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GW2 All professions: What are your advanced PvE tricks?

D

Diremongoose

iSpy
When I played an Engineer in beta, I was familiar enough with the rifle that n0 melee-only target was ever a threat as long they didn't have stability. This is because of the combination of immobilise and knockdown kept them away from me at all times. Works well on stupid warriors in WvW.

The same is not true of the Mesmer, which I'm only now learning the secrets of playing. The Mesmer, like the thief, has a decent selection of stealth skills. I've grown to love combining aggro management via stealth with confusion stacking and clones.

So what little tricks have you figured out for your professions of choice? What good strategies for survival have you found in PvE? Why is the way YOU play your profession awesome?
 
As far as the ranger goes, I use a tanky pet and a ranged pet. Mostly I keep the murello (ugly hairless dog looking bear) out for tanking mobs. Plus he has a poison pbaoe which helps kill mobs. I use a spider as a ranged pet who also poisons and can immobilize.

As for my character I try to use ranged weapons: shortbow/axe and horn. I keep moving while the mobs are on my pet. I use healing spring which lays down a water aoe for regen on projectiles. For my other skills I use traps as a nuke when I have multiple mobs or a bad ass one that is killing my pet. My elite is usually something that will help me kill faster like turrets or another pet like the mistwolves.

My survivability comes more from kiting and directing agro to my pets. If it gets too hairy I let my pet get agro till it dies while I run away. otherwise I run a pretty much glass cannon build and keep away from getting hit.
 
Thief PvE at higher levels (70 up essentially) is all about Death Blossom, Caltrops, Shadowstep and thieves guild.

A condition build is the only way to go at that point. Death Blossom provides you survivability. By learning to time it, rather than spam it, so that you dodge the attacks(instead of landing right in front of them) you can take on groups of 5 or 6 80's. Caltrops to keep the bleeds going, and if you fancy being more offensive, go ahead and use the pistol/dagger combo for your offhand. I however use Shortbow so that I can run if I need to using the Infiltrators Arrow( 5 Skill ). Shadowstep drops off some conditions and if you're using the Signet of Agility, then that also gets rid of conditions in conjunction with thieves guild(which in turn provides you with extra damage or a much needed distraction). Shadowstep is the biggest life saver though dropping 2 conditions on return AND having a much further range step than infiltrators arrow has(Also it's a stun breaker[both on use and on return]).

Hide in Shadows, The healing skill, will in conjunction with the other skills keep you from die'ing nearly indefinitely. (Minus any giant hordes, champions, or leaping off of cliffs that you may or may not do.)

In anycase. I recommend it.

P.S. Forgot to mention that with the right trait build you can get loads of buffs + loads of initiative + stealth on a steal and will also have 15 initiative. I usually get off 5-7 Death Blossoms in a row using the steal. Which puts your bleeds on multiple targets (if you have caltrops down) at 15+ for quite a bit of time and usually peaking at 21-23 for moderate durations. When ya run out of initiative just play with your bow or pistol at a distance until you get your initiative back, and then do it all again.

P.P.S. I didn't make the build, but it serves me well for PvE. I'm sure you can find it somewhere. I need to get to bed. If you haven't I'll edit this post and link it at the bottom of it later.
 
So I've been running a glass cannon build on my Thief. I am using S/P at the moment with SB as my offweap and I switch as needed based on the encounter. It definitely takes a while to get used to the fact that if you don't gtfo of the way of AoEs and watch for the graphic for an incoming attack you're pretty much squashed but the build itself is a lot of fun (esp. when running with a decent group <3).

ModSec I def agree with you on Shadowstep being a huge life saver. It has saved my butt on more than one occasion. I have a little over 11k health at the moment so being quick on the SS has been critical. I like your build for the survivability aspect of it but I'm kind of a dmg whore and I like seeing the big crits. I can definitely put out an average of 15k with my PW dmg even after the 15% nerf which makes me go :eek:mg:

I'm not big on the stealthing unless I'm soloing stuff outside dungeons and in that case I usually just switch out Malice for Hide in Shadows so I can get away from stuff but 9 times out of 10 I can keep things blinded/dazed or use Thieves Guild to help take down any group that I can't PW AoE quickly enough. Also I dig the SoM for the health regen and short CD :)

It's definitely not a build I recommend if you like to space out (which I tend to do on my Mesmer and is likely why she's not 80...) but it's a lot of fun if you can stay alive. I'm still working on getting some gear pieces for her so we'll see how it goes when I have everything I need. I have toyed with the idea of going condition build but I'm just having too much fun with this and most of what I've read seems to say this is a really decent dmg build for PvE so I can definitely see myself sticking with this.

