Guild Wars 2

CM is harder than most other dungeons tbh.
Hell besides 1-2 bosses in arah I have never had a problem with it. CM on the other hand… the trash groups have

1. snipers who can and will 2 shot players (oh and they’ll both shoot at 1 player!)
2. Bomb throwing kitten, chain knockdowns are super fun!
3. an enemy who heals his allies, while maintaining protection and regeneration full time, making him the one you have to prioritize despite being the tankiest because Anet decided on making everything silver and thus impossible to burst before they get the fullheals.
4. Bosses that would be well designed if you werent forced to fight them in stupid locations. Low ceilings and small spaces do NOT mesh well with giant AOE’s. I can solo/duo the plague cloud boss in a relatively easy fashion, but if that bomb throwing jerkface decides I need to die then im dead with no doubts about it.

A revamp to CM imo would see

1. lower damage on trash (you should never be 1 shot from 2000 range. That hilariously bullkitten. Even worse when you then have to walk through the hallway, fight another group of trash with these same snipers shooting you, before you can kill them. Not even a 5 man guardian team has enough reflections to deal with that bullkitten)
2. Either make the healers non silver, or the rest of the monsters non silver. There’s no strategy to the fights beyond pile on the one who can heal and hope we get him before we’re obliterated. Having non silver trash (besides him) would give you the option to burst targets inbetween his heals, or stick to the pile on the healer method. Giving players more tactical options = good
3. Lessen the AOE of some bosses. Tight spaces and AOE is bad design. There’s really no two ways about that.
4. Lessen the stunlocking of some bosses. A player should be punished for being hit. Of that there’s no doubt. A player should not however be forced to sit there unable to do anything for 10 seconds as the boss stunlocks them and slowly kills them, and anyone who attempts to assist. It also turns the fight into a luckfest. Even running 3 stunbreaks and dodging and kiting like crazy if the boss is just stuck to you aggrowise you are completely and utterly boned. Part of this problem is the lack of concrete aggro mechanics, if there was some way for another party member to get the boss to stop hitting you and instead chase them you could swap aggro based on stunbreak cooldowns. But no, you (anet) went with weird kitten aggro rules that dont seem present for bosses, and so we’re (again) deprived of a tactical solution to our problems.

I’ve been a dungeon master for months, and I will not touch any path beyond the one with the plague boss at the end.

have you ever looked really closely at the charr armor?

Here’s a fun one. The charr light CoF pants turn the tail into a flame.
Let me try and explain that. There’s a set of armor that has an additional effect for charr and charr only. This armor piece was basically DESIGNED around that portion of the charr body.
It clips with the tail.
In fact, there’s not even hole in the robe, the tail just goes straight through it. Even some other armors attempt to put a little tailguard thing on there that sways.

You get the same kitten with the charr cultural armor (as in the one that only charr can wear, and thus had to be designed with the charr in mind 100% of the way)
Clips with the head and tail for about 90% of charr.

Even the charr armor seems like it was made to be worn by anyone but.

1. You get your personal reward level or the level of the fractal, whichever is lower. I believe this means you cannot get a ring if your reward level is below the level of the fractal.

Tested: We did fractal 28. My friends reward levels were 30, 28, 41, and I dont know what the PuG had. They all got 10 fractal relics per chest. I however was only receiving 9, as my personal reward level was 23 at the time. This indicates that I was getting my minimum (23) and they were getting theirs (28)

2. I believe it should be the level of the instance to determine the drop. I have not tested this, but it seems like it would be logical, as the monsters do not lose strength if you bring lower fractal level players into a higher fractal, thus they should be the same monsters, with the same loot tables.

3. I believe it will give you the level 26 loot scaling. I dont have any evidence for this, but it would seem sort of weird to not do it that way.

My friend who does 5 fractal 20’s and 3 30’s every day for the past month or so had this to say to me today.

“They have totally nerfed the fractal drop rates. Over 5 of my characters, and 8 dailies i’ve gotten 3 rares today. I used to get 2 rares a daily before the patch”

When I told him he was being unlucky he pointed out that he’s done at least 30 fractals since the patch, and not once have they given him the same level of rare drops as he got before it.

It’s not perfect evidence, but it’s certainly a disturbing pattern.

