Guild Wars 2

Jerus.4350:

Zenith.7301:

PvP doesn’t involve tanky builds anyways. Mesmer/thief run zerker or marauder, as does warrior.

The only cele users are ele/engi and cele signet necro. Guardian can be both zerk or tanky bunker.

Either way I would not call most of pvp PVT-wearing scenarios.

Didn’t the winners of that last tournament run a PVT Engi, 2 Cele Ele, Cele Necro and some kind of probably offensive thief? Or am I mistaken on that?

It is true that current PvP has gone fairly defensive, but that has not always been that much. Ideally, I think raids should have about half/half, with variations depending on the actual encounter.

Silver, PVP has a lot more smaller hits with some nastier attacks that you actively defend. You can’t defend them all, and if you build with a bit of defense in mind you simply don’t need to. If you play a glassier build you’re looking for a quick kill or you gtfo and go to a place where you can or is an empty node to grab quickly. Or at least as I understand it, I won’t sit here and act like I’m a pro PVP player(was highly ranked in old games though so I’d like to think I’m not completely lost on the concepts).

PVE is more about active defenses, larger hits but at intervals which you can handle avoiding it all. Right now we have more than enough active defense to avoid it all (well except necros) The only thing I’d say is stressing that is a Lupi without reflects. I’d like to see the raids be built more like that. Give me something where it’s at least theoretically possible to actively defend yourself through at least for the most part.

But isn’t that a big part of the problem? The combat system of gw2 just does not work well with bosses with 1 big attack every 3s. This is why active defense trivialize the content, this is why confusion is pointless, this is why devs have put so much restrictions on debuffing (slow/chill/blinds/…) and CC. And finally, this is why class balance does not work, because the game was not originally thought this way, so ele can spec full offensive and do insane damage at low risk (devs probably didn’t think eles would risk glassy builds), necro with their insane passive sustain but absolutely no active defense end up getting wiped while having low damage (to compensate for their assumed sustain)…

Another thing is that those type of encounters are frustrating for beginners as they don’t know the mechanics and just get 1-shotted without understanding why. But then too easy or even boring once you know the mechanics since you can so easily avoid it. I joined the game fairly late, and heard people speaking about dungeons being too easy. But when I joined a PUG for the first time, I got massively destroyed and kicked soon after. And this was not my last kick!

Requiring some level of healing is not bad, and tankage would surely be a plus if we can have someone who the adds focus first as they have the toughness for example.

If raids end up being something you can do in full zerker, it will kill build diversity again, because people will want only zerkers. This seems to be a non-shared opinion, but I do hope defensive/supportive roles will be needed, so that you can play the same content hundreds of times with a different experience each time without slowing your team mates. So yes, I would dream of an optimal 10-party of the type:
2 clerics, 1 settler, 1 cele, 1 soldier, 1 rabid, 2 zerkers, 2 sinister

PVP and PVE have a completely different feeling to me, I much prefer the PVE side, I just want it harder and more complex. Making that does not mean it turns into PVP style.

Obviously I cannot go against that. We are all looking for different things in the game, and hopefully, raids will appeal to most of us.

Honestly, I think if there’s a thing people can do to make it faster/easier, Raids aren’t offering the pinnacle challenge they’re advertising.

It should take all of your everything just to win, a “more” beyond that just means the content isn’t properly encouraging operating at the skill ceiling.

What I’m hoping for is not just 1 attack every 3s, it’s like maybe an attack every second, one being an auto attack that’s a projectile so you need high uptime on reflects. Then a series of other attacks on longer cooldowns, some that are unblockable/evadeable with a focus on CC and low-moderate damage, then stuff that you need to avoid with possibly a mix of stuff you can only evade, block and/or use good positioning to avoid.

Faster is good, but I want the goal to be that if you play perfectly you can go through with far far glassier if not full glass builds. But I want it to be challenging that almost no one runs that because it’s nuts. Quick animation mid damage attacks as part of the skill set could do this as you’d want that healer to help bounce back from a failed dodge if you’re not great on reaction time. I want room mechanics that do have heavy attrition mechanics such that having a tankier person handle that mechanic would be the best idea but then when it comes back to the fight he’s doing less so an optimal group would potentially have to come up with a different strategy or a more optimized composition.

That’s what I want.

spoj.9672:

Well this is a huge relief.

Well, the reddit downvote brigade has spoken, and it seems my opinion was in the minority. I’m saddened by the news because I was pretty excited, but there are worse things that could happen, so whatever.

You don’t really spend development time crafting encounters to accommodate for those types, Jerus.

