(edited by savacli.8172)
Can’t say that I’ve seen this bug on Molten Duo. I’ve had it happen in the Mai Trin cannon phase, but then again, that whole phase is nothing but ‘camera please’.
This may also be less noticed in Molten as the animation for the fireball is very noticeable. So even if there’s no red ring of death the giant ball of fiery fury is enough to get out of the way.
We’re probably not on his level; we’re just a bunch of commoners.
Only you do 10% more damage.
+1 Guard only
All four forms of the item use the same name, “Essence of Luck”. The wiki reveals that when you click on the item for more information, or highlight the text revealing the extra annotation of the Luck’s quality. The thumbnail also differentiates from the four forms as well.
Do you have the right quality (exotic) of the Essence of Luck?
With the changes to Confusion, are Perplexity Runes worthwhile anymore (in any game aspect)?
Don’t be salty on me when I flame you with your abysmal addiction to a terrible weapon. Not that we ever get to play fractals anymore lately :\
On that note, yesterday I opened an LFG for “50, No underwater Mossman. No carry. No free ride”. The group was filled almost instantly. Under suspicion of some quick-fingered merge, I asked if any of the new comers actually read the LFG and what it was about. A guy answered me with: “Shut the f—- up, b—— and get on to it (the wisp)”. Without saying a thing, my friend and I entered our emergency protocol and abandoned the instance at once. The rude guy didn’t forget to chase after his victim (see pic below), only to meet with total annihilation. Body was burnt and ash scattered. So long.
The saltiness is real..
Here’s why an Illusion doesn’t follow the companion model:
- Doesn’t follow player, follows its target
- Cannot be summoned out of battle
- Most attributes are mirrored to that of the player’s
- Disappear once their target is destroyed
Companions follow practically the opposite of the above list
- Follows player or will at least leash back to player if target is beyond a certain range
- Can be ‘summoned’ at-will so long as the skill/item is off cooldown.
- Companions have base attributes independent of the player’s*
- Remain summoned until they are defeated, their timer runs out, or the skill used to summon them is slotted out.
*Ranger pets still have base attributes of their own but are augmented with certian Ranger traits.
Trinkets, no.
Armor and weapons, yes.
Companion mechanically seems to be defined as summoned AI’s that follow the player: pets, Elementals, Thief broskies, etc.
Mesmer Illusions are different in that they don’t follow the player but rather the target that they were summoned against.
Personally I’m okay with Rune of the Ranger not applies to Mesmers as Illusions don’t act as companions. I agree that originally it was a bug and that it was rightfully corrected.
If this is your first 80 I would discourage the use of guides that hint at meta or anything optimal just yet.
In PvE, those meta guides gear up for optimal offensive while only providing minimal defense. As such, there can be times where there’s little margin for error. As a new 80 I would recommend using guides that cater to using ‘training wheels’ to say, or at the very least I would recommend running with a group that can hold your hand through the instances.
If you’re in an NA server I can invite you to the guild I’m in as we work with newer players and help familiarized them with gaming content.
Umm….Virtue of Justice?
(looks like you might be in the wrong subforum)
Well, the pug meta is changing, indeed. Kinda scary there.
…I died a little on the inside.
So lets me this easier…..
So if 2200 armor isn’t tanky, and 3100 is super tanky, is 2800 armor “tanky enough” if I was shooting for a tanky character setup?
That’s up to you to answer. As already mentioned PvE isn’t at all strict about what numbers you can run (aside from the caps).
For me, 2200 Armor on a Guard in PvE is Tanky enough. If I need to be tankier I grab a Hammer instead of my Greatsword for the perma-protection. If I want to never die I also throw in Soldier’s gear.
My goal in PvE is DPS so I adhere to berserker stats and traits and just use my Guard features to stay alive.
In contrast,
Theory crafting for PvP/WvW, that’s a whole different story. In those realms there are thresholds you want to meet. If this thread were asking for a WvW build we would be able to spit out more solid numbers.
Let’s say you wanted to go for a frontliner role in WvW. 2800 Armor would be what I considered Tanky-enough. 20-30% Crit chance is what you want to aim for (pre-fury). An HP pool of 15-16k is bare minimum especially with conditions making a return. The rest you want to put in Power. Ferocity would be the ‘dump stat’.
