Guild Wars 2

TBH anet could just scale up every explorable dungeon to 80 and be done with it, at least fresh l35 people wouldn’t have horrible AC runs thinking they should do fine. I’m pretty sure they said that explorable paths were meant to be played by groups of organized l80 people somewhere. >_>

lunyboy.8672:

viciouspike.8624:

…

Oh yeah and make sure you are < level 30 and wear the hardest title to get Combat Healer.

…

Nuuuuuuuu… “Master Crafter” lets everyone know that you craft-leveled your character.

What am i supposed to do? Bore myself to death with open world crap instead of spending some money that i wouldn’t use otherwise? >_>

^
I can only imagine the overflow of threads saying “Omg AC spider too hard, pls nerf.”

I’ve got no idea how you managed to get banned twice on that thread, i got a kittenload of infractions but no ban. You have some serious taunting skills, Dub.

Anicetus.1253:

10/30/30/0/0 isn’t even that good dps. It’s just 1% more than the 25 virtues variant, assuming 4 boons only. And the moment you factor in Unscathed Contender (which actually has very high uptime for me) the “loldps” guardian is also the one with the most support.

Just to clarify things, i meant 10/30/30 as “loldps” guardian, i run 10/30/0/5/25 myself.

If we’re talking about group content then it is not only about me, there’s my whole group as well, and if you can get all the defensive covering your group needs just with only a mesmer why would you bring a guard? There are at least two classes that can certainly deal more damage than guardians. Did i already mention that i feel like a recording right now?

SkyChef.5432:

Let me ask you this Oxxy, do you need master consecration trait to solo Lupi? I mean if you don’t have it you will die as a skilled player?

I was obviously talking about group fights, not solos. Read my posts again.

Same deal applies, you have less uptime on fire fields and wor and no cleansing from F2. If the content you’re playing doesn’t requires any of these there is no reason to bring a guard. I feel like i’m an automated recording right now.

edit:
Also for solo dps i’d use something like 10/25/0/25/10, that way you’ll have vigor from criticals, damage modifier while your endurance ins’t full and you can either get consc uptime or unscathed.

Are you saying you run around with untraited consecrations to get some extra critical damage? Then again, you’d be better off bringing something else.

Any target will be perma burned in dungeons anyways, no need to pick torch just for that.
Also, if you’re bringing a guard without traiting into support just to deal loldps, your group would be better off with an ele or thief.

Using #5 for direct damage is a dps loss, #4 ins’t that good either.

Focus is good because it lets you blind stuff while stacking vulnerability, also #5 can be used without breaking sword autos, every other guardian off-hand is horrible.

laharl.8435:

Guess since this is the l2p guardian thread.

I’ve been told in game a few time now that torch is the best guardian burst and that all dps guards should run it, I’ve also been seeing guards running torch more. I used it when I leveled for a while, but didn’t really see it as great. Is there something I don’t know about torch?

Nope, torch is awful.

I usually don’t have much of a problem cleaving with sword, granted it is worse than greatsword but it is far from terrible. Ranger sword is terrible. Guardian sword is “ok”. :<

• I quoted my post because i didn’t felt like writing the same thing two times in the same thread.
• There are no tanks in GW2 – Most bosses mechanics are full of AoE effects so it doesn’t really matter.
• You could keep people alive with proper support.

:)

Jon.3752:

I think stacking is fine, it’s just cleverly abusing the AI. A few problems though.

In AC on the spider queen, she does not use her poison AoE while everyone is stacked in the corner. This kinda trivializes the encounter in my opinion. You’ll notice if someone is not stacked correctly in the corner, because when that happens the spider queen will actually use her poison AoE skill and deal mongoloid damage to the whole party.

In CoE paths 1 and 3, alpha uses a cone skill called Tooth of Modremoth. While you’re standing inside of him, it deals no damage to you. If you can get him pushed into a wall with the entire party inside of his hitbox, the encounter is trivialized. If he starts moving around, it actually becomes challenging because of the amount of teeth damage the group is taking.

