Antioche.7034

Same, bugged.

Despite the being the highest bench, mirage was still one of the least played specs. Now it's being toned down, and way too much. Couldn't you just nerf it by 1/2k ? This spec is one of the hardest in the game, nobody plays it, and it still gets yeeted to lower damage than way more easy to play specs ...

Is the fact that elo is globally lower than it was before in s-PvP a proof that the population in this gamemode (ranked) decreases ?

I mean I think the two first points are being adressed by this patch. Is the third still relevant now that DH does not use scholar anymore ?

Seems perfectly reasonnable, but now you really need to do something about legendary weapons being worse than ascended since you can't swap them to cast boons ... How to make precasting even more of an headache ... Now I need to unequip my leggies on one weapon set so that I can precast correctly - Kind of yikes.

Completly agreed with the OP. How can you do a beta and not give access to basic stuff such as Accuracy and Impact sigils which are used in 50% of the PvE builds ? Do you realize how hard it is to get those on ascended weapons if you didn't had them in bank ? The only way I currently found for myself (As I don't have Karka thingies in bank nor Orichalcum/Iron ingots to craft the mystic thingy with the Accuracy sigil on by default) is to recycle all the sigils of all the bêta characters and throw them into the mystic forge for the random upper sigil, which can simply take you HOURS straight just to get a normal sigil. It's just mindblowing to me that this hasn't been fixed already. They even fixed the only bug which allowed you to get those sigils easely by resetting the bank. TL;DR : All Legendary stuff + Runes and Sigils should be given on bêta tests.

Yup, login server seems to be down on EU.

You need to install arcdps to see your damage (though it's written in chat in the golem area). Then the math is just (xx/100)*benchmark number. So for 90%, 0.9*34k = 30.6k. You need to hit 30.6k to reach 90% of the benchmark. You'll be fine in pugs if you do 80% benchmark and know how to apply your rotation on the bosses. Just look at the written rotation + the video, and don't forget to queue your spells ! Takes a bit of time for the first class you do, but it's doable !

Yes, it's stackable as DPS for confusion oriented encounters (SH, Largos). Not trailblazer though, you still need a tank and a druid. I think it still outperforms axe, especially if you factor in difficulty of rotation which is non existant on staff.

I would recommand getting in touch with a training community and learning with them instead of heading in pugs. It teaches better habits without the toxicity of the pugs. I would also recommand installing arcdps and training at the golem, be it for DPS or giving boons. Necro is not the best class at the moment, but it'll do fine as DPS to start with. You can find some training communities on Snowcrows.com, just pick the one who suits you best.

Still an interesting patch, hopefully some of the suggested corrections will be implemented (BT, Exposed, Elem & Rev), but a lot of stuff in the patch still suggest that it's going in the right way in my opinion.

Exactly. If you postulate this, then there is absolutely no point in doing any changes to raids, because virtually ANY effort that has to be done will be considered too much. Then it just defeats the purpose of the raid to adapt the difficulty and people might aswell ask to transform raids into OpenWorld.It's hard to make generalities though, so changes might be impactful for some players and then it is just up to everyone to decide whether or not they consider it 'worth' doing. Sort of an endless debate.

Yeah, people are looking for a game but spend hours to farm dragonfall like mindless beasts, sure. Arguying rotations are work is absolutely ridiculous, you have stuff to learn in literally every game and MMOs are definately not an exception."Play by some rules" : Yes, welcome to the concept of "game", that's indeed the definition.I don't really mind if we don't attract people that do not actually want to play a game. P.S : If you could try to do a little bit of effort on your posts, that'd be cool, because even if you don't speak English very well or whatever reason it's actually a bit hard to read with typos and stuff ^_^Though if you're on phone it might be annoying.

The only way to give an incentive to raids is simply to make the rewards better. Right now 95+% of raiders are making less money than people farming AB or Dragonfall brainlessly. "Why would I take time learning raids if I can just farm and get more rewards". There are a bunch of people ready to help you progress, but there are not many people that wish to progress. I've raided with a dozen of training guilds, and you don't even want to know how many people actually ask for advices on rotations etc, because it is close to 0.

Short version, Condition Firebrand and even Guardian in general isn't in a very good spot at the moment in PvE. The only reason people call it 'strong', is because the class is very versatile, which's totally different from being broken. Radiance DH is okay, but it's not a meta DPS in any gamemode currently, it's actually one of the worst classes in raids and sub-meta in fractalsVirtues DH is fine but depends a lot of the group and boss, making it very hard to play correctly in pugCondition FB is fine, its bench is only slightly below top-tier condition classes for raids. For fractals, it's one of the best condition classes due to the fast ramp-up from burning. Mainly used in 100 CM for its utilities, does okay on the rest but not better than meta classes correctly played. Quick FB is currently inferior to StM chronos in many ways in raids, it's only used in fractals since chrono won't benefit from good slow uptimesHeal FB is inferior to Heal Renegade in almost any situation in both Raids and Fractals, given that Quick FB does more DPS than normal Alac while being given the possibility to retain all of its utilities. Better going with Heal Ren in almost any situation. TL;DR : The first strenght of Guardian is to be very versatile, i.e it does everything okay. The second one is that the rotations are not really complicated to execute, although there are many variations and reaching benchmark is still very hard in my opinion. Qfb/DH with FMW is still meta in high-end fractals, and Virtues DH for some raid records, but that's about it. There's no way Condition FB can be considered as OP.

