Guild Wars 2

I started running level 10 fractals when I was personal level 2~10 so that I could get used to agony mechanics, so it’s good practice.

However if you want the fastest way to level up your personal level, you should do odd numbers because even numbers have a final Jade Maw round. So the fastest is to just do 1-3-3-5-5-7-7-9-9-11 to get to personal level 10, and reroll each so that you start with swamp or underwater fractal first. That way you’re guaranteed at least one fast/easy fractal.

If you do odd numbers there’s no need to ‘quit on 3rd one’ since you’ll be booted back to the starting lobby once the 3-fractal cycle is over.

EDIT: I wouldn’t recommend buying the rings. I got 4 for free and I’m only personal level 23.

EDIT #2: To answer question #1, the only thing you can get from fractals that you can’t get anywhere else is the back. You need 1350 relics to get the exotic version, and then you need 250 globs of ecto, 24 skill points, 500 more relics for the gift of ascension and I think one of those mist essence things that randomly drop from monsters for the ascended.

The rings you can get from those daily laurels, but you should be able to get at least 2 rings for free from daily fractal chest if you’re planning on farming 1850 relics unless you’re really, really unlucky.

Eh, most people just plant the bombs and run. It’s not the best tactic to plant and die. The warrior can use skills like endure pain and fear me to get out quick, the guardian probably retreat, stand your ground, save yourselves, mesmers can just teleport out and elementalist can tune to air for speed boost.

It’ll take 2 or 3 runs still depending on how many bombs you get. But there’s no need to defend anything. Just run.

I wouldn’t mind some of the old GW1 armour coming back too. One set for each armour class just seems so limited.

I don’t mean to sound condescending but I do hope you know that the ‘auto’ part of ‘autoattack’ means you only have to press 1 once and it’ll, y’know, keep on attacking until whatever you’re attacking is dead.

I wouldn’t go with the all stats one, since you just get a small boost to each stat rather than a targeted boost to the stats you need.

I don’t understand why you are using a mace but as Thz said, if you’re using a mace then why don’t you use gear that comes with healing power?

For my Guardian I use GS, Hammer or Staff depending on what part of which fractal, and secondary always Scepter/Focus. I’m struggling to think of an instance where I’d use a Mace over any of those three. I’m almost fully wearing P/V/T and it’s working well for me.

Compared to the other dungeons the amount of EXP you get for FotM is really low anyway. I’d advise you to do the explorable modes of traditional dungeons like AC and CM to get to 75 and then FotM from 75 onwards.

Path 1
If your party does not have the DPS to have 4 people running from burrow to burrow and 1 to protect Hodgins, split the room in half and have 2 people on each side, and 1 protecting Hodgins. Make sure that both sides have a roughly equal amount of DPS. You will need to experiment to figure out the best DPS balance and Hodgins will definitely die at least once or twice while you figure out how to even out the DPS on both sides of the room. This works beautifully once you do so.

The ranged weapons not working on burrows has been an issue since Day 1. Time and time again we’ve been told it’d be fixed, but yeah. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I don’t know about the Fiery GS glitch – could you explain it further? Is it that burrow in the far bottom right corner? Because if you’re standing too close to the wall, sometimes that glitches and teleports you through the wall, and then you have to WP to run back.

Path 2
When that happens, pulling/kiting actually does work. Necromancers have Spectral Grasp and Thieves have Scorpion Wire which makes this easier, but you can still pull normally. What you do is you aggro a targetted one (which will aggro them all) and then your whole party makes their way backwards, back towards the entrance where the Oozes spawn. Eventually some of the Ascalonian ghosts will lose aggro and you’ll only have to deal with 2 or 3 of them.

If you do not have the coordination to move together in a group they will all stay aggroed, so make sure that everyone is listening and only focusing on the one targetted ghost.

They don’t let low levels in so that they can give you level 80 rares and let you make a truckton of money while the remaining 4 party members have to work harder in order to make up for your own shortcomings. You are not level 80 so your loot is not level 80 – what is so hard to understand about that?

