Infusion.7149

The only ones I'm working on _slowly_ are the gen 2 pistol (literally only offhand except on condi engineer which is annoying to play + thief which is a meme if you use in mainhand) and shortbow (it's only condi for essentially every spec). That's where all my extra wood is going. My reason is the gen 1 legendary weapons are cheapened out by being on the TP.

Have armor (all weights) , all backpieces, amulet, rings, and trinkets done and multiple gen 2 weapons such as Nevermore and Astralaria.

I might work on more rings from WvW. It's the biggest cost savings as far as templates go if you use +9AR stat infusions that are 60+ gold a piece.

If I were to suggest the order of priority I would say:

* Backpiece --- Because the only place you can have ascended backpieces easily is LS3 and it costs 500 fractal relics each to get 2 infusion slots typically (an exception is Bough of Melandru)

* Rings --- 3 infusion slots is a huge savings if you use +9AR 5 attribute stat infusions and/or WvW stat infusions, not so much if you only raid/openworld ... if you don't WvW often then skip this

* Trinkets --- you can only have 1 of these per account (Aurora + Vision) and they are tedious PvE with some of the hardest jumping puzzles involved

* Armor --- It works for all stat sets , can be obtained in PVE/WVW/PVP

* Spear (Underwater weapons) --- semi-useless now but if you have 10 characters it will pay off once the armory arrives since 7 classes use it

* 2 hand Weapons used in more than 1 stat combination --- Not the ubiquitous Greatswords everywhere (it's a power weapon for all classes whether it is Warrior, Ranger, Guardian, Reaper, Mesmer) ... more like Staff (it's used in heal stat and in minstrel, power stat , and condi stat if you WvW)

* 1 hand weapons used in more than 1 stat combination --- mainly sword (condi weaver uses it and so does berserker ; diviner on mesmers with 50% Boon Duration ; minstrel's for WvW chronos ; power on guardians and revenants...) and axe (condi firebrand , mirage , rev offhand ; power on warrior , necros, and rangers). Shield if you don't intend to use a mainhand legendary (power on holosmiths and warriors; boon duration on chronos and support guardians) . Some other weaker considerations include dagger (condi tempest , ranger ; power spellbreaker and thieves ; PVE support scourge) and scepter (condi chronos , guardians, and scourges ; power tempests and some guardians).

* If you don't PvP whatsoever then I would skip the amulet and just amass eternal ice shards to get a stockpile of Asgeir's amulets. Another alternative is mist pendants.

There's a ready check of sorts for private DRMs but I don't think a ready check for fractals is in the works because ready check is part of the squad UI. Because pre-booning is common in fractals if someone is running ahead it isn't a good idea regardless ; party leader doesn't really exist in fractals and 5 man content since the kick system is based off votes.

In fact if you forget to set yourself to online or away instead of offline you can't ready check.

I've been doing Boneskinner since it launched (including when the damage was bugged) and success rate with just druid heals for one sub is abysmal in every group I've been in. Likewise while I've been able to solo heal my subgroup as firebrand I haven't been able to trust people off LFG as healbrand. People usually end up dying to tick damage. If you're using transfusion on a scourge then by definition it is not full DPS. If you have pulls you don't need dome.

The question in the original post was "how is the environment for PUGs" and that's the honest answer.

It's important to specify the variant of Cold War as well. The Icy Echoes variant punishes stacking but the Frigid Footfalls variant outright just has 200 radius. If you run melee on Icy Echoes pseudo "instability" with a 2s interval it has much less punishment than on Frigid Footfalls which chills you as well. This means running power StM chrono or condi quickbrand is more viable than with Frigid Footfalls. Cleave is more important than outright max DPS on Cold War, which is why fresh air tempests , holosmith, and scourges with epidemic and/or grasp excel there. You're able to use the special action abilities on the minibosses.

