Guild Wars 2

I actually panicked when the query gave nothing after I put my name into the search box… /o\

Seriously, I like the tag system. It helps me browse through without having a definite name in mind. And… where can I find Illusionary Mage in Ascalonian Catacomb? :O

Wow, dlonie, you are so brave! Hats off to you, but again please let the matter rest.

@theoutsider:

Let me give you an example of “throwing oneself under the bus”

Excuse me if I miss anything from your twitch. Which facts are you talking about?

are you just another illiterate white knight?

It is true that I missed the paragraph of you expressing how badly your group performed yet still matched the time proposed by Skady’s trio. But hey, 30 minutes or less isn’t the entire point of her setup. It’s also about being smooth without wipe, enjoyable over friendly bantering on TeamSpeak and above all, being comfortable with any players she plays with. Alright, that was actually what I planned to reply to your post. I would have said some more meaningful things. But then the word “illiterate whiteknight” puts me off. So, in order to let your point come across, it’s necessary for you, as an individual, to talk down to someone else, as courteous as I can with some nasty words like that?

Keep your elitism close.

theoutsider.7849:

Special thanks for completely ignoring the facts that slow down our performance to avg 30min and taking comparable times for granted.
i am 100% certain an optimized party can shape off those 10min with a bit of practice, if they don’t run into any of the time gated rolls.

it wasnt getting double downed I have no explanation for it was getting instakilled through downed invuln frames lol
w/e im done with this thread, this ignorance just keeps triggering me in unimaginable ways lol

Excuse me if I miss anything from your twitch. Which facts are you talking about?

Let’s look at it this way. It’s a trio pug.

Neko.9021:

Do people really need survivable gear to do stuff easily ever since the Great Power Creep Patch of June 2015?

Tried a trio in Cliffside with Spoj and Gabe in EU. It’s not that easy as people always think. Spoj and Gabe are far from lacking any skills or knowledge, however, the encounter is still very punishing with every little mistakes we made. You can ask them how many time we wiped there. Then go look at how Skady’s group pull a hattrick off the Arm Seals effortlessly.

We are talking about a trio, not a full 5 man team. Fractal shards like Cliffside, Dredge or Urban are generally tougher when lowman. Power creep probably contributes very little in a trio group.

SlyDevil.3952:

Iris Ng.9845:

Oh, I was teasing him because he usually just drops a one-liner troll here and there instead of carefully crafting a whole paragraph to explain the thought process of his solo.

The trolling is reaching new levels, if the evolution progresses too far he’ll never be normal again!!!!

Gasp…

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Horus.9685:

IrisTheCasual.3742:

You wrote the whole essay like a sensible person. You think everyone will read your wall of text?

/kappa

#MoreManmodePlease

I did ._. and i appreaciate the wall of text; its a nice addition to the vidio
@OP awsome play with interupts- tbh i didnt even know you could simply jump >.< i used to dodge twice ^^"
edit:
im sorry, i need to sleep i didnt get the /s

Oh, I was teasing him because he usually just drops a one-liner troll here and there instead of carefully crafting a whole paragraph to explain the thought process of his solo.

Tim.6450:

With the prospect of the new fractal system I want to prepare myself by getting myself lvl 50. But now I reached lvl 31 so I have to consider Mistlock Instability. So I’m questioning which lvls are done by pugs and which not and how the Mistlock Instability is negated/migitated (I intend to play warrior).

On a side note at which points in fractals is full ascended practically obligated (since I haven’t a full set for my warrior yet)?

Avoid 31 and 39.

37 and 38 are frequently played in pugs. They are not so much harder as long as you have a) enough DPS, b) full attention.

35 isn’t bad if you are tolerable to a minor challenge.

Let’s do it “The Voice” style!

Format:
Whoever doesn’t know what The Voice is, go watch Youtube or something >.>

There will be four “celebrity” dungeon runners acting as the Coaches/Leaders for the competition.

Stage 1: Participants will register individually or as a group of no more than three players. Participants are required to fight off a boss in 3 minutes (no need to kill), for example Lupicus Giganticus or Marolna, etc, on a live stream. The boss name will be announced before registration is open. Coaches watch the performance and invite the participants of their liking in to their team. The one who receives the offer will get to decide which team he’s gonna follow.

