Guild Wars 2

Can you tell me how can i kill the upper part of the elemental with elementalist?
I know how with mesmer but i heard even ele can.
Need the specific skill..i just heard Icebow is involved but i had no success.

P.S. also i would suggest (in a guide) to not dps it until you cleared the top part…
Even if for most profession (even mesmers) is a minor nuisance, The added lightnings can kill an ele in 2 shots.

Rune of the pack:
175 power + 125 precision and you may get fury and might and stuff when it….

Rune of the scholar:
175 power + 100 ferocity + 3% damage when 90% HP for a Phantasm build since you don’t pass the 10% to phantasms.

I’d say it depends from the build.
If you have a berserker set, and a phantasm build, rune of the pack are not so bad for mesmers only.

Wyrden.4713:

what r u talking about, roaming as elementalist is perfect, condi d/x and celestial + own preference mix meta d/d works awesome for roaming.

Yeah yeah as if i don t play DD since release.
I have even 2 celestial sets only for the runes and almost any trinket combination.

The point is in WWW most people is unexperienced…..the time you meet ANY Group that knows what to do you start thinking “what could i have done better?” after some tries you discover how in WWW ele roamer is extremely situational and any time you don t have the proper setting you can t do anything.

Unless you consider working good “surviving thieves and warriors”.
At that point i could agree ele can be built for that….not that you will kill any decent one.

Fractal staff is one of the few skins without any particle effect :/

Maybe some inquest or the new leyline leave some trails?

Mbelch.9028:

Without being drawn into /any/ arguments, I can confidently say I’d like to see the following balance for elementalists and the game that they are in:

*Nerf to strength runes

already done

*Nerf to celestial gear

already done

*Changes to the way churning earth fires off; it should be manual and scaled by how long you charge the skill for

would still be useless

Ele is in a pretty great place right now thanks to the last patch. I’d just like to see some of the things that make the skill floor so low disappear.

Pvp is not the only game mode.
I still have to see anything but thief, warrior and PU mesmer viable for WWW roaming. and no ELE is not viable…. You can roam even with a PVT necro obviously but that doesn t change the huge efficience disparity with other professions.

Last ferocity nerf and boon runes nerf was a big hit to a profession already struggling.

WWW has only staff eles in zergs (slightly OP but the lag balance them making them totally unplayable in bigger fights).

In PvE, ele gameplay is a joke based on stacking traits.
Its efficient but it actually promotes the opposite off what an ele should do…. (sit in fire and 5121212151212121 etc or conjure a hammer and 1111111 other weapons exists for stacking might ooc -.-).

pvp “balance” damaged GW2 since release i don t want to see any more PvP nerfs ruining other gamemodes.

GW2 won t be an esport….if they want to balance pvp just split pvp skills.

Anet never reverted something they broken.

Just look at iWarden fix.
Would ve been a QoL change to revert it back to when it wasn t mobile at all but attacked with consistence and instead we are stuck with that gamebreaking bug since months or possibly almost a year?

Seeing anet reverting some bad changes would be a great news.

In this game there is not only a matter of skills

Simply we have a bad definition of skill.
Most people thinks that being able to solo lupicus is skill (i’d agree for the first doing that).

I met so much people that can solo lupicus and can’t PUG a CoE to know that repeating the same tactic forever with the same people is the most fast, easy and efficient thing.

But being able to adapt is way harder.

1) target a mob with low health and try to make downed player rally.
2) ONLY if you are sure to survive ress manually the downed player.
3) MOST IMPORTANT: ressing generates the most aggro in the game, if the downed player has no aggro, don t go near him bringing mobs/bosses to him.
If anything, try to lure mobs/bosses away from him so any other player can ress him without taking aggro.
4) ress priority goes to guardians, elementalists (unless its a “meta” build with no defensive utilities, but in that case shouldn t even go downed), thieves and warriors (if they have battle standard off CD) because those are the best profession for ressing other players.

Number 3 is the most common mistake you see in dungeons.

