Showing Posts For Vargamonth.2047:

Sad About Liadri

in Queen's Jubilee

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

IMHO there are 3/4 major flaws on this fight:

- The camera. It’s awful and I’m pretty sure that everybody agrees on this.
- The floor textures, which make unnecessarily harder to spot red circles.
- The FPS loss (really annoying if you have a kittenty PC and already run with lower settings for everything) caused for sharing the area with some zerg events.
- The pulling orbs, not because the orbs themselves, but cause the already stated camera issue. There are sound clues afaik, but if we could cover better the area with the camera, they would be much more manageable.

I do not think 1HKO attacks are bad at all.
Yes, they kill both zeker and tanky builds, but there’s also a regular damage source form the boss attacks.
If people running full mitigation specs think that this damage is negligible, congrats to them, their build is doing exactly what it was designed for and now they can just focus on 1HKO sources.

Having done this with on a character with less than 2k armor, I have experienced how my health goes from 18k to about 2-3k in about 2-3 sec after being charged. On phase 1 I had to use all my healing skills on recharge even if I was sidestepping some projectiles; I even had to respec my traits in order to take “Backpack Regenerator”.
For the 8 orbs achievement, however, I have used my guardian specced for about 3k armor and plenty of protection sources and I have been able not only to endure Liadri’s charges much more easily but also to whirling wrath on her face in the meantime. I pretty much doubt I could have completed this achievement on my engineer without an almost full regear.

Getting rid of 1HKO abilities is more an issue than a solution.
One of the beautys (the main one IMHO) of GW2 combat system is that’s reactive. People should spot enemy attacks and react to them, trying to use the most powerful mitigations (like evades) against the most dangerous ones (like oneshots).
That being said, letting people to solve fights just relying on defensive passive stats would be a great mistake.
I’m not going to deny that Liadri may have too many one shot sources, up to a point where you may need to use a lot of defensive tools for them (even if in theory the fight could be won without needing to evade a single AoE).

The issue with zeker burst builds (usually warriors) finishing fights in few seconds is a completely different kind of monster.
They finish the fights so fast that they can avoid most of the damage covered by long CDs or just never experience stamina starvation, trivializing fights that otherwise could have been a real pain in the kitten . In order to “solve” this problem (we can’t forget that the main purpose of a burst is to finish the fight fast enough to avoid attrition issues) this fights just need to be a bit longer, enough for requiring a second burst and force players to experience a bit of pressure and test skill beyond an initial combo.
This can be achieved by many ways, like the so popular HP increase :P

Removing 1HKO wouldn’t make fights more challenging for burst builds, since they would still melt the enemy in seconds.; it just would make them easier for sustained ones, which may be fair on comparision, but is a step on the wrong direction.
Combats need to be balanced around so called balanced builds (knight gear, mix of soldier/cleric with zerker, balanced trait allocation, …) that must experience one shot moves (that need to be avoided) and pressure (regular damage, conditions, …).
The benefit of a defensive build is on sustaining the pressure much more easily so they can focus on 1HKO attacks. The counterpart is that the fight will be longer, so the amount of oneshots moves will be higher and there’s a higher risk on failing by chance.
The benefit of an offensive build is just the opposite: the fight will be shorter, but the pressure a lot higher, so the player should show great finesse in order to avoid almost everything (or just everything) for its duration.

Nerfed Subject 7 drops...

in Queen's Jubilee

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Deadeye will go next, since it’s actually absurdly easy and fast to farm (at least for certain classes, like my guardian)

Honestly, this farming system deserved a nerf, not only because the insane amount of gold income, but also because encourages the classic “MY farming spot” behaviour (with people not ressing each other and so on) ANet wanted to get rid of.

This nerf, however, is an overnerf.
First, the system was already autobalanced. As more people had realized how big this farm was, queues on cages would have increased and any income would have been diminished.
If an even greater nerf were needed, granting 4s/bag while making gambits free would have been a much better solution (it actually reduces the natural income by half).
Making the system to barely cover the ticket cost seems really unfair to me.
I feel myself almost insulted when the first solo content developed rewards me way less than the mindless zerg that is farming below. I agree with my enemies not being challenging enough to deserve such a high reward but, c’mon, these people just need a tanky spec and tag as much mobs as possible with an AoE weapon while trying to avoid some red circle.

No refunds for Gambits = Wasted Tickets?

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

If you slay some T3 enemy 5 times, you’ll be rewarded with about 50 silver and 25 sprockets. Since 5 tickets cost 20 silver and 15 sprockets, you’ll get a net gain of 30 silver an 10 sprockets.
Assuming a great build wich kill fast and do not use long CD skills (aiming at about 4 min mark for 5 kills), 100% success rate and a free cage all the time, we get a 4,5g (and 150 sprockets)/hour at best result, which is far from impressive.

This gain can greatly increase however if gambits are used.
If the previous fights were done with 3 gambits on, we would be talking about something like 18g/hour, which sounds pretty insane.
There’s an inherent time sink on activating the gambits one by one, so the net gain may be a bit smaller. You also have a harder fight, maybe requiring a high CD like an elite (that would absolutely ruin the numbers) and maybe decreasing your succes rate from 100% (every failed attempt is going to be severeley punished since we were using a free cage).

All this mean that the current gambit system can be potentially used for a really good revenue, but also that it would consist on an obvious grind and that requires a free cage (something that can’t be controlled by the player) in order to work.
Without this, if you can only have fight every 2 minutes or so, you’ll need a near 100% success rate with 4-5 gambits active all the time in order to achieve really good farming numbers.
100% success rate with 3 gambits on outputs a good reward, probably on par with good AC or Arah runs, but’s still grindy as hell.

IMHO the biggest issue with this is not the reward but the fact that gauntlet tickets can just be bought, so in the end we get nothing but a gold/time ratio based on success rate, amount of gambits and fights/time.
If non-buyable tickets were recovered on success and discarded on failure, then a much more interesting reward system, with exclusive skins and so on, could be possible.

Post Patch Dungeon Gold Rewards - Complete

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

How the hell does that work? SEp2 takes at least twice as long as its neighbours, I’m not even going to compare the self-explanatory difference between CoFp1 and p3….

Was hoping these less played paths would actually become worth doing, which I suppose it is if you have absolutely nothing else to do that day. But good luck finding a group.

And that kitten token neutering, all I can do is pray that some of the American players haven’t done their set by the time I log on, and that there’s enough Oceanics online….

Before running all three paths of CoF today, I was expecting something like 1-1-2. An even higher reward for path 3 would have not impressed me at all, not because it deserves it (which I don’t think so since it’s not that hard or long) but just in order to promote a really underused content.
The 1g reward for SE path 2 (the one that no Dungeon Master wants to run again, ever) it’s like a bad joke.

The paths that are going to get some love after this patch are the ones that weren’t in a bad spot right before it. The forgotten ones, those avoided for almost all the playerbase, seem condemned to remain the same.

The only good news are the 1.5g for AC, a dungeon that isn’t longer/harder than many other with smaller rewards but which was revamped some time ago. It brings me some hope on most dungeons receiving deep changes sooner or later.