(note: discounting the end chest after maw, which basically always has rares. He was talking about drops from monsters, and the individual fractal chests)

Grawl fractal is cake with a guardian or ranger who knows their kitten. And an absolute nightmare if you dont have one.

There’s no better way to deal with the elemental phase than either blocking all the elemental attacks, grouping them up, and nuking them down in ~8 seconds, or immobilizing the shaman for 20 seconds while you deal with the elementals with your new found time.

It can trip you up the first time but here are a few tips

1. Waves do not always spawn when everything is dead. Some will spawn when there is 1 monster left alive from the previous wave, always be alert when killing the final 1-2 charr of a wave.
2. The wave 3 (IIRC) is 4 imp summoning guys. They will quickly overwhelm the team if left alone. They however always spawn in the same place, the back right corner, setup around there ahead of time and be ready to knock them down and destroy them as they spawn
3. The Smokelord comes in wave 4 (IIRC) focus him first. Regardless of the hp of anything else. He’s the most dangerous target there by far. His moves have very unnoticeable animations, and they smack you for 9k+.
4. Any elementalist in your group can bring glyph of renewal to revive 3 npcs partway through the fight. They’re not hyper-durable but they can bring much needed relief at a critical moment. (Warriors can do similar with a warbanner, and I believe necromancers can also rez 3 people at once?)
5. When in doubt, stealth it out. invisible people will still stop the circle from being capped. If you can break combat while stealthed inside the circle (say, with a spykit or 30) your allies can revive and come back into the fight nice and refreshed. The flame legion does not get the same luxury.
6. Support based abilities may be stronger than direct damage. A guardian with shield of the avenger can lessen damage from the flame legion archers, or a sanctuary may prevent the shadowblades from bursting down your squishier allies. Simply rolling full DPS is generally not the best solution for a prolonged fight in close quarters like this
7. Teamwork is key.

I assume they just give you enough raw materials to reach a certain level of chef (like 125 or something)

It’s probably not worth it for anyone who already has them maxed.

Keep in mind the laurel prices seem high now, but for someone just starting out, it would only be 3 days before they could then buy one to boost their new characters crafting. So it’s probably designed around those people, rather than us level 80’s.

JQ has had it open for the past 2 days. Id assume that most high/full population servers have it open due to people wanting to actually do the temple events again.

I actually got 4 rares from the shaman world boss in wayfarers yesterday o.o

It’s harder to PuG them by a good margin now.

1. Bosses got stronger
2. Tricks got removed
3. People keep joining fractals without the AR that is absolutely essential for some bosses

It’s generally not worth the hassle to roll with anyone who isnt a guildy.

Here’s a fun one.
Go to the EBG jump puzzle. When you climb out of the well, follow the path. But stop before you jump on the pillars with the spikes in them. Look around the side of the cliff and you’ll see some boulders on the floor. Jump to that and then look into the middle of the big room.

The plateau in the middle there? You used to be able to reach that with ride the lightning. You’d use it and end up right on top of it. I used it as a shortcut every day. Try it now and see where you end up.

There are also a variety of jumps in lions arch that RTL doesnt work on anymore. Go up the staircase by the… bar? I think it’s a bar. The place in front of the order of whispers hideout. From that wooden staircase you used to be able to Ride the lightning onto the bank roof. Try it now.

If you play on the jade quarry server I can show you another spot to kill giants. Multiple giants, non champ/veterans.

it’s a server secret though. We shall be a server of giant slayers, fear us o.o

RyuDragnier.9476:

Clouded, I NEVER got that much doing a daily. At most I always got 20% of my level. It’s been that way for at least a month.

you were doing something wrong. I know exactly what he’s talking about.
Every time you finished a new segment of the daily you got a chunk of exp. Much like when you discover and area or waypoint. It flew down into your exp bar and went ding ding ding. This doesnt happen as often during the dailies anymore because there’s less overall segments.

you know how you’d be doing gathering, and even before you got 20 gathers it would pop up on the side and tell you you’d done like 10/20 or whatever? That gave you a bunch of bonus exp. That doesnt occur anymore.

I know 3 people who all got dusk from a mob in the ascalon fractal.
Eerily enough they all got it in the exact same place too. Not the furthest north gate, but the one below that.

