Guild Wars 2

Skills simply lack depth, they are mostly one dimensional.

slurpey.6014:

then GW2 would be like any other game. 3 hours of farming, fully geared and max characters and we are all bored.

I heard about this game. Its name sounds very similar to this one but lacks the number.

Champs are difficult for average group of 5 players. Zerging and range combat makes it faceroll, those are greatest offenders.

Galen Grey.4709:

Thats got nothing to do with the story though.

Regarding you issue specifically, whats wrong with the instanced versions of the living story we got? MF, AR, Scarlets funhouse, The cragstead instance, Nolan Hatchery as well as the new path in TA are all instanced and they were all pretty good.

Because my problem is not with the childish story but how it is being told. Zerging dynamic events gets boring after a while (personally it is less than 5 minutes for me).

As for the open world stuff, well LS didnt give much of that, some dynamic events during the Molten Alliance, Some DE during the secrets of southsun and the invasions. The only one you could AFK is the invasion, if you killed a few mobs then went to hide in some safe spot and left the game running for an hour. Not sure what the advantage of that would be but sure you could do that.

That is exactly how I did invasions. I did one portal event and went afk. The advantage? Some players have a strong opinion that you should play for fun and I do not see how zerging and auto-attacking dummies could be considered fun.

I did cof1 about 10 times and I would prefer less RNG with fractal weapons.

Galen Grey.4709:

Why do you feel the LS is garbage?

its not bad at all, easily on par with most DE stories. Especially if take the time to talk to the different NPCs involved and read the lore short stories released with every update there is plenty of goodies to be had story wise in my opinion.

I think people are being a bit too kitten LS here.

There are a lot of reasons why living story is bad. Personally, my beef is that every two weeks anet focuses most of its playerbase on a singular content. God help if that’s instanced but if it’s not it clearly shows why open world pve should be called afk pve.

Namely, zergs. Anet could replace all of their LS bosses with dummies and no one would notice a single difference with gameplay. All of the design hard work goes to trash because of the “everyone gets rewarded so let’s zerg”.

Galen Grey.4709:

Then why would you feel its a problem? you’re getting the reward playing the content you enjoy playing so where is the problem?

What can I do with them without stacks of dragonite ore? Hint: delete them.

Its scale 48, it should be. Its also scale 48 and the likely hood of getting an ascended drop is quite high.
I dont venture in high level fractals myself but a guild mate who’s in fractals alot already got 3 ascended weapon drops. Now granted they might not be the stats you need but while you craft one as you wish they might be a good subsitiute in the situation you mention. How about you did you get any ascended weapon drops at those levels?

Nope, never got a single drop. A friend got cleric’s ascended, great replacement of exotic berserker’s.

you mentioned level 48+ now. before now you were arguing how players are locked into low fractal levels because of ascended gear. Fractal is a vertical progression game, the whole point of it is to gear up and be able to take harder challenges. Arguing that ascended weapons are gating you from higher levels is kinda superfluous because thats precisely the point.

It was the whole point when you could have got every piece of ascended in fractals. So you are completely missing the point and arguing just for the sake of defending idiotic decision of making ascended weapons crafted through participation in “various” activities. Activities that promote afk gameplay I must add. Ascension indeed, is a troublesome process.

Staff is still bad as ever in pve.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

You cannot push all classes to the level of warriors without destroying any challenge in PvE. They are simply that overpowered.
You would have to buff all classes and than raise the difficulty level of all PvE content, which would just be the same as simply nerfing warriors.

On the other hand, I am OK with anet fixing useless skills and traits first for other classes and see how close we get to warriors, than balancing them down to where PvE is more balanced for everyone.

I really hope you meant guardians and mesmers instead of warriors. Reflections are that overpowered.

Galen Grey.4709:

You said “Time is usually in denominator. Instead of doing hundreds of jp to get empyreal fragments or guild missions to get dragonite ore one could play something else. Something that one enjoys.” That implies you dont enjoy any activity that gets you empyreal fragements and dragonite ore which in turn means you dont enjoy, minidungeons, dungeons and fractals since they give out empyreal fragements. WvW as it is a source of dragonite ore.

