Guild Wars 2

Dear god that first song… my ears… they’re in pain.

On a more relevant note, it doesn’t appear to me as if you’re substantially overpowered but more so the fact that you obviously know what the hell you’re doing. Fast reaction time, relatively unpredictable rotation, fantastic use of Fear Me along with blasting might for yourself and mitigating incoming damage with dodgerolls.

You could theoretically kick kitten with any class even with awful builds as long as you’re a highly skilled player and have a relatively nice latency.

I could search for videos of OTHER classes beating the living tar out of multiple people by themselves. It doesn’t prove the class is overpowered— it proves that the person dominated. Nothing else.

If your video proves warriors are overpowered, then Sylarscreed’s video here proves necromancers are too ;P http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCaEGzBkEuo

I recently made a pretty thorough guide that covers much more than you’re even asking here. If at all interested, here’s the thread:

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

Not only what style.6173 said, but it’s an extremely viable offhand weapon in PvE too. I actually have three of them.

My bloodlust stacking weapons are axe/warhorn.

I also have two other warhorns; one with a sigil of battle and one with a sigil of energy. I use the one with battle sigil when, for example, soloing Wraithlord crusher+hunter in Arah P3 (dodgerolls aren’t required often enough to need energy on swap, especially with vigour from #5), or FotM (EXTREMELY useful in dredge fractal).

I agree that it needs to be changed, but I have no certainty with what either of you two suggested. What I know for sure is that in PvE it’s only worth using for the purpose of restoring adrenaline after an eviscarate… but since I use Arms I most of the time, I lose precision from not having healing signet equipped.

For PvP, I still think it’s less viable than signet. I don’t care for the PvP on this game as much because of how there isn’t any consequence to failure (shrug, I’m bored. I want to risk-fight), but I can easily imagine a situation in which I’m sitting at roughly half health, use healing surge and take a semi large hit soon after by surprise. It seems like it’d be a lot easier to get stuck in a position where you can’t do anything to survive whereas healing signet not only is consistently mitigating condition damage but alleviates the problem of being stuck in a position where you have to wait X amount of seconds until you aren’t sitting at an uncomfortably low amount of health.

Intuneric.7652:

Korga killed hmm.. Oh right its Miku.. duh.. who else

:D

I love to play donkey kong when I solo Arah, what can I say.

It’s not really just rangers that irritate the hell out of me when in pug teams.

If anything I’d say what I can’t stand the most is seeing a rifle warrior, but generally whenever I’m in groups and get people of ANY class ranging things… it kittenes me off! I lose so much of my own damage because they’re pulling bosses away so that I can’t use hundred blades, possibly cause me to take damage from having to unnecessarily travel and cross the path of AoE splats, etc.

It’s just obnoxious. Not only are they dealing awful damage, but they reduce mine drastically as well. With people running around in circles like idiots, you can be sure there is no way that we’re maintaining a high amount of might stacks so axe autoattack will certainly NOT be better DPS than using greatsword would. Therefore, I am greatly hindered.

The other issue that I want to bring up that applies often with the deeply-loathed bearbow pugs is the fact that often times in Arah, for example, their stupid pets can aggro elite mobs. “It’s on passive” pssh.

@robertul

Don’t take this the wrong way; not trying to be a pain I just enjoy discussing this :P

First, with the ooze… I have been consistently pulling it in the area right before the turrets and fighting it out in the open, GS + axe/sword. It’s ~4 mins each solo this way for me. I was told to range it by a few watching my stream before, but christ that’d be inefficient. Either way I kind of wish they’d give ooze an extra attack to force people off of the coral (and any other elevated objects). Stacking/LOSing is a legitimate strategy whether people like it or not, but safespotting bosses? Bleh.

Second, I know what you’re referring to when you say “4 silvers”… the four elite risen guards preceding crusher/hunter area… but why are they called silvers? I’ve seen that before on the forums and have wondered. But, about those… you know if they’re hunters, elementalists or devastators they can be pulled all the way to the start where all the NPC’s are. The only ones that won’t follow you that far are sentinels, berserkers, and defilers. To be honest the most dangerous of all of them is always the sentinel because it’s reasonably easy to evade/flee from all the others…. but not if you get trapped in his domes and chain-stunned.

Hunter actually will not immobilize you more than you’re able to remove it unless you don’t dodge his bouncing shot. Note: bouncing shot. NPC will guarantee a wipe if you engage the fight with her alive. Aside from that, it’s so SO trivial even in a group of idiots. Crusher frequently changes targets and is the only one of the pair that can actually damage.

The skip afterwards terrible? I run around the corner immediately during my solos and with sword/warhorn equipped, don’t even end up using my utils. Even if you get chilled by an elementalist that’s easily rectifiable and it’s pretty much all about dodgeroll spamming. I can see the skip sucking only if you’re running behind others and there happens to be multiple illusionists. Other than that as long as there aren’t any vile oozes around… there’s no way in hell it’s worse than P1’s run :P

Orbs impossible to fail with 5 people?! AHEM I’ve had to use my watchwork portal devices before in pug groups. The average person is way beyond inept for the light orbs in P3. All you need is one person to stand ~2/3 of the way and wait for you to pass it to them, yet the vast majority of the time even people that claim to know what to do aren’t capable of doing it without fail after fail after fail. Perhaps I’m just a bad luck magnet or something.