There is actually a spot that spawns normal giants. It spawns more than one if there are multiple players. They’re not even veteran level.

but im keeping to to myself! Mwahahahaha!

But in all serious if you’re actually going for giant slayer shoot me a PM. Extra people means more giants!

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Zenyatoo.4059:

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Dungeons do actually scale based on players. Kind of. Bosses definitely do. They have much less hp with 1 player than 5. Unfortunately the normal monsters still have gobs of it ;__;

(for those curious about the less hp with 1 player thing. Go load up the aquatic fractal and fight the jellyfish. Lure him into the lightning with 5 players, record how very little his hp bar moved. Now reset the fight and go in solo and try it, he takes way way more if there’s only 1 person in the room. It’s probably the most noticeable example I can think of.)

Pretty sure dungeons don’t scale due to parties. What you are experiencing could be two things. You are on a different fotm level. But if you are on the same fotm level. You probably have better control over luring the jellyfish to electric cages, which do the most damage to the boss thus making it more effective than a party of 5 which aggro the boss away time to time if not coordinated well.

Also @OP, dungeon scaling is a good idea, but the way they were currently designed—-it’s not possible. They may add newer dungeons comptabile for scaling but redesigning a lot of paths currently would just be too time-consuming.

Nope. Bosses totally have less hp when you have less people. Go try it out before being dismissive please. The jellyfish was just the best example, because the damage is the same from the lightning which lets you see the biggest impact. But you can totally go try it on any dungeon boss.

It’s the same principle inside and outside of dungeons. Veterans or higher have more hp when more players are nearby. Thus, with only 1 person in the dungeon, bosses will have less hp than if there were 5 people next to them.

Or, try not being very hasty and read the gw2 wiki, http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dungeon

It says it does NOT scale. Whatever your are experiencing is either a bug or a placebo effect. And I have done AC exp p1 solo with kohler, gravelings, and spider, it has not changed.

The wiki is edited by users just like us. They are not omniscient beings as much as they would like to be (would make editing a heck of a lot easier o.o)

When you solo AC, you may not notice the change simply because you deal less damage than a full party does. Which is why I suggested you try it with the jellyfish (as the lightning damage is a constant)

Again, please dont dismiss things because someone else has told you they’re false, and your very uncontrolled tests say the same thing. ;__;

nicbet.1820:

So, you bring the example of the Volcano fractal. Let me elaborate.

You set down shield of the avenger, the next 3 attacks with firebolts, or the circles on the ground which drop fire from above or knock down will be directed such that they hit the stationary Shield of Avenger.

In the next phase, the fight on the island, every time I set down SoA, the next attack ALWAYS was a fire storm on the stationary shield killing it within 5-8 seconds of casting it.

We did these fights twice for the regular shaman and five times for the infused shaman and it was always the same. You cast the shield, the boss will prioritize killing it. No throwing it down while already taking damage. The shield will start shielding, it’s stationary, the boss will put down an attack that kills it. End of story.

This wasnt happening to us. Our shield of the avenger never died during the elemental phase. It simply ended naturally. We may do the volcano slightly differently though. We focus the elementals over the shaman, and they cant hurt the shield. The shaman I cripple, freeze, pushback, we fear him away, and immobilize too. Oh and stun I guess. Basically we stop the shaman from moving while we deal with the elementals. When the shaman is attacking us again, the shield has already dissipated, it’s job done. Similar things occurred every time it was used. The shield would last as long as we needed it. I fear you may be either unlucky, or using it incorrectly. When my guild guardians get on, ill ask them if they’re doing anything different.

Redscope.6215:

Jedbacca.6297:

I still noted teams attempting to utilize culling to their advantage after the patch went through. This saddened the SF team

Speaking of which, about 2-3 hours after the patch in T2 WvW, the GSCH guild had a massive culling portal bomb attempt and immediately failed.

You should have seen all the red downed arrows. It was amazing.

Props to GSCH for failing so hard, I didn’t think it was possible to be that reliant on exploiting a buggy mechanic.

AGG tried something like that to defend bay yesterday. I saw them all clumped and then vanished. Our whole JQ zerg stopped and started dropping AOE’s and attacks all around us. About 15 seconds later crops of red arrows started to sprout all over my screen.

