Guild Wars 2

Hello Guild Wars 2 Community!

Let me begin by saying I don’t have a definitive idea of how to fix this issue… but I do know it is something that I haven’t seen talked about very much and it is something that needs to be addressed.

From my experience (I have the Dungeon Master title and have completed up to and including fractals level 40), the average PvE 5 main group in Guild Wars 2 consists of 5 full Berserker players or something very similar. Guild Wars 2 classes have three roles: Support, Control, and Damage. Berserker = damage. Where is the support and control? (Again.. this is only my opinion. Please don’t flame me haha). I come from World of Warcraft… I played a protection/holy paladin for 7 years since close to release date of WoW. I was a tank and a healer. I tanked server first kills for multiple raid bosses and my guild earned server first Deathwing kill. ALL I DID in WoW was tank. It was my heart and soul of the game; I don’t recall having a single dps character. Raid bosses were difficult and the tank and healers had to be on there game (arguably more so than the dps) to be able to clear the fight. PLEASE DO NOT MISUNDERSTAND… I am NOT asking for Guild Wars 2 to implement raids and a role trinity (tank healer dps). However, I do think it is more then necessary to develop a place in PvE content for those who have a support/control play style similar to mine. The logic which I have heard at this point is, “Bosses in high level fractals hit so hard they will 1-2 shot anyone, regardless of gear and traits, so everyone should just build Berserker for max dps.” Hopefully I’m not the only one that thinks this is outrageous. In addition, the counter argument, “Just build support anyway and bring support utilities” is also somewhat invalid as bring a support build (traits and utility skill) results in a kick because you aren’t pulling your weight in terms of damage output.
Possible solutions: Maybe decrease how hard the bosses hit just enough so a full support PVT guardian can eat some of this hits, taking aggro pressure off of his full berserker party…. do this just enough so that an individual who plays a support or control role is not only not kicked but somewhat desired in a fractal or dungeon group.
Again, I am not a game developer and I have no idea how this would be balanced or actually implemented into the game. However, I do feel that current PvE content excludes players who enjoy a Support or Control play style.

Please comment and let me know what you all think!
Who knows: maybe after enough players agreeing Arena Net will consider making some changes.

The support role is there and arguably, even more powerful than the damage roll. Take for example Necromancers, who have little group support while having okay damage. Yet they are considered as a weak class in PvE.

The real problem is that too many people think that support = healing and that is simply not true. Healing in this game is just one of many forms support. You have active defenses like aegis, blinds, reflects, etc… and buffs like might, protection, etc… . Plenty of support.

What they need to change is adding new gear combo’s like Power(main)/precision(minor)/boon duration(minor), Power(main)/precision(minor)/cooldown redution(minor) or Power(main)/precision(minor)/attack speed(minor) for PvE and fix the AI so stacking is less prevalent.

Asking more healing or tanking roles is pointless; this game wasn’t build around that trinity. The trinity is damage, control & support, not damage, healing and tanking. The developers said this from day one. In PvE these sets (cleric and pvt) are meant as gear that you wear when you are new to the game, and nothing beyond that. Nor should they.

Asking more healing or tanking roles is pointless; this game wasn’t build around that trinity. The trinity is damage, control & support, not damage, healing and tanking.

I agree with this! The tanking/healing was only an example. The point is high level PvE needs to be a little bit more than stacking on a boss with 5 Berserker builds to exploit the mechanics of the boss and call for a player in the group has some points into healing and toughness, and maybe brings some stuns or crowd control abilities. I just believe that Arena Net should make the dungeon EXTREMELY hard to complete if all 5 players in the group are bringing the “class x max dps build” setup.

Changing some damage numbers or new gear type.
Increasing damage will just result that every party would have a zerk hammer guardian and the rest is dps.
A new gear type will also help nothing but it will stil be dps, dps, dps.

What we need is a redesign of our mobs. They are to bland, too simple. The best place too look at it is pvp and even wvw since there has been a variety of builds there. We could take some of the OP/strong specs and intoduce them to PVE (dhuumfire/terrormancer, Hambow, backstab thief,… ).

Damage and pure dps is the name of the game because there is absolutely no reason to use anything else. There aren’t really any interesting boss battles that take advantage of wide arrays of different utilities, and a large amount of our utilities are little more than temporary stat boosts.

We need bosses that aren’t immune to control effects and other utilities, and that actually require some form of it for success. Currently a lot of bosses simply stand around, allowing you to wail on them while simply avoiding the occasional attack. But what if we were forced to move them around during the fight? What if a boss became a lot stronger if left idle, and weakening him required pulling or fearing it into a an environmental hazard? What if you had to immobilize a boss to prevent it from activating some kind of mechanism and summoning aditional mobs? Why can’t bosses utilize fears or pulls to separate people who attempt to stack?

If we could just have some intelligent boss fights that required more than simply standing in one place and using a skill rotation for maximum dps, we would be a lot better off.

I think the tricky thing is that control and support mostly comes from skills independent of stats (traits matter, but your gear stats generally don’t as much). That “max DPS” dungeon build is actually a damage/support/control mix that achieves max DPS through party buffs, reflects, pulling the boss to the right spot (a very stat-independent form of control), &c.

The combination of active control, active defense, and mostly-passive DPS abilities (at least when you’re trying to do pure “DPS” against an enemy with a bajillion hit points) means there’s fairly little reward to gearing more defensively for PvE.

Raykon.7908:

Damage and pure dps is the name of the game because there is absolutely no reason to use anything else. There aren’t really any interesting boss battles that take advantage of wide arrays of different utilities, and a large amount of our utilities are little more than temporary stat boosts.

We need bosses that aren’t immune to control effects and other utilities, and that actually require some form of it for success. Currently a lot of bosses simply stand around, allowing you to wail on them while simply avoiding the occasional attack. But what if we were forced to move them around during the fight? What if a boss became a lot stronger if left idle, and weakening him required pulling or fearing it into a an environmental hazard? What if you had to immobilize a boss to prevent it from activating some kind of mechanism and summoning aditional mobs? Why can’t bosses utilize fears or pulls to separate people who attempt to stack?

