Guild Wars 2

The ideal comp right now generally is 2 mesmers, 4 eles, 2 ps, and 2 druids. The ideal comp before the last balance patch was 1 mesmer, 1 rev, 4 eles, 2 ps, and 2 druids.

What you are remembering from before the balance patch was a deviation from meta. The reason you had 2 pug groups who acted identical is that they were both groups going for a meta comp. That group you were referencing from before was not. This is just a matter of different groups approaching raids in different ways. Some groups try to stay closer to meta than others and I don’t think the distribution of those groups has changed much.

It is true that some classes were hurt a bit by the patch, so things like necros might get asked to switch more often, but they are still perfectly viable for getting clears. Thieves are not as desirable because eles got buffed, but they are still very good options for a dps class. I would take an ele over a thief for gors, but that’s no different than before the patch because of the big hitbox. Thief is still very good for VG and Sab.

Essentially, I think you were right about sample size. You happened to get one group before the patch that was very off-meta, and two groups after that were very on-meta.

As for your other question, it seems very likely that there will continue to be development on raids far into the future. They seem to be developing and releasing as they complete things though, so I don’t know if they will necessarily be tied to an expansion, but there will be more raids. The next raid is certainly going to come out before the next expansion.

New specs will very likely introduce some element of power creep, but I think it is unlikely to be as pronounced as with HoT. If a spec is not better, then people just will not use it and things will stay the same. If it is better in some situation, then people will use it. However in order to use the new elite spec, you will have to not be using the HoT spec, so I would have to give up Druid to use whatever the new ranger spec is. HoT specs were super powerful because they could synergize with all existing trait lines, but any future specs will not be able to synergize with each other. This is why I think the power creep will be less. Eventually we’ll end up in a situation where rangers use expac 1, warriors use expac 3, eles use expac 2, etc. It seems unlikely that raids will become as easy as dungeons.

I know this doesn’t answer your main question, but at least in PvE longbow is the superior ranged weapon even for power builds. You get decent sustained damage with autoattack and have access to fire fields and a blast to stack might. If you put a sigil of strength in it, then your primal burst is good for stacking might.

I’m guessing the best rotation for power longbow is the same as for condi, so you can look that up if you want. Unfortunately since I always use that for ranged I haven’t looked into how to optimize dps for rifle. Wish I could be more help.

There is plenty of time for your teammates to revive you if you go down. If they can’t revive you in time then either you are out of position, they are out of position, or they are not trying to res you. If you do go full dead, it’s still pretty easy to revive. Just have your teammates pick up crystals so they don’t die while reviving and pick up the full dead person. Trying to get up a downed person before the next laser is one of the only times I actually feel pressure in that fight.

As a side note, this is a good time to let anyone who doesn’t know about the timing to dodge his death laserbeam. You get a skull above your head when you’re the target. If you dodge right when the skull disappears then you will evade the attack.

You are right that in the last year, there has been a lot of talk about content being too challenging, whether that is in open world or raids or fractals or any other pve content. However I believe that this is a product of psychology. People are a lot more likely to be vocal when they are unhappy about something. With HoT, a lot of content that is more challenging than vanilla gameplay was introduced. The people who enjoy this content are relatively quiet because they are happy. The people who don’t are loud.

I remember very clearly the discussions before HoT and how this was flipped around. At the time, dungeons and fractals were the hardest content, and for many of the players they were far too easy. The people who didn’t crave the challenge where quiet and the people who did were loud.

When I first went into an HoT beta, I got completely owned by a lone smokescale, and that excited me. When they announced new features of the expansion, I got excited but it was never enough to sell me on it because they hadn’t revealed what ‘Challenging Group Content’ was yet. So many people were just waiting to hear about that because that is what they were missing from this game and that is what they craved.

One of your assertions was that raids were created to bring new players in, and I disagree with that. They certainly might have attracted a few, but I think they were designed to keep the interest of a key demographic of players who were very vocal and dedicated to the game, but were losing interest because they needed a bigger challenge.

You did have some great points, but I think that when evaluating how healthy raids are for the game, there is a lot more to it. Raids have kept a very dedicated population interested, which has led to some very ingenious theorycrafting and some amazing builds that push the limits of what is possible. They have led to detailed build guides and strategies that are available to people who don’t want to craft their own builds. They have invigorated a number of in game communities with a fun activity to rally behind.

There is certainly kittenociated with raids, but that is not new to the game. Dungeon runs could be exclusive before. There were plenty of people selling fractal paths. Some of that translated to raids and may have gotten worse but I believe the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

There is currently a bug with crit chance: The crit chance displayed in the hero panel is slightly different from your actual crit chance. Your target number is 99% instead of 100%.

Also make sure you have all the buffs when looking at the crit chance. If you are missing spotter or banner of discipline or fury, your crit chance will be lower. Also make sure you have ascended everything. Being at 98.x% makes me think that you’re missing something.

