Guild Wars 2

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Apparently they really hate the idea of doing damage while supporting, or something. Tbh I don’t really get it either, the only explanation I can think of is that they’re lazy and want to spec full defense and have an excuse for it.

quoting this for truth. I will add another reason why: I believe that some people want to RP as a support tank. That is how they envision their character and thats how they want to play it. It doesn’t matter that the game isnt designed to have that type of character be useful in PvE. They want -they NEED- to play a Holy Paladin Sword and Board Guardian and that’s that. The idea that they can spec full berserker AND provide all the same utility is irrelevant because in their internal conception of what their character is its a full tank support, not a full dps support.

I have no problem with people trying to fulfill some internal vision of their character concept. The issue starts when people demand that the very nature of the game be radically altered so that their internal vision become extremely effective. This is entirely selfish, and ignores all the people whose equally important internal visions would be hurt.

Regardless, the best bet is not to argue fruitlessly about radically changing the basic nature of the game (won’t happen) but to either enjoy the game for what it actually is, or find another game that you would enjoy more for what it is.

Other people seem to be looking to have a character for whom DPS is not a significant function of their build while focusing on support and/or control be as useful to the party as a DPS focused character who carries some support/control as secondary elements of their build.

Unfortunately for them, that isn’t what guild wars 2 pve is. That isn’t this game. Sorry. If this is a deal breaker for you, well, find another game.

Others have pointed it out: all members of the party are expected to DPS, all are expected to control and all are expected to support. How each profession goes about those things, some being better at aspects than others, do vary. But they are all there in pve.

DPS
Thief – Extremely high single target DPS, medium aoe dps
Ranger – High single target, low aoe DPS
Engineer – High AOE and single target dps supplimented by strong condition damage
Elementalist – Extremely high single target and aoe damage increased further with OP conjured weapons
Guardian – Medium single target DPS, high aoe DPS
Mesmer – Low AOE dps, extremely high single target dps
Necromancer – Low AOE dps, high single target dps supplimented by moderate condition damage
Warrior – High single target DPS and high aoe DPS

Support
Thief – Stealth, projectile absorbtion
Ranger – Extremely high offensive buffing capabilities, condition removal
Engineer – Moderate Might stacking, healing, condition removal, massive enemy debuff ability (Vulnerability)
Elementalist – Extremely high offensive buffing capabilities: conjures, Might, Fury. Moderate healing
Guardian – Extremely strong defensive buffs: Stability, condition removal, projectile defense
Mesmer – Extremely strong condition removal and projectile defense. Limited stealth and stability.
Necromancer – Moderate condition removal, strong debuffing: vulnerability stacks (note: necromancer isn’t part of the meta because this section and the next are so limited)
Warrior: Extremely strong offensive buffs: banners, Might, Fury, Empower allies. Strong debuffing: vulnerability stacks.

Control
Thief: Perma-Blinds, spammable on demand CC (headshot)
Ranger – Perma-Immobilize, cripple
Engineer – Moderate blinds, cripple, immobilize, CC, chill
Elementalist – moderate blinds and immobilize, low access to Chill
Guardian – moderate blinds, strong grouping CC, Wards
Mesmer – Extremely high CC ability, strong group CC,
Necromancer – moderate blinds
warrior: Low CC ability with dps utility skills, can swap to high control setup with utilities

If your argument is that these things don’t matter, my guess is that you probably don’t pay enough attention to what’s actually happening in the dungeons/fractals you do OR your dungeons and fractal runs are extremely poor in quality since you DONT utilize the proper support/control roles from your party.

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJODnlDOivc

Bump

Prize pool expanded to 14,000 gems thanks to ArenaNet!

Obtena.7952:

I’ve been wondering this for a long time. Decided to get others opinions on it.

Translation: when I post this gibberish in the dungeon subforum I get mocked so I’ll try again here. Hopefully a different group of people will give me the self-justification I feel I deserve.

Are there other games out there where a subset of players insist on making others play a specific way to the aggressive degree we experience it here in GW2?

Any game with gear progression / instanced content will have this. GW2 is one of the most pug friendly MMOs ever. The community in GW2 is pug friendly. Provided you can read the LFG description or write your own you will be able to find a group of whatever standard you desire.

I’ve played other lesser known games (not WoW) but I’ve never seen it to the degree where people are kicked from groups. Do other games have this that I’m just not familiar with? Perhaps it’s more common than I think? Why do we have this phenomenon?

Why do people kick? Because some people don’t read LFG. Some people have bad attitudes. Some people simply play so poorly that they bring the group down. A very small percent are kicked over trifling reasons and a shame that truly is, but it isn’t worth the ink spilt over it.

I would have thought that the lack of trinity, method of loot distribution and non-competitive aspect of PVE would encourage the complete opposite. Boy, is that wrong.

Let me help you understand. Money and time are interchangeable. If you have a lot of money, you can trade it for free time. If you have a ton of free time you can trade it for money. Everyone values their free time in some way. If my job asked me to work overtime on Saturday for some reason, I would expect additional compensation, because I value my free time on Saturday far more than my standard billing rate. Some people who work a minimum wage job or who have endless free time probably value their free time significantly less than I, or others. There are no doubt people who value their free time greater than I do.