Proper scouting > culling everytime! :o

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Zenyatoo.4059:

Dungeons do actually scale based on players. Kind of. Bosses definitely do. They have much less hp with 1 player than 5. Unfortunately the normal monsters still have gobs of it ;__;

(for those curious about the less hp with 1 player thing. Go load up the aquatic fractal and fight the jellyfish. Lure him into the lightning with 5 players, record how very little his hp bar moved. Now reset the fight and go in solo and try it, he takes way way more if there’s only 1 person in the room. It’s probably the most noticeable example I can think of.)

Pretty sure dungeons don’t scale due to parties. What you are experiencing could be two things. You are on a different fotm level. But if you are on the same fotm level. You probably have better control over luring the jellyfish to electric cages, which do the most damage to the boss thus making it more effective than a party of 5 which aggro the boss away time to time if not coordinated well.

Also @OP, dungeon scaling is a good idea, but the way they were currently designed—-it’s not possible. They may add newer dungeons comptabile for scaling but redesigning a lot of paths currently would just be too time-consuming.

Nope. Bosses totally have less hp when you have less people. Go try it out before being dismissive please. The jellyfish was just the best example, because the damage is the same from the lightning which lets you see the biggest impact. But you can totally go try it on any dungeon boss.

It’s the same principle inside and outside of dungeons. Veterans or higher have more hp when more players are nearby. Thus, with only 1 person in the dungeon, bosses will have less hp than if there were 5 people next to them.

Maybe you shouldnt enforce your will on other players like that?

People skip for a variety of reasons. But it really boils down to a plain simple truth.
Killing trash isnt fun or profitable.
The first bit there is the real important one. Killing trash isnt fun.
This is a game.
We play it to have fun.
Ergo, we will avoid activities we find unfun.
instead of forcing people to do unfun things, make them fun, and people will do them anyway.

Luckily, I think Anet has already reached this conclusion, rather than listening to people like the OP.

I think you guys are doing something wrong? Every guardian in my guild is still having absolutely no problems with their shields on fractal 30+. I honestly dont think I saw it die once when they came to 28 to help me. We camped underneath it for the full duration of the elementals in volcano, the harpies in uncharted, and more.

Perhaps you shouldnt be throwing it down while you’re already taking damage? Preempt things with it, or dodge roll before you throw it up so the attacks dont immediately hit it before it gets placed down.

Dungeons do actually scale based on players. Kind of. Bosses definitely do. They have much less hp with 1 player than 5. Unfortunately the normal monsters still have gobs of it ;__;

(for those curious about the less hp with 1 player thing. Go load up the aquatic fractal and fight the jellyfish. Lure him into the lightning with 5 players, record how very little his hp bar moved. Now reset the fight and go in solo and try it, he takes way way more if there’s only 1 person in the room. It’s probably the most noticeable example I can think of.)

Writetyper.1985:

no brakes on this train

EDIT: I’ve also found it was possible to dodge the bubble and I don’t use reckless dodge, as well as it being possible on my engineer and mesmer. It’s weird to explain, if you dodge when he begins the animation you get knocked down and take one tick of the damage, but end out outside the bubble so you can walk away. Couldn’t do it consistently though.

you can do a similar thing with elementalist (if im thinking about the right thing)
When he does the animation, like, mid… throw? kinda. He’s got his hands in the air and is about to thrust them down to place the bubble. If you use the ele fire 4 on staff the dodge roll takes you far enough back to completely avoid the damage and knockdown. Then lupi sits there staring at his empty bubble for a bit while everyone smacks him.

Unfortunately elementalist staff is probably not the best tool for solo’ing lupi on ele

Joe.2780:

Hey guys! I am still a little confused :-/ How do I get this armor? I keep seeing everywhere that I get it from Karma merchants in Fireheart Rise. Is that true? I saw on GW2Wiki that the armors the karma merchants offer are part of the PVP Dark Armor? But I am looking for the PVE Version of the Tactical Armor.

I believe they meant renown hearts. When you finish a renown heart the renown heart NPC (located as the actual heart on the map) has a variety of items you can buy for karma. Usually armor and weapons or accessories. Fireheart rise renown hearts give the tactical gear.

Iehova.9518:

We need more info.

