Mesmer really isn’t that hard, you just stick on PU and slot in stealth skills.
Except torch most mesmer stealth skills have a long cooldown. Also the duration of each is unimpressive. And the biggest issue is the lack of swiftness. Assuming solo run with no help from the group. Even if you get decent stealth being so slow with only blink and 12s swiftness means it will either run out or you’re gonna be the last to get in on the action.
On the skip from belka to abom you can use mass invis, veil, blink and the prestige and they’ll all be off cooldown by the time you reach him. Mesmer honestly has an incredibly easy time skipping, PU just makes it easier.
Every single class in this game besides necromancer is good for instances like dungeons and fractals. Ele and thief are your top dps classes, guardian, mesmer and engi are your utility “carry” classes if pugging. Warriors have nice utility and are easy to play, rangers have nice utility but are more challenging to play because of the sword auto.
Terrahero is just blowing things out of proportion, most groups aren’t like that at all, and people who want to stack warriors and guardians are just bad at the game.
Are vicious claws going to go the path of unidentified dyes where the price doesn’t even drop because everyone and their dog wants to speculate on it? or do you guys (no need to specify, you all have your own trade secrets) think that with the return of pavilion farming that some items are just going to crash and burn in value?
Didn t uyou use sigil of energy?
Did you solo shaman at lava 50 without other help?
did you solo melee mossman?
Did you tank the final boss on TA aether?
Did you the part with oozes melee?
I don’t own an energy sigil on my mes
no, sanderinoa and wethospu did a duo @ 48 though and he took sw/sw + sw/f
no, sanderinoa did a full melee solo @ 48 though
never done aether
never done aether
Did you obviously even melee the burning oil in ascalon.
lol
scepter/pistol buddy
Do you solo melee other TA paths i suppose…..(i bet you like permapoison).
funnily enough pugs do melee
In order to adapt you need a GS and even a torch
I pug a lot more than my guildies do, and I’m telling you now I never use greatsword besides to pull Tazza.
Mostly for fractal a GS is mandatory.
….no
Suggestion: just play some pug runs and when you see a decent mesmer watch what he is using.
The forum is mostly about bragging.
If I wanted to see decent mesmers I wouldn’t pug anything. You probably think I just do guild speed runs and am out of touch with pugging, but I honestly find it boring as hell, and soloing Arah and pugging other dungeons keeps the game interesting for me, and I never range anything besides where it’s strictly required which is extremely rare.
And if I die … well I’d rather die knowing I actually tried to fight a boss properly than pewpewing at 1200 range like some bad.
In other situations when bosses have faster melee Attacks you simply don t have enough evasions (even with traited BF+vigor).
They are simply used to have Guardians or other professions covering them.
Mesmer itself is the “cover” profession, you don’t need a guard.
The learn to solo can be also disproven comparing a solo build to a party build.
Soloed Lupicus with 30/20/0/20/0, also took the same build in to SE pugs yesterday.
But since they have this fear of being judged they don t even try to equip a GS and see if and where its better than full melee.
it is never better than full melee
I could make a long list where GS is the best option, and all you could reply would be “…some other players do that for me”. if you pug, you can t rely on Others, but yet you are trying to be as fast as you can, so you can t use solo tactics.
I want your long list, and I want to debunk every single example you give.
Honestly, if you’re worried about your group being bad just go on a carry class like engineer, mesmer or guardian. That way it doesn’t even matter if they suck because you’ll be well prepared with decent utilities.
Re: Eles
I never said D/F was superior, you’re probably confusing me with someone else. I’m the one who argued for staff ele Lava Font spamming which no one really disputes is ridiculous DPS.
Reading comprehension OP?
You’ve been telling staff has superior dps than any other elementalist weaponset and is the “to-go” set. Zelyhn proved you wrong that D/F is superior damage and I was correct about S/X + FGS being way superior. Remember, that was before staff eles got a huge buff with persiting flames.
Re: Engis
You can go “I tried an engi for a few minutes and my DPS didn’t seem that good” all you want but I can easily flip that and say my warrior DPS isn’t that good either. There’s a reason the meta warrior build is an EA support build and not a raw DPS build. There’s a difference between engineers not being good for speedruns and people not being good at engineers in speedruns. I don’t think anyone’s ever disputed that a good engineer is anything short of amazing in any situation, speedrun or otherwise.
