Guild Wars 2

roachsrealm.9284:

ranged weapons aren’t necessarily weaker, but there if they are i believe the reason is:
you can use ranged weapons in melee
you cant use melee weapons at range.

They are 100 percent confirmed as weaker.
Thus your first statement is wrong.
And your third statement is sometimes wrong (guardian sword 3 is a ranged attack as an expample).
Your second statement is merely inefficient.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Fext.3614:

…if most of the bosses have very painfull attacks reserved for punishing of the cowardly ranged toons?

Ranged weapons are weaker than melee in this weapons because ArenaNet has not figured out another method of keeping both weapons balanced in a PvP environment. This game’s balance mostly revolves around PvP, while the game’s content mostly builds on PvE. I find it a somewhat odd arrangement.

It’s actually for both pve and pvp. They decided that given the choice between two equal options players would choose the ranged option due to safety and constant dps rather than the more dangerous melee and needing to close distance (resulting in dps loss). Perhaps they overtuned it towards melee, but I don’t really think so. Once you know the mechanics of the fight melee is the superior option in pve, but in fresh content that you don’t know the mechanics of many people choose to range.

Yeah, I kind of got that he was wvw player from wanting these runes in the first place. Its pretty bad for pve. Still, they make people who play pve almost exclusively go running around wvw for map completion and badges just to get a cool looking skin or less time gated ascended trinkets.

Its also why I said leaching, most wvw players who jump into a dungeon tend to have garbage in dungeon builds and such.

Runes of the noble are cheap in dungeon tokens. Find a group of friends or guildies that dont mind letting you leach a couple runs. Heck you might actually end up liking running it if you bothered.

maxinion.8396:

spoj.9672:

I do think we should start referring the meta builds as support guard, support warrior etc. Maybe people will start to understand slowly.

That banner, such OP support!

Hey, i notice when its not there. Its also nice when people know how to stomp them in fire fields for might stacks.

I play support guard for the most part in dungeons. Yet my build is the meta dps gear/trait set. My blinds, reflects, regen, might, condition clear carry bad pugs and contribute my fair share to good groups (I dont run in organized speed clears that often, though I do have the build for it).

Support in this game isn’t the same thing as it is in wow, stop trying to make it the same. Blinds, damage buffs, and well timed prots are all a group needs for support. Healing is a generally non issue since if the other stuff works you dont need heals. The self heal for most classes is so strong that its effectively worthless to spec for group healing. Both my mes and guardian self heal for nearly half their health with just one click without any gear/trait support as an example (though having a low health pool contributes to this, who needs vit?). Add in passive regen provided by other party members (small as it is) and I don’t worry about hp much at all.

Your understanding of the game is at least 6 months out of date, and certainly wrong post dungeon rewards changes (the 4 war mes/5 war runs were just for farming COF and a couple of other paths). Ironically the ideal speed clear group is largely dungeon specific and I would say 6/8 of classes are in demand for them. War banners, guard/mes reflects, thief skips, ranger’s spotter trait/frost spirit, and ele might stacks/conjured weapons are all wanted due to the support they give to the group. Notice that most of the desired things increase dps and stack with each other. All the classes named have strong self sufficient survival even with being zerk. Engie is rough, they can be a credit to team, but the dedicated player who is good enough to run them correctly is pretty rare. Same with necros with the downside that most of them seem to be followers of bad build advice from youtube, and also suffer from the classes mechanics that just don’t work well in a speed clear group. You can make them work if you are willing to understand and accept their limits and your role in a group. This means don’t lay down fields that mess up might stacking or other needed combo fields.

Dragonite is solely from farming world bosses. World bosses are no skill required press 1 to win fests. Stuff that the casuals who hate zerk stacking supposedly argue against. Its a chore for a rare, random garbage drops, and a paltry amount of dragonite. They are time gated and you have to go to them when they are ready rather than being able to just jump into the content at any old hour.

The one time they made a WB actually challenging? Teq, now nobody does it regularly and it gets done mostly on guild created overflow servers. Which prevents randoms from wandering in and increasing the scaling without contributing effective effort.

