Guild Wars 2

Nemesis.8593:

CastIron.7364:

spoj.9672:

Been working on some calculations to work out optimal rotations etc. Heres some of the stuff so far: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1flyI2qHv704UUVYqIJeuo6IzY_J0gXAT623eMY38twI/edit?usp=sharing

If anyone has correct aftercasts for skills, that input would be much appreciated.

Appreciate your efforts. Thanks for putting in the time.

This info is from wiki… and wiki can be wrong at times, not to mention that the information from the wiki is gathered from GW2 tooltips… which sometimes were also inaccurate, especially after the release of an expansion.

Basically unverified information taken from somewhere else… and no aftercast…

Raids are going to be fun.

Its not from the wiki. This has all been calculated from ingame. Some of it matches the wiki some of it doesnt…

And i said i dont have aftercasts for everything. And any input on aftercasts for certain skills would be appreciated. Rather than continueing to be a kitten why dont you tell me all the aftercasts so i can update the data to be completely accurate. Im not trying to decieve people. I want this to be as accurate as possible for mine and others benefit. So please correct any numbers i have.

Only aftercasts i have confirmed are gravedigger spam, greatsword auto, ghastly claws, life blast and dagger auto. I havent checked any single cast skills and i havent confirmed the other auto attacks yet.

Raid bosses are not the same simple mechanics for even 5 minutes though.

I dont know how long they actually took in my group. But it felt far too long for almost every fight. Hitting 5-9k gravediggers is a good indication that armour scaling is way over the top. Its completely forcing condi at that point.

Everythings viable.

Those bosses take longer to kill than raid bosses. And they are boring as hell. Molten duo effigy makes me want to cry.

Been working on some calculations to work out optimal rotations etc. Heres some of the stuff so far: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1flyI2qHv704UUVYqIJeuo6IzY_J0gXAT623eMY38twI/edit?usp=sharing

If anyone has correct aftercasts for skills, that input would be much appreciated.

You cant improve its dps. Greatsword auto is equal to dagger auto right now. Dagger is 0.01 coeff better and has the advantage of more reliable hits and more life steal procs. But greatsword has chill which when coupled with Deathly Chill and the assumption that you dont interrupt yourself too much it comes out on top by quite a big margin.

So the only solution would be to reduce damage but improve speed. But i doubt the devs will do that.

Ive been trying it out more. Because its kitten useful when kiting the golems on aether fractal. But after just doing some calculations. Its still a totally terrible weapon.

And the animation certainly doesnt help.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

spoj.9672:

The lower damage actually makes non zerker specs a little more favourable. Due to constant high pressure. But the super high toughness and health does the opposite for a time perspective. But then the pressure is also no longer ignorable. So sustain and defence has shifted into a bit of active and a bit of passive.

Im a little torn about it. I like that i have to change my builds a bit more for some encounters. Im not too happy about the shift into requiring more passive defence even with good active defence management. And im certainly not happy about how long it takes to kill some bosses now. Its definitely better to have them last longer than they did before. But for some of them its far too extreme (flame effigy on molten duo erghh).

The Anomaly in Thaumanova. Worst offender due to melee downtime when every platform ever blows up.

I can’t really say I experienced what you described though, then again I don’t know how it looks in 91-100. Some fights really need to get toughness reduced though, even if they ramp up the HP in turn.

Im not saying you need to switch away from berserker. But you are certainly forced think about passive defence. I ended up using minions and death magic everytime its aetherblade fractal. Because the golems and the agony walls just create too much pressure and you cant really kill the golems fast enough unless you are really perfectly coordinated. So afk sustaining it with minions doing the work makes it go a lot faster. x)

The lower damage actually makes non zerker specs a little more favourable. Due to constant high pressure. But the super high toughness and health does the opposite for a time perspective. But then the pressure is also no longer ignorable. So sustain and defence has shifted into a bit of active and a bit of passive.

Im a little torn about it. I like that i have to change my builds a bit more for some encounters. Im not too happy about the shift into requiring more passive defence even with good active defence management. And im certainly not happy about how long it takes to kill some bosses now. Its definitely better to have them last longer than they did before. But for some of them its far too extreme (flame effigy on molten duo erghh).

Windsagio.1340:

and yet culture heads call their own forum ‘the trash can’ and wonder why devs are reluctant to engage in here.

I think that reference is probably lost on you to be fair.

I think you are being silly for judging him.

