At 10-19 with 0 agony resistance it’s 12% per tick. 20-29 is 30%. 30-39 is 48%. 40-49 is 72%. Assuming it stays with 24% increase this time, it’s 96%. Reduced by 6 points per 5 agony resistance and maximum AR is 45. The minimum you can take is 42% health. And for 10 seconds at the maw that’s still about impossible to survive unless you have serious heals
It doesn’t go up past 40. Agony never does more than 72% HP/sec, except for Jade Maw 50+, which is 1172% HP/sec. Even in 50-80, all the boss agony is 72% HP/sec (same as 40+).
Currently at lvl 96, spending hundreds of golds to convert to gems so we can buy ressurection orbs.
No you’re not.
What kind of mobs do you face at lvl 80? o.o I’m guessing they’re at level… 100? o.O
They’re 84. Bosses are still 80.
It’s the same as 40 except you do less damage and take more damage.
Well lvl 80 was possible at early stage of fractal release, last I check we couldn’t get pass the agony from maw at lvl 50. Lvl 40-48 tactics didn’t work anymore because as you as you get back up agony hits you again. On the first tick it will take you down on the second will kill you. It was almost instantly. Is it still the same?
Yes, Jade Maw at 50 still deals 1172% HP/sec with agony. You’d need 960~ agony resistance to reliably survive (which is not possible and never will be).
Retaliation only triggers damage dealt. Conditions are not damage dealt, they are health loss.
Full Zerker
15/30/x/x/x (the other 25 points are up to you)
Caltrops / Signet of Agility / Smoke Screen
DD + Shortbow
Pretty standard. Works in Fractals just as well as it works everywhere else. Direct is far better than conditions.
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The gavelings in AC are waaaay too powerful right now just due to the fact that all they have to do is hit you once, then at the howling kind they all group on you and you cant move because your stuck on the ground. and thats the only attack they EVER do. its quite annoying and i wasnt able to finish AC the other day just because of it.
Your group should try using: Weakness, Protection, Blind, Fear, Chill, Cripple, Stability, Knockbacks, Stuns, Immobilizes, and Stun Breakers, so that you don’t get caught and killed.
oh AND the stalkers evade everything once they use their dig attack( i think ), whatever it is, it stay in one spot for awhile and evades every single attack you throw at it even though its not moving. it took 5 level 80’s just about as long to kill a boss as it did to kill one stalker in AC. Very very annoying.
They gain evasion when their dig attack hits someone. If they don’t hit anyone, they don’t evade.
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This thread is blatant troll bait, by the way.
Weapon Strength for One-Hander = 1,000
Weapon Strength for Two-Hander = 1,100Two-Handers have a 10% Base Damage increase over 1-handers.
That comparison isn’t end-all-be-all though, because the skill coefficients are what determine the actual damage dealt, and different weapons use different skills.
That only really matters on profession specific stuff (Burst skills, Shatters), and utilities.
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Set up a PTR, throw all your changes to dungeons on it at once, and try listening. There are literally thousands of people who are all making the exact same suggestions to your team and giving you the same criticisms – your design philosophy seems to be “more hp, more damage, more adds, more CC” and while I don’t know if most people are unhappy with that I do know that a lot are.
Bolded for emphasis.
AC was made easier. It’s different, so you might wipe, but it is overall easier. Mob health went down across the board. I don’t think you’ve actually been inside it yet.
and instead of trying to find a healthy balance rendered them useless.
I don’t think easy access to stealth on any profession through a consumable can be balanced in any situation.
My 2c.
@Rising Dusk
Don’t get me wrong, I hate Dredge fractal just as much as the next person for the same reasons, and the scaling on it is not that good at all.
I don’t consider the effective removal of Spy Kits to be anything like nerfing SB, though. SB was a player ability. Spy Kits are an external item that can make unique abilities of a profession completely redundant. SB was just ludicrously powerful in PvP for being a normal skill, but Spy Kits can break PvE for being a spammable consumable obtainable by everyone.
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Everything has less health. It might be scary because it’s different, but I guarantee that these AC changes made it far easier than before.
Frost and fire auras include the ones generated from combos.
Let’s focus on the most important issue here. Ascended accessories and amulets in fractals. Either that or lift the kitten agony so we can progress.