Encounter design doesn’t have to systematically pull it’s punches, that sort of folk doesn’t need the help and even actively resents the idea. In a sufficiently skill-based game, they just sort of…make themselves known.

butch.8136:

Its been clarified on reddit.

By Colin:
“You can swap between each encounter in the raid, or after a failed run – you cannot change your build mid-encounter by hanging on the edge of the encounter and getting out of combat. We’ve disabled that.
I think either Larry misunderstood my response, or I misinterpreted his question.”

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3j4313/pax_prime_2015_guild_wars_2_is_never_getting_a/

Well that is one way to settle things and shut people up.
/awkwardly crawls back into coffin

Vox Hollow.2736:

You don’t really spend development time crafting encounters to accommodate for those types, Jerus.

Encounter design doesn’t have to systematically pull it’s punches, that sort of folk doesn’t need the help and even actively resents the idea. In a sufficiently skill-based game, they just sort of…make themselves known.

It’s not about making it for them, I want it because that’s why I love this game, you can play easier and harder just built into the system. I don’t expect it to be easy at all to play it with tankier/more supportive builds, but I want the opportunity to shed it and go all out if you master it to that level. That’s what keeps me loving this game’s PVE.

I expect to ahve to be constantly moving, some moves being insta kills for full glass, I expect to take damage and have to do healing blasts in a water field quickly before that spot becomes a death zone.

I’m not sure ‘defense building as difficulty setting’ is really in the spirit of providing a penultimate challenge? Difficulty setting as a concept, full stop, really. The difficulty is set. It’s set at high.

Isn’t that the whole point of this all?

Vox Hollow.2736:

I’m not sure ‘defense building as difficulty setting’ is really in the spirit of providing a penultimate challenge? Difficulty setting as a concept, full stop, really. The difficulty is set. It’s high.

Isn’t that the whole point?

Do you for a second believe it’ll be there? I don’t, never seen a raid at that level ever. Design it for the top 10% and the top 2% are going to be bored fast. I can tell you right now if they design it to the peak of difficulty I’ll never be beating it. I’m no Sesshi or that level player.

So it has been confirmed by a Dev that the party will not be kicked when wiped.

@ Jerus
Are you saying: ‘lacking a means of adjusting personal difficulty via defense raises concerns about the accessibility of content?’
Am I on the right track, or totally offbase?

I kinda don’t mind being kicked, just not int he balls… I prefer to be the one doing the whippimg, tho. Right, raids.

Vox Hollow.2736:

@ Jerus
Are you saying: ‘lacking a means of adjusting personal difficulty via defense raises concerns about the accessibility of content?’
Am I on the right track, or totally offbase?

If a group from SC or vC or any of those top guilds don’t have room to further optimize from what the bare minimum is then there won’t be many people outside those select few beating it. Not that I have a problem with that, if it’s that challenging cool, I’ll have fun trying to beat it (assuming it doesn’t feel like PVP). But I’ve never done a raid at that level. I’ve done raids darn close, but in trinity games you have that power creep that after a week or two of getting new gear on some easier content that hard raid becomes noticeably easier and that’s where we feel the freedom to optimize and stack more damage for faster runs. Obviously GW2 doesn’t have that level of power creep, so we won’t get that, but then again even in those select few hard raids I’m thinking of they were still possible without it and had wiggle room. So if you wanted to sum me up in one line “I’ve yet to see a raid without wiggle room that allows more accessibility as well as further optimization”.

And as far as personal preference I love when you can come out of a fight unscathed, god it’s sweet. But, I want that to be hard enough that it’s actually out of reach of my personal skill level such that if I ever do accomplish it… ahh yeah.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

So it has been confirmed by a Dev that the party will not be kicked when wiped.

thats pretty obvious isnt it? it would be bad game design. if the content is halfway decent and challenging, you will wipe more than 10 times. probably around 50-60 times at least per boss. and now imagine you are fighting the third boss in the wing, you wipe, because its your first pull and you have to start all over again. how terrible and annoying would that be?

Jerus.4350:

Vox Hollow.2736:

I’m not sure ‘defense building as difficulty setting’ is really in the spirit of providing a penultimate challenge? Difficulty setting as a concept, full stop, really. The difficulty is set. It’s high.

Isn’t that the whole point?

Do you for a second believe it’ll be there? I don’t, never seen a raid at that level ever. Design it for the top 10% and the top 2% are going to be bored fast. I can tell you right now if they design it to the peak of difficulty I’ll never be beating it. I’m no Sesshi or that level player.

you dont have to be. raiding and killing ez mode bosses solo and fast are two different things with completely different requirements and speedrunning experience or solo stuff isnt going to help alot….. if the content is good.