Post Patch Dungeon Gold Rewards - Complete

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I’ll convince some LoD’ers to do SEp2 and CoFp3 for the sake of science. I reckon 2g.

You’re wrong, CoF Path 3 is also 1g :S

Why only 2 minutes to kill the bosses?

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

The main reason for full offensive builds to be used is faster content completion and, therefore, a higher reward/time ratio.
It’s also a great “defensive tool” for many encounters, especially those with multiple foes, allowing the group to dish out enemies while protected by things like blind or aegis that wouldn’t last a longer fight.

With the content we are talking about, none of this advantages exist anymore.
The first one can’t exists at all because the queue time seem to be way longer than the fight time.
The second one is lost unless the fight is really short (10-15 sec) or adds are introduced.

Without time limit, a high-sustain build would be clearly the best approach. If most attacks were 1HKO, however, full offense could be the way to go.
Time limit seems to me the best way to solve this best-approach issue and allow balanced builds (which are available to everyone just by traiting) not only to succeed but even to be the best option.

Queen's gauntlet

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

AFAIK dodge rolling is the only reliable full mitigation on necromancer arsenal. If the gauntlet is still beatable on a necromancer, does it mean that it’s doable just by kiting, or even worse, by face tanking with a good self-sustained build?

Death Shroud?

Death Shroud isn’t exactly full mitigation, it’s more like a second HP pool. It can cover the lack of block/evades up to some degree, but when it becomes the only mitigation tool, you need enemies to not exceed a given damage output threshold and you may open the door to facetanking builds.
A mix of chill-kiting and DS being required could keep the fight interesting, but this no-dodge thing still worries and souns really bad to me.

Queen's gauntlet

in Queen's Jubilee

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Yes, in Fractals you can change a number to increase the difficulty of the Fractals. Gambits are completely different, however, in that you activate a specific condition. For example, completing the challenge without being able to dodge.

It may be premature to say this before actually checking the event, but a content that can be beaten by ant profession without dodge rolling doesn’t sound challenging at all.

AFAIK dodge rolling is the only reliable full mitigation on necromancer arsenal. If the gauntlet is still beatable on a necromancer, does it mean that it’s doable just by kiting, or even worse, by face tanking with a good self-sustained build?

Why does f1's CD get reset on interrupt

in Warrior

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

i heard guardian’s healing block skill get resets 30 seconds if it got interrupted.

now sure how that happens though.
its a healing + blocking while healing.

Mostly cause unblockable skills. An unblockable necro fear mark or a warrior cc with signet of might active can interrupt it, and since it’s a channeled skill, it goes on full cooldown without healing (which takes place at the end of the channel).

Dungeons not for casual fun?

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

People that is having issues with dungeons (not on the first try, that issues are expected for a large amount of players) should probably try a more defensive gear/trait setup until they feel confortable enough to give up some survivality and start increasing their damage output.

Here’s another problem. Conflicting information. The first suggestion someone sees when trying to find information about dungeon gear online is to go full zerker. We have a situation in GW2 where taking advice from hardcores – the main transmitters of knowledge – actually hurts your chances of success.

Full zerkers is probably the best choice when you are good/experienced enough to survive with it. It can also be better, survivality wise, than a more defensive approach on many encounters if all your party happens to be damage focused.
From my point of view however, a casual player is not usually going to have a regular dungeon group. He is going mainly to PUG, adn if he is the only one on full damage gear, the killing speed boost is not going to cover by itself the survivality he leaves behind.

Dungeons not for casual fun?

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I’m not so sure about stacking being unintended.
The boss still hits at melee. If this tactic were unintended, then the AoE would be much harder to avoid while fighting in a place were you are already taking extra damage. Add shadowstep and some nasty fire circles to the fight, and you get a really melee unfriendly boss.

About dungeons not being casual friendly, I think most dungeons are easy enough for anyone that understand the game basics and is properly geared to succeed.
People that is having issues with dungeons (not on the first try, that issues are expected for a large amount of players) should probably try a more defensive gear/trait setup until they feel confortable enough to give up some survivality and start increasing their damage output.

Doing a dungeon the "right" way.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

It’s just bad design for most dungeons.

AC, for example, has a fairly good design and most runs should remind that “right” way.
You still can skip a lot of things, but they have much more reasonable HP pools and many of them (Troll, Kholer, most graveling packs including a champion) had guaranteed loot. If you think on the things that don’t offer anything at all, you have the first mound (which I think is there just to introduce players what a graveling mound is), the first graveling pack (on a path which is filled with traps, so it’s a much trickier skip than usual), and maybe a couple of veteran groups (oozes, spiders, gravelings without champion) per path.
You have mostly mandatory bosses/events and optional encounters with guaranteed reward. The amount of pure trash is actually really small.
People will still skip as much as possible because, having that aberration known as COF1, they are probably going to be only interested in tokens, but this is a completely different story.

On Arah, on the other hand, maybe 90% (or even more) of the dungeon is pure trash. All the dungeon is filled with silvers with huge HP pools, even a good amount of champions, with no loot at all. Cleansing everything take ages and is just an annoying huge waste of time.

Glitches on bosses, like safe spots, are much more annoying than skipping to me.
I stopped doing CM with all the mountain climbing, I stopped doing TA with the safe spots on wurm and final boss, I stopped doing Arah P3 with the safe spots on the first two bosses … I pretty much stopped running dungeons with PUGs because of how many encounters were glitched/exploited.
For someone that runs dungeons just for fun, dungeons consisting on a sequence of skips and exploits is extremely depressing and I’m really worried on how long is taking to shutdown those things.

lolwat. funneling enemies into a tight space is not strategy? HAHAHAHAHAHA
that’s one of the most basic strategies of all time. Watched 300 lately? oh, i guess you want to stand in front and spank and tank? next you recommend not dodging? do you only play mmos or something?

Funneling enemies into a narrow space is indeed strategy, but a defensive one.
On a dungeon we are the attackers, we are the ones who want to cross the Thermopylae pass. The foes that guard a room we want to cross don’t have any reason to do us a favor and give up their terrain advantage.
I can accept LoS as strategy against gravelings or briar dogs, but it has no sense against any intelligent enemy.
LoS is closer to an AI exploit than a real strategy. However, it was already used in GW1 and since doesn’t seem that ANet had put much effort on avoiding it, I guess it’s intended.
I honestly think that getting rid of LoS tactics we could get much more interesting combats, but that’s just my opinion.

Bleeding does too much dmg

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

correctly timing it on a multi-hit attack, dishing A LOT of damage

Confusion procs per ability activation, not per hit. A multi-hit attack will trigger Confusion once only.

True. My bad.
A friend told me once he got demolished by confusion using 100B and I took it as true. I have been stupidly avoiding things like Whirlng Wrath and Zealot Defense while confused for months :P

It’s not something like a bleed that you randomly throw in order to deal damage. It’s something that, used at the right time, is far more powerful than a bleed (and absolutely devastating with the old numbers).

So you’re saying Confusion requires more “skill” to use.

