Guild Wars 2

Hello, I’ve been playing Guildwars2 since the beta (Taken 2 major brakes due to boringness) and I just got back again.

Pretty much all I’ve been doing since release is playing dungeons, dungeons is what I love about MMOs, but in order for it to be fun, it need to be challenging.

Here’s the thing, except from the first few times I tried AC explo at lvl 35, and the first few times I tried Arah explo, I never really thought any of the dungeons being challenging. (Worth noting is that I don’t often play in pugs) I’ve played with pretty much the same people (we’ve been a total of like 30people playing dungeons together) and everyone else more or less agree on this.

Over the past few months I’ve seen so many people complaining about dungeons and want nerfs.
They think CM is to hard.
AC is to hard.
Giganticus need nerf.
Project Alpha being hard.
They can’t light 5 torches in Cof path 3.
They can’t beat the vet mobs outside Baelfire in Cof path 2.
They thought flaming effigy was to hard .
Kholer being to hard etc.

More or less all of these has been nerfed because most people cant figure out what to do.

I decided to pug a bit to see what people actually were doing, and why they had such a hard time I also didn’t talk any about how we should do the different encounters..

Here’s what I found out. First of, the majority of pugs use very suboptimal builds. Here’s a guardian I played fractals with.

A guardians, using:
a sword and torch / greatsword.
Healing Breeze.
Save yourself.
Signet of judgement.
Smite Condition
Hounds of balthazar,
and using the passive effect of Virtue of justice.

He also complained about Cliffside Fractal, he thought breaking the last to seals was to hard. (Note that the team used a very bad strategy, no one in the group knew “the” optimal strategy on how you should it)

What the group did was to simply kill the first 2 mobs on the North seal, Attacked the seal with the Hammer, then Every1 rushed to the South side, doing the same thing.

Due to this, around 6 mobs spawn at the North side (respawning as one is killed) and healing the the seal while every1 was at the south side.

This took a large amount of time, people were struggling from dying.

What I would call “the optimal strategy” is to kill 1 mob at the North side, attack the seal, then 4 players run to the south side, and 1 stay at the north.

This way there will only be 1 mob at the north side, and he wont heal the seal.

The other 4 players now on the south side, kill 1 mob, then attack the seal.

After that they kill the second mob at the south side, and the player with the hammer runs to the north side, attacking the seal, while the remaining 3 players attack 2mob down to low health, then start clearing the rest.

now when the player with the hammer come back, they can simply kill one of the low health mob, attack the south seal, kill the second low health mob, and 1 player runs back to the north side attacking the seal.

This is a much Faster, and less risky strategy. (No pug I played it even tried something similar)

I’ve seen a lot of similar things in other dungeons, the event outside of baelfire in Cof path2 being a prime example, people tried to just run around and corpse running until the gate was blown.

Not once in a pug group have I’ve seen people actually killing the vets. (which was very easy if you just Call targets)

Also as I mentioned people are using suboptimal build.
Using the guardian as an example once again, I’ve literally Never seen a guardian using their 2 most Over Powered skills: Bow of Truth > Command (This heals like 400hp per second in a huge AOE) and Tome of courage. (This heals Every1 in a huge aoe at Range for like 1,2k-1,9k depending on healing attribute, And has a spell that fully restores EVERY player within a Huger Range) I’ve never seen it, still it’s the best spell a guardian have.

People use the incredible bad Greatsword. (instead of the “op” mace +shield/focus combo)

Gs and Mace deals pretty much the same damage with auto attacks.

Gs: gives 1 might to self every third attack
Mace: heals self + allies every third attack

Gs: fires projectiles in random directions, deals decent damage and is a whirl finisher.
Mace: places a Symbol which deals decent damage to all enemys, Heals allies, and is a light field.

Gs: Leap at the target and cause blind in aoe, it does have quite a long cast time, so even if your skilled it can be tricky to hit in the right moment.
Mace: Creates a big shield around yourself and nearby allies, blocking the next attack.
With insta cast time, it’s extremely easy to use in the right moment. (It also gives Protection if no attack is blocked)

Gs: Places a symbol which deals decent damage to all enemys, gives retaliation to allies, and is a light field. (It’s a good spell, but often in dungeons pugs can deal good damage without retaliation, however they often need health)
Shield: Sends a wave in front of you, deals decent damage, gives protection to all allies in range.

Gs fifth spell: Here is were the greatsword is actually useful. You throw a blade at 5 enemies around you, and you can after that pull them to you. This can drastically shorten down a fight against normal mobs. (although a lot of mobs have stability, in which this is useless)
Shield: Creates a Dome around you pushing back all mobs for 4 seconds (This gives team mates a lot of time to revive a downed team mate)

In conclusion and after my experience, the Mace shield/focus combo is just so much better in dungeons, a guardian is as best with a support build and with this combo that part really shines.

Another thing I see, is that guardians ain’t using the active effect of “Virtue of justice” instead they use the passive effect. With some simple math we can see that the active effect is better in a dungeon.

Passive effect, cause Burning for 1 second each Fifth attack. (let’s say it deals 100damage/sec and you can attack once per second)

This means that in 30 seconds, you’ll cause burning 6 times. (6 seconds times 100 damage = 600damage)

If you use the passive effect, you’ll cause a 5 second burn on you next attack (This applies to allies as well)

It has a 30 seconds CD as default. So you can use it once in the same time as u can use the passive 6 times.

Since it applies to you plus your 4 allies, that means the total burning time is 5 times 5 = 25 second = 2500 damage.

Just this should be reason enough to use it’s active effect instead, still no1 does. And then we have to take into account that you can trait it: Gives 3 stacks of might to all allies, Reduce cooldown etc.

I know this is a big wall of text, but hopefully someone reads it trough and can give a good answer.

So the conclusion is that almost all pugs use suboptimal builds and strategies, complain on the forums, and anet nerfs the dungeon to fit their “skill lvl”.

And we who are skilled players are left with easy dungeons with no challenges.

