Guild Wars 2

Hayashi.3416:

RuneScape introduced Pay to Win with the Squeal. ArenaNet isn’t perfect and you’ll hear me complain about them elsewhere (esp. slow bugfixing on very simple bugs I can fix for them for free), but they’re not in the same order of magnitude of mismanagement.

I was one of the elite group of players who left RuneScape en-masse during that debacle. By this, I mean a player that had 99 for every single skill. There was about 250-325 of us who left together, we were in partial communication. The update to erase free players from the high scores entirely after that was motivated in part by the majority of maxed players who all terminated RuneScape subscriptions – it doesn’t look nice for your game if your leaderboard is filled with people who had already quit.

More on topic confusion works differently between players and PvE, as well as Warrior skill 5, among others. There are precedents for setting things differently between the PvE and any form of PvP mode, which proves there is no technical limitation – and thus, the act of trying to balance three entire gamemodes on a single situation seems to indicate apathy towards proper optimisation.

As an example, control is hideously overpowered in PvP applications and hideously useless in PvE. Conditions are hideously overpowered in PvP and hideously useless in PvE except fringe cases. Ranged weapons are ok in PvP applications and hideously useless in PvE. Mobility skills are ok in PvP applications and hideously useless in PvE. I’m sure you can think of many more examples.

Good post and you’re very right, however I want point out that control is useful in PvE but can’t be spammed (and for good reason). Defiance I find is perfectly fine in dungeons, but the scaling in open world is utterly grotesque. For example there’s simply no possibility of getting a deep feeze off on a boss in an open world zerg because by the time the defiance stacks finally are removed some clown would have certainly reapplied them instantly. The system has its flaws, but I’d rather have defiance than being able to perpetually cc bosses.

Btw, cool to see another veteran RS player. I probably wasn’t maxed at the same time as you, but I got my completionist cape in jan 2012. I think it was pretty obvious that the game and company went in a terrible direction once Andrew & Paul sold off their shares and left the board of directors. They were absolute geniuses for it too tbh. They left right when they knew their game’s potential for growth was at its peak, and right before it went to hell.

Coloxeus.3480:

6/10
i like your staff but your shuz, leggins didn’t match to your coat and shoulder

@Coloxeus
I would like yours way more if you’d just remove those red eyes. Otherwise it looks the best on the first page imo.

Mine:

Dyes are Strawberry + Pyre and the headpiece is flame eye, the one you start out with when you choose “fire” as your primary element or whatever.

^ Exactly.

I have tried healing surge + evisc and it was pretty terrible. I tried it on Korga and Ancient Ooze. It’s especially terrible if you use scholar runes :P

Also one more thing to mention is that you should be very mindful of when you use tremor in groups, because you don’t want to be wasting cc on champs/legendaries that have defiance when people could be using situationally useful cc like deep freeze, fear me, etc. Just something to take into consideration.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

These are the skill damage coefficients. It’s the only objective way to look at a skill.

Damage lost on Hundred Blades: 0.22

Damage lost on Whirlwind Attack: 0.035

Damage gained on Arching Slice: 1.3

Total damage lost: 0.255

Total damage gained: 1.3

Net Damage Gain: 1.045

I’m sorry, where’s the nerf here? Learn to use your burst skills, PvEers. It’s the whole kitten point of warrior.

Not to mention that the skill in ready up only required a single bar of adrenaline to get a full damage hit. That means if you get something below 50% HP AND you have even one bar of adrenaline, you can just spam arching slice. That’s every 7 seconds. A 2.6 coefficient skill every 7 seconds? Hell yes. For reference, Backstab is 2.4.

Increased damage based [sic] how much adrenaline you have built.

Adrenaline stage 1: 5%
Adrenaline stage 2: 10%
Adrenaline stage 3: 15%

Notes
Triggers before the effects of attacks; burst skills will benefit from this trait before draining adrenaline.

I can’t believe you’re actually telling me to go out of my way to grind mind-numbingly monotonous beginner paths for RNG that hardly anyone ever does more than once per character nor will give the slightest ounce of a —-- about, just so that I can prove my claim online to the almighty certainly-not-full-of-himself maha.7902.

Do you even think before you type your messages?

P.S. Phalanx Strength is still terrible.

