Guild Wars 2

So I came back from a year AFG a few weeks ago and made an engi. I mostly made them because I always wanted to play a character in PvE, and that never really worked out pre-HoT. I’ve been getting my head around the business of condition durations, and I would appreciate it if somebody could confirm/correct my understanding…

Wiki says that for condi duration that is affected by the cap (not Chemical Rounds):
[outgoing] = [base] * (1 + MIN{ 1, [specific modifier] + [Condition Duration] } )

I reckon that this means:
1. If I have +33% bleed duration from Serrated Steel, and 67% from gear/consumables, I hit the duration cap and there’s no point going further. What I’me really checking here is that the two bonuses add, they don’t multiply.
2. Similarly, +33% burn duration from Incendiary Powder +67% from gear/consumables will cap burn duration.
3. Chemical Rounds affects the base duration on pistol skills, that gets extended by the global condition duration bonuses, it’s orthogonal to the two bonuses above and won’t put me over the duration cap.
4. Improving the global duration past +67% helps poison, cripple, confusion etc but not traited bleed/burn.

Do I have my facts right?

So, in a moment of insanity I made an ascended Viper’s armor set with Berserker runes. I am now wondering what to do about trinkets. I have an ascended Sinister trinket set, or I could craft exotic Viper’s, but ascended Viper’s are out since I don’t intend to raid.

I figure I could use something like this to get bleed/burn to 100% for general runaround:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhSsYfWwWLQ7FLsF1XSlhHwYbMGfB4HWiBAA-TBSGQBH4BAEQlfRz8T+U/Rd7PkO9A66EAAAlgECQxcA-e

Is that right, am I capping bleed/burn duration on that build?

If I bought better consumables to improve condition duration I wouldn’t need so much from the Viper’s trinkets, so I could get some of my ascended Sinister out for extra power/condi/crit damage:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhSsYfWwWLQ7FLsF1XSlhHA4HWiBwYbMGfBA-ThSGQB4yECwUeENTE5T9HAoEUd7PcgHAguOBABUJW60DQKgFVWB-e
…or I could stick with the exotic Viper’s and enjoy extra poison/cripple/etc duration.

So, basically, would somebody be kind enough to check my understanding and my math?

…and since we’re doing this, does anybody want to check my wisdom? Are those sensible builds? This is for open world and dungeons.

Thank you everyone, especially PopeUrban, I think I get the general idea.

Hi folks.

I’ve been AFG for about a year, but came back and bought HoT about a week ago. I have all nine classes, but I never really got on with thief and my thief ended up as a mule. So I’m wondering if it’s worth getting her out of the stable.

I played thief in open world and in dungeon PUGs a bit. I played dagger/dagger, very glassy. I pretty much spent my life doing dagger 5 -> run round the back -> some dagger 1 -> repeat until it’s time for dagger 2. This worked fine unless it was a boss standing in a red ring, in which case I died.

I do actually know how to dodge — I play ele more than anything — but it seemed like my thief just had to put herself in the wrong place if she was to get anything like her theoretical high DPS. An ele can at lest pick a direction and keep a little distance to avoid red rings somewhat.

So I found thief squishy, and a bit of a one trick pony, though it was quite a trick when you could actually do it.

And my question, in a nutshell, is is Daredevil the same playstyle, or does it feel different to play?

I hope this makes sense…

To play mes in open world, especially if you intend to map complete, I suggest getting a second set of armour with runes of the traveler or runes of speed. Add a second weapon withna sigil of speed. Use that almosat all the time in open world and swap for hard champions. Works for guardian too.

I can’t really say I have a main. I played open world PVE and PUG dungeons in the year before HOT, took a break, and recently returned.

Mesmer is the first class I made and the one I wanted to main, based on playing them in GW1, but they just aren’t the same in GW2. So after a while I only played mesmer in reflect oriented dungeons. Now they have the huge group buff chrono stuff, but they’re still miserable in solo PvE because the high rate of minor enemies wastes phantasms. Anet need to make phantasms last until you leave combat, or make clone spam/shatter viable.

Ele is the class I played the most, because it was the meta darling while I was playing most heavily (the year before HOT). I don’t especially like or dislike ele, it just got me into groups most easily. My ele is the only character that’s full ascended on armour/trinkets/backpack and multple weapons.

