Guild Wars 2

Luthan.5236:

Knock them down first! Engineer: Rifle 4, Big Ol’ Bomb, Mines, Battering Ram. Okay. It’s not knockdown – most only “launch” and some “knockback”. But still good… if it’s not too many vets or stronger at same time.

Most of them barely last long enough to start a single attack before the mob is back up, and they have cooldowns measured in x10s of their effect duration (never mind that the rifle one is a self-knockback, woho on a thin walkway!).

Dunno about the fight suggestion. If you happen to be somewhere behind a zerg, taking down one mob just clear the spawn point for another. End result is that you will be attrition-ed down the moment an elite spawns on your behind (in particular those hypnoss and their ogre summons).

Ravenmoon.5318:

Oh come on, I’m running with zerker thief and I rarely get pushed around. How exactly are you guys running. Agree though, fear is kinda stupid. It’s like … I run around, out of combat and suddenly im feared…wut

Its the pollen. Never mind that the “hallucinations” that it spawns are ridiculously thick skinned for what is supposed to be a figment of the characters imaginations.

This, in particular the ogres spawned by the hypnoss, likely adds to the feeling of overcrowding and CC spam. Ogres have two signaled attacks. One launch, one cleaves. Just about the only way to tell the difference is how they hold their club on windup. Good luck noticing that while trying to take down an elite hypnoss and friends.

Just had a lovely little session in the first floor minefield. I think i counted no less than 3 elites there, one of them an elite husk, all within the densely packed area you need to cross before you can double back and get to the instance entrance up above.

Mind you, one of them may have been drawn down from the walkways above by someone leaving said instance.

In all honesty the health of the mobs on L80 are just silly. No wonder most have opted for zerker in PVE.

Ameno.6813:

isendel.5049:

Wishmaster.7693:

Dev playing a warrior with GodMode On, priceless.

asd how insane is that regeneration? Anet must really be blind to allow something like this to stay in the game..

I can get almost half of that regen from Backpack Regen trait on top of my healing turret which is already one of the best heals in the game. The pot really shouldn’t call the tea kettle black.

The HPS from the signet passive match or exceed the HPS of our medkit toolbelt and our elixir H before healing power. Meaning that a warrior just having the signet there can run around healing just as much as when we are hitting our heal skills on cooldown.

Never mind that the signet has a 20 sec cooldown if activated, and again produce a healing spike that can be compared to the medkit toolbelt skill (also 20 sec).

Only when healing power is piled on do our skills begin to pull ahead, but healing power in general is a dump stat (only a few skills in the whole game get anything above 0.5 pr point of HP).

And honestly, the only time the turret is the best heal is when you fill your bar with blast finishers. Making you pretty much a one trick pony.

Elementalists can get similar results from Evasive Arcana and a few other traits combined, and a single skill on the off hand dagger. And most of those will be ready to use again faster than our blast finishers.

So lets see, 6-7g for the runes, 1-2+g for the hammer, sure can do that…

Charak.9761:

Paradox.5498:

Lothirieth.3408:

Ayrilana.1396:

Not surprising considering there’s no benefit to run it once you’ve gotten your achievements and can just park an alt at the top to run the instance or to open the chest with your daily key.

I must be missing something.. what daily key do you get at the top of the tower?

You don’t get a daily key at the top. You CAN however park a character with a couple of those instant bank access consumables at the chest. Use another character to buy one complete key per day and bank it (account bound). Then switch to the character at the chest, use bank access to get the key and open the chest.

You can access bank in WvW, logout and back in and be at the chest

More correctly, you can access crafting stations in your home borderland. And those also provide access to the bank.

And yep, what i have been doing the last day or so.

Any necromancer dropping 5 or more points into death magic agrees.

And with the upcoming balance patch, that skinned rodent will appear more often…

And the reason for the one-shots are to shoehorn in the dodge mechanic into PVE, one that is clearly designed for PVP. Why do i say that? Because a good dodge can make or break a spike chain. But all fights in PVE are attrition fights if you are fighting anything above trash mobs at equal level. And so the one-shots become overly harsh. In particular when you are facing down more than one mob at the same time. End result is AOE spamming zerkers trying to clear out the mobs as fast as possible.

