Guild Wars 2

Still no build diversity in PVE. The same stacking strategies or mob skipping is the majority of paths. Pretty much the average dungeon nowadays is pulling the last boss into the middle of the wall so he doesnt hit you and then pressing 1 while you afk.

Anet has really made little comment on this, I don’t see much point on them ever adding another dungeon in the game if its going to continue to be like this. Especially since people will get bored with it. Part of these problems obviously come from the lack of trinity in guild wars 2, while others are just entire paths that have mobs which lack any mechanic whatsoever. If there is one thing that will hinder this game in my opinion, its probably these problems.

The crit damage nerf didn’t do anything, if they planned on it affecting pve, well it backfired and thats more apparent now than ever.

STACCCKKKK!!!!!!!!!

No, there is no hope, especially as most people don’t even have the slightest understanding of the dungeons which have been there for 20 months.

Dungeon team is gone, and after the let-down of TA, probably not.

They keep pushing open world junk, which isn’t making people any happier.

There is plenty of build diversity available in PvE. More builds are viable in this game’s dungeons than in most other MMO’s. Adding trinity would reduce build diversity. There’d be one slot for a tank running the right build, one for a healer running the right build and three for DPS running … the right build. Trinity would kill all groups that currently allow “play what you want.”

If you’re in a dedicated speed-run group, you’d be embracing the optimum build and group composition, not complaining about it. Since you are complaining, that tells me you’re wanting any build (or maybe just your build) to be acceptable in the PuG experience — random strangers on the internet with different desires and priorities.

No one who understood the game expected that Ferocity would suddenly mean that pseudo meta PuG groups would suddenly become more accepting.

there will be hope for dungeons when:

a- the mob AI will be advanced enough to counter group exploits (exploits is not stacking per-se, but stacking in place when mob cant use its abilities)
not only for bosses but for all mobs from veteran and up tier.

b- “condition cap” limitation will be reworked. there are various ways to work around the 25 condition stack. either by reducing the amount of stacks each class can inflict while increasing the damage of individual stack, or by resetting the stack when it
reaches top with a new debuff “condition vulnerability” that will increase condition damage by 5% each time some condition will reach 25 stacks.
for non -stacking conditions the stronger condition should override.

c- stop with the endless re-spawning mobs, this is the worst dungeon mechanic ever.

d- defiant reworked in 5 man dungeons /fractals, it “ok” mechanic for open world bosses, but a completely broken mechanic for 5 man dungeons.
remove defiance, and allow bosses to re-cast stability . this way CC and boon ripping will be important

IndigoSundown.5419:

There is plenty of build diversity available in PvE. More builds are viable in this game’s dungeons than in most other MMO’s. Adding trinity would reduce build diversity. There’d be one slot for a tank running the right build, one for a healer running the right build and three for DPS running … the right build. Trinity would kill all groups that currently allow “play what you want.”

If you’re in a dedicated speed-run group, you’d be embracing the optimum build and group composition, not complaining about it. Since you are complaining, that tells me you’re wanting any build (or maybe just your build) to be acceptable in the PuG experience — random strangers on the internet with different desires and priorities.

No one who understood the game expected that Ferocity would suddenly mean that pseudo meta PuG groups would suddenly become more accepting.

There is no build diversity. Your comment may be the most misleading comment ive ever seen. Everything is zerker, just zerker. Everything is about optimizing damage you so can get that extra few seconds shaved off of your dps when you are downing a boss who is LOS’ed through a wall.

You didn’t even reply to my statement monotony of strategy in dungeons. For the most part, you only really need to understand how to stack and thats about 80% of the challenge in a dungeon. New players who come to this game are so confused by this after a certain point because they have never played a game that has such flawed design that it could warrant such strategy for the majority of its content.

Adding trinity won’t help this. As Indigo said—that would make 3 sets of builds, one for heal, one for tank, one for DPS. And they would all just be focused on the same thing: killing everything the fastest.

Everything is zerker because zerker is fastest. Even if they change dungeons in such a way that pure DPS will no longer be the route to fastest completion, whatever build replaces it as the fastest will become the new zerker. (Look at fractals. They added a damage tick that you need to work around and people just stacked AR as needed and continued with the same mindset, only now instead of ‘all zerker’ it’s ’all zerker +whatever AR is needed for that level range.)

The problem might be able to be mitigated somewhat with better mob AI and special mechanics that need to be carried out (not related to a holy trinity because god no, some of us enjoy not having to wait twenty minutes to pug a tank in LFG.) but if your issue is that people demand zerker now, that’s not going to go away. That’s a people problem, not a build problem.

Speckly.3729:

Adding trinity won’t help this. As Indigo said—that would make 3 sets of builds, one for heal, one for tank, one for DPS. And they would all just be focused on the same thing: killing everything the fastest.

Everything is zerker because zerker is fastest. Even if they change dungeons in such a way that pure DPS will no longer be the route to fastest completion, whatever build replaces it as the fastest will become the new zerker. (Look at fractals. They added a damage tick that you need to work around and people just stacked AR as needed and continued with the same mindset, only now instead of ‘all zerker’ it’s ’all zerker +whatever AR is needed for that level range.)

The problem might be able to be mitigated somewhat with better mob AI and special mechanics that need to be carried out (not related to a holy trinity because god no, some of us enjoy not having to wait twenty minutes to pug a tank in LFG.) but if your issue is that people demand zerker now, that’s not going to go away. That’s a people problem, not a build problem.

