Guild Wars 2

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.

And Path 3 is now the fastest CoE path, we had like 5 more seconds to dps him also, so even a subpar dps group can do him in 1 cycle, pugs probably 2-3 cycles. Guess it’s good for those people who complain about things being too hard…

There’s a shortcut at the start of the video to skip to him:

This should give you some insight on the 2 weapons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WOonDJfRDk

I personally run A/M because I like the playstyle. A/M offers more consistant dps that meets the mid-range of GS when you can’t 100B all the time or you have to dodge to interrupt because A/M damage can all be done while moving, where maximum GS dps involves 100B and ideal WW.

Both are good, but it depends on your playstyle and what dungeons you are running. As far as the extra dodge, your extra dodge with A/M comes from using Eviscerate which gives you back 50% endurance.

Build for each is in my playlists as well.

Ioflux.4369:

Strifey.7215:

Join a guild if you want to be more social, it’s way more fun and easier to talk over voice chat while dungeon running.

We always joke and talk about random stuff and try to troll each other to intentionally kill people since at this point dungeons are pretty easy for us.

It’s not as fun typing to random strangers while trying to actually play the game, so most people don’t do it.

I have fun gettin strife killed in CoE path 2 Husk boss before final alpha. We pretty much turn the room into a minigame on who can kill their teammates the most with the mini golems.

More like I have fun getting you killed -_-

Mesmer is the ultimate troll!

Who doesn’t love getting portal right onto a trap or getting mobs pulled on top of them with focus when they are downed~

Join a guild if you want to be more social, it’s way more fun and easier to talk over voice chat while dungeon running.

We always joke and talk about random stuff and try to troll each other to intentionally kill people since at this point dungeons are pretty easy for us.

It’s not as fun typing to random strangers while trying to actually play the game, so most people don’t do it.

As people mentioned, there are pretty much 3 roles in a successful party in dungeons. It really doesn’t became apparent until you start running organized groups because it requires teamwork and synergy that you’re not going to get in a PuG, so usually PuGs end up trying to balance everything which is the main reason they have so much trouble with dungeons alot of the time.

Now the first thing to note, no group comp is going to allow you to just face tank everything like in a traditional MMO. Dodge is there to avoid the big telegraphed attacks that will down you no-matter what, the rest of the time your group comp will allow you to deal with all of the other attacks that you don’t need to dodge. A big reason groups fail is because they don’t know/recognize the attacks they need to dodge, no class or group comp is going to help you succeed if you don’t dodge or know your enemy. So part of failing at first, is because you are learning the moves and attacks of the bosses/mobs in the dungeon you are running. If you are dieing and don’t learn from it, you fail as a player, no matter what your class is.

As far as roles:

1. “Anchor” – The Anchor is your tank. Their purpose is to draw agro to allow the other classes to focus on dps and “cast-time” support skills. This class will naturally have the highest toughness because it allows them to take priority when pulling agro. The main class that is used as an anchor is Guardian, because they have extremely good survivability skills and can support through shouts and reflection skills which have no cast time (except for Shield of Avenger). There are some other classes that have the ability to be an anchor, but not as good as a Guardian can. Which is why Guardian is a tier 1 class. I always only run 1 anchor except in high level fractals where 2 guardians can be useful.

2. DPS – This is your traditional dps role. Something like a warrior or thief excels at this because of their traits/skills which allow them to maximize dps potential. If you are running an organized group that has an anchor and proper support skills, these can very easily run full berserkers for dps. Now just like all classes, they still have some utility based on the class (i.e. banners/shouts for warrior, stealth for thief) but they are primarily focused on maximizing dps. Anyone who is running a dps build wants to eat omnomberry pies because you will still take minor, aoe, and or/condition damage even with an anchor sometimes, so regen/leech is what allows you to stay in melee range to maximize dps (along with proper dodging bigger attacks of course.) You are always going to have 2 of these roles, and many times you’ll have 3 of them.

Because of the way you cooldowns work in this game, and because there are many events across dungeons that focus on dps to make things easier, this is the number one role that most PuGs fail at, because they are worried about balancing. It is significantly easier to “burst down” a bunch of bosses and events in <1 minute before all of your skills cycle to cooldown, which you can only do with dps roles. In dungeons, most mobs and bosses do significant damage, even with full survivability gear. A group who is balanced and takes 40 seconds to kill a group of silver mobs for instance, is going to have a much harder time then a group with 3 dps classes that can burst down the same group in 15 seconds, while you can still cycle your blinds/knockdowns/reflects/etc. before they go on cooldown. This is what most PuGs fail to realize. Their balanced builds with survivability have much less survivability then a group with 3 berserker classes that both take less time and are safer bursting down the same bosses in a fraction of the time because of the way skills work in this game to mitigate or burst damage.

3. “Support” – Now every class has utility and support, but usually you fill in one slot with a class that adds the things that your group is missing to fill out their utility. This is usually going to be either a Mesmer or Ele. Ele gives you combo fields and the ability to support through a variety of spells through attunements based on what you need. The Mesmer brings huge utility through skills, everything from stealth, reflection, boon stripping, “boon bursting” with signet, and of course Time Warp. Now support doesn’t mean you need to take cleric’s set or something, it’s more for their for the skills and combo fields while still providing some damage. So for instance, my mesmer is still in full berserker’s gear, but they have alot of support through their skills that you miss out on with guardians and warriors in the other 2 slots.

Once you become familiar with dungeons and start running in more organized groups, you start to realize how much easier and smoother dungeons go when you run specific roles and take classes that fill those roles.

haviz.1340:

Strifey.7215:

Yes many mobs in there are kind of annoying… if you don’t LoS or have any projectile reflect skills.

With those 2 things the dungeon becomes the same as anything else, so generally depends on your classes just like many other things that can be either or annoying depending on your classes (which is usually some combination of guard/war/mesmer >_>).

But I could see how it could be annoying.

Problem is, you base your evaluation on your party that consists of so-called 1st tier proffesions only. You should at the very least try doing it with 2nd tier which should represent more average approach to dungeons.

