I’m dubious about the choice of a mace on a condition damage Guardian build. One of the easiest ways to keep burning for a Guardian is to use Virtue of Justice’s passive, but that mace is too slow to activate VoJ often.
Anyone trying for a CD Guardian (and, admittedly, it is a rough path…but not kitten undoable as others swear), should be focusing on quick strikes. Sword is probably your best weapon of choice as a CD Guardian.
It depends on if you set off anything on crit, whether you want to continue to have precision be the focus of your build. If, for instance, you have a chance to proc a fire AoE on crit, that might be a reason to continue to focus on constant critting. If you’re not causing extra benefits to go off on crit, you’re better focusing on getting your damage up so those crits matter.
Since burning is the only condition damage available to Guardians, and Burning only stacks in duration, a lot of people tend to think condition damage Guardians aren’t viable. But burning can do a kitten ton of damage if you can keep it on. Good luck!
Yeah, I don’t find the World Bosses to be any fun at all. The mass of players ensure the bosses take no skill, die in 3 seconds, there is massive lag (I’ve been in a Jormag fight where my skills simply refused to go off, even my Flashing Blade), and massive culling.
Whenever my guildies announce an event is happening now, I just shrug and continue with what I’m doing. They’re simply not worth the aggrivation right now, even though the rewards are nice. They’re no fun.
Our guild master, a high-toughness Ranger always attracts the aggro of any mob in dungeons. Bosses, silvers, anything…they always have it out for him. It’s a hillarious running joke that all the mobs become crazed pre-teen girls for him. (He’s gay, so he wants none of that!) Luckily, he’s very good a kiting.
Still, I wouldn’t think toughness would have such an extreme effect on aggro.
I love when you fall off a cliff and go splat (but don’t take enough damage that you die), and then can slide around on your belly instead of moving properly.
The Charr have a great industrial economy, but their entire civilization is based on war. Our history has shown us cultures like that tend to collapse rather fast…
I’ve made this comparison before, but it bears repeating. The charr are most akin to pre-WW2 Japan. They were on the losing side of technology (magic). In response, they industrialized (with both magic and iron technology) at a remarkably quick pace and began to expand imperially in order to claim lands for resources and with the nationalist notion that those lands have cultural ties to the charr.
The charr may have made their name in war, but the collective nature and the drive of the charr to succeed will make them an industrial powerhouse even in peacetime. (Again, akin to Japan transition post-WW2). Any clocks you see around Tyria? Those are charr-made. Charr are renown for their spring and gear work. The pact’s helicopters? Said to be charr designs. They’ve created things as diverse as ghost containment machines to cow-chucking catapults. The charr are unbelievably – and uniquely – inventive.
Finally, even with the human treaty, the military state of the charr still have outsiders they can focus on: ghosts, dredge, grawl, ogres, harpies, ect. The Blood Legion won’t be bored any time soon. Ash and Iron will use the more peaceful time to move the charr economy in new directions.
It might make their fur mat, but that would only make for more irritated charr.
You do not want irritated charr.
Somebody posted a picture of this kind of thing in the forums not too long back. I’d be down to join up for one.
Sadly, GW2 does seem to have a theme of “never expand or explain” anything. The game is great, but it’s clear that in development the game designers fell into the unhappy situation of not giving enough explanation to new players (where does it ever tell you in game that you can use the “/wiki” command?) and not giving enough details to experienced players that want it.
I think it’s universally accepted that the Zaitan fight was disappointing (though to be fair, in the storyline you had taken several steps to weaken him by the time you even got to Arah). Destiny’s Edge sat in the airship and didn’t even assist in the final fight.
Hopefully, ANet has learned from its dungeon boss design that interesting, multi-step bosses are what will satisfy players in the future. They certainly seem to be moving in that direction.
And you only really need Ascended gear if you’re doing high level fractals.
Otherwise, in some ways, it’s worse than Exotics because of the lack of flexibility from the missing utility slot.
