Guild Wars 2

Mirta.5029:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

That other person deliberately sacrificed useful gameplay changing stats for it, and as such is less useful, and is leaning more on the rest of the team to accomplish anything. If they’re going to decrease the group’s effectiveness on purpose then they kitten well should be sharing the results.

please explain to me now why should people have one of their stats kitten instead of following a different idea from page 3, allowing people with mf to chose any kind of different gear set to use instead and make mf a hard to get infusion that you can get in a slot specifically for mf?

Path of least resistance, it would be easier for A-Net to change how MF works, than to recall every piece of gear with the stat in the game.

Mirta.5029:

Ratty.5176:

Mirta.5029:

Ratty.5176:

Mirta.5029:

if it’s a group effort, then why are you not okay with sharing damage, vitality, toughness and condition damage?
Or is it just that you want to benefit from magic users without actually getting the gear yourself?

But they are sharing their Damage with the rest of the group, they are killing mobs faster. This helps the group.
They are sharing their Condition Duration with the rest of the group, because there conditions are more useful the team enemy move slower, are blinded, do less damage.
They are sharing their Condition Damage with the rest of the group, mobs are dying faster making it easier for the team to get through the dungeon faster.
Their Toughness/Vitality does help the team, they are less likely to go down and need rezing, they are going to need less healing.
Your Magic Find doesn’t help the team, all it does is help you. Any other stat would help the team more (and by more any value is better than 0, which is what your magic find is contributing to the team).

they’re killing the mobs faster preventing their teammates from tagging them or getting any loot from them, they use their vitality/ toughness, go down and die while their squishy teammates have to jump around and avoid attacks. If you don’t want to share your stats with others don’t ask others to kitten themselves so you could get free stats.

How on earth are they preventing teammates from tagging mobs, have you ever been in a Dungeon, all the mobs have so much health that it’s unlikely that team members won’t get a tag on them, especially since they have lowered how much damage you need to do to get a tag. Just because they have Vitality/Toughness does not mean they are not avoiding attacks, But being able to tank some damage does make it easier for them to pick up a downed team-mate without dying in the process. To face tank a boss to make it turn away from squishy team mates.

I’m not asking you to kitten yourself to get free stats. I’m asking that if you kitten yourself (it’s your choice) and therefore kitten the rest of the group by proxy, the team actually gets something out of it. Otherwise people are always going to be after someone that contributes over someone that contributes less to get more personal loot.

try CoE stairs. Mobs are in vast numbers, not a lot of health, can be one hit, if you have one warrior on the group nobody besides him gets loot. There are other places just like these.
If a person with vit/toughness is crap and dirtnaps a lot his vitality and toughness is of no benefit to the team.
If you want another person to kitten his stat to 1/5th of its effectiveness, be prepared to do the same or drop the stupid idea.
Allowing mf users to exchange their gear for whatever they want and allowing all people to get mf trough expensive infusions would be a fair way to do it.

tbh, I think this is what you would find, everyone would take a bit of Magic Find in areas where they don’t think full gear is necessary, rather than one person taking Magic Find for personal reasons.

Also someone that take Vitality/Toughness is going to be down less than if they didn’t take it. What your talking about is bad players, and yes bad players will go down. What’s that got to do with the argument. If I have a Guardian face-tanking a Boss while healing those around him, he is going to do better with Toughness than Magic-Find.

Mirta.5029:

Ratty.5176:

Mirta.5029:

if it’s a group effort, then why are you not okay with sharing damage, vitality, toughness and condition damage?
Or is it just that you want to benefit from magic users without actually getting the gear yourself?

But they are sharing their Damage with the rest of the group, they are killing mobs faster. This helps the group.
They are sharing their Condition Duration with the rest of the group, because there conditions are more useful the team enemy move slower, are blinded, do less damage.
They are sharing their Condition Damage with the rest of the group, mobs are dying faster making it easier for the team to get through the dungeon faster.
Their Toughness/Vitality does help the team, they are less likely to go down and need rezing, they are going to need less healing.
Your Magic Find doesn’t help the team, all it does is help you. Any other stat would help the team more (and by more any value is better than 0, which is what your magic find is contributing to the team).

they’re killing the mobs faster preventing their teammates from tagging them or getting any loot from them, they use their vitality/ toughness, go down and die while their squishy teammates have to jump around and avoid attacks. If you don’t want to share your stats with others don’t ask others to kitten themselves so you could get free stats.

How on earth are they preventing teammates from tagging mobs, have you ever been in a Dungeon, all the mobs have so much health that it’s unlikely that team members won’t get a tag on them, especially since they have lowered how much damage you need to do to get a tag. Just because they have Vitality/Toughness does not mean they are not avoiding attacks, But being able to tank some damage does make it easier for them to pick up a downed team-mate without dying in the process. To face tank a boss to make it turn away from squishy team mates.

I’m not asking you to kitten yourself to get free stats. I’m asking that if you kitten yourself (it’s your choice) and therefore kitten the rest of the group by proxy, the team actually gets something out of it. Otherwise people are always going to be after someone that contributes over someone that contributes less to get more personal loot.

