“I have all the characters because even with the ability to play different roles the different professions play differently, I feel like I can play dozens of different professions. "
I can agree with most of what you said but I don’t quite align with this though. The weapons feel somewhat distinct, the way the utilities work are temporary so, more or less, they all feel a part of a character, not a distinct build. Many of the traits feel too watered down but a lot of the new traits and updated traits feel nice. I hope they change all the traits to be as drastic as to feel like a large distinction…but I still think it pales in comparison to games like CoH and likely what I’ve heard GW1 is like.
“I can be the might stacking warrior, I can be the DPS warrior, I can be the Solo warrior leaving everyone in the dust and Yoloing everything
.”
Well 2 of those are quite similar. I’d likely put the boon dispensing, regen/heal warrior but yeah, that requires a bit of gear swapping. There’s also the burst dps or condi-bomb dps warrior. Seems like about 3-4 warriors. I’m trying my hand at a CC heavy physical warrior but will likely wait until after some more changes to PvE CC to see if it’d be nearly as decent as in PvP.
I’d say, if stats could improve certain aspects of the game, you can make even more builds but I’d think more fundamental changes to not only make certain aspects more distinct but to also play differently too.
“to add, I did this as much as I could in my old game DCUO, hell I actually almost never played full healer for the last year or so of the game. I found a DPS heavy (60% of the “dps role” potential) that I could still solo heal any raid with, I like trying to get everything possible out of my character and living on the edge trying to do it with minimal safety nets while still feeling comfortable that I can handle it (I still often go Energy sigil here, and I still took some “unnecessary” healing there)"
Heh DCUO has nothing (but graphics) on CoH. As far as the healer in CoH, if you wanted to be a healer, you could but they just made other things you could focus on just as useful. Sure, lots of people would shout for healers for their raids, but debuffing mobs or controlling them combined either with great dps also worked…so did just tanking along with enough buffs or just using lots of bodies (pets)…basically, you could blend elements of dps (AoE, burst, damage buffs, defense debuffs, pets) with sustain (heals, defensive buffs, offensive debuffs, pets, control) to make multiple combinations of players succeed. You didn’t need to really swap to a specific set-up, you could just approach fights differently depending what your group composition was like. You could actually make a full team of blasters (pretty much all burst damage) work, you just had to coordinate bursts and rotate novas. Having a few generalized capabilities helped too.
One of my buddies was actually screwing around with a GS/Hammer PS war, since you don’t really need the axe/mace offhand (helps but vuln can be handled other ways), it was quite interesting in a few places and actually very helpful, just locking down some more nasty things. And for traits, I hear ya, some are huge, some not. Like taking invigorating precision + S/P on thief makes it so you can facetank things, pretty powerful trait there, but then a lot of traits are more minor of an effect.
And btw, what you describe in CoH was actually one of the things I loved about DCUO, we had the same (they had a quadrinity in it, and couple other SOE games). Though the main selling point was the “fighting game” style gameplay with a block/blockbreaker/interrupt rock/paper/scissors type system which much like gw2 meant a lot of added bonus just for being a good player and being able to catch those counters. (imagine taking CoH and combining it with say Tekken/SF/MK type game).
I have no issues dying on my thief, I don’t know what else to say. Pistol Whip is a Blurred Frenzy on steroids, and it’s a cleave to boot unlike phantasms outside iwarden who are single target (and the dps from iwarden is pretty crappy for being a cleave phantasm, oftentimes it won’t even finish its low dps channel with any melee mobs around to quickly kill it).
The argument that mesmer DPS is low due to utility is just dumb. Thief utility is just as potent in its own way, and elementalists are the mother lode of utility while being the highest overall DPS class in the game. Hell, even warriors boast indispensable utility and yet they still outdamage a mesmer.
The fact is a mesmer only competes single target with 3 phantasms, but the class will never compete in cleave capacity.
The only times you really stack mesmers is for portal tricks to set records. In the average run the last classes you want to see more than 1 of in your group are mesmer, ranger, and ESPECIALLY necromancer (which most people don’t even want to see 1 of).
Not trying to make any kind of excuses for mesmer dps, it sucks because the mechanics are simply terrible for the way PVE is designed in this game, leading to pitiful dps even if their max potential is fine.