So what’s the point? the point is, free time is a precious commodity and few people value it so little that they want to spend it with griefers, whether intentionally or not. Few want to spend it having frustrating, hair pulling experiences with people who clearly don’t give a single care about the grief and frustration their laziness or “creativity” makes. In the end, people don’t want their time wasted.

frifox.5283:

With my calculations +70 power gave me +2% more dps (and 2.8% in non-buffed scenarios). Not sure if it’s worth dropping legendary amount of gold for that much increase…

It’s only 1550 gold. And yes, it’s worth it if you have a solid main. If I was the type who played 4 different classes equally as much, I wouldn’t bother but since I am on my warrior 99% of the time it’s completely worth it.

spoj.9672:

Its also possible that engi will do way less because a significant portion is condi damage. :>

And it’s also possible that you underestimate the opening burst of Rifle 3+5+acid bomb+grenade barrage.

Engineer dps starts off with a rather huge burst, lowers when you swap to grenade kit, ramps back up and by the time you use the shrapenal grenade a second time you are at your sustained dps rate and almost ready to do your burst skills again.

I kinda want to do trend line graph where the x axis is time and the y axis is average dps at that time. Plot points for 5-10-20-30 seconds and watch how the DPS flows as a fight goes on. But this is a time consuming project that isn’t worth doing until/if FGS gets nerfed.

You should 100% get infusions for your main including omni infusions for your armor. Gold exists to properly gear yourself once you have the look you want.

I bought 1250 t6 claws last week for my new ascended strength set. Worth.

Bump, Prize Pool up to 2700g and growing. further donations appreciated!

Some comments…

Wages (whether farming open world or dungeons) are not necessarily tied to inflation. Other factors matter significantly. You can increase wages considerably and have low inflation. You can have stagnant wages and high inflation. You can have high wages and high inflation.

Inflation is a measure of prices. Prices are controlled by supply and demand. The prices of high demand low supply items have indeed gone up. Low demand high supply items unsurprisingly have not. Wages do come into the demand section, since ability to pay a price premium for a low supply item will cause a price to rise.

In the real world, we have necessities: food, shelter, energy. These are mandatory purchases. There is a minimum of supply that MUST be consumed and demanded. This means that there is at some point a limit to savings. The rate of savings cannot hit 100% of income, even if we experienced hyper-deflation. In Guild Wars 2, there are no necessities. Wealthy players can and do hoard their income. They produce no Demand in the economy because they spend only a tiny fraction of their income on anything.

I suspect that the gold supply among active players is increasing enormously. I personally have several thousand gold with nothing that interests me to spend it on. I know I am not alone. It isn’t unreasonable that is Anet was to introduce Legendary Armor, or another set of highly desireable Legendary Weapons that many players who have enormous savings would be tempted to spend. The prices of t6 mats, despite what many will tell you, have been fairly stable over long periods. If there are new legendaries announced in some future patch, you will see what instability looks like. What happens when 2,000 very wealthy players all want to make “the new legendaries” all at the same time? Well, good luck to any semi-casual player who has any interest in buying t6 mats for any other purpose.

When t6 mats explode in price due to new legendaries, so will exotic weapons. Guess what happens if exotic weapons skyrocket in price? Yup, precursors will skyrocket too.

Conclusion: hoard t6 now, buy your precursor now if there is a current legendary that you want. Retained wealth will devour current income if and when new legendaries are announced. Oh and I hope anet has good bot detection, because if t6 mats hit 1.5g each you’ll see a lot of rangers running around cursed shore.

Serbianwolf.1652:

Tree.3916:

Mortifer.2946:

Tree.3916:

snip

It makes dozen stat combinations useless. – That’s what bugs me.

Gear doesn’t determine your role or your playstyle. Gear is simply where you fall on the axis of tanky – glassy and another axis of direct damage – condition damage.

Those stat combinations are not useless, btw. For starters they all have a use in pvp and wvw at a minimum. Secondly, newer players who don’t know the bosses and don’t know how to time dodges benefit greatly from tankier gear sets, or gear sets that have high sustain. For the purposes of providing a margin of error to newer players, the wide variety of gear sets works exactly as intended.

If you’re upset that extremely experienced players who know all the encounters don’t need to wear tanky gear that’s just carebear, no offense. If you care about what’s best/optimal play whats best. If you care about an RP adventure where your character is a reflection of the story you have for him/her in your head and tanky gear is part of that… well don’t complain when that isn’t optimal for people who care about what’s best.

False! Try to dodge and counter strong AoE! Even dodge won’t save you. As he said, most of gear sets are useless and this is sad truth.

What are you talking about? Dodging works for “strong aoe” too. And I spent a good portion of my post explaining how the gearsets aren’t useless at all, so if you have a response to that please making it factual rather than repeating a discredited statement with italics as if that makes it less discredited.

Mortifer.2946:

Tree.3916:

snip

It makes dozen stat combinations useless. – That’s what bugs me.

Gear doesn’t determine your role or your playstyle. Gear is simply where you fall on the axis of tanky – glassy and another axis of direct damage – condition damage.

Those stat combinations are not useless, btw. For starters they all have a use in pvp and wvw at a minimum. Secondly, newer players who don’t know the bosses and don’t know how to time dodges benefit greatly from tankier gear sets, or gear sets that have high sustain. For the purposes of providing a margin of error to newer players, the wide variety of gear sets works exactly as intended.

If you’re upset that extremely experienced players who know all the encounters don’t need to wear tanky gear that’s just carebear, no offense. If you care about what’s best/optimal play whats best. If you care about an RP adventure where your character is a reflection of the story you have for him/her in your head and tanky gear is part of that… well don’t complain when that isn’t optimal for people who care about what’s best.

