Guild Wars 2

lLobo.7960:

Jerus.4350:

lLobo.7960:

Gadgets really need to become the “engi signet”. It really fits the concept, IMO.[…]

Simple elegant solution that I think is quite reasonable given the state engi is in currently. You did forget Throw Mine though.

Oh, I didn’t event think the mine was a gadget.
What about “33% chance to trigger a small explosion on auto-attacks (1s CD)”
would be a good combo with explosion line

Boom, done, lets move to turrets

Torchdom.8214:

Title says it I guess.
I walk up to the Juvenile Bristleback and don’t get the Tame [F] option.
Not sure what I’m doing wrong.
Any help would be great, thanks.

Could it have been some other ranger’s pet?

Thelgar.7214:

Jayne.9251:

Recruit and power your way up.
…
Because this is the core of the problem.

That is pretty much it. Servers stacking their way up the tiers is the problem. And it isn’t individuals moving, but guilds. Tie guilds to a single server. If you move a guild, start all over in building a guild hall and gaining advancements. And make transfers cash only as you suggested, so trading stacks of ectos for guilds stops.

Pretty sure that’d benefit the game and ANet.

lLobo.7960:

Gadgets really need to become the “engi signet”. It really fits the concept, IMO.
Something the engi wears and can be overloaded to provide extra effects then go on a CD.
So utility googles could give passive ferocity
rocket boots increase endurance regen (or 25% speed)
slick shoes gives 25% speed (or increase endurance regen)
battering ram gives passive power
AED removes a condition every 10s

I dont think this is a complex change to implement, since all the mechanics are already in game, and it would make gadgets much nicer and useful.

Simple elegant solution that I think is quite reasonable given the state engi is in currently. You did forget Throw Mine though.

undouble.1472:

First: I have NO objection to having to work (hard) to obtain the necessary gear, experience, knowledge needed to create a “legendary”. I also do not object to being able to acquire the necessary items by my effort, or my gold.
What I do object to is being unable to just access the needed fractal to obtain these items. Every time I try, I’m sent to the beginning fractal (you know; the Ascalon “grind”), and discover that to obtain access to the fractal I “need” I’m going to have to “grind” through upteen others first. This may be my “ignorance” showing, but that’s MY experience————-and MY disappointment in the design. Like many, I like this game———-that doesn’t mean I have to like the sidelines———-OR be required to engage in them!! But, a part of this game is the creation/acquisition of better armor, weapons, and trinkets. Every player should have that opportunity———————and the choice of method. My “rant” is due to my discovery that, for example" the “Jade Maw’s Eye” is an “unobtainable” UNLESS —-————-. It must be acknowledged that not all players enjoy, or wish to engage in, ALL facets of this gaming adventure. Preventing them from achieving——————because they don’t want to (Pvp, WvW, PvE, dungeon prowl, “run” Fractals—————your pick) is a stricture that should not “be in play”. There should always be an option (Gold, Gems, Laurels, etc) to obtain the needed items. Comments about “destroying the game’s commerce system” is a fool’s argument. Since items of this nature HAVE no commercial value (except an arbitrary, well-undervalued, “sell”
price, they will have little or no effect on the markets—————except as a high-value acquisition from the TP (who can buy it from the “regular” merchants for “coppers on the gold”)

This is not a fractal complaint at all then. It’s a Legendary complaint or just general rewards/collections/whatever complaint. I personally hate most open world stuff and certainly PVP I have no interest in anymore (I have given it enough tries, too many better options out there for PVP). WvW and instanced PVE is my thing, and plenty of times I’ve had to go do things I didn’t want to for a reward, it’s unfortunate and I feel you there. Just… again it has nothing to do with fractals specifically, it’s just one of the dozens of instances of this issue.

I really question how many people are willing to form 10 people together and organize yourselves to manage the mechanics, but not willing to spend some gold to re-equip in a better suited build.

Who would actually use easier raids, not just like the sound of it? The biggest hurdle in accessibility is still going to be organizing 10 people to work as a team.

Before we go too far on the anti-kit thing. Realize our highest PVE Power DPS build uses 1 kit. The Scrapper PVP/WvW builds primarily use 1 kit (though I often slot toolkit in for the pull in WvW). So as far as Meta builds go, only PVE Condi is the full bar of kits, that and using a few old builds for unorganized or solo PVE play, in which case scrapper might be a better option and open up your slots a little anyways

The kit problem was a real issue pre-HoT as every meta build was at least 2 kits, but scrapper has changed that and it’s much less of an issue.

