Guild Wars 2

I too, would like to contribute to this enlightening and engaging conversation.

if you’re a cheap kitten like me, stock up on a full stack of potions that are 1 tier down (+9%/-8%). You only lose out on 1% damage and best of all, it costs mere coppers.

^Careful with that, I’ve had my dungeon stolen with players claiming to have [DnT] tags. They were fakes of course.

We should have honorable mention “Original Gangster Soloist” – Wethospu

As for the categories, most are already mentioned, so I’ll just cast my vote on the ones where I have an opinion on now:

Best soloist – Sesshi – His solos are the most polished of the list. Even more amazing is that he is able to distinguish himself among the saturated population of accomplished warriors who solo.

Dungeon Initiative of the year – Definitely GW2Dungeons.net – so kitten comprehensive. Probably the most referred to link when anyone has a dungeon question.

Best Guides Visual/Written – has to go to DeK – ele is one of the classes where rotations are more important and imo complicated. She not only does this but demonstrates optimal rotations with every weapon set. Just the work alone puts it ahead of the others by a large margin.

Element Two.7316:

Iris Ng.9845:

• Best Solo Player of the Year:
  Colesy

Kekkity kek kek kek

oh and I may as well be productive, could mention metabattle under the guides or something; it’s pretty useful to link to the 45th Reddit post of the day asking what Dungeon builds to run.

agreed

kek

Kiting him up and down the length of your WoR was pretty awesome.

He was right. They spawn their trap and evade when someone/npc/pet targets them.

Create your own party, then make sure you are clear in explaining expectations in the beginning of the dungeon. This way when they decide to kick you, they will do it toward the beginning of the dungeon instead of the middle/end of it. Doesn’t matter if you have a good description in the lfg, you need to type it out in party chat so everyone is on the same page.

The new lfg system sucks a big one, but this is the only way around it.

Example:

I frequently get kicked out of my own group when creating a party for HotW p1 “melee everything” at the troll or at Ginva. Another one is when i do “melee everything” for arah p4 and I melee melandru.

Now, instead of relying on the just the lfg description, I screen out people in the beginning once the group fills. “We are all clear that we will melee (troll/Ginva/Melandru/etc), if you are not ok with this leave now, or you will be kicked later on in the run.” Sometimes people leave, sometimes I get kicked, but at least it happens in the beginning.

Very tedious and it results on me doing less of these paths.

Is this bullkitten? yes, but Anet is has been very transparent on them not spending any development when it comes to dungeons, so you’d better believe they will not give a kitten about fixing this problem as it only applies to dungeon goers.

Good luck.

nice work

do you have high ping?

EcoRI.9273:

Watch videos on how to stealth every path.
Stealth >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> blind. Why? because stealth speeds up the dungeon where as blind does not.
Once you learn all the stealth parts, make sure to tell your teammates to follow you. I swear to god there are bad players out there who think they are good and can not follow the thief and as a result gets people killed or severely delay the dungeon and then they go on to blame the thief. The most common one is the way aggro works while stealthed, and this applies mainly to CM and arah p1. You want the mobs to stop before moving on or they will just continue to follow you. Most players don’t understand follow the thief concept and will just run ahead and never consider why the thief is stopping at the spot to path the mobs.
My favorite is the players who don’t consider that every thief stealths differently, and as a result runs ahead of the thief thinking they are pro and kitten and then misses the stealth and gets themselves killed or worse; survives and pulls all the mobs to the group.

Great advice all around. Many players struggle with aggro mechanics during stealth so this is very useful to know. Listen to this guy; he knows how to thief.

You probably have good intentions, but this idea gives me a headache.

You will never need energy sigils for thief.

rip dodge-storms

Thanks for the bump. I’m hoping enough people see this so at least it will become more common to give this suggestion to others who encounter problems with the forum’s built-in search tool.

This should help if you can’t get the official search to work.

http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/players/Forum-s-search-feature-doesn-t-work-A-tip

I’m against any changes to increase gold rewards over what they already are. Gold rewards for dungeons are in a good place. If Anet were to change anything, the daily gold reward just need to be better distributed.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Lynne.8416:

I wouldn’t have any issue with the “reorgansation” if the Search feature actually worked. Are you going to fix the Search feature? It’s one of the reasons why there are multiple threads created about the same exact topic over and over again.
If I only want to search about Dungeons, I’m certainly not going to want to look through page after page of data.

