Guild Wars 2

Aleth.9630:

The video is nice but it doesn’t really offer any insight on when and why the enemies teleport around sometimes. Like, when standing on the small rock after SE p3’s first boss.

I also believe that many pathing mobs are a bit more complex than described. What I noticed with at least the ones at the start of HoTW p1-3 and SE p3 is that they always first run to the exact same location and then they run at a nearby player. If you leave the instance or waypoint away early, they (still) run up to that “rally spot” and do nothing afterwards instead.

When you are inaccessible by path-to-player mobs they teleport to you instead, it was brought up in a hotw p2(?) record a while back.

We don’t completely understand pathing, there are variations of both path to player and to location, the video was recorded more as a how to thief in day to day dungeons rather than an extensive explanation of pathing.

RubberDougie.2750:

If they know about it, why don’t they just change the geometry a little bit? ANet is incompetent if they really knew about this.

There are ~4 spots I know of at frost where you can afk him. Some require to you clear the turrets first. They need to basically make everything chin level on an asuran or taller than a human to avoid afking melee/conical attacking mobs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfcTkIUqhOA look at what I do in this video against the melee mobs. It works on basically every melee mob minus the risen balth priest in arah p4.

Wethospu.6437:

Would anyone be interested of recording a roleplay video of each dungeon path? It should include all cutscenes, dialogue and key parts of the dungeon.

Are we describing things, or just running through silently killing things and doing the required events?

Wethospu.6437:

Except that clearly isn’t true for all cases as he explained above. So I’m curious where is the line.

I don’t know, I’ll bang my head against it in a couple days when I have time.

I’d guess it would be similar to activating cutscenes and NPC triggers. Those can be triggered up to 5 times if each player hits the threshold a moment after each other. But why that happens, I have no idea.

Wethospu.6437:

You mentioned that the “move to target” triggers multiple times. Does it happen once per player or something like that? I don’t recall them pathing all the time.

He means the command is given another time when other players pass the same threshold. Ie. He passed the threshold in cm so the mobs got the command to move to him, but they hadn’t pathed for their first time, so each successive player got the same command over-writing the previous command until I was the last person to pass it, so they pathed to me(Tormented).

tested it briefly in hotm, my hits with and without the rune were varying from ~1102 to ~1205

If your fights are lasting over 14 seconds and your group has good might, take nike’s condition build. If they’re lasting less than 14 OR your group has an abundance of icebows, take his power build. If you’re pugging, the condition build will often be better anyways since most groups aren’t very good at reapplying their group buffs.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

SlyDevil.3952:

With the addition of a pvp leaderboard they should have reset everyone to rank 1 to not give any players a starting handicap.

From this statement I can only assume you don’t PvP at all. The leaderboard had nothing to do with rank and was simply an indicator of how many games a mid tier player could grind since top level players spent on average three times as long in que.
Also, you can have a 0% win rate and still eventually make dragon, where as you have to actually complete a fractal level to advance a level. The two are not comparable at all.

Forgot my /s, was just a joke referring to their reason for resetting fractal reward levels.

Now go to arah and you can get 260k reflects on other classes. Remember to show your combat log when displaying damage potential, bosses have much higher coefficients/power for reflectable skills.

Could be nice if they allowed you to get a stacking bonus for continuing inside of fractals. From 51 onwards you only have 1 daily,, they could add in that you get an extra 5% of the base reward for a fractal shard if you continue on without returning to dessa’s lab. Then you’d have a reason to do a 95,96,etc.. and run a set of shards instead of 1-3 and done after 30mins.

It would be cool if the new weapons were dyeable and came in a box where you could select the skin. Maybe lock it behind lvl 100 reward level and some hard af achieves, then you’d have some prestige.

You can safe spot is poison spin by standing in the middle of his hitbox or by standing on the diagonal edges of the doorway type things. As long as you run the crystals on s/w or GS you should probably be able to turn on the fan fast enough. The big question is whether you have enough dps to not run out of crystals. And remember to dodge his fist/lightning attack and swap pets so they don’t get put on a long swap cd. I think he’s inquest as well if you need a slaying potion.

