Guild Wars 2

I’ll have to ask you to highlight where it was said that engi would bring EEXXXXTRRREEEEM 30x faster runs on the very first post you ridiculed :

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

This thread is exactly what happens when casuals try to theorycraft about things like DPS.

Also, engineer DPS is fine, it’s about on par with ranger + pet. It’s just not as obvious because about 20% of it is in the form of bleed damage. They also do just* fine* in an organized group comp, their ability to solo-stack might and vuln for the entire party means you can go full DPS on everything else. Case in point, a single grenade engie stacks the same amount of might kitten warriors with FGJ and as much vuln as 3 warriors with A/M and OMM, and deals about equivalent DPS as any of those warriors.

They also have a ton of group healing, condition removal, and snares by default, which may not always be necessary but it certainly doesn’t hurt. Considering how many people bring guardians just for PoV, and considering that engies can remove conditions faster and more often (albeit without the convert, which honestly isn’t that good), I’m surprised more people don’t demand engies for fractals and Arah and whatnot.

I suspect it’s because most engies are just bad.

too bad you don’t have any empirical data to back those claims cause they sure would help your ridiculous arguments

The main claim in that very post was that you don’t need to focus much vuln on the other party members which is true. You can drop most of the vuln stacking when you bring an engi in. The other claims was that engi also provide decent utilities while giving enough dps and soloing most of the vuln, which is also true.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Think for yourself a bit colesy

Personally I’m still not convinced about the Ranger, but maybe I’m just looking at it too critically, expecting it to far exceed what I have already experienced with a different class in it’s party slot, and as such am left disappointed. The Engineer however I always thought pretty highly of, but I kind of just forgot about it after grenade kit got that -33% damage nerf.

At this point I’d just say it’s a matter of preference, but best party compo can also vary depending on the dungeons. I played ranger, it doesn’t feel like it’s bringing the group down, I just think elementalists bring more while not suffering from the very clunky sword mechanics, sword mechanics are not only a problem for dodges – you can learn to adjust to its rhythm – it’s also a problem on any boss you wouldn’t want to “push” in melee. Sword has no concept of “max melee range” which can be incredibly annoying at times and would absolutely not work on some boss fights like the grawl champion in fotm, requiring the use of the less dpsy greatsword or even maybe swapping to longbow at max range.

I don’t really play the “moving the goalpost” game. At first people said of our groups that we suck so much that we needed timewarp to do decent destroyers. That ele aren’t even “equal” to warriors for single target. Etc. Then we show that in a fight that doesn’t use or abuse anything the ele has that is superior (like when boss are pushed against walls, or using the lightning flash trick, or the AoE capabilities etc) and show that this is a valid group composition that works incredibly well even under circumstances that do not favor it.
I don’t really need to prove anything at this point, if people chose to act ignorant of things they perfectly understand and know well I don’t need to do anything more, do go on.

And hell, that was just half of the reason this thread was made in the first place. The other half is that people should stop ridiculing Guanglai.
I was mistaken in not taking him seriously from the very beginning, and so are the rest who still persist as if Brazil invented the whole ranger thing and that it was something like a fluke for guanglai to get right: it was not.

One of the first answers Guanglai got in that thread: “too bad you don’t have any empirical data to back those claims cause they sure would help your ridiculous arguments”

His claims do not sound that ridiculous when you run with engineer and get good times with it.
I also found that in a couple dungeons like CM where you need reflection you can chain reflection even in pugs with bad dps with just a guardian and the engineer. The guard cast wall, then shield, then the engi throws elixir U and the guard will have WoR back when it’s needed. Tested in CM with pugs that had low dps pairing with a guardian guildie. So you don’t need the mesmer all that much for the projectile absorb/reflection. All that leaves to the mesmer are the boon removal and the incredibly reliable pulls (launch can be slightly unreliable at times and so are gs pulls). The boon removal is actually useful in a very few cases like casting a null field on that group of golem before the lasers in CoE because that retal can insta kill you while using a fiery rush or anything that does a lot of proc. But people in that thread, after all the things Guanglai got right before, still ridiculed him for bringing up that engi is a strong class. If this video can show that engi won’t slow a group down and can bring some benefit in a particular group compo like using one or two ele I would consider it a job done.

colesy.8490:

So after all this, is the conclusion basically “2 engi, 2 ele, 1 guard is a strong group composition, but 3 war, 1 guard, 1 mesmer is fine too”?