This kind of selfish attitude is why people become increasingly tempted to be ‘elitist’ in wanting only level 80s in full exotics to run dungeons with them.

While it might be true that you can enter fractals at any level, the fact that the equipment you can exchange your tokens for has a required level of 80 should really tell you something about the level requirement of FotM.

Hi guys,

I’m getting tired of gw2lfg.com so I’m looking for a guild that regularly does dungeons and FotM. I have zero interest in WvW/PvP. I also don’t wish to fork out 1800 gems for a transfer so I’m looking for something in SoS.

I also have a job and do other things so I don’t spend much time in the game. I’m also not looking for one of those meat markets with 500 people who don’t know each other and are just forced to represent 100% of the time because the leader said so.

I know this sounds kind of picky but I’m hoping there’s a guild for me out there =)

It shouldn’t be problem in DEs. But in FotM for example I’ve been in parties that have kicked Rangers and Mesmers out of the Jade Maw before because the pet or the clones were ‘wasting time drawing skull icon aggro from Maw’.

That’s probably to do with the party design problem where you only need 2 people to kick out someone else.

You should only be concerned with maxing out your AR if you plan on running higher level fractals. If you’re like me and don’t mind sticking at around FotM 20~26 just for the chance to get skins then yeah, don’t worry about it mate. You can get enough AR from the 2 rings.

Is it worth 5 laurels for +5 of a certain stat, though – well. I don’t think so, but that’s up to you to decide.

I haven’t run TA in a while but we usually just kill the spiders in the front half of the room and then AOE as much as we like. But if you CBF and/or you know you’re just going to wipe if you aggro the spiders, then yeah, stick with ranged.

Hello Azrael and welcome to GW2 =)

Yes, there is a timer on nodes and most of them are not grouped together, so you’re expected to run around the map to find them. I think that was part of the design, so that you actually get out and explore Queensdale rather than just camp out at the Runite Ore spawn spot and hope you don’t get killed on your run back.

Some things that can be grouped together are the ‘plants’. For example just south of the Caudecus’ Manor dungeon (it’ll be that door icon in your full world map), there’s an enclosed space with some bulls and I think it’s lettuce that spawns in that little plantation.

Bandithaunt caverns is a great place to get jute, but you get a lot more materials from salvaging. Salvaging is basically taking apart a piece of armour or weapon you don’t need and getting raw crafting materials from it. You need to buy a Crude or Basic Salvage Kit from a merchant and use it on your unwanted loot.

I would recommend salvaging all the armours and weapons you can’t use from Queensdale as the materials you can get from them are far more valuable than selling these armours and weapons to a vendor. Once you get beyond Queensdale you may have to think twice before salvaging certain items, but while you’re in Queensdale, just salvage everything you don’t need.

@Croatoan you should have told them that you have never run AC before then and said you needed guidance. You got on your glass cannon warrior and said you have it specced for CoF, not AC. Everyone would assume you know the AC mechanics since you haven’t specced for it. Why then would anyone explain to you how AC works if you clearly know how to run AC?

Also, you’ve just not been in the right groups. I’ve acted as a tour guide for over 100 parties for AC, CM, TA, CoF and FotM. Just because you’ve always ended up in noncommunicative PuGs doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

But low levels wouldn’t need level 80 gear, so I don’t see how this complaint is valid. If you want level 80 gear you should do it on your level 80 character.

I started FotMing at level 50 or 60 something, did FotM 1 once and then jumped straight to FotM 10 from personal level 2~11. I did find myself being marginally more useful at level 80 but the main thing is that you can only get agony resistance on level 80 equipment, so the Maw kind of sucks.

I would say that level 27 is way too low though, and most groups wouldn’t be willing to carry you through.

I levelled my first character from 5x to 80 and my second from 35 to 80 almost exclusively through explorable modes of AC, CM and TA. I intend to do the same once I get my third character to 35. Don’t listen to these elitist ‘level 80 full exotics over 9,000 achievement points required’ whiners. The forum posters are not representative of the GW2 community. Most of them who come here with horror stories probably don’t know how to dodge.