Considering that the average player seems to be so bad they manage to die to stupid crap like standing next to jormag I guess you are right about people just wanting press one to win content. Too bad the people who actually are like that aren’t part of the dungeon community and are part of the champ train/LS crowd.

kny.3789:

i think ive been convinced. we should just have anet put portals at the start of the dungeon that lead directly to the end boss. all new dungeons should just be single room encounters. there would be no walls to glitch through no monsters to worry about just enter the instance spam rotation collect rewards.

why have mobs if they dont all drop valuable stuff each time. why have corridors obstacles mazes and traps if nobody has time to deal them or they are just in the way of the reward. this design will allow Anet to put more rewards in the game since they wont have to make content that no one wants to be bothered with.

everything about dungeons should be changed. and since they would be so much more fun… they should be called “Fungeons”.

fungeon runners 4 life!

nice logical fallacy, I think it falls under the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum category of arguments.

CoE subject alpha, SE path one final boss. Both use this technique. Both are ineffetive because you can dodge all of them with one dodge.

After all, if you die at alpha, l2dodge is the reply.

As for stacking, in SE 3 there is a midboss champion that pretty much trains players to stack. Puts fire rings on each member, you only get burnt if you cross somebodies ring, but take no damage if you all stand on the same spot, or spread out and range. Since range is terrible dps and horid boon support, stacking is the answer.

a number of the threads are ones that got moved from GW2 general to dungeons by moderators (correctly i might add).

Error.6290:

dmg > tactic/communcation/teamplay = boring

.

I guess all the stacking, boons and buffs, moving through trash as a group with proper skills ready aren’t tactics, team play, or communication.

I guess I better reroll a GS mesmer or bearbow ranger and learn to play support better. Or perhaps I’ll get a healing staff/mace+sheild guardian up and running so I can be healer when needed. Then I will stand in my spot determined by my class role. If I’m a mesmer, in staff/GS range, if ranger, the next room over. If guardian, standing behind the tank casting heals on cooldown. Better tactics, more skill required… Got to get good at kiting mobs so the tank doesn’t get overwhelmed too, managing the aggro building mechanics is an important thing to learn as well.

Or I could just play GW2 and not WoW.

Nouvel.2375:

I remembered when AC was very easy and people didn’t mind grouping with different classes and there was no fuss in how you play. As soon as Anet changed AC to make it more challenging, hardly anyone grouped up for AC, even caused some new players to be put off from doing dungeons completely. It wasn’t until groups found methods to make the paths easier to complete that AC got popular again, but required certain professions in the team and tactics.

Generally, players want rewards with the least resistance and max efficiency, hence why there are champ trains in certain maps and some dungeons and paths are hardly touched and others are very popular in LFG. As soon as you introduce something new and difficult, people will likely default to profession specific teams and tactics or not do the dungeon path at all. I think Anet are still trying to figure out the best approach to make all happy, which is why existing paths haven’t been so drastically changed like AC.

Setting the LFG description and stating clearly at the beginning of the dungeon run what you don’t want to do is the only way to avoid the speedrun norm style. Hopefully, you’ll get people to join your team, but curious to know how quickly people join in these groups and the experience of doing a full run without the conventional speed run play style.

Well AC is still very doable by beginners, its just not face roll easy which is what they are probably looking for.

Ralron.8124:

I personally just tired of seeing the following things:

• ZERK ONLY!
• HEAVY ONLY
• NO NECROS (?) ( even if hes ZERK and they ask for zerk only ) ( PS zerk necro have better single target DPS then a war witch is 80% of fights in dungeons and ALL bosses.)
• MESMER OR WAR ONLY!
• LEVEL 80 ONLY ( maybe for some )
• ACHIEVEMENT POINTS XXXXX or more!! ( thats my FAV , i had dungeon master and had done all dungeons over 20 times each befor i got to 1.5k AP)

People in this game are Ignorant , selfish and out right childish

if you want a specific run type then use your guild and Friends!! dont have friends?! FIND SOME!!!

99% of dungeon LFG require the above witch basically means: IF YOUR NEW, kitten YOU!!

If you actually watch lfg you will find that many more generic runs are being done, those zerk types of runs take longer to fill so you actually see them post for a long time. Other runs? often fill faster than you can blink. The LFG tool allows description of what is desired. Joining a group without meeting the requirements is as dumb as joining a Path 1 run and voting for path 3. Or jumping into the instance before the others can and running story instead.

