Guild Wars 2

For spider skip just stick in far reaching manipulations and have mass invis, decoy, blink on your bar. sw/f + sw/t is nice too.

For the skip to Brie you can go mass invis/blink/decoy/veil w/sw+t again and you should have full stealth uptime that when you finally get in to the opening you can blink forward out of deadeye range.

Still missing it. Keep trying.

Also, I like pretending groups have permanent 25 might too, it makes me feel good.

In terms of the dungeon meta, I think it’s probably more accurate to say it’s not changed yet

Except it has.

unless we see more focus on support/denial it will still be whatever does the most damage the easiest and fastest

Except it isn’t.

Sigh.

This post is exactly why it’s hard to take a podcast seriously when people are talking about things out of their depth. There was another mesmerized podcast discussing the berserker meta and “how to make support more relevant” and it had equally as clueless comments in it.

I’m not going to bother discussing this anymore and risk infraction, if you want clarification on what I’m talking about then just message me in-game.

No, it does not have an application in dungeons. The only light field in dungeons is WoR, and I am always careful to ensure that a fire field is placed down BEFORE WoR (usually HG). The only other fields used are: SR, Dark, and once again, that is placed down just before Fiery Rushing, after the fire fields, to activate the new GM trait; and Feedback/Null field, Chaos, which are placed down AFTER fire fields. No other fields or fields placed after fire fields means the Ele’s can might-stack away. Hence, Phalanx is useless in dungeons.

So basically you don’t understand how it can be relevant. I’ll just let you figure it out.

I think somebody needs to stop making assumptions. ROFL, its player’s like you who entertain me in the game and in the forums.

I have a full slew of weapons on my war, I switch them as needed, customizing for EACH fractal boss, which is beyond any average zerker would understand. On any average run, I use GS, axe, mace, shield, warhorn, longbow and rifle. Why shield? If you don’t know the answer to that, then delete your warrior immediately.

I would like to know why you would take a shield to a boss when you can take an off-hand sword.

My philosophy:
I personally run max dps most of the time, yet I NEVER ever ask others what to run. I NEVER ask others to ping. I only get mildly irritated when people can’t do their job right, like a mesmer who doesn’t know when to portal and a guardian who doesn’t use reflects at all. In those weird cases, I bring alts and show how its done.

I was doing it with a friend and he wanted gear pings. I personally don’t care that much, but if our LFG says gear pings I’m going to push the issue.

And in the extreme case when the group clearly lacks healing (as in Shaman boss fight), I bring my cleric guard and make it all seem stupid easy. Now, go cry in a corner if you don’t know how a cleric guard operates or what weapons to use.

I run in groups that lack healing all the time. We do fine.

And I know how a cleric guard operates – inefficiently.

And like I said, I play with pugs, it’s more fun and I can play any build I want (including clerics, hehe). So, I feel this makes me a better player overall than you, knowing all classes and varieties within those classes.

I have a better understanding of the classes I play than you ever will.

~ podcast talking about pve mesmers
~ three pvp’ers discussing the topic
~ bold claim about dungeon meta not being changed

lol

You sound like you don’t actually understand why this build can actually be relevant to fractals. Do you do fractals?

And phalanx does actually have some minor application for dungeons, unfortunately for you.

Why would you not just ping your armour and trinkets? Secondly, why aren’t you using axe/wh + axe/mace for fotm? GS doesn’t do enough to be worth taking.

I had a guy join a FOTM group I made who was exactly like you, except he was a mesmer who pinged his GS. I knew at that point he wasn’t worth taking so I just booted him from my party, and then there was another guy who I was trying to explain to that he had bugged Belka and he said “dude, I have 20k” tokens.

Yeah … it doesn’t prove anything.

And if you honestly think you’re an experienced player, having two healing spec’d characters – well I hate to burst your bubble but you’re really not.

Ask in map chat and hope to god somebody from a respectable dungeon guild gives you the advice you need?

Is this the end of the spreadsheet era?

Will we start using actual boss fights as DPS tests?

I nominate subject Alpha. It’s simple enough but requires dodging so we can see which build can maintain rotations the best and which build loses the least DPS by interrupting its rotation. Also, if we record from the first damage of the (class) we get the actual DPS of them, not just the imaginary 25 might 25 vuln that we do on spreadsheets which like never happens.

also

GS rotation
Cyclone axe = 3
Crushing blow = 2
100b = 3
WWA (4 hits) = 2
Blade Trail = 1
Rush = 1
Axe Auto = 2
Chop = 1
Total GS Coefficients = 25.30
Total Axe Coefficients = 14.80
Power = 3923
Crit chance = 88%
Crit Damage = 1.27
GS Damage mods = 2.50
Axe Damage mods = 2.39
Total GS DPS = 7761.00
Total Axe DPS = 4141.17
Total DPS = 11,902.17

you interrupted your auto chain in the axe/gs rotation which kind of wrecks your DPS

I guess the question again lies in that is the loss of personal Damage out wieghed by the constant 25 might? via phalanx and forcefull greatsword?

+875 power & condition damage (minor but it still does damage) for party with 100% uptime

at the cost of meh dps for an average dps class

personally – I think the tradeoff is worth it as long as you’re using it for the right fights. any instance with long bosses where might drops off – you want the phalanx warrior. otherwise they can just run the regular EA build.

the phalanx warrior can also go double GS, one with a sigil of battle on too for 3x might more for the group if, somehow you aren’t making enough stacks.

now for me personally – I don’t recommend it as a pug build – you’re trying to buff your party but:

1. they have to be in 600 range
2. ideally they need to be in DPS specs, otherwise your extra power isn’t really getting its full effect and you could just run 30/25 to be fully self sufficient since that way you don’t have to rely on the pugs to stay alive

another thing – going double banner + FGJ makes you miss out on sig of fury which means you get less forceful greatsword procs (less crits) – it might be worth dropping FGJ for fury sig or just making sure you have a ranger along with you to get the full benefit of the might stacking.

