Guild Wars 2

I feel so lost without my stacks. </3

Can’t even kill abom by the third tranquilizing gun anymore :’(

maha.7902:

Soloed Alphard yesterday, got pulled 3 times.

Such challenging content with such high risk.

Same here, lol.

Now the only “danger” is a daggerstorm orb instantly hitting you once she begins the attack.

Here is an old kill of mine from a while ago. You’ll be able to see where I fell back to in order to finish her off. It’s less desirable than the barriers for LOSing her, but it actually makes it easier to deal with the clones.

http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/3768848

Ultimately, what you want to do is make sure you get in as many 100bs + WWA’s as you can… especially now since it’s snooze-easy-mode.

Just thought I’d add here that I just finished a P2 solo now and I used ogre pet whistle to break stun from the 2 risen plague carriers that exploded, and then Brie went invulnerable on me…

Needless to say, I was kittened off. Not going to try it again to test it but just thought I’d warn people of it.

Wethospu’s video shows why I don’t like to bother with ranged weapons unless it’s absolutely necessary. I don’t see what’s difficult about hitting enough damage to do it melee.

The only challenging part about this fight is that you can’t use stunbreakers on the portals that pull you in (8 times back to back, neither balanced stance nor shake it off broke the stun for me). So if you fail to kill one in time and get yanked in when the orange telegraph appears, you lose automatically no matter what.

http://i.imgur.com/z4HgKno.gif

Dub had the chance to witness the orb not only hit me through the wall in a duo with him, but it took a turn around the edge of the barrier and hit me.

Ty ^^

Did they fix the glitch with alphard resetting to full hp in the middle of the fight btw? There was a glitch where without even going invulnerable, she would just instantly replenish her hp. I don’t know why.

Also she can sometimes go invulnerable and back to the middle and reset to the last wave with clones, but without any barriers reappearing.

Thank you ^^ but I really did get lucky with the fractals. I still wish I would have gotten a chance to finally get my lvl 50 mai trin solo.

I offered pugs 3g ea to let me solo it the last time I had the chance, but they refused

I miss the “bugged” alphard that required skill </3

maxinion.8396:

Purple Miku.7032:

I agree with spoj.

I was pretty kittening mad when I found out they changed this too. Every single change yesterday was for the better EXCEPT this. Making me hit kitten damage is not going to make me happy.

Warrior meta build is probably least hurt by this. Camp Greatsword with Slaying + Force, offhand is sword+warhorn with a stacking sigil. The build never swaps to offhand anyway, so the loss of the sigil on it doesn’t matter at all.

The 30/25 fast hands builds, or the axe meta builds, obviously do get nerfed by this.

I almost always am on 65003 and I don’t do group dungeons on warrior. Any group dungeons I do are pugs on ele 99% of the time. I am severely hindered by this change because now I have to either put bloodlust sigil on GS, never unequip a warhorn with sigil, or never swap to sword for savage leaping again if I put it on axe.

Emanuel.9781:

Wtf dub, are you me? I can not even FIGHT liadri thanks to lags and freezes right when i enter the arena/cage. 1-5 fp/s…

Dub has legendary lag.

@sandy – Yeah I see what you mean. To be honest it doesn’t really phase me whether or not she teleports, I just do it because I can’t kill her faster than she can kill me with the constant burning. I run ooc and back specifically for the ooc heal up, which is evident to anyone that has watched because I’m always attacking her for a while during my solos.

BUT… that’s during solos.

I’m kind of disappointed with this update. Alphard’s pull SHOULD be 1-hitting you IF you get pulled. What they SHOULD have changed was that someone getting pulled doesn’t wipe the entire party, but just the person pulled. That would have been absolutely perfect.

I agree with spoj.

I was pretty kittening mad when I found out they changed this too. Every single change yesterday was for the better EXCEPT this. Making me hit kitten damage is not going to make me happy.

For PvE, you don’t want to be using swords mainhand other than for skipping past trash. Condition builds aren’t very effective in PvE by comparison to direct damage ones by the way. For a plethora of useful information, try reading through my solo warrior PvE guide. If you have any questions just ask them in my thread and I’ll answer them when I read them!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Guide-for-DPS-build-dungeon-solos-more/first#post3712058

I don’t really consider it cheating to just run away and back. Seems like a logical thing for someone to do when they’re low on health. I’ve also duod p2 before with Dub and she still teleported when we ran behind the bone wall and back btw…

It’s very possible with other classes, it just so happens that warrior is a very powerful class to play with in solo settings by comparison with others. Mesmer, for example, is capable of doing probably more than warriors but a large number of encounters they won’t be able to do nearly as effectively. So, while warriors will have the advantage in a lot of situations, there’s some encounters that they actually cannot do.

