Guild Wars 2

SlyDevil.3952:

If you have 2 eles you really shouldn’t be prestacking, you can go eruption dragon tooth pheonix lava font and put all the fury stack into your opening rotation. If you don’t need deep freeze you can pick up arcane wave for in-fight fury/might, plus arcane brilliance if you need.

I guess I am more so thinking about pugs. But for extended fights where the group tends to break up, such as mai and diviner, I’d rather get the 1 minute of starting fury. Blasting in combat works for the ele, but if people aren’t clustered together your losing the benefits.

Swagger.1459:

thrag.9740:

Swagger.1459:

Fractals are “dungeons” for all intent and purposes, but better designed and offer more variety to players in the long run.

Strongly disagree with this. Fractal maps are often tiny, almost claustrophobic. Dungeons are nice big maps, and as a result dungeons feel different. You can really go around exploring in dungeons, and I think more people actually want to because dungeons actually make an attempt to tie into the rest of the gw2 world. Consider arah, we see huge structures that go all the way from the surrounding maps coming into arah. We understand why there are undead. We are helping researchers explore the ancient civilizations. The entire dungeon fits into the world. Compare that to cliffside or Jade maw.

I also tend to think that dungeons have more room for creativity. For example, I remember a record video where a mesmer would portal the other 4 party members from boss to boss. The mesmer never fought, just running while the others fought, and the other 4 never ran, just constantly fighting while the mesmer ran. Pretty smart. I don’t see stuff like that in fractals.

You can still run your traditional dungeons because they are not deleting them.

Fractals are getting a revamp so we will have to see what they look and “feel” like. Also, the better technology mumbo jumbo the devs are using will allow them to do more with fractals than with dungeons, so things will be better in the long run for players.

Your Mesmer example is precisely what the devs want to avoid. What you consider “smart” gameplay is basically exploiting unintended loopholes. Skip to boss then kill and collect over and over is not healthy for the game.

I never said you can’t run dungeons any more, I said I strongly disagree with your statement that "Fractals are “dungeons” for all intent and purposes", and I gave you examples of why.

Exploiting? How could that be exploiting, the devs put stealth, portals, etc in the game. What other purpose would they serve? That doesn’t make any sense. It is just an alternative method to approaching the dungeons.

Derenek.8931:

Honestly, Anet doesn’t have to change the rewards. All they have to do is implement character model collision and it will break the stacking meta. Once the stacking meta is broken, dungeons will take an hour plus to complete instead of the fifteen minutes they take now.

I replied to your thread in the dungeons forum, but I will reply to it here too. Are you aware that stacking doesn’t raise group dps?

Swagger.1459:

Fractals are “dungeons” for all intent and purposes, but better designed and offer more variety to players in the long run.

Strongly disagree with this. Fractal maps are often tiny, almost claustrophobic. Dungeons are nice big maps, and as a result dungeons feel different. You can really go around exploring in dungeons, and I think more people actually want to because dungeons actually make an attempt to tie into the rest of the gw2 world. Consider arah, we see huge structures that go all the way from the surrounding maps coming into arah. We understand why there are undead. We are helping researchers explore the ancient civilizations. The entire dungeon fits into the world. Compare that to cliffside or Jade maw.

I also tend to think that dungeons have more room for creativity. For example, I remember a record video where a mesmer would portal the other 4 party members from boss to boss. The mesmer never fought, just running while the others fought, and the other 4 never ran, just constantly fighting while the mesmer ran. Pretty smart. I don’t see stuff like that in fractals.

Your aware stacking doesn’t raise group dps right?

My biggest complaint with mai trin is my complaint with all of gw2. The particle effects making it impossible to see anything.

My second biggest complaint is also a universal complaint. The very unpredictable nature of gw2 content. Unblockable attacks, condition immunity, unreflectable projectiles. All without any in game indication of it.

