Guild Wars 2

I’m unfamiliar with this inside joke.

Staff isn’t the best weapon to use for open world leveling, which I’m assuming that’s what you’re talking about (first glance I assumed fractals for some reason). I suggest D/D and make sure to utilize all attunements to stack might (fire #3 or 4 > water #3 + #4 for frost aura + arcane brilliance > earth #4 + arcane wave > air) and autoattack.

Staff is extremely powerful DPS but you don’t want to be using it when your targets are moving. It’s typically best to use staff in group play, so world bosses are pretty much all you’ll want to be using it for in open world PvE.

Yeah group healing isn’t of any concern for me nor is PvP on this game ever. I only set myself up for roaming alone in WvW, so celestial definitely doesn’t seem like a good idea. I personally hate scepter, but I can definitely see it being a more commonly used weapon for 1v1’s especially with the two blinds.

The absolute best with dagger MH on an ele is angling camera straight down before burning speed to shorten the distance traveled and condensing the field. It deals a LOT of damage.

Scryeless.1924:

Purple Miku.7032:

You’re claiming everybody failed to read your posts. Perhaps if it’s everyone that’s telling you that you’re wrong, the problem might be that you did a poor job trying to convey what you actually meant to type?

“Oh but you obviously didn’t read what I typed. Try reading it again until you agree with me.”

You may be absolutely correct. I may have failed to properly convey some points or even all points. In that case, it would be nice to know where and how I failed to do so. I am always trying to improve myself:D

Start by not using a hammer in PvE.

It looks like it’d fail to satisfy my requirement for damage, but I can see what you’re trying to do here with the setup. I haven’t really put thought into using blinding ashes but it looks like you have decent enough of a crit chance to pull it off.

I think any classes that apply weakness will absolutely wreck you, unfortunately. Especially with my warrior in full out DPS that always has a warhorn equipped, I feel like you’d be an easy target to burst down.

I’m not really agreeing with your setup, but it certainly looks like something I’d be willing to accept more.

I didn’t forget deep freezes

But thanks for adding to the list. I just remembered how awesome it is to have imbued shaman chilled for when he gets his shield up.

You’re claiming everybody failed to read your posts. Perhaps if it’s everyone that’s telling you that you’re wrong, the problem might be that you did a poor job trying to convey what you actually meant to type?

“Oh but you obviously didn’t read what I typed. Try reading it again until you agree with me.”

The only cc you really want to be making use of on bosses besides a few encounters like the subject 6 with fear me is deep freeze.

“Warrior or engi can handle might easy, especially if it’s a phalanx warrior.”

I already mentioned that eles are capable of doing it without totally tanking in their own personal DPS. It’s a well-known fact that might and fury outsourced from an ele proves to be more effective party-wide DPS. You also didn’t even mention fury. Where is your party outsourcing all of their fury from without persisting flames? I’m well aware of how many things engineers are capable of, but I find it weird that you’d rather have a phalanx warrior over an ele. I would much rather prefer to do FotM with an ele that knows what they’re doing than without, but I’ll agree that they’re squishy as f***k.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Purple Miku.7032:

In my opinion what they should have done was fastforward the airship with cutscenes + a loading screen and have Zhaitan crash the airship with the party members + a few others evacuating the ship in time and fighting Zhaitan in the lair.

Actually, I think this is what they planned all along but due to having not enough time, they had to make it like… this instead, seeing there is a POI in his Lair you can’t get to and it looks like a huge arena.

Is that a challenge?

-cracks knuckles-

Mountain Goat time.

In all seriousness though, I think I remember being told that if you intentionally disconnect your internet before you crash to the bottom after jumping off the airship, you’ll log in at the bottom of the lair. Haven’t confirmed but I’ll try it next time I do story mode.

maha.7902:

I don’t even know what an ele offers to make it #1/#2.

Let me know if I missed anything.

-party-wide projectile block with swirling winds
-best might-stacking and party-wide fury potential out of all other classes, and they don’t even hinder their own damage output to do so
-very good vuln stacking which is very important for FotM, especially with FGS rushing but even burning speed + camera angled down or lightning flash is insanely good for it
-ice bow’s ice storm is one of the most powerful and amazing attacks to utilize in boss fights and deep freeze is by far one of the best cc abilities in the game.
-sandstorm for blind fields
-rock elemental for blocking old tom’s projectiles which is one of the only things that work besides untraited wardens apparently

To be honest I think the fury + might + deep freeze is more than enough to put elementalists as one of the best assets to a FotM team.

J Eberle.9312:

I’m not bothering to take people who aren’t bothered to take the right gear, no matter how ‘good’ they say/think they are. I just don’t have the time for those attitudes when I’m pugging.