Do you realize you can craft Knight’s armor? I seem to recall crafting some myself and checked my memory just now by looking at the wiki.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Knight%27s#Triple_attribute
If you’re at the point where you can run Arah, you should be able to get to Armorsmith level 400 in no time.
I agree that getting the Arah armor skins are tough, but most of the dungeon skins aren’t that difficult to get. If you end up changing your mind about an item’s look, you can eventually transmute it to something else.
Sword shield is a bit of a fire ice kind of situation. See the sword is used mainly against single targets, whereas the shield is used mostly in group situations.
You could if you wanted to dabble in a “jack of all trades” kind of build
The shield is useful in 1-on-1s, as well. It provides additional natural defense to your stats, protection from Shield 4, and an interrupt and healing from Shield 5.
Most people tend to think it is disadvantageous to spread out your traits along multiple lines. But at lower levels it probably doesn’t matter as much, since you can switch them up easily later. Now’s your chance to try things out and play with options you might like.
Yeah, usually when I’ve had that problem, I came to realize I was trying to put a higher level component into a lower level armor piece, ect.
Who will win tonight’s big prize? Will it be three-time champion Logan Thackery with his famous Karka Cakes? Will Eir Stegalkin’s Bison Brisket Surprise cause our judges to marvel at the surprise of it all?
Will Rytlock beat the judges with a slab of meat??
Yeah, most Guardian players hate the scepter. It’s not very good, but it’s really our only ranged option.
I tend to agree. If players aren’t allowed to sell an item below a certain price, a potential buyer should be notified that their offer will never be met.
It sounds like the OP and I have similar mentalities, and I loved exploring in this game. You’ll level up quickly that way, too, especially if you do heart quests along the way. The personal story can really drive you into new places, too.
If you don’t already belong to a guild, finding one you like will help you out a lot. Since the game often forces players to work together (espeically on dungeons), it can be easy to make friends at group events. That way you have someone to call on when a Champion of some sort is giving you trouble.
Farming is rarely a viable option in this game. You can farm a little to keep things interesting, but buying on the trading post is going to be the fastest option.
Unless you have the prereq weapon, however, you have plenty of time. It’s likely going to take forever and a day to get the prereq you want out of the mystic forge.
Yeah, the items spawkittenpecific locations at random. Usually, they appear near where the flame legion and dredge are attacking. In Diessa Platteau, this usually means the dirt-covered objects are somewhere around Butcher’s Block.
And, yes, it’s still possible to find all four items currently available. I actually found 3 out of the four yesterday, and I also found the fourth one (wouldn’t let me pick it up again, since I’d already given it to the refugee it belonged to).
Staff has gotten much better with the latest patch. You should notice both the healing orb and empower have gotten much more useful.
Spirit Weapons are no longer invulnerable, for whatever kitten reason. There’s a whole lot of gnashing of teeth about it, but at your level they should still be quite viable. At level 80, however, they suck kitten.
On the Crystal Desert server, I and several of my guildies/friends were getting a ton of what seemed to be server-side lag this weekend. Especially in dungeons (one run of Sorrow’s Embrace was made absolutely cringe-inducing by this). Frequent issues crept up, such as my Flashing Blade skill (Guardian Sword 2) instant shadowstep not going off and instead me sitting there for a few seconds with the box flashing.
Since it wasn’t just me, none of us share a connection (i.e., we’re not roommates or something), and guildies who never partied with me that day were also asking about it…I thought it might be worth checking into on the forums.
Anyone else have this issue? Is it known and been addressed? Like I said, it made what should be mild dungeon runs into an exercise of self-teeth-pulling.
A lot of the female charr you run into are exactly as you described. Detha from the Ascalonian catacombs is a great example.
I’d say the charr male player character in cutscenes is remarkably subdued for a charr, as well.
It’s a helpful elite to classes with limited range. The crowd control on it and the ranged AOE will help you blast away groups of mobs in dungons before they can approach.
