Guild Wars 2

Lolyta.4582:

iFocus.3781:

I haven’t seen a necro in a dungeon party since forever, which is really sad! I want to play one, but I’m greatly discouraged by the fact that they’re not a class that is being picked up.

As a Necro player, I couldn’t agree more! Minions are completely useless in dungeons, end-game PvE and WvW because of their horrendous AI- they just stand around watching you attack stuff until the fight is almost over and you have no “ATTACK!” command for them at all like Rangers do on their F1 key, then they finally wake up and attack; they refuse to follow you if you jump even the TEENIEST gap or elevation change up or down, instead mindlessly pathing the long way around via the North Pole and bringing back 379 mobs that they pathed through while wandering about the countryside finding smooth, gap-free ramps; the Flesh Golem in particular goes charging off to attack random out-of-sight inanimate objects such as gates, cannons, trebs, etc. just because one of your wells or AoE’s may have inadvertently clipped them and, unlike Rangers, Necros have NO way to recall them or stop them from mindlessly attacking anything; and like Ranger pets, our minions stupidly path 20 feet AHEAD of us, aggroing things we didn’t want to aggro… and we have NO “come here, stay by me, be passive” control over them at all like Rangers do on their F3 key… so we switch to Conditionmancer or Powermancer (sadly abandoning a core Necro gameplay mechanic that should have been fun- minions) and quickly learn that neither of these builds is as robust and viable as other professions’ builds in terms of damage and survivability.

I personally know TWO players who have leveled Necros to 80 and then deleted them to roll new professions because of these issues. Hopefully, revisiting Necro balance vs. other professions as well as the whole Pet AI and lack of control for Rangers as well as Necros is in the works.

So yes, Necros can’t control their pets, but the only part of that control problem that is actually a problem is getting them to attack what you want them to attack, or not attack what you don’t want them to attack. They don’t agro things, anymore, unless you agroed them first. It was supposed to be on Ranger and Necro pets, and I know it’s the case for Ranger, so it should be the case for Necro too.

My Necro doesn’t summon, though, so I can’t actually confirm it.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Necros can’t control their pets, but the only part of that control problem that is actually a problem is getting them to attack what you want them to attack, or not attack what you don’t want them to attack.

With all due respect, DUH! That’s the only control I mentioned the lack of.

Kal Spiro.9745:

They don’t agro things, anymore, unless you agroed them first. It was supposed to be on Ranger and Necro pets, and I know it’s the case for Ranger, so it should be the case for Necro too.

Woulda, coulda shoulda. My Flesh Golem aggroed several Risens tonight (it’s 3:12 AM CDT on June 3, 2013) in Mt. Maelstrom along the road. I was not close enough to aggro them, and in fact, they didn’t attack me- they immediately attacked my flesh Golem who was mindlessly roaming ahead of me and slightly to the left side of the road, too close to the Risens in the creek/swamp alongside the road.

So either I’m having my usual luck discovering ‘bugs’ that don’t seem to affect other people (lolwut) or they didn’t fix the aggro issue on Necro minions.

My Necro doesn’t summon, though, so I can’t actually confirm it.[/quote]

juno.1840:

This is the big thing I miss from the holy trinity — defined roles. This isn’t required in GW2 and as a result I see far less team work than in other MMOs. The video was spot on with regards to DPS is king in this game.

The funny thing is bunker seems king in PvP — sorta opposite which may explain the reliance on the defiance buff.

Implies that games like basketball, cycling and doubles tennis don’t have teamwork, because the same rules apply to all players, because the players have loosely defined and mostly fluid roles.

Less roles and more interacting is necessary for proper teamwork. Putting people in shackled roles is only an illusion of teamwork. A real life example is the goalie in soccer, who arguably requires the least teamwork while having the most defined role.

marnick.4305:

juno.1840:

This is the big thing I miss from the holy trinity — defined roles. This isn’t required in GW2 and as a result I see far less team work than in other MMOs. The video was spot on with regards to DPS is king in this game.

The funny thing is bunker seems king in PvP — sorta opposite which may explain the reliance on the defiance buff.

Implies that games like basketball, cycling and doubles tennis don’t have teamwork, because the same rules apply to all players, because the players have loosely defined and mostly fluid roles.

Less roles and more interacting is necessary for proper teamwork. Putting people in shackled roles is only an illusion of teamwork. A real life example is the goalie in soccer, who arguably requires the least teamwork while having the most defined role.

Not accurate at all — there are very defined roles in those sports you mentioned. Following the same rule book doesn’t eliminate player roles.

What Players wanted: No more “GLF monk” from GW1
What Players received: No monks

Players didn’t want healing to go away, they only wanted the “monk monopoly” on healing to go away. I like the defined roles in the game, what I wanted was for every profession to be capable of playing a healer role (not just monks).

The current GW2 design is fun, but there’s not much skill involved, and very little teamwork. There are some teamwork examples here and there (like in AC where the team has to split to protect an NPC while beating down the Skelk burrows that appear). By-and-large it’s just a DPS fest. Maybe that’s what’s required to satisfy the majority of the player base. Otherwise we’d have lots of “this is too hard” topics instead, but who knows (I don’t).

juno.1840:

marnick.4305:

juno.1840:

This is the big thing I miss from the holy trinity — defined roles. This isn’t required in GW2 and as a result I see far less team work than in other MMOs. The video was spot on with regards to DPS is king in this game.

The funny thing is bunker seems king in PvP — sorta opposite which may explain the reliance on the defiance buff.

Implies that games like basketball, cycling and doubles tennis don’t have teamwork, because the same rules apply to all players, because the players have loosely defined and mostly fluid roles.

Less roles and more interacting is necessary for proper teamwork. Putting people in shackled roles is only an illusion of teamwork. A real life example is the goalie in soccer, who arguably requires the least teamwork while having the most defined role.

Not accurate at all — there are very defined roles in those sports you mentioned. Following the same rule book doesn’t eliminate player roles.

