Guild Wars 2

Many people have opened forum posts discussing their dissatisfaction with the lack of support to dungeons. Instead of QQing, I’d like to have this thread be about dungeons that could be opened up instead to spur some discussion (maybe give the devs some ideas as well).

I’d love to hear what dungeons you would like to see in the game and what they’d explore story-wise, or types of fights that would be fun.

Additionally, please include the location in the overworld (HoT or Central Tyria) and level requirements!

I would love to see a dungeon in Tangled Depths that explores the ruins of Rata Novus to discover some more about the Asura that lived their. Maybe it could expand on the relationship they had with the Exalted that was touched on in the Personal Story, possibly through helping an Exalted find items that they need. This could potentially be paired with a new fractal showing the fall of Rata Novus similar to the Fall of Ascalon fractal, only instead of being the attackers we could be defenders that get steadily pushed back.

I would also love to see a dungeon exploring the Exalted and how their powers deal with Mordremoth. Maybe a dungeon based on defending Glint’s egg from Mordremoth’s attempts to steal/destroy it and we can learn some more about the Exalted in the process and their relationship to Glint.

What would you like to see?

In order of preference, including Elite Specializations as separate professions because they are very different from the originals:

1. Herald
2. Chronomancer
3. Revenant
4. Mesmer
5. Warrior
6. Reaper
7. Dragonhunter
8. Guardian
9. Necromancer
10. Elementalist
11. Ranger

Anything not on this list I have not significantly played enough to have an educated opinion

Added: I understand that engineers can provide good regen heals, but I don’t know how to play an engineer well at all so I won’t try to explain anything I don’t understand. I hope this helps!

For support, it’s really about what kind of support. Do you want to go for boons exclusively? Healing exclusively? A mix of both?

For defensive support my preference would be the mixture with a focus on protection uptime, so I will explain my thoughts on that. However, if you want to know about some other ones, just say so!

Elementalists using water/earth have pretty good track records with this, providing frequent boons and healing.

Guardians are not as great for constant protection for those around them, and their heals are decent but there are better options.

Druids are nearly exclusively straight healing so they don’t fit that mold as well.

Revenants, I’m going to split into two discussions because there are two ways to play it:

Herald: fantastic boon support, you can provide nearly all boons with permanent uptime (might, sprint, regen, fury, and protection), but applying direct healing is very limited in its options.

Ventari’s Tablet: direct healing for this is not quite as high as a druid and definitely more technically demanding (not underpowered in terms of support, but much harder to pull of really well). A mobile reflect is very useful, and with the right traits you can provide AoE protection and regen as well as steady and pretty good direct healing

My personal verdict: an elementalist is nice because you really dont have to work to provide that mix support, but if you want to be a mix of boons and actual healing you will have better results with Ventari as long as you know what you are doing.

My thought would be to make it the same as if it were 2 melee attackers. Whoever did the damage that actually brought the health to 0 gets credit.

In this case, the person who used the condition that actually did the killing damage should get credit

@Buy Some Apples

Yeah, some of the forum posts are negative, but there are also a ton of people including myself who feel very positively towards HoT. I have been having a ton of fun and am quite pleased with my purchase and would recommend that others get it.

Keep in mind that people are more likely to speak up when they have something negative. If it’s working and people like it, they don’t say much

Zenarium.8950:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

what about the map event rewards? Those might not be available to non HoT owners.

What type of rewards? Gear and weapons?

Gear, weapons, recipes, materials, raids in specific, different events, different playstyles, etc.

Try looking up Auric weapon skins for example. Anet really upgraded their designing

for all of those? can’t go wrong with greatsword and soldier’s gear. But that’ll only be good.

If you want to be great, you need to have a build and gear for each one that you tailor to your style

Honestly, the best way to do it is to do the Meta events on maps you enjoy playing on, and stop thinking like you want to get it immediately. I’ve gotten 14/23 HoT masteries and 6/13 Tyria masteries so far and I don’t feel the rush to get every single one. The only thing I’ve done to directly farm exp was 2 hours in CoF to get my fractal masteries since I do a lot of them.

@Dahkeus

That’s very similar to my build except I’m using Sword/Sword and Sword/Shield (gotta love all those blocks) and I’ve got vitality stacked as well as toughness. I went into my guild arena and asked people to come beat on me and the only thing I struggled with was dealing with conditions since the only person to reliably kill me was a Berserker Warrior with tons of condi damage.

