Guild Wars 2

Rajani Isa.6294:

Xavori.3768:

2. The demand for the karka shell armor from the temporary Southsun vendor will be similar to other exotic armors. I think I’m being very conservative here. If the armor looks cool, 8s for karka shells now will be a bargain a week from now.

I seem to recall hearing that a) the vendor is part of the new meta event and b) the new meta event is permanent.

Ya, that was brought up in one of the threads. It doesn’t change my thinking on the price tho. If the new armor is cool, it’s only going to dampen demand a bit as the vast majority of people will want it right now, and since for many players gold isn’t really an object anymore, they’ll just buy enough karka shells to get it without thinking about cost.

Longer term tho, the price of karka shells is going to remain higher than the 1.5-2s it was it. That price was a result of the demand generated by their use in mystic forge recipes. With a new permanent source of new demand from the addition of a vendor the price will factor that in. I also suspect that supply will decrease because while I’m sure the meta events on Southsun will remain popular, especially if they get added to the various GW2 timers, you won’t have the hordes of people farming Southsun that we have right now. Add together a slightly higher demand and lower supply, and I’d guess that the long term price of shells will be 2.5-3s after the inital spike with the caveat they might bump as high as 4s long term if something on the new vendor is really cool, or maybe only 2-2.5s if there are better sources of the items on the vendor.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Xavori.3768:

They’ve already added Island shoulder pieces with new skins. Why is it out of the question that the new vendor will be selling the rest of that set?

Because of this (which I alluded to earlier, but you missed):

Robert Hrouda.1327:

no new armor models in the southsun shore story stuff.

Although looking like a crab would be pretty sweet.

Can you link the thread with that? I’d like to read the whole thing (not so much about karka shells, but other info and what brought it up). I went through twelve pages of Dev Tracker searching for Robert’s posts and couldn’t find that one.

Rising Dusk.2408:

There’s no question about what the skins will be. They’re already in the database, and they use the same skins as the rares you can get from anywhere in the game. You further make the assumption that ANet will let items obtained with karka shells be put into the Mystic Forge. It’s entirely possible that won’t be the case.

And you’re making the assumption that the vendor is going to be selling Settler’s gear.

They’ve already added Island shoulder pieces with new skins. Why is it out of the question that the new vendor will be selling the rest of that set?

Mystic.5934:

I was not a believer at first

and then I saw her face
now I’m a believer
not a trace
of doubt in my mind

UrScrewed.6183:

I never even wanted a minipet untill i saw mini kesmeer. Yes, she will be mine. The rest seem rather pointless honestly. I think barbie has the most potential because he is hot and there is nothing else i’d rather be looking at while i play. With most players being guys, i’m sure some have the same idea. I just hope she doesn’t distract me to much and get me killed.

I bought several of those minis with guys like you in mind. I made 5g each off of them when I resold

Magnus Steelgrave.6580:

still… so long as the items aren’t at a ridiculous exchange rate… good exotic forge fodder.

That is kinda what happened with the settler’s exotic trinkets given the stat combo and the fact they drop like rain.

‘Course, if they keep the skins the database currently has for them, it’s going to have at least moderate interest as those aren’t horrible skins, just not original. On the other hand, if those are just placeholders and they go with something that matches either of the back pieces, then the price on shells is prolly going to spike.

Either way, between people buying up shells now and holding the shells they have to wait and see what comes out on the 5th, prices should see a steady climb.

p.s. This isn’t a pump. This is me giving my honest opinions on what I think will happen. Yes. I bought karka shells. I bought some as soon as I read that bullet point on the main article. I bought more just after I made the first post in this thread. I’m pretty sure I now have enough shells to buy a full set of the armor if it’s something I want, and I paid less than I believe I would have if I’d waited till the 5th.

Before I begin, let me say this entire post hinges on two assumptions:
1. The price in karka shells will be higher in price in dungeon tokens. I think they’ll be higher because karka shells are faster to accumulate since they have no max per day, and a well-built farm team can average a dead young karka every 10 seconds.
2. The demand for the karka shell armor from the temporary Southsun vendor will be similar to other exotic armors. I think I’m being very conservative here. If the armor looks cool, 8s for karka shells now will be a bargain a week from now.

Right before ANet announced the temporary vendor that’s part of the Southsun finale will use karka shells for currency, the price of karka shells was hovering between 1.5-2s. Given the limited uses for karka shells, that was a fair market price. Speculation has now doubled that price.

I don’t think it’s high enough. I think it’s going to double again in the lead up to the June 5 patch.

Karka shells are much easier to accumulate than dungeon tokens, and it takes 1380 tokens for a full set of armor. You can also buy armor of the TP in one of the standard looks that goes for about 3g per piece. Those combine to give a pretty good indication of what players have valued a full set of exotic armor at as well as what value ANet puts on fixed price exotic armor. You can also look at the prices on guild and WvW items to see that ANet is definitely on the side of grind is good for their bottom line.

So, put all that together, and it gets pretty obvious that karka shells are going to spend the entire next week going up. After that, it comes down to how ‘cool’ the armor you can buy looks. If it’s good, it’ll spike in the aftermath of the release (as in, does it go with tentacles) If it’s lame, the price will prolly plummet.

Either way, there should be a definite week of gains to be had, and possibly more.

Anyone disagree before I go convert all my T6 mats into karka shells?

Vago.1679:

this is by far the worst kitten thing i have ever; EVER done in an MMO

it has nothing to do with being good or knowing anything…when you can run him over a green mine 5 times to have it BLOW UP ON YOU OVER AND OVER AND OVER…not to mention grouping for dungeons seems to have bugged…

You are definitely doing it wrong.

