Guild Wars 2

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-brand-new-fractals-of-the-mists-legendary-backpacks-ascended-salvaging-and-more/

“In addition, after scale 50, the difficulty curve will change to adjust not only the health and outgoing damage of creatures but also other stats like precision and toughness. The combination of these changes will increase the viability of different builds and give players more to think about when attempting to overcome a particular scale.”

First off, a small rant, everything is viable in GW2 PvE. There was never a problem of viability of builds in GW2 PvE content, just how good they were relative to each other.

Second, this idea worries me, because knowing how there’s now going to be 50 more levels of fractal scale, I really don’t want to get to Fractal Level 100 and see that everything now has 4000 Armor and everyone has to switch to Sinister specs to do decent damage. That’s hardly innovative. All it does is move us from one glass spec to another.

So while I’m fine with Condi Specs doing more damage than Berserker specs over the long run in a long fight, please don’t go overboard and basically make all enemies at Fractal 90-100 into Mordrem Husks.

I would also advice being careful with precision. With higher scales enemies will already deal lots of damage. It’s not fun to get randomly hit for +50% damage and probably get killed.

Yes, it would make weakness more important but if you want it really used in PvE, remove RNG aspect.

Yes on both.

Please make the toughness addition not a baseline increase but part of the instability system. This would have certain maps encouraging condi’s but not all say 80+ maps.

And yes to weakness fully, the RNG part of it has always made it nice but not something you really are overly concerned with because you can’t rely on it. It’s still good in PVP because of the amount of hits it’ll average out on, but in fractals you can go through fights unscathed, so when you do get hit it’s very infrequent meaning it’s potentially a roll of the dice on whether you’ll die or be ok. That’s not fun.

Maybe we should see exactly what Anet’s plan is to weaken armor-ignoring damage before we immediately start crying about an extremely vague blogpost?

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Maybe we should see exactly what Anet’s plan is to weaken armor-ignoring damage before we immediately start crying about an extremely vague blogpost?

As the devs implement changes to the game, it’s important for us to give our honest and candid feedback right away as they brainstorm the ideas, rather than simply wait for the day those changes are made to the game in live, and then we have to sit with any problems from those changes for months as they move onto some other project. There’s nothing to be gained by us remaining silent.

I think what is going to cause people to cry the most is not that the zerker specs they’ve played and gotten used to for speed clearing content may not be optimal at everything anymore.

It’s the fact that ascended gear is a huge gold gate/grind, with 400+ gold involved on just the armor not including the weapons. Now people are gonna have to grind out alternate ascended sets because the truth is, it’s 10 spirit shards per piece and if you’re looking at 80-90+ AR, it just won’t be feasible to constantly switch ascended stats given it costs 6-10 gold per insignia and 10 of the much more limited spirit shards per piece, of which you get only 3 with the daily.

What’s more, if you make ascended sinister stats optimal, that’s a problem as well because I for example had no interest in living story achievements. I just don’t find the solo instances with kittened AI fun. I don’t find the labyrinth of 1 shots as a necromancer fun.

Ascended introduced these annoying gold grinds and time gates nobody cared for, and they’re continuing that hideous feature into the expansion instead of the quick and accessible exotics model that everyone liked as it allowed them to have multiple sets with little farming involved and experiment without huge gold and time costs.

Or they scrap the whole idiotic idea of agony and AR checks on fractals and ascended items truly become optional. So people can bring their exotic sets into high level fractal and vary their builds on the fly. If they want to keep agony, they can just give exotic gear versatile infusion slots and call it a day. Make the infusions with extra stats/effects ascended only.

the precision change specifically interests me. It encourages bringing some weakness coverage which isn’t something people normally do (even though it trivializes ascalon fractal). I feel that at the higher level fractals your gonna need to make sure you have your bases covered. I doubt EVERY mob iwll have high toughness. instead I think wel see cases where warrior type mobs for example have heavy armor. And other types have that higher precision. So having different damage types will be ideal.

Thats what im hoping anyway.

Anet doesn’t have it in them to make content incapable of being completed for certain builds. Make it easier? Sure weve seen that all over the game (and were bored of it). But not a massive impeding wall.

I figure wel see mob types have there own characteristics pushed further into there indivudal extremes. Which simultaneously makes them more vulnerable to there counters. (if a mob is balanced around its heavy precision then weakness is gonna kitten them over even harder. Vuln is worth more against targets that are noramlly resistant to your attacks. Condi’s in general will be nice to have for reducing enemy damage output and getting through there defenses. But burst classes/builds are still gonna be needed to get rid of the enemies high damage yet still squishy classes.

