Guild Wars 2

Auesis.7301:

Jzl.8715:

Auesis.7301:

yarpen.1364:

PS.
You really can melee kraits on some 30+? They hit like truck and love to stack this aoe poison which just kicks kitten
Still engi can just throw grenades here.
And on final boss engi can just throw nades dealing massive damage, warrior with speargun? We all know how it works.

Meleeing Krait at 30+ and 40+ is a breeze on Thief. I usually end each fight at full health, never getting hit at all. Whoever designed Spear #3 and #5 wasn’t thinking clearly.

I do believe that shadow assult only hits 1 target.

It does. And?

Thought that was enough to explain..

It’s single target, it’s low dps, sure you can melee and not die as a thief, but then who’s doing the bulk of the work?

But at the end of the day, thief has low dps potential multi-target wise underwater anyway. The usual melee argument has to do with efficiency and a thief up in melee range doesn’t really do anything in that favor, especially not in the case of Kraits encounters. (extremely useful however in say HotW p2p3) You probably be better off killing a single mob faster staying at range and spam 2 instead of up their face and spam 5.

Anyway, just found it funny how you said meleeing in huge krait packs as a thief as an awesome thing.

Auesis.7301:

yarpen.1364:

PS.
You really can melee kraits on some 30+? They hit like truck and love to stack this aoe poison which just kicks kitten
Still engi can just throw grenades here.
And on final boss engi can just throw nades dealing massive damage, warrior with speargun? We all know how it works.

Meleeing Krait at 30+ and 40+ is a breeze on Thief. I usually end each fight at full health, never getting hit at all. Whoever designed Spear #3 and #5 wasn’t thinking clearly.

I do believe that shadow assult only hits 1 target.

yarpen.1364:

-Snip-

Truth for the part about engineers, in my opinion the most underrated profession in PvE for now. Probably because there aren’t enough good grenadiers around to show people what’s what, most seem to be happy with rifles.

Zenith.7301:

Jzl.8715:

Funny how according to half of the post in here solo GL is like one of the easiest thing to do in the game.

It’s a fight more about knowing the mechanic limitations than difficulty. Fractals are better examples of more multifaceted bosses. It doesn’t detract from the solo, but it’s just a different skillset that is being appreciated here.

Not sure what you are on about.

Funny how according to half of the post in here solo GL is like one of the easiest thing to do in the game.

Stooperdale.3560:

Realistically, the fractals have to end somewhere. Anybody who has reached level 50 in fractals has already spent an incredibly massive number of game hours in that dungeon. There is no argument to say that fractals haven’t provided those players with enough challenge, entertainment, or anything else.

Slippery slope argument, also completely irrelevant. By your logic, anyone who has played and enjoyed the game for more than 30 hours should be happy if the game is to be terminated by tomorrow, because that’s typically what you get for $60 dollars of entertainment from a game typically nowadays. But I don’t think you’ll bring up this argument is something was to happen. Because basically, this is exactly the same thing.

Let me try to explain this to you again, this isn’t a problem with capping as compared to very bad communication/decision/design from the developers. First of, we were never told what the level cap was, we were left to explore ourselves. People then reached level 80, and the level doesn’t get any higher, and so we say, alright, so the level cap is 80, let’s work towards that. So we put together a core stable team, got our strats straight, had fun for two weeks progressing, and then BAM the level is capped at 50, without notification whatsoever.

I just want to say, if you have already opened everything for everyone for two and a half months, don’t do a kitten move and take half of it away at some point. If it didn’t go as planned, learn from it and make better decisions in the future content. But just slamming a brick wall on 50+? Again, I have never seen any games do such a thing.

Same thing as shutting down your game because you already got your money worth, hope you won’t be complaining about that.

People really should do away with the notion that people reaching 50+ are doing so because of exploiting every fractal.

Reward wise, fractal really has a low reward/time ratio when it comes 50+. People are climbing the levels for the challenge and the satisfaction of overcoming it. This is where you need plan and communications, where you have to know the encounter and your teammates even better than your own character to succeed. Dare I say it had been the only place where for players longing for that kind of cohesive team play? There are many exploits in there, but I’d laugh if anyone think exploits along can carry any team through.

