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When we get off the first page I'll repost my Revenant guide because it took me ages to write and I think it's useful  .
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Oct 7, 2015 08:45
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Reposting my  guide on Revenant for everyone looking at starting one.I’ve spent a decent amount of time on Revenant the last few beta weekends and a few people in Goon Squad have asked me for a writeup on it, so here is a two part  fest. The first bit is an overview of the Revenant and bugs I’ve found with it while the second is my experiences actually playing it and how I think it should work in all forms of the game. Also before I get too far into things, feedback on Revenant princesses, tia~     Part 1: What the heck is a Revenant? The Revenant is a new class being released as part of Heart of Thorns that channels the spirits of powerful characters from the game’s lore to give them access to several different unique sets of abilities, many of which are based around the mists. It is a heavy armour class with a medium health pool that specialises in party support similar to the Guardian although the Revenant’s skills are more focused on offensive support. Those of you following the Living World Season 2 story will know remember that Rytlock Brimstone disappeared into the Mists while searching for Sohothin. He’s back as a Revenant in Heart of Thorns and has apparently taught other people to channel the mists as well. As part of this process, Rytlock has completed his transformation into something straight out of an anime as best seen in the official trailer for HoT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpeLj-fDK-4 Unique Class Mechanic: Invoking legends and balancing energy The unique mechanic for the Revenant is its ability to channel abilities from legendary characters to provide its utility skills. Unlike the other classes in the game, your utility skills change to a pre-set selection when invoking a legend and while you can swap the order they’re in you can’t add in different skills. You can have two different legends equipped at a time and can swap between then with the F1 key. Each of the legend's skills (along with most of your weapon skills) have short cooldowns and are balanced by the fact they cost energy to use. Energy is a constantly regenerating resource that caps at 100 (50 when not in combat), regenerates 5 per second by default and maxes out at either 5 regeneration or degeneration per second (somewhat similar to degen/regen from GW1). Energy also resets to 50 any time you swap between your equipped legends. Most skills cost a set amount of energy but each legend also has a special upkeep skill that drains a certain amount of energy per second to keep running. Managing your energy usage is very important because if you blow all your energy on your spammable abilities and upkeeps you’ll be left without any of your offensive or defensive abilities available to you while you sit and wait for your energy to regenerate. Legends nominally have a set of weapons associated with them but you can use any weapon set with any legend. Each legend has its own focused trait specialisation that plays to its strengths. Shiro: Legendary Assassin Dual Swords and Devastation specialisation Shiro is about mobility and rapid, hard hitting attacks that either ignore defences or apply vulnerability. Shiro’s utility skills are lacking in direct healing and condition cleanse but make up for it in life leech, shadowsteps, channeled quickness and an AoE stun (Jade Winds for those of you who played Factions). Mainhand sword has a very powerful autoattack that applies lots of vulnerability, an AoE whirl that applies chill and an omni-slash attack that teleports you around the area doing either moderate damage to many targets or large amounts of damage to a single target. Offhand sword has a block and a backwards shadowstep that allows you to drag an enemy away from a group. The Devastation specialisation further increases your ability to apply vulnerability and life leech while providing solid damage boosts and a party-wide Ferocity (critical damage) aura. Mallyx: Legendary Demon Mace/Axe and Corruption specialisation Mallyx is a condition damage powerhouse, able to apply massive amounts of torment while making conditions on you ineffective and stripping off enemy boons. Mallyx’s heal is one of the few consistent ways to remove conditions as a Revenant. The other skills bring the ability to apply Resistance (conditions do no damage) to your group, strip boons from enemies (and leave them with stacks of confusion), teleport to an area to apply mass vulnerability and channel demon form to increase all stats by 10% and pulse torment on everything. Mainhand mace autoattack applies torment and poison, the second skill creates a very large column fire field that burns enemiesoo and the third is a small leap that sends out a cascading blast finisher that can proc 3 times if you land it right. Offhand axe is all about mobility, both in the form of a shadowstep and a ground-based AoE pull that also applies torment. The Corruption specialisation buffs your condition application (particularly torment), gives you the ability to gain resistance when using any of the Mallyx skills, automatically strip boons when they reach a threshold and can be set up to copy your conditions to an enemy. Jalis: Legendary Dwarf Hammer and Retribution specialisation Jalis is a stoic defender with some tank-like abilities, good access to Weakness and provides access to the only reliable stability the class has. Jalis has a heal that can deal with conditions, a nifty ghost road that give stability to anyone standing on it, a taunt (essentially the opposite of Fear), whirling hammers that damage enemies/heal you and can turn the party into stone (a la the Rite of the Great Dwarf which is incidentally what the skill is called) and granting them a 50% damage reduction. The hammer is the Revenant’s ranged weapon, capable of attacking up to 1200 range. It doesn’t really fit the tanky theme of the rest of the Jalis traits/skills but it is an extremely powerful damage dealing weapon. The autoattack throws a piercing hammer, skill 2 sends out a massive cascading shockwave, skill 3 steps through the mists and smashes down the hammer, skill 4 is a projectile block and skill 5 is a massive damage targeted AoE. The Retribution specialisation focuses on defence and provides damage reductions all over the place along with stability/retaliation on dodge, beefed up taunts, reliable weakness application and some reactive healing. Ventari: Legendary Centaur Staff and Salvation specialisation Ventari is a healing-focused legend that plays very different from all the others due to the focus of the legend being on the management of Ventari’s Tablet. Once the tablet has been summoned, all of the utility skills either move it around, create AoE effects