Guild Wars 2

foofad.5162:

Devils.3679:

Why are people talking Torch? i started this thread to get other guardians like Lightrayne.7829 to say yes people scepter is bad(99% of the time). i know Anet put it in so new player could get use to the game and learn how fights worked(Yes i did this also). I just want to encourage players to say “Hey i’m a melee class and that its how i will learn to play to benefit my team”. If it dungeon dps you want why are people talking sword torch? GS/staff delivers the most substained AoE dps with the right build. With dungeons AoE is what you want and i can still hit for over 10k on single target. Thats without full zerker as we need to stay on our feet.

Look, I’ve been playing Guardian for about a thousand hours now, since BWE2. If you don’t have a scepter in your inventory, you are ridiculous. Every guardian should have one. It’s extremely useful. You don’t have to use it all the time, but it’s fine for what it is, which is a ranged option for those fights where ranged is a better idea. I don’t understand why you need to go on a crusade about it. Maybe it doesn’t fit with your idea of what a guardian is supposed to be. But the reality is it serves a purpose and if you completely disown it you’re hurting yourself, not helping anyone else.

The OP states that he does use a scepter on occasion. I think he’s trying to question why people use it as a PRIMARY weapon of choice, especially when it is highly inferior against multiple mobs.

Sometimes, when we have no other heavies on my PuG team, I get ticked off that I have to carry the guardian’s weight when we fight multiple trash mobs (as an example) that we can’t skip. The guardian’s auto attack w/ scepter is ineffective because it can’t consistently hit the intended target due to the interference of moving mobs. The immobilize is useless as you only root a single target. Smite is distributive AoE, which is basically the same thing as hitting each target one at a time with an auto attack. In this scenario, which happens a lot in dungeons, how is the guardian being helpful aside from staying alive? Wouldn’t controlling the mobs with a GS pull + hammer ring of warding make it easier for your team to cleave/AoE the mobs to death versus chasing the mobs with chaotic kiting?

Again, when it comes to PuGs, I’ve just resorted to biting the bullet and trying to outplay them in a way that helps the team. When a PuG plays like that, they’re pretty much leeching (unless, of course, they’re new, trying to adjust to the dungeon). If it becomes habit, it almost seems as if they don’t care that they’re making us do more work in what’s supposed to be a team effort. I dislike using hammer and staff as it’s not my style, but I use them accordingly if it gives my team a strategic advantage. Not contributing your best effort as a guardian by refusing to use the appropriate weapons/skils/major traits for the scenario is like not passing the ball to a teammate in an attempt to score a goal in sports.

Bakitten291:

Because scepter is completely fine? Why force people to play melee when they can pretty much do the same with a ranged weapon? If you only made a thread to get people to agree with you on principal alone, then why make the thread? You had to know people would disagree. (And I am sorry about the torch tangent, but all offhands must also be considered when we are comparing a 1h weapon to 2h weapons.)

Melee damage was designed (stated by Anet) to deal more damage than ranged because of the risk involved. Does a scepter hit 3 targets at the same time with an auto attack? No. Does a scepter pull multiple mobs together or keep them in place? They can root one in place, so mostly no.

Examples:
GS

• AoE blind
• Retaliation field with AoE dmg
• Auto attack cleaves + might on end chain
• AoE DoT that can be triggered if pull is needed
• Bursty AoE attack

Hammer

• Auto attack cleaves + pulsing damage symbol with protection
• Quick cd on AoE spike
• linear AoE immobilize (much more effective than scepter’s)
• has a knockback if isolated mob needs to be pushed into group
• ring of warding keeps stacked mobs in place for optimal AoE dmg

Why use scepter over these options? How can you pretty much do this with a scepter?

He’s questioning the reasoning behind people using the scepter as a PRIMARY weapon for everything when the other weapons have a greater advantage across the board. The scepter does have its uses, but it shouldn’t be habit as a primary weapon when trying to work with a team in most scenarios, otherwise you’re pretty much leeching.

hammer.9721:

Ioflux.4369:

hammer.9721:

seems to me there are a few others that realized you dont need the so called meta group group in this thread and the comment about me being a freeloader lol.guess some people are stuck in their wow days still thinking only a certain make up of classes can do something even though it was laughable there as well.

What’s funny is that you actually think your P/D thief is pulling its equal value to the rest of the warriors in your group. I could bring my necro and auto attack and be proud that we can do “speedrun farms” but I wouldnt be so deluded as to think my necro is pulling its own weight. (not dying is not the same as pulling your own weight).

Actually what is even more funny is you think people are always grouped with warriors and that im always group with multiple ones.My favorite farm group was 4 thieves and a mez.we did 10 flawless runs.Another of my favorite groups was a group i wasnt even sure about at first that consisted of me 2 rangers and 2 necros and once again near flawless.one person did die at the rocks but big deal.

While the so called elite people are spending time trying to find that perfect group i already did my first 3 runs on my p/d thief and switched to my mes.

I will run cof with any class combination if the player knows what they are doing.Now i do agree somewhat with your necro comment.I did one run with mine and because of the spec i was a liability and havent used him since but i have been with a lot of necros that i would have no problem running with again.

The point I think the others were trying to make, is that by design (stated by Anet), melee weapons deal more DPS, and you are purposely reducing DPS significantly by choosing to stay with a ranged weapon. This is true, of course, if you learn how to avoid downing/dying at melee range. Melee is given more damage because of how risky it is compared to the safety of shooting at a target from a distance.

