Guild Wars 2

Focus has 1200 range on ray of judgement. If you don’t use focus you’re already doing it wrong. Which makes staff #2 useless.
Empower is a terrible skill all around. In good groups it replaces longer lasting might stacks with crap. In bad groups.. those might stacks aren’t making up for the dps loss you’ll experience by not using sword/focus and greatsword. First, you’re losing out on vulnerability from the weapon blinds. Second fact is that in the more interesting content like fractals your bad group won’t even be getting those stacks, or at least, not the whole group, because they’ll be running like headless chicken and half of the group will be out of your range.
Skill #5 has its uses, but in the few situations that makes it useful you’ll usually be using hammer as one of your weapon swaps which makes it redundant with hammer’s ring of warding.

Staff guardians are the reason why I might consider putting out lfg with “No Guardians”. Like others have said on the forum, they have become more common than even the bearbow rangers. You’re more likely to get a decent ranger, warrior, [insert anything else] than a guardian who’s not hugging his staff and cleric gear. This gets old pretty fast.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

These are just what comes to mind. A good guardian won’t do much damage, but that is not their purpose.

Go on, teach me sensei. You got me interested. I’ll also subscribe to your newsletter. Tell me all about the great builds and playstyles.

mkaito.6981:

Everyone is DPS. There are no other roles in this game.

Or you can be a “staff guardian” and act like the in game equivalent of a flowerpot, useless, just standing in the corner of a room.

I might actually post “No-Guardians” on my lfg.. at this point I’d rather have condition necromancers..

Tman.6349:

necro build that wrecks in dungeons. […] but necro can bring some serious assets to a dungeon group. […] necro is a straight beast though i assure you

If there was a tool to measure delusion in human beings it would explode on this post.

shoot me a pm sometime and i can show you some things

Maizael.3075:

So the rule of thumb is: Do not talk about Valor line. It is selfish. Do not talk about max MAX damage because it is selfish. Play a different class if you do not pick the mold.

Or do whatever the hell you want.

To be fair most players will literally faceplant with the build he proposed then will end up going back to something more reasonable on their own. No need to even try to convince anyone, real world experience will slap them back into reality on its own. He built a guardian that’s nothing like a guardian, but suffers from the drawback of a guardian (low hp etc). Good luck with that.

Btw if you’re willing to go as far as to trait into virtue without even picking up master of consecrations, why did you not pick bane signet too in your utilities ? if you’re not going to play a guard you might as well crank everything to 11.

Obtena.7952:

MastaNeenja.1537:

My only problem with this is that someone will take it seriously and throw away a lot of gold.

Why do people like to MAKE things their problem? This is not your problem. If someone looks at that video and thinks “OMG, best Guard build EVAR!”, then they deserve to lose their gold for not doing more research, asking, etc …

Just like people who click the links in your signature and think the same.

simplesimon.2084:

I haven’t seen this bug myself. Did you try having everyone die. I may mean you have to redo the fight, but at least it’s better than scrapping the whole run.

Oh yeah we did try. There wasn’t a whole lot to do too, the field that surrounds the berserker when he becomes SupaBerzerk was still up well after his death so we just jumped out of the platform and fully wiped, it did nothing apart from activating another wave of agony when we entered the arena again. And now I remember, this was the fourth, since we got these in order before : underwater, harpies and cliffside.

Since I started playing this game I think I hit almost every single dungeon breaking bug that exists.. so many runs wasted on this, this is just getting old. Fractals by far have been the worst offender, although early ascalonian catacombs could give it a run for its money with Detha (sometimes we managed to recover from her bugging, sometimes nothing would work..) The amount of hours spent to get absolutely nothing in return is mindboggling.

Too bad, there might have been some decent ideas in there, I had a seriously good laugh when mossman popped right at tom and made him activate before we were prepared, even better to see that we recovered from this without wiping. But this is probably the last straw, I’m not sure I’m willing to put more hours into a game that is such in a sad state overall, while being mocked by the dev resetting our levels and anet thinking that content = grinding the same old stuff so that we spend some more time in front of a crafting station. The introduction of gear grinding in other mmo is justified by the apparition of new extension/heavy content, not just a couple gimmicks and the devs calling it a day.

Murphy’s law is in love with me. Second fractal run and I run into a game breaking bug. So basically spent an hour doing 31 in a pug to throw the towel right after killing the end boss because the game didn’t register its death and acted as if he was still alive (there was a remnant of the boss bar on the screen). No prompt to leave the fractal run or do the next level (I don’t remember if we got that as a third fractal or last or whatever and I’m new to this frac patch), no level up, no reward, nothing. Fractal was molten facility. Just stuck in there with nothing to do after the berserker’s death.

This game is lovely. I love the amount of time wasted on these bugs. Why did I even bother trying to give this a shot.

