Guild Wars 2

All I know is they better add more laurels for other achievement points, add Ascended gear to WvW, and add them to Fractals soon or it’s going to be extremely annoying to ever gear up alts.

Simply taking longbow to build a few more might stacks seems very detrimental compared to running GS on swap to get the initial 100B + WW burst at the start of the fight and for a 2nd burst in the Effigy fight.

Scootabuser.4915:

Strifey.7215:

Btw if you ever want to truly compare speed running and viable party comps like in GW1, I would suggest not using an edited run so people can compare the time it takes each group to complete the dungeon. If you want to edit it for a guide then whatever, but if you want to prove superior damage and speed then you should also upload an unedited version which should be very easy.

Maybe someday I’ll upload an unedited speed run video (I’m farming for my Dreamer so I’m spending a lot of time in pugs). The video I have posted is more to explain mechanics and to show people what they need to do, it is a beginners guide, and is not even close to a good representation of a Thief’s abilities.

The way we run with 2 Thieves is with an Ax/Mace/Longbow Warrior and pounding banners. Keeps all 5 party members up to 25 stacks most of the time. For vuln we use a variety of things including skale venom, Mace#4, Thief Traits, and 1 GS Warrior’s 100b.

From your video (and combat logs would be easier, dem bleeds are hard to count)
I clocked you in a total of 110654 damage in 7 seconds. That’s 15808 Burst-DPS.

What were the 275s that kept popping up (counted them) but I don’t know much about warrior traits.

Prob the most accurate way to do anything would be to run side by side in a dungeon run and compare total damage for the first and final boss. The first boss dies so quickly that the extra Thief DPS is only really noticed on the final boss.

You can ignore the 275s if you want, that’s from procs on omnomberry pies.

Also is there a reason your warriors run longbow? That is a terrible option for CoF 1 where you don’t need to range. If they want to run Axe/Mace they should be using a 1-handed offhand on swap to not interrupt their auto attacks but still get the benefit of adrenaline and might on swap depending on their build. I use Axe/Mace + Axe/Axe but I admit that for CoF 1 GS + Axe/X is superior because of the short nature of 2 simple fights.

Btw this is a short clip from a CoF 1 farm last night which nike and ioflux were part of, it was actually in response to some clueless dude on gw2guru who thinks guardians do more dps then warriors.

Anyways, my current video of CoF 1 is 6:29 with the 3 war/2 mes group. The one I will be updating in the next couple of days once I have time to commentate it after I finish my updated TA videos is 5:59. This time is from when the first door opens (i.e. not the 2nd one Magg blows up) until the final reward chest with your tokens.

All of our weapons have normal “comprehensive” sigils for all dungeons, meaning my Greatsword has accuracy for instance, so no Sigil of Night or Flame Legion that would probably have an even bigger boost to damage for all classes, so you can get a comparable start down.

I don’t have the combat log but it should be pretty easy to add them up manually since the fight is HB + WW + 8 auto attacks + Eviscerate + 3 auto attacks at the end. The bleeding overall is probably minor, maybe a few thousand extra.

I am interested in how your 2 war/2 thief/mesmer group does the full run, just so we can compare. Sounds like both of us will have an updated video up shortly.

Btw if you ever want to truly compare speed running and viable party comps like in GW1, I would suggest not using an edited run so people can compare the time it takes each group to complete the dungeon. If you want to edit it for a guide then whatever, but if you want to prove superior damage and speed then you should also upload an unedited version which should be very easy.

Nice job on the 1:46.

I’ll see if some people in my guild want to try in a 1/3/1 group. I have some ideas on how to make it faster after watching your video.

Because they bring less to a group then other classes. It’s not that they can’t do a dungeon, it’s that they are less efficient and have less valuable utility skills that increase the dps of the entire group and or provide valuable dungeon utility like reflects, boon stripping, boons in general.

A large part of their dps is through pets, which also die alot and are useless for burning down trash pulls where cleave and AoE are king.

So most people don’t want them when they can bring in something else that let’s you do things easier and quicker.

Stoutster.2918:

could one of you post the builds for the group of 2 guardians and 2 warriors. me and my friends are starting a group and we would GREATLY appreciate it A LOT. We are looking for the best group, so could you please post a small guide?

All the builds and dungeon guides are in my sig, with links to written version on gw2guru for the builds.

This thread is 3 months old, so we now run 1 guard/3 war/1 mes for everything except high level fractals.

