Guild Wars 2

AoE doesn’t reduce the number of bubble hits. You have to use skills that target enemy, not the ground targetted ones. Check this for comparison. Smite doesn’t help at all despite triggering blocks yet shelter (healing skills) doesn’t trigger any block but still reduces bubble counter.

Lastly, I don’t think shockwave works since it’s blockable.

I would consider using it only in teams that have problems with destroying the bubble or in teams that deliberately prolong bubble phase (to kill as many grubs since shaman in the bubble presents no threat, unlike enraged shaman that inflicts twice the amount of the damage) because of the lack of anti-projectile skills or coordination.

Humans, master race, have a nice elite if you don’t use any other elite skill for that encounter. Only drawback is recharge.

Black Box.9312:

Programming AI to actively avoid damage would go a long way.

What would that change? Would mobs dodge attacks? Would you need cc? What would stop them from dodging your cc?

I wouldn’t say our reqs are steep, after all I’m the member. Anyway, you can always try applying on a different profession. I’m sure spoj would be happy with the first (?) necro applying.

Black Box.9312:

Reworking the AI actually would fix most of the issues plaguing PvE. That is what I was referring to.

I HAVE played through dungeons and I HAVE used the current meta tactics. I just stopped doing it because it bores the hell out of me.

None of the changes to AI would ever fix the issues you have in mind. You can achieve almost identical efficiency while gimping yourself with proper team compositions.

I always wonder how a content was intended to complete but since I lack a crystal ball I’m never certain. However, not killing mobs so they don’t respawn is in line with other similar mechanics.

I would go as far as saying that people that did wurm with Teamspeak (3rd party program) cheated a bit because it’s supposed to be completed by a coordinated zerg without using 3rd party programs.

Sorry, but that’s how I see it. Every content should be doable by everyone and even a tiny bit of required coordination contradicts that. Hence, none of the content should require any kind of coordination. After all, you’re supposed to pug in mmos.

When you show people how coordinated teams do dredge fractal, it’s usually met with “lol, ts”.

For people that mostly pug any content that requires coordination is badly designed.

Ele received few nice traits like new persisting flames and fresh air that allow builds like d/f to shine. Plus, more people found about conjures.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

And what you seem to be ignoring is that the AI really is pretty stupid. I can only assume you haven’t played Guild Wars 1, because if you compare the AI of that game to the AI in this game, you’d see that GW1 AI is far superior. Increasing the intelligence of the AI would requires zerker teams to put a little more thought into combat, or perhaps consider bringing a support character, or a control character instead of slotting 5 DPS. Is adding more strategy and more tactical thinking to the game really such a bad thing? Even doing something as making mobs dodge would be a nice improvement.

Except coordinated teams do bring CC and support. Unless stuns, pulls, reflects, protection and a lot more are not your idea of CC and support or you want dedicated roles.

Hakkology.3189:

With the amount of one shot mechanics in this game, you can never fix the zerker mentality. Not to mention, your dungeon bosses are all immune to your other skills, stuns, roots, snares or other things, all that matters for your dungeons, is DPS.

I don’t know man, my control skills work against dungeon bosses. I can snare them, stun them for up to 5 seconds and decrease their damage output (weakness). What dungeon bosses did you have in mind?

P.S. : It’s still not too late. This game’s power comes from events. Give us rewarding events all around the world and make events more populated on every zone. Events force us to use utility skills, survival skills or other skills that you would never consider using in dungeons. Events make builds like PVT make sense.

Open world is so hard for berserkers’ that they wouldn’t be able to complete them. Not to mention most of the players forgot how to survive when there is a pressure because they just stack. Open world events are the future of gw2 pve and they force people to play together which is the spirit of all the mmos, unlike instances.

Tim.6450:

That’s just ranged combat how can you kite with the warrior sword?
Btw how do you play power ranger longbow? You stay back.
how do you play power scepter guardian? You stay back.
…

And all of those builds have one thing in common, they are bad and shouldn’t be buffed because that would lower an already low skill cap.

unleashed.8679:

Probably the minimum is 5, but is goes most of the time in regions 10+
probably Pets count here as well.