So this is the result of the long wait for an actual dungeon update. So much fun, so much content.

Ayrilana.1396:

Nikaido.3457:

I don’t know how I should feel about this game these days. They removed all the effort spent in levelling alts to higher levels and turned us lvl 30 account wide without even fulfilling the very simple promise of : shortening the dredge fractal and making sure we don’t get some of the most bore-ish fractals one after the other.

I am trying very hard to give this game a shot again but all I hear about the last patches just make me think I better not enter this time sink once more.

Neither were promises though. They were stated as options that they were looking into.

Well, they decided to take my levels away from me and make me repeat baby fractals (did my first post patch run, level 30 was an absolutely mind numbing experience.. completely uncoordinated pug at 5am with basically the whole group being composed of people who didn’t sleep and we still went through this like butter.) while not giving back anything of worth for the levels lost.

They better not be surprised to see a lot of players leaving this game for good. I have a hard time seeing myself going through more lvl 30 without feeling like gouging my eyes off. Wait, not mine. The developer’s eyes. What the heck were they thinking. This patch is absolute crap. The only thing that could ever convince me of going through this levelling process again would be the reassurance that I wouldn’t get a daily dose of infinite dredge spawn to kill. Obviously failed to deliver. Any. Thing.

I don’t know how I should feel about this game these days. They removed all the effort spent in levelling alts to higher levels and turned us lvl 30 account wide without even fulfilling the very simple promise of : shortening the dredge fractal and making sure we don’t get some of the most bore-ish fractals one after the other.

I am trying very hard to give this game a shot again but all I hear about the last patches just make me think I better not enter this time sink once more.

The guardian shield skills are fine as is. Not very useful in PVE (it does have a couple situational uses just not a common equip) but a strong pvp offhand.

What they should do imho is swap the focus and shield skills around. The focus blocking function just makes a lot more sense on a shield. And the shield highly magical property fits the focus more.

Plus, sword/shield would look 10x cooler than sword/focus.

The guy who made this video reminds me of this GTA character :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5THnZfXti_0

All those who talk about the ele being a jack of all trades have never played an engi. The engi is a jack of all trades, a real one, and much better at the job than an ele could ever be for the fact that an ele loses most of its dps as soon as it starts trying to do anything other than using its conjured weapon or staff fire auto + lava font. Engi don’t suffer through this crap because of their kit swapping. They have better group heal even while using zerk gear (Engi can blast their own water field more than an ele can. Staff ele is pitiful in terms of blast finishers. So even if their water field has shorter duration they can burst the group heal more). They have built-in condition cleanse that doesn’t require traiting for it and it doesn’t make them lose anything (turret heal, elixir gun)… they can stack stealth like a thief on their smoke field.. I could go on and on, but the point is, the only strength of the ele at the moment in PVE is actually DPS, and only dps, and only in organized groups that are “carrying” the ele with guardians and the like to allow for optimized used of a conjuration build. As soon as you need actual utilities you’ll find a massive DPS drop.

There is just too much to compromise on ele to get anything close to being able to carry a group compared to classes like Engi or Guardian.

GW2 has the most stupid player base ever. I don’t think I saw a single player who actually read the description when I tried to make groups for the new dungeon path. Not a single one. There are idiots in all games but I haven’t even seen a single player who had read what I stated before clicking the join button..

MikaHR.1978:

Its a subtle message from ANet to their payerbase.

^

haviz.1340:

Nikaido.3457:

I log back just once just to see this path.. the kitten I have to put up with.. screenshot taken while rezzing a full dead after 5 wipes with people going max possible range, not cleaning a single oil spill and never avoiding the attacks from the ooze which has like a 10 hour build up before it hits anyone..

Certainly the LFG tool completely killed pug quality. I don’t remember getting a spirit weapon guardian on gw2lfg for months.

The dungeon doesn’t seem overly bad, but not that great either so far. The idiotic pugs who complained about TAF/U will stop doing TA altogether I bet because while this path isn’t harder, it requires more coordination with is way too much to ask for, particularly on European servers with deaf mutes who join your party not speaking a single word of English.

Why did you whiten his name? I’d like to chat with him.

I got enough infraction as it is (from posting screenshots with names).

God, this lfg tool is the worst thing known to mankind. It’s my first time using it I already got enough cancer to cover all my organs. It is definitely true that while the people who were on gw2lfg weren’t always up to par, there is just no comparison between the braindeadness I’m witnessing here and this tool audience.

I just saw a rifle warrior let the ooze hug him for 4 seconds, then eat the 90% health hit without moving even once, and only started moving once he got hit. zz
I’m not asking for elite players when I pug, but is it too much to ask for players who got a kittening pulse ? are they even alive? human? or bots?

