Huffinator.4598

FC is the new SoS. They can't win the fights legitimately so they now have players that all they do is exploit and port hack around the maps. I've seen it myself and will spread the word to as many people as possible. It's very sad when the only way to stop them is to essentially camp the lord and place target painter traps on them as well if you are going to move away even for a moment. I have guild names and players but that's frowned down upon in the forums if you disclose that.

This bothered me enough to make a post about it: Can someone explain to me why you are blocked from setting up a bonfire just because you have some time left on your boosters? Earlier today, I realized I had a unused communal boost bonfire sitting in my bank and I was feeling generous to drop one in Divinity's Reach for all those people wanting to do an orphan run. After I dropped it, I kept pressing the karma option only to realize that the game wouldn't let me pick it. At first, I thought that I had suffered one of those random AWS disconnects I get from playing the game every so often. But soon realized after reading the wiki page, discovered that there is a convenient note at the bottom that basically says you can't pick a option if you have that particular boost active on your character. Seems kind of messed up that there isn't any kind of warning on the tool-tip of the item itself don't you think? This is not a item that is commonly obtained by playing the game (Unless you buy them with gems or gamble with Black Lion Chests) so knowledge of this important aspect may not be well-known. You don't get the item back if you don't light the bonfire and swapping characters does not work because the game doesn't recognize you as the owner who put it down. It would be nice to have these function like hero banners, but I would even be happy if ANet would get rid of the asinine aspect of not even being able to set it up if you have boosters active. Anyways, my little ramble is over. I'm sorry to those in my instance of the map, I did not mean to troll you all.

I'm just going to drop this here since I've recently suffered this and its just not right to suffer like this after putting in so much effort: Add a grace period for re-joining map instances if you disconnect! I bet almost everyone has suffered from a random disconnect (or game crash) here and there, whether it be to bad internet, a server hiccup, dx11, or something else. I just went through the WHOLE Dragon's End meta, 2 hours of prep and 1 hour of the actual meta only to disconnect right before the end of the Soo Won fight. Was at the last 20% phase with plenty of time left when it happened. My internet was working perfectly fine, as I always test it out when the game randomly kicks me out. But it still takes some time to re-open the game back up and load back in. Even though I can get back in the game fairly quickly, the game would NOT let me back in the specific map instance I was in! 😢 All my time and effort, WASTED. This is just so wrong considering DE is one of the longest meta events in the game!

I used to main Ele for several years before I just eventually got tired of all the nerfs inflicted upon the class. Several years ago, you could play a wide variety of builds in general PvE, fractals, WvW, dungeons, etc. and be very "competitive" no matter your play style. But as the years gone on, one by one the skills/traits kept getting nerfed or downright gutted into the ground. Now sure unless ANet completely took the skills away, you could still play however you prefer, but you basically would only be causing grief for yourself and especially others in group content when other professions can just simply perform way better with much less effort involved. Seeing how easy other professions can dish out damage without much effort really sealed the deal for me. I switched to a Soulbeast Ranger, geared her up completely (Full ascended everything, although I do have a couple of legendary weapons at my disposal) and now the Soulbeast nerf has officially arrived into PvE content. 😞 I do WvW from time to time, so I already know the huge damage difference there is before the patch even lands. Congrats ANet, you are taking away class viability in "harder" content and are basically making it so that you have to play guardian, Mechanist, etc. for raids/strikes/fractals and other future "challenging" content you guys may make. Okay, so you don't really have to play those classes, but good luck finding a pug group that welcomes all if you want to try out a raid/strike/etc. I really hate how raids/strikes are build specific and these so called "balance" patches are only making the issue worse.

I actually do enjoy commanding DE meta runs (Minus all the trolls) that are very pug friendly and will generally try to do a run once a day if my personal time permits. No third party tools required, but you better have your in-game chat turned on. With that being said, I do NOT have a set time as I have commanded runs during all times of the day. People usually add me to their friends list to know when I'm running DE meta.

Just going off the title, I would say that is a fair percentage from my experiences. DE has changed enough to where any fully prepped squad can beat the meta. By fully prepped, I mean everybody gets together on a map EARLY to fully prep all areas of the map and get their 10% map bonus. (And fully stack up their Jade Off/Def boons, but that should be common practice on any Cantha map) As long as the commander balances out the three escorts (And the part where you have to kill bosses at the same time) with role assignments and talks about all the mechanics, you should be fine. You would not believe the amount of lazy people I've run across who just want to pop in a map at the last minute and do the meta while not caring about the mechanics of the fight. I don't bother with those attempts at all if there are a lot of people like that in a particular time. I'll switch to other content to play or log off if I'm not in the mood to do anything else. Heck, ANet now gives you half the map prep bonus now for the final push to make it easier and less time consuming and I still see plenty of people that don't have the 10% map bonus by the time the final boss fight actually begins. If you are asking why I don't bother with those groups of people, its because I see the exact same behavior every time if I were to play through the whole event. Low dps, people dying to easily avoidable dragon attacks, ignoring the tail when we are not close to triggering the next stage of the fight, not bothering to kill bosses at the same time, etc. Basically, I know 100% without a doubt in my mind that the run will fail. I have beaten the meta several times already, and will continue to do so when I am in the mood. I do not care about what build you play if I am commanding. No third party tools (Example: Discord) required either. The only catch with me is that if I am running things, I will find the freshest map instance, set up my squad and try to fill it up ASAP. You will NEVER find my group listed in the lfg tool if you are one of those people that waits until the last minute to join. It is my way of low-keying everyone to build up their map bonus and hasn't failed me yet. The worst trolling I have gotten was the dragon CC bar popping up with the tail at the same time a couple of times, but those attempts still resulted in a successful run, but with less time remaining than my average.

