Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

Outcome: If you kill one knight, you get six boxes, but if you kill three knights, you get 18 boxes. Everyone tried to kill thee bosses. This was chaotic at first, but the players got it down to a pattern and managed to do this routinely.

ANet did not like this. We weren’t playing their game “right,” they needed to stop us from playing it how we wanted to play, we were only allowed to play it how they wanted us to play it. So they “fixed” it.

wrong actually, they actually didn’t mind it at first. the reason Anet decided to do something about is because of so many people whining about it. if you go back a few pages in this forum you’ll notice a few “tired of zerg content” and the locked “knights give too many loot”. zerg wasn’t too bad. yes, we weren’t getting six minute achievement because of the zerg though all knights were being killed (all of them were being taken down) through a simple rotation and we were getting a decent amount of loot from them.
because of the excessive whining they decided to change them. there’s no real point in trying to take down/help take down another knight if there are no extra loot involved so the majority of people stick to one and let the event fail. there are those few servers that do indeed try to succeed and fail/win so they can try to beat scarlet’s holo and get the rng chest, though that’s all.

Ohoni.6057:

Solution: Remove Condition damage from the game. That seems to be the track we’re on anyways, While ideally condition damage could be fixed, moves like this one show that Power damage is intended to be the only appropriate build, so players accidentally putting any effort into Condition builds are just misleading themselves. Remove all conditions from the game and replace them with equivalent direct damage.

I’d argue that might be one of the only way to actually balance PVP in this game and get rid of the meta that was born post dumbfire, berserker stance immunity, cleansing ire etc. and the overall powercreep and sustain war (trying to get as much sustain as possible because condition will burn through builds that don’t have sustain)

wrong actually, they actually didn’t mind it at first. the reason Anet decided to do something about is because of so many people whining about it. if you go back a few pages in this forum you’ll notice a few “tired of zerg content” and the locked “knights give too many loot”. zerg wasn’t too bad. yes, we weren’t getting six minute achievement because of the zerg though all knights were being killed (all of them were being taken down) through a simple rotation and we were getting a decent amount of loot from them.

Psssht, if they cared what players thought they would have fixed this already. The few people whining about “too much loot” on the boards certainly didn’t sway their hands on this one. It only took them as long to implement the “50 people per knight” rule as it did because that’s exactly how long the change took to implement.

Ohoni.6057:

Solution: Fix the scaling. Make it assume less DPS from each player

This is it really. I did this event on the first two days only. I tried again once later during the week. The difference was massive.

With players using food and potions, in DPS gear, it isn’t a problem. I’m not sure exactly how the scaling works either. It’s no secret that it is known to be wonky. However, most of the time in open world events, when you get 20 extra players from somewhere, you can generally assume that 15 of them will be PVT or something equally low DPS.

Because of this, you see a huge spike in Boss HP and yet nowhere near the corresponding DPS to justify.

Suggestion: Scale mobs to DPS comp instead of raw numbers. Or allow large scale, hosted instances with gated controls to entrance.

I believe Anet might have overshot the ability-factor of most zergs to DPS certain targets. Zergs are 90% brainless, we know this. It’s the 10% that are needed to figure out what happens during the fight and when. From this 10% the organisation factor has to come into play, and that won’t happen with standard zergs because they run around like headless chickens, and there’s always someone who won’t listen.

So essentially they’re putting us in the pro-zerg bracket and testing our abilities against a hardened target and a timer. Most servers (I say servers because thanks to the recent patch it’s hard to get as many people in on the fight as before and as such, overflows won’t be made) can barely outfit the 150 person cap for the event, and then getting 50 each to their respective fembots… it just won’t happen. In effect what Anet have done is made the next area with the holograms more elitist territory.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

I believe Anet might have overshot the ability-factor of most zergs to DPS certain targets. Zergs are 90% brainless

And apparently this is something A.Net wants to change, which is good, but it’s going to be hard task because of all those “i play how i want” players

Teaching players how to read boss cues, proper movement/positioning, when to attack/when NOT to attack etc. are all good ideas for improving player skill.

Putting players in a situation where “you need to play Zerker/full DPS otherwise you can forget about beating this content” is NOT a good idea. If that were the case, why even bother having other stat spreads at all? By all means, encourage players to improve their skill, but creating situations where certain builds or stats are useless is NOT good design.

Zaxares.5419:

Putting players in a situation where “you need to play Zerker/full DPS otherwise you can forget about beating this content” is NOT a good idea.

But that’s wrong. All you need to do is come prepared, bring your best geared character, get the damage buff from the mystic plaza merchant, use the scarlect tonic and maybe even eat some buff food and suddenly you are way more effective.

All those help, but there’s still a world of difference between using my Berserker gear Warrior and my hybrid Conditionmancer (and yes, they’re both geared in Exotics and using the Scarlet potions. I have not noticed any appreciable difference in my DPS when using the Valiant bonus, so I skip it nowadays unless I’m going for a 6 Min attempt). It’s pretty clear from the get-go that one stat spread is far, far superior to the others when it comes to the Knights (especially since the Knight’s attacks are so infrequent and clearly telegraphed).

I believe Anet might have overshot the ability-factor of most zergs to DPS certain targets. Zergs are 90% brainless, we know this.

I think this is an unhelpful attitude. It’s more like 10% that are clueless, but that’s still enough to tank the event.

