Guild Wars 2

Is it really that hard to start your own group, roll the first first fractal yourself, and put in “starting with water” or whatever? I’ve pugged quite a few groups that don’t pre-roll. It’s only on 49s that I see people absolutely insistent on getting swamp first.

I just want to give some practical advice for lane 2 fighting in the marionette event – the more systemic problems with ranger have been hashed out above.

1) If you don’t have to be in that lane, then don’t. It’s not impossible but it doesn’t work towards our strengths.BUT if you do find yourself in lane 2…
2) Make sure your pet is on passive
3) Use the jaguar. It’s a low toughness pet and is less likely to draw agro
4) On the rare occasion that the boss does aggro on the pet, untarget the champ and use stalk. The champ should then turn his attention elsewhere. Call your pet to you just to be sure he doesn’t start misbehaving.

BobbyStein.2315:

DarksunG.9537:

But telling us we can’t have any opinion on what we’ve played over the past year is totally unfair. I’m not sure it even makes logical sense.

When did I ever say you can’t have an opinion? I’m just asking that people reserve judgment on the next release, until they’ve played it and absorbed the story components.

1)Because the criticism “I’m bored, this story is taking way too long” has nothing to do with what will come next, and that’s what the poster was talking about. It literally doesn’t matter if the conclusion is better then Shakespeare, it doesn’t change the experience we had throughout the year of frustration and confusion. The criticism is about how the story telling was and is RIGHT NOW. And if you look, the person you responded too before says “I hope the next 2 released are better” – ie, he has perfectly justified skepticism but is suspending judgment when it is appropriate to do so.

2) Because almost without exception, trying to shoehorn in PVE living world stuff in to wvw has caused conflict. Again given the history, its fair to skeptical. It’s sort of like if your little brother was making you a PB&J and he was insisting on putting pickles into it for the third time. You probably wouldn’t just trust him when he said “see how it is this time.”

kyubi.3620:

Such mechanics are blatantly a bug you know? Stacking is a form of glitch wich prevent the boss using some of its mechanics (aka spider venom) Boss should keep using their mechanics regardless of player positioning on the map then wed see who can actualy ’’dance’’ the best at the spider queen

Would you also say its a glitch to range lupi, since it prevents him from using his kick attack in p1, and his swipe in p2?

For AC specifically I like to run staff. Your main enemy is graveling burrows – structures – so you can’t apply vuln (25 in air) and you aren’t getting piercing shard procs. The two bosses (3 if you do kholer) melt to fgs, so i rarely find myself using lightning hammer.

1. Dodge the huge wind up bite attack
2. Bring condi clear for if you happen to miss a dodge
3. ????
4. Profit

Or, if you refuse to dodge, just have a good guardian chain a few aegis. use your heal skill. If you have FGS use the evade. The only way you can fail this boss is if you stand totally still and tank 25 stacks of bleeding. If you refuse to use any utilities or dodge then yah, kiting the boss around and walking out of aoes may be your only option. But lets not pretend that’s a better solution then playing semi competently.

Maybe this is not the right topic, but its a problem I’ve encountered recently.

Me and a friend were in arah P4, and opened up on the LFG towards the end. We waited around for a few minutes, then filled with 2. A 3rd requested to join and one of the two let him in. Within seconds, my friend who started the instance was kicked. To me this a textbook case of greifing – an hour + of work down the drain, but I couldn’t think of any means of recourse. It all happened within 10 seconds, I didn’t have time to look at any of the names and they’re was not chat log. I could submit a ticket but what could I say? I had no name to go on, just that we were kicked from our own party at the end boss of p4 within a matter of seconds.

Is there anything I can do in a situation like this, in terms of reporting the offense?

Thank you thank you for reconsidering deceptive evasion. I was rather baffled when shatter build were singled out as cheesy when PU phantasm builds are what I see complained about.

I’ll sound like a broken record, but I don’t want this issue to fade into the background – look at necromancers in reference to PVE. I understand most of necro balancing is about pvp but trying to play a necro in dungeons and seeing patch after patch of nerfs is frustrating. They need some serious love.

Afaik, many events in dungeons are triggered by npc proximity. An example of this is the first boss of arah p2 – you need to make sure yissa is close enough to trigger the event before you go running past, or the event bugs. Another common place to see this is AC – waiting around for hodge to show up at the scepter room, guiding dethla to the center of the ghost graveling room, not TP’ing too fast in p3 so that tzark will have his dialogue with grast, etc. So yes, this would be a welcome feature, but I’m afraid it would mean re-building the dungeons from the ground up. The best we can hope is that anet learned from their mistakes, but unfortunently one of the most common stalls in the new molten fractal is caused by braham’s dialogue not triggering in the testing room :/.