They absolutely are different, but I’m not going to sit here and say that people like Abe aren’t simply better players than I really ever could hope to be. I don’t have the reaction time and finger dexterity to keep up. If the raid is made so you have to be that good, well it’ll be quite a while till I beat it if I ever do, and I’m fine with that, but just saying I haven’t seen one like that yet in any game. Even in Wildstar do you think everyone in your raid was equally skilled maximizing absolutely everything?

I’ve been able to beat all content in every MMO I’ve played, but it’s not because I was the best player out there but because the content was designed below the absolute peak of skill and I was above that minimum bar.

If it’s designed such that it’s above my skill level, if it’s still fun, I’ll enjoy every minute of banging my head on it, I just want to be clear that I’m not advocating for easier stuff, I’m just saying I haven’t seen content that requires absolute peak performance such that it never gets easier even when the strats are known (I don’t consider figuring out the strats to be part of the difficulty, it’s the puzzle, eventually it’s figured out, it is a big part of the fun though).

skill wont matter that much. if you can stay alive and do the mechanics you will do just as well as players who seem to be king to you. there are other things that are far more important in progression raiding or raiding in general.

attitude and atmosphere in your guild is far more important for example than having all of the good players.
you can be pretty sure that some of the people who you probably consider to be better than you will actually be the reason why their guild wont get world first.
many people in gw2 have inflated egos from running ez mode content solo or fast over the years and their egos will be the reason why some guilds are going to be on self destruction, and other guilds that no one knows will be really good.

@Jerus
I don’t suppose you’d have any other non-straight-RPG experiences I could build an example around? I actually don’t have any Wildstar experience, so that’s not much good.

NoTrigger.8396:

skill wont matter that much. if you can stay alive and do the mechanics you will do just as well as players who seem to be king to you. there are other things that are far more important in progression raiding or raiding in general.

attitude and atmosphere in your guild is far more important for example than having all of the good players.
you can be pretty sure that some of the people who you probably consider to be better than you will actually be the reason why their guild wont get world first.
many people in gw2 have inflated egos from running ez mode content solo or fast over the years and their egos will be the reason why some guilds are going to be on self destruction, and other guilds that no one knows will be really good.

You don’t have to tell me twice about that I’ve been around and done well over 10 years of raiding in other games. Drama can ruin things fast for sure. But if the personal skill aspect isn’t requiring to be the best you can possibly be, playing to absolute perfection, then it isn’t that theoretical absolute challenge. That’s all I’ve been trying to say. I think there will be wiggle room as every raid I’ve ever done has had it, and after we completed the content and got it mastered we began tweaking for optimization just for fun.

Vox Hollow.2736:

@Jerus
I don’t suppose you’d have any other non-straight-RPG experiences I could build an example around? I actually don’t have any Wildstar experience, so that’s not much good.

I haven’t done Wildstar raiding seen some videos, used it as an example because I know noTrigger plays it. My main ones were EQ and DCUO, dabbled in others but never got to that top tier level in any others.

Can’t really think of any examples of what you’re talking about though. Are there any raids in other things?

the challenge in raiding comes from learning complex stuff fast and finding answers and patterns + the teamplay. its possible to make bosses so hard that no one will ever kill them without challenging the individual player.

for example this fight doesnt require much individual skill. but in the second phase the coordination and teamplay required is so insane, that no one except enigma killed this boss in this form. and every other guild and even the devs said its impossible to kill it.

you have to kill all orbs before you run out of shields, players will get rooted, if the roots overlap the players will die. if like 2 players die you wont have enough dps. the only way to protect the players with the roots is using a shield. each player has 1 shield which can be used once, the flame wave one shots everything, unless you use a shield.

Didn’t they also include some hard mode optionals for bosses as well? That would be so neat if ported into GW2.

You recon they will increase partysize to 10?

NoTrigger.8396:

the challenge in raiding comes from learning complex stuff fast and finding answers and patterns + the teamplay. its possible to make bosses so hard that no one will ever kill them without challenging the individual player.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qIVkFINBSQ

for example this fight doesnt require much individual skill. but in the second phase the coordination and teamplay required is so insane, that no one except enigma killed this boss in this form. and every other guild and even the devs said its impossible to kill it.

you have to kill all orbs before you run out of shields, players will get rooted, if the roots overlap the players will die. if like 2 players die you wont have enough dps. the only way to protect the players with the roots is using a shield. each player has 1 shield which can be used once, the flame wave one shots everything, unless you use a shield.

