Guild Wars 2

PierPiero.9142:

for pve rampage is much better than rabid … you lose a lot of dps with rabid .

If you think rampager = 3 offensives stats and rabid = 2 offensives stats and 1 defensive stats mean that rampager is better dps than rabid, you are wrong.

The actual dps of a rabid engineer is a lot closer to a sinister engineer than a rampager engineer is to rabid engineer. It’s just that the additional precision of rampager and power don’t bring enough dps to compare to the additional condition damage of Rabid.

Carrion and Rampager or at the bottom of the list, then rabid is better, sinister even better, and a mix of viper/sinister for the best.

perry.9645:

Thaddeus.4891:

So your point is that Raid reward isn’t worth a kitten if it’s not what like 30+gold per week?? Wtf.

ftfy

No it’s per hour. Now it’s true that we only have 1-2 hours of raid content per week for now. You can do more per week, but at a very low rate of reward. But keep in mind that over time we gonna get more and more of these wings. It will depend on the speed they implement them. We are suppose to have 3 wings per years. Will they keep their promised? We’ll see.

But they could help us while we wait for more raid. We should be able to get at least some decent reward by repeating raid during the week. Maybe like half the reward the second time you repeat it and making it easier to cap out the Shards.

Lendruil.9061:

Well would you say it’s justified that you can harvest/ do winter jumping puzzle/ farm silverwastes/[insert random open world stuff here] all day long without any restrictions and get good loot/gold rewards out of it, while raids reward you once per week?
I am not even demanding that we should get the raid-uniqe stuff on daily basis, but raidboss-kills should at least reward you with gold or some rare materials.

No it’s not. Silverwaste should have some diminishing return. Winter JP is ok imo because it’s only temporary. But maybe they went too far with the 10k drink which made the price of gift jump so high. And it should have diminish return too like you have on Tixx for example. For harvest, you usually have some restrictions. At least for Flax and Rich you have. When harvesting normal material you don’t really have limit true.

A huge portion of that is anet and their precursor crafting which skyrocketed ascended material and at the same occasion low tier material at some ridiculous level.

I agree. We are used to have bad or half decent story in MMO. It’s the norm and we live with it, but it’s not a blank check to do a bad story. Just like with Multiplayer FPS like CoD, it’s just a bit of laziness on the developper. Plenty of MMO did great story or at least it of good story and most of them have great lore. You probably don’t want to put a higher priority on story at the expense of the gameplay or content, but that’s not a reason to do a bad job at it either.

PierPiero.9142:

Rampager works well , i had it. Not carrion becouse our firearms line take a lot of benefit from precision imho .

meh. Not really. I mean rampage is maybe a bit better than carrion, but both are just semi-decent gear. Rabid is far better every where outside of VG and Gorseval if you don’t tank and in raid you should at least care enough to get better gear than carrion or rampager. So ya they exist, but I wouldn’t recommend them for anything really. There is always a better option.

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.

savacli.8172:

perry.9645:

Thaddeus.4891:

fishball.7204:

The raid loot kinda sucks. My friend 22 insights no mini, no asc and no ghostly infusions. I think he just uninstalled after raiding at raid reset last nite. gg

Add all the reward you get from raid dude. You can get around 20-30 gold per hours with a decent group. Not counting any huge drop like an infusions.

Wow 20-30g once a week :O meanwhile you can do the wintersday jumppuzzle for about the same reward endlessly

Even better, give me a pickaxe and a sickle so I can harvest nodes to continue that gold/hour rate once Wintersday ends.

So your point is that Raid reward isn’t worth a kitten if it’s not what like 30+gold per hours?? Wtf.

Cedric Ambidexter.9174:

That is a poor excuse.

We are human beings, not robots.

We need diversity.

Ya, but you are only level 62. You only view a portion of the game. The diversity is there you just didn’t reach any of it yet. Which is kind of weird because 3 months and your highest char is level 62? Try at least all the dungeons paths once, complete the meta events, world bosses, do some EOTM, WvW, PvP, gear up at least one level 80, do some silverwaste and Dry Top. I mean, ok you don’t like repeating the same content, still there is hours of content you didn’t even tried.

On a more general view of MMO. Yes you are right we are not robots and yes we love diversity. MMO have about the same if not less content than some of the best single player RPG on the market, but you can’t have everything.

MMO are there to play with friends, progress over years on your account and give you a comfortable place. That’s the need they fill. And yes in a perfect world they would give us 5k hours of different content, but that’s just not possible. So they provide us with repeatable content that will us to stay engage into the world as we get our fun out of achivements, social interaction, pvp, competitiveness, etc.

Rising Dusk.2408:

SlyDevil.3952:

Can minis be removed from drop tables after they’ve already been acquired?

I actually believe they will find a use for the extra minis, so don’t delete them if you’ve got them.