If anything you’re the one making the bold claims. It’s common sense that in order to maximize DPS you take as many of the classes that are capable of producing it as you possibly can unless certain utilities are necessary in order to speed up the run, in which case you’d substitute for them. Since engineers offer absolutely nothing unique, this is why in the majority of cases they generally aren’t chosen for record runs. It’s a pretty simple concept, so I’m kind of surprised that someone being in one of the most elite PvE guilds would struggle so much with it tbh.

You can continue to keep amusing me if you’d like, but you should probably take your business elsewhere and try to talk to people that don’t regard you as an angry child.

Glad to hear it’s working out for ya!

To be honest any rare time I go to WvW I pretty much do the same as well lmao. Any other build besides max DPS bores me to tears.

Gotcha.

I use my mouse side buttons for dodging as well and just try to time it at the same time with a jump. It’s pretty unreliable for me, and I can’t imagine it working as consistently as yours without a macro. I have only a Logitech M510 laser mouse lawl

Thanks for the response

I hardly know anyone who’s ever even done CoE story without exploiting to the last boss tbh. I also don’t remember any of the encounters in the path at all, so I can’t recall whether or not the majority of them are FGSable.

Basically any boss that you can make use of FGS for, vuln is taken care of. Pretty much any time that stealth is needed, thief is just about always picked. Since I don’t know CoE story and don’t really care about story modes, I can’t really say much about them. Engineer might legitimately be better to take for some of them, but I can’t confirm that.

Anywho, any particular reason why you’re always so belligerent with me and just about everyone else? Seeking attention or what?

You want to explore dungeons?

I feel the same way, OP. Wanna know what I do about it?

http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4907922

People like in the OP are what’s causing the reward system for this game to be so kittening horrible.

Oh I also have a question. Do you use a build in mouse macro or anything for jump+dodge? It looks like you have a 100% success rate with it and it never fails for you. I’m not sure if it’s latency related, but it’d be cool to know.

I have solod them together a few times on 50 as well, but not with the rabbit + bandit without any deaths. I also wasn’t using banner, as it seemed kind of pointless for a huge portion of the encounter due to not being in range a lot of the time. I’ll have to redo it with less GS rushing around, since it worked out well for you.

Good stuff

Nah Tom Yzf, Sublimatio and I have discussed it in PM a few times now. I’m going to also test it with swirling winds as well… if it does, then this will be amazing lol. It’s always a pain when in groups and you’re the only one with stealth consumables, so people drag the vile oozes all over the place and make it nearly impossible to avoid engaging in combat :P

Hello Oakwind!

First of all I want to correct you on that— I’m pretty sure you must have misinterpreted me or perhaps I misunderstood your question. Engineers most certainly do have a purpose in groups, but when it comes for record speedclear attempts they are not valuable. The reasoning behind this statement is that they don’t bring anything unique to the table for teams to benefit from— they are a class that’s capable of doing loads of things and have arguably the most utility overall (stealth, blasting fire fields, insane vulnerability stacking, etc).

The thing is, thief is able to provide stealth as well and has the highest DPS in the game aside from elementalists (in optimal conditions, that is), so when stealth is desired a thief is generally a better option in record attempts. As well as that, an elementalist is able to cap vulnerability using fiery rush + weak spot and just about all speedclears will involve this as it’s also the highest DPS in the game by far.

If reflects are needed, guardian is typically first-choice. If time warp/portals are super beneficial for a path/fractal, mesmer it is.

Generally speaking, the more elementalists the better (for record attempts) and you swap them out for a class that is able to provide the utility needed/desired.

For casual runs/pug runs, there’s nothing wrong about a properly built engineer. The biggest problem is that people hear all of these things about all of the different classes and take them too literally. People behave as if they’re not able to do AC without an ele (it’s easy no matter what, lol). People behave as if Lupi is a nightmare without reflects. People behave as if FotM is impossible without a guard (it sure is hell without one at higher levels, but it’s not mandatory to just complete the run). I could go on but I’m sure you get the point.

Oakwind.6187:

Guild Wars 2 feels to me like a theme park, and not a video game. Sure things could be worse, but the “community” has already been conditioned in a certain way and PvE is down in the gutter (HP sponges, numerous one shots, just generally overwhelming the player in < 1 second instead of challenging them mechanically or in a contest of endurance).