I certainly wouldn’t kick a phalanx strength warrior from my groups. Diversity achieved imo.

obviously if I was a warrior it wouldn’t matter much since they can buff themselves massively in 30/25 – but if I pugged on like … a thief (which is massively reliant on party buffs), a phalanx warrior would be like a godsend.

so I was using the build earlier in AC, SE and COF – we had an ele in the group. for AC it didn’t even matter because stuff died in like 3 seconds, but for the Tazza and Destroyer of Worlds fights where things are a bit more drawn out and pre-might stacking starts dropping off is where it actually started to shine – at Tazza we basically sat there capped out at 25 stacks and at the destroyer we were pretty much 23-25 the entire time. Again, stuff died in COF p1 too quick for it to be relevant.

so

as I was originally thinking – more of a FOTM build. haven’t been able to test in all dungeons so far, but the general rule seems to be that if a fight lasts long enough for the pre-might stack to drop off, its pretty decent. the longer the fight goes on for, the stronger it gets.

It’s a boring, uninteresting trait. Eles still do might stacking better pre-pull and, outside fractals, Ele might should last any boss fight else you’re doing it wrong.

drop fire field > lb3, wh 5, banner, banner, fgj, 25 MIGHT GET ON MY LEVEL

:)

Thief = inquest potion, decent food + stacks, Scholar, full ascended
Ele = undead potion, cheap food, no scholar, no stacks, exotic weapons and armor
Not exactly a perfectly valid comparison. Or at least, not a meaningful one.

Add another 10% to account for potion: 91,383 damage. The extra might the ele had was basically equivalent to the 25 bloodlust the thief had + more.

Thief will pull ahead at <50% when executioner kicks in and they can start heartseekering, and then ele will catch up at <33% when bolt to the heart kicks in. Post-patch, revealed training gives thief a pretty solid buff with the cloak and dagger rotation, while in the case of the COE golem the ele has the advantage of it having a large hitbox. If you give the thief an LH and they drop a smoke screen to repeatedly blast to proc the revealed training – that’s pretty great damage there too. I’d either say thief pulls ahead or they’re even.

. Clearly your trying to favor warriors. Maybe next time you should post videos of classes showing equal consumables, party-wide buffs, and proper builds.

um

well

i’m just trying to show the crazy good might stack potential of phalanx strength

if it crosses on to the turf of eles … well that’s just too bad

Tree.3916:

hendo.1940:

“Frees you up to run more Thieves instead of eles.”
Why would I want to replace Eles? Why would I want a second Thief?

moar deeps in non-fgs situations

Explain how a thief in a non-fgs situation is more dps than a staff ele.

From 6:23 to 6:33 you deal 94,830 damage @ ~12 stacks of might

From 6:34 to 6:44 you deal 75,523 damage @ 24 stacks of might (no scholar bonus). Bump it up to 83,075 if you want to factor in scholar bonus.

???

“Frees you up to run more Thieves instead of eles.”
Why would I want to replace Eles? Why would I want a second Thief?

moar deeps in non-fgs situations

I’ve been running similar build for some time now and it’s astonishing how easy might stacking in fractals became. At higher scales, typically, a guardian has a hammer which makes stacking mights during some fights quite an issue. With this trait you can delegate your eles to staff builds and yolo through everything by spamming your attacks. Support was never that brainless but I guess that’s what people want.

this is precisely the kind of fights I was thinking of. not casual stuff in dungeons that dies in 2 seconds, but the prolonged fractal fights where a phalanx warrior can just cap you out on might for basically the entire boss

What are odds of this getting nerfed into the ground?

well ANet want support to matter more – this build basically gives up dual wielding, slashing power/axe mastery and berserker’s power in return for going full support (berserker gear ofc) and maintaining an easy 25 might.

Been curious on this. What is the opportunity cost though? Compared to the Axe/Mace w/ Empowered allies? Or whatever is the top (i’m hearing Axe/sword?/shrug).

the EA build lacks berserker’s power but has axe mastery and dual wielding – i’ll assume that this build does lower damage even than that – but gives it up for balls to the wall might stacking.

Basically my guildy popped this on the second he got in after the update, and we were testing it, yeah it’s amazing, but the question is what is the opportunity costs? If we can easily toss a fire field and blast to start the fight capped and run that out pretty well without much loss in DPS is it worth the sacrifices you have to make to get Phalanx Strength?

it really depends on the fight. for longer fights where might can drop off (Lupicus, high level fractal fights like Mossman/archdiviner), being able to maintain stupid amounts i’m pretty sure is worth the DPS loss since you’re going to be giving the whole group a pretty hefty buff.

for regular dungeons, you can open up the fight (with no fire field) giving your party 11 stacks of might with FGJ and SoR then cap the might within 5 seconds. If you open the fight with fire field – you all basically sit at the cap the entire fight.

no longer needing an ele (unless using fgs rush) means you can stack more thieves, and FGJ and thrill of the crime (+ ranger warhorn if you have one) can give you the fury you need. your FGJ gives 10.5s of fury too since you have 30% boon duration from tactics.

