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just to clear something out, dps means damage over time, so chaining unload all day long from safety does more dps than a hit n’ run burst build (against bosses)
Yeah, but almost nobody uses hit n’ run burst builds in PvE. Even if you could chain Unload permanently (most builds cannot do more than five/six in a row), it is less DPS than melee auto attacks, or even shortbow auto attacks vs. multiple targets.
So for example, Unload is better DPS than someone landing a backstab, walking around for five seconds, and landing another backstab, but since dagger auto attack is better DPS than Unload by itself, chaining those two together (auto + backstab) is going to result in DPS not just slightly better, but leagues better.
I really would love to see a video of someone maintaining a 80%+ melee presence (meaning staying in there to actively dish out damage without eating dirt in downed state every 10-20 seconds) as a glass cannon thief throughout a scale 10+ fractal.
As someone who has done it in 10+ fractals:
Ice Fractal – Easy, no real issues, time PW well on the shaman boss and you don’t need to worry about the breath weapon.
Dredge Fractal – Depends on your role. I tend to focus on stunning and scorpion-wire’ing the boss around. You can make melee work here, but the fight isn’t really conducive to it, especially since you generally don’t want to cripple him while he’s moving. If you just want to burst him down in a couple phases melee is the way to go.
Grawl Fractal – Melee works great on the miniboss, for the final boss I usually go ranged so I can focus on running around helping people getting hurt by fire. To melee you just have to continue walking circles. Only other boss I generally range.
Water fractal – Inapplicable
Asura fractal – Melee works great on everything, especially if you can get the final robots grouped into a ball for AE sword strikes.
Giant fractal – Generally range the first fight since the group does, for the final fight melee works great, especially since sword strikes will swiftly down the adds as he spawns them.
Charr fractal – Melee works great unless the rest of your group decides to range it, in which case just go with the flow.
Swamp fractal – Melee is amazing on the plant boss, requires a little dodging on Mossman when he pops up.
Bonus fractal – Doesn’t really matter, you can kill the boss without wearing armor because everything is mechanics-based. Melee is needed for the golems.
So in summary the only big fights I really range are Dredge/Grawl bosses, but that is mostly due to fight mechanics and not the fact that it is dangerous to melee them. And ranging the dredge boss is only really when groups want to draw out the fight instead of stacking up and trying to end it quickly.
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GW2’s PvE experience is one of the worst in MMO history.
Please tell me you are joking… but then again you have right to have your opinion on the matter.
This might stem from a lack of experience in MMOs. GW2 doesn’t have the best PvE experience, but it isn’t anywhere near the bottom. If Malicious has only ever played 5-10 MMOs and they all happened to be excellent PvE-centric MMOs, GW2 may very well be near the bottom of their personal ranking.
It’s useful, definitely, but not terribly SEXY.
This sums it up pretty well. Steal is far from a bad profession mechanic, and it actually compares pretty favorably with other profession mechanics, especially if you stop comparing them in a vacuum and see how each synergizes with the profession. You can no more compare Steal to necromancer’s “z0mg extra life bar”, than you can straight-up compare two profession’s auto attacks and ignore everything else.
What Steal does lack, however, is skill synergy. While other professions have skills and traits that interface with their profession mechanic and make it better, thieves have only traits that make Steal better (initiative has some utility boosts).
My suggestion would be to upgrade Steal by boosting some of the thief’s weaker utilities with Steal synergy. What if traps, for example, refreshed Steal instantly when triggered? Suddenly traps are useful and there’s a large niche for a steal-heavy trap thief. What if Steal applied, without application, all of the venoms on the thief’s utility bar?
If you talk general pve I don’t see what is that “killing fast” point you make.
“Killing fast” in open-world PvE is all about AE damage. To that end, P/P will never be able to compete as long as it lacks AE capability. Unload spam may be only slightly below sword auto attack against a single target, but once you’re fighting multiple targets at once the DPS (and therefore kill-rate) isn’t even comparable.
I know it takes forever to kill something but I am not going to change what I like just because I don’t kill it quickly. Everyone has their own play style and what suits one may not suit the other. But don’t dismiss something just because you can’t kill stuff fast enough with it.
