Guild Wars 2

No there is no alternative for versatile infusion with stats. You can only take 6 WvW infusion for weapons and 4 out of 6 trinkets, then you will need 8 × 120 gold versatile infusion. Tbh 960 gold for 40 stats is a bit excessive if you ask me, but whatever float your boat. Just keep in mind that you can’t get +7AR +5stats so you won’t be able to use that gear in fractal except if you take like 5 x +16AR which is very expensive or you just gear up in AR for lower fractal.

softblackcarbon.1537:

(in this case meaning anything but immob)

Why anything but immob? Are you saying you can’t immob the Soul Spirits? Or you talking about a specific profession that don’t have immob.? Because you can totally immob a Soul Spirit.

Jayjaydee.3827:

thanks to all for the info. The more I think about it, I think it may be the eggs giving us a problem, because it always in the later phases and we arent 100% on NOT gettign egged yet.

If that’s the case then ya it’s problably the eggs. When Gorseval start his breakbar everybody (except those in charge of cc) should slowly move toward the 3rd or 4th updraft. They can’t dps the boss at that precise moment anyway, and they shouldn’t stay on the black goo anyway. So best they move toward the right updraft. The 3rd and 4th updraft have a very short window so any eggs or delay before people run to the wall can have drastic consequence. Gorseval might be too far from the wall and the dps will be less and spirit might be too far to get killed.

Wiki is wrong because that line was wrote before the condition patch and nobody took the time to go on everything there is on the wiki to update everything.

No need test it really. You are the only person I know that think this is working differently. Each stack of condition use the stack of the person that put them there. There is some special situation like Epidemic that use the Necro stats when they copy the condition of others or the venomshare which allow other players to apply condition which use the stats from the thief. But those are very specific example.

It’s just me or this was so freaking long and I still don’t get his point?

1) For the Spirits. Do you guys have problem for the first 2 updraft or for the 3rd and 4th? Because for the 3rd and 4th it’s maybe because of eggs. If someone get caught in the egg at the middle, you will have problem with spirits. Othwerise, a Chronomancer pull, good movement and a Viper necro epidemic are all great ways to take care of them. Spirits, pets, minions, phantasm. etc all can be a problem. Phantasm are something that people often don’t think off, but they can cause big problems.

2) For orbs. Ele should only put most of their laval front on orb and let those lava front do the big job. After 6 sec of lava front orb should be at 10-20% so they are easy to kill when you need to pass near theam. They should also prioritize. Between updraft 2 and 3, they should take care of all orb because overtime they might be too big. But when you are near updraft 3 and 4 they should only focus on the region in front of your updraft 3 and 4. Don,t mind if there is orb near updraft 1 and 2, you won’t go there anyway.

Use the breakbar and the split phase for ele to focus a bit more on orb. You don’t need as much dps in those phase than in the rest of the fight. Better take 10 more second in the split phase and clear orbs than to walk around orb for half the fight.

Weird. For my friends it’s boots. He have one for each of his 9 characters, but not as much of everything else.

Calloveri.8547:

Greyhound.2058:

Calloveri.8547:

GW2: Heart Of Thrones

I hope I live long enough to see this happen

Mortifer.2946:

not this again

What do you mean?

What do you mean? Has it come out yet or am i getting an expansion that is coming “In the near future” ? Tell me about it.

You wrote Heart of Thrones and it’s Heart of Torns.

Heart of Thrones would be nice with all the drama lol.

sirsquishy.8531:

Raids were supposed to be a challenge for players that felt the rest of the PVE mode was not enough. But now its turned into this uncontrollable ego power house.

And yes, I bought HoT so I can raid. Yes, Anet said they would be challenging. But the current form of raids are beyond anything that was promised and its tearing the community apart.

Something is going to have to change.

Disagree completely. I just don’t feel that stress, ego power house or tearing of the community. I think that raid are their core are pretty good right now. But there is some stuff that could help a lot on the periphery.

1) A raid section in the LFG, that work with the Squad system.

2) A raid lobby so that people can discuss and find squamates while building their squad. Ideally with a guild bank and vendor like with PvP lobby.

3) More ways to get ascended gear. Not easier ways, just different ways. Right now you better like pole dancing in Fractal or do some serious crafting if you want some ascended gear.

4) Limit the difference in price for some specific gear like Zealot or Viper which are very higher in price then zerker for exemple.

5) Balance patch to make more build good. Like more type of healer, and condi build. each profession should have at last 2 type of build that work well in raid.

That would help a lot of people to get their gear, and bring a lot of quality of life to pugging raid.

Calloveri.8547:

Does this game still have subscription fees? I thought this were turning to free-to-play?

Of course this game is worth buying for second time, but it’s so weird to see they didn’t take the typical approach every developer do instead we are forced to buy the same game again to get the new stuff that is added.

Or

Is Heart Of Thorns total overhaul of GW2 and does it overwrite everything of the game or is it just new map part + 1 new class and new skills? Id wish to know.

First of all. There was NEVER a subscription fee. never ever. From day one you buy the game and you play the full experience. You can buy gems to transform that into gold or to buy special items which are all about skins and quality of life and don,t give you any advantage over someone else.

Second. You don’t buy the core game twice. You buy the expansion at 50$ and that’s it. The free core game is because the core game IS now free to play.

If you don’t have the game. You can go download it right now and play it for free with some restriction. You can then buy the expansion for 50$ and unlock those restriction at the same time. Of you can just buy the expansion for 50$ and download the core game at the same time for free anyway. You can get 10 free account right now if you want.

About your last question. Yes and no. It mostly added elite specialisation, new content, new feature and a new professions. But it also changed stuff in the core game. Some of those are good, other are bad.

Tbh some of the stuff we used to have in the core game were removed from the core game and put behind the expansion. Mostly Guild stuff. Eliste spec are also very powerful and someone without the xpac is a bit disadvantaged. But at the same time, a lot of feature of the xpac are accessible from the core game now.

BloodyNine.7504:

I am looking forward to encounters in other wings not being straight DPS races and actually using the utility a Guardian can bring.

