Guild Wars 2

Zackie.8923:

oh so if someone doesn’t play well he should be kicked?

if someone doesn’t use meta builds he should be kicked?

whats next? if someone gets downed he be kicked?

In pugs I like to give it 3 shots before kicking even with a build that makes me cringe, unless they are just constantly dying. But if we wiped a number of times on the shaman and I notice its because the grubs aren’t getting cleaved down / lack of reflects, then yes I’m going to kick the ranger who stealths and runs away to save himself and camps longbow so no-one is getting his dps buffs. The party could continue to bang our collective heads against the wall, or we could bring in someone who will actually provide team utility and finish the fractal.

Maybe you’re not interested in understanding why people would be frustrated by your play style, but I’ll tell you anyway.

For the harpy part, unless the rest of the team can provide near permanent reflect uptime you should be bringing traited offhand axe. Camping longbow away from the team isn’t helping anyone, you’re also denying your team spotter if you’re standing that far away.

For imbued shaman – it probably wasn’t a lack of dps, but cleave/reflects. Longbow may be decent single target dps but barrage is not going to cut it for a big pack of mobs. Greatsword is excellent for the grub phase, its also a good defensive weapon with a low cd block and an evade on the auto. Once again offhand axe is majorly helpful, although you want to wait till you see the shaman’s firestorm before channeling whirling defense since the animation will lock you in place. If you insist on bringing a ranged swap, axe/axe will be better then longbow. The bouncing auto will also help you clear the grubs. And stealth? So you can let the rest of your team deal with agro while you run away? You can understand why that would be frustrating. You absolutely can use mainhand sword (and I do), you just need to practice weapon swap/skill canceling the auto-attack animation.

So basically, you’re denying your team a lot of important support while doing only moderate single target dps.

disclaimer – this is my personal take from soloing on both classes

Necromancer:
Damage not heavily dependent on pets/ai. More base hp. Access to long lasting personal stability in the form of elite transforms. Better access to fury. Good personal condi cleansing. Perma switfness is possible, but using wh 5 around mobs will put you in combat. Stronger at first Ooze boss of path 1, entities, and Brie.

Mesmer:
Reflects out the wazoo. Stealth. Decent condi cleansing. Good personal survivablity through evades/blocks/distortion. Cleaving auto attack. Stronger at Lupi, Jotun final boss, belka, alphard, Crusher/hunter, magecrusher, and the path 3 ritual. Will also have an easier time with trash skips and the path 3 orbs.

Bottom line is – there are a lot of places where reflects are really strong in arah.

People cried about not getting insect fossils on the forums; they changed the vendor so that people who didn’t want the fossil could change it in for 3 green instead of deleting it. Also hair style contracts are in BL chests for 2 weeks only so key farm it up boys!!!

Anet loves its RNG, I have little hope for fractals. :S

My point was this – people were ranking ele higher than warrior, which was weird to me. They were saying ele can might stack AND do all this other stuff, which is not really true. They can’t might stack as well, or bring banners/ea. I think most people are going to take 1 guard and 1 warrior as a basis for their comp, and consider consider other classes after. Does that leave room for ele? Absolutely. But for me it’s a situational utility class like mesmer/thief.

I find that people tend to really overestimate the amount of might they can maintain with fire-field blasts in fractals. For the long boss fights, pre-stacked might falls off quickly. In theory you might be able to keep up decent might if everyone in the party was watching for the ele fire field and blasting through-out. But i find that rarely if ever happens – once the fight starts the focus shifts towards staying alive rather then excuting perfect dps rotations.

Take a look at rT’s run in the recent fractal tournament. They have 2 ele’s so theoretically might would not be a problem- but watch the first ettin fight. They maintain between 10-20 stacks, very rarely spiking above 20 on some members. The asura boss is the same – once pre-stacked might wore off everyone pretty much stayed below 20 might. And again at the snowblind final boss. This is not me trying to take a shot at those players – I want to point out even at high level play, with an organized team with 2 eles, maintaining 23-25 might in long fights is an unrealistic expectation. Phalanx warrior can provide this by simply executing his dps rotation, at a cost to some personal dps.

