Guild Wars 2

This may surprise you guys, but someone told me today that the miniature collector title is for sale, too.

Anicetus.1253:

Let me try something.

Nike, is 1/3/3/7/0 a good or a bad build?

Edit: The forum didn’t edit the post. I was talking about being good or bad in general which includes survivability, damage and support. Not in someone’s very own opinion for some specific goal under whatever circumstances he has set.

I think you’re missing some very key major and minor traits so you’re not as effective as you could be. This could potentially serve as a leveling build, but I think for leveling you should focus on one trait line and get it to 10 before you start on another.

Not sure how going from 90% to 100% is a waste.

But you’re entitled to your opinion.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Anicetus.1253:

You’re once again arguing against facts, using “i still think” argument.

Which is his opinion, or are you saying he doesn’t have a right to his own opinion?

Opinions are meant to be challenged and vigorously defended. Or abandoned as indefensible.

lunyboy.8672:

What’s hilarious is all the people who “appreciate” your (dungeon elitists) help, guides and snarky comments would get kicked in less than 10 seconds from your runs without even a comment. So while I glean what I can from what you say in the forums, I can’t say having this group of people harass anyone who posts on this forum and isn’t on their level is a positive thing for the game overall.

You have no idea what you’re talking about. I personally dont pug, but plenty of people in my guild do, and I’m sure that is true for other dungeon guilds. Pugs RARELY get kicked, and they definitely don’t get kicked solely for being inexperienced.

To my mind you get kicked when you have a bad attitude. Don’t know the strats but willing to listen? Great! Don’t know the strats but tell us that we suck or we’re doing it wrong! Not so great! Bad build? Annoying but whatever so long as you know what youre doing. Bad build but act like a bigger elitist than people on this forum are accused of being? Not so great!

Obsidyth.1798:

guanlongwucaii.3162:

Obsidyth.1798:

colesy.8490:

Rangers are good for frost spirit and spotter, the fact that the average ranger is bad is due to pugs just being terrible in general, there’s a scrub archetype for every single class in the game, examples being gs mesmers, mace/shield cleric guards, shout heal warriors and so forth, so it’s not just a ranger issue.

Shout Heal warriors and Mace Shield Gaurdians are utility builds that actually work…. u can hardly call them scrub builds.

rofl, they are trash builds that don’t work and are nothing more than a burden on the team. they are the epitome of scrub builds.

A burden? So a build that provides mobile buffs, heals and condition removal with runes of soldier is bad on warriors and it makes the team weaker? As opposed to a highly selifsh zerker build that nearly every man and his dog has?

Yes. “Yes” is the correct answer to all your questions. Do you want a longer explanation, or is ‘yes’ good enough?

Rangers are a slight change of their sword auto attack away from being the second most popular and important dungeon class.

Agony wouldn’t be a waste, since not everybody runs runes that give condition duration. Melandru runes are fairly commonplace and that wouldn’t fit your criteria.

The leaderboard is just the saddest thing to me. This is supposed to be the bone they throw to competitive pve’ers, yet not a single competitive pve’er I know wants this. Perhaps some interaction with the competitive pve community, the way that Colin Johnson interacts with the WvW community, would have let them know this?

Either fractals 40-50 will be so hard that the tears of the casuals wash them down to the bottom of the leaderboard, or it will be so easy that there is a 500,000th way tie for first place at 50/50 after two weeks.

When it comes to assumptions you have to draw the line somewhere. You can assume 25 Might stacks, or 0 Might stacks or some arbitrary number in between. No matter which number you pick, there will be some builds that are biased and look better than they will in practice.

For what its worth the assumptions I use (25 Might, 25 Vuln) are unfair to the 30/25 build. Which means the 2-3% superiority it has compared to the other builds is actually far greater in practice. In game results should probably be 5-8% better.

Anicetus.1253:

Could have been worse, imagine they’d remove infusions. I just spent about 600g on infusions.

Same. I was debating between +40 precision or a legendary. Precision won.

I calculated each build with 25 Might stacks, not sure where you got the idea I did it with 0 Might.

6 boons is absurd, you don’t average 6 boons in an organized group for any extended period of time. 3 Boons is the average, and its what we use for Empowered.

I didn’t say anything about the cool down reduction or axe rotation so thats a non-sequitor. You asked for the math and I gave it to you.

And thats the advice I gave you.

Bursting and Agony is better for you. With Doom on your Longbow.

