Guild Wars 2

Everytime you die in any PvE activity (Yes, WvW is PvE activity), your armor gets damaged.

You better be happy that just by hitting someone/something the durability of your armor/weapons doesnt decrease because thats how it actually should be.

Your complain is totally absurd and not even worth anyones time.

With staff and glyph of elemental harmony, One with Air trait is pretty much useless because the run speeds dont stack. And perma swiftness on you means 33% increased speed. The trait gives you only 25% speed.

You could have 20% faster Glyphs recharge instead, which would – considering you have only one condition removal on 45s CD – come pretty handy.

I have been running full berserker gear with some vitality on my accessories for pure PvE (dungeons mainly) and if you manage to build the character around it to increase your survivability, its perfectly doable. It requires much more awareness and mobility. Vigor on 100% of the time and sigil of energy is pretty much need.

And you need to make sure you use your skills at the right time to avoid unnecessary damage.

I dont expect this type of gameplay to suit everyone. On contrary I expect very few can play in full berserker gear and not dying constantly.

Two hours to kill one boss is a kitten kitten. I dont care what you say but this is now how the fight is supposed to go. No matter if the boss is eventually killable in 2 hours or not killable at all..both cases are design flaw and it needs to get fixed.

More ppl cant beat it, but thats the point. Did everyone with pug clear heroic deathwing? No. Why? Its end game. The exact same rule applies here. Expl Mode dungeons are end game. Will everyone in pug clear it? No. Will you need organized guild group to clear it? Yes.

Absolutely same thing.

can you post the link to that thread?

Gies.3824:

If I had a computer capable of doing a video of this fight I would do it for you Starlink. All I can offer you is what I’ve all ready said though.

what are you talking about?

I remember doing up to 9 hours in expert dungeons back in the start of Rift But its all about some reward..not to spend that time in a dungeon without any reward whatsoever.

Its “END GAME” for crying out loud. If you expect to kill boss in two days in end game, you are just spoiled.

I remember wiping on end game bosses for weeks in other mmos before we finally managed to pull out strategy that killed the boss.

Quit whining.

This fight is one of the few that actually requires communication in the group. All boss fights should be at least like this one or even harder.

I also agree that they should introduce some system which would prevent ppl from farming the dungeon. (Dungeon cooldowns? Helloooo? Be able to do each dungeon (all paths) once a day would be good start.) But this was not one of the brightest moves from ANet part.

Its the same as Eruption or Ice spike. Everything takes around 2s to actually do something and everybody with half of the brain can just see that there is ground shaking beneath them or huge ice/fire thing hanging on their heads.

Starlink.6248:

CC Eva.6742:

Hi everyone.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
I will forward the feedback to the team today.

Pls Fix only High Priestess of Dwayna other boss are ok

This.

what the hell is kitten doing in my post? O.o

Urkittenright it needs fix.
Im never gonna get those 60 shards I worked hard for…

And one of our guildies who needs frikkin 15 shards for two days so he can buy his chest..and can never finish those paths to get even single shard is probably angry out of his mind.

kohppa.3758:

100% agree. I feel that even with maxed out healing traits, runes, and accessories the heals for elementalist are still unrealistically low. T_T

I can’t handle not being able to heal for much.

No profession in the game is supposed to be able to heal effectively other players. If you go down that road we can just have trinity back.

you are supposed to be able to throw few heals, heal few k and thats it. Not to be able to keep others alive for ever without them needing to avoid getting hit.

who said anything about killing stuff…

I even posted bug report because this was just not normal. I mean I have played this game a lot and I can see what is working as intended and what is not. We were doing the fight right but we were just not progressing in it.

You can easily figure out that something is not right. You are not supposed to fight a boss for 1,5 hour. Usually when you are doing something wrong in the fight you just die. In here we just kept fighting and fighting doing the same thing over and over again .

Im all for grind dude..but grind is when you actually get what you came for. 4,5 hours without single shard is not a grind.

DKP.4196:

Kamahl.3621:

Sylvari / Forgotten is the best for farming.
Asura / Mursaat is the hardest working one. Great challenge, long dungeon. Not very rewarding, but fun experience.
Norn / Jotun is a nice in-between, the final boss was a good brain teaser.
Human / Seer is bugged at the end / second to end boss. No confirmation anyone’s killed her yet.