Restriction:

• Participant is required to register with a single profession. He is not allowed to swap classes from Stage 1 onward.
• Members of hardcore guilds are not allowed to register as duo or trio. Furthermore, they are not allowed to be accepted into a team if the Coach is from the same guild or there are already existing two members from their guild.
• Each team is allowed to have a minimum of 5 members and a maximum of 8 members (not including the coach). Preliminary round is closed when all teams receive their maximum numbers or no more participants to select.

Stage 2: All teams are given a week for preparation. During this week, if a participant wants to switch coaches, it is perfectly allowed but it has to receive a permission from the organizing committee.

Stage 3: Head to head competition, using Double Elimination rule. Two teams compete against each other in a (best of three) format. Dungeon or Fractal (level 9) paths are pre-selected with added gambits . The Coach has the full authority on which members and which team comp is used in each match, including the Coach himself as a Wild Card.

Point System : Each player (excluding Coaches as Wild Card) receives 1 point for every winning match they are participating. For example, X was selected to play in 3 paths, in which he wins 2, loses 1 and so receives 2 points. The points will be tallied when the winning team is decided.

• The winning team receives commendation.
• Best Five Players with the highest total points will be rewarded according to their rankings.
• The coach with the highest total points tallied from the best Ten Players will receive a reward.

There are quite a few strategies to win here. Obviously, the more matches you win, the better your points will look. So every team needs to aim to winning as a team first. A coach will decide whether to have more than 5 people in their group to increase the flexibility of their strategy or stick with his best 5 man to secure the highest points possible. On the other hand, swapping players often will lower individual points and their chance at the final prize. Additionally, since the Coach can act as a wild card, he needs to carefully decide when he should use his privilege. Too frequent “Wild Card” will affect his winning odds at the final prize – unless he decides to sacrifice it.

Participants also need to think about which class should they register. Obviously, they need to bring their A game first. Then they need to bring a profession which benefit their team a great deal. However, if stacking a certain popular class (like ele) will result in a situation where they have to compete with many others of the same class to get accepted. Or a team stacking with a certain class (like ele) will become vulnerable to harder challenges – trust me, I am sadistic.

In conclusion, the goal is to encourage people to face (artificial) challenges and have fun. It also promotes strategic thinking, and sometimes, a bit of improvisation out of the box. Better players are placed with a handicap (or two) whereas casual players get to be in the shoes of the good players. Players from hardcore guilds get a chance to mentor other aspiring people. Even though there are certain factors of randomness to even out the play field, unlike PugQuest, each team has a better control of their own team. Pre-selected dungeon or fractal paths with gambit will make it not possible to practice

In the end, just think of it as a Olympic game with MVP prizes.

Added more tutorials for skip and wisp run.

After reading the whole post, I really want to give the Devs a big hug and tell them “Thank You!”. They must have been through a lot while holding off on talking about what they are doing, planning and even trying to fix. I have heard that communication within ANet hasn’t been in a good shape, and the negativity and distrust from the community must have been discouraging.

Devs, thanks for your hard work. I’m definitely looking forward to the launch.

/expansionbought

Jerus.4350:

There is more resentment than prestige from fractal skins. It’s not “ohh man you’re so good, i’m impressed” it’s more like “god kitten , kitten you, kitten rng, and kitten anet”

The new weapons I imagine would have a bit of prestige in that it sounds like you’ll have to complete content harder than the current stuff. Hell you don’t even have to do 40s/50s to get current skins.

i can’t wait to have a few golden misty fractal weapons to pair with my GOLDEN PIG!!!

Enko.6123:

I love how everybody takes everything on this forum in the most negative way possible.
Thanks for attempting to push more negativity into this entire thing, Iris.
If you guys were even paying attention, this run from them as been on the list for the records waiting to be approved that I made to help out the approvers. Why they haven’t approved this already or at least made a comment on this thread, I don’t know.

The current agreed ruleset has been changing every week due to the weekly voting and at the time just after the patch where Anet was still tweaking things or fixing bugs, that was a discussion. Should the approvers be going through the HotW 4 guard 1 mes records as well since at the time there wasn’t a rule denying major bugs for that patch?
This is actually why the builds were even originally required to be shown on runs since there was a concern when this all first started up about people posting builds from earlier patches and such.

Lol, Enko brought the weeking voting topic up and thought I was pushing out negativity. I have explained as a result.

Jerus.4350:

My spelling generally relies on red squiggly lines which don’t help with words like Quaggan Overlord (got it right this time I think?)

