Guild Wars 2

Sadly, I’ve seen it happen. And not just once.
Group’s full and suddenly you’re one short while people are still zoning in. You just saw the kick vote pop up for a second before someone agreed. You ask “what the hell was that about?” and you get “speed signet” as an answer.

The only good thing is that this happens at the very start of the dungeon and you can leave that group immediately as well without having lost much time. Because those are people I simply don’t want to play with, no matter what.

Edit: Corrected “speed sigil” to “speed signet”. Sorry, comes from being a non-native english speaker and in german the two words for sigil and signet are much more akin to each other.

I had an interesting case of “never judge someone based upon first impressions or clichés”. Something that I’ve realised a lot of people (sometimes including me myself here sadly) are prone to do when a dungeon group fills up. (With various extremes as to their reaction.)

A friend of mine needed CoE story on 2 of his characters, so that is where we went. Our lfg only stated “story” so I expected the runs to take a while because you usually get someone entirely new to the dungeon who wants to watch the cutscenes.
Which is perfectly fine by me btw. because otherwise I should have tagged the group as “fast run to unlock” or some such.

We sit before Zojja not activating the first cutsecene specifically because of the reason given above and the group slowly fills up.
To my surprise, we get an axe/shiled warrior. Never seen that combination a lot outside of pvp or very special circumstances. Next is a ranger with a longbow on his back and signet of the hunt slotted. No bear though, he had a drake sitting next to him.
I admit, I forgot what the 3rd was.
Anyway, by the time we’re through the cutscenes and at the first group our ranger has transformed from signet of the hunt and longbow to full melee, spotter and – as was seen shortly after – frost spirit. The Warrior had morphed to greatsword with phalanx strength, which we truly appreciated since we lacked an elementalist or any other form of serious might stacking.
There was the option to work something out between the ranger and the thief maybe, but the phalanx warrior made it much easier and relaxed.

So, lesson of the day: Don’t judge by first impressions. You never know what someone might have done prior to the dungeon.

But frankly, who am I talking to? Those who kick on sight for still having slotted a movement speed sigil from whatever someone did beforehand will never read this anyway. sigh

JasmineLong.6514:

Grimezy.5679:

maha.7902:

No, you do not provide more might than a phalanx warrior. Here’s the thing – ele ha uses, but I’ve already mentioned other classes can cover them. It’s like saying a mes is good because they have reflect, CC and condi cleanse. Well yeah, they do, but so do guardians. I find it hard to rank a completely replaceable class as #1.

I’m not familiar with a Phalanx warrior. Could you tell me what exactly they provide?

I just find it hard to believe there’s another class out there that easily maintains 15+ Might and Perma-fury without having to compromise their own DPS at all.

Phalanx strength warrior (05063) can provide might to the team every time they themselves get might. With strength runes and a greatsword it is typical for a PS warrior to output 25 might to the team on basically a permanent basis. The only issue with this that people may call it an issue is that they cannot prestack might all that well since their might stacking ability mostly comes from in battle.

Edit: OK, I was way too slow with that reply, carry on without reading if you wish.

Depending on the encounter I’d say 20 stacks of might for a phalanx warrior are easily maintained. If you don’t need your off hand swordblock much for example you can get to 25 in most situations. If you can cleave something you will be at 25 stacks, almost no matter what you do.

What is correct, you can’t give perma fury to your team, you can only generate permanent fury uptime for yourself and partial for the team.
But in fractals (at least in my experience, I’ve never played the ele in fractals myself) your ability to maintain perma fury with an ele can easily be compromised by a (hammer) guard or s/p thief who tries to lay down perma blind. There are other fields that might interfere as well like a mesmer’s feedback.
And all of those few examples are actually useful skills and problems can arise even when placed with care.

I’ll give the fact that a warrior going phalanx sacifices personal dps to do so. But I guess at least one warrior in the group will trait for EA and with that is already halfway down that road anyway.