Of course with my luck when I was just playing all the events for the writs (Because I accidentally used the "consume all" option in the past that converts it into imperial favor) I beat the meta with a little more than one minute to spare. No raid builds required, discord optional, and we got it done. Not too much garbage throughout the entire fight that made it happen. This was a NON-advertised group run, you had to actively be in the map doing all the events before all the organization happened. 100% meta participation for set up and the actual final fight. All the pieces finally came together and it was beautiful.

Another failed attempt, I'm officially throwing in the towel with doing this meta PUG style. You just can't expect 50-ish random people to pull this off without RNG being heavily in your favor. The tolerances are too tight. There will always be people that don't have max stat gear, jade off/def buffs, map buffs, cc skills (Even a mere EMP would help tremendously if everybody had the mastery), and the general will to actually learn all the mechanics of the fight. The meanest I will ever get is a mere "lol" if I see several people or more get downed/killed to the easily avoidable Soo-Wan attack. Three expansions in and I worry if people still haven't figured out how to use their class to put out decent damage. Note how I am not saying you have to use any kind of specific raid build, I just want you to be decent at your job. I refuse to be a part of those elitist groups where its "You play this build exactly or you are not welcome here"... I stick my beliefs that you shouldn't need outside communities (Twitch, Discord, etc.) to be able to beat this meta with a high probability of success. Last attempt I spent so much time trying to get into a "meta focused" map, I didn't realize that my event bonus expired and I only had enough time to do a mere 1 event before the lane events began. I have gotten to the point where I don't die from the final boss and only get downed when I get a lag spike due to all the particle effects or there are just so many enemy circles in my area that I can't avoid them all. I was still among the top performers in dps as a very squishy ele and I was not playing a raid build. Heck in my subgroup, when we knew we was going to fail we just dps-ed the [meow] out of our assigned boss when you have to kill 3 at the same time. We did it with plenty of time to spare before the timer eventually ran down to zero while the others didn't even come close at all. I think its safe to say that a small percentage of PUGS would bring their "A" game overall throughout the whole experience. There's just too many people that want to skill 1 their way to victory, quit at various points in the battle for any reason, die and refuse to waypoint immediately, etc. Also, I do hate how the timer just keeps ticking when you reach the threshold percentages to where you can't damage Soo-Wan anymore and Soo-Wan just wants to keep attacking when she is invulnerable before actually triggering the next sequence of the fight. I was in a fight where I didn't get tail after tail after tail, but the amount of invulnerability garbage was noticeably much higher than what I've dealt with in the past.

I’m done with this "open world raid" for the time being. The best I can do with the best PUG groups is getting to the 20% mark of the final boss. I also think that the boss is programmed to troll more if you manage to get this far. I have first hand seen the boss transition sides a whole lot more, give out a whole lot more tails to attack, go invulnerable, etc. So much trolling that people start giving up even though there is still a few or even several minutes left on the time clock. If that happens, then you are 100% doomed no matter what because the boss will not scale down if people stop participating. (Or if people just sit there dead or watch from the side lines to see if some miracle happens) Also, who’s idea was it to NOT give out the turtle egg when you complete the story? It’s not like we don’t have a very long and tedious journey to do to actually unlock the mount!

Tried to play a whole lot on day 1. The random disconnects and actually LOSING map exploration progress/XP/quests/etc to a certain degree made me shelve the game for a bit. The "pre-Cantha" GW2 disconnects would simply boot you from the game very quickly and are generally good at returning you to the exact location where you lost connection. These Cantha disconnects actually let you play for a bit before saying that you have lost connection and EVERYTHING that you have accomplished the server would be like "No you didn't" when you log back in. Sometimes, the disconnect is so bad that you have to log onto an alternate character to be able to log back into the character you were playing the story/exploring Cantha in general with. Today I am able to play through a lot of the story, but now I think someone is playing a game with me because the disconnects are hitting me hard again. I have made it to the "Weight of the World" chapter and have literally gotten booted twice from the game at the end of the story chapter. One time is bad enough, but two enrages me to the point where I really don't want to try again only to be booted near the end of the story. I was actually going to try a third time, but the game threw a connection error message at me right before I was going to start again and I'm not about to waste my time again. I have two different internet connections and they both work perfectly fine outside of the game so don't bother asking me about that. I am just +1'ing myself to the reports of people having issues with the expansion.

+1 on bringing back the infinite unbound magic gathering tools.