Guild Wars 2

How much AR does 64 require? I know 59 requires 77 and 60 requires 80.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Welp, Cliffside is a pug breaker now, that’s for sure.
Worst hour of my life.

What happened to cliffside? I am waiting for group to gather so did’t had a chance to see fractals.

They fixed the arm seals; there is only one veteran chanter on each side and you have to kill both of them in order to get more spawns. It really isn’t that difficult, since you can keep focusing on one seal while constantly pulling the chanters until it’s broken, then go to the other one, but combining the average pug with this change and then adding a suicide bomber instability on top (as in, every enemy killed explodes) makes for something where you want to bash your head against a brick wall.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Just go 5x Guardianway

I’d end up getting four staff guards
Honestly if could see my luck with pugs, you’d be amazed at what exists
Some poor souls in my fl have to deal with my constant kittening about them lol

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Welp, Cliffside is a pug breaker now, that’s for sure.
Worst hour of my life.

Lol my team wiped repeatedly on arm seals. Half the time was spent replacing pug rage quitters.

That sounds just like what happened in my party.
I think I went through about 15 pugs until we finally managed it.
Didn’t help that I constantly got quality pugs like your classic staff guards and people who don’t know what the dodge button does or why they should use it
Sometimes I wonder why I still put up with this lol

Welp, Cliffside is a pug breaker now, that’s for sure.
Worst hour of my life.

Eldiora.5836:

I just beat level 50 and went back in and still do not see any vendor selling the Fractal Weapon skins. Do you need the Fractal Mastery unlocked before it works?

That’s going to be it, then. I do have it, but no points spent in it.

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.

Rednik.3809:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Can’t see pugs getting close to 100 tbh, I assume somewhere between 59 and 70 will be the point where pugs won’t be able to progress further, except they keep running swamp or something

Everyone and his dog will be at least at highest swamp fractal level after few weeks.

Sadly.
And as much as I hate it, I’m probably going to be one of them if I don’t find more people to run with instead of having to rely on pugs.

Well, took them long enough

Rukiichan.4315:

I just lost ~1g running 2 fractals, the stupid box at the end gives me 10s back even though i have to spend 20s to open it wtf?

I got a trophy which is worth 5g – RNG here we go.

//Also ascended water breathers confirmed lel

Can’t see pugs getting close to 100 tbh, I assume somewhere between 59 and 70 will be the point where pugs won’t be able to progress further, except they keep running swamp or something

20 pristines for a skin of your choice

It’s amazing how hard pugs insist on stacking even though they don’t use measures to counter the exploding enemies and can’t manage to dodge either.

deSade.9437:

And inb4 1g to salvage 1 ring.
And I’ll have to merch them.
Well played.

Yeah it’s exactly that. lol

Scaling is different now, Mai Trin loses 2 stacks of her shield at 50 too for example.
Also, it doesn’t reset as of now, the fix is bugged. Expect it to be changed soon though.

araskell.9018:

Yes, 1 gold and 2 pristine fractal relic for one use, or 20g and 40 pristine for a stack of 20.

Pfft, that’s quite something.
Guess I’m not able to afford that for some time.

Well this is saddening

1g for a single use?

Aw, CPC got fixed. To be expected, though.

Also, those fractal fixes make me very happy.

Painbow.6059:

Could drop soul reaping if capping vuln. Allows you to take blood magic instead for vampric support. Using dagger mainly until 50%

Something like that. For fractals I’d run Blood Magic anyway, for dungeons I’ll probably stick with Soul Reaping.

As for Blood Fiend, yeah he’s going to be quite good after the change, though I can still see myself slotting the other heals.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

On this fine pre-launch day I just received a Fractal Greatsword, one of the last two skins I needed. I am looking forward to the patch so I can purchase my last skin and finally complete the collection after three years.

I too am planning on spamming fractals from launch until I drop from exhaustion. I’ve got a few people who are joining me but we don’t have a full party. If any of you experienced pros want to join in we’re going to try to do them hard and fast. Message me on forums or in game. Might see some of you tonight!