I log back just once just to see this path.. the kitten I have to put up with.. screenshot taken while rezzing a full dead after 5 wipes with people going max possible range, not cleaning a single oil spill and never avoiding the attacks from the ooze which has like a 10 hour build up before it hits anyone..

Certainly the LFG tool completely killed pug quality. I don’t remember getting a spirit weapon guardian on gw2lfg for months.

The dungeon doesn’t seem overly bad, but not that great either so far. The idiotic pugs who complained about TAF/U will stop doing TA altogether I bet because while this path isn’t harder, it requires more coordination with is way too much to ask for, particularly on European servers with deaf mutes who join your party not speaking a single word of English.

colesy.8490:

I would seriously consider leaving if the trinity was introduced. With GW2 you can play any class, and as long as you’re geared properly and know how to play you can pretty much be as useful as anyone else.

The problem is, bads don’t want to create their own (proper!! not heal cleric guard, that does nothing!) roles in group content, they want them made for them.

As haviz loves to put it, this game is ruled by metrics. Metrics say that most people use kitten gear, testers use kitten gear, which means, content is created/tailored for kitten groups. Ergo, the introduction of the trinity to this game would be an actual improvement no matter how much you hate the trinity (I don’t really like it either). Because it would enforce a straitjacket on that incredibly horrifying community, it would make the content better for it by not having to take into account the kind of group you can see in the TA livestream, or what we saw when they did the molten facility full livestream etc.

But this game will never have the trinity anyway. It would be a major overhaul, so big that you wouldn’t even recognize the game. There isn’t even a concept of single target heals in this game or serious aggro management.

http://youtu.be/vPQU-qTRMW0

This is the type of group the content is balanced around. Terrifying isn’t —-_ it?

But then again, the trinity is the same thing that kills MMO’s. Play a class that isn’t tank/DPS/healer, and no one wants you in any of the game content.

What do you want to be then if you were not either a dps, a tank or a healer ? Roleplay a fisherman in dungeons? What the kitten is that sentence supposed to mean? I knew the play-as-you-want were filled with idiocy but this is reaching a new low. Idiotic players like you are WHY this game NEEDS the trinity badly, because without the trinity straightjacket, in a game that still has a concept of different gear type people get lost and completely forego the idea of a decent party composition that fits the game. In trinity based games if you weren’t filling a useful role expected by the party you’d get booted by E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E, not just the people you love to call elitist in this forum. GW2 is that carebear community that is welcoming anything at the cost of turning into a torrent of crap. Because there’s no trinity, but a huge variety of gear, idiots will use it and nobody fits an actual role since there are no real roles in this game beside dps in terms of gear (utilities can still support though).

In other games even the worst pug wouldn’t be without DPS-specialized builds in the group because the spirit of trinity completely permeates the community and makes sure they know about remotely decent party compositions. GW2 it’s the contrary, you can join a pug that is filled with 4 tanks. Hell, in trinity games tanks and healers are the rare roles, the ones that take the least amount of time to find groups for high end content, there isn’t a lack of people playing dps.

This game is clearly a trainwreck whose appeal will only stay with the most casuals.

Acerola.6407:

Could you please stop interpret anything from seeing a dev playing the game? This is a kittening dev. He has no time to play the game. It’s pretty kitten stupid to assume them being pro or something.

Oh boy … flaming a dev for going any weird weapon combo is just shortsighted.

That’s not flaming the dev for his terrible skills (although, while I don’t expect devs to have the best twitchy skills, I expect them to know better about their weapon selection since they are the ones responsible for the, you know, kittening class and skill balance.), but flaming the content. if someone like the guy in that video can complete the content whether you like it or not it DOES mean something about the content.

Oxxy.7068:

I’m watching the Dev’s video right now, you can’t skip cutscenes, which means you’ll probably waste 10 minutes worthy of doing something else listening to npcs that you don’t give a crap about. YESSSS. At 16:50ish he says “even our lovely group of coordinate people is having difficulties in keeping something alive”… and then i realize they’re killing normal mobs and no one pulled them together to allow cleaving, and he’s using scepter+gs mesmer… and now i’ve closed the video, what a bucket of kitten.

edit: here’s the link in case anyone wants to acquire brain cancer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbVtyFap1Uc

The mesmer ate a godkitten veggie pizza and, instead of a dungeon slaying potion, a tuning crystal. A motherkittening tuning crystal. Brain cancer? more like we’re at the terminal metastasis stage.
A long as content can be “completed” by such teams it will never be taken seriously.
The lack of a trinity hurts this game in that it seems the vast majority of players, even anet employees, don’t know how to gear up properly if they’re not forced into a particular role. You don’t see the player base going 10 tank group in other MMOs. GW2 is the only mmo where you can make a pug and everyone in the group is playing a tank build. Or builds that just make complete zero sense like confusion mesmer in PVE which is what this guy seems to be playing ( let’s put confusion on him )

Which means that dungeon encounters are balanced around the idea that even this kind of cancerous group can complete them. I don’t like trinity systems but it doesn’t seem like a MMO can do without because if you don’t force the player base into particular roles they’ll end up like gw2’s player base and to make that player base happy you have to push out even worse content.

