Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

leaving the social group because they are cheating, or other such things is a good point. Does that really happen so often? its a shame.
anyhow like i said its not the backbone of the system, i still think it serves purpose, but whatevs

It’s unfortunate but yes, a clear majority of parties in the LFG tool are utilizing that reflect thing. I generally don’t even bother joining groups with guards in them if i can avoid it, but I make it a point to ask at the start, and if they don’t answer I take that simply to mean that they are and feel too guilty to answer or are going to but want me to help them get there first.

Kodiak.3281:

I recommend gems to a lot of people who are newer and are usually rocking WvW exotics they got from leveling in EOTM (too many WvW badges…) and they won’t be able to get the upgrades out.

Otherwise if you got the cash, there’s lots of other options that are pretty decent.

Unless flame legion skyrocketted in price, it’s quite cheap as well and I believe the better option.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

a scaling bonus reward for taking less experienced people through could be kinda cool. There needs to be some incentive to training/teaching – since it is hard work sometimes.

Doesn’t stop someone who’s completed it x times from being completely useless though.

Aye, my main point is that punishments are bad, especially with any games buggy systems there are bound to be issues. Incentives can be pretty cool though.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Not sure if you were around 6 months ago, but Regina came in and had the community compile bugs for each dungeon and fractals. She took them and claimed she was passing them along to the team. There has been no word on those, though there have been a few fractal fixes of late.

I was, and I actually contributed in at least one of them. I’ll try to inquire as to the state of those when next I chat with ANet people.

I think they put them on a table somewhere.

phys.7689:

Thaddeus.4891:

phys.7689:

the penalty doesnt need to be like banning, it can just be like you cant use the grouping tool for a half hour. if a person is leaving groups 5+ times a day but doesn’t want to wait a half hour before returning, i think they may be a serial leaver.

On days that i play for a longer time, this would affect me a lot. I can see me leave 5 groups very easily. This is bullkitten, forcing ppl to play together for no other reason that you feel that the community is harsh. There is A LOT of situation when what you propose would be terrible.

you can ask the party to vote kick you and get no penalty for leaving.

It works in another game i play.
but the bias should actually be towards playing together,
thats why people join a group. If you are leaving groups 5 times a day, and the people of the party dont want you to, they probably would have been better off, if you didnt join.

notice, the entire point of the its all about the party mode, is that its more about the party,

i didnt put that into the effecient mode because that is about being effecient with your time, and i think people there wouldnt mind? not really sure.

anyhow, these are just my ideas, they arent set in stone, and probably would never happen, but yeah i dont think its an unfair system.

keep in mind you wouldnt be locked out from dungeons just one tab in the group finder, for 30 minutes, i dont think its that big a deal

I leave parties probably 5X in an hour. Why? Because I join the arah group ask if they’re going to exploit the reflect on Lupi, they say yes, I wish them a good day and bounce.

So now I’m going to be punished for trying to find a group I’ll actually have fun in? What a load of horse manure.

There is a lockout on joining groups already though. If you try to join something like 5-10 of them within abuot half an hour you get locked out for a good 15 mins. When it pops up the threshold is lower and you can join like 1 group every 15 mins, eventually you’ll be locked out for over an hour. I saw this trying to do SW. Hell the other night I wasn’t even able to get into a SW map that was actually doing the events before I got the lockout…

In DCUO we had the deserter system. It had all sorts of problems, a Disconnect would cause you to get deserter. Leaving the dungeon after you completed it but before it recognized that it was over resulted in a deserter penalty. It was terrible. While GW2 wouldn’t have the same problems I can only imagine it’d have it’s own quirks that make it bad, just like the current “can’t join too many groups” thing we have in the game, which even counts attempting to join a group but being unable to as a joined group and locks you out for 15 minutes if you already built up yoru timer…

It’s simply a bad idea. As for “well they can just kick you” well what if they won’t? Well then I’ll just stay in the group and go farm nodes while they do the dungeon. What a great way to promote comradery…

I actually like the idea of an upvote system, though realistically, we all know it’d just be exploited by those who care too much about it, ignored by those who don’t, and like AP become a very dumb segregation tool. So… it’s a bad idea.

But, positive incentives are far better than negative ones. It’d be interesting if they could add a counter on a dungeon, goes up the more you do it. If someone has less than say 75/50/25/5% of your completions you can get bonus stuff for taking them through, scaling system similar to fractals and karma? Hell it could be karma, dungeon karma would be neat.