I have nothing to say on this, it’s just laughable. For one, I did not try just for a few minutes, actually not for much less than I did on warrior. An hour of going through different builds is enough to see the potential of the thing you’re currently on. Never said I’m a perfect engineer, neither am I a perfect warrior. For sure, though, I’m along the better ones in this game. I might be better on warrior than I am on engineer, but that would not explain warriors dealing almost twice as much direct damage as engineers in any tests I did. And for the last sentence… seriously, start playing the game.
You don’t take staff camping eles into speedruns, not because people can’t handle them, but because they suck. You don’t bring engineers into speedruns, not because people can’t handle them, but because they suck. I’m always flattered again on how far off reality you live, although I should know after such a long time.
Correction: They don’t take YOUR engi or staff ele into speedruns because YOU suck. Maybe, I dunno, not like I’ve ever seen you play, but if you can’t even hit half the DPS of a warrior on an engie, you’re probably doing something wrong and shouldn’t really be talking about meta at all.
Also, staff ele IS and always WAS the highest DPS build from the moment they added the ONE extra tick to Persisting Flames. LH was closer than it is now, sure, so there was a bit of room for debate, but lol @ dagger/anything being remotely comparable. I assumed you were attributing ’dagger is superior" to me because arguing for dagger DPS, really, lol.
really Guang? You want to call people who have demonstrated their skill time and again bad? Do you not think all of us have ammunition we could unload about your level of play or do you just not care enough about opening yourself up for public humiliation?
I’m pretty sure that doing something (sub-5 lupicus) which like only 0.00000001% of the game population has even done let alone even capable of is skill, but YMMV.
People posting for speed runs on LFG don’t understand that anything outside of a record run is just a casual run. I mean yeah, I’ve completed Arah p3 in 8:58 to set the (at the time) record, but if you get four random pugs to “speed run” with you, you’ll probably do it in like 25 minutes if you factor in people lazing around waiting for people to enter the instance, building up stacks and generally just mistakes along the way. At that point it’s not a speed run, it’s probably just five dudes in DPS gear doing the path for their daily reward
If I put up a lfg with such requirements
1)dungeon noob
2)brain
3)able to communicate
4)humor
I join Arah groups with 1) to make sure their experience isn’t too painful and that they’re not stuck in there for hours. 2, 3 and 4, sure, though especially 3 since there are some groups which are honestly just terrible at communicating and it’s frustrating when things go wrong, you say what you can do to get it right and then … no response.
If you felt people were just going to down you’d honestly be better off just running 30/30 or 30/25 and keeping yourself up rather than trying to help them. But to be honest, pugs downing everywhere honestly rarely happen in my experience to justify battle standard, and I do my fair share of pugging
You can go “I tried an engi for a few minutes and my DPS didn’t seem that good” all you want but I can easily flip that and say my warrior DPS isn’t that good either. There’s a reason the meta warrior build is an EA support build and not a raw DPS build. There’s a difference between engineers not being good for speedruns and people not being good at engineers in speedruns. I don’t think anyone’s ever disputed that a good engineer is anything short of amazing in any situation, speedrun or otherwise.
I avoid AP groups like the plague because they’re mostly full of incompetent players with no patience. I just set an lfg for a path, don’t specify anything and just go with the flow – sometimes I do a massive carry, other times I get people who play on my level and it just turns in to a casual speed clear. Though in my experience, people with very low AP normally aren’t that good (there has been like 1 exception in my year playing) but they are both eager to learn and apologise for mistakes they make a lot more willingly than higher AP players. Once you reach around 3k AP players it just goes completely random, it honestly means nothing.
Well now, this is getting a bit scary for me – I main an AH (inb4youareuseless) hammer & staff/greatsword guardian and honestly this thread is frightening. Just to clarify – I don’t join any zerkers/speed parties when doing dungeons on my guard, so let’s see if I’m doing this right:
I prefer staff over greatsword nowadays, in fact I’m not sure when was the last time I used greatsword in general. Why? In dungeons for the movement speed stacking, short but useful might stacks and my 5th spell that blocks creeps when we’re skipping parts of the dungeon.
This is when my hammer comes out -> I stack might with staff and then I switch to hammer and just bash down the champ until my staff’s 4th is off CD, then I repeat the process.
