Guild Wars 2

RSLongK.8961:

How u came up with this composition without knowing the boss mechanics?

I think it’s a pretty safe “generalized” base composition that gives the highest likelihood of succeeding without any other information. I’m sure they’ll tailor it based on specific mechanics as needed, if that is needed at all.

EDIT: I actually think this is a pretty solid composition as the Revenants can carry CC weapons in their swap for breakbars, they pack numerous sources of protection and such, and a warrior can also stack a lot of might with PS if they’re forced to use a Longbow and Warhorn in fire fields. I also think the composition is fairly bulky and can sustain solid damage if the need arises, especially factoring in the mass protection from a Glint Revenant or the Guardians.

thrag.9740:

Here is a list of exploits that should be fixed. I’m posting it in both red threads. Lets see if anything happens.

Christ they know about the exploits. I’ve already forwarded all of them to the appropriate location, which just so you know is exploits@arena.net (and not here).

Iris Ng.9845:

You don’t care about what the dev says anymore? Fine. Can you step out and let others welcome him? because I’m still interested in what else to be learnt from the devs.

Entirely agreed.

Jerus.4350:

Though I will say… all I did was ask a 6 month old unanswered question…

…in an entirely unrelated thread. Maybe we should keep feedback on a 6 month old unanswered question in topics dedicated to that question.

I agree with the OP. The boon-sharing component of WHaO is essentially useless now. As far as PvP goes, this means that TU is essentially the only valid heal once again, which is a shame.

NapTooN.6283:

So i think we can go to the Raid, grab a full set of Ascended Stuff and swap over to Fractals, right? That would make it easier for me to test the new stuff in higher Fractals with different stats to see if they are worth it.

That’s correct, you can do that come BWE3.

Evapor.6849:

Haven’t heard from the QA since maybe she did lose her job lmao

I certainly hope not! She didn’t even really tell me anything that she shouldn’t have! All I know is that she really wanted to tell us more, but that her hands were tied. I really wish I could give more information, but I’ve been prying on it for awhile. I really just think their official policy is to not acknowledge dungeons except in extreme cases.

Horus.9685:

Does that make you the Forum Specialist for Dungeons, Fractals & Raids then?

I’m pretty sure that’s the case, but I don’t want to be presumptuous (I mean, I already have been reporting on raids). I’ve reached out to one of my dev contacts on the matter to clarify.

dlonie.6547:

…riiiiiiiiiight. Dunno about you, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

Gah. They’ve dug themselves into such a deep hole. Everyone who hasn’t just stopped playing is bitter af. Glad to see another wave of token redposts…On the chance that this isn’t just a temporary, hollow gesture like the last few times we’ve seen this happen, it might just help them get out of that pit.

As long as we get appropriate, instanced PvE content I don’t really mind what it is. We’re getting raids, so I’m super happy. If in ten months from HoT release there’s no new content at that point, then I’ll start getting antsy. For now, the only thing on my mind is the new stuff we’re for sure getting with HoT. Hopefully we get new fractals eventually, and at a regular enough pace that we’ll always have something relatively new to play. That’s pretty much my only hope.

dlonie.6547:

What would they have lost by just saying on day one “That’s not right, we’ll fix that once things settle down with HoT” or “Yep, that’s the way we want it. Stock up on energy sigils.”

Sorry to stir it up! I presume the only reason they haven’t spoken publicly about it is because they aren’t sure whether they like it better this way or not and want to be able to change their mind about it down the road without hearing “Omg you broke a promise!” from the community. The change was for sure intended, but I have no clue whether it was seen as a bug fix, an exploit fix, an experiment, or what. Hopefully we’ll find out some day soon.

Kitty.1502:

what about fractals? dungeons? guild missions?

Probably later on once they’ve laid the ground work for it. Also, they’re not working on dungeons any more ever. Fractals are their supported 5-man instanced end-game content. I can’t speak for guild missions, so who knows about that one—I’m just glad they’re instanced now (challenge/puzzle).

Kitty.1502:

While appreciate mechanic adjustments, that is not new content, that is mechanic changes. When will we get content?