Oh and remember every time someone complains about X or Y dungeon being too hard (like all the whining when AC was revamped). A group like the one you linked in that video managed to complete it or it wouldn’t have been released. How much worse are the groups that are complaining?

And I’m not against the thought of culling some of the useless path of the game when dungeons become too redundant but they removed the most fun TA path to replace it with something I don’t expect to ever run more than once if it’s anything like the molten facility and other living story trash. They should have removed up and just made the spider despawn at the end of TA F/U.
If there are dungeon paths in this game that need to be removed, HotW P2 and P3 would be the first on my list.

Essence Snow.3194:

Ofc most of it is situational. For instance 1h sword uses projectiles as we all know, thus it is not a good weapon for circumstances where foes reflect or for target boxes (burrow/traps/etc) that bug out to them.

For SE path 1 you should camp greatsword during the first run part with the barriers because of that. Sword will often just bug out at the third hit, trying to repeatedly do the third hit when it doesn’t connect to anything (trying to cleave the two turrets that generate the walls).
The mediocre AoE/cleave issues (it’s more like a piercing arrow than a sword cleave) from that third hit also means that gs is better to camp in many fights with groups of trash.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

I’m very certain that the restrictions to the ascended gear is to “force” people to do things ingame that have dropped in popularity.

I’ve heard that temples in Orr aren’t done as frequently anymore, and a lot of players complain about not having too many people out in the open world(though I always see a lot of players no matter where I go), so it would make sense if they made it this way to ensure that everyone who wants this gear will participate in these activities.

This is exactly what they’ve done ever since the introduction of ascended gear. At first you could only get rings and backpiece (you can craft a backpiece but you still need a fractal drop to craft it) from Fractals, they were introduced as a carrot to make you do fractals, then they later allowed you to get rings through dailies but for so many laurels that it’s still not worth getting them through anything but FOTM.
Then they introduced amulets, and tied them to the daily/laurel system to make sure you do your dailies every day and feel like you’re missing out if you’re not logging in at least 30 minutes per day.
Then they introduced accessories, and tied them to guild missions. You can get them through laurels, but again, it cost a ton of ectoplasm and is also a waste of a big amount of laurels. They wanted you to do guild missions. The fact that you can get them through laurels is only so that anet can pretend to give you a choice but the choice is so obviously contrived and mediocre (waste a time gated currency you already need for other things?) it couldn’t possibly be called a choice.
Now they want to make the open world feel lively after they removed culling so they’re redirecting people toward world bosses and orr temples. You want your dragonite you’ll have to go through this crap.

Ascended gear is the antithesis of exotics. You could get exotics through a great variety of means and didn’t have to do bad content just because anet wanted you to do all content. Ascended gear is always introduced with the purpose of forcing you into playing a part of the game you didn’t always intend to play. Ascended weapon’s focus were crafting and open world.

Who knows what part of the game they’ll use to compartmentalize ascended armor next.

LordByron.8369:

dumbe

This is why they shouldn’t have introduced ascended gear. They promised no grind but tried to keep the grinders with ascended gear, and in the end, the grinders will leave this game because ascended doesn’t cut it for them. They wanted both the grinders and the player base attracted by the manifesto and they’ll end up with neither. Guild Wars 2 has a future.. as a game for the facebook minigame crowds. Not for people who actually want MMOs.

Zelyhn.8069:

but Nike said assumptions are banner of strength and banner of disc, so we assume two warriors?

One warrior can cast both and someone else in the group carries the other banner. Done that plenty of times. You’d have to trade off either FGJ or signet of fury though. With ele groups giving off both might+fury FGJ can be traded off without a loss on the war.

Wethospu.6437:

Sanderinoa.8065:

Orochi OP please nerf. btw that link you sent for it stinks

Well, what can I do?

http://tinyurl.com/

10/30/0/0/30 is the way to go when you have a set group that has reliable speedkills. I ended up using that when my regular group could reliably kill lupicus in a manner that guaranteed I’d never need the vigor. The 30 in virtues lets you get unscathed contender without having to drop absolute resolution and master of consecrations.

This isn’t workable in a group that doesn’t reliably output high dps or pugs though. In which case either 10/25/0/10/25 or 10/30/0/10/20 are fine. Both of these set are great if you hate retraiting all the time depending on the group you get too.

Vayne.8563:

Oh they’re loud. Squeaky wheel gets the grease, but it doesn’t make them right.

Not nearly as loud as one particular individual in this thread. Most of them will quit arguing in this subsect, just like all the others you have interacted with in your 152 pages of insanity.