Other than that, my protection uptime is stellar and I have access to a wide variety of heals. Not as much as Auei’s build but between the constant regen of Glint, infuse light, shield skills, and Jalis, it was decent. Since I’m building for raid tanking and we have a healing druid I think it may be a good midway point?

On another note, when I wasn’t wearing any gear I took approximately 4-6k damage from autoattacks by a zerker Daredevil whaling on me. When I had all my armor on I was taking 1k crits, and when I popped protection and Rite of the Great Dwarf I was getting crit for 300 or less. Currently, my build is:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQRAse8sn3gWNSuQrJRboBlsP0fS4I6QJ4EdrkFalhNmayRNgBWwO6p3G-TxCBwA5U/RryD3aEQrEUpSsFmYut/AgHAQLtA51Fs5EAQKgvmaB-e

Man you people complaining about the difficulty of ENDGAME CONTENT have never played another MMO have you? Or Dark Souls.

Go play that and then whine about a learning curve.

I would recommend doing Dragon Stand. You do have to work a little to get into an active map, but i routinely get 1-1.5 million exp (you do need booster though) and some great loot. It’s also a ton of fun and, while some people disagree I really do think it’s a well-designed map and fight style.

Alternatively, you could always do a verdant brink spider farm but that’s so unengaging I don’t know how people stand it.

If you are looking for Central Tyria masteries, do a CoF farm. It’s easy and mind-numbing lol

savacli.8172:

The difficulty is at just the right level. Casual pugs who google the latest and greatest builds expecting to faceroll everything don’t stand a chance. Though, players who have the aptitude to learn and adapt excel in a fight like this. Even if we get to the point where the community has developed the ideal composition and strategy there’s still the execution check.

Fights like Teq and Wurm were difficult at first because we were used to having to fulfil certain tasks while engaged in combat. Suddenly roles had to be taken and certain coordination was needed to make sure that certain tasks were being met at certain times. We were used to walking up to a boss, let’s say Lupi, and execute very consistent strategies: DPS hard, dodge the grub, dodge the kick, nuke with reflects. Bosses would hide behind invulnerability windows were the map could burn hard and then take a break while fulfilling the events.

Vale Guard takes that concept one step further by requiring the team to fulfil tasks while maintaining damage throughout the whole fight. You also lose the safety of the zerg blob to where we are used to throwing bodies to overcome the difficulty. Now, we have to compensate quantity with quality: 10 solid folks. The unfortunate part about the Vale fight is that one wrong move could potentially wipe the team. Two wrong moves in a row, and it’ll be very difficult to recover. I much prefer this form of “on your toes” mentality vs what we have with Teq, “Oh, I died. Let me waypoint and run back.”

I have nothing to add to this, I just think people should read it again because it is 100% true.

Completely agree. Sure, I didn’t win, but I love a challenge and it makes victory all the sweater. A lot of the people on the forums complaining how they couldn’t faceroll like they do in dungeons and low-level fractals are full of it and need to learn that they should have to work at least a little.

Do I have a few things I’d improve? Yes. Do I think they should increase the enrage timer by 1 minute so that there’s less of an emphasis on zerker (to match their goal with the rest of HoT)? Yes. Is this a really great first attempt at raids by Anet? HELL YES. The mechanics and fights are intriguing and fun, and I’ve really enjoyed it so far even though my guild has yet to beat it. I am looking forward to completing this raid and to future raids very much.

That’s a really interesting build, I would not have considered pairing Glint and Ventari for tanking (I am doing Jalis/Glint for that damage reduction).

If you wanted to be much more tanky, why not change that devastation trait line to Retribution? You’d get free 50% damage reduction and some extra boons for when you are below 50% health

Thanks so much man, no one in the forums has been posting anything but PvP or WvW builds (or complaining about the changes) but it’s nice to have some feedback and advice, I do appreciate it

What if they killed Eir to have her be the next Elite Specialization Legend for Revenants? We could use the longbow

Well it can’t be impossible since people have already cleared it. Last estimates I saw:

Boss has 22 million health, enrage timer is 8 minutes, 10 people in a raid

That means each person needs a minimum average dps of 4583.33 in order to kill the boss at exactly 8 minutes.

