Guild Wars 2

Dominik.5162:

Yes you do, you can be as sarcastic as you want and don’t believe me.
The madness stacks are basically the main mechanic of the fight, you only get them from getting hit by the red orbs of the laser that comes from the middle or standing on the wrong half of the platform when it gets split by the aoe attack or from the small aoe in the Crystal/2nd Flying phase.
You basically failed at alot of mechanics.
And no it doesnt take skill to follow the other DPSers like a drone, even though you think you did it right.

BTW, you made it harder for you group to complete the fight by getting hit from red orbs, which gave your group less room to move -> lower DPS uptime -> higher chance in the fight resulting in a wipe.
You literally got carried by the people that are experienced because your a sorry player that doesn’t accept that exp groups are made for exp players that don’t want to put up with being like you.

Another post from a person who thinks so highly of me. Yes I failed a lot of mechanics, thanks for pointing that out. I am a clumsy guy who can’t even glide properly cos he gets whacked in the face by a platform wall! It kinda explains why I struggled so much with those JPs years ago and even with some of those hero points when I was trying to attain map completion. So the facts are, I’m clumsy and I’m a charr, both of which taken together means I’m just awful at gliding and should give it up completely, esp that ley line stuff cos I fall off half the time.. I ought to just unmaster that and delete my charr, maybe start over again. Thanks for the support

Also thanks for explaining how madness stacks work for me. I was totally confused before but u explained it that well to me. On a more serious note, it’s funny that Dulfy doesn’t say anything about madness stacks (resulting from the orbs u mentioned) hurting the chances of ur group at all. I know I might be old school for depending on Dulfy so much but I been reading her living story guides since years ago and it worked well for me. If someone thinks I should switch to a more in depth guide, then pls let me know and I will check it out. But honestly Dulfy does not say anything about this, and I read it pretty thoroughly. If someone can tell me the mechanic he mentions is true though, then ill accept that and admit I’m wrong.

It’s interesting how you also said I failed at almost everything, and claim the things that I did correctly even a trained monkey could do (that is in essence what ur saying right?) If so then you’re only half proving my point, that you don’t need to be exp to follow simple instructions like who to follow. Yet you continue to argue that exp groups are for exp. Even the guy who posted before u, basically agreed with me (without explicitly stating as such) that it’s perfectly ok to join exp group for a boss like xera when u have no clue what to do or when u aren’t 100% aware of the mechanics, since the boss is so faceroll and its only extremely difficult for the tank and healer roles. Both of u agree on this count then. Xera is ridiculously easy as long as u are dps role, all u need to do is stack when they tell u to or glide where they tell you to. You’re right though, ill concede even a mindless drone could replace me and complete the task, even do a much better job since I soaked up so many madness stacks, I really am a clumsy charr who dodges away and trips on his feet so much. I’m so bad I can’t even look out for those red orbs coming towards me! It’s like I’m literally half blind or something.

So it’s settled then, both of u agree that Xera is so faceroll easy if you’re a dps role that even a drone can do it, heck if a robot can do it then any newcomer to raids (as long as theyve got full ascended gear) can basically yolo join for exp group on said encounter and finish it without wiping, thus doing an even better job than me. Plus with the possibility of a drone as team member, u minimize the risk of someone clumsily gliding into a wall and dying, hence becoming a liability to whole group. In fact I’m such a sorry player that respects exp when they ask for exp so much that I joined another exp group for xera (I know I’m such an awful person) and finished it on 1st try without dying or getting feared off, I.e. keeping better track of the stacks that will eventually kill me. But Fatalyz is completely right, xera is an easy boss if u have an easy role to play so what I did on both attempts (even the one I died when boss was at 2% health quite literally) isn’t even remotely surprising to anyone, and it shouldn’t be. I’m not even being sarcastic right now I actually agree with him on this.

Yes this makes much sense. That explains why I did not know the role of madness in xera and without having that mastery I fell off at the very end. Right, xera is so easy bc I just have to press 1 to win, not even listen to group directions like I’m which side I’m on and know what that means. If I am able to refuse to listen and get carried cos I die at the start since I don’t have ley line mastered yet, then yeah I’m a terrible person who’s leeching and I need to go do training runs with equally terrible people like me who don’t have that mastery or any clue even that they need it. I completely understand now and I can see why I was wrong.. this whole thread has been a mistake I realise that now and also that i was being carried and I’m leeching off an exp group when I’m not rly expected to tank or heal anyway, and yeah I need a training run cos I dunno how to listen to simple instructions or even have right build to dps down crystals when we have 3 downed ppl depending on me. I finally understand now I was wrong to do this. I am an awful person

As an aside, I only died when boss was literally almost dead, as I got feared off platform cos of my madness stacks. I didn’t know at the time what that meant either, but I looked it up right after. So thanks for saying I leeched off a really exp group. Your right I could’ve just typed /qq at start and they would’ve carried my useless and inexperienced self anyway.

Fatalyz.7168:

nagr.1593:

am I expected to suffer through 8 wipes on a boss before we get the kill?

Yes, that is called learning.

/end thread

I joined exp group for Xera without technically have ever done it, and we killed boss on the 3rd attempt (the first time I failed my group was when I fell when gliding bc of random platform order that blocked me). pls explain to me how this wastes even more time than joining a training run that has 8 wipes on the same boss. and yes u are free to use Absurdo’s example of wasting group time vs. actual time wasted if so needed.

Fay.2357:

Ultimately, you need to be realistically honest both with yourself and with groups if you want a good chance of completing the raids.

You claim to be experienced, but that’s not actually the case. You needed mechanics explained, so you’re not experienced.

On the other hand, being honest about your experience * has no lasting downsides*. Groups asking for experienced members will probably decline to take you, and that’s their right to do so.

However, many groups will at least give you a chance if you’ve completed other bosses/seem competent. I know that I’m personally ok with explaining mechanics for bosses sometimes in my group. Sometimes I’m too tired to deal with that hassle though, and it’s my right to decide whether or not I want to deal with that.

If you’re so inexperienced that you can’t honestly say that you’ve killed multiple other bosses/are familiar with raid mechanics in general, then you need to do training runs or find a guild willing to train new raiders. That’s simply how it is.

Ill go over each of your points and discuss them, it’s hard to do this splitting up ur post as I’m on mobile. Anyway on your first point I would ask, why does everyone who joins a random pug group posting for exp (who obv don’t have any ‘incentive to care about you’ when u join, as someone else stated) realistically need to be honest to complete raid content or get a boss kill on 1st attempt? What is their own (the player who join the lfg) incentive to be honest towards the pug group? I don’t see any absolute need to be honest with a group that can easily kick u and replace u with a guildie once u have confessed the truth to them. Do you see my point? Let me relate you something I observed about most players who join lfg posts I used to make, years ago. Most of them outright ignored the stated post when they joined. When I posted for ‘exp’, I got noobs sometimes who had to have things explained to them. When I posted for ‘mes only’ for runs like Arah where we needed one at lupi, guess who would join and when asked would later admit he didn’t have mes but he was exp, or would claim ignorance on even reading the post before hitting join? The truth is that majority of player base is dishonest all the time, or don’t care enough to read the lfg before they join. Again someone will say how this is diff because we are talking about raid groups on the lfg, but be honest and tell me this doesn’t happen all the time in raids. We had to kick a rev at the start of a boss just a few days ago at a boss bc he was running some hammer build, and acted like that was fine. Tell me was he being honest with us or even himself?

Your next (and last) point is that I’m simply not experienced at all with boss I join for, or to take it a step further I’m not experienced with raid content at all, since I’m just another ranting newcomer to general mechanics of raids so I deserve to be kicked from every exp group out there. That’s simply how it is, I need to accept it. I completely agree with u on this

When you say about being honest about my hands-on exp (or lack thereof) with pug groups that post for exp as having no downside, that makes sense bc if I get insta-kicked after joining and saying something ridiculous like I’m a complete newbie to raids, theres no downside to me being forced to wait about half an hour before I see any other exp post to join where I run the similar risk of them kicking me when I join and relate my exp again.

I like your next point in particular, where you say how how most groups will at least give me chance if I seem to be competent and have completed other bosses. This makes sense bc those 2 groups that kicked me within past week all had that in mind. The first group being an exp wing clear, so when I cleared first two bosses with them I seemed competent enough to them. However when I messed up on the mechanics at matt once, they chose to at least give me a chance by kicking me instantly. Also, I can say that I personally haven’t joined a single LI group, doesn’t make this true for the majority of player base. I appreciate that u are open minded but let’s face it majority of ppl that post for pugs on the lfg are not, as most of them would much rather half-explain a simple mechanic and then silent kick u afterwards because they wanna save a few min, rather than giving me a shot even when I did show I was mostly competent (if not getting downed at sab and clearing big bombs on time is not a measure of this, then I dunno what is).

