Guild Wars 2

Gnat.9405:

Broadicea.8294:

If a boss does 5000 damage per second to your party, every second you add to the fight by doing less damage is you adding another 5000 damage that your party has to avoid or heal through. Every second you shave off by doing more damage is 5000 HP you’ve provided to your party.

Kill speed is the best damage mitigation in the game, no team healing comes close.

This obviously isn’t by design though. If something isn’t working as intended since launch it deserves a little bit of attention. Efficiency and game design are often conflicting concepts but this is getting ridiculous. The builds are there, the gear is there, the classes are there – fix the content.

Wont happen.

I think it will over a very long time. Dungeon by dungeon boss by bos

It absolutely is by design though, that’s why you have a dodge button and most melee-centric classes have evasion skills as well.

Gnat.9405:

I think it will over a very long time. Dungeon by dungeon boss by bos

They’ve revamped one dungeon in 10 months, and there currently doesn’t seem to be a dungeons team. More effort is spent on Living Story and Gem Store items.

Well at most we can hope this thread eventually generates a comment as to whether or not they eventually plan on turning any attention to the dungeons.

Xehanort.4589:

It sounds that for build diversity they should allow healing to be a lot more effective in PvE.

For every 200 points in healing…. every class gets a Trait that grants a stack of might on your allies when they’re affected by your healing skills or you reapply a Regen boon. ….1200 healing? Boom, 6 stacks of might for 12 seconds. Problem solved.

.

Well not really solved b/c all that does is kick the can down the road on why Berserker & Knights are the only stats worth using in 95% of all encounters. But you get the idea.
It would buy them some time to make better mobs, A.I., and consistently balanced attacks / frenzies…

All the might stacking suggestion does is further push the fact that all you need is DPS. I don’t want to have to bribe my group with might stacks into letting me in runs, I want to be needed because I provide support.

Also, that only addresses class and skill changes and does not improve the overall diversity of the content.

Yes.

Hence the disclaimer at the bottom that was already written before I went back and edited anything else. … This is also why I’ve always taken vacations from playing every year for the last … ohhh 5 years? And look at Catacombs… even when they DO overhaul something, it just becomes a slightly different DPS race. Sometimes with an annoying Lift&Pull “Arcade Claw” minigame where Healing, Control, and Conditions doesn’t change anything either.

Well I’m going to keep bringing my rabid necro through dungeons and doing well while everyone else wonders why I’m not a warrior, and then maybe one day when conditions are viable I’ll be that much better.

swiftpaw.6397:

Gnat.9405:

…The builds are there, the gear is there, the classes are there – fix the content.

Wont happen.

I get why people are being so snarky about running a healing build. Honestly, what some people seem to be missing is that the status quo can and should change. What I’m hearing is that nobody (at least in this thread) is up for the free exchange of ideas on how to fix the problem. Instead of saying “zerker for life!”, there should be a tacit agreement that something is wrong with having one effective build to run in a game that allows for specialization outside of that build.

Everyone has done a good job at making the point everyone already knows, the fastest dungeon clear is skewed heavily toward optimizing damage and little else. Everyone will keep running zerker builds up until the day Anet changes the efficacy of doing so. If/when that day comes, the smart people will suck it up and play a different way. Until then, I support anyone who wants to run a healing build as it has a niche outside of the speed clear arena.

Edit: I mean, when I say one build, even conditions “should” count toward optimizing damage but even then you hit a brick wall with the condition cap. Somethin’ gotta change.

nightwulf.1986:

swiftpaw.6397:

Gnat.9405:

…The builds are there, the gear is there, the classes are there – fix the content.

Wont happen.

I get why people are being so snarky about running a healing build. Honestly, what some people seem to be missing is that the status quo can and should change. What I’m hearing is that nobody (at least in this thread) is up for the free exchange of ideas on how to fix the problem. Instead of saying “zerker for life!”, there should be a tacit agreement that something is wrong with having one effective build to run in a game that allows for specialization outside of that build.

