The personal story should keep giving you some trouble even if you have a tough bear pet boosted with traits and signets. You’ll also find that when you get into more difficult content, like dungeons, the pet can die quickly and hiding at the back with a bow isn’t actually doing much for your group. Most players have to relearn their class for dungeons.
Start with greatsword and longbow for PvE. Simple to use and effective. Then branch out and use
- axe – dps
- greatsword – dps and mobility
- sword – condition damage
- macs – single target control
- hammer – group crowd control
Yeah the dungeon running community isn’t too generous. One of the root problems is that experienced players can skip something in 30 seconds whilst a new player will wipe a few times and take 5 minutes to get through, which is 10 times as long. The time ratios are not in favor of the beginners at all.
The solutions are well known. Make your own groups. Join a guild and run dungeons with them. Tell people from the start so the group knows what you can do.
Whoever is fixing these dungeons seems to have a very strange idea of what the problems are. For example, skipping mobs in the snowblind fractal must have been causing high priority problems for someone somewhere because it was made more difficult and the result is that players still skip mobs in the snowblind fractal. With that in mind, I’d want to see quite a different philosophy for dungeon rework before any rework takes place. Let’s see less punishment for players and instead promote fun and rewarding mechanics with increased design quality to prevent exploits and dumb tactics. Lets see the buggy problems that really aggravate players, like fractal harpies, get fixed. Quality design will always beat adding more mobs.
Warrior is much easier in dungeons. You don’t need to change weapons often. You don’t need to change traits and skills much. Common knowledge tactics like stacking nearly always favor heavy classes. Thieves still aren’t in such a bad place though and once you learn the class you can make a lot of adjustments for different fights to make things easier. My survival tips would be
- use all the weapon sets
- don’t stand in front of dangerous mobs
- blind anything without defiant
- have alternative tactics on hand (like SoM, daggerstorm, caltrops)
- plan ahead what defense you’ll use next (weapon evade, dodge, smoke, etc)
All the combat knowledge you’ve picked up on your warrior should be useful. I was certainly able to take more risks on my warrior, find out the key dodges, and then take my thief into the same melee areas.
I’m not sure why the OP is talking about soaking and healing damage. That’s not GW2 and not relevant. The 3 main principles of MMO combat are not the 3 main principles of GW2 combat. A thief can continually stand in front of a group of enemies, continually blind them, and take no damage. Is that tanking? Does the thief need healing?
The Aetherpath isn’t much harder than some other dungeon paths. The problem is that it’s long, so people don’t go there very often, so there are few common knowledge PUG tactics. That’s all. The fights do need genuine tactics and not just stack and skip, but that’s good isn’kitten
Don’t feed the troll.
Evon may have been wanting to research the history of magic within the Abaddon fractal, with the same result about ley lines as found in the Reactor fractal.
Kiel is trying to get evidence against Evon’s main business competitor, the Consortium, so I’m not sure why Even is so bothered by her doing that. Evon was going to play around in the mist if he was elected too.
The Lionguard in Twilight Arbour have taken out many airships and that’s got to be a good use of soldiers. Not sure what complaint Evon has there.
All MMOs provide a lot of game time for each $ spent but eventually players need more content. Players always devour content faster than developers can create it. So nothing new in GW2. At least there is always a fortnightly living story.
“Well, its living story, so why should it stay static? New players can have new personal story.”
Do you want the developers to spend 3 months creating a new personal story for new players after removing the old personal story and three end game zones? I’d personally rather see all the development efforts put into new content and completely new areas.
“You should probably delete your thief if you can’t use it to its full potential, that being a top tier dps class.”
You should probably stop posting on forums if you’re giving helpful advice like that.
Decorated trees are not part of the Nativity and they could probably fit into non-denominational Wintersday.
Yes it is pretty much entirely working as intended. An instant skill does the damage immediately and that is usually much better than a channeled skill that takes a long time to deal damage, can be interrupted, prevents the user doing other stuff, and sometimes stops the user from moving. The channeling user still needs to have you targeted when the skill starts, just like a user of an instant skill. Don’t counter a channeled skill with stealth, blind, aegis, etc, just use an interrupt.