The ritual doesn’t usually take a very long time even with the worst of pugs, I find. The people who are truly awful will end up dying inside one of the rings and once they’re gone you’re good to go. :P

As for DPS check… meh. I’m not really sure if I agree with it being much of a DPS check unless you try to get people to stack for Wraithlord. In that case, yes. Aside from that, hardly much.

Yogi.9410:

Wow, good job.

As for me whenever i tried to solo korga, he sometimes will try to charge Varra Vkylark and as result spawned elite gorilla here and there.
I already tried to resets those elites, but will always end up in the same situation.
And Varra also always respawn whenever i tried to reset the elites.
Any solution to this silly npc problem ?
Thx for your help

Yep! I have three possible solutions to offer for this.

1) Purposely die in the area.
-If you die to Korga— be it on purpose or accident, you won’t have to worry about the NPC harassing you the next time you return. The way it works is that when you waypoint after your death at the start, she’ll waypoint with you and stand there kind of aimlessly. Once you waypoint to Pantheon (the one that appears after Lupicus is killed), she won’t travel with you and you will not see her again until you reach the next step in the dungeon (which would be the Legendary Jotun Stargazer one at the end).

2) While running around in circles with the elite gorillas and Korga, use spykit consumables + harpy feathers to force the aggression onto her. If she dies in the appropriate area and you stealth yourself long enough to go OOC, she won’t get the opportunity to revive herself.

3) Have a friend/somebody else stand in the dungeon past the point where you fight Korga and have them keep the NPC on them. This is probably the easiest solution.

Trust me, I know how much of a piece of ____ that NPC is. Anyone who’s watched my stream while I solo Arah P1 knows how much I curse Varra out for shooting any and every possible Elite risen that I run past. She’s a lot less passive than most dungeon NPCs are.

Molch.2078:

How do you dodge his fast melee hit? One random dodge a few seconds after he finishes an animation? Or do you have just uber reflexes?

Uh, I guess it’s a little of both. It’s not a random dodge, it’s timed. I predict that he’s about to punch because there is a 50% chance of him punching the ground (at least it seems as such) after a rush. I typically try to make sure I have a block up 2-3 seconds after he completes his rush and if riposte is still on cooldown, I dodge back.

robertul.3679:

P1 is the easiest. Ooze is always coral, champs can be soloed, tar is very forgiving with people being able to rally on little tars(whatever they are called) and the last boss is pretty afk. The skip to it might get tricky but only one has to make it. Only issue is wiping on lupi which may happen forcing everybody to redo the whole skip.
P2 has alphard and the arguably “hard” skips after belka and after alphard. Alphard is actually doable with full group of incompetent players because (s)he focuses on one target so others can revive themselves with #4. A mesmer that just spams reflects makes it trivial. Guardian has to put wall inside the boss to make it work.
P3 skip(after hunter+crusher) is actually harder because it’s pretty difficult to not get in combat or soft-cced with chills/dazes. But if you have a thief( even shadow refuge is enough) it’s not an issue.
P4 is too long and if your group has bad dps you’ll fall asleep at melandru and simin.

I don’t know about you but it seems to be beyond mere AI abuse to use the coral tree for ooze, so I avoid doing so because I don’t like to be reliant on exploits for doing things. It’s one of those things that’s borderline… not really sure. I don’t frown upon anyone that uses it, but it definitely seems like it must be unintended. Safespotting a boss? Yeah, no. So, with that in mind… it’s pretty chaotic for a group to fight this boss out in the open. Probably no easier than it is to solo it.

For crystalline entities, you said it yourself… can be solod. I think you were more than likely implying that you may as well just let someone solo it as other people only get in the way. It’s true… whether intended or unintended, this encounter is designed to be solod.

For tar, it can’t be solod so nothing to mention.

For the last encounter… it makes almost no difference with respect to time solo or with a group. If anything, it’s SLOWER in a group if he targets someone with lower precision/chance to crit and lower crit dmg %, as the reflects won’t hit as much.

Because of what I mentioned above… I’m pretty firm on my statement that Path 1 is the easiest path for soloing specifically rather than for groups. Path 3 is tougher to solo than Path 1 is by far (omit shoggroth obviously), but it’s trivialized in a group. Wouldn’t you agree with me that generally speaking, path 3 doesn’t exactly have much of a steep learning curve in a group? Aside from trash skips and the light orbs, there’s almost nothing that you can’t easily skate by without knowing what’s going on other than DPS DPS DPS.

Useful consumables

Skale Venom
- A utility nourishment that gives a 10 minute duration of a chance to apply vulnerability and weakness on a target when struck. They are situationally useful in FotM against trash mobs, especially when there are no slayer specific potions to use.

Order of whispers spykits
- 3 seconds of stealth, 60 second cooldown.

Ash Legion spy kits
- 10 seconds of stealth provided you aren’t moving, 60 second cooldown.

Harpy feathers
- 3 seconds of stealth, 6 second cooldown.

