Guild Wars 2

Gaudrath.6725:

kostbabis.8791:

To be honest i dont know with what i d laugh at more..An elementalist staying in 1 attunement doing pitiful damage and dying over and over again ?..
Or an ele in a dungeon spazzing through attunements putting water in cd when nobody needs it,cutting his dps in fire at half,capping the bleed stacks with his pitiful 0 condition damage or using air cc in a boss with infinite defiant stacks ? :P

You do know that the interrupt component kicks in separately from hard CC such as knockdowns?

And again… you swap attunements for combos as well. You get attunement bonuses when traited for it. I get “perma” fury and vigor by rapidly cycling attunements.

So no. There is no good reason to stick in one attunement at any time except when spamming at Orr events. People who advocate anything like that for other 99% of the game need to learn to play.

Hmm, I’d rather have Static Field or Updraft ready right there waiting form me when I know I’m about to need it vs possibly having air on 1.5sec of cooldown at the exact moment I need it. Yes, 20% crit chance is great, but is it going anywhere? Do you get a medal for keeping it going all the time? Is it not worth using at opportune times like in conjunction with your bigger bursts?

I’m still curious about this stance-dancing perma-fury mentality…what happens when a Warrior with FGJ is around? Do you adapt your play to compensate? Or is it really just a habit?

Enundr.9305:

haviz.1340:

Enundr.9305:

again all i see are the aoe bolts , and when not standing in a red circle BOOM random bolt. yes ive kept track of this , you cant keep track of it and you just die.

Strangely, it doesn’t happen to me so the issue must be on your side.

odd that a dungeon boss would only be affecting 1 person then? cause my whole group was complaining about the same thing i saw last time i went in , and that was the bolts.

I’m pretty sure people said the same thing about Kholer way back when…

Nope, calling me a fool (when I haven’t said anything foolish) doesn’t really affect me.

But as Misfit and many others have said, Arah is suppose to be hard…and yet it’s not. For me? Yeah, I still die in that dungeon and I refuse to do Simin anymore than I already have (done it 3 times now, the last recent one wasn’t so bad but I still think the fight is boring) but it’s not ‘hard’.

And if you don’t want to be a n00b, then get better. I could probably complain about how tough lupi is despite having beaten all paths more times than I can remember…but then I just sound like a n00b whiner who just wants his tokens so he can go. I’d rather try and make myself a better player so that I can show how simple some of these fights can be. But yeah, I don’t have as much patience as some of the other solo dungeon players out there. After 30-45min, I’m usually too tried and give up lol.

Retrospek.4583:

DreamOfACure.4382:

I think it’s realistic.

This isn’t a problem with the enemy mobs. It’s a learning experience:

• Always having a way to cure or sustain yourself!

My Guardian has 2 curing passives and one active cure.
My Thief has a spammable cure from Sword2, as well as the shadowstep utility skill.

How can it be a learning experience if not all classes can remove conditions?

All classes can remove conditions with their #5 skill.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Food#Condition_Removal

And that’s just with that particular skill. Every class has something (some more than others) to remove conditions.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_removal#Skills_that_remove_conditions

Enundr.9305:

any other things you feel like throwing to make yourself look like a fool?

I’m not the one crying that lupi is overpowered.

Have you ran much of the other dungeons? At least 80% of them are cake once you’ve done them. Lupicus is a bit tough, but once you understand his animations and the nature of his attacks, he isn’t horrible, but he’s really one of the few challenging fights across all dungeon paths.

Basically you’re whining about content being hard…when it’s suppose to be hard. What? You want it to be facerolled? I don’t even have to laugh in your face when you start talking about the game ‘needing wp rushing’. I’m sure someone else will do that for me.

Now excuse me, I’m going to make another attempt to solo some dungeons.

Which event?

I’m certain there have to be some more events out there that instantly kill you. CoF path 2, if you don’t collect all the bombs for Magg within the time limit, everything goes boom and the whole party dies.