The way it works now is if you break it up with another path in between switching characters you get 60 tokens.

So you can do CoF 1/2 on Mesmer. Then do CoF1/2 on Warrior and get 60 tokens for each, just don’t do 1-1-2-2 or 1-2-2-1 for the two characters.

Here we go again…

Bukkebruse.2810:

I think you’d get better results with having 1 guardian instead of 4 warriors since reflecting his frenzied blast on phase 3 takes away a decent chunk of his health

Yea that’s true, it just depends on how fast he does it in phase 3. I think in some of my videos feedback was up again for his blast attack in p3 because he didn’t do it immediately.

The fastest kill time on him probably has a large part to do with his attacks and rotations in p3.

Either way, 1/3/1 or 4/1 is probably going to be the fastest overall, I just don’t care enough to test it out right now :p.

Clones and things like Spirit shield also fail in the flame circle for the last boss of Arah Path 1.

Probably has buggy mechanics with things like TA or Arah where people can’t leave/enter an area without a mechanic or invulnerability which causes summons to screw up.

Technically if you were going for fastest kill, I think a 4 warrior + 1 mesmer group could probably kill him the fastest and do it in about 2-2:15 min assuming everyone was on the same page and you didn’t get more then 1 or 2 Invuln hover moves in phase 3.

Would have been easier pre-Jan 28th though since you could slot frenzy on warriors instead of stability.

That being said, you could possibly try with 1 guard instead of 1 warrior and make him use his balanced stance for the first bubble on any party member and let the warriors go for full frenzy and maybe endure pain instead of any stability so they get one free bubble life. If you’re killing him that fast you probably wouldn’t see more then 2 bubbles on one person anyways.

I dunno, I haven’t specifically tried for fastest GL kill.

Puandro.3245:

Fractals

2 Guardians
2 Warriors
1 Mesmer

Dungeons
1 Guardian
3 Warriors
1 Mesmer

.

100B + WW + Evisc with Frenzy

azureai.9764:

Saulius.8430:

so… uhm. why do you want those safety nets? it’s more fun to see someone get crisped

People aren’t asking that the boss not knock people into the lava. That’s obviously part of the boss. People are asking that players who get knocked into the lava be placed in a place they can be ressed.

Under the most recent dungeon res rules, a player who is knocked into the lava stays there until the fight is over, permanently hampering the group. If two players get knocked down early, the boss will quickly become painful.

That’s part of the mechanic and super easy to figure out once it happens once, all you do is don’t stand where you can be knocked off…

The waves stop spawning once you get to Nokk, if you mess up and actually have 2 noobies get knocked into the lava then get out of combat, have people make the <1 min run back, and do it again without getting knocked down now that you know his mechanic.

The big red circle is what knocks you back, and even if you get knocked back, if you stand so that the pathway is behind you then you get knocked back onto solid ground, not that hard.

They could definitely work on some of the more tedious things at higher levels. Just one reason why the Snow Fractal is now my least favorite fractal, super boring, takes forever to kill the stupid ice structure, and knockdowns further lengthen the time.

I get the mechanic, it takes some teamwork and is somewhat interesting, but not when that stupid elemental structure has a ton of health and a stupid hitbox that makes you miss in melee range whenever you move.

Another one is the 4 mobs at the harpy fractal. Splitting up and managing the group is cool, the rabbit and bandit have fine health. After that it’s just a snooze fest. You get one person to kite the Ettin, while the other 4 people afk melee with reflects and occasionally step outside red circles. Then after you finish that snooze fest you get an even bigger one with the Ettin. Where you can either just kite him or melee tank him with a Hammer Guardian where you only need to dodge the big charge up moves even at fotm 40+. Yet he has insane health and even in an organized high dps group he still takes forever.

Luckily I never PuG but I can’t imagine how boring it would be in a PuG without ideal classes or high dps, I’d probably pull my hair out.

They should look into really boring, long, not hard stuff like that for scaling…

This fractal is by far the quickest, which is why pretty much every high level group sends in one person to roll for swamp before starting.

It’s pretty much a 5 min fractal once you learn how to run orbs in the first section and what to do to kill each boss.

PvP and melee/speed running dungeons.

There’s still alot of satisfaction running in organized groups over voice chat and executing things together to flawlessly run through dungeons.

Full melee GL is still a blast for instance.