Almost.

Sanderinoa.8065:

Aradox.6140:

Why don’t you just let each player apply individually and then randomly make teams out of 5 players, that have one month to come up with their own tactic for one path.
In the end all the “big names” are split up on smaller groups and people don’t have to be shy anymore.

I love making random teams but making people have a month to prepare is a bad idea as people will just Google for tactics used before and you’ll have to put in tremendous amounts of time to win anything. Apart from that I would love something which makes up random teams, this helps people make new friends and such. nonetheless, we need to remember that there are NA and EU servers

We’re like star crossed lovers :‘(
I’m sure with my low seed level we could make a fine team.
And, what would make PugQuest fair is that: THERE IS NO (week-long) PRACTICE!

Jerus.4350:

Last member must be the “seeing eye quaggen” remaining in quaggen form the entire run

What happens to your spelling, Jerp? Does it have flu?

/insert Gabo-exclusive-dramatic-exclamation-emoticon-redeemable-with-Arah-tokens.

Now, tons of forewarning would just become troublesome with people expecting practice runs and others not wanting to (remember we’re talking about injecting a more casual element) so just enough to iron things out IMO would be good. Knowing the Path and your team an hour before “showtime” would easily be enough.

Maybe making a small selection of paths and announce team composition and bracket 1 day ahead.

Also, instead of direct elimination, use double elimination for more surviving chance (and easier seeding), faster rotation/turnover and less paths to run -> reduce fatigue. It also works well with a few starting teams.

I hope you also consider discussing All time records vs. Current records, and a grace time for records happening just before a major patch. Or does it still wipe off all the dungeon records? Not my business.

Edit:

I mention “Nike” because it seems people are trying to resolve every issues in one go with the meeting and because as I said, you and “Nike” dislike the “voting” system.

Why do I mention “voting”? Because I think it’s a good alternative to the meeting when dealing with unclear issues constantly produced from ANet finetuning their game builds. But since you and Nike are pro-factors of putting away the voting system, then the upcoming meeting does need to produce a solid rule set to cope with the constant changes.

Double Edit:

I don’t know. It just seems odd that our posts here are being called out for being unsportsmanlike or unprofessional and then you go look at some of the comments being posted in other records that you seem to be perfectly fine with.

You assume that I read every other record threads and feel fine with the comments; in fact, I don’t. I still leave almost all of them unread. I suppose whatever happens inside those threads is the business between approvers and contenders. Since I happen to follow this one, I comment about what are being discussed here.

savacli.8172:

However, I think Iris is on to something with her ideas.

Fix that for you.

Back to Bounty though. I like the idea of adding a gotcha/gimmick (keep certain boss alive, kill in certain order) to make the fight interesting rather than seeing who can roast the bounty the fastest.

Alternatively, you could do something like an escort to where each team have a level 2 player that has to stay alive; downing is acceptable, but a full death would be a disqualification. To ensure that the ‘escort’ is not just hiding out in safe spots there would need to be a requirement such as the escort having to make the first hit.

Oh, that’s easy.

Bounty: Giganticus Lupicus
Gambit: At least one member has to be level 5, active and not dead during the whole fight.
Ban: Spoj is not allowed to participate ‘cause he won it and may win it again :’(

@Enko

Hey, I’m not disagreeing with you. I already made my point here. Read:

I think there is one more thing to add to the record meeting agenda:
- Systematically disapprove any records submitted using game builds during major bug periods from xx to yy.

Why?
- Because you dislike voting.
- Nike dislikes voting.
- The “community” seems to disapprove voting.

So, the upcoming meeting surely needs to address the issue of how to respond to the “meta is changing at the alarming rates”. Personally I wonder if your meeting schedule can keep up with the rate at which ANet is producing bugs/fix/nerfs patch after patch like this.

However, until there is an official ruling of the issue that everybody involved agrees and be made aware of, your guild’s excessive scrutiny seems… to be blunt, lack sportsmanship and unprofessional.

@Wethospu
Are you sure you have enough underpaid and overtime workers?

Unless they are bugged out, the two tentacles are like 2 kilometers apart that no others can touch you when you melee one x)

Yes, damage modifiers increase your personal reflect, aka. (traited) Temporal Curtain and Feedback. So Force is better in practice.

And no, it was base stats (Precisions and Ferocity) that affects your reflect damage. So your additional +7% crit chance kinda falls flat there.

