Guild Wars 2

Nope, they have been fixed for quite some time now along with the pathing mobs before Fimbul in path 3.

Bukkebruse.2810:

This just happened to my group as well. Everyone crashed a few seconds after we’d killed the four skritt around the central console.

It happened to us at lv 50 but not at 30 a day before that. Also considering Aldarn’s opening statement that it also happens at lv 40 it coincides with the levels in which the door to the console in the Prisoner’s Room is already open before rescuing any of them.
Could be related.

EcoRI.9273:

Question: do you think a mesmer would be better than a guardian here? I can see the mesmer running ahead of the group for the first 2 leg seals and portal every1 to the body seal. Portal on arms seal is obviously OP.Temporal curtain allows you to pull the mobs that spawn on the phases of archie quicker.

In a perfect world, mesmer would indeed be better. But when you factor in that the boss fights in this fractal aren’t exactly the easiest there is a good chance people will go down when trying to push for DPS without aegis. Having a guardian relieves some of the “rng grind” factor out of the boss fights.

I haven’t had Detha bug out in the Hall of Champions for months aside from one time I was soloing and I let her die during the Flooded Temple event. When this happens, the NPC auto ressurects itself and it gets broken from there. Never had an issue with people being in combat resulting in the NPC not triggering as we run through the middle of the room everytime.

Just don’t let her die during the Flooded Temple event and she shouldn’t bug out at all.

Here’s my take on the proposed specialization lines for Elementalist in regards to instanced PvE.

Conjure weapons are apparently going to be nerfed. An argument could be made for Ice Bow being a little bit over the top yet it’s ground-targetted AoE nature made it only absurd when applied on large hitbox targets which in itself is just clever use of game mechanics no matter how hard I look at it. The Lightning Hammer nerf is quite puzzling to me, in it’s current state it provided non-staff builds a viable source of sustained damage that was by no means over the top. It’s #4 ability Lightning Storm benefits from the same logic as Ice Bow’s Ice Storm which really only made it optimal when applied to large hitbox targets. Then again, all the balancing revolves around PvP and WvW and I have no clue how Lightning Hammer has been impacting these game modes.

Air Magic is a problem as it was presented to us. No adept trait is currently worthwhile as Ferocious Winds will amount to essentially nothing in ferocity gains and having Bolt to the Heart as a grandmaster trait alongside Fresh Air is a tremendous blow to non-staff builds. I suggest Bolt to the Heart be swapped with Tempest Defense that is a master trait in order to give alternatives to Staff more viability.

The inability to select traits of lower tiers for a higher one’s slot i.e. adept traits in master trait slots is also a highly limiting factor. In general, most professions appear to have at least one rather useless tier of a line that could benefit from this extra flexibility.

In conclusion, if the proposed setups are final the elementalist profession will have been pushed further down the road of the staff meta especially considering that Phalanx Strength has remained unchanged on Warrior which is already now a very well-liked setup due to it’s more reliable and easier to access nature.

Thaddeus.4891:

Why? With a good portion of the stats from trait going into gear, a full zerker gear will make sure he have the maximum power, precision, ferocity stats.

Lets take the guardian for exemple. With a 6/6/2/0/0 build I miss on 200 ferocity and now i’ll probably be able to get it fully. The improvement of basic stats will probably make me lose a bit of power, precision and gain a bit more vitality, healing power and boon duration. You lose a bit and gain a little bit, overall it will be similar. Now take trait. With the new system I will have the equivalent of a 6/6/6/0/0 build now. I could take Mace of Justice and maybe the the new Meta would be now GS + M/F with an overall better dps.

I guess that yes, some build could have a bit less dps, but other build will have more. Overall, I don’t think we’ll see a lot of difference in dps.

Personally I’d go for 6/6/0/0/6 on guardian for unscathed contender and power of the virtuous.

Now I’m thinking about 6/6/0/6/0 warrior, max DPS output combined with phalanx would be ridiculous lel.

As far as I understand, post-HoT you’ll be forced to select 3 categories (currently trait lines) to specialize on and it will basically force you to go all the way into that trait line. And as most professions’ trait lines are currently structured, we’ve been able to distribute our trait points in order to gain access to extra damage multipliers and group wide damage buffs.

