Guild Wars 2

IndigoSundown.5419:

And I feel like simple combat mechanics are simple combat mechanics. Simple encounters in a trinity game are devoid of strategy, require very simple positioning (face boss away) and require roles only because developers decided to make AI too stupid to go after the characters who are actually hurting it.

In GW1 monsters had a habit of going straight after the healers if the players didn’t watch their aggro. And tanks had to actually bodyblock monsters, to prevent them from rushing past them.

It’s not bad if enemies are stupid, in fact in any videogame that’s usually a good thing. What matters is if they provide meaningful and diverse combat. Is there strategy involved? Do strategies have to be adapted at any point during the fight? Or are they easily cheesed?

In GW1’s Domain of Anguish, there was a boss called Mallyx the Unyielding, who teleported anyone to him if they were keeping their distance, and then smashed their heads in. And if players got too close, he smashed them to death as well. Shortly after release players were finding ways to bypass his mechanics for the longest time (teleporting outside his boss room, or skipping the cinematic and running out, or getting him stuck in the door). It took Anet a while to patch all of that out. But once they did, we had an encounter that really wasn’t something you could simply face tank.

I would like to have more to do in GW2 than just surviving attacks, and providing DPS. I’d like to see control skills have a use in boss fights. I’d like to see my conditions matter more against bosses. I’d like to see a role for all those other stats, such as toughness and healing. I’d like to be able to remove important boons from a boss, and have it matter in the fight. Also, I’d like to be able to see the boss, and not just a big bright lens flare of effects.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

—
I feel as if they stripped a whole layer of depth and strategy, and then pronounced it as an improvement. It isn’t an improvement. It’s a barren wasteland, devoid of depth. I do not feel like I have to pay attention to what the boss is doing, other than dodging an occasional attack (when stacking in a corner isn’t completely trivializing the fight that is).
—

Try soloing a dungeon without paying attention to what bosses are doing. The biggest problem GW2 has that the game is really easy, not that we don’t have a trinity.

Wethospu.6437:

Try soloing a dungeon without paying attention to what bosses are doing. The biggest problem GW2 has that the game is really easy, not that we don’t have a trinity.

But this isn’t about soloing. You can make any amount of content more challenging by playing it with less people then it was designed for. That’s not really the point we’re discussing here is it?

What I’m talking about is a lack of depth in the combat overall. Many of the dungeons have very shallow mechanics, that are negated by stacking in a corner, and just out-healing what ever damage is received, instantly reviving anyone that goes down, and just spamming boons on the whole party like crazy. It doesn’t seem like the designers put much thought into what the boss should be doing, and how the players should fight him. It also doesn’t seem like the designers put in any effort to make the game’s mechanics have a purpose during these fights. Virtually none of the enemies you encounter in dungeons require a drastic change of tactics, the only exception perhaps being Fractals. And the same can be said of almost all the bosses in the game.

Granted, they did manage to make some boss battles more interesting in Fractals, by introducing some sort of a gimmick, like with the hammer in the cliffside fractal. And while these are all good ideas, it really is just a crutch. It’s not a fix to the real issue: The game’s mechanics are not given a purpose in dungeons or boss fights.

You can add dozens of boss fights where players have to pick up a hammer, or a crystal, or have to throw stones that drop from the ceiling. But the core mechanics of the game are still not being used. Control skills are still ineffective against virtually every boss in the game. Positioning and movement still lacks a lot of purpose, although they’ve improved that with some of the boss battles in Fractals. And conditions are still being ignored or reduced by a lot of bosses, turning it once again into a giant DPS fest. And are there any boss battles where elementalists aren’t asked to spam FGS and Icebow?

Supposedly necromancers are masters of boon removal. So where is the boss that requires boons to be removed? I see dozens of bosses where reflection is extremely effective, but meanwhile a whole lot of other mechanics are left ignored. Weren’t these supposed to be our strengths? We can’t really call them strengths if they’re not used.

fights aren’t negated by stacking in a corner.

here is the issue:

1. you don’t understand the combat in this game
2. you dislike the combat because you’re just mad your class doesn’t work so you call it bad and inefficient – the fact of the matter is however – you simply don’t likei t. it’s not bad, it’s not poorly designed, it’s not shallow – YOU DON’T LIKE IT

so stop hiding behind the veil of encounters supposedly being badly designed, you simply just don’t like it and are trying to come up with justifications in your head.

maha.7902:

1. you don’t understand the combat in this game
2. you dislike the combat because you’re just mad your class doesn’t work so you call it bad and inefficient – the fact of the matter is however – you simply don’t likei t. it’s not bad, it’s not poorly designed, it’s not shallow – YOU DON’T LIKE IT

so stop hiding behind the veil of encounters supposedly being badly designed, you simply just don’t like it and are trying to come up with justifications in your head.

I don’t really understand this response, you’re not really countering any of my arguments. Nor are you addressing anything I said.

It’s pretty hard to deny that each class has strength’s and weaknesses. And it’s also hard to deny that each class’ strength is not equally important in encounters. Some “strengths” are even rendered completely useless. So obviously that means there’s not a level playing field in PVE.

Is it really that strange that certain classes are highly desired for dungeons (guardians, warriors, mesmers) when we know that their strengths are more important in dungeons than the strengths of other classes?

Cleave, DPS, stability, party wide boons, reflection. These are the “strengths” that people ask for a lot in groups, because it fits with the DPS centered approach of the game’s combat. And these are all mechanics spread unequally across specific classes, not equally among all classes. That is a problem.

Wethospu.6437:

Try soloing a dungeon without paying attention to what bosses are doing. The biggest problem GW2 has that the game is really easy, not that we don’t have a trinity.

Exactly this. GW2 has tricky abilities everywhere.
Even open world bosses can cause 0 damage to you if you act right, and then staggering your dodges and skill uses becomes quite problematic. For example, try doing phase 1 claw in the middle of the lane without ever getting hit and without getting feared to the turrets behind you.

It’s quite possible, but not really easy.

Only, and this is crucial: None of this is required.
ANet added a host of complex combat options to the PvE, but made all of them entirely optional and a part of “perfecting it, for the sake of perfection”.

Whether that is smart (no one feels left out) or stupid (no one really notices the complexity) is debatable. I’m leaning towards the latter, but I can see the merit of the super low difficulty.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

maha.7902:

1. you don’t understand the combat in this game
2. you dislike the combat because you’re just mad your class doesn’t work so you call it bad and inefficient – the fact of the matter is however – you simply don’t likei t. it’s not bad, it’s not poorly designed, it’s not shallow – YOU DON’T LIKE IT

so stop hiding behind the veil of encounters supposedly being badly designed, you simply just don’t like it and are trying to come up with justifications in your head.

I don’t really understand this response, you’re not really countering any of my arguments. Nor are you addressing anything I said.

