Guild Wars 2

Sigmoid.7082:

More of a problem isnt necro, though it is a issue, but more how pve is designed in general. Because of pves terrible design you dont need anything besides damage to complete anything. This is something colin himself said and something they are working on. As well as that its the terrible mob ai that couples with that that makes it all to easy and needing nothing but zerk gear to complete.

I will wait to see the changes to mob ai and new pve content before writing things off completely.

How is that true at all? Blinds, blocks, evades, aegis, swiftness, cleanses, heals, blasts, stealths, stuns, reflects, tanking, all of these things are used in pve all the time. The problem is, necro is weaker at all of them than anyone else.

something to consider is personal dps vs group dps. It is reasonable to give up one for the other. However, given what we have seen of rev, balancing may be better if we give rev both in this case. It all depends on how much damage things do.

WSG Delen.9203:

Personally, I think all the talk of Meta-builds is at least half the problem when critiquing the game in general… I do not subscribe to the meta-or-bust mentality and believe it is something A-Net need to deal with – the focus on Meta-builds from some quarters is killing the game for others IMO.

The problem with rebalancing and A-Net seems to be that they tend to overdo the rebalancing to ensure they appease those that are complaining about balancing in a given area.

Players are predictable. The exclusion of necros is anet’s fault for leaving them so weak in pve. Anet should deal with it, by buffing necros in pve. Necros should have been given the ferocious strikes trait + group oriented shouts.

No one ever kicks an extra thief in the party for a 2nd staff ele, because the difference is small. The difference between a 2nd ele and a necro, is not small at all.

Sifu.9745:

You all say that Rifle is stronger single target dmg … In my case that’s not true. LB autoatack (with burning trait) is like twice stronger than Rifle autoatack. F1 is the only strong Rifle dmg.
Btw in PvP i can’t stand without ranged weapon, while in pve i try to avoid it as much as i can.

traited longbow vs untraited rifle? Not exactly a fair comparison. Also, rifle could be better in groups because of its piercing bullets. Just requires good positioning.

Purple Miku.7032:

AncientManuel.5384:

I play pve not pvp or wvw,

Would you accept “neither” as an answer?

lol didn’t you see nike’s condi build vs zerker abom? Them burns.

But seriously op, you shouldn’t take a ranged weapon in pve as a warrior. However, if you INSIST on doing it (and I recommend you don’t), I think rifle is the better of two bad choices. The vulnerability will help your team more.

But again, its much better to learn how to use only melee weapons.

I’m a pve main so take this as you will, but I am fine with our elite banner being where it is. The loss of the cd trait is my only real complaint. For pve, banners have some really interesting teamwork possibilities. For example if stability is important in a fight, drop the banner, and a team can take turns granting group wide stability. Similar with fury and regen. Its a way of giving blasts to party members who don’t have them (necros are a good example). Really, banners have a lot of neat team work aspects.

So no, please don’t turn banner into a shout. Instead, just request warriors get an elite shout, its not exactly a crazy idea.

I agree. Originally they said they were making it drop faster because people would carry adrenaline from fight to fight. That is no longer a concern, because berserker’s power is from activation now, rather than a passive effect.

necro has always struggled in group pve.
-No evades/blocks
-No access to vigor either, but that’s ok because:
-mark of evasion procs out of combat, making stealth skips more difficult
-Their warhorn swiftness skill easily puts them in combat. Making stealth skips more difficult. So they have to waste a utility slot just for swiftness.
-They are literally the only class without any access to reflects.
-No group offensive buffs.
-NO BLASTS, kitten that’s the main teamwork in this game.
-The few blinds they have are way less useful than thieves blinds
-Terrible dps
-Also terrible movement skills. Deathshroud teleport puts them in combat and is almost the same speed as walking. Wurm will easily put them in combat too. Oh, they can teleport back to where they were 15 seconds ago, great thats useful in arah to run the jotun stone, light orb solos, cof running bombs, etc. Except a mesmer can do that for the entire team and provide reflects, and provide timewarp, and provide stealth, and have better dps and still evade damage.

So what do they bring to the table? Chill? Ele does it better with a LOT more dps/utility/blasts. Brazil has some cool videos showing the group heal/res abilities of a necro, and I give him a lot of credit for trying to improve the situation. Because it is complete bull kitten to players that rolled necro however long ago without knowing what they were signing up for.

3 years into the game, its no longer the players faults for being elitist/exclusionary, its anet’s fault for not balancing it. And then they give necros non group oriented shouts. LOL are you kidding me? Are. you. kidding. me.