Everyone has done a good job at making the point everyone already knows, the fastest dungeon clear is skewed heavily toward optimizing damage and little else. Everyone will keep running zerker builds up until the day Anet changes the efficacy of doing so. If/when that day comes, the smart people will suck it up and play a different way. Until then, I support anyone who wants to run a healing build as it has a niche outside of the speed clear arena.

Edit: I mean, when I say one build, even conditions “should” count toward optimizing damage but even then you hit a brick wall with the condition cap. Somethin’ gotta change.

I don’t think anyone’s saying zerker for lyfe.. we just don’t understand the healing power build even in a ‘niche situation’ >_>

swiftpaw.6397:

nightwulf.1986:

swiftpaw.6397:

Gnat.9405:

…The builds are there, the gear is there, the classes are there – fix the content.

Wont happen.

I get why people are being so snarky about running a healing build. Honestly, what some people seem to be missing is that the status quo can and should change. What I’m hearing is that nobody (at least in this thread) is up for the free exchange of ideas on how to fix the problem. Instead of saying “zerker for life!”, there should be a tacit agreement that something is wrong with having one effective build to run in a game that allows for specialization outside of that build.

Everyone has done a good job at making the point everyone already knows, the fastest dungeon clear is skewed heavily toward optimizing damage and little else. Everyone will keep running zerker builds up until the day Anet changes the efficacy of doing so. If/when that day comes, the smart people will suck it up and play a different way. Until then, I support anyone who wants to run a healing build as it has a niche outside of the speed clear arena.

Edit: I mean, when I say one build, even conditions “should” count toward optimizing damage but even then you hit a brick wall with the condition cap. Somethin’ gotta change.

I don’t think anyone’s saying zerker for lyfe.. we just don’t understand the healing power build even in a ‘niche situation’ >_>

Heh, well until Anet releases hard mode, healing builds are where it’s at.

Healing and tanking should never be worthwhile in gw2. I do however want mechanics to be improved to make other forms of damage builds more viable. Condition damage and interrupt/cc builds could be made viable in speed clears with some very simple gameplay mechanics. High toughness and low hp makes condition damage on one party member a good choice. Or expand on mechanics surrounding defiant.

Example : Deal more damage when boss has less or no defiant stacks but give them attacks which force players to interrupt occasionally. So players have to remove the stacks again to improve kill time. The idea of having to interrupt could be done by giving a high cooldown ability on the boss which does very high damage and cant be blocked/reflected/blinded and maybe even dodged. Or just force the players to dodge other attacks and interrupt that one unblockable attack.

nightwulf.1986:

swiftpaw.6397:

Gnat.9405:

…The builds are there, the gear is there, the classes are there – fix the content.

Wont happen.

I get why people are being so snarky about running a healing build. Honestly, what some people seem to be missing is that the status quo can and should change. What I’m hearing is that nobody (at least in this thread) is up for the free exchange of ideas on how to fix the problem. Instead of saying “zerker for life!”, there should be a tacit agreement that something is wrong with having one effective build to run in a game that allows for specialization outside of that build.

Everyone has done a good job at making the point everyone already knows, the fastest dungeon clear is skewed heavily toward optimizing damage and little else. Everyone will keep running zerker builds up until the day Anet changes the efficacy of doing so. If/when that day comes, the smart people will suck it up and play a different way. Until then, I support anyone who wants to run a healing build as it has a niche outside of the speed clear arena.

Edit: I mean, when I say one build, even conditions “should” count toward optimizing damage but even then you hit a brick wall with the condition cap. Somethin’ gotta change.

You don’t seem to understand. A lot of us have been going on for months about how to fix the game, how to improve, whatever the case may be. It doesn’t happen, and probably won’t since Anet seems to think Living Story is the way to go. When you develop new content every 2 weeks and put your dungeon team on this new content development, that doesn’t really leave much room for actually revamping dungeons or classes.