For staff ele, gear, traits, and utility should but you at 2140 precision. Accounting for banner of disc and spotter, that puts you at 2460. Your crit chance is thus (2460 – 895) / 21 = 74.5. Adding on sigil of accuracy that puts you at 81.5, and so with fury you should be at 101.5, which is 2.5% more than you need.

Thief is very similar. Your prec signet gives the same amount as ele signet, so you’ll also be at 2140 prec. Instead of the sigil of accuracy, you have a trait that gives 5% crit chance while above 90% health. Thus you’ll be at 99.5% crit chance, which is 0.5% more than you need.

Edit: Removed a paragraph that I think is incorrect after reading other responses.

If there is no chrono, then there is probably some merit to taking attack speed buffs. However I mostly play raids, and so I was coming at this from mostly that perspective. Although all buffs is not an accurate depiction of how much damage you will do, it is an accurate way to compare builds for raiding scenarios.

I suppose I should rephrase my question as, if a group wanted to put a warrior in a dps slot in a raid, what could they do to get some more dps? That should narrow the focus enough I think.

I was thinking about this in terms of a warrior filling a dps role in a dungeon/fractal/raid group. It would never be better than other classes at dps, but how good could it get? This means that I’m assuming there are other people there to give you buffs, so I was assuming 100% quickness uptime from the resident chrono.

In almost all PvE content warriors run PS builds. They have amazing offensive support, but mediocre damage. I’ve been wondering how high of dps a warrior could get if they sacrificed their support in favor of pure dps.

I did some work on figuring out such a build, with no luck. I started out thinking back to pre-HoT dungeon meta, where warriors would run fast hands and axe/mace on swap if they were the second warrior in the party. I figured taking discipline instead of tactics would let me access other weapon skills that could up dps, but whatever I tried quickly dropped dps below standard PS berserker. What I found is that with the berserker specialization, there is very little need to autoattack in gs in the standard rotation, and avoiding gs auto was the main reason to fast hands swap, so fast hands doesn’t have much of a place in berserker builds. If someone has a rotation that shows otherwise, please share because I love that trait.

Other alternatives to tactics are defense, which doesn’t have anything useful for dps, and arms. Arms has some useful things being adrenaline regen, and some minor dps boosts, but not as much as tactics since they are mostly condi based. Because of this, I feel like tactics, with empower allies and empowered (1% damage per boon on you), is actually the best dps choice even though it is mostly taken for the support.

So when it came down to it, the best dps I was able to get was the regular PS berserker build with the banners replaced by other things. Signet of might and wild blow for some damage. Is PS berserker actually the highest damage power build for warrior in addition to providing all that offensive support?

DPS testing was done on the golem with all buffs and all condis.

Since you’ve just started out, I’m going to give you some more general advice that I think answers your question.

All weapons essentially give you the same stats. If you look at the stats given by two axes versus the stats given by one greatsword, they will be the same. In order to figure out what does more damage, you need to look at the damage on the weapon skill tooltips.

You’re right that melee typically does more damage than ranged, and the way you could verify that is looking at the damage on your melee skill tooltips vs ranged skill tooltips. Also pay attention to things like attack speed and cooldowns.

Starting out, I recommend just using the weapons you enjoy. However if you want to get into higher difficulty content like raids and upper tier fractals, I recommend going off a guide. http://qtfy.engin.com/builds is my go to source for raid builds, and even for more casual content those builds can give you some good ideas because they are optimized for max damage.

Hope this helps

In my experience there are three types of pug groups. In order to get into raids you will have to work your way through all three and need to set your expectations accordingly.

1. Training – These groups are where everybody starts out. All those people posting for LI in the lfg started out here. These groups are designed for learning and practicing mechanics. You very likely will spend many hours here without getting a kill. Once you can deal with all mechanics for a boss, then you can move on to the next type of group for that boss.

2. Experienced – This category includes all groups that are not listed as training, but also do not have an LI requirement. There is a huge variety in these groups, so be prepared to leave if the group was wanting a higher skill level. These groups are going for a kill and expect people to be able to deal with all mechanics appropriately. If you don’t have a kill on a boss yet, it is a good idea to be up front about it. Say, “I don’t have a kill yet, but I’ve gotten the boss to X% health and have done a bunch of training raids.” These groups are also a good place to get an introduction to later bosses. If you kill Sloth smoothly and move on to trio and matty, say something like, “I haven’t fought Matthias before. Are you ok with that? I’ve watched a few videos but that’s it.” Be open to them saying no.

3. LI/Killproof – These groups are like the previous, but they want to be extra sure it goes smoothly. Don’t fake it, they will probably be able to tell. Don’t join these groups unless you’ve killed that boss multiple times and are very comfortable with the mechanics.

Lastly, and most importantly, go into all of these raids with a friendly, positive attitude. If people enjoy raiding with you then they will add you to their friends list and invite you to other raids they are organizing. That is how you become part of a static group that can get kills consistently. If people don’t like your personality then they’ll add you to their list of people they don’t want to raid with, and you’ll have made getting into raiding a lot harder for yourself.

