Guild Wars 2

Just like the topic says. This on its own isn’t that much on its issue, but considering the amount of rings there could be some which get the different name from attunement (even though unlikely) which, in turn, could lead to issues when it comes to equipping them due to them being unique.

Knowing that Damage, CC and Support are the trinity here, you don’t even need exact comparisons imo. In order to be fast, you have to kill things as fast as possible; this means keeping your HP above 90% if you have scholar runes, 25 vuln, 25 might, reflects if applicable, swiftness and stealth for skips etc.
rT did a run of Arah p3 with five MMs back then, you can still find the video on Badarka’s YT channel (iirc). Took a hour or so, partly thanks to Lupis life drain. He told me they were running builds crafted by Nemesis, but I’m not sure about that since it’s been over a year. Of course, this is by no means an accurate display since no one would ever run 5 MMs normally throughout a full dungeon lol, but it already kind of shows what to expect.
Same with builds; if you run DM/BM/Curses you’re not going to get the same amount of damage than when running Spite/SR/Reaper, it’s just bound to be slower.
The only point where a comparison is necessary is if you’re looking at multiple traits/lines/weapons which all have some sort of efficiency, but it isn’t clear what actually gives the dps boost.

Oh and on a more or less unrelated side note, in pugs there’s different things required than in organized groups, that’s something lots of people forget, or so I noticed.

Oh well isn’t that great. Not like light armor wasn’t expensive enough before this.

StaticX.7695:

winterchillz.2564:

- Dungeon rewards nerfed to the ground;

This was coming for awhile, expac just seemed like the right time to do it.

- Fractal rewards nerfed to the ground and require you to waste gold on keys if you want to have a chance to get reward in first place;

See above. This is a drastic change that anet is doing specifically to get gold out of the economy.

- Fractal levels locked behind Masteries unless you have a couple hundred gold to waste on agony infusions;

You didn’t buy the expac, meaning your experience from fractals 1-50 has not changed, infact they’ve gotten even faster and even better since you get to pick your favorite stages. You’ve gotten an expac benefit without buying the expac, awesome!

- PvP? Yea, well, you should know Masteries apply in there too, so have fun being underpowered as opposed to a HoT player;

Mastery in PvP? Of what do you speak? Are you talking about the couple of champions that are expac only? Do gliders and mushroom jumping even work in PvP? Res speed mod doesn’t, speed boosts don’t either, legendary crafting I doubt makes a single bit of difference… Please do elaborate.

- WvW, I don’t know yet, simply because I haven’t gone in there but I’m even scared to at this point.

Why? You’re getting access to the new map, as well as all the benefits expac buyers have.

I’m not bashing everyone who bought HoT, don’t get me wrong. I just feel disappointed that suddenly I find myself being locked out of content and underpowered in content that I’ve done just fine before the expansion although I have paid to play this game.

But you’re not. Dungeons, Fractal 1-50, open world, world bosses, etc have not hampered your abilities at all to do what you previously did. The rewards have been nerfed, but that has not locked you out of content, that’s de-centified it.

So, what do I and other players who don’t have the expansion, have as an option? Quit, stay and play whatever content we still have or being forced to buy the expansion?

[/quote]

What, fractals were always kitten when it came to gold rewards. However, they didn’t exactly nerf the liquid gold rewards from fractals, it just comes in different forms. The real issue is that the so called “fractal reward buff” is hidden behind a layer of RNG where you get more chests than you get keys in order to make you buy more keys for relics and gold in hopes to get one of the more worthwhile trophies out of them.

His (and everyone elses) fractal experience has very well changed as there’s only three dailies you can do now instead of the 4-5 you had before (which could’ve technically been 10 now.) As for the free fractal choices, I’m not too much of a fan of it but this is purely personal preference imo.

Can’t say a thing about PvP and WvW.

Oh, the nerfed rewards are an issue actually, especially with the now higher cost in ascended armor crafting; with less gold sources and more gold sinks, you’re going to have a much more difficult time getting more AR. Considering most of the good gold sources are probably going to be in HoT… well, you see where it’s going. Guess SW Chestfarm is the best thing you can do without HoT now if you need gold.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

We cant have fun ideas for ranger pets clearly.

