Guild Wars 2

I agree with the OP. The way most hammers look other than the generic lvl 20 hammer, are like staves. Just with a slightly bigger nub on top. It is the only reason why i stick to my magmaton skin. It’s the only skin that actually looks hammer-ish. It looks right when my char heaves his hammer up on the auto attack sequence’s third hit when i’m using the magmaton skin.

It looks weird when it is done with the rest of the hammer skins. It just doesn’t look appropriate. It doesn’t seem like a suitable attack animation for what looks like a really long handled mace.

The problem with dungeon only hirelings is that it will cause a bigger outcry from the player base. And the only reason for the outcry will be this: fractals.

Hirelings have to work across the board in any dungeon. And if a guy can grab 4 hirelings and run fractals solo, there will be even less people in the open world. And there will be people with full ascended infused gear within a couple of weeks.

Mmos cannot cater to all the players. Some will definitely slip through the cracks. That is the nature of the beast.

I hope you find a game more suited to your needs!

cNcHellShadow.7691:

alcedonia.7831:

It may not be as easy to implement as you think. If i’m not wrong, most if not all the zones were made with a low ceiling height.

Adding mounts mean all the zones will have to be reworked to add a way higher ceiling.

Wouldn’t that only be an issue for flying mounts? I’d be pretty happy with land only mounts.

That is true. I brain farted there lol. Sorry!

It may not be as easy to implement as you think. If i’m not wrong, most if not all the zones were made with a low ceiling height.

Adding mounts mean all the zones will have to be reworked to add a way higher ceiling.

Columba.9730:

You can assume whatever you want. Not all of us Zerg in WvWvW. How about this? If the stats truly don’t matter as you claim, why not make them equal to exotics? After all, fractals are so much fun and worth the time to do all of them, right?

we’re all running with assumptions here because only the jewelry is out so far. and as for making them equal to exotics, actually, i was wondering the same thing. i don’t understand the point of ascended gear tbh.

Columba.9730:

mulch.2586:

Columba.9730:

alcedonia.7831:

Columba.9730:

20-50% higher stats. Yes, we must get them now or get curb stomped in WvWvW. Secondly they are introducing many more items. This is only the beginning.

would like to know where you got those numbers. i have yet to see any official posts of any kind supporting those percentages.

easy. simply compare the items side by side. include the added stats you get from the infusion (most people thing that infusion only helps with agony resist). add up the stats and divide ascended by the base. voila. this excludes the better synergies with ascended pieces too.

The actual math shows it really doesn’t matter. Gear is less than a quarter of the stats that matter for your character. Most comes from traits and levels.

The most common ring you see adds 5 power 5 pre. That’s 1/4 of 1% crit rate and about 1/5 of 1% to your damage.

The improvement only matters if what you’re looking at is stats on items in your paperdoll. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at in-game performance.

It depends what you put in the denominator. I exclude base stats, and I am looking at item to item stats. Thus, my point stands. I never said over character stats. I specified item stats. It’s your call on how you wish to represent the facts. I am focused on the items. Whether or not it matters is a purely subjective argument. I think these do matter.

do you think the stat increase will be significant enough to allow you to let’s say kill another player with like for example, 9 hits instead of 10? or take 11 hits instead of 10 to die?

i realize this really depends on what class is facing what class, and using what builds, but i’m talking about in general here.

the only place where ascended gear may make a difference is in pvp, namely wvwvw. considering how little gear contributes stat wise compared to traits and levels, ascended gear may have negligible impact there. the numbers will still remain the number 1 deciding factor imo. the server with the bigger zerg will still win. if i have 50 warm bodies to throw at you, and you have 40 people, even if you guys were all in full ascended gear, i will still win.

Godorn.2931:

My post is not for general consumption, but rather to the company as feedback to why they lost a customer.

oh. you were serious. i thought you were joking.

then why quote me in your reply? and if you’re looking to provide the company with feedback, there are better avenues for that compared to burying your post in a 6 page long debate about ascended gear and its effects on pve and pvp.

Godorn.2931:

I don’t think they will fix existing bugs or the problems preventing them from becoming an e-sport in a timely fashion before they need to release an expansion to compete with Elder Scrolls or Blizzards next MMO.

what gave you the idea that gw2 was going to be an e-sport? for pve, gear skins is what people look for. for wvwvw, numbers mean a lot more than getting bis for everything. for arena, everyone is set to level 80 and has every single piece of gear available to them.

the only vaguely ‘e-sport’ish thing would be arena. where ascended gear and it’s associated grind doesn’t matter at all. so what are you talking about?

unless you’re thinking of stuff like dance-offs or style contests being an e-sport or something.

not to mention bethesda’s elder scrolls series is a single player rpg. gw2 is a mmo. they are both computer games, but they attract different crowds. not to mention, just because you buy a title from a major developer means you cannot purchase titles from any other developer. as a consumer, i can buy the next elder scrolls installment, and the gw2 expansion if i so wish. i’m not shackled to either bethesda or anet.

insinuating that anet and bethesda are competing against each other is like saying ferrari’s new sportscar will cause ford’s new station wagon to drop in sales. they’re both cars, but they fulfil different purposes.

