Guild Wars 2

I don’t suggest S/D for anything in PvE other than for premight stacking, which might be a little over your head right now if you’re new to the class.

D/D is generally not that good of an idea unless you’re soloing in open world. If that’s the case, then go for it. You should generally stack might for yourself by starting in fire and opening with either burning speed or ring of fire, swapping to water and using #3 (frozen burst), using your heal for the blast finisher (if it’s arcane brilliance) and swapping to earth for #4 along with using arcane wave (utility) as well. Then just camp air, as dagger’s best DPS is air’s autoattack.

To add to the above, if you’re solo roaming in open world it might be better to use the glyph heal instead of arcane brilliance unless you’re surrounded by a lot of trash mobs. Glyph gives 3 stacks of might if used in fire attunement, resulting in the same you’d get from arcane brilliance in a fire field. Glyph can also be used for swiftness when running around if used in air attunement, which is nice.

When you get to dungeons you’ll probably want to be using D/F a lot, because while S/F + LH is fantastic DPS, you’ll find that pugs tend to be annoying little ****s that steal your LH and if that happens, you’re stuck with awful DPS. I don’t suggest scepter in pug dungeon runs unless you’re with people that you know aren’t stupid. :P

Neko.9021:

GW2 was actually marketed as an e-sport at launch, just as it was marketed as a non-trinity MMO. I think a lot of people just didn’t pay attention to the marketing though, and were just expecting a game like others (and were surprised to find something quite different).

Anyway, something I find quite interesting about the development and balance in GW2 is how damage has changed over the course of the game’s history. In the beginning, damage in PvE was stupendously high, crit damage allowed players to do absolutely monstrous damage, while in PvP it was much much lower. Forward to today, and we see that the curve of damage has really changed for both game types. ANet nerfed a lot of the damage in PvE (the crit damage -> Ferocity change was the biggest, but a lot of things such as moving the Warrior’s Heightened Focus from Adept to Grandmaster also show how ANet slowly worked to lower damage in PvE over time), but it also greatly increased the damage in PvP. Double Sigil procs (such as Fire+Air now working together) carry more defensive specs such as S/D Acro Thief, or even older builds like Shatter Mesmer, and have them do FAR more burst damage in PvP than they ever did at the start of the game. Celestial Stat buff and Strength Runes made all defensive specs that much stronger. The result is that all classes can now run builds that are tankier, can do more burst damage than at launch, sustain more Might than at launch, but the sustained damage of PvE Zerker DPS builds has significantly gone down since launch as well (ferocity nerf, stacking sigil nerf, etc.).

Basically, ANet increased player damage in PvP, while it decreased player damage in PvE, which is arguably the opposite of what they should be doing to keep the game interesting and balanced. It’s kinda baffling when you think about it. Heck, the change to Warrior Greatsword (nerfing the damage of Hundred Blades, while increasing the damage of the burst skill) shows that they intend to continue this trend of making classes do more PvP damage but less PvE damage.

But that’s precisely what I find so bizarre. They’re doing everything that they can to make this as casual-friendly as possible and ensure that even the newest players are able to get everything done in new content updates (is it so much to ask for some content that’s challenging enough to keep me busier than an hour or two…?), yet at the same time want to try to force the notion of the game being competitive? Wat…? It just doesn’t work, and the reason for it is because the bulk of the players that are attracted to competitive gameplay are probably not going to choose GW2 for their cravings. I chose to play initially because of friends that were on it and pretty much made challenge for myself by soloing all of the group content. I’m to the point where I’m finding myself doing “naked” dungeon solos now, for christ sake. I’m bored. Even if I log in sparingly for just the Living Story, I’m done with it so soon it’s disheartening. :/

It really seems like they’re trying to give people out there the impression that they can satisfy the cravings of gamers like those in the tournaments of League of Legends, for example. I’ve watched gameplay on there and tournament rounds on twitch for GW2 and that’s something that’s run through my mind before.

I don’t think it’s a good idea for them to be continuing the trend you’re describing with increasing PvP damage and decreasing PvE damage. They aren’t doing anything to improve the existing PvE content at all or make the encounters more interesting/engaging, so what’s the point in decreasing damage? It doesn’t make it harder and it doesn’t make it more fun for anyone to just repeatedly increase how long it takes to kill trash mobs. If a dungeon is to take longer, then mechanics should be changed; change a boss’s attacks to be less generic. All of these highly-telegraphed and slow attacks and copy/paste mob AI result in really stale encounters.

It’s extremely annoying how they’re leaving rewards the way that they are; just a bunch of trash to salvage and not care about, lower damage repeatedly, not fix bugs, ignore dungeons and those that want new ones…

Dirame.8521:

Purple Miku.7032:

Laugh all you want. I’m still correct, so whatevs.

Really? This is all about the 100B nerf? How is the game catering to newbs with that?

Nerfing 100B (the most spammed ability in all of PvE) = Catering to newbs

My brain just imploded.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Hold on.

Is this whole wall of text because they reduced Hundred Blades damage?

you’re speaking about PVP-Changes ruining the PVE aspect of the game, right? Only two classes have gotten a nerf so far because of issues with PVP content.

