Guild Wars 2

EnemyCrusher.7324:

“I quit” threads are against the ToS.

I don’t think someone who is serious about quitting gives a crap about the ToS.

2/ Skyhammer
3/ minion mancers
4/ petting zoo
5/ overly passive builds in general
6/ immunity traits and skills

MailMail.6534:

hmm. If you can’t get an ele past 90% HP, then I think the problem is something deeper and more concerning.

Try to do that on rabid engi and while you’re at it try to apply enough conditions before the ele heals the 10% back just by attuning back to water.

Getting them under 90% isn’t the most difficult part, the most difficult part is to keep them under 90% for long enough to blast them with enough damaging conditions. So far necromancers are a good candidate for this with signet of spite but that trait certainly does completely hard counters condi engineer. The time frame between the under 90% hp and the time it takes them to heal back is very low and trying to hit them with enough bomb or nades during that time frame is an exercise in frustration.

No matter how you slice it, there shouldn’t be anything like a trait that gives complete immunity to anything. What’s next, a trait that gives you immunity to CC if you’re not under 90% HP? A trait that gives you immunity to direct damage if you’re not under 90% HP? Why not? after all even a direct damage build should be able to apply some condition amiright.

This is completely idiotic and not the way to go to give any viability to a class that has none. Just because ele is in a very sorry state doesn’t justify the existence of such a trait. That kind of reasoning is why warrior became like this in the first place. From a class no one wanted to bring in a tpvp match, to a class that is seen as almost necessary to bring to ANY team. Diamond skin is just the first step of balancing ele toward more idiotic builds and if anet keeps catering to this crowd they will become the second wave of Hambow. The warrior abomination wasn’t given birth to in a single patch. It took more than one. DS is the first step toward turning ele into the next abomination.

The issue should be nipped in the bud before it turns into an even bigger one after more patches to buff the various ele builds without paying attention to how things might synergize with traits like these. Almost no one would’ve predicted, at launch, that warrior would become what it currently is now and I wager that ele is slowly going into that direction. They also want to remove the previous nerf to the ele healing signet, right? have fun with that if you keep DS.

Saulius.8430:

cave troll is good boss.

Yeah, fear spam is the best thing to have come to this game.

RedSpectrum.1975:

To compensate, a thief’s skills are not as powerful as other class skills.

I guess spammable blind, spammable teleports, spammable stun and evade aren’t all that powerful.

^understatement of the year.

Also, their defenses aren’t that high. Other classes have higher defenses, even ele have active defenses, to compensate for their “stale-mate state” during cooldowns

Good thieves eat ele for breakfast.

Aidan Savage.2078:

In fact, it’d be interesting to see just how many AP can be accumulated without actually doing any skill intensive combat.

Does being carried in content like fotm 49/50 count as not having done any skill intensive combat? Because I’ve seen such specimen with 19K AP. Expecting the guardian to be full cleric and dedicated to getting him back from the downed state. And oh lord, did he knew the meaning of downed state.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

Nikaido.3457:

Funniest lfg I’ve ever stumbled upon. That was for arah btw.

That one seems to pop up daily.

Does that mean I got trolled, or that someone, somewhere, is spending 4 hours a day in arah ? It does give serious trolling vibes. I mean, who would join a lfg made by such a bossy person in the first place. “I lead the way” no thanks. “Dodger”, but if they knew how to dodge it wouldn’t take 4 hours in the first place would it.

Funniest lfg I’ve ever stumbled upon. That was for arah btw.

Toughness can have very unfortunate consequences as an aggro puller when it does work and you’re doing a pug. During a fotm pug we decided to have the necro do the console because he was the least fit of the group to either kite mobs or survive on switches (and since the guy on the console isn’t supposed to be hit at all, or they get interrupted while using it..). What happened next was a real pain in the butt. There was absolutely no way whatsoever to get the mobs off that necro. None. It was technically impossible. We could hit the mobs in melee with high dps and they’d still stick to the necro. They’d fly from the other end of the room onto him.
In the end we had no choice but to put him on the safest switch and just spam stuff to protect him.