We weren’t running 2 engi, and Brazil’s team wasn’t running mesmer for that nice destroyer kill either. 3war1guard1mes is old news.
The conclusion is that whatever you prefer in a team composition there is no point in stacking warriors. CoF records were made with thieves. Most dungeons are faster with other team comps overall. 3war/1guard/1mes is what you run when you have no curiosity left in this game and play it safe and boring.

Is that what you really have to say anyhow, after all the Guanglai bashing? So, you still think his claims are that wild and ridiculous and the guy still doesn’t deserve any respect after all this? We can all be wrong at one point but decency requires admitting when it happens, throwing the towel and stop the bashing. I’m not really proud that I ignored his claims until now. I find it funny that it can persist to this day. I had already made the leap of faith when I geared up my engineer as well as it could be, got through the whole queen’s gauntlet to learn the mechanics solo then jump into dungeon test drives. I hadn’t even done the gauntlet at all yet, too busy farming dungeons with the post patch rewards. Did the gauntlet with his build, his recommendations for what an engineer is supposed to be, and had plenty of fun discovering that class.

Whether X or Y team is the “best” is highly debatable, and actually, can vary from dungeon to dungeon. What is not debatable is that Guanglai got strong theory crafting, builds and that classes are more balanced than most people used to think, whose prejudice (mine included) was heavily influenced by the terrible people who play these classes in pugs and wouldn’t know right from left when it comes to builds.

One word I forgot to put on this thread before leaving for work : I do owe an apology to Guanglai for having mocked some of his theorycrafting sometime before. Although I have zero conviction about ranger providing anything worth taking (this could have, maybe, been the case pre-fury buff to fire field blast on ele since ranger can add some more fury and I don’t really see any reason to pick more than one war these days) he did prove that they have decent dps, and that engineers are also great in an organized party. His build fits exactly the need I had for that 5th slot in a group. People were still calling him out in that dps thread because “nobody provided videos with engineers”. Well, here you go. Do they make runs a lot faster? no. Do they fit the needs of specific party set ups, particularly that of an ele group? god, yes.

I don’t really expect wide adoption even within my own guild beyond the core groups I run though.

You should look at the DPS class thread again. DocMed even made the claim that LH “aoe damage” is “equivalent to warrior”.. we’re killing the destroyer as fast than they do with only a single war and the engi using quickness. That’s just pure sustain on the ele. That’s ele damage on friggin’ single target with zero fiery gs shenanigan. Let’s not even speak of ele third hit being true 5 target aoe which is actually useful in some places like CM. Or what happens when a guardian or mesmer bring group quickness to the equation. Or the fact that the LH (and engi) can actually bring real utilities without breaking their dps build, being able to do things like taking part in the “knock the golem” game etc (Lightning Hammer has a launch, engi have good access to launch and knockback too, unlike classes like ranger.) And the blind on autoattack can be tasted in dungeons like CM. The stun field is also just as useful as a form of CC as the guardian’s hammer ring of warding except that the guardian doesn’t have to sacrifice dps by bringing a hammer.

Dub.1273:

Didn’t we already know that before? No profession is “throw it in the dumpster” in an organized group. Some are better than others but unless going for a record run it doesn’t matter much.

Well, some people on this forum made claims that ele were worse than ranger and that we couldn’t do a decent destroyer without timewarp. Both claims are rebuked here. And with that party composition only two out of 5 had access to quickness (warrior frenzy + engi elixir U) that should tell you a lot about the elementalist sustain.