If you’re going to argue that P/D is an optimal weapon for DPS versus D/D or even S/P, what is your reasoning besides distance safety? Are skills 1, 2, and 3 somehow superior? I don’t think anyone is arguing that a run can’t be completed with P/D, but rather that it is not the most efficient set to use for optimal damage.

Phaedryn.3698:

Wolfheart.1938:

AgentChaos.4932:

why cant you support the team when using scepter? if i want to shout i’ll just move near my team mates then pop the shouts, then i’ll go back out and attack from range.
beside at high fractal, melee is pretty suicidal

Nah. Level 42 here, relatively tanky Guardian ( 17k HP, 2.9k armor ) and I melee 80% of the time. Not to boast, mind you.

For a moment there I completely spaced that you were talking about Fractal level 42 and was thinking…“how in the hell does a level 42 Guardian have 17K HP and 2.9K Armor????”. LOL…

Yeah, I never understood why people call it levels when the game labels them as scales. Sometimes when people start sentences like “When I’m on my level x profession,….”, it’s hard to tell if they’re trying to refer to fractals when no context is given.

As far as I understand, Anet has designed melee to be higher in damage compared to ranged because melee has more risks involved, while range gets more comfort by distance. I won’t go so far to say it’s wrong, but I will claim that it is not optimal if DPS is what you want (taking survivability out of the equation for a second). Scepter provides a nice comfort zone until you realize that you can do better.

OP, you kinda answered your own question. Guardians primarily using ranged are likely doing it because they’re not used to meleeing the content. However, there are certain situations where I do use a scepter (i.e. dredge fractal endboss when most of team doesn’t have good AR or maybe on objects that are on walls). I melee almost everything on my guardian (even Giganticus Lupicus) and switch to scepter for specific encounters. My main set is GS/Staff, but I swap for any combination of hammer, focus, shield, sword, or scepter when it can give me better options for the current encounter.

There are certain encounters where I agree scepter is completely bad and I think guardians seriously need to realize it. The Magg defense room in CoF p2 is an example. Why would you use a single target weapon in a room where you’re being pressured by multiple mobs and your attacks can suffer from extreme interference? Smite is a distributive AoE, meaning its individual ticks does not hit all targets in the area at the same time, so it’s like hitting individual targets with single target hits. Your only useful skill here on scepter would be the immobilize on scepter 3, but then again, the hammer does it much better since it’s a linear AoE immobilize.

I think it’s fine to use scepter on a boss (since it’s single target) if you’re still not comfortable melee’ing, but when dealing with multiple mobs, you’re slowing the group down for the reasons mentioned above, and you’re potentially making the encounter more difficult for yourself than it needs to be. I’ll admit that I used to range a lot when I was new, but once I learned how to dodge, counter, or negate the appropriate hits, meleeing became easier and more efficient.

When I’m in a PuG playing an alt, I do get a bit annoyed when the guardian on the team (only heavy on team) is just sceptering an easy boss when it would be more helpful if he/she melee’d the boss to keep it in place. I’ve taken the liberty to learn how to melee with any profession in case of situations like this. I could lash out at every person that sceptered an easy boss while on a guardian, but I have no idea what their personal experience level is or how comfortable they are with melee. The important thing with a PuG is that they have a way to stay alive and keep their damage constant rather than flopping around and dying doing something their unfamiliar with. If it’s a guild or friend who WANTS to improve their capabilities, then you can bet I’ll do my best to encourage them to come out of their “range-only” shell.

There are no passive movement speed abilities for guardian, but you have a few ways to get swiftness and some gap closers to reduce your travel time:

• Staff 3 (symbol of swiftness) gives you 8s of swiftness with a 15s CD
• Retreat (utility skill) gives you 20s of swiftness but with a 60s CD unless traited (48s instead with superior aria trait)
• Save yourself (utility skill) gives 10s of swiftness; same issue as above
• GS 3 (leap of faith) can leap you forward a decent distance every few seconds
• Sword 2 (flashing blade) can blink you forward a decent distance every few seconds if you can get used to targeting an enemy ahead of you, even if it’s farther than flashing blade’s distance
• Judge’s Intervention (utility skill) can blink you forward 1200 range using the same tactic as above

If you use these in some combination, you can cover ground pretty quickly. I personally use GS and sword/x when I play open world PvE. When I need to run somewhere, I use retreat and mix up GS 3 and sword 2.

My general rule is to wait at least an hour to return to the dungeons after you notice DR.

Just to clarify:

• Keep in mind that if you’re getting 20 tokens for a repeated run, that is NOT DR. That is a repeat reward (initial clear reward being 60) without DR.
• 20 will be your maximum token reward on subsequent same path runs without DR until dailies reset.

It’s more or less a consistency issue. I hope at some point they polish up the account bound/soul bound systems. Soulbound on use with the warning prompt seems best, in my opinion.

Luckily, it’s not needed for the 10 sample reward, and on its own, the sample isn’t even worth any achievement points. Given that, I don’t see why it would be an issue. I wouldn’t even bring OCD as an argument either because there’s plenty of permanent achievements out there that one may never acquire due to limitations of tolerance or capabilities. I think it’s convenient that we have some freedom in choosing which achievements to chase for the item rewards.

Ari Kagura.9182:

For what it’s worth, I know Robert hasn’t responded to anything in this Dungeon Forum for the past 10 days. I’m lead to believe that he’s either taken a vacation or working in another team— and he’s usually quite vocal about certain matters regarding dungeons, rangers, and rangers in dungeons.

