"Cherish the quiet...before my STORM!"
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I grab my builds from the GW2 Guru forums. Here's the thief one... http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/37-thief/
To be honest...complaining you lack time to test stuff...while at the same time playing 8 characters...
Might be part of the problem.
For me though, I like playing with the system. I found WoW horribly boring in that regard. 'Here's your spec. Too bad if you don't like it, this is the best.'
Look at it this way. As long as there is debate on the best traits then it means that they are not too badly balanced. In the WOW days of cookie cutter builds (I am not sure if it's still that way) there was very little choice if you wanted the best DPS. Even if you like a specific talent you always had to take it at a cost, sometimes a big one. In GW2, I feel like I can pick anything I want and it's not going to push me off the radar. I understand your predicament but I do think it's a good thing.
PvP aside, "play whatever, do whatever, gear whatever" is basically the mantra of GW2... which is why I can't be bothered with it any more. Well that and condition (non-)stacking which is borderline retarded.
Every single choice you make in GW2 is nothing but fluff, because deep down it has absolutely no effect on the outcome.
This game is basically the equivalent of letting a bunch of toddlers loose on a football field while their parents keep telling them that "we don't have winners or losers today, we all get a medal for participating and having fun yay ^___^"... Which is very appealing to some players (hance the GW2 fanbase) and there's nothing wrong with it, but then there are players like me (and I assume by this post Lane too) who prefer having cookie cutter specs, defined roles, synergies, rotations, teamplay etc. to beat the challenges of a game.
I can't imagine being so flummoxed by the simplistic play systems in GW2 that I would long for a pre-built spec/build/comp.
The only MMOs I have played that are shallower than GW2 are like Pirates 101, Gran Fantasia and World of Warcraft. Which still blows my mind there exists any pretense of actual intellectual consideration in a closed, linear system.
Fascinating read this last page.
I'll respond with a bit of a rant myself.
Lane, it's a mentallity thing. Whenever someone actually does the math the GW2 community always (and I do mean always) does one of 3things.
1. Plug their ears and start shouting "it's not true, it can't be true, it's not TRUE!"
2. Come up with the "argument" that : "that won't happen in actual game-play since you need to dodge or w/e..."
3. Don't get how professions work together.
Look at the guys from DNT. They make guides talking about "the best build that nearly one-shots people just by zoning in the dungeon with it" and then compare "builds" solely based on Effective Power yet nobody calls them out on this retarded reasoning.
From the start of the game people have been using the "AH Anchor" build for guardians even though it's complete and utter shit. It's a retardedly selfish spec that does nothing for the team and can't 'anchor' for shit, you simply give up DPS for nothing in return.
A couple of people have called strife/DNT out many times on some of those things and then lots of people band-wagoned in naming and shaming people who actually take the time to make a spreadsheet plug everything in and then coming up with an answer.
1. is something you see a lot (and that's probably my biggest annoyance), if you've visited the warrior thread you've probably seen me get annoyed quite a bit thanks to people who keep bringing up the same "point". Regardless of how many times you address something, people keep shouting stupid things like "but I can stand at max range with my longbow, do 6k auto attack hits and never be in any danger"
2. This is probably the biggest reason why GW2 doesn't have an EJ-like forum/site. On EJ nobody cares about stuff like that happening since that will happen regardless of your build, if there's a racing car and a prius going as fast as possible from point A to point B you don't take the prius since on some parts of the route there's swirley turns and corners, you take the racing car since all though it's potential will be limited in those areas on the other areas he has a big lead.
3. For someone reason people see stuff like mesmer/guardian and think "support" giving up everything else in return. I have a couple of people who do dungeons with and for some reason they are hell bent on some blinding glamour/reflect mesmer and a "healing hammer" guardian. And what happens is that you get looooong fights with big chances of dropping dead and like 200% reflect/absorb up-time so that both the mes and guardian have useless traits. You can easily make the guardian and mes full GC builds and keep up 100% reflect/absorb. It's also been known for ages that thieves/rangers/guardians/ele do competitive dps (slightly less) than warriors and that most people just bring warriors due to ease how easy they are to play in full zerker. Thanks to the recent nerfs to warriors (which are quite significant) all those classes deal more DPS than the warrior and the only real reason to bring a warrior is for the offensive support.
