Guild Wars 2

TL;DR: just read the example boss fight to get what I mean by having a roles and strategy without using a trinity.

I have played a few MMO’s in my day, and what I think people like about the Trinity is that it allows everyone to fulfill specific roles in the battle and create strategy. Specific roles allows people to feel needed. A draw back of the Trinity was initially that when you specialized in a specific field, your gameplay was kind of set in stone unless you leveled another character to fulfill a different role. Most people, not all, dislike leveling again for a number of reasons which I don’t feel like I need to get into. MMO’s in response to this started allowing players to reset their skills and attributes to allow for a more diverse gameplay experience. Now you could fulfill as many different roles that were possible for your profession or class.

However, there is another aspect of the Trinity that bothers people. Even though it is easier to switch between tank, healer and DPS, there are still only those three. Sure, you can say that many encounters will require few different variations like maybe having the tank use interrupts or have the DPS use fire instead of lightning. At the end of the day, the core of the gameplay involves having enemies fill in around the tank, the healer keeping the tank up and having the DPS’ers down the target as fast as possible.

GW2 tried to rid us of the same old tank & spank tactics that we have come to know and be jaded by. They removed the trinity by removing healers and giving everyone healing skills. They also made a less than reliable aggro system, possibly on purpose. However, what this has turned into is a bunch of DPS’ers who need to be good at dodging and a support class like a Mesmer or a Guardian for skipping or making things faster in general. We have lost that sense of roles in this game though… and that has also made us lose our sense of strategy. While we don’t have the problem of needing to find a Tank, Healer and DPS, we still are finding that we are bringing the exact same team to every fight. The exact same tactic, again. This becomes very boring after awhile.

IDEA:
What I propose in order to bring back the sense of strategy and roles without adopting the trinity is this. There are many ways in which we could have boss encounters go down. Instead of a tank, we could use people to snare. We could also have bosses who cannot be snared, so they must be interrupted. Maybe we could have bosses who take damage through conditions until a certain point in their health at which point everyone will need to do physical damage. We could have bosses who chase a certain player who takes his weapon, and if he catches up, he does giga-damage to everyone. Let me give you an example of a boss fight which would use non typical mechanics.

Example Boss Fight:
A Boss charges in and is exponentially faster than everyone in the room. His attacks are one hit kills and dodging them will only work for so long unless you adopt a strategy such as this. There needs to be one or two people using traps, skills or spells which can snare the Boss. There are MANY professions who can achieve this such as Rangers, Thieves, Engineers, Elementalists, etc. There will also need to be another one or two people who are buffing the party with swiftness to help everyone to stay away. Since the boss is so fast, there will be no time to rez people. So, it will be imperative to adopt this strategy to stay alive. While everyone is trying to keep away, they must also be attacking either of his legs to get him to finally kneel down in pain. At that point, everyone runs up and does damage before he gets back up. When he gets back up, repeat the process on the other leg until he kneels again and you kill him.

This is just one idea for how to not use the same old Trinity tactics to save the day. Also, this allows for more professions to fulfill key roles at any given time. Rather than NEEDING an Assassin to run Perma or a needing a Monk to heal the Tank, many people can help the team significantly without ditching a feel of specialization.

Edit: misspelled a word.

Another Example Boss Fight:
There is a Boss where his health regain is directly related to how far away you are from him. The farther away everyone is away from him, the faster he regains health. Therefore everyone is forced to stay in close. He will have moves that if they hit or are not blocked, then they will give him a small amount of health regain (similar to how frenzy stacks on the abominations from hitting people). However, this boss is highly susceptible to knockdowns and stuns. He also, only takes damage when he is stunned, dazed or knocked back. When you CC him, he loses one of his stacks of Regen. Therefore you will need to have to have a dedicated CC’r or create a system of everyone using their CC’s at the right times. They also will want to be outfitted to maximize their stun/daze/knockdown times. He attacks very fast and and does medium damage. You will want to have someone healing everyone and putting vigor and aegis on everyone.

Again, with this boss battle, there are many professions already who could help achieve these roles without making it so only one profession will be wanted for that role. I really hope you guys like this idea, and I REALLY hope a certain Dev who likes lurking in this forum likes it as well.

Tell me what you guys think…

I’ll tell you what the problem is. The problem is the class is so different and every build is so different. So every group is very different.

So when you design a boss fight should it be able to be defeated by “any class makeup and any build”?

The thing with the 2 example you give is certain class is better for those thing. Unbalance?

