Guild Wars 2

Sarcasmic.6741:

Not so sure toolkit could kill grubs fast enough.

If you think you need to kill grubs, there’s your problem.

Puandro.3245:

I think RTL is taking me too far away, before i used to just lightning flash a bit so that was never causing this issue.

Don’t use offhand dagger, it doesn’t offer anything and rtl never works at lupi. Just walk away when he’s in transition state.

Kakeru.2873:

Good video but i would really be impressed if u did this as anything that wasn’t a warrior/guardian/elementalist.

So, from “warriors only” we’re now at war/gua/ele?

Lorana.2468:

the infamous Simin

Simin is famous around these parts for her ability to heal, both her and Subject Alpha are 2 fights i would definately consider bringing poison for, neither are needed but they certainly are a good contribution to the fight

Poison is useless there, unless you just mean another way to deal damage. She cures all her condition when going into stealth mode.

On the topic, you can solo path 2 with elementalist or guardian, I can get to Alphard but I’ve never tried continuing after Lupi. You just have to step up your game and start thinking about anything else than just “warriors do more damage”. Different proffesions were designed around different mechanics.

Quarktastic.1027:

Those videos are just disgusting. Lupicus slowly but surely destroys my guardian if I get focused. Being able to dodge out of his snot bubble of death without popping stability or invulnerability? Might as well be hax. If I get bubbled more than twice in a row, I may as well give up and die, because there’s no way I’m getting out.

Not to mention, he killed lupicus faster than my last group.

Once they fix reckless dodge, warriors are gonna complain that they can’t solo him anymore while other proffesions (ele, guardian for sure) still will be able to do it. Not to mention that you should die with 4th bubble on guardian (glass cannon), you have many tools to get out.

swiftpaw.6397:

WTB solo video of lupicus by an engineer. kthx.

Gear shield from Tool kit should make it doable. You have virtually no recharge when swapping from Toolkit to your weapon and want to use it again.

Puandro.3245:

Managed to clear path 2 up to lupi today, having issues with lupi resetting when p2 hits though, bah.

I managed to kill him on guardian, it’s easier to clear path 2 (abom mostly, first boss is afk-able) but I still think it’s easier to kill him on ele. Focus offers tremendous amount of defensive skills, obsidian flesh is few times better than mist form (longer duration, short recharge).

What exactly is happening there that he resets? If you want to get rid of the last grub, you should get away from him, use swirling winds (that will stop him from shadowstep, it’s a projectile) and obsidian flesh (to avoid kd) and nuke the grub asap. And don’t go further than the center of the arena.

Zenith.7301:

What are the times to clear/kill times compared to your warrior.

Puandro was most likely faster considering that weth’s run is made of joint clips. Plus, ele has no issues whatsoever with burrows. Yes, he kills mobs slower but make up in other departments.

Strifey.7215:

Yea phase 1 and 2 could be done by any class since it’s just about dodging normally, really the main difficult part is the dome in phase 3 for other classes.

True, other classes are forced to bring defensive skills for necrid trap while warrior is able to get more dps skills (as ele you’re forced to bring 3 cantrips, as mes I take blink, mantra of concentration and feedback or signet of illusions to get another distortion)

I would think it would be alot harder without reckless for phase 3 :x

True but Robert Hrouda said you shouldn’t be able to get out of the bubble with just a dodge ;p

Though it’s quite possible to do it on ele (I did whole p2 and p3 once but that could be luck) but that’s thanks to the insane amount of defensive skills you take and my weapon set (d/f)

And that’s why I never pug… just really don’t have the patience at this point which is why I joined and recruited for an “elite” dungeon guild in the first place. I enjoy making videos trying to teach people which reaches a broader audience, but actually having to join pugs and teach only a few people while being subjected to possible “scrubs” just isn’t a fun use of my time :x

I’m mostly pugging arah for laugh. Having few dungeon masters on board is even better. A vast amount of them are so bad it’s not even remotely imaginable.

Mace is mainly just for a bit of extra damage from Vuln and the fact that Mace 5 hits twice for damage, since there’s nothing else I would really use in my offhand. I’m actually interested if Vigor from warhorn stacks with signet of stamina though now that I think about it…

I don’t deal vuln on my chars but doesn’t it last a fraction of a second on lupi, like on few other bosses (Alphard for instance)?