Having to work down Defiant by using CCs being necessary mechanic is actually kind of worse than it is now. I say this because it isn’t really promoting using CC for its intended purpose, unless I’m misunderstanding you (or misunderstanding defiant).

Although I’ve been following your feedback in my other threads Spoj and you seem to be on the same page as me as far as what we need to make other build types a little more viable.

Gnat.9405:

Having to work down Defiant by using CCs being necessary mechanic is actually kind of worse than it is now. I say this because it isn’t really promoting using CC for its intended purpose, unless I’m misunderstanding you (or misunderstanding defiant).

Although I’ve been following your feedback in my other threads Spoj and you seem to be on the same page as me as far as what we need to make other build types a little more viable.

You can’t easily CC 50 stacks of Defiant off of a boss in Fractals. You really just have to learn to dodge certain attacks. If you could perma-stun a boss, people would be irritated about how trivial boss fights would be. I’m not sure that Defiant was the best way to make bosses “harder,” though. I would think something as simple as a Stability boon of a certain duration that spawns on a timer and could be removed by boon stripping would be a better implementation, but I’m not sure if it would actually work out. I’m not a content designer and I don’t know what goes into it, and I’m not really that unhappy with dungeons how they are currently. A lot of people are though, and I guess I can see why.

As far as viable builds for other classes, I think that there are already plenty of those. Dagger / Warhorn Berserker Necro does some pretty huge DPS, Lightning Hammer Elementalist does huge DPS, Bomb Engineer seems to be fine, and there are plenty of good builds for the other 5 classes. It’s really just dependent on how accepting other players are, how much work they want to put in understanding game mechanics, and how open they are to builds like that. You’ll find a lot of people think they can work around skill level by stacking Soldier’s gear and don’t want to be “Berserker Elitists” when in reality, it really is the best option. If Anet forced people to take stats like Toughness and Vitality to deal with bosses, that would probably slow down speedrunning quite a bit and I’d lose interest in playing this game. The people that complain about elitists and how broken the game is will find something new to complain about, and no one will be happy. I think the game is more or less fine as it is, although it’s imperfect. Perfect is not a scenario that I want to deal with.

When Anet decided they wanted to remove the trinity, what they actually ended up doing was remove tanks and healers. This is a game with one class, DPS. If you try to put focus into healing, you end up being a DPS that has some heals and does less damage than the tank without actually healing anybody. Don’t be that guy.

The only way to “solve the problem” is to reintroduce the trinity. However, I don’t think it’s too much of a problem. It’s a faster paced, more exciting combat when you have no one holding your hand.

swiftpaw.6397:

Razzy.2741:

Hello there Gnat,

I’ve been playing support Guardian build ever since release, tunning it slighty over the months, until the point I felt like it works everywhere. People say you can’t be dedicated healer in dungeons, but it’s not true. You can, and you can do it very well.

Of course those who say that full berserk sets work even better might be correct, but not every group is full of pro players who know all the mechanics in the game, and know what to dodge. And in these groups, a healing Guardian can be very handy.

I usually run with 4 berserk warriors though, so they make up for all the damage I’m lacking, while I maintain their health, boons and Might on desirable level, as well as can add 10s of Quickness on bosses. Most of the time warriors don’t even need to dodge anything, cos they get stability, aegis, protection and regen, as well as direct heals at right moment.

Here is link to the build I run:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUAQNApeWlUgiCnFyKEg4ERWBRi9AjZsjXPS4DZIA-jwCBoNBCvBkYAgaAi+AMNqIas1uht6KalXBRNjIqWZDDA-e

0 0 30 30 10,
50% boon duration without cons,
shouts removing conditions,
up to 1800 healing power with Mace and Sigil of life,
Endless energy regen with the sigils of Energy+Stamina and vigor (fury from warriors helps with vigor)

Depending on encounter, one or two shouts are switched with consecrations like Hallowed Ground, Wall of Reflection, Sanctuary and in some particular dungeons/fractals Spirit Shield.

