Guild Wars 2

spoj.9672:

Astralporing.1957:

NoTrigger.8396:

other gear allows high survivability without player skill needed. thats actually imbalance and bad for an action skill based combat system.

This what you said is patently untrue. A truly unskilled player in this game will die regardless of build and gear. The only difference will be that on bunker build it will take somewhat longer. And on zerker sometimes mobs will die before that point.

Thats a problem with the content not the gear. Its something that should be discussed in this CDI. Many trash mobs are too easy and the mob groups dont have synergising attacks. The only exception to this is Arah trash mobs.

I don’t think raid mobs, even trash, should die before they can do anything significant. They shouldn’t take ages either, not to bore the players to death, but they should have a window of opportunity where they actually can show what they’re made of.

Naetell.3815:

Again, there’s no inherent risk attached to DPS gear. If there is, I’d like you to show that.

if you do a mistake you are dead. thats the high risk of dps gear. you have to play well, you have to know the encounter, and you have to use the right skills at the right time. in tanky gear i can ignore all of that.

Naetell.3815:

spoj.9672:

Astralporing.1957:

NoTrigger.8396:

other gear allows high survivability without player skill needed. thats actually imbalance and bad for an action skill based combat system.

This what you said is patently untrue. A truly unskilled player in this game will die regardless of build and gear. The only difference will be that on bunker build it will take somewhat longer. And on zerker sometimes mobs will die before that point.

Thats a problem with the content not the gear. Its something that should be discussed in this CDI. Many trash mobs are too easy and the mob groups dont have synergising attacks. The only exception to this is Arah trash mobs.

I don’t think raid mobs, even trash, should die before they can do anything significant. They shouldn’t take ages either, not to bore the players to death, but they should have a window of opportunity where they actually can show what they’re made of.

Which is exactly what i was saying. Arah mobs do this quite nicely. Mostly because of the risen illusionists op chaos storm. But also the risen hunters group stability and the mages knockback contribute. Arah packs have the potential to wipe experienced players especially when stacking. There is certainly risk with glass gear when you face these types of mob packs.

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

Again, there’s no inherent risk attached to DPS gear. If there is, I’d like you to show that.

if you do a mistake you are dead. thats the high risk of dps gear. you have to play well, you have to know the encounter, and you have to use the right skills at the right time. in tanky gear i can ignore all of that.

That’s simply not true. You have an literal invulnerability button and a huge health pool while downed that gives your fellow players plenty of time to pick you back up, if you haven’t gained a second wind from channeling 4 or killing a mob yet, that invalidates any sense of 1 mistake = dead.
In all the content we have in GW2 today, one mistake does not even down a DPS player. A big mistake might, a massive mistake does, but I don’t like defending the oneshot mechanics some bosses have either.
I’ve played in tanky gear too, and it’s not exactly what you’d call fun. It takes everything out of the game, and if you combine it with dodging you might as well be invulnerable the entire time. With the added problem it takes you hours to do anything and you don’t get rewards as easily in the open world because it’s all calculated on DPS done.

On none of my full glass characters have I ever had that feeling of imminent danger in this game.
And there’s no raiding mechanic that can change that.

So, I really do wonder where this notion comes from, that there’s an actual split between skilled and not-skilled players based on the gear the wear.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

And as some guidance. We can tune mobs to behave and require any strategy we want in raiding. This is why I asked that we take the core mechanics of GW2 and build on that and not look to other games or the current balance of our open world maps to dictate encounter strategy and player behavior.

Chris

I do not mean to offend anyone with any of my posts, though I know I sometimes may be without knowing. If anyone feels anything I’ve said is out of line, I will address that to the point of removing posts entirely.

I am curious behind the reasoning of some of these players’ arguments though.

spoj.9672:

Naetell.3815:

spoj.9672:

Astralporing.1957:

NoTrigger.8396:

other gear allows high survivability without player skill needed. thats actually imbalance and bad for an action skill based combat system.

This what you said is patently untrue. A truly unskilled player in this game will die regardless of build and gear. The only difference will be that on bunker build it will take somewhat longer. And on zerker sometimes mobs will die before that point.