A few enemies can be revamped to make them impossible to stack. Imagine if spider queen refused to leave her room and come into the corner with you. Imagine if subject alpha jumped away before he attacked someone with tooth.

I’ll agree with alpha, but not with spider queen, since it won’t use it’s poison as long everyone is melee, stacking ins’t needed, it just makes cleaving the adds easier. Also, on alpha, even without stacking it’s not that big of a deal, whenever a mesmer misses his pull on first alpha we just dps it while following him closely and most of it’s modremoth misses anyways.

zerotwo.4731:

Oxxy.7068:

zerotwo.4731:

Oxxy.7068:

zerotwo.4731:

Like Teq

Right. Because nobody DPS’ing the dragon stacks near it’s right paw.

If that was all you did you couldn’t defeat Teq. Without the guns firing and players helping to protect the guns those players that are stacking are useless.

Firin guns requires zero player skill. Defending guns is easy as hell as well, as long not many people are passing by and scaling the event up.

It doesn’t matter if its easy, Without the guns and the protection you can’t defeat Teq. You can stack all day and fail.

Actually, most dungeon encounters takes more skill than Teq, and you shouldn’t use open world crap that requires a bunch of bad players to pull their weight as an example in a dungeon stacking debate. /thread

My point is to show that Anet is making changes to mechanics so stacking is not always going to be the best option. You can also look at the new path in TA as an example. Anet is clearly not allowing us to run all they way to the final boss and there is more interaction with the environment.

Not allowing skips on both mobs and movies is what makes that new TA path so unpopular anyways, i’m fine with environment interation if done well (i’m pretty neutral to TA puzzle since i just ran it twice), but overall “killing everything” ins’t really fun, not mentioning it’s replayability is awful.

And that’s the problem, most pvpers thinks they hold any knowledge on dungeons and spread bad info across the boards. Also, i meant a debate about GS l33t dps, not your thread.

^
Why beat a dead horse? It makes sense to start a debate on the class specific forums since most people in there doesn’t know that much how dungeons works, but here is just a waste of time, generally speaking.

This is a neat idea, actually (i don’t really have a mesmer so i can’t comment on class specific stuff). I totally think we should have threads like these stickied around here so people trying to learn basic stuff have a place to start.

Advertising AH as a good trait for PvE is simply wrong, if you want to use it then do it, but there are better alternatives.

zerotwo.4731:

Oxxy.7068:

zerotwo.4731:

Like Teq

Right. Because nobody DPS’ing the dragon stacks near it’s right paw.

If that was all you did you couldn’t defeat Teq. Without the guns firing and players helping to protect the guns those players that are stacking are useless.

Firin guns requires zero player skill. Defending guns is easy as hell as well, as long not many people are passing by and scaling the event up.

Actually, most dungeon encounters takes more skill than Teq, and you shouldn’t use open world crap that requires a bunch of bad players to pull their weight as an example in a dungeon stacking debate. /thread

zerotwo.4731:

Like Teq

Right. Because nobody DPS’ing the dragon stacks near it’s right paw.

People who says that LoS’ing doesn’t work in PvP probably are just wannabe hardcore pvpers, i used to hide behind rocks/pillars/trees to break casts/avoid being range’d down and what not in more than one game, it is no different here, aside from the constant desengaging fiesta that GW2’s PvP is.

Dat edit.
Anyhow, on mesmers/guardians/support, i still stand on my point, if you don’t need guardians to cover extra support you’d be better off bringing thieves or eles instead.

Black Box.9312:

Dub.1273:

Someone using a good build who doesn’t know how to play is still doing much better than someone using a trash build who doesn’t know how to play.

A dead zerker deals infinitely less DPS than a live player with a suboptimal build.

There was a thread on the guardian forums, Dub made the math (i think it was him) and someone in 10/25/0/10/25 can spend almost half of most fights dead and still deal more damage than that paladin 2.crap build.

Overlord.7394:

Lol holy crap. Shared-inventory exloit. Dear god I hope that was a joke.

It was…

Silentstorm.7531:

And you get more credit winning with anything on hand. Then you do with winning with set teams. No one really cares about that and rather watch the under dogs.

