Guild Wars 2

“Lol, thieves are useless in dungeons” Luckly those days are over for the most part.

The mobs used to move out off AoEs in the betas. The problem was it worked too well, as classes with tons of AoEs would end up chasing the mobs around with thier ground targetted AoEs and the mobs would be too busy evading to mount a counter offensive.
They need a middle ground. Maybe have it so powerful attacks have a chance to trigger the mob’s evade routine. Like say Hundred Blades now has a 66% chance to make Mobs evade.

It’s a fractal tonic. A rare drop from the fractals.

maha.7902:

Yeah.. thing is, you haven’t. You’ve justified your own gameplay by insulting everyone else. I’m loathe to point fingers, but it’s attitudes like yours that bring so much flak to the “elite” set in the first place.

pdavis argues about and offers justifications for his build/trait/weapon/playstyle choices.

I offer reasons why his justifications are incorrect.

I also state his playstyle is fine, just suboptimal from an efficiency perspective.

how have I “insulted everyone else”?

“Here is the “place” for valkyrie – you enjoy roleplaying a tank, you enjoy roleplaying “support”, you want to use your ascended drop, you’re too lazy to get berserker or you want to make some sort of statement about how valkyrie is fine (which it is, but it’s suboptimal). It’s one of those four which is why you take an armour set with a defensive stat.”
Here’s a nice example. You may not have noticed, but to the casual reader it looks like you’re trying to bully him into a zerker spec.

1) Spear – Warrior, Guardian, Elementalist, Mesmer, Ranger
2) Scythe – Necromancer, Guardian, Thief
3) Battle Axe – Warrior, Guardian, Necromancer
4) Fists – All classes
5) Quarter Staff – Thief, Ranger, Warrior

The Auto hits targets in the crossfire even worse that rifle. As for scaling. It might be doable, but it’ll be an uphill battle for sure. I tried my lvl20 Ranger on the first boss and ran out of time on the last sliver of health. If you want single target dps, I recommend Dagger Thief, Dagger or Axe Necro or Scepter Ele.

Not sure. I know Abaddon (a former god) in GW1 appeared huge. However, Khormir was an average human once, and Grenth was a demigod. I’d imagine their height is a matter of preferance similar to King Thorn.

I was wondering what sigils most Mesmers like on their Greatswords. I’ve recently got my mesmer to 80, and have been finding Sigil of Fire great for open world zerg content. I also have a Sigil of Strength for a little extra punch.

Are there any weapon restrictions? Like am I still allowed to use two Toad King Weapons?

@maha: I have no problem with them finding someway to burst it, you even mentioned guardian running staff, which is currently a big no no. At the very least it would provide a different challenge than what your average stack and spank pug is used to. If they made the stunbreak+stability trigger shortly after it’s cc’d and made it run at +25% combatspeed, I think it’d provide much more of a challenge then you seem to think.

@Sartharina: Actually, the precision and crit make a huge difference. A full zerks set will deal well over 200% crit damage and crit at least 50% (not to mention, many meta comps are capable of achieving over 100% crit chance.) of the time. It’s the reason pvper’s say bunkers do no damage.

I have only one problem with the traits arguement. Is there really build freedom with traits in the dungeons. I mean sure guardian’s can go into support/dps territory, but what about classes like thief?
It seems from my pov only a handful of classes can actually multi-role. Everyone else is supposed to only take traits that contribute to the dps. Like you’d never see a thief go 5/0/6/0/3 or 0/6/4/4/0.
I know this isn’t the speedrunner’s fault. They’re just taking the best tools for the job Anet has presented them. I just find the “your build is your traits” arguement rather flimsy.

It’d be cool in the future if Anet broke the mold with some of their encounts, like maybe have a boss that starts out without unshakable. You have to chase this boss down a hall full of hazards, and it has stunbreaks and cc cleanses, but still can be cc’d. If it reaches the end of the hall it becomes a much stronger boss, but if you can stop it from reaching there, it’d be significantly easier. Something unique like that.

@Dalanor: You sure you’re not a little out of touch with the price of zerkers these days? I went through like 40g (plus like 950 commendations) gearing my mesmer in full zerk exotics, and I don’t even have the runes and sigils yet. And I know quite a few players that can barely manage 3g.
30g will pretty much get you a just the zerk armour package.

