Lexi.1398

Risen Dominators (an enemy found only in the arah dungeon) - dominators seem to be sadly a casualty of early game design, where lots of "trash" enemies weren't really given much indication for their attacks, dominators are IMO the most dangerous enemies in all of arah (even more annoying than alphard) since they can basically OHKO you with literally no indication before it happens, so you can just die outta nowhere and sometimes you can die before that stage to their ring, though the ring is just an inconvenience compared to that counter. Though i suppose cheap isn't really hard?

As for hardest thing which was designed after they realised trash mobs need visual indicators too, hard to say. Probably tanking on soulless horror (tanking specifically), positioning wise SH isn't difficult, but avoiding dying to her attacks while tanking /is/.

The shots won't auto correct to the target on this event, yes, so you need to factor in projectile speed when you take a shot. For me, i always look in one direction only and shoot the balloons that come from that one direction, usually focusing on a specific balloon that i know where i should shoot to hit it.

I think the closest thing in concept to a vampire - as far as "cursed human" goes, is probably joko's awakened - they don't drink blood, and aren't immortal creatures of the night, but they are undead who seem to have atypical survival needs - as such as the awakened servants who we give tar soaked bandages to, and the whole tar everywhere thing. There's no real proof of it being required for them to live afaik though, and obviously they don't take from other humanoids which is a key part of the vampire appeal IMO.

As for werewolves there isn't anythign conceptually similar at all, i think.

i use 2 mounts mainly and i'd say its kinda 65/35 in favour of skyscale, the other main mount being the jackal whenever I don't need the height

I like chairs for the same reason i treasure the quaggan tonic...pointless fun. Also, asura look kinda like theyre planning someones murder when sitting on them (which is probably correct, considering its an asura) which is a great reason to sit IMO.

> @"Besetment.9187" said:

> Yeah that part is quite hard, requires a lot of concentration and immaculate skill queuing. And you need to keep your Zealot's Fire timings consistent and only use it when you have 2 charges while never dropping a charge, otherwise gaps open up where scepter autos creep through. Dropping a charge is needless to say, a big dps loss. Its also hard to count axe autos because all 3 hits have the same activation time (0.5 sec) so that part requires a lot of concentration too.

>

> Is it a beginner friendly build? Not really? Like BttH Power Weaver, the rotation is not particularly long and achieving 75% of the benchmark is easy enough I suppose, but the last 25% gets very hard because of how precise you have to be. Hell, I think Weaver is easier to be honest and that never makes it into anyone's list of easy to play builds.

In a discussion about the easiest builds, i would not expect people to achieve that last 25% whether it's power daredevil or condi holo, and getting the first 75% on cfb is very easy. Like i said, you can literally press skills off of cooldown, heck don't even swap to sceptre outside of the opener if you aren't confident, counting autos does not matter on any class to get acceptable dps and it's not like your dps is bad if you don't either. My favourite thing ive ever seen someone say about condi fb rotation is "it FEELS like mashing skills off of cooldown, even though it isn't", which i guess between that and cfb being brokenly overpowered = very average condi firebrands perform excellently with no real rotational knowledge aside "tome 1 4/5 as much as you can" and "torch 4 as much as you can". Ofc, you will be outperformed by people who are counting autos and paying close attention to aftercasts...pretty much reguardless of build.

I think power weaver definitely has an easier rotation, but is harder to play on actual bosses. Between having very little defence (defined as blocks, invulns, stun break, cleanses), being super weak to retal (aka, requires more knowledge of skills) on a small handful of encounters, and its low health pool giving less room to make mistakes for another small handful of mechanics (since health pool only matters for mechanics that won't kill you if failed), compared to cfb which has every imaginable form of active defense as a dps build and having...nowhere really where being a cfb makes life harder (compared to a small handful where being a weaver is hard mode - which while isn't a majority by any means - is more than 0).

i have definitley experinced one moment where i thought "a black tag would be ideal for this", some map terrain colours have very few options for tags that stick out and when those colour/s are already taken by some other commander you have to take the one no one can see xD

Raids: heal druid is at the core of most every composition and usually the preferred secondary healer on boon theif bosses, next most requent would be banner berserker (power & condi both), then boon chrono, and then condi quickbrand / diviner renegade. (power quickbrand is NOT useable in raids).