It will always be a dps race. Whatever they do, we will always want to finish it ASAP. With or without timers. The point here is to push enough mechanics that need support and to work with the strength of more profession. The strength of the guardian is reflection, condi removal, blocks and blind. Non of which are needed in the current raid.

The other thing they could do is to rebalance the current guardian to make him a viable healer option. Something like make AH heal allies too and maybe rebalance the guardian healing power ratio, which a very bad compare to Celestial Avatar or Elemental Bastion.

Calloveri.8547:

50$ for expansion + free copy of the core game? That is a quite pricy for expansion because the game itself was 50$+ + fees to play it online back in the day.

It never had fees to play online.

As for the price. There was a lot of discussion about that before the xpac was online. Obviously the way they handle it is weird since so many ppl have difficulty with the concept.

Still 50$ isn’t too overprice. At best maybe 40$, but at that point the difference in price isn’t bad at all. Especially if you look at how much time most people spend with the game. Unless you really hate the game, most people spent between 100 to 5000 hours on the game that cost them 100$ with the expansion. A very good ratio time vs cost if you ask me.

Danikat.8537:

I’d really like a set with Condition Damage (main), Power and Toughness for my ranger. But apparently that would be extremely over-powered, according to other people on the forum.

I don’t see how it could be OP. It’s basically Sinister while replacing precision for toughness. At least in PvE it wouldn’t be OP. I don’t know for PvP.

I don’t know if that’s something you want to talk at the same time, but I think that one of the main issue with stats combos are the unequal availability of certain.

- Some stats combos are just a LOT more costly than other. Zealot and Viper come to mind.

- Some stats are not available for everything. Zealot doesn’t have ascended trinkets, the new 4 stats combo only have 1 amulet and some random drop in raids, Magi doesn’t have amulet, back item or rings. Etc. I’m talking about ascended version here.

For new stats combos.

- Condition Damage, Expertise and Precision. Maybe OP for some build it would also screw me over since Viper already cost me so much, but it would still be nice.

- Healing Power, Power, Precision. For a version a bit more support of Zealot

- Condition Damage, Expertise, Healing Power or Condition Damage, Precision, Healing Power or Condition Damage, Healing Power, Expertise, Precision. Any of those could work for a Condition Damage Healer. Something that just doesn’t really exist in the game right now. And please don’t even mention Apothecary.

- Power, Toughness, Precision, Ferocity. Could be a nice addition for tank, but not sure.

- Toughness, Condition Damage, Expertise, Precision. The same thing but for condi tank. A better version of trailblazer. Hopefully this one we will be able to put it on our ascended gear day one

BloodyNine.7504:

One thing that a bunch of people in my guild had to work on was building a second character(if the didn’t already have it) to raid on. For myself, I main Guardian(DH). However in the first wing of the raid it is, frankly, sub par. With the exception of tanking on VG, which other classes can do just as well or better.

So I took all my Zerker ascended gear. Tossed it onto a P/S warrior and am raiding with that. Hopefully in future wings it wont just be a DPS race in every encounter and then the group utility that the Guardian brings will become vitally important.

So ya, it sucks but your Guardian isn’t cutting it for the first raid wing. Is it doable, sure. But if the option is to take a DH for DPS and a Burn Warrior. You are not going to get into the group.

Tbh honest. Guardian is good enough for VG and Sabetha. Not the most optimal, but I have no problem killing either of those two boss with 1-2 Guardian. That said, it would be nice to have future raid where Reflection, Aegis and blind are important.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IHVJao5j85KOp6lBTOgO8qs4VYD3Xty-jKPZo8o-Q4/pubhtml

Compare the current tab to the pre 23/10/2015 tab.

Ascended armor chest was 11.7% and now 11.6%
Ascended weapons chest was 4.2% and now 3.3%

Keep in mind that it’s way faster to do 3 level 51+ than to do a fractal 50 back then.

Nobody care that you are unlucky. That’s just that. You are unlucky. Too bad for you. The loot in fractal is about the same as it used to be and we get a lot more gold. True enough we used to have decent drop in fractal 30 and 20, while now drops are only good in fractal 51+. That’s another story.

As far as the encryption goes. You get 26 silver of PROFIT while buying your first 30 keys. The reward is very good while buying the keys so it’s good there. You should ALWAYS buy your first 30 keys per day. It’s free money.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IHVJao5j85KOp6lBTOgO8qs4VYD3Xty-jKPZo8o-Q4/pubhtml

Compare the current tab to the pre 23/10/2015 tab.

Ascended armor chest was 11.7% and now 11.6%
Ascended weapons chest was 4.2% and now 3.3%

Keep in mind that it’s way faster to do 3 level 51+ than to do a fractal 50 back then.

Nobody care that you are unlucky. That’s just that. You are unlucky. Too bad for you. The loot in fractal is about the same as it used to be and we get a lot more gold. True enough we used to have decent drop in fractal 30 and 20, while now drops are only good in fractal 51+. That’s another story.

Calloveri.8547:

So what does it mean really?

I bought Guild Wars 2
When it came out and i recently saw that there is expansion now, so i though i would come back for this game now and see what the expansion is about.

But my question is, how is it possible to upgrade without buying the core game a second time to to get the expansion? I cannot see any box for that option.

You just buy the expansion. They just decided to give the core game for free if you are buying the expansion without having the core game to attract new player. The expansion is 50$.

Faab.8049:

So wait, let me get this straight.
I can play whatever way I want, but can’t force others to play with me if they don’ t like it. Sounds reasonable, if others return that favor to me.
So let’s turn that around for a moment. Why is it OK for others to force me to play a certain way, if they dont like my way?

I’m sure you can understand the contradiction in your statement? Why would anyone else’s opinion or playstyle preference be more right?

Your statement actually underlines the whole problem with Raids from the start. It encourages elite group play, discourages participation, replaces ’ having fun’ with ‘preparing to have fun’ and in general removes the whole ‘fun’ part from the game once you get verbal abuse on it. Jolly…. Rewatch that Twitch link a few posts back, where they promised something that is simply not present.

Wait what? Who forced you to play a style you didn’t want? I’m sure people asked you to change your playstyle and you could simply respond no and move on no?