Enundr.9305:

Leo G.4501:

Enundr.9305:

and you can imagine how many of these new players will see this then say screw it after awhile , telling their friends and others to avoid the game because of this? its not an issue of the dungeon being challenging , there has been no real balance put before this was introduced , to have introduced it FIRST was the mistake , the balances should have been TOP priority THEN the no rez rush , and exploiting the issue? you think they could even get the opportunity to even rez someone in the lupi fight? yes they get LOTS of time to rez someone when lupi is doing his charge at them for a 1shot with little to no chance of getting back up , yes anyone wants to waste there time doing that , while avoiding aoe and hoping they dont get hit by this projectile thats easily to miss that 1 shot kos you. yes cause THAT is exploiting the thing and not a fight that is ridiculous with no form to mitigate half of it but just pure luck in most cases , or being one of the elite crowds that dont leave the computer.

EDIT: and the reason other games put in a system to prevent so called “rez rushing” ? cause they rely on the holy trinity crutch , where as we dont. We rely on dodging and constant movement. the system does not support no rez rush as it is (and no i dont want holy trinity but i also dont want this no respawn thing that is sorta a bad idea)

Everyone will always want to have things done their way, doesn’t mean it’s the right way. How were the devs suppose to balance encounters that were too tough when the metric used to fights is so badly skewed because people are exploiting WPs? They can’t tell if a fight is hard or not by how many times people WP back simply because people were NOT REZZING their team.

It’s a vicious cycle that keeps kittening people like you. You wanted them to rebalance fights so you don’t have to WP all the time from dying but you’re dying because your teammates aren’t helping you so it’s not clear if the fight is actually hard or if your team isn’t working together.

So no. No, you can’t have things handled your way. It’s not efficient.

And you can name practically any profession and I’m certain there are various skills that make rezzing teammates easier. I’d suggest keeping them around on your utility bar until you’re certain you won’t need them.

1) reread the part about some fights (like lupi) making it stupid to even ATTEMPT to rez someone , 2) as far as utility skills those only seem to affect DOWNED players , not dead. i know warriors can get a passive trait to make rez slightly faster , but with the previously mentioned fight like Lupi , its not going to help.

-sigh- I swear, these n00bs…

You need to rez someone from dead during a lupi fight? Tag-team rez. Have 1 person (ONLY ONE!) get in and heal some until the next round of AoEs come along then either tag out (dodge) so someone else can get in and keep the process going or use defensive skills (invulnerability, distortion, reflect, projectile destruction, or stealth if you have aggro) to keep going. The ones that are still fighting lupi try and kite away from the area as best as possible.

Regardless, it’s a team effort helping a defeated player and it SHOULD BE. That’s all the more reason to LEARN THE FIGHT and NOT DIE AS MUCH.

Enundr.9305:

and you can imagine how many of these new players will see this then say screw it after awhile , telling their friends and others to avoid the game because of this? its not an issue of the dungeon being challenging , there has been no real balance put before this was introduced , to have introduced it FIRST was the mistake , the balances should have been TOP priority THEN the no rez rush , and exploiting the issue? you think they could even get the opportunity to even rez someone in the lupi fight? yes they get LOTS of time to rez someone when lupi is doing his charge at them for a 1shot with little to no chance of getting back up , yes anyone wants to waste there time doing that , while avoiding aoe and hoping they dont get hit by this projectile thats easily to miss that 1 shot kos you. yes cause THAT is exploiting the thing and not a fight that is ridiculous with no form to mitigate half of it but just pure luck in most cases , or being one of the elite crowds that dont leave the computer.

EDIT: and the reason other games put in a system to prevent so called “rez rushing” ? cause they rely on the holy trinity crutch , where as we dont. We rely on dodging and constant movement. the system does not support no rez rush as it is (and no i dont want holy trinity but i also dont want this no respawn thing that is sorta a bad idea)

Everyone will always want to have things done their way, doesn’t mean it’s the right way. How were the devs suppose to balance encounters that were too tough when the metric used to fights is so badly skewed because people are exploiting WPs? They can’t tell if a fight is hard or not by how many times people WP back simply because people were NOT REZZING their team.

It’s a vicious cycle that keeps kittening people like you. You wanted them to rebalance fights so you don’t have to WP all the time from dying but you’re dying because your teammates aren’t helping you so it’s not clear if the fight is actually hard or if your team isn’t working together.

So no. No, you can’t have things handled your way. It’s not efficient.

And you can name practically any profession and I’m certain there are various skills that make rezzing teammates easier. I’d suggest keeping them around on your utility bar until you’re certain you won’t need them.