around it (healing, condi cleanse or projectile blocking) or blow it up to knockback enemies around it and provide fragments that heal. Ventari is almost like an inverse of the normal playstyle where your attention is primarily devoted to the tablet and your weapon skills are used to augment stuff it’s doing or provide defensive options. The staff is a very interesting weapon as it is a melee weapon that provides high mobility alongside defensive and healing abilities. The staff autoattack creates orbs that heal nearby allies and ends with a whirl finisher, skill 2 is a sweeping attack that grants access to a daze if it hits a target casting something, staff 3 is a projectile block that blinds enemies, staff 4 is an AoE healing/condi cleanse pulse that can be used while moving and staff 5 is a forwards charge that evades, knocks enemies back, hits like a truck full of truck parts and generally looks amazing. Salvation is an interesting specialisation that includes a lot of options to increase your outgoing healing to allies (but not yourself) while also providing some nice CC options in the form of blinding and dazing on skill use. Invocation: the traitline that doesn’t have a legend I guess spear should be mentioned here Invocation is your utility line that ties in all your other specs together and makes the actual core functions of the class actually do more stuff. Offering stun breaks/condi removal on legend swap, healing or damage based on whether you have positive or negative energy regen, self-applied Fury on healing/stunbreaking, healing triggered by a variety of different sources and of course the crowd favourite grandmaster trait Roiling Mists. Roiling Mists is unique to the Revenant and increases the critical chance gained from the Fury boon from 20% to 40%. This allows Revenants to substitute gear with more survivability and still maintain competitive DPS or allows them to gear for 100% critical chance to take advantage of the Ferocity buffs available in Devastation. Revenants only have access to one type of underwater weapon, the Spear, which has not one but two autoattacks. The ranged autoattack is focused at condition builds while the melee autoattack is focused on power users. The rest of the weapon skills also have two-stage activations where one is usually focused towards either condi or power. It’s an odd weapon and thankfully there isn’t a ton of underwater combat that we’ve seen yet. Elite Specialisation - Glint: Legendary Dragon Shield and Herald elite specialisation Herald is the only elite spec that was designed alongside the rest of the class and it shows. The traits and skills dovetail nicely into all of the other specialisations to the point where it’s probably going to be more unusual to see a build without Herald than one with it. Every single one of the abilities provided by Glint is an upkeep skill (providing lots of nice party boons - regen, might, fury, swiftness and protection), but they have their own unique twist: instead of using the skill again to cancel the upkeep you gain access to a powerful ability on a medium cooldown while the skill is being channeled. In a way, they’re similar to signet abilities but significantly more powerful. The active abilities include healing yourself for all damage taken, applying damage/vulnerability in an AoE, a stunbreaker that reveals stealthed units, an AoE that applies burning/chill/weakness and a massive knockback that gives superspeed to allies. The actual Herald mechanic adds an F2 upkeep skill, the Facet of Nature, which is available to all legends and boosts your party’s boon duration by 50% instead of offering a specific boon and when activated grants you short duration versions of all the passive boons from the other facets. The Shield is an extremely powerful defensive weapon with low cooldown support abilities. Skill 4 heals/grant protection to allies in a ground targeted area and skill 5 surrounds you in a bubble that roots you in place, blocks all attacks and heals you over a short period. The Herald specialisation line is mainly focused around defence and group support allowing you to increase your toughness for each point of energy you’re upkeeping, increasing your boon durations, applying might when you apply other boons and increasing your damage for every boon on you. What’s a beta without bugs? Revenant is in a much better spot than it has been in the previous Beta Weekends but there’s still a bunch of nasty bugs to watch out for, particularly since I don’t think there’ll be time to fix all of them before HoT launches. Upkeeps and legend swapping When you switch legends to Shiro and had been using an upkeep skill it’ll take a few seconds before the game realises it’s not in that legend any more and allow you to start channelling impossible odds (because impossible odds maxes your energy drain). You can work around this by manually turning off your upkeep skills before swapping legends. Uneven terrain and ground based abilities Many of the Revenant’s abilities that travel along the ground will not connect with the target if there is any elevation change at all between you and the target. Affected skills include Brutal Blade (Sword auto chain 2), Coalescence of Ruin (Hammer 2), Grasping Shadow (Sword 5), Searing Fissure (Mace 2) and Temporal Rift (Axe 5). These skills are using new technology (along with Reaper Greatsword 5) and due to how the engine handles these skills there’s nothing that can be done until ArenaNet fix the underlying tech. Brutal Blade is particularly bad as it is both a projectile and follows the ground so it can both be reflected or fail to connect, both of which stop the autoattack chain from finishing. See this rather amusing video for more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bjhdw_26Rw Projectiles, movement skills and walls Projectile Skills such as Vengeful Hammers and movement skills such as Unrelenting Assault have their projectiles destroyed/end the channel when they encounter a wall. This is to do with how the engine handles these skills and there’s nothing that can be done until ArenaNet fix it. Ranged movement/shadow step abilities with fields Ranged abilities that either shadowstep and return (Hammer 3) or teleport you forwards (Mallyx Unyielding Anguish) that are supposed to leave a field/do damage don’t do so at their maximum range. Hammer 3 max range is 1200 but it won’t do damage past 900 and Unyielding Anguish is a 600 leap that drops the field at 450. Underwater combat All of the legend skills are currently marked as being disabled while underwater. This is presumably an oversight but it’s going to be hilarious if it goes live like this. This was really fun to find out about at the last boss of HotW3 since it meant I didn’t have any healing skills  . At the moment you can kind of work around this by being in Glint stance and activating your upkeep skills before entering water as they’ll stay active but if you get downed they’ll cut out again.