Sometimes you get to the point where players doing things that make no sense to you just gets on your nerves.

HP values are pretty much public.

http://gw2dungeons.net/

Who claimed their guild hall the fastest? As in shortest time spent in the claiming instance.

Windsagio.1340:

EDIT: This is directed @AVHero

dude’s mad the guy in healing made him fail. It’s a classic example of how ‘zerk meta’ people get in trouble, and that’s the thrust of my post.

Raging at others for failure is a classic ugly symptom. In addition, blaming build on failure on what’s honestly pretty easy content is even classicer.

This wasn’t a 65. Or even a 50.

My impression was that the issue was whats the point in healing in a fight where you either dont get hit and live or you get hit and are very likely to die. So yeah…

Dont know what im doing. Stressed from hectic day at work. Come home. Frustrated at Nemesis. Good use of my time and a great day.

I dont advertise calculated dps numbers as practical in real fights. How many times do I have to point that out? Ive been saying calculations dont match reality for over 2 years. So i dont know what you are trying to accuse me of. You are taking quotes out of context, making wild assumptions and putting words in my mouth.

And as i pointed out in the other thread. Even if dps values dont match reality. Then can still be used to compare dps differences. That was the basis for me saying dagger was better than DS. Dagger 1 provides significanlty better coefficient per second than DS 1. There are many variables which effect damage uptime. But its not hard to maintain good enough uptime to beat DS in a decent group. And DS doesnt even have that great uptime due to lifeforce management and certain encounters.

I would also like to see how he came to that conclusion. Clearly our math is suffering.

Pre-fractured rings didnt work for me and all my friends/guildies.

Do you not see the hilarity of using a vagure reference of a quote and a completely unrelated video (they were at different times, the video was from over 2 years ago which was before i was doing calculations for dps) as evidence to discredit me as completely ridiculous?

You are one funny guy Nemesis.

By the way that video was partially just to show some big hits. But the main reason i even recorded and uploaded was just to test my recording and upload speed. And like i said before. You cant quote a number which i stated was calculated under optimal circumstances and compare it to a real fight with suboptimal circumstances.

If they were both optimal circumtances you might have a small point. But then id just say the calculation was done as a comparison against a dummy it has never been to declare actual real dps in a fight. I have never claimed vacuum dps values occur in real fights. Ive never seen anyone else claim that either. Some may have worded things poorly. But its on you for misunderstanding. And shame on you for nitpicking just to make a very weak point and stir up drama.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Nemesis.8593:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

As for the one who came up with the build, hard to say. I played a part, spoj played a part, I think Bawb played a part, too.

It was part of the theory crafting that we were going through. On a shroud focused reaper (spite/soul reaping/reaper), the reaper is capable of stacking 25 vulnerability and 25 might by himself. This leads to a bit of an issue regarding the grandmaster trait in soul reaping. Decimate Defenses makes Deathly Perception obsolete. Foot in the grave, while being a very nice utility on its own, isn’t always necessary. The end choice was Dhuumfire.

At maximum might, a zerker reaper hits for about 248 per tick. Last time I did any calculations, a reaper’s onslaught boosted auto attack had about the same DPS as the greatsword auto attack… before factoring in Burning. I’ll do a quick check…

I just did a quick check. With onsalught, I’m getting a total attack chain time of 2.075. Round up or down as you see fit. With no gear equipped, this comes to a raw tooltip DPS of (235 + 235 + 469) about 438. The sword auto attack does 469 raw tooltip DPS (391 + 469 + 547 over 3 seconds), and the dagger does 473 raw tooltip DPS.

I call it “raw” because it doesn’t include anything else. No might/vuln/chill/life force generation. Just the basic numbers. From this, you can see that sword auto attack is roughly the same as the dagger auto attack, while also being about 7% higher than the Reaper Shroud auto attack. Now, we can acquire a few things from this. In particular, how much effective power you’ll need for Sword Auto to do more damage than Shroud Auto:

Each Shroud Auto chain stacks 3 × 3 / 2 stack of burning, coming to about 4.5 stacks sustained. This is 1,115 additional DPS. We can find the point where the 7.077% ,difference in direct damage between sword auto and shroud auto is equivalent to 1,115 DPS. First, we take the tooltip difference between greatsword auto and dagger auto (31), then divide 1,115 by it (to get 36). This is the scalar multiple that needs to be applied to direct damage. Direct damage scales linearly with power, so at 2000 power you’ll be doing twice the tooltip damage (in our case, 62 extra damage). So, since 1,115 is 36 times larger than 31, we will need 36,000 effective power.