That does not imply that at all. In fact, it is the opposite. I probably did more arah and fractal runs than this whole General Discussion board combined.

here “One weapon is trivial. I guess casuals who like to swing a greatsword never swap their weapons but imagine some people do. You don’t want to lose 10 ar just because you had to swap your weapons.”
Now granted Agony resistance is probably the most valid reason for the argument but still if you need to swap weapon chances are the need justifies loosing 10 AR temporarily.

You have two weapon sets. Let’s say it is a typical guardian with a greatsword and a sword/focus. You have an ascended greatsword and an exotic sword and a focus. You got hit by an agony inflicting attack at scale 48 and you are on your sword/focus set while having weapon swap cooldown of 7s. The difference is between life and death.

Getting ascended rings in fractals is pretty easy. technically at scale 20 you can get a ring every 10 runs using pristine relics not counting potential drops.Thats assuming you got less then 25 laurels & 250 badges, less then 35 laures or less then 12 guild commendations & 5 gold.

Why do you even argue with me about scale 20 when I am mentioning scale 48+ which you most likely have not done ever. I meant weapons with ar, not trinkets. Once anet unlocks even scales 50+ with proper agony you will need more ar to survive jade maw. And it might happen very soon with three new fractal.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

i don’t disagree with you. but you can’t really compare temple events to dragon one or any world bosses for that matter, simply coz of their sheer size. Targeting such gigantic bosses is very difficult even with ranged let alone with melee.

Temple bosses are world bosses. What you mean are epic bosses. Reference

There are few undodgeable fear attacks in pve. In pvp there are certain traits and rune effects that inflict fear and they might be undodgeable.

This might be a shock for 99% of gw2 playerbase but world bosses, at least temple bosses in Orr, are challenging and fun.

When you try to do them with five or less people. Zerging and range combat simply promotes laziness (that’s still an understatement).

What most of the population would do if they had to kill world boss with just few people? They would ask for more people on map chat. And that’s just sad…

sinzer.4018:

Elementalists have their problems, most definitely, it’s why mine’s gathering dust but it’s not because of passive heals or immunities.

They actually have problem with their healing. Healing is one of their core mechanics that should help with their low innate armour and hp. But in order to heal an ele needs to stop attacking to cast those water spell which relieves the pressure of the opponent.

Healing signet: 392 + 0.05 x healing power
Signet of restoration: 202 (168 in pvp) + 0.08 x healing power

There’s no comparison here, signet has also lower cooldown.

Farming should require some brain input. This one does not.

Zelyhn.8069:

I’m a jumping puzzle elitist, can I join?

No, only temple bosses raiders. A great 4:3 sample of our raids.

Zelyhn.8069:

You left LOD?

I sincerely welcome all good players in the best open world guild in EU.

This situation reminds me of my recent 3-men lyssa event. Everything goes smoothly, lyssa almost dead after about 1 minute and then he came.

The Warrior, The Beast, The Predator.

Lyssa suddenly stopped losing her hp. I tried to tell him very kindly to swap his weapon for something more beastly but he had too much dignity. Moral of the story? Replace friends with bads.

Brutaxia.5098:

Brut
Lvl 80 Ranger – loves whirlwind/rampage as one, hates running from killable mobs, weak players that can’t kill trash mobs, and crybabies

I hope you love your dreamer as well.

During this epic fight, Statue often appears not to do anything. However, it is casting its deadly spell called Malchor’s Tears (makes me literally cry when it glitches with that).

Guildwars 2 is a game where dodging, active damage mitigation, is a fundamental mechanic and this bug needs an immediate attention, especially because it occurs in a high end content.

This clip shows it in action:
http://youtu.be/ZppWj9T6lRA

As you can clearly notice, in the first example this attack has a clear cue while in the next two examples there is no cue at all, Statue simply does not do anything.

Please fix.

Xae Isareth.1364:

It really depends on how good you are. When I try to melee Lupi or Foreman Spurr, I end up dead on the floor. Being dead means no contribution and zero DPS.

That’s why I mentioned self-improvement. Range combat in gw2 is very easy and does not make a better player.

But world bosses are very entertaining assuming no nearby zerg.

Astralporing.1957:

In PvE staff is less useful (except for zerg farming, where it is the primary choice). My personal preference is scepter+focus/hammer, but sword+focus and GS are also solid melee choices.
Generally (especially in dungeons) you should always have a range set, and melee set.