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Oct 8, 2015 00:13
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Part 2: Sure, but how do I actually play a Revenant? There’s several different ways you can play a Revenant so I’ll break it down by game type and stats/weapons below. I can go into detail on exact builds and how to use the abilities in each legend if people really want but I think most of it is fairly self-explanatory if you look at the tooltips for the traits and skills. PvE The main choices you have for PvE are Power vs Condition Hybrid and Selfish vs Group Support. For solo PvE you can do whatever but I’d recommend leaning towards power-based builds since you often have to destroy objects and condition damage doesn’t help you there. Revenants are going to be like Guardians and Thieves in that they’re constantly swapping out weapons, skills and traits as required in group content. Special Note: Consider Ventari for Fractals and Dungeons Okay so everyone’s seen the tablet’s skills and thought ‘gee, a set of skills focused on micromanaging a healing tablet sure is garbage for PvE’. I thought that too initially and I’m pleased to say that we’d be wrong with that assumption. Ventari’s Tablet is quite possibly broken (in a good way) as it’ll often bodyblock projectiles (and has infinite HP) and can be used as a spammable short duration projectile block or AoE condi cleanse/heal. The best thing about the tablet is that you can activate its AoE heal pulse, AoE condi cleanse and projectile block without interrupting other abilities so you can sit the tablet on top of you and pulse the skills while ressing someone if needed (Mai Trin I’m looking at you). When we were in uncategorised fractal before I was able to constantly move the tablet on top of the harpies and turn on Protective Solace (AoE Projectile Block) long enough to kill the harpy and then turn it off immediately, leaving me with enough energy to do that every single platform. I was also able to sit the tablet in front of Old Tom and it bodyblocked all his projectiles  . I expect the bodyblock thing will eventually get fixed since I don’t think it’s intended behaviour but it’s still hilarious in the meantime.Condition Hybrid builds I’d recommend Mallyx as your main legend with Corruption/Invocation/Herald for traits. Glint works well if you’re with a group and because of the breath attack that applies burning. Shiro also works well as a second Legend if you’re solo because you can use Phase Traversal for rapid movement and Impossible Odds to really load up the torment/poison application from Mace. Your main weapons for this are Mace/Axe although Mace has kinda mediocre power scaling. Secondary weapon is down to your preference since none of them have any condition application but Staff/Hammer in particular will be able to take advantage of power on your gear. For max DPS, Sinister-stat gear and Superior Runes of Torment (for maxed out Torment duration) since they’re going to change one of the minor traits in Corruption to make Torment do mostly the same damage to a non-moving target as it does to a moving target so you want as much of it as possible. Thanks to Roiling Mists you can probably get away with swapping out some stuff for Carrion-stat gear if you’re feeling squishy. As a side note, we don’t know if there’ll be new stat distributions in HoT (here’s hoping for 4 stat sets like you see in sPvP) but hopefully down the track they’ll release some gear that’s Condition Damage primary with Power/Ferocity as Revenant (and Reaper) will be able to take advantage of that due to their strong crit chance traits. Power builds I’d recommend either Glint (if you’re aiming to provide group support) or Shiro (if you don’t care about buffing your group) as your main legend while using the opposite one as the secondary one. Traits would be Devastation/Invocation/Herald either focusing on personal damage multipliers or group buffs depending on how you’re playing. Weapons are mainhand Sword and then your choice of Axe (shadowstep/best damage option), Sword (channeled block/backwards shadowstep) or Shield (group heal/protection and serious oh poo poo button) for the offhand. I’d suggest carrying both a Staff and Hammer with you and swapping depending on whether you need ranged (Hammer) or group support (Staff) more.  Trigger Warning: Meta-build I dunno how many people care about really minmaxing their gear but people more grognardy than myself have worked out the thresholds for when power/ferocity are more effective at 100% crit. As you can get to 100% crit fairly easily you’re better off using power based runes even though Devastation provides tons more ferocity than previously it’s still more effective to stack power at the levels of power currently achievable with full buffs and ascended gear. Taking the above grognardery into account, you want to get to 52.8% crit chance from gear (fury w/roiling mists and then either Spotter or Banner of Discipline providing the rest) and then dump everything else into power until you’re at 2250 more power than whatever your ferocity rating is when fully buffed. Best choices of runes are Scholar (if you’re good at keeping your health up) or Strength (if you’re bad at keeping your health over 90% like I am). Sigils/consumables/etc are the same as normal for speedrunning/organised groups. end of Meta-build I was running a (pretty close to optimised for spergery) build with Sword/Axe, Hammer on swap and then Glint/Shiro and Devastation/Invocation/Herald, swapping Shiro out for Ventari when I felt that the extra condi cleanse/projectile block justified it. Did pretty well and swapping over to Shiro and turning on Impossible Odds made a noticeable