Permanent protection and high sustain aren’t enough support for you? It’s useless in PvE, except for carrying noobs, but it is clearly good for PvP.
Permanent protection might have been enough for me 3 years ago, and it certainly doesn’t look like it has high sustain to me, especially not on allies. Do elaborate as to where this sustain comes from though. I have my doubts but perhaps I’m missing something.
Auras → Elemental Bastion → Powerful Aura.
It will outheal a druid, though it doesn’t have the same heal spike as one. Needs to utilize Unstable Conduit, otherwise it won’t produce enough auras to really make it.
I like the WvW approach with water field blasting better (just more fun to me), but it likely won’t work well in PvP.
Yes, that is what I was referring to. Commanders often start asking people to leave the map far before the meta starts.
Well, you might want to consider their point of view. I’m trying to organize the meta for dozens players. If there are enough “stubborn” people who don’t give a kitten it will simply fail. Effectively these people will waste the time of dozens others. It strikes me as an extremely selfish thing to do, so yeah, during meta I always urge people to participate. I haven’t asked anyone to leave the map yet, but I don’t hesitate to scold people who are asking for help with HPs for instance.
Please make us a favor and remove all the PvE mechanic of lords in desert borderlands.
Specially the one in air keep, causing hate to people not using the exploit to easy kill that lord, it’s an 100% sure flaming to people trying to normally kill that lord. Disgusting.
WvW is about PvP, players are the most important part of WvW maps, we don’t need annoying lords doing unnecessary things. Just copy and paste lords from original borderlands, or remove that map completely.
Short translation: make lords in desert bl just as generic and boring as they are everywhere else because we’re dedicated wvw-ers who cannot be bothered with such trivial stuff as game mechanics.
Sarcasm aside, I fail to see a difference between using the lord’s attack mechanics to your advantage and climbing on a wall when defending. Both aren’t players, both are part of the map/game design. So following your logic, we don’t need either of them. Just remove all terrain features and let players fight on a plane, because this mode is about players fighting each other, right? And it will be more fun, right? Right? Oh well, I failed to put sarcasm aside.
We usually take a necromancer on Xera recently, mostly to epi shards. Last time we even took two just to be safe in case the epis get eaten by adds. You just don’t need the optimal dps, and you often can’t get it anyway. So go with what you’re good at and find something that works well for the team.
it’s better if reaper epis the adds so xera gets bonus stacks of bleed/burn. its better if shards are overloaded by eles etc. epidemic is too valuable to waste it on shards.
In CM 100 some people (correctly) want a proper power comp, because it is the most efficient way to do this fractal. If the LFG said they wanted 2x power dps, chrono, druid and a ps, you really have nothing to complain about.
Big blob vs big blob is still a fair fight. And to me it is much more enjoyable than roaming. I can’t really accuse FSP of backing off fights they’re losing. Two nights ago we won a few rounds against them in the open field and they were always coming to fight again. It’s up to the commander, ultimately.
You can explain epic-scale feats with the effort of unknown group or device, but you’ll have hard time motivating that. What story purpose do they serve? Why show us an epic feat in the first place, if it has a pretty mundane explanation?
1) Because, having known the mundane reasons why Jennah could pull off such a feat for years, the writers didn’t consider it to be that epic.
2) Because ArenaNet did not want to have to deal with the complexities they did with Lion’s Arch – again - and needed a reason for the White Mantle to be unable to simply bombard Divinity’s Reach into rubble.
3) Because we were not the people who were intended to draw conclusions – Logan was.
4) Because the writers realised how much they’d overcompensated in making sure that humanity didn’t hog the spotlight in GW2, and coming into what is looking like it might be a more human-oriented storyline, they wanted to remind the players that humans were capable of being more than redshirts and victims.
Like I said, if an asura had done this, we would not be batting an eyelid.
1) You can attempt to reason everything with incompetence, but it’s a weak argument.
2) As far as I remember from the human personal stories, the White Mantle was portrayed as a secretive and subversive organization. It was never hinted at all they have a substantial military power at their command. Which is already all the reason you need for them not being able to bombard the city to rubble. Their military power was written as a surprise and as such it obviously had intention. It’s not an accident which the later story deals with, it’s a setup. See (1) again.