Lishtenbird.2814:

tigirius.9014:

Lishtenbird.2814:

tigirius.9014:

Exactly my thoughts. The rewards system in this game is getting worse not better.

After the reward buff the event got far more bearable – 6 champ bags in worst case scenario, more for silver (realistic with 2-3 commanders and some organisation) and more for gold (realistic with 6 groups and some people on TS). And people (some at least) are starting to understand the importance of splitting as well as the incentive to do so. Still, a lot of times it goes through the same pattern:

• Zerger: Which boss first?
• Me: You need to split in 6 groups.
• Zerger: No, we need a zerg.
• Me: 10+ people make bosses take 40+ minutes to kill.
• Zerger: Any commander?
• Dorito shows up.
• In 10 minutes dorito disappears.
• In the next hour, still 0 bosses are defeated.

you mean the system of killing all 6 bosses and getting 2 greens and three tokens? yeah because that’s fun right?

I agree that ANet has problem communicating changes, but if you’re using forums, you should have seen this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-May-20-2014/first#post4054065

6 champ bags + 40 tokens for bronze and 10 champ bags + 80 tokens for gold are quite ok. In a fairly organised instance getting 10 champ bags + 80 tokens + random tokens and gauntlet tickets from mobs every 15-20 minutes looks worth doing IMO, even with the gold sink.

Yah it can rack up under controlled conditions. Woodenpotatoes in his latest QnA was saying he and his guild gathered on a single instance and pretty much did an organized farm on it for a few hours and got crazy amounts of loot.

Is this rune considered passable if I can’t obtain something more popular?

I just want to weigh in about the idea of thieves going Venoms in dungeons because there seems to be a misconception about the purpose of venoms.
While it is true venoms afflict conditions on the opponent, when you acually look at them, only 2 of them deal condi-damage. Venom’s true role is not condi-damage, but rather disabling(control). Spider cripples healing, devourer, ice drake and basilisk impede movement, and skale weakens defense and detours movement. All that said, due to the fact that 90% of mobs become pretty much immobile in combat, especially against a stack, venoms are virtually useless in this setting. If you want them to shine, I recommend small group roaming in WvW.

I know this will be a hard pill to swallow, but take a few minutes to research the meta builds of whatever class you fancy. Take note of what aspects of the class they consider useless. Think about why that may be and, think hard. Consider what other classes will likely do the job you think you need to do for you. Given enough time you’ll realize either “I’m gimping myself by taking this” or “If they hadn’t said I shouldn’t bring this, I wouldn’t have wanted to in the first place”

It’s a shame that so many traits and skills are unneeded, but at the end of the day, it’s Anet’s fault for not presenting a challenge that would call for them. I’d like to dance around the battlefield, but it’s pointless to do so if the enemies are too stupid to present need for it.

What elites are valuable? I’m gathering a good half of our utilities are unneeded.

Should I consider myself restricted to 6-5/6-5/0/x/x?

Just curious, what all I should bring to dungeons on my theif, and what I shouldn’t bring. Zerker gear assumed. A brief explaination of why would be appreciated.

I think I’m gonna keep this tab up. It’s proving interesting.

@maha: Having to CC an enemy so you can wail on them in melee actually sounds pretty fun. It’d be fun going around packing, Devourer, Balilisk and Icedrake Venoms.
I like some actual “fight” in my fights. When dungeons don’t feel like a struggle, when the only question you need to ask in a dungeon is “where do I stand?” the dungeon becomes boring straight out of the gate, and unsatisfying at the end.

One question comes to mind, if all you care about in dungeons is getting the reward at the end as fast as possible, can you really say you love dungeons? From my PoV, you’re just forcing yourself to endure them so you can get your meager restitution at the end, and if that’s the case, if dungeons became too slow to be considered farmable, I assume you’d just find some other way to farm gold quickly.

On a side note, I think I heard Coffeemug in that vid.

I find it weird, because male Human Whisper’s npcs have stark red eyes.

