More great moments in making people feel bad about themselves as a mesmer in wvwvw.
So I was auto-running across the wuvwuv fields with my map up and watching some lol streams on my laptop (woo ADD) I galnce at my map to see my progress and... well it doesnt seem like im moving too qucikly. I drop the map and see a Guardian or Warrior or something is wailing on me! How rude! I am auto-running here!
At about 40-50% HP I fight back!
Man... that cannot be a fun fight to lose... Poor fellow!
Yea this was kind of my experience with the engineer I mentioned earlier. The reason I even bothered to fight him 1v1 was that he let me get up to a vista without bothering me, and then while I was viewing the vista started setting me on fire. I kind of thought that he was going to do this and thus tabbed out of the cutscene early enough to realize what was going on. This vista was on top of a ruined column, so it wasn't the most manoeuvrable place to fight in.
So naturally I temporal curtained him off the edge to fall in the dirt. He never really recovered from that.
Ecto's dropped 5s over two days (Wednesday evening - Friday morning). From 25s 66c on the high end, to 20s 12c on the low. Right now they are creeping back up (21s 10c) but are fluctuating around there.
Personally, I plan on holding onto all my ecto's still they go back up to 25s and cashing in. It seems the market get flooded as the weekend rolls in and screws everything up.
I'd wager that the high end we'll see on Ecto's is around 25s (With a possible bump to 27, I sold a few at that level on Tuesday before it dropped back down). At least for a while.
So I started up a warrior the other night after getting tired of how squishy my other characters were during story quests ("We'll just put two mobs that do a massively damaging whirlwind attack they are invulnerable during next to your Mesmer in an enclosed space and follow them up with a champion mob that takes off half of your life in a ranged attack"). I'm curious what weapon setups people like with one though. I'm currently running around with a greatsword like pretty much everyone else apparently but I'm not fond of how you have to stay still during the entire length of the second attack for optimal results. If I have to move during it to avoid damage, I basically wind up just on autoattack for a bit.
I am running around as a mesmer main. I did a good chunk of my leveling with Sword/Pistal - Gsword. Though for the last dozen levels or so, I have been using Staff - Sword/Focus, and I must say Staff - sword/focus makes any fight so easy. its become super fun and super easy to take on Tons of mobs at once, and I've even managed to Solo a couple Champions. I am only level 62 atm.
i am also gonna vouch for staff + sword/____
not totally sold on focus, i basically only use it for the speed boost outside of combat.
yeah thats all I use the focus for too, Running just a tad faster.. lol
Mesmer is OP solo. What weapons/skill set-ups were you using?
Which quest was this?
Level 10 or so human street rat origin story. Setup was staff and sword/focus. My weapons were very low level so that probably didn't help but that quest line seems to love bandit mobs that go into a flurry without warning and take out all the melee NPC help you get (along with any sword clones).
So I started up a warrior the other night after getting tired of how squishy my other characters were during story quests ("We'll just put two mobs that do a massively damaging whirlwind attack they are invulnerable during next to your Mesmer in an enclosed space and follow them up with a champion mob that takes off half of your life in a ranged attack"). I'm curious what weapon setups people like with one though. I'm currently running around with a greatsword like pretty much everyone else apparently but I'm not fond of how you have to stay still during the entire length of the second attack for optimal results. If I have to move during it to avoid damage, I basically wind up just on autoattack for a bit.
I am running around as a mesmer main. I did a good chunk of my leveling with Sword/Pistal - Gsword. Though for the last dozen levels or so, I have been using Staff - Sword/Focus, and I must say Staff - sword/focus makes any fight so easy. its become super fun and super easy to take on Tons of mobs at once, and I've even managed to Solo a couple Champions. I am only level 62 atm.
i am also gonna vouch for staff + sword/____
not totally sold on focus, i basically only use it for the speed boost outside of combat.
yeah thats all I use the focus for too, Running just a tad faster.. lol
I was using sword/pistol and Staff for a while. As awesome as sword is (and it's pretty great), I find myself kiting too often to make use of it. And I didn't like switching to sword, doing one #2 flurry and then waiting around out of melee for 7 seconds or so for the switch back to staff to cool down. I just automatically switch to kiting mode when playing my mesmer for whatever reason. So I switched to greatsword/staff and I really like it.