But Accuracy is quite nice when you only want to poke your enemy with Swordmen and make sure the hit crits!

Hey everyone,

I made a mini guide to showcase how a mesmer can use Blink (and sometimes Portal) conveniently in Fractals. There aren’t many, but if I can remember or find out any new skips, I will add more. Enjoy!

The playlist

Cliffside

• Way to Leg Seal
• Way to Chest Seal
• Way to Last Boss (normal) , (exploit)

Uncategorized Fractal

• Laser trap skip
• Harpy skip - with Stealth and Portal, no blink.

Aetherblade Fractal

• Laser trap skip

Thaumanova Fractal

• Skip to the Skritts

Swampland Fractal

• Two-wisp run

If it pleases you, do check out my other series of Fractal Boss De-construction from Mesmer’s Point of View. This series aims to beginners to intermediate-level mesmers in casual to semi-casual runs.

If you have any comments and/or questions, please leave them below. I’ll do my best to respond to them as soon as possible.

Cheers,

Just curious, did you play PugQuest as a team or as Free Agents. The difference of playing quality between premade teams and free-agent teams is like Heaven and Earth. Nick has been criticized quite a bit for his policy of making 4 decent ESL-quality pug and 12 crappy pugs just to raise the viewing quality of the stream. But he has the point!!! No one would want to watch mediocre teams fighting each other and the good player has to suffer for he couldn’t carry his whole team. If we were to do PugQuest format, this issue really needs to be addressed.

Also, you can only milk gems from ANet if the tournament has more than 8 teams actually playing :’(

I think there is one more thing to add to the record meeting agenda:
- Systematically disapprove any records submitted using game builds during major bug periods from xx to yy.

Until then, please stop the excuse and approve/disapprove the records according to the current agreed rules. Oh wait, they are not even approvers… People are simply hard to please, huh.

Hey, I do care.

Wasn’t the tournament canceled because there are not enough participating teams? We are trying to design events that bring more people in. We, or at least I, want to hear other opinions about what would tempt them to do things.

Wow, look at this thread…

For the tentacles, you don’t even need blind. They have like 2 attacks – one can be sidestepped (!!!) and the other has a huge tell that’s so easy to interrupt. Necro has like 3 interrupts Wail of Doom, Doom and Reaper’s Mark. Before you even use up any of those, they are pretty much dead.

And what’s about the greatsword mesmer doing at Maw? They can’t even spam Mirror Blade! It’s better to have some thieves to do Unload or ranger Rapid Fire…

Then something to remember that our Illusions always seem to get aggro easily and die quite fast.

What a way to (try to) deny a record!

Sanderinoa.8065:

I like iris’ idea, though rules may need to change depending on the challenge, why not make people try fastest 5necro kill? would add some variety and remove issues with the definition of ‘ele stacking’. Also the fee would be fine as something like 5 or 10 gold. that way we can make prizes high numbers if people show up, making more people show up.

First, I don’t really want to force people to do a certain role (like 5 necro kill) while we are trying to cater to a larger audience. I know someone would throw a kittenstorm on a slight mention of the class, ha! It would be fine as an incentive (for example, a bonus for each necro member etc).

Second, with the current state of the game, there are hardly any challenges left for a 5-man team. Looking for people to fill a team would be a tall task for semi-casual soloists.

Third, entry fee sounds reasonable for a tournament format. However, it doesn’t sound right with a bounty format.

Last, yea, gambits are subject to change depending on the challenge. But definitely, no ele stacking must be a general rule since glyph/icebow/meteor shower are indisputably OP.

Iris Ng.9845:

Weekly Bounty
Best kill time of a specific boss/ encounter for solo/duo/trio (same category – 15 gold in total x 1 slot).

Weekly Trek (community challenge) – Limited small prize (1 gold x 20 slots)
Traverse the dangerous dungeons/fractals to find the special little spot in the screenshot.

Time to clarify my ideas
Weekly Bounty

Target: Casual, Semi-casual and Hardcore dungeon running individuals

Format: A bounty of a Dungeon or Fractal boss will be posted on gw2Dungeons.net at the start of a weekly cycle. Participants will claim this bounty by submitting their records of the boss killing to the website. Entries will be kept unseen from the public. At the end of the cycle, every entries will be revealed and the one with the fastest kill time will be rewarded.

Gambit: To promote challenge and skilled play, gambits will be added to award bonus kill time.