Lian Olsam.9541:

1 command line
if you have more than X condi dmg you will apply bleed, poison, torment etc etc

So zerk will doesent spamm condi ruin your dmg

On my engi even with 0 condi damage going full power based build, 25% of my damage (or there abouts) is condi… so no, this is a terrible idea unless they feel like reworking the profession all together.

hybrid.5027:

Since bosses have defiant, or will have something like that, the idea everyone is having of Taunting a boss to keep him locked on a tank is pretty ridiculous.

How long does it take to strip defiance? How long will the effect last?

I mean it seems like it obviously has some potential for something interesting to play with. But, I wouldn’t be jumping to any crazy conclusions like every party needs a nomad AH guard to tank or anything like that.

maha.7902:

hybrid.5027:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_The_Mantra_Way

This is why.

Somehow this became a “good” build for the dungeon community. I don’t know how to downvote this on that site but it needs to be removed ASAP.

where is the downvote button

this build needs to be downvoted in to extinction

… ugh metabattle. I want to like it, but now I know why I was seeing so many GS mesmers.

Speed Runs like the ones you see aren’t what you’re going to get from an LFG group. Expecting it is only going to frustrate you. But, PUG groups are their own challenge mode, doing say Lupi melee while you have 2-3 guys ranging him causing teleports, bubbles and general unhappiness… fun stuff!

For a guild https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/lookingfor there is a section for that.

It’s not that condi’s are bad in PVE, it’s simply that you’ll often hit the cap or get overwritten, and well, that’s no fun when your damage is nullified simply due to the game’s failed mechanics. If it werent’ for that condi’s are great, and in many solo situations it’s superior to power builds, though some bosses shed condis so it is trash at those.

Arcano.3214:

Rozbuska.5263:

FT as main source of dps is bad idea for PvE even after numerous buffs FT is still worst dps kit like 3 times worse. In general pve its doesnt matter too much but you cant take this into dungeon.
You can eventualy have FT as part of rotation for mightstack and flame blast dmg but its very clunky skill.

I have tried the Bomb build for PvE, but it seems it is mostly for Dungeons, which I have no group to run with, So I stick to world events and some random PvP/WvW (for which I use a different Build). trying to stand near most world bosses while wearing Zerker is like trying to protect yourself from a bullet using a piece of paper.

Easy, that piece of paper is actually your admittance to witness protection Point being correct use of tools and a little creativity goes a long way.

That said, yeah, FT is fine for open world stuff If you stear clear of dungeons you’re golden, it won’t be optimal but it’s a great tool and especially good for tagging and soaking up the loots!

spoj.9672:

Jerus.4350:

Thought she only bugged when you broke the bone wall?

Pretty much the same thing.

The bug is done by running out of range towards the bonewall. Once you reach a certain point the bone wall collapses and resets the fight (she reverts to start position). After the fight is reset. Belka will no longer teleport when you next engage. As far as im aware once you have caused this by accident or intentionally there is no way to unbug her other than restarting the instance.

Thing to note is it doesnt actually disable anything other than her teleport. She still kicks, throws the orb, reflects and fire arrows.

There is a timer on it, something like 5 mins maybe? … flamethrower + afk…

Yes, you can report them, you should have seen their name in yellow in your chat window.

However, this will do absolutely no good as ANet doesn’t actually punish these people and they can more or less freely steal your dungeon, it seems at worst they get a little vacation from the game and then are right back to it.

Thought she only bugged when you broke the bone wall? And you very much can just face tank her, super easy with thief, very doable with Engi with some more heavy build modifications.

To me it is surely an exploit, but I think everyone is ok with it because she’s annoying and people like to solo/duo that path. So making her less annoying is something people can get behind.

>.<

I’ve been doing a lot of tweaking of my new comp, really trying to get this GemFX thing working but not having any luck, so yeah, doing a lot of poping in and out… well then also I never log off, I just walk away when I stop playing

I really need to mess around with condi on my engi more.

Thief/Necro for me so far.

Iris Ng.9845:

I like elixir gun better, Sarah. The Condi cleanse, weakness and cripple rebuff spamming are just perfect. But again, I run pistol/pistol sinister at Mai. So my experience is different from you guys. You know my group. We always pug 2 slots.

. . . you know you could always send me a whisper :b

But yeah, pistol/pistol? curious why? just condi damage or any cool tricks to it that I may not be thinking of?

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

spoj.9672:

Approved.

