It can take forever to find people welling to do other, mostly people who still dont have that levels for the achievements. The same people will not join the next time. SO your suggestion is not viable. The pole need to go.
So people are not willing to play like you want them to play and you think that your opinion > their opinion?
I didn’t realize that forever happened in 5 minutes at most…
If you want a group that adheres to your own playstyle how about make your own LFG? That, or at the very least choose to excuse yourself from the group when they decide to tackle the content in a way that differs from your own preference. The way I see it pug law is majority vote. So you can either go along with what’s been voted on or walk away from the instance.
Personally, I like to think that there’s a running joke amongst the Anet team to see who can get away with slipping little oversights like the tree, underwater, and such. Though, the underwater lure was way more obvious of a bug since Mossy clearly was not programmed for underwater combat…except he was okay to fight alongside Mr. Jellyfish. The tree and poles are funnier because QA (or similar) took a look over the level and thought, “Yep, that’s a pole.”
Regardless if you already own the fully realized Legendary version of your precursor you will start from scratch on the collection and will need to complete 100% like everyone else who may not own the Legendary.
So, what do you do with the one time craftable Precursor per Legendary? That’s up to you. If it’s a Tyrian precursor you can craft it and then sell it right on the TP or upgrade it to its Legendary form to…well…sell on the TP as well. Other than that you get a few achievement points. Though I would take caution when deciding to craft a precursor as some pre’s have costs (factoring in time) that surpass just going to the TP and buying the pre itself.
From personal experience I would have to vote 2.
Use the free keys you get from dailies and then go out of your way to buy discounted keys to open the boxes you have left.
1) Generally up until level 80 is what I still consider fun. After that the instabilities are what keep me from thinking “wow, this is fun” rather than an issue with the class itself.
2) Primarily Power builds. I enjoy running the Druid Elite and trying to mix that with a Condi build would compete for the very valuable Quick Draw. That, and there are 1-2 “mandatory” Utility skills I need to take as a condi build where a Power Druid is a bit more flexible. However, if I feel the need to burn something with fire (literally) Condi builds are very fun to play.
3) Mostly if not completely glass. For lower levels I go with Berserker’s and keep a Zealot’s set with me for high levels where I see that the extra [outgoing] healing would help others especially in 70+ where going down is more so dangerous due to the Fractal Avenger going for the “Finish Him!”
4) Personally, I don’t bother with the +stat infusions. The difference is negligible (not even 2% with 100% filled slots), and I would be spending more gold from the loss of AR in the Offensive/Defensive slots by trying to offset it back into Attuned/Infused slots.
I would have voted no. What’s there to measure? Completion? Death counts? Kill counts? Personal Level? Are we all going to get a “fractal ranking”
Either way, I fall under the category of burnt out vet that just walks in to get his shot at the ascended boxes and walks right back out. The 1 fractal per instance was what really killed that aspect of the game for me. After years of the same content of course I’m going to go take the easiest/shortest paths to get my rewards. No incentive to do anything else.
Oh, and the Legendary backpiece. It’s shiny. I want it.
Aside from the common themes, personally, I’ve been running Marksmanship, Healing Spring (traited), and Sword/Axe on the switch. Though, I find myself having very small windows where I can hop off of staff to actually attack which is why I’m doubting the usefulness of the damage modifiers in that Spec.
Now with Nature Magic, I’m interested in Boon sharing with my Pet since boon prioritization puts my pets on that bottom of the list when compared to Players. The Water Spirit was also interesting to me as it helps keep up regen as well as trickle healing from the Spirit procs. That, and it looks like I’d still have an emergency heal for me and my pet.
I understand builds should be based on both the encounter and your team skill/comfort, but I’m curious to see what others are using for what situations/comps.
I’m a little curious, what do you all run for Raids as a Druid? The common themes I’m seeing are:
- Weapons: Staff (duh)
- Stats: Zealots with Magi, Cleric, or Berserker (based on on encounter and heal needs)
- Pets: Bristleback
- Specs: Skirmishing (x/1/1) and Druid (x/2/3
- Noms: Rice Balls with Furious Crystals or Sharpening Stones
- Utility Skills: Glyphs of Empowerment and Tides with Frost and Sun Spirits
- Elite Skill: Glyph of Unity
I guess that things where I’ve seen conflicting conversation around are:
Heal Skill:
- Healing Spring: Water field, burst heal, long lasting Regen when traited
- Glyph: Burst heal and another Glyph for Verdant Etching
- Water Spirit: Distributes Regen when traited, periodic ally heal (scales with Druid’s Healing Power), and good personal heal with a delayed party heal.
Specializations:
- Marksmanship: Increased Damage, Blast finisher (to be used on water fields) on weapon swap.
- Nature Magic: Spirits pulse boons, Boon share with Pets, increase damage per boon or improved revive abilities.
Pets:
- Felines: Raw damage in case your Bristleback needs a rest
- Fern Hound or Blue Moa: Additional healing and boon distribution
- CC orientated pets: For breakbars and dealing with Boss Adds.
Second Weapons:
- Sword/Axe: Raw damage and whirl finisher on water for large quantities of Regen
- Sword/Warhorn: Moderate damage with an additional Blast Finisher
Overall, I’m looking for discussion to see why folks choose one over the other or what Raid bosses would it be better to use Build A vs Build B
I have a problem with all this support for making fights as mechanical as possible. VG and Sabetha both have a lot of mechanics to deal with. And as a result it feels less like you are fighting the boss and more like you are fighting the mechanics/arena. I dont find that fun.
On the other hand Gorseval is much more about the boss itself. Its a lot more fun. But as a result its easier once you get the dps check and basic mechanics sorted. The thing is that style can be really good if its expanded on.
PREACH. IT.