Trinity would at least give people the opportunity to play different roles. The only role people play in dungeons are another dps for the stacking ball. Having roles for support, or cc, or condi would at least be a start but apparently we can’t even have that.

Forcing people to play roles will only create artificial diversity. There will be one ‘optimal’ build for each role, and anyone not running it will be wrong. Again, just fixing mob AI and adding extra mechanics (as well as lifting the condition cap or at least raising it) would do more to encourage experimentation than boxing people into roles, and even then that’s not going to help if you get dropped in with speedrunners, because they’ll want you running the tank build, or the heal build, or the DPS build, with the added bonus that if YOU have to pug and you get someone in the tank/heal role who’s decided they don’t want to play nice you won’t be able to work around them like you can when everyone’s of equal worth to the party.

Also, I need to point out that ‘stack up and mow’ would be the exact same as it is now, except instead of everyone being in one place, one person would be standing on the other side of the boss.

IndigoSundown.5419:

There is plenty of build diversity available in PvE. More builds are viable in this game’s dungeons than in most other MMO’s. Adding trinity would reduce build diversity. There’d be one slot for a tank running the right build, one for a healer running the right build and three for DPS running … the right build. Trinity would kill all groups that currently allow “play what you want.”

If you’re in a dedicated speed-run group, you’d be embracing the optimum build and group composition, not complaining about it. Since you are complaining, that tells me you’re wanting any build (or maybe just your build) to be acceptable in the PuG experience — random strangers on the internet with different desires and priorities.

No one who understood the game expected that Ferocity would suddenly mean that pseudo meta PuG groups would suddenly become more accepting.

I’m not saying the trinity would be the solution, but to be fair: Build diversity would triple from all the same dps build. – to 1 dps build, 1 tank build and 1 healer build-

Building a good Dungeon environment for a game is far more complex then just adding trinity. But then again. non of those things like zerker- stack etc- are “needed”- Its just the fastest way. Been in plenty of Dungeons where we didn’t do any of it.- it can still work.. Players just usually do not have the patience for it.

SkylightMoon.1980:

There is no build diversity. Your comment may be the most misleading comment ive ever seen. Everything is zerker, just zerker. Everything is about optimizing damage you so can get that extra few seconds shaved off of your dps when you are downing a boss who is LOS’ed through a wall.

No it’s not, you think that because you don’t actually play the game, you dissect it to find the path of least resistance for the greatest reward, then once you’ve found that, you repeat it over and over again like a robot on an assembly line. You farm, that isn’t playing the game, that is work.

Ignoring time and efficiency and actually playing, you can take pretty much take any build through any dungeon (or most content for that matter) and get through it so long as you know your own build and the bosses.

Now do you ever need any particular build other than DPS? No, nobody needs a tanky character in a dungeon, nobody needs a healer, a controller, a buffer or a debuffer; and you can undoubtedly do anything slightly faster with maxed out power DPS and dodge uptime. But frankly, it’s a game, it’s purpose is to have fun, you don’t need anything in it, you don’t even need to play it. Saying something is broken because it isn’t necessary for mindless farming is ludicrous.

Gearbox.2748:

I’m not saying the trinity would be the solution, but to be fair: Build diversity would triple from all the same dps build. – to 1 dps build, 1 tank build and 1 healer build-

There’s actually another problem with this—some classes are going to be able to do these roles better than others. Classes like Mesmer and Thief would need to be retooled entirely to fill the role of a healer. Classes like Ranger and Engi would need to be redone to become tanks.

If there were a trinity do you know what we’d see? “Guardian tanks only.” “Ele/Guard heals only.” “Warrior/Mesmer DPS only.”

Every class would need to be reworked from the ground up to allow them to fill such specialized roles effectively, and even then the nature of just having different skills means some are going to be better than others. If tanks were a thing, nothing is going to beat a guardian because they have a passive, constantly-refreshing block and access to so many others. Every other class would need something equivalent to that to make them as effective a tank as a guardian.

So yes, we’d have 3 different ‘optimal’ builds depending on what role you want to play, but only one or two of them would actually be considered ‘viable’ for each class.

Why this thread again? You couldn’t just dig up some old thread and continue to argue it into the ground a bit more. There is plenty of build diversity so long as you’re not running speed runs. If you are running speed runs, then that is you’re own fault.

Nothing at all is stopping you from running a dungeon the way you want with whatever build you want. Just run in and kill every mob in there. Support your group with a support or bunker build. Why does everyone think the Holy Trinity made things more interesting? Tanks runs in, slams face on keyboard to hold lol aggro. Dps throw everything they have to do more damage than the dps next to him and claim bragging rights. And the Healer afks while tossing the tank the occasional heal. Yeah, so glad we got away from that crap.

Want crazy dungeon mechanics? Do the TA Aertherblade path. See how many people want to pug that with you, then come to the realization that the majority of the playerbase doesn’t want what you want, they just say they do.

Think dungeons are too easy? Stop pugging, find a good PvE guild, and run dungeons with one bunker, one support, and three damage dealers, and clear the dungeon 100%. Can’t find such a guild? Then that only goes back to other people don’t want what you want.

People are the problem, not the game.

the whole stacking affair and the game mechanics that encourage it suck, but it is no way worse or more boring than one guy beating some monsters toe and shouting “Boss, yo mama!” from time to time, some dudes standing on the side going pew pew and some more guys standing back bashing the bosses heel – while one dude even further back goes wooosh – wooosh every 3 seconds. Seriously, every of your posts tells how you dislike every core mechanic of GW2 and how you´d rather have those of other existing games. Why don´t you just give it up and move on instead of trying to force GW2 into your mold?