Ganathar.4956:

I have no idea how anyone can argue that the design is fine. It doesn’t matter if you raid or not. If for any reason you cannot get any more xp towards masteries, whether they are locked or you have no MP, you should be able to use your xp towards spirit shards.

I wonder if players who only have the base game get spirit shards. If they do, HoT players are actually at a disadvantage here.

Thank you, THIS is how it should be. But, btw, core tyria you have to finish all that too, so personally I have to go back and do triple trouble or spend the cash on a bunch of cultural styles I don’t even like… completionist bullkitten.

The raid lock isn’t the problem, the lock behind masteries that people don’t care about is. Forcing people to go do things they don’t want to do so they can actually get use out of their experience points is just wrong.

Ranael.6423:

The problem with Engineer is that our utilities are not competing with other utilities but with weapons.
Why would you take personal battering ram when you can have air blast with shorter CD, reflect and burn on top of the CC and have 4 other skills. If you reduce the CD of the ram then there will be no balance with other profession and if you increase Air blast CD to 50 sec (because there are still 4 other skills) then flamethrower will be abandoned like a gadget.
To be honest I feel that the only way to make other utilities worth is to limit the usage of kits in our bar or to split every trait for kits and have all of them as grandmaster so that we have to choose which one will be powerful. Yes, kits are one of the reason we all play engi but when FT auto does more damage than flame turret, and is mobile. The grenade kit does has more DPS on skill 1 then weapons and has some condi/CC attached to it….

Interesting choice on gadgets, as Ram is the only one that will see regular use in PVE as it’s toolbelt skill packs a decent punch and is on a short cooldown so you get static discharge procs. The toolbelt skill is roughly the same damage addition as Grenade Barrage but with twice the static discharge procs.

If the overcharge from gadgeteer was just made baseline without the wonky conditional part then Ram should give more of a defiance bar hit, which would make it even more nice and maybe be worth using Gadgeteer.

Yes though Kits are hard to design around, making 2 skills greater than 6 is a tough thing to do without creating OP abilities but things do pop up.

Anyways, I can think of a few changes that I’d like to see and would make these skills things I might take. Rocket boots being a targetted leap would be nice due to how often it likes to shoot you off in weird directions, like jump shot on rifle but further. Mine Field having it’s cast reduced would be a good first step for that. Analyze would make more sense to me as an AoE like the Stealth Gyro’s skill, but not sure if people would rather the long range? Utility goggles is a tough one because reactive lenses gives it to you automatically so making it powerful would be tough, but just with baseline gadgeteer overcharge it gives might as well as fury which is not bad.

cranos.5913:

Jerus.4350:

Ghotistyx.6942:

According to Quantify ([qt]?) who ran numbers on a bunch of builds, they found that Scepter, Sword, and Hammer all performed extremely close to one another in a raid setting. The traits happened to be mostly the same with only minor gear adjustments, so in a less hardcore setting, any of those options would be fine. Under optimal conditions Scepter edges out the rest, but it’s largely negligible.

I’ll maybe grab a link when it’s not 5am and I’m not forced to be on mobile.
Found it

Scepter only wins out on large hitboxes, otherwise their tests show hammer. My question is scepter/sword rotation, better? I’d think getting to double up on symbols now and then would be beneficial I’d think.

It is… (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWARUSSYScM)

Does more dmg than hammer even without alacrity.

Furthermore I wanna say both the sword and scepter build only do marginally less dmg than hammer on an average hitbox in the tests, but that’s without alacrity. Hammer dps doesn’t increase with alacrity, but any of the other builds increase a lot since with alacrity you have much larger symbol uptime and many more torch bursts. So in other words in a decent raid group hammer dps is always going to be the lowest.

Nice, yeah I hadn’t seen that and I haven’t gone back and tested myself (initial testing I was being very bad about cancelling the sword auto which of course ruined the rotation) but I was seeing an increase from pure sword by adding scepter, but a decrease on large hitbox for scepter. That seems to sync with what we’re seeing now.

Every profession has these same types of issues, for instance look at Spirit weapons.