Basically the way I play staff is my primary weapon and I use it as much as possible. I only switch to my off weapon to summon more phantasms (illusionary duelist from pistol4 was a pretty great one), so after I've summoned whatever phantasm my alt-weapon has, I like my #1 attach to have some range so I can keep kiting while waiting to switch back to staff. The #5 knock back, and the swweeeeet graphic on #2 and #3 GS are just icing for me haha.
Mesmer is OP solo. What weapons/skill set-ups were you using?
Which quest was this?
Level 10 or so human street rat origin story. Setup was staff and sword/focus. My weapons were very low level so that probably didn't help but that quest line seems to love bandit mobs that go into a flurry without warning and take out all the melee NPC help you get (along with any sword clones).
oooh low level stuff. Can't help too much there beyond saying circle strafe with staff! when they get close switch to sword, hit 2! Hit 4! RUUUUUNNNN!!!!
Mesmer is OP solo. What weapons/skill set-ups were you using?
Which quest was this?
Level 10 or so human street rat origin story. Setup was staff and sword/focus. My weapons were very low level so that probably didn't help but that quest line seems to love bandit mobs that go into a flurry without warning and take out all the melee NPC help you get (along with any sword clones).
Try off-hand sword for better defense in melee range.
Circle kite with staff and Staff 2 solves many problems as well.
Looking at those queue times, I'm thinking if we do a Wuvwuv night on Fridays we probably don't want to pick EB. Sure, everyone who was on at the changeover could get in, but I suspect a lot of members are probably at work at 4pm PST. Though on the other hand, EB is nice because there are lots of smaller targets that organized groups can take out. Maybe we should try it both ways.
I haven't seen Mojo post yet, but my suggestion is we go for one of the two enemy borderlands. If we get in early or have a reasonably large force, we can shoot for taking one of the three keeps and claiming it for our guild, and then use it for a base while sending teams to grab supply camps/towers/NPC camps. They also tend to have the shortest queue times.
Also, I just learned about this whole "Defiance" thing on hard mobs like ... yesterday.
Goddamn this game is bad at explaining shit.
I don't disagree that the game doesn't explain many things to you, but I can't agree that unshakeable/defiance buffs are one of them. I mean, before you engage a boss you can target most of them and see the unshakeable buff on them, and the tooltip explains exactly what it does. Then once you CC them and they get the defiance stacks you can read that tooltip and understand. The only thing it doesn't really explain is that knockdown/knockback/blowout/stun/daze/pull/fear are the only things that will take the stacks, but it took me and my group like 2 runs of AC story to figure it all out on our own.
The game needs better tutorials on a million things, especially combo fields/finishers so you don't have to go outside the game to figure stuff out, and so people aren't lost as hell when they go in a dungeon the first time, not understanding stun breakers and all that, but unshakeable/defiance is fine like it is imo.
Also, I just learned about this whole "Defiance" thing on hard mobs like ... yesterday.
Goddamn this game is bad at explaining shit.
I don't disagree that the game doesn't explain many things to you, but I can't agree that unshakeable/defiance buffs are one of them. I mean, before you engage a boss you can target most of them and see the unshakeable buff on them, and the tooltip explains exactly what it does. Then once you CC them and they get the defiance stacks you can read that tooltip and understand. The only thing it doesn't really explain is that knockdown/knockback/blowout/stun/daze/pull/fear are the only things that will take the stacks, but it took me and my group like 2 runs of AC story to figure it all out on our own.
The game needs better tutorials on a million things, especially combo fields/finishers so you don't have to go outside the game to figure stuff out, and so people aren't lost as hell when they go in a dungeon the first time, not understanding stun breakers and all that, but unshakeable/defiance is fine like it is imo.
So something that should be obvious and is required to understand to really do well took you, someone who has on every occasion say they play with a group of players who are very good at the dungeons in GW2, took 2 runs to figure it out.
