Guild Wars 2

Why are we not allowed to use reflects on bosses?

They are a legit skill used in the correct ways, but more and more bosses we no longer can use on.

Definace and non reflects make bosses no fun or no reason to use mechanics, just melee and zerk done before we are killed, on fighting the new AC 2 (andTA up) the more zerk the better b.c we take less damage, skills like Shield block, endure pain, guard/mesmer invul, thief/mes evades are all enough to not get hit.

IMO:
Letting CC skills and reflects be more useful but giving Bosses a MUCH higher AI and dodge mechanics would be a much more challenging fight and more fun, also will change the meta.

Because this week ANet feels like reflects shouldn’t work.

“Challenge” isn’t the aim. Just boost HP and remove high-damage attacks, because time == fun.

Inb4 they make Lupi attacks not reflect able

At max, malrona is no longer reflect able

Flood control so stronk.

Wait, what? Some small spiders are no longer reflectable, but that’s the only thing, right? I haven’t heard anyone complaining about the ACp2 boss, which you can famously reflect to death in seconds (or Lupi, for example).

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Inb4 they make Lupi attacks not reflect able

ikr? Given how much Q_Q there is over Lupi, I’m really surprised that Malrona got kittened instead of Das Lupicus. I’ve never, ever heard anyone complain about Malrona. Maybe it was the damage boost you got from getting poisoned by her that prioritized this?

dlonie.6547:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Inb4 they make Lupi attacks not reflect able

ikr? Given how much Q_Q there is over Lupi, I’m really surprised that Malrona got kittened instead of Das Lupicus. I’ve never, ever heard anyone complain about Malrona. Maybe it was the damage boost you got from getting poisoned by her that prioritized this?

For all we know poison damage boost is also a bug.

I think they have seen Joey’s “solo”.

At this rate they might as well remove reflects from the game because obviously they don’t like it and are just making more things unreflectable.

Reflects are fine and exist in other games including MMORPGs.

What is not fine is to halve the hp of a single boss by reflecting his projectiles. If such thing would happen in any other MMO (say wow), the servers would be shut down and this issue would be immediately hotfixed.

The thing is, damage mitigation with reflects is likely not implemented in gw2, leading to this ankward situation where the reflect skills are either godlike or useless.

And let’s face it, I don’t like seeing content designed for 5 being soloed because of godlike reflects or FGS or bad level design.

That’s my opinion anyway…

VodCom.6924:

Reflects are fine and exist in other games including MMORPGs.

What is not fine is to halve the hp of a single boss by reflecting his projectiles. If such thing would happen in any other MMO (say wow), the servers would be shut down and this issue would be immediately hotfixed.

The thing is, damage mitigation with reflects is likely not implemented in gw2, leading to this ankward situation where the reflect skills are either godlike or useless.

And let’s face it, I don’t like seeing content designed for 5 being soloed because of godlike reflects or FGS or bad level design.

That’s my opinion anyway…

Dungeons can be soloed without FGS or reflects. These players are just skilled

CuRtoKy.8576:

VodCom.6924:

Reflects are fine and exist in other games including MMORPGs.

What is not fine is to halve the hp of a single boss by reflecting his projectiles. If such thing would happen in any other MMO (say wow), the servers would be shut down and this issue would be immediately hotfixed.

The thing is, damage mitigation with reflects is likely not implemented in gw2, leading to this ankward situation where the reflect skills are either godlike or useless.

And let’s face it, I don’t like seeing content designed for 5 being soloed because of godlike reflects or FGS or bad level design.

That’s my opinion anyway…

Dungeons can be soloed without FGS or reflects. These players are just skilled at finding loopholes

Then we agree that dungeons are “badly designed” because they are not able to provide an actual challenge to groups (since they can be soloed).

Fractals on the other hand are much better : you actually need a party to complete them.

I wouldn’t argue against a reduction in damage for reflected projectiles against bosses but I think there’s an issue where taking reflects out of a lot of fights reduces the type of complexity that makes dungeons interesting.

As someone else pointed out, knowing which bosses you can use refelcts on, and when you need to switch to absorbs is becoming too inconsistent.