Whats most sad is that they probably changed it because they felt it was underpowered when compared to other pets F2. Just imagine a brainless player going: “WTF? This pet only makes a kittenty smoke thingie? bah so useless anet remove pls!!”

Haha

Lmao the worst thing is you could actually be right

Okay, lets work this down.

Thinking that certain classes are inherently way better than others even if played badly is a common side-effect of what nemesis called “the berserker meta” (even though that’s quite a silly name). Even though ppl claim that you can circumvent all these problems it is still depressing to be excluded or trash-talked in pug groups or asked to change your class by your guildies. I could play the worst guardian ever, barely doing anything but the occasional aegis and my former guild would not have batted an eye, but god forbid I tried my DS build. That’s how I became a WvWer.

It’s not. Is this your first game ever? There’s always approaches that work better than others. There’s always skills that work better than others. People tend to take the path of least resistance and this includes taking a setup that works as well as possible, which varies per situation. (Though ironically, lots of people don’t adapt, so they’re to blame for thinking narrowly.) If those were your guildies, they were pretty dumb to be quite honest. Even in hardcore PvE guilds no one gives a kitten if you run Necro in casual runs, as long as you know your class. Besides, Berserker Meta isn’t the result of people advertising it, Berserker Meta is the result of the game being an action based MMO with a focus on active defense and damage avoiding.

These are the ppl we talk about, those that look at a 3 minute video and deduct that certain classes are inherently much better than others.
THIS is what nemesis tried to explain in his videos (even though he chose to slander players in the middle):

1. The Necromancer wasn’t buffed because damage-wise he was in line with other classes.

2. Nemesis claims that optimal setups vary, power isn’t always > condition and was mostly carried by the Ice Bow.

3. DPS numbers of new builds have been inflated to create shock value.

Now it is OUR turn to verify or falsify this claim. Whatever you think about the content of the videos, at least they should have taught you to do your own research.

Those are the people without a brain, again, not the fault of the makers of the video but the fault of people who can’t think for themselves.

Necromancer isn’t horrible DPS, no, but it was on the lower half before Reaper iirc, how it’s looking now I don’t know so I refrain from judging that. Necromancer’s main issue never was his DPS, though, because that could’ve been overlooked easily.

Sure, there is a point where the duration of a fight, it’s mechanics and the toughness make condition builds more viable; however you have to think of ramp-up time for the condition damage and the fact that until some time ago, conditions were capped at 25 and certain others stacked in duration instead of intensity. Back when dungeons were the main thing, everything died so fast conditions were not worth it (and solo mainly against targets with high armor such as the Abo in Arah p2), the condition cap completely killed it for groups.

3. That’s quite the claim, I can’t say anything to that but you’re not backing it up either so idk.

I agree with this, however, I still don’t see who put those information out there and based on what. I never saw any tests that prove this. All I saw were claims that things work certain way and don’t work certain other way upvoted on certain site by who knows who which made it “meta”. “Necro brings nothing to the group” is confirmed how exactly? Because it can’t share might (which by the way it can)? Necro has high dps, high survivability, it can keep vulnerability up (it is a group thing in which necro contributes by a lot)…There are many factors to be taken into account when talking about who brings what to the table, not just party buffs.

I barely watch any videos on builds because I’m capable on picking traits on my own, but from what I know DnT generally backs up everything in their build-guides with video proof and spreadsheets.
Also, “Necro brings nothing to the group” doesn’t equal “Necro brings nothing to the group another class can’t do better” – It’s getting much better now, especially with Reaper and the trait reworks, but before that you really didn’t have too much to work with. There were skills good in certain situations (more often in fractals than dungeons) but you often had to sacrifice something else for it. Reflects/projectile block? Nah, we didn’t have that. Blinds? Sure, we had one field on a 50s cooldown, meanwhile Thief can just spam the everloving kitten out of them. Blast Finishers? One you can’t utilize out of combat, the other being somewhat annoying to use and blocks an utility if you use both; can be used it combat, but again, you sacrifice something more useful. Well of Power? Eh, simple cleanse was often good enough, though there were (and still are) situations were it’s great, volcanic fractal for example. Any good combo fields? Nah, we don’t have that. Vulnerability? Yeah that’s something we weren’t bad at. List goes on and on. Another class could’ve always done it better.

