Guild Wars 2

You can t calculate ele dps with bonus banners 25 might and 25 vulnerabilities unless you can t obtain them yourself.

Swirling wind and reflects can be timed ro take care of the pistol attack.

Not of the lightning projectiles, horrik cannon and melee Attacks.

Those requires every player to be more prepared that it should be considering the average difficulty of Others levels.

And if you add some instabilities …..GG you are done.
Don t as Always defend a clear mistake…you are not being helpful toward the community nor the game if you oppose people submitting things that needs a fix.

EDIT:
GG to this user from reddit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZwzpkCMLFs

i lold when i saw an increment of 200 to 500% damage….
And you still defend it.
Its clearly bugged.

I still have to see any good/great player with profession able to kill a decent thief in WWW reliably.

An ele instead can be killed anytime and when it comes to small groups, a targeted ele will die faster than any other profession.

Its decent in 1vs1 that never happens in www, bit not even so good.
Its great instead for zergs with a staff.

No Pulse.2967:

LordByron.8369:

I know that dungeon forum purpose is to show peoples skill by answering L2P everywhere.

But its quite an insult to human intelligence to debate if mai trinn at level 21-40 is balanced.
Its clearly not: play any other and then play Mai….

Also i say that LFG tool is clearly speaking by itself on how the community likes the fractal.
I didn t see fractals so empty since cliffside had a gamebreaking bug making adepts+fanatics to infinite spawn at boss (and sum each phase you end up with 12-16 if i remember well).

Just pugged a lvl 29 with someone who was new to fractals. 1-2 downs, not a single wipe at Mai (I just told them they need to stay closer to her than me so I can take her shadowshot aggro).

Exactly as i said……

I know that dungeon forum purpose is to show peoples skill by answering L2P everywhere.

But its quite an insult to human intelligence to debate if mai trinn at level 21-40 is balanced.
Its clearly not: play any other and then play Mai….

Also i say that LFG tool is clearly speaking by itself on how the community likes the fractal.
I didn t see fractals so empty since cliffside had a gamebreaking bug making adepts+fanatics to infinite spawn at boss (and sum each phase you end up with 12-16 if i remember well).

Usually John Smith refuse to provide data.
When he does can be read in more than one way and that is why he is NEVER clear.

He would be a better politician than an economy dev.

Example:
He said many times that monopolize precursor market is impossible.
Reality: “monopolize” is impossible, controlling most supply to push prices is instead quite usual.

For how you can read that data, you could have a TP guild invest in Dusks for example.
Unfortunately the data gives is Always interpretable and lacks details and He will never gives statements also.

Notice how he Didn t say nobody attempted and managed to push precursor prices.
Politic.

I’ll ask again to the small crowd showingoff how they can do it.
I can do it also at 50…..but try 33 and 42 and so on with pugs.

But aside that.

Is it fun?

As if mai chain wasn t 1,5 second long and like there is not that funny bug that empties your Whole endurance bar with no evade.

Just to say a couple reasons.

Aside the good job i think this proves that the lack of aggro management is a total failure with this sort of mechanics.

If soloing is way easier than pugging, it just means something.

Jerus.4350:

I should have said no Reaction based gameplay video game is all that successful if they push the difficulty too high. And that’s what GW2 is, it’sa bout active defense, which is about reading and reacting. Strategy games like Civ of course are a different beast.

Halo serie is quite known for its good PvE gameplay.
Expecially the AI.

Simply most mmorpg still have the same AI of first videogames.
I suspect some bosses are even more stupid than pac man ghosts.

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/157127/gw021.png

Got this from reddit.
Its a low level fractal her autochain can down you without even considering conditions.

If you give a tell and its unreliable and almost useless it can t be a feature.

Why then not removing the aoe at all?
At lupi they are totally useless.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

LordByron.8369:

as said i think nobody can say the fractal is balanced.
Try it at 20-30 and you see why it is not.

At 50 may be (yet is unintended, time consuming and not even fun) but at any lower level is just a mistake.

Having a level 2X mai trinn harder than any other level 50 fractal can t be justifyied.

And when such mistakes are done, fast patch rollbacks should be the norm… but i know we ll stick with this for months.

P.S. in mai trinn case, stack is NOT a trick… its the intended mechanic.
What people is doing now are workarounds.

She is immune to most CC just to tell (at least totally immune to mesmer sw2-2, chill, most cripples and stuff)

She is immune to most cc as long as she has enough stacks of her shield.