Dub.1273:

You could replace that engi with a thief, mesmer, necro, ranger, warrior, guardian or ele and get about the same result.

And maintain a perfect 25 stacks of vuln in a group that has two ele without the 25 trait in air ? and necro would provide terrible dps trying to replicate that amount of vuln. Also the engi contributes to the might stacking, can handle knocks on the turret golem etc pretty decently.

While it’s not necessarily evidence that engi is best or whatever, it’s evidence that it’s at least just as good as anything else for a role in a speedclear and can handle doing no time warp destroyers etc along with classes like ele. They are no tier two dps classes.

Yes in the end guanglai was right about engis. And I’m running a carbon copy of the build because the only interest I had in trying engi was to drop all the vuln stacking on the rest of the group except for guard. So it’s just some guard blind + engi doing 100% vuln. For my ele groups it’s something I was looking forward to.

No, dempsey said we can’t handle destroyer without timewarp in our ele groups. And unless you spectacularly fail on purpose, I think your AC run was plenty evidence that you don’t really get fiery gs on boss other than alpha.

Brazil is jelly that there is a group out there that can handle ele without wiping everywhere and messing up combo field and rotations. And finally I made the group run without mes because Dempsey can’t handle the fact that we can, in fact, do it faster than dnt without timewarp too with elementalist heavy groups.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

Elementalists don’t have Banner of Strength / Discipline and Empower Allies.

We still keep one war but you prolly didn’t even watch the video. War replacement as in we don’t stack wars, that’s for bad groups. One war is the most we use at any point in time.

colesy.8490:

Eles are too high risk for pugs to use properly.

I care so much about pugging.. oh wait.
Funnily enough I recently did a CoE pug when all my guildies had already formed full groups 5 days ago and one of the pugs was an LH ele. He was actually pretty good and we had no mesmer in the group he did all the punting with the hammer launch and there was no fault to it. Well, I’m playing on US servers, and you are EU. EU pugs are the literal plague on the earth, that’s why I transferred to US early in the game to begin with.

Guanglai’s suggested build on gw2guru.

No I didn’t record myself so you’ll have to make do with my guildies POV (I was the engi.) cause my computer already has enough trouble with fraps with no engies and explosion + fraps makes my skin crawl. Another guildie will upload his POV later I think. Anyhow that was a pretty fast kill and a good show of both lightning hammer AND engi.

Engi is good. So are ele. Get it into your head. Ele are true warrior replacement in a group that knows how to handle it, that’s with lightning hammer, let’s not talk about what fiery gs does.

Wesnoth.1705:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

His mesmer guide is incredibly entertaining. thank you for providing me some lolz with that youtube channel.

Kirschwasser.3972:

Did they explicitly and purposefully make the reward per character? Did they, at any point, say that was the intention of the system

Yes it was, alts used to be affected by some form of token DR which is something they had explicitly lifted up.

Lucky.9421:

obal.3218:

I used binding blades to pull it. Pulls work through defiant and interrupt it. I’d imagine pushes do the same.

Does that mean this can only be done with Guardian? I know warrior knockbacks do not work.

I never did this boss in melee, but if there is any logic and consistency in terms of what attack can interrupt a boss move despite defiant, then “Launch” type attacks should definitively work on that boss. They interrupt some boss attacks (like the mage crusher in arah p3) despite the presence of defiant stacks. Warrior stomp, Engineer Big Ol’ Bomb, Personal Battering Ram, Lightning Hammer 3, Dagger 5 on elementalists etc. (and also Banish.. on guardian hammer.)

edited to add more.

It wouldn’t be as good as being fully built for it (with right traits) but if you insist on keeping a condition build, what you could do for situations where cond gear is terrible (dredge mining suit, ac burrows etc) is to have a berserker set to swap to in your inventory and swap before these fights.

