Guild Wars 2

Is /r/Guildwars2 leaking or something? Guild Wars 2 is a beautiful game with an amazing combat system, but some areas could use some work.

Chaith.8256:

You basically can’t run Bomb Kit and Tool Kit in the same build. An overwhelmingly large % of Engies with Bomb Kit don’t have Tool Kit.

TIL I’ve been playing bunker engi wrong all along.

On-topic though, I don’t feel stealth-magnet pull is really an issue, as stealthing requires blowing important skills with (mostly) long cooldowns, or taking other skills to get the effect (elixir s or whatever shorter cooldown blast finisher you wouldn’t normally take), and is mostly broken if an enemy is close to you (most all of the blast finishers deal damage). Not to mention the glitches on the pull itself— I cannot count the number of times I’ve wasted a pry bar because the enemy wasn’t pulled all the way to me, even though they used no stun breakers.

My top 3:
1. Length/difficulty variance between fractals (dredge)
2. Fractal diversity
3. Rewards

Proposal Overview
Add additional attacks/mechanics to bosses and other monsters as fractal levels increase, and reduce the cooldown of stronger attacks/mechanics based on fractal level.

Proposal Goals
To make bosses and other encounters feel more challenging, rather than simply increasing attack power and enemy count.

Proposal Functionality
Add attacks to bosses every XX fractal levels, making fights more complex and interesting level as players delve into higher level fractals. Some boss fights, such as the giant jellyfish in the underwater fractal, feel long and repetitive, and adding mechanics which trigger after a certain amount of health is removed would help remedy that.

The Jade Maw, although providing an interesting fight, does not feel up to par with the other boss fractals. It also does not seem to scale as it should with fractal levels. Adding strong area-denial attacks to this boss would make the fight far more active. (Attacks like those used in Twisted Marionette warden fights, increasing in frequency/severity as fractal level increases).

Associated Risks
Bosses could become too strong or unforgiving for some groups to complete, or could force groups into taking certain classes over others. Balancing would have to be very thorough.

Side note: Shouldn’t this CDI be in the dungeon forum? Or are fractals not considered dungeons now?

Xyonon.3987:

Frenk.5917:

If you want to do it by yourself the most efficient way (ie: not wasting utility slots) you have to use Big Ol’ Bomb, put the firefield, use healing turret (don’t worry, the water field DOES NOT override the fire one – as I sadly noticed in WvW

What water field? The HT only grants a water field upon activation. I just leave here the rules of the combo fields. So you will understand how combo fields work.

I’ll just leave this here for you.

Ranger Runes are a great alternative to scholar runes if you’re having trouble keeping above 90% health. The ⁶ effect applies constantly right now, but ANet has stated they will fix it with the next big balance update.

Icebrood Wolves.

Have Heal as One grant a few seconds Frost Aura to both player and pet.

petespri.6548:

I’ve heard this a number of times, but would like clarification.

1. 10% stats is a lot. Can anyone link 2 builds that compares and shows this?

2. Even assuming it is a full 10%, what is the full percentage when you compare player A to player B when adding in stats from the toon before gear. What is the absolute stat difference?

I am very curious, thanks!

ps- My big reason for not going with CRAFTED ascended is that it locks me into one style of build. Berserker? Hope you never want to play Condi, Support, or any other hybrid or mix of gear build. That is not my style. I do however use the rings, amulet, trinkets. Working on a back piece slowly, and maybe a weapon (gasp) after that.

Exotic

Ascended with infusions

The ascended will deal 5.54% more damage than the exotic with kit skills, and 10.8% more damage with rifle and toolbelt skills, while having 2.7% higher armor. This is before precision/crit damage boosts such as fury, banner of discipline, and spotter are added, which increases those damage %s even more. For damage builds, increasing these values a little can make a larger difference than you would expect, due to the way damage multipliers work in this game.

swiftpaw.6397:

The irony when these threads stack up on the front page and no one skips them.

They were conflicted, they wanted to skip the thread but wanted to stack on it as well. It seems as though the posters have terrible DPS though, as it’s been up for 2 days now.

A player in full ascended equipment has 179 more stat points from equipment than a player in full exotic (assuming 2h weapon), as well as ~5% higher weapon attack (yes, this means 5% higher damage, unless you’re using bundles for main damage) and ~5% higher defense on armor. A player using the maximum number of +stat infusions would have 249 more stat points than the player in full exotic. I would hardly call a 10% increase in stats from equipment ‘insignificant’.

Ropechef.6192:

over 24 hours old and it hasn’t been moved to the dungeon subforum?

0.o

Maybe the mods are as tired of seeing the daily “skipping/stacking exploiting” thread in the dungeon forum as we are?