That is entirely fine, up to a point. People might also choose to use Sword/Nothing for instance. S/blank is arguably better DPS than P/P, but weaker in most respects. You can literally spam auto attacks with any weapon and get along fine in open-world PvE. Where the community has a problem with it is:
A) If you’re in a group, that group has the right to drop you or not invite you in the future if they determine that you’re being overly ineffective. Most groups won’t, especially PUGs don’t really care to optimize to that degree, and that is fine. However, if you’ve decided to choose play style over effectiveness and your group is struggling, you need to realize that some of the blame rests with you.
B) If you complain about being ineffective. If you choose a less effective playstyle and you struggle, that is on you. If you have constructive feedback to make the game better, great, but there’s no “I chose to wear full Cleric’s gear because that is my preferred play style and now I keep losing duels in WvW”.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a particular play style, even if that play style is less effective, but when you bring that play style into a group setting it becomes everyone else’s business.
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Can my 4 teammates do more damage with 15-20 stacks of vulnerability than I can do with Unload? Most likely.
The answer to that question is only situationally “yes” because Unload’s DPS is mediocre, and even then it is questionable. 15 stacks of vulnerability is essentially a 15 % boost in power-based damage, which in a perfect world would be easy to determine. However, consider that it doesn’t affect condition based damage, so the effect is heavily lessened if anyone around is running condition-based builds. Also consider that the relative use of Body Shot is lessened the higher the DPS of the thief is than the group average DPS. This means that if you’re running a high-utility thief without many offensive stats that using Body Shot is a great idea, since you’ll lose a small amount of personal DPS (since you aren’t specced for it) and give the big hitters in your group a big boost. However, the reality is that the thief often is the big hitter, compared to the rest of the group. By reducing your own damage potential drastically to increase other lower-damage groupmates by 15 % you might not even be breaking even.
I can absolutely respect P/P as a platform for utility wherein the thief decides from the get-go that they’ll be uninterested in personal damage and devote their initiative to utility via Body Shot, Headshot, and Black Powder. But simply taking a damage-focused build and throwing in Body Shots may not be a good investment.
Ichishisurely you do more damage in a given amount of time in melee but you spend more time dodging and closing in.
With p/p you dont have that 120 range radius area you need to be in to attack. You dont need to dodge as much. You dont need defensive utilities. You can move freely.
And I find it much harder to benefit from scholar runes 6 set when every misdodge takes significantly more than 10% of hp.
Depending on your build you may be dodging anyways, and thieves have enough closers and mobility to ensure very high melee uptime in all but the most mobility-based fights. I’m not sure what you mean by “defensive utilities” though. The only real defense-heavy utility thieves have, Roll for Initiative, doesn’t support melee combat in any case.
You’re right on the money with it being more difficult to benefit from scholar runes in melee range, but I question whether that is enough to offset the disadvantages. That is, however, mostly an extension of P/P being safer, which I don’t think anyone doubts. One could argue that taking a bunch of toughness/vit also makes it easier to benefit from Scholar runes, but it may not be the best choice for damage.
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just to clear something out, dps means damage over time, so chaining unload all day long from safety does more dps than a hit n’ run burst build (against bosses)
Yeah, but almost nobody uses hit n’ run burst builds in PvE. Even if you could chain Unload permanently (most builds cannot do more than five/six in a row), it is less DPS than melee auto attacks, or even shortbow auto attacks vs. multiple targets.
So for example, Unload is better DPS than someone landing a backstab, walking around for five seconds, and landing another backstab, but since dagger auto attack is better DPS than Unload by itself, chaining those two together (auto + backstab) is going to result in DPS not just slightly better, but leagues better.
They nerfed Jboots too, they feel slower.
Seriously though, people have been claiming stealth nerfs for years and years, you need some sort of statistical analysis to back it up.
you can spam at least 6 HS’s in a row.
Not sure if you know what “at least” means. 6 HS in a row would require some pretty good luck, even if a thief focused on using a power-based attack (HS) went deep into the Condition damage tree (Trickery) for the extra initiative pool. This is also assuming they started at full initiative and burn Steal.
Uncatchable is nice, but it is hardly a must have, imo. Thrill of the crime is also pretty sweet, as is bountiful theft. Really depends on the situation, if I am facing a lot of great sword face rollers I typically switch to uncatchable.
I wouldn’t call it a “must have” unless you’re already running a build that has a lot of synergy with it. Signet of Malice + heavy Acrobatics + dodge food, to me, makes Uncatchable a “must have”, since you’re dodging so much, building Might stacks that help caltrop damage, and healing every time someone stands in caltrop field(s).