3) Logan isn’t the consumer of the story, we are. His conclusions are only relevant as far as the story needs them. And the story can only need them because of us.
IF Jennah turns out to be Lyssa (which I highly doubt because some flashy effects and smart preperation a god do not make) it would be very poor writing. She is probably the last human who could be Lyssa with the amount of attention she gets from all sides.
A friendly reminder Lyssa is the goddess of illusion. We’ve already seen Anise getting away with her mesmery tricks on high-profile party politics. And nobody gets under surveillance 24/7. It is totally possible for the goddess of illusion to take the place of whoever she wishes. Assuming otherwise puts a severe limitation on the gods’ powers and basically puts them around the level of the Commander in terms of power. I find that highly unlikely.
WvW players rarely do PvE. Just saying. Lilies are expensive because there is higher demand for them than there is supply. Meaning they are useful, on average. Your opinion is just that – an opinion. The market is a measure.
We usually take a necromancer on Xera recently, mostly to epi shards. Last time we even took two just to be safe in case the epis get eaten by adds. You just don’t need the optimal dps, and you often can’t get it anyway. So go with what you’re good at and find something that works well for the team.
I agree with all that has been mentioned above by the others. But I get how annoying it is when comms don’t remove their groups once the maps full, obviously sometimes they might not know, but if they’ve been told by someone it’s full and they still don’t remove it then that’s wrong imo.
Maybe when a map is full there should be some trigger that automatically closes all groups listed in LFG for that instance of the map. Or perhaps something that automatically notifies the comm via a broadcast message that it’s full. Or even something that just marks the group on LFG with a “map full” icon so people can see at a glance that they are unlikely to get in.
Of course I don’t know how complicated those are, or how much work would be involved to implement any of those, but I think something like any of those could help with things.
I usually end the LFG when somebody says it’s full. However, sometimes you can miss the message due to being occupied with an event, organizing, or explaining the mechanics to newcomers (that are still found occasionally). All I’m saying is: just keep in mind commanders are also human and they will be caring first and foremost for their immediate tasks rather than the QoL of players on another map instances.
I would love to learn how the raid bosses work if the groups let me join them.
How do you suppose the active raiders learned it? Born with the abilities? Granted by a divine intervention? Transferred to them with alien technology?
No, I’m not suggesting idling. I go there specifically to do the outposts and events all the way to the meta. I usually need to clear my inventory at least twice. It’s feline tons of loot and while there are some annoying events I generally enjoy playing there. By the way, I also enjoy DS. So maybe these maps just aren’t for you?
In PvE all conjures are used as fillers to increase the dps of a rotation. Frostbow is quite powerful (cast/pick → 3 → 4 → drop), and it has a strong cc skill (5) which gets used sometimes. In theory “Feel the burn!” is better dps on small targets, but I usually run frostbow nevertheless for the added utility.
If you’re into soft ccs, I’d consider running Arcane Power. You have it traited, in team fights you can spam obnoxious amounts of immob, chill or blind. It just feels like a huge loss in team utility to pick Elemental Surge and not have that one skill that makes the most use of it.
I think this need to be addressed, either by increasing drop rate of lily or changing the forge recipe to create lily from gemstone.
Why? There are 18 options with nearly-identical TP values that work just as well as Maguuma Lilies.
^This.
There’s no problem with Lilies being expensive. It’s because they are rare and they are useful. The game needs items like this which make you feel lucky when you get one dropped. We already have dozens upon dozens of irrelevant drops that are completely interchangeable.
I find it kind of hard to sympathize with you. You want to get 10 mins before meta and organize it? Good luck. The map is supposed to be played on a 2h cycle. Go in a fresh map after reset, tag up and open LFG. By the time meta comes you’ll have enough people for the meta and they won’t leave, I guarantee it. Because it’s what I do and it works every time.
This is the problem with GW2 and automatic systems. They’d need to create lots of specs and slots and with variety for each boss encounter, then the system would need extra upkeep and maintenance after every patch.
And worst of all, a lot of these slots are encounter-specific and are not necessarily intended but rather are created by the players while figuring out the encounter. And even if they all are intended, just listing them there would take away the fun of figuring it out.