.. said necro was the only one with high toughness in the group (rabid gear). It’s pretty clear to me that some trash mobs tend to be highly attracted to toughness in fractals:
dredge, chanters (cliffside), lava elementals (volcanic) tend to be the worst offenders.
You just have to see it to believe it. It’s incredible how the mobs across the whole room will forget about the group and literally make a declaration of love to the pug necro just because of the rabid gear. And also unfortunate because it takes a lot of control away from you while doing pugs.

Some of the most horrific idiots I’ve met in dungeons had sky high amount of APs. One is a thief who is in the top 20 in the AP leaderboards and thinks a guardian should be his cleric rez nanny because he couldn’t survive more than one second of molten duo… while ranging.

Caedmon.6798:

Nemiros.3590:

Herro~

I recently came back to my favorite PvP game to enjoy the dynamic combat that I love from GW2 pvp.

Basically the game is nothing how I remember it to be. It turns out that matches have become who has the most warriors, and these new warriors are ridiculous. It has become a game of waiting out CDs. “there goes berserker stance, kitten, first endure pain, burst. Passive endure pain, wait it out. Block, interrupt or wait it out. Try toburst before they get another cooldown back” not to mention that they heal 400-700 hps when theyre invulnerable, and hoping that no one comes to help them while you spend all that time trying to kill one. I remember when we used to laugh at a signet warrior lol

Not to mention all the pet builds. You outright have to outplay by quite a bit these builds to kill them. I dont mind builds being OP, there will always be OP classes and builds with each patch and the meta will shift, but this current meta is focused on passive abilities. I get Anet is trying to get the PvE community to play more pvp since the community has died out, but making PvP simpler is not the way. Im still winning most of my matches, but its not fun anymore…

TL;DR: Win or Lose the current meta is not fun. Please take a look at it Anet, take some drastic changes for once and switch around the meta to make it more dynamic.

Only warriors being named again ? How many matches Did you play ? What about the OP engies,necros,guardians,mesmers,“Some” thiefs.. ? There are several of those in every pvp match aswell…But no, no thats not interesting lets just follow the qq train to warrior land.

Other classes can have some easy to play or somewhat op build but none can be as remotely infuriating as warrior, simple as that. I almost never lose a 1vs1 against warriors, it’s not that the build is OP, it’s that the build is terribly unfun to play against because even a SERIOUSLY BAD player can survive for way longer than they should. The amount of immunities, stability, sustain etc is just too much. When I engage a war on my engi and he pops his godkitten berserker stance, all I can do is kite him around for 10 seconds. Is it fun? Is it really fun?

Remember OP’s thread is about what is fun, not what might be seen as OP per see. Warrior is just the least fun class/builds to play against by far. That includes other passive builds like Spirit Ranger. Spirit Rangers don’t have billions of blocks, condi removal and immunities.

The typical hambow build isn’t too horrible to play against but what some of the random baddies run in soloq as bunkers with maximum defensive traits and amulet is just too much. It’s actually a lot, lot worse than trying to take down the typical bunker guardian.

When I see more than one ele in the enemy team in soloq, all I can think is free win. When I do get them in my team, I just wish very hard for a way to put class restriction on the creation of a soloq. And also limit the number of some classes, like, no more than one thief. Because it seems there’s still a lot of players who are totally unaware they can actually, gasp, change to another character before the match starts. And usually 2+ thieves in the same yoloq is an automatic loss.

Rangers are barely tolerable for fractals. Even if you fixed the dodge on sword it would still be bad because it follows/stick to stuff like glue and thus can’t allow max melee ranging anything which is pretty pitiful at high level fotms.

They could bring greatsword, and then be 2x less useful.

CC skills aren’t the biggest problem, bunker builds are. Get rid of the bunker nonsense (including guardians) and the game will be a lot more fun than it currently is.
If you could melt the decap engie really fast in 2vs1 you wouldn’t mind the amount of cc that much.

Personally I never find it fun to either play bunkers or against bunkers, there should be some limit as to how much you can stay alive while being useless in pretty much every other way. Look at the standard guardian bunker build and tell me there isn’t a problem. You press a single key to cast something like stand your ground and you : heal yourself, gain stability, retaliation, convert a condition to a boon and remove another condition all at the same time, break stun, on a stupidly low cooldown. This isn’t the style of gameplay PVP should be about. Decap engie, bunker guard etc are just facerolling on the keyboard while being an eternal annoyance on a control point.