Thats a problem with the content not the gear. Its something that should be discussed in this CDI. Many trash mobs are too easy and the mob groups dont have synergising attacks. The only exception to this is Arah trash mobs.

I don’t think raid mobs, even trash, should die before they can do anything significant. They shouldn’t take ages either, not to bore the players to death, but they should have a window of opportunity where they actually can show what they’re made of.

Which is exactly what i was saying. Arah mobs do this quite nicely. Mostly because of the risen illusionists op chaos storm. But also the risen hunters group stability and the mages knockback contribute. Arah packs have the potential to wipe experienced players especially when stacking. There is certainly risk with glass gear when you face these types of mob packs.

Yes, +1 for that btw.

Naetell.3815:

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

Again, there’s no inherent risk attached to DPS gear. If there is, I’d like you to show that.

if you do a mistake you are dead. thats the high risk of dps gear. you have to play well, you have to know the encounter, and you have to use the right skills at the right time. in tanky gear i can ignore all of that.

That’s simply not true. You have an literal invulnerability button and a huge health pool while downed that gives your fellow players plenty of time to pick you back up, if you haven’t gained a second wind from channeling 4 or killing a mob yet, that invalidates any sense of 1 mistake = dead.
In all the content we have in GW2 today, one mistake does not even down a DPS player. A big mistake might, a massive mistake does, but I don’t like defending the oneshot mechanics some bosses have either.
I’ve played in tanky gear too, and it’s not exactly what you’d call fun. It takes everything out of the game, and if you combine it with dodging you might as well be invulnerable the entire time. With the added problem it takes you hours to do anything and you don’t get rewards as easily in the open world because it’s all calculated on DPS done.

On none of my full glass characters have I ever had that feeling of imminent danger in this game.
And there’s no raiding mechanic that can change that.

So, I really do wonder where this notion comes from, that there’s an actual split between skilled and not-skilled players based on the gear the wear.

its not that because you wear berserk, you are automatically a better player. Its that the better you are, the less need you have for the defense.

You say with your tank gear, the encounter is too easy, and you cannot die. What is the advantage of tank gear?
Tank gear in this game exists primarily to set your handicap in battle. the more tank gear you have the more mistakes you can make. I am not saying every player in tank gear does, but thats the main advantage of it.

hybrid.5027:

Ohoni, it sounds like you’re opposed to any sort of unique rewards for raiding. It also sounds like you’re opposed to raiding in a general sense.

So now that we have established that you disagree with the concept of raiding in guild wars 2, could you kindly exit the discussion so people who wish to be constructive and topical can continue on with the Raid CDI?

That sounds like a wonderful idea. I think I’ll join him.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

And as some guidance. We can tune mobs to behave and require any strategy we want in raiding. This is why I asked that we take the core mechanics of GW2 and build on that and not look to other games or the current balance of our open world maps to dictate encounter strategy and player behavior.

Chris

Chris,

Maybe it would help if you give a little definition regarding what you mean by core mechanics. Are we on the right track with this kind of approach – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/25#post4535356 ?

If not, maybe a little direction and examples will spur the conversation.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Naetell.3815:

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

Again, there’s no inherent risk attached to DPS gear. If there is, I’d like you to show that.

if you do a mistake you are dead. thats the high risk of dps gear. you have to play well, you have to know the encounter, and you have to use the right skills at the right time. in tanky gear i can ignore all of that.

That’s simply not true. You have an literal invulnerability button and a huge health pool while downed that gives your fellow players plenty of time to pick you back up, if you haven’t gained a second wind from channeling 4 or killing a mob yet, that invalidates any sense of 1 mistake = dead.
In all the content we have in GW2 today, one mistake does not even down a DPS player. A big mistake might, a massive mistake does, but I don’t like defending the oneshot mechanics some bosses have either.
I’ve played in tanky gear too, and it’s not exactly what you’d call fun. It takes everything out of the game, and if you combine it with dodging you might as well be invulnerable the entire time. With the added problem it takes you hours to do anything and you don’t get rewards as easily in the open world because it’s all calculated on DPS done.

On none of my full glass characters have I ever had that feeling of imminent danger in this game.
And there’s no raiding mechanic that can change that.