Dwayna has been confirmed killed on this forum with a ingame screenie to prove it.

Dwayna has been killed by using exploit. Without that she is unkillable in the current state.

So me and my guildies just spent 3 hours clearing path 4 in Arah EM.
Eventually we got to the last boss, Priestess of Dwayna and kept killing her for 1,5 hours.

I dont mind wiping..but we didnt wipe. It was fight that went on for 1,5 hours..without ANY sign of progress no matter how hard we tried. Boss just kept bouncing from 50% to 80%.

And with the new rewarding system, we spent 4,5 hours in a dungeon that didnt give us any shards.

I know one thing..I will think twice next time before I step in that dungeon again, because this is what I call waste of time and very oposite of fun.

We just spent 3 hours clearing the path. Got to last boss and been doing it for around 1,5 hours. Didnt wipe but couldnt get her below 50%. No matter how fast we were with the orbs, she always healed back to at least 80% and we got her to 50 again, and back to 80.

So after 4,5 hours in this place, we went out without any frikkin Shards.

Awesome.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Wethospu.6437:

I understand restrictions for rewards, but not for content. I also want harder dungeons. That said I’m all for two difficulties.
Easier mode would allow most of people experience dungeons and prepare for harder mode.
Harder mode should be based on easier mode but include more durable, more skillful and more hard-hitting enemies and prevent graveyard zerging.

Exactly my point. Though hand-in-hand, rewards should scale as well. 60 tokens for the easy path is too much, maybe 20-30 tokens? At the same time, the super hard path might be 80-100 tokens? I’ll defer to the devs on that one… having the right mechanisms in place for people to learn is more important to me; it makes for a better player-base.

That was already happening.
For example Arah has easier paths and harder paths.
Easier paths are for the worse players and harder paths are for the better players.
Easier paths rewarded less shards than the harder paths.

This is exactly what you are asking for. Why are we still on this?

Bruno, story mode dungeons are here to introduce dungeon type content to new players. You learn how to play in PvE as you progress. There are boss fights with larger scale out there where you learn that bosses have mechanics and different stages. When you get to first dungeon story mode it shows you smaller scale boss fights and mechanics.

If you complete that you are good to go for explorable mode dungeons. You already know how things work, that bosses have different mechanics and that you need to avoid that, dps those ads etc etc. Then you just progress through explorable mode dungeon and improve, get better try to clear more and more and more when eventually you will improve to the point when you can clear it all.

OR…you are just not as good player as someone else and will be able to clear only parts of the explorable mode dungeon because other parts are just too hard for you. Thats perfectly fine.

This game has very nice ways to introduce new players new content all the way up starting on lvl 30 (which is level when you should already know basic gameplay with that profession and thus should be able to do dungeon, which is much harder than standard PvE gameplay)

TorQ.7041:

Gab Superstar.4059:

As someone mentioned earlier; Giganticus is to Arah what Shiro was to GW1.

A relatively easy encounter that sorts out the baddies from the coordinated by utilizing mechanics that require groups to think.

inb4 drivel about one-shot blah blah: I did the encounter, and nope!

I am a full toughness guardian with everything set to toughness and armor, and yes he 1 shots me when he teleports, you obviously have no idea what you are talking about.

No shiro is not the same, I can solo shiro after the 1st time I saw him, I can solo him now if I go back on gw 1 just for laughs.

You probably failed the first phase and let him get the buff which makes you to hit him for almost nothing and him hit you 50x more than he would normally do.

If you cant execute this fight properly dont complain.

Some paths are easier than others. If you cant do one path because whatever reason…you are not good enough or whatever, do only the paths you can do. Its that easy. Every dungeon has what 4 paths? There are some easier and some harder. Harder ones can be only cleared by excellent players, easier paths by everyone else.

You guys are so messed up with every other MMO having two difficulties of each thing…this game already has it, its just not called hard mod and normal mode.

smushmitten.3748:

all i can say is. “bravo”
I agree 100%
people saying that they are end game, well CM Explore says level 45. SO why should you need to be end game for a level 45 Dungeon?

If you would follow Devs communication, you would know that their idea is to have End Game in the entire game. Not just after you get to max level.