I’m probably crazy, but I squeezed that whole wall down into “Damage has been nerfed into the ground, PVE is now boring because it’s more friendly to newcomers.”

Even though:

Ranger got a buff
Warrior got a buff that almost supercedes the hundredblades nerf.

The rest is fluff.

…We’re getting LS updates every two weeks, and its L80 only. There will be bugs, Tyria is huge, and they constantly have to update large swaths of it with every living story update.

I’m hardly uptight regarding your complaint, but more confused as to what the nature of it is.

I’m confused as to why you two gentlemen are posting on my thread if you’re too lazy to read it all. What gives?

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 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.

Dalanor.5387:

IvanTheGrey.2941:

Or, you could do what Liahm and I did a couple months back: Put a math problem in the lfg. If they can’t solve it, kick ’em.

Yeah, those usually end like this. The math was 2+3x2.

I’m going to do the same thing as this, but make the problem:

“Integrate sec(x).”

Gl pugs.

Dirame.8521:

Purple Miku.7032:

I’m not mindlessly ranting about how much I hate the game because I don’t. I’m just disappointed to see that once again, they’re nerfing damage, forcing their game to be as casual-friendly as possible yet trying to force e-sports into it at the same time (doesn’t even make sense to me how they think it’s ever going to work), ignoring dungeons and loads of bugs/exploits that have been around for longer than a year, and not introducing any content with meaningful rewards or content to challenge anybody besides newcomers.

I understand why, but it doesn’t mean that I like the way things are.

All of these things on my mind coupled with the fact that Google has now bought out Twitch and make it impossible to stream with music make me sad. I have lost all motivation to play and it’s inevitable that I will not remain an active GW2 player for very much longer.

I’m sorry what damage was nerfed exactly? If what you’re talking about is the PvE damage of mobs then I get your post but if it’s Warrior damage then all I’ve got is laughter for you.

Oh yea, everyone in Arenanet is working on esphats. I mean, they couldn’t possibly be working on anything else with over 300 employees. Esphats definitely has to be the reason they haven’t fixed all the things wrong with the game.

Laugh all you want. I’m still correct, so whatevs.

gamersuman.6943:

Boneheart.3561:

Because they look awesome.

Even if they changed it’s process into a scavenger hunt, the desire would still mostly be for their awesome skin.

Dunno what’s wrong with me but I just don’t find those legendary skins appealing at all.

Don’t sorry good sir.

I too find a lot of the legendaries pretty ugly.

The ones that I like are:
-Eternity
-Predator
-Twilight
-Sunrise
-Incinerator
-Bolt (I don’t even want Bolt because I think Whisperblade looks better)

All the other ones can kiss my purple kitten .

I don’t care. They don’t even have to ask, but I’m not going to wait for them to load or anything. As long as it’s not wasting my own time it doesn’t matter.

Pugging FotM is just AIDS. There’s nothing worse, especially if it’s harpy fractal jesus christ…

What you’re doing is good, and I hope you find the people you’re looking for to play with. If it helps, I recommend making sure you are always getting people in full DPS equipment and frequently change weapons depending on what they’re doing. I avoid pugging fractals unless I’m 100% certain that every person on the team is wearing equipment that doesn’t have either toughness, vitality, healing power or condition damage attributes and I don’t have staff guards, rifle warriors, gs mesmers, longbow rangers or thieves with pistol MH etc. It’s always worth waiting around in swamp for a little longer to make sure you get the kind of team that you want.

I’d just like the ability to sort my list based off of:

online/offline
alphabetical order A-Z or Z-A
location
server
class type

Would be nice.

rfdarko.4639, thanks for the feedback. It was mostly to get things off my chest, as you said. I also sincerely doubt that I’ll be taken seriously from any developers because I’m just one player and I’m a part of the community that they least care about.

Shandia.1934, the twitch changes coupled with the things mentioned in my OP have killed my motivation to continue. I also want to add that as a competitive dungeon runner, it disappoints me that I have no competition these days for anything other than the huge number of people that only just started learning to solo Arah and only care about selling the path… for cheap prices as well. I can’t convince anyone to compete with me for the fastest Lupicus solo times, I can’t convince people to race and challenge me to different bosses (like Korga, for example) and I can’t convince people to stop undercutting each other. Even prior to the twitch changes all I was really doing the past two weeks was streaming myself on my mountain goat adventures.

I think it might be a sign for me to move on. Glad you’ve enjoyed my music though… to entertain was always what I’ve wanted.

spoj.9672:

MMO’s are primarily PvE games. That is where the largest playerbase is in most MMO’s. So yeah its kind of ironic how they put so little into their largest gametype. 2 year old game, no new weapons, no new skills, no new dungeons, no decent skill based rewards.

Things really do need to pick up soon because I honestly dont know how long they can keep us straggling along. I managed to last almost 2 years but ive barely logged in for the last month. Its finally got to that point where i cant motivate myself to play even for those shiny skins i want so much anymore. And i was already in a state of “theres nothing to do” a year ago.

