Dredge is better than half of them, even in the mid-20’s. Because you get good drops. Yes, it takes longer, but there is a reward. My record is 28 miner bags in one run. I’ll probably beat that going to higher fractal #’s
Do mobs obey the 5 target limit for AE buffs, and short buff duration on protection? Getting that cleaned up (or raising their cooldown on gonging) would probably help
Battle works for non-crit focused builds and crit focused ones. Fire requires a high crit chance.
Battle is better for long fights, as you’ll be running with +6 to +9 might stacks depending on +boon duration.
Fire is better on short fights, because you can expect a proc at the beginning of a fight with good crit chance.
Endurance is not class specific, and this trait line enhances the class mechanic for each class. It needs to be some kind of bonus to burst skills or adrenaline.
Definitely.
There aren’t a lot of options for this though, because adding a specific effect to using burst is better left to a trait, rather than a 1-30 counter (ie, gain a boon on using burst, heal on burst…much like the already existing gain end on burst)
Allow us to burst more often – cooldown reduction and/or adrenaline gain. IMO Disc should add both of these, and the disc traits that do this changed to something else.
Adding damage to burst is not the way to go, because many burst attacks don’t deal much damage.
Axe auto’s give you more hits per second than GS, and those hits do more damage. Auto-attacks are the worst thing about GS. GS is a great weapon, but that’s because of #2,3,4,5
Rifle is superior to LB in single target, even if you have all longbow traits and no rifle traits.
LB is superior to rifle anytime there are 2+ targets that can’t be lined up. ie, moving targets. It will also get more procs-on-crit, despite a slower fire rate, due to double shot (2 hits), fire fan (3 hits and penetration) and arcing arrow (AE)
IMO, one of the LB traits needs to reduce cooldown on LB skills by 20%
Axe/Warhorn, shout build. 2nd weapon is longbow or GS, depending on the opponents. Soldier runes in a mix of knight and zerker armor. Knight jewelry with ruby gems.
10/0/15/30/15
Hold on to adrenaline until you’re about to use shouts. Use burst then shout to refil adrenaline.
I have gotten most of my shards, globs and vials from Urban. I can’t really say I’ve noticed an enhanced amount of T5/T6 mats or rares/exotics from there though.
It’s really tough to tell with some fractals, because many of them have continually re-spawning mobs that don’t have frequent drops. And others that are puzzle based rather than combat based.
What I’ve noticed:
Good drops
Urban (part 2, after the gate only)
Dredge (part 2, after gates puzzle only)
Decent drops:
Maw (drops per mob are good, but just not a lot of mobs)
Aquatic (part 1, krait killing only)
Volcanic (at the very beginning, make sure to funnel mobs and tag everything)
Meh drops:
Harpy/Asura (harpies drop bloods frequently, but that’s it)
Swamp (puzzle and no mobs…but at least it finishes fast)
Cliffside
Snowblind
Skipping mobs by leashing is an intended activity by ANet. That’s why mobs in dungeons leash. In other games they don’t leash. So people make stealth groups to bypass trash. And in that case it’s still a valid way to play the game.
Cheesing a dungeon is like killing mossman by AFK firing your rifle for 5 minutes.
As to killing everything is more profitable? No way, unless you have unlimited playtime and are running into DR. This is never a problem for me.
I can pug run 3 paths of AC killing everything in 60-90 min. I will get x silver, 180 tokens, and half my drops will be from bosses and chests. This time frame includes killing oozes and gravelings that we aggro…for 5 silver and unknown drops.
or
I can pug “speed run” run 3 paths AC and 2 paths of CoF in the same amount of time, still killing widow and kholer 3×. Just skipping trash. I get 40% more tokens (300), chests, bosses and xp bonus.
Killing trash just can’t compete.
Since I got no rings for my first 8 dailies, you need 0 for a while (no, I was not wasting 100g+ on a zerker quiver)
Having 5 AR is a great help for certain bosses from 10-19, especially as you learn mechanics of agony attacks, but it’s not really necessary.
Having 10 AR from 10-19 means you can pretty much ignore agony.
Having 10 AR at L20 is a lot like having 0 AR at L10
Gaining 3s of protection when casting your 3s duration shield stance seems pretty bad to me. It’s one of the reasons why I wouldn’t want protection linked to stances.