Team Format: Limited to solo, duo and trio

Prize: One single bounty of 20-30 gold. Soloist gets all, duo or trio splits.

Rule set: No elementalist stacking. Everything else is allowed.

Example: (stolen from Ascension Project)
This week bounty (Saturday 1/8 to 8/8) are the Champion Ettin, Champion Flame Legion Shaman and Champion Rabbit.
Bonus time: 30 seconds awarded for killing the Champion Rabbit last. Also, an extra 10 seconds awarded for every minute the Veteran Bandit was left alive.

Weekly Trek
Target: Casual and Semi-casual dungeon runners.

Format: A screenshot of a place in dungeons or fractals will be posted on gw2dungeons.net. Participants need to reproduce the exact screenshot (with their open Hero panel). Twenty (or fifteen) most early and accurate submitting entries will be rewarded, as soon as the quota reaches or when the time expires (1 week).

Gambit: To promote challenge and the attention to details, screenshots from goating PoV or from a Jumping Puzzle angle are welcome. The challenge can be submitted by anyone; if it is used by gw2dungeons.net the challenger will receive a tip of 1 gold.

Team Format: Unlimited.

Prize: 1 gold per prize.

Rule set: No rules. Everything allowed.

Example: See picture attached.

NikeEU.7690:

Iris Ng.9845:

NikeEU.7690:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Entirely hosted by a neutral, democratic, and trusted body

^^Best way to ensure that nothing comes of it.

The best way to ensure something actually happens is someone who has the willpower to overcome the community’s collective ennui to make it happen.

Here comes the strawman. Let’s burn it!

Strawman would imply that I’m just making it up and there isn’t a ton of evidence behind it.

How did you pug tournament work out? Or the Ascension Project? Or any of the other initiatives that required people to, you know, want to get off their butts and do them? These things don’t die because the ideas are bad or the people coming up with the ideas are missing something, it’s just extremely hard to motivate people.

If it’s a sound initiative, I would pay it myself to follow it (Best of 2014 Voting, hello?). However, as previously stated, the idea was nice, but the implementation itself sees problems. That’s how I drop out on Pug Tournament.

There is also the Dungeon Mentor Initiative which was dropped on me alone for awhile and I quit from burning out, but people have picked it up again. If it’s a good community project, it’s fated to stay alive and floating.

Please don’t put all your blames and flames on the so-called “community”.

Chazua.1934:

NikeEU.7690:

You guys in a lot of fights where the CD reduction of Haste from Trickster is relevant? Really? I think if so you have bigger issues than min/maxing your Thief DPS.

The CD reduction is so that it will be up for every fight in a dungeon. In dungeons like CM, where the bosses are around 30 seconds apart from each other, it’s nice to have quickness for each fight. And Thrill of the Crime + Bountiful are pretty much useless if your group is half competent. Eles can cap fury easily, and Warriors take care of might. Vigor is an extremely weak boon since the nerf and is detrimental to Warrior DPS.

If quickness is messing up the CnD/Backstab rotation, then learn how to do the rotation with quickness. When it comes to DPS, Flanking/Trickster is undoubtedly the better choice.

Points taken.

Arah (P1) skip made easy for dummy rangers. No consumables required.

NikeEU.7690:

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Entirely hosted by a neutral, democratic, and trusted body

^^Best way to ensure that nothing comes of it.

The best way to ensure something actually happens is someone who has the willpower to overcome the community’s collective ennui to make it happen.

Here comes the strawman. Let’s burn it!

That idea sounds nice on paper, but will have the same problems as PugQuest: how to seed players in a team? How to make it competitive and fair but not frustrating for a good player in a bad team? RNG factors and such.

Well, but you cannot attack when you’re stunned, and you cannot proc Haste if you cannot attack. Hue!

Edit: Unless you got stunned after your attack connects to stuff like Shocking Aura and by miracles, your Haste procs…

Weekly Bounty
Best kill time of a specific boss/ encounter for solo/duo/trio (same category – 15 gold in total x 1 slot).

Weekly Trek (community challenge) – Limited small prize (1 gold x 20 slots)
Traverse the dangerous dungeons/fractals to find the special little spot in the screenshot.

@Nike

Speaking like you then they should demolish ESL Weekly altogether because it’s outright obvious who’s gonna win each week?