That’s easy to achieve by just hitting 1 repeatedly

oops, I put an earlier link in incorrectly xP I am curious about the precision though because there hasn’t been much discussion on the forums (sadly) about berserker builds, is Furious a trait that I’m missing?

As this is mostly for raiding, the group in my guild has several heralds that do stunbreaking for the entire party so I’m less worried about that though it is a very valid point.

for this build I was struggling to pick a good trait line (the one that was supposed to be discipline). What would you recommend for traits?

I think that adding a minute to the enrage timer would go miles towards increasing diversity in raids, because as it stand the builds people have been having success with are basically 1 tank, one druid for heals, and everyone else is either dps or might stacking for dps.

So yes, there is more diversity since before it would have been all zerker, but still need some tweaks

So I’m trying to work out a good tanky build for my Revenant but havent found much good advice since people are still working on their own builds. My main question is to do with gearing, but I would love to see some advice on builds.

I’m currently running soldiers gear with Superior Runes of the Earth to increase my protection uptime.

What do you do for a build like this and how is it working out for you?

DS has consistently gotten me 1.5-2 million exp each time I’ve gotten on a successful map. For ~2 hours, that’s pretty good and you get great loot.

Do the personal story for HoT. For compelting the last one you get a box of leystone gear that you get to choose from any piece

Hi everyone, I have been looking on the forums for decent pve Berserker builds and thought I’d open mine up to feedback/criticism.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAsfTnckC9kitkC+dAcigFoA7IBGASZK4t1Wb3tA-T1TAABKcACAV9gY2fI6HBgzKhC4MAItWEAOACDcABGUXAqq4wnGiJVCOmyHCOQABAQASmBfjM7m38m38m3sUALKNC-w

Basically, the goal is to increase Adrenaline building to gain access to Berserk Mode as frequently as possible while increasing burning uptime through condition duration.

Please let me know your thoughts!

I don’t think the drop rate has been increased, I think it’s almost exclusively because people are doing the HoT meta events that drop crap tons of loot and champ bags.

You should have ascended rings, trinkets, and amulet at least (they are easy enough to get) and preferably an ascended weapon, but ascended armor doesnt give that much of a stat boost so it is not the most necessary.

EDIT: Raids are about skill and build rather than gear. You need to be able to actually play. The best gear is nice, but its not going to make it so you can’t succeed

Actually, the Assault Knights would be a great addition to fractals rather than raids because raids are supposed to move the story forward and fractals take place in the past, though I understand the challenge of changing Marionnette to 5 players rather than a raid group. Some of S1 was already added to fractals but I think we could do with some more

Lucius.2140:

UnbentMars.9126:

bloodletting wolf.2837:

ZachAttack.3957:

FogLeg.9354:

Were raids success?

Depends what you might call a success. Most players at least tried it. Most players also failed at first boss. As the wipes continue, I expect most people lose interest and return to whatever they were doing before raid release. I suppose the really dedicated players will spend long time in raid(s) and eventually master all of them but it will be very small group of overall players. Most people will quickly get bored and ignore it.

Should Anet throw so much time and money on developing something only few players enjoy? Not really. Should they instead improve for example wvw, played by many more people and ignored for so long? Yes.

But can you really say they’ve ignored wvw? I mean you guys just got a whole new borderland. Even if you don’t like it, you can’t really say you’ve been ignored.

Actually the new borderland proves that the WvW community has been ignored.

How so? You gonna support your claim, or just make it?

Difficult to move, bad places for apropiate big groups fights, cant use much rotating strategies because its difficult to move.

Its more like a roamers set of maps that give exceltn palces to fight enemies, without them retreatring also., witch isnt bad.

Problem its that they eliminated the old borderlands and it seems theres less roamers than big groups.

Thank you, it’s nice to see actual explanations lol. I have not experienced the new BL maps much, but they seem at the same time far too spacious and far too crowded. If Anet’s goal was to incentivize actually staying on plots of land instead of the rotating karma trains of olde, they succeeded but only by making it difficult to actually move around.

