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Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns |OT| Welcome to the Jungle...
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irfaanator
Banned
I agree with Ike, which is why I won't really try the raid. I only have a guardian really geared w/ knights gear w/ the altruistic healing build so I can only fit one role. The issue is that I can't switch to anything else so I can't contribute in other areas. Also since I dont have another class really geared, I don't have the class flexibility which is another big part of the raid. At least if you want to complete the raid with those exact 10 ppl. Otherwise you are going to have to kick people out to ensure you beat the boss. That's why I found the timer to funny. Without it, the raid wouldnt be as hard/role & class specific.
Also is there no ranked pvp right now? Dont want to do unranked but I guess I still have to find out if I like stronghold
Also is there no ranked pvp right now? Dont want to do unranked but I guess I still have to find out if I like stronghold
Well, there's also the fact that every enhancement we get increases the effectiveness of all previous enhancements. And working on raising the gold to buy some of the materials taught me a little bit about some of the more casual TP markets. But, um, thanks for the thanks everyone.
UltimateIke
Member
The problem I was illustrating is that the second "highly spec'd" or "serious push" group the two of you are referring to doesn't exist within GAF. We can't reliably find 10 people that actually have the builds they are expected to have to be able to clear the raid wing (or even the first boss for that matter).
Maybe the first group of players will eventually graduate over to the second as suggested, but I wasn't expecting so many people in the guild to be so laissez-faire.
Just get Sinister. It's cheaper and works just as well.
I was looking at the price of Black Diamonds. Ouch.
Holy....It was like 40s a week ago....
irfaanator
Banned
that reminded me of the other reason why I loled at the raid boss. The inclusion of role specific stuff in gw2 when it tried to go away from that. Tank? healer? Sounds like the trinity to me in some form, but that's just probably me
irfaanator
Banned
yea true. Like me. just different than what I imagined in how they'd approach the raid bosses. I don't have any complaints on the raid itself, just things I thought about
I don't see why you couldn't scrapper tank. They have good sources of mitigation, and are capable of generating hilarious amounts of might stacks through juggernaut and mass momentum. The crit chance traits are no joke either.
I think the tank roles are a bit more freeform than DPS at the moment.
I think the tank roles are a bit more freeform than DPS at the moment.
No, Scrapper tank seems viable. But lets face it, if you're an Engi they'll want you to condi.
irfaanator
Banned
the one nice thing about pigeonholing is you can spend a base amount of gold on gear and not be shunned in pug groups and not have to switch gears b/c ppl won't accept scrapper tanks. that's about it
UltimateIke
Member
With absolute certainty, being the best you can be within your "role" is far more pertinent than which class you choose. ArenaNet has always stressed that every class should be capable of filling every role, and the raids are not balanced so strictly as to require a specific class distribution to be completed. Again, it's just roles.
Years of the "berserker meta" are leaving people high and dry when they are suddenly asked to tank or heal or focus condition damage though. But even more painful is that we've played for years with any build being viable because your role in every encounter was simply to stay alive, and suddenly just staying alive isn't an option at all. You have to fight, and you have to mean it.
Years of the "berserker meta" are leaving people high and dry when they are suddenly asked to tank or heal or focus condition damage though. But even more painful is that we've played for years with any build being viable because your role in every encounter was simply to stay alive, and suddenly just staying alive isn't an option at all. You have to fight, and you have to mean it.
Kos Luftar
Member
My group last night had a Tempest Tank and he did pretty well and the rest of us probably didn't have optimal builds but that didn't matter because the fight mechanics were still killing us.
Hope everyone there has fun learning it. I know everyone got pumped up after that one run where we got to phase 2 but died right away.
Currently I have only a berserker armor set on my Scrapper but I get downed by the seekers really quick. I need to figure out a way to avoid them or to take that damage.
Hope everyone there has fun learning it. I know everyone got pumped up after that one run where we got to phase 2 but died right away.
Currently I have only a berserker armor set on my Scrapper but I get downed by the seekers really quick. I need to figure out a way to avoid them or to take that damage.
Just to add, the guild that beat the raid pretty much confirmed any class is viable. Some maybe more than others for some roles, but overall any class works. Its the player skills and gear that matter, not their class.
Kos Luftar
Member
Can the fire elemental powder be used in raids?
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Elemental_Powder
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Elemental_Powder
The condi duration from Viper is really important so I wouldn't say sinister works just as well. Full Viper isn't necessary though as long as your food and other sources of condi duration get you to 100%
appletoasty
Member
Can't use most any consumables that summon things, including mortar kit, pet ogre whistle, harpy feathers, etc. Also can't use runes that summon things like the tropical bird and the rock dog.
