Guild Wars 2

sMihaly.1492:

What i hate is that ppl decide that x class is not meta, so i’m useless, whatever build i run.
(…)
I won’t ever join to LFGs which’s requirements i do not fit. But i’m quite sad when they ask for a 3rd warrior, or a guardian while they already have a thief and a mesmer. As if there was nothing else viable.

As it was mentioned above, people who post that are not the proper toxic zerk elitists, they are just… “pro wannabe” 2 years behind the meta. I would never kick anyone from dungeon just because what class he plays, I do it because how he plays it. And if someone joins with necro and is unable to switch to any other class because he doesn’t have any (thus not playing necro just for fun), it already rises some suspicion. The moment you see first CC on boss being wasted to fear him out of the stack, you probably already have cursor ready on the kick button.
While adding ranger or mesmer to the group might be far more beneficial than another warrior if you already have one, the odds of getting a tolerable warrior are much much better than any other class. 80% of PUG rangers camp longbow at point blank range, or even better… are completely out of the stack (also, absolutely forget about ever getting spotter or frost spirit). If you ask for another warrior, the group won’t be ideal, but at least it will be decent. I myself try not to make (stupid) class requirements and have faith in people joining, but the sad truth is if you are making LFG, you should keep the state of pugging in mind so that you get what you want. And this might explain why people keep asking for the same classes again and again.

I guess you might be right, but that applies for ~1% of the people. Lag doesn’t cause you to summon discipline banner on non-crittable bosses and it doesn’t make you unable to use waypoint. There is a difference between person, who “just has lag” and another dead weight which keeps spamming say and map chat with “plz help” “plz res” instead of using WP.
I used to enjoy world bosses and did them for fun, not caring about what other people do, but after you run through them a million times, you really start to notice minor things and try to do improvements. Pretty much what dungeons currently are. That’s why I like the idea of doing them with select few who won’t be weighing us down but actually contributing with their effort.

World bosses are lame indeed, yet average people seem to be failing hard at every encounter. Who cares about dodging or using blocks at Jormag? 95% of the zerg gets hit every time he uses his clearly telegraphed 5 seconds delayed attack. Inquest golem and Shatterer? Let’s cheeze it and range him from the noob hill, right?
I would reaaally like to see some challenging world bosses. But first, I would like to be able to fight them alone and prevent some random noobs from upscaling their health while they hug the floor constantly. 20 men is too much, I would say normal party size is max. And maybe some extra achievements/rewards/any encouragement for completing it solo.

I mean… what you suggest seems really nice in theory, but if I just imagine I had to rely on 19 random people to successfully complete it, I probably wouldn’t even bother trying.

Even in groups Rage Signet should be your #1 choice for elite. Since you will likely have signet mastery traited for the whole time and pugs don’t stack might to cap (and sometimes you don’t even see perma-fury), signet will provide much better DPS. I usually take banner only for harder encounters like high level Mai Trin, but if your groups fails to keep themselves alive, you are generally better off just letting them die (or taking better players in their place).
If you are in decent group though (2 eles who can stack might) and the fight doesn’t take more than 20 secs, elite doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.
I guess it’s all up to your own skill and playstyle, but in my experience the only person you can rely on when pugging, is you.

It’s all about time vs reward. Enemies are not skipped because people are pushing record times or because it’s challenging, they are skipped because they give no reward. Kholer, for example, is an optional boss you can skip without breaking the game. But since he drops a champ box, people usually fight him unless they are ACTUALLY aiming for record time.
As for the OP’s question, you can surely try fighting ALL the enemies in a dungeon, you will soon discover there is no point in doing so. I’d like to recommend you having look at Arah, enemies there were clearly meant to be skipped. If you wanna kill all the elites there, gg, see you next month.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve last seen shaman actually reach a villager, but I believe he does not recover 25% HP, but only around 10-15% (don’t take my word for it though). Also, if you prevent him from reaching a villager, he doesn’t recover HP at all.

Egg Shennn.6240:

I’m hopeful that the specialization system brings back a lot of the feel of customization that I miss so much from GW1, but if there is just a single specialization added per class to start it seems like too little.

A single specialization per class isn’t any choice, it’s a single path to try. I realize the plan is to add more specializations as they go but for a specialization system to feel like you have any choice (and they said in an interview that it’s to feel more like a second profession) that each class should have at least 2 specializations to choose from to start.

For me the thing most lacking in GW2 has been individuality and the specializations will bring some of that to the game – provided there are actual choices, not just 1 path. I don’t see a great deal of sense of launching the feature with only 1 choice available per class.

I agree that having more than 1 specialization would be great and I am reaaally looking forward to them adding more eventually, but one to start with is completely fine. What you might be forgetting is that – we are not sure, if choosing a specialization is gonna be a smart decision. Remember – it will not only unlock new abilities, but quite probably also lock out some old ones (which may be potentially good). Therefore instead of looking at it like specialization is a way to progress character and make him better in a single way, you should look at it like making a decision. Do I want to take on a specialization or stick to the core of the class, which is better for my playstyle? And once more of them are released, you will have more options to choose from. Do I want core class, specialization A or specialization B? Each one is gonna have unique perks and choosing any one of them is gonna make sense.

