Guild Wars 2

if you insist on using hammer, then please please please, don’t use the knock backs to send enemies flying out of stacks. pleaaaaase.

but basically cygnus is correct. there is no good build, just less bad ones.

What a lovely idea. <3 chef

Hi Gilchin,

Check out the link in my sig for full details (and gw2skills.net builds) for all the builds.

6/6/0/0/2 means 6 in your top line, 6 in the second, 0 in third and fourth, and 2 in bottom. So that’s Domination, Dueling, and Inspiration.

Traiting for wardens comes with the 6/4/0/4/0 or 2/4/0/4/4 builds. The guide in my sig might be helpful for you in deciding which build to run.

Good luck~

dlonie.6547:

inb4 trashcan

Hate to break it to you, but….

At best, this post will be ignored. We don’t get red posts in the dungeon subforum.

At worst, well…I posted something almost exactly like this when they broke Alphard a few months back. I earned an infraction for daring to ask if the devs made a mistake.

I hope you fair better.

but hey, that was reverted a few months later, so maybe it actually was a bug!

HHR LostProphet.4801:

maxinion.8396:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

maxinion.8396:

plz tell us how you know developers meant for bosses to be kited

kthx

If you stack in front of Malrona without any reflect, you’ll die instantly.
The reflect doesn’t hurt her but it negates her only damagesource outside of her highly telegraphed poison.

i can just dodge/evade that, without kiting her. the timing is incredibly easy to figure out. i usually run a full glass, no defense LH ele in this fight and stay entirely in melee. next?

dodging is kiting…

O.o Kiting is running around at range with a weapon so a boss can’t touch you with their attacks— like dragging a kite behind you in the park when you’re a kid. I’m talking about using evade frames and staying within range of the boss at all times. But ok, if that’s what you meant, I guess we agree.

Example: http://www.wowwiki.com/Kiting

Edit: I’m not going to respond to the replies: I was objecting to your wording that kiting was needed. Kiting is not. Damage mitigation is, definitely.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

maxinion.8396:

plz tell us how you know developers meant for bosses to be kited

kthx

If you stack in front of Malrona without any reflect, you’ll die instantly.
The reflect doesn’t hurt her but it negates her only damagesource outside of her highly telegraphed poison.

i can just dodge/evade that, without kiting her. the timing is incredibly easy to figure out. i usually run a full glass, no defense LH ele in this fight and stay entirely in melee. next?

frifox posted a nice video comparing a good melee solo of the Champ Ice Wolf in CoE to a GS camping solo. The difference in times was negligible. When you don’t have the group buffs and cleave advantages of melee range, GS camping isn’t bad.

The question is ~why~ you want to GS camp, and in particular, why you are solo-ing this content. If you want to get it done easily, there are better ways than soloing (zerging, bringing friends). You solo for the challenge usually— and kiting has no challenge. Solo-ing with melee prepares you for the situations where you need to melee (with good groups in dungeons) and helps you become a better player.

If you just care about completion, well, then kite away.

Anyway, this is getting off-topic. If OP wants to become better with the meta phantasm builds, they have to practice with the meta phantasm builds— that’s the only solution.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Zaxares.5419:

VodCom.6924:

Reflects are fine and exist in other games including MMORPGs.

What is not fine is to halve the hp of a single boss by reflecting his projectiles.

I basically agree with this. However, I’m worried that the approach taken by ANet leads more towards destroying the usefulness of reflects. I think that reflects should still work on bosses, but damage caused by reflect skills is capped at a certain amount of damage based on the player’s attributes.

It’s not the damage they want to stop. The damage is completely neglectable. It’s the fact that you can stop the hardest attacks the bosses have, which are meant to be kited, with just putting down a reflection skill for 5~10 seconds.

plz tell us how you know developers meant for bosses to be kited

kthx

What mobility are you missing? You don’t need mobility to avoid damage in PvE— you need evades, blocks, and invuln. You have Blurred Frenzy, you have dodges, you have a block with sword 4. The key is to recognize when an enemy is going to attack you (almost every attack is telegraphed, even slightly), and to prepare for it with one of those skills.