Effective power here is your power after taking into account all multipliers. Sigils, rune bonuses, might, crit damage, vulnerability, group buffs, etc. To put it into scale, I’m not sure the necromancer can get higher than 20k effective power. Heck, I just did a quick calculation on my zerker necro, and without group buffs I’m maxing out at 14,178 effective power. Special note here, vulnerability affects the burn damage as well, so you can disregard it in the “how much power will I need” calculation for this particular case.

This means that, with reapers onslaught and dhuumfire, Shroud Auto Attack has higher DPS than the Greatsword and Dagger Auto Attacks. Now, is this the best DPS rotation? Good question. I never compared anything other than auto attacks. If there is a rotation that I don’t know about that does more damage, but neither involves nor can’t be improved upon by Reaper Dhuumfire, let me know. If I’ve made a mistake in my calculations, let me know.

EDIT: Side Note: gravedigger might need a buff. I just timed it, and I am getting 2.5 second total activation times. This puts it at exactly as much damage as auto attacking. This was only a quick check, though.

That is in theory my friend…

Using theory Spoj claimed 13.4K DPS on his dagger 1 build, without timewarp or minions… yet when i calculated his real DPS at the Arah Wraithlord fight (which is really really easy fight btw) he was around 7K.

Math… does not match… reality.

Anyway… i didn’t have high hopes for the expansion, but they actually manage to create something amazing… and now they are systematically destroying it with all these nerfs.

They just nerfed the entire Verdant Brink map… if they continue at this rate, the entire content will be finished in a month even by casual players… then the same players who cried “too hard OMG” will cry “OMG no end game, you suk ArenaNet” and then move on… just like last time.

I think this is it… if history repeats its self, there is no way ArenaNet can come back a second time from it.

How did you calculate his DPS? With math, or using a reliable meter? How reliable has the meterms proven to be, and what tests wereally performed to ensure accuracy?

He took an ancient video of mine where I had no ascended, suboptimal sigils/consumables and was only a quick recording of a casual run to demonstrate some big crits on dagger. It was also before ferocity nerf btw. So I’m not really sure how that counts as a credible counter arguement to a calculation I made a long time ago with maxed out buff assumptions and no dodging….

Lopez.7369:

Another bug: When you have Sluggish, Gravedigger does not recharge.

I didnt notice this at all when i went through 61-70. Then again it was friday night so maybe i just wasnt paying attention as many other things were going on.

Maybe they were meant to be account bound so you couldnt sell them on the TP. And this is a temporary measure until thats fixed. At least i hope thats the reason.

Isnt it obvious. Its exactly as Novaan explained. Or are you going to call people idiots for making rational decisions when building for dps?

In reality all 3 traits are rather pointless on a full glass spec. But dhuumfire is probably the best choice if you dont need stab/stunbreaks. Because as far as i can tell RS auto is not good enough to justify using in a standard rotation. Hence why ive been using blood magic instead which also provides well cooldowns.

Trice.4598:

I’m with Nike here, it’s really depressing coming on this subforum and all we see is people nitpicking. I was expecting to see some discussion about new builds, specs, coms but all I read were complaints, while I agree there is some issues, it’s a great expansion, with extremely engaging fights/mechanic. And while most dislike it, I enjoy the bigger health pool, bosses finally feels like bosses (I don’t like the weaker but faster attack however).

Also dev do listen to players, but unlike wildstar which is mostly hardcore players who wants challenging content, anet is trying to please all crowd from phiw and more dedicated players.

And also, I can probably finf 10 thread on wildstars’forum about how GW2 does thing better and vice versa, there’s no way to please everyone, both game are great.

Most people that are enjoying the content are actually playing right now. So i think its unfair to pick up on a few negative comments.

I am personally enjoying the new stuff way more than i thought i would. This is the first time in years ive actually genuinely looked forward to getting home so i can play a game. I was a pretty casual player previously so the story and exploration stuff is fun for me especially while its new.

Ive never really been a fan of open world. Even at gw2 original release i got bored of the open world experience and exploration quite quickly. But so far ive been really enjoying the maps and exploration in HoT. Its a completely different feeling. Only annoyance is getting confused and lost when trying to navigate towards certain map objectives. And the mastery gating is a little too grindy for my taste. But the maps and enemies are cool so it doesnt really bother me.