Xephier.1647:

It almost seems like toughness has no effect vs fire or poison.

Hahahaha…it doesn’t. Nor Bleeding. Conditions aren’t affected by toughness. That’s why it’s important to have some type of fallback when dealing with foes that use conditions.

Condition damage is not as effective as direct damage namely because of how easy it can be nullified by simply removing the affliction. This is for PvP and PvE too. It would just make the case of condition damage worse if it were affected by toughness.

angan.6572:

If they want to prevent zerg rushing do it with timer. 4 – 5 minutes until next respawn when you are down. Being stuck in lava – unreachable places and let your team trying to 3 man – 2 man bosses because they simply can’t rez you is idiotic.

Once i got stuck in lava for 35 minutes in Sorrows Embrace Path 2 because my group never left combat, not because they didn’t want to but because there was always something aggroing at them. This is simply idiotic. Can’t imagine doing Arah and getting stucked in unreachable places. Heard stories for people laying dead for 1+ hours.
Put a 4- 5 minute timer to respawn and problem solved.

That is a problem with your team. If you don’t start seeing the importance of STOPPING to get your teammates back up, then something is wrong. If I were on a team like that I’d quit because I do not like leechers and it’s wasting my time because having that extra person could easily shave of a sizable fraction of the combat time.

Enundr.9305:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Everyone in the party said they were out of combat… I don’t know what happened but I do know that these dungeons weren’t adequately toned down to account for no WP zerg rushing.

Like I already said in another thread, something about path 2 in AC is much harder when Detha is trying to fix the cannons. I never went down on that part before (or often anyways) but our group wiped the last time we did it (a few times actually) because the mobs were destroying us. It was a competent group and an event that I’ve done many times without much effort but for w/e reason it seemed so much harder all of the sudden.

yes ive had the same issue , noone in combat and one of our members couldnt rez. Ive posted on another thread ive seen Lupi just random 1 shot ppl with some projecticle that they cant even track (no red circles , not near him and BOOm 1 shot not downed but DEAD). ill say it again this no rez incombat thing was not done right or shouldnt have been done at all , if anything prior to this i only “rez rushed” cause WPs are far and few in dungeons , thats why most of my guild actually did it too. So Recap , 1) rez rushing was actually used by a good portion of ppl i know since WPs are far and few , 2) bosses still arent toned down in several areas (as well as someone in lava not being able to respawn sometimes) and this no incombat respawn thing was not ready to push out. More testing should have been done , can see some ppl getting ticked off by this and just waiting for another mmo to come out , makes me sad but with something like this , do you really blame them?

Then I’d say you should thank the players (in your guild and others) for exploiting the tactic to its fullest so that it was made top priority to fix. Sure, some didn’t abuse the WP system and genuinely tried to help downed and dead players where they could…but there were FAR more players that would simply let their teammates die because ‘it was faster’ to just go back to a WP. If you don’t find that a problem then you need to open your eyes.

As for waiting and testing more, that would always be beneficial but new players are joining the game every day. I’ve began to run all the old story modes again because we’re getting fresh new people in our guild. The last thing we need is for those new to the game be corrupted by the stupid mistakes of our past.

Anet already said they’re working on rebalancing some content. Just look on the bright side: this will mainly only get easier for everyone from here.

Heh, I laughed at the description of stoning them like some biblical fable. I can hear the sound of lumps of stone smashing them and their ethereal forms flopping on the ground in my head. It makes me laugh at how sad it actually is.

Curious how long it’d take a group to stone the ghosts to death. I’ve never tried it myself.

Then someone explain how a ‘field of earth’ can work with projectiles to create combos. It’s simple to wrap your head around shooting an arrow through a fire field and getting flaming arrows, and although farfetched, you can shoot bullets through water and get magical-water-healing-bullets…

…but how do you throw a weapon through a collection of unsteady rocks (that are * lying along the ground*, mind you) and somehow get ‘rock-like’ effects on the thrown projectile?

Magnetic auras? That’s not an ‘earth’ field, that’s a ‘magnetic’ field. I wouldn’t mind having magnetic fields added but currently no skills elementalist has would qualify except maybe Magnetic Wave…and that kittening skill don’t need no more crap added to it!