Honestly, most people don’t even look at their blocks list once they block someone, similar to how I never bother to check whos online in the list of ppl who are following me. Even if I start flaming the chat to drastically increase the chance that the leader of the group would add me to their blocks list after i’m kicked, doesn’t guarantee ill get insta-kicked when I join the same group again (not that I think it wise to do so).

I joined a raid group with someone who had me on block since months and months ago already in it, and announced it to the group in chat as soon as I joined as well (they never responded back). I provided kill proof like they asked, we finished boss on 2nd try and then we all disbanded. So tell me how someone in a group blocking you means you can never group with them again.

Fay.2357:

You claim to be experienced, but that’s not actually the case. You needed mechanics explained, so you’re not experienced. When a group gets someone that lies about their experience level, they kick and block, so you’ll never have a chance to raid with those people again.

Not true, I joined a raid group a week ago for an lfg post with someone who had blocked me in the group. I was able to hear him in voice chat even though I prob couldn’t read what he said in group chat. Its much better to add people as friends that you want to block and add a note next to their name like ‘Known kicker’ rather than blocking them, which basically means you can’t see their lfg posts either. That’s my understanding of it honestly. It’s been this way for months and months. People I block are able to join my dungeon groups when I post, bc they haven’t blocked me in return. So the notion that getting blocked means you can’t join their raid groups again is misinformed i.e, if you have a friend in the same group as someone who’s blocked you, why should that in itself disqualify you from joining the group your friend is in?

If there’s such a great risk of getting kicked from exp groups that don’t even ask for kill proof or LI, then I don’t see how it would benefit someone to be more honest and open when there are alrdy so few groups running it (during the times I’m on). I always see raid selling groups and get disheartened. The most common groups are LI, kill proof, exp groups maybe in that order too, and the training groups on the lfg are either nonexistent or only for certain easy bosses like VG that I honestly don’t know why you would need training for. Given that exp groups for bosses you need are hard to find, then training runs for those same bosses are even more harder to find. If anything the current system would force others to be more dishonest and tight-lipped when joining exp groups. What’s the worst that can happen? If it’s getting kicked for wasting a couple mins of group’s time then perhaps it’s much faster to join exp groups for bosses whose mechanics you don’t know so that you acquire some measure of familiarity with boss mechanics before they figure out that u are not in fact exp and kick you out.

People like Absurdo are trying to conjure up.. absurd elitist notions like the fact that 10min wasted for the whole raid group is actually one and a half hour wasted bc (10min x 9 people) = 90min, given that you don’t mind wasting your own time. Tell me in what world that makes any sense.

Hey thanks. Ill try salvaging it tomorrow to see if this is in fact true. Btw if you are 100% sure abt it then that means someone should update the wiki entry abt this, no mention of this or drops from salvaging it either. I think it’s under ‘Spirit vale weapons’ it’s missing this info for some reason haha

fishball.7204:

Also this might be harsh but you probably think you’re better than you really are. Occasionally doing T4 fractals and full ascended doesn’t mean you’re good and it’s hard to really gauge how good you are even though you’ve cleared bosses (could’ve been carried).

You obviously don’t know my history and that’s ok i’m not going to bother explaining myself here. I never said I was better than other people in my raid and honestly I’ve joined regular groups for VG (not training runs either since they explained nothing) and we had so many wipes cos the guys who were ranging couldn’t do something as simple as stand in green circles when they had to (my guess they didn’t even know how many needed to stand in green). Tell me what level of skill that in itself speaks for them. You don’t need to be a genius to follow simple mechanics like that, I never said otherwise. I’m just saying mechanics at sab are not that different either. I don’t know why some people have it so ingrained in their minds that exp means full blown exp, otherwise don’t bother joining you’ll waste hours and hours of their time and they’ll never finish. I don’t know what to say but judging from some comments those ppl actually seem to believe this.

Let’s assume you’re right though, then what’s the point of groups that req kill proof of some bosses? Yes I’ve had to provide that sometimes like on Gors etc. its not as rigid as LI reqs which are honestly overblown. Maybe all the people who join for those groups have been carried, so how does kill proof help at all in that scenario except provide somewhat better chance of clearing boss? Most people seem to think its extremely unlikely that u can clear a boss fine on 1st try (with no wipes at all) when there’s no LI or kill proof reqs posted. If that’s the case then maybe I should quit pve right now, since this community has lost its sense of direction and unity.

@Absurdo I don’t like your attitude either man, you remind me of one of those ppl who constantly kicked me out of low lvl fractals when I was starting out and had really low AP just cos I looked at them funny or couldn’t make the jumps in molten furnace at the then time (literally that). Just to prove you wrong i’m going to join an exp group for sab and finish it with nobody calling me out or kicking me from group. I’ll keep you posted

Again ppl calling me unexperienced makes me feel like I’m doing something terribly wrong when I’m not. I used to hate when people who were inexperienced joined for exp posts in dungeon runs too, esp since it was obvious in some paths like cof (path 1). There’s nothing wrong about feeling insulted like that when ppl just disrespect ur posts completely, like they don’t even bother to read lfg at all. What I’m doing is really not that rude that it would necessitate a kick. Again this being raids there are sometimes levels of exp that are not that different from dungeons used to be honestly. Like someone can run one path of arah and know how fight with lupi works, then join another path for 1st time and say they’re kinda exp with it. I know like most of mechanics in theory but sometimes i can’t know it all, like something guides brush over cos it relies on squad for direction and assignment of tasks. I don’t get why everyone saying I should stop joining exp runs when I’m not. I’m not a newcomer to raids honestly like I said in OP just two bosses I been having trouble with and maybe matt would req training run I dunno but honestly most of them aren’t hard it just that most groups seem really on edge most of the time like they’d prefer not to waste a single min more then they have to.

Absurdo.8309:

Sorry, but you’re in the wrong here.

I don’t join exp runs without knowing the mechanics (or making sure I know them from what I read mentioned). Like I said I learn from diff sources and imo it’s not necessary to actually ‘run’ some of the easier bosses before joining exp group, VG and Gors for most part are faceroll with decent group (but only if u don’t have assigned tasks like tanking or dealing condis, then yea u would need to practice that on ur own), even Sloth for the most part is faceroll bc I understood mechanics even like fixation on 1st attempt with a non-training group, no one called me out of anything and we were fine, obv might’ve been diff story if I had been tasked to grub duty yea I get that. The only trouble I had with Sab (literally the only trouble I had, since I read through guide twice so I had a good idea what to do) was the green bombs and yea it seems simple enough now that I understand it but my point is raid groups are too unforgiving even for small mistakes. The mistake was not even technically mine since look at dulfy the order of cannons spawning was not even mentioned once on the section abt sapper bombs, nor the fact u can just look at minimap to make it so much easier. Yet I’m expected to know this immediately after hearing the full order given to me in chat for 1st time, how does that work? They could’ve given me a chance to try again, since I only messed up once. Instead they replace me after 2nd wipe because like u said it’s much easier to find someone who knows what to do. So they shaved off maybe 10min, assuming they got it on the first try after they replaced me. That doesn’t sound a long time to me. I’ve even run around LA much longer than that, literally doing nothing.

Like I don’t even understand where u got 2 hours from. If one of the guys that posted said he had zero exp with matt and his group was able to kill him on 4th try, who’s to say I couldn’t have managed the same? I knew most of mechanics too I wasn’t entirely clueless as you seem to paint me as. Also 4 attempts in best case scenario, tell me how that adds up to 2 hours? I’m not even sure where you are getting these numbers from honestly. Sabetha is like 10min fight from start to completion. Of both groups I had they usually wiped at around 50%, though the first one got waay closer before we had to disband. So assuming three attempts of 10min (wiping at 50% would be liek half that but o well) it would only be 30min, sound good since I didn’t join for an entire wing clear on that where they’re running through content rly fast? The first wipe was my bad, the second one wasn’t. So essentially I only messed up once, and contributed to one wipe. Why was I not allowed to stay for one more attempt? Are groups really unwilling to waste 30min on a boss like sab. If the answer is yes then it makes me really sad, bc I been active pre-HoT a long time and ive run with exp groups for arah that take 1 whole hour to finish, sometimes even half an hour just on lupi. Honestly this was for much lower quality of loot even pre-nerf, I got a drop from Gors that I sold for 8g easily. So don’t give me this talk about 2 hours on sab, that’s honestly not realistic at all. Most of what u said doesn’t make any sense except the part abt matt, yeah I get it he’s the toughest boss in raids so maybe I need real kill exp with him. But honestly you seem to distort everything I’ve been trying to get across. Expecting pug groups to train me, where did u get that from? Did I ask training for sloth or xera when I joined for first time. No because I had good idea what to do, I watched some guides and vids and felt pretty confident. we wiped once on xera cos I fell off, but 2nd or 3rd time was enough for us to get the kill. You are blowing this way out of proportion just like most ppl who are responding with harsh criticism and ‘get good or get out’ posts. I never asked training on sab, I literally asked for one simple but important mechanic explained to me which they failed to do, then later kicked me bc a guildie wanted to join. I don’t understand why pugs are so distrustful. Like they expect the worst of u, even if they see ur running the right build and doing everything else correctly they just make a big deal of a one misstep with green bombs that they end up kicking you. Yeah that definitely would not have been hours and hours wasted given the fact I was not a complete newbie to the boss. But again that’s how competitive it is now, and yeah pugs don’t have any incentive to care at all but how about a little sympathy and helpful tips which I found even in pug groups for arah, where most ppl felt bad about not making the runs or messing up on bosses multiple times? I can guarantee most of them posted for exp runs too. But your right, this is raids after all so an insta-kick for a person not 100.00% exp in pug groups is just ok. Sounds about right

sophiewhite.3149:

id love to know how i can “git gud” on a melee class with kitten heals (warrior) when 3 hits takes most my hp and the third daze ruins any dps or might building i was going to do. let alone the fact he has to be on the panels constantly which i cannot get close enough to damage on.,

