Guild Wars 2

IllegalChocolate.6938:

enough! time to kill the zerker meta where it stands! one bullet into the head and one in the heart!

- nerf Ice Bow INTO THE GROUND, ice storm now functions more closely to ranger longbow barrage and applies chill
- Earth Elemental now scales with player stats with lower innate armor and health
- Giganticus Lupicus projectiles are no longer reflectable
- Mobs now move as they attack just like players and can strafe as well as back pedal, dodge roll, and use stun breakers
-Mobs in dungeons now have a full set of skills (5 weapon attack skills, 1 healing skill, 3 utilities, and 1 elite skill) and use them based on their build archetype
-Mobs can now use finishers to kill downed players

and that’s just the tip of the ice cream

Most of these ideas would be nice. I would like to run more challenging content with my meta zerker

Xhyros.1340:

Maybe the downed zerker swapped a survival trait out for a damage trait because he expected the team to actually be zerker, thus was baited into a false sense of security.

If you asked for full zerker in the LFG tools then you would be right. But the complain would be more about a guy not following your requirement.

Did someone wrote on metabattle that sigil of night work everywhere? Don’t think so, but maybe i’m wrong?

Fails again? Do you see a lot of fails on there?

Azure Prower.8701:

Nothing worse than a self-righteous non-zerker in a zerker team big noting themselves because they survived. Only to show their ignorance of how the mechanics work.

I think that a self-righteous zerker that blame their death on non-zerker because they can’t survive a fight without the team killing a boss quick enough is equally worse.

As a zerker you shouldn’t rely on your team killing stuff fast enough for you to survive, you should understand the encounter and survive the fight anyway.

Ordinary zerker with non-zerker die on the floor. Good zerker will finish the fight solo if they have too. I’m not saying that you should never die, but you shouldn’t blame it on the non-zerker.

Jerus.4350:

In all Honesty it seems like warrior might be able to match an Engi at this point as Engi isn’t actually just dropping nades all the time, you’re often rotating through other kits and in general I’m maintaining 10-15 not the ~20 that is possible with more nades.

Well if you look at these numbers it could see that ya Warrior are able to match the engineer. But that’s not totally true. With the standard GS + Axe/Mace you can in theory reach 20 stack of vulnerability if everything is perfect. But you probably gonna maintain more around 10-15 wihtout unshakable. For the engineer, simply auto-attacking will give you 25 stack of vulnerability without unshakable (13 with unshakable). Of course the less you are quick to getting back in your grenade, the less vulnerability you will be able to maintain. All those numbers are without food.

Further more, the Warrior will give vulnerability to 3 targets at the time, while the engineer can give it to 5 targets.

Yup these guide work with pugs. Most ppl that write them pug often, if not most of the time.

There is plenty of zerker guys that can’t survive if there are not with a full zerker party, they are just bad zerker that rely on the fact that the group will kill the mobs before they die and not on their knowledge of the fight to dodge most important attack.

Jerus.4350:

Is rending strikes really that high? I mean I knew it was decent, but I always thought it was lower than that. Good to know.

Well to be fair that the number if you have 100% crit chance and your rotation is perfect, no dodge, etc. So that’s like the maximum you will get from it. Remember that with the meta build you get +30% condition duration.

1) Its usually good. There could be some connectivity issue from time to time, but they are really rare. GW2 demand more of your CPU than your video card so a lot of buy a good video card and then complain that the game have issue in large scale fight.
2) There is no end-game or the end-game is what you want. This wasn’t an issue at launch, its just that a lot of ppl didn’t find a traditional end-game. The game don’t give you an end-game, you will have to find your own end-game. Achievement hunting, skin hunting, PvP, WvW, Dungeon speed run, Solo dungeon, fractal, etc…
3) WvW is better as ppl balanced themselves the different server, but don’t think we gonna have perfect balance ever. There is also sPvP, which is better in my opinion.
4) The game is base around the concept that anyone in any build can complete any content. So no there is not much challenge in the game (PvE side I mean). But we figure out ways to get challenge. Record and Solo runs need a lot of coordination and are challenging. Fractal 50 is kind of challenging if you try to melee everything. Triple Trouble is a the only challenging world boss, but with a good organized group its not that bad (it need about 100 ppl to be organized together).
5) Mostly vanity stuff. There is some little object that give you a boost in stats, but they are temporarily and you gonna ruin yourself for a really small boost.
6) It’s the only MMO that keep me in the game for so long. The main aspect of the game is the cooperation atmosphere, you want ppl to help you, they won’t steel your stuff (loots, gathering nodes, etc). The fact that you can get back after 3months and still have the best gear and run anything with your friends. The level scaling keep most content fresh (you don’t 1 shot everything in low level zone) and worth running again. You can do whatever you want, everybody go after their own goal and nothing is forced on you (mostly).