You don't see the problem here?
This is shitty design. It's an important mechanic and it's one you only know is there if, mid fight, you are carefully examining the tooltips of debuffs on the boss.
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
I don't exactly understand what the point of defiance is. Like, it tells me that they're immune to CC, blinds are 10% effective, and weakness/vulnerability function at 50%. So...what's the purpose of the stacks? Are they not immune to CC until they have stacks? And then you have to strip the stacks off in order to get that one single opportunity to CC them again?
Looking at those queue times, I'm thinking if we do a Wuvwuv night on Fridays we probably don't want to pick EB. Sure, everyone who was on at the changeover could get in, but I suspect a lot of members are probably at work at 4pm PST. Though on the other hand, EB is nice because there are lots of smaller targets that organized groups can take out. Maybe we should try it both ways.
I haven't seen Mojo post yet, but my suggestion is we go for one of the two enemy borderlands. If we get in early or have a reasonably large force, we can shoot for taking one of the three keeps and claiming it for our guild, and then use it for a base while sending teams to grab supply camps/towers/NPC camps. They also tend to have the shortest queue times.
I have some strategic opinions on this I will share with mojo and we will decide before server reset.
The server matchup should change at 5 PST or 8 EST, so people should be able to get back. The queue should not be a thing we're concerned about as long as we MASH THE JOIN BUTTON.
I'll give you that. I don't feel it's something you need to know to get through the dungeons, but rather just need to know if you want to go above and beyond and actually eat the stacks and interrupt bosses, but yeah, they really could do a better job of letting you know what it means outside of just having to figure it out on your own and what not.
This game could probably use a big ass instance with NPCs that teach you about everything in the game. The first mists room where you learn about capping points/downing players and all that comes to mind, except this would also include practicing doing combo fields and finishers, and the million other little things in this game, like teaching you what each condition/boon does, and on and on.
I mean really, you're right, the game is awful at explaining anything to you. Maybe I don't need it explained to me because I'm a left brained maniac who loves digging deep the find the details myself, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit everybody to have such explanations. I would've learned the stuff faster myself if it was there, because I would've definitely gone through the tutorials or whatever.
I mean hell, if there were practice NPCs where you could practice using stun breakers to get out of knockdowns, practice removing conditions, etc., half the people playing this game would at least be way more ready to enter a dungeon at level 30.
Maybe the game just needs a level 20 story-mode-only group dungeon that has all these mechanics with only like 2 bosses. Each being very slow and lazy, and providing hint popups pointing out boons/conditions and such, but set the boss to be 100% unbeatable if you use no CCs or Combos. One combo = 10% health gone! or something along those lines.
Hell, make it Duoable and gives you your first Rare, just so no one has a reason to skip it.
steejee on
The Great DAMNED STEAM SALES AND WII/U Backlog Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4 Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
I don't exactly understand what the point of defiance is. Like, it tells me that they're immune to CC, blinds are 10% effective, and weakness/vulnerability function at 50%. So...what's the purpose of the stacks? Are they not immune to CC until they have stacks? And then you have to strip the stacks off in order to get that one single opportunity to CC them again?
From what I've been able to gather (had to dig up a post on the official forums), it's the second.
Basically, you get 1 CC in on the boss, then you got reCC them X number of times before you can CC them again. (where X is the number of players in the fight, with a hard minimum of 3)
Well it seems Saturday has other plans for me so I'll miss the PVE stuffs, but I might be around for the WuvWuv fun tonight. Weather is the deciding factor on that one...
I don't exactly understand what the point of defiance is. Like, it tells me that they're immune to CC, blinds are 10% effective, and weakness/vulnerability function at 50%. So...what's the purpose of the stacks? Are they not immune to CC until they have stacks? And then you have to strip the stacks off in order to get that one single opportunity to CC them again?
From what I've been able to gather (had to dig up a post on the official forums), it's the second.