Can I get a place in a party or should I hop on my “meta” thief?
You should be fine – you already said you don’t join speed runs. If you have a warrior though, try sticking them on a phalanx strength build, you will give massive amounts of might to your party.
Actually their traits are fine, they just need to stick the last points in to dueling.
There’s no point really going 30/30/0/0/10 since empowering mantras isn’t the dueling grandmaster anymore, which leaves 30/20/0/0/20 for non-reflect situations and 30/20/0/20/0 for reflect situations.
I’ve been playing a little Thief lately and i was going D/D crit specs with exotic berserker gear. but i cant seem to crit for very high amounts… (over 5000)
What am i doing wrong? let me know if you want my exact build.
Thanks in advance!
30/30/0/0/10
full berserker, scholar runes
Cloak + dagger and backstab mobs in cursed shore, you should two-shot them.
So I checked pages 46-50 of my post history and there’s like two sketchy things I wrote (can’t quote on phone) but my ancient history posts seem surprisingly clean, like I was already yelling at staff guards and PVT wearers by like, the second page lmao.
Wait he doesn’t test things in game, and yet argues validity?
That’s what the detractors usually say when they know I’m right, the math is right, etc. but they don’t want to admit they’re wrong. It’s the classic “I know math, logic, experience, and common sense all support your agument but I totally did this one thing this one time and got a different result” argument that Warlord really brought back into the scene lately. Also keep in mind that the same people were playing the ‘hurr math is for nerds" card when I argued in favor of DPS guardians, DPS ranger, DPS staff ele, DPS engie, etc. And I don’t think I’ve ever been wrong on any major point.
That said, Phalanx warrior is still decent for pugs even at 15 might although you’ll probably still want to consider if it’s really worth the DPS loss. The overall boost is quite significant but the personal DPS goes to utter crap and there’s no guarantee that the other pugs are even doing any damage worth boosting. Double of nothing is still nothing.
I have honestly not seen you arguing about staff eles, dps rangers, dps guardians or… ohwait, you argue about dps engis all time, apparently beeing best profession in the game, doing better job at everything than warriors, especially having greater survivability and of course dealing much better damage, even in a solo setting.
You know what the problem on this one is? Whenever someone tries to verify that claim in game, it turns out that engineers are just about half as good as you make them look.
As far as I know I was the only one advocating DPS guardian back when everyone was on the Strife anchor AH/EM meta, and the responses back then were basically:
1) “u dum guard cant dps like hundred badle”
2) “lol lets see u survive in fractals 20+ without anchor”
3) “post 5guardian cof speedclear vid plz”
Then DPS ranger:
1) “lol show ranger vid beat hb damag”
2) “post 5ranger cof speedclear vid plz”
Then DPS staff ele:
1) “lol ele for lh blast, warrior for dps not other way around”
2) “post 5ele speedclear vid plz”
So now we’re just waiting on DPS engie to catch on since we got through the “post 5engie speedclear” phase already. I think some of the DnT guys were testing it and getting good results? I don’t really know or care, I know I’m right.
I will also point out that while spreadsheets may not be the only way to determine effectiveness, they are probably the most accurate and most objective way to do so. And so far my track record’s been pretty good so i have no reason to doubt them. Meanwhile the “in-game experience” guys are barely getting off 3war/1guard/1mes so you’ll excuse me if I’m skeptical about their ability to accurately kitten stuff in this game.
I love how you refer to in game experience condescendingly when how a build works in practice is kinda like, slightly more relevant than it’s spreadsheet efficiency, otherwise we would all be using desperate power warriors. And if you think we’re barely getting off old meta, then just lol. Why would you make a fool out of yourself arguing about something you can test in game for like five minutes to confirm? This isn’t like where we thought warriors were best dps, this is literally just the number of might stacks showing up on screen, and in the case of phalanx warriors, it’s higher than you claim. The fact that you didn’t even include rush or blade trail in your example of a warrior rotation makes it pretty hard to take you seriously too.
The best bit is when he says warriors are a bad pug class because they can’t keep themselves alive. Like, he literally just needs to play the game and he wouldn’t even be trying to claim half the stuff he does since he would be able to verify it in game for like five minutes.