So, I really do wonder where this notion comes from, that there’s an actual split between skilled and not-skilled players based on the gear the wear.

Do you remember the first times you did Tequatl as a glass cannon?

Are you saying that you were never downed in the front raid group?

Now that folks understand how to use the turrets and warriors drop banners do you die less?

Chris

The new tequatl was an interesting experience the first days actually. I first went on my full glass thief, figured out the jump or dodge over waves thing to melee him, and then promptly got downed by a poison cloud. Other players rushed in to help me up, and died as well because of it.

It was an experience unlike any other I’d had in GW2 before that point.

Ultimately, Tequatl’s timer ran out and people lamented the ‘insane difficulty’, but I was laughing all the way from waypoint to dragon and back.

I then logged on my guard, also in full glass, and I found the clouds weren’t as deadly anymore. Aegis + learning to anticipate the clouds made it a lot easier. Stability for the waves was a good one too.
Still, bone wall happened and at some point we got massacred by a group of risen attacking in the back of the, now mostly ranged, zerg.

From then on, I’ve always ran Tequatl on my full glass guard. I didn’t even bother buying him soldiers gear or anything, and rather than lamenting with the others in chat, I grabbed a turret and tried to learn how to use it as quickly as possible.
I then joined Gandara’s front-line groups in killing Tequatl, and after the patch was over and most went on to do other things, me and two others remained and founded DV, for the express purpose of coordinating these events.
I learned how to lead, I wrote one of the tutorials on turret use, and we went on.

Am I still downed while leading Tequatl sometimes? Sure, and I always make sure to swim back as soon as possible if there are no instant resses around.
Do I feel like I don’t have enough health to lead the front-line zerg even in full glass? No, I feel fine actually. The clouds don’t oneshot, and standing still in them really shouldn’t happen, especially with wall of reflection covering everyone.

Do I die less than at first? Of course, that’s the nature of learning an encounter. The same should hold true for raiding.

Ohoni, it sounds like you’re opposed to any sort of unique rewards for raiding. It also sounds like you’re opposed to raiding in a general sense.

So now that we have established that you disagree with the concept of raiding in guild wars 2, could you kindly exit the discussion so people who wish to be constructive and topical can continue on with the Raid CDI?

I don’t disagree with the idea of raiding in GW2, so long as it is NOT like raiding in other games, ie “pinnacle content” that all players are expected to participate in eventually if they want to be relevant to the endgame. I think that if they want to add raiding as a purely optional element to the game, that’s fine, I just want assurances that they have no intention of shoehorning non-raider players into the raid portion of the game by requiring raiding to achieve various general milestones.

I believe that it’s important to have this voice clearly expressed in the CDI discussion, because raiding is not just about those who participate in it, it also has to do with all the other players in the game. If at any time the devs would care to make a clear stance on this issue, making it absolutely clear that there will not be ANY rewards that can only be earned via raiding, and that there will be no efforts to coerce non-raiders into the raiding element of the game (beyond some minimal “try it once, get a prize, and then you can move on if it’s not for you” element), then I’m happy to bow out, but until then, I think it’s important to always keep the holistic game in mind.

SPvP as the game launched with was a perfect example of how to do things right, where it did not intersect with the PvE experience at all and could be completely ignored. They made changes over the past two years though that erroded this firewall, and made it so that there are numerous benefits to be gained from playing sPvP even if all you want to do is PvE. I hope when they add raids it will be more like launch sPvP and less like modern sPvP.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

snip

And note these are honest questions and not me being rude.

Chris

I didn’t think of them in any other way.

Johan

phys.7689:

Naetell.3815:

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

Again, there’s no inherent risk attached to DPS gear. If there is, I’d like you to show that.

if you do a mistake you are dead. thats the high risk of dps gear. you have to play well, you have to know the encounter, and you have to use the right skills at the right time. in tanky gear i can ignore all of that.

