Guild Wars 2

Still waiting for the Desperate Power fueled lupi solo record Weth!

Unleashed.6195:

I’m putting together a longer post after some extensive testing. However, in the meantime, I’d like to get opinions as to why 30/0/0/10/30 and 30/25/0/0/15 are desired over other builds.

Specifically, the automatic traits from discipline appear lackluster and require micromanaging to get the most of. Looking forward to reading the reasons!

1. Because the math says so. Feel free to use my effective power spread sheet and test it yourself. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmB39y9xwxIRdEtSNjdJTHNydXlUSm05QmdZTUo5U0E&usp=sharing

2. Because I have no idea what your testing process is, but I assure you it isn’t as extensive or thorough as mine and my guilds when it comes to min-max dps builds for pve.

3. Because what you consider “micro-managing” is called “weapon swapping” and managing your dps rotations is a basic warrior skill. If all you want to do is auto attack with greatsword and do the occassional hundred blades, expect to get the lazy results of your lazy effort.

4. Forceful Greatsword is horrible. If your groups stacks you with 25 stack of Might that lasts 22+ seconds, guess what happens the first time you use 100b and WWA? You lose half of your Might stacks. Congrats on significantly lowering your dps.

5. In fact the only thing that Arms has going for it is 10% vs bleeding targets, and yet even with that awesome trait, the math still works out better for 30/0/0/10/30 in terms of dps by around 2-3%. Not a single trait in the Arms line besides Target of Opportunity compares to the OP traits in the Discipline line.

6. http://youtu.be/Sr5PglBiacg Underwhelming? Note, I had gold-find food on and not even dps food.

Can your group stack 25 might, Fury and 25 Vuln? If so, it doesn’t particularly matter what professions you took to get there. From those basics you start stacking unique buffs, banners, empower allies, frost spirit, spotter etc. That’s basically it for general dungeoneering.

Dub.1273:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Dub.1273:

Cause the gains aren’t marginal if used to it’s full potential.

Waiting to see it at the full potential then. With baited breath. Don’t disappoint.

At least you don’t have to wait too long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZQfhOMuOP4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Has only been two ele’s. Would have instantly brought him to phase 3 if we used three.

Is it sad that even with that little information I think I have a pretty good idea of whats going on there?

That said, if you want to release the whole video to the public I would be a lot more impressed.

Dub.1273:

Cause the gains aren’t marginal if used to it’s full potential.

Waiting to see it at the full potential then. With baited breath. Don’t disappoint.

We only ran a mesmer there because we dont care what people run anymore for the most part on casual runs. But yeah, I would not bring mesmer to coe at all if I cared about finishing it faster.

Oddly enough I spent this weekend testing his engie. It’s good for the vuln stacking for sure. The vuln stacking component is especially useful in mixed parties.

I still don’t know why you are so gung ho on ele’s though. The kill times are comparable to anything else, and it requires additional coordination to achieve that. It seems to be more work for marginal gains. But hey, there is more than one way to skin a cat in this game as we all know.

We also encountered it.

http://youtu.be/WREN7NjOCfI

We also had a Duelist. It looks sorta like he turns to the Duelist before he does it but also looks like he turns at one of our warriors. Tough to say but the common denominator thus far is the Duelist being slightly away from the center of the circle.

I cannot fathom why a ranged attack would trigger a melee response, but then again I didn’t code the boss haha. anyway, Phantasmal Duelist seems like the first worthy lead to test in the investigation.

1x Guardian 4x mesmer test run?

Wesnoth.1705:

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

It’s mildly embarrassing that is being offered as good advice. Maybe the next video should be a guide on how to LOS trash mobs, since its clearly very needed.

I cannot fathom why the OP cares what other people pay for and what other people sell. Personally I am growing tired of the tedious moralizing from disinterested parties.

What result are you looking for with this thread in specific? As I said, there will always be winners and losers in any change of system. You didn’t end up on the happy side. We get it. Some of us are there too. But making BHB QQ posts is ridiculous.

For what it’s worth, if GK ever wants to prove a point on video badly enough we will happily run with him.

Holy Socks.3195:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

You’re not being forced to do anything, stop being such a drama queen. Do the content that you find bearable and rewarding, avoid the content you don’t want to do. Wow, this is pretty difficult stuff.

The problem I have is the content I find bearable and rewarding stops being rewarding after i’ve done it once.

Oddly enough, the content I find rewarding stops being bearable after I’ve done it once.

In any major system change, there will inevitably be winners and losers. In this case, the losers are the people who farm the same dungeon path(s) repeatedly. The winners are people who do a little bit of everything. Sucks that you are on the wrong side of the deal, but that happens from time to time.