Hey Spoj! I thought the very same thing— how ironic it is that the majority of the playerbase partakes the most in PvE related content yet that’s what tends to get the least attention. However, it’s worth mentioning that Living Story releases are PvE-related content. This is the biggest focus on the PvE side of the community as it’s what most of the playerbase would prefer. Dungeons are miniscule by comparison as far as popularity is concerned so they don’t care as much. I don’t think that’s good enough of a reason to justify abandoning them entirely which is exactly what has happened.

So it looks like we’re in the same boat— I don’t really know what else to do either. I’ve been patient but I think it’s been long enough for me to express my distaste in the direction that this game’s been heading.

Black Box.9312:

I agree with the premise of this thread 100%.

I’ve always thought it to be highly ironic that Anet is pushing so hard to make this game both casual-friendly and a high end e-sport. The two seem quite contradictory to me, and the current balancing method where usually non-substantial changes (that typically shift the meta of each game mode in different directions) are spread out months apart just shows how much of a mess it seems to be.

The season 2 living story content seems pretty solid IMO, but all it’s doing is leaving me wondering why they aren’t bothering to go back and fix the stuff that we were given at launch; the bulk of the game that we all paid our money for. The open world that is largely ignored nowadays because there’s nothing really to do once you’ve done original map completion. The dungeons that have poorly designed enemies that provide virtually no valuable reward other than a small fraction of a percent of the gold required to get the ACTUAL rewards. Hell, even PvP, where it’s either zergtrains in WvW or a single bland point-capture game in sPvP.

It just feels like Anet looked at this game and said, “Well, it’s not completely broken, so let’s not waste our time worrying about it.” It feels like they’re trying so hard to be new and innovative and different with this whole living story thing that they’re not paying attention to the fact that it’s only a small portion of the game, and everything else needs to receive adequate attention as well. It feels like they’re largely ignoring a community that at times seems to know their own game better than they do.

And the most frustrating part of it all is that I can’t just drop everything and leave. I just see all of this potential in this game because of what it DOES have. The combat mechanics are excellent. The visuals are amazing. The world and lore is unique and fascinating. It just hurts so bad to see all of this potential go to waste because it’s lacking the necessary content to take advantage of these things. It’s like having a fine china plate with polished silver utensils, but no food to eat with it. And the players are getting very, very hungry.

This is an absolute fantastic post. Thank you for the reply!

Glad we agree with each other. It’s a rather relieving feeling to read posts like this so that I don’t feel alone with my dissatisfaction and disappointment, but at the same time kind of sad as well.

The problem with the round pillar behind her is that it’s absolute trash for a greatsword, but perfect for axe. Unfortunately, the axe chain will get you murdered with 25 stacks of confusion so it’s safer to begin a 100b chain as it counts as a single attack so you won’t take the confusion damage.

The pillar that I begin the fight in is ideal for dealing the most damage and wonderful for greatsword but makes it exceedingly dangerous if you happen to get RNG’d and turned into a god kitten kittening bird right when the clones spawn.

For Farnaz/Lyssa, I think this is the fastest solo I have of her if you’re still trying.
http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4394006
I lag out for a few seconds a few times in this, you’ll notice it a little after 1:40 when I’m like “wtf” because everything freezes for a few seconds so I run away and block with shield randomly.

Shield isn’t necessary but it’s not like any other offhands really help here anyways. Sword could’ve worked but I think what stopped me from using it is that I wasn’t sure whether or not retaliating from the block would count as another attack and cause me to take confusion damage.

Either way, let me know if you have any questions about it.

As for Melandru, I use the traits 65003 and I swap forceful greatsword for crack shot. The rotation that I use is with both rifle+longbow. You do rifle #3, then autoattack 3 times after and weapon swap to longbow. Since all longbow skills have nearly the same cast time, I do exactly 5 attacks with the longbow before swapping back to rifle. The opening attack with longbow is always #3, then I will do either 4 autoattacks or 3 autoattacks + pin down. If pin down is on cooldown then just replace it with an autoattack.

So it’s like this:

Rifle3 > Rifle AA > Rifle AA > Rifle AA > [swap] > Longbow3 > Longbow AA > Longbow AA > Longbow AA > Longbow AA

Replace one of the Longbow AA’s with Pin Down whenever it’s off cooldown, and if you’re planting a banner or activating signet of range then remove one of the longbow attacks since the cast time for these is similar. For example, if I was on longbow and activate SoR then I’d do only 4 attacks total before swapping back to rifle that time instead of the normal 5.

Hopefully this will make sense, because it’s a little weird to type.

NewTrain.7549, they are balancing around PvP. It’s not delusional, it’s all over the forums and they have a livestream with people talking about it. Just because it’s in a terrible state doesn’t mean that they aren’t balancing around it, it just means they’re doing a trashy job (I’m inferring that this is how you feel based off of the way you responded to me).