My cents:

Remove the condition stack cap in PvE (only in PvE) except for vulnerability. Make burning to be able to stack (also only in PvE). This would make condition builds viable as they wouldnt lose damage output. Make boons from combo fields have a much bigger range (1000 or 1200) than the combo field itself so ranged attackers also get the corresponding boons (for example the radius within which a fire field burns foes would stay the same). Same thing with shouts, auras, etc. Tune up mob HPs to soak up the damage increase. Make pets and minions 90 or 95% resistant to AoE damage (red circles, lava, boss cleave etc.) only make them take full damage if they are directly targeted by a mob or boss (also only in PvE). Add mechanics to dungeons (especially bossfights) that priorize cleric, soldier, etc. gear sets.

There is just so many unused possibilities in this game that otherwise could be awesome. Pls let us use as many as possible and be effective at the same time.

Conncept.7638:

SkylightMoon.1980:

There is no build diversity. Your comment may be the most misleading comment ive ever seen. Everything is zerker, just zerker. Everything is about optimizing damage you so can get that extra few seconds shaved off of your dps when you are downing a boss who is LOS’ed through a wall.

No it’s not, you think that because you don’t actually play the game, you dissect it to find the path of least resistance for the greatest reward, then once you’ve found that, you repeat it over and over again like a robot on an assembly line. You farm, that isn’t playing the game, that is work.

Ignoring time and efficiency and actually playing, you can take pretty much take any build through any dungeon (or most content for that matter) and get through it so long as you know your own build and the bosses.

Now do you ever need any particular build other than DPS? No, nobody needs a tanky character in a dungeon, nobody needs a healer, a controller, a buffer or a debuffer; and you can undoubtedly do anything slightly faster with maxed out power DPS and dodge uptime. But frankly, it’s a game, it’s purpose is to have fun, you don’t need anything in it, you don’t even need to play it. Saying something is broken because it isn’t necessary for mindless farming is ludicrous.

Ive played the game since launch and I barely do dungeons anymore because of the cheesy strategies people use. You have no idea what you’re talking about because you think im a zerker who speedruns dungeons. If you actually read the post you might slightly understand I am opposed to the zerker meta and stacking meta. You literally just embarassed yourself by raging in the comments getting angry at me for a game that has created a zerker meta itself.

Then again the rest of your statements seem to suggest you do want only DPS roles in dungeons which will lead to just more of the zerker meta. What makes the lack of roles even worse is that there are no mechanics to the majority of these dungeons in the first place. Its like whatever Anet tried to implement just requires a strategy of stacking and its set.

they just should fix all exploits and give all bosses a stacking melee cleave – the more players the boss hit in a short range the higher the dmg

Algreg.3629:

the whole stacking affair and the game mechanics that encourage it suck, but it is no way worse or more boring than one guy beating some monsters toe and shouting “Boss, yo mama!” from time to time, some dudes standing on the side going pew pew and some more guys standing back bashing the bosses heel – while one dude even further back goes wooosh – wooosh every 3 seconds. Seriously, every of your posts tells how you dislike every core mechanic of GW2 and how you´d rather have those of other existing games. Why don´t you just give it up and move on instead of trying to force GW2 into your mold?

Im pretty much saying if gw2 doesn’t change this trend in PVE that has continued for most of the games history, it will kill the game. PVE has no endgame to begin with, and this makes it no better. Its really a shame that a game with an amazing combat system is so disgraced by such poor PVE.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Its really a shame that a game with an amazing combat system is so disgraced by such poor PVE.

Couldnt agree more.

Charak.9761:

Dungeon team is gone, and after the let-down of TA, probably not.

The TA path is probably the only dungeon path in the game that is up to industry standards tbh.

SkylightMoon.1980:

IndigoSundown.5419:

There is plenty of build diversity available in PvE. More builds are viable in this game’s dungeons than in most other MMO’s. Adding trinity would reduce build diversity. There’d be one slot for a tank running the right build, one for a healer running the right build and three for DPS running … the right build. Trinity would kill all groups that currently allow “play what you want.”

If you’re in a dedicated speed-run group, you’d be embracing the optimum build and group composition, not complaining about it. Since you are complaining, that tells me you’re wanting any build (or maybe just your build) to be acceptable in the PuG experience — random strangers on the internet with different desires and priorities.

No one who understood the game expected that Ferocity would suddenly mean that pseudo meta PuG groups would suddenly become more accepting.

There is no build diversity. Your comment may be the most misleading comment ive ever seen. Everything is zerker, just zerker. Everything is about optimizing damage you so can get that extra few seconds shaved off of your dps when you are downing a boss who is LOS’ed through a wall.

You didn’t even reply to my statement monotony of strategy in dungeons. For the most part, you only really need to understand how to stack and thats about 80% of the challenge in a dungeon. New players who come to this game are so confused by this after a certain point because they have never played a game that has such flawed design that it could warrant such strategy for the majority of its content.

Actually there IS lots of build diversity. You can run dungeons with a large variety of stat combinations, Berserker gear is used to do the dungeon FAST, if you want to do it the “easy way” get 5 players in Cleric’s gear and facetank every single encounter while afk. Will it be fast? Nope, zerker will be faster, however, it will be easier (yes it CAN get easier than zerker)

Stacking isn’t the only thing required in good zerker runs, there is boon sharing, might stacking, conjured weapons, reflects, mass stability/invisibility/blind. Good players are not simply “stacking and pressing 1” to win, there is much more to it.

