[PvE] Revising the "DPS Meta"

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Posted by: Painbow.6059

Painbow.6059

even if you made toughness or vitality stats 2x as good or healing power 10x as good zerk will always rule

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Posted by: Belenwyn.8674

Belenwyn.8674

even if you made toughness or vitality stats 2x as good or healing power 10x as good zerk will always rule

No, you can design encounters where your defense is much more important than your offense.

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Posted by: Painbow.6059

Painbow.6059

even if you made toughness or vitality stats 2x as good or healing power 10x as good zerk will always rule

No, you can design encounters where your defense is much more important than your offense.

i look forward to this, generally everything in pve is easy anyways so making stuff more difficult will make more of a challenge for zerker players thus making zerker still better

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Posted by: Ahlen.7591

Ahlen.7591

even if you made toughness or vitality stats 2x as good or healing power 10x as good zerk will always rule

No, you can design encounters where your defense is much more important than your offense.

Not really, because the best defense isn’t based on stats. The best defense is skills and evades.

Evade, Blind(sometimes), reflect, block, etc are far more important the harder the content gets. Not toughess/vit/healing pow.

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Posted by: Thaia.5146

Thaia.5146

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

Pls Jon make us a favor, stop ruining this game.

We dont need to farm another ascendent set because after 1,5 year you realized that pve is zerk based.

There’s no difference between a zerk meta or a cond meta in a game where you require months to farm a full set.

We need that anet allows players to switch easily gear, build and class in way to be always perfomant and we need anet to introduce NEW CONTENT and these NEW CONTENT should be made in way to push people on switching gear\build on demand (and not by default like you’re telling)

In other words we need you to play gw1 for a while and then just copy cantha here.

Sometime is better to copy than having idea.

Regards

This guy right here. He’s right.

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Posted by: Black Box.9312

Black Box.9312

The problem isn’t with zerker gear, it’s with the AI behavior that is too easy to take advantage of using gimmicks like stacking. The ‘hardcore PvE’ community will defend it to the death, but the fact is that when you can force an enemy to come directly to you so you can burst it down faster than it can kill you, you have yourself a poorly designed game. Make the AI smarter, give them dodges, give them more varied mechanics than the simple 1 attack every x seconds that will 1 shot you if you don’t blind, aegis, or dodge. Make enemies that actively try to survive instead of just trying to kill the players. Make them actively try to kite players by trying to keep themselves a specific distance away from the nearest player. Give them things like blind, aegis, and dodge.

The only nerfing to damage builds that should be taking place, if any, should be damage modifiers from traits, sigils, and runes. If you decrease the effectiveness of damage-boosting stats, you will break the balance of the game even further.

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Posted by: Painbow.6059

Painbow.6059

even if you made toughness or vitality stats 2x as good or healing power 10x as good zerk will always rule

No, you can design encounters where your defense is much more important than your offense.

Not really, because the best defense isn’t based on stats. The best defense is skills and evades.

Evade, Blind(sometimes), reflect, block, etc are far more important the harder the content gets. Not toughess/vit/healing pow.

Exactly, in 49 fractals you would actually survive less with defensive gear

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Posted by: Belenwyn.8674

Belenwyn.8674

Not really, because the best defense isn’t based on stats. The best defense is skills and evades.

Evade, Blind(sometimes), reflect, block, etc are far more important the harder the content gets. Not toughess/vit/healing pow.

Imagine an encounter forces you to operate a machine or a weapon like a mortar in WvW. No evade, no normal skills for you available. Who could operate the device longer when you get constantly damaged? Berserker or bunker?

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Posted by: Painbow.6059

Painbow.6059

but there isn’t one

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Posted by: ipan.4356

ipan.4356

I’d like to see them take the active elements of defense and expand them, based upon stats.

Why does dodge always have to be dodge? What if you had a minor (or major) trait that turned “dodge” into “parry” or “block” (these could have requirements placed upon them – such as equipping a certain weapon, without which it would revert to a standard dodge). You would have a variety of defensive skills, affected by traits and stats, and would offer a much larger range of customizability. For example, perhaps 20 pts. in Toughness turns your ‘dodge’ into block, but only if you are wielding a Shield, Focus, Torch, Greatsword, or Staff. 20 pts. in Precision turns it into ‘parry’ – but only if you are wielding a 1-hd weapon in your off hand (such as sword, axe, or dagger – but not torch, focus, or warhorn).

I’m just brainstorming – there are all kinds of possibilities for expanding what your ‘endurance’ bar does, and tying it into your stats.