Grenade Engineer and staff elementalist are the two choices that can power out a lot of ranged damage. Staff ele is some of the best dps in the game with the fire auto, lava font and meteor shower. Pretty much any other ranged choice is weak in this game, though if you don’t care for efficiency or speed running dungeons (by playing ranged classes which aren’t the two I specified you basically ostracise yourself from any speed run) you can basically play whatever looks the coolest to you.[/quote]
I distinctly remember making a post about how tanky my guardian was in CoE, but I can’t be bothered to go hunting out my cancer posts (and I’m pretty sure there’s a whole treasure trove of them).
Not impossible from a resource perspective, but probably difficult. And the threat of driving away casual people unwilling to rise to a presented challenge (Even if it’s not actually harder than their current activities) didn’t stop them from implementing the Great Jungle Wurm or overhauling Teq, and sticking with their decision to do so in spite of the complaints of the difficulty – yes, people were whining, but they were also starting to rise to the challenge once they got the griping out of their system.
That’s because there’s people to do all the leading and work for them. If you look at TA Aetherpath, nobody wants to do it because everyone has to pull their weight and you can’t just slink back in the background letting everyone else do the work because it’s a 5-man instance.
If you force people to have to pull their weight and adapt all the time, they won’t be bothered to do the content. To offer an example – I asked a guardian to put wall of reflection and purging flames on against the Hunter and Crusher in Arah p3 – he then responded saying he’s using a shout build. People don’t want to have to adapt, they just stick their utilities on and forget about it. As much as people complain that the game is stack and press 1, the moment ANet make it any more challenging the complaining grows stronger and people just flat out don’t do the content.
I probably should have clarified – I’m saying mechanically the evolution is a full berserker user, but condition damage should be viable too. The problem however, is like you mentioned, condition damage is DoT. If a fight lasts ten seconds, DoT doesn’t matter when you can burst out power damage to destroy the boss quickly – however if you look for Lupicus condition damage solos, they are able to be done in good time (around the 6 – 8 minute mark I believe) because it’s a prolonged fight and so the whole damage over time concept works nicely.
Picture a necromancer that can’t provide support and focuses on condition damage, what is your thought on this?
My thought is that a player who doesn’t build for damage and support should never be what is considered optimal. Meta builds maximise on damage modifiers in their traiting but if there are support traits that are more relevant and better to take than an extra modifier, we will always take the support trait. Meta builds are builds that like I said, maximise damage but have the correct support traits and utilities. If the maximum damage means giving up a modifier in order to get that support – it should be done.
Not only is TheDaiBish’s ideas basically impossible from a resource perspective, but it would drive away a lot of casual dungeon runners – which are the kind of players ANet want to keep.
Dear Maha, why can’t you have meta builds in zerker, condition and support that are equal in effectiveness? At the moment you only have one specialization where you can have meta builds, which is the zerker, for the other specializations the “meta” is crap compared to the worst zerker meta. Bear in mind I used the word effectiveness, not raw damage.
Because ANet clearly stated this game would have a damage, support and control trinity where all players and classes are expected and capable of doing each of them. Support and control doesn’t scale with any type of gear, so the only thing you can scale is your damage – this means the logical progression to optimising is that once you have the correct support traits and utilities and weapons with CC (if necessary) the last thing to so is to apply as much offensive gear you can handle while being able to maintain support and control. The ‘ultimate evolution’ of this is the full berserker player who can appy the maximum amount of damage, support and control required in an encounter. This is why builds dedicated to support don’t work and will and should never be optimal – because you are forgoing damage, and thus neglecting the one part of the pseudo-trinity we have the most influence over in favour of only prioritising one aspect of it.
Just thought I’d mention that these last 2 sentences are in direct opposition with each other.
The game most definitely does need to have some significant changes made. Maximum damage condition damage builds absolutely should be viable in the same way that maximum damage power builds are. This isn’t an easy fix though.
Condition damage being viable is the only change needed. I have no idea how to make it viable so I just threw a random idea out there. The problem with making it scale better of course is you get organised groups @ 25 might having power build characters with 875 – 1175 condition damage (depending on trait line bonuses) just for having might.
Defiant does not need changing, it’s there to stop incompetent players from randomly CC’ing and being rewarded for it. The games mechanics do not need changing either, there will always be optimal builds and weapons in a game, wanting your builds to be on par with the meta builds is flat out ludicrous. The only thing I can agree with being an issue is conditions, they need to remove the cap in PvE and make them scale better with condition damage or something.