I raid everyweek. In fact I raid several times a week. Usually it take me 2 hours on monday and everything is finish. Still I keep raiding because I like to raid and help the rest of my group to do the raid each week. So far we still have a ton of fun. True we ask for people to work toward other profession so that they have 2-3 profession ready just in case. That way we always have a decent composition. But we never put pressure on new raiders to do so. We did raid with Thieves, Guardian, Zerker Necros, etc, etc. As long as we have a decent composition, there is always a place for 1-2 less meta build.

The problem with designing content that only 1% -5% can do is that the other 95%-99% payed for it.And on this planet that just dont work.People just dont/wont pay for other peoples entertainment.

And where that 1-5% number come from? So far in my guild of 450 people we have about 25 people that are hardcore in raids, about 40 which are part of one of our 2 regular raiding group and about 60 people we do raid in general. That’s more near 10-15% and this number continue to grow. Each week we make more and more guildmate join our raiding group and we teach them.

It’s also not like raid are the only thing in the expansion that exist. You paid for the expansion and part of that won’t necessarily be for you. If we all started to be like you what would be left in the game. Oh noboby do dungeon so lets get rid of them, too few people do raid so lets get rid of them, same with WvW, same with 80% of the old maps. Won’t be long because you only get PvP and 10 PvE maps left in the game.

https://youtu.be/Q7wwxZ3Gv0w?t=10m53s

Take a look at that build. That’s the Burnzerker which is near what you wanted to do and it’s one if not the highest dps of gw2 right now.

Caerbanog.3410:

It may be healthy to nerf a little the condi war and the health of Gorceval to allow more diversity.

I’m interested to know if some team did it without condi war.

Cheer.

They should nerf the condi war a bit, but not too much. Keep in mind that Gorseval have a HUGE hit box and don’t move much. The dps of a condi warrior isn’t as high for like 98% of the content. Still a 5-10% nerf would be nice.

As for gorseval nerf NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOO. You need practise. My team rarely kill Gorseval with a condi Warrior. We usually do 2 PS, 2 Herald, 1 Druid, 1 Tank Scrapper, 2 Elementalist, 1 Condi Reaper and 1 Chrono and it work very good.

The thing with gorseval is the dps downtime. People freak out about the dps at this boss and always blame the builds or the composition. But the vast majority of the time it’s because Gorseval knockdown and Spirit knockback which create a huge dps downtime. That’s the single most important aspect of the fight IMO. Don’t get hit by those two attack so you can keep dpsing.

Gorseval HP are just perfect if you ask me.

Zodryn.4216:

Thaddeus.4891:

Did you two guys just stopped at this sentence and didn’t continue to read? I talked about that more later and I still don’t see how you can do 15k dps without direct damage. If i include 4 other players getting the venom I reach near 8k, not 15k.

Look at the spreadsheet I linked. You are comparing optimal DPS of a condi engi or zerk DH vs some numbers you pulled from one video. I’ve hit 19k on a poison tic with no food or multiple other bonuses. I’ve seen pics of 30k poison tics from VS thieves.

I removed my last post, because 1) I just realized that I completely forgot about vulnerability and 2) I saw a mistake in my formula.

I going through your spreadsheet right now. So far you used 35 instead of 30 for the might (it’s been a year since they changed that) and Sigil of Corruption on swap weapon isn’t usable in raid, but it’s not a mistake.

I’m starting to see the potentiel tbh. But I’ll work on that during the week end to affine the result, but so far condi thieves are more impressive that I originally tough. But I’ll shut up for now and do my homework for real.

Wow that’s a lot of question. I won’t be answering all of them. A bunch are just good for the trash can. I know there are more for fun than anything, but your list is just too big man.

1) Yes, yes and yes.

3) That’s what I loved about WvW and that’s what I was expecting when they talked about GvG. Stronghold and pvp team as GvG? That’s just a lie. But 40 is way too big. In WvW we used to have between 10vs10 and 20vs20, with 15vs15 being the sweet spot imo.

4) Of course, who woudn’t.

6) Yes and no. You start to lose idea when you have 100 instability to create and it showed pre-hot. Also, Anet is hyper bad at creating instability. They choose random instability that you can’t counter and that’s just bad design. So I wouldn’t trust them to create 100 instability, they would just kitten it up I’m sure. But I would love more instability and that they would be more linked to their level since each level have a specific island now.

7and8) Ascended material is the answer for your number 7. You can craft each day for lost cost, or buy it now for a higher cost. So I prefer to keep the current system tbh. That said, there is just too few source of low tier material for the amount of ascended material they ask in legendary, exploding the cost of ascended materials and at the same time crafted legendary precursor.

9) NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

10) Not really. I mean, I’m not a fan of level tbh, but they serve a purpose by giving new cabability to new players in small dose and don’t overwhelm them with option. They also allow for scaling which is good to have easy enough content for new players, while giving a minimum difficulty for higher characters. That could have been done better with just 10-20 levels, but it’s too late. Remove level or diminish them at this moment would be a terrible idea.

12) NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

13) I have the same opinion than levels on that. Ascended should have been in the game since day one or never been there. But now it’s too late, and they would do more dmg by removing them. But it would be nice if they could balance the older content which is now kind of devluated by all the power creep and they should add way more options to get ascended gear. Not easier way, just different ways.

14) In the mystic forge like with ascended armor/weapons ya. Swappable like with legendary no.

15) Well the new borderlands are too big and the older smaller map were better. (not the only reason the new maps are bad, but it’s one of the complain) So ya.

16) Yes if done right, but really not important.

22) YOU MONSTER DON’T TALK LIKE THAT.

23) That would be nice, but at the same time hard to put in the game. Too many way you can kitten it up, I wouldn’t try it if I was a dev. Just a nice way to upset people for little gain.

24) meh.

25) meh. It’s just another method. I don’t see that as an improvement over our current system. Tomato, tomato.

26) Not sure I understand

28) A little quest before you can unlock it with HP. More story the better, but I doudt they would be of great quality tbh. It would need to be character (as in personality) growth and you can’t really do that with a MMO since characters have the personality the player want them to have. It would certainly clash too much with some people. If you can’t have a good character growth in there, then I don’t the purpose that would bring unless the story is just very good.