Godorn.2931:

Its cool, I can wait and refrain from spending anything. This game was not ready for release and the state of pvp is a clear example of it. They do not even have a LFG tool when it comes to Fractals.

ya. anet have come to to admit that fractals was a mistake and they should not have put it in considering the game’s current state. it’s old news. a dead horse if you will.

Lutharr.1035:

5 sig warriors aint a hinderance to any dungeon unless high fractals. Bad players on the other hand are always a hinderance. Ill play 5 sig and I bet i survive longer than a bad player using this lots so-called perfect warrior set-up.

Its not the set-up its the player. If folks realy cant handle the dungeons in their current form due to having a 5 sig warrior around Id say look at your own skills before ranting about others.

Btw I dont play a 5 sig build as I dont like its feel. But the short time I did to try it out, I never had a single complaint.

slayersdragon streamed a starcraft 2 game where he won his opponent by building only scvs and command centers to mine out all the expansions on the map so his opponent would get resource starved.

going by your logic, that must mean it’s a viable build.

don’t kid yourself. there are good builds, and there are bad builds. good players can make bad builds work. bad players can make good builds useless. but that doesn’t mean there are no good or bad builds. there are.

anecdotal evidence do not make for good reasoning.

Godorn.2931:

“we should save all this vitriol and heated discussion for when Anet actually rolls out the entire ascended gear tier. only then, can we seriously discuss the effect it will have on pvp or pve or whatever.”

Feel free to do whatever you wish. However, don’t ever include “we” in your discussion when it comes to my money, and decision making it what is or is not a gear grind. I can think for myself thank you very much, and I prefer not to live in the land of grey.

From my perspective, the Ascend gear grind was just another brick in the wall and I will never give them another dime for it, that is their reward.

Bad pvp, bad WVW, no ladder system for tpvp, no seperation of premades/pugs, class bugs beyond belief, world bugs, exploits, hacks, bots, and now horrid economy and markedly nerfed drop rates since I quit. Check back on the boards now and then and see this game going in a direction I’m not interested in supporting.

“We”, err excuse me, I will not support this with one dime.

this is exactly what i was talking about.

that is a caricature of exactly what we don’t need: unconstructive ranting with threats of ‘quitting the game’ and ‘not spending another dime’ unless things are done my way, and only my way.

thanks for the post! it is a great example of what we as a community do not need.

however, if you were serious, then err… sorry? you will be missed?

Curlybaby.6258:

I see the pro-gear grind crowd continues to harp on ascended gear stats and how negligible they may be not fully understanding that the stats in and of themselves is not the issue. The issue is that for years Anet sold GW2 to be a game of horizontal progression. For years we, the anti-grind crowd, followed the game because we loved the idea of a game with horizontal progression. We loved the idea that we finally had a game developer that thought like us and placed importance on creating a game with intelligent design. Not this mind-numbing farce of a game mechanic that simply keeps players on a treadmill with the goal of getting gear with a +1 only to fight monsters with +1 HP.

There are so many other ways that a developer can introduce progression without having to resort to this, the most basic and simplistic of game progression ever created. After all, they don’t call it a “gear-treadmill” for nothing. I have no doubt in my mind that you can train monkeys to succeed in a gear-treadmill game. All it is, is mindless repetition. What is amazing to me is that some of you dare call this skillfull game play, and you dare call those who refuse to “work to play” lazy and uncompetitive. Nothing could be further from the truth. We just demand more from a game than a mindless gear grind.

So let’s keep the focus where it belongs. It is not the stats, or how minimalistic they may be, that is at issue with the non-gear grind crowd. It is the fact that they introduced a gear grind at all. The fact that they simply did a 180 on their oft stated “no gear grind” manifesto, then tried to smooth talk us and convince us that “we were wrong” in our interpretation, coupled with their draconian and heaving handed issuance of infractions, bans, and deletions of our threads and posts when we attempted to express ourselves in the aftermath. These points alone are enough to quit this game. Some of us do have principles.

Those of you who don’t get this are the same people who were complaining that this game had no gear grind. The brainwashed WOW masses that can not think out of the box and believe that they are rendered useless, or that it is not possible for there to be any progression at all in an MMO, unless they are placed on some type of gear treadmill chasing the holy +1 number. You don’t get it. So stop trying to convince those of us who do get it, to simply go with the flow and join you in your gear grind hamster treadmill.

It won’t happen.

the problem is what do you consider grind? i’ve seen the word thrown about too many times with differing opinions on what it means. everyone has their own threshold. some people are completely happy to sink in 100 hours to get an item. some are completely happy to sink in 10,000 hours to get an item. some want it in 10 minutes.

gw2 was touted as a grind free game. and it launched with gear tiers with exponential price increase the higher tier, and the higher stats they got.

yet not many people viewed it as a grind because for most, exotic gear was relatively easy to get. they had not hit their ‘grind threshold’ yet.

but for the guy who wants his item in 10 minutes, would getting a full set of exotic gear be considered a grind? yes. would it be considered a grind for the guy who is willing to spend 10,000 hours to get it? no.

this argument has no end. it will keep going in circles, which is why it is degenerating into snide name calling and thinly veiled insults. and frankly, both sides are equally hypocritical about the whole thing.

we, as a community, can keep ping-ponging our opinions around. but it doesn’t do anything. we’re all shooting darts at a dart board in the dark and insisting that we hit the bullseye and the other person missed.

but none of us would know any better would we?

we should save all this vitriol and heated discussion for when Anet actually rolls out the entire ascended gear tier. only then, can we seriously discuss the effect it will have on pvp or pve or whatever.

this entire drama reminds me of an old story about blind men touching an elephant to know what it is. one of them touched the trunk and came to the conclusion that elephants looked like snakes. another touched the leg and came to the conclusion that elephants were like a pillar.

we need to stop being blind men feeling up elephant parts.

