Guild Wars 2

Well In this topic I want to discuss about mechanincs that are usefull in other game types but useless in PvE and how to incorporate them into PvE , and example of this would be boon removal most enemies don’t run boons and when they do they reapply immediately so boonstripping mechanics are not very effictive in these situations as well.

I also suggest that we all take the same format like this:

mechanic:
reason for failure:
solutions:

for boon removal it would be like this:

mechanic: boon removal
reason for failure: enemies use too few boons and when they do they reapply to fast
solutions: enemies use more boons and when they do they are on a longer cooldown.

Boon Removal

I agree that very few enemies in PVE use boons, and when they do, they reapply them the moment you remove them…. thus rendering the act of removing them pointless. Many other boons last so short, that there is very little difference between removing them, and them wearing off naturally.

Solution:

We need enchantments like in GW1. Boons that remain where they are, until they are removed, and which cannot be recast very quickly. Removing the enchantment should put it on recharge, since we no longer have a mana system to limit the spamming of skills. Add these enchantments to bosses, so boon removal becomes vital in taking down certain powerful opponents.

Defiant/Unshakeable

Effectively kills control skills, because it does not scale with the number of players actually using control skills. Peeling down all the stacks of defiant takes way too long, and it makes CC as a defense against bosses useless.

Solution:

Make Defiant a buff that lasts for a few seconds after a boss is struck by a control skill. If the boss is struck by any control skill, while defiant is still up, he gains more stacks of defiant, and you have to wait longer for it to wear off. This discourages spamming CC skills for stun-locking, while still allowing you to use it to defend yourself.

Height differences and ranged combat

It really is a shame that when ever you attack things from a vantage point, they go invulnerable and regenerate all their health. This kind of defeats the purpose of having a ranged weapon. Plus the system is so buggy, that enemies will often remain invulnerable, even when the player is already back on normal ground. This strange rule for PVE is also completely at odds with wvw and pvp. It is a bandage for poor ai.

Solution:

Give enemies ranged skills, pull moves, or allow them to flee.

Confusion/retalition

A condition and a boon that both are useless in pve due to the low attack speed of the enemies. It is something that really limits both the mesmer and the guardian.

solution:
An increase in attack speed but lower damage would be a good idea to solve this. Downside is that it weakens dodges/ blocks and aegis.

There is a huge imbalance in regards to confusion/retaliation. Some of the new Living Story enemies, and dredge of course, all spam confusion like crazy, and it lasts really long. But when we use it, it lasts very short, and is not all that effective at all. One of the biggest problems how ever, is that it isn’t fun as a mechanic. It’s just annoying. There’s not much you can do against confusion, except wait it out, or take the damage as you remove it. It doesn’t seem to encourage much strategy in PVE.

Another gotcha about confusion is that PVE confusion do twice the damage of PVP confusion.

This means that 10 stacks of PVE confusion hit as much as 20 PVP equivalent. And 25 hits as much as 50!

This hardly affects mobs, as they attack about once or second. But any character with a fast autoattack chain can go from full health to downed very quickly.

Keep in mind that at launch, WVW confusion followed PVE numbers. But where quickly reduced to PVP numbers because facing confusion stacking builds were virtually suicide.

Speaking about boon removal, I want enemies which actively purge my boons.

digiowl.9620:

This hardly affects mobs, as they attack about once or second. But any character with a fast autoattack chain can go from full health to downed very quickly.

I feel like this could be fixed by instead of PvE having double damage, it should have double duration on confusion.

Carighan.6758:

Speaking about boon removal, I want enemies which actively purge my boons.

digiowl.9620:

This hardly affects mobs, as they attack about once or second. But any character with a fast autoattack chain can go from full health to downed very quickly.

I feel like this could be fixed by instead of PvE having double damage, it should have double duration on confusion.

Or up the attack frequency of mobs in general as that would take some bite out of the zerker meta.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

There is a huge imbalance in regards to confusion/retaliation. Some of the new Living Story enemies, and dredge of course, all spam confusion like crazy, and it lasts really long. But when we use it, it lasts very short, and is not all that effective at all. One of the biggest problems how ever, is that it isn’t fun as a mechanic. It’s just annoying. There’s not much you can do against confusion, except wait it out, or take the damage as you remove it. It doesn’t seem to encourage much strategy in PVE.

Enemies should be directly based on players then, like they were in GW1. If they can attack at the same speed, they’ll be penalized, and they wouldn’t be able to use as many super monster variants of things we do.

Unpredictability.4086:

Enemies should be directly based on players then, like they were in GW1. If they can attack at the same speed, they’ll be penalized, and they wouldn’t be able to use as many super monster variants of things we do.

Exactly! If more monsters behaved like players do, and stuck to the rules, then there would be some good counter play. But the dozens of strange exceptions that have been made for monsters, have kind of broken the combat to the point where everyone just DPS’s everything to death.