Mob difficulty core tyria vs expansions

[AliamRationem.5172]

9 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Weird, it has never not worked for me. Maybe I am just fated to be a legendary smokescale slayer 😃

Here's another clip of it.  I'm surprised you've never seen it as it's unfortunately not a rare bug (I can only assume it's a bug due to the inconsistent behavior?) at all.  Initially, I thought maybe the field is just a bit larger than the boundary indicated by the red circle, but no, you can see in this clip that I am well outside of it and still missing attacks.  The effect also lasts for a full 10 seconds, which is really annoying when you have to just stand there stuck in combat with common trash enemies. 

Like I said, it's probably a bug they never felt like fixing and so this enemy falls under the category of "poorly designed", albeit unintentionally.  When it works as it's supposed to, I'm fine with it because you have a way of interacting with the effect.  Uninteractable immunity like desolators, griffons, and buggy smokescales is what constitutes "poor design" in this example.

 

[kharmin.7683]

9 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Here's another clip of it.  I'm surprised you've never seen it as it's unfortunately not a rare bug (I can only assume it's a bug due to the inconsistent behavior?) at all.  Initially, I thought maybe the field is just a bit larger than the boundary indicated by the red circle, but no, you can see in this clip that I am well outside of it and still missing attacks.  The effect also lasts for a full 10 seconds, which is really annoying when you have to just stand there stuck in combat with common trash enemies. 

Like I said, it's probably a bug they never felt like fixing and so this enemy falls under the category of "poorly designed", albeit unintentionally.  When it works as it's supposed to, I'm fine with it because you have a way of interacting with the effect.  Uninteractable immunity like desolators, griffons, and buggy smokescales is what constitutes "poor design" in this example.

 

I had always wondered about this when attacking from short range on these things.  Glad to know it isn't just me, then (which, as a filthy casual in HoT, is probably more the case in most instances there).

[Ashen.2907]

28 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Here's another clip of it.  I'm surprised you've never seen it as it's unfortunately not a rare bug (I can only assume it's a bug due to the inconsistent behavior?) at all.  Initially, I thought maybe the field is just a bit larger than the boundary indicated by the red circle, but no, you can see in this clip that I am well outside of it and still missing attacks.  The effect also lasts for a full 10 seconds, which is really annoying when you have to just stand there stuck in combat with common trash enemies. 

Like I said, it's probably a bug they never felt like fixing and so this enemy falls under the category of "poorly designed", albeit unintentionally.  When it works as it's supposed to, I'm fine with it because you have a way of interacting with the effect.  Uninteractable immunity like desolators, griffons, and buggy smokescales is what constitutes "poor design" in this example.

 

I probably overstated by saying never. It is entirely possible that it has happened to me but gone unnoted due to still being able to kill the mob quickly or perhaps chalking it up as a rare bug because normally the backstep works. I dont doubt you, just havent experienced this as a problem to an extent that it made an impression on me.

[Khisanth.2948]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Sure, because if they don't own LS 2 and just bought expansions, some people think they have all the content and go to the next thing you have unlocked.  Nothing guides you to Dry Top or the Silverwastes, except the first part of HoT and then you're through it and into HoT.   How would you have any idea that that's just another another zone if you don't research it?

Starting the HoT story requires going into Silverwastes would be one way

[Endaris.1452]

17 hours ago, Smoky.5348 said:

I suppose I could, if just to show my unusual build tendencies. I don't feel right without a way to heal allies and dish out hard CC, and I'm almost always using ranged until it's specifically time to "burn", as the pros say. Here's what l'm doing for Warrior. I got him to a comfortable spot, I just don't know how to push him further. It's what I started with and what cemented my expectations for what I should be able to handle.

And, this is Mesmer. This...is the one I'm not getting used to. I like the weapon skills, but now I've lost what to do for Utility. ANET changed how Mantras work, so I can't be Wannabe Heal-Shout Mesmer anymore—which was probably silly to begin with—but none of the other core skills seem to gel with me. I was thinking Chronomancer might work out, but I never liked AoEs you need to hop inside of. Mirage sounded like it was all about clones, which felt generally unreliable for avoiding aggro, but I didn't know Mirage Cloak was something that replaced dodge. Maybe I should've invested in that? Anyway, because I don't know what niche to fill with Mesmer, I didn't invest in any gear yet.

 

So first of all:

Toughness is a stat with diminishing returns. I'm not going to tell anyone no to run toughness in open world if they feel more comfortable with it but there is very little point in stacking toughness beyond 1500 for most purposes and especially for heavy armor classes.

