Guild Wars 2

I tried to edit my post but it wouldnt let me. Just to be clear, the pug did fail, oh well. It was still a lot of fun, and I imagine a lot of organized groups are going to fail too.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

World War III.3869:

I like how no one invites unless you have full ascended. Yet I finallyy get in one of these groups, they all die before me to the mechanics and the fact they don’t have two brain cells to rub together.

Edit: for clarity, the pug did fail, as expected. Still lots of fun.

Can’t get a group consistantly due to the stupid gear check.

Why are you pugging raids in the first place? It’s like dissolving your face in acid.

I just got done pugging it. We all joined a TS and talked. We were all realistic that we probably would fail, but we all wanted to try it. We had a great time, talking, discussing strategy, etc. Pugs are pretty normal people once you start talking to them.

Right, so for once open world pve requires a bit of warrior actually using its active defenses. My build is str/tactics/berserker, full berserker armor with str runes. I use gs + mace/shield. The gs has force + frailty, the mace has sigil of malice and the shield has sigil of paralyzation. The sigil of paralyzation is important. The sigil of malice is not. The only reason I have sigil of malice there is because I only have 1 ascended mace, so its the same mace I use for vuln stacking with a standard gs + axe/mace setup.

First off, for regular mobs. Start the encounter with mace 3 for a quick 1s stun. Then use shield 4 for a 2 second stun. Then use elite skill headbutt for a 3 second stun. Now, this also stuns you, but while stunned you can use f2 to engage berserker mode. I use the trait that causes f2 to taunt (1.5 seconds). Now use f1 (skull grinder) which is a 1 second daze and a BLIND (warrior doesn’t have too many of those lol). Swap weapons to gs, 100 blades it down with quickness. If the fight is still going use your standard warrior gs techniques.

Some things to keep in mind. When you are on gs, your defenses are gs3 (evade) and dodge. Assuming you take str (ofc your taking str) you have building momentum. Which means your f1 skills restore endurance. So, when in berserker mode you can build up and use a LOT of dodges. This requires you to actively watch the enemies, but it is very effective.

Once berserker mode ends, you can swap weapons if you think you need more active defenses. On mace/shield you have 2 blocks (mace 2 and shield 5). Additionally mace autoattack causes weakness (very good damage mitigation, I suppose sigil of malice does help a bit here). If need be, you can use skull cracker during these 9 seconds (even if you only have say 1 bar of adrenaline) to cause a quick little stun, without affecting the cooldown of skull grinder. Or pop signet of fury if your really in trouble and get a full 3 second stun. Either way, you should be able to survive 9 seconds, then its right back to the initial rotation, keeping the enemy stun locked etc.

So basically when in berserker mode: gs has a ton of dodges and evades, even a disengage (gs 5 untargeted), outside of berserker mode mace/shield has some stuns + blocks.

For bosses: there is some serious aoe coverage. If you think you can not stay engaged with melee then I recommend swapping to gs + rifle. Stay in melee range while you can, gs3 away and weapon swap as necessary. I also recommend swapping tactics to discipline if you think you will be swapping to range a lot so that you can bring fasthands+crackshot. But don’t do these unnecessarily as giving up tactics is a LARGE loss for the group. A lot of the aoe’s inflict conditions so brawlers recovery is a good choice here if you do take tactics. Again don’t do this unless you really need to. Plus spamming gunflame is just fun lol, and it is a 1/4 second daze meaning you still have a little bit of cc for helping with breakbars.

You should seriously consider having the daily 51-100 chest everyday. It seems like on sunday nights you just don’t have it. People have jobs, the days on the weekend are the best time to get together and do that type of content.

So, are scale 50+ fractals just not a thing on sunday nights now? I can’t believe they just have days where there are no rewards for 51+.

Yeah I think last laugh is ok. From lv 50 on should be a decent challenge. One thing you can do, have an engi/ele/mesmer/gaurd pull the mobs into a single point, and cleave them down. They should all die at about the same time, then just dodge the explosions.