dent in the bosses health. Maximum personal DPS with no group support This is for the speed-clearing grognards who are getting boons covered by the rest of the party and just want to do damage. Shiro/Mallyx, Devastation/Invocation/Herald. Take any traits that have damage% in them. Sword mainhand is the only required weapon. Axe is probably the best offhand. Second weapon set is irrelevant but probably Hammer for when you need ranged. This build is braindead easy because you simply use the upkeep skill in either legend until you run out of energy and then switch to the other one and do the same thing while autoattacking with sword and using Unrelenting Assault every time it’s up. Snoozefest but does very good damage. Honestly though, if you’re going to do this you should probably just play a Sinister P/P Engineer. You’ll do more damage and actually provide some benefit to your group. WvW Both power and condi/hybrid work well from what I saw and I think Revenant will probably be very viable for roaming, backline support and frontline fighting in WvW. I’m particularly looking forward to running around as a Cleric Ventari build with SFD  Roaming Both power and condi should be fine for roaming. Power builds have better mobility and burst (and would be my preference for solo roaming) while Condi builds can be great brawlers with good survivability. The main choice is going to be whether you want to take Invocation (more offensive support) or Retribution (more defensive support) alongside Herald and either Devastation or Corruption depending on what sort of build you’re running. Herald (both the traitline and Glint) are hard to pass up so I’m assuming most builds will be taking it. If you really want to play a ghetto thief you could do a similar thing to the max personal DPS build above using both Mallyx and Shiro and a hybrid build. Backline Support There’s two ways you could build for this: Power-based Herald relying on Hammer to provide excellent ranged damage and buffs to the rest of the backline or full on Cleric Ventari that focuses on looking after the tablet to keep either the frontline or backline supported. Power herald is basically the same as a well Necro in terms of gearing. I’d use Hammer primary and either Sword/Shield or Staff as the secondary weapon. Cleric Ventari is particularly hilarious since you can get like 150% increased outgoing healing and on top of the 1600+ healing power you have the tablet can pulse 6k+ healing to each of 5 targets every 4 seconds. Also, sitting it on people and activating the projectile block is also really nice. Ventari/Glint with Salvation/Invocation/Herald using Staff/Hammer and full Clerics gear for that. Frontline Support I didn’t get a chance to try this sort of thing out so it’s pure theorycrafting but I’d be expecting it to use the same sort of gear as either a frontline Warrior or Guard build with Herald/Jalis and Invocation/Retribution/Herald. Traits would be focused around stability/protection/CC when using abilities. For weapons I think I’d probably use Mace/Shield and Staff on the swap since Mace will provide you with a short leap+triple blast finisher (on skill 3), Shield provides you with a solid ‘oh poo poo’ button (along with party healing) and Staff is great for defensive/mobility. PvP We’re coming up on having both Conquest and Stronghold available in PvP and I’m aware that each of them will have a totally different meta so I’m not even going to bother speculating about what is or isn’t likely to be in the meta of either. I’ve mostly been playing a Carrion brawler build in Stronghold because it is Fun As poo poo but I did get a chance to play around with a power build as well. Carrion brawler I used Scavenger runes, Carrion amulet, Glint/Mallyx, Corruption/Retribution/Herald, Mace/Axe and a Shield on weapon swap and was a burly wrecking ball. Despite mace’s somewhat poor power scaling you’ve got enough power in the build that you can damage objects okay and if anyone’s dumb enough to leave you alone you’ll just poo poo out torment, poison and burning everywhere. You’ve got a stunbreaker that reveals stealthed opponents, a ground targeted AoE on a short cooldown that drops burning/weakness/chill on stuff, a ridiculous heal that completely negates all damage and turns it into healing on you (which you can place on an ally while ressing them which is hilarious if the enemy team is trying to cleave them to death), a short duration pulse of might/fury/regen/prot/swiftness, swiftness for running from one place to another and you can just laugh at anyone who tries to put conditions on you while in Mallyx form. Overall, just really goddamn fun to play and I don’t even care if it ends up being terrible or easily countered. Power skirmisher/decapper You know how thieves can do that ‘move really fast around the map and be a +1 in a fight or decap a point’ thing? Yeah, well, you kind of can as well. Well, you don’t have stealth and you can’t disengage at will but at least you can move around the map really fast, right? Using Shiro’s Phase Traversal ability you can target something quite far away from you and shadowstep 1200 units towards it. You can do this three times in a row before your energy has to recharge. For added mobility you can also use Axe for another shadowstep (when you get close) and Staff to move faster with the charge. I’d recommend using Marauder amulet with your choice of runes, Shiro/Glint, Devastation/Invocation/Herald and Sword/Axe with Staff. Revenant is somewhat sturdy even while focused towards damage so take advantage of that and gear for maximum damage. Bunker I’m absolutely terrible at playing bunkers so I haven’t tested this or anything but I think you can make a passable bunker build using Glint/Jalis with Salvation/Retribution/Herald for team support. Weapons you’d want Staff and Sword/Shield with probably a Cleric amulet (go look at the Guardian bunker page on Metabattle for an idea of what other stuff to use). You’ll have very powerful regen, your staff auto will drop healing orbs, staff 4 is a strong heal/condi cleanse, Jalis has taunt, condi cleansing heal, the ghost road for stability and rite for 50% damage reduction, you’ll be able to drop weakness on stuff a lot and you’ve always got Glint for the absurd burst absorbing heal and the AoE reveal/stunbreaker combo.