Keep the cc, it can be part of good gameplay (but maybe give a bit more visual cues to things like the flamethrower knock), what should be done is to get rid of all the bunker builds for good.

Guardian is the only class in the game without a viable condi build. The fact that they added a trait like Kindled Zeal before introducing/modifying any weapon set to give guardians some viable condition application shows how much they know about their own game. I’m sure “burning guardians” were happy to get that trait, all three of them.

Valentin.2073:

i eat engineers for lunch on my zerker ranger.

http://youtu.be/-HiYUlhsO_M

Someone who doesn’t even know how to use his heal put you down to 1K HP. That’s all I take from that rather horrendous ranger play.

Seeing how great you are at moving in this game all he needed to do was to cast a smoke bomb and he would have taken almost no damage from you.

A S/P thief would have a field day with you.

Insufferable music,
Much Fiery Exploit Sword
wow qq

I don’t play decap build, and I wouldn’t mind it being nerfed in some ways, but for the love of god, please don’t do to engi what you did to elementalist. Elementalist had one seriously overpowered build and the way they handled the rebalancing is by making the class a waste of slot. Don’t hammer the class as if it looked like a nail, please.

Ashen.2907:

If it is handled properly (the way it often would be in a Pen and Paper game) gear progression is an indication of getting more powerful at the top tier as well. This is done by changing the nature of the opposition. Instead of facing Orcs with more hit points who hit for more damage at the new top tier you face larger menaces which brings home the sense of increased power level for your newly progressed character.

The comparison isn’t very apt though. By level 80 you’re already beating on dragons and such. Any attempt to tie lore to gear progression would make it look more like Dragon B-\|\|all Z (anti weird censor) rather than pen and paper.

There is a reason why the vast majority of pen&paper players didn’t really do uber high levels campaigns either. At some point it just becomes ridiculous since in d&d you could reach almost god-like level of existence which would work even less in a MMO with thousands of other god-like existences (thousands of other players). In d&d epic levels didn’t exactly reach a great level of success (in terms of players who actually did use the material). Some classes, like cleric, druid and in some ways wizard just became rather inane. The same level of progression in gw2 would have everyone being able to create portals like Scarlet and the world being filled to the brim with plane-walkers.
So, pen and paper increase the level of menace but at some point it becomes too ridiculous to be actual game material.

Most mmo tend to cover the vast majority of the lore-tied-to-progression on a reasonable level before new tier even gets added. I don’t think I want to see higher level of threat, and higher level of player power in terms of lore, than being able to bash dragons senseless and kill ancient, legendary creatures like Lupicus. We don’t need the “Epic Level” nonsense that comes from p&p like D&D where you reach a stage where you can just stroll around the planes like it’s nothing.

Which is why in most mmo you don’t really see more than very superficial higher level of threats. If you actually did it like pen and paper it wouldn’t take more than two new tiers of gear and levelling before you’d have to shut down the operation because you can’t let players become Gods, or just about as strong as the avatar of a God.
That would be like you in gw1 inheriting Abaddon’s powers rather than Kormir.

Then why do you care so much about getting stronger in old content only? since progression is only about getting back to the power curve you had before progression in the new content.

One form of “progression” I could endorse is the introduction of new skills that would add new tactics necessary to beat fights. This kind of thing actually improves the gameplay. Inflating stats on gear doesn’t.

And you can do that without introducing extreme grinds ala ascended gear. In fact if ascended hadn’t been introduced to this game, upping the level cap (for new traits / trait rebalance), adding new skills or even a 4th utility skill to unlock when you get to [level 90 or 100] wouldn’t have been a big deal. It would be a big deal now because of the cost of armor/weapons and the fact that you’d have to spend 1K gold again if they ever do such a thing, since you’d need lvl 90 or 100 gear to replace your current setup. They can’t do that kind of thing too soon because the whole player base would be up in arms, including those who pretend to love ascended grind, if it was made obsolete juste a couple months after its introduction. So that kind of thing can only really happen at the end of the year, if not much later.

Ashen.2907:

Get the top tier gear. Then go play non top tier content.