During the winter event, those stupid princess dolls give themselves boons and stack lots of confusion on you. If you turn the tables, besides their regeneration, you can steal their protection which lasts minutes. Stealing it multiple times can get you upwards of 3min of 33% damage reduction which I didn’t think was possible because Protection’s max stackable duration is 25sec.

Link to the off-hand torch idea for elementalist:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Off-Hand-Torch-Elementalist/first#post1299923

DaedalusDragon.3754:

No forethought… In magg run of CoF if you die in a lava pool during the run across the lava your entire group and magg is stuck permanently unless you log out. You continuously take fire damage even when dead and that keeps everybody in combat. You cant res, they can’t continue the story, and you have to log out and log back in to continue the dungeon. Simple things like that should not have happened if their was a lot of forethought.

That’s rather hit or miss.

I’ve been in that exact situation (died trying to get Magg up with my rez to follow but got immobilized and died in the fire) and after Magg got through from following the other teammember, I was able to rez back at a waypoint despite still taking damage from the flames.

Most likely, being unable to go back to a waypoint involves one of the other teammebers thinking they’re out of combat but still are. If they can’t use a waypoint themselves, then there’s the problem. If they can, it clears anyone (themselves and NPCs/pets) from combat and you can revive.

If I were with you on your run, I’d take the time to rez you rather than just doing the fight with 4.

Eventually, when this mentality is learned, your misgivings with the current state of the game won’t be an issue.

Most tend not to know all the little details until after something goes wrong, in which case, the boss not being superheated and then trying to use a daze and it not stopping its heal.

It rather goes hand in hand with learning though experience rather than googling a guide just because you’ve never done it before. You might not get all the mechanics learned for up to a dozen run-throughs if situations don’t turn sour often enough.

I’d say it is weapon dependent.

On Staff, I like fire. Who doesn’t like the archetypical fireball attack? And the lava font is nice too but the most flashiest over-the-top attack, Meteor Shower, is always fun to watch.

On Daggers, I like Water. Namely because of the auto-attack and that I use sometimes 2 or more glyphs (and usually mist form), he feels like a ninja with his vapor blade shuriken.

On Scepter, it’s Air. Especially the ‘I don’t have to cast anything, I can just look at you (but don’t have to) and a lightning strike will smack you out of nowhere’ attacks.

On Focus, it’s rather a toss up between air and earth. They both feel nice.

OP, I hope you find a good use for the skill. Since it’s rarely used, you might catch some people by surprise with it. Does the strength tree trait affect the transformed skills?

As for how I use it, my Asura is already taller than the average Asura (almost chest height to some female humans) but when he wants to seriously hit on those larger Norn ladies, the extra height from Rampage can slightly help his game. However, when he discovered a vendor that sold growth potions (a heart vendor in one of the Ascalon areas) that made him even taller, he looked over to Rampage, shook his head and said “Looks like I don’t need you anymore.”
[pic1 = natural height, pic2 = w/ rampage, pic3 = w/ growth potion]

kostbabis.8791:

To be honest i dont know with what i d laugh at more..An elementalist staying in 1 attunement doing pitiful damage and dying over and over again ?..
Or an ele in a dungeon spazzing through attunements putting water in cd when nobody needs it,cutting his dps in fire at half,capping the bleed stacks with his pitiful 0 condition damage or using air cc in a boss with infinite defiant stacks ? :P

Thank you!

I tried to say it earlier a bit more subtly but yeah, how people speak of using elementalists sometimes just makes me shake my head. Yeah you don’t want to just stay in one attunement but you don’t want to just dance through them just because they’re there.

There’s nothing wrong with sticking in, say Water for 15 sec or more if you know you need the chill and healing, spamming the auto for some vulnerability stacks isn’t horrible for the team either. Or just sticking in Fire when you know you need the AoE.

I can only hope in PvP (namely 1v1 or small scale) isn’t a spam fest. Players tout PvP above all else, it’d be a shame if all you had to do to win was cycle through your attunements. If you’re doing high-end fractals, that isn’t always the best approach.

Sons.5493:

Element bending with no weapons. Thank you very much Arenanet.