He said in a thread a while ago that he’s been called to temporarily work on another part of the game, so we probably won’t see much dungeon action from him for a bit. For one thing, I noticed that he’s listed on the team for the return to Southsun Cove (recent blog post).

The shield, I feel, is a pretty niche PvE weapon:

• Skill 4 is pretty annoying as a cone skill, but you can apply protection if you expect some big hits to come. However, I wouldn’t choose it over our better choices of protection applying skills.
• Skill 5 has multiple niche uses. Its sequence skill lets you heal a bit. If you keep it up, it’s a neat anti-projectile (anti-projectiles are pretty strong in dungeons). The knockback can be used as an interrupt if you position yourself to push the target(s) into a wall, so you don’t scatter them or force a target out of your team’s AoEs. I mainly use the knockback to help stack mobs together, so the team’s AoE damage is maximized.
• The shield’s role, in my experience, is a minor control/support offhand. You’ll probably use it more against heavy projectiles (harpy fractal) or in situations where you may want to mob stack while wielding a one-handed weapon (i.e. golem bosses at the end of harpy fractal). It’s not a weapon that I would consider a “must-have”, though. If you want it for its niche uses, pick one up. Otherwise, you’re not missing much.

You can change target with #1 by pressing escape and hitting a different target.

Yeah, I’ve just come to the conclusion that fractals is for “gambling” for the weapon skins and trying to get some form of ascended gear. This is just my opinion, but when someone in a PuG asks to farm easily skippable mobs for something other than the mist essence drops, I think it’s just silly because you could make more progress farming outside of fractals. These days, I only hit fractals if my friends want to do it or if it’s part of the daily/monthly.

Fractals’ reward system seems inconsistent to the other reward systems we have. At least with dungeon tokens, for example, there’s a “dump” system you can use after you’ve collected your skin/stats from the dungeon(s). You can either mystic forge the exotics or salvage the 70+ rares if you want coin.

Cavendish.2168:

Hello there guardian bro’s

Last night I ran COF story mode. I found it much much harder than exp p1. I felt like all the bosses and mobs were targeting me more than anyone in my party(not sure, could just be my perception though because I was getting killed a lot). I am wondering if I was being targeted by bosses more since I suspect I had more toughness than my party mates.

I read on wiki aggro is mostly determined by proximity and threat level based on damage inflicted, but how much influence does toughness have?

Currently I am using the shout based altruistic healer build 0/0/30/30/10. My stats are
Attack:2900
Crit chance:38%
Toughness: 1800, armor:3000
Health:15000
Healing:340
Im wearing a mix of knights and valkyrie armor with all knights jewelry.

Does anyone think it would make a difference if I used a different build without many points in the valor line? Or if I wore different armor and jewelry without toughness(which would cost a lot of gold)? Or do I just suck at this game?

Thanks for any input.

I think your stats are fine for what you want to do, and I have even less HP than you do, but I can survive in CoF story. From your post, it looks like this might have been your first attempt at story mode, but from your build, it looks like you WANT to get mob attention. At least, when I run pretty much the same build, that’s my intent. Unfamiliarity might have been the factor here.

Nirvana.5796:

Lightrayne.7829:

I’ve obtained all the skins I wanted since the last time I posted, so here’s an update.

What are you wearing? It looks like a robe of some sort.

The Honor of the Waves heavy chest and leggings make up the cloth appearance.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Honor_of_the_Waves_armor

I try not to think about it too much in PuGs, but while we’re here, I’ll vent a bit.

Many “scepter” guardians I’ve seen don’t seem to understand that the weapon is meant for single target damage. Smite is distributive AoE, so if you use it on a group, it’s the equivalent to hitting each of them one at a time instead of simultaneously like most AoEs. I’ll see guardians use a scepter/offhand mix (and not swap) in the CoF p1 brazier room, messing up the gate kill because they’re kiting outside of the brazier field. Also, during the CoF p2 magg defense event, they try to use scepter 1 to hit assassins, but the orbs get intercepted by the excess mobs… Do they not realize that melee cleave kills those mobs quickly and allows you to hit more than one target at a time?

This type of problem occurs with other professions, too. I’ve seen so many of them, that I have just given up on PuGs unless they specifically ask for advice (which I’ll be glad to give). However, if there is a part where there’s a clear problem because of skill/weapon choice, I have to try to suggest a change politely (i.e. failing CoF p2 Magg event several times because too many people are using single target only weapons or some other inefficient setup).

When we’re doing dungeons, I think everyone has a responsibility to contribute to the efficiency of the run. Sometimes, that means using weapons or skills you don’t particularly like. I personally don’t like the feel of the hammer on guardian, but I use it to keep mobs in place after pulling with my GS. I dislike the feel of the staff, but sometimes, I use it for stacking might before getting time warped while engaging a boss. I prefer to use my shouts, but if I know a troublesome projectile encounter is coming up, you can bet I’ll put up wall of reflection and/or shield of the avenger. Dungeons are a team activity, so in my opinion, if you aren’t trying to help your team to the best of your abilities, you might as well play solo.

In general, added healing will mostly be a percentage of the healing power stat that you use. In the case of guardian staff, the detonate accounts for 60% of your healing power, while empower accounts for 100% of your healing power (info is on the gw2 wiki). You get 179 healing power for a cleric’s staff, so you’re getting an extra 179 heal at most, which in my opinion, is pretty minor because the staff base heals are fine enough on their own.

I run the same build as you, and I pretty much use the staff for running through trash, stacking might, and stacking mobs via line of warding at choke points. I went with knight’s for the extra resistance to damage while trash running, and if I’m waiting on weapon swap, I can at least trigger crits for EM.