As it is of right now I’m not very interested in playing due to this, but I still hope that sometime we’ll get a good challenge. (although my hope is fading once I noticed what you did to the vets in the last part of cof path 2 (As it’s now it’s lame, 1 vet spawning every 1 second and is crippled)

So my question is, will we ever get something like Hard mode or the like, something were we skilled players actually Need to play organised and use strategies? Instead of just Tank’n Spank every encounter as it’s now.
Or should I accept the game is for the casual crowd and look for something else?

Like any game requiring skill, there is a vast difference between good and bad players, or even PUGs and coordinated groups. There is also a vast difference in how hard players like their dungeons. Even good players like to roll something easy sometimes, or bad players looking to challenge themselves.

You can’t have 1 difficulty that suits and rewards everyone. This is why we need Hard Mode, like we had in GW1. Normal mode can be very easy, Hard mode very hard.

I know, that is all I ask for, at least gives us back hard mode. Almost every1 I played with before have stopped playing (we’re 6 left, of the original 30) and I just got back after a 1,5 month break.

I’ve created like 2 other threads over the past half year, asking for a similar thing, but I always fail to get Anets attention (Tried Short and Direct, Aggressive and now a Wall of text)

If you want to have challanging content play as berserker D/D thief or ele and try to fight bosses / mobs in melee range ….

lvis.3824:

If you want to have challanging content play as berserker D/D thief or ele and try to fight bosses / mobs in melee range ….

or better play naked.

Just solo/duo dungeons, thats the most challenge you can get.

Dub.1273:

Just solo/duo dungeons, thats the most challenge you can get.

Sure, already done that, but most encounter don’t really get harder, they just take longer time, also why shouldn’t I be able to enjoy dungeons with 4 of my friends, just because we’re a little better than the average GW2 player?

Just throw in a hard mode, give mobs and bosses a little bit better damage, and a few extra mechanics, so I actually need to think, and I’m fine.

As an example, the event outside of Baelfire in path 2, Before, we had to think, and focus to some extend.
now I just stand still and spam 1 for 3 min until I win.

As another example, I got really excited when I read about the change to prevent corpse running, just to find out it didn’t matter cus you never whiped anyway. :I

More encounters like Giganticus please, at least you need to stay somewhat focused on him.

Komuflage.2307:

(Worth noting is that I don’t often play in pugs) I’ve played with pretty

This is your issue. Initially they designed explorables for only organized groups, but since, unlike gw1, you can’t just buy the explorable armor like you could Obsidian or DoA weapons by farming othjer content for money, they’ve made the armors and their exotic stats more available for people who PuG.

They also solely concentrated the reward system on explorables, while story gives nothing but crappy blues and a rare helm on the first victory, so it was unrealistic to expect the pugging population to stay content with just doing story.

So you want players to use build/skills that can actually get them to finish the dungeon? Elitist!

Some people get builds from websites and don’t understand how to use them or when to change traits. They are sub-optimal. Some people work out their own builds and get plenty of fun doing so. They might stick with a build they enjoy, like I have, rather than get continually try new trait lines and armor sets to find out which is best. These people are also sub-optimal. You might not like other people failing to min/max but other players might like you min/maxing either. The game is there to be experienced rather than walked through!

Save lupicus, nothing in this game is hard; just tedious.

Regarding the GS player you mentioned, his playstyle sounds a lot like mine, minus some of his abilities and behavior/attitude. Let me say a few words-

I could understand that GS and some of those abilities aren’t optimal. I used to raid on WoW pretty solid and strived to maintain the optimal build/stat builds and shot rotations(I played a hunter in Burning Crusade). That was fun, to an extent, because I played pretty seriously and I wanted to be the best. However, my attitude has changed as I’ve grown a little older and gained a difference perspective about gaming in general, and how I viewed them.

What was once something I put a lot of time into being the best at, I now use as a source of entertainment. I have no ambitions of being the best Guardian ever, rather, I want to enjoy myself. I stick with a GS because I spend more time by myself questing than in a dungeon, so I gather groups up and AoE them down which I find to be fun. I take support type abilities in dungeons to attempt to be helpful, since I am in a group. I’m working with MY character to contribute to the group. I feel as though if I play a game to enjoy myself, and desire to do dungeons because I enjoy those too, but force myself to do something I don’t find enjoyable, then I defeat my purpose of playing.

I understand that these thoughts may not apply to who you’re talking about, but I wanted to at least defend why some people don’t use an optimal build. I am with you 100% though using the most optimal strategies.

However, my argument actually in a way supports what you’re saying, in that dungeons should probably have two separate difficulties. One for a guy like me, and one for a a guy like you. Not to say, though, that the optimal build for your character specifically isn’t something you personally enjoy. It’s my understanding that guardians are more of a support/tank type class or whatever, whereas I enjoy their potential as a damage dealer. I do plan, however, to maximize my personal playstyle to give the most I can in a dungeon.

I didn’t mean for this to be argumentative, just maybe insightful to the thought process of your fellow gamer.

This is why I think the “challenge” debate and the “game is too easy” crowd are not good for the game.

It’s easy for me to drive my car across the city and hop into a boat and sail to the nearby island. It’s much harder to cover the same distance in the form of a triathlon. Just because you can use tools to trivialise something doesn’t mean you are more skilled or superior in any way, in fact you are creating your own problem of having no challenge. You’re not more skilled than a triathlon competitor just because you can travel the same distance faster using superior tools, you’re just using superior tools (although I disagree mace/shield is superior to greatsword – the pull alone makes the greatsword more valuable).