SlyDevil.3952:

The one to Rule.2593:

Ele’s need to be able to prestack fury before fights

Might stacking doesn’t really do much, especially if you have a skilled ps war. At most you throw 2-3 quick blasts into a field just before lightning storm.

Yeah, too many people think the ele is prestacking might. It hits 25 and they start running. It’s the minute of fury we want.

Eh, tbh op, if it was me, id have rather you kick me, then split the gold

I will say, there have been times where I think people shouldn’t be rewarded. I would never actively try to stop someone from getting a reward. But I can remember a couple pugs who were so reliant on cheese tactics in arah, I just thought “man these people don’t deserve a reward”.

They probably don’t know. Anet never has a plan before announcing.

Please no. Please, can anet stop wasting so many resources revamping old content. Leave dungeons alone. Make new fractals. Make NEW something. Are raids even coming out with HOT?

They aren’t supporting fractals. It is a very clear lie.

I am so excited that map rewards are finally being buffed, and dungeons nerfed. It was so ridiculous that good dedicated groups could earn money in dungeons instead of chest farming sw.

Jerus.4350:

No thanks. I like healing skills as they are. I could agree on anything outside that 6 skill, but not on the 6 skill. And Water Field blasting I think shouldn’t require HP to work, now if it was changed to use the HP of the person who used the water field, that may change my opinion on that.

I think combos scaling off the person who drops the field could be really cool in pve (and probably broken elsewhere lol). Not even just limiting it to blasting water. For example, your condi engi dropping fire field, and then everyone uses for example whirl or projectile finishers to apply burning that is actually powerful and longer duration because of engi armor/runes. This seems like it could make one person specializing into a certain thing have a larger impact.

ElijahFitzroy has the right idea. I have one character slot for each class. And each class gets the armor to fill the role they are best at filling:
zerker + str runes on war
zerker + scholar on ele
sinister + nightmare on engi

Maybe cleric on ranger? idk. The point is, rather than trying to stretch your main to fill every role, it is more efficient to play classes to their strengths. Of course, within a single instance, this won’t work unless your team has no problem with people char swapping.

is it disabled again?

When we go to red portal, it is greyed out, but we are in a squad, hellp? do we need 10 ?

Iris Ng.9845:

Let me tell you one more truth about me: I murdered every single friends of mine who went to watch a movie before I was able to in order to prevent them from spoiling anyways.

Omg do you think this is why raids are down?

Hey devs, sorry it went down like this I know you guys probably put in a lot of late nights trying to meet this deadline. It happens. Looking forward to trying raids when they are ready.

I dream of the day I can reliably see the bosses I am suppose to dodge.

Good luck Paul! I hope you guys find the time for some good sleep tonight! Can’t wait to test out raids! You guys can do it!

Keksmuffin.1450:

nice team comp

“ok who wants to run ps?”

This is a fantastic thread, and I enjoyed reading all the dev responses. Thank you all so much for sharing with us.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Christ they know about the exploits. I’ve already forwarded all of them to the appropriate location, which just so you know is exploits@arena.net (and not here).

I want to first say, I understand that you and several other very dedicated players do your best to work with anet, and bring these things to their attention. I value and appreciate your work and commitment. I did not post my list to downplay that effort. But, anet made their second major combat update in the past few months, and it seems directed at improving their pve game. I want to remind them, about how balancing pve is useless if everything is exploited.

It also seems like a relevant reminder, of how raids need continued support, or they will become the new dungeons.

UBcktieDL.5318:

Playing on EU, maybe it is slightly different in NA

- If guard fails to OS lupi, the whole party wipes. These parties generally struggle if someone does not go the “zerker” way.

Is zerker gear and exploiting considered synonymous now?

Here is a list of exploits that should be fixed. I’m posting it in both red threads. Lets see if anything happens.

-CM: standing on the wooden plank to kill frost
-CM: air guns to one shot wahlen
-Arah: cheese walling lupi
-Arah: jumping the wall to skip half of p4, also works on p3
-Cliffside: cheesing diviner on the rock
-Mai trin: Ellen keil res exploit
-Jade maw: reflect crystal duplication exploit
-Swamp: mossman underwater exploit
-Volcanic growl fractal: stone duplication exploit for first boss

Here is a list of exploits that should be fixed.

