Guild Wars 2

What I mean is you’ve listed 10/20/0/25/15 as a “meta” build when that is about as far from the truth as you can get, so I don’t understand why you did it. Traiting empowering mantras is practically a requirement to taking your mesmer on dungeon runs with guilds like Retaliate and Death and Taxes, and 10/20 doesn’t allow you to do that.

Improve Boss AI
Change how Bosses think and act, make them more dynamic to fight:

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So more content for speed clearers to blitz through and more content for more casual players to complain about. Most people couldn’t even do the Marionette and that was practically faceroll in difficulty. What makes you think they’re going to be able to do any of this?

The anti-melee aspect of your post is just pointless as well, it would make boss fights about as interesting as the Lyssa temple if they kept running away from melee, i.e. it would be about as fun as getting your own teeth pulled out.

Encourage Build Diversity

<snip>

“Forcing” people to use zerker is bad (spoiler alert – the game currently doesn’t, whereas having a boss stacking toughness actually forces condi) therefore lets force them to use condi. Let’s force them to use defensive stats. Stop imposing the way you want to play on others just because you dislike direct damage builds.

If ANet want to do phases they should take a tip out of their own Lupicus fight where it’s raw skill that lets you overcome the challenges of each phase’s mechanics and this can be achieved in full offensive gear, not irritating “oh the boss is now suddenly resilient to direct damage” gimmicks.

More Unique Mechanics
Nothing is as refreshing as coming face to face with a Boss, and realizing you won’t beat them by just smashing the most conveniently placed blunt object against their forehead and hope for the best. Unique mechanics is what keeps things fun and interesting.

I agree. Lupicus, Alphard and Imbued Shaman are amazing pug destroyers. However annoying mechanics like the ones you’ve suggested aren’t the way to make boss fights interesting.

None of the major dungeon guilds use 10/20/0/25/15 so I don’t know why you’ve listed that as meta.

No. Take 10/3/0/20/10 or 0/30/0/25/15.

There is a difference between “best build” and “here is my build”.

Hello,

I’ve been reading the forum for a little while and realised there’s quite a few people who are unhappy with the current stacking/skipping/exploiting meta, so I was wondering if people would be up for a non-stack/skip run of Arah with me some time?

If interested drop me a message on my NA account Emanuel.9781.

Fumble dodges also just randomly happen. A fumble dodge isn’t exactly a dodge where you do not get evade frames, but a dodge where you “fumble” interrupt the dodge midway. This can happen at various points but it will always consume endurance like normal.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I don’t have the spreadsheet open in front of me but last I checked a one-banner (Discipline), solo warrior (10 might, 10 vuln, about 80% fury) with meta build deals about 6k/s, whereas a no-banner solo engineer (12 might, 20 vuln, no fury) with meta deals about 5.2k/s.

Which is why warrior solo’s usually take about 1/3 of the time an engineer solo takes for the same boss, using HGH (which is stronger for solo play but relies havily on condition damage).

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

That means the warrior deals only about 10% more than the engineer at a significant group support and survivability cost.

So 15% critdamage, (180 power,) 170 precision, 170 power, 170 condition damage, 8s (or perma) fury, guaranteed 3-6 might stacks and ~10 vulnerability compared to ~9-12 might with 75% uptime and 20 vulnerability stacks is a huge loss in group support? The warrior does not even have to pick empower allies and would still contribute a lot more than an engineer.

As for survivability: Warriors have the most evasions/time even without vigor (and they have easy access to), a 3s block on 15s cooldown, the highest base HP and the highest HP/s heal.
Engineers have “only” perma vigor and one 1 1/2 second block on 40 second cooldown together with medium base HP and a pretty strong, but not even close to as strong as the warriors, HP/s heal.

Not by me but found this uploaded on one of the channels I subscribed to.

http://youtu.be/HmUffXSXqy8

Even took him less than 10 minutes!

It’s a split between path two and three. Two has a brutal skip at the end and three has the brutal skip after the first boss. On the other hand, Alphard is basically a pug destroyer.

If you know what you’re doing and can log to a reflect class, path two easily. Otherwise, path three.

Path four is a nightmare and path one has the giant skip after ooze which is basically a pug destroyer in itself.