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Oct 8, 2015 00:13
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PsycheNotFound posted:A big thing I've faced in the past with Guild Wars 2 would be WvW that boiled down to karma trains avoiding enemy teams completely. I remember specifically EotM evolved to be this exclusively. Will the expansion do anything to address this, or can I expect more conga lines with perma-sprints?
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Oct 9, 2015 05:56
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Adhesive Gamin posted:Here's the datamined table from a month back. If nothing changes you'll need 170 hero points total to unlock the last of your elite spec's grandmaster traits, but 50 will get you in the door with the first minor trait. The costs there for the skills/traits are exactly double what a normal skill/trait line are and I suspect they're a remnant from when it was intended that you'd need to do a third of the open world hero point challenges to even be able to fill out your trait lines which was scrapped as a concept a while ago. The only way I can think of those numbers would line up is if the Mastery challenges in HoT give hero points (they haven't in any of the betas so far) but even so, I think expecting players to basically do world completion of both the old and new content before they can get everything in the elite spec lines seems unreasonable given how alt-friendly the rest of the game is. Incidentally, using a level up tome at 80 now grants a spirit shard rather than a skill/hero point so you can't just farm them from PvP reward tracks anymore, either.
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Oct 9, 2015 23:17
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I really like that tether pull thing (which looks like it might be an F4 ability) on Spear of Justice since it gives you an easy way to get stuff on top of traps you've dropped at your feet and addresses one of the main issues about the class.Baron Von Pigeon posted:Speaking of Karl actually has just posted some more updates for Daredevil: quote:Here’s a couple other updates that had been in the works and are now in testing.
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Oct 10, 2015 22:56
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Oh yeah that reminds me, guild mission resets aren't changing. ANet's comms team apparently misunderstood what the Devs told them and it's just raids that will be resetting on Mondays. Mission reset will be remaining as it has been and that's also why it reset last week and confused everyone.
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Oct 11, 2015 00:26
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:I've had to step away from GW2 for a while to play SWTOR, so I haven't been keeping up. I skimmed the thread, but how is my life as a guild member going to change after the expansion drops? I see there's some guild hall thing, is there other guild-centered content
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Oct 12, 2015 04:35
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Lyer posted:https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3obkcl/guild_wars_2_inflation_research/ IsaiahCartwright posted:For example butter was rock bottom at the start but we rebalanced its in/outs so it's increase is not from inflation.
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Oct 12, 2015 06:32
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Generic Octopus posted:Even if they fixed the grind a bit, without the gold the only reason left to do them really is get the skins. And then never bother again unless you find them really super fun on their own merit. Of course, if you don't like PvP you're kind of screwed.
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Oct 12, 2015 22:49
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Also in case anyone wasn't clear, yes they are actively trying to stop people running dungeons and get them to move over to fractals:John Smith posted:Is the intention to deincentivize dungeons
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Oct 13, 2015 02:32
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Also they're not doing any more underwater legendary weapons based on the blog post (explicitly doing 16 new legendaries in batches). RIP in piss, underwater combat.
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Oct 13, 2015 03:18
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I know that both Goon Squad and SFD have lots of people that actually like doing dungeons but let's be honest here, the majority of the playerbase were actually just using them as an efficient source of money and were skipping as much stuff as possible in order to achieve said money acquisition. If Anet wants the playerbase to move to another form of group content it makes sense that they'd move the rewards, too. I'm a bit sad because I've spent lots of time running dungeons over the last few years but I guess we'll still do them for people who want dungeonmaster and armour for princess dressup.