What an ele does bring is fgs. It’s a high-risk high-reward strategy in fractals, and the ele itself can be hard to keep alive. But honestly, its a speed-run tactic, and I would put it in the same category as the mesmer portal. If your talking about pug/casual strats, a guardian-war-thief can do everything an ele can do with a lot less risk.

I don’t think ele’s are bad in fractals, I think they are quite good. But I think they are over-rated, especially in pug situations.

“What I’m looking for is a mobile class (addicted to swiftness) thats pretty durable , with ranged AoE and some escape mechanism. " – this says engi to me, especially for wvw. Nades, speedy kits, stealth-blasts and rocketboots. Condi built engis are naturally pretty tanky as well.

Some soloers experimented with condi damage because pve content in this game is nearly 2 years old and there is nothing to do. They found out that in a solo setting, on some classes, against some bosses, condi specs can do damage competitive with direct damage set ups.

The condition cap as it is currently implemented means that none of this will be relevant outside of solos. It’s a technical issue that would take a system overhawl to address, and since it is not a balance problem that effects pvp it is unlikely to change any time soon.

All of the launch dungeons have a token system because, as anet said at the time, having to repeat content over and over praying to the RNG gods to get the drop you want isn’t fun. But they also wanted to have rewards tied specifically to content, obtainable no other way. The token system is therefore the perfect compromise. They also made it so you could trade in tokens for generic rares, giving value to tokens even if you didn’t want the skins. Win-win.

That’s why I like the previously suggested idea of fossil fragments. Each chest would drop at least one fragment. The bug merchant would trade these fragments for skin-recipes, but also perhaps cactus fruit or.. something matching the theme of drytop but trade-able on the tp. That way if you have no interest in skins you are still getting something out of it.

JasmineLong.6514:

SE p3 shouldn’t be too bad with a guard/thief combo. You should have enough cleansing between the two of you in order to beat the first boss and all his bleed stacks. Will the fights take longer? Sure they will but that’s the fun and challenge of low manning it.

SE p3 is do-able but I don’t recommend it because the dredge car section is annoying as balls. In my solos on thief I enjoyed myself right up until that point. Between that and the perma-burning last boss it was just sort of a pain.

I also recommend TA forward and SE p1 – those paths benefit heavily from both stealth and reflects which is perfect for your class set up. Tazza and Laurent present a challenge, but in a good way. Those paths are relatively short which makes for a more approachable first-time experience, especially if both of you are new to low-manning.

CM path 3 is good, cm path 1 is good except for the last boss. If you do him legit it will be a pain in the booty. I’d actually recommend path 2 over path 1 just for the last boss – thief can stealth himself and the guard when turmain goes invuln and guard can cleanse if need be.

1) Warden freaking out at slightly slanted terrain
2) Warden (and other phants) not attacking minon-summons of other mobs
3) Warden doing nothing for no reason other then its friggin broken fix it please.

How the game currently is – People who want efficiency can stack, people who want immersion can spread out. Everyone can complete content how they want. People group with like-minded people, everyone wins.

How the game would be with anti-stack mechanics – People who want efficiency do the next-most “cheesy” thing, and are annoyed that mechanics are more restrictive. People who want immersion are annoyed that zerker-leets are still finding ways to cheese the content, and cry more on the forums. Everyone is more annoyed, everyone looses.

Give us a sane argument against forming your own party as a solution, and we’ll take you more seriously.

If you don’t like corner-stacking bosses, do fractals. When I got kinda bored of the fgs meta I started doing fractals on my mes and I have a lot of fun.

I really don’t understand the mentality of people who want to force themselves on others who don’t want to play with them. Seriously, you have an opinion on how to complete a dungeon, that’s fine but keep it to yourself unless solicited. People asking for a specific comp in LFG don’t need to be “taught a lesson” on acceptance. Mind your own business.