If they can give the protection at the end of the channel, then I think it would be a great idea
Bundles got fixed to activate sigils in the last patch. Mostly for engineers and ele conjures.
Weapon stats are scheduled to be added too.
Does anyone know how these stack?
Geomancer’s freedom is -33% duration
Then there’s Melandru or Hoelbrak runes for -20 or -25% duration
Then there’s -40% condition duration food.
Is it possible to get -98% duration on immob, chill and cripple? Or do those conditions end up being (.666*.6*.75) only ~30% of original duration?
Protection at the end of the defense tree makes much more sense than retaliation (or the broken endure pain) . 5s every 15s, which could result in up to 50% uptime on self protection, is too much IMO
I’d also rather see the option to trigger protection, rather than have it happen automatically, but I can’t think of a skill to link it to that would work well.
Some of the exotics from Fractals are worth using for the unique stats. For example, the tough/pow/crit damage rifle I got last night. I don’t think there’s any other source of that stat combo.
In pugs on a daily, it usually goes something like:
DC in first or second, group disbands or restarts on reconnect or with someone else.
DC on third, we’ll usually push to the end and then do daily bonus.
But it doesn’t matter, because this issue should get FIXED. Fractals have 90% of their reward come at the end of the third stage (advancement) or fourth stage (daily roll for a ring).
Working with a party of 3-5, a return of 35-40 giant gifts per hour is achievable, running a loop of 5 present spawns, and killing all the toys that spawn when presents are opened. On top of this all team members get these benefits and all the other benefits of additional drops including rares. Must be done in a higher level zone to guarantee giant gifts.
Do the toys drop normal items? Or are you talking about the chance for skins/socks/etc?
People in fractals still generate a fair amount of mithril. It’s a salvager’s mithril-mine.
Admittedly not anything like the mithril you get doing a complete Orr mining run.
I think that once again we have arguing because people are talking about 2 different play areas.
In PvE and WvW, warriors are just fine with respect to self condition removal. Shout build, warhorn, etc. If all else fails, there’s -40% condi removal food to pair up with Melandru or Hoelbraks.
In sPvP, it’s just different.
^^ what he said
Minor buffs could be:
AE attack all around you, or at least frontal cone
Add a debuff to it
Make the fury apply to allies and reduce it back to 3/6/9
There comes a time when you have too much health, mathematically, and you’d get more benefit from trading Pow/tough/vit for Tough/pow/prec. This is a benefit defensively and offensively.
30k health, plus an assumed 10k healing before dying, is way past that mark. I’d recommend trading Soldier jewelry for Knight jewelry (probably best with Ruby orbs to get back some of the lost power and to have harder hitting crits, if you’re using SoR). Knight weapons are also a possibility.
They are killable as a shout warrior (5 condition removals on < 30s cooldown) in full exotics in a L45 zone. Takes so long that I need to remember to grab the present first.
I think I’ll try a L80 zone for fun
Same. I had been storing up useless rares from FotM and dungeon runs and finally turned them in and was planning on buying a few keys.
I get the feeling that the vendor will be back without keys, because this vendor allowed people to turn gold into keys without any Gem Store involvement.
Sword F1 with L3 adrenaline, swap to GS. Pwn noob.
Or swap to…anything? If you’re not breaking a 4s immobilize (which is tough-ish with the bleed covering condition being applied immediately) and dodge rolling or popping some kind of save-me ability, you’re going to die.
Thx for the links. I’ll have to go through it to see what is the most valuable to craft. I think I have enough skill points for 3 scrolls across my characters.
Actually I have the the same question for karma. I might as well turn some of the hundred thousand karma into gold. Is there a known “most-effiicient” method of turning karma into gold? (ie, buying a specific rare from a vendor and either MF’ing it or just salvage for ecto)
I never plan to make a lengendary, so might as well get money from these things.
You also get Mystic coins from map completions and story quest completion. It could be that the stockpile that people had is going away, and less people are re-doing story/map.
So less supply
Healing shouts is bad in that it locks you into a specific skill set. Same issue with soldier runes. Even though I use healing shouts, it really bothers me in fights where I have to swap out shouts for stability or knockdowns or whatever.