I think the intention for the Sabetha fight is that you are fighting the arena. Sure, you’re fighting Sabetha, but you’re fighting all of the bandits in the camp, and they’re all working together to kill you by firing cannons at you, and destroying the platform under your feet, making you fall to your death while they clearly have the ability to survive (Sabetha can shadowstep away). This actually leads to what feels like a more engaging fight to me because I feel like I need to make sure my friends aren’t killed by bandits while also trying to focus on taking down their leader. That kind of effort is exciting!
Lack of proper story telling aside, the Sabetha fight is the only one that made sense. The overall fight felt like a whole, “If I’m going down I’m taking you with me!!”
Similar to how the 10-man raid squad is going in to fight Sabetha, she’s pulled together her own squad to retaliate. Whenever she’s getting weary, she escapes to recover only to have one of her officers to maintain pressure on the group of heroes trying to take her down. Other bandits periodically jump into the fight either in person or grab hold of a cannon knowing their boss can get away if the arena is destroyed, but the heroes will be left to fall to their deaths.
I can respect a fight like Gorsy with the challenge being the boss itself, but I’m more of the person who enjoy when the arena is a part of the challenge as well (within reason).
There are 3 things why I never even considered trying the GW2 raid:
- the requirement to exclude badly skilled/equipped players to enable the team to succeed. With badly skilled I don’t mean players with the wrong traits/weapons equipped. Equipment can be bought. Instead, I mean players from which I know they are not able to withstand a difficult fight. This would exclude some guild members. It’s not possible to carry them. With other words, to not be forced to exclude them I will not even begin to try the raid.
- the timer. I don’t want to try and fail and try and fail for hours. I play the game to win, not to fail the whole evening except probably once (if were lucky).
- the mechanical fight. According to videos, the fight is so totally scripted, it doesn’t feel any natural. You are clicking and tapping keys according to the rhythm of a script someone else wrote, not fighting a deadly enemy. I don’t feel a challenge, I feel it’s just stupid – like I were drilled in the army to learn marching lock-step, and if you fail to march lock-step, you are immediately shot dead.
I can 110% agree with you on the first point.
I disagree with you on the second point primarily because raids imply some difficulty (generalized across all games) and a requirement of investment in time. So, repeated attempts and multiple failures is part of the package deal with Raids.
On the third point I mostly agree. The VG fight is completely scripted. As long as you have decent outgoing damage and follow along with the tempo you will have a pretty easy fight. Gorsy has a small amount of RNG, but the grand majority once again falls along the lines of scripted. Though, this fight has a much higher DPS check. The Sabetha fight is the only one I feel was done right. There are a few items that you can completely anticipate, but there are an even larger set of mechanics that actually feel organic to the fight. Personally, the Sabetha fight is the only thing I look forward to with each week’s reset. It’s very fun fighting a boss that behaves naturally and requires you to be on your toes for the whole fight.
P.S. As far as how wildly popular the raids are? Thursday night we couldn’t get more than 7 people to join up for a raid. Friday night we baaaaaaarely got the 10 people we needed before giving up hope. Apparently, everyone else was too busy doing more fun stuff….like Wintersday
(edited by savacli.8172)
Yep, you can use the same Proto backpiece throughout the whole collection process. Just be sure to remove any infusions from the backpiece before throwing it in the Forge again.
For builds we generally use online tools like http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ to draw it out. Makes it a lot easier for us to look at specifics and critique.
jesus, how long did that take?
It really depends on what you already have unlocked.
If you cleared most of Tyrian maps unlocking your Elite Specs takes a few minutes or maybe an hour or so if you don’t have map much completion. Though You can simultaneously work towards 100% while shooting for HP Challenges.
If you have 0 masteries unlocked….good luck. Though you can combine your Dragon Stand grinding with Mastery XP grinding. A lot of the mobs there grant XP so overdosing on XP boosters lets you level up extremely fast in that map if you have decent Commanders. With decent Commanders you can get in and out of that map in about 1hr 15m with 30-35 Crystalline ore on average. Note that you have to complete the Mordy meta to unlock all the pods with the exception of the 1-3 pods per lane that sometimes show up during the lane events.
For map currency, you want to land about 30 minutes or so before the big Metas so you can build up enough participation % for map rewards. Also look for taxi’s on LFG since they tend to have better tiered map which leads to better rewards. Though, you’re still looking to spend a few hours here per map unless you get good drops from the Hunting bags loots.
The exotic drops? Completely RNG. I spend about 2 minutes on my fastest collection and over an hour on my worst one.
The two adventures required for the Torch and Bow aren’t too bad and can be completed with Silver rank within a few tries.
There’s not a finite hourly measure I can throw at this since I don’t know what OP already has unlocked, and some of those stuff is annoyingly RNG based. At the very least you’re looking at spending a few weekends grinding this stuff out if you’re starting at 0 for anything in the list above. Though once you get your first weapon the next weapons start to fly in much much faster since at that point you’re just grinding map currency for the most part. For me after I got my first weapon I was at 10/14 or 11/14 for the other 8 weapons.
(edited by savacli.8172)
The reason I keep thinking condi will deal more damage against your main argument – ‘same damage but its delayed unlike power’, is that condi doesnt relay on this holy trio of power+precision+ferocity.. you don’t let anything go to chance in terms of how many crits you’ll hit.
Your argument is too generalized though. Power, Precision, and Ferocity have a driect correlation, but Condition damage isn’t the only thing that makes a Condition build. In the case of a Ranger, Precision plays a role in Bleed uptime, and you are also heavily reliant on a single trait for your bonfire Burn uptime that competes with your [off]healing role. Sun Spirit and Flame Trap are also two skills that are equipped in that traditional A/T build so that leaves you either slotting in only a single “healer” skill or giving up one or two of the “Condi” skills in favor of more healer skills (Glyph of Tides, Empowerment, etc).