Mirta.5029:

if it’s a group effort, then why are you not okay with sharing damage, vitality, toughness and condition damage?
Or is it just that you want to benefit from magic users without actually getting the gear yourself?

But they are sharing their Damage with the rest of the group, they are killing mobs faster. This helps the group.
They are sharing their Condition Duration with the rest of the group, because there conditions are more useful the team enemy move slower, are blinded, do less damage.
They are sharing their Condition Damage with the rest of the group, mobs are dying faster making it easier for the team to get through the dungeon faster.
Their Toughness/Vitality does help the team, they are less likely to go down and need rezing, they are going to need less healing.
Your Magic Find doesn’t help the team, all it does is help you. Any other stat would help the team more (and by more any value is better than 0, which is what your magic find is contributing to the team).

Indeed, I wouldn’t go with an average, I would go for total up the MF on all players that kill a mob, all players get that bonus when they loot the dead mobs corpse. But have DR on the MF total, so you don’t get silly bonus’ if everyone just stacks MF.

It makes a lot more sense. You would get groups that all take a bit of it to help everyone in the group get better loot. Or possibly Support that run with a lot of MF to give the group a decent loot buff.

You would no-longer have the situation where one person contributes less in DPS or Support and gets better drops. You would have a situation where someone contributes less DPS but better loot to the entire team. In the same way that someone might contribute less DPS to better support the team with healing.

I have it and the bug is really annoying.. When you spend that much on a item, to have it bug for your Engineer.

I really hope they sort it out soon.

I hope you have reported it.

Having played up to level 48 FotM and run 100s of times with PUGs. Here are my feelings.

Guardian: Having 1 Guardian makes runs much smoother, having 2 can really help but is not essential.
Thief: Having 1 is really useful, but no in anyway essential. They provide nice DPS, Stealth and Blind Walls are excellent for certain encounters. They can also be very squishy.
Engineer: I place this very high up my list of preferred professions for a few reasons, which I will explain as I don’t think they get enough credit. They had very good AOE ranged damage which is very good for a lot of fights where melee is dangerous at high levels. They also have a really useful toolbox, can perma-cripple bosses, throw out a reasonable amount of blinds, can Stealth their team for a good amount of time. They can even out-heal a lot of classes, even when not stated for it, due to the fact they can have so many different healing skills equipped at the same time. In other words though they don’t excel at anything they can adapt to fill in what a team needs in any given situation very well. The can also survive Agony from the Maw at level 48.
Mesmer: The mesmer was my main FotM for a long while, and it definitely has it’s uses, I just don’t think they are as essential to success as everyone makes out, a lot of the time all I felt I was giving to the team was DPS as the cooldowns on the few useful utilities in most situations was so long. Portal is really useful in the Swamp, but by the time you get to 48 most people can run it without.
Warrior: Lets put it like this, I’ve seen far more Warriors that have almost been a detriment to the group than ones that have actually pulled their weight. Now I’m not saying they can’t be great, however too many care more about big numbers than their team and their own survival. A dead Warrior does no damage. Now saying all this I have run with some great Warriors and I don’t think the class is bad in FotM, just if I had the choice I don’t think they would be the first on my list.

Rangers/Necros/Elementalist: I don’t feel any of these really shine for me in FotM, now that’s not to say they can’t bring things to the team. They definitely can. Just the tools they have are not quite as defined. Rare is the encounter where I feel, what we need right now is X (In the way I would think “What we need now is a Guardian for Walls of Reflection.”)

Overall. I do think all classes can play a part in a successful FotM. However certain classes bring tools which do special jobs.

Spent the last week getting enough cash to get my Jetpack. It look quite cool and fits my character nicely. But wait whats that.. I change to a kit and guess what happens.

…. Yep, after I use a single ability I end up with the Jetpack overlaying my Kit backpack.

I know it will get fixed, eventually, but after I’ve spent 4 or 5 days farming and calling in every debt I could to afford one, have skinned it onto my expensive Ascended backpack. It’s just leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. When I should be bouncing around LA, going “YAY I have a Jetpack” … “To Infinity and Beyond”

Race: Human
Sex: Male
Class: Engineer

On an Engineer if you have a Jetpack and use Kits. When you equip a kit, your backpack changes to the correct kit one. However as soon as you use an ability you end up with the Jetpack overlayed on top of your Kits Backpack.

I’m playing a Human Engineer, and the bug appears on all 5 of the kits

The Decorative Molten Jetpack is tranmuted onto an Ascender Fractal Capacitor [Infused] version.

I have to entirely agree. Some dungeons can take a lot of time, I’m pretty sure I’ve had this happen on high level fractals after completing the Dredge and the Collossus. That’s a hell of a lot of time in a dungeon, and then to get kicked before the main reward. And a lot of the time it’s completely accidental. Guild Member DCs, you don’t hear from them for 10 mins, you go to get another guild member, everyone is kicks.