FGS does OP dps, but then people have been saying that for months. As wooden potatoes pointed out, they did nothing to change it when the did the big rework of elementalist conjured weapons so it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. It has zero to do with berserker gear and everything to do with a skill’s unintended (more then likely) side-effect.

@chasewystone

1) You’ve based your conclusion on a single encounter.
2) You’ve generalized the entire dungeon based on a single mini boss – the dungeon itself is not “all about standing in a corner”.
3) Please go do HOTW p1 and stack ’n smack for the last boss. Also TA up the second to last boss. Also mossman. Also imbued shaman. Also archdiviner. Send me those videos and tell me again about “just standing in a corner”.

Please do more then a single dungeon before making sweeping generalizations about endgame pve.

I second the d/f recommendation for fractal pugs. I usually use 30/30/10/0/0, but moving the 10 to arcana for perma vigor is a safe option. Lightning whip has a 300 range, and you can safely “melee” bosses that most pugs tend to range (arch-diviner, imbued shaman, etc.) Also i find myself spamming swirling winds, because pugs rarely use reflects. Arcane shield + mistform + obi flesh will give you enough time to res your teammates even under focus fire. There are situations where you will want to use LH, but I don’t find myself using it enough to trait for it.

I would recommend getting the dps display that was linked on reddit a month or so ago, and do some tests on vet giants. Time the kills. Otherwise its just guesswork.

I’m curious what besides restorative mantras you are building healing power for. Even then, the healing coefficient on that trait is basically crap (0.2). So even with 1000 healing power, a serious investment, your mantras will heal for 200 hp more – or an 8% increase.

If you’re using the standard 0/30/0/25/15 build, you’ll have something like 19k health, perma vigor (for now), and blurred frenzy on a less then 10 second cd. If you’re feeling pressured, don’t pop your signet heal and summon a few clones to get 300 hp/s health regen. You really shouldn’t worry at all about surviving in full zerk on a mesmer.

I think the main complaint mad queen had is not the difficulty itself, but the precision and coordination required in a zerg environment where lower-end computers can slow to a crawl. The other main complaint was that mechanics are discovered through trial and error because they are not effectively communicated in game. Again this is not asking for it to be easier, its simply asking that we be able to fight the content, not lag and bugs and opaque design.

I get that they are splitting up the zerg, and they want to encourage those moments where you feel like you, as an individual, had a big impact on the fight. But I think the initial platform separation is enough. Standing around for a good minute just watching a single defeated player on a platform is not a compelling moment. Let the walls come down after you defeat your champion so you can at least help range the others.

+1 to revert if a fix is not easy to find.

I think the worst example of this is the last boss of the harpy fractal. The wardens absolutely will not spin when summoned on a golem, and that is a fight you really, really want reflects/absorbs. In most situations projectile defense >>>> damage when I’m using wardens, so even if the phantasm is stationary whirling at nothing i can still stand in it and be protected.

Dalanor.5387:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

It literally was removed for no reason.

PvP.

It actually had nothing to do with PvP- https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/DeathShroud-is-now-base-100-HP/first#post2539415

The change to having damage spill over to your health pool was indeed to resolve falling damage, but was also how Death Shroud was, from a Design standpoint, intended to function.

The primary reason was the fall damage. It also happened to fit better with the original concept. It did not have to do with balance. They tried to mitigate the effective nerf with some buffs to life force gain, but as was explained at the time – regen is fundamentally different then a full damage block. You can argue whether or not it was op in PvP, but it was not the reason for the change.

It’s all well and good to be in support of a change to the all zerker meta, but I have to wonder if changing crit damage will actually achieve that. At best its a very superficial answer, at worst it does nothing to help the problem. I suspect the later will happen. As has been said before, the problems are with condition damage (effected by a cap and defiant/unshakeable) and mob ai / active defense that trivializes the need for stat-based defense. It’s not that crit damage is too strong, its that everything else is broken or unecessary. So yes, you could break crit damage to bring it down to the same level as condi damage, but doesn’t it make more sense to address condi damage?

Even though we don’t know the specifics, approaching the problem from the crit damage angle is backwards. That’s why “zerkers” are showing concern. You can be in support of a broader pve stat meta and still be against changing berserker stats. “anything to mix up the stale kitten kitten zerk meta” – this is not an intelligent way to approach the problem. Any change will not necessarily be a good change.