You’re right I could, and it would be harder and more “average”, I mean that’s basically what I started off doing, my first class was neither guardian nor warrior, and I didn’t get a mesmer until my 6th class. My first encounter with dungeons was level 35 on my necro in AC on like day 2 of the game, and it involved alot of face plants, but I’m not going to reference that when talking about the difficulty of dungeons because it’s not relevant on how easy they can be.

At this point, with the people I run with, and with what I’m focusing on as far as updating footage and what not, I really don’t have the time or care enough to do things that I know are less efficient from previous experience. All of my posting is from work to kill time, which is why I ramble so much. But I always have crazy OCD about things I want to get done when I’m actually home and trying to balance whatever personal life remains :x

Basically I’m the min-max type player in every MMO, I try and figure out what’s “ideal.” Once I get to that point, I base any suggestions or guides on that. I know this game is catered around play how you want, every class is equal, blah blah, but I’ve never ever played an MMO that was truly 100% balanced and I don’t care about trying to do things that I know aren’t the most efficient or ideal. The natural cycle of MMOs is nerfs and buffs. If they want to do that to classes then I’ll figure out different builds or class comps when that happens, but I’m not going to intentionally bring in “worse” classes. I mean it takes like 3 days to hit 80 on an alt in the first place because a few of the crafts are so cheap and easy that you’re pretty much 50 after a few hours.

It’s the devs jobs to balance dungeons and classes, not my job to artificially make things harder to cater to the “vision of the game.”

That’s just the type of player I am.

Granted my current CM vids are really old and I don’t even use alot of the strategies I do now and I’m pretty sure I was kitten back then and didn’t even use reflection on my guardian most of the time. There’s not even a mesmer in I think 2 of the 3 paths either. So those aren’t even “ideal” in the first place and are still pretty quick and painless.

Leo G.4501:

Well I didn’t say hard, I said cheap. Those kittens are cheap kittens. Probably why I enjoy blasting them to kingdom come with all the gods’ elements or sinking metal deep in their kitten skulls.

Yes many mobs in there are kind of annoying… if you don’t LoS or have any projectile reflect skills.

With those 2 things the dungeon becomes the same as anything else, so generally depends on your classes just like many other things that can be either or annoying depending on your classes (which is usually some combination of guard/war/mesmer >_>).

But I could see how it could be annoying.

Leo G.4501:

Strifey.7215:

CM? Nope

Lol I’m sorry but CM is cheap! Yeah I watched Wethospu’s CM solo video but I could tell he just had a ‘blast’ soloing that thing (/sarcasm).

The mobs in there are cheap. I don’t care if your group is amazing but snipers that aggro at stupid ranges, archers that use distortion multiple times for multiple seconds, bombers that spam cluster bomb AoEs all over the place, bandits that heal their allies and are armed with stability, bandits that stack bleeds and poison on you dang near non-stop…

Funny though, I run CM alot.

It’s no harder then any other “hard” dungeon with the right skills and organization…

Colossus isn’t that bad at all, I think grawl is easy but that’s because we always have at least one guardian, Dredge on the other hand, what a snoozefest.

Wethospu.6437:

But is it hard or just awfully long?
How can something be considered hard if it can be soloed (like most of the Arah path 4)?

Well I did say longer then anything else as well, but it’s all relative.

This 80F water is hotter then this 50F water, but are either of them really that hot?

Relative to everything else in the game except high level fractals Arah is harder.

I mean what’s really hard?

AC? lol
CM? Nope
TA? Not really
SE? Path 2 is long but not that hard except maybe the last boss.
CoF? lol
HotW? Only hard part is not falling asleep from the high survivability and one attack each boss has.
CoE? Nope
Arah? In terms of named dungeons, I would say things like GL or things that actually require teamwork like Simin are “harder” then most of the other things.

So yes, I consider it “harder” then other dungeons when we’re talking about GW2.

I mean everything is “easy” once you learn patterns and strategies. Outside of PvP which is truly dynamic combat, MMOs are all about puzzling together builds, patterns, and skills to eventually make things easy. Sure once you learn the patterns and bosses of Arah 4, it’s no different then anything else, you hit your keys in a certain timing or do certain things and you complete ‘x’ event. But from a new player perspective, I do consider it harder compared to the amount of learning required for most other paths.

The same reason people say Dark/Demon Souls is hard, but it’s really not hard once you play through the game once and know everything.

Morfedel.4165:

Strifey.7215:

Jzl.8715:

Morfedel.4165:

Strifey.7215:

In the process of re-recording my CoE paths since it is easier now. Uploaded P2 last night, will have the new P1 and 3 up soon, but the older videos on my page still apply to the alpha fight, it just takes longer since he has more health in those.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnRnK3qoYxk

But really, all you do is stand in melee range and time your dodges.

You naturally cleave out whoever gets hit by the purple crystal in part 2 and 3.

In path 1 you don’t even need to dodge the red circles because his only two attacks in melee range are the flame AoE and conal attack
In path 2 the only other attack you need to worry about is his flame AoE, which does minor direct damage so you just want to remove burning
In path 3 you just dodge the same red circles as path 2 but have the conal attack instead of the fire AoE.

Alpha is basically like Kholer, dodge one very obvious attack and everything else is easy. Just count 1-1thousand, 2-1thousand, then dodge.

like I said, we tried stacking on him. we still got wiped.

I’m not sure what the problem was. hi it was the last 1 to go down. the rest, maybe they didn’t have a good enough armor, but really, it was on path 1, his pbaoe fire and cone is what killed us.

Stacking is only worth while if you have enough group healing and condition removal. Even then you still avoid most of his attacks by spreading around him in path 1, or dodge the frontal cone and ground AoE.

In my videos, 4 of the 5 classes are in berserkers, included my mesmer in this specific video. The only group healing we have is from regeneration from the one guardian which is only up maybe 30% of the time. There is literally hardly any survivability gear/skills other then eating mixed berry/omnom pies. Yes there is condition removal, but if every class equips one group condition removal, it is more then enough for alpha who puts burning on you about once every 7-10 seconds.

Don’t give me that bs about group healing and survivability traits being the reason you can stack melee, and of course you want some condition removal which isn’t really hard to get when you are taking care of one condition every once in a while.