Teaching players how to read boss cues, proper movement/positioning, when to attack/when NOT to attack etc. are all good ideas for improving player skill.

Putting players in a situation where “you need to play Zerker/full DPS otherwise you can forget about beating this content” is NOT a good idea.

Exactly. I don’t think most people are playing this thing “wrong.” Yes, you tend to get 4-5 people who refuse to WP when they die. Yes, you get maybe 5-10 that get sucked into each vortex (not always the same people), and that cuts down on DPS a bit, but when you have a group of 50 on a Knight, and the Knight ends the event at over 50% HP, that’s not the fault of the players not reading the mechanics right, that’s something wrong with the HP:DPS ratio.

I have a theory as to how events scale, and what’s wrong with that. Let’s say in a fight they assume that each player brings at least 10 DPS to the table, and they give you 10 minutes to beat it. That means that they have a target HP of 6K for each player to beat down. If you have one player soloing it start to finish, he does his 10DPS the whole time, and deals his full 6K damage to kill it. If you have five playes the entire time, they do their combined 50dps, and their combined 30K total damage, and kill it. If you have 50 players they do their combined 500dps, and their 300K damage and kill it.

The problem is this (I am assuming here, so if anyone knows for a fact different, let us know): When an event scales, I believe it does so without regard to timing. By which I mean, if five people take on the boss, then halfway through the event, they have done 15K total damage to it, with 15K to go. If another 45 people show up, the event then scales rapidly, suddenly requiring an additional 150K damage over the next five minutes. This is sometimes doable, but it’s more difficult than dealing 300K over ten minutes, due to cooldowns and cycles and that sort of thing. I think it’s possible that the system may be even more rigged against the players than that, assuming a certain level of synergy that may not exist.

This didn’t used to be a problem, because the game didn’t used to have TIMERS. If the boss scaled wildly, it just meant it took an extra few minutes to beat, no big deal. Now with timers though, those extra few minutes can ruin it for everyone.

The entire moral of this story is, get your achievements done early, before the zerg gets bored or Anet decides to change things, because “we’re not doing it right”.

kokiman.2364:

Zaxares.5419:

Putting players in a situation where “you need to play Zerker/full DPS otherwise you can forget about beating this content” is NOT a good idea.

But that’s wrong. All you need to do is come prepared, bring your best geared character, get the damage buff from the mystic plaza merchant, use the scarlect tonic and maybe even eat some buff food and suddenly you are way more effective.

First: sometimes it’s still not enough. Especially if your best (or only!) build is a condi. Or there are not enough people on the map. Second, an average player is not going to do that no matter how hard you try to force them. There’s a reason why those are called casuals (what you describe is a “pro” behaviour). They will just leave. And then you get back to the “not enough people on the map” and “wonky scaling” issues.

Saint.5647:

Ohoni.6057:

Solution: Fix the scaling. Make it assume less DPS from each player

This is it really. I did this event on the first two days only. I tried again once later during the week. The difference was massive.

With players using food and potions, in DPS gear, it isn’t a problem. I’m not sure exactly how the scaling works either. It’s no secret that it is known to be wonky. However, most of the time in open world events, when you get 20 extra players from somewhere, you can generally assume that 15 of them will be PVT or something equally low DPS.

Because of this, you see a huge spike in Boss HP and yet nowhere near the corresponding DPS to justify.

Suggestion: Scale mobs to DPS comp instead of raw numbers. Or allow large scale, hosted instances with gated controls to entrance.

I think the primary issue is that it’s exaggerating the Zerker vs Any-Other-Stat-Combo debate.

Basically, since they invalidate all conditions for 50% of the battle (the first 25% and the third 25%)… All condition damage is nullified.

This just shows how significant condition damage is. (Perhaps that was their intent, to demonstrate to everyone complaining about condition limitations.)

The “burn” phases of the boss go by extremely quickly.

If there was a way to easily cause the boss to go into these “burn” phases (like, say a counter related to interrupts or conditions or something… similar to the Dynamics hologram)… Then it wouldn’t have been nearly as bad.

As it is, it just promotes the whole Zerker mindset with the “only actual pure damage output counts.”

kokiman.2364:

Zaxares.5419:

Putting players in a situation where “you need to play Zerker/full DPS otherwise you can forget about beating this content” is NOT a good idea.

But that’s wrong. All you need to do is come prepared, bring your best geared character, get the damage buff from the mystic plaza merchant, use the scarlect tonic and maybe even eat some buff food and suddenly you are way more effective.

No, he’s right, I’ve tried that thinking “oh that’ll actually help my damage right?” And all it does is boost me from ~700-900 a hit to ~850-1050 a hit, nota huge DPS increase and not worth the gold.

I haven’t encountered the problem that OP described. Maybe it was an isolated case? Each time I try players split pretty much evenly and event succeeds without any problem. Never under 6 minutes though.

Durzlla.6295:

And all it does is boost me from ~700-900 a hit to ~850-1050 a hit, nota huge DPS increase and not worth the gold.

~100 extra damage * 50 players * 15 minutes is a rather large damage increase and probably enough to fill in the gap caused by low dps players. Of course there’s no way you’re going to get them to do it however.

I’m seeing a lot of these threads after Anets ‘fix’. I’d hate to have to respond to each of these threads saying the same thing. I really hope that we’ll hear from a Dev soon. I know this isn’t being ignored but not having a response to this is just frustrating.

