User:Gauzy/Group Content

(Almost always) Universal Tips

The following applies to nearly all group encounters in Guild Wars 2. Unless otherwise specified, follow these guidelines!

“Stack!”

Usually, you should be stacking on tag. This is still true even if you are using ranged weapons or abilities. Staying close allows for the most efficient boon and healing distribution.

“The floor is lava, don’t stand in fire!”

Avoid standing in enemy area of effect zones, which are usually denoted by orange shapes on the ground.

Good circles, bad circles

Green circles: Green circles will sometimes appear underneath players, or at different spots on the floor. Green circles generally mean stack together, so always look for and move to these.

Orange circles: Some enemy attacks trigger expanding orange circles underneath some or all players. Spread out when this happens! It is okay to overlap the orange circles, but make sure that you’re not in range of two or more areas of effect!

“CC!”

Always break defiance bars unless told otherwise. Crowd control is a shared responsibility, but never assume that “somebody else will do it”.

“Rez your friends!”

Resurrect downed players! Always resurrect downed players as soon as it is possible to do so safely. This is another shared responsibility, but generally the DPS players should be the first to start resurrecting, so that the support players can continue their support duties.

Ready?

Only answer “Yes” to a ready check if you are actually ready to begin the encounter! Wait for the ready check to clear before engaging the enemy!

Group Construction

Overview

This is a basic guide to putting together effective and efficient groups for Guild Wars 2 PVE content. These groups are most often seen in instanced PVE content like fractals, strikes, and raids, but the same principles can be applied to Open World encounters if desired or needed.

Every profession in Guild Wars 2 has multiple builds available to it. Many professions have multiple builds for multiple roles. It is beyond the scope of this guide to go into each and every possible group composition option, or to provide example builds.

A note on builds: There are many viable builds in Guild Wars 2. Viable doesn’t necessarily mean optimal, but the game never requires optimal builds in order to succeed. Benchmark builds can be a good demonstration of the theoretical/potential maximum output of a specific build, but achieving similar results in real encounters is not realistic or even possible for the vast majority of players. It is generally better to competently play a build that one is comfortable with, then to poorly play a “technically” optimal build. That said, every group has its own set of expectations and standards.

Roles, Responsibilities, Composition

Players in a party in Guild Wars 2 will generally fill one of three different roles: DPS, boon DPS, and healer. Non-DPS roles are collectively referred to as “support”. Parties consist of three DPS and two support, with the supports being one boon DPS, and one healer. The reason for this specific composition is due to the way boons and boon distribution work in Guild Wars 2. The specifics are beyond the scope of this guide, but this composition allows for the most efficient method of covering the most important boons. A ten person raid or strike group is simply two five person parties organized into two distinct subgroups.

A note on boons:  Alacrity and  Quickness are the two most important boons, because they have biggest overall impact on group performance. One of these boons is provided by the healer, the other is provided by the boon DPS. These two roles also cover other important boons between them. Offensive boons include  Fury and  Might, and defensive boons include  Aegis,  Protection, and  Regeneration. Other situational boons can be provided by either role, like  Resolution or  Stability.

Five (5) Person Party

Standard party composition is three DPS, one boon DPS, and one healer.

DPS, three (3) players

• Primary responsibility: damage dealing.
• Stays alive—dead DPS does zero damage!
• Helps resurrect downed group members. DPS players should be the first to begin resurrecting downed group members, to allow the healer to continue healing and providing defensive support.
• Deals damage to the bad guys.
• Brings encounter appropriate utility skills, especially crowd control abilities for handling defiance.

Boon DPS, one (1) player

• Primary responsibility: dealing damage and providing offensive group support.
• Provides one of Alacrity/Quickness with near 100% uptime (whichever of these boons is not provided by the healer).
• Contributes other offensive boons with as much uptime as possible.
• Sacrifices their personal damage output to enhance the overall damage output of the group.

Healer, one (1) player

• Primary responsibility: healing and providing defensive group support.
• Provides one of Alacrity/Quickness with near 100% uptime (whichever of these boons is not provided by the boon DPS).
• Provides various other defensive boons with as much uptime as possible.

External Resources

• Discretize, builds focused on fractals
• Hardstuck, builds for a variety of content
• Metabattle, builds for a variety of content
• Snowcrows, builds for a variety of content