No resources that actually teach you how to fight and live.

[Oldirtbeard.9834]

@"Game of Bones.8975" said:tl;dr all posts, so if it's been said ... sorry.

One main difference between Gw1 and Gw2 is the hopes Gw2 people will naturally group together and fight as a group instead of being solo (with mercs) like in Gw1.The only place I really see people grouping up are Events that require numbers, bounties, and HP/MP trains.

Reaper/MM is my "goto", I have World Completion, HoT completion, and PoF completion with it.My others (ranger, DD, Dragonhunter, and Revenant) all come in far behind.

That's how I roll as well.

[Biff.5312]

How you play depends so heavily on how you're built that I don't think you can separate the two. I believe most build advise sites also include some info about effective combat techniques, rotations etc. Personally, I haven't had any problems on any profession really in open world. There are areas where you'll be overwhelmed no matter what but the idea there is to avoid/get through them without stopping to fight 15 mobs at a time. Maybe your gear is inadequate? For HoT/PoF regions you really should have at least some ascended imo. Exotics are survivable but the difference is huge no matter what some people say (they talk about it being only a 5% upgrade as though that wasn't significant). Other than that - practice. Try things you aren't trying. Make sure you're taking advantage of your full range of skills. Swap weapons. Don't just spam a few attacks. Good luck.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@"Biff.5312" said:How you play depends so heavily on how you're built that I don't think you can separate the two. I believe most build advise sites also include some info about effective combat techniques, rotations etc. Personally, I haven't had any problems on any profession really in open world. There are areas where you'll be overwhelmed no matter what but the idea there is to avoid/get through them without stopping to fight 15 mobs at a time. Maybe your gear is inadequate? For HoT/PoF regions you really should have at least some ascended imo. Exotics are survivable but the difference is huge no matter what some people say (they talk about it being only a 5% upgrade as though that wasn't significant). Other than that - practice. Try things you aren't trying. Make sure you're taking advantage of your full range of skills. Swap weapons. Don't just spam a few attacks. Good luck.

There's no mystery here. The difference in stats is known and it is small. Ascended gear will help a little, but trait/utility/weapons and practice have a much greater impact.

A good example to illustrate the point. If you're playing Mirage, much of your defense and damage comes from ambush, which requires endurance. So, if you're having trouble primarily with large groups of enemies, you can stack the deck by using Superior Sigil of Stamina on your weapon. Every kill refills your endurance bar, allowing you to avoid and deal more damage, resulting in a chain effect where spamming dodge kills mobs which lets you spam dodge more. Easy!

In the above scenario, this simple change would have far greater impact than going from exotic to full ascended and instead of costing hours and hours of play and hundreds of gold, you can buy this sigil on TP for a few silver.

Here is a video of a full exotic build using tanky rabid/dire stats, but taking advantage of sigil of stamina to clear adds quickly.

Now here is another video of the same boss using full ascended Viper and no sigil of stamina.

The exotic build with tanky stats completes the challenge only a few seconds slower than full ascended Viper. Why? Because sigil of stamina inflates your damage as long as there are easy kills. You can see that the sigil of stamina setup doesn't work as well once the adds are gone. Now apply this to open world for a player getting overwhelmed by large groups of adds? Which one has greater impact? Full ascended or Sigil of Stamina?

That's just one example. The point is you have much better ways to improve your performance in open world play than going for full ascended gear!

[SunTzu.4513]

Necro/Reaper teaches a lot of bad habbits in terms of facetanking and do not care about anything at all what mobs throwing at someone. I'm gone trough this too. Played my first two and a half years necro/reaper only. Get bored and tryed something else. Mesmer and Guard were hell at the first time. Had to evolve my playstyle a lot. These days i can survive even better with mesmer and guard than on any necrobuild. Mesmer is nearly unkillable if you use dodges, evades and invul/blocks. Running full glass zerker chrono is pretty easy. Guard take this whole thing to an other level so much aegis and blinds paired with nice burst dps it's pretty hard to get killed.

[Khisanth.2948]

@SunTzu.4513 said:Necro/Reaper teaches a lot of bad habbits in terms of facetanking and do not care about anything at all what mobs throwing at someone. I'm gone trough this too. Played my first two and a half years necro/reaper only. Get bored and tryed something else. Mesmer and Guard were hell at the first time. Had to evolve my playstyle a lot. These days i can survive even better with mesmer and guard than on any necrobuild. Mesmer is nearly unkillable if you use dodges, evades and invul/blocks. Running full glass zerker chrono is pretty easy. Guard take this whole thing to an other level so much aegis and blinds paired with nice burst dps it's pretty hard to get killed.

The more accurate description of that would be every class has to be played differently because not all of them have the same tools available.

[Biff.5312]

There's no mystery here. The difference in stats is known and it is small. Ascended gear will help a little, but trait/utility/weapons and practice have a much greater impact.