I run into similar problem so I can sympathize. Best advice I can give u is learn to adapt or give up try another class they might be better suited for the fight. I don’t run banners on the boss, waste of effort when the guy is running around like crazy and I can’t stop him. I take fury and dolyak signet and some kind of invuln so i can ignore dmg while I’m using skill 2 on gs. Yeah it only works for first two hits cos the next one stops u cold and interrupts ur hits unless u move away. So the way I learned to adapt is get close, headbutt invuln and burst for 2-3sec and ww/evade away before he interrupt hits me. Then there’s also berserk f1 along with ww to keep up dps when u don’t wanna get hit.. get used to range on that f1 u don’t need to be too close to him either so u can whack him on the go. The panels gave me trouble to but it’s really easy just understand that 8/10 times the adjacent tile if it’s purple then on the next tick it’ll be safe, while urs will turn purple. So do a quick hop and its enough. Other times u can run past quickly if ur caught in a cluster of purple titles, use some mobility and a class like that has enough tbh. So yeah not the most ideal and comfortable playstyle but it works better than u might think. When he’s chasing u (fixated I mean) you are going to run either way even if u are ranged, so ur dps will drop close to 0 unless he gets fixated on someone else. In this group I had we wiped once on this boss, both times me and another warrior were staying alive most of the time (he wasn’t the only one ofc) so it was interesting to see that yeah, class rly doesn’t matter overall as much as familiarity with the fight.

Icetea.3204:

I get why you don’t want to join training runs. IMO there are way to many people that don’t know their class, let alone boss mechanics.

I´am fairly experienced in raids, kill all bosses multiple times a week.
Last month or so I finished gearing my chrono and thought: “Hey, lets join a training group to train chrono tanking.”

Figured out 1500 toughness isn’t enough to chronotank… Someone other than me was always aggroed. Nope, it wasn’t the druid. Sorry guys, if you don’t understand game mechanics or think a DPS class like Tempest should have more than 1k toughness, raids aren’t for you.

I started raiding late April of this year and killed my first Matthias mid May or something. I encountered him once before and that’s it.
I joined a group for Sloth. No problem, killed him first try. Since it went so smooth our group decided to go for trio. First try as well.
The group wanted to go further. I told them that i don’t have any kill exp on Matthias, encountered him once. I told them that I watched videos and I´ll leave if they won’t or that they could just kick me if I do something wrong.

Since i haven’t made any mistakes during Sloth and Trio the group decided to give me a chance.
We killed Matthias after 4 tries.

If you play good, groups will most likely give you a chance. Be honest with them and don’t tell them you are exp if you clearly aren’t.

Oh and btw. The order for the Sabetha cannons is South West North East South North West East.
There will be orange swords when a cannon spawns. So you can just use your minimap.

Ok yes, I should have said something at Matt like I’m not exp, pls kick me if I do something wrong. But honestly I’m not sure if it would’ve made any difference bc they ended up kicking me soon anyway (after 2nd wipe). I was in similar group as urs. I never messed up on sloth or trio either despite not having kill exp with sloth and reading guides beforehand, we got sloth on 2nd try bc the tank messed up the 1st time (said as well in chat). But we get to matt and suddenly it’s like radio silence that whole fight, and when they call me out its like 1st word they ever said in a while. Not sure how to respond so I don’t, they’re not rly addressing me either so I don’t know how they expect me to say anything. Then I get kicked after 2nd attempt, yeah it maybe a couple months after u ran with a similar group so they’re maybe used to running it weekly now, but th at just emphasizes the problem I been having.

Also thanks for heads up on the sapper bombs for sab. Only person on this thread to actually bother reading my OP and offer something insightful abt the fight. The guide on dulfy doesn’t seem to explain this either (look it up if u don’t believe me). I just don’t get it bc my group could’ve just explained the minimap thing to me like how hard would that be, rather than dumping some random order on me like SWNE etc. and expecting me to remember that immediately after they say it like wtf cmon.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Its just this simple : You need any mechanic to be explained to you? If so you need to join a training group, no excuse.
If you know every mechanic and saw at least 1 time every mechanic by yourself ( even if you dont got a kill ) then you join an exp group. Its what training and exp groups are, you just joined the wrong one on sab.

If its so simple then why is it so hard for me to find a training group as opposed to any other exp group doing the same boss? 90% of the time I look on the lfg and its only exp posts or 200 LI ONLY blablah, and rarely do I find any training groups for the bosses that I need (sab and matt which are said to be the hardest). Do you understand how someone new to HoT might find getting into raids extremely daunting at first. The easiest way is probably to ask a raid guild for training run on a particular boss. I’ve tried once but no one offered, i don’t like being forced to request something in guild chat. It makes me nervous and unsure of myself. I don’t want to just give up and buy one of those runs either, even though I can easily afford it I would view it as being defeatist and giving up, bc i’m incapable of finishing the boss myself since no group will have me. I don’t like the only option being forced to beg a guild I barely know for training run on one particular boss i’m having trouble with. Like there has to be a much more comfortable way for me to get exp, only no one wants to post on lfg for training runs on bosses that I actually need and rarely does anyone run raids anymore except the only very elite who have full ascended everything on 4 diff alts.

I been kicked from raid groups twice so far in the span of less than a week, that’s more than im used to in a long long time and everytime I get kicked I usually block the persons involved bc I usually don’t deserve it (like getting kicked at last boss in dungeon or fotm just bc I said something relatively caustic to a pug with bunch of guildies running together, what was that 30min wasted for then?) but i’m just speechless when its 10 ppl standing by and allowing me get kicked its more of a faceslap than anything else. If i’m seeming to rant overmuch its because of that, if getting kicked from 2 groups so far bc I explained myself as best I could and asked a simple mechanic to be explained concisely to me so I could learn to do better next time (even if I attempt the boss with another group next time) does not allow me some room to rant abt this issue, then I guess I have to ask what issue you would consider a rant would be justified for.

I’ll give you an example, in tough bosses like Bloomhunger at t4 I’ve seen at times two people in group down and die all the time, even after being ressed they’re incapable of staying alive so my question is it even worth ressing them? In raids you can’t res at all agreed but how is that much different. I just had a group earlier today where we wiped once at last boss chaos fractal, three guys died pretty fast past 50% and one guy with 20k ap ragequit. We got another one, I gave a small peptalk something along the lines of ‘downed is dead here, pls don’t down its hard to res’ and yes a few still died, but we were able to get through it this time and it was only 2nd attempt so I was relieved. You get time wasted on t4 fractals too, if you die on a boss like that and risk causing ur group to wipe, should I be able to kick someone like that? Whether 5 people or 10 people, this is something similar cos it all boils down to exp with the fight. In fractals u can do easier levels to get adjusted to mechanics of the fight. There’s no option like that with raids and they just prefer to boot you outright than explain a seemingly “simple mechanic” (another poster’s words, not mine) that would maybe take 2min tops to explain. I’ve never downed in sab fight either and when I die its cos we all decide to start over again. How is this so insanely different from wasting time in t4 fotm? I’ve had terrible groups that did fine until last boss in molten furnace (the ice boss) and then we spent 30min dying even on the run since mobs kept killing us, and in the end we were getting nowhere so I was forced to leave. Explain to me how raids are so much more insanely difficult to master when u run the risk of wasting a similar amount of time even though there’s a few additional ppl in group? In group content I expected everyone to work together as a team rather than tear each other apart for small mistakes. I just finished Gors on first try with 1 guy in squad dead since halfway through fight. Why should that guy be allowed to get the kill when he did 0 dps in the state he was in?