You need to complete the Alliance Breaker Achievement (found in the Living Story section of your achievements tab in the Hero Menu).

Dulfy’s Guide has a little more detail: http://dulfy.net/2013/04/30/gw2-molten-weapon-facilities-dungeon-guide/#6

Unfortunately, you’ll need to participate in the Flame and Frost event if you want to acquire the gauntlets.

randomfightfan.4091:

BulletNG.7069:

HOLY CRAP! How do you guys get so many skins? I’ve yet to find ONE! I’ve only seen one other player get one as well. Although I only have 30 Pristine Relics which isn’t as much as you, but I’m at Fractal 32.

I actually quit GW2 for a month because I raged at how terrible the RNG drops rates for these skins are. ALL I WANT IS THE GREATSWORD!

advance in fractals. I haven’t gotten a single skin in anything under 36 and I’ve only gotten 1 from there. Sorry but you need to actually do high level fractals b4 you can talk about the skin drop rate as the rate at lower levels is horribly low.

My dungeon crew and I only do fractals 26 or 28 maybe 3 times a week at most (never more than 1 a day), and all of us have gotten several skins. I really doubt that higher scale fractals would make much of a difference in end rewards. It’s just the horrible nature of the RNG-only acquisition. We’ve only been doing this for maybe a few months after they did the party fractal scale progression change.

At this point, I’m just going to wait and see if something is done about the skin reward system and just attempt only if a friend needs fractals. I did want to advance further in fractals, but I’ve come to realize that it’s artificial difficulty and not much of an actual challenge (higher hp, higher mob damage, and higher mob count). There’s other things I’d rather be doing than suffering a headache from repeating fractals too much. I’m not sure why the reward style isn’t consistent with the other reward systems in the game (RNG OR progression acquisition), but I hope it changes eventually.

FYI, lots of Anet devs play on the servers during the patch release days to try to deal with any patch issues that may come up. You’ll see updates on twitter and whatever other media that they use for live updates.

That should not be a reason for soloable dungeons (although there are a lot of valid reasons for solo dungeons). You can make other friends in the schoolyard who aren’t elitist. Look for a casual dungeon guild or start adding casual dungeon runners that you meet. I’ve met a few people and we just run our most comfortable damage/party builds. We all have our dungeon master titles now and are able to teach our other friends how to do runs.

It’s an MMO, so it’s expected to be a social game at its core. The “eltists” aren’t the only ones who can form and pick their social groups.

The only time this should happen these days is if someone in your party was from a different region. Someone on a US server cannot play with someone from a EU server. Otherwise, you have encountered a rare bug.

Also, please don’t necro really old threads. Start a new one for this case. This thread refers to the release problems when parties consistently could not join.

IndigoSundown.5419:

George Steel.1804:

So in GW2 dungeons, skill and competency is moreso focused on the individual instead of the group as a whole. For example, while a good guardian can provide his team aegis and protection, this still won’t be able to make up for an individual who can’t move, dodge, and use his/her skills properly.

So great! I like that facet.

But now you’ve got a portion of the population who is challenged by the content currently out – having trouble in CM, complaining about the new AC (which is ridiculous, but I digress) and trying to figure out how to tackle Lupi.

On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got people completely bored with the difficulty level of the game (highlighting explorable level dungeons, originally a form of “endgame”). You’ve got multiple classes SOLOING a boss that entire groups wipe and complain about. This is pretty much an attempt to challenge ones self.

Isn’t that what fractals is supposed to do?

I feel like fractals is artificial difficulty. The number of mobs increase and so does their damage/HP. To me, it feels like the same fight every 10 levels with some number tweaks. If new fractals will not be added, new mobs, new mob skills, new puzzles, etc. would, at the very least be more interesting. I’ll admit that I’ve only made it up to 28 with my dungeon crew, and we’ve purposely stopped there because we’re realizing that nothing’s really changing as we go up. The maximum completion rewards start at 26 as well, so there’s no real reason for us to go higher.

When I look for difficulty in games like this, I’m looking to be challenged by more than just simple number tweaks (mob size, mob damage, mob HP, etc.). In GW1, for example, hard mode usually meant that mobs had different skill sets. Sometimes, you would need to change your build a bit to counter the new threat. I would prefer encounters that really made you think about switching your weapons, skills, and major traits before fights, more often than we do now.

If they do decided to do normal mode/hard mode again, I think normal mode should help assist with teaching newer dungeon players how to deal with the encounters — maybe with the NPC making suggestions, a daily that encourages completing certain tasks (i.e. Dodge Kholer’s pull attack 0/1, Revive an ally 0/1, etc.), or some other method that helps teach them. For hard mode, the mobs should have different skill sets that encourage more experienced players to utilize their full range of weapons, skills, and major traits.

I think this definition of anchor from the dictionary makes the most sense:

“a person or thing that can be relied on for support, stability, or security”

AlietteFaye.7316:

StriderShinryu.6923:

I quite appreciate the testing and find that it fits fairly well with my own experience. I do feel, however, that proving level 35ish characters can handle the content as well as downscaled level 80 characters is only one piece of the puzzle. Thus why we still have ongoing discussions about the issues found in the revamped AC.

I still don’t quite understand the “puzzle” that everybody keeps posting about. First they complain that it is impossible for anybody that’s level 35 to do it, and some even claimed near impossible for level 80s. Then when proven wrong, the people who were making the claims and complaints suddenly say “well that’s because your group is experienced with the dungeon! You knew what you were doing!” Well.. yeah. So what?