And of course PvP, specifically for me WvW in the EB jump puzzle is so much fun :x

Not only GW1, pretty much every MMO I’ve ever played.

That guy was dumb, you should link him to this thread.

Not only should they make them account bound, but they should allow you to MF superior runes/sigils.

Nothing dumber then having half of the superior runes and sigils be worth less then major ones because you can’t MF them. Would also help stabilize prices between low and high end of sigils/runes.

No, that’s stupid.

Ohoni.6057:

If you think a necro does ungodly damage at any range I question your experience, and as a result I cast aspersion upon any opinion you have to offer on this topic.

I play a character of each class, three of them to 80 so far, the rest somewhere between 20 and 60, of them the Necro does the most damage. at least against large packs. No big numbers, all little numbers, but a LOT of little numbers, very fast.

Play some more characters then, direct damage is far superior in PvE and you can’t get anywhere close the same damage with conditions simply because condition damage doesn’t have close to the same modifiers that DD build does from power + precision + crit % dmg.

JJBigs.8456:

MF Gear stats are actually not that bad. Better than some peoples builds who actually have real armor. At the least, its a Knights set of armor that doesnt have toughness, however if the person can survive, they technically did not even need that toughness. So yea, its not as good as zerker, but most people seem to frown upon zerker anyway.

Im not trying to say MF gear is “Good” but its not as bad as people think, if the player is able to live with the gear. (Most cant)

Yea, ~1k toughness means nothing, just take MF instead, it’s not that bad…

If someone can survive, then they could run berserker, which is over 30% more damage then mf gear.

Such a useless, selfish trait that should never be in a MMO, especially not for challenging group content.

GabGar.4962:

Strifey.7215:

There are classes that are less then others and I say that because I know how to play.

Come at me bro.

You think you know, thats different “bro”

Nope I’m pretty sure I know.

If you want to “compare” stats…
I have 7 80s, 1000s of dungeon runs, 40+ fotm on one character and 26+ on 2 other chars, and speed run guides for every single dungeon path in the game.

I’ve also carried pugs many times in my earlier days before I only did organized grouping, it’s much easier to carry on specific classes, notably guardian.

You’re list of marketing terms has nothing to do with carrying, Engi with “100s of tricks”, Necro with condition removal which is extremely easy for a bunch of classes, Rezzing people with your pet, and Scorpion Wire doesn’t let you carry. The whole point of carrying is to take off as much pressure from your group of bads as possible so they can focus on just killing and downing as little as possible to make dungeons much faster and easier.

Go do Harpy or Shaman Fractal or something like GL and let me laugh at you as you attempt to “carry” your group with a lack of reflection, stability, and skills that allow you to be an anchor so bads don’t need to dodge or mitigate as much damage. Go fight a boss like Kholer with a bunch of people that are terrible at dodging and laugh as you use your Aegis and Stability to keep your group safe. But you know, pet rezzing, scorpion wire, and a necro are really going to help you carry better there… Not to mention Guardian is the best at being an anchor to relieve pressure from the rest of your group. That’s called carrying.

There are classes that are less then others and I say that because I know how to play.

Come at me bro.

ComeAndSee.1356:

I’m just going to nit-pick some bosses from FOTM.

(Volcanic Fractals)

• Champion Grawl Shaman punts people in melee range constantly and has an AOE instant-gib ability. It’s not worth the hassle using melee weapons.
• Legendary Grawl Shaman has an instant gib melee AOE ability that he spams. You HAVE to use ranged weapons on this fight because you need to be near your party members.

(Cliffside)

• 1st hammer dude has a Ring of Warding attack that if you don’t dodge in melee range it will one shot you.
• Final hammer dude punts people in melee range and applies Agony when he hits you. You HAVE to use a ranged weapon on this.

(Swamp)

• Bloomhunger will murder you in melee range. You HAVE to use a ranged weapon here.
• Mossman has an instant-gib AOE cleave, but it’s avoidable.

(Snowblind)

• Frost thing forces you to use ranged weapons. #1. You will aggro extra adds at close range and #2. you will get too many stacks of frostbite. It’s just not efficient to use ranged weapons.
• Shaman boss is melee friendly.

(Ascalon event)

• Final boss has an AOE agony ability that will kill you if you’re close. You have to use ranged weapons.

(Dredge )

• Champ Dredge guy is melee friendly.
• Last part (Ice or Dredge) you HAVE to use ranged weapons. No questions asked.