A warrior in exotic heavy armor has ~2272  armor with the reinforced armor buff you get from anvils.
Let's say a mob with 1000 weapon strength tries to hit you with a skill that has 4000 effective power (the same power you see in your stats, multiplied with a skill modifier, so a reasonably strong power skill like Axe 2 or Axe 4 depending on the mob's stat spread).

Just your base armor already reduces the damage you take to 1760 damage.

Let's say you slap on 500 extra toughness that increases your armor to 2772. You only take 1443 damage with that, meaning compared to a no-toughness setup, you take 18% reduced damage.

Add on 500 toughness more to bring armor to 3272. You only take 1222 damage from the same hit now. Compared to the no-toughness setup you take 31% less damage. So in percentage points, these next 500 toughness only gave you 13% extra damage reduction. Now if you take a peek at the protection boon which just gives you flat out 33% with no stat-investment...it becomes obvious that running high toughness is not that great. Light armor classes naturally have 300 and something armor less so a bit of toughness is accordingly more effective for them.

So look out for protection instead. Concentration aka boon duration makes protection last longer and is therefore a contributor to damage reduction if you have protection in your build. So in that sense, Wanderer gear is usually better Soldier's gear because it gives you less toughness and in turn more concentration. You'll have to progress through HoT a bit to get it however.

Similarly as others mentioned, vitality is somewhat redundant at some point. Warrior is a high-health class so extreme vitality investments will boost your healthpool but in most fights you don't need that healthpool but could instead trade the healthpool for more offensive power. Commander is a good compromise between damage as it gives both power and precision and defensive as it provides toughness and concentration with concentration also boosting your offensive boons too. These are all HoT stats that you'll have access to via stat-selectable gear obtainable via the vendor at the entrance to Verdant Brink. Once you get more confident, Marauder is also a great PvE stat although arguably more greedy than the others mentioned.

Finally, with the last patch, most traits that reduce cooldowns for a skill type had the cooldown reduction added to baseline. That means that you don't necessarily have to take the shout trait anymore and even if you take it, you don't have to slot all shouts and you could certainly consider Martial Cadence for the stability access too. On My Mark is mostly useful against stealth mobs but becomes mostly obsolete once you unlocked Nuhoch Stealth Detection as you already have rifle 3 as a powerful vulnerability source. Fear Me has a relatively high cooldown, making it relatively useless for the heal from the trait. Banner of Strength is a CC as well, has a lower cooldown and synergizes well with strength runes while not making your enemies run away as you try to attack them.

 

For your mesmer build, I would strongly recommend you to run Phantasmal Fury in Dueling and Persistence of Memory. Your phantasms spawn with Fury and Quickness, give it to you when they become clones...meaning you always have Fury from your phantasms and a very high uptime on quickness. You can amplify that effect by taking more phantasms in your utility skills and Signet of the Ether to recharge phantasms or swapping out the off-hand focus for an off-hand sword to benefit from the significantly lower cooldown on the sword phantasm.

Finally, recognizing damage types: If you just look through your skills and at numbers, you should find that your sword skills deal a lot more direct damage than your scepter skills but lack access to damaging conditions. So for scepter, and torch you want condition damage but for sword, focus and greatsword you want power. Staff and pistol are good with either gear stat. Generally speaking, condi weapons will still be ok with power stats but power weapons without power stats will be quite weak.

Can't really comment on gear because you gave no stats but normally you want to have your weapons match whatever stats you're running. So often sword/sword + greatsword or something like that. But obviously the same concerns for toughness apply and on mesmer you have a lot more mechanisms to avoid damage as mobs will go for your clones and phantasms, especially when running ranged weapons.

Overall in your builds it looks like you're not really having a plan "how do I kill my enemy" or seeing synergies between different traitlines but more of a random assortment of skills that help you survive. In general there is nothing wrong with also planning how to survive but ultimately the goal of combat is always to kill the enemies first and I feel like neglecting those aspects is what is hurting you.

[Vayne.8563]

8 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Starting the HoT story requires going into Silverwastes would be one way

It requires you to enter the Silverwastes and go to a star near the beginning. I'm not saying you won't enter the zone. 

Guys that come from other games, they're used to playing to taking an arrow to a star. The star is what's important. New players to this game play the same way, because that's how they've been trained by pretty much every other themepark MMO. Follow an arrow to a star.