In terms of eliminating the old borderlands, I’m sure we all remember how empty they got after EotM was released. More maps does not equal better play quality. I think getting rid of the old maps was the right choice (assuming of course they needed to make the new ones) though I wish they’d gone more along the lines of shrinking the old ones rather than simply rehauling them. That or increased mobility significantly

bloodletting wolf.2837:

ZachAttack.3957:

FogLeg.9354:

Were raids success?

Depends what you might call a success. Most players at least tried it. Most players also failed at first boss. As the wipes continue, I expect most people lose interest and return to whatever they were doing before raid release. I suppose the really dedicated players will spend long time in raid(s) and eventually master all of them but it will be very small group of overall players. Most people will quickly get bored and ignore it.

Should Anet throw so much time and money on developing something only few players enjoy? Not really. Should they instead improve for example wvw, played by many more people and ignored for so long? Yes.

But can you really say they’ve ignored wvw? I mean you guys just got a whole new borderland. Even if you don’t like it, you can’t really say you’ve been ignored.

Actually the new borderland proves that the WvW community has been ignored.

How so? You gonna support your claim, or just make it?

I actually completely agree with this, as long as the raid loot is removed for it. The raid loot should only be in raids and the fractal loot should stay in fractals.

For a condi build, try a Berserker Warrior. Their burn damage is insane. Alternatively, you can’t go wrong with a good old fashioned condi necro, some of the best DoT spread and uptimes in the game.

Mesmers only condition is really confusion, and their uptime is so low its basically impossible to function as well as anything else.

Very few people are trying condi builds on Revenant using Mallyx, but it has some good Torment potential. That said, I don’t know how well it stacks up to other condition based professions, but you could always try it out.

5-10 gold per hour is what people would make in dungeons, and more than what most players will make in a week.

If you want more than that, find a way to make it work. I’ve made 600 gold (not including the 900 I made from selling a precursor drop) so far while playing no more than 2 hours a day since launch. Like someone said previously in this thread (or if they didn’t, they should’ve), find a way to deal with it instead of complaining about the perceived lack of instant gratification.

It’s only the first day, and from the looks of the forums the groups going full zerker are not having much luck (they are trying to kill it quickly enough that the mechanics won’t kill them, but it isn’t working). Give it a few days while people figure stuff out, or join a guild where that doesn’t happen

EDIT: It’s not Anet’s fault that people in the community aren’t nice.

Raids are instanced content, Frozen Maw is a world boss. Raids are limited to 10 people while world content is only limited by the # of people in a map Hope this helps!

Nice. Thank you Anet, for taking this issue seriously. The rest of us appreciate it

GW2 players, by and large, have a problem with instant gratification. For example, the forums were chock full of people complaining HoT mobs were too hard for the first week or two after release, but they learned how to deal with them and changed their builds to be better about it. Raids will follow the same curve. Everyone will be complaining about how they are too hard, but after no more than a week or two many people will have cleared the first wing, maybe multiple times.

The best thing I can think of? Ignore them, they’ll get over it. Engaging, challenging content has finally been added to GW2 and I’m really glad that’s the case.

100% agree. Sometimes the only wall is your own skill level.

Since the Living Story continues after the events of the Personal Story in HoT, HoT is required to experience it.

I don’t know what you are doing, but since the changes to map chat and whispers I have yet to receive a PM or in-game mail from a gold seller. I also have yet to see anyone selling gold in map chat

@Sparc
…have you even read any part of the raid notes over the past month?

1st: Raids are 4g PER BOSS and there will be multiple wings so there you go (1st wing will give you 12 gold and a ton of mastery EXP).

2nd: you arent supposed to be spending all your time in raids just like you werent supposed to just be doing dungeons. instead of whining about rewards try farming in Verdant Brink or Dragon Stand.

3rd: Raids primary function is to provide gear and loot, not gold. Get over it.

4th: Jesus Christ, GET OVER IT. Find somewhere new to farm since you apparently have so much time to waste. There are more good places to get lots of gold in the game than pretty much ever before, and if the “woe is me, dungeons drop half as much gold” crowd spent as much time finding those and utilizing them then they would have made tons more gold by now than they ever did before.

Seriously, everyone is tired of the incessant complaint.

mexay.3902:

UnbentMars.9126:

Did you activate the challenge mote?