You really shouldn’t bring up loudness because you are a true, massive army of loudspeakers all by yourself.

Who knows who are the minority or majority, but in terms of loudness, what you call loudness is the opinion of a truly diverse group of people who come to and leave this forum, while your loudness is a massive forum spam of epic proportions.

I’ll post a screenshot of my friendlist once prime time hits just like the others because a list of offline players speaks more than any words we could put in that thread.

Vayne.8563:

Did anyone every tell you laughing at people is rude? Just curious.

It is rude but it’s also almost impossible not to when you’re in front of someone who has a 151 pages history of vehemently arguing in any thread showing any sort of criticism against anet. (what the f..? I don’t think anyone else in this whole thread has a comparable amount/omnipresence. Paid PR or you just don’t like this game as much as you pretend to and spend more time on forums than actually playing or doing other stuff in your life?)

I don’t think it’s possible to read the general discussion subsection for more than a week without developing a distaste for the One Man PR Army you represent.

Syn Sity.5826:

is everyone serious THAT bored of this garbage game

Daywolf.2630:

In fact I still have many players on my friends list that haven’t logged back into this game for over six months, and in a game that requires no subscription fee. I have new friends dropping out all the time, just unimpressed with the direction things have changed to. Oh and don’t get me started in on inactive guild lists.

My friendlist is filled with players who told me straight they weren’t coming back. I have a huge pool of “followers” who haven’t logged on for like 6+ months. For a game that doesn’t have a sub they sure can’t keep a lot of long time players.
And I haven’t logged on since I made my first ascended weapon after the last patch. I just realized I had absolutely no desire whatsoever in doing temple and world bosses events to build more ascended weapons, and if I can’t get BiS gear for future content/dungeons I might as well just quit. It’s not needed now but there will come a time where having full ascended including armor (which I expect to have the same, or even worse amount of crap content grind like temple/world boss all over again) might make a difference and I don’t see myself grinding the dumb content (sorry but there is NOTHING more mindless than temple and world boss zergs.) to be prepared for that future. Not to mention the difference it’ll make in WvWvW roaming. And the fact that you’re really stuck with one build. Let’s not even talk about alts.

Good riddance to gw2, it had potential but it’s just turning into a much worse mmo because the true grind mmo actually have fun dungeons/raid/content to grind, gw2’s grind is the most boring thing you could build in a mmo. If you’re going to make me grind, make me grind fun dungeons and raids, not playskool-my-first-mmo type stuff like temple events.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

I kind of wish this forum had literacy tests.

Only this forum? how about being tested before they grant you internet access. Oh, sweet utopia.

colesy.8490:

Funny how Define are a hardcore dungeon guild and yet never post here

They probably didn’t like the one and only time they interacted with this place with a thread made to gloat about their “superfarm”.

Thrumdi.9216:

Straight out incompetence.

Well, when it comes to anet it could easily be turned into the “you don’t say” meme when people bring up their incompetence.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1mu2gt/ascended_weapon_box_from_fotm/cccxveh

fritzywiggins:

How do you feel about players who create builds as an expression of the character they’re roleplaying? I’m more into roleplaying than I am buildcrafting, and will opt for a sub-par build if it fits my character better…not that I’m running any pure defense/healers or anything, but my builds will have defensive elements and aren’t intended to do the highest possible dps. However, I’m explicit about this in a group. I’d never try to join an all berzerker’s dungeon speed run, and I basically warn group members before we begin that I’m not in it for speed. I’m not trying to be selfish or “poison gaming,” but I have fun with Guild Wars 2’s affordances for roleplaying within character build, and as long as I’m not getting in your way, I don’t see what the problem is.

At least he has the decency of not joining groups that don’t want his type but I think that the very idea of “roleplaying” a character in dungeons makes him a good candidate for this play-as-I-want thread, probably even more so than the ignorant necromancer guy because he’s actively going for things he knows are subpar for roleplaying’s sake. One wonders if he’s trying to taunt and talk to the bosses midfight too.

Tequatl is a great way for bad players to feel and show online pride for beating something that required zero skill to do. Let’s see how many of these prideful beasts would act if they were told to solo Lupicus or even if they were asked how they’d perform on Liadri with a glass canon build.

I never saw so much pride in gw2 before from players for doing something that gave zero evidence of their own personal skill. Hiding behind the zerg doesn’t say anything about you. And yet here they are, flooding reddit etc with their pride for “beating” a boss that’s basically all about dpsing him hard in a zerg while dodging a couple times movements with extreme tells that people still fail to get.

colesy.8490:

marnick.4305:

PVE dungeons:
S: Warrior, Guardian
A: Mesmer, Thief
B: Necromancer, Elementalist
C: Engineer, Ranger

Although mostly for elitist speedrun groups. Neither my ranger nor engineer have any problems joining groups. It merely means we take about an hour to finish content others would do in 50 minutes. Big deal.