Mortifer.2946:

It was the vision of anet too, they told us that instead of DMG-Heal-Tank, we will have Dmg-Control-Support(or something like that). Eventually we have Dmg-Dmg-Dmg.

Here is a youtube playlist for all the dungeon record runs by my guild. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz0JN2v3KJMm58s8KtMZEvMR7l6KaZQC8

If you like, pick a video and I will go through and point out every instance where Control and Support happens in a particular run. You will see that the anet trinity is very much alive, but come to the realization that you don’t understand the game mechanics enough to be aware of it.

As an aside, I don’t understand League of Legends; never played it. When I watch video it seems like bright colors and particle effects. I am 100% sure there is a ton of nuanced gameplay I have no ability to understand happening.

When you, or anyone else who doesn’t actually understand what is happening in gw2 dungeon speed runs, watches one I expect you miss 100% of the nuances as well. Here is a hint: the stuff you’re not seeing is the Support and Control.

I’m not sure what he expected. If/when I pug AC I fully expect to see horrible builds like d/d celestial signet ele. It’s what you get when you pug a dungeon that attracts the kind of people who make “spider queen” threads on this forum.

2-3 hours mostly because I had done so many duos with Obal that I had a fairly good understanding of the fight. I did it off the wall with full defensive utilities that I didn’t need besides stability for the grub (this was before using an ember to get the grub was well known). My first walled solo with full dps utilities took like an hour, first off the wall solo with full dps utilities took like 2 hours. All of that is warrior. For thief, my first solo took like 3 hours to do since it was such a change from warrior.

Trog.2918:

I recently saw a video where a Necro matched a Warrior for DPS. The thousand blades was matched with Life Blast on a glass cannon Necro.

Of all the saddness in this thread of shame, this is the saddest. Though Nemesis is dead (RIP my eastern european friends) his misinformation and shame lives on. It’s a wonderful thing when someone’s works carry on after them. Too bad they aren’t good works, but that is a hope beyond hope.

Wethospu.6437:

I personally don’t really care who organizes and who get fame and stuff like that. I also don’t really care who wins, loses or gets retaliated (I’m kind of a solo player).

What I care about is how we get anet to work on PvE end game. And for that, we need to make it popular. In my opinion tournament like this is a great chance to gets lots of positive attention. But for that, the matches have to be exciting, especially for the viewers.

I know I have been very aggressively showing my opinion about certain things which has probably annoyed a few of you. Feel free to call me a negative nancy but I didn’t want you to get fooled by success of the first tournament. No one really had any expectations and people were hyped about it so mistakes / bad ideas were tolerated.

I don’t mean to criticize you, I think it was a really good job for a first tournament. However to make this last, it has to go forward. I don’t necessarily mean it has to go forward like I say but of course I will show my opinion. I’m glad to see you guys trying new things on the next tourney.

I genuinely believe removing “no wipe” rule leads to better and more interesting matches. I didn’t like it even before first tourney but wanted to see it in effect. I know my ideas might be all wrong and make the tournament really boring but I have no problem changing my mind if needed.

We took a lot of your feedback and incorporated it into the rules this time. It boiled down to…

Wipes were super exciting in the first tournament, but after the wipe it became somewhat anti-climatic. Matches ended quickly and there was no possibility of comebacks. This rule set eliminates the #wipehype sudden death excitement but allows for the possibility of an exciting come from behind win. It might be that one is far better in the end than the other, or some middle-ground rule set is actually ideal. We’ll find out by doing and refining.

I have talked to DnT folks on their forums rather extensively today. Apparently they seem to be okay with the idea of having a gwscr community meeting held by Cookie, which is what we have been asking for since the beginning.

That will be great for the next tournament not organized by us. I’ll be happy to contribute our experience towards making a community run event better for whomever else is organizing it.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The problem is that this still has [DnT] plastered all over it. Official threads regarding this tournament should be on the official dungeon forums only for maximum visibility and community participation, not on [DnT]‘s forums. [DnT] should not have a single logo on the streams unless it’s their stream and they are participating in the tournament (and I would love it if they did participate!).

We are doing the lions share of the work and promotion. It is our gift to the community. Ofcourse our logo is on it. We are the main sponsor. We are the main promoters. We are presenting the community with this event, why would we pretend it wasn’t something we were proud of?

If what DE says is true and you guys really will be fine not hosting, I’ll talk to Cookie and try to get GW2SCR to host the next one after this, and I’ll work with him on coordinating that. That said, I think you (Nike), Brazil, DE, Cookie, and so forth did simply marvelous work on the last tournament. I couldn’t imagine future tournaments without you guys, and if pulling this away from being a [DnT] tournament makes any of you not want to participate, that would sadden me.

GWSCR is officiating. We are hosting. If there is a dispute and I feel one way and cookie feels another, cookie wins. That’s how it works.

Here is what some people miss: we don’t have to do any of this. We do this because we want to. We do this because we like it. We do this because we think people will like it. But like I said, we don’t have to do it. If some third party says, “we are changing the rules to be ______ even though you really don’t like it” we can simply just walk away. No one is going to make anybody produce posters, streams or donate thousands of gold if we don’t feel proud of the product. We do the work because we think its awesome and we can look at the end result as a great gift. If other people want decision-making control over it, its fine for them to want that but don’t be surprised if our enthusiasm and generosity evaporates.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

No you do not understand. It is not about you or your tournament. It is about the community and what the community wants to see.