I played a lot in GW1 as Imbagon, and that’s exactly what I wanted to achieve in GW2. I think I succeeded, even though most players want to leave when they see a guardian with staff and mace, after one run with me they end up asking about my build. So I don’t think it’s that bad really, it’s just against the belief of “healing power scales bad” and “you can’t heal lol” and “play berserk, kk?”.

I’m trying to prepare extensive guide with videos on the gameplay with this build, so far got only two videos, TAkittenpath and CoE p2. You can check them here:

CoE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwGTvLbPHIQ

TA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5drmLuDu9Gs

It’s really weird for me when I see berserk guardians. If I want to do it berserk way, I play my warrior. If I want to play guardian, I like to dedicate myself to be best supporter you can get, even though my damage is crap.

I don’t even know what to say anymore.

It’s ok… just think of puppies.

Player Character.9467:

swiftpaw.6397:

I don’t even know what to say anymore.

It’s ok… just think of puppies.

Do… Do the puppies have.. Healing power gear? *spasm *

If you want to heal with a guardian, don’t use healing power or focus all your skills on healing. Just change your elite to Tome of Courage. For 20 seconds you heal like a boss. Since it’s just 20 seconds, you aren’t cutting too heavily into your DPS time, and you aren’t gimping yourself by taking worthless utilities, weapons, or traits focused for healing. Even with 0 healing power, that 5th skill is still a full party heal.

swiftpaw.6397:

Player Character.9467:

swiftpaw.6397:

I don’t even know what to say anymore.

It’s ok… just think of puppies.

Do… Do the puppies have.. Healing power gear? *spasm *

Thanks to you I always die at Jade Maw because Guardians refuse to heal me.

Wethospu.6437:

swiftpaw.6397:

Player Character.9467:

swiftpaw.6397:

I don’t even know what to say anymore.

It’s ok… just think of puppies.

Do… Do the puppies have.. Healing power gear? *spasm *

Thanks to you I always die at Jade Maw because Guardians refuse to heal me.

O_O They are just being smarmy kittens! This has nothing to do with me! Nothing!

I think the problem occurs mostly for people that simply don’t want to run DPS based builds. It creates a rift in the community that can certainly diminish sociability of the game and forces a play style on people that are good at the game, but don’t have any interest in the play style. I guess ins hould be used to it coming from GW1 and being exposed to that particular speed clear community, which was much more extreme than the current.

My main gripe with the DPS only design is that it punishes players that use their skills and engage encounters as intended, by making them inherently less effective, and I think that’s a perfectly reasoned argument against the “meta”

Gnat.9405:

My main gripe with the DPS only design is that it punishes players that use their skills and engage encounters as intended, by making them inherently less effective, and I think that’s a perfectly reasoned argument against the “meta”

I don’t understand.

Well the game was intended for players to use support and control as well as damage in a group composition. Players that want to play the dungeons as intended, using a support or control role are, by a flawed system, less effective. Therefor players entering dungeons using the roles that were intended to be used are inherently less effective than blasting through the content with 5 damage roles.

Please note that I’m not saying 5 damage roles having the ability to be efficient is a bad thing, I’m just of the opinion that the alternative should have a level playing field. I guess I’m finding it difficult to articulate that I don’t think 5 damage roles should be punished, because I don’t, that’s not the point – if that’s how you want to play, have at it.

I just think there should be a reason to want or even need support and control builds in the content.

Gnat.9405:

Well the game was intended for players to use support and control as well as damage in a group composition. Players that want to play the dungeons as intended, using a support or control role are, by a flawed system, less effective. Therefor players entering dungeons using the roles that were intended to be used are inherently less effective than blasting through the content with 5 damage roles.

