Guild Wars 2

Azreell.1568:

The funny part is Anet wants to have build and gear diversity.

Or so they told us that is the reason for the zerker meta dps nerf which basically lowers the dps of all players in game via crit damage.

Then they design new content with nothing more then one huge glorified DPS check.

They really need to make up their minds because it’s starting to frustrate far to many people.

To be fair, I am fairly certain that this whole Scarlet series was already finished in development before they started the CDI. It is pointless to go back to change the stuff that is already completed.

All our opinions will be used for future contents. Gameplay, lore, etc.

CHIPS.6018:

Berserkers, unless supported by healers, will certainly need to retreat from the fight to rest up. This way there is an active role for healers and tanks.

You may not be aware of this, it seems many are not, but GW2 was created and marketed as having no tanks or healers. When they advertised GW2 as not having a holy trinity, no tanks or healers, was your first thought “Man that sounds great! I cant wait to make a tank or healer!”? I’m not being sarcastic. It is an honest question. I wonder this on the rare occasions i pug with tank guards and healer eles.

Vargamonth.2047:

In any case, when player gear (even trait/weapon) choices are mostly about a balance between damage output and passive survivability, there’ll always be some kind of DPS check. Without them, designing a content to be challenging for tanky builds but still doable by more aggresive specs is extremely complicated.
The only downside on tanky gear is that it kills way slower and, when you’re going to have a limited amount of tries (temporary content taking place at fixed hours), maximizing the success rate becomes way more important than completion speed.
Without DPS checks, there’ll be no use for anything but the most defensive armor sets (currently, while suboptimal, you can use them as a cover for possible mistakes; the opposite can’t ever be true).

I think WvW is a great example of where Berserker doesn’t work.

In WvW, the damage comes at random times. You have no idea when your enemy will hit you. You enemies are human, and they do whatever they want. There is no set pattern.

The result? Only the best of the best WvWers will dare to use berserker gear in a zerg fight.

Why? It can be roughly estimated that 90% of the berserker gear users in WvW will not survive that first zerg engagement.

Now, a zerg fight usually involves the two zergs engaging, breaking off to buff/heal, engaging again, breaking off to buff/heal again, etc etc. However none of this concerns berserker gear users. 90% of them will be dead in that very first engagement.

Is there a timer in WvW zerg fights? Nope. But it works. So how exactly is this different from Living Story events?

Because WvW, in general, are highly successful in killing off berserker gear users. Living Story events, on the other hand, are very poor at killing off berserker gear users.

I think the game need to be designed so that there is a 80-90% chance of dying for berserker gear users.

Maximum glass cannon=>90% chance of dying once every 5 minutes (on average).
Maximum tanker=>10% chance of dying once every 5 minutes (on average).

This way, there is a real incentive to get more tanky. Glass cannons that dies that often actually deals less damage than more tankier builds. And if too many players are glass cannons, it is possible for a zerg wipe (people are dying too fast too often to be ressed, so eventually everyone is dead). That’s the mission failure; not due to timer running out.

CHIPS.6018:

Vargamonth.2047:

In any case, when player gear (even trait/weapon) choices are mostly about a balance between damage output and passive survivability, there’ll always be some kind of DPS check. Without them, designing a content to be challenging for tanky builds but still doable by more aggresive specs is extremely complicated.
The only downside on tanky gear is that it kills way slower and, when you’re going to have a limited amount of tries (temporary content taking place at fixed hours), maximizing the success rate becomes way more important than completion speed.
Without DPS checks, there’ll be no use for anything but the most defensive armor sets (currently, while suboptimal, you can use them as a cover for possible mistakes; the opposite can’t ever be true).

I think WvW is a great example of where Berserker doesn’t work.

In WvW, the damage comes at random times. You have no idea when your enemy will hit you. You enemies are human, and they do whatever they want. There is no set pattern.

The result? Only the best of the best WvWers will dare to use berserker gear in a zerg fight.

Why? It can be roughly estimated that 90% of the berserker gear users in WvW will not survive that first zerg engagement.

Now, a zerg fight usually involves the two zergs engaging, breaking off to buff/heal, engaging again, breaking off to buff/heal again, etc etc. However none of this concerns berserker gear users. 90% of them will be dead in that very first engagement.

Is there a timer in WvW zerg fights? Nope. But it works. So how exactly is this different from Living Story events?

Because WvW, in general, are highly successful in killing off berserker gear users. Living Story events, on the other hand, are very poor at killing off berserker gear users.

I think the game need to be designed so that there is a 80-90% chance of dying for berserker gear users.

Maximum glass cannon=>90% chance of dying once every 5 minutes (on average).
Maximum tanker=>10% chance of dying once every 5 minutes (on average).

This way, there is a real incentive to get more tanky. Glass cannons that dies that often actually deals less damage than more tankier builds. And if too many players are glass cannons, it is possible for a zerg wipe (people are dying too fast too often to be ressed, so eventually everyone is dead). That’s the mission failure; not due to timer running out.

Berserker gear doesn’t work in WvW zerg fights because those are actually the less action based ones across the whole game.
GW2 combat system is supposed to be about spotting and identifying animations and actively reacting to them, which becomes impossible when two huge groups of characters fight against each other (it’s already quite a mess on a tPvP teamfight, and that’s only 5v5). In these cases, where there’s no way to properly use active defenses, characters are built as passive as possible.
If you read my previous post again, you’ll see that, in fact, a quite big fight against add waves has been my only idea for making defensive stats useful.

In any case, I’m fairly sure we’re not going to agree on how to improve the game.
The way you talk about WvW big battles makes me think that you somehow like how they work. On the other hand, I think they don’t fit the whole idea of the active combat system and absolutely hate them :P

CHIPS.6018:

So I just tried that “Kill 3 Legendary Clockworks” quest. It is nothing but a DPS test. Can we please stop having quests like these?