Fractals: power quickbrand for skilled groups, heal firebrand for pugging t4s, diviner renegade, power banner berserker.

after the non-generic dps slots are taken care of every other slot would be a dps, and TBH, you can be any dps u like in raids (only divided by broad division of power / condi / mirage-condi), for fractals stick to any power dps and u will be gucci.

meta dps raids: power dragonhunter, condition firebrand, condi renegade, condi mirage, and a few sprinklings of power chrono and power daredevil. meta for raids is VERY specific per encounter, and if you're not using speedrunning strats and therefore have dedicated quickness supports, then i believe power chrono/holosmith would be more generic "meta" dps.

meta dps fractals: power weaver, soulbeast is meta, with dragonhunter especially and then literally every other power dps build except for chrono being acceptable, and condi firebrand is also acceptable dps in non-speedclear groups (cfb is special because of how the burning condition works).

effects in the world would be eye cancer, considering for the content I play at least, in the average raid i want to see around 7 boons kept up near constantly, and others more intermittently. that said, i personally haven't had any issues tracking the boons that are relevant to me as a primarily boon support player, but i know exactly what to look for, i can understand how for others it may be difficult though. boons do have duration cues- the white edge around their boon icon, though from the sounds of it seems like this is hard to see.

i wouldn't be opposed to different coloured icons, but colour has a theme in gw2. previously, alacrity gave a purple effect to players because only mesmer could provide it, but then when renegade started providing alacrity it was turned white. same goes for barrier, which at the start of its existence only scourges could produce, but it was turned into a white effect later after barrier was implemented in more places to reflect that it wasn't a scourge only effect- and colour is pretty important, infact, i really struggle to play more than 1 class in ffxiv because of the lack of colour theme between them has a subtle effect that leaves me confused when i switch classes. i wonder how they colour colour boons in a way that keeps with the rest of gw2: so far, *most* information the game throws at you can be understood by colour before anything else.

After typing /stuck you need to not do anything for...i think a minute or so, doing any actions cancels it.

I haven't found many locations that /stuck couldn't help me out of, but i do remember a few times where it didn't work and i was in an unescapable place. Sometimes figuring out how to get out of a small space is a puzzle but it is usually possible, eventually.

Personally i think the pace is fine, actually i quite like it - it's more engaging than silverwastes with it's variety of events, but since you do events for several minutes at a time there's also time to relax- it's not a breakneck pace like dragonfall. Definitely my favourite balance of "engaging things to do" and "time to relax".

i do think its kinda amusing that every boss constantly called for nerf has been because of its cc bar. serpents ire (which i can say, was too strong a cc bar, but didnt need to be as weak as it was nerfed to lol), vinetooth prime (break bar once and every group is capable of kill), muckstalker...the only real exception is diwaana who is worse than muck with the same mechanic lol, and legendary leyline anom- but that gets its complaints in open world instead of forum.

I do think muckstalker has an issue, but it's not with it's breakbar strength itself, its that he kinda just spams his regen/breakbar mechanic constantly in low CC groups (meaning, you see more breakbars if you are worse at it- likely the mechanic has a cooldown which doesn't care about break end time, only break start time.) I think that mechanic either needs a cooldown, or reduce breakbar strength considerably but in turn have muck regen everytime the bar isn't recovering.

In the interest of not voting other... admittedly ive only experienced this twice while pugging, and both times it was extremely annoying, especially as one of those times the "getting carried" person didn't even perform their build correctly (i mean, i don't expect someone who doesn't know mechanics to get 10k+ in the last phase, but i do expect a 20k+ opener EVERYWHERE? theres no mechanics at that point...:/ ).

I've never seen a kp/li requirement that was ridiculous IMO, but i have seen a lot of groups who either ask for more kp than the group has/call themselves experienced when they're not. If its labelled as an exp group i expect the boss to die in 2 pulls, and i expect a maximum of 2 failures of minor-wont-wipe-the-group mechanics. if you're a group who has killed the boss before and everyone knows the mechanics but you can't get close to a kill in 2 pulls then you are not experienced, you are semi-experienced and practicing, so dont be surprised if all the pugs you get are salty. I find this especially annoying in groups i go in who formed outside of LFG and pug for fills- but the commander of that group advertises a higher requirement than /i/ have without conferring with anyone in the group. It makes me feel bad, especially as i can always see it coming when pugs with the same mentality as i do come in, see us wipe, and then my freinds complain about it as if they should have expected anything else...