I would place this issue at the top of my list of things that really need fixing. I can live with the Time/Reward being a bit screwy, I know that doing Arah path 4 is not going to give me as much reward as doing CoF path 1 going into it. What I can not know is that no-one will not have an issue, the PuGs I’m running with won’t rage quit.

It leaves a really bad taste in your mouth when it happens.

TBH they have an agony system in play, which gates content. There is no issue with adding areas under a constant agony effect or mobs that cause Agony related conditions.

I don’t think there is a need for extra levels.. they have every piece of equipment, Infused version of each. So a total of 120AR without Weapons.

CobaltSixty.1542:

iTunes has a EULA clause stating you can’t use the product for the design, development or manufacturing of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

That sounds like a challenge. I’ll get my rodent minions on it at once.

You can do it, the scaling is very reasonable. I did FotM 18 with my level 55 engineer, but it’s really not worth doing, you get SO little XP compared to Dungeons, I did about 5 runs and then went back to leveling via dungeons.

RuneCrimson.7380:

Not really going to get into it again but I have seen it happen in this game and others…Its a normal MMO thing. I have been told all this before but I have also been suckered in at least 5 different MMO’s that said these samethings. Its better I just be careful and not get used again. The help I do get I appreciate but I will not throw myself into a guild or party like I have before when I am told these same things and get suckered. Soon I will be high enough in level to not care to much I am already a level 36 and never partied or joined a guild but thinking about it after I find out how much a guild takes from our loot and exp if I feel I cannot get a straight answer I guess its game play like I have been doing til it matters little if I get exp or not meaning level 80 lol

Guilds take nothing out of your loot mechanically. Teaming does not lower your loot. In fact teaming in this game is the best way to get more loot, as I’ve said you get the same loot wether you solo or have 2 or 3 people killing it. The only time you will get less loot is if you can’t do enough damage to count as having killed said mob, This will practically never happen in a dungeon (it is set very low, the only time it will really kick in is in huge Orr Events where there are 20+ people all killing the same mobs, or in Zergs if you’re Support.)

and btw I know it’s normal for MMORPG to split loot, Guild Wars 2 does not do this, it’s almost part of their mission statement, they don’t want to you to get annoyed when someone helps you. It’s bad for community. Which is why this game does it differently.

RuneCrimson.7380:

Adding them as a party does the samething a guild does and that forces us to share our exp and loot with who we are partied or in a guild with so creating a group with people you do not know is kinda a bad thing with me. If I had a group of friends I would not mind sharing my stuff with them cause then I know I am helping people that are not just doing it to take from me like other MMO’s.

I already give up my loot to people that help me around the game that just do it out of the blue.

Yep, it makes no difference whether 1 or 5 people kill a mob, as long as you do some damage you will get the same loot. In fact your better killing a mob with 5 people as it takes less time and you get the same loot as if you had spent 5 times as long killing it solo.

Jetpack dude goes Psycho, the outside rim of the area becomes a death trap that pushes you back off the side and the Firestorm throws down more AOEs.

The Gate after the Steam Vents, just before the boss fight will not open for us. We have tried all wiping, and all but the original starter Login out, and everyone porting back to a WP, nothing fixes it.

Same issue got to the gate after the Steam vents and it just wouldn’t open.

Same issue shut off the vent.. gate doesn’t open

Ethics.4519:

Sacrai.6280:

1) If you succeed, it means the player’s good. Insufficient AR shouldn’t be a reason to be kicked if you are skilled enough. Yet I might admit that he lied, it might be the best example you have given. I would simply have asked for an explanation.

So you’re saying a level 1 fotm should be able to do a level 48 fotm?

1) The person would instantly die due to one hit of agony. Even if the person were able to dodge every single agony attack, there are two mandatory agony attacks at Maw that would require the team to res him or leave him.

2) The person would be staying range and probably doing barely any damage trying to avoid all the agony attacks.

Not necessarily, We ran a level 38 FotM, with a mate who had had a bit of a break from PvE, doing mainly WvW. He was a tiny bit under equipped at 25AR, but we had a really smooth run, but he did die at the last bit with the Maw as expected, it was only when he got back to sell his stuff from the run that he realised he had forgot to swap in his rings and had done the whole run with 0AR, and none of us had noticed. You can do FotM with very low AR if you know what you are doing.

wikittenha.6298:

Let’s say your alt is level 35. Every 10 levels you destroy (not salvage or vendor) your current equipment, and buy new more expensive replacements.

How poor will you be when you reach 80? Provided that you progress normally through PvE . (I.e. no grinding/farming/playing the TP/etc.)

I level via Dungeons, bit of Story and some map completions, I’ve found that you easily have enough cash to buy every 10 levels no issues, Masterworks cost very little from the auction house. By the time your hitting level 60 you find you have quite a bit more money coming in than going out, and if you use tokens you have gained leveling for Armor you can have a fairly good setup out the gate just with the money the toon makes, especially if you complete Malchor leap and Cursed shore when your leveling your last 10 levels.