I think the issue with the mob density is within the mob respawn mechanic.

While they have a initial spawn point assigned, they seem to just look for a vacant point of their respective group upon respawn. So if you are unlucky, mobs in the respawn queue can spawn on a point that you recently cleared of another mob.

Worst case scenario is that you keep clearing the same spot over and over, with just enough time between them for the old mob to respawn there yet again. If so the impression will be one of a never ending stream of mobs.

Never mind that if you have a couple of other players doing the exact same thing off in the distance, you may be pingponging mob respawns between each other.

Mesket.5728:

Skarpa.8203:

First level chambers drops Mysterious Blue Key
Second level chambers drops Mysterious Green key
Third level chambers drops Mysterious Pink key

This is not true. It was confirmed not to be true by many others. All key parts drops at any level.

OP, if you have problems finding one color in particular; its just bad luck. Outside the tower in Mar’s camp you can buy key fragments (1 per day). Buy the color you are missing.

ps I completed 4 keys the first day and the 5th one the second… its not hard if you stay within the tower roaming and killing stuff.

Pattern seems to be that the instances drop a specific color, while the tower mobs drop any color.

Piecekeeper.4361:

Mostly just time consuming, but I don’t know about you, but time consuming battles are something i’m rough with. I tend to lose focus halfway through and make a fatal mistake.

Been ANet design MO from day one. Fights are rarely hard, just time consuming.

SoulCrystal.2186:

All living story updates that have added challenging content, or content that requires a lot of players to complete, have ultimately been abandoned by the community in a very short time.

• Southsun is mostly vacant even though the mega Queen event was added.
• The Queen’s Pavilion became a ghost town for the last two weeks it was in the game.
• Scarlet Invasions were only popular enough when people got a lot of champion bags (and then they wanted to farm instead of win).
• Tequatl is (almost) only being killed by organized guilds specific to that purpose.
• SAB World 2 had low player numbers due to the difficulty and length.
• The Halloween labyrinth became a ghost town rather quickly.

The tower is already starting to be abandoned. People will do it for the achievements and that will be it. If you cannot get in there now to get the achievements, you’ll have a hard time trying to do it later.

Part of the community asks for more challenging content but they abandon the content quickly when it does not provide interesting rewards that match the risk involved. Everyone else who wants to try to do the more challenging content after the others have abandoned it are just left frustrated.

The karka queen event is a pain in the behind to get started, and it shafts anyone defending the northern camps by filling the center one with karka once the event starts.

As for the pavillion, i think the overlapping invasion meta had a part in that.

As for the rest, yep.

Taco is a special case tho, as the difficulty there is front loaded. You can pretty much tell it is going nowhere when your hitting the half-time point without the first sub-event happening yet. That’s not difficult, it is just a DPS gate.

Makes me want to spend as little time near the vendor as i can.

Torment is particularly insidious, as it does double damage when you are already low on health and trying to get some breathing space between yourself and the mobs.

And those toxic archers love to plink away at you from out of camera, with arrows that are applying torment.

Not that the confusion field spam from hypnoss helps. In particular if you get one or more of elite rank spamming ogres everywhere…

Clock-block, hmm…

roachsrealm.9284:

they have steady weapons in pvp already.

what they should have is a complete collection of back items with all the stats. I cannot test assassins stats in the heart of the mists..

Not all skills behave the same in SPVP and PVE.

It kinda started with the bazaar, but the current living is just as relevant.

The NPC outside the tower require both gold and a collectible as payment. But only the gold is accessible to me at all times. If i do not have enough of the collectible on hand, i have to waypoint to a bank or crafting station, withdraw as many of the collectible as i need, and waypoint back to make the exchange.