I think it requires better awareness.
Bleed is just a damage source. You want to take a few things on consideration, like covering big stacks or unleash them at full power after condition removal is used; not much different than trying to ensure a direct damage burst.
Confusion is more like a soft-disabling tool. If all the damage can be avoided just by doing nothing, you should try to use it when your enemy is less meant to do nothing, In this case, it can hit like a good amount of bleeds.

I think that they nerf it the wrong way. Having confusion hitting harder but in lorger CDs would be more useful and “skillful” than how it’s now.
The nerf was, however, needed; previous values, with high damage and low CDs / great upkeeps, were just insane.

Bleeding does too much dmg

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

This thread is great:

Even though bleeds last longer, have less counters and do more dmg it is ok because I can die while still attacking! Confusion made me stop attacking for 6 seconds to live and that is OP, I would much rather die from bleeding!

lol, but alas, that is how Anet balances things so it is what it is I guess.

It doesn’t really matter if an attack does 2k direct damage or a 20 second bleed that ticks for 100 damage. It has different counters but in the end it’s just damage.

Confusion is something completely different.
It has “short” duration yes, but no way does less damage than bleeding. Pre-nerf it was ticking for 3 times the bleed damage and usually came in 3-8 stacks on a single attack (which equal to 9-24 bleeding stacks ticking on you, numbers that usually must be slowly built on a bleeding spec).
You can avoid the damage by doing nothing, that’s true, but I think you fail to realize how confusion is meant to be played and how powerful it was. It can be used defensively (in order to buy time for some skill to recharge), It can be used offensively, (correctly timing it on a multi-hit attack, dishing A LOT of damage), and it can be used for control (With 5 stacks of pre-nerf confusion, dealing about 1500 damage on skill use, there’s really no way I can fight back your glass cannon thief mate).
It’s not something like a bleed that you randomly throw in order to deal damage. It’s something that, used at the right time, is far more powerful than a bleed (and absolutely devastating with the old numbers).

Bleeding does too much dmg

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

It wasn’t just the damage; on WvW you also have food (+40% condition duration) and ascended gear (condtion damage / vitality / thoughness) at your disposal.

There also is -40% condition duration food and confusion is capped at 10s, so that’s a maximum of 6s and for most skills confusion duration is pretty much laughable. Only problem: people don’t want to use that food because it takes away from their dps.

Yes and No.
I agree with most people chosing damage over survivality, but a -40% condition duration is situtational.
It can do wonders if you face a condition enemy, but it can also be absolutely useless against a direct damage one. A +40% condition duration is always a good pick for a condition build, no matter what you face.

Bleeding does too much dmg

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

IMHO the confusion nerf in WvW was absolutely needed.

It wasn’t just the damage; on WvW you also have food (+40% condition duration) and ascended gear (condtion damage / vitality / thoughness) at your disposal.
This things all together were allowing to create absolutely annoying shutdown builds.

Let’s take for example Pry Bar. It caused 5 stacks of confusion that could esily last for 7-8 seconds (on a skill with 15/12 sec of CD), hitting for about 1500 damage on skill use.
With tanky gear this is not punishment, it’s shutdown. An over 50% upkeep time shutdown on just one skill, while your bleeds, poisons and burns eat the enemy alive.

With mesmers everything is different.
They have more confusion sources and they are far more survivable when it wears off, so good luck trying to beat one of them.
On the other hand, they do not apply other conditions as strongly as enginner does and they aren’t the best chaser around, so escaping is always an option … if they are alone.
Almost unbeatable but easy to flee on a 1vs1 basis doesn’t sound OP to me. Extremely annoying indeed, but not OP. On small teamfights however …

Questions for players that hate grinding.

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

If you are aiming for something like a legendary, right now it’s all about gold.
It doesn’t really matter if you need X totems, Y lodestones or Z gossamer scraps. The most efficient way to get almost anything is through gold.

If you want armored scales, for example, you can go to Frostgorge and farm barracudas.
If people should have to do specifically this in order to get those scales, then we could expect the market price of scales to be in consonancy with gold farming time wise. However, a lot of armored scales are also delivered through RNG drop to players that are not actively aiming for them (from a krait in underwater fractal or WvW, for example). Many of these scales are supplied to the AH and this supply is actually high enough to cover the demand and keep the market price below the needed value to make active farming efficient.
With lower supply, market price could skyrocket to a point were scale farming could be more profitable than, lets say, CoF1, resulting on a migration from CoF to Frostgorge. However, the supply would be then a lot higher than the demand and market prices should decrease.
In the end, thanks to AH taxes, we should get a picture were scale farming is more profitable than farming gold to buy scales, but gold farming more porfitable than farming scales just for selling, which is ideal.

Right now RNG supply is so high that there’s no material which is really profitable to farm for. There are also a lot of them, like lodestones, for which there’s not even a reliable way of farming.

IMHO, designers should set the most profitable ways of gold farming, which right now is (speculation aside) probably just CoF1. Different ways should be boosted/nerfed in order to get a nice amount of top choices with pretty similar profits.
Then, RNG drop of materials should be progresively lowered up to a point where their active farming reach also that point of profit.

This way, a player working on lets say a legendary would have tons of viable choices.
The task would still be time-consuming (in fact, since market price of materials has been increased, it would be even more time consuming without some adjustment on the amounts of needed materials), but far more variated.

Killing blow - My thoughts on Leaderboards.

in PvP

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I think it’s both a population and a design issue.
Right now the population is heavily splitted between hotjoins (which don’t have too much in common with the intended game-mode) and tourneys (which have too many veterans and premades). The transition from hotjoins to tourneys is brutal both in tactics and avergae player skill.

If you have one game mode, you should just put everybody in the same queue. The higher the number of players, the fairier the matchups you would get.

If the palyerbase is still small for splitting solo and team-queues, then split ratings.
Make every new premade (duo, trio, full premade, it doesn’t matter) to be registered and asign a fresh team rating to it. Whenever this premade plays a game, it will be matched in base to the highest between individual rating and team rating, and whatever the score of the match is, only team rating would be modified.
This system should eventually bring team ratings above individual ones, so if a bunch a solo players is matched agains a full premade, then the first ones will be superior enough individually to produce a somehow fair match.

Make the highest between individual and team scores to be displayed on leaderboards. Since the defining rating would probably be the team one, players that belong to a team won´t be afraid of playing solo, which contributes to a bettter population.
You could even make individual rating to be class dependant in order to not discourage experimentation and ensure fairier matches.

Later on it would be possible to get real torunaments (the actual torunaments seem no more than a regular gameplay to me, with hotjoin being some kind of aberration where every player in the match is looking for something different).
This tourneys could consist on the same two teams fighting on 3 different maps and could include things like class turn-picking, etc.
They could only accept full premades with team rating above XXX score and could take place at exact hours (or half-hours) so every interested team would fill the same queue.