Sword: Toad King Sword
Hammer: Aetherized Hammer
Longbow: Dragon’s Jade HornBow
Shortbow: Mystic Crescent
Axe: Ebon Vanguard Axe
Dagger: Pact Dagger
GreatSword: Greatsaw
Mace: Flame Mace
Pistol: Ruinmaker
Rifle: Scarlet’s Rainbow
Scepter: Inferno
Staff: Super Staff
Focus: X7-10 Alpha
Torch: Dredge Lamp
Horn: Windstorm
Shield: Dragon’s Jade Wall
Spear: Dragonfury
Harpoongun: Drakestrike
Trident: Pact Trident

Ray.3780:

@Euran/Pyro : Anti-boon utilities do exist, I think my favorite one in the game at this time is Dark Path boosted by Path of Corruption. Others which take up utility slots are less favoured by many, because others offer better generic utility, and that’s a shame.

I think the effects need some rework.

Isn’t that the idea of a meta? To not have generalized builds on top?
A lot of players are using might, so abilities that specialize against against might become more useful. Eventually more people will be taking these and the meta will shift to whatever weakness these antiboon builds have.

For the most part yes. Wish there were more light armours that played nice with skirts and more armours that let players display their Sylvari/Norn Glow/Tattoos, and customizable undergarments.

I’ve never seen an MMO where the majority of players wanted to take the lead. Though it may not be true, but most ppl I’ve seen seem to think, if they start the party, they’ll be expected to lead and expected to be knowledgable about the content you’re attempting; the kicker is they think they’ll be blamed if something goes wrong.

Elementalist is more technical and requires more skill than Warrior, but as it stands in the right hands has the highest DPS in PvE/Dungeons. They are very versatile and can provide a lot of support to go alone with their attack. Their wide AoE’s and support abilities also make them invaluable in WvW. Unfortunately due to some nerfs a while back, they’ve been struggling in SPvP for the past while.

Warrior is a very easy to play class which is largely due to its natural bulk making it very forgiving to play. They’re something of a bread n’ butter DPS/Control class across all mods, to varying degrees, depending on the mode.

Thanks. What dungeons are legitimately soloable on thief? Not looking to sell, just looking for personal challenge.

Can someone direct me to a AC path 1 solo guide for thieves? I tried youtube and could only find map breakers.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

They could also make it so that Blocks, Invul, dodges and such bring the Thief out of stealth. What else they could do is add an Initiative cost as well. Having a skill that has 1 requirement of being in stealth with no cost of the skill and no downside makes it VERY hated. Sure, you can dodge it, but that doesn’t really do anything seeing as they can just keep trying.

Something else they could do, make it so if within a certain range you can kind of see an outline and if you stay in that range longer and longer then you can see them more and more or something?

I feel the visible strike effect would be enough. It’d be there to punish sloppy stealth play, and is could be used to add a other level of misdirection at it’s skill cap. My thought is, a thief who misses and starts spamming 1 will be easy to track.
Also, note I said all attack skills, meaning this stipulation would extend to all classes.

Having blocks and ect. break stealth is too heavy handed imo. It’d reward sloppy use of defense, and on top of that, it’d mean guardian’s would be impossible to ambush under regular circumstances.
The outline idea is even more heavy handed, in my experience the only times I’ve seen the outline work is when the game is very fast paced, with a locked over the shoulder 3rd person or a 1st person view.
The initiative idea could work, but it seems rather petty imo. I’d rather have stealth nerfed in someway that opens up new avenues of play if it’s nerfed at all.

As Backstab seems to be, yet again, the subject of thief hate of the week, I had one random idea. What if they gave stealth skills a visible particle effect, while letting the Thief remain stealthed? No like a full reveal, just say their knife glows for the strike. Maybe do that for all attack skills from stealth.

LordByron.8369:

Dual.8953:

LordByron.8369:

•Being stuck in the same combat patterns over and over again.

This one stood out to me. True, we aren’t really stuck per say (In the same way that can start a mission in GW1 without a monk or ritualist, or take an MM to a mission without exploitable corpses), but unless you’re clear with your intentions and your party is okay with it, you’ll likely end up having to suck it up and employ to the game’s universal optimal attack pattern. I think we’d see a lot less of these Zerk threads if that was addressed.

Do you know that a non existent PvE issue already harmed WWW badly?

Even if its true zerker didn t lose much dps due to runes and sigil buffs, its even more true that there was a huge power creep for bunkers and conditions.

