Guild Wars 2

The animation is about as subtle as getting a brick thrown at you. She even has a sound effect to go along with it.

Here’s what you do:

1. Stop stacking inside of her
2. Place reflects properly
3. Don’t spam pointless skills (as warrior go axe/sw + axe/m, hundred blades is just going to block everyone’s screen unless you’re all very comfortable with the fight)

The problem with pugs is they make a lot of particle effects for no real reason, you need to trim it down to the bare necessities.

Sublimatio.6981:

mahariel.4981:

A way up to the boat in Arah path 2 was blocked off. This is great, again.

I wouldn’t be so sure about that At least they tried.

It’s the thought that counts, even if they didn’t block off all the points to the boat.

I was trying to be nice anyway, and then I got a post infracted because I wrote that ArenaNet can’t stand the idea of interacting with the dungeon community since that’s apparently a personal attack towards their staff despite the fact that they moved my thread to trashcan dungeon forum.

spoj.9672:

mahariel.4981:

Actually, if you stop stacking directly on top of her and pay attention, it’s quite easy to see. Place reflects directly on her, but dodge just in case they slip through, then it’s a smooth fight. It’s not bugged, they made the fight better.

Debatable. The fight is definately better in some ways. But i still consider it a bug.

I don’t think it’s bugged at all, they’ve just heavily trimmed the margin for error.

Actually, if you stop stacking directly on top of her and pay attention, it’s quite easy to see. Place reflects directly on her, but dodge just in case they slip through, then it’s a smooth fight. It’s not bugged, they made the fight better.

You could have had all of that utility while going 10/20/0/25/15.

And missing out on usually 12-16% in damage modifiers? No.

For every mantra that goes on cooldown you lose 4% damage from Empowered Mantras, and then you have to consider their individual cooldowns, and the fact that each mantra has a 2.75s cast time, in which you’re doing no decent damage, or utility (aside from instant cast spells). Empowered Mantras seems great in theory, but in practice, I can’t get passed the 2.75s cast time and the fact that using them makes you lose the benefit. It kinda seems like a Signet Warrior (thematically, like how it’s meant to be an entirely selfish build, not on it’s merit)

You recharge them in trash skips.

And from what I can tell, unless it has changed, or I was mistaken, Empowered Illusions and Phantasmal Strength stack, giving you 30% damage increase on phantasms versus the 16% from Empowered Mantras (given you never use them). I’m sincerely curious as to why Empowered Mantras is superior to you, than taking both Empowered Illusions and Phantasmal Strength? Especially since every support benefit you listed from the mantras can still be utilized by the latter build, without hinging its dps from having mantras up and unused. Perhaps clarification will get me passed that mantra cast time barrier and have me use it. But 2.75s cast time per mantra is quite a lot.

I thought it would have been common sense that you don’t charge them mid-fight, but you seem actually be anchoring your argument around the concept that someone would be so braindead so as to completely destroy their DPS and charge one. Empowering mantras is worth taking because phantasms are unreliable and it makes your reflects more potent if you stack damage modifiers.

Watch each fight we did:

At Belka, mesmer drops a warden then grabs a lightning hammer. Second fight, Illusions just eat the abomination swing. Third fight, anything outside of feedback pretty much gets obliterated, plus this is where damage modifiers are key to make Lupicus suicide. Alphard, you’ve got wardens up but the fight is extremely reflect heavy – damage modifiers are important again. Phantasms don’t even work on Brie.
the reason empowering mantras works is because it’s more practical than relying overly on phantasms.

Drop your reflects directly on to her or be ready to eat the bomb. New alphard is good, she’s now joined lupicus as a pug destroyer and rewards players for strong, tight gameplay, I.e. speed running arah veterans. Took me like 15 attempts in a pug to get the hang of it, but now I can reflect her quite reliably.

In my opinion, the quoted definition is not extreme and actually very fair. However, I do believe that you should recognize that while there is the melee method to almost all bosses, some other fights like the elemental shaman, lupicus, and the final dredge boss, all have very common and very often used ranged tactics (out of maybe 50 runs of 48s, I have only twice been in groups that melee these and that’s because someone was vocal about it). I think if a mesmer pulled out a ranged weapon on any of these fights, that you should communicate to him/her that your group is doing the melee method. If the player is experienced, he will know the basic strategies for melee-ing the fight and will switch. You should not insta-kick, just mention the use of melee weapons. for the fight. If he says anything to the contrary and acts all “but GS is king blah blah”, then you are totally within your bounds to kick the player.
I was a bit miffed at the example you mentioned, with the mesmer at the volcanic fractal (which can only be a 3rd fractal), because I believe by, at most, the 2nd fractal, you should have been able to tell if the mesmer played how an experienced mesmer should play, and kicked accordingly. Since he was fine until volcanic, it seems very harsh to kick him upon seeing the greatsword. Maybe he thought he would pull the guys and then switch to melee once they aggroed in the stack? I do not know, it just seemed harsh and that you should have been able to tell sooner.

We pretty much 3-manned Fractals and then set up an LFG for volcanic, so the badsword mesmer wasn’t with us beforehand. We had a p/p thief in uncategorised we booted too.

However, since we’ve got it out in the open that my definition is reasonable, it was therefore fair of me to initiate a kick. If most pugs range certain bosses, then well maybe they should stop writing “experienced only” in their LFG because it just means they’re looking for actual experienced players to carry them, and I’ve carried basically every single pug i’ve done Arah p2 with through Alphard despite them supposedly being experienced.

It’s unfair on players like me who want actual experienced players to be subjected to bads like this who refuse to read my LFG properly.