Atleast thats how i picture it in my head when I read what they have said. Having a place for every build has seemingly been a big part of what HoT has been promising.

Edit: At Zenith. Don’t clame to speak for everyone on the matter of ascended armor…or any subject for that matter. I for one (as well as several people I know) actually enjoyed the release of ascended armor. and were looking forward to having the ascended armor we went through the trouble of making be worth MORE with the addition of additional fractal levels. Not everyone wants everything handed to them (oh you hit 80 20 seconds ago CONGRATZ now you can buy the best armor in the game and immediately be at the same level as people that have played for YEARS)

Perhaps we should start considering establishing alternative damage builds. Toughness being specifically mentioned is a high indicator of mobs having ‘Husk-like’ armor, so Sinister might be an option.

Precision is tricky, and if push comes to shove, one solution is to have a profession or two run high weakness application to negate criticals from foes. Ala, That Warrior be putting on Mace…

Why bring weakness for high crit mobs unless they’re blind immune?

And dredge are one of the worst mob designs ingame, I hope that’s not an example they follow. Mobs with little telegraph, quick autoattacks that dze you for eternity and take off half your health is not good PvE design.

what? dredge mobs have the hugest telegraphs in the game, you can literally see those attacks come from across the pacific ocean

sad thing is even if we’ll need weakness, nobody will take necro cuz of skale venom >.>

or ppl will just blast some poison field from thief sb and done.

Who cares how much damage they add to mobs. Everything one-shots you anyways.

Dodge, block, reflect, invuln, blind

Dredge are great because they actually apply boons to each other and are not just bags of hp.

I already have a full ascended sinister gear-set for my engi, because of WvW…
My body is ready, and i welcome this change.

They specifically announced that group-roles will be more distinct and support gets a bigger role. And to defy the zerker stack-meta, it’s only logical to mess with their dmg output directly by scaling up toughness.
On the long run, this will also allow Necromancers & Rangers easier access to Fractals, since both are lacking in group-support (welp, spotter is still kinda nice), but come with powerful condi-builds, hence get better dps than guards, warris & eles against high values of toughness. Ele might still be high up in terms of dps, since they can stack burning the easiest currently, but it wears down as fast as guardians’ and leaves them with almost no condi-output. Not to mention that their attunements lock them out from effectively combining their condi-dps, due to short duration of both their bleeds & burns.

So yea, engi becomes more than just a supporter, and necros & rangers will suffer less discrimination at higher fractal levels.

They could have change other stuff to make fractals harder, not just make the boss into huge HP bag that one shot you.
We’ll see how it goes.
What would be good is some ennemy are like husk and other are just tanky, so we have to get more variety, Some zerker dps, some condi dps, and maybe one tank that can get all the hit.

Arantheal.7396:

I already have a full ascended sinister gear-set for my engi, because of WvW…
My body is ready, and i welcome this change.

They specifically announced that group-roles will be more distinct and support gets a bigger role. And to defy the zerker stack-meta, it’s only logical to mess with their dmg output directly by scaling up toughness.
On the long run, this will also allow Necromancers & Rangers easier access to Fractals, since both are lacking in group-support (welp, spotter is still kinda nice), but come with powerful condi-builds, hence get better dps than guards, warris & eles against high values of toughness. Ele might still be high up in terms of dps, since they can stack burning the easiest currently, but it wears down as fast as guardians’ and leaves them with almost no condi-output. Not to mention that their attunements lock them out from effectively combining their condi-dps, due to short duration of both their bleeds & burns.

So yea, engi becomes more than just a supporter, and necros & rangers will suffer less discrimination at higher fractal levels.

Could you explain how the condi stack meta is better than the zerk stack meta?

It would just mean that instead of using the best pure DPS class picks we’ll take the best condition damage class picks, which don’t include Ranger or Necro.

I personally don’t care if condition builds become optimal in this case, it will add more flavour to harder content, I’m not however looking forward to making even more gear sets when I’m already using a static minimum of 60/160 slots on most of my characters -_-

doddbox.8153:

It would just mean that instead of using the best pure DPS class picks we’ll take the best condition damage class picks, which don’t include Ranger or Necro.