31) Equal, but with more level of difficulty in the achievements and more interesting challenge mote.

37) I like customization and collections so I would love it. But there is a lot of other things that I would prefer before that.

40) Add a system of queue to that and I would be so happy.

41) Yes. It’s a bit too easy now.

45) No way. But IF they fix all the things they broke with their expansions, I would be ok with another expansion. But I would be buying the smallest version possible because I still have the bad taste in my mouth.

46) It should have been in the game for a long time or at the strict minimum in the expansion.

Wait a sec. Venomshare don’t help his dps. He give more dps to the other. I hope you don’t count the dps of other getting his venom as his dps right? Yes venom share boost the dps of other and that count, but not as his dps. So the dps of the thief is the same whatever he have zero or 4 people with him.

Ok I got 2 Steal x 2 Stack x 20seconds = 80 second of poison or ya 40 per steal.

I also got 40sec per trap, 2 trap equal 40 second.

We got the same for auto-attack with 1 stack of 12 poison per sequence. He use 4 chain so it’s 48second total

Finally, yes it’s 1 stack of 4 second for dagger training. He do 294 hits so 98 × 4second = 392 second total.

For the Spider Venom. It give 1 stack of poison, 12 second duration with each attack and you have 6 attacks so it’s 6 × 1 × 12sec = 72second per spider. Against, you can’t count the dps of other that you boost. When we talk about the dps of the PS warrior we do count the dps of the 4 other have because of might, banner and EA? No they are seperate. The dps of thief is one thing and the dps support the thief have is another thing. He does 2 Spider Venom so 72second x 2 = 144 seconds total.

80+40+144+48+392 = 704 seconds of poison over 41seconds.

I can include the dps of the venom on 4 other people than the thief if you want. And Instead of 4763 dps of condition, it’s 7307 dps of conditions. What’s the big deal? You would still need to do 10k of direct damage dps to reach the level of a Zerker Dragonhunter.

EDIT : If I change the exotic viper trinkets on the build Dusk presented to ascended sinister and a rabid ascended back item and changing the on swap sigil to a 10% condi duration sigil. That bring the dps including the Venomshare on 4 other people to 7957 dps.

Ok here my approch. I looked at your video during the Red Guardian phase because that’s where you concentrate the most on dps. You never heal and dps as much as you can.

The fight start a 6:05 and finish at 5:36. It’s hard to seel with the low quality so feel free to tell me if I make a mistake. So the total fight last 41 seconds.

You did 1 Steal, but you could have done 2 so I’ll give you 2 steal. So here the list of attacks during that 41 seconds fight.

- 2 Steal, 2 Trap, 2 of each venom, 8 Lotus and 8 Dodge and 4 full auto-attack sequence. Again feel free to step in if I made a mistake. If anything I think that I gave you too much attacks, but it’s ok.

That give in total 294 hits (because several attack have 3 hits) so on average you should trigger Dagger training 98 times during that fight.

Total of 704 seconds of poison, 609 second of bleed and 146 second of Torment. In reality you have a lot of condition left on the bar when the guy is dead so not all those condition are actually part of your dps, some are wasted. But for simplicity stake let’s include all of that in your dps. Let’s not forget the 33% power to poison and a constant 10% to all condition damage because of your trait. Let’s also not forget the +5% condition damage from rune of Berserker because it doesn’t increase you condi dmg stat, but do increase your damage number. I’ll also take into account that the guardian move always so the torment do more damage. I also took into consideration +170 and +750 condi damage stats from banner and might.

That give us a total number of 195323 damage divided by 41 seconds for 4763 dps of condi. Tbh the swap sigil was useless there so you number could have been higher. But that’s pretty low don’t you think? I don’t really know what’s the engineer dps now, but from what I remember pre-hot it was around 21k with the perfect rotation. Now with viper but the nerf to food, it’s higher than that. But lets say that to be competitive it need to at least reach 18k dps like the Guardian can in theory. And let say that you could reach 5k condition damage with the right sigil. Do you think that your condi thief can do 13k of direct dps? And if he can, what does it say on condi thief if 75% of their damage come from direct damage?

I know that that kind of math can be wrong and feel free to tear that apart if you can. I would love to have 9 condi build that are around the 18-20k dps mark, one for each profession. But I doubt that it’s the case, at least for the thief it doesn’t seem so.

I didn’t do the math on direct damage, but it seem that a condi thief can do between 10 and 15k dps, which is very low for raid. It’s the same dps I have on my engineer when I tank in half rabid with no flamethrower or when I do the circle on my engineer at VG and can’t dps properly for 80% of the fight.

jacore.2583:

I only joined the game and couple of weeks ago, I assume the fractals leaderboards did not work out so well?

They announced fractal leaderboard 2 years ago and it was never in game. Worst, they reseted the fractal level of everybody to level 30 while saying, it’s to put everybody on the same level for the introduction of fractal leaderboard and that kittened off a lot of people because some where at level like 82 (there used to have a way to get there back then).

Tbh the idea of fractal leaderboard seemed super dump to me since the first time they talked about it. Their idea was to have a leaderboard about the profession, but you would just have a majority of player all at max level and the leaderboard would have no meaning.

Would be nice to bring a bit more competitivity in PvE and make it easier to compare performance. They could do a leaderboard of ‘’time remaining’’ on the timer when you killed it.

The problem would be how to attribute that to a squad? Will the leaderboard be individual and give the time to the 10 squad member? Because it would be way nicer to give 1 time for the squad, but squad doesn’t have an identity, how do you list that in a leaderboard. They would need to create a system similar to guild team for PvP league I suppose. And if they do that, 10 people could create several squad and get place in the leaderboard since it’s a one time thing. Not like PvP that if you are in several team, you will divide your point among them as you play and not reach as high in the leaderboard. You would need to be able to join only 1 squad team and when you are in another squad then it doesn’t count toward the leaderboard? But then this limit this to guild only. No pug however good they are could be in the leaderboard. Maybe that individual time would be best after all.