While you say trinity would add more builds I disagree it will have the exact opposite effect. The game doesn’t have GEAR builds, that’s certain, it’s only one stat combination, zerker, for speed clears, but it DOES have build diveristy when it comes to skills used, and skill combinations between players.

You want to make the game gear-based and remove the skills? I certainly do not want to do that.

SkylightMoon.1980:

IndigoSundown.5419:

There is plenty of build diversity available in PvE. More builds are viable in this game’s dungeons than in most other MMO’s. Adding trinity would reduce build diversity. There’d be one slot for a tank running the right build, one for a healer running the right build and three for DPS running … the right build. Trinity would kill all groups that currently allow “play what you want.”

If you’re in a dedicated speed-run group, you’d be embracing the optimum build and group composition, not complaining about it. Since you are complaining, that tells me you’re wanting any build (or maybe just your build) to be acceptable in the PuG experience — random strangers on the internet with different desires and priorities.

No one who understood the game expected that Ferocity would suddenly mean that pseudo meta PuG groups would suddenly become more accepting.

There is no build diversity. Your comment may be the most misleading comment ive ever seen. Everything is zerker, just zerker. Everything is about optimizing damage you so can get that extra few seconds shaved off of your dps when you are downing a boss who is LOS’ed through a wall.

You didn’t even reply to my statement monotony of strategy in dungeons. For the most part, you only really need to understand how to stack and thats about 80% of the challenge in a dungeon. New players who come to this game are so confused by this after a certain point because they have never played a game that has such flawed design that it could warrant such strategy for the majority of its content.

You’re mistaking people’s desire for convenience with actual requirements. If you want to use different strategies, use them. If you want to use different builds, use them. You don’t even have to stack if you don’t want to. The only thing stopping you is the inconvenience of having to put together a group of the like minded.

The real problem is that dungeons are 20 months old and no content can remain fresh that long under constant use. How engaging are dungeons in other games if people have been running them nonstop for almost two years with nothing new on the horizon? I’ve known guilds that wanted to expand to larger raids (10 to 25 man) who failed because the principals couldn’t bring themselves to redo dungeons or 10-mans (once they got their own gear) in order to gear new recruits because they were bored out of their minds.

In other words, you want the meta to change. Well, as long as there’s nothing new, the meta will always be about convenience. Trinity might make the meta look better to you, but it won’t mean things won’t be stale, and the new meta won’t look better to those who dislike trinity. It would also mean the death of “anything goes” parties — the ones where you could play using builds and strategies of your choice. But go on demanding your preferred poison. I will, too.

You seem to be confusing ‘viable’ with ‘optimal’ and ‘build diversity’ with ‘gear diversity’.

Dungeons can be done with pretty much any group composition and with any build, meaning there is build diversity. It’s just people choose to do it the fastest way, thus limiting the diversity.

That’s not saying that more couldn’t be done though (Defiant and how higher level players scale down needs a rework, for example), but rather than introduce pre-defined roles that never change from dungeon to dungeon, the encounters themselves need to get the players to look at the tools they have and adapt to the encounter. This is where ‘depth’ comes into play.

For example, imagine for a minute you had a dungeon with 3 bosses:

• One was a duo boss where one builds up a buff when moving at normal speed (stacks faster with Swiftness) and one builds a buff when standing still, that applied permanent stat bonuses every second.
• One was a boss that did increased damage based on how many boons they had on them but took increased damage for every condition on them.
• The final fight would take place on a platform above some spike pit. If more than 3 players stood within a certain radius of each other for more than 3 seconds, the boss would dig, erupting from that spot, knocking players away from each other and destroying that part of the platform. Another move could be that a player gets a ‘bomb’ placed on them. X seconds later it deals % damage based on how many people it hits (100% for one person, down to 0% for all 5).

What skills (and possibly traits) you take in them cases would be different:

• You’d need to take CC which you’d use while kiting for the first two bosses.
• Boon stripping, boon corruption and skills that apply conditions would be useful on the second boss.
• Constant stacking and everyone melee wouldn’t be a viable strategy for the third, but awareness of where everyone is would still be necessary.

SkylightMoon.1980:

There is no build diversity. Your comment may be the most misleading comment ive ever seen. Everything is zerker, just zerker. Everything is about optimizing damage you so can get that extra few seconds shaved off of your dps when you are downing a boss who is LOS’ed through a wall.

Yeah that’s just wrong. Any build is viable in a dungeon. Not every build is optimal. Big difference. If you want to run the dungeon as fast as possible and be optimal then use meta builds. If, like me, you really don’t care then run whatever build you like. You’ll still get through the dungeon it’ll just take you a bit longer.

IndigoSundown.5419:

SkylightMoon.1980:

IndigoSundown.5419:

There is plenty of build diversity available in PvE. More builds are viable in this game’s dungeons than in most other MMO’s. Adding trinity would reduce build diversity. There’d be one slot for a tank running the right build, one for a healer running the right build and three for DPS running … the right build. Trinity would kill all groups that currently allow “play what you want.”

If you’re in a dedicated speed-run group, you’d be embracing the optimum build and group composition, not complaining about it. Since you are complaining, that tells me you’re wanting any build (or maybe just your build) to be acceptable in the PuG experience — random strangers on the internet with different desires and priorities.

No one who understood the game expected that Ferocity would suddenly mean that pseudo meta PuG groups would suddenly become more accepting.