These quests are saying:
If you are not using berserker gear, go home.

But then how would they justify the gear threadmill without DPS checks?

Funny how condition builds rant how useless they are in the Knight fights, when once the Knights are condition vulnerable, they melt faster than the pure dps thrown at them.

So in the mean time, throw some combo fields and some blast finishers, and go rez down players, and don’t actually just stand there doing nothing because only then do you become useless.

The condition reflect buff is much welcomed, we just need to adapt to it, and stop whining because you’re getting downed by your own conditions.

And I do agree that this is a dps race, but on the other hand, there are a few mechanics to this fight that require yourself to be intelligent enough to understand how to go about it and not spam dps from beginning to the end.

The complaint is mostly that you have to spec for dps to have a chance to beat it, and while this is somewhat true, the mechanics introduced is new and shows that Anet are playing with new ideas for mechanics, and I give them props for doing that.

And I’m pretty certain that one day we will fight a boss who can only be defeated by doing cc. I wonder how useless the power builds will feel then. Ohhh I can see the complaints coming already. And being that they are majority, lookout!

Enaretos.8079:

Hey now, don’t be lke this my friends and don’t talk about DPS race.

Take a second and think about this :
- the goal of the event is to kill 3 bosses.
- people are bringing their defensive gear in the event.
- they complain that they can’t complete the event.

??? I fail to understand…

And about condition damage not working, I find it quite logical : I’ve never seen metal bleed, nor even burn to a small fire. Think about the immersion :>

Consider this then- you can melt metal with the heat from a fire, but no warrior would consider hacking away at a metal robot with their precious metal sword…

Ohoni.6057:

No these “quest”, they are actually called events, are not a DPS check, they are events that encourage people to play together. The biggest problem right now is, that there are way to many “unique snowflakes” around that keep shouting “I PLAY HOW I WANT AND YOU PLAY HOW YOU WANT” which is something that just doesn’t work in a genre that is all about playing together.

That has nothing to do with anything.

Sure A.Net said a lot times “play how you want” but I am pretty sure they meant “play however you want, but try to be reasonable” and not “well yeah just don’t try at all, just press autoattack everything will be fine other people will piggyback you through this”

“Play however you want, so long as it’s a Zerker Warrior. We included seven other classes and a dozen or so other stat combinations, but they are all clearly inferior because pure, Powerbased DPS is the only thing that matters. Heck, we even added a two phases in this fight in which Condition damage is literally worthless.”

I’m starting to think people just want to hit a dragon totem for half an hour! You don’t have to DPS massively, you just have to stay alive which seems to be poorly explained given the number of dead people I see

I have never died in a Knight fight, and have only been downed a handful of times out of about two dozen so far. I’ve still been part of 3-5 failed events, because we were unable to deal enough DPS within the time limit.

too bad, warrior dps is only average.

there is no dps test in gw2. people are just playing really bad.

Zanshin.5379:

The condition reflect is stupid. Period.
A lot of people play full condition builds. What are they supposed to do?

they should stop using a damage type that was never designed to be the “main” damage type in this game, until arenanet changes it.

kokiman.2364:

Fenrina.2954:

Then why bother with anything more than “if people learn to dodge the extraction attack* and it’s other mechanics”? You rattled off a long list of power-based things people should do instead of talking about how they should play better.

Because a good player is not defined by how big his gear numbers are but by how much he tries to maximize his contribution to the fight and this means, buffs, knowing the encounter and adapting his skills or even traits to the fight.

Really… so it takes awesome sauce skills to drink a pot, grab a buff from an NPC all in aid of what.. ooh yeah maximising stats to support your dmg output.
If it wasn’t a DPS check why they does the encounter negate a large proportion of build characteristics.. pretty much every skill/trait line uses some kind of condi dmg unless your prepared to stand and play the 111122111 game… that’s not skill that’s lazy content. As for knowing the encounter yah I will give you that.. its tough to know when hit your dodge key with so many other people covering the floor space and particle effects whizzing round ya eyeballs constantly…
As for adapting skills ywhat your really trying to say is .. take out as much of your condi lines and stick on ya zerk stuff and mash 111 .. .. there trait lines adjusted, shall we begin!

NoTrigger.8396:

Ohoni.6057:

No these “quest”, they are actually called events, are not a DPS check, they are events that encourage people to play together. The biggest problem right now is, that there are way to many “unique snowflakes” around that keep shouting “I PLAY HOW I WANT AND YOU PLAY HOW YOU WANT” which is something that just doesn’t work in a genre that is all about playing together.

That has nothing to do with anything.

Sure A.Net said a lot times “play how you want” but I am pretty sure they meant “play however you want, but try to be reasonable” and not “well yeah just don’t try at all, just press autoattack everything will be fine other people will piggyback you through this”

“Play however you want, so long as it’s a Zerker Warrior. We included seven other classes and a dozen or so other stat combinations, but they are all clearly inferior because pure, Powerbased DPS is the only thing that matters. Heck, we even added a two phases in this fight in which Condition damage is literally worthless.”

I’m starting to think people just want to hit a dragon totem for half an hour! You don’t have to DPS massively, you just have to stay alive which seems to be poorly explained given the number of dead people I see

I have never died in a Knight fight, and have only been downed a handful of times out of about two dozen so far. I’ve still been part of 3-5 failed events, because we were unable to deal enough DPS within the time limit.

too bad, warrior dps is only average.

there is no dps test in gw2. people are just playing really bad.

Zanshin.5379:

The condition reflect is stupid. Period.
A lot of people play full condition builds. What are they supposed to do?

they should stop using a damage type that was never designed to be the “main” damage type in this game, until arenanet changes it.

Rubbish.. show me a decent MMO that does not incorporate DoT’s. Condi damage is a main source of damage for various classes/builds, just because you like to mash the 111 key doesn’t mean others do. So please enlighten me why such builds were never designed to be the main damage type… I don’t ever remember reading about that.