1. Does it stack with omnombars and scavenger runes?
2. Will it stack with itself (when the other utility slots get released)?
3. Which’ll be the most profitable path in terms of dosh per hour until DR?
4. +20% dosh and AR infusion, WHEN?

Oh and don’t forget the +30% dosh booster for laurels. Prepare to swim in dosh.

1. probably. They stack with each other dont they?
2. probably, see one.
3. Either CoF or AC path 2. I’d make a stronger case for AC though. The spider queen, troll, kholer, 2 champion skelk, and the boss all drop money (IIRC) meaning that the things will work on them.

1. I believe they must be the level of the food.
2. Events like this are complicated! The beginning which is meant to happen today (jan 29th at around noon PST) will most likely be here for a while, if it’s anything like their other events, probably 2 full days or so. There will then be other events that show up. Whether these will erase the old ones, or simply be additions to them I do not know. But if I were to hazard a guess? I’d say the old ones will continue to exist until the event ends officially. As for the event ending, they traditionally have ended them with a large 1 time event, this one is only 1 time, and you will miss out on it if you cant play during the day that it’s ongoing. However they may change how it works due to the feedback they received from the last 1 time event.
3. Yes. Backpacks that have no visual model can become the quaggan backpack through the transmute. Transmuting order is Quaggan, old backpiece, old backpiece. This will give you the visual model of the Quaggan, with the stats and gem of whatever backpiece you just transmuted it with.

Psynocide.4965:

Does this mean I won’t be able to solo it now?

Bosses scale in HP (and IIRC Damage) based on players near them. This affects pretty much every monster stronger than a veteran. You may find grenth is easier solo than with a large party. I know back in the day I preferred 3 manning him, as it only spawned like 2 wraiths, which 1 person could np solo while the others were assured to keep grenth away from jonez.

I did a fractal 28 at personal reward level 23. We still went to maw and I still received the daily bonus chest with 30 fractals and the pristine one.

walked around diessa trying to find the flame and frost thing.
Decided to go fight the giant at naegling.
a 2+ second windup on his attack that when you dodge roll can give you 1-3 evade proc’s for the daily? Easiest daily of my life.

Malediktus.9250:

DeathPanel.8362:

Malediktus.9250:

Oh you have to run back for 3minutes? Big deal. Its a low punishment for wiping. I think wiping should cause the dungeon to fail so you have to restart completly.

Good thing you aren’t the one in charge of decisions about the game then.

If you did that GW2 would lose a pretty big portion of the player base in the first week.

Explorer dungeons are the elite areas of GW2. When you failed elite areas in GW1 you had to start over. Much better back then.
And its funny when people threaten to quit because they failed something. They should man up and get better. Its not like theres anything challanging in this game currently.

However elite zones in GW1 allowed you to respawn your allies when they were full dead. With skills. At a range. One of which moved them away, allowing you to escape a wipe if one of your players with those rez skills got away. The situations are a little different ;p

120K karma. Bought 23 boxes IIRC. Got enough karma to get more and more and so on. Ended up buying an opening a total of 51 boxes.

2 onyx lodestones, 7 obby shards, and 76silver worth of the vendor trash item. All in all about 4g.

Honestly this change seems designed to make you hate your fellow players.

before when a PuG from my party died we were in a harder fight, but he could come back. Now any death is essentially permanent (LOL if you think you’re going to full revive someone mid combat in any real situation) so any one who kittens up enough to die is immediately hated.

moreover the dead person feels like kitten because they cant do anything. They have to sit there and watch their team either A. complete content without them or B. watch their team fail, which will most likely be blamed on their death. Neither of these is good options!

Awesome.6120:

You do a combo finisher inside a combo field. Simple as.

inside or through a combo field*

“Glyph of Renewal: Increased this skill’s cast time while underwater from 1 second to 3.5 seconds.”

I… you… what? Why anet. Just why. No one even used it at 1 second. Does anyone seriously use this skill underwater (or above it for that matter) unless it’s for NPC’s?

rest of the changes seem nice though.

“Vapor Form: This skill will no longer allow players to rally off of kills that grant zero experience. This skill will now also properly restore death state on completion.”