Softspoken.2410:

So after you clear the first three burrows (But not the one directly in front of the table that spawns at the start of the event) gravelings stop spawning? I’ve actually never had that pointed out to me: if I’m understanding correctly, that gives a great opportunity to take a breather / clean up / let skills recharge.

A lot of groups can just soldier straight through and clear it in one go, but I’ve been in groups where I wanted to just stop and clear everything out so we could guarantee a finish. I always thought the graveling spawn was endless though, so I didn’t think clearing out the room was really an option unless you could kill gravelings faster than they spawned, which was often unlikely with those groups.

They don’t stop spawning, but no more burrows will spawn, and the mobs that come out the front burrow are fairly weak. So even a group with poor DPS should be able to round up the spill over from the first 3 burrows, while dealing with the extra’s spawning from the front burrow.

In other words, once you get to this stage it is much easier to kill them faster than they spawn as you only have 1 burrow that releases weak Gravelings, rather than 2 or 3.

In the team I mentioned a couple of posts ago (the sub-optimal low level Guard/Ranger team), they cleared the room thoroughly enough before killing the front burrow that I could go and help them with the DEATH burrow, as I had no gravelings to kite away from Hodgins.

Afya.5842:

When I roll my condition necro, all I can do is running circle in front of him……and do whatever I can to hold aggro and stay alive. Cripple, freeze, regen, death shroud, heal, dodge, fear, plague………..and hope my guildies will clear burrows before I go down.

It does make sense for a full condition Necro to take the protection role. I would probably run Signet of the Locust to keep ahead of the graveling and do as you say throw out as much cripple and AOE as I can. The main job of this role is to keep the gravelings off Hodgins, not kill them.

kitsuneKyo.6824:

though i am with all of you when it comes to organized group play I’d still like to see a reduced amount of gravelings spawning.
in certain group setups you dont have the object damage to do this event properly.

I’ve yet to see a setup that can’t do it. I guess if you went with a team of Necros and Rangers all in Rabid gear you may have issues, but tbh if you had that team every fight in the game would be an issue (due to condition capping). Almost every other setup will have Power as a stat on most pieces of equipment and that is the only stat that works on burrows, you can’t crit them and conditions do nothing.

Earlier this week I did this with a team with a level 40 Warrior, 42 Ranger (Which I know was in Prec/Cond green gear, so no power), 80 Guard, 60 Guard and 80 Ranger. Hardly a high DPS team, but we did it first time with no issues.

Thieves have some great utility which is all to often forgotten. Blind can be a life saver in certain fights, Harpies on Fractals, Bloomhunger, Kitten-Golems etc. They are also really useful in the Dredge fractal, both as a lever puller, you can shadowstep cutting out a lot of the run, drop agro easily, pick up downed players, on the panel in the cage and running bombs. I’ve also seen them be very useful in the Ice fractal for lighting the big fire.

If all they are contributing is DPS then there are better classes, if they are competent and able to support the team they can do part of a Guardians job in higher level fractals, where their walls and blinds can do a similar job to a Guardians Bubbles and Walls.

OK this fight is not a DPS check, though it is possible to complete it without tactics if you have a high enough DPS. I have done it a lot of times with suboptimal groups and low level toons and what it really comes down to is having the right abilities equipped and doing stuff in the right order. I’ll try to break it down.

A. Hodgkins defense: One person has to defend Hodkins, My personal belief is that Engineer is the best class for this, but Thief with Short bow is also very good. Failing this either a Guardian or Warrior is the next best thing. Your aim here is not really to kill anything. You aim is to collect every graveling that drops from the front borrow, I do this on my engineer with ‘nades, shortbow AOEs also did a similar job. Warriors and Guardians can use Cleaves to pick up mobs, but this means they have to be facing the mobs, so they will end up taking far more damage than someone that can pick up the mobs on the move. The next important thing is the Gravelings also Cleave, this means if you stand on top of Hodkins he will take damage. The only time you should be near Hodkins is if you need to draw agro off him and a few swings of the greatsword should be enough for this. I generally try to keep moving when doing this, running in circles firing grenades behind me and occasionally on top of Hodkins to pick up any mobs I’ve missed, I used the similar tactics when doing this job with a Ranger and a Thief. Guardians can afford to remain a bit more stationary, though they need to be careful to watch out for Scavengers in Step C as they can end it very quickly for him.

B. The rest of the team. What generally kills teams is the knockdown from the Scavengers, but they only appear when you kill the front burrow. Therefore you should not touch the front burrow till your ready. With 4 people you take out the left burrow as fast as possible. Then head to the back-left burrow (the one in the side room). You then want to run along the back of the room, make sure you don’t drag mobs on top of Hodkins or the person protecting him. You then head to the front-right burrow and destroy that. AT THIS POINT NO MORE BURROWS WILL SPAWN. This means you can clear up any excess mobs that you have around the place. A team should be able to easily sit at this point killing any mobs that come out of the front burrow without any issues. So use the time to get your cooldowns back and heal up. Once ready kill the front burrow.