I doudt it. I would love it, but I doudt it. Look at black lion chest. They still have account bound mini that you get useless double of and it’s been years.

fishball.7204:

The raid loot kinda sucks. My friend 22 insights no mini, no asc and no ghostly infusions. I think he just uninstalled after raiding at raid reset last nite. gg

Add all the reward you get from raid dude. You can get around 20-30 gold per hours with a decent group. Not counting any huge drop like an infusions.

Like other said, all 3 are good.

- Revevant have a very good dps, easy to play and really good at buffing. They will increase the capability or any group they are in.

- Mesmer have ordinary dps, but can be buff good with perma quickness and good amount of alacrity. It can also do some nice tricks with portal/blink. Probably the best profession out of the 3, but near useless if there is always another mesmer. It is also highly dependend on your skill and build. A poor mesmer is not very useful.

- Engineer have the highest dps of the 3, but it hard to reach that dps. It also bring a lot of different support like stealth, heals, blind, blast, etc.

Raid Reward
As for Raids rewards. They can be great, but you gonna need a good group for that. You will lose money like crazy at first, unless you join a group that is already good together. Just to give you an idea. You can do all three boss in 1-2 hours depending on your group. Let’s say you only do the raid once a week.

Right now it will give you 12 gold + 3 Exotic + 3 rare for the bosses. You also get some gold from events in between bosses. I don’t remember the exact number, but I think it’s 4 gold. So in total, you make 20 gold 100% sure in 1-2 hours or 10/20 gold per hours, which is ok, but not great. Add to that the magnetite shards. You can probably get enough shards to buy an infusion in around 50-60 hours or raid, maybe less. That’s around 600 gold for 60 hours or around 10 gold per hours. But this might drop in price as more ppl do raids so this probably won’t be the same in like 1 month. (the infusion was 1000 gold at first). So it’s probably around between 15 and 30 gold per hours depending on your group and the price of infusions.

Now you have to take into account the food/utility, which would probably cost you around 1-2 golds per hours. So now we are talking about 13-29 gold per hours. You finally have to take into account the random drops. Hard to calculate since we don’t have a good droprate reseach yet. You will roughly get a ascended pieces around 10-20% per boss (rough estimate, probably not good). Since most ascended are value around 50 to 100 gold that mean that the final gold per hours is around 20 and 50 gold per hours.

That a huge variance because, well so many variable lol. Keep in mind that this is for a good group. Not that hard to do if you have some good friends/guildmate, but inaccessible for a good majority of the players base. It also doesn’t take into account the 15-50 hours you gonna need to get good in raids. Neither the cost of your gear.

The gold reward of this wing will also drop of 6 gold to reach 14-44 gold per hours when the 2nd wing come in.

Ayrilana.1396:

This is for those that dislike the events on timers. I’m not trying to make an argument for or against at this point but get some insight as to why it specifically bothers you.

What is it about the timers that you do not like?
What is it that you cannot do but want to do?
Have you tried using the LFG to hop to an active map or bring people to yours?

Well even if I still have fun in those map, I find those timer bad for those reason.

1) They are way too long. A DS map is a huge investment in time. I consider myself an hardcore players so it’s not impossible to me and I did my fair share of DS map, but even for me doing a DS map during the week mean that I will pass a good portion of my gaming time in one map since it’s about 2 hours to complete. So I usually try to keep DS during the weekend only. I can’t imagine how casual players with just 1-2 hours would feel about doing some DS. Same is true of Verdant Brink and AB. The full maps are long to complete. IMO they should last more than 1 hour.

2) There is a concept in video game of point of exit. You should design point of exit in your game adapted to your target audience and let’s face it. Open World is for casual mostly. They are fun for hardcore as they farm them for reward, but they should be designed for casual. And for the new maps, there is also the entry point. Again, linked to the length of the timer. Most map have an entry and an exit point of 2 hours. Want to join a DS 1 hours after it started? Good luck. Either the map isn’t far enough to succeed or it’s probably full already. You have an entry point of roughly 30min when the maps start. Be there or good luck. So now, you need 2 hours for the map, but more 3 hours since you need to wait 1 hour before doing the content you wanted. SW did that very well. You can start the map at any moment. Hop on a map and taxi ppl in and voila you are good to go.

3) These map don’t adapt to the population of the map. You need to reach a threahold of coordination/number of players and that’s it. If you are under it, you failed. If you are over it, good for you, but you won’t have anything. SW allow you to speed the meta up the more coordinated/populated the map is. Dry Top allow you to get higher and higher in tier. VB is not really guilty of that, but the other 3 maps? AB and TD don’t even need ppl to bother with the events. It can help for AB with WP and for TD it’s so easy and fast that nobody care. You just need the amount you need at the meta and whatever for the remaining, it doesn’t matter. For DS you need a fix amount of coordination/population to make it to the end. You are in a good map? You gonna wait longer before the next map. You don’t have a good map? You gonna fail and wasted 2 hours.

4) Specifically for TD. The pre-events are so easy and fast that it offen take 1 hours to complete it and then you need to wait one more hour before the chak gerent.