However, implementing dedicated healers gives specific roles to people, making them play by other rules and effectively reduce teamwork by giving every role its own minigame.

What Players wanted: No more “GLF monk” from GW1
What Players received: No monks

Players didn’t want healing to go away, they only wanted the “monk monopoly” on healing to go away. I like the defined roles in the game, what I wanted was for every profession to be capable of playing a healer role (not just monks).

What people wanted was no more “GLF healer”.

Healer is arguably the least team-oriented role because they play an entirely different minigame. The minigame is boring since the mechanics didn’t improve over whack-a-mole in an eighties arcade. To add insult to injury, this role gets the blame for everything that goes wrong, while mostly having no real influence on the battle (since whack-a-mole is so easy).

People wanted other players to clean up their own garbage, because healers are a shoddy excuse for teamplay.

I disagree completely. I loved monking. It was fun and not whack a mole at all.
There was a severe amount of concentration and skill involved with being a good monk. That make or break feeling was what made the class so fun. The only people who blame monks were usually pugs that leroyed 100 margonites on HM and expected to be ok.
The trinity provided defined roles, not just monking in a team situation.
GW2 has very little team work and there are 0 roles at all. It is dps zerg wars and in its’ current incarnation the game takes little to no skill or thought at all.

marnick.4305:

Healer is arguably the least team-oriented role because they play an entirely different minigame. The minigame is boring since the mechanics didn’t improve over whack-a-mole in an eighties arcade. To add insult to injury, this role gets the blame for everything that goes wrong, while mostly having no real influence on the battle (since whack-a-mole is so easy).

People wanted other players to clean up their own garbage, because healers are a shoddy excuse for teamplay.

I disagree with you here. The healer in GW1 could play “reactive” (healing) or “proactive” (protection). It was a fairly sophisticated role compared to healing in other MMOs. Yeah the healer can bail a team out when they play sloppy, but right now everyone can play sloppy in GW2 without much consequence. So to an extent the healer in GW1 was a higher degree of team play (at least on the healer’s part).

The whack-a-mole analogy is good because that’s essentially what you have in GW2 right now. In fact the team doesn’t even need to whack the same mole to succeed.

While you may not enjoy the healing meta, it doesn’t mean others do not. You can play “your way” and go with a Tank or DPS role instead.

+1 to fixing defiance.

People are using guardians and elems as healers. Anet, please give up on this ‘no holy trinity’ nonsense and give us a good healer, like a monk. Let them level thru crafting if necessary.

Rick Rodman.9704:

People are using guardians and elems as healers. Anet, please give up on this ‘no holy trinity’ nonsense and give us a good healer, like a monk. Let them level thru crafting if necessary.

I use my Necro as a healer, I dump regen all over the battle field. My friend uses his Ranger. I don’t understand why we need a main healer when there are so many classes that can already fill the support role. My Ranger doesn’t need a healer because he regens like mad.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Rick Rodman.9704:

People are using guardians and elems as healers. Anet, please give up on this ‘no holy trinity’ nonsense and give us a good healer, like a monk. Let them level thru crafting if necessary.

I use my Necro as a healer, I dump regen all over the battle field. My friend uses his Ranger. I don’t understand why we need a main healer when there are so many classes that can already fill the support role. My Ranger doesn’t need a healer because he regens like mad.

Yeah, and my HGH Engie has been noted as healing just as well as any Ele. We don’t need to go waiting hours to get a healer, especially with guardians borderline filling that “we need to wait for this class” role already. We need it so people won’t look down thier nose when they see a 3 Ranger 2 Thief party. Dungeons that challenge parties, but don’t render certain classes as required and others as unusable.

Wow. I have for sometime looked at PvE content and weather it’s world bosses or dungeon bosses the experience has been largely… boring.

As a comparative, looking at GW1 I would be involved in a number of different ‘Speed Clears’ FoW, UW, DoA etc. All of which offered a sense of team cohension and really gave a sense of accomplishment when done.

Your video nails it perfectly and highlights why it is that dungeons in GW2 felt like a slow walk to me.

Great video! I completely agree.

Dual.8953:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Rick Rodman.9704:

People are using guardians and elems as healers. Anet, please give up on this ‘no holy trinity’ nonsense and give us a good healer, like a monk. Let them level thru crafting if necessary.

I use my Necro as a healer, I dump regen all over the battle field. My friend uses his Ranger. I don’t understand why we need a main healer when there are so many classes that can already fill the support role. My Ranger doesn’t need a healer because he regens like mad.

Yeah, and my HGH Engie has been noted as healing just as well as any Ele. We don’t need to go waiting hours to get a healer, especially with guardians borderline filling that “we need to wait for this class” role already. We need it so people won’t look down thier nose when they see a 3 Ranger 2 Thief party. Dungeons that challenge parties, but don’t render certain classes as required and others as unusable.

Necros make for kitten amazing healers when they are set up right. All classes can throw out regeneration but the Well of Blood throws out ‘small’ packets of healing that you can use in conjuction with regerenation, which nerco have aoe access to as well with the staff ability Mark of blood (Or the mark of blood on dodge.)
Sadly with the current system there isn’t much call for it as players are either getting hit for no damage or so much that healing won’t make a differnce.

I really think that having small attacks mixed in with the big ones to pressure a group to either use control or defensive support (like healing) is the way to go. Defintly keep bigger attacks to be dodged/avoided/interupted in there as well though!

“Sadly with the current system there isn’t much call for it as players are either getting hit for no damage or so much that healing won’t make a difference.”

Well said . My thoughts exactly

“I really think that having small attacks mixed in with the big ones to pressure a group to either use control or defensive support (like healing) is the way to go. Defintly keep bigger attacks to be dodged/avoided/interupted in there as well though!”