But lets be fair. Open world PVE (events, farming, jumping puzzles …)
S: Ranger, Elementalist
A: Engineer, Mesmer, Necromancer
B: Thief, Warrior, Guardian
C: Mesmer and Elementalist under lvl 40.

Who cares about open world tiers? I’d just stick everything in S tier it’s that face-roll.

In fact if I really cared about open world tier I’d unfortunately have to put the warrior as a class above [S], a class of its own, because since open world is faceroll the most important thing would probably be movement skills to quickly get through these maps and not spend too much time walking from point A to B, in which case, warriors are definitively kings, I don’t think there is anything in this game that could ever beat a warrior with traited GS, running sword/warhorn secondary, bull’s rush and signet elite. Doing map completion on any other class just feels pitiful.

Broadicea.8294:

As Lamir mentioned also, there seems to be a long delay when displaying the list per dungeon, but the message displayed when waiting is the same message as if there weren’t any groups at all, which is pretty poor design.

So all in all, it sounds like another typical Anet release. Buggy, partially functional, not very well thought out, and hastily put together.

Funny how they have a hard time replicating the functionality of a third party website that didn’t take that long to be built. And I don’t wanna hear “websites are easy to program compared to game crap” cause this game already uses websites in its in game UI : the Trading Post is an in game web browser.

https://account.guildwars2.com/login?redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Ftradingpost-live.ncplatform.net%2Fauthenticate%3Fsource%3D%252F&game_code=gw2

Anet seems rather.. incompetent, to say the least.

Oh, it seems the lfg tool shows the classes that are in the groups listed. Amazing, no more joining groups with 2+ necro.

haviz.1340:

You can even use whirlwind attack to get out of the bubble.

Nice, I didn’t know about that. Good to know. Although in the event of a full chain bubble I’d probably still keep balanced stance.

Whirlwind getting you out of bubbles though sounds awfully similar to the bug that used to make dodge rolls get you out on warrior. Sounds like something that would get nerfed if made popular. Or maybe not. Because there’s no Robert Hrouda reading what we do in dungeons these days.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

As for getting carried, idk. People tend to define ‘getting carried’ differently, so it’d be nice if people clarified when they make a claim like that.

I would say, (not the player, because it doesn’t mean the player can’t play well with a different build), a build is carried if it can’t stand on its own in any sort of group in the harder content. If you can’t join a fractal 48 or an arah pug without being flattened you’re using a carried build. Certainly, you ain’t going to melee lupi on LH with no vigor in a low dps group.

Now, I’ve done lupi in melee in pugs that ranged him etc decently well on the standard Warrior, Guardian (with 10~ points in honor, I wouldn’t run the no vigor build I used in LOD in a pug.), Mesmer builds. The builds used for these three classes stand well on their own, and do not need a specific group set up to shine. A warrior might swap a couple utilities sometimes to feel safer, personally I’ve always liked endure pain for things like the Ascalon fractal depending on my confidence in the group while mowing down the trash, or for killing grubs in the grawl one, or use something like Balanced Stance or/and! Dolyak signet to escape bubbles in pugs since you will get chain bubbled at times and can’t really do it the speedclear or solo way of using zero stability. But they don’t have to retrait, dramatically change their playstyle or gear to be effective. I actually died less in pugs against things like Lupi than some of the speedrun groups I’ve had because of the fact that I have balanced stance, sword offhand etc in pugs, and I didn’t in these speedkill groups when something happens to make lupi chain bubble us.

Guanglai’s engineer build is also dramatically effective in any sort of group, any sort of pug, it just works, probably even easier to handle than the three classes I mentioned but that’s just my opinion. I love playing engineer in pugs actually. I think it’s the most effective build/class to bring in mediocre pugs because of the versatility, but some might prefer guardian because of the slightly higher amount of group support.

The LH ele build, the full LH one, is truly a thing of carry. You can make it work in some dungeon pugs like AC and maybe even dungeons like TA depending on the groups but you certainly shouldn’t take that in an arah or fractal pug unless you want to embarrass yourself. There is no denying that this thing is a thing of carry. I’ve had successful pug runs in the easier dungeons with the full LH build used in guilds like LOD but I would never take that to some of the harsher dungeons.

So far, while I do agree that mes/guard spec a little more in utility, they don’t lose as much as ele though in terms of damage output. The builds used in speedclear groups are also fine in the worst pugs. This isn’t the case of ele. You just don’t play that build in the fun content outside of a particular group set up. It doesn’t work. And anything other than that build just doesn’t compare in terms of damage output. And its best damage output won’t even really shine unless you have that group set up with the guardian casting fire fields anyway. The typical warrior build can just stand on its own.