maxinion.8396:

hendo.1940:

So I tested this out duo in Arah with a guildie after dub messaged me about how busted the might stacking was

0/30/0/30/10

I/V/X

VI/VIII/XIII

VI

against afk HP sponge boss (alphard) – perma 25 might
against bosses that required dodging (abomination, lupicus) – 18-22 easily maintained
against sped bosses that troll you (belka) – perma 25 until teleport
against brie i switched to 30/25 to burst down, but it’s mostly afk so probably perma 25 might

strength runes
no boon duration food
strength sigil

RIP eles

:)

Nice build! Very curious to try it out. What’s your rotation like? You’re not using fast-hands so I’m guessing you mostly stick to greatsword?

it’s exclusively greatsword. you do hundred blades + whirlwind off of cooldown, if theyre not in a wall you bladetrail for two might procs. then you just gs auto with your flashy twilight until hundred blades/ww goes off cooldown and repeat ad infinitum. dodge when necessary.

your fgj is basically 6 might stacks for everyone, sig of rage is 5 might stacks, if you hb/ww in to a wall you push everyone to 24 stacks of might – if you pre might stacked to 25 you’ll basically never drop from it because the phalanx stacks last 10.5s which is enough to cast hb/ww again which means that even though you’re overriding longer stacks with lower duration – the “lower duration” isn’t even a big deal since you’re constantly reapplying stacks.

not entirely serious about it being meta – but it does basically blank using an ele for might stacking when you can just 2-3-1-1-1-1-1-1 and maintain 25 yourself easily in a fight.

So I tested this out duo in Arah with a guildie after dub messaged me about how busted the might stacking was

0/30/0/30/10

I/V/X

VI/VIII/XIII

VI

against afk HP sponge boss (alphard) – perma 25 might
against bosses that required dodging (abomination, lupicus) – 18-22 easily maintained
against sped bosses that troll you (belka) – perma 25 until teleport
against brie i switched to 30/25 to burst down, but it’s mostly afk so probably perma 25 might

strength runes
no boon duration food
strength sigil

RIP eles

:)

I’ve heard a lot of reasons. Efficiency seems to be the main one. If everyone is stacked, its easier to ball up all the foes on you and cleave them down. Quick and dirty.

+1

Additionally, as I stated, it negates a lot of mechanics. For example, in CM3, people stack behind the door for Wahlen. You can aoe him down (not mention, there seems to be a bit of bus as you can hit him thru the door with certain melee skills), and not have to worry (as much) about his aoe bomb attack. You take less damage because, due to lack of line of sight, he can’t hit you.

-1

Intelligent positioning (as in literal intelligent positioning, not afk safespots) do not negate mechanics. I’m pretty sure you can kill Wahlen anywhere, you just need reflects. Stacking in itself does not negate mechanics, people need to understand this.

Its the same in Aetherblade fractal with the cannons. People stack in the corner, and let the foes mob on them, cleaving them down, while at the same time the cannons can’t do any damage to you because they have no line of sight.

+1

Now, I can see having stacking in certain instances be part of the mechanic, but I think there’s far too much of it right now as a means around mechanics.

My idea of fun in doing the cannon part of Aetherblade is not running around like a headless chicken. If ANet want us to interact “properly” with mechanics they need to not just make them tedious time gates (molten fractal is equally as tedious with the weapon testing room) but things where it actually feels like you’re having fun and getting somewhere, not just afk’ing until the boredom stops.

I also never said that there needed to be more risk in all instances. Only that there did need to be more, overall.

The risk is still there, just people have (for some instances) learned to adapt. Try pugging SE p1 – if you have a bad guard or mes things can get real pear shaped with players being perma-stunned and ragdolled by bosses. Generally though, the fixing of crit damage scaling in low level instances has thrown the damage completely out of whack, I’ve heard guildies mention they deal like 2x the damage in AC now so it’s just a joke.

I have no desire to completely destroy zerkers, merely balance out the desire to ‘all zerker, 80 only’ parties.

They’re playing how they want. You can play how you want by not forming zerker parties. I’m not sure why they should have their right to play how they want infringed upon when you’re not even in their parties and neither of you have an effect on each other. If all you see are zerker lfgs (because they take longer to fill than normal ones) – make your own lfg. They fill quickly.

Which, the only way to do that is to make support and control specs more desirable, and do that, straight zerkers need to be less effective at it on their own.

The point of this game is that there is a damage/support/control trinity where each player is expected to do a bunch of each. I don’t see why people completely ignoring two aspects of this and focusing on one is something they should be rewarded for when it goes in complete contrast to the goal ANet had in mind.

A lot of risk can be negated by having the ability to sidestep some of the various mechanics via stacking.

You’re not sidestepping mechanics. Like you wrote yourself, the point is to line of sight and cleave mobs down. There is no skipping of mechanics. People like to mention the Spider Queen as an example – but if you stack on her (spoiler – it doesn’t matter whether you do it in a corner or in the middle of the room) it disables her ranged abilities but activates her melee skills. There’s no bypassing, the boss is just adjusting to the proximity of the players and using different skills.

AsteriskCGY.5931:

Pyroathiest.4168:

Note that you can always trait mantra heals in a standard phantasm build.

The issue with this mindset though, is that if stuff goes wrong in fractals, people end up dead, not just close to dead. This is particularly true in higher level fractals where so many mobs are 1-2 shots.

It’s not mantra heals though.

Its every 45 seconds I Wardern/Line thing/Leap/Swap/Leap/Storm at feet/3 seconds/Signet. Everyone nearby gets pretty much all boons and a 300hp regen.

