Guild Wars 2 Catch All

That makes sense, especially that last bit

Heretk wrote:

I have yet to see or feel the true merit of going full zerk. I know a lot of the folks that post builds on Youtube and whatnot advocate it. For dungeon runs though, I get by just fine with zerk/knight/PVT combo gear. Might not set any speed records, but I get through.

The merit is in the speed... in a lot of situations the damage output from zerk builds in zerk teams kills everything so quickly that support/vitality/toughness are a non-issue. The tradeoff for afficionados of the zerk style is that if you sacrifice DPS for group support (that isnt might stacks and fury), you are increasing the time it takes to take things down. This increases the likelihood that someone will screw up. go down, miss a dodge etc... When you're at a point where you're putting out that much damage, all the other boons and damage mitigation for the party are essentially pointless.

At the other extreme you have high level fractals, where no matter out tanky/boony you are you die in 1-3 hits. The only options are to go full zerk to kill things as fast and to bring skills that mitigate 100% of the damage (i.e. reflect).

I'not necessarily an advocate of the rah rah zerk style, but having run dungeons where at least 3 players had randomly decided to "play how they want" and run full support builds.... it's miserable, fights easily take 3x as long as with just a regular balanced group (with setups like yours), and all those boons do a really poor job of mitigating the damage. The way the balance goes in PvE and dungeons, the game (probably by design) skews toward DPS being overwhelmingly the better choice. It's a case where killing things quicker is a form of support, and unlike boons, DPS builds synergise really well with other DPS biulds.

Delmarqo wrote:
Badferret wrote:

If you haven't already, bind dodge to a key (I use the default v) and disable double tap to dodge.

I've read that before but have never done it. How do you control the direction of the dodge? Or does that matter in situations where doing it in one keystrokes shaves just that bit of time you need shaved to survive?

It makes a difference.

I have dodge bound to one of my mouse side buttons. Don't think I have enough fingers to play properly and bind it to the keyboard.

Pros and cons to both sides there methinks. Full zerk doesn't do much good if the player doesn't have the reflexes or skill to stay alive. I agree that leaning too much to a "support" build is not beneficial. But a bit of damage mitigation is a good thing. For the record, the context of my earlier assertion is in vanilla dungeon pug runs. Not high level fractals or speed record runs.

Heretk wrote:

Pros and cons to both sides there methinks. Full zerk doesn't do much good if the player doesn't have the reflexes or skill to stay alive. I agree that leaning too much to a "support" build is not beneficial. But a bit of damage mitigation is a good thing. For the record, the context of my earlier assertion is in vanilla dungeon pug runs. Not high level fractals or speed record runs.

Yeah I was mainly addressing the merits of the full zerk approach.

Tenebrous wrote:

You notice in the Atherblades dungeon and to a lesser extent in the tower, Full on DPS/Zerk builds are effectively penalized for their lack of staying power.

Certainly in the tower.
In the aether dungeon I believe zerk builds still did well.... dispatching the clockwork in about 2 cycles.

You notice in the Atherblades dungeon and to a lesser extent in the tower, Full on DPS/Zerk builds are effectively penalized for their lack of staying power.

Certainly in the tower.
In the aether dungeon I believe zerk builds still did well.... dispatching the clockwork in about 2 cycles.

It is everything before the clockwork that was the problem. Fragile builds in the dungeons I ran were demolished by the rampant AoE and everything else that came before.

The overseer especially would just take people down.

The other thing about zerk builds is that a whole party of them are fragile. If one goes down, the chance of a total wipe increases by quite a bit.

With my Necro's power/Death Shroud build (PTV gear) there have been times its me and perhaps someone else who ends up finishing off the boss.

It's official. I have not felt the need to log in for a month. I may be on my 2nd break

But second breakfast is wonderf... oh wait. (I say, as I continue to not have logged in for months and months. :D)

I logged in once about a month ago. But I haven't played on a regular basis since September. I think I was starting to feel the weight of being stuck at 99% world completion and not finishing my main's story. I should check back, though, because I must have my first year anniversary gifts!!