That said, yes, Gadgets could be decent with some minor tweaks. They already do see some niche uses (travel with Rocket Boots, SD builds with Ram, Slick Shoes for Superspeed at times) it’s just that they are in general not strong enough on their own for regular use.

Turrets provide a much more difficult problem. They got nerfed because people loath losing to AI in PVP. Which creates a big problem. How do you make stationary turrets worthwhile without putting that power on the AI side? Not an easy thing, and any solution would likely have people angry because it’d scrap whatever niche use they use the current turrets for. At least Rifle turret gets used for SD builds, though the rest I’d have a hard time finding a use for (tryharding and swapping in thumper for rumble, but yeah…).

As a starter I’d make the overcharge effects from Gadgeteer baseline with the trait, no need to get hit. It’s a strange conditional power, you want to get hit… it just doesn’t work. From there I’d work on more skill based tweaks, like mine field being an awkwardly long cast time preventing it from being competitive at all for damage. And, slick shoes, that nerf… it needs work now. It used to be decent at least now and then.

WvW track with XP booster and guild booster will get you 312 a tick, so it’d be about 5 hours for 50 shards. Not bad at all esp if you like WvW.

For normal farming you can hop maps to any LFG for Jades/Justiciar, this will net you 3 rubies guaranteed for each event chain, potentially more as map rewards. In between farm nodes, and changing alts will let you get more nodes. And of course finishing the dailies while you gather nodes. Doing this I was able to get 50ish in about 3 hours the other night. So farming the map is still the fastest I believe, though IFF there are available maps to hop into for those two event chains.

Xyonon.3987:

Jerus.4350:

Chazz.6709:

Hey Guys

Well to be honest ! I didn`t expected some buffs for us. So i barely got dissapointed and nice 5% more dmg , but kitten on moving targets ? Seems like they want us to go condi only ?

Anyways still waiting for the day , when we get 2-3 sec cast time on each AA ,because dps is too op otherwise!

Power engi is very good, and on the mobile target in the training area it does drop but not by much still being able to land most bombs. Condi actually has more issues in requiring a stationary target with the field damages.

The only skill that requires you to have a stationary target is napalm. The fire bomb is short enough to be placed in front of a target and land all of it’s tics.

True, proper placement can certainly reduce the loss in movement, but still quite often you won’t get you full 4 ticks of the bomb. More an issue in fractals though.

Ghotistyx.6942:

According to Quantify ([qt]?) who ran numbers on a bunch of builds, they found that Scepter, Sword, and Hammer all performed extremely close to one another in a raid setting. The traits happened to be mostly the same with only minor gear adjustments, so in a less hardcore setting, any of those options would be fine. Under optimal conditions Scepter edges out the rest, but it’s largely negligible.

I’ll maybe grab a link when it’s not 5am and I’m not forced to be on mobile.
Found it

Scepter only wins out on large hitboxes, otherwise their tests show hammer. My question is scepter/sword rotation, better? I’d think getting to double up on symbols now and then would be beneficial I’d think.

Brought exactly what I bring to fractals, DM/Curses/Reaper. With Rise, CPC, and Epidemic mostly. Using Plague sending to bounce the condi’s back and Parasitic Contagion for a stupid amount of extra sustain. Pretty hard to die as a necro, especially if you get swarmed (rise → Epidemic, lol).

Mourningcry.9428:

Mitch.4781:

And why remove the little underwater cavern? It worries me that they are trying to remove underwater from the game. Removed it from the pvp map. No meaningful water encounters in HOT, not new UW weapon skins. Piece by Piece.

I wouldn’t miss Aquatic all that much honestly….

Yeah, though GW2 is the best underwater combat I’ve come across. It’s just that with more basic type things, you can just easily kite it and that makes it pretty boring. Try and optimize and even though it’s the best I’ve seen the combat is pretty clunky. I would like to see what they could come up with if they really tried at underwater using the newer stuff they’ve developed. I really think they could do something cool, but yeah… not sure it’s worth the effort.

As was mentioned, SD Bomb build is the best pure damage power build. It won’t be as good in fractals (high levels you want condi) and in general group/solo play because you need the buffs (bringing blasts and comboing for might really helps). Anyways, give it a google search, it’s pretty much the same basic traits as any poewr build but with static discharge and using bomb kit, ram, and rifle turret (just for the toolbelt skill, though can detonate turret for blasts/knockback).

insanemaniac.2456:

yeah sure if you wanna turn engi into something that spams 11111111111 with the occasional nade barrage

Too late already the best power build >.<

So Celebration booster is +10% it says. XP booster is 50%. At 195 level of participation I should get 60% increase for 312 right? But, I’m just getting 292 which is 50%. Do these two things not stack? Intentional? Cap at 50%?