The channeling skills look strange when the user turns to follow a stealth target. My only complaint is that this makes it difficult to land a rear attack from stealth on a channeller.
There is a limit of 25 bleed stacks on a target and that cap to be hit in dungeons and world events. Fortunately most players know this and don’t stack many bleeds so you can often get away with it in dungeons.
Modern MMOs require much more game attention and keying than the old MMOs. Old Everquest I was very simple and you could type all day long while your character attacked. In GW2 you don’t want to stop and type for 5 seconds mid fight when your movement comes from WASD. I think that’s the most basic reason for low communication. More interactive game play is actually a good thing and communication methods need to catch up.
It also doesn’t help that the GW2 social interface is too basic and lacks features seen in previous MMOs.
“There’s something about the class that pulls the most terribad pve players to it in dungeons.”
Open world rangers don’t learn enemy animations or combat tactics. Put arrows into the enemy and let the pet soak all the damage.
If you’re learning the fights as you go along then you’re not going to know the best tactics and you need extra condition clears and dodges. If you pick the right weapon sets and utilities for each fight then you can be more aggressive. Give some acrobatics or shadow arts a try for now, you can use either.
For Mossman just stay out of his melee range and dodge his dancing dagger attack (if you can spot the animation through the all the fire effects). Dancing daggers of your own are good as they cripple him and the wolves.
For Mai Trin you can just hover outside melee range and dodge her pistol shots. Once her shield drops a little you can use evading attacks like death blossom rather than taking all her aoe bleeds. Signet of Shadows gives you speed to dodge the rockets and heartseeker leaps can help. Some stealthy reviving will be appreciated by most teams.
If you start with a mainly zerker build (certainly equipment) you can slot more defensive utilities and weapons if you need more durability.
There are 400 threads about this on the forum. The sword #1 chain is a pain in the butt however the PvP rangers like it since the leap will follow moving targets. That’s it. This could be another long argument thread but there’s not much point.
I have a question for ppl who possibly look around in other threads-Does every forum have ppl coming into to complain about how OP the class for the forum is? This is just getting ridiculous. I try to post and look around this forum for tips on pve/wvw stuff and end up seeing more than half the threads being about how op the class is. It’s shocking to think ppl complain this much about the warrior. It’s like they’ve never played any sort of other competitive video game ever. Some things will always be top tier, some things will always be really good no matter how you work it, either adapt to it or just go play something else.
Yes people always come to thief forum and get told to learn to play. In that case it’s actually true though, as everyone who’s actually played a thief can testify.
The answer to warrior complaints isn’t to tell people that it’s a competitive game, so go away and lose until you play a warrior. Lot’s of people have other classes as well as warriors and want to enjoy playing all of them at a competitive level.
The flip side of getting aggro is that if you’re the best player in your group you can soak/dodge the damage and give the team an easy ride.
Try anything, everything. There’s no point going into harder content without knowing your class skills. Dungeons become easy for players who know their skills but at the same time they eat up people who don’t have a clue. Open world exploration is the easiest part of the game so experiment!
Start with the longbow and if you ever find you’re missing something you can then try the rifle.
“Pull and reflect.”
Warrior can reflect.
“Warriors and rangers are in pretty much exactly the same place”
No they’re not. The OP asked about PvE. Warriors are a country mile ahead of rangers and if the OP joins a PUG group tomorrow it’s going to be full of warriors, warriors that are going to do better than an equivalent ranger. PUG rangers are still likely to get kicked. There’s no point telling the OP about a state of the game he’s just not seeing.
The trap line has a variety of problems but I’d say they include
- remove needle trap
- shadow trap is similar to shadowstep but a worse mechanic so just remove it
- create a trait to shadowstep to triggered traps (if really needed)
- create a trait to applies poison on trigger (if really needed)
- can’t create builds around traps; who really wants a pure point defense build anyway?