Wukunlin.8461:

Adding to what people have already said, a lot of bosses cleanse conditions, subject alpha, CoF P3 boss, and Simins on top of my head. Whereas I have never seen a boss use endure pain or something like that.

You forgot the Dredge Mining Suit and the Elemental. Unless they changed the fights since the last time I did fotm, last I recall, conditions don’t do more damage (or at least, not noticeably more) when these boss are debuffed by the lava traps and set on fire while direct damage is amplified like crazy.

Condition damage doesn’t have anything close to what direct damage can do in terms of amplification between vulnerability, crit damage, crit chance, % damage multipliers traits etc. And ofc condition cap pretty fast so if you pug you really don’t want to play a pure rabid cond build. At worst something like Rampager is decent because it’ll do damage on things like AC burrows etc.

Magnetron.5823:

Yea we tried the range too, but we kept on wiped by the spiders.. So next i want to play a dungeon i should read the forums first, on what class is needed for it?

Bah, hope i finish this dungeon, so i never have to return to it again.

No, you don’t need specific classes, but you do need some coordination and to bring useful builds with some dps. Ele swirling winds, thief smoke screen, engineer wall/smoke etc are all good alternatives and unless you run 5 rangers, 5 necro or 5 warriors you should be fine. Last time I did a run of this I didn’t even have the time to cast my shield before the boss died.

That was with fiery but I’m pretty sure other classes could output enough dps to do a zero reflect run. (we didn’t need reflect on that run, and did another run without reflect). Two thieves with heartseeker spam at 50% hp should do it for eg.

Just use the strengths of the classes in your group. But then again don’t expect a 5 necro team to do anything decent.

No
.

I pugged a ton of arah at some point in the past, I never got kicked from runs right at the end, ever. I don’t see where these supposed flood of people kicking to sell spots are coming from, but it looks more like an urban legend than an actual truth. If it even did happen once, it’s such an extremely rare occurrence that it wouldn’t be worth mentioning anywhere. And I’ve been in runs where I was the extra in a guild run with 4 people from the same guild. That’s where I had my first full group melee experience too. (before I only started meleeing at phase 2 in pugs)

DaKillaOfHell.5907:

Guardians also deal lesser damage than, for example, warriors.

I missed some of the gems in this thread. It’s not true. As long as you just have one war in the group giving the banners the guardian’s damage is actually higher. Guardians won’t win solo videos like soloing the giants in orr but their damage in a buffed group is very strong.

Well for that particular boss you usually pick the war because of the bad game mechanic (debuff on the boss allowing you to do more damage if you use an instant burst skill right when it’s getting close to 50% hp meaning you get past 50% with one last debuffed hit) but I did that to demonstrate the guard sustain. You can see the real nondebuffed boss numbers when the group goes in (including an instant 58K whirling wrath right at the end).

colesy.8490:

And then you stick 10 points in Zeal so you can get 10% (or is it 15%?) more damage against burning enemies so I’m not understanding why he’d use 20 there as well.

His build just seems strange, though maybe there’s some guang-math I’m missing.

20 in zeal is for zealous blade which gives +5% more damage on gs.

That build loses out on why you take guardians in runs though. I much prefer running 10/30/0/0/30, still strong dps on sword/focus and you keep the consecration cooldown etc.

AH is a grandmaster. Guanglai’s build is not AH. And usually AH builds have ton of points in the even more useless line Honor. Honor’s only redeeming traits are the vigor and symbol ones, and you only really need the symbol ones for hammer.

LH ele are no stranger to damage. and neither are guardians. No point in taking anything more than a single warrior to anything except maybe arah because warrior is the easy mode for endurance regen/dodge-evasion.

And the blind on the autoattack is incredible in certain dungeons. With glyph of storms as a starter for fights..

Heylo.4938:

This is happening in my guild too. If you don’t make it in time to be first in line for the dungeon groups, you’re not getting your dungeons done.