In short, it depends primarily on what you play best with. For me, that is warrior… though I only play warrior/ele.

EDIT: My music collection pleases many. I’m sure you’ll hear a lot of songs that might catch your interest. If you want the full list of my main playlist, here’s the most recent one: http://puu.sh/8BI3F

Alphard is a piece of kitten. Buggy monstrosity of a boss. Did they fix the bone wall garbage yet btw?

Btw, this boss on an ele is like jumping rear-first into a factory of nails. Would’ve never known how much of an kitten this guy was had I not tried it on Ruby Miku before. Purple, on the other hand, wipes the floor with him.

I had all four Arah paths done and still felt like playing GW2, but as an american night owl that plays on EU servers, pugging wasn’t a viable option at that hour. I also really don’t find non-Arah dungeons very much fun and my patience for them doesn’t last too long so I didn’t know what else to do. Felt like entertaining the stream by seeing how far I could go in FotM 50 solo before ragequitting, and it just went very well I guess o.O

That’s what you get for being too far away from him m8.

If I were him I’d have done the same thing. “Look at this guy, kittening running out of my attack range. kitten you, guy! EAT THIS! -chucks gear-”

In all seriousness, it’s a legitimate mechanic and I actually don’t mind the gears except for the fact that if someone else causes them to be thrown, I have to pay the price for it too. That part is irritating.

As for the instance host leaving… nothing any of us can really say other than that sucks. We’ve all been there and it’s indeed pathetic that it can happen.

YEAH WELL YOU KNOW WHAT?

ur all mean noobz

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

Well said.

I wish 100b would count as more than one attack for grawl fractal on imbued shaman’s shield -.-…

But then again now that I think about it, I benefit from it counting as only 1 when dealing with Lyssa’s clones on Arah P4 solos… so that I don’t inadvertently wipe from the 25 confusion stacks.

Imbued shaman = one of the most fun encounters in the game imo

I was running my PvE build in WvW with 65003 and I repeatedly was able to solo these same 2 rangers near their spawn point at a camp in a BL. The worst part is the camp NPCs were on their side too. Any ranger that does a poor job at keeping their distance from a zerk warrior will die.

Perhaps the one you fought knew what he was doing, perhaps you did not. My general strategy for dealing with them is similar to how I deal with others— keep up the pressure and burst them down before they have a chance to stack on the conditions.

It’s especially important that you have stability on you when fighting a ranger, btw. They can knock you back pretty far.

Warlord.9074:

The bleed on riffle #1 is not there for the damage. Its just there to look like it does somthing. You cant really stack enough bleeds with it in a condition build to make up for a loss of power that the rifle needs to shine.

Rifle is mainly just 2 skills Volly and kill shot thats it folks. And both of those skills need to be power/critical damage and they need to crit to hit hard.

The rifle is just that its used for sniping people from the back line or sniping people when they are not looking. To drop their HP fast.

I normally disagree with you to the point of becoming really irritated, but for once I actually agree with you.

Well said!

:D

Loot distribution is pretty horrible on this game in my opinion, but I think storytelling would be SO much improved by having more actual cutscenes instead of the cheesy watercolor background with two characters side-to-side.

I’ve said it plenty of times before and I’ll say it again; I feel like I’m being lectured, rather than engaging in a story, unless I have an actual cutscene to watch.

CM isn’t a dungeon, it’s a freakin’ house robbery! Doesn’t count :P

Lol jk, you got me

RIP me…

I agree with your mentality Sandy, but god _ammit soloing Arah P4 on Ele is equivalent to soloing it with no armor on warrior for some of the encounters. It’s for several reasons but mainly the lack of HP (and no healing signet lol); while it’s true that it makes things more challenging, I find warrior to have more fluid gameplay and that the class is just perfect for solos. It’s for sure the most fitting class for my gameplay, just as you seem to feel about mesmer. ^^

Truly, Ele = way way way more challenging to solo with though. I consider it pretty awful to solo Arah with, but by far the dominant team play class.

While I would love new dungeon paths, I think they should work on redesigning some of the current embarrassingly pathetic encounters (examples: Melandru on Arah P4, Mage crusher of Arah P3) along with fixing the plethora of ways to bug out bosses/exploit with maphacks first and foremost. To me, those should be higher priority.