Those descriptions are just different filters looking for people that run in the same way that the person runs. Also known as trying to find a compatible group. I’ve seen ads for casual groups, teaching parties, and even one all low levels only (joined for the lulz, my level 36 ele carried a bunch of 50s to the lovers crypt in ac story before they all quit due to how hard it was for them).

Want to watch ignorant and childish people, watch for those who get angry at other people having fun without them. They often use all caps and extra punctuation to provide emphasis. They also tend to curse even though they know there are filters.

the noobiniser.7465:

People, please notice that I am NOT bashing speed running! I just hate the fact that those things are being done whilst speedrunning! don’t bash this thread because you love speedrunning. I’d like to do it as well, but you can’t deny that people are running the dungeons multiple times in full glass cannon builds without dying. I want arenanet to implement it as a mechanic, an extra thing to do whilst ALSO keeping an eye on the other mechanics of the dungeon, instead of ignoring them with wild CCs

Not bashing speed running.
Hate all the techniques that speed runners use.
Don’t like that people who have mastered the content are running in no defense builds because they know how to use their classes abilities…

IDK what world I live in anymore.

the noobiniser.7465:

Gnat.9405:

Fixing it?

Don’t join speed clears.

Ok, done. The problem I have with speed runs is that it scares away new players. That is not what the first dungeon should be like after you reach max level, It really isn’t…

I’m sure some speed runners would agree with my idea of implementing it in the game as one of many modes of doing the dungeon. with new rewards, but it being actually a CHALLEGE. you remember that word?

The dungeons are still challenging. Just not to somebody who has played their character enough to know what it can do, and who knows the mechanics of the game. The content has been out for well over a year now, expecting it to still be hard despite having been long ago solved is a bit too much to ask is it not? Take an all new group into the dungeon and let them have their fun. I guarantee they will quit more often than not because its “so hard” its unfair. Bring a teacher with them and if they amazingly will actually listen, it will still be a challenge, but it will be very doable. Next time they run they will know all the hard parts and be better geared (maybe asking for to much right off the bat). A few more times and they essentially solve it. If they keep running it, its for the rewards. Then they start looking at ways to do it fast since time = money. Suddenly they are the enemy as they slowly turn towards the dark side of speed running.

Well i figure i will comment before this thread is exiled to the dungeons sub forum:

If you honestly think that the new content is actually good IDK what to tell you. The new stuff is so freaking easy that its good that it usually doesn’t last more than a month because it just sucks and is only good for a run or two.

As for stacking, a quick glance at the proper forum shows that this is a well known issue, and low and behold, bosses will down parties that dont use skills that prevent damage. You might not see those skills used, because you dont know what to look for. Blinds/aegis/protection/weakness. All are often “spammed” in a stack and it negates the bosses slow attacks so the group can keep up their dps rotation. It is a result of the combat system rewarding tight group formations (short range boons)and melee (high risk high reward, melee is much more damage than ranged even in base numbers). Fixing it would require a massive overhaul of enemy AI, how skills and boons work, and how CC and defiant works.

a t s e.9614:

PvE solo takes skill, more than 3 people its a stack and presss 1.

When you say pve, are you talking dungeons or open world? If its open world… Idk what to say.

If its dungeon, then of course 3 people smacking things down is easy. The other two are probably giving you aegis or blinding, and since the fight is over before another blind/aegis is needed, it looks easy.

While I’m hardly a great zerk player, I know my class well enough to carry even the slowest dps pug, enough blinds/aegis/blocks to negate the enemies attacks. It sure is nice when the entire party is playing zerk, because I don’t have to virtually solo the entire thing, but in no way is it a no skill situation. It just looks and feels easy because you aren’t needing to do 4 peoples worth of work for once. TBH i can see those kinds of groups a mile away, and probably should have an alt defensive set so I don’t have to work so hard. I don’t because I don’t want to pick up bad habits and don’t want the run to take 30 minutes when the zerk run is 6 and i can zerk carry a group down to under 20 minutes run.

Well lets look at it this way, this game has design elements that actively discourage killing every little thing. You get bad xp from just killing things, the drop rates on some mobs are either nothing ever or .000001 of for an item literally worth (due to the cash shop we can compare irl currency to in game) worth 10 cents. Or we can traverse the trap and patrol filled dungeon to reach the missions end objective and get a bigger reward (currency that can’t be bought normally and a big XP payoff).