And that is ignoring the squishiness/not so squishy aspect of the entire situation.

Given what I’ve seen in other mmorpgs, that would have been preferable.

However that scenario would have made it more difficult to just disappear him opposed to actually killing him. The way they did it, he might still be around somewhere. Just too beaten up to actually be a threat right now.
This way they left themselves with the option of bringing him back if they need.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

frifox.5283:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

There’s nothing to explore in the dungeons just so you know.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoqMcAQdETw

There is much MUCH more out there to be explored than you think.

I’m so going to ask. How. the. hell?

I ask myself that quite a lot when watching some of frifox’ videos. They never disappoint.

The problem is, however, that you sometimes will learn less if you use those defensive equipment options. (Note: Equipment, not utilites and in some cases traits, that’s a different story.)
If something merely hits moderately hard and doesn’t carry that distinctive “what the hell just happened to me?” flavor, most people will be less likely to look out for that specific attack and its tells next time or while on the ground watching the rest of the group as they avoid the same fate.

Yes, it will most likely take longer in that particular run if you/anyone gets downed/defeated a lot. But the next 3782 runs will be faster for it.

Had a prime example last night. A friend asked if would accompany him on his SE story trip. I picked my ranger because she had not done that particular story mode before, so it was a win/win, play with a friend and unlock explo on the ranger.
However, I am not that familiar with some of the boss abilities/tells in SE story and I’m far from being able to fully control my ranger using mainhand sword to my satisfaction. So I ate dirt more often than I would like.
Still learned a lot more than if I had used her bunkery WvW set or switched to a bow. I probably would have gone down less often, but I prefer to learn. Even if it’s the hard way.

The story mode per se isn’t that rushed. t But like Novaan already pointed out, the nerf/fix/whatever-you-call-it that was meant to make it a bit easier just went too far and killed the entire airship part of the dungeon.
I’ll admit the entire Zhaitan encounter is a bit anticlimatic. And was so even before the changes. Although I do like the cutscenes.

I would like to add my congratulations as well.

It was very amusing to read and it was a great project to follow for us (and I guess even more so for you to complete).

Since you achieved what you set out to do and this seems over now, I wish you and your family fun and good luck in your future endeavors.

That picture looks good enough to be used in an Anet ad.

I only did higher level fractals while drunk pre-fractured. I honestly can’t remember a single 40+ while sober before that time.
And I remember the best counter to the lvl 43 instability being my whisky cabinet.

I also (vaguely) remember various “let’s do [annoying/difficult] achievement”-runs in another mmorpg while drunk. Interestingly enough they nearly always went smoothly.
Must have had something to do with me maining a dwarf back then I guess.

Thank you for cheering me up today everyone.

I fall into the “I forgot, my bad” category more often than I would like.

I have them parked in my bank and usually grab them when I move out of town to do dungeons but if I switch characters along the way I tend to forget to grab some for the new character (I usually use oil or sharpening stones in that case, because that’s something all my toons carry with them).
Or I forget to check which potion is still running from the evening before.

I’ll bite: Erm, no it doesn’t?
First you have no idea how those achievement points were gained. Doing daylies, jumping puzzles and PvP wil give a ton of AP but they do not represent an indicator about your general knowledge about the game or dungeons in particular.
In addition there are quite a few “low AP” players that either specialise in dungeons which won’t give you a carload of AP or that are for example on a second account for another region than they usually play (Eu <> NA). So you could easily stumble across someone with low AP but a lot of experience in dungeons.

Just some small ideas why AP are a horrible idea to judge someones experience in any given field in this game.

On a sidenote: I’ll admit that there are a lot of people with level 80 characters that clearly don’t know what they are doing and someone experienced might actually play better even using a low level alt.
But the reasoning that a low level character means no experience is equally flawed as the reasoning that AP are an indicator of experience.

