help! wtf can we do about our meta game?

[crunk]

Okay so my buddies and I just 80 and got some decent gear. we want to run some explorables but a lot of them are just kicking our asses. now, i know gw2 dungeons are a lot harder than wow or star wars (where we come from in terms of mmos) and there is certainly a level of l2play going on. we're still pretty new. however, after doing some research i've discovered our group comp is just awful -

condition necro
dagger theif
support ranger
shatter/utility mesmer
????

our 5th is generally a pug since the guy who was going to play guardian with us is leveling slower than a mo'fo. from what i understand speed runs are generally some combination of warriors, guardians, and mesmers. for easy-mode pve rangers, thiefs, and necros don't have much of a role. now i'm not saying i want the game to be faceroll, we love how much harder it is, but we've got to figure out a way to make this comp work for dungeon runs that don't take 2+ hours. not asking for 30 minute path clears, we'd just like to be able to knock out 2-3 explorables a night instead of wiping out because of crazy moves like that arah illusionist beam every other pull. We spent 4 hours in p1 arah and didn't even beat Giganticus Lupicus (or whatever). A lot of that was learning, granted, but we have more problems than that. Our thief gets blown up if a mob looks at him funny, our necro somehow manages to hold aggro on EVERYTHING (and gets destroyed) and our ranger does negative damage since shes managing buffs 90% of any run. when we try to build support characters to make up for the gaps we have then nothing dies because nobody can do any damage. when we go for damage nobody has enough stuns or interrupts to peel for the necro. as the mesmer, i'm the only one who feels like i can do decent damage and offer utility.

i know a lot of people will come in here and say "X class is fine ur just bad", believe me, if I were more of a vet I'd say the same thing. But! Reading a lot of forums, the general consensus is over half our party is just bad - especially since we'd eventually like to do fractals. i know we *can* make it work - the question is how (other than the learning when to dodge and what to focus stuff, thats all just experience and we're quick studies). thats why I'm making this thread.

l2play issues aside, when we get a warrior or guardian in as our pugs everything goes 10x smoother. however, we can't always rely on having one of these classes. is there any way we can make this team work. certain builds our classes can use to make up for the lack of aegis spam (for example) or is it just time for some of us to reroll? and how the fuck does threat work? our necro does great damage when he isn't tanking every single mob in the game.

we're really enjoying the game so far, but our necro and thief are starting to get frustrated and if we can't figure something out i'm afraid they'll quit! any advice you can offer would be appreciated.

[Rukh]

That's not meta anything, that's just "How do we do well at the game?".

Stop standing in dragon poop.

[Meledelion]

In general your comp isn't the best out there, however this shouldn't be an excuse for not being able to complete any dungeon. I'll first ask some questions and then give some advice.

1. What dungeons (both SM and EM) did you complete so far?
2. What kind of gear are you guys running (say it for every profession, rabid, berserker, cleric, ... and what quality)?
3. What builds are you running (self composed or checked on the web? a build link for everything would be nice)?
4. How willing is everyone to respec/gear?

Those three things are quite important to know although not necessary your issue. 99% of this game has nothing to do with gear or builds but having good gear and builds drastically improve your runs. Everything can be dodged but not dodging is simply faster/easier

Important things which come to mind are skill overlaps (well of corruption from necro and null field from mesmer) which can be big problems.

[Karizee]

Arah is the most difficult dungeon in the game. It's a bit unrealistic to bring a fresh team in there and expect to beat it honestly.

Having a guardian is nice sure, but it isn't necessary and if you're finding the dungeon a factor of 10x easier with a guardian, then it would seem it really is a L2P issue on the part of your team. Not being mean, please don't take it that way - just trying to be honest. It's ok, everyone is learning

You might want to start out with some easier dungeons. Low level Fractals & CoF P1 are good places to learn the ins & outs of your professions. Make sure to use consumables - food buffs & potions and knowing when/how to use other consumables makes a big difference. Take someone experienced in that dungeon the first time you go if you can, someone who will explain the mechanics to you.

[Deleted]

you dont need a warrior or a guardian in the group.

the aggro works depending on the enemy. the most enemys i have seen just attack the nearest player. some try to focus on the high armor classes and other just do random stuff.

look what the enemys do. there are this water casters that do the water dagger auto attack just with 5 more in a cone infront of them. if you stay infront of him and eat all the 5 bolts your dead, no matter what. try to flank this guys or use reflection skills (mesmer has some, and a thief can block many too) sometimes change your skills.. a thief got so much blind skills its better then every guardian with his aegis.

arah is a long dungeon but only if you kill every trash mob. there are so many enemys you can just skip espacially with 2 of the main skipp proffesions in your team (mesmer and thief) invis and portals!

way 3 is like this:
killing the first trash infront the door, killing the first boss, skipping everything else untill you reached the second boss, doing the little puzzle, killing 5 enemys while skipping the other 30, killing lupicus, skipping again everything till you reached the chicken, killing the 6 or 8 trash mobs, skipping the giants, killing the final boss.

changing utility skills for special situations is important until you have learned everyrthing.

there is a mass of non elite mobs? aoe snares and dmg
ranged that hits like a truck? reflect or block it
need to get fast somewhere else? blink skills
enemys push you around? stability
and so on.

dont give up, just take more care of that the enemys do and try to react with the right thing.

[PACOX]

I main a thief and I would never go (assuming) double dagger in a dungeon. Some do it, but not many do it well. Too much risk with little reward. The thief is either spamming death blossom or backstabing. Pistol and Shortbow are both better and safer. I suggest P/D or P/P and always taking shortbow in the second slot. P/D has a surprising amount of burst if you can consistently land your cloak and dagger ability.