If we could just have some intelligent boss fights that required more than simply standing in one place and using a skill rotation for maximum dps, we would be a lot better off.

So, why can’t the Queen’s Gauntlet bosses be in dungeons? I agree, but it would require multiple overhauls at the same time; otherwise, people will stick with the “easy” bosses and the “hard” ones will become dead content.

I agree with Raykon.7908 100%.

If all boss fights require is stacking and burning, why run anything other than berserker? For example.. Lupicus is a pretty interesting fight in terms of mechanics… however the fact that 5 players can melee him down in 18 seconds is absolutely ridiculous. Fixing things like this is what will reintroduce mechanics and diminish the use of exploits on fights, which will furthermore bring a wider variety of builds into PvE.

It may be just me, but I miss the days where 2-3 hours would be dedicated to figuring out how to approach boss A after watching the video online for the mechanics and wiping 5 times before the kill. A 6th attempt kill (assuming all players are skilled [no one is being carried] and the kill is a result of mastering the mechanics and fight style) for me is both much more rewarding and more enjoyable than a stack and burn 18 second melt. I LOVED the WoW fights… each one had a specific set of mechanics that were both unique to that fight and difficult at the same time. Completing the raid made you a better player. By no means would Guild Wars 2 need a tank/healer/dps trinity in order to implement such boss fights.

those 18 second Lupicus kills are basically rehearsed kills done in vacuum settings, your average kill in a speed clear guild is about a minute.

I’m also not aware of any exploits besides a specific champion and elite mob you can LoS in TA and they do absolutely nothing.

I don’t mean a literal exploit; I’m referring to any fight in which mechanics are present, yet players bypass the mechanics by just stacking and burning

you don’t bypass mechanics by stacking and doing damage.

the only time you bypass mechanics is when using fiery greatsword, which I would honestly be happy if they removed it and deleted the accounts of whoever popularised it because it makes dungeon fights braindead.

All play-styles are viable. The OP wants all play-styles to be options. They all are options. They’re just not options in group that adhere to the PuG meta. Nor will that ever be the case. If the game were designed around the trinity, groups wanting optimal would have one tank (best build), one healer (best build) and three DPS (best builds, with both inferior professions and inferior damage builds excluded). Sure, if “you” want to tank or heal, that would be better — for you.

Roles are not based solely on gear. Berserker is a gear option. Gear is only one aspect of a build, with weapons, utilities and traits making up the rest. Control and Support get used a lot in dungeons, they just aren’t distinct roles that one gears for.

Rhego.6590:

If all boss fights require is stacking and burning, why run anything other than berserker? For example.. Lupicus is a pretty interesting fight in terms of mechanics… however the fact that 5 players can melee him down in 18 seconds is absolutely ridiculous.

I recommend thinking for just a few seconds before bringing such a stupid example. Have you ever killed Lupi in anything even close to 20 seconds? Let me guess the answer: No. Because even five experienced people with good builds will usually take about a minute unless they try to do some kind of record kill, as maha already mentioned.

And now let me tell you something: That was five experienced people. Try to brainlessly stack and burn Lupi with a bunch of people who have little experience on him and you will fail miserably, since he’ll wipe the floor with them in phase 2 at the latest. So if you want to make bosses last longer against the record groups, you’ll turn them into a pure nightmare for the standard GW2 player. Is that what you want?

Rhego.6590:

Guild Wars 2 classes have three roles: Support, Control, and Damage. Berserker = damage.

That is wrong. Berserker gear does not lock you into a “damage” role because while wearing this gear you can perform both control and support depending on what weapons and utility skills you bring.

This false premise is why some people will never understand that “the zerker meta” will never go away.

Let me elaborate – If i’m a full zerker warrior but my elite skill is Warbanner when 3 party members go down dropping that banner and ressing them was me executing a support role.

A full zerker guardian can still remove conditions, heal, and drop reflects to support his team.

Please stop spreading this false statement : zerker = damage

The problem here is that you come from WOW and expect this game to be like wow. When your expectations are not met instead of trying to understand how this game functions you complain about it on the forums.

Also if you’ve run fractals at level 49 you’ll find that most groups there aren’t zerker and the few groups that are are incredibly well coordinated in order to pull it off – usually using voice chat and knowing each other well.

Rhego.6590:

Maybe decrease how hard the bosses hit just enough so a full support PVT guardian can eat some of this hits, taking aggro pressure off of his full berserker

This is you basically asking for a tank in GW2.
This is not going to happen.
PVT and Clerics’ are good enough, allowing people to do difficult content without even needing to dodge.

The whole problem with your post is this : you are asking for the game to be changed in order to make you more desirable to parties instead of trying to figure out how you could improve and adapt to make yourself more wanted in groups.

You can support even in full zerker gear but it requires skill and ability – work towards that instead of trying to change the game so people will want you.

Everything is viable. Everything is NOT optimal.

Key difference.

@Rhego and Raykon.

You have to understand that if the content is too hard people won’t do it.
You might think that people want harder bosses but that’s a minority. The majority want loot – easy loot.

You might think people want to figure out bosses and figure out strategies for themselves but the truth is they don’t. They want to have it handed to them.

Look at how popular dulfy’s guides are. Why do you think that is? because the majority want to figure it out themselves?

Also, the idea case has bosses which are a guaranteed win while making the players think that they’ve outsmarted the game and played really really well, and that it was that part – their own performance – which brought the boss down.

It’s a carefully orchestrated smoke&mirrors setup.

Harper.4173:

@Rhego and Raykon.

You have to understand that if the content is too hard people won’t do it.
You might think that people want harder bosses but that’s a minority. The majority want loot – easy loot.

You might think people want to figure out bosses and figure out strategies for themselves but the truth is they don’t. They want to have it handed to them.

Look at how popular dulfy’s guides are. Why do you think that is? because the majority want to figure it out themselves?