-CM: standing on the wooden plank to kill frost
-CM: air guns to one shot wahlen
-Arah: cheese walling lupi
-Arah: jumping the wall to skip half of p4, also works on p3
-Cliffside: cheesing diviner on the rock
-Mai trin: Ellen keil res exploit
-Jade maw: reflect crystal duplication exploit
-Swamp: mossman underwater exploit
-Volcanic growl fractal: stone duplication exploit for first boss

Rashagar.8349:

thrag.9740:

Daddar.5971:

Will all of the Meta-Messiahs please hurry up and publish the exact builds you are requiring for each profession you’ll allow in your raid party? I’ll need detailed gear lists (weapon, armor, runes, sigils, trinkets) as well as skills to equip and a rotation for pressing my buttons. I’ll put my character together exactly as you require and practice until I am good enough at doing exactly what I’m told to please you. Then I will get the coveted chance to complete a raid in record-setting time. It won’t be ‘playing’ at all; it will be a job. But really, why play when you can work?

I don’t get why this is an issue for people. Make your own lfg that say “raid, anyone welcome”, or join one that is already made. The only time there are ever issues is when meta players join non-meta groups or non-meta players join meta groups. As long as everyone plays with like minded individuals, none of it matters.

Members of one group good-naturedly slagging the other is hardly unheard of though. =P It sounded like satire when I read it anyway.

I also read it as satire. I interpreted it meaning as, “meta players force all of us to not enjoy the game”. And I think that is silly. If someone is forcing you to play in a way you don’t enjoy, simply don’t play with them. It’s not like their is a shortage of meta or non-meta players, both groups have plenty of people to form parties with. When players post an lfg that says “80s, meta, path 123”, they are not trying to force you to play meta, they are purposefully trying to avoid playing with you.

Daddar.5971:

Will all of the Meta-Messiahs please hurry up and publish the exact builds you are requiring for each profession you’ll allow in your raid party? I’ll need detailed gear lists (weapon, armor, runes, sigils, trinkets) as well as skills to equip and a rotation for pressing my buttons. I’ll put my character together exactly as you require and practice until I am good enough at doing exactly what I’m told to please you. Then I will get the coveted chance to complete a raid in record-setting time. It won’t be ‘playing’ at all; it will be a job. But really, why play when you can work?

I don’t get why this is an issue for people. Make your own lfg that say “raid, anyone welcome”, or join one that is already made. The only time there are ever issues is when meta players join non-meta groups or non-meta players join meta groups. As long as everyone plays with like minded individuals, none of it matters.

Wait, people already got their blooms? I never got mine, not that I care too much, but I am sure others do.

Vayne.8563:

There may always be another meta, but maybe not so pervasive a meta. In Guild Wars 1 the meta for DOA was different from the meta for the Underworld. There wasn’t 1 meta for PvE stop.

There isn’t really one now. If you’re using the same exact build for all encounters, you are not playing the most efficient tactic available (meta).

Most people who think they are running meta, are really just running logical builds which have a well defined purpose. Running a cookie cutter build off metabattle is often wrong, especially when your pug’s party composition is random, based on who happens to be reading the lfg when you post.

If we are not going to bring icebow, which skill will we bring? If we bring arcane wave and brilliance, is elemental surge better or worse than bountiful power? In pugs, where might often isn’t capped, more frequent blasting could be nice too.

Thaddeus.4891:

frifox.5283:

Never was a fan of burst-it-before-it-can-react playstyle so I’m quite happy with the nerf, very happy actually.

Ya, but the Icebow was never the problem.You can’t burst-it-before-it-can-react the Archdiviner in fractal 50. Even in record run situation this fight take around a minute and the icebow burst last for a couple of seconds at the beginning. So clearly the Icebow wasn’t the problem. It’s low level dungeon with super easy boss that can be destroyed by icebow that was the problem.