Also, I agree that enemies themselves need to have more diverse options for combat, to shake things up. If fights weren’t so straightforward, then people would have to improvise – including character builds – a lot more.

Make combat all around more “actiony”, but provide many different options in how to approach it.

Make Retaliation hit for a percentage of your Toughness/Armor, instead of Power based – now there’s a trippy idea!

Make different conditions do some different things based on defensive stats instead of just on Condition Damage.

What if – with Vampiric Precision traited – a Necro’s bleeds returned 15% of the damage done as health to the Necro? But those same bleeds caused neighboring opponents (not the target itself) to get Chilled, if the Necro traited Spinal Shivers? Those conditions could have small differences in the way they work directly dependent upon traits and stats. (Again, just brainstorming)

What if, with 25 pts. in Precision, a Thief gains critical bleeds (some kind of multiplier to the base damage based upon crit dmg)? Or with 30 pts. in Power, Poison becomes Mighty Poison, which applies -25% Endurance Regen as well.

For Mesmers, what if 20 pts. in Inspiration could give Illusions a passive Heal – or a small amount of Life Steal (allowing you to sustain dmg from Phantasms).

I could go on with hundreds of more ideas, but I think I made my point – traits should more radically change how everything works, including defensive abilities, so that going for defensive builds doesn’t cripple one as much in other areas.

I think my idea of tying the damage of Retaliation to Toughness instead of Power is probably the best example I came up with, and I’d like to see that actually get implemented.

I’m sure everyone here, and the devs, could probably refine this to a much greater degree than I could, but I just wanted to put this on the table.

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Posted by: Belenwyn.8674

Belenwyn.8674

But you can design one.

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

Imagine an encounter forces you to operate a machine or a weapon like a mortar in WvW. No evade, no normal skills for you available. Who could operate the device longer when you get constantly damaged? Berserker or bunker?

So you cannot complete a path if you do not have a bunker? How’s that in line with “you can complete pve with any team build”?

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Posted by: Dalanor.5387

Dalanor.5387

Not really, because the best defense isn’t based on stats. The best defense is skills and evades.

Evade, Blind(sometimes), reflect, block, etc are far more important the harder the content gets. Not toughess/vit/healing pow.

Imagine an encounter forces you to operate a machine or a weapon like a mortar in WvW. No evade, no normal skills for you available. Who could operate the device longer when you get constantly damaged? Berserker or bunker?

Anyone. You know, you have teammates … One of the CoE paths already has something similar part with a control panel.

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Posted by: Belenwyn.8674

Belenwyn.8674

Imagine an encounter forces you to operate a machine or a weapon like a mortar in WvW. No evade, no normal skills for you available. Who could operate the device longer when you get constantly damaged? Berserker or bunker?

So you cannot complete a path if you do not have a bunker? How’s that in line with “you can complete pve with any team build”?

You could still complete it. It would take only longer. Let’s say 30-60s as full bunker team and 3-5 minutes as zerker team to win the encounter.

Anyone. You know, you have teammates … One of the CoE paths already has something similar part with a control panel.

Four teammates four more devices.

(edited by Belenwyn.8674)

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Posted by: ipan.4356

ipan.4356

Above all, I’d like to see stats do more than be a static modifier – they can fundamentally change the way abilities work, which creates far more diversity and possibility in builds.

And is a hell of a lot more fun.

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Posted by: aelfwe.4239

aelfwe.4239

So after people have gone out and bought ascended armor and weapons for their characters best possible builds, Anet now wants to change the meta completely? That’s completely unfair.

I smell a NGE level catastrophe coming our way !
be careful what you do here a.net, it might be the beginning of the end for the game

- after going through all the time gates and all the laurels.
- after spending considerable time figuring out what works and what works best.
- I’ve been playing since beta and if suddenly all my gear for all my 8 characters is made obsolete.

I’D QUIT
and so would a lot of people !
GW2 NGE No thank you, we don’t need that mistake coming our way ever !

i will dnever buy back any anet game and i’m not joking.

Changing meta after 1,5 years deleting 1,5 year player effort, without adding any new content and putting people in need of farm again gear isnt a game design choice.

Its a criminal act.

Anet will pay a lot if this happens.

Aelfwe Dark Asura Mesmer\Thief,
FREE PYRO

(edited by aelfwe.4239)

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Posted by: mexay.3902

mexay.3902

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

I’m about to say what’s already been said here, but I feel the more voices the better.

