I’m still amazed that there is not an option to hide non-usuable items in vendors. Hell even in the TP. Would make it so much easier to find Weapons, Armor etc.
And failing that just the option to search by Armor type on TP.. why the heck isn’t that in game?
I find that turning on my monitor helps me target the mobs in the dungeon.
Thief and or Mesmer. Easy as pie. stealth run bombs drop portal. Rinse repeat. Just make sure you can survive maybe 1 AOE when you run bombs (switching out of glass cannon armor helps).
Add Engineer to that list. Smoke Field + Blast Finishers can be awesome. I think we managed about 24s of stealth with 3 Guardians and an Engineer.
It’s not hard really, just don’t go with players who have never done that path- It is very much so the longest path (but my favorite) & with experienced players who only know P3 of Arah or just new players to arah altogether; it can be an even longer ride than needs to be.
Did it today with a group of Pugs. OK we had done CoF path 2 together, got on well then did CoF P3 no problems. One of them went “want to try Arah Path 4”… OK. Why not. One of the team left and we got a Necro that answered our add. In the team I was the only guy that had done it before. We managed her first attempt.
It is really all down to communication and having a correct plan now. I don’t think our DPS was stupidly good. And it wasn’t as if every spark run was spot on, there were a few times they had to run off to pick up a spark that had went rogue.
STEP 1) Choose 2 people to run sparks. We gave this job to the 2 Guards, more likely to grab aggro, lower DPS.
STEP 2) Explain that 1 has to go North circling the room and grab the Sparks and one has to go South and grab the sparks that end, and assign roles.
STEP 3) Pile Tears on Right side of room. We made a nice big stash.
STEP 4) Explain that they need to throw a Tear if someone gets paralysed.
STEP 5) Drag Simmin to side of room.
Then it is just DPS, Drag Sparks, DPS, Drag Sparks.
I feel one issue is the length of the Dungeon up to this point. If it was an earlier fight I think people may not have as much issue with it. But by this point people are tired, and a bit of failure can really demoralise people.
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Dungeons can’t progress without agony resist
Patently false, but I’ll pretend you are talking about FotM. You can do FotM up to lvl 10 without agony. There are people that have gone to 30 without Agony, though you’ll die during Jade Maw.
Very true, when FotM first came out, the only way you could get rings was from fractals and even though you had Agony at level 10 you couldn’t get rings without doing 10+. So we were regularly doing 10+ fractals with no rings.
Also due to the fact there were no Pristine Fractal relics and luck, one of our Thieves was doing practially level 28s before his first ring dropped.
Since when did you need to have a maxed out character to participate effectively in anything besides high level fractals?
see any one of the many posts about people running MF in dungeons
or the zerker requirement for various groups…That’s kitten locking, not the game’s fault.
Well I can understand the MF thing. MF is a kitten stat, it makes you perform worse and get more loot than the rest of the team. I think therefore it more people not wanting to play with people they perceive to be selfish and not willing to do their best to help out the team.
Being new is fine with me. Not being level 80, no problem. Not having the best gear yet is fine. Playing with a non-Standard Build is fine (though I may ask why you are running a Rampager Guardian that only uses a staff)…. Playing with substandard MF gear to get better loot, and not caring that the rest of the team is having to do more work because of it, more of an issue.
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You really aren’t locked out of content by level very harshly in this game. You can start doing dungeons at 30, you have to just be honest and maybe wait a tiny bit longer to form a team (maybe a lot longer if you want Story, no A-Net no-one is going to repeat Story mode for a Daily unless that was the only daily and you had no choice at all, please make it more rewarding to repeat).
I’ve level almost all my toons in dungeons, and it didn’t feel hard to get teams. However do note that instead of everyone yelling across maps they are now using GW2LFG. During prime time I doubt it would take me much more than about 10 mins to find a group for AC with a low level toon. But saying that, I currently don’t have a character of that level, my second Engineer is only 19 at the moment.. … And not getting any higher, because I’m staring at a log in screen that won’t let me into the game.
Torment really doesn’t worry me. If what I have seen is correct, It is going to be hard for Thief and Mesmer to stack more than about 4 stacks, and even then it does about the same damage as 6 stacks of bleeding if you move.