This is already a big part of the trinity and what Anet tried to do with the damage/support/control but they couldn’t because they are missing the building blocks tank , dps and healer .
Don’t fix something if it is not broken ! but instead improve on it

Traditionally there have been 2 major issues with trinity :
- people don’t know what that is and they are kitten ed if they don’t get their way – which is really a non issue because if you explain , give examples for the ones who don’t like to do their research on youtube problem fixed
- some roles are not fun when leveling – but there is an easy fix for this . give all classes the ability to play all the roles so that everyone can chose the role they like ! and also the ability to switch between the roles when doing dungeons or when doing the usual pve !

I have no idea what this redesign means in terms of game development and it is probably not easy but hey you want the big money give us the big fun! (And Anet has already shown they are open minded and inventive to pull this off for example with leveling through crafting . i wouldn’t mind at all to spend money on the cash shop so that i can level through crafting for an alt for example . or the fact that instances scale down the players for that instance)

Good video and I agree with all your points. +1

Kaaboose.3897:

Sadly with the current system there isn’t much call for it as players are either getting hit for no damage or so much that healing won’t make a differnce.

Seeing exactly this with the Southsun defense events. L84 young karka eat through a full necro DS and health bar in a couple of blows (and that is not accounting for their tail needle spam), and the event spawns masses of them basically on top of you.

The game is overloaded with dodge or die attacks right now.

After watching this video, I have to say that I agree with everything the OP said. There are a lot of valid points made. It would be interesting to see what ANet does with this feedback…

FalconX.9287:

- some roles are not fun when leveling – but there is an easy fix for this . give all classes the ability to play all the roles so that everyone can chose the role they like ! and also the ability to switch between the roles when doing dungeons or when doing the usual pve !

When i first heard about ANet’s “no trinity” claim, this is what i expected. Move some traits around and my character would shift from DPS or control to heal/support.

Don’t work tho, because ANet is deathly afraid of SPVP bunkers slowing down the spectator esport excitement.

Sondergaard.8469:

After watching this video, I have to say that I agree with everything the OP said. There are a lot of valid points made. It would be interesting to see what ANet does with this feedback…

Bupkis, if fear.

I agree with everything in the video. It would be nice if control builds were as viable as ANet said they would be. Also giving boss enemies smaller, weaker attacks would not only make heals and support more useful but would also make retaliation more viable. Not entirely sure how much would have to change around to accommodate these changes nor do I think that ANet cares enough at this point to make them but its nice to dream at least.
It also may help if the pvp/ pve split put WvW on the pvp side of things (as I understand it WvW is considered pve for some reason) so that they dont have to worry about unbalancing WvW when they make these types of changes.

digiowl.9620:

FalconX.9287:

- some roles are not fun when leveling – but there is an easy fix for this . give all classes the ability to play all the roles so that everyone can chose the role they like ! and also the ability to switch between the roles when doing dungeons or when doing the usual pve !

When i first heard about ANet’s “no trinity” claim, this is what i expected. Move some traits around and my character would shift from DPS or control to heal/support.

Don’t work tho, because ANet is deathly afraid of SPVP bunkers slowing down the spectator esport excitement.

These suggested improvements were to alter the way bosses deal with these skills rather then alter the skills themselves. That way SPvP would be uneffected.

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

FalconX.9287:

- some roles are not fun when leveling – but there is an easy fix for this . give all classes the ability to play all the roles so that everyone can chose the role they like ! and also the ability to switch between the roles when doing dungeons or when doing the usual pve !

When i first heard about ANet’s “no trinity” claim, this is what i expected. Move some traits around and my character would shift from DPS or control to heal/support.

Don’t work tho, because ANet is deathly afraid of SPVP bunkers slowing down the spectator esport excitement.

These suggested improvements were to alter the way bosses deal with these skills rather then alter the skills themselves. That way SPvP would be uneffected.

This may work for control (defiant is a mob mechanic after all) but it will do jack all for heal/support.

digiowl.9620:

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

FalconX.9287:

- some roles are not fun when leveling – but there is an easy fix for this . give all classes the ability to play all the roles so that everyone can chose the role they like ! and also the ability to switch between the roles when doing dungeons or when doing the usual pve !

When i first heard about ANet’s “no trinity” claim, this is what i expected. Move some traits around and my character would shift from DPS or control to heal/support.

Don’t work tho, because ANet is deathly afraid of SPVP bunkers slowing down the spectator esport excitement.

These suggested improvements were to alter the way bosses deal with these skills rather then alter the skills themselves. That way SPvP would be uneffected.

This may work for control (defiant is a mob mechanic after all) but it will do jack all for heal/support.

Exactly . kabuse’s suggestions are only the tip of the iceberg . You would of course have to redesign skills (which in my opinion is definitely needed as some skills are just boring/useless)
And there is also the question of gear for tanks / dps / healers .General consensus is that we don’t like separate gear for each of the roles ( i don’t mind it if the choice is between separate gear or no trinity at all ) – but i’m sure Anet could come up with an innovative way of solving this

P.S. there’s lots of potential in many things the only issue is anet taking the right decision or not

digiowl.9620:

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

FalconX.9287:

- some roles are not fun when leveling – but there is an easy fix for this . give all classes the ability to play all the roles so that everyone can chose the role they like ! and also the ability to switch between the roles when doing dungeons or when doing the usual pve !

When i first heard about ANet’s “no trinity” claim, this is what i expected. Move some traits around and my character would shift from DPS or control to heal/support.

Don’t work tho, because ANet is deathly afraid of SPVP bunkers slowing down the spectator esport excitement.

These suggested improvements were to alter the way bosses deal with these skills rather then alter the skills themselves. That way SPvP would be uneffected.

This may work for control (defiant is a mob mechanic after all) but it will do jack all for heal/support.