Properly restore death state? Does that mean no more death penalty when you use it? That seems… OP as kitten tbh. Sure it was aggravating dying to your own vapor form, but honestly if 3 vapor forms werent enough to live then your situation was deadly enough that no one could have survived regardless of class (except maybe guardian and that OP downed heal! o.o )

MokahTGS.7850:

I just don’t understand what problem this addition is supposed to be addressing.

You kill a monster
Monster drops an exotic
you dont see the glow on the monster (perhaps it’s buried under another set of corpses, perhaps it’s slightly in a wall)
You are now denied an exotic.

new system
You kill a monster
Monster drops an exotic
Chest appears in your lower right hand corner
chest contains exotic
you now have that exotic

It’s basically making it hard/impossible to miss loot of high value as it will automatically be picked up and deposited into a chest attached to your UI that you can open at your leisure. It’s rather convenient.

Azure Prower.8701:

Kill a million yaks.

Use a million supplies.

Yeah… WvW titles are unreasonable.

The defending stonemist title requires you to defend it a million times IIRC.
This takes 3 minutes per defense. Or 3million minutes. Which is 50,000 hours. or about 5.7 years.

5.7 straight years of nothing but standing inside and defending a stonemist castle which is constantly under attack.

Its for the priory member near ancient demetra in… I want to say harathi hinterlands? Far west of the zone. You talk to her and she takes the tablet, giving you partial completion of the heart.

Malediktus.9250:

Its an extremly buggy achievement, some dungeon pathes do not count towards it at all.

from my understanding it works like this:
It counts paths for points. The idea is that you do 3 paths of a dungeon, and this is 1 point.
But you can earn it by doing the same path over and over again. So instead of doing say AC123, TA123, Arah123, HoTW123 and CoF123. You could do CoF1 x15 and get the same amount of points towards it.

Thus when you complete a path and dont receive a point, it’s because you’re still 1-2 paths away from your next point in it.

Vox Hollow.2736:

@Zenyatoo

Elitist is an epitaph first, and a description second.
If somebody’s calling somebody that, it might be an evaluation less of how goal-oriented and picky they may be but how much tact and consideration they’re exercising. For example; somebody with social graces would be able to avoid putting themselves in a situation where they have to kick somebody in the first place. A person with a respect for other people wouldn’t so wantonly waste their time when clear and honest communication could have avoided it.

It’s hard to not get in those situations where you have to kick when people are willingly ignorant and/or non-reading.

if you put up on the LFG
“Looking for Full DPS warriors”. You fully expect every person who joins your group to have read that, and comprehended what full DPS as well as warriors means. Any guardian, or ranger, or ele, or ETC gets the boot. And a lot of them will complain and call you elitist. This is not due to a lack of “social grace” on the parties part. They were explicitly clear.

For example if you check the lfg site you see a bunch of posts like these
“LF1M, dps warriors only” <— taken directly from the LFG site when I made this post
I would bet you 2 gold that at least 3 non warriors tried to join that party. Or a warrior wearing non-bezerker gear. These people do not deserve party slots, nor do they get to complain about any form of elitism o.o

UrFortuneCookie.4816:

I have to ask, did JQ enjoy my 5 hr golem at Langor today (it was alive for like 8 hours)

that was some stupid kitten.
From JQ that is. Every single person their was dry humping oda the entire time. I needed 5 people to follow me for 10 minutes and we could have swept bravost, durios and umberglade. Hell we duo’d durios at one point but BG took it back because lol 2 people defense.

But no, lets just dry hump oda who is trying (and failing) to treb langor all day long.

Ofc they did eventually turn around when blackgate broke the other side of the keep wall. And then surprise surprise took bravost durios and umber in about 10 minutes because I had trebbed the gates and walls down on both of them half an hour ago.

JQ players, for the love of god, think with your heads sometimes rather than just following a commander pin.
Or if you really have to follow a commander pin, follow the commander who is interested in actually getting kitten done rather than turtling up infront of langor for 3 hours doing nothing useful ;__;

you’re most likely missing an area that is devoid of poi’s, hearts, skill points ETC.

look around for any uncovered spots.

If I was to hazard a guess, i’d say it’s probably in harathi hinterlands, far right, and around the middle → top portions of the map. There’s 2ish area’s up there that people usually dont get. I think it’s called hidden ourobond?