Basically, you get 1 CC in on the boss, then you got reCC them X number of times before you can CC them again. (where X is the number of players in the fight, with a hard minimum of 3)
Anyone know if there's some kind of limitation to how quickly you can remove the stacks? I know as a thief with an off-hand pistol I have that short daze (skill 4) that I can spam relatively quickly in order to burn thru those stacks. Sometimes, though, it doesn't take a stack off for a while when I hit them with the daze. Confusing.
I don't exactly understand what the point of defiance is. Like, it tells me that they're immune to CC, blinds are 10% effective, and weakness/vulnerability function at 50%. So...what's the purpose of the stacks? Are they not immune to CC until they have stacks? And then you have to strip the stacks off in order to get that one single opportunity to CC them again?
From what I've been able to gather (had to dig up a post on the official forums), it's the second.
Basically, you get 1 CC in on the boss, then you got reCC them X number of times before you can CC them again. (where X is the number of players in the fight, with a hard minimum of 3)
Unshakeable(white buff) is the buff that makes blinds only 10% effective and weakness/vulnerability only last 50% duration, but the potency is not lower on those two.
The defiance(orange buff) stacks work like this: When no stacks are up, you can knockback/pull/daze/stun/fear/launch/knockdown the boss. Basically all the things that actually interrupt an action, so you can interrupt the big attacks rather than rely on dodging them. Only the effects I just listed previously are relevant for defiance. If there are stacks up, one stack will come off for each of these things that is used. These 7 effects are the ones that can interrupt an action, which is why they're the only relevant ones to the defiance stacks.
The key is to designate people who will take the stacks off, and designate who will use hard CC to interrupt the boss after that. It's pretty much going to be impossible without a coordinated group though, and it helps to be on vent or whatever together too.
Here's an example my group commonly does, using the boss in AC explorable that makes rocks fall down but also does a huge AOE scream that will down you if you don't double dodge it or interrupt:
Boss has 5 stacks of defiance. Mesmer shatters 3 daze clones to take 3 stacks. Guardian uses greatsword binding blades 2nd activation for the pull to take a stack. Thief uses pistol whip for damage but also to take a stack, then the thief is the one who actually interrupt the ability itself when the boss starts the animation for the big aoe blast by hitting head shot for the daze, since there's barely any windup time on head shot so it can be done quickly.
On bosses where they don't have something you must interrupt but you still want to make your life easier, use the longest CCs you have when the stacks are off. Big ol' bomb, the engineer's toolbelt ability from bomb kit(thanks go to @Rend I think it was for mentioning it on here) is one of the best to use. You get about a 3 second window of the boss doing nothing when the bomb goes off. It's just not good for interrupting since it has a timer before it blows. Guardian spirit hammer activation is terrific too for this, as you get a 3 second knockdown, but the guardian has other utilities they'd rather run most of the time.
I don't exactly understand what the point of defiance is. Like, it tells me that they're immune to CC, blinds are 10% effective, and weakness/vulnerability function at 50%. So...what's the purpose of the stacks? Are they not immune to CC until they have stacks? And then you have to strip the stacks off in order to get that one single opportunity to CC them again?
From what I've been able to gather (had to dig up a post on the official forums), it's the second.
Basically, you get 1 CC in on the boss, then you got reCC them X number of times before you can CC them again. (where X is the number of players in the fight, with a hard minimum of 3)
Anyone know if there's some kind of limitation to how quickly you can remove the stacks? I know as a thief with an off-hand pistol I have that short daze (skill 4) that I can spam relatively quickly in order to burn thru those stacks. Sometimes, though, it doesn't take a stack off for a while when I hit them with the daze. Confusing.
Not that I know of. Our mesmer takes 3 stacks at will with shattering clones all at the same time. Never seen a stack not come off when a hard CC was used.
Maybe the game just needs a level 20 story-mode-only group dungeon that has all these mechanics with only like 2 bosses. Each being very slow and lazy, and providing hint popups pointing out boons/conditions and such, but set the boss to be 100% unbeatable if you use no CCs or Combos. One combo = 10% health gone! or something along those lines.
Hell, make it Duoable and gives you your first Rare, just so no one has a reason to skip it.
I was literally thinking this earlier today.