That’s simply not true. You have an literal invulnerability button and a huge health pool while downed that gives your fellow players plenty of time to pick you back up, if you haven’t gained a second wind from channeling 4 or killing a mob yet, that invalidates any sense of 1 mistake = dead.
In all the content we have in GW2 today, one mistake does not even down a DPS player. A big mistake might, a massive mistake does, but I don’t like defending the oneshot mechanics some bosses have either.
I’ve played in tanky gear too, and it’s not exactly what you’d call fun. It takes everything out of the game, and if you combine it with dodging you might as well be invulnerable the entire time. With the added problem it takes you hours to do anything and you don’t get rewards as easily in the open world because it’s all calculated on DPS done.

On none of my full glass characters have I ever had that feeling of imminent danger in this game.
And there’s no raiding mechanic that can change that.

So, I really do wonder where this notion comes from, that there’s an actual split between skilled and not-skilled players based on the gear the wear.

its not that because you wear berserk, you are automatically a better player. Its that the better you are, the less need you have for the defense.

You say with your tank gear, the encounter is too easy, and you cannot die. What is the advantage of tank gear?
Tank gear in this game exists primarily to set your handicap in battle. the more tank gear you have the more mistakes you can make. I am not saying every player in tank gear does, but thats the main advantage of it.

I’d argue against that on the premise of creating a fake difficulty.
The game is plenty forgiving even in full glass. The prevalence of tank gear in the game (and this is simplifying and generalising it by a lot) gives players the idea that it is not only okay, but expected to wear some amount of it. There is no reason to have more than 100% survivability.
Better yet, if the game is built on the premise that all damage can be avoided, then this tanky gear is hampering people’s learning process by reducing the need to learn how to dodge.
From that point of view, it is hard to defend tanky gear at all.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

And I absolutely agree.

There are plenty of ways with our core mechanics that we can make player’s have roles. There are many ways we can make player’s provide a true support role. And there are many ways that we can create new types of raid encounter experiences based on our core mechanics.

Chris

I agree, and I can theorise various paths myself, but there’s this idea amongst players that gear is by and large useless because of the action-based combat system, and therefor gear does not add to roles.
Personally, I think it’s the combination of various factors that have led to this, but I’d like to challenge people’s ideas about what they think is in the game, compared to what there actually is in the game. GW2 has a foundation that allows for more than the same old rehashed roles, and I believe it can be made possible for all classes to play as any role. And I think that ultimately, it should be a combination of skills+traits+gear+encounter that should determine someone’s role, with the ability to swap 3 of those out any time they are out of combat.

Naetell.3815:

In all the content we have in GW2 today, one mistake does not even down a DPS player. A big mistake might, a massive mistake does, but I don’t like defending the oneshot mechanics some bosses have either.

first of all thats a content problem. the pve content we have is not really challenging and difficult to beat, except when you are soloing stuff.

now let me give you one example.
imagine in a 15 man raid a boss has a really tight enrage timer and 15 players are required to use dps gear and optimal rotations to kill the boss before the enrage timer hits.
now in this fight there is healing required, more than just your personal healing skill.
how will players deal with this? they will heal each other with water fields, defensive boons.
so EVERYONE in the raid will be required to provide as much support as possible, teamwork and on top of that dps.
or in other words, everyone has to play well and pull their weight.
and all of that happens while players are dodging dangerous hits and abilities.

now lets say 12 people are required to use optimal rotations and dps gear and you have 3 dedicated healer. will this make the encounter more challenging and fun?
it will actually reduce teamwork, coordination and the requirement that players try to play as good as possible, because focusing on only one thing is much easier to do, and doesnt need as much teamwork.

actually situation 1) is exactly why i love the gw2 combat system.

people always say “just dps, just dps, just dps”. what they dont understand, its exactly the other way around.
its support, support, support with the nice bonus that you can deal alot of dps on top of that at the same time.

how much dps you can deal on top of providing tons of support depends ONLY on how good the player is at the game. a player who doesnt react properly, is inexperienced, and doesnt know when and what to dodge needs defensive gear to survive.
a great player doesnt need defensive gear, because he is learning how to react to X situation faster, how to react proberly etc………

this is actually just amazing. because its entirely based on player skill.

i dont know if you understand what im trying to explain here. but i can recommend every player who thinks “only dps dps dps, no support, no cc” to learn to solo arah paths in berserker gear. once you have done that and reached a certain skill level in gw2, you will look at the game and the combat system from a very different perspective that not alot of players seem to understand even after 2 years of playing the game.