(Jade Maw)

• Ranged weapons unless you want to be thrown around constantly by tentacles.

Another post where a player thinks that because he can’t do it something is fact:

(Volcanic Fractals)
Champion Grawl Shaman – He doesn’t do his knockback AoE if you max range melee him, I never range him
Legendary Grawl Shaman – He has a slow windup melee move where he flies in the air and gives you like 2 seconds to react. I constantly swap between range and melee, probably 40% range and 60% melee which does much more dps by allowing you to use your burst dps melee moves which are superior to range.

(Cliffside)
Yes range is easier, but as you mentioned, possible to melee a large portion of the time depending on your class. Again sometimes you need to SWAP to range, but you never need to 100% range which hurts your dps.

(Swamp)
Bloomhunger is easier in melee, you get hit by one thing. In fact I solo’d him from 30% health yesterday in FOTM 42 after my party died. I have never once ranged him past the first week fractals came out.

(Jade Maw)
Never range here, full group melees and you can kill the tentacles faster then they spawn in p3 which is how you “speed run” it because killing tentacles does damage. Apparently dodging, blinds, knockdowns, invulns, aegis, boons, etc. are too hard for people to use.

The other stuff you listed does need to be ranged some of the time, but besides Ascalon Captain once he hits p2, it is superior to burst in and melee them during certain parts.

Agony is really easy to dodge, he has a tell or you can stay at range and just strafe back and forth to not be hit. Burning doesn’t do that much damage and you can outheal it if you need to rez someone, when you start moving just using condition removal..

The only hard part about him is the shield part without reflects, since the large amount of lava elementals at high levels is the most dangerous part.

haviz.1340:

Ioflux.4369:

The joke isnt so much the build (some parts are definitely viable), but the attitude and tone of the guy making the post and previous guides he’s posted. I’ve played around with DPS guardian builds and theres certainly some fun / viable / optimal builds, but to go as far as say that guardian’s can outdps a warrior in a group buffing environment is just silly.

I don’t follow his posts but from what I see, he’s claiming that guardian has more room for growth in the party because warrior by himself alone can get 10-15, even 25 stacks of might with 10 stacks of vulnerability and almost perma fury. Since those things have limits, it’s pretty good observation from his side. I don’t know how true it is though.

He’s terrible. He makes a bunch of threads with false information based on his “spreadsheets”, without every providing real ingame footage, and when he gets called out he never returns to the thread. At this point he pretty much stays in the guardian forums. I’ve called him out for a bunch of dumb stuff like:
- how Guardian is better then mesmer in CoF 1 with 4 warriors
- how guardians do the most dps out of any class in the game because “warriors rely on a 3.5s root to maximize dps which is unreliable”
- how he tried to say Axe/Mace warriors do bad damage in the warrior forums and proceeded to leave when everyone called him out on it
- how berserker mesmers do “no damage” compared to guardians and their only benefit is TW and how Guardian Tome of Wrath is better in most cases.
- how apparently full dps sword guardians are the “ultimate dps build”
- how Guardians got a “massive nerf” when they fixed the auto attack dodge bug because he couldn’t cancel dodges anymore

And here is my favorite quote of all time from him:
“A sword guardian with fury does so much damage in Timewarp it makes axe warriors look like axe necromancers. If your priority is burning down the Slave Driver and Effigy fast, you only need one warrior for fury stacking. The rest should be sword/greatsword guardians. The sheer amount of damage symbol > whirl > bind > swap > 1h sword auto spam deals in Timewarp is so huge it should be considered a sploit and we should be banned for even talking about it.”

Basically if you kill time on the gw2guru forums you’ll realize what a joke he is and the fact he never provides proof or ingame footage for his claims.

Guardian for sure. Because you can hold agro and relieve alot of pressure from bad players and you have alot of survivability skills for the group.

Enundr.9305:

eisberg.2379:

I try to keep track of the other players and go get them back up before they are fully down. What I hope they do is wait to use their healing downed skill when another player starts to help them back up so they can get back up much faster.

So talk to your groups about keeping track of each other so that people can go rez a downed player before they are completely down. In fact if as many players can make it to the downed player as possible, the downed play will get back up a whole lot quicker.

