Firebeard.1746

I agree with OP, most of them feel drawn out. That being said, I hate it when people just skip all the trash too. I want trash clearing and boss fights, but doesn't take 1 hour.

> @"Ashantara.8731" said: > What does Drooburt have to do with it? You're getting nothing worth mentioning in return for your legendary luck from him. It's so much less than whatever you get out of those bags. The math on one of the videos said otherwise when I crunched it. Remember drooburt is 0.7c/1 luck. Maybe i screwed up, but being optimal is my modus operandi.

Still though, this guy (who I believe is different than the others), with max magic find, opening 6k+ didn't get a SINGLE 8g ornament. That's broken. It's more about them advertising a drop and it not showing up at all with max MF on massive quantities and the few times we actually see it is on lower MF.

> @"Cyninja.2954" said: > No, you literally do not want that. Let me explain: > The common misconception that class balance is to blame for the dps meta is just that: a misconception. T**his game is designed from the ground up with active damage avoidance and mitigation in mind**. What this means is that good players are more than capable to mitigate all or nearly all damage via pure skill. In any case where this is not the case, defensive skills and boons are taken. The games design from the ground up is responsible for the dps meta, not class balance (though balance can affect how easy or difficult certain encounter can be for certain classes). > > IF the developers actually designed an encounter WITHOUT focus on damage, and most encounters are not that focused on damage to begin with as to make the damage requirements difficult to meet, you would end up with fights similar to: Xera, Deimos, Dhuum, Qadim 2, etc. Essentially fight with a ton of extra mechanics which players have to deal with instead of just dealing damage. Now take a guess which fights are most difficult for non static players to tackle: the ones where more than only dps is expected and players need to fulfill specific tasks. > > Even 100CM meets exactly that criteria. The main mechanic to overcome is positioning and crowd control aka defiance bars. Expert players are more than capable of running this CM on differing classes, meeting the cc requirements and positioning so that damage to group is minimal (even running without healers). Weaker players can not and are either locked out of the fractal or dependent on running the most run meta class as to ease success. > > What you actually want IS fights designed around damage and nothing else, because every class in this game can meet dps requirements from a balance perspective. **This**. I believe is the problem. An online game doesn't do as well with that. And there's tons of players that for whatever reason, slow reflexes, latency, etc just don't do well with this. I believe my super high completion % on WoJ with an earthen heal tempest auramancer is because it takes the edge off of that sort of mechanic. 40% DR with 100% uptime gives people a chance to react to the chains for another tick or two and it's the difference between a death and non-death. TBH balancing an Iframe mechanic like dodging against latency is horrendous. If the mechanic is too long, everyone can easily get out, there's no skill involved. If it's too short, lots of people die, perhaps not even due to their own issues. I guess my biggest issue with the elitists in general is they're allergic to more fault tolerant setups, success rates be damned, because if you're not killing it in 30s, you're "holding everyone back" I think the latter part is the real issue people have. Though honestly, I feel like a system where people have to stack to boonshare is also a dumb design because there's less freedom in mechanic design (and leads to some of the horrendous mechanics you mention). Heck, even healing is severely limited by range. Though some of those mechanics on those fights aren't much better than DPS meta. Sabetha has a ridiculously short time to react for throwing the bomb or barrel (it's been a while), which without special bindings is clunky to pull off, dhuum has this ridiculous mechanic on a tight timer as well that almost requires its own skill to do. "Twitchy" mechanics seem to be the gw2 modus operandi. Even on those hard fights

I wish there was an almost never option. I rarely afk but I've done it (can count on 1 hand vs hundreds of matches played and lost). Usually only when I can tell people on my team are trolling and/or we're very close to losing anyway. I have had rally matches before, so I'll go down swinging. But honestly, if you're a pip number cruncher, losing fast is probably more profitable than trying, even with the bonus pips for close matches. EDIT: given the responses here, maybe they should change the cap to about 300 points so people are trying the whole time.

I opened about 100 at around 850%+ MF and am sure that I didn't get a single of the 8g ornaments (or even the 88s ones), apparently reddit has already determined they're bugged, but I see no dev mention of this: This is very important to understand what's going on here, otherwise the annoying drooburt conversion story is meta for raw gold. Can we get a developer comment? I'd like the most convenient way of converting to also be the most profitable. Also, i feel super cheated right now. EDIT: This is embarassing, my OP had the wrong link.

