Guild Wars 2

Why do you join zerk groups if you aren’t zerk?

basically, all your saying, is it is the enemies job to be easily killed while you make minimal efforts.

What I’m saying is that if “fixing” stacking means making fights extremely tedious where mobs run around in circles, don’t do it. Bearbow rangers and GS mesmers knocking mobs out of stacks annoys people enough, now imagine if they just ran away themselves. The game would basically become CC wars 2 where pugs take a guardian using hammer/staff to perma-CC running mobs and organised groups just chain CC with their usual weapons or use a different utility. It honestly isn’t any more “interesting”.

dont throttle my dmg – so the enemy should not in any way try to avoid my dps

Do you not see that “reduce damage of one guy while everyone else does normal damage” is a completely dull mechanic? The boss has exactly the same mechanics, just one dude does less damage. How does that solve anything? Do you think the ferocity nerf made combat more interesting? They’re both throttles, and they both did/do nothing.

essentially your perfect boss was the target in lions arch, except with a low HP pool.

My perfect boss is a boss with multiple phases, each with their own mechanics which change dependent on whether people are at range or not and with multiple attack skills that can be blocked, reflected or dodged. It is a boss with no damage throttles, and doesn’t run away from you, in fact it chases you.

Who am I?

IMO, stacking is the reason why the DEVs don’t ever give us new dungeon content.
It trivializes all dungeon content. It also makes fights incredibly boring. Stack in that corner, burn down the boss.

Stack Alphard, don’t dodge, don’t use reflect.

Stacking does not trivialise content.

I think all of us know Guang has zero speed run experience, is pretty bad at the game and just wants to view everything in a vacuum – generally when he’s been right it’s because his guangmath has actually been applicable in-game, but things like “mesmers have high dps” and “use a ranger here” when the mesmer has like a 12 second ramp up time or the ranger has to deal with the awkward sword auto to dodge deadly attacks kind of throws all of the calculations off when you aren’t able to sustain the high damage.

You are not bypassing mechanics by stacking.

More importantly, there is no “my way is the only way” – what is happening is I’m saying play how you want, just don’t pretend that suboptimal builds and weapons are efficient.

For example: If there is a mob that likes to attack at range, give this mob a flag where they will always try to be at least 600 units away from any player, and treat this as a hard line that mob will refuse to cross. That way, when they come upon enemies stacking in a corner, they will orbit at a distance to get in range, instead of just running up to the players.

Chasing a mob around in circles is not “interesting”, and if that’s “diverse mob AI” then I want my mob AI as boring as possible. That would turn dungeons in to even more of a chore. It would just mean removing a DPS utility and chaining immobilises.

Another idea: make a boss that has a directionally dependent damage reduction: all direct damage from the front is reduced by 90%, due to heavy armor or a big shield or whatever. Then, players will have to encircle the boss, so that only one player gets reduced damage while the other 4 get full damage.

Literally all that is is a damage throttle. Poor idea.

Another idea, give a boss an extremely dangerous and frequent melee cleave attack, but make it so he alternates targets after every use. That way, players will have to surround the boss, because otherwise his attacks will plow through nearly any defense.

Chain aegis/dodge, burst away. There are already bosses with powerful melee cleave attacks.

And now we’re back to square one. Once again, poor ideas offered to counter stacking and no reason besides aesthetics identified for stacking even being a problem.

There is also the option of realising where you went wrong and trying again.

I don’t see how one or two new/low level players could slow down the party.

Yes, it is slower

?

I’ve had this account for like a week and I’m already fed up of the Mesmer subforum. good thing maxinion can continue my legacy I guess >_>

Fay.2735:

frifox.5283:

Fay.2735:

I like using greatsword and I have no trouble killing things but then I don’t care about doing something 5 seconds faster.

I was all here ready to call your bluff and went ahead and solo’d Champing Icebrood Wolf using only the greatsword, just for fun. What do you know, my kill time compared to the sword/sword/focus attempt came out to be… only 3.7 seconds slower.

Guess I’ll let you have your way this time XD

The combo I like to do is. I start in Sword/Sword. Get swordman out > Swap to Gsword before I get into combat (Means no CD on WS) > Use Mirror blade > Get iZerker out > Swap to S/S > Depending on distance, use Illusionary leap to get close > Blurred Frenzy. Then try to get another swordman out as soon as possible. If I need to get out of melee for whatever reason I just swap to Gsword and do another Mirror Blade/iZerker so I just try to get out 3 phantasms asap and they hit like a truck.