Yeah those condition/cc you would use exactly to remove her shield and becomes almost useless once she lost it…. makes sense

Ileap for example or frozen ground etc.

@nick with this game design, the difficulty resides Always in party experience and nothing more.
Fractal 49-50 will be Always extremely easy, while now helping lower levels pug runs 20-3X are the “most challenging” (i’d say frustrating + unfun) content in the game.

There is never a half way…
Its either impossible or easy (once someone put a video on youtube and Others will be able to reproduce it) that because we have outdated mechanics and an AI of games of 10-20 years ago.

I play fotm daily (before patch 2+ daily runs usually 40 and 50).
I don t see a skin since a month and since fractured i saw a couple.

Purple Miku.7032:

They are certainly off now. I know this because I finally had the opportunity to attempt soloing on lvl 50!

I’ll tell you how bugs are Always mistaken for “difficult content”.

If you play lupicus you will see lot of people thinks that is quite difficult to survive lupicus shots.

That is why the aoes are totally unconsistent.
But they are not random, but simply projectiles will hit you on their way to the aoe if they are on the proper heigth, so even if you are way out of the aoe you will be hit.

That makes evading them quite difficult because you don t have a real tell on if they will hit or not.
You can use a reasonable prediction but still not much reliable.

Same exact mechanics happens with horrik AND cannon salvo.

Fire projectiles traveling straight to the aoe tends to hit anyone who is in their trajectory.

Its obviously a bug, but anet gives extreely low priority to bugs that goes against players.

P.S. now try to do it in a pug run of level 20-40 without losing time comparable to old dredge fractal.
I totally quit helping people to level until they fix the fractal because no doubt is a bug on scaling.

Brain may be designed to see patterns.
That is where you start using some simple math to see if said patterns are real or not.

And yet you get thread about tinfoil despite we had already 2 refunds due to chance related bugs and way more proved.

It may be wrong but may also be right.
If many people give some evidences you should start to apply some statistic and if possible work with the community to check if everything is Ok (see fractal droprate project).

P.S. My personal theory is DR related.
As already happened i think DR affects almost any drop you get (chest or mob).

Otokomae.9356:

It could also work for a Staff Ele in WvW, provided they were willing to just throw out Water Fields for healing, & drop conditions & control effects (Static Field stuns, Gust knockbacks, Chill, Immobilize, etc) & give up entirely on doing any real damage.

Waterfield healing consider healing stat from the blast user, making healing power useless in big groups/zergs.

Blasting a berserker ele waterfield cures as much as a nomad one.

Don t ask to make everything harder.

Anet already put veteran dredges like in maw stage at 50….
How’s that harder?
(and yes i know everyone uses the other “tactic”, but playing legit is a waste of time).

They don’t play the game they have to balance.

You can dodge teleportation attack >__> said 100 times already.

Its a 2 phase Attacks.
Mai lift arms and shoots an almost invisible bullet..
You can evade this.

Then if you got hit, the second part of the attack (shiny bullet + teleport) connects.
Otherwyse the second part won t happen since you already evaded.

Aside that the change is clearly a mistake.
Try it at lower levels and you can t honestly still defend it.

Level 50 experienced groups will be probably fine.
Don’t try to pug 1-40 because will simply be a nightmare.

Way to go… to reduce players.

as said i think nobody can say the fractal is balanced.
Try it at 20-30 and you see why it is not.

At 50 may be (yet is unintended, time consuming and not even fun) but at any lower level is just a mistake.

Having a level 2X mai trinn harder than any other level 50 fractal can t be justifyied.

And when such mistakes are done, fast patch rollbacks should be the norm… but i know we ll stick with this for months.

P.S. in mai trinn case, stack is NOT a trick… its the intended mechanic.
What people is doing now are workarounds.

She is immune to most CC just to tell (at least totally immune to mesmer sw2-2, chill, most cripples and stuff)

Xenon.4537:

I’m willing to bet any real swordsman will have objection to you using a katana with only one hand and no offhand. I know you have a stylized idea in your head about ninjas, I’m just saying it’s not realistic. :P

I’d say not
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyamoto_Musashi

Sanderinoa.8065:

LordByron.8369:

The fact that its easier to solo than to pug tells a lot about the awful mechanic they put.

You have no control on the aggro… and bosses like this simply show that if you aim for an innovative no trinity game you can t design bosses with stupid AI and insane numbers.