Dinks.2478:

Yes they can

Ok sorry, yes they can. No they shouldn’t.

Crushing blow give a perma 8.6 vulnerability
Cyclone Axe give a perma 4.16 vulnerability
Rending Strikers give a perma 7.28 vulnerability

With equal to 20 perma vulnerability. You shouldn’t use GS auto-attack if you have the right rotation, but lets say you have a full GS auto-attack in there. That boost to 22 perma vulnerability. With OMM that bring us to 26 perma vulnerability, but what do you sacrifice? Signet of Fury? Banner of Discipline? Banner of Strenght?

And keep in mind that its with the best rotation, no dodge, nothing. In reality you probably gonna oscillate between 20-25 stack of vulnerability with OMM. And more around 15-20 without it. And that’s half of that against mobs with unshakable.

Astralporing.1957:

It’s supposed to be fun and entertainment. If i wanted hard work, i’d stay in RL where i have enough of it already, so using examples based on how RL is supposed to work (no pun intended) is getting you nowhere.

If its not fun for you just don’t do it. It doesn’t meant that other ppl don’t like it. Hard work to gain something give value to that thing and its something important to a lot of ppl.

Nikaido.3457:

- Take Harpy’s feather with you. They stealth you for 3sec and have low cooldown, they gonna help you a lot while running some portion.

Engis can also blast stealth for 10s, then use Toss Elixir S for 5s more stealth while running. Once stealth runs out, elixir s itself is a decent “oh snap” button if something went wrong while skipping.
It’s a great class, and my post was only about the build/gear, not about the character itself. Engis might not be the fastest runners, or highest dps, but they’re well rounded and have a lot of things for various situations. Condis are fine for some bosses, but you really need some berserker gear for those who are strong against them. You don’t need to roll another character.

I know that Engie can blast stealth. But that’s the issue. Its a blast. For some run, a harpy’s feather will make your life way more easier (you can’t blast next to a enemy and you can’t blast enough by yourself with an engineer to run through everything in one shot. Yes of course you can run it, then wait, then run again, but harpy’s feather will save you some time. Always appreciated in a solo run.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Of course it’s not difficult. But some of us just don’t care for fractals, even if they’re easy. The reason I don’t do fractals unless I HAVE to is because I don’t know if I’m going to get lucky and get four good fractals, or if I’ll end up with cliffside AND dredge AND Mai Trin. I don’t usually have enough time to sit down and do all of that.

And at level 1 its suppose to be long if you get all of these? I ask because 2 days ago I took a group of guild mate into a level 1. They were all new to fractal except 1 who was level 4. We got water/cliffside/dredge/Mai trin and I had to explain everything, it took us 45min. If I take the same group again, it will take 30min at max. Level 1 is just too easy.

Dinks.2478:

So for example a Phalanx Strength warrior won’t hit as hard as a full dps warrior but would be capable of stacking 25 minute and 25 vulnerability

Just a little thing. Warrior can’t maintain 25 stack of vulnerability. Other than that you are right.

posthumecaver.6473:

And what is the purpose of going all berserker, if I am going to have so much DPS downtime when I have to hide one corner of the room and don’t DPS at all.

Just because some ppl are using outdated strategy that doesn’t mean that zerker need to use it.