CM EM says level 45 and you can do it as level 45. I certainly did. It was hard as hell (HENCE END GAME) but it was doable. I didnt have to wait to lvl 80 to start doing something I havent done until then.

And for the OP, there are already 2 dungeon modes. Story mode and Explorable mode.
Thread locked.

Artorous.8573:

I really wish they would have made explorable mode 10 mans so people would get out of the mindset that they’re suppose to be pug friendly 5 man runs. They are meant to be difficult but too many players played games like WoW/Rift where 5 mans meant easy mode.

Well this isnt WoW. And this isnt Rift either (which is just WoW in new coat). Devs said that this game will be as different from other MMOs as possible. Every 5 men explorable dung is much harder than any raid in those other MMOs thanks to one thing. There is much higher pressure on you. You need to make sure to do the best because there are only 4 other ppl. If you had 9 other ppl to cover for you your mistakes are not so severe.

Artorous.8573:

When you say you’re in all exotic gear, you fail to mention what kind you’re using. A group of 5 players that goes around with nothing but Exotic Berserker is going to wipe countless times compared to a group of 5 that goes in with Masterwork Knight’s. You won’t be 1 shot if you actually go in defensive, knights actually has some pretty good offense tacked on, but don’t expect easy runs if you want to just see big numbers.

This just isnt true. Full group exotic berserkers who build their professions around it kill stuff faster but need to have builds created to be able to avoid damage more often.

Full berserker group is as viable as any other if those players build their characters accordingly.

Power
Crit % and Precision (you need to go either after both or none because each of them sux without the other…)
Condition damage
Vitality
Tougness (If toughness would affect condition damage too, it would be above vitality)

I guess you guys are missing the point of End Game.

I remember wiping on Muru back in WOW TBC for 4 weeks. Night after night, 4 hours a night. And you complain that end game boss takes longer to kill? and that you have to die and die and die to kill him?

If after so many deaths you still didnt understand the core mechanics of the fight, Im sorry for you. And if thats the truth, you can as well face the fact that you are not good enough to kill end game boss.

If the boss gets buff from his ads that you failed to kill fast enough, it will make the boss almost unkillable.

Stop whining about bosses being hard thats how its supposed to be in the End Game.

Would you rather like lockouts?
By that I mean that you would be able to do each dungeon once a day. Period.

Thats how its done in different MMOs and honestly I would welcome this here as well.
At least ppl wouldnt run one path 10x in a row cause its the easiest but they would be somewhat forced to do the whole dungeon if they so badly need to have the gear ASAP.

Maybe not in the best way, but ANet are trying to tell us with this approach that we are not supposed to get our desired gear in 2 days. We are supposed to do those dungeons every now and then and eventually few weeks/months down the road have enough tokens to buy desired item.

Looria.8019:

Wheeping Song.6423:

Tell me, how do you guys kite with a staff without decent chill effects?

Is this a trick question?

I didnt mean this in a mean way.

It just feels like trick question, cause Staff is the best weapon for kiting multiple mobs at the same time. All earth, water, fire and air attunements have at least one skill that provides you with means to outrun the mobs or to slow them down or stun them.

Frozen Ground, Gust, Windborne Speed, Static Field, Unsteady Ground, Shockwave, Burning retreat. Some of them in combination with combo finishers apply you speed and chills/slows to your targets. With combination of those skills you can make sure that none of the mobs ever hit you (unless the mobs are ranged..but in that case we cant really talk about kiting…)

Wheeping Song.6423:

Tell me, how do you guys kite with a staff without decent chill effects?

Is this a trick question?

Staff for PvE and WvW.
For PvP it depends..if you like support Staff. If you like mobility and mid range combat, scepter/dagger, if you like to be on your foes toes, dagger/dagger. If you want to add a little survivability use scepter or dagger in combination with Focus in your offhand.

Choosing weapon defines our gameplay. Even though i would like to change between weapons based on situation, we have so much more to do with that one particular weapon. It makes us unique.

So no, I think the fact that we cant switch between weapons in combat is not a problem.

However I do agree with guys above and being able to have 2 weapon sets and be able to switch between them out of combat would be really nice. We do that anway…just need to find the weapon in bags, which is annoying.