You can progress to 49 with 30 AR. If you think you’re ever going to get enough AR to survive 50 Jade Maw, I have some bad news for you.
Rising Dusk – I don’t really want to pick apart your post, but your examples on the Dredge fractal is proof of why I think Spy Kits were harmful for the game, because it shows that you have never had to deal with the events properly.
1. The mobs on the left door only spawn at certain door-health percentages (Nuke door -> clean up mobs -> nuke door -> clean up mobs).
2. The cage event requires someone to aggro the veteran away from the panel guy, as well as having the other party members not on a button controlling the adds.
The bonfire event in Snowblind is the only difficult part of that fractal if done without spy kits, so I don’t care that it is very dangerous at high levels.
Then, on top of that, you generally have to play well enough to not constantly die, because your party can no longer res you with impunity under almost all conditions. I don’t call it “skilled play” when your party is dying.
With spy kits mostly out of the picture, it will be clear what the truly poorly designed mechanics are (the ones that you can’t get better at with practice). Then, from that, the designers can learn from them and hopefully fix them / never make the same mistake twice, and the dungeons will be better for it.
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Rapid Fire’s damage is displayed as a cumulative number. Your last shots aren’t 10k damage each, that’s just the total damage you’ve dealt with the ability.
Considering that Rapid Fire is a 5 second cast, you’d only have to be hitting for ~1000 with your Shortbow autoattacks to be doing the same DPS over the same time.
About time Spy Kits got the nerf bat. Now the playerbase might actually have to learn how to do fights properly.
Full Berserker is fully viable in every situation, yes. It generally requires you to pro-actively take less damage than others, though, as a lot of things will 2-to-4 shot you. You can get around this with proper teamwork, i.e. Protection, Projectile Blockers, Weakness, Blind, etc
Did anyone else notice how the OP answered his own thread and marked it as the best response?
If it makes you feel any better, I’ve never been kicked out of a speedclear CoF1 group on my Guardian.
Mesmer is better when you get higher level, due to traits.
Fair warning though, Mesmer has to work a lot harder than a Warrior to be effective.
Anyone who played since release of GW1 how long did it take to get relatively balanced?
That depends on your definition of balance. I only did Tombs, but for the first 6 months, balance consisted of a new overpowered build popping up every 2 weeks and then it would get nerfed, or a complete meta shift would happen to counter that build. Finding those overpowered builds was part of the fun, though.
An example of GW1 “balance”: One week, everyone runs Air Ele Spike to kill people instantly. A few days later, everyone has Mantra of Air (reduce air dmg taken by ~30% in most builds) to prevent it. A few days later, no one is running Air Spike. Things like that happened all the time, early on.
Then every time an expansion came out with new skills, balance was completely thrown out the door while people figured out new builds to get nerfed again.
The game was very much rock-paper-scissors. Personal skill made a pretty big difference for certain roles to overcome balance issues, though, so overall balance didn’t seem too bad after things got settled (a few months).
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Since GW2 is not a gear-based vertical progression game, it would be hard to convince a lot of people to even attempt a raid. ANet is not a large company, so spending time making raids that a small minority of players would play is not a wise use of time.
GW2’s gameplay is better suited to 5 mans. Raids wouldn’t really change much, except you’d have more people. Any notion of boss difficulty that would come from having more players can be easily translated to a 5 man format.
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Conditions always deal the damage they are supposed to deal, unless their duration is reduced or they are removed. This is a design choice, and is why they don’t crit.
It is not as strong as raw power dmage and doesn’t benefit at all from neither precision nor critical damage.
Against high armor targets & protection boons, conditions are stronger. And for a lot of condition specs, they benefit from precision due to condition procs.
Wouldn’t change a thing as bosses don’t hit organized groups.
I DO remember how lacking WoW was when it first launched, and the patch that introduced dire maul. It was a new game and I don’t think the developers realized how much was on the horizon, but they definitely realized the popularity and importance of creating content, adapted, and started pumping it out original challenging content at a crazy pace
Blizzard has never pumped out “challenging content at a crazy pace”. They are one of the slowest developers in the business.
(Molten Core was available pretty kitten early and shot all of ANet’s dungeon content out of the water).
Now, that’s your opinion, but I completely disagree. I don’t remember any content that was even mildly interesting until Naxx.