If you are a ress friendly profession remember to use invul/reflect/protection/block/stealth skills while ressing (or even better while ressing but when you see incoming Attacks).

If you die trying to res someone you did the worst possible mistake.

On prime time SFR ONLY if you are in a WWW guild.
Sadly we have too many closed raids lately.

What’s the point of it not working in dungeons?
If ooc i don t see how it could be exploited, but would ve been really useful to sell stuff.
Well i ll save 900 gems then.

Its a pity any listed will end in the hands of those “altruist” TP players with too much moneys, to resell later.

As anything rare.

Want……won t start without a guardian.

Yep
Differently from dungeons i love necro in fractals if they are good.
Given the fact that you can adapt their skills to many fights

CC and boon stripping are 2 really useful things in fractals.
Vulnerability and Chill are also awesome.

Explain why the LFG 99% wants a guardian then.

99% means almost mandatory to me….

1. Guardian
2. Elementalist
3. Warrior
4. Mesmer
5. Necromancer
6. Ranger
7. Thief
8. Engineer

There is not only dps differently from what people pretends on the forums.
Unique tactics from different professions makes them more desirable than doing good stuff other professions already do.

Ele has some advantages nowaday in fractals:

1) (mostly)ranged dps on par with top melee dps (and melee is not Always possible)
2) Aoes
3) Icebow 5
4) Burst
5) scepter/focus with the 02066 build to carry the Group if they can t get past something. (provide absolute survival+in battle might stacking+ burst with icebow+ ressing,healing cond cleansing capabilities+ defiant removal).

@purple miku…they fixed LF+FGS a month ago…. and i don t really think in a fractal a SD ele is that good compared to staff….
That is infact Destroying your personal DPS (In fractals) unless you use LH….goodluck with it

P.S. FYI i recently took a couple weeks noticing wich trait was better in pug runs between:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Persisting_Flames
and
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pyromancer%27s_Puissance

Even with a SD ele in party, most times the second won by far unless there was a phalanx warrior.

(i use 64202 staff mostly for some reasons)

The difference is you can stack in dungeon and avoid anything.
In dungeons bosses are also more stupid less damaging and with way less HP.

Fractal could be the base for any dungeon and solve most of the issues.

GL stacking a level 49 mossman with pugs.

Your attempt is just an unnecessary showoff.
I could complete a level 73 TTTMW pug fractal with 20 AR, so i know they can be done.

The difference int convenience is the reason why
99% level 40+ pug fractal runs wait for at least a guardian.
Can you deny this statement?

How many did you see without one?

Guardians doesn t only have reflects.
They have one of the best immobilize, Aegis is a life saver, the passive healing helps players to stay above the oneshot threshold and so on.

I would say that one support guardian makes group DPS more effective than a DPS guardians in most cases (pugs).

I had quite a lot stories about the DPS guardians i meet lately in fractals.

Purple Miku.7032:

It looks like it’d fail to satisfy my requirement for damage, but I can see what you’re trying to do here with the setup. I haven’t really put thought into using blinding ashes but it looks like you have decent enough of a crit chance to pull it off.

I think any classes that apply weakness will absolutely wreck you, unfortunately. Especially with my warrior in full out DPS that always has a warhorn equipped, I feel like you’d be an easy target to burst down.

I’m not really agreeing with your setup, but it certainly looks like something I’d be willing to accept more.

Umm not really…
The build is all but perfect, but conditions are the minor issue.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Wave_
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Fire
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Evasive_Arcana
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleansing_Wave

Conditions are not an issue.

I’d say i fear more XvsX when focused.

For the damage part:
you hit for 2-3000 and apply 30 seconds of burning without any effort (500 ticks).

This instead is my dps build, but its nothing new.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhUM6ZW5wzBd0ANACxhzEWIQ5sNnC-TFCFABls/Alq/AwJA4KlgIpMKJlOO8AASTPQAAEgdWnBwRP6RP6RPa38m38m38mlCQUhRA-w

FGS is balanced in the only serious istances we have:
Fractals.

the issue is not the fgs but the dungeons themselves.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

spoj.9672:

Its not even mandatory in fractals.