IndigoAneirin.1590:

Why do I have to do it?

One of many ways to look at it:
Why would anyone want to do map completion? Since the only thing you get from it (apart from “good” feeling) is gift of exploration, I suppose you want to craft a legendary. And THAT is supposed to be a truly legendary journey taking you all around the world and making you try out a little bit (actually a huge bit) of everything in the game. I have done the WvW exploration 9 times and it was a breeze. Maybe, instead of complaining, you should think of a way how to that most efficiently and you will be done sooner than you think, you might even enjoy it.
People, who complain about WvW being required for map completion generally fall into two categories. First are people, who are missing that one last kitten vista in enemy keep and they simply won’t get their desired color for several weeks. Oh how very unfortunate. Second group is people, who haven’t actually even been to WvW, they most likely didn’t press B for the entirety of their playtime but they still complain how it should not be mandatory. If you find yourself to be in the former group, I can only tell you – you should’ve thought of this much sooner. If you started WvW explo as soon as you could, you would be finished by now. If you are the latter, I’m telling you – go ahead and join the epic battle in WvW, it is crazy funny and is a reaally nice break from the monotony of open-world PvE.

@OP: Nothing wrong with you or with your class, it is rather an issue of casual people being unbelievably stupid. Warrior is cool to have in dungeons, but if I knew I could pick a GOOD engineer over a SECOND warrior in the group, I would definitely go for engi. No reason to go for more warriors or guardians, one of each is perfectly enough. Once you’re sure you can survive (especially important in high fractals), you wanna go for damage → eles, thieves, possibly even engies.
I have warrior as a main, it is great class and I always use it to tackle something new and unknown (because it has natural tankiness → slightly better tolerance to making mistakes). Warrior is versatile, great solo class, has invaluable offensive support, but I am already getting sick of seeing 4 warrs in one group and I would personaly NEVER EVER pick warr myself to bring in dungeon if I already see some warriors in the group (again, high fractals being somewhat exempt from this as I don’t feel as confident/possibly lacking AR).
If you’ve built your engi according to the current meta, you really should take your time and explain to the group why they should want you more than another kittened warr. If they understand, maybe we can see better future and more open-minded PUGs, if they won’t listen to you, leave them, it will most likely be a bunch of utter noobs you don’t wanna run with anyway.

Good groups in PvE (dungeons) usually go for 2 eles, 1 thief, 1 war + utility class like guard or mesmer. Anything besides necro is fine, really.
In PvP, there is nothing like “strongest profession”. Everyone has great potential, it all comes down to your personal preference and skill. Good build is still important, though.

Darkness.9732:

yes guys but please stay on the topic We are talking about F skills. Don’ t you think warrior F skills are 10000 times stronger than ranger F skills?^ XD
Please don’ t lie and don t make me mad ah ah

What the kitten are you thinking? Do you even know what does “balance” mean? Yeah, let’s just take a single skill completely out of context of the whole class using it and compare it between classes, right? Nonsense. Yes, warrior skills have much better burst potential than rangers’ pets. But as it was mentioned above, there are many drawbacks to this, it is not nearly as simple as you make it sound.

Here, I can use stupid argumentation too: Ranger’s 2nd longbow skill is doing much more damage than warrior’s, it is so OP and imbalanced, nerf plz omg… GG

I actually have quite the opposite experience. I feel the fractal dailies have brought many experienced fractal players (who didn’t do them because the rewards used to suck) back. Of course, it still takes a few tries before you find a decent party, but atleast there now are some. There used to be none, especially at low levels.

It’s great to hear you wanna challenge yourselves by beating dungeons with 2 people. If I may suggest something, you shouldn’t limit youselves to just two classes, but rather make a pool of them to choose from. Sometimes a class is unable to solo a dungeon (or has a really hard time with it), while another class can cheese through without problem. Most common are warrior, guardian, thief, elementalist and mesmer (depending on the exact dungeon and path), but others are usually fine as well, if the style suits you better.
Best to begin with is probably AC, story mode and P3 are pretty easy with 2 people. P1 is possible as well, but you will need something like an ele ideally. P2 you might have trouble at some places. Low level fractals are usually fine as well, but some of them physically require more than 2 people. Depends on what you get.
Good luck to you!

Gaile Gray.6029:

I think it would be good to value both the journey and the rewards and not focus exclusively on the end result. The sub-80 you party with today, the sub-50 you teach the ropes, may become your new guildie or a valued fractal/dungeon partner in the future.

I take on board not everyone wants to go this route, but I think in the long run it can be quite rewarding in ways that are more valuable than gold and tokens.