And just to point out, as someone mentioned earlier, Maw is a joke fight, what comes before are the hard fights, that’s why people didn’t give a kitten about exploiting it with orbs and ranger pets in order to progress, because the mechanics are easy and stupid.

Great move by the developers capping the dungeon back at end of January, never had I seen in a game where contents and progression are cut out so in-your-face abruptly. If you felt like something was wrong in the design process for some content, leave it for future reference. In a progression based dungeon, why all of a sudden cut it off right in the middle so people got it before got it while for others who were slower in pace is just too bad? Perhaps blocking the single bit of content where the most dedicated players coagulated seems a great idea.

@ Corey, I don’t really get your point of people quitting because they can’t keep up. People do quit because there aren’t anymore meaningful things to do, are you saying keeping up is reaching that point? Besides, this goes back to the age old debate regarding GW2 that was there right from the genesis, what is there to keep up with? It’s not like reaching exotic is hard to do, it’s not everyone’s every char is decked out in ascended accessories, it’s not like every group is demanding them in every dungeons and WvW teams. Do you even hear people talking about the actual stats on ascended all that much anymore?

If you think that people in 50+ are because they are still caring about loot, and they are grinding in 50+ for some sort of peculiar reason, then you have a misunderstanding with people on what you define as the speedy end of the spectrum. The move of capping at 50 has nearly none existent effect on people who don’t care about high level fractals. Anything around 20 or even the dailies now are capable of getting people their ascended items that are oh so precious to them. The only thing capping at 50 does is cutting the sole source of challenge for the most dedicated people who are simply looking for a challenge.

Solo.9027:

also the kick if you melee him during p1

Then sadly you’ll be kicking people from both end of the spectrum, the extremely experienced ones and the extremely inexperienced ones.

Dasorine.1964:

though chances are the next AR item will come from sPvP or something silly like that

The thing is someone recently on the Dungeons forum posted that 45ar won’t get you through level 50, which means it’s still hard gated and not working in accord with agony resistance prior to level 50, in theory according to http://dulfy.net/2013/01/07/gw2-fractal-of-the-mists-fotm-guide/#1, 45ar should be enough for level 50.

One of the best mechanics like:
count to 3 dodge, hit crystal hit crystal, count to 3 dodge, hit crystal hit crystal, count to 3 dodge + evade, pick up crystal hit 1, hit boss hit boss.

Exactly the same “mechanism” (?) as the abomination in Arah path 2 anyone? The boss is fun sure, but don’t draw a weird conclusion.

20 stacks of Corruption perhaps?

TRON.1085:

Some people are just being completely silly with this crap,

Yea, for instance, like contributing to the daily “Make CoF Farming Stop” post.

TRON.1085:

all sorts of classes that are 5-7 mins per run…

Please do show us your record shattering CoF p1 run. I’m genuinely curious, in a sincere way. Because I can just say things too you know, like there is this once I finished a CoF path 1 in 3 minutes, with 4 level 35s, watching tv, in the morning with a massive hungover, while riding a lion, that is made from jelly, in front of the Queen.

Logitech G500, Can’t turn camera or extremely laggy with right button. Not reproducible reliably, come and goes, happens ones a while most of the time is fine. No logitech software installed

Lightrayne.7829:

Jzl.8715:

TRON.1085:

Excursion.9752:

Make your own LFG post. There are a TON of people looking at the same page thinking just like you. Just because warriors and mesmers are taking the initiative of posting on the site and you are not does not mean that’s all that people run now.

Take the time and post I’m sure you will fill up fast.

Been there done that, isn’t the case…

Then I guess we haven’t been using the same gw2lfg.com site or playing the same game.

It’s probably because TRON mentioned Europe LFGs. I noticed Europe CoF listing are less than NA’s. Just throwing that out there…

I don’t see how the same case doesn’t translate from one another. Are you saying that there are more people willing to make a non war/mes party in NA while people in Europ the only people who are willing to run CoF are farmers?