In resume. They should adapt to the number of players either by time (better) or by tier (good if the timer isn’t longer than 1 hour). That way ppl can join when they want and the map will adapt to the number of players/coordination.

Well if it’s WvW or PvP, for both Zerker with Scholar is a bad choice.

For PvP there is the Celestial Necro with Rune of Strength or the Carrion Reaper with rune of nightmare that are good.

There is also a Soldier Reaper build with rune of strength, but I never tried it before. There is also a couple of older build, that I don’t think are still competitive, but I still see from time to time. Like the Minion master in Soldier and Rune of the Pack. Or the Power Necro in Marauder with rune of the pack.

Of course there is always variation in runes so there is no one best answer here. The best is to find a decent build that you like to play and adjust it to your need. One build can be great in the hand of a pro, but not be the best for a new necro or not be that effective when you don’t really like playing it or when it doesn’t fit your gamestyle and you always end up in the wrong situation for your build.

I would keep your rabid gear if I were you for Gorseval to act as the tank. A rabid scrapper is one of the best tank in that fight imo. And you can make another more offensive set for VG and Sabetha. Like other said sinister is good, but a mix of viper/sinister is the best.

Tbh carrion or rampager would probably do the job in most situation, but in raid I don’t think it’s a good idea. You are already new to engineer and raid make it hard for engineer to do good dps because the fight will push you even farther than usual of your perfect rotation. If you had carrion or rampager gear then your dps isn’t really worth it anymore compare to most other profession condi or not.

Xyonon condi build is a good one. Personnally, I prefer scrapper when I tank and Tools when I’m offensive. Scrapper will give you health regen, while tools will give you endurance regen and a bit more dps (mostly because of the reduce cooldown on tool belts). I also prefer the healing turret, but that all about what you prefer.

Anyway, both are almost equal in term of dps since the third trait line is pretty much free for everything you want.

I agree with most of what he said actually. I still have a lot of fun with the game and I wouldn’t say it’s a failure, but it’s near it.

- PvP got only 1 map/mode.
- WvW was completly killed with the new 4 maps completly empty
- Elites Spec are a big power creep and if you are not sure why it’s a bad thing, go take a look at extra credits’ episode on the subject.
- Fractal were improve on one side and broken on the other.
- The story was mediocre.
- Legendary Crafting is actually good, but they did zero to stop the huge spike in ascended price (2-3 times costlier than before HoT) so it’s completly useless to craft most of the old precursor. Still have some bugs that prevent people to complete their precursor (like me) and some stupid decisions (fail an event).
- Masteries in Glinding, Shroom, and Auto-loot are great, but other than that, it’s mostly just gating, useless or boring.

It’s been a bit more than 2 months since HoT launched and I’m almost back to the point where I was before it. I do some daily task, raid, PvP and collection. I gain raid and some new collections so that’s nice. But Fractal is a shadow of what it used to be in term of fun and most of my friend don’t play PvP anymore (mostly because it’s all about elite spec so they feel like they are back to square one).

Still love the game in general, but it’s not a good sign when most of what HoT brought seem to need a lot of work.

Joxer.6024:

Thaddeus.4891:

4) Maybe the game isn’t just for you. I tank and love it in gw2. Hated it in Swotor and WoW. It’s just different for different type of player.

What do you play as a tank? I am struggling between Reaper and Chrono and am keen to find a good fit.

Chronomancer is the best IMO for VG. You are suppose to have 1 DPS party which focus on the boss and that way you combine the 2 weakess dps of this party the tank and the chronomancer into one, while keeping their advantage (tanking and buffing). This increase your dps speed by a lot.

Otherwise, Guardian is easier and still very solid. The perma protection and the cc is great there.

Engineer is probably the best tank imo for Gorseval, but it’s mostly because he can range so less dps lost and Slick Shoes which is OP. Another tank can do the job at Gorseval if you can replace the CC the Engineer bring.

I never tried Necromancer, but it seem solid. Similar dps than Tank Engineer, but easier to survive and to dps on a Necro from what I saw.

There is also more exotic tank like Condi Warrior, which can tank with a super high dps. I guess you could probably tank in most profession.

As far as tanking in general in GW2. It’s fine like it is. All 3 fight are differents. 2 need tank, that doesn’t mean that the whole game should need them. Sabether doesn’t need tank and IMO it’s the best fight of the raid. I hope they don’t decide in advantage to put a tank or no. It’s not the composition that make a raid boss fun, it’s the mechanics. They just need to think of good mechanics and build the fight around those. The better if they can mix things up as much as possible.

Just for info btw guys. Did you guys tried dungeons since HoT? You get more reward now than we used too. Yep we get less direct gold, but..

1) The power creep is heavy. We can finish dungoen way faster than we used too if you have even an half decent group.

2) It’s way easier to keep full buff now with herald. It doesn’t really help good group, but a pug with a PS Warrior and Herald gonna heave zero problem max most offensive buff. Giving even more speed to normal group compare to pre-hot.

3) The material you gain from dungeon are WAY more expensive. CM and TA in particular give you huge reward in low tier material.