People seem to want to "optimise" but only do it half-assed (which doesn't fcking work). I've done countless CoF farms and I know how to do it ASAP using a 3war+mes+X (usually either thief or war) team and every single run you ping your gear but you see people running "endure pain+sio" and use stupid traits like 30/30/0/0/10 for some god damn reason, they also use the elite banner since "it does more dps" while it doesn't since you should have 25might and fury for a full fight without even using your god damn elite. The only reason to use it is for a 1% dmg increase thanks to empowered and stability (but you shouldn't be using empowered anymore...)
The great thing about EJ-Like sites is that people "accept" the math and in situations where there's a big change in play-style (can't backstab or stuff like that) EJ-posts a build specifically for that one fight and people use their alternate set for that. Everyone simply takes the math from EJ and posts guides everywhere else on the internet, this doesn't mean EJ is always right (they're wrong quite often when it comes to certain specific cases) but you get some unifying power.
If you're looking for one site like EJ for GW2 you're unlucky since neither reddit nor GW2guru (and especially not the official forums by god the shit I've seen come flying out of that hell-hole is unbelievable) use math-based builds.
This isn't true at all. Check GW2Guru and see how people have been "discussing" axe vs axe/mace+gs vs gs. Using your statement you'd think they're all pretty competitive, yet someone has done the math on reddit and it's not even close.
There have been very, very few classes ever created in any game that could hold my attention for long. They're fun, but they're not fun to the point of exclusivity. The closest I came to character monogamy was druid in WoW, and even then I had long term affairs with shaman and paladin, respectively. I am particularly a sucker for hybrids since they can do everything, 'pure' classes would be more like occasional flings depending on my mood but nothing I'd ever be serious about long term.
Since there's no trinity in GW2, that makes all the classes fall somewhat into the 'pure' category, thus I'm not really in love with any of them. I play whatever strikes my fancy at the time. However, that's also based a lot on what a class' strong(er) point is. Obviously, I can't farm 3 events at the same time on any other class but engineer so saying that it "doesn't matter" what I play in that regard is ridiculous because it does. (Extreme example there, but you get the point.)
Currently, I'm looking for the best long range class for AoE tagging, so in my mind that means 1200. A class that has a 900 range doesn't fit what I'm looking for so, again, it does matter what class you play for what function/objective you're seeking. (Still thinking necro for this due to long cooldowns on elementalist long range AoEs, unless someone has another idea.)
I agree. IMO content simply isn't hard enough and because of that people just do /whatever. IMO every dungeon should have a DPS-check for the simple reason that outlasting fights simply comes in the same category as "graveyard zerging".
The fact that there's no easy tools counts for most games though. You have to calculate those. The only issue with GW2 in regards to this is that there's no dps-dummies and that skills have unlisted after-cast effects which are annoying as hell.
You can calculate almost anything in GW2 without much issue, the problem IMO is that people don't seem to realise this. And then there's simple logic. TW greatly changes dps rotations (yet few people realise this) an example: war GS relies on using as many skills as possible that aren't auto-attack (since auto attack does shit damage) the main factor in this is activation time. When TW is popped you can't fit in more HB/whirl/rush, you instead fill the gap up with auto attacks (say the CD of Rush is 12sec, you get off rush+hb+whirl in 2.75 sec => 9.25s of (horrible) auto attacks. What you should do (even if you're not specced in axe BTW) is swap to axe since it's the opposite of GS because auto attacks are highest DPS.
It's purely attitude. People think effective=efficient while this really isn't the case at all. The only reason they get away with it is because content is easy and time-restricted. The first months of GW people theorized a lot over who/what to bring into fow/uw since you needed a good team to clear it in 4-5h. If you weren't efficient then, you simply never would do UW/FoW completely since a run would take 8h and not many people have the time to play that long.
I have yet to play a mmog that requires a serious amount of thinking. The level of almost all of it is, move out of the bad stuff, hit the correct target, have the "correct" ability rotation. All of that plus gear is 95% of encounters in almost every online game. At least for PVE it is.
In a short and sweet sense it's just a move out of bad stuff. GW2 encounters are worse then that :/
It's watch for the glowing the foe produces when he is going to do a one shot mechanic but it's almost impossible to see because of spell animations and the size of bosses are smaller then you.
People debate cause they aren't specific enough with their intent. There are weird specific needs people don't address, such as needing the spec to be able to stand it's ground (don't dodge or kite), activate/drop fields, work in wvw, no weapon swap, be a roamer in wvw, kill versus node holding pvp; that sort of thing.
So when you ask "what's the best spec" you only get answers from people think there is one answer. Describe what you want to do, and what's causing you trouble and you'll get better help.