Anet: Oh NONOnono no no no no. No no no. Nooo no…./chuckle. No…

solarisnox.8521:

is there any armor or trinket that is a combination of Toughness/Vitality/Healing Power?
(regardless of which is primary and secondary)

btw: great stat prefix list!

Nope.

Another point, neither Magic Find and Critical Damage (nor Boon/Condition Duration) can be primary stats, at least not as of now. I’d say they probably held this back for balance sake although if you think otherwise I’d be curious to hear about why.

I don’t think prefixes are really the problem though, or even balance being the reason why they haven’t added more combos to the game. IMO, it’s more a matter of time. The devs want options of gear content to add to the game and trickling in the combos over time is the answer. The only other option would be having +4stat combo gear and so on (not talking Ascended though) and they probably don’t want to dip into that stuff for a long while.

That said, they recently added Giver’s gear (although I think it’s still bugged) which gave another stat (I wouldn’t consider condition duration a completely different stat from boon duration yet, as those are the differences between the armor and weapons). They added Apothecary gear before that which is healing/toughness/condition.

I think the only thing you can do is hope the stat combination you want is next on the ‘to-add to the game’ list. We’ll take Merciless for power/condition damage/crit damage next please!

Indeed, it’s a shame.

Personally, I’m hoping for some Power/Condition/Crit damage gear, myself.

Vanillea.5764:

Switch attunement counts as 1 skill. Dodge while having Evasive Arcana counts as 2 skills. Flame blast from sigil counts as 1 skills. Each of the lv 15 minor trais might count as 1 skill but I am not so sure about that. Overall, Signet provides very good sustain that stacks with Regen. If you use glyph on Water, the regen duration is extended but the intensity is not. Signet is better when you have another burst heal options.

Use the glyph in earth then. Stacked mitigation (i.e. a variety of boons) is better than putting all your eggs in one basket anyway.

The other side of signets are their traits though. I think that’s rather the point of them. There are extra little positives you can build toward to improve your or their individual performance.

Elementalist’s trait to make signets passives always on is a big plus for their passive effects and why it’s a Grandmaster trait…but then you also have traits like Fire’s embrace that gives you extra effects for casting signets.

There’s others like getting precision for each unused signet, or getting distortion from using signets which all tie into their performance. Other trait lines aren’t so lucky to have supporting traits like those. I mean, what about Transforms? Those are pitiful no matter what and no traits to help…I’d actually suggest, at least for elementalist, that Mist Form be converted to a Transform utility and then gain some sort of trait to improve them (longer transformation duration, additional skills/stats while transformed, etc).

I read someone’s suggestion for an off-hand torch for elementalist and thought that was a novel idea.

Another I might suggest would be a Bow, both long and short, with the short having your mid-range with some interesting mobility skills and your longbow being long range with some decently high ST damage with perhaps a deficiency of utility…but more importantly, attacks that aren’t all projectiles.

PS: on the point about not copying the conjures, I’m actually hoping someone comes up with a better solution for these utilities. I don’t think they’re bad, just not always practical in use. A change in their core use to reassess their concept or just make them more usable may be in order, but having more weapon options can add more playstyles that conjures just don’t accomplish.

Fiddlestyx.9714:

As long as they are enjoying the game and not hindering you (don’t group with them if it’s a problem) then I wouldn’t worry about it.

Indeed, I don’t see why so many complain about this.

The way I see it, they stay in fire, I’ll swap to some blasty stuff and stack might. Which might mean using more earth skills than usual or using a hammer or axe for more burns. Same with mesmers that use alot of ethereal fields means it’s time for leaps and blast combos for chaos armor.

Around these parts, Tornadoes are ridiculously slow, don’t cause much damage and are very easily hit and destroyed because they’re such big targets.

Malcastus.6240:

An improvement would be to remove the Written in Stone trait, making the passive effects work all the time, that way more diverse builds would be possible, and you only have to invest 10 points in earth for lower CD. If they also moved it to the fire tree, it would be interesting.

That sort of defeats the whole concept of signets though. Signets across all professions have a passive effect when unused and an active one you gain by sacrificing the passive effect for a time. Only elementalist are capable of keeping the passive effect regardless.