This will actually never happen. I used to be a nice and calm guy, explaining every detail of the dungeon to newbies that joined me, I had a lot of patience and had to face many difficulties. The problem is… not only other people are not experienced, which is perfectly understandable, but they cannot and will not read. If I post in my party description I want this and that, it will take as much as 3-5 kicks before people actually meet my requirements.
And if I take my time to explain everything to the noobs I get, what do I get the next day? A party of completely different noobs and I have to explain everything again and deal with a serious headache again. This attitude of the so-called casuals led me to eventually become this angry toxic elitist. Is it really my fault, that when I ask for lvl 80 elementalist with 5k+ AP in the party description, I get a lvl 31 necromancer with 300AP?
Yes, AC is an introductory dungeon, pretty easy to complete solo or with 2-3 people. No matter who you get, you should be able to complete it. But I do not want to spend two extra hours EACH DAY doing dungeons, just because someone is unable to look up video guides/gw2dungeons and either wait until level 80 or join “everyone welcome” groups – oh, I forgot… “everyone welcome” pugs actually never complete dungeons, they ragequit after 10 wipes and then the noobs go leech “exp” groups to get smooth runs.
Because the odds of meeting someone you explained the dungeon to are next to zero, there is literally no point of helping anyone outside of your guild/friendlist. I know I am being a kitten, but seriously, there is no reason for me to lose my precious time.
If you introduce the title “legendary carrier of pugs” for completing 1000 dungeons after posting “everyone welcome” party description, well, I might go through this hell again.

IIRC, Anet themselves initially intended dungeons to be elite hardcore endgame content – not for everyone. After countless nerfs and complaining of casuals, dungeons became more or less a business of everybody. This is the very unfortunate nature of people – they don’t accept that something is beyond their skill. And because everyone wants everything, we now have to live with bad players among us, the dungeon community. Nonetheless… as I said – even though I look like an absolute kitten, I am just doing what this game incentivises me to.

Also, to get to the OP’s point: If the group description somehow implies they want lvl80 players (either mentioning specifically lvl 80 or something like exp/zerker/fullrun/whatever…), I tend to wait for switching until the person joins the dungeon. In other groups, though, I don’t have as much faith in the people, so I tend to leave immediately. Level 50 guy joining “everyone welcome” group is not likely to have another character, especially if he has 700 AP.

In terms of raw DPS, the classes would be thief>ranger>necro. I honesly wouldn’t recommend you going for necro, not only it has bad DPS and lack of offensive support, but you will have a really hard time getting into (good) pugs (given that they exist). Thief and ranger are both fine. Thief is generally more of a solo class, but it is very demanding and requiring you to have good awareness of the battlefield. If you bring thief into dungeons (again, talking only about decent groups), you are expected to know the paths very well and be able to use your skills when needed (stealth for skips, blinds and projectile blocks, shadowsteps at some places). Ranger is good and simple to play and it buffs party nicely. If you avoid common noob mistakes like using bear or signet-heavy build, you can also squish decent amount of damage from this class. I guess you cannot make mistake with ranger, but should first check out the meta builds and see if the style fits you. I personally still have a hard time getting used to the fact their most important (and most used) skill roots you.
As for the choice of class, I’m telling you, go for asura. At least for the ranger, that’s for sure. If you do solely PvE, class pretty much does not matter, maybe just having clear view in some tight areas in JPs. Asuras are nice for that, little collision box. And if you EVER decide to try out a bit of WvW, you will definitely appreciate choosing asura. They are very small, hard to spot and enemies won’t be able to tell if you are readying a dangerous attack. PLUS the combination of technobabble and moment of clarity is like the longest CC in the whole game. Trust me. I made the mistake of making my ranger a charr, now I wish it was asura. Other than this case though, the class does not matter.

Heh, pretty funny to see all the different reasons. Well, according to the principle of Occam’s razor, the most simple answer is… they just wanted to invite guildies and have them get fractal chest for free. I understand you are looking for some complex reasoning involving poor playing or not supporting party enough, the fact is though, people are kitten and often kick pugs to make space for guildies – it has nothing to do with how well you performed. Should they be punished and justice be served? Definitely yes. Will this actually happen? Let me think…
“Thank you for your feedback which we highly appreciate. We will be looking into this problem at some point in the future but we cannot make any concrete promises as of now.” – Anet

saxmachine.6024:

I was having a different experience last night with caudecous manor.

I put a party up saying please teach me this dungeon. A couple of times the lfg tool erased the post as it was ignored. I joined a party and said I don’t know this path but I have my mesmer reflects and they say no problem. We wipe on the rockets and everyone leaves. I then put up p3 all welcome and one person joins. After a while he changed p3 all welcome to just p3 and the party fills up. I say again that I don’t know this path and one person leaves. I eventually did all 3 paths but getting a group was hard work whilst avoiding the sellers.

I was initially encouraged by this post for doing dungeons I don’t know, but I must mix with different people.

Even though I usually advocate the “toxic elitism” here on the forums, this time I’m feeling the other way. I mean, you at least did the job to learn most important things about the dungeon, like presence of projectiles and built your character according to that. That alone is much much more than most casuals (including those joining “exp” parties) do.
If I may recommend you something, next time just join any party and do the dungeon with them. CM can be a bit messy at times, but you should be fine following the rest of the group and helping them killing things. Eventually you get to learn where specifically can your class be helpful (e.g. where to pop up time warp, mass invis or portal,…) but for now doing damage and reflecting should be just fine – as I said, still better than most people do nowadays.

Short version:
Greatsword, everything zerker, traits 6/6/0/0/2 or 6/5/0/0/3.
Long version:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/DPS-guide-for-PvE-Dungeons-Soloing-More

If you used to know warrior in PvE very well, let me just tell you not much has changed. Adrenaline change is gonna strike you immediately, other stuff is very similar. Otherwise, Miku’s guide covers pretty much everything you need to know about warrior.

