Guild Wars 2

The only one that gets under my skin is new players who refuse to use anything but the weapon set they are equipped with, and don’t carry any other weapons. I got called an elitist sh*thead once for asking a thief to switch to sb for stealth with smokescreen. I was doing CM once with 2 wars, a thief, a necro and a ranger. I asked the ranger if he would switch to offhand axe for gunpowder morgan for the reflect, and his response was “reflects? do I look like a guardian to you?”

The AC path was revamped at twilight arbor was given a new path. The dungeon master title was not taken away. I am able to skip that content and retain my title.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Both of the new boss type Fractals have been re-balanced and tuned to be more consistent with the other Fractals. The fight is indeed easier—at level 1. The original difficulty and more can be found a higher scales.

Jade maw is the same difficulty at level 1 as he is at 48. (Piling on ar to deal with an unavoidable application of agony does not represent difficulty to me). Are you going to introduce mechanics that scale maw’s difficulty as well?

This is the solution – just take out the leaderboard.

Then, any “advantage” level 50+ players have has no effect on anyone else. Hey, but then aren’t they skipping levels that will now be harder? No – the devs have said the curve will be easier. The way difficulty is implemented will be different, but not harder such that 50+ players need to prove they can do it grinding out 20 levels again. But lets say for arguments sake it is harder – the system is self regulating because of the difficulty curve. If players cant handle the new 48, they will try easier levels.

The only “advantage” 50+ players have is a slightly better personal reward opportunity. You can still get AR and you can still play 48s (if someone can open for you) at personal level 30. Keeping that seems a lot less unfair then removing character progression for the sake of a leaderboard no-one asked for. Do you really care if some of us get a little more gold and the chance at a tonic a little before everyone else, because we chose to grind through the awful scaling of the old system?

CC Danicia.1394:

Hello all,

The Developers are reading these posts and we are gathering feedback. This is a reminder, as I’ve already had to edit one post. Please do not discuss exploits, discuss how players may have used exploits, and keep these topics clean. We do not want to have to shut down more threads because they dissolve into name-calling, rude comments, and other violations of the Forum Code of Conduct.

Maybe if at any time in the past year the devs had addressed specifically if going above level 50 was an exploit, as was asked on multiple occasions, there wouldn’t be any ambiguity.

Smh at “heavy classes” dealing with condis better than other classes. Conditions ignore toughness, so a natural armor bonus won’t help against condi spam. On the cc front thieves have insane mobility and evades out the kitten, so there’s no need to be face tanking those hits. Not to mention stealth to get out of a fight that’s going sour.

I think my ideal composition would be guard/war/thief/mes/x. that gives you enough reflects to deal with the harpy/grawl fractal. You have portal and stealth for the dredge fractal. Guard is essential for aegis and aoe stability. War for solid dps and party wide buffs. After that pretty much any class would be useful. Ranger has spotter and frost spirit, ele has insane might stacking and personal dps, and even a necro specced for condi’s will rip through those prot-spamming dredge.

Not ressing when it’s safe to do so sounds like an ego trip to me. If they are slowing down the group that bad, just kick them. You don’t need to teach them a lesson and make them watch how great you are at soloing.

Good players die too, to lag spikes, fumble dodges, or even the occasional misclick. If it makes you feel so superior to be standing over their dead body, i doubt you are as confident in your abilities as you think you are.

1. Which path is the easiest / quickest?
I find 1/2/3 fairly equivalent in length, but 3 has less punishing skips. I’d probably start there.

2. Is it really challenging?
The learning curve is steep, yes. You will most likely find it very frustrating in the beginning. However none of it is difficult to execute once you know what you need to do.

3. How much time takes an average run, and how much would it be a quick run? (per path)
P3 is the safest bet for a group with inexperienced players. Unless your looking to get completely carried through, don’t expect a quick run in the same vein as other dungeons. I’d plan for 45mins – 1 hour.

4. Why do people “sell” Arah rewards… is it really that hard?
Relative to other dungeons, yes. Relative to high level fractals, no. I don’t understand the mentality of people who buy dungeon paths, so I couldn’t really tell you why they do it.

5. Do berserker builds survive in there?
Berserker will survive anywhere in pve, so yes bring berserker gear.

You can run staff on ele, but you should only go ranged when everyone ranges – like dredge power suit or imbued shaman. You melee or range as a group, never (or very rarely, I can’t think of an example) mix the two. Think of range/melee as techniques for dealing with an encounter, not as class rolls. It’s not that everyone is a “one trick pony”, it’s that positioning is not an element that differentiates classes.

I agree with the above, scepter itself has pretty crappy dps. S/d might stacking rotation has good burst damage but that’s at close range, and works best when used between conjures.

So are you saying level 48 is easier now, or is it just a “smoother” curve up to 50?