Apparently people think that when you know what you were doing, you’ve always known. Like they’re the only people that have to learn how to do the content for the first time. The people that are familiar with the content also had a first time through the dungeon.

My Guild ran the dungeon the first day it came out as revamped content. Ran every path. No wipes, no problems. Yes, we got lucky with Grast. But the rest of the dungeon did not stop us at all. We all feel like AC got a lot easier with the health nerfs to the mobs. The whining on the forums about AC being an “entry level dungeon” is ridiculous. So what if you couldn’t do it at exactly level 35? Go level up and come back to it. It’s not an issue at all.

Yeah, I think part of the issue is that people are taking the “level progression container” mentality of other dungeons/instances in other MMOs and trying to apply it to GW2. In some other MMOs, doing quests or anything not in an instance would take forever to level, but repeating a dungeon/instance would level you faster. I thought it was pretty quick to level in the open world, especially with things like crafting, so I don’t think you necessarily need to do dungeons to level — only if you feel like increasing the difficulty of the game (compared to open world), getting skins/gear/coin/etc, and/or if you want to start learning how to coordinate with a team.

Recent quote from Rob:

In the case that AC was made harder, that’s a matter of opinion. Having personally reduced numbers like HP and damage, and modifying the skills used to not do more devastating things, I know for certain that it is numerically easier than it was before, and more forgiving to mistakes.
However we increased team based difficulty. We designed things to require players to coordinate and work together more than before, since that is our original goal: To create challenging content build for 5 coordinated players. This is why we’re not allowing it to scale like the rest of the game does. It’s set and built for 5, so it doesn’t need scaling.

We all have our expectations for dungeons, but I selected the key points in the quote above to show what I think Anet’s expectations of dungeons are. I’ll agree that there’s a gap of difficulty between the open world and dungeons, so teaching new dungeon runners to work as a team may require some additional work on the designer’s part (since most players have probably only soloed up to this point). They can only do so much as far as teaching, and then, it’s up to the individual community members to decide whether or not they want to also assist the new dungeon runners.

I think people need to stop complaining by saying stuff like “AC is impossible!”. At the very least, they could put constructive criticism like “The spider queen’s special attack is hard to distinquish. <insert possible solution here>” or “Kholer’s pull attack is hard to distinguish because of his size and particle effects. <insert possible solution here>”. Instead, we get pointless posts threatening devs, flaming other players, or some other nonsense with no purpose. We want to help the game improve, right?

The devs read our posts, even though they don’t always reply. Make it easier for them to understand your frustration with specifics and not rants. You know they want you to work as a team, so what specifically is making an encounter difficult? What would encourage people to coordinate better? How do you think you would learn dungeon mechanics best?

Sometimes, I guess it takes a group who wants to do the content for the sake of playing together rather than personal gains. I’m pretty thankful that my dungeon crew is more about playing the dungeons rather than questioning which one it is. I got everything I wanted, and I helped them and many of our other friends get what they needed. Now that we have our skins and our dungeon master titles, we don’t even really do dungeons anymore unless one of our friends needs it or if it’s part of the daily.

Aside from the fact that the dungeons are in need of rework, some people are just selfish when it comes to helping their “friends” out with dungeons. Oh well. :/

You might be referring to symbol of Judgment. It’s a symbol we can use in the downed state to heal and damage.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbol_of_Judgment

From the looks of it, you’re pretty much performing at least the minimum expectations. If you played more professions, you would probably see how much you bring as a guardian in comparison to those professions.

The simple fact is that you’re a heavy armor profession with good survivability (even without investments) and a ton of useful utility to use on a 5-man team. Easy access to party condi removal via shouts is a lot more powerful than most other professions’ general party condi removal. Shield of the avenger can last 20-30s, depending on traits, which completely shuts down tom and other heavy projectile encounters. Wall of reflection has the advantage of being placed freely, creating a light field, and lasts longer than other professons’ basic anti-projectile. Other professions typically have very limited party support or have to do something awkward to make it useful, but guardian support is just very direct.

I can’t imagine PuG’ing Arah, but after my dungeon crew learned how to do the runs, it’s pretty fun to do every once in a while just for the hell of it. We’ve cut our run times of path 1, 2, and 3 to about 30 mins each, and we plan to get faster at it, so we can help our other friends learn Arah and get their Arah stuff.

One of our members runs his thief and he very rarely dies (full zerker). To say it’s impossible with a thief is an opinion, not fact.

The only reason I can see anyone excluding guardians for dungeons is just those groups that want to optimize full DPS, which is typically done for the CoF p1 farm. Guardians bring a lot to the table for general groups.

I thought pets have their owner’s AR?

Dav.9152:

Been leveling my guardian up solo, but one thing I can’t wrap my head around yet is when I’m supposed to activate my virtues – it just about always seems better to keep the passive effect than to burn the active. What is the correct way to use virtues strategically?

Sometimes, it’s dependent on how you are traited. For example, if you have inspired virtues (adept minor trait in the virtues trait line), all your virtues give boons.

This is basically for solo play:
Virtue of Justice

• The passive applies a 1s burn (on every 5th hit) and the active applies a 5s burn (deals more damage).
• To combine your burns into a single chain, after your 5th hit (large blue flames around your weapon skill bar indicates VoJ hit next), trigger your active.
• If you have inspired virtues traited (adds 3 stacks of might on VoJ active), trigger your active before you do a hard hitting attack to get more damage.
• If you’re channeling Renewed Focus (elite), it doesn’t hurt to activate this, since it’s going to be recharged when Renewed Focus completes, anyways.

