Guild Wars 2

Not all heal are best in all situation. For the meta PvE Elementalist, Arcane Brilliance is super effective. Its also effective in range for blasting water field. But other than that, there is better healing skill. Each healing skill is good for some situation, that’s ok.

Don’t do that lol. I suppose you are new to the game. First of all, there is not tank or healer in the game. You have good basic self heal and healing power scale really badly, so nobody will be able to keep you alive and you won’t be able to tank stuff. A group of tanky character can faceroll a dungeon (this was done and posted), but it was a joke and the run took forever. DPS should be you main focus, and you should only take the defense you need to stay alive while learning how to play your profession.

DeathPanel.8362:

Wrong. Regen banner is good. You admit yourself banners are good without any traits. The regen is just value added to an existing skill that is good.

Taking shouts exclude the option of getting banners. Those things are mutually exclusive which makes shout healing option an inferior option in every way.

Both shouts and banner regen are bad anyway. This conversation is useless. You shouldn’t go more than 20pts into that trait line. There is several better ways to get the survivability that you need if you can’t play the meta and Warrior is really not that great for support compare to other profession. If you want to support your team (other than DPS and offensive support), then you better run a guardian or something else but not a warrior.

Damage Modifier when using a conjure weapons with Meta build and rune of the scholars and sigil or night.

- Warrior : 43.3%
- Elementalist : 93.2% to 132.3% : Depend on the build, boons, but 132.3% is almost impossible to reach because so many variable need to be perfect.
- Rangers : 53.67%
- Guardian : 46.4% to 75.7% (with Aegis)
- Thief : 53.7% (or 84.4% if target under 50% hp)
- Engineer : 42.4% to 73.2% (if target have all conditions, but that pretty much impossible)
- Mesmer : 40.4% (most damage modifier help phantasm damage not yours)

I don’t really know the Necromancer enough. So the best profession is of course the Elementalist that got the best modifier even if a lot of things go wrong, and he can get a astonishing modifier if most things go right (forget about the 132%, you will never reach that in real life lol). Thief and Guardian come second with really good damage modifier, it depend on the ability of the guardian to keep Aegis up while using the conjure weapons. Rangers is not that bad at all, and most modifier can stay up without much trouble while using a conjure weapons. Engineer can be in the top if a lot of conditions are on the boss, but his damage modifier will change a lot from fight to fight. Mesmer and Warrior are the worst for conjure weapons.

Now keep in mind that i didn’t count the personal stats. For exemple, even if the Elementalist have way more damage modifier that the Warrior, he also have less offensives stats since he need to speed points in trait line that don’t give any offensive stats. Which profession are really the best would need more math that what i provide and also depend on the ability of the player to keep these damage modifier.

DeathPanel.8362:

Shout healing is bad. It is nowhere comparable to the effectiveness from the amount of dps you and your group would gain from banners.

Shout Healing is bad, and so is Regen Banners lol.

The banner are good without any trait and can be use by any warriors. So stop trying to say that oh man my banner are good because they boost DPS. Yes of course its a utility skill you don’t need regen banner to make them give DPS boost.

SuperBlunt.7105:

Now that we have a new teir of armor in the game, it is Anets chance to make dungeons how they were suppose to be on release. If you dont already know the way dungeons were suppose to work, ill explain. Once you have completed the story mode of a dungeon you will unlock exp mode. Explorable mode has 3 paths, each path with a different objective. These paths were meant for the most organized group of players and even than it was going to be challenging. After completion of a exp mode, you will receive one token which then you can exchange for one piece of armor.

1) Story Mode and Explorable didn’t change. Right now, its exactly like you describe and it was like that since the beginning.
2) These path were meant for the most organized group of player and even than it was going to be challenging??? You call that learning. Most path were kittenly because nobody know how to do them. As people learn more about their build, their profession and the dungeon, the run as more and more easy. Its normal. When AC was revamp i remember people screaming on the forum that the path was way too hard now, this is bullkitten and everything. One Dev said that its normal, that the community will learn how to do the revamp dungeon and things will get back in order. Guess what, this is exactly what happen as Anet intended it. BTW organized group at the beginning were able to complete dungeon in speed run after only a couple runs. Even casual were able too not that longer after.
3) I started the game 1 month after the release and never went into the beta. But i don’t remember the dungeon giving you 1 token for 1 piece of armor. I’m pretty sure it was never like that in the game, maybe in the beta. But anyway, the token system we have right now is way better.

I get your idea. More challenging dungeon would be nice, but i hate when people scrap content. Why removing existing dungeon to make more hard version. Why not just add an hard version of dungeon so people can still make the normal version. For your ascended stuff i don’t think that 1 dungeon path should equal to once piece of ascended armor. Anyway the idea is still good because more ways of getting ascended gear, except crafting, should exist. Now some balance should be done so crafting don,t become obsolete like it did with exotic. For me crafting should cost more for 1 armor set, but become more cheaper if you want to craft several armor set.

OracleofSilence.2741:

…
So thats a difference of opinion…

The thing is that the Elementalist get its DPS from all the Damage Modifier.

+20% Damage when enemies have 33% or less HP.
+10% Damage when you are at 600 range or less.
+10% Damage when you have 90% or more HP.

And depending on which attunement you gonna DPS (Fire for Staff or Water for Light Hammer)
+10% Damage when in fire attunement
+20% Damage when in water attunement and the enemy have vulnerability.

That’s a lot of modifier, but not all of them are easy to get. 90% HP can be hard to maintain if you are a squishy Ele in melee range. Several Elementalist like to be in Range, especially if you have Staff, but its a mistake. Usually ele don’t give that much vulnerability, so you need other profession to activate your +20% in Water. Also a lot of strength of the Ele is to give boost to the party with Might Stacking, Constant Fire Field and Fury. If the party don’t work well together the value of the Elementalist drop, while a Warrior is good DPS whatever is happening.