Absolutely no need. When I was doing dungeon paths for the first time, I remembered exactly which ones I did. Even though they tend to share some bosses and general looks, it’s pretty easy to tell which one is which. If you can’t remember them, you probably did something wrong.
Anyway, it shouldn’t be too much of a trouble to just go over all of them again to be sure. Most paths are quick and easy (if you prepare well enough) and those, which take more time and are generally troubling for pugs, you will sure remember doing (Arah 4, Aetherpath).
I mean… you have good intentions, but not having detailed achievement section for dungeons is what currently troubles us the least.

Selling services has always been a part of the game, it’s natural. Some people cannot or don’t want to do some stuff, this leads to buying dungeon paths, mesmer portals or map overflows. In the case of dungeon path selling, Anet explicitly said they don’t mind it and that it is in perfect agreement with the game rules (even tough they highly discourage it by removing instance owner).
As it was mentioned, many mesmers give portals for free. If you help for free as well, that’s great. People can choose whether they want to do the jumping themselves, search for someone giving it away or buy it. Their choice.
Btw… I personally did the same trick as you, but the portal gun didn’t work for me, so I used experimental gun. It doesn’t make you land directly on the ledge, but it will get you close enough to interact with the coin. So if you have trouble with the method mentioned above, you might wanna check out this one.

Last few patches made me think we won’t be getting any more cool and difficult jumping puzzles/achievs. Thank god I was proven wrong. Amazing job Anet, thank you for that. JP on its own is rather relaxing and not so challenging but it’s cool. The badges were frustrating sometimes, but the feeling after getting them was worth it. I simply love the jumping aspect of both of the newly added maps, I hope to see more again in the future.

Traveller.7496:

Is it me or are these story achievements getting harder ever since the adding of luminescent armor? (for which you need the achievement item – else you gotta buy it) Harder, and little room for error else you have to do the whole thing over again.

I agree the VERY LAST episode may have been a bit more tough, but the two before it were a piece of cake. Just remember how difficult some of the achievements in “Entanglement” were, probably about as much as the new ones.
As someone was pointing out in a different topic, being hard to accomplish is kinda the definition of achievement. Little room for error and having to restart the whole thing is completely intentional.

Let me actually look at this problem from a different perspective.
I’ve seen plenty of players in this game, they varied by skill, preparation, knowledge and other stuff. NPC AI in this game is not terrible, but it could undoubtedly use some tweaking. I have noticed, however, that there are (actually lots of) players, who behave really similarly to these NPCs. No idea what to do, randomly running around and getting downed as soon as the first AoE lands.
Do we really need to do something about illusions, pets and minions? I say that in this game there are players, who are often outsmarted by these NPCs. The real issue is with players like Miku, who get weighed down by this AI.
Maybe the strength of AI should scale with player’s skill level so that we get companions who are about as skilled and smart as we are. Otherwise there would be always a group of people getting unfair (dis-)advantage. Impossible to implement, I know, but still nice to think of.

Narkodx.1472:

Night/Force do NOT stack – no controversy

I think you may have misunderstood the OP’s question. We’re not talking about whether minor, major and superior versions of the same sigil stack (which they obviously don’t), but rather whether force + night stack together to a total of +15% dmg, which they do.

As for the other OP’s question, standard meta, as it was mentioned, usually involves sigil of force and a +10% dmg sigil to whatever you find yourself doing most of the time. I personally would never go with accuracy on warrior as it’s pretty hard to go under 100% crit chance in PvE. I like fire and air as well, it adds nicely to your overall DPS. And, of course, if you have enough confidence in your skills, you can go for stat stacking sigils (e.g. bloodlust), it’s worth it if you manage not to get downed too often.

Yeah, I guess it’s just that people are so used to the old systems, that they won’t understand how much the patches shuffled the cards. Or they lack the skill to properly play some classes, so they just go for cheesy warrior (which is my case a bit as well). It’s no use telling them or trying to improve their playstyle, they just won’t listen. (playhowiwant forever!)
Anyway, thanks a lot for your replies.

We’ve recently had an argument in the guild and I’d like to ask you guys with a lot of experience, evidence and DPS tables/data to help me with my problem.
I was complaining about random team I got when pugging (= 1 mesmer 4 warriors), because the DPS seemed pretty low. Many guildies were trying to say that “this is actually BEST DPS setup for dungeons, especially CoF”, which I think is nonsense.
When I do dungeons, one warrior is usually a must for his nice party-wide utilities (banners, FGJ when necessary, EA, PS,…) but after I get more than one war, I feel the DPS is going down rather than up. The question is about both – max personal DPS and being actually helpful by increasing group DPS. Everything is assuming optimal situation and max DPS meta build.
According to DPS tables I’ve seen (DnT is especially good in making these calculations), best DPS in the game is held by elementalists (which I can’t agree more) and then thieves and engies (and maybe guards) should also have more DPS than warrior.
Also, if we take into account party DPS, ranger + warrior should have better overall output than two warriors despite war’s damage being superior to that of ranger, because two different classes can stack more boons and modifiers than two people playing the same class.
So what’s right? What’s the class DPS ranking in optimal PvE situation? And is it better to go just straight for 5 war or 4 war + 1 random party or mix it up a bit more thoughtfully?
Thanks in advance. Links to up-to-date tables are also appreciated.