Bombers may be only in the fractal…
Bombers are definitely in SE, and they are indeed more than annoying. Many of the bombers in SE are avoidable, but players won’t know that in their early experiences with the dungeon and are likely to get exploded to death. Plus, don’t count on those bombers being avoidable when the AC-update wave gets to Sorrow’s Embrace.
It’s not a horrible dungeon. Just…who wants to help the Dredge?
Ah, sounds like I didn’t do an actual jumping puzzle, then! Argh, my bad. And thanks for the info.
Hey, folks -
I was doing my Daily today and decided to do jumping puzzle in Mistriven Gorge in Lornar’s Pass in order to get the Daily Shiverpeaks Veterans and Daily Jumping Puzzle goals.
I got the vets piece, but didn’t get the jumping puzzle part when I got to the chest. I’ve done this jumping puzzle before, but does the Daily require you to do a jumping puzzle you’ve never done before?
GS + Hammer symbols both proc VoJ. But I digress.
If you are not using VoJ on cooldown, you are doing it wrong. Whether or not the weapon was “made to proc VoJ” is all redundant. In the end, sword’s skills are lackluster due to the many reasons others have stated. Having a mobile ZD and reworking Flashing Blade to do some actual damage would alleviate many concerns.
Everything procs VoJ. The pont is that sword does it fastest and more often. And considering VoJ has a 30 second cooldown, I wouldn’t denounce someone who can put burning back on every 2 seconds by using VoJ’s passive as “doing it wrong.”
I do agree that Guardian sword could use a minor buff (I’d be fine if they reduced Flashing Blade’s cooldown even more and gave it a finisher), but I think people underestimate sword’s utility and don’t understand its role.
You also can’t claim the weapon was “designed to proc VoJ” when GS, Hammer(symbol included) and torch all have multi-hit abilities rivaling sword.
And those greatsword skills have a lot more cool down than Sword 1. (I have no idea what multihit hammer skills you’re talking about.) Also, part of sword’s benefit is it can be paired with torch unlike hammer and greatsword. Even without torch, just start a mob on fire, and sword 1 with Virtue of Justice’s passive will keep it there until the mob is dead. Steady, quick attacks (which proc Virtue of Justice’s passive) is what every one of sword’s abilities scream.
Giver’s weapons almost certainly are not working correctly and haven’t been for a long time. Note that when you have a Giver’s weapon on hand, your skills that apply conditions won’t increase the condition duration listed.
Not sure about the runes. Or when ANet will address this. It’s been an issue for several months now, as I recall.
The mass amount of DPS can get her under 50% and easily keep her there if the 4-1 orb trick still works.
It didn’t work for my group. I believe they may have taken this trick out of the fight.
As it stands, I can only see a heavy DPS group having any chance in this fight. If conditions had stuck, Simin might have been doable by our group, as well. But in combination with encountering the 50% bug, we just couldn’t do it.
Also, to be fair, the 3-hit-disappear routine only happened to us twice. Most of the time, she just wasn’t giving us the full amount of time she was supposed to. The 3-hit-disappear just made it very obvious a bug was involved. Even stacked with 25 might (as the Guardian, I was keeping a consistent 10 on me), I doubt we could have whittled her down enough in the time we were being given.
Sword quickly procs Virtue of Justice. That is what it does uniquely, and what it is designed to do.
Greatsword and Hammer does it better.
?
Objectively, you’re very wrong. Virtue of Justice procs on every five hits (four with particular traits). Both greatsword and (especially) hammer are much slower at hitting than sword, which gets 5 hits in 2.5 seconds.
I agree with those that have said that, while sword might need a minor buff (Flashing Blade, though a quick recharging bind and gap closer, isn’t that much faster than the greatsword version…and greatsword is probably our best weapon), sword tends to be heavily underrated by players who just want another greatsword. Sword is more versitile and does something completely different than greatsword: quick, consistent one-on-one hits.
Let’s allow the plot actually unfold before we start complaining about plot holes, shall we? There may be room to criticise some day, but ANet hasn’t revealed their whole hand yet.