… It’s easier to kill most of the bosses while stacked in the corner and just pressing 12345. This kind of passive playstyle should punish players. Otherwise there’s no point to run, dodge, just stand in one place and 12345.

This is what you wrote.

And as you demonstrated, you can do this in defensive gear. This playstyle should be punished, yes.

However you didn’t do it in berserker, which implies that you actually need to make use of active damage mitigation when using berserker (i.e., not a passive playstyle) in order to kill the boss.

Again, +1 for actually making the video, it just shows again that defensive gear makes the game faceroll and that using berserker you can’t just roll your face over the keyboard.

I’m pretty happy you uploaded that, I didn’t expect it at all – it’s just if you checked the dungeon forum, twitch streams have already proven defensive gear is faceroll.

People however claim they just smash keys and zerk everything down. Which … is incorrect. If you can 11111 spider queen to death in berserker though, that would be pretty great to see, because it gets wearisome seeing people claim zerker is skill-less – though if you could prove you could 11111 it (take four other zerkers with you if you want) either solo or in a full group, then I’d be more willing to agree with the view that the encounter lacks a skill element.

If you use something like x/x/30/x/20 so that you can hit AH and virtues traits, then you’re giving up damage modifiers somewhere (fiery wrath @ 10 zeal, powerful blades @ 20 radiance and the 10% on foes with conditions @ radiance 25) which makes the DPS no longer comparable between the AH and meta builds (so as opposed to 10/30/30/0/0 where the DPS is actually on par).

The meta build absolutely does not need knights gear as demonstrated by obal’s countless videos, my Lupicus duo with Nikaido where he told me afterwards he was using 20/25/0/0/25 (imagine that, not even vigor on Lupicus). You can run the meta in full berserker in Arah perfectly fine, and for fractals you can run the 15/25/0/20/10 or 15/15/0/20/20 builds which revolve around using the hammer symbol to sustain yourself and the team (plus blinds and chaining aegis) which do not use AH.

I have a guardian myself and pug with those builds and use full berserker too and it works just fine. Pretty much the only time you want knights is when doing something like Fractal 49 where you’re expected to hold boss aggro and need to be able to soak a hit while the rest of your team wails on the boss from behind, and even then … you don’t need AH.

I’m not sure why you’ve claimed “most dps build splash in knights or other gear” when that is quite possibly the most incorrect claim you could make.

Selling is allowed as long as you don’t exploit.

This means legit Arah selling.

Except it’s not the elites who never pug who are claiming it’s faceroll, it’s people who pug all the time who are claiming it’s just 111111111 despite that being completely untrue. I know from running with the guild I’m in that our runs are only so faceroll because we’re experienced, optimised and are speaking over voice comms so we can call out things quick should something go wrong.

I wait eagerly.

And do it in berserker gear since people are so insistent in claiming you can just 11111 zerk everything down.

zMajc.4659:

I’m speaking only for myself and i’m not arguing that meta build isn’t THE most optimal build on paper. Unfortunately it just doesn’t work for me in high lvl fractals. I have a much better performance all around with axe offhand compared to mace. Different things work for different people.

It’s funny tho, i keep seing more and more axe/axe warriors in fractals recently. I guess they must all be stupid kitten using non optimal kittened builds.

If you’re trying to claim whirling axe deals more damage to fractal mobs, well I just debunked that straight away. It doesn’t even deal more if you’re hitting five mobs.

I insist, please record yourself 12345’ing spider queen, destroyer of worlds and slave driver. No utility skills allowed. No dodging allowed. Since you mentioned those fights (as you felt the examples I gave weren’t good enough) it should be easy. haven’t done CM that much so I have no idea what boss that is.

I just went in to Cursed Shore.

My whirling axe dealt 9,325 damage. This is with undead slaying.

My axe auto-attack chain dealt 16,951 damage. This is with undead slaying.

This means that if I cleave three enemies with axe auto, my chain would deal 50,853 damage altogether. If I cleave five enemies with whirling axe I deal 46,625 damage. If I go axe/mace and did axe 2 and mace 4 beforehand giving 8 vuln, I would have dealt 54,921 against those three targets. With axe/axe I only have 4 vuln, meaning I would deal 48,490 damage to those five targets.