EDIT: Sorry everyone, the fixed the mark of evasion problem. So, you know, credit where it’s due.

Yeah, but when your first learning it can be frustrating to have to keep looking up which instances are night/day, especially if you don’t have 2 or more monitors.

You can still keep your incinerator skin. Just get a crap dagger, and skin it as ascalonian. Equip it at the beginning of the instance to figure out if your day/night, then equip the correct weapons.

NikeEU.7690:

thrag.9740:

But that guy posting is a ranger. I can’t really blame a ranger for hating melee/stacking. sword is such a pile of kitten.

He will like it a lot better when he switched to Axe/Torch.

Wait what? Rangers in dungeons should be using axe/torch? I’m pretty clueless with ranger so idk if your messing with me. Would it be a condi build?

On a serious note about the stacking thing. Something that annoys me with stacking is how it makes it even tougher to trash mobs. Obviously visual effects on the mobs are a bigger deal, and I wish we had an option to turn them off. Then again, who bothers to dodge the trash?

But that guy posting is a ranger. I can’t really blame a ranger for hating melee/stacking. sword is such a pile of kitten.

Hey guys, I did 6 fractals this weekend with your advice. It felt a lot smoother, and I had a much better time, thanks

I do have another question though.

7.) For the reactor fractal, in the heat room. At lower levels (1-10) I could easily solo this room by just spamming the first ability (wiki calls it meltdown), it makes you run faster. Is this still the tactic? We had a mesmer portal us half way in to do this room. If there is no mesmer what do we do? I know bear form helps, but I do not know how. Do groups without these abilities need to use cooling rods?

8.) For the final boss in the reactor fractal, the anomaly. Should I use melee? This weekend I did an initial melee burn at the beginning, but then swapped to rifle when everyone else started spreading out.

By the way, I thought I would share something I discovered this weekend. Medical packs (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Medical_Pack) can make the cannon phase of mai trin a lot easier. Giving both swiftness and healing. I made sure to let my group know to look for them.

Something to consider, a ps warrior with no food/strength rune can probably get 25 on trash mobs. Are trash mobs what you want to build towards? What about single enemies that you don’t constantly dps down? For example, Mai trin and diviner. Your not constantly going to get perfect 100b rotations when you have to actually whirlwind out of it to stay alive. Also consider bosses with large amounts of down time like snowblind final boss and mossman. Might is going to possibly drop in these spots.

With that said, for nighttime I currently go night sigil + force, and day time I go force + air, because it is still useful in both good and bad groups. While a strength sigil is wasted in good groups.

Here is what I do. For my weapons with night time sigil, I use royal ascalonian skins. They glow at night. This helps me remember to swap them out if they are not glowing. And then you never have to look it up.

guys please, your all focused on the wrong class. How do we do it with necro????

So summary of class one shot abilities.

Confirmed:
Mesmer – focus on wall
Gaurdian – wor on wall
Ranger – axe 5 standing on wall
Warrior – shield 5 + trait standing on wall
Engineer – throw elixer on wall 50% of the time. Reflect off turrets on the wall?

Personal speculation/too lazy to check:
Thief – dagger storm standing on the wall
Elementalist – magnetic aura standing on the wall

No known method:
Revenant
Necromancer

Guys please. To make things balanced, we need to figure out a way for necros to one shot lupi. Can someone get a necro up there, with a reflect crystal? I know we would need all the rng in the world, but its for the greater good.

I’ve never really payed much attention to the gold/hour stuff for dungeons (I just know its good haha). You may want to try out COE, the dungeon is a little longer than ac/cof but charged lode stones (3g) and cores (1g) are pretty common. On good groups I think I have gotten all 3 paths done in less than 45 minutes. You obviously won’t get great times right away, but that’s true of any dungeon.

I don’t like to kick. To me, there are 5 people in that instance. If your party wiped, every one of those people should ask themselves “what can I do to fix this”. My opinion is that dungeons are so easy, I should be able to carry any group through. Fractals are another story, I’m not good at them yet, and I need to be carried a bit. But if I think a fractal group is garbage, I prefer to leave the group. I don’t want to place blame on someone other than myself. To me, picking out a single person on your team, and kicking them is like saying “I need someone better than you to carry me”. I don’t agree with it, to me that’s not what a team is.

I don’t know if it was intentional, but in my mind I am choosing to believe that everyone went down at the end to give the eles extra lava fonts. This is great to watch, good job.