Especially in dungeons you should never use ranged weapons. Ranged weapons are for world bosses to go afk because even if you try to make an effort it ultimately doesn’t matter because of more than 50 bads “contributing” on the same level (read: prologing fight because reading and watching the field is not in the fashion).

In 5 men instance you should actually care about your own contribution and self-improvement.

Mesket.5728:

/agree

It is a fun fight, better than almost every other. I’m playing this game to have fun fights; if I don’t do them, why the hell am I even logging in?

There are really fun fights in this game, you just have to look for them.

durend.6237:

average damage =
Base damage * ( 1 + Critical Chance * ( Critical Damage + 0.5) ) * Damage Mods

There is also the fact that increasing Critical Damage is additive. If I have 76% crit damage and use a food that gives me + 10% crit damage, I’ll have 86%.

Increasing Damage Mods is multiplicative. If my current mod is 1.39 (the number you’d get from scholar runes, night and force sigils and slaying potions) and I go into zeal for the 10% damage to burning foes and radiance for the 10% damage to foes with conditions I have not increased that number to 1.59, but 1.69.

1.39 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 1.69

Add in the 5% modifier for swords in radiance and were up to 1.77. 35 points spent, and the damage modifier has increased by .38 (1.39 -> 1.77). This number is then strait up multiplied to base damage.

On the other hand, with full berserker/scholar, we sit at 78% crit damage and 38% crit chance. 30 points into valor brings us up to 108% crit damage and the 5% of toughness is applied to percision brings crit chance to 41%.

Now let’s say we’re in a pug group with a shout-heal warrior and a ranger with spotter and a warhorn. perception stacks + spotter boost crit chance to 60% and fury brings it to 80%.

1 + crit chance (crit damage + .5) = 1 + .8 (1.08 + .5) = 2.26

The number that the 10/25/x/x/x build would get however (same party, same stacking sigil):
1 + .89 + (.78 + .5) = 2.14

put those numbers together with the ealier damage multipliers x/x/30/x/x would get
2.26 * 1.39 = 3.14 (total modifier to base damage)

and 10/25/x/x/x has
2.14 * 1.77 = 3.78 (total modifier to base damage)

The reasoning against going into valor after starting with 10/25/x/x/x is that there are better traits for party support in virtues as well as more damage mods. The only damage modifier in the valor line is mace specific (a weapon that has poor dps) and thus the tree should not be considered when specing for damage.

DPS example for a guardian with a shout-heal warrior, I’ve seen everything.

Molch.2078:

Then you buy Dungeons at your own risk, too. Therefore kicking ppl after they payed me 20g for arah p4 is fine and I cannot be reported for this, since its not supportet by Anet.

Logic flew out of a window a long time ago.

Oh, legendaries would have been prestige item if they had not been buyable.

Romo.3709:

Tell me what do you think is prestige? Just giving it to you? Not having to spend hours upon hours of gameplay on acquiring that one thing you want? I’m not asking you to answer my question with a question. WHAT IS PRESTIGE TO YOU? Because right now it’s all rant about how you’re not getting that thing you want and you want Anet to give it to you. Define prestige in your words.

How fractal skins should be acquired is in thread name. Right now, they are not prestige gear, they are rare gear.

Prestige is reputation that spreads admiration on the basis of a perception of one’s achievements, completing fractals and praying to lady luck is hardly that. This game lacks hard content because it is made for casuals who do not like when you need to improve your abilities.

Romo.3709:

What is prestige according to you? And acquiring weapon skins just by doing a hard content? EVERYONE will have that “prestige” skin of yours within few days. Think Teq for instance. Hardest boss fight in the game? EVERYONE can kill him these days. Fractal 48? Our guild does them daily like a regular dungeon run. There is no prestige in this game, even if legendaries could be acquired by doing a hard content, withing a week or two we’d be literally seeing everyone walking around with a legendary.

How then does running something hundred of times make it prestige?

Galen Grey.4709:

Zergs can never be discouraged no matter what you do. the only way to get ridt of them is to do what all other mmos do, make PvE competitive with mob tagging and stuff or hide boses in instances to control the number of players fighting them. Either way its going to be bad.