Well certainly this is going to create some tension for people who are trying to farm gold because not all players in the same guild can run a great variety of dungeons as well as they farm easy going stuff like cof and coe. You can get as much gold (in fact, more) as you used to from doing things like spamming CoE for hours on alts by doing a full dungeon rotation, but, only if all the players in your group know a great variety of dungeons well enough to handle it in a speedclear manner. When you get people who whine because you skip in CM well.. thankfully I managed to throw CM in yesterday with a group that can skip.

Been a bit tense yesterday and finally managed to form two groups for a full rotation but this patch is both something I find fun, and was looking forward to, and a curse to group dynamics.

The difference between farming for gold (my past CoE sessions) and just doing a casual dungeon run (of any dungeon) with other people has been blurred. You’re now running all these dungeons instead of CoE spams for your gold needs, and you’re not going to run them again casually with other people because there is no point (20 token, no silver drops etc).

TA F/U’s reward is perfectly fine, as in, this path doesn’t take longer than the other TA paths with a decent group so it shouldn’t reward more.

kishter.9578:

full PVT

Here’s your problem.

Wukunlin.8461:

edit: yes it is doable, either chain reflects or kite spiders around

Or bring some deeps and you won’t even have to equip reflects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1rq30N-Zls

This patch is both great and bad in a way. I love it, I love running all dungeons in a row to farm gold and material from champs rather than spam the same one over and over. But, this patch, by making the dungeon rewards account bound, just did to regular dungeons what was already the case for Fractals of the Mist. For FOTM if you missed your group for your daily 48 chances are you were not going to get a decent group if they already ran their daily.

The situation felt similar for regular dungeons post patch. After reset I ran TA all paths, CoE all paths, SE P1+P3, HotW P1, AC P1 and P3, CoF P1 and P2, Arah p2… with the exact same group. And some people wanted to group with some of the party members, two got whispers from people who wanted to join in the farming, and I got whispers from someone who wanted to TPVP with me, and I just couldn’t leave my group, because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to get the “right” group for speedclearing everything after leaving so I had to decline and the people who wanted to join my other party mate obviously couldn’t run with them either. And now we are done with most paths until next reset, we still have some we can do with other people, CM, Arah path 3 and 1, AC P2 but overall there is little motivation in joining other runs. And to be honest, I’m not very motivated to do a dungeon like CM without my regulars anyway.

And the fact is, even within dungeon guilds there’s not a lot of people who can spam a whole dungeon rotation in a true speedclear manner because there’s always a couple dungeons that they don’t really know all that well.

This is going to change the face of farming session, when you truly want to farm for gold you will stick with the same group for a long time and you will have all the motivation to avoid being left out and having to run with people who are going to turn farming into a teaching session.

The higher reward for AC doesn’t really make any sense vs dungeons like CM and SE.

Dub.1273:

Path 4 Arah is 1g.

Is this for real? btw, SE path 1 = 1g.

AC path 1 and 3 are worth 1.5g, CM path 2 is worth 1g…….. and lol@arah path3, I guess AC is the better deal. Arah path 2 looks good though, I’ll throw it in a daily rotation.

Good riddance.

I agree with dub, except maybe for lupi’s feedback, everything a mes brings can just be replaced by the guard. I’ve experimented doing knocks and pull on guard it’s fine, although gs pull can be slightly unreliable at times but not bringing a mes is well worth it. I just wish I could convince everyone else to drop it.

Tome of wrath isn’t timewarp but it still does enhance the group dps overall despite having to momentarily stop dpsing on the guard to cast it. I don’t feel a need for timewarp when I run with zero mes.

Nespinha.3165:

Love the videos. Music works fabulously!

Just a bit curious, ever tested this build in wvw? Is the HP enough?