Fire elemental powder
- summon an ember for aoe damage, distracting mobs to lose aggro, take the grub on Lupicus’s phase transition, etc. (30 min cooldown)

Ogre pet whistle
- summon an ogre pet for essentially the same purpose as an ember, but it’s slightly less useful. (30 minute cooldown)
-they also can be used as a stun-breaker when cc’d, though because of the 30 minute cooldown it’s not practical to use them for this purpose.

Mortar turret
- place a mortar turret that attacks mobs. It has its uses and has at least superior AI to that of a dungeon NPC, lol. (30 minute cooldown)

Golem in a box
- very long attack range. Send out a floating golem on a suicide mission to explode on a target specified. Great for pulling mobs so that you can LOS them behind objects.

Pot of hylek poison
- I personally use these for swiftness very often when soloing Lupicus on phase 3. They’re very handy for when signet of rage is off cooldown, but for this particular circumstance you could easily remove the need for these by using Arms II. However, it is often times nice to be able to save your signet and still gain swiftness. It also can deal negligible AoE poison in the surrounding area. Oooooh.

Medical Packs
-Use them for swiftness/a few seconds of fury, or to heal for a small amount. Very useful!

Underwater nets
-Use them to apply immobilize on legendary shoggroth (tar boss) on Arah P1. They are quite useful when dealing with inept pugs that fail to make use of skills to keep him from burrowing in the hole.

Portal Matrix
-A few seconds of AoE daze; useful for trash mobs, however impractical to use at times due to the long cast time. I suggest buying some and testing them, as you’ll need to get used to timing them properly.

Rock
-Each toss will deal a small amount of damage along with a 1 second knockdown— super useful for removing stacks of defiance!

Plank
-These are actually overpowered. You can spam knockbacks, launches, and knockdowns with them, which makes it great for removing defiance and gaining distance on trash mobs!

For more information about these consumables, please visit this page:
http://dulfy.net/2013/01/16/gw2-useful-and-fun-consumables-guide/

If you wish to read a guide co-authored by me with very specific detail and dungeon path breakdowns and loads of useful information about warriors, check out Element and Purple Miku’s Warrior Guide on dulfy here!

If you feel that I left out any important details, have any questions, or want to discuss anything in my posts please do so. I’m open to discuss my tactics and choices/usage of items and abilities.

Anywho, hope this helps at least some of you that aspire to start soloing dungeons on a warrior or just seek some general guidance.

P.S.
If you want to, take a look at my ‘highlights’ page for a variety of solos, boss fights, funny and/or ridiculous clips and more. I love to stream so it’s pretty frequent that I’ll highlight some of the most interesting things that go on. http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/profile

If that wasn’t enough, you may follow me on youtube as well.

Foods/Nourishments

Assuming you’re using the traits suggested on the first post, you’ll want more power and precision more so than ferocity. The following foods will provide you the best DPS potential (the difference is super small, all are great!) :

-Plate of Truffle Steak
-Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup
-Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup

Alternatively, it is very cost-efficient and beneficial to make use of these as well for situations that you struggle to survive in:
-Slice of Candied Dragon Roll (lifesteal on crit food)

If you aren’t looking to spend quite as much but would still like to have a nice DPS boost, try buying food of the same type but lower tiered (i.e. Minotaur Steaks, Plate of Steak and Asparagus).

Nourishments
-Potions of slaying (i.e. Powerful potion of undead slaying for Arah)

Alternatively, you can use any of these if slaying potions don’t work in a certain situation:
-Skale Venom
-Hardened/Superior/Toxic sharpening stones
-Quality/Master maintenance oils

Sigils

For all mainhand weapons, use either:
-Superior sigil of Force
-Superior sigil of the Night
-Superior sigil of x slaying (i.e. Superior sigil of undead slaying)

For all offhand weapons, use either:
-Superior sigil of Force
-Superior sigil of the Night
-Superior sigil of Energy

Trinkets
-Use all berserker. Warriors have very strong self-buffing capabilities due to the Signet Mastery trait, permanent fury uptime, Banner of Discipline and Signet of Fury’s passive boost. Because of this, it is almost always better to opt for berserker over assassins unless it is a downscaled map, though I do not recommend changing gear for lower level maps.

What weapons to use and when to use them

-Almost always use Greatsword as your primary weapon, in conjunction with axe mainhand on swap. Offhand will vary depending on what you are doing:

Offhands:

Mace
-Mace is generally the best offhand for maximizing DPS in your rotations (off-wall, that is) and in groups it’s ideal to take against bosses when you don’t need an extra block, as it’s great for applying vulnerability. Make sure that if your team is making use of cc that you aren’t mindlessly spamming tremor, as bosses will gain defiance stacks when stunned!

Warhorn
-Warhorn is one of the most useful overall offhands that a warrior has! It is capable of providing close to permanent swiftness combined with the signet of rage elite, can cure movement impairing conditions (chill, cripple, immobilize), has a blast finisher, gives you and your allies vigour for more endurance and applies weakness to nearby enemies, which reduces their damage efficacy.