Well said… and I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Oakwind.6187:

almost all loot is garbage, and the feeling of success is diluted, even drowned by the worthless crap you get from every chest. Why do I need a chest if the challenge was worth nothing of value? In addition the contents are totally RNG and that’s unfair. It makes people think about what’s important, and that’s maximizing the number of chests / hour. The end result is more zerging, exploiting broken events, farming the stuff that even the lowest common denominator can manage (usually), and what they want is to never fail and always get the chests because we’ve all been brainwashed by now, if ever so slightly.

…you are a very convincing writer. I’d feel like a total kitten if I was a developer for ArenaNet right now and stumbled upon this post.

It’s so true— that is exactly what happens; just about everybody is trying to obtain as many chests as possible because it’s literally all RNG.

The Crown Pavilion this summer was a perfect example of that. I have friends who braindlessly farmed that for over 1,000 gold pavilion reward chests… speaks for itself, eh?

Good call, I knew I was forgetting something :P

Yes, but if you’re looking to maximize DPS with a 65003 fast hands build you don’t want to camp axe especially in a solo setting. Instead, use it along with the super-hard hitting Rip from sword OH while hundred blades is on cooldown, but only on the rotation that Rush isn’t available for. Forceful greatsword is just too powerful of a trait for axe to compete with :P

Karode, that’s even less DPS than what I take on my ele when I WvW roam with it :|

The #1 reason why elementalists are so sought after in PvE group content (dungeons and fractals) is because they are the absolute best source of might and fury in the game, period. This is only achieved with a proper rotation and with persisting flames, which is a grandmaster trait in fire magic. You have 0 in fire magic.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted but here is a video where I demonstrate the default rotation that I use for GS and axe+sword.

The rotation changes when the target is on the wall— it is generally speaking better to camp GS if on the wall because of WWA stacking a considerable amount of might along with all of the hits landing on the target. Take bladetrail out of the rotation if the target is on the wall too since it’s not really a gain unless it hits twice.

OH axe does not do serious damage. Even when the 17% damage increase to whirling axe happens it still won’t be worth using in PvE. Maybe you meant to type MH instead of OH?

I’m not doing A/M for this because I rarely do much besides Arah/FotM 50 these days, where sword OH or warhorn are generally preferable over mace with the exception of a group doing something like for example, Old Tom in harpy fractal or the final encounter there as well. You won’t have a consistent rotation for either of these anyways.

So, with that cleared this is my general rotation for GS + A/S

Eviscarate is not a good idea to use unless it’s a finishing move because you want that extra precision with 65003. If you were somehow able to keep fast hands trait while taking 1 of discipline and going 6 into arms, then yeah you could probably sacrifice the precision from the signet to add it into your rotation but as it stands, even with deep strikes I still very much want more precision. To add a burst skill into your rotation here would mean a large enough crit chance loss to miss on everything else that you do with GS and that not only means less damage from not critting, it means less damage from less might stacks (forceful greatsword won’t proc as often).

I suggest these utilities for skill points:

-Signet of Fire
-Signet of Air
-Arcane Wave
-Arcane Shield
-Conjure Lightning Hammer
-Conjure Ice Bow
-Conjure Firey Greatsword

Those are the most useful utilities overall for PvE. There’s a lot of other ones that are good too but they’re much more niche.

Make sure you also get the Arcane Brilliance + Glyph heals!

lol

http://puu.sh/aRvaf.png

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Ah I think I get it now. The constant patches are simply making PVE less enjoyable than what it was.

In effect, Anet is making you take more time to do what you previously tentatively enjoyed at best, due to bugs, lack of endgame content, and oversimplification of existing content to cater to new players.

It’s almost like the portion of the game you enjoyed is being removed, due to the lower dungeons being rofleasy and the higher ones taking ages due to the warrior reductions.

Understandable. I apologize for and recant my previous statement.

Yeah, you did a good job at concisely explaining most of what I was trying to say but I want to correct you on the “higher ones taking ages” part. Instead of wording it like that, it’d be more accurate to merely state “taking longer” because the difference in for example a Lupicus solo is roughly 40 or so seconds now compared to what they were before any of these nerfs took place. With the soon-to-come nerf, it’s likely going to be another 30 seconds slower.

Thanks for the apology, I’m glad we understand each other.

I’m not experienced with classes outside of warr/elementalist really, but I can definitely say that for groups ele is the best for what you’re asking. I’m never an advocate for PS on a warrior because of how much they have to sacrifice for it. An ele doesn’t sacrifice personal DPS while maintaining close to capped might just with their own fire fields and blasts and fury and as others have said, are capable of capping vuln with FGS + weak spot.