You’re mixing real sports with PvE. I care about the underdogs when i’m watching a football game and my team/country ins’t playing (i.e.: Taiti vs Spain at confed. cup), not when i’m running thru dungeons.

Noah.4756:

Oxxy.7068:

Syn Sity.5826:

Wow… how many people can possibly make the same exact post?

Apparently not enough people. There’s at least one thread per week complaining about that wolf.

I googled “Champion Ice Wolf bug” before I made this thread and it did not come up with any specific threads about it. So either Google is lying or you are extremely exaggerating.

Well, it is not a bug to begin with… (or it is and anet doesn’t care about it, like every dungeon related content in this game).

edit: i’ve got nothing against these threads (i mean at least people are trying to improve instead of the usual “nurf zerk gear pls/ban path sellers they’re ruining economy/stop skipping and exploiting/LoSing is for bads”), but they do pop somewhat frequently.

Syn Sity.5826:

Wow… how many people can possibly make the same exact post?

Apparently not enough people. There’s at least one thread per week complaining about that wolf.

CryxTryx.9208:

I wrote that wall of text because I wanted to give these guys the benefit of the dobut that if it was all actually explained it might provide some insight for them as to why stacking is a viable tactic, why it is done, what the risks are.

I did indeed, waste my time.

Maybe not, sometimes a little explanation is all it takes. Don’t hold your breath tho, for some reason most of GW2 community is allergic to improvement

Obtena.7952:

Sure, but that doesn’t apply to everyone so speaking in absolutes is debatable. I think it’s easy to forget that there is a segment of the population that don’t run engineered teams and I’m certain the correlation between people running non-engineered teams and those that would consider this build is pretty high.

Actually… if you’re pugging and have to carry extra-weight, group-support and dps are even more valuable. And i’m saying this as someone who used to pug a lot.. staying alive fighting a group of trash mobs or boss that you’re not going to kill alone does nothing but inflates your ego.

SundayTrash.9562:

why even bother making the character if ur only gonna level it through dungeon exploit at the end.

SundayTrash.9562:

level it through dungeon exploit at the end.

SundayTrash.9562:

dungeon exploit

SundayTrash.9562:

exploit

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

First thing i tell party at wolf – DO NOT MELEE HIM, HE WILL ONESHOT YOU IN AOE

I’d kick you from my group.

Now you know how to melee that wolf. Also, you have 30 secs to kill it before he uses his leap again, as pointed by guan.

Stalima.5490:

while im not saying make them stupidly hard i would at least like some difference in my tactics, particularly in CoE where in pretty much all 3 paths alpha can be conquered by stacking on one spot despite having all that aoe.

Actually, alpha fights are most likely “easier” if you split up at range(apart from dodging the earth thing), alpha casts one icy AoE per player, that said, if your group is afar from each other you’ll only have to deal with one attack, which is pretty easy to survive (it deals ~40% of any zerk guardian’s hp, give or take), the problem is when one person is slighty outside of alpha’s melee range, but still near his own group, the dragon tooth’s will spawn in range of everyone else, screwing the dodging/energy cycle.

Stalima.5490:

what i propose is some sort of mechanic that punishes them for just standing around stacking using little to no effort on almost every fight (this comes up especially in the case of guardians and warriors) its ok if theyre moving around dodging actually trying to avoid the effects properly but standing in a corner in melee range “dodging” into a wall while fully remaining INSIDE the aoe at all times is a joke, not even moving position… perhaps even a debuff that prevents you for doing this multiple times in a fixed periodwould at least help to combat no skill stand and hit… or even allow bosses to effectively dodge roll away in order to use their more lethal ranged spells.

Horrible idea. As per usual. people stack because it is easier to cleave the crystals and to use fiery rush/whirlwind to the wall, stacking makes alpha riskier in case of any mistake unless you run…

Stalima.5490:

(infact sometimes on my engineer with a high toughness celestial bomb build i dont even attempt to avoid alphas frost effect and still dont die)

something like this.

