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  1. #1

    I need a little help...

    3 things

    1) Where can I find some guardian builds for both WvW & PvE? More so focused around support/boons/healing

    2) Are support guardian builds viable for WvW & PvE? Centered around cleansing, giving boons, healing, etc

    3) Are fractals not designed for the level ranges they design?


    I was just removed from a fractal for being under level 10, even though it says 1-9?

    Am I failing to understand something? I got insta burst too from one of the mobs while my group was off dilly dallying without me.

  2. #2
    1. Official forums or GW2 Guru.
    2. In PVE? Everything is viable. It is largely an inconsequential question w/r/t PVE. In WvW, same- it's an asymmetrical PVP game mode.
    3. They scale you to level. You can go in at L1 or L80.
    Last edited by Fencers; 2013-11-18 at 06:54 AM.

  3. #3
    So I just got a bad group for the fractal then? Maybe I need to change server...

    They just commented "You're level 3" Then insta kick

    Now I'm level 6 & still rising, but was just confused. Is there a reason I was insta burst you may possibly know?

  4. #4
    As you level, you unlock more skill slots and more gear slots and such, becoming more powerful overall, even if level boosted to 80 in either case. So though teh system means you "can" do the fractals, the group didn't want to bring you for that reason, most likely.

  5. #5
    Scarab Lord Karizee's Avatar
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    There's 2 kinds of levels. Your character level + the fractal level.

    Your character can level to 80 and you are boosted 80 when you enter fractals. However you will still only have the skills, utilities and traits you've actually unlocked so far and are extremely weak compared to a true 80. So going in at lvl 3 you are practically fresh out of the tutuorial and don't have nearly enough skills/utitilities/traits/runes/sigils, etc. to run fractals much less the experience on how to play your class to run them. Most people wait until they've reached level 80 unless they find a guild group that will carry them.

    Fractals have levels as you complete them. The person opening the Fractal sets the level up to whatever level fractal he has completed. Anyone in his party can join in but they will only be rewarded at their current fractal level and will only gain a fractal level if it is higher than their own. Fractals get more difficult the higher they scale and currently are pretty much impossible after fractal level 50.
    Valar morghulis

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Karizee View Post
    There's 2 kinds of levels. Your character level + the fractal level.

    Your character can level to 80 and you are boosted 80 when you enter fractals. However you will still only have the skills, utilities and traits you've actually unlocked so far and are extremely weak compared to a true 80. So going in at lvl 3 you are practically fresh out of the tutuorial and don't have nearly enough skills/utitilities/traits/runes/sigils, etc. to run fractals much less the experience on how to play your class to run them. Most people wait until they've reached level 80 unless they find a guild group that will carry them.

    Fractals have levels as you complete them. The person opening the Fractal sets the level up to whatever level fractal he has completed. Anyone in his party can join in but they will only be rewarded at their current fractal level and will only gain a fractal level if it is higher than their own. Fractals get more difficult the higher they scale and currently are pretty much impossible after fractal level 50.
    Interesting ok, I'll be able to understand that.

  7. #7
    You can also try intothemists.com for some build ideas. But check forums as well for other suggestions. The game community is not especially coherent about 'best' builds because in large measure it doesn't matter for the majority of the content.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Angarin View Post
    So I just got a bad group for the fractal then? Maybe I need to change server...

    They just commented "You're level 3" Then insta kick

    Now I'm level 6 & still rising, but was just confused. Is there a reason I was insta burst you may possibly know?
    I don't know why they kicked you or whatever. I do not play in PUGs and leveled to 80 long before Fractals were placed in the game.

    I also do not know what "insta burst" means.

  9. #9
    Deleted
    I can understand it's confusing when they say level 9 or something while it's the level of the Fractal, and not the characters level they meant.
    But often people just kick without telling, or even asking 'do you have a level 80 char' (in case they're just leveling an alt). I find it kinda rude but it usually happens before I can even speak ^^;

    However when it's a level 10 Fractal, I do understand nobody wants to bring people with them that are below level 80 for lack of good gear or unlocked skills.
    Level 10 Fractal is often done for a daily or monthly, most just want to rush through. They want to do it quick quick quick and the lower the level and the worse your gear is, the slower it will go.