I’m also sure that Anet is just as frustrated with our response to their ‘fix’ as we are with their attempt at removing ‘zerging’ of events.

Zaxares.5419:

Teaching players how to read boss cues, proper movement/positioning, when to attack/when NOT to attack etc. are all good ideas for improving player skill.

Putting players in a situation where “you need to play Zerker/full DPS otherwise you can forget about beating this content” is NOT a good idea. If that were the case, why even bother having other stat spreads at all? By all means, encourage players to improve their skill, but creating situations where certain builds or stats are useless is NOT good design.

I have to disagree.
Understandings the different posibilities your class offers and being able to tune your charcaters for different tasks is also an important part of improving as a player.
If some event is repeteadly failing because a lack of damage, I expect players to make changes and try to contribute to the DPS output as much as possible.

I obviosuly don’t expect a player to open the AH and inmediately buy a full set of Berserker gear (I’ve always believed that some alternative gear is highly desirable and I’m really surprised on so many veteran players not having something in this line. I don’t know, maybe the mystery cat tonic is too tempting). I don’t think, however, that some trait/utility tweaking (which costs next to nothing) is too much to ask.

Unless they’re fighting in melee range (so keeping the boss rooted in place and making ranged AoEs easier to land), I expect Warriors and Guardians to be built for damage. I expect the first ones to bring Empower Allies and Banners and the second ones to slot Stand Your Ground and wield a Staff as a backup weapon only if they’re tanky gear users.
I expect Elementalists to provide some might stacking (and fury through Persisting Flames) with Arcane Brilliance and Wave over fire fields. So I do for engineers, which have an insane amount of low CD blast finishers on top of their own fire field.
I expect rangers to trait for Spotter and bring Spirit of Frost (which I rarely see btw), probably even traited, for a freaking 3.5%/7% AoE final damage increase.

I wouldn’t be surprised if an over 50% damage increase could be achieved without touching any single piece of gear.

Healix.5819:

Durzlla.6295:

And all it does is boost me from ~700-900 a hit to ~850-1050 a hit, nota huge DPS increase and not worth the gold.

~100 extra damage * 50 players * 15 minutes is a rather large damage increase and probably enough to fill in the gap caused by low dps players. Of course there’s no way you’re going to get them to do it however.

It probably wouldn’t be quite that high because most DPS players generally are among the crowd that want to do as much damage as physically possible, and as such are already using the buffs, but I do see what you’re getting at.

The biggest problem with the event is that it scales horribly. Players on less populated servers must guest to increase chances of success, in which guesting was originally meant for playing with friends. This isn’t the first time Arenet has done this. Whoever is behind this mechanic isn’t doing a good job at it. Then, you have this situation where berserker’s gear are further glorified in PvE. This event clearly outlined that. But that’s just a whole different issue.

Healix.5819:

Durzlla.6295:

And all it does is boost me from ~700-900 a hit to ~850-1050 a hit, nota huge DPS increase and not worth the gold.

~100 extra damage * 50 players * 15 minutes is a rather large damage increase and probably enough to fill in the gap caused by low dps players. Of course there’s no way you’re going to get them to do it however.

Not true. With the numbers given we’re looking at a 20% damage increase, give or take. If all players did it the total damage output will still be only 20% higher!

If the boss fails with 50%hp remaining you’d need a damage increase of 100% to kill it! That’s more like the difference between bearbow PUGs and perma-25might+fury speedrun groups than “picking up an additional buff and some food”.

The main problem in all of these threads is people arguing completely different things. Most of those complaining are upset with the general design and how it ostracises “sub-optimal” playstyle choices. Most of the rebuttals accept the design as a “God-given” challenge and only give “advice” on how to improve within the designed limits. I have yet to see any valid argument as to why the knights’ design in itself is good for the game (and on the flipside everyone will agree that taking a condi build is a total waste)

Minos.5168:

The “burn” phases of the boss go by extremely quickly.

Sadly, this isn’t caused by the condition specs at all. I haven’t seen the effects of the debuff explained anywhere but it most likely includes an increase in direct damage and/or a reduction of melee damage dealt by the knight (allowing zerker specs to melee longer). Aside from that vulnerability adds 25% direct damage to the entire zerg and another 10%+ multiplier on many dps specs through “bonus damage to conditioned foes” passives.

The debuff mechanics also don’t favor condition specs as the damage and duration of conditions is entirely meaningless. A zerk mesmer can still proc 24 bleeds every few seconds, dps engineers deliberately spam conditions left right and center to fuel Modified Ammunition. And most ranged autoattacks will cause further procs on fire fields, which the zerkers want for might stacking.

kokiman.2364:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

I believe Anet might have overshot the ability-factor of most zergs to DPS certain targets. Zergs are 90% brainless

And apparently this is something A.Net wants to change, which is good, but it’s going to be hard task because of all those “i play how i want” players

For one, they can make a UI for the Squad system, like there is for the party system. A lot of people don’t even know the squad system exists.