Raids are new content.

This is an exceptional list, and I understand not being able to test all the sets (though I’m sad that Sinister won’t make a showing). Thanks for the information, Chris!

Jerus.4350:

Any chance we’ll see an answer to the Lupi question? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Bug-Lupicus-Necrid-Bolt-hits-at-melee/page/5

Raids are cool and all but… yeah…

And welcome, I’m just genericpesimisticdungeoneer98

For reference, I’ve been talking to a developer via PM about this for months. She promises to update me when/if they get the authorization to talk about it.

Yay! I didn’t want to speak for you given how busy you are, but that’s great to hear.

Cameron Rich.3905:

Don’t just take my word for it, this weekend we’re allowing you to play our content as part of the Beta Weekend Event. We’ve spent a lot of time and poured a lot of love into this content, and simply cannot wait for players to get their hands on it.

Thanks for the post, Cameron! Hopefully we’ll be seeing a lot more of you in the coming months.

People are still really sad that dungeons have stopped being the way of instanced content in GW2, but I think once we see what raids have to offer we’ll be excited so long as they keep getting worked on! Looking forward to this weekend myself; I definitely want to give it a try.

Amicable Pugs.4503:

Erm no, it has 10s cd. Just tested after reading your post to be sure.
So no perma 25 vuln :P

Meh, well boo that. I guess I got excited over other vulnerability I was applying then.

In case anyone didn’t notice, we are now officially the raid forum. This means we’ll get a lot more developer activity once HoT comes out.

Thz.7569:

There are plenty of other areas that could be buffed to infuse some more flavor in the class.

I agree with this, but given that we just saw a balance patch it’s going to be a long time before we get that opportunity. Other things on the Ranger absolutely should be buffed up to levels appropriate for group play in all game modes, but the nerf we’ll see will likely drop the share durations to negligible levels rendering this pretty low on the utility totem pole again.

We’re super excited for the raid beta weekend, and we’ve also been doing hero point rushes periodically to get people the hero points they need for elite specializations! Lots of extra events, guild missions, and everything leading up to the Heart of Thorns release, so it’s a very exciting time to be a part of the guild.

We’re also prepping the fundraiser for our guild hall excursion fund, and that’s coming along nicely. I expect we’ll be able to get our guild hall pretty much as soon as HoT is released at this rate! We’ll set up a special raid time for that when we get closer to launch.

If any of the special or regular things we do interest you, please reach out to one of our officers and we can talk about whether you’ll be a good fit for the guild!

I love how this isn’t even that strong or effective but they’re going to nerf it anyway thanks to the kneejerk spasms of a few people who are playing at extremely low skill levels in PvP or not even trying the build before complaining.

This is really frustrating. I absolutely love my Ranger, but what I love more than my Ranger is feeling effective.

Zatoichi.1049:

Roy: Nerf incoming.

https://twitter.com/roycronacher/status/649267788121411585

sigh It’s okay, I didn’t want to feel as effective as an Ele in PvE anyway. Really.

OlliX.1705:

Weird, cause everyone else in my guild insists that other projectile absorptions and reflects don’t work against those projectiles. Guess I might have to get on my thief and try to see how smoke screen works in comparison.

Many of them used to, but don’t anymore. I am entirely certain that CPC blocking the normally unblockable projectiles is unintended and will be fixed in the next bug fix round. It is not critical enough that it will get hotfixed, though.

That said, I love the new CPC a lot. I wish the special effect would be updated to look like the Toxic Alliance krait AOE field, but that can happen later. Functionally it’s great right now.

The only thing I absolutely hate is the self-weakness. Seriously, any other condition, but weakness is crippling to DPS and has to be cleansed immediately or you cannot even capitalize on the projectile destruction.

I’ve played around with this a lot since patch, and I seriously don’t think it’s that strong or OP at all. Realistically without completely gutting myself, and still with spamming my heal skill, I can maintain regeneration, swiftness, and fury in perpetuity. Permanently maintaining the others requires too many sacrificed cooldowns or too much prep time to actually be useful in a real PvP match or WvW zerg. For WvW roaming it’s neutered by anything with boon stripping which is, well, a lot (this is also true for PvP).