Psst. Bearbow has its uses. The shortbow does incredible amounts of bleed damage, and the bear having very high base toughness draws aggro so you can easily stay in its back arc and stack MOAR bleeds. Though in dungeons, the bear is usually not as useful as the Lashtail Devourer, which adds MOAR bleed and also has a superhigh bleed spec. Unless your party’s condi cleansers fail and you already used up your Healing Spring, in which case the Brown Bear’s F2 becomes useful.

But condition damage is bad in dungeons, so then bleeds become irrelevant. So what ends up happening is you have a low DPS pet, and are using a low DPS weapon so you’re being a dead weight for your party.

Now if you were a power spec and using a longbow from 1200 range, then that would be a problem. Out of range of might, not really taking your share of aggro/damage, breaking the melee stack pattern for CoE bosses, etc etc etc. Don’t hate on condi shortbows.
Btw, the Axe/whatever + Shortbow combination is best used at sub 100 unit ranges so all five poison arrows/all five bleed axes can hit. They’re not melee weapons but sure as heck do much better in melee than further away. The only case in which this build fails is for the singular fight in TA F/F where you have to hit the rangers in perm projectile nullification bubbles. Any condi ranger will have to carry a backup sword if ever running that dungeon.

Condi specs are bad, and a good ranger takes sword and whichever off-hand is most relevant to the situation.

You all keep avoiding my question.

Is “is comfortable with the mechanics of an encounter and plays and gears appropriately” an extreme definition of “experienced”? Nobody is answering this, I keep getting told that my expectations are extreme, but the quote is exactly what my standards are when I make an “experienced only” lfg. Is it unfair? And if so, why?

I cant melee alphard so what? An extra 5 min to range I dont care.

You’ve basically just said Arah p2 is faceroll because you can range the bosses. Well done I guess, I heard bearbows were pretty good at ranging.

And about the skips, I dont abuse stealth consumable like some bads out there. So yea , the truth is I can duo arah now even if I die alot and it takes us 1 hour. 0 exploits used , yep 0.

You’re ignoring the fact that I and many others can perform the skips in Arah without consumables. I’ll use feathers when I’m feeling particularly lazy but I do the skips properly frequently enough to keep myself comfortable performing them legit.

And if you are so pro why you joined my group? You should have solo’ed instead. Oh wait you cant solo and you cannot duo , that’s sad.

Because I wanted to use the lfg tool? And for the record, I have solo’d every single p2 boss except Alphard, which to be honest I haven’t really made the effort to practice because it felt tedious on warrior kiting around boxes. I don’t know if it was your group, but I’ve asked in a number of groups if I can duo Alphard and I have a pretty high success rate with it, one time I downed I got hit when she was at zero HP bar and then finished her in downed state.

I know how you were looking at my twilight, you want my sword right?. You"ll never have it , because bads will never make enough money to affrod one.

It’s kinda funny how far from the truth that is. If anything, bads, knowing they can’t do difficult content will resort to farming easier content for their legendaries like the faceroll dungeon paths and frostgorge which is very profitable.

Sounds like you’re just surprised I called you out and are reeling from it. If you’re going to smack talk about how faceroll a dungeon is, at least be able to faceroll it yourself.

It would be nice if we could get back on topic though, I’m not sure how relevant your incompetence at an Arah path is to the actual thread subject.

“Not that hard”? “Easily finish the path”? Is that why you repeatedly faceplanted at Alphard and said in the party chat she was overpowered? And then you didn’t even make the last skip to Brie?

Well I took part in an 8:58 Arah p3 run, and 12:41 and 12:22 Arah p2 runs, so how about you see how much damage you can do in comparison to our mesmer in each boss fight, there’s full recordings of his perspective too.

What if … you youtubed a run through? Or joined a teaching run? Or newbies only?

I don’t mind explaining to people, just don’t be a newbie and join an experienced only run.

Welcome back. RG got bored of Camelot Unchained or something?

knives.6345:

J Eberle.9312:

knives.6345:

swiftpaw.6397:

knives.6345:

Now, apparently, moving a topic to a correct section is now wrong, because kitten logic. I may have missed that memo.

In true Gw2 forum style I say this to you.

’That’s just your opinion’

K. My argument about moving it into this section still stands.
Happy Sunday.

No. It doesn’t. Because it’s your opinion.

It is? Well, the Dungeon subforum description begs to disagree.

I noticed that the word “opinion” is being tossed around carelessly is most forums I have been. It’s usually used when someone has no more counter-argument to raise (sometimes, it’s name calling, ie: fanboy).

If I say GW2 sucks because it’s boring, that’s an opinion.
If I say Sunrise is better than Twilight because it’s more uncommon, that’s an opinion.
If I say that a dungeon post is correctly moved to dungeon section, it’s a fact simply because there is a forum description to back it up.

Look, I get what this thread is all about. I really do. I also get that OP wants to bring this to ANet, that’s why it’s originally posted on GD. I would’ve done the same. But when ANet’s mods did the right move, don’t QQ. For once they did something correctly.

Now, you all could QQ about devs not visiting this subforum for all I care, but moving the thread? Srsly?

“Talk over dungeon strategy, thoughts, groups or more”

Does not encompass ArenaNet’s refusal to engage with the dungeon community. The closest forum I could think to post this was the Guild Wars 2 Discussion forum, since my thread is aimed less at dungeons itself and more a request for more interaction with the dungeon community.

If you can’t see how this thread being moved would upset people, then I’d like to make the suggestion of looking for ArenaNet symbols in threads on this subforum over the last ten to twenty pages, and count how many are recent posts and which are purposely necro’d threads with months old developer replies.