I wouldn’t suggest using axe 5 even with five mobs around you. If adrenaline is such a major issue for you, pop healing surge at the start of the fight for the 15%+ damage modifier from berserker’s power. You can also double dodge at the start to proc stick and move straight away (3%+ damage w/o full endurance).

Considering I do a lot of Arah, I like torch. And the blast finisher is used for pre-fight might stacking, you swap it out and go back to Sw/Sw + Sw/F before you go in combat.

It does make it quite a nice utility weapon so as opposed to something like greatsword which is in my experience quite average at everything.

I can assure you, that I PUG on my warrior and I whenever I see eles they’re always incapable of might stacking and are more likely to drop an ice bow than an FGS.

It would be great if you could record a boss kill while everyone presses 12345 too, I see a lot of people claim this but never provide evidence. Examples are the three champion golems in SE p1, LoS them to a corner and dont use utilities, just 12345 and record. Then there’s rumblus (LoS, not that weird afk range spot people like to use) or ghost eater. Even better, record yourself 12345’ing against Alphard in Arah p2 when you’ve LoS’d her.

When people make these bold claims I just want to see video evidence of it, because my experience is that when I run in premades, we co-ordinate our skills and make careful use of utilities enabling us to blitz through content, while pugs just mash keys (exhibit #1 – the whirling axe warrior) and either wipe or kill things a lot slower because they lack the self control or even knowledge of how to play efficiently.

Torch is pretty much god mode for Arah skips. The blast finisher also makes mesmer a bit less of a dead weight in dungeons too.

DeathPanel.8362:

joey the creator.3587:

Deathpanel damage builds can provide protection, blind, invuln, aegis, condi remove and stability just like AH does, while doing 10 fold the damage AH does. You’re only possible argument is " I provide heals " or " I can tank mobs" which are poor arguments since nothing in this game is difficult enough to require healers/tanks . But if I am wrong please inform my ignorance..

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

I’m wrong.

Lol you are wrong. Gear choice accounts for a vast majority of the dps for any given build. If you take full zerk on guard and only change the traits I don’t care what traits you choose you will not get a significant increase in dps over AH at least not without significantly impacting survivability.

How do I know this? Because unlike you and those uninformed like you I actually tested multiple builds as well as trait setups with guards. I have 2 fully geared lvl 80 guards and have pretty much play tested most of the builds I’ve seen in the forums as well as having gone through multiple sets of gears in iteration.

People like you just jump on the AH bashing bandwagon because it’s cookie cutter and you want to look like you are special or above it all, but it’s all hype when put to the real test and none of you can ever come up with actual evidence for your claims. AH is cookie cutter in pve for a reason, because it’s been proven and tested in actual gameplay by the general player base ever since release unlike the rogue builds that supposedly can perform better in pve that I’ve seen popping up but always failing to deliver. Until they alter guardian traits significantly and make different things in pve more viable, AH remains one of the most tested and proven pve build for guards hands down period.

If we take 10/30/30/0/0 AH versus 20/25/0/0/25 meta, the AH build has 30% in damage modifiers + 30%+ crit dmg versus 30% (or 25% if on GS), + 100 power + X% (PotV) + 20% if using unscathed which depending on the boss can either be easy or hard to maintain. If we assume an average of five boons for PotV (might, fury, vigour are guaranteed at least) that leaves us with (on GS) a potential 50%+ in damage modifiers plus 100+ power on the meta build or 55%+ on sword versus 30%+ on the AH DPS build. The AH DPS build gives up the support utilities and DPS traits of virtues (master of consecrations, unscathed contender, absolute resolution, indomitable courage, even improved spirit weapon duration if shield of the avenger uptime is crucial for redundant traits like extra precision (when you can cap it anyway), extra toughness and AH which doesn’t matter when you’re taking huge hits at a time and are mostly using consecrations anyway.

