Guild Wars 2

Defiance is a crutch at the moment as far making new dungeon bosses. Defiance is the reason why a condition builds does not do the same damage it does against monsters without it. When I take my rabid engineer into a dungeon I kill trash mobs just as fast as I do with any of my berserker geared toons, when I get a boss or a champ though I notice the difference. The conditions that I am spreading do not last as long as they normally do thus making the fight last longer and making the encounter harder on everyone. This sucks, because I like playing my rabid engineer dungeons every once in awhile because it is different play style.

Guild Wars 2 broke the holy trinity which made me extremely happy. However, instead of it being Damage, Support, and Control there is not much in the ways of Control at the moment. Damage is something that everyone is going to do regardless of build and or gear how much though can affect your dungeon experience. Longer encounters equal more opportunity for someone to mess up. This why Berserker gear is so dominate at the moment. Any condition a berserker applies is a minor bonus.

Normally when I do a dungeon I bring my berserker geared guardian with its berserker hammer + magi mace and shield combo being 10/25/0/30/5 build doing my best to maximize damage without neglecting trying to support my group mates. Support in this game from I have experienced breaks down into condition removal, group wide boons or banners, and healing someone who got low just enough to keep them going until their heal skill comes off cool down. Cleric’s with Magi gear mixed in to me doesn’t make any sense because you can’t keep the group alive by yourself and game wasn’t designed with that in mind. Only way I see + healing gear working would be to make it a fourth stat PvE wise =/.

Control in this game doesn’t exist outside of trash mobs. Why bring a hammer warrior when he isn’t going to the same damage a great sword or axe + mace warrior will. You have to break through the defiance stacks in order to control the boss. I’m not saying that we should be able to chain stun, fear, or knockback/down a boss, but that’s where boons like stability come into play. I would like to see more bosses with this design in mind.

Bunker busting should also be a group role in this game. Classes like necromancers, Mesmers, thieves, and to lesser extent guardians and engineers all have traits/skills that remove boons. If bosses in the future where designed to cast stability on themselves and go on a rampage until they are hit by a crowd control effect might a bit more depth into the game. You would need someone to bunker bust so the soldier geared warrior with a hammer can go in and stop it. You could have a boss that goes on an absolute tear that people will have to blind, block, and absorb its damage because dodging will not be enough. The last boss I mention would have great sustain damage, but wouldn’t hit to hard. You can make bosses immune to blinds, immune to CC, or heck even immune to damage. You could even make a boss who requires you pick up environmental weapons to damage it. Bosses could even remove their own conditions like alpha does!

In conclusion I feel that defiance right now is more of crutch hindering the development to making new and interesting boss encounters.

I agree with you on everything and you’re right about it but it’s been said by many different people many different times. It’s sad, but the first sentence in your post…

“Defiance is a crutch at the moment as far making new dungeon bosses.”

“new dungeon bosses”

From what a lot of people have told me and from speculation, doesn’t seem like there’s anybody working on dungeons nor does it seem like ArenaNet is interested in improving our current ones/making any new ones

Control exists even for bosses you just have to make it happen with a decent group. We use icebow 5 a lot more often in fractals with good success and things like interrupt on the dredge end bosses.

You would need someone to bunker bust so the soldier geared warrior with a hammer can go in and stop it. You could have a boss that goes on an absolute tear that people will have to blind, block, and absorb its damage because dodging will not be enough.

This kind of suggestion makes absolute ZERO sense in a game that doesn’t have any concept of a skill that can generate threat. Bunker ? What bunker ? You CAN’T take damage for the team because you CAN’T keep any aggro on you. DPS members on the team would die and then you’d be left soloing things if there was any mechanic in the game that would kill zerkers through active defense like blinds, blocks, invulns and reflect. This game has no concept of threat so there is no way to make your mister soldier build useful for anything in this game unless they do add a threat system, or force ALL 5 players into wearing PVT which would literally kill the whole dungeon community overnight. If we start being able to actually control aggro in this game it’s just going to turn into another WoW-like game. If we can’t control aggro, and add something that requires a player in pvt, what you will end up with, is a mechanic that would require ALL five members to be in pvt.

Oh, good luck soloing something on a full bunker build. Have fun with your 3 hours dungeons.