Seems like the design rewards the end objective and not just killing everything. The fact that they have removed rewards for early mobs to prevent bag farming also supports this viewpoint. The fact that all the mobs don’t have kill of us to open next door mechanics supports this view.

Hey, people don’t play how i would like to play, the community is flawed argument…

Followed up by the D&D murder hobo style of play actually being promoted…

Yeah, I guess us skippers who don’t like murdering everything our path is what is wrong with the community.

Well I’ve seen the painters in those workshops, most of the really are wasting their time

It’s especially depressing when they are using up perfectly good art supply on future landfill filler. Which tbh is what official forums usually end up as.

To stay topical, I don’t like some skips for pugs because I can usually tell when 1 or more members won’t make it. Then it becomes a lets wait for him to revive and run back, look at all that time we saved. This is especially true on skips where the trash you are skipping is no threat when pulled correctly and takes 30 seconds to reduce to nothing (CM final room before boss). But for the most part skipping stuff just makes sense.

Elrey.5472:

notabot.3497:

I think its rather telling that the most toxic posters in the this thread are Elrey and Nemesis.

Is there a thing such as “reverse” elitism, a sort of a race to the bottom to avoid being called “meta” or a net build?

See our point of view: For us the toxic players are the ones forcing everyone else to use their meta builds… or kick. Nevertheless, let’s not take it personal and let’s focus on the topic.

I’m not really sure how my post was off topic. In a point, counterpoint argument is it not correct to challenge the assertions of the opposing side? In this case the individuals who have been railing against dungeon elitists being toxic are coming into a thread to help a dungeon new-player, and doing so with a negative attitude. The perception of dungeons being full of elitist jerks is also spread by people similar to you. Yeah, some dungeon runners are elitists, but that doesn’t mean they are being elitist about the same things. I see bitterness AND elitism in some of the anti-zerk/stack/skip faction, just about doing things as “intended”, upholding a trinity concept, or some other idea that they have in their head about how the game should be played. At least the RPers keep to themselves and its kind of fun to make fun of them and they generally don’t mind because they are having their own fun. But the guys who want to do things the “legit” way? They are full of nothing but bitterness and tears. Nobody is forcing you to pick up the current meta build and join arahSC groups, you can always form your own groups. Don’t like getting kicked? Don’t join parties that advertise specific things you don’t meet, and don’t be surprised that the average “P1&3” group is just looking for a smooth and fast farm run.

That being said at least you are mostly still having fun, even though you are letting those other guys having fun bother you for some reason. I don’t think the same is true of Nemesis, he is sounding awfully burnt out these days.

My experience? I went into dungeons running after doing the courteous thing and finding out how to run them and how to play my class. I let the other players know I was new to the paths, and didn’t take it personal if I got kicked. Which I did get kicked a few times. No big deal, they are playing how they want and I don’t have the right to impose on that. I checked my ego and entitlement at the door and went along with how the group did things.

I might add that most pick up groups do things the same way, so teaching people who are going to pug how to do it the “legit no stacking, zerk elitist go away” way is a disservice. Yeah, most pug members aren’t going to be full zerk , but they in general will bring reasonable dps (as best as they feel comfortable running) builds unless they are coming into the dungeons with ill informed preconceived notions or misinformation spread by people who don’t like/know how the game is and want to force a meta based on how they think it should be. If you want to play a certain way, form a group with those parameters. Sure you will get the random zerk skipper/stacker who doesn’t read the LFG message, but that’s kinda funny considering how often clerics/bearbows/tanks try to join advertised zerk speed clear groups.

I think its rather telling that the most toxic posters in the this thread are Elrey and Nemesis.

Is there a thing such as “reverse” elitism, a sort of a race to the bottom to avoid being called “meta” or a net build?

Nemesis, I imagine a good portion of the people you are against played in the betas and the early launch.

Well honestly the runs you see on youtube are good groups doing the paths in the most efficient manner usually. The average lfg dungeon X path Y isn’t going to be doing things that fast usually. While it is very doable to join a learning group, its also good to watch the vids to learn about the tricky fights where reflects or dodging is particularly important. Its also important to let the party know you don’t know the dungeon past watching a vid, you might get kicked but there are other parties so don’t take it personally. Its important to check your ego at the door when you are learning.

As long as you show up with level appropriate gear, one that is set for doing damage (conditions don’t count) and don’t use obnoxius skills like fear and knock-back and are willing to melee most fights you won’t run into problems.

