Guild Wars 2

How’s it going guys?

Gliding’s cool, and it looks like there are quite a few places blocked off to you until you have access to the it or the jumping mushrooms, which doesn’t seem all that bad since you only really need 1 level and 1 mastery point for each.

The mobs in the zone aren’t anything to write home about, and the events seem to be pretty zergy. Many of the objectives for events and the meta event are left unexplained, and there isn’t really any direction in the zone. The night phase seems to just mean ‘more random mobs and events’, and no particular increase in difficulty that I noticed. I didn’t see any real boss type events, so I suspect they’re tied to the areas meta event that none of us understand how to progress properly.

The one ‘challenge’ minigame thing I found wanted you to collect supplies from a pit filled with mordrem tendrils, with collecting consisting of pressing f and being locked into a pickup animation for a second or so, while locked out of all skills. It was annoying as hell because a lot of people were entering, getting aggro, and then getting a ton of poison AoE circles shot at where you spawn. It seemed like the event would be trivialized by certain traits (some seemed to work, others didn’t) and foods.

cant wait to play it in my real gear instead of that cele crap they gave us :P

#justelitistthings

Real elitists aren’t in the beta because you had to farm open world content for the access

/s

Nah real elitists need to be in the exclusive club at all cost

Cheezy.2039:

Real elitists aren’t in the beta because you had to farm open world content for the access

/s

real elitists are in the beta, cuz its exclusive and you want in but cant get in but theyre better than you so theyre in ofc

Well, I felt right at home: Meleeing, stacking and blasting might, while the casuals safely hammered from 1200 range.

Unfortunately, I was lacking swiftness, so I couldn’t properly speed-clear

Dreadfully boring. I also felt frustrated due to the terrible gear. I shouldn’t have chosen revenant. :/

Yeah rly dull and revenant is horrible.

Sins.4782:

The mobs in the zone aren’t anything to write home about, and the events seem to be pretty zergy. Many of the objectives for events and the meta event are left unexplained, and there isn’t really any direction in the zone. The night phase seems to just mean ‘more random mobs and events’, and no particular increase in difficulty that I noticed. I didn’t see any real boss type events, so I suspect they’re tied to the areas meta event that none of us understand how to progress properly.

The one ‘challenge’ minigame thing I found wanted you to collect supplies from a pit filled with mordrem tendrils, with collecting consisting of pressing f and being locked into a pickup animation for a second or so, while locked out of all skills. It was annoying as hell because a lot of people were entering, getting aggro, and then getting a ton of poison AoE circles shot at where you spawn. It seemed like the event would be trivialized by certain traits (some seemed to work, others didn’t) and foods.

So…..more random zergy open world events and gimmicky minigames? Sigh.

Time to /uninstall?

I mean…if there isn’t any challenging instanced content, all I see HoT doing is killing the worn-out existing content via power creep and adding more heart quests + Dry Tops. Those who enjoy things like Arah get nada from the sounds of it.

HoT is LS guys, you know what you get.

You act like its surprising that the open world stuff is like that.

We still dont know anything about the “challenging group content”. Or what they are doing to fractals. So theres really nothing new to talk about. And its pointless worrying.

I was really bored throughout the meta. Factors that caused my boring-ness:

• 1. Gear. Celestial + Dolyak Runes. I dealt absolutely no damage so I couldnt gauge whether Revenant hitted hard or not. It was frustating me to spend 1 minute killing regular passive mobs.

• 2. Map was kind of confusing. No real interesting places that caught my attention that made me want to go there. You couldn’t even be free to explore because the majority of the map was just an endless pit. Gliding might fix this issue.

• 3. Revenant sucked. Atleast for me. I felt pidgeonholed, combat wasn’t fluid because not every weapon skill meshed well together. The utilities were an absolute joke too.

• 4. Three to Four guys popping their commander tags and a zerg behind them instantly reminded me of Silverwastes and Dry Top. Not a fun reminder should I say.

• 5. Events were pretty shallow/brainless in my opinion.

Positive points:

Some new interesting mechanics like that Mounted Boss you had to break defiant bar in order to dismount him and be able to do damage.

spoj.9672:

You act like its surprising that the open world stuff is like that.

We still dont know anything about the “challenging group content”. Or what they are doing to fractals. So theres really nothing new to talk about. And its pointless worrying.