This is an action based game, stop trying to turn it into #genericmmo101. No one in a community like the dark souls one would complain about endurance and vitality being useless for an experienced player. Those two stats in an action game are only there to help new players/let you through a couple mistakes. Experienced players can do all of dark souls without upgrading any survivability stats, at Soul Level 1. That’s seen as a good thing in that community. The more you get experience with the game, the less you need stats like vitality in PVE, until you end up being able to play builds that would die from single hits.

Why are people so hellbent on making healbots work in this game? we play gw2 because we wanted to escape this mindset.

The world is literally filled and littered by trinity based mmo. Aren’t you happy with WoW? Rift? Tera? FF14? the soon to be released wildstar? does GW2 need to have tanks and healers in PVE to appeal to a base of player that will jump to the next-best-mmo and leave gw2 in droves anyway ?

Nikaido.3457:

Control exists even for bosses you just have to make it happen with a decent group. We use icebow 5 a lot more often in fractals with good success and things like interrupt on the dredge end bosses.

You would need someone to bunker bust so the soldier geared warrior with a hammer can go in and stop it. You could have a boss that goes on an absolute tear that people will have to blind, block, and absorb its damage because dodging will not be enough.

This kind of suggestion makes absolute ZERO sense in a game that doesn’t have any concept of a skill that can generate threat. Bunker ? What bunker ? You CAN’T take damage for the team because you CAN’T keep any aggro on you. DPS members on the team would die and then you’d be left soloing things if there was any mechanic in the game that would kill zerkers through active defense like blinds, blocks, invulns and reflect. This game has no concept of threat so there is no way to make your mister soldier build useful for anything in this game unless they do add a threat system, or force ALL 5 players into wearing PVT which would literally kill the whole dungeon community overnight. If we start being able to actually control aggro in this game it’s just going to turn into another WoW-like game. If we can’t control aggro, and add something that requires a player in pvt, what you will end up with, is a mechanic that would require ALL five members to be in pvt.

Oh, good luck soloing something on a full bunker build. Have fun with your 3 hours dungeons.

This is an action based game, stop trying to turn it into #genericmmo101. No one in a community like the dark souls one would complain about endurance and vitality being useless for an experienced player. Those two stats in an action game are only there to help new players/let you through a couple mistakes. Experienced players can do all of dark souls without upgrading any survivability stats, at Soul Level 1. That’s seen as a good thing in that community. The more you get experience with the game, the less you need stats like vitality in PVE, until you end up being able to play builds that would die from single hits.

Why are people so hellbent on making healbots work in this game? we play gw2 because we wanted to escape this mindset.

The world is literally filled and littered by trinity based mmo. Aren’t you happy with WoW? Rift? Tera? FF14? the soon to be released wildstar? does GW2 need to have tanks and healers in PVE to appeal to a base of player that will jump to the next-best-mmo and leave gw2 in droves anyway ?

Nikaido I talking about being a Bunker Buster. The mob is a Bunker/Tank that casts Protection Regeneration and stability on itself five or so seconds before it goes bananas and does something like Butcher from HoTW path 1 damage wise and lets say its immune to fear and daze. So you would need someone strip boons from the target so it be stuned/knocked down/ knocked back but the target is also is also doing something like dagger storm. So would would need a beefy player to go in and use CC on it so the squishies do not die.

Also i am happy with game i dislike heal bots. I have ele i geared with clerics armor and Valk trinkets + weapons. I still hit pretty kitten hard and when i switch to my water atunement i heal for 2k, Water trident for 2.1k and Dagger 5 for 2k. Like i said before i think a dash of healing gear works wonders while full on healing gear hurts the entire party. doing 6k of healing can get someone to last long enough for their own heal to come off CD.

cleric’s armour geared ele with valk trinkets… that’s pretty much the opposite of hitting hard though.