GLHF

Overall, a pretty good video, but the warrior rotation is not optimized. If you start a max adrenaline you can skull crack > shield bash > pomel bash > headbutt > berserk > skull grinder > blood reckoning > skull grinder. The extra skull crack and skull grinder give about 400 more break damage than what you showed in the video.

This is most likely not going to kill raid revenant. Suppose they reduce the boon duration to 25 or 30%. This will still be wanted so that chrono can take more dps gear.

Also, to me Naturalistic Resonance is the third most important thing about rev. #1 is fury. #2 is protection. Those are likely going to be buffed to compensate.

Stop being all doom and gloom until we know all the changes and have had some time to play around with them.

So when the game first came out, each step of the personal story had it’s own level. You would do a quest for level 1, then level 3, then level 4, then level 6, and so forth. However they simplified this a while ago so that you unlock a group of story steps that are related to each other every ten levels. You unlock story at level 10, 20, 30, 40, and so forth. My guess for why you’re seeing is that it is some text that was missed when they made this change.

If the text you’re seeing that says level 33 is in-game, then I’d advise that you report it through the in-game reporting system as a text bug. Sometimes they just miss things like this.

I haven’t done this story step in a long time, but I looked some things up for you. From what I found on the wiki, it looks like you get this at level 40, not 31. You might be looking at an old version of the wiki page, because they changed the levels for a bunch of story quite a while ago.

It also requires that you have done all of your personal story up to that point and joined the Priory. If you joined the Vigil or Order of Whispers then you’ll get a different story.

Hope this helps!

nagr.1593:

Like someone can run one path of arah and know how fight with lupi works, then join another path for 1st time and say they’re kinda exp with it. I know like most of mechanics in theory but sometimes i can’t know it all, like something guides brush over cos it relies on squad for direction and assignment of tasks.

I think what some people are trying to say is that exp means somewhat different things in raids than in dungeons. For dungeons as long as you know generally what to do, you can get through just fine because it is easy content. However when people post for exp for raids, they usually want people who have killed that boss multiple times. It just means different things because of the difficulty of the content.

My advice to you is to just be up front with people as soon as you join a group. Suppose you join a group that is advertised as ‘Matty | need ele’ or something. Right at the start, say hello, and then give the disclaimer that you know most of the mechanics but don’t have a kill yet, and might need some of the finer points explained. There is a chance that they’ll just kick you, but usually people are very friendly when people are up front and honest with them. If they are rude and kick you, then you probably didn’t want to run with that group anyway.

People are just generally more welcoming and helpful if everyone is on the same page from the start.

Hope this helps.

Raids are a very different sort of content than anything else in the game. In fractals you can join a random pug group and be fine. Raids are not like that. It is absolutely critical that when pugging you find a group that matches your skill level. It is unfortunate that you are late to the party, because you’re right about there being fewer training raids, but if you aren’t familiar with a boss only join training for that boss. Also, with raids exp doesn’t mean that you’ve done the boss a few times. Exp usually means that you can comfortably deal with all mechanics for a one-shot kill.

The reason that raiders get the reputation of being elitist is that we’ve all put in a lot of effort into learning the fights and know what it takes to get a kill. When someone doesn’t do something properly, it becomes very difficult to win.

That being said, there are a lot of people who do training raids, but they are usually in guilds nowadays. A guild has incentive to build up inexperienced players so that they can fill spots on their static teams when people are out, or even make multiple teams. Since guilds play together frequently, the exp people who do the training get the benefits of it by getting to play with those same people. In contrast, if someone leads a pug training raid, they likely won’t ever see those people again. They will have put hours of work in, and gotten no benefit.

If you really want to get into raids, a raid guild is the way to go. I know you mentioned that you tried this, but just asking for a training raid at some point likely won’t work. These guild usually have set times they do their training raids, and so I’d recommend trying to find one that works with your schedule. People will usually only lead training raids once per week because it is a lot of work for little reward.

Step 1: Identify a time of the week that you will almost always be free
Step 2: Find a group that does training raids at that time. This may be difficult, but do your best.
Step 3. Attend those raids every week. If you do this for a while, you will start to become one of the experienced people teaching others.
Step 4: People will likely start pulling you into other raids. The consistent training raid is a great place to start networking, which is the best way to get into more good groups.

That all being said, if it is not possible for you to do some of the stuff I mentioned, raids might just not be right for you right now. Did you play before raids came out? Did you have fun then? Those things are still in the game. Don’t get frustrated over raids when the whole rest of the game is open to you.

GLHF

I can’t speak for WvW, but I know a thing or two about PvE. If you want to use a longbow as your main weapon I highly recommend a condi build. Using it on a power build is pretty disappointing. You can find an optimal build at http://qtfy.enjin.com/warrior. It uses vipers, which is absolutely the best for PvE condi. If you don’t have the resources for that, sinister is a good stepping stone, but you’ll be missing a lot of condi duration.