Columba.9730:

20-50% higher stats. Yes, we must get them now or get curb stomped in WvWvW. Secondly they are introducing many more items. This is only the beginning.

would like to know where you got those numbers. i have yet to see any official posts of any kind supporting those percentages.

i think in general, warriors really need to understand that the game has no holy trinity. by specing purely into a glass cannon dps, you are forcing party members to take on the responsibilities of tank and healer. which this game simply does not allow. you can’t build a tank because no matter that you can take a hundred hits before going down, there is nothing you can do to stop a dungeon boss or mob from simply deciding to turn away from kicking your tomato can rear, and 1 shotting the glass cannon half a screen away. the aggro in this game is too random for a tank build.

and considering there are no targetable burst heals save guardian’s elite book skill (which is terrible and has a cd as long as my rambling posts) it is impossible for any class to function as a viable healer class as well.

as a ‘dps’-er, you have to learn to keep yourself alive. a good friend told me this, and i think it is very true: it is a bonus, not an onus.

aegis, party heals, party condition cleansers, stability etc are bonuses. it’s great if you get them. but you shouldn’t and cannot rely on them.

and that’s the problem with signet warriors. they are forced to rely on them. i’ve seen my share of signet warriors. almost all are terrible. i personally only know ONE good signet warrior. and he was good not because he ran signets, but despite him running signets.

i have no idea why new players gravitate towards signet warriors. they are one of the most unforgiving builds to use. solely because you have so few survival mechanics. you can only rely on dodge, of which you can only do twice in a row, good positioning and the knowledge of when to go in and beat things up, and when to gtfo. which means your only real escape mechanism when things go bad is dodge.

it is not enough to know how to dodge, but when and what hits to dodge, and what hits to take to the chin. management of the dodge bar is insanely important for signet warriors, which is what most new players do not understand, and fail to do. they just dodge liberally and end up getting struck by a 1hko attack which could have been easily avoided with dodge, had they any dodge bars left.

it’s fine if you’re solo in the open world and you go down. you just go ‘oh drats’ and res at the nearest wp and continue on your merry way. in dungeon runs, you going down makes a team wipe a very real possibility because more often than not, wipes happen cos people get caught in things they normally don’t get caught in cos they are ress-ing someone.

@wildcode

i’ve taken a look at your screenshots and you are obviously WAY more balanced in terms of stats than the zerker/signet warriors i am talking about.

you have to understand that shout builds are not about your own solo dps. shout builds buff the entire team, so while you may see a significant drop in damage (still shouldn’t be drop from 10k to 5k per 100b tho), the damage dealing capabilities of the entire party is increased, which will definitely exceed the damage you can deal solo even while maximizing damage at the cost of everything else.

the thing that shines with substituting signets for other utility isn’t just the raw effective hp total. as you can see, the forum suggested build increases your health total by about 4k which is about 25% more health than before.

the shouts also provide way more utility. you can now cleanse conditions on demand, stun break on demand, and add an incredible amount of survivability for yourself solely for the fact that you now no longer have to rely on someone cleansing conditions for you, or helping you pop stability before you get hit by a knockdown or stun. with shouts, you can even cast them while you’re cc-ed. not to mention they’re instant cast. and when traited, has a cd of 20 seconds. all of which makes shouts like shake it off even more attractive.

with soldier runes, you cleanse 1 condition with every shout as well. considering shouts like for great justice, which gives you practically the equivalent of signet of might, also affect the party, soldier runes would compound the effectiveness by not only increasing party damage, but also supporting by cleansing 1 condition from every party member in range every time you use it.

same goes for shake it off. with soldier runes, sio removes 2 conditions from yourself every time it is cast.

just by using those 2 shouts, you now still maintain high personal damage, but way higher party damage, and effective condition cleansers that not just benefit yourself, but your party.

at max effectiveness, using both shouts remove a total of 11(!!!) conditions. 8 for your party, and 3 for yourself.

that means you are free-er to select other skills without having to worry about conditions. most importantly, this frees up your heal slot for the one that increases in heal amount based on adrenaline.

in less condition heavy environments, that heal will serve you a lot better than the heal signet. and in condition heavy environments, the heal which cleanses 2 conditions per cast is available.

the best thing is soldier runes serve two purposes. first it increases your effective hp significantly with the toughness and vit stats, but they also serves as a condition cleanser.

warriors’ high health pool also help in keeping conditions under control.

in other words, one of the main priorities is mitigating direct damage. you can do that through gear, namely knights gear. knights gear give you power/prec/toughness. what this does is help you maintain good damage, while increasing your effective hp by a lot.