It’s really not that hard.

1. Stack Melee
2. Eat Food
3. Dodge big red circles by counting to 2
4. ???
5. Profit

Grats, you have just negated half of alphas attacks, have no problem dealing with the purple crystal, and if someone does go down you can quickly rez him before the next red circle chain. It’s not rocket science, all it requires is people to count to 2, hit a button, and use a small portion of their brain to equip useful skills.

Not to mention how many people I see who never eat food. The minor silver cost of food would probably save your group so much money in both repair costs and time you waste that could be used for making more money. If anyone complains about regen and isn’t eating pies, or complains about endurance and isn’t eating the stew for 40% endurance regen, then they have themselves to blame.

most people want to eat omnomberry bars, but you make a good point: there is more than 1 food you could use for a dungeon

I mean bars are fine if you know the dungeons and don’t die, especially easier dungeons.

I use bars myself on quite a few dungeons, but use pies on harder things. It just comes with experience on knowing what you can and can’t get away with.

But if someone is using bars while complaining about boss fights which have proven to be simple once you recognize it’s pattern, then that’s their own fault.

Every single dungeon path except Arah 4 can be done under 25 minutes.

Arah 4 is basically the “bonus” path to challenge players, there’s a reason Arah is the only dungeon with 4 paths and is also the last current dungeon in the game.

This thread is basically complaining about Arah 4, not about dungeons in general. Expecting every bit of content to be quick and easy in an MMO is just dumb, there’s a reason all MMOs have varying content that is easier or harder to give different types of players things to do.

Nerfing one path to be faster or easier which doesn’t even give unique rewards other then an achievement title because some people don’t like things that are a bit more difficult or longer is the dumbest, most entitled thing I have ever heard.

Compared to “hard” stuff in other MMOs, Arah 4 is nothing, there are so many raids and gear and things casuals would not experience in other MMOs compared to GW2.

And what exactly is unique that you get from Arah 4 other then two words under your name? Oh nothing. Because you can farm the other 3 paths that take less then 25 minutes if you actually want the gear which is just cosmetic and isn’t stronger then any other exotic gear.

Orbys.4895:

Really, because I tried it with 4 different groups all ready. We can never seem to get past the burrow mounds rush. We focus everything on the burrows, but still get over run every single time at around 80%.

Dude people solo and duo AC, groups speed run it in under 10 minutes. It’s probably the 2nd easiest overall dungeon in the game. It’s l2p, it’s not hard cause one group has trouble when thousands of other people realize how easy it is at this point.

At least pick something like Arah if you’re going to complain about something being hard.

Orbys.4895:

I hate that, when I am in the dungeons that is the one place I want to feel over powered.

lol wtf, is this opposite day?

Because casuals + required dungeon path to complete your personal story = easy mode.

Personally who cares, there’s plenty of explorable dungeons that are much harder, originally story mode was suppose to be super easy anyways and was more for casuals to experience the story.

Stack on top of that your personal story which is super easy, and now you get super duper easy dungeon path so no one can ever complain about things being too hard to complete their story.

Jzl.8715:

Morfedel.4165:

Strifey.7215:

In the process of re-recording my CoE paths since it is easier now. Uploaded P2 last night, will have the new P1 and 3 up soon, but the older videos on my page still apply to the alpha fight, it just takes longer since he has more health in those.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnRnK3qoYxk

But really, all you do is stand in melee range and time your dodges.

You naturally cleave out whoever gets hit by the purple crystal in part 2 and 3.

In path 1 you don’t even need to dodge the red circles because his only two attacks in melee range are the flame AoE and conal attack
In path 2 the only other attack you need to worry about is his flame AoE, which does minor direct damage so you just want to remove burning
In path 3 you just dodge the same red circles as path 2 but have the conal attack instead of the fire AoE.

Alpha is basically like Kholer, dodge one very obvious attack and everything else is easy. Just count 1-1thousand, 2-1thousand, then dodge.

like I said, we tried stacking on him. we still got wiped.

I’m not sure what the problem was. hi it was the last 1 to go down. the rest, maybe they didn’t have a good enough armor, but really, it was on path 1, his pbaoe fire and cone is what killed us.

Stacking is only worth while if you have enough group healing and condition removal. Even then you still avoid most of his attacks by spreading around him in path 1, or dodge the frontal cone and ground AoE.

In my videos, 4 of the 5 classes are in berserkers, included my mesmer in this specific video. The only group healing we have is from regeneration from the one guardian which is only up maybe 30% of the time. There is literally hardly any survivability gear/skills other then eating mixed berry/omnom pies. Yes there is condition removal, but if every class equips one group condition removal, it is more then enough for alpha who puts burning on you about once every 7-10 seconds.

Don’t give me that bs about group healing and survivability traits being the reason you can stack melee, and of course you want some condition removal which isn’t really hard to get when you are taking care of one condition every once in a while.

It’s really not that hard.

1. Stack Melee
2. Eat Food
3. Dodge big red circles by counting to 2
4. ???
5. Profit

Grats, you have just negated half of alphas attacks, have no problem dealing with the purple crystal, and if someone does go down you can quickly rez him before the next red circle chain. It’s not rocket science, all it requires is people to count to 2, hit a button, and use a small portion of their brain to equip useful skills.

Not to mention how many people I see who never eat food. The minor silver cost of food would probably save your group so much money in both repair costs and time you waste that could be used for making more money. If anyone complains about regen and isn’t eating pies, or complains about endurance and isn’t eating the stew for 40% endurance regen, then they have themselves to blame.

In the process of re-recording my CoE paths since it is easier now. Uploaded P2 last night, will have the new P1 and 3 up soon, but the older videos on my page still apply to the alpha fight, it just takes longer since he has more health in those.

But really, all you do is stand in melee range and time your dodges.

You naturally cleave out whoever gets hit by the purple crystal in part 2 and 3.

In path 1 you don’t even need to dodge the red circles because his only two attacks in melee range are the flame AoE and conal attack
In path 2 the only other attack you need to worry about is his flame AoE, which does minor direct damage so you just want to remove burning
In path 3 you just dodge the same red circles as path 2 but have the conal attack instead of the fire AoE.