Taobella.6597:

i have a friend who on 80 ^^

that’s all good and great, now show me an even 50+ fractal he did since end of Jan

TRON.1085:

Excursion.9752:

Make your own LFG post. There are a TON of people looking at the same page thinking just like you. Just because warriors and mesmers are taking the initiative of posting on the site and you are not does not mean that’s all that people run now.

Take the time and post I’m sure you will fill up fast.

Been there done that, isn’t the case…

Then I guess we haven’t been using the same gw2lfg.com site or playing the same game.

Kaimick.5109:

Any player that up and leaves because of one thing in the game probably isn’t that dedicated.

There are people that do Jade Maw at 62
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gPuwtuAWV4

there are even people that do Level 80 fractals ( all be it odds I assume )

Please do research before you comment. The video is from last December well before the related patch, it only s hows phase 3, the actual problem is getting threw the phase transition agony, which wasn’t a problem before that patch anyway. And for the record, Maw was never considered as a hard part in any level.

We are level 56 right before the patch and having very few issues progressing, we actually consider ourselves quite dedicated, PvE wise, we were speed running every dungeon, ever paths, we got dungeon master within first 2 months of launch.

You probably have a different definition regarding dedication, and we aren’t the farming for skin type of dedication. My friends left the game because there is nothing challenging left in PvE for us to do together, hence the hiatus.

Not sure what your point is, that we can find someone higher level than us and do odd levels to progress? If so then I would suggest maybe just get around that and let us get past maw again, which is the point of the suggestion in the first place.

What aspect of the game are you referring to? If PvE, I say learn to love the sword.

Like, why not? I don’t think I can convince my friend to come back with SAB, but definitely can with FotM.

Just run there the gate no longer closes, and the waypoint is always open as well.

After some digging I would assume that you are more or less on the casual side and mainly played a ranger right from the release of the game. Forgive me if I’m wrong, like I said, putting things into perspective helps a lot with the discussion. The reason I said the points are subjective is because (well, they are opinions rather than facts, and they are just by definition subjective) a lot of the points you raised I don’t personally see as outstanding issues.

The problem is, as soon as you through in words like “Stressful”, “frustrating”, and “challenging” together in a general discussion without a clear reference, it becomes impossible for other people to anchor to your perspective. So say, is constant stun from graveling stressful, frustrating or challenging? Are people just referring to challenges they cannot overcome as frustrating? You seem to welcome challenges, but on the other hand it also seems like you only want challenges they way you want them or those you are comfortable with, so can they be considered as a challenge after all?

Aden Celeste.3650:

…how many times did they wipe before learning the ropes on how to pass the dungeon?

I thought this was the exact process that the people who are asking for harder/more challenging content are looking to go through. I think you just described the process of “overcoming a challenge”. People who asks for hard content are actually a lot more realistic when it comes to success or failure, because I certainly don’t think it’s the same kind of people who say “Let’s try this new hard content.” and “ kitten i didn’t faceroll that in the first go.”

Aden Celeste.3650:

• 6) DUNGEONS SHOULD HAVE MECHANICS THAT USE ALL CLASSES ABILITIES
• Why not create dungeons that have uses for each specialty from various classes? Like a room where a thief could easily sneak in and press that button to open the gates for a group. Or a bridge, where a mesmer can create a portal and move the entire group across
• 7) BALANCE OUT THE DUNGEONS WITH ALL CLASSES IN MIND
• Instead, most dungeons seem to be easier for certain classes and for some not so good.

See the contradiction here? Why is thieves using stealth and mesmer using portals okay while icebow is bow is just plain OP? and btw, thieve can easily sneak in and out and push the button in CoE1 golem control room, run through the the lava in CoF 2, and twenty more scenarios, mesmer can utilize there portal all the way they want, either it be the infamous CoF 1 flame trap, or you can just portal stealth portal in any where you want. And I thought a ranger standing far sniping w/o dangering the group was what you categorized as as “brainless” and “unfun”.

All the singular points have been brought up previously, and tbh, most of these are very subjective, also, as a whole, there are a lot of contradicting points in this post.

Perhaps explaining a bit more about what experiences led you to these conclusions would help the discussion a bit more.

In CoE you basically fight everything except for inquest.

• Weapons sold by vendors are no longer salvageable.

