Showing Posts For Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Condi Necros are hurting the game

in Necromancer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

I just went into an AC p2 zerk only group and intentionally bearbowed as badly as possible and no one said anything. Full clerics, LB #4 out of stacks, no frostspotter, etc.

The vast majority of the time you just won’t get kicked unless you’re obviously AFK and/or talking kitten.

Condi Necros are hurting the game

in Necromancer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

You have to consider that the profit you get from a dungeon is a function of reward on the one hand and effort and time spent on the other.

Say you do Arah P1 on your zerker and get 3.26g reward for a 30 minute pug run and spend ten units of effort per minute. You’re getting about 1.1 silver per unit of time-effort spent.

If on the other hand you join a full zerk pug group on your full TVH necro and just spam Life Blast at 1200 range in every encounter and “accidentally” get kicked by Lupi and spend the rest of the fight dead while you make yourself a coffee, you will still get a 3.26g reward at the end and the run may take maybe 35 minutes and you’ve spent maybe half a unit of effort per minute on average, tops. That’s 18.6 silver per time-effort unit, or almost 18 times the reward.

It’s simply that much more cost-efficient to be the leecher than the carry even if it makes the run take longer overall. It’s not an issue of being lazy or bad, it’s being efficient. That’s why I have a cleric set on my ranger too.

Gotta love that pug mentality

in Guardian

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Its bit confusing with the OP deleted. What is this all about again?

It’s a screenshot of him outside a dungeon after having just been kicked on his meta guard by a warrior going:

“we don’t need FGS i have enough dps”
“lol gs on guardian youre supposed to be tank”
“9k ap and only one legendary lol i have six already”

Then blocking him. Overall good times.

Staff vs S/D Hammer (PvE)

in Elementalist

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

I get like 12k on an non-frostspotter LH spec, I’ll have to recheck the numbers. What is your rotation outside of LH specifically? DT > Flamewall > Phoenix > Comet?

I like how every time you post you show how well informed you are!

I like how every time you post it’s to say something pointlessly salty just because you lost the whole staff vs. LH thing months ago.

phalanx in pug

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

I just did COE story earlier tonight and I got a PS/EA warrior, a firestaff ele, and a frostspotter sword/cat ranger. There was a GS guardian too but I dunno what he was running.

It was still the best non-cherrypicked pug I’ve ever rolled. Just thought I’d share. Story mode pugs are apparently top tier.

When does cash start becoming more plentiful?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

You actually get more money from regular play at lower levels. Weapons and armor that drop from mobs scale with your level and so do the materials you salvage from them. Because most people are level 80, the overwhelming majority of dropped gear is level 80 too so you get primarily tier 5 and tier 6 mats from them. This floods the market with tons of those mats while tiers 2-4 (between about levels 20-60) tend to be worth a lot more.

The real money at level 80 comes from running dungeons since the gold rewards from those are huge. You will always get 1.26g minimum per dungeon run not including drops and chests from inside the dungeon itself. Some of the “harder” (according to Anet apparently) ones will net you as much as 3 gold per (Arah).

For the love of God, stop nerfing mesmers.

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Maybe you guys are the ones who don’t understand the playstyle and are getting mad because Anet isn’t conforming it to your incorrect notions. PvP is the one format Anet actually balances around, I think they generally know what they’re doing better than a bunch of randoms with questionable experience in the class.

You guys sound like the Smash players who complain about Sakurai “ruining” Smash by catering to casuals and making it less hardcore when it was never a hardcore game to begin with. Just because something happened to turn out the way you liked one time doesn’t mean it was intended or in conformity with the overall vision.

I’m curious, what is Anet’s “overall vision” then for the mesmer? Unless you are actually an Anet employee posting off an Anet forum account it seems you would be right alongside of us in this “bunch of randoms.”

Also, this is a product that a business sells to customers. If a significant amount of Toyota owners were like “Hey, Toyota, we really, really, don’t like how the GPS in the new Corolla is laid out. It negatively impacts our driving experience and I am less likely to buy another Toyota automobile in the future because of this” and Toyota considered them just “a bunch of randoms” somebody would get fired. I promise you that.

I’m not the one complaining about it, I’m perfectly happy with the buffs mesmer has been getting in recent patches. You guys are the ones complaining that Anet doesn’t know what they themselves want with the mesmer, in their own game.

And hey, if you don’t like it, quit the game and stop supporting it with gem store purchases or whatever. Maybe a programmer will get fired when all the mesmer players are clearly personally and deeply offended by this massive gamebreaking nerf will follow you and someone will get fired and you can be all like “see that iLeap nerf ruined the entire game for everyone”.

Or more likely no one will care because honestly no one should care.

Rangers Useless in Dungeons

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Unfortunately nothing that can’t be fgs’ed would promote taking an engi about an ele. Never. Ever. Nowhere. As for nightmare tree, if running 1 warrior 1 thief 3 eles or 1 warrior 1 thief 1 engi 2 eles, that would still be superior. Simply due to another icebow and metor shower killing tree before engi stacked 10 stacks of vuln.