Virtue of Resolve

• You typically want to keep this passive as much as possible because free HP regen helps you stay alive.
• If you really want the extra heal, trigger the active while channeling Renewed Focus (elite). This should only happen if you’re in serious danger of dying.
• If you DO have inspired virtues traited, this puts a regeneration boon on you when you trigger the active. Again, you shouldn’t really activate this unless the previous scenario happens.

Virtue of Courage

• The passive recharges every 40s, so every once in a while your first incoming attack is negated. Don’t trigger the active for aegis if your passive aegis is still on, so you can at least get two blocks in a fight.
• By itself, the active puts up aegis, which blocks an attack. You want to trigger this to block a big hit that might down/severely damage you or put you in a bad position (i.e. being knocked back). Sometimes, this is essentially another dodge roll because it allows you to maintain your position by negating something that would have made you dodge.
• If traited with inspired virtues, you get a protection boon (damage reduction). If you know you want to reduce damage, trigger VoC’s active.

That’s just a general run-down of the virtues from my experience. Once you know what you’re fighting and what traits you have attached to the virtues, you can probably find more ways to use your virtue actives to your advantage.

P.S.: One of my favorite uses of VoJ’s active is to blind, apply vulnerability, apply burning, and apply 3 stacks of might in one press. With Renewed Focus, all of that is doubled.

I believe it was Colin Johanson who said that Anet wants to focus on reworking existing content. If they add too much new content, the playerbase will be spread out to too many different areas, and you’re left with even more stale areas.

My personal opinion is that it’s a good idea because we play the current dungeons enough that our feedback is way more valuable now, doing the current dungeons regularly, than it was when we were just getting our feet wet. As much as I would like a change of scenery, I think the primary dungeon mechanics are more important, so we have to start with something we’re very familiar with — the current dungeons. If we can manage to find a decent balance between the rewards, the play experience, and the dungeon mechanics with the current dungeons, then it will probably be much easier for the dungeon team to implement newer dungeons by using a template from what they have learned.

One of the dungeons that I think is in serious need of a revamp is HotW because the boss fights in that dungeon are an extreme example of tank and spank. You will probably spend 5 minutes or more on each boss in there, seeing the exact same attack rotation, almost falling asleep from it. The only thing actually difficult about the bosses are their absurd amount of HP.

Lupicus should be one, if not the only, inspiration for some future boss designs. Even with all the particle effects, you can learn his tells because of his massive size. He has transitioning phases, with each phase granting him a pool of abilities that he uses randomly, for the most part. This is the only boss where I took the time to learn every single tell and how to counter his attacks to the best of my abilities. Of course, a boss like Lupi would be very punishing for the lower level dungeons, but I think having one as interesting as him would bring some life into those dungeons, and hopefully, the clear tells will help newer dungeon runners realize that they can anticipate deadly attacks.

If you think about it, a new dungeon is pretty much a re-skin of relatively the same experience, so why not enhance the core experience? You’re 5 players navigating through a container to find the carrot on a stick. We will eventually get the carrot, but it’s the journey that I think we want to remember most.

I’m not sure which game format you’re going to use this in, but I have tested this on Lt. Kholer in the AC dungeon. He has a spin attack that hits multiple times, and you can use shelter to completely block it and gain might stacks, which does heal you with AH.

Shelter is better when you can counter a series of hits, otherwise, it’s just a sub par heal. Signet of Resolve is better when you aren’t receiving so much burst, since you have to channel it for a bit for its huge heal. I generally use the signet for PvE, but in sPvP/tPvP, I use shelter to counter burst hits.

If you have the appropriate guild permissions, you can talk to any of the guild registrars in LA or any of the main racial cities. However, your guild needs to have researched the Guild Emblem Template upgrade under Politics (rank 1).

Here’s some links in case you need them.

Guild Registrar: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Registrar

Influence Upgrades: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Influence

If anything, don’t force yourself to enjoy the game if you truly don’t find anything fun for the time being. The typical MMO PvE mentality is to chase the carrot on a stick, but changing the carrot to something else can be a solution. Sometimes, you may just need a break from the game to miss it. I’ve played GW1 for almost 7 years, with a few breaks in between. If it weren’t for me liking more things in GW2, I’d still be playing GW1. :P

From the OP, it sounds like you’re one of those people that needs content progression (activities) rather than completionist progression (collecting skins/completing achievements/etc). In the long run, this game supports completionist progression, but on certain patches, you’ll get your fill for content progression, depending on what you’re looking for: new dungeons, new story, new minigames, etc. If that is true, then it doesn’t hurt to take a break, especially since you’re not playing on a sub.

I personally still enjoy playing the game even though I’ve maxed all the professions to 80. My main has pretty much all the skins I wanted, so I have small eventual goals of getting skins for a few of my characters. I want a few name changes, a few achievements/titles, and perhaps, rent a custom arena (starting to get into tPvP w/ friends). On occasion, I like to theorycraft builds, playing around with traits, skills, and equipment.

The primary reason I still enjoy playing GW2 is that I’m playing with friends, helping them out with whatever dungeons they need or just doing an activity for no particular reason. We like to discuss the state of the game and speculate what might happen next patch. When I play games like GW2, I’m looking more for the social experience than the content experience because that’s what I feel matters in the long run.

In conclusion, go with what you feel, not what you feel forced to do.

Adamantel.6427:

Simple as that, this is another proof to the very sick attitude to the consumer in general, making a dungeon that CAN be done, impossible instead, just to prevent farming for the better of the whole – this is some very typical bullshiiiiiit of the socialistic thinking, of course nobody identifies it in himself, definitely not the developers. Never.