When Ascalonian warriors rush at you for 10k and mages insta-gib you, 300hp regen isn’t going to do much.

many of the dungeon bosses do have interesting mechanics; however, the stacking gimmick negates these

Can you clarify why groups stack? Because I have screenshots of me asking why (when I did a dungeon) they wanted to stack and the answers they gave were so far from the actual reason it was just sad.

One of the zerker arguments is that you can effective support your group and control your environment without speccing into support or control lines. I think this needs to be…reduced. In GW1, if you equipped a superior rune (for example) so that you could dish more damage, the trade off was that it dinged your hp, and in certain situations you felt it. We need more tradeoff here, more risk to going full dps.

In defensive gear you can kill Lupicus and Alphard with your dodge key unbound. In berserker gear, swipes become one-shots and inability to dodge the multiple projectile attacks results in instant death.

But clearly, threat of being one-shot isn’t a risk at all. Contrary to what you see on dungeon guild videos, your average player doesn’t just dodge everything because “zerker is ez faceroll”.

Making it so you can actually look good in PvP was horrible, yes.

ANet please change it so we look like trash again, that made me really enjoy playing it.

Both hundred blades and axe auto have backloaded damage, so you need to not dodge to make your axe auto do as much damage as possible.

The berserker does damage in an AoE, hitting multiple enemies. The swordsman and warlock do not …

Please tell us about all those times where area of effect damage is relevant in dungeons which can’t just be achieved by main hand sword cleave.

All of which is solo “speedrun” plays. I’m not saying that they’re not the better ways to play, but when you PUG as much as I do, you need to be ready to play the full idiot method.

No, they’re not just solo speedrun plays. And I pug all of the time. Almost every single solo tactic is perfectly applicable to pug runs.

I can even revert to a 0/4/6/4/0 build that lets me solo Lupicus while ressing teammates.

I can run 0/0/0/0/0 and res a team mate while soloing Lupicus. I’ve had one guildie get a friend killed so that he can try a medic’s feedback solo too. That does remind me actually – a couple of days ago, me and a guildie took someone to Arah, and when they were in defeated state I basically attacked Lupicus, dodged the major attacks and they just sat behind him and ressed them (+ dodging when necessary). You don’t need inefficient builds to achieve that.

But when my teammates don’t dodge grubs and try to melee, then it’s better to just range in P1.

Literally just sit behind him and cast phantasms and attack. That way if he switches aggro to kick you have time to dodge.

When my teammates don’t know how to use reflects or sit in them in P2, it’s better to use Feedback when I can and then play safe when I can’t Feedback his barrage.

You play safe by sitting under him meleeing and dodging. You do realise his autoattack projectile doesn’t hit you in melee right? It’s safer.

In P3, if that one guy decides he wants to not sit under Lupicus, then I will sit under Lupicus until it’s not safe and range him when I have no escapes readily available.

If someone is going to be stubborn and not stay under him, just let him chase them, repeatedly bubble them and eat the floor. They’re being completely counterproductive by ranging. For example, a competent player can burst Lupicus out of phase 2 and in to phase 3 in a minute flat. If he’s running around porting to people, it takes a lot longer.

If you’re stuck in a bubble, you can use Phase Retreat to get out and you’re also out of range of another bubble attack.

stability mantra/distortion/blurred frenzy/dodging inside bubble/off hand sword block

He holds position while casting necrid trap so you can get back in to melee range too.

You can keep refuting me all you want, but that doesn’t prove anything. From the beginning, I’ve been stating that it’s not the BEST way to play, but it’s a possible way (in regards to Lupicus).

It’s also possible to circle kite him around the room with scepter/torch but I’m not going to say “guys, this is viable” — when it is — but it’s extremely inefficient and would be wrong of me to tell someone.

Using Staff on Lupi allows me to avoid the projectiles if I accidentally roll twice too soon.

blurred frenzy/energy sigils/distortion/feedback

This isn’t very useful if we’re meleeing,

Which you should be doing, because — no joke — ranging Lupicus is actually hard mode because it makes him unpredictable and lets him use his more deadlier skills.

it is useful to be able to be flexible.

Feedback, stability mantra. You can now break out of two bubbles if they spawn on you and you can reflect spray and projectiles. Your main hand sword allows you to evade heavy burst damage, your focus allows you to apply swiftness so you can move in quickly after AOE life drain, warden allows you to reflect spray if feedback isn’t up. That covers you for basically the entire fight – very flexible.

I’ve probably spent more time practicing Lupicus and pushing for fast kills than you have doing entire Arah paths – so I feel like I know what I’m talking about when I say staff isn’t a good choice.

10/20/0/25/15 is a nice “do everything” build. You have ample access to reflects, personal damage, and phantasm damage modifiers. Full berserker, scholar runes. Mesmers have so many defenses available to them you really don’t need to run defensive gear.

Utilities-wise – you literally just slot in whatever is useful. If you need reflects, feedback. Condi-cleanse, you’ve got mantra of resolve and null field. CC? The stability mantra. Weapons – you’ll want sword/focus + sword/sword.

If she needs a res, you use the f4 distortion shatter to make yourself invuln then you can get her up.

They key thing to note with this game, is “support” isn’t healing, and support and DPS aren’t mutually exclusive. A player in this game is expected to deal damage, support and control when it is applicable – not just one or the other.

Elitests will never accept the staff. It’s a good tool if you use it correctly for kiting enemies but since it’s not “meta” they wont care about your build. I just recommend avoiding those people. I use sword/pistol and a staff but I carry a scepter and greatsword as well. All are good in the right situation if used correctly.