Do not nerf berserker gear or Power/Precision specs

This will not fix the problem. It will only make it worse. Remember that if you lower how much DPS a berserker stat puts out, it’s incredibly likely you’ll also nerf the damage a non-berserker spec is putting out.

Buff other playstyles

Introduce new mechanics to the PvE scene. I can almost 100% guarantee you’d see a split of 2 power DPS, 1 Control, 1 Condition DPS and 1 support if you changed the way bosses worked to be suitable for those. Don’t just buff conditions or lower the amount of stacks of defiant an enemy has. Remove defiant, make enemies far more vulnerable to conditions, add mechanics like “on-crit retaliation” so that if you’re criting a great deal, you need a support character to help.

Decrease the health of enemies and introduce new ways to fight them. The problem isn’t that DPS Spec and zerk gear being so dominant, it’s that the other specs are so utterly weak and completely unnecessary that bringing them is a waste of a slot.

There is thousands of interesting, yet simple ways to improve the mechanics. Adding procing stability, add crit-based retaliation, swap the HP sponge with toughness sponge.

Again, I repeat do not nerf berserkers, rework the mechanics.

noice

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Posted by: Fenrir.3609

Fenrir.3609

Why do I get the feeling you are going to totally f*** this up.

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

You could still complete it. It would take only longer. Let’s say 30-60s as full bunker team and 3-5 minutes as zerker team to win the encounter.

And that makes sense how exactly? Playing easier builds (yes, bunkers are easier) to complete content faster. Do you want the game to be harder or faceroll? Because what you just said tells me it’s the former one.

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Posted by: Wethospu.6437

Wethospu.6437

Gear is not the issue.

Nerf stacking by giving boss a cleave with at least 5 target limit.

Buff conditions, implement some kind of condition overflow for PvE.

Maybe do something with reflects (I’m probably biased with Warrior main).

Balance innate survivability by buffing health of low tier and reducing health of high tier.

(edited by Wethospu.6437)

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

Gear is not the issue.

Nerf stacking by giving boss a cleave with 5 target limit.

No, make all attacks of all the bosses not being affected by aoe limit. Will also help with certain world bosses which are being zerged down.

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Posted by: Ahlen.7591

Ahlen.7591

Not really, because the best defense isn’t based on stats. The best defense is skills and evades.

Evade, Blind(sometimes), reflect, block, etc are far more important the harder the content gets. Not toughess/vit/healing pow.

Imagine an encounter forces you to operate a machine or a weapon like a mortar in WvW. No evade, no normal skills for you available. Who could operate the device longer when you get constantly damaged? Berserker or bunker?

I imagine that it’s crappy game design. But then I don’t like having control of my character removed to play some pre-determined world object instead.

I play the game to play my character.

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Posted by: Latinkuro.9420

Latinkuro.9420

Imagine an encounter forces you to operate a machine or a weapon like a mortar in WvW. No evade, no normal skills for you available. Who could operate the device longer when you get constantly damaged? Berserker or bunker?

So you cannot complete a path if you do not have a bunker? How’s that in line with “you can complete pve with any team build”?

requiring a bunker is no different than requiring a tank, shortly after we’d need a wack a mole healer to keep the tank up and be back to the moronic holy trinity.

people talk about beserker being faceroll, which is not true even when stacking you gotta know how to pull, where to stack, what boons to prioritize and what condis to prioritize for removal etc etc, I’ve seen many parties wipe while stacking and not understanding why, some in the party mention but I just did it and it was fine, that is because the majority of that party knew what they were doing.

I understand some do not like to run pure dps builds and that is fine but understand that we are not forcing you to run zerker, please do not force us to lower our gameplay and dungeon clearing for your sake, what happened to play the way you like ?
I like clearing fast and moving on, if you like to smell the roses assemble a group of like minded people and go do the dungeon, while we can keep clearing dungeons the way we like it.

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Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089

DiogoSilva.7089

“Play the way I want”

Does not means

“Please, keep this game broken so I can abuse it”

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Posted by: Bloodyhell.8760

Bloodyhell.8760

there’s some point of this discussion I understand, and some I understand not.

1 pug players have high less dps than organized gruop (first post): do u have considered this difference could be the reward for “organization”? Why should it be weird? After playing a year with my 4 team player, I can tell u that I play as I’m managing all 5 characters, cause I know what they’re doing and what to do to massimize the group result. I know their build, and I have learnt best synergie of our playstile. I mean: of course organized players do an incredible major dps effect!!!