I’ve had him bug where he doesn’t take damage, but never so that I took damage instead.

What you are almost certainly doing is trying to disarm ‘yellow’ mines which don’t actually disarm.

Here’s what you do from start of dungeon to finish.

1. Pick up a mine detector.
2. Hit 1 which lights up all the mines. Check out what the symbols over the mines look like so you’re familiar with them when you get to Canach.
3. Use the mine detector to avoid the mines and run back to Canach.
4. There will be a land mine (bomb icon…matches the 2 attack on the gun) near the entrance to his room. Hit 1 to find it, then hit 2 and target right on that mine. It will turn green.
5. Move a bit further into the room. Maybe flip another mine.
6. When Canach starts moving towards you, turn and run STRAIGHT to the land mine and jump over it. Then stop and turn around and wait for Canach to run into it. You won’t take damage, but he will definitely set it off.
7. Hit 1 and find another land mine. Flip it to green.
8. Take a quick gander at the chat box. Good chance he’s about to kaboomie all his mines.
9. If he’s blowing them all up, you can use 5 on the gun to interrupt him. This will let you get another land mine in before he tries to kaboomie them all again.
10. When you see that message, find open space well away from any mines. There are all kinds of places like this. Just make sure you’re about twice as far as the detection circles are since the AoE of the mine is about double their detection range.
11. Run around waiting for all the mines to respawn.
12. KEEP WAITING UNTIL MINES GO FROM YELLOW TO RED.
13. Flip a land mine, run and jump over it, he’ll run into it.
14. Goto 9

Luthan.5236:

Xavori.3768:

Cannach takes 5 minutes once you get used to it.

I’ve now completed it using every single class. Mezzie can cheat via confusion. A couple other classes can as well with ground targeted condition applying skills. That said, it’s so much faster to use the mines.

I though he is not taking damage by skills? So I can just use every AoE and he really is only evading directly targeted skills? Okay then it seems easy but the description sounded like he was ignoring all other damage besides mines.

Edit: And reward is probably only 1 time? If it really was farmable it would be too easy… or if it was without DR.

Can’t use direct targeted AoE’s. It has to be an attack that proc’s conditions on targets that enter the area. For example, you can use the thief shortbow poison cloud attack to poison him. He won’t take damage from the attack, but he will get poisoned from being in the cloud, and he’ll take damage from that (and if you are going to kill him this way, pack a lunch because it’s going to take a while).

The reward is once per character. Can’t tell you if it’s per character per day for at least 3 more hours tho

Cannach takes 5 minutes once you get used to it.

I’ve now completed it using every single class. Mezzie can cheat via confusion. A couple other classes can as well with ground targeted condition applying skills. That said, it’s so much faster to use the mines.

Bunker builds are easier than zerker, but the only threat Cannach presents is possibly knocking you into a land mine. Neither Cannach’s other attacks nor the other mines are a threat. Since he telegraphs the hell out of that attack, easy to dodge or step behind a rock or something.

It also has a solid reward, although perhaps a bit too much given that it really does get down to a 5 minute-per-run time making it about a 12g per hour or so. Not as much as Union could be pre-nerf, but better than any other dungeon but CoF path 1 speed run.

Okay, you obviously didn’t figure out the mechanics.

YOU DO NOT WANT TO FIGHT THIS NUDE.

You want as much freakin’ toughness and vitality as you can get. This is the first non-DPS dungeon in the game. Well, non-player-DPS anyway.

The fight with him is all about turning mines green and luring him over them. Just hit 1 on the mine detector and then match the symbol with the disable. Land mines (bomb) use 2, gas mines (green skull) use 3, and caltrops (uh…caltrops) use 4.

Glance down at the chat box from time to time. When you see him getting ready to detonate all his mines, just run to any of the many places where there are no nearby mines and wait. Maybe read a book while you wait. Do your nails…pick belly lint…

Actually, he can bug. If you hit him with a land mine (the bomb floating above it) and he takes no damage, just leave and start over.

Other than that, just keep turning all the mines green and running to the safe bits of the cave when he decided to detonate everything.

Oh, and this is one dungeon where bringing a bunker build helps immensely. Your DPS matters not at all so go all-in on survival.

There are problems all along this chain. It can get stuck repeating the same mission at any point. It’s why she’s the only of the achievements on my boss tab that I haven’t been able to complete

If it weren’t for the karka, I’m pretty sure I could hold the crab for an entire match at this point

Xavori – Human male thief. Wears grey hood and grey AC armor (cuz it looks like studded leather the way a fighter-thief should look). The trick was getting the anonymity hood and armor to match shades of grey since they don’t naturally.

Lyza Zarq – Human female necro in dark green and purple masquerade armor with green glowy eyes.

Asyntora – Human female warrior in heavy looking silver and gold plate.

Lysergidea – Human female mesmer wearing pink and purple winged wielding sword and pistol.

Princess Beerlove – Human female mesmer wearing bright green with pink trim wielding a princess wand and beer mug

Targa Nahrl – Human female thief in bright red.

Aideen Zahn – Human female elly in whatever bright colors I feel like sticking her in at whatever time I’m playing her.

Raeza Vire – Human female necro with a deep blue fauxhawk, red demon facepaint, and bright red and blue outfit.

Nurse Gadget – Asura female engineer in solid white with pink tennis shoes.

Sweety Pies – Asura female warrior in pink T2 cultural armor wielding pink T3 cultural sword and axe and wearing a quaggan backpack.

Candee Kayne – Asura female warrior in white and red wielding a candy cane hammer.