Flitzie.6082, the kind of PvE that I’m talking about is generalized as all PvE but the kind that I focus on the most is dungeons & fractals and to be even more specific, I even solo all of this stuff as well. I understand your love of WvW and I can relate to how you feel, but to me interest fades in it fast as well because of how dead it tends to be unless you’re following a commander with just about everybody else. The whole “capture points” thing gets old fast for me and it’s bothersome that the borderlands maps are all the exact same. For me to hold interest, some pretty large changes would need to be made. It’s a great game mode but it’s not intense enough for my tastes.

Im Mudbone.1437:

hannah mee.7925:

This game’s directed toward casuals and the best way to make the most of it is to play it casually.

IMO, any game that has TIME GATED play requireing you to log in each and every day to obtain IS NOT a game for casuals.

But that isn’t even the case. You can bypass the time gating for dungeons by doing PvP for reward tracks to get the gear, can repeat the same paths as many times as you want to (for 20 tokens instead of 60), can bypass the daily ascended crafting by just buying fully crafted material on the trading post, can bypass the need for daily fotm by getting the rings elsewhere, can bypass the need to do weekly guild missions should you want to by just buying with laurels and ectoplasms, and getting your daily achievements done can often times be done in for example a single Tequatl event.

Daily skill interruptor, daily condition remover, daily reviver, daily killer, daily group event completer, daily dodger, daily harvester, etc… I find it hard to believe that you don’t find this casual-friendly but whatever.

I agree with you and that’s why it’s so frustrating for me.

Purple Miku.7032:

I don’t like this game’s PvP because it makes me feel like a child in a playpen with this awful announcer voice, generic red vs. blue conquest in a restricted pen with equal armor attributes and no consequences at all for losing. To me it’s boring, and I don’t want to take part of it.

I think I did a good job at explaining how it feels like in a PvP match to me. It doesn’t set the mood for PvP at all for it to seem like such a safe playground. The rewards offered from PvP are completely irrelevant to the activity as well, which also seems really strange. It doesn’t make sense why we should be rewarded with equipment skins that are supposed to be rewards from dungeons.

This is partially why rewards on this game seem so meaningless. I wouldn’t be surprised if they added other methods of obtaining for example, Tequatl weapon skins… like adding the option to purchase them with badges of honor or some crap like that.

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt the way that I do about a game.

GW2 has been competitive with some of the very best subscription-based MMOs out there despite costing significantly less with just their one time payment, which is why I didn’t have as high of expectations. I knew this entire time that a game like this without a subscription fee had to have a catch, especially since its cash shop didn’t even require use of real life money and was only optional.

I figured out over time that the catch was that bugs/popular methods of exploiting would never be fixed unless they were directly tied to living story updates, there would be tons of emphasis on making the game as casual-friendly as possible to make sure that they’d always have new players to profit off of.

I did not anticipate ArenaNet to be so heavily focused on forcing “e-sports” into this game. There is virtually no concern over how balance updates in their PvP portion of the game impact anything in PvE or WvW. I have progressively watched them nerf damage into the ground without making changes to mechanics of bosses or compensating by lowering health pools of any mobs at all. New bugs have been introduced to dungeons without old ones being fixed. Popular world bosses like Tequatl went on with terrible bugs for months before finally being fixed.

As well as the above, there are so many things in this game with meaningless rewards. The fact that over 90% of the items you get are considered ‘salvage-trash’ is pretty sad. Champion bags contain the same dull loot that you get from everything else. Ascended drops from FotM are worth less than rares, since you can’t salvage or sell them and are forced to vendor them.

There’s a lot of people that don’t care about these things at all, but there’s also a lot of people that do. As a PvE player, there’s not a whole lot for me to do. I don’t like this game’s PvP because it makes me feel like a child in a playpen with this awful announcer voice, generic red vs. blue conquest in a restricted pen with equal armor attributes and no consequences at all for losing. To me it’s boring, and I don’t want to take part of it. Because of it, I’m left to mindnumbingly repeat the same things that I have been for such a long time.

There’s been Living Story releases, but the second season isn’t keeping me interested for longer than a few hours on the first day it’s released. There’s no way that it could because it’s designed so that anyone can get it done… so there’s no challenge associated with it.

I’m not mindlessly ranting about how much I hate the game because I don’t. I’m just disappointed to see that once again, they’re nerfing damage, forcing their game to be as casual-friendly as possible yet trying to force e-sports into it at the same time (doesn’t even make sense to me how they think it’s ever going to work), ignoring dungeons and loads of bugs/exploits that have been around for longer than a year, and not introducing any content with meaningful rewards or content to challenge anybody besides newcomers.

I understand why, but it doesn’t mean that I like the way things are.

All of these things on my mind coupled with the fact that Google has now bought out Twitch and make it impossible to stream with music make me sad. I have lost all motivation to play and it’s inevitable that I will not remain an active GW2 player for very much longer.

This situation that I’m in reminds me of what happened with another game that I once loved and was part of for many years, Runescape. It was ultimately destroyed and despite how much I hated everything that was happening to it, I stuck around because it’s tough to get yourself to leave something that becomes so routine especially when you’ve been a part of it for so long. Eventually when my nostalgia was ruined I was able to fully abandon it and move on.