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Oct 13, 2015 06:12
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Lyer posted:I doubt people in GS were/are doing dungeons for fun, but for most it's either an easy tolerable way to make gold or something that's a change of pace. I don't think fractals are well done either, the encounters there save the last bosses are laughable in terms of mechanics and even then, those bosses are pretty basic compared to other games.
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Oct 13, 2015 06:56
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Sprite141 posted:It's a lot easier to just get ascended trinkets from guild commendations, and also grab one of the crafting backpacks which are the best. Plop the +5 infusions in them and with just the commendations having infuaions you are good to go. The main misconception I see with all of this (which is what Diego is confused about) is that people assume that the +1 infusions are how you actually get Agony Resistance and consequently they make them into a +5 (or buy them from the TP since they’re not bound) and can’t add them to their ascended gear (usually accessories from Guild Missions), declare that this is bullshit and Fractals are stupid and spit the dummy and vow never to do Fractals again. I’m hoping that the below will help to make things a little clearer so that this doesn’t happen to you when you start looking at Fractals in HoT.Fractals of the Mists Okay, so for people who aren’t familiar already, Fractals of the Mists are a set of sequential mini-dungeons that can be accessed through a portal in Lion's Arch. They have difficulty scales that (in theory) reward better loot as you go up them but to counterbalance the increase in rewards they scale the enemy NPC health/damage and also introduce a mechanic called Agony which is a ticking debuff that does damage in the form of a % of your health per second. Currently, a Fractal set is composed of 3 randomised sequential islands followed by a random boss island and you need to complete all 4 to count as ‘finishing’ the set of fractals. In Heart of Thorns this is being changed to each level being a single set island (could be either normal or boss, depends on the level) so it should require significantly less time investment. Agony Resistance Agony Resistance will allow you to reduce the damage that Agony does down to a minimum of 1% per tick which makes it negligible but it means that there is effectively a hard gate to entering high level fractals. Fractal scale 1-9 doesn’t require any Agony Resist, 10-19 requires 10 Agony Resistance to reduce Agony to 1%, 20-29 requires 25 AR, 30-39 requires 40AR, 40-49 requires 55AR and 50 (currently the highest scale available) needs 70 AR to reduce the Agony ticks to 1% damage. There is a good explanation along with a chart on exactly how Agony Resistance works on the wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony_Resistance The difficulty scaling is going to a max cap of 50 to 100 in Heart of Thorns but we don’t know what changes to Agony Resistance will be required for that since I don’t think you can actually get enough AR for 100 going by the 15 more AR per bracket increase we have now. Anyway, to actually get Agony Resistance, you need to have ascended gear as it has Infusion slots on it that you can slot AR into. There are two types of items you can slot into your gear that provide AR: Versatile Simple Infusions (+5 AR, can be put into any normal Agony Resistance slot regardless of whether it’s Offensive/Defensive/Utility) which cost 75 fractal relics from one of the Golem Vendors or special Agony Infusions (the +1 numbered things that you get for completing fractals) which can only be put into infused Rings and Backpacks. There are also fine versions of the simple infusions which are crafted in the mystic forge and give you +5stat as well as the +5AR but they use T6 mats and cost hundreds of gold so they’re entirely not worth it. Now, to get a lot of AR, you need lots of Ascended gear. There’s no way around it. That said, what you don’t need is to get all 70AR at once before you even start. If you’re only doing fractals for chances at ascended loot chests and fractal skins, I’ve actually gotten more of them from 19 and 29 scale fractals than I have from 49/50 (and I think Cletus has as well). Also, as Nilgoow said 70AR is the absolute maximum you need for the very highest level of fractals and realistically, more people levelling their reward level will be running 49 as opposed to 50 (which also only needs 55AR). You can quite conceivably get 55AR from just your accessories and weapon so I’d honestly be recommending people do that before they charge headlong into ascended armour crafting (which is absurdly expensive). Ascended accessory acquisition All of the accessories can be acquired without actually running Fractals at all, although I find it’s still more efficient to get rings from Fractals.