There is no build diversity. Your comment may be the most misleading comment ive ever seen. Everything is zerker, just zerker. Everything is about optimizing damage you so can get that extra few seconds shaved off of your dps when you are downing a boss who is LOS’ed through a wall.

You didn’t even reply to my statement monotony of strategy in dungeons. For the most part, you only really need to understand how to stack and thats about 80% of the challenge in a dungeon. New players who come to this game are so confused by this after a certain point because they have never played a game that has such flawed design that it could warrant such strategy for the majority of its content.

You’re mistaking people’s desire for convenience with actual requirements. If you want to use different strategies, use them. If you want to use different builds, use them. You don’t even have to stack if you don’t want to. The only thing stopping you is the inconvenience of having to put together a group of the like minded.

The real problem is that dungeons are 20 months old and no content can remain fresh that long under constant use. How engaging are dungeons in other games if people have been running them nonstop for almost two years with nothing new on the horizon? I’ve known guilds that wanted to expand to larger raids (10 to 25 man) who failed because the principals couldn’t bring themselves to redo dungeons or 10-mans (once they got their own gear) in order to gear new recruits because they were bored out of their minds.

In other words, you want the meta to change. Well, as long as there’s nothing new, the meta will always be about convenience. Trinity might make the meta look better to you, but it won’t mean things won’t be stale, and the new meta won’t look better to those who dislike trinity. It would also mean the death of “anything goes” parties — the ones where you could play using builds and strategies of your choice. But go on demanding your preferred poison. I will, too.

You still miss the point, the fact that there is really one strategy to use ruins everything. Ye i’ll agree that people can do a dungeon in a long arduous manner clearing every mobs for no apparent reason since they arn’t rewarded any differently for it. People obviously speedclear through various methods(stacking/skipping). You can make your argument that no one is forced to do any specific strategy(this is one reason why mechanics are so poor in this game).

Now imagine if there was a strategy where you can complete a dungeon in 30 seconds. Obviously you don’t have to, you can do it the normal way and take 30 minutes like the expected time of the dungeon. People are still going to take this cheesy broken strategy anyway even though its not the only way.

Im not even suggesting they bring in a trinity, but its obvious there is more diversity with a trinity than there currently is in PVE. I mean its really quite hard to lie about it, just open up LFG and look at the number of zerker only advertisements.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Im not even suggesting they bring in a trinity, but its obvious there is more diversity with a trinity than there currently is in PVE. I mean its really quite hard to lie about it, just open up LFG and look at the number of zerker only advertisements.

Are you, at any point, going to acknowledge any of the arguments made proving that a trinity won’t actually force build diversity? Your issue is that one particular build set is the only one people want to use. Making zerker no good won’t change that whatever build or build combo is the fastest is what people are going to use. Period. There is no more to it. Plenty of feedback has been given on ways that the dungeon encounters themselves could be made better, but none of that is going to change the fact that the overwhelming majority of players want to get in, get done, and get out.

What was the motto of every speedrunner ever even in WoW? “GOGOGOGOGO?”

TheDaiBish.9735:

You seem to be confusing ‘viable’ with ‘optimal’ and ‘build diversity’ with ‘gear diversity’.

Dungeons can be done with pretty much any group composition and with any build, meaning there is build diversity. It’s just people choose to do it the fastest way, thus limiting the diversity.

That’s not saying that more couldn’t be done though (Defiant and how higher level players scale down needs a rework, for example), but rather than introduce pre-defined roles that never change from dungeon to dungeon, the encounters themselves need to get the players to look at the tools they have and adapt to the encounter. This is where ‘depth’ comes into play.

For example, imagine for a minute you had a dungeon with 3 bosses:

• One was a duo boss where one builds up a buff when moving at normal speed (stacks faster with Swiftness) and one builds a buff when standing still, that applied permanent stat bonuses every second.
• One was a boss that did increased damage based on how many boons they had on them but took increased damage for every condition on them.
• The final fight would take place on a platform above some spike pit. If more than 3 players stood within a certain radius of each other for more than 3 seconds, the boss would dig, erupting from that spot, knocking players away from each other and destroying that part of the platform. Another move could be that a player gets a ‘bomb’ placed on them. X seconds later it deals % damage based on how many people it hits (100% for one person, down to 0% for all 5).

What skills (and possibly traits) you take in them cases would be different:

• You’d need to take CC which you’d use while kiting for the first two bosses.
• Boon stripping, boon corruption and skills that apply conditions would be useful on the second boss.
• Constant stacking and everyone melee wouldn’t be a viable strategy for the third, but awareness of where everyone is would still be necessary.

Excellent ideas! There are many things that are commonly used in PvP but meaningless in PvE. Probably because ANET wanted to avoid making PvE too complicated favoring less knowledgable/skilled or just simply casual players. I’m not saying ANET should turn all PvE content extra hardcore, I do think they should keep the majority of dungeons for the casual player base. But higher level fractals (and also a hardmode version for every explorable path) could introduce more complicated mechanics where blindig/boon strippng/ stability/projectile reflect/mass swiftness/etc. is not only nice or handy but is an absolute must. Requiring much more situational awareness and group coordination.

AdaephonDelat.3890:

SkylightMoon.1980:

There is no build diversity. Your comment may be the most misleading comment ive ever seen. Everything is zerker, just zerker. Everything is about optimizing damage you so can get that extra few seconds shaved off of your dps when you are downing a boss who is LOS’ed through a wall.