As far as vuln is concerned, I’m not entirely sure how ele compares with warrior when FGS isn’t included. A GS + A/M warrior with V in arms will be able to contribute quite a bit of vuln on bosses, and I’m pretty sure they’d be able to apply more vuln stacks over time than an ele would with just D/F or S/F+LH, but taking the mace out of the equation I think they’d be roughly equal for vuln. Someone else will probably post and correct me, just guesstimating on that.

Haven’t seen any besides the axe so far, but when I saw it I thought “o… shiiiiiiiney.”

Even if they aren’t that impressive to you, chances are they will be to many others. I would prefer them to keep releasing new skins. Eventually they’ll release some that will really appeal to you. :P

I read it.

I agree with you on just about everything but I want to make it clear to you that there will no matter what always be metas. There’s always a best and a worst. If there wasn’t, then there would be no way of distinguishing whether or not something was better or worse than something else.

What it seems like you’re suggesting is you want things to be more niche than they currently are so that there are less setups that are effective in a variety of situations. More specifically, it seems like you want to eradicate the existence of an all-purpose setup I guess?

For the most part that’s somewhat already the case, but I get your point.

nearlight.3064:

These warrior changes are fine. I’m still holding my breath for the ele/necro/mesmer changes though… since if they want the classes to be on an even playing field the ele could get nerfed in some sustained dps aspects while necros/mesemers could get buffed.

I’m just glad that I won’t have to worry about bad hambows anymore.

As for the PvE implications, well that sucks.. but as long as icebows and FGS+walls are a thing its not like it will even matter save for arah/fractals.. in which case I’m actually a bit happy that some other class could usurp warrior as the ultimate pugclass. But I’m also really biased against easy to play professions.. so theres that too.

The main problem is that they’re responding to all of the people who whine about warriors being overpowered and are making balance changes with benefits only for PvP. They are once again enforcing changes that are primarily PvP-related and still refuse to separate PvP from PvE. If they’d split the two entirely, it’d be perfectly fine.

First of all, PTV is a poor choice for PvE unless you’re doing open world bosses like Tequatl that can’t be crit. In open world roaming there’s hardly anything threatening so there’s really no point in using anything besides all-out DPS. In a group setting (like dungeons) you want to contribute as much as possible by providing might, fury and as much damage as you can.

Sometimes blinds/projectile blocks are needed and you’re able to apply that with LH autoattack chain (blind on the final hit), sandstorm (glyph of storms utility with earth attunement), swirling winds (air attunement focus #4), and your elite for summoning an elemental (use earth attunement elemental, as it will survive longer and bodyblock/absorb more projectiles).

Basically, you can utilize all of the support that a dungeon party will ever need regardless of what build you’re using. So if you are in full berserker, you are optimizing your potential contribution. It’s true that eles are the squishiest and will get absolutely destroyed on many occasions, but with practice and well-timed use of defensive skills and utilities you can survive. For dungeons, use focus as it has wonderful utility and offers better potential for stacking might (extra blast finisher) than dagger offhand does.

Scepter in PvE is truly terrible damage and the only use for it is for stacking might, typically before engaging in a fight (called “prestacking”). If you’re doing dungeons and use scepter, it’s supposed to be because you’re relying on your conjured weapons for DPS. The scepter is only there to stack might, as it offers superior might-stacking potential to that of a dagger (not by much, but it has decent burst). The problem is that if you’re with pugs, they often loot your LH and when that happens… you’re stuck with awful DPS.

So with that in mind, you should basically always be using either D/F or Staff in dungeons. S/F+LH is superior DPS, but trust me it just doesn’t work in pugs most of the time. You want people to loot your ice bows/firey greatswords most of the time, but not your LH— that’s yours!

The typical trait point allocation is 6/6/2/0/0 or 6/4/2/2/0 or 6/6/0/0/2 or 6/2/2/2/2 depending on what weapons you’re using, what dungeon/fractal you’re doing, how many other eles are in the group and what is needed of you.

For detailed information on builds, I really really suggest you check out DeKeyz’s guides and the extremely detailed elementalist class guide made by haviz & zelyhn on dulfy. They’re the best ele guides you’ll ever find for PvE!

If it’s possible to solo Arah with no armor/trinkets now, what leads you to believe that it might not be possible to do after they nerf damage on GS by 5% and adrenaline?