I’ll try and be constructive here. I want to look at what is actually being changed since fractal rewards is one of the biggest issues with FOTM as it currently exists.

The good -
potentially greater gold reward, though it’s unclear whether it’s scaling. After the dungeon gold revamp I’m not holding my breath.

The bad-
Weapon skins, which IMO is what drives people to do high level fractals, will be available at level 10. Still RNG.

Above 30, the only special drops are :
“The Rune of Resistance grants bonus toughness, a reduction in condition duration, and aegis upon using a signet
The Sigil of Momentum grants a stacking toughness buff every time you kill an enemy”
Not things I would take into a high level fractal, probably ever. Though we don’t know yet how the high level fractals will change.

Above 40, the only special drop is a rare chance at an endless tonic.

All in all, it looks like a are getting more RNG, not less, and we are given even less reason to do high level fractals, but maybe there’s something I’m missing. I don’t mean to just pile on more negative criticism for the upcoming patch but I was sort of baffled reading through the notes. Very little seems changed for the better.

VOLKON.1290:

rfdarko.4639:

Why didn’t they just open up 50+ with the new challenges, instead of needlessly deleting the only meaningful character progression that exists above level 80? To people saying getting above 50 is an exploit – I’m sure that if it was a serious issue it wouldn’t have taken them nearly a year to simply make it impossible to open higher than a 49.

If someone was at 50, wasn’t their progression done? There’s no more “up” after that, isn’t that true?

So isn’t this going from “no more progression” to “progression with added challenges”?

It’s deleting the progression I’ve already achieved, when they could have left it well alone. If they opened up new character levels I don’t think they would push everyone back to 60.

Why didn’t they just open up 50+ with the new challenges, instead of needlessly deleting the only meaningful character progression that exists above level 80? To people saying getting above 50 is an exploit – I’m sure that if it was a serious issue it wouldn’t have taken them nearly a year to simply make it impossible to open higher than a 49.

It’s not a gem storm purchase, so why would they bother refunding?

It’s actually tragically hilarious, it was literally yesterday I infused a back-piece. Waking up to this news today was just peachy.

Sorry anet, this is what happens when you leave players hanging for nearly a year with the promise of something better, then announce that in a weeks time your going to delete all the character progression people sunk hours into. That you are going to make the only weapon skins in the game that require skill to obtain accessible for entry level fractals, instead of fixing the actual problem with them which is the kitten RNG.

This is what happens when you kitten up the one chance you had to preserve what little hardcore pve community you had left.

I think the harpies were missing also, so both troll fractals.

Fractals is basically the only significant character progression for 80+, and that’s being deleted. If there was any clearer way to say kitten anyone who isn’t casual I don’t know what that would be. I cant believe they kittened up the one patch in months that was going to give something for hardcore pve’ers.

I’ve been duoing lupi and we finally managed to down him with me soloing p2&3. Most of what I learned came from dirt napping in rezardi’s charity runs and some great advice from deSade. If you put your ego aside and watch carefully, there’s a lot you can gain from watching. You can think about what you did, look at what the person is doing differently, and try out new strategies next time.

Yuri.5810:

Pro Tip for Necro: don’t even bother to try it solo. Reroll Thief or Warrior or wait for a zerg so that you’ll be able to skip all the poorly designed content and get the chest. Because apparently that’s how we are supposed to play this game.

I actually had a much easier time with my necro then my other toons. The biggest battle on floor three is the attrition of the poison, and with my necros monsterous health pool that was much easier to manage. Plague lasts for 20 seconds, which will get you most of the way to each of the air filtration tanks. Just spam the blind and walk on through. That plus three stun breaks slotted should be enough for the run.

Temporary solution – post your dungeon listing under “open world content”, which is limited to your server only.

Yup, just tried FOTM and its borked as well. You can only join instances with people on your own server.

swiftpaw.6397:

My tour night is ruined -_- trying releasing and renewing IP, loading diff chars etc.. nothing works.

Not only this but I have not guested to another server in like a month and yet as soon as the new build hit, the game auto guested me on two random servers.

Ah the sacrifices dungeon goers have to make for the open worlders -_-

I thought someone had hacked my account at first, when I crashed I was going to try and guest onto their server but found I had apparently randomly used up my guests. Haven’t tried FOTM yet but yeah I’m not really going to bother playing till this is fixed. I’m pretty sick of these “polished” two week patches.

Melchior.2135:

$7.50 each for a one-time use skin. Thanks.

Eh, it was about 45 gold when I bought it, and I suspect when gem prices settle a bit it will be less. That’s cheaper then a lot of the skins on the tp.

Bought this as soon as it came out to show my support for:
1) not RNG
2) not blue and glowy

The OP is clearly talking about the tower maze itself and not the instances. A few of the events along the way are at least designed not to be soloed, and realistically only a very skilled player could solo the champion on the first floor, or the vet worm queen. In a few days when the tower is deserted like the mad kings labyrinth, those soloable instances will be practically inaccessible to the solo player. That’s the point I think the OP was trying to make.