Flissy.4093:

Thaddeus.4891:

The meta build with some knight armor would be even better, again if you need some survivability.

Exactly, now throw out what you said about using heal shouts for survival because it just isn’t a good idea.

I didn’t say it was a good idea. I said if you want to give some healing support to your team, i rather like you to have heal shout than banner Regen. Meta Build with knight gear is better, but some people want to support the team. At least a Shout Heal warrior with 30pts in tactics and empower allies with everything else for DPS wouldn’t be a bad build. It would be a good one since you have plenty survivability with the basic warrior, but hell i think its a good compromise between his build and the meta.

Like Guanglai said you trade personnal DPS for Surviability, Regen Banner and Empower Allies. You CAN’T talk about normal banner here man, any warrior can bring them, there is nothing new here.

Empower allies is a good trait so no question here.

Regen Banners are not that bad, i mean i would prefer someone using Heal Shout because banner can’t help you if you run around and less cooldown on FGJ and OMM are not that bad either. But i understand, if someone need a bit of defense and can’t go into full DPS, i rather they bring some support and not only survivability.

Ok so you have 30pts in tactics for some survivability and support. Ok i can live with that. But 20pts in Defense really. That only bring you limited amount of survivability but you sacrifice a lot of DPS. These 20pts in Defense should really be in Strength, Arm or Discpline to get those damage modifiers like Slashing Power, Beserker Powers or Dual Wielding. Even if you need to replace 1 or 2 piece of armor for Knight gear so you have your own survivability if you need to.

A 30/10/0/30/0 Build would make a lot more sense if you want to bring a bit of support and need some survivability for yourself. The meta build with some knight armor would be even better, again if you need some survivability.

Mobility
Warrior, Ele and Thief are the best at that. But most profession have good mobility depending on the build you use. Mesmer on the other have a really bad mobility with only 1 skill that give swiftness and 1 teleport.

Smooth Feel
Again it depend on which build and weapon you use. Warrior have some infamous channeling skill that can get you kill, but are powerful.

Damage over time and/or giant numbers
Giant numbers = Warriors, Elemenlist and thief can give you that. For DOT you’re better with necromancer or engineers. But DOT in this game is broken. You can still enjoy it, but its not the best way to go.

Preparation
I only get that on my might stacking Elementalist or my Warrior (banner, FGJ, etc).

Visuals
Any Heavy or Light are really good. Medium have a harder time with that, but you can still pull off something nice. For the skills looks i find Ele and Guardian the best. Necromancer is also really nice and dark. Engineer can make a lot of explosion, while a Mesmer will paint your screen in pink, which can be either really cool or not depending on your opinion.

Less switching
That exclude Elementalist or Engineer. Except if you want to play a Staff Elementalist (usually you stay in fire).

Solo/AoE
Any cleaving weapon will do AoE in melee : Warrior, Guardian are really good at that. Elementalist, Necro and Engineer also have great range AoE.

Overall don’t take Mesmer or Rangers. One won’t fit your needs and the other is just bad.
Warrior would be a good choice, but check if 100 Blades is good with you since its a channeling skill.
Elementalist would also fit your need but as you said the attunement don’t do it for you. If you use a Staff and camp fire this solve the problem, but don’t really give you anything to do for preparation.
Thief seem to fit most of your criteria. But for the big number you will need a squishy melee thief. if you can live with that and find a nice medium skin then maybe its the perfect profession for you.
Guardian don’t shine but don’t anything negative to any of your criteria. If you think that thief is too squishy or don’t like the medium armors skins, this could be an options.
Necromancers will give you the best Condition for you. If you want to go that way, then Necromancer should be your choice.

Actually Elementalist are in a really great place right now. They have one of the best DPS of the game for PvE and are now regularly use for min/max speed run.

For WvW, elementalist are one of the good Ranged DPS with great support with combos field.

Your post is long, but there is really small amount of information to help you. Celestial can be good but it depend on what you are doing and right now i don’t suggest you to get ANY celestial gear or assassin gear because it seem that these two gear will be the more affected by the incoming change to crit damage. Don’t expect the change to come on the March 18th. Don’t know where Fuzzion got that. This change will more probably come in April or even May 2014. Also i never heard of the diminishing return you talk about ferocity compare to precision. Anet didn’t say that and precision don’t have diminishing return (except if you reach 100% crit chance and that doesn’t apply to crit damage).

Now you are talking about a build with ‘’the frost bow and endless might stacking’’ This seem like the meta S/X Light Hammer build, because he give you huge amount of might stacking, but you don’t use Frost Bow (except in specific situation) and use more Light Hammer.

If you want use to help you, you need to give more information on PvE, sPvP or WvW, what kind of gameplay you prefer, and what you want to do more with this build.

CureForLiving.5360:

Thaddeus.4891:

There is some hint of P2W. They are really tiny and usually don’t change nothing in the game

Sorry my pedantic nature simply won’t allow me to not point out that you’re contradicting yourself.

Ya lol i can see why. Of course with my sentence out of context, I seem to contradict myself.