The sword/horn is great for mobility, but you probably want to get a torch for when you are actually in combat. It provides some great damage while your berserk mode is on cooldown.

This build is loads of fun. You basically spam scorched earth (longbow primal burst) and light everything on fire, and give great offensive utility to your group while doing it.

I really don’t know how this can be modified for WvW, as I don’t play that gamemode.

The higher tier daily boxes give a better chance at good loot. You’re more likely to get those fractal skins and ascended gear if you do T4s. Also you can get T7 mats that can be used to craft ascended gear or can be sold for good money. But more importantly, doing T4 dailies also rewards the dailies for lower tiers, so in the end you’d get more than twice the loot as T2s.

If you run them close to reset, there are likely to be a lot of good groups. A lot of people are very familiar with the mechanics and run them every day, so you can get some very smooth runs. That being said, you’ll also run into some very bad groups if you’re pugging, but in my experience it isn’t any more likely than a bad group on lower scales. If you’re used to T2s, you may take some practice to do T4s consistently though, as they are more difficult.

As is, the fresh air staff build that utilizes conjures is just shy of the dps from regular staff. See https://youtu.be/oyE3T09ByuI for the rotation. If they decide to buff conjures, it would need to be paired with nerfs elsewhere to keep ele in line with other classes in raids. The suggestion proposed by OP would completely remove one of the downsides to this build: that you need to pick up your own conjures to keep up the dps rotation. This is not necessarily good or bad, but should be considered when discussing changes to these skills.

I’m not sure what problem you’re trying to solve. Some people afk with a pet won’t impact the economy in any meaningful way. Also, I don’t think this is against the terms of service, so there should be no punishment.

The negative side of this proposal is substantial. People go afk all the time for legitimate reasons. People might be engaged in conversation with a friend on TS and not move for a few minutes, and it would be really annoying if that got them disconnected. If they have to go afk for a few minutes (maybe the pizza delivery guy arrived), they absolutely should not be suspended for any period of time for it.

If you have autoloot, the chest might disappear after looting it (shouldn’t, but might). Check your inventory to see if you looted it without noticing. If you have a legendary insight, that means you looted the chest.

If you have already done that boss this week, then no chest will appear. I know you said it was your first time, but I figured I’d mention this anyway.

If you leave and re-enter, the chest will not be there. It is only there immediately after finishing the encounter, and once you leave the instance you’re out of luck.

At this point there probably isn’t much you can do beside contacting support. They might be able to give you the legendary insight, although the RNG drops are less likely.

I play rev somewhat frequently in raids, and it has made me curious what exactly procs the trait Cruel Repercussion. Some specific scenarios that I can think of are when you do 0 damage against a seeker or blue guardian with the buff, when gorseval goes invuln, when sloth starts to sleep, when Matt is in his bubble, etc.

I have not been able to find a list of effects (block, invuln, evade, 0 damage, other) that proc this trait. What exactly counts as an attack being negated?

Thanks

I ran all paths of HotW every day for a few weeks to get the accessory for my druid. I found that it really wasn’t very hard to get groups, but that I had to start it. You need to be the one to create the lfg, as the people you usually get are people who are bored and searching through all the lfg tabs for something to do.

Also, if you are comfortable on your class, you can start the dungeon without a full party. Frequently I would get 1 other person and we would just start while we waited for the rest. Doing this means you only have to spend 5-10 minutes to find one friend in order to play, instead of ~30 minutes trying to find a full group.

I also highly recommend doing some other dungeons as well. The rewards for dungeons are only good if you’re doing the dungeon frequenter achieve (8 unique paths), and so doing that will make your time more worthwhile. You will also get an extra 150 tokens for doing that achieve each time.

Lastly, if you are still having trouble getting tokens you can pvp. Equip the correct reward track and then do pvp matches. I have a group of friends that I do pvp dailies with in a custom arena so that we don’t have to play real pvp. Ranked matches give you much more though.

I don’t understand why people are having such an issue with the new instabilities. They are new mechanics that you need to play around, so you can’t play in exactly the same way you did before the patch, but you can still play around them.

Toxic Trail – Use pulls to force mobs together and burst them down. Alternatively use slows to limit their movement. Groups of small mobs can be killed fast enough where it doesn’t become an issue, and bosses are usually located in rooms large enough to move around the poison.

Flux Bomb – Move out of the group when you get this. If you are going through trash, place it where you came from, not where you’re going to. If you time a dodge roll right as the bomb drops, you can avoid all damage from it.

Adrenaline Rush – I have not noticed the enrage be a problem so far, so I don’t have much insight. Make sure you can sustain normally and know when to res or not.

Social Awkwardness – The visual indicator made this instability much better. Don’t stack up too much.