Sword
-Sword is used for blocks. It has half the cooldown as shield’s block and will also block all projectiles provided you aren’t within melee distance of the attacker(s). You should be using this in combination with shield (see below) to skip trash, and in fights that you need more than simply dodge rolls to effectively stay alive. For example, Giganticus Lupicus.

Shield
-Used in combination with sword OH’s riposte block, shield’s block will help you stay out of combat while skipping trash with ease! Since swapping weapons while out of combat doesn’t disrupt a channel, you can begin with riposte, swap to shield while it’s channeling and begin channeling shield stance before riposte ends. Then while shield stance is channeling, you can swap to warhorn or whatever other offhand of your choice without disrupting the block. If done correctly, you end up with 5-6 seconds of blocks and don’t engage in combat. Because of this, shield is a super useful item to carry for experienced warriors and I strongly recommend one. Aside from skipping trash, they are overall a weak offhand to use in PvE.

Mainhand:

Axe
-Axe mainhand is the absolute best autoattack weapon for a warrior. Always.

Mace
-Mace mainhand is helpful for situations when you need an extra block, but overall a generally poor option and very infrequently useful.

Sword
-Use sword mainhand for mobility and skipping mobs to avoid combat. As a power weapon in PvE, it’s very bad.

Ranged weapons?

Longbow
-Longbow is always the superior choice. Generally speaking, you’ll always do better damage with hand-to-hand combat than you will with ranged. If you must range, it’s in 99% of all circumstances a better choice to use longbow as it deals superior damage to that of a rifle and provides excellent utility.

Rifle
-Generally speaking rifle is crap in PvE. Not only is it single target, but it is awful DPS by comparison with GS and axe mainhand autoattack. If you are forced to range in the first place, longbow is in almost all circumstances better.

Utilities
These will vary majorly depending on what you are doing.

The primary utilities for DPS in a solo setting:
-Signet of Might
-Signet of Fury
-Banner of Discipline

“For Great Justice” is no longer a mandatory utility as of 6/23/2015, as we will be able to maintain our fury from readily using Arcing Slice off cooldown when maintaining our Berserker’s Power modifier. It is still a useful shout that provides power and fury, but due to the recent changes Signet of Might is the overall better option as it provides more power.

Banner of Discipline is almost always a must for optimizing DPS. It gives extra ferocity and nearly the same precision as signet of fury but to allies as well, which makes it crucial for both solos and groups. The other banners are irrelevant in a solo setting, but do remember that Banner of Strength is important to bring to groups as well as both combined increase the team’s DPS by 20-25%.

If banners are already settled, then you are free to use the extra utility to whatever you want; it’s probably better to use On My Mark or “For Great Justice” at this point depending on whether or not vulnerability is covered. Note that “On My Mark” is most of the time obsolete due to mace offhand receiving a buff towards the end of 2014 to give an equivalent amount of vulnerability with a cleave instead of single-target.

Sometimes, you will find yourselves in positions where utility is needed over straight up DPS. In these circumstances you have an array of tools to make use of depending on what you’re faced against.

Shake it Off is a stunbreaker that has an instant cast time and a short cooldown along with removing a condition from allies as well. Definitely the first-choice condition removal/stun-breaker if it’s needed.

If you are in dire need of stability, always use Balanced Stance over Dolyak Signet because it has a slightly reduced cooldown so you’ll be able to make more use of it. A good example of when it’s best to take it is for example when low-manning Simin, the second last boss in Arah P4.

Signet of stamina is sometimes very helpful during situations in which you are soloing and occasionally need to remove more than a few conditions. If you are in an encounter that you’re certain an energy sigil isn’t enough for, this might be of some use.

Endure Pain is definitely useful and you’ll find yourself needing to swap for it on occasions for things. It is however not an invulnerability skill and you will still engage in combat when struck. It does not prevent damage from conditions and only temporarily converts all incoming physical damage to 0 damage.

Berserker’s Stance can be useful as it provides temporary immunity to conditions, but rarely will you ever find yourself in the position where it will be practical to use due to its long cooldown. This utility in combination with both endure pain and defiant stance chaining results in invincibility.

Bull’s Charge is a situationally useful skill that I frequently swap to for the purpose of mobility when I know that I’m not going to engage in combat for a while.

Bolas has its rare uses like for keeping tar boss in Arah P1 immobilized, but it’s rarely ever needed for anything. However it’s worth memorizing that you have it at your disposal provided you ever need to stack immobilize.

Fear Me is an unblockable interrupt that’s very helpful for situations in which you need to interrupt a boss, for example the Subject 6 ooze boss in the Thaumanova Fractal during its block stance. I also tend to use it in pug groups for Arah P1 at the Legendary Shoggroth boss (tar).

Some videos of me making use of some of our many utilities in solos!

CM Path 1 Golem Remains Solo
Arah Path 3 Light Orbs Puzzle Guide
Arah Path 3 Wraithlord’s Ritual Solo

Maybe if Axe 5 did something like apply an interrupt, a daze, or something it’d be viable even without a damage buff. Just a thought.

I’m kind of opposed to the idea of giving it a damage buff because you’d need to give it a pretty kitten large buff for it to be worthwhile.