Lynne, I would give just about anything to get that Search feature working. Unfortunately, it’s not possible for us to do. Believe me, I dislike that we’re missing “search” as much as you do!

…

This should be a great help to you or any of the others who have trouble with the search feature:

http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/players/Forum-s-search-feature-doesn-t-work-A-tip

You can of course apply this search technique for any other website.

Use the Google search bar

Type the following in the search bar (without any brackets):

• site:[the url of the subforum you want to search in] [your search terms]

Example #1:

You need to search in the subforum “Players Helping Players” for the term “search options”. You want to type this in to the Google search bar:

• site:forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/players search options

This will bring up results that limits your search of “search options” to the specific subforum url.

You can also search user names and/or widen your search to all forums in general.

Example #2:

You need to search for me, “Tom Yzf”, but are not sure what subforum I frequent. You want to type the following into the search bar:

• site:forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum Tom Yzf

This should return mostly posts from the dungeon subforum, but also widens the search to all subforums so it will return non-dungeon subforums searchs as well.

Example #3:

You need to search for me in a specific thread of a forum, lets say…. the General Dungeon Discussion Thread, a dungeon subforum favorite. Type in this:

• site:forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/dungeons/General-Dungeon-Discussion-Thread-Part-2 Tom Yzf

There you go! Instant gratification.

Hopefully this helps.

dlonie.6547:

Tom Yzf.5872:

Thank god Gaile we still have this forum.

Now that the euphoria of “winning” a place were we can have on-topic discussions has worn off, I wouldn’t go that far. Those who voiced their opinions on here and on reddit when this kitten-storm rolled out deserve more credit.

Next time this happens, most of us will no longer be around to say anything. This place will just be phased out without a second thought because it’ll be as dead and useless as those racial subforums.

Like it never existed at all.

._.

When it is all said and done, the only mistake Anet made was trying to phase this place out earlier than they should have.

Thank god we still have this forum.

Do they actually blind though? I’ve seen the blind debuff on the dredge many times in the UI, but i’ve never actually seen a “missed” proc.

Izaya.2906:

Tom Yzf.5872:

Most players do their daily dungeon rotations for gold, the tokens are only secondary. So increasing the token reward from 20 to 60 will not encourage player only doing 1 path over and over. They will still go through their daily paths for the gold reward but will be more encouraged to work on repeating those paths with their alts because because getting the full 60 tokens per path per alt is a lot more enticing, which was the point of this thread.

60 tokens for alts affects the dungeon trinket market.

Oversupply back then was so bad because of not much diminishing returns on token supply.

I would consider this a good middle ground. No increased reward in gold so we are not introducing more gold into the economy; actually, it is helping with the gold sink via trinkets/ecto trade through the BLTC. While increased tokens will lower trinket prices, it is still limited by the amount of recipes out there and cap on how many alts people have. More importantly, the trade-off of more dungeon activity is a net positive IMO. And this is coming from a person who has at least 1 recipe in almost every dungeon.

WE LIVE!

Well said.

The purpose of those volunteers are nothing more than acting official “white knights”. If and when those players assume that role, they will have no other option than to be the scapegoat behind of all of Anet’s decisions.

Anet knows what they are doing; they will pick out influential people who will act as some vague representative between both players and company. These players will have to be both champion for Anet and the voice of the general players. Yea no conflicts there. However, it wraps up everything pretty nicely for Anet… to tell all the dissenters to kitten.

Expect more changes to come that we will not like.

Hennessey.2985:

Gaile Gray

Our hope is that when we’re asking the developers to look at fewer forums — to not have to scroll down 11 times to get to the bottom group, to not have to play a guessing game of “Where would players look for this info?” — there will be increased developer participation.

This has to be the worst joke I’ve ever read in my life

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Guild-Wars-2-Forum-Specialists-Program/first#post4600059

she meant to type more “forum specialist” participation.

HAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

We are plenty outnumbered; we won’t even make a dent. With this move even more will drop off from this game. All is lost.

wow, well that is depressing.

no promises were made, and i don’t think anyone expects any even if they were made. and the devil laughs.

undocumented change:

• TA: Up, the last boss now spawns more turrets (previously it didn’t spawn much of it, if any at all). I think the damage from the red turrets were changed to do less, although i’m not 100% on that.