I really like the idea of raiding in guild wars 2 but I don’t really see it getting a kick off until things change.

Raiding is a new form of content you plan to add, yet if we look at avenues for content like fractals/dungeons/guild missions/world bosses that are already in game, they are barely developed. This is especially true for dungeons and guild missions. Even in interviews during September, you admitted that youd rather find more ways to keep people playing the dungeons already in game, rather than add new ones. Oddly enough people have already played the same dungeons for 2 years now.

The only type of content we really see Anet committed to right now is Living Story content, open world maps, or the story instances. Anything else has not been shown any attention.

My current stance is that it is just another avenue of content that will be neglected if put in game. Although, I really hope that the diversity of content pumped out changes.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Naetell.3815:

phys.7689:

Naetell.3815:

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

Again, there’s no inherent risk attached to DPS gear. If there is, I’d like you to show that.

if you do a mistake you are dead. thats the high risk of dps gear. you have to play well, you have to know the encounter, and you have to use the right skills at the right time. in tanky gear i can ignore all of that.

That’s simply not true. You have an literal invulnerability button and a huge health pool while downed that gives your fellow players plenty of time to pick you back up, if you haven’t gained a second wind from channeling 4 or killing a mob yet, that invalidates any sense of 1 mistake = dead.
In all the content we have in GW2 today, one mistake does not even down a DPS player. A big mistake might, a massive mistake does, but I don’t like defending the oneshot mechanics some bosses have either.
I’ve played in tanky gear too, and it’s not exactly what you’d call fun. It takes everything out of the game, and if you combine it with dodging you might as well be invulnerable the entire time. With the added problem it takes you hours to do anything and you don’t get rewards as easily in the open world because it’s all calculated on DPS done.

On none of my full glass characters have I ever had that feeling of imminent danger in this game.
And there’s no raiding mechanic that can change that.

So, I really do wonder where this notion comes from, that there’s an actual split between skilled and not-skilled players based on the gear the wear.

its not that because you wear berserk, you are automatically a better player. Its that the better you are, the less need you have for the defense.

You say with your tank gear, the encounter is too easy, and you cannot die. What is the advantage of tank gear?
Tank gear in this game exists primarily to set your handicap in battle. the more tank gear you have the more mistakes you can make. I am not saying every player in tank gear does, but thats the main advantage of it.

I’d argue against that on the premise of creating a fake difficulty.
The game is plenty forgiving even in full glass. The prevalence of tank gear in the game (and this is simplifying and generalising it by a lot) gives players the idea that it is not only okay, but expected to wear some amount of it. There is no reason to have more than 100% survivability.
Better yet, if the game is built on the premise that all damage can be avoided, then this tanky gear is hampering people’s learning process by reducing the need to learn how to dodge.
From that point of view, it is hard to defend tanky gear at all.

But as a PVT War my goal is to ensure the rest of the group doesn’t get downed so we can win as my DPS is poor. I love this role and even when I dodge effectively there are still plenty of attacks that catch me off guard. So therefore I see my armor and traits as a way to better support my group.

It doesn’t matter if i can stay alive ad infinitum (which I can’t). What matters is that I can help my group to help us all win.

Chris

The percieved problem here is not that the PVT warrior (heal shouts) is an ineffective build. (It’s not, it’s one of the most powerful support builds in the game, I’d argue)
The point is that the sacrificed DPS do not mathematically align with the support gained. You could use the same build in PPF or VTP gear with the same level of support given.
Theoretically, the dodge alone + the self-healing ability you have are enough to make it through an encounter as encounter time drops the more DPS you deal. The longer any encounter takes, the greater the theoretical chance becomes of anyone making a mistake, and the added survivability mattering.
Tequatl as an encounter tries to balance the equation by taking Precision and Ferocity out of the equation, and that works to some degree, but this does tend to annoy DPS players.