You don’t have the advantage to see the big picture that I do. Leaders of other guilds are excited about the tournament and have already graciously donated gold. Lot’s of people have contacted me with questions and expressing excitement. None of them felt they excluded or complained about any aspect of the rules. Only one guild has contacted me about things they aren’t happy with or how they feel were excluded. No one else feels that kind of entitlement.

This is how gwscr approached the problem. Rules were discussed publicly so that the entire community would feel involved. Any form of individualism would have thwarted the project. Only thanks to this community-driven approach was the speed clear competition successful.

Apples and oranges. GWSCR had to develop rules that the community as a whole agreed upon because otherwise no one would support it. This is a one time tournament. The rules changed from the first and if there is a third they could change again based on how it goes.

Before you launched your first tournament, we had a thread on the forums. We were doing exactly this. We were discussing formats, as a community. Then you made your public announcement, using ideas developed in the aforementioned thread, and it was a great success.

Actually, what happened was the thread had the kernal of a good idea. I saw a ton of bad ideas and horrible directions it was beginning to take. I realized that it would either a.) never happen or b.) be really dumb. It was much better, especially for the first time, to organize our own tournament where would wouldn’t be beholden to the tyranny of the mob, so to speak. The tournament was a success thankfully.

I can imagine that you needed to generate fame for your guild and bypassing the community was a way to get a first-mover advantage. I can also imagine you may think I am discussing this only because I – as an rT member – would be envious of the attention your project attracts. Please believe that it is not the case.

Really? Do you think we need any more fame? Do you think we did it for fame? We did it because we wanted it to be a success. We did it because we want the format to have a future. Those things were far from certain unless reliable leadership took charge; it isn’t clear it would have ever even happened if we didn’t step up and lend our already famous name to it to give it credibility. If you think your quote was seriously our motivation that is shameful.

Therefore I believe that we have to engage the community as a whole in order to achieve long lasting success. Could we put individualism and personal interest aside for a while? DnT launched two tournaments, KING launched one, all these without community involvement. Okay, I guess we could all launch our own tournaments. The consequent chaos would certainly be entertaining, for a while. But do you really think we can get long-lasting support from Anet if we do not get organised?

If you think you can do better, do it. If anyone else can do better, do it. A superior product will drive the competitors out of the market.

As I said, we get one shot. How about we took the time to sit and discuss things?

We could act as a community, to survive as a community. So you see it is not about your tournament, even if I would have some criticism for it, it is about the way we get organised in order to make competitive PvE happen.

We did sit and discuss it. Your guild’s feedback was essential. We took everything Weth, Haviz and everyone else mentioned into consideration and several rules did change as a result. I’m sorry you missed it, but others from your guild managed to contribute a great deal of constructive criticism so I don’t see anyone as being actively excluded.

Everything is a work in progress. The first tournament was a very restrictive and confining ruleset. This one is far more open based on feedback from your guild especially. Hopefully it will be a step in the right direction. I hope you guys enter a team and crush it, I really do. I hope afterward you have more good feedback and more positive changes come as a result for the future whatever it may be.

I die everytime someone replies in very broken english to one of my comments on that video and tells me how badly Nemesis owned me and how he is a math master and I don’t know anything about the game.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

remember there were talks about holding a meeting with guild representatives so that we could organise not only the tournaments but also discuss their formats. Such meeting never happened. The tournament takes place in two months, but if you tell me we can’t even discuss things like we had agreed to within this time frame then that is too bad!

The “talks” you refer to was something Sandy wanted, but I don’t think I ever said I was interested in having. We didn’t “agree” to do anything. I do not understand why you feel entitled to have your fingers in the pie, why should the time and effort we put into this event be dictated to us by “guild representatives?”

If you think our approach is fundamentally wrong and not fun your right is to not participate. If you think you can organize a better and more fun event PLEASE DO IT! It will make the community better to have better and more fun events, don’t let me or anyone else stop you.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Is there any opportunity to discuss the format of this tournament anymore?

Well… no. After the first one we had a feedback thread on our forums that anyone could post on, and we got feedback from Anet and we got feedback in the thread on these forums. We made draft copies of the rules and sent them to the leaders of rT and SC for critique. After we were satisfied with the results we announced.

The philosophy this time is to make the rules as streamlined as possible and with the least subjectivity as possible to lighten the burden on the gwscr and us when it comes to deciding on grey areas or disputes. This way 1. we can participate without issue and 2. the tournament won’t have any results that come down to arbitrary decision. Having paths selected at random will accelerate the time between round (big anet criticism) and also eliminate any gamesmanship.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Yeah, I saw that. Still, though, the best prepared teams like [SC] will start practicing again right away, so that doesn’t mean much. It shouldn’t be too bad for most people, though, you’re right.

I have the utmost faith that FGS will be able to replicate their stellar performance from last time =)

Current Prize Pool: 4,500g and growing.

2000 gems per player (limit 5) on the first place team
800 gems per player (limit 5) on second place team

Donations always welcome and appreciated.

Apparition.1576:

Greatsword is only significantly higher if you are melee stacking properly on mobs. Otherwise, its really not that great..

But… that isn’t even true. The simple coefficients / time of greatsword skills are far superior to Hammer. The fact that greatsword has traits in dps lines that boost damage AND lower cool downs and stack Might makes greatsword light years better in any circumstance.