Giving a direct filter option changes nothing. Currently, if you join on a class that was not requested, you’ll get kicked. If your sub-80 in an 80 only post, you’ll get kicked. A filter simply reduces time wasted, trolling, and booty-ache that people experience when joining a group without reading the LFG post.

If you have a problem with class balance in pve, take it up with ANET in the balance sub. Make a recording of your LFG post as a necro taking more then 10 mins to fill up (spoiler – it won’t happen.) Play and let play.

You’ll probably need to watch the streamer for your favorite teams. (IE, purple miku for rT, etc.) If you want to watch 2 side by side you ckittene multitwitch.tv.

I look forward to your 5 warrior dungeon records- the current record holders use “sub-optimal” classes so surely you will smash through those records with ease with a 5 war comp. /s

Wethospu.6437:

- daily fractal quest to complete 3 of 4 randomly selected challenges

I’d actually really love this – an incentive to explore other mistlocks and break up the daily grind of 30/40/50 to get yet another uninfused khilbrons phylactery. Maybe the daily challenges could include progression towards a weapon skin box (like pvp reward tracks).

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I think the theory behind Defiance would work well if everyone knew exactly when to interrupt. This is a troublesome prospect for the ad-hoc groups that GW2 promotes in various settings, so maybe shifting the responsibility to the boss (which everyone is already paying attention to) would work out a little better. “He’s winding up for super-mega-attack, everyone stun now!”

Honestly, I find this sentiment saddening. If there is one thing I think we need more of in GW2, it’s a higher skill ceiling in pve content. Defiance is one of the few systems in the game that truly rewards organization, and I don’t see why that should change. If stripping defiant and interrupting a skill was a requirement for an encounter, I could understand the complaints to a degree. But this is not the case, pugs are always able to complete an encounter without interrupting the boss at all.

The abomination in arah p2 is an excellent example of defiance as a positive mechanic. In organized groups, a thief or a mesmer can keep the defiance stripped from the boss. The animation for his enrage has 2 parts- a damaging kick and his transformation. This means if the interrupter times his cc in-between the kick and the transform, the skill will go on a very long cool down. Long enough that defiance can be easily re-stripped, and the skill consistently interrupted. This is the preferable method for dealing with the boss, it is clean and efficient. However, pugs are given an alternative – the tranquilizer darts. It is a reactive solution, and one that does not require coordination (if multiple people shoot, the only loss is guns which will respawn in the form of inquest adds before the next phase). This, to me, is ideal design – organized groups are rewarded for their coordination and skill, but pug groups are not excluded from the content.

This was mentioned above, but I definitely agree – defiance gives players a lot more freedom in their approach of the fight then boss-dictated windows would. Defiance is an opportunity to make the fight easier – if you work together with your party – while pugs make do with reactive defense. Boss-dictated windows further narrows what organized groups are able to achieve beyond pug tactics.

All of that is not to say defiance is perfect. However, I think changing it for the sake of pugs, when pugs can already easily complete the most difficult pve content in the game, is misguided. I would say that in zerg events, defiance is basically a non-existant mechanic. The boss might as well be immune to cc. Perhaps a new system could be created to deal with mega-bosses. But for 5 man content I think defiance works well. GW2’s combat could use more complex challenges, not more neon signs like, “He’s winding up for super-mega-attack, everyone stun now!”

I was more referring to the fact that you ran past the bone-wall so she would stay in one spot. Running out quickly so you get ooc is imo questionable but probably ok. Glitching her so she doesn’t teleport (a major mechanic of the fight) is definitely not “fully legit”. With stealth you could probably run out without going past the bonewall.

Aww I was hoping to see a non-glitched belka. Ah well, nice job regardless.

take axe mainhand to clear blossoms ( its a bouncing aa). go with axe/warhorn + gs. When you use gs block make sure you are not in melee range of anything attacking you or you’ll do an animation that will lock you in place for a few seconds.