So you enter the silverwastes to go to a star near the beginning. The second star appears in your story instance. You never even see the Silverwastes again. I'm not saying they don't know the zone is there. I'm saying they have no reason to explore or consider it, since they're following an arrow to the star, you finish that story, there's another star, and that starts a story, which deposits you in VB.  Why would they go back?

When I first did my story the story never deposited me in any of the char zones and I went through the whole game barely touching them. One story led me to a bit of Field of Ruins and for ages, all I had of Field of Ruins was that bit the story took me too, because like these other people, I was interested to see where the story took me. It takes a while to figure out this really isn't a linear game and that a lot of what you're working toward is in the open world.

[The Boz.2038]

19 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Here's another clip of it.  I'm surprised you've never seen it as it's unfortunately not a rare bug

Kinda puzzled at your absolutely correct knowledge of this bug, but lack of familiarity with the arrowhead's cone attack dealing damage as he lifts his head, not when he smashes it down and sends out a shockwave, or his roll-over knockdown knocking down at the exact start of the animation...

[Smoky.5348]

20 hours ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

Oh there is a lot "sub optimal" in your build. A lot of build fundamental the game expect you to know are not met. I hope you have accessories equipped and just forgot to put them in the editor?

Yeah, if it's not listed, then it's just some random assortment of level 80 yellows or oranges. Though, l do have one Ascended ring on Warrior alongside that backpack. I just didn't think the accessories were important to point out if I didn't put effort in to match them with the build yet.

20 hours ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

Elite specs are just more powerful then Core [... and are OP].

The weird thing about elite specs is that none of them feel right to me so far. It's as if I need to trash my entire build and start from scratch with an entirely new set of skills, and none of them sound like skills l want to use. Plus, I don't even have the option to use them until I get all the Hero Points with the build l'm replacing. Mesmer is the most likely one I'll adapt since I need to form a new build away from Mantras anyway.

20 hours ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

Vitality is a stat you shouldn't stack more then you need. On Warrior who has so much base HP you probably need almost no extra HP. Power damage is balanced around having 3 Damage modifier: Power, Crit chance and Crit damage. They are multiplicative so they game punishes you hard for investing in defensive stats like you did. If your damage is low mobs have more chance to kill you:). Elite specs are just more powerful then Core. Rifle is sadly just a bad weapon. The game expects you to rely on active defenses like Dodge, Blocks, Stunbreak and Condition cleanse.

The reason I went for Vitality is because the toughest fights I climb out of are ones where l have a sliver of health left. In such fights, the enemies are numerous and attacking won't bring my health back up or mitigate the damage...or it's how I think, anyway. Logically, speccing more fully into damage should make those fights quicker. The multiplicative stuff makes sense. The set of gear I used to have, though, was all Healing Power since that's how much value l put into health.

I don't know what you mean by Warrior Rifle being bad, though. It's power-based, it pierces, it has a dodge, and its knockback is respectable for defiance bars. I've been using the Longbow for the past year and I really miss the Rifle.

20 hours ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

If you struggle surviving, it is a good idea to keybind your abilities if you have not already. A mouse with 2 extra buttons does wonders, because with shift modifier that are 4 comfortable buttons to reach quickly. Having Dodge, Blocks, Stunbreak and Condition cleanse on good keybinds does wonder for surviving in Tyria.

I have been using dodge on Mouse4 since the beginning, so evading in time has never been an issue. But, there are a few keys near WASD and my middle mouse button that aren't doing anything in combat... Gonna be tough getting used to, though.

9 hours ago, Endaris.1452 said:

Finally, with the last patch, most traits that reduce cooldowns for a skill type had the cooldown reduction added to baseline. That means that you don't necessarily have to take the shout trait anymore and even if you take it, you don't have to slot all shouts and you could certainly consider Martial Cadence for the stability access too. On My Mark is mostly useful against stealth mobs but becomes mostly obsolete once you unlocked Nuhoch Stealth Detection as you already have rifle 3 as a powerful vulnerability source. Fear Me has a relatively high cooldown, making it relatively useless for the heal from the trait. Banner of Strength is a CC as well, has a lower cooldown and synergizes well with strength runes while not making your enemies run away as you try to attack them.

The Healing Shouts is what's keeping me alive in tough fights, it's my only form of damage mitigation on Warrior beyond just dodging (other skills just never seemed to work as well). The Fear Me is mostly there for defiance bars, though. It does quite a good chunk, but I never tested Banners since their rework so l can try that.