Unless you turn on Powerful Foes on Forging Steel, it isn't hard just long. (20+ min)

**Easy three**

* Shiverpeak Pass (Icebrood Construct) -- DPS golem

* Fraenir with firebrand per party to aegis becomes more or less trivial , you can jump the wave attack

* Voice and Claw with double firebrand and possibly druid if one is condi quickness --- people used to farm it

**Ones that you don't want to PUG often**

* Boneskinner unless you have 3-4 healers (double healbrand+heal scourge/druid) and decent DPS - not a required weekly chest strike so you get terrible results when it's not the daily

* Whisper of Jormag - your success goes up exponentially if you run a scourge with transfusion and use wurm on last 25% in hitbox , druid is also a good choice. Whenever I tag for this I put "stack on green, spread on red, don't chain people or stand in hitbox" in squad message so people don't have excuses.

* Cold War when it's frigid footfalls (10% health per tick armor ignoring) week - play a slightly ranged comp with condi scourges + power tempests , condi RR renegade , druid, condi StM chrono unless you want to run more than 3 healers or run DPS scrappers . DPS requirement is low but it's long, the reward is based on cleaved mobs in first half so condi scourge , power holo (swap to scrapper at boss), and DPS tempests are good due to cleave.

* Cold War when it's Icy Echoes - play typical PUG meta comp with 2 healbrands (obviously alac+druid would help) but have people spread out around boss fight to avoid tick damage (per 2s) from people attacking near one another.

* Forging Steel - it's very long, if you want to do it run superspeed holo to superspeed the tank

I finished all CMs 5/5 , but numerically...

Field of Ruin : 11 min --- basically comes down to not dying to the invisible wave

Thunderhead Peaks : 15 min --- lax if you CC with EMP instead of spear for first break

Lake Doric: 18 min -- extremely lax if you CC

Snowden Drifts: 13 min with escort included in that time

I bet it would be much more balanced if the defiance bar functionality were fixed (EMP bugs it out but also instead of exposed you get a bunch of boons on the boss). Currently it is extremely hit or miss with the timer , I had a group that had 2 minutes left on timer that managed to be 1 min over the next run. The biggest help is using swiftness and superspeed on the Kodan NPC. Also Alkar's Alchemical Acid is much more useful than the Ebon Vanguard ally which vaporizes which means it isn't balanced within itself.

In its current state it rewards heavy DPS, healing really isn't meaningful when 5-6k autos from Ryland happen (even if you wear full minstrel or Trailblazer).

Verbatim from April 2020.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1206170/#Comment_1206170

For fractals you want to refer to discretize and not random youtube videos generally.

https://discretize.eu/builds/guardian/condi-firebrand

Condi FB is the only condi build viable for general usage. That's because the ramp time on burning is extremely low (~70-75% of the damage is burning and most of the other damage is derived from power) and the bleeding damage is 5% or less of the total damage in the Condi FB build. This is versus other condi builds that have conditions where it's 50% burning and 20% bleeding or other ramping conditions.

I hope "Destroyer of the Third Fortress" waves are actually confirmed to be bugged in CM. People say there's an invisible wave and even with aegis , unlike other DRMs, it doesn't get blocked. 1.9 million damage seems as though there's an extra decimal place or something. The range on the orange circle also seems to not be the entire size of the AOE when it isn't doing the channel attack with the green circle next to the statue.

Recipe to stat swap the infusion is with 5 Mystic Coins, Anthology of Heroes, and then the usual T6 materials

Be careful what you wish for you just might get it. Raids have a far lower payout because at the end you often just get unid gears and decorations.

Weekly CMs with a full payout is a terrible idea , the added rewards are daily and already significant enough. The reason why people don't want to "teach CMs" (particularly Sunqua) is a lot of people don't even break CC bars in normal T4s. If you want to make it more accessible and less guardian + rev based especially after the CC consumables nerf (which coincided with a steep cliff dropoff of LFG I suspect) , then the extraneous breakbars for adds should be further normalized for 5 people versus a 10 person raid (something such as Slothasor or Samarog is 4000-4500ish).