Anet just destroyed a part of the game simply because part of their content is too easy.

Well, a few fractal bosses can be burst down quite well with icebow, such as bloomhunger and molten duo. However, there are also a lot of smaller bosses such as mossman, diviner, mai who are not affected nearly as much by icebow.

My guess is that this nerf is more so about the fact that raids will probably have large enemies and large clusters of enemies. And less about dungeons.

I guess we can only truly comment once we get to try it, but at face value this seems pretty disappointing.

PopeUrban.2578:

I’m waiting for the balance patch really.

Phalanx warrior as a required buff isn’t a justification to make phalanx buff more people. It’s a justification to nerf phalanx because it is deemed a “required” buff in comparison to all other avaliable buffs.

I actually think it kind of is. We can either bring 2 ps wars to get the whole party its might, or we can have one, and let that other slot be taken by a different class. Unlike staff eles, warriors don’t stack with one another.

You can nerf ps war if you want, but then groups will swap ps war for a scepter hammer ele I’d imagine. Removing warrior and replacing it with even more eles seems lame.

On a side note, because everyone keeps complaining about ps war on these forums, does anyone have the average might generation for scepter hammer ele when we assume there is always a fire field?

4 support/cc based skills? Lets examine them

1.) Healing skill and damaging skill.

2.) Vulnerability application skill, setting up a target for future attacks. Combos with peircing shards when we use 4.

3.) Chill skill. Helps keep a boss in an aoe for when we use 4 in the event defiance is an issue.

4.) big damage skill. Also solid condi application.

5.) 5 sec stun, helps keep a boss in the 4 aoe. Also combos with tempest defense.

Now, you have decided to group enemy debuffs and ally buffs together and call them all support. You claim the weapon is a support weapon. However, if you read the above, 4 of the 5 attacks all have good interplay together to maximize personal dps. Only the autoattack does not make sense. If 4/5 skills are dps, and only 1 is healing, I think the 1 skill is out of place, not the other 4.

JVJD.4912:

thrag.9740:

Here is a list of exploits that should be fixed.

-CM: standing on the wooden plank to kill frost
-CM: air guns to one shot wahlen
-Arah: cheese walling lupi
-Arah: jumping the wall to skip half of p4, also works on p3
-Cliffside: cheesing diviner on the rock
-Mai trin: Ellen keil res exploit
-Jade maw: reflect crystal duplication exploit
-Swamp: mossman underwater exploit
-Volcanic growl fractal: stone duplication exploit for first boss

It’s great that your attempting to do something about the state of pve anet. But 2 years of neglect is not going to be undone by changing 2 parameters in your code. You need to continue to make improvements.

I heard ppl getting banned for them, there’s even selling groups saying “No exploits” in their lfg

Banning people is not a substitute for fixing. It needs to be fixed. Many of these exploits are demanded by the majority of pugs. Just as icebow needed to be fixed. I disagree with the way it was fixed, but I acknowledge that a fix was needed for the raid bosses which will probably all be large hit box.

-_- forum bug so I won’t be able to see a response lol (btw fantastic work as always anet).

Iris Ng.9845:

2. In the case the boss cannot be deep frozen or rooted, moving (small hit box) bosses inside the ice storm aoe take a considerably more damage than stationary bosses. So the same suggestion wouldn’t be really a nerf to ice bow damage.

Arn’t where the blobs of ice fall random? A moving boss seems just as likely to decrease its damage taken by moving within the aoe, as it is to increase it. Obviously if the boss moves out of the aoe it will take less damage. Am I missing something?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

thrag.9740:

Also, if 5 eles are so clearly the best comp, why don’t we see them in game now? I have never once seen “fractal 50, eles only”.

5 eles would’ve been in the best comp for raids.