Also, hire me to waste my days checking instances to see if people skipped Lupicus. BANHAMMER TIME!

Please.

That’s true I suppose yeah, we don’t quite have a dungeon like that though… thankfully ^^

@Guang

Your last statement on warriors…

-Ahem- http://i.imgur.com/burgBx2.jpg ???

Despite how much I love my beloved beast of a warrior, I accept the fact that she would lack a purpose in a speedrun if not for Banner of Strength and Banner of Discipline.

The general rule of thumb:
Bring 1 warrior and as many elementalists as possible; swapping one out for another class depending on what utilities said class is able to provide that would improve the time it takes to clear the path (i.e. stealth, reflects).

In an optimal speedclear, the warrior is only there for banners and banners are pretty much essential. Your last statement of “If personal base DPS was the only thing that mattered you wouldn’t bring a warrior either, you have to look at how much the group is dealing overall.” We all know that warriors aren’t there for the sole purpose of individual damage output and there have been repeated attempts on this thread to get through to you that the vulnerability that an engineer applies is easily outsourced.

It looks like the main reasons you advocate use of an engineer are because of stealths and vulnerability, so…

Please, answer these two questions…

1) Do you really think engineers are able to provide stealth to the team better than thieves?

2) Even if engineers are able to cap the vulnerability for the team in a boss encounter, would that be better than another elementalist there with ice bow and/or fiery greatsword?

I can’t think of any encounter for those. Let me know if you can.

I don’t dislike engineers or anything, I just don’t see the point in taking one over an elementalist if you want an optimal group composition for speedclearing.

I use both M4 and M5 mouse buttons for dodging (left buttons on the side) and I have a Logitech M510 wireless mouse. Hope that helps you out when deciding on keybinds for dodging.

This was a nice guide to read. I’m pretty happy that the vast majority of all information in the thread I already knew. ^^

Indeed, I am.

Give me reasons to play, Arenanet!

PvP is the worst that I’ve ever seen on any game online, including pay-to-win ones. Lore/story-telling is also laughable and even Runescape over a decade ago did a superior job at that aspect. The two main bragging rights of GW2 aside from the lack of a subscription model are the awesome PvE and graphics.

If there are loads of people out there soloing the supposed endgame content provided to us (even with no armor, and many friends of mine are doing it with laughable condition builds for kicks!) in a desperate attempt to find challenge in the game…

ISSUES. We haz them.

dlonie.6547:

+1 for TA forward. Pretty straightforward, though I grab guildies for the nightmare tree. The fight isn’t that hard, but it takes forever solo.

Pre-patch I considered it a darn tough encounter. Nightmare tree on TA fwd was by far worse than Leurent was. The pressure from the veteran oakhearts was unbearable to the point where the only feasible way to kill the nightmare tree was very slowly. I had to use shake it off + warhorn offhand to stand a chance and it took like 20 mins lol.

MRW when I see how much hatred and internet warfare exists on this thread:

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

I know that I would not be able to solo the last boss in harpy as a warrior. Old Tom I probably could but the last time I tried soloing harpy fractal I died when both ettin and flame legion shaman were <10% hp… so FORGET THAT.

One of the fractals that I’m curious of how well I’d be able to do is cliffside. I feel like the arm seals would be excruciatingly difficult to do, but last boss I kind of have a strategy already from when I’m the only one that doesn’t wipe in pug runs xD

To prevent him from instantly pointing at you to send you to the cage, just go behind one of the pillars/beacons and LOS him. He generally will always either hammer swing or do that projectile attack that pulls you in. So, that’s on my to-do list. ^^

In case you haven’t noticed, I mentioned nothing about utility of the sword being bad. Really have no idea where you got that impression, as I specifically said that in PvE it’s bad for anything other than skipping past trash.

In WvW and/or PvP, it deals bad damage by comparison with axe aside from <50% hp final thrust, however it makes up for it with utility.

The OP specifically asked whether or not it’s a good power weapon, implying that they’re interested in its capability for direct damage output— in which case it’s viable but not the best option.

Lecturing me on sword’s mobility… pfft.

Oh I know, I made a big deal about my RNG luck in the beginning of the post. I refuse to even do harpy fractal in groups, let alone solo. I absolutely refuse to do it.

I’m assuming you’re not talking about PvE at all.

Sword is only good for skipping past trash mobs as a mainhand weapon in PvE, not for attacking. In WvW and PvP I wouldn’t consider it a very good power weapon, but it’s surely good for a condition build.