But the classes aren’t different in this game. Almost every profession boils down to putting on zerker gear and hammering on the DPS while dodging at the right times. There are really only two ways to play every profession with degrees of effectiveness depending on how survivable you want to be. You can either be a power/precision person or you can do conditions. Since there is a cap on the amount of conditions the team can put on an enemy, people tend to lean towards zerker/glass cannons. This idea allows for there to be a diverse gameplay experience by forcing people to change their tactics. Also, in MMO’s there is a problem of needing someone to fulfill a role and not having anyone with the right class to fulfill it. This is why ANET originally ditched the Trinity. So, I was making an idea that would appeal to their desire to end that aspect of the Trinity while returning the concepts of roles and strategy that players enjoy.

That would certainly make PvE more interesting. In it’s current state, PvE is mostly a mindless endeavor that would actually be IMPROVED by the trinity, so if they did what you suggest, the PvE might actually be enjoyable.

Of course, it would also help if the grind in this game wasn’t exponentially longer than the one in WoW, and with nothing to actually be getting the gear for.

Also, this idea isn’t excluding anyone. Almost every profession has some version of swiftness, CC, vigor, snare. So it isn’t about excluding professions that don’t, it’s about having professions use skills they don’t normally to create a strategy.

Goose.5196:

Also, this idea isn’t excluding anyone. Almost every profession has some version of swiftness, CC, vigor, snare. So it isn’t about excluding professions that don’t, it’s about having professions use skills they don’t normally to create a strategy.

yes they have it. But some profession do certain things “better”. That is where the problem rise.

The problem I find dungeon is certain class or certain build have easier time compare to other in certain situation. For example most dungeon encounter is so much easier if you just have everyone in full berserker and maximize dps.

It’s like almost every class have projectile reflect, but guardian obviously do it better right?

Now nothing wrong with your idea. My question is should the “difficulty” of the content be designed by the “idea group makeup and build” or “the weakest group makeup and build”.

I understand what you are saying, and balancing a game so that everyone’s skills are just as effective while not creating an homogenous build variety is difficult. So, I agree that they will need to buff other classes to be just as good as others at doing certain things. At the same time, the dungeon should be able to be achieved without using a profession that is typically better at doing that one thing. Making a knockdown warrior is very viable, maybe more so than other classes that do CC. One way to remedy this is if you don’t have a Warrior in the group, everyone needs to synchronize when they use the CC’s they do have. I am all for them adding skills, and they may be needed to fully achieve what I am talking about. Therefore, more professions would have more skills that would them adequately fulfill specific roles as well as some of the other professions.

I agree with you wholeheartedly.. And we have needed these types of fights months ago..

Instead of the trinity and its unique depth and variety, we actually have lost one role and are now only able to play DPS or Support. (Given that everyone has to keep track of their own dodges)

Personally I pretty much put the game down a few weeks ago. I thoroughly enjoy PvE content in MMOs, but GW2s system is pretty boring and repetitive when you get down to the nuts and bolts of the system. 4zerker + 1 support and dodge hotkey.. That’s the PvE game in a nutshell.

When I got this game, I was excited to hear the end of the Trinity. At first it was fun and exciting to be able to heal myself and not spend time looking for the a specific class to fill a role for a dungeon. The problem is, like the OP said, almost every boss and dungeon just feels like a chaotic dpsing game that gets old quick. There is no real feel of accomplishment, no real feel of teamwork, no real feel of being part of a finely tuned machine.

The OP’s idea makes a lot of sense. This game removed the Trinity, now they have to put something in its place to fill the void it left. The void of, TEAMPLAY and STRATEGY. The simplicity of your bosses, Claw of Jormag, hell all your world bosses are really pathetic. I’ve been on a couple farming run of all these bosses, everyone just stands in one place and attacks it till their pretty chest pops up on the side of their screen. Wow. You guys had ONE good world boss, Fire Elemental, then nerfed him to oblivion. Now people stand INSIDE his Flaming body and dps him down. Ridiculous.

Anyway back to the OP’s post. I like your idea to adding more teamwork and strategy to bosses and dungeons, but some of the examples, although good, make me raise an eyebrow as what could happen. The CCing boss, everyone would just want to bring 5 hammer warriors to massacre it. The snaring boss, bring a trap ranger with a warhorn to give everyone swiftness while snaring the boss and dpsing. Idk if these are the best classes to bring in these situations, but I know people will find the best classes and excludes others like P1 CoF. This isn’t the OPs fault, but rather the players of gw2 tho. Best solution I can think of is make these into challenging guild missions, so no one is left out.

Anet! Listen to the OP make more challenging events!!

The reality is other game have cc too. And the cc in this game is probably even more “soft” compare to other game.

I never implied that other games didn’t have CC… I was just suggesting a way to add roles without adding a Trinity… in THIS game.

Crazy Crazy Doctor.3946:

That would certainly make PvE more interesting. In it’s current state, PvE is mostly a mindless endeavor that would actually be IMPROVED by the trinity, so if they did what you suggest, the PvE might actually be enjoyable.