No, it will not. I specified mixing in weak regular attacks in with the big ones for this very reason. The weak regular attacks (which would vary from encounter to encounter) would be desiged to pressure the group. You can only dodge so often, and dodges should be reserved for dodging the most dangerous attacks in an encounter.
The regular ones, without support, would eventually wear down a group, But if a group brought along support skills they could delay this pressure long enough for the foe to be defeated.
It’s called a trinity because if one of the 3 roles is removed from the equation it should no longer work.
If you ignore damage you should fail. If you ignore suport you should fail. If you ignore control you should fail. That is the way it should work. (And no, I don’t mean that everyone needs to be focused in one of these three roles, that’s not what anet wanted, They wanted players to do a bit of everything.)

Exactly . kabuse’s suggestions are only the tip of the iceberg . You would of course have to redesign skills (which in my opinion is definitely needed as some skills are just boring/useless)
And there is also the question of gear for tanks / dps / healers .General consensus is that we don’t like separate gear for each of the roles ( i don’t mind it if the choice is between separate gear or no trinity at all ) – but i’m sure Anet could come up with an innovative way of solving this

Most skills that are boring or useless are that way because they were designed around Arenanets original concept of the holy tinity that they have failed to impliment. Look at hammer warriors in PvE for instance.
And we should not even be mentioning Tanks/Dps/Healers as that is not the trinity Anet wanted.
Gear should be a factor in how well you perform at each part of the GW2 Trinity. Someone who wanted to excel at support should by want to be a bit more durable and have longer lasting boons and better heals.
Somone who favored control would want to chose a weapon/skill/trait that grants him access to more of these skills or power up his attacks on enmies effected by these skills. He’ll proably also want more condition duration.
And somone focusing on damage would want more Power, precision, Condition damage or whatever stats meshed best with his traits for optimal damage.
All three of these players can particpate in the GW2 Trinity and depending on the combination of skills/traits/gear they’d be able to do a bit of all 3 to differnt levels of effectiveness but never be locked out from taking part in any one of the Trinities roles.

“It’s called a trinity because if one of the 3 roles is removed from the equation it should no longer work.
If you ignore damage you should fail. If you ignore suport you should fail. If you ignore control you should fail. That is the way it should work. "

Yep this is correct .

“(And no, I don’t mean that everyone needs to be focused in one of these three roles, that’s not what anet wanted, They wanted players to do a bit of everything.)”

And this is why it is not working today . Sure players can do a bit of everything but you still need a main role player for every role
As said before why reinvent the wheel . improve on it.

FalconX.9287:

“(And no, I don’t mean that everyone needs to be focused in one of these three roles, that’s not what anet wanted, They wanted players to do a bit of everything.)”

And this is why it is not working today . Sure players can do a bit of everything but you still need a main role player for every role
As said before why reinvent the wheel . improve on it.

So why not say to your party “Hey, My builds really good at support so I’ll be focusing on helping out my allies more then damging the boss.”
Or “Hey I’ve got some great control skills, Leave debuffing and interupting to me!”
Lastly “I’m not very good at control or support so can I focus on damging the boss please?”
You’ve got your guideline roles right there but if something goes wrong (And if the fights designed right it SHOULD) and our control player can’t perform his role for a time one of the other group members could take over that role for as long as nessesary.

The whole reason Anet wanted to get away from hard defined roles (Your character is Either Damage OR Support OR Control and don’t you dare thing about doing more then one!) was so that groups could be formed more easily.

And so we are right back at altruistic DPS guardian, shout DPS warrior, and the odd control DPS mesmer for good measure.

Nice job in the commentary. I agree with just about everything you said.
The closest profession that follows the DPS/Support/Control trinity that we were promised is the elementalist. Because I have been in dungeons and I can adjust my play style through attunments. For example water for heals, fire for dps, earth for snares. As for the other professions…ya they are just pure dps machines. Well guardian supports to a degree. Also with the dungeons…I have stopped in the middle of a dungeon boss fight to get something to drink, and no one even noticed I stopped attacking until they realized the boss was taking a little longer to kill then usual. Shows how important the group is. It’s more like 5 people doing the same dungeon then an actual team because a team is relying on everyone to do their part. Now it is just run around and just auto attack the boss to death. I have seriously killed a boss by running circles around him and killed him with my auto attack.

Kaaboose.3897:

FalconX.9287:

“(And no, I don’t mean that everyone needs to be focused in one of these three roles, that’s not what anet wanted, They wanted players to do a bit of everything.)”

And this is why it is not working today . Sure players can do a bit of everything but you still need a main role player for every role
As said before why reinvent the wheel . improve on it.

So why not say to your party “Hey, My builds really good at support so I’ll be focusing on helping out my allies more then damging the boss.”
Or “Hey I’ve got some great control skills, Leave debuffing and interupting to me!”
Lastly “I’m not very good at control or support so can I focus on damging the boss please?”
You’ve got your guideline roles right there but if something goes wrong (And if the fights designed right it SHOULD) and our control player can’t perform his role for a time one of the other group members could take over that role for as long as nessesary.

The whole reason Anet wanted to get away from hard defined roles (Your character is Either Damage OR Support OR Control and don’t you dare thing about doing more then one!) was so that groups could be formed more easily.

So Kabuse . to cut it short
Most of the design concept from GW2 is from RIFT which is not a bad thing .
I love it/and i’m highly supportive when newer games take the concepts from the oldies but goldies such as wow , rift and probably others and try to improve on it :

For example :

Questing in both wow and rift is bad . GW2 improved on it(by making fewer quests and the excellent personal story) which is great . in the first 2 you have lots of useless quests which are extremely boring (not to mention GW2 improved on the questing system itself which was also good ) but did badly with the experience !
I should not be punished if i want to lvl only through questing . Gw2 expects me to also craft and do wvw to lvl which i don’t want ! I should be able to only lvl through questing if i wanted to (and not be hard to do so )
Someone else should be able to level only through dungeons , and someone else should be able to lvl only through crafting ( which is excellent for alts ! ) or through wvw for example etc

Problem is GW2 removed the trinity from RIFT and by doing so also removed a lot of the crazy fun which comes with it .