That would be an absurdly fast kill since engi can get to 10 stacks with just Grenade Barrage > any other Grenade,.

Staff vs S/D Hammer (PvE)

in Elementalist

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

I get like 12k on an non-frostspotter LH spec, I’ll have to recheck the numbers. What is your rotation outside of LH specifically? DT > Flamewall > Phoenix > Comet?

Current State of the Elementalist?

in Elementalist

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

What if you have to choose between an elementalist and a warrior?
Also something that never gets tested is how often ele has to use his defences (evasion, healing etc) and how often warrior needs.

That in some content lowers ele dps drastically.
For example even at bloomhunger you can t spam your dps so easily.
Cast aftercast and cooldowns forces you to wait for the proper window, thus lowering your dps by a lot.

Warrior has a great autoattack instead and low CD, that helps spamming whatever you want when you want without caring much if you will have to interrupt to evade etc.

The problem with warrior DPS is that the meta GS build that people use as a reference for numbers is extremely unforgiving in terms of rotation. We are talking a rotation that requires you to be channeling a skill that roots for you for a full four seconds every ten seconds, and if you don’t hit that full channel on cooldown every time and follow it up with a perfectly spaced Whirlwind on a mob of appropriate size you’re losing a massive chunk of your DPS.

By comparison ele is basically just doing whatever while dropping Lava Fonts, you are never rooted except for during Meteor Shower (which is about the same channel time as HB) and that can be done at range and only needs to be done every 30 seconds. Moreover even if you don’t use MS at all it’s a much smaller DPS hit.

Gotta love that pug mentality

in Guardian

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Gotta love how they quickly log off after whispering you so that you can’t rebute them.

That’s them blocking you actually.

Also lol @ 9k AP and only one legendary, git good scrub lmao

For the love of God, stop nerfing mesmers.

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Maybe you guys are the ones who don’t understand the playstyle and are getting mad because Anet isn’t conforming it to your incorrect notions. PvP is the one format Anet actually balances around, I think they generally know what they’re doing better than a bunch of randoms with questionable experience in the class.

You guys sound like the Smash players who complain about Sakurai “ruining” Smash by catering to casuals and making it less hardcore when it was never a hardcore game to begin with. Just because something happened to turn out the way you liked one time doesn’t mean it was intended or in conformity with the overall vision.

TVH Armor Set - New Dungeon Meta

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

You’re overcomplicating it. It’s actually quite simple to look at the base marginal effect of might and fury on soldier’s vs. knights. Gonna round it a bit here.

Soldier has about 2k base power. Add 25 might = 875/2000 = ~44%.
Soldier has 0 precision. Add 20% crit chance = ~10% (ignoring the 4% base crit chance cause whatever, it doesn’t change that much).

Knight has about 1600 base power. 25 might = ~55%.
700 precision = about 35% crit chance = 17.5% boost before fury, 27.5% after = fury adds about 8.75%.

As you can see, the marginal impact of additional precision DRs much less harshly than the marginal impact of additional power.

Then you get to the practical aspects, like:

- Power buffs tend to be more common in general. Might gets thrown around tons, fury rarely unless you’ve got a non-bearbow ranger or an ele who knows what he’s doing. Strength banner is also more common in pugs than Discipline for whatever reason.
- Having higher precision = more procs. For some reason pugs with soldier’s and no crit chance seem to love to pile on on-crit proc traits and gear anyway, I have no idea why. Most of them are crappy procs anyway (Sigil of Fire, etc.) but if it’s an engie, thief, or warrior, you’re getting extra vuln out of the knight’s pug than the soldier’s pug
- If you’ve got pugs in soldier’s you’re probably not a zerk group which means all fights will take a very long time. It’s been a while since I last calculated the amount of damage you’d need to take in a knight’s set to offset the extra HP pool you can take at the start of a fight in soldier’s, but IIRC it wasn’t that much, something like 30k total damage, which a pug will easily take over the course of a boss fight.

Rangers Useless in Dungeons

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Cmon guang, just give us an example where an engi is good already.

Literally any boss that can’t be FGS’d, or any dungeon where you need stealth that isn’t Arah P3.

guardian, necromarcer, engineer or mesmer?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Elementalist is the king of damage so I wouldn’t expect to getting equal numbers on any other class.

My thief says ‘hello’ while eating ele’s for snacks …

Guardian is popular because they can pile on a lot of support buffs and basically AFK through a lot of content. However, they do not buff well offensively so you will likely find that it takes longer than you would like to solo a lot of stuff, and your ability to receive buffs from allies in group content is directly proportional to the quality of the group, so playing guardian may result in a lot of situations where neither your party nor the enemy are taking damage.