Mists Convergence – Although the most random, this can still be played around. The mechanics usually need at most one dodge roll. If a mob spawns, it will despawn in a few seconds so you can just run away from it. Watch for the symbol above their head as that is much easier to see than the rabbit. For the rabbit and tentacle, you can burst them down if they are in a particularly bad spot. If you get an aoe on the ground, just move to a safe spot and wait for it to be gone.

There is certainly something to be said for minstrels, mainly that it can help out someone who isn’t used to chronotank. Being able to tank a few hits is very nice when you don’t hit all your blocks/evades. However a skilled chrono can self sustain without any healing power or assistance from the druid.

Also, although the dps of mesmer isn’t good, it is not insignificant. Every experienced raider has had a time where they got the boss to 1% health and wiped. Even on VG where the dps check isn’t very difficult, you could end up as the last one standing and need that extra 5k dps to finish the boss off.

In the end, I’d say to think of minstrels as training wheels. You can use it at first, but you want to work on being able to sustain without it if you want to be part of a higher level group.

GLHF

Sarahfull.4930:

You do realise that you can choose the stats from a pool. With crafting your going all in on one stat. Like you can choose from all stats with powet major etc.. That’s also included in the costs..

I don’t really understand what you mean by this. You can’t change stats on the fly, you have to pick one in order to use the armor, which makes it no better than crafting. Also, it only takes about 10g to change stats either way. Are you buying/crafting before you know what stat of armor you want or something?

Because that boss doesn’t have one.

In PvE, it is very good. In scenarios where you are against a group of mobs, it is essentially a full heal as long as you don’t get cc’d. It also completely fills your adrenaline while in berserk and puts your primal burst off cooldown, which lets you get more out of your berserk. This can also be used to get a little extra cc out of your mace.

In instanced content where you’re probably running a PS build, it is almost essential. With the power PS build it will give 5 might when you use it, which makes stacking might quickly much easier. With the condi PS build you need the extra primal burst to have competitive damage.

The beauty of the skill is that it is used offensively. In PvP scenarios where you actually need a heal then it is not the best. Also, PvE scenarios where you are likely to get cc’d and are under a lot of pressure without a dedicated healer are not somewhere you’d want to run this. However just because it isn’t good in all scenarios doesn’t mean it needs a change.

Hopefully that gives some useful insight. GLHF

This is super annoying in raids. You cast SnR on an ally in Sloth and get ported into the poison across the map.

In most (all?) fights there is a periodic tick of damage across the entire arena. If an ele doing orb clear on gors leaves the group, they’ll actually get to low health after a while despite not being hit by anything. This tick of damage will proc blocks, so it will get rid of your aegis.

This is the optimal build for raids: http://qtfy.enjin.com/warrior#Gear2
You get 33% condi duration from traits for bleed and burn, so you want to be as close to 67% as possible. However since you’re just starting you don’t need to get exactly this. You won’t have access to viper accessories until you complete some raids anyway.

Here is the optimal build in a build editor so you can mess with it more easily: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAT8fnckCVegdfA2eAEliFoA7t1Wb3tHJwAQKLZFkCydA-TRSFQB9TtnGqsbkKBJwTAAAXEAipUAO7PIMVBanuBSBsoyK-e

Here is what I came up with for what might be doable for you: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAT8fnckCVegdfA2eAEliFoALZFkCydHJwAQK7t1Wb3tA-TRSGQB+SVEA8EASoyi0pbAYK101FBgN7P4Rlg5TtDSBsoyK-e
I replaced the sigil of earth with a sigil of malice to get a source of condi duration outside of vipers. You’ll lose out on a bunch of bleeding stacks, but I think that’s fine for starting out. I kept the sinister pieces from the optimal build so that you could more easily transition to that if you choose to do so at some point. Also, the accessories and back are sinister since those are the harder pieces to get. You can get the viper ring and amulet from bloodstone fen. I kept all might stacking components to the build since that is the main role of warrior in raids.

I hope you find this useful and glhf

In the old agony system, items had either an offensive or defensive infusion slot. You could put things like +5 power in the offensive, and +5 toughness in the defensive, but not the other way around. However most people got versatile agony infusions to put +7 agony in the slot no matter the type.

In the new system, all infusion slots are the same. You could put either a +5 power or a +5 toughness infusion in the infusion slot since they no longer have that offensive/defensive restriction. However most people will put +X agony in those slots.

The two types of backpack are a product of the old system. They were there so people could pick what type of slot they wanted. Now they are exactly the same, so you could pick either with no consequences.

I usually run the same build as in instanced content because I’m too lazy to switch out traits. Usually there are some other people around that will benefit from phalanx. However if I’m solo and feeling selfish I’ll sometimes switch out tactics for discipline or defense. Discipline gives you fast hands which is great for breaking with mace/shield and then switching back to gs. Defense gives you automatic endure pain and balanced stance which let’s you pay less attention.

I will switch out the banners though. If in HoT, I’ll use endure pain and shake it off or outrage. Outrage functions as a stunbreak that will work as you’re flying around bloodstone fen. In vanilla zones I’ll usually run fgj for fury and balanced stance for swiftness/stunbreak.