It’s just once again Arenanet balancing combat around PvP-related activities and ignoring how it impacts those that play in PvE, resulting in just constant pointless damage nerfs. Warriors aren’t unbalanced on a high skill level in PvE, so all this is going to do is annoy everyone in PvE that plays on this class.

Not only is this a single encounter of yours of which we have to take your word for it having happened exactly as you described with which you’re describing as the deciding factor to determine whether or not warriors are overpowered… but as the poster above said the balance patch hasn’t even happened yet!

What are you on about, OP?

I guess it makes sense why I’m not familiar with it, because I only have ever played warrior and elementalist.

I get really annoyed with phase 2 RNG 1-shotting when on Ruby Miku so I always wall him with FGS. I’m tempted to check this “safe zone” out with staff now lol… oh god wait what am I thinking, off-wall staff solo?!

Wethospu.6437:

Purple Miku.7032:

Agreed with this all except what do you mean by “safe zone”? I’m aware of his ranged attack not hitting when standing in melee range but you can always be hit by his sweeps if in melee range unless you go behind him, which makes perfect sense to me. I’m guessing you’re talking about something else.

At certain range he won’t use sweeps and bolts won’t hit you.

But isn’t it out of melee range (at least on a warrior)? I feel kind of ashamed for not knowing this detail. I haven’t really put any effort into looking for a spot like this before but I’m interested now.

Doesn’t sound like it’d be worth the money at all because making mystic salvage kits is super cheap and easy + quick to do. The only reason the copper salvage o matic is so awesome is because you can use it on all the trash items that aren’t worth using mystic kits on while at the same time conserving loads of inventory space that you’d have had to waste on basic/fine kits.

For people like me who probably don’t use mystic kits on anything lower than yellows/rares, you don’t go through them enough to justify needing or wanting the silver salvage o matic.

Rant time.

I really can’t stand how so many people are under the misguided idea that people with commander tags in PvE actually do anything useful or different than other people (exception of those at Wurm, as they and most of the others in organised overflows are typically on Teamspeak and working closely with one another). Even for Tequatl, they don’t do squat. Just about everybody is conditioned to go to the same general areas and just spam things off cooldown.

Sadly when people look at their maps and don’t see commander tags, they tend to immediately assume things like “oh there’s barely anyone here wtf we’re gonna fail” and I think part of the reason for that is because they’re assuming that that’s what everyone else is thinking too. It’s an irritating psychological effect I guess.

It’s very uncommon for me to go to a Tequatl event and for it to fail unless I’m there really late and get in a trashy overflow where there’s evidently enough people to get it done, but half of them aren’t doing anything other than trying to get themselves taxi’d into another overflow because they lack confidence in the one that they’re in.

Lindbur.2537:

Fat chance. This is the trashcan, expect no love from ANet here.

Even if we were to buy thousands and thousands of gems, they won’t care. Internet sportz and Living Story are more important.

If I ever put up an LFG that’s really goofy like “P3 must be an idiot irl and lure trash mobs in full WvW build” I’ll typically get people that are good, sometimes people that know me and are on my contacts list… whereas if I put something like “P3 full DPS gearcheck no amateurs allowed” I’ll get complete morons that not only didn’t read the LFG and don’t ping equipment, but I’ll sometimes get complete morons that aren’t even aware of their gear not being “full DPS” and they’ll have things like PTV/celestial/knight’s etc.

Goofy LFG messages is the way to go imo.

Neptune.2570:

Majority of the warriors I’ve seen are reasonably happy with the changes and not necessarily considering them a nerf either. Seems the change will hit lesser skilled warriors harder then warriors over all.

What about the skilled warrior players in PvE? The ones that strive to optimize DPS and make use of the trait that gives 15% damage bonus when adrenaline is full, meaning increased damage to a burst is essentially useless to us especially considering that eviscarate would be more ideal than arcing slice to begin with?

This is a nerf, and it will in fact hit more so at a higher skill level for PvE players.

Dirame.8521:

Purple Miku.7032:

Sure I understand it’s a long read to many, but no one’s forcing you to come here. If you’re looking for a thread that requires less reading, there’s plenty of other ones to choose from. Go on and see for yourselves.

I read your entire post the first time I posted and all I could gather was that you didn’t like a certain change because it caters to newbs which is why my first post in this thread was phrased the way it was.