Tarasicodissa.7084:

When facing multiple trash mobs (or veterans), blinds are really helpful. You can put down an AoE that will periodically pulse out a condition to enemies that will make them miss you with their attacks -> you don’t get any damage. Your best blind fields are Smoke Bomb and Flash Shell.

this is class-specific sometimes like warrior can’t blind at all afaik, they are just so useless atm they can’t even reflect or self-apply boons like regen and prot like rev have now. But one thing they have that’s highly useful in trash mobs is invuln, they have Endure pain which is just awesome if u wanna stick in one spot and bash some annoying trash mobs down (im looking at u tiny raptors trying to bite my face off). Sometimes u don’t even need it if u learn the class like GS evade and stuff honestly this is basic stuff u need to stop complaining abt individual classes its not fair to ppl who main it and don’t have as many problems as u do. I run zerk on warrior for open world and while I down a couple times when fighting 4+ mobs I rarely (if ever) actually die. Most times even vengeance helps greatly if there are significant amt of trash mobs theres like 2% chance u wont rally at all. You need to learn your class, learn your stuns like your elite one, and if u need help post on class forums cos we cant help u without more specifics tbh.

so I’m a fan of GS.. admittedly. I have four ascended GS alrdy, I been wondering abt salvaging 1-2 of them that I rarely use anymore (but dunno if I end up getting anything other than vision crystal and stuff, which I don’t need). So I have this drop from SV in raids for a couple days now. its just sitting in my bag not sure what to do with it.

I want to be able to sell ascended wep drops to vendor and get some shards back (I don’t think it works that way now). Or if I salvage it, theres nothing on drop rate that’s different from regular ascended GS. so im unsure what to do, I don’t need it at all. help?

I think u are misunderstanding what I said, I never said fights like sab are too difficult in fact I actually enjoy them since its similar to adapting to new Bloomhunger in fotm content but the fact is that ppl are not willing to explain what you describe as “important/easy mechanics” so im fully aware and know what to do. In fact they’re rather kick me and replace then spend even 2min explaining to me and saying, bottom line if I can’t adapt on the next time we fight then they’re going to kick me or ask me to leave. Is it really that hard? And notice on the guilds especially I rely on ones by Dulfy, it passes over what to do exactly with sapper bombs like “ono ask your squad for advice where to use it” when its actually embarrassing to do so. Being told a specific order like ‘NESW NSEW’ is not helpful bc its not repeating and its hard to keep track of which is up next. Not all of us are so capable of understanding seemingly simple mechanics as u describe, when I can figure out flamewall and when heavy bombs drop and be ok with that then asking for simple heads up which direction to turn shouldn’t be as hard.

Its the little things that trip me up sometimes and in most raid groups no one bothers explaining those to me even after I confess that im exp but I never got the kill before. Its hard to rely on guide bc it happens different in real time and u only have a split second to decide usually and if u make the wrong decision then theres a huge risk of u getting booted and replaced. I understand matt is a difficult boss but no one bothers telling me beforehand even something so simple as which direction they’re going in (clockwise or something diff?) and its hard to keep track of it even with all the markers especially when ur in panic mode. Telling me to not blame raids is not good advice when most encounters have some hidden or unmentioned mechanics that even most raid groups wont bother explaining and instead will prefer to replace u with someone more capable.

I’ve joined two groups for sab so far, on the 1st one I got tasked with handling the bombs strewn around and yeah I’m used to it now but after 2 tries or so we just disbanded, I guess ppl were having trouble with cannons and the dps was low. On the 2nd group I got called out cos I wasted those sapper bombs on the boss cos I wasn’t sure where to throw them, then after we /gg they asked me if I was exp and I said yeah but my group never finished then they said that I should know what to do with the bombs then, only I never got the bombs before so I was at a loss. Then they said something along the lines of ‘NESWNSEW’ that’s the order and even though I vaguely understood what they meant I started panicking bc I’m not sure how they expected me to remember the order when it was my turn. Then on our 2nd attempt thankfully i didn’t get the bombs placed on me and yes I was afraid I would mess up the directions this time, but someone else was late on the sapper bombs anyway so we wiped again. Then without saying anything the leader kicked me out of group, when I told him I felt bad and what did I do wrong, he said that quote ’it’s not you, I had to get some guildies’.. so there you go, that same competitive edge again. Maybe I wasn’t the only one kicked out of that group but I can’t possibly know that. I just don’t understand bc I did everything else well.. I even volunteered to get the big bombs and I stacked right on top of boss when they told me to and everyone else was a little further back, I had good rotations in and I never downed even once, and I mess up on one mechanic and they just all pounce on me, end up kicking me bc of it rather than spend some time explaining it to me more clearly.

So yeah that’s one bad experience.. but there was another even before that (I mean they’re both within past week and both similar outcomes, neither asked for kill proof or LI I did check). The previous one was for matthias, and honestly I’m scared to ever try again bc what if I get another group that’s always asking for exp, exp, don’t down on last phase more than once, etc. It’s just really really hard to find a training run for this boss, and I would join one if I found one but I never do. Whenever I see any group posting for matt it’s always asking for exp, or if not exp then 120 LI or something ill never be able to achieve in a year at the rate I’m going. I will admit I messed up on the 2nd time I got that debuff placed on me, went to the closest fountain and obv it was red and someone immediately in group calling me out, ’he’s going to wrong fountain.. he’s not exp.. kick him’ and then the leader saying ‘yeah sry, I can’t do this’ and then insta-kick, no further discussion or anything saying what I was doing wrong (they never even mentioned the order beforehand).

To be clear I didn’t join for exp Matt post, but for w2 exp post so we cleared past sloth to matt fine. I figured I’d give it a shot and leave if I did something wrong but they don’t even give me that chance, instead they prefer to humiliate me by calling me out in chat and then kicking me soon after. If they asked me to leave I would’ve left. It’s not to hard and most groups I’ve seen have that decency at least to other ppl. But screaming their heads off for something I’m not even sure negatively affected the group in a big way and talking abt me like I was not even in group, then kicking me without even bothering to give me a heads up beforehand so I could choose to leave (and I think most ppl would’ve done the decent thing and left if asked) I think it’s a humiliating experience to have especially for pve content where everything’s supposed to be cooperative rather than competitive, only it’s actually more competitive bc ur either exp or ur not, you’ve either run raid content X times or you’ve not, you either have this particular class were looking for or u don’t. I just suddenly feel like it’s PvP again, where everything is like first to the finish line wins. That’s not a good feeling to have for pve even if it’s the most difficult content bc I know I’ve done t4 fractals and stuff like arah so yeah I’m not against challenging content, but again it’s so demanding now and u can see players are getting frustrated by the difficult content too (like how many mechanics u have to be aware of before even starting thr fight) that there are very few groups ever running on lfg for them, and most of them have strict reqs that I can’t satisfy, and the groups that I do end up joining are all on edge and want to get through as fast as possible with as few deaths as possible, and if they see anyone lagging behind or unsure on some mechanic it’s much easier to kick them and find another like maybe a trustworthy guildie who probably has 170 LI rather than spend 5min explaining it to them, and tell them if they can’t manage it on the next attempt then they will be asked to leave. Or am I wrong in feeling this way?

I just returned awhile ago and that means I been trying to learn HoT content so I find it’s a tough learning curve bc lots of new challenging content but not too steep. Then enter raids which feel as dead as dungeons sometimes, frustrating and near impossible to find a group sometimes, only a 20% chance of finishing any boss or even getting anywhere. I feel lost and I don’t know what’s wrong with majority of the player base but raids seem to bring out the worst in them, and by that I mean full-blown elitism, either the highway or no way. I get it, raids are supposed to be challenging content. That’s ok bc in can adapt in most cases. It’s just for some bosses it’s hard to be aware of all the mechanics, even after reading the guides which forget to mention some parts and just brush over them or hint at something obliquely leik, ‘ono it’s nothing just ask ur raid group don’t be afraid to speak up’. I know I should join some training runs and someone will suggest that here but the thing is I’m no longer able to be on just whenever the mood strikes me. I have an unfortunate schedule that I rly have no control over and the raid guild I’m in now only runs at specific times and I’m unable to make most of the times. I’m not even sure if they do practice runs for the harder bosses and I’m afraid to ask cos they might kick me if I do (I’m not even sure I can trust these guilds anymore to be friendly or open).

