Guild Wars 2

Don’t forget additional party wide healing when you trait for healing shouts!

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Most groups are really ignorant

I’d take a good mesmer over a guardian any time.

Maybe Sandy has just brainwashed you.

I know, I just can’t remember being hit for that much by archers in the past. I think they didn’t hit that hard even at lvl 80 (maybe with crits), and even lvl 49 was scaled down when we got reset.

Have you tested crit dmg value after ferocity patch or only before? My though was they might have had base crit dmg of 150% when there was no ferocity, but with the change mobs got a ferocity value related to their health, much like their power values etc are (I’d imagine).

I’m fully aware you have explored stuff like this a lot more than I have and nowadays I don’t even have the amount practical experience I used to have.

Wethospu.6437:

I would still like to see any evidence to support this.

Sadly I can’t give you any actual evidence, but I’ve been hit for 19k+ by ascalonian archer basic attack in fotm 49 after ferocity patch on either warrior or ranger, can’t remember exactly.

I suspect ferocity change also effected crit dmg value of certain (high lvl?) mobs, but haven’t ran any further testing. Possibly something similar to what they broke with npcs in spvp at least, also don’t know if it was fixed when illusions etc. got fixed.

So you farm hotw nowadays? Not that I would disagree.

Actually, in addition to nerfing crit damage Anet is also buffing support. My opinion, which is the correct one since Anet has a clear goal with these changes, is that you will have to replace 2 more berserkers with one healer and one boon bot, resulting in 2 condition classes, 1 berserker faceplanter, 1 healer and 1 booner. That will do exactly 23,7% more damage per player than the second best option resulting in a 118,5% damage increase for your party.

ELement.5647:

Looks like we’ll need to re-bind our dodge keys for this one lads.

You are doing it wrong. Wear berserker, stack, press one. I heard that solves problems.

I’ve always strongly disagreed on EA being the pug carrier. For me the answer has always been to go for maximum self efficiency instead of trying to give buffs for people who are struggling (as a warrior that is). When I feel like the job gets done faster solo than with the team EA is not an option.

I think sword is on the list of things to be looked at in ranger CDI, those changes won’t see the light anywhere near 18th march though.

I doubt sword fix will be enough to bring it on line with other melee weapons in the game. My guess is max melee range still won’t work, but hopefully both dodge as well as all weapon skill evades will start working on demand. That would be a huge boost for survivability.

Also, the fact that fire trap needs to be triggered for field and lasts way shorter time than torch field makes it even more situational than torch for me.

Well, I wouldn’t consider either of those if I was looking for an optimized fractal group. If anything I would say ranger is weaker in fractals than dungeons and as you said necro performs better in fractals compared to dungeons. For op though, I stick to my opinion of ranger being the superior option when considering potential in dungeon/fractal content.

That being said, since op was concerned about ele being too squishy, I’d also like to add that especially in fractals both ranger and necro have some handicaps when it comes to survivability.

That is totally understandable, necro and ranger are so seldom seen in general. In ranger’s case it doesn’t help there are close to no decent guides out there afaik, and the ones that exist basically focus on maximizing damage in boss encounters. That isn’t a bad thing and they certainly do work. However, they are tailored for dungeon boss fights mostly, where feline pets are an obvious choice. Different pet choices offer a lot especially for trash fights (fractals). Swapping and managing pets accordingly is something people overlook. For example, ranger can get 2s cone daze (much like necro warhorn 4) and 10s aoe weakness from pets on demand, which I would consider more valuable in certain fights than the high single target damage from feline pets.

Embrace The Bold.7619:

Necro stacks vul and has weakness so the boost groups DMG and reduce enemies DMG. They can eat some damage. AOE blind, though I’d rather spam the golem into a wall. Also i think necros are just below ranger when it comes to DPS. Oh and no sword rooting :P

Now mind you I’ve play my ranger A LOT in fractals and I only have a lvl 38 necro so I don’t know all the pros/cons of Necro. Ranger though has a lot of cons Id take a necro over ranger because I know they have any easier time doing fractals.