MAMA: 1800 defiance , Assault Knights: 800 defiance each

Siax : 2000 defiance --- in line with a raid boss

Ensolyss : 2000 defiance , 2250 defiance --- in line with a raid boss

Skorvald: 2200 defiance --- in line with a raid boss

Artsariiv: 2100 defiance --- in line with a raid boss

Arkk: 1800 defiance --- in line with a raid boss

Ai, Keeper of the Peak : 3200 defiance --- inflated versus the past bosses

Sorrow : 1800 defiance in 10 second window --- clearly not equal to what has been present in the past

In a dynamic event on an openworld map , the scaling at 5 players is 120 defiance per player with a 15 second window.

Re: AR

If people can't be bothered to get AR for their character (eighteen +9s is 135 gold and if you want to be optimal and only run 150 AR you can get 150AR in 18 slots for around 100 gold) then they probably shouldn't play it in fractals. The only thing that I think could be added is the introduction of a recipe to combine +5 stat WvW infusions with +9 agony infusions, to give people without a full suite of templates and legendary items ability to reuse gear.

Re: Increasing Mist attunement AR

It would benefit people already invested in the mode and not help new players whatsover. That's entirely contrary to your intention.

If you have a heal firebrand (or even any firebrand that times aegis properly) in your group then it should not be an issue. Also soulbeast is highly effective when things can be reflected which is why it is used on Shattered Observatory and Nightmare with the axe offhand.

Which tier are you playing by the way?

It isn't a huge problem because you're not supposed to hoard the Deldrimor marks really (75 = the infusion).

Unless you're doing sunqua peak often there's no reason to run any condi build anywhere other than condi firebrand. The other condi builds don't have enough burst due to the way conditions work ; killing things results in a full reset of tome of justice which means you have added value from adds.

Firebrand is in a top spot at the moment , and to a lesser extent renegade (both condition for 100 and alacrity for everywhere). If you're looking at CMs then for 100CM it's actually only Firebrand + renegades typically after the CC consumable nerf (see the often taken sanctuary on firebrand along with bane signet or hammer of wisdom; darkrazor's daring and surge of the mists on revenant).

It's all about the CPU. Anything 10th or 11th gen Intel 6+ cores or Ryzen 4000 series (same gen as Ryzen 3000 / Zen 2 on desktops) , or Ryzen 5000 series (Zen 3) should do decently or as good as a desktop so long as it isn't constrained to 15W TDP. If you want better performance than that there probably isn't anything that you can buy.

The GPUs in laptops as long as they aren't integrated GPUs should be fine ; don't expect to have 60 minimum FPS and just get adaptive sync (gsync / freesync). GW2 is CPU-bound. If the laptop is thermally limited due to the thermal solution you're actually better off with a weaker GPU as your CPU will boost higher if it's the same thermal solution used throughout the lineup.

It's important to distinguish between high graphical settings and settings that are CPU-bound such as model limit, high quality shadows (this is not ray traced on GPU), and reflections (if you try anything other than terrain and sky it is CPU bound to the utmost, you're better off turning it off completely). Ultimately if your content of choice is instanced (such as fractals, strikes, dragon response missions, raids, dungeons , instanced living story, etc) and not WvW or openworld metas then you can turn up the model limit , shadows/reflections higher.

See the GW2 benchmarks I linked in https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1400083/#Comment_1400083

Made you a filter on geizhals if you're in EU: https://geizhals.eu/?cat=nb&sort=p&xf=12822_6%7E12823_12%7E12_16384%7E1482_AMD%7E1482_Intel%7E8149_dedizierte+Grafik%7E82_M.2%7E9676_35%7E9_1920x1080

>! Filter settings: 1080p+ resolution, AMD/Intel CPUs (not ARM), 6 cores + with hyperthreading or SMT due to Amdahl's law of parallelization, CPU power TDP 35W+ because you can't beat physics, RAM 16GB + because RAM isn't that expensive anymore, M.2 SSD, dedicated GPU

>! From that filter it seems the most _balanced_ setup is the Ryzen 5 5600H + RTX 3060 with 1080p 144Hz in the Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-45-R9GZ) for 1200 EUR , but I would wait for reviews ; there's a higher tier one with Ryzen 7 5800H + RTX 3070 for 1400 EUR. A comparable ASUS TUF system (A17 FA706QM-HX008T) costs 1800 EUR for Ryzen 7 5800H + RTX 3060. Comparable Intel 10th gen chips with RTX 3060 GPUs cost 2000+ EUR.