I think he means the big underground cavern with the scaffolding and the 2 circles of mobs with the elites dueling in the middle. In which case you always pull that whole room, it’s been happening for years when I join groups that refuse to skip.

The average clear time of bosses in record runs is ~14s or less, in lvl 80 dungeons it’s around 24secs. Ramp up time in pug groups is basically never an issue as condi engineer as long as you’re getting your rotation out. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xpVWsJ9riOC5mqB2LcrZdXCPHIj23vjJUX7RbVPCOpY/edit#gid=0 Nike’s list of kill times.

Too bad they don’t just make the number of pristines proportional to the drop rate for a specific weapon currently. Hue hue

Zenith.7301:

Isn’t it lovely when the elemental’s autoattacks are a ranged ice spike that hits for over half your health?

That fractal is just painful when you’re with incompetent people that overaggro, can’t pull together and DPS the elementals fast enough, and where nobody but you tries to renew the flame.

Don’t forget the blizzard that almost obscures the animation, and of course, the particle effects of 5 other players plus swirling winds, wait….. what swirling winds? SURPRISE KNOCKBACK!!!!

With the addition of a pvp leaderboard they should have reset everyone to rank 1 to not give any players a starting handicap.

The tips can be improved/expanded, some classes with related abilities aren’t mentioned.
Eg. Ele staff 4 in air functions the same as the warrior warhorn skill for both swiftness on party/condition removal, but my tips(guard/mes/ele/thief/war) are only showing the idea for warrior, there are variances of the same tactic on all the class that aren’t mentioned. Same with thief teleports not being mentioned but mes/guard are. Warrior being suggested to bring power buffs over prec at burrows but not thief, other power/prec signets aren’t mentioned on some classes to either remove or put on.

Side note: Is fearing the Howling King into a wall as a warrior a good idea since it reduces the safe area around him by more than half?

Particularly Pedantic: Some of the sentences aren’t perfectly worded, though the point is described well.

Tongku.5326:

as long as they do something to change the current stale zerker meta am good with it. dont care if condi deeps, or bunker / support builds, whatever, just do something, do not do nothing.

Stale bunker meta incoming, please refer to Card’s channel for all of the nomad fun times that can already be had.

Malediktus.9250:

You dont waste time by running around. The waves take exactly the same time no matter if you are stealth stacked or running.

Removing the shield usually takes longer with a group kiting instead of a single player.

Did they have awesome pants though?

savacli.8172:

Double Longbow BearBow or go home.

Your team is your gambit

Wethospu.6437:

The gambits are tricky since not everyone will be streaming. It’s impossible to tell if someone is using first person or HUD.

For gambits like I mentioned you could require a video submitted from the same path/party, and you could compare to the original video to check for same tactics/occurrences during the run. Failure to submit a video would result in the time from the stream being accepted.

Also for teams that do no have a person capable of streaming, with 4man tournaments you could slot in a thief with SA and harpy feathers to stream the run from the edge of fights.

Dahkeus.8243:

Hmm…lots of speculation on condi engineer without much of any proof to back it up. Would be nice to see someone flesh out that argument better.

Nike did some numbers for condi engineer a couple weeks back, it was the highest condi spec but it fell short to buffed zerk parties, including a zerk engineer. In terms of solo play, or group play where your party is failing to adequately provide group buffing, condi engineer is the best choice for an engineer if burst is not required. It has very good self buffing if you bring aristocracy and a strength sigil, as well as easy blast finishers for 15+ might depending on fire fields sources.

You can also check out aristocracy runes from CM, they are like strength runes for condi builds. As an alternative to koi cakes you can get super pizzas for a couple silver and they last longer.