Why are you taking a random jab at “elitests” just because the OP asked an innocent question?

I’ve used Sword/Pistol + Staff for a long time. It’s possible to be used against things like Lupicus effectively,

No, it isn’t.

I’m not even going to bother elaborating because it takes five seconds fighting the guy to realise they aren’t.

but it’s still inferior to Sword/Focus + Greatsword in terms of raw dps.

Incorrect. Sw/F + GS have phantasms with average damage, staff + sw/p has some of the hardest hitting phantasms in the game. Greatsword isn’t a high DPS weapon either.

Of course, since I go PUG’ing, it’s good if I can play support that keeps everyone alive while reducing incoming damage (without using Protection and Aegis.<)

Not sure how staff helps support the team when you have much better resources at your disposal.

The staff is one of those weapons that falls into the “good phantasm, bad weapon” category, much like the GS.

GS does not fall in to this category. The DPS of the phantasm is about 33% worse than swordsman, and completely out of the league of the warlock.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

Mesmers are trash for dungeons… you guys are cute.

No come on in, the water’s fine.

A lot of us in Death and Taxes have shelved our mesmers because they’re pretty weak DPS and have replaceable utility, and the patch didn’t help things at all.

They can be used as a pug carry class – but so can guards.

EU pugs definitely aren’t better.

I soloed Lupi for one EU group and one of them ended up making a warrior and naming it after mine.

EU pugs were definitely a lot more grateful though – whenever I sold Arah they seemed so much grateful for it than NA buyers, and whenever I soloed parts of Arah – well I’d say there the NA pugs probably got the upper hand. I had this legendary run like a month ago with people basically repeatedly worshipping me from Lupicus onwards and then we did p1 and p2 and the same stuff continued. So happy I took caps of the dialogue because they were seriously the greatest runs of Arah I’ve ever had, it was just so funny.

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

miss you morfid </3

You’re meant to write “Path (number) anyone welcome” if you want to get the worst players.

As long as your lag isn’t being stupid making it impossible to dodge alphard pulls or lupicus swipes you should have a blast running ahead and soloing basically every fight.

daros.3407:

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

daros.3407:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

daros.3407:

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Prefect.3681:

Huh? We just have to do DPS now so why would we need these?

Either bad sarcasm or I don’t get it, is it even possible to just dps something? Like, anywhere?

Everywhere. In all dungeons and fractals only thing you need is to stack in corner and DPS as much as you can. Nothing else is needed.

Misconception and bad understanding of what stacking is, why it is used and why groups rather run Berserker than tank specs. Do you even run dungeons and fractals outside of AC and Lv20/38?

I even run 40+ fractals dont try to offend someone if dont know anything about him. Stacking has more reasons but main thing in dungeons is always as hight DPS as possible. That is how people do dungeons today.
And if you think otherwise then you are sadly naive or don’t do more den ,,AC and Lv20/38"

You don’t use reflects or boons? Just sit in a corner and mash 1-5?

My party probably sucks at DPS’ing then, we have to use reflects/debuffs/cc and boons. Please learn me daros senpai

What boons do you use? Half of them are to support DPS.

And in trinity games, you have healers to support DPS. You have tanks to support DPS.

Why should GW2 be any different?

Create mobs with actual class abilities/statistics/health, and make them cooperate with combo field and support abilities…. AND NOT SKIPPABLE PLEASE!!! XD

Risen sentinels use rings of warding and drop banners of strength
Risen putrifiers pull you in
Risen hunters buff their allies with stability, might and throw a bouncing axe and spawn eagles
Risen elementalists apply protection to themselves
Risen mages use knockdown and damaging fields as area denial
Risen illusionists apply retaliation, aegis and massive area denial with chaos storm
Risen devastators deal high damage and CC

These are unskippable at a number of points in Arah.

Do you know who enjoys fighting these? Not your average player.

Mesmers are literally trash tier for dungeons — avoid.

http://i.imgur.com/dfz0mdR.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/PvYw3hL.jpg

This is why you have people arguing on the forum about stacking being bad.

They don’t understand why people stack.

You can trust Nike too, even if he can’t post here anymore (rip Nike).

Nike Porphyrogenita/Nikephoros just to clarify. The other Nike in the forum has no idea what he’s talking about and suggested Fractals having a crafting panel – so don’t get the two mixed up.

Problem : increasing the rate of attacks and lowering their damage results in active defense such as block blind and dodge being significantly less useful, resulting in a far less engaging and active game.

Increasing the rate of attacks results in dredge which nobody likes.

People need to be careful what they wish for.

Asmodeus.5782:

Monsters should hit weaker and more often, that’s one simple and useful adjustment. You won’t be able to dodge it all – tough/vit/healing suddenly become needed in the team.

Dredge.

And guess what?

They’re almost universally hated by people in this game.

Guess what else?

You CC and drop weakness on them but still run full glass cannon so that you can take hits but burst quickly enough through it.

People got seriously spoiled on what is difficult. The fact that you can actually solo those dungeons is a bulletproof sign that they are too easy.

Not really. You have people soloing dungeons in WoW and Tera too.

Again, duo Arah with me at reset if it’s “too easy”. But of course, you won’t – because it’s not easy.

And spending 7 hours practicing?