And yet the only issue is not healing….is the fact that WARRIOR and GUARDIANS (<== even support) are monopolizing LFG in PVE.

Now that war got back with even more dps than before and mesmer is bugged even more a fast look at LFGs will tell you what is the real problem of PVE.

Sorry, what does that have to do with anything in my post? (Not even saying Zerks is the problem)

LordByron.8369:

•Being stuck in the same combat patterns over and over again.

This one stood out to me. True, we aren’t really stuck per say (In the same way that can start a mission in GW1 without a monk or ritualist, or take an MM to a mission without exploitable corpses), but unless you’re clear with your intentions and your party is okay with it, you’ll likely end up having to suck it up and employ to the game’s universal optimal attack pattern. I think we’d see a lot less of these Zerk threads if that was addressed.

To my knowledge, IP blocks can be circumvented, and these companies likely know exactly how to do such things. (I’ve known people that play IP-blocked X-Country-Only games)
The reason I think you’re seeing a spike in them is the new Megaservers. It’s not so much that there are more bots then there have ever been, it’s all the bots across all servers are now gathered into the same place. Report them, and block them as they come is all I have to say. Ideally, since they’re all in the same place now, they’ll be reported more often, making it harder for the sellers to maintain their advertising budget. Wishful thinking at least.

Wouldn’t mind this. And hey if Guards become overpowered vs Thieves, maybe they’ll buff us some other way.

I’m definitely going to play more. Between trait hunting, trait experimentation, the new PvP features and the wardrobe system, there’s plenty for me to experiment with.

I’m trying out 6/6/2/0/0 with Revealed Training. Tis fun so far

Damage doesn’t break stealth because so many attacks in this game are dumbfire AoEs which require no target. If you compare this to a game like WoW where stealth breaks on damage, AoEs are few and far between. So if you want the game to be balanced around stealth breaking on damage, say goodbye to your Sword Cleaves, Barrage, Traps (as they are, they’d need to be nerfed) and spread shots. All of them would either lose their untargeted functionality of be heavily nerfed.

Spoj The Second.7680:

I dont believe you actually read his post Star Ace. I consistantly see you attacking meta players and accusing them of being toxic and rude when in actual fact they arent. They are expressing a valid opinion and their frustration due to players not reading their lfg posts.

I can only assume you have a have a serious vendetta against all meta players and use any slightly emotional post as a tool in which you can attack them and make it clear how much you hate these “elitist jerks”. Really it just makes you look like intolerant and ignorant. Because the toxicity goes both ways and ive seen far more non meta players being abusive, toxic and intolerant than I have meta players doing the same.

I think he was reacting to his opinion of players who are skilled enough to run zerk and meta builds but don’t. The second last paragraph.

I don’t know about other non-meta players, but when I do dungeons, I do put in all the effort I can for the run with whatever I bring to the run. I imagine many other players have this mentality of doing their best to contribute in their own way, and if that’s the case, I think it’s only natural that they get offended when despite their best effort, someone tells them they’re being lazy and slowing the team down.
In short, no one who honestly tries, likes to be told that they’re being a burden. (Go figure)

If this negative view of non-meta players didn’t exist, I imagine Zerker-hate wouldn’t exist.

Felices Bladewing.3914:

urdriel.8496:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

urdriel.8496:

Felices Bladewing.3914:

Atherakhia.4086:

So when all is said and done, unless you’re standing on a wall, this is a melee dominated WvW and PvP.

fixed it for you because the term game includes PvE aswell

melee is better in pve too , sometimes you may need to use ranged weapons, but the best dps is always from melee .

depends on the situation.
i agree on soloing, leveling in generel etc.
in cases of mass-events and dungeon bosses i keep my point from my previous post

The key is cleave damage, any attack or autotack of a melee weapon will hit more than 1 enemy, if all your group use melee weapons you have a x3 or x5 “damage boost”.

what does cleave dmg against single targets because i was refering to bosses and boss-like events? i never said it’s the dmg thats make range better. i did already agreed that the dmg output of melee is superior i still think that range is way less risky and the reduction in dmg isn’t reason enough to switch to melee if you don’t need to because of your build/playstyle. the greatest issue why the risk of being melee is too high imo is because nobody actually tank the boss so every melee even if he is a glasscannon is taking the risk of becoming the next target due no indication of aggro whatsoever.
So kiting is the playstyle in this whole game regarding PvE and this is ofcourse more handy for ranged players addionally.