Weekly is a bit too much and would devaluate it I think. Maybe more a monthly. With a price for some of the best team. Ideally, not just the first few or it will probably always be the same people getting the only reward. Maybe the first 100 teams get something like 100 or 50 magnetite shards and the first 10 teams get something better. I don’t know.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Condition Thief is actually surprisingly good. It can easily reach condition Engineer level DPS, benefits from Alacrity a lot (venoms are a pure DPS gain whenever cast), spends 80% of its time evading, and can single-handedly deal 75% damage to VG’s breakbar allowing you to keep other classes like Herald in their primary DPS sets. It’s no condition Warrior, that’s for sure, but having one in the raid group is actually really nice.

Ok I have BIG BIG BIG doubt about that tbh. I just can’t see how. The only venom that give condition dps give torment and poison, not that impressive tbh. Yes the thief have access to a good amount of bleed, but I don’t I just can’t see a thief reach the level of a ranger or guardian let alone a condi engineer.

Do you have videos or at least a build to present?

People already answered your specific question so I’ll just give you advice how to improve your AR.

- Infuse and attune your ring for more AR slot. You can do it in any order you want. Attuning need Fractal Mastery, while Infusing need some ascended material that you get from higher fractal so Attuning might be easier first for you. You can buy a AR remover in fractal so you can remove your infusion from your ring, attune it, add AR back in it and later remove them again to infuse it. So you don’t lose your AR.

- Back Item. You can craft relatively cheaper an exotic back item with 1 AR slot. That’s the only exotic item that can do that as far as I know. They are relatively cheap and each crafting profession can do it. It just temporary because on the long run you want Ascended infused back item (only ring can be attuned and infused and only Back item can be infused). Mawdrey is the cheapest ascended back item in the game to my knowledge, especially for infused (most other back item need 250 ectos to infuse, but not mawdrey). The problem is that it can one month while you daily craft some item.

- With fractal mastery you can exchange your +5 Versatile AR to a +7 versatile AR. That,s for the first AR slot of each piece. When you Infuse or Attune then those slot use those +1 you get and that you can craft to get higher AR.

- You can buy an amulet in WvW for 20 Laurels instead of 30.

- Accessories can be bought at a cheaper price with Commendation that you get by doing guild missions. So find a nice little guild that fit your needs.

- The ideal composition to get to 150 AR the max is +7 AR on your armor and weapons and 94 AR from your trinkets. A +7 on each trinkets then on you 5 additional AR slot (2 on each rings and 1 on Back Item) you want 3x +10 and 2x +11.

- You can drop ascended weapons and armor from pretty much any daily fractal, but the chance is only good at level 50+. The daily 56/67/77 are in farm mode on the LFG and you need 109 AR for that. Like I said, fully upgraded trinkets get you 94 AR so you could only have a two handed weapons and 1 piece or armor ascended to reach 115 AR and do the daily 56/67/77 to drop ascended chest. It could be long because on average you will receive one chest per weeks if you do it each day. But it would be the cheapest way to get your ascended on the long run.

- Buy 30 keys each days in fractal. At that lowest price, it’s profitable to even buy encryption and open them so always buy your daily key and buy encryption if you can’t get 30 encryptions per day from fractal. That will give you free gold each day and will give you enough +1 to craft the +10 and +11 you need.

Probably Flame Legion rune with Sigil of Force/Air. That would be the best choice for a guardian after Scholar.

1) Inspiration Marionnette. Your group attack one or two lanes and then you need to fight maybe 5 mini bosses on a timer. That way, you need a group that work well together as a team of 5 or 10, but that is also able to work in team of 2-3. With all 5 mini boss really different from one another.

2) A boss that manipulate the arena around him. He can add trap, make the ground move under you and you need to move constantly during the fight to stay alive.

3) Insipiration Prime Hologram. Several AoE accross the arena with different color. You need to get hit by the right color AoE to be able to dps the boss. The difficulty would be to get hit by the right color and then don’t get hit by another color or you won’t have enough dps. The boss should change color over the fight so you need to adapt over time. Optionally, you could maybe get stack of the right color so you don’t just get hit by the right color once and then evade all AoE until the boss change color. You would need to get hit by the right color as much as possible to do as much dps as possible. You could also give a degen stronger the more stack you have so you have to deal with that. Getting hit by the wrong color could remove one stack or maybe all stack to be more punishing.

Additionally, I would love mechanics that push us to use a lot of the tools we have in game. Those would not be the main mechanics, but just added mechanics to give more difficulty to a boss.

- For exemple, a boss that give a lot of condition so you need to use resistance and condi removal a lot.
- A boss that get like all boons or a good amount of boons on a regular basis. The goal here would be to bring enough boons rip/corrupt to keep him boons less or he would be just too powerful.
- A boss that summon like a lot of small minions at a regular pace that need you to bring like a burst of blinds, aegis, protection, to stay alive long enough to kill them.
- A boss that a very high critical damage. You need to maintain perma weakness on him. Ideally, it should be not one boss, but maybe 3-4 mini boss because keeping perma weakness on 1 boss is too easy with 10 people.
- A boss that just does way too much damage in melee. Your team need to kite him, but he’s too fast for you and can’t be tanked. He doesn’t have a break bar and you can cc him constantly so that’s the goal here. Soft cc the hell out of him to keep him far from your team and maybe a burst of hard cc so you can go in melee. Ideally, the boss wouldn’t be the only source of damage because you don’t want to perma cc him and have an easy fight. But the difficulty would be to rotate your cc as a team to keep him from destroying your team in a couple of shots.
- A boss with projectile so you need to bring projectile defence. Maybe the boss with the arena traps. Like turret that shot at your projectile. The best would be that they attack from all side so you need to protect you. You could either use projectile reflect to kill the turret back quickly, or bring projectile destroys skills and kill turret from range slowly. The reason here is that projectile reflect are usually harder to maintain 360 degre around a team for a long period. See WoR and Feedback vs SoA, Field of Mist and Solace.

Vayne.8563:

Funny I run fractals all the time, and I have very rarely seen people not bother with singularities. Why wouldn’t you? It’s like a get out of jail free card.