No

If you want the boss to do more damage, I suggest trying that. It is right next to Trahearne before you enter the Dragon’s mind

I think having b2 of each of PS warriors and Heralds is a little overkill since both can stack might very effectively, so I might recommend switching one PS out for someone who can better utilize the support they will receive, like a Shiro-zerker Revenant who can lay on the damage. That said, PS can stack more than a herald can unless the herald is completely decked out in boon duration gear so that’s more about what you want than anything else (though heralds can provide fury better than any warrior). I think exchanging an Ele or an Engineer for a Reaper would be good. That vulnerability stack will improve everyone elses life and you’ve already got a fair amount of condition damage.

EDIT: Condition engineers are also hard to play right, so you might have better luck switching one out for a Berserker Warrior for tons of Burns and crit.

Did you activate the challenge mote?

I would hoard them for a different reason: In december, Anet is bringing ascended drops back to those chests, so I would recommend holding onto them until that point

Don’t do SW, do Verdant Brink. I’ve made some 400 gold from selling mats I gather and salvage from events

Get the Karmic Converter from fractal achievements. You can spend karma every day to get decent items

Texas.9547:

Yeh, I caught that unbentMars. Heres the highlights (should probably start a new thread for this)

- Toughness scaling: Good stuff, all builds being viable is good, less time to kill bosses, good

- Money increase: Sounds good, the money was low. Not awful low so it shouldnt take to much of an increase to put it in a good spot.

- Ascended drop increase: This sounds good on paper. Problem is we dont know how much of an increase. From community response, and the fact that were getting raids leads me to believe we wont be seeing the 10% chance we had before which leaves me with a bad feeling and since this was the most important part to me, sours the whole thing for me. I have a bad feeling of forboding. Anyway, Im sure others feel different. Also where they say the emphasis on ascended armor at higher levels should not be read as your chance to get a drop increases at higher levels; but instead should be read as, your chance to get ascended remains at 5% but your chance for the drop you got to be an armor drop is higher.

Things not addressed are: Same old crappy boss mechanics. No work is being done to update old fractals. Repetitive instabilities and bad instabilities; nothing is being done as yet about these. Broken collections, I assume these will be fixed but since no mention of them in the blog post I could get my self in trouble with those assumptions. And worst of all, no addition of a daily 75 to 100 fractal; holy crap how did they miss that.

Sorry this kinda devolved into a pessimistic out look for the update, but they make it so hard to be an optimist.

At least they are working on it and not ceasing all activity like they did with dungeons :P hopefully they will continue to fine tine it and maybe work on some new content for it in between raids

Monk Tank.5897:

And i thought this was unacceptable..
New Legendary Boltfang

best legendary ever

Muusic.2967:

UnbentMars.9126:

By the end of the night you’ll have gotten a crap ton of loot and a guaranteed exotic armor piece, but you have to succeed.

And before anyone says it, succeeding at the meta events is not hard, just try to ensure that you are organized. Be smart about it.

You mean run stick figure graphics so you don’t crash and hope that someone else kills the other bosses in VB while you kill yours for a chance at a gold chest after spending 90 minutes killing mobs that don’t give xp or loot?

Maybe you’ll fill your inventory after 4 or 5 runs unless you found a spot I haven’t found yet. If you’re “smart” about it you’ll avoid Metas and farm mobs that actually give rewards.

If that’s what it takes, but are you running GW2 on a typewriter or something? I play on a 5 year old laptop and have graphics set nearly to the highest. I don’t know what mobs you are referring to, because the only mobs I’ve run into give plenty of experience and loot, so maybe you are just not actually tagging them. I fill my inventory 2 or 3 times per night cycle on Verdant Brink while actively depositing all materials into my bank and salvaging in between events. You must be doing it wrong.

And yes, I mean that it’s pretty easy to find a map with people who are doing the right things considering I’ve been a part of maximized maps several times. It takes 2 minutes of effort (if not less) in looking through the lfg…if that can be called effort.

If you are “helpful”, you would say what and where those mobs are rather than kittenting on the strategies that obviously work for other people. I mentioned a strategy that has worked for me as i have been “smart” about it.

Go to Silverwastes and start the HoT story, it’ll tell you where to go and guide you hope that helps!

To start the story: go to your character page and go to the area that keeps track of your personal story and whatnot, then choose “Play this Story” for the “Prologue: Rally to Maguuma” Heart of Thorns. That’s the first story instance.