Will my halo work?
appletoasty
Member
I dont think so Mikey, that's too strong for raids
The rub, of course, is that after class, people will completely focus on the gear first, then useless metrics like AP, and only then will player skill be a factor. Based on the last 72 hours, I'm not liking where this is going, community-wise.
RIP Privateer runes
What are you trying to go for? Adding a little bit of condi won't be as effective as staying full direct dps AFAIK
Class, gear, AP (even though it's useless) is easy to see before getting into the raid. It's easy for a group to determine whether a player theoretically fits their need in the raid. Player skill will always be one of the most important things but I can't see any way for the general population to consider it when forming pug groups.
appletoasty
Member
You're better off focusing on either a power or a condi build, if you want power stick with your marauders. You could always make a second exotic set for condi when you feel like changing up your playstyle though.
This first week is a big shock to a lot of people because they will realize they may not be as good as they thought they were after 3 years of sleeping while doing CoF1. Once the dust settles and raids are taken for what they are (the hardest content in the game which you have to be prepared for), I think things will get better. The fact it will be impossible to pug anything beyond vale Guardian (and if you do get to suvh point then you will be ready for anything) will also help keep the community expectations in random groups low.
This is the first time some people will be pushed out of their comfort zone, and as such I expect a lot of drama.
human onion
Banned
In my experience, if you give too many ways to do something, that thing is typically too easy. Deus Ex is my favorite game, but it's not particularly difficult.
The raid from my impressions doesn't seem that tight, while still giving a hefty challenge, so it seems they succeeded with that.
The raid from my impressions doesn't seem that tight, while still giving a hefty challenge, so it seems they succeeded with that.
Apple I am but a poor sad pathetic little man, I only own one piece of ascended armor so far as it is! Got a fancy mauraders chest
appletoasty
Member
Apple I am but a poor sad pathetic little man, I only own one piece of ascended armor so far as it is! Got a fancy mauraders chest
Exotic man, exotic! Much cheaper if you just want to mess around with new ways to play.
Apple I am but a poor sad pathetic little man, I only own one piece of ascended armor so far as it is! Got a fancy mauraders chest
Full power exotic and full condi exotic would serve you better than mixing your ascended set.
Okay, Stronghold:
The most important thing is the mist essence spawns. Bar none. If there are three of you in the opponent's base and a mist essence is about to spawn, unless you already have two heroes with you one of you should go to one of the spawns. If two mist essences should spawn, two of you should leave.
Mist Essences don't just help you push. They give you 50 points (ten player deaths, also the same amount of points as if you took down a wall) and even if you don't bust into their lord room, the points give you extra leeway so that if the game goes to time, you win. And if both teams are defending properly, the game can often go to time.
The most important thing is the mist essence spawns. Bar none. If there are three of you in the opponent's base and a mist essence is about to spawn, unless you already have two heroes with you one of you should go to one of the spawns. If two mist essences should spawn, two of you should leave.
Mist Essences don't just help you push. They give you 50 points (ten player deaths, also the same amount of points as if you took down a wall) and even if you don't bust into their lord room, the points give you extra leeway so that if the game goes to time, you win. And if both teams are defending properly, the game can often go to time.
You left this off the patch notes:
I'll have to test that and see what gains I get back.
Of course, and I expected that and think it's a good thing. I'm talking about the community's knee-jerk response a mere 3 days after raids went live, going straight to the old familiar MMO fallbacks; pigeonholing classes into/out of roles, focus on gear checks and cookie-cutter builds vs. skill, wanting DPS meters, etc.
I don't know why I thought it would be different this time, other than the foundation was so much better... but here we are with the old MMO mentality creeping in. It's not like this sort of stuff wasn't already happening anyway, right?
Ah, it wasn't in the notes when I copied them, thanks.
Good read. Thankfully since I've only been playing with guildies I haven't encountered this, but I figured something like this would probably happen. I hope when the dust settles people will embrace the inherent flexibility that the team comp allows.
The issue is the team composition for raids is like a massive puzzle. You've got roles like tank, healer, condi dps, and regular dps. Then within those roles you need certain abilities like boon strip, specific boons, aoe hard/soft cc for seekers, melee dps, and ranged dps. Your group could go with a phalanx warrior for might, but depending on the classes/builds you have you could potentially blast fire fields for might instead.