Given that said collectible goes straight into our bank when we hit “deposit all”, unless we remember to move it into a invisible bag first time we get one, it would be very convenient to be able to use it without having to retrieve it first.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

This is probably the only place in pve thus far I have found reliable use for the ally rez skills. Up until not they were situational or hit and miss, but I’ve used mine on every class (not counting warrior banner, that is hands down best ally rez in the game and doesn’t count) with much success. It’s honestly the only reliable way to rez people in the tower. I would suggest putting it on your bars. Necro and engi are the best rezzers in here, ele isn’t too bad either. Also, almost everyone has traits to benefit in some way while rezzing. Use them. It’s still difficult to get off rezzes, but every little bit helps. And if you’re dead (not downed) and surrounded…just waypoint out. You know you’re going to get someone killed trying to rez you. The courtesy goes both ways.

Meh, don’t see it happen. It ties up a utility slot (the warrior one at least is one the elite slot) and have cooldowns measurable in minutes( Engineer 2, necromancer 1.5).

Never mind that you need to reach them while still downed.

Meh, it favors swiftness and vigor builds. Tho i guess it could be considered defensive in a wide sense…

I wonder why ANet has yet to reduce the PVE confusion damage to PVP levels, as they keep producing mobs that spam it left and right. The PVE variant do twice the damage of the PVP variant, and it even got reduced in WVW after initially being on par with PVE.

the tower overall is a bit like Scarlet, insanely confused. The instances are quite soloable, while the main hallways are frustrating to the point of table flipping.

Do ANet intend for us to spontaneously form patrol groups on each floor or something?

And the spore mines take the cake. I could understand knockback, i could understand heavy damage. But enough damage to strip 3/4 of my tankish engineers health, and a knockback?!

sMihaly.1492:

i wish i could make my char look like this in PvE too

Yeah, that armor is clearly missing in PVE.

Kal Spiro.9745:

VOLKON.1290:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Sorry, I’m all for a system that supports all modes of play, but while it is possible to do well in other types of gear and to build characters around other modes of play DPS is still king.

Well, that’s love and all. While all the “kings” are waypointing back to the start of the tower the rest of us that actually use the full aspects of the combat system will be waiting for you at the top.

DPS was never king in GW2. Content was too simplified. Fortunately we’re seeing things refreshingly shift back to fight and content that is reinforcing combat the way it was intended in GW2.

I honestly have no idea what game you’ve been playing but you’re wrong. Zerks have already been explaining repeatedly in this very thread how they don’t have any trouble clearing this content. As much as I like to think I’m competent and capable in my Cleric gear I can still watch a zerker warrior buzzsaw through things that would take me forever to beat.

Oh so much that last sentence. I wonder how many times i have steeled myself for a drawn out fight with a veteran, only to have something in heavy armor come rushing up, swing his greatsword a couple of times, and the health of the mob drops from 100% to zero in what feels like a second.

Sometimes i wish the damage numbers of others were visible, so i could document such events properly.

And thats the thing, i suspect the mobs are well spaced out and all that, when the instance have recently reset. But once you have had a couple of groups come through, you are likely to have mobs spawning on top of mobs simply by chance of what spawn points picked.

I suspect that what is happening is that mob spawns are not reserved for each individual mob. Instead they are generic spawns without larger groups of mobs (toxic, nightmare, bandit etc). And when a zerg clears out a group of mobs, they go on a 90 second cooldown. Then they start spawning on the first available spot for their kind of group. And that often happens to be the very spot that some unfortunate player happened to just having cleared on his jaunt towards the top. End result is that for that particular player it seems like the game is spawning new mobs within second of the old one dying.

Then again, event spawns seems to scale up in batches. But fails to scale down if the event is abandoned. Meaning that a upscaled batch of event mobs may linger in an area for quite some time.

Something that make crap all sense. The story that ANet put up seemed to indicate that Scarlet thinks she have found a way to break sylvari free of both the pale tree and the nightmare. Something like turning everyone into soundless. It may well be that the plan has gone wildly astray tho.

I suspect the problem here is that zerker works too well in the rest of PVE. As such, it has become expensive to outfit a toon with it. This leave little room for maintaining multiple sets unless you’re a dedicated train runner.

The tower is bringing to mind a general discussion about mob spawn rates.

And i am starting to suspect that ANet should revise the mechanics of such.