2 not all the build possibilities are incouraged. Depends. what are you talking about? if dungeon, I totally agree with you, about the rest no. Let’s talk about dungeons, that, btw, are so important as final content are. The ideas following are only about dungeons.

There are big problems about characters that don’t fill in meta builds because of game mechancs. Necros, for example, are designed for aoe damage. But this rather sucks in dungeons, where aoe is required only for trush mobs.

Btw, it’s not even true that only dps play dungeon. most common character and builds are mesmer hybrid (phantasm master), ele blaster, guardian healer, warrior berserker.

Problem is about the other classes: necros because of canditions gameplay, ranger because it does not excell in anything (no damage, no party buff, no healer), thief is only master skip cause of invisibility, engineer because.. wtf, is there an engineer in gw2???

There is something that has to be done for this characters that has nothing to do with meta high dps research. Meta dps is not the research of character best dps, but the research of party best dps. this involve different build of different character that are “best at”. nowadays this characters are best at: damage (warriors) buff (ele) guarantee long life and so long dps (guardian healer), control mob’s position (mesmer).

I think Arenanet has to find something in which the classes i mentioned can be “best at”. An idea: necro debuff mobs, thief take aggro for short time while in stealth… just to give an idea of what i’m trying to say. In dungeon, “best at” is a lot more important that “hiher personal dps”.

One thing left, if we’re talking of dungeon, Arenanet, i prey you, take a break from living update and work kitten dungeon. I think that devs really have to clear community about what exploit in game are, and fix all of the trush exploit are. I don’t want to be in a party that does lupicus in 10 seconds, but if the devs consider it right, i think WE HAVE RIGHT TO KNOW WHERE THE GAME IS GOING IN ALL WAYS THAT AREN’T L.S.

thanks for reading, excuse grammar errors^^

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

“Play the way I want”

Does not means

“Please, keep this game broken so I can abuse it”

The game is broken not because of the gear but because of how trivial the mechanics are in pve.

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Posted by: Ahlen.7591

Ahlen.7591

“Play the way I want”

Does not means

“Please, keep this game broken so I can abuse it”

To turn that around in your face, what you’re asking for is the game to be broken for others so you can play it how YOU want.

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Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089

DiogoSilva.7089

Also, people very quickly trash the holy trinity as if it was the worst thing ever. Well, it might not be the best thing ever, but a MMO being stuck to three well-defined roles is far more appealing than a MMO being stuck to a single DPS role.

Not only does the holy trinity offer more build diversity than what we currently have, it also promotes better and deeper teamplaying.

No, GW2 doesn’t needs the trinity. But if teamwork is ever to be taken seriously, then roles must exist in one form or another. And they are meant to exist. GW2 has its own trinity: damage/ support/ control, which in theory is a more sophisticated, broader version of the holy dps-tank-heal trinity.

Tell me how can a game promote team playing without roles. Better yet, tell me how can a game promote an excellent level of team playing between random pugs, without roles.

To turn that around in your face, what you’re asking for is the game to be broken for others so you can play it how YOU want.

You’re jumping to false conclusions.

(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

Also, people very quickly trash the holy trinity as if it was the worst thing ever. Well, it might not be the best thing ever, but a MMO being stuck to three well-defined roles is far more appealing than a MMO being stuck to a single DPS role.

Not only does the holy trinity offer more build diversity than what we currently have, it also promotes better and deeper teamplaying.

No, GW2 doesn’t needs the trinity. But if teamwork is ever to be taken seriously, then roles must exist in one form or another. And they are meant to exist. GW2 has its own trinity: damage/ support/ control, which in theory is a more sophisticated, broader version of the holy dps-tank-heal trinity.

Tell me how can a game promote team playing without roles. Better yet, tell me how can a game promote an excellent level of team playing between random pugs, without roles.

GW2 trinity is soft trinity meaning those roles are interchangeable between party members. I have no clue why people want something like hammer with mace/mace warriors that would do no damage but would stunlock mobs. Shouldn’t it be required that you have to coordinate those CC instead of delegating one person for the job? Spamming skills on cooldown is never better than coordinating them.

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Posted by: Fenrir.3609

Fenrir.3609

“Glass cannons who know how to move out of the way of damage and know how to stack effectively can do more damage than me when I’m wearing defensive gear and trying to facetank, it’s not fair!!!”.

Will you be giving free changes for ascended gear when you make changes to the meta, given you decided on time gating BiS items?