I’m fine with the changes. I might even say I like them. I enjoy running staff cele ele in a zerg. It has that feeling of being versatile which I used to associate with ele. No matter if the call is for ccs, bombs or sustain I can answer. The latest changes only make this better. Sure, there are classes that can damage better or cc better, but this level of versatility? That’s quite unique to ele, I think. And it’s something you can only really experience in WvW.
VG is actually a rather good introduction to raids. Yes, it is mechanically challenging, but that gives people a good idea what to expect from raids. If you start with Escort you can create unrealistic expectations in new players and when they encounter one of the harder bosses the experience can be too disheartening for them and cause them to quit raiding.
From PvE perspective:
I wouldn’t ever want to remain in Water long enough to cast Ice Spike twice, so I will likely never notice the increased cooldown. The added blast finisher is nice in solo play scenarios. I can Earth 2 → Water 2 → Fire 2 for some easy might, fury and damage. Oh, and earth 2 now cripples? Sweet. I mean, I should still probably not bother because opening with Air Overload will finish stuff quicker, but it’s nice to have an alternative for fooling around. Or just minor prestacking.
From WvW perspective:
Blast in Water? Yes, please.
@ fearnor..
“Get it already – it’s the people who are toxic, not the tools, not the game modes, the people. I fail to understand why so many are having problems grasping such a simple concept.”
yea, with that I do agree.
“So the tool doesn’t serve me to call others – I’ve never done that, not on a single occasion – but to help me and my group get smoother and more enjoyable experience.”
And yea, I wish everyone used them as such. I mean in WOW you got kicked for low dps, period. You go improve and try again. Its just a shame many others cant be like you in that respect.
Well… what can I say, it’s the people problem again. You just shrug and find others to play with. I get easily triggered by the “dps meters are evil” notion because I’ve seen all the toxicity they are supposed to create before they became a thing.
@Feanor: that principle worked well for many console games. I started playing games in the 90’s, and games at that time started easy and got harder and harder the further you proceeded. It’s also how humans learn in other environments. You start speaking/writing with easy sentences, that’s not a habit you keep when learning more about writing.
It’s a valid point, but it is missing the group aspect. You won’t always have the group of 10 players who are all at the same level in their learning progress. In my opinion it will lead to even more wipes and frustration when different players have different habits and fail to match the exact requirements of the modified environment.
Also, would absolutely LOVE to see dps meters go away, they are toxic to raids. Its been proven over and over that you don’t need uber high dps to succeed so if that’s the case then why bother having a “tool” that mostly serves to call people about on sucking more than someone else?
Because I want to know how well I’m doing and I want to become better, okay?. And no, dps meters do not make raids any more toxic. To be honest, I’d much prefer being kicked out because I suck at dps than being kicked out on some arbitrary reason like having 5 LI less than asked or not running the absurdly overpriced top food and hence losing 1-2% of my dps. Get it already – it’s the people who are toxic, not the tools, not the game modes, the people. I fail to understand why so many are having problems grasping such a simple concept.
P.S. Also while high dps is not required to beat the encounter, it does reduce the difficulty and increase the chances of success. Many encounters have various mechanics which can be skipped or reduced by simply having high enough dps. So the tool doesn’t serve me to call others – I’ve never done that, not on a single occasion – but to help me and my group get smoother and more enjoyable experience.
Yeah, that’s the problem. Because only a small number of people are doing that.
No, it’s not. You can’t force people to make the same choices, and you don’t have to. The game offers a multitude of experiences which can appease a multitude of tastes. It’s unreasonable to expect every single player to like every single experience in it. More to the point, it is unreasonable to expect every player to invest the time and effort he needs to in order to raid actively. This content was obviously designed for the more dedicated players, based solely on how challenging it is. Better tools won’t make a big difference in accessibility. More players will try the content, but they won’t be willing to spend enough time to actually be successful in it, so they will quickly move out of it.
That’s not to say “it’s better to have poor tools”, it’s to say you’re fixating on a non-issue and proposing ways to “fix” it which won’t even work.
You assume the worst outcome and base your opinion on that. In low scaled versions of a raid, green circles at VG could take, let’s say, 5 seconds longer to explode than normal. Next scale, 4 seconds, then 3 and so on. People would naturally learn that the higher the scale, the shorter the amount of time until they explode.