The class I would have liked to main is necro. I enjoyed the variety, the switching from melee to range, weapons to shroud, dagger DPS for serious work to staff AoE for zerg events, cruising through trash mobs on dagger then going up a gear with the wells and elite. But necros weren’t ever that welcome in groups, and the DPS is barely adequate rather than good. So my necro just gets to be the first character through new content, the one who’s ready for anything. Now I’m one trait unlock away from filling the reaper line, which will be interesting.

Ranger is a bit like necro, it has some of the multi-dimensional variety, but not as much. I like ranger, but prefer necro. And the thought of playing a druid has put me right off rangers.

Warriors are a bit bland. Thief is too fiddly. Guardian is for people who know every animation and which ones need aegis — I’m colourblind and I don’t see some of the animations so well. I haven’t played revenant.

I recently made an engi which looks promising. I like the variety of things they can do. It’s my first condi character that’s really worked. I like that they do quite well on meta dps + utility, so they will hopefully be welcome in groups. I need to finish up the Viper’s gear and really get my rotations down but I think engi could be main-worthy.

I’m just glad dodging works now.

GW1 had monks. I didn’t play one.

My main memory regarding monks is standing at every Zaishen mission in a group saying ‘6/8 GLF 2 monks’ for 5-15 minutes.

My second strongest memory is advertising my services as ‘LFG SOS rit (or prot)’, being taken by a group, and immediately hearing ‘switch to resto heals please’ before leaving the group and trying LFG again.

There are never quite as many people who want to play healer as there is need for them. Pen and paper roleplayers have known this for more than 30 years, and MMO players for more than a decade, but it took GW2 for a dev to finally get the *@#£ing message.

Getting rid of the healer class is the best thing Anet ever did.

And now they’ve put them back.

sigh

Thank you, Ging.

waenhir.8146:

The reason why people stay on a server is due to server loyalty

Speak for yourself, my friend.

I’m a PVEer on Fissure of Woe, one of the candidates for worst WvW server in the game. Back when I was map completing I stumbled across its one busy night per month; I joined in and quite enjoyed it. I went back every night for a week, but it was a ghost town. I thought about a server transfer, but it turned out I could buy Dishonored and Far Cry 3 for the price of the transfer so I did that instead.

Now we’re tacked onto Gunnar’s Hold, and I’m looking at WvW forums and reading build guides…

I have no interest in or loyalty to my server. I don’t give a juvenilecat about it. I stayed on it because it cost money to move, and stayed out of WvW. I wish WvW had never used “worlds”, I’d rather it had used dynamic map allocation like PvE megaservers (which worked great).

Hi folks,

I’m a returning player, AFG since pre-HOT. I don’t have HOT, I’m thinking about getting it. I do (did) PVE, PUG dungeons and Silverwastes and so on. A couple of days back I made an engi, my eighth character. And I have some questions…

1. So condi Viper’s is the new hotness. AFAICT that’s HOT only, somewhere along the line you need a non-market recipe or component from HOT to craft it. Am I correct?

2. What do you use to attack things that are immune to condi, like doors or Rotmouths or dredge carts? I’ve been spamming grenade kit 1 at them, is there a better alternative?

3. What do condi engineers do underwater? The speargun doesn’t seem so great, apart from the grenade skill. So I’ve been mostly sticking to the grenade and occasionally bomb kits, with a lot of grenade 1. Any suggestions?

4. What do you do if you want on-demand condi cleanse available? There were times in LS2 when I wouldn’t have died if I could only clear that 15 second cripple to get some space… So far I’ve swapped bomb kit to Elixir H when I really wanted a ready cleanse, any other suggestions?

I’d like a cute French beret.

Also, since I’m coming back to the game, a sale on extra character slots would be fine.

segman.3560:

Beta is made to test content

Not in the last decade. It used to be about testing once, but now it’s a marketing tool.

Do try to keep up.

NikeEU.7690:

http://dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/21199431-my-dream-balance-changes-for-pve/

" These changes will make the deathshroud build the best DPS build for Necromancer."

You propose to make a ranged build deal higher DPS than the melee builds? Explain yourself.

Hey guys,

After a few months of daily dungeons, I think I’ve had most of the fun I’m going to have and I’m calling it quits. I wanted to say thanks for the help, especially the build/rotation guides from DnT (Nike, Brazil, DEKeyz, Obal) and the excellent advice I’ve had on the forums from spoj and Jerus.