Yeah, necromancers really should be given minion control skills on F2-F4. Nothing that’s going to make anyone feel they have to run minions or it’s wasted potential, but stuff that will allow you to get minions to attack or heel.

digiowl.9620:

draxynnic.3719:

(And those forms of support that do work are largely independant of stats.)

Makes me wonder if there is too much “all or nothing” in this game.

Consider defiant. one control effect and suddenly the mob is 100% immune to the next 5+. Maybe they should instead make it have a slight chance to interrupt and only a half second “daze” (no launch, no knockback, no knockdown, just unable to attack for half a second) if it does so.

And yeah, support is too disconnected from stats. The only thing that seems to matter is boon duration, and maybe healing power for some professions.

Protection, duration.
Stability, duration.
Regeneration, duration and 12% (?!) healing power.
Aegis, duration.
Fury, duration.
Retaliation, duration.
Swiftness, duration.
Vigor, duration.

Only Might has intensity stacking, and even then there is no stat that can improve said intensity.

Meaning that the only way to tell the difference between someone good at support and someone not so good are how long the various boons last.

Btw, it is starting to get annoying that ANet tought making a movement speed boon was a good idea.

It’s worse than that, in fact. Some of the best support out there is pretty much entirely disconnected from stats – reflection and blocking effects, stealth fields, auras, banners, and revive skills are either independent of stats or only have stats as a secondary effect. Many of these can be improved by traits, but with equipment providing the majority of your trait points, taking a hundred or three points out of a stat for a particular trait isn’t going to cost you much, and if anything it might push a player to berserker’s even more.

Regarding defiant: That’s pretty much what I’ve been saying all along. Other games have systems like granting resistance (but not total immunity) to control effects for a time – that would probably be a much better solution to making control viable without rendering bosses helpless through chain-stunning.

It’d probably also prevent a lot of frustration among players if players received a similar benefit.

digiowl.9620:

And so we are right back at altruistic DPS guardian, shout DPS warrior, and the odd control DPS mesmer for good measure.

I’m not following Owl, That would still work (if some control/support was mixed in via skills) but It would no longer be the meta. If everyone just bunched up and spammed dps as they do now they’d be werecked by the “weak” regualr cleave atatcks that need to be mitigated through control and support.

FalconX.9287:

Kaaboose.3897:

FalconX.9287:

“(And no, I don’t mean that everyone needs to be focused in one of these three roles, that’s not what anet wanted, They wanted players to do a bit of everything.)”

And this is why it is not working today . Sure players can do a bit of everything but you still need a main role player for every role
As said before why reinvent the wheel . improve on it.

So why not say to your party “Hey, My builds really good at support so I’ll be focusing on helping out my allies more then damging the boss.”
Or “Hey I’ve got some great control skills, Leave debuffing and interupting to me!”
Lastly “I’m not very good at control or support so can I focus on damging the boss please?”
You’ve got your guideline roles right there but if something goes wrong (And if the fights designed right it SHOULD) and our control player can’t perform his role for a time one of the other group members could take over that role for as long as nessesary.

The whole reason Anet wanted to get away from hard defined roles (Your character is Either Damage OR Support OR Control and don’t you dare thing about doing more then one!) was so that groups could be formed more easily.

So Kabuse . to cut it short
SNIP!

Problem is GW2 removed the trinity from RIFT and by doing so also removed a lot of the crazy fun which comes with it .

All of the snip was off topic! That fun can be had with Anets trinity just as much as with Rifts (If RIFT’s trinity is like wow’s, I dunno as I’ve never played it)

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

And so we are right back at altruistic DPS guardian, shout DPS warrior, and the odd control DPS mesmer for good measure.

I’m not following Owl, That would still work (if some control/support was mixed in via skills) but It would no longer be the meta. If everyone just bunched up and spammed dps as they do now they’d be werecked by the “weak” regualr cleave atatcks that need to be mitigated through control and support.

Both of those builds either heal self as part of group buff cycles (never mind that guardians buff as they attack), or heal group as part of self buff cycles. Meaning that they can mix heal, buff and DPS in a single package. Then you put in the odd control mesmer (never mind utilities for getting around puzzles and DPS boosting) for taking care of those interrupt-able spikes.

The others that come close are perhaps engineer and elementalist, by swapping kits or attunements at a furious pace.

I agree the bosses should have light and medium attacks but bringing in the tank/healer/dps bs from other games is just a dumb idea. This is a skill based game, having 1 person be super tanky and 1 person super healing a near unkillable tank is not the answer to making this game better. Imo, it would make this game like all other crappy mmos an take any skill out of the gameplay.

If you really want to find a way to make the game better, look for ways to make both ranged and melee mechanics a must for a fight, find ways to make condition builds shine, make bosses target highest threats first instead of the tankiest.

If a party is all going melee, the boss starts kiting away and uses movement conditions. If the party is all ranged, the boss uses leap attacks to catch the kiting players and use anti-projectile skills. If the team is using both, the boss can’t shut everybody down. The answer is boss mechanics, not nerfing all classes so they become just like another wow-clone game.

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

And so we are right back at altruistic DPS guardian, shout DPS warrior, and the odd control DPS mesmer for good measure.

I’m not following Owl, That would still work (if some control/support was mixed in via skills) but It would no longer be the meta. If everyone just bunched up and spammed dps as they do now they’d be werecked by the “weak” regualr cleave atatcks that need to be mitigated through control and support.

FalconX.9287:

Kaaboose.3897:

FalconX.9287:

“(And no, I don’t mean that everyone needs to be focused in one of these three roles, that’s not what anet wanted, They wanted players to do a bit of everything.)”

And this is why it is not working today . Sure players can do a bit of everything but you still need a main role player for every role
As said before why reinvent the wheel . improve on it.

