Guild Wars 2

EDIT: this is in regards to Orr only…too much CC, either the amount of CC needs a reduction or the following should be implemented.

There is nothing worse then being feared 3 times in a row, being pulled 3 times in a row or permanently immobilized. It’s frustrating, dumb and bad design.

What I propose is to add a buff the players who have been CC’d that makes them immune to CC for X amount of seconds after the 1st CC effect/condition wears off.

This would only apply to PvE.

while it is annoying, there are methods against it. For fear and immobilise, you need condition removals, and for all other control effects, you need stability. Both of which are offered in the game. There are also specific traits that help the player against CCs. There is no need to have diminishing returns on CCs, because there are plenty of options to deal with them.

Let’s break the problem down.

1) The “windups” that telegraph these attacks are inconsistent both in visual representation and in timing.

You will eventually learn that when the bull rears up he’s about to charge you, and that when the kitten zombie with the shovel gets a purple glow he’s about to knock you down. There’s plenty of time to dodge or block the bull charge, but the shovel window is pretty short. You can still dodge it if you’re on the ball, but…

2) Dodge is flaky.

Often I will find that my character performs the animation without actually dodging. Result: shovel to the face, even though I made all the correct inputs to the game.

3) The animation system doesn’t always return control to the player in a timely manner. Or, there’s a disconnect between the length of the stun/knockdown and the length of the animation associated with it.

Let’s continue from “shovel to the face” from above. You get knocked down. The animation system takes control away, goes through the motions of standing up… and then you stand there doing nothing for a few “blank” frames before you actually regain control of your character. This is a discrepancy between the length of the control event and the length of the animation.

By the time you regain control of your character, the zombie has closed the gap and immediately hits you with the shovel again with his other CC, the stun. Or, even worse, the second zombie in the group executes his own knockdown. Result: this thread.

Statements such as, “There is no need to have diminishing returns on CCs, because there are plenty of options to deal with them” can only be made in the absence of proper analysis. If everything worked correctly then you could say such a thing, but that is not the case.

castlemanic.3198:

while it is annoying, there are methods against it. For fear and immobilise, you need condition removals, and for all other control effects, you need stability. Both of which are offered in the game. There are also specific traits that help the player against CCs. There is no need to have diminishing returns on CCs, because there are plenty of options to deal with them.

Yes, because as a character you clearly have enough counters to mass CC. I’m a thief so I have 1-2 options to deal with this and there’s far, far more CC then 1-2 being thrown at you in Orr. It’s absolutely ridiculous that I’m essentially forced to fight ever trash mob on the way to my destination, especially when I’m lvl 80 already and there’s almost no reason to fight them anymore.

Not every mob should have CC abilities but they do for some ill-conceived reason.
So lets make it so players can’t be CC’d so bloody much they can’t even get to their destination in any sort of timely manner…heck we just did a Temple run a moment ago I ended up getting killed, the nearest waypoint was contested so I have to run from CS to get there…that’s fine, I can dodge the attacks as they come until I get meat hooked and then mass CC’d by everything in the area, forcing me to fight through that ungodly mess so I can go help clear the temple. If I don’t deal with the mobs and try to run away I end up getting there with half health and end up dying again…rinse, lather repeat.

Mass CC on trash mobs in Orr was a terrible idea.

If you’re talking about Orr only, then that’s a far more reasonable request to balance than an overall CC reduction all over the map.

Now, apart from Orr, even if everything was working fine, this thread would have still come up, because sometimes you’ll be faced with a couple of enemies, dodge really powerful attacks, run out of endurance, and then get hit by two CCs in a row. And there are ways to deal with it. Every class does.

It would be exactly the same thing as facing an enemy who throws out tons of conditions and not bringing a single condition remover to the fight. You have ways of dealing with the conditions yet you didnt bring them. the worst i’ve faced outside of orr is three ettins throwing out knockdowns in a row, keeping me down for maximum time. While that was annoying, it’s still somewhat survivable.