Ok, lets discuss the idea of a collision system.
I am against a collision system. For one it would deeply impact wvw, pvp and open world events. Even if you put a zone restriction to it like the OP suggested, then we have an even further increased inconsitency between dungeons and other game modes.
Another point is what constitutes as a collision. Lilith would like to exclude attacks, the op dodge rolls. Both suggestions are not only reasonable but absolutely necessary to allow melee oriented playstyles at all.
But in addition – as Lilith said – it it further increases the difficulty for people meleeing (sp?) something. And most of the time meleeing something is already more difficult than ranging something.
With multiple player characters in the “melee zone” moving out of a cleave or cone attack for example becomes much more difficult. Practically forcing you to dodge and therefore waste endurance or skill cooldowns on something you could otherwise have countered simply by moving your toon.
This most likely forces players to go ranged, simply due to space restrictions. Forcing people into ranged combat does absolutely nothing to “remove a lot of the cheese factor” as the OP called it. It just forces a certain playstyle on some people in the group. A playstyle they might not like much (I for example prefer to take on my enemies up close and personal).

On a side note: Medohgeuh, if you want to initiate a serious and reasonable discussion you should probalby refrain from using phrases that debase someone elses playstyle, especially if your description of it is not entirely correct. Helps a lot in my experience if you don’t want to be taken for a troll and to prevent a fast flamewar like we partially got here.

Edit: Something I forgot: what happens if a dodge or attack involving movement carries you into another player because they moved? Will the system simply reposition you outside of their space or stop you dead in your tracks before you enter their space? In that case your defensive maneuver might actually place you in a worse position than the one you tried to avoid.

I admit I am no programmer but I imagine this will also put additional strain on the server. Position is a variable the server already has to check right now to evaluate if an attack/boon/whatever connects. But with that new system I guess it will have additional load to compensate for blocked positions and forced relocations and it will always have to check wether your movement was part of an evade or attack and can carry you through a blocked position or not.

A collision system is a rather large change.

And I may have read this wrong but mobs don’t have a collision system in game as well. You might have mistaken the melee assist option for one however. That one tries to prevent you from running through an enemy in order to make it easier to stay in melee against a moving target. But if you uncheck that option, you can move freely through any target.

Which frankly put is a highly necessary thing to do in pvp and wvw. At least in my opinion.

Aside from that, I think Ropechef put it the best. The simple solution is the best in this case. just don’t stack. If you get an overabundance of grief from other players for that, make your own party and label it “no stacking”. It might take a minute longer to fill up than a nondescript party, but you avoid people interested in a different playstyle.
Once youve met a few people and they were friendly enough put them on your friends list or mayba ask them about their guild, wether they prefer to run this way and start building a community for that or hopefully get integrated into an existing one (they do exist).

Be warned however. The number of people out there that don’t read party descriptions is uncomfortably large. So in some time you might find yourself here again complaining that no one reads or gives a fluffy feline about your descriptions. When that happens: Welcome to our world.

I just saw someone ask in mapchat in DR what a transmutation charge is for. After someone explained it to him his reaction was – freely translated – “I see, so nothing useful, thanks”.
I was honestly speechless.

In unrelated notes: I almost changed my thieves hair and face to one of the new options. Then I realized “nope, doesn’t fit the personality you imagined for her, too cute” and canceled the changes.
Playing p&p rpgs for over 20 years has left its traces it would appear.

I encounter the same problem. I only tried the achievement with the current build, not before. So I never even tried the “do it after the completion but before leaving”- variant.

Things probably worth mentioning:
I always go in alone and I am never in a group when I do the instance. So any scaling should be for a single player.
The npcs to rescue spawn only after you’ve talked to Lindsay. I can’t find them before that.
I have rescued 7 npcs. If I am simply missing someone, I can go and search again.
I never waited for the enemies attacking them to down them. Which in most cases wouldn’t work anyway because they can actually defeat them themselves.
On one remarkable occasion, one of the npcs was missing. He simply was nowhere to be found, which is partially why I mentioned that I found 7 and wether I am missing someone. Maybe one simply isn’t spawning for me.
I carefully searched the entire map area, going in wide circles around the last step to prevent it from triggering which would negate any chance of doing the achievement.