Flissy is right. No matter what you’re going to aggravate people with poor choice of weapons and very poor choice of build. This is PvE, not PvP.

Rogue!

I know, I’m glad that I saved the clip for reference. I had no idea what to really say. I was going to pay the POS either way in the end, so it made no sense to me why that happened.

I’m on Desolation and many people joke about it being “Guestolation.”

Seafarer’s Rest is probably the better choice for WvW, but Desolation DID come first place in that silver league :P

Deso #1 PvE and SFR for #1 WvW, I suppose.

Benefit from cleric stats? Can’t be done. You’d only be hindering yourself by using a weapon of those attributes. However, if you like the weapon skins you can transmute them! That’s what I did with my Shaman weapon chest. Transmuted the axe on a zoija one so that I’d have a blue one with a sigil of battle, making it easier to differentiate between my mainhand ascended axe and offhand one

This achievement has been discontinued since the tequatl changes made months ago, as it’s now impossible to fire the Vigil Megalaser. It doesn’t make sense to leave the achievement there as something unobtained yet waiting to be completed. I haven’t seen any comment on it claiming for it to be intentionally discontinued.

It’s a very trivial issue, but one that should be changed/fixed nonetheless.

Just pointing it out…

In all honesty, it’s better to just fight him with all DPS utilities. MAYBE swap the signet of fury for dolyak signet if you really want to keep stability on you (I always take it with me when I’m NOT soloing because one person screwing up and causing a necrid trap will kill you).

If it helps, here are a few highlighted solos of mine. Maybe it’ll help you to see where I’m standing.
http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/3744778
http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/3768787
http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/3786184

For phase 1, it’s very important that you make sure he doesn’t get too close to the door exits (that aren’t opened until he’s killed). If he gets too close to them, he resets. It’s bull. Happened to me so many times when I was first learning.

To avoid this happening, I have a solution but it’s kind of tough to describe by typing:

When he’s inching away from you along the wall, wait for him to begin an attack (either his arm swirling around in circles for the grub spawning, or where he lunges forward and does that “roar”-like sound to spawn swarms). If you step IN his red circle, and on the side that you want him to go towards… he’ll move in that direction with you.

Rule of thumb is basically that he only moves in between his attacks. Phase 1 I actually find much easier to fight him off wall, but the thing is I find it much easier to deal higher damage when he’s against the wall. It’s just easier to deal with the stupid swarms when you can freely move around without accidentally pushing Lupi in the wrong direction.

tonyg.3824:

As a fellow warrior that has also played since beta and on behalf of the warrior community your post hit the nail on the head good sir.

Unfortunately I highly doubt the anet team really cares for pvp anymore at the rate the casual player is taking over the game it seems they would rather cater to the game modes those casuals are attached too pve and wvw.

These days in pvp a newbie picks up his class makes a build and expects the world from it and then heads into hotjoins/solo que and typically doesn’t have a good time which leads to them heading back to pve, wvw where they can have a better time zerging bosses and other zergs of players.

Believe me when I say I hope anet throws pvpers a bone to chew on, and at the same time attracts more players to pvp, but when your balancing a game for casuals that have no interest for pvp “smash keyboard and win” seems to be doing alright for them aye?

As someone who has tried and thoroughly disliked PvP on GW2, I have to say that it feels like a playpen. It doesn’t feel the way that PvP should. I don’t have fun running around and taking turns standing in circles until they change colors. If I join a sPvP match then I want to do absolutely nothing but fight someone else. The restrictions are just so… bleh.

I can’t see myself giving a crap about this game’s PvP unless they implement a way to have risk fights and something different than this tacky red vs. blue capture points crap.

The game’s been ruined for years, but “PKing” on Runescape during its prime was the most thrilling PvP I’ve ever EVER experienced on any game, despite the click-and-wait combat system. Why? Because you were exploring in a wilderness and the deeper you ventured, the less safe you were. Your heart would be beating out of your chest as you narrowly escaped a huge team with a blinking red health bar and you would quiver with happiness when you killed someone for a ton of goods, like an Abyssal Whip back before it became common trash. This thrill is completely absent on GW2. It’s too safe and with no consequence to failure and no tangible rewards, there’s simply no drive for me to bother at all!

Arenanet has been changing PvP and claiming to have a lot of things planned for it in the past months from what I’ve observed, but I don’t think they’re taking the appropriate steps needed to make it more attractive to the players.

What I said in the long-winded paragraph above— THAT is what I believe sucks about the PvP. I haven’t really encountered any class-specific problems in PvP aside from feeling that elementalists seem to be a little less viable for PvP. I feel like they’re often times way too easy to beat when I bump into them but then again maybe it’s because I’m finding noobs.

Sorry, but you didn’t clarify all of these things in the post that I replied to. If you look at what you typed…

“I’ve recently got into the habit of not using the Greatsword, it’s just not very good apart from mobility.”

It might make a little more sense why I responded that way. With your last post you pretty much stated that it IS good and went on to clarify that as long as you’re maintaining ~25 stacks of might then it’s not the best DPS. In this circumstance, I agree with you. I also use axe AA more often in groups. Everything is trivialized and dies fast enough to the point where it hardly matters though, honestly.