It’s not a fun mechanics. That doesn’t bring anything to the fractal experience. It fill like a filler because they didn’t have any good idea.

Faab.8049:

The attitude the OP describes is exactly why I stopped bothering with Raids. The proffesion/role requirement is so strict and demanding, that there is no more fun in going there.
And of course the twitch link is hilarious. Promising something that would be awesome, delivering the exact opposite.

There is plenty of challenging content in HoT that can go wrong (Tarir south, Garenth) because of poor communication or understading of the mechanic. It does not however completely invalidates or excludes a large amount of players, never able to do the content because of a player generated (and Anet created) skill wall.

I disagree. We killed the first two bosses with different compo (Sabetha we only killed her 2-3 times yets, so we didn’t had a chance to try different comps for now). We have no problem with diversity when it come to composition for raid.

Of course, there is some serious balance that need to be done to make things better, but you can’t base your assumptions from pugs. They used to ask heavy only or a number of AP as requirement in dungeon.

Vayne.8563:

Actually I consider this mastery point a success, not a failure. The idea was the give people masteries they needed, so they could gradually aquire the other ones without having to worry about grinding. Imagine the outcry if the last mastery in the line was gliding instead of the first.

There are reasons for certain design decisions. In my mind, this was well done.

I disagree. First nobody talk about putting gliding at the end, this is just nonsense. The whole Glinding line was just rightly done and my guess is that this is what started their idea of mastery line. This was the first one done, and it’s by far the best. It doesn’t take long before you get your Glider which allow you to do most of the new stuff, but over time you upgrade it, allowing you to access some more advanced place and the last few line are basically quality of life with I think just 3-4 PoI and HP blocked by line-ley glinding. That’s just perfect, over time you gain tool to advance and you use them as a mechanics and that’s the big difference. The mushroom are also something nice. You get boucing shroom early and it open big door for the expansion, but then you gain quality of life with speed and adrenal, which are nice. They are mechanics.

Same with auto loot, mentor tag, Forsaken Thickets, Nuhoch Wallows. They add something to your experience. They add mechanics.

But other masteries?

Some are just plane gating. You unlock them, remove a gate and you forget about it. They are not just, they don’t add anything to the game and can be weird.

The language things just doesn’t work since we talk to them from the beginning in the story. It just feel deconnected. They could had at least change a bit the story if you do it with or without the language. You could have a branching quest if you don’t have Itzel and Nohuch langague for exemple to go find an Hylek from core tyria which could half translate since those language are similar, but not exactly the same. Then if you do the story again but with the languge, you don’t need the translater.

Some other like Itzel poison and stealth detection could be nice, but they just don’t have any mechanics to it. You just forget about them as more and more people have them. It was nice for maybe the first few weeks, but after that, not really. They should add a mechanics. Why not use the special action key from raids. You need to press the key to send a wave that detect the stealthed foes, a bit like with guild rush do with trap. They could add a cooldown longer than the detect timer, so you need more than one people to keep the foe detected. Same with Itzel poison. No mechanics. It’s xp farm and forget. It could allow you to get some plants that protect you from the poison when you eat it, so you need to keep some in your inventory or maybe you get a new special action ability that allow you to survive the poison. Something.

Other are good, but just not worth using. Like the exalted assistance, the ability to fight champions, the mistlock singularity. The champion are usually not worth doing, the only do on a regular basis is because the zerg pass by him after Tarir Meta end so why not. Most people just don’t bother with the singularity even when they pass next to it and the who ask for exalted assistance?

There is just too much filler mastery just to gate, useless or boring in between the good mastery that work well in the world, bring new mechanics and that you don’t forget you have over time.

safarissPL.2476:

But it’s brainless farm atm. Before nerf u could make every path in each dungeon and get money without repeating same kitten over and over like sw for example

I didn’t test every single path tbh. Right now, too many ppl are doing Winter days farm in my group to test more dungeon, but when we do have time for dungeon we usually only do CM and sometime TA. So I don’t really know what’s the average total rewards for the other paths. Sure if only CM and TA are worth doing, it suck a bit. If that’s the case, I will probably only do those two on a regular basis. I wasn’t doing all path everyday anyway before.

Venomshare Thieves, I can’t see why. It will just drop your dps, while not bringing much to the team.

Condi Ranger on the other end can be a decent choice. Not great, but decent. We used it during our early raid when we weren’t sure if two condi engineer were enough for VG (turn out they are more than enough). That said, I doudt that you will find a place in pug with such a build. In a guild group ya, for VG you can probably find a place, but most likely even a guild group will ask you to find another character for Gorseval.

It is possible to kill Gorseval with a ranger, but until your group is experienced at this boss, you will likely kill him at the extreme limit, so every advantage count at that point. It’s pretty much the same for Condi Guardian.

Raziel.4216:

Uriel.6310:

Most of the elite specializations excel much better than the core classes and if you do not own the expansion, your punished by being over ran by those classes until you buy the expansion.

Source?
Since this is pretty much the core point for your whole argument, I’m sure you’ve something big to back it up besides “everyone I know says so”

Well I don’t really like metabattle, but it still give you an idea. The 5 ’’Meta’’ build are Elite spec and 7 of the 12 ’’good’’ build are elite spec. But like i said, it’s just meta battle.

A better source would be stats on which profession/elite are played the most (especially in higher league) and in PvP tournament. I don’t follow the latter enough to give you stats on them, from what I have seen the vast majority of builds used in those tournament are elite spec. I remember a post here on the forum, but I couldn’t find it anymore. It was listing the build used in one of those tournament. It was early after the expansion so maybe not the best look, but still, there was 1 non elite build out of the 5 team or 5 players.

You can also see that in PvE. The only meta build not using the elite is condi Engineer.

The funny thing is that dungeon like CM and TA are even more profitable now than they used to. With the power creep, dungeon goes even faster they before and with the price of low tier material that you get from dungeon, you can get 10-20 gold per hour in there.