Like I said before: it doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen anyone use it. Linecasting still exists. Not seeing someone do it doesn’t make it not exist. The amount of people who use it can change in an instant. Hell, I’d even argue that with how frequently pugs will push a boss against a wall/corner, that they’ve been doing it unknowingly for years.

Personally, I’d prefer they just fixed linecasting and kept Icebow where it was.

thrag.9740:

arkealia.2713:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

This is what line casting does for a skill. Ruin a skill because 5% take advantage of a glitch they were too lazy to fix.

Or maybe they wanted to prevent a 5 ele requirement for raids just because of icebow?

Why don’t we have 5 ele meta for fractals?

A raid has 10 people. 5 eles would provide group icebows, while the other 5 players would provide other useful utilities. Phalanx Warriors, support mesmers, etc.

Oh i get what you mean, 50% party comp as eles, which is close to what people consider meta now.

It does matter whether or not I have seen it, because we want to discuss whether line casting is widely used. We also need to discuss whether balancing around a minority is smart. If anet had just removed aoe compression, they would be fixing linecasting. Instead it sounds like anet is balancing around line casting. Which sucks.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

He never claimed everyone linecasts. He claimed that the icebow as a whole is artificially inflating the DPS numbers of everyone else in the party.

11:23 in his video. “The icebow with the linecasting exploit is so ridiculously overpowered that it literally single handedly imbalanced the entire game. And there are all these unpleasant side effects. The first side effect, is that it makes the fights so short, that you might be fooled into thinking you do more dps than you actually do”.

27:20 in his video “The entire zerker meta is literally builds that were never designed to function in a complex pve environment, bur rather they were made for the sole purpose of amplifying the use of a broken mechanic, ice bow, while exploiting with line casting”

It sounds to me like he is claiming icebow is pretty much always used with linecasting.

For the record, I also think his proposed solution is better than what anet has done. He proposed a maximum number of hits done to a single target through a single icestorm. This would tone down the damage done to larger targets while leaving the damage done to smaller targets alone. This would have been nice, because icebow is already unreliable against single small targets such as mai trin and arch diviner.

Iris Ng.9845:

Because you pug?

Completely valid critisism. I pretty much only pug, although I have done runs with organized groups and they never line casted either. Again line casting is very unreliable.

However, my guess is that purple miku mostly does organized runs (when he isn’t solo), and he also seems pretty convinced that line casting is rarely used.

Also, here is a fairly recent video of DnT killing lupi in 11 seconds. Notice no line casting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1UoLamBy5k

Here is the most recent record attempt video I could find on the dungeon forums. Final boss starts at 5:50. No line casting used. https://youtu.be/GcZEx8ELb6g?t=5m50s

Here is the first video I found when I searched “casual COE run” in youtube. I went and watched the first subject alpha fight as well as the golumn fight. No line casting that I saw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeqX8nez8oc

Now, granted, this isn’t a very large sample size. But most of the evidence I have seen points to line casting being a very rarely used tactic in both pugs and organized groups.

Xae Isareth.1364:

If you’re talking about PvE here, why would you switch out of fire on staff for damage reasons unless your target is about to die?

Let me guess, you think the only think a staff ele does is 211211211211211? Check out the rotation here (http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Elementalist_-_Staff). Fractal pugs fights often last longer than a minute. You can take note that at minimum every minute you will be swapping out of fire. However, in pugs you may need to play defensively and be swapping a lot more. For example, if you have no gaurdian/mesmer/engi, then magnetic aura (which is shared with the group in the build given) may want to be used to prevent a party wipe. Examples would be harpy fractal to prevent harpy knock back, and lava shaman to prevent incredibly brutal deaths lol.

If ice bow was supposed to be a high DPS weapon, its autoattack wouldnt have been an awkward targeted heal and it wouldnt have given you healing and condition duration.