Tygurr Boomkitten – Charr male engineer in bright yellow shirt and pants wearing a bright orange coat with bright red shoulders, gloves, and boots.

Cardeae – Sylvari ranger with purple uh..hair/leaves wearing very simple brown leathers.

Cher Stegalkin – Norn ranger in very dark purple AC armor.

Brynnhild Nygaard – Norn guardian in basic heavy plate although will be switching to a mix of HotW, gladiator, and cultural when I get around to it.

It’s interesting that you use the word “interesting”.

I bring this up because in ANetese, interesting actually translates to MORE HITPOINTS AND CROWD CONTROL ABILITIES REGARDLESS OF HOW ANNOYING AND NOT FUN THESE THINGS ACTUALLY ARE.

Take for example, the new and more interesting Ascalonian Catacombs. They are more interesting because the Spider Queen has more hitpoints (and bogus OP attacks), the ‘trash’ gravelings now spam knockdown, and the boss fights takes longer not because the mechanics are more involved, but simply because the bosses have more hitpoints. I suspect all this interesting that got added is why the dungeon went from easily the most popular, especially with newer players or players leveling up alts, to one of the least popular, and effectively off limits to new players not in a mega guild of people willing to carry them and rez them every couple of minutes.

Or take the changes to the krait that made them more ‘interesting’. They can pull, knockdown, cripple, immobilize, and do so very readily and seemingly without any rhyme or reason to how often these abilities fire off. Oh, and they also have more hitpoints. The krait raid in Sparkfly Fen has gone from a nice distraction while waiting for Teq to near certain death for non-tank builds, especially if enough people are hanging about to trigger upgraded krait.

I’m so looking forward to the rest of the mobs being made more ‘interesting’ since if there is one thing I absolutely maternal parent juvenile felining enjoy, it’s watching my character lie helplessly on the ground slowly being ground away while I can do nothing to fight back.

At the moment, there is still enough to do that doesn’t involve ANet’s attempts to make things more ‘interesting’, but I am a bit worried about the future.

p.s. Here’s my constructive part: QUIT DOING IT. Interesting is not make fights drag out by adding hitpoints or making it impossible for players to, you know, actually play. Interesting is bosses with different mechanics, activities other than combat, etc., none of which drags on because at the point where the players have shown they’ve got things in hand, the fight ends with a dead boss. It doesn’t continue with the players repeating the same sequence of skills, button presses, whatever, another half dozen times.

I’ve posted this math before, but here it is with updated numbers.

An orichalcum pick costs 4s
100 gems costs 3g 35s.
The infinite pick costs 800 gems or 26g 80s.
You could buy 670 ori picks for the price of that one molten pick.
That means you need to collect 67,000 bits of ore before you’ll have spent as much on ori picks as the molten pick. This number gets even sillier if you use cheaper picks on non-ori nodes.

Better get to mining

As one of the people who’s been around since beta…no…they did not drop a couple a day.

You might get one every 1000 kills or so. You definitely get one completing your level 10 personal story mission. You might get one on a map complete.

So what I’m guessing is that y’all remember your freebie at 10 story, maybe a map, and are calling that “a couple a day”.

One definite thing I’ve noticed, there are more dye and key drops in low level areas than in level 80 areas (the joys of being an altaholic…keep having to go back there). However, even in the low level areas, you’re still not going to get to a couple keys a day.

Seraki, the NPC’s kinda do. The only NPC that was still talking about their lost item with me was Biron. Of course, in my case, I knew exactly what it was since I’d just picked them up and turned it in to him when I got bugged.

Apparently I got lucky as one of the server patches or at least just the server resets cleared whatever flag was keeping me from picking up a new bottle. So I’m done now and could get my molten gloves…except I have no idea which character I’d want them for (and this is even with having 20 of them) as none of my toons are into dripping gloves.

And bump up the 5 minute timer to 15 minutes so that they at least have a chance to survive boss/events without going on full cooldown for no reason.

Wow. You must really hate 3-bar necros with the downed damaged trait….

About this “new” stealth thing…

Way back on a text-based MUD, as in before Meridian 59 or anything else like it, thieves had stealth.

Normally, when someone entered the room you were in, the game would send you a message “So-and-so entered from the north” and if they left, it would send “So-and-so exited to the south”. However, thieves using their stealth ability would suppress those messages. So a thief could enter and leave a room, or more likely, enter the room, use pickpocket and/or backstab, then leave the room when the dust settles.

So ya, not a new mechanic at all. And just because you personally don’t want to be bothered with figuring out how to deal with it (in the MUD, you could just type “look”) doesn’t make it a bad mechanic. In fact, it’s one of the few mechanics that’s been around since the beginning that actually makes combat more than just a bunch of dice rolls against your opponents armor and hit point stats.

Biron is a kid. He’s upset about the ship because it’s his way of remembering his dad.

I just picked up the Logbook and Ship in the Bottle and took them to the refugee camp. I thought I’d turned them in, but only got credit for the Logbook. I talk to the kid, and he tells me he’s still missing his item. However, going back to Wayfarers and trying to pick it back up gives me the ‘already had possession’ message.

Any ideas? I kinda want my achievement…

Danicco.3568:

kokocabana.8153:

It’s definitely not necessary or unbalanced since doing the math shows that it’s not worth on picks alone, but as a quality of life improvement, it’s a good investment.

That’s exactly why I bought it too.