Seriously, I think this is actually pretty well balanced, and as far as Ranger in PvE goes this is what was needed to bring it up to snuff. People are now discussing Ranger as being equal to a Warrior in terms of value to a group. Think about that for a minute.

Let’s talk how good the new Ranger changes make it for PvE.

• Storm Spirit now functions a lot like Frost Spirit, except it’s a 75% chance to apply 3 vulnerability for 10 seconds.

This easily allows the Ranger alone to create 25 vulnerability on anything and everything you’re fighting so long as the spirit isn’t dead. Maybe this is a bug that it works so well? It still does say it has a 10 second effect recharge, I just don’t think it’s actually there. Even if we assume it is a bug, 5 people attacking with this once it’s fixed generate up to 15 in perpetuity.

• New We Heal As One along with QZ allows perfect quickness/might/fury/swiftness/regeneration uptime on the Ranger and pet without any outside influence.

Granted this sacrifices a lot of utility and your heal skill is always on CD, but this is really strong and totally viable for a number of PvE encounters.

Add both of these new changes to Spotter and Frost Spirit and general good overall DPS and I think this is a real contender for some serious speed clears. What do you guys think?

Make them useful by making them function identically to Engineer kits. Seriously, even the shield and fire axe will see play then.

Give this a blast finisher and you can bet it will see use.

The only buff Axe needs at the moment is a blast finisher on the 3. It has competitive (although slightly low) damage for a weapon with 900 range, it just needs unique utility that other weapons do not offer. Give me a blast finisher on the 3 (and on the trait Spiteful Spirit) and I guarantee you I’ll put it to good use.

Although if we’re really wishlisting here, a whirl finisher on the 2 would be awesome as well.

Gaaroth.2567:

imho this depends on how they build them…what if there are encounters with loads of adds where you need a group dedicated JUST to mass cc stuff? (thus needing to share between them proper buffs) and the other group is left to do the full DPS stuff without worring of other things? 2 balanced group wouldn’t cut it, not enough DPS, not enough CC…i’m really seeing specialized groups in raid content, thus alloying many different gameplay/classes and getting outside of the full support/balance idea of team we have now.
At least this is my hope and the direction this should go. otherwise…all is vain

It’s entirely possible that there will be times where it makes sense to party people up based on their role, particularly if their role involves them being split up from the main group.

I wouldn’t expect a clean 5 and 5 split in that case, though. I would expect maybe 3 heavy CC people working together to keep the area clean and the other 7 to handle the boss itself. These heavy CCers might also stack stability to avoid being CC’d themselves, or something like that. Remember that we’re not playing raids with parties in the traditional sense; we’re using the raid commander UI where you can divide groups up as needed. You’re going to need huge DPS no matter what, and the fewer players you need to sacrifice to support/utility/CC roles the better chances you’ll win.

I think a 100% projectile finisher for staff 1 is definitely warranted. I also think it could attack a little faster, but I personally think it’s okay that it can be strafed. It builds into itself where you can chill a foe to secure hits, etc.

Gaaroth.2567:

well…who said that the 2 rading groups HAVE to be 2 full optimized damage wise groups?

Because there are enrage timers on the bosses, which means that high DPS will be critical to success. Everyone should and will bring just enough CC to ensure that breakbars are broken, and just enough survivability to ensure that they won’t die. If more support or CC is needed, then things like a Hammer Guardian may come into play in each party. Really, though, both parties are going to need to be doing huge damage during burn phases or you’re just not going to win.

Brayzz.6524:

Its just an example you can change the numbers. Nobody going to use this terrible Shouts with casttime. The question is what do you want with 50 Might Stacks that you cant have, because its capped at 25.

Shouts aren’t that bad, although the might-stacking shout definitely does need some longer durations on it. That said, remember that Reaper’s Might has a long ramp-up for its might, so in solo scenarios you’ll still want an initial might burst to start doing high damage right away.

deSade.9437:

They already reiterated that you wont’ need a specific teamcomp. If you don’t need a specific teamcomp with strict gear, it means the content isn’t tuned to be hard. Period.