I’m pretty sure you have people in WoW and Tera who solo instances. It’s nothing to do with bad design, it’s mastering content and learning how to do it yourself.

VodCom.6924:

Fractals on the other hand are much better : you actually need a party to complete them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Full-Solo-Lvl-50-FotM-D/first

VodCom.6924:

CuRtoKy.8576:

VodCom.6924:

Reflects are fine and exist in other games including MMORPGs.

What is not fine is to halve the hp of a single boss by reflecting his projectiles. If such thing would happen in any other MMO (say wow), the servers would be shut down and this issue would be immediately hotfixed.

The thing is, damage mitigation with reflects is likely not implemented in gw2, leading to this ankward situation where the reflect skills are either godlike or useless.

And let’s face it, I don’t like seeing content designed for 5 being soloed because of godlike reflects or FGS or bad level design.

That’s my opinion anyway…

Dungeons can be soloed without FGS or reflects. These players are just skilled at finding loopholes

Then we agree that dungeons are “badly designed” because they are not able to provide an actual challenge to groups (since they can be soloed).

Fractals on the other hand are much better : you actually need a party to complete them.

All due respect, but from your statement, it seems to me that you haven’t pug’d Arah. If I’m wrong I apologize, but I pug for fun (I’m an arah junkie…. SOMEONE HELP ME!!!!!) and time and time again I have to solo a boss when everyone’s bit the dust. Arah is plenty challenging for people who haven’t done it a bunch of times.

As for Fractals, there’s a video where Purple Miku solos a lvl 50 fractal. It can be done. Granted, there are some instances that you need a party, i.e. dredge, but soloing fractals IS possible.

I don’t think that every dungeon is “badly designed”, but due to a stagnation of the content that only sees a developer’s hand when hidden “fixes” come into play, the casual player wallows in their mediocrity while the good ones continue to make it look easy.

Lucas.9157:

VodCom.6924:

Fractals on the other hand are much better : you actually need a party to complete them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Full-Solo-Lvl-50-FotM-D/first

Quoting from OP of the thread linked : “I don’t know if anyone has done this yet but I probably won’t ever do it again because the chances of getting the fractals that I did are so low it’s insane.”

My respect for this guy, he deserves a special award. I still maintain my statement : fractals are not soloable (he had one guildy to allow him to repair) and not regularly (you need a good draw).

He could have used Instant Repair Canisters…

VodCom.6924:

Lucas.9157:

VodCom.6924:

Fractals on the other hand are much better : you actually need a party to complete them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Full-Solo-Lvl-50-FotM-D/first

Quoting from OP of the thread linked : “I don’t know if anyone has done this yet but I probably won’t ever do it again because the chances of getting the fractals that I did are so low it’s insane.”

My respect for this guy, he deserves a special award. I still maintain my statement : fractals are not soloable (he had one guildy to allow him to repair) and not regularly (you need a good draw).

person – “here is a guy who soloed fotm 50”
you – “fractals are not soloable”
me -

….

VodCom.6924:

Then we agree that dungeons are “badly designed” because they are not able to provide an actual challenge to groups (since they can be soloed).

Fractals on the other hand are much better : you actually need a party to complete them.

Counterargument: http://www.twitch.tv/purpleishawt/c/4277337

What’s wrong with soloing…?

maha.7902:

VodCom.6924:

Lucas.9157:

VodCom.6924:

Fractals on the other hand are much better : you actually need a party to complete them.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Full-Solo-Lvl-50-FotM-D/first

Quoting from OP of the thread linked : “I don’t know if anyone has done this yet but I probably won’t ever do it again because the chances of getting the fractals that I did are so low it’s insane.”

My respect for this guy, he deserves a special award. I still maintain my statement : fractals are not soloable (he had one guildy to allow him to repair) and not regularly (you need a good draw).

person – “here is a guy who soloed fotm 50”
you – “fractals are not soloable”
me -

….

He’s clearly clueless.

VodCom.6924:

fractals are not soloable (he had one guildy to allow him to repair) and not regularly (you need a good draw).

Erm, you know there’s plenty of things in dungeons that can’t be solod right?