Elite – Glyph of Elements and Tornado.
I only use Tornado for fights under water. There its just pure awesomeness.
Glyph of Elements is the one I use majority of times. I use it on every single fight when off cooldown unless I know I will need it more before the CD runs out. Depending on what I need for me and my group, I use it in different attunements. Huge group of mobs that are very fast moving and deal big damage (dogs in TA I look at you!) Air attunement to stun the mobs. My group is low on HP and there is just too much damage going around to heal it – Water attunement. I need pure damage, fire attunement and I need someone to tank the mob for a bit, earth attunement (the least used).

I can see myself running something else in a bit, but so far this works well for me. It requires more concentration and error-free gameplay, but thats what I like about this profession. Fast peace, everytime I have something else to use, it requires planning ahead and knowing your enemy to anticipate their moves.

Regards,
Looria

Hey guys,

I thought I would throw in my few cents.

So this is my current build:
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/pve-staff-glass-cannon-pve-elementalist-glass-cannon-6954.html

I have had this build since the start and had no need to change it yet. I can see few possible changes I could make, but I dont think any of them would be such a huge addition to force me to go and reset my traits.

I will say right now, this is pure PvE build and I am using full Berserker set with some vitality on my accessories. I did PvP with my Ele in betas until rank 25 or so, but right now Ele is in a bad place for PvP imo (lowest armor and lowest HP), so I am using guardian for that instead. (at least armor is much higher and the condition removal is so much better).

Few notes to my build. I would never think of using staff in my early days..but eventually it turned out to be the best weapon for PvE. You pretty much kill 10 mobs at once in the same time as it takes to kill one. So its a perfect weapon for farming or just killing multiple mobs at the same time. Also for me it makes no sense just to be killing 1 mob at a time with this. When I decided to fight mobs I aggro many of them (as long as they are not ranged…if they are, well im in deep trouble) It requires skill in kiting, because Ele just isnt one of the professions that can just stand still and take the beating. I prefer strategy “Never get hit, you wont die, you can keep helping your group that way.”

So for weapon if I go with pros and cons:
Pros – huge support, plenty of CC, a lot of healing, great mobility, many combo fields.
Cons – very poor defense against ranged mobs, killing mobs one by one is not worth it.

There are few options for Sigil..for now Im running with Sigil of Earth that with 60% on crit it applies stack of bleeding to my target. It is again to increase my damage output. I might switch to Sigil of Energy (switching attunements is the same as switching weapons in this case) so pretty much every 10s you get 50% of the endurance back.

The build I have and the whole idea of my Ele is glass cannon. I do a lot of damage but im squishy as paper. For that I need to use all skills available and to have as high endurance regen as possible for dodges. There is very high error penalty. If you dont dodge correctly or dont use reflect projectiles correctly or dont use mist form in the worst cases, you will die a lot. This build gives good results but requires very high awareness and mobility.

Traits are pretty much self explanatory.

- Condition removal when entering Water attunement is need. The more points you have in Arcana the faster you can use this trait.
- Dealing more damage when above 90%, again..learn how to make sure you dont get hit by enemies and you benefit from this trait the most.
- 33% Chance to gain vigor on critical hits. With my gear I have Vigor on my all the time and this trait is VITAL for my gameplay. If I dont have Vigor on, I cant dodge as often, I die.
- Elemental Attunement, mandatory for every single Elementalist out there.
- 10% more damage in Fire Attunement…well like it or not, most of your damage comes from Fire attunement.
- Deal 20% more damage to foes under 25% HP. there is really not much else to choose and again, when fighting some boss, last 25% you do 20% more damage with every sill.
- Glyphs 20% faster recharge…even just for the healing glyph, this is just so needed in case you ever get hit.

In here I can see one trait that I would love to have, but just dont have enough points and thats Blasting Staff that increases the radius of Staff AOE spells. But Elemental Attunement and Vigor are so vital for me that I just cant get rid of it…and so are all my other traits.

Other than that, switching to air attunement gives you swiftness and deals damage to your foes, switching to water heals players around you and grants you regeneration, switching to fire gives you Fury, switching to Earth attunement gives you armor.

So now when we have the build covered, last thing is utility skills and Elite.

Glyph of Storms. With my trait has reduced CD and again, goes with my gameplay well. Killing more mobs at the same time is better. Having them CCed and slowed is mandatory for not getting hit. And thus I can throw another AOE damage spell on them to kill them faster.