So it's a puzzle where you have hundred of pieces (each class/build combo) and each piece connects into specific other pieces and your goal is to find exactly 10 pieces that all fit together perfectly. It can be hard to do, especially when you're flexible with team comps so I'm not surprised pugs are pigeonholing classes/builds into certain roles. If an engineer is always condition damage, then you already know exactly what they can do and how everything else fits. I hope that organized teams continue to show the variety of compositions that can be used because I feel like something needs to counterbalance the natural tendency towards pigeonholing.
With that out of the way, my current dilemma is getting ascended gear. I can pretty easily put together 1, maybe 2 sets, but looking at my ranger right now I can potentially go tank-healer (nomad druid), healer w/ damage output (apothecary druid), condi dmg (sinister ranger), or power dps (zerker or marauder ranger). As mentioned in that blog there is the perception that ascended is necessary and at this point I can't say whether it is or not. I think vale guardian is probably doable without it, but at the current level of familiarity most of us have with the raid that extra edge offered by ascended seems necessary. I think all these builds could potentially be useful in raids and each lets me fill a different role, but I just don't have the gold or mats to do it all at the ascended level.
Anyways, most any time I'm on I'm down for raids. I don't mind doing them as a learning experience and with 3 separate multi-hour attempts under my belt I feel comfortable explaining them to anyone who hasn't done Vale Guardian yet.
shysaursoft
Member
Kos Luftar
Member
Here is my all engi raid group.
1. Pistol/shield engi with bomb kit and high toughness to kite the boss. Drop bombs down as u kite the guardian.
1. Pistol/shield engi with bomb kit in the dps group using the healing bombs trait so the blog gets healed all the time
4. Pistol+shield/net turret/thumper turret engis for the green circle. Run zerker gear. Use turrets and shields to keep the seekers away. Place all turrets at 4 "corners of the" 1/3 of the floor area. (Center, obelisk, 2 straight edge sides)
4. Pistol/x or rifle grenadiers whatever makes sense for condo damage.
4/10 Engis also bring throw mine for striping the buff from blue guard. Preferably the 4 circle Engis.
The tanker will kite the boss towards each 2 turret area but nt right on top of them, condo Engis + 1 healing bomb engi will stack on boss and attack from behind. Green circle Engis will attack from range and move together as a blob to each green circle.
At the split phase 4 circle Engis go to blue guard. 3 condi Engis go red. 1 condi engi and 2 bombers at green.
Next phase do the same but move turrets to safe section of the battle ground. Ground electrifies clockwise every 20 seconds.
What do you guys think?
1. Pistol/shield engi with bomb kit and high toughness to kite the boss. Drop bombs down as u kite the guardian.
1. Pistol/shield engi with bomb kit in the dps group using the healing bombs trait so the blog gets healed all the time
4. Pistol+shield/net turret/thumper turret engis for the green circle. Run zerker gear. Use turrets and shields to keep the seekers away. Place all turrets at 4 "corners of the" 1/3 of the floor area. (Center, obelisk, 2 straight edge sides)
4. Pistol/x or rifle grenadiers whatever makes sense for condo damage.
4/10 Engis also bring throw mine for striping the buff from blue guard. Preferably the 4 circle Engis.
The tanker will kite the boss towards each 2 turret area but nt right on top of them, condo Engis + 1 healing bomb engi will stack on boss and attack from behind. Green circle Engis will attack from range and move together as a blob to each green circle.
At the split phase 4 circle Engis go to blue guard. 3 condi Engis go red. 1 condi engi and 2 bombers at green.
Next phase do the same but move turrets to safe section of the battle ground. Ground electrifies clockwise every 20 seconds.
What do you guys think?
Kos Luftar
Member
It's 1 block u get either way. That can be swapped.
This whole idea came from last nights run where Fishious told me about his previous run he did with retro and how he used turrets to keep the seekers away.
Also this is just a fun idea I don't expect people to run engi only.
Madness! Sheer engineer madness!
I feel like I should start interrogating people after each raid to learn how they changed their build to adapt to the raid. On that run I mentioned I believe we initially had 1 person on seeker duty, but that proved to be too much of a dps loss and I think we were already low on dps. So we stopped using a dedicated seeker wrangler and Retro mentioned something about turrets so I'm assuming that was the change that made the difference in our efficiency. It's possible other people changed up as well to deal with seekers so I can't say if it was the game changer or if I even understood everything that was going on since both tanking and healing was occupying every ounce of my attention.
I'm not terribly familiar with engineer so I can't say if the turret positioning is a good idea. Specifically for phases 3 & 5 where you'll be moving around the arena. By default the seekers seem to move towards the Vale Guardian, but change targets if people focus them. It might be better to have the tank lead the Vale Guardian and by proxy the seekers into turret range and have them toward the center rather than trying to blanket the arena.
