Guild Wars 2

On my climb to lv. 50, I encountered some good and bad instabilities. Now that I’ve had time to collect my thoughts, I figured I’d turn them into constructive criticism.

Lv. 31: Mist Stalker – The Mossman stalks you through the fractals.

I think this is exactly the kind of mechanic instabilities should be going for. It’s interesting and definitely forces a group to change its playstyle a bit — or at least gain a little caution.

My only criticism here is that I really don’t think Mossman should have any stacks of defiant or initial crowd control immunity when he pops up. That would not only make countering the spawn more interesting, but it would also give a higher value to the control role, which has long sought a stronger standing in PvE. (On that note, if ArenaNet is truly interested in boosting control roles, these are the kind of mechanics that should be looked into.)

Lv. 32: Impaired Immunity – Conditions applied to you last longer.

I really like this instability in concept because it could encourage better teamwork and support through condition cleansing. The problem is most PvE encounters just don’t make much use of conditions (or boons, for that matter). So this would be a great instability if there was some groundwork in place that already created some condition pressure, but that groundwork needs to be built first.

Lv. 33: Outflanked – Enemies do more damage when attacking from behind or the sides.

Another interesting instability just because it requires players to be more cautious and change their playstyles. More survivable builds in particular deal with this instability much better, which is a welcome change from the berserker metagame. The problem is it seems really buggy, particularly for AOE attacks.

Lv. 34: Fleeting Precision – Your critical chance is reduced.

This is the first boring instability, and I think it’s the kind of damage throttle that ArenaNet should avoid for these abilities. This kind of instability doesn’t make anyone change their gear set-up. (There are too many issues with that, considering fractals require ascended gear.) Instead, it just makes encounters unnecessarily longer without adding any depth.

Lv. 35: Stormy Weather – Lightning periodically strikes.

This is similar to the Outflanked instability in that it adds depth and caution to all encounters while indirectly boosting non-berserker builds. It also could encourage stun breaks if the stun on the lightning strike lasted longer, which is perhaps one area ArenaNet could look into. The one difference from Outflanked is the lightning strike directly discourages stacking, which is a tactic that can often trivialize encounters if done correctly.

Lv. 36: Losing Control – Outgoing control effects have reduced effectiveness.

This instability seems really pointless. Control effects are already trivialized by the defiant mechanic on bosses, and control builds have long been trying to find a niche in PvE. I don’t think ArenaNet should be weakening a type of effect that’s already too weak.

Lv. 37: Keep Them in Line – Damaged enemies gain boons when unattended.

This instability is just too negligible. It’s extremely rare that a damaged mob would go unattended for long enough for the instability to trigger. Even if it does happen, chances are a few boons aren’t going to make or break any encounter. The only time it became a problem is on Mai Trin, which produced a few unwanted bugs.

Lv. 38: Ill and Chill – Poison, chill, and confusion have unintended effects. (Poison inflicted by players becomes regeneration, chill becomes protection, confusion becomes fury.)

Another negligible instability. Poison, chill and confusion don’t play strong enough roles in the current metagame or encounters for their conversions to make a big difference.

But the bigger problem with this instability is it unfairly targets some condition builds that rely on poison and confusion. Considering the vast majority of the playerbase already considers condition builds too weak, nerfing them even more seems unnecessary.

Lv. 39: Last Laugh – Enemies explode when killed.

One of the best instabilities. It completely changes how a few encounters are approached, hurts berserker melee trains more than other builds and discourages stacking.

My only concern is it might be a little too much in certain areas of the game. Legendary Imbued Shaman — already one of the most genuinely difficult boss encounters in Guild Wars 2 — becomes a total disaster with this instability because players have to kill the spread-out worms as quickly as possible.

Lv. 40: Agonizing Expedition – You are frequently afflicted with agony.

I like how this plays as a gear check and warning for those beginning to progress through the 40s. There are just two issues: First, it’s pretty uninteresting; it doesn’t change fights at all because the right group will just equip enough agony resist to negate it. Second, it fails as a gear check because it’s easy to simply skip lv. 40 once a few people beat it legitimately.

To be honest, I think this instability is how agony should work in the first place. Agony resist is supposed to be a crucial factor in how players progress through fractals, but it can be largely ignored because it’s only unavoidable in the boss tier.

Lv. 41: Playing Favorites – Untargeted enemies take half damage.

Although it’s a damage throttle, I like this instability because it goes against the berserker melee train metagame by making it much more difficult to stack and AOE clumped-up mobs. It also indirectly boosts condition builds because conditions are not affected by the instability in any way.

So if damage throttles are going to exist, this is how they should be done. Don’t just make them blanket reductions in damage; make them interesting mechanics that can be and have to be played around.

Lv. 42: Lethargic – Reduced endurance regeneration.

This instability adds a huge layer of challenge to all PvE encounters, which justifies it in its own right. But it’s also compelling because it makes it much more difficult to run a glass cannon build, which, as we all know, are all too popular in the berserker metagame.

The issue is that no one is going to realistically change out gear to become tankier when ascended gear, which is needed for agony resist, is so difficult to come by. So while this could actually encourage tankier builds for one fractal level, I have my doubts that it will actually do that because most people will simply tough it out and accept the extra challenge instead of changing out gear.