You equip yourself with the most optimal builds, you exploit every flaw in the AI (I’m a ranger main and a GW1 veteran, I know how stupid the AI is – exploiting line of sight alone is terrible to see being used again) and you build cookie cutter team builds and you think the game should be balanced around that? Why should the game be balanced around a handful of classes and builds and cut out any class or build which doesn’t fulfil that criteria? You might enjoy exploiting every advantage the game gives you and limiting yourself to the absolute minim variety and tools but I enjoy playing a variety of classes, play styles and builds. A lot of people out there play rangers, necromancers, engineers and elementalists, should ArenaNet design content that caters to the tools a handful of classes have (portal, reflect, stealth, highest base DPS) simply because the people who use these tricks find them to be OP and trivialise encounters that would be otherwise challenging for people without them (swamp fractal and portal, CoF p1 boulders and portal, dredge fractal and stealth, harpy fractal and mesmer or guardian plethora of reflects and blocks, almost every dungeon path and OHKO type skills that are blocked by aegis etc)?

Your example of the Cliffside fractal is a flaw in design imo. I personally don’t like it when dungeons favour knowledge, tricks and exploits over skilled play. Realising you can essentially cheat an encounter by preventing a lot of the challenge provided by it by choosing not to do something which would be most players first instinct is pretty lame. I honestly doubt the encounter was intended to work that way – I suspect it’s just an oversight that slipped through and it only favours those in the know. Doing it doesn’t show you to be a superior player, you just know more ways to cheapen content.

It’s funny you complain about nerfs to make things easier while at the same time you criticise people for not knowing and using an exploit which negates intended challenge from dungeon design.

@Komuflage.2307
no offence bro, but you are a really bad guardian. GS is a single most useful weapon guardian has. Look up blind related traits. Lol like mad when leaping into bunch of mobs applies full stack of vulnerability to all of them. Mace isn’t nearly as good neither in damage nor utility, and Hammer is a better healing weapon anyway. Plus GS and hammer are on the same 20% cd trait.
Book is too slow and situational. And bow? I heal for more by dodging…

SkyChef.5432:

lvis.3824:

If you want to have challanging content play as berserker D/D thief or ele and try to fight bosses / mobs in melee range ….

or better play naked.

What does the OP poster wants ?
Did you ever try the content with a glasscanon ?

Either preemtively dodge , be fast, or be downed. …

High thougness Guardian builds are easymode, the game blocks attacks for you, which would kill other professions / speccs .

So you want the content to be harder for the EZ mode profession specc, what do you think will happen with berzerker speccs ?

I’d say if you want some challenging content, then do odd fractal lvls above 51 up to 79. Now once you’ve done this a few times it might not get so challenging anymore but imo it requires more effort/teamwork compared to all the easy mode dungeons out there.

lvis.3824:

SkyChef.5432:

lvis.3824:

If you want to have challanging content play as berserker D/D thief or ele and try to fight bosses / mobs in melee range ….

or better play naked.

What does the OP poster wants ?
Did you ever try the content with a glasscanon ?

Either preemtively dodge , be fast, or be downed. …

High thougness Guardian builds are easymode, the game blocks attacks for you, which would kill other professions / speccs .

So you want the content to be harder for the EZ mode profession specc, what do you think will happen with berzerker speccs ?

Berserker specs are fast becoming the easy mode specs. A lot of the content is over before you have to deal with too many issues. Combined with positioning (like stacking behind a wall so the enemies all stack up on top of you to get line of sight and then AoE bursting them down) and hard counter skills (like wall of reflection or aegis) a lot of party builds don’t need defensive stats. On top of that, content is reaching a point where vitality, toughness and healing power are becoming obsolete. Offence is becoming the best defence and parties can deal with encounters faster than the encounter can provide challenge to the party.

GW2 needs both a harder and an easier mode dungeon experience. The divide between the two “camps” is too great for one dungeon difficulty to serve. Also, the existing “normal” mode (story) offers no rewards worth bothering with.

A guardians, using:
a sword and torch – Bad
greatsword. – Good
Healing Breeze. – Bad
Save yourself. – Fine, removes condis, grants u fury for more crits, grants you a good heal. If running soldiers and there is ample fury in your party, one could argue its not worth taking, but it has it’s place.
Signet of judgement. -Bad
Smite Condition – Bad
Hounds of balthazar, – Very Bad
and using the passive effect of Virtue of justice. – Bad, but at least he’s using his other virtues which majority of pugs dont touch at all.

Mace..just … lol.

I think there is a lack of understanding of how greatsword and hammer work.

no offence bro, but you are a really bad guardian – Trollhammer.
Now while he’s said some rather questionable things about mace and great sword, there’s no need to say that.

wow horrible knowledge on guardian class imo,

Greatsword is about as good cleave damage as guardian dps can get even unspecced. Nice utility and greatsword #5 will make the entire group do vastly more damage.

Sword / Torch is debatable to be guardian’s top single target damage build.

Combining this with GS makes a lot of potential to swap between cleave pulls and #5 suck along with more blinds, and bigger single target damage and group might. If a range weapon isn’t needed. Theoretically there are more optimal set ups but it’s far from horrible, GS’s #5 especially has far more value then can be calculated by math depending on the situation.

Mace / shield is alright too though. Honestly don’t see how you can really dissect a guardian by the weapons they are using. I don’t see a weapon combo that a guardian couldn’t benefit from situationally. I don’t see any of the weapons aguardian has access too being one they would never use. IMO guardian should carry every weapon they can use.

A lot of style points also + group condition removal.

Healing Breeze is far from bad in a lot of situations also.

The utility choices do sound sketchy though.

Removing the holy trinity unfortunately limits challenge in PvE to how good you are at pressing your dodge button.

Thankfully I no longer play PvE to any great extent.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Removing the holy trinity unfortunately limits challenge in PvE to how good you are at pressing your dodge button.

Thankfully I no longer play PvE to any great extent.

PvE in any game is never going to be all that challenging to high-end players. If you take as a given that the content has to be mathematically doable, then all that is involved is memorizing what to do when to complete. It may be challenging during the learning, but once it is rote it can become boring. This is why players looking for hard should PvP, since players are less predictable than AI.

There’s a little more to PvE success in GW2 than dodge button (sometimes, block or reflection > dodge), but … yeah. I never felt that trinity mechanics made for hard PvE either, although raids by virtue of larger numbers provided more opportunity for one member to screw up and cause a wipe.