This point came under the Dungeons main category, kind of vague, are these referring to the dungeon weapons? If so what are the implications of armors?

• Reduced quickness from 100% attack speed to 50%.

Guess we all see that coming.

• Disabled the use of some consumable items in dungeons.

Just got a quick question about how will the leader boards manage the monthly and daily achievement points. The daily achievement had been revamped quite a few times in the past few months, during launch it was 13 points per day, then during Feb and March it was 25, and that only lasted for a month now it’s only possible to get 6 points per day.

So with the coming of leader boards and the fact that we are also hinted laurels will be awarded for previous achievement points sometime in the future, I’m wondering how the discrepancy will be taken into account, if it ever will be like the hobby dungeon runner and agent of entropy achievements.

While you are working on the achievement points revamp, could you add these 2 to the category? A legendary is a legendary right?

From the amount of people complaining about how other people are running CoF1 I don’t understand the claim of lack of people to not wanting to run war/mes groups.

Valid points, but awful, terrible attitude. Which makes it hard to accept even though most people agree with most of your points.

I assume you are sincere about bringing into the public some attention about manners and curtsey, so you might want to try talking about it as part of the crowed instead of making it feel like you are standing at a righteous position while pointing fingers at the fools who should have known better. Just easier to convince people that way.

But I got to say, for me, some of your points are jarring to the point where it overshadows the valid ones. If you are suggesting excluding a large portion of the player base, because you want most of them to melee or play a certain build, then that’s not an etiquette. This is perfect for your guild recruitment message for a hardcore dungeon crawling guild looking for experienced players.

Sometimes respect and attitude is everything, don’t just let the facts blind you. I cannot help but feel the contempt you and your fellow Kuishen share towards the so called pugs (which is other peoples guildies). Doesn’t matter if you really intended to, but it came out that way.

Community service done properly?
Here is a hint:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Arah-Vets-grouping-together-to-do-Arah-Runs/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Arah-Vet-here-to-help-you-with-Arah-runs/first

Good tips on the classes. Since you have going in depth about that, I’ll add in some tips about the overall strategy.

The dynamic and focus of the fight changes a lot based on what level the fractal is at. The bottom line is as a team you shouldn’t have too much trouble in the normal phase, the parts between every quarter of health. If the team is going down during that, then the team is missing some basics.

Hardest part of the fight is of course how the team handles the transition phase where both the grubs and shield is up, and this depends a lot on the team composition. Preferably you don’t have to deal with the boss and all of the grubs at the same time. The team has to to plan how quick you take down the boss’s shield. Doing so too fast is not actually a good idea since you don’t want fire storm aoe and the arrows to hit where you stack up. You can have a 1-4 split or 2-3 split depending on how quick you attack and how much aoe power you have. General rule is take down most of the elemental before taking down the shield.

Scattered tips:
- Always keep an eye on the boss. Players tend to tunnel vision during transition phase. But it’s crucial to know what the boss is doing all the time. As soon as the shield is down, everyone’s attentions should be on the boss. If you have a few elemental left over they are not as deadly, you can just kill them with collateral damage.
- Spread out when boss is active. Relatively speaking of course, you can still stay as a group to better utilize reflection skills, but at least 300 range from one another. At level 40+ the AoE storm is actually harder to handle. You will definitely need 1 dodge to get out of it most of the time since each tick does too much damage to walk out of it, so you don’t want more people doing so if you don’t have to, endurance is important.
- Have at least 2 people on boss at all times. If you need to res someone, don’t go all out on it. It is possible for 1 player to kite the boss, but having 2 to 3 is much more easier. Only res when you don’t have the boss’s attention.
- Take pressure off other players if you have to, following from above, most players can’t solo kite the boss indefinitely.
- Elemental slaying potion, +endurance regen food or utility.

It’s one of the few harder fights in fractals at the moment, along with the last encounter of cliffside (if doing normally). Last time I did this was on level 55, so mostly talking from that perspective.

Mourningcry.9428:

DanH.5879:

all character are naked and at dungeon level (lvl 35), having only weapons equipped.

party composition:
1. thief.
2. engineer
3. ranger
4. mesmer
5.necromancer

do AC all 3 paths, and tell me about it
your naked’ness+skill should compensate with pug’s lack of skill+gear

Sure.

