Guild Wars 2

Zero times. I’ll probably play through it once, eventually, and maybe (reluctantly) repeat to grind some AP.

I don’t play this game for the story. If I wanted a good, interesting, well-told, and compelling story, I’m quite certain I could do much better by playing another game, or even better yet picking up a good book and/or watching a film and/or watching a television series. From what I’ve heard from people I trust, the LS is decidedly mediocre when it comes to being well-told and compelling, and it also sounds like it’s quite a bit more childish than anything I’d normally consume.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

They finally address this issue and then DON’T let you use it in Solo Q? DUH!!!

I would not want to see it in WvW, and they only added an ON/OFF switch so I am glad it’s not supported there personally, but I would think that would make WvW perform better for some people.

I’d use it everywhere in sPvP, and for both foes and allies if I could.

I’d use it in WvW, and for both foes and allies if I could. Nothing to do with performance at all, either; I can comfortably run the game at 2560×1600 at MAX graphics settings, even in WvW.

I’d use it in PvE for allies if I could. (Weapon standardization would at least go a very small amount of the way to improving combat readability, since one is supposed to read tells of bosses who can probably 1-shot you when said tells are clouded by a bazillion particle effects which obscure them, including particle effects from legendary weapons)

As for why I’m guessing you can’t use it anywhere except Team Q and custom arenas? Legendary weapons. Couldn’t have people not be forced to see their particle effects, now, could we? =/

This should definitely apply to Solo Queue, and even hotjoin. The tells being less noticeable for those with tiny Asura isn’t just a problem at top level play; it’s a problem at every level of play that noting and reacting to tells is important to good gameplay, which is coincidentally all levels of gameplay, since combat in the game is focused on reading tells from animations to know what’s going on and how you should react.

If you’re going to make this important fix to help move the game towards being e-sports compatible, do it all the way.

They’ve claimed that they can’t increase the cap above 25 due to technical limitations with the way the game handles conditions; increasing the cap would heavily degrade game performance, apparently.

We’ve suggested this sort of thing since day 1. It was a good idea then. It’s a good idea now.

It’d also be nice if you can’t actually get to a location because the pathing won’t let you, that instead of not really going anywhere, the game detects it beforehand and just doesn’t let you use the skill, or similar… Because nothing is worse than using Blink or a similar skill, to get to somewhere that’s basically on flatish perfectly passable ground from where you are, only to stay in place and burn the cooldown on the skill. This has been suggested for a good long while, too…

P(effect) ~= 0

You see, these people aren’t “really” AFK. If you go AFK, you’ll actually get booted out in (relatively) short order. If you stand around doing nothing except shuffling stuff in your inventory, however…

You’re certainly not the only one. I’d imagine most of the WvW, sPvP, and Dungeon communities feel exactly the same way, and for all of the same reasons.

It seems as if your post has already been removed from that thread, and you’ve probably gotten an infraction. That was fast.

Brother Grimm.5176:

They have to make turning Karma into Gold in some way painful….

They really don’t, though; it’s not too much trouble to drop the naive notion that karma shouldn’t be able to be converted to gold, when their game allows us to do exactly that. They ought to give us well-designed game systems that are efficient to use, such as vendors, the mystic forge, the trading post, et cetera. As-is, those systems are pretty much absolute garbage that people wouldn’t put up with in any other setting, and that people barely tolerate here because they otherwise like playing the game.

What do you want to accomplish solo roaming?

Are you looking to take out Supply Caravans, Sentries, and Camps on your own? Are you looking to skirmish with other players? Are you looking to do a little bit of both?