Ok so somebody might tell me ‘l2p’ and maybe I deserve that but to them I would respond: ‘how?’ Because I honestly feel like no one has the patience or trustworthiness honestly to teach me. I’ve not joined any training groups yet, I know they are going to be grueling and tiresome and full of newbs in rubbish gear that don’t know what they’re doing (tell me I’m wrong I can trust them to be like me, full ascended and at least done t4 fotm occasionally.) So yeah it’s going to take forever to join one of those groupsm. I don’t have lot of time anymore to sit around and listen to some guy in voice chat yelling out what to do. That’s not how im used to learning things and I resent that nearly every pug group asks u to join in voice chat honestly. Not that I don’t, but it’s tiresome if I’m asked to everytime. If I refuse to come on chat, I’m afraid I might get kicked bc that’s how I view raid groups now. All of them selfish and short on time so they’re looking for any small defect or imperfection in u and that ur really are 102% exp and once they find what they’re looking for then kick

Ill be honest I’ve done PvP before and yeah competitive stuff but I quit after a few months bc most of them were way too competitive or took things way too seriously. I ever got mocked at by my whole team in a random matchup once after they kicked my kitten and my team’s kitten on the last one, and I realise they were like an arranged team (pre-made, some group of friends together I dunno what u call them) but after that I realised that I didn’t feel comfortable with PvP anymore, if I have ppl mocking me after they beat me then I don’t get how people can say ’it’s just a game you’re competing only for fun, brush it off and shake hands and smile politely once ur done’ but only that was never true, not once. One necro even got angry after I beat him solo on a point once and he blasted me in chat, saying how if I’m so good why can’t I carry my team? We both knew my team was rubbish and they were getting destroyed but he still felt he had to say that even though he knew he would get the win that round. Maybe he was humiliated I dunno, but if that is what u usually say or do when u got beat in PvP then yeah I just don’t care abt it anymore. So I left it behind and I haven’t ever looked back since.

Ok I change my suggestion after today, it was a minor change but a refreshing one. I joined for a squad on my mesmer since I need to get him elite spec, just been holding that off for a long while and its just my lazy nature overall. This squad was different because he only went for the group HPs (that are largely unsoloable, sometimes to the point where u want to bang ur head against the wall bc there’s nothing u can do abt it) but since he didn’t have any WPs either he just ran through most of them pretty quickly. I was surprised.. these commanders actually have a lot of training in something arcane that it actually impresses me.. especially when I struggle for half an hour trying to figure out a way to an obscure POI and then give up and check some random guide, then I feel really dumb. It was peculiar tho cos we had an official anet guy tagging along in our squad (he had the red icon next to his name too). Is it just me or I always get nervous or uncertain when I see ppl like that, even when they’re hanging around LA or something? Like what are they spying on and reporting to their overseers anyway.. gives me goosebumps when I think abt it sometimes I swear. But yeah, if u wanna join one that’s only running through the group ones then go ahead. The others are easily solvable since they are just communes. In fact some of the group ones are actually soloable with like 5-10 min of effort. So yeah if u feel like ur ready to take on a champ that doesn’t seem too intimidating for solo then go for it :p

Sublimatio.6981:

1. allow us to dodge the damaging panels
2. don’t remove condis from boss when the vuln debuff is out
3. lower the boss’s damage and remove daze from 3rd attack.
4. make fixated stay longer

right now the fight punishes melee a lot….

1. Yeah I somewhat agree.. if you’re reliant on dodges because u don’t have easy access to block/invuln then yeah the tiles can be a real pain in the kitten . Plus I feel like dodges in this fight are largely useless, except if the charr guy with his oversized GS is chasing you constantly or if u need to panic dodge out of his circular spin thing. I’m 90% sure that blocks don’t work on those tiles either. Not sure if it’s good design to have something unblockable and undodgeable.. kinda seems to put down classes like warrior that are so reliant on them.

2. I don’t run condi build (no condi set yet but prob should use) so I don’t know what u mean

3. Why would you want to nerf him? Do you not realise his mechanics are kinda brainless as they are now. All he does is chase people around and use a simple autoattack chain (similar to warrior AA). It made me laugh the first time I noticed the boss actually.. and then my group proceeded to wipe right after that. The funny part was how I died.. I ate up ton of dmg from the tiles cos I had no idea where I was going then the charr guy came out of nowhere and downed me with a single swipe.. then auto-attacked me to death which was embarrassing to watch (and my group did stand by and watch this happen, I was among the first ones to die). If you ask me his AI is very brainless as it is now. I mean hes so blinded by chasing someone that hes willing to and actually walks voluntarily on those harmful tiles even though he knows it’ll break his shield if he does so? It’s like someone walking barefoot on hot coals without anyone driving or forcing them to. Hes actually a terrible warrior-boss too.. all he does it swing his sword around like an oversized club, no fancy attacks at all. If you’re too close to him all u need to do is dodge or move away on every 3rd consecutive hit tbh. The stun doesn’t even stun you (u can still move to avoid tiles). That’s important because 99% of the time the thing that’s going to mess you up are the tiles, and the fact that they make it so hard to rez someone downed anywhere that whole fight, it’s pretty much impossible unless boss is not chasing either of you and u would still need to interrupt res to avoid tiles. The boss by himself is kinda a distraction from the main problem (watching thr tiles) and only annoying thing he does is his spin and pull thing at 50% but as long as ur ranging you should be fine. You can even stay inside his AoE the whole time.. just use a combination of stability and a sustained block stance (or invuln, or sustain heal and double dodge). If you want to make this fight more interesting then sure nerf his autohits but make him able to leap and rush (similar to warrior GS skill) to someone so he can catch up to them, rather than chasing someone at close to 1/2x speed. He’s actually easier than other bosses once you figure out that he’s essentially like a rat in a maze filled with traps that are lethal to everyone, not just him. I actually had a group do the t4 chaos one only a few days ago where not a single one of us wiped or even downed that entire fight, that’s how easy it was. I was melee too, I was very close to getting downed near the end but somehow I survived it (it’s the tiles that can down u on low health imo, which means its ur own fault). And yes in case u were wondering that was with a pug

So the fights really easy.. like I mentioned he has only two interesting mechanics you need to be aware of (you can even discard these if ranging him whole time).. only TWO! The archdiviner in Cliffside (easy boss actually) even has better designed AI because he teles to farthest player and then knocks them down if not dodged properly in time. Actually KNOCKS them down! So yeah nerf his damage but pls add some interesting element like a knockdown/launch that would be fun to see how effective it is in that limited space and given the nature of the fight. I do agree balance it so melee is easier or not so punishable as it is though.. it basically forces u to range since u will get the benefit of better dps output as well as an easier time with boss, since u don’t need to worry about his damaging auto-hits. I don’t range either.. and my dps is kinda awful and it must be if I’m only managing to hit him 50% of the time and I have to keep interrupting my channeled bursts because he’s either going to swing his sword at me or spin around or chasing some random person who’s not me the whole time (unless minions or something so yeah I love when he gets fixated on them). Like its way more punishing and lethal for melee than even Bloomhunger at most times.. especially the way it’s designed. That’s all I want to see get fixed tbh

Its inevitably a combination of both factors you mentioned, but more then likely the class u mentioned u are playing. Ele has since the very beginning been one of the hardest classes to figure out and get used to, the reason stemming from the fact that it has a much higher skill floor than most other classes. You notice this with its design and the mechanics involved, i.e afaik no other class utilizes so many function keys (f1-f4) and that too so frequently as it does. If only to compound the problem further, ele in full dps gear are generally more glass and susceptible to dmg (either through condi, or focus-fire mechanics such as those employed by the golem boss in CoE explorable which is probably one of the best examples since he 9/10 times seems to go after the squishiest and light-armored classes, in this case Eles who are generally afar ranging with staff or bow etc.) I haven’t played my ele in years partly because I got bored of it but in larger part because i realise theres a much lower margin for error when using it than any of the heavily armored class for instance and survival in that case almost always boils down to rotations, and practice with rotations. I guess inevitably I’m just scared I’m going to mess up on it, like I said easier done with Ele and that holds especially true for solo or open-world situations. So yeah you really need to practice your skills and learn your class inside and out if you want to increase ur chances of not getting downed/dying so often. I would recommend keybinds I think I did use them for attunement swaps, kinda a relief I don’t have to bother with that anymore tbh

Quick word of advice for traversing open-world content with Ele, staff can be useful at times to stack swiftness agreed but dagger offhand in lightning attune is better for mobility as well as a burst of speed, signet can compensate for lack of swiftness at times and become best friends with your elite GS skill, similar to warrior GS skills and insane mobility with low CD’s.. makes map completion a breeze taken all together.

1) acquire a Teleport to friend or Portal Scroll (region-specific)

2)(optional) place aforementioned consumable item in shared account-wide slot(s)

3) search on LFG under ‘Open world’ for a similar post to the following: ‘HP train, running through all WPs and MPs, no WPs required’ and join said squad. Recommended regions to sort through: VB, TD

4) Use selected consumable item from #1 to move yourself to either one of the chosen squad members positions or to the map region. Search on map (hotkey ‘M’) for individual player icons that are relatively close to the group congregation spots beforehand.

5) Follow the leader of your squad, always run as a pack and that means not lag behind overmuch and make a mental note of the markers used. Be aware of what masteries you currently possess in your kitten nal as well (thank you anet).

6) Profit!

The current meta seems to revolve around necros for condi and sustain build, eles for dps in raids and generally any other content, and druids (ranger elite spec) as a competent healer class mostly in raids and high lvl fractals atm. These are all the classes that are usually in high demand most of the time, which sucks for me because I have no interest in any of those classes nor any desire to learn their builds. I mean I don’t even have a necro or ranger lvled to 80, after all these years. It’s just about the playstyle and what feels right for me I honestly don’t care about what’s so in demand these days..