- so create two new non-trap skills and put them into a versatile trait line
- make the replacement skills work underwater
- make one of the replacement skills a viable stun break
(edited by Stooperdale.3560)
There don’t need to be more ‘end game’ zones. There are already three endgame zones in Orr that need more population instead of people going elsewhere. Orr needs fixing so that it is popular/rewarding/challenging/scaled/balanced and only then if it is overpopulated should new end game zones be created.
Change to ‘+10 damage when using a bundle’, applying to damage from thief stolen bundles (F1), damage from bundle (replacement) weapon skills, and not other skills when carrying a bundle. Would solve many misunderstandings.
I use mostly the same skills as Cynz with a shadow arts build so the use of class skills is probably more important than the build. There are still plenty of small changes you can make across the board so don’t take it as gospel. All the weapon sets can be used. Signet of Malice + caltrops/daggerstorm can be good for trash.
One ranger can provide a few skills and traits that can boost dps in a speed running PvE Elite team. In these elite teams the weaknesses of the class are not exposed as mobs die too fast. Outside of these elite teams these select skills and traits are less important and all the weaknesses of the ranger are exposed.
(edited by Stooperdale.3560)
“The problem with that is that at the end of the personal story, DE is very clear in that they are staying together and turning to the next dragon.”
It’s not a problem since new players are not at the end of the personal story. As the other poster said, Living Story time is ambiguous can be before, during, or after the personal story for different characters. Each story dungeon may or may not be completed.
The mysterious probes are almost certainly going to have open world events with Scarlet’s minions (probably Molten) defending them. It seems unlikely that they’ll be running at the same time as a full invasion of Lion’s Arch and Divinity’s reach by Scarlet’s forces. It’s hard to see why Scarlet would be doing widespread research with probes if she has her military objective already picked out.
You can also get a strange situation where you need to use the hammer twice on the last seal once the other is down. It’s better if you have 2 chanters alive for that.
The first thing that thieves bring in dungeons/fractals is blind/smoke and that allows thieves to be in front line melee with trash. Elite runners ignore that as they kill things so fast it doesn’t matter to them. Stealth provides some handy skipping and reviving. Shadowsteps and movement skills in general can be useful. The shortbow is a good utility weapon. Repeated cripple or daze on demand can be good from offhand dagger and pistol. Making use of all of that requires different skills to open world PvE and it is harder work than playing a warrior. Many dungeon tactics are also based around heavy classes and can be plainly fatal to thieves – that doesn’t look like it will change any time soon.
“You say this like it’s a common occurrence. I haven’t had any non-comical NPCs take credit for things my characters have done, yet.”
Really? Anyone who logs on for the first time tomorrow has effectively the same progress in the living story as you do. That’s because the living story updates through world characters rather than player characters. Kiel has a camp named after her for exploring Southsun, she’s captured an aetherblade ship, and taken a seat on Lion’s Arch council. Did you get any credit for that?
“Warrior is an easy class to play and you’re probably just not skilled enough to bring out the full potential (or half of?) of other classes, just saying.”
Nope. Warrior is the class I’m least skilled at since I’ve had to rework my skills and builds on other classes while the warrior always kept on trucking. Maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about. Just saying.
“I’m tired of people coming to the warrior section and complain about us being OP in whatever.”
How about warriors? Can warriors come to the warrior section and say that the class in OP? I’ve found the warrior to be the easiest to play and gives the most success with the least effort. It’s the class I play the most at the moment. Other classes need bringing up to this same standard as the warrior and the community should get used to that idea, most specifically for PvE.
Yeah it’s rubbish for a #1 skill but there’s plenty of PvP rangers who swear by it since they can leap onto targets that they can’t follow with wasd.
The worst part is the way that alternative tactics (not necessarily exploits) have been ‘fixed’ by adding more and more dredge everywhere. I’ve seen two new exploits in PUGs since fractured that are largely unnecessary but groups are using them to skip these extra dredge. It just shows how counterproductive that type of fix can be.