Whilst it's easy for those of us who have been deeply involved with following this game for years to notice things like Unshakeable/Defiant, there is no in-game explanation. The mob tooltips ('inflicts poison', 'stronger when together', etc) go some way, but some people are just going to gloss over them and need it kind of pressed into their faces.
EDIT: CC is Daze, Stun, Blowout, Knockback, Knockdown, and Float and Sink underwater. For any of you necros out there, fear, a condition, works on everything always (which I guess is why player-sourced fear is pretty short-lived), even if on champs the duration is negligible. Necros should in theory be able to interrupt any attack on demand, though this needs testing. Might just be that some stuff is straight up immune to fear.
Lots of stuff is immune to fear
If a defiant monster gets feared the skull thing shows up but they don't actually get interrupted and I'm pretty sure it doesn't even take off a stack
The most important boss buff I've seen is the retaliation one...and the only place I've seen it is on the ice worm DE. You can kill yourself pretty darn quick if you don't see it in time and stop attacking.
Things like that would train players to carefully examine the boss buffs.
Although I do wish all of your conditions went on one row and all of his buffs on another.
Legendaries are about on the level of, if not maybe a little easier than, obsidian armor from GW1. It's really a long term goal to want one of these things and that makes it all the more interesting to me.
I'll probably clap anytime I see someone with the staff because if they have the will power to not identify 250 dyes than they deserve a standing ovation.
I'm planning on going for broke with the legendaries for my main. I want the legendary for every weapon my Guardian can use. Which means I will need to 100% map explore on all my alts, as well as whore out basically every dungeon and hoard every material. I think I'll just buy the unidentified dyes off the AH. >_>
"The psychedelic mind is a higher dimensional mind, it is not fit for three dimensional space time."
- Terence McKenna
3/4 cup orange juice (no pulp)
3/4 cup tangerine juice
1 packet orange Flavor-Aid
1 packet tangerine Flavor-Aid
1 spoonful Country Time powdered lemonade mix (or 1 packet of lemonade Flavor-Aid? Just throwin’ it out there)
1 3/4 cup sugar
Blue and green food coloring
Stir all ingredients in a gallon jug. Add water to fill the jug. Add food coloring until it’s just the right, unsettling shade of green.
Posts
Tengu thief hoooooo!
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
Yea this was kind of my experience with the engineer I mentioned earlier. The reason I even bothered to fight him 1v1 was that he let me get up to a vista without bothering me, and then while I was viewing the vista started setting me on fire. I kind of thought that he was going to do this and thus tabbed out of the cutscene early enough to realize what was going on. This vista was on top of a ruined column, so it wasn't the most manoeuvrable place to fight in.
So naturally I temporal curtained him off the edge to fall in the dirt. He never really recovered from that.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Ecto's dropped 5s over two days (Wednesday evening - Friday morning). From 25s 66c on the high end, to 20s 12c on the low. Right now they are creeping back up (21s 10c) but are fluctuating around there.
Personally, I plan on holding onto all my ecto's still they go back up to 25s and cashing in. It seems the market get flooded as the weekend rolls in and screws everything up.
I'd wager that the high end we'll see on Ecto's is around 25s (With a possible bump to 27, I sold a few at that level on Tuesday before it dropped back down). At least for a while.
I'm no economist, these are just my observations.
Please tell me I am not alone in this.
Path of Exile: snowcrash7
MTG Arena: Snow_Crash#34179
Battle.net: Snowcrash#1873
It's awesome.
Haven't taken the time to find it.
PSN: Beltaine-77 | Steam: beltane77 | Battle.net BadHaggis#1433
yeah thats all I use the focus for too, Running just a tad faster.. lol
Level 10 or so human street rat origin story. Setup was staff and sword/focus. My weapons were very low level so that probably didn't help but that quest line seems to love bandit mobs that go into a flurry without warning and take out all the melee NPC help you get (along with any sword clones).
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I was using sword/pistol and Staff for a while. As awesome as sword is (and it's pretty great), I find myself kiting too often to make use of it. And I didn't like switching to sword, doing one #2 flurry and then waiting around out of melee for 7 seconds or so for the switch back to staff to cool down. I just automatically switch to kiting mode when playing my mesmer for whatever reason. So I switched to greatsword/staff and I really like it.