For all I would recommend Rabid out of the stats you listed because it has condi damage as the main stat and precision as well. Most condi builds have some sort of condi on crit aspect to them. If you can switch out for sinister, that is more dps.

A good default rune set is 4x nightmare runes and 2x trapper runes to get you some condi duration without vipers.

Below is a summary of the classes you listed in regards to traits and what they lose going vanilla instead of HoT so you can make a judgement about what you want to play.

Necro – Great condi damage and can be really fun to play. By going vanilla, you’re losing some key things that will lower your damage, but it will still be fine in dungeons and open world. You lose the 5 > 4 combo in reaper shroud that stacks lots of chill and thus bleed. You lose the trait that converts chills into bleeds. You could go with krait runes to focus on bleeds.

Ranger – You lose nothing by going vanilla. See http://qtfy.enjin.com/ranger#Gear5 for optimal setup and change the armor/weapons to fit your requirements.

Warrior – You lose a ton by going vanilla. Most of the damage comes from longbow primal burst, which you won’t have. Also, this build is mostly used in group scenarios like raids where might generation is critical, and isn’t necessarily the best for solo play.

Engi – Meta condi engis don’t run scrapper, so you lose nothing. See http://qtfy.enjin.com/engineer#Gear1 for meta build and adjust gear as needed. Nightmare/trapper runes are probably good to get duration up. I suggest watching videos of the rotation to get an idea before investing in gear. People either love it or hate it because it is very involved.

Ele – I’ve never seen this played, so I can’t give any meaningful insight. I think it is generally lower dps than other condi, but might be fun to play. Here is a fun thing you could look into if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPKnSjhdl7U

Hope this helps!

I think this could be very useful, especially in high level fractals where many of the breakbars have very short durations. However the only time that I find this useful is when you are trying to break the breakbar to prevent an attack. There are many other situations where this doesn’t make much sense.

There are some enemies that have a breakbar up permanently. An additional bar wouldn’t provide any useful information and would just distract from what is relevant. Lots of mordrem have this type of breakbar.

Another situation is where the breakbar has a set duration, but you want to break it as soon as possible. An example is when VG gets his breakbar. You want to break him as soon as possible so he moves to the next section, but if you don’t break him he will stop eventually. Having a bar showing how much time is left would be very misleading to people learning the fight, especially if they had gotten used to it being a good indicator of how breaks are doing in other content. If they take 5 seconds to break, they would be inclined to think they did a good job because of that extra bit of information, when really it should take a fraction of a second.

I have a couple settings that really help me with this. First, I have my ground targeting lock at max range, so it is easier to target. Also, I have it set up so that when I hold down 2 the ground target displays, and when I release the skill activates.

Then what I do is I put my cursor where I want to go and spam the skill until it activates. This won’t work if you click your skills. With the targeting technique I described, but it reliably activates the skill despite the small window of time you have to use it.

Skill clicking makes this one very hard.

From a PvE perspective, these changes wouldn’t change my traits at all. I still need the might and dps boost from strength. I still need EA and phalanx from tactics. I still need the dps boost from berserker. I might be able to use different weapons or something to get a little more dps, but I feel like GS would still be the best weapon. In PvE the build of a warrior is more determined by its role as a might factory for the group than by weapon choice.

I can’t speak to PvP and WvW though. I can see how there could be more build diversity there.

Many mobs in the game don’t count as being ‘killed’ when they die. There are a few indicators of this:
1. They don’t give loot
2. They don’t give experience
3. You can’t rally off of them

This is usually done in open world with mobs that spawn infinitely to prevent farming, but has also been done in raids as rallying isn’t a mechanic the designers wanted in their encounters. So in short, the sigil still works, there just aren’t any enemies that will proc the sigil during encounters. Pocket raptors before VG work, and although I haven’t tested it I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the mobs before Trio work.

Since you’re doing a condi build, here are some recommendations for sigils you can use as a replacement:
Agony/Smoldering/Venom: +20% condi duration to one condi type. Figure out your main condi and the associated sigil, just be sure not to go over 100% duration for that condi. Agony costs 9 silver.
Malice: +10% on all condis. Good if you do a variety of condis. Costs 5 gold.
Bursting: +6% condi damage. Will give a similar effect as the corruption sigil. Costs 8 gold.
Earth: Inflict bleeding on crit. Costs 4 silver.
Geomancy: Inflict bleeding on weapon swap. Costs 6 silver.

Most of those have a place in some raid build, but which is best is very dependent on class, build, and playstyle. I’d be happy to help out more if you want some help with your build.

GLHF

The number one mistake I see eles doing on VG is positioning. If you are using staff, then all your dps is ranged, but you don’t want to be ranged unless you’re going to green circles. Part of the reason for this is buffs. If you are to far away from your warrior and rev, you won’t be getting might and fury.