Necklaces can be purchased with a special utility infusion slot that allows you to get 20% Magic Find or 15% Karma gain (also exp/gold but no one uses those) which I’d generally encourage using over a raw +5AR infusion because you can’t get those specific buffs from any other source and they stack with everything else. Rings I would encourage you to purchase them with Pristine Fractal Relics (which you get for completing a daily bracket completion or fractal daily if it’s up, more on that later) since if you actually start running fractals you’ll be swimming in them before long. Now, earlier I mentioned ‘infused’ rings and backpacks. Well, when you’re running fractals there’s a chance for some ascended crafting materials (vial/glob/shard of mist essence) to drop. The rings are easier to infuse than the backpacks but basically you need to throw your ring into the mystic forge along with 5 vials/3 globs/1 shard of mist essence and it’ll spit you back out the ring with a second infusion slot on it that can take all those +1 infusions you’ve been getting and combining. You can also infuse ascended backpieces in the same way but they require a Gift of Ascension (500 fractal relics from the vendor in Fractals) and a bunch of ectos to do so most people will stick to infusing rings unless they really need the extra AR. Reward Level or Why Am I Actually Running These Fractals In The First Place So, in addition to the scaling difficulty level Fractals also have a scaling reward level called the Personal Reward Level. Basically, any time you complete a set of fractals equal to or higher than your current reward level, it goes up by 1. You can only start a set of fractals with the difficulty as high as your personal reward level but you can join in on any level once it’s started. What the reward level does is increase the quality of drops you get during fractals but it also has a special interaction with the daily fractal bracket completion where if you’re reward level 11 you start to get a chance of straight up being rewarded an ascended ring (which is unfortunately random so enjoy your bank full of rings with magi stats) when you complete a daily bracket. At personal reward level 26 and above that changes to a chance at an infused ring. Higher level daily rewards also have a better chance at dropping bonus loot like Fractal Weapon Skins, Ascended loot boxes and at higher levels the coveted Endless Fractal Tonic. Daily Rewards and Reward Brackets Last confusing mechanic for the day: when you complete a set of fractals you’ll get a reward once per day, similar to dungeon paths. However, unlike dungeon paths there are actually different daily rewards for the various brackets with the caveat that any thing at or above your current personal reward level counts as a single bracket. As an example, I’m at level 50 so if I really hated myself I could run 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40 and 41-50 for a total of 5 daily rewards. If I was reward level 25, I could run 1-10, 11-20 and anything 21 or higher would be a single bracket. You might also notice that from time to time there are dailies for Fractals, either ‘Daily fractal’ (which requires you to complete a single island) or Daily Scale 1-10 Fractal (which requires you to finish a full set of fractals in that scale). Both of these give a Pristine Fractal Relic from their resulting wigglechests so if you have both of them together at the same time you can combo them with a scale 1-9 fractal run (which requires no AR) and get 3 Pristine Relics. Do that 3-4 times and you can buy yourself the ascended ring of your choice. Note that this is being condensed to three daily ranges in HoT: 1-20, 21-50 and 50+. Mercurius fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Oct 14, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 23:54
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Sprite141 posted:I still didn't read the thread or the wiki or anyone's responses to my posts. I know you have a different way of how you play the game to most people but please try to remember that there are a lot of goons who read the thread but don't post in it and when you drown out pages of discussion with hysterics about how everything about fractals and Ascended armour is awful then those people who just read the thread might never decide to even try. To reiterate: you don't need ascended armour to do level 49 fractals because you can get 55AR from a full set of trinkets+weapon if you infuse the rings and backpack (and you'll get the drops required to infuse the stuff doing up to 29 fairly quickly). There's a very minimal difference in terms of reward between 49 and 50 and we don't know what's going to happen with the fractal masteries at this point so just chill out. You only need 10AR (which you can get in the accessories you can buy every 2 weeks of guild missions) to trivialise the damage in 10-19 fractals. You only need 25AR (either a weapon+3 trinkets, 5 trinkets or less if you end up with an infused ring) to do the same for 20-29. Again, anecdotally, I (and others like Cletus) have received more ascended gear box drops and fractal skins from 19 and 29 than we have from 49/50. Generic Octopus posted:Alternately link the Fractal page on the wiki. It'd be nice and complementary: a link to the wiki no one reads from the op no one reads. For those who aren't aware, you can type /wiki {topic} (so in this case /wiki Fractals of the Mists or /wiki Agony Resistance) into the chat box in game and it'll open up the relevant page on the official GW2 wiki. It's a pretty neat feature and a good way to get a quick explanation on something you're unfamiliar with. Mercurius fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Oct 14, 2015 |
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Oct 14, 2015 22:00
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Thoom posted:Worth noting that while Ascended is only a 5% boost in raw stats, it works out to be a roughly 15% boost in DPS, which is pretty significant.
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Oct 15, 2015 07:14
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Thoom posted:15% is the number I've seen bandied about in recent discussions.
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Oct 15, 2015 07:42
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CLAM DOWN posted:Dreggon is one of the greatest parts of this thread/forum and I will knife whoever disagrees 
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Oct 16, 2015 08:34
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Wooze posted:hi hello I've got a question! While levelling you're going to be largely stuck with Shiro stance (direct damage but glass cannon, no condition removal, no stability), Mallyx stance (condition hybrid damage, can become resistant to all condition damage, condi clearing heal, no stability or stunbreaker) and Jalis (tanky, condi cleanse heal, stability and stunbreaker, damage reduction, low damage). There's another stance available, Ventari, which is mainly based around healing/condition removal/projectile destruction and relies entirely on weapon skills to do damage. The current meta is still 'kill it before it kills you' so everyone gears for balls to the wall damage with supporting traits and abilities that increase damage done.
