Guild Wars 2

The reason why inferior PvE professions such as Engineers, Rangers and Necromancer will forever be inferior is because control role has zero worth.

Cripple/chill/immobilize will never be useful when a group can melee it better. Enemy mobs do not move if both the player and the mob are in melee range.

Knockbacks are counter-productive or worthless. Anyone who uses knockbacks slows the dps down. Bosses are almost immune to the control role and when the time defiant stacks are gone, the final knockback is worthless as boss spams the moves.

Dungeons and Fractals needs to be reworked from the scratch where control role is valuable. When that happens, inferior professions will no longer be inferior.

given the very generic statements you made, I’d have to argue that’s not necessarily true.

Given multiple mobs, control powers that knock targets back, or slow or root them, should be exceptional at helping teams dps the remaining targets down faster, at least as far as single target classes are concerned. Take 4 mobs, “control” two of them by knocking them back into a corner, then root them, then slow them, take them essentially entirely out of the game for a good…what, 10, 15 seconds?

In the meantime, your team concentrates fire on 2 targets instead of 4

Now, if your team is composed of entirely AOE builds, of course this is counterproductive, and when it comes to bosses, MOST bosses in almost all MMO’s are immune/resistant to CC, which is why most CC classes/builds need to have a 2nd build to fall back on, but CC can be very valuable

UNFORTUNATELY…for crowd control to be anything more than marginally effective, you need a team of people prepared to take advantage of crowd control, which makes CC a very team-oriented build, which, sadly, isn’t a very rewarding build for PUGS and the like

So, in short, CC IS useful – it’s just a lot harder to take advantage of then DPS TILL DIE!!! which means most people tend to go with the easier, less screw-up-able non CC builds

but I’ve played with great CC builds in other games (sadly, I don’t see it much in GW2, so I’ve got a hard time gauging just how effective it can be, as I haven’t seen anyone really try yet) and a good CC player with a team prepared to take advantage of it can turn a hard fight into a cakewalk.

I couldn’t agree more. The anti climax feeling I got at my first ever dungeon when I realised my hammer warrior was worthless . The cc shield bosses have is a mechanical cop out and the degree of builds and professions it would add if removed would be immense. Coupled with the fun you could have with it. Ofcs no one is going to KD a boss to death but least it could be used effectivly . Currently the shield makes 30 % of the games skills useless.

indeed, in PVE most of the CC is used to remove defiant stacks instead of the actual CC

I wish the defiant stacks were timer-based instead of stack based or something. It needs to be something where you are rewarded (and not completely trivialized) because you learned how to time a disable just right.

For now, I’ll get my control kicks from positioning unavoidable trash mobs for my group.

The way I see it, City of Heroes had the best boss CC system. It was possible but you had to stack them from 2 different characters to make them effective and their durations were always shorter. This gave players the option of focused lockdowns a boss while still making them challenging.

control effects are completely and utterly useless against any boss. this needs fixing. wtf is 15+ defiant on some bosses and even then, a lower control effect duration…. ?

bump for justice

I agree. Control is pretty worthless against bosses. It only removes defiance stacks and you’re luck if one of the CC actually gets through at a time when it’s actually crucial. Promotes unskilled gameplay in most pugs to just spam any CC they have available on every cd in hopes one goes through.

wait? Theres control in this game aside from mesmers?

I feel sorry for the groups where non mesmers try control wow.

I think there’s a wider problem with the strength of boons vs debuffs (conditions) and how they scale in various content. Protection still works whether you’re fighting 1 boss mob or 10 trash. Not only are many mobs resistant to debuffs but it might be difficult to apply debuffs to every enemy.

Control and support need a buff, while self maintaining boons and dps need a little more hate to promote team play in dungeons.
I liked that idea of timer based defiant, but I also like the actual way it works. So why not both ? Give a boss 30s of Defiant and everytime a player CC the boss the timer goes down for the amount of downtime the CC should have given. When the timer is down the next CC will be fully operational.