It’s still early to provide any meaningful speculation, however it’s not looking very promising for those of us that enjoy doing ridiculous amounts of damage.

NikeEU.7690:

Veckna.9621:

Okay so now that we’ve concluded that dumplings have no ICD they need to be hyped up so I can sell the stacks I still have left.

Where’s Nike when you need him to make a new warrior meta video? :^)

they are already in my last video. Thats why the price went from 2s to 6s.

They were nearly at 20s each at some point, didn’t last long though

Okay so now that we’ve concluded that dumplings have no ICD they need to be hyped up so I can sell the stacks I still have left.

Where’s Nike when you need him to make a new warrior meta video? :^)

Lendruil.9061:

Hey, I didnt want to make a new thread, because my question is similar to the op.

Does anyone know what exactly is the reason that Melandru gets totally disabled by using Sanctuary or Power Block?
The same question can be asked about the destroyer and the husk in coe, though i don’t know if Power Block works there.

Power block will work it’s wonders on any boss that has a primary ability that it spams or just a single ability, giving that ability a 10 second cooldown post-interrupt making it superior to Deep Freeze in some scenarios. About sanctuary, it only permanently disables stationary bosses as those don’t get knocked out of the CC area.

Power block works well on Melandru because it’s stomp ability is by far the most dangerous it has and it’s basically spammed.

Thieves in fractals have obvious functions such as very high single target DPS, stealthing, blinding and defiance management.

However there are also some niche scenarios where having a thief speeds things up
or makes them more smooth, for instance thief is arguably the fastest profession to solo the heat room in thaumanova fractal without the use of any racial skills, spamming pistol whip on Baron Von Scrufflebutt (4th golem to be activated by the raving asura in uncategorized fractal) keeps it fairly harmless especially at higher levels where it’s rockets can very easily cause a wipe or shadowstepping straight to the 2nd archdiviner’s level after the arm seals in cliffside fractal to deal with the 4 chanters before the rest of your party gets there.

However, bear in mind that thief needs to be within 130 units range to deal proper DPS and that given your low health pool you’ll more often than not be down after 1 hit from bosses like Mossman and Archdiviner, that also happen to have ridiculous cleave damage radiuses, which makes effectively DPS’ing bosses with thief hard for less experienced players so don’t be discouraged if you find yourself mopping the floor with your face often when starting out.

I do them simply because I find them fun. It’s a nice change of pace from the average dungeon, it introduces players to different concepts like max melee’ing and allows me to play my favorite spec in the entire game (Dagger/Focus elementalist) without feeling guilty about it being a dps loss. It also allows people to employ clever ways of speeding up the run such as stealth/blink skips and split tactics.

And yes, the average run in an organized and experienced group is 25-30 minutes long (provided you don’t get Molten Facility and Cliffside in the same set) which still puts fractals at a loss in a time/effort vs reward ratio when compared to most dungeons hence it’s lower popularity.

1. I’ve gotten reliable results by aggoring the Wraithlord at the very start of the event and then deaggroing as soon as possible.

2. I don’t have the faintest.

I’d actually do the categories differently.

1. Those who hide behind Rocky

2. The hipsters that have learned how to max melee

As somebody who’s not really a part of the record leaderboards, I’d say only to reset the dungeon paths that were affected. The changes are very significant in some cases and the might nerf that translated to an about 3% DPS loss warranted a reset so I don’t see why a more significant impact to overall DPS shouldn’t.

Also punishing people that have put out records for the paths that were not affected by stripping them of their records would just be pointless in my opinion. Unless somebody genuinely loves to grind for that RNG I can imagine people would be upset if it were to happen.

Gruocs.3412:

One more thing that isn’t in patch notes, swirler can’t be destroyed in snowblind fractal anymore. Tried with ele and engi. Can anyone confirm for other classes?

I just tested it very thoroughly on a lv 1 snowblind Craius, I’ve tried looking for the hitbox all over the vicinity as I thought of the possibility that it had just been moved however I couldn’t find it. My guess is they moved the hitbox deeper underground where not even AoEs with 300 radius can reach it.