And still not sure why you keep comparing pistol whip, I mean if you want to go with a mroe defensive setup, yeah sword/pistol + Invigorating precision, maybe even tack in feline grace, and well, you should be a bit ashamed if you go down easy, you can literally face tank many bosses while in zerk gear
Aye, may be an easier rotation to pull off though? Pretty sure optimized start is Earth, get your Eruption out, which takes a while to explode, this is enough time to quickly swap Air and glyph of storms, As soon as this starts casting you swap to fire, which is where you have your +10%, you won’t have air trianing because you should likely have Arcane Lightning for the higher Ferocity when you slip in an Arcane wave onto your first Lava Font. So after you’ve cast your Lightning Storm in air you immediately swap to fire and lava font on that same spot, this allows you again to get the damage modifier on at least most of your Lightning storm ticks and your eruption as well as just enough time to have dropped that lava font for another tick of might from the eruption blast. Slip in an arcane wave for the buff, pull out your Ice Bow, likely another Ele was waiting for the deep freeze if you’re utilizing it, so generally it’s 4->3, drop it and lava font/meteor/auto attack with fire for the remainder till icebow/storm is up again.
The tough part of staff is that you do have utility in things like Water4 being a chill field, or using Earth + Greater Elemental/Sandstorm just for examples (also things like water field or immob but yeah). So weaving those in can be a bit more demanding. With Blasting staff you’ll have 1s off recharge for 11s attunement swap. Need to fill that up best you can. So say I swapped to Water for a chill/water field, I’ll drop a water2 then maybe swap Air to just auto a couple times till I have like 3s left on fire, swap Earth and Eruption, then swap fire and catch it in a lava font and get back to the standard rotation. Generally want to be in earth before fire if I can, so if I go to earth for a glyph or earth ele summon I’ll generally stick in earth to get 2 eruptions off the second being swapped to fire and blasted in a lava font.
Not sure if those are the best damage rotations, but I haven’t heard the optimized setup for when you leave the standard plan, it’s just kinda what I’ve come up with for when I do it. Try to land big hitters and try to end with eruption to grab those 3 might stacks and fury. Only really a concern for longer more dangerous fights where you have to use some unplanned utility/support tools.
EDIT: eek misread your post Yellow, yeah if you picked up Air Training as the GM slot trait, then yeah you can do everything in Air without a concern. And, worth mentioning that it may be good to have an Ele who’s starting with Bow for DF to have it out early so no eruption and all
So yeah sorry
(edited by Jerus.4350)
Feedback on wall is pretty easy all you hotta do is be at a specific distance(outlined by the shadow on the ground) and you look down at the ground and its done
Well don’t spread it and it’d buy at least a bit of time before pUGs learn it!, but yeah maybe not optimal, but seems like a possible “easy” fix.
is there a way I can complete a dungeon while giving the exp for my level 50? When ever I do an AC path with my 80 then switch to my 50 right when the dungeon ends all he gets is the exp but not the daily 1.5 gold
Wiat to get the daily bonus chest on the main (happens right when the boss dies usually) then swap. If you have kitten you should be fine. However some people load slowly, in this case swap before you kill the boss so you’re in there and you’ll get both, the second option though generally is considered rude unless you’re with freinds who don’t mind
And well, those are your two options.
I did do the second one where I swap right before the boss dies but all I get is the exp and not the chest that gives the daily gold. I heard about the cutscene one but when I asked I got kicked from one group so I can’t depend on other people
Can’t be right before, you need to be IN the dungeon when he dies. And yeah, that’s the problem with attempting it when pugging, not everyone is ok with it, and well, as much as people say GW2 has a great community… that’s not always the case.
is there a way I can complete a dungeon while giving the exp for my level 50? When ever I do an AC path with my 80 then switch to my 50 right when the dungeon ends all he gets is the exp but not the daily 1.5 gold
Wiat to get the daily bonus chest on the main (happens right when the boss dies usually) then swap. If you have kitten you should be fine. However some people load slowly, in this case swap before you kill the boss so you’re in there and you’ll get both, the second option though generally is considered rude unless you’re with freinds who don’t mind, in the first case ask someone to hold the cutscene btw, it’ll extend the time to swap (doesn’t finish till the cutscene does) again you’ll have to hope your group is nice, but it’s an option.
And well, those are your two options.
To add to 3, iirc (been a little while since I’ve played mesmer) if you have 2 phants + 1 clone it’ll always replace the clone over the phantasm. Just something I thought was worthwhile to add But, yes oldest phantasm if you have 3 up, which is why say offhand sword block can be dangerous, though you can hit escape after the block and cancel the cast of the clone (another good thing to know )
That’s honestly one of the things I like about this game though. While I hear ya on being a bit “watered down” it’s nice that I can have a character and swap what I’m doing pretty easily. In other games if i chose a healer, it was a healer, a tank it was a tank, a dps it was a DPS. You could make adjustments but you were very limited. While having different armor sets be a major role would still leave that as an option it’d be at a very high cost and my inventory space would cry.