Given that we have to kill him 3 times for the chieve, the story mode unlock seems a bit redundant and more confusing the necessary.

So to be clear, we need to go into the instance again and defeat the hybrid again to get the achievement?

If your just pressing one on the spider queen your getting carried hard by someone else’s condi removal, and even then I don’t think I could just tank all of her hits (tbf I am on a zerk ele). I’m not sure which boss you “just press one” on, I assume that’s an exaggeration. Most bosses require the use of evades/block, reflections, sometime condi removal, etc. the only difference between stacking and not is that instead of running around like a headless chicken every groups up to benefit from buffs/heals/reflects.

Given that nearly every day there is a new thread about how stacking and skipping is the end of all things holy, there are more people out there who want to experience dungeons the way you do. And of course they are thinking, just like you, that they are the only ones who want to run dungeons without skipping. If the only reason you want to solo is you’re afraid to be a burden to others, then my advice would be try making a lfg post or asking in guild for a no-skip run. Soloing usually involves a lot more skipping then a normal run, unless you like 8 hour runs.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Intentional. We could probably add a max range but I don’t think it’s necessary at this time since it isn’t really breaking anything. The bug was what Godless described.

I just want to ask a practical question – what do you mean by max range? That wouldn’t do anything the way I use to cliff dive, since I just double tap it right before I hit the ground. I don’t see what max range has to do with anything.

I think you’ve answered you own question – they are treated both as a skill with a cd and as a weapon swap. You do make an interesting point that we are are the only class who has our weapon swap slowed down by chill. I think this is because our weapon swap is more powerful then most other classes – boons, cleansing wave etc. So chill can provide a some good counter play – for example, you might chill an ele as he swaps out of air attunment to buy you some time before the next burst. I know eles need some love in pvp right now, but I think this at least is working as intended.

Also eles are one of the most desired professions in organized dungeon groups at the moment – the conjures are strong but they are just one of many reasons to bring an ele. Since we only can use one weapon set at a time, saying “we can bring a staff to wvw” isn’t much evidence that we are bottom tier. If your zerging eles provide some of the most important combo fields and good aoe dps. Roaming eles face the same problems as they do in s/tpvp, which is the only place we really struggle.

http://youtu.be/K5lAGrC_w6c

This helped me emensly with the p1 skip, which is really the only part that will give you grief on that path. It’s similar to what is described above, but I always like a good visual aid.

I find when I play ele it’s frenetic, bordering on the chaotic, but satisfying when you can land all your key presses and get you combos off just right. Certain weapon sets will require some muscle memory training to pull off effectively. Mesmer is fast passed in its own way, but it’s more about strategy and mind games rather then quick fingers. In terms of leveling, both can be tricky but the learning curve for mesmer is more like a wall.

I agree with the above about the blood magic change. I like the idea of opening up more trait lines for pve, but 25 points is a really heavy investment for a single minor trait. Considering you’ll almost always want to take 30 in spite for close to death, your only left with 15 points for curses or soul reaping.

And what two major traits are you going to take in blood magic? Well cd reduction is your best bet, although with the s/d might stacking ele meta going on I find myself using wells sparingly. Lifesteal is of little help – typically I find myself at near full health (from swaping in and out of DS) or flat on my face because I missed dodging the 1-shot KO. A little bit of health regen isn’t going to help me in those situations.

A number of times there have been balence discussion on the pvp forums which pertain to changes that effect both pvp and pve. When a pve point is brought up – such as an argument for a split – we are told to go back to the class subforum. With that in mind, I think this is the appropriate place to get dev feedback on the pve side of things.

How do the devs feel these changes will improve or weaken the state of necros in pve? (Read: dungeons and fractals, not open world). Would you consider splitting the weakening shroud change for pve as spoj suggested? What can we look forward to in future changes that will improve our ability to deal with massive spike damage and provide greater team utility?

Torch gets me through a number of skips in arah when I pug. An extra 3 seconds of stealth can come in useful, and unless your going straight into a fight after a run there’s not much reason to use oh sword or pistol. I wouldn’t put it in the same category as staff or scepter – it has decent utility.

If you range him he wont do his kick in phase one and his big knock back in phase 2. Is that also an exploit?

I think the reason we haven’t seen a dev response, for the pve points at least, is that the biggest problems necros face currently is defiant and the condition cap. These two things inhibit our class strengths. Unfortunently, changes to these systems will be months and months away, if they happen at all. These thing aren’t an issue in pvp, which is what balance is focused around. It would take some serious pve only changes to bring necros up to decent level, which anet is unwilling to do. Im 99% sure pve necros will be left to rot until they get around to adressing defiant/condi caps.