Here we have 2 groups which actually put effort into proving things. However, they obviously can’t seem to agree which calculations are correct and which are false. So, there is my suggestion to show it once and for all.

I don’t agree with Nemesis when he says that you have to account 10 people factor as variable. While that it is true, using that as excuse to not even try (I am not saying he doesn’t want to try it) is same as saying that you can’t establish which sport team is better because they have different players. I think it’s quite the wrong view.

The joke being here that you need five people at best, since those five people can run the same content with different builds/classes, as long as they’re both used to both the classes they’re using.

I am not trying to go against PvE community, but PvE, even at highest level, is predictable. No matter how hard you make certain content and mechanics, it is fact that those mechanics won’t change from one encounter to another. That makes it possible to learn mechanics and adapt (unlike in PvP/WvW environment). So, if you have a group of 5 people that play certain PvE content a lot, and I don’t think anyone would disagree that Nike and Nemesis are good players (you can disagree on their views and ideas, but not whether they can play the game or not), then those variables aren’t exactly variables. It is content you have done hundreds if not thousands times before and it’s gonna be the same the next time also.

And this discussion goes on and on while there is one and final way to end it.

Sure, PvE is about learning encounters. This however also makes it about optimizing them and trying to hit the best possible times, if you’re into that. It’s a different form of challenge compared to PvP and WvW.

A smoke field clearly would’ve been too strong.

Nemesis.8593:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

AngryBear.8741:

I respectfully disagree because if you kick Necro right after he joins a party or write in LFG tool “no necros” then you are not doing it because he doesn’t know how to play their class. You are doing it based on pure prejudice. Or maybe you want to tell me that number of necros that can’t play their class is somehow significantly larger than number of eles that can’t play their class, if taking a necro is a risk, but taking an ele isn’t? I have never heard of the case of ele being kicked from the party just because being an ele.

Please, read my posts again.
The important factor here is that Necros and Rangers barely bring things to their group when played badly/with the wrong setups. Thus many people don’t risk it and just kick on sight because there’s a high chance he’s kitten and not bringing anything to your party. A bad ele still often rolls staff so that you have decent dps + fire fields to utilize, there’s still a high chance they have ice bow and at least spawn an earth elemental now or then. So even though they’re kitten, they at least bring something you can properly utilize.

… see what i mean AngryBear ? Icebow did nothing to targets with a small hitbox without the linecasting exploit (which doesn’t work anymore btw) even before it was nerfed in half, and elementalist staff auto-attack DPS is laughable, yet people still cling to it.

See… what 2 years of misleading information has done to the community.

My friend… i can explain it to you, but i can’t understand it for you.

Take your favorite elementalist build, and test out your REAL DPS in a fight of your choosing, you don’t have to tell me what it is… because i already know it… i know all the values, all the real HP values and so on…

Do it… and after that if you still wish to argue with me, i will agree to everything you say.

Oh… oh wow. lol

Nice to blow things out of context. You should’ve been aware that I was talking about the past here, because back then ice bow was a major reason to take an ele, even before linecasting (which I wasn’t even around for and I think that’s silly anyway)
Yes, you hardly use ice bow now, especially not against small target because as you noticed, there’s barely a reason if you don’t need Deep Freeze.
Also, fire staff AA is laughable? Properly traited you also have a 100% uptime on lava font, which additionally increases your DPS + you have meteor shower, which, again does more DPS against large hitboxes and hordes of trash but is still good. On top of that, there’s all the utility staff offers (no, it isn’t all about dps, who would’ve thought) and for the times where staff really doesn’t cut it, there’s still setups like D/F.
I don’t even play Ele much because I can’t keep up with the proper rotations and I know that lol

Besides, information is there to be shared, yes. However, people should be wary of what information they consume and expand their knowledge based on said information, verifying it on their own and checking what it exactly says. If someone says “Necromancer has no place in an optimal group setup”, then that doesn’t mean Necromancer is bad, just that it doesn’t offer the best way to get something done. If people interpret it as “Necromancer is bad” then that’s the fault of the people and, quite frankly, the lack of their brain/their willingness to use it, not the fault of the person who gave out the information. That’s given the information is true, of course. This applies to virtually anything anyway.