Alpha is basically like Kholer, dodge one very obvious attack and everything else is easy. Just count 1-1thousand, 2-1thousand, then dodge.

Defrost.1679:

1. They DID give us a new, free, bank tab for rare materials.
2. They DID add Laurels as a new currency, without using Tokens.
3. Do we have stacks of gold or karma? Do we have stacks of weapon mastery points (2,670/5,000 kills with an axe)? Nope.
4. Tokens are a non-trade-able, account-wide currency, equivalent to Karma/Laurels. Plain and simple.
5. The question (for Tokens) shouldn’t be about how big of a stack size vs required amount of computer storage space. The question should be, “Why do we have stacks for THIS type of non-trade-able currency?”
6. All that is needed is a new tab for the Hero Panel, showing a list of Tokens & amounts.

PLEASE don’t make Tokens a “Deposit-able Collectible”, that we are all seeing hinted at, when we right-click a Token. PLEASE just make a Tokens tab in the Hero Panel… showing all the various amounts we have.

This.

Dungeon tokens are pointless as a collectible, it takes like 4 runs to hit a 250 stack. They should transition them into the hero tab like laurels.

I currently have 2 bank tabs dedicated to tokens because I’m OCD and like having 1500 of each type on hand so I can always deck out any alt in a full set of a specific armor gear or buy a few weapons if that comes up. Be nice if I could free up those 2 tabs >_>

Writetyper.1985:

I think he just got mad that everyone bugs him 24/7 and started taking advantage of the fact he’s invsisible.

lol maybe, still waiting on a dev to see if it’s really intended or not.

Tinni.4351:

TRON.1085:

Say im lvl 25 fractals and I do a lvl 10 daily fractal.

Am I suppose to get relic rewards at lvl 25 rates or lvl 10 rates?

I ask because on top right corner of screen it says “fractal reward level 25” but when I do level 10 fractal im not getting lvl 25 rewards, im getting lvl 10 rewards.

Is it a bug or just poor choice of words on arena nets part?

I don’t see how im getting lvl 25 rewards, coz im not, even the drops seem to be nerfed on fractals and been made harder so take longer…

You get reward for the lower of the personal reward and fractal difficulty level. But I think there is some minor scaling if you are on an odd number. I.e. if I am level 25 but do level 26, I believe my Maw reward is scaled-up (not a 100%). But no, you will not be able to farm-up Fractal skins by farming level 10 after getting to Fractal 20+

I actually did this last night, my warrior was 25 and I was running with guildies on 26 daily. I ended up getting a (crap mariners compass) ring and it wasn’t infused, so I believe you still need 26 to get the guaranteed infused version.

khefka.2804:

I was confused about that also, did level 20 with reward level 19 and got a chest. I assume then I got the daily for the 10-19 tier? Confusing since I didn’t expect a chest as my personal reward level was an odd level. If I had done level 21 with reward level 19 I imagine I would not have gotten a chest?

Correct, you got tier 2 which is 10-19 chest.

If you did 21 then you wouldn’t fight Jade Maw so there would be no chance for you to get a daily since that only happens after you fight Jade Maw.

Rhoda.1654:

haviz.1340:

Rhoda.1654:

Meridius.6502:

Before any nerfs are done, I would like to see these bugs fixed. First, the sparks will often pass right through circles or sit inside a circle and not activate. And then you have the bug where she will stealth every 5-10 seconds. sparks are placed under 15 seconds usually. I’m not sure which groups can dps fast enough when she goes into stealth almost instantly. If these are not fixed then this fight is more about luck and dps than skill/coordination.

We were breaking even with 4 warriors and 1 mesmer (mesmer using tears). It took us 3 timewarps to finally take her down. The sparks seem to be ok now, it’s just the stealth timer that is unfair to non-DPS groups. Increase the timer as well as make Dwayna hurt some more because her threat is non-existent at the moment.

3 timewarps with 4 wars and 1 mesmer? Did you have tanks?

All of them were running with a DPS build, actually.

So groups with less dps kill it way faster, sounds like they weren’t really DPS builds or your group was utterly terrible at pulling sparks or let it heal more then you could DPS it during non-timewarp cycles which is pretty commendable because that’s hard to do with a 4 warrior/1 mesmer group in the first place.

Sounds like a l2p issue more then a boss issue at that point.

Ioflux.4369:

EADF feels incredibly uncomfy unless you meant ESDF.

Nope. EADF. E & D are forward and backwards, would be weird if they weren’t right on top of each other (like W & S in WASD setup).

Basically I move over everything by one key from WASD except the ‘A’ which is still my left strafe, WASD feels way too cramped for my fingers, EADF gives me a more natural resting position for my fingers while opening up that extra key for me to use on the left side.

Think of it like this, if I rest my hand on a table, I don’t put my fingers together so they are all touching, they are spread out slightly. When I use WASD my fingers are unnaturally close which for me personally feels uncomfortable, in EADF they are basically spaced like they would be if I was just resting my hand somewhere else. Just something that I’ve come accustomed to over the years, pretty much started when I first started playing PC games like 15 years ago. So if I were to take a pic of my hands on the keyboard, it would look alot more natural (for me personally I guess) using the EADF setup.

Patch notes bro:

Fractals of the Mists
– If players have a higher reward level than the current fractal difficulty, they will receive bonus karma at the end of a round. However, item rewards are set to the minimum of the fractal scale and reward level.

Do you know how broken that would be if you could get level 50 rewards by running a level 2 fractal which you can pretty much do in your sleep?

Skill clicking >.<

Could always combat mode mod it up, I couldn’t even imagine playing the game without it at this point. Been using it since September and if I had to play the ‘vanilla’ way at this point, I’d probably stop playing because of how clunky it is for a twitch based action mmo.