AC Ex 35 Run Video and Impressions

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I was referring specifically about the burrows. If you use ice bow anywhere else your generally just hindering yourself. I skimmed through the video real quick. And you’ll notice she unslots mist form for the bow during the burrows. If you go to the 35th minute of the video watch as the ele solos the corner burrow in ~3 seconds thanks to the ice bow. The guardian simulataniously goes into the downed state and they fail because of it. The part of AC is nothing but a DPS race. Kill before u get overwhelmed and every second you waste killing a burrow is one more mob the guardian has to tank, or 1 more mob that will randomly aggro on hodgins. The ice bow makes this incredibly easy as its “4” 1 shots the burrows no matter what level u are.

I think it feels like a DPS check just because people keep trying a 4-1 split.
A 3-2 split (or safety 2-2-1), focusing on 2 burrows at once, should aggro every graveling and keep Hodgins safe. You just need a bit of coordination in order to destroy burrows as close in time as possible.
Before the changes, the 4-1 split was easier to perform because hatchlings died with a couple of hits. It’s not probably the best approach right now unless you are really confident on the “tank”.

Dungeon re-works VS new content

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I think that most dungeons need a serious rework before anything new is released.

AC is probably the only dungeon in good shape right now. Moderate HP pools, interesting events and bosses, some guaranteed silver drops here and there, …
Path 3 is probably a bit lackluster, since both events are about destroying burrows and Grast´s behaviour is pretty incosistent (from what I’ve read), but path 1 and 2 are close to perfection. I would love however to see the troll receiving some changes.

COF 1 needs some kind of change ASAP and HoTW needs a deep and serious rework more than any other dungeon, probably followed by SE and Arah.

SE Path 1 is even in worst shape than HoTW. The first event is OK, but after that is about killing a champion that seems to do many things but is far from dangerous, running forward, using LOS with golems in order to split them, and luring a final boss wich is somewhat like a subject alpha with an insane HP pool.
Path 2 is extremely long and boring, filled with annoying champions with high HP pools.
Path 3 is on par with most other dungeons (OK, but most events/bosses should get a rework).

Arah can be almost reduced to Lupicus (which is the best bossfight in the game btw).
The usual path 3 PUG run consists on: fight 4 risen veterans (just because the gate is closed), exploit boss 1, skip, exploit boss 2, run orbs, carefully avoid every single enemy but the 2 berserkers on the door before lupicus, fight lupicus, skip, fight final boss (which is a joke).
There’s no reason for placing so much enemies if they are going to be avoided. Trash number should be seriously decreased and replaced by events and/or small packs including a champion with some kind of loot (like in AC). Terrain exploits should be obviously fixed.

Once every dungeon is fine (free of exploits and “cheesing tactics”, free of most of the useless trash that is going be to be skipped and tank&spank champions , and with similar reward/time ratios), then it would be possible to work on difficulty levels, which is something that a lot of people is asking for.

AC Cave troll projectiles

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

AC Troll still needs line of sight in order to throw the lightning orbs. I managed to solo it with a lvl30 engineer just running around a column while using grenades and bombs,

I’ve never been a big fan of LOS tactics however. It’s extremely useful for bunching up mobs and I guess it’s intended (it was used all day long on GW1 too), but many times feels like exploiting a limited AI and makes trivial fights that otherwise could have been interesting (I also accept that I belong to a really small minority that usually finds more fun fighting trash than bosses).
I really think that LOS shouldn’t be the indended tactic for anything, and I agree on this boss needing sme kind of change.

Does profession priority exist?

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Warriors are very useful everywhere, one guardian is very useful almost everywhere and one mesmer is useful almost everywhere. Situational Eles are very useful. Thieves are nice too but don’t bring much to the party in fights. Rangers, Engineers and Necros just suck. I’d rather go with an open spot than taking a ranger, anytime, everywhere.

So basically any profession that does damage in a more sustained or over time manner is useless in the meta’s opinion. Seems there needs to be some adjustment to either content or the profession if that is the case.

When both sustained and bursty DPS have the same average output, bursty is always going to be better because fights are not infinite.
My grenade engineer can inflict 3 stacks of 15 sec bleed with a 4/5 second CD skill that also has a fairly good attack speed, inflicts some vulnerability and easily deals about 2k direct damage unbuffed. This is a good amount of damage and can be interesting for long fights like bosses, but most of the DPS vanishes if the enemy dies in less than 5 seconds.

Condition damage also suffers from stacking issues. 2 or more condition characters are going to handycap each other.
Sometimes a second toon is not even needed for this to happen. For example, a single guardian is going to provide almost 100% of burning upkeep on single target fights (most bosses), which obviously hampers any condition build with some investment on burning.
This is probably the main reason for condition/hybrid builds to be avoided. For a build that loses power when paired by chance with a similar one its obviosuly hard to be popular.

Usually burst is also better than sustained direct damage because, if played well, evades are going to happen instead of low damage output moves, so the %DPS loss is going to be smaller.

In any case, warrior priority is not about them doing high burst direct damage. It´s about them usually doing MORE damage while providing a really good offensive support through might, fury and vulnerability.

(edited by Vargamonth.2047)

AC is supposed to be the first dungeon.

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I would remake most of the “skill point challenges” to actually teach the player some game basics like boons, stunbreakers, condition removal, defiant, …
It would also be interesting to attach some hint windows to them.

AC is supposed to be the first dungeon.

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Vargamonth.2047

Why should new players get themselves to level 80 to enjoy a level 35 dungeon?

As I said, I do not see AC Explorable exactly as lvl35 content, I see it more as “end game” content that you can (but you are probably not expected to) experience from lvl35 onwards.

The game already provides story dungeons at 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 75, 78 and 80 iirc. I think that’s more than enough to experience dungeoning while leveling and discovering the game.
I see the level of explorables as a clever use of the downscaling mechanic that is more focused on “hardcore” gamers that could enjoy the challenge and specially on alt characters, never on an average fresh player.

I can see, however, a new player, probably unfamiliar to downscaling, getting somehow confused and frustrated when trying to run it at tagged level and being kitten hard.

AC is supposed to be the first dungeon.

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

After that experience, players simply say, I wont touch another dungeon until I am level 80.

I do not think this is a bad thing at all.

I didn’t run any explorable dungeon until I was lvl80 on crafted exotics.
I just thought that those explorables were there more for skins than anything else, and that dungeons with level below 80 existed only for organized groups (in fact, I always expected explorables to be designed for organized groups) that could prefer a really challenging content over the open world PvE in order to level up and enjoy the game.

I never expected groups of random players without a deep understanding of their characters, without the apropiate gear and traits for the content they were going to face, to just group up and be succesful at the lowest entry level of the theorically hardest content of the game. I still don’t expect it.
I expected, and I expect, organized groups failing many times before completion and learning by hard how to face and solve every encounter.

There are lots of players however that knowing what these dungeons reward (high amounts of gold and XP in comparision with open world and tokens that can gear up a lvl80 toon for no cost) want and think they are entitled to do them.
I do not. Without explorable modes, the game still offers many ways to level up and earn enough money to carry on.
Personal story, events and map completions are usually enough to make a toon naturally level up. If a player feels that this is not enough, a little bit of gathering and crafting, alternative maps (those not tied to the main storyline for each character) and story mode dungeons (which should be, and usually are, easier than explorables, and which are somehow tied to the story) should solve any issues.
The fact that explorables offer shinier rewards doesn’t mean that everybody should be looking for them as soon as they can. Low level explorables are there IMHO as an OPTION more than as an expected path.