I post where I want.

And that’s why I said there’s nothing to discuss with people who think that their way is the only way to do anything. You keep calling it an “ad hominem” but you’re basically agreeing with me that you consider “experienced” to be “does things the way I do them”. I don’t agree with that definition, nor I expect do most people, and so there’s really nothing to talk about.

I don’t understand what’s so extreme about my definition. Would you honestly say “is comfortable with the mechanics of an encounter and plays and gears appropriately” is an unfair definition of an experienced player?

Funny because I can’t recall ever getting into an exchange like this one here before. If it happens to you regularly, you might want to reflect on why that is.

It’s because my views are unpopular so they get flak.

Maybe that’s because there is no real argument or discussion to be had with you, because you apparently believe your viewpoints to be the only correct ones. (So yes, it is one-sided).

If you feel my definition of experienced is unfair, please explain why. It looks reasonable when I read it, I’m not sure what I’m missing. I’ve quoted it again just above this so you can take a look again.

There are obviously some builds and ways of playing that are bad or inferior to others, and you’re not wrong in all your points, but your delivery needs some working on.

My delivery does not need working on, people need to stop getting their feelings involved and start looking at things practically.

And in the final analysis if a group can successfully complete a dungeon, and do it in roughly the same amount of time (and have fun!)

Time to link it again I guess.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=427QaI-Ic5U

It’s almost like … we had fun. Did you know minmaxers could have fun? I never would have guessed, it seems crazy.

, does it really matter if they kill the final boss at range or with melee? Whatever works, works. You can’t argue with results. Although you’ll probably try.

What matters is that people who meet the criteria of my lfg join. People who range aren’t experienced and therefore are instantly deserving of a kick.

In dueling you’ll take phantasmal fury, blade training and empowering mantras. If you aren’t currently using mantras you can slot out empowering mantras for something like duelist’s discipline or deceptive evasion. In inspiration you take glamour mastery and warden’s feedback and in illusions you’ll take compounding power and phantasmal haste if you have 20 points there. In domination you take empowered illusions and if you have 30 points in dom (30/30/0/0/10) anything that boosts damage I guess. I remember domination mostly being pretty janky for PvE.

The point of posting it there was for it to receive more exposure. Unfortunately, I now know that if I’m ever nice about things I just get ignored.

Ranger: Spotter, frost spirit (traited, untraited)

Guardian: aegis (to enable longer DPS uptime in certain situations)

Mesmer: time warp

Warrior: banner of strength, banner of discipline, battle standard for might and fury for longer fights when pre-stacking might drops off

Elementalist: fiery greatsword, lightning hammer (built-in blast finisher makes it easy to keep up might in longer fights as long as there are fire fields, e.g. embers or purging flames)

Good to know I was wasting my time trying to be reasonable, it seems they would prefer their dungeon forum to just remain a toxic wasteland.

I was in a group that set world records for Arah p2 and p3, and I can tell you now, stability and cond-cleanse mantras were extremely useful. Heal mantra is just extra DPS and can be popped for the mesmer to keep up scholar runes, mantra of resolve got us out of combat quicker and dealt with things like poison quickly. Stability dealt with belka’s troll knockback. So…. yeah. A mesmer can still ooze utility with mantras.

I’ll preface this by saying I hope we can have a constructive discussion, and any ArenaNet input would be greatly appreciated.

Now a little about myself – I was once just your average player doing some nice open world events, zerging down bosses, going on the daily loot train. Slaying dragons, all that kind of thing. Sure, dungeons were just a little side activity that I did every now and then. It began to change when I first made my mesmer to get in on COF p1 farming; I wanted a legendary and needed to get the $$$ to buy a precursor. As boring as it was, a weird part of me looks back at the old lfgs of “p1 zerk farm, 2h, ping gear!” with a strange nostalgia. Then I began crafting a warrior up, and it was then I began to take the game more seriously (started researching strong builds, that kind of thing, I wasn’t interested in leveling the normal way again).

The dungeon forum and its regulars were basically an endless pool of information. Unsure about something? Ask! I was having trouble with Lupicus so I asked for advice. I wanted people with a similar mindset to play with me so I asked who would be interested. I wanted to learn about how the DPS of classes compared to one another, so I got involved in DPS discussions and asked questions.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not the nicest of places. Sure, once you’re in the “circle” it’s fine and you can do what you want and nobody will really fling anything at you, but I can imagine it’s intimidating for someone to ask for help about something and to be told quite bluntly what they would have to do to overcome the challenge, so as opposed to elsewhere in the forum where niceties are more commonplace, and people are more willing to meet at a middle ground. People who interact in the dungeon subforum will generally be polarised between users who swear by berserker gear, myself included, and those who are more inclined to say “play how you want to play”.

Now here is where my issue is, after all of that. The dungeon team was disbanded quite early on and amalgamated in to the living story teams. Now while I personally disagree with this decision, it’s understandable from ArenaNet’s perspective since they would want to push their concept of fortnightly updates to create an ever-changing world and to see how it would compare to the old expansion concept. Dungeons take quite a while to construct too, and the Living Story would be their method of being able to implement new dungeons or improve older ones while giving it an in-lore justification. For example, the Twilight Arbor F/U revamp and the introduction of the molten facility which came along through the Flame & Frost storyline.