You clearly know nothing about guardians or playing one

A full zerk 4/5/0/0/5 GS guardian in scholar runes can do more sustained damage than a warrior, while still throwing out some support buffs. Also, it seems you know nothing about guards ability to stack group might And no decent guardian player would build bunker/support for dungeons/PvE because they would be utterly useless.

I like how I used to get in big fights with Strife about guardian vs. warrior DPS like two years ago back when everyone still thought Hundred Blades was best DPS in the game and guardian was only for tanking, and now randoms are telling me I don’t know how to DPS guardian and regurgitating outdated info that I myself put out there literally years ago.

The fact of the matter is that guardian has high BASE DPS which means that with 25 might, vuln, and fury from external sources plus warriors to supply banners, they do excellent damage. That said, warriors have gotten substantial buffs since two years ago and their peak buffed damage is now higher than the guardian’s in their respective DPS specs. Also, guardian puts out very little might unless they make substantial personal DPS tradeoffs, they have almost no access to fury, and their vuln stacking is average at best. That means that if you’re in an average pug that does not stack anything, you won’t buff your group that well and you won’t hit that hard yourself because they’re not buffing you either. Compare that to a warrior or engineer who can pump multiple buffs up to the max and still deal high DPS and the difference is pretty apparent.

For the love of God, stop nerfing mesmers.

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Yeah, I bet nerfing one skill was a super high priority for them when they were trying to push out a major content release and when they didn’t even so much as touch any of the other classes.

If you really hate the class so much just reroll, obviously you weren’t super committed to the class to begin with if being preventing from exploiting a super minor bug is enough to make you drop it.

For the love of God, stop nerfing mesmers.

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

The time has come where bug fixes are considered as buffs. Not that wierd though, with 30+ bugs on 1 single profession only. I like how arenanet seems to succes at every patch to bug 1 thing of mesmer by trying to buff or fix it.

Remember the chaos storm bug with falling damage? Yeah lets just make the damage equal to the tooltip, woops forgot to place the comma.

Or mirror of anquish that dealt 10x damage to shocking aura reflect + halting strike.

Or what about iwarden where they tried to buff it but totally bugged it instead.

All of these skills and probably some more I forgot got insta bugged when they tried to buff it. Maybe you shouldnt look at if it gets buffed by fixing it but rather by what caused it to bug.

So basically it doesn’t count if it’s a bugfix that results in a buff but it does if it’s a bugfix that results in a nerf?

Rangers Useless in Dungeons

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

With fortifying bond a ranger is having to use a trait to get boons applied to the pet. Perhaps it isn’t coincidental that the heavy armor classes, the favored dungeon classes, get the full benefit of all boons without using a trait to do so.

It’s a minor trait you get passively when using the meta build, so yeah, there’s really no special investment needed.

I used 25 might and 100% fury. Realistically it’s going to be about 15 might and 20-50% fury though depending on external sources, unless you’ve got a Phalanx warrior with a Warbanner. There’s simply a lack of long-duration fury applications for the pet since Fortifying Bond only gives you 3 seconds base , which isn’t even 4 seconds after boon duration buff. That means you need a fury application every 4 seconds on average.

Even when you assume full buffs on the pet by whatever means, it still scales extremely poorly due to their low base DPS (iirc the feline has a base DPS of about 700, which is really bad). Moreover, they don’t benefit well from buffs due to higher-than-normal base power (reduced marginal effect from might), high crit chance (reduced marginal effect from Fury), and lack of ferocity (reduced marginal effect from fury). A feline with 25 might/fury approximately doubles its damage, versus a player with 25 might/fury, banners, food, traits, etc. who will get something like 5-6x total multipliers.

That makes sense. I think ultimately you’re probably right, especially when you consider the pragmatic issues a Ranger faces like pet DPS being inconsistent due to AI, Frost Spirit downtime due to it being on CD after a specific encounter, Sword dodge challenges, and so on.

Still, I think the Ranger merits inclusion in specific speed runs if it is being used as an conjured weapon user with a small bit of practical reflection on the side. It isn’t being used for support, but is being used for pseudo-support with good conjured DPS. In this instance, the Ranger is better than a Guardian or Mesmer because of higher damage multipliers (and the pet, which is free DPS on top of the FGS/IB) and also because of the higher uptime Swiftness. Furthermore, it’s better than the Engi because of higher base DPS (in FGS scenarios maintaining 25 vuln isn’t that hard considering you’ve got an ele using FGS) and because the reason you’re even considering the Ranger is due to its reliable reflect, while the Engineer instead has only a 50% chance of getting one throwing Elixir-U.

Beyond that, I disagree with the specific mention in the OP that you should kick them from your groups regardless of what they use. I believe that for a speed clear (a true speed clear), you would tailor the team specifically based on the path you’re clearing. For pubs, which is the context the OP is worded to suggest, a skilled Ranger is still a boon to the group, and is still superior to the average pub, making it a good member to keep. In that vein, I don’t think this thread really tells us anything the pub players or speed clear groups didn’t already know. That said, some parts of it are interesting to discuss regardless, so rock on.