To be specific, a GS warrior, fighting an enemy in the open (not stacked against the wall) will produce a coefficient of 1.4 per second. The Hammer warrior will make 1.045 per second. So the GS dps rotation is about 25% better than the hammer before traits are even considered and when you consider how much greatsword benefits from Slashing Power and Forceful Greatsword the comparison isn’t even fair.

Lastly, you seem to think that in “non” stacked fights (aka headless chickens running around a room with a boss in it) that a Hammer somehow performs better. In such a scenario you should understand the value of Whirl Wind Attack providing an evasion AND a high damage attack at the same time.

pmnt.4067:

maha.7902:

What part of ‘this skill does quadruple the DPS of anything else’ sounds balanced? What elite in the game is even on a level close to that?

Glad you asked. Let’s use the wiki and compare the base damage. Equal buffs (food, might) will multiply these values equally

The Fiery Rush line ticks 80 damage, lasts 3 seconds, and consists of 12 patches. Multiplying these numbers gives 2880 damage.

The Bear Form Charge hits multiple times for 609 damage, but the wiki doesn’t say how often it hits. If it hits at least 5 times, it actually outdamages Fiery Rush. Most movement skills hit bosses 4 times, but I personally haven’t tried Charge yet. I’d call that “close to” fgs.

Bonus: 100b+Whirlwind Attack deals 3066 damage on the same cooldown as Fiery Rush (these CDs can be reduced by traits). That’s also “close to” fgs.

As you see, all FGS really does is provide warrior-esque DPS for the ele and a second player (oh, now I see why FGS should be nerfed). So stop claiming that it does quadruple damage of anything else in the game.

Since you don’t seem to know much about warrior DPS or how FGS works here is some information to consider

http://dtguilds.com/forum/m/6563292/viewthread/13086970-who-picks-up-fgs

Let’s put this into precise perspective.

1. The FGS will produce a coefficient total of 43 over 12.15 seconds. A greatsword warrior with a walled target using perfect rotations produces a coefficient total of 42 every 30 seconds. So at the most basic level, a warrior with FGS will be producing about 2.5x the DPS of a warrior using a normal weapon.

2. There are classes that do significantly more DPS with an FGS than a warrior. A GS warrior with FGS will do roughly 29k dps over that 12.15 second period. A fairly normal 66xxx ele will do nearly 39k dps over that same time frame. So YMMV when carrying an FGS.

3. Based on the ongoing DPS research by Dekeyz published here http://gw2dps.david-reess.de/ we can see that when not using FGS, a well built meta team comp will put out 55-65k dps. Consider that one ele carrying FGS can put out nearly 40k dps by himself, and 2 two eles distrubuting a total of 4x FGSes to the team can make a total team dps of around 150k. A elite skill that is capable of increasing DPS by such a significant factor is clearly imbalanced.

4. If we consider Time Warp the measuring stick for an elite, it makes total team dps go from 65k dps to 97.5k dps for 10 seconds. We can say, very roughly speaking, that Time Warp is worth about 325k total damage. A single cast of FGS (assuming someone reasonable picks up the other FGS) is worth about 550k total damage. Time Warp has a 240 second cool down, FGS 180. I understand internal balance vs external balance but nonetheless the value of FGS is so far above the “next best” elite that it’s quite literally in a league of it’s own.

But my argument against the current state of FGS#4 isn’t that it’s “boring” or that I suck at the game, or I’m worried about losing records to FGS or whatever other excuses have been offered by others or for me. The problem is simply put the skill is so strong that it dominates the PvE meta and makes a minimum of 2 Ele’s obligatory in anything calling itself a “speed run.” If people want more options, more class diversity and, yes, more interesting boss fights FGS as it currently stands has to go. If you don’t care about those things that’s your right, but objectively speaking it is by far the most powerful thing you can do in PvE.

Anet fixed Ursan-way in GW1, and I would argue that there is no dispute that FGS is just as omnipresent and oppressive as Ursanway ever was. If you don’t remember Ursanway, lucky you.

The best thing Ele’s contribute to a fractal team is perma-Fury, oddly enough. Everything else is something you can give or take or get better elsewhere. And since you only need one ele for perma-fury you should seriously consider how redundant a second one is and think about what other classes bring that might provide more team utility.

Emiko.3217:

I have a friend in my usual party dungeon runs whose main is a hammer. Frankly I never had an issue with it… he’s awesome at using that weapon.

Being that most important mobs (bosses) are immune to the 3 CC attacks, and cripple is mostly useless, what exactly does he do that makes him good? Auto attack and…?

Hi, I’m Nike. I am the leader of DnT, I will answer you.

Razor.6392:

Why would you want to remove FGS 4?

Personally, I find it warps the meta-game and limits build and comp diversity. While it makes “boring dungeons” faster I find it makes individual fights more boring. You might say “well a fight is already boring” and that may be true, but I would prefer to at least have to dodge or use some kind of tactical approach to a fight. It makes the game a bit less mindless.

Are other guilds catching up to your “records” by using this “cheese” perhaps?

No, we are doing a good job of using this “cheese” set records ourselves. When it comes to records we have a play to win attitude, whatever the best possible thing we can do within the rules is what we will do.

Do you enjoy longer PvE fights?

Yes. I do.

Or maybe you guys never run elementalists, so you feel you’re at a disadvantage?

Nope, we have some of the best Elementalists in the game in our guild.