Legendary Shoggroth and Simin, High Priestess of Dwayna are good examples of things that require others for. For Shoggroth you can’t do it with less than 4 people. For Simin you require only 1 other person to help lure sparks if done properly.

There’s a lot of other things in dungeons, like CoF gate controllers etc, that can’t be done soloing too. It’s not just fractals that have anti-solo mechanics.

Quetz.4389:

As someone else pointed out, knowing which bosses you can use refelcts on, and when you need to switch to absorbs is becoming too inconsistent.

It’s honestly really annoying to me from a game design perspective because rule consistency is #1 if not close to it.

easier to just turn off our skill, than adjust reflect damage….or GASP, improve /alter boss behavior and attack patterns.

just a terrible ninja nerf……lazy and indefensible solution to a non-problem.

who knew a “tooltip patch” could suck so hard.

I understand and agree with it being a bit over the top to be able to nearly 1-shot a boss by reflecting a certain attack, but it’s kind of stupid to make things that were reflectable unreflectable altogether. With that kind of change then I can see mesmers losing their places in dungeons more and more

Guess nerfing reflects for Lupi is the next thing. I’m honestly surprised Malrona was ninja patched but Lupicus wasn’t.

I assume pugging Malrona now will just be everyone safe ranging it with horrible DPS, kitten .

They probably didn’t nerf it at Lupicus because the dungeon itself is dreadful to get past in pugs anyways. The amount of people that struggle desperately to get past Lupicus is still very high…

If they change anything with Lupicus, I want them to fix the stupid glitch where he keeps resetting if you wall him without attacking him first.

The lack of consistency is really frustrating. +1 for just scaling reflects sanely and making all projectiles behave the same.

I’ll cry if they make even more stuff unreflectable. I just got my mesmer his ascended assassins set with ranger runes :C.

petyr baelish.9675:

I’ll cry if they make even more stuff unreflectable. I just got my mesmer his ascended assassins set with ranger runes :C.

Here, let me help you park it at the nearest JP.

:)

VodCom.6924:

Reflects are fine and exist in other games including MMORPGs.

What is not fine is to halve the hp of a single boss by reflecting his projectiles.

I basically agree with this. However, I’m worried that the approach taken by ANet leads more towards destroying the usefulness of reflects. I think that reflects should still work on bosses, but damage caused by reflect skills is capped at a certain amount of damage based on the player’s attributes.

VodCom.6924:

CuRtoKy.8576:

VodCom.6924:

Reflects are fine and exist in other games including MMORPGs.

What is not fine is to halve the hp of a single boss by reflecting his projectiles. If such thing would happen in any other MMO (say wow), the servers would be shut down and this issue would be immediately hotfixed.

The thing is, damage mitigation with reflects is likely not implemented in gw2, leading to this ankward situation where the reflect skills are either godlike or useless.

And let’s face it, I don’t like seeing content designed for 5 being soloed because of godlike reflects or FGS or bad level design.

That’s my opinion anyway…

Dungeons can be soloed without FGS or reflects. These players are just skilled at finding loopholes

Then we agree that dungeons are “badly designed” because they are not able to provide an actual challenge to groups (since they can be soloed).

Fractals on the other hand are much better : you actually need a party to complete them.

If you edit at least make an acknowledgement of that fact.

Soloable =/= badly designed. Solos can match a lot of PuG clear times. That just shows how weak or unreliable PuGs are.

Fractals are solo able depending on your roll and skill.

Also, name these loopholes you speak of.

The wall of reflection against Malrona was a double edged sword anyway.Sure you were safe behind the wall (mostly), but it also put up a massive light field, which 80% of the time led to your poison being cleansed and the loss of that huge damage buff.

Projectile absorption as it is in the game can never be balanced, its either very op or very up. Thats tied to the core of this games design, no easy fix to that.

Id rather have it consistently up than having some ranged bosses be cheesed by some classes and having them not work for no visible reason on others. Just give absoeption piercing as another trait to unshakable or something.

Then again, why bother with balance as long as fgs is in game.