-Tab is used to toggle between locked camera which moves as you move your mouse and “vanilla” settings.
-‘C’ is closest target, and ‘V’ is next target (which is the default for tab).
-Attack 1 on left mouse click (which was especially useful before this patch when auto attack bugged dodges so I had to turn it off, way easier to keep clicking left mouse then a number key)
-Dodge on right mouse click
-Attacks 2-5 and heal skill are numbers 1-5
-Weapon swap on ‘Q’,
-Elite on ‘W’
-Movement on ‘EADF’ (habit from playing FPS for years with longer fingers, also gives you the ability to bind ‘Q’ and ‘W’ which can still be hit easily instead of just ‘Q’
-Other 3 utility skills are mouse wheel click, mouse wheel up, mouse wheel down
-‘F1’ skill is my forward mouse button (button 4)
-My push to talk for vent/mumble is my back mouse button (button 5).
-f2/f3/f4 skills are shift + mouse wheel up, down, and mouse wheel click respectively.

Not to mention I can constantly move around like an action game because I don’t have to hold down the stupid mouse the entire time to lock my camera. Also more fluid for me since I’m used to constantly strafing and moving all the time from playing twitch based FPS for years which lends itself well to this game.

So much more fluid for an action MMO overall, thank god for the CM creator. Easy to move, ‘twitch’, and dodge, while having access to all of your skills by never having to move your hand and allowing you to instantly use skills because you don’t waste unneeded time with extra movements. For example, I can instantly use all 3 of my utility skills and aegis for example in tenths of a second because I only need to move my index finger up/down or my thumb on the side button of my mouse, all while still having control over my movement, camera, and quick dodges.

I bet a ton of players would be alot better if they actually used a setup that allowed them quickly and easily use any skill with minimal finger movements and without losing control of their character’s movement.

I think they should do what they do with other exotics/rares to make them more valuable… allow them to be salvaged and MF’d.

That’s the whole reason salvage kits and the MF exists in the first place, so if they intend on adding another gear tier, then I think they should use the same things that bring value to rares and exotics in the first place, because right now, you are correct, once you get your rings, Ascended gear is more worthless then rares and harder to get.

It would be great if Salvaging them gave you a chance at getting back ectos and some vials/globs/shards instead of other crafting materials.

It would also be great if you could MF ascended jewelery to at least get a chance at something worthwhile instead of piling up useless things like Mariner’s Compass and the Rings of Light or whatever. Some of those rings have stats no one would ever want.

Some of my guildies and myself were wondering if Mossman is currently acting as intended.

Now I’m sure everyone knew it was easy to bug him pre-patch, and many people might not have fought him legit prior to this patch.

But from my numerous experiences before the 28th, when Mossman came out of stealth he would give you time to react to either dodge his Axe Throws or his Charge-up melee attack.

After the 28th patch, the two times I have fought him now, I’ve noticed alot of times you will get hit before you even see him come out of stealth, like he is charging his melee attack while stealthed and hitting you the same time he unstealths.

Was wondering if anyone else noticed this change and if the devs were aware of this and if it was acting as intended. Not sure if it was an un-intended bug like the Ice Elemental causing agony before you even had time to react or if it was an intentional change.

Bad: Almost every HotW boss, amen.

Main reason there are less adds on lfg is probably because it’s much easier to get friends to run with you now.

Before the patch, I had to fill out my groups with pugs on lfg because everyone had to be the same exact level, so I couldn’t bring the person on fotm 40 with my character on fotm 33 unless I wanted to waste their time.

Since the patch, I haven’t had to use LFG at all, because even though my alts were on fotm 11 and 23, I can now run them in guild groups doing 26/30 dailies and still advance in levels.

I’m sure many people are in the same position, now they can rely on friends and people in their guild instead of random PuGs.

Thread title should be how to make fractals better in 1 day and why I should make more friends and join guilds who are active.

Boyd.5438:

Strifey.7215:

Dungeons are easier now because they keep nerfing a bunch of stuff that people complain about, unless you mean “easier” because you could death zerg before.

There’s no way using gw2lfg takes 3 hours to find a group, even when I ran a story mode on an alt with 2 guildies and 2 pugs, it took like 5 min to fill out the 2 pug spots.

i had 2 guildies and a friend trying to fill one empty slot for 3 hours in lfg and LA shouts “TA”, had to 4 man all 3 paths at the end cuz its takin too long a wait. first and last pug dude went offline when he cant work with the worm boss. sub 1k achievement points.

so, idk what time of the day u play but when im up its like hell to get a group up and ready. i had to pretty much 4 man ta cm se a few times.

no way for you but yes way for me, i was sitting there waiting. 3 times i posted on gw2lfg lol. that was right after the patch.

and, dungeons were NEVER hard, its just because u didn’t understand howto. and most new players do not know how and why even after watching a youtube movie about it.

before the patch coe was doable, after the patch, they are still doable, problem is that nobody is willing to guide new players into coe or arah anymore. unless u got a very very cool headed friend or player to take you thru it. no wp = no way to see or experience the content. yes you can see it all, you can feel it all, but the dead person sleeps it all.

and with ur ps, it aint happening in 5 – 10 minutes if you solo lupi, its a repeating circle stability hold the line and retreat/save yourself / invul elite run for a guardian or dolyak siggy balanced and endure pain + signet of rage for a warrior.

meh how do you expect to guide guildies thru arah? you ALWAYS solo lupi half way down the road cuz everyone is dead via the bloody aoe.

even worse now since shield of avenger is nerfed, we cant even hold lupi off with his aoe right after invul to gurantee everyones survival. lol

oh yeah, im a cry baby, when ure all alone in the bloody game with ur “elite friends” and nobody else, that would be your perfect bubble and nobody is gonna burst it

Really, because Weth already put a solo video of Lupi after the 28th patch which is 8:30, sounds like that’s under 10 minutes.

Also our guardian never uses SoA on Lupi, it’s unreliable because it blinks in and out. You use wall of reflection until the grub is dead at the beginning of phase 2, then just use dodges/blocks like normal the rest of the time (or be like my guild and use feedback + timewarp to end phase 2 in 20 seconds >_>).

You think that I just fell into an “elite group” and just naturally woke up one morning and knew everything about dungeons?