I guess with mobility and condition, you’re referring to staff (which has the 2 ability to get you out of trouble). With staff, you’re mostly running around kiting and never getting close to enemies— when you’re new, of course this is easier. The phantasm build requires a lot more work and concentration: you need to pay attention not just to how close the mob is (which you have to do when you’re kiting), but what the mob is actually doing. This can be hard at first, but is rewarding in the long run: you master the content and you win fights much more rapidly.

Keep in mind that you can always run a 2/4/0/4/4 build without mantras and focus more on phantasm damage. You can easily slot things like blink in that case to get more mobility without DPS loss. This is often an easier build to learn with— you can let your phants focus on damage while you just focus on keeping them alive and keeping yourself alive with your blocks. You can switch to mantras once you’re more comfortable.

My phantasms spawned so many bubbles yesterday, even the wardens. such sad

Stories of bad pugs being more common are grossly exaggerated. I pug AC and CoF most days because I run them after my guild has, and honestly to see what whacky things pugs will do. It’s been the same quality for months. You’ll get kitten s sometimes, you’ll get great people sometimes.

I will say, lots of stoned/drunk people pugging CoF2. That’s made for some amusing runs.

Try Mantra of Recovery. The no-channel heal is quite useful— and doubling phantasms is not really necessary because they usually die fairly quickly from kicks and swipes anyway.

Once you have two mantras, Empowering Mantras is more worthwhile. 5/4/0/5/0 is also an option if you don’t want MoR.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84416-guide-minmax-dungeon-groups-with-any-class-composition/

The builds here are very old and out of date, but the basic principles are solid.

I would definitely kill more trash if the loot from them was better. Absolutely.

The time spent in AC for a speedclear group is longer than most other dungeons (besides CoE and Arah) because of the long timegated events. The award is your prize for surviving the boredom.

Wait, what? Some small spiders are no longer reflectable, but that’s the only thing, right? I haven’t heard anyone complaining about the ACp2 boss, which you can famously reflect to death in seconds (or Lupi, for example).

Ropechef.6192:

Wethospu.6437:

Just fyi, scaling makes barely any difference in boss blitz. It’s the players.

wait…

HUH???

hp / person growth is constant (more or less). it’s just that with more people, you get more PTV leechers, so DPS goes down and time-to-die goes up.

tigirius.9014:

You know what I find fascinating in these threads. All of these dungeoneers who most likely called for the open world fiascos that we’re now seeing with Teq for example, who wanted everything to be harder, wanted the return of CC to the Orr mobs, but make mention of anything that would make dungeons harder and OMG someone call out the guard! GASP.

It’s not a complaint on making things harder. It’s a complaint on making things dumber. Anti-stacking mechanics don’t make the game harder (we’ll still find ways to stack), anti-skipping mechanics don’t make the game harder (we’ll either just be slower or still find ways to skip)— they both just make it dumber.

Harder things, like harder boss mechanics, are welcomed by almost everyone. Hell, many people here support the removal of FGSploits in order to bring some challenge back into the game.

But the point is that threads like these don’t actually have good suggestions.

I generally agree, Ryu, with the one caveat that shatter won’t be very good against dungeon trash (which are usually elite, etc.).

Velimere.7685:

maha.7902:

i’m not using the new peasant naming.

Guild Wars 2 is a peasant? We’re talking about how traits work in the game now, not about personal preference. Good luck telling people to put 10 points into a single trait line when the max per line is now 6.

Joke —-——————>

your head —-————->

Anyway, @Amethyst: shatter is fine for open world. Anything is fine for open world! If you enjoy shatter more, go for it.

Aww, that’s the build I used to level. So much kiting

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-How-To-Mesmer-in-Dungeons lists the current meta for PvE: mantra + phantasm (with some non-Mantra options).