Sovta.4719:

So you want players to use build/skills that can actually get them to finish the dungeon? Elitist!

Yes I’m a Elitist, but no I don’t care if pug people use suboptimal builds or strategies, what I’m saying is that all those people complaining on the forums about dungeons being to hard, find the dungeons hard due to their suboptimal builds and strategies.

As of right now the dungeons are tuned for these people, leaving us who know strategies, who can come up with optimal builds, who play organised etc, without any content that fit our skill levels.

So what I’m asking for is not “all noobs should l2p rage rage!”, rather, I want to know if there is any plans to introduce challenging dungeons, or if they will stick with these simple casual friendly ones.

Shiren.9532:

This is why I think the “challenge” debate and the “game is too easy” crowd are not good for the game.

It’s easy for me to drive my car across the city and hop into a boat and sail to the nearby island. It’s much harder to cover the same distance in the form of a triathlon. Just because you can use tools to trivialise something doesn’t mean you are more skilled or superior in any way, in fact you are creating your own problem of having no challenge. You’re not more skilled than a triathlon competitor just because you can travel the same distance faster using superior tools, you’re just using superior tools (although I disagree mace/shield is superior to greatsword – the pull alone makes the greatsword more valuable).

You equip yourself with the most optimal builds, you exploit every flaw in the AI (I’m a ranger main and a GW1 veteran, I know how stupid the AI is – exploiting line of sight alone is terrible to see being used again) and you build cookie cutter team builds and you think the game should be balanced around that? Why should the game be balanced around a handful of classes and builds and cut out any class or build which doesn’t fulfil that criteria? You might enjoy exploiting every advantage the game gives you and limiting yourself to the absolute minim variety and tools but I enjoy playing a variety of classes, play styles and builds. A lot of people out there play rangers, necromancers, engineers and elementalists, should ArenaNet design content that caters to the tools a handful of classes have (portal, reflect, stealth, highest base DPS) simply because the people who use these tricks find them to be OP and trivialise encounters that would be otherwise challenging for people without them (swamp fractal and portal, CoF p1 boulders and portal, dredge fractal and stealth, harpy fractal and mesmer or guardian plethora of reflects and blocks, almost every dungeon path and OHKO type skills that are blocked by aegis etc)?

Your example of the Cliffside fractal is a flaw in design imo. I personally don’t like it when dungeons favour knowledge, tricks and exploits over skilled play. Realising you can essentially cheat an encounter by preventing a lot of the challenge provided by it by choosing not to do something which would be most players first instinct is pretty lame. I honestly doubt the encounter was intended to work that way – I suspect it’s just an oversight that slipped through and it only favours those in the know. Doing it doesn’t show you to be a superior player, you just know more ways to cheapen content.

It’s funny you complain about nerfs to make things easier while at the same time you criticise people for not knowing and using an exploit which negates intended challenge from dungeon design.

I think you need to read the wall again, I’m no way criticising people who don’t know as much as me, or are at a lower skill level.

Where did I say I only “accept” specific professions and build combos.
Where did I say I exploit everything that I can?

I don’t mind people who don’t know as much, who don’t use the optimal strategies/builds.
If I would I would flame 90% of the people I played with while in pugs.

As mentioned the group I played in was quite big, and we had people playing every class. So no, I’m not a “Only 4 zerker + mesm, cof1” farmer.

I’m not exploiting either, but I do use what I would say optimal builds and strategies for each encounter.

As an example: when we’re up against project alpha, (path2) we stand in a circle around him, tank the flame Aoe, and wait around 1,5 seconds from that he uses his Ice aoe, until we dodge, and we don’t doge out of the ice aoe, we’re just in the dodge animation when the aoe trigers. This way, we’ll all stay in range, so he wont use his Dragon Tooths, and we don’t take any damage from the Ice aoe. This is not a exploit, it’s knowledge in the encounter.
Knowing that he only uses Dragon Tooth if you’re at range.
Knowing that you can still be inside the Ice Aoes when it activates.

Again, all I’m asking for is to get some info in whatever we’ll get some challenging content that fit our skill level.
I’m not saying however, “tune all the instances so they fit us, kitten all the naabs rage rage!”

Stego.3148:

wow horrible knowledge on guardian class imo,

Greatsword is about as good cleave damage as guardian dps can get even unspecced. Nice utility and greatsword #5 will make the entire group do vastly more damage.

Sword / Torch is debatable to be guardian’s top single target damage build.

Combining this with GS makes a lot of potential to swap between cleave pulls and #5 suck along with more blinds, and bigger single target damage and group might. If a range weapon isn’t needed. Theoretically there are more optimal set ups but it’s far from horrible, GS’s #5 especially has far more value then can be calculated by math depending on the situation.

Mace / shield is alright too though. Honestly don’t see how you can really dissect a guardian by the weapons they are using. I don’t see a weapon combo that a guardian couldn’t benefit from situationally. I don’t see any of the weapons aguardian has access too being one they would never use. IMO guardian should carry every weapon they can use.

A lot of style points also + group condition removal.

Healing Breeze is far from bad in a lot of situations also.

The utility choices do sound sketchy though.

As mentioned the GS 5# is very good, (In some specific situations, but at a boss for instance, it’s not useful at all compared to other weapons) but that’s all the GS is good at. Sure it can deal more damage than a mace, but guardians are still suboptimal as damage dealers.
The blind is also good, but aigis is often better, GS blind also has a long casting time, Mace aigis is insta.