In the end, you can end up with 10-20 gold per hour in dungeon right now, compare to the 5-10 gold per hour pre-hot.

It’s not an exploit. They just didn’t use the same standard for every stats. It was the same thing with ferocity. Critical damage food were nerfed when they standardized it. They could standardized it now too for condition duration. But that would hit ALL condi build. Condi Warrior would probably still be op since he’s so much ahead of everything else. But build like condi would be useless because he would have less dps than direct damage with a more difficult rotation. Reaper, Ranger, Guardian, Elementalist would probably all go extinct too in condi build.

Because you also need to take into account the noursihment, that would represent something like a 15-20% nerf to all condi build. If they ever decide to do it, they would need to balance thing out to limit the nerf to maybe 5% They would also have to buff some specific build like ranger, guardian and nerf Warrior.

It would also be nice to balance Mesmer, Thief and Revenant.

2) The VG also turn 180 right before doing the blue attack. A lot of sign, it would be bad if they make it even more visible. It suppose to be hard.

3) He keep aggro on the highest toughness, but he also aggro periodiocally on the player the farther away from him. You need to work around this mostly when you try to drag him to the wall. It’s an added difficulty that need simple teamwork. It’s mostly for when someone get cc or in an egg at the wrong time. It can screw your dps, wall or atls killing. You just need to learn more about his aggro system. I like that it’s different and you need to adapt.

4) Maybe the game isn’t just for you. I tank and love it in gw2. Hated it in Swotor and WoW. It’s just different for different type of player.

Yaki.9563:

This is a ridiculous statement. Of course it owes me ascended gear if that’s the ultimate reward of the content. Go state that in the raid threads and claim that there should be no ascended drops from raids and get laughed out of there. Ascended is the only reason to run fractals so requiring ascended to get more ascended is just screwed up.

You just don’t care because you’re already in ascended from doing pre-HoT fractals or you don’t hate crafting so you have an entirely different agenda. It’s as if I went into the thread about encryption boxes and said “the game doesn’t owe you gold”.

I didn’t said that ascended shouldn’t drop in fractal. But no reason for it to drop at super low level either. You claimed that it was impossible to drop ascended without ascended armor and it was bad. I corrected you since you can.

Yaki.9563:

Also explain how you get 94 AR with just the 6 accessories. 7×6=42 + 2 slots at 10 each is only 62. Potion for +10 and that’s 72. Still a long way off from 94 which you imply should be easy enough. From my perspective it looks like you’re locked into running sub-50’s for nearly no chance at ascended, which is required in order to get the AR to run higher levels which actually have a decent chance. That’s just broken.

Like other said, attuned rings exist and you seem to not know at all about it. To reach 100 you need 94 AR from your trinkets.

Back Item : 7 + 10
Rings : (7 + 10 +11) x 2
Accessories : 7 × 2
Amulet : 7

For a total of 94. That’s want you need to eventually reach 150 at the lowest cost. Because with +7 on all 6 armor + 2 on weapon it mean 94 + 8 x +7 = 94 +56 = 150

2) The game don’t owe you ascended gear. Like I said before you can reach level 68 without armor or weapons, but if you wait on drops to get to level 100 it will take a long time. On average you gonna drop 1 ascended box (armor or weapons) each week. So it should take you around 2 months to get your full armor if you do a daily 51-100 each day. If that’s not fast enough for you, you can craft the pieces you need.

Just gonna bump it up. A lot of bugs are stopping people from completing their Legendary.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Honestly, what data are you looking at?

I’m looking at King’s Fractal Drop Rate data here:

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

These data indicate that from the daily boxes you have about a 12.5% chance of getting an armor box from a Champion daily chest, and practically 0 chance from any other chest. That’s a skin every 8 days. Pre-HoT if you did 50, 40, 30 daily you’d get an armor box every 5 days or so (again, using that same data sheet.)

Skin drops have been radically nerfed – about 1 per 5 days to 1 per 25 days. Golden skin drops are abysmal – about 1 per 50 days.

The rewards are worse than before HoT, still. The only thing that’s better now is XP and maybe gold, though I haven’t looked at that data.

I’m look at King too.

Pre HOT it was 11.9% Chance to get an Armor chest and 4.2% to get a weapon chest.

Now it’s 12.7% chance to get an Armor chest and 3.6% to get a weapon chest.

Pretty much similar don’t you think? Especially since fractal are faster now than they used too. You can do 3 Swamp at level 51-100 that take about 20min to complete on a regular basis, while pre-hot it was a random run that used to took between 30 and 45 min for most people.

About the Fractal Skin. Yes you are totally right that the drop rate is lower. But you can buy them with Pristine now, giving more value to Pristine, which were becoming useless by the time HoT was here.

As for people pointing out that they dropped ascended from Mist and Adept chest I’m sorry. At the time that I posted, nobody in my group saw ascended from those chance and neither KING did so I assume it was zero. Now I guess there is a very small chance a ascended for Veteran, Adept and Mist.