How about getting 40 (skilled) people together and practice for several weeks 4 to 5 nights a week to get a single boss down. Does that sound hard? That is where I am coming from. I learnt my lesson on wiping long ago. Sorry that I am not impressed by the dungeons in GW2…

And from my experience, once they get the mechanics down, the reason people fail these raid bosses is because like one guy slips up and bones the entire fight because they can’t maintain their level of consistency long enough. Or if we take the wurm or teq from GW2, you had people messing up a part of it which made us lose enough time that we failed – condis not killing husks fast enough, not enough stability while doing burst phases, not enough might stacking during bursts (blasting dark and light fields is no bueno) or getting knocked down after the wurm heads turned in to normal enemies by its charging attack which reduced peoples’ DPS uptime.

At that point it’s not hard, it’s just “for the love of god can we just be consistent enough to get this part right” and it’s just practicing the same strategy over and over again hoping things don’t mess up since everybody already knows what to do.

I honestly find you chickening out of my offer kind of laughable. It’s like you know it’s challenging but you want to save face.

The problem is that people play easy content and then complain that the game is easy.

Play hard content and you’ll be able to challenge yourself.

Play hard content solo and then you can challenge yourself even more.

Make a non-specific LFG for Arah (just a path name … or … anyone welcome, etc.) and just … watch what happens.

Countless groups can’t do the skip from Belka to abomination. Countless times they get knocked back at the abomination and pull drakes. Or they don’t dodge the attacks. Countless times they fight Lupicus with stupid utilities, weapons and just a complete lack of knowledge and eat dirt. Countless times I’ve stacked for Alphard, I’m the only one that dodges, they get pulled in, ragdolled by the big ‘ol bomb and sit there in defeated while I solo from basically 90% HP onwards. I always kill Hunter/crusher where they spawn. Pugs die all the time. They try to afk range Magecrusher. I purposely melee him so that he throws gunk over and over again until they either adapt or eat the floor. They can’t do the skip to ooze. They can’t do the skip to entities. They pull elites or champions in the room prior to fighting Lupicus. They can’t do Simin.

The fact of the matter is – the game has been out two years. Strategies have been found for almost everything- and with this new patch, downscaling has made berserker gear insane for lower level dungeons. Lower level dungeons are a joke. People complain that the game is too easy, and most of it is. But they refuse to challenge themselves.

It’s like spending your days champion farming and then complaining that the game is just running to bosses and autoattacking. Well yeah, if that’s all you do – that’s all you’re going to experience. If you actually make an effort to do the challenging content the game has to offer – you’ll get a different experience. We need new dungeons. But claiming “GW2 dungeons are no challenge”, that Kai has done here is a lie. If it wasn’t a lie, I wouldn’t have over fifty screenshots of people expressing their gratitude.

Play challenging content, and then when that gets too easy, play it low man or solo. You’re not going to think it’s so easy when you’re raging at your screen after spending ~7 hours trying to practice Lupicus for your first solo. I find Arah easy, but I’m not going to pretend it isn’t challenging – the sheer fail rate of players keeps me in check with the average player’s perception of the dungeon – it is challenging.

Look, I have been playing MMOs for over 15 years. I have been successfully raiding vanilla WoW AQ40 and Naxx40 (as you might know these dungeons and their difficulty level).

And I tell you with a straight look on my face: GW2 dungeons are no challenge. They are dumb. Their design is dumb. The bosses are dumb. The rewards are dumb.
So my final statement on this topic is: My guides are for open world and casual PvE. If they are not for you, feel free to ignore them.

Thank you, have a nice day.

I don’t really see how 15 years of MMO experience is relevant to the topic at hand.

Message me around reset and we can duo Arah. Then I can demonstrate to you that it’s not faceroll at all.

Or you can be like those randoms in Divinity’s Reach, deflect from what I’m trying to say and worm your way out of it because you’re too scared that you’ll eat dirt for 95% of the dungeon like what happens when I pug it and solo basically every single boss for the group. And just so you know I’m not smack talking:

http://i.imgur.com/GGdMwAC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/H44RZPI.jpg

While I don’t personally have any problem with the stack-n-smack dungeon meta, I do see the fact that this strategy is even possible as a massive failure in dungeon design. Just because this game has massive amounts of active defense doesn’t mean that stacking in one spot should be possible or the optimal strategy. This is a result of substandard boss design.

And it shouldn’t be possible because you said so? There’s nothing substandard about it, it’s people complaining for the sake of complaining.

Most bosses in this game have less than 3 attacks/mechanics. Usually they’ll have some sort of boring autoattack, some sort of aoe type thing, and maybe one additional booster. Lupicus is really the one single outlier in the entire game. He has 10 unique attacks (assuming I’m adding properly). However, Lupicus fights are quite vulnerable to the reflect mechanic, tending to trivialize most of his mechanics as long as the party is on point with the reflects for a fast kill.

Reflects only trivialise it when the party knows what they’re doing. As you may or may not have noticed, the projectiles are semi-targeted and he aims a number at teach player and ally present, so if you are all at range and dump a feedback on him, you’ll get like no reflects. But that’s consistent with the rest of the game – a competent party trivialises content because they’re that proficient at it they can blaze through it … this is perfectly reasonable.

Additionally, defiance itself makes boss fights bad. Defiance means that CC is not a consideration. This removes an entire aspect of support in this game that doesn’t normally conflict with dps like healing does. However, since cc is completely useless against bosses, this makes the fights that much more 1-dimensional. You saw this yourself with the few days of Power Block being a mechanic that could actually affect PvE through the use of CC.