Can’t exactly say I’m a pro, but I wouldn’t mind joining given it’s EU. I’m mainly Nec but can roll a Warrior.

Unfortunately I’m NA

Ah, what a shame. Was still worth a try, though.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

On this fine pre-launch day I just received a Fractal Greatsword, one of the last two skins I needed. I am looking forward to the patch so I can purchase my last skin and finally complete the collection after three years.

I too am planning on spamming fractals from launch until I drop from exhaustion. I’ve got a few people who are joining me but we don’t have a full party. If any of you experienced pros want to join in we’re going to try to do them hard and fast. Message me on forums or in game. Might see some of you tonight!

Can’t exactly say I’m a pro, but I wouldn’t mind joining given it’s EU. I’m mainly Nec but can roll a Warrior.

spoj.9672:

Shocked tempest and dragonhunter even got votes. o.o

Well, if either class is your main you’ll unlock it first anyway.
Then there’s also people who only play 1-2 classes.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Rasimir.6239:

I jumped into fractals 34 on my favourite asura last night with some guildies that I’d never played instanced content with before. It was surprisingly pleasant (despite the fact that I had to change my armor set for the final fractal because I forgot to bring repair canisters ). More importantly though, I got my first ascended armor drop from fractals, a raider’s shoulder chest. Only two more armor pieces missing and I’ve got enough ar for fractals 40 .

Instanced content is always the most pleasant with friends !

Truth.

On a side note, pugs are extra horrible today. Someone send me some help please.

Reaper. After that I’m not sure, depends on what I feel like unlocking.

nacario.9417:

So instead of having to do 4 fracs for 45 min we only need to do one, for potentially 10 mins only and get same reward or better? (But u can only do this once per day?). If so then thats a forgiving change

Tbh I’m not really happy with that change, at all. At least not if it’s proving to cut down fractal play time you are actually rewarded for.

//wow I shouldn’t open multiple threads at the same time and then go through them, kitten Taku

Dadnir.5038:

Why shift from active to passive defense? To encourage lazyness? Up to now, you could’ve done every type of content in full Nomads if you wanted to and sleep through it, it just would’ve taken forever. I’m really glad raids require a certain amount of DPS so that you’re forced to stay on your toes due to a certain degree of squishyness. This game is about reacting properly to attacks, not tanking them kittenmit.

I’m not saying that there should be only one source of damage nor will there be only one source of damage. What I suggest is a mechanism that make the boss more and more threatening as time pass as a passive aura on the boss while other source of damage are still there and need to be avoided or disabled. Simply put It’s a system that require the group to be able to have a minimum of tankiness as well as a minimum of dps. And why shift active defense to passive? To make healing a thing! Because healing have to be needed as a active way to sustain your party.

Well, lets start with the most important thing: There is no classic Damage/Tank/Heal trinity in this game, ANet doesn’t want it and it will never happen. Your idea tries to make it happen, even if it’s just to some degree and not a full blown classic trinity, thus it’s unlikely to see it implemented.
If we’re really going with something like that, I’d rather prefer the boss to hit harder on his own instead of his aura, maybe give him more and more range over time. That’s probably going to be wonky though.
Oh and, even if healing was required, you can be quite certain that most of it would be done through water fields so you can still get as much dps as possible.

Noxty.5089:

Hm if the pattern continue then 51-60 should be a totally new personal daily chest, awesome! Here comes the fractal weapon chest boxes!

1-20, 21-50, 51-100 are the new tiers afaik
rewards are bound to dailies now iirc, you’d have to check the blog post

spoj.9672:

I cant say anything conclusive yet because im not 100% on after casts. And i dont really trust the random different aftercasts and values people have been throwing out.