If the dungeon was doable and first of all could be enjoyable, THUS it was done by many players, why, oh explain me why would anyone kill it and make it almost impossible unless you’re a very extremely godlike veteran in very godlike gear? Any logic behind it? Thought so.

And by the way, just to ask that seemingly obvious question: HOW are new players like myself supposed learn the dungeon if the only way to get into a squad that maybe may have a small chance of completing it, is to be an above mentioned elite veteran with astonishing experience??? Oh well… Too bad I wasn’t born a god. I’ll just fvck this game and go sit outside on the grass, I’m so tired of the idiots behind the worst decisions repeating time after time after time, destroying any good standards and possibilities of having simple fun in mmos… Too much of this shiiiiiit, I quit.

You act like this design is permanent when the design teams can make changes eventually based on reasonable feedback. It may take them a while, but they’re always reading the stuff you post.

It’s true that the transition for newer dungeon runners is rough, so explain what the experience is like through constructive criticism — you know, calm relevant critical discussion without vulgar language (seems to be the only vocabulary many people know how to use these days). Rants like this don’t solve anything, so good riddance. You’re such an expert at what happens behind the scenes, so your rants must be fact.

For the record, most of us weren’t “dungeon gods” when we first started out. We did the trial and error to learn how to do better next time, going through repair bills and dying to unnecessary obstacles. People had to explore dungeons to figure out the tactics. With the dungeons’ current state, if you want smooth perfect runs, then find a guild or group of friends that are willing to go through it with you. If they are experienced, ask them to teach you. If they are new as well, do your best to learn the dungeon. If you’re going to PuG, the experience varies because you can only influence population behavior to an extent.

It mixes with my sunrise, but I don’t mind it.

It depends on the skill or trait that uses it. Skills/traits/effects that heal will use a certain percentage of your healing power stat when healing. Look up any individual healing skill/trait/effect on the wiki, and it will show you the formula used for it.

Here’s an example, using the regeneration boon: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Regeneration

Yeah, I agree that there needs to be consistency when classifying attack types. Is Tom’s multiple poison shot attack a barrage of projectiles or something else?

The high HP problem exists in pretty much every dungeon and fractals. I just did HoTW path 2 last night to help a friend. Whenever I fight the two legendary icebrood marauders, I just want to fall asleep. Just like the ettin/flame shaman, they do the same attack sequence for the whole 5 or so minutes it takes to kill them.

DropTrigger.5217:

Downscaling is extremely annoying, especially for someone who plays solo. The only reason I can even see it having a purpose is because experience is shared. I bet the idea is they don’t want lv 80’s running through low level zones basically just handing xp to low level players.

So how do we fix this? Because I’m not gonna play much longer if I keep dying trying to do events by myself. What’s the purpose of building up your character if you can always get scaled down to whatever level the developers think you should be?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_level_adjustment

• Prevents griefing by one shotting mobs before low levels can touch them
• Keeps content somewhat challenging for scaled level
• Level advantage would make botting much easier

You mainly level to get your minor/major traits to enhance your abilities. Other than that, you need to master dodging and proper skill timing to survive. Treating this like another MMO where you can just stand there and expect a heal from a potion/healer will get you killed easily.

The only dynamic events that you probably can’t solo are some group events and meta (gold border) events, since those are intended for multiple players. If you’re having problems with the regular events, your gear might be outdated and/or you may need to adjust your strategy. If you’re expecting to get a level advantage and one shot lower level mobs, then GW2 might not be for you.

It sounds like you’re talking about open world events, but this thread is about dungeon downscaling, which is intended for parties of five. You would probably only go with less if you wanted to challenge yourself or something, but the dungeon environment is intended to be more difficult than the open world, anyways.

(The previous posts are 2 months old, by the way. I suggest starting a topic in the appropriate forum if you want to discuss open world downscaling.)

Before the change, I honestly felt the shield was overpowered in PvE for stopping projectiles, especially against mobs that were partially projectile-based. I mean, it gives you a lot of projectile negation uptime, which was the equivalent to three of any other profession’s anti-projectiles. This heavily trivialized boss fights like the champ nightmare vine in TA and the golem boss in CoE. Now, I only really use it on mob groups that are all or mostly projectiles because it will likely die quick otherwise.

JJBigs.8456:

Retaliation should show damage being done on your screen. I know its doing alot but without seeing the numbers, its hard to notice exactly how much it helps. (Dont think it shows up as DPS at least)

It’s much more noticeable when something is hitting you more frequently. It’s similar to that of a condition damage tick. The mob hits are usually so slow that you can miss the damage tick by blinking.

@ Shiren
I never claimed he liked skipping. I was just pointing out his suggestion and showing that they know it’s a “problem”.

Here’s a few of the issues I see:

• People want the rewards, but the content isn’t up to par with the dungeon designer’s AND the players’ expectations. Some of us enjoy obtaining our skins, coin, or whatever else it is that still draws us to dungeon. Enduring the current obstacles of dungeons is not fun, so skipping is just an adaptation to deal with it until changes are made. There are also some cases where fighting all the mobs will cause you to spend time you don’t have. Arah paths would take 2 hours or more, instead of 30 mins or less, if a group killed everything. Do you really want to spend the extra few hours for nothing?
• New players can have a hard time actually learning the dungeon because the popular choice is to skip (which is what the OP is blaming us for). The one thing I agree with is that there should be an easier transition for those newer to dungeon running. People who aren’t guided by friends/guildies will likely have a worse first impression of dungeons. However, there are some cases where players will just be so ignorant that they choose not to learn the content, even if there’s a guide or if there’s people showing them the ropes.