What’s the point? That you keep repeating old tier content when you get new gear, rather than doing new tier content, because you have a keen interest in playing games in easy mode? For all that matters you’re still pretty much on the same power curve, you never get stronger than [current content]. Old tier content is just obsolete in every way. It doesn’t drop [new tier gear] to boot.

Aioros.4862:

Nikaido.3457:

Aioros.4862:

Nikaido.3457:

Aioros.4862:

Are you worse or equal at pve or pvp if you’re doing more damage/surviving longer from a stat increase?

In the typical progression mmo, when you get inflated stats on your gear, mobs also follows the inflation. So if you can tank more, the mobs will also do more damage. Did you actually get stronger ? no, you grind so that you can go back to the same power level you had before the new tier of gear. It’s just a constant hamster wheel.

The same being true for pvp in another way, since the players who do care will all grind the new gear, so if you can tank more, the dps opponent in front of you can also damage more, in the end, no one gained anything from it beside wasting their time on a mindless grind.

Vertical progression is stupid and mindless.

Just look at ascended gear. Weapons do 5% more damage. But armor gives 5% damage reduction. So you grind for more damage, but then said damage gets negated by the armor grind. Two people fighting each other in ascended isn’t any different from a pure gameplay point of view as two people fighting each other in exotics.

All it does is make you do content you wouldn’t have wanted to, like grindfarm orr temples all day, so that you can keep your spot on the power curve, rather than be left behind. You’re grinding for the right to do the same thing you would have done if the grind didn’t exist, since the game doesn’t actually change, it’s only a general inflation of numbers.

Oh, i’m with you then, except on one part.

“Did you actually get stronger ?”.
Yes you did, dungeons do not scale, so you just got stronger by dealing more damage and taking less.

This is because GW2 is the only mmo in the world that introduced vertical progression without introducing actual content to follow.
You get new tiers of gear in WoW so that you complete new raids.
GW2 still has the same old instances from years ago with nothing new on the horizon.

But actually, when it comes to PVE speedruns the next balance patch is going to negate the benefits from ascended gear. 10% damage nerf for berserker builds is basically an ascended nerf. Anyone who cared about speedrunning already has ascended gear, and that nerf is going to bring them to the level of damage they used to do on exotics.

Ascended gear is an answer to the wrong question. It didn’t bring anything of worth to this game beside a mindless grind.

We grind for ascended berserker in PVE so that we can have the same power level we.. had on exotics? what a joke.

Won’t people in exotic berserker suffer the same penalty percentage? If so, ascended is still a damage upgrade.

It is if you intend to actually stay in exotics forever. It isn’t if you give in and get a set, in which case, your normal gameplay will feel like “going back to exotics”. Which is why even talking about “progression” while mentioning ascended gear is a serious joke. Progression? It isn’t even close to what progression is supposed to mean. It is a grind, without progression, without a reason to exist. Other games give you said grind with a real motive : so that you complete new content and lots of it.

Frankly what I think is that they tied ascended to crafting to force the player base to do content that no one really wanted to do before, like Orr temples. Orr used to be very empty. Most players still don’t enjoy doing temples, they do it because they feel obligated to, to stay on the same power curve rather than fall behind.

Aioros.4862:

Nikaido.3457:

Aioros.4862:

Are you worse or equal at pve or pvp if you’re doing more damage/surviving longer from a stat increase?

In the typical progression mmo, when you get inflated stats on your gear, mobs also follows the inflation. So if you can tank more, the mobs will also do more damage. Did you actually get stronger ? no, you grind so that you can go back to the same power level you had before the new tier of gear. It’s just a constant hamster wheel.

The same being true for pvp in another way, since the players who do care will all grind the new gear, so if you can tank more, the dps opponent in front of you can also damage more, in the end, no one gained anything from it beside wasting their time on a mindless grind.

Vertical progression is stupid and mindless.

Just look at ascended gear. Weapons do 5% more damage. But armor gives 5% damage reduction. So you grind for more damage, but then said damage gets negated by the armor grind. Two people fighting each other in ascended isn’t any different from a pure gameplay point of view as two people fighting each other in exotics.