I really wish they wouldn’t nerf lupi, but it might be the case. As if dungeons weren’t easy enough.

About commentary, you can easily melee as a mes, feedback works for AoE in phase 2 when you stand in it (you could also use ranged weapon and use feedback, blink into it for some defense during p2). Probably most proffesions are valid for melee there, I do that on mesmer, ele, guardian and thief.

When you mentioned dodging last grub, you probably meant dodging kd effect. If that’s so, you can’t do it without reckless dodge. Reckless dodge allows to dodge a lot more than just a necrid trap (simin’s petrify, giant’s fear, probably stonetouch’s petrify).

Now that you’ve done it, try doing it next time without reckless ;P

Oh, and maybe if more people had seen that, I wouldn’t be kicked by pugs anymore ;<

Puandro.3245:

I actually have very little experience with Arah TBH since ive only done path 3 a total of 3 times with a group lol. But ill look into Path 2.

I would have showed you some tricks how to do it as fast as possible and maybe some tricks for lupi but I think you’re playing on NA server.

I’m gonna practice for some time today, but unfortunately my pc barely plays gw2 let alone try to fraps it.

Puandro.3245:

Well i wish i could get to lupi solo but i have to drag a friend with me for the light orb part and then make him stay with me while i do attempts.

You can try doing this in p2, the only issue is abomination.

Puandro.3245:

haviz.1340:

Puandro.3245:

How do you get around the bubbles, eventually he kills me since my 3 cantrips go on CD and he likes to spam it at times.

I use d/f.

Well maybe he just hates me because i did 1 attempt with D/F and he even went through my Focus CD’s on top of my Cantrip CD’s thats when i called it quits.

I have similiar issues on guardian in phase 3. Lack of defensive skills with greatsword/mace+shield in phase 3 and only about 12k hp. Though there is one trick to get out of bubble, but it won’t work with ele.

Excursion.9752:

I laughed literally out loud when I read that. I really can’t believe that statement seeing how they have had to at least experience all the dungeon content. It’s hard to believe they were carried through all of it. Path1 and 4 Arah you really have to hold your own weight in and if people are making it through that content I would go out on a limb and say they don’t suck that bad.

If you have a 3 to 4 baddies in a group its really hard for the others to carry the load. There is not a class in this game that can take 100% of the damage all the time.

Whenever I have those dung masters in my pug they somehow ends with graveyard zerging lupi and when I ask them if they really did it, they usually answer with something like “check my title”.

And what exactly is hard in path1? Harder graveyard zerging due to lack of the waypoint after tar boss?

Puandro.3245:

How do you get around the bubbles, eventually he kills me since my 3 cantrips go on CD and he likes to spam it at times.

I use d/f.

Puandro.3245:

Yah i was already filled in about EA, would had been good to know when i was attempting him.

Ye, but you don’t need EA. I’m killing him constantly without it.

MarzAttakz.9608:

haviz.1340:

Hah, my crystal ball was right – bunkers on the watchlist.

My hero! I hope you noticed the mention of one-shot thief builds too.

Visions were a bit too unclear in that matter.

LordByron.8369:

yeah other prefession has some skills to deflect projectiles…

They doesn t have virtues.
They have few stability skills with long CD
They cannot equip so many deflecting skills.

Yes, they don’t have virtue but other skills if you lack defense. Ele can heal as much with healing ripple, necro can use life transfer to heal, etc. There are a lot of possibilites. Think outside the box.

Guardians have only 1 deflection skill, others absorb.

Hah, my crystal ball was right – bunkers on the watchlist.

If d/d has only 2 single target spells and rest are AoE, does that mean they’re going to nerf greatsword for warriors? Every attack with GS is AoE after all.

For fractals, guards are most sought for their ability to absorb/deflect projectiles. I can understand that, but few other proffesions have those skills as well. Feedback, Swirling Winds, Magnetic Wave, Magnetic Aura, Smoke Screen, even war with trait can reflect projectiles. You don’t need guardians at all and if you do you need to step up your game.

Areth Belthazor.2369:

I might have missed earlier posts of you, but could you elaborate on the bugs? I agree that the sparks weren’t always as easy to get in, but that was indeed really annoying. For the rest I didn’t really see bugs.