Long before launch, anet designers claimed that bosses get new abilities with more people around that let them handle those players properly. Have you seen anything like that? If bosses could instagib not five but all players afking the fight zerging could be at least a bit discouraged.

Game is shallow.

• no resource management except cooldowns
• almost no existent punishment for being interrupted
• positioning not required thanks to plentiful of gap closers and teleports
• (in pve) control against bosses is almost completely worthless

Galen Grey.4709:

Thing is if you dont like JP, World bosses, Temples, Dungeons, Fractals, WvW, Guild missions, Mini Dungeons etc.. what exactly is these people would be playing exactly?

Where did I say anything about dungeons, fractals, wvw and mini dungeons?

People put way too much emphases on stats. You dont switch weapon just because its cool to switch weapons. You switch weapons because you need to perform an action the other weapon provides so yeah it would still make sense to switch weapon even if that weapon is slightly less effective then other one to deal damage. chances are its less effective to deal damage anyway since not all weapons of the same class are designed for damage.

Where did I emphasise stats?

Because without an ascended weapon you cannot get further then level 1 right. People get to level 20 with no agony resistance what so ever but suddenly without the weapon even level 2 becomes an issue.

You cannot survive maw with 0 ar at scale 20+. And try scale 80.

LordByron.8369:

So you want 1500% current chances?
Ok i want to pay a dusk 50 gold
I want to craft an infinite light with 40 charged lodestones and 15 orichalcum blade.
And i want ascended weapons to cost 5 gold each.

Its exactly the same you asked applied to the rest of the “skins”.
Since they want to preserve the luck of people who drop a precursor….why should they totally disregard people that run fotm with 0 rewards for skins?

@haviz
If you look at all the stealth nerf they made in fractal they are clearly supporting fractals.

The issue is all they do is against players but they stealth buffed mobs and bosses almost each patch.

Afaik they solved the cliffside arm seals respawn also at least.

Winning a lottery isn’t a prestige. Acquiring skins should be done by completing hard content.

Stealth nerfs/bug fixes are hardly support.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

This^

You have your sword swap for the trash at shaman, the ranged swap is simply for the non-bubble phase(s) where you’re presumably just dodging arrows all day (you could just full melee, if you wanted to). Your points for the GS made no sense at all. Using the push on the elementals, seriously? That’s about as counter-intuitive as it gets.

You aren’t bending over backwards at all with that build. You should (almost) always have 2 mantras on your bar for fractals, there are some instances where you’ll have as few as 1 and as many as 3, claiming that mantras aren’t effective just shows your inexperience with the area(s). Vuln buffs the entire teams DPS, if you have the ability to easily apply vuln, you should do so; there is no reason not to (theres also no where else to put 5 points that is actually helpful).

Scepter/sword is purely for the imbued shaman, there is no other encounter that you will be ranging in fractals. Otherwise, you’re camping Sword/Focus+Sword/X, primarily off-hand sword and rotating to off-hand pistol when the situation asks for it. It is a fools choice to put all your eggs into one basket (phantasms), they will not and do not survive for the majority of most of the fractals.

Also; ANet said that mimic’ing agony isn’t an exploit. It’s a clever use of skills.

In closing; Scepter/sword if you plan on ranging something, 15/30/0/25/0, use mantras, sword/focus is always one of your swaps, greatsword is bad. This is all based on tests conducted going from 6-70 (hitting 80 this weekend) fractal level with a mesmer.

Ranging at shaman, mwahahaha.

Galen Grey.4709:

Not really. Jumping puzzles give out Empyreal Fragment which is a component of Ascended gear. Dragonite ore can be acquired through guild missions which arent exactly zergy though I can understand if you feel they’re border line zergy. And Bloodstone Dust can be gotten from dungeons / fractals / guild missions. The rest of the stuff can be done even solo if you want.

I spent my life avoiding zergs. I was telling people to go 20 steps that way when they were complaining about zergs at launch.

The only new skin that you cannot get by zerging is actually the Tequalt exclusive ascended skins that yes but every thing else you really can!

Time is usually in denominator. Instead of doing hundreds of jp to get empyreal fragments or guild missions to get dragonite ore one could play something else. Something that one enjoys.