Now since i took some time between dungeons runs to type all this crap, i’ll just throw my opinion here:

It is obvious that you don’t do dungeons often, that said, stacking is not an exploit just because you think it is. Stacking, LoS’ing and skipping are present in many games (GW1 included (aside from stacking i think), according to anyone that played it, i didn’t so i can’t really vouch on that), not only GW2.
I seriously suggest you to get more experience instead of posting stuff like this, because it won’t lead anyone anywhere and you’ll just get harassed by the actual dungeon-runner community.

hybrid.5027:

Vox Hollow.2736:

I can’t imagine why I’d have to justify saying stacking is lame.
Why in the briny blue blazes would think stacking is fun?

It’s not particularly boring, either ;o

Pretty much. I’m neutral on stacking, i do it because it is efficient, the day anet breaks stacking (they won’t), i will just use the second most efficient method.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I don’t care what the devs wanted.
It’s reason #2 dungeons are so lame in this game. That’s reason enough to kill it with fire.

Based on what? Can’t you see how popular that new no-skipping-allowed TA path is? (It ins’t).
And i’m pretty sure anyone in the dungeons forums can tell you what is an exploit and what ins’t (ie.: AC stairs, afk range some arah stuff, jumping on that thingy on SEP3, etc).

Show me a dev post saying that skipping is not intended and then we’ll talk, Anti.

I like talking to brick walls. I’ll reply to OP seriously in a sec, gotta do some AC first.

AntiGw.9367:

CryxTryx.9208:

I don’t understand the people that say ‘this is not what the devs intended.’

Ok, I’ll explain.

You don’t design and balance a variety of classes and skills just to have people ignore most of them in favor of one “tactic”. You don’t design a huge dungeon full of mobs just to have everyone skip it all to fight the end boss in 5 minutes. You don’t design and balance a variety of gear options just to have everyone use one gear type. You don’t design a huge beautiful world just to have everyone grind in one area and miss most of it.

Whenever you see results like the above, you have a design that failed to some degree. We are not trying to be psychic and read the thoughts of the developers. That’s basic design concepts.

Devs already said that skipping is fine and intended , not all mobs are meant to be fought (aside from the new TA path).

Stalima.5490:

(infact sometimes on my engineer with a high toughness celestial bomb build i dont even attempt to avoid alphas frost effect and still dont die)

Heh.

It is worth it when you burst him in 10secs, since he’s squishy as hell.

haviz.1340:

Oxxy.7068:

You sure? I’d like to see people fighting lupi or alpha for example in a non optimal (non zerker, not stacking boons) group without vigor, it sounds really painful.

Stacking only regen I guess.

Oxxy.7068:

really painful.

:(
Also, that guard had vigor on critical, pffft. Kind of funny how this guy can be solo’ed way faster than this when people care about their build.

You sure? I’d like to see people fighting lupi or alpha for example in a non optimal (non zerker, not stacking boons) group without vigor, it sounds really painful.

You run Mace and think Hammer has low damage? I don’t even.

fadeaway.2807:

That might actually change if mesmers become the new condition removal + reflect meta for pve dungeons. We’ll wait and see.

We’d be better off playing as Thieves or Eles if defensive support ins’t needed. There is no point on playing guardian without traiting into proper support.

laokoko.7403:

^ He said non speed run. He didn’t say being purposely inefficient for no reason.

non speed run usually mean casual runs mostly for inexperienced player.

Pretty much this, when i joined any non-speed run group back when i was starting i expected something more laid-back, with explanations, and maybe some little extra trash killing, not “screw efficient strategy”. IMO OP should be clearer when making a non skip-and-stack group (wethospu’s suggestion should do the trick).

My instance on AH is simple: It is ok to use if you’re learning your class, but after that you’re just wasting trait points.

If you play guardian for five months and still use it, you’re either super casual and don’t care that much about how you peform or is just wasting trait points. I’m not sure how you can think your build is just as good as 10/25~30/0/5~10/25 or something like that. There is a gap between running, lets say, 10/25/0/25/10 and 0/15/30/20/5, the former is a solid build, while the later is just bad.

wauwi.9162:

snip

I think it is intended… i mean… well… let’s just pretend there’s a dungeon team and wait for more fixes.