Oh, they actually reduced the amount of cloth needed? That’s actually good, then. Was under the assumption you always needed one per insignia.

AngryBear.8741:

I respectfully disagree because if you kick Necro right after he joins a party or write in LFG tool “no necros” then you are not doing it because he doesn’t know how to play their class. You are doing it based on pure prejudice. Or maybe you want to tell me that number of necros that can’t play their class is somehow significantly larger than number of eles that can’t play their class, if taking a necro is a risk, but taking an ele isn’t? I have never heard of the case of ele being kicked from the party just because being an ele.

Please, read my posts again.
The important factor here is that Necros and Rangers barely bring things to their group when played badly/with the wrong setups. Thus many people don’t risk it and just kick on sight because there’s a high chance he’s kitten and not bringing anything to your party. A bad ele still often rolls staff so that you have decent dps + fire fields to utilize, there’s still a high chance they have ice bow and at least spawn an earth elemental now or then. So even though they’re kitten, they at least bring something you can properly utilize.

No, as I said, they’re kicked because most rangers and necs don’t know their class + don’t bring a thing for the party on top of that, that’s why lots of people don’t want to take the risk. Necro had that issue for a long time because there was virtually nothing of importance Nec had that another class couldn’t do better
Also, being good/useful doesn’t mean optimal, that’s important too.

AngryBear.8741:

I think there is one undeniable way to establish who is right here. On one side we have group of people claiming that (berserker) meta is the only way to be efficient at high level Fractals, while on the other hand we have Nemesis (there are more people for sure, but he stands out) who claims that (berserker) meta is a lie and that it was Icebow meta.

Now, here is (more or less) simple test for both sides which can show who is right and who is not:

I challenge both sides to form party of their choosing and do as many Fractals as they want and record and present any run they wish (I assume they would want to show fastest run, but who knows). However, there are some rules.

1. “Berserker meta” party should obviously use only berserker builds. “Berserker meta” party cannot have Necromancers or Rangers in it.

2. “Anti berserker meta” party must have at least one Necromancer and/or Ranger (preferably 1 of each). “Anti berserker meta” party can use any set up they want (even if it is full berserker since the “berserker meta” excludes Necromancer and Rangers), however, for sake of everyone I hope they will use more diverse build setup.

3. They will agree on number of maps and which maps they will test so that certain mechanics don’t affect one type of builds. I suggest that each team suggests 2 maps which means they will have to test between 2 and 4 maps (preferably 2). At the end they must show best run for each map.

If they agree on it, they can select only 1 map of course.

4. Build changing is allowed but as long as it doesn’t affect type of the build in which the Fractal started (no changing power to condition or hybrid damage build for example).

5. Since the point of meta in general is to present ways to do things in most efficient way, each video must show run from the moment teams are in until the moment last boss is dead. This is to account for build changing, since spending time to change build before encounter is not really efficient and goes against the very idea of meta setup.

You can both keep presenting your calculations, but I don’t think average Joe will understand half of it. However, I do think that this is situation that needs a closure because meta has divided community and created toxicity and that is a FACT. Now let’s see if it was justified or it was just BS created by certain minority which majority accepted without asking questions.

P.S. I will create separate topic with this just so it gets more attention. I hope you won’t mind.

Uhh I’m gonna go ahead and say that this is a quite silly idea, mainly because there’s a difference between playing berserker, playing actual meta builds, actually knowing what you play and playing an optimal group comp for a dungeon/fractal etc.