If you were to come to the fight with Berserker equipment and say that you were going to frontline I would have to question your sanity as stats in this realm DO matter.
Anyways, back to PvE,
We have already determined that virtually all content in PvE can be done with zero investment in defensive stats, and any investment pulled away from offensive stats is considered bad DPS. As Thad and Obtena have already brought up, it’s all about the player. Give me a team that is wearing no equipment whatsoever (except weapons only because it’s required for 1-5 skills), and they have the potential to out-dps a full berserker team while simultaneously being able to out tank a full nomad team.
TL;DR Stat distribution are up to the player to decide in PvE.
(edited by savacli.8172)
The only sort of thing I can see that’s valuable to know about stats is when they get hard capped in down-scaled zones.
The best example I can offer is Tequatl. The fight area is level 66 which means any attribute will be hard capped at 2552 points (1830 is what it will show up as in that zone). What that means is any value higher than 2552 will stay be scaled as 2552. So, in cases like that you are better off moving your points to other stats that have not hit the hard cap. This particular hard cap ranges from low 2000’s all the way up to mid 2900’s that correlates to levels 2-79’s downscaling.
Other than that, choosing stats in PvE is entirely based on the player. In your example of saying that 15k DPS is optimal, I would consider something like 14k DPS no longer effective if I traded that extra 1k for a couple hundred points of health.
In PvE, optimal is considered to be the most amount of damage while still being able to stand on your own two feet. Some players can achieve that comfortably through builds that resemble the ‘zerker’ or ‘meta’ builds. Others need to take more defensive traits or even more defensive gear. Unfortunately, every player is different, and there’s no universal set of stats or build that will get you through every content in the game at your desired pace/difficulty. However, if that’s your goal to obtain a ‘universal’ build than you are your best critic; only you will be the best judge of what you think you need more of or what you can do without.
The lesser Glyph is nothing special at all. At best the Lesser Golem is nice to have as an extra meatshield, but that’s about it. The upgraded Glyph Elementals will use the same skills as their respective lesser counterparts, but they have a new active ability each. Earth Elemental is practically a tank and draws aggro very well. It also can grant PBAoE protection. Ice Elemental is decent for sizable heals and condi clear, but the knockback effect makes it tricky to use. Fire and Air are okay at best. Air is a bit more worthwhile, imo, since you can summon it at range vs the Fire Elemental that has to be in melee and generally will get wrecked pretty fast.
CoF Path 1 would be my recommendation. Really quick path which very straight forward objectives. The only two tricky parts would be the transporting of the rocks (which can be skipped with a mesportal), and everyone just needs to remember to get under a brazier. They’re optional mobs that are almost always skipped.
Halfway through the third fractal he then decided to not run PS because he was “tired of carrying us”.
Complains about DPS, turns off one of the most DPS-y group traits in the game.
#puglogic
This Guardian guide goes into detail as far weapon and skills explanation as well as potential builds with their respective rotations. Note that as the title of the thread suggests the focus of the builds is for optimal DPS (which is what players strive for in PvE).
For guides specific to dungeons as Fractals, Wethospu has put together a site that breaks down each instance into multiple parts and even goes into detail as to key classes that can excel in those sections. For optimization Wethospu also provides information such as time of day, enemy types, and pug/coordinated strats.
I generally just hit it on cooldown. There is no situation in which swiftness and aegis are bad, except maybe if idiots are under the effects of torment and don’t know how it works.
This is wrong, the situation where Aegis is terrible is when you are stealth skipping and the guardian is using Shattered aegis. any one who steps into an aoe or gets hit by mistake gets revealed and causes anyone else caught in the crossfire to get revealed as well. Ive seen it happen in CM. It’s incredibly rare but I wanted to show you that there is an exception.
If you are playing with a guardian using shattered aegis, you should kick him from the group.
It was the best choice while SA was broken, I think every guard I know had this exact scenario happen to them before they swapped to the Spirit weapon trait that didn’t help outside of maybe Grawl Shaman.