I’m not really a fan of the rocky tactic at the champs, but I can’t argue with the results.
Very well done

Jeremlloyd.6837:

All I need now is a Fractal Tonic but that will never happen anyway.

Have you tried leeching Jerry? Oh wait you’re not dutch…

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

We need a search option on these forums.

Would be too confusing for new players.

MePhx.2031:

why you are ignoring me?

Perhaps because there is a hidden requirement to joining our guild that is possessing the ability to read. When you apply properly, you’ll get your responses.

I don’t think we recruit NA players, however if you still want to properly submit your application you should PM Zorkoma as is instructed in this post.

Sowee I couldn’t make it sound any nicer :P

Congratulations!
There’s at least 4 different people in Europe that I know of who have the tonic and somebody in NA with 2 of them.
There’s probably a lot more but it is still extremely rare.

Painbow.6059:

Iris Ng.9845:

Taku.6352:

Iris Ng.9845:

Painbow.6059:

you put on some zerker gear and press skill 2 on greatsword

You don’t stack vuln?

More often than not we have an engi in the party to keep up the vuln and warrior can happily camp gs.

So everytime someone needs to run Phalanx and to be able to spam gsword 2 at their leisure, they need to look for an engi to stack vuln? Great advice!

Just 100b and all your dreams will come true

^ I support this statement 100%!
There is but one path for a warrior.

serenke.4806:

In my experience fractal 50 pugs are reliable and know what to do in there.
Generally you don’t get to level 50 in fractals without having acquired the necessary knowledge/gear and patience.

I’ve had faster duo times than whenever I go full-on pug style at lv 50. If by ‘being reliable and knowing what to do’ you mean that they’ll attempt to range every boss and fail miserably at anything that requires the least bit of coordination you’re spot-on!

I’ll get it even if instanced group content gets no love.

It could just be me being overpowered by Down’s syndrom but I couldn’t get Belka to stop teleporting by breaking the bone wall just a few minutes ago.

Still looking for more banter loving people!

P.S.: Bonus trial points if you are capable of annoying Taku as much as I do

Tsk, tsk… Back to the first page with you.

Purple Miku.7032:

How do you see them doing it under 8 minutes? xD

Also how does doing a solo fast have to do with exploiting? The only way you can really tell if they are is if they include “last boss 1%” in the message and/or see that spider queen was skipped.

If they’re missing the waypoint at the Archive room where the ‘Defend Hodgins from gravelings’ event is at, it is also a dead giveaway that it is an exploited run. That’s usually the first thing I notice whenever I see people selling AC p1.

2015 is fast approaching, happy new year everyone!

pranker.3748:

Acotje.5689:

http://i.imgur.com/HiV1bFe.jpg
#Meta

I don’t trust you… It is clear you have more characters (the right arrow at the bottom), which might not be human female! Are you hiding something? Do you have a charr?!?!?!

Everyone has a charr warrior hidden somewhere in the depths of their character select screen

Fractals are quite a bit less popular than dungeons, not only because of the higher challenge that they present to a group but also the lesser monetary rewards. All the best loot you can get from fractals revolves around account bound skins, ascended armor/weapon chests and the coveted fractal tonic.
As far as getting your feet wet as a newcomer to fractals, I see someone has pointed you towards Zip’s guides which are great and contain a wealth of useful tips that will put you in a position to succeed.

Concerning getting a group through the LFG tool, this of course depends on your playstyle preferences and many other factors, but expect to find quite a bit okittenward situations and groups that struggle to beat certain fractals. My advice would be to use your fractal relics to buy as much agony resistance as possible so you can quickly jump onto higher tiers and perhaps come across people that know the content well and you could learn from.
Alternatively, you can sign up for [Noob] which is a non-rep guild devoted to pairing experienced players with people who wish to learn more than they currently do or newcomers to both dungeons and fractals and get in touch with a fractals mentor (I think Particlar is the only fractals mentor who’s currently active these days).

I’m experiencing the same issue, it’s highly annoying.

Bumping for raider’s chests meta!

As I was sorting through my friend’s list this morning, I realized that most of the people in there had grown inactive. As such I’m left with very few options for either a fun chat or whenever there’s a spot or 2 to fill in my party.