Bottom line is. Ascended chest are easier to come by now than before HoT for casul. You have the same chance at a greater speed. BUT for people tha tused to run 50, 40 and 30 each day before HoT, they probably get less ascended chest that they used to, even if doing all dailies is now faster than 50, 40 et 30 used too.

You get less Fractal Skin from drop, but you can now buy them, making the collection super more easy to complete for hardcore (RNG was a kitten when you only need 1 or 2 skin), while making life a lot easier on casual that want a specific skin or can’t run 50 each day.

The reward in gold at 0.25 silver of profit (counting key at 20silvers and TP taxes) per encryption is vastly superior at what it used to be.

The current reward system is more rewarding than before. That doens’t mean that no other problem exist.

There is no daily for 76-100, giving almost no reason to run these level after the first time. The current system push people to run Swamp only, with no reason (reward wise) to run other fractal after the first time.

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

I opened about 200 encryptions and the proffit per was about 25-30s solid cash.

But I got no cat golem. Did anyone else get any after patch? Or are they super insanely rare now?

I got 3 with 700 encryptions.

Well DH tank is pretty great at the first boss. Not the best for the 2nd one, but still do a good job.

DH DPS is actually pretty great at Sabetha with the Hammer providing perma protection.

DH DPS is decent for the 1st boss, but not perfect, while it’s just not good enough for the 2nd fight, even if it’s possible to kill Gorseval with one.

Fay.2357:

CS cooldown under permanent alacrity is 45.9 seconds. Add in 6s CS duration for a total of 52s combo reset.

3x heal, 3x action, 2x recall = 26s

52-26 = 26s remaining

Shield phant attacks every 7.5 seconds, providing 2s of alacrity. With chronophantasma though, you can increase that rate by ~1.5x, getting about 9 procs during the duration per phant.

2x phant at 9 procs = 36 seconds.

Permanent alacrity without too many issues. I’ll often have 3 phants up too, so that overcaps it a bit.

You are right it’s 52 seconds. Well 52.08 seconds to be exact. Because the actuall CD of CS with alacrity is 46.08 and not 45.9 but it’s not important. In reality, the rotation is closer to 53-54 seconds. We are not machine after all. But lets keep your 52sec.

The 56second was my mistake, it’s for another rotation with 4 WoA in it.

chronophantasma? This trait respawn your illusions. It doesn’t increase the attack of a phantams. I think you mean Phantasmal Haste no? But the problem is that it doesn’t work right now. The attack speed of the Avenger is 7.5second and it stay the same with or without phantasmal haste.

So with 1 Perma Avenger it’s 6 attack for 12sec of Alacrity for a total of 38second of alacrity per 52 seconds rotation.

You can probably increase that a little with a second Avenger, but he won’t be up for the whole 52seconds rotation.

But now we are going into pointless math territory. We all know that a Mesmer can keep 60-70% Alacrity uptime on his party. The question are

1) Can a Chronomancer can in-game put perma alacrity to his party. And forget about math your way out of this one. This isn’t obvious enough to be calculated in 2 seconds using wiki and such. A video will be the only evidence possible here.

2) If a Chronomancer is able to give perma alacrity to his party, is it worth it? Only to a certain point. You are a member of a 5 man party and as such you are still suppose to take care of 20% of the total dps. Sure you can drop your percentage if by doing so you boost the dps of the party by more than you lose dps. It’s not always worth it.

In the video that TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275 provided. Zui from DNT talk about exactly that. Oh he didn’t made a full test and all, but for him you lose too much personnal dps to get to near perma alacrity to be worth tempting. So there are my two questions. Can you or someone else provide a video of perma alacrity on party? And if so we can try to look if it’s worth it.

Glint is for Fury or Protection

Shiro is for DPS because of the quickness, but it’s useless if you have a chronomancer giving you perma quickness.

Mallyx Elite give you 10% buff to all your stats.

Camping Glint is always a dps lost compare to Glint/Mallyx or Glint/Shiro swapping.

Adapt to your party. If the herald you are talking to sit in Glint, they are lazy and not good herald. Not a big deal if they are lazy in low level fractal and dungeon tbh. But it’s a bit sad if they do that in raid and high level fractal.

Fay.2357:

Xyonon.3987:

It’s not about IF you can keep up 100% alacrity for your team. It’s about how many shield phantasms you require to do so with your build.

If you don’t have 100% uptime on alacrity for your 5-man subgroup, you’re doing it wrong though. It’s raid-wide buffing that’s exceedingly difficult to do reliably.

Well I guess that DnT and Snow Crow are doing it wrong then because on all of their video they never reach perma alacrity on your sub-group.

The reality is on a 56second rotation you can do your 3 wells 3 times each for a total of 24seconds of alacrity party wide. You can maintain 1 Shield Phantams for pretty much the whole fight so it’s 14 additional second for a total of 38seconds of party wide alacrity for each 56seconds rotation. Even if you could maintain 2 Shield Phantasm for the whole fight you would not be perma party wide alacrity.