You are right to an extent, but that is exactly the problem. People want evdrything handed to them with little effort. I don’t blame them honestly, who doesn’t want nice things? But that isn’t how it should work. Where is the satisfaction in earning sometbing that everyone else has?

Dungeons shouldn’t be easy, they should offer some kind of challenge, but the risk should be worth the reward. I’m not saying they should be impossible, but they should require more than what we currently have now since bosses have practically no interesting mechanics. We need something that requires strategy and utilization of utility skills and profession mechanics rather than pure dps builds that can just stand in one spot.

To say that no one will do it because it is too hard isn’t true though. Players will do anything as long as there is a chance at greater rewards. Rewards must be worth the effort.

Regardless. problems with build diversity stem from a multitude of problems.

• Utilities – Skills that define a profession are hugely underdeveloped. Many of them give simple stat boosts while others last so short amount of time that they are mostly situational. We need more utilities that interact with the environment and players. Why use anything but dps if motivation for using other skills is marginal at best?

• dungeons – Lack of intelligent dungeon design and boss encounters leads to a lack of diverse builds. Dungeons and encounters within them should take into account the mechanics spread accross different proffressions and encourage their use. Why do we have all of these control skills if bosses are immune to reflection, immobilize, fear, or pull? Why bother utilizing strategy when we can stack in a corner and do everything easy mode? Why bother taking other professions if 2 or 3 excel at everything we need? Which brings me to….

• Profession Diversity – i’ll rephrase. Why take other professions if 2 or 3 can do everything that any other profession can do,, and do it better? At first glance, every profession looks different, in skill appearance at least, but this is superficial. Every profession can cause bleed, burn, chill, or poison. Every profession can boon strip, buff with the same buffs, or cleanse conditions. This isn’t a problem with you have professions who are especially good at individual things independantly of one another. The problem comes with you have a few who can excel at all of it better than others, or when you have profession mechanics or abilities that are ineffective. Every profession should, ideally, be able to bring something unique to the table, and every dungeon should be planned to be able to take advantage of it in different situations. Right now they don’t.

“that isn’t how it should work” is your opinion. I feel the game should be more rewarding and since it isn’t I’m going to try to get the best/most rewards for as little time as possible.

You mention dungeons. Dungeons aren’t easy if you’re undergeared and doing them at their intended level without previous knowledge of how to do them.
They were considered hard at the beginning of the game.
But it’s been almost 2 years – players learn, they progress , they learn their class and they get gear. They hit level 80 – and dungeons when done for the hundredth time become trivial – not because the content has changed but because players have gotten better.

Rewards in dungeons are another issue – I feel that they’re not rewarding enough as it is right now. 1 gold is hardly reason to subject yourself to some of the longer dungeon paths in this game.

You and others keep mentioning strategy -this part was done and finished with in the first few months since the beginning of the game. Then people found out what works best and did that.
Even if bosses were revamped people would figure it out, post it online and within a week it would become the meta for that encounter.

The days of " figuring things out and wiping for the 99th time" are gone – dead and buried.

RNG based rewards are not worth it. And players will quit after a while. Or after they get the reward they want.

I quit fractals after I got the skins i wanted. No reason to go back.

Regarding what you said about profession diversity – that part will likely never happen. Having something required in order to complete content is not a direction they’ll go in.

The motto is " everyone can do anything".

thing is, the so advertised “new trinity” doesn’t make much sense in gw2.

Why? Because everyone can support and control, regardless of equip. Sure, you might get a few more seconds on boon duration, or slightly better heals, but that doesnt really matter that much if the boss stays alive longer due to lack of dps.

One of the biggest loopholes in gw2 design is that, due to lack of restriction on team composition, attrition fights were removed. Bosses are challenging due to one-two shots, dodge-or-die moments and big hp pools, to increase the chance of someone losing focusand screwing up.
To decrease focus on team composition, and required classes, they made difficult encounters gimmicky. Which means the “best” classes are those that can output high damage while still providing buffs and utility like reflects, might, quickness. And on those classes, the “best equip” is now zerker.

Fixing it now is close to impossible, because it’s deeply rooted in gw2 design…

Back in GW1, bosses sometimes had massive aoe attacks that you couldn’t just roll out of. Healing and protection from defensive classes were essential to success, to keep overall party hp up. But there also were interesting boon and curse mechanics. Players had to be aware of what they were doing. If you got a nasty curse on you, it became very important that someone in your party removed it ASAP. Some bosses like Mallyx the Unyielding, could teleport players that were too far away, yet hit like a truck, so you didn’t want to be too close. Players were constantly on the move, and carefully positioning themselves. There were also interesting dynamics where players had to coordinate their spells. A necro could curse an enemy with the spell Barbs, so that melee classes did extra damage against that enemy. Also, we no longer have spirit walls!

All of this is missing! The design is just fundamentally broken in GW2. Skills are all over the place. Reflects are extremely effective most of the time, but ironically the classes that are already very strong PVE are also the ones that have access to it. Stability is also important, but again classes have unequal access to it. Some classes are very condition heavy, but conditions are broken in PVE, while direct damage rules supreme. Control skills are completely negated in almost every single boss battle, because of lazy design. And all the interesting interplay and clever mechanics are out of the window, replaced by a boring game of whack a mole.

If you don’t design mobs and bosses with the damage/support/control trinity in mind, then there is no trinity. There is only damage.

Can we go back to good boss designs and good game design?

Oh well good thing there are mobs/bosses designed with damage/support/control trinity then, and that conditions aren’t broken.

I completely disagree with the OP and some others here. Personally I feel all play stypes are in fact viable. To me it seems that some people seem to lack an understanding of the meaning of viable in relation to the meaning of the term optimal.

@Aegis
I have not seen Anet officially advertise “a new trinity” at all. I have only seen an advertisement for the lack of the old trinity. Do you have a link to support what your suggesting?

dancingmonkey.4902:

I completely disagree with the OP and some others here. Personally I feel all play stypes are in fact viable. To me it seems that some people seem to lack an understanding of the meaning of viable in relation to the meaning of the term optimal.