Well I do agree with the static field pulling being easier alone, but getting some CC in a pug creates just the same results and the real issue is her damage, which is only more of a risk because of this as the fight takes longer(which is also the case solo). Agro of her shot is still controllable anyways, her spinning attack is aoe so it would’ve hit everyone anyways, and her melee is probably not the main issue honestly.

I’ve been helping out random groups for fun mostly, but I’d say this is nothing more than a temporary issue for people who were too used to relaxing during this fight.

If you try to ress people you die now.
And if someone of your party gets downed, will die in seconds.
(just to say, trying to ress pugs, i was downed even before my downed state bar appeared 2 days ago).

That is what i don t like..they ut downed system in PvP and WWW and make it useless in PvE.

Also as said i know anet loves praising, but if you just try a level 2X mai trinn you understand why current mai trinn is just stupid.

Its like putting lupicus in personal story.

I would argue that ele is top DPS only in presence of a wall.
Seems recent dps speed tests showed ele 4th after thief, warrior and guardian.
On single targets.

DD imho is still extremeley bad in WWW as many already said.
Unless you “duel” that puts a set of rules that helps ele (see opponent freedom of disengage)

Staff is possibly the best DPS zerg weapon btw but is risky so most people wants you to be a waterbot….

Maw at 50 is as annoying.
With mobs having lot of HP and aggroing from mars.

0 challenge 100% annoyance.

Its not about pug.
Its about having control of aggro (solo) or not (pug).

Also warrior dealing lot of dps any build you use.

The fact that its easier to solo than to pug tells a lot about the awful mechanic they put.

You have no control on the aggro… and bosses like this simply show that if you aim for an innovative no trinity game you can t design bosses with stupid AI and insane numbers.

Wyrden.4713:

i am idea is: it uses savage leap (warrior sword 2) , we can swap with the clone as well, and the swap works like the portal, terrain doesnt affect the blink, means we could even use it in jumping puzzles to places wars usually go to!:o

this plus 1 sec damage immunity for the clone.

S/F ele has tools to deal with it also….

What is the biggest problem is stacking to remove mai shield.

And if somone dies, many will die also trying to ress.

But the real problem is the usual slap in the face by anet.

This change has nothing positive. is literally working to make your playerbase angry as happened for a year with costant dredge buffs.

I bet it was the same devs to do the job.

can we have a video of anet completing the fractal please?

There is only broken RNG everywhere.

Streaks everywhere..
Someday people will notice that despite we tend to notice only rare occurences, its becoming too obvious for occurencies that should be rare to be instead the norm.

I personally get almost no exotics from forge… like 50 attempts 1 random exotic.

Neko.9021:

Illusionary Leap: Fixed a bug that allowed players to swap places with their clone after it was destroyed.

Why did you nerf this skill?

because they don t have a clue.
Also because most of game designers probably left the game/were relocated short after the game was published.

Now we have developers that are trying to change an existing game in something else they have in mind and obviously, its not working.

Carighan.6758:

Because seriously, the person who fixed this probably considered it a bugfix. The functionality was clearly a bug. The tooltip says you swap with the clone, it makes sense that given no clone, you cannot swap.

As Always your unpopular theories are clearly intended ._.
How many people did you hear talking about this “bug” before today?

No its wasn t clearly a bug.

I just know that if i get hit, i don t care much about 5 or 10 seconds of might.
The 2% nerf is the only i see.

So if they drop i m gettin some for my mesmer (i already have on ele and don t plan to change them).

Good part about outfits is they don’t need trasmutation stones.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

LordByron.8369:

There is something about the healer chests also.
Out of 13 chests i got 11 healers, and 3 out of 4 weapons with healing.

Could i be just unlucky?
Possible
but how much are the chances?

You’re unlucky. Most chest drops in our guild are defenders.

That suggest rng doesn t work.
Even if we get someone dropping only offensive or malicious.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Mai Trin is now everything the anti-metas want, I think. Fast attacks, high damage, damaging aoes, blah blah blah. Now everytime they complain about a boss being stacked we can just ask them how they like fighting Mai Trin at 50.

Its not.

I Always carry with me a www set on my ele and i perfectly know how to build a nearly immortal tank (in any other situation even lupicus).

It was not enough at level 29

Jerus.4350:

LordByron.8369:

maha.7902:

PvE is not an esport

And yet we had a tournament a few days ago.