I sincerely hope you’re right.

dlonie.6547:

spoj.9672:

You act like its surprising that the open world stuff is like that.

We still dont know anything about the “challenging group content”. Or what they are doing to fractals. So theres really nothing new to talk about. And its pointless worrying.

I sincerely hope you’re right.

Im not saying be optimistic. Im just saying nothings changed. And theres no further evidence to say we wont get instanced stuff. So its pointless fretting over. We will find out when we find out.

Since beta server seems to be broken right now, I’ll go ahead and post my thoughts for the second test period.

This time I commanded the Itzel events through most of the day cycle. We saved the village a couple times, fed starving villagers, put out firs (throw water bucket at red circle, repeat ad infinitum, ugh), hunted some beasties with their hunters (mobs upscaled hard here, but the hunters we had to defend didn’t, so that was fun), restored their faith in frogmanity, punished the enemy frogpriests, and brought a ton of wyvern eggs down from some high cliffs to stick in the enemy frogcamp. They were all pretty average, but the wyvern egg thing showed just how fun the glider system really is. It’s definitely the best addition to open world exploration we’ve had.

The revenant, though… well, let’s just say that nearly everyone was playing one, and half of those players absolutely loved to spam the displacement move they had. And let me tell you, it is far, far worse than rangers point blank shotting off cooldown. There’s going to be a whole huge new wave of dungeon pug hatred when this one comes out.

Revenant blacklist before it even comes out. I like it. :>

Unyielding Anguish is going to make open world or random pugs really miserable with them teleporting mobs around everywhere randomly.

Their teleport location can be “aimed”, but random Revenants aren’t going to do that. They’re going to just displace big piles of mobs away out of everyone’s AoE. It’s like the ranger longbow knockback but a million times worse.

Nokaru.7831:

Unyielding Anguish is going to make open world or random pugs really miserable with them teleporting mobs around everywhere randomly.

Their teleport location can be “aimed”, but random Revenants aren’t going to do that. They’re going to just displace big piles of mobs away out of everyone’s AoE. It’s like the ranger longbow knockback but a million times worse.

Hmm, wonder if people can use this to troll others. Could be fun.

Didn’t participate, but I heard condition cap got increased/lifted? Is that true or did someone try to fool me?

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Didn’t participate, but I heard condition cap got increased/lifted? Is that true or did someone try to fool me?

Some conditions got their cap increased to 100 in the last stress test. Dunno about this one.

Sins.4782:

This time I commanded the Itzel events through most of the day cycle. We saved the village a couple times, fed starving villagers, put out firs (throw water bucket at red circle, repeat ad infinitum, ugh), hunted some beasties with their hunters (mobs upscaled hard here, but the hunters we had to defend didn’t, so that was fun), restored their faith in frogmanity, punished the enemy frogpriests, and brought a ton of wyvern eggs down from some high cliffs to stick in the enemy frogcamp. They were all pretty average, but the wyvern egg thing showed just how fun the glider system really is. It’s definitely the best addition to open world exploration we’ve had.

The wyvern did show up for us after placing the eggs at frogcamp. It was th best part with no doubts. Seems like some servers didn’t get to see him, though :\

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

I dealt absolutely no damage so I couldnt gauge whether Revenant hitted hard or not.

Heh, I couldn’t kill 4 menders. No joke. I couldn’t.
Had to roll ele and jerus christ the difference I’ve seen, even in kittenty gear.
I fear it’s gonna be even more pvp oriented than I expected – with terrible damage, average utility, average ccs, average everything else and good at nothing <.<
I also desperately need to hope that the power revenant does more damage than the horror I’ve seen up to this point, because I so like the concept of the class.
I already know it won’t work <.< and yeah, utils are also a joke.

This stress test was a gigantic bore. I expect the xpac to be underwhelming for my personal enjoyment.
The same 2, 3 events repeated at infinitum, just like in the SW. Gah, booooooring.
I can’t imagine doing this zergy,mind-numbing open world content for more than a couple of weeks tops, and just to grind the mushroom masteries.
Gotta be some more Mario.

Cute mushrooms.
Cute little mushrooms with legs.
Must be worth 50e? Yes?

Elrey.5472:

The wyvern did show up for us after placing the eggs at frogcamp. It was th best part with no doubts. Seems like some servers didn’t get to see him, though :\

Ah. The server kicked us all out after 8 or 9 minutes of standing around killing stuff at the egg placing event, sadly. Maybe I’ll get to see it next test period.