Galen Grey.4709:

whats this hurry everyone has, I really dont get it. Its like if it takes you 2 months to get your ascended weapon instead of 2 weeks the world is going to end so people rather get bored to death grinding those 2 weeks then getting a nifty reward after 2 months of enjoyable game play.

Seriously why?

One weapon is trivial. I guess casuals who like to swing a greatsword never swap their weapons but imagine some people do. You don’t want to lose 10 ar just because you had to swap your weapons.

Galen Grey.4709:

1. you can play fotm even if you never get a single ascended piece ever

No one here who wants ascended gear abolished cares about level 1 fractals. That’s even worse than the living story crap.

Galen Grey.4709:

A for materials thats a bit debatable. its true for temple events, world bosses etc.. They will be full of people and thus they are a zerg sure but you’re not really zerging in the sense that you jump in there do the event and you’re gone. Its not like in say the champion trains when you’re actively zerging. I dont think ascended gear is really encouraging zergs, its encouraging certain game aspects like temples and world bosses.

A zerg is a zerg. It should be discouraged but it will never because of a target group of this game. Temples and world bosses are the most boring content designed in gw2 with the exception of the living story. The only way it could possibly be better is to make them instanced. “Open world raiding” translates to “welcome all zergs”.

High end content…

Mckeone.9804:

The real question is whether they have totally abandonded the fractal system now that they are pushing two-week living story updates.

The real question is whether they had supported fractals in the first place?

Zelyhn.8069:

@ spoj
Yes I would like to make a tl-dr, but on what? I am not advising just one build. I will add quick and easy info about the build I currently run, but then again I tend to change it frequently

@ Jalabi
Celestial gear is ok, it is a very decent way to get started with this game.
I would advise you to use D/F for PvE, it is by far my favourite weapon set.
As for the builds you should start with something like this:
0/30/0/20/20 (fresh air, air training, vital striking, cleansing wave, elemental attunement, renewing stamina)
Once you get comfortable with this try to get rid of 10 points in arcana and put them in water and try aura sharing (with zephyr’s boon in air).
This is a good way to get started with a D/F elem.
In the future you may want progressively switch to berzerker gear.
Don’t hesitate to ask for advice along the way

@ DEKeys
Thanks to your awesome data-mining I can make a proper rotation calculator now I am very grateful for your contributions!
I will finish to update this thread soon, and I will be as specific as detailed as possible.

Where is the appreciation of my work?

Just do what Zelyhn and I did with lingering elements. If you already have infractions, do not try that.

I’d like to add my similar experience. Getting died because of bugs is not fun and needs prompt fix.

Rune of strength does not work, otherwise it might have been used.

Hey Dub, are you suffering from mod-induced dissociative identity disorder?

Taldren.7523:

That is exactly what I was afraid of. Why does Ele have 3 freaking end regen abilities (2 in one line) again? Class is so badly designed.

At least those traits work differently. Let’s marvel at Ember’s Might and Burning Rage.

That’s preposterous.

Paulytnz.7619:

Easy – Sigil of Doom:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigils

That’s why ele healing was nerf, because everyone could use poison it by weapon swapping sigil that no one would cure. You realize those professions have almost no other conditions so this poison will be cleansed relatively easy?

How about you give a practical example?

Mackdose.6504:

Where did you find this information?

Empirical tests.

Mackdose.6504:

No, it’s an educated guess based on the relative strength of 80 zones and base 80 rewards.

I mean the last PS mission gives you a rare for a reward, all of the faction skins are rare, the cultural armor is rare.

What do you think the endgame content is balanced around baseline? Exotics?

Downscaling assumes you should have exotics from level 60 and rares from level 35 (can’t recall exact numbers) to be downscaled properly to lower levels.

That’s a fact, not an educated guess.

Mackdose.6504:

I’ve deduced it from the fact that prestige armor is rare, and full rare is the tipping point where you go from getting scraped by mobs in Orr to mowing them down.

So basically you pull that out.

Mackdose.6504:

As for gear-gated content, the PvE is balanced around rares. Until 80 rares no longer complete content, “power creep” in this game is a bogeyman.

Who told you that?

Bright.9160:

Did you know by the way how much those bosses downscale when you’re there with only a few people? That duo of Mark ll took a whopping 90 seconds.

Zerkers everywhere, right?