What i mean is that someone with a lot of money that he can put into that game, will have some advantage over someone else. For example, some stats booster give you an advantage over player that can’t afford them and the watchwork mining pick will eventually be the only place to have sprockets. These are real advantage that hint P2W. Ya you can still buy them with in-game Gold, but its either 85 Gold or 12.50$ USD for the mining pick. I don’t mind that if its only for convenience or for looks, but when it give you stats booster and a material that you won’t be able to get otherwise, then P2W start to appear. For now these examples really don’t affect the game because Booster can’t be bought directly (only by Black Lion Chest and its RNG) and the sprockets don’t really have any values. If it stay like that i have no problem but imagine if sprockets would be valuable or if booster could be directly buy at the gem story. A WvW Guild where every member could buy Booster will have a huge advantage over others and people buying the mining pick will be able to dictate a market.

DeathPanel.8362:

The build has full zerk on every slot and runs empower (+150 power to group) and 2 buff banners. If that is “small dps” then I don’t know what qualifies as big dps.

Well simply a Meta build. Trait give you damage modifier that will boost your damage a LOT.

DeathPanel.8362:

There’s a point in which sacrificing group support for dps gives diminishing returns.

?? Toughness have a diminishing returns (with higher toughness, each pts of additional toughness will mitigate less damage. Some reward, like farming mobs or the same dungeon path during 1 day, have diminishing returns in the code to limit farming the same thing over and over. But for DPS its pretty much the other way around. Damage modifier are multiplicative meaning that 2 modifier of 10% = 21% not 20% The more modifier you have and better return you will have from each one.

But I’m not stupid, that wasn’t what you meant, i’m sure. You wanted to say that, at one point more DPS become useless if you can stay alive and you are right. Most of the time i play with my guildmate that use this kind of hybrid build. This is way better that a tanky build (PVT or Cleric in PVE?? pls). There is nothing wrong with that build for most people. You can do dungeon in a quick time, you can do most fractal under level 40 without much problem. But the guys asked for Speed Run dungeon farming build and high end Fractal. And this is where the regen banner build reach its limit. Less DPS = more time to kill which is exactly the opposite of Speed Dungeon run. For fractal 40-50 your regen will do nothing man. Your build will die as fast as a full DPS one at this level. You need to avoid being hits and kill stuff as fast as you can, because if you begin to rez people, try to survive and don’t dps the boss, the fight start to become longer and longer leaving more place for mistake and people downing, meaning less ppl for damage, meaning longer fight, meaning more place for mistake, etc in a spiral that usually end with a wipe. Some party can do level 40-50 with that kind of build, but this is really not the best options.

There a list of the best DPS weapons for each professions :
Mesmer : Sword (1 H)
Guardian : Sword (1 H)
Rangers : Sword (1 H)
Warrior : Axe (1 H)
Thief : Dagger (1 H)

For Necromancer i don’t really know, i don’t really play that profession.
For engineer its a kit so..

Dawdler.8521:

Is there any one handed weapon that doesnt outdps two handers?

Elementalist Staff is the best personal dps. S/x is for might stack and not DPS and anyway in that build you use a LH for dps which is an 2 H weapons. I also suppose that suboptimal weapons can do that too. For exemple on a Guardian, a Greasword to more dps that a Mace or Scepter. But these are not the BEST dps weapons on that profession.

Yep these are the three more popular build right now.

S/D or S/F with trait : 25/10/10/25/0 or 30/10/10/20/0. You use your weapons for might stack only and do you DPS from Light Hammer. You have some rotation to learn, you will move a lot between attunement, you are really squishy and fight in melee so its hard but rewarding. I love this build. The force of this build is might stacking, since you can stack 18 might at the start of the fight and each between 12 and 18 other stack during the first. With all the damage multiplier it and the LH auto-attack it also have a lot of dps.

Staff with trait : 30/20/10/10/0 or 30/10/10/10/10. Basically you stay in fire and spam lava Front whatever you can. You need to stay near your group for boons and support but you don’t need to be directly in melee. That give you a little bit room, easier to survive without sacrificing any DPS. At 600 range and less you don’t lose any DPS, at 300 range you don’t lose any boons from your party. The force of this build is the constant Laval front that have good dps but also give a constant fire field. You have give fury each time you blast a fire field. You can easily give 30sec of fury, add that with 2-3 Warrior that spam For Great Justice and you have constant Fury for your team.

Dagger/Focus i don’t really know that build well. But you have more survivability with that one, with still a good DPS. The two first build are better for speed run and organized group, you can still do great things in pug group, but if your pug group have bad dps and the fight last longer you will have some difficulties. This build is more pug friendly if you want.

These are meta so of course all will take Berserker gear. You can take some knight piece at the beginning to get use to it and then replace those piece gradually when you get more comfortable.

These are Phantasm Weapons. There is almost all weapons in this form and all can be crafted in the Mystic Forge.

This would be a terrible idea. This would force people to craft ascended food to get better stats. That would be a huge grind for a lot of people and a lot of drama on the map chat and the forums.

Crafting a metabolic primer would be nice. I was also thinking about infinite food. Something like a recipe that you can buy from the Crafting master, a bit like ascended recipe right now. They would cost maybe 5 Laurel and 5-10 Gold. After that the recipe could be a bunch of ascended material and the food you want to get infinite (maybe like 20 of that food). Once you finish to craft it you have the food on infinite. If you activate it, you don’t consume the item that stay on your inventory and after 1hour the buff disappear and you need to reactivate it again. You could do that for Tray of food too maybe. But this should cost a lot of stuff to create.

If you want to eventually craft Ascended Armor and Weapons for your warrior, then go for Weaponsmith and Armorsmith. Keep in mind that ascended crafting are a HUGE investment, especially for someone who is starting to play and don’t have a lot of stock in bank. But still these are nice to have. I also like having those on my main since you have a lot of crafting that you can only do once a day (once you are max level in crafting), do i don’t have to switch to an alt for doing those. If you see yourself more like a casual and don’t really care about the stats, then you problable never craft ascended or this won’t happen until a long time. In that case these two are not really good for you.