with ruby trinkets or their equivalent, you can sustain high damage, run an optimal burst heal, have good damage mitigation against direct damage, have more than enough condition removal and cc counters for most encounters, and party wide buffs that increase damage and cleanse conditions as well.

just because we say that non-signet builds have more survivability than signet build doesn’t mean that they can be played as tanks though. even with the increased EHP, you cannot simply run into mobs and expect to face tank them. that will still get you killed. the build simply gives you more options, and the opportunity that when you goof up, and the fecal matter hits the fan, you can get yourself out of trouble without having to rely on someone else to do it for you.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, hellkaiser. Wildcode put in the effort to try out an unfamiliar build. For that, already he’s not the pig headed guy you make him out to be
I’m just really interested in what caused his dps to get halved. Because it definitely isn’t caused by the loss of precision from running 5 signets. Unless he’s at a low level, where stats are low across the board. Then the precision bonus is huge. But if he’s putting out 10k numbers previously with 100b, he’s definitely lvl 80. Which is why i’m confused.

Wildcode, can you take screenshots of your character with your 5 sig build, and your shout build? It would be more helpful to us to see what went wrong.

wildcode.5403:

ok, so I went with a shout build, 1st thing I tried was hundred blades since this is our main damage dealer against mobs, half the damage than my signet build … final blow only got up to 5k where with signet build you see numbers beyond 10k … #1 skill does less damage … sure I have more health, but with all the conditions that get stacked on, using mending + shake it off + trait to remove conditions on heal still left me bleeding and crippled … so yeah, less damage and still could not remove conditions.

Note also: because I am not killing mobs as fast, I am dieing alot more often with the shout build than I did with the signet build.

what? you do not make sense, i’m sorry.

there is no way you are losing half your damage by removing signets. because fgj already covers them.

and you do not get more health by not using signets. how are you getting more health? did you change your gear and neglect to tell us? if you trait properly, you actually do not lose health even with gear change. because all your extra health comes from traits and soldier runes.

where are you getting all your conditions stacked on? traited shake it off with soldier rune removes 2 conditions every 20 seconds. for you to still die from conditions means you’re fighting mobs that apply at least 4 conditions every 20 seconds. what mob are you fighting??? the only mob that can do something like that off the top of my head is the necromancer in AC. or TA, in general, which is condition and cc madness. if you don’t see an increase in survivability, it is either against something like when your team makes a bad engagement against TA’s knight swarms, or you’re not dodging big telegraphed attacks that will 1-2shot you anyway.

the increased utility gives you more chances to screw up and survive, it doesn’t make you a tank. from what you describe, it seems as if you are walking up to tough mobs and relying on your utility to tank them. it doesn’t work that way.

Sylosi.6503:

I didn’t think you were referring to me, given had you read this thread you would know I’ve played a grand total of about 30 mins since Nov 15th, so I haven’t even fought anyone in WvW since ascended gear was introduced.

As for the feeble to attempt to play the innocent with “why so prickly”, you wrote a comment that amounted to “people are moaning cos they is bad”, if you act like a twelve year old trolling, you will find you get appropriate responses.

how am i acting like a 12 y/o trolling? there is no way to tell what gear the other guy is wearing in wvwvw. and in wvwvw, numbers are the main reason why a team wins or loses a fight. not because someone in the team has +x number of stats.

which is why it sounds like QQ to me. it’s not like there is currently a visible increase is effectiveness of a player due to him rolling with ascended gear instead of exo. the increase in stats is so low that it doesn’t allow you take more hits, or deal more damage. against the same target, you still die in y number of hits, and kill him in z number of hits.

declaring that your opponent won because he had a gear advantage over you caused by ascended gear is clearly an excuse for losing.

Sylosi.6503:

They’ve stated they are going to roll them out to the other slots and add tiers for infusions, it is not guesswork, the stats will not negligible then.

it’s not guesswork? tell me the official stats on the ascended gear and weapons that are not even out yet, then.

Sylosi.6503:

alcedonia.7831:

in wvwvw, how do you tell if your opposing team is rolling with groups of players with full ascended gear? it’s not something you can tell by simply looking at a character.

How is it relevant?

alcedonia.7831:

tbh, it just sounds like a convenient excuse cos someone got roflstomped and had to blame something other than him/herself.

TBH, it sounds like logic isn’t your strong suit.

why so prickly? did i hit a nerve? i wasn’t actually referring to you, but it looks like i accidentally hit your tender spot. yikes.

right now, we have ascended gear that for all practical purposes, is purely for cyber member posing. because it has minimal stat increases and take a long time to farm.

yes, full sets of ascended gear will be coming out in the future. so will infusions. how much more stats will the ascended gear have over exotics? and at what price? how much more stats will infusions give over exotics? and at what price?

if going by the example of current ascended gear, the increase in stats will be negligible. and at a really high cost, which will probably exponentially increase the more infusions you use.

i say probably, because i don’t know. and neither do you. so i reserve my judgement on ascended gear as a whole until it comes out.

i don’t understand how you can talk about logic not being my strong suit when you’re making such big leaps of assumption based on nothing but guesswork. your behavior in itself is illogical.

it’s like saying i saw my neighbor’s 5 year old son kill an ant today. which means he is capable of killing things. which means he is capable of murder. therefore the state should just lock him up or put him to death now because he will grow up to be a murderer.

well, now that i think about it, it sure looks like you already have an excuse ready the next time you lose in wvwvw.

