Guild Wars 2

Changes I would love to see implemented now that hey plan to redesign Boss Encounter Mechanics:

1 Remove the annoying defiance buff from Bosses it was a lazyman’s way to fix the core of the issue anyway.

2 display name coherence, what I mean is most of the time I have no idea who is writing to me because the name is always different and if I’m in the middle of a fight I can’t stop to hover over their name to see the account name !

Give us options, say, display account name only for all characters of the same account or display chosen nickname for all characters of this account.

Just my 2 cents.’’

Tho the 2nd point is not related to the title of the topic, i must agree with it.

With the actual GW2 system, when everything is account range, we should be able to at least have an option to display the account name and not the char name. The nickname in the friend list is not enough. When people have so many alts, its quite hard to keep track who’s who if your not looking all the time in guild panel.

I think Defiance and essential immunity to CC is fine, but I think being able to successfully interrupt a boss is an important part of combat. This is something that existed in GW1 for most bosses, and really added depth to combat. I’m not asking to chuck the boss across the room, knock him down, or even break his AI, but to be able to interrupt a skill they’re using.

In GW1, the solution to this for “big bosses” that were supposed to be difficult to interrupt was to require X interrupts before they got interrupted. This is in-line with how Defiance works now, which is fine, but having this mechanic on every single champion+ in the game essentially makes combat against non-bosses more interesting than combat against bosses. That is a real problem.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

1. Defiance is necessary unfortunately, and we figured that out early on. Without defiance, groups just stack knockdown skills and utilities and kill every boss without them being able to get up off the floor. There are some funny videos of this that can be found where players repeatedly throws rocks at Adelbern and knock him over constantly, allowing them to kill him with ease.

Wait, this isn’t planned ? I always thought it was because of the high number of rocks and because his attack is quite unforgiving, especially against new players.
And it teaches player to look around and use what they find laying there.

While we are on the subject : sometime when you use a CC on bosses with defiance stacks it says “Interrupt”, but are they really interrupted or is it a bug ?

While I completely agree that the bosses need some sort of CC resistance, I think defiance as it is, is incredibly clunky and maybe trying to develop something new would be a good idea. What this could be I could only make wild suggestions about.

Simple things like maybe giving defiant stacks a time limit may help a bit, or maybe at least something for those who use a lot of cc would be to make it so removing a stack of defiant damaged the boss (representing him breaking the cc at a cost).

What I would like to see is that defiant was put on an agenda somewhere and the subject of boss cc resistance and possible better mechanics discussed.

I definitely see the need to give bosses some degree of CC resistance, but I agree a permanent buff like Unshakable wasn’t the way to do it. It’s difficult for some skills to get around and impossible for others, and rather than needing to strategize use of your CC skills it just removes much of their utility all together. Trying to play a class or build with a reliance on CC just ends up frustrating, especially since control is supposed to be one of the three areas of combat to balance yourself around (alongside support and damage).

What I think would be better is give bosses skills/secondary effects of skills that set of temporary forms off control immunity/removal/etc like Unshakable/Defiant. This helps prevent CC spam while still giving it a window where it can be used without otherwise having to spam your CC just to whittle those stacks down for the one that will actually do something (and it still doesn’t do anything for the permanent blindness and vuln/weakness debuffs).

Robert Hrouda.1327:

1. Defiance is necessary unfortunately, and we figured that out early on. Without defiance, groups just stack knockdown skills and utilities and kill every boss without them being able to get up off the floor. There are some funny videos of this that can be found where players repeatedly throws rocks at Adelbern and knock him over constantly, allowing them to kill him with ease.

Why not change defiance mechanics? Current implementation only works for groups with voip. An alternative design could be time interval that’s active some time after successful cc during which you can’t cc boss again.

I think rather than what defiance is now, there should be some sort of mechanic within the boss fight itself, or an animation that opens up a short window where they can be CC’d for the next…2 seconds or so.

As the mechanic is right now on certain bosses, you remove the stacks by CC-ing them. Once that’s done, you can successfully CC them once before they gain the stacks again (from what I understand), but in the naturally fast-paced action of this game, the problem becomes that someone is rapidly cycling through their skills, and the CC they apply is not overly helpful or even planned, and then it goes back to being stacked. Creating a short window where players can expect their CC to work allows them to plan their CC for a boss when he’s about to activate a really devastating skill.