I used to have a bunch of Mithrils and just one Oric when I happened to find an Ori node, but even using Mithril Tools I couldn’t help but think “This 8c Copper Ore is costing me 1.6c to get it…”
And when I was out of Mithril, just with Oric, I would always skip Copper and Platinum Ores as I don’t think it’s worth paying 4c to sell something for 8c minus taxes…

If you start really, really getting into optimized wealth in GW2, you’re still better off running past nodes and just buying ore/bars (whichever is cheaper at that moment) from the TP. The time you waste running to and waiting while mining a node is worth more than anything short of what ori sells for on the TP.

Unless you’re also trying to get the XP for mining because you’re playing a non-80 toon. Then it’s worthwhile.

(oh, and if you really dig the effect from the new pick, by all means…GW2 is a game…games are fun…if you have fun watching lava fountains, then its worth it)

My zerker warrior is built around making the signet of rage boons permanent. It’s the only character I’ve built around an elite skill.

I think you could build a venom thief around the on-elite-skill-use runes given that you can get the cooldown for basilisk venom very low. However, not sure what kind of overall build would make that worthwhile. The flip side is that underwater, thieves ONLY have basilisk venom as an elite skill choice.

Necro flesh golem might be useful except a) minions’ AI overall sucks, and b) flesh golem AI in particular is worse than the rest of the minions.

The biggest problem with most elite skills is that they are on such long cooldowns that you can’t use them as a regular part of your skill rotation, and the effects they bring don’t have anywhere near the power to justify those long cooldowns.

(then again, I think all utility skills are on way too long of cooldowns…I’m much more interested in skills and counterskills than I am in watching a clock)

The math:

At current gem prices, it costs 25g20s. A regular ori pick costs 4s. You will have to use up the equivalent of 630 ori picks to equal the cost of the molten pick. That works out to 15,750 ori ore.

You’d prolly better get to mining

(and all that completely ignores Demolishinist Varr who sells ori picks for karma which doesn’t have much use for anything else)

I’ve seen mesmer, thief, warrior, necro, and a bunch of guardian videos.

Have any elementalists, rangers, or engineers pulled it off?

If not, that’ll be my next project in GW2

IamDuddits.1692:

Just curious, but are SE/Arah full of hit point sponges like pre-patch AC and current CM? Interested in running some of the other explorable dungeons but I’m hoping to avoid a snooze fest due to enemies with tons of hp that don’t deal enough damage to be a threat.

SE has some fun fights, including some of the non-boss stuff. The gauntlet fighting is a great example. You’re just plowing through enemies you can’t skip. The fight versus three champ golems each of which has a different attack mechanic is also a good fight just because trying to figure out how you’re going to keep them from ganging up. Do you try to pull one at a time, or do you try to lure two away while the rest of the party ganks the third.

Arah is all about learning the mechanics of the fights…well, the non-buggy fights anyway. The reason you see people able to solo Lupi isn’t because Lupi is an easy fight, it’s because if you play it right, and don’t make any mistakes, you can win. But it all comes down to you as the player getting it right.

IamDuddits,

Nowhere did I use the word “better” when explaining my reasoning. I think I used words like “business” and “expenses”. GW2 is a business, and their business is entertaining players. If your ‘update’ to existing entertainment is attracting fewer players, obviously it’s a failure. Better has nothing to do with that part.

Better can explain why it’s failing to attract more players tho…

Now, previously I mentioned better because I don’t think the new AC is better. Kholer was better before. Fixing Kholer by letting him spawn adds constantly doesn’t make that fight any better. It just provides additional incentive for groups to skip a boss fight they were already skipping. You want to make Kholer better for the first exploration mode dungeon, you do it by making him more forgiving. Instead of ‘miss dodgedeath" it should be "miss dodge50% of life gone". That’s a better fight for new players. They still have incentive to improve, but aren’t going to get frustrated and quit.

Spider Queen isn’t better either. I actually liked the Spider Queen fight before as she could kill players who didn’t make sure to clear the spiderlings first, or who didn’t pay attention and got caught. Now, non-tank builds who try to melee her WILL die. She’ll eventually catch them with no stun breakers and then hit her big channel attack, and down they go. Or, she’ll immobilize someone on one of those everlasting poison pools.

The final boss fights aren’t better either. I am rabidly opposed to being dependent on NPC’s for my success. If I’m playing a game, I want it to be about my skill and my strategy. I don’t want to fail because Grast decided to go all Charge of the Light Brigade on the big bad. I don’t want to fail because Hodgypoo keeps throwing fire circles at the back of the room instead of anywhere near where the adds are coming through.

Ghost Eater v2.0 is better than 1.0, but is still seriously tedious. Once you figure out the mechanics and get it going, you’re going to win. Cut the hitpoints in half, reduce the damage of the really big hit (no boss in a low level dungeon should be able to one-shot-kill any player no matter how fragile the build).

So no, new AC isn’t better. If it was better, it would also be more popular. It’s gone from being a great way to level up, make a bit of gold, and meet new people to a dungeon people only do when a guildie really wants to get their dungeon master title.

This is actually really easy to answer. I’ve pointed out the flaws in the dungeons in a few previous posts but ultimately it comes down to this:

X = number of people who ran dungeon before changes
Y = number of people running dungeon after changes

If X>Y then bad

Well, it’s beyond obvious that this is in fact the case. It doesn’t matter why.

A theme-park MMO like GW2 is all about people running the content of the game given to them by the designers (as opposed to sandbox MMO’s that give players the tools to make their own content). Given the massively higher amount of time needed to create content versus playing it through, theme park devs need to make content that their players WANT to play repeatedly (again, it doesn’t matter why they want to).