If you’re just looking to “PvE” against NPCs, I’d suggest the standard PvE meta 6/5/0/0/3 (Strength: Dual Wielding, Slashing Power, and Berserker’s Power; Arms: Rending Strikes and Forceful Greatsword; Discipline: Signet Mastery.). Run full Berserker’s with Strength runes. Greatsword and Sword/Warhorn for mobility, Greatsword and Axe/Mace to kill NPCs. Run Bersker’s Stance (condition immunity is fantastic), and Bull’s Charge (extra mobility is fantstic). Most camps have spots where you can stand to LOS the NPCs after aggroing them, and then mow them down with your cleave (and Whirlwind Attack into the corner/wall/whatever). This build is, however, terrible versus actual players, except for the worst players in the game (it’s beautiful when someone stands in 100 blades for the whole duration…). I’ll typically only run this build when I’m not “seriously” WvWing, and just looking to get camp capturer/caravan disruptor/land claimer daily out of the way quickly. For food? Maintenance oils and Power/Precision food. If you find an enemy player, quickly ask yourself how likely it is they’re any good at the game. If they’re killing random PvE mobs for no reason when you encounter them, it’s a good bet you can engage them and win. Otherwise, you should probably just run away.

If you’re more looking for skirmishing with other players, take an sPvP build and modify it intelligently for WvW use. If you’re looking to do a bit of both, just use this same build and approach camps a bit more cautiously. You should probably use Hoelbrak/Melandru runes, with lemongrass poultry soup as your food.

Yes, the anti-projectile mechanic (encompassing both absorption, and reflection) is poorly designed, and also poorly implemented. ANET’s attempts at “fixing” how reflects can trivialize certain encounters have made the issue even worse.

Sometimes, the same class of anti-projectile skill will behave different across classes, or even on the same class with different anti-projectile skills.

Sometimes, reflecting projectiles won’t work, but absorbing them will.

Sometimes, projectiles cannot be absorbed or reflected.

In some of these cases, ANET has purposely altered the encounter so that projectiles don’t count as projectiles anymore, because they’re just too lazy to either re-design the boss encounter so that it’s not trivialized by such skills, or because they’re too lazy to re-design the anti-projectile mechanic in such a way it’s useful but won’t lead to such “problems”. In other cases, they may have realized reflects trivialize things, and decided that they’re proactively only going to allow projectiles to be absorbed. In still other cases, it seems like it could be more of an oversight on their part, or a bug, or just poor design and testing.

In any event, the state of anti-projectile skills is almost a microcosm for everything involving Guild Wars 2 that doesn’t involve artistic aspects, the Living Story or the Gem Store.

Penarddun.6827:

I think it comes from the fact that the players are frustrated with the grind-like nature of having to farm drops from these bosses day in and day out, and want to do it as quickly as possible, so they get annoyed when the situation isn’t optimal.

Not right, but understandable considering how much repetitiveness is in the end game farming. Would drive anyone a little batty.

Ignore them, or don’t look at the chat window at all. Then they can’t hurt you.

I think you’ve definitely hit part of the reason. I find world bosses fairly boring; I mostly enjoy content that has some level of required person skill and small-team skill, and where both are actually noticeable. World bosses aren’t challenging in that respect. However, they are the absolute fastest and most reliable method of obtaining dragonite ore; sPvP is very slow comparatively, WvW is slow on average but also with wide variance depending on the current situation, and EotM is fairly reliable but still slow. WvW Keep/SM taking, and EotM still suffer from the same issues as world bosses for me, though. Due to the lack of other reasonable options for efficient dragonite ore obtainment, one is effectively forced to do world bosses if they value their time, and if you feel forced to do content that you probably wouldn’t otherwise be doing as much (or practically ever) just because you value your time, you’re probably going to want it over ASAP.

Another part of the issue is organizational. Anyone in your map instance and not participating is taking the spot of someone who could participate. Not only does this lead to a slower completion, meaning more time expended and less chance of hitting bosses that are close together on the timer (side note: does ANYONE like playing on a timer?), but it also increases the probability of failure of the event. People doing map completion aren’t just not participating, they’re hurting you, because they’re taking the spot of someone who could help you (or, you know, your buddy who really wants in the instance, but can’t get in because it’s full, even though say 20% of the whole map isn’t participating). This is a fundamental issue with the design of world bosses, amplified by megaserver change.