Getting out of the habit of spamming your skills is one of the best things that helped me on guard. There are some classes where you just hit your skills when they come off cd, but one of your roles as a guard is to chain aegis, and to a lesser extent blinds. Learning to watch for “block”, learning to prioritize dodging for attacks that have multiple hits, and learning not waste focus 5 when a mob is blinded will all help you be a better guardian.

I also agree with what someone said above – learn to swap out your weapons for the sake of utility. Staff is the primary example but hammer is useful the the aoe imob and as a second line of warding. Bash or greatsword pull can put an enemy in a corner when you don’t have a mes to focus pull.

Projectile reflection is obvious, but what’s not so obvious sometimes is what count as a projectile. For example, the ice elementals that you face in the beginning of CoE have a nearly insta-down v shaped ice attack that can actually be reflected. The dredge have what look like a tremor in the ground that is a projectile. Watching dungeon videos will show you what bosses you need to use reflect on, but learning which attacks you are actually reflecting will help you time and position them better.

Yes, I mean those recipes. Throw the crystalline essence in the mystic forge with a salvage kit and some dust to convert it to coagulated essence.

What confuses me the most with all this is…..who was asking for this? The devs say all the time “the community proposes great ideas but we are super limited on time! We have to prioritize!” Then a balance change like this comes out of left field and I’m sort of left scratching my head. We can debate the level of broken this change is but regardless – there are a million legitamate balance issues that the community is crying for, this is not one of them and should not have been a priority.

Find a guild that does guild missions – 12 commendations and 5(?) gold will get you accessories. It may take a while to get but probably much less time then 40 laurels.

On the infused rings front – at personal level 22, if you do a lvl 28 fractal you should be getting the crystallized essence, which you can downscale into coagulated/vial as needed. I usually get one every 5-6 fractals, but I do have 100%+ magic find. I agree the fact that its an RNG drop only is a little frustrating, but keep doing lvl 28s until you get your personal level up there, and I bet you by that time you’ll be able to infuse at least one ring. Bare in mind pre-infused rings also have a chance to drop. (I got one in a 28 at reward lvl 25).

If all else fails you can grind the 1800 or so relics for the ascended back piece. Assuming you haven’t wasted your relics on bags or something, you should have it easily before you hit 30.

Getting my 10th apothecary ring which I can either let rot in my bank or vender for 5s is a great reward. As is the third trident skin.

But @ OP, honestly high level fractals are designed to be the most challenging 5 man content in the game, and so it should be obvious that going into it with random strangers is a high risk proposition. If your not talking about high level fractals and its taking you that long to get through <20 lvl fractals, some blame probably falls on your own failure of execution. You might need more practice on lower level fractals, or go with some guildies that will help teach you along the way.

Just wanted to put in one more voice saying blood magic is no where near ok. I literally laughed out loud when I read the line, the after it sank in a little it was just depressing. With every balance patch and every dev post there is always something that slips that proves they don’t understand the necromancer class at all. I don’t even know where to begin offering suggestions if the devs are so clueless they think blood magic/siphoning “feels good”. Sorry if that comes off rude but I know I’m not the only one here who is getting sick to death (pardon the pun) of months of totally out of touch balance changes, and an apparent lack of understanding from any of the devs posting.

To be fair, it is at least a little disappointing that anet tried to design a free flowing combat system where you can attack on the move, and yet sometimes the best strategy is to stack up and stand still behind a corner. However, there are actually fewer encounters that are genuinely trivialized by stacking then people think, and there are fights in the game that are similar to what you are asking for, OP. Lupi (melee) is a great example – in phase one you are punished for standing completely still by the swarms. The first boss in CM p3, you can’t avoid his pbaoe standing inside him, so the best strategy is to keep circling around him. Even the final boss’s in COF p1 requires some strafing. I would say alpha is an extreme example, not the rule.

I love when they say we should sustain with death shroud and siphoning. The two have zero synergy, if you sitting in death shroud for a good portion of the fight then all that siphoning is going completely to waste.

If we are suppose to take siphoning seriously, and our only defense is death shroud, the obvious answer seems to be – let us heal in death shroud.

They already nerfed d/d into the ground months ago. I don’t understand why its getting more nerfs. I get they want to buff staff but its coming at the cost of any sort of viability d/d had left.

Bright.9160:

Oh my god, remembering his warrior guide, this is going to be marvelous.

I hope I have time to watch it…

Dis gun b gud…

Considering the last live stream (necro) started out with a recommendation of clerics gear into a well build with blood magic traits….yeah can’t wait. We’ll see if Brazil’s new guide can measure up.

Still haven’t fixed closest enemy targeting, which is my biggest annoyance at the moment. But hey at least now I auto-target champs in the zerg trains, so working as intended, right? :/