DPS is not the only thing that matters in PvE, I really wish people would stop spreading this lie around.
Truth is, once an individual has attained a decent grip on the game’s mechanics, his profession and the dungeon at hand, DPS is the only thing that matters.
Actually, support is crucial and even worth giving up damage modifiers in some cases. I didn’t expect to have to tell you of all people that. The game being a dps race is just a myth perpetuated by bad players who don’t understand the work involved in achieving smooth runs since they don’t pay any attention to the skills people are using while stacked.
Except, when I tested it with guildies in duo/trio Arah I purposely told them not to buff themselves. It was 20-25 consistently. I did Arah p2 up to Alphard later and then invited guildies in (Alphard I just find stressful soloing on warrior) and we ended up with me, 2 mesmers and 1 guardian because those happened to be the classes they were on. I maintained permanent 25 for them.
So take a break from the spreadsheets and actually test it in game, it’s so easily verifiable it’s kind of sad to see you argue about it.
It also sounds like you’re completely oblivious to the fact that warriors can give themselves fury, you don’t need a pug to do it.
There are a number of NA dungeon guilds like Renegatus, Zerk Wars (though I think a bunch of their core split in to a Jalupeno Peppers guild or something) and Death and Taxes.
Make an LFG asking for no stacking or skipping. It’s only your own fault if you get in to groups that want to skip mobs. I resent fiery Greatsword because it basically sets the skill level required to kill bosses to zero so I rarely bother running in organised settings because everyone is obsessed with just 4-ing corners to death. But you see, I identified a problem I had and decided to remedy it – I mostly pug or solo now since it’s the way I keep the game interesting for myself. If you don’t want to stack and skip, you make groups that specify no skipping or stacking.
Forceful Greatsword triggers Phalanx Strength for one stack of might for six seconds. A GS rotation should look approximately like 2 GS chains > HB > WWA > run back for an average of 6 + 9 + 4 = 19 hits every 10 seconds. Let’s round that up to 20 per 10 seconds and you get 2 hits per second. At 50% critical hit chance that means you get, on average, one crit per second. That equates to one proc of Phalanx Strength per second for 6 seconds, or a sustained 6 stacks. For Great Justice is 3 stacks of might for 25 seconds on a 25 second CD = 3 stacks sustained. PS gives an extra 3 stacks for 6 seconds = 3 × 6 /25 = .72 stacks average. All together: 6 + 3 + .72 = 9.72 stacks of might.
Add in boon duration and Strength runes = +75% might duration. 9.72 × 1.75 =
~17 stacks of might, BUT:
- PS through FGJ only gives might for about 10 seconds. That’s 10 seconds where you have +3 might, 25 without.
- FGJ only gives 3 stacks of might from the start and won’t overlap until 25 seconds in.
So in reality you’re looking at closer to 11 stacks of might for most of the fight, unless you burn your super-long-cooldown elite or the fight’s been dragging on a while.
I guess this is where you guys claim that math is for nerds and you don’t believe in it until I make a video of a warrior not getting 25 stacks of might etc. You know, same old deal? Or should we just skip to the part where I turn out to be right as always?
This is where we tell you to go test it, watch how your party permanently have 20+ stacks of might and then you don’t bother replying again because you realise you were completely wrong.
See now I don’t think that’s fair. I could simply state that PvP is sitting on points with bunkers and condi spamming people to death. Now this does have a semblance of truth since there are so many ways to apply conditions – you can so it with your auto attack, and apex in the tournament of legends just bunkered all of their points and won it that way. But you and I both know there’s more to it than that, and it’s exactly the same in PvE. Learning to solo Lupicus taught me more about my classes than anything else in the game, and pushing for faster kill times requires me to learn what all of my traits do, how to gain their effects and how they synergise with my dps rotation. You also know full well you can’t just randomly dodge in PvE either if you want to play it at a high level, every single dodge even if you mistimed it should be done with intent, either to proc a low endurance damage modifier or just to mitigate damage. I don’t like simplifying game modes because it’s just a discourtesy to those who play them at the highest standard,, and most importantly, downplaying the level of skill involved is normally incorrect or hyperbole.