That said. If you use the Leadership Rune + 4 Wells build. You probably be able to cast 3 WoC for an additional 6 seconds of party wide alacrity. This would put you at 44s in your 56second rotation with 1 EoM perma up. It would be in theory possible to reach perma with a second EoM up for almost all the fight, but I don’t think it’s possible.

IMO. It’s possible to get a very high party wide alacrity up time. Between 60 and 80% for a good Mesmer in the right condition. But to say that you are doing something wrong if you can’t keep perma alacrity on your 5 man subgroup is a bit far fetched.

I would be happy to be proven wrong. If someone can post a video with a mesmer next to them giving them perma alacrity that would be nice. But so far it doesn’t seem to be possible. Near perma in the perfect situation, but not completely perma. And in fight, this drop to like I said 60-80% depending on your build.

If you are looking for a good hybrid gear you are in luck.

Decimate Defenses give you a huge amount of critical chance. In a decent group you should have perma fury and 25 stack of vulnerability which will give you a base critical chance of 74% with zero precision on you. In that situation you only need 546 precision to reach 100%. You can drop that even more if you take into account Banner of Discpline, Spotter, food, etc.

So you can make a mix of Zerker and Valkyrie depending on what you expect to see usually when you fight, without losing any dps at all.

As for condition build. Viper and Sinister will be superior, but Rabid isn’t that much far behind, while giving you enough toughness to have a lot of survivability.

Tbh, I wouldn’t waste gold on ascended if I was to craft Rabid. Why bother with all the gold to craft a non optimal ascended gear set. Exotic will do the job at a lower price. For Valkyrie it’s debatable. In a optimal group, Zerker will be useless, so Valkyrie would be better. But Zerker will be better in solo or in bad group where you don’t have perma Vulnerability, banners and Fury.

KurisuX.7340:

Yeah see I think she has no access to LA til level 35…. I think any and all portals to LA are off limits. So my only option will be to run her to DR through the whole map. That’s why I was wondering if maybe they had a Wintersday portal or something since they announced players would have to be level 10 to enter, but didn’t state that they had to be human or run the entire way.

Like other said.

‘’There is one waypoint in every starting area automatically available for transport before level 35.’’

She only have to WP to Queensdale and walk 30sec into Divinity Reach.

Yaki.9563:

I’m pretty disappointed. I guess I’m forced to craft ascended armor and weapons if I want to continue in fractals and that is just not worth it. I opened about 20 days worth of daily boxes (40 regular, 20 adept, 20 of the middle tier) and got nothing. GG and bye bye.

If you bother looking thing up. If only lol.

Ascended box are dropped from daily 51-100. There is a very small chance to drop from Veteran and zero from Adept and Mist chest.

With Trinkets alone you can reach 94 AR which mean you can do up to level 68 where you should get about 1 Ascended box (weapons or armor) for every 6 days on average.

Pretty much similar to what we used to have.

It’s been a long time since I played a char not level 80 and I know there is stuff that changed since then that limit what you can do a low level. Still here some stuff she could try.

There is a portal going from LA to each Cities and it goes both ways.

Go in the PvP lobby. There is a portal there going directly for Lion Arch. For Hoelbrak it’s near Peeta’s Waypoint in the West of the city.

Same with WvW. A portal go at Lion Arch.

You could still escort her to Lion Arch or Divinity Reach. Not such a long walk and you can protect her, rez if she die.

The one to Rule.2593:

So it is only the dailies then? if so there’s still zero reason to do the highest level fractals cuz there are no 75+ dailies

Well I guess the chest at the end of each fractal give a bit more reward, but I highly highly doudt it will be worth it. So ya they fixed some stuff, but once you reach level 100 once there is not reason to do them again.

700 encryptions opened for me. It’s around 25-26 Silvers of profit per encryptions if you buy keys at 20 silvers a piece.

Meaning you are left with 25-26 silver per encryptions after the price of the key and after the TP taxe after you sold everything.

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

So many people complain about necro’s DPS. I have a question for those who claim others do more damage per second than we do, how much time do these damage dealers spend on the ground waiting to be res’d? How much time do they spend dodging and not doing any damage at all? Probably a good amount of time. I got to level 80 without becoming an effective dodger.

That’s not a good thing to brag about lol.

To be clear. Necro have to fight the old idea like Ranger had too and kind of still are. Let’s be honest here. Necro used to be on the bottom when it come to DPS. They had good burst with Lich Form and Life Blast and that,s why they were view as good bursting build in PvP. They also have wells which are instant, making them very good as dmg dealer in WvW, but they lacked the DPS to shine in PvE. So ya, Necro still carry the baggage coming with the fact that they had the worst dps of the game for pretty much 3 years.

That’s not saying that Necro were bad or useless in PvE. Just that their dps was at the bottom of the list. And TBH their dps wasn’t that much below lets say a Mesmer. But at the same time, they didn’t brought much support to the team like a Mesmer or a Guardian could.

