Guild Wars 2

I would like to suggest an increased cooldown on dodging in PvE, to increase build diversity there.

Both on and off the forums there seems to be a lot debate on the ‘zerker meta’, or as I think it should be more aptly called, the all glass meta. In most PvE environments, it is simply optimal to build for extreme damage output, with very little regard to survivability, and not very much regard to utility either.
Long story short, the advice most PvE players get is: Grab a berserker’s set with scholar runes, go deep in the damage trait lines and pick the traits and skills that add the most damage to you and your party. You do not need tanky armor as dodging at the right time can negate a large portion of the damage you take.

Why this glass focus is terrible for build as well as armor set diversity has been discussed ad nauseam, and I will not repeat that here. To remedy this one-sided approach to character building in PvE, I would like to suggest increasing the cooldown of dodging while in combat by a large amount, so that it is no longer possible to dodge all big hits by bosses.

Characters can currently dodge two times (with vigor: four times) every twenty seconds, or once (twice) every 10 seconds. Decreasing the regeneration of endurance to allow for, e.g. only two dodges every 30 seconds, could make dungeon and open world content more challenging, and force builds to take support and survivability into account, while leaving dodging a core mechanic of combat.

I know this solution is far from optimal, but I believe it is a change Arenanet can make with a very low development cost, while having a large impact on the ‘zerker problem’.
What are your thoughts on this?

Enemies could also attack more often.

So, you’ve gone from a zerker meta to a PVT meta. What have you accomplished? You are not in anyway helping build diversity, but actually limiting it.

A thief can be in full zerk gear, but a support player by spamming blind fields, meaning that being in anything other that dps gear is pointless, as no one will be taking much if any damage.

Guardian and Mesmer can use reflect, allowing the group to not take damage from projectiles, making survivability gear/traits pointless.

There are plenty of “support” options through weapon skills and utilities that needing any other gear in pve is pointless.

I understand that people want build diversity and want to go into a dungeon as a water camping healing ele and feel useful/needed by the group, but that isn’t the case. Yes, you can go into an instance as a water camping healing ele, but unless your group lacks a lot of dps (which they will be lacking one person’s dps as you would be in healing), then needing heals or a tank is a useless concept.

This game was designed with the intent that no one class or spec would be required to complete content. This means that you can complete Arah with a group full of Necros and Rangers, if you are so inclined.

There are lots of different ways they can dissuade players using all berserk stats. Increasing the dodge timer isn’t one of them.

You guys are absolutely right, looking at my post a few hours later made me realize that my idea was probably not quite as brilliant as I thought it was at the time.

Fatalyz, thank you for the constructive reply.

Wethospu.6437:

Enemies could also attack more often.

This ^.

I have been saying since launch that the way to get rid of the zerker meta & make more styles of play viable is to make enemies do more unavoidable damage but the same or less telegraphed spike damage.

This could be done several ways

1: Make enemies attack faster but for less damage per attack.
2: More frequent use of conditions (though this route would require some classes like thieves/mesmers/rangers get more condition removal)
3: More bosses/mobs/NPC’s with access to stuns, dazes, immobilize, weakness etc…

As for weather or not this would cause other gear/trait types to simply become the meta. Possible, but it all depends on how it’s tuned.

Now as for condition specs, it will likely take allot more work than what i mentioned above to make them something more people would consider using. As is the way the scale, cap & work needs some serious work.

Waikd.4632:

You guys are absolutely right, looking at my post a few hours later made me realize that my idea was probably not quite as brilliant as I thought it was at the time.

Fatalyz, thank you for the constructive reply.

No problem. I understand that people want build diversity. And you have it, it’s just a matter of if it is the best possible solution or not. The way that PVE works in this game, anything done to remove the zerk meta will only create a new meta, for example a PVT meta.

They have created some encounters where certain things are needed, for example the husks on Triple Trouble are hurt by condis. But if you put that in a dungeon, then you start getting LFG’s, LF Condi <Insert Class here>. If you are making a group, and you don’t want to play a specific way, then you are stuck waiting for that one or two people that play a spec that is needed, instead of just picking up whoever wants to go, and going.