So, to share a bit about myself…
I’m a fun loving guy and not too shabby of a player or so I’ve been led to believe. I enjoy playing with other good players, trolling my friends during runs and having a laugh.
Elementalist and thief are my professions of choice, however if I’m in a Hodor mood I may want to play warrior.
I’m fairly knowledgeable when it comes to speedclearing content and can probably point people in the right direction for whichever situation or profession.

Want to rid me of this loneliness? Add me and give me a shout so you won’t get lost in my Follower’s list.

Sinifair.1026:

Just out of curiosity, Veckna, what are some of the most fun, challenging and/or best dungeon mechanics you’ve encountered?

For starters, I dislike Aetherpath because of the annoying puzzles that were implemented into that dungeon. The boss fights themselves are not challenging at all which just makes it anti-climatic that what would make or break a run would be something that could be considered a “sideshow”.

As far as my favorite encounters in this game, I’d have to say that I’m quite fond of Kodan’s Bane, Huntsman of Jormag (last boss of Honor of the Waves story mode), Giganticus Lupicus (the most iconic boss in any of the arah explorable paths), Mai Trin (Aetherblade boss fractal – Not really by the challenge of the encounter but by the interesting change of pace that the fight brings), Imbued Shaman (boss of Volcanic Fractal), Wraithlord’s Hunter and Wraithlord’s Crusher (arah path 3) and Farnaz, High Priestess of Lyssa (arah path 4).

Concerning stacking, there is only 1 reason for groups to stack these days and that’s to “Line-of-sight” groups of mobs. Standing in melee range of a boss achieves the same results on the boon sharing front and as proven time and time again since the 9/9 patch, more often than not pulling a boss to a corner is nothing but a waste of time.
I’m sorry that you’ve had bad experiences in pick-up groups with people that would consider themselves high-end dungeon/fractal players, but you’re barking up the wrong tree in these forums as most regulars here wouldn’t do what you’ve described above.

Sinifair.1026:

While the first season of the Living World had its flaws, many agree the dungeons that it presented far exceeded the original bunch at launch, and I know that I, for one, really enjoyed some of the newer paths and dungeons that GW2 has to offer.

Aetherpath, really?
The fractals that were added during the 1st season were mostly enjoyable though, apart from Molten Facility that is nothing but waiting, waiting and more waiting.

Sinifair.1026:

Everyone knows that the original dungeons has a bad case of the stacks.
- People “cheat” their way through

Bingo, anyone?

Sinifair.1026:

Revamp the original dungeons, and at the same time, introduce some ascended armor and weapon designs for these dungeons. Keep the original exotic armor sets as well, but add something extra that gives players incentive to revisit the newer versions.

If by ‘revamp’ you mean change them into something more like Aetherpath then I can’t support that, even though the odds of that happening are exactly zero. Adding new designs of ascended gear as rare drops however are a fair suggestion imo however.
The devs would be better off devoting their efforts to fixing existing bugs in current dungeons than completely transforming them.

Stompy.1387:

Purple Miku.7032:

-snip-

Also keep in mind that she goes into hiding based off of a global timer, so you need to deal as much damage as possible in between the increments of time that she’ll stay put in order to succeed. This is why it’s really easy to get stuck in a lousy loop of her disappearing right away and why sometimes people I’ve known had to reset the fight to progress.

-snip-.

Can you explain the concept of the “global timer” a bit more? I’ve never been able to figure out the exact mechanics of her myself, other than just how to beat her pretty easily. I’m just the type of person who likes to know as much as possible about boss mechanics and stuff.

It means that the faster you run the sparks, the larger your window to DPS will be. Simin doesn’t stay revealed for a set amount of time after it pops back up.

While I do agree that it’s cheesy and takes the challenge factor out of the fight completely, you have to understand that most people look at dungeons as merely a way to turn a quick profit.
By putting yourself in their shoes you quickly reach the conclusion that there’s no point in spending hours mastering everyone of the 3 phases of the encounter when you can just cheese it so easily.

I’m afraid that people that afford PvE the respect it deserves are a dying breed.