tl;dr i don’t think a weaponclass is better than another i just think the risk/reward ratio isn’t balanced in PvE

You should take a look at how the dungeon meta works in this game. Speed runners do go melee in glasscannon builds pretty much exclusively. They use tricks like pinning to mobs/boss into a wall so they can maximize their dps. They survive on active defenses such as blocks, aegis, blinds, stuns and reflects, and as they’re all stacked up, they share theirs party boons and buffs without needing to call everyone together. At the top level of PvE, ranged is considered essentially useless along with defensive stats, to the degree that the meta players will consider you a leecher, looking to for a free ride just for investing in them. The old mantra “A dead DPS is no DPS” doesn’t apply to them as they’ve learned how to erase their need for passive defense all together.
Go in the dungeon board and you’ll find them complaining about the run they did with that, bearbow ranger, or that camping staff guardian.

As Star Ace put it, Zerk hate is the backlash of the prejudice non-zerkers experience. They may not all be victims of ridicule for their gear choice, but the ones who are, are vocal and influence the opinion of those around them. They latch onto the idea that zerk player’s are mostly arrogant jerks that they must stand up against, as our society loves to romantisize the weak overcoming the strong.

hendo.1940:

if this is the future of this game then… theres no reason to go run these dungeons… T_T i went through my 3rd run through the ascolon catacombs (i know i misspelled it) but im doing the same friggin deal in all 3 runs… “Stacking and skipping”. its not the game’s fault its the friggin gamers fault for ruining the fun… laugh as you want… im not having fun i hate to admit that because with everything else, dungeons are not fun because of this exploit. call me a noob for all i care, its just not fun at all -_-

Skipping and stacking are not exploits. If you don’t want to skip and stack, explicitly write in your lfg “no skipping or stacking”. How hard is this? Do you see me writing up threads on how pugs are bad? Of course not, if I want good runs I just find a solution to my problem (inefficient runs) and run with guild instead for nice, smooth runs. Why can’t more people do this? Why do they feel like they should complain rather than actually find a solution for themselves?

I am only against skipping and stacking if it’s a teaching situation. I’d want new people to learn how a dungeon was done before super efficient methods became norm, and then show them the more efficient method. That way if something goes wrong, they can fend for themselves and not act like chickens with their heads cut off.

“Learn how to do it wrong then learn how to do it properly” doesn’t sound like a good way of teaching. It literally serves no purpose. Why would you, for example, teach people how to 1500 range Bloomhunger and then show them the melee way? Wouldn’t it make sense to just show them the melee way?

Whether someone can fend for themselves purely depends on their level of control and initiative, and that’s something you can’t teach. People who can control themselves and keep cool will get through awkward situations, and people who struggle through situations that deviate through their standard rotation will … struggle.

I wish this view was shared across most dungeon teachers, but alas, the people that taught me the dungeon runs emphasized the parts to skip (i.e. “When we get to this next section, just run past everything and go to safe spot X”)

The point of teaching is to help educate people on efficient ways to clear a dungeon. Skipping mobs is efficient. If you have a problem with this, don’t ask for a teacher. I’d rather have someone just flat out kicked from the mentoring guild than teaching “no skipping stacking” methods because that’s not teaching, that’s just imposing your inefficient view on your victims (students) who won’t know any better.

You show them the inefficient way for two major reasons. 1) It teaches the students the basics of dungeoning, which gives the students a solid pool of basic skills to rely on, making them better at adapting to changing and uncertain situations, (like if they release a new dungeon, or end up having to pug)
2) It gives the students a healthy respect for the meta tactics they employ.

jweez.7214:

Flissy.4093:

No new skills, but at least we’re getting a trait overhaul in 2 weeks. Surely that counts, right?

Yeah that counts but I just hate the utility skills in this game. The lot of them are soooo situational. And that’s fine if they want us too to be swapping our skills out often but in that case they should make it friendlier to do so.