I like the idea that others have proposed where Defiance is essentially as follows:

Unshakeable: When struck with Crowd Control while not buffed with Defiance, this unit gains Defiance for X seconds

Defiance: This unit is immune to Crowd Control.
——

To be honest, I almost think it’d be better if, instead of Defiance, you just gave it Stability. This way exceptional players could tech to remove the Stability boon (only a few select few classes can do this). This would be a good way to make Necros, for instance, feel useful in dungeons again since the Fear nerf.

Rising Dusk.2408:

This would be a good way to make Necros, for instance, feel useful in dungeons again since the Fear nerf.

Two 1-2 seconds fear from skills with long recharge unfortunately won’t really be a breakthrough for Necromancers in dungeons.

If Defiance were replaced with Stability, you’d have the ability to drop Well of Corruption on a boss and corrupt its Stability into Fear for an interrupt. You could also achieve that with Corrupt Boon. That was where I was going with the above idea, and I think that’d help a lot with the class’s shortcomings in dungeons.

Defiance makes classes with CC and low damage not very good.

There is a reason people are stacking warriors with a mesmer and one guardian. You brute force everything because the finesse of CC is not needed.

Imagina a boss that ignored damage from a specific class like a warrior and mesmer until a number of stacks is removed. Defiance disproprotionately hurts classes that weren’t given warrior/thief damage because supposedly their control/conditions were supposed to compensate for the gap. With bosses, they don’t.

Woops sorry I didn’t fully understand what you were saying. I guess it could be somewhat useful, but really…Interrupting bosses might be useful for teams learning the ropes, but teams that are used to dungeons won’t have any need for it.
Be it in AC or Arah or CoE I can’t remember a time where I though “Oh no ! If only I could interrupt it ! No one would have died !”

That would be the problem with it : it would be sort of learning tool that you won’t have any use for in the end. Hell, before fear was nerfed, my guild mates would sometime tell me to not fear the boss because it made it move outside of our AoEs and out range us.

RedStar.4218:

While we are on the subject : sometime when you use a CC on bosses with defiance stacks it says “Interrupt”, but are they really interrupted or is it a bug ?

i’m pretty sure they are not actually interrupted by that, it’s just a display bug/oversight.

maybe instead of having to “burn” through multiple stacks of defiance, make it a timed buff that wears off with time, and triggers back (with increased lasting time) whenever the boss gets CC’d. CC skills could be used to shorten the time of the buff.

the way i see it, this wouldn’t break the balance that defiance was meant to bring, while at the same time making CC actually useful in boss fights, rather than something you just burn through whenever you have the chance (one could say you have to faceroll your CC skills) until it has no stacks left, and THEN worry about clever use of CC.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Latinkuro.9420:

Give us options, say, display account name only for all characters of the same account or display chosen nickname for all characters of this account.

2. I’m a bit confused still about what you are implying with this and how it effects boss re-designs. Could you elaborate some more?

I think it doesn’t relate to the boss redesign at all, but, in my opinion, it is reasonable UI feature request.

~MRA

Robert Hrouda.1327:

1. Defiance is necessary unfortunately, and we figured that out early on. Without defiance, groups just stack knockdown skills and utilities and kill every boss without them being able to get up off the floor. There are some funny videos of this that can be found where players repeatedly throws rocks at Adelbern and knock him over constantly, allowing them to kill him with ease.

So Rob, just when was the last time you were in AC Story?

More than defiant itself, which I don`t like at all, I honestly think that the bigger issue with CC skills is that dungeon design focuses too much on bosses when the combat system suits better a fight against multiple, less powerful enemies (the ascalonian ghosts just before the Ghost Eater in AC2, for example).

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Latinkuro.9420:

Changes I would love to see implemented now that hey plan to redesign Boss Encounter Mechanics:

1 Remove the annoying defiance buff from Bosses it was a lazyman’s way to fix the core of the issue anyway.

2 display name coherence, what I mean is most of the time I have no idea who is writing to me because the name is always different and if I’m in the middle of a fight I can’t stop to hover over their name to see the account name !

Give us options, say, display account name only for all characters of the same account or display chosen nickname for all characters of this account.

Just my 2 cents.’’

1. Defiance is necessary unfortunately, and we figured that out early on. Without defiance, groups just stack knockdown skills and utilities and kill every boss without them being able to get up off the floor. There are some funny videos of this that can be found where players repeatedly throws rocks at Adelbern and knock him over constantly, allowing them to kill him with ease.