So why not say to your party “Hey, My builds really good at support so I’ll be focusing on helping out my allies more then damging the boss.”
Or “Hey I’ve got some great control skills, Leave debuffing and interupting to me!”
Lastly “I’m not very good at control or support so can I focus on damging the boss please?”
You’ve got your guideline roles right there but if something goes wrong (And if the fights designed right it SHOULD) and our control player can’t perform his role for a time one of the other group members could take over that role for as long as nessesary.

The whole reason Anet wanted to get away from hard defined roles (Your character is Either Damage OR Support OR Control and don’t you dare thing about doing more then one!) was so that groups could be formed more easily.

So Kabuse . to cut it short
SNIP!

Problem is GW2 removed the trinity from RIFT and by doing so also removed a lot of the crazy fun which comes with it .

All of the snip was off topic! That fun can be had with Anets trinity just as much as with Rifts (If RIFT’s trinity is like wow’s, I dunno as I’ve never played it)

I don’t disagree with this and theoretically everything is possible
But we also have to be realistic about it

and lol @ randomfightfan who is actually posting trinity gameplay mechanics but thinks trinity is dumb

FalconX.9287:

and lol @ randomfightfan who is actually posting trinity gameplay mechanics but thinks trinity is dumb

Having each class swap between ranged and melee to adapt to the situation and healing themselves is trinity gameplay? No one being the tank but instead everyone keeping themselves and each other alive through dodging, blocking, invising, and resing is trinity gameplay? People being ranged in order to confuse the boss mechanics while doing subpar damage is part of trinity gameplay? Zerker people in melee range to do max dps is trinity gameplay? Here I always thought it was stupidly tanky people in front, something that deals a ton of damage nearby, and someone with too many heals supporting the tanky guy.

digiowl.9620:

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

And so we are right back at altruistic DPS guardian, shout DPS warrior, and the odd control DPS mesmer for good measure.

I’m not following Owl, That would still work (if some control/support was mixed in via skills) but It would no longer be the meta. If everyone just bunched up and spammed dps as they do now they’d be werecked by the “weak” regualr cleave atatcks that need to be mitigated through control and support.

Both of those builds either heal self as part of group buff cycles (never mind that guardians buff as they attack), or heal group as part of self buff cycles. Meaning that they can mix heal, buff and DPS in a single package. Then you put in the odd control mesmer (never mind utilities for getting around puzzles and DPS boosting) for taking care of those interrupt-able spikes.

The others that come close are perhaps engineer and elementalist, by swapping kits or attunements at a furious pace.

I might be misunderstanding your terms here so correct me if I’ve got this wrong.
You’re saying that the solution proposed in the video (Defiance fixes, regular weak attacks mixed in with the strong ones) wouldn’t result in a change to the current META because it already has all of those things?

Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t the current META run full zerkers (Except your standard guardian anchor)? How long would that last against a boss that throws our regular attacks that cleave? They’d have to spread out and that kind of throws a spanner in the works for the current META.
Then again if they added in some kind of AoE Protection/Healing build (I don’t think the Guardian Anchor build would be enough since it’s not just him getting hit) then it might work. Or if they brought something other then zerkers but then the META has changed already.
Do you think this would be enough to make Healing Power a worthwhile stat since there would most lilkey be a decent amount of small packets of damage on a party or do you feel it would still fall well short of Boon Duration in terms of support?

bosses already love AOE spam…

I want to throw in a couple of thoughts that may be helpful.
What is wrong with WoW’s trinity?Couple of things.
a)Number of healers does not equal to the amount of DPSers and does not equal to the amount of tanks.(usually it is close to 2:5:18 or 1:1:3).This creates disproportion in playerbase, and different sideeffects.
b)It is not equally fun to play as different roles.Healer does not interact with enemys at all.Tank usually stands at one place and just takes damage.This usually creates sideeffects such as “it is hard to find healer”
c)Some roles are weak as soloers(i.e. it is hard for them to roam the world and have fun). You think this is anavoidable? I doubt it.
What is good about WoW’s trinity?
a)It exists.This allows to create interesting encounters with decent skillcap.

So let’s think.What if we create a system, that still has benefits of WoW’s trinity, but do not have its weaknesses? I think that is the right solution.
Arena.net’s decision to eliminate roles is strange imo.Every popular game has roles.Dota 2 has roles, LoL has roles. It is not EXCITING to watch games without roles.
Of course it is possible to allow players to switch roles to some extent, but eliminate them completely – that is just not right.
And of course, number of roles does not have to be three. It can be 4. Or 6, why not?
The main problem is to make them all important in challenging content, fun to play and to give them ability to solo soloable content without switching role.

I agree. Can’t say I care much about PvE since I spend all my GW2 time in the the mists, but the issue goes, to some point at least, for PvP as well.

The game simply doesn’t reward clever play and good timing. Take engineer for example, since that is what I play most. There are a lot of nifty tricks you can pull, blast finishers in your smoke field to stealth at the right moment, double/triple blast water fields and a lot of other ways that would require some experience to pull off.. the game simply does not reward this type of play as 9.5 times out of ten it would have been better to just spam whatever damaging skills you have and hope your opponent goes down before you do.

In essence, the game rewards mindless spamming when it should reward full utilization of a profession.

@ prip, if you really think this game doesn’t reward for good timing and clever play, maybe you should switch to something that isn’t bunker. I suggest playing a thief. I can’t say much for pvp as I hate the crap on a point playstyle but in pve and wvw the clever playstyles and quick thinking is the difference between life and death. If you’re saying it’s not rewarding at all for any class then you have not seen it done properly. Lastly, those clever things you’re talking about (blasts in water or big bomb in a smoke field) will win you an extended or outnumbered fight. Keep practicing those things as you don’t have to sacrifice dps to pull off tricks like that. Once it feels natural to play your class to its fullest, you’ll be able to roll over the majority of people you find.

randomfightfan.4091:

@ prip, if you really think this game doesn’t reward for good timing and clever play, maybe you should switch to something that isn’t bunker. I suggest playing a thief. I can’t say much for pvp as I hate the crap on a point playstyle but in pve and wvw the clever playstyles and quick thinking is the difference between life and death. If you’re saying it’s not rewarding at all for any class then you have not seen it done properly. Lastly, those clever things you’re talking about (blasts in water or big bomb in a smoke field) will win you an extended or outnumbered fight. Keep practicing those things as you don’t have to sacrifice dps to pull off tricks like that. Once it feels natural to play your class to its fullest, you’ll be able to roll over the majority of people you find.