How about: shouts heal, and shout “Shake it Off” on every weapon swap (cooldown: 20 seconds). Now I can get better use of the trait with less utility investment.
You can run the healing banner without banner regen. It’s unique skills is a group heal for 4k on a 10s cooldown, along with the other generic banner skills.
Pickup→heal→plant in a field (or drop)→back to attacking. The more I think about it, the more I think I need to use a banner more often
Yojack based zerker combo works well in PvE/WvW. The bonus is that you can use Hammer, GS, Axe, Rifle or Longbow effectively. Also shield or horn offhand
Zerker armor with soldier runes, knight jewelry with ruby insets, and choice of weapons and food to tune your stats more. I prefer zerk weapons and lifesteal food too
The simple solution to versatility is having 2 suits of armor (or more), and being smart with your food. Food is very powerful. (Traits 10/0/15/30/15)
I have a Soldier’s rune zerker set and a Hoelbrak’s rune zerker set (using all knight jewelry)
For a group light on condition removal and healing I: Wear soldiers runes, use lifesteal food, shout heal trait and make sure I always have a warhorn on, with warhorn trait.
For a group with tons of healing/condition removal, I go into might-stacking mode with Hoelbraks (+165 power), longbow, banner (to banner blast longbow field 2x) with traits and DPS food. If conditions become a problem I use the -40% condition duration food for a total of -60% condition duration.
Yes, I could have soldier armor to go with soldier runes for more survivability, but…the DPS hit is pretty severe. So I make up the survivability with lifesteal food (you could use regen food too)
Unless you’re going all-out support, knight jewelry with ruby gems is the way to go IMO.
After that, you can try a bunch of different armor/weapon/trait setups from your tokens:
Zerker with Axe/GS/Hammer/Rifle
Rampager with Sword/Longbow
Healing, condition removing shouts is a high investment. 6 runes and 30 points in a DPS-less traitline, and 2 shouts always on your bar.
An alternative is 20 points in Tactics, and warhorn traits. You get 2x condition→boon on short cooldowns and you have more options with runes. Poison is very common, and converting that gets you 6s of regen to replace the healing shout.
I doubt I’d ever go lower than 20 Tactics when I’m pugging so much
In general, rune set bonuses are worth more than a modest increase in stats.
If you want to put a price on the 6-rune bonus, at least one of them clocks in a +100 precision for 6-piece, and Lich is something like +5% of tough = condition damage (which can be a lot more than +100)
25+15+50+35+90+100=315 stats for 6-piece runes
vs
6*(20+14+14) = 288 for 6xorbs
You can do some math and place a stat value on some set bonuses too. Example: +20% might duration
As a warrior, I can run with almost 100% uptime on 10 stacks of might without trying. So 20% of that would be 2 stacks of might, if averaged over a long period of time. 2 * 35 = 70 power and 70 condition damage. If I’m running longbow it’s even more.
TLDR: Many rune set bonuses are worth a lot more than a little bit of stats
I am amazed that ANet is not doing more about farmers (I admit they are doing more than most MMOs). Every $ spent buying gold from a farmer is a $ that could have been spent in the gem store.
The last time I looked around a month ago, you could get 4x the gold from a farmer that you could get from the gem store
(edited by Spifnar.4712)
Since you’re not 80, the best place is dungeons. You can clear 3 wings of AC in a fairly short time with a good group. You’ll make a couple gold and enough tokens for an exotic for when you hit 80
The only problem with warrior bleeds is that we have no way to apply a large stack quickly, outside of a full adrenaline Flurry. But all of the condition weapons build adrenaline slow as kitten.
If longbow applied a bleed along with the burn (attack #2 and burst), I’d call warrior conditions complete. This could even be part of one of the longbow traits
Thief condition is a very durable build, but it’s not that hard to stay out of caltops. It’s the pistol stealth attack that’s nice (5 stacks ranged, 4s duration). That’s enough to force condition removal. It’s not OP though, you counter it the same way as any offhand dagger build (dodge/outrun/CC CnD) and any condition build (condition removal)
There are a lot of ways to “Tank”, but I think the design is that any class can spec to survive for a while if he’s the focus of a boss. This is above and beyond endurance/dodging
Warrior: EP, shield stance, high health/armor/regen, weakness
Thief: Evades/blinds/etc
Ele: missle reflect, healing abilities, boons (prot)
But as far as aggro goes, I think pulsing boons are an aggro magnet. My aura-share support ele draws so much aggro. Every attune switch and aura and shared regen probably fires an aggro-check. This really isn’t an option for warrior?