10 hours ago, Endaris.1452 said:

Finally, recognizing damage types: If you just look through your skills and at numbers, you should find that your sword skills deal a lot more direct damage than your scepter skills but lack access to damaging conditions. So for scepter, and torch you want condition damage but for sword, focus and greatsword you want power. Staff and pistol are good with either gear stat. Generally speaking, condi weapons will still be ok with power stats but power weapons without power stats will be quite weak.

I'm aware, I was mostly intending to focus on Power for Mesmer since Pistol-4 and Scepter-3 hit pretty hard along with Sword in general. I was using Scepter-1 and 2 for clone generation, really, since l've been putting a lot of stock in Shatters. The Torch was there for the defiance break, but the raw damage felt strangely high as well. The gear stats I have is just mis-matched all over for Mesmer in particular because I don't really know what niche I want yet.

10 hours ago, Endaris.1452 said:

Overall in your builds it looks like you're not really having a plan "how do I kill my enemy" or seeing synergies between different traitlines but more of a random assortment of skills that help you survive. In general there is nothing wrong with also planning how to survive but ultimately the goal of combat is always to kill the enemies first and I feel like neglecting those aspects is what is hurting you.

Oh, that is indeed exactly what I'm doing. There's a lot of psychological stuff going on that's surely leading to missteps. A lot of my motivation comes from how fast my health bar drains, and thus I focus on how to bring it back up or keep defensive options plentiful. It never occurs to me to kill the enemies first since I can never drain their health instantly, so I assume every engagement will be a long one to stay 'safe'. I'm also really bad at casting buffs; I need to have reactive skills that serve an immediate purpose, not ones I cast at any time to give myself a boon. I notice, too, I tend to dodge when I don't really need to, such as jumping away from a weak attack instead of keeping it for a stronger one.

Trait synergies like putting extra stat boosts on boons and getting those boons to apply often is something I never really considered before. It's the sort of thing that's just out of reach for my typical thought process since it's very "implied" and spread out across traits. There's a lot to learn from these replies, but it's a lot to take in at once, too. I'm sure I'll be reevaluating a number of things.

[SlayerXX.7138]

1 hour ago, Smoky.5348 said:

Yeah, if it's not listed, then it's just some random assortment of level 80 yellows or oranges. Though, l do have one Ascended ring on Warrior alongside that backpack. I just didn't think the accessories were important to point out if I didn't put effort in to match them with the build yet.

Fair enough. If you have yellow mismatched trinkets it may not be obvious, but accessories are a big source of stats, almost giving as much as armor and weapons' combined.

1 hour ago, Smoky.5348 said:

The reason I went for Vitality is because the toughest fights I climb out of are ones where l have a sliver of health left. In such fights, the enemies are numerous and attacking won't bring my health back up or mitigate the damage...or it's how I think, anyway. Logically, speccing more fully into damage should make those fights quicker. The multiplicative stuff makes sense. The set of gear I used to have, though, was all Healing Power since that's how much value l put into health.

I assumed something like that, that is why I suggested changing out a couple of pieces not all. You probably will still end up with a sliver, thanks to killing stuff faster. There are also a couple of healing Option you overlooked. Adrenal Health from the defensive trait line heals you for 6k HP over 15 seconds after a 3 bar burst. Mending Might from Tactics counts you as an ally too and counts each stack of might. So giving yourself might does heal you for each stack of Might, so "For Great Justice" heals you more (473HP) then the other shouts. Mending heal skill has halve the cooldown of "to the limit" and cleanses up to 5 potentially dangerous conditions.

1 hour ago, Smoky.5348 said:

I don't know what you mean by Warrior Rifle being bad, though. It's power-based, it pierces, it has a dodge, and its knockback is respectable for defiance bars. I've been using the Longbow for the past year and I really miss the Rifle.

 Rifle is the best Power option. I also like the feel of the weapon. The numbers are just kind of low on Rifle. 

1 hour ago, Smoky.5348 said:

There's a lot to learn from these replies, but it's a lot to take in at once, too. I'm sure I'll be reevaluating a number of things.

It is indeed a LOT. Best of luck.

[Endaris.1452]

Okay, so here an idea for your warrior:

Ditch Arms, it has some inherent condition based minor traits that don't do anything for you as you're running both power weapons and soldier stats. Bleeding on crit and condition damage on fury is just wasted and you don't have any significant long-term CC to actually profit from Unsuspecting foe either. It's only Fear Me and Rifle 5 and both remove the enemy from you so that you can't even easily reach with your hard-hitting skills.