Note: This is not aimed at anyone in this thread. I just need to rant for a bit because I dislike people who will come here to bash elitism.

The elitism argument is stupid and I wish people would stop using it.

here, lets take some hypothetical scenario’s.

Lets say players suddenly started discriminating based on achievement score (lets pretend it was actually worth something regarding player skill)
So a party of 3000+ kicks you, a 2000 player out of their group. This is clearly elitism, and discrimination.

BUT
you have no right to be angry. Because, if you were to then create a group of 2000’s, you’d also be able to do the content. All you have to do is ask yourself 1 question.
Will we finish this content as quickly, easily, or as well as the 3000 group?

If yes, then you have absolutely no problem. Let the 3000’s be elitists and stick to your 2000 party, you’re getting to do everything they do just as well.

If no, then you have absolutely no right to enforce yourself on that group. You are accepting that 2000 players are generally worse than 3000 players, and thus you do not deserve a slot in that group, regardless of your skill. Even if you play at the level of a 4000 player, you cannot prove that without forcing the 3000 group to take you on faith. Which is not fair to them. It’s entitlement.

A similar thing occurs at CoF. The mesmer/warrior parties clear the content faster than almost every other combination (call me crazy but I actually prefer 2 warriors 1 thief 2 mesmer.)
Thus they see no reason to take other classes. And you cannot enforce your will upon 4 other people because you disagree with their behavior.
There’s a similar thing about armor. Especially when a group asks specifically for full DPS, and you show up in soldiers or knights gear and claim it’s fine.

Elitism is designed to allow groups to quickly and safely clear content. It wouldnt exist if it didnt work. And claiming that it’s a bad thing is a self-defeating argument.

Get a guild, get better at the game, and if you really want, prove to the elitists that your build composition works better, then rub it in their faces going nyeh-nyeh-nyeh.

His point is still valid. You should (and I believe Anet said will be able) to obtain ascended gear from WvWvW, either by badges, or some other system.

basically fractals is a set of 10 mini dungeons. When you enter you get 3 random ones in a row. Finishing all 3 increases your fractal level.

Even level fractal levels (2,4,6,8,10, and so on) Also have a 4th fractal at the end of them which is always the ocean fractal (jade sea themed)

Fractals are usually pretty short, each one taking 5-30 minutes based on how good your party is, and which fractal you get.

The ascended gear comes in the form of rings and backpacks.
The rings are random drops from the daily chests. These daily chests can contain rings starting at fractal level 10. At level 20 you can start to get infused versions of these rings from the chest. Infused versions start off with an innate 5 agony resistance (a type of resistance that lowers the damage of a fractal only boss condition.)
The backpacks can be made in the mystic forge with large amounts of ecto and t6 materials. Or eventually bought and upgraded in the forge using materials gained from fractals, and fractal relics (fractal relics are much like dungeon tokens, you get them as you complete fractals)

Ascended gear has higher stats than exotic gear. And some hard to find stat combinations are present on the ascended gear. Power/Tough/Vitality rings for instance are quite rare in exotic form (only the WvWvW gear and some very rare exotics)

Ascended gear can also be infused. There are 2 types of infusion. Innate infusion and normal infusion. Innate infusion will change the name of the item directly. You can create innate infused rings and backpieces in the mystic forge. You can also receive the rings as daily rewards past fractal level 20.
The second type of infusion relies on putting an infusion inside an infusion slot (much like you would put a gem into a normal accessory) these infusions can be bought for fractal relics, or made in the mystic forge.

When people refer to “doing their fractal daily” they mean doing an even number fractal level in order to get the daily reward chest (and thus a chance at a ring, or other better loot)
Fractals have multiple daily levels. 2,4,6,8 make up the first level. If you do fractal level 2 and then fractal level 4, you will only receive 1 daily chest, that of the level 2 fractal. However if you then do fractal level 10, you will receive another daily chest, that of the fractal level 10.

Agony is a new condition caused by some skills from bosses in fractals. It rapidly drains your hp and has no cure. The only way to mitigate this damage is agony resistance gained by infusions (of either variety) on your ascended gear. Agony will start to show up at fractal level 10.