I had times where I was able to move the boss away from the downed player so the rest of the group can go get them back up. This is provided that they got to the player before they went completely down.

the issue is , we still have some bosses in dungeons (lupi) that are full 1 shot spams (as in do not get downed and go straight to dead)

I don’t know of any attacks or bosses that instant kill you. Unless you have 4 stacks of res sickness on you, you will always enter downed state.

How do I know this?

I’ve run low levels through high level zones before (i.e. when I got lvl 2’s up to the Rich Ori node in Southsun) where level 80 mobs will do thousands of damage to your level 2 with like 200 health, even in those instances you will still get 2 shot i.e. you get downed, then a 2nd hit will kill you.

Considering myself and many guildmates and friends have run Arah many many times and I’ve personally fought GL probably 100+ times, even after the rez rush patch, I have never heard or seen any weird one shot mechanics.

It’s odd that you’re the only person to claim this happens. So no wonder most people are doubting you. You either have a rare bug that you should record/screenshot or you just don’t know how to do GL at all and are using your lack of knowledge to complain that he is too hard.

Btw, one reason you get hit by a ranged attack which isn’t a red circle in p2 is because he throws single bolt auto attacks out as well which don’t have a red circle and instead you need to watch his body and dodge appropriately. His AoE attack “goes off” once he finishes his charge move, but because of travel time from where the AoE bolts originate (at the top of his head) and how they move out across the Arena, it takes about 4 seconds for the AoE to finish. Once he casts his AoE, even though his bolts are moving and hitting, he will still throw out 1-2 auto attacks towards a target which isn’t indicated by the circles. I have never seen these invisible bolts though.

Because his ranged attack doesn’t hit in melee range, p2 is actually easier in melee range.

GL is designed perfectly for this system, just like many other action games and MMOs, you are required to learn patterns and skills of the bosses to be successful. Just because you don’t understand his attacks doesn’t mean he’s broken or needs to be nerfed. If GL was broken there wouldn’t be solo videos by various classes and people who understand his mechanics easily clearing him every time in group settings, it’s called learning his attacks and reacting/positioning accordingly.

As far as the OP, the “balance” is killing faster, which is why people who know boss’ patterns go full melee to speed clear.

The “balance” is doing a dungeon in 25 minutes with single target and lower dps ranged attacks to be slightly safer in general, or be a good player and learn encounters and melee so you can do the same dungeon in 10 minutes and imho have more fun at the same time because you have to react and read tells. Not to mention there are alot more teamwork mechanics when you go full melee groups to deal with certain things instead of kiting around.

Dungeons don’t “favor” ranged, bad players favor ranged to be safer so they don’t die.

Dungeons favor whatever the group is capable of, which is ranged to go slow, or melee to go fast at the expense of safety. That’s the whole tradeoff.

JJBigs.8456:

Kirbyprime.2645:

I’m really only posting to say,

Bloom is actually easier at melee range, this coming from an ele.

How? My guardian (Suppsoedly the most survivable class) dies to it at like 15+. In 10, I have a 50/50 chance of melee not killing me.

That’s funny, because I melee him at 40+ fotm all the time.

If you stand in his body there is one thing that can hit you, his agony attack. Possibly the poison cloud once in a while which is easy to get out of and clear conditions.

His agony attack can be dodged as long as you don’t have terrible reaction time.

Thus, there is nothing that can actually kill you if you know how to dodge.

Yes, and they are account bound.

Learn 2 dodge. That’s pretty much it.

Besides an easy to dodge move from Alpha there’s really nothing too damaging in CoE.

Scootabuser.4915:

I have 2 gold infusions in my RINGS.

As for “end game content.”

That would be level 40 fractals, not exp dungeons…

No you don’t unless you figured out some secret MF recipe that creates offensive/defensive/versatile infusions that don’t come from the laurel merchant.

Missing the two important hints.

Mesmer Feedback on last boss not only prevents knockdown but does a 30k burst of dps.

Most importantly, the one thing that reduces more time then anything… how to grab Ferrah by keeping one person in the video until you talk to her allows you to bring her to the door at max run speed which also causes Magg to spawn on you. You shave off ~20 seconds by doing this or almost 30 seconds using memser portals instead of waiting for them to slowly walk up.

Takato.4976:

I haven’t seen any behaviour that makes him charge more.
My guild has been running this once/twice per day, and every time we’re at bjarl, he literally refuses to charge for 1-2 minutes even.

We normally split around the room near the pillars, while the person being chased kites towards different pillars hoping he gets excited and charges towards anything. Even charging towards spire would be much loved.