I was looking at some of the fractal records and they were done on scale 49. Didn’t the rules say they have to be done on 50?

I believe the idea was that previously it was 49 that they were being done. Now it swapped to 50, so any previous records would be kept for the all time with the thought that a 49 should actually be slower when you consider the damage loss from the instability. So old ones 49 is ok, new current restricted records are supposed to be 50… at least iirc.

And that’s why we have guilds like NOOB and ARES trying to be helpful , lots of great people doing their best to help others along. You have people like Sarahfull teaching fractals. Ivan, Jiyn, and Zui used to do arah teaching tours on weekends (where I learned, that zone intimidated the hell out of me, now I can’t get enough).

Fact is though, that no matter what is done, people will be people, and you can’t really stop kittenes.

I can agree with that, though I’d also say the lfg tool puts a group together much faster than the games I played. In other games we were much more picky to begin with, especially with the trinity in place.

Point remains that you’re demonizing and generalizing an entire group because of some kittenes. These kittenes aren’t only in the dungeons though, the amount of negativity in map chats anywhere there is a good loot farm is just insane. “kittening idiots, you’re supposed to let this event fail, god learn how to play!” Should I read that and assume the entire open world PVE community is nothing but a bunch of kittens?

I like what Nike said. And Negativity breeds Negativity.

If we’re going to take specific examples and extrapolate a generalization out of them. WHy not what happened a month or so ago? Guy comes here asking for advice on doing Lupi with guard but without energy sigils because he can’t afford them. Not only does it get flooded with advice and video demonstrations, but also someone just sends him a set of energy sigils. Yup, the people in this community are such evil kittens.

And I think everyone in the dungeon forums has the same chant, “if you want to wear PVT that’s fine, just don’t join my groups please”. Why is that so wrong?

Hmm, Never thought to use FT reflect, personally I suck at the timing on that usually, any tips for catching her pistol shot? Hit it as it releases or earlier?

The toxicity in PUG dungeons has a lot to do with what groups you join. A “p1” will generally be a lot less annoying than a “p1 zerk, exp, ping gear”

As someone who’s played a lot fo MMOs over 16 years, GW2 really isn’t any worse than other ones, it simply has this LFG system which has people lumped together a lot more often. In other games the speed runners will generally keep to themselves, here they post an LFG and get people who aren’t really set up and ready for htat, or think they are but really aren’t, and that’s where the toxicity starts.

I do take offense to the idea that the speed runners are at fault though, especially that the people active on the forums are bad. You have guilds like NOOB and ARES that actively try to invite people who are interested in learning dungeons and teach them, yet here we sit being bad mouthed for being too “elitist”. Show an interest in getting better and the people who are int he know will love you. I’m FAR from perfect, but I’ve felt nothing but love from the dungeon community, and I really feel that’s because I try to learn from them, and constantly improve. Go into a dungeon with a chip on your shoulder and start telling people they’re dumb for running things efficiently and sure you’re going to be met with the same toxicity you’re emitting.

There are bad apples in any group though, I’ve seen just as much hate and toxicity in map chats in silverwastes as I have in my time PUGing dungeons. Again though, that goes both ways, both the side of people expecting perfection, and those complaining because they’re unable to keep up.

If you want to do “speed runs” (lets be honest speed runs in LFG aren’t real speed runs) take a minute and ask questions of those that are more knowledgable, learn to play better, and do your best to improve. Eventually you won’t have any issues.

Personally some of my best times playing were in Arah “p1” groups where I get to play with some new players and lead them through teaching them encounters to the best of my ability (which again is limited). I do really enjoy my new guild that does real speed run tactics though as I feel pushed. It’s all different environments and I try to fit myself to the environment I’m in to the best of my ability, and I’ve very rarely has any real issues.

TL : DR – don’t join groups you aren’t a fit for, and try to play better and try and fit the groups you join and you won’t have issues. I concede therea re bad apples, but lumping everyone together is pretty dumb too.

You’ll only get a 75% burn on reflect if you use the wall trick, normal off wall stuff you need to tack vuln and people to get even out of phase 2.

Also stealth from smoke fields only stacks to 15s, (5 stacks max at 3s a stack) with Elixir S you can boost that another 5s in the run though.

^^ Ele has all the tools, it’s simply a matter of learning them. Knowing the dungeon is good and all but your success is more about learning the Ele, and you ahve to play it to learn it! Personally I’m a very bad ele working on it though!