Why would you not consider torch? Not all the time but it does have it’s uses in fractals. Yes you can’t max melee range with sword and that sucks. While the reflect isn’t as good as mesmer’s or guardian’s reflect, it’s way better than no reflect at all. Your pets can aoe fear, immobilize daze, cure conditions and weaken for example, and I really don’t feel like pulling those off is hard. In addition your axe has cc, with potential to group up mobs.

As you said necro brings vuln, blinds and cc and that comes with little aoe dmg/cleave and ok single target damage. Thing is, considering necro doesn’t shine in any of those over all other professions, they just don’t add up even close to ranger’s level. Yes, necro pug might be a lot more likely to make use of his skill set than ranger. I was talking about potential, and I don’t see much potential in necro.

Spoj The Second.7680:

Necro would be safer than ranger in high fractals. Goodluck trying to max melee with a ranger xD.

Anything is safer than sword ranger, then again I feel gs ranger would contribute at least as much as a necro can.

Swagginator.3246:

ranger frost spirit has a 10 sec ICD for it’s passive effect. i can’t find any skill worse than this, and this is by not mentioning that they die alot. (unless tooltip is wrong)

i’d go necro just because of the fact that claiming they can’t hit multiple targets in one skill is wrong. it’s easy to blast several mobs with lifeblast.

Frost spirit effect has no icd. I don’t think anyone has said necros brings zero multitarget dmg but lifeblast doesn’t make their cleave/aoe good.

Iris Ng.9845:

I say necro contributes more to the group at high level fractals. ‘The group’ here is consider both pug and semi-organized groups.

I would be interested to hear why you feel like it. Ranger brings water and fire fields, aoe cc, pulls (as in grouping enemies), reflects, weakness, situational tanking and unique dmg boosts and occasional blast finishers. I admit my list gives the impression rangers would be better than they actually are since several of those points are covered better with other professions, but all of those things are still there.

I don’t hate necro but I do think they are just extremely weak at the moment. While ranger certainly isn’t one of the top professions their potential is in a whole other region compared to necro, again, in my opinion.

At least in the past, re-equipping signets after swapping to the trait would update hero panel. If the trait actually works immediately, after re-equipping or never is something I don’t know.

I’m not sure if I understood you correctly, Miku, but I got the feeling you say attack of opportunity is triggered only by attacks that cause bleeding. In reality it amplifies all damage as long as target is bleeding meaning even in solo situations it has almost 100% uptime unless fighting something like Alphard. No matter if solo or in a group, attack of opportunity is the best trait modifier available for a warrior and there is no reason to run 20 in arms.

Either run even less than 20 or go all the way to 25, the damage increase for 5 points is way more than you will get from discipline for example. Assuming 100% crit chance and 2,5 crit damage modifier 5% more crit damage is a total damage increase of 2%. In reality, warrior often has higher than 2,5 crit dmg modifier and always has lower than 100% crit chance leading to even lower total damage increase. Bleeding uptime required to surpass that is non existant and you also gain precision on top of it.

thefantasticg.3984:

Vigorous spirts? Mmmm… IMO, no. Not worth losing the 5pt in power alone.

Vigorous spirits doubles the amount of procs from frost spirit meaning traiting it is a 3,5% party wide damage increase when spirit is alive. Spotter is the only trait more important than vigorous spirits.

I would suggest going 15 in nature magic for vigorous spirits, meaning you would end up with 30/25/0/15/0 or 25/30/0/15/0. Pets are something you should switch around according to situation and for the most part you want to try and have sword mh in both of your weapon sets.

For anything but record runs rangers are fine. If you are running with pugs you will probably have hard time convincing people, though, since most people either don’t know the potential of ranger or think they are more likely to get decent player if taking something else than ranger. Concerning records, rangers are basically a weaker version of a warrior meaning groups run out of slots before it would be rangers turn to be picked.

You will want to use full berserker/assassin and 20/25/0/15/0 traits with last 10 being optional. For some rare occasions going 25 in wilderness survival for offhand training can be worth it . Try to use sword mh for everything but encounters that require you to stay at certain (melee) range, All oh options have their uses.

Yes, you get the same effect as your allies.

I’m talking mostly from dungeon perspective, although the build does just fine in open world content too.

There are 2 important things ranger should generally bring to dungeons: frost spirit and spotter. In addition you can bring a water field for your group but you don’t have a whole lot of useful group utilities outside of those, the rest are mostly situational.