Oh boy, almost as good as illegal vedios *crunches on popcorn*

Purple Miku.7032:

I thought about that too, it’s just… who cares about HotW -.-

(sowwy Painbow <3)

Don’t apologize, he’s a C U Next Tuesday! :P

Staff eles are absolute godsends for certain fractals, especially when dealing with large hitbox targets as shizz just meeeeeellllttssss.
A good elementalist knows when to bring each different spec at his/her disposal and when to ask the warrior to be more than just a banner kitten and trait PS

About hammer guardian in dungeons, the only place I’d consider using it would be HoTW, especially story mode (kittena yoo Hunter of Jormag!).

Burning Speed in fractals is a must-have in any D/F elementalist’s rotation. The damage output is too good to be passed on, however unless you are absolutely confident in your ability to predict a boss’ behaviour and your timing I wouldn’t try using it as an evasion, except on Mai Trin’s teleport shot in case you’re stuck in fire attunement, normally you’d just want to use Ring of Earth to block it.
The blast radius on Burning Speed however, which represents the vast majority of it’s damage, can be used to your advantage if you aim it properly in order to get the damage in without putting yourself at risk while doing it. This is something that any elementalist worth his/her salt must do, especially in fights like Mossman and Archdiviner where you have to stay alive despite their cleave abilities with hardly any tell that will 1 shot you at lv 50.

Tazza follows the same aggro pattern as the Golem boss in CoE, typically goes for the squishiest target first. Normally I’d recommend you attempt to Deep Freeze her in order to buy your group some time of uninterrupted DPS to give you a better chance at staying alive through the entire fight as her auto-attacks do hurt quite a bit and are nearly undodgeable, but in a PUG situation (I don’t PUG often so bare with me) I doubt your group will have enough DPS to properly benefit from a Deep Freeze approach to it so take a focus offhand and manage your defensive cooldowns, I’d also recommend taking Arcane Shield just in case the fight becomes longer than expected.

frifox.5283:

I wonder how many popcorn bags I’ll go through before this settles down.

Hopefully it won’t settle down until April 2015, need something to keep me entertained until the next season of Game of Thrones premieres :P

I must say I’ve only been wrongfully kicked from fractals once and it was because I asked my group to reset the chanter spawns at the arm seals in Cliffside after they had triggered both sides.
More often than not I leave on my accord when not satisfied with a PUG’s performance depending on how far into the fractal the group is i.e. "These guys are ranging Bloomhunger? Oh well won’t even wait to see how they go about the harder bosses then *leaves*".

What I’ve noticed more and more lately is the amount of people running WvW zerg and roaming builds in fractals i.e. S/D thieves with Infiltrator’s Signet, Shadow Refuge and Shadowstep for utilities, people with falling damage traits.

My advice is not to join any groups that don’t clearly advertise the playstyle that you abide to. In my case a group advertising for instance "Lv 50 Meta Zerks Gearcheck" would be far more appealing than one simply advertising "Lv 50".

At least one elementalist is vital to having a smooth fractal run regardless of which fractals you get, not just for the perma-fury but Deep Freeze is extremely valuable in fractals. More often than not you’re forced to play conservatively as most enemies will one-shot you at higher levels, by using Deep Freeze correctly you can safely get bursts of damage in that significantly speed up encounters. Glyph of Storms is actually quite valuable as well for either blinds or vulnerability. And staff just brings tremendous DPS with very little effort and some niche utility as well.
A combo of a D/F ele and a staff ele is still how I’d go about optimizing group DPS for fractals along with a guardian, warrior and thief/engineer.

Considering you put the condition of only having a staff available, the rotation you’re using is already pumping out as much might as possible for staff camping.

I find myself between guilds at the moment and with a need to do fractals on a daily basis. My friend’s list is not what it used to be with the vast amount of people losing interest in the game.
Bottom of line, I need to meet a few people that would like an experienced elementalist to join them for fractals.
I’m open to advanced speedclearing strategies and whatnot, I’m a huge fan of the Deep Freeze fractal meta.

Here’s the build I usually run during fractals if you’re wondering.

Just add me to your friend’s list and I’ll be more than happy to contribute to your runs.

I interpret “exp” in LFG posts as a joke. Chances are nobody in that group will be close to what I’d consider an experienced dungeoneer.