I think you underestimate the power of habits. It’s harder to “un-learn” a “training” timing than to learn the real one. So I’m with maddoctor on this point.
I wasn’t advocating solo version, just explaining the need for exclusive rewards. I can even argue against solo versions, as what makes these fights fun is their mechanics and the team work. A solo version cannot have the latter and will need to see the former severely reduced. So I can’t see it being much fun.
Dungeons were totally fine without that exclusive content.
Right, because dungeon skins and runes aren’t exclusive rewards. Plus it was the top gold farm at the moment. Try again.
So please tell me were I can get legendary armor functionality outside of raid since now the skin exclusitivity is what you defend.
You could get exotic equipment from karma vendors in orr, random drops and Wvw merchants so that tier wasent exlusive at all.
The functionality is mostly irrelevant. The exclusivity is in the skin, just like it was for dungeon armors. Which you couldn’t, and still can’t, get as random drops.
Yes but you can get them from reward tracks so then maybe they should implement the same for the legendary armor right?
Sure, as long as it takes as much time and effort as acquiring it through actual raiding.
It was fun. A bit simplistic for my taste (I main ele, after all), but still fun. Mechanically perhaps close to the condi ranger, but felt more satisfying for some reason. Maybe because of better visuals, not sure. In any case, very happy with it, I even made Eureka for my rev because of it.
I kited shards on Cairn the other day in my Ventari Deimos gear… You definitely can’t support the group as hard as an ele can since you need a lot of self-tablet love to heal through the agony storm ticks, but holy crap is it easy mode just rotating through your evades and blocks. If you want to be especially lazy, you can even just straight up block all the shards with your tablet dome for a crazy long time.
You may want to try supporting with the same gear on Matthias. Really does wonders.
Back to the topic, I would expect the condi rev to be at least decent on bosses which move around (again, Matthias being the prime example), ‘cause you know, torment. On static/immobile bosses like Gorseval or Sabetha it won’t be that good, but probably still passable. You can pull your own weight with that build, the issue IMO is the community will most likely think you’re a beginner if you’re not brining the current top meta dps to the party. And of course, there’s KC, don’t bring condi rev to KC please.
Dungeons were totally fine without that exclusive content.
Right, because dungeon skins and runes aren’t exclusive rewards. Plus it was the top gold farm at the moment. Try again.
So please tell me were I can get legendary armor functionality outside of raid since now the skin exclusitivity is what you defend.
You could get exotic equipment from karma vendors in orr, random drops and Wvw merchants so that tier wasent exlusive at all.
The functionality is mostly irrelevant. The exclusivity is in the skin, just like it was for dungeon armors. Which you couldn’t, and still can’t, get as random drops.
Because raids in most games are about rewards in addition to challenge, and there are two factors.
The reward must be the best of its type (usually gear stats) the game offers, at least in PvE.
Some players who raid look for prestige to be had by displaying the raid reward.
All of those games are raid-centric, so they should not be used as an example of “what things should like” in GW2.
In those games the reward for raids have to be the best, because raids are considered to be the most important content of said games. That assumption is supposedly not true in GW2.
Raid rewards need to be exclusive to create a drive for players to play them again and again. The content is great, but even the greatest content gets exhausted if you have no reason to go back to it. See dungeons for instance.
It’s not just about knowing everything without being told, you also have to know the timing perfectly – and it should match the timing of your teammates. It’s just so much easier to do something in unison with voice chat.
I mean, if we were going for sensible options, they would have fixed the one formula that causes the 375% leather/cloth disparity in armor crafting before fixing things with a farm and then nerfing it because people were farming. So obviously they will instead resort to some sort of overly complex, high-dev-cost fix that breaks the intended gameplay along with the farming.
I don’t think it’s that simple. Leather had no value whatsoever before this disparity. Changing this one formula may very well bring back those days and I don’t think this will be healthy for the game economy.
Just going to throw this out there as something no-one seems to have mentioned.
Have you tried playing with friends?
To save time I’ll put an answer to the inevitable “my friends don’t want to raid/not enough friends/they’re nomads guards who press 1 on the lootstick”.
Have you thought you might make new friends by joining a regular raid group or a training run.
I forgot to raise that point. Going on TS/Discord doesn’t feel like a hassle when you know you’ll be having fun with the same people and you’re going to laugh on the blunders you all make.