Guang snow said it and although he knows nothing he is always right, don’t you know that??

I would like to join a no guardian 5 pugs fractal 40+ with you and see how much it takes.

Why can’t we put in practice our statements for once and see who is right?
As i said many times i will do my part, its not me you’ll have to worry about.

Because fractals 49-50 is full of berserker guardians, melee warriors that wipe the floors…..its quite annoying when they are the same opening the “only zerker” lfgs.

Obviously they didn t read the part of the guides suggesting how to use spare weapons (and equip).

Orangensaft.7139:

Vol.7601:

Here are some great ones from reddit

Dolyak:
http://imgur.com/a/TqPzf

Nyancat
http://imgur.com/PIzED6i

Request:
-krait tonic
-marionette tonic
-guild banner tonic
-furniture
-a tornado (ele elite)
-a tree
-all fractal tonic forms
-avatar of melandru
-Norn bear

krait for you

Longkrait is long

Since i drop a full healer ascended armor from fractals (-.-) i decided to get a second celestial set and try this build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAoYhUM6ZW5wzBdEBCAGxsQSIcAIBUEFtBK9GA-TFCBABapMwRlgkq+DO7PAwJAwjHAgZK9yTPQAAEAP35O35O35czbezbezbWKgRFGB-w

Its quite fun…..Since you apply so much burning with little effort helps you to stay Always on the offense (if you don t you die :/ ).

Maybe 04046 is stronger but this is fun :P and kills mesmer/thieves quite reliably.

I agree there are some gamebreaking things in PvE.
FGS is one of them as its is shadow refuge, stealth fields for skips for example (but also the low investiments on guardian reflects and support that makes the profession MANDATORY in 99% pug runs in anything not extremely easy).
Also the fact that elementalist get oneshot by 90% more things in the game, needs to be rewarded somehow.

Remove FGS (and lighthammer please) and give us some sort of POWERFUL elite like any other profession plus more survivability for PvE that doesn’t need to destroy our dps.

Or you will really have the old WWWWG parties everywhere.

And i still think that Guardian is more of an issue for PvE than anything else.
They have numbers and they know how guard is in 99,9% fractal parties (30+) arah, TA aetherblade etc..

P.S. stacking was already meta before FGS..removing it will make thing worse without adding anything, this is why i believe anet will do something.

WHY?

No trinity
No aggro management
No AI
PVP (capture point) balancing (melee > ranged)
Defiant

^
Agree

People ruins your ele firefields?
No problem you know you can press H go into equip section, equip a staff.
Then go into trait section and activate pyromancer’s puissance.

Problem solved.

People dies evrytime in that difficult part and you are Always the last one standing?
Equip some defense, utilities and skills and support/ress them.
If you are good you can even guess wich equip to use before every fight.

You are a good player?
If yes you have every weapon, and can change your trait.

I suggest people to bring their WWW set in dungeon and switch to it if needed.
90% of times people will have a soldier/celestial/knight set for WWW so it doesn t even costs anything.

If people keep saying only zerker is the way. You can just answer them “unless you keep dying, losing way more time than the few gained with dps”.

mtpelion.4562:

There is no monopoly in play on precursors.

True but there is manipulation.
A wise use of words by a dev to mask the fact we have a problem.
That is why i came to dislike his posts.
They are usually misleading and cryptic for common players.

Economy may be working as intended… and intentions are totally wrong since they produce complaints in an environment that should be totally about fun (a videogame should earn moneys based on the fun provided).
There is even a strong effort to avoid measuring the unsatisfaction about economy.
And no effort to discuss it on a less biased forum environment.

If you look at 3rd party forums or other boards it seems gw2 economy “TP in particular” is quite unpopular, in this board is the perfection itself instead and other players should L2P the TP O__o

WWW is the best way to get them.
The megaserver affected PVE dragonite farming too much, something should be done.