We don’t need to hide in a corner and wait for mobs to get to us. That used to be a good strategy because of FGS. You wait for mobs to come to you, but then you do massive dmg to them. But FGS is not that good anymore so that strategy is bad in most case, but ppl are still using it because old habit die hard. It is still a good idea is some situation when mobs are all over the place, LOSing them in a corner is sometime the best way to regroup them so you do dmg to all of them, not just one at the time.

This thread is going beserk (see what I did there). Pls keep it focus on the question of TPMN.

TPMN.1483:

From what I can ascertain zerker is a armor stat is there a corresponding trait stat or is it all 6/6/x – full power / precision traits?

Yes zerker is the armor stats (Assassin can be better depending on your profession and build). For trait it’s more complicated, some build are using 6/6/x, but not all. Each profession will have several build depending on the situation or you can just use a general purpose build and never change it. Take a look at gw2metabattle for some basic build to start with.

TPMN.1483:

Is there anything I’m missing here – or is the game really that easy that heals are not required?

Self heal are required, but ppl healing other ppl is not that good and not required. Yes this game was build for casual mostly so its easy. What is less easy is to run full meta build, optimizing buffs, and optimizing your stategy to finish dungeon super quick. (Most dungeon can be run under 5min, while good pugs can do it in 15min and bad will do it in 20-25min). We also get our challenge from duo or solo run of dungeons.

TPMN.1483:

PvP seems a bit harder to active defense – as the players are more random (human) but I presume the same logic there also applies?

Yes and no. Some build/profession are glass canon, but they are non-forgiving. Most build in PvP have some defensive stats, but active defense is still super important. In PvE you know what will happen so you can anticipate all attack and use active defense, you can’t do that in PvP.

TPMN.1483:

Active defenses are like Stealth, reflects and stuff so you don’t take damaged e.g. Stabilitys / condition clears?

IS it really just a case of learning the skill animations, sounds and what each boss does in pve and use an active defense?

Enlighten me a little please..
Tell me more how this dark art works that I can do dmg and take no dmg from stuff.

Active defense is all thing that you activate to stop or lower the incoming dmg. It include aegis, blind, block, invulnerable, distortion, dodge, reflection. You can also think about weakness, protection and vigor as active defence(partially). Condition removal also, but its more like a heal. It fix thing after the hit, not prevent it.

How to use them depend on what profession you are using and what option are available to you. Your main goal here is to learn what are the animations of your enemies and react to them. If you spam your active defense, you gonna run out pretty quick. If you are using them at the right moment to block a particular attack you will drastically decrease the incoming dmg.

Didn’t you read the window that appear before going in the dungeon? Its a level 35 dungeon. Its already hard for level 35 when they don’t know the dungeon, I can’t imagine what will it be like for level 26 lol.

For your vitality and toughness thing. The game have a lot of level scaling. Your stats will change depending where you are. You probably checked your stats outside of the dungeon where you are both downscaled to level 15 or something like that, but check it out again inside the dungeon and you will probably see that your friend stats is higher than yours since he’s gonna be level 35 and you will be level 26 inside the dungeon.

Ele zerker is the hardest way to play when you are not used to it. It’s gonna take a lot of dying but you gonna get used to it and you gonna die less and less over time.

The best defences for the Elementalist is position and knowing the attack of mobs.

I get that some ppl like to have smooth run and only want ppl with good build and gear. I also prefer that, even if I never ask that in my LFG.

But some ppl push that too far. Yesterday I was doing my daily Arah runs (1-2-3). I did a duo path 3 at lupi because my group was really great so I put 3 pts in acrobatic for my thief just to be sure. Forgot to switch it up, I’m going in a path 2 and the guy kick me saying that’s because of my 6pts in acrobatics. Didn’t ask or think, he just kicked. I end up with a lovely group and we were doing abomination by the time the other party filled up so…

Frost.1503:

Yeah, really easy -.-", and is a only pieace ….
Did you forgot somethings?

http://pwniversity.com/gw2/crafting/armorsmith-guide

I do pvp really often and sometimes fractal (really rare WvW). i don’t take a lot of gold or materials from them….

No I didn’t forgot somethings. Pls read before commenting. I included the gold to level from level 1 to 500.