If people only run AC once or twice to figure out the mechanics, or worse, only attempt it once and then give up and never run it again, the dungeon is a failure. It means ANet put a lot of time and resources into content that occupied players for less time that it took to create. That’s fine for a non-MMO or non-persistent game whose business model is based on initial purchase of the content and whose expenses are limited to that initial creation of content. However, it’s harmful for a business which has ongoing expenses in content creation and is dependent on ongoing purchases to pay for the content, especially in a case like new AC where it actually seems to be driving customers away.

This just started. At the edges of armor on some of my characters (most obvious with Ascalonian medium armor), there are now bright red lines. There are a few old posts about this, but no answers.

Has anyone figured out how to make them go away as they are not just ugly, but distracting?

alemfi.5107:

@Xavori: no need to be condescending, particularly because you are only 1/2 right. For the PvE leaderboards, he does have the achievement point value, but the sPVP leaderboards do not provide the information for the player’s placement.

@Adry: 3rd party site: http://www.gwshack.info/?region=na

That wasn’t condescending. That was snarky.

Very important difference

Well…you know how many points you have…and the leaderboards are in numerical order….so as long as you didn’t go to a school that tried to teach new math, you should be fine.

Otherwise, you’re up juvenile feline creek without a paddle…

Kuruptz.4782:

Xavori.3768:

( Trolltastic topic title is trolltastic )

The calculators don’t really work for this, so I’ll just write it out with explanations…

tl;dr version – 70% boon duration with shouts. Build has perma fury, swiftness, and 11-14 stacks of might OUT OF COMBAT with more in combat. Teammates get 6 stacks of might at 50% fury uptime. Silly high DPS ensues.

Traits

Strength 10
V – Berserker’s Power – moar damage with moar adrenaline

Arms 20
Precise strikes – 33% chance of bleed on crit
III – Deep Cuts – Bleeds last longer
VIII – Blademaster – 10% higher crit chance with sword

Defense 0 (cuz what self respecting warrior cares about survival)

Tactics 30 (cuz smart warrior is bestest)
30% boon duration (this is key)
VI – Empowered – bonus damage for every boon
VIII – Lung Capactiy – shouts recharge faster
XII – Vigorous Shouts – shouts heal (cuz why not…could also go with II)

Discipline 10
VI – Signet Mastery – faster recharge on signets (this is also key)

Gear is all zerker. Like every last bit. Runes, however…
2 Major Water – 10% boon duration
2 Superior Water – 15% boon duration
2 Superior Monk – 15% boon duration

Weapons are sword/axe. Greatsword is for boring warriors

(okay, really it’s about getting bleeds that get buffed to a fare thee well by the 15-20 stacks of might you end up with solo…25 is normal in groups…also, axe 5 inside a mezzie time warp creates 15 chaos bolts on top of the very high dps that attack has. This stacks a lot of confusion on your target)

Sup Sigil of Strength – chance of might on critical (hehehe)
Sup Sigil of Smothering – cuz CoF1 just begs for it. Otherwise, lots of things work here

In testing on dummies in the mists, this build is the only one I’ve come up with that beats the 100 blade/banners. Might stacks and permafury are just better DPS buffs, espec since bleeds ignore armor, than banners even after banners got buffed. However, this build suffers the same DPS hit as any other condition-heavy build if you group with lots of other bleed stacking teammates. It’s still excellent, but not quite as excellent as it is when you’re the only one using bleeds.

I’ve also run CoF 1 until my eyes were bleeding. It’s a perfect fit with those banner loving greatsword freaks. They get your 70% longer might stacks on top of their banners, and you get their banners. Also, greatsword warriors don’t bleed, so you’re not overlapping their. And as mentioned, mezzies create all those happy purple places you can spin in for chaos bolt fun.

Solo, it’s overkill in PvE. Then again, so is 100b. In PvP, you are the highest AoE DPS thing around (although you lose out on sticking major and superior runes so go with might buffing instead), but are also a delicate flower. In WvW, stay just back from the lead of the zerg so you can pounce on stuff without getting pounced on in return. Again, you have all that DPS, but no survival.

2 Major Water – 10% boon duration
2 Superior Water – 15% boon duration
2 Superior Monk – 15% boon duration

How is this suppos to work in spvp

you cant get major?

and water and monk gives 10% each in spvp

I mentioned the lack of major. Pick up 2 of any of the might duration runes instead. You end up at the same place for sPvP for yourself, and only slightly worse for the fury you give teammates.

monika,

Thank you for your input. It really is terrible having the highest possible warrior DPS. I mean, totally sucks and everything.

Vicarious,

I haz those builds (I haz lots of alts). The wells necro doesn’t have anywhere near the DPS. On the other hand, I can facetank zerker warriors without a care in the world since she has way, way more survival and a constant stream of blindness on your opponent negates whatever naughtiness they were planning.

The HGH engineer is so overrated. Mostly because HGH is overrated. I’m much happier with my nearly unkillable healer engineer. Still elixirs (cuz that’s all engineers have worth taking..except PvE farming then turrets are okayish), but focused on healing rather than might stacking. I can hold points long enough to get reinforcements no problemo.

Ellies have a hard choice with the no weapon switching. They can get some good AoE damage or they can get the amazing dagger build stuff (personally, I use daggers in sPvP, staff in WvW and PvE). But again, can’t get the kind of AoE DPS going that my warrior does even though they definitely can hit single targets harder (and ya, a d/d elly prolly eats my poor warrior for breakfast as no way a glass cannon warrior deals with the mobility/control of a well played d/d elly)

I’m surprised you didn’t bring up thieves as they really, really wreck this build. Thieves have pathetic AOE DPS, but they are masters at single target elimination. Oddly enough, my thief is actually a bunker build that uses boon stacking similar to this build (same runes, radically different equipment and skills)

Where this warrior build shines (I have three warriors btw) is in PvE, and WvW/sPvP ambush. You don’t want targets that have time to prepare to fight you. You want them hurt and running/dead before they start fighting back. Then again, that’s pretty much true of most warriors in sPvP. Even my tank is…lacking…when it comes to straight up 1v1 fights.

