Guild Wars 2

Your most viable options are:

Dagger/Dagger Elementalist (not technically melee but very short range)
Conjure Lightening Hammer Elementalist
1h Sword/x Mesmer
Dagger/x Necro

Khisanth.2948:

Well there were differences in GW1 but that small difference is now gone as well.

I miss my fiery sword wielding N/W. Every time I brought her out in PvP you could almost see the stutter-step of others going “uh…what’s, what’s this all about? <death> Ohhh….”

Ranger pets are no brainer easy in open world. In dungeons though, they need to be micromanaged to ensure they don’t die.

Warrior vs Guardian party buffing: Warriors will buff offensively with might and fury and the like. Guardians will buff defensively with aegis and regen and reflects and the like.

Both are pretty boring to play imo; nothing like Engineer. Although, while gameplay is pretty boring with warrior, having access to so many weapons makes build variety fairly large.

OP said “Also, it seems kind of strange to me that half of the classes in the game are considered bad when it comes to dungeons. For a game that is so focused on character and world investment that seems like kind of a big flaw.”

It’s not that there are bad professions in dungeons, they’re all quite viable. It’s just that there are a couple that are preferred for speed runs since they bring optimal damage with the best party buffing. A guardian/warrior/Mesmer group brings offensive boons, defensive boons, and utility respectively. But every profession can do these things, just not as optimally in zerk dungeons speed run situations.

Ele can might stack like a mofo, group heal wonderfully, and unleash some hard hitting aoe. Engi can too. But mob mentality, ignorance, and greed often dictate what’s acceptable in any given situation. Play what’s most fun.

FT/EG works well because their traits overlap. You can build for more effective FT & EG and still have plenty of trait points left to put elsewhere, like 409 for instance. Also, with reduced CDs on EG you get faster access to group cleanse, a healing aoe field, a high damage blast finisher, and weakness.

The nice thing about engi is that almost every build can bring along Healing Turret and a couple blast finishers for great aoe heals. FT happens to also bring one of the longest lasting fire fields in the game.

Oh yea, and the OP asked for non-GK/BK builds.

It’s often hard to distinguish which field is on top in a group of more than 2. I’m guessing that they each blasted once at nearly the same time and between each blast a new field was laid down.

FT/EG support with Altruism Runes lets you blast fire & water fields, cleanse conditions, throw out a large number of control conditions, and deal constant damage. Rough build here

SD/Rifle is a great bursty build. Unlike FT/EG, it let’s you still deal effective damage at >600 range when necessary. Although SD bounces, it’s a single target build.
Rough idea here Swap Rocket Boots and Rifle Turret according to encounter. I like RB for the kick and movement, but RT when long range is needed.

The builds are frameworks. Fill in the traits/utilities/gear with what you need to stay alive and maximize your effectiveness.

My Sweet Lily.1952:

Chidori.9483:

My Sweet Lily.1952:

Well, I learned that Scarlet knows Malycks secret. Maybe she knows where the Other Tree is.

When and where did you learn this?

Scarlet said this during one of the Chamber instances.

Ah, so we get some story progression in the chambers? Haven’t done any yet but that’s exciting.

I got a really cool cutscene with a clear recap of the events since Molten Alliance. Nothing really progressing the story yet.

From the NPC dialogue in the instance I get that the Nightmare Court are intentionally deceiving the Krait. I’m hoping to see that play out.

Scarlet’s little diatribe makes me feel like she’s just having fun & showing off with all that she’s done. Which negates the importance of her actions, making it seem like a child playing with puppets rather than orchestrating a grand design.

Fighting from bottom to top yielded me 21 spores last night. Didn’t do any side chambers. Seemed pretty good for not champ hunting.

MadDemon.7548:

When I saw the “rapidly evolves” thing, I told a pokemon joke to my party.
But when I saw it, I thought it was going to be something that stacked if we didn’t kill him quickly, but when that happened, I realized that it would be a form/tactic change gimmick.

Changing tactics is not a gimmick. It’s smart combat. Adapting to an evolving enemy is what makes a fight interesting.

I highly doubt when military tactics are taught at West Point they refer to them as gimmicks.

Stacking buff/debuffs are gimmicks…

Still wondering why we just let her calmly walk to and through the portal. No instinct to at least throw a half-hearted swipe at her?

Ayrilana.1396:

Rangersix.1754:

In my humble opinion, I’d say that they need to get rid of the key requirement of the chest. Following that, make chest drop daily rewards based on how much levels you didn’t skip.