Shatter should never be used in PvE— the sustain is tiny and the burst isn’t even that large.

alpha already does this, fyi

hallo pyro

I also use duelist fwiw, gets the three out faster and it’s only marginally lower DPS than swordsman

Lazy Kai’s build (google for it) is still probably the best build for leveling (especially in the Boss Blitz arena, where it’ll help you get tags, etc.).

Don’t use hammer. It’s not very high damage, and using the knock-backs is very situational (if you know how to use it to bunch up enemies, good— if you’re using it off cooldown and it throws enemies out of stacks, that’s bad).

erm

the posters here are talking about another bug (where merging would instantly destroy parties). this just sounds like you had a party experience.

Lilith, stahp the nightmares, plz

spoj.9672:

Wow that is terrifying.

those teeth, the stuff of nightmares

Ah, sorry for the misinformation. Thanks to moderator then for sparing our thread! <3 moderator

A person said something (silly, imo) that was guaranteed to stir up drama/trouble, which is something we try to avoid in this thread so that we don’t get it closed. Person was called out for starting trouble, but the bait was taken and some people responded to the trouble. Person deleted comment, others deleted responses, etc.

tl;dr: be nice, don’t cause drama in our nice thread

The best for high end PvE is zerker trinkets + assassin’s weapons and armor (with ranger runes). Assassin’s and ranger runes are precision based, zerker trinkets are power based, so the best is a combination.

Check out the link in my sig for the full discussion on gearing for highend PvE.

Obviously in PvP your mileage will vary.

y u respond to videogamermike

Lilith Ajit.6173:

@Jerus:

I haven’t found any math hard since my stat therm course

http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/9709356v6.pdf

maha.7902:

You have mesmers who don’t use feedback? I’m pretty sure 99% of pug mesmers just have it glued to their bar and drop it on every fight.

chaos armor OP

D/F is much more standard for high-end PvE (check out DEKeyz’s and Zelhyn’s stickies above). The extra mobility of offhand dagger is useful, but the damage difference is minimal (air auto-attack is still the best source of damage) and the extra survivability from things like Obsidian Flesh and Swirling Winds is substantial.

Aezryn.1462:

Thanks! I used the advice you guys gave and I was able to get the achievement pretty easily.

Congrats

It might still be a fluctuation, but the LOD spreadsheet is indicating increases in a lot of places. More data points are necessary, but it’s looking positive at the moment.

Illusionary Swordsman, Signet of Ether, Illusionary Swordsman, swap, Illusionary Duelist, run around kiting and healing (Restorative Mantras with Mantra of Pain is a good combination), win.

In high level fractals, it’s hard to keep up 25 might stacks just from ele’s (especially if the eles are running D/F or something), which is why I mention PS at all. It’s definitely optional, but I find (as do many others, I think) that it’s worth the tradeoff in high level fractals.

No banners? They’re one of the best ways to buff your team in the game.
No Empower Allies? Yet another one of the best ways to buff your team in the game.
No Phalanx Strength? Hugely useful in Fractals to… you get it, buff your team.

This is a very, very selfish build for PvE: you’re stacking traits that help your survivability (all those points in Defense) and taking shout heals to improve survivability at the cost of the large potential damage boosts you can provide to your team. This is outside of the fact that hammer is poor DPS and rather “wild” control (knockbacks are awful in PvE, since they scatter mobs which are faster to kill when grouped up).

The “zerker meta” isn’t just about using full zerk with the best DPS weapon— it’s about using builds that support the capabilities of the rest of your team. Taking Phalanx Strength, for example, is a large hit to your personal DPS, but a large boost to the rest of your team.

The gear choice is kind of erratic, and full berserker would do better for you, but it’s not a bad configuration.

Take a look at the guide in my sig. Xenon’s first build is viable; shatter definitely is not.