No, what I did was started running dungeons on my 80 Necro 4 months ago before people even knew what classes, build, and gear were ideal for dungeons. Before everyone was in full exotics, and before everything started getting nerfed. I died a ton learning various paths and encounters and started realizing what classes and builds go good together. I continued to refine that, meeting new people who were good, adding them to my friends list, and using voice chat which anyone can do these days, even if you don’t have a mic you can still listen to one person in the group which makes things way easier.

Then we worked together and figured out how to do events, bosses, I started making guides, meeting even more people through PuGs, refining builds, and recruiting for an “elite” PvE focused guild over the next 3 months. I sat in Arah for 2 days (~12 hours) learning how to melee GL and what his tells were, I didn’t just run in there and magically melee him on my first try and laugh at how easy everything was. I died probably 100 times before I got everything down, what I didn’t do is whine on the forums that I couldn’t death zerg him because he’s too hard.

So don’t give me your sob story about how I’m in some magical “elitist” bubble that I don’t want popped, there is no bubble, and nothing will pop it. Because some people actually take time to learn things instead of whining that they want everything handed to them and dungeons should be as easy as mindlessly farming a DE event or dragon that you can have 100 people fighting. If you don’t want to take the time to learn you class or work together with 4 other people, there are plenty of other overworld bosses, DEs, and ways to farm your exotics for stats.

I started the same way alot of people did, not knowing anyone in beta, not knowing anything about the game. Some people actually value some sort of difficulty and working together and actually using their brain to accomplish something instead of whining to devs about things that are obviously not that hard as shown by the hundreds of guides and videos out there.

Dungeons are easier now because they keep nerfing a bunch of stuff that people complain about, unless you mean “easier” because you could death zerg before. In this recent patch, CoE became way easier, SE1 became easier, TA became easier, CoF 2/3 became easier. Don’t post a bunch of bs about things becoming harder, besides a few undertuned events in dungeons, everything has become easier since the first month (other then the old Magg event for CoF2). So please, tell me what is harder other then death zerging which good groups never used in the first place, guess you’ll have to actually learn to play your class now.

You’re right, everyone was a noob once, but not everyone complained that everything is too hard. The people who find dungeons easy and speed run them do it because they took the time to learn encounters, learn how classes interact with each other, and made friends and joined guilds who focused on dungeons. I’m not special and I don’t have better gear then anyone else, I just don’t whine about stuff that isn’t even hard because I don’t understand it. There is so much footage and guides out there now, like the ones I have, that the only people still complaining about dungeons being too hard are the ones that are too lazy to learn or even take advice from people showing how easy things are once you learn them.

If I had all the helpful materials around when I first started running dungeons (not to mention how easy it is to get exotics now compared to the first month, don’t give me that bs about it’s hard to get exotics now when you have tons of karma sources, easy farm paths like CoF1, Orrmaps and now 2 guest servers to make 5g an hour just from harvesting, etc.) it would have been even easier in the beginning.

People who ran dungeons in the early days did it before level 80, before having full exotics, before ascended gear even existed, before having a bunch of build guides to help them with good PvE builds, before people found out what consumables were good, etc. Don’t give me that cry baby story that somehow noobs now are worse off then before, guess that’s just the “casual” attitude of expecting everything to be given to them and thinking that because people are good at dungeons now, they were just automatically good at the start and didn’t need to figure out anything themselves. The only people who think this game is about “elitism” are the people too lazy to actually take the time to learn their class or that this is an action MMO that actually requires you to move and dodge and learn strategies and encounters instead of mashing buttons and creating a bunch of macros to chain heal and buff while you stand still.

Also there’s no way using gw2lfg takes 3 hours to find a group, even when I ran a story mode on an alt with 2 guildies and 2 pugs, it took like 5 min to fill out the 2 pug spots.

And as someone who WvW’d heavily the first month of release and was part of Titan Alliance, the reason I started focusing on dungeons and guides was because there is no progression in WvW, things became stale, and things like culling made it un-enjoyable. Many people I know that were hardcore about WvW and in strong T1 guilds like the TA ones got burnt out by WvW and moved to dungeons to go back to trying to speed run things like in GW1. There is something addicting about trying to run dungeons as fast as possible and figure out tricks and class combinations and how to melee bosses by learning their moves.

P.S. I’d love to see you solo Lupi if you think it’s so easy, killing him in 10 min. isn’t time consuming.

Yea I noticed that since that patch, wasn’t sure if it was bad luck or a nerf.

Only done 2 dailies per day also, so not like I’m farming it or anything.

Grats to the OP on the solo.

Sarcasmic.6741:

Is it safe to say we can put the ‘lol guardian scepter sucks’ response to rest yet?

Well done OP, I’ll have to show my guild leader later after work. He’ll surely want to try now.

But soloing something with scepter doesn’t mean it still doesn’t suck when melee weapons not only cleave, but do more dps in general. That’s like saying just because you can solo ‘x’ mob with every weapon a class has, they are all equal.

haviz.1340:

Strifey.7215:

I agree it’s a dps check, but I’ve personally run this path multiple times without ever failing, and there’s a dude in my guild whose trying to get the bloodstone shard recipe and has done this path over 20+ times, even with pugs and un-optimal classes.

It’s not as crazy a min-max as you say, I mean I did this before ascended gear was even out and in a half pug group with a terrible ele, but yes you still want everyone in dps gear to make it easy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akoLjsITrk0

This is the method we use, there’s a skip to Simin at the start, I’ve never needed to go past a 2nd spark pull, even in this video we had a bad spark pull at 50% because one leashed, and we still got it, so there’s plenty of room for error. Not to mention this was before the 28th patch so I imagine it’s even faster to spark run now.

Also everyone should have stability so you don’t waste time with petrify and tears unless you run out of stability.

Since 28th patch sparks shouldn’t even leash like in your case.

Few runs back, we did it with 1 warrior, 1 thief, 1 guardian and 2 necros. One necro had blue/green gear and it didn’t take us more than 10 minutes including preparations of tears and explaining the enoucnter. If you still think you need tons of preparations and unimaginable dps you simply need to step up your game and use that thing between your ears that’s supposed to do something.

Yea I figured the 28th patch would fix that which would give even more leeway to groups who aren’t maximized for dps.

