I keep dying, Do I suck?

[Galmac.4680]

So don't die, just dye! 😀

[baseendje.8452]

On 12/12/2022 at 1:09 AM, Insignia.3826 said:

Hello all,

I am a level 80 guardian (Just switched to willbender) and I keep dying in the HoT expansion story. I bought armor off the trade post with mostly power attribute. I usually play casters but the Elementalist looked way too complicated to start with. 

 

Do you have any suggestions or tips?

 

Thanks.

HoT can be very tricky indeed. I had exactly the same experience when I first entered the content. There is a noticable leap in difficulty from the core game. The best tip I can give you is to have a look at some of the 3th party websites with builds. A strong build can make a huge difference in terms of survivability. Note that a lot of popular PVE damage builds are often played in combination with a healer there to keep them alive. I typically make use of my build slots to have at least one open world/solo build and one specialist build (dps/healer/boon suppoort) which is talored towards group play.

For open world builds have a look at these: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Open_World or https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/?gw2gametype=open-world&d=0 another good resource but focused on group content is: https://snowcrows.com/. 

[Dayra.7405]

Once you learned Nuhoch-4 Mastery Nuhoch Stealth Detection survival becomes a lot easier. These partially invisible Mordrem Guard Snipers and Coztic Shadowleapers are quite a pain before.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Dayra.7405

[Dadnir.5038]

Oh... You're new to HoT... It's natural to keep dying if it's the case. If you also keep being lost, it's natural as well.

Don't worry, it's just HoT's flavor.

[Nabbut.7480]

A simple wisdom so many DPS-obsessed players miss: you do exactly zero DPS while dead.

Thus, using tanky gear, ranged weapons and lots of crowd control and defensive abilities is not to be afraid and ashamed of. It's better than feeding Mordremoth with your precious self.

For Guardian, Dragonhunter is the HoT elite for a reason: it is kitted specifically for this expansion's content, with traps for dealing with mini-raptors and hordes of minions, and Longbow being weapon of choice for shooting champions and bosses and everything  else that doesn't charges into traps.

The Guardian does naturally benefits from healing power and both power and condition damage and thus Celestial gear shall give you best survivability for slot while boosting both damage types.

If you are short on gold (you do the daily 2 gold quest right?) you should delve into gathering and crafting, simply collecting every node you run by shall be a sizeable income.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I can recommend Celestial stats for general gameplay. It gives a lot of suitability and makes the game not frustrating.

You can keep your DPS stats for raids and other instanced gameplay where specialized builds are recommended.

[AliamRationem.5172]

On 12/16/2022 at 8:14 AM, SpiderZ.9146 said:

A simple wisdom so many DPS-obsessed players miss: you do exactly zero DPS while dead.

Thus, using tanky gear, ranged weapons and lots of crowd control and defensive abilities is not to be afraid and ashamed of. It's better than feeding Mordremoth with your precious self.

For Guardian, Dragonhunter is the HoT elite for a reason: it is kitted specifically for this expansion's content, with traps for dealing with mini-raptors and hordes of minions, and Longbow being weapon of choice for shooting champions and bosses and everything  else that doesn't charges into traps.

The Guardian does naturally benefits from healing power and both power and condition damage and thus Celestial gear shall give you best survivability for slot while boosting both damage types.

If you are short on gold (you do the daily 2 gold quest right?) you should delve into gathering and crafting, simply collecting every node you run by shall be a sizeable income.

While it's true that players do zero DPS while dead, it's also true of enemies.  I don't think so-called "DPS obsessed players" are missing anything.  Especially since EoD with the massive increase in baseline passive defense from armor reinforcement, jade cores, and jade tech protocols the balance has shifted more in favor of offensive builds. 

It's simply a matter of perspective.  With the boons from jade tech protocols, raid-style DPS builds are now capable of near-benchmark DPS in open world solo play.  At 30-40k DPS even most champions melt in around 20 seconds and veterans in 5 seconds or less.  At these speeds there's really not much in open world that's going to threaten a player who knows how to play their build and the need for a more defensive build becomes very niche.

That's not to say that there's anything wrong with more defensive builds.  If you're new or don't have all of the masteries unlocked, then your DPS output is going to be significantly less.  In that scenario enemies will have more opportunities to deal damage to you, which means you'll get relatively more out of your passive defensive stats.