I agree. Going without trinity sounded exciting in the first months, but PvE did not profit at all from that change. I think it is a fault of both the system’s inherent limitations and incredibly bad work from the dungeon designers, but in the end, the return of the trinity could only be an improvement.

roles actually imply there’s a different between the person in the group. Tank have to be tank because they absorb more damage. dps is dps because they do more damage. etc.

Now you said yourself all the class can do everything. So where their role coming from. All you said is make the boss fight more interesting, that’s all you said.

And both of your example implies of boss fight which everyone should have speed buff and snare and stun. Roles imply everyone should be doing something different. Your example dont’ imply that.

That being said other game have cc with longer duration. The funny thing is this game actually dont’ make you cc boss. Since most boss in this game have a buff which make them immune to cc. Other game actually make more use of cc.

What make other game more interesting more than anything is the min/maxing. This game don’t have that. Or at least try not to have that. IMO many of the dungeon content is actually not bad. The problem is many of the content is trivilize by maxing dps(aka berserker gear).

I mean I was doing an AC path 1 group. And people start complaining about how difficult the burrow part is. And one person complain he did it like 20+ times and still can’t get pass it. But in reality a berserker elementist can duo it.

the problem of this game is not trinity and stuff….
Look at PvE state of the game..

Bosses get first immune to CC or get an unreasonable amount of defiant stacks so CC becomes useless…(15-20 stacks? you’d better kill the boss before you remove enough)

Then they start hitting like trucks so they 1 shot or 2 shot everyone

Then they start to nerf anti projectile/and reflect

What is left?
DPS (warrior)
and for support you need a class able to heal huge amount of HP fast while negating damage (guardian).

They limited 30-60 % players skillsets to few trash mobs….trying to make the game more difficult…..

Nothing is “balanced” is either frustrating or easy depending only on how well you memorized boss skills (note that this is not “skill”).

Imho was the wrong way.

Weapon skills, traits and utilities continue to be balanced around pvp. Anet will need to get very serious with skill splitting and dedicating time and effort into accommodating more exotic levels of pve.

Their continued hands-off approach to making meaningful changes to the game means it will be a warm day in Grenth’s domain before we see anything that shakes up the current meta.

I wish people would all be running berseeker gear and dodging at the right time. What i mostly get are people in PVT or Cleric Gear who try to fulfill a healer role. Sadly that makes them extremely useless.

The game have damage,control,support but the truth is you don’t ever need to use anything else than just damage you might want to take 1 mesmer to take care of the control. That’s why the optimal team is 4 warriors and 1 mesmer. Also healing spells in this game is not particular powerful. They usually have over 30s cd and heal for 1-4k something you get hit for every second so whats the point. With only warrior dps (the highest in the game) you can beat anything if you can dodge right. I don’t think warrior is OP. Someone have to have the highest dps in a game with 8 professions. I think its a combination of the game being relatively easy and support skills don’t really support that much.
Gw2 has not hooked me like gw1 did. I just stick around as its f2p but i spend more times on other games not mmo’s. But i know for a fact that gw1 had a lot more depth in combat than gw2 anyone who deny this must have never played that game. To get better they can start of with adding more skills to choose from and weapon skills. They can stick to the 5 locked skills as long as they let you choose from different skills in each slot per weapon.

Well I guess I’m one of the few dissenting voices in this thread. I absolutely love the way professions and roles are set up in this game. I think ANet delivered a product as-advertised. Sure, min-maxers are always going to go for the highest DPS class, but that doesn’t mean the other classes cannot do the same content, and do it well. Can a group of randomly selected classes run CoF1 in 5 minutes? Probably not, but they can run it just fine. Same for any dungeon, in my experience.

Some of my least favorite things about other games had been waiting for X class to begin a dungeon and having people rage on X class for not using their one required skill at the right time in order for the party to succeed. This is a different kind of game, and in my opinion, it works.

Good post OP and i want to add this.
I think the lack of holy trinty in GW2 also makes all teamplay/dungeons feel like solo play. hardly any boss fight has some sort of coordination in them and when they do.. the result is often failure becuase people are just not used to working as a team.

I personally am very dissapointed in the PvE endgame GW2 offers and i really don’t understand why Anet doesn’t look at the cross combo system. I think the cross combo system can bring back a feel of teamplay and sort of holy trinty in a good and fun way. If they just put a special cross combo buff on entering a specific dungeon then they can test this very easy to see how things turn out... but no instead they only focus on more flame and frost like content and many new shiny gem gear..... i mean who cares.. gear doesn’t matter at all in this game.. who needs gear when the pve end content is so horrible you don’t want to play it anyways... no need for shiny gear to show off.. when all you do is standing in LA trading.

tbh i really hope they wake up soon becuase this game has a LOT of potential but atm it is wasted over and over agian.. and i don’t know about your friendlist.. but mine is getting very empty.