(edited by Fenrir.3609)

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Posted by: SonOfJacob.7396

SonOfJacob.7396

What everyone seems to be talking about here boils down to balance – whether to a system that does not seem to even out among PUGs in dungeons, or in PvE (the original post and some responses). The rest seem to be zealously communicating their desire to not have zerker nerfed. It makes sense that “the ideal” DPS build (whatever that winds up being) will always be the meta – that’s what meta is about. I’m going to recommend something which probably won’t be popular, but would actually lend to balance.

The solution, I believe, lies in viewing this problem on it’s side – zerker shouldn’t be nerfed, but it should be used to measure the amount of balance. Let’s break down the two topics being discussed:

1) Regarding PUGs in dungeons, it would seem that since this is intended to be a group dynamic, the final boss should be scaled in difficulty based on the group total effectiveness dynamic. In other words, take the sum of all five players for their potential effectiveness: (Power * Precision * (100% + Crit Damage)) – since this IS the meta, and set it to determine the difficulty of the main boss (and you can set that total to equal the difficulty of what the final boss is now for five zerkers – so it scales DOWN for those that aren’t zerkers; this will still take time to complete a path, but will make other builds MUCH more viable). Whatever it is, I know there’s an equation that can be worked out by the devs to calculate that in virtually no time upon starting the path in any given dungeon, and then the scaling of the final boss is based on that. Furthermore, to make everything dynamic (for programming purposes on future adjustments) you could then make the lesser minions a fraction of the boss’s difficulty.

a) True group accountability requires making it harder on fewer than five players in a dungeon. If people are skilled enough to do a path with fewer than five players, then that needs scaling – just put in a simple “player count < 5 = ridiculously OP’d final boss” bit of code and the fractional minion part of the code takes care of the rest. The scale based on player count would effectively render a solo run impossible while at the same time increasing the difficulty for those that want it.

b) This also means that even if a fifth player isn’t zerker and joins an all zerker group, they don’t really cause drag on the entire group. But it also means that “any group” can truly run “any path”, which is what I think you guys are shooting for anyway. Yes, more work on the front end, but MUCH more manageable on the back end, and that’s really what good coding is about.

c) As for implementation, all you need to do to test this out is CoF P1 initially. Get the code right on that path (the most-run path) and once you have it tweaked to your satisfaction, take the model to other dungeon paths. This will, rather than nerf zerker, effectively balance the non-zerker CoF P1 run – which I’ve read endless replies in other posts about it needing to be done anyway.

d) And if you REALLY want to go crazy, allow up to 10 players in a dungeon. And here’s how you scale it: INVERSE of the < 5 player calcuation. So a team of 6 has the same scale of difficulty as a team of 4. And a team of 7 has the same scale as a team of 3. And 8 the same as 2 and 9 the same as 1. Then a team of 10 could simply be super hard mode for crazy elitists (of which I’ll never have interest to run…ever – but I’m not THAT hard core anyway).

2) Regarding PvE, I believe you’ve done as much as any group of devs could do and still make it manageable for non-zerker players to still get through almost the entire world map AND still be fun at the same time (I suppose the areas of Orr are still not as easily solo’d by non-zerkers). People seem to be underestimating the fun factor in PvE. There are a lot of Guilds and PUGs that now specifically run PvE – I’m in one that runs a full area (minus Hearts) every Wednesday at 9pm EST. It still takes about 90 minutes, but it’s because we have people bailing all the time, and new players jumping in all the time. But it’s FUN.

a) If you try to do anything about PvE to make it somehow tougher (especially on the zerker build which, let’s face it, affects all players negatively in PvE), no one will want to clear the world map as much. It just won’t be fun – which is what I think you guys were shooting for in PvE anyway.

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Posted by: aelfwe.4239

aelfwe.4239

ANET:
we introduce ascendent armor !!

Player:
QQ 450 gold to craft a full set it requires 30 laurel plenty of time gated mat QQ

1 month later

Player:
Finally i’ve complete my zerker ascendend armor, it costed a lot, but now finally i’m done

2 day later

Jon Peters:
We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berrserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

is this a troll, yeah?

Aelfwe Dark Asura Mesmer\Thief,
FREE PYRO

(edited by aelfwe.4239)

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Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089

DiogoSilva.7089

GW2 trinity is soft trinity meaning those roles are interchangeable between party members. I have no clue why people want something like hammer with mace/mace warriors that would do no damage but would stunlock mobs. Shouldn’t it be required that you have to coordinate those CC instead of delegating one person for the job? Spamming skills on cooldown is never better than coordinating them.

Tell me, how do you coordenate CC skills and party support skills between different players in a random pug team, all the while preventing redudancy and wasted skills due to the lack of voice communication?