It also looks like it’s on sceptre for Mesmer which is rarely used, and I think it’s unlikely to make it better than most other Weapon sets.
On the thief it’s on a venom, and I feel that it’s unlikely that a Thief will take it over other utilities unless heavily conditioned specced.
In other words, it’s not really going to make the strong builds any stronger, but may make some of the weaker builds more interesting.
The Necro gets a pure buff, but Necros do have the issue that it’s very easy to disengage from them. Also it does mean I might use DS more on my Conditionmancer now, as it stands all I use it for is a second HP bar If things go really badly and to get fury.
Do a dungeon with people that know what they are doing, or failing that are willing to learn. Some of the worst runs I have ever been in have been all 80.
This is true now apparently (haven’t done it for awhile) but Grast used to not pop the bubble reliably. Therefore it wasn’t skill at all, but mostly buggy RNG to see if you would wipe or kill the boss. That’s why people started stacking in the corner by the pillar, instead of relying on the not-so-reliable Grast.
I haven’t seen it bug in ages.
I’d love to see someone say this is an l2p issue and melee as it stands is acceptable. Though of course, if you down and get res’d, you’ll probably end up doing the same or higher overall damage than most ranged, but that is NOT the point.
L2P. Melee is acceptable as it stands.
I have to agree, infact I would probably say it’s a bit too good.
It really depends on the group, I generally pug. In most pugs I find my support d/d elementalist much better than my zerk warrior. Why? Because players take damage because they can’t always dodge, so the ability to heal and protect them when needed is great. Players go down, and don’t always tag a mob, so you need to rez them often under enemy fire.The generally can’t max might, so I can help boost their damage.
When running with mates I might go zerk, if they can handle themselves OK.
BUT long story short, depends on your team and how comfortable you are. If you need a bit of extra toughness to mitigate non-spike damage use it. But if you find you only ever go down if you mess up and get hit by the bosses spike, throw in a bit more damage.There is no point running all PVT if you could survive fine running a bit more damage.
Also consider having spare kit, if I find a team is fine and doesn’t need to be picked up I’ll pop in more zerk parts into my armor.
If you focus on making sure everybody is having fun, even though they’re not perfectly balanced, it will all be okay in the end."
The problem is in games with PvP players of Class X don’t have fun if they’re always dominated by Class Y because of reasons beyond their control. Balance is paramount.
That’s not necessary the case. Class X doesn’t mind being Dominated by Class Y, if they are kitten ed good against Class Z which is common in PvP, and reasonably equal with Class W and U. The problem comes when Class X is Dominated by Class Y and Z and stands only a 30% chance against Class W and U.
There is a really good video about Imperfect Balance. In fact my main issue is not that they are Balancing Classes, but they are removing fun things from classes to balance eg. Kit Swap on Engineer. Swirling Winds not blocking Siege etc. Rather than making sure that every class has a selection of fun, slightly overpowered things.
TLDR: I don’t mind imbalance as long as every class has some slightly OP cool things no other class can do, and each class has some classes they are good against.
It’s the longest dungeon as nikaido said, and it is probably the hardest. Why is it so hard? Because you need coordination. A party of experienced players who can communicate efficiently can finish it in 2 hours, maybe less than that.
If you are pugging, good luck. A lot of people run it without knowing how to deal with some bosses, especially Lupicus and Dwayna, and that’s why you see so many people crying.
If your party can get on a voice chat, it’ll make things easier
Not entirely, you just need 2 people that are good at running sparks.. everyone else can more or less stand on Dwayna and hit her. Knowing where to tank her helps. So it is very hard to do if no-one has done it before. Fairly easy if 2 or 3 people know that encounter.
The problem with Stacking in a “safe” place.. Is too often they are not “safe”, yes you will not be hit by the rocks, but the entire team will take every cleave the boss does, and may even be knocked out and still get hit by boss.
So much better to run in with Grast, heal him when he takes damage. Fire off stability when he puts up the bubble. And possibly have a stunbreak or shield in case you do get knocked outside.
the way that Agony works does make Vitality a double edge sword, it will make it easier to survive the non-Agony part of most Agony causing hits (which is good if you have more Agony than you need for a level), but will make it harder to heal through the Agony ticks as each one will do many more HP in damage. I would avoid using too much Vitality at higher fractals therefore.