Basically this. At this point I am expecting something at the level of difficulty of Triple Trouble Wurm, which is to say you can bring basically any class you want and you’ll have to know the encounters well, but otherwise you can succeed with almost any team composition and trait loadout so long as certain key mechanics are covered.

This will only apply to the boss rewards. That said, I’m against the weekly lockout as well, but ANet is adamant that the rewards are “really awesome” and thus being able to do them multiple times in the same week would be too much. I’ve already raised this topic with them once, but I’ll definitely do so again.

Brayzz.6524:

What if one of the Shouts REMOVED 10xMight(10-15) stacks from the Necro and give 5xMight to our allys? Something like Boon transfer.

This would be literally terrible as written, I’m sorry to say. They already made BiP function as it does to provide AOE might, so they wouldn’t even consider something like this in the first place.

Jerus.4350:

And of course Dusk, future thing, but curious, do they lack the ability, or just the time. You say they lack the tech, does that mean something other than “well we having put code in to create that type of thing”?

It’s just the time. It’s actually not a tough implementation, but it has ramifications for projectiles everywhere, and they’d need to allocate a lot of QA time to validate the change. Of course they also have to find the time to implement it as well. It’s just a lot for something that would really only buy them value against a few bosses here and there in one game mode, so it gets relocated to low priority.

The “Fractals & Dungeons” forum, where you currently are posting, is exactly the correct place to post about Fractals.

Adrenalin.5719:

What do you mean with this? Is there a website to see these rules? I’m really curious. Are you talking about world record rules?

Yes, http://gw2dungeons.net/Rules.

Jerus.4350:

Again I say for the health of the game and future development they really should spend some time making non reflectable but blockable/absorbable attacks

I’ve suggested this before to them. They lack the tech right now and are too busy working other things to get to it, unfortunately. Maybe we’ll see it at some point down the road post-HoT.

Yeah, but at least that takes a modicum of coordination. You have to all, like, stand on top of each other. sighs dejectedly

One-shotting GL is not an exploit in the GW2 context of the word. I know for sure because I’ve talked to so many developers about it. What it is, however, is a frowned-upon tactic, and since we control the rules of our restricted ruleset we decided that it doesn’t belong in there—Not to mention it’s actually slower than doing it legit in a speed clear (thanks Time Warp).

If it’s confusing why it’s so frowned-upon, just imagine taking one of the most enjoyable and most challenging of dungeon bosses and, you know, auto-killing it without any team or build coordination at all besides “do you have wall reflects”. Also, seriously, it’s super low-skill; there’s no way to effectively argue against that.

This literally doesn’t affect my guild at all. Thanks for the heads up, Gaile! I would be interested in the personal story key reset time as well.

Lord Kuru.3685:

This. Calling in “top” players for help could really make a difference — particularly since they’ve shown they have very little understanding of their own game and how it’s played .(This is true for all game modes: PvE, PvP, WvW).

This is why I exist. This is why there are four types of forum specialists, one for each game mode and then me. I spend an inordinate amount of time collating forum and reddit feedback on these things from all of the people you want to get involved and send it to the raid and balance developers directly.

The single best thing you can do to get your and other top-PvE players’ feedback heard is to make topics and posts about your thoughts. These get used in the form of ammunition to make solid changes.

Note: Sometimes they don’t listen to player feedback regardless because they think certain changes are against the better health of the game. I can only provide community suggestions to ANet, I cannot guarantee change.

I think the biggest conflict of interests is in Astral Form. You charge it very slowly with damage, and much quicker with heals. The problem with this is that it encourages staying in Staff to charge it up and then burst the big skills in Astral Form.

I will say that bringing FS/Spotter in addition to Druid will be mandatory for a Ranger, but it lacks aoe protection (stone spirit is abysmal), it lacks aoe stability, it lacks other aoe boons. I seriously can’t see this actively competing with a Guardian or an Assassin’s Presence Ventari/Glint Revenant if the content is hard enough.