This threads on the Trinity in PvE, not PvP.
Unless you WERE refering to PvE in which case you’re just suporting the DMG>ALL META that we currently have

Ok, i was perhaps a bit harsh. Still, the impact of healing power on relevant skills and traits will have to be reworked so that trading power and/or crit damage (precision is too overloaded with trait and rune procs to be considered) for healing power makes a impact on the overall survivability.

digiowl.9620:

Ok, i was perhaps a bit harsh. Still, the impact of healing power on relevant skills and traits will have to be reworked so that trading power and/or crit damage (precision is too overloaded with trait and rune procs to be considered) for healing power makes a impact on the overall survivability.

Solstice came up with a great soltuion to that on the Guru forums:

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying critical chance should be hammered into the ground, a precision-focused build could still attain, say, a 30% critical chance with fury halved to around 10% for a total of ~40%. I also recognise the impact on traits and other ‘on critical’ effects, but many of these have their own in-built probability which could be increased or removed. Hell, Arenanet has already had to adjust for high critical chances by placing an internal cooldown on certain effects (e.g. life-steal consumable if I remember correctly)

I cannot help but feel that unless something is done to reduce direct damage scaling in PvE, anything other than blatant game mechanic gimmicks will be trivialised as DPS ‘nukes’ past them thanks to hard-counters such as dodging and reflection. Furthermore, as a result condition-type damage will continue to be dropped in preference of the former for many professions and while increasing the damage per condition stack is a potential response, it does not strike me as a solution as it only compounds the spiralling DPS issue.

Even a mediocre player like me sees a somewhat limited use for condition damage, a simple example being a ranger which I levelled recently. Ignoring the arguments of whether a ranger is good, bad or downright ugly when compared to other professions, trialling on level 80 rare and masterwork greens left me feeling there was no real build choice as upgrading to direct-damage (i.e. beserker) exotic items yielded a much higher return with the additional damage from condition-stacks being a ‘nice-to-have’.

This would also make those “Extra crit in X scenario” much more apealing when used with crit dmg builds.

Kaaboose.3897:

So why not say to your party “Hey, My builds really good at support so I’ll be focusing on helping out my allies more then damging the boss.”
Or “Hey I’ve got some great control skills, Leave debuffing and interupting to me!”
Lastly “I’m not very good at control or support so can I focus on damging the boss please?”

This is exactly what i hoped to find in this game. To do what you can do with you skill. But if you are saying that your build is a control build, the party will kick you 90% of the time an tell you to kitten off with your noob build or roll a zerker build, because in bossfight, all you need is damage. Some support can help but control is a joke against bosses. There is only one class who can ignore this stacking defiant crap. Its the thief with his basilisk venom. Yes, this skill has a 45 seconds cooldown but this thing works on most bossed, from little asura to giant stone statues. All other classes are srewed with their control skills becaus of way how defiant works.

Like you said in the video, make this thing a timed buff, to make control effect efficent but not overpowered. With a timed defiant buff Anet can build interesting boss fights The mentioned mix with many weak and one strong attack is a good idea. We can even expand on this. Let’s just take the Prototype F-IV Golem of phase 3 in the Kudu boss fight of the Sorrows Embrace dungeon.

This golem burns a lot and “can” purge conditions to heal himself, but honestly i’never seen this purge work. Ok now this boss gains the “new” timed defiant buff and gets some rework with his mechanics, so that he tries to purge the condtions every 10 or 20% HP ( depends on the health he has after the rework^^ ) , with a visible animation and make him resistant or immune to damage when he is trying to purge the conditions, so control at this moment is a must have, but if the party uses control on cooldown they can’t really interrupt him and he heals himself and also gets a bit stronger but if the party can interrupt him he becomes weaker for a good amount of time.
And in explo he gets something like an enragestack, if the party fails to interrupt his purge 3 times he goes oneshot an wipes the party. ( But this only if there is only one golem instead of three ).

Ok this was a little mechanic suggestion, but in my opinion control works better with a timed defiant buff instead of a stacking defiant buff, and this suggestion should show that more interesting boss fight mechanics are possible with the “new” defiant buff.

Kaaboose.3897:

This threads on the Trinity in PvE, not PvP.
Unless you WERE refering to PvE in which case you’re just suporting the DMG>ALL META that we currently have

I probably did respond to something that was a little off topic but oh well, I’ll come back to the topic at hand. I believe something should be done to increase the difficulty so that 5 noobs in zerkers can’t just instantly annihilate anything, but if a player is good enough to pull off full zerker and NOT die, then he/she should be rewarded with exceptional dps. In the case of slave driver in CoF, that is a GREAT boss for killing pure zerkers. If the hp was flat out doubled on that boss, we wouldn’t be seeing people just face-tanking it until death, people would actually have to dodge and you know, use some skills.

If you watch any of the Lupi solo vids, you’ll notice that every player used pure dps gear not because they wanted to plow through the content before a threat could surface (they’re soloing Lupi, they’d have to be skilled to do that in any gear), but instead they wear it b/c they can handle the no-survivability-if-hit senario. They want to kill the boss a few minutes faster b.c the faster it dies, the less time they have to make a fatal mistake.