Guilty.
For the most part though I shelved my Guard while SA was in its bugged/disabled state. But, I was running Shattered Aegis during the few times I played Guard until SA was being repaired.
Best Gear:
In PvP, there’s no such thing as everyone has all items unlocked (except for a few ‘premium’ runes/sigils that cost a few gold). You simply open up your Hero panel and slot them in.
PvE? That’s a bit more difficult to explain. The absolute best-in-slot is Ascended which is obtained through crafting or being rewarded a ‘Gear Box’ that lets you pick a certain ascended gear of sort. Beyond Armor and Weapons, Ascended trinkets are obtained differently as you get a part through crafting, another part through potential reward, others by purchasing with unique currency, and the last part bought through yet another unique currency. I’m generalizing is why it sounds kinda crazy and confusing, but it’ll make more sense once you’re level 80 and can participate in the instances that award you what’s needed to obtain ascended Gear.
Just below that is Exotic quality gear with is very close in potential to its ascended counterpart (~5% difference in stats). Exotic equipment can be crafted, bought on the post, or bought with Karma from particular vendors.
Besides outright purchasing a Legendary you can craft it yourself. All legendaries follow the same formula:
- Gift of Mastery – Requires in game achievements such as spirit shards, map completion, etc.
- Gift of Fortune – Collect various top level crafting materials and forge them together
- Gift of [Something] – Unique to each legendary but require mastery of two crafting disciplines, currency from a particular dungeon, and a sigil (plus more crafting materials).
- Precursor – Nothing fancy here other than a single weapon that is considered the ‘un-upgraded’ version of the legendary. It’s mostly purchased off of the Post as trying to obtain it otherwise is very random and unreliable put your luck to the test).
Silverwastes is going to be a good source for mats. You’ll get gear boxes that gives a bunch of common grade equipment for salvaging. There’s also a lot of opportunity for champ bags from events, champ slaying, and chest opening. Once you’ve acquired enough shovels you can join ‘Chest Train’ maps where they go around and open hidden chests in the map. Beyond that the unique ‘crests’ currency can be exchange for loot bags as well from that vendors at that map.
There’s a decent amount of back-to-back events there for gaining karma as well.
Without context to a situation I would have to default to Retreat. SY comes in handy in specific situations to where the Aegis from retreat can be used in virtually any environment/build.
DPS-wise you’re looking at Scholar’s offering the best potential DPS, Strength being next due to might uptime, then Flame Legion and Rage being roughly the same. The final two have blinds spots in that Flame Legion does terrible against foes that cannot be burned while Rage doesn’t do well against constructs and such that cannot be crit. Rage is also made redundant in that a decent party will be able to keep up Fury fairly easily.
As far as going down in one shot, welcome to the ele life.
I would change Inscription for Tempest Defense as TD works with Ice Bow’s Deep Freeze.
The general consensus for ‘fixing’ the squishy problem is not getting hit in the first place (duh, I know). So rather than adding the extra vitality Arcana could be used in place of Water primarily for Renewing Stamina for extra dodges. Bountiful Power will help to make up for the DPS loss though if you were regularly falling below the 90% threshold you’ll actually see a DPS gain. Flame Legion or Strength Runes can be used in place of Scholar’s if you are really having a hard time keeping over the threshold.
Smite would be awful as a symbol. Currently, smite hits up to 16 times in a 200 radius which makes it phenomenal to use against bosses or constructs with large hit boxes. Turning it into a symbol would take away that advantage and only hit targets within its radius one time per pulse.
Beyond the Powerful Blades trait, sword doesn’t feel like it was supposed to be a DPS weapon to begin with. The auto-attack is pretty odd to use with it projectiles finisher, the 2 is a blinking blind, and the 3 is a small/short projectile finisher. Mace, on the other hand (main hand?), has always been a damaging weapon, and even though the final attack in the chain only hits one target it is far more reliable to hit than Sword Wave. The reason is didn’t make the cut was because it had a slightly less DPS output than ideal sword situations.
If anything I would say move Binding Jeopardy back into Radiance.