So you think the way conjures were suppose to work, is that ele summons them, and continues to use them for their autoattack? That takes away the ele’s class mechanic, as conjure weapons don’t swap skills on attunement swap. Again, look at water attunement, huge dps modifiers, but no high dps skills. Staff water aa is also a weak healing skill. This punishes you for swapping attunements without a plan. It forces you to come up with smart combos. Something else to consider is tempest defense. 20% dps boost against stunned targets. It is no coincidence that ele’s biggest burst skill is on a weapon which also has a 5 second stun. Anet clearly planned for icebow to be a powerful weapon for ele. As for giving healing power and condi, all I can say is look at the weapon as a whole, the skills themselves tell a better story than some statt bonus’s equal to a warriors banners.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Disregarding whether water has higher damage modifiers, water is the support/healing line. I don’t think you can spin it any way to argue that water is supposed to be the DPS attunement.

The attunements are not one dimensional. If water is ONLY for support/healing why does it have the best modifiers? Because attunements have more complexity than that. Why does water staff have vulnerability and chill?

Xae Isareth.1364:

Kicker.8203:

Ice Bow was supposed to be a support weapon in the first place. Add tons of healing and support to it and done. The other conjures need buffs too! they dont see use in any part of the game except fgs

See, this is the problem. If its supposed to be a support weapon, why is #4 even on there?

It’s like the whole Death Blossom issue with D/D thieves.

I agree with the nerf but I think they’ve done a kitten job. Conjure weapons need a rework. Throughout the entire history of their existence, they’ve been either useless in both game modes, one button spammers, nuke-and-drop, or only used as a mobility tool.

It’s not suppose to be a support weapon. Ele has it’s greatest dps modifiers on water attunement, so if you’re thinking icebow is water based therefore it’s support, your misguided. Water attunment is very interesting because it has huge modifiers but no really good attacks. This encourages setting up combos and then swapping to water attunement right before they burst. A lot of ele’s big hits have a long cast time, pairing perfectly with this. On staff: fire 2, 5, earth 2, air 2 can all be comboed together in one way or another while swapping to water attunement to get the biggest hits possible.

Conjure weapons benefit from this as well, so when you want to really do some damage with conjure weapons, you do so in water attunement. Therefore, a conjure based on water being the best dps weapon seems like the natural choice.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m sorry, but Nemesis has a point, and in all of everyone’s rantings and ravings I have yet to see it disproved.

What point are you referring to?

The part where he claimed everyone line casts? Seriously, I’ve done about 500 dungeon runs and 100 fractal runs in the past 6 months. No one line casts. It is way too unreliable.

arkealia.2713:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

This is what line casting does for a skill. Ruin a skill because 5% take advantage of a glitch they were too lazy to fix.

Or maybe they wanted to prevent a 5 ele requirement for raids just because of icebow?

Why don’t we have 5 ele meta for fractals?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Purple Miku.7032:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m not sure ice bow will ever stop being used as long as line casting is still a thing.

Line casting is not a thing…

Jesus christ, Nemesis seriously is a thorn in this community’s side.

I see people doing it. Besides, so long as it is possible it is still an issue. Just because a certain group of people refuse to use it doesn’t mean that it stops existing.

arkealia.2713:

Was probably needed to avoid the “must have 5 eles” on raids.

I think the icebow had the nerf coming for awhile, but this is an important thing. Immediately after being announced, I knew the optimum comp would have 5 elementalists just for their icebows. Thea ability drop 1.28m damage on the boss in 3 seconds forces a difficult balancing decision: make bosses have so much health that you need these icebows, or don’t balance around that strat and make the bosses too easy when you do have icebows.

Ice Storm is still a good skill. But now it is a marginal increase in DPS instead of a whole number scalar multiple.

In the last 6 months I have gone from about 5% dungeoneer achievement to about 95% done with that achievement. All through pugs. I have also pugged all the way from lv 1 to lv 50 fractals, and have nearly completed the fractal frequenter achieve. Line casting is not a thing. Pugs never line cast. I also watch a lot of the speed run videos, they never line cast. At this point, I am pretty sure the only person who line casts is some random guy who purposefully joins and trolls nemesis’s parties. To be fair, he sounds kitten good at it.