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On a 50% hp boss with around 90% crit rate from the back unload with all crits deals 12+k damage, up to 2k leeching from food, restores 3-4 initiative, applies 2-3 vuln and it is also a ranged attack.
Yes, you can stack a bunch of bonuses up and Unload will do a lot, but so will all the other skills that synergize with those bonuses. Pistol Whip, for instance, will do more DPS, stun, evade, and have more hit volume (Unload’s primary strength). Lets break down your claim though:
1. Damage. Yes, it can do 12K damage, no that isn’t a lot of damage for how long it takes to channel. It isn’t bad DPS, but it can’t compete with other options the thief has.
2. 2K leeching from food. Absolutely, but again not particularly that impressive due to how long it takes to use Unload. PW is leagues better in this respect, and since Unload doesn’t have any AE capability, sword mainhand will pull in more on-crit healing against multiple targets.
3. 3-4 initiative is not going to happen very often, at least not from procs. Even if you were able to pull 100 % crit rate, a 20 % chance to trigger your +1 init trait means you’ll pull in on-average 1.6 initiative from your 8 Unload hits. Since even perfect-world you aren’t holding a 100 % crit rate, you’re looking at substantially lower returns. What you’re actually seeing is proc intiative + natural initiative regen over the eternity it takes to use Unload.
4. With a 1 second cooldown on Vulnerability proc you’re not going to see 3 Vuln stacks on an ability that doesn’t last 3 seconds. This is a place where Unload could potentially shine, but it is utterly shut down by cooldowns on crit procs. The fact here is that running huge crit rate values you’re going to be able to keep that cooldown down with most skills and Unload doesn’t help much. Edit: A quick test against some targets in the mists demonstrates that with 85%~ crit rate, you can expect 0-1 stacks of vulnerability, with 2 being very uncommon (less than 10 % of the time).
So, to reiterate, P/P is a good choice for trading damage potential for safety. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as people who use P/P accept that it is the choice they’re making. Conversely, groups have no business telling people to stop using P/P unless they’re also telling people to stop using defensive gear and get into Berserker equipment. Damage potential for survivability, it is the same choice.
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I know any offensive action breaks stealth, so why doesn’t stealth break until the hammer’s been dropped? Maybe beginning an execution should be considered a hostile action? Or is this intentional?
The simple answer is that stealth breaks on a damaging attack, and finishers are neither damaging, nor an attack, they’re a channeled “F” action.
Even if finishers were an attack, stealth would break only upon successful completion of a finishing blow that actually hit and killed, which would do very little to solve the issues people seem to have with it.
6. Thieves who think that sneaking up (in any form of prolonged stealth) on a low level players at half health and bashing their skulls in takes real skill.
Nobody thinks this, but everyone does agree that it is satisfying.
right now thieves can cover the entire point in caltrops by facerolling, i mean dodge rolling, meaning that everyone trying to take the point is getting 20 stacks of bleeds at all times.
Dodge roll caltrops can, at most, apply 4 bleed stacks per dodge. Utility caltrops, not the trait-generated ones, are your culprit if you’re getting 20-stacked.
This. We don’t WANT new content. No-one does. We want the content that is currently there to actually kittening work!
I, for one, want new content. This same complaint has been made since the 90s regarding MMO development. People will always insist that halting development to fix bugs is what is ultimately best, but the fact of the matter is that content is the lifeblood of MMOs, a decision to stop growing is a decision to kill off the game. Everyone wants bugs fixed, but the prioritization of new content is important.
So, if for whatever reason, you can’t get in melee and STAY in melee, P/P is as good as it gets.
P/D only requires you to get into melee, not stay in melee, while having situationally better damage and equal range capability.
Whether you can venom share with melee depends on your group composition, but I’d still argue that P/D is superior for venom share.
The problem with the idea of P/P being a utility set is that to even maintain mediocre damage output you’re pouring initiative into Unload, necessarily leaving less available for the (quite good) #4/5 utilities. Compare to S/P or D/P which can outdamage P/P without using any initiative, leaving 100 % of it for timely Headshots and Black Powder.
I’m afraid of getting kicked from more groups for being “slow” when all I want to do is not exploit. Happens in every game where exploits become common place. If you don’t exploit, you get kicked or people avoid you.