I actually find the SW bosses to be pretty entertaining, I mean they’re no Lupi but they keep me busy. Problem is huge event chains to get to the things I find fun. Which goes against the casual nature of this game and the idea that I can log in play for 15-20 mins and have fun. Instead I have to map hop and go through long periods of boredom to get to the things I actually find entertaining. If that’s what the expansion has to offer… well… I’ll probably play as often as I am right now.

I didn’t really like SW that much. Yeah, the defend/escort events and bosses were interesting the first few times, but that and the jumping puzzle were the only things in the map. No interesting NPCs, lore, or anything really to take a break from the meta event, and everything seemed so loot oriented. Not to mention that the place was very bland visually outside of some portions of the jumping puzzle. I think the most fun I had in SW wasn’t doing any of the events, but mountain goating around and trying to max out falling damage on my necro.

Don’t forget they intend to remove all damage modifiers so maybe all our classes can hit like floppy revs #spongehype.

And yeah SW is boring to me too, I only go there sometimes because of the loot and the lack of anything else meaningful to do.

Remember the chronomancer Points of Interest? How PvE was showcased with the dev playing on a STAFF mesmer?

Yeah, now you know why your beta consists of celestial gear Revenants.

Game is made with the zerg loving people in mind. You want more complex combat and encounters than just a twitch game, play the other ACTUAL MMO’s.

Or you can spvp. Maybe there you won’t have to contrive some challenge because the vanilla encounter is awfully dull and gimmicky.

And to those who got in, congrats; you deserve it. I don’t know what possessed you to endure such a mindless and soul crushing experience such as farming Silverwastes, but you at the very least deserve some compensation for it.

BTW, for those who played Revenant: disregard the gear. Tell me what you think about the class design and what it could do in berserkers.

What do you mean “Actual MMO’s”?

Other MMOs have their twitch mechanics as well, in fact many are more overbearing.

I think what GW2 did is something great, removing the trinity and creating a system where you have more options. I doubt it’ll be the last we see of it. The trinity is simply an easy way out of good synergetic design. It’s forced diversity and nothing else.

In DCUO we saw the start of this type of system thanks to the action style mechanics of blocks and counters. But, again, in that game reacting .1s too slow can end in disaster (tank dead, raid failing). Though they had trinity there the more action style with it’s more engaging play allowed you to surpass the status quo of trinity games.

But even that, in EQ we had our twitch style with having to react quickly to enemies before they unleashed devastating attacks on groups of comrades. Be it landing a CC or pulling agro, or even landing a heal right at the right time, anticipating the action and casting right at the right time. Really no different than reacting to a Lupi Kick, the difference being that often you had healers who could let you rebound as long as you didn’t flat out die, and even if you did, just res and keep going.

There’s really nothing superior about other MMOs other than the fact that they release far better and far more content to actually play. That’s really the only thing GW2 lacks.

Jerus.4350:

What do you mean “Actual MMO’s”?

Other MMOs have their twitch mechanics as well, in fact many are more overbearing.

I think what GW2 did is something great, removing the trinity and creating a system where you have more options. I doubt it’ll be the last we see of it. The trinity is simply an easy way out of good synergetic design. It’s forced diversity and nothing else.

In DCUO we saw the start of this type of system thanks to the action style mechanics of blocks and counters. But, again, in that game reacting .1s too slow can end in disaster (tank dead, raid failing). Though they had trinity there the more action style with it’s more engaging play allowed you to surpass the status quo of trinity games.

But even that, in EQ we had our twitch style with having to react quickly to enemies before they unleashed devastating attacks on groups of comrades. Be it landing a CC or pulling agro, or even landing a heal right at the right time, anticipating the action and casting right at the right time. Really no different than reacting to a Lupi Kick, the difference being that often you had healers who could let you rebound as long as you didn’t flat out die, and even if you did, just res and keep going.

There’s really nothing superior about other MMOs other than the fact that they release far better and far more content to actually play. That’s really the only thing GW2 lacks.

Options my kitten . They removed the trinity only in spirit. It still functions the same. You use a guardian to absorb damage via aegis or use blind spam or CC. You’re still standing in a mob’s face and using avoidance (which traditional tanks use with cooldowns and native parry/dodge rates) to divert the damage.