If you’re in an NA server and are around level 45, I’m happy to take you on an AC or CM run if we’re ever online at the same time. Give dungeons a go with a more open-minded party and if you decide you don’t like it – at least you’ve tried it and you know what it takes to see a run through.

Just because the new AC is harder than before, that doesn’t mean it needs to be nerfed. It just means that people need to learn the new mechanics before coming back to the forums whining that the new AC is too easy once you’ve gotten past the learning curve.

The key to any dungeon is communication. You don’t even need voicechat. You just need to use your keyboard. In that regard, @Croatoan, if no one is taking the lead then you should step up and tell people what to do. People don’t sign up to a PuG to ‘be followers’. Most people sign up for the tokens. If you fail because you just want to follow around mindlessly and waste a few silvers repairing your armour, you don’t really have a right to come to the forums to QQ about the new AC. You’ll find that most people will agree that the new AC is harder than before, but almost all of my PuGs get through it just fine. A full party of level 80s who’ve done the new AC before got through it much faster than some non-80s and first-timers, but it wasn’t impossible.

penatbater.4710:

I’m guessing guard’s shield bubble thingy doesn’t work on the rocks here?

I tried Shield of the Avenger and it doesn’t work, but I’m not sure about Sanctuary.

You’ve made some really good points and I also agree. That dredge bar requirement when you’re fighting Rabsovich is just a ridiculously unnecessarily long kiting exercise. Mossman also can be difficult for people new to Fractals because of the annoying stealth and massive damage he does in melee range. The knockback harpy thing can get really annoying too, and it’s honestly just a waste of time. People just res-rush from the bottom (and I thought the whole point of removing WPs was not res-rushing) over and over again until they’re dead.

Also would really like to see some armour repair NPC in there, maybe spawning next to the chest. Either that or get rid of repair cannisters from the gem store to make it fair on everyone. After all, it was advertised to us that stuff sold in the gem store was supposed to be mostly cosmetic, and not put some players at a much greater advantage than others.

The thing I don’t like about some of the mechanics is that some of them can be a total nightmare if your party composition does not include certain classes. I play a Guardian and I know I’m a godsend to my party with wall of reflect, shield of the avenger and sanctuary for harpies and the legendary imbued Shaman, and stand your ground and hallowed ground make the Svanir elemental source boss fight so much faster. I made my Guardian specifically to do dungeons because he’s much more supportive than my actual main, but I can’t imagine what those harpies in those jump puzzle parts would be like for a party with no guardians.

The only things I’ve been complaining about AC are the bugs, like in path 3; Grast not summoning bubbles or summoning bubbles after the rocks have fallen. I’ve never spoken on behalf of a new player or anything.

Having said that, you should also understand that while you are a new player, you are not necessarily representative of all new players. I’m a regular ACer and FotMer, and I purposely stress in gw2lfg.com that all first timers and people still getting their bearings around these dungeons are welcome in my party. I want to guide people through dungeons so that everyone gets to give it a go, not just the elitists. As such I usually get at least two first-timers because of my open attitude.

The thing is, you and the parties that didn’t ragequit were willing to keep trying even after numerous wipes. You were willing to step back after a couple of failed tries and go “Okay, this strategy isn’t working guys – should we try something else?” and your party was very adaptable. And this is a sign of a really great party even if it was a PuG.

The new players I run with are not like you. They’re so used to facerolling in their PvE, running around killing everything so easily. They’re not used to dying. They’re not used to seeing repair bills that actually cost in silvers, not coppers. They’re used to doing whatever they like in PvE because it’s not as challenging of an environment, so they run on ahead and get themselves killed even though the other party members said to wait. They’re used to doing things on their own in PvE so they don’t bother resurrecting people until they’re the only one standing, and then they come to the forums and go “I’m a new level 35 but my whole party died and I survived – what’s with all this elitist attitudes when I’m clearly better?”