I’ve always been a more “this is my character” person, usually sticking to one main character. This is the first game where I’ve had a dozen characters I play somewhat often, but I love the fact that I can still take my Engi and adjust it to different roles when I’m digging on Engi (which is most of the time now), same with Guard. I have all the characters because even with the ability to play different roles the different professions play differently, I feel like I can play dozens of different professions.
I can be the might stacking warrior, I can be the DPS warrior, I can be the Solo warrior leaving everyone in the dust and Yoloing everything. I can be the Engi that keeps things locked in place with Immob, I can help with projectiles, I can dps with the best of them, I can stack vuln like a boss, I can pump some fury, I can go full reflects and own it, I can pump out the might, hell engi can do it all. I can go reflect mesmer, portal mesmer, dps mesmer, focus on condi clears or boon stripping. I can go general defensive guard, pugcarry guard, full dps guard, tank guard, healer guard. I can go full dps thief, I can lock things down with immob, I can go defensive, blind everything, stealth everyone through everything. And so on, and I can do this all without having to change up my gear really, I can make certain roles more potent by doing so like healer guard or tank guard, but I don’t have to, because that’s how the game is designed, I swap weapons/traits/utilities and I’m off to play differently.
It’s something I love about this game.
to add, I did this as much as I could in my old game DCUO, hell I actually almost never played full healer for the last year or so of the game. I found a DPS heavy (60% of the “dps role” potential) that I could still solo heal any raid with, I like trying to get everything possible out of my character and living on the edge trying to do it with minimal safety nets while still feeling comfortable that I can handle it (I still often go Energy sigil here, and I still took some “unnecessary” healing there)
(edited by Jerus.4350)
Approved. Please don’t beat this in like a day and make me regret being an active approver.
Don’t worry if it’s anything like last time SC will come in with a like 2:50 time and make everyone go “wtf” and end it
Really though, may suck for you approvers, but it’s great to see the active competition. Great job to both qT and IV, love watching these, both of ya’ll. Keep the competition alive!
I’d honestly rather they remove the trait consecrated grounds than to nerf reflects. THough you’d still be able to line up a feedback on the wall at least that takes a little skill that most PUGs will lack The side bonus is this also nerfs the double wall trick… well if you see that as a bonus, kinda neat to do in casual runs with friends but I certainly wouldn’t cry at the loss of that trait.
Staff = highest damage option
S+LH = most might and medium damage
D/F = Most utility and lowest damage.
All 3 are very viable builds.
Your choice for S+LH will basically be “do you have a PS war, or a second Ele who is running S+LH?” If the answer is Yes, go Staff, if it’s No, go S+LH. However in PUGs S+LH is tough to play, very very tough, generally I save it for more organized grouping and run D/F so I don’t have to deal with stolen hammers or when I expect a WoR from a guard and it simply never comes and I eat a downed
.
Part of mastering the profession though will be knowing when to take what. You can often get away with just using staff and swapping to Scepter to prestack quickly as you run in, then blow things up with staff. But that’s for quicker fights.
I’d highly suggest look up dekey’s guides for scepter stuff, great info, Zelyhn for D/F and well staff… it’s pretty simple, try to start in earth get your number 2 down, swap Air, glyph of storms quickly, swap Fire quickly lava font on your earth2 to catch the blast, ice bow, 543, drop it and back to the lava font/meteor/auto spam. Staff Ele is IMO one of the easiest damage rotations in the game, it’s weaving the utility in that takes a little finesse.
Ohh and staff is still better than LH for dps, but sometimes LH can be nice just to drop for your mesmer or something, but again situational thing, generally run Ice Bow, Arcane Wave, and Glyph of storms and rotate between Ele and FGS for elites.
People ahve looked at their combat log, calculated the coefficients of the attacks and figured out the formulas for damage. They then do rotations and calculate the time it takes to do different attacks and combinations of attacks. They throw all that information into a well built spreadsheet, and play around with it till they find an optimized answer.
So basically most of the work is done with just good ol’ maths and is heavily focused on the theoretical. Then you take that and analyze the practical and argue with people about it
So should they remove the passive effect of vit/toughness and make it work purely on activatable skills. Is that what people who currently wear tanky gear would want? Or do they choose to use that gear because it acts as a passive safety net?
It really doesnt matter if it effects passive and active, or just active. In either case skills would have to be tuned accordingly.
as for what people want from their tanky stats, they probably want to be noticeably better at dealing with/responding to enemy attacks.
if the point of stats is just handicap adjustment, i suggest they get rid of that, and add a slider that increases rewards for lowering your handicap.