Dagger has a good amount of range to it allowing you to still “melee” while outside many incoming melee attacks. This helps a lot. Add in some good dodging and water blasts it’s really not bad at all.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Chaos is ok, thoug unlucky situations can mean an automatic death no matter how good you play (bar players with shadow step maybe).

Bloomhunger is a huge fail imo. Mathematical sense is nowhere to be found in this fractal.

Hint: Lvl 100 Mai trinn is 100000x more fun and doable then lvl 77 Bloomhunger. Bloomhunger is insanity.

PS stop mixing raid devs and fractal devs. They got nothing to do with each other, and Bloomhunger 100% certainly has raid dev influence.

It’s reddit… and you’d think they’d post this stuff on their own forums too. But, anyways, the dev who made the encounter said he specifically wanted to introduce some raid mechanics as a stepping stone to raids. He also stated that they don’t have plans to change the other easy fractals to be like this, so you don’t have to fear there, you can get easy t4 farming done most of the time, just a few times a month you’ll miss out on a t4 daily if you don’t do swamp.

Ropechef.6192:

I actually started being designated poison bloom killer on some of the runs i was in. As a reaper it made me giggle as i watched the stacks add up and transfer makes me happy.

Jerus,
We need to run together more often, Maybe a new guild of old forumites to fractal and raid with

:)

Hit me up! (not tonight, WvW night). I think Sarahfull and I ended up doing Chaos and Swamp like 3X each last night, too fun.

Last I heard they were working on it… but no news yet.

A relatively quick reuse sustained block skill alone is worth having, with damage on top it’s a great skill. With high DPS such that it can be used just for DPS… that’s a bit much. Change is fine.

CptAurellian.9537:

Chaos is really nice, except the final gladiator guy. Bosses that punish melee so much aren’t fun.

Does it punish too much or should we approach it differently? I’m not sure, but I intend to find out. Perhaps a healer/tank type approach would allow for melee with an evade/block on the third attacks?

I really think it’s too early to complain too much when it very well may be possible with a bit more practice.

Nice tip list.

The charge and leap both have tells before the attack initiates. I can’t describe them in detail as I didn’t really focus on it but I was able to easily recognize the two by the end of the night last night (4 t4 kills, so I was in there a lot ). Working off those tells is much easier than just reacting to a charging boss or an orange circle.

His big orange circle attack that has the inner circle expanding… this seems off for me and some others. The attack happens a little before the small circle reaches the outer circle it seemed. So keep that in mind.

Now this I’m not sure on, but at one point the ground pound shows open areas that should mean it’s safe… it didn’t seem to be safe when I tried last night. Also the champ’s knockdown is a wider radius than what his model would suggest, so make sure to give it some room or just dodge.

Chazz.6709:

Hey Guys

Well to be honest ! I didn`t expected some buffs for us. So i barely got dissapointed and nice 5% more dmg , but kitten on moving targets ? Seems like they want us to go condi only ?

Anyways still waiting for the day , when we get 2-3 sec cast time on each AA ,because dps is too op otherwise!

Power engi is very good, and on the mobile target in the training area it does drop but not by much still being able to land most bombs. Condi actually has more issues in requiring a stationary target with the field damages.

It was a thing at one time, I remember seeing videos of people testing it in the PVP area, but I want to say it was fixed? Not completely sure. And, realistically it’s not too impactful, more a theoretical thing. The amount of times you get to use GS2 right inside the hitbox is pretty minimal, and that’s the only thing it was affecting, it was something like getting 2 less bolts to land on the large races.

mrauls.6519:

I want to get into Fractals. I play Guardian. My biggest issue is that at higher levels it feels like I have a lot of setbacks. What is a good setup with Scepter/Focus + GS? I want to play a power build.

What are some things I should be aware of and avoid doing?

GS symbol is a retal giving symbol, so that’s a no-no. Light fields you just need your team not to needlessly blast. Don’t trait virtues, don’t use stand your ground. Just keep retal out of your rotation. I don’t think any builds use any crucial blasts so it shouldn’t be an issues if you just put a little thought into it.