As far as the runes and sigils go, that could be disastrous. The reason Druids can get by with so little to no Healing Power is because it’s offset by the Outgoing healing multiplier (30-50% depending on your nourishments, runes, and sigils). Unless you’re working with a close to perfect team you’ll either need to keep the stuff that increases your Outgoing healing, or you’ll need to tack on more Healing Power back into your gear (less efficient).
Lastly, the bulk of your damage is behind your A/T weapon set. So, anytime you have to switch to staff your damage drops dramatically since you will have only Flame Trap and Sun Spirit procs to work with (add any additional effects from runes sigils). If you miss your Quick Draw or are stuck on Staff you will be contributing less than what a traditional Power build would offer.
Ultimately, a Druid’s primary role isn’t damage. I’d much rather take a Power build that offers the flexibility of slotting Glyphs (traited) and Spirits to buff my team. My potential x% increase in personal damage pales in comparison to the additional damage my team is getting from me buffing them. Again, on VG there’s just too much constant damage to catch a break, Gorsy has its DPS burst moments, and Sabetha escalates rather quickly in pressure. That being said, I’m gonna be stuck on staff for the most part so I’m going to focus on what makes me more efficient 99% of the time vs the 1% of the time when I get a breather.
Is Condition Damage the way to go for Druids in raids? Maybe, but right now there are waaay too many things that need to line up to make it worthwhile.
6.5: Black diamonds are exclusive to HoT maps.
Overall drops tend to be better in AB if you can catch it during its primetime event which is the Octovine Meta. However, this relies on a decent map and having keys. SW is more forgiving in that you can just hop in for the most part, though you get much better rewards during the Breach/Vinewrath events which are not time gated and is much easier to find a map for.
Weapon chests from Fractals comes is currently at 4-5% drop rate. So while not exactly non-existent I wouldn’t say solely relying on a box drop is a good idea. Granted in a decent group it only takes about 15 minutes or so to clear 3 swamps to get get the Champion daily box. Weapon boxes adhere to a specific stat, but you are free to select the specific weapon you want. Even if the box you get isn’t of the stat you want, you can choose the desired weapon and used the Ascended transmutation recipe in the Mystic Forge (which does not require any level in crafting) to change the weapon to the stats you want.
Now for the fun part: the specializations. All of them follow the same formula:
1. Unlock the class’s Elite Spec (30 Hero Points)
2. Kill a particular creature for its unique Exotic drop (RNG based) or Slay a boss for its unique drop (guaranteed)
3. Buy an item from a Specific vendor (heart or end-of-chain vendors)
4. Create/buy Mystic Weapon (~20g)
5. Kill a second particular creature for its unique Exotic drop (RNG Based)
6. Buy your Class’s Specialization Inscription (50 Crystalline Ore)
7. Earn Silver Rank in a specific Adventure
8. Stealth Glide on the character (requires Tier 4 master in Gliding)
9. Buy a specific item from Nuhoch vendor (300 Airship parts + 15.36 silver)
10. Mine a Aruic Sharpening Stone (requires tier 5 in Exalted Mastery)
11. Collect your class’s Invisible Mushroom Spore (can be RNG based and requires tier 4 in Nuhoch Mastery)
12. Fully unlock your class’s Spec (250 Hero Points)
13. 100% map clear 1 of the 4 maps in Magus falls with your class.
14. Unlock the Machine variation of your Weapon (subcollection needing up to 400 of each map currency, 3 reclaimed plates, oiled component, and looted component from Noxious Pods).
Since you’re wanting both the Torch and Longbow you would need to fulfil the above list for both the Berserker and Dragonhunter classes. Collection items 8,10, 11 essentially only need to be unlocked once since masteries are shared across characters.
From experience, I can tell you it’ll be a whole lot faster just grinding for gold to make your Ascended weapons if that’s all you’re wanting. I was going for Nevermore at the time, so I was able to simultaneous work on that Legendary as well as completing the objectives for the Spec weapons. Ultimately, your decision should be based on what you want to do long term.
I get from your experiences CA freedom is less about build and more about who you’re with. Is that right? If you were like me and wanted to force the issue what would you try?
It also depends on the encounter (assuming you’re talking a bout raids). An encounter like VG require more of a dedicated healing role due to unavoidable damage: green circles, “pie” pulsing damage, etc. Gorsy and Sabetha have little to no unavoidable damage so in those encounters you can afford being more offensive and take a break from healing.
In short, each skill can only be slotted in a particular block
Weapon skills occupy 1-5
Healing skills occupy 6
Utility skills are free to take any slots within 6-9
Elite Skills take 0
Each Speacialization usually comes packed with a combination of the following
0-1 Heal Skills
4 Utility skills
0-1 Elite skills
In the case of Necro Signets you’re looking at
1 Heal: Sig of Vamprism
4 Utility: Sig of Locust, Plague, Spite, Undeath
0 Elite skills
This wiki link breaks down the various skill types and slots that your Necro uses if you want to know the exact details.
The audience for these kind of record runs also became non-existent. Before the expansion half of the Page 1 of the fractal/dungeon forums was threads about record runs and attempts. Plenty of people were commentating on them. More casual guilds looked forward to these record runs and would try to emulate the same strategies seen in the videos to improve their own times. Now whether they were improving their times for the mere sake of challenge or to get gold faster? That would be hard to quantify, but I don’t think I’d be wrong in assuming that faster gold was more often the selling factor.
As others have mentioned the expansion has also completely overhauled all the classes (some more than others) so virtually every record run on file can be beaten with fair amount of margin. There’s 8 dungeons, 3-4 paths a piece, and various completion categories (solo, duo, 5 man, etc). If I were to put myself in the shoes of the approvers I can easily see how they would get burnt out if day after day since the release of the expansion they could have been bombarded by submissions. On top of that, most of them were probably not even “polished” submissions but rather they were runs that beat the previous records simply because the player took advantage of the overhauled classes.