(edited by savacli.8172)
For PvE in general, direct damage is going to be most beneficial. As such you’ll be advised to run gear that Prioritizes Power > Prec > Ferocity (aka Berserker) as well as choosing Specializations that promote damage.
In WvW, stat selection depends on what type of role you are trying to fill.
Frontliners need to stay alive as they are brought for buffs and a small amount of crowd control. For this you’ll want Vitality and Toughness. As a third stat you can go for Healing Power if you want to be a tank with legs, though Power is mostly advised so you can do minor damage to enemies and full damage to siege (they cannot be crit so something like Soldier’s and Berserker’s end up doing the same amount of damage).
Roamers tend to have a mix of both defense an offense. The ideal striker will stack on all Berserker’s/Sinister’s (Condi, Power, and Prec) to be able to take down targets quicker, but in reality some defense in needed. On top of your ‘roaming’ traits you’ll want to slot in some Toughness and/or Vitality. With conditions starting to re-emerge you really need to play it by ear to see what stat you need more of.
i really don’t know how people can even stomach grinding borefest achievements to get 10k+ ap
A lot of them you can just accumulate over time. Heck, I took a 7-8 month break after having played since release, and I’m just shy of 14k.
They ‘Dora the Explora’d it!
Here’s a link on Reddit with a compiled list of resources for returning players.
I’m all for the mobility signet, but I don’t think shadowstepping would be the best active for it; Guardians are mechanically not designed to be very mobile. I would instead say we could go with a mobility trait similar to Chronomancer.
Nope, Berserker equipment still reigns supreme in the PvE realm, and Altruistic Healing is still considered to be a crutch trait. AH is also in Valor which is a non-optimal Spec to take in PvE in terms of DPS.
Burn builds have been proposed as an alternative now that conditions have been overhauled, but the last set of numbers I saw placed condi/burn builds at ~14% DPS loss over traditional Power-based builds (this likely has changed since).
With Main-hand Dagger you will also want to use Fresh Air instead of Bolt to the Heart in Air Specialization. Air Dagger is the core of the sustain damage, and you’ll want to attune for spike damage or specific skills from other attunements.
If your focus is damage then you’ll want to swap Evasive Arcana to Bountiful Power.
For your Runes you’ll want to trade them in for either Scholars or Flame Legion. Both offer a large deal of damage boost, but you would want to opt for Flame Legion if you find yourself falling below the threshold frequently.
In PvE, being able to mitigate/eliminate the damage is preferred over recovery. Yes, I agree that Water has more utility in the sense of recovery (heals, cleanses, etc), but even all it doesn’t go as far as an extra dodge that you get from vigor uptime.
The same applies to Elemental Attunement and Contingency boons. 5 1/2 seconds of protection applied to the team goes much further than a splash heal on Water attunement.
The reasoning behind this is that in PvE you’re generally looking to dodge the bigger, yet slower hits. Thus, in instances such as high level fractals recovery techniques aren’t as useful as Ele’s tend to go down one-shot from just about anything with Defiant.
However, if you’re in a situation where you know you’re going to running into a lot of conditions Water works much better over Arcana.
Anyways, OP is wanting to know damage.
Water works best under certain conditions and will generally require a more skilled player to make sure they are able to keep above thresholds. Arcana, realistically, won’t offer as much damage but is generally easier to maintain the damage bonus.
On topic, I’m looking forward to using staff on teef! Gonna be awsum. Owait, I hate the class anyway, nvm.