Besides, Necros/Reapers are godkitten Vuln-trains now and Vampiric Support is pretty amazing in fractals; Rangers always had Spotter and Frost Spirit, on top of that Condi Rangers are pretty good right now from what I’ve heard, being the second best condi class behind the unbeatable engi?
The issue why those classes weren’t taken often is because there were a ton of idiots who can’t play and don’t bring anything to the group, so you’re stuck with some Ranger who knocks away mobs on 1500 range while his bear steals aggro even though you might need it due to kiting mobs etc. or Necs who camp staff, almost falling asleep during that and running three utilities that have no use whatsoever. A crappy warrior generally still throws banners, a crappy guard more often than not still uses reflects and brings aegis, thief throws at least SR every now and then…
It simply wasn’t worth it for most people to deal with the morons who slow down progress and don’t even feel like contributing.
I think I got kicked from a total of 5 or so parties for being a Necro. I started back in Nov 2012 and mainly pugged, most of the time on Nec.

I wasn’t able to find a thread by going through the first pages (and forum search is eh), so if there’s already something regarding this topic, please link me the thread.

Is there any reason Insignias, especially Damask ones, now additionally require Leather to craft? With the dungeon reward nerf and arguably more difficult ways to get ascended gear from fractals, ramping up the ascended armor prices (especially the light ones) seems to be a huge slap in the face.

Did ascended insignias require Elonian Leather back then? Because the patches you need now require one Damask/Leather each. If they weren’t there before, that means they ramped up the cost zzzz

Run Zerker for PvE. If you’re solo (and struggling), go Spite/Death Magic/Reaper (or if you don’t have Reaper, Soul Reaping) and whip out some minions, you’re going to have a much easier time

If only you would’ve scrolled down a little bit

spoj.9672:

A few times in fractals today my golem caused problems by being practically immortal and keeping aggro in awkward positions. So yeah it is a little annoying. Not an issue for flesh wurm, bone minions and blood fiend because you can sacrifice them.

Heh yeah you need to be careful about where to summon him now.
Having your flesh golem tank the projectiles at Tom while the Earth Elemental goes down is amazing though. lol

Skoigoth.9238:

What? The other thread got deleted already? What a surprise…

Gee I wonder why

Bloodlust sounds like it could win, but the changes made to stacking sigils are so bad imo it’s not worth it to slot them.
For night areas you could always get a weapon with night+slaying, then stock up on the appropriate slaying sigils since they’re cheap and swap them out whenever needed.
For daytime areas… yeah, there’s definitely less choices.

1) In PvE, you generally want to roll Berserker.
2) Do you have Heart of Thorns (and thus access to Reaper) or not? You pretty much always run Spite in PvE. If you have Reaper, that’s your third line anyway and the second line would be Soul Reaping, Death Magic or Blood Magic, depending on if you want pure DPS in a group setup, a self sustaining build with some minions or support your team with life leech and the ability to prevent your downed partymembers from bleeding out and having access to other useful stuff like teleporting downed party members to your location while healing them a bit. If you don’t have Reaper, Soul Reaping is generally your third line and Curses takes the place of Soul Reaping in the second line.

Traits I usually use for each of those lines are

Spite: Spiteful Talisman – Rending Shroud – Close to Death
Curses: Chilling Darkness/Plague Sending – Master of Corruption/Path of Darkness – Weakening Shroud
Blood Magic: Blood Bond – Vampiric Presence – Transfusion/Vampiric Rituals
Death Magic: Flesh of the Master – Deadly Strength – Corrupter’s Fervor
Soul Reaping: Speed of Shadows/Unyielding Blast – Vital Persistance/Spectral Mastery – Either of the three Grandmaster Traits, though Foot in the Grave is used mostly for skipping, though it does have uses outside of that.
Reaper: Chilling Nova – Decimate Defenses – Reaper’s Onslaught

That’s pretty much a baseline when it comes to traits, you’ll have to see what works best when and change up stuff whenever needed. Also, just because I didn’t list a trait doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad/not useful.