‘you lot must be a fat no life nerds drinking mountain dew and eating cheetos living in your mom’s basements cos you can only win me using your fully infused ascended gear that must have taken you 738123792184712 hours to get’.

pretty strange that you’re already coming up with excuses for losing fights in the future that you haven’t even participated in, let alone lost.

it stinks of abject insecurity, if you ask me.

Xavori.3768:

I run a 5 signet warrior who uses sword/axe and rifle. Axe is fitted with explodies and rifle with bleedies to go with my traited bleed-on-crit (bloody bosses ftw!). Basically, in melee I’m an AoE machine, and at range (ie bosses) I stack bleeds.

Thing is, I also have 20 points in defense which means in addition to my signet regen, I also have adrenal regen and a bit more toughness.

So nope, I don’t go splat. Add in the fact I know how to play, and I’ll put my 5 signet warriors survivability up against anything short of true bunker builds with the advantage that I can still actually kills all teh stuffs.

but whatever you can do with a 5 sig warrior, you can do better with a non 5 sig warrior.

i’m not saying 5 sig = omg dead weight, our dungeon run is scrooooood.

it’s the combination of 5 sig with full zerkers and greatsword that is a trainwreck. and that is the build new players walk away with when they look for a straightforward class which is easy to play and deals good damage.

the only warriors i see who can play 5 signet decently (not even well, just decently) are those that have mains of other classes. like mesmers or rangers etc. and i swear they only play their warriors when they’re taking a break from their mains. because no one really expects much from a 5 signet warrior. no stress, no pressure. it’s like freerolling in a casino.

personally, i’ve only ever met ONE 5 signet warrior who could hold his own in arah. that in no way means that 5 signet is a viable arah build. he was definitely an exception, not the norm.

11k life glass cannon thieves in arah saying lupi is easy, because it’s all about ‘l2dodge’.

dodges lupi’s normal attack because if they don’t, they get 1shotted.

proceed to die because they can’t dodge out of red circles due to their dodge bar being empty.

stay dead and complain that the guardian (me) needs to aegis more.

yes. true story.

just wanted to ask.

in wvwvw, how do you tell if your opposing team is rolling with groups of players with full ascended gear? it’s not something you can tell by simply looking at a character.

tbh, it just sounds like a convenient excuse cos someone got roflstomped and had to blame something other than him/herself.

wildcode.5403:

How about this. Instead of everyone knocking signet builds (which are ment to be an all round build), how about offer a full all round build so those of us who only know of the signet builds can be better informed, especially those of us who have trouble working out builds.

For instance, atm I’m running all power/prec/toughness (armor + jewels) + runes of the pack, with signets except healing, and traited for signets. I dont want to retrait just for dungeons so any build that is offered has to be an all round build, good for everything from open world pve, karma farming, to WvW.

There is your challenge, now educate us. And please, do not include that elite banner that does almost nothing in WvW.

shake it off
for great justice
6x soldier runes
endure pain or whatever utility you think is best for your playstyle.

that’s it.
the only thing the signet build offers is precision. which is equivalent to about 10% crit chance at lvl 80. no point sacrificing all your utility for 10% crit chance. it increases overall party dps by negligible amounts.

it’s quite elementary, really.

wildcode.5403:

And there is the problem, the build is designed to work as part of a group, which does not translate well when you have to go solo against a mob.

when do you need to go solo against mobs? only when you’re in the open world. and the mobs in the open world are so easy, you don’t need to trait or gear for it.

signet warriors are not ‘designed’ to work in a group. they’re designed for the absolute easiest gameplay possible. the 5 signet build lacks EVERYTHING. you contribute fair dps with signets, but you would contribute more with shouts. you have to rely on everyone else for heals and anti-cc like stability or actual condition removal. it is the actual opposite of a team-friendly build.

i don’t know what gave you the idea that it was actually designed with the team in mind.

honestly, you must have done some pretty serious mental gymnastics to arrive at that conclusion.

i don’t think anyone expects much from warriors at the cof wp zerg part.

as far as i can tell with my own ingame experience, 99% of the people don’t expect anything from the rest of the party other than these 2 things:

1. deal some damage
2. stay alive (which in the higher difficulty dungeons means you need to pack your own suvival utility spells, be it endure pain, shake it off, or whatever)

the thing is, you don’t need to ‘have the reflexes of a 15yo hyped up on energy drinks’ to use more than signets. when you get cc-ed you just need to hit 1 key to shout it off. and with soldier runes, what that one shout does is stun break and remove 2 conditions.

and you can do it ON DEMAND. you don’t have to rely on anyone else to do it for you. when you need it, you use it.

it’s barely any additional effort and it goes a long way. there are only 4 other people in your party excluding yourself. if you get cc-ed and go down cos you didn’t have a stun break/condition removal, it means someone has to drop what he is doing and res you.

that leaves the party with 3. the party’s effectiveness just got halved because you didn’t think you were capable of managing 2 keys instead of 1.

and if people blow their aegis/team heals/stability/condition removal just so you can stay alive, that’s one less spell that could have been used more effectively.