Lv. 43: Bloodlust – Combat is agonizing. Get a kill for relief. (You take increasing damage each time you hit an enemy, based on your health. A single tick is 0.1 percent of your max health. Each hit causes one tick.)

This is easily the worst instability in the game. It is nothing but a damage throttle. All it does is require people to slow down their damage to avoid dying. That doesn’t add depth to gameplay; it just makes bosses unnecessarily longer and uninteresting chores in kiting.

Lv. 44: Overextended – Take damage on critical hits. (The damage seems to scale with maximum HP; mostly moves between 400-900 damage.)

The exact same problems apply to this instability as Bloodlust, but this one also adds the unnecessary gear issues that surface with Lethargic.

Lv. 45: Frosty – Periodically leave a patch of chilling frost.

This discourages stacking, and can force even good groups to change up how they approach encounters, much like Stormy Weather (Lv. 35).

One issue in terms of progression is that this seems notably weaker than Stormy Weather because the lightning strike effect is much stronger, even though Stormy Weather causes only one lightning strike while Frosty drops scattered chilled bombs. So it might be a good idea to switch Frosty and Stormy Weather in terms of fractal levels.

Lv. 46: Social Awkwardness – Nearby allies reduce your healing effectiveness.

One of my favorite instability effects. It does everything to discourage the current metagame and stacking, particularly because it makes reviving so much more difficult. (In effect, only one or two can revive a teammate.)

My main concern is that it disproportionately affects some encounters far too much. In cliffside, the hallway players must stand in to destroy the two seals effectively requires stacking, which is made close to impossible by Social Awkwardness. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if there were other means to tackling this encounter, but the hallways is the only realistic approach.

Lv. 47: Antielitism – Elite skills cause death.

This could be interesting by forcing some team compositions to change up skills so they can adjust to not using certain elite skills. For example, a group with a warrior and necromancer might make the necromancer pick up Signet of Undeath to make up for the warrior’s lack of a Battle Standard.

The problem is elite skills are too seldom useful or interesting in PvE for this instability to play a big role, so Antielitism ends up acting as an extremely weak damage throttle for some classes and a nearly negligible hassle for others.

Lv. 48: Tainted Renewal – Regeneration, protection, and vigor have unintended effects. (Regeneration becomes poison, protection becomes vulnerability, vigor becomes weakness.)

This is much more interesting than its condition counterpart — Ill and Chill (Lv. 38) — because it hits all classes and particularly impacts the berserker metagame by reducing survivability that isn’t attached to traits and armor. But this instability hits a really nice sweet spot in which it’s not impactful enough to require gear changes but still notable enough to cause a player to pick up a few traits or utility skills that otherwise remain dormant.

Lv. 49: Stamina – Outgoing damage is reduced when endurance is low.

This is essentially a better version of Lethargic (Lv. 42). By giving players the option of dealing with less endurance or less damage based on how they manage their roles, the instability manages to avoid becoming an overly burdensome damage or survivability throttle. It essentially punishes mistakes that force a roll by causing the player to deal less damage, but it also rewards players who are attentive enough to only roll when necessary. That’s the kind of decision-making that instabilities should encourage.

Another bonus: It boosts condition builds because they’re not affected by the damage reduction.

This is a really nice analysis of the instabilities, I agree with pretty much everything you said.

Sounds like you just hate berserker gear so I’m finding it hard to take this thread seriously at all. Berserker and stacking isn’t a problem at all since only good groups can do it properly, bad players either don’t use berserker, don’t stack or try to stack in pvt, or try to stack in zerk and faceplant anyway. Annoying anti-good player instabilities just make me roll my eyes, it’s like anet just wish everyone could be bad so they forcefully impose mediocrity on everyone by weakening berserker builds. Things like permanent death until end of instance, death on elite/cap on number of utility skills, wipe forces team to restart instance and exploding enemies are better since they promote good play as you have to time dodges to evade explosions and with limited utilities it requires you to think more about what is strictly necessary for a fight.

I don’t hate berserker builds. I think the game should have opportunities for every playstyle and role, including berserker builds.

But I think, regardless of what the metagame is at any given time, instabilities should be about shaking up the current metagame and how players approach encounters. That’s also the developers’ stated goal for instabilities, according to the stream they did on Monday.

I couldn’t disagree more on 40. It’s a super lazy gear check that’s pointless because we already HAVE gear checks on the bosses. It takes no skill to grind out the AR necessary for 40, and there’s no challenge to it. It’s just dull and only there to encourage people to burn gold on agony infusions.

If you did the legendary shaman fractal on level 36 you would know how annoying reduced control is trying to save the people. The level 36 instability it really badly designed because it only makes this one fractal so much harder than the rest.

We need N46 in www. That would be perfect antiblob system.

Nightshlin.5234:

If you did the legendary shaman fractal on level 36 you would know how annoying reduced control is trying to save the people. The level 36 instability it really badly designed because it only makes this one fractal so much harder than the rest.

That does seem pretty awful.