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s awesome that you had such a great dungeon experience and I hope that there are others who are equally keen to give dungeons a go. But do understand that just because you are one new player who has enjoyed doing what you do doesn’t mean that every single new player will find dungeons just as fun.

Uhm. Have you even seen what the exotic armour skins look like? Who the hell would want to wear that?

Well we eventually beat Colossus Rumblus by pulling him into the tunnel where no rocks fall, but I find it really hard to believe that all these ‘safe’ spots were intended.

Yes you will lose any infusion you currently have, just like the rings and backpieces you can currently infuse.

I only ran this new revamped path 3 once. Grast always popped his bubble too late, after the rocks had fallen, and the boss could not be interrupted. Somewhat tangentially-related, much more recently ran path 2 and Detha just stood there in the centre of the final Ghost Eater chamber. Didn’t go to fix traps.

Do the developers even test the dungeons out after they decide to revamp them or are we supposed to be the disgruntled guinea pigs wasting hours upon hours just to uncover a whole series of glitches to report and end up with no reward or reimbursement for our time?

You don’t really have to buy the rings. I got 2 uninfused and 1 infused ones from daily chests and I’m only at FotM personal level 22. But there’s nothing else to use the pristine relics on so it’s up to you.

Between Warrior and Guardian it really depends on what you enjoy. The above posts have said Guardian and I also use my Guardian for Fractals. The consecrations and shouts in particular are incredibly useful, and of course situational protective bubbles like shield of the avenger and sanctuary.

However having a Warrior in the party just makes boss battles so much faster. The scepter is ridiculously underwhelming compared to the Warrior’s longbow/rifle. They can also give party members might and be equally effective at DPS, whereas a Guardian has to stack might using a staff, and the staff isn’t exactly your highest DPS output weapon. And DPS isn’t everything but a boss that dies faster is a party less likely to wipe.

In the end it’s up to you, but I’ve been in a party with 4 Warriors and myself the lone Guardian. My mate’s been in a five Warrior party. But I’ve never been in a party with 4 Guardians and 1 Warrior, so. While I’d recommend Guardian, at the end of the day both have their benefits and it’s up to you.

Funny that you didn’t mention elementalists. I don’t have one personally but they can be very useful and supportive in dungeons too.

It’s hard to pick between guardian and mesmer but I would recommend guardian. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing you can just slot in 3 shouts, press whatever, faceroll and you’ll probably get by just fine. You can’t do the same with the mesmer. Obviously ‘press whatever’ isn’t the ideal playstyle but what I mean is you don’t really have to master the class to still be very useful to your teammates.

I pretty much have enough time to get on GW2 everyday to do just the daily and one dungeon (usually FotM), so I enjoy dungeoning too, and yeah. I actually think 2 mesmers in a party isn’t a big deal. Double the time warp and whatnot. But when I ran FotM with 3 guardians and we got the Shaman fractal, practically no one died because wall of reflect/shield of the avenger was up all the time. So I guess people are more willing to keep 2+ guardians in a party compared to 2+ mesmers.

I am currently going out of my way to do dailies/monthlies in order to get Ascended gear to get enough AR to run higher level FotM. The difference between exotic and ascended tiers for accessories, amulets, rings and backpieces is kind of negligible, but I need that slot for +5 AR.

It would be nice to see other ways of getting laurels seeing as the game is getting progressively less casual-friendly, and yes, weekend-only players should be rewarded as much as people who can spare a couple hours a day to play GW2, but this current laurel earning system doesn’t allow for that.

Having said that, I have enough free time to devote to doing dailies almost every day so I can’t complain personally.

Grey Warden.2983:

You really don’t have to make anything. All you need is to refine Mithril ore into ingots and you are done. It would also work with other ore or planks ect..
So there isn’t a need to use mats for something you don’t need or can’t sell.

This is incorrect. The original poster is talking about the monthly achievement, which requires you to craft 40 items at Masterwork (green) level or higher.