It looks like it’s happening to me here, again. :/

Sorry in advance to those of you that get uptight when people vent about the things they don’t like on the forums.

When I solod him a long time ago I used GS with axe+sword and kept shake it off in case he chilled me. Basically the only thing that would get me screwed over was getting chilled.

You have to play really defensively and break your 100b chains a lot for this guy if on a warrior.

Though in all seriousness if you’re in a PUG that has terrible might stacking it’s probably better to just swap to an ele instead of staying on a warrior and running phalanx strength, since they not only have superior DPS but don’t have to sacrifice all of their own to provide might.

The situation(s) in which phalanx strength is good to take are very niche, but less so than EA is. Geez, it’s quite a bad trait line isn’t it?!

Talyn.3295:

I wish people would try to enjoy the game more rather then spend all their time here on the forums complaining that they haven’t been able to get there Shiny yet.

Posters here can be worse then Skritt. At least Skritt appreciate the shines they have,

I’m gonna be that person here because I’m in a rotten mood.

their

-shakes fist-

The most versatile and overall best warrior build is 65003 GS with axe+X

In most circumstances, I usually use X as my offhand. Most of the time mace isn’t really that practical because in the case of trash mobs they should be dead if you’re in a group too fast for mace #4 or #5 to be very worthwhile. In a boss fight you might be better off using mace, but if it’s a boss that is at least moderately engaging (Lupicus, Mossman, Archdiviner, etc) then you’re best off with sword for the block.

In a typical dungeon run, you’re best off providing basically permanent swiftness and having a blast finisher for the fire fields dropped by an ele (hopefully you’ll have one).

The traits I most commonly have on are:

6 (V IX XI)
5 (V X)
0
0
3 (VI)

However if you want to, you can change dual wielding to great fortitude and just use dual wielding whenever you’re using a sword offhand, and you can change signet mastery for warrior’s sprint if you’d prefer to take warbanner.

A lot of people keep glorifying empowered allies for no good reason because the power it brings is truly negligible unless the team you’re in is all pretty much picture-perfect and organized in meta builds like they’re going for speedclear records or something. Even some of the most prestigious high-end PvE guilds don’t bother with it in their casual runs most of the time.

The tradeoff that the warrior has to make for their own individual output is kind of large for the small party DPS boost the trait offers, making the benefit it offers pretty redundant and your own performance awkward without fast hands and the 10% damage modifier from attack of opportunity… not to mention the loss of 150 ferocity and 50 precision. It really sucks.

Very likely to be able to?

Everyone can solo orbs with a portal device.

DesertRose.2031:

This build is okay if you’re the third or forth warrior in a group.
Your team loses a significant amount of damage if you’re the only Warrior in your group and not bringing Empower Allies and banners.

Empowered Allies is terrible and too crippling for the warrior to justify using it. I’ve done it for one occasion ever and it was completely pointless and I’m ashamed for having used it. Everyone that makes a big deal about using it doesn’t know much about warriors and is just whining for the sake of whining.

As for the OP’s build, good traits but bad offhand and should be using a banner in groups. Don’t bother with two banners unless you have help from someone in the group carrying one of them… otherwise it’s obviously never worth it.

kitten , need to step up my Lupi RNG game I see.

That 74-no-swamp roll though… omg. What the hell even are the odds of that happening? I’m not sure if there’s an equal percentage chance of rolling it as the other options are but it sure as hell doesn’t seem like it. Harpy + Ascalon by far seem like the most common rolls.

I think on NA it’s a lot better to sell Arah than EU. I have some friends on NA servers that laugh at me because of how many problems I have had selling paths that they sell in a fraction of the amount of time I have to wait.

The most 4-swarm spawns I’ve gotten consecutively was four back to back, but I’ve had dozens and dozens of Lupicus phase 1’s where every single Roar attack was at minimum 2 swarms and a few times where I’ve gotten 3 minimally.

By the way on my warrior trial for rT, I had three back to back 4-swarm spawns, all before the phase 1>2 transition for the solo. I ragequit and relogged, lmao.

You’re on!

Let’s do it.

I’m a swarm magnet on Lupi phase 1’s <3

J Eberle.9312:

TI think open world is probably better for that for me and even there I tend to get more fun out of trolling randoms with particle effect stacks and cow tonics while they’re trying to do the cybernasty in some discreet corner of a bar in divinity’s reach.

Hahahaha

No Pulse.2967

Haha, I’ve had him attack me 9 times in a row at the very most. It was during a solo, the most he’s done in a row while in a pug group was 6 times. He’s done 6 in a row plenty of times for me tbh.

The only super-rare RNG I haven’t experienced that I’m just dying to is the legendary level 84 Elite Risen Illusionist spawning in place of the berserker before the Lupicus arena that inappropriately touched Dub.

You don’t use earth 5 on dagger unless you’re premight stacking before a fight.