In other top MMO’s the difference in DPS between classes is also not as vast. Look at FFXIV or Wildstar or WoW. Nowehere near the difference between an elementalist/thief and a necromancer/ranger/mesmer.

I never said other MMO’s didn’t have twitch, merely that the sole appeal of THIS one is the twitchy combat. Because this game sure as hell doesn’t come close to the encounter design or raiding scenes of WoW/Wildstar/FFXIV.

What you have here is the same as Challenge Modes competition in WoW.

Yup, because guardian is required for content… wait, no it isn’t.

I’d go on, but really that statement proves my point just fine.

Jerus.4350:

Yup, because guardian is required for content… wait, no it isn’t.

I’d go on, but really that statement proves my point just fine.

What part of blind/cc (including elementalist ice bow) did you miss. Be it a thief or elementalist instead of guardian, it’s the same concept.

As is using an earth elemental on mai trin or the golem in fractals.

I’m sorry to burst your bubble but this game is far from revolutionary. It’s a pretty looking game with a great art team and a fun combat engine, but most importantly it’s F2P.

You’ve sat for 2.5+ years with the same old dungeons with the only innovations being how to make it go faster because you’re so over them already.

Which of these took months of attempts and different configurations to figure out the encounter? Oh, right, none of them.

The closest this game ever got to that is Priestess of Dwayna, and that’s stretching it.

Now tell me Zenith how my group of 4 players without guardian or thief or elementalist made it to fractals level 50 1 by 1 (no cheating with the instabilities!) and still try to prove your point that a certain proffesion is needed.

The holy trinity is gone, what we have here is active defense, where anyone can protect himself from the hits. No need of a tank to get the hits nor a healer to heal them.

fishball.7204:

Don’t forget they intend to remove all damage modifiers so maybe all our classes can hit like floppy revs #spongehype.

What?

They haven’t shown the Revenant Power trait line, Power legendary form or Power melee weapon and you complain they have bad damage. Duh.

Elrey.5472:

Now tell me Zenith how my group of 4 players without guardian or thief or elementalist made it to fractals level 50 1 by 1 (no cheating with the instabilities!) and still try to prove your point that a certain proffesion is needed.

The holy trinity is gone, what we have here is active defense, where anyone can protect himself from the hits. No need of a tank to get the hits nor a healer to heal them.

There’s not a single 5 man either in any of the MMO’s I mentioned where you need a tank. Presence of a trinity combat system does not mean you require a tank to complete casual content, which is what fractals are in comparison to other games’ content.

The point is, in GW2 someone is taking care of the damage absorption/avoidance part. Someone, based in proximity, is baiting the aggro.

Saying that GW2 is successful in removing the trinity because it made content where DPS can just bumrush an hp sack and trivialize most of its attacks is a pointless boast.

Don’t think the trinity exists? Go out in WvW or spvp where the opponents are actually smart compared to the terribly designed 2+ year old neglected PvE AI. Chances are your frontline and damage soakers are the warriors and guardians, the elementalists and engineers are laying down the water fields and the other classes stay most of the time in ranged weaponsets.

Is there any way in the beta to obtain anything besides celestial? Do toons come with tradeskills leveled?

Zenith.7301:

Go out in WvW where the opponents are actually smart

Well…

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Zenith.7301:

Go out in WvW where the opponents are actually smart

Well…

Yeah, yeah, not smarter than you of course. Smarter than the AI who will happily stand in your lava font till it dies however is another matter. Speaking of zerglings since you prefer to paint with a broad brush, not the dueling roamers I’m sure you beat without effort.

And of course we have mobs in PvE who make plentiful attempts to interrupt your skills via well timed stuns/daze or attempt to foil your burst/CC with aegis/blind of their own, or stunbreak and apply stability to themselves when they predict incoming CC from a skill animation.

Or who slap poison on you when they predict you are going to heal or who cleanse conditions like vulnerability off themselves or place projectile reflection on themselves when they detect you using a projectile.

Zenith.7301:

Jerus.4350:

Yup, because guardian is required for content… wait, no it isn’t.

I’d go on, but really that statement proves my point just fine.

What part of blind/cc (including elementalist ice bow) did you miss. Be it a thief or elementalist instead of guardian, it’s the same concept.

As is using an earth elemental on mai trin or the golem in fractals.

