Guild Wars 2

Everybody “stacked”… till the real firearms appeared on battlefields. “Stacking” is a proven melee tactics. Military commanders even tried to keep it some hundreds years after it was obvious how obsolete it was. The first loose formations appeared with militia during American war of independence. kitten , even fighter aircraft were still flying in tight formations during the first months of WW2!

ANet likes melee and therefore every player who wants to go ranged and cowardly shoot from safety is properly punished by game devs. It reminds me the early samurai movies where the cowardly gunslinger was always killed by a virtuous traditional swordsman.

What we see here is somehow wrong implementation of a great idea, which is to remove the trinity. In trinity games, players have different roles and thus they need different equipment.

ANet decided to remove the boring trinity, but for some reason they wanted to enforce the trinity equipment concept. Maybe because the players are used to that. This confuses many players who come from trinity games, but also it forces devs into some vain attempts to keep the various types of gear and combat styles “viable”.

But it never worked like that. We do not use swords for some reason in real life. Finding the most efficient way how to do things is just in human nature. Now it is zerker stuff, stacking and melee.

After ANet nerfs zerker stuff, people who will not leave the game will find some other best working gear and tactics and all will do it again, and these who will not accept it will be rejected by pugs again. This will happen because such is a human nature.

I’ve been doing plenty of dungeon runs lately, and everyone stacks, and it never fails. It’s just a way more reliable tactic for just about anything. It’s also a great way to make sure that my fellow party members receive the benefits from my wells, which they wouldn’t normally stand in otherwise. It also helps with getting all the monsters to stand in the aoe and receive maximum damage.

I don’t think it’s a good mechanic though. It blatantly exposes the weaknesses of the AI, and dumbs the whole game down (or at least exposes just how dumb the combat really is). I’m not against stacking as a tactic, but I’m in favor of smarter combat that is more involved. I don’t feel any urge to artificially make the fights harder for myself, just because the AI is so borked. It’s up to the game’s designers to make sure that the combat system requires more thought.