But then perhaps I’m just thinking too logically about the ability type’s concept. It’s basically like having a marked symbol with you and you give that symbol power by believing in it and keeping it with you. Using it, you’re basically throwing away your symbol for momentary power, which is why I’ve never really cared much for signets on any profession.

zTales.4392:

That’s the point, though. I don’t want people to ragequit and roll something else. That’s why I directed this toward NEW Eles, so that they’re aware. Staying in Fire/Air, for example, can get you killed pretty easily.

I’d say staying in fire/air doesn’t get you killed, taking damage and not doing anything in response gets you killed, obviously.

You can stay in fire/air all day and not get killed…or swap to water/earth and get killed…or dance like a lunatic and still get killed.

Perhaps you should be more specific in your message.

With the glyph + inscription, I’m capable of getting max duration protection for myself with the proper set-up. I find that a bit better than aiming for the extra regen from water attunement. Use the swap for whatever bit of regen you may need.

The glyph is really versatile in that respect plus it can trigger on-heal food and runes which make it even more versatile for a variety of builds. I don’t really run the FotM d/d build so maybe the signet is better but I always found it sub-standard for me.

And considering I like to pick Air traits, it can make the glyph (and all the other glyphs) much better for me.

That said, I still find Ether Renewal better than either despite not having any traits to support it. I almost wish ER was a conjure or something so support traits would give it more versatility. In the instances where I need a heal + condition removal that glyph+food can’t cover (and because I don’t just hurr/durr 30water/30arcane) then ER will handle it in spades.

Hmm how about for the Fire traits, we roll Persisting Flames (30% fire field duration) and One with Fire (chance on flame Barrier while attuned to fire) into one Master Trait.

For a Grandmaster trait, we add Master Summoner (Summon a ‘spectral weapon’ depending what conjure you use for 25sec. Summoned entities have +20% more health).

Basically, if you use frost bow, it will summon a bow in your hand, a bow on the ground and a pet Ice Bow that will use its attacks until it expires or it is destroyed. It also helps summoned elementals by increasing their health.

Probably wouldn’t make conjures hugely better in PvP but it’d be a sort of summoner/pet type elementalist for those that like that.

A lvl 60 alternative to that build would be a regen banner build. I say alternative because, if you like support and shouts and want to dip into Tactics for reduced cooldowns, you might not like going Tactics and Defense at the same time.

Adrenal Health’s regen is sub-standard but it works however you have to either not use Adrenaline as much as you might want to or need to be able to build it relatively quickly. Some weapons you just want to spam the burst skill but like those videos say, if you go greatsword then what burst? But I like to play with more than one weapon so yeah, that’s not ideal for me.

Adrenal Health regens I believe 360 HP/3sec which is 120HP/sec which is lower than regular regen and doesn’t scale with healing power. If you don’t mind dipping into Tactics and keeping a banner on your tray, you basically get 1.25x better Adrenal Health but also for your whole team. And you can make it better by simply popping a Sigil of Life on one of your weapons.

Maybe.

But I seem to be the only one that always keeps 30 in air >_>

Also, since the beginning, I’ve usually had 30 in water but as I play dual dagger less and less the amount of time I play elementalist, the Powerful Auras trait gets less and less useful.

One of these days I’m going to have to take all my points out of water and put it into earth because I really never use earth traits. Or maybe something drastic and take all points out of air and put them in earth instead.

I usually let the build dictate the style rather than try to pinpoint a desired playstyle then build toward it.

Not positive myself but I’d wager it’s that condition users usually have toughness in their build out of necessity (namely per/toughness/condi gear and/or the need to survive while their conditions apply their DPS).

Not sure what protection does special besides apply a reduction to direct damage after the damage is calculated by a character’s armor.

The extra evade weighs this heavily in GS’s favor. However, if you’re a Charr, it weighs heavily against GS.

Yeah that’s probably it.

At first I thought this situation was similar to another poster who consistently describes Warrior’s Signet of Rage as looking like farts when farts don’t have a look…but I think he was just being silly.

If there’s a gurgle sound in the Charr male voices, I don’t hear it. A low growly tone when they hit a certain pitch? Yeah, but not like someone gargling or something in the background, at least not to me.

While I can agree that off-hand sword isn’t the best of weapons a warrior can use…

…but how in the holy heck can you compare Riposte to Mesmer Blurred Frenzy? They’re totally different skills in completely different hands. Blurred Frenzy is the #2 attack and is the premiere melee strike of Mesmer because it locks their squishy selves in melee for around a second.