Definitely up there i dislike commanders who don't really understand raid compositions/tactics properly. Like- VG is renowned as a training boss because it is mechnaically complex, but isn't very punsihing...IF you do greens. If you do no greens you must be an experienced group, and it will not be training-friendly because 80% of the time if someone fails a mechanic they'll die to green while downed. The SC compositions are based on speedrunning strats, as are some of their guides, they shouldn't be blindly followed without understanding why. For example - cairn is commonly called a "condi" boss, but this isn't really true. Cairn is a mirage boss, and if you can't play mirage then which build you have you perform best on (that has no reflects) is the better option- infact, specifically for cairn, i can also mention that cairn is the hardest fight to mirage on due to it's movement abilities requiring much more class knowledge AND mechanical awareness (axe 3 into tp/axe 2 into agony is the bane of mirages) than playing almost anything else at cairn. It is for that reason I always suggest to people who can play mirage, not to if it's a training run (ofc, if its not a training run i don't care.) If a commmander insists on something "because SC does it" without understanding that for example, out group dps is too low for that stategy, i don't care for that commander.

Most of all i hate tolerating bad attitudes by anyone, but if the commander has a bad attitude i just leave the squad, no matter how justified i think or don't think that bad attitude is. Relatedly, if you didn't advertise a group as experienced (or it was advertised with low kp), then don't be surprised when people mess up.

You can unlock skin without soulbinding items, it makes them untradeable to other players, though still means they'd be soulbound if you decide you want to equip them.

In fact, it'd be such a different game that melee range would become straight up impossible for most in open world events, and theyd have to rebalance the combat system completely and make ranged weapons much better, all boons/healing apply to a much larger range, leading to a balance in instanced content where you can avoid any melee range mechanics by doing the far superior ranged methods...so overall, i'd not like this, not to mention the body blocking when looting chests, getting access to highly contested enemies (idk if you've ever been on a full dry top farm map, but good luck tagging the rare beast without a mount as is). Social awkwardness is annoying enough as is...you ever done cliffside with that instbaility? That experience is the most body blocking i'd ever like to experience (even if we couldn't push our friends off of things, you can still be blocked from going somewhere.)

Yes, 6 out of 10 cache champions are from the charr personal story, 3 are the not chosen warband member you recruit (which is luccia for iron legion charr), 3 are from blood warbands also in the lv10 stories.

hard agree - it was fine the first time i was grinding them, but the repeatables make the nearly completed section quite useless, we shouldn't have to fiddle around allowing ourselves only a certain amount of grinding then never touching the map just to keep them out of the window.

I'm only having issues getting credit for pillage the fort, even with seige weapons. It's not that it never increments, it doesn't seem to increment consistently though. With only 10 attempts (and something like 6 remaining, for me) i'm not sure I can figure out why my results are inconsistent. But things i've noticed so far:

Most structures in all areas never contribute to the counter unless killed with seige, EXCEPT for lighthouse, all structures at lighthouse seem to increment the counter regaurdless of the method you applied damage.

Except for fort, i've also got credit for barricades and only barricades via attacking with weapon/util/profession skills, i haven't tested wall supports but tents also don't give credit unless attacked with siege.

I didn't get an increment for pillage the port while destroying the cannons using a catapult.

I've only gotten credit for the gate as a structure when using a flame ram.

Some of these things are consistent with OP, and lots of this info comes tainted with personal experience/the convenience of each area for testing different structures. I'm thinking that, a structure needs to have been damaged by seige for it to count towards pillage, but you can use weapon skills to get credit for a structure as long as that structure has also taken damage from seige- just a theory though, i haven't tested it.

I don't particularly like having to wait x minutes doing basically nothing because it guarantees that no matter whether my squad is 10 80 boosted newbies or 10 benchmark setting speedrunners it's gonna take forever to complete eitherway, and the champions in the pre event are absolutely trivial.

The boss fight isn't too bad when you eventually reach it, i wish the charr cars had like 1 second longer before they actually appear and run you over but considering it's a stike it's not too bad. It's a nice transition strike between the likes of icebrood construct and the "extremes" of whisper, IMO. I don't expect any strike to ever be as fulfilling as completing a raid boss is, so while i do think it's a bit boring, i'm also fully aware that this is not content made for me.

> @"frqnbbsov.9806" said:

> But facts say it is not that you think.

You have been given two different links to show you where training groups are that only have one requirement: a build that performs it's job.