> @"Rodrick.1942" said: > > @"Hannelore.8153" said: > > Its because Quickness and Alacrity are the only two boons that truly matter. Everything else is useful, yes, like Aegis, Protection and even Retaliation, but overall your party's performance will depend on those two boons along with Might and Fury. > > > > One problem is we have no viable tanking mechanics. Another is many boons are DPS-centric. Nerfing Quickness would help, but it'd still be a required component of any fight even if it provided only 5% extra attack speed. > > > > The game has always been lopsided towards pure DPS setups with a single full support or hybrid support player to carry the entire party, maybe two in raids due to the increased player count but that's about it. And the devs are unlikely to change this because they don't know how to make content that's not a DPS check anymore, and that's rather unfortunate. > > > > Hint: Underground Facility is a good example of versatile mechanics. Deepstone is another good example. A bad example would be Siren's Reef, which may as well be called One Thousand Years of Bosses. > > Siren's reef is the response from dev to tell us that "you need decent support / healer or different tactics to finish this fractal ", however player rate this one is a bad fractal just because they can't use no healer comp to finish this one. > > Another example is the removed instability "bird", this one has an easiest solution to counter : have someone to spam resistant to ignore blind. but people just don't like it and don't want to adjust build. > > So the reason this game always been toward dps check is our attitude, not dev's attitude. That's interesting because I've always seen Siren's as a soft DPS check too, if those adds don't go down it's a wipe. There was once when i was carried by some crazy DPS god who's ignored them, but I've literally had to teach tons of teams to keep them down or we'll be overwhelmed because they couldn't do Hyperfocused DPS god. Though a way the devs could take emphasis off DPS is to trigger events/mechanics on certain boss health %s. Like instead of doing the adds on a timer like Siren's, do it at boss health intervals so your team could end up getting zerged. And maybe not despawn adds on boss death.

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said: > > @"Firebeard.1746" said: > > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said: > > > You don't have to do what is meta. Create your own group if you don't see any to your liking in the LFG. > > > > > > DPS has been the go to for just about everywhere in PvE over the past 8+ years. > > > > > > Meta is usually always fairly narrow to a degree and has been for 8+ years. > > > > Usually the people in PuGs don't care, but i think it's toxic some people feel they have to lecture people on how to play, especially with fractals which has a massive overhead to climbing (ar collection + ascended gear). If i was more fragile i might quit the game mode altogether. Honestly i have run some parties with almost all supports in lower tiers because of how sparse the player base is. You have to use what's available. > > It depends on more than just simply telling someone how to play in order for something to be toxic. If the people in pugs usually don't care then why is this an issue for you? It seems your issue has more to do with how a handful of players treat you than the meta itself. Yeah, it's more the latter, but i feel like if things were balanced better they'd have less to troll about. Imo it's really condescending and discouraging in the context if everything it takes to climb fractals (and the span of time it took).

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said: > You don't have to do what is meta. Create your own group if you don't see any to your liking in the LFG. > > DPS has been the go to for just about everywhere in PvE over the past 8+ years. > > Meta is usually always fairly narrow to a degree and has been for 8+ years. Usually the people in PuGs don't care, but i think it's toxic some people feel they have to lecture people on how to play, especially with fractals which has a massive overhead to climbing (ar collection + ascended gear). If i was more fragile i might quit the game mode altogether. Honestly i have run some parties with almost all supports in lower tiers because of how sparse the player base is. You have to use what's available. I just would like some wind knocked out of the sails of the everyone is dps meta. Which by the way was how i started this character but because of lack of support while climbing, i swapped it into support before i invested too much into the character.

The best way to do this would be 1) Give each race its own voting slot -> lumping 5 different races into the same class could bloat the popularity when in reality the individual races could be far less popular 2) This should be a ranked voting system -> I think people have so many different favorites that the best way to make the most people happy is with ranked voting so most people get SOMETHING they'd be somehat happy with vs. 2% of the population is happy and everyone else grumbles.