I thought this thread had been a little quiet lately

I'm still playing, although my weekday gaming time has dropped to around an hour (two at most) per night. That's enough for a roam around WvW or some Living Story PvE if it's fun or the rewards are worth it. Otherwise I'm happy to ignore LS. I'm having fun with my Necro (full condi dire/rabid now) ... new characters give your MMO the 'new car' smell

Overall I'm at the stage where I want be playing other games and slotting in GW2 around them. I still enjoy the game and it's the 'easy' option to log in when I have an hour to kill. On the other hand I kinda feel it stopped giving me new experiences a long time ago ... Fractals don't interest me (too time consuming) so after next week's patch I'll probably head back to the pile.

No worries.

I'll be holding the fort until you come by and visit.

I personally did enjoy fractals, so I am looking forward to the next patch.

Patch notes are up.

I can't comment on the Fractal as I don't do them, but I was disappointed to see that Anet has reached the bottom of the barrel and begun tarting up existing armour sets to sell in the gem store. Not just any set either, a T3 cultural with particle effects for 800 gems. I'm sure the people who saved 119 gold to buy the original T3 set are thrilled ...

babakotia wrote:

Patch notes are up.

I can't comment on the Fractal as I don't do them, but I was disappointed to see that Anet has reached the bottom of the barrel and begun tarting up existing armour sets to sell in the gem store. Not just any set either, a T3 cultural with particle effects for 800 gems. I'm sure the people who saved 119 gold to buy the original T3 set are thrilled ...

On one hand I can understand being upset.

On the other, if this means I can one day get some of those sweet asura armors on my humans and sylvari, I am all for it.

I'm afraid I don't see any valid reason for the angst over the new gem shop armor. If you don't like it, don't buy it. If you do, hooray for options! I personally think it's pretty damn ugly, but I'm not the type to spend money on armor skins in any event.

The fractal content sounds like good fun, but sadly I've only ran fractals about 6 times total because I really hate trying to learn new things like that with PUGs. If anyone wants to make some guild runs I'd love to tag along to see fractals both old and new.

Tyops wrote:
babakotia wrote:

Patch notes are up.

I can't comment on the Fractal as I don't do them, but I was disappointed to see that Anet has reached the bottom of the barrel and begun tarting up existing armour sets to sell in the gem store. Not just any set either, a T3 cultural with particle effects for 800 gems. I'm sure the people who saved 119 gold to buy the original T3 set are thrilled ...

On one hand I can understand being upset.

On the other, if this means I can one day get some of those sweet asura armors on my humans and sylvari, I am all for it.

I did not see that in the notes only something about flameX armors.

EDIT: I see what you are talking about now. I had to see the page from home fore the thing would show. Work has gotten very strict about things lately.

Also I am torn now. I have been wanting to gather more Draonite Ore and acutally like the tower, but I have had a hankering to run more fractals but have not really had the chance (lvl 22 all around BTW).

I'm okay with it as long as they aren't taking away existing options. Because I saved up all that gold for T3 armor on my sylvari. If I log back on and it's gone, then I'll be upset.

It's half the price of standard t3 (converting gems to gold) and can be acquired by any race, largely negating its status as a cultural set.

Oh. Well, bummer. Ah well, what's done is done.

Yeah. It's not that I want to deny other players nice sets, its that up until now cultural has been different. As race specific armour, its worn by the Destiny Edge mentors and is evidently fairly high status gear (Rytlok is a Tribune of the Legion, Logan the Captain of the Seraph).

From a player perspective, its one of the myriad of reasons to choose one race over another, and as the most expensive set of armour currently in the game its a long term goal for most players but an achievable one.

I appreciate that some people won't be concerned by this at all, but I can also see why others might be upset by the precedent.

babakotia wrote:

I appreciate that some people won't be concerned by this at all, but I can also see why others might be upset by the precedent.

Yeah, the real issue would have been if it counted for the achievements.

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I played a bit of the new fractals stuff. It's been nice. Some of it is buggy (it wouldnt ben an ANet patch if it werent), but if you have enjoyed fractals in the past then it should be great for you now.

I completed the story instance and a run through at difficulty 20. It went well enough fought though the 1st part of the molten facility, and at the end we fought the 2 molten bosses. That fight is definitely more difficult than maw. I'll be looking to do more fractals over the next week or two for sure.

*Joy*

WxP to be account bound.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/w...

well dang, that should push me over the edge for guard leech or applied fortitude

GrandmaFunk wrote:

well dang, that should push me over the edge for guard leech or applied fortitude

Yeah it'll be good for freaks like us with 8 alts.