We also had some on character appearence.

And PvE skill floor is all but balanced.

Until the content is extremely easy once you beat it just once, its hard to consider it skill.

Most of the “skilled” players just reproduce youtube videos…
While i agree that the first to discover certain tactics were indeed skilled.

And when you switch from (example)elementalist to warrior you learn the difference between playing an imitation of dark souls, and an imitation of darksouls with 3 lifes.

P.S. i don t even consider dark soul “difficult”.

No video game is that difficult, and successful.

Want a “difficult” video game, go play battletoads, but personally I don’t find that kind of difficult entertaining.

So what do you consider difficult? PVP? /shrug personally I find that dull in this game.

As one of my buddies use to say, video games are just about pressing buttons, it’s not that hard.

But at the same time, some people do it a heck of a lot better than others.

Civilization is not successful?
Its about pressing buttons?
is it easy?

P.S. notice that despite what wotc says magic the gathering have recently dumbed down to incredible levels.
So anyone can be a pro. (usually who is better at cheating if you just watch tournament history).

Don t listen to marketing.

afaik evade works on pistol.
You have to evade the real attack (almost invisible), if you get hit by that, the shiny attack that comes later is unavoidable.

But that is not the issue.

The issue is staying melee against a boss that apply dozens of conditions and deals massive dps while another boss shoots massive dps on you that you can t even avoid…because you have to remove stacks.

I’d just like anet to show us how to fight that with pugs and if they fail… they should simply revert changes nobody asked for, but since it would mean admitting a mistake, won t happen as in usual anet style.

I would say that whoever is taking care of fractals needs to totally changes the way he works.

One mistake is ok, 2 can be but each time they touch fractals they make it less fun,more unbalanced and more frustrating, that obviously without even fixing rewards.

Just for coherence.

Check fractal population after similar Patches… GG

At 29 i got somethng like 300% damage i usually get at 50.
Not from salvo but from mai and horrik attacks.

John Smith.4610:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Jansen.4753:

Flipping does not increase any price, in fact, without flippers sell orders could be higher, if you don’t understand this, then you don’t understand how it works, plus with the gold sink it creates its actually helping reduce inflation, which is good for everyone.

Sorry for my spelling

yeah… no. How, in gods name, should people who buying cheap and selling expensive help keeping the prices down? It makes no sense.

When a player adds velocity or liquidity to a market, the result is often lower prices and often prices closer to equilibrium.
Given recent feedback let me try also this in other terms (I’ve tried this before and failed so bare with me).

Supply and Demand curves can also be called Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Sell curves. Essentially they are the shape of what people are willing to pay or how much people are willing to sell for. If everyone is will to pay $5 then the “demand” curve would be a flat horizontal line at $5.
In real markets the curves end up being curves because people have different preferences or costs. I might be willing to pay $100 for a new video game and you may be willing to pay $50 and yet another person $30. When you extrapolate this out you get a smooth curve of what people are willing to pay (it works the same way for the willingness to sell).

Balance (or equilibrium) occurs when those two lines meet, and people are willing to pay the same amount people are willing to sell. This price is decided by the market as a whole. Given the “freeness” of our market in GW2 people can sell for more or less than this price. In a textbook this would never happen because people always want to be in that balanced state. In real life though, especially in video games, people have different preferences outside of that market equation. Time is a major factor of this equation in real life. Imagine you could instantly sell items to a vendor for 1 gold or you could place them on the TP for 1gold 5 silver; some amount of player would be willing to sell straight the the vendor and save the time because their preference for time or convenience makes that a good trade off for them and that’s awesome, people should be allowed to make that trade off if they want. Now let’s say people instead just place everything on the TP for super cheap instead of vendoring because it’s easier. The prices these items are placed at are often placed below that equilibrium price which leaves room for someone to purchase those items and sell them at equilibrium price earning some profit per item. The person who purchases and resells values that trades and so does the individual selling easily, in this case both parties match what they want. Now the market has items placed at the equilibrium price for the standard buyers/sellers that sell at that equilibrium. Those sellers cannot change that equilibrium price and placing items above that price will result in the items not selling. They cannot raise the price, the market has decided the price and other people have decided their willingness to sell.