I do wish they’d change boon thieves to just stealing boons and maybe give themselves some baseline buff if they are able to strip like 5 might for every boon they strip, still dangerous but without the imbalance.

You don’t even have to change your build if you play it right! But, it does help a lot. A stunbreak can make what would have been a down just a little hiccup. Some group healing and condi cleanse (<3 plague signet) will go a long way. The poison doesn’t hurt too bad but making your healing skills ineffective does matter. On both swamp and Chaos I want to see if toughness can pull agro at all because that could help a lot. I’m gearing up my guard again just because of Bloom/Chaos which is a nice thing.

To the people saying Bloom moves too fast, what tell are you using? Are you dodging the leap when the orange circle pops? Or the charge once he’s already charging? They both have specific animations that you can recognize. The charge he kinda pumps himself up then charges, and the leap he leans down a bit… hard to describe from memory but it was certainly recognizable after running it last night (4 completions with plenty of wipes sure does help learning).

So you see those tells, give the normal 1-2 count and then he actually performs the action, so it’s more be ready to dodge, then you have to gauge how far away he is as that will affect the travel time. He might not leap at you or charge at you but seeing these tells you’re able to be ready with the dodge the second that orange circle pops or he starts charging.

I have pretty bad lag issues myself but I didn’t have any issues with this, the thing that took me down the most was catching hits from the champ that I thought I was out of range for but still clipping me and knocking me down (bring a stunbreak!).

slashlizardy.9167:

Redenaz.8631:

You can unlock a 10% XP boost in Bloodstone Fen, up to three times for a permanent 30% boost. Since Bloodstone Fen counts as a HoT map, I can’t help but wonder if this option is meant to help people grind mastery XP. I don’t know how efficient that would be compared to doing HoT maps, but without a big map meta, Bloodstone Fen is easier to jump in and out of.

+30% towards spirit shards could be useful, but it seems much more useful for masteries.

I will have to look at this, as I am in the same boat as Kaon. HoT has been a boring drag & grind to me and I loathe about every minute I’m in one of those maps.

Yup, I simply don’t enjoy the maps. They’re beautiful and the boss fights are fun, but the sitting around and running around trying to find something worthwhile to do during the hour+ wait is just so boring.

Masteries are IMO the worst thing they’ve added to the game. It’s no different from any other MMO now where if you try to jump in you have a hell of a lot of catch up to do before you can dig into the content.

I remember on many occasions reading the ANet staff boasting about the fact that you could walk away from the game and come back and jump right in… full 180 there.

Jahroots.6791:

Jerus.4350:

Atticus.7194:

OnizukaBR.8537:

People finding Swamp too difficult now just prove that it was really needed ( so after a while people will be pugging raids a lot easier ) , because it still way easier than raids, and if you cant complete T4 swamp you shouldnt be trying raids.
And for people that says that fractal shouldnt be that hard. You remember that there is T1/T2/T3 swamp right? So there you go your easy content for 5 man. All T4 should be on the level of Chaos and Swamp.

Difference is raids reward you for that difficulty, Swamp as it stands now provides next to no real rewards.

Also tone down the tryhard please? I know you’re the best and everyone else needs to “git gud” and you’re voting Trump but until everything is tuned to be like the T4 swamp it’s a little unreasonable to have this single lone boss fight be about 5x harder than any other encounter in any fractal without at least providing appropriate rewards.

Welcome to Fractals, where your reward isn’t “worth it”. That’s how they were for a LONG time, then sometime while I was gone HoT made them a quick and easy daily farm. I very much welcome this change even if it means less reward for the effort.

So, basically you want fractals to suck again so that only the ‘true’ players can enjoy them? Okay.

Dropping a tier or two down isn’t an option for most of us who’ve been pugging for the last 8 or 9 months. We’ve already established certain expectations from this content (daily fractals, at their core, are little more than a gamble for ascended chest drops) and fundamentally some of the changes feel like an indirect reward nerf: greater effort for the same reward.

In the past when Anet significantly buffed content there was also an increased incentive to play it at the higher difficulty. The loot tables need to be revised, or at least have the fractal lab vendors offer new items.