@Aegis
I have not seen Anet officially advertise “a new trinity” at all. I have only seen an advertisement for the lack of the old trinity. Do you have a link to support what your suggesting?

So true. People lack an understanding of HOW to play a profession so they say it is not viable.

GW2 has no trinity and never will – don’t know what ‘New Trinity’ is all about…

I agree that there is no definite trinity, but it definitely isn’t wrong to attempt to categorize play styles in GW2 in such a manner. The “New Trinity” is not a finite concept even in the slightest, just a way to attempt to categorize and furthermore reference different styles of building your character and playing the game. Apologies on the delayed post, but back on the topic of whether or not dungeons should be easy or not.. unless I’m misinterpreting the concept.. IS THIS EVEN A QUESTION?
I am not sure about everyone else in the community, but I didn’t pay $60 to log on and be able to down easy content for shiny loot (I’m not at all saying this is what the game is… this is just an exaggeration to prove a point). I bought the game to develop my skills as a gamer, learn new types of play styles (I now am learning some caster classes where as before I was strictly melee), and HAVE FUN. I don’t believe any of the latter stated can be achieved via simple and easy content, aside from MAYBE learning a new playstyle? But at no means to a level of complex understanding. Am I wrong to say ALL gamers play games to be challenged? If we don’t play games for some sort of a challenge, we all might as well go back to the square, circle and triangle blocks we played with in our infant years… but wait.. even that was a challenge at the time. And furthermore completing the “challenge”, whatever it may be, is what grants the reward and therefore makes the game fun.

Furthermore, on the topic of the whole “players will find a new loophole to new content” type thing, make the boss not have an exploit… WoW did it for 10 years and is still doing it. There no secret spot for your party to stand in or a glitch you can hit the boss with that makes the fight easy. PLEASE do not respond to that saying “THE GAME ISN’T WOW GO BACK TO WOW” or any of that crap. The point is a boss fight without exploits is possible. I agree that there will always be a meta, but does having knowledge of the meta necessarily make the fight easy again? I recall having to research boss fights for the many mechanics and even then wiping 99 times. I knew the meta, and even years later when my guild and I would replay content at level with appropriate gear we would STILL wipe and need to play to the best of our ability to clear the content. Again, I keep comparing to WoW because it’s my only basis of comparison regarding a solid boss fight. A boss fight without a simple meta is possible GW2, and maybe to tend to casual players who enjoy easier content, don’t change everything. Just add more fights like Lipucus that require a bit more skill to down, but FIX THE EXPLOITS. Give him a mechanic like: if someone steps within melee range in the first phase, he gains a new ability making the fight change and adapt.

“I quit fractals after I got the skins i wanted. No reason to go back.”

This is the problem… What do you do now when you log on (in terms of PvE)? Just stand around in LA or maybe farm Orr until your WvW que pops or your tournament team logs online? I think what Anet really needs to do here is, way off the topic of the play style balance, gives players a reason to stay in PvE and keep doing PvE content after they get that skin they wanted. Guild Wars 2 raids? Maybe? … Who knows… but I feel that something like a 5 man raid as opposed to a dungeon with more frequent boss encounters, more difficult boss encounters, and massive rewards at the end would really throw people back on the train tracks of “Maybe I should ask my tourney team if they want to build a raid composition as well so we can get that chest at the end of x raid filled with goodies you can’t buy off the gem store!”
^ I would pay $60 10 more times if this happened. Expansion pack? Massive update like we saw in April? Who knows. (Just a side note… the posts in LFG modeling “selling arah p4 10g” is absolutely ridiculous… player A buys dungeon completion with bought gold via gem store… person B levels the character, crafts the gear, learns his class, recruits a group, and spends 2 hours in the path clearing it the old fashion way. Both receive a “Dungeon Master” title. One of the two is not a dungeon master. Problem? Absolutely.) Please leave your thoughts!

Many, perhaps most, boss encounter mechanics can be independent of game play style. Needing to protect an NPC or move to different spots in a room at different times, or things like needing to kill adds at given points can be inserted into encounters in any play style. Even highly scripted fights can be programmed regardless of whether player mechanics are strictly scripted (trinity game) or not (GW2).

Kel’Thuzad in WotLK Naxx had attacks that would propagate from one player to another if the players were too close together. So, players had to split up and stay split up. That could be done in GW2. Another Kel mechanic involved a periodic attack which could kill a DPS or healer if the healers didn’t drop their fast heal on the target quickly enough. This could be done in GW2 also, except the target would have to dodge, block, etc. What would be harder would be other players in GW2 healing the target — since they would also have to stay away due to the other mechanic I mentioned. The add that has to be picked up by an off-tank could also be done in GW2, though it probably would not involve face-tanking. That’s just one encounter from one raid. I dare say most mechanics from other games’ dungeons/raids could be adapted to GW2.

I think that more complex or in-depth (presumably more interesting) mechanics could be created in GW2 small group encounters. I don’t think that those mechanics have to involve dedicated roles, though. That, frankly, is a separate issue from difficulty/challenge. On its face, tank and spank — the trinity version of a dull encounter — is certainly no more interesting than LoS/stack/burn and may be less so.

I believe that as far as dedicated roles go, GW2 was designed not to have them. Roles were designed to be fluid, changed on the fly, even during encounters. That some players have difficulty embracing this concept, I also believe. Perhaps if there were no boss encounters in the explorable dungeons that are the GW2 equivalent of tank n spank (stand there and die?), that acceptance might have been easier. As it is, though, I think that the challenge issue in GW2 group play has been merged with the dedicated role issue when it really didn’t have to be at all.