Toughness is still useful though, it does nothing to Agony but does reduce all other damage making it easier for you to keep your health up and therefore heal through Agony. So Knights, Clerics, Cavalier, Rabid in preference to Soldiers and Carrion for higher level fractals, if you want a bit more survivability.
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I play D/D ele in pve and pvp. Very rarely do I need a different build to defeat a boss. Eles are so versatile. Dont look at the weapons, look at the skills you can attune to. Every skill I pop gives me a boon+heals+ etc….. Such a huge difference to my first character, warrior.
I love the fact I almost always have Vigor up and my rolls do useful things. You rarely don’t have a dodge when you need it.
What is the other class without weapon swap? engineer? Forgot about him….must buy another character slot. I imagine it is the same for them.
Less of an issue you get you first Utility slot at a similar time to getting Weapons Swap when leveling, and you can slot a kit into this slot which is like having access to a second weapon
So at I think it was level 6 or sot you have 1 weapon set and a Toolkit (EG. Rifle + Toolkit.. or Pistol/Pistol and Flamethrower) which you can switch far more often than any other class.
The truth of the matter is the Ele gets 20 abilities on one set of weapons, other class get 2 × 5 abilities. Even D/D which is close range isn’t as close range as most melee weapons, the Water auto-attack is up at 600 range which I wouldn’t count as melee.
In dungeons I go D/D in most fights. The few I don’t are things like Bloomhunger where it’s better to be with the team behind reflects so I go S/F for the Swirling Winds, TA Tree bosses on 2 of the fights where Staff is better and Grawl Shamen where having access to another missile protect is just better for the group. Even on the Dredge Powersuit I normally do the switches and use D/D for better mobility and to whip the boss on the way past for a bit of extra damage. I would say D/D is fine for 70-80% of the bosses in the game.
If your running the 2 war 2 guard 1 mes group ( or any similar group composition) and you are in full zerker it takes a lot of skill to not actualy die. You still need to dodge most of the attacks since alot of bosses/trash in this game will either 1 shot you or basically 3 shot you. Sure some content is made trivial by this compoition (like slave driver at CoF p1) but in other places like CoE you still need to dodge all of alphas AOE you still need to either dodge or time aegis at the destoryer troll in p3. It still requires skill, it just gets done faster
With most builds you have to dodge all of Alphas AoE, they 1 shot almost anyone, however with a full Zerk team you need to do it far less times (also things like the crystals go down far faster).
There are lots of other places where if you kill a mob fast enough, mechanics just don’t come into play. As you say CoF p1 is one example, you an kill the Slave Driver before the Effigy gets a shot, but I’ve also heard of teams skipping whole stages in both Lupicus and the Ascalonian Captain.
There are also quite a few bosses where the bosses AI can’t deal with players sitting inside it’kitten Box so does very little at all.
I do agree it still needs skill, but the amount of time you need to go without mistakes is far less. There is far to much 1 shot kill in this game and not enough white damage. So the amount of difference that running zerkers makes to your survivability is not really enough.
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Fror, I think the real question was which would take more skill from individual players a run with the 2 War/2 Guard/1 Mes composition. Or other mixes. I run an Ele and will go with anyone because it is SO much more fun, and a lot of that fun comes from the fact that the content isn’t made trivial by group comp. You actually have to react to what’s going on rather than doing the same thing every time.
And btw, I think the difficulty is fine. I just feel that the Dredge might be too long. I wouldn’t change it, just randomly remove one of the 3 encounters. So at random, the cage might be open and you can just run through at the start, or the door may be blown (but you would still need to do the Cage and Rabovich), or the clown car is just not there and you go straight to the boss after blowing the door. I actually like all the parts of it (so don’t want them gone), but having all 3 everytime just makes it much longer than any other fractal.
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There are times that you need to be able to kick. Thankfully it’s really very rare. But if someone is just not listening and agroing mobs onto the party, pulling boss the wrong way etc. What can you do?
Not being able to kick people would completely support Bad Manners, People could say whatever they wanted, do whatever they wanted and the team would have no recourse.