Yup.

However I think for me it’s more like I don’t want to have anything to do with people that willingly g!mp their potential. I don’t want to condone the notion of it being OK to join groups without reading the LFG posts, nor do I want to frustrate myself.

I really would rather solo, go with a team size less than 5, or wait until people with adequate equipment join the party.

Scryeless.1924 I will not sugarcoat my comment. You are an absolute fool if you think that stacking is glitching.

It’s encouraged by ArenaNet themselves. Please don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the term “line of sight” before? Anyone that has even the most basic understanding of logic (and artificial intelligence) would agree that players and mobs being capable of attacking things from behind walls/objects would be very weird. If something is obstructing your view, you shouldn’t be able to damage it. The only way to change that is to either make it so that nothing obstructs your attacks or to remove every and all possible objects/obstacles so that the entire game is a wide open area.

“Line of sight” isn’t just a video game term either. It happens in real life and in movies too. If you fire a pistol at a cliff, do you think the bullet is going to go straight through it? Have you ever watched a film before and seen gun fights in it or someone firing a bow at someone with the other person hiding behind a wall or tree etc?

The act of mobs running to a corner to get burned down is them reacting to their targets being out of their line of sight. This is intended. This isn’t a glitch.

Cleaving mobs is also intended and people want mobs to be closely packed together to deal more damage over time.

Boons also have a limited radius and all of the unique buffs that certain classes provide do as well, so what better way to ensure that your teammates acquire said buffs than to stick together?

If you want your argument to have any merit along with not being taken for a complete fool, prove that stacking is glitching. Go on, try it.

maha.7902:

elementalists effective in fractals ahahahahahahahahahaha

What, are you trying to solo with yours or something?

Painbow.6059:

In high level fractals the effectiveness order pretty much goes as follows:

1. Elementalist/Guardian

2. Warrior

3. Thief

4. Engie/mesmer

5. Ranger

6. Necromancer

However when pugging guardian is probably your safest bet

This is extremely accurate imo. I separated them for you though (I placed mesmer before engineer because in my honest opinion a mesmer offers more valuable utility to FotM considering how freakin’ awesome portals are along with time warp, but it’s a close call):

1. Guardian
2. Elementalist
3. Warrior
4. Thief
5. Mesmer
6. Engineer
7. Ranger
8. Necromancer

You guys know that Mai Trin was nerfed since they buffed her… right?

She’s actually really easy now. It’s just Horrik that hurts (if you do get hit by him).

In my opinion what they should have done was fastforward the airship with cutscenes + a loading screen and have Zhaitan crash the airship with the party members + a few others evacuating the ship in time and fighting Zhaitan in the lair.

There’s plenty of styles that are great.

There’s 66200 D/F, there’s 66200 S/D or S/F + LH, there’s 66002 staff, and there’s a lot of little variations you can make to the individual trait setups depending on the situation.

“This means that beserker is not the best, only the best in getting as much damage as humanly possible, as fast as humanly possible.”

Kind of a contradiction right there, because that’s what the goal is. You want to perform well because that’s what is needed to be successful on this game. Things stop revolving around the idea of only having fun when you’ve repeated something hundreds of times.

For me and many others, our way of enjoying ourselves is to get as good as we possibly can. The content is dull and ordinary when doing it casually because it’s not challenging unless you make it so.

So no, I don’t agree with you. Almost every class benefits the most from berserker over all other options.

Thanks for the input and I agree with you on the last part.

I was tempted to go for bolt to the heart as well, so inscription seems like the best candidate to replace for it. Good call.

dlonie.6547:

Purple Miku.7032:

No Pulse.2967:

Arah mountain goats approve of this thread.

+1

This.

This is why I QQ about making the required bosses required for Arah. Everytime they put up an invisible wall I like the dungeon less and less.

I still want all the bosses required and it annoys me when people skip them, but I enjoy jumping around the map like a mountain goat for the hell of it. :P

Yeah, just let them do whatever they want. You want to maximize your damage potential while learning to defend yourself actively with strategic use of evasions, blocks, and placement.

I bet I could do superior DPS in a solo setting with GS and no armor than in full ascended berserker with a hammer.

Well I seemed to pretty much stomp a hambow warrior, a hammer+gs warrior, a condition necro (I think? I don’t know much about necros), and a d/d thief. I had a pretty close call with a condition gs mesmer but still beat them too.

Keep in mind, my comment about being tanky was purely subjective based off of my own experiences.

“I was pretty darn tanky against people I bumped into thanks to essentially perma-vigour as well along with well-timed dodges and air #5 interrupts.”