Yeah that’s just wrong. Any build is viable in a dungeon. Not every build is optimal. Big difference. If you want to run the dungeon as fast as possible and be optimal then use meta builds. If, like me, you really don’t care then run whatever build you like. You’ll still get through the dungeon it’ll just take you a bit longer.

Theres no build diversity in PVE. Im not saying in the entire game, thats true obviously. Look at something like sPvP which does have an annoying condi meta right now but is certainly more diverse than the toxicity in dungeon community. One reason there is only zerker is because there is no strategy to the bosses in dungeons, at least nothing too complicated. The strategy used to kill most bosses in dungeons is so simple that it doesn’t really warrant multiple strategies to be used. Its usually just “okay lets do the strategy where we do as much dps as we can because this boss doesn’t do anything or we can completely avoid its abilities by putting it in a corner”

Speckly.3729:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Im not even suggesting they bring in a trinity, but its obvious there is more diversity with a trinity than there currently is in PVE. I mean its really quite hard to lie about it, just open up LFG and look at the number of zerker only advertisements.

Are you, at any point, going to acknowledge any of the arguments made proving that a trinity won’t actually force build diversity? Your issue is that one particular build set is the only one people want to use. Making zerker no good won’t change that whatever build or build combo is the fastest is what people are going to use. Period. There is no more to it. Plenty of feedback has been given on ways that the dungeon encounters themselves could be made better, but none of that is going to change the fact that the overwhelming majority of players want to get in, get done, and get out.

What was the motto of every speedrunner ever even in WoW? “GOGOGOGOGO?”

If you actually read any of my original post you’d see that I blame lack of build diversity also on the lack of mechanics in most of the dungeons. Bosses may seem to have a mechanic by reading the text under their name but it usually is negligible.

SkylightMoon.1980:

If you actually read any of my original post you’d see that I blame lack of build diversity also on the lack of mechanics in most of the dungeons. Bosses may seem to have a mechanic by reading the text under their name but it usually is negligible.

I did read your original post. No one here is arguing that the mechanics of bosses don’t suck. They do. I acknowledged it. Others acknowledged it. People have supplied plenty of maybe-fixes for that. It’s this trinity thing that you keep pushing that people disagree with, and those are the counterpoints you seem to be ignoring when you continually say ‘but this will add diversity!’

Speckly.3729:

SkylightMoon.1980:

If you actually read any of my original post you’d see that I blame lack of build diversity also on the lack of mechanics in most of the dungeons. Bosses may seem to have a mechanic by reading the text under their name but it usually is negligible.

I did read your original post. No one here is arguing that the mechanics of bosses don’t suck. They do. I acknowledged it. Others acknowledged it. People have supplied plenty of maybe-fixes for that. It’s this trinity thing that you keep pushing that people disagree with, and those are the counterpoints you seem to be ignoring when you continually say ‘but this will add diversity!’

What im trying to say is that one reason the bosses blow in this game is simply because Anet is trying to make bosses in a game that doesn’t have a trinity. Its rather that Anet has(had?) very bad encounter designers or they were trying to make the bosses so simple that literally any class set up could do it. At this point, zerker becomes the meta, because there are no boss mechanics and you only have to do dps and now doing the most dps you can in a certain amount of time becomes the next priority.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Im not even suggesting they bring in a trinity, but its obvious there is more diversity with a trinity than there currently is in PVE. I mean its really quite hard to lie about it, just open up LFG and look at the number of zerker only advertisements.

And even those “zerkers” are not the typical DPS role you see in other games. They all buff in some way or another, they heal each other, up the DPS of each other, support each other etc

Trinity will simply make this worse, defined roles will make this worse, as each party member will be using a subset of their skillset.

You want more stat variety (other than zerker) to be used in PVE, have you ever considered that making the game require different stats, in a trinity way, would limit variety in skills?

Also, all dungeons are doable with different gear sets, the key here is that they are slower, do you want to make them equally fast with zerkers? So a 5-player Cleric Guardian team that can facetank (without even dodging) even the hardest dungeons can do it as fast as a full Zerker team that might even die if they screw up? Where is your build diversity then?

SkylightMoon.1980:

Theres no build diversity in PVE. Im not saying in the entire game, thats true obviously. Look at something like sPvP which does have an annoying condi meta right now but is certainly more diverse than the toxicity in dungeon community. One reason there is only zerker is because there is no strategy to the bosses in dungeons, at least nothing too complicated. The strategy used to kill most bosses in dungeons is so simple that it doesn’t really warrant multiple strategies to be used. Its usually just “okay lets do the strategy where we do as much dps as we can because this boss doesn’t do anything or we can completely avoid its abilities by putting it in a corner”

I think we have a difference of opinion on what build diversity is. For me it means how many viable options there are. For you it seems to mean how many optimal options there are. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

AdaephonDelat.3890:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Theres no build diversity in PVE. Im not saying in the entire game, thats true obviously. Look at something like sPvP which does have an annoying condi meta right now but is certainly more diverse than the toxicity in dungeon community. One reason there is only zerker is because there is no strategy to the bosses in dungeons, at least nothing too complicated. The strategy used to kill most bosses in dungeons is so simple that it doesn’t really warrant multiple strategies to be used. Its usually just “okay lets do the strategy where we do as much dps as we can because this boss doesn’t do anything or we can completely avoid its abilities by putting it in a corner”

I think we have a difference of opinion on what build diversity is. For me it means how many viable options there are. For you it seems to mean how many optimal options there are. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

I should say “in the current state of dungeons”.