Now, it’s a new era and thing had change. People have to test thing out and prove what is the new standard. Of course people will still view necro as bad dps, there were for 3 years. They won’t believe people on faith and they will prejudice against Necro. But that’s normal. It’s with actual numbers and video that the reality of the Reaper DPS will spread. If the dps is in fact good, then it will spread, if it’s not then it won’t.

Jacob.4280:

And shield phantasms work for everybody else so ye Im sure you can mantain perma alacrity on your team (in 5man content) when shattering and resummoning those.

And (if u dont care much for quickness coz thats rly not hard to mantain 100% in 5man) you can mimic WoR to get up to 42sec alacrity for your team just from wells in CS rotation, not counting any phantasm attacks.

Well I don’t know about 5 man content. Maybe. That said, here a video of probably the best buffing situation with the Snow Crow Gorseval run without any updraft.

Here the Warrior point of view which is inside the Chronomancer Party. And you can clearly see, even when you only talk about the time spend on the boss itself that the Alacrity uptime is not 100%.

Here a similar situation with DnT at sabetha. Again the point of view of the Warrior in the same party as the Chronomancer.

Again no perma alacrity.

I’m not saying that party wide Alacrity isn’t possible. But in real situation it seem that DnT and SC two of the best guild for PvE ain’t able to pull it off in raids even in their best run so far.

Maybe in fractal where there is less pression on everybody the Mesmer could achieve that. But I don’t think that Alacrity is something that people should try to reach on a regular basis. Maybe I’m wrong.

Jacob.4280:

In 5man content allies will always have perma alacrity and quickness if u support them properly …
In raids single chrono can (in ideal circumstances) keep all 10 ppl on perma quckness.

Pretty sure Celeras is right and you are wrong.

The Leadership run + 4 Wells build will give yourself perma alacrity, but only 70% uptime Alacrity for your party in the best situation.

The Chronomancer rune + SoI build will give yourself perma alacrity, but only around 50-60% uptime Alacrity for your party in the best situation.

Remember that Flow of Time and Improved Alacrity only work on you, not your allies.

Xyonon.3987:

Because you said this:

Thaddeus.4891:

You can get perma alacrity without well of calamity. I guess there two different ways to get it done. Either you use Rune of Leadership to reach 100% boon duration or Rune of the Chronomancer + SoI.

or did i misunderstand something? ö.ö

Ok no I should have put those in two paragraph or be cleared. My first point is both build can give perma alacrity.

My second point is that it seem that both build can reach perma quickness, then I continue.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear.

The theorycrafting is already been made. Mostly by Wooden Potato and Particular. Here their journey

Particular before HoT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI-hOGKQDQ4

Particular after HoT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqKc1_CyFH4

Wooden Potatoes before HoT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH-aB4mwAOk

Wooden Potatoes after HoT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPKnSjhdl7U

They talk about what they tested, what they think is best and why. That should give you some ground work to build on.

Sephiroth.2503:

ragnar i know these builds, but i don’t know the best armor and jewels stat for my guardian :| i want build for tank raid or making pve content’s. is there only full berserker build stats? i have in this moment full cleric jewels and full soldier armor…i need to delete all my equip?

You don’t need to delete it, but it’s not because you made it that it suddenly become good.

For raid you can probably use it. A mix of Soldier/Cleric gear won’t make you the best tank, but with the right build it will do ok. You will have a lot of surviability with your gear so take as much dps from your utilities and trait. Also take the Hammer with Writ of Persistance and you should have a decent tank for raid.

For anything else? Won’t be good at all. Won’t matter much in open world, but people might be upset if you bring that in dungeon or fractal, especially high level fractal. Zerker will be your best option.

Yes there is now tank and healer in raid and raid alone. That said, they are really not like a normal holy trinity.

There is several ways to get the job done. For exemple the healer. Two main strategy exist. You get the support Tempest that pretty much give 40% protection to the party, and boons to keep everybody up. Or you have the druid which have more burst heal for specific moment when some people are in hard place.

You can also have profession like Guardian or Herald put out perma protection to limit the healer’s job easy. Some even only bring Beserker Healer because they don’t need that much heals.

The tank, it’s even more different that the Holy Trinity counterpart. The tank job is to keep agro and survive. But for that, he usually don’t need much tankyness. For exemple, a Necro or a Mesmer can tank in a full zerker armor with only some pieces of knight for just enough toughness to keep agro. Tank also usually need to bring 1 more thing to the raid. Some bring buffs, like the ChronoTank. Other bring dps like the Reaper or the BurnZerker tank. Other bring protection and CC like the Guardian Tank.

Here one exemple of tank build for guardian. Narc also have a more offensive version, but it might be hard to play when you are not experienced in raid and don’t have a good group so.

If celestial is too expansive for you, you can make a mix of stats to match around the same stats as a full celestial for a smaller price.

There is a lot of different option. But IMO Writ of Persistance and Hammer are a must for tank guardian. Not that you can’t tank without it, just that it’s this little something else that Guardian can bring. Protection on your melee group will make sure they down less and dps more. Make the life of your healer easier, etc.