I think it’s a legitimate concern that Legendary Imbued Shaman becomes far too difficult with a lot of the instabilities. It just seems like that fight wasn’t tuned with the wiggle room for even more mechanics.

I did the legendary Fire shaman a few times and nothing compares to the horrors at level 43. This was probably the nastiest encounter i’ve Had in the game so far. The elementals were killing us just by putting up a wall of reflection. The two pugs that we had with us gave up after the third wipe so we teamed up friends. After countless tries and strategy changes and me giving up my spot for another friend, did the shaman eventually die.

While this instability was fairy ok in the frost fractal, it just makes the grawl one insanely and unnecessarily difficult. Especially since the destacking
Was bugging out and killing an elemental was not resetting the dmg stacks.

too many of them that affect thief class too much (that frankly can’t build tanky as much as they would like to and heavily rely on crit dmg and dodge) and not enough of those that punish tanky classes likle guards/wars.. as far as i see OP would love to see lees zerker builds running around but did you and maybe devs ever wonder that some classes just don’t have any other (viable) choices?

ill and chill on dredge map was really annoying …..

Lopez.7369:

Lv. 33: Outflanked – Enemies do more damage when attacking from behind or the sides.

It doesn’t change anything for berserker metagame.

Lv. 36: Losing Control – Outgoing control effects have reduced effectiveness.

Blind is considered as contol effect by this instability.

Lopez.7369:

Lv. 40: Agonizing Expedition – You are frequently afflicted with agony.

Pointless gearcheck, nothing else. Forces you to have enough ar that you would take 1%/tick which only trivializes whole instability plus scales 40-49.

Lv. 42: Lethargic – Reduced endurance regeneration.

This changes nothing with zerkers.

Lv. 43: Bloodlust – Combat is agonizing. Get a kill for relief. (You take increasing damage each time you hit an enemy, based on your health. A single tick is 0.1 percent of your max health. Each hit causes one tick.)

This instability is seriously bugged because you don’t get relief after you kill an anemy that thanks to anet great anti-farming mechanics will not give any loot, experience or stack for sigils. This for instance includes lava elementals at shaman, cliffside chanters at arm seals.

Lv. 47: Antielitism – Elite skills cause death.

Shouldn’t kill you if you cancel elite.

Overally, most instabilities are annoying and achieve nothing.

Lv. 38: Ill and Chill – Poison, chill, and confusion have unintended effects.

My beautiful combo fields gave us a lot of furious enemies… Mesmers really like confusion, and although they do not rely on it they always spam lots of it. Poison and chill are less often in use, sure. And I don’t see a problem in “nerfing” condition builds. It’s just one level. It would be unfair to “nerf” condition builds “everywhere”.

Lv. 41: Playing Favorites – Untargeted enemies take half damage.

It goes everthing but against berserker melee train. Stacking and tabbing around is the way to go, you don’t even have to. Half damage from “tons of damage” is still lots of damage.

Lv. 42: Lethargic – Reduced endurance regeneration.

> The issue is that no one is going to realistically change out gear to become tankier
Who said that you should counter the instabilities by changing gear?
Instabilites shall be challenging and be countered by playing well, in my view, and not by changing gear. And this is what people do.

Lv. 43: Bloodlust – Combat is agonizing. Get a kill for relief.

I liked it because you always have to think: Can I do one hit more? Or should I try to reduce the stacks? Shall I kite somewhere else, just circle the enemy, or ask my thief for a SR? For us it took some tactical things inside that were quite fun. But maybe this changes once you know how to deal exactly with it.

Lv. 46: Social Awkwardness – Nearby allies reduce your healing effectiveness.

About your Cliffside concerns: Did it and it went quite good. We just tried to get ooc after each wave to regenerate a little. Makes it a little slower since the seals have time to regenerate more, but it works.
The difficulty comes more from reviving, which is also affected and makes some boss fights harder.

Lv. 48: Tainted Renewal – Regeneration, protection, and vigor have unintended effects.

> particularly impacts the berserker metagame by reducing survivability that isn’t attached to traits and armor.
Ummm. No. How does armor counter weakness? Oh right, we can increase the damage of hits. So let’s go zerk! The only thing you have to rely on a little bit more is cleansing. And just be careful not to use too many of the mentioned boons.

Lv. 49: Stamina – Outgoing damage is reduced when endurance is low.
It doesn’t change anything about your playstyle. If you deal less damage – don’t worry, it’s back in a second. It’s by far the easiest instability to deal within the range from 40-49. You have to think about it that way: If you dodge, you deal less damage. If you don’t, you deal no damage (and reduce the damage output of your party).

Conclusion
You are right, some instabilities are not designed very well. Some are fun to deal with once, and will be skipped ever after that. But some really turned out to be good challenges you had to learn to deal with (What doesn’t mean you gonna do that again).
But honestly I think Lopez just curses berserker builds and stacking and thinks that instabilities should/would work against that. But this is not the fact.

It’s perfectly valid to go with conditions or PVT or whatever. But the instabilities are not designed to force a gear switch or to work against certain tactics, they are designed as additional challenges to be beaten. And how you beat them is your choice, and not a choice of gear.