Can I assume that a hard trinity is more user/ pug friendly than a soft trinity for deep, challenging content?

Keep in mind that I’m not saying that the holy trinity is the way to go, just giving food for thought.

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Posted by: Pexx.6327

Pexx.6327

What gets me now is the amount of negativity because the first thing people assume that will be addressed is a nerf of gear. They don’t have to touch gear to fix the current disparity between gear builds.

The problem is that the current mechanics limit players because their builds were either too strong (control builds), couldn’t be as effective due to limitations placed upon them (condition builds), or doesn’t provide enough bonus to outweigh a pure damage mindset (support builds).

If the current boss mechanics are addressed (like I specified earlier: Defiant, Condition Cap and Bulk) and tested in-depth, that’s when you should look at gear or actual combat mechanics.

Red Rum Mai // Ozma Amzo

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Posted by: Aza.2105

Aza.2105

Imagine an encounter forces you to operate a machine or a weapon like a mortar in WvW. No evade, no normal skills for you available. Who could operate the device longer when you get constantly damaged? Berserker or bunker?

So you cannot complete a path if you do not have a bunker? How’s that in line with “you can complete pve with any team build”?

requiring a bunker is no different than requiring a tank, shortly after we’d need a wack a mole healer to keep the tank up and be back to the moronic holy trinity.

people talk about beserker being faceroll, which is not true even when stacking you gotta know how to pull, where to stack, what boons to prioritize and what condis to prioritize for removal etc etc, I’ve seen many parties wipe while stacking and not understanding why, some in the party mention but I just did it and it was fine, that is because the majority of that party knew what they were doing.

I understand some do not like to run pure dps builds and that is fine but understand that we are not forcing you to run zerker, please do not force us to lower our gameplay and dungeon clearing for your sake, what happened to play the way you like ?
I like clearing fast and moving on, if you like to smell the roses assemble a group of like minded people and go do the dungeon, while we can keep clearing dungeons the way we like it.

Not really the same. In traditional mmorpgs certain classes had the ability to tank while others didn’t. In gw2 every class has the potential to bunker, support and dps. The problem with traditional rpgs was that sometimes you couldn’t find that class so you couldn’t form a group. In gw2 that wouldn’t be a problem since every class can technically do it.

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Posted by: Latinkuro.9420

Latinkuro.9420

Also, people very quickly trash the holy trinity as if it was the worst thing ever. Well, it might not be the best thing ever, but a MMO being stuck to three well-defined roles is far more appealing than a MMO being stuck to a single DPS role.

This again !
it has been discussed to death already that your perception of a single DPS role is misinformed, misguided and missing a lot of game knowledge.

just because all you see is DPS, it doesn’t mean that other support and control related things are not going on to.

the problem is people view those other roles in gw2 with kittenty trinity eyes and do not understand how gw2 support works, it’s not wack a mole of here is my meat shield beat on it while others kill you,

There’s talk in this thread about dumb AI, well the trinity AI is even dumber, attacking only the guy that is hurting you the least because he happens to have a skill that generates fake danger making you focus on him alone, now that is lame AI !

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Posted by: Manuhell.2759

Manuhell.2759

“Glass cannons who know how to move out of the way of damage and know how to stack effectively can do more damage than me when I’m wearing defensive gear and trying to facetank, it’s not fair!!!”.

The problem is that not only they do more damage, but it is also more safe to wear zerk and kill quickly than to wear defensive items and slug it on. Because defensive items don’t defend much anyway – maybe you resist one or two more hits, but as you end up taking more time, you’ll probably end risk more – and stats like healing power have very small benefits.

Also, zerkers have stats that are all multiplicative between them in the damage calculations. And that’s why it works so well – the effect ends being exponential.
Unlike the other gear types.

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Posted by: LostInSmoke.2590

LostInSmoke.2590

ANET:
we introduce ascendent armor !!

Player:
QQ 450 gold to craft a full set it requires 30 laurel plenty of time gated mat QQ

1 month later

Player:
Finally i’ve complete my zerker ascendend armor, it costed a lot, but now finally i’m done

2 day later

Jon Peters:
We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berrserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

is this a troll, yeah?

I WILL quit this game if Anet messes this up. I have 2 sets of zerker ascended armor made already.

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Posted by: JeRune.3512

JeRune.3512

It would actually be nice to get this discussion back on track; right now there are people saying that DPS (zerker) specs should be nerfed and people defending this because of multiple reasons..