GW2 is basically now like an Ursan run from GW1. Mindless spamming with just damage and 0 thought put into the game.
I was glad when Ursan was nerfed since it brought back the “thinking” aspect of GW1 which I loved so much.
There are 0 tactics involved in GW2. How many people use combos on purpose? Not many I can tell you. They are just a result of mindless zerging.
I havnt played my main which WAS a guardian with toughness type build. Mace/shield and healing. What is the role for that type of character. I guess I better get those fine transmutation stones from the TP since I will have to change EVERYTHING to zerker in order to be somewhat effective.
With 0 challenges worthy of gameplay, the mindless zerging, the aweful risk vs reward system and all of the other problems that GW2 has the only reason that I am still playing is because there is nothing else out there.
I get the feeling that when a better game comes along, I will be switching to something that makes me think, feel rewarded for difficult content and not have to grind/pull out the visa in order to acquire items.
Anet NEEDS to wake up and wake up fast because after 9 months there is little left in the tank.

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

Ok, i was perhaps a bit harsh. Still, the impact of healing power on relevant skills and traits will have to be reworked so that trading power and/or crit damage (precision is too overloaded with trait and rune procs to be considered) for healing power makes a impact on the overall survivability.

Solstice came up with a great soltuion to that on the Guru forums:

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying critical chance should be hammered into the ground, a precision-focused build could still attain, say, a 30% critical chance with fury halved to around 10% for a total of ~40%. I also recognise the impact on traits and other ‘on critical’ effects, but many of these have their own in-built probability which could be increased or removed. Hell, Arenanet has already had to adjust for high critical chances by placing an internal cooldown on certain effects (e.g. life-steal consumable if I remember correctly)

Hmm, may work. Drop max attainable crit chance so you can’t run with virtually guaranteed crit damage, and up the proc effect numbers to compensate.

And yeah, those consumables. They allowed a zerker warrior to be a better vampire than a vampire build necromancer before internal cooldowns were put in place…

randomfightfan.4091:

Kaaboose.3897:

This threads on the Trinity in PvE, not PvP.
Unless you WERE refering to PvE in which case you’re just suporting the DMG>ALL META that we currently have

I probably did respond to something that was a little off topic but oh well, I’ll come back to the topic at hand. I believe something should be done to increase the difficulty so that 5 noobs in zerkers can’t just instantly annihilate anything, but if a player is good enough to pull off full zerker and NOT die, then he/she should be rewarded with exceptional dps. In the case of slave driver in CoF, that is a GREAT boss for killing pure zerkers. If the hp was flat out doubled on that boss, we wouldn’t be seeing people just face-tanking it until death, people would actually have to dodge and you know, use some skills.

If you watch any of the Lupi solo vids, you’ll notice that every player used pure dps gear not because they wanted to plow through the content before a threat could surface (they’re soloing Lupi, they’d have to be skilled to do that in any gear), but instead they wear it b/c they can handle the no-survivability-if-hit senario. They want to kill the boss a few minutes faster b.c the faster it dies, the less time they have to make a fatal mistake.

Solo chalenges like that SHOULD exist for the players that want them IMO. But that should NOT be possible in a team scenario. If it’s possible to SOLO a team effort then what’s the point in brining a team? There’s no need to work together if each of you is capable of doing the encounter on your own.
This is why I recomend throwing in many weak attacks with the strong ones. So that without team support the boss WILL pressure you to death. This is also why I recomended the speed increase, to prevent indefinate kiting without control.

digiowl.9620:

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

Ok, i was perhaps a bit harsh. Still, the impact of healing power on relevant skills and traits will have to be reworked so that trading power and/or crit damage (precision is too overloaded with trait and rune procs to be considered) for healing power makes a impact on the overall survivability.

Solstice came up with a great soltuion to that on the Guru forums:

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying critical chance should be hammered into the ground, a precision-focused build could still attain, say, a 30% critical chance with fury halved to around 10% for a total of ~40%. I also recognise the impact on traits and other ‘on critical’ effects, but many of these have their own in-built probability which could be increased or removed. Hell, Arenanet has already had to adjust for high critical chances by placing an internal cooldown on certain effects (e.g. life-steal consumable if I remember correctly)

Hmm, may work. Drop max attainable crit chance so you can’t run with virtually guaranteed crit damage, and up the proc effect numbers to compensate.

And yeah, those consumables. They allowed a zerker warrior to be a better vampire than a vampire build necromancer before internal cooldowns were put in place…

The only problem is how it would effect PvP. Bunker builds… Wait physical bunker builds wouldn’t NEED to focus so much on pysical damage mitigation as much would they? They’d start favoring healing and negating conditions more? nah same problems still.
Spike builds would actually have to go for talents that drasticly increased crit under certian circumstances…
I’m terrible at PvP balance, anyone care to share some insight as to what a change like that would do to PvP?

Stormcrow.7513:

SNIP
With 0 challenges worthy of gameplay, the mindless zerging, the aweful risk vs reward system and all of the other problems that GW2 has the only reason that I am still playing is because there is nothing else out there.
I get the feeling that when a better game comes along, I will be switching to something that makes me think, feel rewarded for difficult content and not have to grind/pull out the visa in order to acquire items.
Anet NEEDS to wake up and wake up fast because after 9 months there is little left in the tank.

I’m in the same boat Stormcrow. My guild and I were tiring of how casualised WoW was becoming on top of how repetative it had gotten over the years. Even with it’s faults GW2 offers more fun than WoW but it’s fallen well short of what we were promised nearly 2 years ago.
As soon as something comes along that offers a fun optional challenge without resorting to a grind to keep us interested we’ll be gone. GW2’s time to act is before this game comes out, not after.

Kaaboose.3897:

Solo chalenges like that SHOULD exist for the players that want them IMO. But that should NOT be possible in a team scenario. If it’s possible to SOLO a team effort then what’s the point in brining a team? There’s no need to work together if each of you is capable of doing the encounter on your own.

What’s the point? Getting the content done 5x faster, thus, 5x easier is one big point in bringing a team. Why solo a dungeon (aside from wanting the challenge and status) if it takes an hour to solo but 10 minutes as a team?