I advise anyone reading this thread not to use the _Vortex_ app service referenced as a way to play on Android. It costs $10 a month at a minimum (limited to 50 hours a month at that base plan) which is more expensive than Geforce Now Founders Edition or the same price as full Google Stadia accounts (which don't carry GW2 currently). It also isn't a vetted service such as Nvidia Geforce Now or Google Stadia. It will likely get your account banned if anyone does anything against TOS using that streaming service.

You can't say that scrapper is strong and in every squad and then proceed to push for more scourges as boon rip...

Well of corruption is weaker now with the superspeed flying around and the strips on the weapons , albeit on low cooldown, don't strip that deep anymore.

Burning actually doesn't do massive damage without condition damage , it's merely 131 damage per second without added stats. It does help with _Radiant Power_ trait for the damage bonus though.

Instead of _Shattered Aegis_ I would run _Symbolic Avenger_. _Shattered Aegis_ cannot critically hit and the damage under your build is around 700ish only (below auto-attack damage on greatsword even without crits).

As you don't have healing power I would run sword+shield instead of mace+shield because the sword has fury on its symbol as well as a gap closer. It would also proc _Inner Fire_ (which you run over the typical _Right Hand Strength_) much quicker due to the sword multi-hit attack, Zealot's Defense. For any power build I would run **Sword of Justice** or **Bane Signet** instead of "Save Yourselves!".

Instead of running _Rune of Sanctuary_ I'd probably run Fireworks or Pack Runes.

I do have to ask why focus on retaliation though. It does not actually protect you from damage and with your current gear you are only at 70% crit chance (+10% vs burning = 80%) even with retal up so you still need Fury. By running _wrathful spirit_ over _Fiery Wrath_ you basically give up 7% free damage bonus. People typically run boon duration for boons such as quickness , might, and protection.

I'm assuming this is for PVE. I strongly advise running _Taste for Danger_ instead of _Oakheart Salve_. In instanced scenarios you also don't want to use Soulbeast rune as it adds toughness ; I would run Krait , Mad King, or Afflicted rune (openworld the explosion helps a bit, but why play bleeding in openworld) as it is likely your build is 50% bleed damage and ~20% poison damage.

The number of situations where 5% incoming damage reduction and pitiful regeneration (zero heal power) is completely negligible compared to expertise gained from Taste for Danger that results in at least 5% condition duration.

Gear-wise I would probably run Viper over Rampagers. Keep in mind the chance for bleeding on critical hit is 33% via the trait even with 100% crit chance ; if you're on dagger or shortbow alike with a 50%+ crit chance under fury statistically you will proc Sigil of Earth. I would run Sigil of Bursting over Sigil of Blight as well.

Another thing to note is conditions have breakpoints (1133 for bleeding and 942 for poison ; for burning it is 655), running without expertise is actually less damage than 200 more condition damage in the case of bleeding. If you want a bursty condition class you should play condition firebrand.

It's alphabetical.

> @"Lord of the Fire.6870" said:

> > @"Touchme.1097" said:

> > Guardian is in a decent spot but it's not doing better than other professions. If you have a look at snowcrows the benchmark is currently dominated by mesmers with 42k dps. Considering Anet is not going to nerf the current Meta builds I would rather buff those builds who are not in the Meta with a balance patch before EoD is released so the staff can focus on balancing the new elite specialisations.

>

> It depend if we talk about raids or fractals , Raids have mostly bosses with big hitboxes in fractal it is the other way around . We basically we said cFB is meta in cm fractal runs without serious competition if you look at your average player.

>

> Actually I didn't heard before that there is a 42k Chrono build this is more a proof that Arena.NET holding their hands in the air atm because they made their policy before that 40k is the limit and every build above it gets the hammer and yes there are also build which under perform like Mirage ,Spellbreaker, Scrapper(and core), Scourge and ELe in PvE

>

> On the healing side Revenants Ventri missing 10 people condi cleans, Chrono can be played is half a healer but not so really.

You're not going to get that chrono benchmark realistically _especially in fractals_ because slow uptime will be atrocious and _No Pain No Gain_ / Vengeance eats into your 15% _Vicious Expression_ damage bonus, so at best you're looking more along the lines of 35K due to **Danger Time** (10% damage , 15% crit chance vs slowed). On top of that when you shatter it takes time for the clone to pop. Frankly wouldn't care if Danger Time was deleted, because the biggest benefactors are stacked squads with multiple chronos.

In addition, scrapper really isn't as bad as you make it out to be , it's around 33K. The reason why people don't run it is holo is even more theoretical DPS.

https://lucky-noobs.com/builds/scrapper-power

The same goes for spellbreaker (~29K). https://lucky-noobs.com/builds/power-spellbreaker

Mirage only performs well when confusion ticks often.

I doubt it. I've seen a benchmark of a meme air tempest (dagger+warhorn) last year pushing 24K on power tempest camping air attunement with bolt to the heart.

Build was bottom-mid-top in air , mid-bottom-bottom in water , and bottom-bottom-bottom in tempest. This was before _Transcendent Tempest_ I think because nobody uses Harmonious Conduit on a DPS build.

Non-heal utilities were signet of fire, arcane blast, glyph of storms, "rebound"!.

I also saw a condi tempest bench of ~25K with dagger mainhand that camp fire attunement. Viper gear, nightmare runes, utilities were the glyph of storms, glypho of elemental power, signet of fire, elemental elite. Fire (top-top-top), earth (mid-top-mid), tempest (top-bottom-top).

Someone also benched power weaver (sword+dagger) on air attunement pushing 19K DPS just autoattacking (Bolt to the Heart variant).

Honestly I would not recommend camping an attunement, just play a different class such as berserker, staff daredevil, soulbeast (single shortbow condi soulbeast), or condi scourge. At least swap between air + fire if you're on power gear.

If you're talking about fractals ultimately it comes down to "free" aegis and the CC of sanctuary for 100. The low ramp time of 70+% burning (as opposed to running 50% burning and 20% bleeding as on some other condi classes) along with power damage means it functions similar to a power build (see power chrono with shatters) when things don't die in less than a few seconds. This also means higher damage within an "exposed" window.

Sustained damage such as in a raid or strike isn't amazing otherwise without adds because you don't get F1 resets. The only thing that's a real outlier is the mantra of solace skill really.

> @"lare.5129" said:

> > @"Infusion.7149" said:

> > Except anyone that is unbiased will not say it is "great performance".

> for me it great. Currently on 2060 if preset same I get less.

That's statistically impossible unless your Intel CPU is ancient.

M1 Mac using all 8 cores in Parallels gets a singlethreaded Cinebench score of 513 single thread in Windows 10 virtualized with 1833 points across all cores (versus 1520 single thread and 7794 in MacOS natively which can be partly attributed to OS optimizations and code paths). That's lower in Windows 10 than an Intel i7-4850HQ (only turbos to 3.5GHz) which scores 750 single thread and a performance hit of over two-thirds relative to native macOS.

From 2011 (before GW2 was launched) to 2013ish when the i7-4850HQ was released there has only been around 10-20% single threaded improvement from Sandy Bridge on 32nm to Haswell on 22nm (a node shrink and a FIVR power experiment). The only exception is if the application uses AVX2 instruction-sets which aren't present in Sandy Bridge. It wasn't until Kaby Lake on 14nm with DDR4 and higher clocks that there was a sizable performance gain on Intel chips ; until the Coffee Lake set of chips there were no mainstream mobile chips with more than 6 cores.

>!

See also:

_Quick Apple M1 macOS reference points against Intel Tiger Lake and AMD Renoir Linux laptops by Michael Larabel._ https://openbenchmarking.org/result/2012250-FI-2012032FI40

----

As far as native MacOS performance, read this review by notebookcheck in 2019 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2019-Laptop-Review-A-convincing-Core-i9-9880H-and-Radeon-Pro-5500M-powered-multimedia-laptop.445902.0.html#toc-gaming-on-macos-doable-but-not-recommended) :

> We also looked at gaming performance on macOS in case you did not fancy running Boot Camp. In short, the experience is not as good as it is on Windows 10. While Planetary Annihilation: TITANS remains playable at maximum graphics and the display's native resolution, we would recommend running League of Legends at a slightly reduced resolution if you are an avid gamer. Unfortunately, we could not show the frame rates our unit achieved when playing League of Legends.