Fractals went from something fun with an underappreciated reward to a braindead gold farm. It’s not that I want it for ‘true’ players, whatever the hell that is, it’s that I want them to be what they used to be, an actual step up in difficulty. The welcome to fractals thing was more a joke, but it rings true in that fractals back then were still worth it, I have 5-6 sets of ascended thanks to that, quite a bit of gold saved. What they weren’t though was a gold farm, and that is something I’m very much ok with. I think the rewards are great right now, enough pocket change to sustain me (easily) and a chance at being able to make secondary builds or set up even more alts!

The bloomhunger fight will get quicker as people learn what to do, in fact I wouldn’t put it that far off from Mai trin in length, and when you compare the whole fractal to say cliffside it’s pretty close as well. What makes Bloom long is people dying and holding him off while you res 3 people between phases.

Vinceman.4572:

Atticus.7194:

Vinceman.4572:

Anet_Ben:

“Bloomhunger is intended to be the most difficult fractal right now. There is a problem in Guild Wars in that there is no real stepping stone to raids.”

Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v4bz4/finally_got_around_to_doing_the_new_swamp_fractal/

Another clear announcement that GW2 wasn’t made to only cater easy content to the playerbase (although I don’t call Bloomhunger that difficult after playing swamp)!

Another indication that if that’s the case then they need to separate the swamp out from every other fractal or buff every other T4 fractal to it’s level AND provide appropriate rewards. You want to cater to the psuedo-raider? Fine that’s okay, but don’t just lump it in with everything else and expect the playerbase to choke it down without providing appropriate time/effort rewards.

No, all I’m saying is that T4 fractals were and are too easy for being rewarded with ascended chests and the amount of gold you are getting. I hope they continue to make T4s harder. There are easy T1-3s to learn your stuff.

I agree on the idea that all t4’s should be as involved as the new Bloom and the Chaos Fractal. But, when you have maps like SW and AB out there, naw, easy t4’s aren’t too rewarding at all.

shakome.7458:

Has any of you encountered problem where bloom get to 25%, about to do his massive attack, but you can’t interact with the column after you pick up the wisp? My group wiped about 3times last night, not because we didn’t know his attack but because we can’t interact with anything after picking up the wisp.
I wonder if this is a bug, or we did something wrong, like there is another step we need to do before picking up the wisp

I haven’t experienced this and I’ve run it a few times. So I don’t think there’s anything extra, just grab a wisp from SE/SW/NE/NW and bring it to the closest depository pillar.

Dahkeus.8243:

Jerus.4350:

Dahkeus.8243:

Played around with power engi in the raid testing zone using realistic buffs. It’s still clearly behind thief in DPS.

Curious what you got as results. “Clearly behind” makes me think it’s a lot but from what I’ve seen, while it may be behind it’s just by a little bit.

I definitely didn’t practice the rotation enough to min/max everything, but I was hitting 24k. For conditions, I didn’t include immobilize and fear, but added everything else, which may not actually happen, depending on comp. I’m sure this could be beat by someone who’s more efficient at nailing the rotation, but I don’t see it surpassing the benchmarks from thief.

For reference, here’s some recent vids with good benchmarks for staff and D/D thief using all buffs and realistic buffs:
Staff – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXSKqzeR1E4
D/D – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WRkbPr8z6o

If someone can post a vid of power engi hitting ~29k DPS or better with realistic buffs, I’ll reconsider, but especially considering the simplicity of staff DPS, it’s hard to imagine many scenarios where an engi actually outperforms a staff DD in an actual raid fight.

Considering the only real thing to watch out for in the build is not using your toolbelt skills in the middle of a bomb placment, I don’t think you’ll get that much higher. Though I’ll try and test again tonight/tomorrow. IIRC I was getting high ~26-27ks with “realistic” buffs but I wasn’t paying attention to conditions, just tossed them all on.

But, Thief is doing better than I thought, I thought thief was 29k with staff before and taking the nerf would drop but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Dahkeus.8243:

Played around with power engi in the raid testing zone using realistic buffs. It’s still clearly behind thief in DPS.

Curious what you got as results. “Clearly behind” makes me think it’s a lot but from what I’ve seen, while it may be behind it’s just by a little bit.

Atticus.7194:

OnizukaBR.8537:

People finding Swamp too difficult now just prove that it was really needed ( so after a while people will be pugging raids a lot easier ) , because it still way easier than raids, and if you cant complete T4 swamp you shouldnt be trying raids.
And for people that says that fractal shouldnt be that hard. You remember that there is T1/T2/T3 swamp right? So there you go your easy content for 5 man. All T4 should be on the level of Chaos and Swamp.