If you’re premight stacking, you can hit 24 stacks with this rotation…

Start with S/D and use dragon’s tooth (#2) in a ring of fire (#4), immediately use a phoenix (#3) followed by arcane brilliance (healing skill), swap to water attunement and quickly equip a dagger mainhand and use frozen burst (#3), swap to earth attunement and use earth #4 and #5 in that order and while churning earth (#5) is channeling quickly swap to focus and use magnetive wave (#4) and arcane wave (utility) before the fire field ends. Your churning earth channeling won’t be interrupted by these two and will complete after the fire field disappears putting your might at 24. As long as you casted churning earth before the fire field ended, it’ll count as a blast.

If it helps I’ll make a video demonstrating how to do it, let me know if you want one.

Well when I solod a FotM 50 run I had to have a friend join instance temporarily while I went to character select & waypointed in LA to repair. Like I said, it’s really tough to solo some of the fractals at level 50.

Duoing cliffside with 2 warriors was dreadful too, and if you don’t get Jade Maw then it could be messy trying to sell at the end. You need to be pretty consistent with Mai Trin/Molten Duo to pull it off, else you will just be wasting your buyers’ time and money.

I honestly think “meh.”

Most of us on this subforum have done these dungeons so many times that it doesn’t seem enticing to purposely play less efficiently and watch the “cutscenes.”

They aren’t even real cuscenes, they’re just watercolor backgrounds with two characters gazing from side to side and lecturing. It’s the laziest form of storytelling tbh.

If they bothered to make dungeon lore more appealing and cutscenes as awesome as the one at the end of LS S2’s second release, I’d feel inclined to watch. Since that won’t happen, forget it.

It might be kind of hard to find people that want to roleplay in dungeons, but it can happen.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Meanwhile, I have a streak of 13 (and going) runs without any daily drops at the end , thus beating my old streak of 12.

Blessed be RNG, blessed be fractals.

You haven’t suffered until you’ve firsthand experienced my not-getting-swamp streak of mother f***ing 74 times back to back when rolling for a level 40 run.

Also can’t forget the time I had wraithlord autoattack me 13 times in phase 3 before doing his breath blast, or the time I was triple kicked by Lupicus.

-cries irl and buys magic find boosters from gem store- SAVE ME ANET

nearlight.3064:

Purple Miku.7032:

There’s nothing that we can really do since it’s a free market. Oh well… off to selling FotM 50 runs it is ^^

Hahaha wow, I didn’t even know it was possible to solo fractals! I assume you just reroll if you get the swamp?

Duo them, it’s faster. I roll for underwater ruins.

For elementalist soloing orbs, I change my traits to…

0
5 (V VIII)
0
3 (III)
6 (- VIII XI)

Reason for the hyphen as the adept trait for arcana is because there’s nothing relevant there. You ideally want to blast swiftness before using either executioner’s axe toy to rush or RTL and then immediately swap to water.

I use full cleric exotic gear + trinkets swap for this particular encounter. It’s possible with cleric armor and non-cleric trinkets but very frustrating.

Use a mango pie nourishment too.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I1yXl_ev-Q

As for prices, I was able to sell at these prices for months but not any longer unless I try to sell at the perfect window of opportunity super early in the morning for me:

P1 – 7g, P2 & P3 – 6g, P4 – 18g

P1’s price has tanked ever since they’ve fixed the tar waypoint and fixed the underwater exploit that all of the amateurs used to use to skip the entire path in P2. Now many of them have shifted over to P1, thus ruining my favorite moneymaking method. It’s rare to see P1 sellers stick above 5g, and quite often you’ll see people selling it at 4g…

P2 was for a month fine and I was able to consistently sell it at 6g because a lot of people didn’t know how to kill Brie and the underwater exploiters didn’t know how to actually do the path, so there was less competition. Now you will struggle to sell it at 4g/slot again, and it shows no promise of improving.

P3 has been terrible for a while because for similar reasons as yours, most new sellers start with this path because they’re under the impression of it being easiest. You will struggle majorly with trying to outcompete them to the point of it not even worth selling the slots due to how low you’ll have to go. Average prices tend to be around 3-4g unfortunately.

P4 has been in just about the worst state among the four paths. I see people selling the slots as low as 10g or even under, 3-4 different groups at a time on the LFG sometimes. It’s horrible! Considering how much more effort this path requires to solo/duo by comparison to the others and how much longer you need to wait to sell all four slots, this path is the lowest gp/hr to sell. It also has the most competition.

There’s nothing that we can really do since it’s a free market. Oh well… it was nice while it lasted.

As for everything else, ele is just flat-out obnoxious for soloing Arah from a firsthand experience. Comparing it to warrior, literally every single thing is bad by comparison unless I can burn it down with FGS. It’s strange, but I can do things just about as fast with my warrior using no armor (naked, but with trinkets).

Since you specified p3, I’ll put each encounter into perspective for you:

Crusher+hunter:
-Average solo time on warrior ~2:30-2:40
-Average solo time on ele with D/F ~4:00+ depending on how fast hunter is cleaved down initially to prevent the poison clouds

If you can find a perfect LOS spot with FGS and kill the hunter ASAP so that he doesn’t consistently do the poison cloud anymore, then ele will be wonderful. On a warrior you can pretty much tank the poison cloud, but on an ele it just destroys you. Everything destroys you. It’s also incredibly hard to properly FGS this encounter, since you have to ensure the NPC dies as well else you’ll be permanently immobilised.