READ P[insert number here] [insert any other pertinent info, like “MELEE LUPI”] Answer on join: [Insert math problem]

I was advised by a friend that order of operations messes up people who are otherwise very bad at the game. It mostly works. Something like 5^2-2^2 ought to be sufficient. You’ve now excluded everyone who can’t or doesn’t read, or who doesn’t have a high school or better (or in some countries, middle school) education, or that they know how to use google/some similar tool to solve the problem for them. Even when these people turn out to be bad at the game, explaining that they’re bad and how to fix it is surprisingly effective. If you’re feeling especially selective, use something more advanced like Euler’s identity, or the definition of “e”, or some simple integration.

You need a friend in the group who will quickly second your kicks. Depending on how charitable you’re feeling (how desperate you are), you may need to repeat the question in chat, or prompt them to read the LFG, because actually reading stuff is very difficult or something.

Miaire.5468:

Tom Yzf.5872:

She glows when she charges up for her Venom Spray. Icebow 5 has a lond windup, so ppl usually time the attack to hit her once she LOS, but if you don’t have ele, you can wait for that glow to interrupt it. Non-projectile interrupts like fear or mesmer mantra works best since the little spiders sometimes body block.

If the Spider Queen has defiance, can you still interrupt her Venom Spray? Or is it a one time thing till her defiance get whittled down again?

Also, is there a trick to safely killing the low level spiders inside the room to make the Spider Queen appear and pulling her to the LOS spot? I run around with Staff on Guard, but I end up having to pop Condition Removal and Heal just to make it back safely. If there is FGS, I pick it up , use #4 and then #3 to dodge with it. Else, I just pop remaining dodges/skills, trying desperately to stay alive.

If she has defiance stacks, no, you cannot interrupt her. She has to have zero stacks of defiance. Thus, you should strategically use a long-duration CC on her initially, and coordinate with your team who will be CCing her (no one else use CC skills until she’s been CCed by the right person). Just get her to the stack spot, and when the yellow/orangeish glow starts (indicating the spit attack), be prepared to CC her. Ideally, you want CC to land immediately before the attack would hit, but erring on the side of caution is always good.

You probably won’t need to CC her twice if your team has good damage. If you do, what should happen is after she’s been CCed once, the rest of your team spams CC (except for a designated CC the second person to actually CC her will use) until she again has zero defiance stacks. Then the second person waits for the animation, and interrupts. If you fail to kill her and she has remaining defiance stacks, decide if you want to try to stack again, or if you want to just do her “normally”; if you want to stack again, send someone in who can CC her enough to get the stacks to zero, ideally, or possibly two people depending on the number of stacks, what CC you have, etc. If this is your strategy, you may need to slot additional CC, especially if you’ve wiped before and need to get those defiance stacks down quickly.

As for pulling the tiny spiders, make sure you have “look back” bound on a useful key. Dodge or otherwise block/evade their attacks that inflict poison. For a Guardian, swapping to GS once you have aggro (with autotarget off) and using your leap to get closer to the stack spot quicker might also help. With practice, you can generally avoid being hit.

Stooperdale.3560:

The more regularly that you run fractals the more workarounds you find. Many players also copy tactics that bypass glitches without even realizing it. So, yes, fractal groups lose hammers but most get it back by falling to death together so the hammer resets. The person who is new to fractals or doesn’t know the latest tactics is always going to get more frustrated by the glitches.

Unfortunately, death reset no longer works in many instances. If someone falls with the hammer, it can be game over. See: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Cliffside-Fractal-Hammer-Bug-1/first

In any event, it’s still inexcusable that basic bugs like this still have yet to be fixed, just like the 38+ mesmer bugs that relate to basic things the class is supposed to be able to do not being fixed yet is simultaneously inexcusable… I’m sure the community could compile a list of all such similar bugs (in many cases, they already have).