Yeah im struggling to gain relics now. Which shouldnt be right. Especially as there are now more things to spend relics on in game. So relics should remain just as abundant or even more abundant than before. :P

When attuning berserker ascended rings (Ring of Red Death and Crystalline Band). It renames them incorrectly to Attuned Bagh Nakh and Attuned Vine of the Pale Tree. But the stats and the icons remain correct.

Also Reapers gravedigger does not recharge correctly if you are interrupted, dodge or cast a skill during the aftercast.

CastIron.7364:

spoj.9672:

It was never the math which pushed a narrow set of builds.

Quoted from aforementioned website:
“Builds are scored on how well they help a party complete the dungeon run.”

Then they proceed to evaluate the worth of their presented builds for speed runs. Completely disregarding how, for example, a cleric guardian could make the dungeon run a cakewalk as well.

spoj.9672:

It was the simple fact that they were the most effective. And people like to be efficient. There are many reasons for that mindset. Limited play time, better rewards for time, improving yourself by pushing for better times. The math was only used to try and work out relative differences in effectiveness. Its necessary to establish an understanding in this way.

This is an artifact from the times CoF was the way to farm gold. It made sense then to grind path 1, as it was the most effective way to get the stuff you wanted.
But the times have changed. But the “we-must-clear-fast”-meta didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, every game needs a speed run meta, but if everyone is a speed runner, no one is a speed runner.

Its not an artifact. I find it fun to go as fast as possible. I dont really care about rewards. But some do. And thats just as valid now as it was when cof was on farm. Before dungeon rewards were nerfed with HoT release, people would speedrun full dungeon tours for rewards. Some found it fun. Some did it purely for the rewards for their time. Some both.

These are all reasons for people taking up the efficient route. Whether its for fun, rewards or smooth all experienced runs. All are valid and a majority does share at least a portion of one or more of these mindsets. Even those of you who say you dont care about a few extra minutes can appreciate these views to some level. I think you would care if it became hours of extra time rather than minutes.

PS. I and most people in top PvE guilds have nothing and never had anything to do with Metabattle. That was done by someone who felt the need to bring all the builds together. Theres nothing wrong with that idea. But certain advise gets lost when it gets transferred to a third party. So if you are blaming the original theorycrafters for whats on an independant site. Then shame on you.

You will notice there are no dps values on our Dulfy guides. :P

Math doesnt lie. Taking the math out of context and using it for purposes it wasnt calculated for would obviously cause discrepencies.

The dps values calculated were just assumptions of perfect rotations, no dodging, 2600 armour foes and max buffs. This was to provide a consistent comparison between classes. It doesnt matter if the real values are lower. The relative differences between classes is mostly the same. And the math provides you with the easiest and most effective way of gaging that.

It was never the math which pushed a narrow set of builds. It was the simple fact that they were the most effective. And people like to be efficient. There are many reasons for that mindset. Limited play time, better rewards for time, improving yourself by pushing for better times. The math was only used to try and work out relative differences in effectiveness. Its necessary to establish an understanding in this way.

It wasnt until math started getting used that people started optimising away from warriors and heading towards eles and then further to that changing the ele builds for certain situations. But dps is only a fraction of true efficiency. Which is why record runs have mesmers and other lower dps classes….

Just use lifesteal.

I had no problem maintaining scholar on lvl 80+ fracs last night. With blood fiend you rarely need to dodge and that was even the case on arch diviner.

So scholar for fracs and raids definitely. They have reduced mob damage in high fracs but armour scales so much. It literally takes forever to kill with full berserker. Condi meta incoming.

Obtena.7952:

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

So basically some ignorant people think its optimal in situations its not and that’s somehow the people who make the builds problem? It’s like people who complain that a company doesn’t warn you that the Coffey they sell is hot. If you check out the build in the link it very clearly says the following: [DnT] PvE DPS Sinister Engineer For Dungeons and Fractals 8/3/15

So it does even come with a dummy label!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UeNcqdSJI8

See my problem is that I’ve NEVER seen anyone who promotes meta builds say “Oh hey, It’s not that great for this particular situation”. Either they promote it or they sit back and watch the ignorance happen because they think it’s to their benefit for meta to be promoted everywhere, even if they do know it’s not optimal in every PVE situation.