The tower can be a fun challenge, even if you’re in a small group. But it needs to have a payoff. The chests are already random enough, we don’t need an additional lotterly for keys added ontop of it.

After you complete the achievement for the chests, you don’t have to do them. You also get a key daily from the vendor in Kessex as well.

Didn’t know this. Does it cost anything? Is the vendor west of the Tower on that hill?

The notion of being upset that challenging content is not soloable when geared with zero defense is mind-boggling. What do you expect to happen? There’s a reason it’s referred to as “glass”…it’s easily breakable.

cesmode.4257:

Seras.5702:

Yes mj.

And seriously, people are complaining about not being able to run this tower without effort? You went through it once, know what’s coming, build accordingly. Drop the zerk gear, bring condition removal, bring swiftness, bring stun breaks, bring stability, bring blocks. It’s a zerg, you don’t have to deal max dps. Build for survival and try again. You don’t even have to maximize the build as if it were PvP/WvW. Oh yea, and pay attention to the spores before their red circles appear. Just don’t go near em.

Drop the zerk gear? So now I need to gear a certain way to do this?

I can rebuild my thief for more survivability, infact he has decent vigor uptime when dodging. But theres limits. My gear is zerk.

If I need to get some PVT gear to get through this, or knights gear…if I need to get a single new piece of gear to do this, then the patch fails. Horribly.

First off, I did say you don’t need to optimize as if it were PvP/WvW. I went through in zerk gear myself just fine. Just bring some condition cleanse, swiftness, stun break, defensive skills.

Also, you made the choice to gear yourself for no defense, all offense. You can’t truly be surprised that some places will be hard. Zerk is fine in dungeons once you know the mechanics and can avoid damage. Likewise, once you learn the nuances of the Tower zerk is fine too. Can’t expect to be pro at everything on day 1.

You can absolutely avoid the plants. See those big floaty spores? Don’t go near em.

The chest isn’t much different than any other JP chest, except it has a chance at the terrestrial breather skin and I think the mini.

And if you get separated from your group in a dungeon you’ll probably get killed too. No different here. The difference is the mindset of the players: run-run-run rather than fight-help-rez-cooperate.

Also, the first time through, don’t go into the side-instances. Get to the top & get the “waypoint” golems along the way. Then, you can hit the chambers and when you come out you can make your to the golems to wait for others.

Bring friends. Ideally, it takes more than a group of 5 to push through the tower with efficiency. But if the 5 of you stick together, rez each other, cleanse each other, you shouldn’t have a hard time keeping up with the zerg.

Yes mj.

And seriously, people are complaining about not being able to run this tower without effort? You went through it once, know what’s coming, build accordingly. Drop the zerk gear, bring condition removal, bring swiftness, bring stun breaks, bring stability, bring blocks. It’s a zerg, you don’t have to deal max dps. Build for survival and try again. You don’t even have to maximize the build as if it were PvP/WvW. Oh yea, and pay attention to the spores before their red circles appear. Just don’t go near em.

So I went through the Tower last night. Rolled with a group of about 8-10. Went down a few times. Got rezzed every time. I did some rezzing. Have to be situationally aware. Bring heals and condition cleanses. I only made 1 adjustment to my utilities, otherwise stayed in my dungeon HGH/FT build and it worked fine.

I think this content is challenging, which is good. Stick with the group and you’ll be fine. Don’t expect zerker to win this one for you.

Almost positive she has alpha access. Only way to explain her walkthroughs on patch day.

Also, I want to be clear that I am a big fan of dulfy and use her site often when I get stumped or just want a gallery of the new skins. This is in no way a negative thread.

I mean it. Seriously. During the Open Dialogue I (and others) had discussed how having LS walkthroughs available the day of patch are a bad thing. Walkthroughs aren’t inherently bad, and are often times needed by many players to accomplish temporary content before it disappears. But just not immediately on patch day.

I was just at dulfy’s site to check out the new gem store weapons and noticed there’s no walkthrough yet. Hopefully, this is a result of Anet taking the words of its forum-goers into consideration and holding the post of a walkthrough for a short time.

I’m with Valenthor. Plenty of creative ways to keep the tower. Partially destroyed, lingering toxins, too risky to destroy completely, become a haunted krait burial tower…..Plenty of ways to progress the story & still make it permanent.