I’ll give you one right now. I don’t want to only do hero challenges. I want freedom to progress through a multitude of methods. Its a serious problem that anet should address.

Well first and foremost I do tequatl daily. It’s a solid chance at ascended boxes. Even if you don’t get ascended its pretty much guaranteed 2-3 g which is at least competitive with pug dungeon running(15 minute teq). Here is some data I found on it:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Dragon_Chest_%28container%29#100_of_each_dragon_chest_after_the_patch
looks like 1-5% chance. Pretty good. I always go staff ele for this. Meteor shower hits teq for 20k each during burn phases.

Next I would keep doing fractals. Buying 50 isn’t worth it because my reward level is only 25. However, I have gotten an ascended box drop already, so its not like only 40-50 has them.

EDIT: I should include, teq might only drop ascended weapons. I am not sure, but that data I gave you only has weapon chests, no armor.

Thanks for the responses everyone. I will add summaries of your answers to my original post sometime this week, I need to go to bed now haha.

Sarahfull I am on Na, and I would love to run with someone experienced. I don’t usually run fractals on weekdays, so maybe sometime next weekend?

I am gona grab one extra post slot in case I ever expand this.

Hey everyone. I am a ps warrior (gs + axe/mace usually) who is beginning to go into higher level fractals. I always pug as joining a guild is just not practical for my lifestyle. My personal reward lv is 25 and I have every intention of working towards 50. I check gw2dungeons.net frequently but I find the fractal guides not that helpful, probably because fractals change quite a bit every 10 levels.

I will do my best to make my questions organized, and then update my posts if I am given answers. Maybe this will help other inexperienced players too.

1.) Trash mobs. At lower level fractals you cleave them down so quickly it doesn’t matter. At higher levels what should I be doing to help my team? I can apply weakness with my warhorn. Is that more helpful than the knockdown + vuln? Or does a thief’s blinds take care of it all? Should I be using skale venom?
A1) Stick with mace. Trash mobs have no defiance, so use tremor to knock them down. Warriors are not there to give defense against mobs. We are there for offensive support and moderate dps. Skale venom is probably a waste. Eles/thieves should do the blinding. Remember tremor is a projectile, beware reflects.

2.) Range vs melee on certain bosses. I know melee is higher dps. I prefer to run melee, but some bosses are so visually cluttered I cant see the tells to dodge. Examples of what I am wondering. Arch diviner, mai trin, grawl shaman, moss man. What is expected of me in a fractal group? Pure melee? A hybrid? Pure range? I want to run whatever will help my team the most, but I just don’t know what that is. Are most of you able to see the animations and dodge? I can totally accept “learn to play” as an answer.
A2.) Stick with melee, its a skill worth learning. Practice max melee range. Don’t fight a boss head on. Have the boss on the right side of your character, at max range possible. This makes it easier to see. Use bladetrail as appropriate (diviner has reflects!). Whirlwind to save yourself too. Also gs f1 has increased range so that can be used. If a boss turns to face you, you typically need to dodge. Don’t start a 100b if the boss is facing you.

3.) Snow blind fractal : Melting the ice wall. At higher levels, say 40 or even 50, should I be trying to kite the sons of svanir around, or trying to kill them? Some hybrid with range?
A3.) Kiting as a guardian is possible. Also stealth is a common tactic. Mesmer portals could also be utilized to hop in, light the fires, port to safety.

4.) Snow blind fractal : Elemental source. I have no idea what I am doing in this fight. I mostly hope that someone targets an enemy and I go dps that enemy down. Should I kill the ice elementals when they are up? Or should I focus on the ele source? Should I keep a fire lit for us? Should I give up banners to bring stability/stun breaks ?
A4.) Try to keep the team together, by actively targeting enemies. Go around the outer edge of the area to avoid agrooing ice elementals. Try to keep a fire burning, and remove frostbite stacks before the “blizzard” starts (25/50/75% health left). Remember disc banner is useless against the boss.

5.) Aetherpath final room. It seems pugs mostly stack on top of the one box at the edge of the room and bring stability/stun breaks to tank the lasers. Will this continue to be the tactic at higher levels?
A5.) Yes this is the tactic. Consider bringing shake it off. Unblockable cc works well to interupt the golems spin attacks. I believe, but have not tested, that fear me could work well. Rampage was also recommended, I have not tried that out personally.