I’d like to add that just because I, for one, choose to skip unnecessary mobs doesn’t mean I don’t like dungeons. I like learning the encounters and choosing the right skills, weapons, and traits to help in those scenarios. I have max leveled every profession and learned how to use their skills in every dungeon, both story and explorable. My daily activities with my friends always involves a run through multiple paths of at least one dungeon and a fractal run. I like working on a small, focused team and having a meaningful impact on our success, which is something I can barely get from open world PvE.

In any case, this still leads to the same result: create/join groups that share your interests. We have our reasons to do dungeons using either method. It’s the same end goal, but it’s achieved differently. Non-skippers pointing at skippers and saying they’re not “proper” would be like RP’ers saying we’re ruining their immersion, but guess what? RP’ers are playing with like-minded people and non RP’ers are, too.

I want dungeons to not take more than an hour through normal methods and be an enjoyable rewarding experience from start to finish, but we have our existing design flaw of unnecessary time sinks. I’ll be optimistic and patiently wait for Rob and the dungeon team to come up with a solution.

If I remember correctly, you can send a message to exploits@arena.net, putting in any video/screenshots to help your case.

If you’re going for most gold, people just do CoF p1 repeatedly for the boss coin drops, not the end reward. Those drops are NOT affected by DR at all and you can increase your gain with omnomberry bars/20% extra gold infusion (which is why it’s farmed to death). This is more profitable than what you’re suggesting, assuming your group is fast and efficient.

If the enemy hits you very frequently (multiple times in 1-2 seconds), retaliation shines. However, many mobs in dungeons attack pretty slow. Some niche encounters I can think of are Kholer’s spin, CoF hellstorms, and risen berserkers. You may need to throw in some protection or something to survive the hits, though.

Don’t trait for it. It’s fine untraited for those niche situations if you plan to use it.

I’ve honestly beaten every dungeon (story AND explorable mode) normally several times, memorizing every room and boss fight encounter. It’s not worth the effort in its current state. Anyone who knows the dungeon and mob layout enough deserves the ability to skip because they know how to counter the mob groups that are being skipped and will not suffer the consequences faced by inexperienced players.

There’s enough guides out there to educate PuGs, but many, for some reason don’t know the guides exist or they just simply don’t care. These are probably the same type of people that will probably skip tutorials or read instructions, even though it has all the answers they will need. You could put all the information on the screen, but it won’t stop people from being ignorant.

Here’s the quote again because we like to beat dead horses:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

It’s one of those human things to do something with the path of least resistance and danger, especially when there is a reward at the end. I could make enemies never drop their aggro on players and force them to fight every single mob, but I don’t see that as a viable solution right now.
I think the better solution is to look at why people are skipping things, and approach from a different angle. Trash mobs have too much HP, and can’t be counted on for lucrative drops from a Risk/Time vs Reward, so people interested in making money (most groups) aren’t incentivized to do it, whereas the end chest/boss are more guaranteed and accountable returns on time and risk. I also think there is something to be said about interesting trash mob mechanics making them more enjoyable of a fight.
I can’t make the rewards from trash mobs so lucrative though that people just farm the first couple trash mobs/boss in a dungeon and then rinse/repeat. We encountered this when people just farmed the first boss in an instance and then restarted it (earlier around launch time), and we had to adjust the content as a result. It’s a fine line you have to walk to encourage players to get to the end, but make the process of getting there rewarding enough as well.

I don’t imagine this next update will resolve all the skipping behavior. The path of least resistance is engrained in people, and even if I do everything I could to incentivize people, there will still be those who skip stuff. I have been fixing exploits that will require players to complete more of the events in dungeons, but I am sure people will still skip what they can to get to their end goal.

For now I would encourage those not looking to skip to find some folks who don’t like skipping and make a guild with them… or maybe look for guilds that are dedicated to not skipping, and tag along with them. I’m in a couple of them (anonymously), and it really is an effective solution to playing the game the way you want to play it: Find other people with similar interests and band together with them.

Scepter + focus is a good ranged option, especially if you’re fighting against a target where you may need some breathing room (immobilize, blind/regen, shield of wrath). In open world PvE, I think staff is best as a farming weapon for mob tagging or for running around the map with the swiftness symbol. It’s not really much of a ranged weapon, and if I wanted to AoE that close, I’d use greatsword or hammer instead.

If you’re doing this for general open world PvE:

• Scepter is better for 1 on 1 combat. The smite skill on scepter is a distributive AoE, meaning it’s equivalent to attacking multiple mobs in a group one at a time instead of hitting them all at the same time. I feel the scepter conflicts with the torch because one weapon is meant for range, while the other is meant for melee.
• For general use, I would go with the sword because it cleaves and has an AoE blind. You can also use flashing blade to travel around the map faster (click a far target and hit flashing blade without hitting the target). This may also be a better weapon with the torch, too, because the torch skills are pretty much melee range.
• I’d probably use meditations for general use, since consecration skills have more specific uses and have really long cooldowns. You can swap out to consecrations if you know you’ll need anti-projectiles or any of the other specific areas that they cover. The consecrations typically don’t need to be traited to be useful in open world PvE.

Kozai.8269:

You can buy the Rare magi trinkets and Enhancements on the TP, I didn’t know there was a source of Exotic ones?

Yep. Lightbinger Brutefur sells them for karma.

For anyone interested, scroll down to Karma category: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats