Guild Wars 2

It’s only easy once you’re well experienced at the content. If you think you can get some random baddie and stick a meta build on them and expect them to burn bosses down you’re gravely mistaken.

And the thing is, being able to breeze content once you become experienced at it is a natural progression and shouldn’t be something we’re trying to fix.

30/30/0/0/10, 10/30/0/20/10, 10/30/0/10/20, 0/30/0/25/15, 10/20/0/25/15 builds are used by a number of people on mesmer, with the first two and 0/30 being the meta ones.

30/25/0/0/15, 30/10/0/20/10 warrior builds.

10/30/0/5/25, 10/25/0/10/25, 10/25/0/5/30, 20/25/0/0/25, 15/15/0/20/20, 15/25/0/20/10 guardian builds.

I’m not familiar with eles but there’s a bunch of different builds there too (people in our guild actually tend to swap builds while doing dungeon tours when playing eles actually.

Well clearly it does take skill if you can’t use it properly yourself.

Greatsword auto at >900 has approximately half the DPS of the sword auto (using 0/30 or 10/30 meta builds) and the phantasm, assuming all four hits connect has 2/3rds the DPS of phantasmal swordsman.

So…

…run what you want, just make sure the lfg you join doesn’t want a speed run because running staff/gs is probably the lowest DPS you can get.

Black Box.9312:

hendo.1940:

There are definitely ways to keep the game action-oriented while curbing the efficiency gap between zerker and non-zerker setups. It just involves making content that can’t be so easily predicted and exploited, which simply will not happen while there is no dedicated team working on it.

How so? All content becomes predictable once you’ve done it enough times, and content doesn’t need to be exploited to be cleared efficiently either.

Because when you’re tweaking it and providing new elements on a consistent basis, the predictability becomes less prominent because things are constantly changing. This makes for more reactive play instead of proactive play. Reactive play is what this game’s PvE needs more of, because it takes much more skill to be able to adapt successfully to an unpredictable series of events.

Actually what happens is everybody learns each variation and develops strategies for each of them.

There are definitely ways to keep the game action-oriented while curbing the efficiency gap between zerker and non-zerker setups. It just involves making content that can’t be so easily predicted and exploited, which simply will not happen while there is no dedicated team working on it.

How so? All content becomes predictable once you’ve done it enough times, and content doesn’t need to be exploited to be cleared efficiently either.

Based on your statement, Guild Wars 2 has created every class as a Hybrid-Type to where each and every character has it’s own support capabilities.

100% correct.

Yet, with all the flexibilities of each class, only one profession has found to be useful regardless of the stats designed for several variations of professions that are not used by, I would assume, a large majority of players. Now, why do you think that is?

All professions bar necromancer are useful in dungeons, though I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say.

It can reflect some of the spray but it’s used sometimes while running back in after phase 3 AOE life drain so that you can get to Lupi quicker so he doesn’t bubble you.

Why should a more defensive build be more viable than an offensive one? The inevitable progression in video games is that as you become more familiar with content, you slot out more defensive gear for more offensive pieces as you know better how to actively counter fight mechanics rather than having to rely on passive damage mitigation.

What you interpret as a problem, I see as a natural progression. PVT used to be the dungeon meta, now it’s full berserker as we’ve had over a year to learn boss mechanics and speed clearers know how to mitigate the damage from them. This applies to quite literally every single game ever – even something like dragon age with a trinity-esque combat system, people realised stacking offensive skill mages and using fireball and storm of the century was more effective than using a tank to hold aggro with dps’ers dps’ing behind (or wherever) so if people wanted to be efficient, they just used a triple mage party composition. Maybe 1 warrior to hold aggro if the CC and DPS skills from the mages somehow weren’t enough.

I still find it absolutely hilarious that you tried to tell members of two elite dungeon guilds that support and control doesn’t matter though, when we use it in abundance every day.

Just a little thing I wanted to ask:

Would it be possible to have Mossman increased to the size Ginva the Butcher from HOTW p1 is? Mossman is a good boss but the fact that he’s so small means that particle effects make him really hard to see when trying to fight him which means it’s hard to see his very subtle tells.

People really don’t get it.

We tell them over

and over

and over

and over

and over

and over again

that support and control is viable and used in GW2. Yet every single time are ignored.

Well I’m sorry if you don’t consider might stacking, fury stacking, aegis, blind, protection, reflect, mob positioning, crowd controlling bosses and then shaving defiant stacks off for the next CC, immobilising/crippling/chilling bosses as support and control, but I’m afraid your concept, “healing” just isn’t a part of support in GW2. For control you also do not need to use mace/mace + hammer warriors with sigils of paralyzation, you just need to use the appropriate utility skills and weapon skills.

Not in fast clears they’re not.

Here you go:

Also:

Guardian uses stability for the p1/2 transition to prevent knockdown, phase2>3 transition gets reflect and aegis up so no stray projectiles can harm us, there’s might and fury stacking before the fight, and banners for extra support. How you can say there isn’t support here is beyond me.

At ~3:00 he uses blurred frenzy. If you want to reflect the phase 3 spray, you need to put feedback up immediately as the red AOE shows up.

Then how would we get past deadeyes? They do 50,000 damage kill shots. Lupicus deals 16,000 damage with swipes. Lupine blasts deal ~8,000 damage. There is absolutely no benefit to making dodges reduce damage, all it does is make dungeons get cleared slower since you have to compensate with defensive gear, and I much prefer being rewarded for skillful dodging rather than being gear gated.

serialkicker.5274:

hendo.1940:

EnderzShadow.2506:

When in the kitten did ‘radius’ come into play in this conversation.

The op says things will go RIGHT OVER top of the wall… that isn’t kittening working as intended…

What I mean by radius, is that to offer you an example, a traited ranger can reflect Lupicus’ projectiles because their radius is increased to 300, whereas an untraited one can reflect some, but not all of the projectiles aimed at it.

The same case here, temporal curtain itself has a smaller radius than wall of reflection, meaning that attacks can go over it. And then wall of reflection has a smaller radius than feedback, since feedback absorbs almost all of Lupicus’ projectiles aimed at people inside of the bubble whereas you can sit directly in a wall and still take multiple hits because of its smaller radius.

It’s working as intended, just because you either don’t like it or can’t use it properly doesn’t mean it’s bugged.

I think we all know that “radius” is smaller, that’s why it doesn’t reflect if placed at wrong distance. That’s notthing new for mesmers. The question is, why does it have such radius? That doesn’t make sense to me. Mesmer, master reflector, even have to go 20 points in inspiration to trait for focus and then i can’t even get proper reflection?
Every other reflect or “absorb projectiles” skill that i know of are working 100% of time.
If you place wall of reflection in front of you, there is no way you’ll get hit by a mob that is firing at you from ahead. Same goes for smoke screen. And the other reflect skills like daggerstorm, magnetic wave, whirling defence etc., (idk about ranger) all reflect 100%.

“It takes skill to use therefore it doesn’t make sense”.

Okay.

And for the record, the “master reflector” is able to fully reflect Alphard’s daggerstorm and Old Tom’s projectiles if you untrait your warden, which absolutely no other class can do.

I even had a screen of a 3 billion damage “One Shot” to Lupicus.

<- Lupicus (solo) world record holder.

Go figure.

http://i.imgur.com/eE298Um.jpg

Lol, Ajit ~ Iris, right? I mean, both consists of four letters?!?

Do you want a boss with frequent attacks and hits for less? Mossman with weakness applied to him hits for like 3k at Fractal 49. However he also hits quite often and has a multitude of attacks (dancing dagger is like 8k and his double chop is basically a one-shot).

Guess what pugs do? Bug him out and afk range.

Be careful what you wish for, you’ll make dungeons terribly boring if you get what you want.

Spoiler – dungeon guilds use full berserker for this fight too.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

hendo.1940:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Also I don’t think hendo is dub. Unless he has 3 accounts.

I’m just an innocent, cute, black fashioned asura.

#trollinggoku

You confuse me. Lol

You make me getting infracted by telling them I was Colesy or dub.

I am neither Colesy nor dub!

Enaretos.8079:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I’ve never actually seen a male norn elementalist or Mesmer.

Trust me you don’t want to. BTW tonight I shall post the Incredible Proofs of Superior French Fashion or IPSFF. deSade knows what I’m talking about

mmoboys.tumblr.com?

Edit: For your sanity, do not visit that website.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Also I don’t think hendo is dub. Unless he has 3 accounts.

I’m just an innocent, cute, black fashioned asura.

#trollinggoku

Dual.8953:

DogCompany.1062:

maxinion.8396:

The roles of dps/tank/healer are old and boring, and done to death by other games. (Though we could always use more— condition could be improved, etc.)

I understand that this game doesn’t need Tanks/Healers and that was definitely a topic that concerned me the most. First, I enjoyed playing the role as Healer. I don’t mind having others do the majority of the Damage. Since that was my first build as a Guardian, it quickly grew outdated and unwanted as Guild Wars 2 became more populated. Therefore, I was forced to change to a different build and train myself in that new combat style that the majority of players prefer or else threaten dismal from the party.

So, in the end, has Guild Wars 2 become such a linear game, in which, players must continue to update their build, play-style, and meet a standard to enjoy the game?

That’s about my problem with the whole Zerker thing. If you want to play in some way other then the current DPS meta, you’ll have difficulty finding a party. Shame too because this linearity exactly what a lot of players came to GW2 to escape. This mentality is largely driven by players’ desire for gold gain.
I can think of 3 solutions off the top of my head.
1) Increase the difficulty of dungeons to the point that full Zerker parties won’t work.
2) Add challenges that target specific skillsets
3) Make the dungeon rewards undesirable to farmers

Actually you won’t have difficulty. I write “lfm p2 anyone welcome” in Arah every day and get full groups very quickly with no gear checks, no pings.

Regarding point 1), if you increase the difficulty of dungeons to the point that full berserker parties don’t work, you end up with content that basically none of your casual players will be able to complete. In DnT, we make use of a guardian in knights gear for fractal 49/50 (i.e. not a full berserker party), but guess what pugs do? Range (or if possible, bug) every single boss. Circle kiting for half an hour is not interesting, and you know it isn’t.

2) This is already the case. Thieves can shadow refuge or blast smoke screen for area stealth, if you need to get through somewhere fast, an ele can drop an FGS for the extra mobility. If you don’t have a thief, you need your guardian providing area stability for the final Arah p2 trash skip if your party doesn’t have enough of it themselves.

3) This is impossible. Dungeons will always be farmed for rewards, no matter what game, you will never “fix this”.

To absolutely nobody’s surprise, this is another thread about an imagined problem, once again talking about berserker gear being bad and lacking skill. Well if you want to talk about it being a lack of skill, pug Arah with me, hopefully getting a party of berserkers and watch how wide the skill gap is when I pull off skips first try and evade dangerous mechanics quicker, or even simply evading them in the first place while the pugs die over and over again. I pug Arah every single day looking for bad groups to carry, and they’re always in abundance.

Sanderinoa.8065:

Allright it is finally time to ask the fashion police for help, I never thought I’d end up in this thread.

Glad you did, I’m going to help you. Here is my 3-step-manual on how the become a fashionable mesmer:

1. Buy a total makeover kit and go female, with dark (perferably short) hair.
2. Buy a nice armor and add some violet and black (not black, midnight ice) parts to it.
3. Equip Infinite Light with some glowing focus and either Bifrost or two Infinite Lights as secondary set.

Variant.5129:

Why anyone expects these developers to add any features that have been in mmo games for near a decade now is beyond me.

Exactly, priorities, guys! They rather bring out more zerg “content” than doing real fixes to the game or adding basic features any mmo should have which would take effort of a few minutes to code. Ohwait, there do already programs like this exist, they would just have to implement it into the GUI.

CC Danicia.1394:

Bugs – The best thing to do when you know something is bugged is to put it in the Bug Forum, following this format: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Please-Read-How-To-Bugging-Best-Practices

I was making a thread about fumble dodges and we were bumping it day for day for about a month, until we got the response that the devs are aware of the issue. As they didn’t tell if they are doing anything about it or planning to do so, we continued bumping to get an answer. Yet, no statement about if they are working on it, nor a fix to the problem itself. The most “prevelent” mechanic of the game suffering from an insane driving issue seems to have way less priority than pushing out some half-ready living story zerg-content and even less priority than fixing some dumb clipping bugs with armors noone is wearing anyway.

I understand why you said it’s “doable” to tell the devs what issues dungeons are suffering from, the main point, though, is that our developers do not give a fart about dungeons or anything related to them. I think you understood this, which is the reason that telling them about our issues will not change anything at all.

I’m 100% certain “you” ’d (as in developers) would do a lot more people a favor by fixing important bugs (fixing arah diving/lupicus or other boss skips would take about 10 minutes flat, putting in some invisible walls sums up to cost you a lot more time than this) before adding more living story stuff that almost noone of us even touches.

RemiRome.8495:

My eternal gratitude to the guy from [LuPi] that just saved me from the best “Arah P2 – experienced only.” run I’ve ever been in.

I’ve been looking for bad pug groups in Arah all day on LFG and none of them have showed up.

I just want to kill Lupi for them then drop

I really don’t understand why people keep suggesting 10/20. 30 in dueling is a strict requirement due to the extra precision, critical damage and empowering mantras. Mesmers are taken for reflect utility, so you want to get the most out of your reflects as possible, not taking a lousy second phantasm damage modifier.

Off hand axe equals fury equals dropping FGJ for another DPS utility.

Use it for easy champions like risen giants.

Clumsy.6257:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

When you say its the meta team composition, people might be fooled and actually believe it.

If by meta you mean the fastest, then yes it is. The speed you get from stacking warriors and guardians isn’t acceptable by my standards, however I’m not sure about yours.

@hendo Notice i clearly said dungeons in my original post. I didn’t mention fractals. And yes all bosses in regular dungeons are easily pulled and melted in seconds (there are 2-3 exceptions though).

If stacking eles and thieves was meta, all of the world records would do it. But… they don’t

And if I recall correctly, HOTW was a dungeon. And if I also recall correctly, the last time you guys tried FGS’ing Ginva you didn’t kill the retaliation totem and suicided yourselves instead.

Edit: Linksville incoming.

I’m so good lol.

You’re still susceptible to stupid RNG like spray > life suck > life drain. Walling removes that risk entirely.

The problem I have with not walling is the extra eviscerates I have to do just bones my DPS since I lose berserker’s power.

Clumsy.6257:

Dempsey.8760:

Clumsy.6257:

But with the meta team composition of 2 thieves and 2 elementalists

Not everything Anierna says is correct.

I knew 2 thieves and 2 eles were the best damage long before I ever met anierna.

spoiler – not every boss is a slave driver or subject alpha punching bag

try 2 thief 2 ele on ginva, mossman or any other not-a-punching-bag boss

if it was so meta, I want to see anierna get a team and set records with it.

how about …

http://i.imgur.com/mqSvnQp.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/LOhvnV9.jpg

LILITH NO

Q_Q

T_T

Nike.2631:

Don’t get me wrong – I think the polishing should be done. I just, in my heart of hearts, can’t believe that it would take more than a day to write the code to kill re-rolling. That it would take more than a day to rip the clown car out of the Underground facility Fractal. That the meetings to review and expand the array of choices for the Fractal vendors drawing on existing assets would take more than 3-4 days of focused analysis. Then yes, all of that has to be tested before being pushed to Live, but ultimately if there was the will, all of the these adjustment would take less time to execute than we’ve spent talking about them .

Except re rolling doesn’t need to be killed and I really hope ANet are ignoring the complaints about it because practically nobody besides a handful of people trying to draw attention to themselves on the forum even care about it.

Don’t want swamp? Set up LFG – lvl [number] fractal, rolled [not swamp]. Is it that hard? Stop concerning yourself with what other people are doing and focus on your own fun rather than punishing other people who want to roll a certain fractal.

you … fashion ELITIST

I DRESS HOW I WANT

Lilith Ajit.6173:

hendo.1940:

so what would you guys say was the best look on my character (also, RIP in peace makeover kit #5, you served me well):

http://i.imgur.com/H9zYOlY.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/iUyYaqR.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Qv8tfzP.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/E00QgeF.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/KiLAoHf.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/j1l0fuW.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/hHhfmQ4.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/FfXgm2y.jpg

Not a fan of the ascended, but for the first time I prefer the Zodiac abomination. Human t3 heavy never strikes my fancy. (It looks like a dirty loin cloth to me)

:O

dirty loincloth

Well, almost

http://tinyurl.com/iSuckLupi

EnderzShadow.2506:

When in the kitten did ‘radius’ come into play in this conversation.

The op says things will go RIGHT OVER top of the wall… that isn’t kittening working as intended…

What I mean by radius, is that to offer you an example, a traited ranger can reflect Lupicus’ projectiles because their radius is increased to 300, whereas an untraited one can reflect some, but not all of the projectiles aimed at it.

The same case here, temporal curtain itself has a smaller radius than wall of reflection, meaning that attacks can go over it. And then wall of reflection has a smaller radius than feedback, since feedback absorbs almost all of Lupicus’ projectiles aimed at people inside of the bubble whereas you can sit directly in a wall and still take multiple hits because of its smaller radius.

It’s working as intended, just because you either don’t like it or can’t use it properly doesn’t mean it’s bugged.

Xaylin.1860:

hendo.1940:

It is.

A correctly placed temporal curtain will work just as well as a wall of reflection against Alphard.

That is not the point.

Wall of Reflection works in many places where Temporal Curtain does not.

I’m pretty sure any example you give me can be simply explained by temporal cutain having a smaller radius than wall of reflection, i.e. they are both working as intended.

so what would you guys say was the best look on my character (also, RIP in peace makeover kit #5, you served me well):

http://i.imgur.com/H9zYOlY.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/iUyYaqR.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Qv8tfzP.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/E00QgeF.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/KiLAoHf.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/j1l0fuW.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/hHhfmQ4.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/FfXgm2y.jpg

The troll is nothing but trolling.