Then add an autolauncher to a mumble channel designated by the commander of the squad into the UI- a commander should have the ability to designate “his” or “her” mumble channel, port, and password, and anyone who joins his or her squad can join up from an ingame launcher- IDK about you but I’ve found that zergs with voice chat and a commander at the head have only about 30% brainlessness

Photoloss.4817:

I have yet to see any valid argument as to why the knights’ design in itself is good for the game (and on the flipside everyone will agree that taking a condi build is a total waste)

I see it as good in the sense that should encourage players to look into their builds and try to adapt them, which IMHO is a very important part of the game that, since usually uneeded, A LOT of people completely ignore.
In this case the tweak should be towards DPS and, given how controversial the whole DPS/berserker thing is, generates a lot of rage. The idea, however, could still be valid for survivability, condition removal and many other things: people tend to not change builds even if for better and it’s good to encourage them to make situational changes.

On the other hand, having this on the preevent towards the final boss of the LS season finale is a terrible mistake. This update should have provide some feeling of epciness and illusion of challenge while being among the less skill/gear demanding ones.

Condition builds, as you said, are completely useless, but that’s a common issue for almost every PvE group content and not specifically related to this event.
Sure the condition immunity/reflect phase makes it worse but, if we have to be honest, condi builds would still be crap even without it.

Vargamonth.2047:

I expect Elementalists to provide some might stacking (and fury through Persisting Flames) with Arcane Brilliance and Wave over fire fields.

And as an ele, I refuse. Fire Fields can actively hurt anyone using projectile finishers during the reflect phase. I do not like placing them then. And when I do, I’ve seen people dodging out of my fire fields or otherwise avoiding them. I personally can’t blame them. Part of being a decent player is avoiding doing stupid things that directly hurts allies.

Fenrina.2954:

Vargamonth.2047:

I expect Elementalists to provide some might stacking (and fury through Persisting Flames) with Arcane Brilliance and Wave over fire fields.

And as an ele, I refuse. Fire Fields can actively hurt anyone using projectile finishers during the reflect phase. I do not like placing them then. And when I do, I’ve seen people dodging out of my fire fields or otherwise avoiding them. I personally can’t blame them. Part of being a decent player is avoiding doing stupid things that directly hurts allies.

We’re talking of a (usually 20%) chance of receiving back 1s of low condition damage that’s going to deal no more than 700 damage.
The fire field doesn’t even need to be a huge wall. Burnign Retreat can be used to avoid the extraction attack (so no time or Lava Font wasted) and creates a wall which is radial towards the boss and shouldn’t be a problem at all.

Part of being a decent player is also about maximizing your chances of success.
If your server has no problem beating the Knights, then it’s perfectly fine and safe to not lay fire fields on the ground. If, onthe other hand. it tends to fail because of a lack of damage, then there’s no point on worrying about a minor damage source when it could make winning possible.

Fenrina.2954:

Vargamonth.2047:

I expect Elementalists to provide some might stacking (and fury through Persisting Flames) with Arcane Brilliance and Wave over fire fields.

And as an ele, I refuse. Fire Fields can actively hurt anyone using projectile finishers during the reflect phase. I do not like placing them then. And when I do, I’ve seen people dodging out of my fire fields or otherwise avoiding them. I personally can’t blame them. Part of being a decent player is avoiding doing stupid things that directly hurts allies.

The extra damage people would get from Might (and Fury) greatly outweighs the damage they would have to endure from Burning.
An even more important part of being a good player is being able to ??ses a situation and pick the best option available.

Vargamonth.2047:

Part of being a decent player is also about maximizing your chances of success.

Maximizing? No, it’s not. That’s part of min-maxing which is among highest tiers of play. Decent is a long ways away from that. Decent is knowing what your build can do and doing it well enough for most fights.

Also, you’re making some rather large assumptions about my build. I suggest you don’t. Suffice to say, I’m not using burning speed to avoid any attack.

Vargamonth.2047:

I see it as good in the sense that should encourage players to look into their builds and try to adapt them, which IMHO is a very important part of the game that, since usually uneeded, A LOT of people completely ignore.

Two problems with this: One, as you state yourself, max dps “zerker” is the meta anyway, thus Anet should design such challenges to drive people away from it rather than further enforce it.

Secondly, the game interface currently can’t support constant build-switching. Even new sets of exotic gear are hard to get unless you’re rolling in cash anyway, so requiring a specific stat combo for time-limited content is a no-go. (“hard” is of course relative, but it still takes several days running CoF for the full zerk set if you’re broke and we only get 2 weeks total)

There’s also no feasible way to retrait/switch templates mid-adventure, meaning the hardcore players would most likely develop 2-3 “most adaptive” builds which can switch without a full retrait (banning all other builds and classes in the process) or enforce gear and build checks before the run.

Obviously the solution is to give us build templates and/or better inventory management so carrying around 2-3 different stat combos actually becomes feasible (without investing into the gemshop for additional bank+bag slots); but until that is done they should keep force-retrait “challenges” OUT of the game, thank you. Maybe 1-2 raid dungeons so hard even TTS will take months to beat them, with a meaningless “bragging rights” reward for their effort, while the vast majority of players can simply ignore it.

Vargamonth.2047:

Part of being a decent player is also about maximizing your chances of success.

Actually, your comments seem to be more about other players maximizing your chance of success. Rangers, for example, are worth nothing more than a precision buff with some damage on the side. Not players who have their own health pool. Do you even bother to rez them when they are downed?

