Maia

As far as tanking strategies go, The person with the claim button probably needs to decide on that. We may want to consider abandoning our "stay in the middle" strat because the corners are just as "safe" as the middle regarding blues and it would allow us to delay two of the adds longer. I have yet to find a good start that ensures we only encounter one powered up add at a time. That would be the holy grail for us druids (and everyone who likes a fullish health bar). I think Mold mentioned the method used by KING at our last raid. Elaborate drawing of this strat: I've looked at a few videos and I'm partial to the method used by Snow Crows. Three POVs have been posted from that run (see below). Again, I really don't think there is a right or wrong here. The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. (Why don't we have a pirate emoticon? That would go perfect right here. Please tell me someone else got this reference) Elaborate drawing of this strat:

So I was researching the blue square patterns and they are not random. I charted out mine to clarify the pattern for myself and thought I'd share it. I'm not sure if the overall pattern is random or not (meaning I had the pattern labeled "1" first, but someone else might have "3" or "7" first). I think we've already figured this out, but you've always got a blue in one of the 4 middle squares. I've been putting this info together with more videos but haven't come to any conclusions yet. I have a few strategies I like and will post when I've collected more "data." Interesting things to note: Only one blue square appears in any column or row at a time. Only 4 patterns exist. Similar to the middle, you will always have one blue available to you on one of the three squares adjacent to each corner or the corner square itself. (So, if we have to go to the corner at the end because of low dps we can still make our blues. As long as they don't line up perfectly with the spikes, which is the case in the middle anyways.) My first pattern looked like this: Over the course of the entire fight it ended up looking like this:

Nice to know I'm not the only one Bone. Tonight I was PUGing thamanova and we wiped on subject 6 after someone continued attacking during the block phase. One of my party members types "MALDITOS NOOBS" (damn noobs) in party chat and rage quits. I knew that wasn't a compliment, but I thought it just meant bad noobs. We finished the fractal very quickly after that guy left. Now I've joined the select group of people who have been sworn at in Spanish in a T2 Fractal . They should make a title for that...it could be Maldito Noob.

You know you need to leave a fractal pug when you catch yourself thinking: "That bloodstone shield is really nice. ... Wait a second, is that a DRAGONHUNTER using sword/shield? I haven't seen a single trap this whole run!" Part of me wishes I recorded that fiasco, but I can summarize it for you: fractal pug with minimal dps limps through T4 fractals. Condi ranger rage quits when dps is too low to kill molten berserker. You can probably guess who the condi ranger was

With the new warrior banner changes, we're learning which warriors really know what all their utilities do and which ones don't. I'm happy for warriors' new found freedom to use utilities other than banners, but please don't kill the rest of us with it.

I just found this video. I don't know how I missed it before. A must watch and listen if you play Druid. The song almost made me fall out of my chair laughing.

Reddit quote of the day: adozu [Hype] Lead Singer • 1d no, people not taking guardians is an issue with player opinion. people not taking necro is because they are actually bad.

With our Deimos kill, I'm excited we're getting closer to challenges! Just wanted to update this. As far as I can tell Necro seems to be meta for overseer challenge mode. Why? You guessed it, epidemic! I guess it makes sense with ele nerfs. Good news for people who like playing Necro. Bad news for people (who shall remain nameless) who are triggered by Necro in raids.

Turns out regen druid does even less damage than normal heal druid. Feelsbadman

Nike posted about which buffs to use when benchmarking on Reddit recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5vqnd4/meta_pve_benchmarks/ Looks like qT is on it and is hoping to get their new builds and benchmarks on their website tomorrowish.

The rumor in the forums is that ele staff dps is down 5k. Could be off because I'm not sure of the source but it gives us an idea.

Thanks for correcting me Odd. I read too fast and was for some reason mixing together the sharpening stone change and the sharpened edges change. Dyslexia strikes again.

How bad was the condi ranger nerf? Can we keep full spotter coverage by bringing one Druid and one ranger? The other consideration is spirits did not get the ten party member target increase. We typically have at least two frost spirits around and sometimes other spirits. Thinking about this from another angle: What is the smallest change we have to make for tonight so that we're not wasting stuff? Seems to me our regular comp with warriors compensating for the banner thing should still work, right? Of course it could be optimized, but I don't think it's broken.

I wanted to leave the updated build this discussion is about here for future reference.

Wow. I didn't know what my life was missing until I heard the remix of No Scrubs at the beginning of that video.

What a cutie! We need her there just for that.

I know we're probably going rev for this, but I found this video today that illustrates how Druid can kite without going to the middle for the dome (most of the time, it might not be 100%). Thought I'd throw it out there in case we want another option (or perhaps the back up?).

I don't routinely bring warhorn, but I have a setup similar to this and I have used it. I've tried it on Matt and Cairn, but I don't bother if I'm in a group with a minstrel chrono (I don't want them to feel like they wasted all that gold ). Let me just say my build is a little different because I run enough boon duration for the healing spring regen to exceed 10 seconds. Therefore, I overwrite more of the chrono regen stacks (hehe). I haven't tried the fern hound option. I'd want to make sure that it uses my healing power instead of its healing power. I've seen conflicting posts on that point. What is a Druid giving up? I'm my opinion there are two considerations here. First, we lose off hand axe. That's an issue in fights where I use the axe 4 pull. However, there is always someone else in the group with a better option, so it's primarily back up. Examples: extra cc for Matt sacrifices, pulling adds or the orbs on Xera, pulling loose slublings on Sloth. This is why I haven't tried this build on Xera or Sloth (even though I was tempted). Second, you have to pay more attention to internal cool downs and your rotation. Quick draw and weapon swap management matter. This maybe a practice/experience issue, but for me it makes emergency healing a little tricker. You have less tools at your disposal if you just swapped to sword/warhorn. Still doable of course. On the other hand you might not need as much emergency healing with high regen ticks. Ill think about this a bit more. I reserve the right to edit this post.

Tons of videos of kills of the Wing 4 bosses have been posted to YouTube in the past few days. I've dcided to watch them all and post the ones I think are best. This is no doubt a fools errand, but it sounds like a fun challenge. I'll up date this as I go along. Here we go: Cairn the Indomitable Absolute insanity: Druid solo and it only took him a little over 4 hours: Mursaat Overseer Very simple tanking strategy (did this bug somehow?) (Brazil) https://youtu.be/nZ7PLR7xgKQ Samarog Shield strategy. Two adds one jotun and one human spawn. The idea is to keep them apart with the human under the shield while you focus the jotun. (Anaconda Ren) https://youtu.be/COflnr5dtbo Deimos First kill from qt (fennec, Mesmer pov) https://youtu.be/aSer6fu_nz8 Druid flak kiting from KING https://youtu.be/HuE6_rVq1hE