No one’s arguing that skill and other factors aren’t involved in winning fights. It’s simple math though, when all other variables are equal, higher stats will always win. Saying it’s meaningless is simply not true.

Warlord.9074:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Sins.4782:

If by “meaningless” you mean contributing to a higher damage, then sure.

Seems pretty clear to me.

I really don’t get why these people are trying to argue that a clear statistical advantage is meaningless.

It’s meaningless because 50 power amounts to no real world gain. Especially vs an opponent with high armor rating. 250 power yes 50 power no. 50 power is less than 1% 50 power is like .1% in real world.

Comparing that to an advantage would be like Comparing a 150HP honda Civic to a 151 HP honda civic then saying the Honda civic with 1 more HP has a clear advantage in a Drag race from 0-100. When the race will be determined by the drivers not the car.

I think you need to retake some math classes mate.

If by “meaningless” you mean contributing to a higher damage, then sure.

Warlord.9074:

Stats matter when they give a clear advantage, Ascended armor by itself not including ascended trinkets do not give a clear advantage in this game. If you can prove that if 1 player with ascended armor and another with exotics that the player will 100% beat the other player in a 1v1 with exotics Ill hear you out. Or have any numerical real world advantage outside a calculator or spread sheet id eat my words.

Do you not understand how stats work or something? If someone has 50 power more than someone else, then they are 50 power stronger. It’s not hard math.

Flamethrower 1 has a 1.5 skill coefficient and takes 2.57 seconds (according to wiki). Grenade has a .33 skill coefficient for each 3 grenades, and takes .85 seconds. Assuming all 3 grenades hit, the grenades will hit 1.995 times harder than the flamethrower. As long as flamethrower’s skill coefficient remains that low, it will never compete with grenades in direct damage. You’d need to nearly double your power through might stacks for flamethrower to beat out grenades (with all 3 hitting).

ANet has said time and time again that skipping mobs and stacking are not exploits. Go run Arah without skipping anything, please. And vid it.

I don’t WvW much, but I’d imagine with at least 10 in explosives for forceful explosives, 30 in inventions for elixir infused bombs and stabilized armor, and 10 in alchemy for protection injection, we would be quite useful. That said, the major downside is our lack of stability. Getting stunlocked and killed is not fun. If you have others to provide stability for you, though, we can certainly be of use.

Definitely. It has a blast finisher that can be used to stack might/stealth/healing, a block, a projectile reflect, 2 CCs for taking down defiant stacks/interrupting, and a bouncing blind. What’s not to love?

Drop your turrets first, then big ol’ bomb, then fire bomb, then overcharge thumper turret, mash your toolbelts like a madman, and use shield 4. It’s a pain and I don’t really recommend it because of the high recharges on thumper turret, I’d much rather have lower cooldown blast finishers to work with, even if there are less of them.

Try your combos, and remember, practice makes perfect. Unless you have a bad connection, in which case practice does little.

Perplexity runes are amazing in world vs world, because of all the CCs we have. Turrets are most commonly used for their blast finishers, notably rifle turret an thumper turret(a lot of finishers, but long cooldowns). Rifle turret is also taken in burst damage static discharge builds due to its low cooldown damage toolbelt skill, and sometimes in PvP decap builds with accelerant-packed turrets for keeping players off points with its knockback.

Yes, you’re crazy. As always, damage is king in dungeons, and there’s really no need for much party healing— condi cleanses in some places, yes, but rarely healing. We do, however, provide a lot of damage support, in the way of might stacks (we have quite a few blast finishers, and a fire field on bomb kit) and vulnerability (traited, explosions cause vulnerability, each grenade autoattack counts for 3 explosions, each crit can cause vulnerability). Our damage really isn’t too bad either. 30/30/0/x/x is the current meta, sometimes with giver’s pistol/shield, +condition duration food, or +condition duration runes, if your party is having a hard time getting those vulnerability stacks on bosses. We can provide quite a bit of burst healing when needed through blast finishers on Healing Turret’s water field, as well as condi removal (2x on healing turret, 1x on super elixir, 5x on fumigate), so it is quite possible to fill all necessary defensive roles while still putting out optimal damage.

(Please don’t use condition damage for anything. It scales terribly when compared to power/precision/crit, and is hard capped, so having multiple condition players in a party essentially makes one useless).

From what I’ve heard, toolbelt skills will always use your mainhand weapon damage, so using a rifle(1095.5 avg weapon damage) over a pistol(952.5 avg weapon damage) should result in a 15% damage increase. So, while it’s not +25%, it’s certainly a significant increase. I’m still not sure rifle is worth taking over the utility of pistol/shield though— that blast finisher is huge as an engineer.