Who knows, though. We’ll all get to try it come next weekend, and then we can give more solid feedback on the matter. I do plan to compile some serious feedback on raids/druid/scrapper for my next report post BWE3, so make sure to post what you think in the next BWE.

Nemesis: “Necromancer is not lacking in damage”
Engineer does it 2 minutes faster.

That literally means that in this case the Engineer is doing roughly 50% more average DPS than the Necromancer in an identical scenario. If that isn’t telling about the current state of the Necromancer I don’t know what is.

This was very disappointing to me too. I fought really hard with them to get it spread to ten-people, but they’re just too scared of the ramifications for party compositions. They think that you simply won’t start a raid run until you have “one of every profession buff class” and you’ll opt not to run that night. Similarly, they feel like this creates some kind of “super party” that is somehow more OP than stacking the strongest classes in the first place.

I disagree with them, but whatever. It just means we’ll have to bring two warriors instead of one, among other things, limiting the flexibility for other classes to participate. Their arguments are really weak when you consider that the “optimal raid group composition” will always exist and be desired no matter what; all they do by keeping the buff sharing at 5 is prevent certain classes from making the optimal list and keep the discrimination against them.

I still think Thief is the king of stealth, and that’s what really matters. If stealth isn’t required in raids, I can foresee Thieves not being desired nearly as much, and that’s okay. You pick the classes based on what you need.

I wish I had more friends to do this with. It sounds so entertaining.

I’m sad that Anet doesn’t know how to do anything but heavy handed nerfs (poor FGS), but I am glad that it got a nerf at all. I think a 20% shave from damage would’ve been sufficient, but oh well.

[VZ] is growing with lots of awesome, new members, and it has been great. We’re still definitely a medium guild, and we still have the same dynamic we’ve always had, so if you’re interested in the types of things we do and the way we play the game talk to one of our officers!

We’re also doing a guild event hero point rush this coming Monday @ 9 PM EDT to get ready for the upcoming HoT elite specializations on our alts! Anyone is welcome to join us, of course, but it’s primarily a guild event so be ready to see lots of us.

Amante.8109:

If you really think an extra dodge every now and then is equivalent to…

• Warrior: the ability to go berserk, gaining 15s of +10% attack speed, a one-stock adrenaline bar that counts as three, and access to upgraded “primal” burst skills

• Guardian: upgraded virtues that do more powerful things, including a leaping AoE heal and a ranged root that hits multiple targets

• Revenant: the ability to pulse +50% Boon duration around you for as long as you want, with the option to put it on CD to give out Fury, Might, Regen, Protection, and Swiftness

• Engineer: the ability to stomp or resurrect from 750 units away while doing other things

• Necromancer: an upgraded Death Shroud called “Reaper Shroud” that grants access to new and powerful abilities

• Elementalist: the ability to “overload” attunements after staying in them long enough, granting powerful effects to yourself and those around you

• Mesmer: a powerful new shatter skill that literally lets them rewind time

…then I have some swampland I’d love to sell you

Add in Daredevil’s GM dodges and the gap begins to close… but as many of you are so eager to point out, those are well-balanced GM traits, not the elite mechanic (that’s the extra dodge pip and nothing but), so by your own logic the comparison doesn’t seem fair.

Sell me the ‘swampland’ then. I’ll be blunt, I’m shocked you’d sell me a diamond mine for so cheap, but hey, you keep telling me it’s swampland…

Zenith.7301:

I don’t understand what’s so important about repeating “progression” on alts. It’s like saying getting the 170 hero points on 8 toons (having one lv80 class of each) just to unlock their elite spec stuff is OK. Or doing world completion on multiple toons. It’s just pure tedium.

People don’t roll alts to repeat progression. They do it to experience different personal story steps and starting racial experiences, or even more so experiencing the different combat experience of another class.

I do, and I know countless people who do as well. You don’t speak for everyone. I love having things to do on my alts. It’s the reason I repeat my personal story, it’s the reason I repeat map completion, it’s the reason I repeat ascended gear crafting, and it’s the reason I play them in fractals to get and then build infusions. I also, of course, roll alts for different combat experiences, but being able to build something up from zero to something meaningful has value to me.