Sure, other elements have a greater impact. Nevertheless it is noticeably easier to stay alive with ascended gear than with exotics. It matters. And it matters all the more the less skilled you are. Every toon I took into PoF or HoT maps with exotics I found required far greater attention and effort to maintain than the same toons geared in ascended stuff.

So I don't think there's much mystery on my end either. Ascended is better. Simple.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

It does you credit that you recognize that there's something you could learn that would help make things easier. The next (and harder) step is recognizing that it might mean giving up everything you already think you know about what works.

@"Oldirtbeard.9834" said:I actually use my dodge when ever it's availableDon't do that. This is why you don't have enough dodges; you're not saving it for when you need it.

This is an example of where no amount of guides is going to help, because it's mentioned in basic guides for newbies, but it hasn't clicked for you. And now you're at a state where you rightfully don't think of yourself as a newbie and (rightfully) won't consider returning to review basic guides. As others have pointed out, you also spend a fair bit of your forum time explaining how you want to play, rather than adapting your play to how the game works.

It's not wrong to want to play how you like. It's not even 'wrong' to play like that. But neither should we expect that it will work in all games or all types of combat.

Dodging too much isn't the only such example. It just happens to be one that has a clear "do versus don't" rule of thumb, i.e. dodge only when there's a reason to dodge.

I think if you really want to re-learn the game, you should consider starting from scratch. I'd recommend an L80 profession that you hardly play (or better: that you hate). Thief, for example, since they survive by being glass and doing extra DPS (they also have evades and blinds and stuff). You have to avoid damage while dishing out your own.

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:It does you credit that you recognize that there's something you could learn that would help make things easier. The next (and harder) step is recognizing that it might mean giving up everything you already think you know about what works.

@"Oldirtbeard.9834" said:I actually use my dodge when ever it's availableDon't do that. This is why you don't have enough dodges; you're not saving it for when you need it.

This is an example of where no amount of guides is going to help, because it's mentioned in basic guides for newbies, but it hasn't clicked for you. And now you're at a state where you rightfully don't think of yourself as a newbie and (rightfully) won't consider returning to review basic guides. As others have pointed out, you also spend a fair bit of your forum time explaining how you want to play, rather than adapting your play to how the game works.

It's not wrong to want to play how you like. It's not even 'wrong' to play like that. But neither should we expect that it will work in all games or all types of combat.

Dodging too much isn't the only such example. It just happens to be one that has a clear "do versus don't" rule of thumb, i.e. dodge only when there's a reason to dodge.

I think if you really want to re-learn the game, you should consider starting from scratch. I'd recommend an L80 profession that you hardly play (or better: that you hate). Thief, for example, since they survive by being glass and doing extra DPS (they also have evades and blinds and stuff). You have to avoid damage while dishing out your own.

Or use superior sigil of energy and stamina on both weapon sets if you wanted to dodge as you wish.

D:

[Oldirtbeard.9834]

@GDchiaScrub.3241 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:It does you credit that you recognize that there's something you could learn that would help make things easier. The next (and harder) step is recognizing that it might mean giving up everything you already think you know about what works.

@"Oldirtbeard.9834" said:I actually use my dodge when ever it's availableDon't do that. This is why you don't have enough dodges; you're not saving it for when you need it.

This is an example of where no amount of guides is going to help, because it's mentioned in basic guides for newbies, but it hasn't clicked for you. And now you're at a state where you rightfully don't think of yourself as a newbie and (rightfully) won't consider returning to review basic guides. As others have pointed out, you also spend a fair bit of your forum time explaining how you want to play, rather than adapting your play to how the game works.

It's not wrong to want to play how you like. It's not even 'wrong' to play like that. But neither should we expect that it will work in all games or all types of combat.

Dodging too much isn't the only such example. It just happens to be one that has a clear "do versus don't" rule of thumb, i.e. dodge only when there's a reason to dodge.

I think if you really want to re-learn the game, you should consider starting from scratch. I'd recommend an L80 profession that you hardly play (or better: that you hate). Thief, for example, since they survive by being glass and doing extra DPS (they also have evades and blinds and stuff). You have to avoid damage while dishing out your own.

Or use superior sigil of energy and stamina on both weapon sets if you wanted to dodge as you wish.

D:

Maybe just one or the other while keeping Force on each weapon, I mean Air never made much sense to me, and Accuracy isn't that much of a DPS increase, I was screwing around with Sigil or Strength and Strength Runes for stacking up Might quickly but I'm sure I'd get greater utility out of filling my endurance quicker.

I don't plan on doing bleeding edge content any more.

You know what I'd love, a great Open World class as forgiving as Reaper that provides decent Zerg Support in Open World, gets welcomed with Open Arms in Fractals. Would that be a Druid maybe?