PVT is like getting to used to training wheels, some people end up too afraid to take them off. Zerkers is like learning how to ride without training wheels. Yeah, you will fall, but if you are with others they will help pick you up. The pain of falling will make you learn faster.

None of the kids in the neighborhood are going to want to ride with the wimp with the training wheels.

Me, I learned with ONE training wheel, that was barely bolted on so i would fall if I leaned on it too hard. In game that is a dps set that has some defense like knights. Its a good alternative to just face-planting right out of the gate. Once i got comfortable with the build (which was much faster than if i started with facetanking) I just salvaged the entire thing and replaced with zerkers.

IMHO its a better metaphor than the calculator.

Give us HM dungeons. And don’t just call it in by upgrading mob hp. Well maybe, make HM dungeons all lvl80.

Sundar.1735:

It is possible to make every class work but Necros, and to a lesser extent Rangers and Engineers have always been seen as weak classes that don’t bring much to a team, particularly Necros. People often leave a team if they see more than 1 Necro in it. I don’t think they are that bad but yes I think your best bet would be to play either a Heavy Armor class or Mesmer/Ele/Thief because they all bring something useful for the entire team such as Time Warp, Feedback, Ice Bow, Fiery Greatsword and Stealth. The Necro was my first character and is still my main character and favorite class to play but I seldom play him nowadays because I am far more successful in PUG’s as something else. Don’t let this demotivate you though, just play what you like.

People are coming around to rangers finally, as long as they have spotter traited and frost spirit. Provides a nice boost that just rolling with war2 & war 3 can’t provide. Takes a bit more skill than the average ranger player to prosper in dungeons, and ill informed pugs will kick even good rangers as a result (most are so bad its easier to the content 3 manning or 4 manning than deal with them).

The only healing you need is group condition removal. And that is only sometimes needed for specific fights, and happens to be on good trait lines for specific classes. As for Defiant, yeah extremely annoying, but organized groups can burn off stack and still get the required CC skills off.

One of the things that I actually liked about one of the “exploits” that they patched, in SE path 3 the pipe and ledge that you could run up to drop down by the first champion. It was a moderately difficult JP under pressure from the opening mobs that people often run past and all it did was bypass some easy mobs. The jp was about the same difficulty as just killing the bombers IMHO (assuming a good zerk team). Then they removed it and took an option away from us (it didn’t look like an exploit like running over the caves in CM used to, it had an obvious ledge and path that looked like it was meant to be used). I don’t mind skipping trash, or fighting it, but I think its actually more fun if they included more of those kind of mechanics so groups that can’t burn down trash as effectively as zerk teams can or can’t run past groups as well as skilled players at least have an option to get through content. One would have the make the JPs long enough that killing trash would be about the same time otherwise the zerk teams would just use the JP for even faster runs however.

I don’t count on any of that actually happening though, its not like there is an actual dungeon team anymore. But it would be interesting for the new LS instances and fractals as they come out.

Yeah, if the balance team remove the viability of zerker builds that will be the final straw for many players, as they in many cases just got done grinding out their full ascended set. Yeah, its not as much as a grind as in other games, but its still a lot of hours of play for ugly armors (requiring a transmutation) and time gated gear.

Make conditions viable, so my necro can be useful other than a mule to carry extra bloodstone. Make it so confusion matters for my mesmer, actually make an interrupt build viable while you are at it.

Make it so artillery builds (ranged dps) can actually be useful. As it is ranged dps misses out on team boons AND does less damage. Considering that one class is supposed to be an archer but effective players use melee weapons exclusively, another class doesn’t actually have real melee weapons but summons them for some of the highest dps in the game, and lastly one class can’t ever really melee (only guns) and thus is nearly useless… Yeah, give some love to ranged players. Sure you will have to balance encounters to take that into consideration, but hopefully it won’t be a punish the whole team like spider queen does when somebody dares to range (spits poison if the entire team isn’t in melee).

The real problem with the “zerk stack in corners” meta is melee is the only good choice, and the AI falls for it.

Vargamonth.2047:

That’s clearly one of the biggest issues with zerker in PvE. It’s supposed to be a risk vs reward spec, but sometimes (too many times if the group is coordinated enough and stacks boon/vulnerability correctly) it can easily bypass that risk.
The easiest solution would be just about increasing armor/HP on enemies , but then the game could become extremely annoying for all those “play what you want” groups.