Remember that this is ArenaNet and they don’t do things like typical MMOs. You can’t already compare GW2 raids to “typical” raids like Wildstar and WoW. They are going to be very different.

NoTrigger.8396:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

So it has been confirmed by a Dev that the party will not be kicked when wiped.

thats pretty obvious isnt it? it would be bad game design. if the content is halfway decent and challenging, you will wipe more than 10 times. probably around 50-60 times at least per boss. and now imagine you are fighting the third boss in the wing, you wipe, because its your first pull and you have to start all over again. how terrible and annoying would that be?

Guild Wars 1 did this in it’s Elite Areas (and to an extent, all Hard Mode areas) and it was great! You actually had to keep your kitten together to survive. The difficulty of these areas was also very high, so high that the first time I entered DoA I wiped on the first pack of trash mobs.

NoTrigger.8396:

the challenge in raiding comes from learning complex stuff fast and finding answers and patterns + the teamplay. its possible to make bosses so hard that no one will ever kill them without challenging the individual player.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qIVkFINBSQ

for example this fight doesnt require much individual skill. but in the second phase the coordination and teamplay required is so insane, that no one except enigma killed this boss in this form. and every other guild and even the devs said its impossible to kill it.

you have to kill all orbs before you run out of shields, players will get rooted, if the roots overlap the players will die. if like 2 players die you wont have enough dps. the only way to protect the players with the roots is using a shield. each player has 1 shield which can be used once, the flame wave one shots everything, unless you use a shield.

Cool stuff, you got me there, I did downplay the value of organization a bit too much, guess my brain is stuck on GW2 where it’s kind of “learn your job and execute it” without that need to communicate on who’s going to handle it as the situation changes. Reading/seeing that reminds me of some old raids. Closest we have in this game is Simin’s paralysis but of course that can be nullified with a well timed stability, no need for communication (though it helps).

So I assume you use your shield to defend whoever gets stuck in a bad spot, trying to save yours by hitting that gap aye?

All I can say is that I am looking forward to this. The more challenge, the better.
My guildies share my mindset and we as a guild already have discussions going what we expect.

I hope that there will be a focus on teamplay and team synergy. Rewards are another thing I put my hopes in but well, we know what the current rewarding system is like..
Anyways, cool move from Anet’s side, really looking forward to october 23rd.

Silverkey.2078:

Jerus.4350:

If the raids play more like PVP than current PVE they might as well not exist to me, I won’t be doing them.

But a gameplay where you can’t face tank everything, where some people will need to spec defensively to carry the group, where you will need all skills in your bar to succeed etc… sorry, but that is the least I expect from raids.

Yeah…. because Zerkers are the ones facetanking stuff.

Seriously you just want to be able to “tank” in a no-trinity MMO. Don’t bullkitten around, that’s all you want to achieve in here. And that’s okay, but don’t claim it to be the “better” solution or even the most skillfull decision. Even if you say you should specc defensively and not be able to facetank, what’s the point? What is this obsession with wanting extra defensive stats to carry you, instead of depending on your own actions?

The fact is that it is easier to be specced defensively and rely on passive defense stats to carry you rather than be specced offensively and rely on reacting through active defenses.

Guess which one is the more engaging and active. Hint: not the facetanking one.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

What is this obsession with wanting extra defensive stats

bc zerkmeta is nogood

I haven’t any obsession with wanting extra defensive stats, but I do want the raid to be challenging enough that it forces us to consider defensive traits that provide pure utility and no bonus damage. I want the content to be hard enough that we consider trait lines we otherwise ignore because PvE is currently super easy, and if the need for passive defense is so great that we even consider defensive stat combinations then that’s great too. I don’t want to see 10 people running the absolute highest DPS loadouts, and what I’d like to see is a number of different classes getting a slot in the raid because of some key utility they offer better than other options while still retaining respectable DPS.

I want there to be sacrifices to DPS and classic PvE strategy that have to be made for us to succeed. Those sacrifices and that planning is a huge part of what makes raids fun for me.

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Silverkey.2078:

But a gameplay where you can’t face tank everything, where some people will need to spec defensively to carry the group, where you will need all skills in your bar to succeed etc… sorry, but that is the least I expect from raids.

Yeah…. because Zerkers are the ones facetanking stuff.

Seriously you just want to be able to “tank” in a no-trinity MMO. Don’t bullkitten around, that’s all you want to achieve in here. And that’s okay, but don’t claim it to be the “better” solution or even the most skillfull decision. Even if you say you should specc defensively and not be able to facetank, what’s the point? What is this obsession with wanting extra defensive stats to carry you, instead of depending on your own actions?