Bloodstealer.5978:

NoTrigger.8396:

Ohoni.6057:

No these “quest”, they are actually called events, are not a DPS check, they are events that encourage people to play together. The biggest problem right now is, that there are way to many “unique snowflakes” around that keep shouting “I PLAY HOW I WANT AND YOU PLAY HOW YOU WANT” which is something that just doesn’t work in a genre that is all about playing together.

That has nothing to do with anything.

Sure A.Net said a lot times “play how you want” but I am pretty sure they meant “play however you want, but try to be reasonable” and not “well yeah just don’t try at all, just press autoattack everything will be fine other people will piggyback you through this”

“Play however you want, so long as it’s a Zerker Warrior. We included seven other classes and a dozen or so other stat combinations, but they are all clearly inferior because pure, Powerbased DPS is the only thing that matters. Heck, we even added a two phases in this fight in which Condition damage is literally worthless.”

I’m starting to think people just want to hit a dragon totem for half an hour! You don’t have to DPS massively, you just have to stay alive which seems to be poorly explained given the number of dead people I see

I have never died in a Knight fight, and have only been downed a handful of times out of about two dozen so far. I’ve still been part of 3-5 failed events, because we were unable to deal enough DPS within the time limit.

too bad, warrior dps is only average.

there is no dps test in gw2. people are just playing really bad.

Zanshin.5379:

The condition reflect is stupid. Period.
A lot of people play full condition builds. What are they supposed to do?

they should stop using a damage type that was never designed to be the “main” damage type in this game, until arenanet changes it.

Rubbish.. show me a decent MMO that does not incorporate DoT’s. Condi damage is a main source of damage for various classes/builds, just because you like to mash the 111 key doesn’t mean others do. So please enlighten me why such builds were never designed to be the main damage type… I don’t ever remember reading about that.

This one

In large scale open world pve content, DoTs always suck.

More damage = win.My lil warrior is lvl77.The special LA foody buff is for lvl 80s only.Had a nicely organised group and failed.Its no longer fun.Hammering away for a slender chance to get to the next stage which is just as bad,hopping from ring to ring so you can hit and damage.Its a fail.

Funny how condition builds rant how useless they are in the Knight fights, when once the Knights are condition vulnerable, they melt faster than the pure dps thrown at them.

Yes, but the “melting” still seems to be due to Power damage mostly, the conditions are just a “seasoning” that make them more vulnerable to it. I haven’t seen any evidence that having a +condition build is actually even helpful. I believe that if you wanted to make a maximized build for this event, it would be one that is fully Power specced, with at least one fully power-based weapon set, and then at least one alternate weapon set that can spread out a lot of different conditions, not just damage but also Chilled and Immobilize and stuff. In the Condi phase, the important thing is not dealing a lot of condi damage, it’s just spamming as many different stacks of conditions on the enemy as possible. As near as I can tell that means getting 25 bleed stacks and 25 Weakness stacks and a few other things to top it off, most condis that don’t stack for damage probably amount to nothing.

And I do agree that this is a dps race, but on the other hand, there are a few mechanics to this fight that require yourself to be intelligent enough to understand how to go about it and not spam dps from beginning to the end.

Sure, but the spamming DPS is the important part. I love the “do this now” sort of mechanics, but you can do those 100% right the entire fight and still lose because you fail the DPS check. If they are to have interesting mechanics, victory should be determined by how well you can complete them, not DPS checks.

As for the Condi Reflect phase, it’s an interesting idea but way too punishing to a build that was already on its knees. How about instead a “Condi ONLY” phase, where direct damage does nothing? And the phases should last much less time, because if you are condition-based during the fight then you have nothing usefulto do for about the first half of the fight, then you can spam your attacks for about ten to thirty seconds, then you are back to practically no point for the next third or so of the fight, and then you can help out a bit more. It’s very tedious.

too bad, warrior dps is only average.

There are a few other builds that can out DPS Warriors under very specific circumstances, and this is fine in things like PvP where the idea is to rush in and slaughter someone ASAP and then move on, but the Warriors are very strong in balanced damage, damage that lasts consistently and doesn’t get thrown off by much of anything. And they have better defenses than most on top. I say that as someone who plays Warrior at least part of the time, but it’s not my favorite.

In large scale open world pve content, DoTs always suck.

No reason they would have to. DoTs work great against groups of normal enemies. They just suck in this game for large encounters because 1. They haven’t figured out how to fix their existing stacking mechanics, and 2. they haven’t figured out how to apply condition damage to “yellow bar” enemies like dragons and turrets. Neither of these are insurmountable barriers, they just haven’t bothered.

If they could just make it so that 20 condi builds fighting a dragon were dealing the same combined damage as they could each deliver to 20 different normal mobs, this would take care of itself.

Vargamonth.2047:

In any case, I’m fairly sure we’re not going to agree on how to improve the game.
The way you talk about WvW big battles makes me think that you somehow like how they work. On the other hand, I think they don’t fit the whole idea of the active combat system and absolutely hate them :P

I actually support a new idea altogether: An improvement to the mob AI so they fight as a unit.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Important-Suggestion-Mob-Unit-AI/

The problem with is “identifying animations” is that it is too focused on Berserker gear. Why? Because it involved dodging an boss attack with the perfect timing. That means that boss attack, since it is designed to hit so rarely (with the player dodging), must deal very devastating damage. That means one or two mistakes by the player and he is dead.

With this design philosophy, tanky equipment must be made useless. Why? Because if a tanky character can face tank this boss’ attack, then everyone will just face tank it. Then there is absolutely no need to “identifying animations” anymore.

In the above “identifying animations” environment, berserker is the only way to go. The player try to kill the boss ASAP, so they don’t have to dodge as much. Tanky equipment are meaningless here, because 1 or 2 mistake will down any character.