Not sure about prisoner’s numbers, the build that was shown is only at 65% condi duration when not on pistols. Also drop the geomancy sigil for that build and pick up strength. If you want a slightly easier/cheaper build, drop bursting and take battle or you can also pick up malice.

Wolfey.3407:

UBcktieDL.5318:

I recently joined a group titled “exp metazerk” without class requirements as an engineer. 2 People start flaming about my class as soon as i joined.

Most Lfg’s are just searching for these 4 classes. I understand ranger and necro do not bring as much dps or group buffs than other classes, but mesmer and engi?

“People should not shun the classes I play but should shun class A and Class B because I don’t play them and no one seems to like them”

Let me rephrase the original statement for you. "I understand people shunning slightly less optimal classes based on the general skill level by players using that class as well as less opportunities to support the group. However I don’t understand why a just as optimal class is shunned as well.

As has been pointed out, a mesmer can replace a guardian with ease, as an engi can replace a thief. The difference being at most, waiting a couple seconds to stealth, or better use of aggro and positioning to make up for no aegis. So if the classes are barely affecting the run time, and engineer provides more group support than a thief for groups that have weaker mechanic knowledge, why are those classes shunned?

As a side note, mesmer can provide group invulnerability which blocks all incoming attacks during a period, instead of one, so it can be considered to have better group defense in some situations.

Rednik.3809:

spoj.9672:

Im not to worried about rewards. I think if the daily achieves are rewarding enough then the incentive to do other fractals will be enough.

However I am very concerned about progression. Please do not allow players to progress by getting carried on an easy high fractal. Players should be required to do each scale to progress to the next. Skipping out scales should halt your progress.

Please don’t tell others to play how you want them to play. If you like to waste time for BS long runs because you think it’s “fun” – feel free, but make you own group for people like you.

Why bother designing 80-90 levels worth of instabilities if everyone is going to do just the last 5-8?

The twirl attack hits in all directions, I’m not sure if it’s at the same time though. If it is sweeping from left to right it could remove the blind on a previous player.

therapite.3645:

If I may add, as of last night:
Arah P4: Dwayna still bugs out at 50% and goes invulnerable at that point no matter what you do to get her past that.

Pretty sure this is one of his mechanics, did 5 sparks spawn nearby when he went invuln?

Bi-weekly tournaments, first week is registration, second week is practice with the matches on the weekend. For each 2 week period a certain dungeon is announced, and all non-easily bugged paths are considered to be viable options for play. People register until the closing time, at which point players are sorted into X number of 4man teams(the latest people to sign up are excluded, ie. 3 players left at the end must re-enter at the next tournament), a maximum of 2 players from any of the well known speed clear guilds at any time.

If a party does not completely wipe, it can not use WPs, ie. if team members die at lupi you are required to hard res them before they can continue playing. For each member from a well known guild(considered to be a very skilled player), at least one “less” skilled player must survive the encounters(skilled players can’t solo/duo bosses if the party fails to react appropriately to mechanics).

The organizing player(idk, say Weth) would randomly sort the set of “most” skilled players into teams, then the rest of the players and get in contact with each player to tell them their team. Each team has ~5 days to practice for the tournament.

During the tournament the first path is randomly selected, and no path can be replayed until all of the options have been completed, ie. ac 123 and story must be completed before a path can be repeated.

Single round knock-out, semi/finals can have 3 paths instead of one.

For each gambit active per player a team takes 0.5/1% off their finishing time.

Gambits can include: first person camera mode, no HUD, some other random things.

Javonovich.5280:

I’ve been thinking about switching to an engineer for open-world pve and silverwastes (he’s already level 80. I used to use him exclusively for pvp and amassed a lot of tomes). I’ve always loved condi builds, and I heard that engins are in a good spot with current burn damage. I was wondering what you all thought about the current state of engins in pve, if you have any preferred burn-based builds, and if Engi is worth it over a condi necro or condi Mesmer.