So rework the entire game’s base systems because one type of gear is preferable in content that is supposedly so underutilized that it’s not even worth putting changes to it in the patch notes let alone make more content like it. (If the majority or even half of the people in Silverwastes wore zerk gear I don’t’ think we’d ever fail a boss due to time )
Why do you want this to happen? Because you want more gear types to become more popular? So that instead of being able to change up a build on the fly you’ll instead have to carry around multiple sets of 12+ items to be able to have multiple builds. Doesn’t really sound desirable to me.
Even zerg content can fail… ever seen a VW fail? Or Teq even? I have
This isn’t just about dungeons, it’s about the overall playerbase. Especially with the expansion coming and having “challenging group content” that we know won’t be in the form of dungeons/fractals, so pretty highly likely it won’t be select-able instanced content (basically you’ll likely get shoved together with randoms), I think it’d be nice if everyone I got lumped together with knew at least the basics.
I’m just going to leave this here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Holy-Trinity-is-back-Cleric-Guard-FOTM/first
Seems to work for fractals at least.
Yup, but like discussed throughout that thread, it really only makes it easier on a handful of fights in fractals. Then in dungeons… well it’s basically never worth it there.
And yup, sanddragon, best ways to help them are to utilize your reflects/projectile defense, your aegis, your blinds, and kill the sucker faster
Healing is just very limited in the game and especially in regards to the utilization of healing power, it is generally quite a low coefficient.
Generally speaking in most content you can avoid almost all the damage and survive quite easily while you kill things. So focusing on faster kills is preferred rather than extending fights and having more chances to fail a dodge/block or even run out of condi cleanses and what not. Faster completion times are generally prefered over a safer situation.
So between those two points (heals being weak, and heals not being needed) you have a situation that generally leans towards not worrying about them and preferring speeding it up a bit.
Now, Clerics guard actually can be very good in a few situations. Look up Skady’s Clerics guard build in fractals for examples, but, those situations are so few and far between that I would not focus on them. Berserker = main gear, clerics a situational set would be a raesonable idea, but not the other way around basically.
And as for gearing, maybe look into getting rares as you try new sets to start, then you can upgrade to exotic if you like what you have, saves you some money
Cool, I just thought I didn’t understand it as well as I thought I did.
I mentioned PVP/WvW because you were saying that the suggestions only pertained to dungeons/fractals. I mentioned Teq because people rightfully so stack might there, and yes a lot of people do know how to play the game, but even more don’t… that’s the problem we’re talking about, that the game doesn’t immersively teach many of the skills that players would benefit greatly from knowing.
If things sound a bit lopsided towards dungeon type content in the discussion, well, take a look at what subforum you’re in
. But, these tools would be used everywhere. I remember when I first played my thief way way back when I was a scrub and using Smokescreen + shortbow to stealth up and sneak through some more heavily populated areas in the open world. It was nice being able to skip through the areas that had killed me a couple times when I had done it on my guard when I leveled him up. I was glad I had looked that up, but this was far from my first MMO so I had that prior knowledge to know when I see something like “combo finisher” that I should look into what it means, and the wiki came in handy. Not all players are coming from other MMOs, or even other RPGs, they won’t think to go to the wiki or do some research, or even some simply wouldn’t be willing. Those are the people this type of in game tutorial would target and help.
What other skills would you say aren’t properly taught or intuitive and would help players?
If I wanted to make a full dungeon training thing, I’d be including using LoS to gather things together. I’d put a focus on skipping as much trash as possible by using tethers. Really driving home the importance of projectile defenses. If I were to do a dungeon tutorial I’d go beyond the basics, which is what I think utilizing the combo system and dodging is for GW2, the basics. It just doesn’t really teach it’s players them very well and expects them to pick it up along the way and many simply don’t.
And I’ve gotten the impression that people don’t know these things from watching players not toss blasts in water/fire/smoke/lightning fields in various areas of the game. And, from having taught many players how to do those things and to be aware of them. And the no dodging, well when you see players just eat easy attacks with orange warning tells, well, you begin to assume they must just not understand something about what’s going on. I see it a lot in Silverwastes for example, but also about half your PUG COE’s it becomes quite clear. Again, there are only really a couple different dodge scenarios. There’s a windup, a tell, a red circle (orange for new ones), and a delayed red circle. That’s pretty much it. Great thing is that the windups and delayed red circles are generally the same timings, so once you learn the timing for one you have pretty much all of them figured out
http://th01.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/f/2013/265/0/2/the_general_forums_by_vixen11-d6nhf2m.jpg
Poster 1 and poster 7 personified.