The minimum is 3 and it goes above 5 only in the open world.

probably dodge was the wrong word here, but you can melee them and you don’t need tanky stats for this

Who cares if you get hit, you will survive it.

Then maybe the problem is with a guardian? Try doing it with any other team composition.

Where is the problem here? Because zerker gear wouldn’t be #1 anymore?

This does not mean, power builds are useless and can’t beat that boss. It just won’t be the easy way anymore.

Berserker’s gear, as well as rampager’s and assassin’s are all the most squishy. Why something that gives you a cushion in the form of either toughness, vitality or healing power be any better? Low risk, higher rewards? That doesn’t make any sense.

No one wants these tankiness, it is just there by design. There is no Condidamage, duration precision set available. Do you need less skill there for? No.

Tankiness is not the only thing making them less skillful.

Why are conditions against active combat?

• You have to hit your target: Y
• You can dodge conditions: Y
• You can Block conditions: Y
• You can cast while moving: Y

Because you can kite around and spam condies. How do you play as condy necro or a mesmer? You stay back.

Warrior recruitment is closed indefinitely.

unleashed.8679:

You have to fight through 7 or more stacks of defiant to land one single hard CC. All of them have high CDs. So even with coordination it is nearly impossible to time those CCs (interrupts).

Spamming CC should not work, but here would the “rage-mode” come into play.
If the party uses CC to much, the boss gets immune to it and much stronger. So you have to think, what you are doing. I probably should mention that the stability can’t be removed (probably should call it CC immunity).

It’s 5 not 7 and somehow my teams ae able to stuns fractal bosses for up to 5 seconds.

Put two hammer guards in front of the mossman with perma-protection and you can kill him without kiting (at least before last fractal patch, didn’t test it afterwards).

Why 2? You can do it with 1. But is it about dodging or abusing guardians? I thought you had written that you could have dodge everything, not tank it. You can tank almost every boss with right trait and gear (clerics, etc) but we already knew it.

It would crate content, in which zerker gear didn’t shine. Something different to current meta. Lets say power damage is reduced by factor 10. You would love to bring a condition class with you.

Btw, why do you think it needs more skill to play direct damage? You just have to hit the enemy, no matter what kind of damage you do.

But then we have condies > power. So what exactly is the difference? Do you want to change it just for the sake of it?

Condition damage builds usually have low skill cap due to tankiness, reducing damage through condies (chill, weakness, cripple) and usually being ranged playstyle. In the meantime, power builds usually need to go up closer to enemy and are glassier.

If no one wants build diversity, why not delete every armor except of berserker ones?
And delete every condition skill, … ?
They are in the game, so why should they be ignored/under powered in PvE?

Your build is determined by traits, weapon choice, traits choice and utilities choice. You gear puts you on defense-offense scale.

If it were up to me, I’d delete every gear (stats). It just binds you to one playstyle (especially with ascended) and make so that your entire build is encompassed by traits. But since we cannot have nice things we have to deal with what we have. This game was advertised with the active combat in mind, condition damage builds are antithesis of it.

Evilek.5690:

Warrior make 42k+ Hundred Blades every 8sec, 3.5 sec cast time = 12k DPS without full might stack.

I have never seen 42k+ 100b without might stacks. Got a screenshot perhaps? Just keep in mind that almost any warrior dealing that amount of damage traits for forceful greatsword which gives might stacks.

unleashed.8679:

The problem of conditions isn’t the damage alone:

• You can’t use CC, because of defiant and unshakable:
  Introduce a “rage-mode” for every boss, if he gets too many hard CC within too short time (stunlock), the boss get buffed with stability, swiftness and fury/might.

You can use CC, you just have to coordinate it. Thoughtless spamming of CC should never work.

• There is no need to kite bosses in current design:
  Kite them to position X and they get damaged (exception: dredge fractal)
• There is no need to kite enemies, because you can dodge every single attack of bosses

I’d like to see people that claim this to fight mossman or archdiviner at high scales. Dodge every single attack of them without kiting and I’ll applaud you. You keep using hyperboles and that’s not a thing you’d want to use in a serious discussion.

• There are no bosses with high toughness:
  “Difficulty” of bosses is made due to vitality (life sponge) and not toughness. There is not a single boss with high toughness, so conditions would deal more damage then power builds (due to the effect, that they ignore armor).