The first question to ask here is, “Isn’t the profit of the reseller directly equivalent to how much people are willing to trade off money for time or other preferences?”
The answer is yes, and more than that, the potential profit is split between all the different individuals attempting to buy and resell. Since the profit is finite and will become distributed between players, why wouldn’t people begin doing that until everyone only made little to no money? If everyone was the same person they would, but there must be some barrier to entry to that activity, there must be something that stops people from jumping in and distributing some of that profit to themselves. The most common and the most correct (but not complete) is that it takes time and skill, if it did not there would be almost no profit in the activity because the potential would be split between too many different individuals.

(Hello again econ and business people, I’m aware that this is very simple, but I’m attempting to introduce people to the ideas and attempting to explain complex concepts right away turns out poorly)

During war people is willingly to pay absurd prices for food and medicines.

People gathering stuff to resell are consideered criminals.

This is a game and even if stuff is not needed as food would be, its basically the same thing.

Since the purpose of the game is FUN, people is forced to trade mostof their rewards in order to be able to have fun.

This is where your economy is totally wrong.

maha.7902:

PvE is not an esport

And yet we had a tournament a few days ago.

We also had some on character appearence.

And PvE skill floor is all but balanced.

Until the content is extremely easy once you beat it just once, its hard to consider it skill.

Most of the “skilled” players just reproduce youtube videos…
While i agree that the first to discover certain tactics were indeed skilled.

And when you switch from (example)elementalist to warrior you learn the difference between playing an imitation of dark souls, and an imitation of darksouls with 3 lifes.

P.S. i don t even consider dark soul “difficult”.

The fact that 80% players use warriors and 99,9% fractal groups have a guardian means clearly that community doesn t want harder content.

Just switching party comp/build can make stuff way harder.

Wanze.8410:

John Smith actually gave a good hint why a new sink for t6 mats (suggested precursor crafting or new legendries) wont be introduced without adding new ways to acquire them. The topic is closed so i cant quote directly but he said, replying to the thesis that t6 mat prices are too high atm:

2. T6 prices are too high, the material drops are too rare.
A. There are arguments that can be made here on both sides that I think are valid. (I know this is really frustrating so I apologize for the generic response) I can’t give my opinion on either side for fear of shocking those markets which won’t be positive either way. What I can say is that it’s something we watch, there’s always room for improvement, and we will continue to work to make the game better.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Golds-from-dungeon-is-killing-the-economy/page/4#post4141549

99% of john Smith posts are made of:
Economy is awesome
I have data i cannot show you that proves economy is awesome
You can t understand since you don t have a degree in economy (and if you have one you are wrong anyway i have data that proves it….but cannot show you).

Still waiting for the silk fix he promised, but aside that, i think that even him can understand the mess of adding T6 sinks when he nerfed almost every farming activity.

Unless he wants to beat diablo 3 economy.

Dalanor.5387:

Stooperdale.3560:

PUGs actually see a more rounded view of the game as they see all the problems that dungeons can pose, not perfect runs with best builds and well tried tactics.

You won the internet today. Check out the post above yours and reread it until you understand it why balancing for new players / noobs / pugs isn’t a good thing. Half of the pugs still want to roleplay healers and tanks in a game without the classical trinity. Just sayin’.

According to what you say, anet should ve not implemented LFG because you want to balance the game around the 5-6 PVE guilds around.

If you instead consider the average player, even with a decent knowledge of his profession it won t be able to achieve perfect party composition, won t have Always a guild party nor will have 8 identical weapons with dungeon sigils, and possible will have the same weapons (berserker with slightly suboptimal sigils) shared with WWW.

If you don t accept this try to imagine a guild wars 2 with 300 players…because itw what you are asking to balance around.

Skill floor is something to balance around in PvE.
PvE is not an esport

There is something about the healer chests also.
Out of 13 chests i got 11 healers, and 3 out of 4 weapons with healing.

Could i be just unlucky?
Possible
but how much are the chances?

Just a thing:
if you stealth or go out, the people remaining in the area not stealthed will get even your aoes so will have a harder time.

Just stay each in a different spot far from Others so everyone gets less aoes and move the least you can.

Also you can unequip your berserker equipment for the fractal since mai doesn t have so many HP.

The longest parts are shield stripping and cannon phase, everything else is lightning fast even in soldier.

Map completion and daily ends up giving a decent supply of them.
The wardrobe system (except for the city clothes) ended up being a good system.

I’d love to have a similar composition with random pparties (you simply get random parties and in the end of each fractal you get points according to time used, then you reform another random party).