> @"Threather.9354" said: > > @"Firebeard.1746" said: > > > @"Threather.9354" said: > > > Its just how the game is managed. When you promote illogical system with terrible competitive balancing, you end up with only emotional people around. Fix linking system, claim buff, siege balance etc. Not hard. > > > > Theoretically those people could just transfer to a different server + the best rewards are mostly participation based, and if you're outnumbered, you get a leg up on everyone as far as those rewards are concerned, outnumbered >>> being best server, though the buff is very capricious. > > > > There's literally no reason to be toxic. Don't justify bad behavior, 2 wrongs don't make a right. > > > > Only 2 of the many available pips/tick come from being top server. you can get up to 10 just for being high rank (3 base + 7 max rank). > > Issue is that if you remove 9 of the 10 reasons to play the game that are not being toxic, the distribution of toxic people will be more. There are no competitive guilds anymore due to objective balancing and minstrel meta, there are no competitive duelers anymore due to hypermobility and claim buffs and there are no dedicated server communities anymore because relinkings. There are no real blobfights anymore because objectives are too strong statwise instead of requiring brain and time to take, only some open field 1 push fiestas where 1 commander feeds another losing every fight out of 20. There are no scout guilds anymore because siege is useless (shield gens) and defending is completely number reliant. > > There is a reason why there is big lack of commanders and guilds, and it is that the game just isn't interactive or fair anymore. Which is due to bad balancing. > > Overall there is no excuse to be toxic but it is the main reason why people play the game these days. Look at the "fighting" communities, they're full of people who talk openly bad about everyone who isn't part of them like they're 13 year olds. There used to be mature communities and commanders but they just don't exist because the gamemode isn't fair or competitive anymore, just a cashcow for a company. I still think you're trying too hard to justify bad behavior by adding rhyme and reason. Those aren't real reasons. There are toxic people they will always be there, no matter the game, especially in competitive environments.

> @"Threather.9354" said: > Its just how the game is managed. When you promote illogical system with terrible competitive balancing, you end up with only emotional people around. Fix linking system, claim buff, siege balance etc. Not hard. Theoretically those people could just transfer to a different server + the best rewards are mostly participation based, and if you're outnumbered, you get a leg up on everyone as far as those rewards are concerned, outnumbered >>> being best server, though the buff is very capricious. There's literally no reason to be toxic. Don't justify bad behavior, 2 wrongs don't make a right. Only 2 of the many available pips/tick come from being top server. you can get up to 10 just for being high rank (3 base + 7 max rank).

> @"Crackers.9628" said: > I was roaming as thief. Some thief killed me and started jumping and dropped siege on me. Naturally I went back and killed him this time, only for someone on my own server to start trash talking me, calling me kitten, noob, he will transfer to farm me, etc. He has in the same guild as the thief I killed. > > The thief came back, and because my server mate stood on me, the thief could track my stealth and killed me. Then of course more trash talk and dropping siege. > > Of course the toxicity is rampant from other servers, but how are people so awful they literally grief their own teammates? Actively helping enemy server kill your own server. > Report both of them. Pretty sure this is against the rules. Really sounds like they're mad you bested them. Think of it this way: this person was so bad, they needed someone else's help to deal with you. Also I 100% guarantee that other person was on a throw-away account. They're there to spy on the other team. They wouldn't transfer because they'll lose that. For all you know, they could both be the same person.

1) You might not think a 1% Gold and/or MF bonus is a lot, but it really does add up. You are going to progress faster maxing achieves with the ACCOUNT-WIDE bonuses they offer. As others have said, they're often tied to particular rewards. As someone who one day wants a full legendary set, the Achieves required for vision are useful. I found other achievements in Jahai I liked so I did them too (1 gives a permanent GF bonus as a reward, in and of itself). I also found some pieces of story interesting for Jahai. Achievements help you experience the world in greater depth. And then lastly, you can do them if you're bored/want bragging rights.

> @"Kurrilino.2706" said: > Even if ANet would announce numbers or statistics you guys would never be satisfied. > Everyone that doesn't play the game how you guys dictate, is labeled a bot anyways. > Standing Farmers are the best example. Thousand of players getting called names and are labeled bots for no reason at all. Well when someone keeps suiciding mid and won't respond to the question "who here is not a bot" it makes one wonder. This does happen, but really it happens because there's a lot of obvious bad behavior in PVP anyway. It's the community's reality vs. what anet says. I think if the quality of matches improved and it became obvious there were fewer bots, people would be satisfied. But we mostly get static from our own observation against anet's "We're dealing with it, but we won't tell you anything about anything we've done". Which doesn't say much.

> @"AgentMoore.9453" said: > > @"Linken.6345" said: > > What have they done? > > They've added a loot bag you can buy as many of as you want (provided you have the luck to pay for them). The bags are affected by magic find, and of the few hundred I opened, the value of the objects therein was about 1.5 gold. Total. > > Not worth it to me, but I'm sure someone out there has been looking for something to do with their massive luck stockpile. What's your MF? The conversion rate for drooburt is about .7c/1Luck, I opened like 8 and got about 12s of junk (about .8c/1Luck). But that sucks if it's not equivalent to drooburt. I had about 400 MF at the time of opening.