I assume they will pool the experience across characters, so those first 4 levels at a discount may be a bit lost on alts. That being said in case they dont, might be a good idea to go ahead and get those discounted levels on your characters who havent been to WvW, if only to get those free WvW boosters.

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Correction, the WvW account wide will sum total XP across characters, not ranks.

I.e., if you have 2 chars at rank 10 = your account will be rank 16 ( not 20 ) because of the discount on early levels.

Greetings.

So after almost a week of logging on and being essentially the only one online and representing GWJ I decided it was time to move on. I've joined the ZoS guild on NSP (http://www.zealotsofshiverpeak.com/). I know a few other GWJ players have also joined them.

For those of you who are still interested in playing GW2 with a great bunch of people I *Highly* recommend you make the move as I did. ZoS is a great guild, welcoming of new players and most of all, they are mature and very active in game (30-45 people online when I play on pacific time). They have a solid calendar of events, WvW and sPvP groups, skilled players, and a very active TS server if that interests you. (vibe reminds me of the first few months of GWJ on GW2.... which is to say very nice).

Suffice to say I was pretty sad about making the move, I had a great time with all of you and I hope some of you will join us in ZoS (Thursday, Hetrek, Eleima... you could find a home here). If anyone is interested in taking over leadership for the guild, or had some suggestions, send me a PM.

Of course I'll still be posting here plenty. *joy*

To be perfectly honest, I've kinda moved on from GW2 in an attempt to make progress on the ever growing pile. I think I must've logged on once or twice in the past month. Tops. I could probably make the move to ZoS as well, but I'm on so little these days, I'm not sure how active I'd be. And there's the whole time zone thing, of course, as you know. :/

I like your description of ZoS. I'm really not into doing random PUGs for dungeons and fractals and that's stopped me from experiencing a lot of the content since GWJ hasn't run many guild groups since the early days. WvW is also something that's obviously a lot more fun in an organized group. Maybe ZoS has the activity level it would take to get me sucked back into the game. Despite a pile of epic proportions I really want to play GW2, just not solely for the sake of leveling another alt to 80.

Eleima wrote:

To be perfectly honest, I've kinda moved on from GW2 in an attempt to make progress on the ever growing pile. I think I must've logged on once or twice in the past month. Tops. I could probably make the move to ZoS as well, but I'm on so little these days, I'm not sure how active I'd be. And there's the whole time zone thing, of course, as you know. :/

Yeah I dont know what their representation is across time zone. No worries I wasnt calling you out to come back (well maybe a little), just pointing out some of the types of GWJers I t have played with that I think would enjoy ZoS.

Elycion wrote:

I like your description of ZoS. I'm really not into doing random PUGs for dungeons and fractals and that's stopped me from experiencing a lot of the content since GWJ hasn't run many guild groups since the early days. WvW is also something that's obviously a lot more fun in an organized group. Maybe ZoS has the activity level it would take to get me sucked back into the game. Despite a pile of epic proportions I really want to play GW2, just not solely for the sake of leveling another alt to 80.

Well have a look at their board, joining is simple enough, make a post on their recruitment forum and then you'll be invited for a quick chat on TS. Seems to happen quick enough.

Predictably I finally burned out after finishing my legendary and have been spending my time in a couple of closed betas and finally paying attention to my very neglected pile.

I think it will take a full blown expansion to get me back full time, though I'm sure I will sample some of the more interesting updates until then.

Badferret wrote:

Predictably I finally burned out after finishing my legendary and have been spending my time in a couple of closed betas and finally paying attention to my very neglected pile.

I think it will take a full blown expansion to get me back full time, though I'm sure I will sample some of the more interesting updates until then.

Yeah getting the legendary kinda does that. Enjoy the pile.

GW2 would really benefit from an expansion. I really hope it gets one.

Well, you don't have to leave the GWJ guild to join the ZoS one, so it's not exactly a move.
I've been on a very long break from GW2 to work on the pile as well. I imagine I'll get back to GW2 at somepoint, especially if they put out an expansion (or equivalent permanent storyline added over several updates). I found the time sensitive updates dissuaded me from logging in as I didn't have time to finish the new content before it disappeared.