Hellkaiser.6025:

this thread…

It’s like, tiny bit of faith in playerbase restored…

If you keep this up alcedonia I’ll actually want to log in! you fiend!

=D

go log in! play a full zerker/5 signet/gs only warrior and be a ’"rockstar"!

you’ll be gw2’s unofficial mascot!

Mechanix.5719:

alcedonia.7831:

I really wouldnt mind 2 sigil slots on my 2h weaps. Worth 600 tokens, imo. +5% more crit chance? Or full energy on swap? Yes please. I’d pay it in a heartbeat.

Then Dual wield your forcing yourself to use the 2h not the game simple if your a guard/warr and you wanna play eaze mode GS then thats your fault.

actually i don’t use gs. i use hammer because of the boons and the cc it provides. the good aoe damage is great as well. i don’t need extra 5% crit chance. but i think it’s worth it if’s 600 tokens. that’s cheap considering how easily and quickly dungeon tokens can be gotten. it’s an extra 5% crit chance with no loss. i wouldn’t mind that.

the reason why so many guard/war use 2h weapons is because the weapon skills are just better suited in general for the role they wish to play. gs for guardians have a dynamic aoe damage skill with a pretty ok cd. it also has a gap closer with a short cd. and an aoe dot that also pulls opponents towards you. it also has retaliation, which for guardians that focus more on vit/toughness, means that you can still do fair damage.

wars use gs as their go-to weapon because it has good burst damage with 100b that also has aoe, as well as 2 gap closers, and a range attack which cripples. that’s not bad. it’s what most warriors want because of the synergy. charge in, do some burst damage, charge out. if the mob is too chunky and hits too hard for your liking, cripple it with your range attack for breathing space.

but i mean, if you wanna use something different, it’s your perogative. go ahead.

just like if you wanna wear your pants on your head instead of around your waist/hips because it’s too passe and everyone does that, no one will stop you.

but demanding that clothing companies design pants with a large hole at the crotch so you can wear it on your head is kinda silly, imo.

and throw out your elitist ‘ez mode’ nonsense. it got old halfway through you typing it.

we can debate this like adults, and share opinions to develop this opinion into something really worth looking at and considering, or you can ruin your own topic with unwarranted prickliness.

choice is yours.

I really wouldnt mind 2 sigil slots on my 2h weaps. Worth 600 tokens, imo. +5% more crit chance? Or full energy on swap? Yes please. I’d pay it in a heartbeat.

I actually had a 5 signet zerker warrior in another pug arah run last night (unfortunately i have to pug most of my arah runs cos my guild is just… Underwhelming)
He died at the lupicus fight, like three times. That’s dying. Not going down and throwing stones. He actually died. Three times.
Even though my friend’s nec had 100% of lupi’s aggro during phase 2.
He never made an effort to dodge the red circles.
Maybe he thought they were buffs or something.

After his second death he started raging that as a guardian, i need to aegis him more. Oh i’m sorry. I only have two team aegis skills: retreat and my virtue. And i spam them a lot to keep the nec alive so that the rest of us can focus on pew pewing.

I’m sorry i can’t aegis when you aegis when you need me to because you can’t figure out how to press a key to dodge.

facepalm

The run was brutal. Everyone did what they were supposed to do other than him. The lupi fight was just like pulling teeth. The nec successfully kited lupi for 20 minutes straight. That should be 20 minutes of pure pew pew from the rest of us, right?

Wrong.

We spent more than half the time resing the warrior. And when he died, he refused to wp back and run (mainly i think because he can’t get past the mobs by himself since he’s paper and has no swiftness, stability or stun breaks)

Didn’t help that he either kept lagging behind and dying when we ran past mobs, or ran forward alone and died as well.

One path 3 run took more than an hour, of which more than 30 minutes was spent resing him, or waiting for him, or going back to help him run past mobs because he was just incapable of doing it.

When the run ended, he left party without even a ‘ty’.

I understand wanting to play the way you want to play, but that is just being entitled, rude and an exercise in frustration for everybody.

Stupid warriors! (ok i don’t really mean that haha)

I think it would be cool only if

We can chop trees with them.
That would be neat.

That is true haha. Obviously i didn’t think that through.

@sky

Whatever gave you the idea that having the highest damage dealt makes you the most valuable player in a group?

Not to mention in boss fights where it counts, warrior damage is easily outclassed by chars like necs. While the nec is still maintaining high ehp and utility.

Being over enamoured by damage numbers is the reason why most warriors are terrible. A good guardian can keep you alive with well timed aegis and heals though. But then again, that means the MVP of the team isn’t you. It’s the guardian.

@eldoria

Hear hear!
They make me a little embarrassed to main a guardian. I’ve seen my share of guardians with abysmal health pools as well.
I’m sorry but having high armor isn’t going to do anything for you in TA. Haha!
Met two 11k life thieved in a pug arah run the other day as well. Lupi would literally look at them and they would fall on rears and stick their hands in the air like they were freddie mercury.