Cooking is useful for everybody, you can make some money out of it, but I use this mostly so save on some food that i need. It’s also one of cheapest crafting to max.

Jeweler is cheap to max level but it won’t help you all once at max level except for 2 exception. If you don’t care at all for ascended gear you could craft exotic trinket with that. But keep in mind that if ascended armor/weapons are expensive, you can get ascended gear without much problem, especially if you go into Fractal. The other reason to get Jeweler is for Dungeon recipe that will give you really good money. But you need to do a lot of dungeon and get lucky to find the Recipe first.

Artificer is also really cheap to level up. But it won’t really help you warrior at all. Maybe some potion, but not really a big deal.

I don’t think you can infuse something else other that a Fractal Capacitor. If you want to have an infused Shadow of Grenth you will have to craft a Infused Fractal Capacitor and then transmute in with your shadow of Grenth. Don’t transmute your shadow on a capacitor before you finish to upgrade it or you will lose your Shadow of Grenth skin.

Ascended Weapons box do drop. I didn’t drop one myself. But 2 of my friend drop 2 boxes and one drop 3 boxes.

Seetth.6189:

I understand your point and yes you are right a massive brainless zerg will lose vs an organized group most of the times, but still is WvW a zerg based area, most of the times zerg is what rules at WvW and in a big zerg player skills are not that important cause doesn’t matter how bad you are if you are in a group of 100 vs 10 that 100 will win always.

Im not saying that WvW is the most boring thing on this game that will be a lie, but several ppl miss the challenge of a real PVP, I really enjoy when from time to time I find at WvW 1 enemy and we can have a real fight where the player skills are the what will make the difference, some1 may say “go to the mist” yeah well I live there but that becomes really repetitive is just the same place and same strategy again and again.

As LanceHavenbay.2067 said we will like to see here “more skill, less zerg”

PVE so far is fine for me I cannot complain about it but at least for me my friends and several others PVE is secondary our priority and what we like more is the challenge of a good fight vs other ppl.

Usually all this kind of games offers gameplay for PVE/PVP fans, I will have to say that this one is just very focus on PVE.

Correct me if i’m wrong but you are saying. I want WvW to be more like sPvP so i can have the same gameplay but in with different strategy/new maps. So for me this is a sPvP problem, not WvW problem. WvW is far from perfect, but making it more like sPvP don’t solve any of them. WvW should be a better Realm vs Realm while sPvP become a better sPvP. And OF COURSE 10 ppl will lose again 100. What is wrong with that?? Were usually raid with 15 ppl in my WvW raid and we can take against 30ppl and even 40ppl if they are not organized. Hell we were able to kill a 50ppl zerg once, because they split and we jump on the occasion. But we will never be able to win over a blob of 60+ ppl if they stay together and that’s normal. If we could wipe them, imagine how this would be unfair.

But you are right about the fact that GW2 is a PvE game with some PvP parts. If you just want to pvp there is a lot of better game out there.

I did a lot of different stuff with my Alts.

- At first i used them for crafting profession. (My first 4 character are maxed in their respective crafting profession).
- After that I used them for different dungeon. For exemple, my elementalist was always at the entrance of AC, my Mesmer for CoF, etc. They were useful profession for the dungeon and i liked to do these dungeon with that particular profession.
- Then i needed a lot of Glob of Ectoplasm for my Ascended Shiny back item and my first legendary, so almost all my character was at CoF for a lot of dungeon token (but this don’t work anymore since the dungeon reward don’t work that way anymore)
- Anyway i had enough glob so then i needed AT LOT of orichalcum for my legendaries, and Mystic Forge unique weapons (like Vision of the Mists). So several of my character were next to Ori nodes for some quick gathering each days.
- But then i had enough orichalcum and I started to have some specific build for each my profession. So now i have my Guardian as a main for a bit of everything. I have my Warrior, Elementalist and Mesmer full DPS for Dungeon speed run, my Engineer for WvW roaming and sPvP, my necromancer will eventually be for WvW and my Ranger will stay in his hole because i don’t like it.

Envinyatar.9432:

Let me rephrase my question:
Is there a ranged class (with a range weapon used) that can do well in dungeons? Not asking for top dps, just for a good preformance

Ya. If you build full DPS you character any profession can do well in dungeon, because dungeon are easy. Now, you may have some problem because most people in dungeon will ask you to stack (because this is the best strategy for several stuff). My friend use a thief (almost full DPS except some trait for more stealth). He use shortbow most of the time, except when we need to stack, then he use Sword/pistol so he can evade in melee. That’s not the best gameplay or build, but he don’t care and i don’t care because its my friend, a really good player and he bring a full DPS Elemetalist when we want to do a real min/max speed run. Same thing with Ranger. If you want a short or longbow, then use a much DPS as you can and bring a secondary melee weapons when people will stack. You won’t be perfect but you will be able to help you team and do a really decent job. The problem is that a lot of people are Hypocrite. They will run a Warrior GS Axe/Mace Meta but they will hide the fact that they bring Knight gear or defensive trait, etc. They will look your Ranger like it was a kitten but at the end if you are full DPS ranger with a bow you may do more DPS that they do with their kittenty build that they hide behind a false meta looks. This should not happen, but what do you want to do with that. Your best shot at a Range profession would be Elementalist Staff. If you can’t survive full DPS you can still take some defensive gear pieces or some defensive trait and hide yourself behind a meta looks. Just don’t get kitteny and act like you run a real meta if you don’t.