So high skill and proper play shouldn’t be able to mitigate the risk? You want it to be all risk and no reward? Its not actually easy to coordinate boon stacking right out of the gate in terms of player experience to be able to burst down bosses faster than they can do something. All it takes is one person stupidly laying down the wrong field and that 25 might stack doesn’t happen and you get AoE weakness or blindness instead. If it was easy every time I Iay down a fire field when I pug the other players which I know have them would use the blast finishers as part of the the pre fight buff rotation. As it is, its pretty unusual for a pug to get more than 3-12 stacks going and good luck with perma fury as that pretty much never happens outside of organized groups.

Your suggestion to increase the HP actually just plays into the dps meta as the reason why it became so popular is some bosses already have too much HP. HotW takes FOREVER to burn down bosses with anything short of full zerker builds. A good zerker team is actually still good at the active damage mitigation skill use that any HP level you give the bosses will still be done better by them.

The real way to kill the zerk meta is give enemies a higher rate of attack (so can’t dodge all of it) but with lower damage per attack (so toughness mitigation matters more). This would reduce the power of blinds, limited number of blocks skills (like focus 5 on guards), and also increase the potential value of healing and a decent HP pool ( you could still burst the enemies down, but you need a larger buffer of HP ect).

A less draconian option would be to make conditions viable, as it is now the capping of conditions makes them utter garbage in a PVE setting. The zerk meta is a result of the only viable damage in a pve setting being direct damage. The only way to maximize direct damage is to go with full glass builds, with active dodging and over powered slow attacks that down face tanking toughness/vit builds in 1-3 hits reinforce this play style. Whats the point of tough/vit if you can’t face tank and dodging/active skill use is superior? Then in fractals with hard ticking damage and even trash that get stronger as you go up, the best defense is “dead mobs deal no damage”.

idk, I used to not do CM, but I’m doing it much more often now. I bring my own guardian and do all the critical reflect stuff myself. I don’t trust pug guardians because they are usually using trash builds like cleric staff or meh stuff like the old strife build, or the new nemesis build. That and I pop survival skills for the trash runs when we dont have a stealth class. Or we just kill the last room because its like 20 extra seconds. Of course I’ve been using the 80s only tag and that keeps the disasters to a minimum. I still run generic Path 1,2,3 occasionally, but only when i have time to deal with the pug rollete’s bad spins.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Finnway.2183:

I agree with all Nemesis’ points too though. I don’t think stacking was intended, and the way the game is currently designed kills diversity.

How’s that? Every class in the game except necro is viable in pve. There is plenty of diversity.

Unless you mean diversity of ways to kill bosses, but until you can heal them to death unfortunately melee will be the superior way to kill them.

I would love to see an “overheal” boss. Make it like the balloon water thing at carnivals. Watch him fill up on health till he pops.

blutstein.2468:

finally, its disgusting reading all the wannabe-elitists comments in this thread mostly from people who follow mindless the ‘meta-super-elitist-guide with 1% mo dmg than others’ after another while being way to closeminded to adjust according their own playstyle. Yey, Lemming-Power and the people are proud of it, congratulation!

Of course the PvE Part of GW2 is soooo difficult that min-max is a absolutly must-have…. maybe fractals >40, but for every other part of PvE its simply ridiculous.

Well if it was just 1 percent I could see some point to this. But its not. Also when you get to the high tiers of dps increasing damage percent is huge. Increasing performance by 10 percent isn’t a big increase when you are playing a cleric or bear bow, but it is when you are zerk/assassin.

Yeah, PVE is mostly face roll easy (yet I see the wvw players downed tanking with their not right for pve builds and elitist attitudes against pve…), but I pug a fair amount and many groups I play in don’t bring enough dps/part coordination. They rely on my guardian’s blinds/reflect/aegis and superior dps (to their builds, I haven’t nailed the perfect rotation yet) to get through content smoothly. I know this because when I mess up the entire party downs quickly, or if I down and they survive somehow (probably due to being defensive statted) party dps plummets to near zero even if they don’t go and res me. I’ve even seen the CoF path 1 boss actually start regening with 4 of them attacking (i had a weird lag problem where I could receive data but not send somehow, it was like spectator mode for like 15 seconds).