I’ve made fairly good progress with jewels as well but I’ve found it cheap to buy bronze plated inscriptions (they’re about 1s20~40 each) and combine with a large green haft and a bronze hammer head. Around 48s for the inscriptions, 45s60c for the bronze hammer heads and 21s60c for the hafts. That’s about 1g15s20c for everything, and then you can sell back your 40 green hammers at 72c each to recuperate some of your costs (28s80c). So in total you’ll spend 86s40c.

If you have a higher level weaponsmithing, then mithril plated dowels are faster. Didn’t check TP for prices but most of us should have stacks of these ores and woods lying around anyway.

Of course, what’s been more cost effective for me was to buy embellished brilliant chrysocola whatevers (the level 375 karma recipe one for jeweller that requires one glob of ecto to make) from the TP, make earrings and salvage. Please don’t craft this yourself as it requires one ecto and 3 jewels but you can buy them straight off the TP for under 15s (ectos alone cost more than 30s each). You can actually break even with this technique if you get enough ectos from salvaging.

But I assume more people have level 50 weaponsmithing than 375 jewellery crafting.

I used to enjoy taking level 35~40 players new to dungeons through AC path 2 to teach them the basic mechanics of a dungeon. I was never against having so-called ‘sub-80s’ in my party and I don’t harbour all this ‘anti-carrying’ sentiment that most ‘80s heavy armor onli’ parties do.

Unfortunately by increasing the difficulty of the very first dungeon that new players are exposed to by so much, I do feel less inclined to take new people on board and show them the ropes.

If you’d like to make AC a level 80 only dungeon, you should change the level requirement. As it is, I’d love to know if the developers did test out fighting the Spider Queen with 5 level 35s (this dungeon is meant to be doable with 5 level 35s, or so the recommended level suggests) in whites, blues and greens, or if Robert meant they’d tested it with mixed levels as in one level 35 in rares and four level 80s in exotics – all of whom already know the boss mechanics off the bat and don’t have to type to each other to explain red circles and cones.

It’s RNG, so no one can really give you something specific. I’ve done 11 or 12 FotM 10+ runs for dailies now. I’ve gotten 3 rings so far.

I would say don’t bother to buy the rings with pristine relics as you’ll eventually get them for free, but if you’re unlucky then you might just have to.

What Oglaf said. They target the people with higher toughness so if you have the highest toughness by far in your group, you become the computer-designated tank.

I would recommend CM or TA. Arah takes up far too much time compared to those two, and I would only recommend HotW if your team has rare/exotic underwater weapons. Chances are they don’t, and you’re in for a long staring contest with the boss doing 200 damage per hit.

Personally I got the TA set for my necromancer (though I ended up transmuting everything) because the superior runes already have condition damage in them. Seemed kind of pointless to get the other sets and then have to run TA enough times to get 720 tokens for the runes. You could always buy other runes like rune of the necromancer but if you do TA, you kill two birds with one stone.

TA is fairly enjoyable as long as you’re with a team that knows what they’re doing. U/U is the fastest path, followed by F/F, then F/U. If you’re under time constraints, just do U/U once a day.

If you want to do CM, I find the Butler path is the fastest unless you use the exploits in the Asura path. The Seraph path can get very annoying very quickly if your team doesn’t know what to do at the bomb the gate stage and ends up wiping over and over again.

Relogging should fix it if nothing else works, but it’s obviously not an option if you started the instance. It’s possible that the particular instance was bugged out, but it sounds to me like he was just too lazy to run back.

I have had it bug out on me before multiple times at Caudecus’ Manor. I was sure that everyone had gotten out of combat but I wasn’t able to WP. What works for me every time is if they get in combat and then out again. But for CM it’s not so easy to just get in combat and then run away when you have half a dozen riflemen shooting you.

I have to say that while I don’t enjoy this fractal, I get so many of those heavy miner’s bags and those mats are fantastic.

