Anet, how will you be successful with PvE?
Would a zerker ele just switching to water attunement be sufficient? I doubt it.
something like that will happen, at least in very organized groups. you will max defensive buffs and tools the same way you max your offensive stuff at the moment.
[qT] Quantify
Yeah, I imagine… but healing power or not, the scaling is abysmal so it won’t make any difference. You can’t have dedicated healer because even with full healing power they don’t have any impact on the game as it is. And healing power scaling won’t be buff because e-sport. E-sport being the main goal of gw2 developpement, we won’t see this coming.
No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.
Yeah, I imagine… but healing power or not, the scaling is abysmal so it won’t make any difference. You can’t have dedicated healer because even with full healing power they don’t have any impact on the game as it is. And healing power scaling won’t be buff because e-sport. E-sport being the main goal of gw2 developpement, we won’t see this coming.
The real reason we don’t have them is because we don’t need them. The content doesn’t force us to.
If we needed a healer even with the bad scaling it would be needed so we’d do it. People would still have to use active defense to mitigate most of the damage though.
Also they could fix the scaling in PvE by adding buffs into the content like some buff you can stack by completing a challenge that increases your healing power by a percentage.
(edited by Khristophoros.7194)
the real reason a dedicated healer isnt needed is because you can evade and you have tons of other defensive tools + combofields + teamwork = as good as a few dedicated healers and on top of that you can deal more dps, but it requires more effort, skill and teamwork.
in gw2 its active defense and teamwork > passive defense.
and healing power + defensive stats seems pretty op to me, because you can ignore everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM
[qT] Quantify
(edited by NoTrigger.8396)
Content need healer = content where people can’t keep themselves alive
Content need tank = content where people can’t kill mobs fast enough before mobs kill them
Anet makes all classes to be self sufficient and favor open world over instance, so this kind of content will be extremely hard to implement(if it’s even possible).
It doesn’t matter what the reasons are for why we don’t need healers or tanks.
What matters is ANet said they want to make content more challenging and require people to switch their role on the fly in order to incentivize more playstyles.
And the problem is that the current systems in the game go against that goal.
“switch on the fly” can also mean instead of camping fire on your staff ele your job will be to use and blast waterfields.
[qT] Quantify
The number one thing anet can do do help pve is make it more dangerous, specifically by drastically increasing npc attack speed.
It’s not only possibly, but expected that capable players are able to dodge EVERY major attack that is thrown at them. If creatures didn’t have ~3 seconds of recovery time between every hit, not only would squishy glass cannons be in greater danger, blocks/blinds would be much more balanced. Right now, a few well timed blocks can create a huge window of complete safety that facilitates the stack and spam style everyone uses.
Skilful players would still be able to protect themselves and others from big, infrequent, exceptional dangerous attacks but smaller strikes would still take their toll on players.
The end result would be much more value on survival over raw power. That survival could take the form of possission (give player a reason to go ranged/flank/not stack/move in and out of combat), tank stats, or healing from themselves or others.
Once defence becomes a requirement rather than simply a sub optional crutch for players who don’t have fights and dodge timings memorized, pve well be WORLDS healthier, probably more challenging and satisfying too
Except that won’t create diversity at all, just make knight or pvt the new meta, with zerker gearing more toward the “pros”. At the end, everyone still respond to keep their own skin intact and do as much dps as possible, which is no different compare to now.
The number one thing anet can do do help pve is make it more dangerous, specifically by drastically increasing npc attack speed.
It’s not only possibly, but expected that capable players are able to dodge EVERY major attack that is thrown at them. If creatures didn’t have ~3 seconds of recovery time between every hit, not only would squishy glass cannons be in greater danger, blocks/blinds would be much more balanced. Right now, a few well timed blocks can create a huge window of complete safety that facilitates the stack and spam style everyone uses.
Skilful players would still be able to protect themselves and others from big, infrequent, exceptional dangerous attacks but smaller strikes would still take their toll on players.
The end result would be much more value on survival over raw power. That survival could take the form of possission (give player a reason to go ranged/flank/not stack/move in and out of combat), tank stats, or healing from themselves or others.
Once defence becomes a requirement rather than simply a sub optional crutch for players who don’t have fights and dodge timings memorized, pve well be WORLDS healthier, probably more challenging and satisfying too
Except tipping the scales too far that way destroys our Controls aspect. If we compare this to PvP (which is basically what the system is balanced around), single trigger controls become much weaker as attack rate increases. The trouble with class design is we tend to have a huge focus on Blinds and Aegis (one off effects), but absolutely abysmal uptime on lingering conditions (like confusion, protection, etc) due to the long cool downs and very low proc reliability. And those are supposed to be our counter tools against pressure damage.