It’s pretty hard to deny that each class has strength’s and weaknesses. And it’s also hard to deny that each class’ strength is not equally important in encounters. Some “strengths” are even rendered completely useless. So obviously that means there’s not a level playing field in PVE.

Is it really that strange that certain classes are highly desired for dungeons (guardians, warriors, mesmers) when we know that their strengths are more important in dungeons than the strengths of other classes?

Cleave, DPS, stability, party wide boons, reflection. These are the “strengths” that people ask for a lot in groups, because it fits with the DPS centered approach of the game’s combat. And these are all mechanics spread unequally across specific classes, not equally among all classes. That is a problem.

It’s not a problem otherwise classes would just be a homogenous blob and we might as well just have one class called “fighter” which does everything.

maha.7902:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

maha.7902:

1. you don’t understand the combat in this game
2. you dislike the combat because you’re just mad your class doesn’t work so you call it bad and inefficient – the fact of the matter is however – you simply don’t likei t. it’s not bad, it’s not poorly designed, it’s not shallow – YOU DON’T LIKE IT

so stop hiding behind the veil of encounters supposedly being badly designed, you simply just don’t like it and are trying to come up with justifications in your head.

I don’t really understand this response, you’re not really countering any of my arguments. Nor are you addressing anything I said.

It’s pretty hard to deny that each class has strength’s and weaknesses. And it’s also hard to deny that each class’ strength is not equally important in encounters. Some “strengths” are even rendered completely useless. So obviously that means there’s not a level playing field in PVE.

Is it really that strange that certain classes are highly desired for dungeons (guardians, warriors, mesmers) when we know that their strengths are more important in dungeons than the strengths of other classes?

Cleave, DPS, stability, party wide boons, reflection. These are the “strengths” that people ask for a lot in groups, because it fits with the DPS centered approach of the game’s combat. And these are all mechanics spread unequally across specific classes, not equally among all classes. That is a problem.

It’s not a problem otherwise classes would just be a homogenous blob and we might as well just have one class called “fighter” which does everything.

It is a problem when those strengths have little use in a game mode and you balance that class in regard to having that strength in that game mode, which seems to be what’s happening in regards to classes like Necros in PvE.

Carighan.6758:

Wethospu.6437:

Try soloing a dungeon without paying attention to what bosses are doing. The biggest problem GW2 has that the game is really easy, not that we don’t have a trinity.

Exactly this. GW2 has tricky abilities everywhere.
Even open world bosses can cause 0 damage to you if you act right, and then staggering your dodges and skill uses becomes quite problematic. For example, try doing phase 1 claw in the middle of the lane without ever getting hit and without getting feared to the turrets behind you.

It’s quite possible, but not really easy.

Only, and this is crucial: None of this is required.
ANet added a host of complex combat options to the PvE, but made all of them entirely optional and a part of “perfecting it, for the sake of perfection”.

Whether that is smart (no one feels left out) or stupid (no one really notices the complexity) is debatable. I’m leaning towards the latter, but I can see the merit of the super low difficulty.

In MMOs, most players work off incentives. No one will bother with perfection if there’s little incentive to do so.

Conditions cleansing isn’t required in most cases, so people just ignore them. Consideration into survivability in your build is not required so people just ignore that in favor of more DPS. Boon stripping isn’t necessary so people just glance past it.

When you make it that nothing is required, you then in a MMO get a whole bunch of what’s perceived to be useless things. Then when you go as far as to balance classes and weapon sets around it, you get what’s perceived to be useless classes or weapon sets.

MMORPGs are built on requirements and incentives. Tanks and healers only exist in a trinity system because they are required, mechanics are only followed because they needed to be. It’s not only the old trinity MMOs either: you see how action-MMOs like Vindictus have fast paced and engaging combat? That’s not because players felt like doing that, but because the game made it so that if you don’t, you die.

It’s even human nature. We always seek for the route of lowest resistance. If you don’t need to work, you won’t turn up the next day. If you don’t need to study to pass the exam you’ll just slack off all year.

Stripping away requirements means you just get a mess.

Basically, Malafide touched on the point I was trying to make.

The Case-by-case basis roles we’ve seen so far have tended to be more focused on objects and your positions in space. Generally speaking; they’ve mostly added simple variety, not meaningfully impacted character building or broadened use of the game’s mechanics.

This is partly because Position and Object-use ‘plays nicely’ with practically any form of building in this game. So it ends up being a pretty shallow role to build for. Because Depth comes from making choices; a role where neigh every building choice is applicable is exactly as bad as a role where only one choice is.

Xae Isareth.1364:

stuff

Actually I do – I dodge the hell out of whatever has aggro on me. Perhaps you don’t but don’t assume.

Dungeons are designed to be easy – I’ve explained this before.

They’re designed around the common denominator – a pretty bad player. Of course good players will be able to go full offense against content designed to challenge bad players.

Content designed to challenge good players however does exist – and it’s strongly recommended you don’t go full glass there.

Regarding Arah and FoTM – players don’t do them precisely because they aren’t faceroll.
Do you realize that that’s the main reason people don’t do these? That and the rewards.

Hard content will never be the norm in a game designed to cater to the hypercasual player.

I’m going to quote myself here

Harper.4173:

That’s not actually it. The reason is that they designed the game to have a very low skill ceiling required to play and complete content successfully.

This was done in order to keep a good retention rate of hypercasual players – the kind of player that isn’t very good at games and can’t be very good ( because he’s got a job and spends most of his time outside the game) but who might be inclined to spend money on the gem store ( because he has a job and can afford it).

The indirect ( and unavoidable) side-effect of this is that very skilled players ( the kind that play the game for thousands of hours on end because they have the time – or just the kind that are good at games in general) are capable of mitigating every threat the game poses through skill and don’t need defensive gear because they can compensate the lack of passive defense with their own ability as a player.

This is what lead to the viability of full glass parties.

Xae Isareth.1364:

In conclusion. I don’t think I ever said I wanted the trinity back, that system itself is actually flawed in the same way as GW2’s is: focusing too much on one aspect. However, the trinity as an aspect of the 3-sided consideration of healing, power and defense should be in every game in some form or the other.

This i disagree with completely.

This game is not WoW – it never meant to be WoW. It will never be WoW.

Please understand that if it’s WoW you’re looking for this is not the right place.

The idea of healing power and defense are part of GW2. What bothers you is that there are only some areas where even good players are forced to choose between the three.

That’s because of what I explained above – simple content made for poor players allows good players to do very well.

But Tanks and healers are artificial.
Heck I can think a role up too – the stander. He stands there during fights doing nothing. The game has to register that he’s there and alive so you don’t lose the fight.
There – role created. Does this mean every game has to have one of these too?

Ultimately I feel the problem here comes from your dissatisfaction with the content. Which has less to do with what GW2 is and more to do with what GW2 isn’t.
A lot of players wanted a new WoW – this isn’kitten
I understand your frustration but changing the game to suit yourself won’t improve it.