Use the siamoth pet – he will give you a drop that’s either all the boons (so aegis and swiftness, etc.) or 3 seconds of stealth.

Signet of stone (make sure your traited for sig of the beastmaster), rampage as one and healing spring are the the most important utilities. With rampage as one and call of the wild you shouldn’t need to slot sig of the hunt. You can take protect me, signet of renewal, lightning reflexes (if you can use about-face quickly), or signet of the wild for more stability.

Thief is situationally useful – the blind from black powder is very strong in trash-heavy fractals like cliffside and ascalon. Stealth has it’s uses, although it’s not as manditory since the dredge nerf. Engineer is a solid pug class but it is tricky to play well – I’d stick with thief and warrior unless you feel very confident both with the fractals and with the pve engi playstyle. Necro is best left to pvp game modes.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/83915-axemace-dps-build-for-dungeons-and-fractals-041514/

^ is a good starting point. In pve you’ll want to use axe mainhand and/or greatsword. Greatsword can be harder to use against certain fractal bosses, so you may sometimes use axe mainhaind for both swaps. Depending on the encounter, you’ll swap between axe/mace, axe/sword, axe/warhorn, and greatsword.

edit: ninja’d, the link i posted is a written version of the video above.

What would really help I think is a short video of a lvl 49 ascalon fractal pull – one where you stand still and and just press one, and one where you use ring of warding/blinds/reflects/aegis, etc. At some point people will realize that its a FGS-damage-is-out-of-wack issue rather than a mobs-magically-stop-using-skills-in-corners issue.

As I understand it [KING] has the intention of periodically updating these guides, so I would take the criticism as stuff to try out next time rather than an attack. Take the information at face value – as it is presented – and choose to either ignore it or incorporate the advice in your next video.

But really, its not really a nitpick to point out a mesmer not reflecting :P.

I’ve been pugging nearly every day for over a year now. Here’s my perspective -

Pug runners themselves haven’t gotten any better or worse, you get good and bad and everything in between. I have seen people become more accepting of the zerk meta (despite what forum warriors say), especially since WP started preaching it in his videos. I see a lot more rangers rocking cats/drakes and usually a greatsword, which is a step up from the bows.

When you pug there will always be horror stories. There will always be terribad runs, and those will be the ones you remember and tell to your friends. You can’t extrapolate anything from a single anecdote – the weird and random and “impossibly” bad will happen, but that doesn’t mean anything for the overall state of pugs.

Most people who I see complaining about the declining state of pugs don’t realize that they are just getting more familiar with the game. It’s like when you go back to your kindergarten classroom and everything is smaller. There are mechanics and techniques that people start to take for granted, and forget that it’s not so obvious for an inexperienced dungeon runner.

So no, the sky is not falling, pugs are not regressing. People run CoF more casually then they use to, but in general pugging is the same as ever – player skill / build is random and the pug meta lags a few months behind the community meta.

Low hanging fruit-
Make a wvw type queue for full pve maps.

Perhaps harder to implement -
Let players see the instances of the maps and pick the one the want to enter directly. Use low, medium, high and full if you need to obfuscate the actual number of players in the map. That way for big guild missions and tts events, people wont have to rely on RNG to find a relatively empty map, and people who DC have a way of getting back to the same instance they were in before.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I’m baffled by all the hate on the chest hole. I mean, yes, obviously for someone with boobs it’s a cleavage window. But if I didn’t know it was a cleavage window because all you people are griping about it, I would never have guessed it was anything other that an unusual and interesting design for a vest front.

It’s a tiny hold in the front of the shirt, big whoop! Since it doesn’t show anything anyway, why is it such a problem?

The problem is the the male version gets a look that is obviously designed with the charr body in mind – ie dragon on the tail – while the female version is the normal stretched and clipped armor directly converted from the human version that we are use to.

More rp then fashion – I was imagining what dessa’s hired muscle would look like if they were formal employees instead of random adventurers turned test guinee pigs. Ended up looking a little female-space-marine, but I guess that appropriate for a warrior traveling through space and time.