Difference is raids reward you for that difficulty, Swamp as it stands now provides next to no real rewards.

Also tone down the tryhard please? I know you’re the best and everyone else needs to “git gud” and you’re voting Trump but until everything is tuned to be like the T4 swamp it’s a little unreasonable to have this single lone boss fight be about 5x harder than any other encounter in any fractal without at least providing appropriate rewards.

Welcome to Fractals, where your reward isn’t “worth it”. That’s how they were for a LONG time, then sometime while I was gone HoT made them a quick and easy daily farm. I very much welcome this change even if it means less reward for the effort.

OnizukaBR.8537:

People finding Swamp too difficult now just prove that it was really needed ( so after a while people will be pugging raids a lot easier ) , because it still way easier than raids, and if you cant complete T4 swamp you shouldnt be trying raids.
And for people that says that fractal shouldnt be that hard. You remember that there is T1/T2/T3 swamp right? So there you go your easy content for 5 man. All T4 should be on the level of Chaos and Swamp.

The bolded exactly. Fractals are scaled, can’t do the hardest, drop down a tier. The new Fractal changes are great, we now have at least a couple t4 fractals that are tuned to how they should be at t4.

Please don’t touch a thing! I love it. The only thing maybe is I saw someone mention champ first at the phase, not a bad idea to make the in between phases more fun.

Green circles make him and the adds vulnerable, so you continually rotate trying to keep them in the circles. At 25% you go grab wisps at 4 corners of the room and turn them in. While he’s invulnerable because of a charge too far or something clear blooms to get rid of poison fields, once gone they don’t seem to respawn that phase so preclearing is useful.

Yeah especially jump shot when you have quickness, I’m curious if it’s worth it

Masta.4510:

i did a benchmark on my power engi the other night, well i got the trait that give more dps on condi target and i put all condi on golem. But wihtou all condi and only those use in fight, i can do 30k average more or less. This is for static boss:

https://youtu.be/zNGuT1fElcg

For moving fight i recommand to play scrapper hammer, basically you use 2 of hammer then grenade and bomb.

Thanks, yeah I keep forgetting about the condi thing making it artificially high. Still very viable.

are nades better than Ram? Toolbelt skills look roughly equal with about twice the damage on Barrage, but at twice the cast time and reuse, factoring in an extra static discharge, just seems ram is better unless you need extra cleave damage? Or are you thinking Shrapnel procs?

Dahkeus.8243:

Jerus.4350:

Dahkeus.8243:

General consensus for pure dps role seems to be:
IF
boss is large hit box
THEN
Staff Ele
ELSE IF
You can stand behind boss the entire fight
THEN
D/D Thief
ELSE
Staff Daredevil
END

But ele still isn’t terrible for normal size bosses. It’s just not as good as thief.

Performance wise, ele is still a solid choice, but from what I’ve heard from ele friends, the new rotation is really clunky and not nearly as enjoyable to play as what it was before.

From the best benchmark DPS videos I’ve seen on YouTube, the new ele rotation seems to be pretty bizarre, but that may just be my impression as a non-ele raider.

How does new staff Thief compare to Power Engi though? IIRC they were pretty close before the staff nerf.

Have a link to a benchmark of a power engi build doing something like that? I’m actually not very familiar with a power engi build doing anything like that.

However, it’s pretty safe to say that you can just take almost 5% DPS off whatever staff numbers you got in the last patch since the vast majority of damage comes from the autoattack that was reduced by 5%.

Doing some quick napkin math, that means I’d estimate the following:
Staff DPS with unrealistic buffs = 35
35 * .95 = 33.25 DPS
Staff DPS with normal boons = 29.2
29.2 * .95 = 27.74

So if you can break those with a power engi build, then theoretically, it would be better, but you’ll also want to consider realistic scenario limitations that could keep thief as higher DPS:

• If engi build requires boss to be stationary for full DPS
• If engi build is slower to back away from and return to melee range

Considering that staff thief loses no DPS to mobile fights due to AA rotation and can leap in and out near instantly with vault, it would be hard to beat with all else equal.