Just curious, what’s holding you back from getting HoT? If price is an issue check out the current list of official retailers and its possible to save up to 30% this way so it’s helpful to know that. In regards to lvling and dungeons, use any tomes for lvling that you might have lying around or run some easy dungeons for fast exp. It isn’t exactly accurate to say no one does dungeons anymore, it’s just that time/profit investment with troublesome paths such as those in Arah are just not even remotely worth it with people who have access to HoT content currently. For example running a single Arah path would take roughly half an hour and in that same time participating in chest farm in AB would require next to no effort and reward you with a minimum of ~15g in that duration assuming you know what you are doing. However, there are still people willing to run the easier and shorter paths such as AC and CoF (path 1), I know that I would probably be willing to join for them if I had a good group. From what I am aware of, 2nd year gifts should come with some lvl20 scrolls and a few exp boosters. If all else fails, just be aware that there is such a thing as an insta-80 scroll only catch is that it does require you to have HoT beforehand.

In regards to farming gold, best advice I can give you is to keep tabs on currencies you have saved up in both your account-wide bank and wallet. Laurels, mystic coins, spirit shards, globs of dark matter, fractal mist shards, dungeon tokens etc. — all of these can be converted to gold with a modicum of effort and knowledge. The conversion rate from dungeon tokens to gold is roughly ~1.5g per 100 tokens at a minimum, though it does have some strict requirements in that regard (a combination of random luck and time investment honestly). Let me know if you have any questions.

Ok, it wouldn’t let me include this in my main post so I’ll just tack on to it here. I also had some tips I wanted to share that I would have wanted someone to share with me when I was kinda fresh and new to the scene and still trying to figure out HoT content as I went along when I similarly returned from my break as well, I’ll add on more to this later once I figure out what exactly I wanted to say. Anyway I think the first thing you ought to do is figure out how old your account really is, what I mean by that is that you have a char who is at least three years of age since their inception, then you are in luck since you would be able to receive one of those Teleport to friend things that can help you traverse unknown areas or navigate to previously undiscovered regions, the downside of course is that they are very hard to acquire otherwise so I would suggest that you hang onto them. I would recommend also that you look at the regions or areas of interest that currently serve as hotspots for various reasons, in this case it would be Auric basin and the DS meta map in particular as they are both useful in exp grind and farm and AB at least plays a pivotal part in the current gold-making schema, which as usual involves an exploit in some game mechanic or another. I would honestly expect it to be nerfed sometime soon since almost everyone is aware of it by now, but check it out since its more lucrative as it is now then most other meta chains on the new maps. The thing about the MM functionality on Auric basin is that it allows you to also join other maps that are close to completion in the culminating meta event, which rewards a large chunk of mastery exp as well. I just coincidentally figured that out as well while I was playing around with it but for such a short duration as it is, if you successfully manage to complete it more than once its actually better exp farm than even DS, even if your total is like 4% participation at the end you should still get the same exp for meta completion. The chest farm is as usual tedious and mind-numbing as grinds usually are, I tried it once or twice but honestly i have other equally mind-numbing ways of farming gold that generate even more profit for me. You can see the impact of this on the economy too, ecto prices are consistently dropping and then rising up again to a stable level, and to some extension I guess dust prices are as well since they’re correlated to each other.

The second piece of advise would be to be aware of what currencies and items are offered in each map region so that you can decide which one you want to focus more of your attention towards, as that can save you a lot of time and effort in the long run. Most of the new ascended mats specific to each zone are largely only used for legendary crafting, though I might be wrong. For instance, noxious pods in DS drop not only crystalline ore, but also various other currencies found only in other regions. In contrast the relevant containers in other Maguuma areas only drop region-specific ascended mats, which actually places more importance on DS if you want to opt for a more balanced approach at the start. However, the understandably demanding amounts of each mats for legendary crafting in particular would eventually force you to start tackling each region individually, and keep in mind that VB is a special case because no vendors in that region currently sell any of the container keys you would need to acquire the mats. Therefore event grinding is basically a necessity there, so be aware of this special case. Also the hero’s chests that drop from each region after succesfull completion of their pertinent metas offer an additional supply of these aforementioned container tools that should not be forgotten either. With MM as it stands currently, joining other instances of the same map region should generally reset all the chests/containers as well, though not sure if this was intended. Similarly the region-specific nodes in Bloodstone fen will also reset when using this method, though the daily cap would still be in effect of course. Also be aware of DR that persists when farming the same region of a map or just the map as a whole. When attempting meta chains from my understanding they count as a chain of individual events which can rack up DR quite quickly. Thankfully this for the most part is character-based so you should be able to make use of this fact for specific chains such as the one in Bloodstone fen. That’s enough for now

I also similarly came back from a long break that I took sometime right after HoT released. At the time I was disappointed with the new content and kind of habituated to the old one that I rarely found any incentive to explore (or re-explore rather, since I managed to attain world completion twice and that in and of itself was a real struggle for me because of time/effort investment, plus I suck at jumps and struggled with a few HPs that shall not be mentioned here) and so I found it all rather bleached of any reason or purpose, and most of the maps and regions such as the lowbie leveling zones seemed kind of dull and lackluster in comparison to how it used to be. Seeming just to add salt to the wound, the new content as I perceived it then felt kind of ridiculous and not something I would ever find myself doing. I mean gliding, what’s the point? And masteries, just how exactly does that help me? The only thing I remember that piqued my interest at the time (and I guess the main reason I eventually caved and decided that I really ought to upgrade once I did return from haitus, as it made me realize it really would be necessary if I wanted to be taken seriously in groups, for example my inability to attain the cap on AR without access to a stable income or attuned equipment which actually felt like a significant handicap believe me) was the elite specializations for the classes, especially Berserker as the warrior upgrade since it was touted at the time that theoretically it would double your dps output, which I didnt really believe at the time. I am glad I transitioned to the new content now, actually. It’s actually more exhaustive and time-intensive then I would have believed possible, and though I might still retain qualms about the majority of it there is no doubt that the devs succeeded in what they had intended to do at least. By that I mean, the new content actually expands the end-game experience in a way that I previously would not have thought possible, at the same time it’s actually more challenging in more ways than I can name. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not as I am frustrated occasionally with some of the mobs including a handful of champs/vets as well as the occasional adventure that is nearly impossible for me to compete for gold without multiple failed attempts despite it being perceived by most ppl as an easy one to achieve gold in, but I guess the bottom line is that it’s challenging and if nothing else introduces various mechanics that carefully conceal some brilliantly devised time sinks that you really won’t identify as such until much later. Another point on which I feel that I’m obligated to share concerns the new legendaries. Just a little background on the subject at hand: while I suppose that I consider myself as technically having six legendaries (the case of Eternity subsists as ever on shaky ground, I would say), I haven’t used two of their respective skins in what feels like years. Maybe it’s just me but I could never wrap my head around any of the newer generation of legendary weps.. I mean most of them looked kinda lame or unappealing to me and still do. I mean who needs the aquatic wep anyway? But then I saw Eureka, and while this was at least a month since I was learning the ropes all over again with the new HoT content, it gave me that extra push again that I sorely needed to start getting my feet wet. I’m still currently working on getting my hands on it atm if nothing but for that stunning aesthetics (I mean I could craft a dozen ascended maces instead in the matter of minutes if I wanted to honestly) but i have to say for the first time in so long it feels like a step in the right direction, since they actually came out with a skin that appealed to me. I mean you might have a different experience with all this, but it’s one point of view. Most people I know are also going towards that legendary backpiece, though I’m honestly relieved I’m not one of them. I mean it just seems like a trumped-up version of the shiny fractal capacitor, who cares if you can cycle through the stats on it? Aside from my colorful and jaded opinion though, the new mechanics introduced actually mesh well with the content and the areas of interest as well. I have to admit that my preconception of gliding was actually misplaced; I mean it’s enjoyable when you’re not forced to jump through hoops mid-flight or something which thankfully doesn’t happen all too often, plus it actually serves some purpose other than the scenic view and relatively leisure comfort (I mean when you don’t have mobs sniping at you and occasionally incapacitating you) which like I said works well with the new content introduced as well.

Having rare accessories at this point is just downright pitiful, I don’t mean to sound callous but you can ask around the ascended accessories (at least the ones toting the pre-expansion stat combinations) are pretty straightforward and easy to get. If you are a casual player then I agree it could be a struggle for you, but then again the sheer plethora of previously unseen content might be enough to unnerve or overwhelm you well before that. I suggest taking things slow and working on story and other various achievements. The story ones in particular have some easily doable ones that award various ascended pieces for literally just spending a little time, though this list is by no means inclusive. Also take note of thr amount of laurels you have on hand, it might just be enough to simply buy some ascended rings that you will sorely need. In regards to ascended equipment, accessories and weps have the highest stat boosts which is why most ppl will recommend you invest some time in working towards that. Rares at this point are a joke, especially with legendary armor on the waitlist presumably sometime soon. Not that I will be enthusiastic about going for that, unless the stats are different from their ascended counterpart.