Honestly i don’t see anything wrong about reflects, this was not some garbage mmo, even gw1 was more about clever usage of skills. Rather than making interesting boss encounters, they do this crap; rather than making bosses with a VARIETY of skills, they say – nah just nerf reflects and leave him with 2 skills to spam.

Next thing: pls nerf aegis and blocks

Rag.3258:

Then again, why bother with balance as long as fgs is in game.

Without FGS you would see ONLY 5 warriors teams.
Thank ele to push dps a little giving chances to other profession to take some spots.

CuRtoKy.8576:

At this rate they might as well remove reflects from the game because obviously they don’t like it and are just making more things unreflectable.

You’re crazy. Reflects are still one of the most powerful mechanics in the game.

Anyone who was being fair knew that reflects were incredibly broken when used against boss mobs. The Lupicus videos showed this – a single skill was, in a few seconds, doing more damage to the boss than the entire rotations from the four other party members during the fight. Reflects were stupidly broken mechanics when they reflect powerful monster attacks that do full damage that was never intended to be given to players.

Not only were reflects one of the most powerful DPS options given to players, they were also incredibly powerful defensive options. Malrona was an incredibly easy fight with chained reflects. Without them, her poison shot required you to pay attention, but with reflects she was a complete snooze and much faster. Some boss attacks simply shouldn’t be able to be reflected if you don’t want to turn dungeons into cheese content (which even with these changes they still are).

Even if there wasn’t a single boss attack in the game that you couldn’t reflect, the mechanic is incredibly valuable in content where trash mobs have powerful or annoying projectiles. The harpy fractal is a glorious play ground for a reflect mesmer, and a lot of CM paths are also very good places to bring reflects. Not only is the mechanic incredibly valuable as a defensive option, it also does quite good DPS against a lot of attacks.

Honestly, GW2 has reached a point where content has become stale and unintended game mechanics (FGS’ Fiery Rush, LoS AI exploits, reflecting boss attacks etc) have resulted in a very low skill cap and very high efficiency for content that has the potential to be more engaging than it is. As players we should encourage and support efforts to make content more complex and engaging, rewarding players for accessing more of their tool box or simply doing more than standing behind a wall auto attacking.

I don’t want to spend hours in dungeons because of giant health bars, but I don’t think the old/current meta of reflects, LoS and FGS abuse are what we should aim for when it comes to shorter dungeon runs.

LoSing mobs and reflecting bosses are unintended game mechanics?

Are we really doing this again?

LoSing is abuse of a stupid AI
Reflect is an intended mechanic

For some reason developers still are taking everything except direct damage out of PvE.

Let´s facetank everything! Because clever use of skills must be an exploit!

Pls Anet don´t try to balance it, just remove it.

Aegis, Blocks, Blind, Weakness and Chill Vigor an Endurance, remove it all!
Because it´s not challenging it´s an exploit. We have to stack healpower and thoughness, that´s the only way to make funny and challenging content!

Or….

Just play Wildstar…

This is one of my biggest concerns in Anet’s dungeon design. They can’t seem to keep the rules constant.

My issue with the TA Spider boss change is that almost every other spider in the game casts projectiles, save for a handful of exceptions that have melee attacks. When one is training their playerbase to learn simple mechanics, consistency is key. An observant player may realize that every spider’s attack can be reflected back on itself. That player then knows whenever they encounter a spider, they can reflect the damage…

…until you throw a curve ball with a boss spider. Suddenly, the projectile reflect rules don’t apply, and for no apparent reason or explanation! That’s where I have a problem, and there are several instances of the reflect rule being null for no reason. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. At least in PvP there’s no question about whether something will work or not. If its listed as a projectile in the tooltip, it can be reflected – even the Guardian’s staff 2 was fixed to be reflectable! So why is it that so many bosses break the rules of the game at the whim of Anet’s design team?

I think reflects are an amazing mechanic in the game! Defiance buffs and changing the rules on projectiles are not because they essentially limit how a player can play the game.

Shiren.9532:

CuRtoKy.8576:

At this rate they might as well remove reflects from the game because obviously they don’t like it and are just making more things unreflectable.