Photoloss.4817:

Obviously the solution is to give us build templates and/or better inventory management

Alternatively, and probably a better solution, they could design the bosses to be more open-ended. Allowing condition users to break the reflect and cause condition crash would be a wonderful mechanic. Kinda a shame they didn’t do that, eh?

FenrirSlakt.3692:

The extra damage people would get from Might (and Fury) greatly outweighs the damage they would have to endure from Burning.
An even more important part of being a good player is being able to ??ses a situation and pick the best option available.

Expecting a random person, and even fairly decent players, to be willing to hurt themselves for a greater benefit is not going to end well. That’s ultimately the point. If a boss has a mechanic that causes fields to hurt themselves or others, it is less likely to be used in spite of any benefits.

Klonex.4562:

because of the excessive whining they decided to change them. there’s no real point in trying to take down/help take down another knight if there are no extra loot involved so the majority of people stick to one and let the event fail. there are those few servers that do indeed try to succeed and fail/win so they can try to beat scarlet’s holo and get the rng chest, though that’s all.

This is ridiculous. Please point out which dev post states that to back up your claim. Yes there was one thread titled “Knights drop too much loot” and some people complain about it. But it’s only a minority even on this forum, and there are many more popular threads that demand more reasonable changes that if “excessive whining” compels devs to make hotfix patches then there is no way it got us into the current crappy situation (read: can’t get to hologram).

Neural.1824:

Vargamonth.2047:

Part of being a decent player is also about maximizing your chances of success.

Actually, your comments seem to be more about other players maximizing your chance of success.

GW2 is the only mmo where statements like these can be pronounced without ridicule following. This game needs instanced content, /inspect and all the things that allow a community to filter out the bad grain.

Neural.1824:

Vargamonth.2047:

Part of being a decent player is also about maximizing your chances of success.

Actually, your comments seem to be more about other players maximizing your chance of success. Rangers, for example, are worth nothing more than a precision buff with some damage on the side. Not players who have their own health pool. Do you even bother to rez them when they are downed?

And as a guardian I’m little more than another damage source which will eventually grant stability for the extraction attack (which happens to be useless if everybody dodges). I’ve neither damage boosting auras nor reliable low CD finishers, my heals are useless and the player side loses DPS if I dare to grab a staff for buffing.
I can be a “tank” too and keep the Knight engaged and easier to nuke down (a ranger also can do this), but that’s currently pointless. Most of the time there’s enough people meleeing and an obvious lack of DPS.
I guess I could also be a high DPS melee fighter, but that’s out of my reach and my computer doesn’t help either. I’ve tried to go in and out and burst during extraction attacks, but the safety window is too small and I become useless for a few seconds until I can return to scepter (not sure if useful).

And yes, I try to res every character that gets downed next to me :P

Fenrina.2954:

Vargamonth.2047:

Part of being a decent player is also about maximizing your chances of success.

Maximizing? No, it’s not. That’s part of min-maxing which is among highest tiers of play. Decent is a long ways away from that. Decent is knowing what your build can do and doing it well enough for most fights.

Also, you’re making some rather large assumptions about my build. I suggest you don’t. Suffice to say, I’m not using burning speed to avoid any attack.

Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have used that word.
What I mean is that your main goal should be to finish the event, so if the event needs damage, you should try to bring as much as you can figure among your possibilities.
As I said, worrying about a minor damage being reflected is pointless if the event is likely to fail because a lack of DPS.
It’s like if the enemy would pop retaliation. It might seem unhealthy to hit it at first glance, but if the DPS race fails otherwise, then it’s a sacrifice that must be done (just being careful to not destroy yourself).

And yes, I obviously have no idea about the build you’re using.
I could perfectly be mistaken too in my assumption of staff in permafire being the best sustained ranged damage for ele (apart of some eventual Ice Bow).

Photoloss.4817:

Two problems with this: One, as you state yourself, max dps “zerker” is the meta anyway, thus Anet should design such challenges to drive people away from it rather than further enforce it.

To be honest, max DPS berserker is the meta for dungeons, and outside the few well known paths that a lot people run for farming, I’m not sure on if we should call it meta at all.
Many organized groups run it and there are a few speedrun PUGs here and there, but for the most part those dungeons/paths are pretty much ignored.
The meta for zergy content has been really more about PVT than anything else.

Photoloss.4817:

Secondly, the game interface currently can’t support constant build-switching. Even new sets of exotic gear are hard to get unless you’re rolling in cash anyway, so requiring a specific stat combo for time-limited content is a no-go. (“hard” is of course relative, but it still takes several days running CoF for the full zerk set if you’re broke and we only get 2 weeks total)

I already said that I don’t expect anyone to get a set that doesn’t want for some temporary content.
I strongly believe that there’s enough potential in overlooked traits, utilities, weapons and consumables to increase the damage output by A LOT.

I still think, however, that an average veteran PVT user should have enough laurels (and maybe even guild commendations) to acquire some ascended berserker trinkets that might be useful on a quite recurrent basis (I would not buy the now, so close to the ferocity changes).

Photoloss.4817:

There’s also no feasible way to retrait/switch templates mid-adventure, meaning the hardcore players would most likely develop 2-3 “most adaptive” builds which can switch without a full retrait (banning all other builds and classes in the process) or enforce gear and build checks before the run.