Another thing you ought to know is that dungeons are vastly deserted, being bludgeoned to near-death as they were by Anet staff. Yeah, most Pve people are shifting to fractals and raids which are mostly daunting and stress-inducing content to a returning casual player, though admittedly they still are to no small part of the player base so you’re not alone there. If you’re not a Pve’er, then don’t mind me and just do what you intend to do. Though I would probably work on upgrading my gear to at least exotics if I were you, lest I get laughed at by a random stranger in-game.

I think they are both somewhat similar in terms of rotations and how you play them, especially as it pertains to the new meta for both respective classes. Being both heavy armor classes, you would think they would have share a bit more in common however it is most assuredly not the case. I am working on leveling my Revenant to its elite spec counterpart at the moment, but it plays different enough from warrior that it will warrant some getting used to. The class mechanics are disparate from anything else I played but the Elementalist would probably come the closest to matching it, with their ability to sift through and swap between various elemental states whilst maintaining their sole wep set. I personally like to think of the Revenant as a hybrid class with an assortment of thief+elementalist mechanics. This is especially perceptible if you are used to leveling with the Jalis/Shiro stance combos like I am, and also from the skills on the wep sets they use, sword mainhand and staff set especially. The sword 3 skill reminds me of the dagger whirl/evade on thief, the backwards dodge utility skill seems to be modeled after the evade+ roll backwards heal animation on thief, not to mention the devastatingly useful lifesteal and quickness combo. Even the very dodge skill on the class is eerily reminiscent of the evade animation on thief.

Suffice it to say that because of this hybrid playstyle and its unique class mechanics, Revenant is ideally suited for the DPS and support role, being able to ostensibly provide a bottomless supply of crucial boons such as a high prot and fury uptime among others. The warrior class I feel is somewhat more durable and survivable in pve, at the cost of not being able to provide group heal and dmg reduction to allies for instance. However they do arguably bring more offensive support through use of banners, as well as more noticeable power increase to their groups through use of EA and might stacking rotations. A warrior running meta can ideally stack and maintain full might stacks on their group provided there are at least an average of 2 mobs to cleave through, otherwise might stacking might be rather slow. Overall both have similar roles though the Revenant is more of a group support one. I was testing out Revenant rotations at at times the dps actually seems to be an increase over warrior, at least for solo situations involving single mobs. Then again I am more easily able to solo a champ on the new maps with warrior whereas that same encounter would cause me to fall flat on my face with Rev. This could be because I am still learning on grasping the fundamentals of the class and working towards my elite spec, so don’t read too much into this. Anyway hope it helped

Personally I would say either guardian or Mesmer, then again I am a bit biased in that opinion. I still remember the days of 4 warrior and mesmer group for CoF though that was many years ago when they were farming the dungeon. Basically the idea was mesmer for feedback and time warp, and warrior to burst everything down. Guardian and warrior is a good combo because guardian provides protection that is really good for warrior with high health, then again guard is a good combo with almost any class.

Also no one mentioned this, but Eternity is most distinguishable from its footfalls which are more lustrous and reflective than its other two counterparts, and also from its shiny, somewhat coruscant pommel that is hard to miss even if the weapon were not sheathed. These are two things that I think makes it easiest to recognize an Eternity and distinguish it from a Twilight or Sunrise, since some people tend to be unaware of these differences and mistakenly identify it as either of them. Also when throwing the sword with classes such as warrior or whirling around in place with guardian for instance, the projectiles appear as dual or twin blades of Sunrise and Twilight swirling alongside each other. If you want a clearer picture of Eternity being wielded and demonstrated, the event outside the gates of Arah culminates in dueling a Risen High Wizard who wields the selfsame Eternity whose visual effects you were wondering about.

Rowdow.6918:

I am a player who unfortunately doesn’t have much time to play due to RL obligations. I play a Norn guardian with sword and shield because I absolutely love the aesthetics of this combination of weapons and heavy armor. Currently, with my limited time, I am working towards the Bolt legendary weapon and all time I can play I dedicate myself to gathering all the materials I need and it will still take me a long time to gather it all. I absolutely love this weapon as it will make my character so much more complete and its just so beautiful. The problem I am facing myself however is getting Zap. Materials can be farmed but getting 1000 gold for Zap is something beyond anything I will ever reach. Also crafting it would take me so much time that it is very much leaning to the impossible.

I was getting rid of all my dungeon tokens and thankfully got Zap from throwing in enough exotic weapons in the forge, so I donated this to you at no cost to me at all

I just thought I would use this thread to reach out to others who need donations of any sort. I have been playing since 2013 (/age is 1,084 days since last I checked) and in that duration I have amassed a considerable amount of in-game funds as well as at long last obtaining all the legendaries and gear that I could have wished for. However, keeping mind that I never set out to farm for riches or prestige in the first place as that has never been my ultimate goal, I do currently not have as much funds in my possession as I could have hoped for. This gold has accumulated over the past year or so as the unwarranted (but not totally unwanted) byproduct of various endeavors that I need not go into, and additionally I have reached the conclusion that I am not going to be playing anymore due to personal reasons that I reserve for myself. I am currently sitting on well over 3k gold the last i checked, and using this I would like to hand out reasonable donations to any that needs it.

Feel free to send me a mail in-game about your current goal that you are working towards and why you feel that it is important to you or why you want it as much as you do, and i will consider it and try my best to assist you as well I am able. On a separate but also related note, do not hesitate to ask me for what you believe to be an unreasonable or outrageous request because if you explain and articulate your desire well and clear enough that it stands out to me, I might end up fulfilling or granting it to you.

Edit: So far I have donated 3 different precursors, a ghostly infusion, some gold for hawk wings and a cultural armor set, about 2 stacks worth of ecto, and given away some t6 mats that I had sitting in my bank as well as 72 deldrimor ingots to two different people. I am basicaly out of gold now, but I still have tons of karma that I have to burn through so I can donate any temple-related or armor sets as long as they are tradeable, just make sure to check that they are beforehand. Also its probably easier to just send me an in-game mail since its easier for me to keep track of everything that way.

just do dungeons, its the easiest way to get gold. mostly the easier explorable paths like TA, CoE, and Arah 1/2, you will easily get 10g in a day just from that. i can also lend some gold if you need it. i have way too much and dont plan to use it anytime soon.

Dante.8456:

Guardian has the best survivability.

its a matter of perspective, but really any class can be tanky if you build for it. imo the classes that can be built really bunker to have good survivability are warrior, guardian, ele, and engineer. If you are doing spvp you should try a warrior shout heal build, thats probably closest to what you ask. the whole build is about bleeds, self heal, condis, and rotations. for pve I suggest warrior, they have such high base health and regen even when built for zerker, in groups I sometimes solo Lupi off the wall without taking any damage. The idea of banner warrior is you are naturally tankier than other classes due to high health and armor, and you still bring more dps than a guardian with bunker build, for example.

Farzo.8410:

Charr just looks weird as guardian.

they are actually look really good. with heavy t3 cultural especially they look beast. my personal opinion is norn for guardian, charr for warrior, human for thief, etc. with the cultural armor for them they look really nice.

@Elodium btw what’s the dye?

gw2spidy.com

look for items that are:
1. decent supply (at least 5+ i would say)
2. high demand

I used to flip months ago, but gave up after sigils market crashed. I think I made like 10g/day with flipping, then again i didn’t take huge risks so you could make a lot more. But you could also lose a lot, for instance I bought a dye for 60g and now it sell for less than half that. I suggest weapon skins market, I used to made a lot flipping that. Some of them you can make more than 100g profit easily, only it might take a few days to sell.

Cream Sauce Pasta.8254:

1) Good map mobility – I want to go for map completions so perma-swiftness or at least 25% movement speed would be great.
Thanks in advance!

Just want to say, you can get perma swiftness on any class with just centaur runes or the traits for it. The classes with best mobility is thief or warrior, I suggest warrior because you rly don’t need to care about your group at all. The only group support they have is battle standard, other than that you just give offensive support (banners etc). You also don’t have to babysit anyone like with a thief or guardian. You have good cleave with melee weps, will never lack for AoE at least. High survivability, solid dps, plus the easiest class in game.

Northernnliht.9514:

Elementalist is pretty good

This probably the worst advice because Ele has the highest skill floor. You need lots of practice and always think about your rotations, even then there’s a good chance you die pretty fast. Ele is also more focused on your group, you bring heals if you are support and make sure to stack might if you are a good Ele. Highest dps, but low survivability with zerker.

Dalanor.5387:

Same as Lupis kick or swipe in melee range or the teleport or bubble when someone is at range. It has nothing to do with walling the enemy or not.

not true, if Lupi is walled he will not do his PBAoE blast or bubble as long as everyone is stacked on him. You can fight him without walling him as long as everyone stand close, but the problem with that is he will move around and you risk his PBAoE blast.