And you said, “laugh all you want” and that prompted me to think that you’re angry about the 100B nerf. And you’re still not denying it so I’m going to continue assuming that’s what you’re on about. And frankly that is the silliest thing to be angry about. No offence intended.

I am upset about the nerf to greatsword, but that’s among many other things that I’ve listed in my OP which you chose to ignore. If you’re certain that you don’t have a problem understanding what I’ve put in my OP, then why are you choosing to believe that I didn’t list a lot of other things that I’m bothered from instead of just that one particular detail?

You’re being extremely pedantic about it. I understand that most of the things that I’m bothered from you aren’t, but I don’t think that justifies you basically telling me that none of it counts as a valid complaint just because you don’t have a problem with them, which is what I infer from you telling me that you can “summarize this block of text with the fact that I’m upset about 100b getting nerfed’.”

If it helps, I’ll elaborate on why I have a problem with greatswords being nerfed since you are focusing so much on it. I do not do PvP on GW2. I hate it. Because of that, this change does absolutely nothing beneficial for me. Berserker’s Power is an obvious choice of a trait when you’re focusing on maximizing DPS, so burst skills aren’t viable options here unless used as a finishing move. Since mobs and bosses on this game have a ton of HP (which I have complained about in my OP), this means burst skills are pretty much useless altogether.

So it’s pretty obvious that I’m taking once again another hit here. To make things worse, I’m someone that has enjoyed soloing dungeons. I’ve also loved going for my best times and pushing myself to see how fast I can do things such as Lupicus solos or Korga solos and such. This warrior nerf is an additional nerf to the following:

-The implementation of ferocity which completely trivialized all of the lower-tiered dungeons to the point of none of them being even remotely challenging to solo, my damage is very very very noticeably reduced in the higher dungeons (more specifically, anywhere that I’m level near or at level 80 rather than downscaled). Any groups aside from those pug teams consisting of first-timers will find all of the dungeons drastically easier. While some people enjoy the idea of being able to play with totally subpar setups and still be able to win every time, this alienates people that prefer challenge.

-The changes to stacking sigils (i.e. Bloodlust, Accuracy). They were completely fine the way that they were. The DPS increase in a group setting was very negligible in a casual run of any dungeon path and it was never a deciding factor to determine whether or not groups were able to succeed. Not only are they still buggy with underwater vs. land weapons, but there was virtually nothing in PvE to justify the change. Before this change, these sigils were very purposeful. Afterwards they’re not even worth using aside from super niche situations like someone attempting for a Lupicus solo record. The only logical conclusion is that the nerf was either WvW or PvP related.

-The nerf to strength runes. While this change wasn’t nearly as noticeable as the previous two were, it was almost completely redundant as far as PvE is concerned. Prior to them nerfing the damage by 2%, it was already well-established that Scholar runes were optimal for DPS in a group setting with appropriate fury/might uptime. It was already well-established that Strength runes were optimal for solo settings, as a person in a solo setting is never able to maintain 100% uptime on capped might/fury. After the change, these facts remain the same. Absolutely nothing changed other than slightly reduced damage output for Strength runes users. Once again, this change was only because of PvP/WvW. I will agree that Strength runes for sure deserved tweaking, but all Arenanet decided to do was nerf damage. Why? Why not implement a tradeoff for the damage like the conditional 10% damage modifier from Scholar runes? It was a very lazy change and poorly thought out.

I can elaborate more on this, but it’s getting to be a pretty long response as it is. Would you care for me to go into detail about any of the other things that I’ve mentioned in my OP and explain why I’m bothered by them as well?

dlonie.6547:

I’m NA :-( I know of some exploration paths that still get you to Farnaz and eventually Corrupted Lights, but haven’t gotten around to trying them yet. I need to get back in there and see how far I can get again :-)

And I totally understand the frustrating jumps. The old way out of the lobby with the coral (after they put in the first wall…) took me about an hour the first time I did it, but after a few runs I had it down to about 3 minutes. Just gotta learn where the invisible bumps are.

I think my favorite was the one after Belka. Man, you could see everything from on top of that one. I wonder if you can still get there from p3…

It’s like a more challenging SAB with random boss fights thrown into the mix

I’m going to add you ingame. I feel like I’d be able to make you pretty happy with some of the stuff that I know.