It’s true, but it very well could be because of a combination of me outplaying the people and just because by comparison to what I’m normally used to (full glass), this setup allows for much more protective measures to make sure I stay up in an encounter. Keep in mind, I never opt to play in low DPS setups ever so this is pretty “tanky” by my standards. I understand your point though and I’m pretty sure that I’d likely get stomped by condition bunkers that know what they’re doing.

I’m typically spending a long long time searching for people to fight period. Finding a lone person willing to fight is such a rarity and generally all I tend to find are people trying to gangbang me or zergs. :/

Something that I absolutely can’t stand is hitting low damage. Because of this, I pretty much refuse to run anything besides berserker. As a result WvW typically bores me but I screwed around with my traits until coming up with something that seemed to actually work well.

So with that, I’ll share it:

Build

With this I’m very very easily able to maintain permanent swiftness when roaming about along with basically permanent regen mid-fight along with fast access to a full hp restoration from glyph. With both inscription and elemental attunement, it was proving to be pretty awesome.

The only real problem with this is that you desperately want more power with trait point allocation like this, which is my reasoning for the sigil choice. Along with permanent swiftness and regen, I’m maintaining at minimum about 10-15 stacks of might (due to a tolerable crit chance), and I was pretty darn tanky against people I bumped into thanks to essentially perma-vigour as well along with well-timed dodges and air #5 interrupts.

I contemplated taking 2 out of air and replacing it with stone splinters in earth, but the problem with that is that with less precision, strength sigil will proc less and I’ll also have less swiftness and regen.

Feel free to express distaste if you think that my decisions are bogus, but keep in mind that hitting terrible damage is an absolute no-go for me.

No Pulse.2967:

Arah mountain goats approve of this thread.

+1

19k health is not low at all.

Get berserker for everything.

Probably shouldn’t even bother posting, but I just thought I’d say…

NTY.

Liewec.2896:

Purple Miku.7032:

So you’re advising people to waste both of their dodge rolls to make up for the inferior damage of axe #5 so that it’s on par with the autoattack?

did you miss the part about doing 16k damage in several seconds?
yes the autos are great, but using axe5+2 dodges you can often down everyone on the point while avoiding taking damage or getting CCed.

its not hypothetical either, i’m rank 72 and still love using axe/axe fairly often.
if they buffed it further because people don’t know about the potential of it and the synergy with Reckless Dodge then it would end up getting nerfed,
they’d probably make the dodge cancel the whirl.

also something to take in to account is the adrenaline you can build with the whirl

So what happens if you don’t kill them then by the time it’s done channeling? You’re left with no dodges. 16k damage in a few seconds doesn’t impress me at all. You’re stuck with a purely offensive offhand that deals less damage than an autoattack does.

I don’t know why you’re bringing your rank into this, because it doesn’t really give your claim any more merit… but grats nonetheless.

The situations in which axe #5 are actually good are so niche that there’s no way you’re ever convincing me of it being worth it. Even in the situations that it is good to use, it’s barely better than autoattacking would be.

If that’s not a good enough reason to stay clear of it, then forget it and just play how you want. :P

As for race, it’s all personal preference.

Esplen.3940:

Purple Miku.7032:

Deccode.3659:

So Purple Miku basically said that Strength runes are so expensive that you better get a second ascended armor set, lol.

Try reading a little more carefully.

Sorry to be a devil’s advocate, but you had to update your post which means it wasn’t clear enough the first time around. Additionally, you didn’t read the OP very carefully either which was what created the entire confusion. (Although Deccode didn’t read your answer very well either, but it wasn’t extremely clear the first time around.)

The OP does not seem to have either Runes of Strength or Runes of the Scholar, making it a question of “which should I aim for”. You did answer it, although your answer also responded as though the OP had a set of Scholar runes.

Your answer was helpful, but it was also misleading. What you meant to say (and I did read it before you updated it and after) was, in fewer words:

Get Strength runes. If you have Scholar, don’t replace them (instead, get another armor set).

I updated my post because I forgot the second asterisk in the bolded sentence. Notice “edited _ days ago”?

You’re also wrong; I did read the OP and wasn’t misleading at all. The OP didn’t claim to not have scholar runes that’s just what you’re inferring differently than me. Either way it doesn’t matter what his current rune type is, because he’s asking for whether or not strength runes yield a noticeable difference for output compared to scholar when soloing. That’s what I answered.

I then added to my response by offering my own suggestion on what would be ideal and most efficient with respect to cost longterm.

I don’t know why you’re so confused but hopefully this post helps clear it up for you.

Most pug teams will be able to handle all bosses in a path, but Lupicus tends to destroy people on phase 2 that don’t know what they’re doing.