I bring my best because I can’t count on others being able to.

The “problem” with this game is you can still be all the necessary support/control/heals without giving up all of your dps. Seems like a feature rather than a flaw to me. The problem with Nemesis’s guardian dps build is he give ups all support for dps when he doesn’t need to, and he chooses an inferior play-style to justify it. If you aren’t going to be in the stack or providing support, might as well max range the fights, right?

His necro video’s aren’t as big a deal, other than the hybrid build being a trap (expensive to build towards and not that good). Its not like necros are a serious dungeon running classes. To many critical flaws in the concept (though it does work fine in other game modes). Condition focused class ideal when conditions don’t work due to game design. Doesn’t provide the preferred direct damage boons. Combo fields provided are in low demand for the above reasons. They can provide good enough dps to bring to most groups without problems, they just have a hard time doing much else except in niche cases.

Also stacking isn’t as easy as some people make it seem. Enemies have an easier time hitting, and many individual targeting skills go from massive damage to instant down if the proper techniques aren’t used. In the stack a mistake is fatal for an entire party sometimes (like messing up reflect in SE P1 for noob level mistakes). In some cases a stack can be carried by a skilled individual, like a guardian using WoR and aegis correctly while the group burned down the enemy before those critical skills run out. Even then this requires more skill than ranging the enemy with 1&2 and occasionally popping utilities (or worse, keeping signets on passive).

You know what I hate, when I look for a good build for something, seems to make sense, go start building it, then find out its crap. Before I got better at guardian I bought into the knights AH build that was popularized via popular youtube contributer. Yeah, it worked for pugging and I never died ect, but my dmg was terrible and I dragged the team down. Same thing happened before I got better info on the hybrid/dps necromancer video. Didn’t know much about the class so I trusted a popular youtuber… Yeah, build was underwhelming in dungeons and I wasted a fair amount of gold and time (which is a bigger deal than gold) on crap gear.

I take part in some fast runs of dungeons, not really speed clears but definitely under 10 minutes for several paths. Never really “exploit” past using class abilities like portal, stealth, might stacking, summoned weapons, reflects, ect. If the boss happens to melt instantly due to full might + fury + reflecting his own damage… How is that an exploit? Its good play being rewarded. Doing it “legit” means no party coordination/ranging dying every 10 seconds for the res fall repeat cycle like how most pugs were at launch. I guess using knowledge of game mechanics is an exploit too. Using the aggro mechanic and pulls to wall an enemy is an exploit? man he would have hated GW1 where body blocking monsters for spike balls was the usual tactic. Or that Xsc was the endgame (x being whatever map you wanted, usually HM areas).

As for condition builds and pve, yeah, DOA due to capped stacks and diminishing returns. They don’t work and trying to make a kitten not a kitten is an quixotic quest.

It’s not hard to get a pug to carry you. You could also cultivate a group of friends to run dungeons with. Sounds like a solution in search of a problem.

SE is definitely easy. Both story and all explore modes are completed well under 2 hours for all of them even if not familiar with the paths (watch youtube if nobody has run them).

idk, is this for pve, pvp, or wvw? Either way its not like you are going to do much damage with that trait/weapon setup so it doesn’t really matter what swap weapon set you go with as long as you get whatever you want out of it. Perhaps staff for mob tagging and the wall.

Nothing like still evaluating something that has been calculated months ago as sub-optimal.

Check your wallet. They aren’t objects anymore, just currency.

You don’t really need the protection symbol (and thus hammer) in most dungeons, bosses die to fast. Factals? Yeah, sure do that all day long. That being said at least you are running one of the meta builds.
I have to agree with most pug guardians being really bad with their cleric staff camping AH builds. Had one join a multi dungeon run group i was pugging in, 4 of us were running meta builds (2 wars, ele, myself as guardian) other guardian is staff/scepter+focus. As we are melting mid champion in SE3 in just a few seconds and running to the next area he says “holy crap you guys are monsters” It was like…. you could be to if you get of that kitten staff and get a good build.

But rangers aren’t an archer class. Never seen a good ranger even use a bow.

Watch a video and ask help from guild members to teach it to you. If your guild doesn’t do that sort of thing find a better fitting guild.

rogerwilko.6895:

Hello, a bit off-topic, a question from my part:
– I play a power necro. I plan to have ~3 knights pieces on my armor for a bit more suravility, the rest being zerk. Why do you guys say that more toughness is not worth it?
Thx.