It’s a fun combo. I also use mantras so there’s a bunch of micro managing involved as well. Sure it’s not the most optimal build or a meta build and it will raise some peoples eyebrow but I have fun doing it my PvP build is somewhat similar just without mantras but the PvP meta is really not in favour of phantasm builds any more (Hasn’t been for the past year).

You could say I haven’t really been playing much the past few months after 5k+ hours I’m kind of burned out and waiting for new content. I guess what I’m saying is that sure Gsword isn’t optimal but it’s not useless either. I mean if you were using scepter in PvE fair enough but I did all the content in the game prior using a Gsword with reasonable efficiency so whether you go completely melee (and/or only stack in corners) or use a Gsword it’s not a major deal unless you reaaally care about being super optimal or just want to do melee only. I also like Gsword because it makes it a bit easier to quickly move to range to type something in chat and then move back into melee (This goes for if you aren’t cheesing a boss in a corner).

And the reason for pointing out the cheesing bosses in corners in relation to pure melee is because the main reason melee is so optimal is because you can throw a boss in a corner and take virtually no damage before it’s dead. To do melee without cheesing bosses is a lot more fun and more challenging but people don’t generally do that (For example I like staying in melee on Subject Alpha when not cheesing him because I like timing blocks and such and for some reason he always aggros to me so.. hugging him with my sword is fun)

LoS the first champion in SE p3 near the stairs and don’t bring condition cleanses. Posts like yours make me so angry because you don’t even understand what’s going on in the stack yet not only do you condemn and claim corner stacking is cheering and makes you take barely any damage but you say “but it’s fine against alpha because I said so”. Am I wasting my time? I think I’m wasting my time. Nobody cares, nobody wants to learn. Everybody just wants to wallow in their own ignorance.

Are you trying to imply that melee equals bypassing mechanics and therefore I don’t enjoy fighting mechanics? Do you realise that in a single arah path 2 run I switch my build six times so I can fight the mechanics better? I resent bypassing mechanics, it’s why I resent fiery Greatsword. The difference is, that actually bypasses, melee itself doesn’t. I don’t play for gold either, so don’t generalise – I’ll run a dungeon multiple times despite having my daily if it interests me because I play for fun and to hone my skills. Maybe one day I’ll be completely infallible, or at least hold some boss solo records.

I feel obliged to upload screens of my chars now

is it getting hot in here or is it just me

1,688 people do apparently. Are you even trying?

I prefer player v forum.

Actually it does impress people. Watch Kr’s unrestricted COE p3 record, it’s very impressive. Again, just because YOU don’t care, doesn’t mean people aren’t impressed. But I don’t even know what this has to do with the topic, I’m still waiting for someone to give an actual reason with examples on where GS is practically better. The one example I thought of, well I just got told I can use mantra of pain so I just so that now.

I don’t think Guang understands that belka doesn’t teleport in decent groups and an engi will not have enough stealth for the skip to abom and you’ll just lose time.

awwwwww I wish you could join us

When I did the aetherblade and molten dungeons and thaumanova fractal for the first time i took double melee sets. When I did my mark 2 golem gold solos (they’re on my YouTube) I took double melee sets. For new and old content, the best option is two melee sets, die a bunch of times and analyse each time why you died. I did this when soloing the archmage near Caer shadowfain and I took endurance food to help deal with the weakness, then on a later attempt I dropped it for dps food since I was able to time my dodges and blocks better through practice. This is honestly just getting tedious to argue, you and nobody else has given any practical reason for using Greatsword besides being lazy, liking lasers or that it’s part of your special snowflake build. I seriously need to record my pugging again, I got sick of throttling my internet connection having to upload all of the time but it would probably put these arguments to rest if I just linked footage every single time.

People always add this addendum of ‘if you aren’t running in meta groups’ when they post suboptimal builds. Honestly, you can use meta builds and get by just fine in pugs.

Do an entire dungeon path of your choice by just either stacking in corners just pressing 1, stacking in corners pressing random buttons or stacking and pressing 1 with dodges permitted but no other skills. These are the 3 biggest myths perpetuated on the forum so it would be nice to see it in action.

You don’t need a GS on maw at all. For molten duo you have reflects out the backside so you have the least excuse to be ranging.

i miss the days where people actually liked having mesmer

Sunshine.4680:

Stacking is awful. There should be mobs that are anti stacking to make it more diverse.