I think 100 CM has ruined fractals for a lot of people. Mostly because it completly ruined LFG. I was at 450+ old KP and I played fractals like thrice since months, despite playing raids and other gamemodes almost daily.

Literally everything you said is utterly wrong. Getting ascended is incredibly fast and easy, and most trainings do not require armor to be ascended. Except armor, getting everything ascended is doable in 2 days for an experienced player who has time.150 LI do not take a year to get. In a couple of months you should largely get that if you devote time to raids.It is incredibly easy to get into raids if you do a modicum of effort, which is searching a training community or a guild. Go to www.snowcrows.com to find links to all the training communities and find out which one seems the best for you. Seeing you advance obviously wrong numbers, I can only assume that you did not do this modicum of effort.

No one is "teaching" the SC "meta". Most raiders, and by that I mean players who raid beyond those 1-2 initial raids where they got carried by benevolent experienced trainers, know what SC is as a resource. The site itsself has extensive information one ca read up on, especially under the writen guides for each class and build. A vast majoroty of the builds aren't even meta, just good builds to run. As such they are already providing a vast amount of information and guides which are off meta and safer. There is an entire ranking of how difficult a build is and how well it performs on specific bosses. That's not something needed for top tier players. The complaint here is not that SC is providing only meta builds and should provide "safer" builds, given how they already provid substantial non meta builds and go out of their way to explain how to play them. The argument in this thread is literally: the SC builds are not safe enough for some players. Well how safe is safe enough? You could make a setup which is nearly unkillable, the famous multi scourge raid setup for example, and there would still be players for whom this would be not safe enough. The issue with "safety" is that it's completely subjective and dependant on a players skill. That's something each and every player has to figure out for themselves (or within their squad). The problem here is the complaint put forth targets an issue of ability, lack of reading comprehension, lack of desire to understand, lack of desire to improve, etc. In short: human ignorance and lazyness. Instead of putting the blame with the individual though, it is put with the group who try to provide information and share their findings/knowledge. The self pity and entitlement is off the charts with this line of thinking. Sure the 98% of players who just don't bother with raids are stupid, entitled idiots. Super healthy opinion to have of the community. Honestly the community will give you flack for trying something different even in Strike missions. Can you point me to the link in snow crows for the nigh unkillable scourge comp? Also i can personally attest to people bending over backwards to match meta while having a few good trainers who make safer comps and we actually pass the boss. SH being my most famous experience with this. Also people give me flack for running 3 heals in WoJ runs. We have like 80-90% 1-shot pug rates with that. I mean you can blame the community all you want for being idiots but i think snow crows doesn't put enough emphasis on changing strategy to actually clear. But those players who were just handed those safer comps were hurt unless the trainers took time to make sure they understood the reasons why they chose certain traits and skills over others. Snowcrows aren't aiming at just clearing. They're aiming at the meta. The meta will more than just clear content. And no one is saying that a majority of players don't want to learn. Just that bad PUG's tend to have these players in them. Because to me, even if a group doesn't clear the content before the group disbands, if improvements were made, then that's a win. The next group they get into they'll be able to take that improvement and improve further and maybe clear it the next time. And no amount of giving them builds or spending time with them is going to change them. They have to change for themselves. Your getting on a site who has no part of this problem. You think giving out fault tolerant builds will help but it's just a crutch and many will rely on that crutch too much and be more harmed than helped by it. They won't strive to improve to not needing the fault tolerant build. Key word being strive, some people may just not be able to improve enough given their own limitations at a specific time. Players should learn the meta and then back it down to just the level that works for them. Not start at the most tolerant and work towards meta. That's just a recipe for bad habits being learned. I disagree. There's nothing wrong with telling Chronos not to use CS on SH and/or taking extra alac with a ren. It's just plain sense when you have so many instant death mechanics running around that you want one less thing to have to manage before you react to it. This, arrogant elitism you just displayed is exactly the problem. "Let's make this as hard as we possibly can and then treat people like idiots if they don't want to do that".and"Let's waste hours of our time learning it"Sorry to tell you that your own arrogance is everywhere in your posts, as you point out on others.Sorry to tell you that not everybody considers that taking hours to learn is a waste of time.Sorry to tell you that not everybody find raids fun just because they kill a boss in any manner, be it with two, three, four, nine healers.Sorry to tell you that not everybody wants pugging experience to be "safer".Sorry to tell you that not everybody wants raids to be "more accessible", by making pugging experience "safer". Making the game challenging by your own means when the base content really isn't is what makes raids fun for a bunch of people (Feel free to consider that it's 100 people only if you wish, it does not change my poiny whatsoever). What you call "plain sense" really isn't plain sense, just a point of view that I (or rather we, since I'm apparently not the only one to disagree) am free not to share. I don't want to play with people who are not making any efforts and need a reduced difficulty level, therefore ruining my own fun. You can make changes to pugging LFG if you wish, but it will probably end up the same way it is now, with requirements.