Kurr.4179:

Strifey.7215:

Kurr.4179:

I understand all this strategy stuff, and we did most of that (foods, etc).

I just want people to understand that this is the ONLY boss fight in any dungeon path that requires anywhere near this level of preparation, and that you can still completely fail despite preparing intensely.

I just think it needs to be consistent with the rest of dungeons. It’s OK for one fight to be more challenging than others, but this is not challenging. It’s just tedious, hitting you head against a wall for hours in the hope that it works.

You absolutely cannot do this dungeon path without a premade group that knows what they are doing. If you manage it, you are lucky IMO.

And who says every dungeon has to be equal?

Other then DM title, there is nothing unique about Path 4 if you just want skins/exotics, which you can get by running other Paths.

Almost every dungeon has one path that is harder then the other 2, it gives people a way to still get tokens while allowing more organized groups to experience more of a challenge to complete the achievement.

DM title isn’t a necessity and you aren’t entitled to it.

I don’t think it’s coincidence that Arah is the hardest dungeon, Arah is the only dungeon with 4 paths, and the 4th path is longer and requires more organization then other dungeons and Arah paths. It’s basically the “bonus” dungeon to challenge people for DM title as far as I’m concerned.

Every game would be really boring if every single dungeon/boss was the same difficulty and you never had different challenges.

I don’t think you really understand.

We did have preparation. We did have a pre-made team. We were organized. We did have good gear.

It’s not that this boss fight is 1 step harder then the rest. It’s 10 steps harder.

The only way I can see us winning is with a perfect group, all gear with up to date ascended gear, all using the best food possible. Trying to assemble such a group is nearly impossible. The best you can legitimately ask for is a group with exotics/berserker that will listen, and you can send them food if need be.

I know the guy up there said he did it with someone with blue gear but I have no idea how someone is supposed to achieve that to be honest. Like the above person said, to even have A CHANCE, you need to trick the game with 4/5. That’s not good game design.

*edit : And I wouldn’t complain if this was a matter of skill, with hard to dodge attacks and such. But this is pure min-maxing and luck (like the above person said, sometimes she only stealths for like 10 seconds).

I agree it’s a dps check, but I’ve personally run this path multiple times without ever failing, and there’s a dude in my guild whose trying to get the bloodstone shard recipe and has done this path over 20+ times, even with pugs and un-optimal classes.

It’s not as crazy a min-max as you say, I mean I did this before ascended gear was even out and in a half pug group with a terrible ele, but yes you still want everyone in dps gear to make it easy.

This is the method we use, there’s a skip to Simin at the start, I’ve never needed to go past a 2nd spark pull, even in this video we had a bad spark pull at 50% because one leashed, and we still got it, so there’s plenty of room for error. Not to mention this was before the 28th patch so I imagine it’s even faster to spark run now.

Also everyone should have stability so you don’t waste time with petrify and tears unless you run out of stability.

Writetyper.1985:

Subject alpha is impossible to kill…? Maybe you should learn to dodge in something like AC before complaining on the forums with broken unreadable english. He’s as difficult as he was before, just you were relying on a crutch to pass in him instead of, you know, actually playing the game.

Well technically he’s easier since they lowered his health lol.

There is literally one mechanic to not die on alpha… stack melee and dodge 2 seconds after his rings appear. Everything else is minor damage that can be negated through proper boons, heals, and removing the burning condition.

It’s really not that hard.

Somewhere in the middle pretty much, not as brain-dead easy as AC or CoF, but not really hard or time consuming compared to some of the higher lvl dungeons.

HotW is my least favorite dungeon because literally almost every boss has way too much health and is extremely boring, with really only one attack.

I hope the analysis of this dungeon as they look at bosses will result in decreased health and more interesting attacks that don’t make you shut off your brain…

Oh and for the love of god decrease the health of the underwater bosses especially, if most classes do like half the dps that they do on land, underwater bosses shouldn’t have the same amount of health..

Kurr.4179:

I understand all this strategy stuff, and we did most of that (foods, etc).

I just want people to understand that this is the ONLY boss fight in any dungeon path that requires anywhere near this level of preparation, and that you can still completely fail despite preparing intensely.

I just think it needs to be consistent with the rest of dungeons. It’s OK for one fight to be more challenging than others, but this is not challenging. It’s just tedious, hitting you head against a wall for hours in the hope that it works.

You absolutely cannot do this dungeon path without a premade group that knows what they are doing. If you manage it, you are lucky IMO.

And who says every dungeon has to be equal?

Other then DM title, there is nothing unique about Path 4 if you just want skins/exotics, which you can get by running other Paths.

Almost every dungeon has one path that is harder then the other 2, it gives people a way to still get tokens while allowing more organized groups to experience more of a challenge to complete the achievement.

DM title isn’t a necessity and you aren’t entitled to it.

I don’t think it’s coincidence that Arah is the hardest dungeon, Arah is the only dungeon with 4 paths, and the 4th path is longer and requires more organization then other dungeons and Arah paths. It’s basically the “bonus” dungeon to challenge people for DM title as far as I’m concerned.

Every game would be really boring if every single dungeon/boss was the same difficulty and you never had different challenges.

For all the people always asking why there aren’t guides for Arah. Yes they are “speed runs” and no I’m not going to make videos that show boring trash kills… ever… unless I’m forced to. But the tips and boss footage will still apply even if you are killing trash, and especially for Arah, there are quite a few tips to successfully run all the trash since it’s quite a bit harder then other dungeons.

Arah:
Path 1 (21:11): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZWfW9hOJeI
Path 2 (24:10): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5c7cLJ1IvA
Path 3 (18:39): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM4tWe9BM4w
Path 4 (42:22): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akoLjsITrk0

Now that I have guides for every path right before the patch… it’s time to re-do CoE all, CoF 2/3, and SE 1 based on the changes from yesterday.

Then I plan on re-doing all of my fractal videos at fotm 30 and removing all my old ones since they were done all in the first couple of weeks when fotm was released.