Regarding that teleport tool, next time i see someone complain about skiping in the dungeons, I’m going to refer them to the gem store xD

• Added a new Teleport to Friend consumable as an uncommon drop. This consumable will take you directly to a party member in PvE.

LOL

Enjoyment, like any other form of reward, is just another way to be measured by utility. Sure, some people out there do things just for the sake of fun, but rarely is that the only thing that gets taken into account when deciding to do one thing over the other.

In addition to that, gold/tokens/etc. allows a player to enjoy many other things the game has to offer, so that aspect has to be considered as well.

IMO I feel the argument that “you should just do things for fun, and that should be enough” is a very weak one. Players want to be rewarded in a multitude of ways and fun is only one variable.

Oxidia.8103:

You can actually prevent it by not selling the dungeons!

Most players do their daily dungeon rotations for gold, the tokens are only secondary. So increasing the token reward from 20 to 60 will not encourage player only doing 1 path over and over. They will still go through their daily paths for the gold reward but will be more encouraged to work on repeating those paths with their alts because because getting the full 60 tokens per path per alt is a lot more enticing, which was the point of this thread.

I think it is a good idea for increased rewards for alts. Anything that will encourage more dungeon play is ok in my book. Maybe not the gold reward though, that would definitely be unbalanced imo. I’m thinking more along the lines of one-time full 60 tokens w/o gold for alts that repeat a completed dungeon before the daily; that would be nice.

I hear ya, there are many people out there who are an kitten when it comes to filtering out player for meta in the LFG. I was a part of that for a time as well. Some of the PMs that appeared in my chatbox was definitely warranted. But for a time I was very polite when kicking other players, even then the negativity in the replies didn’t reduce by that much.

This is how I eventually came just not caring about looking for meta people any more when I pug. The frustration from receiving those types of remarks just isn’t worth it. I dont’ mind waiting longer for a group of like-minded players, but when these players decide to be a pain in my butt just for doing so? “All welcome” it is.

No bitterness here because playing with terrible pugs is actually more interesting and fun now xD. As for us not being enough for creating a solid statistic, yea i can agree with that. But from my experience alone, I can at least say that getting unwarranted insults like this when you ask for Meta in the LFG can happen.

Lovestar.2705:

Thanks guys. ^^

I do understand you can’t play the traditional Ranged Healer type in GW2. Or, well, you can, but it’s apparently really pointless and probably causing more deaths than it prevents. :p

@Tom Yzf’s reply is more what I meant, I was curious what the best “real” playstyle would be for someone who’s used to doing the Support / Ranged role in other games.

Being an actual, useful Support is much higher priority for me than camping at range, if I have to pick.

So if I’m understanding Tom Yzf’s post correctly, you’re saying that Grenade Engi & Staff Ele are best classified as “Not Entirely Useless Ranged”, as opposed to actually being “Ranged Support”? (I know we’re being a little blunt / crass here but that’s ok, I want to learn)

Whereas Guardian is more like “Accepted Useful Playstyle with the most emphasis on Group Support out of all the usable options”. (if so that sounds about right ^^ )

When I asked someone else who plays the game (but not really with a Group emphasis), they mentioned that Thiefs running OH Pistol / Shortbow were also useful support because of their debuffs. Is that overexaggerating? :p

All of us in the dungeon community are always happy to help.

As for interpreting what I said, you got it about right.

Regarding thief, in a way they are not over-exaggerating. When you’re in a dungeon, a thief is very useful when it it comes to trash mobs (non-boss encounters). They have the best access to stealth; short bow has a blast (wiki combo-fields) without any cooldowns and they have access to many smoke fields. Along with skills that can stealth players directly, a thief is the best to have around when you need to skips mobs easily, which will happen frequently in dungeons.

OH pistol 5, while more useful as a smoke field for blast finishers, also applies pulsing AoE blind. When you melee and spam OH pistol 5 over mobs that are grouped up, it pretty much negates all of their attacks (only 10% proc on bosses though). So for trash mobs it can be a great help to negate damage to your party. However, in recent patches this skill has been nerf’ed heavily to pulse and reapply the blinds less frequently, so if a mob has fast attacks it will not be as effective. Keep this in mind when you see people mention how pistol5 is OP in pve. You still have your ulitily Smoke Screen, functions in the same way with more frequent pulses

With all this said however, when it comes to boss battles, a thief really isn’t the best option for support. Blinds can’t be depended on, nor can cc(thief has a lot of this) in a non-organized group, so all you’re left with is damage.