My concern is that there is a fractal mastery… what does that mean? If it’s simply a barrier to entry for new levels, ok, that’s fine, if it’s “this will make your level 50 easier” that’s when I start to have my doubts.

I’m an old school MMO player, power creep is something I’ve done, and while those games always had content in which you basically needed new gear, I still always had my issues with it. Mianly that you usually go say t2 gear to get into t3 raids, t3 gear to make t3 raids easy… and that isn’t much fun, unless there are hard mode mechanics that allow you to really push it, and persoanlly I saw very few of those, the ones that did were awesome though.

EcoRI.9273:

I want to be able to buy 1power/1 AR infusions that can be combined to be more powerful stats(2^n-1). Considering that it cost me 1500g to get 12 +5power infusions for my thief. I basically have reached a point where I have nothing I want to buy now and a stats reward would be nice.

Sounds an aweful lot like power creep to me, which i swhat I love about this game, not having that. Which is also what concerns me with that mastery system they’re introducing.

Always thought the “here’s some better gear to make what you were doing easiser” idea was just so wrong. Your ability to defeat content you have already done should get easier through actually mastering the content, not through gaining stats to make it easier.

Same reason I loved some of the raids in my old games that gave alternative routes to quicker but harder completions. Do you do each boss one by one? or do you release them all and pound 5 bosses at once?

More than increased rewards I’d love to see more of that, I think it was spoj hitting on it in a different thread, giving content that allows alternative routes and real creativity and “hard modes” that allow for quicker completion if you’re up to the challenge.

I guess personally I’m driven by what I find fun content rather than rewards.

I was thinking about it last night, and now I’m torn a little.

Now maybe this is all because I’m just some dirty kazul, but, the fact that fractals are so unrewarding is kinda nice. I say this as someone who does PUG things, in dungeons often I come across people who simply make it incredibly unfun. The rush for gold and focus on speed because of that has created a bit of a diffrent attitude.

Now that’s not to say I don’t like doing things quickly and efficiently, I do. My problem is when someone takes that to a point that it ruins the fun. And I get it, some people feel that there is no fun to be had in dungeons, that they’re all just boring and repetative and they’re only there for rewards… but that’s exactly my point.

Fractals we don’t have that attitude because anyone there for rewards is pretty dumb. Of course people are after their skins, but you don’t get uppity about being delayed 30s, or at least I haven’t come across people like that yet. I can’t say the same about people in dungeons.

Phineas Poe.3018:

mPascoal.4258:

And how much of utility do you bring to a PvE party compared to the 2 I’ve most played (Guardian and Thief)?

Engineers are generally brought for their might and vulnerability. They don’t generally provide any real utility beyond that unless the fight calls for CC (e.g., Shoggroth or Clockheart).

Engineers tend to be more useful in fractals than in dungeons, because dungeons are very much about burst damage with ice bows where fractals require more sustained damage (and that’s where vulnerability really comes in). It’s a very useful class to have, but it’s not a top tier, record-clearing class for PvE instances.

^^ great summation. I’d just add that we have the utility available and generally pretty on demand with tossed elixers or a kit swap, so while we generally don’t provide it, it is available if the group needs it for whatever reason.

You’ll get a good 5-6 months of challenging content, then you’ll tire of what’s there, maybe come back to do stupid stuff to make it harder on yourself to revitalize the fun, and then become a grumpy person on the forums.

Really though, dungeons/fractals fun stuff, decent challenge until you learn them thoroughly, then you pug them, and watch people screw up the tactics you learned that made them easy, so it gets challenging again, then you master that, and then maybe start to solo stuff, then maybe even try a naked lupi solo using only warrior dodge damage.

End game is to make yourself look pretty.

There are some very fun things to do at level 80 though, just no real gear treadmill where you’re constantly getting better gear to destroy content you may have stuggled on before. That doesn’t happen, the only thing that will make something easier is playing better and once you get your gear, you’re good. (thre is ascended, for a small upgrade as something to work on, but nothing above that)

Server time doesn’t really mean anything, and people play 24/7 so whatever timezone you are you’ll find people, though of course normal NA prime time is a bit busier in general (like 6-12 eastern)

Keneth.6490:

I don’t think having people run around in their underwear is the vision Arenanet has for their game.

Have you seen t3 human light armor?

Toss on “crafting bags” to the fractal merchant for pristines (like the ones from laurel vendors).

Toss on “supply bags” like the “bag of stolen goods” that you see in silverwastes for bandit crests for normal relics.