You can solo arah.

It is.

A correctly placed temporal curtain will work just as well as a wall of reflection against Alphard.

If you don’t want to start with swamp, make a group that states “fractal [number], rolled [not swamp]”.

Or, instead, you can choose to impose your view on everyone else and make everybody else who you’re not even playing with suffer because what they’re doing hurts your feelings, that works too.

Also the comment “why fix it if it doesn’t affect you?” I think is quite faulty.
Why set up invisible walls in Arah so that you can’t break out of the map and skip Lupicus? That doesn’t affect you, you can use the normal way if you want.

Well actually it’s killed legit selling. White knights kick sellers, and the value of Arah paths crashed because of exploiters.

It’s funny, because if you’ve gone on youtube you’d see how busted Cleric gear is (it lets you literally 111 afk bosses) but I’m not going around asking for it to be removed from the game because I don’t use it and I don’t play with people who use it therefore it’s not my problem.

Kartel.2561:

One thing that a lot of people complain about is how so much (everything maybe) in the game boils down to a DPS race. No strategy, no support / control. Just get things killed asap. Thus the whole Berserker popularity. I don’t mind a straight forward kill fest, but it gets old when that’s all anything ever is.

I just wanted to throw this out here. How can the game be tweaked to make support / control matter more and take some focus off just speed-killing? I’m not talking about nerfing zerker gear, for example. I’m talking mechanics. What type of encounters could Anet give us to shift away from just killing?

How about healing / protection. Maybe some situations could be created or modified to have a constant DoT on everyone, like the miasma, except not as lethal. Just enough so that you’ll want to have lots of heals going at all times or you’ll probably all end up dead ..but, unlike the miasma, it is actually possible to out-heal it. Your own heal won’t be enough ..you can’t just run through. You’ll need to rely on heals from others. Kind of like how in WvW, you have people dropping AoE swiftness in succession so everybody can keep up, maybe do something similar with heals.

The real danger is the environment. You just need to get through, and at the end, instead of some big champ to zerg down, maybe have numerous points that need to be captured all at the same time, or some switches that need to all be flipped. A deliberate team effort in any case, but with the main challenge staying alive more than just killing anything that moves. The tricky part about this would be to find the right balance of what % HP to tick off. It has to be enough to need several heals at all times, but it can’t be too much or you just die in the start.

What about control? What if there were scenarios where you have to get through, or achieve some goal, but you don’t need to kill all the enemies. In fact, I suggest there might be some that CAN’T be killed (or they can but really unlikely and not really practical for the goal). They don’t need to be killed, just need to be kept out of an area (or in) until the goal / timer is done. Use your snares, cripples, walls, etc. Maybe one team has the job of reaching or controlling an area, or completing some activity sequence, but it only works if these enemies are kept away (or maybe there is some captive area the enemies need to remain).

Maybe there could even be a supply / build mechanic similar to WvW where you can get a blueprint to make an actual physical wall or other things to keep the enemies where they need to be. Maybe there could be another team working on that.

These are the alternatives I could think of to prioritize our other non-killing abilities. Any other ideas?

Three examples of control.

Stacking might and fury, banners, reflecting projectiles, well-timed aegis, carefully timed stability.

Clearly, GW2 is just a DPS race.

Sander!
We didn’t allow you to play thief again, did we?

Why would a public DPS meter be bad? People with bad dps won’t get into parties like “full offensive only, gear & traitcheck” anyway, a public dps meter would simply filter out liars. And anyone who doesn’t care about how much dps he deals wouldn’t mind the dps meter anyway. So in my opinion if there is a better thing than a private dps meter that could be added to gw2, it’s a public one.

msg me on colesy.8490 if you want someone to join you

Lilith Ajit.6173:

spoj.9672:

Next up. The Moot and Sunrise for my warrior.

I’ll fight you for Dawn!

hue

Try stacking Mossman, Archdiviner, Lupicus and Ginva.

The first two require a lot of co-ordination and breaking away from each other, the third has semi-targeted AOE projectile attacks and then life suck and AOE life drain skills which force a player or the group to briefly disengage and Ginva is pretty hostile to both ranging and stacking.

They’re all interesting encounters, but the one thing they all have in common is that your average player will just attempt to range and kite around in circles rather than even trying to interact with the mechanics so the only people the fights will even be interesting for are organised groups.

…then again that’s not a bad thing. If Mossman had a larger character model like Ginva he would be a fantastic fight.