WRay.2391:

RainbowSyrup.4130:

TooBz.3065:

RainbowSyrup.4130:

Death Prosecutor.8713:

I do have patience! I have played GW2 diligently since release day, have tolerated it’s early months of bug filled gaming. I have 5 lvl 80’s, three characters with maxed crafting lvl’s, a number of ascended weapons and celestial armor. I however wouldn’t pay time or gold, or grind for the ascended. Besides, I don’t really care for it’s appearance and the difference in stats doesn’t warrant the effort anyway.

Don’t you think you’re contradicting yourself a bit here? You don’t care for the appearance or the stats, so why are you complaining? You don’t NEED it. It’s for the people who ENJOY the extra character progression. You can do anything in this game without ascended armor.

What about people who enjoy BIS gear and don’t enjoy tedium? I swear, everyone in this forum assumes that everyone likes the same thing. If I want BIS gear then I need to get ascended gear, and getting ascended gear is terrible.

I also enjoy making builds and performing tweaks to get the best performance out of my characters. But If I want to “tweak” something about ascended gear I need at least a week and (for weapons and armor) about 20 gold.

If you want BiS gear, work for it.

LOL I have work in RL. If I need to work afterhours I’m expecting another paycheck in real money. I’d prefer to have fun in my free time.
From your post I can tell about you:
1. You like grind. But many ppl don’t like it (which is completely normal, I’d say it’s abnormal to like grind without new content).
2. Or your time is really cheap. You don’t have real life and you don’t know how to waist it. Not all ppl like this.

You have a RL job, then lets compare that to real life. I want a BMW (ascended), but i can’t afford it because i only work 8 hours per day. I can afford a Honda (Exotic) with my job with which i can do all i need to do, hell i can still do most of my stuff with a Lada (Green), but I think that i deserve an Honda and i work enough hours to pay myself that. Now i can decide to get a second job and not only work 8 hours per day, but 16 hours per day. That way, i’ll have enough money to buy a BMW (ascended). Ok its my choice and now i ask you can i said : ‘’Hey i can’t afford BMW (ascended) with my jobs right now, this suck and they should decrease the cost of a BMW because if i want one right now i’ll have to work more hours. This is not fair because i hate doing more work hours (grind) but i still want the BMW (ascended).

Now i don’t know for you, but that seem like a strange and disconnect reality. Ascended and Legendary are end game gear and for that they should be the gear that cost the most. Its not because you want the best gear that you should have it without effort. Now lets take the example of SWOTOR. I need to do daily/weekly to get Basic commendation to get the first gear tier at level 55 (max level). Once i have the gear, then i can do hardmore flashpoint and some hard daily/weekly to gain Elite commendation to buy the next tier of gear. Once i have my gear, i can start to do hardmode operation to get Ultimate Commendation to get the other next tier of gear (which i think is the last tier of gear, but not sure because i stopped playing SWOTOR). At that point forget pugging, you need a guild to get that stuff. A guild that’s gonna do operation on a regular basis and will ask its member to be pretty much hardcore gamer. In GW2, ascended/legendary can take some time to get, but you can do it by your own at the speed you want and you never need to be an hardcore player with a guild schedule. That’s why i stopped playing SWOTOR/WoW, etc and i’m still on GW2.

mercury ranique.2170:

I disagree with you here.
Just cause they have less health and armor as other classes is a wrong statement. The amount of support from skills and traits is much more massive then any other class. Besides that, you can do it while not loosing a lot of pure DPS. That while with other classes you can make them more tanklike with traits and skills but that goes with the cost of a loss of lot of potential DPS. That last is not the case for ele’s so thats why they are not squishy in my book.

First of all, I think its just about what the word mean exactly. For me squishy is not the same as survivability. An Elementalist for me is squishy because if you get hit once or two you gonna go down. On the other end, the Ele have good survivability because, like you said ‘’the amount of support from skills and trait is much more massive then any other class’‘. So i’m pretty sure we are talking about the same thing with different word here.

Second, i don’t think you can say that Ele can gain more support from trait and skill without much lost in DPS while this is a problem with other professions. This depend on which profession and which build you use too much. Some build don’t sacrifice that much DPS for a little bit of defense, while other sacrifice a lot. I think the Ele is in the same place as the other professions on that. But the elementalist have some of the best active defense skill in the game. This allow an ele to quickly boost its survivability with defensive skills, before switch back to more offensive skills. Any profession can do that, but not all profession have things like Mist Form and Arcane Shield.

Just lets it go man. This was discuss all over each time an ascended pieces was release. Grind is relative to everybody. Grind is a repetitive content that you don’t like but keep doing only for the reward. For someone, Fractal is nice and doing it is not a grind, while another one hate it but keep doing it for a Ascended Back item or other ascended trinkets.

mercury ranique.2170:

First of all, Ele’s are not squishy!
They can be actually pretty tanklike.

Well in that case any profession can be tanklike if you trait it. Still the Elementalist is the squishiest profession of the game, they have light armor with the lowest amount of HP (like guardian and Thief). Their survivability come from their skill, heal, boons, etc. But they are still squishy (except if you give it a good amount of defensive stats/trait, but then again you can do that with all profession).

haviz.1340:

I’m pretty sure you can do that with neither of them.

Ya well i can dodge 2 AR arrow, then GS skill 3, then another dodge, after that another GS skill 3, but after that i gonna get hit by the next Arrow. Ya sure i can do right, left, right, left so i don’t get hit by any arrow. But if i’m pugging and my team need to rez a couple of people i want to be sure i don’t get hit by any arrow. That’s why i want something more like the signet of a shield. But true you can still do it without them.

Konu.1826:

That build will bring easily enough dps to pass all the dps checks in fractals and you will have the chance to trait for reflects for fights like vulcano end boss. If it’s a speed run build or not depends on who you ask, the impression I have is most people would consider this build well suited for speed running.