I learnt every boss in the game (except one) in the span of a month or two (and it only took that long because i held back from even trying some of the scarier bosses - something which i did not need to do at all) using one of those discords.

So no, i don't "think" there are training groups that don't rquire killproof, i know they exist, i used one of them, and every guild i've been in that offers raid training has had the same standards. groups that require kp/li are NOT training groups, they are clearing groups.

If legendary insights dropped from world bosses they wouldn't be killproof - proof of killing a raid boss- and raid LFGs would just ask for something else exclusively obtained in raids anyway. If the group is asking for kp/li and you don't have that, you probably shouldn't enter it - those groups aren't looking to take 2 hours to teach you the mechanics of the boss so you don't wipe the group, they're looking to clear most of the wings in just as much time, and will likely kick you as soon as they see someone failing mechanics constantly/doing like 2k dps on a dps build.

I don't know what sort of training groups you've tried to find but i've certainly never heard of an actual training group that requires killproof (aka, you already know the boss mechanics) for a boss they're trying to teach you how to kill...? The only requirements for most training runs is having a build which does it's job sufficiently, aka your full soldiers bearbow LB ranger isn't going to provide enough dps to pass an encounter and nor is it providing boons/healing to keep everyone elses dps/health bar up too.

Also if raiding is your only end game, maybe take a look at the rest of the game. In lots of mmos raids are the end game content, but not this one...anet is more concerned about easy open world maps than instanced content.

looks fine to me

i would probably not use unscathed contender (virtues first row) though- retaliatory subconcious for an extra touch of defense as general use, or master of consecrations when running wall of reflection/purging flames (on a specific fight basis, not general use) simply because unscathed contender is really hard to keep up, that said, there's not a whole lot until expansion maps that makes retaliatory subconcious get any use either.

personally i'd also run inspiring virtue (virtues second row) because w/ radiance you're gonna get so many tome resets it'll get quite a bit of value, although it's not going to be massive damage because modifiers like that only affect power damage (though cfb does have a fairly large amount of power damage, for a condi build), but absolute resolution is also good- extra cleanse is never a bad thing, especially when its competing traits aren't much better for condi.

these are things i'd use out of personal preference, so what you're using is fine.

gear wise it's fine, i wouldn't bother with infusions though- they have such a small effect, even smaller in open world.

on your sceptre set i would run focus or no offhand (default to torch) over shield myself, focus 4 will proc your justice passive lots and focus 5 is essentially 3 stacks of "aegis" (the effect isn't aegis, but is functionally identical) as comapared to 4s of protection and 1 actual aegis with sheild 4, sheild 5 is a knockback though but i'd take hammer of wisdom before i swap a weapon out for CC. torch is better for damage than either of those, but focus is a nice in between of damage / defense IMO.

and i'd swap retreat for stand your ground as a default, swiftness has no value in a world full of mounts (except in personal story) and SYG is a stun break + stability, every open world build needs a bit of stun break.

Yes, i still see him on occasion.

I think scourge is reasonable given it's insane level of group support, but reaper on the other hand provides nothing aside CC meanwhile...

It always irks me when people say reaper is ez to play ez to survive on because its just not true in end game content (it is true for open world tho).

1. it is NOT easy to survive on if you running the meta build, your only defences aside positioning and dodging (which everyone can do) is CC (only on open world trash, and very few consistently available sources) and stun break (every class can access stun break, but also necro happens to have some of the worst access to stun break of all professions)- most professions in the game have some access to additional active defenses either in thier meta build or not (blocks, invuln, aegis, extra dodges, heck even leaps and shadowstep/teleports would be a step above what reaper/necro in general gets)...the issue with an extra health bar is, in raids and fractals anyway, if somehting kills you it KILLS you. You cannot outheal an attack which either does bonkers damage or is scripted, either one to intentionally down you if you fail the mechanic, extra health isn't useless per se, but doing an encounter correctly will get you much further than additional health will.

2. reaper rotation being simple doesn't mean its the only simple rotation out there- there are some even easier than reaper, especially when considering that reaper has a lot of oppotunities to optimise by cutting aftercasts via weapon stowing/shroud.