Mage crusher:
-Can essentially wipe an ele in roughly 2 autoattacks that have no tells.
-Life leech takes roughly 5 seconds from full hp to kill an ele, give or take, so if you are low health when he starts channeling this then GG.

Wraithlord:
-Very buggy, can’t use FGS on him efficiently anymore either. His autoattacks are dangerous on a warrior as it is, so getting hit at all on an ele is very dangerous especially since he applies both poison and bleeds. Magnetive wave (earth #4) on focus is your saving grace for this, but ideally it’s nice to be able to use it as a blast finisher.

—

Sorry to be so negative about it, but soloing Arah on an ele truly is awful by comparison with a warrior. As well as soloing… for the most part Goku and I have even found duoing P2 and P4 faster with warr/warr, just because literally anything that you aren’t using FGS for is going to be slower (not by much, but just saying).

I’m also going to throw in that selling Arah has died fast the past few months. All of the new sellers have been putting their prices extremely low and as a result doing regular dungeon tours tends to be superior gp/hr than selling Arah paths is now, assuming your teams aren’t too horrible.

Either way, good luck!

Purple Miku.7032:

Unfortunately phase 2 is about 90% RNG and 10% skill. It doesn’t take long to learn when you’re supposed to evade, but you have no control over the ‘random’ projectiles. Keep in mind each entity is only targeted twice, so the two projectiles that you evade while hit at the exact same times every time with the addition of X random projectiles that can either land in completely different locations to where you are, or directly on top of you. There is virtually no way that you can control this other than projectile blocks/invulnerability or evasions.

You shouldn’t ever be in endurance deficit really aside from phase 3. Sometimes really unfortunate RNG on phase 3 requires immediate access to dodge rolls/evasions. If you use FGS, you’ll find phase 3 a breeze and I suggest 66200 with energy sigil instead of renewing stamina. Reason being you want that extra damage modifier and if endurance is needed, can swap attunements. Since each skill with FGS will only count as one attack, you won’t really benefit too much from renewing stamina. If you aren’t using FGS, renewing stamina is a lot more useful and you should take that over energy sigil and you’ll have essentially perma-vigour.

The sigils I suggest depending on what you’re using:
D/F without FGS and 66002 traits:
-Dagger with 1x Superior Sigil of Strength (or Undead Slaying)
-Focus with 1x Superior Sigil of Battle (or Undead Slaying)

I think I recall Particlar saying Battle sigil helped him maintain ~20 stacks of might in a solo setting with Strength runes, not sure. Either way, Strength sigil is very good on an ele with Strength runes!

D/F with FGS and 66200 traits:
-Dagger with 1x Superior Sigil of Battle (or Undead Slaying)
-Focus with 1x Superior Sigil of Energy

---

I will add that if you truly want to make sure you’ll have access to endurance at all times, feel free to go energy sigil + renewing stamina. I do that in casual solos when I can’t be bothered to gamble with RNG.

I will also add that 66200 without energy sigil is indeed possible as well, but only with superb RNG and FGS.

The utilities I typically take are: Arcane shield (for the phase 1>2 transition grub), Lightning Flash, Signet of Fire

Hope this helps.

I’m curious about that too.

HotW is boring as hell. I avoid it too.

dlonie.6547:

If serious, part of the problem might be that most of the Risen mobs in Arah are not meant to be fought, but rather skipped.

Doesn’t stop me from burning them down in my solos.

If you’re dying with 22,000 hp you’d probably be dying with 30,000 too. You need to learn how to time your skills and maintain a good rotation. Know the boss’s attacks, be 1 step ahead of them instead of 1 step behind.

The way to be successful in a fight is to not be in the situation where you’re just reacting to an enemy. You won’t win like that. You want to get to the point where you’re in control of the fight and that will never happen until you get used to timing your dodges/whirlwind when you know the boss is going to attack.

Unfortunately phase 2 is about 90% RNG and 10% skill. It doesn’t take long to learn when you’re supposed to evade, but you have no control over the ‘random’ projectiles. Keep in mind each entity is only targeted twice, so the two projectiles that you evade while hit at the exact same times every time with the addition of X random projectiles that can either land in completely different locations to where you are, or directly on top of you. There is virtually no way that you can control this other than projectile blocks/invulnerability or evasions.

You shouldn’t ever be in endurance deficit really aside from phase 3. Sometimes really unfortunate RNG on phase 3 requires immediate access to dodge rolls/evasions. If you use FGS, you’ll find phase 3 a breeze and I suggest 66200 with energy sigil instead of renewing stamina. Reason being you want that extra damage modifier and if endurance is needed, can swap attunements. Since each skill with FGS will only count as one attack, you won’t really benefit too much from renewing stamina. If you aren’t using FGS, renewing stamina is a lot more useful and you should take that over energy sigil and you’ll have essentially perma-vigour.