Please fix the exploits so I can enjoy Fractals without feeling peer pressure to exploit.
Just build your own groups with the rules laid out before hand.
There’s only 3 options for thieves:
1. Condition build
2. Burst build
3. Ineffective buildPick whatever you like.
Aside from the fact that burst and conditions aren’t mutually exclusive, this determination is highly situational.
Well, it seems that all the other classes have a good number of builds available to them, but thieves feel like a one trick pony. I do like sword/pistol a lot, but I don’t know how to build my traits to compliment not being burst…
30 Critical Strikes, then some combination of Acrobatics and Trickery for the remaining 40 points works well. I’m a big fan of 20/20, with 30/10 the pressure is on to constantly be burning endurance so you keep your damage boost. 15/25 is also very underappreciated, netting you both the extra Might-dodges from 15 Acrobatics as well as the coveted 15 % passive for 25 Trickery. Crit strikes passive + Trickery passive = 25 % bonus damage for staying full-initiative while you use auto attack.
a lack of useful utility on other skills.
It isn’t that P/P lacks utility, it is that all the good utility it has is on the off-hand, which means you can take S/P or D/P and use it. Pistol off-hand isn’t weak, main-hand is where the problem is.
You can spec into pistols, you can spec into init. regen, you an spec into Signet CD reduction (that gives you +2 init. on pop)…etc. etc.
I can chain Unload [almost] all day long, regularly hitting 7k+ in ~2-3s.
How is that bad damage exactly..? Would you rather me facetank the boss and get 2 shot? I mean thieves have low armor and low (the lowest?) hp pool. There is a reason we range some dungeon fights.
Not to mention with P/P you can drop an amazing AoE blind field (that constantly blinds anything that comes in it). I regularly “tank” parts of dungeons this way with my Thief when we are with less experienced players. When you are specced into init. regen, you can maintain this field for quite a long time, allowing the ranged dps’ers to burn down the mobs.
It is “bad damage” because it is worse than most other damage sources thieves have, even if you could chain Unload forever. Even un-interrupted Unload spam is less DPS than using either melee auto attack. The best thing you can say for it is that it allows sustainable power-based damage on single targets from 900 range, not exactly a wide area of expertise.
And all the utility of P/P comes from the /P offhand, which can just as easily be used with S/P or D/P.
If you enjoy the play style and safety, more power to you. There are some fights that genuinely support P/P (like, as I said, the Dredge fractal boss). However, there are two facts that people look at when deriding P/P:
1. P/P trades damage potential for safety, it straight up can’t keep up in DPS with most other thief builds. There’s nothing hugely wrong with that, people do it all the time when they wear Valkyrie armor instead of Berserker, for instance, but it is the truth.
2. Pistol traits are, on the whole, underwhelming. You’re right that you can spec into signet use, init regen, etc, and those specializations can be made genuinely useful for a variety of weapons, but the pure pistol traits just aren’t very good.
If you do not think being able to lock down a boss for 15 to 20 seconds every 45 seconds
Not sure how you’re pulling that off, unless you’ve got several thieves popping headshots to instantly remove stun immunity and then hitting a long-duration daze.
You don’t really need to “drop WvW” to farm Ascended. Burn through to fractal 10 and just run that daily for rings, then you can spend the rest of your time on WvW.
wait, how is that bugs or exploits? isn’t that more like you’re using the pillars as a shield, more like a tactic?
That’s exactly what it is. People just like to throw around the word exploit on these forums the same way Bioware made people throw around the world entitled.
The words “tactic” vs. “exploit” are not as cut-and-dry as people like to think. The line is nebulous and has a lot to do with severity and intent. You can see in long-lived MMOs like EQ that, over time, some “exploits” become moulded into tactics by the playerbase and eventually utterly incorporated into legitimate gameplay. Kiting, for instance, was once in that nebulous realm between legitimate tactic and mechanics exploit.
The important thing is for people to not get up-in-arms about someone labeling something an “exploit”. Too many people see it as a statement of “you are cheating and should be punished”, when really they are questioning whether that particular tactic is balanced and should really exist.
As far as crafting? None of them are really profitable.
Barriers to entry for crafting skills are so low that no one is going to pay you much to press buttons. The majority of people that claim to make money crafting are only doing so by farming their own components or buying them undermarket. While this makes you money, crafting really has little to do with it, since you could make almost as much just selling the raw materials.
