Guild Wars 2

Bagel.4598:

The leader board will determine who is your group, not necessarily class.
PvE revolves around 2 things : DPS and Dodging.
Those that advance to high level fractals, regardless of being heavy, med or light, will be those with the skill to evade and earn their keep. It will be a skill thing.
If you make it to those levels you will be acknowledged.
Rangers in PvE are a poor class on a whole, you don’t need the new Fractals to show you that.
Thieves have their place and I think the new mechanics will strengthen that.
Fractals teaches you a lot about how to play, and I know that even rangers are powerful in a group build, running high end PvE.

Actually, PvE revolves around 3 things: DPS, dodging and reflects.

Harrahou.4518:

Poor Brazil, Cookie, Vix and Crigger who had a 12 hour session to reach their goal not that long ago!!!

Don’t forget about obal!

swiftpaw.6397:

We are the hated ones. We are the people who have kitten hurled at them and smeared across our names and yet we endure. We receive death threats and insults, reddit downvotes and mindnumbingly stupid arguments. And yet we endure to create a better place for all.

We are the nameless heroes.

Nokaru.7831:

I dunno about you but I found 50+ Fractals to be pretty mindless with a few Guardians and spamming Ash Legion Spy Kits.

And that’s why my team decided to use 0 guardians and spy kits were already nerfed. Some people like to challenge themselves, it might be difficult concept in this game where zerging and afking is rewarded.

Anyway, let’s see how mindless new scales will be, especially with few guardians which is the common “solve-all-the-problems” solution — can’t beat shaman, let’s swap to guardians.

Zenith.7301:

Agree to disagree tbh. HotW is just HotW.

Let’s try again, shall we? I agree that doing similiar amount of dps as warrior and let’s say ranger (I assume that’s your profession) is easier for warrior (lower skill ceiling). But you seem to completely ignore the correlation between having enough reflects and facerolling fractals. You can have 5 warriors but without guardians or mesmers to support them with reflects you will have problems even with basic content like harpies or even asura.

Warriors reign over other professions where dodging is important (i.e. lupicus) since typical warrior build has more evades than perma vigour elementalist or guardian. But where projectile reflections matter (i.e. imbued shaman, mossman) warrior does not offer anything except banners and easily stackable fury, especially that you cannot burst bosses at higher levels.

Watch closely those speedruns on youtube.

Whitey.6185:

I actually love the boss fight to the Dredge fractal. When I did it for the very first time I was like.. finally a boss that actually requires you to do something other than stand there AFK with auto attack going.

So true:

http://youtu.be/tiIU_ktc2Ac
http://youtu.be/oXLDvQOKzxU

So the answer is they couldn’t fit all dredges in the timely manner.

Nokaru.7831:

The first wave that reached level 80 should have the title, “Saved By The Rock”.
The next wave will be, “Carried by Search and Rescue”.
Next will be, “At Least There’s Revive Orbs”.
The last wave of titles will be, “Boosted All The Way to 80”.

If you don’t know what any of this mean, then you probably don’t know the history of how players bypassed the Maw’s 1172% Agony.

Yes, because it’s the maw agony that made it harder than champion farming.

Zenith.7301:

Did you not read my post? I said warriors and guardians both. You for some reason felt like nitpicking when we both know a party made of engineers and necros and rangers and elementalists and thieves by themselves, without the support of warriors or guardians would be a much rougher party.

At no point in my first post did I ever leave guardians out. I said specifically they trivialized content.

There is a very real difference in the impact guardians and warriors have on a group compared to other classes, and I’m tired of people playing it down.

I cannot agree. Today I did Hotw 1 with pug. We had ranger, 2 necros, mesmer, and engineer. It was a breeze and it was a pug of rather questionable quality.

True story.

I’m sure everyone remembers how control skills were crucial to defeat Mai efficiently. The thing is, similarly to all dungeons bosses, she only had 3-5 defiant stacks (depending on the team size) while in fractals that number go absurdly higher.

Will it change or will we have to use 30 control skills just to pull her just once?

And the final, most important question. If anet will not change defiant mechanic for that fight, should they update gem shop with a “control booster” that increases the number of defiant stacks removed with the control skills?

Zenith.7301:

The necros and warriors are damage sponges. What’s so hard to understand about the fact that without 2 warriors, having 2 other non-warrior classes instead, your run wouldn’t go so well?