Good luck with the record runs, and may none of your PUG guardians use staff.

DonQuack.9025:

When a thief uses black powder on cm I feel so happy as an ele. Its like. “I’m a big boy now I get to blast something other than fire” then I frown because no one ever gives swiftness, or has harpy feathers.

I know exactly what you mean, get the same thing on my ele.

Of course half the people are thinking “Stealth for skips is the thief’s job. If they can’t do it, why did we bring them instead of another ele?”

spoj.9672:

I gave up pugging as a thief in CM. Try to stealth the group with blasts and noone helps despite their being two eles and it being a “zerk meta” group. If im forced to play like a pug thief and wait for SR cooldown i would rather slit my wrists.

The last time i tried pugging on a thief i thought kitten these guys im blasting. They didnt help so stealth ran out faster. They didnt stack swiftness so they got left behind when i restacked mid skip. I just decided “kitten it” and went ahead. 3 out of 4 of them died because they couldnt keep up. The other guy somehow powered through on a warrior despite never using warhorn or mobility skills…. And then they had the nerve to complain despite not once blasting stealth or giving the group swiftness….

After that ordeal and other similar abominable runs i decided never to pug CM again.

I need 7 more CM runs for the collection. Guess what I’m doing after that.

However, a point I’d like to make…

There are standard ways for doing dungeons, but they vary between groups.

In PUGs, the standard for CM is for the thief to alternate SR with Smoke Screen + 6 shortbow blasts. This works, absolutely fine, without extra blasts or swiftness, if you pause in the standard PUG places. You could do this in 10 PUGs in a row quite successfully. And at PUG speed, it only very occasionally involves waiting for cooldowns.

In organised groups, you check that you will have enough quick blasts to use black powder, and that somebody will apply swiftness, and go a lot faster. This works too, in the organised group.

When the two collide, it usually goes wrong as you describe. If I see a thief using Black Powder in a PUG formed using LFG, I think “Well, this is gonna be a rough ride. Hope the thief doesn’t quit at the end of P1 and leave me looking for a P2P3.”

For speedclear people to play thief in CM PUGs, without confusion and unhappiness, they need to learn PUG methods every bit as much as the PUG people would have to learn speedclear.

So I can see why you’re fed up, but I think your expectations were unrealistic. You can’t do CM in a PUG like you can in an organised group. Maybe you should be able to, if you put “speedclear” in the LFG, but you can’t.

You have to either learn to do it the PUG way, or try to do organised tactics in PUGs and annoy everybody including yourself, or stop doing CM in PUGs. You have chosen option 3. That’s a sensible, practical solution — well done.

Lindbur.2537:

If only Witcher 3 would release this month instead of next. :/

Pillars of Eternity is good.

I was in a Cadaceus Manor group yesterday. In path 3 someone had to leave and a staff ele joined.

We killed the first boss, Seamus, fine. The ele conjured an icebow and I saw near- continuous lava fonts plus a meteor storm. The ele did not die. That person doesn’t completely suck at playing staff ele.

Then we trotted up to the door where every “experienced” person knows you wait for the thief to stealth you to skip the elites ahead. The ele saw the elites ahead, and cast meteor storm on them. The ele was not experienced in CM, or perhaps in dungeons at all.

Since the LFG said “exp”, the group would have been within its rights to kick him at that point. But everybody was in a good mood after a really smooth P1+2, so he got some free tuition instead.

Yes it’s + 175

If you have all six runes, you get the sum of the six bonuses.

serenke.4806:

If you get ticked off by builds, don’t pug.

I used to be in a “daily dungeons” (not speedclear) guild. I left after a CoE run with an axe and shield warrior in WvW gear who told us we should be tankier, and and made disparaging remarks when I died to Alpha after 4 dodges.

But you can’t quit on guildies, so on quitting the dungeon I felt I had to quit the guild.

Really I should look for a better dungeon guild. But I started doing dungeons to see what they were like, and now I know, and it’s not like I need money, and Pillars of Eternity is out tomorrow.

My heart does not fill with joy at seeing two warriors, but at least they can’t leave their pet out for a stealthed skip past volatile blossoms in TA.

Really, there are worse things than a second warrior.

Big charr/norn with twilight/eternity and wings. I can’t see Kohler stick his sword in the air past one of those. I have about half the chance of knowing which way Seamus is pointing his gun. It’s like they’re saying “screw you guys” to everyone else, using that stuff.