All it does is make you do content you wouldn’t have wanted to, like grindfarm orr temples all day, so that you can keep your spot on the power curve, rather than be left behind. You’re grinding for the right to do the same thing you would have done if the grind didn’t exist, since the game doesn’t actually change, it’s only a general inflation of numbers.

Oh, i’m with you then, except on one part.

“Did you actually get stronger ?”.
Yes you did, dungeons do not scale, so you just got stronger by dealing more damage and taking less.

This is because GW2 is the only mmo in the world that introduced vertical progression without introducing actual content to follow.
You get new tiers of gear in WoW so that you complete new raids.
GW2 still has the same old instances from years ago with nothing new on the horizon.

But actually, when it comes to PVE speedruns the next balance patch is going to negate the benefits from ascended gear. 10% damage nerf for berserker builds is basically an ascended nerf. Anyone who cared about speedrunning already has ascended gear, and that nerf is going to bring them to the level of damage they used to do on exotics.

Ascended gear is an answer to the wrong question. It didn’t bring anything of worth to this game beside a mindless grind.

We grind for ascended berserker in PVE so that we can have the same power level we.. had on exotics? what a joke.

I guess that might matter if your goal in life is to trivialize old content and run the same crap all day.

—> content has inflated stats, you can’t complete it until you get the new tier of gear
—> you spend hours, and hours, and countless days, weeks grinding for said new set of gear
—> you’re back to the same status of power as you had before that gear and content was introduced. No more stronger or weaker when completing the new content.
You are a lot stronger when completing old content though, which is why old content in most mmo tends to be rather abandoned or boring stuff. Anet tried (and failed) to keep a semblance of balance so that the older content doesn’t get abandoned, by introducing downlevelling in lower level dungeons, but the problem is that lvl 80s are still a lot more powerful than the actual intended levels for these dungeons, and ascended gear’s higher damage is also noticeable if all 5 in the party wears it.

Anyhow, the purpose of gear progression always leads you back to where you were before new tier were introduced. You have X amount of power against X enemies at the moment, Y enemies are introduced you need Y amount of power the game doesn’t actually change it only slows down the time it takes for you to actually access and complete the new content.
The old content gets abandoned because it’s trivialized and obsolete. New content is like a replacement for said old content. Your power level, once you finished your grind, is always the same in the new content, as it was before grind in old content, in a way of speaking, the gameplay didn’t actually change. It’s just stat inflation on two side (your gear, and the mobs) and making older content obsolete.

Edited by Moderator

Ashen.2907:

Nikaido.3457:

Did you actually get stronger ?

Yes. You can now face tougher foes than you could previously. That is one definition of becoming stronger or better, the ability to accomplish that which was previously beyond your capability.

A chess player who practices a lot so that he wins more, increasing his ELO rating, will then be matched up against tougher opponents. The fact that he now faces higher rated opponents, more of a match for his new skill level, does not mean that he has not become a better, or, “stronger,” player.

Except that inflated stats has nothing to do with challenge, try again.

In fact, the introduction of more ascended gear trivialized fractals. Before the introduction of maxxed AR and gear-checks in the game (like 40 and lvl 50 instabilities and end bosses) you could do higher levels without necessarily having enough AR to survive everything. Now since you need said AR to actually complete the content at all all the gear inflation does is trivialize something that required constant dodging before. Now there are plenty of agony attacks from bosses you don’t have to pay attention to since you’re always maxxed in AR. I can remember the days where I ran groups where one single agony arrow from grawl shaman could kill you. This will never happen again because they decided gear checking AR with instabilities and the end bosses was a worthwhile endeavour, rather than encouraging the player base to learn how to dodge.

Aioros.4862:

Are you worse or equal at pve or pvp if you’re doing more damage/surviving longer from a stat increase?

In the typical progression mmo, when you get inflated stats on your gear, mobs also follows the inflation. So if you can tank more, the mobs will also do more damage. Did you actually get stronger ? no, you grind so that you can go back to the same power level you had before the new tier of gear. It’s just a constant hamster wheel.

The same being true for pvp in another way, since the players who do care will all grind the new gear, so if you can tank more, the dps opponent in front of you can also damage more, in the end, no one gained anything from it beside wasting their time on a mindless grind.

Vertical progression is stupid and mindless.