That’s my two cents.

The problem is that for a ranger to be worth taking over a guardian, you need a situation where::

1) 5 seconds of reflect is enough.
2) You don’t need aegis, protection, or blind.
3) Whatever you are reflecting can be safely reflected without interrupting your channel to avoid other non-projectile attacks.

Versus engineer:

1) You are already capped on vuln, both with and without FGS.
2) You need to max out damage on Fiery Rush specifically and it’s not important how much damage you’re getting from the non-FGS users otherwise.
3) If you are reflecting anything, it needs to be something that is worth reflecting over just blocking, and is something too fast that an engie can’t reflect with turret shields.

It’s just a very small list of situations.

Current State of the Elementalist?

in Elementalist

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Ele DPS is still higher than warrior DPS even without banners and vuln and with only self-stacked might and fury.

guardian, necromarcer, engineer or mesmer?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

It depends on what you want to get out of the class.

Elementalist is the king of damage so I wouldn’t expect to getting equal numbers on any other class. However, if you do want reasonably close numbers, engineer and mesmer both hit quite hard. Necromancer and guardian are weaker by comparison so that would rule them out.

Guardian is popular because they can pile on a lot of support buffs and basically AFK through a lot of content. However, they do not buff well offensively so you will likely find that it takes longer than you would like to solo a lot of stuff, and your ability to receive buffs from allies in group content is directly proportional to the quality of the group, so playing guardian may result in a lot of situations where neither your party nor the enemy are taking damage.

Necromancer is a good solo class due to their absurdly high health pool and decent self-buffing, but they are pretty much worthless for any group content. “Kick necros on sight” is a common rule for a lot of dungeon pugs.

Engineer is a very strong class across the board but they have to press a lot of buttons to be effective. It’s not impossible to manage but if you just want to take it easy and AFK everything at range you probably don’t want to roll an engineer.

Mesmer is a strong class for group content against stronger mobs (like elites and champs) but their AOE sucks and they take too long to ramp up to good damage, making them really bad for dealing with large groups of weaker mobs. They also lack a good speed boost so it takes a while longer to get anywhere with a mesmer than with any other class.

gear question about damage

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Berserker is always the best DPS option; especially in high level fractals because a lot of enemies abilities scale of % of total HP and ignore armor.

The problem with many ’zerker builds are glass cannons – hence why so many drop like flies when fighting world bosses.

The amount of DMG ’zerker has over other builds is not as great as it used to be.

To the OP, where will you be playing WvW or PvE? That will determine what you should get. In WvW, toughness and HP help survivability.

The gap is actually bigger because you cannot mix in zerker pieces for ’free" crit damage. At base, a zerker set deals about 50% more than a soldier or knight set. However, Zerker also scales up much better because you have all of the stats needed to benefit from marginal increases to crit chance or crit damage. A Soldier by comparison has high power, so he has some degree of base damage, but he will not benefit from fury or buffs like Banner of Discipline which increase crit chance, since he has no Ferocity so his crits are worthless.

TVH Armor Set - New Dungeon Meta

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Soldier’s is arguably the worst overall set for DPS just because you’re still running power main stat and you have no precision. The already-high might stat means that might/EA/banners have a reduced marginal effect, the lack of precision means ferocity from banners and food has zero effect, and the lack of ferocity means precision has a greatly reduced effect. Moreover, since your defensive stats are both minors, you have to trait more heavily into defensive lines to get the same level of survivability, which is a further DPS loss.

Compare that to Knights, which gets both power and precision in minors, guaranteeing that might and ferocity have the greatest marginal effect, and also has substantial toughness which is arguably the most important defensive stat. Even Clerics or Magi is better because you have a lower power stat (so might helps) and your defense is already through the roof so you can trait offensively and do more damage overall than a Soldier traiting defensively.

Obviously if you’re a Cleric traiting defensively you will do absolute crap for damage, but it’s still a better overall balance of stats if you build right.

Rangers Useless in Dungeons

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Highest DPS in game is 3 eles + 1 warrior + 1 ranger with all the buffs active.

With the ranger DPS-ing higher than a guard on FGS, you can consider ranger in a speed run with these considerations in mind:

  • Do you need a stealth?
  • Do you need long stability?
  • Is aegis rotation core to some of the significant encounters?
  • Do you need long reflect uptime?
  • Is Mesmer portal extremely useful?

If the answer is no to all of the questions above, I believe Ranger is the best 5th to bring.

Specific example of where to bring a Ranger: CoE p1.

Basically, if the dungeon requires a bit of reflect and Mesmer’s portal isn’t needed, Ranger should be the better choice in terms of DPS compared to a Guard or a Mes.