Please note that I’m not saying 5 damage roles having the ability to be efficient is a bad thing, I’m just of the opinion that the alternative should have a level playing field. I guess I’m finding it difficult to articulate that I don’t think 5 damage roles should be punished, because I don’t, that’s not the point – if that’s how you want to play, have at it.

I just think there should be a reason to want or even need support and control builds in the content.

Support and control are both heavily used in speedclears. Control to position mobs either by mesmer or guardian pull or LoS. Or even line of warding to chain interrupt mobs in fractals. You could count blinds as either support or control, your supporting the team with them but your also controlling what attacks the boss/mobs miss with. Support comes from utilities like feedback, wall and boons like aegis along with damage buffs (banners and frost spirit). The problem is people are thinking of support and control roles as something you have to build your class around completely.

The reason we have all these weird stat combos is too make certain parts of certain builds more effective. But if you look at every single stat combo it either has power or condition damage on it. This suggests that Anet always intended everyone to be dps but some people to be dps with support and/or control. The more defensive gear is just for less experienced people who are learning mechanics or for select situations or WvW.

Anet said every class can play every role. Every class has a self heal and cc and damage mitigation which they can access without building completely around it. And that suggests to me that the meta was always meant to be full dps if your skilled enough, but take some utility for certain encounters. I do want them to make different and more specialised dps builds become more viable though.

Those are good points spoj, I guess I never considered it that way. A lot of the time when I make noise about support I am doing so in favor of fully built support roles. I will admit that my opinion can be a bit biased considering I main Necro, and really just want to be able to run full conditions and be as effective as raw DPS, but I can dream.

I assume that’s a main point of your comment about specialized DPS builds as well. I’m not sure if you’re also following my thread in the Necro forum but someone suggested that for bleed caps, after 25 stacks, instead of applying more bleeds the applicator instead increases bleed damage universally on the target by a percentage per additional “would-be” bleed.

Gnat.9405:

Those are good points spoj, I guess I never considered it that way. A lot of the time when I make noise about support I am doing so in favor of fully built support roles. I will admit that my opinion can be a bit biased considering I main Necro, and really just want to be able to run full conditions and be as effective as raw DPS, but I can dream.

I assume that’s a main point of your comment about specialized DPS builds as well. I’m not sure if you’re also following my thread in the Necro forum but someone suggested that for bleed caps, after 25 stacks, instead of applying more bleeds the applicator instead increases bleed damage universally on the target by a percentage per additional “would-be” bleed.

Yep i have been reading your thread on the necro forums. Im not a fan of the bleed suggestion. I think it should just be something people are aware of and dont take anymore than 1 condition damage player into a dungeon.

When I mentioned specialised dps builds i was thinking of things which arent always effective but should be for some situations/dungeons. Like condition damage or interrupt builds or even reflect builds. Or just dps builds which take a lot of boon removal or debuffs. It all comes down to much more creative mechanics. Unfortunately I dont see that happening any time soon with the lack of a dungeon team at the moment.

At the moment only reflect is a good specialised build. But its only maximised for lupi speed clears so its not even in a perfect state.

spoj.9672:

Support and control are both heavily used in speedclears. Control to position mobs either by mesmer or guardian pull or LoS. Or even line of warding to chain interrupt mobs in fractals. You could count blinds as either support or control, your supporting the team with them but your also controlling what attacks the boss/mobs miss with. Support comes from utilities like feedback, wall and boons like aegis along with damage buffs (banners and frost spirit). *The problem is people are thinking of support and control roles as something you have to build your class around completely. *

Truth. I know this will sound a bit insulting but…

A lot of players are used to traditional trinity MMO where a “support” character could hang around in the back out of danger buffing his team not really using any twitch or micro skills and get carried through content because even though his skills are low, the character type is important enough to warrant inclusion and thus the lazy man has a path to success. The lazy and less skilled players gravitate to support/midline roles because it allows them to blend into the background for the most part. They don’t get special credit when a raid goes well, but its also usually not their fault when it fails.