But first, adequately explain how your conditions at all correlate to a PUG – especially considering all the combinations and factors that go into any given PUG.

Adequately explain? Won’t be possible from the OP. Our OP is a frequent poster on this subforum, and if you actually look at it, few of his posts are longer than one and half lines.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Why stop the criticism of Rangers at PvE? Lets talk about PvP . And WvW when rangers arent on top of a wall.

There is a very good reason for that, might be because this is a dungeon subforum.

Dearest Rob:

I’d love to buy you a beer for St Patrick’s day, but that wouldn’t be possible since that was yesterday. My other proposition is sending you some Easter egg for Easter, in return you have to agree to make one change to dungeons that I propose to you. It’s not a bribe! Well, as long as I don’t send you more than 100 chocolate eggs I guess… I’ll have to consider where to draw that line.

Sincerely,
Jzl.8715

Ahh, now that we got to the so called respect and ego. Actually, that’s what I think what this is mostly about. People just don’t know better about the profession you say? Well, then their impression is even more based on ego and faith (ha! this word is so heavy) isn’t it. In case if you didn’t noticed, I am one of people who thinks rangers are relatively weak. Now halt! Before anyone twist my claim beyond recognition, I didn’t say they are bad, I didn’t say they are useless, I didn’t say they are garbage, I said they are weaker, relatively. One thing we have to realize, is that naturally most of us don’t really set our norm and standard based on ourselves, we look to the top tier, the best, the “elistist”, (ha! I hate this word too, along with noob, funnest, clunky, viable etc, oh, and this is an anecdote, Anet hates word “class”, so use “profession” instead you noobs.), even though ourselves may not even be close to that level. In this enviroment of post release dungeon speedruns and melee/solo/naked Lupi kills, where the truely skilled can avoid most if not all damage while in glass cannon builds, our sense of a good and efficient run is shaped around high dps and bare minimum survival. Do you know what is actually the problem? It’s not that rangers are inherently bad, it’s that you can get through any encounter without a ranger (your Maw argument is invalid!), so…why bring one instead of another profession that you feel you will absolutely need at some point?

I hope no one bring up this this and that skills and say, “but look! this is good!”. The simple fact is, in the upper echelon of PvE slaughtering at maximum efficiency, that is simply not the case, and that’s where most people identify their professions with. I guess we just need to somewhat come to peace with that. But I’m not saying give up your rangers, delete your characters and join the flood of hate. Be THE good ranger, instead of another good guardian/warrior. If you really care or love your profession, so what if you are bearing a little hate or misconception or whatever you call it when it’s a tad on the weaker side, for now. I always have a thing with underdogs. Do you know how people say thieves and engineers are bad in PvE, but that’s not really true? How the truth is that you just have to work twice as much harder and know the fight inside out to show that? I actually have more thieves and engineers on my contact list, the good ones, because they are rarer, they are more impressive, and it actually feels great to play with a good one. I just have a lot more respect for those. The same way I will respect that ranger who spends 5 times more effort soloing Lupi because he thinks doing it with a guardian and warrior is just too trivial.

Asking for an easy way out is not the best, if you want an easier life just go for those more popular classes then. But if it were me then I say bring the rain, anyone who played a game with more than one profession knows there are ups an lows for each one, do not pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger rangers.

P.S: As you can see I have not bothered with providing any evidence whatsoever. So if you want a clarification you can try ask, politely! But.. it’ll just be that same old argument you saw again an again, where I sort of think I know what I’m talking about and you as well and we can’t really convince each other because none of us were looking to be convinced in the first place? So what you can do instead is be a good ranger and I’ll promise I’ll like you, how ‘bout that:). Can’t say the same about your pet though, if you bring an ugly one, like one of those Siames or something.

Oh rangers, for better for worse, the focus of every “which class is the worst” discussion. So much bias, so much prejudice, so much misconception, so much getting caught up in personal egos that after awhile it makes me think, hey, maybe people actually likes doing this after all, you know, shouting at the other side of the river without knowing fully what’s going on there.