Agony will be better dps for you over time than Earth.

docMed.7692:

Wow. Get over it people. So your and my levels are getting reset to 30, big deal – we’ll be back up there in no time and I’m also interested in taking on the new 30+ challeneges per level. They also made levels account bound in case you missed that, so hey, you can switch easy between characters as you need, still earn progressions/etc. They also released entirely new fractals and revamped the entire system. Let’s scream doom because an insanely small portfion of the community farmed odd-level fractals to get 80 or you zerged it to 80 with bugs. Talk about an achievement, exploited your way to max level, upset it gets revamped with an entirely better (at least sounding so far) system.

I didn’t exploit anything to get to my fractal level, and it was challenging and it was brutally hard. Belittling my efforts won’t make me persuaded that my effort wasn’t rendered meaningless.

Blaeys.3102:

What people are “losing” is a number that no one else in the game can see. It isnt like it came with a title or people could click on you and see your fractal rank.

We arent losing potential rewards or public esteem of any kind – just a number that only the player could see. You could literally take a piece of tape, write your old fractal level on it and adhere it to your computer screen and it would mean the same thing.

On the flip side, those players (along with everyone else) are getting a lot – new fractal maps, new rewards, etc. The loss of an arbitrary number (again, that only the player can see – that is most important) seems extremely trivial (yes, my personal fractal level is well above 30 as I write this).

Who are you to determine how others should rate and value their progression? If someone got a sense of pride from their mini collection and it was deleted, I wouldn’t begrudge them their anger. You attitude is oddly presumptuous, and presumes that you know (obviously better than I) what is and isn’t an acceptable way to enjoy the game.

How would the WvW community react if their progression was reset? How would the pvp community feel if theirs was?

you can argue with me saying that they are not equivalent, but in the end everyone determines their what progression they find important, from mini collectors to tpvp pros to elite pve guilds. Nobody wants their progression reset, regardless of what their progression is. The failure of many people to empathize with that is truly baffling to me.

A great many people highly valued the accomplishment of hitting fractal 80. even if you did it during the Search and Rescue days, or as recently as last week doing odd numbers, you still killed a boat load of insanely tough dredge. Still dodged a lot of deadly fire arrows. Still beat an brutally challenging Mossman fight dozens of times. It is no small feat, not only of skill but also endurance.

I seriously hope anet considered the blood, sweat and tears many people put into their fractal progression before they made this decision. I hope that the objections we have raised cause them to reconsider some aspects of the change, though I suspect it won’t.

This is a really good change, actually, for people who made a habit out of eating agony attacks.

This will be good. I could use 5 more stacks of ecto with the upcoming ascended armor update. Please have the ecto waiting for me in my mail anet.

This thread is comparing 3 builds. From the context of the thread the three builds I listed are obvious. I’m sorry that you don’t know the traits implicit in each build, but most everyone who cares about such things already does.

Olba, these setups don’t need clarification. The are known builds.

But for you sake, the assumptions made are

25 Might
25 Vuln
Slaying sigil
Dungeon Potion
Scholar Runes
disc banner
stre banner

As spoj said 30/25/0/10/5 is the best dps for a pure axe build. 30/25/0/0/15 is the best for gs+axe.

I’ll math it out for you since you dont trust that I’ve already done it properly.

30/25: 19,994 ep [3400*(1+.88*1.58)2.38]
30/10: 19,789 ep [3400(1+.93*1.73)2.17]
30/0: 19,842 ep [3400(1+.89*1.73)*2.23]

Once you add stacking sigils and food the 30/25 build gets even better, since the % damage mods scale better than crit damage does.

Things to note: this math assumes 25 vuln and 25 Might. The 30/10 and 30/25 builds will have better Vuln stacking than the 30/0 so the numbers in real world gameplay are going to be even better for the 30/25 and 30/10. The 30/25 will have about 3-4 more stacks of Might at any given time than the 30/10 build which means its numbers will be even better in real world gameplay. when you factor those two things in, the 30/25 build will be significantly more dps overall than even these numbers show.

I’d be curious to know what 3 fractal shards they got in a row that allowed them to duo it. Swamp seems challenging to duo, dredge virtually impossible, cliffside virtually impossible, uncategorized would be extremely rough, shaman theoretically possible, water definitely possible, and snowblind is possible.

So by what luck are we talking here whereby someone duo’ed a full fotm 79?