They are both good. For all three, the Warrior will have better dps. But Engineer have better CC and Healing/Blast which bring quality of life and more security while doing the circle at VG. He also bring slick shoes for Gorseval, which is very powerful and can be more efficient than the warrior to take care of the spectral darkness. For Sabetha in paricular, engineer don’t seem to have a particular advantage over a Warrior.

In the end, they are both pretty good. There is also the Condi Necro and Condi Elementalist which are both pretty good too, but a bit under engie and warrior. The advantage of Condi Necro is epidemic, which is very good at Gorseval, especially when you have more than 1 condi in your team.

Ayrilana.1396:

How is it really a bad thing? I guess that’s what I’m not understanding. Unlike other MMO’s, the power creep (via expansion) comes solely from the elite specs. It’s normally assumed that most players will purchase expansions so players will essentially have access to these right off the bat (provided they get the needed HP).

This will likely be something we won’t agree on.

Watch that. It will flesh out why power creep is bad way better than I can. It also talked about why power creep is so ever present in the game industrie, especially in MMO and a couple of ways to limit it’s effects.

Vayne.8563:

In the mean time, you have the problem of having to sell the expansion. Plenty of people are simply cheap. They won’t spend the money unless you give them a kitten ed good reason to pay the money. So people who only PvP, they really have no reason to spend money on an expansion if you give them everything.

That doesn’t even make sense dude. They sold their elite spec on the very fact that it wasn’t a power creep and they were equal, just different way to play your profession. You don’t remember? All those tread and qqing about how elite spec could be pure upgrade and it was bad. And all those fanboy (me including) that were defending anet since they clearly said that

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Elite-Specs-No-Diversity/first#post5069916

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Pay-to-win/first

Here two that I could found.

They don’t need to make the profession more powerful to sell the expansion. They could sell the expansion by promoting the NEW roles these spec would give to the professions, not by improving where they are already good at. And you know what, that’s exactly what they did. Take a look at the Elite spec page right now.

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/specializations/

brand-new way for you to progress, adding nine entirely new ways to play, a twist on your standard profession mechanic.

They always talked about how they would unlock different way to play the character and never talked to improve current strength of these profession.

Ask yourself. What do you prefer to play and what would sell the most?

Hey come play the new PS Beserker and the new Staff Tempest. Which are pretty much basically the exact same thing as the PS Warrior and Staff Elementalist, but with just a little twist with your F keys and more powerful.

or

Hey come play the Condi Reaper the first time Necromancer can finally be powerful in PvE. Come play the Chronomancer who can buffing the party with crazy with quickness and alacrity. Come play the first truly competitive Condi Warrior. Come play the Healing Druids. Come play an auramancer support with the tempest, etc, etc.

Those are what are selling the new specs because they bring completely new ways to play your characters. That sell way more than pressing F1 and F3 on a staff elementalist that play otherwise exactly the same, but with more dps.

Of course some are a bit too powerful. Chronomancer perma quickness is a bit much, condi Warrior dps is crazy, etc. But the point is that making profession more powerful is not what sell the best. Giving new ways to play your characters is what sold the elite spec to the players base. They just included a power creep into that.

Ayrilana.1396:

Thaddeus.4891:

Ayrilana.1396:

Would you consider the Guild Wars 1 standalone campaigns and expansion P2W?

I didn’t play GW1 so I can’t answer that. And tbh I don’t care about labelling any game as P2W, B2P or whatever. My only point is Elite Spec should have been equal in power to the core specs and not so much more powerful like they are now. That’s my only point here.

The thing is that this has been in the series since the beginning and practically every other MMO does the same. The OP is also using the term incorrectly.

Well, it depend on what we are talking about here. Again. My only point ever was about the power creep so I guess if you quoting me you are talking too about power creep.

It’s not because a lot of MMO are doing it and it was in GW1 that it’s a good things. Watch the video that I linked. Power Creep in gw2 is a bad thing. Ascended, Specialisation and Elite Spec being the 3 main power creep element added to the game. That’s the reason why most World boss are so freaking easy now, why dungeon can be done under 5min with a pug group, etc.

Ayrilana.1396:

Would you consider the Guild Wars 1 standalone campaigns and expansion P2W?

I didn’t play GW1 so I can’t answer that. And tbh I don’t care about labelling any game as P2W, B2P or whatever. My only point is Elite Spec should have been equal in power to the core specs and not so much more powerful like they are now. That’s my only point here.

Vayne.8563:

I disagree. I played Guild Wars 1 too, which was also buy to play and there was definitely power creep in that game as well. People want to feel like they’re progressing. It’s very hard to do that without making them a bit more powerful. That said, it’s not TONS more powerful in most cases.

Then you have necros, which were less powerful over all and now have a spec they can use.

It’s simply more complex an image than you’re painting it.

I’m just gonna leave that here.

Power Creep is a very bad design decision. You said it yourself.

‘’People want to feel like they’re progressing. It’s very hard to do that without making them a bit more powerful.’’

Power creep is an easy way to achieve that, but it have a lot of bad side effects on the game, especially on the long run. Think about it for a second.

My guardian used to do around 6-7k dps back at launch with level 80 full exotic gear. And I’m talking with full buffs on. Now? We are doing more around 18k and we one of the worst dps profession. Lupi which was one of the biggest boss at launch with 1 or 2 million HP is ridiculous compare to the 20+ millions hp from raid boss. People complained that dungeon were way too easy. That’s what happen when you can explode mobs in second bypassing their mechanics.

Again like you said, it’s complex. Some buffing is needed. Some profession are weak in certain content and certain build are weak for certain professions. That’s where elite spec should have buffed their profession. Not buff everything into a power creep.

Vayne.8563:

Yes, I am facing the facts. The fact is there’s a difference between cash shop purchases and selling an expansion.

Is WoW pay to win? Because every expansion in that game raises the level cap.

The game is buy to play. It was always supposed to be a series of games that you bought, instead of paying a sub. That’s the business plan of the game.

By your reckoning, Anet could never add anything to the game that might give power, unless they gave it to everyone. In my reckoning that’s a failed business right there.

If you can’t tell the difference between an expansion for a game that sells once, three years after the game comes out and Maple Story there’s not a whole lot of point in continuing this conversation.