So…

…the DPS ends up being fairly even. You just lose a bunch of support traits. If I personally could choose between having strong DPS + support versus just strong DPS, I’d take the former. You can quite easily argue that the main guardian support (consecrations) doesn’t require traiting, which is true, but then it depends on the content. If you want to have them up between fights more reliably (or chaining reflects against a boss like Alphard), wouldn’t you rather just take the virtues build which will give you equal DPS and faster cooldowns?

my 0.2 pennies

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Riss.1536:

Ummm… We’re talking about a game which is more mediaval like than modern like where there are still people with swords and shields. I don’t want to break your fantasy but medieval wars always looked like zerg.

No, they looked like formations. There is a huuuge difference between a zerg and a formation. The best example of this is the way the Romans made formations. They didn’t just stack on top of each other. They had ranged people in the back, shields and spears in the front, throwing spears just behind them. And when the battle demanded it, they could assume different formations as well. They did not pile on top of each other behind a corner, and wait for the enemy to pile on top of them, or just blindly charge forward as one big mob. They used flanked maneuvers as well, and made use of cover from terrain, or the inclination of the land.

None of these things can be found in zerg and stack strategies in GW2. This is because GW2’s combat was not designed to encourage positional awareness (unlike the ai in GW1). The only thing that slightly comes close to realism, is the way wvw zergs deliberately flank their enemies. Although that is more a case of a surprise attack, rather than actual flanking. (since the game doesn’t provide flanking bonusses)

I’m pretty sure you could count things like the battle of Teutoberg Forest and pretty much every ambush in history ever as armies pulling, stacking and LoSing.

yayuuu.9420:

Jahroots.6791:

Missed those earlier, just went to have a look. Holy kitten that was awesome!

Its also a far, far cry from the typical dungeon run. 1500+ hours of game time and I have never seen anyone do anything quite like that. But then, I’d also not call that cheating so much as a ‘display of skill’, and I don’t think that anything a player is able to do using only their skills while playing the game (no add-ons or code manipulation) can be considered unfair. If the devs don’t like it, they’ll patch it (which has been the case with a lot of content).

Weird how that video upsets you, and I just wanna try it for myself, lol.

Ofc, you don’t need any external programs to do it, but calling it “display of skill” is not correct for sure, as it requires way less skill than killing boss without it. All you need in party is 2-3 elementalists and full zerker party. What’s the point of defense if you can kill boss in few seconds?

Elementalists were always the strongest class against big enemies, but since you can push the corner, it hits small enemies as hard as big enemies, with the difference, that big enemies are usually designed to take much more damage because of their large HP pool.

If it’s not an exploit, but the game is designed like this, then
what’s the point of other classes?
what’s the point of other armor sets (not zerkers)?
what’s the point of enemies being big or small?

Imo this have to be fixed asap or it will kill the game.

What you don’t understand, is that things like that rarely ever happen, and showing us a video of a dungeon guild having a laugh trying to burst Kholer down as fast as possible really won’t kill the game considering your average group will never, ever be able to do it as simple as it may look on the video.

To answer your questions, the point of other classes is their unique buffs. A balanced dungeon party is required for a smooth run. Sure, you can stack eles, but waiting until FGS comes off cooldown and skipping with a full party of 11k glass cannons will take longer than just killing with a regular party. Warriors offer offensive buffs like banners, vuln stacking and FGJ, guardians have aegis, reflect, protection and vuln stacking. The former three for the guard are great for enabling the party to DPS uninterrupted in the first place and to let them complete skill rotations. Rangers can offer spotter, frost spirit and projectile reflection. Thieves offer extremely high DPS, blast finishers and stealth. The two exceptions are engineer and necro. Necro support is generally just bad and ANet probably need to take a real good look at it, and the engineer is a class that becomes worse the better a group is. If a group can stack vuln and might, they aren’t needed. If a group has a thief, engi smoke field isn’t needed. If a group has a ranger or ele for a water field … you don’t need an engi.

The point of other armour sets in my opinion is for two reasons:

First (in my opinion) – training wheels. To allow people to become familiar with content with more defensive gear. People don’t like dying so some people react by buffing their defenses to soak up hits. Second – roleplay diversity. As much as ANet wanted to do away with the trinity, there are people insistent on being healers or tanks, and stat combinations like soldier, sentinel, cleric and maybe zealot are pretty much a half measure in an attempt to assuage that crowd.