My opinion: This is not about encouraging players to stay in the map and actually do the events. The reward from them is good enough on its own (finally!) and we do not need any more of this so called encouragement. This is more about forcing players to do the events, because Anet apparently didn’t spend much time preparing the story instances and achievements for this chapter, so they decided to tell the players… “repeat the map ten or twenty more times, that should keep you busy for at least the time you expect from living story updates”.
As for me, I’d prefer one more story instance and a few challenging achievements tied to that rather than more mindless zerg grind. Time I spend in the game will be the same, it’s just I will have a lot more fun.

Remember, this game is not about grind. Now go and collect 2000 bandit crests, you may as well prepare 8000 more of them for future needs. I was very upset by that.
Definitely wrong choice on your side Anet, I am really hoping you will return to the old system with the next update(s).

Algreg.3629:

misterman.1530:

…

thing is, GW2 is so easy for the most part you don´t need any “hardcore” schedule to beat its usual content. And OP is clearly not encouraging any advice by just ranting incoherently. I know, sometimes some challenge in any game (or any situation in life) is surprisingly hard even for people reasonably competent. But then you can ask, “I have difficulties with X, here is what I tried, do you have any suggestions how to do better”. The game is too hard, boss cannot be beat, I am a poor casual player with 20 kids, I am quitting-rants aren´t helping anyone.

Pretty much this.
Every day I spend a bit of time on forums and I must say – EVERY time someone had difficulties with a specific part of the game and went on forums to say “I have trouble with this, any help welcome”, he got a lot of useful tips and in-depth explanation of the problem. But… if someone just comes to say “this kitten is sooo hard, plz nerf it or i’m quitting”, what can he possibly get for that?
I’ve seen many good points up above, just read them and learn from them. What people used to do before every other guy had access to the internet? It took a lot of time, but we managed to beat every challenge sooner or later. And NOW you can even access dulfy, wiki, youtube and many other helpful sources of information. That saves you a lot of time and frustration and you can get everything easily on the first go.
Oh and btw… I DO think this update was the easiest one of all season 2. Of course according to one’s playstyle and build the experience may differ, but I am pretty sure the OP didn’t do the previous chapters (or didn’t do them for achievs), otherwise we wouldn’t see this pointless whining.

Nosscheech.3592:

Is this new content only meant to be played by players in groups or solo players in all Ascended gear? I ask because I’m in all exotic medium gear and I get hit twice and sometimes just once by Mordremoth none boss creatures and die or is that because the damage output on the Mordremoth minons is beyond ridiculous…

I thought the same first, but soon I realised the problem was in me. You should learn to read, everything important is in the mob description. I know, one is not used to read it because open world content tends to be (extremely) trivial, but I guess it´s about time to pick up these good habits. For the wolves, description reads: “deadly when flanking”. And it is REALLY deadly. Now I pay more attention to positioning and I have no problem, so should you.

Jerus.4350:

Ohh don’t get me wrong deSade, I agree, just it’s frustrating when people who seem very capable stick too close to the generic meta and refuse to see past it. I’ve run into far too many decent->good players that get caught in this attempt to copy the best instead of using their brains to fit themselves to the situation. Just saying, learning the meta is step 1, step 2 is learning your profession and where you can adjust to better fit given situations, step 3 of course… profit

Everybody means something slightly different by using the word “META”. Me personally, I perceive it as a set of ideas one must learn and then, when situation calls for it, process them with his own brain. Hard for those who lack one, of course. So if someone is not switching utilities, traits and other variables according to the situation, I wouldn’t call it meta no matter how zerky his gear is or how tightly he’s stacking.
Unfortunately, this game offers unlimited supply of nobrainers and noobs, who will keep annoying you and wondering how the “berserker exploit” works, so the only way to deal with them is to find someone else. If you have just one noob in your group, kick. If there is 4 noobs, leave. Then roll the die via LFG again. You will get lucky once.

@OP: Not gonna talk about pros and cons (wait, there are basically just pros ^^) of getting full zerk gear or mixed assassin, there’s plenty of info about it out there. Just get it.
I am assuming your team is not having problem with the very first Alpha encounter for every path. There is very little mechanics to it and you only have to get his HP to a half. The problem can easily come up in the following fights. Since you’ve been in PTV so far, the fight prolongs enough for him to start summoning adds which heal him on contact. Also, as there’s no elementalist in your group, you have no way how to efficiently deal with them. My advice would be to get an ele and blast alpha with as many AoEs as possible. Glyph of Storms + Icebow 4 + LH 4 should do the trick.

Sins.4782:

How does ranger solo work at orbs in arah p3/4?

Many good tips were mentioned above, something else that comes to my mind could be perhaps Watchwork Portal Device. I’ve seen some arbitrary class (maybe not ranger specifically) orb solo runs using that. Of course this is not viable for regular solos (dat price! charged lodestone?!?), but it’s always good to know there’s technically at least the possibility.