The whole point of Defiant is to stop bearbows from smashing point blank shot off of cooldown. Defiant is perfectly fine, it requires a co-ordinated group to peel off stacks and then CC at the right time so that the party can maintain their damage rotations uninterrupted.

Ultimately, the challenge that you guys find in GW2 dungeons is running them incredibly rapidly. You do this because there is no challenge in them otherwise, going full glass builds and attempting to beat it as fast as is possible is the only challenge you can dig out of these dungeons, and that’s sad. Sad because this is a great game, and it deserves more interesting content.

Yes, the game does deserve more interesting content – but if you honestly think there should be challenge with instances we’ve been able to learn for two entire years then I don’t know what to say.

GW2 dungeons are one of the biggest disappointments since release. This is probably related to the lack of trinity

nope

and any mechanic that makes fights less random and interesting.

rng =/= interesting

How desperate must one be to set own challenges like speed runs, because there is nothing new and exciting to do.

personal satisfaction is “desperate”?

They are overly simple, boring and the same old same melee stacking on every boss.

Feel free to do this yourself.

In fact, feel free to get four other people to “melee stack” with you.

You know, a couple days ago there were some people in Divinity’s Reach map chat saying that PvE is just faceroll stack and smack. I repeatedly asked them if they could duo Arah with me and they just made excuses saying that they weren’t interested or that it would take too long (spoiler – it would not take too long).

You sound like one of those people. You sound like one of those people who just does easy AC and COF, doesn’t bother touching any of the challenging content (Arah, FOTM 40+) and then claims the game is too easy, because if you hadn’t noticed, Fractals aren’t even close to stack and smack in most cases, and Arah pugs have a pretty high failure rate if there’s no experienced player to help them through.

My connection stops being atrocious around reset. Message me on Serah Mahariel and we can do Arah. Even better, we can “stack and press 1” for the bosses and wipe over and over again until you get the message that there’s more to the game than just stacking in corners.

You say it practically takes no skill but then I can quite safely say that if you told the average player in this game to run it they would either interrupt at the wrong time, spam it for every single attack or just forget to use it.

~ Takes months to fix phantasmal berserker
~ Fails to fix phantasmal warden on two separate occasions
~ Makes no attempt to fix a number of buggy traits
~ Introduces skill-based grandmaster which is strong but not overpowered – immediately fixes because a mesmer used it against Grouch

And the final result:

Mesmers got boned even harder in the patch and are basically below necro tier in terms of dungeon viability.

I personally run sword/focus+greatsword in PvE, simply because I enjoy the ranged capabilities, and going full melee isn’t as effective with a PUG group in dungeons.

Haven’t bothered to upload my Alphard and Lupicus solos yet – but as you can see, I don’t need to range even if I’m solo – and if you pug, always assume you need to be self sufficient.

I love everything about staff mes. I can’t wait for the day they make condi viable in PvE so I can finally roll staff/GS and not bring down a party. Until then, staff/sword-sword or sword-focus/sword-sword all the way. My poor sunrise… so under utilized in PvE.

Don’t worry, I bought a cheap greatsword, transmuted my sunrise over it and use it as a nice afk weapon while in divinity’s reach.

Good job ANet, you removed basically one of the few skill-based traits in the game, made mesmer boring (and terrible) in PvE again and killed some diversity by fixing this skill rather than actually taking some of the posts on the forum on-board and just attempted a rebalance.

Thanks for still not fixing phantasmal warden though.

Nage.1520:

MrDmajor.7084:

How come nobody can specifically describe what builds benefit from a nerf to Zerker build? They always speak of them vaguely, then when you take them to task they get defensive and deflect.

What builds benefit from a nerf to Zerker? How are they “more viable” now when the game play mechanics haven’t changed one iota?

In order for MMOs to be playable for some people, they need variety. Saying zerker and only zerker hurts the game.

This “nerf to zerker” isn’t the final step of the changes Anet will be making to the game. They’ve said that this is only the first step but it’s a require step to make the other changes.

As it stands now the game suffers from a lack of build diversity. Certain measures are being introduced to mitigate that, but they’re being introduced slowly because MMO players aren’t universally fond of change.

This is a backbone change that allows them to make other changes.

But I can’t imagine anyone would believe that having one single viable build in PvE is good for the game.

Right now, post-patch:

Warrior builds:

30/25/0/0/15 (solo)
20/30/0/20/0 (only warrior in the group)
30/30/0/10/0 (first warrior is using the second build so you can use this one)

Mesmer builds:

30/30/0/0/10
30/25/0/0/15
10/20/0/25/15
30/10/0/20/10

Guardian Builds:

20/25/0/0/25
15/25/0/20/10
15/15/0/20/20
10/25/0/5/25 + 5

Thief Builds:

30/30/0/0/10
25/30/0/0/15
25/30/0/15/0

I don’t play other classes to know theirs – but we have eles in guild who switch between builds depending on what the dungeon demands.

What people need to understand is that there is no such thing as a “zerker build”. You stick on berserker gear, sure. But the traits for each meta build are designed to support a group as much as possible with relevant boons and abilities while stacking as many damage modifiers as possible. If you look at guardians for example (barely touched by ferocity), their meta builds don’t dip in to the critical damage trait line at all. It takes support traits in virtues and then damage modifiers in radiance and zeal. Does “a build that supports as well as possible while utilising as many damage modifiers as possible without compromising the level of support the class can offer” make it a “zerker build”? Do other builds not support their team or something? Or do they just do it in trivial ways? Those aren’t called non-zerker builds, those are called weak or suboptimal builds.