The fact is that it is easier to be specced defensively and rely on passive defense stats to carry you rather than be specced offensively and rely on reacting through active defenses.

Guess which one is the more engaging and active. Hint: not the facetanking one.

The current PvE content allows you to facetank with zerkers, that is what I mean. You can for sure facetank it even more with defensive stats. Actually in the current dungeons, defensive stats may even be harder because you take more time to kill.

I don’t want to use the defensive stats to be able to facetank. I seriously hope facetanking will be impossible. I just think the content will be so that you just won’t survive without some of the team speccing defensive AND playing very actively, blocking/dodging/evading the deadliest skills but necessarily still absorbing a lot of damage and outhealing it. So the game will be impossible in a full zerker setting and extremely challenging if you have an optimal composition, and this optimal composition will involve some people in very defensive/supporty builds.

The reason why in PvP defensive builds are not necessarily easier is that offensive builds will often be used in a +1 situation with the possibility to disengage whenever the situation is not at your advantage while the defensive builds will be expected to defend the point in a 1v2 and sometimes (for a short time) 1v3, until the bulk of the team arrives.
This kind of mechanics is something they definitely can implement in a “defend blablabla” event where you have to play an unwinnable fight just to buy time for the rest of the team or a NPC.

These roles are fun to play and allow build diversity and replayability.

Silverkey.2078:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Silverkey.2078:

But a gameplay where you can’t face tank everything, where some people will need to spec defensively to carry the group, where you will need all skills in your bar to succeed etc… sorry, but that is the least I expect from raids.

Yeah…. because Zerkers are the ones facetanking stuff.

Seriously you just want to be able to “tank” in a no-trinity MMO. Don’t bullkitten around, that’s all you want to achieve in here. And that’s okay, but don’t claim it to be the “better” solution or even the most skillfull decision. Even if you say you should specc defensively and not be able to facetank, what’s the point? What is this obsession with wanting extra defensive stats to carry you, instead of depending on your own actions?

The fact is that it is easier to be specced defensively and rely on passive defense stats to carry you rather than be specced offensively and rely on reacting through active defenses.

Guess which one is the more engaging and active. Hint: not the facetanking one.

The current PvE content allows you to facetank with zerkers, that is what I mean. You can for sure facetank it even more with defensive stats. Actually in the current dungeons, defensive stats may even be harder because you take more time to kill.

I don’t want to use the defensive stats to be able to facetank. I seriously hope facetanking will be impossible. I just think the content will be so that you just won’t survive without some of the team speccing defensive. So the game will be impossible in a full zerker setting and extremely challenging if you have an optimal composition, and this optimal composition will involve some people in very defensive/supporty builds.

The reason why in PvP defensive builds are not necessarily easier is that offensive builds will often be used in a +1 situation with the possibility to disengage whenever the situation is not at your advantage while the defensive builds will be expected to defend the point in a 1v2 and sometimes (for a short time) 1v3, until the bulk of the team arrives.
This kind of mechanics is something they definitely can implement in a “defend blablabla” event where you have to play an unwinnable fight just to buy time for the rest of the team or a NPC.

These roles are fun to play and allow build diversity and replayability.

Haha, no.

You don’t know what facetanking is.

I’ll help you : facetanking is a concept about not avoiding or blocking damages EVER, but rather take it with high vitality or thoughness. If you prefer, we can say you are mitigiating the damage so much, that you don’t ever need to actively avoid it.

People in Berserker, exept for War in some auto attack chains (and after the said chain, either heal/avoid/die) CAN NOT facetank.

Facetanking defined: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMltxyvAvo

dlonie.6547:

Facetanking defined: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMltxyvAvo

There. Thanks mate.

Kordash.2197:

Silverkey.2078:

The current PvE content allows you to facetank with zerkers, that is what I mean. You can for sure facetank it even more with defensive stats. Actually in the current dungeons, defensive stats may even be harder because you take more time to kill.

I don’t want to use the defensive stats to be able to facetank. I seriously hope facetanking will be impossible. I just think the content will be so that you just won’t survive without some of the team speccing defensive. So the game will be impossible in a full zerker setting and extremely challenging if you have an optimal composition, and this optimal composition will involve some people in very defensive/supporty builds.