6.) For the reactor fractal, in the heat room. At lower levels (1-10) I could easily solo this room by just spamming the first ability (wiki calls it meltdown), it makes you run faster. Is this still the tactic? We had a mesmer portal us half way in to do this room. If there is no mesmer what do we do? I know bear form helps, but I do not know how. Do groups without these abilities need to use cooling rods?
A6.) Take Defiant stance for heal, shake it off bulls charge, shake it off, and elite rampage. Use sword + warhorn for swift+initial leap. Then spam the #1 skill to get back to normal movement speed. Once your agony has worn off, use your heal + shake it off. Then bulls charge. Go into rampage and use dash, seismic leap. Dodge whenever possible. If you get downed, heal until you can use vengeance. Once your inside use shake it off to cure immob so you can hit both switches.

7.) For the final boss in the reactor fractal, the anomaly. Should I use melee? This weekend I did an initial melee burn at the beginning, but then swapped to rifle when everyone else started spreading out.
A7.) Try to melee the whole time. This boss dies fast, at any level. If he turns to face you dodge back. It is probably best to bring gs+rifle. You can still stack some initial vulnerability, just like axe/mace (not quite as much).

Your advice is really appreciated.

Khenzo.2465:

thrag.9740:

man you should check out the dungeon forums. They have an insane number of reds

They are necrod threads.

It would help if you open them to see or use the dev tracker function on the forums.

Speaking of reading, you may wana check whos been posting in them
Just trying to have some fun.

For relatively new players like me, the necros have been really fun. Its pretty neat to read how much the game has changed over the years.

man you should check out the dungeon forums. They have an insane number of reds

ran this guy through arah last weekend….also more red on front page.

i see, thanks for the responses. Yeah, I’ve always felt like trait unlocks made the difference between lv 79 and lv 80 huge. With the most recent trait rework this difference is sorta smoothed out. But it sounds like the damage is already done =/

Hey guys,the necro threads got me thinking. Did dungeons use to actually be a lot harder? Like did anet change them to make them easier? Or was it that people learned how to insanely buff dps (banners/fury/might/vuln/spotter/bow etc)?

These necro threads make it sound like a completely different game. I’ve only been playing gw2 for a year.

I honestly didn’t know this boss had any mechanics. I’ve only been playing like 14 months. wtf happened? Did people just start learning about might/fury/vuln/banners/ice bow and then it became faceroll?

Where did you hear this?

Well I agree, that scaling npcs up isn’t a great idea. Sometimes with guardian blue flame I still have trouble seeing the tells on lupicus. Admittedly hes tells are more subtle than say, an abom. But still, simply scaling enemies won’t fix the issue as our effects scale too.

However, I think the op brings up a real problem in the game. Through out the thread I have advocated the ability to turn off player effects. I think this is a broader solution that will work on almost all bosses.

Not to mention, graphical performance. You can turn your graphics setting down as much as you want, your still going to see other players effects. This kills slower computer set ups. More people could play gw2 at higher settings if it wasn’t for the extreme particle effects. Like textures in the world, and npc details could look better if some much of our computer’s resources were not on particle effects.

Right now gw2 is a game at odds with itself. On one hand your suppose to see signs that an enemy is about to attack, and your suppose to dodge it. On the other hand your have the extreme visual clutter. If anet wants to introduce challenging group content as they have stated is their goal, they have really painted themselves into a corner. Either make bosses large. Make bosses use only aoe attacks (molten duo glitch,lupicus glitch…this doesn’t work well). Or….anything else viable?

I really think we need a “turn off other player effects” option. This wouldn’t fix everything, but it would fix a lot of things.

lordkrall.7241:

thrag.9740:

Here is a typical boss fight in gw2. We are not stacked. Just fighting the boss like normal. As you can see, the boss is pretty much a white blob.

http://i.imgur.com/9ONr5vr.jpg?1

All of the bosses I listed above have the same problem. We really need a solution. I think turning off player effects would work.

I don’t know, it seems rather easy to see the boss in that picture.

Do I need to post a picture of svanir shaman fight before you will admit it’s a problem?

The thing is, I don’t know if it would even affect us in pve really. gs + axe/mace is already pretty optimal rotation wise. Its our best auto attack, our best utilities, all wrapped up together. I can’t think of any other big bursty ability we could swap to that would be better than axe aa to kill time while 100b is on cd. Maybe sword 3 would be incorporated into rotations? I’m not sure how much of a dps boost that would even be.

So then would it give us utility? It opens up hammer or warhorns as a source of weakness. But anytime weakness is useful, blinds are better as far as I know. I guess we could throw rifle in there for the vulnerability, then immediately swap weapons again. Overall I don’t think a pve warrior would really use a 3rd weapon set.

You shouldn’t think of your warrior as playing a particular weapon set. Warrior has too many tools to restrict itself like that. As you get more experienced with warrior you will really appreciate the validity of that statement.

I keep a full set of weapons in my inventory, and swap them in as the situation dictates. Most fights I use greatsword and axe+mace. There are exceptions. Fights where you need ranged, swap ranged weapons in. But if you keep that bow equipped at all times your really decreasing the utility you can provide your group. Warrior has the fastest weapon swap in the game, if your not using it your missing out on a lot of potential you could be using to help your team.

Here is a typical boss fight in gw2. We are not stacked. Just fighting the boss like normal. As you can see, the boss is pretty much a white blob.

http://i.imgur.com/9ONr5vr.jpg?1

All of the bosses I listed above have the same problem. We really need a solution. I think turning off player effects would work.

haha don’t forget those eles dragging the party down.

:( i just wanted to be an elitist like everyone else

Yeah, and now shirev is going to come in and wreck house its bs. 5 war meta is so boring.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

seriously guys?

Did someone make an actual bingo sheet? Or are we all pretending to have bingo sheets. Because I am up for this if its real.

I think most of these ideas would not accomplish what you think they would.

1.) This is already a failure in fractals. Players just log out to LA to repair. I don’t think there is a real way to accomplish what you want without making it impossible for people to join a party mid dungeon. In which case any time someone dc’s the whole party might quit. Even if you figure out a way to do it. People are just going to be forced into stupid stuff. For example, unequipping their armor for the COE jumping puzzle, or carrying extra armor sets. This stuff happens in mmos with expensive armor repair such as secret world.

2.) Why would this require more healers? It only affects out of combat healing. We don’t need healers in combat right now, so why would we need them out of combat? After every fight, have everyone swap weapons, put down a water field, and blast away. This isn’t making the actual fight more difficult, its just forcing us to do one more thing before we run to the next fight. Worse yet, we could carry another set of healing armor, equp that after a fight, use our healing skills, etc. The out of combat regen system gets rid of a lot of that silly stuff.

3.) Your only making the dungeon more difficult for those who fail. I think that’s the wrong way to go. Make the individual bosses more challenging.

p.s.1 Group support already prevalent in dungeons, I promise.

p.s.2 I do agree, bosses should have a chance of dropping the dungeon specific gear. Tokens are a great system, guaranteed progress towards a goal. Now just add a little rng bonus progress and players will really be enjoying themselves. Eagerly looking at their drops after a boss dies, etc. Silverwastes’ carapace armor is a good example of this. Guaranteed progress in the form of crests, with occasional bonus from the loot boxes.

In your video you complained that certain paths are not ran. That is because those paths have not been balanced to be rewarding for the amount of difficulty. I don’t know how to fix this.

kitten it guys stop making me think the forums are active.

OP you need to be the change you want to see in the world. Make an lfg like this:
“p123, anyone welcomed”.

deSade.9437:

thrag.9740:

Hey, did ventari not have a water field? if so, your really killing its healing utility.

Water fields should be nerfed.

Lol. no no, fields are fine, they are pretty. blasts are what anet should remove, way too op for filthy sinizerks to heal for 3000k hp

Hey, did ventari not have a water field? if so, your really killing its healing utility.

who says necros aren’t allowed in dungeons?

Was running an atl to all the dungeons. Tried him again. Still broken

lordkrall.7241:

Heck, I have both a full size Norn and a full size Charr, and I really don’t see the issues you are talking about in this thread, so I am not sure how much of an issue it actually is.

Really? I mean, I’ve had this problem a lot. Between mesmer effects and gaurdian blue fire, I have a lot of trouble seeing the following bosses in fractals:
-Archdiviner
-Mai Trin
-Dragonseeker
-Mossman
-Ashym

Even some world bosses are tough to see. For example
-Svanir Shaman
-Taidha covington
-maybe Modniir

Ignavia.7420:

Most of the visibility issues come from people stacking on the boss. This is the place Anet should work on, e. g. by improving the AI (which they are doing for HOT) or enlarging the radius of support skills – at least in instance.

I think support skills in instances should have way larger range. Everyone can play as they do right now, while also opening up other possibilities. A.I. can have cleave/aoe attacks, but the incentives to stack are just too high.

Also, you can have 5 people meleeing not stacked and still have a ton of visual clutter. I think the best solution is:

I just wish there was a way to turn off player FX.

This would help a lot.

Because fractal rewards are so awfully RNG that they need days with guaranteed boosts.