Just look at ascended gear. Weapons do 5% more damage. But armor gives 5% damage reduction. So you grind for more damage, but then said damage gets negated by the armor grind. Two people fighting each other in ascended isn’t any different from a pure gameplay point of view as two people fighting each other in exotics.

All it does is make you do content you wouldn’t have wanted to, like grindfarm orr temples all day, so that you can keep your spot on the power curve, rather than be left behind. You’re grinding for the right to do the same thing you would have done if the grind didn’t exist, since the game doesn’t actually change, it’s only a general inflation of numbers.

Elvahaduken.3609:

I read the first page of responses to this thread, mine probably wont be read but I will say this anyway.

Currently ascended armour is the worst form of progression I’ve ever seen on an MMORPG. I know many people don’t want progression but it really stumps as to why not, why would you NOT want to have goals to aim for.

Getting more stats isn’t a goal, it’s a hamster wheel. Are you stating that your basic needs are on that level ? Stats progression is meaningless because in progression based games the new content also follows said progression so, you become stronger, but so do the mobs.. in which case, are you actually stronger? No because there is always a power balance maintained in the new content so that you don’t overpower stuff with the new stats. The only thing stat progression does is make older content obsolete/incredibly easy/fast to complete and put a time gate / barrier preventing you from accessing the new content (aka having fun) until you grind mindless crap over and over.

Having a goal is more like desiring to become better at the game, more skillful, be it in PVE or PVP. Getting more stats isn’t a goal. You’re just playing the hamster wheel, running in the same spot, never actually moving toward anything. Are you a hamster?

Considering the timing it seems pretty obvious to me that they fixed potion because they affected potions they introduced for dat Living Story. Which is to say, it proves they can do something in 24 hours when they want to. They just didn’t care.

Not a bug, magnet is unblockable. You have to dodge it. Or use stability.

It happened again 2 times in a row then I couldn’t reproduce it. I have no way to know for sure but I have a feeling a player might be the cause of this (abusing a game bug).

This one I verified, affects more than just me. Whenever you click a subcategory in the searching area, the drop down menu doesn’t disappear anymore, you have to click somewhere else to make it go away. Not a priority/serious bug, but still.

Don’t know what to say beside the added screenshot. I am on EU servers atm and it doesn’t crash on all subsections, only the popular ones like AC so I’m kind of wondering if someone didn’t find an exploit to cause game crash by feeding broken lfg text or something.

[edit : yeah, it’s not happening anymore at the moment. I could be wrong but I really feel like something wrong is going on.]

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Also the bomb combo doesn’t actually cost you any DPS because of how much damage BOB does, it actually does more than just raw grenades if you’re using Acid Bomb as your third blast.

Wait, what?

So you’re seriously proposing to use Big Ol’ during the fight and not only as a prestack? Don’t you even realize why you shouldn’t use it. In the case of big ol’, it’s not because of its damage.
Frankly if you include Big Ol’ in your rotation during a fight you’re not better than the typical GS mesmer and if I were to get you in one of my runs my patience would run thin very quickly.

The same thing is true of shield 4 at times although it’s not as bad as BOB.

Rising Dusk already answered the other point.

A war with forceful gs is sometimes the only thing that can keep your sanity up in a full tank pug. What’s better between interrupting your dps rotation every now and then on engi stacking might for a bad group while still not being able to reach a full potential on your own, or a war who can self stack better, with burst (hundred, whirlwind on a wall) on gs reaching 25 might, banners etc and just killing mobs a lot faster ? in a pug slow to kill things you won’t even be able to maintain that much might during the fight on engi for multiple reasons : overlapping combo fields, the inability to use some of your blast finishers (you can’t possibly be thinking of using big ol’ bomb while fighting pack of trashs are you?) etc. Warrior just pops signet, FGJ, swaps weapon (battle sigil), hundred blades and he’s good to go. Nothing except for signet cast will interrupt your dps rotation. Situation for blast finisher use is different for a speedclear group that can kill everything during the duration of said might stacks, and a pug where you’ll find yourself constantly needing more might stacking rotations instead of pure dps rotations because of a much longer fight.

I love engi but the ability to solo dps of a war in a group that has bad dps is stronger, there is no denying it.