I guess there lies the core problem of “identifying animations”:

“Identifying animations” puts the game into two extremes:
One hit kill from the boss
vs
Maximum DPS from the player.

(Side Note: Necromancers are designed to face tank everything, putting them in a serious disadvantage in this type of gameplay. But that’s a different story.)

Now I am not against the idea of “identifying animations” anywhere. I just believe there need to be variety in the game. In fact this type of gameplay already widely exist in dungeons. It shouldn’t be the only way to play this game. So let’s not continue to add this type of gameplay into the game, until other types have been added in sufficient numbers.

I believe in open world Living Story events, it is much better to follow a different philosophy in game design. The “Mob Unit AI” philosophy is one idea that I came up with. It put the focus of the fight into the players organizing themselves against an organized mob army. This change the focus from a DPS test into a organize the players until they win.

Like I said there are many other things Anet can do.

Ohoni.6057:

too bad, warrior dps is only average.

There are a few other builds that can out DPS Warriors under very specific circumstances, and this is fine in things like PvP where the idea is to rush in and slaughter someone ASAP and then move on, but the Warriors are very strong in balanced damage, damage that lasts consistently and doesn’t get thrown off by much of anything. And they have better defenses than most on top. I say that as someone who plays Warrior at least part of the time, but it’s not my favorite.

not only a few other builds. 5 professions can deal more dps than a warrior in groups.
and you dont even need specific circumstances for that to happen.

Responding to these 2 replies.

JackDaniels.1697:

Funny how condition builds rant how useless they are in the Knight fights, when once the Knights are condition vulnerable, they melt faster than the pure dps thrown at them.

NoTrigger.8396:

they should stop using a damage type that was never designed to be the “main” damage type in this game, until arenanet changes it.

Whoa hold on a minute. Listen to this rule:

Duration of Time damage MUST out-damage Direct Damage over time!

Why? Because if not, where is the balance?

DoT (bleeding, poison, etc) can be removed. And it deals damage slower, so it can be more easily healed.

DD can be dodged, blocked, etc. But guess what? DoT can be dodge, blocked, etc too! Anything that counters DD also counters DoT!

There is no main damage. DoT and DD are both equality important. DoT is better for pressure. DD is better for spiking. That’s how it always was, since GW1.

So why is DoT better than DD in a boss fight?

Because the boss have a billion HP. So a boss fight is always a drawn out fight. And in drawn out fights, OF COURSE DoT is better! What else is new? You cannot spike a boss. You can only pressure a boss.

Blame the boss design (billion HP, etc). Do not blame DoT out damaging DD over time. It must be this way.

Lastly, do not forget that Vulnerability 25 stacks is also a major factor in the boss melting like butter when it can be affected by conditions. And that helps DD not DoT.

ShibVicious.9681:

Here’s how I see most the knights battles go down that I’ve partaken in.

Large group of people rush the knight. All those wonderful zerker characters that do tons of damage run in, get swinging there swords and sure, they’re putting up some big numbers. Good job. Problem. 20 seconds later. Half of them are dead. One attack and poof, all lying on their backs, perma’d and begging for a res, instead of wp and running back.
In contrast, I’m running knights gear. Sure I don’t hit as hard, but I don’t die as soon as I’m hit. My increased survivability means that ultimately I’m out damaging a large number of these zerker characters because I’m constantly damaging the knight throughout the encounter, as opposed to throwing down some mad spike damage at the start and then nothing else for the remainder.

If that were true everything would be fine. However…

…if you pick a non-melee weapon, there’s only 1 attack you gotta dodge to take 0 damage. This means that there’s literally no reason not to take max damage gear for these events. And given the huge amount of time it takes to take them down, I’d say they were balanced for a full zerker group.

Once what you say actually starts being true ingame, the different gear sets will have their place. But right now, there’s no risk for the berserkers and thus their main downside doesn’t exist.

ThiBash.5634:

ShibVicious.9681:

Here’s how I see most the knights battles go down that I’ve partaken in.

Large group of people rush the knight. All those wonderful zerker characters that do tons of damage run in, get swinging there swords and sure, they’re putting up some big numbers. Good job. Problem. 20 seconds later. Half of them are dead. One attack and poof, all lying on their backs, perma’d and begging for a res, instead of wp and running back.
In contrast, I’m running knights gear. Sure I don’t hit as hard, but I don’t die as soon as I’m hit. My increased survivability means that ultimately I’m out damaging a large number of these zerker characters because I’m constantly damaging the knight throughout the encounter, as opposed to throwing down some mad spike damage at the start and then nothing else for the remainder.

If that were true everything would be fine. However…

…if you pick a non-melee weapon, there’s only 1 attack you gotta dodge to take 0 damage. This means that there’s literally no reason not to take max damage gear for these events. And given the huge amount of time it takes to take them down, I’d say they were balanced for a full zerker group.

Once what you say actually starts being true ingame, the different gear sets will have their place. But right now, there’s no risk for the berserkers and thus their main downside doesn’t exist.

I understand this issue. To resolve this:

Mobs must be organized enough to have a chance to literally take out the player zerg. The players need to literally lay on the ground all dead.

Someone metioned before:

Well, what’s stopping the players from WPing and running back and keep fighting? We seen this problem in dungeons before.

Answer: Change the winning/lossing condition, so the players cannot wipe at all.

In WvW, to capture a tower/keep the players have to have 100% control of the lord’s room circle. They can add this into the event.

“If the players lose control of this circle for over 3 seconds (zero players alive inside the circle), mobs win. Game over.”

3 seconds is not enough time to WP and run back. So a wipe is game over, pretty much.

To split the zerg, have 5 of these circles on the map (e.g. 5 of them inside LA). If at any time any one of these 5 circles have no players in it for over 3 seconds, TOTALLY game over for everyone. (Players you all suck cry me a river. :P)

Just one of the many things Anet can do.