My general impressions are that RS auto with reapers onslaught should do slightly more than dagger (but havent confirmed). Gravedigger spam will probably be best dps below 50% even if the aftercast makes it 2 second repeatable cast. Lich is still really good so it might be worth using to fill in the gap before reaching 50%. No idea where a GS + dagger rotation sits when above 50% though.

The things i am certain on though. Spite is mandatory for power along with Reaper. And it will be your standard dps traits. The 3rd line could honestly be anything. Soul reaping would be the best dps. But death magic has potential for shroud dps increase and anchor utility along with minions. And blood obviously has vampiric aura.

For a group condi build im really keen to try a curses, death magic, reaper build. Basically death nova spam with whirls to stack poison out the kitten. Only problem is death nova spam might not be as good as i hoped with minions becoming 95% immune to aoe damage. If this build does work and provide a decent amount of condi dps then it could also anchor in raids. due to toughness from death magic.

Well, good to know I wasn’t really far off.

As for the condi build, the minions summoned from the shout lose HP over time, don’t they? And you can manually blow up bone minions and blood fiend, so it shouldn’t be too bad I guess. Probably not as effective as it could be, though.

Dadnir.5038:

deSade.9437:

Dadnir.5038:

- It would make aegis or pretty much every “on block” skill less and less effective as a survival tool.

No, make sure guardians turn from still alright to barely decent/crappy, because why not. I got carried too many times by random aegis and now I want my revenge!

Not wanna hurt you but the point is to shift a bit survivability from active defense to passive defense. Guardian gain a lot of value with simply the ability to give protection and retaliation. Beside, guard can trait their aegis to heal on block which make them pretty much a free aoe heal.

Why shift from active to passive defense? To encourage lazyness? Up to now, you could’ve done every type of content in full Nomads if you wanted to and sleep through it, it just would’ve taken forever. I’m really glad raids require a certain amount of DPS so that you’re forced to stay on your toes due to a certain degree of squishyness. This game is about reacting properly to attacks, not tanking them kittenmit.

Sublimatio.6981:

I don’t know why ANet stopped working on underwater combat. I love it, it’s the best underwater combat in any MMO ever. To see no new underwater legendaries makes me kinda sad.

That’s standard procedure for ANet: Start things, then drop them instead of pursuing and expanding them. It’s sad, really.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Every mesmer in 1 day and 16 hours.

So incredibly accurate

If I’m not completely kittened you should get about 12-13% more crit damage from the oil, going by the Vitality in Gin’s build. Someone else surely knows better though and will correct (or, hopefully agree with) me

deSade.9437:

Oh I don’t know, I found the mastery unlocking in beta to be excruciatingly slow, to the point of frustration. Took me an entire beta weekend nerding to get (1) gliding and (1) mushrooms, and higher tiers get much slower (not exponentially, but almost).
Then again, it’s probably because of the lack of events and most chains being bugged. I couldn’t see the xp bar going up… not that anyone gives a kitten: more timegating, more fun, right?

It’s probably going to be the fact that you didn’t have access to lot of things during the beta. Things will be bugged on release anyway. :v

Decided to pug Arah p2 yesterday evening, why I don’t know

Party filled instantly, apparently a 4-man group (Nec, War, Ranger, Ele) had a lfg up, saw mine and just joined me. Two were from the same guild, the other two were randoms, though they all had one thing in common: They never ran the path before and all of them were rather new (sub 3k AP each, the lowest had a bit above 1k). I’ll be honest, they were horrible at the skips besides the Ele (though that’s understandable) and it was the first time in my life I saw a Deadeye getting a Quad-Kill, but what they lacked in the skipping department they made up for in the combat department, at least. Bosses burned down pretty quick, especially in comparison to a lot of “EXP only” pugs I’ve seen, Ele stacked Might, the others used their utilities well too. Heck, they just went in at Lupi and fought him open field, no grubs spawned, no deaths (only the Nec got downed once at the end) and no cheap OS tactics; that’s from a party where 3/5 people apparently only did Arah two or three times before. Alphard went down well enough too and they needed some help for the last skip (as in killing some Deadeyes and Inquest), but eventually they made it and Brie just popped.