Now, engi brings other things that can help a bad pug, so it’s not only about damage at times. Stealth can get some pugs through stuff they’d usually fail to skip for example. The class has great versatility and the support, while not being on guardian’s level, isn’t too bad overall. Blinds, chills, some reflect, ability to group heal, guard level of cond removal..

DigitalKirin.9714:

I think Nikaido mentioned this when he said – and I’m paraphrasing here, “Traits and utilities determine the playstyle, your gear simply determines where you are on the spectrum of how much damage you’re comfortable receiving and dealing.”

That was Nike, although I do agree with the quote. Gear isn’t a playstyle and doesn’t affect (beside runes/giver’s armor) the boons you can give, the duration of your reflect and all the other forms of support this game provides. Gear doesn’t care whether you’re stunning something with a mace or dpsing with hundred blades. Full pvt doesn’t give you more stun duration, does it? All the crying against berserker gear is just plain ignorance of this game mechanics. It’s even more fun when it’s lumped with stacking implying that only berserkers can or should stack. Stacking is just as effective with other builds, in fact it’s the only way to get anything out of an otherwise useless healbot because you can’t heal people at range now can you? I’d like to see you guys try to “support” a bearbow sitting at 1500 range while you’re trying to “heal” as a mace/shield guardian. Headless chicken is so effective! only berserkers stack, other builds can play the game of headless chicken better.. right? right?

Palador.2170:

Total agreement. This should never have been a 5 man mission.

And let’s stop to ask: “Who are these four other people?” Why, they’re Trahearne’s right hand man, of course!

. . .

That’s right, Trahearne’s apparently been cheating on you. He’s a dirty, rotten marrrubium vulgare.

Let’s be honest, though. They’re not going to change it. They made a big, game spanning storyline for solo players, and at the very end hid the conclusion behind … group content. It’s the same trick they pulled by putting 5% of map completion in the WvW zones, and it’s done for the same reason. They think that we don’t know what we like, and if they just pressure us into doing it, we’ll suddenly discover that we like it.

Or ascended earrings and guild missions etc. Anet going from “you can gain best in slot through various activities” to “you’re better off doing all the content we want you to do”.

You’re right, a group in full cleric wouldn’t have any reason to stack, only berserker stack. It’s not like everything in this game has very narrow range or anything, or the fact that grouping together for the support, blind, cleave is of any use. No, it’s always zerker who stack. You never see pugs in pvt do stacking. Never.

Axe offhand is a good indication of a player who prefers to look cool over bringing something useful for the group. Which is a strong signal indicating “kick me, please.”. We all know the truth. You know the truth. It doesn’t bring anything apart from “oh I’m spinning yolo swag, swag”.

BrutusW.8251:

i like to play axe/warhorn as main spec. anyone has a good build for this?

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83915-axemace-dps-build-for-dungeons-and-fractals-101513/

There isn’t anything special about warhorn that warrants using a unique build for it. Just use the pure axe build with another offhand that will let you get the benefit from the dual wielding trait, using warhorn for either the blast finisher or weakness/vigor then immediately swapping to mace or sword.

#Warlord
Warrior is the pve easy mode. If you can’t handle running warrior on meta build I shudder to think what you would consider as a build for a class like thief and elementalist.

DeathPanel.8362:

Thaddeus.4891:

DeathPanel.8362:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAneRjkOZvtPCP4wBEkCNMLOKAQmI9IMIj1A-j0BBYfERjkFAUBLaMzsIastBFRjVXDT5iIqGA-w

That’s a terrible build for speed run and high level fractal. Such a small DPS that you just can’t do speed run and for fractal you have DPS checkpoint that gonna make you fail every time if most people use this kind of build.

The build has full zerk on every slot and runs empower (+150 power to group) and 2 buff banners. If that is “small dps” then I don’t know what qualifies as big dps.

There’s a point in which sacrificing group support for dps gives diminishing returns. Between regen banners and empower and full zerk gear there’s plenty of dps in the build while also providing sustain and dps buff to the whole team.

Your build doesn’t even has a single damage modifier trait checked. Just putting zerker gear on is meaningless when you’re actively avoiding any trait that amplifies all damage. Just 5 more points into arms and you would at least get Attack of Opportunity. As it stands, your build is a zero dps build that just so happens to run zerker gear.