You’d get destroyed trying to run the PVE berserker builds in wvwvw. The “anchor” build might somewhat work a bit but it’s not really optimal, if you’re going bunker you’ll find cleric builds to be much stronger. If you’re going damage with mostly zerk gear, you should have a look at meditation builds.

docMed.7692:

AoE Target DPS:
Elementalist ** especially with firery greatsword; LH is equiv to Warrior

LH third hit (the hardest hitting one) is a true AoE that can hit 5 mob at once and it’s the one that also applies blinds.
Ele defintively have stronger AoE dps than warriors. (sustained dps, not burst. Warriors have frenzy..)

CMF.5461:

Good reasoning, but pretty negative down talk to your audience. Although I guess that could work in a “only great players use this build, otherwise go back to your training wheels” type of coercion. Works for some I guess.

Nope, that’s really a warning. I’ve seen plenty of people faceplant during their first runs on a true dps guard build, not necessarily that one, but since that one doesn’t have vigor it won’t help if you are used to wasting dodges. I really don’t want players to take this build and expect it to play like AH. It’s a warning for them to be careful, not an attempt to discourage them or be elitist.

I don’t PvE too often, so my only question is, Why Sigil of Night. Is it always considered night in some dungeons? or is it night enough for when you are doing dungeons that you gain the full benefit?

Wouldn’t force be the nice in between for 5% all the time instead of 10% sometimes and 0% the rest of the time? I’m sure there is a gimick there that helps make the reason for you to select night, I just don’t know it.

Yes, it’s always night in the dungeons I care the most for. I used to have spare weapons and min max dungeons like arah, and still do from time to time, but really night covers CoE, SE, AC, TA, CoF, the Dredge, Grawl, Snowblind, Swamp, Solid Ocean fractals.. all of these are always night. You can test it with ghastly weapons, they only glow when the game engine considers it’s night.

The day dungeons are : Arah, CM, HotW, the Cliffside, Urban Battleground, Uncategorized, Aquatic Ruins fractals. Which is why I recommend Force on underwater weapons since the only two underwater dungeons are day (HotW, Aquatic Ruins). For fractals you really can get away with just using night and not minmaxing the couple day fracs.

Chances are if you really need to farm one of the days dungeon a lot you should just pick up a “Slaying” sigil on a spare set of weapons. Undead slaying for Arah, justice for CM, wrath for HotW.

foofad.5162:

Staff’s Line of Warding can also work as a knockdown but it’s also incredibly fiddly and vulnerable to Stability; same deal with Hammer’s Ring of Warding.

And you don’t really want to be stuck in staff for 10 seconds when you’re already having a hard time killing people.. staff is decent in some TPVP builds when your goal is to survive as long as possible as a Point Defender Bunker, or in Zerg versus Zerg to tag a lot of people but it will never work on a roamer whose purpose is to kill other roamers.

The only guardian build that can kill anything that’s trying to flee from you in WvWvW are the triple meditation DPS builds. They are terrible for zerg vs zerg and don’t offer much sustain/survivability but they are your only hope if you’re looking more toward roaming and dueling people in open fields. These builds rely on damaging your opponent as fast as you can so that they will die before they successfully flee from you. Three gap closers, some burning, enough healing to let you stand a decent 1vs1. The base of the build is 0/30/30/0/0, the remaining 10 points are up to your personal taste/preference. Gear is zerker trinkets, zerker weapons, ruby orbs and some PVT on your armor. Utilities are.. it should be obvious, it’s in the name of the build. Greatsword, sword focus, sigil of hydromancy on focus and GS, force on sword.

After a long search and lots of tests during farming runs for better dps builds, while keeping some of the stuff that makes a guard, a guard, this is the final build I decided to settle upon that retains the highest amount of damage while keeping the strengths of a guard, mainly, the consecration and some (limited) form of cond removal for a group that should ideally have none slotted on their bar except for the guard, and sometimes a mesmer.
http://intothemists.com/guides/422-the_virtuan_dps_guardian_build_for_speedclear_groups

For fractals I tend to replace one of the two preselected consecration in the link for a Wall, and the shout with SoA, most of the time keeping Purging Flame as my fire field for might stacking and the bonus cond removal. (Hallowed Ground is incredibly useful for some of the dredge trash fights though. But then I’d just use SoA and have both purging and HG.)
This is a great alternative to the classic 30 Honor cookie cutter build for cond removal, has higher DPS, keeps decent support, particularly, support that can be used even when you don’t slot a full bar of shouts (and in the more interesting fractals you won’t have access to 3 shouts since you will almost always have WoR and SoA..).