I run Fractals with my Guardian so the swamp is not a problem for me. I usually take the furthest one since no one else wants to. I just use 3 shouts (save yourselves, retreat and the stability one? stand your ground or whatever?) as soon as the countdown starts and then go.

However if I run Fractals on my Necro I feel much more limited. I only have Locust Signet for passive 25% speed and Spectral Walk for 33% speed. Maybe I can do the trap one but I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing the others. As soon as I run into two knockdown traps without stability, it’s over (lich form can’t be used with spectral walk).

So some classes just have more useful skills for doing the furthest one (mesmers have it pretty easy I have to say). Nevertheless, the two nearer ones shouldn’t be a problem. Once you figure out how to jump over the spontaneously appearing walls you should be fine.

My gripe with this fractal is with Mossman. I’ve run in one PuG with low DPS and we just kept wiping. Never had a problem in average~high DPS PuGs. I think this fractal should be able to accommodate any type of party composition.

Dynamic Events level you up fairly quickly, especially if you find a chain of them. Once I hit level 50 something on my first character I levelled to 80 doing dungeons. I then levelled my second character from 35 to 80 doing dungeons. Completing a dungeon run gives you 70% of your current experience bar. I highly recommend it for fast levelling, but as a result my world completion is under 40%. It doesn’t bother me though, since I don’t really enjoy map exploration and find it really time-consuming. It just depends on your playstyle and personal preferences.

No lag and highest graphics will not come cheaply, and this isn’t even at WvWvW. I’m actually doing well with my AMD CPU and Radeon GFX – my lag is more to do with my slow internet connection than my computer specs, and that’s something that you’ll have to consider if you’re in Australia/New Zealand as the internet on this side of the world is pretty abysmal – so you don’t need Intel and NVIDIA.

My estimate is around $1500 to build from scratch (but I’m in NZ so it might be different over there). The cheapest case you can get with built-in fans is maybe $100. 650W PSU $170~200. AMD 8-core CPU $250~300. A high-end graphics card will cost you between $350~1000. 32GB of RAM is around $360~400. Motherboard $150. Cheapest DVD drive since you won’t need it for GW2 is around $40. 120GB SSD is around $150. Normal keyboard and mouse is probably $20. If you want a gaming keyboard, it will be around $150, and a gaming mouse is between $80~100.

Oh right, I misunderstood; I thought you meant one key per day as in you have to do all three paths in one day. I think it’s one way to encourage dungeon regulars to do the difficult paths, but seeing how ArenaNet has responded to all the QQing over trying to get precursors from the Mystic Toilet, hell will freeze over before they make it that easy to get a precursor. But I’m pretty sure just a salvageable rare or an exotic is enough to motivate people to do all the paths.

I think people choose to do the same path over and over again because it’s the easy path. If each path was more balanced, this wouldn’t be such a big problem.

That said, while it’d be nice to have a system like the one you suggested, if people only have time to run one path a day, they’d just keep doing the same easy path anyway. I think people should be given more or better rewards for doing the difficult path to encourage everyone to do them rather than those who have time to do each path everyday. Or have the more difficult paths be included in a monthly or something.

As everyone else has said, the ambient conversations that you run past in towns and stutff are great, but your own character’s voice for some races/genders and those 1 on 1 scenes are absolutely atrocious. Humans and Charrs are okay for me but the Norn voices are too high and I wonder if you got your own kids to voice the Asura?

Also I feel that I must mention every time I get that Charr Ascalon whatever Fractal and I get to the final boss, I burst out laughing when he says that ‘yarrr’. What the hell is that? Is that meant to be a ferocious or a pirate noise? He sounds like a drunk angry German trying to order a pizza.

It’s such a pity because almost every other aspect of the game is awesome. And I shouldn’t have to punish Jeremy Soule and his amazing compositions just because I cringe every time I hear a twelve year old behind me go ‘More violets I say, less violence’ or a woman who sounds like a man saying ‘I could outrun a sandtarrr’. Also some of the shouts your characters make a half-arsed effort to shout (to be more accurate, Shouts should be renamed to Deadpan Utterances) isn’t even proper English, like “For Great Justice!”