BUT I’m so gonna rp as a monk on my rev. You knew it was coming. It’s just too perfect. Healer with monk outfit. Fan-freaking-tastic.Off topic, I’ll provide the helpful list of excuses I make whenever we’re doing cluffswide and I don’t want to pick up the hammer:
Engi: I’m afraid of the old kit swapping bug;
I need to focus on my rotation;
I’m bad at engi so.. yeah;
I have too many kits, elixirs and stuff to carry, one more thing and I’m gonna fall to the ground, possibly breaking my ankles.Teef: I’m too squishy;
I need to blind;
I need to blink with sb;
plz I gotta see pistol hhhwhip with bolt.Warr: hurr durr /falls down with hammer
“ok fine, you just sit there and spam 100b”Ele. I’m too squishy,
I suck at ele so.. yeah;
I forgot my rotation, hold on a second;
gaahhhh, I’m sick of dying /rolls other classMesmer: I’m too pretty, look at how pretty she is, heyyy, a pink butterfly;
I have to focus on putting down portal, you know I get distracted easily;
I forgot decoy and blink, I CAN’T DO THIS!Guard: I’’M SICK OF CARRYING YOU PITIFUL kittenS, I’M DONE, I QUIT, I SUCK, YOU SUCK, BEEN BREAKING MY BACK FOR THE WHOLE FRACTAL AND NOW I EVEN HAVE TO CARRY THE BLASTED HAMMER, GWAAAAARGHGHGHGH
Ranger: I… ahm… I’ll just sit over here and camouflage… you don’t see me….;
I miss my teddy bear;
“since you’re already useless, you could at least rao the stupid hammer through the kd wind thingy and carry it upstairs” NO! Not without my teddy bear;
I’m a ranger, I don’t know how to play.Necro: I’m a necro;
I’m a necro;
I’m a necro;
spojski told me not to touch his hammer.
This made my day, especially the Guard.
My last post was a joke :p If it’s a set amount of damage…I (or anyone else) should try to bear-form tank it.
Tank….Bear….Bearbow?! ON IT!!
One of the key factors that still kills the shield’s signature 5 skill: rooting.
The knockback isn’t anything new. Even with its reduced cd and new Defender trait shield still lacks the utility of the Focus. Sure, Focus may block a burst or some measly auto-attacks, but either way that still gives the guard a bit of breathing room.
As mentioned before, Hardcore Dungeon groups (even semi at that point) generally require you to have proficiency with multiple toons. If you’re trying to join with your primary class being a Mesmer you’ll be competing for the same spot as a Guard on the team is why this thread is continuously bring up the comparison of the two.
As far as team comp is concerned Guards and Mesmers aren’t brought on board for their DPS; there are other classes that do that better. Both Mesmers and Guards offer defensive capabilities as well as team support. Guardians have higher defensive/support capabilities by default while Mesmers have more utility.
For most casual teams I would say a Guard is more preferred as their skills are more straight forward and intuitive to use. For high-skill/high-demand teams I would argue going with Mesmer as the class is not as straight-forward. By this I mean that skilled Mesmers are those that can make creative use of their skills (portal shenanigans being the most known creative use).
AP requirement makes no sense. A low AP is either someone who hasn’t explored the game a whole lot or is a seasoned player on an alt (less likely).
With a lower AP player you get two scenarios: they don’t listen and do things their own way, or they realize the players they are with may have more experience and instead look to the more seasoned players for direction.
With a decent AP you get either someone who thinks he’s been around long enough and doesn’t listen to direction, or you get someone who understand that listening to the team/providing feedback is what keeps the team alive.
At the end of the day a pug is still a pug regardless of their achievement score. If there was a way to measure player aptitude we would be smooth sailing.
Assuming that the exact same traits for Fire and Air here is how Water and Arcana would be different (with a DPS focus):
Water:
-10% Flat base modifier based on Health
-20% Flat base modifier based on attunement to Water (Note you lose the 10% from not being attuned to Fire so I would argue this is only a 10% modifier overall).
-Extended duration on Vuln (which naturally come from Air Spec)
Arcana
-2-22% conditional base modifier based on number of boons (realistic minimum of 6% with an anticipated 10-12%)
Or
-10% Flat crit modifier after using an arcane skill.
As far as ‘on-paper’ is concerned Arcana would win if you somehow managed to have every boon on you simultaneously. For burst situations Water would win assuming your health stays above 90% as you can start off the fight with your damage channelling through Water and then switching to Fire for sustain.
As far as non-DPS traits are concerned Water is more reactive with its heals and cleanses to where Arcana is more proactive through its Boon granting, Shielding, and lower attunement cd’s.
So, to answer the OP. Water offers more damage, but I would still recommend Arcana to Ele’s for higher utility.
Disclaimer: This post assumes all traits working as intended rather than some of their current bugged/disabled state.