Wow 50 points? I didn't know it was that high, that is pretty important. Although, ten player deaths? I didn't think those counted to team score in Stronghold? That is generally my issue with the game mode, if I'm behind in points and offensive pressure, I'm not sure at all what I can do to rebound my team. I just end up defending or running supply to knock down doors and get to more guards to kill for points. Which doesn't normally work since most people fall back to defense which doesn't seem to offer many points.
Brazil posted a Vale Guardian guide video.
It's very informative, covers the mechanics of the fight, explains role distribution (not profession/build), and mentions it can be done with a variety of team comps. The most important takeaway for me though is they used a nomad druid tank-healer and 9 dps rather than the standard 1 tank, 1 healer, 8 dps. Though they don't recommend this for people learning the fight. I'm just glad to know this is possible and I wasn't being a crazy fool for trying to pursue this build.
Looks like I need to git gud.
It's very informative, covers the mechanics of the fight, explains role distribution (not profession/build), and mentions it can be done with a variety of team comps. The most important takeaway for me though is they used a nomad druid tank-healer and 9 dps rather than the standard 1 tank, 1 healer, 8 dps. Though they don't recommend this for people learning the fight. I'm just glad to know this is possible and I wasn't being a crazy fool for trying to pursue this build.
Looks like I need to git gud.
Seekers seem to spawn in the middle of each sector. Turrets might be able to keep two of them out of the sector so you'll only have to worry about knocking back one of them. Setting that up in the later phases might be tricky but it sounds possible.
Squall ASF
Member
I finally finished mastering Herald last night, wooooooo! Now I don't feel completely gimped and can practice my proper skill rotation problem is most enemies go down too quick to go through the full progressions. I'll have to use the champs as practice but not always a good idea to attack them close haha Thank gondor that the Hammer is so awesome on Rev.
My jungle explorations are going well, cleared VB and AB and am most of the way done on TD but man it can be tough to figure your way around TD. Most of the vistas here actually require thinking and real exploring while the last two zones just required the mushroom or updraft masteries but were otherwise obvious. I've learned the first two tiers of gliding, exalted, and am nearly finished with tier 2 for nunoch which will be great as those burrows should really help get around TD. I'd like to get the anti invisibility skill next but I think I'm going to have to go back to gliding instead because I need that Leyline mastery. I'm prioritzing jungle traversal masteries and ones I need to progress the story first and foremost. Besides, infinite glide will be super fun! I'm thinking of saving my xp boosters until Tier 4 for masteries, what do you guys that have fully mastered some think? The first two tiers go pretty quick and I haven't extensively worked on a third tier yet so not sure about those but I know I got a little bit in Lean reasonably quick.
Also, the meta in TD must be serious business. Right before I went to bed the server was demanding everyone get in a single TeamSpeak room and everyone go to a specific wp and if you don't, please leave the zone because they want a full server dedicated to tackling the meta. They then kept urging people to join the chat room. If this is necessary, must be a doozy of an event! I was tempted to do it with them and learn it but it was already late.
problem is most enemies go down too quick to go through the full progressions. I'll have to use the champs as practice but not always a good idea to attack them close haha Thank gondor that the Hammer is so awesome on Rev. My jungle explorations are going well, cleared VB and AB and am most of the way done on TD but man it can be tough to figure your way around TD. Most of the vistas here actually require thinking and real exploring while the last two zones just required the mushroom or updraft masteries but were otherwise obvious. I've learned the first two tiers of gliding, exalted, and am nearly finished with tier 2 for nunoch which will be great as those burrows should really help get around TD. I'd like to get the anti invisibility skill next but I think I'm going to have to go back to gliding instead because I need that Leyline mastery. I'm prioritzing jungle traversal masteries and ones I need to progress the story first and foremost. Besides, infinite glide will be super fun! I'm thinking of saving my xp boosters until Tier 4 for masteries, what do you guys that have fully mastered some think? The first two tiers go pretty quick and I haven't extensively worked on a third tier yet so not sure about those but I know I got a little bit in Lean reasonably quick.
Also, the meta in TD must be serious business. Right before I went to bed the server was demanding everyone get in a single TeamSpeak room and everyone go to a specific wp and if you don't, please leave the zone because they want a full server dedicated to tackling the meta. They then kept urging people to join the chat room. If this is necessary, must be a doozy of an event! I was tempted to do it with them and learn it but it was already late.
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