Bugs = it’s too hard. Though there are bugs that most people would love to know how to use (bugging simin).

Honestly, I’d rather run with unexperienced people than with so called experienced or even our great dungeon masters. You can still convience them to use better tactics instead of cheap ones and they don’t have so big ego.

So, if you have some leading capabilites and knowledge you’re not on lost position. But in case you haven’t done this particular dungeon, the good idea is to watch youtube/read wiki/guides and pretend to be experienced. After few runs you should have the general idea of what should be done (even if that means defying thoe sguies you read/watched guides).

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

haviz.1340:

Good to know they weren’t so many!

About AoE nerf, anyone with logical capabilites knows that they won’t just nerf the damage because every melee weapon except daggers on thief is AoE.

I kind of interpret the AoE nerf as only affecting ground target and/or proper AoE spells. Cleave skills whilst AoE, aren’t necessarily in the same bracket as skills such as lava font, chaos storm etc etc.

It’s kind of a difficult concept to explain, you’ll either understand or not. Could end up being wrong, but classes with swords/greatswords would all end up with nerfed auto attacks, which would seem kind of weird.

BASICALLY; I’m agreeing with your point that a nerf to all damage that isn’t pure single target isn’t an ideal approach to toning down AoE.

I understand that, but take a look at all those panicking ele on their subforum. Their argument is that 18 out of 20 skills are AoE (which obviously is true only if you count cleave skills, gap glosers and cone skills).

Puandro.3245:

Eles have to be good at something am i right? BTW i would had posted a Lupicus solo video shortly after yours but with no Reckless dodge my ele eventually dies to his bubble after i use all 3 Cantrips to get out of it, sucks.

You can solo lupi on ele even without “our” reckless dodge (evasive arcana). Though, I soloed him through whole phase 2 nad 3 once without EA and few times in phase 1 while practising . So it’s doable. If you want to know what I’m using just send a PM or ask here.

kKagari.6804:

This is an interesting question, I shall answer it in several perspectives.

Direct: The crazy 88 actually didn’t have 88 people (apparently), nor do they actually appear all at the same time. GW1 Bonus mission pack actually had a solo dungeon that paid homage to this scene. So, yeah, I wouldn’t mind really.

In light of AoE nerf: My hunch is that the AoE nerf might actually be just an improvement on enemy AI; a similar change like this happened in GW1, where the AI would learn to walk out of persistent AoE. A part of me still thinks this won’t be the case because the devs explicitly mentioned damage.

HOWEVER: The AoE nerf doesn’t actually bother me too much. GW2’s borderline menial gameplay has caused me to become lazy, often I make builds in PvE that put significance on autoattack rather than ‘rotations’, simply because I can 111111 my way through everything. Typically I like to pick weapons that ‘cleave’ (hits enemies to the sides of your target). I don’t think these AoE cleaves will be adjusted much since the AoE component of the attack is instrumental to the auto attack. So what does that mean? I think the idea of waving my thief’s sword auto attack through a huge group of enemies with them dying in a few hits is highly entertaining. I’d also like the encounter to be difficult though.

TLDR: Yes.

Good to know they weren’t so many!

About AoE nerf, anyone with logical capabilites knows that they won’t just nerf the damage because every melee weapon except daggers on thief is AoE.

kKagari.6804:

You know guys, I think my video reference was just slightly off. Hero is a great movie and all, but you know what a dungeon should feel like?

Kill Bill, Volume 1, Crazy 88 onwards. Multiplied by 5.

Seeing as anet said something about nerfing AoE, do you still want to fight 440 mobs at once?

Hopefully they won’t nerf lupi because that would only make him less challenging than he is currently. They might nerf simin though, judging by the amount of whines coming from future “dungeon masters”.

Zenith.7301:

I’m not going survival build on neither my mesmer or ele…. full berserker/ruby jewelry with ruby orbs and offensive traits.

You try playing a 13k hp ele with 916 toughness and come back and tell me you do the same numbers of this warrior sustained.

I am, but thanks for persuading me to try. If you would want to discuss that, pm me. That’s not a topic for it.

