Guild Wars 2

So the raids created a need to make builds other than just zerker builds. Most of the stats the game has are used for their design but toughness is still kinda missing in action. At this point we have the classic builds, (dps, healer, utility) but we don’t have a true tank.

The “tanks” in this game tanks pretty much only use toughness to keep aggro and not really for damage mitigation as the stat is designed to do. Also the tanking person’s build is heavily focused on providing buffs to the party and not on mitigating damage. This is because they can use class skills/traits/dodging to avoid the majority of the heavy damage and will rely on the healers to keep them topped off for the damage they do receive.

I would love to see a raid encounter that forced people to use toughness as it is intended, to mitigate damage. This may be difficult to do, because as I see it, that means the boss/mechanics would deal very high amounts of damage which could be punishing to the rest of the team not running toughness gear. I would think that the high damage attacks would have to be focused so that the rest of the team could avoid them (like with vale guardian you can just stand behind him). The attacks would have to be frequent as well as high damage so that the tank cannot just avoid them and have the healer out-heal them.

Another option I could see would be to have a mechanic that separates a person from the group and that person has to survive on their own for a time. But again, It would be difficult to make that person rely on toughness and not just using skills/traits/healing to survive.

Lastly they could do some mechanic that strait up requires X amount of toughness to survive, but that seems like a bit more of a lame option for me, unless they make the damage in that area scale differently so that it is much more significantly mitigated with higher toughness.

I wish I had a better answer to how this could be implemented to get people to truly run a tanking build with high toughness. What are your thoughts on this?

A boss whose auto attacks hit frequently and are high damage. Like vale guardian level attacks but 3x as rapid.

Unless they give incentive to take toughness (by changing it directly) people are merely going to find other ways of doing it. There’s more than enough passive blocks and invulns to go around. If you present a boss that hits that hard they’ll just sync the heals on druids rather than changing the meta; if you present a teleportation mechanic on the tank they’ll just have a secondary one or even have the PS’s take a bit of toughness. Whatever you’ll do, the player mindset is already driven towards the current meta. To change it, you must give some incentive, otherwise people are just going to keep using what already works so well.

If your seeking to defeat the current Meta-tank(chrono) you need to make the damage unavoidable (no blockin ,distorting,evading) but , mitigatable through toughness. Either ways that directly penetrate these defenses or that punish you for using them.

A boss like this is pretty much deimos, it hits slow and soft but the ticking dmg from the world eater-thingy can kill you pretty fast, with misntrel gear u can self-sustain yourself forever. Same as any boss that would have fast high dmg attacks chrono will still be by far the best tank for its damage mitigation, xera is a nice example where chrono only has to use blurred frenzy or shield blocks and thats it. And if u happen to run misntrel u can face tank the whole mechanc, it will leave you with almost no health but still alive. Also there is no need for other people to run toughness, if indeed u take too much dmg from the boss then protection can make up for it.

They could in theory make a boss that hits hard with attacks which are unblockable, undodgeable and undistortable. They could even take it a step further and place a debuff on the tank preventing them from being healed from outside sources.

That said, why encourage passive defences such as toughness, vitality or healing power when active defences such as well timed evasions, blocks or distorts are far more interesting, involved and challenging by comparison?

Realistically I’d like to see a boss which has enough pressure to encourage the use of the defensive stats in addition to the active damage mitigation abilities.

AnariiUK.7409:

They could in theory make a boss that hits hard with attacks which are unblockable, undodgeable and undistortable. They could even take it a step further and place a debuff on the tank preventing them from being healed from outside sources.

That said, why encourage passive defences such as toughness, vitality or healing power when active defences such as well timed evasions, blocks or distorts are far more interesting, involved and challenging by comparison?

Realistically I’d like to see a boss which has enough pressure to encourage the use of the defensive stats in addition to the active damage mitigation abilities.

Yes you could also make “punish” style mechanics where you could use distort but not being hit by what you distorted means you dont get some effect that protects you from something else. Or perhaps an aggro mechanic where the mob is fixated on who ever takes the most “unmitigated”(before toughness) damage.

i dont think much actual rewarding gameplay can be tied to an increase in the use of toughness. Its passive.
Think about it, what interesting mechanics can come from toughness? Its basically exactly the same as unavoidable agony, just a gear check.

If you want to make toughness interesting, tie it to actual gameplay/skill usage.

underweaver.8324:

At this point we have the classic builds, (dps, healer, utility) but we don’t have a true tank.

The “tanks” in this game tanks pretty much only use toughness to keep aggro and not really for damage mitigation as the stat is designed to do. Also the tanking person’s build is heavily focused on providing buffs to the party and not on mitigating damage. This is because they can use class skills/traits/dodging to avoid the majority of the heavy damage and will rely on the healers to keep them topped off for the damage they do receive.

I’m going to challenge the assumptions here.

• Tanks in harder MMO instanced content have one job — keeping the boss’ attention. If a GW2 tank is doing that, then GW2 has true tanks.
• Only if the tank in GW2 raids is never hit does toughness play no role. It’s a passive stat, which does its job on every hit.
• Tanks in other games also have damage mitigation skills, albeit usually on long CD’s. If a GW2 tank is using active abilities in addition to absorbing the occasional hit they’re doing more than tanks in other games. From having tanked in other MMO’s, I’d say being the focus of a boss’ attacks in GW2 is more demanding.
• I’ve neither seen nor heard of a game with serious instanced PvE in which the tank was not being healed by a healer. In fact, the damage mitigation abilities such tanks do have are mostly reserved for a boss’ Sunday Punch or for a possible gap in the healer’s ability to keep the tank up.
• What is wrong with a tank also providing buffs? GW2 buffs are a much bigger part of the game than in other MMO’s I’ve played. They last much less time, and thus require more upkeep.