It’s almost like you’re asking for timely fixes of critical, progress-blocking bugs, and a rewards scheme that’s both well designed and well implemented. Based on ANET’s track record with GW2, I think you’re (sadly) asking for too much from them. I can only hope this is wrong, and they’ll actually do something meaningful here…

Galandil.9641:

Thaelias.7432:

Galandil has an excellent point as asurans just use human male armor models.

I wasn’t even thinking about armor models.

My point is that, at least in PvP, we should have a simple option to scrap away all that shiny/glittering/fashion stuff for enemy models. It’s PvP, not Fashion vs Fashion mode.

A game that now is 15 years old like Q3 made you choose via a config file which model you’d want to see for enemy models (Keel/TankJr with green acid color ftw!) and which model for friend models. I’m astonished that this game doesn’t give us that option yet.

This should a competitive environment, so everything should be done in order to help players enjoy the gameplay, not let them lose some diopters in order to understand wtf is doing that little asura.

This makes perfect sense. A standardized enemy (and maybe allied) player model, along with standardized weapons would be great, and help to improve the readability of combat. It wouldn’t fix all the readability issues, but it would be a good first step.

The ability to do this with weapons would even be beneficial in PvE, where important animations can annoyingly be clouded by a bazillion particle effects due to legendary weapons, making the game “harder” because you and/or your allies are using legendary weapons.

The fix to something that’s poorly designed is to redesign it. Not to slap a bandaid fix that also suffers from a design flaw on the problem.

One flaw with your suggestion? It removes the prestige factor of fractal skins. Complete level 1 for a daily chest X times, and you get X fractal relics. The same amount someone who completed level 50 for a daily chest X times would get.

You know what the best way to get fractal skins would then be? Speedrun the lower tiers, starting at the lowest, because hey, fewer mechanics in some fractal, less enemy health, and less enemy damage. You’ve now turned fractal skins from what they should have been, a prestige reward for completing hard content, into a “lets grind easy content for shinies” reward.

You mean a RNG-based rewards scheme is generally a poorly designed one, especially when the RNG-rewards are extremely low probability, and should one be lucky enough to get a reward, they go through yet another level of RNG?

It’s almost like the whole fractal rewards design (and implementation) is atrocious, in addition to fractal reward levels being atrocious.

I don’t think your fix goes far enough to fixing fractal rewards. The rewards need a complete redesign.

I think I 100% agree with the OP. The spider is impossible to defeat. It’s impossible to defeat with horrible PUGs normally, much less trying to stack with equal or better in skill to above-average PUGs. It’s just not possible to CC the spider queen to interrupt her spit attack with trivial ease, nor is it possible to DPS her down fast enough that you wouldn’t all die even if you could CC her. This is despite what those insane elitist Berserker gear players say; not only do they claim to be able to kill her, but they claim to be able to kill Kholer too, so we know they’re just joking. Next someone will say is that the AC (and HotW P1) Troll can actually be defeated, even in melee combat. Soloed, even! How preposterous.

/sarcasm, because, you know, some people can’t detect it apparently.

First, this is punishing people who can’t play according to a timer all that well. As it stands already, it’s pretty annoying to schedule play around world bosses, that if you want to get anything that might take a bit of time or you can’t leave at the drop of a hat in along with your world bosses.

Second, some of us don’t really want to do world bosses. Unfortunately, they are the fastest and most reliable method of obtaining Dragonite Ore. They’re already time consuming enough; making them more time consuming sounds even worse. It would be one thing if there was some kind of content that could reliably net as much or more dragonite or that say, required some actual player skill or something, and maybe wasn’t on a timer… But that’s not the case.

Third, pre events already have rewards. They have the same rewards normal events have. They’re also invariably faceroll easy. Easier than the world bosses themselves, even. Why should they be even more rewarding, other than the fact you think some players are “lazy”?

Fourth, world bosses are by definition very easy, with possibly the exception of Wurm and Teq (which are more of a coordination / knowing mechanics issue, not a player skill issue). You’re saying that for things that require extremely low effort play, that people aren’t putting in enough effort? I don’t get it.