Bigger dungeons, yes.
More difficult dungeons, yes.
but larger group sizes probably won’t happen.
I believe the condition stacks are in place for technical reasons, and that ANet should indeed put effort into removing those limitations.
The condition cap is a design choice centered on PvP.
problem with mechanics like boon removal is that the majority of classes dont have it.
defiance and bad telegraphing dont allow for interrupts and because people dont die but go down (dont get me wrong i love the downed system) it is hard to get an interrupt thing to work. Best would be if defiant/unshakable was a 15sec buff that make them immune to CC. No stacks, just 15 sec, then its off and u get 1 cc, then 15 sec. Does the same job, better, and allows for interrupt mechanics without cc locking bosses. Maybe a skill (enemies) that hits everyone after 5 seconds. Purple beams shoot to everyone, in 5 seconds they will be downed, it must be interrupted. Would need a good description under the enemy title.
When I say boon removal, I don’t really mean necessary boon removal. The idea was more like, “This boss gains a huge might and fury buff every so often, so parties without boon removal might actually have to do the fight differently than parties with boon removal”.
As for interrupts, just make the interrupt mechanics come from adds that are veterans/silver and don’t have defiant. Problem solved!
There are many solutions to these types of things for a game designer that can use current mechanics appropriately. Like I said, that kind of thing just has to be explored a bit more.
Sure there are optimal strategies to defeat dungeon encounters, but straight up zerging a boss with players who know how to dodge roll will win the day 9 times out of 10.
^THis is the biggest problem
There are counters to that too. Make bosses that move around more making melee a liability. Put mechanics in that aren’t completely avoided by a single dodge or two. Put in abilities that prevent players from stacking up and time-warp zerging. Make fights that last 5+ minutes even with a full Berserker party, in addition to mechanics that don’t let you sit there and zerg. Easy!
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Ingame voice-com would not be useful for dungeons. WoW has it, and no one uses it. PvP could use it, though.
Because half the time it doesn’t work right.
Maybe it’s because everyone had it turned off, like me!
Ingame voice-com would not be useful for dungeons. WoW has it, and no one uses it. PvP could use it, though.
Pinch, you only think larger groups dilute personal roles because you are looking at the later raids in WoW. I invite you to go check out Vanilla/early BC raids and even more importantly EQ/EQ2 raids (even some Rift dungeons/raids have proper mechanics).
These games had proper raids, not the garbage that is in place today. In these raids each player would have specific mechanic-related jobs (not just tank/heal/DPS) where the failure of one player would result in a wipe.
I raided hardcore in vanilla & TBC, and tried out Rift’s raids for a little while. The specific mechanic related jobs were just “wipe mechanics”. I can’t really think of many examples where a player tasked with dealing with a wipe mechanic had to do much else. The difficulty in those raids still came from hoping that no single player would mess up, more than anything.
With raids such as these, larger groups absolutely allow for more customization of mechanics because there are more players to be given specific roles.
Again, I don’t think you need more players to have more things happen. You just have to make each individual player do more stuff in a 5 man.
For example, I played a Rogue on M’uru, one of the hardest fights in TBC WoW. My job was to: Attack an add, stun it, attack another add, stun it, attack boss, avoid gravity circles. At any given time, I wasn’t actually doing that much.
The problem with GW2 right now is that, as I mentioned, the only true mechanic is getting out of red circles. Sure there are optimal strategies to defeat dungeon encounters, but straight up zerging a boss with players who know how to dodge roll will win the day 9 times out of 10.
Those may be the only mechanics right now, but there are a lot of others that haven’t even begun to be explored. You’ve obviously raided a lot, so you know what I’m talking about.
Things like:
- Boon removal
- Coordinated condition removal
- Interrupts
- Add management, kiting, prioritizing, etc
And I could go on, but you get the point.
Anyways, I totally get what you’re trying to say about how large fights have a lot of stuff going on and need a lot of group coordination and strategies, but I think 5 mans can get very close to emulating it.
The reason I think they should stick to 5 mans is mostly due to the power of ressing. Adding more players would require some questionable mechanics to make fights more difficult (enrage timers, groupwide oneshots to force you to get death penalty so it can kill you for good, etc).
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Larger groups simply allow for more in-depth/creative mechanics and higher levels of teamplay.