    Don't take it personally or anything. It might happen to you more often. Because they are looking for something specific or w/e. I've been mad at guildies for kicking thieves right away.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Silverbleed View Post
    I can understand it's confusing when they say level 9 or something while it's the level of the Fractal, and not the characters level they meant.
    But often people just kick without telling, or even asking 'do you have a level 80 char' (in case they're just leveling an alt). I find it kinda rude but it usually happens before I can even speak ^^;

    However when it's a level 10 Fractal, I do understand nobody wants to bring people with them that are below level 80 for lack of good gear or unlocked skills.
    Level 10 Fractal is often done for a daily or monthly, most just want to rush through. They want to do it quick quick quick and the lower the level and the worse your gear is, the slower it will go.

    Don't take it personally or anything. It might happen to you more often. Because they are looking for something specific or w/e. I've been mad at guildies for kicking thieves right away.
    Why thieves in particular?

  11. #11
    Because thieves don't bring anything to the table that other classes don't bring already and usually better. The only real difference is ofcourse stealth where the thief is king.

    The problem here is that most fractals don't have a lot of skippable trash so stealth isn't valuable.

    A good thing for thieves is that they can perma-blind big groups of trash, however there's a problem with this too since you need to go X/Pistol making you sacrifice most AoE damage which is actually the thing you need in this situation. Add to this that X/P makes thieves lose most of their damage (D/D is king) and it becomes clear that the only thing a thief brings (to fractals) is stealth which only comes in handy in 3/9 fractals.

    Similar things actually happen with other unpopular professions:
    An engineer can give lots of might/vulnerability but 4 people combined probably will get enough already.
    A necro is borderline since they can both blind and weaken foes, the problem is the relatively long CD so every 50s you make your team invincible but for 45/50s you're not bringing anything to the table.
    A ranger is shit unless both the party and the ranger know how to play very well. You must use sword to be competitive (99.999999% of rangers don't use sword). You need everyone of your party to be in melee. And the ranger must know how to work around the annoying as hell auto attack.

    A mesmer would be classified here too IF there wasn't a "glitch" that makes them probably the strongest anti projectile class in the game. Not making focus skills reflect (not taking the trait "Warden's Feedback) makes it so the warden (focus 5) absorbs projectiles that no other skill can absorb.

    So the only really good classes are war, guard, ele, mes and 0.0000000001% of the time ranger.


    This of course is only the case if you're looking to optimise efficiency. Even a group of 5thieves can complete all fractals it'll just take longer.
    In most cases, I understand the other side's viewpoint and how they came to it, but cannot tolerate their stubbornness to not see mine (the right one).

  12. #12
    well I find the killing speed of my Thief to be greater than any other character, even a warrior Mel, for whatever that is worth. Plus if you ever want a Blind bot, I'm your player.

  13. #13
    Scarab Lord Karizee's Avatar
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    Thieves have the biggest burst in the game right now. And they are amazing for Dredge fractal.
    Valar morghulis

  14. #14
    I imagine they are amazing for the dredge fractal for sword thieves due to boon removal, not necessarily for the damage

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Doozerjun View Post
    well I find the killing speed of my Thief to be greater than any other character, even a warrior Mel, for whatever that is worth. Plus if you ever want a Blind bot, I'm your player.
    Solo or in team? Thieves are notorious for "one-shotting" most veterans using a c&d, steal, BS combo but that no longer works on dungeon bosses/champions.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely aware the thieves have some amasing DPS when they play dd and can use backstab, however then you lose the blindbot part.
    PW looks like a great DPS build on paper but when you do the math it's quite lackluster (and will be nerfed a lot with the ini change coming soon) again in content where you're basically alone you won't notice since by the time you need to spam PW again your ini will be back but in a boss fight you will have to throw auto-attacks into the mix which greatly reduces DPS.

    The issue is that a thief only brings DPS, sure they bring 2stacks of vulnerability (perma) but that's nothing, especially if you compare it to what the "good" classes bring while doing similar DPS as a thief.