2. I’m a bit confused still about what you are implying with this and how it effects boss re-designs. Could you elaborate some more?

I mean, I can understand why defiance is there right now at the current state of the game.

But, now that they will be revising, reworking Boss encounters and adding possible phases to those Boss encounters, it would be a good idea to come up with something other than a buff that negates all forms of control.

Yes because because boss without crowd control immunity system would be so good..oh wait…
Remaking it? Why? Its working fine,you can still use it slightly to your advantage…
There are bigger problems as far as bosses go,making them CC able would just burry them to the ground.
Anyway i wonder what should be reasoning about trying to control creature far more powerfull than a player,answer should be pretty interesting indeed when CC´s are used mainly to interrupt not control.If thats the case-the interrupting-bosses have long and clear casting animations.

The only problem I see with Defiant is that the stacks do not have a timer.
With a timer you would not be able to spam CC skills to keep them interrupted, just like now, but you would also be able to save them for when they are useful, instead spamming them again so you can use them again on recharge.
Something like 10 seconds plus +3 second per player around for the stacks would be fine.

Other than that it’s fine.

I’d rather have the bosses be all completely immune to CC than the current Defiance mechanics.

imo, it should be 15 second cc immunity base with an extra 3 seconds per cc the boss is hit with(not per player as many times people do not use any cc and not every weapon set has cc) up to a maximum of 45 seconds immunity.

once 45 seconds is reached have it reset from 15. this would allow the boss to be kept from being cc’d into triviality while allowing coordinated groups to get a reasonable interval of control on the boss. it would also punish attempted cc spam and push uncoordinated groups into changing tactics if they want a slightly easier time of controlling the boss.

Zenith.7301:

Defiance makes classes with CC and low damage not very good.

There is a reason people are stacking warriors with a mesmer and one guardian. You brute force everything because the finesse of CC is not needed.

Imagina a boss that ignored damage from a specific class like a warrior and mesmer until a number of stacks is removed. Defiance disproprotionately hurts classes that weren’t given warrior/thief damage because supposedly their control/conditions were supposed to compensate for the gap. With bosses, they don’t.

This.

Even as a warrior, defiance makes pure dps weapons (greatsword, axe) clearly superior to control oriented weapons for killing bosses. I love my hammer. I love swinging around a heavy object and smacking monsters on the head with it. But it’s feels pretty underwhelming when I’m the only one applying CC to a boss and I have to cycle through skill 4, skill 5 and burst skill multiple times to finally be able to disable the boss for 2 measly seconds.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Latinkuro.9420:

Changes I would love to see implemented now that hey plan to redesign Boss Encounter Mechanics:

1 Remove the annoying defiance buff from Bosses it was a lazyman’s way to fix the core of the issue anyway.

2 display name coherence, what I mean is most of the time I have no idea who is writing to me because the name is always different and if I’m in the middle of a fight I can’t stop to hover over their name to see the account name !

Give us options, say, display account name only for all characters of the same account or display chosen nickname for all characters of this account.

Just my 2 cents.’’

1. Defiance is necessary unfortunately, and we figured that out early on. Without defiance, groups just stack knockdown skills and utilities and kill every boss without them being able to get up off the floor. There are some funny videos of this that can be found where players repeatedly throws rocks at Adelbern and knock him over constantly, allowing them to kill him with ease.

2. I’m a bit confused still about what you are implying with this and how it effects boss re-designs. Could you elaborate some more?

Crazy idea make all CC turn into dazes on the bosses and give that a 25% duration reduce . Maybe give each boss on skill to break stuns and render him immun for a few seconds. That would make CC acutally usfull and importent .

I don’t mind the mechanics of Unshakable all that much. With even a little coordination, a group can take off stacks of Defiant and leave a boss open to a well-timed interrupt that trivializes many attacks.

That being said, I would prefer some variety. Things would be significantly more enjoyable for me if not all bosses/champions used the Unshakable mechanic. It is, after all, a rather passive effect and that tends to make it fairly dull.

What would be nice to see is some kind of mechanic where each control effect added a stack of something to an enemy and, when enough of these stacks are added, the enemy receives a temporary immunity to all control effects while it performs a powerful offensive or utility ability.

Stacks could, of course, wear off with time, but any control effect would refresh all of their durations, effectively resetting them to maximum.

For example, the spider boss in Ascalonian Catacombs might get ten seconds of immunity to control effects and also spawn a room full of smaller spiders if you apply control effects to her too frequently.

Anyway, just a thought…