Legendary weapons should be what they were always intended to be. A fancy skin, and that’s it.

The stat swapping on legendary weapons should carry over to all ascended gear. Your sigil swapping idea should carry over to all ascended weapons, and all ascended armor should be capable of rune swapping. All ascended gear should also be capable of infusion swapping.

As it is, getting a full set of ascended gear isn’t that much of a grind; it’s within the realm of reasonable grind IMO. Getting a full set of close to optimized ascended gear for dungeons and fractals in a team setting is a colossal grind. Getting a second set of ascended armor with Strength runes for solo and uncoordinated group play is an additional grind, but it’s not as bad as getting a ton of ascended weapons (even if you more or less skimp and just get say force/frailty, force/justice, force/night, and force/undead combos, along with a bit more weapons you normally won’t use for situational purposes).

Then we’ve got WvW, which is going to demand at least one different set of gear, because you’re probably not going to want the same stat combinations you would in PvE, nor are you going to want the same sigil/rune combinations. And we’ve got WvW infusions, too, which can make a noticable difference when taking things like fully upgraded camps with a lowish number of people. And we must consider that hey, perhaps someone might want to run different builds in WvW, and in many cases, this again demands another set of gear…

Let’s not forget people with multiple characters, who want to do lots of different things with those characters, either.

For example, I might really want to play a condition warrior in WvW in addition to what I normally play there. It could be very fun for skirmish-style play. But I’m not going to invest in a set of rabid gear with runes of the krait, and some weapons with doom/earth sigils to do it. Especially not ascended gear, which due to WvW infusions (what does one typically do in small group WvW play? Take camps. NPC damage reduction and damage increase helps.), and a few percent damage reduction over exotic gear, and ~6% damage increase, would really shine here. I’m sure it’d be fun and interesting to play. But is it worth even the time cost of doing it in Exotic gear, much less Ascended gear? Not even close.

One of the appeals of Guild Wars for me, was the ability to run an optimal (as best as I could determine it) setup on any character I wanted with relative ease, allowing for a great deal of fun experimentation playing different builds with the same class, even different classes, and knowing that it was my player actions that dictated success.

Lots of grind to play different builds and classes? Not fun. Extreme tediousness of managing all the items? Not fun. I thought that ANET said grind wasn’t fun, and they didn’t make grindy games. Well, the grind for ascended isn’t too bad, until you factor in how compounded that grind gets for multiple builds and multiple characters, and it’s really unfortunate. As far as I’m concerned, this is mostly a design oversight on their part. An oversight they really should fix.

Any game where you have team mates, you have any degree of control over your team mates, and where the performance of your team mates impacts your own experience in the game has this.

Different people want different things out of the game, and value things differently. Some players have low value for their time, and others value it highly. Some players have no goals other than an immersive experience, and others have different goals. Some players really want to complete things as they think were intended. Others don’t care. The list goes on.

If a group under the Arah dungeon was listed “P2 take time and kill EVERYTHING”, these players are imposing what they want just as much as a “P2 FAST experiened zerker melee lupi” group is. If a player joins that first group, and sticks with it all the way up till Belka, and then trash skips to the Abomination and starts to solo it, is it wrong for them to be kicked? No. If a player in full Nomad’s gear who doesn’t know anything about the path and only has and uses ranged weapons joins that second group, is it wrong for them to be kicked? No. Everyone in this game has their expectation, or an acceptable range of expectations, for what they’d like to play with. The range of some people is narrower than others, but it still exists. There just isn’t much way to determine if someone fits within the category of people you want to play with or not. You can’t tell if they’ve ever (legitimately) run the path before, or how many times they’ve run it. You can’t tell what gear they’re using. You sure can’t tell if they know how to use the dodge key until you’re in the dungeon. You probably can’t tell if their traits are very “creative” or if they’re optimal/close to optimal. Et cetera.