What i am observing suggests that any mob of a specific kind (court, krait and so on) can spawn on any point designated to their kind.

End result is that you can face a spawn wave simply because you cleared a few spots around you. Right before the mobs killed by, say, a earlier zerg rush in a different part of the map, came due for a respawn.

This can then give the impression that mobs continue to spawn and spawn without respite.

Heh, that last spiral walkway is borderline trollish. One false move and you’re down at the bottom again…

Yeah, i wonder how week two will go when we are left with chest zergs from L3 onwards, and a dead zone for L1 and L2.

I got a suspicion that it is bugged. The attack pattern was pretty much that of a damoss, yet i never noticed the “serpent strike” doing as much damage as i would expect from a L80 champion.

Aerlen.5326:

…. where is this part of the tower? I must do it.

Yellow spirals, they are mini-instances. find them all and you will get an achievement (i am currently missing one…).

RedStar.4218:

Are you guys playing on the worse servers ?

When the event started, the zerg formed and waited around for people to complete the chambers before moving on, while clearing every monster.
Now people are running to the top, but they do help each other along the way. Just talk to others and form groups to get up fighting or running.

Overflows, Europe, end result is that 2 thirds are talking languages i have no chance understanding, much less try to organize a coherent zerg.

The golem at the entrance acts as a “waypoint”. Talk to it after reaching the start of level 2 and 3, and it will offer to transport you to either. Sadly i suspect that by the end of the week there are few running the lower levels…

I pitty the ones coming late to this, when the key farmers are all golem jumping to third level…

Why from bosses? Have them potentially drop from any mob in the dungeon, that way people have a reason to kill rather than skip…

The detonates, in particular as they are blast finishers, cause all kinds of issues.

Right now the favored way to play an engineer as a “support” is to load up on easy blast finishers, and then drop the healing turret, overcharge and blast as much as possible while the water field is up.

Right now the basic design of turrets seems to be focused on siege. Meaning that a engineer sets up camp in some location and holds it against any comers. We can see this in both the deployment costs of turrets and in that the toolkit can heal turrets. This pretty much turn GW2 engineers into Team Fortress engineers.

Except that this flies in the face of how PVE is played, and a large part of WVW as well.

To fix this turrets should not be something the engineers deploy and babysit in a siege mentality, but rather something that is disposable on par with a mesmer clone.

Indeed drop the detonate, and allow us to use the toolbelt skills at all times.

Also make overcharge the default, and remove the option to pick turrets up. Instead have the last much shorter and start the utility cooldown right away (and maybe shorten them greatly, as the cost vs benefit is clearly out of whack compared to something like necromancer minions).

Turrets should be something the engineer simply drops while running into a fight or away from a fight, and continues to drop while in a fight to aid himself and his fellows.

Not something he sets up in a planned fashion to create a defensive line.

Never going to happen, as ANet wants player reaction time and manual dexterity to have a say in combat outcomes. Heck, they specifically rearranged the skills of a gardian weapon to tone down how easy it was to produce a combo chain. Rather than hitting 234 in sequence, we now have to hit them 243 for the same outcome.

All this does it favor players with programmable keyboards however…

coglin.1867:

digiowl.9620:

The CC in this game is tuned for SPVP, not PVE. As such it is OP in the hands of the mobs, but UP in the hands of the characters.

Couldn’t disagree more. Mobs hove ridiculously over telegraphing actions that give you a full 2s+ warning. Players tend to have more CC and use them much more often then Mobs.

Individual mobs sure. But they tend to come in packs. And no, you can’t opt out of the packs (unless you like running away a lot). Attack one mob, and more often than not they call for support from 2+ of their nearby kin.

My first thought watching that fight was “why is he standing in the fire fields?!”, second was “do ANet wants us to play on the brink of death constantly?”.

As for the vacuum turret, reminds me of the pull attack that reef drakes do after putting down a confusion field. And i actually would not mind seeing us get a pull option, as we have a pile of knockback and launch options already (something that can be interesting for those bridges. Get a bunch to give chase, drop a BOB, watch them rain down).