I should specify that in the OP, this is regards to Orr only. Thanks for the reminder.

Ah okay then. No problem. While i still disagree with the method of improvement, an improvement is needed for Orr.

castlemanic.3198:

Ah okay then. No problem. While i still disagree with the method of improvement, an improvement is needed for Orr.

If we’re just dealing with Orr, I like your method better: take some of the CC away from the mobs. It would be a heck of a lot less messy and centralized.

It just comes down to the player feeling a loss of control. It’s pretty basic game design that your player should always know exactly why they died, and it should always be their fault. I shouldn’t die because the dodge mechanic failed, and I shouldn’t die because I get into a CC chain and go get a cup of coffee. At least in PvE situations.

So, yeah, 100% agree with dealing with Orr. Also agree with the direct removal of some CC from Orrian mobs.

Agree 200%, make them more powerful. But remove all CC from orr!

Removing all CC from Orr is bad, just reduce it.

I shouldn’t have to deal with 2 pulls, fear, knockdowns and immobilizes from trash mobs. Not when you get groups of them spawning together and start a CC chain (making it so I cannot fight back).

BabelFish.7234:

Removing all CC from Orr is bad, just reduce it.

I shouldn’t have to deal with 2 pulls, fear, knockdowns and immobilizes from trash mobs. Not when you get groups of them spawning together and start a CC chain (making it so I cannot fight back).

I went to Orr, once. I’ve not been back because of this very problem. It felt like all the mobs in Orr were like the bots we see other places. They keep on coming and never quit.

And, the respawn rate is ridiculous as well. I remember I stood at the doorway of one place for almost 1/2 hour just fighting the zombies (undead) over and over and over again without stopping. I could not move out or I would have been overwhelmed. Had I not been in a group and had the area not had so many fellow players, we all would have been dead in minutes due the the respawns not stopping.

So two things are happening there, not only are the respawn rates off the chart, but those mobs that do spawn there, have horrendously imbalanced abilities.

I think the theme of orr is that it’s supposed to be difficult. You’re about to confront an elder dragon, of course he’s going to have his strongest minions in the foray.

But the way they did it is a bit much. Lower the rate of respawn for mobs as a whole, further lower the rate of respawn for CC mobs and reduce their numbers too.

Orr is difficult. But not in a challenging way. Its difficulty is lazily implemented and frustrating. High respawn rates and successive stuns/knockdowns are not a challenge, they are a nuisance.

The respawan rates make planning ahead almost impossible as you have no way of knowing when you’ll suddenly get swarmed from behind by enemies you just killed.
The variety in enemy types in general is lacking, too. But that’s not the point of this thread.
The main problem with stuns/knockdowns/pulls is that the enemy animations are often not timed very accurately to the actual attack. And like previously pointed out the “dodge window” is often very small. This makes it more likely to miss a dodge and in Orr that can mean inevitable death if enough other enemies are around (or about to respawn). The sheer number of enemies with such abilities also means you run out of dodges and condition removal very fast.

You’re not challenging the player by letting him lie immobilized on the ground while (e.g.) 2 Abnominations punch him into a small puddle of goo.

The thing is, enemies can permanently deadlock you, stability or not. They should not be able to do that, because that leaves no room to strategic retreat if you are overrun, and simply being hit once and then repeatedly mauled to death without being able to do anything at all is not fun.

Because of that, players should get something similar to the champion’s Indignant when they are spiked with countless crowd control skills, but not getting it as easy as champions, of course.

For example, each effect that disables your ability to move and/or use skills should give you a certain number of stacks of an “Aggravated” effect, the number of stacks would depend on effect, ‘worse’ effects (like those that disable both movement and skills) give more stacks.
When you gather enough stacks of “Aggravated”, they all are removed and you get a version of Indignant that makes you immune to all effects that disable skills and alter movement in any way and that lasts for a few seconds, enough to get away, but not enough to keep fighting under their attacks.

That would solve the problem altogether. I believe they did that in a number of other games, an it worked every single time. It also makes sense lore-wise, as it’ll represent you getting pissed off, having a rush of adrenaline and getting away with sheer will.