CHIPS.6018:

Whoa hold on a minute. Listen to this rule:

Duration of Time damage MUST out-damage Direct Damage over time!

Why? Because if not, where is the balance?

DoT (bleeding, poison, etc) can be removed. And it deals damage slower, so it can be more easily healed.

DD can be dodged, blocked, etc. But guess what? DoT can be dodge, blocked, etc too! Anything that counters DD also counters DoT!

There is no main damage. DoT and DD are both equality important. DoT is better for pressure. DD is better for spiking. That’s how it always was, since GW1.

So why is DoT better than DD in a boss fight?

Because the boss have a billion HP. So a boss fight is always a drawn out fight. And in drawn out fights, OF COURSE DoT is better! What else is new? You cannot spike a boss. You can only pressure a boss.

Blame the boss design (billion HP, etc). Do not blame DoT out damaging DD over time. It must be this way.

Lastly, do not forget that Vulnerability 25 stacks is also a major factor in the boss melting like butter when it can be affected by conditions. And that helps DD not DoT.

This rule doesn’t apply when condies ignores toughness, use mostly ranged weapon sets and condie users are tanky. Why should faceroll builds be more efficient?

kokiman.2364:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Why can’t the event scale down so 10 people in exotics (maybe even rares) can kill a knight in ~12 min?

Because people would abuse it.

…and how exactly this could be abused?

PhansyPanda.7215:

You may not be aware of this, it seems many are not, but GW2 was created and marketed as having no tanks or healers. When they advertised GW2 as not having a holy trinity, no tanks or healers, was your first thought “Man that sounds great! I cant wait to make a tank or healer!”? I’m not being sarcastic. It is an honest question. I wonder this on the rare occasions i pug with tank guards and healer eles.

Because people like build variety. They take up a challenge of taking vitality, toughness and healing power and try and build something useful. There are many many ways how to be useful besides being a glass cannon.

haviz.1340:

This rule doesn’t apply when condies ignores toughness, use mostly ranged weapon sets and condie users are tanky. Why should faceroll builds be more efficient?

Depends on how you spec.

Example number 1: power, toughness, precision, critical damage elementalist with a staff can be outputting a lot of damage, staying purely in the distance and be tough.
Example number 2: berserker warrior with a bow or a riffle. Once again they can stay in the distance.
Example number 3: a condi necro with two daggers. They need to be close.

Distance and your toughness is not decided by going condition or pure power. You can build both to be squishy and up close or far away and tanky.

This rule doesn’t apply when condies ignores toughness, use mostly ranged weapon sets and condie users are tanky. Why should faceroll builds be more efficient?

Condi builds are no more tanky than power builds. Sure, you can go CVT, but you can go PVT too if you like. If you’re aiming for a “glassy” Condi build you can go Rabid or Carrion and only have slightly more defense than Zerker’s. And fighting as a Condi is significantly more difficult than fighting as a Power.

As a Power, all you need to do is run in, land your attacks, and the enemy is dead. As a Condi, you have to run in, land all those same attacks, and then survive while those DoTs do their work. If you don’t land your initial attacks then the enemy won’t have any conditions on him to die from, and if you don’t survive long enough for the conditions to do their work, then you’ll be dead. Not to mention that condition clearing effects that negate Condi damage are far more common than effects that blunt power attacks, and most effects that do blunt power attacks (like dodge, block, aegis, invulnerability) tend to apply just as well against Condi attacks.

Anything a Zerker needs to do to win, the Condi needs to do as well, they just also have to live longer for it to matter.

Mirta.5029:

Depends on how you spec.

Example number 1: power, toughness, precision, critical damage elementalist with a staff can be outputting a lot of damage, staying purely in the distance and be tough.
Example number 2: berserker warrior with a bow or a riffle. Once again they can stay in the distance.
Example number 3: a condi necro with two daggers. They need to be close.

Distance and your toughness is not decided by going condition or pure power. You can build both to be squishy and up close or far away and tanky.

Your example number 3 is a bit nonsensical because daggers are power weapons for necro. If you want to compare them, use a staff or a scepter. Moreover, staff ele attacks as well as rifle and longbow attacks can be avoided by simply pressing ‘a’ and ‘d’ randomly. You cannot say the same thing about conditions attacks because they are not projectiles.

Conditions are always tanky because you just need 1 stat, unlike power builds. The worst kind of cheese builds in pvp are condy bunkers. Faceroll to play with very high efficiency.

Ohoni.6057:

Condi builds are no more tanky than power builds. Sure, you can go CVT, but you can go PVT too if you like. If you’re aiming for a “glassy” Condi build you can go Rabid or Carrion and only have slightly more defense than Zerker’s. And fighting as a Condi is significantly more difficult than fighting as a Power.

As a Power, all you need to do is run in, land your attacks, and the enemy is dead. As a Condi, you have to run in, land all those same attacks, and then survive while those DoTs do their work. If you don’t land your initial attacks then the enemy won’t have any conditions on him to die from, and if you don’t survive long enough for the conditions to do their work, then you’ll be dead. Not to mention that condition clearing effects that negate Condi damage are far more common than effects that blunt power attacks, and most effects that do blunt power attacks (like dodge, block, aegis, invulnerability) tend to apply just as well against Condi attacks.

Anything a Zerker needs to do to win, the Condi needs to do as well, they just also have to live longer for it to matter.

Rabid and carrion are now glassy? Bonus toughness and vitality now makes you glassy? Condies gameplay is essentialy staying back spamming your skills while your team gets all the aggro. And even if you’re solo, don’t tell me you never heard about chill, cripple and immoblize. Kiting away mobs while they’re dying isn’t hard, it’s trivial.

Zerker needs more effort to survive because it’s glassy and usually fights in melee while condies spammer stay back with all of his soft cc and additional tankiness. Go play pvp with zerker and then condies build and tell me again how condies are “significantly harder to play”.