But why don’t we take a step back, let’s save this mainstream thing of picking narrow bits of evidence the size of a grain of sand within an endless desert and argue about it. There are 8 different professions, there are countless encounters, I think we can agree that there is bound to be classes that performs better, are more useful, and are embraced more warmly by the general public, and then hate follows quite naturally from that.

Let’s first talk about this “Capability” thing. I’m not saying best, I’m not saying optimal. I’m not sure if anyone still remember one of the first few high level fractals, I sure do, to be specific, this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQPt8STlszg. Yes yes, I know, there are 2 guardians, and yes yes I know they are Koreans as well so they got it in their genes with video games. But there is also 2 rangers and a thief, which I dare say are the more.. “colourful”(?) ones when it comes to discussions like these, and as far as I know, generally not regarded as the best professions for the shaman fight. Skill is a relative thing, and when blend with a certain profession, becomes even more interesting. So I guess I’ll retire from arguing on either side of the coin, and just say, 2 guardians or not, this group, these 2 rangers and thief, they probably had to spend more effort on this fight, compared to say, a two-guardian-a-mesmer-a-warrior-and-an elementalist-lol-why-you-so-easy-Legendary-Shamam group, but they do have more respect from me.

TBC…

Titan.3472:

AC p3 encounter is broken aka Gigantus Lupicus

I was expecting to be impressed, instead you blew my mind.

Well then, if you encountered Giganticus Lupicus in AC3, then you are very right in saying the path is broken.

Titan.3472:

@Writetyper , well I dont have problem to complete AC at all but it’s completely broken for new players, the difficulty scale for a said level 30dungeon is absurd.
P1 is easy like it was before, p2 is more fun, p3 is just broke in 2sides.
P3 if you run it without EXPLOIT you dies always and its impossible but everyone actually complete it on “safe spots” that make the fight completely a joke so easy it is… So don’t talk about such “skill” dungeon path its like broke if you manage the fight like you should and broke if you manage the fight in safe spots. It s completely an encounter not working as intended and the genius are more the people farming it with the exploit way… aren’t you?

I’m curious about where this “you cannot complete without exploiting” encounter is?

“Warrior Tank”, there is your issue.

Iehova.9518:

Lupus is fine.

I’d love the last grub to be avoidable though, merely as a convenience.

Only the one at P1 and P2 phase transition could not be avoided.

Xynn.2748:

For everyone talking about people complaining it’s too easy, what fractal level are you on? I quit on level 48 two months ago because the rewards are trash.

Now on to the real point of why your AC changes indicate that Robert has no idea what he is doing. People play MMOs because they are social. AC was the perfect social dungeon – want to bring 1-2 lowbies? No problem, the other 3 of us will played geared 80s. Try that now.

I was wondering who would make such direct comments on the Dev and then I saw you mention fractal levels, and then I recognized your name. If my memory serves me right you are the tanky tanky Asura guardian I ran into a few times during level 40+. I wouldn’t go into the details of why I remember so clearly, but I’ll just say, fractal level isn’t really indicative of actual skill sometimes since a lot of people got to level 40+ doing the same 3 of the 9 fractals over and over again without seeing the rest.

Also, you know, sometimes you might just happened to have gotten in a group group.

azureai.9764:

Psybunny.8906:

Simin was nerfed hard and it’s A LOT easier now, work on your group composition/strategy.

Also, I have an issue with anyone who claims only certain compositions of groups should be able to take out a boss. The game advertises itself as designed so that any composition of players has their own way to do accomplish things in the game. This boss should not require four warriors and a mesmer.

And it probably wouldn’t have, if she wouldn’t occassionally disappear after allowing us to get only three hits in and the mechanics removing any chance that out condition builds would have any effect on her.

The bug is annoying and is a valid complaint,

The fight doesn’t require a very specific composition. It doesn’t require 4 warriors and 1 mesmer. But that doesn’t mean it can be done with any composition any build and players of any skill level. You bring an idea composition, the fight is easier. You don’t, it demands more focus, less room for mistake, and overall you’ll have to work harder.

azureai.9764:

Three of us were built toward conditions.