Ok. Yes this build will bring enough DPS to pass the dps checks in fractal if you have a group with enough DPS in the first place. You need to be the weak dps for that, because if the other people have less dps that this build give, then no your won’t be able to pass the checks. For speed runs, its totally false. You will be able to do the path easy. Its even gonna be fast, but again the same thing with fractal. You will need your party to be full DPS while you stay back on your defensive stats and boons and enjoy the ride. The definition of a speed run is to go as fast as possible and you do that with DPS, not regen banners, signet of stamina, toughness and vitality. Like i said you can still do dungeon pretty fast with a build like that and a good group. But its a learning build, or an hybrid build. Not a speed run build.

I have them both and like them both. I won’t talk about WvW or sPvP because you didn’t talk about that in your list of what you usually do.

Mesmer was with the Warrior the Meta King a couple months ago. Mainly because of Timewrap and awesome utility skill. Their main problem is their DPS. They have the potential for freaking awesome DPS but for that you need to put 3 Phantasm and they need to stay alive, which can be hard, but also all about chance and timing which can be frustrating. They kind of lose their place in the Meta, because of that, but still are really good for specific stuff. Of course Timewrap, but also they are the best for pull/push boss in corner, they remove boons like crazy, they have access to a really good reflect, etc. You WILL feel useful to you group once you know how and when use your utilities. They are a pain to level up until you reach level 60. Even if they have light armor and medium health, they are probably one of the easier profession to play full DPS in the game. Will all the invulnerability, and clones you won’t get hit that much unless you are bad.

Elementalist have a new place in the Meta for the last couple of month. Some people think that Ele now have more DPS that a Warrior. I don’t agree, but I think that leaving place for 1 or 2 Elementalist in a party give you way more DPS that a 3rd and 4th Warrior. You will feel squishy as hell and gonna need way more practice that the Mesmer if you want to stay alive. Of course you can make a tanky Ele but then you gonna miss the advantage of the Ele so don’t do it. Two top build exist for now for the Ele (you can play around with them, but the basic stay the same). In the first you stay Staff Fire and you lava front the kitten out your enemies. Huge personal DPS, less Burst DPS but constant fire field during the fight that give might and fury to your team. Its a bit easier to play and safer. The second is the Light Hammer build with S/D or S/F. Its a bit hard because you swamp attunement (you use all 4) and have some rotation to learn. But people will be like WTF where all this might come from and the answer will be you. You will be able to give 18 stack of might by your own. I love this buld more since you gonna have a lot of tools to play with in combat. For the might, this build have better offensive support but less personal DPS since you will stack might, use your Hammer, pump might again, take the second hammer, etc. More burst DPS, but since you don’t attack all the time, well. Its still amazing DPS, especially to melt down a boss in a short period of time.

Ebonhawk would be a bad idea. The city is link to Divinity Reach with its Asura Gate, not to Lion Arch. So all the refuges will need to get through the gate to Divinity Reach first and remember that the Government of Lion Arch is not the same as the one in Divinity Reach, meaning that they will need to negotiate something between them. By the time they do that, most refuge will be out of Lion Arch and no longer have access to the Asura Gate to Divinity Reach. Also Ebonhawk is a big problem between Human and Charr. If a bunch of Human would be transferred to Ebonhawk, this could lead to a potential political incident. Now you can say, refuges of Lion Arch are from all race not only human. But the Ruler of Lion Arch is an Human and the Captiain Council have 4 Human, while the Char have 1. The city may be for all race, but its more human that anything else.

Also the Vigil Keep is at walking distance from Lion Arch. Easy to reach for refuges.

DeathPanel.8362:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAneRjkOZvtPCP4wBEkCNMLOKAQmI9IMIj1A-j0BBYfERjkFAUBLaMzsIastBFRjVXDT5iIqGA-w

That’s a terrible build for speed run and high level fractal. Such a small DPS that you just can’t do speed run and for fractal you have DPS checkpoint that gonna make you fail every time if most people use this kind of build. The Worst will be at the Volcano Fratal where you won’t be able to kill any grawl before they push the human and you lose. Same thing with the grubs at the end, you will never be able to kill them quick enough.

haviz.1340:

Do you really need signet of stamina with all those heals from banners?

Just don’t use that build man. The Signet of Stamina could be a nice defensive addition for some fractal. Again the example of Volcano come to mind. I want to be able to keep the Shaman on me so the rest of the team can rez the dead and if i want to do that i usually like to have my shield and the signet of stamina so i’m able to kite it for all the time i want.

Dungeon don’t need a dedicated dungeon group to be more rewarding that any Frostgorges run. You need first to have a good build yourselves. Then you need to learn how to speed run (stacking spot, rotation, tricks, etc) then you can enter speed run, full zerker run, etc. You have way more chance to get a fast run with these. I have no problem finding a fast pug for dungeon running even when no guildmate are online. Of course the best way would be to find you a guild with good Dungeon runner, but that’s not an obligation.

But if you are bad at dungeon or don’t seem to be able to find good PUG then ya Frostgorges will be more rewarding.

P.S. : There is a post somewhere on the forum about someone having 10 or the 11 Legendary a Guardian can have. Most of the people posting advice there have several legendary and pretty much all of them (at least on that post) used dungeon to collect that much money. For myself i have 2 legendary and a third on the way.

Razor.6392:

So many clueless people here, I’m out.
I know that stacking is the most effective strat because of the way this game works, but it’s a cheap and stupid playstyle with no real negative tradeoffs.