You want to use 1h sword as much as possible and switch to greatsword only in fights where you absolutely can’t handle the restrictions caused by the leap nature of 1h sword 1. All of the offhand weapons have their uses, torch being the least useful and used only for fire field. I encourage you to try to avoid bows if efficiency is what you are looking for.

My general trait spread is 30/25/0/15/0. The goal here is to boost your individual dmg while grabbing spotter and vigorous spirits to improve your group utility.

Tooltip says “burst recharge increase” meaning it is working as tooltip suggests, people are just used to thinking the other way around.

It is by no means my intention look down on anyone. I’m perfectly fine with people using different builds no matter what I think of said setups.

I have changed my own view regarding several builds before and that has mostly happened due to discussions and arguments between people be it in forums or somewhere else. That is my goal here too, listening to the arguments other people bring on the table and maybe change my mind regarding something once again.

None of what I have written here was meant to be offending someone, although I admit that in some sentences I am stating my own opinion in offensive manner.

So additional survivability comes for condition cleanse provided by burst skills with cleansing ire? With sharpened axes you will recover adrenaline while eviscerate is on cd without axe 5 also, and since you are not using berserker’s power using slower, hard hitting, attacks instead of smaller fast hits leads in no damage loss and works just as well with cleansing ire as long as you have accumulated adrenaline before using burst skill again.

What you may get is one higher adrenaline health tick every 2nd eviscerate rotation compared to other offhands due to axe 5. If you were using sword you could get an extra block within the same time frame which on average prevents more damage than that extra tick recovers.

It seems this discussion is now turning towards whether going 20 in defense tree instead of full damage traits is worth it or not. While I certainly wouldn’t consider doing that myself I do understand that several players like the defensive benefits and I agree it does increase your survivability.

Thaddeus.4891:

That’s a terrible build for speed run and high level fractal. Such a small DPS that you just can’t do speed run and for fractal you have DPS checkpoint that gonna make you fail every time if most people use this kind of build. The Worst will be at the Volcano Fratal where you won’t be able to kill any grawl before they push the human and you lose. Same thing with the grubs at the end, you will never be able to kill them quick enough.

That build will bring easily enough dps to pass all the dps checks in fractals and you will have the chance to trait for reflects for fights like vulcano end boss. If it’s a speed run build or not depends on who you ask, the impression I have is most people would consider this build well suited for speed running.

Although your latest post seems to be more about defending your individual skills in the game, I’ll return back to axe offhand.

Where does this additional survivability that let’s you live more often than other offhands come from? Using some other offhand while stacking doesn’t force you to take any more dmg, actually it lets you avoid or mitigate with blocks, weakness or cc while saving evades and also supporting other members of the group. The dps you gain from dodging with axe 5 on could be replaced with free dps time for the whole group of yours if you cc’d mobs with mace instead.

You can run cleansing ire just as well with another offhand and cleanse just as many conditions. I’d imagine being not as often downed against Mai Trin was in your opinion because of cleansing ire and not axe offhand. However, this is a great example of a fight where sword offhand shines with block so I bring the discussion about offhands here too. Personally I feel no condition removal is needed in this fight, at least when playing as warrior. Then again, taking some condition removal isn’t all that bad since Mai’s health is so low that difference between taking offensive compared to defensive utilities is small.

The main point I’d like to understand is what is it that makes you consider axe offhand pug friendly? Is it just the fact axe 5 brings dmg while dodging?

I wouldn’t call people stupid because of using offhand axe, I rarely try to optimize everything myself.

However, name of this thread as well as the earlier posts gave me the impression people were comparing the potential of axe with other offhand choices and cold facts rather than discussing axe’s growing popularity or that using it would just give a feeling of good performance.

If that was the aim, I’d like to add axe offhand looks pretty nice. When it comes down to how axe offhand feels in combat, the feeling I get is I tend not to use skills 4 and 5. Also I haven’t seen any axe offhands recently in dungeons or fractals (granted I haven’t been doing too much of them) and only occasionally in open world.

Pacer.6143:

Meta build don’t have perma fury if you take battlestandard isntead of signet of rage. And you are forgeting that whirling axe gives many many vuls. stack. more than 4% of mace. I can maintain alone -+15 vul. stacks all the time (15% party DPS increase). And you can use evirascate also in rotation. Adrenaline is back in 1-2secs with whirling axe. With sword blocking on bosses you are not contributing to dps.