I’m sorry to burst your bubble but this game is far from revolutionary. It’s a pretty looking game with a great art team and a fun combat engine, but most importantly it’s F2P.

You’ve sat for 2.5+ years with the same old dungeons with the only innovations being how to make it go faster because you’re so over them already.

Which of these took months of attempts and different configurations to figure out the encounter? Oh, right, none of them.

The closest this game ever got to that is Priestess of Dwayna, and that’s stretching it.

I’ll refer back to my other post. The only thing GW2 lacks is content. They’ve failed to take advantage of a great system.

WvW players have much less health than enemies we consider thrash.

Zenith.7301:

Smarter than the AI who will happily stand in your lava font till it dies however is another matter. Speaking of zerglings since you prefer to paint with a broad brush

Ok so if I understand your points correctly, the zerging part of wvw involves smart decision making, which forces players into trinity roles. One of these roles being the tank.

Zenith.7301:

The point is, in GW2 someone is taking care of the damage absorption/avoidance part. Someone, based in proximity, is baiting the aggro.

And so the tank takes care of damage mitigation from the enemy zerg. A role which is enabled by his ability to bait the smart enemy zerg’s attacks thanks to his proximity with them.

The enemies smartly focus the tank just because he is close to them.

That does not seem so smart to me. But again, I don’t play wvw. So either zergs are not smart (but we will discard this possibility because I trust your wvw experience) or the role of the tanks is not what you described.

Let’s explore the second option.
The trinity is commonly described as DPS-heal-tank. But this is a misconception. The real trinity is damage-support-control. Now if you look at it from this perspective then you will understand that we require these three elements everywhere in the game, yes even speedrunning PvE. No class has a monopoly on any of these, and no class is truly lacking in any either. This is why there is no explicit trinity in GW2: it is actually internal to every character.

Although now that I read your posts again before sending this message I realise that maybe this was your point all along, in which case we agree

Yes, it’s what I meant. The trinity comes in another form, which is still there.

In WvW the importance of the meatshields is not in the aggro system, though it is by the definition of the frontline that they will likely absorb the brunt of the damage as they will be the initial people within attack range.

The real value of the “tanks” in WvW comes from the bodyblocking of projectiles (not seen much in PvE due to projectile reflect because you can sit in reflect walls without being forced to move out of them, unlike WvW) and soaking up the aoe cap limits so the more squishy backline and midline doesn’t eat as much cleave damage. They also trigger things like necro marks and traps before those go off on the back or midline. Because much of the engagements as well hinge on surviving burst and trading CC, those tanks serve to pressure the use of rings of warding and other offensive tools so that they can absorb that CC and spike chain that would otherwise annihilate the backline.

These features are useless in PvE of course because in PvE you can gear and slot utilities/traits for efficiency in damage output and clear times and mobs won’t punish you for it or exploit your defensive weaknesses. Doing GvG in berserker gear for most classes except midline wells necromancer (and in the case of the necromancer the team heavily builds around them to keep them alive) and thief is often suicidal.

Problem is creating good PvE AI or encounters is expensive, while creating PvP content is cheap because the content is generated as much by players as developers. You give them a map, and they will find multiple, constantly changing ways of using that map for months or years. PvE is scripted and grows stale.

And they’ve been rather stingy with additions in this game so let’s hope that when players pay for an xpac box that anet finds some incentive to invest in a dedicated PvE team.

Ehh, I’ve never really seen the frontline as that, the frontline more over applies pressure, pushing the other team around, making them move and react instead of getting open free casting from safety. If they fail to move they get caught in the hammer train and die. Of course being the front you are going to take the brunt of the attacks, but you’re not there to soak up damage as much as you are there to try and keep the pressure up and try to keep them off balance. Still a very offensive role, but instead of focusing on personal damage you take advantage of numbers, even if each person individually hits for only say 800, when you have 10+ people hitting you for that and inflicting cripples/immob/knockdowns, well you’re gonna get smashed up pretty quickly.

Good PvE doesn’t require now, nor has it ever required in the past, good AI. The best raid bosses in the history of MMOs don’t even have what could be called AI. They just spit out their mechanics in a semi-scripted order and challenge you to deal with them or die. Better AI is what you ask for when you want PvE mobs to act like players, which really isn’t the strength of good PvE encounters in the first place.