I’m not going to argue with that, we’ll just get infractions. But I will try to tell you that in fractals guardians are much better choice than warriors. If I replaced 2 warriors that had had no support (both elementalist weren’t exactly supportive) with 2 guardians, I am pretty sure we wouldn’t argue right now.

lordkrall.7241:

Mistlock Instabilities:

As Dessa has always been quick to point out, diving into the Mists is a dangerous hobby! Playing above fractal level 30, you will notice new Mistlock Instabilities that will force you to rethink your approach to what might otherwise seem like familiar challenges.
Every level starting at 31 will have a new instability to conquer. This instability is tied to the fractal level, so it will be the same for all three fractals and the boss, but will be replaced by a new challenge when you move up to a new fractal level.
These instabilities should offer new and varied challenges, even to veterans of the Fractals of the Mists!

Difficulty is a subjective opinion, not a fact. For instance, I heard Liadri was supposed to be hard. As it turned out, she was more of a jester than something hard.

Since these two fractals weren’t presented in the trailer, should we assume that both of them are being replaced by the two new fractals? Or is it because the trailer couldn’t fit all dredges in the timely manner?

Would appreciate the answer from a dev.

Zenith.7301:

Which is somewhat mitigated by the necro’s and wars. You’re still aoe bursting the kitten out of groups with those two warriors in it whenever you can’t use FGS.

Drop the warriors and see how smooth the run becomes for the caster/leather.

Bursting mobs at level 80? I didn’t know necro could aoe burst. I guess we were waiting for fgs every time when pulling mobs. I would also like to see how would you explain bursting bosses like archdiviner or mossman.

Are you serious?

lordkrall.7241:

What he is saying however isn’t that it will be easier, he is saying that the curve will not be as steep.
And the fact remains that there WILL be new stuff added to lvl 31+ fractals that WILL make them harder.

Please use “going to” instead of “will”, you are not someone who posses enough information to make that claim. For all we know fractals are going be dumbed down to cultivate the current gameplay that everyone loves.

lordkrall.7241:

They reset levels simply because they are changing how fractals lvl 31+ works.
They will be harder with new challenges now, thus having access to the “best” (the highest currently seems to start dropping at lvl 40) rewards without having to do said challenges wouldn’t make sense

I would really like to get so much inside info as you do. Constantly.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.

SkyChef.5432:

Range weapons?

I can appreciate good attempts.

Zenith.7301:

Moreover, you can’t say dredge and ascalon got ridiculous for non plate stacking groups.

I know most “hardcore” groups can’t appreciate this as they have rarely had any qualms about using guardians and warriors to trivialize content, but doing dredge at 48 as berk ele or even ascalon without a guardian for perma reflects or the burst aoe of 100b is just dumb.

It was gimmicky balancing. Hopefully the newly introduced challenges don’t take the usual game balance design of “Hard = more HP more damage done”.

I’ve got to 80 using this composition: 2 war/nec/2 ele. You know what do you need the most in fractals? Reflections. Do you know what this group lacks?

They couldn’t increase the difficulty for one simple reason, the game is already too hard.

I’m sure everyone remembers how control skills were crucial to defeat Mai efficiently. The thing is, similarly to all dungeons bosses, she only had 3-5 defiant stacks (depending on the team size) while in fractals that numbers go absurdly higher.

Will it change or will we have to use 30 control skills just to pull her once?

Konu.1826:

Either nobody will hit lvl 50 and the content will be nerfed or the ladder will be full of lvl 50s. My wish would be lvl 31 being equal to current lvl 80 but there is no way that’s going to be the case.

Sorry:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We fixed a number of bugs and made lots of balance changes to existing fractals. Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.

I will gladly get 750 ectos.

Dynnen.6405:

Those who throw stones labeled “useless dodges” shouldn’t live in glass houses with the welcome mat that says “we always dodge attacks and keep unscathed defender up”

I see you completely missed the point of that video.

Bright.9160:

This is a pretty ironic statement, coming from someone who made an entire guide centered around Burning damage as a viable option for Guardians, while it is in fact, absolutely terrible.

Satires bring the worst out ouf the people. I recommend reading this short wikipedia article.

foofad.5162:

Triple spirit weapons, full condition damage gear. Traits to capitalize on both. It’s a comedy build by virtue of maximizing the two worst features of the Guardian class.

In my honest opinion it is somehow still a better build than most posted here, including yours.