>

> Conversely, the MacBook Pro 16 could only average 40 FPS in Fortnite at 1636x960 and maximum graphics. The game does a wonderful job of scaling though, so do not let the resolution put you off. Meanwhile, Planetary Annihilations ran at 60 FPS natively and at maximum graphics, as we implied earlier. We achieved 60 FPS while playing skirmish games with two computers, for reference.

>

> Overall, we would recommend using Windows 10 if you are planning on gaming with the MacBook Pro 16. Doing so will not only deliver a better gaming experience than macOS offers as many games are optimised better for DirectX but also a wider library of games from which to choose.

---

> @"lare.5129" said:

> > @"Asgaeroth.6427" said:

> > Could you rephrase that? I have no idea what you are trying to say.

> some time ago I buy new x86-64 laptop with itel cpu and geforce 2060. Now on aprox half of this price I can buy macbook air.

> And how I say **if** I set native rendering and same graphics options I have same fps as in m1 in Parallel

>

That's also impossible unless you bought a $2000+ PC which also manages to throttle with a RTX 2060 (a quintessential 1440p GPU) which means you didn't read reviews or do your own due diligence. The only Apple M1 computer below $1000 is the Mac Mini for $700 without the screen ; even with double that budget ($1500) there are quite a few computers you could have bought or built. If you look on noteb which I linked to someone else looking for PCs, there's notebooks that run this game 40+ FPS that are below $1000 , since it's CPU bound more or less anything with a discrete GPU that isn't a 15W constrained CPU is going to do the job.

In fact a laptop with i7-9750H + RTX 2060 was benchmarked this past year there: https://noteb.com/?content/review.php?/2020/03/13/acer-predator-helios-300-15-2019-ph315-52-review/

FPS min = 21 , FPS average = 62 (model limit = highest , best appearance preset)

>!

In terms of business strategy putting their "A team" on the expansion is a wise move because new customer acquisition is paramount to sustaining their business model.

What I expect is:

* Instanced DRMs using old assets whether they are maps (typically unpopulated core maps) or models --- check ; also it's slated to continue til April 2021

* A few weaponsets based off older weapon sets (low amount of risk and investment) --- check

* Incremental improvement to the reward structure --- supposedly there's a new emote and infusion , but will wait to see what those entail

* An end to that timer countdown when all the pre-events in a DRM are completed , less dialogue in CM --- hopeful for this

If I remember correctly dungeons are "dead" due to the dev responsible for that content type unable to work on them due to technical issues or something akin to that. Raids are just a niche mode but they still had investment (Key of Ahdashim in 2019 , Mythwright Gambit in 2018) which seems to have shifted to strike missions as of 2019; fractals had investment just this past year and even before that (Sunqua Peak in 2020 , Siren's Reef in 2019 , Deepstone in 2018 for example). Just because the cadence isn't to your liking doesn't mean they aren't being worked on.

The difference between DRMs and the older living story as far as I know is there is no "public" instance of living story : it used to be party based. If you look back at Forging Steel that was more or less an experiment with a public instance of living story.

edit: would be worth linking to the page explaining it all https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/january-19-2021/

For WvW and PvE it is a solid class and despite the complaining about how it is weak it is quite common in PvP as well (currently common in burn iterations).

The only other class that provides quickness is Chronomancer right now and Boon Thief/Daredevil in a few select instanced raids and strikes (Freezie aka Snowman's Lair) so its PVE dominance will continue.

For WvW it's the most common source of stability via Firebrand spec.

Of course if you want to play tanky in WvW/PvP then you probably want to play Tactics Spellbreaker. For acting tanky in PVE without resorting to toughness gear generally I would say that heal druid or renegade is better.