Also, I think the method for cliff side pugs is:
-charge hammer
-stealth
-hit seal
-run to safety
-charge hammer/repeat

But I wouldn’t know. I’m not touching fractals again until the update.

The system we have now is fantastic. There is tons of customization available from swapping weapons/traits/skills, and you don’t have to carry tons of different armors.

Imagine if PVT was the meta, then what? It would all be the exact same, you’d just be wearing different armor. You would still customize yourself for the fight at hand by swapping weapons/traits/skills.

So then, what are you complaining about? Do you want different armor sets to be meta at different events? Because that just sounds like a huge pain to carry all that gear in our bags.

If you think the only thing pve uses is damage, I think you have been stuck in dungeons too long. dungeons have been ignored for a couple years, and really shouldn’t be considered in these discussions. The only thing to fill that roll are fractals and raids (soon).

Ascalonian monks? Better bring them blinds.
Mai trin? Get some condi clenses
Grawl time? Reflects (don’t forget the chill/knockback/immob for the 2nd fight)
Dredge? Stun lock em, chill too. Stealth would be smart too.
Aetherblade? You’re gonna need unblockable cc, and stability
Diviner? Drop a water field on him when he drops that hammer, make sure the party is healed up so they can actually pick it up.

It goes on.

Ryn.6459:

By the way, if you think that “all is dps dps dps”, sorry, but you have been carried all this time.

Nailed it.

Yobculture.5786:

You can always just not play Guardian.

:^)

In all seriousness, maybe this is actually anet’s mentality. Why else would fractals (one of the least alt friendly areas of the game) give tomes of knowledge?

Filosophi.7251:

If they put the tonic in there for a ton of pristines, I’ll be furious, as I just dumped 500 pristines on rings for matrices, as they’re virtually useless to me at this point since I have all the weapons, and 2 mawdreys. I kept some because I may need a ring or 2 down the line, but beyond that, there’s not a single item I need them for.

With this mentality nothing can ever be improved.

Eight Samurai.6840:

Honestly if anet does get this right. ASSUMING the do… There shouldn’t really be any more issues that are severe.

I don’t know. Yes condi meta and kitten rewards were annoying and definitely pushed a lot of players away, but I think there are still huge problems:

1.) Stale content, same maps for years. And honestly, given how much work it would require to put maps into the 1-100 range, I doubt this is going to change.
2.) Bad instabilities. Dodging is too fundamental to this game to punish it.
3.) RNG vs. steady progress. I think it should be possible to purchase golden skins/ fractal tonic with a ton of pristine relics.

Kythan Myr.4719:

Watched the following video from Brazil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMxrq_0mDvI. Basically it’s about how Anet has just made fractals worse when they’ve tried to make them better. I’m not a big fractal person, but I’m just curious about a few things:
1. Has fractals been more/less fun since the xpac dropped?
2. Do you see yourself doing more/less or the same ?
3. Since they are now a bigger focus than vanilla dungeons, are they satisfactory the way they are or do they need something more?

1.) Less fun.
2.) Less. Use to do 50 a few times a week. I did a few since HOT.
3.) They need more. They need support. They need collections that work. They need meaningful rewards. But more than anything, they need some new maps.

Any new fractals would be a good idea at this point. I think it’d be really fun to have a fractal relive the day snaff died to kralkatorik. They could even reskin everyone to be one of destiny’s edge members.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ascended Drop Rates

Mastery Experience

Gold

I am very happy you decided to post on these forums. The changes sound positive, but the fact is they are 2 months too late. I want to point out how big a blunder this was, and how important it is to avoid it in the future.

Everyone wants ascended for raids, exp for their masteries, and gold for their guild upgrades etc. So many people looked to fractals, and then left because of this mistake. This was an amazing opportunity for you to bring a LOT of new players into fractals, and you blew it. Will you ever get such an opportunity again? Who knows.