Yeah giving the armory ascended gear devalues the value proposition of LA. If they did anything, I'd like them to release a tier of exotic soulbound gear on use that can be stat swapped at will and has infusion slots, and costs about as much as ascended to make, that way we can play with our characters' full capabilities before diving super deep into a particular ascended gear setup (and being forced to play for years before being able to experiment using leggies).

> @"kharmin.7683" said: > > @"Firebeard.1746" said: > > > @"kharmin.7683" said: > > > You might want to review this thread [https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/121390/an-update-on-game-security-and-player-reporting-in-guild-wars-2](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/121390/an-update-on-game-security-and-player-reporting-in-guild-wars-2#latest) before accusing Anet of not doing anything. > > > > Saying they're doing something but unwilling to explain what they actually did leaves lots of room for people to believe they aren't doing anything, especially when emprically, players are noticing otherwise. They could be doing something, but I think they need to be a little more open about who and how many they ban, etc. > > But they won't for privacy reasons. I'd rather that then have them be more specific and then being sued out of business. Blizzard has no problem publishing ban numbers. Also, I think it's stupid allowing F2P accounts into competitive game modes (especially ranked). The cost of punishment is severely decreased in that environment. Just make a new account.

> @"kharmin.7683" said: > You might want to review this thread [https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/121390/an-update-on-game-security-and-player-reporting-in-guild-wars-2](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/121390/an-update-on-game-security-and-player-reporting-in-guild-wars-2#latest) before accusing Anet of not doing anything. Saying they're doing something but unwilling to explain what they actually did leaves lots of room for people to believe they aren't doing anything, especially when emprically, players are noticing otherwise. They could be doing something, but I think they need to be a little more open about who and how many they ban, etc. As well as how they intend to regulate F2P account in competitive arenas.

The best advice I have for OP is to understand two things: How much DPS your skills are (damage/cast time) How much of your DPS will come from a given skill (damage/CD time). Do Prioritize #1 and fill with #2 as much as possible. This will only get you to a "passable" level but it's probably the best way to intuitively undesrtand your rotation. Sometimes there's very non-intuitive crap. For example I was practicing condi mirage when it finally occurred to me that most of my damage must be coming from axes outside of phantasm CDs. I started trying harder to land my ambush better, was still not getting much. Then i finally realized the seek function of the axes from my illusions wasn't working properly, they were spinning off into space! Then I noticed that repositioning clones with #3 before ambushing gives better seek on the axes. So I started being more intentional about where I spawned my clones and when i ambushed and I'm still not amazing at it, but at least I'm not mid teens (in thousands) of DPS any more.

Well the shards from the FS were only like 5. It was really low, like what I remember normal runs. I guess the extra seals make sense, but Given the current seal rewards it's really not much consolation for how annoying they are.

Griffon is easier to get by far, but skyscale is probably more useful. Griffon has very niche uses -> adventures, it's very fast when maxed with mastery and you can start from a large drop, it's pretty fun. Skyscale can go up way higher. The griffon is kind of like a baby flying mount without starting on altitude -> You can jump before flapping so you can get some distance off the ground and glide for a bit, but as far as traversing HUGE cliffs or something, it's not that great. It's probably my favorite mount, but it just has really niche uses. Also note, you will have to complete the mastery achievement for Jahai if you want Vision, Griffon adventures are one of the categories. You will also need skyscale for Vision as well. It just occurred to me some of the rifts are only accessible via skyscale.