3) If you have Reaper, Greatsword and Dagger/Focus work well, if you don’t have it, replace the Greatsword with Dagger/Warhorn. I sometimes like taking staff with me due to what it offers, but that’s mostly me I guess. In general you want to be able to keep a full set of weapons you can use because you never know when something might prove to be useful (though I have to admit that I don’t think I ever touched axe lol) – If you get Scepter, you’d go with Sinister or Viper-stats (if you have access to HoT for the latter) of course, though I’m not sure which of those performs better on Necro.
Otherwise this is some great lecture to read. Spoj’s probably going to add the new stuff soon, but I’m not him so I can’t say for sure.

Also, in case it wasn’t obvious enough, those tips are all focused on PvE as I’m not much of WvW/PvP-player.

Evapor.6849:

There is nothing in p2 that requires more than one person goku already has a video on his channel of him doing it, although it was before the downscaling nerfs and so on

Right, come to think of it you could just aggro Oozes and pick them up once they’re inside the trap

Son of Urza.1692:

Shiki.7148:

Edit : Doesn’t need to be a leeching field, it could be a mechanic like “stop attacking him or he fires a giant laser and may God help us all”, and similar things.

Subject 6 is a pretty good example of this – when he’s in shield phase, attacking him builds up stacks of Overload, and if he hits 20 stacks then every time he gets hit after that it does a nasty AoE to everyone in the room. Can easily wipe a party.

Ideally a solution would be applicable to all player-summoned NPCs. A “Stop attacking and retreat to me until I push this button again” command might work (available in key bindings, can be bound to whatever you like). Ranger pets already have this in the Return to Me command and the “Avoid Combat” mode. However, it would leave out Engineer turrets, which are immobile. However, turrets can be removed by being picked up, or simply not deployed against such enemies, so that might not be an issue.

Minions don’t build stacks on Subject 6 afaik, been some time since I last tried it out though.
Imo, minions should simply be excluded from life-leech and instead take more damage (or another effect to make up for it), or you could simply respec for such encounters as it’s not a viable approach as of now.

As long as there’s no mechanics that require more than one player, it can most likely be done in one way or another. Just depends on your personal skill.
p2 wouldn’t be soloable.

Lelouch Sothoth.1982:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

It’s happening
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/HoT-Gift-of-the-Nemesis

I cringed so hard just by reading the first three lines. Ugh.

PS: For those that have already unlocked the full/most of the elite spec: I’ve read that most of the “easy” hero points are in Verdant Brink and Auric Basin. Can confirm?

Definitely. Tangled Depths made me want to kill myself due to how everything is set up and how you can’t see where you’re going. Dragon’s Stand is completely locked behind an event chain it seems, if it fails the map gets poisoned and you die in there lol, so it depends on what map you land on. Didn’t go too far into that one.

It’s happening
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/HoT-Gift-of-the-Nemesis

Perry said he has 146, which is reasonable.
+7 basic infusions replacing the +5s on full ascended armor is already something, on top of that you can run +10 infusions or w/e
I’m at 98 with two outdated +5 infusions and three missing armor pieces (21), so I could get 123 easily. Then you can add another new slots to rings, which is another 14 AR. 137. etc.

And yeah rewards looked pretty kitten, like usual. Nothing new here. lol

Lightsbane.9012:

Sollinton.6842:

Dude, stop complaining and start playing. Yesterday I fully unlocked Tempest and today I’m solidly workin my way through Reaper. Yeah, took less than a day to fully unlock the elite spec, and that was almost completely solo with very little help from others.

Remember each HoT hero challenge gives a whopping 10 points. Get your glider, bouncing mushrooms, and updraft masteries, then advertise in map chat or get some friends together and bang out those hero challenges. It goes incredibly fast.

i didn’t buy HOT for anything involved in the jungle storylines, masteries, or whatever. I bought them as a wvw exclusive player who wanted a new way to play necromancer. i loathe pve and all things to do with it, because it feels like a chore. i have map completion on one character because i wanted a legendary.
if I could have stayed completely out of maguuma jungle and gotten the elite specs some other way, I would have been two thousand per cent satisfied with this (pve) expansion.

Wait, aren’t you able to get them by just playing WvW? It’s probably no extremely fast process, but I heard that you’re able to.