Maybe you should try AC and Arah. Ascalonian necromancers fear you out of the stack, elementalists summon firestorms which serve as massive area denial. Risen illusionists drop chaos storms that pulse for 4,000 damage, give retaliation that pulses for 800 per attack if you hit them. Devastators CC you, hunters throw a deadly bouncing axe and mages cast fields that give regen to allies and pulse for like 2,000 damage or something. They have a pbaoe knockdown too. The mobs and mechanics exist, people either forget or don’t do the dungeons where they’re present.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Azrael.4960:

I run with my guildmates and we sometimes take on a pug who sometimes asks “y no stack?” The best response from my guild matewas, “cos we’re not cowards”. Think we were doing AC spider queen. Then proceeded to fire off our combos and tear the queen limb from limb.

When I LFG, I usually make sure to add “no stacking, killing everything in sight” and it fills quickly with people who are of the same mind. Do the dungeon the way it was meant to, not the fastest way possible.

One AC run, did all paths, slaughtered everything that didn’t respawn. We’d skip the mobs in the Tzark path when you clear the hall of burrows since they’re unending. Hell, we even killed all the gravelings in the various corridors. Now that was fun.

My guildies and I are like this. I put things like ‘casual’ ‘non skipping’ ‘non running’ ‘non stacking’ ‘be prepared to massacre everything’ in our lfg descriptions, and the number of people that either obviously can’t read, or don’t have any reading comprehension is concerning. It’s gotten to the point where we just 3 or 4 man the paths, unless we absolutely need a pug (which isn’t often).

This is exactly what happens when people make zerker lfgs. I joined a friend for SE, some random joins and pings knights and rampagers. I feel players in this game generally just lack the inability to read and i can imagine it’s frustrating for people when they set requirements on their post. Luckily for me I just write ‘path 2’ and take literally anyone because idgaf, lol.

deSade.9437:

I wonder wut y’all going to say when they nerf fgs.
“Ele sucks, X class super gud super efficient, the others are bad! And I’ve been saying this all the time, AND I WAS FIRST!!!!”
Then I’m pretty sure someone will come up with the revolutionary idea rangers or random x class will be worth taking, and then maybe someone will actually bother to l2p said class.
This fgs mania is really starting to look ridiculous. I shiver if I think that those kitten playhowiwants may have a point when they say it’s borderline exploitish. It’s lame, it’s become a stupid thing to behold because it’s completely out of line with other skills -damage-wise.
/avoids kitten flying around
No, no, don’t fling that stuff at me. I know you’re awesome and all, we’re all just poor peasants in front of your awesomeness.
Still, it looks stupid. I tried some dungeons superl33t style with 2-3 ellys and it felt so kittened… I don’t really know how you can endure the boredom of playing the superl33t comp, seriously. I guess you don’t play for… wait for it, wait for it…
Nah, nevermind <3 Lav you.

FGS spamming is the whole reason I avoid doing organised dungeon runs like the plague. How can someone demonstrate their skill when half the fights boil down to press 4 before it kills us? Doing dungeons solo, low man or pugging allows you to test your ability to react, adapt and how consistent you are with your damage mitigation since fights take longer. I dunno. I’m not going to say I play for fun and FGSers play for $$$ since there are people who enjoy melting hp bars like that, but while I found it cool at first it got boring for me after a while. This is probably the most carebearish thing ive wrote in months and almost sounds PHYW. meh.

People always say this, but whenever swiftpaw joins groups on her ranger she’s only ever come close to being kicked once, and then they recognised who she was.

I feel like some of these stories are just exaggerations or lies.

I think you don’t have an argument so you’re just resorting to memes. Try again.

swiftness

dodge

uh

that’s pretty much all that’s necessary

for mesmer maybe stealth

- Noone melee stacked TA Aetherpath at release (you have said earlier on you have never been there, so missing that knowledge is not your fault). Because when dungeons are new, they are hard and exciting by just being dungeons.

mmmmm?

- I do not care, what weapon players are using in dungeons, I just say that it is ok to use the weapon you feel the most comfortable with.

So again, you’re not arguing from a practical viewpoint, you’re arguing from a hipster viewpoint. If you’re not going to give actual reasons don’t post.

- The whole melee stacking thing is a result of bored players running the same old content a billion times. New content would solve this (as long as players actually try the new dungeons), which would be a win/win situation for everyone.

Incorrect. Melee stacking is a result of players learning mechanics and how to maximise their damage, and damage mitigation while grouped up closely. Pugs then try to copy this while not understanding what’s involved in the stack – they’re simply doing what they heard/thought was best. It’s nothing to do with “bored players running the same old content”, you’re just trying to pursue your “this game is boring” agenda but you’re completely off the mark.

Why is this so hard to grasp?

It’s so hard to grasp because you’re WRONG.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-How-To-Mesmer-in-Dungeons/first#post4025636

Thanks for admitting your already obvious motive: to tell people they are wrong and prove your own superiority.