Sure you can give might to you allies, but I can (with a little help) already stack 25stacks of might for 20-30 seconds. So the “Extra” might from a gs would not be useful, since 25stacks is the maximum amount. And since you calling me horrible, I defend myself with the following “Probably you don’t know how to stack 25stacks of might so easy” (We just do it before an encounter, we deal pretty much double damage over the next 20-30 seconds)

Having Extra heals, “Aigis”, Protection and other support ability, will be more useful in most situations, that way you can “tank” and heal your zerkerz so they’ll have enough health, so they don’t need to worry and can just spam out dps, and with the xtra might, most bosses can be killed within a minute, so why would I need dps, when my zerkerz allready kill everything in a matter of seconds, I just need to keep them alive, since they’re so squishy. (Thus, support spells are in general more optimal for a guardian)

@Indigo, yes I’m very aware of that, that’s why I’m asking for a “hard mode”

25 stacks of might are almost double damage when you have base power. Do you have 916 power?

haviz.1340:

25 stacks of might are almost double damage when you have base power. Do you have 916 power?

Oh Oh.

Stradlater.2436:

Regarding the GS player you mentioned, his playstyle sounds a lot like mine, minus some of his abilities and behavior/attitude. Let me say a few words-

I could understand that GS and some of those abilities aren’t optimal. I used to raid on WoW pretty solid and strived to maintain the optimal build/stat builds and shot rotations(I played a hunter in Burning Crusade). That was fun, to an extent, because I played pretty seriously and I wanted to be the best. However, my attitude has changed as I’ve grown a little older and gained a difference perspective about gaming in general, and how I viewed them.

What was once something I put a lot of time into being the best at, I now use as a source of entertainment. I have no ambitions of being the best Guardian ever, rather, I want to enjoy myself. I stick with a GS because I spend more time by myself questing than in a dungeon, so I gather groups up and AoE them down which I find to be fun. I take support type abilities in dungeons to attempt to be helpful, since I am in a group. I’m working with MY character to contribute to the group. I feel as though if I play a game to enjoy myself, and desire to do dungeons because I enjoy those too, but force myself to do something I don’t find enjoyable, then I defeat my purpose of playing.

I understand that these thoughts may not apply to who you’re talking about, but I wanted to at least defend why some people don’t use an optimal build. I am with you 100% though using the most optimal strategies.

However, my argument actually in a way supports what you’re saying, in that dungeons should probably have two separate difficulties. One for a guy like me, and one for a a guy like you. Not to say, though, that the optimal build for your character specifically isn’t something you personally enjoy. It’s my understanding that guardians are more of a support/tank type class or whatever, whereas I enjoy their potential as a damage dealer. I do plan, however, to maximize my personal playstyle to give the most I can in a dungeon.

I didn’t mean for this to be argumentative, just maybe insightful to the thought process of your fellow gamer.

Glad to see someone actually understanding what I’m trying to say

I fully understand that some people chose a build they think is fun, instead of what’s optimal.
A lot of the people I used to play with did this. And I don’t mind that.

But personally, what I find fun in Rpgs like this one, is taking my gameplay as high as I can.
I like to spend time trying out different builds, respecing just because 1 trait wasn’t the optimal one. I like to take the time to observe an encounter, finding patterns in a boss movement and attacks. Looking at his animation to learn his attacks, basically knowing what he’ll do before he does is. I love spending 2 min after a failed encounter, discussing what we did wrong and what we should do in order to complete it.

It’s a Huge felling of satisfaction when you’ve learned a specific encounter good enough to pretty much “do it in my sleep”, and then looking back at what I learned.

The problem I find, is that I only felt this way 2 times in GW2, the first time we beat Kholer, and the first time we downed Giganticus. More or less the rest have been a cakewalk, there has been some difficult encounters, but most things you beat in the second or third try. And once you made it the first time, you knew what to do the next time you went the same dungeon, thus completely removing the challenge.

The thing is that it’s difficult to say “I find myself better than the majority of people in this game” without sounding like an kitten hole and offending everyone, especially in written.

Also, if you say “Please nerf Giganticus because I find him to hard” thus affecting Every1 just because you can’t beat it, then it’s accepted.

But if you ask, “Keep the instances as they are, but make some challenging content as well” then you’re a kitten.

haviz.1340:

25 stacks of might are almost double damage when you have base power. Do you have 916 power?

Hehe, no. But that’s not how the damage model in GW2 works.

Gw2s formula for damage is (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor).

This mean that if you’ve have 1k power you’ll maybe deal 500damage to a specific mob, but if you’ve 2k power (double) you maybe deal 1800damage.

See it as diminishing return, but it’s vice versa.

To explain this in a easier way, you can look at it as: Damage = Attack – Defence (This formula is ofc wrong, but it’s the same idea, but simpler, thus it’s easier to explain)

If you would have 2000 Attack rating, and hit a target with 1000 Armor, you would deal 2000 – 1000 = 1000 damage. However if you would have 3000 Attack rating, and hit the same target you would deal 3000 – 1000 = 2000.
Double the damage, but only 50% more Attack rating.

Komuflage.2307:

haviz.1340:

25 stacks of might are almost double damage when you have base power. Do you have 916 power?

Hehe, no. But that’s not how the damage model in GW2 works.

Gw2s formula for damage is (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor).

This mean that if you’ve have 1k power you’ll maybe deal 500damage to a specific mob, but if you’ve 2k power (double) you maybe deal 1800damage.

See it as diminishing return, but it’s vice versa.

Also, at lvl 80, 25stacks of might is 875 power, not 916 ^^

Nice “math”. You managed to list the proper formula and didn’t even take the time to prove your own conclusions wrong.

Here, I’ll do it for you:
Assume 1000 dmg weapon, 1 skill coefficient, 2000 target armor.
1000 power: 1000 * 1000 * 1 / 2000 = 500
2000 power: 1000 * 2000 * 1 / 2000 = 1000

You double your power, you do double damage.
The only time getting 25 stacks of might gets close to doubling your damage is if you have base power, like haviz said.

On-topic: Hard content will come eventually. Maybe.

swiftpaw.6397:

no offence bro, but you are a really bad guardian – Trollhammer.
Now while he’s said some rather questionable things about mace and great sword, there’s no need to say that.

I don’t see the difference. If the guy tries to teach people how to play specific profession while displaying some pretty silly ideas about that profession, then he is bad at it. It doesn’t mean he is a bad person, just a bad player. One can get offended at it all they want, frankly I don’t give a kitten.