C. The DEATH Burrow. The back right burrow is the burrow that wipes most teams, this is because as soon as the front burrow goes down this burrow spawns and 2 Scavengers jump out. So it’s important your ready for them. Fire off Stabilities, make sure you pick up the Scavengers so they don’t attack the guy guarding Hodkins, and drag them onto the burrow, then AOE it down as fast as possible as it will continue spawning Scavengers. If you have taken the time killing the front burrow, you should have all your cooldowns for this job, so you should be able to deal with this burrow fast and have stability up for long enough (or have enough stun breakers/shields/Aegis) so that the team does not die.

D. Cleaning up, if you get to this point it really only take 2 or 3 people to finish the final burrow, so have a look at how the defender is doing. If necessary give him a hand while a couple of people finish the last burrow.

If you follow these steps you should be able to do it no problems with most teams.

I would be fine with team gets kicked if No-One left in the team had Story. Want to guarantee your team never getting dropped because the starter leaves. Do story, while your in the team you know you are fine. Makes sense and removes this issue 90% of the time.

Yep I love my Trident. I even get to show it off, because we have a water fractal

OK. Engineer currently is my main, I love the guy, he’s just so versatile. However I found just this when leveling my Engineer. At the start I just couldn’t get him to do any kind of meaningful damage. It was like pulling teeth. A lot of the Story missions were really hard comparatively to doing them with other classes, it only really started to feel like it came into it’s own when I hit level 35 I crafted a full set of rare gear and started doing AC Explorable.

It lead to him spending the first couple of months of the game acting as a bank character. I really don’t think the first 30 levels really gave a good indication of the Engineer at level 80.

Comparatively Ranger was really easy to level, so was Warrior, Mesmer and Guardian. I can’t really say about Thief. It was my first character and everything was new, so I spent much more time running around looking at the sights, so if it was hard to level I didn’t notice it.

I find Rangers fine in Dungeons, did all my leveling in them, they work great as tanky close support. I run a condition build with some power, toughness and healing and spec heavily into BM. The damage is solid, not top notch but very decent, if you can keep moving and behind enemy. You can keep up the best healing field in the game about 50% of the time and your hard to put down.

I feel part of the issue people have is poor pet control, survivability. The fact that they try to run Pow/Pre/Crit, which doesn’t scale as well for them as they have low base damage (due to it being split with pet, remember crit is a percentage of damage, the lower your base damage, the less each point spent in crit does). And they try to remain at extreme range, your best fighting at about 600, as it’s easier to get behind mobs, line them up for piercing and support your melee by placing your healing spring so they are on the edge of it.

Once you have piercing and are Condition specced, Ranger Shortbow can be really fun, kiting behind mobs, rolling through them and rapid firing them before they turn, strafing to get them lined up so you can hit 3 with the same arrow. I’ve run bow on all 3 classes and Ranger is the most fun.

Daecollo.9578:

Ratty.5176:

Daecollo.9578:

To bad the 98% disagree. Warrior is by far the worst class in the game.

And yet it is one of the most played classes in the game, and I have to wade through dozens of posts on GW2LFG looking for Warriors.

Not even 98% of the people in this post think Warriors are bad. It looks to me that at least 80% are arguing that Warriors are fine.

Not really, its actually 12% where elementalist/guardian is 13%.

I didn’t say 80% of people that played were on Warrior, I said at last 80% of people in this thread felt warriors were fine. The only released info I’ve seen from ANet still says Warriors are one of the most played classes, and this matches what I see in game. Even if your figure was right 12% which I doubt, 12% is the mean. 100% ÷ 8, so even then Warriors wouldn’t be the least played class. You also see a lot of posts moaning about the holy trinity Warrior/Guard/Mesmer, and though I don’t agree with them, the number of threads suggest the majority of people don’t think Warriors are bad.

Daecollo.9578:

To bad the 98% disagree. Warrior is by far the worst class in the game.

And yet it is one of the most played classes in the game, and I have to wade through dozens of posts on GW2LFG looking for Warriors.

Not even 98% of the people in this post think Warriors are bad. It looks to me that at least 80% are arguing that Warriors are fine.

Star Ace.5207:

You see, you are one of the nice, open-minded players, and that’s fine. I don’t care if you farm CoF 1, because you don’t feel entitled-it’s something you just do to get your gold. Some other players do have stinky attitudes, though, which very much spread like a plague in the community. That’s the danger that comes with exclusivism: some people confuse “speed” with “skill”, and bash those who aren’t as fast as they can be (I doubt you are the type). And I do understand your point, Berserker’s is too fragile that not enough “zerk damage” may make things go quite slower due to more frequent downed states. I have no problem with you, though, because you don’t feel superior or treat others like “baddies” because they may not prefer to do what you do.