Raids are coming out this week, people will think of raids as the main way to get ascended drops, they may have already forgotten fractals.

Central tyria mastery exp has already been grinded out in cof. If fractals had been rewarding, a lot of players would have tried them out. But now they are done grinding those masteries.

Many dungeon runners were grinding out a ton of gold for legendaries/guild halls/etc. With dungeons nerfed, they looked to fractals, and then walked away to other more profitable options. Their halls upgraded, and there weapons built, they have no reason to come back.

TLDR: First impression matter, and you threw this one away. Please don’t do it again. I want to see fractals succeed, and part of that is drawing in the population.

Kulvar.1239:

Fractal Raids … Fractal + Raids
Not Fractal. Not Raids.
… Fractal Raids …

I think you mean Fractal dungeons Raids

Howl.2498:

The drought doesn’t look dead at all. Only 5 ascended boxes out of 742 daily chests. That’s only one more than last time I looked. No, it is still in full force.

I was more so joking about the fact that we finally have a record of ascended dropping from the highest level chest. I’ve been watching this update each night, and waiting to see when we would see the first.

The drought is dead!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IHVJao5j85KOp6lBTOgO8qs4VYD3Xty-jKPZo8o-Q4/pubhtml

In all seriousness, hidden update? We will never know.

only your hammering on something that’s already dead.

Tentonhammr.7849:

Mortifer.2946:

I can already see how it will look… my completely fine and beloved soldier guardian/dragonhunter will be totally useless, because i will have to craft berseker with sigil of force, air, and runes of scholar….not gonna happen.

How is this relevant to sigils of night/slaying potions/ect. being disabled?

Well I think he is pointing out that no matter what many people are going to have to optimize their builds for raids, and that the sigils/runes/potions were only ever a small part of that.

Take ranger as an example. If everyone expects rangers to run healer in raids, the zerker/sinister gear they have for fractals is going to be useless. Rangers may get stuck often having to carry 2 different sets of gear.

Another example could be warriors expected to bring condi instead of ps.

Raithwall.8201:

thrag.9740:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

+7 versatiles, +10 agony infusions. With full ascended you end up at 148 AR. If you want 150 badly, go +12 or 2x +11 on some agony infusions.

Don’t forget that ascended aqua breather.

why? there is no underwater frac which needs 143+agony resistance

Well don’t forget the 14 on your weapon. But still not an issue, I was just making a joke.

ProtoGunner.4953:

I always disliked the Night sigil, never used it, be cause you had to have different sets of weapons. This was silly. I like the change.

Well I somewhat agree’ somewhat disagree here. I main ps war (I guess zerker zerker ps war now). And it was always annoying to have to carry multiple greatswords. But what about my other weapon slots? If I played the entire game using gs + axe/mace I wouldn’t be playing very efficiently. For example at mai trin I usually go gs + mace/shield for cc + blocks during the first half of removing stacks.

Is carrying multiples of the same weapon really any different from carrying different weapons? Because I would imagine the builds used in raids could very well use different weapons, especially in classes with weapon swap. This is a form of gear progression in the game, whether you allow situational sigils or not.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

+7 versatiles, +10 agony infusions. With full ascended you end up at 148 AR. If you want 150 badly, go +12 or 2x +11 on some agony infusions.

Don’t forget that ascended aqua breather.

Tree.3916:

I say trust because I doubt any one posting on this forum has a degree in economics as well as numerous years of industry experience in conjunction with the massive amount of data Anet collects on the economy. So until one of you are hired by Anet to balance the economy, I will TRUST John Smith with any decision he makes.

Well just because you believe John Smith is capable of achieving his goals does not mean his goals align with your own. They stated too much gold was coming into the economy, so they nerfed dungeon’s gold rewards, while simultaneously putting a lot more gold sink into fractals.

As far as causing deflation is concerned, this is probably going to be successful. But as far as I can see, it specifically targeted a particular type of player (the ones in this forum), and as a result, 5 man instanced content in this game is now much more unrewarding, with a much larger gold barrier to entry (AR).

Deflation is probably achieved. But I’d rather have a rewarding 5 man content.

forum bug -_-
char 15

fair enough.
char 15

Enko.6123:

slamfunction.7462:

Balance? Who needs it? Just ban the things you couldn’t test! BRILLIANT! sigh…

How are they just banning it? They said way before HoT launched that they didn’t want slaying sigils/potions for HoT.

And yet fractal potions….

Zaklex.6308:

No, actually people don’t need DC protection in this game, I can guarantee you that 99% of the issues with people DC’ing is either OOM or something goes wrong with packet loss in the route between the ArenaNet servers and the persons computer. It has nothing to do with the games stability in the super majority of cases

That is really an irrelevant point. It doesn’t matter whether it is anet’s fault or not that players DC. It is simply a fact that players do, and will continue to dc. Really any software that uses the internet should consider this fact.

Sola.7250:

Everyone knows they nerfed the Gold, I’m asking why does Story Mode give more Silver than Explorer mode?

Story Mode = 50 Silver
Path X = 35 Silver

More Silver and the same loot for Story Mode makes no sense!

Neither does ascalon giving more than other dungeons. Or aether path. It’s over. Dungeons are done. Nothing will ever be fixed. Just move on.

simplesimon.2084:

Skoigoth.9238:

https://twitter.com/Shazbawt/status/658092329962573824

There you go buddy.

He also says this tho.

https://twitter.com/DazedRabbit/status/657973067612729344

Lol. Pretty sure any mob in open world pve is “constantly respawning” and “drops loot”.

Anet clearly doesn’t have some strict set of rules for determining if it is an exploit. Anything you do that makes them angry can be deemed an exploit whenever they want.

This seems like an appropriate time to remind to discuss this again, so I am gonna res it

I don’t know, anet said they had two goals.
1.) stop gold from being created in dungeons, slowing inflation.
2.) stop people from playing dungeons, as dungeons bugs will never be fixed.

On number 1 they clearly succeeded. On number 2, they moved people from playing a bunch of dungeons, to only playing cof p1. No longer are people experiencing invisible lupi, exploiting frost, or getting the glitch on alpha. cof p1 is relatively bug free. As sad as I am about it, they succeeded.

Xbon.9086:

now have 9 full stacks of +1’s… starting a 10th stack… taking a ton of my bp space hostage while I wait for it to work again

I’m betting that the merchant was not suppose to be cheaper than artificer. There was a thread on reddit the night it got disabled talking about how you should never use artificer once you unlock the merchant. They probably saw that and realized it was a bug.

That is disappointing but not surprising. Maybe they could put an enhanced version in for like, 2g that guarantees the rune is returned. Thanks for making this info public.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

I think it’s only Mossman if you use the challenge mote? We ran it earlier and got Bloomhunger, didn’t use the mote.

This is my experience, well at least for lv 2 it is.

deSade.9437:

thrag.9740:

deSade.9437:

96, still no ascended drop.

Seriously? No joke, I ran my friend (her personal reward lv is 20) through 1-4. On fractal 1 she got an uninfluenced ascended ring, and lv 3 got her an ascended armor box.

Well, good for her? What do you want me to do, screen every single daily and chest I opened? I got no improvement in rewards 51-100, the boxes I tried to open are a flat gold loss (didn’t even recover the price of keys with full fractals mastery, so what the hell is the point?), no more weapons, no more armor boxes, no gold, no exotics… not even empyreal fragments or uninfused rings, jerus kittening christ.
I’m so annoyed I can’t be bothered to complain any longer. Whatever. I’m distancing myself from this horror. I’ll just get to 100 and then strictly do dailies.

I’m sorry man I didn’t mean to anger you. I’m just so surprised. Now that the lowest tier of fractal drops ascended, the fact you did 40+ above lv 50 with nothing says to me something is up. Sorry =/ I am also disappointed with the recent changes. Lets just hope raids will be better.

deSade.9437:

96, still no ascended drop.

Seriously? No joke, I ran my friend (her personal reward lv is 20) through 1-4. On fractal 1 she got an uninfluenced ascended ring, and lv 3 got her an ascended armor box.

Do you guys think the AR is too hard to get? I have always avoided putting AR on my weapons specifically so I could carry a lot of easily obtainable exotic weapons with specific sigils. I’m looking at my inventory and I feel like I need to craft like 10 more ascended weapons for my war now. Also I guess I’m gona have to get rid of my +magic find amulet =/ kinda bummed out about it.

I guess my ele is fine though, I never swap out of staff.

Yeah still a problem.

Something to consider, the overwhelming majority of the things skipped are just trash mobs, basically mobs that have no mechanics, and no challenge. For the majority of trash mobs, the only thing required is applying a few blinds or stuns or maybe even passive aegis from a guard, and the entire party will kill them without taking any noticeable damage. You really are not missing much by skipping those mobs.

Also, I think skipping is a neat break from straight up combat. It is a chance to utilize other things that are typically not worth while in combat. For example, blasting smoke fields. Inexperienced players often don’t even know what combos are, this is a solid chance for them to learn, because fields are thrown around carelessly in combat. Additionally, it is a chance to learn about swapping to mobility weapons, and weapons that have blocks to keep you out of combat so you can keep running quickly. Weapons players would otherwise be fairly unfamiliar with because of their lack of damage.

I have 2 skins, and neither show up in the achievement.

5.) I think you are sorta downplaying this. Sure the team can work together to make things work. Warrior usually has at least 1 cc, staff ele has 1 on demand, almost any team can pull together 5 cc’s if they need it. But in pugs, it works a lot better to have a dedicated CC’er because pugs stink at organization.

Also worth mentioning here. I believe the true king of CC would be a thief venom share build (I know, I know, bad dps etc). But with the trait, cool down should only be 24 seconds I believe. And if 5 people get the buff (radius 360) then you have 10 stacks of defiance stripped, every 24 seconds. I know that is overkill right now, but it seems like it could be relevant when defiance bars come out in like 12 hours.

It certainly seems likely rev will be a direct damage high dps class. So berserker seems like a good bet. If you are worried about wasting money, you could just run citadel of flame/city of arah/crucible of eternity for the few days left before rewards are nerfed. Some cheap armor/weapons and some gold with it.

I’m no expert on minion use, but this seems like a really good change, that addresses issues that my mesmer and ranger friends have complained about. Good job.

where did you get this?

Probably not. A few months ago I made a schedule to make sure I finished the dungeoneer achievement before HOT launched because I feared something along these lines. I got the title last week. Doing something that only rewards gold feels unrewarding to me. I consider myself done with dungeons because I have all their unique rewards.

Raids are going to be sold a LOT (assuming it is possible), because they are gated weekly. The first day after reset you get your rng shot at a reward, but the other 6 days of the week, you just sell your spot in the party. This is already how players get around fractal 50 gating. Granted, you need 9 trustworthy teammates instead of 4, but I would still expect good pve guilds to do this.

And frankly I don’t blame them. Dungeons rewards nerfed, fractals still stale content with no new fractals in years. Selling your raid slot is a pretty appealing alternative, and lets you play the newer content more than once a week.

TLDR: maybe time gating rewards isn’t that smart.

Derenek.8931:

dodging grants 100% evasion. They’d phase through each other. Melee attack could attack 3 at once. Of course this would only happen if the player was playing well and smart, by positioning themselves and leading monsters in a certain way to occasionally get that kind of proc. I’m all for that tactic. However hitting 20 at once because they are standing inside of each other is not the same thing. Of course, one has to wonder, why are they “trash mobs”? It is because they are stupid and can be stacked and dispatched ten at a time by a stacked group of players.

If those mobs actually posed a challenge, they wouldn’t be trash mos at all, but actual worthy game enemies.

Increasing difficulty by increasing stat numbers is poor programming and design. Increase difficulty by implementing smarter behavior.

Cleave already hits only 3 at a time. Go try it. Only a few melee attacks hit more than 3 at once, for example warrior arching slice hits 5. You can stack 20 mobs if you want, but you are only hitting 3 per attack.

Trash mobs are trash mobs because we can trivially avoid 100% of their damage. Just spam blinds, or stuns.

Sometimes increasing difficulty by tuning stats is bad programming. But that is only true to an extent. It is incredibly naive to thing in such absolutes. Imagine if you could kill any boss in the game currently with a single auto attack, clearly that would be a situation where changing stats would be the right thing to do. A lot of the bosses in dungeons die before we see any type of mechanic.

I’ve done daily dungeon runs for at least the past 5 months, all in pugs. Wasn’t kicked once. My secret? I never join groups unless I meet the lfg requirements. The system is fine.

Derenek.8931:

Dungeons are 5 man instances. I didn’t ask for collision to be implemented in cities. Only in areas where stacking is used to to such an extent that the actual gameplay mechanics of GW2 are ignored.

As for stacking up monsters, their AI needs to be fixed so they won’t stack either. Playe to monster collision doesnt need to be impllemented, only player to player and monster to monster. Players should be able to phase thru monsters and vice versa to allow for maximum mobility and action.

We still have the problem of players dodging and hitting one another. Melee attacks usually have a range of 130, even if enemies are not on top of one another, you can easily hit 3 (the maximum number of targets you can typically cleave). And again, this only applies to trash mobs, why do we even care about killing trash mobs?

Your experience of dungeons being easy isn’t because of some big secret trick like stacking. Dungeons are easy because everything has too little hp, especially bosses. Stacking is just a tactic that pugs still use because they still haven’t realized that fgs was nerfed a long time ago.

Derenek.8931:

thrag.9740:

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?

Yes, it just concentrates the entire focus of the action onto a single point. So all boons, buffs, conditions, and damage is all in one single spot.

Total damage of course is exactly the same, but the effect of all that damage hitting simultaneously is a lot different than that same damage spread over a greater area.

Say for instance there are 5 elite mobs with 50k hp each. If players didn’t stack, those mobs would have to be individually taken down. Which would mean players would have to output 250k damage. However with stacking, all the mobs enter one spot, so the players can kill all 5 with only 50k damage.

There is a huge difference..

Someone else responded saying people don’t stack anymore, but run CoE or CoF Caudecus P1 P2 in a pug. You’ll find stacking is still the norm.

Players would just use pulls such as mesmer focus 4, gaurdian gs 5, ele earth shield, engi shield, etc to stack enemies up, and then circle around them. I think the smallest range buff is 300. That is tons of space. Players do not need to be stacked on one another to get this benefit, and in fact frequently in harder fights, they do not stack. For example most bosses in fractals.

Just consider what player collisions would do to the game. It is going to be impossible to reach banks, merchants, black lion, etc. You go to dodge out of an aoe, and someone stops you from dodging out? Not to mention the trolling aspects. You could form lines of people to prevent access to content. What if someone just afks in a doorway, not even intentionally trolling? World bosses would be so crowded you’d have to bring ranged weapons because it would be impossible to reach the boss.

Not to mention, your example is for TRASH mobs. Those things that we can perma blind, stun lock, etc. There is nothing interesting about trash because the majority of players can avoid 100% of their damage. They are completely just a time sink. The pve side of the game should not be balanced around trash mobs, but rather bosses.

The number one thing anet can do to improve pve, is to actually devote some resources to it, and actually make new content.

What if they replaced the gold reward with silverwastes shovels? 1 shovel per gold seems fair.