Basically the way I play staff is my primary weapon and I use it as much as possible. I only switch to my off weapon to summon more phantasms (illusionary duelist from pistol4 was a pretty great one), so after I've summoned whatever phantasm my alt-weapon has, I like my #1 attach to have some range so I can keep kiting while waiting to switch back to staff. The #5 knock back, and the swweeeeet graphic on #2 and #3 GS are just icing for me haha.
oooh low level stuff. Can't help too much there beyond saying circle strafe with staff! when they get close switch to sword, hit 2! Hit 4! RUUUUUNNNN!!!!
Try off-hand sword for better defense in melee range.
Circle kite with staff and Staff 2 solves many problems as well.
Goddamn this game is bad at explaining shit.
I haven't seen Mojo post yet, but my suggestion is we go for one of the two enemy borderlands. If we get in early or have a reasonably large force, we can shoot for taking one of the three keeps and claiming it for our guild, and then use it for a base while sending teams to grab supply camps/towers/NPC camps. They also tend to have the shortest queue times.
I don't disagree that the game doesn't explain many things to you, but I can't agree that unshakeable/defiance buffs are one of them. I mean, before you engage a boss you can target most of them and see the unshakeable buff on them, and the tooltip explains exactly what it does. Then once you CC them and they get the defiance stacks you can read that tooltip and understand. The only thing it doesn't really explain is that knockdown/knockback/blowout/stun/daze/pull/fear are the only things that will take the stacks, but it took me and my group like 2 runs of AC story to figure it all out on our own.
The game needs better tutorials on a million things, especially combo fields/finishers so you don't have to go outside the game to figure stuff out, and so people aren't lost as hell when they go in a dungeon the first time, not understanding stun breakers and all that, but unshakeable/defiance is fine like it is imo.
So something that should be obvious and is required to understand to really do well took you, someone who has on every occasion say they play with a group of players who are very good at the dungeons in GW2, took 2 runs to figure it out.
You don't see the problem here?
This is shitty design. It's an important mechanic and it's one you only know is there if, mid fight, you are carefully examining the tooltips of debuffs on the boss.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
I have some strategic opinions on this I will share with mojo and we will decide before server reset.
The server matchup should change at 5 PST or 8 EST, so people should be able to get back. The queue should not be a thing we're concerned about as long as we MASH THE JOIN BUTTON.
@Mojojoeo thoughts?
This game could probably use a big ass instance with NPCs that teach you about everything in the game. The first mists room where you learn about capping points/downing players and all that comes to mind, except this would also include practicing doing combo fields and finishers, and the million other little things in this game, like teaching you what each condition/boon does, and on and on.
I mean really, you're right, the game is awful at explaining anything to you. Maybe I don't need it explained to me because I'm a left brained maniac who loves digging deep the find the details myself, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit everybody to have such explanations. I would've learned the stuff faster myself if it was there, because I would've definitely gone through the tutorials or whatever.
I mean hell, if there were practice NPCs where you could practice using stun breakers to get out of knockdowns, practice removing conditions, etc., half the people playing this game would at least be way more ready to enter a dungeon at level 30.
Hell, make it Duoable and gives you your first Rare, just so no one has a reason to skip it.
Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4
Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles
On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts
Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
From what I've been able to gather (had to dig up a post on the official forums), it's the second.
Basically, you get 1 CC in on the boss, then you got reCC them X number of times before you can CC them again. (where X is the number of players in the fight, with a hard minimum of 3)
Battle.net: IronSquirrel#1462
And in the afternoon?
That flavor needs to make a comeback.
Yup. Pretty sure it's clear with the wife.
I'll post up a thing a little later once I'm sure.
Anyone know if there's some kind of limitation to how quickly you can remove the stacks? I know as a thief with an off-hand pistol I have that short daze (skill 4) that I can spam relatively quickly in order to burn thru those stacks. Sometimes, though, it doesn't take a stack off for a while when I hit them with the daze. Confusing.