It would also support unfairness, if someone just wasn’t up to the dungeon or wasn’t listening to the group, either the group would have to disband through no fault of their own, or would have to drag someone that was making the dungeon much harder for them through the whole dungeon. This doesn’t really sound fair to me.
But they are incredibly dumb and dull-witted when alone, which means having Skritt who venture out and explore the world on their own (Putting them into the current Hero situation) will result in a lot of very stupid Skritt running about.
We already have lots of stupid Warriors running around. I don’t think we will notice the difference. However it is easy to work in a reason that they can work solo, have the player controlled Skritt all come out of Proxima Labs, where the Raving Asura was messing around with Skritt intelligence.
And I definitely WANT to play a Skritt.. It’s top of my list. It would be awesome fun to play. Can you imagine the Personal Storyline?
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You should have seen the run we had earlier today. I actually had to explain to the level 80 ranger how to put his pet on passive.
what!? how do people not know that!
I don’t know.. In the end I had to go.. “DO you see a little blue icon with a white dove on it” … “Nope” .. “OK click on the Red Icon next to your pet skills until you do.”
Running with a perfect team does not take skill. It just takes knowing when to do X. Running with a imperfect team of strangers takes far more.
But what makes a “perfect team” is everyone being skilled :psyduck:
Everyone knowing what is required and when to do it. It’s not really about ability to adapt which I consider part of what denotes actual skill.
You could take 5 of the worse players in the game, give them the optimal team setup, set up their equipment traits perfectly, tell them when to do each ability, and they could run perfect dungeon run in a lot of cases. But what they wouldn’t be able to do is team with 4 random people and succeed.
What LordByron is saying, is running the same fractal with the same people the difficulty doesn’t massively scale. Once everyone knows there roles it’s just a case of doing them correctly.
If your playing with a group of people you don’t know, and who don’t know how you will react, things go wrong, and recovering from things going wrong takes far more skill than just repeating the same thing you have done with a set group everytime you have run a dungeon.
And I would have to agree. I’ve had Guild Runs of 48 which I’ve almost been afk watching a movie while I’ve played. I’ve also had Pug runs of 18 where I’ve had to keep my eye on the screen every moment just to stop everything going to hell.
Running with a perfect team does not take skill. It just takes knowing when to do X. Running with a imperfect team of strangers takes far more.
Is it even possible to Taxi ourselves back “out of combat” in a fight to regain that triple Rezzing speed? I’m guessing it’s not? When anyone in our party is still in Combat, we can’t even switch skills now? (there goes my old Sure-fire tactic for beating Lupicus by switching skills between stage 2 & 3!!)
You can switch stuff normally if you personally are OOC. I quite often switch from D/D to S/F on my Elementalist when the Ascalonian Captain is at 60% by running to the wall, while the rest of the team is still fighting him.
One trick that helped me in GW2 a lot was rebinding all the F1 – F4 keys to shift-1 through shift-4 – so I can use those keys now as fast as I use my core abilities. For my pet that means switching what it is attacking or triggering the ‘F2’ skill are actions I can do with very little hand-movement (all my keys are actually arranged on a nostromo pad, if not, I’d have rebound everything on my keyboard into a tight circle to keep my fingers from needing to stretch).
I must admit I never enjoyed my Ranger until I got my new mouse. Having all the pet controls on a little joystick by my thumb makes the class very playable.
i didnt even know anybody did AC anymore….jesus please take me with you! i never see map calls out for it anymore :/ im most definitely willing to listen i just want to finish my armor set off.
I think that may be more because people have moved so heavily over to GW2LFG. I know I no longer go to zones and shout out for group members.
i will agree though, the one group i got into recently….was full of level 80s who had no idea how to dodge, or kite. it was really sad and it took us three hours to finish the dungeon.
You should have seen the run we had earlier today. I actually had to explain to the level 80 ranger how to put his pet on passive.
That way, you can know why ppl hate ranger and thief in their team.
for example, in AC p1 burrow part. those two class are basically useless.
Not actually true, both are actually quite good at protecting Hodgins. Both are naturally fast, and can put down enough AoE to pick up mobs, and have enough dodges and evasion not to die doing that. I would say they are better than a lot of classes at this job as it really isn’t about Tanking. They are less useful on Burrows.