The problem however, is that there are a number of issues which people have with the current dungeons. As far as I know, ArenaNet have actually been sent videos of exploits, most notably in Arah and they have yet to do anything about them. If we ignore the whole Fractured! controversy but look purely at the rewards revamp, you get rewarded I believe 1.4g for performing a fractal of level 40 or higher. Now if you compare this to AC which can take a decent group maybe 15 minutes, you get 1.5g, which is more than what the fractal runners who worked their backsides off got for maybe an hour (if in an organised group) or multiple hours, got.

Any opinions in the dungeon forum are completely ignored, dismissed, deleted. If they are insulting or off-topic, then yes, it is correct to delete them, for that is a violation of forum rules, however there are perfectly reasonable threads, not even asking for revamps, but simple fixes which are simply overlooked. The other concern I have is that when things are fixed, they’re never mentioned in patches. You could pretty much glitch Alphard in Arah p2 if you stacked in the middle to never daggerstorm, and recently ArenaNet changed that. Now she’s a more interesting fight admittedly, and it rewards strong, tight play so as opposed to just spamming reflect which is great! But this was never mentioned in the patch notes. A way up to the boat in Arah path 2 was blocked off. This is great, again. However it wasn’t mentioned in patch notes.

So all I can say I’d really want … is just more interaction with the dungeon community. We aren’t expecting new content, a dungeon team doesn’t even exist anymore so it would be a bit excessive unless it was tied to the Living Story itself (in which case it becomes Living Story content), but I think I speak for a number of people when I say I wish there was more interaction between us. How do we feel about certain fights? Are there major issues worth fixing? Is X path too long? Is the reward for path Y appropriate? Minor things like this, it would be nice to be able to interact with staff about. If you feel it’s reasonable to ask for suggestions on what could appear in a new instance … even better, but that’s up to you of course.

Taking into account that % bonuses don’t apply to Phantasms, and Phantasm builds arguably provide the highest dps in PvE, I really think that you’re being a little skewed here.

The builds I listed all hit a phantasm damage modifier and hit both personal damage modifiers in the form of empowering mantras and compounding power. Phantasms are less reliable DPS than a player, so giving yourself modifiers is always a plus, especially since mesmers are sorely lacking in them (compare it to a warrior with 10%+ while wielding greatsword, 15%+ at full adrenaline, 10%+ to a bleeding foe, 3%+ while not at full endurance and then you have DPS boosts like deep strikes, rending strikes and fast hands which allow you to maintain a greatsword/axe+mace rotation quite solidly which is a DPS boost of ~10%+ in itself over pure axe.

Now what you have to remember, is these are reliable damage modifiers, a mesmer only has two conditional ones, empowering mantras and compounding power, so you’re not even going to be getting the full benefit of them most of the time. Nevertheless, you need to take what you can get.

Phantasms are an extension of yourself (as cheesy as that sounds), and boosting the damage they deal definitely matches up (if not out-performs) an Empowering Mantra build.

I kind of doubt a potential 25%+ in personal damage modifiers is beaten by 15%+ phantasm damage considering builds taking empowering mantras already one of the phantasm damage modifiers.

Which is exactly the point I’m trying to bring around. You make it sound like Empowering Mantras is the best thing since sliced bread. It isn’t. It’s good, yes, but not a necessity.

If empowering mantras wasn’t such a big deal, it wouldn’t be run in every single dungeon meta build.

You’ve got a definition of “experienced” that implies specific characteristics of a build that you expect others to magically know, and you’d consider someone applying to your group without meeting your predefined requirements – even if they actually are experienced but just play differently – an act of “griefing”.

Then they’re not experienced. If a bearbow joins my group, are they “experienced but play differently”? Of course not, they’re just pewpewing content and letting beary the bear roll in to eat hits every now and then. Like I said, an experienced player is someone who is comfortable with the mechanics of an encounter (e.g. meleeing Lupicus because you know his tells) and gears appropriately (i.e. berserker gear since they will be able to mitigate damage through dodging, blocks, blind, invulnerability or whatever other resources their class has at its disposal), and for someone to not fit that is griefing because you’re imposing yourself on a group that’s not interested in having you. If you made a group for a casual dungeon run and I joined, I would be griefing because I don’t share that mentality and as a result do not meet the prerequisite of your group. Again in my case, the pug joining does not meet the prerequisite of my group and is therefore griefing.

That’s a level of self-absorption that precludes any sort of reasonable discussion.
I wrote what I did because I literally laughed at your reply – it’s kind of amazing that you can’t see how wrapped up you are in your own view of things to the point where you’re incapable of entertaining the idea that others might see things differently.

It’s stuff like this that adds nothing to discussion.

Enough you two. Your posturing is making this forum smell bad.

Also this adds nothing. I can’t have an (albeit one-sided) argument or debate in this forum without having insults thrown at me.

Classy as ever I see. Not even bothering to answer me with real responses, just calling me out for imaginary ad hominems.

I think your constant insistence that everyone who disagrees with you is somehow either stupid or griefing puts you well into the ad hominem category.

What? Someone griefing my lfg means I’m using ad hominems?

And that’s just here; the noxious behavior I was talking about is what you’ve described about how you act in-game.

Why yes, I’m a complete horror in-game, just ask all those people who talk to me in game how much of a pain I am.

spoiler alert – i’m not

People with such specific ideas about what “experienced” means should not be PUGging, IMO.

So let’s get this straight:

“is comfortable with the mechanics of an encounter and plays and gears appropriately”

Is an extreme definition of experienced? If someone is well-versed in something, it means they can do it efficiently both through their method and their choice of gear since they know how best to tackle the content.

If you want to actually be able to do decent damage yourself then yes, empowering mantras is a necessity. Mesmers are already quite narrow in their uses, might as well try to compensate for their lower practical DPS by getting some damage modifiers in there via mantras.