You don’t need trinity, you just need content designed with the this combat system in mind. Look at monster hunter, the bosses are epic and require skill. The mobs in gw2 should be more like dark souls / monster hunter, not mindless mmo mobs that just run at you.

laokoko.7403:

roles actually imply there’s a different between the person in the group. Tank have to be tank because they absorb more damage. dps is dps because they do more damage. etc.

Now you said yourself all the class can do everything. So where their role coming from. All you said is make the boss fight more interesting, that’s all you said.

And both of your example implies of boss fight which everyone should have speed buff and snare and stun. Roles imply everyone should be doing something different. Your example dont’ imply that.

That being said other game have cc with longer duration. The funny thing is this game actually dont’ make you cc boss. Since most boss in this game have a buff which make them immune to cc. Other game actually make more use of cc.

What make other game more interesting more than anything is the min/maxing. This game don’t have that. Or at least try not to have that. IMO many of the dungeon content is actually not bad. The problem is many of the content is trivilize by maxing dps(aka berserker gear).

I mean I was doing an AC path 1 group. And people start complaining about how difficult the burrow part is. And one person complain he did it like 20+ times and still can’t get pass it. But in reality a berserker elementist can duo it.

I am not saying that EVERYONE will do EVERYTHING. First and foremost, Bosses will need to be increased in their difficulty (by adding more damage from their attacks rather than giving them more heatlh) to make it impossible to bring the exact same ZerkerFTW team to every battle. Second, there needs to be a clear split between how skills are effective in WvW and PvE just as there are PvP versions of PvE skills. This will allow for skills to be buffed without worry about their overpowered nature in WvW. And third, boons, conditions, cc’s, etc need to become much more effective so that they make actually be used to turn the tide of battle. However, I do think there will need to be a great deal of specialization. With my first example, I am saying that people in the group will need to be dedicated to snaring and no one else in the group at that time will be snaring. There will also need to be 2 people giving out swiftness, and no one else at that time. I am not saying everyone needs to be snaring and giving swiftness and all that. Roles will apply situationally. This is the best this game can do given the Developers’ vision and without returning to the problems of having a trinity.

^ that make so little sense consider some class have permanent swiftness. And if I have snare ability why would I not use it.

Not to mention certain class have way better snare and mobility than other class. It is unbalance.

In your example the meta group would be 5 thief? best mobility, pretty much can keep up 100% snare.

Maybe if they redesign the combat ability for every class what you said will make sense. Currently what you said definitly don’t make sense.

Nothing wrong with what you said, just that it don’t work “in this game”. Because of how class combat and ability is designed. In your example the encounter can range from easy to difficult depend on the group makeup.

Your concept of the boss fight do work. The main problem I have is the balance. Since the class ability obviously isn’t balance around pve dungeon.

Let’s make Lupicus Kicks and Smashes deal 100k damagge to people wearion knights gear.
…
…
Still: Berserkers > Everything else.

Goose.5196:

First and foremost, Bosses will need to be increased in their difficulty (by adding more damage from their attacks rather than giving them more heatlh) to make it impossible to bring the exact same ZerkerFTW team to every battle.

Sorry, but Dub is right. Unless there is a much clearer distinction between offensive and defensive characters, it will be simply impossible to discourage the use of zerker gear without slapping every single melee into the face so hard that meleeing is no option anymore. And if this distinction is applied, the holy trinity is back (which would be quite a good thing, imho).

Goose.5196:

I am not saying that EVERYONE will do EVERYTHING. First and foremost, Bosses will need to be increased in their difficulty (by adding more damage from their attacks rather than giving them more heatlh) to make it impossible to bring the exact same ZerkerFTW team to every battle. Second, there needs to be a clear split between how skills are effective in WvW and PvE just as there are PvP versions of PvE skills. This will allow for skills to be buffed without worry about their overpowered nature in WvW. And third, boons, conditions, cc’s, etc need to become much more effective so that they make actually be used to turn the tide of battle. However, I do think there will need to be a great deal of specialization. With my first example, I am saying that people in the group will need to be dedicated to snaring and no one else in the group at that time will be snaring. There will also need to be 2 people giving out swiftness, and no one else at that time. I am not saying everyone needs to be snaring and giving swiftness and all that. Roles will apply situationally. This is the best this game can do given the Developers’ vision and without returning to the problems of having a trinity.

Actually, make tanky build tanky? Make boss hit harder zerk guys and improve mitigation for toughness?