Xae Isareth.1364:

To put things bluntly, if you think all you have to do as a tank or DPS in a game with the trinity in it is just afk and let the healer do it all, then you have no right to debate about it.

Yes I have. And I did the afk thing with AI healers in GW1 and it worked marvelously for 90% of the game.

Move party to target x, engage enemy mobs, tab out, tab back in, mobs are dead. Rinse and repeat.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I think this perfectly illustrates my problem with the game as it is right now. I don’t think the trinity is perfect either, but it did make higher demand in regards to strategy, positioning and roles then what we have now.

I feel as if they stripped a whole layer of depth and strategy, and then pronounced it as an improvement. It isn’t an improvement. It’s a barren wasteland, devoid of depth. I do not feel like I have to pay attention to what the boss is doing, other than dodging an occasional attack (when stacking in a corner isn’t completely trivializing the fight that is). I don’t feel like I have to watch my aggro, or that I can control aggro. I don’t feel like I have to strip certain boons to beat a fight, or that I have to interrupt specific skills.

What happened to actual combat mechanics? Where are they?

The answer Is above. I’ve quoted myself from another thread.
The game has shifted from what you’re describing to a more simplistic twitch-reflex approach. I’m not saying it’s better or worse.

It’s the game Guild Wars 2 is. I think people should consider if they want to play this game or not. The game works well on its own merits.

It’s been out for 2 years and has done well despite the LS stuff and lack of an expansion or good content.

I think it’s fair to say even the “crippled combat system” you dislike is well liked and played by a lot of people.

Maybe they want a game like this. Maybe this is the game for a different type of player than yourself.

Harper.4173:

Xae Isareth.1364:

To put things bluntly, if you think all you have to do as a tank or DPS in a game with the trinity in it is just afk and let the healer do it all, then you have no right to debate about it.

Yes I have. And I did the afk thing with AI healers in GW1 and it worked marvelously for 90% of the game.

Move party to target x, engage enemy mobs, tab out, tab back in, mobs are dead. Rinse and repeat.

Boy, I must have been in some pretty bad guilds that took weeks to perfect a raid then.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Harper.4173:

Xae Isareth.1364:

To put things bluntly, if you think all you have to do as a tank or DPS in a game with the trinity in it is just afk and let the healer do it all, then you have no right to debate about it.

Yes I have. And I did the afk thing with AI healers in GW1 and it worked marvelously for 90% of the game.

Move party to target x, engage enemy mobs, tab out, tab back in, mobs are dead. Rinse and repeat.

Boy, I must have been in some pretty bad guilds that took weeks to perfect a raid then.

I’m not saying you didn’t do different things in different games but don’t tell me that the trinity has more depth because it doesn’t.
It has more artificially added difficulty.

And your main complaint is that GW2 is faceroll easy because it doesn’t have a trinity. I was simply pointing out that GW1’s trinity system was also faceroll easy.

PVE content will always be faceroll easy in 90% of situations because :

1)Players get better
2)Tactics are shared on the internet
3)Content is the same and people learn it by heart
4)Players get better gear ( arguable in GW2 but even so small improvements are made)

Harper.4173:

Xae Isareth.1364:

In conclusion. I don’t think I ever said I wanted the trinity back, that system itself is actually flawed in the same way as GW2’s is: focusing too much on one aspect. However, the trinity as an aspect of the 3-sided consideration of healing, power and defense should be in every game in some form or the other.

This i disagree with completely.

This game is not WoW – it never meant to be WoW. It will never be WoW.

Please understand that if it’s WoW you’re looking for this is not the right place.

The idea of healing power and defense are part of GW2. What bothers you is that there are only some areas where even good players are forced to choose between the three.

That’s because of what I explained above – simple content made for poor players allows good players to do very well.

But Tanks and healers are artificial.
Heck I can think a role up too – the stander. He stands there during fights doing nothing. The game has to register that he’s there and alive so you don’t lose the fight.
There – role created. Does this mean every game has to have one of these too?

Ultimately I feel the problem here comes from your dissatisfaction with the content. Which has less to do with what GW2 is and more to do with what GW2 isn’t.
A lot of players wanted a new WoW – this isn’kitten
I understand your frustration but changing the game to suit yourself won’t improve it.

First of all. Can you stop pretending you know how to play a tank or a healer. From your posts, you clearly don’t have a clue. If you think all you do is just stand there and afk, then why does it take weeks and sometimes months for guilds to get a smooth run on a raid then? Is everyone stupid? Is your intellect just that much above them?

No one wanted a new WoW. No me, not you, not anyone here. Do you see anyone saying we should get the trinity here too? I don’t.

In Pokemon there’s the consideration of defence, offence and utility when you make your moveset. Does that make Pokemon a copy of WoW?

Harper.4173:

Xae Isareth.1364:

stuff

Actually I do – I dodge the hell out of whatever has aggro on me. Perhaps you don’t but don’t assume.

Dungeons are designed to be easy – I’ve explained this before.

They’re designed around the common denominator – a pretty bad player. Of course good players will be able to go full offense against content designed to challenge bad players.

Content designed to challenge good players however does exist – and it’s strongly recommended you don’t go full glass there.

Regarding Arah and FoTM – players don’t do them precisely because they aren’t faceroll.
Do you realize that that’s the main reason people don’t do these? That and the rewards.

Hard content will never be the norm in a game designed to cater to the hypercasual player.

I’m going to quote myself here

Harper.4173:

That’s not actually it. The reason is that they designed the game to have a very low skill ceiling required to play and complete content successfully.

This was done in order to keep a good retention rate of hypercasual players – the kind of player that isn’t very good at games and can’t be very good ( because he’s got a job and spends most of his time outside the game) but who might be inclined to spend money on the gem store ( because he has a job and can afford it).

The indirect ( and unavoidable) side-effect of this is that very skilled players ( the kind that play the game for thousands of hours on end because they have the time – or just the kind that are good at games in general) are capable of mitigating every threat the game poses through skill and don’t need defensive gear because they can compensate the lack of passive defense with their own ability as a player.

This is what lead to the viability of full glass parties.

Just a search on google of ‘ArenaNet on dungeons’ yields this:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/17/arenanet-talks-guild-wars-2-dungeon-difficulty/

‘Just like Domain of Anguish in [Guild Wars], it takes time and practice to learn how to overcome stuff as hard as our explorable mode dungeons, and that’s exactly the kind of players they are designed for.’ – ANet.

They clearly didn’t design explorable paths to be faceroll.

We’ve had 2 years to practice said dungeons and design strategies to clear them in the most efficient ways possible. At the start of the game these dungeons were percieved to be far from easy and the meta was entirely different from what it is now.