Oh and if you're interested here's the link I used for the build I currently have: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/67030-zerjs-pvedungeon-dps-thief-build/
 
As an elly, there aren't that many tricks for PvE other than to RTL away from all danger, lol.

On a more helpful note, Lightning Hammer is really useful if you're trying to melee a slow attacking group of mobs. It's 3rd attack in the #1 chain is an AoE Blind. I find that blind is constantly under utilized in a lot of PvE and the more you can keep up blind the better your chances are at staying up. Glyph of Storms while in earth attunement (sandstorm) will give you a constant AoE blind in the area you cast it.

Glyph of Renewal used to be able to res people from dead (not downed) state, but they fixed that. It can still be used to res NPCs from a distance (long distance res TP in air attune) or res a group of NPCs in combat (3 in earth attune). It used to be pretty unbalanced because with an elly up you could recover from a wipe if she has that skill equipped. You can also move while casting it, so as long as you do not interrupted it or go out of range, the res will go off. This is usually useful if you're soloing an event with a lot of NPCs that are dead or if you're soloing your story and it's a bit too difficult for just yourself and you need your NPCs to tank for you.

Another tip is to turn off AUTOTARGET in the options menu if you ever expect to RTL (Ride the Lightning in the direction you want to go) anywhere. Otherwise you will RTL straight into mobs or even run back into the mobs you were running from. (Very frustrating)

Our earth conjure shield has a skill on it that is an AoE ranged pull. It pulls everything around you towards you. Very good for grouping up ranged mobs. Still not sure what the target limit is.

These ended up being super helpful to me when I was in the process of figuring out my class. Hope this helps! ^^
 
Mesmer:

Granted, I'm only level 50, but I can usually take mobs 5-6 large up to three levels higher than me and be fine. I prefer Staff, Sword/Focus.

I'm spec'd down the healing tree, and I have such that focus reflects projectiles. It proves to be a huge damage negator. And, honestly, with this, Null field, Feedback bubble, Mass invis, and Decoy (survivability), I feel like I have a pretty good influence in a WvW choke point.

Confusion against players is amazing. They rarely notice they have it, and if they get it stacked to 10 (via your allies shooting through null field or Feedback Bubble), they'll take about 1-1.5k damage every time they use a skill, which is always. It's hella efficient.

I use the feedback bubble when rezing talent as an offensive weapon. I'll often find players I maybe know I can't rez in WvW (dead usually means a respawn when losing territory), and "revive" them for one tic just to bring the bubble up.

Mass Invis frequently. It's CD is so short I never notice it being on CD when I need it again. I use it randomly in WvW just to mess with the other team.

I would love to see what a well coordinated Mass Invis could do. A team of Melee with a mes or two Sequencing a mass invis correctly could yield 10 seconds of invisibility. Imagine flanking a bridge choke point because you have a crew of 10 melee moving while invis'd for 10 seconds. Especially since most players at choke points take ranged weapons.

Chaos

/squee

Ele:

I'm low level, but I've found that you can kite very well when using the staff.

Also, I have a favorite combo when using Scepter/Dagger:

Air:
RTL, burn all skills

Water:
Burn all skills except for skill 2.
Skill 2 goes last (Inflicts Vulnerability)

Fire:
Ring of Fire
Phoenix --> Dragon's Tooth --> Arcane Blast --> Skill 5 (Does lots of damage when on fire, and you have might stacked to six)

Earth:
Whichever skill spikes earth out of the ground in a huge AoE.

If done right, the Earth skill, which has the highest damage of all the skills in this weapon combo, will hit with 9-12 stacks of might on a target with 3-6 (can't remember which) Vulnerability. It's amazing.

Only problem is... it's a bit glassy. If they're attacking you, and focused on you, you essentially aren't moving or dodging the whole time or you lose the combo.
 