I kept messing up my own dodges as well cos i was giggling that hard. It crossed the line of frustration to absurd.

But that’s for a different topic. This one is getting derailed :/

@zappix

Not sure about you but i for one, don’t find full zerkers/5signets gimmicky. I find it just… Bad. Lol.

I agree anyone can play whatever they want in a pug game. It is their right after all. If i wanted to, i could run around without armor and /dancing all the time. Because i can. But just because i can, does that mean i should? We all have the option to be a richard, but most of the time we make the choice not to.

Like for example, in a neighborhood casual basketball game, i can just fling the ball anywhere i want if i want to. I can foul my own teammates. I can walk off the court for a drink midway through a play. I could have immense fun doing it as well.

But why would i?

I understand that for the rest of the players, the objective is to win and have fun. If i choose to participate in a team effort, i think it’s only fair that i perform as a teammate. Not goof around or sabotage the others because i can.

That’s just having an entitled diva attitude. Since you have not made an issue about the graphic lag elementalists produce, you obviously know where i am coming from.

As i expounded in my previous post, the issue isn’t with 5 signet warriors (which can hold their own with the right gear) or full zerker warriors (which can hold their own with good traits and/or utility skills).

It is the combination of both. A 5 signet warrior running full zerkers.

Because that leaves the warrior frail and without any utility. The only thing they have that they can rely on is dodge. Of which there are only 2 bars. Of which doesn’t work when mobs/bosses do untelegraphed attacks.

That combination of full zerker/5 signets in dungeons often lead to rock throwing. And when i say often, i actually mean very often.

Throw another spanner into the gears when some of these warriors simply have no other viable weapon on them other than a greatsword and the frustration increased exponentially.

Gs/5sig/fullzerkers doesn’t work. At all. Yet that is the build that new players go to because on the forums, that is the information they go away with. That full zerkers is one of the best setups for warrior. That 5 signet makes for the easiest warrior gameplay. That gs is the best weapon for warrior because of high damage in the form of 100b.

So by running full zerkers/5signet/gs, they should have an effective, high damage, easy to play character.

Unfortunately that conclusion is wrong. And imo, there’s no real solution to it other than awareness that the ‘best setup/gear/weapon choice’ cannot be taken in isolation. But i’m not sure if new players will want to be bothered by that.

I mean, if i’m interested in finding The Optimal warrior, the answer of ‘it depends’ wouldn’t really answer my question no matter how true it is.

Cant seem to edit my post on my iphone if a mod would help merge this with my previous one so i wont double post, that would be massively appreciated.

@condas

Being the last man standing is kinda a dubious honor for most big boss fights considering the way most bosses hate are based on either highest damage or highest life total. So being the last one alive most of the time means you are doing the least amount of damage, or are the most glassy.

Like for example lupi will always chase the guy with the highest life. He will rotate hate once in a while, but generally will keep sticking to one guy for the entire second phase. Or at least until the guy goes down. Then he’ll move on to the guy with the next highest hp.

The issue isn’t of one massive problem imo. It’s a collective of decisions, an event cascade if you will. It is the series of three choices, namely wearing full zerkers, running 5 signets and only utilizing a greatsword that makes a significant portion of the warriors i encounter nothing more than dead weight.

I’m pretty sure experienced players or those with more mental and physical dexterity will be able to function well semi-well or even well with that setup.

But when you realize that the warrior class tend to attract new players looking for an easy main, the problems start to show. Because they simply do not know what hits they can take, what hits they should avoid, when to run and when to fight.

So people tell them to go full zerkers because damage is important.

And when they ask for an easy build for warrior, people tell them 5 signets with passives.

And when they ask what wouls be the best weapon, they get told gs for 100b.

In isolation, they’re all correct. But put them together and you get a recipe for disaster. You’ll end up most of the time with a glass cannon melee char with no utility in the hands of a new player unable to learn much because he spends more time reclining on the ground throwing rocks than staying alive to find out what he should be dodging, what he should be tanking, how to position himself etc.

If at any point, they had made a different decision, they would be way better off. Knights instead of zerker gear for example. Fgj and sio instead of 2 random signets. Soldier runes. Using a rifle or bow. If at any time they had done just one of those things mentioned, they would have a completely different experience in dungeons.

It’s very frustrating and amusing at the same time. Zerker 5 signet warriors are like the obnoxious cousin every thanksgiving who eats all the drumsticks, makes a lot of noise and fart a lot.

i’ve lost count of the number of times i’ve seen 5 signet warriors in pug dungeon runs who faceplant every fight, either against trash mobs, or bosses. and when asked to link their gear, it’s always full zerkers.

if warrior players stopped sacrificing ALL their team utility for the sake of a larger cyber member, and started using more team oriented skills and utility stuff like swiftness/condition removal/stun breaks/stability, warriors would be more than viable. as it stands however, most warrior players are more concerned with their nice big numbers on the hero screen than actually being useful in fights.

every time i see a warrior in a pug dungeon run, i cringe a little inside, because i expect them to be useless. most of the time, they prove me right.

it doesn’t help that whenever new players ask what class they should play, people tell them to play a warrior.