I honestly don’t understand why would you care.

Because I don’t have a myopic view of the game. I understand the difference between what is good for me and what is good for the game overall. will nerfing FGS slow down our casual dungeon runs? Yes. Will it make the game better? Also yes.

EcoRI.9273:

J Eberle.9312:

EcoRI.9273:

J Eberle.9312:

EcoRI.9273:

Jerus.4350:

J Eberle.9312:

‘Played amazingly.’ Yes, well it’s not hard to look ‘amazing’ when playing a facedesk build.

EcoRI.9273:

Edit: They placed 2nd, could’ve won if they didn’t get 5mins of DC.

OR if he didn’t feel the need to use AH ‘most of the time.’

What does this say for those that they beat?

They were competing against people like [rT] and [iV] who were running berserker’s. But anyways good players can run bad builds.

And it doesn’t have any relevance to pugging. This was a tourny environment that depends on many different factors including the risks and tactics employed by other people to be successful. If another team gets wrecked because they took huge risks, then of course all your team needs to do is not die and get through it at a stable pace. Props to them for playing it safe because it worked out for them, it’s a really good tactic for that environment.

When I am pugging, I will absolutely kick someone in PVT and AH 10 times out of 10. They’re nothing but a burden to a well composed full meta team doing a dungeon tour with tactics that are low risk and proven time and time again to work. You should know just how much of a spanner in the works one bad build can be when the rest of your team is geared towards getting things killed fast. It’s noticeable, and then when it’s say 3 people with bad builds, or 4, you really start feeling it, and the wipes start happening. Doesn’t matter how ‘good’ they are, it does not change their kitten dps.

‘good players’ can run bad builds, or good players can run good builds and be better.

Talking about Fractals here. The Fractal tourney showed that you can AH PTV you can get things done safe and fast. But Yes I agree in dungeons its best to run all berserkers because most of the time things melt so fast you don’t even need to dodge. Also you should probably put ‘bad’ in quotes too because although AH is not ‘meta’ at the moment, RTG must has talked about their builds prior to the tournament. The AH guardian allowed every1 else in the team to play more aggressive and stay melee for longer, a form of dps meter that can not be calculated with paper dps.

The two comments before yours were referring to pugging but I suppose it’s not out of the ordinary for some people to post their random opinions out of the blue.
Either way, just so you know because I’m not sure if you play guardian.. but you can actually be a ‘pillar’ without AH and still do more for your team. So it’s still a bad build and it’s not up for debate.

People pug fractal, why can’t they take builds used in a fractal tournament that showed it was safe and fast?

You only need enough toughness to hold Mossman/Archdiviner/Ettin aggro. Any toughness more than you need to keep their aggro is a waste. You don’t need the Toughness to survive when holding their aggro assuming you know how to rotate Aegis/focus 5/dodges. You don’t need the healing from AH to survive while holding aggro for the same reason. So long as your party keeps the bosses crippled and/or chilled you won’t be hit much at all. So what is AH for? It’s a safety blanket for someone who doesn’t know their class well enough.

This skill is easy to fix. You know what happens when you try to cast a phantasm without selecting a target? Something like…

Skill Failed. No Target Selected.

Easy solution without changing the intended functionality at all.

EcoRI.9273:

RTG Guardian in KING tourney was running PTV and AH build most of the time which are both said to be suboptimal(Build and gear wise). The Guardian in my opinion played amazingly.

Edit: They placed 2nd, could’ve won if they didn’t get 5mins of DC.

In spite of =/= because of.

There are a few fractal bosses where I could see PVT being used to hold aggro situationally, but AH traits is just a pure bad decision.

Scryeless.1924:

RagNoRawk.3625:

Scryeless.1924:

RagNoRawk.3625:

Not really. Why? Because instead of trying to CC a stack of trash to death, you can just let a thief throw down perma blinds while you release superior-to-hammer dps.

This seems to be a common theme amongst GS fanboys. “I’ll do what I want and someone else can do all the work.”

Why would I hurt myself with hammer when somebody else can do the job so much better? perma-blinds> 3s stun
Which is basically their primary job for trash mobs and they sacrifice nothing to take advantage of this.
All you are doing is deflecting with out making real points.

All of my points have been made. People just aren’t reading them. Everyone seems to be just scanning for tidbits they can remove from context. Everyone is arguing points that I agree with them on. All I am doing now is trying to help people learn to read. Read everything, let it sink in, try to comprehend what was written. Don’t forget to breath.

The only statements you’ve made in this thread were troll-bait designed to provoke an angry response. Perhaps you should re-articulate your points in a manner consistent with the promotion of a legitimate conversation and you’ll find you get the respect you are looking for.

Step one of that is to not use pejorative terms for groups of players. Step two is avoiding dismissive statements like “read what I said more carefully.” For what it’s worth, the onus of being understood is on the writer not the reader. If a lot of people consistently “misinterpret” or “don’t understand” your writing there is a very strong chance that your points aren’t as clear or self-evident as you believe they are and you should work on refining the clarity of your expression rather than belittle other people’s comprehension.

=)

Stooperdale.3560:

Tree.3916:

Put it this way: bad players can wear good gear and still be bad. But good players can’t wear bad gear still be good.

Good players are still better even in poor gear and often even on an unfamiliar class. They just nail the dodges and stay alive easily. It’s only speed runs that need players in good gear.