AC has been the first dungeon on receiving major changes. Explorable mode difficulty has been toned up (and suffered btw a really interesting decrease on most enemies’ annoying health pools) while Story Mode has become easier.
Every other dungeon on the game is probably going to experience the same changes in the future, and I expect them to become harder than AC.

I expect almost every player to want to experience every scrap of content in the game, and I feel that most of them should be able to do this, but this doesn’t mean they should do it by the most profitable way.

Value of Precision

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

EDIT: I’m not sure what skills you guys got as a thief. But on a Guardian, Power > Pre >Crit dmg at all times since we cannot actually reach such a high enough number.

I disagree.
In most situations Power dominates, but in group enviroment high stacks of might can easily make precision more useful than power damage wise (when you had a lot of critical damage, which is not unusual to have on a cookie cutter guardian build).

Plague of Skippers

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Unfortunately in the most recent dungeon redesign (AC) imo they made trash mobs even more annoying and take longer to kill. The gravelings have lots of knockbacks (almost everyone hates those) and they are invulnerable a lot of the time increasing the time to defeat them regardless of how high your DPS is. Speed runs and skipping groups are barely playing through content any more. Half the time it doesn’t even feel like a game.

I have to disagree.

I would say that the new AC is the best designed dungeon skip wise (as it was the previous AC).
You can skip many things, but there are skips that can be trickier than the mobs themselves (the trap corridor just after the spider queen) and many of them have a guaranteed reward (few silver on most champions; good amount of silver and a chest, which probably contains trash, at Kholer).
You can skip a lot if you’re looking mainly for dungeons tokens, but you can also kill everything (or almost everything) and be rewarded for it.
Sadly, since COF1 is much more rewarding than any other dungeon, the few people running AC are probably looking for tokens or leveling alts (which makes skipping more efficient).

About gravelings, they have a lot less HP than before and there are only 2 of them which have knockdowns. The one that leaps and the one that tunnels, which does it in AOE (marked with a big red circle on the ground) and goes invulnerable for a long time after it ONLY IF someone is caught inside.

Is there a class that hasn't solo'd Lupi yet?

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I would say that only ranger and engineer are left.

I’m probably going to give it a try with engineer on the next few days (as soon as a I convince some guildmate to complete story mode, probably when daily comes up :P).

For God's Sake Remove 8v8 in sPvP

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I think there needs to be more game modes not less. I like the 8v8 it’s good for farming rank points/glory.

This is probably the main issue with 8v8.
It’s not only about having 16 players on a match that has been designed and balanced for 10 people, it’s about this gamemode giving better rewards to a not-so-competitive player than the intended 5v5, and even worse, giving better rewards by playing on a completely unintended way that many times ends up on a lost match.
Zerging in 8v8 is maybe the best way the regular player has for glory farming and daily fast completion.

It would be interesting to see glory being rewarded only at the end of the match (in order to avoid leavers) and being doubled for the winning team. This at least should encourage people to actually try to win.
I also think that the rewards should be increased for 5v5 because the higher amount of players should still mean faster matches and better glory farming on 8v8.

I don’t mind if 8v8 remains, but it should be there for people that enjoy bigger teamfights to play it, never for better resource (glory/daily) farming.
This way maybe we could see something that barely resembles an intentended gameplay in hotjoins.

Guardians in WvW, I don't get it...

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Everything is about how you play in WvW

Nothing to add for group play.
AH+EM combo works fine and keeps enough room for decent offense, while Healing Power + Selfless Daring is an awesome healing support. A mix of bothis also possible, which means A LOT of healing.

If you are looking for something like solo roaming, everything changes.
AH+EM loses a lot of potential. EM loses strength because it’s a party wide effect and AH loses because EM (and any other boon source) only procs on you and you also can’t rely on symbols at full potential (which also weakens a possible symbol healing).
Selfless Daring is still a good healing source (even if way more useful with allies), but heavy investment in healing power is going to handycap yourself offensively in such a big way that your fights are going to be attrition based and a lot of enemies are just going to escape from you.
In the end, your best options are probably going to be meditations (which handycaps yourself utility wise and is horrible for anything besides solo/duo), perhaps paired with a bit sefless daring and/or other healing sources like mango pies, or a full offensive approach, relying on blocks, blinds and RF for defense with no more healing than resolve.

AC Exp Spider Queen Solo. Engineer LvL36

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Thanks to everyone for the replies.

Way to get lucky with those Walls of Reflection! RNG’s favor shines upon you.

Not really; I got a couple of procs on each wall. The footage previous to the bossfight just has been cut a lot :P
I got the first veil on killing the first spiders, so ended up being a regular kill with just a few confusions added.
After 2:05 mark hatchlings leashed before reaching the corner so I couldn’t use the previous tactic anymore. The new tactic consisted on casting a wall in front of the previous corner, taking cover behind it, popping quickness and trying to dispatch one or two before retreating.
The first attempt was a veil, so I ignored it and directly retreated. Luckily, one of the spiders didn’t leash and I got a regular kill.
The second attempt was a smoke screen, but I messed up and ended using rifle 4th skill (which is binded to ‘3’ for me) instead of Elixir U (binded to ‘Ctrl+3’) so I wasted a lot a time and the wall vanished by the time I correctly popped quickness. I got a frenzy proc and decided to not take risks and retreated after a couple of shots.
The spiders didn’t fully leash and those are the ones that are killed at 2:05 mark.
The third and last one was a smoke screen too, but at this point just the last spiders remained and leashed way before the choke point.

Awesome video and great soloing, but its really just abusing the AI by having one player. I have never seen the spider just stand still against a group and spew posion in exactly the same position, it always randomly target you and move around, which is what kills most people that doesnt react quick enough.

I absolutely agree with the AI abusing thing but tbh that’s more or less what most bossfight tactics are about.
The spider always stands still if everybody is at range. As far as i know, the only two things that make spider move are being in melee range (where the boss can backpedal a little bit if you place yourself right onto it or perform a couple of steps if you are out of melee range but extremely close) and LOS, which usually happens when someone takes cover behind the column.
Whithout people on melee range, the spider alternates web shot (which is about 600 range) and poison fields, and the mid poison circle is going to be always centered at the position of the player that is aimed at. Since I’m the only player there, I can abuse it and keep myself always safe from the web shot while getting the poison fields exactly where I want.
In theory, soloing this boss should be as easy as standing still just behind the poison field and rolling forward when the spider is about to spit another one. This way, the new field should accurately overlap the previous one, and you should just roll backward to your previous position, just getting poisoned and receiving no more than one tick of damage. Heal/cleanse a little bit. Rinse and repeat.
With a PUG this can be much more chaotic because most players don’t know how it works and use to panic and move and spread a lot. If groups would fight this boss stacked, its behaviour should be much more predictable.
IMHO the hatchlings that spawn with the spider are the real danger on this bossfight.