My motive is to educate people. Guess what I did yesterday? Pugged SE p3, melee’d the clown car and then near the end one of the warriors joined me in melee. I don’t need to prove my own superiority when I already have videos demonstrating it, have been accepted and vetted in to the strongest NA dungeon guild and have pugged enough times to realise my skill far exceeds the average player in this game. It’s not even bragging, it’s just the truth.

Thank you for adding absolutely nothing to the thread.
Video games are entertainment — in other words, a suboptimal way of spending time. The entire reason we’re here is because we’re the kind of people who like laser swords and so on.
If you value optimizing numbers over having fun, then let me tell you, a spreadsheet will work much better than sword/sword or sword/focus.
People enjoy using a greatsword. They have said so, here, in this thread asking about why people use it. They have said why they think it works — and you’ve made it your mission to tell them they’re wrong. That sure is some optimal behavior!

So like I said, it’s people being hipsters. People make weak builds, throw their laser sword in and go to town with it. That’s fine. It’s just “I like it” is not a practical reason. I play greatsword on my warrior despite it having approximately 300 less effective power than axe because I like it, not because it’s optimal. Sure, Nike told me that you should just play whichever weapon’s rotations I can maintain the best (since the difference is so minor) but if I wanted to perform at peak efficiency I would use pure axes, but I find the playstyle dreadful so I don’t. I’m not even going to pretend pure GS is optimal though when the math points to it not.

Don’t tell me that a scepter is better at bursting than a GS, just because you have blinded hate (because it’s cool to) for GS. Seriously, I’m starting to believe there’s a GS hating lobby group on the mesmer forum. You know guys, it’s making the forum very toxic. Can you let it drop !?

lol. I hope you realise liking GS is the “cool” thing to do, people did it back in the day until me and a few others smacked some sense in to them, and now people still think it’s cool to like it to be edgy and stand out from the majority accepted opinion.

Than again, in PvE it doesn’t really matter unless you want to speedrun dungeons. If you go into a dungeon with a full group and people have half a clue, the group will succeed with any weapon setup.

Except, if me and Pyroatheist took greatswords to Lupicus a few hours ago we would have either spent 20 minutes kiting or just never finished it.

Of course you can min-max for speed clears or try to solo dungeons and stuff to make things artificially hard, but PvE in GW2 is just designed to be simple (I blame the lack of a trinity for this, especially in dungeons).

Open world is, sure. But take the time to learn dungeon mechanics and you’ll realise there’s more to it, and cool little intricacies. I think it was either the same group a few hours ago or a pug before that where I/we scored numerous interrupts on the Arah p2 abomination – a well timed interrupt places its enrage on a ~minute cooldown and makes you not have to use a tranquiliser gun. Lack of trinity has nothing to do with it, trinity being added would be the worst thing possible to this game, it’s tedious and just forces people in to the same three roles all the time while GW2 lets you, no matter your class pull your weight and carry hard.

If there was a new dungeon every few weeks like in other games, that would actually challenge the playerbase, I doubt that melee stacking against a wall would be the meta. If there was any learning required for an encounter, zerker gear would probably not be meta either.

Nope, there still would be.

“new” content corner stacked. Repeat ad infinitum. Making new content won’t magically make people not stack, bad players just won’t do it, good players will just stack because they know what to do in the stack and what it means rather than just 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 and hope not to die.

We get it, you don’t like the game. We also get it, you want to make out using greatsword is fine, but we’re speaking practically here. From a practical perspective, in dungeon content it’s not worth using. Use it in PvP. Use it in WvW. Use it in open world PvE. But if you use it in dungeons, you’re not even trying to help your party as best you can, you’re just trying to be a special snowflake with your cool laser.

Pack runes are just average runes a bunch of people from good fights stocked up on heavily and then told everyone was good so that they could unload theirs.

‘Certain purposes and playstyles’? Why so vague? Why do I always have to push people who say things like to give examples? I want examples so I can tell you why greatsword isn’t worth taking for those examples. What you’re saying just falls under the being hipster category, people with suboptimal play styles trying to shoe horn their favourite laser sword in to their build.

People clarified why it was used in WvW, PvP and not in PvE, Foosnark literally just wanted to make a cheap shot at the people who clarified why it shouldn’t be used in PvE with the typical lets write in poor grammar because berserker gear users are drooling idiots and I want to insult them for no reason. It adds nothing to the thread besides conflict.

It’s probably worth remembering that Guang calculates everything in a vacuum and doesn’t have actual speed run experience, hence the bad composition he just posted above.