Trice.4598:

LordByron.8369:

I know pvp ONLY players unable to complete AC
I also have double your playtime most of wich in Fractals, going for the second stack of pristines.

I have 2 friends in my buddy list with 3k + hours on guardian only, who pug FoTM 2-3 times a day, 20k achievements points, couples of legendary, yet when I tried running a couple fractal with them, they wouldn’t use Wall/Shield of the avenger at Mossman. Didn’t blind in Ascalon fractal, and hardly ever used Aegis. I’d take a necro or engie over that anytime.

Whoever say Guardian are god bless in PvE pug is delusional. Every single PuG guardian I have seen is running a AH staff build. I’d rather get a bearbow ranger than a staff guardian, at least the bearbow is actually doing damage.

Also about you saying that Fractal =/ dungeon. That is wrong, whatever is better in dungeon, work just as good in Fractal.

You hit the spot.
I pug, I succeed in pug runs, i don’t open posts against pugs.

So if someone other struggles to pug, it may not be pugs’ fault.

I really knew some “forum pros” totally lacking their profession knowledge.

For example switching traits to compensate pugs lacks, is not rocket science IF you know at least your traits.

I don t really care if i have 2 support guardians, for example, if it happens i just get all utilities and trait for dps and play in a more aggressive way (and its indeed easier despite what you say….slower but easier..in the end it will be no more than 5-10 minutes).

But you know what instead?
The time you have DPS guardians you spend half the fight ressing them…….wasting your dps and possibly i have to switch utilities (or even worse traits) to avoid wipes.

Spreading the idea that every single player should play DnT builds is just wrong.
They rely on 5 perfectly efficient players something you will almost never find in pug runs.

And trust me the lack of adapting skills makes most of those copy/paste players worse than any bad pug when something goes differently from what they expect.

For example try to think about how much dps a staff ele would waste if forced to go water to cast heal5 (either to remove conditions or to get some health).
The perfect machine you see in videos is the consequence of players knowledge, but they won t complain so much about pugs.
I met some of them and they even adapted and liked some silly stuff i did (sometimes i like to change because with the few dungeon we have it becomes boring to play every day the same rotations).

“random elitists” instead would’ve complained to Death (can prove that, try to play mesmer on AC2 boss with “random elitists”… you don t stack behind wall? you are a noob even if you kill the boss in half the time! 0 flexibility same happens with any tactic they don t know of).

silentnight warrior.2714:

“Despite warrior healing is better than elementalist”.

- In what game?
GW2 as proved by tables.
You can evade be invulnerable and kite while healing…passive play at its worst

“Its clear to see balance Bias when you see healing signet nerfed of 8% and RTL nerfed of 250% along other skill doing the same.”

- What Healing signet got to do with mobility?

Its not about mobuility but about approach to nerfs… 8% is ridiculous when usually they nerf minor stuff by not less than 50%.

8% nerf paired with 10% average damage nerf (ferocity) is just a bad joke.

“Not to mention signet of restoration in the past.”

- They reverted the nerf they made for PvP.

That doesn t change the different attitude:
A weaker signet nerfed by 50%
a stronger signet nerfed by 8%

“But as someone said…ele can heal fast to 100% HP while warrior can heal only to 50%….. >_> (find the mistake).”

There is no mistake. If you remember well elementalist could bunker better than warriors and they give more suport also in the same time (and still can) with their low health pool.

They heal the same……warrior has 2X HP and more armor
Something shouldn t exist.

Nischana.2036:

Maybe because Ele will have this mobiliy only with picking up a Ulti ?
Its not like the current ele (with ulti) cant keep up with Warri or Thief.

Unless you take in account FGS that is a mistake (you cast FGS you get to target, you drop FGS since its useless in a fight, and opponent start to flee again… your FGS is on CD).

You can simply check skills on Wikipedia to rpove yourself wrong.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

Good players will adapt, you will return here and complain again about something different. And that will repeat. Unless you change your ways of thinking and stop being a scrub, the only one who will be harmed, are you.

So you tell me “good players will adapt”.
Efficiency means clearing stuff in the shortest time possible.