I don’t agree with that either. Large groups dilute player responsibility. There may be more things going on overall in a 25 player fight, but each individual player will matter less. For example, there may be 10 different dangerous abilities in a 25 player fight, but each player is only responsible for a small subset of it, such as, “deal damage, don’t stand in void zone, interrupt this attack when its your turn”, or “buff allies, don’t stand in void zone, kite this mob when it spawns”.
Comparing GW2 and WoW, the way I see it is like this:
GW2 -> Personal Skill > Group Coordination > Gear > Strategy
WoW -> Strategy > Gear > Group Coordination > Personal Skill
The strategy aspect of GW2 certainly needs to be bumped up, but I think player skill being a very important factor is what sets GW2 apart from other MMORPGs, and I’d like them to explore that further. I can think of theoretical 5-man fights that would work in GW2 and be a lot more involved than the majority of WoW bosses, that’s for sure.
On the flip side they would be much harder to design and balance so it’s a tricky tradeoff.
I agree.
I don’t know if you play WoW, but it’s fairly obvious that they’ve had a raid fight formula ever since Wrath, so they can get these “cool designs” in their fights because the vast majority of it is: tank swap mechanic, healer mechanic, dps check, void zone to not stand in, special mechanic that gives an important role to a couple of players.
It’s all an illusion of good raid encounters, anyways. I’m a jaded former hardcore raider though, so take my opinion with a bucket full of salt.
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I cant even compact/move to collectible on the items in my backpack since I upgraded to 110 slots … I have to do it all manually for whatever reason.
Are you using an invisible bag? Compact/Deposit ignores invisible bags.
What GW2 really needs is 10 player Fractals with actual mechanics that do not just involve staying out of red circles.
The game does not need party sizes larger than 5 to have dungeons with mechanics and fights that require group-oriented strategy.
The only reason for servers in this game is WvW. That’s why.
The big thing that sets Raids apart from Dungeons is that you can build fights around the assumption that one of every class will be there.
I don’t think so. You’ll either bring what you have or you’ll bring the best professions for the dungeon. There is no shared gear drops like WoW, so there is no reason to bring one of every class.
With 5 man encounters you need to design a lot of leeway for “suboptimal” groups. You can have them require a certain ability or a specific profession because that would be unfair.
I don’t really think that’s true. There is a lot of overlap in profession capability, and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say; “ok for this fight you need 2 interrupts”, or “you need boon removal every 15 seconds”. You’d be able to get things like that from a lot of parties.
In Raids you can do just that. A 10 man fight also has a lot more variables and depth to it than any 5 man encounter could ever have.
A 10 man can have more going on in it because there are 10 players, but from a single player’s perspective, there might be less going on than what could happen in a 5 man. The individual is not as important as the group when you add more people. GW2 is a game about personal skill, so I don’t think lessening the personal aspect would work well.
I raided hardcore 40/25mans in WoW for 8 years, and let me tell you, as easy as GW2 5 mans are, they certainly require more effort than doing my DPS rotation and not standing in fire ever did. Then again, I play a glass cannon thief, so I am playing one of the more fragile professions.
That’s why Raid encounters tend to be much tougher and involving than your standard Dungeon fights. I mean look at some of those Fractal encounters. That’s probably as much depth as we can reasonably expect from a 5 man Dungeon. And I don’t really think that’s good enough.
I could write up a 2 page outline for a 5 man fight that is more involved than any raid I’ve ever done.
Honestly, the hardest part about raiding was meeting gear checks and hoping other people didn’t screw up. I can count on one hand the number of times that figuring out a good strategy was the biggest thing making a raid fight hard.
I think we’ve only scratched the surface of what we can do in GW2.
/opinion
I’m curious, what would raids accomplish that 5 mans could not? You don’t need 10 or 25 players to have coordinated group play and fights that require strategies.
Also, as large groups in WvW have proven, ressing is extremely powerful when there are a lot of players around to get you up on your feet quickly.
That’s not what this topic is about. This topic is about Fractals and agony resistance, specifically Jade Maw 50.
Are you in the wrong thread? Or was your thread merged into this one?
No. You guys have started diverging way off course. Go read the first post. It’s about agony resistance and Fractals from a quote by Robert Hrouda.