Was actually a pretty fun experience, pugs like those guys give me hope.

Lelouch Sothoth.1982:

I lurked and said nothing during all the salt and QQ and the death of the trashcan and the few reasonable discussion, but this…

Covers mouth, tries to avert his look from the horror, starts to speak with faint voice
…a real Nomad Shout Warrior. Is this the end times?
I hope it’s just a practical joke to scare people to death: it’s Halloween, right? No one would really invest that much money in Nomad ascended armor, right?

Warrior? No pal, that here is a guard. I also saw him using Bifrost.
He wanted to pull the levers at the ice elemental boss, I didn’t mind but he kept getting aggro despite doing nothing so I asked him what kind of gear he’s wearing… lol.

Eldbrand Charging.8902:

Godservant.8736:

I was sitting in a PvP match with some friends, and we were talking about raids. Remembering a few forum posts on Raid tools, we were wondering if anyone had talked about using the PvP statistics displayed at the end of a match (damage dealt, healing to allies, boons applied, etc, etc.), but putting them in a Raid. For instance, every time you left a raid or click “Retry from Checkpoint”, a box would appear with those statistics like it does at the end of a PvP match. This would give raiders some idea of how they were contributing to the raid/ what changes they might need to make.

Anyways, just a thought we had. Figured I would post it here.

keep your elitist crap in PvP, took us almost 4 years to get Anet to separate PvP and PvE in GW1, no going back.

And I thought they’re a myth, a simple horror story people tell each other.

Skoigoth.9238:

Rising Dusk.2408:

This gets even easier if you set up a cooling rod first and gets ridiculously simple if an Ele drops you an FGS.

Just be careful when asking for FGS in pugs, I got kicked once because the guy thought I was calling him and his guildies f*gg*ts for not being able to do the heat room themselves X)

#justpugthings

Ropechef.6192:

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s 400 points total to unlock everything in an elite spec training line – I just can’t remember off hand how many points folks have currently if they have done all the existing ones, but it’s right around 200. The rest you’ll need to earn in jungle to unlock the deeper skills/traits/etc. in the training line.

Again, hero challenges are worth 10 points each in the jungle. So no you don’t need to go do 200-400 jungle challenges.

400 points gang,
values of 10 in the jungle though,

Guess I’ll have to do that first, then.

Also, this might be a long shot but I planned on getting through as many fractals as possible on the weekend to see how far I can get, but sadly pugs are, uh, more than discouraging lately, my friends list went kind of empty over the course of a year of doing nothing (understandably) and I don’t have a guild. Would there be a bunch of people on EU I can bother/who planned on doing something similar and still have spots free?

Go away, forum bug.

They’re going to have their fun I guess

gin.7158:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Upcoming-Global-Change-to-Player-Minions/first

Wow I think this change my build. Probably Death magic is worth to be taken for extra power. Now I wanna try chronomancer instead ha3

Ehh, not too sure about it. Yeah, the damage reduction is pretty neat, but the second the boss aggros the minions (and that happens rather frequently, at least for me) they turn into pieces of nothing. Also you have to drop either a better death shroud or support via blood magic for it (though that would probably be acceptable, depending on the situation) + you still have to fight the biggest enemy of minions; their AI.
It surely does make the build more useful, though.

I didn’t get Thaumanova in some time, but back then I just went with full DS, ported myself in with flesh wurm, dodged twice, spammed 1, healed when necessary and went into DS; for some reason, going into DS does trigger energy sigils as long as you’re in there (or did, at least, been over a year since I last ran it lol). That was enough for me to make it through. As for traits, the only thing you’d probably want is Speed of Shadows, otherwise they don’t really do much for you I guess (except you take Lich Form and Spectral Mastery)
Considering you actually run Valkyrie gear (from your build posted in my thread) you shouldn’t have many issues getting through there.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Unless a minion is specifically targeted by a creature, they will be dealt 95% reduced damage and condition duration from attacks.