The reason why in PvP defensive builds are not necessarily easier is that offensive builds will often be used in a +1 situation with the possibility to disengage whenever the situation is not at your advantage while the defensive builds will be expected to defend the point in a 1v2 and sometimes (for a short time) 1v3, until the bulk of the team arrives.
This kind of mechanics is something they definitely can implement in a “defend blablabla” event where you have to play an unwinnable fight just to buy time for the rest of the team or a NPC.

These roles are fun to play and allow build diversity and replayability.

Haha, no.

You don’t know what facetanking is.

I’ll help you : facetanking is a concept about not avoiding or blocking damages EVER, but rather take it with high vitality or thoughness. If you prefer, we can say you are mitigiating the damage so much, that you don’t ever need to actively avoid it.

People in Berserker, exept for War in some auto attack chains (and after the said chain, either heal/avoid/die) CAN NOT facetank.

A big chunk of current dungeons can be done facetanking, especially trash mobs (those few that aren’t skipped). Then some bosses do indeed require some active defenses.

Having high vitality and toughness does NOT imply facetanking. Gw2 is designed so that passive defense will never be enough to survive in a real fight. But in a well designed encounter (which atm means only PvP), active defenses are not enough either and you need the passive toughness and healing to survive the amount of damage that was unavoidable. Sure, if you only play PvE with the enemy attacking once every 3s, you can dodge/evade/block most skills, so the devs even had to add unblockable attacks to make it somewhat challenging. But when you have more typical situations with attacks coming permanently at you, you focus your active defenses (which in PvP also include CC, blinds and other debuffing) on a few dangerous attacks (rapid fire, hundred blades, mind wrack etc…) and slowly absorb the rest. That is NOT facetanking.

Actually a big chunk of current dungeons are done where bosses are disabled and does nothing.

In short : i wanna tank in a game that isn’t designed for it.

Nope.

Please do the whole dungeons trash mobs with no dodge/active defense in Zerk. And post a video showing it.

Kordash.2197:

In short : i wanna tank in a game that isn’t designed for it.

Who said that exactly?

I think there is still a massive confusion about what “no hard trinity” means. Tanking still exist, although usually you don’t “just tank”, you also support. The difference of gw2 compared to others is:

• a class does not have a specific role. You can (in principle) play a DPS role or a supportive role with all classes. Classes differ in the way to do it only.
• you don’t have pure tanking or pure healing or pure offense, you have a spectrum of possibilities.
• tanking is not facetanking as most of your survivability comes from active playing. In the same way, healing is not just about looking at your team UI and clicking on the one currently low. Every role is just as fun to play.

If you look at gear prefix, you do realize there is something else than berserker (incredible huh?), if you look at specializations, you see that while the 2 first lines are mostly offensive, the 2 next ones are mostly defensive/supportive and the last one usually has options for all styles. So yes, the game is created around the possibility to tank or simply to add a bit more defenses (passive AND active) to your character while remaining mainly offensive if it is what you want/need.

Silverkey.2078:

The current PvE content allows you to facetank with zerkers, that is what I mean. You can for sure facetank it even more with defensive stats. Actually in the current dungeons, defensive stats may even be harder because you take more time to kill.

This is facetanking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1mxlA13ICk

Try that with Zerker will you?

You can have “defensive” roles without forcing tank gear down people’s throats. Example? Warrior with mace/sword, blocking and dodging. New Daredevil probably. ETC.

Silverkey.2078:

If you look at gear prefix, you do realize there is something else than berserker (incredible huh?

I keep saying this. GW2 PvE should never had stats on gear. It confuses some players (such as yourself, more familiarized with traditional MMOs) about the real purpose of GW2 combat: active. Not passive.

They created gear stats mainly because of PvP, otherwise you would have statless gear in PvE just like GW1

I’m really looking forward to raids and I’d really like to try them as soon as possible Err… don’t expect me to be very good at them though

Kordash.2197:

In short : i wanna tank in a game that isn’t designed for it.

Nope.

Please do the whole dungeons trash mobs with no dodge/active defense in Zerk. And post a video showing it.

In short: i didn’t read anything but poop in the thread, tho

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

You can have “defensive” roles without forcing tank gear down people’s throats. Example? Warrior with mace/sword, blocking and dodging. New Daredevil probably. ETC.

Yes you can, this is a strength of gw2. Technically, I don’t care about the gear, I care about the playstyle. If you think about it, the only gear stat that helps support is “healing power” and it scales poorly to be honest. Most of support is from boons and conditions which scale only with duration, something which is provided mostly by runes and food (and revenant :p ).
But that is precisely the point, the playstyle (and how fun it is) is not defined by the gear, the gear only provides efficiency in one or another playstyle. So if clerics proves more efficient than berserker for a specific playstyle, why would that be a terrible thing?