If you’re bringing the LH build in pugs, even in easy dungeons like AC where you can play that it’s more like self gratification than anything else, because you won’t really have an optimal damage output. X/focus will on the other hand make some things smoother by making sure that you have some absorb of your own if the rest of your group is too dumb to use absorb/reflect etc. It’s also great in these groups that keep using that dumb LoS spot for kholer, not moving away from him when he does the spin inside that LoS spot, you can activate earth 5 and also rez people while invuln.

I think the game’s concurrency figures are growing, and if what he said was true, well…that wouldn’t likely be the case.

There’s a lot of new players + a somewhat temporarily renewed interest in some because of Tequatl but these are not what will keep the players for long. Most of my friendlist left the game. The ones I know who haven’t are playing a lot less than they used to and to be honest, I don’t know why they still do. I haven’t logged on for some time, and don’t intend to. I’m still following the news, hoping anet would get a grip, but I don’t think they will.
So far out of the players I’ve know for the first 6 months I started playing this game, none are active anymore. None of them. The only people I know who still play are the rare hardcore I met in guilds like DnT and LOD who have an interest in doing things like record times in dungeons they’ve already ran 100000 times and I really don’t know how long this will keep them up.

As for actual content vs fluff being defined, the fact is, actual content is lasting content that people still like and complete a year after release. People still do fractals, will still do most of the dungeons and they are repeatable content. You’re saying we’re a minority but I’m pretty sure there are far more players doing dungeons in this game than people who still play activities like Sanctum Sprint.

The fact is, all the players who really care about the more involved, less fluffy content in this game are leaving one after the other. Top TPVP players are leaving, and whole teams have left in the past, and will probably leave again if nothing is done to the current TPVP meta and game modes. People who were interested in GVG are now leaving because GVG is going to be massively unbalanced with the new WvWvW patch, and anet has no interest in supporting this game mode that people loved in the previous game and tried to remake through WvWvW. Notice how a lot of active WvWvW guilds also do GVG, and the people who were interested in it will not stay forever in the current conditions.

People interested in high end PVE content kept leaving since the introduction of fractals, there’s no denying that.

In the end, if all that’s left, are people like you, who profess love for fluff like Sanctum Sprint, I don’t know what to say, did we really expect this game to be a game that attracts the type of crowds that enjoy facebook games ? Because that’s what you really are.

@champ

I love the da——____mning with faint praise! keep it up. No seriously, it’s funny.

The last time I logged on I did a last AC run with a funny test. DPS contribution in a fully random, average/mediocre pug. Took a group that had the intent to do more than one path for that test. Did path 1 with my zerk gear. It went mostly okay, with everything dying as intended. During path 3 I swapped all my gear to full PVT and healing power trinkets (what I use in WvWvW) to see what would happen with just one player dropping all the offense in a group that already had close to zero dps. First thing we did, is to wipe on the spider queen because the little spiders wouldn’t die fast enough (and there wasn’t much ways to avoid that since we used the stack method as all pugs would do). Funny uh? I don’t really want to hear about all these dumb “zerkers drop all the time” when one zerker’s contribution is actually preventing so many group wipes on adds. The only projectile block we had for the little spidey was my Swirling Winds (obviously the other pugs have no idea they had projectiles blocks) and it lasted long enough in path 1, but not enough with the dps drop in path 3.

Bottom line, pugs are trying to use stacking methods even when they don’t have the dps and then don’t realize what is going wrong. Everyone in party chat was like “why did this happen”.

We then nearly wiped on kholer because the adds were murdering us and we didn’t kill them fast enough etc. We had to kite the champion’s group after the spider queen because they didn’t nearly die fast enough while stacking behind a wall. Overall do a test yourself in dungeons where pugs tend to use stacking methods and you’ll learn soon enough.

Mediocre dps pugs tend to copy methods they learned from groups that had average/decent enough dps to pull it off, and want to stack everywhere, and then wipe inside the stack because they still take more damage than they can take despite the tanky gear, but the mobs will not die fast enough to make the stack work so you need to circle strafe mobs, max melee range the ones that can be while kiting etc. Stacking with truly zero dps is a fail tactic but most of these bad dps pugs so far seem to always have had at least one or two high enough dps member to pull it off. And then they probably laugh when said dps goes down in the stack while having done 70% of the damage during their lifetime. And when they truly get into a true tank group and wipe in a stack they wonder and ask in party chat what went wrong? I’ll tell you what went wrong, you’re a kittening leech and you should stop joining dungeon run on your crap gear.

Join dungeons like AC where you’re guaranteed that pugs will use stacking methods, try to find a truly mediocre dps group and get your two set of gear and swap it during the run, see for yourself, it’s a good learning experience.