Sword needs its own unique mechanic. The hammer gives a symbol, mace gives a symbol, greatsword gives a symbol, staff gives a symbol.
Sword should do something as well.
Sword quickly procs Virtue of Justice. That is what it does uniquely, and what it is designed to do.
don’t mess too much with the rock-carrying encounter, which is far more engaging (plus teammates raging at the dredge’s glacial speed never gets old).
To be fair, the dude is carrying an unecessarily giagantic rock. You’d be going slow, too!
Simin was nerfed hard and it’s A LOT easier now, work on your group composition/strategy.
Also, I have an issue with anyone who claims only certain compositions of groups should be able to take out a boss. The game advertises itself as designed so that any composition of players has their own way to do accomplish things in the game. This boss should not require four warriors and a mesmer.
And it probably wouldn’t have, if she wouldn’t occassionally disappear after allowing us to get only three hits in and the mechanics removing any chance that out condition builds would have any effect on her.
Sword/Shields a good combination for bosses and the combination I personally use.
Sword is possibly our best 1v1 DPS weapon, and shield balances it by giving defensive measures. Flashing Blade is a quick-recharging blind and gap closer. Shield 4’s free protection with the attack is great. And I disagree with Kharel Arhew about Shield 5’s usefulness, it’s a versitile interrupt with free healing. However, it’s not a “keep mobs off you” kind of skill, despite its look. Use it when a mob is about to dish something big out, then knock them onto their kitten. Or absorb a projectile that’s about to wreck you or your allies surrounding you. Then pop for free healing to you and your nearby allies. What’s not to like?
But Danicco is correct that Sword/Shield is not built for swarms. At best, Shield will help you run away there. Keep a Greatsword or a Hammer handy for when swarms hit ya.
The sparks tends to aggro by proximity, so you should stay well away from the spark kiters. You might had the pets on aggressive, so put it on passive and stay near the walls. As for the npc, you can always kill it, it’s not big deal, for me I hardly ever encountered such problem.
Thanks for your constructive advice. We were actually doing what you said regarding the sparks, and the Ranger pets were on passive. The sparks still occassionally went after them (including, annoyingly, when they got petrified). I feel like the Sparks shouldn’t be going after NPCs or pets at all, considering the mechanic is that WE have to guide them.
And, LOL, I can’t tell you how much I wished I could just stab the useless NPC.
Even after resetting the fight and resetting our skills to maximize our DPS (our Ele in particular did this), we couldn’t lay down enough damage to get past the bug. It was a big flip of the kitten from the dungeon to learn, after such a long slog, that we wouldn’t be able to do this fight.
That looks awesome! So many Charr pals…had to be coordinated.
A greatsword Guardian can use Binding Blade to suck a great many hatchlings into one area, making them easy for him and others to AOE.
I agree with those that have said generally pick off that adds that come down with the Spider Queen with 900+ range.
Hey folks -
Last night, several guildies and I trekked into Arah Path 4. One of us had a strong working knowledge of the path, and though I wouldn’t call any of us “elite” players by any means, our group included all strong players (including our guild leader). We know each other well, frequently team up for dungeons, and we had voice chat set on Skype so we could coordinate. With the recent updates to Arah, we were certain we could finish up Path 4 and have fun.
We were wrong.
The Path leading up to Simin went well. We had little to no trouble. (Though groups of two or more Hunters and their Risen Eagles can go to kitten and kitten themselves). We trounced Giganticus Lupicus in one go. The other bosses seemed cake in comparison.
We knew the strategy for Simin: Pack a bunch of tears near where Simin would be fought; Get Simin down to 50% and in that spot away from the statue; have one person kite the northern sparks and one the southern; have a low DPS player ready with tears to salve petrification; thwack Simin with DPS when she reappears. Our group was composed of two rangers, an elementalist, an engineer and a guardian. Three of us were built toward conditions.