Nice. I hope we get to see your lvl 10 clerics gear solo :d.

In all honestly, I wish the dev hadn’t posted at all. Now we are just going to have people arguing over nothing for a week. This could be the overhaul of the condition system we’ve been waiting for, or it could be an arbitrary nerf to zerker gear to “fix” 5 minute dungeon runs. Right now we don’t know anything other then the devs want to shift the meta somehow. There’s not much point in talking about this until we know what changes we are arguing about.

None of your tactics would benefit less from “min maxing” and none of them exclude “silly stacking” as a means to clear the trash. I think the main point of your post is a good one – people have been exploiting the path for so long people have forgotten it’s even possible to do it without exploiting. Sometimes we need to be reminded it’s not scary or hard, it’s just tedious. But your point is muddled when you conflate exploiting (porting through walls) with tactics (Using line of sight to group enemies, using the most effective gear for the content).

I suggest putting in something like, “playing for the story”, or “casual run”, and tell them at the start you going to take things a little slower (people tend to ignore the lfg description). It helps if you can run with one other person you know so they can back up kicks if need be.

The pull is definently dodgable at max melee. In pugs it’s best to dodge and step back incase someone gets pulled. Also the aoe circle seems to persist and deal insta-down damage, so wait until it’s gone before stepping back. But the shadow shot is buggy in the sense that it often ignores line reflects such as WoR and temporal curtain, which is what really makes this fight frustrating.

I’ve had the best luck with two mesmers using untraited focuses and standing max melee in the middle, making sure alphard isn’t pushed at all. You can do it with one but the timing has to be just right. With two the only way to take any damage is if she gets pushed and the wardens get confused and die to the dagger storm.

Any time you can hit a large area (a boss with a large hit box, or a big pack of trash) is can do decent burst damage. The problem is that burst has a pretty long cd, and it’s taking up a utility slot that could have lh, fire signet, arcane shield, etc. I don’t really fault people for experimenting with it, I only get annoyed when I see them ice-storming human sized bosses and continuing to auto attack with the bow. It’s pretty obvious when someone understands what makes an icebow powerful, and when they don’t.

If you love the dagger playstyle, at least switch to a focus for pve, and run 30/30/x with fresh air. Know that your loosing about 20% of your dps potential and sacrificing some might stacking capabilities. If your pugging and/or your in a group that isn’t super concerned about maximizing dps, I think this is the best compromise.

My advice, just scrap the idea. Hope that everyone eventually forgets about it like the level reset. Trying to create a competitive leaderboard for something that is by its nature a highly RNG experience makes little sense.

When I see people post for war/mes/guard only I just laugh and take my fgs somewhere else. But I think to say you’ll get auto kicked from the average pug if you’re not w/m/g is a huge exaggeration, if not completely false.

It’s been nearly three weeks since the fractal patch, and I’ve seen hide not hair of the announced leaderboards. Am I just not finding them? Or is this like the weapon skin boxes – advertised for this patch but actually not being implemented until new levels come out?

Unless I’m in a situation where my phantasms are getting instantly killed, I take scepter instead of gs. This lets me use sword/pistol/focus which are all better phantasm then izerker IMO. Scepter has a block built in, so with scepter/sword you can have access to 2 blocks on a low cd. With gs you trade the block for an aoe knockback, which has situational use but isn’t typically needed.

Given that the WP appears randomly later on in the dungeon, it seems more likely that it’s a bug. (Although given how long arah p1 has been missing its WP after the slime boss is probably not a bug that will get fixed any time soon). I don’t think the alpkittene is a bug, however. It seems like an attempt to punish melee stacking. The scorpion wire is near impossible dodge with 5 people stacked on top of her, unless maybe they were all asura, but it is a slow moving projectile. At range it is very easy to dodge, probably easier then kholer’s big wind-up. With 100% reflect uptime you can melee her the same as always – it just requires a but more coordination which IMO is a good thing. If your group is more casual, you can spread out and range using the boxes for cover.

according to dulfy both elements of the necro heal skill have a 1 second icd. :/

http://dulfy.net/2013/12/05/gw2-new-healing-skills-for-next-patch/

Standing in front of an animated structure occasionally pressing 1 is not an activity that should be the primary method to obtain account bound mats for endgame+ gear, IMO, and I think that’s the point.

I recommend re-posting this is the bugs subforum – the fractal weapon box issue was answered in a number or hours when posted there.

I’m use to the dungeon subforum being ignored but typically the on-going LS subforum has dev feedback, at least in regards to perceived bugs. I’m not sure what’s going on, but they are really letting the wound fester by not giving a reply.