Nikado Lets address your assumption that there is no way to hold agro at the moment. This true, however that does mean you cannot add anyway in the future. Ather path in TA you get the little blue gum drop over your head and instantly the ooze loves you. Every class has utility/weapon skills that allow them actively evade or negate damage. Let’s say said boss didn’t have defiance but was immune to cripple and immobilize, but not chill. The boss would also cast 8 seconds of stability that cannot be taken away every time it is hit with CC. So instead of the mob picking a random person to hate on the entire fight (I’m looking at you Lupi!) Groups would take 30seconds or so before the encounter to maybe adjust their weapon sets, Utilities and in some cases Major traits. This way everyone is prepared for some point during the fight to be ready to Absorb, Evade, Blind, Chill kite, and CC the boss. The agro indicator buff would rotate between targets .The boss would deal more sustain damage with the occasional aoe spike that everyone would have to dodge. You would still be able to do a lot of this a berserker but it would also open up different gear types if people wanted to use those. You could have the soldier geared warrior being able to take a beating and truly not hurt the party in the long run hopefully.
Anet says they want legendary armor in the future. If you can change the stats at will on an armor set to a just for the encounter then I might not hate the thought of crafting my ascended armor if they are going to make the ascended the precursor such as the rumor mill says they might. You could also have something in the gem shop called Armor Bot. Have it be a little golem with a butler or maid outfit that acts a permanent bank for X amount of armor+ trinkets+ weapon sets so you can switch on the fly. So you can be berserker for one fight and soldiers for the next because the encounter is more about one’s ability to survive then all out damage because you have to try and take a bunch of trash mobs that keep spawning more and more but after three to five minutes a giant laser eradicates them and the group can move on.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

cleric’s armour geared ele with valk trinkets… that’s pretty much the opposite of hitting hard though.

30pts in fire for fury on fire blast finsher, 20 pts in air, 20pts in water. 60% might duration. So i start out at 3kish attack then stack 21 stacks of might by myself with somewhere about 50seconds of fury in my first rotation. With Fury I have about 50% chance to crit It is accended valk trinkets too so its more zerker then valk. Its Zerker damage? Nope. Can I survive a bit better on my Ele then I would in full zerker? Yes. 6k group heal > 3k group heal? Yes. Do i still hit like a truck? Yes. Are there eles out there who can surivive well as zerker? Yes. Can i? probably not.

Valks gear Power major the Hp and crit damage Cleric’s gear Healing power major Power and toughness. I just wanted to be a tad bit sturdier. With pretty much constant fury and 20ish stacks of might for the whole group and being able to heal for not a blank ton more but enough to generate some breathing room for some who made mistake and still has few more seconds on their heal left. I feel i do enough that when i play my ele i do not need to invest in zerker gear for it to damage and be helpful to the group. But this same setup would not work very well as thief as far as the group is considered.

The second sentence in the opening post makes no sense. Defiance in no way makes condition builds killing slower, in fact it’s the opposite, it makes direct damage dealers killing slower.

haviz.1340:

The second sentence in the opening post makes no sense. Defiance in no way makes condition builds killing slower, in fact it’s the opposite, it makes direct damage dealers killing slower.

It does not make Direct Damage slower. It makes CC harder and blindness only work 10% of the time. Bosses in general lower the condition durration on themselves make it so that conditions do not last as long as they would normally reducing the % damage done from conditions.

no, they only reduce vuln/weakness duration, although some bosses (crystalline entities, alphard etc) are immune/mostly immune/cleanse conditions

How do cc and blind help condition damage dealers when bosses are mostly dangerous in melee and the vast amount of condies builds are ranged bunkers?

Never said CC and blind helped condition damage ranged bunkers. I only said that it makes CC harder and blind only work 10% of the time. Which affects everyone. Also it “Feels” like my damaging conditions aren’t lasting as long to busy switching kits and spamming stuffs to look at see how long they last. but like i said it “FEELS” like they aren’t lasting as long as they should =/ Gaun Long Wu Caii is probably right that it is just vunrability and weakness, OR the coding got messed and its all conditions /conspiracy =P

Marlafox.8715:

Never said CC and blind helped condition damage ranged bunkers. I only said that it makes CC harder and blind only work 10% of the time. Which affects everyone. Also it “Feels” like my damaging conditions aren’t lasting as long to busy switching kits and spamming stuffs to look at see how long they last. but like i said it “FEELS” like they aren’t lasting as long as they should =/ Gaun Long Wu Caii is probably right that it is just vunrability and weakness, OR the coding got messed and its all conditions /conspiracy =P

You started your opening post with the claim that defiance is the reason why a condition builds does not do the same damage it does against monsters without it which is a false statement.