Also, I think everyone know this by now but if Lupi is walled he can be 1 shot at the start of phase two with reflects (guard, engi, mesmer etc.). I don’t think its intended and I dislike when groups do it, but until they fix it there is a huge advantage to walling this boss.

edit: I never thought about it much, but you are right… walling a boss is mostly pointless now. I guess its just group mentality which you cant change, almost all of them will try to wall any boss they can. Since the OP will most likely get groups like this, he should be prepared to adjust his build for this. Always use s/p when this happen.

If you talking dungeons and PvE, dual wield dagger is great against bosses or single target mobs. The only thing with D/D though, you need position yourself behind your target when attk, otherwise it lose its potential. For more than two mobs you can use sword/pistol. Pistol whip is really OP, you are basically invulnerable when you use it. Imo the blind on sword isn’t that useful except as smoke field, its good for pulling mobs but when you are stacking you can just use smoke screen. I also use Sword/pistol for some bosses where you need to spam evade a lot, like Alpha in CoE, you basically can’t survive without it. For bosses and mobs you stack on a wall for, I would say dagger set is completely useless, just use s/p instead.

Here is the build I run for ‘casual’ speedruns (ie. unorganized groups). Its focus on boon sharing with you and your group, which is mainly fury + swiftness:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoY8al8Mp6pFOx3JsPRRLBtdHi+H86N6ehA0DA-TRRBwAX3fU+dT9HU6HA8EAMrEUMA5B-e

SobeSoul.6910:

Shout warrior isn’t strong. It’s actually a pretty horrendous build to play outside of zerging in wvw. Even more atrocious when you put LB on it instead of hammer.

don’t know why you would say this but s/w is a pretty good build for pvp, especially effective against condi necros, rangers, and thieves. only problem I had with it is against most engis (turret engi usually), shatter mesmer, and some eles. Of those, i can usually take down most mesmer and eles in 1v1. Most of the eles with bunker builds usualy seem unbeatable, but halfway thru the fight they will start to lose health while you will be close to full health if you use ur skills off cd. the only ones you can’t take down is some bunker eles, they don’t lose health so you can’t beat them, but then they can’t beat you either.. so no one wins.

OP, if you want the short answer then exotics is better % chance than rares for precursor in forge. This is a direct quote from the wiki (post is over a year ago, but pretty sure this is still correct): “As you only have a certain chance to get an exotic on throwing in 4 rares (if we assume it is a 20% exotic return) the chance on 4xrares is way lower then on 4xexotic.”

Basically you have better chance of geting exotic with 4xexotic, so obv better chance of getting precursor. I actually got a Dusk drop almost a year ago from throwing in 4xexotic GS in the forge. This was my 2nd attempt that month, I only used dungeon tokens and previous to that I had about 10 tries or so, I usually did about 2-3 tries of 4xexotic in the forge per month (about 1500 tokens each attempt). So I guess you could say its an alternate way if you’d rather not spend any gold, who knows you could get lucky like I did.

This is a build I mainly designed for dungeons, but it works in general PvE too. It is a 5/6/0/1/2 build, and traited to provide swiftness and fury to both yourself and the group. Since Thief usually don’t have this when they need it, this is much better than not having it at all or relying on groups to bring them. It is also useful if you are stealthing through mobs, you can use Steal (untargeted) to grant a few seconds of swiftness to everyone close by. Along with Runes of the Pack and the swiftness on dodge trait, you can maintain swiftness and fury on yourself and the group for about half the time. I choose Pack runes because it seemed to fit this build the best, also with Scholars I was rarely able to get the +10% bonus.

Note: if you want perma swiftness, you can trait 3 into Acrobatics for it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoY8al8Mp6pFOx3JsPRxLBtdGa+G8aN6OhA0DA-ThRBwAXV+dT9HU6HIu/AgnAgZlgAA-e

Any thoughts on the build, or how I can improve it?

Lyndis.4653:

It is just as it is implemented in the game : there is no ownership of an individual but decisions are made by the majority (paths and kicks). It is pure and simple fact. Considering you own an instance when people join you is delusion.

This is exactly the problem with having no instance owner. Since every instance you start becomes public as soon as you put the group on the LFG, it doesn’t matter if you take 30 mins or even more to solo an instance to the end, it’s not your instance at all because you have no ownership over it. So if you invite 2 other friends/guildies and open the group to the public, it is perfectly fine to have one guy join, invite his friend and kick you and everyone else in group—because no such thing as instance owner. Plus they don’t even get kicked out, they can simply finish the rest of the run and get their 3g reward (from daily chest) with almost no effort on their part. So technically, if this happens to you then your instance never got stolen because it was never yours in the first place. Btw don’t think I’m making this up, I had this happen only recently. It wasn’t the first time either that I got kicked out of my own run after they made it so there no such thing as an instance owner, I never got kicked before this even once.

You can argue their change made instance owners more polite, and no one has to worry about the person who started instance leaving the group or going offline since they can just replace him, but there is also other problems now like people being more aggressive and abusing kicks, since nothing discourages it now. It used to be someone would not be so quick in kicking, maybe they would ask something like ‘wait.. did he start the instance?’ and if answer was ‘yes’ then they wouldn’t kick. Now the group doesn’t even have to think twice about kicking someone else that only 2 of them don’t agree with, since the instance belongs to nobody. No point, I don’t even sell anymore because players are more hostile now that there no such thing as instance owner at all.

Lyndis.4653:

If people join, this is a public instance and you have to adapt to people or get out just as if you joined one.

The only notion of ownership can come from being 3 guildmates/friends in the group.

Your attitude here is already too aggressive for a public game btw.

Not sure if trolling, but your post is just dead wrong that I don’t even know what to say. If I post for lvl 80 should I be ok with carrying any low lvls who join the group? It might not be my instance but I have a right to expect people to read/respect a LFG post, since I do the same. I don’t know about you, but I would rather kick them so they learn from this next time, rather than staying and adapting or leaving, both of which encourage their behavior that they might repeat with other groups.

I use metabattle now, like Highchu said it has all the class builds for any game mode. Personally I just use the dungeon meta build for PvE, I never use a PS build or any other build when I pug because it’s too much of an effort to change builds/gear, plus I don’t like sacrificing any dps. I do make a small change sometimes though for harder content, I take III in Strength instead. I use the same build for any PvE (including world bosses), only thing I change is weapon and skills.

If you don’t like metabattle, I recommend Nike’s warrior guide, his is more in-depth and he explains it better.

sometimes when I am on my warrior in wayfarer foothills to complete daily events, I see a big arrow pointing to my heal skill when I am low health.. do I really need to be told this? I have world completion and am lvl 80 on this guy. Plus it is a heal signet, you rarely should need to use it at all.. so I think it could be teaching newbies the wrong lesson.

Same here, game crashed 3 times for me when I tried to do sanctum sprint for daily. I thought it strange since it’s been a while since i had it crash for any reason, was about to post a bug too but then i saw this :o

Rhaegar.5120:

I’ve already reached LV80 with 2 chars and I’ve already got Exotic gear…what can I do next?

This is hardly anything as I guess you can figure out, most of the people by now have at least 2 chars to lvl 80. a few things to work on in no particular order:

1. World completion
2. Legendary crafting
3. All race/classes to lvl 80
4. Ascended gear (armor, wep, trinkets)
5. APs (Story, collections, Jump puzzles, SW, dry top)
6. Dungeon master (includes not buying Arah)
7. Activities (Crab toss, southsun survival etc.)
8. World boss for farming dragonite and achievs (Teq + wurm)

The sigils for all of those are different enough that you probably need more than one GS for everything. I have 3 ascended GS, one with Force/Night that I use for PvE and dungeons, one with Undead/Force that I use for Arah specifically, and for WvW another with Hydromancy/Air sigils. I also have a GS with bloodlust for some dungeons, and another bloodlust sigil on axe in case I need to swap to something else like a sword set. The whole thing is complicated enough that I wish they would let you swap sigils once you unlock them (kind of like what they did with wardrobe/skins). This way before you start, you can decide which sigils you need on a wep and make sure you have it.

I think Thadeus did a good job of listing all the sigils that are useful. One thing I would add is that bloodlust is still useful for some dungeon (not all) if you know how/where to easily build stacks. For something like CoF you won’t get a chance to use bloodlust, but for ones like TA, CoE, and Arah you can easily build stacks. TA forward for example has the dogs before the last 2 bosses where you can easily get 25 stacks in a few seconds. I usually use the bloodlust on axe set and then forget about it, since I don’t use it much. Sigil of Energy is useful for WvW or hard boss fights like in Arah. For warrior I have just one energy sigil on sword, but for thief I sometimes use 2 energy sigil (one on each set) since I’m not that good with it.