Obviously the solution is to give us build templates and/or better inventory management so carrying around 2-3 different stat combos actually becomes feasible (without investing into the gemshop for additional bank+bag slots); but until that is done they should keep force-retrait “challenges” OUT of the game, thank you. Maybe 1-2 raid dungeons so hard even TTS will take months to beat them, with a meaningless “bragging rights” reward for their effort, while the vast majority of players can simply ignore it.

I agree on the build/template system being too rigid.
I also think that the overflow issues don’t exactly help people to retrait and those staying in L.A. for different activities might feel slightly uncomfortable with a different trait setup (I do).
For people porting to L.A. just for the Knight event, however, I can’t really see a good reason to not visit the Mists and retrait before. It’s just a minor nuissance.

I will point this out about the Knights, a mechanic which I don’t believe anyone has made note of before. Knights do not reflect conditions 1:1 to the players. That is to say, if you “apply” 5s of Poison to a buffed Knight, you don’t receive 5s of Poison yourself. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what does happen, and it’s possible that the conditions just get reflected around randomly (like your Poison goes to some other player while you get someone else’ Weakness), but I actually think what happens is that you get several seconds of a random condition each time you apply a condition. So like if you apply three stacks of Bleed, you might instead end up with one stack of Poison, one of Cripple, and one of Chill or something.

I just know that my character tends to apply various conditions regardless of which attacks I use, so I just have to put up with that if I want to deal any damage at all, but I tend to pick up conditions that I don’t actually generate.

Vargamonth.2047:

What I mean is that your main goal should be to finish the event, so if the event needs damage, you should try to bring as much as you can figure among your possibilities.
As I said, worrying about a minor damage being reflected is pointless if the event is likely to fail because a lack of DPS.
It’s like if the enemy would pop retaliation. It might seem unhealthy to hit it at first glance, but if the DPS race fails otherwise, then it’s a sacrifice that must be done (just being careful to not destroy yourself).

It doesn’t really matter though. People are not 100% logical beings. They’re more likely going to react to stuff like this with an emotional response (avoid getting hurt) than a logical response (worth it). Since this is about anet’s design, it’s that anet should work with player’s typical reactions than try to fight them.

Vargamonth.2047:

And yes, I obviously have no idea about the build you’re using.
I could perfectly be mistaken too in my assumption of staff in permafire being the best sustained ranged damage for ele (apart of some eventual Ice Bow).

It’s complicated. It’s Flame Axe’s higher base damage and might vs Frost Bow’s multihit vs player’s reactions to them vs situation stuff (aka I’m going to meteor shower it. Oh no, it moved.), and so on. I really don’t want to get into the specifics as I’m getting tired of said knights. You’re kinda right in that I do use fire all the time though.

I could actually combine the two for even more power, but then I have to gamble if other players are going to screw me over or not. They usually do elsewhere so I haven’t bothered trying.

Ohoni.6057:

I will point this out about the Knights, a mechanic which I don’t believe anyone has made note of before. Knights do not reflect conditions 1:1 to the players. That is to say, if you “apply” 5s of Poison to a buffed Knight, you don’t receive 5s of Poison yourself. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what does happen, and it’s possible that the conditions just get reflected around randomly (like your Poison goes to some other player while you get someone else’ Weakness), but I actually think what happens is that you get several seconds of a random condition each time you apply a condition. So like if you apply three stacks of Bleed, you might instead end up with one stack of Poison, one of Cripple, and one of Chill or something.

I just know that my character tends to apply various conditions regardless of which attacks I use, so I just have to put up with that if I want to deal any damage at all, but I tend to pick up conditions that I don’t actually generate.

No, it’s not random.
If I use Chains of Light during the condition reflect phase (yeah, its stupid :P) I get automatically affected by immob.

I don’t know exactly how it works, but I guess reflected conditions share the application method of the original soruce. Directly applied conditions are directly reflected, while projectile ones are reflected like projectiles.

Ohoni.6057:

I will point this out about the Knights, a mechanic which I don’t believe anyone has made note of before. Knights do not reflect conditions 1:1 to the players. That is to say, if you “apply” 5s of Poison to a buffed Knight, you don’t receive 5s of Poison yourself. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what does happen, and it’s possible that the conditions just get reflected around randomly (like your Poison goes to some other player while you get someone else’ Weakness), but I actually think what happens is that you get several seconds of a random condition each time you apply a condition. So like if you apply three stacks of Bleed, you might instead end up with one stack of Poison, one of Cripple, and one of Chill or something.

I just know that my character tends to apply various conditions regardless of which attacks I use, so I just have to put up with that if I want to deal any damage at all, but I tend to pick up conditions that I don’t actually generate.

If you hover on the condition you’ll be able to see the source player name, so it shouldn’t be random. It looks like if your attack causes a condition, the boss randomly transfer a condition from the pool of conditions that all players are currently applying (but not seeing).

I noticed this since I’m getting confusion status… bleed/burn/poison I can understand… but confusion… really? I am suspecting that people are feeling trolly.

Ohoni.6057:

I will point this out about the Knights, a mechanic which I don’t believe anyone has made note of before. Knights do not reflect conditions 1:1 to the players. That is to say, if you “apply” 5s of Poison to a buffed Knight, you don’t receive 5s of Poison yourself. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what does happen, and it’s possible that the conditions just get reflected around randomly (like your Poison goes to some other player while you get someone else’ Weakness), but I actually think what happens is that you get several seconds of a random condition each time you apply a condition. So like if you apply three stacks of Bleed, you might instead end up with one stack of Poison, one of Cripple, and one of Chill or something.