I’d be greatly amused if Aussie/Kiwi accents are added sometime later on. We might not have an Oceanic server but we should at least have one or two representatives in the game. Nevermind that none of the Americans would understand what they’re saying without subtitles. Someone brought up Norn Iron (AKA Northern Ireland) before and while the English/Welsh/Irish/Scottish blokes wouldn’t have too much trouble with it, there’d probably be a lot of people who have to read the dialogue to decipher what the VAs are saying. Same with the regionals like Scouse or Geordie.

I believe you can upgrade it to the Beta but yes, you will lose your current infusion.

That’s a really difficult question to answer because everyone has different playstyles. The best thing to do is to try every weapon to see what you like.

For ‘condition build’ which is probably the most common for PvE, I would recommend the Scepter/Dagger and Staff. What you’d want to do is get gear that says ‘+ Condition Damage’ and trait for condition damage. The 6~9 skills you’d want are Consume Conditions for the heal, and then skills like Blood is Power, Epidemic, Plague Signet. Elite would be Lich Form but that won’t be for a while yet.

The condition build is designed to deal damage over time, so you won’t see like huge numbers flying off your scepter, but you’d see 10 bleeds ticking away and the HP bar just drains to zero.

The ‘well build’ would be everything that says wells, so. Well of Blood, Well of Darkness, Well of Corruption, Well of Power and Well of Suffering. Blood is great in a party, and Darkness and Suffering are useful. Corruption and Power are situational so it depends on where you’re at. I find Wells more useful in dungeons and WvWvW rather than PvE but again, it depends on your playstyle.

Another build you might want to try in PvE is the Minion Master. So you have the minion for the healing, then Bone Fiend, Bone Minions/Flesh Wurm, Shadow Fiend and then the Flesh Golem for elite. Minion Master is absolute fail in PvP and WvWvW but for PvE they’re not too bad. There are some problems with the Minion AI though so be prepared for a few incidents where they stand around and do nothing.

Personally for solo PvE I use Consume Conditions for healing, then Spectral Walk, Locust Signet and Spite Signet for the skills, then either Lich Form or Flesh Golem for elite. 33%+25% movement speed is fantastic for covering great distances and I do a lot of running around for 100% map completion (or if a guildie needs help somewhere, or if a dynamic event starts in the corner of your mini-map). This forces you to rely on your Scepter/Dagger or Staff for your attacks, but unless you’re in dungeons you don’t really need support skills like Plague Signet or Well of Power.

Sorry that was kind of TL;DR. I hope it was useful.

I avoid the problem by specifically advertising (for example) “LF3M TA U/U killing hounds and 1st husk” or “killing everything”. I don’t like skipping because it feels too much like a grind, and in TA’s case you have to run past everything again if the party wipes.

But for people who are running dungeons just to farm tokens as fast as they can, they’d want to skip everything, and they shouldn’t be punished for that. I don’t know about you but I avoid those ‘LF3M lvl 80 full exotics guards n wars preferdd’ types of parties so to a certain extent you can figure all this stuff out before entering the dungeon to save you a lot of frustration later.

The problem with most PuGs is the lack of communication. And that leads to faildungeon, not just with the Shaman fractal (I like this fractal the most actually) but with any other dungeon. People tend to be selfish and they don’t try to resurrect downed players (until they’re dead, which means you spend a hell of a lot longer reviving them) especially if the boss is hovering near them. Agony hits like a mack truck. People run into lava pools and then they don’t try to rally using the lava elementals when they’re available. It’s okay if you’re only having to pick up the one person but if three out of five in your party are just going down over and over again, prepare for the ragequit.