Well it’s flirting on the line if you ask me. An expansion should add content and give more option. That’s what they were telling us and that’s what we were expecting. The problem is not the expansion itself, it’s the power creep from the elite specs. It was a big debate pre-HoT. People were fearing that elite spec would be elite and would toss aside vanilla profession. I was of those who were defending Anet since they said that elite spec would be new ways to play the game, not just improved version of profession. And I was wrong because they are.

You can see it. In PvP, the vast majority of build are elite spec. Same with PvE. You don’t want elite spec to be bad so ya of course you want some of them to be meta, but ALL of them?

As for your question. If Anet could never add anything to the game that might give power, unless they gave it to everyone.

I answer that they should never add anything to the game that might make a power creep. Balancing profession yes. But not power creep.

You could say, hey lets upgrade the dps of the necro because it’s lower than most.

You could say, hey let’s make tempest improve condi ele since it’s wasn’t competitive.

But when tempest add dps to the direct damage elementalist, that’s when you brough Power Creep and it’s never a good idea that you give it to everyone or behind the expansion. But behind the expansion is ever worst.

It’s a lot of job to do tbh. I could see 1 version of 6 or 8 people behing done, but variable from 8 to 12? No way.

The HP of the boss are easy to adapt, but the mechanics? You will have to balance version of the boss individually for each number of players. It’s not like fractal, with an algorithm that work for most level and some variable in some table. You need to decide how many player receive the blue AoE at VG, how my ppl need to be in the green circle, how many updraft at Gorseval, do you add a 5th canon at Sabetha? Think about sabetha with 8 ppl. Do you leave 4 canons? 4 on canons + healers, leave only 3 ppl permanently on the boss. Do you remove 1 canons? Do you rearrange them or just skip the west one for example.

My points is that they would need to rebalance each version of the raid and that’s a lot of work, for such a small return on investment. They is a lot of other things they could do to improve raids accessibility other than your solution.

Here my two cents from my raid group point of view.

There is some balance issue and that’s anet fault. True enough some profession will always be better, but right now, there is some issue like the fact that pretty much all the advantages of the guardian are near useless or done better by the herald for raid.

That said, raid is all about adaptability. I run in guild and our group is now about 20+ in size. We don’t mind any decent build as long as we can form a working squad with it. We kill bosses with thief, guardian, zerker necros, etc. It’s not a problem. But we also ask of our fellow raider to create other profession for raid so we can have better groups and always have the possibility to fill important role like buffer, tanks and healers.

IMO this is an important thing in raid. You should have several option available to your group when they need it. That you want to stay on your main is legitimate, but don’t really work with the raid mentality. My main is a guardian too, but I have a lot of fun on my engineer and elementalist for raid. I still play my guardian 90% of my time in game, just not in raids. Who know, maybe the next wing will have a raid boss where aegis, protection and reflect will be important at the same time.

Tbh honest. Pugs also have a lot of trouble with raids. 1-2 Guardian is fine a VG and 2 Guardian hammer is actually good at sabethar. But pugs fear to waste hours with a bad groups, so they ask for the best they know. (which isn’t always the best in-game).

Yep, if you have a character slot empty you can make a low level character and open Green bags of gear to get lower tier of materials. A level 31 to 35 character will give you Tier 2/3, a level 44 to 50 will give you tier 3/4, a level 51 to 58 will give you mostly tier 4 and a level 58 to 63 will give you tier 4/5. Pick whatever you prefer. Of course 51 to 58 will be the best for you because Linen is the most expensive cloth material so you want the most of that.

You can open champion bags, but pre HoT there was a little bit more profitable to open on a level 80. Post HoT, i’m not sure. Linen spiked in price at HoT, but got back to a more regular price lately. But Green Bags of Gear definitely is better to open on a lower level character.

Other than that, low level dungeons give you low tier materials, especially CM.

There is the karma things and you can also make some mystic forge promotion. Jute to Wool is usually profitable, but it’s always a gamble.

Marvi.9642:

Thaddeus.4891:

Facepalm.

You did 3 gold in silverwaste, but did you bother looking at the material you got and you could sell or use?? The silky sand alone get you coarse sand that sell for a good amount. Direct Gold is rare in the game, almost nothing give you that in huge quantity. Why? Because this contribute to inflation. Most gold are from material that you can exchange for gold from other players.

No, I meant, I got that money salvaging and selling stuff not earn like after Silverwastes run i had 3 gold. I’m not stupid, just want clarification.

Ok did you run the events accross Silverwaste? Because that’s the less profitable portion of SW. What is profitable in SW is in not particular order, the Labyrinth, Breach, Vinewrath, the champs after VW and Chest Farm.

We do SW events to
1) get the map started
2) get bandit crest or
3) get shovels

But not for gold.

SW is not the most profitable thing to do anymore post HoT. Salvaging was a bit nerfed, the chest were a bit nerfed and tier 5/tier 6 which was one of the big source of income there have dropped in price. Still, with the addition of Coarse sand and the price of several low tier mats have increased so in final, SW is still a very good place to farm for mats/gold. It’s also super easy (once you know what to do) and don’t really have any diminish return. Not the most interesting thing to do, but a little bit everyweek is ok.

Those are super expensive. A full set of precision infusion will cost you around 1200 gold, while the same set in condi damage will cost about 750 gold.

IMO it was never worth it, but it was a expensive way to reach the ultimate gear for your character, which had both max stats and was able to go in max fractal. But now that we all use +7 AR infusion for fractal, those +5 AR, +5 stats are not worth using since you can’t even go in max fractal with those. That’s why the reddit tread ask that we were able to transform our +5 AR, +5 stats into +7AR, +5 stats.

But anyway. Really not worth the gold.

Incendiary Ammo, Blowtorch, Napalm, Fire Bom and Sharpnel Grenade. Those are you highest priority skill as a condi engineer. There is barely any direct damage in those. You are wrong.

I won’t say that there isn’t a good portion of your dps coming from direct damage as a condition engineer, but just not enough to compensate the lost of condition damage. Rabid vs Sinister discussion was a long time ago and can’t find the numbers anymore, so whatever.