There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s the people. I cannot believe how so many individuals can be so stupid and ignorant – majority of PUGs I’ve run with so far clearly prove it. People don’t even think, they just go on doing what they are used to and completely ignore any changes to the game.
Not only hatred for rangers persists, but also eles keep summoning FGS’s before every boss and previously superior tactics (even though now they are useless) are still being used. It’s like the patch never came out if you look at what people do, except that the results are significantly different.

I think this is an issue of that particular player’s mindset. Anyone who has some experience hopefully understands how dynamic a “build” is and that using specific utilities is not exactly a part of the build. That guy was unfortunately thinking skills are something static and what’s worse – he refused to learn and change his wrong attitude.
At that point, things come to YOUR mindset. Will you get over it and try to complete the dungeon with a bad person? Me personally, I would probably not hesitate to kick him out or (if the rest of the group wouldn’t be cooperative enough) leave the dungeon myself.
No matter the party requirements, when doing a lvl 50 fractal, there are simply things you expect automatically. I’ve run with terrible pugs many times, but most of the time, if I could get over it and explain the game to them, they at least were able to do what I told them. If someone is doing something completely wrong AND refuses to listen, he deserves nothing but kick.

As it was mentioned above, you would probably get to complete the dungeon later anyway, but I don’t see reason to go through this pain. There are plenty of experienced players out there (or at least players who can listen), so you don’t have to tolerate noobs getting on your nerves.

OP, are you claiming that dungeons being easy is an objective fact? I have no problem believing you and many others (including me) can complete dungeon without pulling much effort – but that’s just some individuals that others don’t care about. I can easily point you to many players who are unable to complete dungeons, not mentioning completing them with consistency. If they were easy to you from the very beginning (thus when you were not using optimal strategies), which I highly doubt, then I can say you are very skilled, but not many people are (apparently), which you simply have to deal with. I suggest you find another game that is perhaps focused on players with high skill level, not an MMO which is for…. you know… massive audience.

Also, does really content being easy prevent you from having fun somehow? Yes, I do like to test my abilities, but sometimes I play games just to relax and if something is not really challenging, it does not become automatically “unfun” to me.

While I agree that this game could use some content, which is not as repetitive and definitely more challenging (so it gets more rewarding for skilled players), I am pretty happy with the living story releases, possibly because I am not used to frequent major updates and content expansions in games I usually play. Again, if Liadri-like stuff is not enough for you, you should consider playing completely different game. Otherwise, the only thing you can probably get from this is showing you massive ego by making stupid threads of literally no value… just like you did.

If Anet wants to educate new players, they should rather explain them the benefits of using META strategies over their PHIW style. If new players (me, my freinds, basically everyone I know) ever struggled with anything, it was not basics of the combat system, but getting started in professional dungeon runs. Unless one is completely blind, they are gonna understand how to fight in no time (hovering over skills to display their effects), but finding a group and doing a smooth dungeon run is much more of an issue for newbs.

There is something horribly wrong about this whole thread. Now I feel I cannot tell anymore if we are speaking serious or just joking around. My first question: Is atleast A SINGLE POST in this thread serious? If yes, are we all talking about the same thing? CoF (aka Citadel of Flame), Path 1, the bridge part after you kill the Slave Driver and before the room where you kill Acolytes?
Are we talking about doing the actual bridge event or just skipping it? To be honest, I have never done the event, not a single PUG does it as far as I know. If we are speaking about the skip (JUST WALKING OVER THE BRIDGE), there must be something I am missing. There is simply no way how to fail to cross the bridge, no matter the conditions.
Unless there was something completely wrong going on, like the rest of your party was 10+ levels below the dungeon requirement (it is not possible to use LFG then, but you can still open the dungeon if you already have the party) or they were completely naked and tried to AFK at the bridge, I see no way to die there.
Until you provide me with some evidence, I refuse to accept it is possible to fail there.

I have seen people fail to skip AC P1 (before last boss). Arah skip fails are also pretty common. But this, I have never seen a single death there. And I’ve run with pretty terrible pugs. But come on – you can just facetank all the hits with fully offensive armor and autowalk over the bridge. No matter the skill level, fail should be not possible there unless you purposely aim for it.

Thankfully, our dear Anet was kind enough to let us solve it – if you are afraid of damage, just bring in full nomad’s gear and traits 0/0/6/6/2, CUZ DAT’S DA NEW META! ^^

To be honest, tough, I’ve never run into any trouble at the bridge, even with “casuals”.

In general, everytime you encounter a boss in the middle of a room. Fifth skill is a push and it happens pretty quickly. Of course, you can achieve similar effect with focus, but if you cannot use it for some reason, GS works nice. Examples: Subject Alpha (first encounter for every path), Slave Driver in CoF 1.
Also, if I recall correctly, second skill is unblockable. Not really a big deal, but might be useful sometimes.
Other than that, I will probably not help you much, I haven’t done the calculations or even rough DPS comparisons. But if you don’t need cleave (e.g. when just fighting bosses), GS shouldn’t be that bad.