The first try did not end successfully. Simin went down to 50% very quickly and we took our places. Spark runs were difficult, since Randall and ranger pets kept attracting the Sparks’ attention. And the Sparks’ attack animations cost us precious time when they should have been moving toward the runes. Eventually, Randall was killed and the Spark runs went better. But we noticed we didn’t seem to be making any headway; Simin was teleporting away too quickly for us to whittle her down, and our conditions weren’t helping after she disappeared. We seemingly weren’t winning a war of attrition.
We let her regen to full, then tried the tactic of holding a spark to force Simin immediately back out of stealth. This does not work. We finally decided we weren’t doing enough DPS and reset the boss. We all made as many modifications as we could to our builds to add DPS.
What we didn’t realize at the time is Simin’s 50% reset bug was taking place. Our second attempt made that clear. At one point, immediately after appearing, she took three hits, went invulnerable and disappeared again – that is not hyperbole. It was beyond aggravating. Even on our most flawless Spark runs, her healing was undoing most, if not all of the damage we were able to do in the shortened time she would give us.
We tried desperately to get Simin to stay below 50%. But after more than an hour, late into the evening on a work night, we had to call it a day. Four hours wasted because of one (bugged) boss fight.
I know people have done this boss fight, and Arah is supposed to be difficult. People will undoubtedly come onto this thread to claim how easy Simin is with their group of four Hundred Blades warriors and a Mesmer. But for our group (an experienced one with working knowledge of this dungeon and path), this fight was frustratingly impossible.
In addition to the 50% reset bug (again, she once gave us literally 2 seconds to attack her before going invulnerable and invisible again and multiple times gave us less than the minute I understand she is supposed to), there were multiple problems that worked against us in this fight:
@ The Sparks would aggro onto the NPC or Ranger pets, which can’t be stowed during a fight;
@ The Sparks attack, which causes them to stop pathing;
@ Simin doesn’t carry conditions over when she goes invisible, making conditions like burning completely useless. Condition damage builds seem unviable for the fight.
Aside from the above, this boss battle was both irritating and unfun. No one in the party ever went down fighting Simin. The fight was just an annoying war of attrition, which neither side would win. Simin is an irritating bag of HP after an overly long dungeon. Whereas a fight like Giganticus Lupicus is challenging, Simin was at best obnoxious and at worst bugged.
Maybe we could have done something better, but I can’t think of what. With our builds and the challenges we faced, the fight seemed insurmountable even with changes in tactics and experienced players. That’s not fun.
Your thoughts and feedback are appreciated, as is constructive criticism.
Yeah….I won’t be getting any of those. =D
Thanks for the previews!
People are putting way too much importance on level and numbers, especially when level 80s get scaled down into the ground.
It’s worth noting that, even when scaled to the ground, Lv 80s enjoy a significant advantage over Lv 35s – completed trait lines, access to high level gear, more access to skills that can be switched up to fit the situation.
I’ve personally enjoyed the dungeon changes, but I also understand it would be a much different experience for a Lv 35 than for a Lv 80.
Nobody knows the answer for this one?
Charrzooka is always a huge dps loss.
Have you used Charrzooka post-recent patches, where your weapon attributes now apply to kits?
Maybe it’s because I have significant Condition Damage, but the Charrzooka usually deals a ton of damage to my target before they can even reach me.
I found it last night, too! On a foothill near Butcher’s Block where I assume her Farrar was. Now that Malia’s ready to get revenge, I’ll have her join my warband so Euryale
and Wroda can teach her the ropes.
One thing I’d like to add is that Robert did a fantastic job integrating the story of the explorables into the gameplay. You actually use Detha’s traps now, and there’s a reason now that you recruit Grath’s help to take down Rumblus.
AC used to feel like a bunch of random events strung together, but now there’s a logical reason everything is being done. Thanks for that, Robert.
My main issues with AC now is that the Gravling Stalkers spend far too much time tunneling and have a weird few seconds of invuln after doing so.
Are you sure that was invuln and not evade? They get evasion bonuses now if they hit you after the pop out of the ground. I thought the Stalkers were great.