Arcane Wave. I cant live without this utility. Its the far best combo finisher we have and it can be used in combination with Static Field to give me and others swiftness, with water healing skills to do burst healing and with fire to add burning to foes and might to allies..

Mist Form. Even when you try hard to avoid all attacks, sometimes you just cant. Or you need to get through some passage with a lot of mobs and you dont want them to slow you down. Its one of those “OH CRAP” skills that you need with this spec in case something goes horribly wrong.

This bug has been in the game since the first time I tried Ele in the first beta. I have reported it in every beta and stress test, written multiple threads on beta forums and also in here.

It doesnt have anything to do with Electric Discharge or anything else. Simply by standing still, having neutral mob targeted, switch to fire attunement, nothing happens. Water attunement and Earth attunement, nothing happens. Switch to air attunement and nr1 skill (auto attack) starts firing off.

It is very annoying especially when you are running away from some mobs, jump in air attunement to give yourself swiftness but instead you start attacking mob and it throws in you combat, thus slows you down.

We need more ppl reporting this very annoying bug. The more ppl, the better…the sooner it gets finally fixed.

silvermember.8941:

Looria.8019:

This bug has been in the game since betas and I will keep posting it until it gets fixed.

Switching to Air attunement while having target selected activates auto-attack. It is very annoying especially when are you trying to run away from mobs, switch to air attunement, character starts attacking the mobs, you are slowed – in combat.

Please fix this already.

Thanks,
Looria

I don’t think that is a bug, when you switch to air attunement Electric Discharge traits activates assuming you put more than 15 points into air attunement. If you did put 15 points into it, then it is not bugged and you need to read your traits.

Electric Discharge has nothing to do with Auto attack automatically starting. Yes, Electic Discharge does lightning damage to target around you when you switch to Air Attunement. But even without ED trait, Chain Lightning engages when you switch to this attunement while having mob targeted.

I have played Ele a lot :p I know it inside out and I know this is a bug because no other attunement does this.

EM dungeons are hard. And I say let them be hard. Even harder (this doesnt mean give the mobs/bosses 5x more hp). This is this game’s Endgame, so its supposed to be hard for crying out loud.

Right, the whole class would need total overhaul and redesign, thats for sure. I just dont get why you say that the class relies on mobility and thus needs innitiative.

If done well the profession can remain as mobile as it is right now just without innitiative.

I already have thread regarding heartseek changes in Thief section : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Suggestion-Heartseek-fix/first#post235108
I am trying to keep the thread as constructive as possible with different specific ideas how to change the skill to be better overall.

What you mentioned was one of the ideas. On the other hand it has its flaws. Even with 1 innitiative you would be able to use it. It would do small damage, but it would still close the gap between you and your target. So in this case it would require some minimum innitiative, lets say 3-5 to even be able to use the skill. And then the more innitiative you have, the more damage it does and it consumes all your innitiative.

But anyway, thats purely heartseek discussion. What I wanted in this thread was to give ANet idea how to change this profession overall so they dont have to deal with balance issue over and over and over again. Because as long as this profession stays on different base than any other profession, this wont go away.

Jack of Tears.9458:

I’m guessing this thread is only about PvP … because I play PvE exclusively and I don’t use either of those attacks – and I’m still doing pretty good. But, with that said, a lot of the thieves movement based attacks are made with the idea of Initiative in mind … you take that out and you’ll need to rethink just about every weapon skill they have.

Yes, the issue is mainly in PvP.

And thats the whole idea. It only makes sense that taking out innitiative would meak redesign all skills to the CD based form.

Are you even serious with the video?

He doesnt do almost anything else but heartseek spam until he is out of innitiative and then he heals, go to stealth and do it all over again.

Thats exactly what I was talking about. No weapon switching. He is basically killing ppl with blade storm and heartseek spam.

If this is the example of good thief’s gameplay according to you, then this thread is exactly suggesting how to change this shallow and easy gameplay, because well this is just ridiculous.

You actually have 13 other abilities, but yea.

Problem comes when 90% of ppl use 10% of the true efectivness of thief, becuase its just enough to do enough damage to defeat the enemy. And thats the whole problem at the moment.