Engi: More vuln = more party DPS = better net DPS.
Ele: Higher personal DPS = higher party DPS = better net DPS.

If it’s strictly ranger vs. guardian with the ranger playing support or something, it’s a different story, but in general I don’t see ranger being used as a replacement for a support, rather as a raw DPS. I guess Whirling Defense could be used as a WoR backup for specific attacks (i.e. Lupi spray) and the bear, moa, or drake pet can be used to tank certain mobs, if it’s possible to make it take aggro.

One thing I’ve seen brought up here is that the Pet gets excluded from Might stacking and so forth, and while that is technically true from a base level, I haven’t seen anyone mention Fortifying Bond. Basically, if you Might and Fury stack and the Ranger gets boons, the pet gets stacks of those boons too. Furthermore, it uses the Ranger’s might/boon duration, which means that if you tech 3 or 4 into that line you get 15%-20% duration, which stacks with Rune of Strength for 65% in the case of Might duration.

I’m not sure if Guang’s unlisted calculations factor in 25 might and fury perpetually on the pet, but that may make a difference.

I used 25 might and 100% fury. Realistically it’s going to be about 15 might and 20-50% fury though depending on external sources, unless you’ve got a Phalanx warrior with a Warbanner. There’s simply a lack of long-duration fury applications for the pet since Fortifying Bond only gives you 3 seconds base , which isn’t even 4 seconds after boon duration buff. That means you need a fury application every 4 seconds on average.

Even when you assume full buffs on the pet by whatever means, it still scales extremely poorly due to their low base DPS (iirc the feline has a base DPS of about 700, which is really bad). Moreover, they don’t benefit well from buffs due to higher-than-normal base power (reduced marginal effect from might), high crit chance (reduced marginal effect from Fury), and lack of ferocity (reduced marginal effect from fury). A feline with 25 might/fury approximately doubles its damage, versus a player with 25 might/fury, banners, food, traits, etc. who will get something like 5-6x total multipliers.

(edited by Guanglai Kangyi.4318)

Surprising lack of warriors bringing EA

in Warrior

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Everyone one knows warrior is like 20x more DPS than all other classes combined, taking any personal DPS hit to buff those other losers would be dumb.

can someone help me with a pve build

in Warrior

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Now I’m 100% sure he’s a troll.

Condi Necros are hurting the game

in Necromancer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Basically what Bhawbby said ^^

If you’ve ever had to grind and goldfarm for something expensive, such as legendary, and you have the reasonable goal of running lets say 9 dungeons paths per day (which is about 20 gold with dungeon token gear salvaged) and lets say for AC p1, a condition necro joins your party with the intention of bleeding and tormenting the burrows to death. Perhaps you don’t have an ele too, and another player doesn’t have power based gear. You may even wipe on the burrows multiple times because of too little DPS.
Suddenly, before you know it, you’ve spent an hour of the 4 hours you can allocate to running dungeons per day, just failing and wiping to the burrows. Now you may only be able to get 5 or 6 paths in that day, which is an estimated loss of 8 gold if you run 5 paths instead of 9 because poor builds kitten it up.

Now that is an extreme example, but thats how some players such as myself think. The PvE content in this game is already horribly repetitive and soulsucking to begin with, lets not make it worse by making it take longer. Zerker necro is 100% fine for casual yet fast runs, despite all its PvE problems regarding the speedclear meta, but for those just looking to do dungeons for money and tokens, its DPS is fine enough to not hinder your group significantly. I have never once been kicked soley for playing zerker necro, and I join zerker groups all the time, I just avoid stupid groups that only want heavies and eles. Anyway, time is money, and suboptimal builds cost us as players time, which in turn costs us money.

tldr: condition necro = less money, not just less for your self, but less money for your party.

You have to realize that by excluding them from your party, you’re forcing them to run with non-zerk groups with builds similar to theirs, which means they’re going to be wiping even more and losing even more gold. A group with 4 zerks and a PHIW can clear content easily, a group with 5 PHIWs will wipe constantly.

By denying PHIWs the opportunity to PHTW in a speedclear group you’re basically stealing gold right out of their pockets. You’re literally the cancer killing the GW2 community.

For the love of God, stop nerfing mesmers.

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

I can think of quite a few other recent buffs/fixes.

- Empowering Mantras was previously bugged to be 2% per active instead of 4%. Now it’s properly 4%, i.e. twice the buff.
- Mantra of Concentration and Resolve are now AOE applications..
- Phantasmal Haste now works for Swordsmen.
- Phantasmal Wardens now follow the target properly.
- Illusionist’s Celerity is now a master trait rather than a grandmaster.
- The Prestige is now an actual stealth application rather than a crappy channel.
- Mind Spike now deals extra damage against boon-less targets.
- Signet of the Ether is one of the best heal skills in the game.

I’m sure there’s a bunch more but that’s what I’ve got off the top of my head. So yeah, nothing but nerfs, bad class.

Subject Alpha armor value

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

A Phalanx warrior and an S/F engie spamming Shatterstone should be able to get you to 25 stacks of might and vuln and permafury plus the ele can get people without leaps over the gate. Might be worth making a DPS video series of so we can shut up the spreadsheet naysayers.

Rangers Useless in Dungeons

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

This may sound silly, but if you have 3 Eles in a party, and you didn’t need the utility of a Mesmer or Guardian or Thief, and want to fill the last slots, wouldn’t Warrior+Ranger be the best to maximize damage? At 3 Elementalists, I’m not sure a 4th will increase damage.

I’d argue that warrior + engie would better since that comp is really lacking in vuln for non-FGS fights, but warrior + ele would better than warrior + ranger for the reasons I just discussed above.

can someone help me with a pve build

in Warrior

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

I’m 99% sure he’s a troll.

Phalanx Strength PvE Build by [QQ]

in Warrior

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

That’s not how Phalanx Strength works, it only gives 6s might for any might application. FGJ gives might for 25 seconds on a 25 second cooldown which means the “6 stacks” you’re getting is actually closer to 3.7 stacks on average in reality.

Don’t mean to burst your bubble, but…

10.5 / 1.75 = 6. Sounds about right.

Viable PvE Builds

in Engineer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Again, I just swap to Medkit and drop Stimulant, which is usually good enough for general purposes and doesn’t require you to open an annoying window and click multiple times.

Blast finishers and ranged builds

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

You’re supposed to get more benefit from being in melee than at range because range is inherently safer in the general course. If blast finishers and other buffs had infinite range, melee would have less reward and more risk. That might help change things up a fair bit but it’s clearly not what Anet intended risk-reward to be.

The logic of "Defiance"

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Clearly OP has not fought Arah Berserker Abom or any other boss that can be completed negated simply by sidestepping him when he swings.

*Are* Warriors OP?

in Warrior

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

And now 1 year later from the last post, warrior is still massivly op in pve and pvp.

you know what?

You know what? He’s right.

They -ARE- over powered. That is their selling point. They are supposed to deal incredibly high damage. they’re supposed to burst you down to 0 HP if they touch you. They’re -supposed- to be the leading or front-line soldiers in WVW zergs. That’s their shining point, that’s their playstyle; and for that reason complaining about “guuh, warrior hits too hard~” is frankly, ignorant.

That being said, they are very easily outmatched in PVP and WVW by classes that know what they are doing. Warriors depend heavily on weapon choices and being able to actively locate their target to be of any use. If their target knows how to -dodge-, or worse yet is a thief, they’re in trouble.

And they have no gimmicks and very little damage mitigation. you lock onto a warrior and you avoid their cc, and the fight is yours.

Uh, you just described how warriors aren’t overpowered. I fail to understand your post. Easy to play =/= overpowered.

phalanx in pug

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

25 stacks of might equal a DPS buff of 25% for a good build or about 15-20% for a bad build. So Phalanx will be good for most pugs. Of course if you have a mix of bearbow at 1200 range, clerics staff guardian and necro minion master, then no Phalanx won’t do enough to compensate your own DPS lost, but this are special case. In most pug Phalanx will do miracle. With normal pugs, Phalanx could create between 4 and 6k DPS by its own, almost a 6th pug player.

25 might + banners + EA will actually more than double a bad pug’s DPS if he’s not wearing anything with +power on it. The marginal impact of more might diminishes the more power you have, which is why PVT is so terrible. You do crap damage and buffs on you are almost negated because you’re reducing the marginal impact of might and you have no crit chance or ferocity so you’re negating the impact of fury as well. Your overall damage sucks so vuln’s % modifier is tiny, etc.

Rangers Useless in Dungeons

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Well even with an ele nerf ranger would still be at a disadvantage relative to engies and thieves and mesmers[…]

disadvantage relative to engies and thieves[…]

relative to engies[…]

ENGIES!!!!!!

Are you ever actually going to try to disprove my engie claims beyond constantly going “I’m really bad at engie so I don’t believe other people could be good”?

Back on topic, I’ve had suspicions about the efficacy of Frostspotter ever since the Ferocity nerf and since I recalculated ranger DPS relative to everyone else’s, but I didn’t really pay a ton of attention to it. I do think it’s funny that the general populace is only now starting to jump on board the “Frostspotter ranger is totally legit guys” bandwagon as soon as it’s becoming apparent that it’s no longer true.

I expect “grenade engie is super OP for vuln stacking” to become a popular pug phrase approximately a month after Anet nerfs Steel-Packed Powder.

Rangers Useless in Dungeons

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Ah, I see.

I wanted to interject the idea this thread might be getting the posts it does, because it’s a hard topic to generate a conversation around. If composition is one of your concerns, there’s not much to say because you assimilate and move on. If composition isn’t one of your concerns, there’s not much to say because you don’t have a vested interest at all.