We can talk all we want about if the DPS meta should be “balanced” or “nerfed” or whatever. The fact remains that the “DPS meta”, the “Zerker builds” or even the “Players” are not at fault here.. and thus should not be changed or forced to change. Even the players that feel left out because they can’t or won’t play in a predefined way must see that “gear” is not at fault here..

What is? The game mechanics.. simple as that. No trinity (which I’m not saying is desirable) means that everyone is in fact a “jack of all trades”, this wouldn’t be a problem and actaully sounds good, if the encounters in game were made to fit that. The fact is that this is NOT the case. You don’t need a jack of all trades, you don’t need a trinity, you don’t even need toughness or vitality… You have dodge and DPS, you can stack/LoS, burn everything down and GG.

So nerfing or changing the Meta? This will just result in a different Meta or in another version of “trinity”.. Both of which will result in all the same problems you have now but with a different focus.. So quick fixes for this imagined problem are just not there, simple as that.

Can something be done? Sure.. Change the whole system, dodging, buffs, condi’s and AI. Change boss skills, trash mob skills the whole lot.. In essence, change everything..
Why? Because the the current meta is inherent to the system… There was no other outcome, never was, never has been..

So please, ANet, if you want to change something so there will be more build diversity, to move away from stacking and nuking.. fine! But don’t go for the easy way out here, because honestly, you’ll destroy a lot more than is good for the game.. I’m sure you guys are thinking this thing through and I think this thread is a testament of how important your decision is going to be.. This is one thing you CAN’T screw up guys..

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Posted by: Fenrir.3609

Fenrir.3609

“Glass cannons who know how to move out of the way of damage and know how to stack effectively can do more damage than me when I’m wearing defensive gear and trying to facetank, it’s not fair!!!”.

The problem is that not only they do more damage, but it is also more safe to wear zerk and kill quickly than to wear defensive items and slug it on. Because defensive items don’t defend much anyway – maybe you resist one or two more hits – and stats like healing power have very small benefits.

Also, zerkers have stats that are all multiplicative between them in the damage calculations. And that’s why it works so well – the effect ends being exponential.
Unlike the other gear types.

Zerkers/dps does that if the person/group knows what they are doing. In a more action based combat system (which this is meant to be in comparison to your typical mmo) that makes perfect sense.

In order to effectively overhaul the system without making a “lets just nerf x” screw up of it, then you have to overhaul the entire emphasis of the combat system and take it away from the “no trinity, action combat” style.

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Posted by: Odd Magnet.3970

Odd Magnet.3970

[…] “boss aura” […]

Borrowing this name from you Guanglai :p
(but with a different idea of mine)

Boss Aura
Bosses only take X% damage, goes up by Y% every Z seconds
(doesn’t have to be liniar)

Example:
Only takes 1% of damage you deal, goes up by 1% every 5 seconds

Why
It would make it harder for pure-zerkers to just burst it down with almost no risk.
Now you need to either coordinate your dodges/aegis very good or put in a bit more survivability.
Bosses would take a bit longer, but everything would still be doable for full zerkers.

It could even go into 100+% damage. That would be nice for more defensive groups, since it gets faster the longer they need for the boss (or in other words: stay alive)

It would make bosses take a bit longer for speedrun-groups, making it harder to do in pure-zerker, but wouldn’t nerf zerker-groups, especially not good coordinated groups.
At the same time it would make some defensive stats better for average good players (without a good coordinated group) and even let them be a bit faster than before (if the “Boss Aura” goes to 100+% damage)

Your thoughts?

I don’t attract, I don’t repel. That’s kinda odd

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Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089

DiogoSilva.7089

This again !
it has been discussed to death already that your perception of a single DPS role is misinformed, misguided and missing a lot of game knowledge.

just because all you see is DPS, it doesn’t mean that other support and control related things are not going on to.

I play this game’s pvp, I know absolutely well how this game works, how the soft trinity works, and how to control, support and deal damage effectively in a single build.

However, there’s a reason why 5v5 pvp battles are a bit messy, why GvG in WvW is zergy, and why the pvp map designers try to spread the players as much as possible with secondary objectives.

The current soft-trinity role setup is not as efficient as the old holy trinity at keeping group battles well-paced and organized.

Maybe there are solutions for that? Who knows, but some people bash the holy trinity and praise GW2’s soft trinity as if what we’ve got is perfect.

(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

Tell me, how do you coordenate CC skills and party support skills between different players in a random pug team, all the while preventing redudancy and wasted skills due to the lack of voice communication?