Most of the fights where you might actually want the extra toughness do so much damage that 3 pieces of knights aren’t really going to do enough to save you (also known as have a dodge or blind prepared). And honestly necros have a deep enough health pool that the attacks that might down a unprepared guardian/thief/ele only take like 2/3 of the necro’s health. You need to go all in to really be able to facetank 1-2 hits in this game, which makes your character hit really weakly. So its much better to go all in on damage and not let the bosses get enough time to swing more than a couple of times so you don’t run out of dodges/blindes/ect.

To be honest Idk even what the spider queen looks like. Back before the spot was being used I ranged it just dodging pools because its not hard (yeah, terrible scrub, but even I learned eventually), never got a good look at it because i just targeted and paid attention to red circles while spamming ranged attacks, and then when we fought it legit (whatever that means) in melee all i saw were sparkles of effects, now that the sparkles can be toned down everybody fights in the spot that is hard to see anything will due to how the camera and clipping works.

As for stacking not being intended. Even the Anet employees run the dungeons where stacking is most common, they have to know about the specific spots. When they were highlighting the wallet one of the vids about it showed a large number of tokens from dungeons where its the norm to stack, some even where its expected to get on “can’t hurt me” positions. They put in OBVIOUS spots to LoS or jump onto, some of which wouldn’t take long to delete (they spent time removing the get out of the map stuff in CM, if they thought stacking was bad they would get rid of frost’s rock or the safe box too).

The more restrictions you see on a post the longer it takes to fill. I usually just put in pX in my self created parties and I get a group pretty quickly. Its a mixed bag, but most of the time there is no problem actually finishing content. Get my fair share of worthless people like bearbows, staffguards, fearnecros, ect, but its not hard to kick if they are really bad (I give them a chance, if they really mess things up its boot time with a msg to watch the path on youtube). I tolerate sluggish clear times as long as it doesn’t cost me a dirtnap (im full zerk and not crazy elite, so I mess up my rotations in long combats which ends up downing me occasionally). Actually I had a group recently in CoF that i asked if they knew the path… All were sub 1500AP, 1 was only lvl75, 2 rangers with bows out and bears out… They asked why was I worried, i said I see bears out. “What is wrong with bears” I said “The fact that you don’t know is what worries me”. The preceded to range the slave driver, die in 2 seconds in acolyte room, complain of no mes in boulders, and one didn’t get in his bubble and ran around like an idiot killing all of the mobs. Got through that ordeal and they needed to be aegis/condition removal baby sat on the final boss because they refused to dodge or have ways to remove burning. Run still took less than 15 minutes, but man it was painful.

All that and I got to say, it was less painful than the AC run I did with 3 other guardians and an ele I did next. The 3 guards were all AH shout builds, didn’t know how to use the ele weapons, and were bragging about their mad heals. All were 8k+ characters. Took forever since it effectively was a duo run of the dungeon.

I personally prefer new players over bad ones set in their ways. There is still hope for the new players.

A guardian can do most of that and still have high dps using the zerk sw-f/GS meta build. And if the party fails at the rest then they need to get good, dodging is a requirement in this game, not an option.

A “better” AI just means a different pattern to exploit. Players are smarter than the resources available to the average silver mob that is MEANT to be easy to kill. Silver and below mobs are meant to be killed easily, trash a basic skills test. Stacking makes best use of cleaves, AoEs, Boons, short range condition clears, healing, reviving. EVERY mechanic of the game points to pulling mobs and stacking. Including the fact that ranged skirmish style fighting DPS is terrible.

In GW1 high powered speed clears would often ball up enemies, often huge areas of a instance, for a big party spike that would kill everything at once. If you don’t like the meta of balling up the enemies then bursting (spike) then you don’t like GW.

Watch the runs on youtube. Watch them several times. Most of them have a narrator that tells you what to watch out for. Unfortunately not many are from the perspective of a good ele, most were made when it was war/guar/mes or get kicked era.

I personally teach the farmable runs to my guild all the time, and I am always willing to teach randoms who speak up about being new.

Its sometimes pretty hard to get good build advice, lots of old/bad/misleading stuff out there. Looks like you have the right idea at least. Look for the dps meta builds, and anything that says its amazing support/heals/tank ignore.