(edited by Vargamonth.2047)

AC Exp Spider Queen Solo. Engineer LvL36

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Intended at 35, but failed many times trying to clean the hatchlings without being downed and ended leveling up :P

Why is CoF so hard?

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Path 1 is easy because:

First boss is a cakewalk for any party. He is easy to kill at range and his melee atacks aren’t too powerful until he’s near to die.
Tanky characters will kill it slower, but they are going to be downed slower too. High DPS characters can be beaten much faster, but they are also going to kitten him.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if anyone gets downed, because the boss is going to die just a few seconds later.

Then you just can run to the next event, skipping everything.
Acolyte part could be tricky if people wouldn’t have found multiple safe spots. Having them makes the event harmless.
Then you have the rolling fire stones, which is maybe the hardest part of the path for an unexperienced player.
After this there’s a second event whis is probably going to be a dejavu from the first boss. High damaging groups are going to destroy the stone so fast that there’s not going to be any risk for the people in jails. Tanky groups are going to destroy it slower, but since they are tanky, it’s gonna be a safe bet too.

Finally you get the effigy, which is tank & spank for though charcaters, and pretty easy for bursty ones. A bad full DPS player can have some troubles here if he gets paired with a tanky group which requires more time than usual, but even if he gets downed, ressing is far from a big issue here.

Path 2 is an average dungeon path IMHO. I think people find it easy just because it has been done nonstop since game launch.
I personally think that the “Defend Magg” event is the hardest of every encounter on COF, which would make path 2 the hardest of all three, but this is probably because my character is not damage focused and I usually get heavy pressure from those zergs of regular mobs while a more damage oriented char can probably demolish them before getting attacked.
In any case, mobs are so weak that you are probably going to rally anyway, so failing here is usually coused by some misspoted assassin.

Path 3 on the other side, feels really easy to me. Not as path 1 which is a joke, but maybe easier than path 2.
The torch part never was difficult. Now, with only 3 of them, it’s really easy and PUGs wouldn’t have any problem if the path just were as popular as the other two.
Same goes for the next bunch of regular mobs and the first boss, which is probably the easiest one of the whole dungeon.

And then comes the gauntlet which is the part where most complaints are aimed at.
Ironically, as a though character, I find this event easier than “defend Magg”. The mobs are thougher and hit harder, but their number is also more manageable for evading, blocking, CCig, kiting, etc.
I can see, however, the destroy them ASAP tactic which can do wonders in COF2 failing here. The major issue with this encounter is that doesn’t fit a full berserker oriented team as well as the other two paths do (which doesn’t mean it can be completed on zekers, just that requires higher defensive awareness).

The rest of the path is actually really easy.
Bomb part is a cakewalk, abolutely easier than the rolling stones on path 1. The problem here is again that people are not used to run this path, so many of them have not figured yet how to pass it.
Cheesing it requires only 2 things: swiftness and one gap opener (jump, blink, rush, …).
The only two characters that I think could have some problems here are engineers (I’m not sure about this, their jump skills just feel a little bit clunky and slow) and necromancers (that just need to find the timing for activating and triggering spectral walk).
There’s no problem with doing this naked because there’s a safe spot at the front end of the next room where you are going to leave combat automatically.

After this, you destroy some turrets, kill a champion drake that’s just tank & spank, and face the final boss which is pretty easy.; annoyingly slow to beat because of the invulnerable animations and melee unfriendly mechanics, but really easy to kite and kill at range.

Not sure about this but I would say that if a party can beat the gauntlet and doesn’t get stuck at torchers or bombs path 3 is faster than path 2, which I think includes more time sinks.

(edited by Vargamonth.2047)

Dungeons are difficult for the average player I think

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Warriors are OP damage wise, so they’re the best class for speed clear purposes, like CoF 1 farming. The ones that do every dungeon with these OP full damage builds are actually the elite minority, those skilled enough to survive without investing on passive damage mitigation, HP or healing.
The “average player” (which I don’t find so average btw) you mention, shouldn’t give a kitten for that speed. If you’re having a bad time with dungeons, your goal should be just on completing them, and for this matter, warrior is not OP, not even close.
If you just want to complete dungeons, Guardian is your best bet BY FAR.

It surely sounds stupid, but you can’t compare this game with GW1. While GW1 was absolutely build centered, GW2 is much more about the player.
You can’t take GW1 as an example of what the difficulty shlould be, because once the 7-hero team was available, 95%+ of the content on that game was beatable without actually playing. You could just walk and open the fights which whatever attack you wanted for a good hero setup to follow you and demolish everything.

Here, you don’t need to learn any meta because there’s nothing close to that on this game besides a little optimization for speed clear groups. Meta-wise, you only need to group 5 well rounded, general purpose individual builds.
What you really need are 5 not terrible brains to understand those builds, 10 not terrible hands to use them and a little bit of communication.

Dungeons. Change for the sake of change?

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Did 3 paths on AC two days ago and I would say that path 3 is actually easier than path 2. I got a lot more pressure over my character (which runs high thoughness and is pretty much an aggro magnet) on the new Deffend Magg than on those deadly 5 waves, and these are the hardest encounters on both paths.
Everything else on path 3 is really easy and PUGs shouldn’t have troubles running it just by learning some mechanics and automated strategies like they did with path 1 and 2.

What class would you pick in real life?

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Since I’m not sadistic, I would probably pick up a ranged class with good resources to avoid being hit and good scape mechanisms.
Pistol Thief, Mesmer or Scepter/Dagger ele could be great choices :P

Dungeons favouring ranged combat.

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Vargamonth.2047

IMO there are too many statics bosses in this game and those that actually move usually don’t have any kind of resistance to crippling/snaring effects and are easily kiteable.
Their ranged attacks become the almost only threat against ranged players, and when projectile based (which happens a lot) they can also be nullified up to a high degree by some well-known skills (which have their own complain thread).

I wouldn’t say the game is melee unfriendly and I actually like the idea of melee players keeping the pressure of the fight for themselves, but I also think that there are too many fights where that pressure is pretty unfair when we compare it with a full ranged approach (which can easily be spotted when every melee can disengage and fully recover without bigger issues).
I know there’s a lot of people out there who love speedclearing, but I find that time-saving being the only reason for going melee is a bit lackluster at least.

I feel there are more urgent things to tweak/solve in PvE (class/role balance being probably the most notorious one) but some kind of heavy resistance to cripple could be welcomed in the future. This would make kiting much more CD dependant and time limited so we could see a more team oriented gameplay where players had to go into melee and buy time for snares/chills to recharge.
Some kind of aggro-disengage besides stealth would be great too. I don’t think it’s OK for a immobilized/chilled enemy to keep tracking the same target when this disengages with speed boost and another potential target stays/enters close combat .

In my view, gw2 is geartrademill

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Vargamonth.2047

All the gear hating people, what do you want ? that we remove all gear from the game ?

Or make it widely accessible, through all the same methods as exotics, at no more than twice the cost/time/effort. That’s for ascended.
Preferably, of course, all the top tier gear would have been accessible more easily than exotics currently (like it was in GW1). Too bad that didn’t happen.