Raven.3248:

Meleeing GL, not helping with grubs, not ressing, ofc using signet of rage, soloing him to death…. oh no wait Miss Legendary rage quit before i could finish. She opened but at least she has a special place in my block list. Am i a troll?

Whats wrong with Signet of Rage?

haviz.1340:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Heck, when two people can full melee the Risen Priest of Melandru i’ll be in agreement with you.

You mean the guy in Cursed Shore or in Arah?

Cursed Shore.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

If two people can duo the supposedly hardest content in the game then this game has much bigger issues.

When two people can duo FotM 80, I’ll be in agreement with you.

Heck, when two people can full melee the Risen Priest of Melandru i’ll be in agreement with you.

CoFp1 takes pro groups slightly more time than it takes pro groups to do SEp1. However, for random pugs, CoF1 will be significantly quicker than SEp1.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It’s pretty common for the “harder” dungeon paths…

I mean look at the LFG page for arah….

A guild group of 2 people get to the last boss, kick everyone else and then sell the path completion for 20g a person.

How do you know any of those teams kicked anyone? Since people can easily duo arah p2 in 20-30 minutes I would be surprised if ANY of those people kicked pugs. Perhaps before you make an accusation you should have some evidence, no?

Carlos.9104:

Technically any mob that gives poison and confusion specifically. Also, to remove cripple and chill when skipping mobs – these conditions tend to be applied alot. I may not need them, but someone else in the group (PUG specifically) will.

Name the boss that applies poison and confusion in rapid succession whereby two cleanses would not be sufficient? And skips you have Aegis and a cleanse, name me the specific trash run that requires more than that. When I say “specific” I don’t want a general answer, I want a specific one.

So, how can I take MoC, UC and AR all at the same time with 25 in Virtues that everyone is talking about? It seems to me that taking AR is a given, and yet without MoC and UC my build is a fail. Which am I suppose to be picking up again?

Playing coy is not endearing. Not every encounter has conditions. Not every encounter requires reflects. Use your common sense as to how to swap the traits around for what you’re doing.

Neither build you recommended have 10 in Virtues so they are automatic fail. Master of Consecration is literally the best thing you can be doing on a pve Guardian, so a build that doesn’t use it is kitten from the start.

Secondly, the 5 in Virtues build. Why does this happen? Do you really think that a few seconds of regen, some worthless might stacks and some worthless protection is worth 5 trait points? You think those five points are better spent in Virtues than Right Hand Strength? Or if running a GS build, 15 in Zeal for symbolic exposure?

Also, in an extended fight, I will need more on-demand AoE condition removal than ever which 10/30/0/5/25 has difficulty providing past VoR and Purging Flame.

Name the boss fight where this is true.

Stooperdale.3560:

If you want to reduce your survivability by 25% for the zerg to take the boss down 1% faster then that’s your choice.

If you really wanted to go selfish you would run full zerker and afk range the boss from a safe distance. Carrying a second set of gear for that is both inefficient and undignified.

Gillian.1859:

Urgh, here we go again… Same old trash about berserker builds being better than everything else… I ran CoE with a zerker warrior constantly complaining about the lack of DPS and kept dying every 5 seconds. On the other hand, the two eles, guardian and ranger than no problem staying alive. I wonder what contributes to the lack of DPS – having to rez that warrior who is downed every 5 seconds or just really bad builds on all the rest of us? Hm…

On the other hand, I have played as an Ele with full healing specs and was the last one standing but couldn’t finish off a boss because I was doing next to no damage. I agree that dps is needed.

A more moderate argument is that the best chance of succeeding is to have players who know how to use their builds effectively. So as an Ele, no, I may not be able to dish out insane damage, but I guarantee that I will be stacking those area might combos, frost aura for protection, and handing out fury to everyone so that those who are DPS traited are even more effective.

Actually, Subject Alpha is one of those bosses where going full DPS is far and away superior. His big aoe dodge checks might happen twice per encounter in a full dps team. In a bunkery team, he might do it 10-12 times before he dies. 1-2 times, for average players chances are they won’t screw up a dodge. If you ask that same average player to go 12 of 12 on dodges, there is a pretty good chance they will mess up one of them, and the attack is brutal enough that even a full bunker isn’t likely to be able to eat it without going down.

So if the price of failure is the same for full zerker or bunker (going down if you fail a dodge) but the chances of failure are demonstrably better on one of the options it is a no brainer, logically speaking.