I just know that my character tends to apply various conditions regardless of which attacks I use, so I just have to put up with that if I want to deal any damage at all, but I tend to pick up conditions that I don’t actually generate.

A small note in regards to the idea that the conditions applied to the player are random: I was at Red Knight the other day with a group that was pretty well versed on the condition reflection, and I noticed during that time period against the night that I was usually only getting bleeding or at times cripple. There were others occasionally, but the consistency of getting bleed with a little bit of cripple or confusion on the side might go against the random theory.

Klonex.4562:

Ohoni.6057:

Outcome: If you kill one knight, you get six boxes, but if you kill three knights, you get 18 boxes. Everyone tried to kill thee bosses. This was chaotic at first, but the players got it down to a pattern and managed to do this routinely.

ANet did not like this. We weren’t playing their game “right,” they needed to stop us from playing it how we wanted to play, we were only allowed to play it how they wanted us to play it. So they “fixed” it.

wrong actually, they actually didn’t mind it at first. the reason Anet decided to do something about is because of so many people whining about it. if you go back a few pages in this forum you’ll notice a few “tired of zerg content” and the locked “knights give too many loot”. zerg wasn’t too bad. yes, we weren’t getting six minute achievement because of the zerg though all knights were being killed (all of them were being taken down) through a simple rotation and we were getting a decent amount of loot from them.
because of the excessive whining they decided to change them. there’s no real point in trying to take down/help take down another knight if there are no extra loot involved so the majority of people stick to one and let the event fail. there are those few servers that do indeed try to succeed and fail/win so they can try to beat scarlet’s holo and get the rng chest, though that’s all.

They did it because it broke their loot system and the knights stopped dropping any items at all.

Neural.1824:

I was at Red Knight the other day with a group that was pretty well versed on the condition reflection, and I noticed during that time period against the night that I was usually only getting bleeding or at times cripple. There were others occasionally, but the consistency of getting bleed with a little bit of cripple or confusion on the side might go against the random theory.

Warrior Sword combo is bleed, bleed, cripple. Sword/Sword has some decent power attacks, and a block, in it so there might have been people using them. Not fully sure if that explains things or not, but it might be related. It can’t exactly reflect something it’s not hit with.

Edit:

They did it because it broke their loot system and the knights stopped dropping any items at all.

Which is weird on it’s own because they didn’t need to change how the knight’s worked to fix the looting issue. About all I know for sure is their use of “encourage” in the patch notes makes their decision rather troubling. There’s no way this encourages anything; it’s a requirement. Why they seem to think it’s encouragement does not lead to nice thoughts.

Fenrina.2954:

Which is weird on it’s own because they didn’t need to change how the knight’s worked to fix the looting issue. About all I know for sure is their use of “encourage” in the patch notes makes their decision rather troubling. There’s no way this encourages anything; it’s a requirement. Why they seem to think it’s encouragement does not lead to nice thoughts.

the tin-foil-hat side of me says that it was an intentional break because some monetizer executive threw a tantrum over how much loot was being injected into the economy.

Vargamonth.2047:

To be honest, max DPS berserker is the meta for dungeons, and outside the few well known paths that a lot people run for farming, I’m not sure on if we should call it meta at all.
Many organized groups run it and there are a few speedrun PUGs here and there, but for the most part those dungeons/paths are pretty much ignored.
The meta for zergy content has been really more about PVT than anything else.

Zerker is also best for open world content (higher clear rate, higher tagging rate with random weak AoEs) and any zerg boss you can actually crit. The “can’t-crit-zerk-ban” just invalidates all dps gear so you’re left with PVT/clerics (because conditions are still worthless). And while a PVT player might survive better against Scarlet’s souped-up minions, the second Elite Aetherblade Thug Battle Standard will kill them too, as the first already gave him 25might.

Vargamonth.2047:

I already said that I don’t expect anyone to get a set that doesn’t want for some temporary content.
I strongly believe that there’s enough potential in overlooked traits, utilities, weapons and consumables to increase the damage output by A LOT.

I still think, however, that an average veteran PVT user should have enough laurels (and maybe even guild commendations) to acquire some ascended berserker trinkets that might be useful on a quite recurrent basis (I would not buy the now, so close to the ferocity changes).

Few utilities increase direct damage (you don’t really want more people running Signets purely for the passives, do you?) and few traits can be switched without actually retraiting entirely, which as I said can’t be done on the fly.

And while there is room for “improvement”, we’re back to “accepting the design versus questioning it”. Yes, necros can use an axe and switch dumbfire for Close to Death, but they’ll still be running an inferior mockup in suboptimal gear through no mistake of their own beyond playing PvE necro in the first place. Anet needs to either allow people to adapt without being penalised for personal playstyle choices, or diversify/“dumb down” the content enough so everyone can make a meaningful contribution.

Vargamonth.2047:

I agree on the build/template system being too rigid.
I also think that the overflow issues don’t exactly help people to retrait and those staying in L.A. for different activities might feel slightly uncomfortable with a different trait setup (I do).
For people porting to L.A. just for the Knight event, however, I can’t really see a good reason to not visit the Mists and retrait before. It’s just a minor nuissance.