Just saying but in dungeons I rarely needed the hard CC, apart when I wanted to prevent a boss from healing.
Most damage can be avoided by dodging and no boss has a single attack or chain of attacks that will be able to down you even if you have 2 dodges and 20 seconds of invulnerability.
The only mechanic that comes close to this is Agony but then you can still dodge it in all but one fractal.

Overall CC will never be as good as pure damage because of AI, content difficulty and visual effects (nothing to do with dungeons but try dodging Melandru’s Priest whirlwind attack during prime time… I can barely see him behind all the explosions, its the same in dungeon). You can only dodge or try to CC when you see something coming and all the visuals are sometimes getting in your way.

Kermit.3691:

given the very generic statements you made, I’d have to argue that’s not necessarily true.

Given multiple mobs, control powers that knock targets back, or slow or root them, should be exceptional at helping teams dps the remaining targets down faster, at least as far as single target classes are concerned. Take 4 mobs, “control” two of them by knocking them back into a corner, then root them, then slow them, take them essentially entirely out of the game for a good…what, 10, 15 seconds?

In the meantime, your team concentrates fire on 2 targets instead of 4

Now, if your team is composed of entirely AOE builds, of course this is counterproductive, and when it comes to bosses, MOST bosses in almost all MMO’s are immune/resistant to CC, which is why most CC classes/builds need to have a 2nd build to fall back on, but CC can be very valuable

UNFORTUNATELY…for crowd control to be anything more than marginally effective, you need a team of people prepared to take advantage of crowd control, which makes CC a very team-oriented build, which, sadly, isn’t a very rewarding build for PUGS and the like

So, in short, CC IS useful – it’s just a lot harder to take advantage of then DPS TILL DIE!!! which means most people tend to go with the easier, less screw-up-able non CC builds

but I’ve played with great CC builds in other games (sadly, I don’t see it much in GW2, so I’ve got a hard time gauging just how effective it can be, as I haven’t seen anyone really try yet) and a good CC player with a team prepared to take advantage of it can turn a hard fight into a cakewalk.

So, CC is primarily useful on trash in dungeons. Aren’t those the mobs so many dungeon groups seem to want to skip past?

Also they should make that interrupting a monster puts its ability on full cooldown.

IndigoSundown.5419:

So, CC is primarily useful on trash in dungeons. Aren’t those the mobs so many dungeon groups seem to want to skip past?

There’s some dungeons that feature mobs that you cannot skip, but if you die to it, it’s a shame. One common example is the three hellstorms at the beginning of CoF path 2. I’ve seen so many guardians afraid to melee that group when guardians have some of the best control tools to help the party (typically PuG teams without the optimal DPS setup) DPS that group faster than running around like headless chickens because of the flamethrower. One GS pull and a swap to hammer for ring of warding, and you have a good few seconds to AoE/cleave that group down. Stopping a hellstorm’s flamethrower for a few seconds with a disable is huge damage reduction for your frontliners.

The only viable CC atm is spammable AOE-blind. It can help A LOT, especially wih some ridiculous silver packs out there.
Everything else is mostly worthless, especially if you have 3 100b warriors burning mob down all at once.

Current CC system balanced around the PvP is mostly useless in PvE and in dire need of rework.

Lightrayne.7829:

I’ve seen so many guardians afraid to melee

Guardians who are afraid to melee in a melee encounter should be insta-kicked. There is no place in GW2 for those healbot-wannabes.

Kermit.3691:

given the very generic statements you made, I’d have to argue that’s not necessarily true.

Given multiple mobs, control powers that knock targets back, or slow or root them, should be exceptional at helping teams dps the remaining targets down faster, at least as far as single target classes are concerned. Take 4 mobs, “control” two of them by knocking them back into a corner, then root them, then slow them, take them essentially entirely out of the game for a good…what, 10, 15 seconds?