Also, if 5 eles are so clearly the best comp, why don’t we see them in game now? I have never once seen “fractal 50, eles only”.

Zenith.7301:

Nerf meteor shower, nerf phalanx strength, nerf persisting flames, and voila suddenly you’ve got more class variety. They’ll probably have to nerf engineer a bit as well if they don’t want people stacking engineer instead of ele.

But nerfing the easy might stacking from one trait and perma fury/fire field of the other would open space for more classes to also bring their own might stacking utilities instead of being totally eclipsed. For example, ranger would become attractive with clarion bond to complement fury uptimes and they could even buff necro might stacking from Blood is Power for the group.

We just have to remove the monopoly on the vital boons (might, fury) from just two classes who also do some of the highest damage and provide insane utility (banners, glyphs and blast fields).

I think you are wrong on this. By only needing one war to provide might, you open up party slots. If a party wants to build for 25 might stacks, they are still going to pick the most effective might stacker. For example, why bring a necro to help the first warrior stack might, if you could instead bring 2 warriors? Why bring a ranger when you could instead have 2 eles?

I think a better way to include more classes is for every class to have their own unique non-stacking buffs. For example ranger has spotter and spirits. Necro’s vampiric aura is also interesting, if it was a more noticeable party wide buff I think necro would be more sought after.

Also, as a side note. PS war doesn’t really get a party to 25 might in difficult content such as higher level fractals, especially not in pugs. I feel like the majority of ps war hate is from people who do dungeons. PS war is probably op on trash mobs. But so is sword/pistol thief. So is ele. Even necro is op on trash mobs. Pretty much everyone is op on trash mobs. But who cares, they are trash mobs, with no interesting mechanics. It is way better to judge a class based on how a typical player can use it in a boss fight.

Here is a list of exploits that should be fixed.

-CM: standing on the wooden plank to kill frost
-CM: air guns to one shot wahlen
-Arah: cheese walling lupi
-Arah: jumping the wall to skip half of p4, also works on p3
-Cliffside: cheesing diviner on the rock
-Mai trin: Ellen keil res exploit
-Jade maw: reflect crystal duplication exploit
-Swamp: mossman underwater exploit
-Volcanic growl fractal: stone duplication exploit for first boss

It’s great that your attempting to do something about the state of pve anet. But 2 years of neglect is not going to be undone by changing 2 parameters in your code. You need to continue to make improvements.

lol opps put this in wrong thread. But yeah, conjures are looking pretty useless now.

Erasmus.1624:

While you have a point there, it’s a little strange that we gravitate toward 3 specific, individual skill buttons despite the fact that every player has anywhere between 16-35 unique skills to activate. Seems a little off-kilter if we’re trying to define the actions and roles of professions on the whole—a lot of homogenized bloat floating around in there.

I don’t know if you and I just play at totally different levels, but if your only pressing 3 buttons your playing very poorly on a war/ele. Those are my mains so they are all I can speak for.

Erasmus.1624:

Technically, yes, but it’s mostly planned before a fight ever begins. It’s not hard; it’s either rehearsed and executed before an engagement or it’s effectively entirely passive while a fight runs its course.

Are you basing that off of experiences in fractals or dungeons or open world pve? My experience is that might generation isn’t so easy in higher level fractals unless a boss is deep freezed.

Erasmus.1624:

Yes, because consumables and runes are so unique to Warriors and maintaining a permanent/30-minute-long passive gear bonus is incredibly difficult in the heat of the 2-5 minute-long battle.

You misunderstand my point. The runes are expensive, the food is expensive. You said that the cost is low. I am pointing out that beginner players can’t come close to affording to be a good ps war. Strength runes are a dps loss to scholar and cost more. Fried dumplings are a personal dps loss compared to soup.

Erasmus.1624:

Oh, they have a rotation! That’s unique as well! I can’t imagine a single other class that doesn’t press what is effectively 15 (often fast-activating) buttons before going back to pressing 1!