> @"Cuks.8241" said: > > @"Firebeard.1746" said: > > > @"Cuks.8241" said: > > > > @"Firebeard.1746" said: > > > > Not sure you could argue this. In OW you can build whatever you want and get away with it, in PVE there are specialized roles way more than other MMOS (quick, alac, might, bs, spirits, healing, tanks, DPS) some builds can cover multiple bases sure, but comps in this game are way more complicated and support buffs can take skill to have to apply based on class (chrono specifically). At top end PVE, this game is FAR more difficult than anything I'd done in WoW. > > > > > > Most support roles in gw2 are just buff coverage. That is not much different to other games, they are just not called support usually, just DPS. When I was raiding in wow, the raid comps were just as complex and more strictly defined to get the optimum buff coverage and synergy. And buffs had unique effects per class (not like here where quickness is the same regardless who applies it) so the top meta was much narrower. With time blizzard tried to break that with giving more classes more options and unify buff effects because before that some classes never saw high-end raids. > > > > I think you're oversimplifying "just buff coverage" in this game =/= the same in WoW. In this game you actually have to weave those buffs into a real rotation, and you also have to make a stat sacrifice to give them over raw healing and/or DPS. Wow is "I press this button once every X MINUTES". Right now in WoW, there's only 3 buffs + heroism that matter. I actually really hate GW2's buff system in the context of group content. It's been around too long to change it, but it's annoying to say the least. > > My experience from WoW raiding comes from burning crusade and Wolk. Especially BC had probably the tightest meta in history. 25 man raid format and every group (e.g., tank group, caster group...) had a strict class and build combo for best synergy. You talking about the shadow priest shadow weaving/ruin warlock combo that was meta in BC and they took just enough of every other class to provide buffs/heals/tank? If you weren't doing that hyper debuff efficient comp, Really it was some combo of 1 mage, 1 priest, 1 Shaman, 1 druid, 2 locks, + enough unique pallies for buffs (2-3 iirc), so we're looking at ~30% of your raid > I would say rotations are harder in GW2, the combat is more action-oriented. DPS checks are tighter in wow. But playing a "support" is usually no harder than playing a pure dps. Alaren, qfb, BS hard? As long as you can kill 1 boss with a higher ilvl, your group will start climbing in dps, and with easier rotations, it's easier to hit that cap. Heck, frost mage in BC was a 1 button every 2s rotation and a 2nd every 45s, you just used utility as situation demands. The rotations being so simple makes the dps demands as i've mentioned earlier, nothing but a gear/consumable/synergy check. Also note, what % of your raid is a unique support role, even in BC? Far lower than in this game, at least half your raid is providing some sort of utility Also if your boon support dies in this game you lose the boon. Definently harder here than WoW In fact the only deadly death in wow is the tank, sometimes healer. Here it can be any of the supports + anyone filling a raid mechanic role, or even 1 dps depending on the boss. The few times i raided back in your era you could still kill a boss with a dead person or 2. And the mechanics in gw2 feel way more intense than anything i experienced in wow, back then or even BFA when i still raided. The only reason why raiders in this game think it's easier is because this game isn't famous for its raiding and the content get so stale with new raid releases being so sparse, after the players learn the raids they just don't feel hard any more. From a player skill perspective, this game is far more intense. I don't play any of those classes, but their rotations are definitely more involved than the games i was comapring. I did have a guildie with an alacren who started refusing to play it because he couldn't hit its DPS capabilities. SO people tap out when they struggle.

> @"Shao.7236" said: > Losing an unrecoverable mid? Attempt to decap far or go back home to defend if someone already does it. Commit to cap if viable and defend from respawns 1v1. > > Players on respawn from mid will take care of home, far no longer possible? Fall back to mid for a back cap / help team that should have home secure by now. > > Dying in the process? Teamwork your way home after respawn if it's not been won already or head mid to team fight and win it. Should be able to rinse and repeat from there. Except if most of your team dies in that mid, you better bet you'll get chased far and killed and now they have mid and far. That's basically the problem when people rush far at start, leaving your team in a 3v4 situation is a bad idea because more than likely they'll die. The strategy really only works if the enemy team is doing the same thing. But most of the time what I've seen is the enemy team's home capper is smart, lands a few really high damaging abilities in MID to throw for them, then goes.

> @"Cuks.8241" said: > > @"Firebeard.1746" said: > > Not sure you could argue this. In OW you can build whatever you want and get away with it, in PVE there are specialized roles way more than other MMOS (quick, alac, might, bs, spirits, healing, tanks, DPS) some builds can cover multiple bases sure, but comps in this game are way more complicated and support buffs can take skill to have to apply based on class (chrono specifically). At top end PVE, this game is FAR more difficult than anything I'd done in WoW. > > Most support roles in gw2 are just buff coverage. That is not much different to other games, they are just not called support usually, just DPS. When I was raiding in wow, the raid comps were just as complex and more strictly defined to get the optimum buff coverage and synergy. And buffs had unique effects per class (not like here where quickness is the same regardless who applies it) so the top meta was much narrower. With time blizzard tried to break that with giving more classes more options and unify buff effects because before that some classes never saw high-end raids. I think you're oversimplifying "just buff coverage" in this game =/= the same in WoW. In this game you actually have to weave those buffs into a real rotation, and you also have to make a stat sacrifice to give them over raw healing and/or DPS. Wow is "I press this button once every X MINUTES". Right now in WoW, there's only 3 buffs + heroism that matter. I actually really hate GW2's buff system in the context of group content. It's been around too long to change it, but it's annoying to say the least.