This is pretty much what I said and was going to say again but you said it better. I don’t exactly see it as a problem, but it would be nice to have my favourite class be one of the OP ones for a change.

Though, I do discourage the exclusion of rangers in a PUG environment (Which is the context of the original post) where min-maxing composition is no where near as important.

If you’re referring to my post I’m talking about minmaxed comps. Frostspotter is terrible in pugs since you’re losing a fixed amount of damage but boosting party DPS by a percentage, meaning that the lower the party DPS is, the harder it is to break even with the fixed personal DPS loss. Frost Spirit gives you around 700 DPS gain on a 10k meta DPS warrior ally but probably only about 140 DPS to a crappy bearbow. Meanwhile you’re still taking that 7k DPS difference between a ranger and a staff ele just by being a ranger.

Yeah, except you’re thinking of extremes where in reality most groups will hover around in the mid range spectrum of DPS. We already know Rangers are not ideal for min-max groups.

Unorganized groups don’t think in terms of numbers. You’re also severely underestimating the importance of PHIW and comfort picks in unorganized groups. Maximizing DPS is the least of people’s concerns in PUGs. They’re much more concerned about not wiping and will opt for the less yolo-y strategies.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re minmaxing or not, minmaxed is where the ranger does the best numerically but it’s also the place where they do the worst logically. Frostspotter simply doesn’t add enough DPS to worth it unless you’re in a high-end DPS group and if you’re in a high-end DPS group you don’t want a ranger because you’re probably trying to minmax. It’s a lose-lose situation either way.

Rangers Useless in Dungeons

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Ah, I see.

I wanted to interject the idea this thread might be getting the posts it does, because it’s a hard topic to generate a conversation around. If composition is one of your concerns, there’s not much to say because you assimilate and move on. If composition isn’t one of your concerns, there’s not much to say because you don’t have a vested interest at all.

This is pretty much what I said and was going to say again but you said it better. I don’t exactly see it as a problem, but it would be nice to have my favourite class be one of the OP ones for a change.

Though, I do discourage the exclusion of rangers in a PUG environment (Which is the context of the original post) where min-maxing composition is no where near as important.

If you’re referring to my post I’m talking about minmaxed comps. Frostspotter is terrible in pugs since you’re losing a fixed amount of damage but boosting party DPS by a percentage, meaning that the lower the party DPS is, the harder it is to break even with the fixed personal DPS loss. Frost Spirit gives you around 700 DPS gain on a 10k meta DPS warrior ally but probably only about 140 DPS to a crappy bearbow. Meanwhile you’re still taking that 7k DPS difference between a ranger and a staff ele just by being a ranger.

Viable PvE Builds

in Engineer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

I just drop Static Discharge and trait 6/6/0/2/0 instead. Gives you permavigor uptime, I’m not even sure if Adrenal Implant stacks with vigor to begin with.

Return mesmer, looking for PvE build advice

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

that’s like saying “necro is good if you want to play inefficiently”

guang pls

Mesmer does well in pugs because they have high sustained DPS

What.

Mesmer is good in pugs, but not because they have high sustained dps. Mesmer is good in pugs because you bring (almost) all of the utility that a full party needs for any dungeon in 1 single player. This means you don’t have to be reliant on other people for things like stability, reflects, condition removal, boon stripping, and mob gathering. It allows you to carry a party with ease.

That being said, your damage still won’t be all that hot in most cases.

The biggest problem with pug-carry mesmer is that they don’t stack might/fury/vuln too well which means they don’t pull as much group DPS as the EEW pug trinity do. That said it’s not super hard to self-stack might so you’ll most likely by the hardest hitter by a wide margin.

Whether it’s better to stack lots of offensive buffs so your party can burn through stuff or focus a bit more on keeping the party alive is a judgment call you need to make and is pretty much the counterpoint to “this game is nothing but DPS” complaints. Certainly EEW has higher self-buffed DPS than the mesmer but not by that much, it’s the AOE buffing that makes the difference.

Runes with damage modifier

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

What modes are “important” is subjective. If anything you could argue that balance in WvW and PvP aren’t as important because anyone can just join up with a zerg and steamroll things, whereas in PvE everything is co-op and people are trying to minmax so no one’s going to take weak classes (see: necromancer). Certainly as someone who only plays PvE and primarily pugs dungeons, I’d say mesmer is extremely strong and needs nerfs if anything. As someone who does sPvP or WvW or whatever you might have different opinions but Anet needs to balance the class across all modes, with the current design they can’t buff the mesmer for PvP without making it broken in PvE and vice versa.