Unfortunately, the rewards nerf was the ultimate nail in the coffin. For casual players, there’s no point in doing dungeons unless you need the currency. So, less and less casual players are interested in looking up speedruns to see how the pros do it. Personally speaking since I recently needed to grind AC tears, I could care less who I had on my team; I’m just glad I had people that showed up at all tbh.
On the other side of that, the same players doing speedruns were also getting monetary compensation for their attempts. Take that away, and what do you have left? Speedclearing for the sake of challenge? We already have something new for that called raids.
So to the OP, if you want to continue doing speedruns on Dungeons, that’s great! But sadly, the community has moved on to bigger and shinier things.
Ultimately, it depends on your team and the encounter.
For something like VG where there is unavoidable damage (green dots, pulsing “pie” damage, etc) you’re going to need to semi lock yourself in a more dedicated healing role. So regardless of whether you go Power or Condi you’re not going to have much of an opportunity to go Attack Mode. As Cameron pointed out switching to condi just means that your damage is spread out over time vs all your damage being front loaded in a Power build. Since we’ll be in Staff for the most part in this fight it just make sense to go with Power since the Weapon doesn’t natively benefit from Condi builds.
Now against someone like Gorsy his attacks…her attacks…their…..its attacks can be avoidable. Sabetha has a tiny amount of unavoidable damage (cannon snipers), and the last moments of the fight are crazy enough where you will end up eating a bomb or two. Though, in these two fights there are large windows of opportunity where the Druid can afford to go Attack Mode. I guess at that point you could go with either Condi or Power, but Apothecary just looks horrible. On top of that Quick Draw is a high value item in both CAF and A/T builds so you’d have skills competing for the CD reduction.
The difficulty with that is that it would be very easy for people to create dungeons that are specifically for easy loot farming (which isn’t good for the obvious reasons) or impossible dungeons either through impossible gameplay or completely unaddressed bugs.
Logistically, they’d have to release their game engine and models with all of the game data to make that possible which opens up a HUGE can of worms.
If it were possible, I’d love it, but people would take major advantage of the system if it existed. Frankly, I think a good approach would be this:
Diablo 3 style dungeons built into an alternate mode of Fractals since they’ve stated that fractals are easiest to make. In this, there are preset tiles that are semi-randomly assorted with random mobs populating and a few randomly generated bosses, all from a larger pool. This would dramatically shake up the dungeon crawl because you’d have something new every time. Add in random instabilities and you’d have even more of an interesting time.
Yes!! I love this style of dungeons where you have a starting/staging area, and then the rest just dynamically builds itself as you go with a mixture of encounters, puzzles, etc ultimately leading to the boss which allows you to complete the instance once slayed.
The raid loot kinda sucks. My friend 22 insights no mini, no asc and no ghostly infusions. I think he just uninstalled after raiding at raid reset last nite. gg
Add all the reward you get from raid dude. You can get around 20-30 gold per hours with a decent group. Not counting any huge drop like an infusions.
Wow 20-30g once a week :O meanwhile you can do the wintersday jumppuzzle for about the same reward endlessly
Even better, give me a pickaxe and a sickle so I can harvest nodes to continue that gold/hour rate once Wintersday ends.
The raid loot kinda sucks. My friend 22 insights no mini, no asc and no ghostly infusions. I think he just uninstalled after raiding at raid reset last nite. gg
Spent about 2 hours going through the whole raid again last night. Best loot? A Gorsy Mini. What was last week’s amazing prize? A Green Guard Mini. The only real awesome loot I’ve personally gotten from the Wing since its release was a neat Healer’s ring (Asc “select your stats”). Other than than just showered in junk items that I had no use for other than salvaging. But hey, I’m almost at 500 shards and can buy stuff! It only took me a couple months, but I’ll be able to buy everything I want in a couple years, right?
If you looted one of them every time, the sellable items would quickly lose any value they have, the non-sellable ones would quickly become vendor/salvage trash, and players would complain anyway. Look at what happened to ascended rings with Fractals. The entire point of RNG loot is that when you do get something shiny you get excited. If you got something shiny every time it wouldn’t be exciting.. or shiny.
I get that they’re wanting to prevent the whole bank/bag slots full of Ascended rings, but consider the resources we had during the initial release of Ascended rings vs what we have now. Once you got the rings you wanted from RNG you just let them stock pile because there was nothing else we could do with them. On top of that we had Pristine Relics introduced which after time ensured we got the ring we wanted (similar to the intent with shards). The big difference? There were 4 tiers worth of Fractal dailies that could potentially reward you with rings. The odds were moderately high at that. Furthermore, you could repeat those same 4 tiers everyday thus you’d end up with 28 chances a week at getting a ring. So sure, months/years of this reward system being in play it’s no wonder players had enough rings to make collages in their Inventory bags with all the extra rings they had.
Nowadays you can at least salvage rings for Matrixies which have a handful of uses. The potential loot from Raids are not just rings. If we get an armor or weapon we now have the resources to transmute the item to the stats we want.
The frustrating part is that we’re locked out of rewards by two things. For one, there’s a weekly time gate on the rewards. Second, the skill check limits the number of people who will realistically have a shot at the rewards, well, at least in the immediate future. I can agree that the sellable rewards should be limited to preserve their value, but I don’t think that players are being compensated fairly for the amount of time and effort that they’ve put into/are continuing to put into the raids. If that’s the intended design? Great, the raids are going exactly as intended. Though the participation in raids is going to continue to diminish since the “wow” factor has worn off. Just look at dungeons. They were fun, plenty of people ran them, and the rewards were good both monetarily and xp-wise. Nowadays the content’s rewards/compensation got nerfed so hard to the floor that the participation level has plummeted.
My suggestion would be, in the topic of maintaining interest in the raids, loosen up the timegate on the rewards or at least make the rewards more generous. Otherwise, if “clearing the content is part of the reward” is an honest statement I don’t see the interest level rising until the next wing is released. Those same folks that are in it for the challenge are some of the same folks that enjoy speedrunning and/or low-manning content that was design for appropriate team sizes.