Zerking in non-zerk group is very much possible but you do have to be reminded that you can’t just stand in a spot not moving or avoiding anything and survive for long if the group dps sucks. Max melee range, circle strafe things, use more dodges/have vigor etc.
It’s possible on the spider queen adds as long as you have enough dps to kill during the time absorb/reflection is up, but it’s not possible on all mobs and at some point you’ll have to break off the dumb stack.

Dolan.3071:

And I must insist that an Ele build with points in Arcana is not a ‘dps build’.

It is good to live in the fiery rush lalaland but if you try to do FOTM 48+ without the perma vigor from 10 in arcana (which really sucks on an ele like there’s no tomorrow. You’re not playing a guardian. And even guardians are still very shy of not putting at least 5 in honor to get that vigor.) you’ll quickly learn to shut it and deal with being a “slightly less, but still dps build” over the current faceroll of the current incredibly badly designed dungeons.

Whatever you insist we’re all free to fully ignore.

This game will obviously either tank or it might have found the dumbest community and took it as its own. There is no content. The last actual content introduction was fractals. Anet wants a grind but they aren’t bringing the benefits you get from grinds in other MMO such as doing fun, high end raids and dungeons. The grind itself in GW2 is also one of the most boring I’ve ever seen.
People who enjoy grinding, and even people who don’t but are willing to grind when the game requires it, want content to go with it. The idea that you can introduce crap like ascended weapons and later on ascended armors without tying their acquisition to an high end dungeon or raid is senseless. The people who are attracted to that aren’t going to stand for the idea that the end game is all about open world crap, champion farming and standing in front of a crafting station.

As someone who doesn’t enjoy grinds I’d still rather play a true grind game that also has actual content than a game like GW2 whose only “content” is the grind itself, a year after release, still nothing introduced after the first release of Fractal of the Mists. And FOTM is almost all there is to high end PVE, maybe we could count some Arah in, although it’s really not comparable to FOTM 48+. I’ll probably buy FF14 once I’m done going through Dark Souls which I’ve picked up after being bored to death by Zerg Wars 2.

This game’s current vision of PVE is like a facebook game with a better engine. It has conflicted visions all over the place, it tries to be Playskool-My-First-MMO while having dungeon mechanics that, while not difficult for a decent organized group, completely shreds apart the casual crowds it tries so much to attract, while not being able to keep/retain the player base who really cares about content like dungeons.

It’s spreading out thin and can hardly satisfy everyone, while trying very hard to do so.

Gandarel.5091:

I love when PvE guys complain about how is PvE in beta.

Ever tried to play PvP only? To actually play the very same gamemode for a year? It’s like playing CoF P1 for a year with no rewards, earning 2 copper a day. They only thing we have is a currency called ‘glory’ – which is at least as useless as karma.

You have content updates every 2 weeks, we haven’t had any content since release.

PvE is spoiled as hell and you still complain, complain about things like ‘camera position’ or “oh if I get a legendary I want the game to announce it in guildchat”.

You don’t seem to be much of a pve player so why are you talking about this? Content every two week, but what content ? Press F on piñatas, a couple minutes solo instance, a revamped open world zergfest? Where are the hard mode dungeons or the higher level unlocked fractals ? The PVE content in this game is crap compared to most MMO, including new releases.

PVE for people who really care about PVE as opposed to open world zerguers has been in the same, exact same state, since the release of Fractals of the Mist. That was the only permanent and worthy PVE content introduced since the release of the game.

Draehl.2681:

colesy.8490:

They exist for PvP and WvW.

And in these environments glass cannon builds can still avoid damage incredibly well with invulns/stealth/etc. Who do you have more difficulty killing? A tank geared Warrior/Necro or glass cannon Thief/Ele? Considering the damage output of the glass cannon builds the survivability is remarkably similar. In many cases all out avoidance of damage is far superior than soaking damage. Either evasion is too strong or soaking is too weak.

Glass elementalists are free kills. Glass thieves can’t do group fights because all the aoe will kill them before they do anything (stealth doesn’t make you immune to cleaves and aoe.). Glass thieves are strong 1vs1 but completely useless where it really matters in WvWvW. It’s okay in SPVP I guess though.

But don’t even enter group fights in wvwvw on your glass thief you’re just a rally bot. I’m not even talking about zerg, even a 10vs10 fight is enough to turn you into an instant rally bot. Who do you think people will try to hit first if they spot you among a group anyway.

Glass elementalists aren’t even all that strong in 1vs1 though. They are very easy to destroy and all their abilities to escape have been nerfed to oblivion.

Wrei Mors Les.8406:

Sucks if you aren’t necro. 25 bleed stacks over the zombie mob clears then up real quick and we got DS #1 for the walls. Imagine a confusion Mesmer try to tackle the walls.

Confusion mesmer.. in PVE? What? This isn’t something that should ever be taken in a dungeon or any pve content worth doing.