In the meantime, your team concentrates fire on 2 targets instead of 4

Now, if your team is composed of entirely AOE builds, of course this is counterproductive, and when it comes to bosses, MOST bosses in almost all MMO’s are immune/resistant to CC, which is why most CC classes/builds need to have a 2nd build to fall back on, but CC can be very valuable

UNFORTUNATELY…for crowd control to be anything more than marginally effective, you need a team of people prepared to take advantage of crowd control, which makes CC a very team-oriented build, which, sadly, isn’t a very rewarding build for PUGS and the like

So, in short, CC IS useful – it’s just a lot harder to take advantage of then DPS TILL DIE!!! which means most people tend to go with the easier, less screw-up-able non CC builds

but I’ve played with great CC builds in other games (sadly, I don’t see it much in GW2, so I’ve got a hard time gauging just how effective it can be, as I haven’t seen anyone really try yet) and a good CC player with a team prepared to take advantage of it can turn a hard fight into a cakewalk.

LoS, you can crowd the mob together with no expense until they die.

You guys do realize that CC is normally weaker against bosses in every single MMORPG to date, right? Because where’s the challenge if you can completely stunlock a boss fight?

Crowd control generally is designed for two situations: the first is quite obviously PvP. I don’t think I need to explain this one since I certainly hope people here aren’t THAT ignorant about basic MMO mechanics, and since this thread is primarily about PvE anyway.

The second situation, the one relevant to this thread, is encountering special mobs that need to CCed for a specific purpose, such as kiting, preventing them from doing dangerous attacks, or just to keep them out of the fray while you burn down the primary target. For example, during the Molten Facility dungeon, you could normally try to CC some mobs away while you focus fire on the shielder or the rifle jerk. Even so, some bosses are more susceptible to some CC effects than you think. Lupicus can still be crippled during phase three to give teammates some breathing room (unless they fixed that recently, can’t remember if they did), and chill also still works on numerous bosses. When dealing with trash, sometimes an AoE fear can help create space, or a quick blind to help players dodge a crucial strike.

The overall problem isn’t crowd control being weak. The real problem is that the majority of the playerbase is too lazy to put the extra effort into learning how to properly apply CC and prefers to just try to faceroll everything with little to no effort. While both methods work and have their place, the latter is easier for most people because it requires less active brain cells for a GSWD Warrior to kitten his way through a dungeon and pretend he actually knows what he’s doing.

Meanwhile I was running a mace/shield warrior in Molten Facility, stunning the crap out of dangerous trash mobs and keeping them in place, using the shield to bounce back flame projectiles, and blocking attacks from the bosses to stay alive longer. I actually found it to be more enjoyable, and I normally hate playing defensive roles.

That just sounds like more compelling evidence for why Defiant really isn’t working as a core concept and further establish how much help Control roles need.

At the end of the day, if the vast majority of the player base is ignoring the role to the extent an entire third of the game’s character building is rotting on the vine, it’s time to roll back the ole sleeves and go back to the drawing board.

Less pointing fingers, more elbow grease.

PolishSausage.1279:

You guys do realize that CC is normally weaker against bosses in every single MMORPG to date, right? Because where’s the challenge if you can completely stunlock a boss fight?

Crowd control generally is designed for two situations: the first is quite obviously PvP. I don’t think I need to explain this one since I certainly hope people here aren’t THAT ignorant about basic MMO mechanics, and since this thread is primarily about PvE anyway.

The second situation, the one relevant to this thread, is encountering special mobs that need to CCed for a specific purpose, such as kiting, preventing them from doing dangerous attacks, or just to keep them out of the fray while you burn down the primary target. For example, during the Molten Facility dungeon, you could normally try to CC some mobs away while you focus fire on the shielder or the rifle jerk. Even so, some bosses are more susceptible to some CC effects than you think. Lupicus can still be crippled during phase three to give teammates some breathing room (unless they fixed that recently, can’t remember if they did), and chill also still works on numerous bosses. When dealing with trash, sometimes an AoE fear can help create space, or a quick blind to help players dodge a crucial strike.

The overall problem isn’t crowd control being weak. The real problem is that the majority of the playerbase is too lazy to put the extra effort into learning how to properly apply CC and prefers to just try to faceroll everything with little to no effort. While both methods work and have their place, the latter is easier for most people because it requires less active brain cells for a GSWD Warrior to kitten his way through a dungeon and pretend he actually knows what he’s doing.