I understand what you are saying Razor. But i can still disagree. You don’t like Stacking and Zerging. You find it cheap, bad, no skill, you simply don’t like that. It’s ok you have all right to your own opinions.

The problem is : you ask Anet to nerf the kitten out of it so it become more convenient for you to play how you want. Right now you need to work a little bit more to find a group that’s gonna play as you wish and you dislike that. You hate that the exact mechanic that you dislike is the standard for almost all dungeon run. But other people like these mechanics and you want them to be screw over so your play time become more easy for you. I understand your point, and I’ll probably have the same point of view if i was in your position. But as i already said you can already play as you want (with a little bit more work).

LA is clearly not the target, but a obstacle in Scarlet’s way. For me the target is the Ley Lines or a source of magic under LA from which the magic get to the ley lines.

There is already an hypothesis about Mordremoth being the 6th Elder Dragon, a Jungle Dragon and that Sylvari could be Mordremoth’s minions. What if Mordremoth use a different strategy than the other Elder Dragon. Most of them reach a place and start growing an army of minons. Zhaitan was building his army at Orr, Primordius underground, Jormag in the North, Kralkatorrik in the Crystal Desert and Deep Sea Dragon in the sea.

But what if Mordremoth play it more subtle. We already know that sylvari, despite being a young race, saw their number growth really fast. Mordremoth could be growing his army right in front of the World without any hints of treat like the other Dragon do, so nobody will interfere with his plans. Just waiting the right moment to awake and take control of his minions who are free for now. Mordremoth could be the voice that push Scarlet to act, to attack LA and reach under the city where maybe Mordremoth is. Scarlet would be the first controlled minons and she’s only partially controlled since Mordremoth would be still asleep with weak power.

phys.7689:

Well i dont know what the super high level dudes are doing, but the pug version of it is a problem. While it should be advantageous, at some times, it should not become an automated system like you describe. If it is not automated, and you are moving in and out of party stacks while dodging key skills, and using positioning to sometimes avoid damage, then whatever you are doing is not the problem he is talking about.

Well i often get good pugs that stack right we i’m usually able to do the dungeon in about 15mins. Of course sometime the pugs are less good and usually they stack for part of the fight before going in range because they can’t take the hits anymore (not enough DPS to melt the boss and aren’t able to dodge at the right time). Then i simply change my gameplay to complete the path in 15-20mins and that’s all. Whatever i stack with my guildmates, good pugs or bad pugs i’ll adapt my gameplay are try to do my best and usually always have a good time doing it.

With whatever strategy they will always have some people that only understand half of it and think that you only need to stack and auto attack or 100B. This will happen whatever the strategy is so deal with it. And like i said, there is PLENTY of options that you can use to play as you want.

For dungeons
1) LFG Warrior 6K AP+ or kick are not that common. I think i entered 1 or 2 of these and i did more than an thousand dungeon runs.
2) For stacking you may be right since most people will do it that way. You still may create you own LFG with no stacking, no skipping (i see that on a regular basis), or join a guild of people thinking like you. Hell you can even create a guild for exactly that. Post on the forum that you will create a guild for people that want to play dungeon with no stacking and no skipping of whatever the rules you want. I’m sure you will have plenty of people joining you.

For WvW
1) Make you own little squad of 3-4 ppl to flip camp so the zerg go to bigger target.
2) Join a WvW Raiding guild. With 15-20 organized ppl you can destroy any choochoo train you want. (Hell we actively search for them)

I wonder how many of these people saying that Stacking and Zerging is always braindead, mindless, no skill, auto-attack only, had actually done it the right way.

Ya of course you can stack without knowing how like a braindead. And you know what? These people will die. Not because they are bad player, that happen to me and to pretty much all of my guildmate. One of them was screaming at me some time when i ask to stack. Then i understood that on my guardian i always had vigor and it was easy for me, not for them. So we figure out ways to all be able to stack. Thief (the one screaming at me) switch its weapons and figure out a rotation to evade at the right moment, the warrior figure out how to use this GS skill 3, the elementalist changed her build and use more skills, etc. Now how is that braindead? If you have no fun in it you can do it your way, while other play how they want. And if you are saying that only because you can’t stack in full DPS build, then i sorry for you.

For me i use the Name Thad to begin all my characters names.

Thaddeauz, Thaddessa, Thaddesse, Thaddeak, etc. That way, my guildmate always know its me even if they never saw this character.

go for ascended right aways if you can if you can.

Rings
– Easiest way is from Fractals Pristine (10 fractal daily per rings)
- WvW Laurel Vendor will cost you less laurels but some Badge of Honor that you should have from achievements chest.
- Normal Laurel Vendor will cost you an awful amount of Laurel

Amulet
- WvW Laurel vendor is best
- Normal Laurel Vendor will cost you more Laurel

Back Item
- Both method will cost you. Either do a lot of fractal or use a lot of gold to craft your back item in the Mystic forge.

Accessory
- If you can do guild mission then its the easiest way.
- The Laurel Vendor will cost a lot of gold and laurel.

Dungeon is WAY WAY more profit that frostgorge. But for that you need to know how the dungeon work, have a good build and play with good player (either guildmate, or post specific requirement witch can make you feel bad). If done right most dungeon can be done in 15min or less and give you between 8 to 30 Gold per hours (depend on your speed and drop).

Or course if you are new to dungeon or don’t have that much experience in them, dungeon will take you 30min to 1 hour each path and this will make Frostgorges more profitable. It took me 6 months to craft Sunrise and 3 months for Meteorlogicus and i was still playing other stuff that dungeon for fun. There is also other tricks for more gold but there is a lot of topic about that already.

So basically you don’t want dungeon, you want an underground map.