Can you guys stop going back and forth about general gear treadmills please? That’s not what this topic is about. This topic is about Fractals and agony resistance, specifically Jade Maw 50.
This thread is getting pushed off topic pretty hard.
He’s not saying anything about ascended gear being a gear treadmill. That’s what all the other threads are complaining about.
The problem he’s talking about is that Robert Hrouda has explicitly come out and said that “you’re not getting past Fractals 50 until we say so”, which is confusing, because the content already exists up to 80, as players have found out.
Fractals wasn’t added to give people a gear treadmill, it was added to give players a sense of progression in a difficult dungeon. The progression and difficulty is there at higher levels, but it has an agony resistance treadmill tacked on. While you can beat every other boss with 0AR, you can’t beat Jade Maw unless you keep up with the treadmill. That’s not fun.
Regarding Jade Maw 50, I am on both sides of the argument.
One one side, there should have been no one past 50 in the first place, but due to bugs/explots/oversights, you could get past it. We would have been none the wiser about the existance of Fractals up to 80.
On the other side, I don’t think it’s good game design to have a brick wall that we’ll never get past until they change the damage agony deals on Jade Maw, or releases 950 agony resistance to survive it (it deals 1172% HP per second, and agony resistance subtracts a flat 6% per 5).
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ive seen a group without a heavy class do p1, and Slave Driver rips everyone to shreds.
Warriors only take 16% less damage than scholar professions, just so you know.
The downed state exists to counter really high burst in a game without healers. I think that even if you did have a team that instantly gibbed someone, you’d be able to get them up quick. Remember, this isn’t Conquest we’re talking about, so your whole team is going to be together. There is going to be an AoE damage reduction sometime too, which would make it easier to keep downed players alive longer.
I’d quite like to see a 3v3 or 5v5 sPvP deathmatch. Burst is even higher in WvW than sPvP because of consumables + more crit damage, but I’ve seen a lot of small skirmishes that tend to last a lot longer than you’d think.
(Dear ANET, maybe another round of scaling nerfs are in order.. this time making it perfectly clear that a lvl 80 in exotics will have the same stats in AC as a lvl 35 in greens)
That wouldn’t do anything. Higher levels still have:
- More traits
- Better runes and sigils
- More consumables, stronger consumables
Though, I guess that does promote transmutation stone sales in the gem store.
Map Complete is where I get mine. I’ve never bought a single transmutation stone from the store and I have a stack of about 50 fine, and around 200 regular.
You must admit though, it does seem a bit weird that the only way to make use of them is a transmutation stone. Nothing else really does that (cultural armor does to an extent, since it’s only rare and not exotic). Everything else would either have stats on it, or be an apply-able skin item.
Actually I think his pull has a 20-22 second cooldown. I know this because if I use traited Stand Your Ground (24cd) I can’t use it again by the time he uses his next pull, I’m always 1-2 seconds off.
It’s pretty random. I do AC a lot on my Guardian as well, and Stand your Ground is usually up, but it hasn’t been sometimes. That’s why I said around 30s.
Just bring a stun breaker if you can’t see it. When you get pulled in, use it and roll away. He only casts the pull around every 30 seconds, which is generally enough time to stun break every pull.
Myste, your access to the content was never taken away. You can still zone in and kill mobs in dungeons. The only difference now is that your party actually has to work together, instead of next to each other.
Spreading out all over the place is generally not a good idea. If you do get downed far away from your team, they can’t come to your aid right away. (This is a really bad thing to do on Subject Alpha)
Emphasis on this.
Pay attention to your party members and stay close. If you see someone getting low on health, keep an eye on them and get ready to res them if you have to. There is almost no excuse for having someone downed more than a few seconds if everyone is prepared.
Depends on the boss imho. For instance you dont want to be grouped together doing Lupicus but its a good idea on the Nightmare Tree.
Getting downed people should be a priority if you can do it and not die yourself. Sometimes I got to revive someone and get boss aggro so then I change to kiting the boss and try to pull him away so others can revive. It sort of works sometimes :P
When I say grouped, I don’t really mean stacked, I just mean don’t be more than a 2-3 second run away from any other person. This is quite possible on Lupicus, especially since it’s far easier to dodge his massive AoE if the bolts are all concentrated in one general location.