Boom, you have a way to spend your supply of relics to pull money out, increasing the reward for fractals in general.

That’d be enough to make me quite happy.

Sarah, while I don’t really disagree in that I have no real problem with the rewards, personally speaking, it’s basically because I find them fun to do and don’t really give a hoot about the rewards. Objectively speaking with respect to the relative value of the rewards for your time compared to other avenues of play, it really is pretty bad, again though, personally not a problem, i get some rewards and I play something I find fun. But there are a lot of things that simply go to waste and are “rewards” but aren’t helpful.

When you look at Dungeon tokens, you can always spend your superluous tokens on rares/exotics and drain some gold out of that, not so with relics or rings. Giving us ways to do that would go pretty far to increase the rewards for fractals, which again, objectively with respect to other game modes are lacking.

Exeon.4358:

I think many don’t get the meaning of pay to win, basically a game is pay to win if game developers give any unfair advantage to players that are willing to spend money on the game, generally things that cannot be obtained otherwise or nearly impossible to obtain otherwise.

Bank slots and bag slots pay to win? if you really think so you have never ever experienced a real pay to win game, or worse, a game that wasn’t pay to win, but became one over time.

^^ So much this

The only thing I can really see being argued as pay to win in this game is the boosters used in WvW (though I don’t really agree).

^^ I simply ask before I zone in now if I see a guard. Strange I actually get really happy when a guard says “naw, that’s lame” suddenly I really like them

Mirta.5029:

Jerus.4350:

I like GW2, but I sure as hell wouldn’t pay a Sub for it. Not unless they started coming out with new sets of dungeons every couple of months like subscription based games do.

what subscription based game does it? Concerning free, WoW does one every 6 months at most, everything else is in payed expansions.
Concerning Wildstar they’re doing quarterly updates, instead of updates every 2 weeks like here.
Concerning Elder Scrolls Online I don’t remember them doing any meaty content updates either.

DCUO drops out their DLCs, free if you have a subscription, every 3-4 months, so I guess I should have said few instead of couple months, but yeah.

And yeah, most games have expansions being the big content thing, but at least it’s there. I want to support GW2 but I want to get the content I enjoy in return, they aren’t doing a very good job of that. The scope in which GW2 updates their game is limited almost solely to open world PVE.

Not trying to be a hater, just can’t see myself giving them money for such a limited amount of content. I will say the solo instances in the living story have been really cool, disappointing that they’re so easy, but outside of that they’re really cool.

I guess my point being basically they’d need to broaden their scope and pump out more content if they wanted to go subscription, at least IMO. I think there are a lot of people like me playing simply because “well… it’s free, why not?”

also, as a side note, I think there’s something brilliant about their buy to play model. While many people aren’t feeding money into the game, their presence makes it feel pretty alive 24/7.

Mirta.5029:

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Anet wouldn’t want a sub model. They’d make less money that way. Short term profit from whales on a cycle earn them more money than longer term investment through subscriptions.

they earned like what? The equivalent of 250K subs this quarter? They could most definitely hold a bigger population than that if they forced a sub on us. But for a B2P model this game is very fair.

I like GW2, but I sure as hell wouldn’t pay a Sub for it. Not unless they started coming out with new sets of dungeons every couple of months like subscription based games do.

Behellagh.1468:

Jerus.4350:

Why is no one talking about the Copper Salvage-o-matic? There’s your true p2w right there!

I’m fine with my current bag space at just full 20 slots on all my alts, but that thing… not having to buy salvage kits and take up half a bag for those… man, how are people not up in arms about that thing?

While I have one now but most NPC vendors who will buy junk also sell basic salvage kits. At most I gained one or two slots for spare basic salvage kits. I never retained enough items to bring back to a TP that those slots used for spares impacted my carrying capacity for a session.

The copper fed simply lets me ignore seeing if I need to buy some more BSKs as well as never running out because I forgot to restock.

I can go through a good 7+ before I hit a merchant again, though I usually let my inventory literally fill with minor runes/sigils and junk before I hit a merch. A full dungeon tour on an alt I’ll usually end up running out of my 7+ sets of them. I have to remember to slip in and say at COE buy them from the guy up top, it’s something I have to keep in mind and for me it cleared up 6 spots and a lot less hassle. Which is what this thread really comes down to, the amount of hassle more space removes. To me my Salvage-o-matic does it far better than an extra 15-20 slots, I have an opened up inventory on my 2 main chars, I rarely utilize the extra bag space because I simply salvage things as I go and hit a merchant the same times I would on my alts. It is nice for clearing 100s of champ bags at a time though

Ahh for some reason I thought the warden just lost his big hitter.