I second “warriors who hurtle off leaving everyone else to handle the back aggro”.

As for builds… Staff guardians.

My dandy highwayman mesmer (rapier, bottle of whisky, pistol, embroidered jacket, scarlet boots) will miss his pink flamingo^H^H^H^H^H moa.

spoj.9672:

Clones – dont work
Phantasms – dont work
Turrets – dont work
Banners – dont work
Minions – work
Spirit weapons – work
Glyph elementals – work
Ranger pets – work

Minipets?

Iris Ng.9845:

RIP Icebow

TBH, I wouldn’t miss it. It kind of takes my character over, I become an icebow bot with some additional features.

kitten ed if you do, kitten ed if you don’t.

First thief left at 9:27 and second joined at 9:29

At the end of the burrows in The Lovers’ Crypt I often stand where the chest will spawn and say “I’ll stack swiftness”. Anybody who wasn’t standing there already is only about 50% likely to move closer. Pop a merchant however…

I just bought a perma merchant. It’s nice. Thanks for the idea.

This might be hard, but… animations for bosses, what they mean, how to deal with them.

E.g. Bloody Victoria periodically goes invisible and does XYZ when she reappears, which is bad enough to want to avoid. You can count to 2 when she vanishes and dodge.

Or.. when Kohler shoves his sword in the air, he’s about to pull you and hurt you. Dodge, or (I think) you can reflect the pull.

Were Old Tom’s poisonous projectiles ever reflectable?

Jerus.4350:

SW Chest farming is pretty awesome. I’d have trouble believing it wasn’t close to par if not exceeding dungeons.

I compared with some care (7000 SW chests) — I make more money in SW than in “zerk exp” dungeon PUGs doing AC 1/2/3, CM 1/2/3, TA F/U, SE 1/3, COF 1.

I’m sure you speedrun types do better than me (I reckon on ~40 mins for AC). Though so do the SW pros who run around just tagging every event on the map, and do what amounts to chestfarm speedclears in specialised guild runs.

I wonder how the Tequatl/TT guilds compare?

But I do dungeons to get better at them, rather than to make money.

For just a moment, this got my anti-mesmer prejudice alarm going of..

yhvh.8703:

“hack runs”

The game has skills granting invisibility, swiftness, invulnerability, stability, endurance regeneration, condition removal… but if we do anything useful with them it’s a hack?

Eh.

This is a tangent from a tangent in the “what are thieves good for” thread.

So my scepter/X ele has a fire field and Arcane Brilliance + Arcane Wave + 4 blasts on weapons. With some gyrations, I can stack 18 might before a fight starts.

But then those skills go on cooldown and I lose all that damage (and healing, and perhaps scholar bonus) in the fight. Also, it might take a while to do a pull or run to the fight, during which might runs down. And if your fire field is on cooldown as the fight starts, you maybe can’t get it down again before e.g. smoke. And people run off and start the fight during your pre-stack. It’s seldom as neat as I want.

Sometimes I think it would be better to just stack might on the target as the fight starts. But if I’m might stacking then, I’m not using icebow 5.

It’s a bit simpler if there’s also a staff ele who can do the icebow 5, and I’ll pick up their spare (noone else will) before conjuring my lightning hammer.

So, what do other people do?

Also, what about weapon swaps? I’ve tried running staff, pre-stacking with just 4 blasts from scepter/x, and switching to staff where I can use Earthquake + Arcane Wave + Arcane Brilliance on a lava font after ice bow. I’ve had mixed results.

Thaddeus.4891:

For exemple in TA up, in record run you at Malrona you gonna stealth to here, only kill the last group of spider and kill Malrona. In 99% of the party won’t do that. They will kill all spiders before fighting Malrona. Aggroing all groups in one shot with a thief blinding them is a far superior technique than aggroing these groups one by one.

Can a thief do that, without running into “max 5 targets”? I’ve never seen one try on a full pull. Full pulls I have witnessed in PUGs ended badly.

If it’s possible, would Glyph of Storms in Earth work too?

Jerus.4350:

While also having potential to up that number if someone tosses down another fire field for your LH.

That’s the crux of it, I think. If the fight is short, or somebody is maintaining lava fonts, S/D-LH is very strong in a PUG. Otherwise, it’s one of the options.