I wouldn’t party with you, because my gear has too many non-full Berserker’s pieces, and that’s frowned upon (all jewels are rubies, but I don’t have the “required” max precision.) I would probably make things slower for you, but NOT due to “lacking skill”, but because I have chosen to play another way. To be honest, though, I don’t care, because I just don’t enjoy that type of frenetic paced-gaming, and prefer to group up with random Professions with different “non-optimal” builds. We are both fine in being different, and I am not better than you, nor are you better than me for choosing to play CoF 1 (or anything else for that matter) differently.

TBH I still play CoF with mixed parties as well. I really enjoy it especially Path 2. But I would never take my Zerk Warrior in one of those teams, it just would not survive for a second.

The Zerk farming is a social contract really between players in the group. It’s saying I will take full Zerk because I know that if I don’t you will die, and in return I expect you to do the same for me. It’s covering each others backs. In some ways it’s similar to running with any other party (though in this case it’s 4 Warriors). If I’m running a Thief, I’m entering a contract with the party to pick up the dead people with Shadow Refuge and put out a decent amount of damage, and in return I expect people to realise I’m a bit squishy and try to heal me and rescue me when I make a mistake. You don’t get this as much in GW2 as a lot of MMOs where the tank has to hold agro or the team will die, the Healer has to keep the tank up or the team will die and the DPS needs to take down the boss fast enough so the tank doesn’t get wittled down. In the Zerk farm in some ways it’s come back in a way except everyone has to have enough DPS to take down the boss fast enough that the team doesn’t wipe.

Daecollo.9578:

Ratty.5176:

Before the change, I could go dual axes, full DPS. Full into mobs and keep my health up constantly with no issues while also putting out more DPS than any other class in the game. It was just silly.

Now it’s still a good choice, but other foods get a look in, and I actually have to either sacrifice DPS, or rely on my group to keep me up. This feels right.

Its a terrible choice, and that was pretty bad. However it was overnerfed.

As you can see, I didn’t ask for it to go back to the way it was with the exploited attacks, however I wanted it to work before with regular attacks.

It feels wrong, you should not rely on your group for everything. Warrior is the worst PvP class in the entire game because it has no sustain, your just a baby holding peoples hand.

If you mean WvW. I know quite a few warriors in WvW that would argue with that. Warriors can be awesome if set up correctly. Giving good healing to both themselves and the zerg or decent buffing. While still doing great damage. If you are wanting to launch yourself into the enemy Zerg and survive your just asking to much. No class can do that. But Warriors definitely have enough survivability to hit the out runners, put down 2 or 3 people and get out before dying.

If you mean sPVP, you can’t use food so it doesn’t matter.

Before the change, I could go dual axes, full DPS. Full into mobs and keep my health up constantly with no issues while also putting out more DPS than any other class in the game. It was just silly.

Now it’s still a good choice, but other foods get a look in, and I actually have to either sacrifice DPS, or rely on my group to keep me up. This feels right.

laokoko.7403:

Star Ace.5207:

I do have a problem with saying “GW2 is so grindy, of course I must farm CoF 1 with zerk war for ten hours!” when it’s a self-induced problem, as aforementioned. You don’t need that Legendary stuff and other rare weapon skins in a week (not even a year, or ever, really).

Ya but in that essence no mmorpg on the market is grindy. You don’t “need” to do anything. You dont’ even need to play the game.

And the game is designed “by the developer” to make those skin to be grindy. It is by design. It is a way to keep the hardcore player and maintain the economy.

And you know what’s so wrong about not getting things asap argument? inflation.

You say that, but their are games which heavily gate content. Aion was a bit like that. To play with my mates I had to keep up with their level and equipment otherwise I just couldn’t do any content with them, zones would be trivial for them, there were no instances we could do unless they were similar level. I felt I had to grind.

I don’t feel GW2 is like this. If I’m level 60 in green gear I can do 13 different instances with my mates (12 individual paths), I can do world bosses, I can do world completion, I can do sPVP, I can do WvWvW. I don’t feel I need to grind to spend time with the people I want to spend time with.

I don’t think this is about Elitism, the Zerk Warrior farm only works because you take down the mobs so fast. If you have anyone in your group that isn’t full damage spec you quite often end up with the team wiping as they can’t deal with the damage coming their way in a longer fight.

I felt the same way when I first saw the Zerk Warrior farm appear. But having now played both sides of the fence (I had a Warrior that was doing nothing so I though what they hey), I totally understand the Gear checks. Most teams I’ve been with have been nice people, not elitist, I’ve never seen anyone kicked because it was their first time or they made a mistake. I really thought it would be unpleasant experience but it really isn’t. And it doesn’t really feel like they are being exclusive, just realise that the setu kitten itting on a bit of a knife edge and that if people aren’t properly set up it just doesn’t work nearly as well.

StriderShinryu.6923:

I find it kind of funny how some (all?) of the people defending the current difficulty are saying “Hey, it’s perfect for an end game dungeon!” when the dungeon is clearly not an end game dungeon. It’s playable and enjoyable at end game, yes, but it’s designed for level 35 characters as the first introduction to explorable dungeons. While it has been proven that, statistically, level 35 characters and down scaled level 80 characters are not particularly different in terms of strength that doesn’t at all take into account differences in actual experience.