Super Adventure Box is very challenging!

Pinch.4273:

Komuflage.2307:

haviz.1340:

25 stacks of might are almost double damage when you have base power. Do you have 916 power?

Hehe, no. But that’s not how the damage model in GW2 works.

Gw2s formula for damage is (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor).

This mean that if you’ve have 1k power you’ll maybe deal 500damage to a specific mob, but if you’ve 2k power (double) you maybe deal 1800damage.

See it as diminishing return, but it’s vice versa.

Also, at lvl 80, 25stacks of might is 875 power, not 916 ^^

Nice “math”. You managed to list the proper formula and didn’t even take the time to prove your own conclusions wrong.

Here, I’ll do it for you:
Assume 1000 dmg weapon, 1 skill coefficient, 2000 target armor.
1000 power: 1000 * 1000 * 1 / 2000 = 500
2000 power: 1000 * 2000 * 1 / 2000 = 1000

You double your power, you do double damage.
The only time getting 25 stacks of might gets close to doubling your damage is if you have base power, like haviz said.

On-topic: Hard content will come eventually. Maybe.

I didn’t take the time to do the math :P

Although you’re absolutely right. What’s so weird though is that I just tried this on my warrior just to check.

Without no might I deal in average in 1 Auto attack combo: Damage / Crit damage
970 / 2215
970 / 2215
1270 / 2885

With 25stack of might:
1345 / 3360
1345 / 3360
1650 / 4241

So for my warrior I deal pretty much exact 50% more damage. (Obviously this is not double, I’ll guess for with my guardian I deal like 75-80% more since I’ve lower power on that one)

But still, this means that if I stack 25stack might to my team, they deal like 50 – 80 % more damage, which is a lot. So I still say, therefore I rather keep my team alive, than deal a little bit more damage myself.

Trollhammer.7439:

swiftpaw.6397:

no offence bro, but you are a really bad guardian – Trollhammer.
Now while he’s said some rather questionable things about mace and great sword, there’s no need to say that.

I don’t see the difference. If the guy tries to teach people how to play specific profession while displaying some pretty silly ideas about that profession, then he is bad at it. It doesn’t mean he is a bad person, just a bad player. One can get offended at it all they want, frankly I don’t give a kitten.

Again, I’m not trying to teach anyone anything.

People are really misunderstanding the whole point of my first post. Is it that it’s so long, no one reads it through, get stuck on that part and then just comment? :I

Simply my point is: Most people who play dungeons in GW do it in pugs, often players in this pug uses builds that ain’t that good, and they don use good strategies. They pretty much just run into an encounter, just trying to kill everything, wipes, respawn, run into the encounter again, again just trying to kill everything wipes, rince and repeat.
Until they finally tried 5 times, then they go to the forums and complain.

Take the torches in Cof path 3 as an example, if you simply kill 2 mobs at each torch, then split up, that means every1 only have 1 mob to kill – they kill it – type in chat “R” – the leader types “Press” – every press the torch, and they’re done. That’s how easy it was before.

Every time I tried it in a pug. People just tried to kill their 3 mobs al by them self, and even though that’s not especially hard for most professions/players, there was all ways 1 or 2 players who didn’t manage. So people tried over and over. Until enough people complained, and now that room has been nerfed.

The same thing goes for the event outside Baelfire in path 2, were you were suppose to kill a bunch of veterans, while magg set a bomb.

Most people in pugs just tried to kite these instead of killing them. (If you search the forum you’ll see that a lot of people just couldn’t kill them, even if they tried)
Now that encounter is nerfed to.

As mentioned, there is pretty much 2 camps; 1 is the “casual pugs” who think the current difficulty is to high, and the other one is the “organised groups” who think the current difficulty is to low.

It’s not possible to balance the dungeons so they fit everyone with just 1 difficulty, therefore I’m requesting another difficulty to be implemented or some new content focused on those player who think the current dungeons are to easy.

That’s what I wanted to know with this post, not trying to learn people things.

Again, it’s hard to express yourself in written, since it’s easy to sound like a kitten.

Adding challenging content would require them to weigh control and support as heavily as damage currently is. 4 Warrior 1 Mesmer in runs is just too good because you really don’t need support or control to overcome the mechanics.

They could still keep the philosophy that a trinity doesn’t exist for the simple fact that every class is capable of bringing damage, support and control to the table in one form or another, assuming the player is willing to respec for given fights. That’s a big assumption though.

They could very well have fights that would require Interrupt or Wipe mechanics or something that would require your team to stack on an AoE regeneration to heal through unavoidable AoE damage because of how readily available AoE buffs are.

@Komuflage.2307
You are applying an unfair difficulty standard. If a dungeon is meant for sub-80 players, then they are right to complain about it.

IamDuddits.1692:

Adding challenging content would require them to weigh control and support as heavily as damage currently is. 4 Warrior 1 Mesmer in runs is just too good because you really don’t need support or control to overcome the mechanics.

They could still keep the philosophy that a trinity doesn’t exist for the simple fact that every class is capable of bringing damage, support and control to the table in one form or another, assuming the player is willing to respec for given fights. That’s a big assumption though.

They could very well have fights that would require Interrupt or Wipe mechanics or something that would require your team to stack on an AoE regeneration to heal through unavoidable AoE damage because of how readily available AoE buffs are.

The reason why 4W +1M is so powerful is just as you say, they don’t need anything else because it’s so easy.

I don’t see why everyone should respec before any encounter just because they added more challenging content.

As it’s right now, there’s a lack of meaningful mechanics.
As it’s right now, you can just out DPS and out tank most bosses.

If they instead added mechanics were you actually need a bit of everything (to some extend) then this whole 4W +1M would be over.

Add a boss that deals a high damage pulse aoe every other second, so you wouldn’t be able to dodge them all without things like vigor. Now all warriors can’t come with a Greatsword, it would be needed to have a warhorn.

A boss that heals himself a lot, so you need poison upkeep.