I was about to write a lot of stuff about thief support abilities there. Then my brain kicked in. You almost got me.

Maybe it was the stealth? As long as there was another viable target on the ground like in Lilith’s case, the cannoneers would cheerfully try to blow that one to pieces, but once that disappeared, they nuked the safespot?
Might happen as well maybe if the single runner gets killed.

That would fit to what Spoj said about everybody needing to get there at once during tha phase transition or the safe spot won’t be very safe either.

Just a thought experiment on my behalf though, I’ve never used that safe spot technique, so I have no actual empiric data to confirm this.

Since I have quite a few twinks (alts or whatever you wish to call them), I used a lot of mine to equip those, sometimes with multiple sets for pve and wvw. Other than that I spend quite a few to mystic forge them before I got the pre to the legendary that I wanted to craft.

Iris Ng.9845:

@ Silber: 2 point domination. 3-point is quite rare or one sided and honestly not that interesting to watch.

We have a slight misunderstanding there.

I was not talking about how the pvp round developes but about the game mode.
I’m used to calling the game mode by its basic feature. 3 positions to hold to accumulate points to me is 3 point domination. 5 positions you can possibly hold would be 5 point domination (to me). At least that’s what the crowd I play(ed) pvp in this and other games always called them.
If I’m deviating from a more standardised nomenclature, sorry, then I was unaware of that.
I meant this opposed to game modes like capture the flag and variants, assault style maps and similar.

I have no problem with some skins only availlable in certain game modes. But I can only shake my head at this exclusive tournament winners only armor given what spoj recited from Anets official stance on the matter of armor skins.
It just shows again how much of a stepchild character pve has in GW2. At least WvW got exclusive weapon skins for season 2.

And for the revord, I play GW2 across all game modes pve, pvp and wvw. I’ll admit that I spend most of my time in pve, but that is due to the things I find lacking in pvp for example.
All you get is 3 point domination. Yes, sometimes with some cute variation, but it’s still 3 point domination at its core. The closest we have to alternate play modes are the minigames like aspect arena or keg brawl. But those are mini games, not normal pvp.
(And I know there now exists a deathmatch map…)

domness.6719:

[…]
- AoE bomb section, always hits my bloody Norn in the head when I’m not standing in any AoE, and insta-kills me.

Not sure if the problem is norn exclusive, but that’s something I’ve noticed too. If the trajectory of the cannon barrage goes through the point where you are standing to a red circle close to you, you sometimes get hit by the projectile in flight. Very annoying.

Was able to talk two “greatsword mesmers” into getting their one-handed swords out and try and melee lupicus.
Reaction: “Ok, if you have a bit of experienve in this, I concede this is actually easier and way faster than the ranged method.”.
Was a good day!

I’ve only duoed storymodes so far with friends to unlock pvp reward tracks. The most important lesson I learned from that was: nightmare court knights are ouchies…

But I had a lot of fun with this and one of them suggested trying other paths as a duo as well, so we’ll probably be doing more of those in the future.

Well, given that the last season had 2 dungeons and one replacement path and that like spoj I believe they will continue to add small parts of maps/small maps continually, I guess our chances for a new dungeon are much better than 0%.

The only concern I can voice is that they might have used the story instances to foreshade what we can expect mechanicswise from the new dungeon. Read: lots of aspect crystals to use. And I hope they don’t overdo that.

Amusingly, since they redid Mai Trin I exclusively get Mai Trin as my last fractal.

Fought her on 40 last night with some friends who hadn’t seen her after the revamp (2 of them had actually been totally inactive gamewise for some time). General reaction: “What the….?”.
We wiped a couple of times but got the hang of it after that.The least you can say is that you get a nice feeling of accomplishment if you beat her now.

But I still think the damage of some abilities is a little too much (and yes that especially includes the barrage phase for me).