If you are up for it try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z-ISy3T1MU8
Recipe at 1:07 - 3:02 if you want to skip right to it. I haven't actually made it myself so I can't speak for how exact it is.
Battle.net: IronSquirrel#1462
Unshakeable(white buff) is the buff that makes blinds only 10% effective and weakness/vulnerability only last 50% duration, but the potency is not lower on those two.
The defiance(orange buff) stacks work like this: When no stacks are up, you can knockback/pull/daze/stun/fear/launch/knockdown the boss. Basically all the things that actually interrupt an action, so you can interrupt the big attacks rather than rely on dodging them. Only the effects I just listed previously are relevant for defiance. If there are stacks up, one stack will come off for each of these things that is used. These 7 effects are the ones that can interrupt an action, which is why they're the only relevant ones to the defiance stacks.
The key is to designate people who will take the stacks off, and designate who will use hard CC to interrupt the boss after that. It's pretty much going to be impossible without a coordinated group though, and it helps to be on vent or whatever together too.
Here's an example my group commonly does, using the boss in AC explorable that makes rocks fall down but also does a huge AOE scream that will down you if you don't double dodge it or interrupt:
Boss has 5 stacks of defiance. Mesmer shatters 3 daze clones to take 3 stacks. Guardian uses greatsword binding blades 2nd activation for the pull to take a stack. Thief uses pistol whip for damage but also to take a stack, then the thief is the one who actually interrupt the ability itself when the boss starts the animation for the big aoe blast by hitting head shot for the daze, since there's barely any windup time on head shot so it can be done quickly.
On bosses where they don't have something you must interrupt but you still want to make your life easier, use the longest CCs you have when the stacks are off. Big ol' bomb, the engineer's toolbelt ability from bomb kit(thanks go to @Rend I think it was for mentioning it on here) is one of the best to use. You get about a 3 second window of the boss doing nothing when the bomb goes off. It's just not good for interrupting since it has a timer before it blows. Guardian spirit hammer activation is terrific too for this, as you get a 3 second knockdown, but the guardian has other utilities they'd rather run most of the time.
Not that I know of. Our mesmer takes 3 stacks at will with shattering clones all at the same time. Never seen a stack not come off when a hard CC was used.
Battle.net: IronSquirrel#1462
I was literally thinking this earlier today.
Whilst it's easy for those of us who have been deeply involved with following this game for years to notice things like Unshakeable/Defiant, there is no in-game explanation. The mob tooltips ('inflicts poison', 'stronger when together', etc) go some way, but some people are just going to gloss over them and need it kind of pressed into their faces.
EDIT: CC is Daze, Stun, Blowout, Knockback, Knockdown, and Float and Sink underwater. For any of you necros out there, fear, a condition, works on everything always (which I guess is why player-sourced fear is pretty short-lived), even if on champs the duration is negligible. Necros should in theory be able to interrupt any attack on demand, though this needs testing. Might just be that some stuff is straight up immune to fear.
If a defiant monster gets feared the skull thing shows up but they don't actually get interrupted and I'm pretty sure it doesn't even take off a stack
Things like that would train players to carefully examine the boss buffs.
Although I do wish all of your conditions went on one row and all of his buffs on another.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
I'm planning on going for broke with the legendaries for my main. I want the legendary for every weapon my Guardian can use. Which means I will need to 100% map explore on all my alts, as well as whore out basically every dungeon and hoard every material. I think I'll just buy the unidentified dyes off the AH. >_>
- Terence McKenna
Homemade Ecto-Cooler
3/4 cup orange juice (no pulp)
3/4 cup tangerine juice
1 packet orange Flavor-Aid
1 packet tangerine Flavor-Aid
1 spoonful Country Time powdered lemonade mix (or 1 packet of lemonade Flavor-Aid? Just throwin’ it out there)
1 3/4 cup sugar
Blue and green food coloring
Stir all ingredients in a gallon jug. Add water to fill the jug. Add food coloring until it’s just the right, unsettling shade of green.
from here
i now return you to fighting about dungeons
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At least I'm not a warrior.
- Terence McKenna