I got my own ideas why theorycrafters don’t step up to defend their meta against ignorance, but I think in the end, it just works against them. When I see notable people promoting meta builds intended for dungeons for use in openworld content, I KNOW this isn’t limited to a few ignorant people.

Clearly havent been paying attention then. Because i mention it all the time. Its in my guide. Also others have been saying it for years. Adapt to the situation means adapt to the situation. And that implies that some things arent as effective in some areas.

Battling ignorance is an impossible task. It takes way too much time. And often its willfull ignorance so the players concerned will never actually allow themselves to be receptive to your advice. Hence its an impossible task and waste of time. The players that listen often dont need the advice in the first place. And if they do they certainly dont need the extra detail that “battling ignorance” would involve.

Fear actually does a pretty good chunk (its fast degen). Maybe your view is warped because you have been using it on upscaled mobs? Immob also does very fast degen.

RS5, golem charge, RS3, blind, chill, immob. Very easy to solo burn the break bar consistently.

A few times in fractals today my golem caused problems by being practically immortal and keeping aggro in awkward positions. So yeah it is a little annoying. Not an issue for flesh wurm, bone minions and blood fiend because you can sacrifice them.

Yeah minions are actually really useful now. Been using them quite a lot in fractals. Able to completely faceroll Mai Trin solo with them as well.

It keeps getting removed because its actually a pretty toxic video. He just spends the majority of it bashing me, nike and sesshi.

Still cant stop laughing about him quoting things i said over 2 years ago before i really had a grasp on things.

I still dont like how gs5 casts. Its better now. But you need to face your target. I really want it to just be a ground target skill like whirlwind attack. And there are still loads of times where it will hit but not actually pull the mobs. Which is annoying to say the least.

As far as i can tell its to do with the aftercast. Ive been experiencing the issue all day. But im still not 100% sure on the exact cause. My general impression is that if you get CC’d, dodge or cast a skill right after you hit and while the aftercast is still in effect. It will self interrupt the aftercast and prevent the 100% cooldown reduction from procing even though you successfully hit the target below 50%. Its very frustrating and has been annoying me all day.

Maybe this bug is a good enough reason to get the aftercast reduced?

Yeah so either sell for 5 silver or salvage and get mats you probably wont need that much of. Im going to wait until i actually know how valuable those mats are. But i do think the salvage kits should be halved at the least.

Its not too easy to delete ascended. It asks you to confirm. Its kind of your own fault if you disregard that. Feels bad when you make a stupid mistake like that but its not the end of the world and it hardly needs addressing on a global scale.

Support may or may not help you. I deleted a backpack skin i had before wardrobe got implimented. I contacted support and they gave me the item back. Although they said they wouldnt normally do this and I shouldnt expect them to do it in the future.

That type the name in to delete is incredibly frustrating. So no thanks to that suggestion.

Release is less than 8 hours away. You will have to wait for the patch notes.

The thing is soul reaping is better from a pure damage perspective. Even if you dont use dhuumfire you still have a 5% modifier and the option to trait lich form.

So like i said its not really an obvious choice.

Ship me where? Im happy where i am. :<

Shocked tempest and dragonhunter even got votes. o.o

Also makes blood fiend easily the best heal we have. Ive been enjoying it for a while now. But this change just clinches it. Its like warrior heal signet but it deals damage.

Im sure you can understand how nervous we are about that regarding fractals. Especially considering what happened with fractured. :P

Tzozef.9841:

Ok, lets forget about stats for a moment…

Should I gear ascended with my regular necromancer or my reaper?

They are the same. Your necro can become a reaper and your reaper can become a necro. It simply depends whether you equip the traitline or not.

Plus ascended is account bound. So you can swap it between characters if you do have two necromancers. So that means the only discussion worth having is what stats you want.

Please dont let it turn into fractal weapon boxes all over again. Announced and then we dont see them for 2 years. Legendary backpiece was something i was quite looking forward to simply for the stat swap.

Yeah for it to be worthwhile it needs to provide enough poison and death nova procs to compensate for the lack of burn necro has.

Only in certain situations/very select builds. Which is exactly the problem ive been trying to point out.

Highly likely its the greatsword in the reapers concept art. Pretty sure weve seen it in the reaper gameplay trailer as well so thats even more evidence supporting that theory.

Belinda’s sword was on the tp. Would be such a cop out to just give us an imbued version of the same simple skin we already have.