In a pug team I’d expect on average an hour per path unless either you or somebody else is capable of soloing things.

Try out path 1 through 4 in Arah. They’re a hell of a lot more fun than story mode is.

“I can haz a long island plz?”

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Purple Miku.7032:

BeckaPL.2670:

Rather than being sarcastic and pointless would someone care to explain to me what’s wrong with wanting to play a support ele rather than a boring kitten zerker warrior?

Play a zerk ele?

If only eles could put on berserker gear. When bought, it cannot be equipped because it’s an exploit or something.

You make me like asuras because of your pictures lol :P

It was fun

Very much enjoyed practicing for it and participating.

I’m awake woooo

Dub.1273:

No Pulse.2967:

Elrey.5472:

I will check that illusionist, sounds like fun Where does he appears exactly?

You don’t choose the illusionist, the illusionist chooses you…

You don’t want to be the chosen.

I do!!!

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Purple Miku.7032:

…and sometimes go on a mountain goat adventure…

Why does this sound like so much fun?

Because it is.

BeckaPL.2670:

Rather than being sarcastic and pointless would someone care to explain to me what’s wrong with wanting to play a support ele rather than a boring kitten zerker warrior?

Play a zerk ele?

maha.7902:

Purple Miku.7032:

maha.7902:

moony.5780:

i dont like dungeons..they r too much farmed…and arah p4 takes too much time…if i just have 20 min to play im still bored
i want somethign hard which is also rewarding sure i can just go solo a dungeon…but why?? i get nothing from it..then the fun factor is also away

24g in under an hour is nothing?

Under an hour lol.

Out of the several dozen times that I’ve sold P4, it’s only taken under an hour to do the path + get all of the buyers ONCE. It takes on average several hours to sell all four slots.

You can run a p2, 3 or 1 around reset hours on NA servers and your group will fill very quickly. p4 was never worth selling due to the scarcity of buyers in comparison to other paths.

That’s true. I think selling on NA is a lot better because there are SO many idiots on EU servers that sell the exact same paths as each other at the same time and just continuously undercut each other. Not saying it never happens on NA but friends of mine that play on NA laugh at me often times and compete for the lulz over who sells their slots first. I always lose -_-

Deccode.3659:

So Purple Miku basically said that Strength runes are so expensive that you better get a second ascended armor set, lol.

Try reading a little more carefully.

I know this game’s combat mechanics is primarily balanced around PvP and I understand what you guys are saying; necromancers aren’t completely lackluster in it.

However I want to point out that as far as PvE is concerned, necromancer is essentially worthless to party compositions and brings no unique buffs for others to benefit from and that is a problem in my opinion. A lot of people will feel quite upset when they get repeatedly kicked from groups when they try to join parties on the LFG and it probably turns them off from dungeons and fractals.

Wethospu.6437:

With PvP buff it would be the highest damaging skill against 5 enemies (assuming coefficients listed on wiki are correct).

I reckon the circumstance in which 5 enemies are closely packed together and remain so for your whirling axe to hit them is pretty rare though.

Yeah, just hover your mouse over them.

Wethospu did such an awesome job with this website tbh.

I think I get you.

http://i.imgur.com/ISueqo9.gif

maxinion.8396:

No Pulse.2967:

maxinion.8396:

All of Arah should be doable.

Not the Tar boss.

kitten , yes.

but you can hire pugs for that

You also forgot Simin. :P

maha.7902:

moony.5780:

i dont like dungeons..they r too much farmed…and arah p4 takes too much time…if i just have 20 min to play im still bored
i want somethign hard which is also rewarding sure i can just go solo a dungeon…but why?? i get nothing from it..then the fun factor is also away

24g in under an hour is nothing?

Under an hour lol.

Out of the several dozen times that I’ve sold P4, it’s only taken under an hour to do the path + get all of the buyers ONCE. It takes on average several hours to sell all four slots.

Lmfao.

Lilith’s gettin straight down to business I see.

Miaire.5468:

Sad about what happened, but maybe it’s just a rare issue.

I’m trying to not get left behind when Engineers make a breakthrough so I’ve started playing more as Engineer in dungeons. I’m not a top-level player of [insert class here], but I played enough as warrior/guard to mostly know which weapons/skills/traits for which particular dungeon situation, and planning to extend learn Engi as well.

Engineers are OP as proven to me by Element.

A huge reason why I solo all of the time is for the same reason. I’d bore myself to tears if I kept doing things in groups.

I mind when people skip bosses with them, yes… as do plenty of others. What I’m talking about serves no purpose other than to kitten around and explore. :P