I actually still use the combat healer title on my guardian. Was the first I got and it kind of stuck.

Edit: And I just realised after logging in, I actually changed it a little while ago. Yay me for false intel.

I will not argue that what happened to you classifies as antisocial behaviour. Simply because it does.

However I wouldn’t link it to the “dungeon master” title or the “all welcome” description. You just had the bad luck to draw two individuals that lack certain social graces.
Yes, it is frustrating and annoying, but that doesn’t link necessarily two those two criteria.

Iris Ng.9845:

I was thinking… maybe one day Anet decides to cap all the reflected damage. Maybe…

I honestly like Jerus’ idea he posted in the Malrona thread, making the reflected damage based on the statistics of the reflecting character power wise. This will still make it a very useful tool without it going over the top like it does now in some cases.

Addendum: I don’t know if someone else came up with this before already. Since it is a topic discussed pretty often, it’s actually rather likely. But I know of Jerus’ suggestion, so that’s the one I’ll refer to.

Same here (EU server). Dry Top is the one region where I have delays that border on unplayable, especially when you do an event like Tootsie k*tten you have to time your interrupts.
Everywhere else is just fine.

I have recently been paying more attention to this and I found (at least in my pugs) that Asura players tend to be more prone to “weird behaviour” in dungeons. Like actually using the chat, greeting people and all sorts of strange stuff like socializing more.

I’m fairly certain this is a individual experience on my behalf, but as I said at least in my pugs, it appears to be the case.

ergo: We need more Asura.

I just realised the same and found it oddly amusing. Judging from the skins that drop it appears that dry top classifies as Kryta, but we’ll have to wait for the appropriate daily to verify that.

Edit: Ok, you do get Krytan and Maguuma skins both. So that is not an indicator that it classifies as a Kryta region. I stand corrected.

maxinion.8396:

Cotser.7015:

Lucas.9157:

Did the patch bring anything good?
Or just unskippable cutscenes?

What do you think?

I actually like the new content~ It’s fun to play through once if you care about the story at all. It’s much better than Season 1 stuff.

Agreed. The fights, while not too difficult, are a bit more challenging than in usual solo instances and I really like the dialogue plus the information you get.
And the Taimi dialogue in that last part is almost too cute.

Edit: And I finally managed to get myself obliterated by rushing a mob against a wall while it had retaliation up and I didn’t see it. Took the new story for that to happen to me (now that says a lot about how rarely I use my ele…).

While I feel for Necros and someone new to this, I don’t see that much trouble with the normal phase. Yes I make mistakes like everyone else (most likely more so), but with a bit of consideration you can at least revive someone during the normal phase.

I’m much more concerned about the increased damage during the cannon phase.

I admit, think they overdid it a little bit. I’m used to the cannon phase on lvl 40 or 50 pre-change on guardian and thief and never had that much trouble. Then there came that funny level 11 the other night and I sometimes had serious trouble on my warrior to stay alive.

I know they can sometimes single you out during the cannon phase and if that happens you are screwed. But as far as I remember that only happened once to me that night. Still took a worse beating than what I’m used to from higher levels pre-change on characters with a much smaller healthpool.

I guessed as much from your and their description.

Iris Ng.9845:

Fashion. Come in a pack of four Asuras – http://youtu.be/ruGYtPeMOEE

I can’t watch that video in my lovely country due to copyright reasons. Curse you GEMA!

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Cotser.7015:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Guys guys you’re stroking their egos too much haha.

And your’s too!

Wellllll… I wasn’t called a legend until AFTER the others were xD

That’s okay. My fashion is legendary.

Great, now I’ve ticked off Lilith. This must be my day.

I feel like I need a disclaimer: The order okittennowledgement does not confer any form of evalluation of people’s importance or status!
Or some such…

Edit: Every now and then I find something new and hilarious the forum filters out.

That method 3 puts a lot of strain on the bait though doesn’kitten I’m not entirely certain I would like to play that role if it ever came up.