More importantly, you need to be with the group to get heals. The druid has a limited number of heals, and can’t afford to use any on someone who has strayed from the group. They will usually drop some aoe heals on the circle team and then direct their ranged heals toward the tank. If you are not close to the tank, you aren’t going to get those heals. You should basically be standing in your own lava fonts.

Now to address sources of damage. As an ele you have to be particularly aware of all sources of damage in each fight because you’ll be hurt the most by them. In most fights, there is a tick of damage every few seconds so even if you don’t get hit by anything, you’ll take a little bit of damage. For ele, over the course of 10 seconds or so this is enough to be a significant chunk of your health, which brings us back to the positioning and healing point.

Seekers: You cannot afford to get hit by a tick of seeker damage. If you are on green team then it is the responsibility of your teammates to push seekers off the green, but you can still stand in the green safely when the seeker has it 90% covered if you go to the very edge. If you are on melee team then if a seeker gets into a bad spot you need to strafe around it, staying as close to the boss as you can without getting hit so you can still get heals.

Cleaves: You’re super squishy so you can’t afford to get hit by one of the bosses cleaves. Don’t stray in front of the boss or you will probably die. Hopefully your tank can keep VG facing away from you, but if the tank is moving around a lot it is ok to stand a little farther back (maybe 300 range, so you can still be healed) to stay away from the cleave.

Teleports: The way teleports work, is they actually drag your character from one location to another. You will take damage from anything between your start and end point. As an ele this means that if your teleport brings you through a seeker, you will probably end up downed from full health. Like everyone else in the raid, it is critical that you practice to the point where you don’t ever get ported.

Pie slices: This is tricky. Sometimes your tank will bring VG into a pie slice to ensure a good green circle. Hopefully they only bring him a little bit inside so you can continue melee dps from outside the slice. If VG goes too far in, stay close to the group as that’s where heals will be. This is likely a good time to use rebound.

Split phase: You need to be sure to stay stacked on green guardian when he is pulled over, as that’s where the heals will be and you’re going to need all of them. If someone goes down ask your druid not to res and instead focus on healing everyone else. Usually when I’ve seen wipes here it’s because someone was outside the druid’s heals and went down, and then the druid tried to res instead of heal causing everyone else to go down.

I hope this helps you with knowing what you need to watch out for. I really like playing ele in raids because it teaches you what to watch out for, thus improving your play on other classes. Sure a warrior can tank a seeker tick and not really care, but that doesn’t mean they should.

GLHF

Your impression of mesmer is fairly accurate. Most raids run one chronomancer as the main source of quickness, which is essential. Messing up your rotation can cause serious dps losses to your group. You will also be expected to tank in most groups, which can take getting used to. You have to block or evade most attacks. Likely, your first boss will be VG which is one of the hardest to tank well. I usually don’t recommend doing this as your first raid class.

Most groups still bring a few eles to most fights even though they might not be optimal in some situations. There is a lot that you can do as ele if you take the time to learn how to optimize the rotation. There is definitely less to do than engi, but you use most of your skills across two attunements. It’s a lot of fun and probably better to start raids with since you won’t get put into a critical role.

My question for the OP is do you have HoT? That will change things up greatly. Dragonhunter (the guardian elite spec) has great dps for open world as well as instanced content like raids or dungeons, and doesn’t do a whole lot of support. They tend to be looked down on in high tier fractals though, because of the ability of mobs to steal boons and guard’s retaliation generation.

Necros were looked down on in general pve a lot before HoT because their power damage doesn’t compare very well with other classes. It’s better now with reaper, but you’ll have a hard time finding a place in raids. Most dungeons and fractals people don’t care. Necro condi builds are very good though, so long as you get viper gear. Viper necros are great in instanced content, but will do lower damage than power build in open world pve because the mobs die before your conditions can ramp up.

Ele is great aside from it being difficult to stay alive. It also has a more difficult dps rotation than the other two. With that ping I wouldn’t really recommend.

Condi builds have a huge reliance on gear because condition duration is necessary in order to have competitive damage. If you goal is to have competitive damage, then you really need viper’s gear for condi builds.

In contrast, power builds are pretty easy to get gear for. You probably want berserker stats, which you can craft. You can also get those stats from a few dungeons when you want to get exotics. This would also fit well if you are interested in using GS more.

I’ve found that usually when I get hit in stealth it is because the attack was fired before I was stealthed. In this game there are many skills that track people through stealth if they are started before the stealth is applied.

For example in pvp, I believe that rifle warriors can use their kill shot and it will continue to track thieves that go into stealth. If you fire a projectile, stealth won’t make it miss.

The thing about Bloodstone Fen is that the projectiles that enemies fire have a super long range, and so they have a super long travel time. If an enemy fires a projectile at you right before you stealth, it can be a few seconds before it actually hits. This can be easily mistaken for the enemy detecting you while in stealth.

The other thing at play is that the projectiles home in on their targets. This is necessary or they would never hit the moving target that is a gliding player, but it makes it so that the projectiles continue to home when stealthed.