Additionally, we all saw this coming far, far in advance. So don’t pretend these changes are some surprise that blindsided you, as these implications were talked to death prior to implementation.

58k whirling wrath vs. small hit box boss is surely legit. Surely.

Why don’t you do Arah before the QQ about nothing to do starts?

Haha noob. Try breaking out of your cof one.zerk mindset and try carrion power vit condi and watch how fast the tree dies. If you aremt willing to adapt you deserve to fail.

Learn basic game mechanics. Cant crit the tree so use bleed builds to max conditions which he is vulnerable to. Power vit condi stat for the win noobs.

Since you cant crit the tree dude we all went full bleed builds. We all maxed 25 bleed stacks and he melted.

Didn’t see any threads on this one.

I managed to kill the boss with my party.

BUT HE DIDNT DROP TWILIGHT FOR ANY OF US AND ISNT THIS DUNGEON CALLED TWILIGHT AND WHY DOESNT THE END BOSS EVER DROP IT

I figure this is troll bait, but here is my ranking of the classes in terms of general dungeoneering…

t1: War,thief,Guard, ranger
t2: mesmer, ele, engineer
t3: necro

Rationale: Warriors and Guardians have good personal DPS and provide excellent party-wide buffing. Thief has the best DPS for most dungeon bosses, and blackpowder is OP for trash, and Shadow Refuge/smoke field makes dungeons like Arah and TA that have trash runs trivial. Ranger has decent to good personal DPS and provides 12% party-wide DPS boost which is far from trivial.

In tier 2, Ele’s have good personal dps but unless you build your party around their might stacking capabilities their utility isn’t so great. I compare them in a lot of ways to a Thief, and when you look at them side by side the Thief is superior. Mesmer has low DPS but really good utility so based on the dungeon they warrant inclusion, additionally while they raise your clear times in some dungeons (like CoE) they provide a quality of life improvement that makes casual runs more laid back, and that isn’t a bad thing. Engineers can have decent DPS and provide good utility but when I look at them side by side with other professions I can’t see where I would bring one before I bring any of the tier 1 professions, and the problem is once you have one of each of the t1 professions you have to ask yourself if an engie would add something the others don’t have covered. The only compelling case would be built around vuln/might stacking if your team isn’t capping either.

Tier 3 is the necro. They have no useful team utility, and their dps isn’t anything special. Put it this way: even if their DPS was equal to a Thief or warrior you still wouldn’t bring one because their team-utility is essentially zero. Imagining you have the four t1 professions covered, why would you ever bring a Necro ahead of one of the t2, in what possible scenario would that be optimal?

Dub.1273:

Path 4 Arah is 1g.

Are they playing the same game we are?

Dub.1273:

Path 1 Arah is 3g.

time to raise the price of the slots we sell by 3g!

Update 8/6/2013: All CoF Warriors have “Dodge” functionality added to their characters, enabling them to not fail in CoE runs. Functionality in Caudecus Manor still disabled, do not attempt.

Dub.1273:

Undead Slaying and Force do not stack.

Bottle tested?

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

swiftpaw.6397:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

I’m done. I am trolled.

We’ve all been there. And it’s not trolling. It is genuine. Some people really are genuine. Sometimes I just sit back and I stare at the ceiling and I wonder how people on these forums are in real life.. Who employs them? How do they function day to day? Do they have a family? What do they do when they are not playing the game or on the forums?

I just go over and over all the little details and possibilities that could make up that person’s life and try to comprehend why they say the things they do.

I was just reading about boss tells in the bible. Turns out, everything Mad Queen has said checks out there.

The wind up on Goliath’s attacks were such an obvious tell even a noob like David could one-shot him.

moiraine.2753:

Of course it is NOT impossible.It’s just not pug friendly.The fight is basically a dps check plus reflects.Nothing special.The average pug is not capable of that

So go run CoF or AC.

Malafide: if you see an animation and have no idea what it does and it kills you, you’ll learn that next time you run, right? What’s wrong with that?

Xan Thav.5369:

On another note, good luck getting a decent/good team for each one of those runs, especially SE, HotW and Arah 2/3 ._.

I’ll just ask my highly skilled guildmates in our voice chat, so it won’t require much luck at all actually.

SE p1 takes like 7-8 minutes. Probably faster if we ran it enough to come up with a super optimal plan. I would definitely consider it worthy of inclusion in my dungeon gauntlet.

AC1
AC3
TA up
TA FF
SE1
SE3
CoF1
CoF2
Hotw1
CoE 3
CoE1
Arah 3
Arah 2

Very awesome. How did you keep him from getting the Retaliation from his spirit?

current meta build ^

And no, there is no need for a ranged weapon in any named dungeon. There are few fractal fights where you might want a ranged weapon but for the regular dungeons you can melee everything.