Oh my, i’m wet.

Yeah that’s actually a pretty cool change.

Wethospu.6437:

That would make sense as he enters it pretty much instantly. So is Plague even needed then?

Probably, due to the additional toughness reducing received damage. Except the beam ignores armor, which it likely doesn’t?

And yes, I completely forgot about Unholy Sanctuary because there’s never any use for it in PvE… lol.

gin.7158:

Sigmoid answered your question.

Air sigil is just personal preference since it’s good in general situation.
Sigil of frailty will be useless if your group can maintain 25 vuln (with rev or engi, I guess it’s very easy). Sigil of night doesn’t always work. Sigil of strength will be useless if you capped out at 25 might. Anet may release better sigils later on though.

Funny because I heard Air sigil is pretty crappy now.
Then again, I’m someone who keeps energy sigils on his offhands because it’s basically a requirement for me. lol
I’d just go the multiple weapon-route like I do on Warrior, but I can see why you went with air.
As for being able to cap, nah, that won’t be difficult, keeping 25 stacks up will be though, considering they only last 5s on bosses. In pugs anyway, organized groups shouldn’t have too many issues indeed.

Skoigoth.9238:

Hey! I´m one of “those guys over there” =P

Heh, well that works too.

Build is looking good, pretty much what I used for solo play last BWE, but I would never use SR without Vital Persistence. The small cd reduction on Lich Form from Spectral Mastery just doesn´t cut it and the extra LF-gen can´t compete with the decreased degeneration from Vital Persistence as well imo.
Swapping out SR for BM in group content definitely seems like the right thing to do though.

Spectral Mastery isn’t actually just a cd reduction for Lich, but also a duration increase from 15s to 22 1/2s. I do kind of lean towards swapping it out once Reaper hits, though.

I haven´t seen any comprehensive calculations on Reaper damage so far, so pls correct me if I´m wrong, but I believe Dagger AA still beats RS AA against 2 or less targets. Also, burning maybe will get tuned down a bit with HoT (just speculation), so Dhuumfire might not be worth it in power builds anymore.

Gravedigger is a bit clunky to use sometimes because of the root, that´s correct, but if you miss it you can still fall back to RS or Dagger for ~8 or 9 sec and be fine I think.

Ah, so it is a root. That’s helpful to know, thanks.

Sigmoid.7082:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

@Gin: Any particular reason you went with Valkyrie-gear and Air-sigils? Seems pretty pointless. The build itself is rather close to mine, so that’s good I guess.

Decimate defences is 72% crit chance in his build. Spotter/Banner/Fury to reach 100% in or out of shroud. Valk for the extra HP and wurm runes. Overall works out slightly higher than str runes for damage last i napkined.

Valid points there, but that assumes you always have 25 stacks vuln on everything where it matters (or very close to it) and only run in parties where you have those buffs. Since I don’t have a guild and mostly pug, it’s not really an option for me.

@FrenchFry: Yeah I know, the “xD” gave it away well enough, but kitten , that’s just cruel.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

Try this build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

Great video by a top necromancer who states complicated stuff very simply. Probably the best necro out there. His dedication to the necro class and the gw2 community in general is amazing. He single handily took down Nike and all the elistists and in the process saved GW2.

xD

Wow, I feel badly insulted.

@Sigmoid: Alright, that does make sense. Thanks for the info.

@Gin: Any particular reason you went with Valkyrie-gear and Air-sigils? Seems pretty pointless. The build itself is rather close to mine, so that’s good I guess.

Wethospu.6437:

Rest of what? The damage comes in two packets of 100% max health.

Based on this, I would assume that Plague with >90% health is enough to survive both hits. Plus some extra for agony.

I heard something about being able to have both Death Shroud and Plague up, which would probably result in what we can see in the video; that’s just my guess though.