Vicarious.3047:

Xavori.3768:

In PvP, you are the highest AoE DPS thing around.

That’s simply not true at all and I’m seriously hoping that’s just part of your “trolltastic” troll…….

A warrior with 15-20 stacks of might has better AoE DPS with sword/axe than anything else I’ve come up with. All your sword autoattacks stacks bleed, and they’re cones. Might buffs both the direct and conditon damage. Warrior Axe 5 is the best melee AoE in the game at that point.

Might is 35 points of power (and condition damage) per stack at level 80.
15×35 (15 being the low end of where this build lives on might stacks in combat…20 is very possible solo, and 25 is normal if you have another shout warrior/might stacking buddy around) is 525 power bonus. Power is a linear buff to damage.

Might also buffs condition damage just as much. Even if you had no other condition damage buffs, 525 from might makes every bleed into a 69dps attack. So, 10 stacks of bleeding (easy peasy) is an extra 690 dps. If you get to 25 stacks of might/875 cond damage, that becomes 860 extra dps.

Anyway, just sitting in Lion’s arch spamming signet and justice, my warrior is over 3400 attack, 65% crit chance, over 600 cond damage, etc. While other classes can beat part of that (ie. I have a faberge cannon ranger with higher attack and higher direct damage on her Barrage), no other class can push those kind of numbers across the board.

Now, if I could might stack my ranger, sure, she could be better for her barrage, and her autoattacks pierce, so she could possibly top my warrior. However, in testing and gameplay, might stacked warriors win for top DPS because they can might stack so much easier than other classes.

( Trolltastic topic title is trolltastic )

The calculators don’t really work for this, so I’ll just write it out with explanations…

tl;dr version – 70% boon duration with shouts. Build has perma fury, swiftness, and 11-14 stacks of might OUT OF COMBAT with more in combat. Teammates get 6 stacks of might at 50% fury uptime. Silly high DPS ensues.

Traits

Strength 10
V – Berserker’s Power – moar damage with moar adrenaline

Arms 20
Precise strikes – 33% chance of bleed on crit
III – Deep Cuts – Bleeds last longer
VIII – Blademaster – 10% higher crit chance with sword

Defense 0 (cuz what self respecting warrior cares about survival)

Tactics 30 (cuz smart warrior is bestest)
30% boon duration (this is key)
VI – Empowered – bonus damage for every boon
VIII – Lung Capactiy – shouts recharge faster
XII – Vigorous Shouts – shouts heal (cuz why not…could also go with II)

Discipline 10
VI – Signet Mastery – faster recharge on signets (this is also key)

Gear is all zerker. Like every last bit. Runes, however…
2 Major Water – 10% boon duration
2 Superior Water – 15% boon duration
2 Superior Monk – 15% boon duration

Weapons are sword/axe. Greatsword is for boring warriors

(okay, really it’s about getting bleeds that get buffed to a fare thee well by the 15-20 stacks of might you end up with solo…25 is normal in groups…also, axe 5 inside a mezzie time warp creates 15 chaos bolts on top of the very high dps that attack has. This stacks a lot of confusion on your target)

Sup Sigil of Strength – chance of might on critical (hehehe)
Sup Sigil of Smothering – cuz CoF1 just begs for it. Otherwise, lots of things work here

In testing on dummies in the mists, this build is the only one I’ve come up with that beats the 100 blade/banners. Might stacks and permafury are just better DPS buffs, espec since bleeds ignore armor, than banners even after banners got buffed. However, this build suffers the same DPS hit as any other condition-heavy build if you group with lots of other bleed stacking teammates. It’s still excellent, but not quite as excellent as it is when you’re the only one using bleeds.

I’ve also run CoF 1 until my eyes were bleeding. It’s a perfect fit with those banner loving greatsword freaks. They get your 70% longer might stacks on top of their banners, and you get their banners. Also, greatsword warriors don’t bleed, so you’re not overlapping their. And as mentioned, mezzies create all those happy purple places you can spin in for chaos bolt fun.

Solo, it’s overkill in PvE. Then again, so is 100b. In PvP, you are the highest AoE DPS thing around (although you lose out on sticking major and superior runes so go with might buffing instead), but are also a delicate flower. In WvW, stay just back from the lead of the zerg so you can pounce on stuff without getting pounced on in return. Again, you have all that DPS, but no survival.

Softspoken.2410:

Part of it is the duration of the knockdown. Not only have you been interrupted, but you’re laying helpless on the floor in excess of 5 seconds if your stunbreaker is still recharging. It’s disproportionately long coming from a typical / silver mob.

Edit: Regarding the Ghost Eater, most of the coordination is managing his oozes and location. Once his shield goes down, he’s pretty helpless, and it’s pretty easy for everyone to see the “Now we hit as hard as we can” signal, what with the colour change, buff icon removed, and giant flash filling the screen.

As mentioned, he’s not particularly dangerous if you just make sure to keep out of his AoE pools, but I agree that it’s a long fight if you can’t fill & trigger traps quickly, or if you have to trigger too many. (imo, a group should be able to do it in 4 traps, 3 if they’re good at it, but if it takes 5 or 6 traps, the fight really drags on.)

That’s actual another problem with the new ‘interesting’.