If you’re comparing something to Blurred Frenzy, it’d likely be Flurry and/or Savage Leap (combined make a deadly combo). But you can’t because they do totally different things.

If you’re comparing something to Riposte, then it should be Illusionary Riposte, which frankly isn’t very good either. I think it’s a bit better suited on Mesmer if only because they don’t often sit in melee range long enough to need to block more than a couple of attacks.

Personally, I think they should just add more ‘paths’, sort of like how the underwater fractal has the glowie-plants or the dolphin path. Just play with the whole instance so maybe it’s not as cut and dry as ‘insert fork here’ but have whole different objectives.

LameFox.6349:

caelstraz.6298:

If it doesn’t seem realistic try talking with a mouthful of fangs and a tongue that’s probably more feline than human and see how clear your voice sounds :p

That’s what bothers me about it in the first place. I mean think of the stuff that’s happened to your voice before… I’ve had it affected by all sorts of things: wisdom teeth cut out, talking through mouth guards, bit tongue, accidentally blew hole in tongue (it hurt, don’t eat explosives), drunken slurring, rasping out ‘I can’t breathe’… but as weird as you can make yourself sound, how often do you feel someone is following you around playing a recorded gurgling sound randomly while you speak? :P

Maybe you should test out talking through a neck the size of a human torso and see if that might affect things :P

Dante.1508:

Yes…
You see those level requirements on those dungeons, ignore them totally they are meaningless you need to be Exotic geared 80 with the rest of your group 80 geared to attempt such folly…

Ascended helps too course…because you know hard and insane = Fun these days…

Hah, how do you even get to level 80 in the first place? Doing map completion?!

No! You rake in that gold doing dungeons once they become available for your level range! Duh! Everybody knows that and that’s how I level all my 80s so far.

Well obviously, Warrior should chain 2 scepters together as a 2-handed weapon and use them like nunchaku.

Horrorscope.7632:

^And then you are back to square one. So Yaki would you say the most important thing is to get dodge regenerating as fast as possible?

You don’t have infinite dodge, though. Even with vigor (100% Endurance regeneration or recover Endurance 2x faster) the fastest one can recover endurance, you will be without endurance if you spam dodge.

That said, you don’t need vigor to survive but it helps. Most encounters are doable with proper placement and timed dodges. Often vigor is moreso used for on-dodge effects like Elementalist’s Evasive Arcana that casts a spell when you dodge or Mesmer’s Deceptive Evasion that creates clones when you dodge.

It’s better to be able to use your dodges effectively, not just to be able to dodge more.

The best heals in the game are the #6 skills. All the other stuff is only to hold you off from needing #6 right away or until it’s off cooldown.

The best support is boons/conditions and well place CC. Healing is more a secondary support along with condition removal. And the best tank is someone who can dodge well enough to not need any of those.

Aggro feels pretty mysterious to me. It’s very mob dependant and I haven’t really delved into that well of knowledge yet. Some mobs aggro whatever is closest to them and/or who has done damage to them while some seem to want to attack players with specific equipment (i.e. light armor or is using a shield). The best way to lose aggro is to run away from the mob while staying close seems to help maintain the mob’s attention. The most definite way to loose aggro is via stealth.

I don’t know the specifics on aggro though but the best way I’ve learned, again, is get close when you’re high but run away when you’re low.

Elm.8169:

Kalas.6743:

All those snipers can down someone who is not in heavy armor with one volley, and it’s hard to tell when they are going to fire. It was one of my most hated dungeons because it always seemed that they focused me first.

But yeah, the mobs in this dungeon are terrible. Not to mention the shotgun weilding, rapid firing, knockdown happy boss and the boss with the ice flame thrower which chills anyone in an area.

It’s all about knowing the mechanics. Bandit Riflemen do double damage against moving targets. It’s not very much if you’re standing still. It also draws a huge crosshair under your feet when they’re aiming at you. You should have plenty of time to stop moving, dodgeroll, or LoS.

The shotgun boss puts both hands on the shotgun and aims at someone. You simply need to dodgeroll or back off when that happens.

Once you know what to look out for, CM is a cake.

Huh. I’ve played CM countless times and didn’t realize you’d get hit for less if you stopped moving.