Well that’s frustrating to hear. I was hoping to bring my lvl 36 Ele into the new content for good XP and fun group play……

Reading the first 1/2 of your post I’d have said Engi, but it seems like the cons for Engi are super big for you. The things you listed are also irksome at times for me (I main an engi) but in terms of build selection, survivability, mobility, versatility, self-sufficiency…Engi has it all.

Ele is similar to Engi in those respects save for one thing: they’re squishy. Like really squishy. I just rolled one myself and it’s super fun, aside from constantly dying in dungeons. I’m working on it though.

Thief is tons of fun, has mobility and survivability, but is single minded (kill). I never feel as if I’m bringing anything to the group. If group support is your thing, drop thief. Also, Charr look terrible in all armor. Reroll your thief as another race if you love it.

I found the classes u mentioned boring as well: warrior, guardian, & mesmer.

I really think Ele or Engi are your best bets.

Keep in mind large WvW zergs with retaliation up will hurt if you proc the aoe flame.

Dikeido.8436:

\Isn’t it better to just join the champion zerg train ?

Anet recently nerfed the amount of silver in the champion loot bags. It definitely was the best way to make money. Not sure now. Probably still is.

However, running dungeons = earning tokens which can be used to buy guaranteed exotics to salvage.

Also, Queensdale champ train can get rather boring rather quickly. Dungeons, especially a wide variety, will alleviate some of that monotony.

You’re clearly having misgivings about giving the laurels to your lil bro for a character on your account that he might reroll on his own eventually. Not to be selfish, but I wouldn’t give em to him. You’ll be sad when you feel they’ve gone to waste.

I think you can get away with celestial on the Ele, certainly not the Ranger. Rangers have enough evasion and mitigation that you shouldn’t need anything other than zerker, and what non-zerk stats you’ll want in the future you can get from exotics.

Gotta back up mercury about disliking the reasons Mesmer are brought along for speed runs. You’re there specifically for your reflects, group quickness, and potentially stealth skipping.

I mentioned Mesmer cuz OP said slight preference for ranged fighting. If you want melee, then guardian and warrior are your obvious choices. They’re highly desired in speed runs, and dungeons in general, and offer fantastic party buffs. Of the 2, guardian is more support oriented, while warrior can top dps charts..

Ele was actually my least favorite class to play in GW1 because it felt so slow. Sure, it hit hard, but the wind-up for everything was interminably long and that meant standing still and getting interrupted. Instant casts were the only way to go for me. If I had to play Ele, I actually preferred the playstyle of me/e for the faster casting.

On the other hand, in GW2 Ele is a very active and dynamic play type, which makes me like it a lot.

Mesmer has very little in the way of ooc movement enhancement, while Ele has plenty of access to swiftness, RTL, 25% speed signet, and a blink. Makes running around the world and doing events/hearts much faster.

Whether you find Ele easier than Mesmer is subjective. I feel that since they’re both very reliant on traits, they both kill at the same speed whilst leveling. But Ele is a faster explorer.

I’m thinking Mesmer. They’re wanted for speed runs, offer good damage, have great team utility in dungeons, and can hold their own in PvP.

Queensdale zerg offers good XP due to doing a lot of events.

Personal story gives good XP. I like to save em up so I can do a bunch in a row.

Crafting: You don’t have to go 1-400(500) with a profession to get XP. Grab artificer and cooking. Using a guide, craft as much as you can with what you’ve got in your bank and for minimal coppers. Once you top out, drop them for jewelcrafting and anything else you’ve got mats stored up for. Craft those as far as you can go. You might end up with 4 crafts at level 100 for almost no gold.

100% explore all major cities and LA. Especially at low levels, you get great XP from exploration. As for exploring the world, gather everything you see. It’s free XP and silvers.

Dailies net nice little bonus chunks of XP as you accomplish each task and then at completion.

RyuDragnier.9476:

My idea on it would be of the skill randomly doing a different condition on each. The interrupts would be dazes, which again, would be random. Since the skill hits 12 times on 5 enemies, that’s 12 randomized conditions total rolled one each target. But they don’t need to be long lasting. 2 second on each one would be more than enough time to reek some havoc. Meaning 2 second cripple, 2 second torment, 2 second confusion, etc. In other words, a total roulette of conditions.

So nearly the same as Mesmer’s chaos storm?

RyuDragnier.9476:

Kilger.5490:

The theme of the class is about pets. Its our unique mechanic, like it or not.

Then they really should have kept the name of Beastmaster on the class. The class is actually a mix of the ideas of Warden, Beastmaster, and Archer. It’s why our traitlines feel so out of place and why we’re slightly awkward to play as in high level content…Anet combined 3 classes without ever completely making sure things worked.