Here some tips
- Start by path 2. Path 1 you need 4 ppl for the tar fight and Path 3 can be hard to solo because of the orb, don’t know if engineer can solo but you problably gonna need cleric to do it.
- Have a backup zerker set since like most ppl said some boss have some immunity to condition.
- Maximize you dmg. Take ascended gear if you can, take sigil of force and sigil of undead slaying. Take a couple of different food. Take a good pile of potion of undead slaying, etc, etc You will be alone so fight are gonna take a long time. Every little bit of dmg will count.
- Prepare yourself to change your build often. You probably gonna have to change you build for every fight so your fight run should be about trying to find the best build for each encounter.
- Take Harpy’s feather with you. They stealth you for 3sec and have low cooldown, they gonna help you a lot while running some portion.

BlackGuard.9602:

This is ridiculous hehe.This whole point of not needing the best gear hehe.

Its like you say:“you dont need the best drug to treat your disease,the generic drug is just a LITTLE LESS effective”

This ridiculous rationalization attempt goes against human nature.We could have lived in stone age to this day,“we were killing just fine”(its totaly not “I can do hearts just fine” parody).But guess what we are not because we NEED and WANT the best,we constantly progress.Its our nature…

But still ppl in a lot of group
- Don’t bring both banner as a warrior
- Don’t help blast fire field for might or put light field under
- Don’t bring potions
- Don’t bring food
- Bring zerker because everybody talk about zerker, but change their trait and don’t bring dmg multiplier
- If they have good sigil they will never ever have several weapons with different sigil
- Its cool IF they gonna bring fury
- Rarely participate to stacking vulnerability
- Don’t bother to get their rotation right and just spawn their skill on cooldown

All of those think boost your dmg as much if not more than ascended armor+weapons and cost either nothing or small amount of gold. If you do all those thing then ya you have a point, but the vast majority of ppl that cry about ascended don’t even bother with all those thing.

Deamhan.9538:

I would certainly consider a 16.23% increase in damage pretty significant.

You just made a small mistake. You forgot to calculate total dmg, you only took critical dmg.

(857 × 0.76 × 2.23) + (857 × 0.24 ) = 1658
(940 × 0.79 × 2.26) + (940 × 0.21) = 1876

(1876-1658)/1658 = 13.1% increased dmg

Also, it’s kind of weird to take into account exotic accessories, rings and amulet since its easier to get ascended version over the exotic ones. So your first build should have ascended rings, accessories and amulet, while keeping everything else exotic.

With that into account, that leave us with a difference of 10% more damage in full ascended.

That’s of course if you play alone and don’t take into account buff. When you talk about group content with might, fury, banners, spotter, etc then this number get even smaller. Lets see the number with 25 stack of might, fury and both warrior banners (this isn’t all buff, its just the normal buff that you see often). I also took the liberty to change rune of the ranger to rune of the scholar otherwise both exotic and ascended version would reach 100% crit chance and so the diffence in dps between both would be lower than in reality since a part of the additional precision for ascended would be wasted.

Ascended
Power : 2503 + 750(might) + 170 (banner) = 3423
Crit chance : 70%+ 9% (banner) +20%(fury)=99%
Crit dmg : 226% + 11% (banner) = 237%
Base damage : 1050 × 3423 × 1/2600 = 1 382
Average damage : (1 382 × 0.99 × 2.37) + (1 382 × 0.01) = 3 256

Exotic (with ascended rings, accessories and amulet)
Power : 2454 + 750(might) + 170(banner)=3374
Crit chance : 68%+9%(banner) +20%(fury)=97%
Crit dmg : 225% + 11%(banner) = 236%
Base damage : 1000 × 3374 × 1/2600 = 1297
Average damage : (1 297 × 0.97 × 2.36) + (1 297 × 0.03) = 3 008

(3256 – 3008) / 3008 = 8.24% increase in term of dps in a group.

W Johan W.5968:

AR always been required for fractals.

Well that’s not true. AR was useless in high level when it was first introduced since you couldn’t have enough AR to make any difference. I used to say to my friend that started to play fractal that they shouldn’t try to gain AR so they can practice to dodge Agony attack otherwise they gonna get used to AR protecting them in low level and when they reach higher level where AR don’t protect you enough anymore you smash into a big wall. That unfortunately isn’t the case anymore.