There are no useful metrics to show skill, experience, or mindset of the player. Of course people are going to get kicked for not fitting with the expectations of the rest of the group.

The loot system isn’t a reason why this shouldn’t happen. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. You effectively get the exact same rewards for completion, no matter how long you take. If you complete a level 49 fractal set in 3 hours, you’re getting the same rewards as the team that completed it in 50 minutes. Some people might really enjoy the slow run, taking time to savor the experience and struggle through the encounters, and finally getting a reward at the end. Others might really enjoy pushing their limits in terms of maximizing effectiveness, as well as value their time, and want to complete things in more or less the shortest time possible, as they get the same rewards no matter how long they take. Most players have some range they’re comfortable with, between these extremes. They don’t want to be too slow, because they do value their time, and don’t enjoy struggling too much through content when that struggle is needless. They don’t want to be too fast, because that requires a degree of performance and coordination (and their participation at that high level) that they may not feel they’re capable of, or be comfortable with, or even enjoy.

The abolition of the trinity isn’t a reason this shouldn’t happen. Everyone still contributes to the team, having one or more players that aren’t contributing in the way you’d like them to, really does drag everyone else in the team down. Whether that be the guy who is skipping ahead and soloing content because you’re killing random skippable trash way back there, or the guy who is camping greatsword on a Mesmer and not really doing any of the things Mesmers can do to contribute to the team in a meaningful way (like say, reflects, or focus-pulls to group mobs up).

The fact there’s no explicit in-game competition in PvE isn’t a reason this shouldn’t happen. Some people like to compete with themselves, always trying to improve their performance (and the best way to do this is with a group of people who share the same mindset). Some people even like to have their teams compete against other teams (see things like speed clear records, pve tournaments, etc.).

This is always going to happen. It happens in every game that fits the criteria in the first paragraph.

Had this happen yesterday. A pug thief picked up the hammer and fell off (or got downed at the edge by the mobs—not sure) at the chest seal. Bye bye hammer.

We all suicide, and it doesn’t appear to come back. So we suicide more, making certain everyone is dead before anyone resses. Then we suicide and spike-res. No hammer. We try this some more, and I die in the fire near the pedestal where the hammer would respawn. Turns out, the hammer was respawning! It just disappears again shortly after someone resses. We eventually try everyone leaving except the instance opener, and the instance opener dying and ressing. We search everywhere for the hammer, just to see if perhaps it’s respawning and telporting somewhere else on the map.

So we then try and dodge roll to grab the hammer right after respawning. You can get there fast enough to be able to hit “F” to try and pick it up… But there’s no way to actually even start the animation to pick it up by hitting “F”, because it despawns so rapidly.

So somebody gets their mesmer, and tries blinking to the hammer instead of dodging. About as effective as dodging for it.

Our mesmer then drops a portal from the player respawn to the hammer respawn. Can get to the hammer fast enough to hit “F”, and partially finish the animation to pick it up before it despawns. Many failed attempts, before we realize this isn’t enough.

Then, we get the idea of placing a portal, AND a time warp at the hammer location. Time warp makes various actions faster, like gathering from a node faster, so we figure it might work with the hammer, as it’s at least worth a shot. Can you guess what happened? We got to the hammer, and partially finished the animation before it disappeared. No idea if the time warp actually helped or not.

All hope is lost. We abandon the run.

There is a program called YOLOmouse, that overlays a useful cursor on top of the cursor for any 32-bit application (GW2 presumably included). It works the exact same manner as the Windows “show location of pointer” feature does, except it’s continuous, and allows for a few different cursors to be selected. If using the native windows feature is presumably acceptable (as one may imply by Michael Henninger’s response to this thread), and using overlays in WvW to monitor what’s happening on the map effectively is acceptable, one must also conclude that YOLOmouse is also probably acceptable. Obviously, ANET can’t (won’t) say anything one way or the other on that, though.