I consider staff my “preferred” setup, and it’s like an article of religion for me to maintain lava fonts and slip the icebow/meteor stuff in between them. But since I got on this scepter kick, I’ve noticed how often they’re conspicuous by their absence.

Thanks.

The whole business of swapping is problematic for me in pugs because, well, mostly because warriors. They hurtle off to aggro and I get stuck on the might stacking set.

I’ve been working on it… Running staff with a staff build (quite close to scepter build), and prestacking on scepter dagger, but with a hammer for insurance in case I get stuck. I haven’t really done this enough to know where I’m going with it, yet.

OK, the experiments will continue.

Tangent: (why) are dagger/focus eles welcome in lower level dungeons?

ISTM they don’t DPS like staff or buff like scepter, they’re just eles who wanted to be less squishy. They often turn up with defensive utilities and no icebow.

If I wanted to play a medium DPS character less squishy than staff/scepter ele, I’d play dual banner warrior or frostspotter ranger. But I am not well versed in the theorycrafting of this game. Enlighten me.

Here we go again…

Power:
720 with no buffs
1008 with 18 might = 16 power per stack
720 with steak and asparagus, no might
1008 with steak and asparagus + 18 might

Precision:
593 and 56.33% crit with no buffs
611 and 59.33% crit with minotaur steaks (nominally + 60 prec)
635 and 63.33% crit with quality (5/3) maintenance oil
683 and 71.33% crit with signet of fire (signet tooltip says +90 prec)
701 and 74.33% crit with minotaur steaks and signet of fire
725 and 98.33% crit with signet of fire, minotaur steaks, quality maintenance oil and fury
742 and 101.16% crit with signet of fire, curry butternut, master (6/4) maintenance oil, and fury

Ferocity:
344 with no buffs
359 with minotaur steaks
sorry, I only bought one bowl of curry butternut and forgot to check it

Food is doing slightly better than yesterday, though in AC it’s still a thing I’d use mostly to stop people firing birthday guns at me. The maintence oils are not bad at all, IMHO.

Until tomorrow…

I think all explorables should be level 80, and the mobs rebalanced for level 80, and you can’t enter below level 80.

Lower level people can do the story dungeons for a taste, with the present downscaling system for 80s who do them.

It doesn’t take that long to level up, and you should be doing “serious” dungeons in final gear not levelling gear.

Footnote… today in the Lover’s Crypt in AC3, the other ele failed to kill a burrow with icebow 4. Never seen that before.

I think we have different concepts of “decent difference”.

But sure, for you over-competent types.

Morte.5916:

In AC my ele (my only full ascended character) shows 590 no buffs, 878 with 18 might, 894 with 18 might + steak & asparagus.

And… 897 power with 18 might and truffle steak which is nominally 20 more power than steak & asparagus. That’s 3 more power for about 15 extra silver…

Also in AC…

487 precision and 38.66% crit base
499 precision and 40.66% crit with minotaur steaks (nominally +60 precision)
577 precision and 53.66% crit with signet of fire
589 precision and 55.66% crit with signet of fire and minotaur steaks
+20% to crit chance with fury

The tooltip on signet of fire says +90 precision in AC, +48 outside it, and +180 in WvW. This does match its effect. It seems food is giving 20% of its tooltip effect in AC.

Well, I foresee more scepter/focus in my AC pugging future.

Edit: first time I ever used truffle steak, and look where it got me…

Stormie.1284:

Hate how they just increase the range without matching its visual :{

I’d call that a bug.

Carighan.6758:

I really think a lvl80 downleveled to lvl30 should be roughly similar in power to a lvl30.

It’s a difficult one — what about gear and traits?

Say a level 80 is in AC in full exotics with superior runes/sigils and full traits, but downscaled. Should they match someone who wandered in wearing typical levelling gear? Unusually good levelling gear? Or should they match an optimal character of the dungeon level?

In AC my ele (my only full ascended character) shows 590 no buffs, 878 with 18 might, 894 with 18 might + steak & asparagus.

The food didn’t seem to do much… Does this mean I should use minotaur steaks and maintenance oils for AC?

I don’t know what it was before the patch.

Today the joys of LFG left me as a mesmer with 4 warriors in SE3.

A banner of tactics between them.

#puglyfe

Don’t forget that any character who wishes to enter the guild hall must have a pristine fractal relic in inventory.

thought better of it

I wouldn’t.

I find dungeons challenging enough.

runs and hides