Right now Knight gear it’s good only for…cleaning my butt in all honesty lol, doesn’t matter if i have 3k tough or 900 tough i still get 2 shot from bosses.

laokoko.7403:

Not to mention certain class have way better snare and mobility than other class. It is unbalance.

I do not disagree with this, and I didn’t earlier. I do think that professions need to be tweaked to a make more professions viable at these situational roles. However, what you are taking for granted is that each of the Boss fights are not inside a dungeon where the next Boss fight might take entirely different make up/design than simply 5 zerker thieves with swiftness and traps. Here, I will make a fuller example.

Here is our Example Team Makeup: Ranger, Engineer, Elementalist, Necromancer and Guardian. These are not the big three, and typically not wanted for the speed clears (except maybe the Guardian).

Boss Example 1:
Ranger decides that he is going to go down the Skirmishing Traitline and use the Trap Potency trait which will allow for his traps to recharge 20% faster and the conditions caused by them to last twice as long. Now his Spike Trap will last for 4 seconds of Cripple and will recharge in 20s. His Frost Trap will last for 10 seconds and will recharge in 24s. Since before the dungeon, he has decided it would be smarter for him to be a condition Ranger to increase the duration of his conditions (cripple and frost in particular) those traps last even longer. Giving the team even more breathing room. Since he is conditions, he picks up the Shortbow and uses the Quickshot to give swiftness for himself (can’t be avoided, but he is not a typically considered OP class) and dodge if he gets to close and uses Crippling Shot to also add to the Cripple he is doing.

The engineer will be assisting him in snaring. He too decides to go conditions and maximize his condition duration. He builds a Net Turret in the center of the circle they are kiting around to add immobilize and he is using double Pistols. He is using good timing with his Glue Shot skill, as to not double up on when the Ranger is putting down his skills. This will maximize the amount of time the Boss is crippled. He also decides to use his Trait Knee Shot to add 5 seconds of cripple every time he uses Glue Shot. He also decides to play it smart, and use Accelerant-Packed Turrets trait, this way in case the boss decides to go after his turret, he will be knocked back, adding to the distance between the Boss and the Party.

The Elementalist is using a staff, and particularly staying with the Lightning Attunement for adding swiftness with Windborne Speed. You could say that he would be better off using Earth to help trap the Boss, but the team wants to minimize the amount of time they take doing this boss, and his efforts would be better spent by doing more damage. His primary goal is to target and attack one of the two legs and doing a lot of damage. Also, this Boss has the resistance to CC, but not to conditions, and most of the snaring skills on the Staff in Lightning cause CC.

Necromancer will be much more useful for the second boss encounter with conditions, so he cannot pick up and axe and use it here. However, he can go with a Scepter and Warhorn, using skills Grasping Dead and Locust Swarm to help both teams out with snaring and swiftness. However, the other team players who are more geared toward snaring will be doing the most work (by having the developers buff both how effective a specialized player can be and how difficult bosses are if you don’t know exactly how to defeat them/not prepared for them) since he is not going to specialized for snare in this particular situation.

The Guardian will be using a staff most of the time and, sure he will use Line of Warding when he can, but he will mostly be doing damage to the leg with the Necromancer and Elementalist. He will be offering the team Swiftness with Retreat! and Symbol of Swiftness. He will need to have his Boon Duration higher than usual for both this fight, and the next.

Next time on hypothetical dungeon theater, our team of unlikable candidates take on the 2nd Boss Example…

I think there’s a cap on speed and most class have signet for passive speed. I think thief have 5 second snare which cost 4 initiative. Warrior probably need to rotate between GS and rifle since they have long cooldown. Guardian have hammer too.

My main grip on the game isn’t about roles. My main grip on the game is certain group/class/build makeu kitten o much easier for certain encounter and situation compare to another.

laokoko.7403:

I think there’s a cap on speed and most class have signet for passive speed. I think thief have 5 second snare which cost 4 initiative. Warrior probably need to rotate between GS and rifle since they have long cooldown. Guardian have hammer too.

My main grip on the game isn’t about roles. My main grip on the game is certain group/class/build makeu kitten o much easier for certain encounter and situation compare to another.

I agree with you 100%, I think in order to make roles, more Professions will need be equally viable at doing certain roles. I think those should require more specialization rather than just using the right utility skills regardless of your trait specs. That way, I couldn’t bring my zerker Thief to every fight and assume that all I will need to do is change my utility skills. I am NOT saying the game is ready for my suggestion as is. They need to do a LOT of balancing and buffing.