Some additional cursor options would be very nice (and have been asked for since release), especially given that some of us (myself included) play GW2 on a 30" monitor at 2560×1600 (on large resolutions, the cursor seems proportionally smaller, just as icons denoting buffs/debuffs also seem proportionally smaller), and have additional monitors to the left and the right (and play in windowed fullscreen mode most of the time). This makes “losing” the cursor extremely easy, especially since the most effective way to move in this game is to constantly hold the right mouse button down while moving the mouse to change the camera, which incidentally completely hides the cursor, thus meaning it can pop up anywhere. I’d absolutely love some of these UI QoL changes that people have been asking for since day 1. Heck, if a patch existed that’d show all important buff/debuffs on allies using the simple party display (like, for example, hammer corruption on cliffside), even that would overjoy me at this point.

It’s really sad when one of your favorite PC games is overall very good, but has some flaws as glaring as the very cursor (and that haven’t been fixed despite ~2 years of time to do it).

I don’t think that knowing how to play your class relatively effectively in a team-oriented (albeit not necessarily terribly coordinated) manner, knowing the mechanics, and being appropriately geared for PvE are terribly high standards at level 49 fractals. Nor are they terribly high standards for say, a dungeon group that asks for such things.

I agree that the LFG tool is for everyone. I have no problem with everyone using it, as that’s what it’s there for. It’s not terribly good for finding like-minded players, and this is compounded by the fact that many players misrepresent themselves through the tool, totally ignore the description for the group they’re joining, or both. There’s also the fact that group descriptions don’t explicitly state everything, most players know this, and some players ignore it; a level 49 fractal group ought not need to state they only want people using relatively decent builds who have an understanding of common tactics and the encounter mechanics. A “P# FAST” dungeon group need not state they’re going to be skipping trash. People looking for a moderately quick run (certainly, not anywhere near as fast as an actual well-coordinated speedrun, but casually fast) don’t join “P# no skipping take time and explore” groups and expect everyone to conform to their preferences, and if they did, they’d rightfully be kicked. There should certainly be no problem with the reverse, either, where a person joins a “FAST” group, but is wearing masterwork quality Soldier’s gear and doesn’t know any of the skips or mechanics and therefore gets kicked, right?

Dual.8953:

Fluffball.8307:

People continually make these asinine posts about how they deserve to play whatever they want and have 4 other people do the work for them. Do what you want but at least tell other people you have no desire to complete content.

Pfft. What’s gonna happen? You’ll wipe and the dungeon will boot your party out? Nope, you get infinite lives, and mobs don’t respawn. The only thing that can make a dungeon fail in this game is loss of morale (you could argue Agony as well, but that’s pretty much the only thing that creates an artificial barrier and has no baring on gear type). If you want a perfect team, why are you pugging in the first place?
You can do content in Soldiers, or Carrion or anything, and be successful. You don’t need to use meta tactics. Anet hasn’t altered the dungeon, adding codes that prevent nonmeta builds from being successful.

Some people don’t enjoy involuntarily spending large amounts of additional time because someone refuses to use optimal gear, and/or an optimal trait setup/skill setup, and/or optimal tactics. Enough sub-optimality, and to a large enough degree, can even lead to an actual inability to complete some encounter with the existing party setup.

If someone is bad enough that they’re demonstrably not pulling their weight, or are a huge liability to the group, they deserve to be kicked. The time and effort of one person does not outweigh that of four other people, especially since that one person evidently does not value their time and/or effort all that much. If you are leeching, and people who are sub-optimal enough compared to the rest of their party are by definition leeching while attempting to create an illusion (usually a very unconvincing one) of substantial contribution, you do not deserve the same rewards (or the same probability at the same rewards) as your team mates. You deserve to be kicked.

Pugging is not the problem in these instances. The problem is that there’s effectively very little way to sort out before a run who is appropriately skilled and appropriately built, and who is not. There is also practically no way to sort out who has the same mindset as you. The closest there is to any of these things is group descriptions, which very few are capable of even reading, and arbitrary requirements that don’t really mean anything like pinging gear or some Achievement Point barrier which is also not useful. Pugging can be very enjoyable, and you can meet new friends, or get in a run when no one else you already knew (or not enough people) were around to fill a full group. Just because a group is a pug does not mean that all members are obligated to cater to the most suboptimal players joining that group. That’s just silly.