I personally don’t care if condition builds become optimal in this case, it will add more flavour to harder content, I’m not however looking forward to making even more gear sets when I’m already using a static minimum of 60/160 slots on most of my characters -_-

+1 on this. Already carrying a kittenton of gear/weapons/potions/consumables and most importantly cat tonics on every character around.

Arantheal.7396:

On the long run, this will also allow Necromancers & Rangers easier access to Fractals, since both are lacking in group-support (welp, spotter is still kinda nice), but come with powerful condi-builds, hence get better dps than guards, warris & eles against high values of toughness.

Ummm no. Necro is not that good at condi as people think.

Arantheal.7396:

I already have a full ascended sinister gear-set for my engi, because of WvW…
My body is ready, and i welcome this change.

They specifically announced that group-roles will be more distinct and support gets a bigger role. And to defy the zerker stack-meta, it’s only logical to mess with their dmg output directly by scaling up toughness.
On the long run, this will also allow Necromancers & Rangers easier access to Fractals, since both are lacking in group-support (welp, spotter is still kinda nice), but come with powerful condi-builds, hence get better dps than guards, warris & eles against high values of toughness. Ele might still be high up in terms of dps, since they can stack burning the easiest currently, but it wears down as fast as guardians’ and leaves them with almost no condi-output. Not to mention that their attunements lock them out from effectively combining their condi-dps, due to short duration of both their bleeds & burns.

So yea, engi becomes more than just a supporter, and necros & rangers will suffer less discrimination at higher fractal levels.

Engineer has been top condi damage for, I think 2 years? Maybe since launch, considering it also brings projectile defenses, lots of blinds, smoke fields, fire fields, blasts, etc…. The meta with high toughness targets would just become 4 engis + another engi, or a class with utility better suited to the situation. And everyone in sinister.

Actually necro would be super meta with sinister and epidemic.

Pretty sure in Condi Meta, we still wouldn’t take Necro, so people who are fantasizing that by arbitrarily making Direct Damage terrible we can somehow backdoor Necro into becoming ‘meta’, it’s not going to work.

@Mal: Mind you, necro might shine in situations where condi manipulation = good DPS & support. Otherwise, necros might be a util/support class, and they can be overshadowed by other classes doing their thing.

Wethospu.6437:

Arantheal.7396:

I already have a full ascended sinister gear-set for my engi, because of WvW…
My body is ready, and i welcome this change.

They specifically announced that group-roles will be more distinct and support gets a bigger role. And to defy the zerker stack-meta, it’s only logical to mess with their dmg output directly by scaling up toughness.
On the long run, this will also allow Necromancers & Rangers easier access to Fractals, since both are lacking in group-support (welp, spotter is still kinda nice), but come with powerful condi-builds, hence get better dps than guards, warris & eles against high values of toughness. Ele might still be high up in terms of dps, since they can stack burning the easiest currently, but it wears down as fast as guardians’ and leaves them with almost no condi-output. Not to mention that their attunements lock them out from effectively combining their condi-dps, due to short duration of both their bleeds & burns.

So yea, engi becomes more than just a supporter, and necros & rangers will suffer less discrimination at higher fractal levels.

Could you explain how the condi stack meta is better than the zerk stack meta?

A beautiful example of zergburger meta hate, mixed with “this change doesn’t bother me, so I don’t care if it could be bad for you, for the game or for anyone else”. Who gives a kitten if people may have to spend hundreds of golds in ANOTHER ascended set, possibly on multiple characters if they have to switch profession often, and all of this on TOP of the gold grind for agony resistance? He’s already got it!

Honestly? I pray the meta won’t shift to 4-5 sinister because I hate DoT playstyle – it disgusts me even more than full tank. At this point, I’d rather play healer, and I’m not joking.
I probably will, if feeling cornered.

My hope would be to see variety in mob packs (Afflicted!) as to favour both glassy playstyles and a good, varied instability system that doesn’t destroy some classes completely…
… but I know this won’t happen and we’ll get some hp bag mobs with crazy toughness and 25k aa on crit with aoe so that it kills pets and phantasms in a sec okthxbai

/choked sob

Current fractal mobs already crit fairly often. And they also hit hard already on higher scales without critting. Ascalon mobs are a good example. So yes im curious how they are going to do this.

Ascalon warriors – the destroyer of groups!

Them buggers can be so annoying with there 10mile rush

deSade.9437:

Wethospu.6437:

Arantheal.7396:

I already have a full ascended sinister gear-set for my engi, because of WvW…
My body is ready, and i welcome this change.