Flissy.4093:

It’s already very strong in WvW, situational in PvE but poor in PvP.

Sadly, not every skill can be brilliant in every situation. It’s affected by stance traits which is enough of a buff for it.

Well said.

Sartharina.3542:

1. Waypoint prices add up quickly, and are worthless when exploring new areas.
2. Real world money for a painfully small, temporary boost? No thanks.

l0l @ bolded.

Do CoF p1 once, waypoint back and forth across the map ~100 times with money acquired from appriximately 7-10 minutes of minimal effort. O NOES!

Thank you Lilith and hendo, and I had a lot of fun doing it aside from the Krait at the start of underwater tbh. Those were just not fun… ;_;

Ele is excruciatingly challenging to solo with, at least Arah. I had to give up on Arah P4… couldn’t get past Lyssa and only killed Balthazar once on it because 1 of the fireball aoes = 1 shot. So irritating.

Sandy there is no undermining of your achievements! You managed to solo swampland AND cliffside. I really don’t know if I’d be able to do cliffside… I can’t imagine how I’d be able to.

Those krait really were horrible… I wasn’t making any progress at the very very start, but started to get a pattern going. Spam a few attacks with harpoon gun, then yolo spear tsunami with endure pain + balanced stance and hope you activate defiant stance in time before your hp tanks from full to 0.

Did my craziest ever solo stunt tonight. I didn’t expect to actually get it done, but I completely solod a full level 50 run FotM. I don’t know if anyone has done this yet but I probably won’t ever do it again because the chances of getting the fractals that I did are so low it’s insane.

It took me about 5 hours overall, and the raw footage is here:
http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4277337

I had this:

Underwater Ruins
Ascalonian City
Aetherblade Retreat
Jade Maw

Like, holy mother of RNG…? I’m not even as happy about not getting dredge as I am not getting harpy fractal, holy crap. I was expecting Mai Trin and was looking forward to finally getting a chance to attempt a level 50 solo of her (did a sloppy 49 mai trin solo a while ago) but it felt pretty relieving to get something I knew I’d be able to do in a reasonable amount of time after all of that effort.

The absolute toughest 2 parts of the full run were…
1) Krait at the start in Underwater Ruins. O-M-F-G it was awful. Could barely clear 1 of them at a time, took me I think 2 repairs.
2) Most challenging of all, the final encounter in Aetherblade Retreat. I’m actually pretty proud of myself for it, but I’m sure there are people who can do a less sloppy job than mine.

I took it upon myself to highlight the Aetherblade boss fight itself, which was just under 10 minutes. http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4277500

P.S. I did not have any help other than my friend joining instance while I char selected to go repair armor (placeholding for me so I wouldn’t have to lose instance). I gave him the daily at the end, along with 3 other guildmates of mine. We all got kitten loot as always. Ty Arenanet, #1 Loot system.

-

P.S. If you want to see, Goku Destroys U and I have been trying to go for a sub-40 Arah P4 duo record. This was our best attempt so far, a ~46 minute one. He doesn’t want to upload until we reach our goal :P but I will highlight mine because it was a smooth run: http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4277372

We WILL get it, it just is really hard to have everything go just right in one run

The simin kill was astonishingly fast… 3:04 duo warr/warr: http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4277387

Hope you enjoy, and that I won’t see you all in Linksville anytime soon. Pls no.

Actually if anything the mentality has shifted to be even more so in favor of GS than before. The absolute highest damage capability our class has to offer is camping GS. Perhaps you’re watching the video of Nike’s prior to the discovery of GS being the best? He later on tested and found different results along with posting an updated build guide.

Full berserker with strength runes is indeed the best though yes. ^^

I’m going to recommend the following:

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

Greatsword + Axe/ (warhorn, sword mace for offhand – alternate between the three depending on the situation)

It makes for more fluid gameplay and offers the most utility and self-buffing aside from 6/6/0/0/2. You will find that you’ll hit like a monster and that fast hands from having 3 in discipline will be quite nice with a battle sigil or energy sigil.

This was basically the meta before april 15th patch hit and is still very effective. I use it all of the time during my solos along with 6/6/0/0/2 and to be honest, I tend to have more consistent results with 6/5/0/0/3. In order for 6/6/0/0/2 to be the best you basically need to stay on GS… so if the fight is trivial and you don’t need to swap for blocks/an extra dodge from energy sigil, then you’ll want that. If you do need an extra dodge/block, then keep fast hands.