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

I think Executioner is better once you have above 50% and good access to Fury actually.^^

It depend where and what you play. As a D/P or D/D thief in WvW you focus on sustain in stealth and burst dmg. With Hidden killer you can get a mix of valkyrie and zerker gear to get you a minimum survivability, while sacrificing almost no dmg at all. Keep in mind that in WvW the thief is looking to fight 1vs1 or 1vsgroup. You will have to fight for a long period of time while the enemy is high in life.

In sPvP, that’s not the same situation. As a D/P thief you role is to finish ppl off. You are using your mobility to chase ppl with low hp and finish them, executioner is far better in that situation. Fight are faster as ppl can’t drag them by moving away from you, they need to defend their node.

If you can’t dodge there is several options. Whatever option you choose, don’t just stop trying to dodge, it will still help and it could become easier and easier over time for you.

1) Take some defensive stats. You will be less effetive, but it will still work. Plenty of hybrid build can work for you.
2) Take an easier profession. Elementalist for exemple is harder to play wihtout dodge. But heavy class profession will have more passive defense. Necromancer, Engineer and Ranger also have more passive defense.
3) You can use a range build to help you survive. Probably won’t be super good, but it will work.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

I reached fotm 80 without using a single revive orb lalalalala

You used a Ranger to revive the first person to go in? Or you did it after when ppl at level 80 could bring you in odd numbers fractal only? Probably the first one since the other one could only bring you to 79.

Or maybe there was another option that I wasn’t aware of.

I loved this heart, it was one of my favourite.

It depend highly on what is your build and where are you using it.

If you are a D/P thief in WvW, you have way too much precision and you should focus more on ferocity and power. You should be using the trait that give you 100% crit chance from stealth so precision shouldn’t be your main focus.

If you are in PvE dungeon you also have way too much precision. 73% is the sweet spot (banner + fury will bring you to 100%, 65% if you expect rangers with spotter and 62% if you plan on using food with precision in it). If you are using the meta thief, you should even be less than that because a lot of trait boost your crit chance in some situation, so make sure that you took that into account.

Now if you are in PvP, using a Sword build or are soloing content, then its different and it come to what fit you best.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Side note for all the people who say that Staff has the highest DPS in the game: it is true (I TCed it myself!), but it is only applicable when your enemy does not move much, when you have access to the required buffs, and when you do not need to do anything else but damage. Technically, that is very niche.

Well that’s pretty good in PvE since you can lock down enemies so they don’t move much. And its pretty good to support a node in sPvP, ppl have to take you attack, waste their defense or get out of the node. But its just not that good in solo or in pvp fight out of a node. All weapons have its purpose, we don’t want them to all have the same strength.

Dragon’s Tooth : That would be bad for PvE, but good for PvP. That would still not make fire sceptre good in PvP so more change would be needed to make that change meaningful. Until then, that would make more harm than good.

Glyph of Storm : I can agree with a small boost in dmg but not a 387% boost. That would make this a powerful burst dmg skill almost as good as Meteor Shower which is suppose to be one of the best burst dmg skill for the Elementalist. 200-300 base dmg could be ok, but not more than that.

-Conjures : The CD and charges consume is good as they are. The CD will make Icebow so much OP as you could use Ice Storm every 20s, which is insane. Icebow is already a big source of burst dmg, it don’t need a boost. The charge thing will make LH almost unlimited as you only use the auto-attack anyway. For the thing about being able to put the LH back on the ground and pick it up later, that’s would be awesome. That would make conjure more easy to use and less frustrating sometime. (Looking at you pugs that take my LH when you pick up your loots)

- FGS : It depend on what you want to create. The buff to fiery rush will make the corner stacking come back as the one tactic to rule them all and its not good. You could either boost firestorm like you write. That would make the FGS like the Frost bow. You drop it, use firestorm/fiery rush, then drop it.