Dude, a true Beastmaster would be awesome. Like a necro minion master but rather than it being a single build, being what the whole profession is about. Have up to 3 beasts out at a time, an elite beast, variable and responsive control over them, spells designed around the beasts. All personal skills would be defensive or movement in nature: evasion, repositioning, vigor, regen, etc. Skills like spike trap & muddy terrain and pet shouts would remain as ways to “get in the fight” and kite enemies. Build choices would be defensive (lotsa bears) tanking damage, cleansing conditions, chilling foes; offensive (cats/birds) bleeding, spiking, blinding; and supportive (spiders, moas) setting up poison fields, fury, might, and regen.

Since burning stacks duration and not intensity, all burning no mater the skill source will deal the same amount of damage over a fixed amount of time. If you’re going off your skilltips, the damage from IP is more because it lasts longer than the burning from FT’s autoattack. If IP procs during your autoattack, it’ll simply tack on to the end of the current burning. The real strength of IP with FT is that it keeps a more consistent burn rolling on your target so that the autoattack deals 10% more damage.

posthumecaver.6473:

As an Ele I always feel I have to stay in Water Trait line or Arcana and wear PVT gear so I can survive and do something useful, then nothing is left to take from other trait lines.

Ele is versatile but is also boring because of these restrictions, I see they are trying to put some nice traits in fire to cleanse and so but kitten CD will be enough to ignore 30 points to water.

This statement scares me more than any others in terms of looking forward at my new Ele. I hate boring. It’s why I stopped playing ranger and couldn’t get a warrior past lvl 18. And while I think Ele is dynamic and fun to play, I really hope creating builds doesn’t become boring when it seems everyone is forced to take so many Arcane and Water traits just to stay alive. And while I understand Anet’s resistance to making really strong traits Adept, they gotta see the trend that everyone is taking them not just because they’re awesome but necessary to living long enough to kill something.

I also think the mechanics of Ele can be too complex for someone just picking up GW2. As I said, it was one of the first classes I tried and couldn’t grasp it. I eventually played ranger & guardian, learned how combat & build mechanics work in this game, and could then move onto engineer and elementalist.

What’s the best way to target Phoenix? I set the center of the green circle behind the target but still keeping the target in the circle. Ideally this will let the shot go thru the target, explode on him, and then return thru him. Yes?

JasperDevons.6417:

Asuran special is a golem just as the engineer elite skill. So asuran tech is based on magic, engineers must have a little magic available for access. Also, DON’T SQUASH MY DREAMS! (j/k)

Engi elites are Mortar, Elixir X, and Supply Drop. Both golems and the suit are asuran elites. They have no similarities. Having said that…

I want a portal gun kit too so bad!

Will SoR proc for each LH attack chain? With lower CD trait, I find healing glyph to be pretty awesome: low cooldown and buff on heal. I can’t see SoR keeping me topped off. I get focused and it’s not nearly as effective an emergency heal.

If you’re traited for anything to happen on attunement swap (like Elemental Attunement), then it’s going to proc confusion.

Also, although attunement swapping procs weapon sigils, they aren’t a true weapons swap, aren’t triggered with the ~ key, and they still have a spell cooldown and so will be affected by chill. Makes sense to me.

How effective is LH in wvw/pvp? Cuz you can burst without Fresh Air and then whip out a LH for sustain/knockdown/daze.

It’s got great utility: aoe blind, knockback, reflect, long fire field, decent burst skill.
Super long fire field = plenty of might stack blasting.
It won’t top dps charts, but thankfully we don’t have those.
It works great in conjunction with EG as a utility/support build that can still deal quite good damage.
It’s suicide against retaliation, especially against a group.
It’s great for tagging events.
If it’s tons of fun, keep it up.

In dungeons, Poliswag is correct. Supply Drop is much better than an asura elite. But in open world I love the golems. They’re fun.

Professions like Ele and Engi, which require some serious traiting and skill unlocks to fully realize their potential, are often abandoned early. I remember both were among my 1st to try at beta and both were quickly abandoned once I realized that Ranger and Guardian were much stronger. Only later did I understand that was because those professions are less defined by their traits.

Now of course, I prefer the classes that are defined by their traits. More depth.

As Jeydra & lunyboy recommended, I’ve been rocking S/D, blowing my air & fire cooldowns and stacking might and then conjuring a lightening hammer to blow everything away.