There's also the fact that defensive builds no longer prioritize defense to the complete exclusion of offense like the old PVT builds from years past.  High sustain builds today generally recommend stats like celestial and are easily capable of producing 10k+ DPS with some builds even hitting 20k+ (especially with jade tech!)!  If you find you're dying too much in solo play you'll almost certainly perform better with one of these types of builds than a pure DPS-focused raid style build.

 

 

 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

16 hours ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

I can recommend Celestial stats for general gameplay. It gives a lot of suitability and makes the game not frustrating.

You can keep your DPS stats for raids and other instanced gameplay where specialized builds are recommended.

If a build can effectively make use of power and condi than Celestial is a DPS stat set. Firebrands run it in high-level content, and some classes break 15-20k real-world DPS (not golem) on it.

Edited December 18, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

On 12/16/2022 at 9:14 AM, SpiderZ.9146 said:

A simple wisdom so many DPS-obsessed players miss: you do exactly zero DPS while dead.

Thus, using tanky gear, ranged weapons and lots of crowd control and defensive abilities is not to be afraid and ashamed of. It's better than feeding Mordremoth with your precious self.

For Guardian, Dragonhunter is the HoT elite for a reason: it is kitted specifically for this expansion's content, with traps for dealing with mini-raptors and hordes of minions, and Longbow being weapon of choice for shooting champions and bosses and everything  else that doesn't charges into traps.

The Guardian does naturally benefits from healing power and both power and condition damage and thus Celestial gear shall give you best survivability for slot while boosting both damage types.

If you are short on gold (you do the daily 2 gold quest right?) you should delve into gathering and crafting, simply collecting every node you run by shall be a sizeable income.

One thing to be careful about with advice like this: For some classes like Scrapper, Thief or Warrior, sustain is tied to DPS. You'll actually have more healing the more damage you do. Purely defensive and healing builds might actually have less sustain than a good damage build; its just understanding how the game works.

[Nabbut.7480]

Yes, to make a good build you need to strike a balance to both kill enemies sufficiently fast and not getting downed fast yourself. Purely defensive builds are going to be a slog.

From my experience playing Verdant Brink, some high-mastery players are getting downed trying to defend the camps from packs of Mordrem minions. Their high single-target damage seems to do little in these situations.

Edited December 18, 2022 by SpiderZ.9146

[Hashberry.4510]

Once you are getting downed less you can get some damage back using damage stacking sigils

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Bloodlust

 

These are easy to stack in HoT maps (pocket raptors are now your besties).

[infant.8175]

On 12/12/2022 at 2:09 AM, Insignia.3826 said:

Hello all,

I am a level 80 guardian (Just switched to willbender) and I keep dying in the HoT expansion story. I bought armor off the trade post with mostly power attribute. I usually play casters but the Elementalist looked way too complicated to start with. 

 

Do you have any suggestions or tips?

 

Thanks.

don't let your memes be dreams friend
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PWABs2xzlhyoYpMVWLW8X2RXA-zRIUR8fMchGoDRgICvPVQmSB7OLmZGBVA-e

[taara.3217]

On 12/12/2022 at 3:09 AM, Insignia.3826 said:

Do you have any suggestions or tips?

Thanks.

Practice... and practice... and even more practice.

No any magic bullet - even  level 80 guardian + armor off the trade post with mostly power attribute )

Edited December 26, 2022 by taara.3217

[Selven.3127]

try a tankier rune like rune of dolyak and take a ranged weapon

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I'm a bit surprised nobody actually said how Willbender is supposed to survive fights.  Changing all of the runes and equipment and sigils is expensive, and hard to change back.  Tactics are key here.

For Willbender, there's something that I call "invulnerability buttons."  These are skills that, when pressed, give you a pseudo-invulnerability that will let you power through a lot of enemy attacks and abilities.  These pseudo-invulnerability skills are better on strike damage builds than they are on condition builds, due to condi builds needing to maintain permanent rushing justice to do the most damage.  However, as you are running a power build, you will suffer very little drawback from using these skills:

1. Litany of Wrath.  This heal skill rewards aggression.  It is best reserved to actually heal yourself, but once this button is pressed, for 6 seconds you completely out-heal and damage that you receive, so long as you can keep attacking an enemy.  This will make you effectively indestructible for six seconds, outside of one-shot attacks and abilities.  
2. Crashing Courage.  At first, this doesn't seem like it is that useful, requiring 5 hits to get a slight bit of Aegis.  However, know that guardian is capable of dishing out a lot of hits to a lot of enemies, all at the same time.  You have your symbols, you have the greatsword spin, you have whirling light, sword of justice, and you have the circle of fire that Crashing Courage creates.  If you use Crashing Courage and proceed to use one weapon symbol, swap to greatsword, use greatsword 4, then use greatsword 2, then whirling light, and so on, you will get Aegis every second, sometimes even more frequently than that.  The more enemies this hits, the more aegis you get, allowing you to block many incoming attacks very quickly.  This, again, lasts for 6 seconds, giving you that much more invulnerability.
3. Flowing Resolve.  This is a weaker version of Litany of Wrath.  It does, however, have its uses.  First, Flowing Resolve itself is a dodge, so feel free to use it while entering combat under heavy pressure.  Second, it removes stuff like cripple and immobilization.  Third, you can use it twice in a row, and it stacks the effect in duration.  This gives you a total of 12 seconds of frequent healing, so long as you can keep attacking enemies.  To my knowledge, each trail of fire counts as a different attack, so be sure to dash through then back again when fighting an enemy, to double up the healing that you'll get.
4. Shield of Wrath.  Using two swords is very cool looking.  I won't lie about that.  However, consider using Scepter + Focus or Sword + Focus as one of your weapon slots.  This skill blocks 3 attacks, or else it will explode.  This shield lasts for 4 seconds.  You can pop this while entering combat, which on top of your starting Aegis means that it will take 4 attacks before you even feel damage.

Combine all of these together, and the Willbender has about 28 seconds of combat where they are very hard to kill, due to all of the blocked attacks and self-healing.  You might of noticed that I haven't really touched the utility skills yet.  All of this was weapons, heal skill, and the function skills.  This is because I'm one of those super-elite try-hards that runs maximum damage.  After all, with 28 seconds of pseudo-invulnerability, it is beneficial for me to kill things as fast as I can.  However, there are several utility skills that will also help you survive.  These include Wall of Reflection to stop projectiles for a bit, Advance for a fast aegis to block an attack, and Renewed Focus to become invulnerable for a bit while also instantly re-charging all of your function skills.  The Willbender specifically also has Roiling Light to evade, blind, then daze an enemy for 3 seconds.

Edited January 4, 2023 by Blood Red Arachnid.2493

[Strider.7849]

On 12/11/2022 at 4:09 PM, Insignia.3826 said:

Hello all,

I am a level 80 guardian (Just switched to willbender) and I keep dying in the HoT expansion story. I bought armor off the trade post with mostly power attribute. I usually play casters but the Elementalist looked way too complicated to start with. 

 

Do you have any suggestions or tips?

 

Thanks.

Hey! No, you don't suck. A lot of the low base health pool characters have other means of mitigating damage. Guardian, thief, and elementalist are the lowest.

 

Guardians means of mitigating damage is through blocks (such as aegis) reflects, blinds, protection boon, and reflects - this is in addition to using dodge. For a newer player this can be overwhelming since you haven't learned enemy attack patterns or in many cases what attacks are worth dodging or avoiding or worth absorbing.

 

I've been a player since launch and was lucky enough to experience a time when peoples were still experimenting with gear, stats, and builds. In the beginning, many players were doing dungeons for gear and running soldiers gear from dungeons (power/toughness/vitality) and that changed to mixing stats, and ultimately ended in full berserker (power/precision/ferocity).

 

As a new player you need enough cushion to learn these things and if you find that marauders (power/precision/vitality/ferocity) is too squishy, I recommend throwing on a few pieces of knights gear (toughness/precision/power), so that you have a bit of wiggle room to learn attacks and then slowly re-equip full marauders (or berserkers depending on how glassy you want to go) as you get more comfortable with the game mechanics. I don't recommend going full tank like with soldiers gear though as you may find it equally as difficult - clearing speed will take a lot longer and the survivability gain vs damage loss is too great.

 

Good site for getting builds is metabattle and look at their open world builds. 

[DarcShriek.5829]

If your name is Hoover, then there's a good chance you suck.  But that's a good thing.