My proof? Check the dungeon forums and search for posts from a while back. After AC got redesigned there was a lot of qq that the dungeon was too hard, now it’s faceroll easy. Recently a thread on GL from a year ago got necroed, people had a lot of trouble to beat him with 5 man parties while a lot of players can solo the fight now.

All we need is new content because the current one is old. We need a new puzzle to solve, code to crack, whatever metaphor you wish to use.

If you really are that bored go do some lvl 50 fractals. They have more depth and solve a lot of the issues you have with the easy dungeons.

edit: inb4 ‘but rewards suck’ – Then your issue is not with how faceroll/one dimensional/insertcomplainthere the content is but with the imbalance of the rewards in the game. In that case you should make/post in another thread. If you truly desire to experience harder content then the lower g/hour shouldn’t stop you from doing it anyways.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Just a search on google of ‘ArenaNet on dungeons’ yields this:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/17/arenanet-talks-guild-wars-2-dungeon-difficulty/

‘Just like Domain of Anguish in [Guild Wars], it takes time and practice to learn how to overcome stuff as hard as our explorable mode dungeons, and that’s exactly the kind of players they are designed for.’ – ANet.

They clearly didn’t design explorable paths to be faceroll.

And they weren’t that way. They still aren’t for a significant portion of the player base. No PvE content difficulty survives 22 months of continuous use.

You know, I think anyone who uses the term “faceroll” should be required to link a video of their party doing truly random crap in a dungeon — such as true facerolling would produce — and still beating the dungeon.

I’ve said this for a long time.

Reduce dungeon mob HP.

Give them all roles and self-sustaining abilities that are countered by different player skills.

Let them react to taking large amounts of damage/AoE damage.

Give some mobs soft counters to different forms of damage. Endure Pain for example only mitigates direct damage and not condition damage.

Xae Isareth.1364:

First of all. Can you stop pretending you know how to play a tank or a healer. From your posts, you clearly don’t have a clue. If you think all you do is just stand there and afk, then why does it take weeks and sometimes months for guilds to get a smooth run on a raid then? Is everyone stupid? Is your intellect just that much above them?

No one wanted a new WoW. No me, not you, not anyone here. Do you see anyone saying we should get the trinity here too? I don’t.

In Pokemon there’s the consideration of defence, offence and utility when you make your moveset. Does that make Pokemon a copy of WoW?

Because new content is always hard before you get it down and figure it out.
It has nothing to do with the trinity – new content will always be hard at the beginning taking people weeks to figure out how to do.

I did not say playing a tank or a healer is afk-easy. You seem to not understand my point.
My point is that healer and tanks do not make a game better. They don’t add challenge or difficulty and are just arbitrary things added in the game in order to impose restrictions.

That’s where my GW1 example cam into play – In a game that had tanks and healers you could still do most PVE content while afk so I don’t get this complaint that GW2’s PVE is too easy.

ALL PVE IS AND WILL BE EASY. Unless you’re talking about those specific areas aimed at hardcore players.

Guild Wars 2 also has a consideration of defense, utility and offense. However these considerations are not forced through gear.

Each time a player dodges he sacrifices damage output for defense.
Each time a player activates a skill that keeps him alive he’s sacrificing damage for defense/utility.

That Anet statement ( and I find it funny that you quote an old statement considering how true they’ve been to many of them) was answering players on the forums who at the time were complaining dungeons were too hard.

Let me break it down for you – that was 2 years ago – the content was intended to be hard THEN not now.
The Domain of Anguish that was considered to be so hard and that they used as a basis of comparison was being speed cleared in GW1 like nobody’s business.

The fact that you might think they intended this or that based of a 2-years ago statement and given Anet’s history of holding true to things they’ve said in the past is admirable but if you actually looked at the content you’d see that what I wrote about who the target audience for this is becomes painstakingly clear.

Dungeons that you cannot fail, you can always just respawn and try again.

You have to understand that dungeons were intended to be kitten release – and they were.

No level, no gear, no idea what’s going on and little experience with the GW2 systems of dodging, boon sharing and even little experience with their own class and builds were all factors that meant the dungeon experience then was very different from the dungeon experience now.

All these factors that added difficulty have disappeared for the experienced player while for newbies and newcomers they’re very much an issue.

Rhomulos.2089:

I’ve said this for a long time.

Reduce dungeon mob HP.
sure, dont see why though

Give them all roles and self-sustaining abilities that are countered by different player skills.
they already have this.

Let them react to taking large amounts of damage/AoE damage.
they do

Give some mobs soft counters to different forms of damage. Endure Pain for example only mitigates direct damage and not condition damage.
Endure pain only mitigates direct damage for all of 4 seconds, and you are still susceptible to conditions

bolding mine

@Indigo I was quoting it in response to Harper’s claims that dungeons were made for the lowest denominator and were meant to be extremely easy.

@Harper again, no one ever claimed healers or tanks make a game better, or wanting them in GW2. It’s like having the role of goalkeeper in football: having it doesn’t make the game better but the game was made around having one.

Games like WoW we’re built around having a tank and a healer and their players like having those roles. GW2 wasn’t, so we don’t need a tank or healer here.

You can’t fail dungeons in most games. That’s why just giving up and wiping when things dont go as expected to start again is a thing. That doesn’t make it easy, it just makes it not frustrating.

So what if the content was from two years ago? Once you get appropriately geared and know what to do, mechanics should still exist and they should still impose a challenge, especially in a game that aims to keep everything eternally relevant.

Remember what happened when you wiped repeatedly in a GW1 dungeon? Without the DP removal consumables you got kicked out.

That’s good dungeon design. You fail, you pay.

Mechanics do exist, but they’re not as strong against a party that has removed all of the other factors that worked together with mechanics to make the dungeon hard.

A MMO can’t rely on mechanics alone – if it did it would be a platformer. The idea is that mechanics work together with other factors to make the game hard. Through 2 years of progression players have overcome those other difficulties and easy content is their reward.

There is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that there has been no new content added to keep us challenged as we keep progressing.

Well, I suppose that’s one way to look at it.

But I think it might be a bit limited to say mechanics only exist for the sake of the difficulty curve? I tend to like the ‘verbs you use to accomplish goals’ and ‘teaches you about how your all your options work by telling you when you’re screwing up’ definitions myself.

It’s actually kind of surprising game theory has such a wishy washy potluck of definitions for something so fundamental.

nerf FGS
Nerf fire fields to 1 or 2 stacks of might
make fields overlapping give overlapping bonuses (so a blast finisher activates all the effects in the fields its in). nerf others if necessary

makes burst pve much less effective and less reliant on FGS, allows other forms of support to be a little more prominent through uses of other fields. Right now you’re actively discouraged from using fields other than fire or water…and while I don’t mind a little bit of strategy for using those sorts of things, right now if it’s not fire fields, and maybe sometimes water is okay, you’re kittening stuff up. The other fields buffs just aren’t appealing enough to be worth it, and a lot of it stems from the fact that burst is king. And it always will be, but if you take it down I think it will force players to deal with mechanics a bit more…but more likely it’ll just require further optimization for the best groups. (aka kick out more necros)

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I picked up FFXIV the other day and the dungeons are, like, super boring. Healer stands at range clicking on bars, tank sits in melee tabbing through targets to make sure everything is on him, everyone else stands on the other side and refreshes their DPS macros every 20 seconds of so.