Also, comparing mesmer phantasms to ranger pets is silly. Mesmer phantasms scale with their stats meaning a single Swordsman actually has better DPS than a feline pet, and the Swordsman can be resummoned and stacked on a 12s cooldown, not to mention the second phantasm you get with your other weapon set. Meanwhile felines are stuck on a 20s CD if you swap to avoid them dying and you can only ever have one out at a time. Not to mention mesmers can recoup some DPS loss if a phantasm dies by summoning the sword clone in its place, which sustains about 3 vuln per.

Runes with damage modifier

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

I think the ranger or necro could use that 20% boost way more than a mesmer does.

Mesmer lacks burst but their sustain is amazing, boosting the sustain even more doesn’t actually change anything except making them even more OP in the content where they are already OP.

Return mesmer, looking for PvE build advice

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

that’s like saying “necro is good if you want to play inefficiently”

guang pls

Except necro is bad even in non-speedrun comps.

Mesmer does well in pugs because they have high sustained DPS and the lack of burst doesn’t matter as much by comparison. Reflects and condi removal can also save pugs in a fair few encounters. Plus Signet of Inspiration and sword clone vuln (if and when you have them up in lieu of phantasms) help a fair bit although it’s not nearly on LH/Phalanx/Grenades level.

Viable PvE Builds

in Engineer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

If that’s what you’re worried about, losing another 10% or so and taking healbombs is probably your best bet. I generally find that the biggest problem in pugs isn’t healing (there’s always at least one guy trying to be a dedicated healer) but rather lack of DPS to take down trash and bosses. The engie’s big might and vuln stacks and high burst are very good there. You won’t get that support contribution with an SD build though even if you do get the burst.

Lack of New SKills

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

If you’re actually expecting Anet to add new weapons and skills when half of the existing ones are already useless then lol.

If they really wanted they could just give us alternative skillsets on existing weapons, which would cut out the work needed to model new skins, etc. but I honestly don’t think they’re interested in adding new game mechanics like they did regularly in GW1. Unfortunate but true.

Rangers Useless in Dungeons

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Wow reading the actual post seems to be way to hard for some people here. I guess just spitting out the same 3 lines you hear in every discussion about the ranger in dungeons ad nauseam is much easier than actually understanding the point. As of now there is no constellation of 4 people in a dungeon where a ranger on 5th position would be the optimal choice for the groups dps, since an ele would always be better, even when ignoring the additional utility the ele brings with more FGS and Ice Bow. That’s because ranger DPS is so bad, that the boost of Spotter+FS is not strong enough to actually boost the groups more than the personal DPS an Ele would bring.

With all the problems the ranger class right now has in PvE, WvW and to a lesser extent in sPvP (they are still currently not that good there) ANet should really completely overhaul the class.

On the other hand, looking at the numbers provided ranger could actually even get viable for the group DPS if the ele DPS get a considerable nerf. Ice Bow and FGS are currently too much of a gamebreaker, making the difference between Ele and other classes ridiculous.

Well even with an ele nerf ranger would still be at a disadvantage relative to engies and thieves and mesmers, albeit to a lesser extent since engies don’t overlap with themselves well and thieves and mesmers are single target DPS (although the ranger is too).

The obvious solution is just to buff pet stats. It’d actually be a pretty significant buff if Anet actually lowered their base stats and increased their skill coefficients, since that’d give them better scaling with might and fury without really affecting whatever ranger pet-DPS bunker build is popular in PvP right now.

Runes with damage modifier

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Mesmer clones do enough without gear modifiers, DPS would be through the roof if they got everything.

They’re the only minions that inherit stats which already makes them extremely strong in general.

Oh noes, what a terrible shame and horribly unbalanced it would be to get an extra 150 – 300 points of damage for our 1500 – 3000 phant hits when everything can already out sustain any glass mes that isn’t phant build… and Phant builds aren’t even all that useful outside of 1v1s in PvP but are useless in team fights and yet can still loss 1v1 due to terrain.

The Horror!

Phants would get:

10% from Scholar/7% from Ranger/+5% from Strength
+10% from Night
+5% from Force

If you’re going to add consumables you can count 10% from potions and +10% from Seaweed Salad. That puts you up to over 50% boost (since it’s multiplicative) which is massive. Don’t forget how much damage phantasms deal in general, it’s not unusual for a Swordsman to be hitting 10k on a properly buffed mesmer.

Return mesmer, looking for PvE build advice

in Mesmer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Play the reroll build. Comes in warrior, ele, thief and guardian variants.

Mesmer is objectively better than thief or guardian in non-speedrun comps. Not everyone is aiming for a record.

Viable PvE Builds

in Engineer

Posted by: Guanglai Kangyi.4318

Guanglai Kangyi.4318

The problem is that in a pug where you can’t measure the skill of players beforehand, you’re often pretty close to the line between smooth completion and miserable failure. That’s true in guild runs even, it’s not like playing with your friends automatically makes you awesome.

I have no problem with going “screw these pugs, if they’re not going to put in effort I won’t either” though but I usually try to reserve it for open-world or the really easy dungeons like CoF or AC.