I keep dying, Do I suck?

[Vayne.8563]

On 12/17/2022 at 2:14 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.

I used to think like you.  Me and my casual guild used to run dungeons back in the day. And I told people it's okay to take more defensive stats and in easier content that works out fine. Then you hit guys like Lupi.

 

Gigagnticus Lupicus is a boss in every single path of the Arah Dungeon.  It usually took us 8-10 minutes to kill him. Sometimes we'd wipe. In the early days we'd often wipe, in fact. We'd have to run back from the waypoint. He just did so much damage, even with toughness and vitality you wouldn't stand a chance. We'd get him eventually, but it was hard.

 

Then I started running with better players. It took two minutes to kill Lupi.  We almost never wiped. Not because we were better, but because trying to avoid all his attacks for 10 minutes was a lot harder than trying to avoid those same attacks for two minutes.  You had to be much better and put more work into it the old way with less DPS.

It's not a question of what you can do in the open world, it's what you can do later and people learning how all that works.  I thought like you. I know better now.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

7 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I used to think like you.  Me and my casual guild used to run dungeons back in the day. And I told people it's okay to take more defensive stats and in easier content that works out fine. Then you hit guys like Lupi.

 

Gigagnticus Lupicus is a boss in every single path of the Arah Dungeon.  It usually took us 8-10 minutes to kill him. Sometimes we'd wipe. In the early days we'd often wipe, in fact. We'd have to run back from the waypoint. He just did so much damage, even with toughness and vitality you wouldn't stand a chance. We'd get him eventually, but it was hard.

 

Then I started running with better players. It took two minutes to kill Lupi.  We almost never wiped. Not because we were better, but because trying to avoid all his attacks for 10 minutes was a lot harder than trying to avoid those same attacks for two minutes.  You had to be much better and put more work into it the old way with less DPS.

It's not a question of what you can do in the open world, it's what you can do later and people learning how all that works.  I thought like you. I know better now.

I'm going to chock that up to competence more than anything else.  It isn't openly discussed that often, but there's a way to check how strong a build is when it comes to total statistical fortitude.  It is the multiplication of DPS and Effective Health.  That is, how much damage you do multiplied by how long you'll live to do it.  I usually use Effective Power as a substitute for DPS, due to the linear way that power scales.  Anyway, I've run the numbers many times in the past, and the result is always the same: glass cannon sets do not have the highest DPS X Effective Health product.  For example, the Power/Toughness/Vitality set Soldiers has around 62% of the damage output of a full Berserker set while giving the player an effective health anywhere from 2.72 (ele)  to 2.14 (warrior) times that of berserkers.  Trailblazers gives similar numbers, though it is far more profession dependent.  This is far greater than the 1/5th of damage described above.

Glass cannon gear sets are run primarily for three reasons.  First is that they have a higher loot rate.  Most of the game isn't made hard enough to necessitate glass cannon gear, so if a player is capable of plowing through content it is better to do it fast.  Second, there are many late-game mechanics that are instant death while also serving as DPS checks, such as Arkk CM and Harvest Temple CM.  Since HoT onward, Anet has been designing the game with the 'zerker meta in mind.  Third, glass cannon gear is frequently demanded of by teammates who do high-end PVE content.

There's something to note, though.  The value of passive defenses is relative to how well a profession can use active defenses while still maintaining an offense.  As it happens, Willbender is one of those professions that can maintain nearly full damage while also keeping itself alive with blocks and self-healing.  This is one of those strange issues where it is technically easier to run defensive gear sets, but it is not necessarily better overall in the long term to do so.  I am biased heavily toward recommending better tactics and strategies over changing gear sets, because it is better to learn the tactics and it is far easier to change tactics than to change equipment.  

[Rogue.8235]

On 1/5/2023 at 2:43 AM, 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.

 

Self-efficacy is extremely important.  I don't suggest this for everyone, but this might work for a few.  Self-efficacy is extremely important in the military and competitive sports, and translates well to a skill-based game like GW2.  Almost always, survival is dependent on active skill usage, and a confident player will perform better than a self-doubtful one.

 

[Rogue.8235]

Don't reply to a thread from any page but the last one, else you'll have to say something awkward about a double post.

<insert something about 90's era doublemint gum commercials>

Edited January 12, 2023 by Rogue.8235

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

The biggest problem with defensive stats is they were most useful before the game had healers. That's why they're still used for solo content, but for anything group-based (including open-world alot of the time), you're just going to either be overhealed or 1-hit KO'd anyway so you might as well not bother.