I find it a bit amusing that a lot of pve-ers want to increase the efficiency of condies and cc while a large majority of pvp-ers wants to have it gone and calls to finally end cc spam and condies spam. One of the reasons why pvp is getting dead with every passing day is because of the efficiency of condies spam. “Dhuumfire” patch that essentialy changed meta from power/boon to condies/cc is considered as the worst balance patch ever.

RemiRome.8495:

Darkobra.6439:

Oh and stop bringing berserker to world bosses. You’re dead weight. Sometimes literally.

This only applies if you’re terrible though.

What was your highest crit on Tequatl and Jormag?

haviz.1340:

Your example number 3 is a bit nonsensical because daggers are power weapons for necro. If you want to compare them, use a staff or a scepter. Moreover, staff ele attacks as well as rifle and longbow attacks can be avoided by simply pressing ‘a’ and ‘d’ randomly. You cannot say the same thing about conditions attacks because they are not projectiles.

Conditions are always tanky because you just need 1 stat, unlike power builds. The worst kind of cheese builds in pvp are condy bunkers. Faceroll to play with very high efficiency.

1. We’re talking about PVE bosses, not about PvP (and in there you can do a lot of counters to condis as well, like a build full of condi removals, healing and retaliation)
2. Actually condition duration is a thing and then I believe conditions can crit too.

Mirta.5029:

1. We’re talking about PVE bosses, not about PvP (and in there you can do a lot of counters to condis as well, like a build full of condi removals, healing and retaliation)
2. Actually condition duration is a thing and then I believe conditions can crit too.

1. Then anet should change the bosses.
2. Condition duration is only on giver’s set and conditions cannot crit.

If you want to increase the viability of condition builds, ask anet to increase the efficiency of rampager’s set cause it’s the only glassy condition set.

You know, at first i thought there were three different encounters.
Every knight would work differently

However every one of them is the same.
If they would at least give everyone of them another weakness or fightingstyle, then other builds might even be viable.

The problem is however that these are perfect bosses… but not for mass player.
These are bosses which would be awesome for a group of up to 15 players at most.

the same goes actually for Scarlet Prime, as these enemies are all nothing more then damage sponges.
Their mechanics are very easy to avoid and the damage gating is just an annoyence to put another level on it.
Which is fine in theory and it works perfect for small groups.

as soon as the player numbers are rising however the whole thing just gets annoying and an DPS-race.

While the knights are actually more forgiving, Scarlet prime is a much greater offender, since you cannot do damage if you are not in tune.
Unfortunatly you have to run around the whole big map bearly getting the buffs you need, only to do a few seconds of damage.
Combine these with a large health pool, which requires a lot of damage by a big group it ends up as nothing but a frustrating brain afk attacking.

The fights are unnessecary long, without any danger for the player itself.
While i get that these are easy designed like that to allow as many players as possible to finish them, it ends up very frustrating since the high hp of the encounter just puts more damge to the enjoyment of the encounter as it`s actually fun mechanics.

I would rather have the enemy do more damage to players, to punish the ones that are afk, instead of bearly being harmed by the enemy, but having to fight them for hours…

RemiRome.8495:

Darkobra.6439:

Oh and stop bringing berserker to world bosses. You’re dead weight. Sometimes literally.

This only applies if you’re terrible though.

Seeing as I’m pretty darn sure you can’t crit world bosses like Tequatl, yes you are a dead weight in zerkers gear. 2 of the 3 stats that gear offers you are rendered useless.

ShibVicious.9681:

RemiRome.8495:

Darkobra.6439:

Oh and stop bringing berserker to world bosses. You’re dead weight. Sometimes literally.

This only applies if you’re terrible though.

Seeing as I’m pretty darn sure you can’t crit world bosses like Tequatl, yes you are a dead weight in zerkers gear. 2 of the 3 stats that gear offers you are rendered useless.

You can crit the knights.

haviz.1340:

This rule doesn’t apply when condies ignores toughness, use mostly ranged weapon sets and condie users are tanky. Why should faceroll builds be more efficient?

You are talking about 4 very different issues here.

1) Ignore toughness

Conditions can be removed. Conditions rarely lasts their full duration, and so rarely deals their full damage.

Think of the times when weak mobs dies too fast. Sometimes condition users does not even get experience and loot from these weak mobs.

Max 25 stacks of bleed when it is 1 on 1. Max 25 stacks of bleed when it is 80 people on 1 boss.

Conditions do not critical hit.

Conditions cannot take advantage of low armor, high health targets.

etc etc

2) Ranged weapons

You are now talking about range vs melee. This is a risk vs reward factor.

I was talking about DoT vs DD. This is a timing issue; damage now vs high damage later.

Notice that there is melee DoT (e.g. Hundred Blades). There is also range DD (e.g. warrior with rifle).

3) condie users are tanky

DD users can be just as tanky. Which law said DD must use berserker gear?

4) Why should faceroll builds be more efficient?

Tanky builds became faceroll builds because the mobs are VERY VERY BAD at killing the players. I mean look at them. They can barely kill berserker players.

If you think it is hard to berserker in Living Story, try going WvW with berserker gear. Like I said, 90% chance of dying in that first engagement.

Let’s be honest. It is super easy for a berserker to survive in PvE. None of these events so far had been successful at killing berserker gear users in mass quantities.

Berserker isn’t dying enough in PvE. That’s why they are so popular, to the point that a great majority of the people use them. The mobs cannot even take out berserker (easiest to kill) on a consistent basis. It shows how bad their AI is and how badly designed they are. The risk vs reward is out of balance.

ShibVicious.9681:

Seeing as I’m pretty darn sure you can’t crit world bosses like Tequatl, yes you are a dead weight in zerkers gear. 2 of the 3 stats that gear offers you are rendered useless.

But haven’t we all heard that vitality and toughness were useless?