With the introduction of new dungeon “ownership” system, a few problems are expected to be encountered. As it has been already mentioned by many players, it is now possible that players, who haven’t contributed to progress in the dungeon at all, to completely steal the instance and others’ effort to (for example) sell it.
I’d like to suggest a different system, which will hopefully help to fight this kind of griefing.

At the very moment first person enters a dungeon and instance gets created, all current members of his party are saved and locked as an “original party”. Of course it doesn’t have to be full party, even a single player is enough. Then, when someone is kicked out, the dungeon asks itself a question. Is atleast one person from the original party still in here? If not and no member of the party that originally entered the dungeon is still there, the instance gets destroyed.
This will protect the dungeons from being stolen and sold by people, who have not completed them (=been there from the beginning). There is still some danger for casual runs – if there are two griefers already from the beginning and kick others at the end, they will be able to sell it/give it to their friends. I see no solution to this unfortunately, just make sure you don’t open dungeon with people you don’t trust.

I don’t ask to be able to skip dialogues on the first go, I always read them and enjoy them most of the time, but I absolutely agree hearing them twice/more times should be entirely optional. I like the immersion we get from first run, but after I’m done and go for the achievements, this becomes pretty much an annoyance.

@OP:
I don’t really think so. The story so far has been perfectly believable to me. Do you feel you (we) are the center of everything? Maybe that’s because you don’t see all the stuff that is going on everywhere else in the meantime. We are seeing our story, but there are tons of other stories going on without us even thinking about it. Rytlock is maybe fighting for his life somewhere in the mists by now. There can be something really epic happening in the Dominion of Winds, but we don’t see it.
If those cool things and great accomplishments in the personal (and living) story happened to anyone else but you (maybe an NPC), would that be believable to you? Yes, for example, we became surprisingly quickly a high-ranking member of the pact, but Trahearne became its commander just as quickly.
If you look at things from just one, YOUR perspective, it might feel as you have a lot of power. In fact you don’t. Look around, there are more things than just you.

lordkrall.7241:

The problem with having a flat price for it would be inflation.

100g today is MUUUUCH easier to get than 100g at release.

So unless they actively changed the price based on the current value of gold (which is exactly how the TP works) it wouldn’t really work out that well.

I am no expert in the game economy, but NPC vendors selling precursors for fixed price (as suggested above) sounds like a huge gold sink to me, which could help maintaining the value of gold and fight the inflation.
Yes, I do agree inflation exists and has to be taken into account, I highly doubt, however, inflation changed the value of gold so much that precursor cost changed by many hundreds of gold within a few weeks. The OP definitely has a point, I see player action in that.
No matter what you say or what you think… what is happening to precursors in the game is very unnatural. Since I am no expert in economics, I cannot really suggest how to fix it, I am absolutely sure, though, a fix is necessary. If upsetting few rich TP barons is the only cost of accommodating much huger playerbase, then I am willing to pay that cost.

I see no reason to protect the so called “casuals” as some people here tend to do. I myself am not playing the game from the very beginning, I joined it way later after those “elitists” figued out best ways to deal with the game content.
Guess what? I decided not to be a fool who just ruins the game for those, who took their time to learn it, I instead visited the forums regularly to hear other people’s opinions, watched youtube guides for encouters I was planning to face and read many web pages like gw2dungeons. Now I can proudly say I am one of those evil elitists, who can play the game properly and expects others to do so. I hurt no one along the way, I practised everything alone many times and joined experienced players only after I was sure of myself.
Being a good, experienced player and being a non-experienced newbie is NOT a magically enclosed loop, that doesn’t allow you to move forward. It’s all about people’s approach. If you decide to take the road of selfishly ruining my game experience and expectancy of being carried just because I worked hard to learn the proper strategies, I am sorry, get the hell out of my group. Either learn the stuff first, or do it with people like you, who are new and want to figure it out for themselves.

OP: You have a HUUUUUGE +1 for this thread. Let the world know that we, the “elitists”, also have right to have fun in the game. And our way of having fun is simply doing dungeons quickly, not spending an hour fighting a single boss and then another hour explaining the encounter to “the casuals”. And then again. And again. Every single day. …

//Edit: Now that I have read a few more comments, I see that I may have been reacting to stuff that has already been sorted out. Anyway, take this only as an expression of my opinion and my experience with gw2 elitism. Peace.

@OP:
Despite what Anet makes new players think, those “specific roles” actually exist. If you really wish to, sure you can make a “tank”, who will be able to eat heavy hits at the cost of no DPS and very little healing. As it was mentioned before, classes with great potential for this role are warrior, guardian and necromancer. You can then further extend their tanking abilities by giving them Soldier’s, Sentinel’s or Nomad’s prefixed gear.
You should be aware, though, that building a character in this way will make it very undesirable to play with in PvE as most experienced players want to finish content as quickly as possible, which involves offensive strategies and usage of offensive gear (such as Berserker’s or Assassin’s). Once you reach the point, when you complete explorable modes of dungeons every day to make profit, you will definitely want to scrap your tanky gear and start focusing on playing offensively.
My honest advice is: do not get used to facetanking heavy hits and playing lazy. This kind of gear and play strategy is no good even for beginners. You should rather try to learn encounters and boss’ attack tells and dodge them properly. Otherwise, if you try to switch to proper gear later, you will be surprised how quickly you go down if you don’t do anything.