Set ring vendoring prices to 1g and everything is fine
Yes there will be a (huge) influx of money when this change goes through, but that’s going to be an one time thing and really, whoever saved up multiple hundred rings for that long deserves it. lol
Would also make me say “oh hey at least a ring, that’s 1g bonus” instead of “ugh kitten might as well have gotten nothing”

TheRandomGuy.7246:

I like that I need to waste time with champ trains in open world or spend hours in cof to level up my FRACTAL mastery in order to get some questionable reward boost. Who made this?

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but dungeon tours are still decent for leveling up your core masteries.
That being said, I agree that a fractal scale should give a chunk of EXP on the first clear of a day, depending on what scale you ran and which fractal it is.

The Great Al.2546:

Is death/blood/reaper the optimal reaper build at this point? Not soul reaping?

Depends on what you’re looking at.
PvE? Probably not, missing out on Spite is huge. Really huge. Middle trait line is basically contested between DM/BM/SR, depending on what you want. DM would be used when running around solo with a build that is pretty much self-sustaining, BM is for content like fractals where the vampiric skills actually matter (and transfusion is an excellent carry-tool, just be sure to not pull someone who’s downed into an AoE you’re standing in lmao) and SR is your way to go if you’re looking for pure DPS.

Can’t really say much about WvW and PvP as I only play PvP from time to time when I’m bored/doing dailies and don’t touch WvW at all unless necessary, so someone else will have to fill you in there.

I’d actually suggest going with Spite/DM/Reaper instead, use Blood Fiend/Bone Minions/Flesh Golem and Wells (or whatever else you see fit).

Finish unlocking the Reaper spec and you get the hood.

EsarioOne.9840:

Wait, so the only way to get ascended (rings and such) is the fractal encryption now? That can’t be, I opened a few hundred yesterday and didn’t even see one.

The only ascended thing I got were recipes for waterbreathers.
Guess is that the daily chests (can) yield the ascended items and whatnot.

I think the upgrade extractor works on infusions too.
Also there’s no way you can get close to 150 it seems; the max I come up with is 115 (30 from your armor, 10 from weapons, another 30 from simple infusions for your trinkets and 45 if you go all in and craft +15 agony infusions for rings + back), not sure if I’m missing something there. Crafting three +15 agony infusions though… well.
However, the only fractals you really are not able to run are boss ones; and even then your party could pick you up after you died to agony. The downside is though that you’ll have to dodge all agony inducing attacks or you’re kittened, simply put. That means you’re going to need a static team that doesn’t mind it because pugs will surely kick you on sight once they see this happen

Full Reaper here, it’s really a lot of fun.
As for the runes, not sure how to get them yet (not that they’re all that great either tbh)

spoj.9672:

As far as i can tell its to do with the aftercast. Ive been experiencing the issue all day. But im still not 100% sure on the exact cause. My general impression is that if you get CC’d, dodge or cast a skill right after you hit and while the aftercast is still in effect. It will self interrupt the aftercast and prevent the 100% cooldown reduction from procing even though you successfully hit the target below 50%. Its very frustrating and has been annoying me all day.

Maybe this bug is a good enough reason to get the aftercast reduced?

I can confirm this, just tried around a bit. If something that would normally interrupt you happens during the aftercast, the skill enters cooldown regardless of if it should or not.

winterchillz.2564:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

winterchillz.2564:

Yo, folks. Am I the only one who feels like ANet just took a huge dump on all of us?

Idk, I’m really torn right now.
Some of the changes I like a lot, but at the same time there’s things that just… just no.
Rewards are pathetic but we’re used to that, not like ANet ever got difficulty/time spent/reward given down or got even close to that. Not that I like it but yeah.

Also in case anyone didn’t see it on leddit, 150AR for scale 100, but you can unlock additional agony slots on rings and get +7 infusions from masteries (Basically you can make it to about 70-80 without HoT, after that you’re done)

I’d say that it’s kind of unfair for people who bought the vanilla game but then I’d get all the kittens telling me I’m cheap and I should buy the expansion, kek.