And you don’t just roll mantras, you roll utility skills and fill all of the blanks with mantras, and adjust to a situation accordingly. For example against Lupicus you can go mantra heal, feedback, mantra, mantra, whereas Archdiviner you might go mantra, feedback, null field, mantra to deal with the projectile attack and if someone doesn’t get out of a well quick enough

If you don’t need mantras at all, you can swap out the trait for that dungeon/section/area for like duelist’s discipline or something. A good player is someone who uses a strong build and swaps utilities, and sometimes even traits around.

swiftpaw.6397:

I’m scared.

Colesy, hold me.

Evaded!

I’m sorry swiftpaw, I’m an elitist. did you see that dodge?

I wonder how many of the ‘zerker or go home" advocates truly know how much time it saves on a run vs running a half/half build.

Well let’s see, I’ve cleared Arah p3 in a full zerker team in ~8:58, how long is your fastest run?

I’ve been playing since headstart and I do nothing but PVE dungeons and completed them all within a couple months of the game(even Arah P4 when it was truly a dps race)

Was it ever a DPS race? Five bearbows can kill Simin, I really doubt pre-nerf Simin was so hard that it was a DPS race.

Like others have said, the groups that require zerker or kick or anything like that are usually fail players who need to be carried.

Way to go and generalise people who just want smooth runs.

Play the way you like and have fun. If you aren’t having fun, wtf is the reason for even playing.

Because when you join an instance with a bad build, you’re wasting your group’s time, now I don’t know about you but I value both myself and other peoples’ time and don’t like to waste it by running some bad build.

ut a partial is fine as long as you can stay alive and do dps. Better to do decent dps the whole time than good dps 1/4 the time and have the rest of the group have to stop dpsing to rez your sorry kitten .

Well actually it’s not, because otherwise you end up with situations where a berserker user can sit in defeated state in a fight for X amount of time and still be averaging out to have higher DPS than someone using a low DPS setup.

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

Any of those.

Anything which is 20/x/x/x/x and traits greatsword is automatically bad, and x/20/x/x/x builds are questionable because it means you’re unable to use empowering mantras.

Svarty.8019:

fadeaway.2807:

It’s perfectly playable if you are good at dodging, don’t waste aegis, know when to blind, when to reflect, when to cleanse and when to shelter.

Oh sorry, I didn’t realise this class was solely for elitists. My bad.

Sorry, I didn’t know being a good player automatically made someone an elitist.

It’s times like this I can’t believe the people on this forum are real.

Interesting that you’ve resorted to ad hominems and i’m the noxious one. You know my standards for “experienced” are perfectly reasonable, yet you’re arguing against me for no real reason besides “I don’t like you” – it’s at that point you should just step out because your personal feelings are clouding your judgement.

I’m not flawless, I die, I make errors, and anyone I’ve played with can testify to that, but when I write “experienced only” in my lfg, I don’t expect to get people who aren’t geared properly and are clearly not experienced; a mesmer using greatsword is like a ranger using bow – clear signs of an inexperienced player, and yet we will all happily condescend towards bearbows (because hurhur it’s so funny), but when it comes to calling out bads of other classes, like greatsword mesmers and cleric mace/shield guards, people like to defend their abysmal builds.

They’re completely random. I like to solo Arah path 2, and I’m practicing on one of the bosses and I’ve literally had my client disconnect four times in a row, killing my progress (though luckily the instance is fine). What could be causing it?

I’m sure we know by now that fiery rush is good DPS :p

@Mahariel, to be fair, while melee-ing the first grawl boss can be learned pretty quickly, melee-ing the elemental shaman is difficult, and very few “experienced only” players melee him. I have run a ton of 48 (now 49) fractals and never been in such a group that went full melee on the grawl boss.

Then quite clearly they’re not experienced. How is it that someone like me who basically never runs fractals has learnt all of the tells and melees imbued shaman but a ton of “experienced” players don’t? With the camera bug it’s a lot more understandable, but before then it’s practically inexcusable.

think you should be very clear in the post. You can know some of the boss fights very well and be very experienced, such as the final dredge boss and the final grawl boss, and have always run in groups that use ranged weapons.

Again, they’re clearly not experienced and clearly don’t know the fight if they’re ranging. If you actually know the final dredge boss you can go balls deep in melee and not get hit once, use DnT videos as a reference if you want, that’s where I learnt the tells from, and then I rolled a pug, melee’d just fine and basically carried the entire group’s DPS.

To say it demonstrates an inability to learn or that you are not experienced is excessive.

It’s not excessive at all, it’s completely correct. Experienced players know their actual boundaries when it comes to melee vs. ranged such as Vahid in Arah p4, and Archdiviner forces you to back out of melee too since his attacks are very hard-hitting. With pretty much 99% of other bosses though, if you’re ranging it demonstrates one or multiple of the following:

1. Inability to learn
2. Refusal to learn
3. Laziness
4. Incompetence

I’d put “playhowyouwant” as under incompetence too, such as a bearbow who enjoys ranging. Pugs generally fall under all four categories since they’re sheep to the perceived meta; I’m sure if you asked a “no rangers, necros, engis” lfg why they’d just say “bad” or “low dps”, which means that they’re just following a perceived meta they don’t understand, and don’t realise why those classes have a stigma attached to them.

Join a dungeon guild.

In NA you’ll have guilds like DnT, Coldsnap (IX) and LOD. Also, be more open minded regarding classes.

My disagreement is that you vote kick someone just because you see they have a particular weapon equiped. They could have a really good build that maybe you never thought of, but you’ll never know since you vote kicked them.