For instance I “made money” for a while buying Orichalcum at lower-than-TP prices (via mail), making it into hilts and the like, then selling it at over-TP prices (via mail). While I was making money, pretty much none of this was due to me having that crafting skill and pressing a button, it all had to do with margins on buying/selling under/over market.
You can get personal value out of crafting though, cooking in particular is useful for making your own consumables, as is weaponsmithing if you use sharpening stones. And if you ever want a legendary you’ll have to max a couple crafting skills depending on which legendary you’re working on.
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Feline Grace you can dodge 3x before you need to wait for it to regen, thats 3 stacks of bleeding just from dodging!
Uncatchable caltrops stack one bleed per second up to the four second duration, not one bleed period. So triple dodging will give you, for a brief period of time, a triple caltrops field that gives 3 stacks of bleed every second standing in it. If you can land all three fields on your target and cause them to stand in it for the full duration, that is 12 stacks of bleed applied via your dodges, not 3. Given enough condition damage to get 100/tick bleeds (not that much) and enough +duration to push bleeds to 4 seconds, a dodge will give you 1600 damage/target (4 bleed stacks, each doing 100 damage 4 times). Not a huge amount, but nothing to scoff at for the cost of a dodge, not to mention it is AE and those aren’t max numbers.
Full critical strikes + full trickery is not a common choice simply because conditions and crits don’t play well. That said, trickery has some awesome traits that have nothing to do with conditions. If you do want to run a steal-heavy build like this, though, you’ll probably want to pick up Mug from Deadly Arts.
Sword/Anything has no burst capability. There’s simply no other abilities that offer more DPS than spamming auto attack. Any initiative spent is to gain some kind of situational advantage, but not to dump for damage. As a result the sword mainhand plays really nicely with the “conserve initiative, get a damage boost” traits.
I’ve also seen some acrobatics-heavy dagger builds that rely on lots of auto attack and dodging to sustain a ton of might stacks, and passive damage boosts. That is more a play style choice though, since the option to spam heartseeker isn’t gone, just something you choose not to do.
There are actually a couple instances where I swap specifically to P/P, although I wouldn’t recommend running it full-time.
It is excellent for the Dredge fractal boss, providing access to Headshot to easily wear away stun immunity for Scorpion Wire while still allowing some power-based damage to be brought to the table while you’re on the move.
It is also pretty good for the Grawl fractal boss, allowing easy constant mobility, high hit volume for the shield, and Black Powder.
Is P/P’s damage mediocre? Sure, but most people aren’t min/maxing their groups anyways. Someone running P/P isn’t going to cause much more harm than someone running Signet of Shadows instead of a more useful utility, or running MF food instead of combat food. If you’ve got a guild group running level >30 speed-fractals with a min/maxed group, more power to you, if not, there are probably tons of things you could do to be better.
I would submit to you that running P/P so you can be lazy and do less damage at a safe range is exactly the same as people who run +vit/toughness gear instead of full berserker so they can be lazy and miss a dodge. As soon as you jump on people for not going full-offense gear and dodging everything, you can jump on people for using a sub-par weapon set.
So if there are more than one character which stack bleeding, you have suddenly dropped your dmg in half approximately, which sux.
Right, condition damage doesn’t play nice in groups, unfortunately. It also lacks a vulnerability-equivalent. Thieves also lack access to the Burning condition, which is typically a better “burst” condition than bleeds.
A bit of a damage revamp to make conditions more viable, especially in groups, would be welcome.
Burst is not equivalent to instant, burst refers to damage over a predefined short timeframe, usually with the stipulation that the level of damage cannot be sustained beyond that timeframe. Pumping condition damage-heavy bleed stacks without focusing on duration and burning through initiative results in a condition damage burst timeframe of <10 seconds. You sacrifice potential sustainability to pack more damage into a short timeframe, thus, burst.
Condition dmg can be hardly called “burst” for two reasons:
1) the “timeframe” as you call it is too long (burst dmg is somewhat similar to “Spike dmg”, this term was used in GW1).
2) The burst damage also often means unavoidable dmg by any other means that the passive damage mitigation (armor, protection) or complete evade – dodge/block. however conditions can be cleansed, and that with the quite long timeframe for doing its´ dmg make it irrelevant in the terms of burst damage.
