Guild Wars 2

So, it’s not a well kept secret that PvP trumps PvE when it comes to balance considerations. There are a lot of things that, in PvE, are either brokenly OP or completely kitten that are ignored because they aren’t major balance concerns in PvP. One very large example of this is autoattacks. A good #1 skill is very important in maintaining sustained DPS in prolonged, mostly passive engagements (most PvE fights) but is relatively insignificant in quick, reactive engagements (most PvP fights). As a consequence, a weak or poorly balanced #1 skill will make a weapon that works mostly fine in PvP become highly situational or outright bad in PvE, which is/was the main problem with many ranged weapons like the Ranger LB and Thief Pistol.

The #1 skills aren’t the only balance concern. The dominance of Zerker was (and to some degree still is) another one, that has more or less the same source. Defense is more important in PvP than in PvE simply due to the differing nature of the fights. PvP values a combination of offense and defense because both opponents are players with similar attributes, while PvE disproportionately values offense due to mobs having high health and damage and low hit frequency.

My point in making this post is that the solution for these things is fairly simple and revolves around the attributes and behavior of mobs. Rather than trying to balance PvE and PvP separately, especially since the former isn’t really happening at all, what needs to happen is that, due to the active nature of combat in this game, PvE needs to be made more like PvP. Specifically, mobs should be modified in the following ways:

- Have less health
- Dodge/react more
- Do less damage
- attack/hit more frequently

This change will allow balance to flow through both modes instead of having massive headaches trying to balance both or just ignoring one or the other. There are probably other things that could help, but I think this is the most crucial.

I’ve been asking for this since release. Also, give the mobs level appropriate traiting and variations of the meta-builds.

Scaling for difficulty should be through number of opponents, rather than making the enemies HP sponges.

HUGE +1 for OP.

More dredge? No, thank you. I would suggest the exact opposite, veteran packs over large crowds.

Balancing the #1 is a real issue though. Too bad PvE is still invisible to the balance team.

People keep mentioning dredge, but dredge don’t fit the bill. Endless boon spamming and immunity to blind, coupled with unblockable projectiles just makes the dredge cheap, not tactical. Even then, the dredge aren’t so bad. People hate the dredge because the fractal they are in is poorly designed.

Anyway, balancing the auto attack is something that is really hard to do, since sustainable DPS has to be balanced against versatility and utility, and also with burst DPS. Anet doesn’t want to give one class everything, because otherwise you get Guardians, but with good ranged attacks.

+1 for OP

However, for it being a huge undertaking I fear that will never happen. It requires an overwork of the whole AI system.

TyPin.9860:

+1 for OP

However, for it being a huge undertaking I fear that will never happen. It requires an overwork of the whole AI system.

Toxic Alliance mobs fit the bill, so clearly this isn’t the case.

Einlanzer.1627:

Specifically, mobs should be modified in the following ways:

- Have less health
- Dodge/react more
- Do less damage
- attack/hit more frequently

All for it!
I would like to add:

Use skills (player skills)
Walk out of AoE
Kiting players if ranged

I actually still do not understand why they changed the mob design from the one they had in GW1, where mobs were of some class and had the same skills, while being overpowered versions of players to make up for the lacking AI and to make them strong enough to have a chance against 8. The GW2 boss design is lazy in all regards. Create a Hammer Warrior with some nice utilites, buff his stats and toughness/vitality and let him rage. Give him an interrupt Mesmer and a condition Necro as backup and boom, interesting engaging boss fight is born.

Every boss fight becomes boring with enough experience, so at least it stays engaging and not just passive boon and #1 spam.

TyPin.9860:

+1 for OP

However, for it being a huge undertaking I fear that will never happen. It requires an overwork of the whole AI system.

Probably so. One thing that would help a lot in the interim is if they just did a balance pass on #1 skills. It’s utterly preposterous how unbalanced they are in the game currently, and how unusable it makes certain weapons in PvE.

They’ve actually said they want to mess with the AI, but they’re waiting on other changes first before they do that (ie ferocity).

Like was mentioned before, toxic alliance and even aetherblades were two groups I saw major improvements with. Zerker builds still survive in pvp formats, but changes like these would help all the other style builds.