In general, just add meaningful mechanics. As of right now, Vigor, Poison upkeep, profession combos etc aren’t needed, you can easily beat any encounter without any of that. At least something so I need to stay focused.

Using the Cof path2 as an example again, before I needed to stay kind of focused while defending magg, now I just spam 1 for 3 min till I win

Trollhammer.7439:

@Komuflage.2307
You are applying an unfair difficulty standard. If a dungeon is meant for sub-80 players, then they are right to complain about it.

Again, you misunderstand, I’m not talking about people lower than lvl 80, I’m talking about the average player I meet in pugs.

There are lvl 80 players who can’t dodge kholers hook, who then complain about it being to hard.
There are lvl 80 players who think the bomb event in CM path 2 is to hard, because they can’t figure out a good strategy, and instead of trying to observe the encounter etc, they just try a few times then complain.

Another example of this (Not dungeon related though) is the clock tower during the Halloween event. Apparently only a small amount of players actually made it. Most people just seemed to jump at random platforms, instead of trying to learn the map, and come up with a “tactic” of how to jump.

Now the creator of the clocktower apologised, and said he would not create such difficult content for such events. (Halloween, Christmas etc)
First of, isn’t the point of a difficult jumping puzzle with an achievement, that only the “best” ones will make it. If it’s balanced so that everyone can make it, it’s not much of an achievement right?
Now we got a new jumping puzzle for Christmas, this was significantly easier, it was ridiculous.

Just to make this clear though, again, I’m not requesting that they’ll balance their jumping puzzles/dungeons for the minority who made it. I’m asking that; instead of balance all the content for the casual players, give us “hard core” players some content as well?

The ease of respeccing your utility skills and swapping weapons is something that GW2 has over WoW. You can go into a dungeon and you have a lot more options. They need to incorporate this with their “no Trinity” philosophy. Warriors have a lot of support and control options at their disposal, but you never see them because Damage is so heavily weighted.

Combos are another great mechanic that is under utilized by the dungeon mechanics. You never really need to use them, making them more of a gimmick than a mechanic. They are incredibly useful, but I hardly ever see them used.

My point is that every class has control, damage, and support that they can bring in, meaning that they should be designing dungeons that assume you always have enough heals to heal through unavoidable AoE and that you always have enough CC to interrupt an unavoidable Wipe. Honestly, they could even do something that would instantly down someone which could encourage taking those “Revive” skills that you never see used.

There are just a lot of interesting weapon combos, utility skills and traits that never get used simply because they don’t maximize DPS. People won’t use a utility unless you give them instances where the utility is useful or needed.

Komuflage.2307:

Trollhammer.7439:

@Komuflage.2307
You are applying an unfair difficulty standard. If a dungeon is meant for sub-80 players, then they are right to complain about it.

Again, you misunderstand, I’m not talking about people lower than lvl 80, I’m talking about the average player I meet in pugs.

No, I understand perfectly. What I am saying is that content designed for sub-80 players should be easy by definition. And if your average pug is dressed in greens, he is just as good as sub-80.
Do I think those encounters you listed are hard? No, not at all. I completely agree that they are in fact too easy. But the point is that sub-max-level content has certain expectations attached to it, that you can’t just ignore.

Trollhammer.7439:

swiftpaw.6397:

no offence bro, but you are a really bad guardian – Trollhammer.
Now while he’s said some rather questionable things about mace and great sword, there’s no need to say that.

I don’t see the difference. If the guy tries to teach people how to play specific profession while displaying some pretty silly ideas about that profession, then he is bad at it. It doesn’t mean he is a bad person, just a bad player. One can get offended at it all they want, frankly I don’t give a kitten.

Well I arrived at the same conclusion but I figure telling him that wont solve anything XD Usually they either ignore you or they spew some other nonsense.

Better to tell him exactly why it is what they are doing is bad.

Imo, why is he running all this so called support with mace and shield if dungeons are not challenging? if they are so easy then maybe he should be running a more optimized build? aka damage spec?

The excuse may be ‘well my team is bad so therefore I need to keep them up.’. well that’s all very well and good, but you may have an easier time of it with greatsword as you have added crowd control. You shield only serves to scatter mobs out of aoe and the few select times when you think you need it to res someone do not justify the other 95% of the time when you wont be using it. The damage from it is poor, and rarely are people going to be standing in front of you to take the protection buff, in most cases you would have to either turn around and hope people are close enough, or walk over to them, usually bringing mobs with you which rather defeats the purpose. The GS’s Aoe blind prevents an attack from all the mobs you just binded in and pulled, couple that with justice, that’s 2 blinds right there.. trait it right, and everytime you kill a mob (easy when they are all on you) Justice refreshes, you have an AOE blind machine. Not to mention you are doing alot more damage.

Preventing Damage is always better than trying to heal it up afterwards.

I doubt PVE is capable of providing a challenge that doesn’t wear off.

PVE is fundamentally predictable. Discover the formula, memorize it, repeat it. You can’t play mind games with dumb monsters.

You can throw in all sorts of mechanics like:

• Do X while other people do Y or Z
• Everyone does X in the same time window
• You need this type of skill to pass this area efficiently
• Gimmicks involving items or boss phases
• Use CC on the mobs
• Increased monster damage
• Maintain an effect on a boss/yourself.

But the mere presence of more complicated mechanics doesn’t necessarily add real challenge in my opinion.

All that does is change the formula to be memorized and make you go through a checklist before a run to make sure your team isn’t full of morons, is capable of communicating, and brings the right skills/effects. It will still get repetitive and easy once you know exactly what to do. Strategy is static in PVE.

To have any real, lasting impact on PVE difficulty, a new mechanic would have to increase the amount of twitch gameplay and unpredictability. Content needs to force you to react quickly, decide quickly, and make good decisions, i.e. difficulty comes not from simply requiring strategies but making the required strategies really hard to execute properly.

I’m sure the developers could’ve made the PVE super hard in this sense, but I don’t think that would work out well, many people will just get frustrated and complain. If “hard mode” is added, I think that’s the direction the new mode should emphasize.