Quite frankly, I enjoy the fact that I don’t have to change a build that I like playing to fill something like doing condi damage, or having to wait for someone that can. Four days a week, I have at most 2 hours to play, and if I have to spend 30 min waiting for someone to fill a role, I don’t feel that that would be a change that would be beneficial to the game. If I have to change my role to fill that one, well what happened to play how I want?

We all have ways that we want to play and enjoy playing, the current system allows for everyone to play how they want to play. If someone can suggest a system that allows everyone to play how they want to play without having to require certain builds, classes, or anything restricting like that, I’m all ears.

If some kind of unavoidable damage stream were introduced (in the shape of a lack of active defenses, unavoidable hits, enviromental effects, or whatever), everything could be sumarized on if you can beat the encounter before you die by attrition or not.

A damage oriented group would receive serious harm over time but might kill enemies fast enough to still suceed. For a PVT one the fight would take longer but could still be doable thanks to a higher survivability.
When both specs are mixed, however, PVT characters would slow down the fight and cause berserker ones to die (PVT ones might die later too after losing some of the support of their dead comrades). Without a manipulable aggro mechanic, there’s just no way to take advantage of that diversity.

This is not far from what we have now: most PvE content can be completed with different degrees of damage/sustain, but different focused specs don’t combine well together (still viable tough because most content is quite easy). It’s just that one of the possible approaches gets the job done faster, so it shows as superior from a farming perspective.
I could sincerely agree with making the game overall thougher for offensive setups in order to balance their natural advantage (some fights are fairly OK in this regard, but most are not), but that’s still far from a perfect solution and, definitely, it wouldn’t create any diversity in the sense of mixed parties. That’s something that can’t shine withotu a clear aggro system or special encounter mechanics.

DPS orentated armor in PvE:
Dodge an attack: survive.
Fail dodging an attack: die.

Defense orientated armor in PvE:
Dodge an attack: survive.
Fail dodging an attack: die.

So your suggestion would result in more death regardless of armor type.
Why do you think this would be good?

There’s simply no point in doing this.
It’s really not a good idea.

If you want more challenge the content should be made more challenging.

I had the same though once, that dodge may be the problem but soon realized that wasn’t the case.

The problem are the mobs, and the design behind them. If they could attack faster, increase the melee AoE damage, or change the mechanics in some AoE skills would change the meta in PvE really fast, and “stack” gameplay would be reduced a lot.

why harm necros?

Kiba.9701:

….
The problem are the mobs, and the design behind them. If they could attack faster, increase the melee AoE damage, or change the mechanics in some AoE skills would change the meta in PvE really fast, and “stack” gameplay would be reduced a lot.

Still wouldn’t change it all that much, as someone else already stated, it still becomes a matter of kill it before it kills you, whether by attrition or not. Edit: forgot to add another reason why it wouldn’t help much, esp on trash, simply for the fact that if your group has proper boon share, you can pretty much almost instantly wipe any group of trash. Not to mention you can spike rez anyone that gets downed. Oh you have more aoe’s and faster ones too, learn to dodge them, learn positioning, unless you make the aoe’s 360, then you are forcing people to have to back off and range it down or have to bring someone with a specific spec, which takes away from the play how I want design.

Whether people like it or not “stack” gameplay was intended by design. All you have to do is look at how combo fields and boon sharing works. It requires you to be within about 600 of each other, and the best way to accomplish this so that everyone gets the boons, is to stack. Or maybe you are against stacking in a corner to move the mobs to you and make sure that they don’t move out of range of the aoe’s that are being dropped by your group. The simple fact remains, you don’t want to stack or don’t like it, don’t do it, don’t force a game play change on people that are ok with the current design. The current design is the only one that lets everyone play how they want to play. You want to wear nomad’s on your guardian and be a “tank”, go right ahead, but don’t request a change that makes a build that is “needed” Again, the system that we have right now, allows for everyone to play how they want to play.