SkylightMoon.1980:

What im trying to say is that one reason the bosses blow in this game is simply because Anet is trying to make bosses in a game that doesn’t have a trinity. Its rather that Anet has(had?) very bad encounter designers or they were trying to make the bosses so simple that literally any class set up could do it. At this point, zerker becomes the meta, because there are no boss mechanics and you only have to do dps and now doing the most dps you can in a certain amount of time becomes the next priority.

And what I’m trying to explain is that it’s the nature of a speedrunner to use whatever the meta is. There is no way to mess with stat sets or armor sets that doesn’t produce a ‘fastest’ result, and that’s what those people are going to use. They can discourage this by changing the mechanics up and what we’ll get are more fun, challenging, fulfilling encounters, but it doesn’t change the fact that there will always be an ‘optimal’ way to do them, and thus there will always be a meta. If your problem is just that the meta is DPS, then yes, this would change that, but a meta will always exist in some form, and the mentality of the people using it will be the same, because it’s not that they’re die-hard zerker fans. They just want their loot and they want it now. No matter what Anet does there will always be a ‘fastest’ way to do a dungeon path, builds and mechanics be kitten ed. The best they could hope for is to make the ride more challenging. (Of course, they tried to do that, and those paths ended up falling into disuse. Who does Arah at all, ever, except to reluctantly finish their personal story or get that last achievement for their title?)

I get that you want something different, but ‘different’ doesn’t always mean ‘better.’ In this case, ‘different’ doesn’t even actually mean ‘different.’ It would be the same repetition of whatever build & strat produces the fastest results, and the same mentality… It’d just be wrapped in a new set of gear. Like I said in my initial post: this is a people problem.

Anet’s not going to make any more dungeons — they’re 100% focussed on zerg content now.

The only way you’re ever going to get a challenge out of GW2 dungeons is to run paths with fewer than 5 people (1 or 2 preferably). The meta is still zerker, but the fights are a lot more interesting than with 5 people.

Pvt Guardian running dungeons, fractals, and leads in some open-world raid content.
Condi necro running dungeons, soon to be running fractals, and would be leading the same open-world content if she had a commander tag.

People laugh and poke fun if I join dungeons with my necro, but by the end they have no choice but to admit they’re strong in dungeons.

If people only want to run dungeons with zerkers or XYZ class and build, they can kiss my green Sylvari kitten . When people demand a certain build regardless of how well you know the dungeon, they arent the kind of people I want to run a dungeon with. Asking someone to not be a particular build for good reason I dont mind. God knows a minion necro can be pretty useless in CoE.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Pvt Guardian running dungeons, fractals, and leads in some open-world raid content.
Condi necro running dungeons, soon to be running fractals, and would be leading the same open-world content if she had a commander tag.

People laugh and poke fun if I join dungeons with my necro, but by the end they have no choice but to admit they’re strong in dungeons.

If people only want to run dungeons with zerkers or XYZ class and build, they can kiss my green Sylvari kitten . When people demand a certain build regardless of how well you know the dungeon, they arent the kind of people I want to run a dungeon with. Asking someone to not be a particular build for good reason I dont mind. God knows a minion necro can be pretty useless in CoE.

I main a necro.
The most trouble I’ve had is from other people who play/have played necro’s… and wars who think only their class is useful >.>

But zerk is not class dependant. I run zerk or Knight gear on my necro depending. SO those asking for zerk builds only, are simply asking for you to have the highest dps your class can put out, many of them are ok with different class. Anyone who asks specifically for wars, doesn’t know much about the game I think.
However, have a party of guards, and they can take anything on.

the hope is to switch to guild wars 1 back

I haved to make 2 posts because it’s too long to fit in one.

The problem with dungeons in this game is that you can go 5 man full zerker, melt everything in few seconds. You don’t need any skill to do it (and yes you meta defenders will say that the skill is needed – it’s just a poor excuse. I’ve been playing dungeons enought to tell you that if you stack in the corner, all you have to do is to press 12345 randomly. Maybe you can do it 2 seconds faster if you, as you will say, chain your buffs, blinds etc, but whatever you will do, you will succeed).
It is really horrible, most of the “non-action oriented” games have more action in their dungeons than GW2. Even in these crappy korean grinders, you need more coordination to finish dungeons.

The causes of this, are:
- Fiery Rush and few similar skills, that used in the corner can “focus” its whole power in the single spot. This encourages players to stack in the corner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPZhPcyhPOg

- Reflects and some bosses that can nearly 1-shot themself. The problem is that the amount of reflected damage is not capped, so you can literally reflect everything back on their face.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA3xTJIM1x8

- Terrain issues that makes huge parts of the dungeons skippable.

- Trash mobs that loose aggro after running some distance away from their original spots.

- Radius of “boon sharing” by blasting fields and the “strength” of blasted boons compared to class specific skills that gives boons (for example Empower).

How to make dungeons really cool place to play and give more role diversity than just DPS? Here are some ideas:
- First of all, change how the stuff works currently.
> Make Fiery Rush and other skills that moves character break when you hit the wall. This way using it in the middle of the room can be still effective against big enemies, but using it against the wall would interrupt skill prematurely, causing it to deal even less damage. This would encourage players to fight enemies in the designed place.
> Limit maximum reflected damage.
> Fix terrain issues by adding invisible walls or just make all trash mobs that should be killed (not the optional) teleport to the boss when you attack him. This way you don’t have to worry about exploiting terrain anymore, because players will just die if they try to exploit it.
> Increase radius of boons a bit or make the class specific boons stronger. Currently Might given by Empower lasts 10 seconds while “blasted” might lasts 20 seconds. It should be at least reversed, so the Empower can give might for 20 seconds while blasted might lasts only 10 seconds. Increasing radius of blasted boons would on the other hand make some use of the ranged classes.