Is that what people actually want? Replacing the zerk meta with a trinity is just going to make everything 10x more boring and take 10x as long. That’s 100x the headache.

Final Fantasy died after it went MMO anyway. Should’ve stayed Turn-Based. Fact.

To balance the game is kind of moot. Realistically, I imagine what they should have done is stick with the old GW1 ideology and make everything instanced content. It made balancing so much simpler because you didn’t have a thousand and one different scenarios to take into consideration.

GW1’s balancing just got broken because there were so many skills, so little time and too little effort.

hannah mee.7925:

GW1’s balancing just got broken because there were so many skills, so little time and too little effort.

The more skills they added to GW1, the harder it became to balance, but also the more interesting it became. Balance problems are almost an unavoidable side effect of having a complex combat system.

On top of that, there were the dual professions, and PVE and PvP to consider. Since balance issues are usually felt the hardest in PvP, most balancing often revolved around PvP first and foremost. But a skill-change for PvP, may have a bad effect on the same skill in PVE. And thus at some point they started splitting the skills for PvP and PVE. But once you go down that road, there’s no end to it.

I think you’ll have balance problems no matter what. MMO’s are big beasts, with a meta that is often in motion. The multitude of skills in GW1 may have attributed to balance problems, but it was also what kept a lot of players experimenting.

I think in the past Anet has dealt with the cleverness of the players in mixed ways. Some overpowered skill combinations got nerfed into the ground, while other clever skill combos got hammered for no good reason.

One particular bad case of wrong balancing, was when they made it so that pets no longer left exploitable corpses. This meant that you could no longer use them as bombs, or as minion fodder. It was a case of Anet eliminating something that made use of the dual professions in a clever and original way, yet they decided contrary to the whole point of the game, that that was not how they wanted pets to be used. And it was a bad call. Clever skill combinations should not be killed, unless they really present a problem to the game’s balance.

And on the other hand of the spectrum we had Ursan Blessing, consumable sets, and Shadow Form completely dominating elite areas of the game, yet they let it go unchecked for a very long time.

I’m pretty sure 99% of the people who complain about lack of trinity are playing their own class wrong.

“I built my warrior like a tank but I can’t even hold aggro when I try.”
“I made a healer elementalist but my heals suck and everyone goes down too fast to heal.”

There is maybe one profession in this game that is actually raw DPS and that is ele running staff. Everything else is varying degrees of support, control, or “tank”. You can totally make a “support” character who buffs his allies instead of dealing damage, that’s what a Phalanx Warrior or Hammer Guardian build is all about. Alternately you can roll a mesmer and use phantasms to “tank” hits meant for other people by absorbing damage with clones, Wardens, and Defenders. Or you can roll a thief and spam blind fields, which is pretty much hardcore CC with no DPS.

It’s pretty obvious that the problem isn’t with not being able to play a support role because there’s tons of ways to do that. The problem is that people want to play JUST a support role and don’t want to have to attack anything for some bizarre reason. If you wanted to, you totally could play 3 DPS – 1 Healer – 1 Tank and succeed in pretty much any content, and it might actually go pretty smoothly if the “tank” and DPS are actually working together to keep aggro focused on the former. Apparently like 99% of pugs are pacifists and want to be tanks or healers though so your party comp is most likely going to end up being something like 3 “tanks” (who make no effort to keep aggro) and 1 healer (who only heals himself) and one very ineffectual “DPS”. And that’s going to fail in any MMO regardless of whether there’s an official trinity or not.

tl;dr i’m pretty sure 99% of the people crying for trinity would get booted from any party in a game with a real trinity, so just be glad that GW2 is designed so one guy carrying four bad players is actually possible.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

It’s pretty obvious that the problem isn’t with not being able to play a support role because there’s tons of ways to do that. The problem is that people want to play JUST a support role and don’t want to have to attack anything for some bizarre reason.

It’s worse than that.

1. They want their dedicated support role to require them to gear for it.
2. They want their dedicated support role to be a necessary part of what’s optimal.

These two combined would force ANet to completely re-balance support options so that support from anyone not geared for it would have to be reduced in effectiveness — probably dramatically.

Wow, almost all of that Guanglai Kangyi, was a complete strawman. I think virtually none of what you just said actually represents the position of people in favor of a trinity. I guess that’s what makes it easy to beat up on.

I’ve played GW1 for years, and I enjoyed the trinity in that game. It wasn’t perfect, because constantly needing monks was quite a chore, and I’m glad that’s gone. But it also had it’s positive sides, like roles, inter-class dependency, and depth to the combat. And I like that. I feel that the current game was stripped of a lot of depth, and it leaves me unfulfilled.

I think I play my class pretty well. But in PVE I quickly noticed just how little effect Toughness has at higher levels. I think this problem is known to many, which is why so many go full damage. While theoretically you can build a tank, the balance isn’t right, and you’re better off maximizing your damage instead of your defense. The pay off is higher towards the damage spectrum.

This problem also extends to control skills. I’ve tried building a full fear-build necromancer for PVE, and it was very disappointing. Almost all bosses in the game are immune to crowd control, and crowd control in itself seems very unreliable. Often enemies would not run away, but stay rooted in place instead (maybe due to bad path finding). And why would you want to fear enemies away from your allies? That simply makes the fight take longer, and sends them flying out of the aoe attacks of your allies. These game mechanics don’t seem to work well together.

The duration of fear is also disappointing, even when boosted to max. Especially when comparing it to the fear duration of many enemies in the game. I started to realize that fear was not that useful as a defense in PVE as I had hoped. Enemies would instantly return to chase the same player after a few seconds of being feared, which made it not feel like a very effective defensive measure when enemies pack so much health. Eventually I came to the same conclusion as many players, why not simply maximize damage and stack on top of enemies?

We didn’t have this problem in GW1. With the trinity, we had well defined roles, and the various mechanics in the game mattered. I’m not saying it was perfect, but it definitely felt better than what we have now.

Wow, almost all of that Guanglai Kangyi, was a complete strawman. I think virtually none of what you just said actually represents the position of people in favor of a trinity. I guess that’s what makes it easy to beat up on./

Actually it does. People endlessly complain that “the game is just DPS”. They literally want to spam heals and not do damage. Their objection is with the fact that they are expected to do damage. They want to afk in the back line and spam heal skill off cooldown.