I will just add that what I am describing right now is mostly caused by sPVP and tPVP. I suppose it doesnt effect PvE that much. Thing is that same principles are in PvP and PvE in this game. And you cant do one thing in PvP and other thing in PvE. Which is exactly another reason why having one class standing out with different game mechanic is a bad idea and will never cause any good in the game.

Erin.7521:

All classes should have a different feel to them, something that makes them stand out. The thief’s initiative is what this class has, take that away and what are you left with? I am really not sure. A rather dull squishy warrior I suppose, that doesn’t sound like much fun to play.

I play a thief for the fast pace, the diving in and out of action and movement. I do not play it because it can kill another player in a few hits because I am never going to use that skill. I don’t PVP, as such I cannot comment much on balance or glass cannon builds. All I can say is there is more than one area of this game and that should be taken into consideration with all changes to classes.

Even then no class should have their main mechanic removed be based on the opinions of those who play against them. Only if the players of that class are not enjoying it, and I am sure that is not the case here.

You will still be able to do that. What are you left with? Stealth, poisions. Thats what is thief about. You will still be able to get in, do some quick damage, get out. You just will have to use multiple skills to achieve that, not just two because your skills will be on CD.

I agree its nice to have every profession stand out. The problem is that with this mechanic Thief is the only profession standing out. Every other profession is the same in this regard and thats why you dont hear ppl complaining about other professions spamming only one skill to kill the enemy. Because simply you cant do that.

LED Head.2439:

Well in that case they better make the rest of the attacks more viable because we only spam those two skills as they are really the only ones worth using for opening attacks. They don’t need a nerf they just need to make the other dagger skills more useful.

Can you please elaborate?
I mean this is good, sure make other skills more useful. But what specific skills and what changes do You see need to be made to make the more useful.

LED Head.2439:

Thief is by far not the only profession that suffers from people using only 1 or 3 of its moves all the time mesmer comes to mind and so does warrior.

There is a huge difference between USING only 1 or 3 skills or SPAMMING 1 or 3 skills. If as warrior you use hundred blades and you are not close to the target, its wasted and you cant use it again. Same as if the target dodges this skill. You cant spam it but have to wait for the CD to come again. With skills you can spam in a row thats not the case.

Melphina.9035:

I enjoy watching people spam that ability like its the be all end all of D/D spec from 40% and down.

This is what concerns me.

Can you say about any other profession that they can “spam” with one skill anyone down from 40%? No. This isnt good design and you should not be able to do that. The fact that you enjoy it is for me sad, but also confirms that majority of ppl just spam heartseek until they are dry on innitiative, go stealth, wait for innitiative to get up and do the same thing over and over.

Which again leads to the class delivering high results with one or two skills and thus the class is very shallow compared to other professions.

Mojo.2691:

Any thief would builds like a squishy cannon can kill most noobs (or cooldown’d pros) by blowing all their initiative in under a few seconds. If they don’t THEN they could just run away and try it again. It sounds as if you’re a little bias with your responses.

Thieves have a few issues. It doesn’t matter how you ‘think’ they should be played, if people can spam an ability and kill someone quickly then they’ll do it over and over again.

Suggesting changes is the best way to balance. Even bad suggestions could help find the core issue and improve the archtype.

Thank You.
First person who actually understands that I didnt make this thread to cry about Thieves or to make the underpowered or whatever. But to point ANet how to make the profession deeper and eventually enjoyable to play for majority of players. Im sure there are many more solutions how to fix Thieves. But at the moment innitiative is the only single biggest difference between other professions and Thieves.

And is also the core reason why we have gazillions of whiney posts about heartseek spam or whip spam.

Have you heard any other profession from the game connected with word “SPAM”? No, because you just cant do that with CD based skills. And thats what makes the combat deep. If I use skill it goes on CD. Its done..i cant use it again and I may pay for that. With Thieves they use skill at the wrong time but its all fine, they still have enough innitiative to use it again…and again..and again.

Melphina.9035:

Or we could leave it alone and let people who run full berserk gear die for it.

I asked for constructive feedback and suggestions.
Your comment is neither of these so please if You dont have anything better to say, dont say anything.

Full berserker gear should be as viable for thief as any other gear for certain gameplay. Anyway armor is not not the point of this thread.