Then again, we could be back to the age old “I’m a pro WvWer main tank and pve is easy so why should I respec from my healway sentinels build for something as easy as pve” mindset in which case, you can’t save them.

If you’re solo you probably want a warhorn, but in a group I usually swap to shield on my warrior for the trash run since you’ll get swiftness from everyone else.

My usually rotation is

Run past first group, stability shield block, sword leap, swap, greatsword rush and you’re clear.

When running solo you might want to bring Endure Pain since it is possible to run out of dodges if you have to dodge the first group and then get immediately deadeyed.

I disagree with a lot of your assumptions and your results. You cannot translate effective power directly into dps, especially with builds using different weapon sets and averaging out a swap is meaningless because the effective power of a Sword does not have anything to do with the Effective Power of a gs.

Most of the time people die on the initial spider pull is because they are getting owned by the spider adds. Her auto attack and web attack hit pretty hard, but they aren’t going to one shot a party. however, if 5-10 of those little spiders unload on your party and you don’t have a reflect up you will melt.

I did the nightmare within stuff yesterday with the same build. For the trash running part I changed from fighting utilities to running utilities. I’m sure it would be easier with a defensive build to run the trash, but why bother when it’s easy with a glass cannon build already.

If you have to range, use a Longbow. If you don’t absolutely have to range, don’t.

If you drop your banner on the run to Alphard and carry it with you, the cool down will be up in time to swap to stability for that trash run.

Bright.9160:

Could someone calculate the DPS difference between the meta warrior build (assuming PUG standards) and that shout heal warrior build?

Well, a full zerker 30/10/0/30/0 shout heal build (the “best” shout heal build you can make) is still 24% less dps than the meta build. So you can imagine where it goes once you start adding defensive gear or use worse traits.

a t s e.9614:

Many people seem to care about the boat . I tought only “bads” used this trick , looks like im not the only bad .

Nope it was pretty much bads. Everyone else ran it legit.

Swamp, Aetherblade Retreat, Dredge. Sounds like a fun-o-rama.

Seveleniumus.5973:

While I would never kick a newbie, as long as he’s willing to listen, many aren’t that nice to the newcomers. In pugs people don’t really see if you do 10k or 30k+ with your 100 blades, they just see that you’re laying on the ground all the time and they are quick to point fingers.

Funny, if I saw a guy do FGJ! and then saw my health go up by 2k, I would probably kick him for that. I guess we live in different worlds.

Brutaly.6257:

Im getting extremely bored with all these pointless discussions regarding dps and it would just be great to have a guide “to dps”, that the experts on dps can support.

The experts have pretty much weighed in. Not sure who else you’re looking to hear from.

The closer answer is running the meta dps build, substituting in Knights armor as needed. The best answer is running full dps with scholar runes and realizing that if you want to progress fractals and learn to mitigate damage.

Some bosses are checks for bad dps. Some are checks for bad dodging. Some are checks for people who refuse to melee. Some are checks for people who refuse to spread out.

Seems like all the QQ about this particular boss comes from people who aren’t happy that their chosen set-in-stone play-how-you-want playstyle is not the particular check for this boss.

Harrahou.4518:

you can always buy a pat, i sell at like seven hours before reset.
i ave broken keys on my keyboard wy tis post is badly spealt xd includin my sift key

The best part of being a skill clicker is problems like this wont hurt your game at all.

Obtena.7952:

Adam.4103:

Obtena.7952:

You don’t get it. It doesn’t matter. People can decide for themselves if they find value in a build and use it.

But they would find more value in better builds that’s the entire point. Promoting something sub optimal is just wrong.

Maybe. That’s for them to decide for themselves. I

We are helping people make informed decisions.

Positive. I heard about it in LA map chat.

haviz.1340:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I would probably rune ranger runes so you get the 5% buff from your ghost weapon pets.

But it doesn’t increase burning damage.

It increases your burning damage by 5% too. That’s how the rune works. So long as a ghost weapon pet is up.

haviz.1340:

Nike, what do you think of my newest build? Does it warrant creating new thread where everyone could give some feedback? I’d love to hear some positive thoughts about it, I’m pretty sure this build will be new meta based on the recent comment from Jon Peters about increasing viability of condition damage builds.

Silentstorm, keep up the good work, don’t stop what you do because of this zerker circle*****.

I would probably rune ranger runes so you get the 5% buff from your ghost weapon pets.