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Oct 16, 2015 10:29
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LITERALLY A BIRD posted:SFD since GOON is running out of room
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Oct 16, 2015 23:03
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kater posted:You get one for pre-ordering if you use their store.
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Oct 18, 2015 03:37
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Agent Kool-Aid posted:to celebrate my fancy new hammer i decided to make my charr look like a pit fighter. somehow every piece comes from a different set (barring the helmet but who wears those as charr) and i am mildly proud of it
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Oct 18, 2015 11:51
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treizebee posted:I was unaware that Norns had bandana hair like that. I guess I will finally make my first Norn for my Revenant.
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Oct 18, 2015 20:35
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 They updated the Daredevil staff autoattack animation and it's loving amazing now http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/v/20972084 - Starts at 43 minutes in and is using the new legendary birdstaff Nevermore. E: I'm at work so I can't make a gif out of it but the third part of the chain is now whirling the staff from side to side repeatedly instead of the floaty re-used Revenant auto animation it had last beta weekend. The whole chain is a lot smoother and looks really great so I'm cautiously optimistic about the rest of the animations that were placeholders. Mercurius fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 01:42
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Shalebridge Cradle posted:Not great quality but you get the idea.
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Oct 19, 2015 06:13
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Lyer posted:Did they mention anything about keeping the T6 gifts in the new weapons? That blog post was confusing as all hell. They also said they're looking into a way for people to craft blank legendaries (so basically a stat swappable ascended weapon) so that you can have the equivalent of dual wielding the same legendary with the new ones that it isn't possible to get a second copy of.
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Oct 19, 2015 06:58
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Phosphia posted:I thought the entire point behind the new legendaries was to remove the gold barrier that we know from precursors.
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Oct 19, 2015 10:55
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Raskolnikov posted:I believe they are no longer account bound. I switched a weapon recently and I don't have anything to 400 but cooking
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Oct 20, 2015 04:23
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Adhesive Gamin posted:Fortunately it will be possible to grab all the low hanging fruit Hero Challenges in HoT maps, and then just farm WvW rankup unlock scrolls to unlock the rest with no mastery required.  I'm actually okay with this change because I couldn't be bothered grinding hero challenges on the ~10 characters I regularly play and was going to use hero specs on in PvE/WvW and since Masteries are account wide once you've unlocked them on your first character all your alts will be able to just race through and grab the ones that are locked behind mushrooms/glider stuff anyway.
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Oct 20, 2015 20:51
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Amante posted:Same.
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Oct 21, 2015 01:17
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Rand Brittain posted:Do we still know nothing about any of the other zones in the expansion a few days before launch?
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Oct 21, 2015 02:22
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Rynder posted:Haven't been playing as often the past few weeks to try to reset my interest for hot but drat that elite spec grind is disheartening. I'll probably get my ele to tempest, get bored and uninterested in doing the same content again for my robot engi let alone another 8 times. For reference I think my characters with world completion have around 210ish hero points right now.
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Oct 21, 2015 03:00
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Tempest and Berserker are meh but that's mainly because their base classes are so good already that it's hard to improve much. Everything else was fun from what I saw during the last beta. Also has anyone bought the butterfly wings for Arus yet?
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Oct 21, 2015 08:08
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Mercurius posted:Also has anyone bought the butterfly wings for Arus yet?
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Oct 21, 2015 08:48
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This is kind of kawaii, right? It's not an asura, though.
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Oct 22, 2015 01:45
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Waci posted:You can start dumping points into it, but even if you have world completion on the character you wont have enough to finish the track so you wont actually be able to get the higher tier traits until you've hosed around in the jungle for about 200 hero points.
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Oct 22, 2015 03:32
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:Man, I just dropped 50 bucks on this, which has been the most money I've spent on a single game in over a year. I feel like I've dropped a shitload of cash (since I also bought into the SWTOR expansion -- I imagine Dulfy must be ecstatic this month) and I'm already having buyer's remorse since I have significant doubts I'll get my money's worth. I finished my personal story and was playing quite a bit of PvP for a while but that's dropped off. I haven't really touched Silverwastes or Dry Top, and when I visited those areas it just seemed like confusing grinding. I also didn't do the Living Story since I jumped back into the game after like episode 4 so I don't have access to the whole story without paying more money. The only thing I've done in the game these past couple months is log in for my daily chest and do guild missions whenever I've been free on weekends, just because that's become routine.
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Oct 22, 2015 04:48
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Amante posted:Never, unless you count HoT's gliders as mounts (which you probably shouldn't).
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Oct 22, 2015 09:50
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Welp, crash to desktop at the start of teq and now my client is stuck with connection errors  brainSnakes posted:For Scrapper, function gyro is finnicky as gently caress, but I actually don't hate the other gyros so far. I was reading a lot of disappointment about them, but it really helps that they're a daze on self destruct. Just don't go about intending to keep them around for their whole lifespan.
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Oct 25, 2015 01:05
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