Anicetus.1253:

On a serious note: the build is horrible. Just less horrible than most builds on the front page.

That hurts man.

Quoting obal:

obal.3218:

You beat our 4 min kill using other peoples builds by a minute. It is more viable than a lot of builds as I figured. I would add it to my sticky, but the world isn’t quite ready for it yet

Pinkey Flowery.7018:

If you leave the siege up in the middle the ballistas constantly knockback the Shaman. He then casts the ritual from where he gets knocked back to and will aggro one or, at most, two mobs which are significantly easier to deal with than the four that you normally have to deal with.

Just a minor correction, mobs come in group of three, not four.

No rest for the wicked.

5 necros lupi with not-so-good build like 30/15/0/0/25 is going to be boring. There has to be something to stir things up!

LordByron.8369:

Oh sorry i forgot that Sw/sw is more effective in front of LA bank….

Greatsword is heavier so you move slower. At least in Divinity’s Reach where RPs reside.

You shouldn’t have done that screenshot with your greatsword.

colesy.8490:

Why is it that we decide to have fun just once with a quirky/bad build with haviz’s hilarious pseudo-RP and explanations in his OP and the thread gets removed for upsetting people, but bads can poke fun at us with their poor “zomg zerker!” comments and nothing ever happens to them? Isn’t that said with intention to upset too?

My OP was hilarious? I was trying to be serious.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I’d be curious to know what 3 fractal shards they got in a row that allowed them to duo it. Swamp seems challenging to duo, dredge virtually impossible, cliffside virtually impossible, uncategorized would be extremely rough, shaman theoretically possible, water definitely possible, and snowblind is possible.

So by what luck are we talking here whereby someone duo’ed a full fotm 79?

I think he meant a single shard but to add something, swamp is possible to duo with thief running two wisps.

This build includes Bow of Truth so it gets +1 from me.

Of course it is viable, the broader audiance just cannot see it.

I see no one noticed one very serious exploit. The bubble at the end had too many targets and we received no damage. I bet no one thought about spirit weapons from that side!

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Whats wrong with Signet of Rage?

Can’t rez play-how-you-want.

Can’t wait!

I managed to gather 4 fellow druids and 2 druid spirits and together we slain this legendary beast. Here are the results:

Druid haviz’s PoV: http://youtu.be/zjwcNbMrrT8
Druid Dub’s PoV: http://youtu.be/GJMS-zBvlB8

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Heck, when two people can full melee the Risen Priest of Melandru i’ll be in agreement with you.

You mean the guy in Cursed Shore or in Arah?

phys.7689:

in armor
920 ele versus 1211 guardian/warrior

= about 20% difference in damage mitigation .

That’s why it is hard to discuss game mechanics.

Paulytnz.7619:

I mean the amount of hp healed not the amount of healing options.

I know what you meant.

Paulytnz.7619:

For warrior I have noticed that their heals are a lot worse than other classes, this is probably to offset the extra armour they get. So in the end I think it all balances out.

I would completely disagree.

swiftpaw.6397:

I’m sorry but this build offends me (somehow)

Don’t do it to me.

This is how guardian dps build looks like in action:

http://youtu.be/PfmilDFq7yQ

Endless amount of burning, three allies and really fast fight. Though, this build is really hard to master, just one stunbreaker, no stability and rather hard to manage condition removal.

You can sell it for 1g.

Dynnen.6405:

Took me 5 or 6 times. Why?

So it is challenging.

Will it come with commentary?

CptAurellian.9537:

I’m already waiting for your next attempt to redeem the guardian class forum.

I have something in mind but I cannot use header tags and increased font size.

spoj.9672:

Difference is mesmer has very situational dps. Due to clones dieing. So if you dont need the utility they are a really bad choice to take. Whereas other classes can atleast provide decent dps at all times.

Indeed, even my druid provides great dps.

Walhalla.5473:

THIS. This is the main reason why we don’t have really interesting fights. Look at the original dungeons. Some bosses have intersting ideas but they didn’t play with the idea and most of the fights feel like placeholder.
And when we look at the bounty hunt fights, the fractal fights, the ones from the temporary dungeons and the aetherpath, you can see that anet can create intersting bossfights, they only need time for this. Even the champions in the tower have mechanics suited for dungeon fights, like the Spider who can trap players and eat them.

In my humble opinion, the best bosses in the game were already at the launch.