Almost any other class is better at condi than necro(not literally, but condi necro is ridiculously overrated), condi mesmer isn’t bad, last time I saw the numbers for staff it was just over half of a condi engineer. Pistol offhand could be strong on a condi mes, but I was told the trait is bugged(could just be an incorrect assumption on how the trait should work). It’s a very easy class to play solo, and covers almost every type of condition in large amounts. Between blind, chill, swiftness, vuln and all of the damage conditions, survival is easy, and damage just requires learning rotation/spacing.

Holding your right mouse button will do the same thing, even if you select a hostile enemy, just tap a movement key while you face in a given direction and your character will re-orient based on your mouse rather than your target.

It’s a cone attack, it is parallel to the ground in a rectangle/cone shape. The animation is like any projectile though, it tries to match up with where your character is facing.

Wethospu.6437:

TexZero.7910:

I don’t really agree with end game dungeon content being open to people who arent willing to put in 1hr at a time.

There’s plenty of other dungeons for those that can only commit 20 minutes a day.

And once you wipe few times per fight, that 1 hour becomes 3-4 hours.

I spent 2 hours at molten duo because I was stubborn and tried to solo on thief when my group kept dying. Oh the memories.

5man teams, each team gets 1-2 members from the high-end speedclear guilds/Noob mentors(isn’t this pretty much complete overlap?) and 3 randoms, do bi-weekly best of 3 paths with 1 week notice on randomly selected paths. New players get time to practice and work through the dungeons with experienced players, then the teams go head-to head and look at what both teams have learned/are able to apply.

Sounds like an episode of The Biggest Loser…

So, how many headshots have you guys gotten with your GS so far?

EcoRI.9273:

:-/ i feel like im in my room in my boxers playing a game.

I feel you man

Ascended trinket boxes? You get to choose your stats of an ascended ring instead of random useless ones that 90% of the time aren’t a stat combo you want. Could be nice.

Make your personal reward level the total sum of all tiers completed? You can run fractals with higher players, but continuously doing the same fractal will net just the end reward. Like the karka achieve in LA, there are 50 different karka you need, so have 100 different fractals(listed in an achievement) and your personal level is equivalent to the total number completed, if you do 1-40, 50 and 96, you’d sit at 42 personal reward. Unsure about how grandfathering would work.

Does anyone find it odd that the daily rewards are stacked at the easiest end of fractals, 1-20 and 31-50 have more rewards than 50+, and they are significantly easier, both currently and I would assume after the patch. Why not 1-30, 31-60,61-80,81+ or 1-40, 41-70, 70+

First person camera mode? Sounds like a double gambit, maybe a triple.

Chill + Projectile defenses would negate almost any need for a tank. Engi with food and scale venom covers both weakness and conditions, if the toughness gets too high you can add in more engis for more chill, blind and projectile blocks on top of their condition damage.

Arantheal.7396:

I already have a full ascended sinister gear-set for my engi, because of WvW…
My body is ready, and i welcome this change.

They specifically announced that group-roles will be more distinct and support gets a bigger role. And to defy the zerker stack-meta, it’s only logical to mess with their dmg output directly by scaling up toughness.
On the long run, this will also allow Necromancers & Rangers easier access to Fractals, since both are lacking in group-support (welp, spotter is still kinda nice), but come with powerful condi-builds, hence get better dps than guards, warris & eles against high values of toughness. Ele might still be high up in terms of dps, since they can stack burning the easiest currently, but it wears down as fast as guardians’ and leaves them with almost no condi-output. Not to mention that their attunements lock them out from effectively combining their condi-dps, due to short duration of both their bleeds & burns.

So yea, engi becomes more than just a supporter, and necros & rangers will suffer less discrimination at higher fractal levels.

Engineer has been top condi damage for, I think 2 years? Maybe since launch, considering it also brings projectile defenses, lots of blinds, smoke fields, fire fields, blasts, etc…. The meta with high toughness targets would just become 4 engis + another engi, or a class with utility better suited to the situation. And everyone in sinister.