From a logical standpoint, part of being a good player is knowing what is optimal. good players wear good gear as a result of being a good player. Sure sometimes, as a joke, good players will run Clerics or Nomads or whatever. But no “good player” would wear bad gear if he was trying to be good.

When someone says “well I run full Knights and I’m a good player!” they are almost certainly wrong about that.

Put it this way: bad players can wear good gear and still be bad. But good players can’t wear bad gear still be good. If I cared I would gearcheck, but when I do pug I usually put “p3 be interesting” as my ad.

I see at least 4 dungeon-centric speed run guilds recruiting on the first page of the guild recruitment subforum. If I went back a few more pages I’m sure I could find more. Rather than using trashcan forum to recruit for your “afraid of arah” group, why not join an existing guild that fulfills your needs and might be able to teach you arah?

tronzilla

We have no need for a speed running guild at the moment, we are looking for a consistent speed clearing group. So please go else where for your inane comments. Only reply if you are interested in consistent speed clears.

Your first sentence has two clauses. The two clauses disagree with each other in substance. If the second clause is true, it would imply the first clause is incorrect. So my comment is anything but inane, which is pretty insulting since I gave you amazing advice. I suggest you re-analyze your actual problem and you’ll arrive at the same conclusion I did.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I’m not quite sure how you did your calculations but that mesmer number you just quoted is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off.

Not really when you consider I wasn’t adding vuln or condi damage, which when you consider those puts the mesmer up to 12k-ish dps which is pretty much spot on. One thing you may need to reconsider with mesmer is the 3rd auto attack in the sword chain is bugged and the coefficient/tooltip is totally wrong and it does way less damage than it is “supposed to.”

TurtleDragon.3108:

Tree.3916:

In a typical group setting a ranger and pet will get around 8.5k dps not counting Vuln.

For comparison’s sake using the same assumptions (25 Might, 0 Vuln, Warrior Banners, Spotter, traited FS)

thief: 13.5k
Warrior: 11k
Staff ele: 12k
Guardian: 8.5k
Necro: 9.2k
Engineer: 11.7k

Rangers are definitely in the bottom tier, if you take pet DPS out they aren’t even mentionable. The DPS you benefit your party with using FS and Spotter does mitigate your own abysmal DPS so your party breaks even. Rangers need to be buffed by about 10% to make them a “must bring” addition to parties.

I know it’s very situational, but where would you place mesmer on that list?

Durzlla.6295:

Also I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers excluded buffing the pet…

I’m pretty sure Nike and GK are including might and fury, but not unique buffs such as banners (because pets don’t get them when your entire party is within range)

Re: Mesmers. Mesmers require a lot of assumptions, but a 64004 mesmer with 3 Swordsmen up, 2 mantras readied and the same buffs we considered here (banners, 25 might, spotter, frost spirit, no vuln) would be somewhere around 9.5k. How feasible 3 swordsmen up at a given time is your call, I aim inclined to say “not very” but I think 2 swordsmen one Warden is slightly more realistic. Each phantasm is around 1900 dps so feel free to add or subtract the phantasm dps as you see fit.

Also remember the numbers I put are with ZERO vuln. Even a bad team is likely to have 10-20 vuln on bosses pretty much so increase the numbers by that much. Also, the numbers I gave for the above classes include their condition damage which is important. I haven’t yet added condi damage in for mesmer and thats likely to be a few hundred dps.

For pet dps we assumed fury and might, but not banners or spotter or frost spirit.

In a typical group setting a ranger and pet will get around 8.5k dps not counting Vuln.

For comparison’s sake using the same assumptions (25 Might, 0 Vuln, Warrior Banners, Spotter, traited FS)

thief: 13.5k
Warrior: 11k
Staff ele: 12k
Guardian: 8.5k
Necro: 9.2k
Engineer: 11.7k

Rangers are definitely in the bottom tier, if you take pet DPS out they aren’t even mentionable. The DPS you benefit your party with using FS and Spotter does mitigate your own abysmal DPS so your party breaks even. Rangers need to be buffed by about 10% to make them a “must bring” addition to parties.

Axelwarrior.9084:

Tree.3916:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Personally, I think that in a casual run (and by that I mean not a record-setting speed run or a solo), potions and food are unnecessary. They might give you a small boost, but in the end you don’t really need them.
Saving a few minutes off a run isn’t that big of a deal for me. I’d rather just keep my gold.

Spends hundreds of gold on ascended armor and weapons for a 5-10% dps boost.

Won’t spend 25 silver on a 20% dps boost.

Makes total sense.

Totally.

First of all, I don’t have ascended armor and weapons.
Second of all, I only have to buy armor once, but I need a different potion for every dungeon, every day. They add up. Also, ascended equipment isn’t only useful for dungeons, but also for WvW and world events.

Think before you speak and make fun of others.

I thought about it.

I’m still right. People should use potions and food always. There is no excuse anyone has provided that amounts to anything more than laziness.

Axelwarrior.9084:

Personally, I think that in a casual run (and by that I mean not a record-setting speed run or a solo), potions and food are unnecessary. They might give you a small boost, but in the end you don’t really need them.
Saving a few minutes off a run isn’t that big of a deal for me. I’d rather just keep my gold.

Spends hundreds of gold on ascended armor and weapons for a 5-10% dps boost.

Won’t spend 25 silver on a 20% dps boost.

Makes total sense.

Totally.

knives.6132:

I forget to use simply because no one in pugs uses them too. And me using will have no significant effect on the time the dungeon finishes.