- Improve bosses AI to counter “full melee” tactics. Bosses with strong ranged abilities should try to escape players from time to time and use their ranged attacks.

- Build new dungeons around the classes. For example:
> A thief can use Steal on some guard and then open the closed doors to make some small shortcut in the dungeon.
> Elementalist can pass some room with few colors on the ground by attuning to certain elements without activating traps and pull the lever to open the gate for the oteher players.
> Engineer can “hack” the control panel.
You can use your imagination to make more stuff like this, that can make all classes usefull in some situations. Also these parts of the dungeons should be random, so players will never know which class can help them to make shortcuts and these shortcuts shouldn’t be too big to encourage players to relog to the certain class, but it should save a minute or two.

- Basic attacks of the bosses should be weaker but faster, to encourage melee players to build more “tanky”. Slow and strong attacks can be avoid, while rapid but light attacks can not, but they can be healed. By this I don’t mean introducing trinity to the game, but increasing effectiveness of tanky and healing builds. Just to give you example of how can this work, I’ll summon the mighty AC Spider.
Let’s say that our party is 1x ranger, 1x elementalist, 1x warrior, 1x thief and 1x mesmer. We have 2 melee classes, 1 partially melee and partially ranged (mesmer) and 2 ranged. Elementalist and Ranger can play full glass cannon and avoid poison circles staying a bit away. Warrior will get constant beating by spider’s fast melee attacks, but elementalist can throw some heals on him to keep his HP up, Thief can use his pistol whip to be immortal and heal himself. Mesmer can stay melee, but after he loose some HP, he can fall back and play ranged until his HP regenerates. Spider queen doesn’t run away because she can use her ranged attack against ranged players. Also melee classes should use their dodges to avoid the web attack. Also the spider should gain additional attack that activates when everyone stays ranged and that pulls raondom player to her. Ofc if you read carefully you can see, that players are still able to counter every attack, but for that some skill is required, not just stack in the corner and FGS.

- Do something with the conditions. I don’t know what, just something. There is a lot of great ideas, but we are stuck with this horrible design for almost 2 years.

AdaephonDelat.3890:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Theres no build diversity in PVE. Im not saying in the entire game, thats true obviously. Look at something like sPvP which does have an annoying condi meta right now but is certainly more diverse than the toxicity in dungeon community. One reason there is only zerker is because there is no strategy to the bosses in dungeons, at least nothing too complicated. The strategy used to kill most bosses in dungeons is so simple that it doesn’t really warrant multiple strategies to be used. Its usually just “okay lets do the strategy where we do as much dps as we can because this boss doesn’t do anything or we can completely avoid its abilities by putting it in a corner”

I think we have a difference of opinion on what build diversity is. For me it means how many viable options there are. For you it seems to mean how many optimal options there are. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Well all builds are “viable” because dungeons pose no challenge whatsoever. There is practically no possibility for failure so yes, it really doesn’t matter what build you run. Hell, people can solo many dungeon paths and bosses so you can even afk if you want.

But that’s not a solid basis for discussion. Yes, everything is viable because there is no real challenge and yet the benefits of going all out DPS far outweigh the benefits of any other build. That’s the issue.

Dee Jay.2460:

Well all builds are “viable” because dungeons pose no challenge whatsoever. There is practically no possibility for failure so yes, it really doesn’t matter what build you run. Hell, people can solo many dungeon paths and bosses so you can even afk if you want.

But that’s not a solid basis for discussion. Yes, everything is viable because there is no real challenge and yet the benefits of going all out DPS far outweigh the benefits of any other build. That’s the issue.

I’m still failing to see the issue. The OP complained about a lack of build diversity. In general. He didn’t state a lack of optimal build diversity. Just build diversity. If all the builds are viable then surely there is not a lack of build diversity? Now whether all those viable builds are optimal or not is an entirely different matter (hint they’re not).

yayuuu.9420:

I haved to make 2 posts because it’s too long to fit in one.

The problem with dungeons in this game is that you can go 5 man full zerker, melt everything in few seconds. You don’t need any skill to do it (and yes you meta defenders will say that the skill is needed – it’s just a poor excuse. I’ve been playing dungeons enought to tell you that if you stack in the corner, all you have to do is to press 12345 randomly. Maybe you can do it 2 seconds faster if you, as you will say, chain your buffs, blinds etc, but whatever you will do, you will succeed.
It is really horrible, most of the “non-action oriented” games have more action in their dungeons than GW2. Even in these crappy korean grinders, you need more coordination to finish dungeons.

Someone got carried by people who knew what they were doing :p

Nice advertisement for my guild still ^^

Which game has everything optimal?

haviz.1340:

Which game has everything optimal?

Tetris. There is only RNG there.

Enaretos.8079:

haviz.1340:

Which game has everything optimal?

Tetris. There is only RNG there.

I was gonna go Pac-man…..

In Pac-man you can exploit by using the ÜBEROPOMGPLZNERF buff to kill the ghosts. This is abusing game mechanics, but it’s not the AI’s fault : see, they’re trying to run away xD

kitten ! I forgot about the power pellets.