You’re crazy. Reflects are still one of the most powerful mechanics in the game.

Anyone who was being fair knew that reflects were incredibly broken when used against boss mobs. The Lupicus videos showed this – a single skill was, in a few seconds, doing more damage to the boss than the entire rotations from the four other party members during the fight. Reflects were stupidly broken mechanics when they reflect powerful monster attacks that do full damage that was never intended to be given to players.

Not only were reflects one of the most powerful DPS options given to players, they were also incredibly powerful defensive options. Malrona was an incredibly easy fight with chained reflects. Without them, her poison shot required you to pay attention, but with reflects she was a complete snooze and much faster. Some boss attacks simply shouldn’t be able to be reflected if you don’t want to turn dungeons into cheese content (which even with these changes they still are).

Even if there wasn’t a single boss attack in the game that you couldn’t reflect, the mechanic is incredibly valuable in content where trash mobs have powerful or annoying projectiles. The harpy fractal is a glorious play ground for a reflect mesmer, and a lot of CM paths are also very good places to bring reflects. Not only is the mechanic incredibly valuable as a defensive option, it also does quite good DPS against a lot of attacks.

Honestly, GW2 has reached a point where content has become stale and unintended game mechanics (FGS’ Fiery Rush, LoS AI exploits, reflecting boss attacks etc) have resulted in a very low skill cap and very high efficiency for content that has the potential to be more engaging than it is. As players we should encourage and support efforts to make content more complex and engaging, rewarding players for accessing more of their tool box or simply doing more than standing behind a wall auto attacking.

I don’t want to spend hours in dungeons because of giant health bars, but I don’t think the old/current meta of reflects, LoS and FGS abuse are what we should aim for when it comes to shorter dungeon runs.

Wait what?!?! I never said reflects aren’t strong. Just saying with these type of changes you might as well remove reflects and redo things but it is confusing to newer players. Vet players will know the differences anyhow between what is reflectable and what isn’t.

No such things as mob AI exploit :/ . People too often throw the term exploit without knowing what it means. PvE will always be scripted so you will always know what mobs are going to do. Saying it is an exploit is like saying knowing Lupi’s skill rotations is an exploit.

LoS is intended if it wasn’t then ArenaNet should just make boss encounters in like a large open field.

Honestly, the idea of low skill cap just comes from players you meet in PuGs that have no intention of playing well or better. These changes do nothing since I just did the exact same thing I did before the patch just fine. The only difference is maybe an extra dodge.

Bread.7516:

Honestly i don’t see anything wrong about reflects, this was not some garbage mmo, even gw1 was more about clever usage of skills. Rather than making interesting boss encounters, they do this crap; rather than making bosses with a VARIETY of skills, they say – nah just nerf reflects and leave him with 2 skills to spam.

Next thing: pls nerf aegis and blocks

They actually are doing that since nerfing reflections in most cases means making projectiles unblockable. As it was done in Malrona’s case.

LordByron.8369:

LoSing is abuse of a stupid AI
Reflect is an intended mechanic

For some reason developers still are taking everything except direct damage out of PvE.

O’rly?

What about choke Points in WvW? That’s exactly the same as LoSing NPCs. Difference is SOME, not all, people in WvW know to hold up and wait for a massive push through the choke point. but either way it’s a strategic use of the environment to gain the upper hand.

LordByron.8369:

Without FGS you would see ONLY 5 warriors teams.
Thank ele to push dps a little giving chances to other profession to take some spots.

In average pugs, sure.

See here I am prefering GW2 over Wildstar SPECIFICALLY because of things like reflect walls. Sure they’re incredibly OP in some situations, but it’s about knowing those situations. Knowing when/where to use some of these very powerful abilities is the key to success in many cases. Match that will good reactive play and you’re set.

Wildstar in an effort to create balance eliminated all these situationally OP abilities. Which has it’s merits, but it really takes a level of complexity out of the game. I chose Guardian over Warrior because I knew guardian has these abilities that were just amazing if used correctly, where warrior was just a strait up standard system awesomeness.