Also, as far as I understand, the community you speak of seems to only evolve around a certain elite number who actually cares enough to compete and those who are interested to support the tourney as the audience don’t count as the community?

or is it the same community which was described by you as “ingrate, jealous, foolish, etc” or the community who has authority over speed run record ruling?

I have seen this word thrown around a lot to describe different groups of people but in the end it is almost always used loosely as a straw man to take any kinds of blame, insult and responsibility.

Am I safe to count myself not a part of this community?

EcoRI.9273:

Incase people haven’t heard, the event is cancelled due to lack of interest from the community to register teams.

who represent “community” here?

You made eternity because some (very) dumb friends donated Dusk to you!

+1 for Style point. Fashionable Runner achievement unlocked!

For extremely casual fractal pugs and with a Devil May Care persona:

1. Slaying if feeling hardcore and have spare sigils to swap.
2. Night + Force, if feeling cheap and have only one ascended weapon.
3a. Strength – with decent crit chance buff and vuln application, no Might access but benefit from both Power and Condi.
3b. Accuracy – with most damage coming from crit procs, have ferocity buff and no crit chance buff, have low attack rates and Might is not imperative.
3c. Frailty – universally works with all classes, however used only when feeling willful enough to support/carry an average group. Most important for a reflect mesmer when vuln is not capped.
4. Air – has good attack/crit rates, might and vuln are not issues, long fight with no burst potential. Of all characters of mine, the only one that has Air sigil is my mesmer, in her greatsword.

I think the biggest (wrong) perception is the OP’s group trying to cycle Blind and Block whenever they are available. You need to know that you may not have enough of Blind and Block, or even if you can afford all of them you are practically gimping your DPS, when the fight is drawn out. Thus, you need to learn which encounters when using them is appropriate and when there are more simpler methods to use so you can avoid exhausting your active defense.

First, weapon skills have a shorter CD than most utility, so use them deliberately if it’s for personal defense. For example, you don’t need to activate Aegis or Retreat when a single target attack aims at you. A block from Mace or Focus OH is sufficient.

Second, before you want to blind a mob, check if their mob type can be blinded. Bosses only have 10% chance to be blind, don’t waste your skills on it. Dredge cannot be blind. Certain mobs have higher attack rate than your blind pulse, so you are not entirely immune to damage with blind. For example, Fire Elemental, Earth Elemental, etc. Aegis only have one charge, Distortion have one second immune from damage.

Third, against approaching (melee) foes, check if you can ward, immobilize or interrupt them for bursting before blind becomes necessary. I’m talking about Ring of Warding, Line of Warding, Zealot’s Embrace, Unsteady Ground, Static Field, Shockwave, Temporal Curtain (pull), Magic Bullet, Head Shot, Tremor, Net Shot etc.

Fourth, before using Aegis, check if that attack is a projectile which can be reflected (not all projectiles are equal!!!). Reflection is a form damage prevention which consists of both block and reflect. Vice versa, if a projectile cannot be reflected, it cannot be blocked. All spider spit attacks from Elite to Champion to Legendary fall to this category. Speaking of Reflect, please use Reflect skills when there are actually things to reflect, not just cycle them as a safety measure. At the same time, prioritize actual Reflect over Projectile blocking/destroying.

Fifth, almost every single attacks that absolutely for the love of Christ needs aegis have a long long long long winding tell. Use the tell as your signal to get aegis down. Some knockdown/ knockback effect cannot be blocked. It is very likely that the damage portion cannot be blocked as well. Aegis only have one charge so timing is important!

Sixth, Stability is the most useful during channeling a big damage skill (Meteor Shower, Ice Bow). However, Stability now have limited charges, which means you will not be immune from a constant CC effect for a long duration anymore. For example I’m looking at the Golem spin or the Abomination Charge. In both cases, damage prevention is the most imperative. Interrupting their actions/skills works much, much, much, much more efficiently.

thrag.9740:

Hey guys, I did 6 fractals this weekend with your advice. It felt a lot smoother, and I had a much better time, thanks

I do have another question though.

7.) For the reactor fractal, in the heat room. At lower levels (1-10) I could easily solo this room by just spamming the first ability (wiki calls it meltdown), it makes you run faster. Is this still the tactic? We had a mesmer portal us half way in to do this room. If there is no mesmer what do we do? I know bear form helps, but I do not know how. Do groups without these abilities need to use cooling rods?