Basically, i do not want gear to take the place of content. Instead i want actual content.

Even if I had read it dozens of times, GW1 top tier gear being more accessible than GW2 exotics is something that I don’t know if I should agree with.

If you look at vanilla Prophecies, making tons of money was far from something you achieve naturally. By the time you reached Droknar, you probably had to invest all your funds in order to get the top-tier armor which still came without runes at all (and a Superior Health one wasn’t exactly cheap).
Then you had the weapon issue. ¿How were you supposed to get your top tier weapon? There wasn’t any green weapon rewarded on campaign completion, and both collector and crafted weapons (idk if this last one even existed, but 5 plat would had been a really good chunk of money at that time) were lacking upgrades/bonuses you had to RANDOMLY recycle from other rare items.
In order to get, lets say, a perfect health sword pommel, you needed: a) a rare sword to drop, b) that sword having a pefect health sword pommel and c) getting randmoly the pommel instead of any other upgrade the weapon could had.

If you look at latest versions, gearing could seem easier since money was given to you nonstop, but it still had its tricky parts.
Even if buying a raw top-tier armor was really cheap, superior health runes were still pretty expensive and some insignias (which were given to you for free on vanilla, but must to be bought at this point) were more expensive than the armor itself (a shaman ritualist insignia was for a bit more than 4 plat iirc while armor pieces were 1 plat each).
Getting a good weapon was far easier for many reasons. Crafteds were much more accesible money-wise, you were rewarded with a green weapon on each campaign completion, there were a lot of champions along the world that dropped complementary green items, salvaging wasn’t random, …
I feel however that there are a couple of points about the latest versions of GW1 that affect the “gearing” process and need to be taken into account
a) The game became highly oriented to 7H groups, which means that you should probably unblock skills and get some runes/insignias/weapons for each one of your 7H, probably more (and obviously unblock the heroes themselves).
b) There were really powerful PvE-only skills which performed based on rank levels, so even if it wasn’t gearing at all, you still had to earn/farm those rank points (which were character based iirc) in order to perform at full potential (this was eased A LOT with one of the latest patches, not too far from the launch of GW2).

Rune of Major Vigor = Health +41
Rune of Superior Vigor = Health +50

9 hp difference xD

9 hp for a 540 total health pool equals 250 for a 15k one. It’s far from a lot and I used myself a major one (as almost everybody i guess) for a really long time, but still an obvious upgrade and something that IMO should be taken to account when arguing about max stat gear and how things were much easier on GW1 (we are talking about something that would give 25 attribute points on GW2).

Discussion on "hard PvE"

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I see game difficulty is a somewhat heated debated among in-game players so I thought I’d post this.

Now, casual players will complain difficulty (i.e. pre-nerf dungeons) so there is no way to make the game both hard and enjoyable by everyone.
I believe a separated version will be required at some point like GW1 HMs.

In my opinion the best way to create difficulty is not the current oneshot/circles mechanics but simply recreating a simulation of PvP like GW1 endgame PvE.
Instead of pulling 5 windriders who will use the same tactics/skills, a 5 mob pull would be made of 2 HB+Frenzy+EP Warriors, 1 Conditionmancer, 1 disabling Mesmer and 1 Staff Ele – they access the same skillbar a player would have on the same build, and use it according to how a player would play it, while also trying to dodge our attacks.

I don’t think there is a better way to create hard PvE than to replicate player builds and behaviors, so if there is going to be any “hard PvE” at somepoint I sure hope it will be like this.

So would you prefer this system or keep PvE on the plane of “mob-only mechanics” that can be circumvented?

I absolutely agree. I think that the combat system in GW2 fits much better this kind of fights than the more classic boss encounters.
I keep thinking that, if we keep on mind that is not designed for 80s in exotics, the ghost encounter previous to the final boss on AC path 2 is one of the bests dungeon fights the game actually has. Not one big foe, not a ton of trash, just a small group of different enemies, each one being annoying in its own way.
With a proper balance on the legth/pressure of the fight and few improvements on enemy AI (better management of defensive skills, different aggro behaviour on each foe, …) this could be a really good start point for challenging and interesting content.
Adding the right adds to some bosses (not those ones that rush or directly spawn in the middle of the fight and just die from AoEs or cleave effects) can also work. I can think on the adds on Kholer having a N sec respawn time and joining the fight from a random ranged location.

In my view, gw2 is geartrademill

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

All the gear hating people, what do you want ? that we remove all gear from the game ?

Or make it widely accessible, through all the same methods as exotics, at no more than twice the cost/time/effort. That’s for ascended.
Preferably, of course, all the top tier gear would have been accessible more easily than exotics currently (like it was in GW1). Too bad that didn’t happen.

Basically, i do not want gear to take the place of content. Instead i want actual content.

Even if I had read it dozens of times, GW1 top tier gear being more accessible than GW2 exotics is something that I don’t know if I should agree with.

If you look at vanilla Prophecies, making tons of money was far from something you achieve naturally. By the time you reached Droknar, you probably had to invest all your funds in order to get the top-tier armor which still came without runes at all (and a Superior Health one wasn’t exactly cheap).
Then you had the weapon issue. ¿How were you supposed to get your top tier weapon? There wasn’t any green weapon rewarded on campaign completion, and both collector and crafted weapons (idk if this last one even existed, but 5 plat would had been a really good chunk of money at that time) were lacking upgrades/bonuses you had to RANDOMLY recycle from other rare items.
In order to get, lets say, a perfect health sword pommel, you needed: a) a rare sword to drop, b) that sword having a pefect health sword pommel and c) getting randmoly the pommel instead of any other upgrade the weapon could had.

If you look at latest versions, gearing could seem easier since money was given to you nonstop, but it still had its tricky parts.
Even if buying a raw top-tier armor was really cheap, superior health runes were still pretty expensive and some insignias (which were given to you for free on vanilla, but must to be bought at this point) were more expensive than the armor itself (a shaman ritualist insignia was for a bit more than 4 plat iirc while armor pieces were 1 plat each).
Getting a good weapon was far easier for many reasons. Crafteds were much more accesible money-wise, you were rewarded with a green weapon on each campaign completion, there were a lot of champions along the world that dropped complementary green items, salvaging wasn’t random, …
I feel however that there are a couple of points about the latest versions of GW1 that affect the “gearing” process and need to be taken into account
a) The game became highly oriented to 7H groups, which means that you should probably unblock skills and get some runes/insignias/weapons for each one of your 7H, probably more (and obviously unblock the heroes themselves).
b) There were really powerful PvE-only skills which performed based on rank levels, so even if it wasn’t gearing at all, you still had to earn/farm those rank points (which were character based iirc) in order to perform at full potential (this was eased A LOT with one of the latest patches, not too far from the launch of GW2).

(edited by Vargamonth.2047)

MF In Dungeons

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

MF Gear stats are actually not that bad. Better than some peoples builds who actually have real armor. At the least, its a Knights set of armor that doesnt have toughness, however if the person can survive, they technically did not even need that toughness. So yea, its not as good as zerker, but most people seem to frown upon zerker anyway.