I regularly did this job on my Ranger as many Guardians have issues on it. I know I don’t particularly like doing it on my Guard.
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finaly some progress from this guy, lucky me I’m subscribed to that guy or else this will pass me by.
That doesn’t look bad at all. I still am able to see 3D from 2 images next to each other from my magic eye days, so I was doing that while watching the Youtube video, and it really does translate the game to 3D very well.
I like them the way they are, they mean that people congregate in certain zones which makes the world feel far more alive. Queensdale with Krytan Killer and Events is actually really quite fun.
It is possible they could do with 1 more PvE option each day though. Sometimes you just end up with a lot of long ones all in different zones, though this is rare.
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A Mausoleum is kind of gravesite, so given what the area beside it is called I would imagine the bloke inside must be Khan-Ur.
Strangely that was my first guess when I looked at the map. The real question is why would Khan-Ur tomb be chained shut?
“hurr durr is so easy to me, i can pass that part with my eyes closed”
NO, you can’t, the controls underwater don’t respond quickly enough and you CAN’T see without those things, it is not easy.
1st thing turn on enemy labels.. Then you can see them real easy.. BIG RED TAG saying Krait.
2nd thing learn route, the Krait don’t change location. So once you know the route to avoid them (generally hug ceiling), you never have any difficulties at all.
I feel half the point of Krytan Killer and Dailies in general is to put a bit of a focus on an area of the game each day. When Krytan Killer is in the list alongside events for example you will get far more people running around Queensdale doing stuff rather than being spread across all the maps.
A lot of MMOs suffer from empty zone syndrome, and this along with some other things at least helps alleviate it a bit.
As Wukunlin says part of the issue is too many people attacking him while he’s in ghost form.
Designate 1 person to attack him, and thus generate ghostlets, that way you are less likely to have issues. Ability 1 causes him to spawn mobs, just use it once. Ability 2 agros him don’t use it till all 3 traps are charged.
In other amusing things: Worst ever run of AC path 2 was with a Warrior that was wearing full Runes of the Golemancer. Not only was he constantly dying to the AoEs but every so often a Golem would pop up out of nowhere and Leroy Jenkins the boss.
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were people standing on the collectors? The mobs Cleave so that can cause issues.
I do this dungeon regularly with 35+ people. And I must have leveled at least 4 characters through it since the change. It does involve a bit more co-ordination than before, but almost all the boses have got less actual HP.
I’ve found the Collectors in path 3 have got much easier since the patch. I never remember having big gaps between collectors with no adds.
You did entirely the right thing. You stated that after the bubble was burst you went to killing the Lava Elementals.. You need to do this as they will either kill you or you will end up with twice the Lava Elementals next stage.
Ah, but the Ascended items gained from Laurels are in no way exclusive to Laurels and are obtainable by doing other stuff.
So, how do I obtain Ascended Amulets without doing dailies again?
That is one item, how is that a problem?
You can also lower the cost by doing a bit of WvW now. In a month you can make 40 Laurels and 500 BoH and buy 2 of them.
25 food is one of the easiest ones.. just order 25 of the cheepest consumable and eat them. comes to at most 2s, normally around 1.
5 uses of the Mystic forge is just a case of throwing your greens in the mystic forge. Which at the moment is far more profitable than ever before as the price of Ectos has went up again. You get about 1 rare for every 16 greens. So any green under around 1s 60c is fair game as far as I’m concerned
Karma spender, buy a single Orrian Jewelry box. They give OK returns, and you will probably get a fair chunk of your Karma back as Karma bottles.
Jumping Puzzle, Troll End in the NE of LA is very short.
Reviver, The Reactor in Metrica Province.
Kill Variety, Also the Reactor in Metrica Province.
In other words almost all of them can be done fast. If you just play normally just keep an eye on what you need and if you are running low on time just use one of the fast ways to get the remaining few.
There are also some really good places to get the Veteran slayer in seconds. But also not the Dungeons count as the areas in question. So Ascalon Slayer can be got from AC or CoF. Shiverpeaks from HotW and SE, Meguuma from TA or CoE. Kryta from CM.