You can use stealth to avoid a lot of damage, but you have to use it early and proactively. If you need to avoid attacks, both the 4 and 5 skills do that, and the 4 skill is a minor heal.

Deepcuts.9740:

Yes. The drop rates have been changed/lowered.
Of course Anet will not admit.

I love when people make general statements without backup and without reading any of the previous posts in the thread. </sarcasm>

Anet does change drop rates from time to time, but they usually say something about it and their reasoning behind it. There just is not sufficient evidence that drop rates have changed at this time.

In my experience almost everyone who has a rev has another class as well. This is because most people had a level 80 before HoT, and so rev is a second class for them. This means that if a group already has a rev, there is a high likelyhood that they will be able to switch to something else in order to accommodate.

In contrast, many people who play warrior only have the warrior. Also, many pug groups run 7-2-1 which usually only uses one warrior.

It’s probably fine to go with either and there won’t be much of a difference in ability to get into raids. Just note that neither of these classes should join a raid looking for dps. Those groups already have buffs covered and are looking for eles or thieves.

For fractals, both can be tricky with boon thieves. Both have mediocre dps and provide lots of boons. Rev can bring good utility in the form of ventari tablet to destroy projectiles at key points. Warrior can bring banners which are buffs that can’t be stolen due to mistlock. Also, if you are in a troubled pug fractal warrior can retrait for lots of survive if you give up might generation. I’ve saved people in barrage phase of mai trin by popping endure pain and ressing.

Rev has one of the easiest rotations in the game. Your utility skills are all upkeep so you press them once and wait till you are low on energy before swapping legends. Otherwise you spam 1 and 2. Warrior is more difficult as you want to maintain your damage buffs. You get 20% damage for 10 seconds from burst skills, and 10% damage from low endurance, but using burst skills restores endurance. Thus maintaining both buffs can be tricky. It’s interesting using dodge rolls as an offensive skill in your dps rotation.

Hope this helps

I agree that one-shot kills make recovery utilities not very useful. However I don’t see very many one-shot kills in dungeons. I have a hard time thinking of anything in dungeons that will one-shot my warrior or necro. If playing an ele then it’s more likely for things to down you in one hit. This is why it would be helpful to know what class you’re playing and what encounters you’re getting one-shot on.

Jerus.4350:

http://dulfy.net/category/gw2/raid-guides/

Guide for every boss with a lot of helpful tips. Then there’s also dozens of youtube channels out there showing various tactics and professions points of view.

The dulfy guides tend not to be up to date with the latest strategies. They are excellent at explaining mechanics but since they come out close after the wing is released, they can’t include latest strats. I’ve found that most of the knowledge of strategies and cool tricks that exploit those mechanics are passed on through word of mouth. Watching videos is a good way to learn them as well.

I do want to express my appreciation to the OP for having a well thought out and respectful suggestion. Although I disagree with it, it is very nice to have some well-mannered discussion.

I think that part of the issue is that the community is very split. There is the section of the community that find enjoyment from just playing different parts of the game and have a much more relaxed playstyle. Then there are the people who find enjoyment out of really challenging content and min-maxing.

Pre-HoT the ‘hardcore’ community was really desperate for some challenging content. At the start of the game they had dungeons, which were very challenging at the time. Then they had fractals. But by the time HoT came around those gametypes had become very easy for various reasons.

What it comes down to is speedrunning and lowmanning easier content just isn’t as satisfying as having legitimately challenging encounters. If the game didn’t have raids as is, the hardcore community would be the ones on the forums asking for things to be different.

Without enrage timers, you’re right, people would be able to turtle up and beat the encounters. But then people who can kill the bosses quickly would not be satisfied with the content. It is satisfying to kill quickly because we have to kill quickly.

Raids were not designed to be completed by everybody, nor should they be. There will always be some people who optimize their builds, leading to creating the meta. This will always be a fairly large portion of the community, and they need content to play. If you are not one of these people, but want to become one, then there is a lot of support for learning. If you want to keep your playstyle and don’t like to optimize, then raids are content that was not designed for you and that’s ok. There is still a whole world out there for you to enjoy.

GLHF

The thing about enrage timers is that they are already survivable if you can handle the mechanics. On VG, you should be avoiding ports, seakers, and making it to the green circles anyway. You should be breaking the breakbar in a second or two. What the enrage timers do is ensure that you know the mechanics and are playing into them instead of facetanking/ignoring them. I think this is healthy for the gametype.

There are a few videos around of hour-long boss kills where people bring lots of tanky gear. If you want to do that, it’s an option, but you still have to understand the mechanics because of the enrage timer.

Some bosses enrage isn’t too bad. My first Matthias kill was about two minutes into enrage.

Jerus.4350:

Don’t forget Glint’s Elite for CC

This should only be used as a last resort. Revs should keep 100% protection uptime on the group unless the group is skilled enough to go without it. Axe 5 and Staff 5 are usually sufficient.