Another option is to boost firestrom a little less, but buff other skill as well (other than fiery rush) . That way if you use it all, it will be a dps increase over you standard weapons set, but it won’t be a burst fast burst like the Frost bow.

synthyourlife.8174:

As I’m new to the game, just pardon me if I make some mistakes.
I’m currently using a Sword/Axe (or Sword/Shield) – Hammer combination on my warrior.
What I usually do is throw some conditions and dps with sw/a and change to hammer, do the stuff and jump back again to sw/a. I don’t know if this is correct at all, but I feel like maximizing all the conditions I have in both stances.
I tried GS too, but I like hammer more for the knockbacks and stuns and stuff.

This tread was about Guardian not warrior. If the Hammer of the guardian is pretty good in PvE (but not the best) and that sword is part of the meta, its not the same for Warrior.

Hammer for a warrior is a terrible in PvE. Sword is ok for a condition dmg build, but that only good in solo situation, if you use that in group content it will be pretty bad.

Well its not just all dps, especially with the guardian. You have a limited dps (even if you go all dps) as a guardian. You will be ranked 6th in term of dps. The main reason to bring a guardian in a dungeon is for the support it bring. The meta currently focus on blind, aegis, reflection and condition removal. In harder situation it can provide perma protection, that’s 33% less incoming dmg. That’s about equal to 950 toughness for all the team at only the cost of 5-10% less dps only for the guardian. That’s the strength of the guardian.

Meta guardian have 2500 power, 50-60% crit chance (65-75% with their sword) and 210-220% crit dmg.

Hybrid was a view on the game 2 years ago. Ppl needed some survivability and didn’t really know what was best. As we knew more about the game we realized that active defense was the best defense and that’s what the guardian is all about. Skill like retreat that was view as simply a running skill, is not the most important skill of a guardian. Time it well and you can save a hit to your whole team that could have take out thousand of hp to everyone, far superior than healing them after or anything. The meta give you access to 5 blinds and 3 aegis all allow you to deny all incoming dmg for a shot duration or block all big attack on your team for a longer period.

Now that work as well when you play solo. I know its hard to make the transition, you freak out at having 11k hp and limited armor. I know because I was freaking out too. But as you get better with the build you will realized that you survive more because you block incoming dmg, you can get hit by them. It is also way more fun because its an active gameplay, you rely on your own skill and knowledge of the game to survive, not just some passive stats.

Hybrid still work even if they are not ideal. I suggest that you try the trait, weapons and skills of the meta but keep your current armor. You will learn how to use your active defence, while still having the safety net of your knight armor. As you get better with those active defense, you can slowly change your knight armor to a zerker armor. Don’t rush, do it at your rhythm. In the end, it will help you a lot because Knight armor give you a lot of aggro.

Dredd Spirit Caller.4082:

with “Bunker Down” (firearms XIII) ucan place a mine every 2 seconds (another explosion) and keep vuln up without much problem (with fury and bunner u got 100% crit chance)

I don’t like BD because even if it can have a higher potentiel dps, in average you gonna have less dps. Its not that reliable, but that said, its still a good build.

Like with precision, there is different way to reach your goal. You maybe right that with BD + Bomb you can have enough explosion to keep vulnerability higher. I prefer to play flamethrower and static discharge because the overall dps is higher. For that build you need the food from time to time to keep vulnerability always at 25.

You guys know that Ele Staff is the highest dps in the game right? We want to boost it? WTH

Ppl seem to don’t really understand what they are talking about.

Hammer dps is higher than GS.
Hammer dps is lower than GS + Sw/F

That’s different. If you gonna camp 1 melee weapon, Hammer is the way to go. The only problem with Hammer is the annoying constant light field that prevent might stacking. It won’t be an issue when you solo in open world and it won’t be an issue in most pugs group, but you will have the issue eventually.

If you gonna use a Hammer build you ABSOLUTLY need the trait Writ of persistance. Without it you don’t have perma protection and its a 35% increase in dps against 3 targets, a 126% increase in dps against 5 targets. So its a really important trait to have.

Overall, a Hammer build will make about 90-97% dps of a GS + Sw/F build. And the protection is not needed except in fractal. That + the fact that it screw up might stacking is the reason why most ppl don’t use Hammer in dungeon, but they tend to use in in Fractal 50, especially against hard and fast hitting boss like Archdiviner. Guardian Hammer + Skale Venom allow your team to melee that boss and not just range him.