Head: Gas Mask
Shoulders: none
Chest: Draconic
Gloves: Banded Gauntlets
Legs: Heavy Plate Legguards
Boots: Ascended

RemiRome.8495:

Stooperdale.3560:

Ranger sword is one of the least liked weapons in the game and it is only appreciated by the players who control the #1 skill manually.

first part true
second part not so much

Even if you have aa turned on, you need to be aware of where you are in the chain and sometimes use skill or weapon swap canceling to dodge. You’re still micromanaging the animation lock even when the skill is autocasting. I think that’s what he means.

Engi’s are actually a great pug class, for the exact reason that they are non-optimal (imo) in speed runs – they can do a bit of everything. You have vuln, might, and stealth stacking all in one class. They even have a reflect you can use in a pinch. For dungeons where you don’t need the support elements (stealth/reflects), I’d probably take a warrior for the unique buffs, and warr is a lot less work to play. But, you said hammer guard seemed boring to you so maybe engi is more of what your looking for. For arah and fractals I find mesmer is the best pug-carry class.

I’m a pretty patient person, but for some reason thieves and especially engis who can’t blast stealth really really annoy me. I was running TA Forward and I ask the engi to blast smoke bomb. He says “k”, we wait for a good 30 seconds, he places smoke bomb and everyone just stands there. The only blast was mine on my torch on my mesmer. The guard runs forward, we get to the next spot, I say “you have to blast in it”. He drops smoke bomb, and waits. I sigh and pop viel/mass invis. I know I see people do dumber stuff in pugs all the time but for some reason that especially bugs me to no end.

Stealth is the main and most obvious reason to bring a thief, but I wouldn’t forget blinds. Black powder shuts down trash mobs like nothing else – it’s amazing for things like the cliffside and ascalon fractals. Improvisation (20 in to deadly arts) makes thieves great conjure-users. And as was pointed out above, sundering strikes (10 in deadly arts) is important for vuln stacking. Shortbow has a spammable blast finisher which is not only good for stacking stealth in smoke screen, but also for stacking might at the start of a fight. Pistol whip is a spammable and short-cast cc, so in fights where defiance needs to be stripped to interrupt a powerful skill, you’ll want to be sure to help in the stripping.

Not sure this has been suggested before, but this is something I would love to have as someone who a) loves challenge for the sake of challenge and b) runs gw2 on a low end computer.

What I envision is an NPC that allows you to go into an instanced version of the guantlet, where you can take on any of the bosses with any of the debuffs for no charge – the trade-of is you get no loot from it. It would be purely for the fun of it, and to help those with low-end systems get the achievements. I have a lot of ideas for silly things i’d like to try with liadri, but the frustration of 15 fps and farming for tokens is a real hurdle. I don’t care about the loot, I just want to test my skills.

WPing within the sanctum should be free regardless, imo, but then again this whole update seems to be designed as a gold sink.

I think the main issue is that lag really, really effects the lightning pull. It was the same with the flower pads in SAB. Some people had no problem with them and some people got rubber-banded from here to the moon.

It’s kind of ironic that anet released the perfect example of how the megaserver system did nothing to help the issues with open world raids, and in some ways made it worse. This morning I was sitting around spamming “join in x” just like i did at tq’s release.

Just one entry for me- my mesmer in arah with her trusty torch.

edit: added engi (cm) and guardian (ac)(ghosts!)

edit2: bonus pic, my thief newly demon-ified

Allie Murdock.8152:

Well, let’s try out the change in WvW for a little while instead of theory crafting. It shouldn’t be as bad now. We can revisit this after a few weeks of playing if it’s still an issue.

Thanks for the feedback all!

What change? Retal was nerfed months ago…there was a bug fix to EOTM but that’s not worth talking about from a balence perspective. I think we’ve had plenty of time playing with the retal change to “theorycraft”. Did you read the link you posted?