You stated players only use 3 buttons, but when I point out that is not the case you make fun of me because every class presses 15 buttons? Pick one. You claim all this might generation is passive, but you admit that we are constantly pressing buttons.

Erasmus.1624:

They attack from melee range and press the dodge button! Truly unique to the class.

It is to an extent. I’ve never seen a staff ele stick within 130 on diviner. Necro can do just as much dps from 1200 range and stack quite a bit of personal might. This is an example of what the warrior gives up for its might generation. This is an example of how classes play differently.

Erasmus.1624:

but the warrior still does an enormous amount of damage for what would otherwise be considered a “support” role in any other game.

That simply isn’t true. Warrior dps is medium at best. The ‘enormous’ damage comes from thieves and eles. Engineer too, but I think its very difficuly to actually pull that one off. The point is, ps warrior isn’t a high dps role.

Erasmus.1624:

Moreover, since the warrior plays with 4 other allies at all times, it doesn’t matter in the end. If the party had to split up at any given point during a dungeon run, then running a build like PS might actually pose some level of risk or sacrifice, however, that doesn’t happen given how procedural and hallway-like every dungeon/fractal is.

I don’t understand. It sounds like your angry that the optimal build is better than suboptimal builds? Of course ps is better for the group. Why would we run a build that wasn’t better for the group? That doesn’t change the fact that warrior sacrificies their own dps to support the group. Again, we also completely give up our healing skill, so there is your risk. And as I said earlier a ps warrior needs to dodge more actively. Yes they have armor and higher hp, but i’d estimate it only takes 3 hits from a boss to down you.

Erasmus.1624:

This is the only thing that you have said so far that isn’t utterly contrived. MMORPGs are numbers games. They aren’t necessarily driven by individual, active player skill because they don’t feature the mechanic base to foster that. Players plan what is going to happen before anything happens, enter an instance, press all of their buttons and press whatever back-up/panic buttons that they brought along to make sure everything goes exactly according to the sterile, excel-document plan.

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I don’t understand your complaint against necro getting their own version of ps. How does whether or not necro’s are able to support their party offensively in a manner competitive with warrior, change whether you consider mmorpgs fun?

Cyninja.2954:

I’m sure that most of the pve necro community would take that trade-off in a heartbeat. Might generation certainly is not free, but it’s out of hand. If the cost to get maximum stacks of might is so low, why keep a stacking system at all?

Where in my post did I give you the impression the cost is low? If the whole party could magically get 25 might without a warrior, bringing a warrior would be a HUGE waste. Eles and thieves both have a lot more utility and much higher dps.

A ps war on a single target maintains average 23 might according to dnt last I heard. In perfectly ideal situations. Unless the war is doing something weird like bringing elite signet and fgj, you never sustain that unless a boss is deep frozen. Go do fractal 50s with pugs, show me some videos of mai/diviner/anomaly/svanir where you even have more than 20 might for the party and I will be impressed. The only time pugs hit the cap is against trash mobs, and again, who cares about trash mobs?

Every class plays the same? Ok let me see a warrior pop a group wide defense just at the right time to prevent a wipe. Let me see an ele manage the defiance on a boss so we can interrupt tactically. Show me an engineer who can insta res players at just the right moment to save the party.

Might stacking is planned. Good ps warriors use a specific rune, use one of 3 specific foods, and run a specific build where they constantly keep literally every weapon skill on cooldown. They tactically position themselves constantly. They keep their heal skill on cool down. They have to actually be in melee range to do their job, so they actively dodge and avoid damage by carefully observing the boss and looking for tells.

All this is planned. And it all comes at a noticeable personal dps loss. Might generation isn’t free. Even if every class in the game had their own version of ps, only 1 person in the party would be running it. The only difference necro having their own version of ps would make, is that at the start of the instance necros and warriors would coordinate to see who would run dps and who would run might. That and that necros would be more accepted in lfgs.