Zenith.7301:

He’s an awesome players, but other classes can’t do this simply because of the vast damage potential differences. You gear a ranger or ele the same way and see if you can pull these numbers off and sustain such damage. You can’t.

Why? It’s not just 100b; warrior autoattacks dwarf the damage of other classes’ autoattacks. I WISH my mesmer or ele could consistently crit with autoattacks for the same number warriors do, but they don’t. And the fact is a higher hp pool and highest armor rating allows you to dish out defense for a longer time before needing to turn defensive.

Higher hp classes allow for berserker gearing while lower health classes take much more risk. In fractals above 20 ascalonian mages can easily 2 shot someone under 15k health, as can the ascalonian warrior autoattacks (not just the easily dodged charge).

If you’re using survival build, why would you expect to deal similiar damage with autoattacks as someone who uses full zerker exotic/ascended with ruby orbs and 20/30/0/0/20 traits? He got 0 defensive traits/items. My ele deals some decent damage, 2x(2-2.5k) with air autoattacks d/d with some stacks of might when they crit, and they crit pretty often.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

There are many guardians who use both hammer and gs.

If we’re looking from PvE viewpoint, then spamming autoattacks and occasional MB with hammer is what’s currently the most efficient way of playing hammer. That means that if you swap to GS in the meantime you’re not utilizing the strengths of hammer.

kidbs.8920:

Guardian effective dps > a glass cannon warrior because glass cannon GS warriors spend too much time in a downed state :-P

Tell that to warriors who are actually using magic button. They’re gonna laugh at you.

Malediktus.9250:

Scale dungeon rewards with the percentage cleared. The more you skip, the less exp, tokens and silvers you should get at the end.

You mean after they triples token rewards for longer and harder paths, right?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If you watch the gameplay closely, he’s swapping utilities and weapons frequently, and to serve different purposes. He has a knowledge of the bosses and event mechanics, and mitigates what risk he can through smart play and knowledge. His dodges and blocks are well timed, and rarely are they unnecessary when he uses them. He knows which attacks he can soak, and which attacks he needs to avoid.

Robert, can I ask you if reckless dodge is supposed to allow to evade some attacks that are unavoidable on other proffesions? What I mean by that is that you can for instance dodge fear attack of champion giant in Arah path3 as a warrior but on other proffesion it’s impossible – you get feared during dodge animation and I thought dodge should grant you some window of invulnerability.

And now every warrior hates me for spoiling it ;<

Rising Dusk.2408:

It’s definitely not the Warrior’s issue. This player dodges like a boss, and I am confident that an Elementalist, for example, could also solo this path given a talented enough player.

Reckless dodge OP! Nerf warriors.

I’ve never tried but I’m fairly sure you can. Fractals are character bound not account, like personal story missions (eg. difficulty level).

Let’s compare everyone’s favourite weapon’s traits.

Slashing Power – 10% more damage with GS and spear
Greatsword Power – 5% more damage with GS

Both are master traits in Power line

Forceful Greatsword – Might on crits, -20% recharge for GS and spear
Two-handed Mastery – 20% recharge for all 2h weapons

Both are master traits. Now, one could argue that you’re getting -20% recharge for all weapons but who would use both 2h weapons. Guardians also have Empowering Might that gives same duration of might for allies but 1s ICD makes that trait less appealing. And both those traits are in Vitality line, not Precision.

Strang.8170:

o_O i´ve been just horribly trolled….kudos

I’m not trolling! It’s forbidden on forums here…

My crystal ball tells me bunker spec will be nerfed and the scream of hundreds of players will be heard on the whole earth, twice.

Wethospu.6437:

Sure.
Path 1 Ooze: Stay in safe spot.
Path 2 First boss: Stay in safe spot.
Path 2 Alphard: Pull out to avoid clones.
Path 3 Crusher & Hunter: Stay in safe spot / pull to bug.
Path 3 Mage: Stay in safe spot.
Path 4 Melandru: Stay in safe spot.
Path 4 Dwayna: 4/1 trick (questionable) or some tricky pull to make it stuck (I haven’t seen this but heard about it)

What cheap player would try to use them? Plus, we shouldn’t be talking about exploits on the forums, it’s infraction-guaranteed ;<

Mystogan.4157:

Dont use a backstab build you will die instantly… use Shortbow with signet of malices and get the trait that heals when you use initiative. i run AC and CM all the time and i barely die as a thief… you neeed to kite and dodge like crazy.. maybe get the utility skill to stop rangerd attacks when fighting ranged enemies. its not that hard if you know what your doing. also when i go BS build my thief does 5-6k crits and has 20k hp with 1.2k toughness

If you want to play with shortbow, why not just play a ranger? Backstab build is more than possible, you just have to use that magic button.