Meanwhile I was running a mace/shield warrior in Molten Facility, stunning the crap out of dangerous trash mobs and keeping them in place, using the shield to bounce back flame projectiles, and blocking attacks from the bosses to stay alive longer. I actually found it to be more enjoyable, and I normally hate playing defensive roles.

You can just melee Lupicus and don’t need any breathing room. Also Molten Facility was one of the easiest dungeons, it’s easy to do well on that.
And by the way, you aren’t good if you can survive on tank-spec. You are good if you can survive on DPS-spec.

The glorious part about making Control and Support roles more relevant, is that they would have value on their own merits apart from how they can be used to burst something down. It’s no surprise that you’d find the control (and support) capabilities of classes that have ended up being very good at the fulfilling the current meta’s "burst everything down with direct damage’ strategy, would in fact still be very good at fullfilling that strategy.

The endgoal here is not to change that, but to introduce fights that force completely different overarching meta-strategies which will give other classes chances to shine in even quantities. Fights where rounding things up, locking them in place, and bursting them down is The Wrong Thing To Do.

Wethospu.6437:

Also they should make that interrupting a monster puts its ability on full cooldown.

^ ^ ^
This. This. This.
Interrupts and overall CCs require good timing and are usually on a very long cooldown. Make the effort matter.
P.S. Why the hell are almost all enemies but Kholer standing still all the time…

Nikaido.3457:

Strengthening the control role will not diminish the value of the current “trinity” in the meta, because it already has way more than enough ability to fulfill that control role. Did you even give a look at the control abilities of the warriors, guardians, mesmers ? A mesmer can remove 3 stacks of defiant with a single shatter. 2 more by alternating between focus pull and gs 5.

For trash mob that have no defiant, focus curtain pull is one of the best control ability of the game, followed closely by the guardian’s ring of warding, line of warding, banish, binding blades..

And if you turned peeling defiant off into an extremely core part of the game one of the warriors could swap gs for hammer to peel of defiant then switch back to axe/mace for damage.

Strengthening the control role is not going to destroy the current meta.

Yet another “pie in the sky”.

The control abilities of classes like rangers and necromancers do not even compare.

And we already use quite a lot of control in high lvl fotm, guardian’s ring of warding and line of warding are really nice in ascalon and dredge. Also on trash in arah to group them up with focus pull and spam the mace knockdown with all the warriors in the group to keep them interrupted. And golem groups in CoE etc.

As for things like cripples, warriors can spam these and mesmers can trait for cripple on clone death, while the guardian has a good immobilize on scepter and hammer, and warriors have bolas and bow immobilize. So if you made immobilize and cripples an important mechanic, again, it wouldn’t be a revolution in group set up.

The current meta exists because it has the highest amount of group synergy. Control, damage, defensive buffs, we have all of it in the most optimized way.

That is why I said that dungeons needs to be reworked from the scratch where it is balanced with control role to strengthen and make control role valuable.

Wethospu.6437:

And by the way, you aren’t good if you can survive on tank-spec. You are good if you can survive on DPS-spec.

I never said anything about being “good.” Reading comprehension. Use it.

Actually, my “good” was referring to “good/bad” and not “good/evil”. Sorry for the confusion!

Couldn’t agree more on control role.Being underhanded by bosses defiant stack.
Molten facility was something that control role shine there.Would be better if there are enemies that stick to their advantage position that need player with control skill to kick them out.

runeblade.7514:

Cripple/chill/immobilize will never be useful when a group can melee it better. Enemy mobs do not move if both the player and the mob are in melee range.

What makes you think chill isn’t good for melee fights? It slows attack cds too.

Also, knockdowns and blinds.

Player Character.9467:

runeblade.7514:

Cripple/chill/immobilize will never be useful when a group can melee it better. Enemy mobs do not move if both the player and the mob are in melee range.

What makes you think chill isn’t good for melee fights? It slows attack cds too.

Also, knockdowns and blinds.

Chill is nice for melee fights, but a few seconds per skill isn’t worth sacrificing 10-20% of the team’s damage output to bring in an inferior class. If you really need chill just throw a couple of sigils of hydromancy on the warriors.