No, they won’t have a really good build I never thought of, because meta builds are good builds, and not a single meta build uses a greatsword. Also, it’s people who built the meta who are the ones who push classes to their maximum, so there’s no kind of hidden secret that could suddenly make greatsword good, therefore someone using it is clearly inexperienced with either an encounter, their class, or even both.

I know that the Blackwater build has some bad traits for PVE, which is why I said I would modify the build to be more useful in PVE.

Quite literally every single trait in the blackwater build is useless in PvE. Swap the traits around, drop the 10 in domination, 30 in chaos and stick them literally anywhere besides where they originally were and take more appropriate traits. So that leaves you with 10/20/0/0/0 and forty trait points. Drop the 10 in domination for fifty trait points.

I seriously can not believe you guys are perfectly ok with someone attempting to grief my instance, like, I am literally flabbergasted that you’re perfectly cool with it.

They’re griefing because they’re joining an experienced only lfg while not being experienced, just how it would be griefing for me to join a casual group while not being a casual. I don’t like carrying people unless I’ve specifically gone in to the dungeon with intent to carry (like the Arah p2 teaching run I did a little while back).

Qaelyn, I agree with you as well. When I run dungeons, its with guildies and friends who are more interested in showing players how to fights right the first time, instead of just kicking less “experienced” players. I stay away from the LFG tool for the same reason you do (try to avoid elitist groups). After all, it’s a game and people play it to have fun.

Not aimed at me, but there’s a point here worth responding to regardless. Do you think it’s fine that I make an LFG asking for an experienced player, get an inexperienced one and have to kick them since they don’t fit the criteria? Do you think it’s fine to grief my group purely because it’s “elitist”? Again, I will not join a “casual run, p1” group, so why should inexperienced players join my experienced only lfgs?

Not one experienced player I know with a mesmer runs greatsword, and for the extremely rare times that I log mesmer, I don’t either, so why was it wrong for me to kick the mesmer from my fractal when I made the logical assumption that they weren’t experienced? I’d do exactly the same if I saw a shield, scepter, mace or staff on a guardian.

After searching the forums, I’m leaning more towards running with the Blackwater build with some tweaks to make it better for PVE, and less for WvW.

Blackwater is complete trash for PvE since it takes traits that are completely irrelevant, just how running some 30/25/0/0/15 warrior in to PvP is complete trash there since the traits aren’t going to help you survive against the meta. Builds like 0/30/0/25/15, 10/30/0/20/10, 10/30/0/10/20 are the kind of ones you want to run for dungeons since they hit both personal and phantasm damage modifiers, provide cooldown reductions for relevant skills and in any x/x/x/20/x build, you trait your focus which enables your phantasmal warden and temporal curtain to reflect projectiles.

My initial question was an honest one as I have never had anyone say boo to me in game about my using a GS anywhere in PvE. The tirades were your choice.

If nobody has ever criticised it, you’re either playing with bad players, or good players who are too nice to say anything. The tirades were my choice, but you provoked them, so to try and clear yourself from responsibility I find quite pathetic when it’s pretty well known on this subforum that I’ll argue against the weapon until I’m blue in the face.

Efficiency can be fun. Dealing with people who think 100% efficiency is the end all be all of playing part of a game, or who obnoxiously boot people from their group because they decide their build isn’t exactly the way they would do it? Not fun.

You can melee both bosses in grawl fractal, therefore the mesmer having a greatsword demonstrates a lack of experience, an inability to learn, or a conscious decision to use a weaker weapon. If I ask for experienced players, I want experienced players. I dunno, maybe “is comfortable with the mechanics of an encounter and plays and gears appropriately” is too much to ask from a supposedly experienced player.

I’d rather take twice as long to do a dungeon with “inefficient” players than have to endure one with an attitude like yours.

Which is why I don’t dungeon with inexperienced players, again, so I don’t inflict myself on them. If I can do all of you a favour by not partying with you, please do groups asking for experienced players a favour, and leave your ranged weapons at home.

Not sure how you can’t see the elitism when you kick someone who may even be a better mesmer than you (you asked for experienced, right) but is carrying a GS

I’m pretty terrible on mesmer but if a mesmer is taking GS, they’re pretty much worse than me right there because it takes a conscious decision to be inefficient for someone to take greatsword.

And of course it’s elitist, but if they don’t meet my group’s requirements I have every right to kick them. When I ask for experienced players, I literally mean experienced players, not “i’ve done this a few times hurrrrr”, it’s why I’m at the point I just duo or trio dungeons mostly if I can’t get enough contacts, because I can’t stand carrying players who have claimed to be experienced.

But do you know what else is elitist? “p1, casual run”. That’s excluding metagamers and the people in the party feel them to be beneath them and don’t want to suffer their presence. But of course, that’s perfectly fine because … reasons.

If they’re experienced, just ask them

If a warrior rolls in to a dungeon with a longbow, do you think they’re experienced? No, of course not.

. If they give you a bad answer, politely state that by experienced you meant “not GS”. Seriously you’re doing players no good by just kicking them outright once you hear the purple beam.

I did my whole team good by booting them, we didn’t have time to be carrying people. The only thing I found unacceptable was one of the warriors we took along ,a guy I knew just said “we’re only taking you for the banner” which I thought was out of order.

Some people seem to be under the bizarre impression that this is a mission-critical military operation rather than a game.

OP asks for build ideas, I give him build ideas. You bait long tirades from me by questioning my condescension towards greatsword.