But yeah, last night was once again boring (add an extra hint of frustrating due to bugged Chrono’s). Then we got to Sabetha, and it was fun again.
Edit: When I mention rewards I’m talking about the unique drops/skins. Gold is easily obtained from other content so I wouldn’t say that would revive interest in the content unless it was something outrageous.
(edited by savacli.8172)
Any of them can do anything on a fundamental level, and everybody will have different opinions on what is the “best” at each role, for example, I have seen Warriors be healers, but I personally think Druid or Tempest makes the best healer, but other people might argue that Revenants are the best healers, and it all comes down to the situation it’s being applied to.
+1
On top of that you also run into the argument of professions in a vacuum setting vs in a team setting. The biggest example being a Chronomancer who has incredible buffing capabilities. In a vacuum all the Alacrity and Quickness goes straight to the caster and Illusions increasing their Damage output by a noticable amount. Due to the prioritization rules in a team setting those same Illusion would seldom, if ever, receive those buff since player party members take priority over companion or other AI when it comes to receiving boons/buffs.
Personally, I’ve run with Rev healers and have had great success. Sure, they may not have the damage Healing coefficients/bonuses as someone like a Druid, but being able to visually see the tablet made it a bit easier to see where the healing was focused at. I’ve also seen Necro and Mesmer Tanks.
I agree with Argon that any class can fit any role to an extent, though there are definite winners when casting particular roles when we’re wanting to optimize. If you’re concerned about optimal professions in optimal roles I’m sure the community will gladly point you in the right direction. Though if you’re not concerned with that at all I would recommend you pick a class that better meets your playstyle.
Highly generalizing…
PvE
Guardian still holds the role of being a solid defender. They distribute a lot of key defensive boons/buff and have readily available access to Aegis which in PvE it’s more about mitigating the single heavy blow vs multiple flurries of attacks. They are suitable for both melee and range, though they excel in Melee due to traps. While not as strong as other classes Guardians are natively defensive while still offering a respectable amount of damage output for the defense they offer. For the most part you see Guardians mostly in Dungeons, Fractals, and they are excellent for open world.
Revenant is more or less seen as a Jack of all trades. They excel in Power offense but can be set up in a more condition oriented manner though Ranged attacks are limited to mostly Power based pressure. They have defensive options, and they also have group healing. They are amazing at boon distribution but also can strip boons from their enemies. While you do have many options you generally take two “roles” based on what Legends you choose. The meta example being Glint and Shiro which gives the Revenant the roles of BoonBot and DPS respectively. Revs are generally sought after due to their very high damage output while offering high uptime (perma-up time for all intents and purposes) on boons.
WvW
I haven’t played WvW in a while, but all 3 classes mentioned in this thread share the front liner role. Rev and Warrior do a respectable amount of damage while offering team buffs and offensive boons (might, fury, +Power/Ferocity). Guardians tend to focus more on Defensive buffing and defensive boons: Aegis, Stab, Protection. Though Guards take staff for Pre-fight might stacking as well as when a zerg is able to break away for recovery. All 3 classes offer CC through various means.
PvP
I have even less experience here so bear with me.
Rev and Guard both have clearly defined roles. Guardian generally excels in lower-tiered matches due to a more concentration of inexperienced players not knowing the tales for Guard’s high hitting Longbow and Trap skills. In higher tiers more player are able to move around or avoid the spike damage altogether. Rev can go either Power or Condi though their condi build lets them have high access to Resistance which helps cover a very exposed weakness.
In PvP, Warrior falls under the category of “Anything you can do I can do better”. As in other professions are able to offer what a Warrior can and possibly even more with less investment in resources. Thus, the general consensus when seeing a Warrior on the team is you’re eating up a slot that could be taken up by someone who can actually contribute to the team.
Conclusion
Guardian focuses on being more defensive orientated while Rev lets you switch up roles quite readily.
The raids got….boring.
VG is about as exciting as NASCAR with all our running in circles.
Gorsy is a DPS race….don’t forget about the eggs.
Sabetha is about the only exciting fight for me but only because you have so many things going on at once, and each team member needs to be on their toes due to the random assigning of bombs, cannons, Flame wall, etc. It’s a really fun fight, and I wish the devs had made the other fights as multi-sided as they did with this one.
Other than that though…what else is there to do? Teach other players? Grind Shards til our thumbs fall off? Solo Vale Guardian?
raid has surely turned people to elitist. i have guildie who doesn’t want to play with us anymore because we failed raid few times. not hard core enough for him….
Sadly, I’ve run into the opposite problem where too many guildies have walked away from the raids because we wiped too many times, and they consider themselves too noob to go. “Burdening the team” and whatnot.
As far as fractals as concerned you can get away with Berserker’s. The key there would be you have to offset the lack of Healing Power with increased Outgoing healing %. In those instances you don’t so much need sustained healing as much as your need occasional burst healing.
The reason Druid has so much screen time is due to Grace of the Land and various Spirits which increases outgoing damage (both power and condi). They have great healing coefficients and can stack outgoing healing % very well (30-50% comfortably with a proper build), but the extra selling point is the ability to buff damage which is critical to successful attempts.
While other classes do offer healing they don’t offer buffs nearly as impactful as what a Druid offers. Personally, we’ve had a very good time with a Rev Healer so I’m not saying Druid is end-all-be-all.
Does this change the base item to Zojja’s shield if you do berserker for example? Would be kind nice if the one of a kind item stayed as “Glint’s Bastion” or whatever other item it was originally.
The Specialization Weapon then becomes the new item when used in the Mystic toilet rather than just modifying the Glint’s stats.