I run it every day as well and have never had him refuse to charge that long. We all get a reasonable length away from him and he always charges.

Stay 2 pillar lengths away, he doesn’t charge when he’s close.

Ioflux.4369:

Strifey.7215:

0

Probably because I stopped Pugging very early on.

You kicked us out of dungeon for being a noob host and swapping toons on final boss.

lol, but that’s because you we’re like “hurry up switch to your alt” and I was so panicked I forgot I hosted V_V

At least it only wasted like 13 min :o

It still hasn’t ‘happened’ to me tho :p

0

Probably because I stopped Pugging very early on.

Really depends on players and what fractals you cycle.

Most groups cycle until swamp first, which can take less than 5 minutes.

Then it just depends if you get quicker paths or longer paths for your next 2 cycles and how good the players are. 1-10 are rather easy, maybe an hour if people are familiar with all of the fractals, faster if you run ideal groups, slower if everyone is new.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Strifey.7215:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Strifey.7215:

Guess it’s good for those people who complain about things being too hard…

You thought this fight was hard before the change?

Lol.

Yea bro, my 15 min guide run where we kill him in 3 cycles before the patch definitely means I thought he was hard :ugh:

So what’s the problem then? And I can pick on whoever I want, given that their argument is poor enough. Yours fit the bill perfectly, cute videos or not.

Another nooblet who thinks if something isn’t a ‘joke’ it’s automatically hard.

Not to mention it’s cute you actually thought you were picking on me, “picking someone” != “picking on.”

Learn to read before posting next time, kthxbye.

angan.6572:

My problem is not about that i don’t like a challenging dungeon. My problem is, that in a game with no designated healing and tank class, in a game where Anet so proudly claims “Everyone can tank” the reality is that not everyone can in such level of difficulty dungeons.

Unless you have guardians / mesmer etc to provide a bit amount of shields, protection and projectile reflection the dungeon is really frustrating. Why should i be restrained by team setups ?? Wasn’t your motto Anet that any team setup could do any dungeon with no problems ? Yes some setups maybe are better than others but i didn’t expect it to be at the point of unless you have this and this hero in your team you are most likely to fail.

My first 2 runs i did it with some friends. 2 rangers , 1 necromancer, 1 elementalist and 1 mesmer in group. It was nearly impossible to survive 5 minutes without at least 3 people dying…

I play a ranger and i run with full exotic gear with toughness, vitality, precision (obtained specifically for dungeons like that) and i still get 2 shotted by every boss in there, i still have hard time surviving in there and i have people bashing at me when i pug “omg noob ranger you are a glass cannon, rangers useless anywhere”.

That’s my problem!. I enjoy a challenging dungeon. But a dungeon that offers real challenge, not mindlessly trying to dodge roll through 20+ mobs and find the best spot to use an Ash legion spy kit in order to hope to survive the hordes chasing you just because you have no chance to kill them in fight.

That’s more of an issue with what Anet claims you can do when it comes to dungeons and what reality is as far as how hard/easy things are.

I think the main difference between GW2 and other MMOs is people know they need certain roles in other games. In GW2 it’s much more open, which works for most PvE content, but shows the obvious disadvantage you have without certain roles when it comes to dungeons.

It’s way harder to balance hard content in a game that says “do whatever you want” compared to one that already has specific bounds of the trinity.

So you get people using the “GW2 Trinity” which makes things easy vs. groups which bring in random classes/builds/gear which don’t synergize and then have issues in things which require teamwork and certain mechanics.

There’s really no way around it with the way the game is currently designed by making things challenging for one group without making it too easy or too hard for another group because the spectrum of balance in GW2 is way bigger then other traditional MMOs that know they need to design challenge around tank/healer/dps trinities.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Strifey.7215:

Yea bro, my 15 min guide run where we kill him in 3 cycles before the patch definitely means I thought he was hard :ugh:

Apparently reading isn’t your strong suit huh, “those people” usually doesn’t mean yourself.

> “So Evolved Destroyer is a joke boss now”

> Implying it wasn’t a joke boss before.
> Implying it’s easy now, not before.

There’s a difference between a joke boss and something that is hard. A boss isn’t just a joke or hard, there are many things in between. Is Kholer/Alpha hard? No.
Is he a joke though? No because you actually have to use your brain somewhat. Same with many bosses.