And the point of larger and smaller enemies is because there’s a range of different enemies in the game. Some humanoid, some creature. The game in my opinion sorely lacks creatures (exhibit #1 – Lupicus) and has a lot of upscaled humanoids as bosses.

Seems people need to get out of faceroll content and so some Arah. Try stacking versus the elites in that dungeon, you’ll get chewed out without co-ordinated CC.

Alpha’s teeth attack doesn’t bug anymore, it hits you for like 4k even if you stand on him.

RedStar.4218:

This whole stacking thing is starting to make me wonder a few things : do we all have the same definition about it ?

When you stack at a specific point so the enemies behave differently, that’s an exploit. When you stack wherever because everyone is meeleing/boon sharing, that’s being smart.
And when you stack at every single encounter, that’s guardians not knowing how to pull things.

Stacking at range so Lupicus doesn’t kick just confirmed as an exploit.

Ranging in dungeons is basically the antithesis of improving, though if it’s something you’re set on, something like scepter/pistol + scepter/focus or scepter/pistol + staff could work.

Good builds to go with are probably 0/30/0/25/15 and 10/30/0/20/10 since it lets you hit a phantasm damage modifier, empowering mantras, pistol traiting, warden traiting and compounding power.

Saturn.6591:

^I doubt that the difference in dps between a meta-build and a less optimal build (taking AH for example) is THAT big. Depending on the build and the skill of the player using it, I guess it equals out or at least almost equals out. And then there’s always the skill of the players you run with, which is a factor too. It might happen that they bring you into situations where you would die in a meta-build but could survive in a non-meta build; who knows.

I guess outside of speedruns it doesn’t really matter if you run meta or not, as long as your dps is still acceptable and you bring at least some useful things to the party.

When obal tested whirling wraths on the magecrusher, one meta guardian dealt the same amount of damage as five AH cleric guards.

Eleir.9325:

hendo.1940:

I don’t really see how you can conclude you have yet to be challenged when the only dungeon you’ve done is AC.

Try pugging Arah and watching your group fail both fights and skips over and over and over again, and then come back and say the game is faceroll. The sad thing is, having more people with you in something like Arah p2 actually makes fights harder. They spam CC against the abomination which means you can’t CC his enrage (which saves you from having to get a gun), they make Lupicus spam bubbles and spray because they’re kiting in circles and they don’t dodge Alphard’s pull so you can even get caught in that if you’re unlucky.

Stack and spam all the attacks = PvE in a nutshell.

Using appropriate weapons, weapon skills and utility skills is not spamming. Please tell me how spamming kills Lupicus.

I’ve done every dungeon in the game. I am just doing a very small portion of my breakdown for now. I am not going to write the entire thing if it is not well received. Lupicus is a cake walk. Don’t use Lupicus for a basis of difficulty when he can be melee killed in under a minute. Which I have done with a party on several occasions. Don’t get me wrong though. Lupicus is a step in the right direction, but my god he still falls very short of requiring anything near skill.

So you’re saying co-ordinated groups who are all experienced with his mechanics can melt him quickly. I’m pretty sure that’s meant to happen once people learn fights inside and out. However for the average GW2 player, it’s a very challenging fight. I’ve probably spent over 40 hours just practicing Lupicus solo so if it’s easier for me I wouldn’t say that is because the fight lacks skill, it’s because I took the time to learn it.

This is why I like to pug every now and then, experiencedguild groups carry each other perfectly, but when you’re in a pug which (though they don’t realise it) are actively making an effort to get you killed it requires you to keep your reflexes sharp and your skills fresh.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

klemen.8439:

To make bosses challanging, the trick is not by making insane damage attacks but to make attacks that you have to survive by harmonizing with others (aka. healer-tank).

Not really. There is nothing inherently skill-based about having to “tank and heal” damage. This is an active combat game. They can make bosses challenging by encouraging active defense and twitch skills.

The Archdiviner in fractals is a great example of this. Can’t dodge a telegraphed (but still quick) hammer bash? You die. Can’t react to him switching targets and hitting you with an auto attack in time? You die. Try to stack in a corner and burst him down without dodging? You die. There is a good reason why this boss and (to a slightly lesser extent) the Dredge Power Suit are the best bosses in fractals.