So if you take in account the time needed to form a Group, seems you might save time being a little more feasible.

At this point if you require players with the exact build for the exact dungeon, you might not only wait a lot but also you ll Always play said dungeon in the exact same way.

At this point you may miss stuff that nobody yet posted on youtube but are extremely efficient anyway.

That is the opposite of “adapting”

This is exactly what the “stacking to avoid mechanics” led to.
So when anet rebalance the game you can t really “adapt” until someone posts the new build and speedrun video on youtube.

This is all but efficience (and not even skill to tell the truth).

Efficience is being able to:
1) build a party in the least time possible.
2) understand if waiting for better players Worth the wait or not considering the party experience.
3) adapt to make the run as fast as possible according to the party
4) accepting suggestion for tactic you never seen, may result in faster runs afterward

Some iperefficient speedruns are just few seconds slower than average runs.
But waiting for the proper party, or even wiping a single time will just waste way more time.

So i think that the tunnelvision of some players is just the result of a wrong elitism.
Being able to REALLY adapt makes the difference.

I know people like that that can solo lupicus and takes 1 hour to pug CoE1 resulting in multiple kicks and insults..

But according to him he is pro nd efficient because can reproduce exactly speedruns he saw on youtube.
Then he ask me why i lose time blasting my fire fields with staff ele when nobody gives fury …… (he mains ele).

Miku Lawrence.6329

Hi, I’m mesmer for 2k hours not counting beta, doing speedruns rather than casual tours, r60 and going up to 80, Reaper and Champion Illusionist (September 2012), 150 qp (you might not know what that even is), Bold, Bifrost and all that bling.

I know pvp ONLY players unable to complete AC
I also have double your playtime most of wich in Fractals, going for the second stack of pristines.

Warrior is Always wellcome but only for the ressbanner and the ease of play

Cool tell me what a warrior usually does in a PUG level 50 fractal RUN (see TOPIC)

Miku Lawrence.6329:

LordByron.8369:

Why most people complained?
Because it dies too easily against zergs in WWW due to aoe stacking.
That happens to be the exact thing happens in Fractals with aoes everywhere PLUS aggravated pathing issues by the weird stages.

Also still waitinig for someone complaining of my efficience in fractals IN GAME…..

They complained because their free out of jail card on a 9 1/2 second cooldown got fixed to actually do what it was supposed to do, and that this particular thing got fixed before 30 class breaking bugs.

Not obnly you are horribly wrong, proving a lack of knowledge about mesmer (you possibly never played one), but also you don t want to see wich skill they could fix.

The 2 skill is almost identical to many Others profession’s…
Was fixed possibly by some dveveloper that doesn t have an idea on how the game works but just reads the code.
As happened with mai trin.

And many angry mesmer players wrote a list of “fix” similar to ileap that would ruin the game for almost any class.

It was obviously provocatory, but i dare you to tell again what you said if they actually go on with that list.

AP is an indicator of how long a player played gw2.

If you want good chances to get competent players for istances you usually go (for fractals) between 7000 and 15000

Over that you get usually achievement hunters, under that you get relatively new players that may not understand many game mechanics.

The fact that the game itsels has no decent tutorials or explain mechanics and people has to look for 3rd party sites or guides aggravates the problem.

Consider this:
Last fractal has Always an AR check.

Some players often enters fractal with less ar without even telling.
That s a totally acceptable kick even at last boss.

What i want, is the chance to compensate for other player lack of experience (for any player).

And mechanics that needs all 5 players to do their job flawlessly are a hinderance to a mmorpg.

That is why people hates some dungeon paths.

Enaretos.8079:

LordByron.8369:

Ranger is annoying… expecially with a pet. Only profession that is possibly a hinderance.

My ranger is crying at your ignorance.

Talking about pug runs.
I don’t see a decent ranger since a year at least in fractal.
No entangle no spirits no spotter and so on.

For my other opinions…. well as i say i have a really high success rate.
That means i can carry many elitist, switching build, when they would instead quit.
Or use the meta builds when everything runs smooth.