They have said they want to keep some of the pve abnegation, which is fine, but they could start really ramping up that ai in the later levels, and really increasing the attack speed for all mobs. I hate when anything has a ridiculously long global cooldown before they can do anything. Well also need to wait on their changes to defiant, as that is a purely pve mechanic that needs to be reworked in respect to wvw and spvp.

I would support this, however the question is, if the majority of PvE players would want this.
“Clever” enemies might be the end of any kind of speedrun.

They had more dodging mobs during the betas, and as i recall it was removed because in part AOE attacks could be used to herd the mob into a corner and lock them there.

I would love to see scaling more around toughness than health tho, unless they eliminate the conditions cap, as it would level the field between direct damage and condition damage at the high end.

Right now the ranking of mobs seems overly simplistic.

As best i can tell, a veteran is a x2 on the basic mob stats. Elite, x3. Champ, x4.

Meaning that a champ of the same kind takes x4 the damage and hits x4 as hard as a basic. but that is not to say that 4 basics are the same threat as one champ. If you have cleave on your auto they drop like flies, but they can also overwhelm a player by doing their spike attacks in a staggered pattern.

They should also avoid aoe where possible and have more ways of cleansing conditions. Conditions are significantly stronger than direct damage especially while leveling due to a combination of more hyperbolic scaling on crit vs condition and mobs inability to deal with them.

EverythingEnds.4261:

I would support this, however the question is, if the majority of PvE players would want this.
“Clever” enemies might be the end of any kind of speedrun.

There’s a catch here but you’re on to something.

Someone above mentioned a trio of a hammer warrior, mesmer and necro mobs working together and creating an “interesting boss fight” – that’s right but only half right.

Would it be a hard fight? yes.
Would it be a mechanically interesting fight?yes.
Would it be a fight you want to repeat every day? Probably not.

Hate to break it to you guys but the majority of players don’t really want to do hard content.
There is harder content in the game than your standard average press 1 to win PVE encounter – high level fractals.

How many of the players do high-level fractals? Not very many.
Why? because players don’t really like doing hard stuff. Sure they might do it once or twice for the bragging rights, to be able to say " been there done that" but will they really come back? Not really.

Why do you think almost any form of difficult content that’s been put in the game has been subsequently nerfed due to massive forum complaints?

People want the autopilot press 1 to win easy mode PVE is right now. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be doing everything they can to minimize their effort while maximizing rewards.

Prologue out of the way – let’s look at the issue from 2 perspectives.

1.Open world PVE – in here we have extremely easy opponents ( with a few exceptions in Orr) and bosses that can be zerged with great ease.

Could it be improved – probably – but then what?
The majority of people that enjoy the open world aren’t exactly the best players in the game in terms of skill – since more skilled players naturally migrate to areas of the game that require more skill.
You’ll have a open world littered with the corpses of new players and the less skilled for which the game will become a less fun experience.

Open world PVE is where you’re the hero, you fight and win and the evil mobs lose and that’s a fantasy that people live. You take it away from them and it’ll be hard.

2.Dungeons and instanced PVE – I think that what the majority of the player base want in this regard is easy to figure out – players stack, min-max gear, make use of all class mechanics and even exploit the content in order to beat it faster.
Making it harder would appeal to a very small portion of the player base making the rest of them angry.

Angry because people do instanced PVE for the rewards mostly. Take those away or make them harder to reach and people won’t really praise you for it.

“Thank you Anet for making it even harder for me to farm enough gold to get my precursor” – does that sound likely?

So what’s the solution? Simple.

Give the game both types of content and keep them separate.

You want easy faceroll spam 1 to win – go open world.
You want a decent challenge – go do dungeons.
You want a good amount of challenge -go do high level fractals.
You want a great amount of challenge – give us hard mode for dungeons/fractals.

It would allow players that want challenging and rewarding experiences to get what they want while at the same time the game remains easy for the rest of the players.

Would it delete stacking? If not, What is the point of adding all this if it doesn’t? Adding all of these junk won’t change gameplay at all.