The charr battle roar is an inferior version of FGJ. Not worth slotting
Mainhand sword does good bleed damage, but it’s more of a hybrid condition/power weapon.
Warriors in general do well as a hybrid of condition damage and direct damage. Easy solo might stacking to 8 stacks, a +50% bleed duration tactic and a 33% bleed-on-crit tactic is part of that. You can maintain 10 bleed stacks with just sword auto-attacks, and spike 20 stacks for 5 seconds with the burst skill.
With knight jewelry, rampager armor and 10 stacks of might, bleeds tick at 80-90. So, the bleeds are rolling for ~900 DPS, on top of 500-1000 direct damage on each attack.
Offhand sword would add more bleed stacks, but that risks hitting the cap on bleeds. But guardians capping burning has the same issue.
It’s that way with most ranged weapons
Warrior: rifle and longbow only have one “#1” attack
Elementalist: all weapons only have one “#1” attack
Ranger: shortbow, longbow and axe only have one “#1” attack
Engineer: pistol and rifle only have one “#1” attack
Cloth wearers have 1832 as a base armor with full exotics. So warriors take ~16% less damage than a clothy when both are in full zerker. That’s a decent amount, considering the stat value of ~300 defense/toughness.
Moderately more important to not being very glassy is the extra 8k health
Kholer is definitely not worth it in a pug. You can only rez people so fast. Any time 2+ people miss dodging the pull it’s pretty much either a wipe or reset.
The issue is that kholer’s spin attack lasts longer than the down’s invulnerability and does huge damage. So it’s not just that people are downed…they’re dead and need to run back
Warriors start at around 916+1211= 2127 armor with full exotics and no traits/runes/etc.
1) To get to a point where you take 20% less damage, you need to add 532 toughness and get to 2659 armor. This is a reasonable amount of damage reduction to get (ie, all knight jewelry and some traits/runes)
2) To get to a point where you take 33% less damage, you need to add 1063 toughness and get to 3200 armor. That is a large amount, and will require +toughness on every piece of armor and jewelry and probably trait and rune for it.
3) To get to a point where you take 50% less damage you need to add 2127 toughness and get to 4254 armor. Theoretically impossible?
Usually somewhere between 1) and 2) is where people end up landing when they want to be defensive, but still have some offense
My elementalist is an aggro magnet. I’ve always assumed this is probably due to group-wide buffs, regen and AE damage/fields.
My shout warrior (60’s) gets ignored pretty well in CM when grouped with 80’s, but that could be a level difference thing.
If you have a handy combo field, the damage does go up
It’s just not a good comparison. Period
Conjures use no weapon stats, including sigils. In a 2-hander, that means bye bye to 400 points in stats. This is probably the biggest reason for a higher damage coefficient.
Conjures use a util slot
Then there’s the comparison between swapping and attunement switching.
Then there’s the lower base health/toughness of the ele
It’s just not as simple as hammer vs hammer.
People were hunting for overflow servers still in progress for hours after the first server finished (some were bugged and finished hours later). All you needed was a group invite to get into the overflow.
And we know it wasn’t just because they D/Cd on their first go-around.
Is it that hard to make a chest only openable once per account?
Ironic that Ele’s got stability removed from cancelling their elite, but Thieves didn’t. Heh
The change of Tactical Strike I can understand. A 2s daze is OP with +33% daze runes. But the gutting of offhand dagger is just ridiculous.
Love the change to Blinding powder. It gives pre-emptive stealth to non-offhand dagger. D/P more viable for backstabs now?
I find the thief to be very effective underwater compared to other classes
I find underwater combat to be terribly designed and un-fun on all classes
Mug applying several conditions instead of straight damage would be pretty nice as a trait too
ie, cripple (5s) and weakness (5s). It’s a trait in the condition duration line at least.
IMO immobilize on steal would lower BS skill cap too much :/
It’s on the front page, and has been there for days: