Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
(edited by zencow.3651)
@Inci: Have you tried it after the patch/ does the jotun path actually still work?
We just tried it again today, this time killing everything in order: Ooze, Crystallines, Tar Elemental, Lupicus, Gorilla, Jotun etc. This time round the NPC was actually talking when we reached the Jotun but after killing it we were still stuck with the observatory remaining locked and searched endlessly and couldn’t find a key? Bugged or are we missing something stupid? At least this time round we didn’t have to put up with a pug mesmer who only had greatsword (seriously, he didn’t even have other weapon skills unlocked at lvl 80, must’ve paid some gold seller or something) and couldn’t kite to save his life so things died ALOT faster and knew the boss mechanics this time so it only took 2 and a half instead of 5 hours (we somehow wiped from lupicus 5 times this time though and the marathon run on jotun path is just so long and wiped another 5 times at the jotun cause apparently just standing there with reflecting crystals while dodging the occasional obviously telegraphed lava font was too hard lol).
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
(edited by zencow.3651)
Basically the rules are: stacking Sigils don’t stack with each other, ‘weapon-swap’ don’t stack with each other. Reportedly trigger on-crit Sigils don’t stack with each other either but those are too random to confirm.
So the most overpowered option naturally is Bloodlust + Battle though if you could afford 3 sets though it’s more preferable, since stacks will still be on you, you can switch to a xx/Battle. My personal favourite for xx being chance for quickness on Crit for super AoE spamming when it triggers (if you’re fast enough to respond/button attune swapping and aoeing the results are AWESOME.)
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Mickpea, you and I are not understanding something the same way. You only get the might stacks if you SWITCH to that weapon while in combat. Are you an elementalist? Because elementalists don’t “switch” to any weapons in the middle of combat. This leads me to believe you would not be getting this bonus ever. You’d best be bringing THREE weapons, one to stack Bloodlust until 25 then switch over so you can have +5% damage or +5% crit or chance to do things on crit or anything else paired with battle sigil.
Only one ‘weapon-swapping’ is allowed tho, so no super Hydromancy and Geomancy on Dagger/dagger mega-ownage allowed.
This is getting old, attunement switching counts as weapon-swapping for the purposes of those Sigils.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
(edited by zencow.3651)
atleast with a staff, with D/D or S/D you might have a chance. Im running 0/25/0/30/15 build with Cleansing Wave and Cleansing Water from the water tree (=lots of condition removal) so it really helps me out against especially necros.
With scepter/focus (bunker for life!) you are guaranteed to hold whatever cap point against a necro with with Magnetic Wave and Phoenix and SHOULD be able to hold at least 1v1 against anyone.
Who doesn’t take 30 water? It’s like the only thing viable! I prefer the 0/20/0/30/20 so I can have the chance for vigor (10+2 seconds) on crit trait for infinite dodge!
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
^You could always practice in full MF gear first, squishy for no extra damage! It was the only exotic set I had doing my first Arah run doing the Muursaat path though 2 deaths only occured to trash, 3 to the oola’s lab style golem running, 3 to giganticus and 2 to the mine fields but by the end of the run I still came out barely positive.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
For WvW You definitely want full Berserker’s for massive Meteor Shower ownage. For Dungeons you need some survivability. I’d say go Valkyrie on Chest and Legs since they carry the higher stats and Beserker’s on the other pieces. Personally I build crit-chance only up to 35% since I can get fury from other sources for 55% though I rock Carrion’s instead of Valkyrie since I feel more comfortable with a round number for my crit damage xD
I think someone did maths somewhere that past crit chance has diminishing returns past 50% so 55% is a good number. In League of Legends 55% crit coincidentally is also when AD carries begin building survivability so I’m basing some assumptions around that too :P
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Equip Cleansing Fire and Signet of Water, press “H” and equip scepter/dagger since your traits are a lost cause to try switching to scepter/focus. Why wouldn’t you carry other weapon sets?
Failing that, run away and rejoin your team. As you said, you’re not a bunker, it’s not your job to hold the point. With a staff you are support, team player, what ever you want to call it, you’re not meant to be by your self. Don’t like it? Switch to scepter/dagger and be a roamer but your job is then to gank and power play. Ele’s don’t really excel in 1v1.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
(edited by zencow.3651)
It took my half PuG group 3 wipes to figure out 2 weeks ago, seeing as OP doesn’t even remember the bosses name I doubt he even noticed the obvious tells and the grub eating. After first wipe I figured he was eating grubs that made his aoe strong, second wipe I learned the grubs spawned on top of players, third wipe I had to remind people to rez during phase 3. Godly awareness? Far from it, just bring a brain instead of mindlessly running him?
In a PuG, you need at least one competent person to ‘boss’ the other around from reminding telling them about the mob/boss mechanics to reminding the mindless rangers to shoot from an angle to trigger bleeds to suggesting the constantly dying guardian bring some blocking skills by bringing a shield or focus and not just sit on greatsword.
Of course, you can only carry bad players to a certain extent, you can’t exactly play the game for them.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
(edited by zencow.3651)
Complaining about blossoms is so 2 weeks ago. They are present/respawn in set locations, just pull mobs to where there are no blossoms and stay there, simple. They also serve as a free rally.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
In Phase One, Lupicus does an amazingly obvious animation wherein he leans over and spews out 2 locust swarms and at a player’s feet, a grub. Because of this, it’s way to simple form up in a ball or what I affectionately call the ‘bot formation’ and focus the grubs as they spawn. There’s two possible improvements I’d like to see: 1. make the locust swarms deal more damage to discourage balling and 2. make the grubs spawn at a random location and/or more should spawn but at reduced health.
At ~75% health he leans back and goes invincible to transition, I think the delay in transition is fine if the above changes but currently it makes it way too obvious and gives players too much time to spread out.
In Phase Two, I’d like to see adds being spawned, Lupicus is just like a mobile Dark Behemoth, minus any adds. Maybe this time not locusts but something that has pulls to force players to expend more dodge and require more co-ordinations from sharing projectile reflections and blocks, or those that root/applies weakness the players to prevent dodging to force condition removal sharing.
Phase Three Lupicus is super easy since he just focuses one target and chases but leave them when they are downed to chase another target so people can effectively just juggle aggro so it’s even easier than Phase two! understandably since he’s so weak it should be somewhat easy but I’d like his aoe life steal to be more like that of Shiro Tagachi’s Meditation of the Reaper; a shield that blocks maybe 10k damage and absorbs all projectiles, lasting 20 seconds and steals 1000 health for each second shield was up, with the aoe range of the entire room (door should be closed to avoid running out). This should force some players to have to go into melee range to deal enough damage and reduce the ranged-fest that this whole fight is.
Basically, just make this boss solvable by dynamically switching between bot-formation and spreading out rather than just a one-time transition which just solves the boss too easily.
On a side-note, also make the other bosses harder e.g. Serpent Ladies’ taunt lasts way too long before she does dagger storm (when she throws/shoots lightning orbs) giving you way too much time to hide behind the hay bales and she takes way too long to do her massive aoe damage shot after pulling, I stood in it for fun to make sure she did use it and the damage is fine, I think it’s more of a bug that she takes so long to chain it. You need to check that out. She’s like an easier Lt. Kohler and with it being Arah, she instead should be HARDER.
Thanks for hearing out my suggestions, with the updated increases in Shards I feel you should accordingly increase the dungeon’s difficulty rather than relent to the inexperienced players. You intended dungeons to be hardcore and un-PuGable, please keep that promise.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
47 hours ago before the patch I ran the TA explorable up path twice for the standard 30 and 20 tokens each, taking ~30 mins each run as standard.
39 hours ago I did the TA explorable forward-up path taking 1 hour and the rewards were fine at 60 tokens.
10 hours after that (29 hours ago), within the same ‘day’, I did the forward-forward path taking around 50 minutes and got 60 tokens then redid the forward-up path to help my friend and the PuG out taking around 40 mins and that’s when the DR really hit me I think,
15 hours ago, got 60, 45 and 30 tokens doing the forward-forward, forward-up and then up path in the order of difficulty taking just over 1 hour, around 40 minutes and 30 minutes all together around 2 hours and a half. (It was really enjoyable though, I only died twice [at the hounds beyond the f-f portal archers room and then at the geyser bees since I didn’t go far enough and stopped to chat] and the PuG group worshipped my leadership skills.) Thinking back now if I knew the system was like this I should have done up, forward-forward and forward-up but I’m unwilling to risk my rewards at all doing this until the DR is fixed.
Overall, I ‘lost’ a significant amount time-wise compared to those in the PuG who never seemed to have ran much dungeons pre-patch and I feel that really punishes the regular dungeon-runners who have been loyal to doing their dungeons properly and in reasonable time, who already received less rewards running the dungeons back then and are receiving less now. The only advantage we do have is the experience but that in turn benefits the PuGs we help more than us which feels really unfair since we had to learn all the dungeon mechanics and suffer repair bills right from the start, and the happy feeling you get doesn’t really mask the blatant slap-in-the-face reward due to DR enough.
I still love TA explorable though and will just be doing easy up-path as this bug encourages and ignore the rest till it’s fixed >.>
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
(edited by zencow.3651)
I thought my repeating the TA forward-up path (to help the pug and a friend out who never did it before) giving only 15 blossoms instead of 20 was bad. Friend got only 45 for the path, first time doing it in 1 week, the rest of the pug got 60 (even though we ALL presumably ran the up path excessively prior to the patch).
Perhaps if you died more you got more tokens?
We also did TA forward-forward before that and everyone did get 60 tokens for that though. We did both paths in around 50 mins each which nothing like a speed clear. Anet, please fix your anti-exploit codes ASAP!
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
First off I’d like to say I prefer starting in earth with Eruption, running in with magnetic aura to lava font and arcane wave before backing off to continue the other jazz it fires off 6 might stacks on your team which gives 20% more damage stat-wise (210 power and condi damage!)
It sucks, because you can’t use Superior Sigil of Battle for a free 6 extra might stack (yes it works on attunement-swap, inb4 battle sigils inflate more) AND stack luck at the same time or your choice of other sigil like bloodlust which gives 10%.
Also, scepter/focus combo can maintain 12 stacks of might on your whole party with just your own blast finishers (flamewall → tooth+phoenix → comet → magnetic wave not even including arcane wave!) if your team happens to lack in that department (bear in mind at 25 stacks, 875 power AND condi damage increases your team’s efficiency in killing by 50% if they only do damage with power or condi or 100% with both!). Sure a staff guardian can do it too but he needs to stop and channel it plus he’s better off doing whammoing on the mobs.
Scepter/focus also pretty much guarantuees you keep your 25 stacks with the invulnerability/swirling winds, not to meantion a 24 recharge on swirling winds when traited pretty much shuts down everything in the game since it seems EVERYTHING in gw2 is counted as projectile be it malronna’s kitten to giganticus lupicus’ splats. It’s so strong you can even solo kudu’s second golem in CoE SM since you have so much left-over dodge (okay it that will take ages but you get the picture).
It also puts out more defiant removal than gale (gale also sucks when it knocks things out of the way sometimes) alone if the boss tends to just sit there and not walk into static field.
Finally, scepter offers very short cast times especially which gives you so much sustain in combination with signet of resto and the focus off-hand you pretty much feel like a god even with MF gear in explorable modes.
So overall scepter/focus will carry the day in PuGs with massive defenses to bandage up mistakes but really, staff is as much the ‘optimal’ choice as saying a guardian is useless since all HE does is makes creates rooms for mistakes since an optimal team can just dodge everything themselves and do things perfectly etc, see what I did there?
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
(edited by zencow.3651)
They do indeed work, the Superior Sigil of Battle happens to be the strongest sigil EVER since you pretty much have 6 stacks of might on you at all times which is 210 power and 210 condi damage (35 power+ 35 condi per stack at lvl 80, hidden cool-down of 9 seconds stops you from getting more) and with combo fields you should be able to maintain 15-20 stacks of might depending on weapon and destroy everything with your try-hard comboes and 1000 damage auto-attacks with a tanky as kitten build i.e. only viable way to play ele.
When used in conjuntion stacked with bloodlust or perception your output damage gets pretty insane for an ele.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Probably same codes were used as in Guild Wars 1 that makes blue team win by default in tie situations; Kurzicks always won by default in AB, JQ and FA if the winning objectives were met at the same time or even if Luxon reached it a few seconds before the Kurzicks did at 500 score, 10 jades or if Gunther died even half a second before God’s Vengeance filled up. If in The Crag if both sides scored a kill at sudden-death or even if red killed someone a few seconds before blue did, blue would still win. And before a certain fix this happened in GvG too; if Guild Lords died at the same of even if red killed blue lord a few millisecons before blue would still win etc.
Lets get Anet to fix it!
PS: Oh and maybe because you forgot to bring balanced stance!
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
After the first summon, further stacking is not possible (counter resets but further kills do not accumulate stacks) rendering the sigil useless after which.
Also impedes you from stacking on other sigils even after this reset; hit 26 stacks and summon, counter resets but when you switch to bloodlust/luck/corruption/accuracy those stacks will also fail to accumulate.
The limited duration of the summon is also not mentioned on the tooltip.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Oh and upping per boss chest rewards causes the risk of people just farming the first boss for both tokens (hear some people complaining about having to farm the first boss 1000 times for full set so I assume some people are taking that approach currently) AND monetary rewards (IF they up the per boss reward) and make GW2 even more of a farming fest…
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Why I avoid going with PUGs altogether, I know the members of my warband won’t bail out midway. Even with PUGs though I try my hardest to communicate ideas and how to counter the boss mechanics so we don’t just keep running into the boss and wiping repeatedly for no reason.
Usually end up with a net PROFIT of ~10 silvers by the end of my explorable dungeon runs after paying the repair bills (1.5 wipes per boss before figuring out how to exploit mechanics to trivialise the encounter) since my philosophy is to bring as many defensive skills as possible since as long as you are dealing damage, you will wear out whatever and its much safer than to sacrifice survivability (trait+utility wise) for damage since boss fights lasts so long regardless of your damage output.
Yeah okay none of that changes the fact that 1 copper per chest is terribly unrewarding. Heck, 10s “profit” from completing an explorable is WOEFULLY unrewarding. You can make that same money doing much easier content elsewhere. Bigger risks, bigger challenge, should have bigger profit.
That depends on how much you value the dungeon sets. That’s what at the end of the day makes having a full dungeon set more prestige, it is (perhaps unintentionally) a measure dedication and of of how well you/your pocket endlessly survived through all those runs. :P
Elitist thoughts ahead ->
If they WERE to increase the rewards though, those casual zergers/farmers would start complaining since they would feel ‘forced’ to do dungeons and it will be even harder to make form a competent PUG once those self-entitled type of people become more prevalent in the LFG. Sure it’s harder to form a group currently but the players you currently get are those you can carry or are self-sufficient enough on their own.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Essentially it doesn’t matter what professions you bring as long as you can bring the following as needed: aoe condition removals – essential for survival against mass poison/burn bosses in the form of signet of locust, healing rain, healing spring, shake it off, save yourselves (basically any profession except the mesmer? can do this), blocks/projectile nullifiers/reflectors (everything except necroes can do this) to trivialize projectile based bosses/ones that use a projectile pull that would otherwise annihilate the dodge-depleted, snares both in soft (cripple/chilled) and hard (immobilise) for melee control and boon removals for boon to make certain dungeons faster (boon removals most readily available to necroes/mesmers).
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Why I avoid going with PUGs altogether, I know the members of my warband won’t bail out midway. Even with PUGs though I try my hardest to communicate ideas and how to counter the boss mechanics so we don’t just keep running into the boss and wiping repeatedly for no reason.
Usually end up with a net PROFIT of ~10 silvers by the end of my explorable dungeon runs after paying the repair bills (1.5 wipes per boss before figuring out how to exploit mechanics to trivialise the encounter) since my philosophy is to bring as many defensive skills as possible since as long as you are dealing damage, you will wear out whatever and its much safer than to sacrifice survivability (trait+utility wise) for damage since boss fights lasts so long regardless of your damage output.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Move speed don’t stack above 25%. +33% move speed from swiftness is fastest you can obtain. Backpedalling is slower than running forwards. Being in combat mode snares you (by 15% I think) so if anything hits you/ you deal damage or you take fall damage, your chasers will probably catch you.
Best snare on the run is Frozen Ground since while you may hit some people with Unsteady Ground or Static Field, the other chasers who manage to avoid them will catch you.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Another advantage with stacking crafting on one character is the xp gains means you can attain the skill points as needed for legendaries faster on one character rather than spreading the xp out. That’s assuming you don’t want to skip a few levels through crafting on your alts tho.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Dude, seriously… FACT: u cannot awoid being hit by close range AoE attacks when u’re close range. U’re either dead or u’re not close range. Telling me to use dodge + 3 in fire to close range or 4+5 in air ussing dagger/dagger every single time is not realistic.
What about the Eye of Zhaitos making the shards go all directions. u take 2 of those and u’re dead, 2 more and u’re defeated. U can’t avoid that. The only thing u can do is go staff and back off which is not that horrible but if that’s the case they should also give us weapon switch
In the end, melee is not the problem, the niche-ness of the off-hand dagger is. With a dagger/focus you can reflect/nullify those shards. If you choose to forgo utility for a dagger off-hand then of course some other team members gonna have overcome that weakness for you.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Oh and as for sPvP, if you are forced to face an necro 1v1 switching to scepter/focus before engaging is your best since Phoenix and Magnetic Wave can remove those condi stacks better than Healing Rain could.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
I said dagger /dagger is good as is scepter. what im saying is that u can’t and there’s no way to go dagger/dagger in an explorer instance. tried it and it can’t be done. I’m talking about lvl 80 “advanced” playing not solo
You CAN if your utilities are mist form, arcane shield and obsidian flesh :P
The main problem is the bosses’ defiance stacks that disables the usefulness of Updraft and Earthquake i.e. the only useful skills on the dagger off-hand since the others e.g. Frost Aura and Churning Earth are a joke leaving you with a mostly redundant off-hand.
Okay it does suck.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
Ever been in an dungeon in explorable mode? Magnetic Wave and Swirling Aura can really save teams and PUGs who can’t dodge something like that ranger boss with the aoe pull → dagger storm. Sure Staff is hands down the easiest but even in zergfests the dagger main-hand is hands down the best weapon to tag monsters with once you get comfortable with.
Quasi-elitist dungeoneer and missing Gw1 GvGs greatly.
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”
“GW2’s PvE is almost as bad as the PvP.”