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There are so many ways to avoid their knockback and fear its not even funny and they usually are spending large amounts of time not attacking to do their CC you have plenty of time to take care of them, avoid them and kite them.
The Graveling knockback has a really pronounced animation. They crouch a bit, hiss with a kind of spitting animation, just before they pounce.
There are only 2 places where it can be an issue.
One is the Hodgins room with the burrows, and this is down to the team not knowing how the encounter works and spawning 2 Scavengers which work their way through the whole team. If you are aware that the killing front burrow spawns a burrow and they jump out of it you can prepare and run in and kill their burrow before the cause a problem, you just need enough stability, stun breaks or shields to survive a few seconds.
The second is the Final fight in the Hodgin path, and that is due to the numbers. But even then it’s a case of watching for the leap and dodging and keeping a fire ring between you and the enemy. You should only need a stun break if you kitten up.
Well without the Tank, DPS, and Healer roles not really being in this game, the content and depth of anything is limited. Since everyone is DPS in all reality the only thing that matters, content depth/ game depth (character development) I think is limited because of this.
The thing is not that true. In SPvP and WvW, DPS is not king, Support, Control and Survivability also matter a lot. So the real issue is not so much that DPS is king without set roles, it’s that Dungeons need a bit of a redesign to make the other facets important so the most efficient team is a team that mixes roles rather than one that just has the one role.
Self-proclaimed best tank eu once said that elementalist is the best class to absorb damage. I agree with him.
Yeah I can definitely absorb more damage on my Ele than my Guard. When I need it Protection, Regen, 7s of Invulnerability, 3 blocks and Earth Shield + healing. The Guard can’t chain nearly that much together, though it does have higher base Toughness and Armor. The real advantage the Guard is he can give Aegis to the rest of the group and can have Reflects up more often.
Yeah do it most days, never have any issues getting a team. The thing is a large amount of the dungeon running population use GW2LFG, which means they don’t have to stand outside dungeons to find a team.. generally people stay doing other stuff till the team is full then all port to the WP.
What needs to be changed it is that stupid part on underwater fractal, that dark path with kraits it’s insanely hard and frustrating, you can’t see kitten, you get stucked on walls, and the underwater controls don’t help at all.
If you know the route you can solo this, with no issues at all, you don’t even need to fight a single Krait at level 48. I much prefer this to the Dolphins.
A little hint, try to hug the ceiling when moving from one Steam vent to the next, and be prepared to make a dash for it on the last steam vent (you don’t even need a light to get from here to the boss)
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I have a problem with the fact that when you get to a certain level, u are compelled to go berserker gear , and i fear this limits compositions .
I really don’t see this, there is only 1 DPS check in all the Fractals, the Grawl Shamens, and even then it’s a fairly weak DPS check. Having one DPS speced Warrior or Thief seems to be enough in a team full of Hybrid/Support. I do now bring a second set of equipment on my Ele in case we hit this point and don’t have quite enough DPS, and I recommend that people do have the ability to swap in a bit more DPS if they are running Fractals at 48. But saying all this a balanced team should have no real issue here.
When the game first came out I had a nightmare time running through Orr.. by the time I hit my 3rd toon, it really felt like a walk in the park. Condition Cleanses, Dodges, Swiftness, Stun breakers. You have all the tools to just run past almost any mob in the game.
From the sound of things you have put everything in healing through damage rather than mitigating it.
OK.. I have no issue with this, if and only if the ability to detect stealth was put on abilities and Weapons that are considered bad in WvW.
As long as it’s a choice between detecting thieves and using something far more useful in every other situations, then I don’t see the issue.
Just like I don’t have an issue if a class can do anything, as long as it has to make hard choices about which things it can do at any time. EG Warriors can do heavy DPS or Really good team healing… but not both at the same time.
It’s very similar to the Boon Hate the Thief now gets on the sword. It takes out a classes main class dynamic, a Guardian needing boons to be comparable to other classes. But it’s not really an issue because the Thief has to choose to use a sword which isn’t as good at other things.
I would also be tempted to put these abilities on some of the weaker PvE classes and then put in some hidden traps in dungeons that only these abilities can reveal.
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