Trait and skills knowledge is the most common lack nowaday for most players.
Anything not meta (and even how meta stuff works) is a mistery for most elitist you meet.

At this point you can yell at them/quit/wait forever for the perfect Group, or try to compensate.

The latter is more fun.

P.S. i wonder who has the courage to deny pug waiting for Guardians before starting fractals.
I did some high level runs without guards but really really few (best was a level 73 with 3 thieves, 1 mesmer and 1 warrior).
And you know what? we had a HEALER/support thief really effective.

P.P.S: fractals are not dungeons.

P.P.P.S:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Nerf to mesmer’s sword 3 is not huge.

In PvE it’s tiny. LordByron is just being LordByron.

Why most people complained?
Because it dies too easily against zergs in WWW due to aoe stacking.
That happens to be the exact thing happens in Fractals with aoes everywhere PLUS aggravated pathing issues by the weird stages.

Also still waitinig for someone complaining of my efficience in fractals IN GAME…..

Its obviously server side.
andd happens expecially with mobility skills (Lightning flash combos are impossible with lag but even dagger fire 3 and 4 becomes unreliable).

Its just strange appens only for some players.
But when you go back to PvE lag suddenly vanishes.

I am quite used to recognize server latence since i played some online tournaments in the past in other games and i know wich mechanics are used to mask latence.

Obviously any active play is impossible with heavy lag.

Not really.
Balancing is a total mess.
Some profession are completely unviable or pigeonholed in few roles that shouldn t even exist.

Discussing balance will be useless until we will have balance patch clearly aimed at WWW and PvE rather than the common excuses:

WWW is unbalanced by nature and PvE is easy.

Really they have 99% of players stop with the excuses.
If anet wants to balance for PvP they should SPLIT any pvp change they want to do, and not curse WWW and PvE players with silly changes that impact capture point.

I don t even ask for splitting all skills… but only when they comes up with their brilliant PvP balance changes.

Silmar Alech.4305:

Isn’t this not occurring any more? This is from a lvl 49 run one or two days after the update that “fixed the scaling”. We did not run one single 49 after this any more, because of this. We gave up at that time after more than one hour of fruitless tries with our guild team.

(I apologize that the text is in german, but you can read the numbers, I hope).

She used to do 2X damage with teleport and shots.
16.000+

Now you can safely survive any attack.

Issue.
Mai trinn have been turned from easy to BORING AND UNFUN.

There is no challenge, but now you will lose lot of time removing her shield.

Same thing they did with Jade maw at level 50.

I would argue they are trying to make fights longer rather than more fun.
The condition duration reduction should be changed to 75% base with a 15% less every 2 stacks rather than a flat 20% per stack.

P.S. not to mention the usual habbits of anet of putting totally unclear mechanics with no hints.
How a player is supposed to understand all mai mechanic without dulfy or forum?
Simply no way -.-

Well i can get the only warriors, eles and guardians in dungeons.

But for fractal is a different story.
I am possibly one of the players with most fractal runs (i think i have at least a run per day or more since release).

Only issue is the mandatory GUARDIAN.

It isn t even a discussion before starting 99,9999% parties wait for at least 1 or 2 guardians, but you can have 3 to 5 and be happy this is the most OP broken profession for any difficult content (and with random players there is plenty).

Warrior is Always wellcome but only for the ressbanner and the ease of play.

ELE is way better in fractal: having the chance to aoe dps or just cleanse and heal.
Having one with 2 different stats sets is really good.
But mostly its possibly the best ranged profession, and there are plenty situation where you will range.
Even if you melee he can range burst before the fight starts.

Mesmer is full of tricks but last nerf to sword 3 was really huge, anet should really stop to balance the game on the failure that is PvP ruining the game for everyone else.
Yet unless they keep their “fixing the wrong things and bugging the working ones”, a phantasm/reflect mesmer has still a place.
2 mesmers can do portal chains or temporal curtain chains for fun tactics.
But the lack of dps makes them quite unwelcome.