7/10 thieves take shadow refugee and healing signet, but be prepared to be switching skills often as needed. Thieve has a ton of utility, utilize it. They simply can't out glass cannon a warrior, so don't try. What you do have is IMO one of the best combo finishers in the game (Shortbow #1) one of the most versatile utilities in the game (Shadow Refuge), and a bag full of tricks. You probably want to trait points into trickery and acrobatics, but im not going to tell anyone how to build their traits.

I know someone people who run sword but I've used a sword on my thief pretty much ever.

[Deleted]

Don't start by Arah... Do Citadel of Flame first, then Ascalonian Catacombs, Caudecus's Manor, Honor of the Waves, Twilight Arbor, Crucible of Eternity, Sorrow's Embrace, and leave for last The Ruined City of Arah. I think this is the order for more easy to difficult...

Lupicus is a pain, and is present in all the paths...

[Dalgomar]

Okay so my buddies and I just 80 and got some decent gear. we want to run some explorables but a lot of them are just kicking our asses. now, i know gw2 dungeons are a lot harder than wow or star wars (where we come from in terms of mmos) and there is certainly a level of l2play going on. we're still pretty new. however, after doing some research i've discovered our group comp is just awful -

condition necro
dagger theif
support ranger
shatter/utility mesmer
????

our 5th is generally a pug since the guy who was going to play guardian with us is leveling slower than a mo'fo. from what i understand speed runs are generally some combination of warriors, guardians, and mesmers. for easy-mode pve rangers, thiefs, and necros don't have much of a role. now i'm not saying i want the game to be faceroll, we love how much harder it is, but we've got to figure out a way to make this comp work for dungeon runs that don't take 2+ hours. not asking for 30 minute path clears, we'd just like to be able to knock out 2-3 explorables a night instead of wiping out because of crazy moves like that arah illusionist beam every other pull. We spent 4 hours in p1 arah and didn't even beat Giganticus Lupicus (or whatever). A lot of that was learning, granted, but we have more problems than that. Our thief gets blown up if a mob looks at him funny, our necro somehow manages to hold aggro on EVERYTHING (and gets destroyed) and our ranger does negative damage since shes managing buffs 90% of any run. when we try to build support characters to make up for the gaps we have then nothing dies because nobody can do any damage. when we go for damage nobody has enough stuns or interrupts to peel for the necro. as the mesmer, i'm the only one who feels like i can do decent damage and offer utility.

i know a lot of people will come in here and say "X class is fine ur just bad", believe me, if I were more of a vet I'd say the same thing. But! Reading a lot of forums, the general consensus is over half our party is just bad - especially since we'd eventually like to do fractals. i know we *can* make it work - the question is how (other than the learning when to dodge and what to focus stuff, thats all just experience and we're quick studies). thats why I'm making this thread.

l2play issues aside, when we get a warrior or guardian in as our pugs everything goes 10x smoother. however, we can't always rely on having one of these classes. is there any way we can make this team work. certain builds our classes can use to make up for the lack of aegis spam (for example) or is it just time for some of us to reroll? and how the fuck does threat work? our necro does great damage when he isn't tanking every single mob in the game.

we're really enjoying the game so far, but our necro and thief are starting to get frustrated and if we can't figure something out i'm afraid they'll quit! any advice you can offer would be appreciated.

Sorry the only thing I can address on this would be the theif problems.

Based on what your saying it sounds like he/she is running a glass cannon (Power/Precision) build, the same build I ran with from 0-80 and still use to some degree in WvWvW. For taking out a player or open world mobs the build works well. Using the same build in a situation where players are expected to be in a fight lasting more than 20 seconds....not so good.
It took alot of way point zergs & other players spending more time rezzing me than dpsing the boss to conclude that my build for dungeons need to be adjusted.

For me taking trait points out of Power and putting them into Toughness really changed my ability to take more than just that first or second punch.

Personal opinion... your group makeup, while not optimal for a speed run, is really not bad. My solid dungeon group runs with the exact same classes adding our warrior for the 5th spot. I think someone else brought up starting at Arah might be a little above the groups ability until they learn to work better as a team. Try COF path 1 if you can. Not bad money and you can burn through it pretty fast if you do it correctly.

[Meledelion]

@dalgomar
You're just bad at playing a GC thief (there's nothing wrong with this, I am bad at playing a tank thief).
There is absolutely no need for thieves to not be GC. There might be a need from individual stand points but that's it.

[crunk]

i sort of abandoned this thread after all the comments were "lol theres no meta just dodge stuff betterer". here's what we did to fix our dungeons

i went boon mesmer staff sword/focus with a GS on hand
ranger went full toughness and either uses traps for kiting (reason for toughness) or them tasty guardian spirits.
powerleveled thief into GS warrior
recruited a staff guardian
necro went condition/epidemic spec

we went through our builds and figured out how to instantly slap up 25 bleeds on a target, who could produce the most might stacks the quickest, and how to keep a high uptime on burning. my mesmer can pump out 5k heals every 5-6 seconds with mantras in the right gear (rares not exotics), and our guardian can do the same with whatever the fuck guardians do.

now we roll into dungeons and have 20 stacks of might and full boons/conditions on every pull that lasts longer than 30 seconds. clearing paths 1-3 arah in 3ish hours, no exploits and only skipping mobs that are easy to skip - we pull it, we fight it. sure, with 4 warriors and a mesmer you can speedclear faster with wall exploits and shit, but we don't like to cheat. to those who say the meta in guild wars doesn't matter...

LOL

[Meledelion]

Crunk it really doesn't. There's vids of people running arah with 5engineers in green gear...

[Dalgomar]

Crunk it really doesn't. There's vids of people running arah with 5engineers in green gear...

This is true, but the videos are only about 3 mins. in length and 2 and a half of those mins. are the 5 Engineers getting their ass handed to them.