Glint’s Bastion + Mystic Toilet = [Prefix/Title]’s Bastion
-Snip-
That all sounds about right with extended boon duration. In the case of 50% boon duration (Herald’s buff alone) your stacks look something like:
TW 1.5s→13.5 capped
ToT 2.25s→20.25 capped
Chrono Runes 3s→27s capped
WoA kitten →40.5s capped
Obviously, there’s time lost in skill activation and aftercasts. That, and there’s also the case of some skills applying Quickness in quantity vs quality (TW vs WoA).
In the example you gave, my teammates would indeed hit cap. though the big question is what stack got dropped? Would it be from WoA since it was the last thing applied to me and would therefore be considered the “10th” stack, or would one of the TW stacks be lost due to the game code seeing it as having less intensity?
The cap is indeed there as seen with other boons ignoring further applications until the 9th stack burns off, the question is just in how SoI “copies” its caster’s boon and in what priority.
As far as testing this idea, that’d be difficult without having some form of data output since it’s dealing with multiple small quantities in small time intervals. In other words if the timing were off just a little I would be guessing between an extra 3 seconds of Quickness coming from Chrono Rune Well casting or two TW stacks (the 9th stack on my ally could have just burnt off as I went to cast SoI).
The official response was that the LFG tool was not designed to handle 10 player parties. When asked if we could just get a Raid tab with proper subsections for the current LFG to at least help with the clutter we were told that it would be more efficient to invest time in the more proper tool rather than patching a work around in meantime.
2- any stack of quickness won’t apply if target capped even if you are trying to apply a longer/bigger stack than any of those currently applied
This is not true.
When target is capped the newest stack subscrive the older ones who totally change what your saying here.
Actually, it is true. Once a duration based boons hits its capped (9 stacks) all other sources to stack onto that boon are ignored until you drop back down to 8 stacks.
The interesting part of duration based boons is how the timer is consumed. Regardless of what order the boon stacks were a applied the ones with the strongest effects are consumed/prioritized over those with less potent effects. The big question though is how does Quickness fall under that rule. Are all sources of Quickness treated as equal potential since they all cause the identical effect, or are stacks of Quickness with longer durations seen as “more potent” by the game? The other issue being how does SoI compare stacks when potentially going over cap? Does it copy stacks chronologically, or does it prioritize those with longer durations if they’re seen as more potent versions of the boon?
Ultimately though, I don’t know how much value there would be in looking into this stacking oddity. In a 5 man team (dungeons, fractals, Story, etc) the fights don’t last too terribly long to worry about maximizing your stacks; most of the mobs/bosses are usually dead seconds into the fight or during burst opportunities (E.G. Bosses in Dredge fractal). The biggest aspect of the game I can see benefiting from this discussion would be Raids….except you there’s are a few variables in a 10 man situation. Who’s in your subsquad? Are players within buffing distance? Are they getting Quickness from somewhere else? Etc.
iirc, using just +5’s in your slots across your gear would have placed you at 85 AR. You could have gone higher, but that would have required you invest in some rather expensive infusions since the pricing starts stacking exponentially.
As far as the “easy-mode” fractals in the 51-100 most run 56 67 77 (3 swamps) requiring 72, 91, and 109 AR respectively. If 77 seems like too much of a stretch for you you can go with level 60 (Jade Maw) with an AR requirement of 79.
Most players avoid anything in the 51-60 bracket due to the instabilities outside of the 56 and 60 since the mobs are manageable. If you have the fractal Masteries you can unlock a 3rd slot on your rings for additional cheap AR (uses the same infusions that slot 2 does).
As far as the most efficient way to go for asc boxes I would say stick to just the 51-100 daily. The other dailies will net you in mostly asc rings and keys. Though, the encryption boxes actually give some pretty decent loot now so it’s pretty worthwhile to do the 1-50 fractals along with the 51-100 dailies for some extra cash.
So just as a thought would Insp: 3-2-2 Illus: 2-2-2 and Chrono: 3-3-2 be a decent build with Assassin’s and Chrono Runes? Or would it be more beneficial to take Chronophantasm?
Well, it depends what you’re building towards. As a blanket statement I would say Chronophasma is just too good of a Trait to give up.
If you have already come across this, I would recommend taking a look at Sandy’s Guide and drop down to the builds sections for the Chrono Spec. There’s not a one build wins all, so it would be beneficial to have multiple builds on reserve to tackle “x” content.
So it sounds the very content that initially required Ascended armor and weapons only gives players one chance per day for the drop they need.
For the higher leveled Fractals, yes. Though you can get enough AR for levels in the upper 60’s through trinkets alone. Anything higher than that, and you’ll either need to budget on making the armor/weapons yourself, hope you get a drop, or make outrageously priced infusions.
0/0 and 0/0 for me :> RNG.
Zero out of zero, huh? Wait, does that mean that you’re trying to divide by z-
/explodes
As far as the most forgiving/easiest class for you to play I would suggest progressing your Warrior to Berserker or rolling a Revenant.
Warriors have high health so missing a dodge or two won’t get you killed right away, but the missing chunk from your health will let you know you did something wrong. PS Berserkers are still valued for their might stacking as well as being the BannerBot. Gameplay is relatively the same except now you have an extra F2 to go “beast mode” for faster attack rate and more damage.
Revenant would be my other suggestion because of how visual they are. The Herald is extremely visual not only on the boon bar, but they also have a visual on their feet to let you know what skills you have toggled. Extremely forward play style if you’re using the meta build has you mostly toggling upkeeps and auto-attacking until your energy burns out. The class can be confusing at first since you kinda run into a double swap mechanic, but it makes more sense if you look at it from a Elementalist point of view of swapping Legends plays a bit like swapping attunements.
Both classes and their variants are widely accepted in fractals and raids.
Personally, I run Mesmer/Tempest for Fractals and Herald/Tempest for raids (unless something else is needed). Mesmer for her versatility and group buffing, Herald for his raw damage and boon distribution, and Tempest because he rains fire from the skies…literally.