Agreed. Although the roles in gw2 was the original topic, I believe at this point the challenge level of the mechanics in the game is a bit more prevalent now. The roles is something I personally will adapt to as well as many others who are Lich-babies like myself I’ll never forget my paladin. On the contrary, if the game offered a bit more challenging content in terms of what was discussed above, I don’t think there would really be any need to discuss roles at all. More involved mechanics along with an equal distribution of mechanics throughout all 5 players would change any “I miss my tank” feelings to “What can I do as a guardian to support my team against this difficult mechanic.”
^THAT is the “support role” I was referring to, and if you consider the current stack/burn/loot that every boss encounter has become, this role is not possible, and even if it is, its not wanted on 90% of encounters. Why bring support skills when you can just stack and burn with dps skills? <— this is what I feel is the problem. No need for half the utilities in my skill box. Sure there’s a theoretical need: “X boss in Y dungeon could require Z skill” could be applied to anything. But is there a constant need for someone bringing some support skills when mostly everything is just stack and burn? Not really

If I wear toughness and pack a ton of armor, I want it to matter. If all the bosses still kill me in one or two hits, then there is no reason to build a defensive character.

I want conditions to be on par with direct damage. I hate constantly bashing my head into these cheap anti-condition rules that cause bosses to be immune to them, or for them to have reduced duration/effectiveness, or to run into the annoying condition cap. If the designers can’t do that, then remove condition classes completely. Because what is the point?

I want bosses to be properly designed, so stacking in a corner isn’t the solution to everything. The stacking phenomenon doesn’t just put bad boss design painfully on display, it also painfully shows the inherit problems with the game’s skill system. Specifically, with support skills in combination with direct damage. Currently the game’s rules encourage players to stack for maximum efficiency.

I want good loot. Stop focusing on only the gem store. Start working on improving the stuff we can earn while playing the game, and not the stuff we get by forking over a couple of dollars. When I started playing the game, I had the illusion of maybe being able to buy every mini pet in the gem store with gold earned in the game. But 400 gems for a mini piglet at the current exchange rate? That’s like all my gold just to get some cheaply up-scaled ambient creature. At least in GW1 we got most of these for free as a birthday gift. But this is getting ridiculous, and I don’t think it’s worth all the gold any more.

Healing should matter. In GW1 you couldn’t go anywhere without a healer. And sure, it had it’s problems, because everyone was always looking for monks. However, being completely not reliant on other players, has removed an essential cooperative and strategic element from the game. No one is focusing on healing, because all what matters is damage.

The removal of dual professions has completely obliterated the best part of the original Guild Wars: Builds. The current build diversity is but a shadow of what the previous game had, and it’s not sufficient. There simply isn’t enough depth or diversity.

I feel like I’m playing a castrated version of Guild Wars 1!

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I feel like I’m playing a castrated version of Guild Wars 1!

Good. There’s plenty mechanics of GW1 I don’t want to see anywhere near another MMO I play. Hell knows that game couldn’t fade from the spotlight fast enough, so many good ideas, so wasted (sounds familiar? :P ).

Anyhow, back to the topic:
Yes, we need more complex PvE mechanics most of all. Class balance (as in, the stuff the PvP-bois complain about here all day long) really isn’t all that important to a perceived fun and fair PvE game. What matter is that the mechanics challenge mostly things which are of comparatively little use to a specific class, while occasionally being skippable with a specific to make that player feel glorious.

So as an example:

• The 3-split of the LA event and the 6-split of the Pav are good. They need more UI support, but on a logistical level this is the kind of stuff which should be done to make players care more about intelligent interaction. Marionette was event better in this regard, allowing players to shuffle around mid-fight. But really, needs more UI. Badly.
• As someone above said, WoW over the years had to think up plenty example of non-class-related mechanics. Wildstar shows how to 100% overdo a specific one of them. Between those, grab some ideas. Heigan Dance, Kel’Thuzad spreading, Mimiron Hard Mode OMGTHEROOMISONFIRE-kiting, add-handling at Yogg-saron (have to be burst to 1% very quickly so a NPC kills them before they kill you), etc etc. Especially the Ulduar/WotLK-in-general days are really rich in class-agnostic mechanics.
• Meanwhile, don’t let mobs fight alone. Especially in the open world, but also in dungeons. The game is just not made for many-vs-one fights, I’d argue it isn’t made for 5v5 either but the PvPers will again insist that because the AE-cap number happens to match it has to be made for that, no matter how little the game supports smallscale PvP. Anyhow, point is, your game’s design emphasizes medium~large group combat, it doesn’t start to feel valid until you have ~15 players or so. Embrace that in PvE design. Give lots of friendly NPCs which rezz and heal and create zones like Braham or Kasmeer do, and give lots of non-trash enemies to boss fights which link for abilities, block areas, heal the boss, everything like that. Make them not stack and rezz each other if not finished.
• Finally, go through the dungeons after all this and give those boss adds some mechanics specific players excel at. Have adds where keeping specific extra mobs in combat (Ranger pet!) is good, where reflections are good, where lots of stability is good, which avoid areas with lots of logistics support (turrets/banners can shoo them away), etc etc. As only the (non-trivial!) adds have this, the boss itself is class-agnostic, while some fights embrace certain classes more, but only that one fight. There’s no “perfect party”, but a perfect player for each fight.

Carighan.6758:

• Finally, go through the dungeons after all this and give those boss adds some mechanics specific players excel at. Have adds where keeping specific extra mobs in combat (Ranger pet!) is good, where reflections are good, where lots of stability is good, which avoid areas with lots of logistics support (turrets/banners can shoo them away), etc etc. As only the (non-trivial!) adds have this, the boss itself is class-agnostic, while some fights embrace certain classes more, but only that one fight. There’s no “perfect party”, but a perfect player for each fight.

The problem is that whenever they design mobs specifically where reflections or stability are good, you run into the problem that these two mechanics are unequally distributed among the classes. My necro for example has no reflect skills what so ever, and extremely poor access to stability.

This is the problem they should be focusing on, and it once again goes back to class balance. It IS important. And it IS a problem right now.