Robinschultz.9652:

I am not some longbow camping bearbow, I use my sword with axe in off-hand and greatsword on swap. Like I said I prefer longbow in THAT fight, because no ranger is crazy enough to use sword on shaman.

Plus I am running this so called 4/5/0/5/0 build with Spotter and Frost Spirit, because god forbid if you didn’t you probably wouldn’t be allowed anywhere.

The build you’re running sounds fine. Traits are up to par. Utilities are good, although you might want to drop some things for encounter-specific utilities (see below). Weapons are good, and the offhand axe is probably justified over warhorn in this instance (Axe #5 FTW); rfdarko.4639 has also given some good advice in this area, so listen to them.

The shaman is not that hard to melee assuming you know the fight mechanics, and either you don’t have aggro, or your group has reflects that they don’t need to save for the lava elementals when his bubble pops. I would really suggest trying to find some low level fractals on which to practice fighting the shaman; you can fairly often find groups from level 1 to into the 20s advertising that they’re on the third fractal and are looking for additional members; these groups are almost invariably stuck on this exact encounter, so join them. These groups are very unlikely to kick you, although the instance owner might rage in frustration. If you have some idea of what you’re doing, and especially if you have an idea of what other classes can do (just read gw2dungeons.net entry on this encounter, for all the things other classes can take/do to make this fight easier), you’ll probably be regarded as a hero for joining, and get some relatively fast karma, one gold (oh, the fantastic rewards), a pristine fractal relic, and maybe an extra 0.0495 gold (i.e. a ring you don’t need anymore, probably isn’t even infused, and probably has a stat combination so bad you wouldn’t use it even if you were somehow missing two ascended rings). I know, because this is how I learned to melee the in this encounter (for awhile, I thought melee was suicide, even on a warrior. How wrong I was.).

If you don’t have reflects that you can use, or the reflects are currently down, if you have his aggro, you kite/strafe at range, and dodge if necessary. Everyone else can melee (staying at max melee range is always good, but not really necessary), making sure to constantly move to avoid burning. He’ll cast his firestorm after every 2 ranged attacks, which can either be walked out of or dodged out of. When the shaman rises, quickly into the air, if you’re in melee range, you need to dodge/evade ASAP. When he rises slowly, you have a bit more time to dodge/evade or block. Never stand in the lava, or any of the shaman’s AoEs, and always keep moving to avoid burning. Keep the shaman in the center of the island area. Stop DPS before 25% health increments if you need to wait for reflects or res people (you may need to lure him away from center, and then back again, to res people before you pop the bubble phase by DPSing him more). During bubble phase, auto-attack him with your fastest attacking weapon to get it down quickly, and stop attacking when it’s close to disappearing so you can deal with lava elementals (which reflects help a lot with… and so does being able to hit multiple simultaneous targets with melee attacks, along with the fact if you’re meleeing, you can stick with the group and stick with any reflects you may have); make sure to pop the shield before he gets to a villager, though, but keep it up as long as you can as he doesn’t deal any damage while in bubble form. As a ranger, you can use Entangle on him before he enters the bubble form to help root him. You can also use Frost Trap or Spike Trap at any time, even in bubble phase, to help impair his movement further.

If you have reflects, and they’re up during his normal phase, keep meleeing, don’t stand in AoEs, and dodge/evade/block when appropriate.

Lifesteal on crit food can be very nice for this fight. The shaman counts as a demon potion-wise. The elementals count as elementals potion-wise. For this fight, I generally just run an elemental slaying potion and don’t bother switching to anything else, as it’s the bubble phases (via the elementals) that apply the most pressure to the group, and dealing with those elementals ASAP without going down is important for success.