But be that the case, it’s rather defeated when you’ve got 2 other bandits either bombing you to death or slicing you up with bleed and poison, you either move out of the way of that or eat other stuff and still suffer.

But regardless, CM is never cake! It will never BE cake until the devs feel it needs to be nerfed. Those mobs are like terminators when you realize a regular human thief could never take that much punishment and they will either SWARM you or find a way to swarm you.

It’s a pain but a challenging pain when you understand how they attack. Just don’t feel like you wasted anything from failing a dungeon. If you learned from the experience, then it will make the other paths easier and future runs less chaotic.

I’m getting a laugh at the OP. Because it’s true. When you first get your feet wet in dungeons, you gonna die.

I think the part that makes the difference though is knowing the enemy. All the talk about support, CC, kiting, etc is all well and good but it really does little when you don’t have knowledge of the enemy…and having knowledge of the enemy is almost all you need to survive most encounters (in AC at the very least).

The gravelings have a variety of attacks you probably want to look out for, one being their flip-evade-claw attack which lets them hit you multiple times while dodging your attacks and it causes vulnerability on you…it also hits pretty hard. You might as well dodge away from them since swinging or shooting at them won’t cause any harm.

Then there’s the graveling ‘class’ specific attacks. The Breeder class spits up lots of little gravelings. They’re not that dangerous alone (and don’t attack very often) but each time they attack it causes bleeding. Having 5-10 of these little guys chasing you to hit you once can stack lots of bleed which will drop you if you’re not savvy enough to stop the Breeder by interrupting it, kill it fast while it’s spitting up (it doesn’t do anything while it’s spitting up, leaving it open for attack) or quickly dispose of the summoned gravelings with AoEs.

The Howler class, while it also has the flip-evade-claw attack, it spends most of its time using various howls. These howls, I believe, buff all its graveling buddies with might. He also does a cone howling scream that knocks you and allies back and stuns you for a bit. You can either dodge away, move around him so he only stuns you rather than all your buddies next to you (if he’s attacking you with it), use stability so that you can’t be knocked/stunned or a block maneuver to shield yourself. If you get knocked down, you can use a stun breaker to get back up faster. Another point about the Howlers, they seem to be more sturdy than the rest. People usually defeat them last as it’s better to dispose of more threats quickly at the start.

Lastly there’s the Scavenger class which are probably the most annoying. These have a deadly leaping attack that, if you don’t dodge, can knock you down and then follow up with a continuous barrage of headbutt that will keep knocking you down and do quite a bit of damage. The most annoying thing though is, this can affect multiple group members and one has to be careful around a scavenger who is headbutting as they could find themselves taking heavy damage or knocked on the ground helpless. To combat this, dodge is the easiest bet, move away after he does the leap. You can also cripple or chill them which shortens their leap distance often leading to him not reaching you or allies. You can use stability or blocks to defend against the initial attack but it’s still important to move away from it. Lastly, there’s CC; knock the guy back, stun or freeze him before he lands the leap (before it leaps or while it’s leaping).

The best way to support, IMO, is with area effects like damage on breeders or control on the scavengers. It’s also very important to rez someone who’s been tackled by a scavenger. Either CC the scavenger then pick up your teammate or just position yourself and safely bring up your friend while they’re being attacked. After the scavenger finishes his headbutts, he stuns himself for a couple seconds (banging your head against armored adventurers will do that) to which your ally will be up and ready for revenge.

Beyond that, there are special ‘sequences’ to the various events to make them easier that you might have fun learning on your own or you can look up some guides too. But it’s always important to know the enemy! Then you can dodge and defend against their attacks.

I started out as dagger/dagger. Not sure what I did to stay alive since that was back when the game released and I wasn’t that savvy about gear. I think I went with defensive gear with some vitality and healing power. I also used signets for some reason (probably to keep the gameplay simple while I was learning the weapon skills and attunements) which also meant using Signet of Restoration to heal every time I cast something.

I probably would suggest using Vitality if you’re having trouble surviving in the early levels. With it, you have quite a few extra hits in you before you go down.

bri.2359:

Defending Maggs while he plants the bomb is CoF path 2 …

Right, but OP mentioned Magg and Magg isn’t in CoF 3.