I really hate the idea of the unique powerful abilities of different professions being removed. Sure it may promote better play at the base level, but it removes the flavor of the game to me. And I might as well just throw GW2 away and play wildstar if that’s the case.

Zaxares.5419:

VodCom.6924:

Reflects are fine and exist in other games including MMORPGs.

What is not fine is to halve the hp of a single boss by reflecting his projectiles.

I basically agree with this. However, I’m worried that the approach taken by ANet leads more towards destroying the usefulness of reflects. I think that reflects should still work on bosses, but damage caused by reflect skills is capped at a certain amount of damage based on the player’s attributes.

It’s not the damage they want to stop. The damage is completely neglectable. It’s the fact that you can stop the hardest attacks the bosses have, which are meant to be kited, with just putting down a reflection skill for 5~10 seconds.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Zaxares.5419:

VodCom.6924:

Reflects are fine and exist in other games including MMORPGs.

What is not fine is to halve the hp of a single boss by reflecting his projectiles.

I basically agree with this. However, I’m worried that the approach taken by ANet leads more towards destroying the usefulness of reflects. I think that reflects should still work on bosses, but damage caused by reflect skills is capped at a certain amount of damage based on the player’s attributes.

It’s not the damage they want to stop. The damage is completely neglectable. It’s the fact that you can stop the hardest attacks the bosses have, which are meant to be kited, with just putting down a reflection skill for 5~10 seconds.

plz tell us how you know developers meant for bosses to be kited

kthx

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Zaxares.5419:

VodCom.6924:

Reflects are fine and exist in other games including MMORPGs.

What is not fine is to halve the hp of a single boss by reflecting his projectiles.

I basically agree with this. However, I’m worried that the approach taken by ANet leads more towards destroying the usefulness of reflects. I think that reflects should still work on bosses, but damage caused by reflect skills is capped at a certain amount of damage based on the player’s attributes.

It’s not the damage they want to stop. The damage is completely neglectable. It’s the fact that you can stop the hardest attacks the bosses have, which are meant to be kited, with just putting down a reflection skill for 5~10 seconds.

So what are reflects/walls for then? Trash adds? negligable boss attacks? If that’s all it’s for then there’s no point, and we’ve just eliminated another build for guard/mesmer and quite frankly the need for either in many cases.

What’s next? Defiance being on them initially so we can’t pull them into corners? Just to solidify the uselessness of mesmers? Then get rid of Aegis so we can have the same for Guards? Lets all just play warriors and ele’s!

maxinion.8396:

plz tell us how you know developers meant for bosses to be kited

kthx

If you stack in front of Malrona without any reflect, you’ll die instantly.
The reflect doesn’t hurt her but it negates her only damagesource outside of her highly telegraphed poison.

Jerus.4350:

So what are reflects/walls for then? Trash adds? negligable boss attacks? If that’s all it’s for then there’s no point, and we’ve just eliminated another build for guard/mesmer and quite frankly the need for either in many cases.

What’s next? Defiance being on them initially so we can’t pull them into corners? Just to solidify the uselessness of mesmers? Then get rid of Aegis so we can have the same for Guards? Lets all just play warriors and ele’s!

1) I’ve neither said that I’m happy with this change, nor that it was a wise one. But it was a reasonable one.

2) Let’s take a look at AC P2 endboss. The boss has basically just 2 different attacks and both could be reflected, which meant that your whole party could not die if you had just one well placed reflect. Same applies to the triple golems in SE P1, to Bloomhunger in FotM, Deadeye Dunwell in the Queen’s Gauntlet and many more bosses whose damage can be signifcantly reduced, if not negated, through reflects.

That’s ANet’s problem: Their bosses are too easy and they’ve fixed it. They’ve not chosen the best way, they’ve chosen the easiest one.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

maxinion.8396:

plz tell us how you know developers meant for bosses to be kited

kthx

If you stack in front of Malrona without any reflect, you’ll die instantly.
The reflect doesn’t hurt her but it negates her only damagesource outside of her highly telegraphed poison.

i can just dodge/evade that, without kiting her. the timing is incredibly easy to figure out. i usually run a full glass, no defense LH ele in this fight and stay entirely in melee. next?