Azure, I really don’t care about what you have to say at this point. Black Box.9312 hit the nail on the head— you just told me everything that’s in my post is invalid and are attacking me for something that isn’t even true. I’ve mentioned everything that I’m bothered from and if you choose to not believe me, that’s your call.

I already explained why these Living Story updates aren’t enough. It’s ultimately the same thing as before; just stuff you can get done within an hour or two then you’re back to doing the exact same stuff you’ve done since launch waiting for weeks until you can have 1-2 hours of new content again. Oh boy!

—

Also Harper, I’m glad we agree with each other on so many of these issues but thanks for bringing up the lack of communication bit. Good freakin’ point.

While I understand the significance of making sure you don’t give your customers the wrong impression, communication can’t just be eradicated entirely because you want to make sure you don’t say something that you change your mind about later! Wtf!

Completely agree with you on that. It’s not hard to tell your playerbase what’s going on, as they obviously just did on their stream recently talking about upcoming balance changes.

On this note it’s also very sad that they can’t be honest about things that they eventually mess with in a dungeon. For example, Alphard’s hook attack was bugged for nearly a year and would always instantly 1-shot anyone pulled… they finally change it back to normal without a word of it anywhere in the patch notes. Such idiots, seriously. I think most people actually referred to it as Alphard getting “nerfed” because they were so used to the glitch that they thought that it was actually the way she was intended to be. That’s really pathetic.

Nope. There’s only one little jump in the many places that I know to that will be super frustrating at first, but once you get it then everything becomes a sinch.

It can all be done with an ele, engineer, guard (I think?), and I guess other classes can too if they borrow a LH. Warrior and engineer are by far the best classes for mountain goating, but with engineer reigning supreme.

I’ll take you on mountain goat tours on EU if you’d like so just send me mail and I’ll pm you back when I’m next on :o

Wethospu.6437:

spoj.9672:

Most people cant even dodge grubs. They probably wouldnt have dps gear either.

It would be really stupid for anet to change a boss which has been considered challenging and well designed for the last 2 years.

I honestly wouldn’t call Lupicus well designed, perhaps just designed. Plenty of bugs, inconsistencies and trivial attacks.

For example

- Prevent instant reset at doors and Lupicus walking out of arena
- Prevent players getting out of combat inside the arena

Phase 1:
- Should attack more frequently (kick and infection) to increase pressure
- Infection should be an area attack with poison gas effect
- Locusts shouldn’t spawn behind wall
- Locust spawns should be normalized
- Roar should cause frontal infection cone
- Double effect of Empowered
- Remove or rework phase grub

Phase 2:
- Add missing circles to frenzied blasts
- Fix bug with dash making Lupicus disappear
- Make sweep more faster and frequent to increase pressure
- Stop using bolt on close targets
- Remove safe zone (no melee hits or bolts)
- Remove reflect instagib: Damage cap/reduction or make projectiles appear higher

Phase 3:
- Remove walling
- Stop using bolt on close targets

Agreed with this all except what do you mean by “safe zone”? I’m aware of his ranged attack not hitting when standing in melee range but you can always be hit by his sweeps if in melee range unless you go behind him, which makes perfect sense to me. I’m guessing you’re talking about something else.

dlonie.6547:

Agony.3542:

Lastly lazy fixes of glitches and bugs (invisible walls and such) instead of really getting to the root of evil made “exploration” in arah nigh impossible while still allowing fancy exploiters to skip 90% of the bosses, including lupicus.

This pushed me enough to take a few multi-month long breaks, too. Mountain goating was so much fun, but they decided it was easier to kill it than make bosses unskippable. A huge source of fun was taken out of the game for me when they put up those walls. I still have a buried hope that they will do the right thing someday — make the bosses required for rewards and take down the walls. It still kittenes me off that I can’t explore the dungeon as freely as I used to (without making any profit, btw), but folks can still skip Lupi and sell.

#GiveUsBackArah

As for some of the stats, I’m at 1.5k hours and have 86 stacks of Hobby Dungeon Explorer. I’m sure that’s a fraction of what some of you have (lol @7.5k hours swifty), but it sounds like a lot to me O.o

You’re wrong. I can show you how to get to all of the places, for example that old coral. Mountain goating will always survive. ALWAYS.

Zaxares.5419:

That’s why I’ve always supported Tequatl and the Triple Wurm scaling a bit better for lower numbers of players, so success is not so dependent on having the majority (if not all) the players in a map participating.