It was pretty cool figuring out how this fight worked the first time. And it’s kinda fun to show people…for 2, maybe 3 traps. After that, the cool wears off and it’s just a long, tedious fight. I mean, still more interesting than Ghost Eater ver 1.0 which you could just facetank, even in full zerker gear, but this Ghost Eater ver 2.0 should have half the hitpoints it currently does.

Extra hitpoints don’t make fights ‘interesting’. They make them long and boring. Ghost Eater isn’t the only fight that suffers this problem. Heck, AC isn’t the only dungeon that suffers this problem.

I have 20+ alts. Your solution wouldn’t even phase me.

Instead, it was the fact I get bored farming.

Have a nice day!

p.s. IAm, if you ever ran AC story with me, I promise you you won’t need to dodge. Not even once. It’s all about the rocks

IamDudditts,

Kholer isn’t a learning curve. He’s a learning brick wall. “Hey, newbie, that Spider Queen is what’s called a boss. It wiped the party because most of you kept trying to dodge out of circles to big to dodge out of that last too long anyway which is why I kept telling you to quit dodging. Now, this guy Kholer, he’s also a boss. If you don’t dodge, you’ll be dead in a couple seconds…”

Again, not a problem for me. (side note, I didn’t learn to dodge by dying. I learned to dodge by practicing in open world until I could make ‘EVADE’ show up almost every time without having to consciously time it anymore. Then again, I’m wierd in that I’m a KESA player type where the E is explorer and that doesn’t mean just going to every nook and cranny of the game world (which I do) but also exploring how all the game mechanics work and AI ‘thinks’ etc). But it’s a huge problem for PUG groups I run with. I’m pretty sure if I built a game for players like me, there’d be maybe a hundred players total as I’m fairly evil (you never want me for a DM in a pen and paper RPG. You don’t want me on your Minecraft server. Not a griefer. Just really creative in getting people to kill themselves)

Kholer got skipped pre ‘interesting’ because frankly, the risk-reward ratio was out of whack. If players are skipping your content, you know something is wrong. You should fix it. You don’t fix risk-reward skewed too much to heavily towards risk by increasing the risk. Yet that’s exactly what ANet did.

Ayrilana,

When exactly do you look? Cuz I looked before I started typing my reply to IAm and there was 1 group and 1 player for AC. There were more people for every other dungeons with lots for fractals and CoF 1. I just looked again a second before typing this very sentence and while a bunch of new listings are up for things like Sorrow’s Embrace (seriously???), there is only 1 new one for AC.

You’re right gw2lfg isn’t everyone, but it’s a really good representation of people that actually want to run dungeons.

Oh, and this is a good place to make it clear I’m not complaining about difficulty. I’m usually pretty good at using ‘risk-reward’. Difficult content with good rewards would be a welcome addition to GW2. I enjoyed the clock tower at Halloween. It was difficult, but if you finished, you got an exotic. I ran the winter jump puzzle as a daily. I’m working towards trying to solo all of Arah using not-warriors. I’m all for difficult.

But I’m pretty opposed to Requires Nearly Perfect Gameplay Out of Low Level Players as that’s counter-intuitive. And I’m even more opposed to Requires NPC’s and Luck Rather Than Player Skill because that’s not difficult…that’s luck.

IamDuddits,

Kholer is not a good intro fight for new players. It’s a do or die fight. And dying repeatedly is not encouraging.

Kholer is pretty simple to dodge…for you and I. But a new player…not so much. One, you have to pay really close attention to his hand, all the while fighting and dealing with adds and whatnot. It’s also not as simple as seen glowy hand-dodge. You have to time it. Again, experienced players do that without thinking…new players…notsomuch.

Kholer’s mechanics would make sense in any of the dungeons after Sorrow’s. Most players by that point are really familiar with how the game works, dodging etc. But try to imagine this being the second boss that you ever faced? Or heck, just try to remember how many times you used to die when fighting him? And then add in all the frustration of the new spider queen right before this. How many players exactly do you think just give up after that?

Ayrilana,

It’s not lower. It’s freakin’ dead. There are more people looking for every other dungeon except CM. It’s also not about people doing other stuff. That just lowers the total number of groups. We’re looking at the groups running dungeons, and they’re just not running AC anymore.

Games are about fun. Most players have decided AC is not fun. It’s really that simple and really that obvious.

VoiceofUnreason,

The reason people skip Kholer is that after you’ve killed him once, maybe twice, you learn the risk/reward is horribly out of balance. He was a high risk low reward fight previously. Now, he’s higher risk with the same low reward. He’s also an absolutely-does-not-belong-in-a-newbie-dungeon kinda fight. If you miss a dodge, you’ll likely die. That’s not what players new to dungeons want to go through. Sure, I have a few toons that can survive being blended, but that’s because as soon as I get yanked, I know I have to throw up my bestest defenses while dodging out. Anything less than that, and even tanks get dead.

And I bring up the bugged/bad NPC’s because it’s common. It’s also to me a cardinal sin of game design. Players should never, ever, be punished for things totally beyond their control, and all three paths can do that. Hodgins really can keep tossing fire rings off where there is no way to lead the mob adds into them, and it doesn’t take long for that many adds to flatten a party. Deltha can either a) completely bug out, or worse b) get killed/respawned which spawns a double wave of ghosts. B is far worse than A because at least with A you don’t end up dead before you realize you can’t complete the dungeon. And Grast…I think I’ve had him not go kamikaze maybe once since the ‘interesting’ fights were added. In an extreme DPS party, you can get away with that since you’re only going to need him to bubble once. In normal parties, hahahaha, he dies then you die. Ya, great fun in any of that.