Necro is just awesome, having a good necro makes the run easy.

Thief is a great resser and dps is nice, has reflect and parry etc etc

Ranger is annoying… expecially with a pet. Only profession that is possibly a hinderance.

Engi ._. never understood the class and not interested. so can t say anything.

What i learnt:
Most groups asking for more than 2 warriors are usually extremely unexperienced.
You end up seeing 3 warrior with rifles :| and hammer and no spare weapons.

Unfortunately out of fractals: warriors everywhere

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

What I would like to see, is dungeons in which you actually have to do stuff, instead of walking through bloody corridors. In Dungeons and Dragons Online, they had dungeons where one player had to switch off a bunch of deadly underwater traps, by swimming through a gauntlet of bladed fans, to reach a lever on the other side. GW2’s dungeons lack any sense of cooperative challenges. Oh sure, there’s the occasional destroy X amounts of burrows before this or that npc dies. But what about levers and mechanisms? Remember just about every other rpg out there, that has dungeons with things in them? Where are the pressure plates, the doors, the traps? Why don’t we search for keys, or have any sort of platforming in the dungeons? It’s just a bunch of corridors, corridors, and more corridors. Boring!

COF3 is like that, and its Always empty.
Having stuff that needs 4-5 coordinated players to complete, cuts 99% pugs out of the playerbase.

Fractal 49-50 is possible only at peak hours even in the weekend and it takes lot of time to fill a group.
Fractal population dropped a lot…due mostly to Mai Trinn update.

The following rebalancing was not enough.
Many people happily got back into fractal when they changed dredge.
But Mai trinn change was really a punch in the face.
It just made people lose faith in the “dungeon team”.

And since rewards are still broken attempting at people fun is a worse mistake.

For once anet needs a long balancing works of stuff going against players….
Only then they can change workarounds and easy stuff.

-Example in Urban fractal, NPC still get stuck somewhere until you wipe.

-Harpies still can hit you when you can t hit them (invulnerable but oneshots the same).

-Same with molten fractal, and also the scaling is totally broken, trash mobs hits harder than any boss without even a tell (melee dagger attack for 14.000 is an example).

-in molten it still risks breaking if you enter the room before NPC afaik.

-Cliffside changes were only a DAMAGE to the game without adding anything.
Now you miss in front of the seal sometimes, spawning the infamous fanatics.

And REWARDS…..only healer chests with 0.0000000001%? worse than before.

I have almost never seen an “elitist” switch armorset/build when the Group struggle at last boss for example.

I wonder if they even know they can change traits/equip.

If you want to be effective, you have to learn also how to save the day

Obviously a couple of decent players in the party is the bare minimum, it all comes being one of them.

silentnight warrior.2714:

Warrior was made to be fast with some weapons and was made to be slow with others.

Ele can have good mobility for chassing with D/D – Burning Speed / RtL / Magnetic Grasp and then Magnetic Leap / Lightning Flash / Conjure Fiery Greatsword (with Gap closers with low CD).

You are wrong DD ele was build to be fast.
Warrior was built to engagé fast.

This was clearly original design that was reverted by other developers as it was profession descriptions and stuff.

And just to answer you:
-RTL from 15 second 1500 range, became 40 second 1200 and has worst bug than rush
-Magnetic leap once used to escape the skill was completely redesigned to avoid it.
-Lightning Flash nerfed removing breakstun
-Conjure fiery GS cool an elite wich nly purpose is to escape and has a long casting skill

As you see DD ele was designed to be mobile and nerfed into oblivion
I can t really see ANY other profession nerfed so hard as DD ele was in mobility.

In the meantime both Warrior and Thief can move more than old DD ele.
Despite warrior healing is better than elementalist.

Its clear to see balance Bias when you see healing signet nerfed of 8% and RTL nerfed of 250% along other skill doing the same.
Not to mention signet of restoration in the past.

But as someone said…ele can heal fast to 100% HP while warrior can heal only to 50%….. >_> (find the mistake).