How would toughness not be a life sponge? Instead of promoting direct damage, you’d promote condition damage which arguably is much easier to play. Build diversity achieved by the cost of lowering already low skill cap isn’t something I would like to see.

Heck, if everyone wants build diversity so much, anet should also buff AI specs. I’m sure pvp-ers would appreciate that.

Slight correction, weapon swapping has 10s cooldown and attunement swapping 10-13s (down from 10-16s since 10th Dec).

Sure but make condition builds a bit more skillful to play.

As long as there is virtually no punishment for people going ranged, it should never be encouraged.

I’m elated scarlet’s potion was fixed this fast.

I’d argue that actually 0% of a body is revealed.

phaeris.7604:

Elementalist -168/cast (so at max auto attack you’d heal 336/second), active 3275, cooldown 25 seconds, cast time 1 second.

None of the autoattacks can be used twice per second.

Why do I use CC against bosses? Are you telling me that was a complete waste of time?

Warriors don’t need vigour, they have 4.5 dodges/20s while perma vigour ele has 4/20s. Let’s not include block on 15s cooldown or 50% uptime of party wide vigour + weakness that actually helps (50% chance not to be one shotted as ele in fotm).

The only reason why you could die substantially more on a warrior is the fact that all other builds you most likely play (engi, staff ele) are ranged. Mystery solved.

This game needs more casual content seeing as we’ve got two hardcore bosses only a fraction of players can ever complete. People need content that is easily attainable, otherwise they will leave the game for good.

It’s ironic how those threads end up here, being skipped and ignored by any potential dev who could read it.

Surprisingly enough, I play dps ele without a guardian or even a mesmer. And by dps ele I don’t mean putting 20 points into water and 30 into arcana.

Mobs do cleave.

Just two?

Sustain is needed if the incoming damage is constant and too high for you. You die from one-two hits so how would sustain change it? Even healing signet wouldn’t change a thing. Sustain is the problem in pvp where incoming damage is steady, unlike in pve. Answering the title of this thread, you stay alive by playing not badly. If you have issues it’s either generic l2p (I help any ele that asks me for an advice) or just the problem of getting more guardians.

I do AC daily and I’ve never been CC’d with blockable attacks while having arcane shield up. I made tests yesterday and never saw anything what you say. Make a video of it happening, otherwise noone will believe your baseless claims.

Off-hand axe can you give a lot of sustainability. Just ask someone to put down a water field.

I consulted the best pve mesmer in game and then I performed seperate experiment. Sorry to disappoint you but it doesn’t block unblockable attacks.

Who are you going to heal without stacking?

digiowl.9620:

haviz.1340:

But then ranged players can pew pew from the distance while melee ones do the entire job.

Odd, i thought the constant argument for lower ranged damage was that ranged was less risky. With the current aggro system i don’t see how that’s the case.

Even more so with bosses that are happy to spam out heavy ranged attacks that go bye bye the moment everyone is in the mobs face.

Never mind that the way support is either point blank on the caster or ground targeted, making non-melee support a much higher workload.

Right now the game seems to be a mishmash of traditional rules of thump (range safer, etc) and attempts at introducing something new. End result is a fish on land, gulping for air.

Range combat is safer even if you have constant aggro because most of the hardest attacks are melee only. And even know a single warrior can hold aggro of let’s say mossman for entire combat with 4 ranged players pewpewing from the distance having absolutely 0 risk.

But then ranged players can pew pew from the distance while melee ones do the entire job.

I see DnT is not the only guild that has problems with tyrants.

They haven’t moved adept trait to master after community claimed ele survivability is already too low. They will probably nerf it after increasing ele sustainability.

“Play how you want” originally pertained to playing different game modes and be rewarded similarly, not running bearbows or clericstaves.

LordByron.8369:

try mesmer sword 4…

So you claim mesmer block allows you to block unblockable attacks? That’s interesting, I’m going to ask someone to check it but you’re going to pay the repair bill, ok?

Bosses already cleave in melee (even the boss that everyone likes to brought up, namely the Spider Queen) so unless you want to increase the limit from 3 players to 5 I don’t see the reason why would you change it.