it helps less when they ask how they should gear their warrior up, and everyone responds with ‘get full zerkers cos you know, damaj k?’.

and for best weapon? greatsword. cos 100b for you know, damaj k?

it helps even less when for some reason, as a main, the warrior class attracts the most number of players who are unwilling or unable to do anything more than toddle up to enemies and auto-attack.

what this means is that more than half the time, you get a glass cannon warrior with no range weapon switch whose only strategy is to walk up to things and hit them until either they die, or he dies.

it’s like a nut kicking contest. i’ll kick your nuts, and you’ll kick mine, and the guy who cannot get up loses. unfortunately, in areas like arah, mobs tend to have bigger nuts than you. and they also kick very hard.

this strategy is completely counter intuitive, but somehow still extremely prevalent.

what boggles my mind even further is why so many people still insist that glass cannon/5 signets is a viable build in dungeons because you can just ‘l2dodge’.

what bull.

you have only 2 dodge bars. sooner or later, (and trust me, it’s always sooner when it comes to zerker/signet warriors), you’re going to be out of dodges. and then you’ll be on the ground spamming ‘4’ because you can’t take more than 2 hits. and i’m not even talking about big telegraphed hits like kohler’s vacuum move. i’m talking about hits like lupicus’s untelegraphed normal projectile attack. or the spider mobs’ paralysis in ta.

my guild mate told me a once while we were pug running a dungeon with a signet warrior: ‘the sky is blue. ricky martin is gay, and the warrior is on the ground’.

inescapable facts of life.

it stopped being funny after the warrior went down for the 8th time (yes, i counted. he died twice to locusts in phase 1) in one single lupicus fight. he proceeded to die 2 more times in the final boss fight even though he wasn’t kiting.

what is especially strange is when one realizes that warriors have a skill called ‘shake it off’. it is honestly, one of the best, if not the best skill in the game. traited 20 sec condition removal/stun breaker shout? which removes 2 conditions with soldier runes? yes, please.

crippled? shake it off. got knocked down? shake it off. poisoned? shake it off. have girlfriend problems? shake it off. i mean, really, can you say no?

apparently many warriors can.

then come to the forums and whine that the warrior class is terrible.

what is this, i don’t even-

/rant

Have you searched for similar threads on this forum? I’m pretty sure you haven’t. Because this issue has been discussed to death.

To bring you up to date, ANet has already admitted it was a mistake to release fractals by itself as the sole way to get ascended gear FOR NOW.

They are aware that this has caused an exodus of sorts where every tom richard and harry is in the fractals instance, and theres a diminishing number of players elsewhere.

They released only fractals as a method of getting ascended gear because the other methods weren’t ready to be released, so they pulled those back to work on them some more.

Not that i see a point in causing a hullabaloo regarded ascended gear in the first place. Why? Because the gain in stats is so small that ascended gear is practically for stroking your cyber member in /map chat.

EVEN IF more ascended slots are released, the gain in character performance is negligible. To the extent that it’s unnoticible. If you have 1500+ points per stat on average across the board, do you really think an increase of +2 to the relevant stat will make you deal noticibly more damage/have more damage mitigation? If everyone in your party rolled with ascended gear instead of exo, MAYBE you’ll shave off a minute of time from running all the paths in a dungeon. MAYBE.

You won’t take down lupicus faster, you won’t be able to tank more hits from kohler’s vacuum attack, you still wouldn’t be able to sit in the spider boss’s red circles in ta, or survive longer defending magg while he plays with his kaboomium in cof.

The time you ‘save’ beating things up with ascended gear as compared to exo gear in a month of gameplay will be way less than the time it took for me to read your post and respond with this reply.

I mean, let’s put things in perspective.

If you don’t want to run fractals for a minute cosmetic improvement in stats, don’t.

If arah path 3 takes you 2-4 hours, ascended gear is the least of your concerns.

I dont wish to grind so that i can get an extra +2 to power and prec or whatever.
So i don’t.
Considering how heavily diminishing returns to stats set in after a while, ascended gear is practically for flaunting the size of your cyber member.
If you think there will be a perceivable difference in the effectiveness of your character who is in full exo as compared to ascended, i want whatever it is you’re smoking.
I mean, really. With full exo, your stat points should be more than a thousand for everything.
Do you really think adding 10-20 more is going to change anything?
Drama queens. Really.

because every time you have something dreadfully important to tell him, he ignores you and you have to wait patiently in a corner while he finishes gushing to his assembled fans about how wonderfully they’re doing.

and also, he keeps volunteering you to do things. ‘ok good job, you guys. you can all go back to camp now. the commander and i will take it from here’.

WHAT.

WHY DO I NOT HAVE A SAY IN THIS?

then he proceeds to go down a path with more undead than the entire population of trinidad and cheers you on while you fight them all.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF BEING THE COMMANDER OF AN ARMY IF MY ARMY HIGH FIVING EACH OTHER BACK IN CAMP WHILE I’M FIGHTING THE WAR ALONE.

i can’t even COMMAND my army even though i’m referred to as COMMANDER because that stalk of celery called trahearne does it instead. he even gets to command ME!

WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN-

i should have named my character RAMIREZ.