I melee 90% of the time and I’m puging most of the time in full zerk gear. I can melee cliffside boss and mossman 75% of the time while 2 guards are ranging with scepter without giving me aeigis whatsoever.

Maybe in organized groups is mace better, but for me, axe all the way.

Meta build should be maintaining perma fury. Not by itself when using banner, but if rest of the group is delivering 0 fury I wouldn’t bother bringing banner for them instead of personal dps increase via signet. Fury is now covered, therefore axe 4 brings little to nothing on the table.

With 100% crit chance 15 hits of axe 5 would give you an average of 5 vuln for 7s (0 cond duration) on 20s cd while mace 4 gives you an average of 4.33 vuln for 10s on 15s cd with only 0.33 vuln of that being reliant on rng and crit chance. At least for me, offhand axe vuln compared to mace doesn’t seem appealing.

In addition to that, mace brings aoe kd which really isn’t hard to hit against a group of enemies when they are in the range at which offhand axe operates (melee). While axe 5 gives you the chance to deal dmg during dodge, 2s kd with good dmg lets the whole of your team both deal dmg and save dodges. That is huge, it really makes me sad so many people seem to not value the effects of cc.

Comparing axe to sword makes no sense to me, they obviously reach for different goals. Axe brings only offensive improvements while sword (or warhorn) brings defensive. The difference is there are situations where defensive utility of sword is next to no other option. In case of axe the only situation where I could think of picking it over mace is while soloing content and not needing any utility. In said situation aoe buffing of fgj isn’t utilized meaning you can look for other means to get fury while getting more power by using signet of might instead of fgj.

While berserker can work for both depending on what you do in wvw, I would argue you want different runes for pve and wvw.

Sadly, assuming you are looking to be effective in both pve and wvw you will have to get 2 armor sets. Close to optimal exotic set tailored for pve or wvw will perform way better than ascended set that aims to be effective in both pve and wvw. Either pick pve or wvw set to go for or upgrade both sets piece by piece from exotic to ascended if you can’t decide which set to prioritize.

If you like a certain stat combo for both pve and wvw by all means go for it but in that case asking for opinions isn’t going to lead anywhere so I assume that’s not the case.

Yes, EA is worth it for organised groups. People just want to feel effective (see big numbers) and EA doesn’t give that feeling.

The first round champion actually can be soloed. It turns to face aggro target like once every 2s meaning you can circle around to get hits in. At least warrior can solo it, maybe other professions too with better movement than what I had.

I ran the test with mesmer again, This time I swapped weapons with/without sigil around. Sometimes testing with no 2nd set equipped, sometimes with no force in oh, sometimes wtih no force in mh etc. At one point I got few results pointing to both sets doing the higher of the two dmg values but then the tries with only 1 force sigil got lowered again. I wasn’t able to reproduce the raise in dmg with 1 force sigil after that no matter what I tried so I guess the game is just broken, not surprised.

I tested today with both nec and mes, stacking for both tests…

I ran the test with nec dagger too, still stacking.

Personally I’ve been using double force for daytime when going for 2 dmg sigils. Then again I run quite a bit of forceful greatsword warrior which is as far from ideal of a battle sigil user as it gets. And before someoen points out force doesn’t stack with itself, it actually does, at least in pvp. That is something to be tested again after next patch, though.

For anyone who gets results saying force does not stack: How are you testing it? I just ran the same test i did some months ago again, still stacks. Naked mesmer, no amulet or traits, 4 vuln maintained with chain.

2 force sigils: 60-60-107 on heavy golem
1 force sigil, the other sigil slot empty: 57-57-102 on heavy golem.

Even though this will probably be changed next patch I’m curious to hear if one or several of the people saying it doesn’t stack bothered doing something like large sample size pve testing? I would be interested to hear those results.

Force stacks with itself, or at least it did few months back when tested in the mists. I would be surprised if it was changed after that, but it might get changed in the next patch. I was too lazy to test any 10% sigils because that can’t be done in the mists, but I know at least undead doesn’t stack with itself so force might very well be the only one that does.