Only one I could find, but yeah, and it’s a simple build :s

You are right on the engage/disengage thing with the mechanics in raids and mobility. I will say that on the training area mobile golem you can chase it and still hit it just fine with bombs if you stay up close to it.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Everyone seems to be forgetting that a lot of people ran with all the AR in the 6 trinkets so they could swap characters without worrying about gear rate. The new system gimps all these people badly.

Previous system: 6 7 slots and then 5 slots you can put anything. So you have 42 and need to make up the other 108 in 5 slots. To do this you could do 4x(22) and 1 (20).
That would break down to 17 (20s), and further into 500+ (+15) infusions if my math is right… which is enough to gear up 50 sets of trinkets with 150AR.

If someone actually had 150 AR in a trinket set before though… WOW that’s a lot of gold.

Deihnyx.6318:

I’m very confused as to what people who claim you don’t lose anything think.

The biggest cost of high AR infusions (+15, +16 to +20) is the reagent cost, which is huge.

In my case, for AR + 16 it costs 590g JUST for reagents.
Multiply that by 5… cause that was the required amount of +16 needed to max your stats.
Even if you break it to a lot of +9, you still lose all the reagents needed from +9 to +16. And that’s a lot too.

Again, I am not saying this new system is bad, only that logically, Anet should have a solution ready for players who spent a lot of time and gold (or real money) on this.
It makes absolutely no sense to anger the players who still play the game a lot.

The value of an item should only decrease in time, and not because of some surprise update on them. It’s very frustrating.

You still don’t LOSE money converting to the new system. It’s just that you spent more back then than you would need to now, which happens basically every patch to someone, there’s always price changes and potential money losses.

Dahkeus.8243:

General consensus for pure dps role seems to be:
IF
boss is large hit box
THEN
Staff Ele
ELSE IF
You can stand behind boss the entire fight
THEN
D/D Thief
ELSE
Staff Daredevil
END

But ele still isn’t terrible for normal size bosses. It’s just not as good as thief.

Performance wise, ele is still a solid choice, but from what I’ve heard from ele friends, the new rotation is really clunky and not nearly as enjoyable to play as what it was before.

From the best benchmark DPS videos I’ve seen on YouTube, the new ele rotation seems to be pretty bizarre, but that may just be my impression as a non-ele raider.

How does new staff Thief compare to Power Engi though? IIRC they were pretty close before the staff nerf.

Mal.1670:

Solution: add a repeatable Spirit Shards mastery track you can switch to.

Or just get the rest of the masteries, completion is fun and it’s the closest to single player end-game GW2 has

I’m trying to think of things that sound like less fun than completing my masteries. It’s tough.

mobocaster.3925:

Jerus.4350:

mobocaster.3925:

I think this is a really bad thing. It feels incredibly punishing towards casuals, everyone who doesn’t have gold or time to do raids. Something like that shouldn’t be exclusive.

And if I don’t have the time to wander around HoT/Tyria to finish those out? I’m the flip side of what you’re describing. When I get on I want to do some fractals, raid if I can, and then I’m off, I don’t have time to play what I want and finish all the other stuff that I find terribly boring.

It shouldn’t be tied to masteries at all. As someone who quit right before HoT and recently came back, masteries are the worst addition to the game IMO, just a kitten ton of grind for a game that wasn’t supposed to force grind. A game that was supposed to be easy to come back to if you took a break. Masteries ruined that.

Regarding the system as it is, I do think they should cater to the majority, and I don’t believe raids fit in that category. However, I agree, it shouldn’t be tied to masteries. People should be able to skip masteries and still gain xp and shards.

Why should majority/minority matter? If it’s a “completed it all” reward benefit, then it should require everything. But, that’s a pretty kittenty thing to do, leaving everyone who isn’t done with no benefit from XP until they jump through Hoop_094.

Tim.6450:

Lahmia.2193:

AWSUMSAUCE.4372:

This makes my sad Will only get to try when I get home, but having come back to GW recently I was really enjoying playing my main as minion necro. Why does Anet hate necros??

Rangers and Engineers both had their 50% damage reduction skills reduced to 33% (Protect me shout and Bulkward gyro). Don’t act like we’re the only victim.

We got another hp and toughness decrease as well on these minions.

Aye so they die in 4x the time it takes for Bulwark Gyro to die rather than 8X as long :b

Really Rise is still pretty great when you have multiple enemies, not as OP when it’s just 1 but still not shabby. General consensus from Fractals the last two days is that while it’s still OP necro actually feels some pressure now.