I would argue that any ele player saying he ckittene LH build everywhere is either relying on party heavy support or just lying.

Its not L2P, you have 2 evades, no defenses (you have LH) and can be killed by any trash melee attack quite fast.

Most of them uses blind fields and tactics that avoid the necessity of even reacting.
Don t worry its not your fault.
I can play in both pug runs and speedruns and i know how really is.
Simply change build if pugging something harder than AC or COF or CoE.

Grimezy.5679:

…..

In some dungeons/fractals, stacking might before the fights is not enough given the fight duration.

Staff can stack 10 might and stack fury, also can really burst an aoe with meteor shower+ice bow.

I still prefer versatility over speed record builds.

I don t see many LH ele on mossman for example in fractal pugruns.

P.S: for aggro there are different aggro mechanics as said.
Example dredge fractal lava boss usually has some preference against though players.
Or again ressing genereates the most aggro.
Anet made sure to remove trinity and every chance to manage aggro so we have this broken PvE system.

In speedruns burst has a role also.
And if we could mesure ele DPS without conjured, even with staff build, but without support, i’d doubt ele is so efficient.

In most pug runs you can’t be get top efficiency with standard builds even if you never risk to die for example.

Nowaday we have more antiPUG thread than antiSTACK ones, that could just suggest the tunnel vision the community has.

I would argue that with staff exception, ANY other weaponset needs a strong PvE buff.
Without conjured they are nothing expecially DD unless you camp in AIR with autoattack.

What i really hate is that the most fun build this game ever seen (EA) is so bad in PvE.

Ropechef.6192:

…..

I instead can play with whatever class i want with almost any pug… and still succeed :o

Sometimes i go mesmer, other ele staff dps, but i even go scepter focus celestial not to mention the number of different traits i use.

The nice thing is it makes every run different and not the usual copy paste of a youtube run.
Expecially in fractal you can get some fun with pugs to forget the lack of istances this game has.

There are times when all you want is clear the dungeon as fast as possible.
Other times that finishing it without wiping is enough.

If you can do just one of the two, you can’t call yourself experienced (nothing wrong with it, unless you open thread on the forum against pugs ).

Bhawb.7408:

LordByron.8369:

Are you saying this game can t have Artificial Intelligence on bosses?
Because if people find safe sposts it means a hole in the AI.

As it is stacking but since the AI is so bad that we can t even call it AI, its legit.
Safe spots would be exploiting by the same definition anet already gave.
(attacking from a spot where opponent can t attack).

Artificial Intelligence doesn’t lead to there not being safe spots. Look at Dark Souls, a game in some ways comparable: active combat, dodge mechanic, bosses with extremely high damage. Dark Souls still had bosses whose AI could be exploited, in fact DS took the idea of skill far further than GW2 ever will because you could beat the game at level 1, by abusing AI.

The AI has to have holes, it doesn’t work otherwise. ANet can make the holes more difficult to exploit, make the game more punishing of not beating the AI, but at the end of the day they want an active skill-based combat system, and putting in arbitrary mechanics to punish skillful use of the mechanics (stacking uses the mechanics far better than not stacking does) makes no sense.

Dark souls as i told at least 10 times is the sequel of a long series of LOW BUDGET games (king’s field=>demon’s soul) that had infact amongst the worse AI ever seen before GW2 in a modern game.
It has the same issues of GW2: you learn how to fool the pathetic ai and you complete the game without equipment.

If you want to see some decent AI you might look at halo2-3 for example.

What i find extremely interesting is NPC behavior in skyrim also.
i you have few on map they have AI, but each one over a certain number uses scripted behaviors that are infact superior to GW2 AI.

Actually MMORPGs are famous for their lack of AI, and replaced those with numbers and the aggro management + the trinity system

You can see wich was anet mistake.

P.S. lliadri challenge was a glitched camera -.- nuff said.
Mai trinn was nor “active gameplay”.. too many onrehsot attack one unblockable and the other undodgeable……
Once again the BAD ai made players find workarounds.