I’d like to see a better explanation for why GW2 should shift to more passive tanking. I don’t know about anyone else but just taking hits constantly while depending on a healbot was boring.

Actually i was thinking about toughness/vitality i think the only way to make it interesting is if they tie some kind of scalling to these status as damage bonus. Like lets say a skill that have a 1.2 power scalling, we could get a skill that have 0.4 toughness as bonus damage or a skill that sacrifice your hp and deal 10x the hp sacrified as bonus dmg.
Just like some mobas have with different kind of scalling damage.

But as passive damage reduction, there is nothing they can do about it without making something trivial and non interactive, which is very boring.

IndigoSundown.5419:

underweaver.8324:

At this point we have the classic builds, (dps, healer, utility) but we don’t have a true tank.

The “tanks” in this game tanks pretty much only use toughness to keep aggro and not really for damage mitigation as the stat is designed to do. Also the tanking person’s build is heavily focused on providing buffs to the party and not on mitigating damage. This is because they can use class skills/traits/dodging to avoid the majority of the heavy damage and will rely on the healers to keep them topped off for the damage they do receive.

I’m going to challenge the assumptions here.

• Tanks in harder MMO instanced content have one job — keeping the boss’ attention. If a GW2 tank is doing that, then GW2 has true tanks.
• Only if the tank in GW2 raids is never hit does toughness play no role. It’s a passive stat, which does its job on every hit.
• Tanks in other games also have damage mitigation skills, albeit usually on long CD’s. If a GW2 tank is using active abilities in addition to absorbing the occasional hit they’re doing more than tanks in other games. From having tanked in other MMO’s, I’d say being the focus of a boss’ attacks in GW2 is more demanding.
• I’ve neither seen nor heard of a game with serious instanced PvE in which the tank was not being healed by a healer. In fact, the damage mitigation abilities such tanks do have are mostly reserved for a boss’ Sunday Punch or for a possible gap in the healer’s ability to keep the tank up.
• What is wrong with a tank also providing buffs? GW2 buffs are a much bigger part of the game than in other MMO’s I’ve played. They last much less time, and thus require more upkeep.

I’d like to see a better explanation for why GW2 should shift to more passive tanking. I don’t know about anyone else but just taking hits constantly while depending on a healbot was boring.

i generally agree with you, but id say that your experience with tanking in MMOs is not representitive. They now design it so although they are being healed, active use of skills is still required in general. FFXIV i tanked some of the mid endgame stuff, and it was just as many things to keep track of as anything else, including GW,

in fact in reality, the toughness/defense stat aspect of it, is basically a given nowadays, because gear checks and gear scores. You have no gear choice in most other MMOs so really defense stats are just a measure of your progress as a tank, rather than a choice of how to execute a tank role.

As you say, at this point there probably isnt too much difference from a top level in the gw tank, and the other games. I guess people just like the idea of being able to take hits better than anyone else, and the feeling that people will value you for it.

But would that be worth it? From what people say now, raids have many ways in which people can pull them off. That seems like a better paradigm to me.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Actually i was thinking about toughness/vitality i think the only way to make it interesting is if they tie some kind of scalling to these status as damage bonus. Like lets say a skill that have a 1.2 power scalling, we could get a skill that have 0.4 toughness as bonus damage or a skill that sacrifice your hp and deal 10x the hp sacrified as bonus dmg.
Just like some mobas have with different kind of scalling damage.

But as passive damage reduction, there is nothing they can do about it without making something trivial and non interactive, which is very boring.

they could give it some active defensive uses, and probably a bit of control use. They could also have some limited skills which scale in effectiveness the more dmg you mitigate or something similar.

However, is it worth it though? thats the real question, is there a good reason to bother?

They could have more attacks where a couple of characters can “take one for the team”, rather than just affecting an area (say, tossing multiple non-piercing projectiles, or a cone attack that is actually modeled as multiple hitscan projectiles).

They could update certain skills or traits so that they allow a player to briefly absorb a percentage of direct damage inflicted on nearby allies (the same way as is already done for condi with many skills)

They could use swarms of unkillable, weak adds to inflict sustained DD.

They could modify some block skills so that, if an attack is blocked, the same attack is blocked for nearby allies if the toughness-adjusted damage that would have been taken is less than a certain threshold.

They could weaken dodges so that they only provide fast movement and make the hitbox very small, but don’t provide evade frames without traiting for it.

For more active suggestions, they could allow blocks to be passed if toughness-adjusted damage was above a certain threshold.

They could also give players more control over aggro by giving bosses specific anger mechanics (e.g., gets angry when burned, gets angry when its AA is evaded, etc.), shown as a “condition” on the boss. Triggering whatever ticks it off would throw limited-duration stacks of “Ire” on players, which would be treated just like any other special boss condition. The boss would focus on whoever has the highest Ire rating, so the whole thing would be very clear to everyone.

be cool if anet remove the toughness thing in all raid boss so the boss don’t follow people with highest toughness instead a randomly selected person at any time of the game like sloth etc. will be fun :P
do tht for Xera, VG, deimos and all xD
and mechanics for green circle, teleports etc in raids a bit boring now.. we need some new approach to mechanic design.. something different and more fun Idk..
recent balance change doesn’t allow much room for pug to take other profession or perhaps more time needed for balance adjustment to flow in. will be nice to see pug group bringing in more variation professions for support and dps roles