Can I assume that a hard trinity is more user/ pug friendly than a soft trinity for deep, challenging content?

Keep in mind that I’m not saying that the holy trinity is the way to go, just giving food for thought.

Dungeons in Guild Wars 2 reward players who enjoy organized parties, epic challenges, and delving deeper into the secrets of Tyria

Yes, dungeons should either require higher coordination or you should be force play with training wheels (defensive passive stats).

Yes, soft trinity is less pug friendly but you don’t need to wait an hour for a healer.

Also, gear should have no stats, just pure skins like in pvp and those stats should be easily obtainable. Then no one would cry because they have to farm timegated gear for another year.

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

Not really the same. In traditional mmorpgs certain classes had the ability to tank while others didn’t. In gw2 every class has the potential to bunker, support and dps. The problem with traditional rpgs was that sometimes you couldn’t find that class so you couldn’t form a group. In gw2 that wouldn’t be a problem since every class can technically do it.

Except that vast amount of your stats come from your gear which is not easily changeable. You can retrait, change utilities but you cannot magically get 1000 healing power.

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

The problem is that not only they do more damage, but it is also more safe to wear zerk and kill quickly than to wear defensive items and slug it on. Because defensive items don’t defend much anyway – maybe you resist one or two more hits, but as you end up taking more time, you’ll probably end risk more – and stats like healing power have very small benefits.

It’s safer because of the protection guardians and, in lesser extent, mesmers give.

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Posted by: Aza.2105

Aza.2105

Tell me, how do you coordenate CC skills and party support skills between different players in a random pug team, all the while preventing redudancy and wasted skills due to the lack of voice communication?

Can I assume that a hard trinity is more user/ pug friendly than a soft trinity for deep, challenging content?

Keep in mind that I’m not saying that the holy trinity is the way to go, just giving food for thought.

Dungeons in Guild Wars 2 reward players who enjoy organized parties, epic challenges, and delving deeper into the secrets of Tyria

Yes, dungeons should either require higher coordination or you should be force play with training wheels (defensive passive stats).

Yes, soft trinity is less pug friendly but you don’t need to wait an hour for a healer.

Also, gear should have no stats, just pure skins like in pvp and those stats should be easily obtainable. Then no one would cry because they have to farm timegated gear for another year.

Its funny because in traditional mmorpgs dps players are considered the bottom tier out of the holy trinity. The problem was that it was always difficult to find healer and tank, you have to question why that is.

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Posted by: Aza.2105

Aza.2105

Not really the same. In traditional mmorpgs certain classes had the ability to tank while others didn’t. In gw2 every class has the potential to bunker, support and dps. The problem with traditional rpgs was that sometimes you couldn’t find that class so you couldn’t form a group. In gw2 that wouldn’t be a problem since every class can technically do it.

Except that vast amount of your stats come from your gear which is not easily changeable. You can retrait, change utilities but you cannot magically get 1000 healing power.

Certainly, I like your idea about gear not having stats. That would be a good change. Stats could come from traits.

But I don’t see this happening.

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Posted by: Black Box.9312

Black Box.9312

Maybe do something with reflects (I’m probably biased with Warrior main).

The best thing to do with reflects is to just eliminate damage scaling with it. Make it a 1 to 1 ratio: You reflect the same amount of damage that would have been dealt to you, give or take any potential armor modifiers. Critical damage and trait modifiers need to be removed from the equation entirely.

P.S.: I main a guardian, so I don’t think it’s really a matter of bias.

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Posted by: Magi.8643

Magi.8643

Most boss enemy’s have the ability to one-shot players regardless of gear or spec so investing in toughness or vitality ends up being redundant meaning your better of actively avoiding damage via dodge or skills/utilities.

This is the main reason for berserker’s gear been the most monopolized in the game as its better to use your gear for more offensive stats essentially its better to kill before your killed.

The only thing a nerf would cause for sure is a uproar for player who have spent there time and gold to build there berserker’s ascended sets only then to find it useless for previous content they used to do.

Real the focus should be on the dungeon mechanics and bosses rather then the gear making them needs more then just the typical stack, melt and roll tactics and opening to more varieties of builds and gear. But the chances of this happening is slim to none.

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

Its funny because in traditional mmorpgs dps players are considered the bottom tier out of the holy trinity. The problem was that it was always difficult to find healer and tank, you have to question why that is.

I never played any mmo but I would assume that it’s because of utter boredom, at least the case of healers.

Maybe also because it’s harder to play get gold by farming solo. Just making assumptions.