The mesmer one looks promising for getting up 3 phantasms right at the start of the fight – but it’s a tough trade off with mantra heal off you want to run empowering mantras. The ele heal looks amazing – I’ve been running d/f more since I started bringing my ele to 40+ fractals and the one thing I miss from s/d is the blast finishers. The frustration with the necro one from my perspective is that when you’re taking lots of hits normally you are in DS, but you can’t heal in DS….maybe there’s something I’m missing though.

I wouldn’t like it, but it would at least help if they said something like : “we realize the way we handled the level reset was a mistake, and was frustrating to many of our most dedicated pve players. We cannont provide a fix at this time, but we have listened and taken your feedback into consideration. That is why current ranks in pvp ranks will equate to a title once that system is retired.”

This silence we get instead makes it seem like the devs think everything is fine, and it’s just a tiny minority screaming over nothing. Well, high ranked pvpers are probably an even smaller minority. But hey they’re net’s shot at ESPORTZ so they actually matter, right?

I’ll add a minor bug that has been mentioned elsewhere, for the molten facility boss.

When playing on elementalist, if you get downed during this fight sometimes your mistform skill will go on full cd without casting. From what I can tell this happens when 1) you were hit by the firestorm aoe and 2) you are spam clicking 2 as you are going down to avoid being instantly defeated in the persisting fire. I’ve been able to mitigate the bug somewhat by making sure the downed ui is fully displayed before casting mistform, but that doesn’t always save me.

As far as I know in the first phase, all of the firestorm’s projectiles can be reflected or absorbed. The more of them you can reflect back, the less will make it onto floor and that will give you more space to jump the waves.

The devs also said that it has always been possible to get skins at level 10, even though in a years time there wasn’t a single documented case. Maybe it’s that level of rare. :s

So I tried this out last night – while arc lightning counts for multiple hits on the Shaman bubble, for whatever reason on this boss it only strips one stack per channel. Not sure of that’s a bug or feature.

Ah, so for example I could use ele scepter 1 to burn stacks off the fire storm while the rest dps’d the zerker?

Considering arah p1&2 reward 3 gold each and take like 20 minutes, yeah I’d say the gold reward is lowballed.

I’ll take a slice of humble pie and say this kicked my butt at lvl33. I’m not looking to QQ, I’d just could really use some advice.

My main issue with dealing with the projectile from the jet pack guy. They are reflectable, but if the angle isn’t right and it lands successfully, the aoe can touch you and instantly kill you. If everyone is spread out ranging you can sort of just run out of the way, but I’d like to know how to have everyone melee the berseker. His shockwave attack also seems pretty hard to jump at melee range, but maybe it’s more about learning the timing.

Any tips or strategies you’d care to share would be much appreciated.

The reskin Is obviously lazy and a cash grab. But generally I don’t care what crappy skins they sell in the gem store, it doesn’t affect me, if people want to spend money on it let them.

What does effect me and everyone in the game is co-opting cultural armor. I don’t know if anyone at anet remembers but there’s a reason it’s called cultural – only your race can wear it. For humans that concept has been destroyed. This is a huge deal, a huge change, and the fact that it wasn’t announced or discussed tells me anet knows it was problematic. What confuses me is why they went through with it. Of all the other skins in the game…..why in the world chose cultural? It’s just looking for controversy at that point.

It doesn’t really bother me, what irks me is they did nothing about the dredge clown car. That was the one thing people consistently complained about and it’s exactly the same

They need to choose between one of two things – 1) Play easy content casually or 2) showcase difficult content with competent players. Watching them fail a level 39 fractal over and over because the dev was playing without a weapon swap or using any of his utilities besides heal, was simply painful. As was said above, if its too distracting to play and livestream, but they want to show the harder mistlock levels, just have the devs commentate.

There are only a few class specific cases i can think of that are like AC icebow cheese -thief for cm p1 springs to mind. There are some skips in arah p2 and one in TA forward that are a lot easier with a thief as well. Generally you’ll want to bring a mesmer in arah to feedback lupi’s big aoe. And lets not forget mesmer portal for COF p1 bolders.

Dedicated players with some free time will get to 50 by Wednesday. Equally skilled players who only have time on thanksgiving will be ranked lower on the leaderboard over the holiday. It will be a totally meaningless metric, and a horrible reason to reset progression.

I guess also people who still think war/mes/guard is still the meta…I tried to join a Coe group the other day with 2 war, a mes, and a guard. I was on ele, so I assumed they’d appreciate the fgs…nope, “war only”.