NikeEU.7690:

Good PvE doesn’t require now, nor has it ever required in the past, good AI. The best raid bosses in the history of MMOs don’t even have what could be called AI. They just spit out their mechanics in a semi-scripted order and challenge you to deal with them or die. Better AI is what you ask for when you want PvE mobs to act like players, which really isn’t the strength of good PvE encounters in the first place.

Are you saying that the distinction, for you, is whether the enemy adapts to what the player is doing or not?

I would say good PVE design either has a really well designed script, that requires you to execute pretty well, and make you feel good when you do execute well, or having an enemy that better responds to player behaviors, or a combination of those things.

I will say GW2, in both styles is fairly lacking.

phys.7689:

NikeEU.7690:

Good PvE doesn’t require now, nor has it ever required in the past, good AI. The best raid bosses in the history of MMOs don’t even have what could be called AI. They just spit out their mechanics in a semi-scripted order and challenge you to deal with them or die. Better AI is what you ask for when you want PvE mobs to act like players, which really isn’t the strength of good PvE encounters in the first place.

Are you saying that the distinction, for you, is whether the enemy adapts to what the player is doing or not?

I would say good PVE design either has a really well designed script, that requires you to execute pretty well, and make you feel good when you do execute well, or having an enemy that better responds to player behaviors, or a combination of those things.

I will say GW2, in both styles is fairly lacking.

Please see this post as to why I find “make pve mobs behave like pvp players” to be a really dumb idea…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/General-Dungeon-Discussion-Thread-Part-2/page/52#post5077603

Any human wannabe ai can and will be abused very hard. People who complain that los is abusing will be horrified when they will see what can be done with advanced ai. It will solve nothing. Good and solid scripted boss mechanics, however, can be made really fun and bug proof.

NikeEU.7690:

phys.7689:

NikeEU.7690:

Good PvE doesn’t require now, nor has it ever required in the past, good AI. The best raid bosses in the history of MMOs don’t even have what could be called AI. They just spit out their mechanics in a semi-scripted order and challenge you to deal with them or die. Better AI is what you ask for when you want PvE mobs to act like players, which really isn’t the strength of good PvE encounters in the first place.

Are you saying that the distinction, for you, is whether the enemy adapts to what the player is doing or not?

I would say good PVE design either has a really well designed script, that requires you to execute pretty well, and make you feel good when you do execute well, or having an enemy that better responds to player behaviors, or a combination of those things.

I will say GW2, in both styles is fairly lacking.

Please see this post as to why I find “make pve mobs behave like pvp players” to be a really dumb idea…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/General-Dungeon-Discussion-Thread-Part-2/page/52#post5077603

You bring up some valid points in that post, but unless I skim-read too much I did not see anything about mobs voluntarily crippling themselves by refusing to move and attack at the same time.

This AI failure is what creates the largest imbalances between pvp and pve, fixing this would go a long way to make this game mode more interesting.

NikeEU.7690:

phys.7689:

NikeEU.7690:

Good PvE doesn’t require now, nor has it ever required in the past, good AI. The best raid bosses in the history of MMOs don’t even have what could be called AI. They just spit out their mechanics in a semi-scripted order and challenge you to deal with them or die. Better AI is what you ask for when you want PvE mobs to act like players, which really isn’t the strength of good PvE encounters in the first place.

Are you saying that the distinction, for you, is whether the enemy adapts to what the player is doing or not?

I would say good PVE design either has a really well designed script, that requires you to execute pretty well, and make you feel good when you do execute well, or having an enemy that better responds to player behaviors, or a combination of those things.

I will say GW2, in both styles is fairly lacking.

Please see this post as to why I find “make pve mobs behave like pvp players” to be a really dumb idea…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/General-Dungeon-Discussion-Thread-Part-2/page/52#post5077603

you seem to have a preference for a certain type of fight, but i disagree that it is the most entertaining pve design.
I will say that if designers poorly execute certain mechanics, they will be annoying, but that is true of anything they do.

i also dont think that enemies that do things players dont like, if the player responds poorly, or doesnt use their skills well is a bad design.

also they dont need to design enemies that have a 50% chance to defeat players, but they should design enemies for high end content, that require players to use more of their available skill sets like movement, control, timing, strategy other than just offensive buffs and defensive negates.

basically what we have now in GW2 is its own version of tank and spank.
which you seem to be suggesting is the best PVE design, of which i disagree, though for some encounters it has its place.