RedStar.4218:

Players don’t even bother with that, they simply exploit by using the big boat (basically, CM mountain little brother, except that it’s even easier to do). At first I was like “Hey, it’s like in CM, they place this boat to allow players to infiltrate the base” and then I saw missing textures and what not and realized that I wasn’t totally wrong, it was like in CM…it was an exploit.

I was talking about “legit” skipping, not exploiting.

Strang.8170:

And if you´d pay attention you´d notice that´s as glasscannon as ele can possibly go….i wonder why it´s frail….
But aguess if you´ve seen it, it has to be true, and fotm is only way to go.

Aura sharing builds 0/10/10/30/0 as a basis, then rest according to ones own playstyle, even 10 in earth can be swapped.
Signet aura build with 20/10/10/0/0, rest are optional.
Different spikers, stacking damage can be done through grounded in air line, vulnerability traits + dmg against vulnerable foes in water line, heavy investment in fire or might stacking through traits and equipment.
Support staff builds, 30 in water and rest is up to you. Perfectly playable even with 0 investment in arcana, though points there do help at times.
Do i need to continue?

Well, all in all it´s rather pointless to keep arguing about how many points to spend in what line. Apart from arcana, every line can be compenstated with equipment choice, so passive bonuses aren´t necessary from them. What one should look for are the traits themselves. Even if you have standard 0/0/0/30/30 the traits you choose make the build and how you play it, not the amount of points in each line.

But those people, everyone keeps saying that 0/10/0/30/30 is the only good build and I can’t really disagree with them.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The ideal team composition for DPS is actually three guardians (for raw DPS), one warrior (for group fury), and one engineer (for vulnerability stacking and condition damage). Good luck telling that to people who only know how to look at their own numbers though.

It might be true but good luck finding 3 non-tanky guardians as well ;p

I think that dying gets you out of combat mode and that might be an issue here. Being not in a combat mode. So even if you had stayed dead, you wouldn’t have probably got any credits.

Skipping is awesome, forces people to actually use dodge button and swap utilites when it’s needed. Try to skip from Alphard to Operative Brie with just a W button.

Strang.8170:

Sorry to say sir, but you´re what´s wrong about fotm.

There´s plenty of builds, bunker, spike and support, that dont run standard 0/10/0/30/30.

Many bunker build use that build as a basis, true, but you can hardly expect to be a bunker without using the most defensive line available to us.
Spike builds are fragile, more so than spike builds of other professions, but they still do their job.
There´s even many variations of that said build, with different sets of gear and traits to accomplish different things.

Well, I’m only seeing this one build. Or 30/30/0/0/10 who dies from a sneeze.

Get a thief, and do it like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment. Thief can use shadowsteps to just “teleport” right through those lazers.

Kumakichi.2583:

So if I read this thread right Lupicus has been fixed but the change hasn’t be implemented yet. So I shouldn’t use any illusions when doing Lupicus…. yet??

You can use them as always, just know when you should shatter them. (a hint: after he infects one poor soul).

That would be awesome. Anet should add voice over there saying “I’ll be back”, modulated of course.

NdranC.5107:

I was comparing a bunker build ele with shatter berserker mesmer, I said so on my post. The whole point is that I am tired of the 0/10/0/30/30 ele coming to the forums and saying they can do it all PLUS good or amazing damage. No… your damage is not amazing. Btw those numbers come from fractals. My mesmer can shatter every 9s for more damage your churning earth can do every 30 secs.

But, but… I can heal! And I got mesmer as well so I’m not stucked with this healing proffesion

Buy new gear every 5-10 lvl from WvW Karma merchant, they sell Power/toughness/vitality at higher levels. Buy from TP trinkets (with as much defensive stats as you need to), they’re really cheap.