Clarifying that to begin with would’ve been a good idea. Greatsword is by far the best primary weapon for someone soloing though ;P

I use sigils of undead slaying because of how often I solo Arah. For all offhand weapons I use either sigil of energy or sigil of battle. I use scholar runes, but considering how expensive they are it’s a lot more cost-efficient to use ruby orbs. Also since they are changing a lot of things soon, you never know… scholar might not remain dominant. We’ll have to see.

I use axe offhand specifically FOR the fury. For certain bosses that I know for a fact I won’t be taking any damage (Berserker Abomination in Arah P2), I can freely swap out For Great Justice for Signet of Might and gain ~80 extra power whilst still maintaining fury due to axe offhand #4.

It has its purposes, but unfortunately it is kind of a rare circumstance… especially because it’s only viable when solo and when fighting bosses that are trivial enough to take literally no damage at all the entire time.

Sword isn’t useful in PvE for any purpose other than offhand for blocks and ONLY mainhand for mobility. The only time I use sword mainhand is when I want to savage leap past things. You don’t use it for combat. It’s horrible in comparison to axe mainhand.

I duod FotM level 29 with somebody that I had just met via livestream once. I rolled for underwater ruins and pretty much solod it all (they died very early on the boss encounter; pretty much the only part that they contributed to aside from the last cage of krait at the start was the part where you turn into a dolphin).

We then got Ascalonian city. Pretty much the whole time I’d use endure pain, defiant stance, signet of fury + BoD. WB because of how crucial it was to have the NPC’s soak damage for you.

Thaumanoval was third. It kind of sucked because the east reactor or whatever with the asuras that you were supposed to rescue bugged out and we couldn’t open the last door.

Jade maw was last, which was easy as usual.

It took a good few hours, but it was a hell of a nice challenge. I encourage you to try it OP. There are a few fractals that cannot be completed with only two, like swamp (unless you’re a very skilled thief and use shadow trap + watchwork ports for the wisps like Sanderinoa) and dredge. I know for a fact that certain bosses like Mai Trin CAN be solod but it’d be extremely tough to.

It’s kind of sad, but all of these boss fights are amazing and truly engaging fights when you’re alone but in a group sometimes you barely even have to know what’s going on at all due to how trivialized it becomes. This is mostly applicable to dungeon bosses, for example TA up’s Fyonna or Fwd’s Leurent, where people commonly stack and don’t know much of what’s going on at all. However as an example of how this is the case in FotM as well, I had absolutely no idea why people were always luring the Jellyfish Beast to the light sources in underwater ruins until I tried soloing. Those little adds are satanic… within seconds you’ll be at 25 stacks of vuln > dead if you don’t stay away from them.

Try duoing / soloing. It’s a lot of fun

You’ve just reminded me of a boss that I need to try to solo. Thanks!

I remember when I was first exploring all of the dungeons for the first time, that cave troll beat the living hell out of me. Should be fun :o

Well I don’t know if this will work for you because I was told it didn’t work for everybody, but I visited some stupid instance headquarters place in bloodtide coast when I first got 100% and it awarded me with the completion of a place I had already been to along with the 2 gifts of exploration that I needed.

I logged in just so that I could comment on this with…

ARE YOU JOKING ME???

Is there even such thing as a game where this isn’t the case lmfao?

Coming from somebody that played runescape for just about a decade, I do not sympathize with you OP.

Yeah I can’t imagine this being too fun on a mesmer. Actually aside from the last “boss” (if anyone considers that anti-climactic crap at the end a fight), path 1 doesn’t have any bosses that are ideal for a mesmer. :/

I’d feel the same way about the NPC chatter if it wasn’t so kitten repetitive.

“No, your face is funny! It’s like a little raisin.”

“There is no ailness that cannot be cured by some of my Krait oil.”

grr…

Aww that’s ok! I think you’ll find it’s a fun fight :P

I “forced” a group to fight him once (being in a group for path 1 was a rarity in itself, as I’ve pretty much only solod it for ages) and I could not stop laughing it was so awesome. For soloing make sure you get him to revive all of the corpses in the area you plan to fight him in first because one of them being alive can easily ruin the fight! After he revives it, run ooc. The adds will disappear after they lose aggression.

CharrGirl.7896:

My elementalist:)

- Trickster’s vest
- Ascalonian clergy pants
- Frayed cloth shoes

Looked through a lot of pages on this thread out of boredom and yours is the only one that’s made me wanna post. Looks great

I’ve attached my warrior in full ascended zoija transmuted to orrian, but the gauntlets are transmuted to t3. I think she looks great especially with twilight. The dyes are abyss and vincent.

“I’ve recently got into the habit of not using the Greatsword, it’s just not very good apart from mobility.”

Wat…

I don’t know what you’re on about, but in my solo Arah P3 runs I very VERY frequently hit above 46k on Wraithlord crusher with hundred blades final strike and easily above 52k on the hunter. Highest I’ve hit on crusher before was ~50k and highest on hunter was 60k, SOLO. Forceful greatsword IS the most significant trait here, but there is absolutely no way in hell that you can convince me that axe autoattack chain is better DPS. Whirlwind serves as an evasion AND incredible damage, so I’m not sure what you’re on about with “leaving the player more vulnerable” and GS #5 hits a ton of damage as well— nearly as much as eviscarate.