There are some really good examples of cleaver use of boss mechanics in the Guild Bounties, though most people don’t notice them. One Example is Sootz who sits in a ring of Achohol which you need to knock him out of to do significant damage. Bosses in GW2 are not immune to CC like some people think. They have a defiant buff that needs to be worn down so that a CC can work. Once all stacks of Defiant are removed you can do one CC and then it’s reset. The Sootz fight relies of people wearing away the buff and then hitting him with a Knockback, which does involve some communication between the team, if you use the wrong CC it just resets the Defiance for no gain. Another fight that relies on this is Komali, He puts up a ring of fire that means everyone that hits him gives him a buff making him hit like a freight train and take almost no damage. So you need to stop attacking him when the buff goes up and someone needs to clear Stability off him so he can be knocked out of the circle. This means you need certain skill and good timing.

I’m not saying that fights should be class specific, but more that there should be things that non DPS classes can add to the fight that make the fight go much faster.

There are some really good examples of this already in the game. The Grawl Fractal is much easier if you can shut down the Lava Elemental’s ranged attacks to give you time to take down the shield. Which is why Focus Ele’s really help here.

The idea is not that you have only 1 of these in a dungeon, but that a dungeon has a real mix of things you need to do. SO it makes sense to bring a Toolbox rather than 5 Sledgehammers. Fractals do this quite well, there are places where different tools definitely make things easier, and you have no clue what your going go to face when you go in.

I also think there is a lack of pressure in some fights, they end up being dodge the big hit or die. There needs to be a mix of “dodge the big hit or die” and “heal through the thousand cuts or die”. Some of the better fights in the game have this. And it’s fights like this that characters with Healing Builds come into their own.

Goose.5196:

TL;DR: just read the example boss fight to get what I mean by having a roles and strategy without using a trinity.

However, there is another aspect of the Trinity that bothers people. Even though it is easier to switch between tank, healer and DPS, there are still only those three. Sure, you can say that many encounters will require few different variations like maybe having the tank use interrupts or have the DPS use fire instead of lightning. At the end of the day, the core of the gameplay involves having enemies fill in around the tank, the healer keeping the tank up and having the DPS’ers down the target as fast as possible.

GW2 tried to rid us of the same old tank & spank tactics that we have come to know and be jaded by. They removed the trinity by removing healers and giving everyone healing skills. They also made a less than reliable aggro system, possibly on purpose. However, what this has turned into is a bunch of DPS’ers who need to be good at dodging and a support class like a Mesmer or a Guardian for skipping or making things faster in general. We have lost that sense of roles in this game though… and that has also made us lose our sense of strategy. While we don’t have the problem of needing to find a Tank, Healer and DPS, we still are finding that we are bringing the exact same team to every fight. The exact same tactic, again. This becomes very boring after awhile.

IDEA:
What I propose in order to bring back the sense of strategy and roles without adopting the trinity is this. There are many ways in which we could have boss encounters go down. Instead of a tank, we could use people to snare. We could also have bosses who cannot be snared, so they must be interrupted. Maybe we could have bosses who take damage through conditions until a certain point in their health at which point everyone will need to do physical damage. We could have bosses who chase a certain player who takes his weapon, and if he catches up, he does giga-damage to everyone. Let me give you an example of a boss fight which would use non typical mechanics.

Example Boss Fight:
A Boss charges in and is exponentially faster than everyone in the room. His attacks are one hit kills and dodging them will only work for so long unless you adopt a strategy such as this. There needs to be one or two people using traps, skills or spells which can snare the Boss. There are MANY professions who can achieve this such as Rangers, Thieves, Engineers, Elementalists, etc. There will also need to be another one or two people who are buffing the party with swiftness to help everyone to stay away. Since the boss is so fast, there will be no time to rez people. So, it will be imperative to adopt this strategy to stay alive. While everyone is trying to keep away, they must also be attacking either of his legs to get him to finally kneel down in pain. At that point, everyone runs up and does damage before he gets back up. When he gets back up, repeat the process on the other leg until he kneels again and you kill him.

Yes.

I’ve been saying this for so long. We need defined roles in some way and a reliable aggro system so that we can actually form strategies around fights based on objectively true things (IE the way aggro works and mechanics that exist in the game). They already have the targeting mechanics for dragons and large bosses, yet where you are targeting means nothing… i don’t understand this. You could easily make it so that taking out a leg cripples the boss, or taking out the head target removes a breath weapon (like on a dragon). They have the tech for this but dont do it.

Also another main problem is that since EVERYONE has an easy time applying supportive buffs like protections/regen/vigor mostly without building in a certain way all supportive roles are overlapped by dps who can just pick this stuff up for themselves without sacrificing much damage. If traits were more impactful (IE Changed certain skills entirely to actually change how you played) we would see much more defined builds… instead we just get passive boosts so everyone feels very similar.