3. you actually need to be BETTER at mechanics than everyone else is, because you can't be healed while in shroud, and if your life force is depleted by damage you won't be able to get off your burst properly. so if you make no effort to avoid damage at all, you will perform much worse than everyone else anyway, and then your shroud time is also cut by cannot-be-avoided arena damage.

given those things, i think its more than fair that reaper should have a higher maximum potential damage, the issue arises that making reaper more powerful in raids/fractals also would have the same effect in open world (on the other hand, i personally don't care about open world balance cus everything works)- and design wise, it's really hard to work around those issues because reaper shroud, IMO, inherently doesn't function like the rest of gw2 combat - which is built on skill being more important than stats (not to say stats are irrelevant, but for example unlike lots of mmos, your health bar is generally an allowance for mistakes and not "if you have less than x health this enemy cannot be killed no matter what because of its dps output"), necro is the closest thing we have to being able to play the game like traditional MMORPG combat system which i suspect is why it's so popular. Without revamping reaper to be something else entirely, you're stuck with an extra health bar that holds it back from making other changes, though i will note: scrapper gives more to the group while being easiser to survive on anyway and doing...not that much worse dps, so maybe reaper does deserve a little love.

Depends on stuff. i'll be assuming you're using voice chat to communicate primarily, in which case i highly recommend using open mic if it's at all possible - seeing a mechanic/know its coming up, pressing the push to talk key, and then saying the words in time for people to respond...is an acquired skill, a skill that takes shy talkers (like me) a long time to acquire xD if you're not used to talking i would reccommend joining a run someone else is leading, and talking to yourself like a lunatic calling out the mechanics (even if there's no voice chat/or you're muted) just to get in the habit of it.

I would always reccomend placing markers (default key alt + 1-8, and 9 clears all markers) for encounters as required, even if your group is relatively experienced (im assuming this is not the case) it helps clear confusion for people, and gives you a symbol to call out if it's required. Marker set ups are differnet per boss, but i would imagine the guides you're using show most of them.

Object markers (default keys are alt + shift + 1-8, and 9 clears all object markers) can also be useful, depending on whos doing what. Some low experience groups like to mark the tank with an object marker, or if the commander is tanking some of them like to mark the next most experienced person with an object to show where everyone should stack. Marking the tank is useful for your healers, and for letting the squad know where they should stack next sometimes, marking the non-tank is useful for showing where people should stack (most of the time people tend to follow the commander tag)- especially if people have to split at any time, like for example marking the kiters on quadim the peerless.

If you yourself are not of much experience i would pass harder roles onto others and just be a dps or dps-boongiver, simply because it can get really overwhelming to try and call mechanics while you're also staring intently just at One Thing and kinda ignoring the other mechanics that aren't relevant to you, once you're experienced with special roles, like tanking and kiting on some encounters, this isn't so difficult to do, but at the start it is intimidating. Don't be me and have your first raid commanded be on a class you're kinda unfamiliar with while also tanking for the first time on one of the more difficult tanking bosses. xD

Stuff not so related to leading, but since you are gonna be the one dragging people into subgroups, it's relevant info:

alacricty renegade is 10 man alacrity (doesn't matter which subgroup its in), but it also has 5 man assassin's presence (does matter which subgroup its in) - it wants buddies who are power dps.

guardians love each other because some of their retaliation is 5 man, and dragonhunter is only getting critical chance capped if they have full retaliation uptime. put all dragonhunters together.

also for guardians: if they're a dragonhunter using perfect inscriptions, they want power dps friends.

druid and power soulbeast bring spotter, a 5 man unique buff important for a few classes to crit cap- you ALWAYS PUT BERSERKERS WITH DRUID, power banner berserker rotation does not work without 100% critical chance and it's a bigger dps loss for warrior than anyone else to be lacking spotter (goes especially for improperly geared bannerserkers, who may be using crit food AND require spotter), otherwise alacrity renegade, power weaever + tempest, power chronomancer, and power daredevil + deadeye, all require spotter. if you can't remember feel free to ask if anyone needs spotter, but make sure power warriors always have spotter- most other builds can easily adjust to no spotter.

healers go in different subgroups each.

all quickness sources are 5 man, so if you're using 2 dedicated quickness supports (2x chrono, 1x chrono 1x firebrand, 2x firebrand) they need to be in differnet subgroups too.

some boon stuff can move away from 5/5 subgroups in meta set ups, but i would reccommend sticking to basic set ups with inexperienced groups.

Most of all, be positive and supportive...if your group is wiping a lot they'll appreciate a "we're handling x mechanic much better than we did at the start" or a "great work on y mechanic".