Mystic Salvage Kit + Copper thingy, then personally I even carry a black lion on my mains.

Personally with just full 20 slots, and not a ton of extra fluff on my alts I can go through about 2 dungeons without having to salvage/sell, if I salvage as I go 3-5 depending on my luck.

That said, ideally I should carry more food and potion variations, but other than that they’re solid, though just one set of gear on everything but mesmer who I carry a running set for.

Wasn’t doing the Warden in TA on the tree a similar situation that was disallowed?

Why is no one talking about the Copper Salvage-o-matic? There’s your true p2w right there!

I’m fine with my current bag space at just full 20 slots on all my alts, but that thing… not having to buy salvage kits and take up half a bag for those… man, how are people not up in arms about that thing?

Iris Ng.9845:

Why should Bridgette be pushed to the wall?

I think it’s more the using the house and rotating back and forth to the different sides to get her to follow you out of her damage field. I think you taught me that one

randomguy.1283:

Zerker gear is gear with berserker’s stats. The easiest way to obtain exotic berserker gear is through running CoF and buying it with tokens. It is basically necessary in PvE.

^^ This, though you might also look into buying supplies and having a friend craft it for you, costs about 25-30 gold IIRC to craft up a full set, bit faster to get the gold than farm a full set through tokens. (then an additional 25-30g for the trinkets which you’ll basically have to buy, again cheaper if you can find a friend to craft them for you)

Also being new, you may find it a bit tougher to play than some more defensive stats, though in general PVE it’s a target you want to shoot for, as you can use your active defenses (blinds/dodge/blocks) to survive just fine and don’t need defensive stats at all.

For leveling, focus more on damage stats, generally more power/prec.

Get your flamethrower and Bomb kit, bombs are good for kiting and dropping bombs for them to run through, flamethrower can just torch a whole group.

Get speedy kits asap, until then Elixir B and Elixir H are probably going to be pretty nice, travel time when leveling is hugely important.

If you go flamethrower, Juggernaut is nice, bombs Forceful explosions is great.

Thing about leveling is you won’t have access to most traits for a while so giving a whole build is just kind of silly as you’ll be adjusting through the leveling process. Just keep the above in mind and it should be helpful.

Ohh and I’d use Rifle mostly, pistol/shield has uses but it’s not really the best while leveling. It’s more of a utility thing for say blasting might/stealth, or utilizing the block/daze components. When leveling, Jump Shot → BLunderbuss → Flamethrower kit → FLame Blast/detonate, you can usually kill most trash with just that quick combo.

Dub.1273:

Jerus.4350:

So, GemFX… Anyone have any tips on getting it to run on Windows 8.1?

Updated my c++/.net stuff, still getting a message that it’s unable to load sweetfx/gemfx in my logfile and I can’t get the game to load while I have it set up (have to delete the .dlls).

Tried finding info on it but no luck so far.

I wanna make my dungeons look even prettier.

You’ll need to have all the stuff in the bin folder unless you launch the game without patch ui.

Yeah, did that, simply won’t load the game (launcher loads up runs the patch but then simply doesn’t load the game up when I hit “play”).

Actually just tried again, and got a different message. Now it said " [06:55:07] Preparing FXAA…
[06:55:07] Unable to load FXAA Shader"

I changed it to no FXAA in configurator, and got the old message. " [06:57:06] Unable to load SweetFX or GEMFX Shader"

Guardian = defensive option, makes things nice and easy
Ele = offensive option, stacking might/fury will really help a thief who’s capabilities in that area are quite limited without building around it, which sacrifices far too much for the gain imo.

And funny enough, my google search is what lead me to this thread :b

I’d rank them in this order:
SE1>CoF1>>AC>TA/SE3/CoF2/CM/COE

SE1 is just so fast and easy, CoF1 is pretty quick and easy too, AC is a bit longer but again, easy… the easy thing translates into smoother runs in pugs which translates into generally quicker runs as you have less screw ups. The last few are generally a little longer and you see more mistakes made, though personally I’ve had a lot of luck in COE getting Charged Cores/lodestones which is an extra 1-4g for the run so I kind of view that as above the rest. Cm is pretty easy and very quick, but it requires a degree of coordination that a LOT of PUGs lack (hell I even screw up there) and a wipe or two can double the length of the dungeon pretty quickly.