Now the real questions and issues begin when looking at stats that actually do matter for support. Healing and Boon Duration exist, they are on gear. (Not many in the case of BD, admittedly) However, these stats do not affect support in the matter DPS is affected by gear. Instead, sufficient support is added without these stats according to many experienced dungeon players.

But maybe this is just me thinking too much like a theorycrafter than as an actual player.

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

In all the content we have in GW2 today, one mistake does not even down a DPS player. A big mistake might, a massive mistake does, but I don’t like defending the oneshot mechanics some bosses have either.

first of all thats a content problem. the pve content we have is not really challenging and difficult to beat, except when you are soloing stuff.

now let me give you one example.
imagine in a 15 man raid a boss has a really tight enrage timer and 15 players are required to use dps gear and optimal rotations to kill the boss before the enrage timer hits.
now in this fight there is healing required, more than just your personal healing skill.
how will players deal with this? they will heal each other with water fields, defensive boons.
so EVERYONE in the raid will be required to provide as much support as possible, teamwork and on top of that dps.
or in other words, everyone has to play well and pull their weight.
and all of that happens while players are dodging dangerous hits and abilities.

now lets say 12 people are required to use optimal rotations and dps gear and you have 3 dedicated healer. will this make the encounter more challenging and fun?
it will actually reduce teamwork, coordination and the requirement that players try to play as good as possible, because focusing on only one thing is much easier to do, and doesnt need as much teamwork.

As presented, situation 1 is preferable.

NoTrigger.8396:

actually situation 1) is exactly why i love the gw2 combat system.

people always say “just dps, just dps, just dps”. what they dont understand, its exactly the other way around.
its support, support, support with the nice bonus that you can deal alot of dps on top of that at the same time.

I agree. The problem is there is that they’re looking at the stats the game has to offer, the builds people recommend, and they only see: DPS focus, DPS focus, DPS focus.
That’s what causes them to wonder: What about the rest?
What they don’t realise, is that the rest is already so powerful it doesn’t need boosting, regardless of whether this is even possible or not.

And I do strongly believe it should be possible to have both a high DPS output and a high support value at the same time.

NoTrigger.8396:

how much dps you can deal on top of providing tons of support depends ONLY on how good the player is at the game. a player who doesnt react properly, is inexperienced, and doesnt know when and what to dodge needs defensive gear to survive.
a great player doesnt need defensive gear, because he is learning how to react to X situation faster, how to react proberly etc………

this is actually just amazing. because its entirely based on player skill.

Now that, I fundamentally disagree with. I don’t think anyone needs defensive gear because they are a bad player. I think they could learn to play great without it just fine.

I’m all for skilled play, but, and I may be wrong here, I also think tanky players should be skill-based rather than just stats. I’d like their stats to be meaningful in the same way DPS stats are, by emphasing skill over just standing there and getting hit.

NoTrigger.8396:

i dont know if you understand what im trying to explain here. but i can recommend every player who thinks “only dps dps dps, no support, no cc” to learn to solo arah paths in berserker gear. once you have done that and reached a certain skill level in gw2, you will look at the game and the combat system from a very different perspective that not alot of players seem to understand even after 2 years of playing the game.

Yes, I may secretly be mentally handicapped or something that prevents me from understanding other human beings.

I can recommend learning to solo Arah to anyone. It’s a lot of fun, and it doesn’t cost you anything now repair costs are no more.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I think your comments are well made. And therefore what I would say is that the notion of support, co-operation and a role is very much dependent on the kind of encounter that is built then with a delta of skill and armor and traits that is not as important as knowledge and co-operation in said raid encounter but important none the less.

I suppose that this is the core of the approach I would like us to discuss.

knowledge>skill>character setup>group number

And the reason group number is last is because I think that by following the paradigm we discussed and in the confines of this proposal that player’s could complete a raid with less than the recommended amount by increasing their acumen in Knowledge>skill and character setup.

Chris

All the more reason why encounter design is so important. In contrast, for others reading this, I’ll say that in World of Warcraft, for example, a number of bosses per raid were often so-called t&s bosses, which didn’t do anything special and were more of a hard stat-check for your raiding group rather than anything resembling an interesting encounter. Fighting them wasn’t any fun, but they were once the majority of raid bosses in that game.