1. The timeframe is situational. In PvP you could consider the burst period to be <4 seconds, but in most PvE fights the burst period is whenever the boss is most vulnerable, often increments of upto 30 seconds.
2. Burst has never meant this.
I’m not arguing with your analysis of the strengths of condition damage vs. power-based damage, just the redefining of existing terms to suit them. Burst condition builds and sustained power-based damage builds exist. S/P is an excellent example of the former. having no real way to sacrifice sustained damage for short-term burst. Caltrops/DB/DS spam is an excellent example of the latter, chaining together a bunch of short-term high damage bleeds and cooldowns to deliver burst condition-based damage and then being relatively impotent during a recovery period, shotgunning shortbow works the same way.
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Condition damage is no better than power-based damage at sustained damage, conversely running burst conditions is entirely viable, depending on the timeframe for your burst. The two damage types simply don’t conform that way in GW2.
No, it’s not, but Condition Damage ONLY has sustained damage. There is no such thing as burst condition damage. It takes time for your conditions to tick, and you’re not going to be doing anything near what a burst build can do in the same time. Depending on how many stacks of bleed you can dish out, your condition damage can deal more sustained DPS than burst builds.
Burst is not equivalent to instant, burst refers to damage over a predefined short timeframe, usually with the stipulation that the level of damage cannot be sustained beyond that timeframe. Pumping condition damage-heavy bleed stacks without focusing on duration and burning through initiative results in a condition damage burst timeframe of <10 seconds. You sacrifice potential sustainability to pack more damage into a short timeframe, thus, burst.
I time between the traited quickness boon, the sigil of rage on my sword,
These are random procs, so you can’t do that. Furthermore, Sigil of Rage is pretty bad overall. Also really surprised you took sword mainhand without using Signet of Malice in PvE. Going that deep into Shadow Arts for PvE is also odd, especially since you don’t have organic stealth (no dagger offhand).
If it works for you, great, I guess, but you’d probably get more mileage out of Acrobatics.
Most ridiculous I’ve seen was more than 10 enemies (invaders) camping our home BL JP with seiges. EB JP fine, but borderlands?? Whats the point?
On an unfriendly map the BL JP makes a great fallback point. Fortify it a bit and defend it, then poke out and repeatedly take nearby towers/supply, if you get engaged directly by a zerg as long as 1/2 people can fall back into the puzzle they can always come back and rez the group. Also provides a steady stream of easy kills while you’re between targets.
Does it make more sense? Perhaps.
It’d weaken most Acrobatics builds though, the current functionality creates nice Might synergy and also helps some of the other trait lines. Reduction in non-damaging conditions is not very useful in PvE in particular.
Why? cuz face it they willl kite us to death if they dont die in the first 5sec.. All you need to beat a thief is to dodge and roll for 6 sec intil the int runs out and then you can just take him on easly.. And at that point all thief can do is run..!
Bad thief is bad if he’s burning all his initiative in 6 seconds, especially in a mobility fight. Acting like an NPC (following a preplanned rotation regardless of what your opponent is doing) in PvP isn’t going to produce good results against someone unless they’re also acting like an NPC.
Secondly: Most of the time that you -can- melee you are better off ranged. It is a resource/risk vs reward thing and the reward is not there therefor it most of the time makes no sense being melee.
This is not true for most professions. Melee has innately higher damage, which is the payoff for having to deal with more survivability issues. Most fights where you can viably survive in melee range with a stationary target will benefit melee more.
…If you go based on how Guild Wars (1&2) has always been geared towards Map Completion = PvE…
…PvP players that have the WoW mindset …
Brings in another MMO as an example of how GW2 “should” work … ridicules others for doing the same. Sounds like you’re stuck in a “GW1 mindset”.
The fact is that GW2 doesn’t have exploration and achievement hunting geared 100 % towards PvE. If you want those things you’re expected to deal with PvP situations to get them. That doesn’t mean you have to fight, but you at least have to avoid fighting.
I don’t sacrifice anything to melee and I run a melee weapon for every fractal.
Please do show. And i dont mean it in a sarcastic way.. if there is a way i’d really love to see and practise.
Blurred Frenzy, 2xrolls (3-5 with Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew), Distortion (up to 4 seconds of invuln), rinse and repeat.
Also, F3 will interrupt.