A joke boss means you literally have to do nothing, kind of like Evolved Destroyer. You run down some red platforms, block or dodge one slow attack that happens like twice over the course of 15 seconds, and stand in place and kill him.

Before you actually still had to make it up the ramps and make sure your party wasn’t full of bads that fell into the lava.

Apparently you think if something isn’t a joke it must be hard, nice logic there.

Keep trying though.

JJBigs.8456:

I dont think they do

Sure they do.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Strifey.7215:

Guess it’s good for those people who complain about things being too hard…

You thought this fight was hard before the change?

Lol.

Yea bro, my 15 min guide run where we kill him in 3 cycles before the patch definitely means I thought he was hard :ugh:

Apparently reading isn’t your strong suit huh, “those people” usually doesn’t mean yourself.

Maybe you should also try picking someone who, you know, doesn’t have guides for every dungeon in the game showing how easy PvE is before trying to infer they think something is hard.

Nice try bro, maybe next time.

Boolet.2968:

Y’know I actually had to LOG IN in order to ask a question that’s seriously bothering me….

As a player who supposedly is “min-maxing in order to achieve maximum effectiveness and minimum time/effort in dungeons”…

Why, for all that is holy, do you use Prayer to Dwayna.

Unless you know some secret I don’t, it’s one of the most rubbish skills that exists.

Reasons for Resolve over Dwayna…

1. Higher healing bursts to counter heavy damage.
2. Utility (condition removal) when healing is not necessary.
3. Can be used underwater.

Reasons for Dwayna over Resolve…

1. 10 health per second (theoretically) higher when used perfectly on cooldown during long fights.

Notice how I threw around words like “theoretically” in there.

You don’t heal until you take damage. So let’s assume the fight “starts” once you heal the first time.

With Dwayna, you just healed for 6775 and cannot heal for another 31 seconds (cooldown + cast times).

With Resolve, you would heal for 8525, and cannot heal for another 41 seconds.

That’s a difference of 1750 healing. Seeing as Dwayna would heal for 10 health per second greater with only 300 healing power, it’s easy enough math to divide that by 10.

As such, you would have to be engaged in a fight for nearly 3 minutes (2 minutes and 56 seconds) before you gained ANY benefit from Dwayna.

All of the above calculations greatly diminishes if healing is not done on-cooldown, and disregards potential “healing” from removing damaging conditions via Resolve.

Rule of thumb for this particular comparison would be simple. If you ever delay more than 1 second before recasting Dwayna, change it for Resolve. At 33 second recasts your 10 health per second advantage is reduced to a 2 health per second defecit.

Anywho, that’s all I had to say.

~Minmax

That’s alot of text for something rather simple.

Because I like having my burst heal on lower cooldown. 10 extra seconds could mean life or death many times when you need a heal. I’d rather have the option to heal a second time 10 seconds earlier in harder boss fights like GL for instance. Burst heal for me is more about practicality for boss fights that don’t die in 60 seconds, which is pretty much going to be the few harder bosses in the game like GL and high fractals. I’d rather have a heal 10 seconds sooner instead of possibly getting downed.

Obviously situational depending on when you need your heals, if you’re just healing once in a while then signet is better, but in those instances I’m not going to die with a 6k or 8k heal anyways. For stuff where I need to actually use my heal alot I’ve found the 10 second cooldown benefit better, especially in a lower hp base class like Guardian. So I just leave it on my bar, obviously you use signet underwater, not sure why you even mentioned that since it’s not like you have a choice anyways.

Searched in bug forums, didn’t see it, and figured I’d post it here instead since Robert is pretty active.

From what I heard from my guild it’s been this way since the last patch.

Anyways, last night did some FotM progression, and got Ascalon twice on different runs, one was 40 and one was 26. Both times the Veteran NPCs sat in the tent and didn’t follow us. If you try and drag mobs to the tent, they will attack them but immediately go back into the tent.

Now if you go kill Dulfy and the gate without the Veteran NPCs, and then go back to them and drag a mob to them to make them agro, they will finally attack the mob and this time follow you. So it seems like they aren’t triggering until you hit the checkpoint after killing dulfy/gate.

Little bit annoying, pointing it out incase the devs aren’t aware.

P.S. Any confirmation that Mossman should be attacking and hitting you while still in stealth which changed with the recent patch as well?

Bartho.7896:

haviz.1340:

It’s not that classes matter, builds do. You can take 5 necros but 3 of them have to be power necros or some hybrids.