-Meta events
Timer: http://gw2timer.com
Most meta repeat themselves in 2-3 hours in the same order so the time should help you find stuff you can do the moment you’re logged on.
-Grinding
It depends what you’re after: skins, new characters, gold, etc. If you can give us an idea of what your after (materialistically) we can point you in the right direction.
-Gold
Yeah, there’s lots of ways to make gold. Silverwastes drops a lot of loot bags/boxes. Running certain meta events give you good loot upon first daily completion. You can also do a node run where you collect high valued materials (some logs and ores sell for quite a bit).
-Is HoT Better?
Well, depends your definition of better. For one, it’s a lot more grind for some of the new skins, collectables, achievements, etc. You also have more Tequatl-esque fights that require a good deal of map coordination. You get about 17 new chapters that follow the in-game story. The big selling points are the new classes: each core class has an extended Elite Specialization and there’s also a new 9th profession with its own elite progression as well. There are also a new account bound Mastery system that let’s you do things like gain access to new vendors or even craft your own precursor for legendary weapons.
+300 Concentration and 8370 points worth of luck in a single Nourishment?!?!?!?
NEW META NOMS
The more I think about it, the less reason I see to take Leadership runes, even if you don’t take Chrono runes.
It’s the +x to all stats that kills it for me. The +10% condi duration is rather odd, and the condi->boon conversion doesn’t occur frequent enough to make it the worthwhile. If it had a more meaningful stat contribution + 30% boon duration I could see the rune getting more attention.
Underwhelming Stats and Effect + hiding the rune set behind a grindfest = no thank you
3 illusions -> start rotation with precast something + CS -> Mimic -> Feedback -> … -> Feedback -> end CS -> Mimic -> Feedback -> … -> Feedback
can do without illusions if ur feedbacking more targets, so u dont overlap them (thus not wasting them)
Thanks, i though of something like that but if you were feedbacking one target you’d be overlapping feedback duration (as you said). Better then, to cast 3 illusions > Csplit > Feedback > Mimic > Cshift > Feedback > Mimic > Feedback > Feedback as savacli suggested?
Whether you cast with 0 or 3 Illusions.You would have 10s of Mimic’s Echo buff to cast Feedback #2. Afterwards, both Mimic and Feedback are still off CD so you can cast Feedbacks #3 and 4 whenever you want to. The important part being you cast Feedback before Mimic during CS. That way, whenever CS ends you get Feedback back and you have the Echo buff.
(edited by savacli.8172)
Hope this helps u deciding on why and where to use feedback, most likely that u can master your weapon skills and use some more usefull utility for your team.
Thats from my point of view, feel free to ask and critique.
I think you took that last thread waaaay too seriously. The concept of triple or quadruple casting (blink and feedback notably) are just niche techniques that fall under “Things I can do with my Mesmer Super Powers”. Are there better ways to make use of utility slots? More than likely yes, but how awesome would is it to look around the instance and see 4 simultaneous giant Globs of Ectoplasm on the field?
If you want to know which fights have projectiles, this guide could help you out below. Just click on what dungeon/fractal shard then look over the different creatures attacks.
A site like that works wonders and helps to better describe the situation a player running into. In other words, players on the team who are familiar with the Mesmer class will know to hide behind iWardens and to stack on curtains, but Feedback draws more obvious attention. On top of that some attacks are single direction while others are multi direction. The multi-direction ones can’t always be caught by Focus depending on where the attacks originate from; Feedback in that case gets the +1 simply because of the larger catching radius. E.G. Archdiviner’s spin can be shut down with a single curtain while Lupi’s barrage has an easier time going around Focus skills.
My initial discovery of the multi Feedback casting was to help out my more nooby friends on the Uncategorized Fractal. Focus + Feedback + Mimic + CS = Noob-proof fractal. Was there a more optimal choice for my utility decision at that point? Absoultely yes. Will they eventually learn to observe their surroundings and not lean as much on me? I really hope so eventually. Though at that moment, the Overkill award is what helped my team out the most; no point in pumping out all that quickness/alacrity if everyone is flying off the platforms.
Eh, even as tank, it still seems like you can use assassin’s gear and just swap your trinkets for Knight’s. That frees you up to swap back to zerker when you get to Sabetha. However, if you’re ok either having two sets (assassin and commander) or are ok in using commander’s gear everywhere, then it can definitely save you from the high cost of a Concentration sigil.
Multiple armor sets. The selling point in Commander’s being the boon duration, the toughness from that armor set being more along the lines of “it’s a package deal”.
Sigil of Concentration has never been appealing to me due to the conditional buff only being applied during weapon swap. In a perfect world being able to meet those rotation requirements to nail the boon boost would happen every time, but I’d much rather prefer a boon duration solution that’s more consistent.
As far as boon duration caps? Goes back to using what you have. I happen to have Commander and all 3 of the Bountiful recipes. So that’s a baseline 31% ish boon duration. In raids, we always have a rev on the team for the Chrono’s so that’s another 50%. So to top that off I just need for Spring Rolls or something with 20% boon duration, and voila, I’m at 100%…..okay, so I’m a tiny bit over.
With Leadership runes I could cut back the Bountiful utility, but the extra effort of going for the runes is not at all appealing to me. The wonky stats from leadership further the “meh”. I agree that they won’t necessarily interfere with anything, but I feel like I’m wasting stats here.
The Surging + Platinum combination is an interesting budget choice, and I like the dedicated Power stat.
Fracs are already basically dead now, all people run are 56 67 and 77 with the occasional pages just in case we need in the future. Don’t need to wait a year lol.
^
Though, I’ll also throw in the extra 15-20 minutes to do the adept and veteran dailies for the free keys and boxes. Otherwise, this statement is awfully accurate.