HiddenNick.7206:

Don’t get me wrong. I do like the story in this living story season… But I feel like that this season is even less group friendly then the season one.

All added instances are aimed for a single character. So there is absolutely no cooperation required what so ever. And there are instances like Concordia that should rather be designed for groups.

Or maybe add some group exploration/hard mode for instances with additional achievements?

Are you seriously asking for dependency on a bunch of fools to get some kind of reward in the LS? I cannot even express how happy I am with the new LS and the achievements and since the season 2, I have always done all of them (the first day they were around) unlike in season 1, where I simply had to resign to get some of them.
Let’s face the sad truth. Majority of players are mindless noobs, who do not know how things work and will weigh down the group in every single encounter. And if you take your time (even as long as an hour) to explain every detail in a noob-proof way, next time you attempt the challenge, similar bunch of guys shows up again…
I would be perfectly happy with content, that is repeatable and designed for a small group of players, just like dungeons. We could then face that with friends or guildies without the frustration of being dependant on PuGs, who don’t know what to do again.

My opinion is, achievements are truly achievements only as long as they are purely solo effort. Liadri (or whole queen’s gauntlet) is the best example so far. If there is any chance you can be carried by someone else to get the achievement, it is not a proof of your skills. Anet realised it and with the last few patches, they are putting in ACTUAL achievements rather than mindless zerg content.

Allandir.6289:

… I shouldn’t spent time on lvl’ing 5 others classes…

You said it. There is nothing in the game that would forbid you from creating a war/guard/ele and leveling it to 80. As long as all the players have the same conditions, no one is in unfair advantage/disadvantage and I see no problem.
Let’s be honest. Most of people who are getting kicked from parties are just noobs who refuse to listen or accept very simple facts. People who understand the game and can really play it well DO NOT have a single lvl 80 character on their account, they have many.
If you absolutely insist on doing dungeons with your engineer or necromancer, very well, do it, but far away from me. Seriously, there is something wrong with you.
People I like to do dungeons with have multiple classes and we compose the team to clear dungeon with maximum efficiency. It is not obligatory of course, everyone is doing it in his own way. You can spend hours in a single dungeon trying to do it with like-minded noobs, while I am already moving on to another one.
That is the difference between scrubs and actual players. Do not develop non-existent game rules for yourself in your head. Nothing limits you from playing the META and clearing everything fast.

Here is something to think about. Even if Arenanet decides to listen to you and completely rebalances the whole game (which would be an insane amount of effort), they nerf war,guard,ele,fgs,stacking,LoSing + whatever else you call cheating and exploiting, there are still gonna be efficient and inefficient ways how to deal with things. Just all of them will be different. Good players will adapt, you will return here and complain again about something different. And that will repeat. Unless you change your ways of thinking and stop being a scrub, the only one who will be harmed, are you.

I did it first time I tired, here is something that might work for you:
Doing it solo or with 2-3 people could be pretty difficult. Try to find a map where there are more people doing it. Since it happens in a small area (top of the rock), you usually get all the boons from others around.
Class is also an important choice. I find warrior and guardian to have easy time with this. Not only stability, but other skills as well.
Thing that saves you from falling off does not always have to be stability, evades/blocks work very well (for example warr – offhand sword or shield). Guard usually gives party-wide aegis, so ask a friend to bring him there and help you out.
DPS matters because the faster you kill him, the less you have to worry about not making any mistake. Burn him down quickly.
(Blinds should work as well making guard extremely helpful but I really don’t know how reliable they are in zerg setting. General advice is rely on your own skills and well-timed dodges.)

shadow.6174:

…

After what you said I DO honestly believe you managed everything, only might have taken you a bit more tries. I would say it is more of a question of persistency.
Anyway, if failure is predicated by factors I didn’t mention, like PC/connection problems, it affects other parts of gameplay equally as this living world content. Because of lag you might fail to dodge a lethal attack and get downed. I don’t see any reason why should be all the hatred aimed towards jumping (in my opinion, it is even more lag-forgiving than combat).
I do understand you and respect I shouldn’t toss everyone in the same basket, but I still got the feeling most complaints are coming from people, who have not learned to complete the content on their own and kept relying on others.

Lukyromero.6780:

Okay, people need their legendaries, were already being restricted by the amount of gold we have; this is a horrible idea, I’m pretty sure that it would just make most incoming tp flippers ragequit the game.

So what? I don’t remember last time a TP flipper helped me complete an event, skill challenge or ported me to end of a jumping puzzle. People, who would be affected by Wanze’s suggestion do literally NOTHNIG in the game and therefore there is no reason to try to keep them around.
People, who combine TP and normal gameplay will definitely be experiencing significantly more profit. Why not? They sure deserve it. Anet’s philosophy has always been “the wider amount of content you do, the faster you will achieve success” as it was proven to us by PvP reward boosts that have already come and that are probably arriving in the future.
You just have to understand that if you play the game normally and use the TP ocasionally, this change won’t affect you at all (you might be even better off) and if you do TP solely, there is no need for you being in the game at all. Go find yourself a market simulator and don’t poison our RPG.