You don’t think it should. But it does. I don’t want to grind for ascended gear, I really don’t, but I don’t want to perform suboptimally either. Especially in group settings. In WvW for example, that 5% could make all the difference. Whether or not it was intended, I feel like I am being a burden upon others if I am not using the best gear possible. Thus, I end up working for the gear anyway, and hating every moment of it.

Historical MMO and RPG players are attracted to goals— higher levels, better stats, equipment, etc, and will work toward those whether they like it or not. They will do so simply because those goals are there. If there is something in-game that can be completed, players will try to complete it. What the developers should really be working towards is making those grinds that do exist enjoyable.

Reverence.6915:

That’s why Ascended armor is a long term goal. Once you’ve settled down into your build, you can start building your ascended armor. Once legendary armours come out, then you can start going for that

Some of us enjoy build experimentation, and a lot of players play multiple builds regularly (PvE, WvW). And then alts. This is why having long term goals involved with higher stats is a bad idea.

Anymras.5729:

Would just raising our armor class make bunker engineers overpowered? We already have more health than Guardians.

I’ve got 3,429 armor in PvP already with settler’s and melandru runes, another 170 would only be about a 4% difference. Another 3k health though, would be great for dealing with conditions and burst damage, and synergize well with automated response.

Raise our armor class to heavy, raise our HP to warrior levels, give us more reliable stability, and bunker engineers would be ridiculously overpowered.

(I really do want the ability to disable or at least dye my hobosacks though. ANet please.)

Aegael.6938:

Hey OP, share with me this unbeatable build. Is it the new 30/30/30/30/30 meta?

I really love playing my 30/30/30/30/30 6-kit rifle/shield engi— she just wrecks everyone in pvp.

Heavy sets just wouldn’t look right with our hobosacks.

World bosses are unstable (not always up, must check external sites to find bosses/temples up, not always sufficient players willing to complete them) and, quite frankly, boring. The only other ways to obtain dragonites are guild missions (some of them, and time gated) and WvW (small amounts). At least players who lack Empyreal fragments have decent options (dungeons, fractals, jumping puzzle/open world chests).

That feeling =\

You shouldn’t be using 916 for armor. The only way you’re going to get a target with 916 armor is if it’s an enemy in spvp or wvw that isn’t wearing any armor, or invested in any toughness traitlines, or using any toughness trinkets. For reference, the light golems in the heart of the mists have 2,180 armor, the medium golems have 2,330 armor, and the heavy golems have 2,597 armor, at least according to wiki. I don’t know what the average enemy NPC has for armor, but I’d imagine it’s somewhere around 2600.

Using full ascended armor/weapons/trinkets, power food/consumables, banners of discipline and strength, empower allies, frost spirit, 25 stacks of might, 25 stacks of vulnerability, all 12 conditions, on a target of 2180 armor, I’m calculating a max hit of 11,318 for bomb 1 on a 30/30/0/0/10 build. If the target were to have 916 armor instead, that would be 26,936. With the frenzy debuff, that would be 33,670. For even more fun: With Big ol’ Bomb, that would be 60,606 damage.

Of course, you’ll never actually encounter a frenzy’d naked warrior with 12 conditions on him, while you have 2 warrior banners, 25 stacks of might, empower allies, and frost spirit active. If you do, though, take pics.

On a slightly related note, with the aforementioned buffs, but only 5 conditions on your enemy (seriously, how often are you going to have all 12?), your average bomb 1 would do 9,099 damage, leading to over 11k dps just autoattacking. I don’t know the exact aftercast for bomb 1 though, would be nice if someone could provide that.

EDIT: I forgot to add in bloodlust, so those numbers should be about 6.4% higher under optimal conditions.

Don’t forget to add marionette wardens. Queen’s Gauntlet bosses returning would be lovely too.

What server are you on, Danicia? I recall seeing a minionmancer dev a couple weeks ago in LA on CD, was that you?

1. Ranger
2. Ranger
3. Ranger

Looks like I’m all alone over here with my sylvari Engineer… ah well. Vine Shield ftw.

If ANet wants players to spread out more, they should increase the range of boons/healing on most skills. I mean, shouts currently have a radius of only 600 units for crying out loud. Guardian Virtues on the other hand, have a radius of 1200, which is much more reasonable considering these skills all have capped numbers of targets anyway.

This thread is both hilarious and depressing at the same time.

Have some relevant XKCDs.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some dungeons to run.