I’ve played GW1 for years, and I enjoyed the trinity in that game. It wasn’t perfect, because constantly needing monks was quite a chore, and I’m glad that’s gone. But it also had it’s positive sides, like roles, inter-class dependency, and depth to the combat. And I like that. I feel that the current game was stripped of a lot of depth, and it leaves me unfulfilled.

You see inter-class dependency as a plus, I don’t. I don’t want to have to rely on anyone. And for as “stripped of depth” as the GW2 combat supposedly is, ANet won’t even add a combo field finisher priority system because they think it would confuse people – so clearly “in-depth” combat isn’t an option if something so minor can’t even be added.

I think I play my class pretty well. But in PVE I quickly noticed just how little effect Toughness has at higher levels. I think this problem is known to many, which is why so many go full damage. While theoretically you can build a tank, the balance isn’t right, and you’re better off maximizing your damage instead of your defense. The pay off is higher towards the damage spectrum.

Do I need to dig up the no-dodge Arah path 2 defensive builds video again?

Even in games where healers and tanks are required, if you’re trying to optimize you would still spec as much DPS as possible with the minimum amount of healing and support necessary. That’s just how healing works, you don’t need a guy who is 100% healing and 0% DPS when 50% healing is enough to keep everyone comfortably at max health. That’s why in GW1 you could get away with not having a monk in a lot of scenarios and instead take a ritualist with Restoration spells on half his bar and Channeling or Communing on the other half, or an Ele with /Mo subclass using 2-3 heal skills and 2-3 Fire spells.

Realistically speaking, it boils down to complaining that YOUR specific build doesn’t work. Want to have good healing and defensive support while still being useful? Make a Zealot’s Guardian with healing symbols and a hammer and mace, or a Scepter ele specced for quick attunement swaps between Water and Air, etc. Not everyone is a super hardcore 100% record-setting speedrunner who dodges everything. In fact, with the current so-called “stacking meta” for pugs, having someone who can spam decent regen heals and defensive buffs is actually a pretty good thing to have to avoid random downs costing kill stacks, so long as that regen doesn’t come at an excessive DPS cost.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

There is maybe one profession in this game that is actually raw DPS and that is ele running staff. Everything else is varying degrees of support, control, or “tank”.

You forgot to add ‘if you camp fire attunement’, otherwise it’s fully-fledged support and control weapon.

With all due respect, I think you might be losing sight of the forest for the trees, Guanglai.

If you’d like to get closer to where people are coming from; try to imagine roles more like overarching goals, and less like the literal act of using each and every individual skill.

Like;
In a Trinity game, Paladins are a kind of tank that use heals to help them hold the mob’s interest. When a tanking Paladin uses a heal, you don’t suddenly call him the healer – he’s still the tank. Because what segregates these roles is more about differing targeting responsibilities and whether your intended effect on the aggro system is positive or negative, than a simple ‘used a heal is therefore the healer’.

There’s no reason why a game HAS to have a role where “big guy in heavy armor stands in one spot so things will hit only him.” People got used to that role but as we’ve already established GW2 isn’t meant to be your conventional MMO. That siad, it also doesn’t mean that Anet isn’t giving players plenty of options for playing the roles they like to play. What do you think the guardian is doing by spamming protects and walls on everyone? He’s not pulling aggro and eating lots of damage but he is enabling other players to focus more on their own jobs (dealing damage) by mitigating damage. What people take issue with is the fact that the guardian can do that AND still put out decent damage in the process, and they don’t want that to be an option because then THEY can’t do only the former and ignore the latter.

Arguing for trinity as opposed to hybrids is literally asking Anet to limit each class’s options because you don’t like healing/tanking at the same time as attacking and would prefer to take out the attacking part.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

We didn’t have this problem in GW1. With the trinity, we had well defined roles, and the various mechanics in the game mattered. I’m not saying it was perfect, but it definitely felt better than what we have now.

felt better for you – you mean.

It was a game designed in a different way for a different demographic of players. It was very different from GW2 – both as a design, mechanics, tone, story – everything.

Also regarding depth, what is combat depth? How do you define it? How do you measure how “deep” you want it to be?

And you mentioned classes being interdependent – but it was forced. There were a lot of classes that weren’t desired in PVE because you didn’t have to have them.

How was that fun?

Before I get into a response, I just wanted to be clear:
I don’t agree with DPS-Tank-Healer setup for this game, either. I think a survival-based dependency doesn’t seem like a good fit for a game that puts so much effort towards self-sufficiency. My attention is on exploring other kinds of roles.

Well, I can’t speak for everyone,
but I can say that doesn’t really bother me personally. I tend to play around in lots of different genres, and FPS Medic/MOBA Support are much more naturally violent than their RPG Healer cousins. So, I’m totally okay with a ‘everybody has damage tools in their toolbox’ setup, what I’m not okay with is ‘everybody uses their tools for one set of goals’.

I think that point about Guardian is still kind of talking about Trees instead of Forests. Let me see if I can’t illustrate my view in another way.

MMORPGs used to have Quaternities.
One of the roles that was filled by the fourth slot was ‘Crowd Control’. In Trinity games, I have definitely seen skills I would label as having a Crowd Control effect, but, I’d never say Crowd Control was a role. My GW2 Guardian fullfills a support role, about as well as my WoW Mage fulfills a crowd control role.

Vox Hollow.2736:

In Trinity games, I have definitely seen skills I would label as having a Crowd Control effect, but, I’d never say Crowd Control was a role. My GW2 Guardian fullfills a support role, about as well as my WoW Mage fulfills a crowd control role.

My memory of WoW mage CC is slow, immobilize and transform. GW2 Guards can provide aegis, regeneration, retaliation, protection, swiftness, healing, cleansing, stability and reflection (Please understand if I missed anyone. It’s been a big day. I’m a little tired.). It seems to me that most — or at least some — of these get used a lot more in dungeons than slow, immobilize and transform did in dungeons in that other game. If that’s not fulfilling a support role, what would be? Does it have to be always on? Does it have to be geared for? What would qualify?

One problem with these non offensive focus roles/builds being undesired is that also defensive items & gear are undesired. This reduces actual available rewards in GW2 that feel worthwhile and rewarding for offensive focused roles/builds.

So we all agree we want new content but should Arenanet’s time be spent on making defensive gear/items in this light. Isn’t this taking away from making content that feels rewarding and worthwhile.

Not having non offensive roles/builds/gear being desire also effects more of GW2 then just the combat encounters. In GW2 defensive focused items & gear only saving grace is WvW were these items & gear are desired and wanted. But if WvW wasn’t in GW2 how would the economy look? How rewarding would half the items feel?

Oo look just got the latest new shiny… Oo but it’s defensive focused and no one want’s anything defensive focused. Oo well just another item to sell to the vendor.