Greatsword not being good? Don’t be silly. :P

I can only think of 3 circumstances in PvE where a rifle is the ideal choice of weapon to use.

1) Melandru on Arah P4
2) soloing the Champion Orrian Warrior in Arah if at all desired
3) Soloing a Champion Risen Megalodon (the shark champ) by rifling it from the shore, due to the fact that it 1-hits you with its rush which is pretty much impossible to avoid.

Other than that, it’s a complete waste. Single target, significantly less DPS than other weapons.

Wethospu.6437:

And what if dungeons and fractals were truly random? There could literally be zero competition. Difficulty and length of every run would be affected by luck. Lupicus records already suffer from random mob behavior. Also if the content was hard enough, then there would be a risk of getting stuck if you get some hard events.

Do you realize how much content they would have to add to keep an element of surprise? Just few random events there and there wouldn’t do because you would have already seen all of them after couple of runs. If they just tweak some enemy parameters (color, amount) then it barely makes any difference.

Personally I would rather see them working on a more skill based content. Lots of encounters could use some extra mechanics to make them more complex. Also removing linearity would be a big step for competition as it would allow different tactics.

I’ll start out in my reply by stating that I actually do enjoy the fact that there is RNG hindering me in Lupicus solo times. I rage, I rage and I rage because I get 3 swarms every single attack cycle and complain about it but secretly it’s what keeps me coming back for more. I have something to hunt for! I don’t want everything handed out to me on a silver platter. I VERY much enjoy the fact that I’m not 100% certain if he’s about to kick or if he’s going to delay it slightly. Like I said, there is the element of surprise. Sometimes he double kicks, sometimes he does a sudden AoE barrage on phase 2 and sometimes he doesn’t even do it at all and keeps doing his normal ranged attacks for a suspiciously long period of time. You may not enjoy it, but if you knew EVERY single next move of his, then really… I can’t imagine it being as fun of a boss fight as it is.

I get the point that you’re making, but luck has to be a factor involved in gameplay as well as skill. Not just one or the other.

“And what if dungeons and fractals were truly random?”

Sorry… but… that would be a theoretical impossibility

I understand what you’re getting at, but you over-exaggerated / generalized what I said. I was implying that I want more randomization implemented with the dungeon content so that it isn’t so linear and predictable.

“Do you realize how much content they would have to add to keep an element of surprise? Just few random events there and there wouldn’t do because you would have already seen all of them after couple of runs. If they just tweak some enemy parameters (color, amount) then it barely makes any difference.”

Yeah, and I think it’s worth it in the longrun. If Jagex was able to do it on Runescape with dungeoneering then Arenanet sure as hell can too. I’m aware of the fact that there will always be a limit with how much of a variation with dungeon steps / content they could implement, but once again I emphasize my point; as long as there is a certain degree of uncertainty with what I will encounter in the dungeon, it makes for great replayable content.

As for your last statement, no one said anything about wanting them to trivialize their content even more so than it already is or avoid making certain encounters more skill-oriented. I want that too. I’m simply stating that knowing exactly what I’m going to find and fight and have to do in every single dungeon is much less exciting than the idea of “never know what I’m gonna get this time” or “hope I get such-and-such as a boss this time and not such-and-such.”

P.S. thanks for the reply. Glad to discuss this with ya.

…nah.

It’s not like I’d have a problem with this being released but it seems so unorthodox. For me personally, this doesn’t matter. I can’t imagine the majority of the game’s population caring because FILTHYCASUALS.

On another note, I’d much rather them do more significant things like fixing bugs / exploits for a change instead of doing a half-kitten job at it months later.

Hello, I managed to meet my goal of sub-5 Korga solo

http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/3805255

I could have done a little better with axe autoattack chains I think, but do you guys think that my choice of when to 100b / WWA was best, etc? I can’t think of any other strategies to do it faster. I tried healing surge once so that I could refill adrenaline and do an eviscarate every now and then but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.

I wish more people would fight this boss so that I actually had some competition with times!

He’s a fun boss fight, but the adds are irritating.

If you aren’t in full berserker especially for FotM level 50, you are unfortunately a burden by comparison with anyone that is. At this level if you do take damage, it’s a LOT. Enough to kill you regardless of what gear set you’re in. The only survivability you’ll have depends on:

a) how fast you deal damage
b) reflects (you should always have at least 1 guardian on the team, obviously)
c) your use of evasion skills and dodges

The way that the mobs in this game are designed is to attack slowly and predictably. Because of this, toughness and vitality are essentially useless attributes in PvE. For them to be viable choices would imply that you AREN’T making use of your utilities, dodges, and weapon skill evasions… essentially standing there letting things attack you. In any other circumstance, they are very inefficient to use aside from WvW/PvP where there actually is a certain degree of uncertainty involved in the combat.