Jerus.4350:

shion.2084:

I still notice that my big ol’ bomb is canceled if I try to queue other skills up after it. I assume this is also still an outstanding bug?

Take off Static Discharge and see if it isn’t fixed. There is an issue with that trait causing toolbelt skills to fail at queueing up the next attack correctly.

SD has it’s own aftercast, it can’t queue up the animation for the next skill until SD finishes. But BoB has it’s own cast time that you can cancel if you’re pressing buttons too fast. It’s like using WW on a warrior during hundred blades, using skills during the animation can break it.

I find the condi rotation easier because you don’t need to land the double jump shot or acid bomb cancel. Everything in the condi rotation is mid-range or you can drop a bomb and it will detonate as the enemies walk closer to you.

And Condi engineer supports itself well with aristocracy giving you perfect might uptime as well as food giving you nearly perfect vuln, whereas a zerker gets a lot of its buffs(namely might/fury) from working with 1-2 other players.

Can a category be added for the players that do not abuse zerker exploits to clear dungeons in unintended ways? Like, nomad only section, active defenses are restricted to a minimum?

I had a pug group with 3 guards(one of whom was running shout condi cleanse and had never done a 50 before) do a 32minute 50, I was rather amazed(I had a solid guard/ele in the group that were swapping out slaying potions throughout)

otherdeadangel.6354:

I know that bombs are bugged but i still love them to much to give them up. (cross fingers they get the fix they need)
And turrets might not be the best for pve, but rifle turret has a short cooldown anyway so it’s not to bad.

Rune options:
Rune of strength
Rune of the pack
Rune of the ogre (cheaper option)
Rune of the Flame Legion (cheaper option)

Sigil option:
Sigil of Fire/Air
Sigil of Battle/Strength
Sigil of Force/Night
Sigil of Accuracy
Sigil of Bloodlust

I use Rune of the ogre with Sigil of Accuracy + Night (i tend to run alot of dungeons)

Food buff you can use anything that fits your taste (The pun !!)
i use condition duration and a dungeon specific +damage potion

I am unsure about any bomb bugs that actually affect their viability, as far as I know it’s just graphical.

The rifle turret is not bad for the fury uptime, as long as you keep it alive during fights it’s a good choice for group buffing if you are avoiding blast fields.

Flame legion is the best rune choice as long as you have a constant source of burning, with bomb kit and working with another guard/engi/ele you should have constant burning uptime to always give you the 6th bonus. Strength is only more useful if you are constantly putting flame blast into fire fields/blasting might consistently for your group.

You may want to include a stat set for your links, without precision as a secondary stat fire/air sigils are probably weaker than accuracy/force/night, likewise strength needs crits. Frailty is a good choice for group play if you aren’t running precision as a major/minor stat on your armour(night sigils are better though).

Without the high vuln stacking grenade kit gives, it may be better to run power/prec food instead of condi duration. Dungeon potions, 11/10 would recommend, 10% potion cost 1 token and get you through a full dungeon set, or you can get the weaker ones for a very cheap cost from the tp.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Then I must be wrong. Anyone care to add to my original post to make it right or should I just drop it entirely?

2 main notes. The cleansing is very nice, but outside of pve it is not realistically possible. Also dark fields do not blast for stealth and if the skill was a smoke field, no engineer blast is 1500(orbital strike not included, and nearly impossible to land without the trait).

frifox.5283:

Once Alpha gets past 75%, spire will teleport to nearest player and then the risen will start spawning every 40 sec. Just reset alpha near 75% and you should avoid all of the above.

Ye, I recreated it. Unfortunately it wanted me to kill alpha before progressing.

So i was testing mortar coefficients on alpha and this happened. I’m guessing the spawns were triggered by his hp drop, but spire teleporting, never seen this happen.

Interestingly I am able to speak to spire and path select from anywhere in the dungeon now. She stopped moving when I talked to her, sadness, I wanted to cross half the dungeon before path selecting.