That imho would show skill and profession/mechanics knowledge (expecially adapting builds on the fly).

Cotser.7015:

So much is wrong with this post… let me fix it.

everyone knows that rangers, thiefs, necromancers and engineers are unwanted for dungeons. Same goes for elementalists sometimes

Firstly- Elementalists are the most sought after profession for dungeons because no other profession can conjure Ice bow /FGS or stack might/fury as effectively.
Secondly- Thieves are probably 2nd/3rd most useful profession for speedruns because stealth makes skipping mobs that previously could not be skipped, skippable…
Thirdly- it’s not that rangers/engies/thieves/necros aren’t wanted. Bad Rangers/engies/thieves/necros aren’t wanted. If you’re a ranger playing Bearbow your dps is gonna be nothing and I don’t want you in my group.

gabbe.8503

Necromancers would be more useful if any kind of mob would have boons to remove

Yes because no mobs in dungeons have boons… Dredge in SE/Fractals don’t have boons.
Golem in CoE doesn’t have boons.
Endboss of HotW P1 doesn’t have boons.
The list of mobs with boons is endless.

gabbe.8503

there really is no risk in zerk bursting everything

Where do you pull this logic from? How are the most squishy builds in game ‘not risky?’ Compare a 18k HP Zerker Warr with 0 toughness to a ptv warr with 34k health and 3000 armour… how on earth can you say zerker is not risky?

gabbe.8503

general rant about how necro is great and not to be ignored.

Then play necro.

gabbe.8503

want to play this game and the class i want

Yes because it’s impossible to do that…
Wait here’s an idea.. make your own lfg! Don’t join a lfg that says ‘no necro/ranger/engi’ Wow I’m a genius…

This is actualy wrong.

The most sought after profession is WARRIOR.
Simply because its so easy to use to be extremeley unbalanced.
After that, unless the dungeon is really easy, comes the guardian because it makes stuff so easy that can’t really been given up.

FInally it comes elementalist due to the high damage (with or without fgs).
But if you look at lfgs, people won t start with 3+ eles but will gladly start with 4+ warriors almost any dungeon.

Also let me say how much damage did this forum to the community.
The elitism we read on forums led many players that for sure needs some strong support, to ask only for berserker and extremely squishy party comps.

Everyone nowaday feels a pro but in the end needs to be carried; but they also wants to be carried by berserker guardians and elementalists.

If you are not able to run with ANY party composition (from speedgroups to unconventional groups) you are probably the problem.
If you don t know what each class can provide to a dungeon run you shouldn t really be so strict in requirements.

If you get a good mesmer or a good necro, the run will be often way faster than the average warrior (expecially if you wait 15 min to build a party).

The only thing i believe is that PvE needs a strong push to heavy professions skill floor.
So finally people won t believe that necromancers are bad for any dungeon, and they won t choose warriors and guardians because even a beginner can do well with them.

P.S. not referring to any player in particular.

Issue with most of the community i usually meet on LFG is they can’t really think for themselves.

Someone told them that GS is for newbies… and so they start attacking anyone with a GS.

Reality is:
You want a GS as a backup weapon in many dungeon fractals if you play for efficience.

GS is ranged
GS is AoE
GS is one of the best weapon to spam illusions (and sometimes you need to shatter with a non shatter build)
GS has a PUSH skill
GS has a ranged boonstrip.
GS can achieve long cripple uptime (with focus also) that makes many fight extremely easier.

Said that if you know what you are doing you will find plenty situations in dungeons and fractals, where to use the GS.

TA aether for example.
SE3 you can clear paths before people can even choose the path itself (also clown car)
Bloomhunger to take care of spirits
Svanir stage to shatter elemental
Dredge fractal.
Ascalon fractal to do stuff too long to explain (see pull and push).
Lava shaman fractal if you play phantasms (possibly the best build for fotm).
And i could go on a lot but basically i wouldn t enter a fractal without a greatsword.

Also in many other situations you won t be able to switch weapon so what you use its not that important but the GS opener is still a great option (even if by a low margin).

Just learn to switch weapons before the fights. Its not that there is anything random

P.S. Iwarden DOES reflect arrows. (covers 90-120 degrees so you should place accordingly)
And if you melee you d better switch because your mesmer is far worse than a bearbow ranger.
Not to mention how GS push and aoes are good during phase, and how much it helps to be able to create 3 illusion to shatter as the phase start.