If stability lasted longer than five or eight seconds with a long cooldown (25 seconds to a minute, depending on the skills I know of off the top of my head), then sure. I could see that as a decent argument.

But when you get stunlocked by a few translucent oozes or mummies in the labyrinth (haven’t yet been to Orr), there’s nothing more frustrating than watching your character get ripped to shreds because you can do literally nothing except wait for the cooldown on your stability skill again.

It’s not just Orr. I had problems with the aforementioned translucent oozes. These in Gendarran Fields near the skill point (side fun times — the cave trolls nearby also have a knockdown, but at least that one can be dodged). With multiple ettins I’ve been stuck on the ground for a while. With multiple griffons I’ve been able to get up only to be knocked down again. With multiple centaurs I’ve been knocked down, then launched, then knocked down again.

Whee, fun times! Except not. And each time, I had stability skills or stun breakers (Dolyak signet or “Shake it Off!” for example) on my skill bar, but waiting for cooldown.

Orr isn’t even that bad. As a guardian running “Knight’s” gear (a.k.a base health but loltoughness), I round up mobs. I understand this can be frustrating, but avoid large numbers. I am not trying to demean or overly insult your playing skill, but if my craptastic guardian is handling 5+ per fight…surely you can handle one or two. If memory serves, rogues have a way(s) of gaining stability. Try adding that in before spamming whatever attack(s).

Also, I will say the chains from 900+ units away is kind of foolish. The rest is fine. DO NOT ADD DIMINISHING RETURNS kitten IT!

-Hate

Hateborne.7942:

Orr isn’t even that bad. As a guardian running “Knight’s” gear (a.k.a base health but loltoughness), I round up mobs. I understand this can be frustrating, but avoid large numbers. I am not trying to demean or overly insult your playing skill, but if my craptastic guardian is handling 5+ per fight…surely you can handle one or two. If memory serves, rogues have a way(s) of gaining stability. Try adding that in before spamming whatever attack(s).

Also, I will say the chains from 900+ units away is kind of foolish. The rest is fine. DO NOT ADD DIMINISHING RETURNS kitten IT!

-Hate

Sigh, the assumption you make.
I don’t have problems with this unless I’m trying to run past mobs and I agro too many, as a thief I also have very high toughness and respectable health (Power/Tough/Vit exotics).

The only way a thief can obtain stability is through Dagger Storm which AoE’s everything in a pretty massive AoE. Not to mention it’s our elite.

BabelFish.7234:

Sigh, the assumption you make.
I don’t have problems with this unless I’m trying to run past mobs and I agro too many, as a thief I also have very high toughness and respectable health (Power/Tough/Vit exotics).

Look closely…

BabelFish.7234:

I don’t have problems with this unless I’m trying to run past mobs and I agro too many,

Heh I made an assumption and you proved it right. Thank you. :-)

-Hate

castlemanic.3198:

I think the theme of orr is that it’s supposed to be difficult. You’re about to confront an elder dragon, of course he’s going to have his strongest minions in the foray.

but the elder dragon isn’t tough if you just spam 2 on your keyboard to beat them. i believe though that the hardest enemies are on that last story mission, because of the lack of useable space to move about. the lack of space amplifies the difficulty to hair-pulling levels.

Orr is annoying and difficult.

I actually like the idea of a consecutive CC penalty in general. Only applied to successful CC of course. It would go well with hitting >5 targets in breaking up zergs.

castlemanic.3198:

I think the theme of orr is that it’s supposed to be difficult.

There’s nothing difficult about Orr. It’s very unlikely that you will lose/die while running around, even if you screw up and pull too many mobs. It’s not difficult; it’s just tedious. I would even say nauseating.

The issue this thread wants to address is a major factor contributing to the tedium.

Fixing dodge would help. Fix dodge so that it actually dodges rather than rolling in place, and preferably so that it dodges in the direction indicated by the inputs I make to the game.