This game is disappointing me so much because it has the foundation to have amazing dungeons and pvp and yet the devs seem to have no idea how to build encounters and pvp systems effectively. These are seriously the worst dungeons ive ever seen. The encounter mechanics are absolutely stupid and simple and the bosses boil down to mindless dpsing 99% of the time. Fractals was a step in the right direction but I’m not convinced the devs realize where or why that step was taken. Bosses like the graal destroyer fractal boss are gems that should be analyzed and put on a pedestal for how they SHOULD be designing fights.

Okay, here we go. Last time on Hypothetical Dungeon Theater, our uncommon party defeated the Boss Example 1, now they have moved on to Boss Example 2.

The Ranger is still geared toward Condition Damage and has Trap Potency going. During this boss fight, he decides to use a Sword and Dagger. He will need to stay in close because of how the Boss’ health regains depending on distance from him. With Serpent’s Strike and Stalker’s Strike, he will be able to evade moves from the Boss at the right time as to not add stacks of health regeneration by being hit by the Boss. Condition damage will also be important because in the brief windows during which the Boss has been CC’d in some manner, he will be able to give him conditions that will continue to do damage after he recovers from the CC. Direct damage will not affect the Boss unless he is CC’d, so going with conditions will help both mitigate the health regeneration the Boss gains, but also will be more effective way of killing him. He decides to bring Viper’s Nest and Flame Trap to add powerful condition damage at the right time.

The Engineer decides to go with his Flamethrower, since he is a condition build still. He will be able to get in valuable burning duration that will last between CC intervals to help kill the boss and mitigate his regeneration. He will use Air Blast to help with CC’s (which remove one stack of regeneration per CC and allow for direct damage and conditions to be applied during the duration of the CC) when he can and use Smoke Vent to mitigate the hits the Boss actually lands, thus keeping him from gaining a stack of regeneration.

The Elementalist has decided to bring his double Daggers. He will mostly stick with his Air and Earth attunements for the various CC options contained there, but will also try to get burning in if he feels like he needs to do. He will be trying to do vast amounts of direct damage in the CC duration. Perhaps, because of this, he may want to have the Trait Grounded so he can do 20% more damage to enemies who have been Knocked Down or Stunned. Of course, Renewing Stamina would be a no brainer for a fight where getting hit means faster regeneration for the Boss.

The Necromancer has a condition build, as you remember. He decides to go with the Scepter and the Warhorn. The autoattack on the Scepter will allow him to apply a lot of conditions and the Wail of Doom will allow him to assist with CC’s when he can. Perhaps he will make very good use of Signet of Spite. Hemophilia and Lingering Curse would be wise traits to use during this Boss fight as well.

The Guardian will be switching between his Hammer and some weapon along with a Shield for the two CC options those weapons provide. He will also want to use Bane Signet, Hammer of Wisdom, Retreat!. Aegis will help the party block attacks which will not count towards Regeneration Stacks. With the Elementalist, the Guardian will be vital in allowing the party to actually do damage.

Now, I have explained how the exact same team, inside of the same dungeon, without leaving and having to change their builds significantly, is able to progress to the next Boss fight which calls for wildly different situational roles. This adds variety of gameplay. This also means that the entire dungeon you will not be using the exact same strategy, and thus will be forced to adapt with each encounter. You are still going to be fulfilling vital roles that if not done correctly will cause the party to fail. A lot of people consider roles to be jobs you will ALWAYS be doing in every encounter. I am saying that this game has made it clear they don’t want to have that. They want to have variety of combat. They also want more professions to be able to fulfill more kinds of roles (in the situational sense). Both of my examples have not used the traditional concept of a tank, someone who gathers agro and takes all the damage, DPS, random methods of doing damage without regard to how, and healer. While aspects of those elements may be apparent in each of these Boss examples, these situational roles are fundamentally different and force the team think of strategies that aren’t cookie cutter Trinity.

emikochan.8504:

You don’t need trinity, you just need content designed with the this combat system in mind. Look at monster hunter, the bosses are epic and require skill. The mobs in gw2 should be more like dark souls / monster hunter, not mindless mmo mobs that just run at you.

I totally agree with this. One thing that attracted me to this game was that the combat, in a way, resembled the combat in Monster Hunter Freedom. The creatures in Monster Hunter Freedom have a really good AI. And fighting them with a group of my friends ALWAYS felt intense, scary, and fun at the same time. The fights always got my adrenaline pumping.

Even more issues with other roles appear when they fail to adapt to the lack of effectiveness of all of their skills.