They specifically announced that group-roles will be more distinct and support gets a bigger role. And to defy the zerker stack-meta, it’s only logical to mess with their dmg output directly by scaling up toughness.
On the long run, this will also allow Necromancers & Rangers easier access to Fractals, since both are lacking in group-support (welp, spotter is still kinda nice), but come with powerful condi-builds, hence get better dps than guards, warris & eles against high values of toughness. Ele might still be high up in terms of dps, since they can stack burning the easiest currently, but it wears down as fast as guardians’ and leaves them with almost no condi-output. Not to mention that their attunements lock them out from effectively combining their condi-dps, due to short duration of both their bleeds & burns.

So yea, engi becomes more than just a supporter, and necros & rangers will suffer less discrimination at higher fractal levels.

Could you explain how the condi stack meta is better than the zerk stack meta?

A beautiful example of zergburger meta hate, mixed with “this change doesn’t bother me, so I don’t care if it could be bad for you, for the game or for anyone else”. Who gives a kitten if people may have to spend hundreds of golds in ANOTHER ascended set, possibly on multiple characters if they have to switch profession often, and all of this on TOP of the gold grind for agony resistance? He’s already got it!

Honestly? I pray the meta won’t shift to 4-5 sinister because I hate DoT playstyle – it disgusts me even more than full tank. At this point, I’d rather play healer, and I’m not joking.
I probably will, if feeling cornered.

My hope would be to see variety in mob packs (Afflicted!) as to favour both glassy playstyles and a good, varied instability system that doesn’t destroy some classes completely…
… but I know this won’t happen and we’ll get some hp bag mobs with crazy toughness and 25k aa on crit with aoe so that it kills pets and phantasms in a sec okthxbai

/choked sob

This is not WoW, where you have 1 set of healer gear, 1 set of tank gear & 1 set of dps gear, perfectly fitting for solving all the content in the current raid tier.
In gw2, stats are not meant to be all-optimized for every situation you’ll ever encounter, they were meant to serve as solid foundation for all the various builds a class has to offer, while the content was intended to force you into adapting to the encounters quite regularly.
What went wrong, is how easy the encounters are, and how easy stealth & leaps allows you to skip trash or even whole encounters.

So now that they attempt to fix that, and give you something engaging to chew on, zerkburger meta-heads like you are becoming the hilarious nay-sayers, criticizing the new content before they even could get their hand on it, ironically after years of salty comments on how easy the content is.

You know what?
It’s entirely possible that a-net kittens up again, and the content will be as easy to solve with zerkburger stacking & skipping as before.
How about you try it out, before you spurt slurs, promoting nothing but your salty opinion. Better start farming and get ready to craft your new optimized gear, once you know what you’ll actually need. Chances are you don’t spend a single coin.

wut do u mean this isnt wow i wanna play heler monk scrw u

i play how i want anet said i can so imma playh monk

It was ok to force adaptation when it wasn’t about spending 500g per set and stacking agony resistance, but I’m still willing to adapt.. if they make it worth.
It’s hilarious that you think sinister will remove this fabled stacking, stealthing and skipping, or mobs with more toughness or damage will completely turn the game around. I’m not even sure how such a genius can extrapolate that I’m somehow afraid of “harder” content from my worries about a dot meta. Even more moronic than I thought; I figured it was only a zerk vs snowflake problem, but this is more than that.

I’d be a lil afraid of the power creep, though. Not that’s a big concern, since I presume older instances will be abandoned in favour of fractals/new raids/zergy content/whatever arenanet is cooking.
Afflicted mode all the way… mordrem mobs are cool, perhaps a little too gimmicky.
It’s too late to be put into the game, it’d screw the entire balance to hell so it’ll never (and should never) be implemented, but.. I kinda miss the different elemental/armor resistances from gw1. As a side effect, it made armor-ignoring classes such as necro and mesmer much more desirable in HM. I thought that was a good thing.. but eh. Too late now.
We’re still in time to have mobs that are vulnerable to life steal, though.

Corran.4957:

Ascalon warriors – the destroyer of groups!

Them buggers can be so annoying with there 10mile rush

For me it’s not the warriors, their leap has wind up and so do their slashing attacks. It’s the stupid monks doing nearly instant ranged conal aoe in combination.

It’s one of GW2’s main flaws, with no real aggro system to work off with you have multiple mobs deciding to hit the same person with 6-8k autoattacks it can lead to an instant-down with little counterplay other than blind spam.