This would be a problem even in a normal dungeon. Simin no longer requires that much dps anymore, but 3 condition build characters is more than too much in a group since bleed caps at 25. The 50% bug is annoying and I have encountered it many times, but keep trying and eventually it will be fine if you push her pass 50% fast enough. From what you mentioned I would say it’s mostly a problem with your team composition.

Also, if this is your first time don’t be so quick to complain. This is considered to be the hardest path of the hardest dungeon, we used to spend hours on path 3 when it first came out. It all becomes trivial once you know how to do it.

azureai.9764:

two rangers, an elementalist, an engineer and a guardian

I would assume the 3 condition characters are the 2 rangers a engineer, and I hope the engineer is a grenadier instead of pistol. If it is a pistol engineer then depending on the ele/guard build you may have a very very low direct dps team.

The sparks tends to aggro by proximity, so you should stay well away from the spark kiters. You might had the pets on aggressive, so put it on passive and stay near the walls. As for the npc, you can always kill it, it’s not big deal, for me I hardly ever encountered such problem.

Your group composition is more than enough to do the fight. I’d say if your rangers are familiar with their different builds, go for a sword melee/haste/beast mastery based build, engineer should go with grenades with full explosives tree (vulnerability stacking is great), and the ele and guardian should also stay in the respective dps build. Also you should have a D/D elementalist and the guardian for spark kiting, instead of the rangers and engineer because they are much slower.

I’m going to chain run a few path 4 for those who need it tonight starting around 7pm EST.

Having no previous experience in path 4 is fine but do please be experienced with the other paths (mostly GL fight, since this path could be longer than the other paths it’s not the path to start learning Arah) and have a direct dps set of gear. Send me a in game mail (or pm if I’m online) if you are interested, I’ll invite the people from the guild before others.

Why do you try to join them?
Why don’t you check the lfg message and join the ones saying all classes welcome?
Why don’t you take some initiative? (:D)
Why don’t you form your own group?
Why don’t you go ahead and find like minded people?
Why don’t you give it a try and see how easy to form a CoF farming group not asking for just mesmers and warriors?
Why don’t you prove with your own group that it can be just as efficient?
Why don you come here to complain about this century old topic here instead?

Auesis.7301:

Jzl.8715:

Auesis.7301:

Ioflux.4369:

Auesis.7301:

stof.9341:

- AoE Weakness up 100% of the time but I’m not sure it works that well on bosses anyway

This is pretty much THE defining benefit of having a Thief aside from Shadow Refuge. It definitely does work on bosses, because shooting through the poison field (weakness on poison) applies weakness at such a fast rate that the boss will never be able to shake it off.

Skale venom, 100% uptime on weakness if your whole party uses it. No need to ever have a class just for it.

No, it’s not. Skale Venom is a chance on crit. This is guaranteed 100% weakness, always, no gamble. It’s also removed when downed and most parties will forget to reapply it even if they have it. Be honest, how many groups have you seen actually use that consumable? I’ve found myself to be quite literally the only one in over 1000 hours of dungeoneering.

Skale Venom, the thief venom ability, not the consumable item.

On itself, 3 attacks, 5 seconds each, stacks in duration. If using venom aura, it’ll be 100% uptime.

Right, when Venomous Aura has the range of my toenail. Unless you’re all in voice communication and you shout STACK every time you want to apply the venom, you won’t have anywhere close to 100% uptime. Plus, using Choking Gas + 15 Deadly Arts, you have absolutely no need to waste a utility slot and a Grandmaster trait just for the same end result.

First of all, we are talking about a very specific situation of where it is possible. Venomous Aura has a 300 range, 15 seconds for each person applied, 30 seconds cooldown, 24 if traited. Which means as long as 1 person is within your 300 range it’s 100% uptime.

Again, we are talking very specific situation regarding a few claims and ambiguities made by other posts. Yes, I understand that it’s more of a PvP thing, yes I understand that it takes coordination for best effectiveness, and yes I understand that since release it is generally viewed as not so effective in PvE because you have to trait heavily into venom and the situation generally don’t call it. Any other questions?

EDIT: Also I want to point out that I wasn’t intending in quoting you in the first place the person I intended to quote possibly deleted him post. In any case..