I keep saying this. GW2 PvE should never had stats on gear. It confuses some players (such as yourself, more familiarized with traditional MMOs) about the real purpose of GW2 combat: active. Not passive.

They created gear stats mainly because of PvP, otherwise you would have statless gear in PvE just like GW1

Which is odd since you have much fewer gear stats in PvP than PvE.
I don’t think it’s confusing: the build (weapons/utilities/traits) defines the playstyle and the gear accentuates its strength. Example: yesterday there was a PvP necromancer tournament. Defensive gears are forbidden there. Well people used their usual build (minion master in this case) but switched to an offensive gear. The defensive gear is still better with MM, in PvP, but marauder works and the playstyle is the same.

So ultimately I don’t care which gear people will use, and nobody should. But at the end, if the content is hard, defensive gear will most likely be a part of it.

I’d rather prefer a content where you have to sacrifice traits, traitline and spec into more utility/support oriented builds – skills too. Example: the new guardian bores me, I don’t like the new radiance, I barely tolerate virtues, I wanna be able to spec honor, take that amazingly oh-so-compact symbol trait and feel a lil more like supporting without people eyeing me, muttering under their breath on how I’m missing the 20% bonus of UC (and when do you manage to keep it in low-man fracs outside of molten, I wonder?) or the bane signet trait.
Another thing about radiance: I LOATHE the “new” signet trait you sometimes have to take for the increased effectiveness of bane signet. Well, I hate bane signet too. I hate spirits. I hate banners. I hate any skill that is just there, you see, the kind of skill you lay down… and, well? kinda forget about.
Adding to what I said above, I also learned to dislike defensive stats for the exact same reasons.

I want more ACTIVE content. More dodging, more positioning and trashmobs control (a thing I really see only in arah or fracs, barely…), more utilities that have to be used with good reflexes in reaction to a skill; I also want proactiveness, decision making, cd management (to, say, keep perma stability for as long as possible, or dosing it for the aether fract last boss) and bosses having multiple skills so they’re a little more unpredictable; I don’t wanna be a guardian and go like “well, I don’t need this, I don’t need that, I don’t need anything, lemme just take bane signet”. What the hell is the point, then?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do more dps and speccing for full damage, and I completely understand that it’s just a symptom of the content becoming old and being.. not that hard to begin with (even though I feel like high level fracs and arah are in a good spot for a casual game): for these reasons – and for the fact that I’ve always liked playing well, I don’t mind “bending” under the meta. The thing is, I don’t enjoy it that much. I’d like to see the difficulty upped in a way that requires… I’ve already said that. Mostly looots of team synergy, like in gw1.

I’m not opposite to mild healing at all, but first I want zealot’s gear to be made less ridiculously expensive <.<
kitten tanking. Seriously, kitten tanking.

So much agree Gabe, so much.

That’s my fear is that we’ll just be forced to take a lot of more passive things, that’s not the game I fell in love with. I want to build a set of defensive gear because I find myself unable to keep up actively, be it because I screwed up in my dodge/block rotation or because projectil defense had a gap in it. I do want some healing both to help counter that but also to deal with certain mechanics that require quick responses (think old tom but harder/more punishing). I want effects like Simin that require some team response. I want adds that come rushing in to destroy something where we have to respond quickly and keep them away while we whittle them down, not blow them up, maintaining blinds on them and interrupting the “unblindable” deadly channel effects while avoiding the fields from the boss/adds/room. I want rotating fields (when you look at rev’s new projectile block skill on hammer it looks like they can do the things like you see in noTrigger’s video of that rotating field on that boss). I want to have to keep on the move, no free casting outside certain times (when you break the breakbar?).

I want the difficulty to be about actively responding to each situation, not slapping on tanky gear because it’s required to survive. I want this game’s PVE to be taken to the next level, not transformed into their beloved PVP.

dutchiez.7502:

Remember that this is ArenaNet and they don’t do things like typical MMOs. You can’t already compare GW2 raids to “typical” raids like Wildstar and WoW. They are going to be very different.

i agree they are doing alot of things different than other mmos. but there will be alot of stuff in encounter design that people have seen in other mmos before already.

did you watch the raid trailer with the dps til last second and then jump off before the big nuke hits thing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68JGdWZng8k

the only difference here is that the boss is shielded and not the room. and when the shield is removed you will have to cc the boss in gw2 when you land on the platform again, the boss will be cced automatically in wildstar after the shield is gone.
and then there will be moment of opportunity.

some mechanics will probably be exactly the same. some might be new with parts that look familiar at least.