Knockbacks are often an issue due to the ‘issues’ DPS shouldn’t even have. Most of the melee weapons in all of the classes I played, while I do not fully remember the necromancer because I played it for only 2 hours before replacing with a mesmer, have a skill that charges/leaps/closes the distances to any target. Most of the time in my experience the PUG DPS are only realiable at killing one target. There is literally no excuse for it.
The theives have infiltrating strikes and heart seeker.
Warriors have savage lunge, shield bash, rush, whirlwind, and the axe&hammer’s F1 leaps(although not as reliable on the spot due to the need of resources) while their mace is the only weapon that cannot close the distance.
All of the ranger’s melee weapons have leaps and so does the mesmer’s.
Engineer’s bombs are their only offensive melee ranged kits that cannot close the distance to anything.
Elementalist’s daggers has 3 ways to close the distances, not to mention their fire lunge(dagger fire 3) deals the most damage at the end of the charge, while making a fire combo to ups everyone, who has a ranged weapon, blast, or whirling attacks, damage.
I can’t remember if necro daggers even have means to close the distance.
Guardians’ maces are their only melee weapon that cannot close the distance, not to mention the most used weapon, their greatsword also has a pull, and their hammer has a ward that can keep foes from entering and exiting it. So while all outside foes are getting pushed down the Guardian can focus more of his efforts into bashing the foe than dodging the horde.
In underwater combat, difiance does not protect from sinking and raising. If you had a team of Elementalists, guardians and anyone else with more than one sink/raise skill then the water bosses will never be able to act. When the foe can’t hurt you, then that means you got nothing to fear and you can go all-out on the offensive.

The difiant buff on bosses is a serious issue. Those with 5 stacks are feasible with everyone ultizing their weapon’s pull, daze, stuns, and knockbacks. Theives are the only ones with a reasonable excuse not to pitch in; aside from their stealth sword attack, all their CC their weapons have use resources they all want to use for DPS. Even a lone warrior with all physical skills(3 stuns), 30 power points and at least 20 defense points, with a hammer (3stuns) and/or mace+shield(3stuns and 2 blocks) can save the party form some of the boss’s attacks with nine stuns excluding the rampage because of it’s long CD. With the traits to upgrade CD speeds, they can do all nine stuns 6 times of 5. With the help of the others in the team, that last difiant stack on the second time won’t be an issue. While someone keeps the enemy stun-locked, the rest can go all out in their attack. If everyone does sets themselves up specificly to stun-lock foes, then the boss never will beable to act, however the fight will take longer, and sometimes they often fail because of their CD’s.

Focusing on condition/buff removal and buffing is a HUGE help in any given situation. You can dodge all you like, but eventually you will get hit with conditions, and witout a huge sum of HP and/or a condition remover ready you are in trouble. Most of the time because such a valuable ally is not there by your side.

It is a fair trade in sacrificing your own DPS so that the rest of the gang won’t have to lose their in evading and reviving the team cause they got hammered by nigh unavoidable damage too much.

The less the enemies act, the more you can afford to do.

Among other things, the lack of feilding AoE’s or just the lack AoE’s in gerenal is a huge issue in PvE. Don’t give me junk about it’s useless when the enemy moves out of it, because most of the time the AI is too sitting still attacking the melee, or any body who knows how to kite properly or those with the right means (chills, cripples, immobilizations), will ensure that the enemy doesn’t leave the rings. Ranged DPS is an issue too, mostly because there is a lack of, but they always have it better than melee, they can act more than melee too because they are at safer distances. I’m surprised I don’t see a Crit damage Warrior with a rifle and Crack shot more often in this cesspool of “DPS or nothing” crap which doesn’t help when everyone is the same build cause then they all go down for the same reason none of which are good ones. It puts shame on them that PvP players are better at staying alive against a flurry of hits that will instantly kill them while having a trick to escape immobilzation and all this while they are out numbered 3-6 to one when these PvE PUGs can’t even replicate this effect against a single boss. I’m not going to go into that right now cause this post is long as it is.

I tell you the main problem in removing the Tank,healer and dps roles from this game,,, simply you will have no tactics whatsoever in Dungeons/Bosses fights, it is a solo/co op game their is no actual teamwork.
For casual players this might be fun game, for hardcores not so much.

meshowz.6987:

For casual players this might be fun game, for hardcores not so much.

Funny fact about gw2 is that the casuals still fail despite this game’s dungeon being conceptually easier because they can’t really handle the more twitchy play style either.

When I see even some of the more experienced players stay inside the poison fields from the spider in AC I feel like throwing the towel.

One role can be to fight like warrior, other can be to guard and 3rd something like mesmerizing enemies and helping allies. Guess we can have roles…

Sovta.4719:

One role can be to fight like warrior, other can be to guard and 3rd something like mesmerizing enemies and helping allies. Guess we can have roles…

that is a way to play ..not a role. Tanker role is to provoke attacks toward them and protect the group, Healer provide healing and buffs for the team and essential to the group survival, DPSers are classes with high damage outputs to take the enemys down. This is where teamworking and the sense of grouping kicks in.