In the end, Hammer is a super powerful PvE weapons. It lack a tiny bit of dps, screw up might stacking, but give one of the biggest boost possible in survivability to your party. It is definitively worth using if you like it.

serenke.4806:

You mean you bugged and glitched your way up to 80. As there was no proper way to go that high. Everybody who went to 80 knew they were doing something that worked only due to an oversight by devs. But of course you can call it “skill”.

It wasn’t a bug or a glitch. We simply rezzed ourselves with a revive orb or a pet in 1 place. Oversight by the devs? Sure. We played content that we weren’t suppose to access? Of course. But it doesn’t change the fact that this concept was so much better that the fractal we have now. It was skilled base because (except for the final boss) every single agony attack one shot killed you. Not down, but dead. Every party member had to be perfect and dodge/block incoming agony attack or the party was in trouble. That was on the two best content I ever played in that game (the other one is SAB). Anet could had run with it, but instead they decided to make infusion necessary to complete it, making that content so much more easier. I’m ok with ascended, but that doesn’t mean that its the best system.

So they say :

We want to give you more option, meaning and milestone to make it a journey.

And you read :

We made a huge mistake, we are sorry, we gonna fix it for free.

You bring limited support, have really bad dps, but you will have high survivability.

It’s a variation of a two years old build when nobody knew how to play the game well and that everybody saw as bad for PvE. It looks more like a WvW build than a PvE one.

Its ok, I use a similar build once. We probably all did. Now a lot of stuff was learned about the game mechanics and its time to evolve.
http://dulfy.net/2014/08/25/gw2-guardian-pve-class-guide-by-bordy/
http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Prevas.9305:

So for leveling D/F is the way to go ?

Its one way to go. Its a versatile setup with a good survivability. But a lot of ppl like to level up with D/D for the mobility around the open world. Using a staff with your Earth Elemental getting the aggro is another option. D/F was a nice option for him in particular because he was complaining about dying. It doesn’t mean that its the best way.

phys.7689:

what you can see is the problem.
Legendaries were supposed to be a long term goal, but the precursor was a sticking point that required luck on a low random roll, or earning enough gold to compete with the mid -high range gold earners.

The fact that you were fine with random/gold grind doesnt mean it wasnt a problem, just that it wasnt a problem for you specifically.

The designers admited it was a problem about a year ago, and said that solutions were on the way for free.

Even casual players can afford a precursor. I know because I was a casual and It took me a year to get my first legendary. I started to play more after that. There is also a lot of casual with their own legendary in my guild. It ain’t gonna be easier to get precursor through collection, its will just be more different. You could gain gold through a lot of different ways to buy your precursor, with the collection you will have specific stuff to do. They are both great ways to get a precursor and more diversity is always welcome. That doesn’t make the old system a problem.

Now I really would like to see that post from a Dev a year ago that said that admitted it is a problem and the solution is on the way for free. Because that seem a lot more like your own interpretation and not real word from a dev.

phys.7689:

yes its problem that they identified within 4 months of the game coming out which they were hoping to fix within a year of the game coming out.

2 questions. What is the problem? And how it is a ’’core’’ problem?

I can see that not everybody like the RNG of the mystic forge or that going through a adventure or collection to get your precursor will be more fun than accumulating gold, but I still don’t see the problem?

I ask because I just made my 6th legendary and didn’t see much problem there.

Jerus.4350:

Thing is it’s still a time sink where you’re grinding trying to unlock something so you can go see more content. Not that time sinks are necessarily bad, but it’s just… yeah… we’ll see how it goes…

It’s always a struggle. We want to experience new content as fast as possible because its new and exciting, but at the same time we don’t want mastery to be ridiculously easy to get so that we don’t burn through them quickly. Whatever their direction there will be ppl unhappy and other happy.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I was not replying to statements that the Ascended increase did not matter in PvE. WvW is PvP, despite people who play it as Player v. Gate.