Auesis.7301:

Ioflux.4369:

Auesis.7301:

stof.9341:

- AoE Weakness up 100% of the time but I’m not sure it works that well on bosses anyway

This is pretty much THE defining benefit of having a Thief aside from Shadow Refuge. It definitely does work on bosses, because shooting through the poison field (weakness on poison) applies weakness at such a fast rate that the boss will never be able to shake it off.

Skale venom, 100% uptime on weakness if your whole party uses it. No need to ever have a class just for it.

No, it’s not. Skale Venom is a chance on crit. This is guaranteed 100% weakness, always, no gamble. It’s also removed when downed and most parties will forget to reapply it even if they have it. Be honest, how many groups have you seen actually use that consumable? I’ve found myself to be quite literally the only one in over 1000 hours of dungeoneering.

Skale Venom, the thief venom ability, not the consumable item.

On itself, 3 attacks, 5 seconds each, stacks in duration. If using venom aura, it’ll be 100% uptime.

I think, you should go ahead and read the other 5 exactly similar topic right in the front page of this sub forum.

The feeling of thieves as not so useful is mostly in my opinion a problem of perception, both from thief players and others.

Usually thieves focus on direct damage in PvE. While both their single target and multi-target dps are respectable, they can’t really compete for the top in either category give or take a few specific scenarios. I honestly think that thieves has some of the best support abilities in the game. The problem is that these support are a lot more subtle, compared to more conventional support such as block or heal. Most noticeable amongst which are blind, interrupt and vulnerability. You definitely notice that aegis that guardian gives you, those might stacks a warrior gives you, or the heal an elementalist gives you. But those vulnerability stacks or all those misses from mobs attacks players don’t really realize they come from a thief. Needless to mention blast finishers and stealth, but I think they get enough attentions already.

It’s hard to appreciate a thieve in most instances, simply because people don’t play to their strength in general PvE. This is a direct problem with most of the PvE content being so trivial that this was simply never called for. But you’ll notice it if you ever play with a good thief. I have to come to know a few in fractals. They are not bad in anyway, they are just less easy to comprehend.

P.S: blast finishers are good, but the true strength of a thief are in the #4 skills, with any weapon.

P.P.S : if anyone is truly interested in this topic, I would point you to this post:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/78598-usage-of-a-thief-in-higher-fractals-and-dungeons/page__st__30
this post contains all the reasons you need, and also some bad misconceptions about thieves.

runeblade.7514:

Jzl.8715:

runeblade.7514:

Jzl.8715:

runeblade.7514:

Jzl.8715:

dodge when he bends to smash the ground in melee, a little after as ranged

Except that animation is too quick(.10 seconds to react) and share animation with his searing crystal summoning. It also happens directly after he smashes the ground so it hard to react to it.

No it doesn’t, crystal is sort of a upward flex animation, knockdown wave is downwards animation

The upward flex animation is the huge AoE burn.

Sigh… the crystal he does a very slow crouch like animation with both of his hands then into a upward flex… the knockdown is a one hand slam… the downward animation are quite distinct, and the speed varies greatly, I don’t see how it share the same information. If you are just slow, then learn the attack pattern and anticipate what attack will be coming up next. sheesh

You could back up your claim and prove me wrong with screenshots or point to me from a video.

Watch any video on Legendary Effigy. You are a funny man, asking for advice and won’t take any.

runeblade.7514:

Jzl.8715:

runeblade.7514:

Jzl.8715:

dodge when he bends to smash the ground in melee, a little after as ranged

Except that animation is too quick(.10 seconds to react) and share animation with his searing crystal summoning. It also happens directly after he smashes the ground so it hard to react to it.

No it doesn’t, crystal is sort of a upward flex animation, knockdown wave is downwards animation

The upward flex animation is the huge AoE burn.

Sigh… the crystal he does a very slow crouch like animation with both of his hands then into a upward flex… the knockdown is a one hand slam… the downward animation are quite distinct, and the speed varies greatly, I don’t see how it share the same information. If it’s just your reflex not being quick enough, then learn the attack pattern and anticipate what attack will be coming up next.