In contrast, Guardian is by far the easiest class (if you had to pick 1) to carry a group through the dungeon, especially when played correctly. When I pug with while using my Guardian most players in the party can play passively and the dungeon will almost always go smoothly. They may not know what is actually going on, because the only person doing something active-defense is me, while all they see(if they even realize it) is they are taking zero damage from projectiles from my reflection skills, or they didn’t get cc’ed because I provided stability, or they took no damage because I applied aegis and it proc a block, or blinds at the right time, among other things.

So in terms of the traditional support role, I feel guardian is the best to transition to.

When considering the other side of support, buffs to party members that increase damage, a good option to consider is your Meta non-staff Ele. You need to be in melee but from your traits and skills you can provide fire fields (again look up combo-fields) and have many blasts to provide the two of the best buffs in the game that will make your party increase dps: Fury(permanently) and Might (maintain 18 stacks out of the 25 max).

While many players know that might stacks is good, many pugs don’t ever get to really feel or experience how powerful a party fully capped 25 might stacks can be. This is how rare it is to find a player who can stack might efficiently in pugs. So you can go this route too if you see it enticing. It is very much night and day the difference in a group damage output.

deSade.9437:

If someone gets THAT kind of hate (the one in the “wall of hate”) so often… it means that someone is the trigger. I used to be an explosively kitteny and aggressive teenager with uncontrollable anger issues and I was always in the middle of some heated argument, especially since I was a pvper (gasp) in gw1. The things that community did to me… like, I turned into a little monster. I was flaming and calling names 24/7. Now I’m not nicer, but I’m more withdrawn and overall lost any energies to argue since I became this pathetic shell of a man, so these things don’t really happen anymore. Whenever someone DARES to just say one single misplaced word in my party, /kick.
If people insult you like that and you’re NOT in pvp, it means 90% it’s on you.
It’s not about pugs, it’s not about casuals vs elitists, it’s not about EU pugs vs NA pugs. It’s about you.
I used to think everyone around me was stupid, too stupid to understand me and that I was different from them.
Now I know better… /sigh
You know, it would be easier, much easier, if I could convince myself that it’s not all a misunderstanding but I actually have something special they don’t have.

Create an lfg requiring meta build and gear. Then make them ping prove they fit the requirements. Then kick if they don’t. You will see these types of comments flow in more regularly than you think.

Be prepared for advice that will not cater to your list of likes and dislikes. With that in mind, we should probably focus on this part of your post

“What would be the best compromise for me to start with?”

We will assume you will chose to adapt to this game’s design while not being “dead-weight” to your party. Sorry to say you will not be able to support your team being far back while ranging bosses. But you can still maintain a decent dps in certian builds if you absolutely must be at range.

So you must chose 1: range, or group support.

If you must range, you have 2 options:
1. grenade engi. In the meta buidl, You can step back a little to provide vulnerability debuff and step in to do a might rotation to buff your party when you feel safe.
2. Staff Ele. Pretty much the same as above, without the vuln. Just camp fire, auto attack and cycle through the fire skills. This has better dps, if a little more boring to use.

If you would rather support and are ok with coming in for melee. Your best option is the Meta Guardian. You will still build for as much dps as you can, but you save a few things to help you “support.” This game uses active defense, so support means: timed aegis(block) right before a boss does a big hit, reflection skills on encounters with lots of reflection, etc.

Also, no such thing as support in terms if “Healing” in this game, so you might as well drop that idea now. Anyone who says otherwise didn’t read your post clearly enough, as you stated that you didn’t want to hinder your team.

For a list of meta builds and how to use them, head over to these forums: http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewforum/4280860
A great collection of information in both text and video form.

For help and hints about specific dungeon encounters: http://gw2dungeons.net/
Best guide out there for all dungeons and paths.

Looking for people to run dungeons with you, while keeping in mind of your noobness and willingness to learn encounters? Just look up in this forum: http://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Mentors-Noob
The best way to find other like minded players if the thought of getting randoms in the LFG tool scares you.

GL, and hope you enjoy doing dungeons as much as we did when we started this game.