Not saying this description applies to everyone who wants to play a dedicated support character, but it certainly describes a significant enough portion of them to make it the rule not the exception.

As I have said in other threads on this topic, this is an action MMO. You can’t reach the top by playing a support necro who sits at 1200 range with staff auto, casting wells on cool down. You have to be in the mix pulling your weight. If this isnt appealing, this probably isnt the game for you.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

spoj.9672:

Support and control are both heavily used in speedclears. Control to position mobs either by mesmer or guardian pull or LoS. Or even line of warding to chain interrupt mobs in fractals. You could count blinds as either support or control, your supporting the team with them but your also controlling what attacks the boss/mobs miss with. Support comes from utilities like feedback, wall and boons like aegis along with damage buffs (banners and frost spirit). *The problem is people are thinking of support and control roles as something you have to build your class around completely. *

Truth. I know this will sound a bit insulting but…

A lot of players are used to traditional trinity MMO where a “support” character could hang around in the back out of danger buffing his team not really using any twitch or micro skills and get carried through content because even though his skills are low, the character type is important enough to warrant inclusion and thus the lazy man has a path to success. The lazy and less skilled players gravitate to support/midline roles because it allows them to blend into the background for the most part. They don’t get special credit when a raid goes well, but its also usually not their fault when it fails.

Not saying this description applies to everyone who wants to play a dedicated support character, but it certainly describes a significant enough portion of them to make it the rule not the exception.

As I have said in other threads on this topic, this is an action MMO. You can’t reach the top by playing a support necro who sits at 1200 range with staff auto, casting wells on cool down. You have to be in the mix pulling your weight. If this isnt appealing, this probably isnt the game for you.

There is an element of truth to what you are saying. Anet clearly doesn’t want a true healer or tank or GW1 mesmer flat out shutting down the opposition in the game. However, I just wanted to add that no matter what build Anet wants you to use, you’re gonna be doing damage. There are some people who want a dedicated healer or tank back, I’ve read the threads saying as much. But then there are some people who want to still be in the fray and fight while healing or fight while supporting, instead of just fighting.

It’s true that the current Meta of Mesmer, Warrior and Guardian teams for speed clears do involve support and control but someone made a good point earlier which is that some forms of control and certain boons are way too effective and some are grossly ineffective. What is being asked for is a re-imagining of the healer, the tank and CC so that it fits GW2 action. Right now, the healing and CC mechanics feel like functional placeholders while Anet works out what they want it to be. And honestly, that’s probably what we’re looking at. This is something very different from every other mmo in how combat is being handled and everything we say and do is going to be looked at for a while. I still believe that maximizing damage will only be the way to the top so long as combat allows it. It’s possible that may change.

swiftpaw.6397:

I don’t think anyone’s saying zerker for lyfe.. we just don’t understand the healing power build even in a ‘niche situation’ >_>

I don’t think it even needs to be understood…. honestly…

I think even the Zerker Fo Lyfe crowd could understand the REASONING though.
B/c it’s something that’s happened many….many many many times in Gw1.

IE: some Spikey Gimmick build gets nerfed too hard until eventually everyone’s eventually playing a Shadow-Tank or some stupid Grenth-Derv that just won’t die and then the Meta has to finally swing back the other way b/c everything got way too Pubby/Turtley way too fast. Anyone who disagrees…. I got 3 words for you:

BY
URALS
HAMMER

.
…when we don’t use our collective voices to guide the Nerf Hammer before it hits… it tends to just land in the worst possible places. *(EDIT: they just did it again to Necros)

BUH nerf was the most unexpected nerf of that game for me, and that’s saying a lot for GW1

Since it made you able to summon over 100 spirits it wasn’t unexpected to me mich.
About Lupicus Speedclears: There’s nothing like a specialzed reflectiom build. It’s a raw damage build with feedback as only reflection skill, not even traits affecting it.

Haha funniest bug they ever let through.

But seriously you know what I mean (once they fixed that).