Well out of all the things I’m gonna say that locking the last fractals behind masteries is the smallest offender (though it’s still one). Killing pretty much all rewards in the core game, slapping us in the face and then making fractal rewards in general worse (did you look at the chest you get for clearing 75-100? That’s kittening sad, really.) is extremely bad. Also, they had lots of chances to make ascended gear more of a fractals thing again; why not reward us with ascended crafting mats we could need to progress or at least sell if we don’t need them anymore etc.

So many missed opportunities

winterchillz.2564:

Yo, folks. Am I the only one who feels like ANet just took a huge dump on all of us?

Idk, I’m really torn right now.
Some of the changes I like a lot, but at the same time there’s things that just… just no.
Rewards are pathetic but we’re used to that, not like ANet ever got difficulty/time spent/reward given down or got even close to that. Not that I like it but yeah.

Also in case anyone didn’t see it on leddit, 150AR for scale 100, but you can unlock additional agony slots on rings and get +7 infusions from masteries (Basically you can make it to about 70-80 without HoT, after that you’re done)

Yes, the collection is bugged for some people. Devs already said they’re looking into it, so you gotta be patient.

Zach.2618:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Sublimatio.6981:

i literally feel like i can’t get gold from anywhere now. idk what to do

Meta event chain hype

also idk why but the fractal cypher boxes sold for like 20s+ yesterday on the tp, made 6 gold with them so it’s something
Gonna die in price anyway

I just sold mine for 45 silver and it was 80s somewhat about 2 hours ago haha apparently there’s something inside that many people want.

No, no. See, we’re dealing with RNG here, something that can give you lots of return if you’re lucky (who knows if the 5g book I pulled is the most worthwhile thing in there) and apparently you can get ascended recipes from those, so you can probably get other stuff too. That’s enough to make people roll on those things like mad, because gambling always makes people spend money in games. lol

Sublimatio.6981:

i literally feel like i can’t get gold from anywhere now. idk what to do

Meta event chain hype

also idk why but the fractal cypher boxes sold for like 20s+ yesterday on the tp, made 6 gold with them so it’s something
Gonna die in price anyway

Just do some stuff and mainly focus on hero challenges, there’s enough to unlock everything that’s important without having many masteries.
Also, if you did everything before HoT you’re at 210~ points anyway, so that’s halfway through at least.

Laar.5476:

aww, I am only at 77% of my reaper

You’ll get there soon enough!

yay.

/15reapingchars

What’s the instabilities later on? 71-80, 81-90 and 91-100

Also grats

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Fractals are pretty much dead to me now. At least until Fractal Mastery is 100% completed. Even then probably still dead because I’m not at all ok with needing to spend coin to get my final rewards from Fractals.

What do you need to spend coin on to get your rewards? Do you mean tons of experience for the fractal mastery?

Those decyphers for the boxes you get as reward.

Zach.2618:

64 requires 86 AR and 65 requires 88. That’s where I’ve gotten to, will plan to get more AR by changing to plus 10 infusions.

That sounds like an 1-2AR increase per level then.

Purple Miku.7032:

And on 71+ you lose all boons when you dodge… is this supposed to be fun? Dealing abysmal amounts of damage never has been for me, dunno bout you guys.

Please tell me this is really bad joke. PLEASE.

Minos.5168:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

phys.7689:

So, basically no reason to do a fractal at all if you have no daily?

You still get a normal, lootable chest at the end.

But the real “loot” previously was from the bouncy “bonus” chest after doing a set.
(Ascended gear, Fractal skins, etc.)

I guess I won’t be doing Fractals until after I grind through the Fractal mastery.

If my memory wasn’t so horrible I could tell you if I got wiggly chests on 50 and 51, but alas it is. I think I got them, though.
Just saying that you can run different scales and still get some loot at the end, even if it’s not so great. Kind of makes me wish they’d take the rewards and toss them into specific fractals so you can farm them, but like that’s gonna happen

phys.7689:

so heres my next question, what exactly does personal reward do now?
looks like there is only one chest?

…the exact same it did before?