Okay then, I said 5 necros, not 5 condi necros. He can give them whatever build he wants, if he kills destroyer in one cycle i bow and admit the boss health should be buffed. But i doubt he could do it even in 2 cycles….

Full berserker dagger necros does pretty good single target dps, problem is they have no cleave and lack support or damage skills that other classes have making them ideal over other classes.

5 necros could easily do it in 2 cycles though, maybe not 1, but definitely 2.

Shiren.9532:

Strifey.7215:

Brutal Arts.6307:

You’re upset your co-ordinated group was able to timewarp double 100b the boss to death. Are you complaining or showing off?

Just showing how much it got nerfed. Prior to this it would still take 2-3 cycles in a coordinated group, meaning it got nerfed over 50% with the combination of less health and longer dps time.

Can time warp it before the shield even starts blinking which still gives you ~5 seconds to keep dpsing, meaning even with no time warp you could kill it in one cycle in a high dps group with no mesmer, or a lower dps group could kill it with a timewarp. It’s part of my normal dungeon guides anyways, so was just pointing it out.

You sound upset that it was changed. Do you really think the bench mark for every group should be time warp mesmers and zerker greatsword warriors? Those two cookie cutter builds which cut out much of the challenge and difficulty that was put into dungeon design dramatically alter the experience compared to every other build. This content is for everyone, not just warrior and mesmer teams. Your complaint is based around using what is probably the most OP dungeon build in the game.

People are now posting in this thread about going AFK on a glass cannon thief and winning. You can’t go AFK any AC or TA boss (maybe Fionna, certainly the tree if you use exploits), not without your team carrying you.

Warriors need a DPS nerf. The dungeon meta has shifted to them and we are seeing more and more evidence every week of warriors breaking dungeons by pushing DPS to break points the dungeons simply weren’t designed for. Buffing mob health and armour is just going to hurt everyone else already hurting when it comes to completing content, warriors need to be brought down to be on par with everyone else.

Taking condition damage over direct damage isn’t like Usain Bolt shooting himself in the foot, it’s like Usain Bolt going for a swim instead of running because he likes swimming. Not everyone plays games to cut cookies and break stuff as fast as possible with the most optimum choices, some of us play games because we enjoy the experience and have specific play styles that don’t involve the cookie cutter builds.

Psh why would I be upset, just lets my guild farm faster. Pointing it out and secretly getting more traffic to my page >_>

This and many other fights basically makes me realize how hard it is to balance PvE compared to other MMOs because of the lack of trinity though.

In other games, you pretty much know you want a tank, healer, and then dps for dungeons. So the spectrum of a group is much more narrow, which makes devs have an easier time balancing bosses. Obviously there’s more and less efficient groups, but the range is lower because you always know you’re going to bring some classes that are focused on dps, and a tank and healer.

In GW2, since the devs advertised you can play any class/build in any combination, it makes the spectrum of dungeon groups erratic and also inadvertently causes PuGs to have alot more “luck” when it comes to successful group or not. Because you can have an ideal group (basically what amounts to a tank/support(healer)/3 dps in other games) on one side of the spectrum that just steam rolls through dungeons, or a group with a mix-mash of random classes, with the possibility that they are all balanced, or support with cleric gear, or PVT because they are afraid of what other classes they will get in PuGs, you get groups on the other end of the spectrum who are the one’s who complain about dungeons.

In other MMOs, you knew you could go full dps for instance, because you would have that tank and healer. Because of how GW2 was “advertised”, people feel the need to balance things alot more which really narrows the amount of challenging content devs can currently use, because the spectrum of what’s easy and what’s hard for a group is so much more broad.

It’s about min-maxing, which many people do in every MMO. Not playing certain classes to intentionally make things harder is just dumb, most people naturally want to find the best builds and groups. Now in other MMOs, the range of min-maxing is way lower. You may get a “casual” group without the best gear, but they can still clear a dungeon with the typical trinity. Then you get an “elite” group, that has gear with 30% higher stats, and clears it quicker.

In GW2, that range is like 500%, the difference between an ideal group and a random mix-mash of classes and gear and builds is huge. In WoW or EQ2 or FF11 you always knew you wanted certain classes to complete harder PvE content. In GW2 there is no guidance, so people bring in whatever, which is what leads to problems and why some groups clear dungeons in 1/4th of the time.