Good points guys. I think this depends a little on your group. Organized folks know how to take out turrets quickly (or attack both turrets and golem at once) so you don’t need the blocks and the reflect damage helps. In pugs where you need to carry hard, warden blocking helps keep the boons off and is more important than a little dps. Frifox is probably used to the more organized runs.

Anyway, it helps to know the advantages for both, so thanks for pointing them out!

One thing which should be noted— in a good speed running group, AC is amongst the slowest of dungeons because of the large time-gated events. The awards are actually somewhat natural if you look at it from a time-per-dungeon perspective of a top group. Credit to Nike P. for observing this on reddit a few months ago.

Had a group this morning for AC: “P1/P3 EXP ZERK SPEED.” Ok, sounds fun. Join up, it’s 4 warriors and me (s+f/LH ele). It’s a bit of a joke, but ok, DPS is going to be enough and at least they won’t die. 10 seconds into the dungeon, party leader has called a kick on one of the other warriors (who had Dolyak Signet up for a moment, but quickly turned it to Fury… must have been a misclick). He says “Accept,” everyone continues to ignore him… starts counting down… leaves group and kills the instance.

I’ve never seen someone closing an instance because a player accidentally put up Dolyak Signet, but first time for everything I guess.

@frifox: Thanks for the point there. I do keep mine traited, but wasn’t clear in the response.

@Azure: If you need speed, I suggest an alternate set of Centaur Runes. I know many mesmers who carry a set like that. Traveller’s isn’t particularly good for DPS, and is slower than Centaur for movement.

And yeah, the Signet Mastery is because there’s nothing else worth taking in Domination Master. I sometimes switch to Signet of Ether depending on the circumstances, so it’s nice to have it already traited without having to switch that.

Welgaia.7523:

maxinion.8396:

---

Phantasmal Disenchanter can provide excellent boon-strip and party condition cleanse. This can be useful on bosses like the turret-golem in CoE (where sometimes I even summon two Disenchanters by using Signet of Ether).

You can use untraited iWarden instead of iDisenchanter for this fight to maximize DPS, as uiWarden destroys the turrets’ boon-beams. 2x uiWarden (Ether Signet + Phantasmal Haste) should be good enough and autoatks can strip the occasional boon that slips through. I always tell PUGs to not worry about the protection turret and just maximize DPS with the golem.

Lately I’ve been double Wardening there instead, yes. I was just trying to think of places where Disenchanter might be useful, and that was one of the only ones where it’s a maybe.

Using the wrong weapons and skills.

Rangers should be bringing sword mainhand for their weapon, since it’s the only one that does good DPS. They should be bringing spotter and traited frost spirit. And they should be bringing cats and birds and drakes (I think? Not a ranger player myself, so not sure about this) as pets.

Instead we see bearbows, and we cry.

The only bug which really affects you in PvE is the warden-not-spinning and temporal-curtain-not reflecting. So long as you know where and when that will happen (you learn it fairly quickly), it’s not a huge deal and you can plan around it.

Some of the other bugs are a lot more annoying in PvP and WvW, though.

Lenn.6347:

BlackBeard.2873:

I wouldn’t take this table as the absolute optimum, as it ignores “on-crit” procs and how that changes your dps. If you have air/fire/strength sigils, or run fresh air then your precision will have more value for you than listed in this table. Make sure you have “enough” crit. chance to quickly proc those things more reliably (remembering that you have pretty high fury uptime).

i see fresh air thrown around a lot, what does the build revolve around? im in the process of leveling the class and didnt quite get it

Fresh Air is a grandmaster trait in Air which resets your attunement cooldowns on critical. It allows you to use all of the neat burst-utility skills on Dagger/Focus (or Dagger/Dagger), and then rapidly return to the Air Attunement which has the best auto-attack. Without Fresh Air, you’d be stuck in low-damage attunements after using their burst, and your damage would suffer.

Check out Zelhyn’s sticky above, and DEKeyz’s Dagger/Focus build in her sticky above, for more information.