The timer should probably have some more leniency as far as it goes. The achievement, on the other hand, I’m okay with being incredibly tight on timing.

I dunno if it’s a DPS check or an attempt to get people to all three events instead of just focusing on one then moving to the next in true zerg fashion. They have been trying to discourage the zerg mentality these last two updates for LS. (Notably, zerging around the map killing things wouldn’t get the better group prizes as opposed to saving civilians for 1200/1500.)

Nice effort, some work still needed.

kokiman.2364:

No these “quest”, they are actually called events, are not a DPS check, they are events that encourage people to play together. The biggest problem right now is, that there are way to many “unique snowflakes” around that keep shouting “I PLAY HOW I WANT AND YOU PLAY HOW YOU WANT” which is something that just doesn’t work in a genre that is all about playing together.

Really? So I should load up on 3 or 4 exotic gear sets with various stat combinations – with trinkets, runes, and sigils – just so I can play how a certain event needs everyone to play? Then keep changing up my Traits per event? Are you saying that’s the way to do it?

CHIPS.6018:

I actually support a new idea altogether: An improvement to the mob AI so they fight as a unit.
…

And that’s why I said we’re not going to agree. The concept of timing defensive moves is indispensable for me, it’s just the main thing that keeps me playing this game.
When properly timing these defenses becomes impossible and the game becomes too passive reliant (like WvW battles) I lose interest. I don’t get anything that a classic combat MMO could not offer me (In fact it’s even worse since I play dedicated healer in those games, which is something I can’t do here)

While active defenses are quite prevalent in dungeons, most fights can actually be easily facetanked (as long as you still prevent some hits at least). The damage isn’t really THAT devastating until you reach high level fractals, and even there, building defensively and ranging is the easiest and safest gameplay.
The almost only reason for dungeon facetanking to not be the meta is that it results in way slower runs (there are really few bosses where extreme survivability makes things more difficult), which becomes crucial when there’s farming behind the content.

If we’d get a temporary dungeon that could be entered only once a day (or require grinding some kind of items to allow entrance) and would kick players on a wipe, that would be completely different.
Players going the easy way and facetanking dungeons is not a problem at all because, even if possible, offers far worse income ratios and it’s naturally discouraged.
When there’s a real chance of failure and finishing the content becomes dominant over doing it as fast as possible, however, playing safe is encouraged and soft DPS checks become necessary for disallowing the most extremely survivable setups (which, otherwise, would be unrivaled).

Let’s take a look on your enemy unit idea.

Needless to say that I dislike it. Several mobs blobbed on a single spot (where every player AoE is also going to land) makes impossible to read animations. Active defenses become quite useless and you are forced to rely on passive tankiness and healing.
The focus fire on glass cannon players makes this even harder (probably impossible) and it’s quite ironic btw. While it makes complete sense for enemies to target the biggest threats, what’s the point then on slotting survivability? If increasing your own survival makes you unlikely to be attacked, what is it doing for the group?

But most important. Is this content allowed to fail?
Unless it takes place on some kind of instanced enviroment (like inside the benchmaker), nothing prevents dead players from resing, joining the fight again and eventually winning.
If the event won’t fail, why should I bother on using an offensive spec and putting myself at risk when I could be built for survival and not only avoid repairs but also mindlessly spam Wave of Wrath and tag every mob for a chance of loot?
Even if the fight is instanced and a global wipe is possible, how are the mobs supposed to win if there’s a huge amount of extremely tanky players slowly melting them? What can they do against the insane amount of Resurrection banners players would bring? If they are blobbed, how can they prevent defeated characters from being ressed when the player blob leads them to the other side of the room?

Your “reserve” advanced tactic is the only way to exhaust players and allow NPCs to eventually win, and while not a clearly explicit timer, is still a DPS check.
If new units spawn over time, players would need to defeat the previous ones under a time mark in order to not get overwhelmed. Otherwise (if new units would appear only when the previous one is defeated), nothing would prevent players from building as defensive as possible and keeping the last enemies alive on purpose while topping their health bars and recovering CDs.

And that’s exactly my point.
Whenever some content is allowed to fail (winning the event becomes dominant over doing it fast) and no DPS checks are included, the most deffensive setups will always be the safest choice.
DPS checks are needed in order to disallow the most survivable setups and force players to take as many risks as they’re confident on handling.
No matter how you design a content, there’ll be always an optimal strategy. When that strategy is about using the spec that reduces the risk the most, there’s absolutely no point on using anything else and build diversity gets completely destroyed.

Side Note: Yes, the current state of the Necromancer is atrocious for PvE.

At one point a commander scolded the zerg for not bringing zerker warriors, no joke.

After I completed the event once I stopped going after the knights. No point in doing it if it’s not any fun. If it were fun for me I’d still be taking part. Soooooo if any of the DevTeam are reading this know that there are some ppl actively avoiding the event. The opposite of what you wanted. The way this event plays is driving ppl away from it. Counter-productive wouldn’t you say?

I will give a little history lesson.

If you create something that truly is amazing and works people will try to continually copy and or improve on it.

We will use Wow for example. (I would use Eq1 but that might be too old for some of the younger crowd to understand)

Post after post even in these forums says how they don’t want another copy of wow mechanics or wow this or wow that or there are already far to many wow clones in this genre.

Wow is nothing more then a trinity game which originally was designed as PvE only and with the intent to dethrone EQ1.

It succeeded in doing that. It also like it or not did more things right then more things wrong because the game is 10 yrs old and still thriving both player base wise and profit wise. It also has more more games trying to use its systems then any other game on the market.

My point in saying that is GW2 tried the trinity less mechanic and simply just created a different trinity – aka the zerker meta. . Beyond it’s own IP little to no one is interested in copying them. If this was such an amazing and desired idea one would think that new title after new title would be coming out without trinity’s.