The net effect isn’t solving the issue. It only offloads it in a different direction (see mordrem attack tables).
The state of the combat system is also clearly moving toward more interdependence, but the build system is at odds with it. The main being its too hard to spec a build that requires attribute synergy. Zerks is popular because it yields the highest damage potential as a base, as we shuffle traits to build our defenses, sacrificing some damage multipliers to for better staying power. But that doesn’t work the other way around.
We have very few % based defensive traits. And of those, their net effect tends to be poor against sustained damage in practice. In fact, the majority are explicitly designed to blunt spike damage, only to go back on a long cool down. Sustain is pointless because damage sources generally overwhelm strong defenses at very low thresholds. And once the damage source is removed, DPS drops accordingly.
In order to better enable endurance style fights, soft controls need to be modified to better fit high rate of attacks.
At the top of the list, Aegis needs to become stacks like Stability. To counter play that, mobs are expected to have higher rates of attacks, and MORE attacks (both mobs and classes) need to start using Unblockable more intelligently in design. This allows it to mitigate bursts the same way, but makes it more flexible against different attack types.
Unblockables becomes your heavy hitter, shield breaker style skills that exchange a wind up for a solid hit. This adds emphasis to fast attacks being pressure, and large attacks being spikes. Obviously the counter to this is using blind. This will allow the existing “big hit” style to remain in the game, but adds the much needed extra bypass to make it flexible against other changes.
The counter play in both of these to this is better inclusion of Protection and Weakness (which is severely underutilized, despite being the primary counter to crit damage). Combined, they greatly reduce DPS potential of a target. Right now Protection is unreliable when needed, and Weakness is only sustainable (as far as I know) with 2 attacks out of the entire skill list.
And just like that, we have a functional Trinity thats compatible with our build system.
The number one thing anet can do do help pve is make it more dangerous, specifically by drastically increasing npc attack speed.
It’s not only possibly, but expected that capable players are able to dodge EVERY major attack that is thrown at them. If creatures didn’t have ~3 seconds of recovery time between every hit, not only would squishy glass cannons be in greater danger, blocks/blinds would be much more balanced. Right now, a few well timed blocks can create a huge window of complete safety that facilitates the stack and spam style everyone uses.
Skilful players would still be able to protect themselves and others from big, infrequent, exceptional dangerous attacks but smaller strikes would still take their toll on players.
The end result would be much more value on survival over raw power. That survival could take the form of possission (give player a reason to go ranged/flank/not stack/move in and out of combat), tank stats, or healing from themselves or others.
Once defence becomes a requirement rather than simply a sub optional crutch for players who don’t have fights and dodge timings memorized, pve well be WORLDS healthier, probably more challenging and satisfying too
I don’t think it’s that simple. Why would PvE be healthier if players are forced to build more defensive stats? What is the actual effect on gameplay? Well it’s slower. It takes longer to do the same thing. Is that healthier? I don’t think so.
The number one thing anet can do do help pve is make it more dangerous, specifically by drastically increasing npc attack speed.
It’s not only possibly, but expected that capable players are able to dodge EVERY major attack that is thrown at them. If creatures didn’t have ~3 seconds of recovery time between every hit, not only would squishy glass cannons be in greater danger, blocks/blinds would be much more balanced. Right now, a few well timed blocks can create a huge window of complete safety that facilitates the stack and spam style everyone uses.
Skilful players would still be able to protect themselves and others from big, infrequent, exceptional dangerous attacks but smaller strikes would still take their toll on players.
The end result would be much more value on survival over raw power. That survival could take the form of possission (give player a reason to go ranged/flank/not stack/move in and out of combat), tank stats, or healing from themselves or others.
Once defence becomes a requirement rather than simply a sub optional crutch for players who don’t have fights and dodge timings memorized, pve well be WORLDS healthier, probably more challenging and satisfying too
……
that will solve nothing. anet will have to lower damage to compensate. The whole issue is that the best support is a dead enemy. Healing skill and defense skills pales in scaling in comparison to dps and cc. It might magnify the zerker meta while alienating the rest of community including those defense and healing builds.
I would rather have anet add more interesting mobs with lower damage and maybe one or two telegraph. So building for pure dps and minimal cc is a bad idea.