Stats are handled differently in PvP. Because the critical damage you can reach in PvP with amulets is much lower than the amount you can reach in PvE with full berserker’s gear, you won’t be seeing numbers near as high as you can in PvE. Those 8ks are also with might stacks, bloodlust stacks, vulnerability stacks on your target, and 10% damage increasing sigils like Sigil of the Night and sigils of x slaying or potions of x slaying. Power/pre/crit boosts from other party members, such as Empower Allies, Spotter, Frost Spirit, and warrior banners, also improve damage. In short: don’t expect pvp damage to be any indication of group PvE damage.

For a conditions build, you can stack corruption to 25 on monsters, then switch to a weapon with a superior sigil of bursting. I would recommend torment on your other weapon.

Ele definitely wins for dungeons. They have very high damage with LH and staff, and even higher with Fiery Greatsword rushing and Ice Bow 4 vs structs and bosses with large hitboxes. I have no idea about fractals though. I personally enjoy playing my engineer a lot more than ele, mostly due to how active gameplay can be with multiple skill sets at your disposal without dealing with any swapping cooldowns. We can stack might and vulnerability easily, as well as area stealth, condition removal with elixir gun, a projectile destroying or reflecting wall on Elixir U, and area heals by blasting water fields. Ele on the other hand has better might stacking, vuln stacking, and high damage, but at the cost of lower survivablity.

It’s your choice, really, but I hope you will level both and play whichever you enjoy the most, rather than which is better at X piece of content.

Yes please.

Just finished running AC p1/3 with a naked PUG team. Please don’t make dungeons easier.

Perhaps they’re members of a secret club or organisation. Maybe you should mimic their actions and see if a secret room appears, filled with precursors, cake, busty female elementalists, and bosses with low health pools.

PS: You may want to learn the secret handshake and password first

PSS: One of those things I listed was a lie

Elixir Gun 3 is ‘secretly OP’ because it cleanses like 5 conditions on allies within its cone. And yet people don’t use it. Hence the ‘secretly’.

I don’t like apothecary with elixir infused bombs. If you’re spamming bombs for the heal, you’ll mostly be using skill 1, which does a lot of direct damage, and needs points in explosives and firearms to even start with conditions. If you’re not using bomb 1 as often, you’re probably better off spending those points in alchemy instead, for things like protection injection, automated response, and backpack regenerator.

I feel like I both do more damage and bring more utility on my dps engineer than I do on my dps guardian. Ele does ridiculous damage right now though, especially counting FGS rushing and Frost Bow 4 against bosses/structures with large hitboxes. I don’t have a warrior at 80 yet, so I can’t compare those, but I do feel very effective running 30/30/0/0/10 on engineer.

1. I don’t think a limit on sizes of posts is a good thing— however, I would not mind requiring players with long posts to have a summary portion (TL;DR) in their first or last post.

2. I think letting players choose a broad topic at first is the best idea, followed by both ANet and players dividing it into specific issues for discussion every so often.

I really appreciate the CDI threads, and hope we will be seeing some of the ideas here implemented in the future.

Axe mainhand is pretty terrible for damage, decent enough for killing trash though. Greatsword is completely outclassed by mainhand sword unless you really need to strafe for whatever reason, or need the ranged block/leap for skipping.

Traits are a mess. Taking 25 in beast mastery makes little sense— you’re only gaining some healing power, 25 power, and slight boosts to your pets. Due to the damage split between ranger and pet favoring ranger, however, your points are best spent elsewhere— specifically damage multipliers for yourself. There are also traits that improve pet damage that aren’t in beast mastery, like Companion’s Might and Pet’s Prowess in skirmishing. In Marksmanship, Steady Focus is infinitely better than Malicious Training. 5 in Wilderness Survival is unnecessary when using sword, especially with dagger offhand, due to the evades on weapon skills on low cooldowns, and at 25% is little help anyways. The 5 points are much better off reaching Bountiful Hunter in Nature Magic for the 5% damage increase. If you are dead set on spending points in beast mastery though, please don’t go past 15, unless you plan on going the full 30 and taking Zephyr’s Speed and using it on cooldown.

Utility skills: While there are probably some situations where search and rescue is very useful, they are rare, and the 85 second cooldown makes the skill terrible pretty much everywhere else. Signet of the Hunt is bad as well— you’re taking warhorn which grants swiftness, and you will probably have swiftness from other party members as well. The active isn’t worth using even with signet of the beastmaster. Switch these out for skills that increase damage like “Sic ’Em” and Quickening Zephyr, or Lightning Reflexes if another evade/stunbreak is necessary.

And please switch to berserker’s gear. Preferably with scholar runes, runes of the ranger, or ruby orbs. Also, I haven’t played my ranger much recently, so forgive me if I missed something.

Cool. I wonder what fun topics we’ll have this time.