One example from recent weeks. I was facing down a elite krait just to see how tough they were using my “tank-ish” engineer. His normal attacks didn’t phase me much. But when the big hit came in a inattentive moment, i watched my health go from near full to near empty. One hit and i was scrambling for every heal i could dig up while trying to avoid further damage.

From what i have learned since, the elite is pretty much the normal kind x3. Meaning they seem to hit 3 times as kitten average. All fine and good for the normal attacks, as the typical variant seems to hit silly little as a baseline. But this basic upscaling sends the hard hits spinning out of control quite quickly.

What all this does is leave very little margin for error. Meaning that the difference between tank and zerker is bordering on academic, because you need to keep dodging anyways. Meaning that going for defensive stats are for the most part a futile gesture as the drop in DPS do not balance out with the increase in survival.

While they are at it, fix it so that we can actually dodge out of the animation without having to tap a direction key first. Not everyone play with double tap to dodge on (it is suicide for me if i go to a jumping puzzle with it on).

The CC in this game is tuned for SPVP, not PVE. As such it is OP in the hands of the mobs, but UP in the hands of the characters.

I was thinking more in the sense that the engineer would be able to deploy turrets effortlessly in mid combat, kinda like how a necromancer drops a well or a mesmer summons a clone.

Right now the turrets are all about setting up a siege. All well and good in SPVP, and certain aspects of WVW, but pointless in PVE.

This mentality comes from the long duration (5 minutes if they can survive that long) and high deployment cost (upto 60 seconds on some of them, after they are destroyed) of turrets.

Picking them up do not make up for this in PVE. Mesmers lose their clones at end of combat, necromancer minions and ranger pets follow along automatically. Warriors may opt to grab a banner. But then they get a bundle weapon that they can put back down instantly, while engineer get a small-ish reduction in recharge time.

And turrets are more in line with mesmer clones than necromancer minions in how much punishment they can take (never mind their oversized hitboxes).

All in all i cant tell if ANet wants them to be disposable or something to manage.

Einlanzer.1627:

woeye.2753:

Einlanzer.1627:

The simple fact is if you’re somewhat good at one you’re likely to be somewhat good at the other too. NOBODY would ONLY use a bow or ONLY use a melee weapon – bows and swords are weapons with two different tactical uses. Most people who used one some would use the other to supplement it when needed. I.e. no matter how good an archer you are, you’d virtually never try to use a ranged weapon in a close range skirmish.

Well said. But when it comes to PvE in GW2 it’s almost always a bad choice to use ranged weapons. There’s no tactical use case for them. Or in other words: GW2’s PvE is all about pure raw DPS. Since melee gives the most DPS ranged is out.

In some situations, yes, but not universally. There are some things many people fail to consider – the most prominent being that in some fights you get more uptime with ranged weapons because you don’t need to move around or dodge as much. I would argue that that’s a bigger reason for the imbalance than the relative risk is.

Only time that is the case for me is with event zergs.

JasperDevons.6417:

Asuran special is a golem just as the engineer elite skill. So asuran tech is based on magic, engineers must have a little magic available for access. Also, DON’T SQUASH MY DREAMS! (j/k)

I suspect that the engineering magic is channeled via alchemy.

coglin.1867:

For months after release, players made thread upon thread demanding that melee weapons do more damage. They suggested the risk of melee range deserved more damage. Which in itself is a good point.

If your unhappy that melee weapons do more damage then ranged weapons, you need to be unhappy with the posters who flooded the forums demanding this situation.

Must have happened on a different sub-section, or before i took a active interest in the forum, as i don’t recall seeing them.

Trixie.7614:

I find it funny that there is “reflect projectile”, but there is no “reflect hit” (not counting Retaliation, because it works for ranged too).

Retaliation do not reflect tho. You still take damage, and the damage done to the attacker is not based on the damage you take.

After getting the krait shard i have not logged into the game. This seems to be a pattern for me. If there is an LS meta i can complete on my own, i go for it (didn’t get the quartz tho as i found the amount of jumping and such annoying). But if it is dungeon focused i pretty much do not log in for 2 weeks.