I don’t do dungeons a great deal (in part because it’s boring to do the same thing over and over, and in part because of pompous attitudes like those on display in this thread) but when I do, I go with friends or guildies. Despite not being 100% efficient, we still get through them. Sometimes we actually have a bit of fun, even if it takes a few minutes longer. Shocking, I know.

Listen to our TS comms and tell us all with a straight face that we weren’t having fun. Who would have guessed, efficiency can be fun.

Oh, and on more than one occasion I have saved the group’s bacon specifically because I was not in melee range.

And maybe to stop cheap remarks like this I need to start recording every time I finish off Lupicus or duo Alphard with a group to save them all from everlasting torment.

Why would you report them? If you join an experienced only LFG and you don’t fulfill their criteria, you are griefing them, therefore it actually be right for them to report you. I don’t join “lf p1 casual run” groups because I don’t share their mentality and wouldn’t inflict my insistence for efficiency on them and that would be griefing, however if I label my lfg “experienced only” and I get players who can’t perform trash skips, don’t use proper tactics on bosses and aren’t meleeing, it’s fully within my rights to kick them.

“Elitism” isn’t some kind of get out of jail free card that people who don’t care about efficiency can drop when they’re slighted by more hardcore players.

People quite wrongfully hate on rangers, but it’s the players being bearbows that are the problem, not rangers themselves. Rangers offer spotter, frost spirit, fury from warhorn and solid DPS.

I hate all of the classes equally because whenever I roll dungeons, most people don’t actually play them properly, and a cleric “healer” guard isn’t actually any better than a bearbow ranger.

I wasn’t aware that anyone had been elected Grand High Arbiter of Right and Wrong when it came to builds.

I wasn’t aware that greatsword had higher DPS and relevant utility skills so as opposed to sword and off-hand sword, pistol or focus.

Look at the greatsword objectively, versus something like sword-sword.

The auto attack is weaker. The second skill doesn’t really do anything, the third skill doesn’t do anything (and sword auto is boon stripping per 2.5s), the phantasm is outclassed by swordsman and the five skill is just awkward to use and replaceable by temporal curtain.

Sword auto is stronger, blurred frenzy is an extremely powerful evade, illusionary leap is questionable, illusionary riposte is a nice DPS spike when timed properly plus solid damage mitigation, and swordsman is our second strongest phantasm. Slot in focus, and you get temporal curtain and phantasmal warden which have spades of utility versus phantasmal berserker and illusionary wave.

It also means being out of “dying all the time” range, which is my preference.

If you go in melee, you learn the encounters, which means you die a lot less. Staying at range means you don’t bother to learn mechanics since you can safely pewpew from a distance.

Well you’re just so uberUber00ber I’m clearly not worthy to be in your presence. (Honestly, the attitude of some people around here is amazing.)

We want experienced players, and a mesmer using greatsword is clearly neither experienced nor aware of the actual meta. Since they didn’t fit the criteria of the group, they deserved a kick.

Since when isn’t (stupid censor) it?

Since I, Guang and others bulldozed through the entire forum pointing out they were wrong. Range means lower dps and also means being out of boon range. Worst case scenario, you aggro the boss away from melee’ers, and I can tell you how annoying it is for Lupicus to get ranged aggro when I’m trying to melee. On the rare occasions I make a group, seeing greatsword on a mesmer is pretty much an instant kick, I did fractals with Emanuel a little while ago, we got to grawl and needed an extra and the moment I saw the phantasmal berserker and heard the laser, I initiated a kick.

I was just generally speaking, since it seems like most of the Mesmer builds people run are Zerker Greatsword builds.

Therefore the logical conclusion then is that most builds are bad. Note how it’s always pugs using greatswords and not decent players. Again, speaking of dungeons. Open world I find too casual to find worth arguing, and I’m pretty clueless about WvW.

The problem I have with using Sword on both weapon sets is I’d be forced to be in melee range all of the time. If I do go with Berserker gear, that seems kinda squishy to be in melee range all the time, unless I’m missing something.

Boss attacks tend to be quite clearly choreographed, so two dodges, perma-vigour, blurred frenzy and illusionary riposte tends to be pretty good damage mitigation. Lets you sit there and tank Subject Alpha like a champ, lets you block kicks from Lupicus, and gives you a lot of survivability against something like Colossus Rumblus which has annoyingly powerful, frequent attacks (that’s one fight which I repeatedly scrub out on).

But it’s on a 12 second cooldown, 9.5 if you’re traiting for it. For the purpose of this build discussion, forget I mentioned WvW. I’ll be doing PVE and dungeons (Fractals) mostly anyways.

Like I said, my advice is dungeon-centric. Damage mitigation in this game is best done actively, not passively through stacking defensive stats. Get yourself in melee and it’ll force you to pay attention to boss attacks and you’ll improve massively as a player, there’s been a number of times where I’ve had to solo bosses down after the group wiped and it’s knowledge of their attack patterns plus careful use of resources that saved me.

Black Box.9312:

colesy.8490:

Black Box.9312:

colesy.8490:

Black Box.9312:

colesy.8490:

Hearte.6852:

MastaNeenja.1537:

Why would you want to spread out?

You need to be near other people to get them up if they go down
combo fields encourage close proximity play
you can dodge while you are stacked, in fact you are SUPPOSED to
If stacking is bad, then so is ranging and kiting

there is no real punishment for clumping up, and don’t expect any dungeon over hauls the deves are too busy planning what Scarlet will do next.

Also see Ethic’s post

/thread over

This post fits perfectly with the mentality that the current system has bred.

Exactly, there is no need to spread out now.

Also, combo fields encourage ranged play as well with projectile/blast finishers, pet/illusion finishers, etc, so that is moot.