So my favorite end-game PvE tactic to use on my warrior is to play punchy face with any enemy I find. I punch them in the face, they punch me in the face, first to die loses. I don't often lose.


d3HED.jpg
 
I'm going for a hard-hitting nuke build on my ranger. Because of my high damage, I frequently pull aggro off my pet. Fortunately, I can run and shoot at the same time, so kiting usually isn't a problem. I don't have all the pets unlocked, but I usually have Snow Leopard for a tanky pet and the Forest Spider for range. the poison aoe it drops helps with my arrow dmg.

Currently using a longbow as my main and axe/torch offhand. The opted for the torch when I found I could make a bonfire to rapid fire or barrage through. Mows down enemies very quickly.

I'm still allocating points and unlocking ablities, so my final build isn't set.
 
I run +power / +vit / + tough on all my armor, and +power / +pre / +crit on my weapons and accessories. Given that warriors have a high base toughness and vit, this makes me hard to kill. Then I use frenzy (4 sec quickness), max perception trait (4 sec quickness when you crit a target under 25% hp), and sigil of rage (30% chance for quickness on crit). I have 30 power / 30 pre / 10 tough on my trait points. I can survive 4 or 5v1 against orrian mobs on the cursed shore without trouble, and bring them down quickly. I rarely come across a PvE scenario that I cant handle. Basically just maximizing the warrior's strengths (survive-ability & massive DPS) Keep in mind, this is open world PvE.. dungeons are a whole different ball-game.
 
At the risk of going off on a brief tangent: Rune of rage - worth it? That's a long cool down just for 3s of quickness. I am currently of the mindset that +5% damage is better:


100 damage per second over 45s (no rune)= 4500
100 damage per second over 45s +5% =4725
100 damage per second over 45s (with 3 ‘free’ seconds from double speed quickness) = 4800

This is ONLY true on protracted boss fights. The rest of the time you’ll kill one enemy quickly and then have say 35s without the effect of a rune. The problem is that you can't choose when it activated.
 
I think one of the bonuses is that in 1v1 battles against weaker enemies, you have a chance to kill the target without triggering the sigil. It should take on average 25 attacks (12.5 seconds) to trigger the sigil if you are fighing 1 enemy. But when you get into a 3v1 situation, you have 3 hits per 1/2 second so it only takes around 4 seconds to activate.

The fun part is starting a battle with frenzy, making those attacks that would normally happen in 4 seconds, happen in 2, thus triggering another 3 seconds on quickness. By the time the full 7 seconds goes by, one of the enemies will be at 25% HP or less, and trigger another 4 seconds of quickness on crit. This puts you with 11 consecutive seconds of quickness (assuming nothing was on cooldown and you're fairly lucky_ ) and clears mobs very quickly.

Running a full breakdown on rage vs the +5% damage would be good though, we would just need to factor in number of enemies, % chances to trigger, and all that
 
Hmm...so if it only triggers ever 12.5 seconds that makes the damage much worse than the sigil of force in terms of average DPS
Thus it becomes

100 damage over 57.5s = 5750
100 damage +5% = 6037
100 damage over 60.5 = 6050

The difference is starting to become fairly negligible. Makes sense as they probably balanced it this way.
 
I ran some numbers to see how other damage buffs interact, or how multi-targets would help. Multi target difference is that Rage will trigger faster after cooldown resets. The damage difference is still very small. Does quickness also reduce cooldowns, because if that is the case, quicker cooldowns means you also get to use damage spike skills more often. Which further increases the damage output of Rage.

I think a good comparison to do would be +5% damage vs. Chance for might vs. 25 stacks of power. I'll have some time today and see what I can throw together. I am going to create a new thread in the Warrior section with some calculations behind a few sigils. It's data-intensive, so I might not have it ready right away.

Single Target Battle
DPS 100
Seconds 57.5
Buff 12% Due to max adrenaline

Normal Damage in 57.5 seconds 6440
Force Damage in 57.5 seconds 6727.5
Rage Damage in 57.5 seconds 6776


Multi Target Battle
DPS 100
Seconds 49.17
Targets 3

Normal Damage in 49.17 seconds 14751
Force Damage in 49.17 seconds 15488.55
Rage Damage in 49.17 seconds 15651
 
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