The virtue trait line has interesting traits that can be hot swapped depending on your level of confidence with the group, group composition or situation. Replacing Absolute Resolution with Indomitable Courage for Lupicus if your group isn’t well versed in speed killing it can help a lot if they move around too much and create ton of bubbles. For something like the dredge fractal you could replace Unscathed Contender for Shielded Mind and swap back to Unscathed for the end boss. With well placed smites you should have some of the highest ranged dps of the game too (although I think that title goes to ranger. Maybe.).

If you fit either target groups (might stacking through fire fields, or just running a lot of fractals and finding yourself without much shouts in your bar, or even just wanting to try something without the shout cookie cutter for once) this build will grow on you pretty fast.

Finally got that one recorded in fraps. For such a rare attack I was lucky it came up while we were experimenting with stuff and recording.

http://youtu.be/OZ8Tb-eFEBk

Still have no idea as to what triggers it but it doesn’t seem all that random seeing as it’s the third time it happens to our groups in a short time frame.

edit: he seems to have faced the duelist while doing the attack.. I get the feeling that the duelist might actually be the culprit.

Shadowmoon.7986:

and all of coe.

Someone wants to find a place for the magic find necro.

http://tinyurl.com/bestguardianbuildforpugs

This is what everyone should run in fractals 48.

Dub.1273:

found myself not able to do it anymore once it has 13+ Stacks.

If he misses his swing 4 times in a row the stacks reset. A blocked hit counts as a miss. If you’re solo he should never build that many stacks.

I don’t know if I would describe it as a belly flop, but I’m pretty sure we’re talking about the same thing (there couldn’t be two different almost never used attacks.. unless anet has a sense of humor).

What I’m looking for is a trigger. I have a gut feeling that there must be a trigger, something the group does that makes it more likely for this attack to get queued, although I could be wrong and anet just can’t program a decent RNG and made a boss attack that just almost never happens.
I would do so much to get my hands on whatever action could trigger this.

A couple weeks ago, my group witnessed an incredibly rare attack, that I had never seen before, and didn’t get to see again since then. At first we thought that I was responsible for it because I had cast a pistol phantasm before jumping into the destroyer’s platform and that might have been the trigger (having something at range take his aggro) but to my dismay we couldn’t reproduce this.

It was written “Firy Blast” in the combat log. The thing deals enough AoE damage to bring warriors to 5 or 10% hp. Low HP classes gets instagibbed. The animation I could see before we got hit is that he seemed to have jumped in the air.
Google doesn’t say anything about this beside gw2db giving a chat code for the skill.

Did anyone else trigger that peculiar attack ? if there was a reliable way of making him do that.. I’ll give you a cookie.

No, the point was that he complained about obal previous group melee video being only at lvl 48 (not to mention the serious business talk about banners) and that there might be more circles at higher level and the same aoe circle drawing issue as lupicus.

- Bloomhunger is really annoying to melee. There’s good chance that some circles won’t even appear (at least if everyone melees).
- Just like with Lupicus, too many circles and game engine just stops drawing them.[…]I don’t recall having this issue on lower levels.

So yes, their (obal’s) group having done it at 80 is good entertainment as a follow up to the previous threads.

This thread is going to generate a ton of fun. Or maybe not, because the interested party might prefer silence after this being posted + DnT’s 80 group melee.

Nub.2391:

use 5 class with 1500 range and start shooting at 2000 range. done

If you’re going out of your way to get specific classes, weapons or builds you should just do it the right way and get it done under 1 min in melee.