GW2 will become nothing more then Niche game and we are expecting far to much from it. It’s simply one of those games that you can play here and there for 5 minutes to blow off steam then forget about for months on end.

That is really the bottom line.

misterman.1530:

kokiman.2364:

No these “quest”, they are actually called events, are not a DPS check, they are events that encourage people to play together. The biggest problem right now is, that there are way to many “unique snowflakes” around that keep shouting “I PLAY HOW I WANT AND YOU PLAY HOW YOU WANT” which is something that just doesn’t work in a genre that is all about playing together.

Really? So I should load up on 3 or 4 exotic gear sets with various stat combinations – with trinkets, runes, and sigils – just so I can play how a certain event needs everyone to play? Then keep changing up my Traits per event? Are you saying that’s the way to do it?

I don’t know if this is sarcasm but … yes, that would be great.

3 or 4 exotic gear sets with various stat combinations (with trinkets, runes, and sigils) are, however, far form needed. There’s no need on having the optimal gear for everything, but some capabily to tune the character towards it is highly desirable.

For a full soldier gear user, for example, swapping the trinkets to berserker ones (I would’t get them until ferocity changes are made) and retraiting (which costs next to nothing and, yes, it’s something that players should do much more frequently) should be enough to considerably increase the damage output if needed.
Condi users are a bit trickier and should eventually get a whole power set (or make a power based alt). There’s still no need on huge investments; If the gear is unlikely to be extensively used, retraiting and rare/masterwork gear (except maybe for weapons, which are much more tier sensitive) with cheap orbs is enough to perform far better.

It’s obvious that a new player won’t be able to do this and it doesn’t really matter, but when even veteran players chose to be unefficient and work agaist the common goal, that’s actually a problem.

Azreell.1568:

My point in saying that is GW2 tried the trinity less mechanic and simply just created a different trinity – aka the zerker meta. . Beyond it’s own IP little to no one is interested in copying them. If this was such an amazing and desired idea one would think that new title after new title would be coming out without trinity’s.

I already see action based combat mechanics, including dodging and other active defenses, becoming prevalent in every recently released MMO.
This doesn’t completely replace the trinity on its own, but it’s clearly a step away from it.

The problem with this is and in fairness to Anet is they designed a system where dps is the only attribute that matters.

So in designing content as much as I might despise the idea -The options they have are limited without a complete rework of all mob encounters and AI – which is not going to happen.

What you see is what you are going to get.

kokiman.2364:

But like I said the main problem is the “me” mentality in MMOs these days, when it used to be a “we” mentality.

Sure A.Net said a lot times “play how you want” but I am pretty sure they meant “play however you want, but try to be reasonable” and not “well yeah just don’t try at all, just press autoattack everything will be fine other people will piggyback you through this”

A “me” mentality has also never been as corrosive as it can be in Guild Wars 2, because in Guild Wars 2 a lot of things don’t work in PvE. Conditions…toughness…Dodge or Die gameplay will be the downfall of the game if it’s not restructured significantly.

hannah mee.7925:

kokiman.2364:

But like I said the main problem is the “me” mentality in MMOs these days, when it used to be a “we” mentality.

Sure A.Net said a lot times “play how you want” but I am pretty sure they meant “play however you want, but try to be reasonable” and not “well yeah just don’t try at all, just press autoattack everything will be fine other people will piggyback you through this”

A “me” mentality has also never been as corrosive as it can be in Guild Wars 2, because in Guild Wars 2 a lot of things don’t work in PvE. Conditions…toughness…Dodge or Die gameplay will be the downfall of the game if it’s not restructured significantly.

They can’t restructure it because the gameplay itself has no structure. No tank no boss control no nothing.
So all zerg events are all just massive AoE spamming hp sponge bosses that end in a dps check. There is no group skill involved, only personal skill.

Noone has to take care of others or anything at all but the boss calls. That is just shallow gameplay, no teamplay needed.

Azreell.1568:

My point in saying that is GW2 tried the trinity less mechanic and simply just created a different trinity – aka the zerker meta. . Beyond it’s own IP little to no one is interested in copying them. If this was such an amazing and desired idea one would think that new title after new title would be coming out without trinity’s.

A lot of titles now either advertise as no trinity, or has a soft trinity (See Tera, it sort of has trinity, but you can clear dungeons without having a tank, or a healer, etc)

Zerker needs more effort to survive because it’s glassy and usually fights in melee while condies spammer stay back with all of his soft cc and additional tankiness. Go play pvp with zerker and then condies build and tell me again how condies are “significantly harder to play”.

That’s the problem. Too much balance discussion focuses around PvP tactics, which are completely irrelevant to PvE. You can have build that devastate in PvP and are completely useless in PvE, or that are worthless in PvP but dominate in PvE.

GW2 will become nothing more then Niche game and we are expecting far to much from it. It’s simply one of those games that you can play here and there for 5 minutes to blow off steam then forget about for months on end.

That is really the bottom line.

Geez, there are still trinity whiners hanging around? Go home, you’re drunk.

They need to stop with zerg content

Seems to me to me the pertinent question about zerker gear is why have they let all the other types of gear become more or less redundant, with a few exceptions? Where is the useful diversity???

Personally I use berserker in WvW, too. Even when doing the commander. And I still live longer than most of the sentinels wearer.

Malediktus.9250:

Personally I use berserker in WvW, too. Even when doing the commander. And I still live longer than most of the sentinels wearer.

Good. But remember that an average player is not as good as you. Don’t force a PVT gear wearer to put on berserker. If they can’t, they can’t.

Please kick the few of us who haven’t bought a zerker set, yet, until we finally do… Just in time for the feature patch to nerf it

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

They have been trying to discourage the zerg mentality these last two updates for LS.

Considering that the knights do not scale down very well, and have to be zerged, i’d say that they didn’t even try. The only difference is that instead of one zerg, you have to have 3 of them.