In PvE, weapons with symbols are getting more attention due to the re-work of the traits, Zeal specifically.
Greatsword and Mace offer the highest DPS if you can keep up momentum on your rotations. Focus is used for its burst and blocks while Torch is kept on hand (on off-hand?) for sustained DPS. Otherwise Hammer and Mace offer a more relaxed playstyle while still providing competitive DPS.
Greatsword also gets access to CD reduction for more DPS orientated builds that never got to select Two-Handed Mastery.
Bulwark Trait for Mace gives you free heal stacks for block with a Mace…which it already does a good job at; the same trait also reduces cd on Mace skills which makes the symbol on it nearly permanent when combined with Writ.
Writ of Persistence is another highly favored trait if you’re playing with Symbols and are going with Honor. Honor is practically required if you’re going with Hammer though.
Scepter is still our best ranged weapon or to be used against big-boxed-bossed. They took away its flat damage modifier trait for a might stacking trait, but it competes with fiery wrath.
Sword has been shelved due to losing its Powerful Blades trait. Utility of this weapon is limited to minor “blinking” shenanigans and when extra blinds are needed. If going the Blind route Radiance is encouraged for VoJ blind synergy as well.
Staff is still considered the ‘Loot Stick’. They have a trait giving the weapon a +20% Boon duration, but we break about even now that Virtues doesn’t have extended Boon duration.
Torch got quite a damage increase due to Radiance giving you a free 4 burst on crit every 10 seconds.
Focus is more defensive than ever by being able to trait for Protection on Focus skill use.
Shield got its cd’s cut by quite a bit, and its respective trait cuts it down even more while offering toughness. Overall, still on the ‘meh’ side of the weapons selection.
No clue why people still care about 5 Guard teams. when there are plenty of other team comp’s that are fare more efficient, Severely Out-DPS & Out-Burst them and more content-flexible. Also, why do you think Fury is OP from an ELITE skill? Most team’s have 1-2 ele’s who can easily blast 1m+ fury in seconds before any fight, or the warrior’s FGJ + Spammable Banner #2 by everyone Pre-fight. FMW, It’s a good elite with no real point in nerfing. There’s better stuff out there.
1) We cared about 5 guards team because there was a broken trait that allowed Guardian to do insane amount of dps. But now I think that trait is simply disabled while they fix it, so no problem anymore.
2) I don’t think fury is OP. I just think that every profession should have a balance between what they can provide. Guardian used to bring defensive support with limited offensive support. But with the new traits and skill they can provide good might, fury and vulnerability, while still giving good defensive support. Fury itself isn’t OP at all. But this give too much tools to the guardian.
3) Feel of Wrath feel a bit too powerful because compare to other quickness skill, it have the highest uptime of them all, while being party wide.
I agree with the fury issue; it doesn’t need to be included with Quickness. The duration/cooldown on the shout doesn’t bother me as much though.
Time Warp could use a smaller cooldown, but the new Glamour trait gives it a lot of great utility. Not only does it extend the duration, but it also provides for a burst of superspeed and resistance.
If you’re wanting an easy to learn on I would recommend Warrior. The class’s mechanic is very straight forward, and they are one of the best classes to learn weapon swap/rotation techniques as they are the only class that can obtain a base weapon swap cooldown of 5 seconds. Necro is also a very straight-forward class, but the play style can be a little frustrating as their damage potential also interferes with their survivability due to the nature of their mechanic as you are literally giving up life force to do damage.
Thief isn’t necessary kitten paper, but their initiative mechanic is very odd for most new players. The best way I can describe it would be a thief’s weapon skills have no cooldown but rather work off of a resource similar to mana/MP in typical RPG’s.
Yep, it’s very real. You can practically YOLO Guard practically any content with 5 hammers. The overall stacking of boons and heals wasn’t so much the problem, but the fact that that team comp can out-DPS anything else is way unbalanced. I think the comment about unbinding our dodge key was mentioned.
The damage buff should only be a flat one time x% boost if the enemy is standing on one of your own symbol regardless if you or any other Guards are stacking more than one symbol.