Previous to the island structure, players would actually go through the various tiers since they all had somewhat of decent chance at ascended equipment. Relative to the drop data for fractals chests, our realistic chance for box drops nowadays are from the Champion boxes. So if that all a player wants it’s not at all a surprise they go straight for the goal and as quickly as possible. Thus, we end up with triple swamp.
Also, wondering where the heck all these great instabilities went off to.
(edited by savacli.8172)
The instabilities are a side issue. Its lazily done, and sometimes works against good play, but thats not why people run swamp to death, and its not why they go on top.
As annoying as random conditions are, its still more entertaining than pressing rotation x with virtually no interaction.
But the exploit is easier, the level is faster and the difference in reward is not great enough to offset longer levels, and longer waiting for group.
Simple truth, fractals shouldnt be competing against each other. The work balancing them is not worth it, and it overall will make them generic and same feeling, as well as limiting development options.
I would have to disagree and say that the instabilities are definitely an essential part of the issue.
Sure, it’s a lot easier to pole climb against mossy, but it would be much faster to kill him out in the open where Mossy doesn’t get random invulnerability frames or put himself in a spot where everything gets obstructed/can’t be targeted.
Why isn’t that seem more often? Have you ever been hit with random fears with the Superspeed buff? With the amount of distance I travelled I might as well be running the wisps again (I’m exaggerating). The higher damage output and higher health pool I can deal with against Mossy. The unpredictability of what I need to counter is largely annoying after the first couple times I fear run myself into Narnia.
Even better. How many of us enjoy walking into the sea of Dredge to have every single one of them explode upon being killed? That instability was funny the first time around during v1 of the instabilities; you would end up with something like Last Laugh on Uncategorized. Outside of the Achievements I can’t see many people purposely running anything other than 56 in that set.
I will agree that fractals worked better as a set of instances rather than pick and choose. I understand that the devs wanted to make the content more casual friendly, but they did not do a great enough of a job to balance effort against compensation. The major differences being trash mob loot (meh) and the quantity of XP reward (neato….unless you’re maxed in Masteries).
Commander’s gear has also been used in conjunction with Chrono runes to meet the boon duration needs. Obtaining the Inscription/Insignia recipes is cheap enough at 50 Crystalline Ore a piece. Though unless you have some Ascended boxes set aside that you can transmute you’re also looking at purchasing the armor/weapon recipes for each individual slot.
Ultimately, the decision should be based on what you do, what you have, and what you’re willing to grind/spend.
Personally. I use Assassin/Chrono as my “catch-all” gear and just switch around traits and nourishments to meet my needs based on the situation: Raids, fractals, open world, etc.
If I was more dedicated as a Chronotank my preference would be to made a set of Commander’s gear. Though, that decision is primarily based on I have the Insignia/Inscription recipes already on hand as well as spare ascended gear I can transmute.
(edited by savacli.8172)
P.S. – Clearing it twice isn’t enough, so you’d have to do all of this again. Call me crazy, but getting 1 shard for wiping on a boss every 5-10 minutes with a group learning it again isn’t enough incentive for me to help them when I can just re-launch the raid and clear it all in 30-40 minutes with my guild.
^
The rewards were fine at first since there was some ROI for the time spent helping other players. Nowadays you get next to nothing on repeated failed attempts, and a minuscule reward for actually beating the content. I understand players shouldn’t be getting this stuff for free, but right now there’s barely an incentive to clear the content more than once a week other than those who want to grind shards…..yay, more grinding.
The rewards aren’t that convincing either, well, to the point to where I feel compelled to invest time grinding the currency:
-A handful of exclusive skins
-Ascended items with selectable stats
-Ascended boxes
-Mini’s
-Underwhleming Infusions (the selling point being the aesthetic effects)
I’m assuming Legendary components for the armor will be tossed in here, but that’s much further into 2016 so maybe that hype train will get refuelled then.
The Adept, Veteran, and Champion Fractal daily rewards all have a chance to drop Ascended gear boxes. The Daily Chest of the Mists from the Recommended Fractals only drop rings.
Realistically though, The Adept and Veteran boxes have so low a chance to drop these boxes that we consider the drop rate to be non-existent.
However, the Champion boxes have a very consistent drop rate: Armor boxes averaging to 1/8 while weapon boxes are about 1/20.
Hero points are the new Skill Points.
Nowadays Hero points are used exclusively to purchase Skills and Traits; Spirit Shards replaced the secondary use of Skill points for buying premium items that are utilized in Mystic for recipes. So any excess Hero points that you have are left on reserve for some future use.
Double confirming. Even with 0 Illusions you can still cast Mimic in CS though as stressed by others you have to make sure you cast Mimic before entering CS otherwise you’ll snap back in time before Mimic is fully cast.
This same technique is also used for things like quadruple Feedbacks for projectile hells like Uncategorized Fractals.
How do you quadruple feedback with this? Seems like you can only cast the skill three times
If have you multiple Illusions you can cast CS > Mimic > Feedback > Feedback > End CS > Mimic > Feedback > Feedback
Otherwise, you can do it solo, but the timing is a lot tighter and makes use of the fact that Feedback is an insta-cast as well as Mimic’s buff not being consumable until the skill fully finishes casting:
Start Mimic > CS > Feedback > Mimic finishes casting > CS Ends > Feedback > Mimic > Feedback > Feedback.
Though if you goof up on the timing you’ll end up eating the Mimic buff with the Feedback cast during CS. In which case, you’ll only get off 3 casts.
I don’t really think there’s a way to get this to work at least if you’re trying to keep up the thematics of a Bard. There’s no real sense of charming (unless you count dazing them), suggestion, Bardic Inspiration, etc. No instrument playing, and the closest thing orations are the Mantras.
There’s quite a bit of crowd control for a Mesmer, but it doesn’t really come in a Bardic flavor.
So I guess it really boils down to, what about the Bard are you trying to replicate?