Meta build are the flavor of the month. Its the best build available at the moment. It can be wrong (some people can find a new better build at some point) or its can change (with update and patch).

But anyway, for the Wurm or course most people want the other to run DPS build with specific skills and weapons. This event is really hard. I do it on a regular basis as part of TTS. Several times per week, with almost everybody in TS, we split evenly the numbers, we form special task party (reflect, condi, power, etc), we give food, most people use oil and consumable, we have leader and players of experience and even after all that we fail more than we succeed. Of course with time this will change, but still, its normal to ask people to run the best thing possible because if they don’t we gonna fail.

Its true that some of the WvW title are pretty much impossible (who gonna play any game for 20+ year at several hours per day). But on the other hand, that allow us to keep count of our stats in WvW. If the max was 50 000 (some people reached that for WvW kills for exemple), then in 1 or 2 years most people that play wvw would reach that number and everybody would be at the same level. Everybody would have 50 000 kill. Maybe intermediary title like for sPvP would be better. The limit could stay very high, but each 10K kill you get a new Title.

Some people like Zerg and Stacking. This is partially why so much people are doing it.

Stacking : You want to do the best you can, making you rotation the best you can, bring the right utilities and build to max your DPS to bring that boss down. Not everybody is able to stack for everything, you need to be able to control you camera and dodge at the right moment.

Zerg : Mindless Zerg is not that great as a gameplay, its true at least in WvW. Guild Zerg on the other hand is freaking awesome. Time you skills with your teammates, follow your commander in the middle of an enemy zerg twice or triple your size and still winning. I had some of the best time in the game during those. In PvE it nice to have a lot of people doing an event with you. I have no problem with that at all. I usually talk to people around me, tag up to organize if there is nobody to do it. Zerging is not the problem in PvE, its poorly designed events. Tequalt Zerg is really nice and need coordination with the commander, the Wurm is the same things and the Marionnette divide the zerg completly. But on the other end you have the usually World Boss that don’t really need and gameplay at all, some are them are just boring, but that the same thing that you are 5 or 50, the event is bad, not the zerging of it.

DigitalKirin.9714:

He probably meant Persisting Flames. (Blasted fire finishers grant fury.)

Maybe. Anyways the reasoning stay the same. The Elementalist don’t have as much dps as a warrior on their own, but they bring FGS and can give might and fury. Depending on the party build and composition the fury and might will reach their maximum with 1 or 2 Elementalist. After that the Elementalist don’t bring enough advantage over a Warrior.

what don’t help the ranger even more is that their best build (sword), is hard to master. It have long animation during witch you can’t dodge, meaning that you have to learn how to use your skill and to break the animation before dodge if some situation. Since this can be hard when you begin to use that with a full dps build, most people die a lot when they learn to play that build.

hendo.1940:

When obal tested whirling wraths on the magecrusher, one meta guardian dealt the same amount of damage as five AH cleric guards.

True. But the guys was talking about suboptimal build with good DPS. Aka something like a AH build with full zerker gear/scholar Runes, not full Defensive, Cleric build which is the worst possible DPS of the game.

I prefer someone using a bit of defense in their build (just as much as they need to stay alive most of the game), then someone who go full DPS but can’t handle it. Of course i prefer even more someone with a Full DPS build that stay alive whatever happen, but not every people is playing the game enough to be that good. Everybody should make that their target and work toward that goal, but you need to have a build that follow you current skill in the game and with your current profession.

Manuelito.6081:

Just to clarify: that is an assumption (toughness = threat) that was made some time ago and never been confirmed.

Well Toughness is one of the factor for aggro. I used to play an AH Guardian with Knight gear at the beginning of the game (hell i even used to play a Cleric Guardian back then) and i had the agro most of the time. This ain’t reliable, this ain’t the best gameplay, but it partially work.

Warlord.9074:

Real players lol Orbs are for pur exotic build mainly trinkets if you are a poor player. But it is just there for reference.
Since when does sigil of perception prevent you from using precsion food? Thats pretty new to me I have never heard of that.

Its Jewel for Exotics Trinkets btw not Orbs. For armor exotic or ascended the Orb is not that bad. Most player used them until some people found out that Rune of the Scholar is better. Ya if you are bad and are under 90% hp most of the Time, you are better with Orb. Anyway Orb are still good if someone don’t want to spend a couple Gold in their Runes or someone who try Zerker for the first time.

Sigil of Perception don’t prevent using precision food. But if you have a good build in a good group you will already have 100% Crit chance with a Sigil of Perception, making Spotter or Precision Food useless.

L2P can be seen as almost an insult, but its the truth. You can play as a full DPS in a full DPS group without any pts or stats in defense and still survive and even do the content faster. I’m sure we can because there is video of people doing it and i have done it myself for most of the content. But that doesn’t mean that you cannot run anything that a full dps build. Its a game, use enough defensive trait and gear to survive yourself as you get better and better. Its not even a big deal if you can never play a full dps build. Its the best way to go, but you can still enjoy the game with a hybrid build. Just don,t go into defensive trait/gear because you think its better, its not. It only help you survive if you don’t know the encounter enough or can’t use the active defensive skill well enough to survive.

Yep GS and Axe/Mace is pretty much the best weapons set for DPS warrior.

Greatsword is for burst Dmg with skill 2, 3 and 5 while the Axe/Mace have a better auto-attack and can stack some vulnerability with skill 2 and 4. With most DPS build you have a 5sec cooldown for weapons swap and by that time most skill already finish their cooldown or are about to.

Some people prefer Axe/Mac and Axe/Axe. This give you more DPS if you need to move a lot. Since most GS burst skill need your target to stay still, but usually this is not a problem since most mobs get push on a wall for max DPS.