The ability to survive in melee still doesn’t make it a good choice for every fractal. As a thief I can survive in melee in any fractal by chaining dodges, evades, and life-leech, but I still don’t do it for fights like the dredge fractal boss because melee just doesn’t lend itself to that constantly-moving fight, especially since I’m often pulling the boss along with scorpion wire.
There’s some situations where going into melee range even when it isn’t the common choice makes sense if you can mitigate the unfriendly factors and get the higher payoff of the melee damage. If you can hang in melee range on these fights, more power to you.
However, there are some fights where there isn’t any real payoff for it, especially ones where the boss is constantly mobile. Any extra damage you get out of melee is lost due to having to constantly re-acquire range. Furthermore, guardians aren’t one of the better professions for being able to constantly close. In these fights, your group might get unhappy with you, so I’d make sure you have a supportive group before you attempt your “personal challenge” of meleeing the un-meleeable.
Ten shots makes sense, and would boost the damage up a bit, but it would also take longer.
Increasing the channel time to account for the extra hits would just result in Unload staying mediocre DPS, at best it’d become more initiative-efficient, but Unload doesn’t exactly have that issue as-is.
the key to kill it is to keep it super heated all the time or he will regenerate
No, the key is to keep it from regenerating. Keeping it superheated all the time is the easiest way to do this, but several professions can literally do it on their own with interrupts, an entire group should have no problem doing it with interrupts. Your priorities should be surviving → stopping regeneration → superheating → damage, and I’ve seen quite a few groups drag it out by mixing up the second and third, foregoing a guaranteed interrupt in an attempt to superheat.
Given enough time, he’s probably soloable.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
Power/Prec/Condition is honestly one of the worst stat combinations in the game. Power and Precision equate to burst damage, while Condition damage is sustained damage. You also have no defense, which is terrible on any set with Condition damage.
Condition damage is no better than power-based damage at sustained damage, conversely running burst conditions is entirely viable, depending on the timeframe for your burst. The two damage types simply don’t conform that way in GW2.
If you are downed or dead you are not doing Any damage and neither is the guy reviving you (who is now very likely in harms way). Survival > Damage
Sure, but most survival in GW2 is movement-based, not stat-based. The fact is that many more people over-gear towards survival at the cost of offense than over-gear towards MF at the cost of offense/survival. They don’t catch any flak for it, because it is more socially acceptable to be lazy with your movement (choosing to take hits because you can) than it is to be lazy with your income (choosing to spend less time farming because you brought MF).
The “you’re harming the group!” argument only has significant weight for groups that are actually optimizing now, which very few are. Tuning your groupmates’ stat is something you should be looking at only after telling them how to properly build and play their profession anyways, since skill choice is going to have a much larger effect on how well the group tackles things.
tl;dr – Group says “How dare you run pirate runes!” while ignoring the thief using Signet of Shadows.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
The fact that the most significant jumps in rewards are tier-based is one of the main reasons that the fractal progression system doesn’t make a lot of sense. There’s no reason to gate every single level when only every tenth level actually results in a substantial reward increase.
Swiftness + thief stealth can probably get you through most of them without much hassle. Running with stability is another option.
.the difference is ridiculous LOW considering the majority of groups skip mobs.
Which again runs into the issue of what the goal of the group is. If you’re going for optimal fast completion, everyone should be running as much glass cannon as possible for most of the fractals. If you’re looking at getting the most out of the mobs, you won’t be skipping them and you’ll be using some MF.
Depending on the fractals you get, the mobs can easily drop more value than the chests, especially with MF, so they’re worth the time unless dailies/tokens are your primary goal.
You can argue that running MF is selfish, but I fail to see how it is any more selfish than running a bunch of vitality/toughness instead of power/condition damage, especially if you’re just doing the latter so you can be lazy and take hits. You’re slowing down the entire group just because you don’t want to dodge things. But that is a straw man, isn’t it? Because the anti-MF sentiment in groups isn’t really about group optimization to achieve a goal, it is just backlash against people making money.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
How do casuals that are not Lv. 80 fractals. I know that they get upscaled but judging by how much more damage upscaled people take in general in wvw woulnd’t be fractals “a bit” hard?
Not really, the first five fractal levels in particular are substantially weaker than explorable dungeons. As long as said sub-80 people have their elites they should be able to hang pretty easily.