Buran.3796:

Wait to see the % critical damage nerf before craft anything. Otherwise, Celestial armor + full zerker trinkets are better choices than PVT or Knight. For weapons either zerk, valkirie or celestial based on your class (assuming we are talking for raids, in roaming condition can be better for some classes but condi works bad in dungeons).

there is NEVER EVER EVER a reason for a warrior to be in celestial gear. EVER

He already clarified that he meant the ones that exploit in his above post.

phys.7689:

Wethospu.6437:

Nike.2631:

Wethospu.6437:

I seriously can’t understand what you guy see in randomness.

We see the soul-crushing monotony that was CoF 1 over and over and over and over and over and over…

Players will gravitate to the easiest way to get the shiney. Sometimes its in the best interest of the game to NOT LET THEM.

Better “fix” dungeons too. Just make that whenever you try to enter a dungeon it randomly teleports you to any dungeon and locks the path selection. Only way to get rid of it is to completely the dungeon without stacking or skipping. Also remove grouping and just party people randomly. Imagine the soul-crushing monotony of playing with same set of friends all the time. We can’t have that.

Seriously, fix root of the problem. If people roll Swamp, make it longer. Like make people spawn at Mossman hut and move Mossman to trap area. Then require players to kill both bosses.

But no, let’s add some weird system which just makes everything more complicated and restricts stuff.

taking things to an extent that is illogical, is illogical.
random elements increase variability and test more different types of skill sets. Its pretty hard to make something incredibly replayable without adding uncertainty. Dealing with the unknown, or having every playthrough be different does more for replayability than just having the same thing again and again.

Solving the same problem 100 times is not more of a challenge, or more entertaining than solving 100 different problems.

I am a proponent of more random elements, and unpredictability in fractals. It doesnt have to impede progress, adding random extra goals, events, and very different levels will make it a lot more entertaining and replayable. And fractals is definately the place for it.

Holy hell, I’ve finally found someone with the same mentality as me. Hello!!!

I’ve been trying to push forth my ideas for implementing randomization methods into dungeons for a long time. Games are much more exciting when you have a whole world to explore and they lose their excitement when you have nothing new left.

Exactly what you said.

Content with great replay value MUST have an element of surprise. Uncertainty is a good thing and makes activities more thought-provoking and engaging rather than arduous and repetative.

With gold being as easy as it is to acquire and with the lack of content updates aside from zerg living stories and lack of bug/exploit fixes AND with neglection of dungeons, I wouldn’t buy gems even if someone reimbursed me for the payments because they don’t deserve the support if all it’s going into is living story crap.

It’s fine, as long as you get it now that’s all that matters. =P

Proposal Overview
Unique rewards for completion of each individual fractal.
Goal of Proposal
Due to the overwhelming majority of all players on this game obsessing over how much time everything takes, it is accepted by those that do fractals to always “roll for swamp.” This is problematic by design in more aspects of the game than just FotM (this could branch off into a whole separate topic out of the scope of my post), and I believe a wonderful solution to it would be to provide actual incentives to do more than what the typical fractal runner expects, which is to do swamp and hope they don’t get cliffside, dredge and mai trin for the other fractals.
Proposal Functionality
What I expect and/or hope for could be achieved with a plethora of ways. Unique weapon/armor skins that are only found from each particular fractal and aren’t tradable, directly impacting the daily reward chest at the end based off of which fractals were completed, extra fractal relics, unique nourishment/utility consumables, possibly unique minis… plenty of things that can be done.
Associated Risks
Right off the bat I’m aware of the fact that depending on what’s implemented, it might stir conflict in parties forming based off of which fractal people want/need to do and cause difficulty forming groups. However at the same time, I believe that with these added incentives there would be a considerably higher number of players doing FotM and it would more than likely nullify the issue.

It isn’t challenging to do unless you rush in unprepared. If you do get immobilised and can’t remove it, you’ll easily go down. Warhorn #4 and shake it off are your friends. Also make use of dodgerolls and jump over the lava gaps and you shouldn’t have an issue.

It’s almost as if it was the gateway game to MMORPG’s

With the question you’ve asked me, I respond with simply: I would change far too many things that would be out of the scope of this thread’s topic. So many that you’d probably request a tl;dr.

A simple yet effective solution would be to simply do what I’ve suggested in the previous post:

1) Instance owner cannot be kicked
2) The moment the instance owner LEAVES the party OR gets automatically removed from the party after X minutes of being disconnected (Is it 5 or 10 minutes?), the ownership is transferred to either a person in the party at random, or a person will receive the ownership based off of some other criteria. I’m going to go with the person that was in the instance longest. It wouldn’t be difficult to keep track of, and it’d reset for a person upon disconnecting/leaving the instance.

Zaxares.5419:

Asking for ANet to fix what was obviously an unintended way of getting past parts of the Dredge fractal (and by extensions, the dungeons) is an exercise in stupidity.

What we should REALLY be looking at is addressing the root cause of WHY people want to skip in the first place. If you want people to not skip, you have to make not skipping the more profitable/entertaining option.

Best post I’ve seen on any thread in the past few days at the very least.

Kudos to you.

Despite the fact that you’re advertising casual non-elitist dungeon runs, I pray for you that the dolyak signet + rifle warriors leave you alone.