Player Character.9467:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Dub.1273:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Dub.1273:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

1) Stacking warriors is a bad idea. There are unique buffs you are losing out on and you are passing up the opportunity to take other classes with even better DPS than the warrior, i.e. the thief.

Stacking warriors usually is a good idea.
Dungeons contain 30% fighting and 70% running. Warriors are the fastest proffession in the game, followed by rangers and (stupidly traited) thieves. But warriors have a much easier time coming to it’s full movement speed, even when skipping tough parts. You can even manage p1 arah skipping withput getting into combat (speaking from experience, i doubt my level 5 warrior has been able to take a hit). Rangers instead, using sword 2 will have a much harder time.
Also warriors have more cleave damage, more sustain (PvE, Whirlwind Attack) and have a much easier time bringing their damage on. Not to mention Mace 5 and Fear me foe more specialised fights.

For simple fighting though you are right and stacking warriors is a bad idea. Gor bursts 3 ele 1 thief 1 warrior is the best setup, for long fights something with 2 eles, a warrior and a ranger.
But as stated before, that doesn’t matter much in dungeons.

Quick question to the end, for a warrior with 30/25/0/0/15, 2400 Base Power, averaging 6 stacks of might, 1980-1250 precision and 90-105% critdamage (70% banner uptime). Are 25 Stacks of Bloodlust or Precision better, aswell as which Consumable (100 Power, 70 Precision, 100 prec or power and 10% critdmg).

Warriors aren’t any faster than anyone else for anything. They have Savage Leap and Rush on GS, which are okay but nothing amazing. Rangers have Hornet Sting/Monarch’s Leap (which can be used to double the distance by turning before pressing the button) and which is also usable as a standard leap for those leap “sploits” like CoF P2. Both in terms of being able to survive annoying runs like Arah Risen skips, and in terms of raw ground covered, warriors aren’t any better than anyone else.

Also, Bloodlust is always better in speedrun comps simply because it scales better and won’t cap, unlike Perception, which caps at 100%. In general, power > precision, unless your crit chance is very low (less than 50%). The power + crit damage consumable is generally the best, although unless you are already capping precision, you won’t see a huge difference overall.

You forget WA. Savage Leap is 900 range (can go up to 1000 range with a good interrupt), Rush is 1200+ range. WA is 600+ range. Ranger Sword #2 is 600 range twice and GS#3 is 900+ range. I’m aware that rangers are pretty fast too, aswell as thieves, but warriors are simply faster. Also, Savage Leap (interrupted) and Rush won’t get you in combat, Bullcharge just to a slight chance. Get a friend up to battle you on running through open PvE world paths and you will see.

Also i’m a bit confused that you say bloodlust is always better than perceprion, haven’t haviz and nike proved perception is better considering 25 stacks might?

I believe Hornet Sting + Monarch’s Leap are 900 both ways. I know Monarch’s Leap goes miles, it’s even farther than Savage Leap.

Also, Bloodlust vs. Perception (rough estimates, can’t be assed):

Bloodlust = 250 power, assume ~3k power, 250/3000 = ~8%.

Perception = 250 precision = ~12% crit chance, assume 88% crit chance and 200% crit damage, (1 + (1 × 2))/(1+(.88 × 2)) = ~8.5%.

That’s half a % point difference and that’s assuming you’re not going to cap out crit chance halfway through the Perception stacks. A warrior stands to have 40% crit chance from gear, +15% from Heightened Focus, +15% from Spotter and Discipline, and +20% from fury. That’s already 90%. Guardians will cap it out even faster because they are getting +29% from having 30 in Radiance line for 1H weapons.

I do still run Perception over Bloodlust though. Why is a S E C R E T.

o.O 200% critdmg?…

I think he’s talking about the total boost. There’s already 100 crit dmg base. Your crit dmg stat is “bonus” to that 100, so if you have 95%, it’s 195% in the damage formula to calculate how much more you deal when you crit vs a non crit.