We are not all saying that. I’ve done the new AC with 4 characters at level 35 and never had any issues at all. Players that don’t know how to dodge and either don’t know the dungeon or don’t listen to advice will have issues whether they are 35 or 80. Even done it with groups with no players above 60 a few times.

I have to say I really love my Ascended Hobo Pack of doom, I went to a lot of effort to get it. One of my fellow Engineer Guildies almost kittened in his pants when he saw it. I think he thought it was a craftable item.

Yep, their are abilities I just don’t use in that fight.. EG Big Ol’ Bomb. I believe any knockback has a chance of knocking something into the ceiling.

There are multiple things brought up here, but I think they come into general catagories.

1. Enjoyment: Different people enjoy different things, I personally really enjoy some of the places where you can Skip mobs, TA for example. I enjoy and run TA far more than CoF. If I was doing it because I wanted the most rewards in the fastest time I would do CoF. But I’m doing TA because I really enjoy dodging knock down attacks, triggering the right abilities at the right time to avoid dying etc. For me the enjoyment comes from the challenge and I find a good rat run far more fun than fighting multiple groups of trash mobs.

2. Exploitation: Running past mobs, skipping Kholer are not exploitation, it’s even being stated as such by the creators. Walking through a wall, jumping over a door, or falling through a ceiling that is not actually there is not the same as skipping a mob, and really shouldn’t come into this conversation.

3. Truthfulness: A lot of the time I see new players join a team, say nothing to suggest they have never run a path before. Then when it comes to a section and someone says Skip, they die multiple times because they don’t know how. All it takes for me to change how I run a dungeons is for someone to actually go “Hey this is my first time” or “Can we clear these dogs as I have a real issue running past this”. This is equally true for ads on LFG. if you don’t like skipping be truthful about it. It’s obvious from this post that a lot of people don’t like doing it so it’s very possible that you can get a team together if you put up an advertisement for “looking for a team for X, killing all bosses and most mobs”. You may even get people that normally skip, if you just advertise for CoF path 1, you have got to accept that people will probably run past the boss on the bridge or get annoyed if you start demanding to fight it.

4. Immersion. Just because for you immersion is killing every mob in a dungeon it might not be for everyone else. For example CoF path 1, Ferrah is obviously distraught because her friend is being sacrificed. To me the goal is to get there as fast as possible before she is killed, so it feels totally right to skip past the boss on the bridge whose only job it is too slow you down so they can complete the ritual and try to get her friend out ASAP. Likewise in AC, the Priory are getting overwhelmed by Gravelings so you are hired to take out one of the Breeders as quickly as possible before they all get eaten. Stopping halfway to beat up a Human that is too stupid to know he’s dead is not part of the mission brief so I have no issue skipping it.

5. Reason for doing Dungeons. To me the reason to do dungeons is because they are NOT grinding mobs for XP. So why would I go into a Dungeon and grind trash mobs? Now this is me. Other people might do them for different reasons. But for me it’s interesting boss mechanics, dodging through running parts, those cool missions like protect Maggs that keep me interested, not grinding trash mobs.

SO TLDR: People do dungeons for different reasons. Respect that reason and try not to ruin it for people that enjoy them in different ways.

hedix.1986:

And since AC’s revamp, it’s not frequented as it used to be. At least on my server. I also wouldn’t recommend it as the first dungeon to new players, cause without at least some experience, it gets annoying very soon.

Every so often I get a group of AC virgins from the guild and take them in and explain all the fights, and never really had any issues regardless of the teams level. But in general I don’t think it’s that bad for first timers as long as people admit it’s their first time. Most of the issues I’ve seen have been from people being afraid to say it’s their first time, because they believe they will be kicked. If they say it’s their first time I’ll tell them to stay back behind a Reflective Wall and let someone pull in the mini-spiders one wave at a time. Explain the Hodkins burrow fight etc. The real issue come when they run in and pull whole rooms, kill front burrow etc.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m willing to bet that the Arah armor is to show you have experience.

But why would you want to wear all Arah armor, it’s quite ugly. Certain pieces mixed in can look nice.. the gloves are cool on a Nerco. And the Heavy can look good on a Warrior if a few pieces are replaced.

It does look like Lag to me. Your screen showed you moving out.. the game thought you were still inside. All damage got applied when your game caught up with the server. I’ve had that quite a few times with large lag spikes where I will be fine then 1-2sec of damage will catch up with me all at the same time.

Aksamitna.9680:

Rachel.1249:

I personally feel that this dungeon need some revamp,coz majority of the pple are just looking for mesmer and warr in gw2lfg.com for a speed run! Other classes need some love too!If this goes on, everyone will eventually roll only mesmer and warior!What’s the use of having other classes!

I think you mistake two different things. Mes+4Wars is just probably the highest dps setup. It is not connected in any way to CoF, its connected to maxed speed runs. If you revamp CoF to make it long or annoying (like recent AC changes) it wont increase “love” to other classes. It will just make pople stop doing CoF P1 so often.