You were talking about might nerf. Might nerf is for spvp where there is no ascended gear. Just didn’t see the point of your argument.

phys.7689:

Essentially he fears they the solution to the core games problem will only be available to those who buy the expansion

And precursor crafting is a ‘’core game problem’‘? It will be nice, but its not like precursor were a problem ever. Mastery won’t allow you to get a precursor within an hour, it will probably as long and difficult as buying or forging a precursor right now just without the RNG of forging it.

Yup precursor crafting was suppose to be in the game by december 2013. They screw up, their first system wasn’t good enough they had to redesign it and they apologized for that.

IndigoSundown.5419:

If stats are not important, why the recent Might nerf?

It was done for sPvP and sPvP only and have nothing to do with PvE or ascended. PvP need more fine tuning of your numbers because you need balance between profession. Celestial Amulet + Might stack is a huge meta right now in pvp and they were a bit too strong compare to other build.

We are not saying that its not important. But gw2 in PvE have A LOT of little thing that boost your dmg. A potion costing 2 silver will boost your dmg by 10% and your defense by a 10%, still not that many ppl are using them when they run dungeon and still at least twice more powerful than a full ascended armor.

Of course they go into slippery terrain Jerus. That mastery thing could be a huge flop. What if you can hardly fight mobs in some of the new maps and mastery give you more resistance and more dmg against them. That’s would be pure vertical grind progression.

But if they go like Windsagio said, more toward a metroid kind of progression or even like Zela, then it could be a lot of fun. Special tools that allow you to gain access to new part of the region or that can be used with some special mechanic to defeat bosses.

Jerus.4350:

tools you need to excel in these fights. Hunt new enemies, master abilities to defeat champions, and become more deadly against the new creatures waiting in the jungle.

This set of systems is vertical progression from what I’m reading today. Whether that will be true in fractals… we’ll see.

Not necessarily. All of those can be horizontal.

- Hunt new enemies : Maybe something to find special type of enemies that you new. Maybe you need to kill different type of enemies for a collection and you have a tool that allow you to find one of those specific enemies to make your life easier.
- Master abilities to defeat champion : Maybe a buff or even better a skill that allow you to rip off the armor of a new boss. Once the armor is removed everybody can kill the boss. Or maybe a mastery that protect ppl around you against a special attack of the boss so we need to work together and make sure we have ppl with certain mastery against specific bosses.
- become more deadly against the new creature in the jungle : that one seem indeed more like vertical progression. But it doesn’t mean that it can’t be awesome. Imagine that there is 4 different type of enemies, so you want to regroup everybody with the right mastery against the right type of mobs. Without the mastery we could only have time to kill 1 boss, as ppl get more mastery we can kill more bosses and get more reward. Think of it like husk for the Triple Wurm. We need a condi team to fight them otherwise we may not always succeed. It could be something similar. Or it could be boring small power creed. Just hope not or at least, that it will be as small as possible (think like WvW abilities)

I really don’t think it will be power creep Jerus (Or at least I really hope it won’t lol).

Specific mastery that we know of are learning a new languages, gliding, jumping from mushroom, gaining access to new reward, etc.

Total speculation on my part but here some possibilities of Fractal Masteries

- Unlocking new recipe to upgrade infusion. Right now, crafting +5 is easy, crafting +8 is hard, crafting +10 is stupid. Maybe a new recipe will make crafting +10 and +15 more accessible so we can do higher level of fractal.
- Unlocking new skills that allow you to go through some higher level instability.
- Unlocking new collections and rewards.

dlonie.6547:

kitten , I need to do that. Didn’t realize the farm was /that/ rich.

Ya i’m drowning in dragonite now. With the gift of generosity and mawdry 2 that try their best to keep my amount of dust and star manageable, I’m ending up with more dragonite ore than the other two sitting in my bank.

Rage.4693:

I am truely shocked that nobody agree’s with Milennin. has everybody forgotten what GW2’s goal was compared to other mmo’s.

We could agree a bit more with Milnennin if we were in december 2013, but we are not anymore. Material price have drop down, we figure out intelligent ways to level up crafting profession at a super low cost and we accumulated a lot of Tier 7 over the year. As of what was the goal of GW2 everyone have its own version of it, so that’s not a argument at all.