Delete SC, and then I certainly hope you'll enjoy all your raids full of minions necros, four healers and trailblazers condi renegades. Also don't expect any boon uptime, to be completly honest.You can make very good groups in LFG, I've pugged fullclears where I insisted on solohealing almost all bosses and it went quite finely. Admittedly it depends of the requirements you do set for joining. Just learn to pick your groups according to what you wish to do. Stop thinking that most of the playerbase is interested in yolo-ing all the bosses with 7 scourges running rez-traits and some boons. Some people want to play the meta things to actually get better, and you have zero rights of criticizing them. There's something in the middle of 'Speedkills' and 'CompleteBullshitCheeseKills', but apparently only those two exist in your head. SC is effectively making your life easier. Just join some zero LI requirements groups where everyone runs 'His own build' and maybe you'll realize this.

It's bugged in CM aswell. Anet should really look carefully into fixing this fractal, both its bugs and its balance.

This is wrong, warriors and revs aren’t meta on Largos. If you really want something for ALL fractals and raids, it’s ranger. If you use portal on Largos both are completly fine to start with, and even if you don't, renegade can pull 30+k on Largos. Warrior isn't great for split though. I could tell you Druid isn't meta on Matthias as the same kind of argument. But if we head that way of course we won't find a class to do everything with. Maybe godlike ren can pull 30+k on largos but it’s pretty generally accepted purple class is better than anything else for dps there. You can still run condi sb on Mathias. I didn’t say Druid, I said ranger as a class. They’re the only class with builds usable at everything without losing too much efficiency. The fact of the matter is, even NA pugs nowadays mostly just look for purple classes on largos cause it’s that efficient. Other dps is definitely doable, I’m not saying it’s not, but it’s not close to meta. Yes, wars and rev are great universal classes and there are beginner strats that use them but that wasn’t what OP asked. In a vacuum, ranger is the only class where you can have a build that slots into everything in pve Ren on Largos is just as "out of meta" as slb on Matthias, though. I rarely see people being blocked on asking mirages or Cchronos for Largos, aslong as you pull your weight. Renegade fits as much the description as ranger does IMO. I can say exactly the same as you did, "It's pretty generally accepted that Cwar with weavers are better than anything else there (Matthias)", it doesn't mean that ranger isn't very decently playable, just like ren is very decently playable on Largos and is meta on everything else. I completly agree with you about ranger, but I don't see why you decided that what I said was "wrong", just because it's only the second best DPS class if you use one of the two strats available for ONE boss in the game xD. Anyway cheers, I think the OP is completly answered at this point, so I'll hop out.

In fairness, full-Minstrels Firebrands who pop 5-4-3 on top of a down and then rub them aren't really "skilled builds" either. Neither are the condi bunkers or other attrition-monkeys. Nor the Dragonhunters who spam out all their traps in order to create a single down out of position and then finish them with residual damage. It's quite possible there are no "skilled builds" in this game at all, with or without the down state. Yes, you're right, however this 5-4-3 tome FB isn't oneshotting anyone with it. He isn't spending his whole time trolling people with a cheesy build. Imagine how tiring it would be to deal with these builds all the time.

This is wrong, warriors and revs aren’t meta on Largos. If you really want something for ALL fractals and raids, it’s ranger. If you use portal on Largos both are completly fine to start with, and even if you don't, renegade can pull 30+k on Largos. Warrior isn't great for split though. I could tell you Druid isn't meta on Matthias as the same kind of argument. But if we head that way of course we won't find a class to do everything with.

What? Weaver is only better than holo if you have short phases and splits which just wont happen in pugs. Not everyone cares about cm boss speedkills which is what weaver + slb are good at. Holo sees plenty of play in fractals. Ranger and Guardian use both different builds and playstyles in fractals and raids so i would suggest either warrior or alac ren as a starter. The question asked wasn't "What to play", but "What's the best ?". Meta wise, Weaver is better than Holo in fractals, it's factually correct. Maybe you'll see one Holo out of 50 300+KP groups and it's not bad at any rate, but weaver is still above. Even in pugs unless you run 50 KP with Hfb.

The answer is quite simple. What's meta in every content ? 1) Renegade2) Warrior Both of these are used literally in every single encounter. Renegade comes top because it can either be Alacrigade, either Condi RR, either full Condi DPS.Bannerslave warrior, either power or condi, is meta everywhere. 3) Ranger. Druid or Soulbeasts stancesharing on a few bosses for raids. Soulbeast for fractals, Druid for strikes. 4) Guardian It isn't meta on much stuff, but is very decent everywhere. Meta in fractals as pQfb, sub-meta as DH. Meta in strikes as Cfb (DH for Bone). Meta on some raid bosses as Cfb, DH is decent on power ones. Mesmer, thieves, engis and necro see no plays in fractals so they are off, so the only other one would be Elementalist with weaver being meta in fractals and very decent everywhere else. If you ask only about Raids : Engineer's holo and mesmers are very, very good.