What’s also a problem, is simply that the game’s core combat mechanics are too simple. There’s not enough depth. This is why I said this is like playing a castrated version of GW1, they stripped too much of the original game’s depth from it’s successor. Ironically, the core of what made GW1’s skill system good (dual classes) was stripped from the game. What we’re left with is a very simple game of whack-a-mole. There is no way for me to expand my necro-character beyond just being a necro like every other necro in the game. There’s no room for much specialization the way it was possible in the previous game.

It’s not all bad. I like being able to jump, roll and cast while running. But the combat is just poor and empty, the targeting is terrible, the camera is atrocious (even when compared to the average PS1 game), and the developers make it extremely difficult for players to still host community events in the game. Something that I’ve been doing for more than 8 years.

The game is not simple or “stripped down” at all. It’s different.

In GW1 I only needed to select a target and watch that target’s cast bar and my own skill bar. That was it.

I could have ignored what was going on in the rest of my screen 90% of times.
Sure it was more interesting as far as skill choice went but as far as combat gameplay you’d just set your character to attack and that was it. Mash skills and watch what your opponent is doing.

GW2 is different – positioning matters. Dodging matters. Reading animations matters. If you’re not watching that screen and making smart decisions you’ll go down fast.

It’s a different game that brings a different type of depth which is less theorycraft based and more execution based.

I personally like it.

Also for others in this thread : please realize this is not WoW. Nor does this game want to become WoW.

No, that problem can be solved without class homogenization (which IMO, is the worst mistake you can make as far as balance goes).

Necromancers have better-than-average boon and condition control. Sure, Guardians can keep up in condi-control, and Mesmers mostly in boon-control. But Necros have it both.

So, what do we need?
Enemies with very strong boons (mind you, they’re not stronger if we steal them, re Thief and Mesmer, they give us the normal benefit but the enemy much more) and very dangerous conditions.
Not unbeatable without a way to directly handle them, but much much easier to get past the bosses’ adds if you can do that.

So, new enemy tags:

• Enrages when buffed
• Extra effect from boons
• Powerful condition
• Conditions stack if left alone

Carighan, you touch upon a very good subject. And that’s the problem that Anet has added a lot of mechanics to the game, but left a lot of them unused in combat. Boon control is but one of those mechanics, conditions is another. And then there’s control, which is rendered useless in boss battles. This is indeed why we see this massive divide between the usefulness of one class or the next. Some classes focus a lot on a mechanic that has yet to play a roll in combat. Meanwhile we have some other classes that have mechanics that are all covered in combat, such stability, reflects and direct damage.

Yeah, it really is. It’s also weird because they have the tags under the enemy nameplates, so it’s rather obvious what they can do (btw, I would genuinely add these tags to players depending on some skills and traits, like, it’d be a balancing downside of a trait in PvP, for a trait which needs to be artificially weaker in PvP, that it adds a tag to your char). And they do sometimes have really good ideas, like the large mobs in the 3-Wurm fight which are just about immune to direct damage but take full condition damage.

It’s just that these mechanics are soooo underutilized, especially in the older content. Newer stuff, TA mobs, those champion mobs, LA fight, bossfights in the last 4-5 LS patches as a whole, they really screwed with the expected status quo a lot, and overall that’s a good thing I feel.

Just… we need a pass over the dungeons at least to adapt them to this.

Delate downed state – cures every problem (almost).

What would you report it for, Rudy?

Carighan.6758:

What would you report it for, Rudy?

I mean that this game doesn’t have holy trinity, because of downed state. Healers are bad, because they do no dps and ressing is better healing. Also tank builds are bad, because you are not doing dmg that way, better to go downed and be ressed in 2 sec, or cast an aegis etc. Every aspect in this game (in pve) is promoting zerker. You can’t die with good team cause of ressing. Simmilar thing is for wvw zerg fights – why there are only hammertrains? Because of ressing – distance weapon can kill, but someone will ress this person immidetly, which can’t do when stunned for 2 sec and being hit by dozens of warriors/guards in face. While roaming – best proffesion is thief, why? Because he has stalth and can stalthstomp – he can fight 1 vs x, what i cant do as efficently with other classes. Pvp is ressfight – stun those who are ressing and be invul not to be interrupted while stomping. Downed state is the biggest issue in this game imo (destroyes build/tactic diversity), and should be removed.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Carighan, you touch upon a very good subject. And that’s the problem that Anet has added a lot of mechanics to the game, but left a lot of them unused in combat. Boon control is but one of those mechanics, conditions is another. And then there’s control, which is rendered useless in boss battles. This is indeed why we see this massive divide between the usefulness of one class or the next. Some classes focus a lot on a mechanic that has yet to play a roll in combat. Meanwhile we have some other classes that have mechanics that are all covered in combat, such stability, reflects and direct damage.

Conditions:

Control:

Boon control is more relevant to PvP.

Rudy.6184:

Downed state is the biggest issue in this game imo (destroyes build/tactic diversity), and should be removed.

Ah. You said delate. :P

Anyhow, Downed state is a crucial combat mechanic, and for an example of just how twitchy-bad the game would be without it, run into any group of 5 players solo while not on an Elementalist, and could your chances for how many milliseconds a ranged team member would have to come to your aid.

Downed state wasn’t added to push some important PvE class balance agenda. It’s part of what makes GW2’s combat approachable to the giant mass of people playing MMOs, despite it’s rather twitchy and personal-skill-focused combat. For a casual player, dodging and interrupting and reflecting might not be their forte, but they can rezz each other so they just need to stick together. Hey, MMO mechanics! :P

Plus on a class-balance level, rezzing is universal. It reduces class imbalances by virtue of everyone (except Warriors, ofc \sigh\) rezzing the same more or less. Considering how often people complain about the classes not being homogenized enough, rezzing works towards a more samey experience independent of class.