And if you allow bosses to use their ranged-only attacks on close targets, also allow them to use melee-only attacks on ranged targets, of course hitting players. It’s not fair that if you range lupicus in p1 he doesn’t kick you. Should be definitely changed.

Ah, yes, blocks are ineffective against unblockable attacks. That’s why endure pain is so strong and is the reason behind warriors dominance.

yayuuu.9420:

Ok, let me explain one more thing. What kind of damage reduction I got from my not 100% toughness set? I think that I’ve seen some calculations, and max is around -50% (not sure) if you go full toughness. This video showed, that with around 30-40% damage reduction even without healing this boss would give me a lot of time (maybe around 10 attacks).

Normally I’m playing with mostly berserker set and high protection uptime (you can achieve it as an elemetalist either using auras or earth attunement), so damage reduction with full zerker and protection is the same as with the gear I used killing her solo. Also it is possible to kill him with zerker in few seconds and you can resurrect downed players really fast.

I just did it few times in zerker, rarely using my healing skill (if the party was strong enought I could just 12345 it in the corner) and I never had to dodge.

Also, I bet that it would be possible to AFK kill it with 5 Axe warriors autoattacking it, with mabe some heal on crit sigils. Unfortunately, I can’t record video, because I don’t have other lvl 80 characters.

As a reminder, I’ll tell you my point again, because maybe you understand me wrong. I’m not saying that this encounter is too easy, but that bringing spider to the corner makes it too easy. If everyone stay on the spider queen, she’s not using her poison AOE attack and without that attack you can really tank and spank it. My point is that advantages of stack-in-the-corner tactics should be removed to force players to active play.

This is the part where you made a mistake almost everyone does. Together with higher damage reduction you achieve higher sustain (water traits, etc) which berseker’s has not have.

I can record how that looks with berserker’s gear but I’d expect you to know it already, you’re dead after 2-3 attacks. It doesn’t matter if you stack or not because if you go in melee range everywhere else, she still wouldn’t use poison field but you still have to dodge her autoattacks and immobilize.

As a reminder, I can tell you that ranging bosses is even easier because (surprise, surprise) they don’t use their melee attacks which are usually more punishing.

Why would I compare endure pain to arcane shield? Endure pain is two classes above and warriors now have the best healing skill ever, defiant stance. Poor elementalists, it’s either no dps or dead dps.

Yes but if you take arcane shield your dps drops drastically. At the same time warriors don’t need to take anything.

Would be nice if champions scale more than just hp. How can a champion fight 30 people if he has a damage output similar or even the same as a champion that fights 1-5 people and he can only hit up to 5 people but usually just 3? Even if champs would one shot players, 25 are already ready to revive poor lads.

Ah yea, cleric’s gear is OP but we already knew that. I’m not sure why you picked that spot to fight her there, you can do it everywhere as long as you are in melee range. I guess the person who designed that boss thought that using unavoidable (can’t even dodge iirc) three poison fields that last for about 30 seconds is not a good design because it punishes melee players way too much.

You can kill her at 1200 range while avoiding poison circles only as she won’t bite you at all and her immobilize web has only ~450 range (though she uses it anyway, that’s like a real exploit I guess). So you either exploit while being in melee as she won’t use poison fields or you exploit while being in 900-1200 range as she won’t bite you and immobilize you. Pick you poison but don’t try to justify 111111 solo with cleric’s gear as that was already proven to be the best gear in the game. Try with berserker’s next time and compare the difficulty between 130 range and 1200 range, I’m sure you’d be surprised.

yayuuu.9420:

Spider Queen’s poison attack in AC, graveling’s jumping out of the ground, icebrood wolves leap, wurms underground traveling and probably many more

Being in melee range stops them from using those attacks, not stacking. Stack at range and they will use those abilities.

I guess relying on ranger’s, thief’s and warrior’s fields as well as their reflects is my recipe for success while running fotm 49/50.

If you desperately want a condition removal (though I have no idea why, magnetic wave is enough) just slot ether renewal. You can die from any attack anyway so it’s not like you need a healing skill. The only thing I’m relying is the bear duo because bears are best tanks, followed up by d-series golem and earth elementals.

I guess sharing mostly offensive boons could be compared to tanking. Definitely similar objectives.