Cliffside has been discussed many times before. Remove the initial fight or lower the boss health. Let players respawn the hammer on demand to stop it getting lost on falling. Reset fights properly on the seals after a wipe. It’s then a longer fractal but very playable fractal.
I fully expect the Living Story to visit Rata Sum and Zoija before it is finished.
I’m sure that if players had the choice they would go right now to Zoija and tell her that Scarlet was helping the Inquest research draconic energy at the Thaumanova Reactor and it blew up because it was on magical ley lines. I’m sure Zoija would be interested. However we’ll presumably have to wait for for Kiel to realize she should do that instead, as that’s the way the living story works.
The Living Story is entirely designed so that a new player (who has seen none of it before) can participate in everything, so missing a month is no handicap at all. Log on, play what you want to play, and log off happy. It’s only a perception problem that makes people unhappy about what they don’t play. Are you really unhappy that you haven’t eaten everything on the menu when you go to a restaurant? No, well think of GW2 the same way and pick you want to do.
“I don’t see why she’d want us to kill the tower. That makes no sense – and I know she’s crazy and insane and all that but nonetheless she wouldn’t intentionally hamper her own plans.”
It might make sense for her to walk away from toxic alliance now without giving the Krait anything else, and without taking the blame, so the the destruction of the tower might fit that. My bet is that she’ll have the toxic alliance under her command for a bit longer though just because she’s a nemesis.
“I just want content that actually requires theorycrafting in order to be completed efficiently. "
All the existing dungeons do. What’s happened is that the theorycrafting has become common knowledge and shared amongst PUGs. You might not be able to remember the way that CoE was run by PUGs for the first six months after release but I can. CoE was seen as a difficult dungeon because the current tactics were not yet common knowledge.
If you look back at old MMOs like Everquest where raid leaders developed tactics over a series of weeks, well that time wouldn’t be needed at all now. Publicly shared tactics on the internet would instantly make some of those raids absolutely trivial for anyone who can follow a video on social media.
Am I right in thinking that low level characters are scaled up in fractals?
I’d agree that AC explorable should have been an easier dungeon (and as such the tokens shouldn’t barter for exotic items). This would have made a better introduction to the game. However with one revamp of AC done there is probably not going to be another.
GW2 endgame isn’t all dungeons though and you don’t need a close group of friends to run content. Trying to take a close group of friends through dungeons together as the pinnacle of GW2 was always going to miss the point of the game somehow. Grinding for low level gear from dungeons isn’t right either. GW2 is about a lot of things including world events, event chains, mini games, jumping puzzles, and so on and those are all available at low level too.
“oh i forgot to add that you can also get +10AR from weapon, making it total 70AR..”
That’s if you decide to under perform in fractals and use only one weapon. If you use all the weapons at your disposal it becomes an expensive way to get AR.
“I don’t see members of the nightmare court turning on Scarlet as they seemed to have received some benefit from the alliance. "
I’m completely at a loss to why the Nightmare Court didn’t bundle Scarlet up in one of their conversion pods and leave her there until she fell into Nightmare.
“I usually play a necromancer, when i get stolen from while activating my elite it puts my elite on full cooldown. Does this happen to any other classes?”
Steal will not interrupt. Steal can be traited to give a standard daze effect and that will interrupt a skill and put it on cooldown.
I don’t mind her voice acting and character when it’s on screen. The problem is that she’s just got to be such a nemesis all the time. So in the Thaumanova reactor there could be Inquest scientists who tell us what’s going on while we save the plant with them, but no, Scarlet has to be there herself to explain all the plot and vanish out just in time, as always.
Hard to Catch should just be scrapped. It’s no use. There is no way it could ever match the warrior trait that gives balanced stance upon the same triggers, 8 seconds stability with swiftness and stun break (+more with other traits). Warriors don’t have to break stride to shrug off CC and don’t need to yield time, position, or dps. Hard to Catch needs a complete redesign.