    Guardians bring A+ dps, stability/aegis/protection and projectile defense.
    Wars bring A dps, might, vulnerability, banners and EA.
    Ele brings A++ dps (some consider it a glitch), might/fury, perma health regen.
    Mes brings B to B+ dps, the most OP projectile defense, boon stripping(foes)/sharing(friends), time warp, stealth, portal.
    Ran brings A+ dps, might/fury (lots and lots of fury) wonky as hell projectile defense, spotter, spirit of frost, fire/water fields (work extremely well with an ele), group condi cleanse/healing.

    Thief brings A+ dps and stealth OR B+ dps, blind/weakness and stealth.

    Quote Originally Posted by Karizee View Post
    Thieves have the biggest burst in the game right now. And they are amazing for Dredge fractal.
    The only part in the dredge fractal where thieves shine is if you get the Bomb part, the drill part is easy enough even without stealth (pro tip: drillers should use the drills at the same time to delay the (re-) spawns) and the rest of that fractal really doesn't have any use for stealth. The cage part uses a simple dieing on levers trick and the hallway after razuvius or w/e his name is can be walked past easily.

    I'd like to make sure that it's clear that I'm talking about optimising speed runs in fractals. Thief isn't in a bad place at all if you look at each class independently, the problem is that for fractals thieves don't really bring anything to the table that helps the group.
    If you change the scene to dungeons thieves become a lot more valuable since they have some awesome DPS against gates/burrows/... good dps in general and can stealth the team for long periods of time making hard skips, piss easy. Add to this that in most dungeons you can drop either the guard or mes (or both) freeing up slots for a thief.

    In my other post I simply tried to explain why someone would kick a thief in particular for fractals. I wasn't putting down the profession in general.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bovinity Divinity View Post
    Burst is really only relevant if it kills the target in question outright. Otherwise sustained DPS is what you're really after.
    This is actually not true. Burst DPS is far better than sustained due to the dodge mechanic.

    Let's say you do a constant 3k DPS with two builds.
    Build A gets a spike of 6k DPS but taking the full "rotation" into consideration it does 3k DPS.
    Build B does a flat and constant 3k DPS.

    For simplicities sake let's say dodging takes 1s and that you can't deal dmg while dodging.
    In Build A you can have higher actual DPS if you time your burst to be after the dodge so that you don't have to cancel your burst to dodge (think HB of the war).
    In build B you will always lose 3k damage regardless of when you dodge.

    Quote Originally Posted by Doozerjun View Post
    I imagine they are amazing for the dredge fractal for sword thieves due to boon removal, not necessarily for the damage
    Then you again give up the blind bot part.
    Last edited by Meledelion; 2013-11-18 at 06:11 PM.
    In most cases, I understand the other side's viewpoint and how they came to it, but cannot tolerate their stubbornness to not see mine (the right one).

  16. #16
    Deleted
    I personally don't care what class people are playing. It's way more important how the people behind it play. I've met some very pro thieves, who were absolutely amazing in pve. While I've also met guardians that were so pathetic I could cry.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Meledelion View Post
    Then you again give up the blind bot part.
    good overall post, Mel, and I agree with your reasoning

    now for this quote, that wouldn't be an issue against the dredge since blind doesn't work against them anyway

  18. #18
    You're correct, I overlooked that completely.
    In most cases, I understand the other side's viewpoint and how they came to it, but cannot tolerate their stubbornness to not see mine (the right one).

  19. #19
    I've kinda thrown my guardian away. It didn't suit the particular playstyle I thought I wanted. I thought I wanted more of a pure support, but I read alot of this 'if you're not aggressive even as a support, you're doing it wrong' which is kinda meh. So then I thought well ok, lets pick something different.

    I've read about the mesmer especially the thread here on mmo-champ that outlines all the classes & their weaknesses & strengths. The mesmer from what I gather is a very very different profession with some utility and some damage along with some control. Which in all, possibly if done very well can be very rewarding. Kind of that you put as much as you want out of it.

    Is this true?

    What I'm kind of searching for now is something that is very rewarding in both pvp (including wvw & sPvP) & pve when done well and it shows to not only yourself, but your allies/enemies.