As annoying as he is, Ginva is actually (in a twisted kind of way) a fun fight that promotes good reflexes. Sure, the 360 degree cleave on some of his attacks is just stupid, but keeping myself alive while meleeing I find quite enjoyable. If we used a hammer guard in knight gear or something we could probably co-ordinate burst phases where we just go balls deep with DPS until everyone runs low on HP and then go back to trying to hit him in the back while the player with aggro back pedals or something.

I don’t really see how you can conclude you have yet to be challenged when the only dungeon you’ve done is AC.

Try pugging Arah and watching your group fail both fights and skips over and over and over again, and then come back and say the game is faceroll. The sad thing is, having more people with you in something like Arah p2 actually makes fights harder. They spam CC against the abomination which means you can’t CC his enrage (which saves you from having to get a gun), they make Lupicus spam bubbles and spray because they’re kiting in circles and they don’t dodge Alphard’s pull so you can even get caught in that if you’re unlucky.

Stack and spam all the attacks = PvE in a nutshell.

Using appropriate weapons, weapon skills and utility skills is not spamming. Please tell me how spamming kills Lupicus.

A few PvE tips:

Activating signet of fury gives you adrenaline that you can then use for your longbow F1 skill to drop a fire field and then you and your team can spam blast finishers.

Using burst skills gives you an extra dodge if you have 15 points in strength which can come in really handy if you really need that evade.

Sword 5 will block everything for its entire duration as long as they aren’t melee attacks.

Your phantasms function as sustained DPS, and since PvE bosses have anything between 600,000 and 1,500,000HP at level 80, you’re better off keeping them up rather than shattering for a very small burst of damage.

You’d probably be better off using something like sword/sword + sword/focus in dungeons too since greatsword is more of a PvP/WvW weapon.

LFG Tool system won’t display LFGs that want 4 out of 8 classes in their group, but will instead look for most likely 1 healer, 1 tank and 3 DPS classes (No matter which class plays which role)

No, you will have three DPS players waiting half an hour for a tank and healer.

People won’t stack in corner but will fight Big kitten Monsters with effort through different stages of Bosses’ attacks and will actually require to harmonize with each other – Tank taking in most of the damage, healer keeping tank alive, DPSers do their job

I’d recommend joining a major dungeon guild. It’s too much for me to want to make the effort explaining (unless you want me to), but we take group compositions that synergise well with each other, or “harmonise”. The only time groups don’t synergise is in pugs, and that is perfectly understandable because it’s just five randoms. I’m not sure why you’d expect co-ordination outside of the bare necessities (if that).

Making different types of mobs (Elite, Bronze, Champ, …) always dropping something valuable (depending on their type) would most likely make players kill them due to knowing that they will get rewarded for doing so (Currently, you have higher chances of acquiring T6 materials by killing non-hostile mobs like baracudas and skelks than by killing Elites who for example at Jade Maw drop stones)

I agree. If they make elites and bosses in dungeons drop dragonite ore (maybe 1 per elite, 5 per boss, so if you just kill bosses in something like Arah p2 you end up with 25 ore) it would actually be worth doing full clears.

There would be many other things that would change with such update and so far, I can only see positive ones. Therefore I’m looking forward to the day Guild Wars 2 takes a step back and notices that the essence of MMOs is missing in it and by that, this game makes an insane step forward – becoming my personal Best MMO released so far.

I disagree vehemently with any sort of trinity for this game as it makes me reliant on others. I purposely join Arah lfgs stuck at certain bosses because I enjoy carrying through the dungeon, imposing a trinity means that I wouldn’t be able to carry on a class I prefer and would be forced to take another. GW2 combat is skill based, not class based (entirely), which is a good thing and it should stay that way.

Phadde.7362:

Might not be considered as a good idea to some people, but I’d really, really appreciate some mechanic that prevents stacking. Perhaps adding AoE abilities that are targeted at peoples position (forcing them to move a couple of meters) to encounters where stacking is blatantly used

Have you been to Arah? Risen mages and illusionists have full area denial skills and are targeted on players.

I too would like more mobs like this, because overall the Arah elites actually have interesting mechanics.