Are there any groups out there that are doing silent raids run or groups that do not require you to talk?
In my experience most group do not require you to talk. I’ve done some “no-ts” runs in my pug days, some were even pretty decent. But in general I do not recommend it. Too much can go wrong and it is just so much comfortable to have the voice comm.
Long story short, loved my ele but decided to boost him considering I have a few 80s already, but before I decide to dedicate some real time into him right now what is the current viable builds/weapons for pve content in general?
Like hot, fracts, and raiding?
How are they doing in pvp or even wvw? I know these are allot of questions but I need something else to play, I am getting bored with my rev.
Thanks all!
For PvE builds, check this site. Long story short – d/w, sc/w and staff are the popular options, first two have a choice between condi and power builds.
You might want to check the way buffs and heals work. Squads and subgroups in them are to prioritize and sure, you’ll get less of these, but you will get some. Also I’ve never been left behind dead unless the zerg has been pushed away and going to res me would have other players risk getting killed themselves. That’s regardless if I’m in the zerg or not.
With recent changes to wvw, it became clear that classes like guards/war/necro/eles/revs (basically those must have in squad) get advantage over other classes in wvw because they are allowed into squad and allowed to zerg in wvw which allows them to gain ranks/pips faster in wvw. Meanwhile rest of the classes get kicked/forced into roaming due to their class design which results in less rank/pip gains in wvw.
Since wvw community and devs deemed it as fair and logical system i propose that zerg classes (guards, eles and co.) gain less shards/rewards/pips in other game modes (pvp/pve) compared to other classes (engis/druids etc.) to make up for the reward difference.
How, exactly, can anyone prevent you from following the commander/zerg with just about any class or build? So what if you’re not in the squad? WvW is actually the one game mode where class discrimination matters the least. Ask just about any revenant who wants to dps in a raid, for instance.
Yes, you’re wrong. You are supposed to wait for everyone to be in position, because on higher tiers the time limit is too short to reach the cleft and make it back in time. It is customary to say “r” in chat when you’re in position at the cleft, wait to have 3 “r”-s and then someone say “go” in order to sync the effort.
Punish the players breaking the rules, not the ones following them.
For the record, I don’t necessarily condone the idea of punishing everyone, but when there is a consistent problem then it is important to look at the root of the problem rather than the symptoms.
You’re misinterpreting the problem. Players will always look to maximize the reward/effort ratio. Obviously, as effort approaches zero said ratio approaches infinity. That’s not a reason to never ever implement any quality of life features. Because this is not the one and only factor when it comes to player’s decision making process. For instance, making the reward small enough will cause players to lose interest. Of course, in case of Lake Doric this kind of defeats the purpose of introducing the farm, so they went for something else. Killing a QoL feature that allows the farm is trying to fix a pest problem by burning down a house. Not to mention it won’t fix the problem, as many players will simply move to macros or more sophisticated ways of automating the “F” keystroke.
You can explain epic-scale feats with the effort of unknown group or device, but you’ll have hard time motivating that. What story purpose do they serve? Why show us an epic feat in the first place, if it has a pretty mundane explanation?
People are now mad because of the nerf at lake doric (for those who don’t know, trebuchets now shot even at the entrance gate) they’re saying they’re going to BFF now to continue AFK farm. It is comunity’s fault in first place that be got punished this way for abusing AGAIN in a farm Anet gave us the option to use.
It happened with Auric Basin, it happened with Lake Doric and it WILL happen to Bitterfrost Frontier if “we” keep doing this. Because of one, we all have to pay, and it’s not fair.
Who said life is fair?
This is a pretty classic scenario. Pleading to the masses won’t change their behaviour. On some basic level, playing a game is finding and using the exploits, the things that are most efficient. This doesn’t only concern damage dealing. The reward/effort ratio is also a measure of efficiency. So people will keep doing it. And I’m not saying that to justify my own decisions. I have never afk farmed and I never will, because I see it as a waste of time. I’d rather have fun in the game and earn less virtual goods than have no fun at all and earn more. However, that’s just my subjective stance and I cannot enforce it on everyone. And neither can you. So brace yourselves, winter is coming to Bitterfrost Frontier. I must admit I’m curious to see how will ANet handle this thematically.