I think with that we’ve pretty much covered everything in regards to stats and raiding. xD

I agree. Completing a raid with less than the recommended amount of people has been a long-standing tradition in MMORPG’s, and it’s a great challenge.
Knowledge and skill should always be first there, in my honest opinion.

Its actually very encouraging to see Chris understanding and agreeing with NoTriggers posts. Many of us have had our doubts about whether the devs are on the same page as us or atleast understand our side even as a minority. So thanks for the encouraging comments Chris and Crystal. I now believe good raid content can come out of this if those core values for difficult content are maintained.

We should probably move away from the gear discussion though as that always invites arguements. So lets move it back on topic.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I don’t know if I agree about PVT AOE Heal wars just standing there. It depends on the encounter and I certainly can’t just stand still in fractals (-:

Anyway even if I am wrong we have got to the point in the discussion where I think we can agree that any perceived issues can be handled by the design of the encounter and the balance thereof.

Chris

Yes.
For anyone wondering how to do, for example, classic raid tanking on a skill basis rather than a stat one, I’ll try to think of an example here:

You could have a transformation that transforms you into the Avatar of the Great Stone Dwarf, for example, and replaces your skills with a number of skills to counter the moves of the raid boss. The raid boss will be attracted to the Avatar player, but only as long as that player has a buff on him granted by one of his abilities. The player can’t heal himself in this state, but he can prevent damage through tactical and correct use of his gained skills in this transformation.
Say, to counter the boss’ basic attack, you get a simple ‘Defend’ as skill 2. Using this skill reduces damage for one second from small attacks, but is useless against big attacks, it also prevents use of your other skills during this second.
Skill 3 is Parry, which has uses endurance, and turns one of the boss’ attacks against him, but only when timed exactly right. If mistimed, you take increased damage.

The difference between this and classic tanking?
Classic tanks do their thing, the boss does his thing, and the two never really need to pay too much attention to each other.
In this example, the tank needs to anticipate the moves the boss will make and react appropriately. Failing to do so is going to down him pretty fast.

The balance of the encounter can determine whether the player can make any mistakes, to how many mistakes, to even allowing this player to solo the battle, theoretically.

Not a word about interrupts yet? It’s the most basic system mechanic needed for a raid fight. Enemies that will instantly wipe your group unless you interrupt them (dodge shouldn’t work if you fail).

I think that’s the very first step needed to build proper fights in gw2. Bosses ans thrash mobs needs to have access to powerful skills that should be interrupted when they are channeling it. To make sure it’s challenging, the execution of those enemy skills should be random, not something like “each 60 seconds exactly”. Obviously it should have a minimum skill cooldown to avoid bosses spamming it.

Just make us feel DANGER. And if you add Defiance to the fight, there you have an easy simple already-in-game mechanic that automatically build up group coordination (to remove defiance) and ready the boss up to interrupt.

As a pvt warr who prefers an interrupt based build, i approve of the essence of this statement. I agree it is an under utilised skill set, but tootsie showed that even simple encounters can be fun, yet challenging under this mechanic.

Ohoni.6057:

SPvP as the game launched with was a perfect example of how to do things right, where it did not intersect with the PvE experience at all and could be completely ignored. They made changes over the past two years though that erroded this firewall, and made it so that there are numerous benefits to be gained from playing sPvP even if all you want to do is PvE. I hope when they add raids it will be more like launch sPvP and less like modern sPvP.

I understand that sentiment exactly. Raiding is a part of PvE though, and we should be trying to make it more so instead of make it more of a fringe thing like you have in other games where there’s ‘the entire game, and raiding’ almost diametrically opposed to one another.

Still, you’re fighting a massively uphill battle here, and for that alone, you have my respect.

Elrey.5472:

Not a word about interrupts yet? It’s the most basic system mechanic needed for a raid fight. Enemies that will instantly wipe your group unless you interrupt them (dodge shouldn’t work if you fail).

I think that’s the very first step needed to build proper fights in gw2. Bosses ans thrash mobs needs to have access to powerful skills that should be interrupted when they are channeling it. To make sure it’s challenging, the execution of those enemy skills should be random, not something like “each 60 seconds exactly”. Obviously it should have a minimum skill cooldown to avoid bosses spamming it.