[Xperiment.6923]

This thread is making me feel better about sucking as well. Started playing over Xmas holiday. Picked up a lvl 30 Warrior I shelfed in 2013. Lvling to 80 was fun, addicting and such a refreshing game that I needed! I went Berserker against ppl advice. Not even fully traited out yet and went to HoT exp to get my glider. Holy Eff did I feel like a kitten! I actually considered quitting again after just buying the exps, thinking im just not good at the game? Rolling around in cheap Exotic Koss gear w/ Balathazar cause I only have 15g to my name. Heading back to central Tyria now to complete zones a get all my hero points before I set foot in HoT again. I guess need that springer mount too. 

[Xperiment.6923]

On 1/2/2023 at 6:44 PM, DarcShriek.5829 said:

If your name is Hoover, then there's a good chance you suck.  But that's a good thing.

recently back to the game Finished playing my story. There was definately a spaceballs joke in there about something going from  "suck to blow" LOL devs you made me chuckle with 30 yr old pop culture reference!

[Nabbut.7480]

If you move into an area above your power level you're gonna get pwned.

I suggest getting full ascended gear and a lot of experience before moving into HoT - it is not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. sPvP is a good training - if you survive in the arena, you will likely survive in open world.

As for quitting, I did it multiple times, let the frustration went out and returned with renewed resolve.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

3 hours ago, SpiderZ.9146 said:

If you move into an area above your power level you're gonna get pwned.

I suggest getting full ascended gear and a lot of experience before moving into HoT - it is not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. sPvP is a good training - if you survive in the arena, you will likely survive in open world.

As for quitting, I did it multiple times, let the frustration went out and returned with renewed resolve.

I wouldn't suggest players wait to get ascended before entering HoT.  Ascended does slightly more damage (below 10% without infusions on a pure damage build) for strike builds, and is barely noticeable when it comes to condition builds and regarding player defense.  Half of that boost to strike damage comes from the weapon alone.  The entire game was balanced around exotic gear, with the exception of high level fractals.  As such, high fractals are the only place that players should wait to get full ascended before entering.

[Nabbut.7480]

If you are mechanically minded that is correct but the main problem for new players going into HoT for the first time is not the math, it's confidence, and ascended gear helps to boost it.

[Nash.2681]

59 minutes ago, SpiderZ.9146 said:

If you are mechanically minded that is correct but the main problem for new players going into HoT for the first time is not the math, it's confidence, and ascended gear helps to boost it.

Even if I'd agree with your "boosts confidence" claim (which I do not), it's no substitute for a proper build, knowing how to play it correctly, and knowledge on enemies and encounters. Those are the things that make a difference. New players strugging in HoT don't struggle because of a lack of confidence. They struggle for the same reasons many of us struggled when they got there for the first time, namely that playing through core Tyria allows for all kind of roleplay and pepega builds and still be succesfull, while HoT expects the players to at least remotely know what they do.

So the short answer to the initial question (I keep dying. Do I suck?) is a harsh "Probably yes, you do.". But often you can't blame the players and it is nothing that is set in stone but can easily be changed.

[Mythras.2091]

HoT meant to be a challenging content for those, who comlpeted the core game and sure it is. You need to know, why you die and make some effort to avoid it. Also full exotic gear is completely fine, just get some deffensive stats as above mentioned. Full zerker gear means you are fine with your class and your enemy.

 

- Moving is key, you shouldnt stand still while fighting (until you kitten aoe-s under your feet and your enemy wants to hug you). A good timed dodge can save your soul, so dont let your stamina bar full all the time.

- Your foes here use often poison (especially Itzels, bugs etc.) so mind some condi remove skills. Poison can do high damage when stacked and prevent you from fully benefit from your healing skill.

- On guardian utilize aegis and blocks. The best damage that you dont get hit by. Also sword 2, and F1 with Radiance cause blind (also F1 recharges after a kill if you take Radiance so abuse this as much as you can).

- Know your enemy and you win half your battle. Know yourself and you will be unstopabble 🙂

[eXruina.4956]

no. you don't suck, and never think that.

 

you will find that the more you play and get accustomed to what you're using, the better your survivability will be.

 

also if you're having difficulty adjusting, you could always use or mix defensive statted gear into the build. try out dragon gear. willbender can easily hit crit cap with dragon gear when running radiance and the extra hp is a godsend. if its hard to attain marauder gear is a nice placeholder.

 

i know meta this and that is a common "requirement" for people coming into the game, but don't let that dictate how you play, you know personally what your needs are, adjust and tailor to those needs accordingly.

 

good luck.