That’s about it for the ascended gear. I recommend entering the fractal portal and talking to the golems. One of them has a second buy tab with a list of ascended rings, this will help you see which rings you may want, as well as familiarizing you with their stats and so on. I would also check the wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page) when it comes to any and all mystic forge recipes.

LiuliRenai.3928:

RoRo.8270:

You said you had over 50 globs… You do know you can turn globs into vials?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vial_of_Condensed_Mists_Essence

I did say globs of ectoplasm, not glob of coagulated mists.

I tried farming the veteran mobs in Urban alone, but they seem to never drop anything at all. Did I somehow hit DR while trying to get the right instance? Or do mobs there only drop items after the gate is broken into?

non-respawning monsters drop loot. The monsters in front of the gate in urban all respawn infinitely IIRC. So yes, you must break through the gate and kill those groups between the gate and the main courtyard in order to get vials.

EDIT:
My advice for breaking the gate is to bring stability, as well as plenty of ranged attacks. Deal with the ballista, then the burning oil. With a bit of luck your NPC’s will go for the boss automatically, and they can kill her by themselves at fractal level 1. Giving you time to kill the arrow carts, oil, respawning ballista, and do DPS from (reasonable) safety.

For monsters inside the gate, aggro them at range, then prepare to dodge roll the warriors charging at you. From there it’s simply survival, and trying to get the NPC’s to aid you. I did it as full DPS, so survivability isnt a major major deal.
I would not recommend trying to clear the courtyard solo. It’s a pain. I died 3 times.

Thobek.1730:

jojojoon.8607:

Here is an example. If you’re going to pick a server to join, which server would you pick when the final score of each server is this:

Server A 200,000
Server B 60,000
Server C 50,000

Now, if these are the scores, who would you pick?

Server A 110,000
Server B 100,000
Server C 90,000

First scenario is server B and C taking points from each other to allow A to build a huge lead. Second scenario is all 3 servers fighting each other with the goal of taking 1st. It ends with all servers having similar scores and the 3rd place server still having a shot at first place heading towards the end of the week.

That’s all very well. During the weekend you were in 2nd place. Now you’re fighting for first and coming 3rd. Next week SoR will probably take your spot so you won’t even be on that list.

I may be completely wrong and you completely right. Lets see how it all unfolds…

JQ is always always always lower in points on the weekend. Always. It’s just not our best time.

Seren.6850:

They as far as I recall were modifying some of the encounters so this isn’t to brutal. Ele’s warriors and guardians can quickly revive people from range with utilities, mesmers have the not so great illusion of life. We had been using these skills on lupicus already.

I really think it’s a good change, will promote better teamwork.

hahah what
ele quick revive? It’s 4 and a half seconds. The ele may as well just walk over to you and get you up. It’s faster most of the time, and it’ll actually help keep you alive during the rez time (as the glyph doesnt heal)
I ran glyph 24/7 until they nerfed it into the ground twice without lowering the cast time on it. It’s completely useless now for anything that isnt reviving NPC’s.

the bosses drop silver, as do some of the chests sometimes.
10 silver from the slave driver, like 17 from the effigy (non-omnomberry, it’s more like 14-15 and 22+ with it)
I think some chests also give 10silver.
Oh and the bags of coins are 1-3, and you average about 2-3 a run. so anywhere from 2-9 additional silver there.

at the very least im clocking about 50silver a run despite the DR. Runs take 5 minutes with a good group, is nice money. Oh and ofc molten cores/lodestones can add buttloads to your profit with a little luck.

Lots of bosses have attacks that you must be a cyborg to dodge. It’s bad game design, nothing more nothing less.

Take malrona off the list though. She has a buff called predatory instinct or something (Blue icon with white boot in it) when that wears off is when she uses the attack. Youve got plenty of time to predict when you’ve got to get moving.

Few questions before we get the pitchforks

1. class?
2. Gear?
3. Did the party specifically ask for something you are not?

If the party asks for a full damage warrior, and you join as a warrior in knights gear, and dont explain upfront? Then you have brought the wrath upon thyself. It’s definitely a dick move to kick someone before a final boss, but for CoF the party probably had a good reason (in other dungeons people do it for the exp/gold for a guildy, but that’s absolutely pointless for CoF because they might as well just take him in the first place). You most likely made at least 2 people mad at you. Either your playing, or your gear.