As people have been saying GW2 dungeons have been mastered, but it’s not just the dungeons. To extend GW2 combat has now been mastered.

So if non offensive roles/builds/gear are still not going to be desire in new content. Any rewards created with the new content that have a defensive focus will again feel unrewarding. Non offensive minded players are left unsatisfied, undesired and wondering why are they playing GW2. Maybe GW2 really is not the right game after all. And Offensive minded players again unsatisfied with the rewards.

Edit: corrections, sentence rewording and sentence corrections

I think the main problem with GW2 pve is everything is a bit too….straightforward.

Especially trash mobs. You can get away 95% of the fights with stack, ward, reflect, dps. After a few fights it really becomes boring. Many game mechanics ain’t used. No condition means no cleanse, no sustain means no heal, no scattering so no snare……..These make GW2 combat feels shallow.

This leads me to think GW2 pve is too boss centric. Trashes pose almost no threat at all. Bosses are where is mechanics come in but at the same time they have the evil unshakable or native stability making 75% of the mechanics useless. Again it returns back to the stacking dps meta.

I think fractal instability is addressing some of these issues. You can see conditions in 43 etc. And if 40/50 instability being implemented in regular dungeon, you might see a healer in group. Also Mai trin recommends the use of cleanse. So hopefully future contents we can see more of these.

Last thing is unshakable, it really is ruining the game. The gauntlet bosses is so much more fun than dungeon bosses when you can fear, chill, cripple, blind them. I hope they can finally address unshakable.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vox Hollow.2736:

In Trinity games, I have definitely seen skills I would label as having a Crowd Control effect, but, I’d never say Crowd Control was a role. My GW2 Guardian fullfills a support role, about as well as my WoW Mage fulfills a crowd control role.

My memory of WoW mage CC is slow, immobilize and transform. GW2 Guards can provide aegis, regeneration, retaliation, protection, swiftness, healing, cleansing, stability and reflection (Please understand if I missed anyone. It’s been a big day. I’m a little tired.). It seems to me that most — or at least some — of these get used a lot more in dungeons than slow, immobilize and transform did in dungeons in that other game. If that’s not fulfilling a support role, what would be? Does it have to be always on? Does it have to be geared for? What would qualify?

I think his point is that the CC role in trinity games is something that is spread out. Different roles/classes have better tools in any given situation. No one class is the end all be all of CC such that they are brought simply to CC and nothing else.

That’s different than some of the quadrinity games, which I think judging by his name he’s played Everquest. In Everquest we had the Enchanter, it’s entire job was to lock down things and CC. For example you approach a room with 10 enemies, instead of rushin in and killing htem all you could pull them out one at a time, or pull them all locking down 9 with stuns/mes and killing the 10th then continuing one at a time. Or even possibly charming one turning it into a pet and locking down 8, etc… lots of options the entire class was based around CC.

EQ had Enc/Bard being primary CC roles in their quadrinity. Couldn’t heal, couldn’t tank, couldn’t dps, but they gave group support through buffs and CC’d like a boss.

In that, just like guardians in this game, the CC role was a subtle role spread around, rather than a main role. Guardians support, but while focusing heavily on their own personal damage. It’s a side role. Important, but it’s not something you build around other than a single trait choice and skill choice.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

hannah mee.7925:

GW1’s balancing just got broken because there were so many skills, so little time and too little effort.

The more skills they added to GW1, the harder it became to balance, but also the more interesting it became. Balance problems are almost an unavoidable side effect of having a complex combat system.

On top of that, there were the dual professions, and PVE and PvP to consider. Since balance issues are usually felt the hardest in PvP, most balancing often revolved around PvP first and foremost. But a skill-change for PvP, may have a bad effect on the same skill in PVE. And thus at some point they started splitting the skills for PvP and PVE. But once you go down that road, there’s no end to it.

I think you’ll have balance problems no matter what. MMO’s are big beasts, with a meta that is often in motion. The multitude of skills in GW1 may have attributed to balance problems, but it was also what kept a lot of players experimenting.

Yeah. Based on what was coming out in GW1 (BMP, WiK, Hearts of the North, WoC) I was thinking GW2 would see something a lot similar to GW1 mechanics with a complete overhaul on the skill system – having 300+ different elite skills alone make balancing an astronomical nightmare. Had they been able to condense skills to something as limited as GW2, I imagine balancing would’ve got over a lot smoother.

Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers.

Plus, as WoW has shown, quantity is often counterproductive to quality. Just having more skills doesn’t make the player choice any more important or interesting or varied, just more confusing (higher barrier of entry, you need to google more stuff).

I’ve been thinking further on roles/builds/skills/items & gear in GW2 and the action MMO combat. And this is most likely the cause of issues with roles, varying profession and non offensive passive stats.

Now what I mean is there is next to no difference in supportive, defensive game play between Supportive and Defensive focused builds and supportive, defensive game play of Offensive focused builds. (bar up time of effect, duration)

But there is a vastly large difference between Offensive focused builds offence and Supportive, Defensive focused builds offence.

And it’s this that I think is a large part of the problem for these players. Looking at both action games & MMOs, strong active & passive defensive & supportive skills & effects are locked behind skill trees, roles, builds, classes & sub-classes. To access these abilities players must unlock then. This helps differentiate Offensive, Defensive & Supportive focused play styles as each doesn’t have access to all options or skills (active or passive).

• Offensive – misses out on the best defence and support.
• Defensive – misses out on the best offence and support and,
• Supportive – misses out on the best offence and defence options.

At the moment I believe traits were meant to fulfill this difference between these focuses, but I believe this is were they’re lacking. Master tier is quite easy to access and Grand Master’s doesn’t seen deep enough to provide this locking. Now I don’t want to take away from the exist options but one way to improve this focus locking could be through expansion of existing options.

Expanding Traits, Trait Tiers; Could this Help
In away I could seen expansion of trait points up to 16 or keeping the 14 and also adding another tier pass Grand Master could help. Expanding traits tiers and adding more traits could help by allowing strong supportive & defensive skill improvements, buffs, changes deeper into the trait lines. Also adds more offensive options.

• Going 8 into a trait line would feel deeper and more costly.
• 2 higher major trait spot allow for further focus options (Maybe a way to add sub-professions but using exist trait system and not adding another system all together).
• More progression both vertical and horizontal.
• Further grow of the roles, builds, combat system.

Again using the Guardian as the example support, defence, active or passive their is very little difference in feeling from a Offensive focus or Defensive focus build. Using non offensive passive stats only seems to improve passive game play overall. Increase the duration of the effect or like healing & stun break are after the fact (you’ve already been damage or effected).

Active support and active defence seem to have very little skill improvement (intensity) other then effect up time (duration) and is through further new traits and maybe a higher trait tier that these intensity improving effects/changes could be placed. Maybe adding ways that non offensive passive stats can help improve active support & active defence. Locking Offensive focus builds out of these supportive & defensive improvements.