Rangers were picked for the CDI because their class has issues across the board – the class itself is clunky. Eles are incredibly strong in pve and struggling in pvp – necros are fine in pvp but absolutely bottom tier in pve. When people talk about balancing or fixing necros its almost always in a pve context.

Allie Murdock.8152:

So far, I’m seeing that it’s pretty unanimous that people think Elementalist and Ranger need the most help in all areas.

I’ve already cast my vote but I’d like to point out – Eles don’t need help in pve, at all. People list them without qualification but right now most dungeon speed clear teams always take an ele, often 2. Part of this is the “fgs thing”, but it’s not the only reason. It’s really only in PvP game modes that they are struggling. Rangers are a clunky class, and necros have no place in pve right now.

1. Necro (pve)
2. Ranger
3. Ele (pvp)

the dungeon pugging scene is currently, “you must stack, you must wear full zerker, you must skip, you’re on thin ice if you’re not a heavy, you have 10 minutes to complete this run” groups

No. Just no, this is absolutely false. As people constantly point out, lfg posts that request “zerker only” fill more slowly then non-specific posts. In fact, non-specific posts usually fill in a mater of seconds unless its 4am or for SEp2.

With a new anti-meta thread appearing every week or so, it would suggest “play how you want” parties have become a rare breed among the parties being formed.

This suggests exactly the opposite. It tells me that there are many, many people who are looking for a more casual experience, but inexplicably are offended by the mere existence of lfg posts which may exclude their un-optimized build.

No one here is going to spend hours logging lfg posts for your edification – you can do that yourself. What I can say is I pug a zealots gear ele almost every night for the lolz, and I have never had to post for any of the “on farm” dungeon paths – 99% of the time it takes less then a minute for a non-specific post to pop up. I’ve never had any complaints. Most people expect you to stack for trash rather then run around like a headless chicken, but you’d be surprised how many groups wont stack for even the first alpha fight.

I’ve had more success with “know the path”, then “exp” or even “experienced”. Some people take experienced in a more general sense, meaning “not noob, know your class” or something like that. When I ask people explicitly to know the path, even if I do get retaliative newbies they tend to be ones who have read/watched guides – and I’d rather have ones that are trying then ones that want to get carried by “exp” groups.

Maybe I pug too much, but I don’t find that there are a disproportionate number of bad guardians – it’s just that a guardian has a more complex and specific role then a lot of classes. I see just as many shortbow thieves, longbow rangers, flamethrower engis, greatsword mesmers, scepter/dagger no hammer eles, staff necros, and hammer warriors. I also find plenty of people running the meta who have way more skill and knowledge then me, and everything in between. People pretty much tune out bad rangers at this point, but a guardian can and should be the backbone of the team, and a bad one is a bigger disappointment.

As long as you have a mesmer, I think the “normal” way can be nearly as fast as the old jumping puzzle. You can still die on the switch, you just need to stay alive for a few seconds so your party can get through the door. On the second door, the mesmer runs though and drops a port, then hops down through the middle and everyone ports on her. It helps to have a bit of stealth before porting, so you can get the jump on the trash mobs.

I think it would be enough if they just watched a 49 clown car. I don’t know how anyone could look at that and say “yeah, that looks like it scales properly. A time-gate slaughterfest standing in the same spot killing the same enemies that takes 10 minutes sounds like good design.”

If you spam the heal button, it will give you the water field immediately. You have to trigger the active before it starts its spin cycle.

Aden Celeste.3650:

What’s wrong with Aetherblade path? I actually did not like the horrid and boring design of foward up path… to the contrary, I think aetherblade is very good and a proper step up in their dungeon design, although still needs work but overall much better.

imho, there are too many gated rooms with trash which spawns in waves, which makes that path longer then it needs to be. If they trimmed it down to the more interesting bosses and gave you the option to skip some of the trash, it would be fine. The fact that it was replacing a path instead of just being added did not help its reception either.

I’m 99% sure their dungeon team consists of a single intern who was hired to implement invisible walls. I’m not holding my breath for new content.