The sigils I suggest depending on what you’re using:
D/F without FGS and 66002 traits:
-Dagger with 1x Superior Sigil of Strength (or Undead Slaying)
-Focus with 1x Superior Sigil of Battle (or Undead Slaying)

I think I recall Particlar saying Battle sigil helped him maintain ~20 stacks of might in a solo setting with Strength runes, not sure. Either way, Strength sigil is very good on an ele with Strength runes!

D/F with FGS and 66200 traits:
-Dagger with 1x Superior Sigil of Battle (or Undead Slaying)
-Focus with 1x Superior Sigil of Energy

I will add that if you truly want to make sure you’ll have access to endurance at all times, feel free to go energy sigil + renewing stamina. I do that in casual solos when I can’t be bothered to gamble with RNG.

I will also add that 66200 without energy sigil is indeed possible as well, but only with superb RNG and FGS.

The utilities I typically take are: Arcane shield (for the phase 1>2 transition grub), Lightning Flash, Signet of Fire

Hope this helps.

I’ll try to explain what I know.

First of all the gorillas can change their leash point at a variety of locations and actually a lot of mobs in Arah can and do if you haven’t noticed. Do you remember any time you’ve done Arah P1 and saw tons of elite oozes or orrian drakes not leashing and just littering the area with the crystallines? Or perhaps on the way from Korga to the last encounter some of the spiders just stayed still without returning?

For some reason it’s certain mob types that tend to be susceptible to this and while it may be an AI bug, we don’t really know. Generally speaking what works for me is that when I’m on that pillar, a flora will spawn and once it starts immobilising me while I’m on it, it moves me down next to it and I think what might have to do with it is that the gorillas still detect me on the pillar above after I’m dead. I’m not certain of this, but it could be. Also something else I’ve noticed is that depending on where I die, Randall will move/teleport to a specific location relative to the position my body is in. In the case of the pillar, he moves directly on top of me. Sometimes if Randall doesn’t die in a very specific spot, the gorillas will not leash.

I’ve found that when I’m not the only person in the party, this tactic doesn’t work unless everyone in the party wipes the exact same spot as me.

I’ve also found that sometimes even from the spot I’m ranging in, one of the gorillas will just randomly aggro at some point in the fight. No idea why but it’s really f’n annoying.

Anywho if you want to see what I do for Melandru soloing just watch me stream it sometime and it will be really easy to replicate. I can also show you the fastest warrior solo DPS tactic on it. I still have wanted to try to do a sub-2 hour Arah P4 solo without exploiting Simin (friend helping me with luring sparks but not attacking boss) on video. It’s a goal of mine so if you want, let me know if you’re ever watching and I’ll gladly do it!

Lmfao are you serious. I got an infraction for responding to deSade about something so freakin’ trivial that the only explanation is that a mod is clearly crying in real life because they like to leisurely play as a staff guard.

Mortifer.2946:

Yesterday I saw some guild recruitment where it was claimed that they look for experienced dungeon/fractal runners. I consider myself such player, yet I was not accepted, because I’ve built my guardian on soldier stats and condi removing runes/traits which is very useful for the whole party, yet it lack some DPS so I was told GL BB

Those zerkers are just dumb. Sorry, but they do. The most fun is when I see them play open world and some champ insta-down them. Most of them don’t even try to dodge. Thousand Blades rulezzzz, I guess.

You aren’t experienced in dungeons/fractals if you believe that an extremely inefficient stat combo + rune type + trait allocation is “very useful” yet shrug off the fact that you “lack some DPS” and justify it because you’ve seen people die in open world.

People aren’t dumb for denying you because they know very well that no one who knows how to play most effectively would willingly hinder themselves to such a degree unless it was purely for the sake of trolling people.

When you know what to do in an encounter, it can be done in full DPS-oriented builds. This is why experienced players don’t want to have anything to do with people that play on a suboptimal level. To them it’s really annoying and spoils their fun.

Maybe instead of mocking them you should try to play with players that share a similar mentality to yours and like to take things slowly with low DPS, as it’s apparently what you like.

Try using these traits instead:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/DPS-guide-for-PvE-Dungeons-Soloing-More/first

You will be even more impressed with the changes than you were with the addition of strength runes

Lol irl @ this thread

It’s a bug, and it’s extremely freakin’ annoying.

Dub.1273:

Purple Miku.7032:

Dub.1273:

Remember the famous ranger letting his bear tank the grubs?

Stop being inactive n come back :<

Someone used to suck up all my available time, but I don’t really feel like visiting gw2 anyway. As I may have said a few times already, despite graphics, gw1 is a much better game. Less grind, less qq, more tactic, better reward system = more fun.

It’s a shame as I still consider you as overall one of the best GW2 players in PvE and it also saddens me that there may not be a Lupi Swag #3 now

If you want the best all-purpose sigil combination for a staff, you could go with either force+accuracy or perhaps force+strength (though I suggest the former).

My staff currently has force+night, but I’m probably going to change it to force+accuracy because I can’t be bothered to make a second one.