It’s just cheap and encourages you to stunlock/blindspam mobs. One of their big selling points was telegraphing and attack readability.

They outright refused to adopt GW1’s system of cast bars and discernible actions under the pretext that they would have animations clearly indicating actions, but what we got instead is a cluster of many mobs all doing slight animations at the same time under the clutter of many particle effects.

They also said they MEANT for people to be downed in an encounter and that’s what their downed system is based around, but that isn’t even true. The AI is so cheesy around downed players, bosses will spam ground targeted aoe or lethal cleave on a downed person that often even ignores reflects so rezzing people without a warbanner or singet is often a death trap and not worth your time. The Fire Shaman’s meteor Shower on a downed person or Captain Arshym’s meteor shower is a good example of this.

They didn’t even remotely deliver on what they said their PvE combat system would be like. The encounters are so shallow and just a damage race instead of mechanics checks.

Which makes sense if their goal is to make every single encounter doable by a PuG group withing a single play session instead of having encounters that require players to form statics with similarly skilled players and learn and practice encounters for weeks to months.

Neko.9021:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-brand-new-fractals-of-the-mists-legendary-backpacks-ascended-salvaging-and-more/

“In addition, after scale 50, the difficulty curve will change to adjust not only the health and outgoing damage of creatures but also other stats like precision and toughness. The combination of these changes will increase the viability of different builds and give players more to think about when attempting to overcome a particular scale.”

First off, a small rant, everything is viable in GW2 PvE. There was never a problem of viability of builds in GW2 PvE content, just how good they were relative to each other.

Second, this idea worries me, because knowing how there’s now going to be 50 more levels of fractal scale, I really don’t want to get to Fractal Level 100 and see that everything now has 4000 Armor and everyone has to switch to Sinister specs to do decent damage. That’s hardly innovative. All it does is move us from one glass spec to another.

So while I’m fine with Condi Specs doing more damage than Berserker specs over the long run in a long fight, please don’t go overboard and basically make all enemies at Fractal 90-100 into Mordrem Husks.

as long as they do something to change the current stale zerker meta am good with it. dont care if condi deeps, or bunker / support builds, whatever, just do something, do not do nothing.

Tongku.5326:

as long as they do something to change the current stale zerker meta am good with it. dont care if condi deeps, or bunker / support builds, whatever, just do something, do not do nothing.

Stale bunker meta incoming, please refer to Card’s channel for all of the nomad fun times that can already be had.

i dont mind rescaling of mobs if its done to be more linear growth from 1-100.

As is there’s a giant spike in power from 1 to 30 and again at 31 to 50 when it comes to mobs in fractals.

1-30 are fairly laughable, outside the 1shot mechanics, which are fine. But then you come across mobs like the ice elementals in snowblind fractal and are pretty much forced into having high blind up time or reflects which limits a fair bit of dungeon class diversity.

Isn’t it lovely when the elemental’s autoattacks are a ranged ice spike that hits for over half your health?

That fractal is just painful when you’re with incompetent people that overaggro, can’t pull together and DPS the elementals fast enough, and where nobody but you tries to renew the flame.

Zenith.7301:

Isn’t it lovely when the elemental’s autoattacks are a ranged ice spike that hits for over half your health?

That fractal is just painful when you’re with incompetent people that overaggro, can’t pull together and DPS the elementals fast enough, and where nobody but you tries to renew the flame.

Don’t forget the blizzard that almost obscures the animation, and of course, the particle effects of 5 other players plus swirling winds, wait….. what swirling winds? SURPRISE KNOCKBACK!!!!

SlyDevil.3952:

Zenith.7301:

Isn’t it lovely when the elemental’s autoattacks are a ranged ice spike that hits for over half your health?

That fractal is just painful when you’re with incompetent people that overaggro, can’t pull together and DPS the elementals fast enough, and where nobody but you tries to renew the flame.

Don’t forget the blizzard that almost obscures the animation, and of course, the particle effects of 5 other players plus swirling winds, wait….. what swirling winds? SURPRISE KNOCKBACK!!!!

That’s another issue entirely that needs to be fixed. Enemy AI sharing the same cast animations as players while at first a good idea, needs to be toned to have a different color or something.

Another thing that needs to be fixed is mechanics being nulled for the the sake of artificial difficulty. Unblockable attacks, Knockbacks that ignore stab, etc… Those need to be thrown out