How much friendlier can you get than, “click the little triangle while out of combat”? Not like it’s hid in a deep menu or barred by an npc.

@hendo:
Yah that vid of soloing the golem’s what I like. Embracing movement rather than trying to minimize it. I go in dungeons an most of them time, it’s “stand here and maximize dps as much as possible as the enemies funnel themselves in” Sure it’s effective but it lacks aesthetic style. Might be because I’m usually playing fighting games or PSO2 when I’m not playing GW2.

I think I’ll restate my point. What these players want is not necessarily trinity. They want to do things like like run support traits in Shadow Arts on a Thief and be considered an asset instead of a burden for it. They also likely despise the fact that the optimal way to play PvE in GW2 is to stack in a “safe” spot, as Dalanor’s videos demonstrate. They crave Active, Dynamic and Frantic combat and the game gives them the tools for it, unfortunately the enemies are too stupid to provide the challenge necessary.

I think the real issue is so many of our abilities in this game go undervalued. Like if you’re a thief, and you go anything other than 25/30/0/x/x in PvE you’re automatically considered a bad thief.
If you take Withdraw, it’s hard to stack = bad thief
If you take a venom build = bad thief
P/P = Bad thief
x/x/30/x/x = Bad thief
The list goes on.
The only things in the game that are considered useful are those that contribute to the group’s DPS, by way of direct damage, damage buffs, or low cost means of preventing damage. Options that decrease the DPS too significantly or run contrary to the usual stacking tactic are considered worthless.
Lets talk about tactics a sec. This “All for DPS” phenomena spreads to tactics as well, with LoS and Stacking. As enemy AI in this game as no concept of position and flanking, these two tactic have become the ultimate way to handle nearly every PvE encounter in this game. You can’t fault the players for going with what works best, but you should fault the Devs for allowing such a strategy to be optimal with respect to the ratio of offense vs defense. (at least imo, my ideal of optimal combat would be very frantic and dynamic, making full use of all the movement abilities the devs have granted us.)
This extends to gear too. Not talking about armour types mind you, I’m talking about Runes and Sigils. There are so many of them in with game with a multitude of bizarre and interesting effects. What do we all take? Scholar Runes and Ruby Orbs, both upgrades that offer nothing more than damage boosts. This even applies to Foods.

You may want to ease up there runeblade. Your tone will only serve to solidify the perception that duelist are toxic players who demand duels and don’t take no for an answer. You’re representing the dueling community, so your actions reflect on the other would be duelists.
Anyways, they’ve got that TDM map coming out, why not get your fix there? Or there’s always WvW. Go solo roaming, and bow to a possible opponent, heck, if you lose they might even spare you the spike.

Zerker’s never reigned supreme in WvW, so I doubt much will change due to Furousity. Organized Zergs will keep their focus on CC, AoE, and not being Rally bate and Roamers will do as they feel.
The new Traits and sigils are more poised to cause a shift than Furousity.

The DA one sounds like it’d be great following a Backstab. 200 power plus the 300 from the investment isn’t something to sneeze at.
The CS one I’ll experiment with as with the SA.
Acro one I’m trying to figure out how to make the most of.
Trick one sounds good on condi builds.

Carighan.6758:

Gryph.8237:

I am perplexed and thrown by the huge disparity in trait quality etc among the classes. Perhaps a blatant example is the new grandmaster trait for Mesmers and warriors , compared to the rest. Is this just an example of how much Mesmer and Warrior are just so favored compared to the rest of the classes?

I’m still perplexed that people consider the Mesmer trait so strong. have you checked the other two GM traits in that very slot? And how often do you see people with those, exactly?

Reesha.7901:

The Mesmer is not a part of the pvp meta….

Or PvE. Used to be good before the Time Warp nerf, granted.

Actually Mesmer’s still have a firm seat in Dungeons. Those reflects are in high demand and they’ve been integral in performing some of the fastest Lupi kills in the game. (The current record for a Lupi kill last I heard was 7 seconds) It’s just the Pug speedclear community is usually months behind the actual meta.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Imagine you have heal turret, 3 utility turrets and the supply crate. You can chain a bubble of reflect for 20 seconds, that’s pretty neat if stationary fights are used.

Then factor in that most turrets have a 20 to 30 second cooldown.