Start kicking pugs that refuse to use potions. If this becomes the norm they will learn quickly. Negative reinforcement can have a positive change.

Being philosophical for a moment, a question we should often ask ourselves is, “are you the type of teammate you would want on your team?” This is an interesting question that takes into account not only your playskill and build efficiency, but also your demeanor and attitude. No one wants to party with a highly skilled well built pseudo-elitist knob. No one wants to party with a super nice guy who runs awful builds, doesn’t know the encounters and contributes negatively if he even contributes at all.

So when looking at your “I don’t care about the rest of my party I am going to pew pew for no damage and contribute less than 20% of group damage and support” I have to say your attitude is fairly negative. Nobody wants to party with a guy who doesn’t care about the success of the group and isn’t willing to help to the best of his ability.

Further evidence is that you appear oddly proud of the fact that you’re “the last man standing” but you have not paused to reflect that this is so because you’re contributing least. Perhaps another player in your spot who did his fair share of damage while also supplying helpful support would have made it so that nobody died? It’s entirely possible -even probable- and yet it appears you have not considered it whatsoever.

In regards to build and player skill, I have a few observations. First, as others have said, your build is not efficient for PVE. People expect a ranger to provide traited Frost Spirit and Spotter to the party at a minimum. Even if you cannot comfortably run a Berserker build, you can contribute at least these things to provide value. I would reckon that so long as your brought these two things more groups wouldn’t know or care that you weren’t doing a great deal of damage personally. Omitting them is a blunder, and frankly, unforgivable. I am rather tolerant of pugs and I have reasonably low expectations, however I would not hesitate to relieve my group of the burden of a Ranger who failed to bring these things.

As far as your playskill goes, I have no first hand knowledge of it. But based on reductive reasoning, I can make a few educated guesses. The overly defensive nature of your build, along with a default ranged option leads me to guess you are either 1. inexperienced in PVE and require defensive crutches to survive encounters or 2. you simply play the same build in WVW and you are too lazy to make separate accomodations for PvE dungeons. The first is forgivable assuming the player is making an effort, but in your case from comments you’ve made, I understand you don’t care to make an effort. The latter less easy to forgive, as it reveals a laziness that is unbecoming of a good teammates and something that a skilled player wouldn’t tolerate of himself.

Based on the evidence as it sits in total, I have to conclude you are not the type of player anyone would want as a teammate and you probably know that to be true on some level even if you won’t acknowledge it publicly. But now I’ve laid it all out, where you go from here is up to you, and hopefully you take the appraisal for what it is and find it to be quite improving for you.

Warlord.9074:

If your playing with good players adding more vuln to boost thier good dps without taking so much of a hit to your own DPS is better.

FWIW the pure axe EA build maintains 1 more vuln per second than the 65003 build so that isn’t really a point of compromise.

spoj.9672:

I find it kind of ironic that anet themselves said they dont have the resources to create armour skins which can be earned in game. Thats why they put them on the gemstore. And yet here they are creating armour skins which will only be available to 15 people. Lol.

All for the sake of esports! Its depressing that they can waste resources on their smallest community with no real gain.

I have to agree with this. In the Fractal CDI, the answer of why we can have a special fractal armor skin for people that get to super high levels in the future amounted to “we dont have a lot of artists who can do armor and they are pretty much working for the gem store 24/7 and every dev team wants them when they aren’t so probably not.” I’ll just add this to the list of things to mention next time some pve update happens and reddit/forumer says, “they never support pvp!”

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Again, the problem is that you are comparing the much more consistent axe DPS with peak GS DPS, since EA build is an axe build.

This is where you’re mistaken. You seem to be in a world where 100b are impossible to land without interrupting by axe chains never get interrupted, or Rips always happen perfectly after an auto chain. Both chains are equally fragile or equally easy depending on how you look at them. Neither I, or anyone else experienced with Warrior and the boss fights in this game, have much of a problem landing consistent Hundred Blades.

Weth is correct. Talking about percentages is only relevant if everyone’s dps was equal. What matters is that an EA warrior loses a very real nominal amount of DPS to run EA. So it matters completely whether or not the group gains nominal DPS high enough to compensate, and you can see where I stand on that.

Veckna.9621:

Tree.3916:

Veckna.9621:

EA is about an 8% DPS increase for the party as a whole assuming everyone is rolling a zerk build.

It’s closer to a 4% boost.

Assuming the average power of a zerk build to be about 2500, considering some builds do not go all the way into their power tree, EA is an exact 6% increase in power for the average used.
150*100/2500 = 6

This of course is subject to several circumstances and the bonus is less noticeable as your power increases via might or bloodlust stacking.
Still worth taking over a personal DPS increase in my opinion.

You don’t have any Might on you ever in dungeons? I think that would change your math a bit.

Let’s look at real DPS numbers for a typical party comp (assuming 25 vuln)

Staff Ele 13381
S/F Ele 12087
Thief 14410
Guard 9911
DPS War 12214

total: 62003

Now with EA

Staff 13942
SF 12562
Thief 14958
Guard 10323
EA War 10558

Total: 62,342

Congrats on managing to generate an additional 0.5% DPS.

You’re supposed to craft your armor and consider anything useful that drops as a bonus/cost savings.

Veckna.9621:

EA is about an 8% DPS increase for the party as a whole assuming everyone is rolling a zerk build.

It’s closer to a 4% boost.