I can guarantee that the other side of the coin, will rarely receive such hate. I join and create “all welcome” type of lfgs all the time. No meta player has ever joined in to chastise players like that, and pleny of meta players do join these groups as well as noobs.

I guess it is no surprise to most of us who frequent dungeons to understand which side of this “elite” and “casual” playerbase is more inclined to go out of their way to abuse and create an environment of (oh got I hate using this word) …. toxicity.

(Casuals are by far more toxic, for those of you who are having trouble following along)

Lelouch.8745:

It takes a special kind of boredom for me to resort to this sort of behavior.
Needless to say I was kicked immediately afterwards

hmm this looks fun.

!!!

are you an undercover anet employee?!? trying to get it to buy a new 50% off account so we can have low AP to troll these “elitists”. I see right through you!

Iris Ng.9845:

Last night, my little brother shared me this “Wall of Hate” which he has accumulated over the years of diligent pugging. I’m not sure whether he would post the image himself at some points but I couldn’t resist

I want to add a bit of background information. This “little brother” I have always mentioned is a junior fellow countryman of mine who has helped me a great deal since my noobie days. He is a highly skilled player in all classes yet still a humble and avid student of the [Noob] mentoring program. In short, he is the kind of meta player with a casual experience. His LFG usually reads “80 experienced, DPS, meta or close to meta only”, which hilariously attracts all sorts of imaginable hostility. Plus, this guys is a bit of a tease with his explosive passive-aggressiveness. He never kicks anyone for being bad, but his speech may or may not have pushed them off the cliff

I want to dedicate this Wall of Hate to our dungeon community on this ThanksGiving occasion.

haha a nice collection. my favorite line: “We kinda did I think.” xD

spoj.9672:

Well i got one of my 1 line posts in that thread deleted and infracted. Why did they leave the rest of the thread alone lol.

And yeah ive had a few giant eyes drop. Not sure from what. Probably moldy bags.

hi-five

That BHB Nike probably reported me xD

how in the hell is this thread still open and the other constructive thread locked? I know they are in here bc i just got infracted for calling Nike a phallus, which isn’t really a stretch to say. <3 nike

trigger happy on the lock button.

Silmar Alech.4305:

…And it’s not some brainless invincibuild like in GW1, it’s really their skill and comprehension of the combat system and the boss mechanics. I feel this is the real flaw in the combat system. Here, min/maxing went too far, in my opinion. I don’t want to equalize all players, but the difference between the capabilities of an elitist player should not be so ridiculously higher than the capabilities of a player with an ordinary skill level.

As a somewhat casual player myself, i wanted to give some input regarding this quote. I actually think that the gap between the elite and casuals are not big enough. I’d like the bosses in this game to hit harder and have more HP (i’m definitely in the minority in this one). This way mistakes or miscues in dodging/active defense will be way more punishing than it currently is.

An example I like to us is Ginva in HoTW. Everyone hates this boss. He hits hard frequently, has reapplying boons that make him more tanky, and it seems like he has tons of HP. I’ve seen so many people range him because he is a pain to melee. I think this is the way to go. When people actually try to melee, they will find his attacks a little more predicable and eventually fun, because it is punishing to make a mistake.

I remember when melandru in arah was the major topic of complaint. Oh god the whining that went on. Then bam! someone melees him. all of a sudden he is a fun boss. But if you make the smallest mistake you can get rekT immediately. As it should be.

If all bosses were designed to be this difficult, I’d think we would be in a much better place. Casuals would have their casual tactics and still complete it, although they will be punished with wasting time and boredom. Elites can use their elite tactics and kill it a lot fast, but 1 mistake and they wipe. That is were the gap should be.

whoa whoa whoa… what is this word “communicate”? we’re still trying to decipher the word “read”

holy wall of text. ok you win.

His words are more than clear enough within the context of the conversation. You, however, are trying too hard by reaching in order to prove what exactly… I dont even know. Grasping for straws as they say, when you can’t back up your stance with logic.

If you are really going to try that hard in fooling yourself otherwise, I suggest you take a deep breath, step back, and try a little harder to understand what is being said. This way, you don’t sound sound like someone who is brain-dead when posting in this forum.

there are definitely sphincters on both sides of the coin. I’ll agree with that.

lol, he went through and deleted all his posts. better to run when you have nothing to stand on