But, is rezzing and downed state perfect? No, ofc not.
But it needs balancing, not removal. Removing it would mean that PvE would need to be made substantially easier. And that’s about the last thing it needs right now. :P

Carighan.6758:

Downed state wasn’t added to push some important PvE class balance agenda. It’s part of what makes GW2’s combat approachable to the giant mass of people playing MMOs, despite it’s rather twitchy and personal-skill-focused combat. For a casual player, dodging and interrupting and reflecting might not be their forte, but they can rezz each other so they just need to stick together. Hey, MMO mechanics! :P

Plus on a class-balance level, rezzing is universal. It reduces class imbalances by virtue of everyone (except Warriors, ofc \sigh\) rezzing the same more or less. Considering how often people complain about the classes not being homogenized enough, rezzing works towards a more samey experience independent of class.

Yea you have right points, but still it eliminates build diversity, they did add new monk rune and trait to heal, but noone will do it (maybe in wvw). As you said it is rather self – centered skillset, but can be made supportive. Why not? As you pointed it better to take banner and ress up to 4 ppl from your party instantly with half hp, while you CAN’T heal someone in downed state, my water fields soo good, mace guards so useful.

Whithout ressing noone would be sticking in the corner waiting for boss hit and dpsing like a boss – oh he oneshot me, res 2 sec, ok dps further. I mean it looks so terrible, it is so dumb mechanic, that I don’t play pve at all – just wvw and pvp. When i’ll bring my soloeverythingroaming build which i was perfecting half year roaming in wvw, bosses won’t kill me, but they’ll throw mud at me – where iz yor fullzerk huh? No dps? Lol nab not using strangth runes, kick him. In other mmo’s there were no downed state – it worked. Just few skills/bosses need to be adjusted. I know that mmo shouldn’t be so hard, but abusing such a brainless mechanic is just bad. I’ve seen threads about adjusting enemy AI, without removing downed mechanic, but noone will change neither of them, so this discussion is pretty much pointless.

Just look at lastly adjustment of runes/sigils – few are more powerful, few are nerfed to the ground and rest is useless (3/4 of runes). Sigils are in better position, but still. New traits? Useless. All is done without second of thinking about classes mechanic, how to make build diversity etc.

Carighan.6758:

• Meanwhile, don’t let mobs fight alone. Especially in the open world, but also in dungeons. The game is just not made for many-vs-one fights, I’d argue it isn’t made for 5v5 either but the PvPers will again insist that because the AE-cap number happens to match it has to be made for that, no matter how little the game supports smallscale PvP. Anyhow, point is, your game’s design emphasizes medium~large group combat, it doesn’t start to feel valid until you have ~15 players or so. Embrace that in PvE design. Give lots of friendly NPCs which rezz and heal and create zones like Braham or Kasmeer do, and give lots of non-trash enemies to boss fights which link for abilities, block areas, heal the boss, everything like that. Make them not stack and rezz each other if not finished.

While I agree on the game not working fine with “many-vs-one” combats, I completely disagree on the game not supporting small scale fights.

I find 2on2 and 3on3 fights the ones where the combats system works at it best. Large scale battles, like the ones we can find in WvW (a full 5on5, sometimes even 4on4, sPvP teamfight starts feeling too large for my personal taste), are the ones I actually find unsupported.
On these large scale fights, the “action combat system” gets lost and replaced by a much more classic passive gameplay. You don’t actively defend from that nasty pindown (dodges tend to be used totally oblivious on the dame source, just as a small invulnerability window when you feel you’re receiving too much damage); you don’t interrupt healing skills on purpose; … there are too many things happening at the same time and too much clutter in the screen for this to be possible. Even the downed state, which (despite several downsides) offers a lot of strategic gameplay on small scale fights , gets ignored and most bodies are just massively cleaved to death.
You just assume “things” are going to happen and take countermeasures. You build around tankiness and sustain for the most part (some backline players, usually eles and maybe necros, being the exemption), bring a couple of guardians to rotate stabilities and keep the party immune to CC during engages, slot a good amount of condition removal, …
It’s just a completely different game, and clearly not an action based one. There are certainly A LOT of players, probably a majority, that prefers this gameplay, but that doesn’t make the combat system to magically support it better.

The problem with a “many-versus-one” scenario is that it’s just the opposite. We move from a cluttered enviroment we can’t analyze to a new one where there’s a single model to focus on, from a high reliance on passive defenses to a situation where they are close to a waste as long as the player is any decent.
A fight against 3 “lesser champions” instead of the usual single boss automatically increases the rate of received attacks (which is something that some people has been asking for a long time) but still allows it to be countered by control, positioning and some other ways unrelated to defensive gear.

In any case, a change like this would require additional changes like:

- Better AI
If our “lesser bosses” are nothing but some idiotic golems that get LoSed into a corner and keep point blank shooting against a wall of reflection, then the change is for nothing.
This kind of enemies would require an slightly higher amount of moves and some kind of decision making allowing them to dodge out / blink away from extreme cleave / AoE damage, stop firing against projectile reflects / blocks or wasting their most powerful moves against a precasted aegis.

- Overhaul of natural resistances (unshakeable, defiant).
With an increase of the effective attack rate, damage prevention through control (CC, blind, …) becomes less relevant and the current natural resistances may be softened (they should be modified anyways IMHO), allowing control to be a lot more interesting for bossfights (atm it’s really situational besides the usual pull against a wall).
A properly designed fight against several foes could also make useful some forms of control, like knockbacks, which are currently useless for the most part unless you’re looking for a kick.
I’d go for a X% hard CC duration reduction (which should include immobilize btw, even if it’s a condition) on top of a DR system, providing enemies with an N second immunity after being affected by a given effect (a N1s DR for CC, a N2s DR for blind). These numbers shouldn’t be fixed, but adjusted depending on the content (a single big open world boss should be more resilient than some foe on a 5-man multi-boss encounter).
Vulnerability and Weakness duration should probably be adjusted (increased) depending on the content, and clearly include Cripple and Chill (based on the usual long CDs chill could probably work unmodified on 5-man content, but would need a reduction for bigger player groups).