Foosnark.1784:

If you read the OP, it doesn’t specify dungeons only — in fact there is a paragraph specifically about WvW, and the last paragraph mentions its use in PvP. And nowhere does that post ask for objective reasons only.

There were a bunch of reasonable posts, before the “everything = dungeon zerk melee deeps lawlz” people chimed in, anyway.

Thank you for adding absolutely nothing to the thread.

ctrl + shift + h for screenshots ;p

I recorded a pug lupicus which I can upload as footage to stick in the guide or something, a lot of people like to bring up the ‘well you can’t melee in pugs’ excuse for not using two sword sets so it could serve as a little demonstration since most Mesmer footage is solo or organised groups

I should make a belka solo recording where I set up triple warden and then afk :p

Urque.6837:

And guess what, I don’t need to dodge. My build makes it so that I can constantly be in the boss’ face and wail on them with my hammer. Sure, call me unskilled. But i am playing a ROLE PLAYING GAME, and my character is assuming the ROLE of tank. That is why my gear is VIABLE. Zerker snobs are so annoying, and that’s why it got nerfed.

we actually got a huge buff in <80 dungeons

Record a speed kill without fgs, no engi, then record a speed kill again with no fgs but with an engi. There’s no point mentioning that record when it’s done with an overpowered weapon, of course an engi isn’t going to be able to beat that kind of damage, but in a conventional setting, who knows.

If I can be put on the waiting list, please :p

hendo.1940:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

deSade.9437:

Well, it’s a comp I adore to use. It’s not like I’m giving a kitten if the superprol33tspeedzrecordz meta changes; if all the characters in your party are built properly and know what to do you complete all runs in more or less the same time with any comp – as long as there’s a parvence of a warrior and maybe an elly.
It’s just some people that are obsessed with having a very specific comp with 300 ellys, thieves and warriors. You don’t need that.

Engie is even better if you’re minmaxing the minutiae precisely because they cover all the bases and give good DPS to boot. A single engie will give you might, vuln, DPS, and stealth by default and he can swap into reflect if necessary, although I’m not totally sold on the effectiveness of said reflects.

Nonetheless they are good in any circumstance because:

1) They are a huge damage boost to pugs due to all the might and vuln, plus their own high personal DPS.
2) They are a decent damage boost to casually-organized groups, because those groups aren’t likely to max vuln on their own.
3) They are a net DPS boost to absolutely minmaxed groups, because they enable the organizer(s) to drop out certain “necessary” utilities for DPS. That also includes stuff like might and vuln stacking, i.e. an ele can drop Weak Spot and go something like 6/2/2/4/0 instead of 5/5/0/4/0 for more DPS.

Which is what I’ve been saying since the start, but you know, HURR HB DMG BESS

Awaiting your sub 7 second lupicus kill with engi(s).

What

Actually you just need a phalanx strength gs warrior using all of their skills off cooldown, it’s not that hard

worst guide NA jk <3 you max, also my guide is hella outdated and I never even finished it

A warrior with phalanx strength, strength runes and strength sigil will maintain 25 might on the party

maxinion.8396:

Kick them, for sure. No mercy.

(Though honestly I’ve had a great deal of fun lately joining groups like this with my meta builds and carrying hard. I never ever complain about anything and follow the group in stacking or not if I do this though.)

This is pretty much what I do. No point bragging, no point telling them what to do. Just carry on silently and let your carrying do all the talking, a lot of pugs find it incredible to watch.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I will try it this way:

Q: Topic: Why do people use Greatsword?

A: People prefer the greatsword as they do not have to know all telegraphs of boss fights in dungeons to succeed without constantly dying.
As more experienced players that can actually play melee leave the game out of boredom, you more frequently see new players with greatword learning the dungeons until they can melee the bosses, get bored and leave themselves.

On topic, clear as a mountain lake.

Plenty of experienced players still play this game, just because you’re bored of it doesn’t mean we are. In fact a lot of us in guild stay because we enjoy the gameplay so much. Here are the real reasons people use Greatsword – they either just like the aesthetics, want to be a hipster, don’t want to lean to melee or (and this applied to me) just take a gs/sw+f setup and don’t ever question it. When someone I cof farmed with back in the day asked me why I used gs I honestly didn’t even know why and then went main hand swords. The whole reason we have initiatives like the dungeon mentor guild is so teach people how to do content efficiently, so the more people we can get on board with it, the less gs mesmers we have.

it wasn’t that funny, also i thought you were talking to yourself in a bank guild until the last image

maha.7902:

that literally added nothing to the discussion at hand