8.) For the final boss in the reactor fractal, the anomaly. Should I use melee? This weekend I did an initial melee burn at the beginning, but then swapped to rifle when everyone else started spreading out.

By the way, I thought I would share something I discovered this weekend. Medical packs (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Medical_Pack) can make the cannon phase of mai trin a lot easier. Giving both swiftness and healing. I made sure to let my group know to look for them.

7.) For the Heat Room, I usually take Defiant Stance, Signet of Stamina, Bull’s Charge, Rampage, Shake It Off, Sword and Warhorn.
- Start by giving yourself swiftness. Stand a bit over the edge of the first barrier, Savage Leap into the room.
- Spam Melt Down (Transform skill 1) to get a normal walking speed. Dodge deliberately.
- Around 5k HP, wait for the Agony tick to go away then use Defiance Stance.
- As you are healing up, Bull’s Charge.
- Activate Rampage: use Dash, Seismic Leap. Then proceed to Walk in your Rampage form, Dodge if needed.
- You should reach the end of the room when you exit your Rampage form. If you go down, keep Heal until your Vengeance is up.
- Once you’re inside the room, activate one of the switch, use Shake It Off or Charge (Warhorn) to cleanse your immobilization then turn off the other.

OPTIONAL (usage may be considered nubs by many):
- Get at least one cooling rod inside the room.
- Trait for Vigorous Shout and use Shake It Off early as a small heal. You can swap for Nomad or Cleric trinkets before hand to have a small Healing/Toughness/Vitality bonus.
- Get an Energy sigil so you have two free dodges when entering and exiting Rampage.
- Eat Vitality+Toughness food.

8.) What I usually do is to let a staff ele/scepter guardian/duelist mesmer/grenade engi/long bow ranger to engage in combat first. They are classes that have a more potent firing power than you. They will draw the aggro, especially the bomb pulse which detonates the floor, for awhile and leave you enough comfortable room to melee. When the boss spins, back down to mid range a bit to bait the floor breaking action there, then come back in to melee. I would love to have Discipline trait here so you can get Fast Hand and Heighten Focus, the latter allows you to fully burst 100b without interrupting (F-k Tactics).

This boss seems to have a short leash range. If you run completely to one end of the area, you will get out of combat easily and he starts to reset.

@laokoko: Sandy did a solo at level 30. According to him, there is way too much pressure at 40+.

After asking around the speedrun record players, and with frifox’s confirmation, I’m positive that Mantra Strength increases the reflect damage from Feedback and Curtain. So there is one more reason to madly spam your mantra during reflect.

+6 and above infusions? I hope

Fay.2357:

Iris Ng.9845:

Only 25k? Mine hit 32k-38k on Teq. They hit hard, but slow and almost only effective on immovable targets.

Totally doesn’t count on Teq if you hit him during the laser.

Why doesn’t count? Numbers are numbers. They only look pretty. In comparison, Wardens hit about 23k at the highest count.

Xyonon.3987:

Iris Ng.9845:

One thing I usually do with mantra is to activating all of them during a big reflect (Lupi/ Bloomhunger) to stack the effect of Mantra Strength. Mantra of Distraction and Diversion stacks Vulnerability on target, and so they are perfect to spam right before a big reflect as well.

They aren’t affected by your mantra dmg modifiers, only the vuln of daze.

Interesting. I would love to hear more about it. I’m under impression that reflected damage is effected by all damage modifiers, including Empowered Mantra (old) which is now carried under Harmonious Mantra (current). Unless Harmonious Mantra doesn’t give the same damage modifier Empowered Mantra used to do, all of the Lupi-one-shot work involved the use of triple Mantra plus Feedback before the Specialization Patch.

Only 25k? Mine hit 32k-38k on Teq. They hit hard, but slow and almost only effective on immovable targets.

One thing I usually do with mantra is to activating all of them during a big reflect (Lupi/ Bloomhunger) to stack the effect of Mantra Strength. Mantra of Distraction and Diversion stacks Vulnerability on target, and so they are perfect to spam right before a big reflect as well.

Ever think that it will reduce recharge of banner, Moa, SR? Or even portal…

deSade.9437:

Because monks didn’t provide attack absorption and damage mitigation… ow8…

What’s that blue guy doing? is it a plastic soldier? anyone knows?

Finished my canthan carto and took a first dip into Slaver’s Exile yesterday. kitten , GW is so entertaining