FOTM drop rates are fine at lvl 50, it’s just they replaced fractal skins a bit in the drop table with ascended armor boxes and weapons. I got three weapons and 5 armor boxes since fractured (and I only recently came back to the game, didn’t do much fractals.)
Between box and frac skins I’d rather get boxes. Frac skins are mostly meh too.
http://i.imgur.com/n6smktm.jpg

I’m still waiting for an archdiviner livestream@50 from these “zerk is zo ezy” winners.

He doesn’t realize how much we can depend on mace 5, or blinds, even immobilize sometimes (arah tar ele), interrupt, fear, area of denial like ring of warding (ooze in thaumanova for eg) etc.

He either 1/ spends all his time in AC 2/ spent too much time watching speedrun videos without understanding how they even work.

And if you were to really enforce a game of headless chicken running around rather than grouped close together you would end up with something that promotes even less mechanics, because boon range is very limited as is most form of support so all these headless chicken asking for healbot builds are going to have a tough time healing anyone in a group that runs around at max range randomly pressing buttons and running in circles. For fun and trolling purpose I ran cleric guard a bit in random playasyouwant pugs, your heals won’t even reach the vast majority of these perma-ranged-weapons users. That’s just how useless the whole concept of a healbot is.

Another one who’s never graduated out of AC school. Seriously, if all you run is AC you shouldn’t have any say here.

Go ahead just say “stack here” while even doing something as faceroll as ginva in your pug and let’s livestream it while we’re at it. It will be fun to watch. If FOTM 50 is asking too much of you, I’ll reduce the level to HotW P1. Simple enough, I hope? show me all these groups who just “stack here” at ginva and press 1 to win.

They can’t possibly fix fractal bugs and QoL when even their servers are running on a toaster’s budget.

Still waiting for that “stacking is easy, I can even do it in fotm 50” video. Preferably while stacking on mossman and archdiviner. So far it just looks like complains from people stuck in AC, which, as anyone who has pugged a lot of dungeons knows, has the worst pugs, players who literally almost never left this dungeon, and when they do, it’s a disaster.

Always the same old “spider queen hrp drp drp hrp spider queen hrp drp drp drp”

Was levelling a new character and doing a couple story mode while still not 80, just making groups that state literally nothing, got other underlevelled chars played by new players (who were between 400 and 700 AP) guess what, I had no stacking or anything, nor did I tell them anything about the dungeon because it was kinda fun to see a group discover CM as if it was release day.

Groups are what you’re asking for. Don’t join speedruns and guess what, you won’t get speedruns. It’s magic, isn’t — * it? the power of words! It’s so difficult to create your own party and state your own requirements. I wish I had such Power of Words.

This kind of thread always seems to come from players who haven’t graduated from AC. Try “stacking” on bosses without understanding mechanics on high lvl fractal with a group that is also not used to doing so. Also please livestream it.

If you were doing your job right as a guard maybe they wouldn’t have eaten the spikes so much. Greatsword pull cleave the adds? Blinds from greatsword leap, virtue, sword 2, focus 4. Well timed aegis, condi removal through virtue and purging etc.

You’re talking about the paltry heal empower does, which makes me guess you might be running a cleric guardian build, which in most case don’t even have blind on virtue of justice, so that means you only have one blind versus a much more spammable set on a dps guardian with sword focus + gs.

When you build around the thought of using a heal you already lost the battle because they are the most idiotic form of support. I’m sure your staff healing is going to carry a lot of people in arah. Lupicus is trembling in fear of Empower.

Guardians act more like placebo than anything in a fractal like dredge. There’s still a ton of unavoidable damage that will set off despite the proj absorb and I’d rather have even one more mace 5 to knock while we dps than pretty much anything guard can do there. It isn’t really like volcanic, where guards can actually completely trivialize the content just by using a couple skills.

Thieves, on the other hand, will literally make you skip a large part of the most boring parts of the fractal. (post-nerf) Harpy feathers won’t let you fully skip the bomb and rifle events but thieves can. They can also let you completely avoid harpies in uncategorized in a very safe manner.