Is it the belly flop attack animation? I’d heard rumors of it but in literally hundreds of runs I hadn’t seen him use it… until he did and nearly wiped us. No idea what triggers it, but its incredibly rare, like one out of two hundred runs he will do it. In a year of playing this game I’ve seen him do it twice if that is any indication.

Can’t wait. doing the fastest path of each dungeon is much more fun than doing the same dungeon over and over.

Time for the super ereet cof farmers to re-watch some of Strife’s videos so they can learn some other dungeons.

Let the QQ begin.

spoj.9672:

Nikaido.3457:

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.

Ill bite. That was incredibly low dps for killing bloom. Or do bosses have way more hp in 80?

A soul crushingly high amount of hit points.

Purgatory Fire.4057:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Purgatory Fire.4057:

Which only causes inflation nothing else. Great work on not fixing this and not working on the economy but getting pigeon-holed in to the Living Story crap.

What has inflated? Ectos are cheaper than they were in december. Precursors are cheaper than 6 months ago. t6 mats are about the same as they were 6 months ago. Not seeing this inflation.

Inflation is not the increase in the price but the decrease in the value of the money or what your money can buy. Know the difference.

Oh I know the difference. Not sure you do though. Purchasing power is reflected in price in this game. 100g will buy you about the same now that it did 6 months ago. What game are you playing?

I’m sure you could find examples of a few miscellaneous items that have skyrocketed (lemongrass) but the staple commodities at different tiers (ori, ecto, lodestones, precursors) have remained flat despite incomes increasing through more effective speedrunning and farming techniques.

Purgatory Fire.4057:

Which only causes inflation nothing else. Great work on not fixing this and not working on the economy but getting pigeon-holed in to the Living Story crap.

What has inflated? Ectos are cheaper than they were in december. Precursors are cheaper than 6 months ago. t6 mats are about the same as they were 6 months ago. Not seeing this inflation.

spoj.9672:

Support and control are both heavily used in speedclears. Control to position mobs either by mesmer or guardian pull or LoS. Or even line of warding to chain interrupt mobs in fractals. You could count blinds as either support or control, your supporting the team with them but your also controlling what attacks the boss/mobs miss with. Support comes from utilities like feedback, wall and boons like aegis along with damage buffs (banners and frost spirit). *The problem is people are thinking of support and control roles as something you have to build your class around completely. *

Truth. I know this will sound a bit insulting but…

A lot of players are used to traditional trinity MMO where a “support” character could hang around in the back out of danger buffing his team not really using any twitch or micro skills and get carried through content because even though his skills are low, the character type is important enough to warrant inclusion and thus the lazy man has a path to success. The lazy and less skilled players gravitate to support/midline roles because it allows them to blend into the background for the most part. They don’t get special credit when a raid goes well, but its also usually not their fault when it fails.

Not saying this description applies to everyone who wants to play a dedicated support character, but it certainly describes a significant enough portion of them to make it the rule not the exception.

As I have said in other threads on this topic, this is an action MMO. You can’t reach the top by playing a support necro who sits at 1200 range with staff auto, casting wells on cool down. You have to be in the mix pulling your weight. If this isnt appealing, this probably isnt the game for you.

Whiztard.1728:

easy solution:
nerf crit damage

Won’t stop anything. Top dps will still be top dps even if said dps is less than today’s top dps.

There is a breakpoint in crit chance and crit damage where Perception becomes better than Bloodlust. I don’t have the exact number where they are equal, but in a 30/25/0/0/15 warrior build bloodlust is slightly better and in a 30/0/0/10/30 warrior build, Perception is a bit better.

Also crunched numbers on Mesmer and 30 in dueling build Perception is better than Bloodlust by .8%. To me, a good rule of thumb is if you have 30 in your crit damage trait line Perception will be superior. Exception is Thief who hit 100% chance to crit without Perception.

But, that said, your current power plays a role in it too. If you look at identical warrior builds if you have 0 Might stacks Bloodlust is a lot better, and if you have 25 Might stacks Perception becomes better. There are so many variables and moving parts that I would say your best bet is to crunch the numbers and make no assumptions.

Trust me, attack is not used to compute effective power.

Ballads.2509:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Ah yeah, I forgot the “base” 50% crit damage. That would benefit the build which crits more substantially.

Also, you’re right, about base damage modifier, it is multiplicative so in this case it should be 1.58 base damage considering scholar runes, slashing power, stick and move, attack of opportunity, berserker’s power.

So….

BL: 2795*(1+.80*1.65)*1.58 = 13,116

Per: 2545*(1+.92*1.65)*1.58 = 12,739

Still showing bloodlust as better for solo play in this build by roughly 3%.