Instead go Strength and take all the middle traits - they approve your might generation (which is damage), convert your might to benefit you more on a power build and provide you endurance and healing through Might Makes Right which is effectively a stronger version of Mending Might in Tactics, having both makes your self-healing through giving yourself Might quite significant. If you look through your other traits...weapon swapping gives you Might, every 10 seconds you get Might from Empower Allies and Marching Orders, you get Might when you crit, when you dodge, when you use your Heal...and the Healing is per stack, not per application. And you also get endurance which lets you dodge more which in turn gives you more Might.

Switch out On My Mark for For Great Justice - they have the same benefits for the sake of your shout trait but For Great Justice also gives Might to grant you extra Healing and Endurance and also patches up the Fury you lose from ditching Arms. Don't be afraid to use the first charge somewhat early, the extra fury helps you crit which in turn will give you more Might and Healing.

Just with these changes I can defeat the two Veteran Smokescales at the start of AliamRationem's video although it's still close. With Tactics it feels near impossible if the smokescales don't line up their skill casts. I used this exact build to somewhat mimic your gear (no stats on rings/back/amulet to make up for ascended and my axes).

Next, use food. There's a very cheap event food from Lunar New Year, Fried Golden Dumpling, that has a chance to grant you Might upon scoring a critical hit. Meaning it heals you while also making you deal more damage and have Might on you last a bit longer with the extra concentration. Plays right into Might Makes Right.

Followed by a bunch of open world survival hacks...

There is a very cheap vendor enhancement that gives all your hits a 10% to inflict weakness on the opponent: The Skale Venom (consumable).
Weakness turns 50% of the enemy hits into glancing blows (dealing only 50% damage) which is effectively 25% damage reduction. Both Rifle 2 and Axe 5 hit a lot of times, making this likely to apply. If you look back at how much toughness you needed to stack in order to get to similar amounts of damage reduction...yep, this can be pretty powerful when dealing with strong non-defiant foes like Veteran Smokescales. You'll need to do the event mentioned in the wiki article to unlock the vendor but then you can stock up for hours of playtime.

Next up are consumables...most people play without these because they are kind of clunky but since you specifically talked about taking Fear Me to deal with breakbars I thought I ought to mention this, especially because it is extra powerful on warrior.
There are various NPCs in this world that sell so called bundle items. Most of these are more funny than useful but there are some that are just extremely powerful (and unusable in fractals and dungeons), for warrior specifically Wooden Planks. The easiest and cheapest vendor I'm aware of is Worker Rasha. If you double click the item in your inventory it gives you three skills on warrior (opposed to two on any other class) and every single one of them is crowd control. The usual idea is to just press 3 -> 2 on warrior against defiant foes and it should be enough to get you through 90% of a Veteran Bristlebacks breakbar. So that is really where an organized inventory can come in big because you can just minimize it on the side with only the consumable bundles being visible and then you simply draw out a plank when you need it to break a defiance bar without having to invest a 50s cooldown skill to do less breakbar damage than the plank does. There are many more items to assist with breakbars, ranged options and other skill types so they can be used in quick succession even, mostly found in the Notes section on this page.

Granted, playing your inventory might not be the most fun and it costs a small bit of coin for every use but it's arguably very effective and valuable to keep in mind if you ever struggle in a story instance as they allow to break enemies very quickly and repeatedly as the bundle cooldowns tend to be rather low. If it makes you kill the enemy instead of dying, you probably recoup the cost of the bundles in loot and time saved from waypointing and running back to wherever and the same is true for food/enhancement cost.

 

15 hours ago, Smoky.5348 said:

Yeah, if it's not listed, then it's just some random assortment of level 80 yellows or oranges. Though, l do have one Ascended ring on Warrior alongside that backpack. I just didn't think the accessories were important to point out if I didn't put effort in to match them with the build yet.

The best source of ascended rings for you would be playing Tier 1 fractal dailies. You can get 1 pristine fractal relic for each daily fractal achievement chest (there are 4 for Tier 1 each day) and you can buy rings with core stats for 10 and pick any core stat to your liking. For your current build, the most important stat would be precision followed by power. The build suggested above already gives you a lot extra power thanks to might stacks but you have very low critrate at the moment. Not only are crits a huge damage multiplier (and have a chance to grant might and heal you), in combination with the Axe trait you take, you can charge your adrenaline much faster and use burst skills much more liberally...and your Axe burst grants Might too 😉

So ideally Precision as major and power as a minor. For maximum damage, ferocity as a second minor but there's a trinket with toughness as a second minor stat too. If you're entirely too indecisive and don't want to give up any survival stats, the all stat celestial trinkets kind of work for most builds.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Endaris.1452