In dungeons though, I feel very squishy. I’ve been taking LH, Arcane Shield, and Cleansing Fire. I feel I need the extra condition cleansing in addition to water5 and I can’t rely on fire3 because I use it to stack might early on. I’m only lvl 36 but I’m traited 5 into water for regen, 10 into air for glyph CD reduction (heal), and 10 into arcane for attunement swap buff…suggestions?

An unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on who you’re talking to) result of the current LS design is zergs. If you release temporary content in a concentrated location, you will inevitably have zergs mobbing the zone. Examples: Scarlet Invasions, Mad King Labyrinth, Grand Pavilion, Toxic Offshoots in Kessex.

New LS releases need to figure out a way to not discourage zergs so much as promote small groups spread out. The Scarlet Invasions were a step to that end, creating multiple rifts throughout the map simultaneously. But of course, they were exploited and eventually zergs just mapped from one champ location to the next for max loots.

Chained events need to happen more often. Ideally, with multiple branches. Complete a Toxic Offshoot event and then the zerg has to disperse to accomplish 2-3 separate events simultaneously. Something would need to be done to prevent zergs from just bouncing from to one to the other, but rather split up.

Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up for me Da Beetus.

I started an Ele because I wanted another dynamic profession. The Fresh Air build seems like the most straight forward and least dynamic of the Ele builds. Sit in air, autoattack, swap attunement for utility, swap back, continue to aa. New Ele friendly.

8.5/10

My newest alt, male asura elementalist: Zap Gatetuner

I’m still having a hard time understanding Fresh Air’s use. The trait auto-recharges air attunement on crit, but you’re saying that air auto is the best attack. So if I’m in air attunement attacking, and I crit to reset recharge….I’m confused. You’re resetting the recharge of an attunement you’re already in. Is it so that you can swap to earth for a Magnetic Leap or water for heal/cleanse and then right back? Is that the purpose?

I’m not going to read all of the posts here, arguing about best heal class vs guardian does it better vs rerollL2Pnub.

Simply put, Engi is a great support class. It can blast water or fire fields constantly for heals or might. It can toss elixirs for heal, condition cleanse, stability, and projectile reflect. It can group condition cleanse with elixirs, healing turret, med kit, and elixir gun…take your pick. It has fantastic mobility, able to be where you need to be at a moment’s notice. With a single kit (EG) it can aoe cleanse, lay down a healing field, grant swiftness, grant aoe regen, and blast a field.

Phenn.5167:

Perhaps one of the best ways to move forward with this (given the state of the game and the resources available) would be to begin implementing additional steps to already-present DEs. Imagine the surprise when the Shadow Behemoth’s death spawns an onslaught from “the other side” that then has to be stopped before rendering all the waypoints in the south of Queensdale contested.

You’d have a bunch of players going, “Wait, what? It’s not over?” The “newness” of the event would add to the surprise and the motivation to discover the other DEs that suddenly have more to them.

Whereas I’m not opposed to the introduction of more, independent DEs, I think the real strength of the DE system lies in prolonged encounters that evolve as they’re played out. At the moment, this doesn’t happen much (save for Orr invasions). So at the very least I believe this would be a good place to start.

I like this idea. Since exploration of the world and DEs seem(ed) to be the major focus of GW2 at ship, I’d love to see significant additions to that aspect of the game in future releases. Adding DEs in the way you described fits nicely in the success/fail conversation that we had earlier. Not only can we have chains initiated by failing events, but continuations of short chains or stand-alone events from success.

World bosses are a perfect example. Despite lead events like Jormag’s and FE’s, when they’re done, everyone scatters and says good job. But defeating something awesome enough to be dubbed a World Boss should have resultant effects as well. And since they’re never failed (Teq aside) having chains that follow them would be cool.

Especially if they’re random. What if 1 of a possible 3 different chains followed an event? That would be cool. Maybe dependent on the size of the zerg or time of day or completely random. Then, after we defeat the Shadow Behemoth, either 1) a swarm of shadowy monsters pour out of the portals, 2) 3 new portals appear at locations around the swamp that must be closed, or 3) the SB’s “corpse” leaves a shadowy residue that must be carried (and defended from random attacks) to a nearby outpost for study/cleansing/etc. The residue could have a toxic/slow effect forcing it to be dropped often or else death to the carrier so-to include more people and not make it a footrace.

How does a Fresh Air build work? Do you simply swap to air on CD for the bonus lightening strike and then back to another attunemen?