Im not trying to say MF gear is “Good” but its not as bad as people think, if the player is able to live with the gear. (Most cant)

As far a I know armor has pretty high influence on aggro control.
Even if undesired for some encounters / party setups, thoughness still adds something to the group.

Explorable dungeons for 80's only?

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Burrows are probably one of those thing where charcater levels isn’t too relevant.
As far as I know objects cannot be critted, so power becomes the only meaningful stat and low lvls are much less handycapped when using 2-stat gear as far as they stack it.
There’ll still be an obvious DPS loss because those characters are missing trait points and cannot wear exotics (probably they are not using even rares), but as long as they are in updated greens and stacking power, the DPS should be more than enough.

Dungeons should be easier now

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I disagree.
The player skill spectrum is pretty wide and designers should tone the difficulty in a way that caters to most people at a intended challenge level.
Dungeons need to be between slightly hard and hard for the average player, so people who is far below this level are going to find them insane or just impossible. The same way, people who is far above will find them absolutely unchallenging.
Both extreme cases are bad but unavoidable.

Ascended Healing Power Stat: I am disappoint.

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

AH/Hammer crit build works IMO a lot better with knights than with clerics.
Not only you grant might to allies on crits (which I think it’s by far the best damage boost trait you can get for a group enviroment unless your party is already sitting on 25 stacks), but you also heal yourself in the process and you have a naturally high crit damage from the Valor taritline.
Crit rate also do wonders with life stealing food if you feel you need it and with some sigils out there.

You are survivable enough to swap some knight gear for berserker, which is what I’m actually doing with ascendeds, but in the long run I’m really afraid of the absence of ascended knight gear.
I have no problem with using a full berserker set of trinkets, it’s maybe even better than using emeralds with ruby jewels, but I don’t see myself on full berserkers.
Even if not that great, thoughness still adds damge mitigation which comboes pretty well with a self-healing build, and more crucial, it adds a lot of aggro control which is where I think the build shines, specially when PUGing.

Maybe the designers are just trying to nerf knight gear because they feel it’s too powerful for certain classes in PvE, but if it’s not, I hope they add a few more stats combinations in the future (knight, rampager, cleric, …).
I really don’t understand why are we lacking those stats while there are two different stat combinations for MF users (which actually means gimping your overall performance and shouldn’t be so tied to using BiS gear), specially that paired with defensive stats.

Guardian with sword - sux!

in Guardian

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

1H sword has great single target sustained DPS, the advantage of being able to be paired with an offhand and can benefit from one of the best offensive trait guardian has.

It lacks AoE damage because zealots defense is single target and the 3rd attack does not cleave in a front arc like most melee weapons. This, added to the fact that 1H mastery can’t be taken together with AH and Empowering Might, makes the weapon a bad choice for “hard” PvE content like dungeons.
I think It’s in good spot however for PvP and open world play where AH/EM combo is far from needed.

AH/EM combo is not needed for anything, even if many people use it. Is it good? Perhaps, but not essential for quite a few players out there (Guardian survival is not solely linked to AH or meditations.)

Nothing is mandatory in this game, but I find anything besides AH/EM lackluster on a dungeon enviroment.

If you go towards DPS, EM is almost a must unless your group sits on 25 might stacks without it. Then Zeal is a pretty bad line besides “10% against burning foes” and Radiance is tied to Condition Damage, which is crap in this enviroment.
Radiance could be a good option for 1H weapons, like 1H sword, granting you A LOT of crit chance, which has a great sinergy with EM, and a good damage boost from 25 minor. The counterpart is that you end up with a really high crit chance but with zero natural crit damage (cause almost every other line gives you better things than Valor at this point) so berserker/valkirie gear becomes almost a must and you lose the ability to draw aggro based on thoughness which is present in almost every AH/EM build.
The final build probably ends with better damage output than a AH/EM one, but with great loss in both control and survability.
You keep some interesting capabilities every guardian has, like WoR, stability sources, aegis and protection, so you still can be a godsend for some encounters. Besides that, I think it’s a wannabe warrior build.

If you go towards more defensive support, Hammer with Writ of Merciful or Battle Presence is probably the best source of healing and protection you can get, and it’s still viable with AH/EM.
You can give up EM in order to get both, but that would hurt badly the character both in offense and defense.
You also can give up Writ of Merciful and go Mace/Shield for better healing output, but this way you are going to lose damage and probably need Hold the Line to keep protection up.
You can even go Mace / Shield / Hold the Line without AH/EM at all, but then I feel again you are trying to do something that other class is most suited for, the elementalis this time, and that only your guardian utilities, availble for any guardian build, are going to keep you in good spot.

I don’t know, I think that AH/EM is just too powerful and the only trait combo that can make the guardian shine over other characters besides regular utilities.

Guardian with sword - sux!

in Guardian

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

1H sword has great single target sustained DPS, the advantage of being able to be paired with an offhand and can benefit from one of the best offensive trait guardian has.

It lacks AoE damage because zealots defense is single target and the 3rd attack does not cleave in a front arc like most melee weapons. This, added to the fact that 1H mastery can’t be taken together with AH and Empowering Might, makes the weapon a bad choice for “hard” PvE content like dungeons.
I think It’s in good spot however for PvP and open world play where AH/EM combo is far from needed.

Precision Vs Virtue Traits. (PvE)

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Radiance is probably the best option survivality wise.
Extra crit grants you more healing from Empowering Might / Altruistic Healing combo or food while obviously increasing yur damage.
20% sigent recharge is a big boost to self healing, and the blind on VoJ from the minor trait comes handy sometimes.

Virtues is more situational, but it really shines when useful.
Both the minor and the consecration / spirit weapon trait are very interesting boosts. Even 20% damage while aegis is up has its uses.

Zeal is also viable. 10% damage against burning foes is up almost all the time when fighting bosses and 100 points in power are always a good damage boost by themselves.

So, Radiance for defense, Zeal for ofense and Virtues situationally or just when you feel OK with your regular capabilities and you don’t want to change your traits for every dungeon run.

Challenging missions like Jennur's Horde

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

When Kappa Attack HM with heroes :S

Dailies discussion [Merged thread]

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I actually have 4631 achievement points. Only 2890 are tied to the categories listed below so I assume that 1741 come from dailies and monthlys.
Getting “regular achievements” can be pretty easy at first, but it’s going to get harder and harder as you fill the list. On the other side, you are going to get 25 points every time dailies are completed.
In the long run, lets say 2 years, achievement score is going to be tied to how much uninterrupted time have you been playing the game instead of how many things have you played/completed.

Adding N points each time you finish your dailies (or having unlimited achievements like agent of entropy) just kills any sense of achievement for a completionist, which is the only use this score has.

Caudecus' Manor Path 2

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

I used Sanctuary when I did it on my guardian. Other classes probably have skills (AoE pushbacks, AoE fears, …) that, if even not powerful enough to get the job done by themselves, can be more than enough when used together by 5 people.
There’s also probably a simpler and intended way that someone after me will explain :P