So what AC has become is a lot of frustration without a lot of reward. Sure, it’s still doable. But I have so many other things I can do in GW2, most of which I succeed or fail at based on my skill not random NPC garbage. And while I’m all for the devs working on improving dungeons, AC isn’t an improvement in any way that is fun. The boss fights are more tedious. They don’t make sense for a true group of players at level 35 (as opposed to the party of vets who built a near perfect group of level 35 alts to run it), and there isn’t any point to running it when you get better rewards from a whole lot of other options.

And, if the devs keep making more ‘interesting’ dungeons like AC, those other options will start to be ‘play something other than GW2’ which would make me a sad panda as I really like GW2.

For those worried that small groups of ellies would hold forts against zergs…

I guess it’d take maybe a day, worst case two, before setting up trebs outside of elly range became the tactic of choice. You already see that a bit in EB for the teams attacking some of the trickier keeps. I’m all for this. If the elly’s stay inside the walls, they’ll lose when the walls go down and the zerg rushes past their meteors with little to no damage.

On the other hand, the ellies will want to blast the people around the trebs which sets up a fight to keep people away from the trebs, and since AoE is now dangerous, this fight will naturally spread itself out with people dodging out of red circles and having to pay attention and whatnot.

Just ran AC path 3 for the first time in a long time. Epic fail.

Got to watch new Kholer and new troll duke it out. Was afk eating sandwiches for much of that. The group jumped in when they were both almost dead, and the rest of my group ended up downed. My tank rogue, who knew exactly how tough the new mobs were, was plinking away with shortbow and hence not splattered by troll spam that leaves people vulnerable to Kholer hook and blend. However, we at least killed them.

Off to the collectors. First attempt, epic fail. Decent DPS, but eventually enough knockdown spamming gravelings get out that your DPS goes to hell as you’re on the ground all the time. So I switched to elly because kitten it, we’re gettin’ this done. She has no business being in a dungeon, but she has ice bows. We win. Stick with her through next set of mounds then switch back.

The first attempt at Colossus ended in fail because while I didn’t want to stack, the party did. Colossus knocked them out of their happy little corner and with Grast not being in on the stacking thing, that meant they were roadkill from rocks. Second attempt we tried to play fair. Grast, however, had other plans and kept rushing in front of Colossus’s AoE attacks. Dead Grast. Dead party. Third attempt goes the same way. Grast just doesn’t have a brain in his ghostly head. Fourth attempt we pulled Colossus to the tunnel where his rocks can’t get to. NPC’s pulled him back out. Party (except me) gets killed trying to pull him back. I only survive because as soon as rocks started falling, I made a beeline to the ledge.

Party disbands. Can’t blame them. Can’t count on the NPC’s to do their job, but can count on them to screw up the cheese tactics. Shouldn’t need cheese tactics in the first place, but hey, at least the fight is more “interesting” now.

p.s. I have actually finished all the new AC paths. Path 1 isn’t bad if you skip Kholer and have very high DPS as you can burn down the burrows and Howling King quick. Path 2 is entirely about whether or not Detha bugs. Oh ya, also need high DPS to kill the ghosts. Path 3 is a mess. The burrows spawn big gravelings more often, and they can get a couple out before even ice bows can burn them down. Again, if you don’t have a high DPS party, this is going to be fail. Then, Colossus comes down to having either someone who can interrupt his howl (ie. PUGs need not apply) or dumb luck that Grast isn’t dead sometime between the first and second rock fall.

There is nothing about being reliant on NPC’s that is fun, and all three paths come down to NPC’s, not players, being the key component of the fight. This is horribad design.

I’ll fifth or sixth this recommendation. I’ve carefully gone through and thought I got all the baubles, but apparently missed something somewhere. Very annoying as I have all the other achievements now.

It’s not that the dungeon is more challenging. It’s that you can fail through no fault of your own.

If you don’t have enough DPS in the part when you hit the defend Hodgypoo or defend collectors part, you will fail because infinite mobs with knockdown > players.

If your NPC pals bug, you fail.

If your NPC pals don’t bug but instead throw fire circles over in the corner or decide not to put up the dome quick enough, you fail.

If not everyone in the group is a good (don’t have to be great, but at least good) experienced player, you will fail as soon as the weak link goes down and the rest of the party is shorthanded.

The bottom line is that AC went from a good introductory dungeon to likely the third hardest (Arah hardest, Caudecus second). In fact, it’s now a good idea to tell players to skip AC and CM until level 80 so that they don’t get frustrated and decide that dungeons are garbage.

Condition damage is vastly inferior to direct damage, and likely always will be.

25 stack limitation pretty much wrecks long bleeds.

Trash mobs die before most conditions finish proc’ing.

Thieves, shout warriors/guardians, necros shed conditions with ease.

Mesmers just give you your conditions back.

Condition could be a cool thing if they were simplified in application. No more stacks, just give bleed and burning different secondary effects instead of straight dps (ala poison) so that they are differentiated by those secondary effects, not by how quickly they build up to max damage. Remove most of the condition removers and replace with one utility skill per class that acts as the only way to remove conditions. No more thief default heal being condition removal, etc. All subsequent applications of a condition increase both the damage and duration of that condition. So every time someone hits you with burning, it ticks for a couple extra points and one tick longer, etc.

This would greatly simplify balancing condition damage compared to direct damage as well as reduce the CPU load for tracking conditions on the servers.

It won’t happen tho. Too much creative energy was invested in the original system, and its really hard to break that kind of creative inertia no matter how obvious its flaws are.

timecookie.8570:

If you consider PvE being the only thing you can do in GW2, yeah you’re right. Otherwise not.

I prefer my ranger and thief for WvW. I’m not that fond of sPvP which is odd since that’s all I do in Champs.