- Adequate HP pool.
This is a really important part. If you replace a single boss with several enemies and you don’t intend them to be stacked and cleaved down, you need to make sure they don’t explode in a few seconds.
Preventing LoS abuse through AI, providing the enemies with disengage tools and making them a real threat while stacked helps, but a decent survivability is still mandatory.
Now that there’s a quite high damaging meta stablished, it shouldn’t be hard for designers to test their own creations and properly adjust numbers to the desired levels. Against popular belief, damage differences between full offensive, balanced and even sustained setups aren’t that extreme … it’s when players use terrible builds with next to zero sinergy (useless trait, utility and weapon choices, lackluster might and vulnerability stacking, …) when the time spent on a fight reaches ridiculous levels.
There’s a design compromise here. If designers want some content to be PUG casual firendly, with players having a pleasant experience whatever crap spec they have chosen, then offensive organized (and not so organized) groups will necessarily melt things in the blink of an eye.
If you want the content to provide some kind of challenge for this groups, however, you need to accept that terrible builds will have a really bad (or long, at least) time with it.

What Carighan.6758 talked about sounds like a raid to me
Raid style content pretty please, Anet

The main problem here is poor quality development. Primarily the AI, but overall game mechanics as well.

The secondary problem is class / profession balance. For example, you can complete a dungeon in a group of 5 zerkers partially due to the fact that they can buff each other’s DPS even further.

the encounter AI is simply unable to reliably deal with the control and support roles, there are no game mechanics present on the boss mobs that would properly detect and deal with these, and there should be.

Tongku.5326:

The main problem here is poor quality development. Primarily the AI, but overall game mechanics as well.

The secondary problem is class / profession balance. For example, you can complete a dungeon in a group of 5 zerkers partially due to the fact that they can buff each other’s DPS even further.

the encounter AI is simply unable to reliably deal with the control and support roles, there are no game mechanics present on the boss mobs that would properly detect and deal with these, and there should be.

Just a thought though. This is only a rumour, I wasn’t there at the start and there’s no hard evidence of this. But…

From what I heard, during the first BWE, GW2’s AI had everything GW1’s AI at the end did. Mobs would run from AoEs, ranged mobs would kite you, all that good stuff. But there was two problems. One everything was AoE so mobs would just run away all the time. The second was more concerning, the playerbase complained to Anet that it was frustrating trying to land AoEs because mobs would just get the heck out.

I’m not sure if the second is true or not, and it would be nice if any BWErs can confirm, but if it is, that’s rather worrying and a bit shameful.

PvE needs to be balanced through changes to NPCs.

Example: Bosses/mobs that are immune to crit, that dish out a kitten ton of condi’s, passive debuffs in an area that slowly drain health so that you have to coordinate group heals, etc.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Carighan, you touch upon a very good subject. And that’s the problem that Anet has added a lot of mechanics to the game, but left a lot of them unused in combat. Boon control is but one of those mechanics, conditions is another. And then there’s control, which is rendered useless in boss battles. This is indeed why we see this massive divide between the usefulness of one class or the next. Some classes focus a lot on a mechanic that has yet to play a roll in combat. Meanwhile we have some other classes that have mechanics that are all covered in combat, such stability, reflects and direct damage.

Because a lot of mechanics are too difficult for the average player to understand and use.
Hell – lots of players don’t even know how combo fields work.

The common denominator around which the game is balanced is pretty bad. That’s why you don’t really see complex mechanics in PVE.

I really laughed when I heard that the traits were reworked from the usual 70 points to the new system because people were adding points in trait lines that weren’t unlocking traits for them.
Eg. – they’d go 22 in Strength, etc.

You can’t make the game harder. PVE can be summed up by " whack something with a weapon until it dies".

Rudy.6184:

Carighan.6758:

What would you report it for, Rudy?

I mean that this game doesn’t have holy trinity, because of downed state. Healers are bad, because they do no dps and ressing is better healing. Also tank builds are bad, because you are not doing dmg that way, better to go downed and be ressed in 2 sec, or cast an aegis etc. Every aspect in this game (in pve) is promoting zerker. You can’t die with good team cause of ressing. Simmilar thing is for wvw zerg fights – why there are only hammertrains? Because of ressing – distance weapon can kill, but someone will ress this person immidetly, which can’t do when stunned for 2 sec and being hit by dozens of warriors/guards in face. While roaming – best proffesion is thief, why? Because he has stalth and can stalthstomp – he can fight 1 vs x, what i cant do as efficently with other classes. Pvp is ressfight – stun those who are ressing and be invul not to be interrupted while stomping. Downed state is the biggest issue in this game imo (destroyes build/tactic diversity), and should be removed.

I’d rather have downed state in this game than have dedicated healers. Everyone healing is better than some people healing.

The majority of players don’t want healers in this game. How do I know? Because the majority is playing. If they would’ve wanted something else from the MMO they play they would have moved on to another MMO.

Those that are here want GW2 for what it is.

Because a lot of mechanics are too difficult for the average player to understand and use.
Hell – lots of players don’t even know how combo fields work.

The core concepts of GW2 combat aren’t anymore complicated than the kind of stuff I find in FPSs or MOBA all the time. I’ve seen the average folks manage so much more than a rudimentary timing/spatial challenge. They can do this because they learn to play the game by playing the game. And part of why that can happen is because the combat in those games is as simple and clear in execution as it is in concept.

Like,
Setting an arrow alight by passing it through a fire field and seeing it cause a mob to burn for ‘x’ damage is a clear teachable moment. Kind of less so for the reality of the situation, which is more like; Setting an arrow alight if it passes through a fire field but only 20% of the time and only if it was the first thing on the floor and only if it has charges left, and then maybe seeing the mob burning if you can successfully distinguish it from other particle effects and if the stacks are working in your favor you might maybe get to see your damage sometime soon.

Between the particle effects jubilee and the host of balance minutia attempting to wrangle this game’s ungodly condi/boon spam; there is one heckuva’ signal to noise ratio to overcome for what should be some simple cause and effect style hands-on-learning.

If more than just “dodge or die” boss exists it would be so much better.
But dodge is the only thing that every profession have…