Perhaps they could make really smart and dynamic behavior for the monsters, but that’s not easy.

So for challenge, I feel like you’d have to seek out PVP against good players for dynamic strategy/tactics and twitch gameplay,

I see some people in this thread saying mace sucks. It’s an amazing weapon. Yes it sucks if you go Berserker gear. Here’s why it’s good; the block is awesome, and the symbol allows everyone in the group to remove conditions from themselves.

The tomes just suck. You can’t use any of your other weapon skills while it’s up and it’s way too situational. Renewed Focus is so much better. Half the cooldown and I use the trait that heals when aegis breaks. So basically I can use virtues a lot and save my group. I can dodge 10 times in the amout of the time tome would be up with endurance sigil in offhand and vigor boon from Save Yourself. Use this with the dodge heal and my 1300 healing power.

The bow is ok, but I would much rather use Hold the line. I can use it twice the amount of times, and it’s instant cast so I don’t have to stop other things, like my block from mace. Plus it reduces damage by 33%. I have 50% boon duration so it lasts a long time and it removes a condition with the trait. Usually it gives aegis with the removed condition which will also add another heal again when it breaks. No one has to stand in a circle, they can get the boons and dodge or move out of the way.

Yes, pugs can be bad, but don’t judge what someone is doing based on how you would play. There are very many options for each class, probably some you wouldn’t think about.

Do good players represent a large enough part of the player-base to hope more challenging content? I think not.

I don’t understand why people are talking about weapons, when that’s not the point of the thread, but since I’m not getting any valid answer I might as well join :P

Let’s start with comparing the mace and Gs

GS #1; hits 3 target in an arc, deals same amount of damage as mace, Gives Might, which you can already have 25stack of, so it’s not needed.

Mace #1; hits 3 target in an arc, deals same amount of damage as Gs, Heals
(Does the same thing + heals) “therefore better”.

Gs Light field, Gives retaliation to mates. Well damage is rarely a problem in dungeons, and retaliation only deal a small amount of damage.

Mace Light Field, Gives Regen to mate, damage might rarely be a problem, but people are taking a lot of hits in dungeons, “therefore better”

Gs Blind, Sure it blinds in a Aoe, do you really need it for Mobs? And it’s “useless” against bosses, since of it long cast time, and the duration is only 10% against bosses.

Mace Block, Blocks 1 attack for the whole team (presuming your standing close) less useful than a blind against mobs, but it’s really useful against bosses with a instagib attack, also the attack has no cast time, so as long as you have reflexes, you can block any attack when it’s of CD(well almost) It also gives protection to your team, if you don’t block any attack.

Gs whirl; nothing bad about this attack, it’s a finisher and deals decent damage, still guardians are suboptimal as damage dealers.

Shields protection; Gives protection to my whole team, 33% less damage taken, that’s Huge, and why would it be hard to hit all your allies with it? I run in first, turn around, use it, turn back to the enemy.

Gs Pull: This is what’s useful with the greatswords, it’s a really good attack, against mobs, not bosses though. But that’s it.

Mace “ward”: I must say puching back mobs is less useful than pulling them in (in most situations) However, you can knock down a boss using his “Ulti” and you can always use it to heal your allies.

A mentioned, sure the gs can deal decent damage, but Guardian are suboptimal damage dealers.

As an example, let’s say you’re in an … apocalypse, your a trained doctor, and you team up with a soldier and a professional swordsman.
You find; a medkit, a gun and a sword.
you can give the soldier the medkit, he will be able to use it, give the gun to the swordsman, he’ll be able to shoot with it, and you can take the sword, you’ll be able to chop with is. But that would be suboptimal.

About renewed focus/tome.

Sure renewed focus locks you in place for three seconds making you invulnerable and renews you virtues (Yea another heal and block)

With tome of courage, you get a Ranged Heal, that heals like 1,8k per seconds (more if you got loads of healingpower) a bouncing Blinds, a Regeneration + Protection spell for your allies. A AOE Daze, and a heal that literally heals your whole group to max health. How is 1 heal and 1 block better?

“if they are so easy then maybe he should be running a more optimized build? aka damage spec?

The excuse may be ‘well my team is bad so therefore I need to keep them up."

No I’m in no way saying my team is bad, my group is just as good as me.
However, If I kittenage with my guardian, well still only get a small amount of extra damage (which will be nullified, since my team will have to dodge, and probably go down from time to time)
If I go full support, my team can just tank and spank, while I keep them up. (Ofc some attacks still need to be dodged.)

“The bow is ok, but I would much rather use Hold the line.”
Why not both?

timecookie.8570:

Do good players represent a large enough part of the player-base to hope more challenging content? I think not.

No, that’s what I’m afraid of, thus I’m asking this question.

Naked melee party against Lupi

And I’m sorry to say the “undisclosed” reason people asking for harder content is mostly for bragging right, which in itself an indication of a lack of self confidence (and lack of self esteem)
The content is already hard. Trying naked. QED.

I completely understand the OP’s sentiments. Lately, I find myself running only Arah and nothing else because, simply put, they are not fun. The question is, what makes a dungeon fun? Certainly not the annoyingly small fighting spaces in CM. Definitely not the multitude of bosses in dungeons where all you have to do is range, kite, meleeing is almost impossible, there are very little tells for the bosses’ attacks, and just pew pew to death for 1 hour (slight exaggeration).

No, what ANet needs is more bosses like Giganticus Lupicus. There is a boss worthy of my efforts! You can choose to range, sure, but for me, that gets rather boring. The real fun is when you try to melee him. All of his attacks have very clear and visible tells, rewarding those good players who are able to dodge them, and punishing the rest rather fairly. You can’t just go in with a kitten mind to kill GL. You have to put in that effort and attention or else be killed in a matter of seconds.

CoE’s Subject Alpha comes in close, but after a while it just becomes getting him against a wall and timing dodges. It may be fun for the first few times, but it’s just too simple and dull.