That thing’s missing a few posters. Posters16-20 should just be sitting there with popcorn
Thaddeus : I don’t understand if you are mad at me or not.
I’m never mad on internet
I just hate some toast with nutella and banana, how can someone be mad after that.
you hate toast wtih nutella and banana??!?!
Yeah that stuff is delicious, might have to pick some up for breakfast instead of my normal chocolate milk and a banana (eat them together and it’s like having a milkshake).
By the way, any good Fractal guide out there if I want to start doing it now?
Many thanks to all!
Like Taku linked, KING’s youtube guide is awesome. Aside from that gw2dungeons.net is great for looking more in depth on certain things.
Can also hit up people like Sarahfull and other fractal mentors, I’d offer myself but just not finding myself in game much lately, too busy/sleepy
To the OP, learn to play a mesmer well and you can be a great help in most dungeons.
AC is probably the one you aren’t really going to do anything, you can do some neat portal tricks, but most PUGs don’t have the understanding to utliize those.
CM, you can be a great help with reflects, though a guardian does it better.
TA, Again reflects are nice, though again not a huge help.
SE is where mesmer starts to become pretty awesome. path1 you can set up reflects for the trash on the first golem boss, move into Nokk and reflect there as well shutting down his most deadly attacks, a little stab might help too. Get through to the 3 golems, and you can use temporal curtain place a little before them, and pull them to clump them up, drop feedback on them and burn them down. Then Tazza, you can use stability to counter her knockback though not that huge.
Path2 you can reflect all the dredge as well as cleanse conditions for the first boss. You can portal to the second boss, or just run it, get there down him, get to the cart and again use reflects, also knocking the guys back under the ledge (look up a video) and you can manhandle that in melee pretty easily. Get to the next group of guys and again reflect, final boss destroy him and done.
Now on to CoF, path 1 you pull the initial fire lords to the side next to a turret, kill them for a second or two, toss a feedback up to counter the turrets and finish them off. Get to the next boss, and Time warp ftw. Move on to the acolyte room…zzzz… then set up a portal across the boulders and easymode through. Open the door to the final boss, then utilize your reflects and stab to make that guy easymode.
Path 2, Again inital wave of guys pull them together with temporal curtain, beat them down. kill, kill, kill, up to the second boss, time warp and beat his kitten . Get up to the Bomb room and you can use some portal stuff for a little faster run, but not a huge deal. Move on, get to the defense section, blah blah, get to the final boss down it.
On to COE, Here your big thing is the robot. You do the initial alpha, easymode with blurred frenzy and dodges. Move on to the Robots, pull them in the stack spot to interrupt and gather, reflect is helpful. Interrupts are nice. Boom boom bang, done. Load up Phantasmal Disenchanter and Feedback and on to the robot. Rush in cast a Warden, followed by a Phantasmal Disenchanter, Signet heal, Second warden. Auto attack to help keep boons off. Burn him down, when he charges his beam Feedback, and Temporal curtain on alternating times to guarentee a reflect (wardens can help you out but I don’t like to rely on them). Boom bang, on to second Alpha, utilize your condi cleanses and such, blah blah blah, Time warps on either second Alpha or on p3 safe it for the destroyer. Kill Kill, slaughter slaughter, done.
On to Arah. p1 use your reflects to kill the turrets, down the Ooze. Down the Aboms. Get to Tar and use some reflects and immob, done. On to Lupi Use your feedback in phase 2 to massacre him from his insane attack being reflected. Blurred frenzy is awesome, blah blah, done. On to the 3d Pong boss, reflects ftw, easymode and done. On to p2, First boss reflects are nice, projectile destruction better, kill her np move on. Use duelists placed far away for abom, on to LUpi, same thing, move on to Alphard and reflect the kitten to death. Skip skip, on to Brie… and well, you suck at brie but kill her. Yay p3. First boss reflects are nice as well as condi cleansing, kill it, move on. Second boss reflects are awesome, woopie done. Orbs, mesmers are awesome at it with blinks and portal, use them learn it, easymode. On to Lupi, same thing, yay. On to the last boss, kill it, done. p4… ok who does p4 regularly except guilds
Just my quick and dirty notes for a mesmer in dungeons Hope it helps. Outside of AC I love mesmers, CM/TA you aren’t a huge help but still nothing I’d complain about, especially if you learn portal tricks.
LOL, Iris, that seriously made me crack up.