Cotser.7015:

Ropechef.6192:

Silberfisch.3046:

Plus: I still get nervous everytime I am in a group with Lilith because sooner or later she will invite some forum legend and I just know I will screw up badly and make a fool of myself. sigh

I know, right….

Seconded/Thirded.

Not that Lilith herself isn’t already a forum legend in her own right…

OK, and now I cut the fanboiism here before it gets out of hand.

Cotser.7015:

Speaking of frac runs
That one with Lillith was far from great^^:
Level 11, Swamp, Molten, Dredge, should be fine rite.
Then, I: DC DC DC DC DC DC DC DC DIE DC DC DIE DIE DIE DC DIE
and get carried to boss fractal, Mai Trin, wonderful
I proceed to diediediediedie and kitten everything up.
Eventually get carried to victory…

Fractal dagger drop.

I can savely say that I don’t hate you.

I just feel bad for deSade given how we got deepfried by Mai so often.

Plus: I still get nervous everytime I am in a group with Lilith because sooner or later she will invite some forum legend and I just know I will screw up badly and make a fool of myself. sigh

Intuneric.7652:

Edit: Holding aggro @ archdiviner… pPPPPPPPpppplleaaaaasee teach me

I wasn’t talking about holding aggro by design. You should be well aware how fickle aggro in GW2 can be and sometimes a boss just latches on to someone and won’t let go. But by all means if this is the only way you can “discuss”, keep it up.

I want to see you get by with dodges if Moosi or AD have singled you out and are hellbent on getting you to eat dirt.
Aside from that, maha meant it is better to use the Aegis to block the blow that downed you or your teammate instead of using it to protect the revival. Just FYI.

Since you asked about the specific order to run. Acutally, there isn’t one. Ideally everyone runs on the same position, but we all know that this is even less realistic and likely than getting two precursors at once from the Karka Queen pop up chest.
And Purple Miku already pointed out the problem with the idea of a running order.

That aside, what acutally helps a lot as well in that phase if you use the disperse technique: Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Orrian_Truffle_and_Meat_Stew

Not the cheapest foodwise there is, but the increased endurance refill rate is really useful in that encounter.

Well one way of dealing with the cannon salvoe is basically what you mentioned. The group balls into a tight knot and starts running together leaving the AoE fields constantly behind them. As can be imagined, this works best with a speedbuff and only if everyone is doing it. This is also the way usually used in solos if I am correct, where you don’t have to worry about anyone being left behind or dancing out of the group for whatever reason.

Another way that works more or less well is to disperse where everyone takes his little corner of the room far enough from each other so you mostly avoid overlapping AoE fields.

The downside of the first version is that you have to move coherently as a group and keep moving constantly. Sometimes this can’t be executed particularly well if the participants aren’t used tho that kind of coordination.

The downside of the second version is that sometimes a player is singled out and gets a lot more AoE fields than others and might run out of room/dodges to avoid the barrages. And once that one goes down, with one target less to choose from for the AoE barrage, the other 4 will get the additional incoming fire, which can quickly cascade into multiple defeated characters.

Both versions have their upside and downside. I’ve had groups that wouldn’t get the run done no matter what but used the disperse technique flawlessly and I’ve seen the disperse technique go horribly wrong as well.

But as you can well imagine, mixing those two variants is not a good idea. So your team will have to pick which one they are more familiar/comfortable with and everyone needs to go along. Otherwise things will almost inadvertedly go haywire.

If there is a third even more elegant way to deal with this I am unaware of it. Stealthing the entire group for example doesn’t work because that forces a reset of Mai Trin as far as I know.

steps on the forum bug

Congratulations to Snow Crows!

And Kudos to all teams participating. It was really fun to watch.

And of course thanks to DnT and everyone involved for organizing this event.

It’s really interesting to watch. I’m just sad the guild I was rooting for is out already.

I have to admit, I had a lot of fun last night. And as expected, I did learn something. So thanks for that.