It’s already AFKable enough… sorry, but no. If it’s going to stay open world then this idea is terrible. I understand your point but the drawback certainly outweighs the benefit, as there’s already a huge lack of “end game” content as is.

dlonie.6547:

deSade.9437:

So if you’re bad at math=an idiot? No, not talking about extremely simple things like 3-3×2 or something.
Why are “science” people so irritating?

It’s a better measure than AP checks :P

Personally, I think just something that just shows they read the LFG is best (“say ‘purple lupi dong’ on join or kick”), but order-of-operations trolling does sound fun

Or give them another shot at the math after asking them to remember to excuse Aunt Sally first.

PURPLE LUPI?! :O

Coldtart.4785:

I don’t see what anyone expects anyone to be able to do about pve. It doesn’t matter how many dungeons you make or how ‘hardcore’ you try to make it, at the end of the day it’s still pve. You’re still just fighting against AI that’s been programmed to lose.

I understand your point, but that’s something I’m advocating against. I want AI that isn’t programmed the same way that we’re all used to. I want to be challenged with really hard encounters. I know that it won’t happen, sadly.

maha.7902:

robertul.3679:

“melee lupi” is an attempt to find decent players since it seems more reliable than “experienced”.

Hardly. 99% of the time it’s just bad players looking for a carry. The remainder is actual experienced players too lazy or unwilling to solo so they’re hoping and praying they don’t get players that suck.

Pretty much this.

I never join groups if I see an AP requirement, says “need mesmer” or “melee lupi.” It’s always going to be the kind of people that are really clumsy and slow yet act like they’re good. As for the AP requirement… well, self explanatory. People that think farming living story achievements will have any outcome on the skill level of a player are obviously clueless as well.

I also never join tar help LFGs anymore these days either since half of them are neanderthals that skip Lupicus anyways.

spoj.9672:

Friends, community and hope (futile hope) is the only thing keeping me here. That and theres no other games I want to play.

I stopped playing a while back because i felt completely burnt out. I couldnt even motivate myself to leech dungeons off the guild. The lack of new skills and end game content this late into the game has finally taken its toll. Theres no freshness anymore. The season 2 patches are what caused me to finally give up i think. They gave me some content to enjoy for a day, but after that i couldnt be bothered to do anything else.

I will be playing a bit again soon. But i dont expect ill ever get back to being fully active like i was several months ago. Unless we get some new stuff which makes the game feel fresh (new weapons, skills and dungeons).

This, except I’m only just phasing into what spoj here has described. I have played a lot, but not for as long as many of you guys so my motivation wasn’t shot until recently due to a series of bullsh__ things happening (Twitch getting bought by Google + ferocity + strength runes nerf + bloodlust nerfed + warriors getting nerfed, etc).

linuxotaku.4731:

Oxidia.8103:

You can range the molten zerk but on higher lvls he has much much much more hp. It would take forever to range him. Keep in mind that while on ranged the other boss spawns aoe everywhere because party is scattered and in some point the party wipes because it’s imposible to dodge.

I’ve ranged him on 49 and 50. It goes much faster melee, if you can pull that off — but I’ve seen more PUGs doing ranged than melee. The last time I did it (49), after 3 failed tries (definitely didn’t feel like a full DPS party, though I was wearing my full DPS gear) — we started (mostly) melee and switched to ranged once there were too many red circles — that worked.

Pretty much don’t have a choice when you get people that aren’t all-out DPS and don’t utilize their skills to their fullest and/or spam cc without thinking. It’s pretty much guaranteed success rate with a well-timed deep freeze, reflects, time warp (if there’s a mesmer) and 2 ice storms with both banners. Sadly this is too much to ask of most pugs, so yeah ranging is just about the only option you have in some cases.

IvanTheGrey.2941:

Purple Miku.7032:

I know something that helped me a lot when getting used to Mai Trin at first was putting my graphics on absolute minimum settings. You wouldn’t believe it to make that much of a difference but try it and see for yourself.

You’ll mutter “holy sh__” outloud in surprise at how much easier it is to react on time when in groups, especially with those guardian animations blooming the hell out of the place.

Crap! Does that work on Archdiviner too? What a GREAT idea!!! Can’t wait to try it out! Having massive problems dodging said bosses on my full height and size norn guardian This would be a gift from the gods.

Well it doesn’t change anything about his hammer cleaving from a mile away, but yeah it should make it easier to notice his animations.