MetaBattle is a great source for builds though it’s currently in limbo as the community is revising the builds to match the 6/23 update.
Other than than Reddit’s Build and Theorycrafting is a good subreddit for posting questions and getting feedback.
Damage on a longbow will also seem better because the individual Damage number you see on a longbow’s auto-attack is higher; however, the attack rate of the longbow is rather slow is why it’s supplemented with a more damaging weapon such as Sword.
Specifically, Longbow is brought into a fight for its Rapid Shot(2) and Barrage(5) as those two skills offer high burst damage. Beyond that you would want to switch to Sword and off-hand Axe. From there you would cast Path of Scars(4) and finish out with Sword Auto while keeping a mental track of your longbow cooldowns. Sword and Axe Damage numbers will look smaller, but they attack much faster and rack up more damage than a Longbow.
My point of view is primarily from a instanced point of view (story, dungeons, fractals, etc.). In open world you can continue with your Longbow tactic while hiding behind your pet, but as Slalom mentioned this is a bad habit to develop as this hinders your potential in more team orientated situations. From an instanced perspective, we want to keep team members fairly close to each other as the majority of key buffs have a small share radius. Thus, if you’re pew-ing from afar you’ll be missing out on key buffs that the rest of your team has.
Anyways, weapon swaps and rotations are something that I wouldn’t necessarily worry about until you’re much higher level. At your level I would encourage you to try each weapon and skill to get a feel for how each of them work.
In regards to PvE swapping weapons is all about rotation rotation rotation. For the most part you want to avoid auto-attacking as that generally does not offer the most optimal DPS rate. Ranger is in an odd situation in that the Skirmishing specialization promotes weapon swapping, but Rangers don’t rely as much on skill rotation for optimal damage. For a Ranger you want to burn a few skills on Longbow and then swap to sword to auto-attack permanently (I’m generalizing, but you would also throw in the odd off-hand and utility skill now and then).
When’s the right time to swap weapons? That’s highly situational based entirely on what build you are running on your class. Unfortunately, trying to explain weapon swapping over post isn’t necessarily that simple, and it’ll make much more sense if you were to see in-game examples.
Adding my two copper
1. Players will often refer to metabattle (or mb) as the source of how a zerk player so gear up. The sites currently in a limbo as they’re updating their data to be compatible with the 6/23 patch.
2. Each of the eight dungeons reside in specific maps. So, as long as you go to that map (doesn’t matter if your team is outside about to enter or already in the dungeon) you will get a prompt to effectively be ‘ported’ inside the dungeon with the rest of the team.
3. It’s common courtesy to ask if you can swap but most groups won’t have a problem if the team is doing fairly well with the dungeon. The experience for clearing the content occurs right after the final boss is slain so players will do nearly all the content on their primary account and then wait til almost the last moment and swap so their lower level toon gets the xp credit (which is about 7/10 of a level).
4a. In PvE, maps and instances will have a level cap so if you walk in with a character with a higher level than that of the cap the game will ‘downscale’ your equipment and skills to better match the zone that you are in. There are also caps of how high of a stat you can have as well as the quality/rarity of your weapon. In other words you can walk into a level 40 zone with a Legendary quality weapon, but it will have no higher weapon potential than that or a Rare weapon.
4b. At level 80 though you have a couple advantage than someone of ‘appropriate level’
-Hero Points: Unless you do a lot of grinding of Hero challenges a higher level toon will generally have more of these spare to train more skills and traits
-Specialization: Even though a player is scaled they still retain the number of specs they can slot as well as all abilities unlocked through their specialization choices.
-Stats: Despite the scaling a properly geared level 80 toon will still have higher stats, on average, than low leveled toons.
Honestly, too early to tell. There’s not really any concrete data we can get insight from so at this point the decision is really up to you. The loose theory is that the crafting system will work similar to Mawdrey (final product) in that you are running into gathering items, crafting/buying material, and doing events/missions for components.
If the system looks like that you’ll be trading time for money. Aside from the Gift of Mastery, currently all other components of a Legendary can effectively be bought. With the theorized new system you may be waiting on time-gated materials and trying to catch events to continue your crafting progress.