Eventually I want to re-do all my videos, especially the older ones from like November since myself, my builds, and the people I run with have all become better, but I’ll probably wait to do the rest as patches come out to re-balance bosses and paths in the next couple of months.

Also starting with Arah I started commentating after I record, so you won’t hear all the key and keyboard clicks anymore as I start to re-record videos.

That is all, thanks.

Troppo.1683:

Skipping it’s something I find not fun. That’s my opinion, and I’m entitled to hope many others shares mine, that’s why I made this post.

Great, then don’t skip, no one cares if you don’t skip. How many threads do you see telling people to stop fighting mobs?

Apparently you care when everyone else skips though.

Guess what, I don’t find wasting my time and being slow by fighting pointless mobs fun either, so I skip. So don’t make a thread telling people how to play.

Devs have already said skipping is a valid playstyle and they don’t have plans to change it, you got your answer, stop whining.

Sages.3496:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Sages.3496:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Sages.3496:

Strifey.7215:

Sages.3496:

Strifey.7215:

Which means you actually have to dodge and work together which emphasizes teamwork.

You can do every single dungeon without dieing if you learn the encounters.

Other games don’t have rez rushing, how many raids or dungeons have you done where you beat bosses by endlessly dieing and rezing? Because I can’t think of any I’ve personally played.

Rez rushing is a crutch for bad players who don’t actually know how to play.

witch helps them learn the strats cause they will learn over time what to do. having to repair armor was bad enough but now this… not being able to get back into battle is bullkitten

It doesn’t help you learn strats, it gives you bad habits of not learning strats because you can run back in.

You learn strats by completing a fight from start to finish, even if you have to wipe while doing so.

You don’t learn strats by getting “multiple lives” and taking twice as long to kill things because you have to keep running back.

just admit this change is wrong

It’s not wrong, you’re just bad at playing the game apparently.

so now we are going to insults yeah that will get you anywhere. the changes were wrong this patch messed up more than it should have. just admit that what im saying is correct and move on

I was actually looking at your posts in the other thread you’ve posted in, you’ve not been able to provide any concrete evidence as to why the previous res rushing tactic was legit and didn’t need removing, you’ve also resorted to calling everyone who disagrees with you a “fail” and an “Elitist”, effectively insulting them, and then you assume that by me saying you’re bad at the game, is also an insult, it may be an insult, but it’s also apparently true.

If you can only clear a dungeon by Res-Rushing, then you suck, and greatly need to improve, i’ve done many dungeons without having anyone wipe once, BEFORE the change. So it’s easily possible, because a lot of these were done with pugs, you’re either on a terrible server, or you yourself are a terrible player, sorry, but that’s the truth, now as you seem to say every single time you post a comment. “You know i’m correct so just agree with me and move on.”

the changes on this patch kitten more people off then just me

Based on all the threads I see you whining in, it looks like it’s primarily you.

We get it, you’re bad.

Sages.3496:

Strifey.7215:

Sages.3496:

Strifey.7215:

Which means you actually have to dodge and work together which emphasizes teamwork.

You can do every single dungeon without dieing if you learn the encounters.

Other games don’t have rez rushing, how many raids or dungeons have you done where you beat bosses by endlessly dieing and rezing? Because I can’t think of any I’ve personally played.

Rez rushing is a crutch for bad players who don’t actually know how to play.

witch helps them learn the strats cause they will learn over time what to do. having to repair armor was bad enough but now this… not being able to get back into battle is bullkitten

It doesn’t help you learn strats, it gives you bad habits of not learning strats because you can run back in.

You learn strats by completing a fight from start to finish, even if you have to wipe while doing so.

You don’t learn strats by getting “multiple lives” and taking twice as long to kill things because you have to keep running back.

just admit this change is wrong

lol why would I admit a good change is wrong, should have been in at release.

Everyone who thinks it’s a bad change is either terrible at this game or has never played any other action game or MMO in their life and thinks rez-rushing is a valid strategy because it was in this game for the first 4 months.

Sages.3496:

Strifey.7215:

Which means you actually have to dodge and work together which emphasizes teamwork.

You can do every single dungeon without dieing if you learn the encounters.

Other games don’t have rez rushing, how many raids or dungeons have you done where you beat bosses by endlessly dieing and rezing? Because I can’t think of any I’ve personally played.

Rez rushing is a crutch for bad players who don’t actually know how to play.

witch helps them learn the strats cause they will learn over time what to do. having to repair armor was bad enough but now this… not being able to get back into battle is bullkitten

It doesn’t help you learn strats, it gives you bad habits of not learning strats because you can run back in.

You learn strats by completing a fight from start to finish, even if you have to wipe while doing so.

You don’t learn strats by getting “multiple lives” and taking twice as long to kill things because you have to keep running back.

Whether it’s multiplayer or single player games, 99.9% of games don’t have “rez-rushing”. It’s the dumbest mechanic ever and should have never been in the game in the first place.

How many single player action or rpg games do you play where you get a game-over and can rush back in to a boss at the same health when you died (besides arcade games I guess so they can take your money)? That doesn’t help you learn anything or create anything challenging, which is why no game does it.

Yea there’s a few places where you take damage while dead which doesn’t really go well with the new system.

CoE laser room, lava, shaman fractal, etc. Luckily you can relog and re-join the dungeon (especially fractals now) to fix it, but it’s an annoying work around that should be fixed by not allowing you to take any damage when you are fully dead.

Specific path and mob?

I did a CoF 1-1-1-2 money run and a CoE all 3 paths money run last night and it was exactly the same.

Which means you actually have to dodge and work together which emphasizes teamwork.

You can do every single dungeon without dieing if you learn the encounters.

Other games don’t have rez rushing, how many raids or dungeons have you done where you beat bosses by endlessly dieing and rezing? Because I can’t think of any I’ve personally played.

Rez rushing is a crutch for bad players who don’t actually know how to play.

Good job on removing zerging, was a dumb mechanic.

I didn’t notice it in the patch notes, but did Alpha/GL not targeting pets/illusions not make it into this patch?

Also do you have any idea when the auto attack causing “fumble dodges” fix will make it in, that’s the number one worst bug in the game imho and I really want to turn my auto attack back on.