Cynz.9437:

- why can dredge snipers attack you through the car but you can attack them back? worst part, it seems like dredge car actually absorbs??? some of the aoe as cluster and choke bomb wouldn’t have any effect not any aoe mark on the fllow if it somehow ended up particualry on the car

This is why you need bowbear. With piercing arrows and eagle eye traits you can hit dredges through car while being far enough for them not to retaliate. That feels good, one of my top moments in dredge fractal for sure.

I’ve heard ascended weapon codes had no infusion slots either, do you have any other information apart from codes?

Actually he is just applying the logic used by majority in past topics.

This situation is a good example of how instabilities promote the luck factor in fractals. It is doable but one of the hardest if not hardest instability/fractal composition at the moment, I believe.

Projectile absorption skills would be strong for this fight since reflects can get their caster killed rapidly. Also mesmer illusions do not trigger instability as eekzie said, so mesmer if a stong pick for this fight. Try to take advantage of projectile cover offered by warden, that is probably the only reflect across professions that won’t hurt players.

Silver.3284:

It is interesting how this concept “It’s ok, you had fun along the way”, can be applied to almost anything else, and looks just as weak on anything else.

I’m happy someone seems to have solved the puzzle.

Because the whole point was to make someone else say it.

haviz.1340:

Azzer.8137:

Can’t you just do a 41 twice and skip 40?, ofcourse 50 you can’t skip this way but 40 there is a workaround.

Yes, that’s what some people will surely do. And that’s what everyone that was arguing for reset was saying, that we haven’t done new instabilities thus we do not deserve having our reward level at 50 from the start.

Yet skipping scales is perfectly fine. Very logical, I must admit.

While one can skip level 40, doing so is clearly an exploit. Anet put the instability there for a reason, if you can’t pass it you are not supposed to progress.

Lopez.7369:

How would it be easier than lv. 31-39? At best it could be the same difficulty, but we know enemies scale up in health and damage, so that can’t be true, either.

It could be easier because with ar you are playing a level with and easy instability: Minimal dmg and healing reduction every once in a while. On the other hand, lower level might have a nasty instability and almost as strong enemies.

LostBalloon.6423:

I think the people that are still rolling for swamp do not understand why people used to do it and why it does not really matter as much anymore…It will just take time for the playerbase to adapt & some superstitious players will still roll for swamp…

Edit: though if I were to get a fractal that is a mid-duration as the first one, I would still reroll…

Swamp rolling is not going to end. On top of still being the fastest choice it is also the least affected by pretty much any instability. I would say it will be the other way around, people who temporarily stopped rolling swamp will after a while return to their old habit.

AKGeo.6048:

I’d still like to see the source for this scale. Because if that’s the case, then Agony has been scaled UP in higher fractals as opposed to DOWN in lower levels. So where does that discrepancy lie? 30? If I did a 30 before the update, I could survive just fine with 35AR. 40 meant I needed 45AR. Is that increased to 50 or 55 now?

It has been scaled down in higher levels and I think it is unchanged in lower levels, but at the same time there are more instances where it’s frequent and unavoidable. Level 30 is the same as before, 40 ar means 1% dmg. Level 40 has been toned down, 55 ar let’s you take 1% insted of 6%. However, level 40 instability applies agony to anyone in combat every ~10s. Basically sustaining party in a fight without enough ar to take 1% dmg requires a lot of coordination even if it’s just 6% dmg every tick, depending on the fractals you get. This also greatly encourages either entering each new “agony tier” with enough ar not to care about it or later, when enough people have reached higher levels, skipping these instabilities.

Jon.1376:

lmao why would I want to keep up with it? I don’t understand the relevance of your post. tokens take time to farm up for exotics. time is the real lost value here. I believe that is the main point of the thread

Even thought you will probably not understand it, you gave me the exact answer I wanted .

Steelxsoldier.6512:

here is my question: can you still buy the 5 agony resist infusions from FoM? If so, can you combine those together to make a +6? Or, have they been removed from the fractal relic golem? Or are they just 5 agony resist instead of a +5 agony resist? I haven’t seen anything on this yet.

You can still buy them but they are different kind of infusions than the ones used in crafting. Infusions you buy from fractals are used in offensive/defensive slots and not in agony infusion slots.