Here some info of the Daily Fractal drop

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

Like they said. Pretty much all the drop are the same. The change daily 1 to 50 are too small to see with only around 1 thousand chest, but it’s mostly the daily 51-100 that got boosted in Ascended Armor and Weapons box.

As for encryption. I had 700 Keys and Encryptions ready that I tested yesterday. If you buy key at 20 Silver each (30 per day), you get a profit of around 25-26 silver per encryptions. It’s the direct profit you gain from each encryption. So as long a an encryption won’t sell for 29+ silver on the TP, it’s better to buy key at 20 silvers and to open them.

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

That should settle the debate. The only talked about Ascended drop, not the Skin drop in fractal. The Fractal Skin rate is pretty much the same as before the 15th.

Xyonon.3987:

@Thaddeus:
Alacrity is not a boon, no affected by boonduration, nor by soi.

I know. Why do you bring that up?

SoI and Boon Duration are for quickness.

Xyonon.3987:

Why would I use soi? I cast 1x TW (22s), 3x WoA (18s) and 4x ToT (24s). This means 64s quickness every 51s. With that considering reality is not a perfect world, I indeed might miss my allies with one or two skills (or they miss the wells) and keep a 100% quickness uptime. Without soi, and calamity instead A) your personal damage is higher, not just a little bit, and you have a higher alacrity uptime for your allies = higher passive damage / group damage.
On one thing tough I agree with you: group dps is far more important than personal damage. That’s why I do not use soi, nor chronomancer runes in raids.

You can get perma alacrity without well of calamity. I guess there two different ways to get it done. Either you use Rune of Leadership to reach 100% boon duration or Rune of the Chronomancer + SoI.

Like I said, both seem good and both seem to be able to keep perma alacrity and perma quickness. Your build seem a bit safer on the alacrity up-time, while the other is a bit safer on the quickness up-time.

I still prefer the Chronomancer Runes + SoI variant. I never had any problem with perma Alacrity and it’s safer for the perma quickness which is highly depended on the Facet of Nature. This variant allow you to keep perma quickness even if you miss one Facet of Nature.

Rabid or Rampager. The more your build is axed toward condition the better Rabid will be. The more balanced between condi and direct damage your build is the better Rampager will be.

But the different is so small that who care. Take any of the two and it will be fine.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

In a sense that a group has asked that this role be fulfilled regardless of profession given. As more “restricting” and “overzealous” raids are, I have seen more build diversity in raids than the entire since launch that I’ve done dungeons in this game.

True. The amount of different build that we see working in raid is astonishing. Of course stupid people will still exist. People that are usually behind in the new and can only accept something if it’s on metabattle. The kind of people that used to kick condi warrior of their squad 2-3 weeks ago and are kicking Condi Reaper right now.

Azure.8670:

How its working, a tank that can stay alive and still do damage is whats optimal.

Not necessarily. At long as he bring something else to the table than it’s own survivability. He can bring buffs like Chronotank, the can bring dps like condi Warrior tank, he can be the healer like a Full Cleric Druids, he can bring CC and Protection like an Hammer Guardian.

Just as long as he bring something else than simple tanking.

In WvW and Open world, you Celestial gear will do the job just fine. They will give you decent dps and good surviability. Won’t be optinal, but for someone getting back in the game, that will give you a change as you tackle the new maps, which are a bit more difficult than the old ones. Nobody really care about dungeon anymore and they are really easier than ever so why not.

For fractal and raid on the other end, it won’t work. I guess you could do a celestial scrapper tank and it could work for the first 2 boss. But other than that. You could probably use your celestial gear for low level fractal like until 30. But I wouldn’t go farther with that gear If I was you, unless you find a bunch of friend or guildmate that don’t mind.

Xyonon.3987:

In my opinion your tankyness is overkill. I use against VG a normal dps mes, just with Knight trinkets:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhUQNAs+dncfC9fitfCmfCUrhFVjiMAKgirOZn2qFtLSjsD-TxBBABRqEEgTCQe6F6S53oq/0/+DB8AACAcAwyLv8yLvcpAAcCA-e

Got no problems at all with that build.

Well maybe he is a bit too tanky, maybe. But that’s FAR FAR less a problem than you not having chronomancer runes + Signet of Inspiration. Perma Quickness for your group is far more important than a bit more dps on your chronotank.

Viper > Sinister > Rampager and Rabid

The actual difference change a lot depending if your build rely more on condition damage, or is more balance between condition and direct damage.

Just for some quick exemple. If your build is about 50/50 between direct damage and condition. Then Rampager will be about 5-10% better than Rabid, Sinister will be 10-15% better than Rabid and a mix of Viper/Sinister will be 30-40% better than rabid.

On a build that is more 25% direct damage, 75% condition damage. Then Rabid will be better than rampager by around 5-10%. But Sinister will then better than rabid by around 20% and a mix of Viper/Sinister will be better by 40-50%.