CoF p1 is currently the last dungeon we do ad-hoc, evenings, with any guildmates, with any class, just to have some fun of playing together, when not all people have an hour of time just to endless tap one mob. I’d rather like to see more so short-timed and not annoying paths instead of changing this last one.

Totally agree, it’s not fast easy runs that is the issue. Having a fast easy dungeon is a good thing, gives people something to do when they have a short amount of time. The real issue is that fast easy runs give the same rewards as long tedious ones. Why would anyone ever do CoF path 3 even if they did have time, when in the same time they could do path 1 4 times with far better rewards. And I’m not asking for CoF1 to have it’s rewards nerfed (though I wouldn’t be against 40 tokens on it instead of 60). But that long paths like CoF 3 or Arah 4 get their tokens increased, whether this be through more in final chest or having large bags of wonderous goods that give more tokens than their normal versions on the later bosses. Time should be correctly rewarded.

TBH, I’m now regularly invited to groups because I’m an Engineer. And even though I have all classes to 80 and fully equipped the Engineer is my Fractal Runner. (Strangely it used to be a Mesmer, but a lot of the time I found it a bit wanting. TW is nice, but when it comes right down to it I find the Engineer has better tools overall. Rather that tools that are useful in a few locations in the dungeon like Portal.)

Engineers are one of the most useful professions in fractals,

• High ranged AOE DPS, good for bursting down groups of mobs like Lava Elementals/Dredge
• Good team healing where necessary
• Able to heal themselves through Agony
• Able to use Elixir S to get to places which are deadly to pick up downed players
• Able to put up a reflect/smoke wall to assist the Guardians
• Long Range ground targeted attacks to take out things like Dredge Turrets and even Harpies.
• Ability to Immobilise and Cripple bosses at range constantly. Great for the flame sword part of the Ascalon Boss fight and for the start of the Grawl Shamen fight (where you also have quite a few knockbacks)
• Pretty much able to survive most things if played properly.

I’ve even seen groups advertise looking for 1 member Guardian/Warrior/Engineer on GW2LFG.

Now Rangers I know have a bad press, and to be honest as someone that has played Rangers I know why, this is largely due to a huge proportion of the Ranger community playing them badly (having watched Rangers that join pugs with us). When played well they can be a real boon to the team. They can supply good DPS, while still being very tanky and supplying good team healing. But to do this they have to run close support. How many Rangers have you seen that seem to want to be in the next continent pinging one enemy from range for OKish damage? Rather than close where they can put down Healing Fields over the melee fighters, and make use of bleed stacking and piercing attacks to damage multiple targets at once.

TBH rather than buff/nerf paths. I would much prefer looking at the paths, the average time to complete, number of deaths etc, and then a rebalance of rewards. The issue is not P4 Arah being long or hard, but the fact the rewards are no better than a path that takes a 1/3 of the time. Same with Path 3 CoF. Up the tokens to 100, add a bit better loot on the later bosses, final chest.

If the rewards matched the difficulty, time invested, I don’t think some paths being easier would be an issue.

I noticed that both of the Zerker Thieves I regularly do fractals with started to swap in a bit of Toughness and Vitality when we passed 30. They just found they were a bit too flimsy without it. It doesn’t matter how good you are at dodging, eventually you will make a mistake, and full Zerk is just a tiny bit too unforgiving at the higher levels. Saying that you can make it to a fairly high fractal level just running Zerker, they seemed to be fine up 30 and even 30+ they still could do very well.

But even then they regularly swapped to either pistols or shortbow when they needed to. There are too many fights you just can’t afford to be in close for like Bloomhunger, Grawl Shame etc.

Kozai.8269:

I still try it with a PUG every once in awhile, since I want PVT armor on a couple of characters, but then after getting bounced around by gravelings for awhile I remember why I don’t do it more often. Almost none of my friends/guildmates will join me (mind you, we don’t have enough after two left because of high dungeon difficulty to make up a full team any more). With an Engineer main with virtually no access to stability, I’m not sure what I can do to avoid attacks from half a dozen gravelings at once.

Elixir S is a really good way to avoid the problem, even works when you are knocked down, so is a great Oh kitten button. I run Speedy Kits, so swapping kits means I can have permanent Swiftness (I also use a trait so I get Vigor on kit swapping), this means you are moving faster than the Gravelings, all you need to do is watch for the ramp up for a pounce, they give off a noticeable crouching animation and dodge the pounce, by the time they cooldown and can pounce again you will be miles away. I combine this with blind grenades so they miss with their pounce and ice grenades so they definitely can’t catch up with me.

Engineers have all the necessary tools to get through these bits you just need to practice getting the timing right.

It’s even possible to collect all the parts of the fire scepter with an Engineer. But it does involve a bit of cunning foot work to do.

(You can also hang slightly behind a Guard/Elementalist and run through after they have been pounced by the graveling as there is a fairly long cooldown on the pounce)