Some classes help more than others. As soon as I put up wall of reflection the rest of the party swarms behind me which is awesome. But you don’t need to run this fractal with any class specifically and DPS doesn’t matter – this boss needs to be taken down using the slow and steady mentality. You just need to make sure that everyone is spread out around the island, make sure that two people are kiting the boss if someone is down so that the other two can go resurrect (i.e. don’t be selfish), and if you have a skill that can help like wall of reflection, keep updating the rest of the team about your cooldowns and whatnot.

Any PuG can succeed anywhere with adequate communication. Don’t be afraid to tell people to slot in useful skills – I’ve learned more about my own class when people tell me to use X and Y skills in dungeons than I have experimenting on my own. And also don’t be afraid to tell people that you’re about to go down – better to tell them beforehand so that someone’s nearby to help rather than have everyone clustered on the opposite side of the island while your downed HP bar drops to zero.

I’ve only ever experienced this in FotM. And that’s because I was running level 10 FotMs with my level 4x guardian, which, y’know. Agony sucks.

But I digress. It really depends on the party. I don’t kick people who meet the recommended level requirements but I have taken a 32 through AC path 2 before. Let’s face it – you don’t need to be level 80 to pull levers and dodge traps. Plus, it really shouldn’t be a problem especially if the person is levelling an alt since they’d probably have run that dungeon before.

What helps is if you post on gw2lfg.com to just state your level and profession. Then whoever invites you won’t be in for a surprise if you’re not a level 80 with 6000 achievement points swinging a Twilight around. And they’ll likely be more forgiving if you happen to down more often than the level 80s (though in my experience, it’s usually the level 80 glass cannons who just down over and over again).

Well I have been doing FotM level 10 since my personal FotM level was level 2 and I’ve been getting the daily reward jiggly chest thing, so I assume you can, yes. But it wasn’t until my personal FotM level was level 10 that I got the pristine relic, so you might get like one or two less relics if your personal level is in the 10~15 tier?

Firegoth.6427:

Farm sparks in Cursed shore, they drop charged lodestones at large quantities.

Yeah, I was going to say, they drop maybe once an hour with omnomnom berry bars and maxed magic find runes >_> Not sure how that counts as ‘large quantities’.

What works for me is FotM, the ‘easier’ dungeons like AC and farming in Orr. Usually in that order. I get between 0-5 cores per FotM run which already sells for ~1G, and that’s excluding all the drops you get to sell/salvage. The most I’ve earned in a FotM run (3 fractals + Maw, level 10) is 5G. And you’re not trying to tag everything in the zerg like you are in Orr.

I don’t understand how people can claim to be a ‘casual’ player if you play an hour or two a day. If I played 2 hours every day I could finish all 3 paths of AC and do the daily achievement everyday – how is that casual? There are actual casual players who only have time for the game on weekends, or just log in for 30 minutes~1 hour every other day to do a daily achievement. That’s casual.

But that’s besides the point. I agree that a lot of the content is designed for more ‘hardcore’ players who are willing and have the time to farm Orr or grind towards full dungeon sets, FotM gears, a legendary and so on. It gets boring fairly quickly if you can only play on the weekends for example and all you have to do is the daily.

I think you just need to have long-term goals set in place and work towards that in your own pace, like getting crafting levels to 400 over the course of a couple months. You’re never going to be as decked out as a player who can devote more time to the game if you don’t have the time to run dungeons or whatever (but you can always craft your end-game gears), but the game is also about spending time with your mates, exploring the map, jumping into DEs you come across and the occasional farm for gold or crafting materials. Those are things you can do in your own time.

@heartless.6803 – If you’re in an NA server I can take you on your very first dungeon run Promise it won’t be a total disaster. They can be really fun if you’re with the right crowd. You should give everything a go at least and if you find you don’t like it, at least you’ve tried it and know what it’s like.

I always make it a point to tell my party to wait if I see that someone has disconnected at the final boss. You don’t even have to tell people if you’re doing dungeon runs with your guild – they wait for you.

If you know your internet connection is unstable, let your party know beforehand so that they can keep an eye out to see if anyone’s gone offline before finishing off the boss. There’s no point coming to the forums after it’s happened because we can’t really help you.