1 question, would it not be more accurate to use attack instead of power for these calculations? Please inform me how, if you would, thank you.

We are comparing the same weapons, so weapon strength is a wash.

Zenith.7301:

Reflect and guardian/mesmer pulls are OP and you know it. They far outclass the CC/support tools of other classes.

The fact is nobody wants the necro’s chills, nobody needs poison because mobs don’t heal, nobody needs conditions because mobs don’t have high armor, nobody needs boon stripping because outside a specific type of dredge no mobs or bosses suddenly spike boons to lethal levels, and nobody needs the engineers turrets or cripple fields.

I thought we were talking about the need for control and support, not class balance. Ofcourse wall and curtain are OP, thats why they get used. But thats the point, they ARE a “control” element that is extremely important and the fact that they exist means that posters saying “this game doesn’t require control or support” is a shallow comment. It does require them, but people don’t like that two classes are better at it than anyone else.

I see, so you’re just stating a fact without taking a pro or con position about it. Fair enough.

Maybe read what I wrote again since you clearly missed the point. If you want to play a ‘hang out in the back casting party buffs while getting carried through combat’ support character, I suggest you try a different MMO.

I didn’t know Control wasn’t needed. Temporal Curtain and Binding Blades are two of the most powerful, and most commonly used, skills in the game in terms of PVE dungeons. Those are the epitome of control, and the sign of a good group is being able to coordinate it properly.

Your mistaken assumption that Control is irrelevant probably comes from a pug meta where you can’t count on the mesmer pull or guardian pull to be used effectively so people just deal with it and have a lot of downs or rough trash pulls or fight bosses away from walls.

As far as “Support” goes, I don’t even know what that means. If that means condition removal, reflects, blind fields, stealth, portals, and boon buffing; well then the zerker meta does that too. These are all integral concepts to organized group speed clears. My guess is you mean “Support” to be some mid line type of character who can be lazy and get carried through content by casting party buffs. Sorry, pal. In this MMO the classes that bring a lot of support (mesmer, guardian, thief) are also expected to do their fair share of dps. If you long for the days of bad players getting carried through content by being buffbots this isn’t the game for you.

Ah yeah, I forgot the “base” 50% crit damage. That would benefit the build which crits more substantially.

Also, you’re right, about base damage modifier, it is multiplicative so in this case it should be 1.58 base damage considering scholar runes, slashing power, stick and move, attack of opportunity, berserker’s power.

So….

BL: 2795*(1+.80*1.65)*1.58 = 13,116

Per: 2545*(1+.92*1.65)*1.58 = 12,739

Still showing bloodlust as better for solo play in this build by roughly 3%.

Dub.1273:

/confused.

Game tells me bloodlust is around 12.5% better than perception when soloing.
@Nike: Where is the critdamage in your calculations?

Could you both post your calculations wuth sidenotes?

My mistake I didnt see that you wanted only 6 Might stacks. I’m used to calculating these things with full party considerations

+100 Power 10% crit food…

2795*(1+.80*1.15)*1.38 = 7,984

2545*(1+.92*1.15)*1.38= 7,754

Bloodlust still better. If Haviz’ numbers are coming to a different conclusion (perception being better) I am not seeing my mistake.

And the formula is…

Power x (1+crit chance x crit damage) x base damage modifier

crit chance is expressed as a decimal, so 92% crit chance = .92
Crit damage expressed as a decimal for 115% crit damage = 1.15
base damage modifier is a decimal, so 38% base damage modifiers = 1.38

Why did you assuming dodging was part of his playstyle? Don’t you know any and all play-styles are equally optimal and valid?

Dub.1273:

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).

Assuming banner up, Fury, 25 might, scholar runes, butternut curry squash soup (+100 pre) and no signet passives…

BL: 3570*(1+.85*1.15)1.38 = 10,481 EP
Percep: 3320(1+.97*1.15)*1.38 = 10,379

So in that set up, bloodlust is about 1% better. But I wanted to see the same setups using Sweet and Spicey Butternut (+100 power) instead of the precision one…

BL: 3670*(1+.80*1.15)1.38 = 10,483 EP
Per: 3420(1+.92*1.15)*1.38 = 10,420 EP

So bloodlust using Sweet and Spicey is the winner in this scenario.

Vox Hollow.2736:

(Not that’s it’s your fault the community’s so mixed up proof of concept for a build comes down to that.)

Thankfully that ISNT our proof of concept. We have live streamed this build during testing, we posted dungeon run videos for most dungeons including Arah and Fotm 48. If Cof1 isn’t a valid test, and neither is Arah, and neither are high level fractals, I’m not sure what sorta of proof you’d accept.

If your arguement is “sword too hard community is too bad to play it” you’re right… for now. Give people a month or so of playing and even casuals will have it down.