Also, if it wasn’t clear, I’m not arguing for strict ranged combat…just to change the current system that rewards skilless play.

If you think this system rewards skill-less play, then I’d like you to compare your average pug melee zerker experience to a dungeon guild speed clear experience, go ahead and watch any DnT, LOD, Kr or rT video, then compare to pugs.

See the difference? Yeah, that’s called “skill”.

I’d hardly call taking advantage of a poorly designed AI system ‘skill’. There are a small handful of fights that involve skill, but let’s be honest: the bulk of the game is far too simplistic to call a simple understanding of game mechanics ‘skill’.

Then get a group of mates together and replicate it yourselves and stop ****ing on people’s efforts unless you can back it up. The difference between organised groups and ‘experienced’ pugs is light and day, and it annoys me when people try to claim the game is skill-less despite the clear skill gap between random pug and obal gandalf solo.

I already did that just today, actually. Ran some stuff with buddies of mine from a major ‘elite’ PvE guild; their tactics primarily revolved around stacking around a corner, using FGS rush into the wall and hoping that the boss didn’t use its one hit kill attack in time.

I wouldn’t consider myself a hardcore gamer by any means, but I’ve been gaming long enough to know the difference between tactics that actually require skill and strategy as opposed to silly gimmicks. Like I said, there are places where such display of skill shines through here, but let’s be honest: the vast majority of the methods used to clear through this game’s PvE content fall within the latter category.

If they’re such a major guild, then name and shame. No speed clearers I know ‘hope’ to fgs rush before dying, they rush, knowing the boss will die before dealing lethal damage to the player wielding it, or they prepare in advance by say, slotting in arcane shield versus lupicus so they can eat a kick should it happen. I can’t even think of many bosses you wall an hope they don’t one shot, it’s almost like you’re keeping your anecdote so cryptic it didn’t actually happen. Here’s my tip, watch alphard and lupicus kills. They don’t require skill? The fact that I can reliably duo (haven’t attempted solo much) alphard is completely skill less? Oh yeah I forgot, hurrrr pve is faceroll, which explains all of the arah buyers and the tryhards running around this forum who try to put down newbies but can’t zerk in a dungeon to save their life.

Name and shame so that there can be more pointless drama in a forum that’s already overly melodramatic? No thanks. But we wiped more using their ‘guild tactics’ than we ever did when we ran dungeons before they joined the guild. The fights were quick when it worked, but it was all based on chance, not skill.

And what were these imaginary fights? You’re not being specific. If you specify the dungeon path then I can probably tell you how a group would be able to mitigate that chance, because “hoping” doesn’t sound like a speed-clear mentality at all, that just sounds like pugs who heard a certain skill or class was good and hope it’ll work out without having a clue why it’s good (e.g. why warriors are valuable or why people say no rangers – it’s because most of them are bearbows, not that the class is bad, pugs don’t get that).

Since when is greatsword viable in dungeons?

No, the best builds to go for are 0/30/0/25/15 or 10/30/0/20/10, normally on sword/sword + sword/focus or sw/sw + sw/p. Conditions are a complete joke in PvE, though staff (with new sig of the ether especially) I can imagine is a nice weapon to open up a fight with by going warlock > sig > warlock > swap to sword+sword/pistol/focus, third dps phant, then whatever.

Shatters will normally just wreck your sustained DPS so it’s something you will generally avoid doing (you’ll learn which encounters and which situations shatters can work, like distortion against Lupicus’ AOE life drain if you don’t have blurred frenzy up).

WvW I honestly haven’t got a clue, you’d have to specify whether you were roaming or zerging, I can imagine stock phantasm or PU loadouts would be ideal for roaming whereas some sort of 20/20/0/0/30 glamour build for zerging would be more meta for that, though take my word on this with a pinch of salt and let someone more qualified answer there.

ConntectToReality.5926:

This may be a troll thread, but doesn’t the fact that things like “optimal build” and “substandard build” point out a very deep flaw in game design? I mean, shouldn’t GW2 have a greater build diversity instead of everyone sort of settling on one build per class? Why can’t we have a condition built warrior that deals devastating stacks of bleeding?

That being said, I usually use a greatsword on my gaurdian. I use scepter/torch when I need ranged dps, but usually use a staff for speed boosts and buffs.

How is it a deep flaw? I’m sure in any trinity MMO there are builds which involve maximising a character’s healing, tankiness (in the sense of being able to draw aggro, hold it and sustain damage, not just pure damage resiliency) or DPS. The meta builds in GW2 actually have variation, mesmers for example have 0/30/0/25/15, 10/30/0/20/10, 10/30/0/10/20 and then there’s a 30/30/0/0/10 raw DPS build. Warriors originally had the 30/25/0/0/15 and 30/0/0/10/30 builds, now it’s just 30/25. Guardians have 15/15/0/20/20 hammer, 10/30/0/5/25, 20/25/0/0/25, 10/30/0/0/30 or even 10/30/0/10/20.

The reason we can’t, for example have a condition warrior, is that condition damage by its nature is DoT, and dungeons tend to involve spiking bosses down with burst damage, and conditions aren’t going to be any match for a fiery greatsword, a whirlwind in to a wall, a whirling wrath fully inside a hitbox or a thief hacking away behind a boss for the positional damage modifier.

Now if you were to argue it’s a problem that condi builds aren’t viable … then yes, I’m sure people would agree with you that it’s a shame, but that would mean segregating PvE and PvP balance entirely and removing the condition cap, the former which ANet can do, but the latter which hardware restrictions make it impossible for them to do so.