A minor nuisance that must be squashed, burned, torn to shreds and forgotten before it can take root. It would already be bad if the Holo fight actually required dedicated condi players, what if the next boss reflects all crits? Or has a constant 2000dps armor-piercing aura? Or is only vulnerable to conditions and has the aura?

I noticed this since I’m getting confusion status… bleed/burn/poison I can understand… but confusion… really? I am suspecting that people are feeling trolly.

Yeah, I mean I have an SB Thief. I know I can apply Poison, Bleed, Weakness, and sometimes Imobil. I still find myself getting hit by Burn, Confusion, and other effects, so it can’t be “you get what you serve.” The only thing I can think of is that it might be reflecting Combo effects?

They did it because it broke their loot system and the knights stopped dropping any items at all.

But adding in the “event chest” reward method, while it would still be a nerf to the total rewards of the Tuesday zergs, would still have allowed people to clear the event. When they added the “50 players only” rule, that’s what broke the whole event chain, and has nothing to do with loot.

the tin-foil-hat side of me says that it was an intentional break because some monetizer executive threw a tantrum over how much loot was being injected into the economy.

Yeah, how dare PvE players get anything nice, rewards are for people who play the Trading Posts ONLY.

Ohoni.6057:

Yeah, how dare PvE players get anything nice, rewards are for people who play the Trading Posts ONLY.

Nice try, but the issue of loot amounts in PvE is irrelevant to your jealousy of people making money on the TP.

I’ve said for a long time, as recently as yesterday (in a now trashed thread) that loot in this game is dismal and needs to be boosted a lot. The trading post is just fine as it is.

Photoloss.4817:

Zerker is also best for open world content (higher clear rate, higher tagging rate with random weak AoEs) and any zerg boss you can actually crit. The “can’t-crit-zerk-ban” just invalidates all dps gear so you’re left with PVT/clerics (because conditions are still worthless). And while a PVT player might survive better against Scarlet’s souped-up minions, the second Elite Aetherblade Thug Battle Standard will kill them too, as the first already gave him 25might.

Whenever the content is about tagging and getting loot, survival is way more important than damage. The PVT player might die to the second Battle Standard, but the Berserker still dies to the first one and might get downed easily by many other damage soruces like Lighting Strikes or Grenades.

Photoloss.4817:

Few utilities increase direct damage (you don’t really want more people running Signets purely for the passives, do you?) and few traits can be switched without actually retraiting entirely, which as I said can’t be done on the fly.

And while there is room for “improvement”, we’re back to “accepting the design versus questioning it”. Yes, necros can use an axe and switch dumbfire for Close to Death, but they’ll still be running an inferior mockup in suboptimal gear through no mistake of their own beyond playing PvE necro in the first place. Anet needs to either allow people to adapt without being penalised for personal playstyle choices, or diversify/“dumb down” the content enough so everyone can make a meaningful contribution.

Some classes can fill their bar with damage improving utilities and other don’t. If you’ve no other meaningful utility, a power boosting signet is among the best things you can slot.
As a Guardian, with Aegis, Reflects and any other defensive utility being a complete waste, Bane Signet is actually my second utility choice for this content right after Stand Your Ground.

Banners of Power and Discipline (and Battle Standards), even FGJ, for warriors; blast finisher and fire fields for Eles and Engis; Frost Spirit for Rangers … I could easily expect about a 20% damage increase just from that.

And when I talk about adapting, I talk about a full retrait before porting to L.A.
Retraiting “on the fly” is still useful but nowhere close to what a fully respec can achieve.

About questioning the design, I absolutely question how Conditions work for PvE.
That’s, however, completely unrelated to this content. Even if they are even worse when fighting Knights, they’d still have been useless without the reflect phase.
This also means that tuning a conditiomancer for massive content requires a complete trait and gear overhaul. It’s annoying but nothing new for Necro users.

And don’t get me wrong. I wholeheartly dislike the Knight fight.
I just think that encouraging player to adapt and experiment with their builds instead of sticking to their “chosen one” is something positive.

Photoloss.4817:

A minor nuisance that must be squashed, burned, torn to shreds and forgotten before it can take root. It would already be bad if the Holo fight actually required dedicated condi players, what if the next boss reflects all crits? Or has a constant 2000dps armor-piercing aura? Or is only vulnerable to conditions and has the aura?

I wasn’t calling the Knight battle a minor nuisance :P
That was about porting to the Mist for a full retrait.

About your hypotetical encounter … you would need a good amount of power damage for the Knights and a good amount of survivability for the Holo. I’m not sure if it could be matematically possible to achieve both.
Condition vulnerability still wouldn’t be a problem since you could easily reach the cap with a couple of dedicated conditon players. Those should attack while every other player dance and cheer at them (there’s a chance on inflicting weak conditions and lowering the overall damage if they attack) :P

Neural.1824:

I’ve said for a long time, as recently as yesterday (in a now trashed thread) that loot in this game is dismal and needs to be boosted a lot. The trading post is just fine as it is.

That’s fun. I actually think that we suffer a rampant inflation and rewards are completely out of control :P

I just think that encouraging player to adapt and experiment with their builds instead of sticking to their “chosen one” is something positive.

No. A build is something players should be able to get comfortable with. You should be able to set it and forget it. If you get bored with your build and want to change it then that’s fine, that should be an option, but the content should never bully you into it.