    Something that makes the enemy think "This profession this guy I'm fighting sucks, I'll beat him np." Then I'll end up destroying him because he under estimated it because the general population does. Perhaps even underplayed.

    A good example of this is when MoP came out in WoW I loved the monk class in beta, so before I even touched my paladin who was already at 85 I leveled my monk as soon as possible to 90 & people were curious about monks as I was one of the first 90's on my realm to have one and they usually always underestimated the healing output of one, but with enough effort & knowledge I could prove myself.

    Its kind of an odd question to ask let alone answer I'm sure, but if anyone feels up to it please feel free & I would greatly appreciate it. I think the main thing I'm concerned about someone answering this question is that, they may just say "Any class can do that." And I don't doubt you, but if possible look beyond the generality and really think about this. I would assume most classes in this situation are the more difficult ones to play.
    Last edited by Angarin; 2013-11-19 at 12:18 AM.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Angarin View Post
    What I'm kind of searching for now is something that is very rewarding in both pvp (including wvw & sPvP) & pve when done well and it shows to not only yourself, but your allies/enemies.
    In short no.

    The problem is that GW2 is a really fast-paced game so 99% of the time people don't realise what you did that took skill.

    In PvP they only know you beat them, they probably didn't notice that you blinked backwards flipped your toon in a 180 used a backwards teleporting skill and then stepped back to them with a weaponswap thrown in the mix.
    People don't even realise when confusion kills them which is clearly telling something.
    If you've ever seen Reckfull play wow you realise that he takes a slow game and plays it fast, he uses skills that don't trigger a GCD to teleport all over the map which you notice but don't realise how he does it, similar things don't really exist in GW2 because speeding up the already fast game makes it "invisible" add a crappy combat log and it's become nigh impossible.

    In PvE there's a myriad of reasons why this won't show. The first is that there isn't really a situation where it's needed, the second is again the speed of the game and the third would be the ignorance of the player base.

    1. The most skillful thing you do can probably also be done by dodging correctly. An example for me personally would be a dungeon (HotW) where I interrupted trash that does a nasty spike using my mace (OH ofc), only one person of the full group with whom I run dungeons with regularly (I consider them better than average) noticed. But we all could've dodged the attack too.

    2. The (optimised) dps ranger relies heavily on not using the dodge button ever, luckily there are two skills built into the sword that have evades. The problem is that one of those's evade is 1/3 as long as a normal dodge meaning your timing has to be spot on to be successful but because of how fast the attacks go people don't really notice.

    3. People have issues noticing things like protection on bosses, red circles of doom,... as is the last thing they'll notice is your toon.

    _________________________________________________

    Regarding PvE
    The funny thing is that the two classes with the highest skillcap also have the lowest base skill requirement: warrior and ranger.

    Warriors are the only class that require weapon-swaps to maximise DPS, on top of this there are a lot of tricks which increase your DPS some examples:
    Learn the correct rotations (it involves dodging!), learn to make attacks that can double strike always double strike, wwa weapon-swap cancel, GS auto attack final hit cancel, using wwa instead of dodge.

    Rangers require expert timing to ensure you never dodge but use skill evades. Other difficulties are pet micro, positioning (flanking), combo field control and dealing with idiots (you need everyone in your party to melee or you, your pet and your spirit are absolutely worthless.

    Why not the other classes?
    Guard: only difficulty is knowing what fight requires what utilities (I wish I was kidding)
    Mes: pop tw, use feedback/null field, spam auto evade burst nothing hard
    Engi: spam bombs or nades, yes that's it
    Nec: 2options either stay dagger 100% and auto attack or complicate things and use dagger + axe deathshroud spam, requires being able to read a healthbar!
    Thief: use stealth and backstab or if the boss is low heartseeker (keep an eye on stealth cd and ini regen (in the future)
    Ele: 2options: staff fire attunement spam lavafont (I'm not kidding) or LH build where you first stack might (requiring a whopping 2 attunement swaps) and then auto attacking. Both options require you to learn the FGS trick for whenever it's off CD but it's simple.
    In most cases, I understand the other side's viewpoint and how they came to it, but cannot tolerate their stubbornness to not see mine (the right one).

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