Yup, whenever I decide to pug a dungeon I specify gearcheck for zerkers in the description to sort out the superbads. I then proceed to sit around and kick people that join and link their full clerics set, people that link their rares, people that link their zerker weapon only to see them linking toughness jewelry after further asking, people that lie to me by linking berserker chatcodes, people that joined for the wrong dungeon or path, people that are not even max level, people that join and then show no reaction at all, people that join and then write “go?”, people that link a ranged weapon as their main weapon, people that join and claim that their damage is more than enough to finish the dungeon etc. etc.. After 10-20mins of kicking and being insulted I usually just rage and give up on it.
If by any chance I happen to actually fill a group of 5 people more or less passing the gearcheck I go ahead to do the dungeon in slow motion, with a group dps that can only possibly be achieved by full defense traits paired with no game knowledge whatsoever. I watch people do things like being sprayed at with the spider queens aoe poison in the corner during the pull and standing in it like sheep, only to be insulted myself for then moving out of it; or people pulling the whole room before lupi into the lupi room trying to get back to the party. Special greetings to people that see me standing ready to pull say alpha, only to then dash past me when he spawns, madly swinging their fiery gs until nearly in touch range, getting encased in a crystal halfway back to the party. I think if I play this game any longer I will develop the ability to punch people over the internet through sheer will.
The times that I actually played how I wanted could probably be counted on one hand.
(edited by Rag.3258)
Warrior: Simple and straight forward, probably the hardest class to f up. Great offensive buffing through banners and fgj. Every group should have 1-2 warriors just for that. Okay damage but great selfbuffing, hence your damage advantage shrinks the more group buffs your group throws out. Great base defense and mobility, okay at evading damage with evades from GS-Whirl and maybe offhand sword.
Guardian: Much like a defensive version of warrior. Meh at offensive groupbuffs (can stack some short lasting vuln up relatively fast), but can put out some group defense without giving up much DPS (reflects, condition removal, aegis, blinds, to a lesser extent hammer auto for perma prot). Good damage if buffed by the group. Good base defense, but you cant just sit it out like warrior. Defense is a bit more skill based with a lot of blocks and evades that shouldnt just be spammed. You got the GS pull and Line/Ring of warding to group mobs.
Mesmer: Sits very much in the same position as Guardian, bundling the desirable defensive support for the group with the least DPS lost possible. However it feels a bit different playing mes. Much like a catalyst mes will be bad in bad groups and make strong groups even stronger. Your utility skills are almost exclusively supporty. Weak self buffing, boonshare signet is conditional but a strong skill. Good condition removal and strong reflect, although it requires a bit more thought than guardians projectile protection. Mes is a light armor class but has a huge array of damage evasion at disposal, you shouldnt die a lot as mes. Damage relies heavily on your phantasms, without them you hit like a wet noodle, with them your damage is good. Phantasm upkeep doesnt work very well for me but others seem to be happy with it. Mes has a nice pull-skill as well.
Rating scale: Meh<Okay<Good<Great
I assume berserker gear and traits.
For testing warrior and guardian you could probably just create one and play them to lv30. Mes really isnt that great solo so its hard to rate it before you played one in a group. Maybe watch some dungeon guides played on a Mesmer to get a feel for it.
Surely theyve also fixed björns rangebug and npc aggroing in general then.
It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to see that reflection is unbalanced in PvE. It’s not the reflect itself, it’s the amount of damage that the enemy ends up dealing to itself because of how it scales with the player’s damage multipliers.
N
Reflection damage is just the icing on the cake, projectile protection as it is is completely broken. It only needs two people to bring 100% projectile protection uptime barely dropping any other support or damage for it. If anet ever wanted to use projectile attacks as a serious measure again they had to go down the “unblockable” road. Anyone could have seen that, it is the old dragonball scheme (new stronger enemy arrives, he is seemingly immune to all of the heroes attacks, hero learns a new attack to counter him, next enemy has to be even stronger to make any sense…)
While we are at it, lets yell at guild mission exclusive ascended trinkets as well.
There are no guild commendation only ascended trinkets it takes 12 commendations for just the accessory slot trinket which you can also buy with laurels plus 50 echos so please get your facts straight, thanks
40 or 45 laurels per piece are prohibitively high, they might as well not have implemented it at that price. Silly me, thinking I can use multiple characters.
Dungeon runners can get ascended weapons from dungeons without crafting. Champions and fractals have a chance to drop weapon chests.
Lol :-D
Dungeons for empyral stuff, fractals for dragonite stuff. As with every and any design decision in this game it is impossible to grasp for me how this was not implemented.
Ive been deleting dust and empyreal things for months(? Since shortly after their release) now and could barely make 2 ascended weapons.
While we are at it, lets yell at guild mission exclusive ascended trinkets as well.
My issue too. I really do not wish to go out and farm dragonite ore in open world, and I’m sure as hell not going to make enough money to level up my crafting through fractals which do not provide adequate reward vs time input. Perhaps the fractal skins that drop should have agony infusion slots and etc.
We could have had dragonite from fractals. Would have been the logical thing.
Eitherway it is the combat system thats broken to the core that prevents them from putting in challenging content. They went all out with permablinds, 100% critchances with critdamage as a stackable stat, 100% reflection uptime, lots of invul moves and tons of flat damage modificators.
Seeing how gw1 did not need any time gated content to entertain people for years (they tried once in the first game, although it was a very soft gear check) saddens me.
Most annoying thing about playing ranger to me is how they give you a million dodges and then make sure you’ll always miss some. Come on! :-/
Step 1: Identify damage modificators (+5% etc.)
Step 2: Identify game-changing op traits (such as vigor on crit, longer consecration uptime, condition removal on virtue, reflect on focus skills, to some extent longer firefields and forceful greatsword etc.)
Step 3: Stockpile as many damage modificators as you can get with least op traits neglected. Keep the statbuffs of the traitlines in mind.
Works for every class.
Example for Mesmer:
1: 4% per mantra, 3% per illusion; to a lesser extent both 15% more phantasm traits
2: Reflect on focus skills, vigor on crit, faster glamours; 20% faster sword recharge, (clone on dodge); 20% faster recharging phantasms, faster recharging phantasm attacks.
Now if you expect a lot of projectiles, youll get the focus reflects because its the most op traitpoints you can spend under projectile circumstances. Else it takes a lot of points with no effect. Mesmer is one of the classes that have a tad more build variety within the meta than say, warrior.
Remorseless isnt great though if it does only what it says.
(edited by Rag.3258)
We have a cc heavy skill system where most classes can bring an interrupt or better with a moderate recharge without giving up much or any damage, whereas dungeon bossfights are usually 5vs1.
The current defiant system isn’t great but I have yet to hear any suggestion that does not enable coordinated groups to dumb bossfights down even more if they wanted to.
The idea of 100% projectile protection with long uptime and little to no downtime was broken from the start.
It’s a bad idea