Power block I see as a self-balancing skill – sure, you can spam it in PvE and you will actually score interrupts through defiant – but if you’re just interrupting everything you see a boss casting, you’re not really using it properly. As an example – some rT guys experimenting with it interrupted Lupicus’ grub attack and then he kicked immediately afterwards. Double kicks normally are so rare (since he kicked prior to the grub summon) it can throw people off balance – so spamming the skill kind of punishes the person doing it right there. At the same time however – if you interrupt his AOE life drain skill you basically no longer require the whole party to run out until he stops draining. If somebody is too far away and he goes to spawn a bubble – you can interrupt this too. The key thing to note is that in the 30/30 you will still only have three charges on the daze mantra – so it’s not like you can just stunlock bosses.

Some bosses have very fast tells too – so it’s not always possible to interrupt. My connection ranges from like 150ms to stupid numbers like 600ms, so the interrupt playstyle while extremely fun (judging from guildies’ reactions to it and playing in the same group as them, it’s pretty crazy) and able to make you a complete god at pug carrying is still something that requires a very solid connection – and again, in addition to the self-balancing of limited number of interrupts in the class, it’s skill capped too – you need to know what tells to look out for and to have the reflexes to cast an interrupt in time (if you do it too late the boss does an attack anyway).

I honestly feel the trait is perfectly fine the way it is – in addition to the things I’ve mentioned above it also means not using empowering mantras, so simply using power block right there is a trade-off between higher damage and a smoother fight. It emphasises the control (and the supportive nature of control) aspect of this game’s “trinity”, and from what I’ve seen on the forums seems to allow ex-GW1 mesmers to have a playstyle a bit more like how the mesmer used to be in GW1 – that being a very reflex-based, controlling, skill denial-centric playstyle. Defiant I honestly feel is fine in this game (it prevents bad players from just spamming CC skills, we’ve all been in events or groups with that bearbow ranger point blank shotting the boss for no reason whatsoever because the defiant just happened to drop off at the wrong time) – but having fringe skills – and making those skills either long cooldown (basilisk venom) or limited uses (power block) to break this rule I honestly think is fine. It doesn’t even cost anything to re-gear to “control gear” (so as opposed to how the warrior meta shifted where if you’re using 30/25 still you now need to use strength runes which are 10g/ea, you need to do no such re-gearing with the mesmer trait) and it fulfills the goal Josh Foreman wanted to do with the new open world bosses – to improve the skill level of the average player – since it’s a trait you can’t just dump on and suddenly be strong, it takes skill to be able to use it properly.

So …

10/10 for the trait – keep it as is.

You want scholar runes on mesmer. Berserker’s fine for groups, you want assassin’s for solo or for pugs if you think they’re not capable of giving the appropriate crit chance buffs (disc banner, fury, spotter).

Strength runes are a waste of time on mes, plus they’re stuuuuuuuuuuuupidely overpriced and scholar is a lot cheaper.

Solo warrior on the other hand …. I have a 5:26 Lupicus solo where I basically stuck at 20+ might basically the entire fight because of that ungodly might duration. Strength runes is just for classes who are responsible for stacking might – so eles – and if a warrior is using longbow fire field, you’ll get 29s might blasts in to it if they’re using strength runes. Engis are pretty legit might stackers too, so strength is good for them. I’m guessing it has a lot of WvW application too because the might duration is absolutely insane.

But for mesmer … I’d honestly say if you wanted a set you never had to change, assassin’s + scholar would be fine. It means in groups you could just stack bloodlust to make up for the power loss if the group was good at giving you buffs since in berserker + scholar you’d just stack perception so you basically get the same results – plus the assassin’s you can use in pugs just fine.

Also what food will you use after patch? power/ferocity, precison/ferocity or power/precision?

Orrian truffle (100 power/70 prec), the 100 precision butternut, or (if you can afford it) – seaweed salad. Seaweed salad is busted.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

People actually watch GW2 PvE streams?

I’d much rather watch something like League of Legends on Twitch, which is miles more entertaining.

Some people like watching dungeon guilds do their daily dungeon train, yes – because it allows them to see what high level tactics there are for instances plus hearing the voice comms normally means hearing funny banter.

Since you brought up livestreams, there was a particularly funny one from a well-known DnT member on thief with multiple wipes at Lupi.

Because all guild runs are meant to be flawless I suppose. Everyone is just robots who can’t make any sort of mistake. The fact of the matter is – we’re able to stream our casual runs because the skill level of our average player is high enough that Nike can get a group together of basically anyone in the guild, do a tour and it goes pretty smooth – I however don’t see any DD streams anywhere which suggests either a lack of interest in doing so (which is strange since I can imagine you want your guild to get some interest by the community) or that you’re not comfortable enough with your membership to be able to perform tours without there being a bunch of (gtfo censor) awkward wipes.

The new grandmaster domination trait is busted as hell, incredibly fun to use and very reliant on twitch reflexes for PvE.

We were able to score actual interrupts on Lupicus and it was hilarious yet weird to play in since it meant breaking our traditional patterns. Apparently works on the imbued shaman, berserker abomination and subject alpha too, so having a mesmer to interrupt dangerous skills so that other players can perform their skill rotations seems pretty solid. Plus their traditional reflect utility is good for fractals.

We’re thinking 30/30/0/0/10, 30/10/0/20/10 or maybe 15/20/0/25/10 might be pretty legit builds, more so the 30/30.

So… yeah. Mesmer might still honestly have a place in the dungeon meta despite getting its reflect damage hit slightly.

Based on how long it took in gw1, that’s going to be in four years.