Edit: spelling & sentence wording

Bezagron.7352:

Now what I mean is there is next to no difference in supportive, defensive game play between Supportive and Defensive focused builds and supportive, defensive game play of Offensive focused builds. (bar up time of effect, duration)

But there is a vastly large difference between Offensive focused builds offense and Supportive, Defensive focused builds offense.

And it’s this that I think is a large part of the problem for these players. Looking at both action games & MMOs, strong active & passive defensive & supportive skills & effects are locked behind skill trees, roles, builds, classes & sub-classes. To access these abilities players must unlock then. This helps differentiate Offensive, Defensive & Supportive focused play styles as each doesn’t have access to all options or skills (active or passive).

• Offensive – misses out on the best defense and support.
• Defensive – misses out on the best offense and support and,
• Supportive – misses out on the best offense and defense options.

While what you say has truth in it, you’re neglecting to address what is the fundamental design contradiction in GW2 — that being: (a) wanting to create a dungeon (and open world) experience that would allow any combination of professions (and builds) to complete content; and (b) wanting to create differences between professions and builds for the sake of diversity. These two goals compete with each other.

GW2 already has trade-offs between defense and offense. Defensive builds provide a great deal more sustainability than offensive builds do. In all three game modes, players choose defensive options or offensive ones depending on whether they feel they need the defense or not. So, how do you buff defense? You don’t, not without generating further trade-offs with offense or support. You don’t, not without putting more emphasis on passive defense or reducing the active defense available to everyone else. Such moves would have unfortunate effects for PvP, for WvW and for non-dungeon-speed-run PvE where players are choosing passive defense because they prefer it.

You’ve also got profession design in which certain professions rely on support buffs to make up for shortcomings in comparison to other professions. Guardians have low health, and make up for it with a large array of defensive and offensive support. Engineers have “versatility” (read support) and pay for it with lower damage coefficients. Accentuating the difference between support and offense for the sake of what you’ve called “high-end PvE” would necessitate lowering the effects of support if you do not build for it.

Why? Because the observed effects — meta groups doing what you perceive as too much damage — is the result of too much support already. 25 stacks might x 35 power each = 875 power. That’s nearly the equivalent of a level 80’s base power of 916. Now think about the other offense-buffing support. Those melting bosses in dungeons don’t happen just because of berserker gear. If you provide greater support for a “dedicated” support build, you’d have to lower base support. If you don’t, then your boosted support build would still not be desired in the holy grail of “high-end PvE” or it would be so egregious that it would further break the game.

Thanks IndigoSundown and everyone enjoying the discussion & replies.

IndigoSundown.5419:

While what you say has truth in it, you’re neglecting to address what is the fundamental design contradiction in GW2 — that being: (a) wanting to create a dungeon (and open world) experience that would allow any combination of professions (and builds) to complete content; and (b) wanting to create differences between professions and builds for the sake of diversity. These two goals compete with each other.

And this is the hardest part of any comment from Arenanet, we all take away different meaning. Regarding your quote above IndigoSundown I actual believe their is no contradiction between a) & b).

a) Wanting to create content that would allow any combination of professions to complete this content.

And it’s here that we differ, this is were I believe the comment was purely about professions and not that any build or combination of random builds could also complete this content. For me this was about allowing all professions equal access to complete any content.

This was so professions weren’t locked into 1- 3 designed encounter roles, but through different builds each profession was able to fulfill the designed encounter roles for each encounter. By not per-defining and locking professions designed encounter roles for encounters, this allows for differing encounters that can require totally different designed roles for completion. This design allows for so much future expansion, as the available designed roles can be expanded through adding more skills & abilities further expanding options for encounter designs.

Explanation of Designed Encounter Roles: The holy trinity (Dps, Tank & Healer) is one of the best examples of designed encounter roles. With the holy trinity no matter the encounter at it’s heart it was design to always needed a healer, a tank & a dps for completion.

Also I believe this comment was in reply to a discussion about dungeons, which at this time were the most challenging & hardest content available in GW2. And it’s this part that makes me believe the comment was about profession and does not include any build.

As if any build can complete any content how is there any hard content.

For me this was about through builds any profession is able to have equal access to content. You could have a party of 5 different profession each able to fulfill a designed encounter role or at the extreme you could have 5 Rangers, which through each taking different builds could fulfill the designed encounter roles. Bring 1 of each or 5 of one each 5 player party have equal access and can complete any of this content including the hardest content but each group would need to still fulfill the design encounter roles for each level of play.

Now I say access to any content not that any random 5 player combination of professions or builds can complete all content no matter the difficulty level of said content. If the design encounter roles and skill level are not met then players should fail the content or encounter.

b) Wanting to create differences between professions and builds for the sake of diversity.

Here I kind of disagree with the wording. It’s not about differing profession and builds just for sake of it, but through providing these different professions and providing a large diversity of builds that all favours and all types of game play can be enjoyed.

For me diversity, and diversity of builds (profession/traits/skills/gear) is the actual way that a) can be achieved.

The absolute biggest problem with GW2 PvE is that it’s shallower than a puddle on a plateau.

Everything there is to know on GW2 combat has been jotted down, numbers taken, numbers compared, and results posted in the forums of each respective class. Building defense is nigh meaningless because dodging is a thing. Remember: taking 0 damage is better than taking “less” damage (i.e. “not 0”). That’s why most people go glass cannon, at least in explorable dungeons. Not as sure about Fractals. Get good, dodge the red circles on time, and you’re golden.

Certain classes are indeed shafted when it comes to a lot of things: dungeon utility, DPS support, simply having good skills… I can make my Necromancer as DPS-focused as possible, but his damage will ALWAYS pale to that of a mediocre Warrior’s, just as long as that Warrior stays alive long enough to consistently spam FGJ and 100Blades. Maybe even put down a Banner of Discipline/Power or Battle Standard for his allies. Necromancers get… a minion, a cruddy lich form, and Plague. I’m great at single target damage! But that’s not good at all in dungeons like CoE or AC where AoE and cleave is much more appreciated.

Welp.

At the very least, all I’d like to see would be separation to PvE and PvP balancing, maybe some new skills for classes that deserve it. Skills, traits, and weapons all designed on making PvE dungeoneering an easier time for the classes who are kitten simply by who they are. The heals were a start, but they’re baby steps compared to what I expect out of a company that produced Eye of the North and Nightfall (my personal favorite GW1 expansions).

Do I want all classes to be a single homogenous blob? …Not really, but I’ve played games where it was sort of like that (Vindictus and SMT: Imagine actually come to mind), and I can tolerate games like that. But I’d like Anet to make this puddle just a bit deeper. No, Anet, your Lowest Common Denominator will not get confused by the sudden addition of depth, but they’ll certainly be curious about the new skills/traits/weapons and might want to experiment.