Jerus.4350:

So I assume you use your shield to defend whoever gets stuck in a bad spot, trying to save yours by hitting that gap aye?

yes. but if a player who is rooted is in the gap, then you have to shield him for the next wave, because the shield also removes the roots, after the flame wave hits it.

If a raid requires healing, I don’t want to be forced to have a Cleric’s on my party. I want the more active alternative: I want people to merge together when the healing time is needed, someone drops a water field and others blast it, filling the party’s health.

That is such a better and more beautiful concept to me than having a clerics shout healer warrior spamming shouts off cooldown to heal.

Where less skilled groups/players will pick the easy way out: gear, to solve their problems, while still allowing skilled players to be able to perform the content without resorting to passive stats. That’s really what I want. Keeps everyone happy.

Aye makes sense No Trigger, like you said different games use things from other games, advance them and tweak them to fit. That shield thing doesn’t sound all that different from some old EQ mechanics with doom triggers and bane items, something like the two combined with an environmental mechanic added in.

So, been thinking about how GW2 would do its raids, how they would prompt diverse builds, thinking outside the box…

This are a couple of things I think they are hinting at:

- We already know about the Breakbar, and we can all assume at some points during the encounter people will have to ‘PRESS THE CC’ together to stop some raid-wipe attacks. That’s nothing new. However, I can see something where the Breakbar acts differently with the encounter boss channeling a different action. For instance, during the boss’s frontal cone that cleaves everything in front of it, breaking the bar will not quite CC the beast but make it suspectible to TAUNT, thus said Taunt player, let’s call him ‘Not Wearing Berserker’, will taunt the boss away from the rest of the raid for the duration of the channel and take the cleave and possibly live. It’s not tanking its Control, you control the encounter so you don’t fail.

- Support is practically everything from buffs to offensive support like blinds or reflects, etc. Perhaps some phases you will need to have a few ‘reflectors’ go to certain points on the map to reflect a projectile back at the boss to make it vulnerable to attack. Maybe even have someone, Guardian with Shield (Just bear with me here) will have to use a Shield of Absorption to cover the raid for a very long barrage of attacks coming from above rather than a line in front of the raid.

- Damage is well, I don’t even think we need to talk about that.

I guess we will have to see. The key to all of this is that despite the ease of access to raiding, you have to make the raid enjoyable. I don’t see these boss encounters being too rigid in their attack patterns, they will probably mix it up quite a lot.

Sykper.6583:

For instance, during the boss’s frontal cone that cleaves everything in front of it, breaking the bar will not quite CC the beast but make it suspectible to TAUNT, thus said Taunt player, let’s call him ‘Not Wearing Berserker’, will taunt the boss away from the rest of the raid for the duration of the channel and take the cleave and possibly live.

I hope the mechanics don’t end up being that specific (only susceptible to taunt) … it’s a bit too close to being forced to use certain builds, which takes creativity away from the players.

You shouldn’t expect sincerely challenging Raids to only be approachable to some Frankenstein’s Monster of every feat of strength you see on youtube. In order to explain that, it helps to think of people’s skill in terms of Tiers instead of Percentages.

Thinking in terms of Percentages implies the game population distributes along the skill curve totally evenly. That’s not really how it works. Skill curves are meant to be climbed: and while it’s true not everybody makes it to the top – hardly anybody idles at the bottom.

Tiers are a nice concept because they acknowledge we have a tendency to ‘clump’ along the skill curve. Progress doesn’t happen in these neat 1% increments; but in leaps that are tied to events like our sudden understanding of a foundational concept or achieving muscle memory.

The ‘top tier’ of this game can be alot more populated than you’d think because most skill ceilings are the result of a mechanical absolute and not your biological limit as a human being.* It has alot of potential once encounters more fully engage the combat system offering encouragement to progress up the curve, as well as challenging your other mental skillsets so there’s ‘more things you can be good at’.

/* probably bears some explaining.
It doesn’t matter if you can headshot somebody in an FPS, when aiming in this game means using massively huge AOE reticules. Games don’t always allow you to express your full capability. For better or worse, skill ceilings put us all on a more even playing-field and make it easier for devs to design encounters because they have some vauge idea of what you can do.

Totally agree Vox, and what I was trying to get at earlier. I highly doubt it will tune at the absolute maximum, but I hope it will advance PVE past whatit is at.

And here I sit, wishing for mini instances in which you can solo epic bosses without having to do half a dungeon full of crappy hp bags just to get to your favourite encounter…