Just make us feel DANGER. And if you add Defiance to the fight, there you have an easy simple already-in-game mechanic that automatically build up group coordination (to remove defiance) and ready the boss up to interrupt.

Actually on this, I’ve always considered the dodge mechanic replacing this in a manner of speaking in an “action/active combat”.
In GW1 a skilled mesmer could effectively go “lol nope nope nope” and completely lockdown a character preventing them from doing anything useful.
In GW2 a skilled thief can spend so much time out of targetability/ dodge invun that it effectively negates the attacks.

A combination of the mechanics could be interesting though, but important questions would be
- How will defiance/indomitable work with this?
- Is it player skills or a bundle like in the mouth fight in Arah story mode.
-Is the target only channelling this attack or do they maintain the other pressure? (I.E is the player attempting to dodge 20 red circles while trying to notice a cast animation and watch the stacks.
-Should it telegraph to the players likely to be effected (like Jade maw does just before it blasts you to give you a chance.)

Interrupts and defiant was discussed in detail a while back. Cant remember if it was a separate thread or in the fractal CDI.

There are a lot of people who like the coordination that defiant forces players to use to setup interrupts. But if you are going to add some skills which absolutely must be interrupted then maybe it should be possible to interrupt those specific attacks through defiant.

Although personally id still like to encourage removing defiant stacks even for those special attacks. Maybe an interrupt through defiant could not fully interrupt the attack. Or it could cause a debuff on players as a penalty. Or you could have the opposite and reward players for interrupting it while there are no defiant stacks by giving them a temp buff.

petespri.6548:

Concern: “Raids” will end up just like dungeons, ie, dps is the only viable spec and build.

Proposal Goal: To make raids challenging, to require teamwork and puzzle-solving through well executed organization. To avoid dps-only, zerg only combat.

Proposal Overview: “Raids” will be set in the Mists. Raids will be instanced. All gear will be equalized and picked from the pvp lockers. Raids will be for story and cosmetics skins and for the sheer challenge of beating them with your friends.

Proposal Functionality: Raids will be set in the mists. In order to avoid the pitfall of dps only dungeons (faster boss deaths is less player damage taken) and wvw (big zerker mobs to simply outnumber bosses and using your most damaging #1 autoattacking weapon), raids will likely need to be roll/build specific. There will be a team make up that the devs tune the raid too, such as you have 4 slots that need to be condition cleansers, the rest can be dps. The encounters will require this and the instance will check this from the party before the raid can be entered.

Associated Risks:
1- Puts Guardians that have tons of protection granting skills and lots of bonus healing in an overpowered and overdesired support position.

2- Many people wont like the requirements for roles to be filled. I don’t see how this can be avoided and not turn into dps/zerg playstyles, however.

3- People will eventually start min-maxing which classes specced as what will be optimal. Counter this by ensuring that each raid has different bosses that lend itself to different classes being present. This way, even if one class is better at one fight, you have to consider the entire raid (of course this means you cant swap people out mid-raid and would require a lock to the raid).

You don’t exactly roles to be class based. Take Ta Aetherpath for example, there’s a clear role on the ooze puzzle where there are people killing the elementals and people luring the ooze around, but neither of those roles forces the use of any particular class.

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

In all the content we have in GW2 today, one mistake does not even down a DPS player. A big mistake might, a massive mistake does, but I don’t like defending the oneshot mechanics some bosses have either.

first of all thats a content problem. the pve content we have is not really challenging and difficult to beat, except when you are soloing stuff.

now let me give you one example.
imagine in a 15 man raid a boss has a really tight enrage timer and 15 players are required to use dps gear and optimal rotations to kill the boss before the enrage timer hits.
now in this fight there is healing required, more than just your personal healing skill.
how will players deal with this? they will heal each other with water fields, defensive boons.
so EVERYONE in the raid will be required to provide as much support as possible, teamwork and on top of that dps.
or in other words, everyone has to play well and pull their weight.
and all of that happens while players are dodging dangerous hits and abilities.

The boss must constantly do some aoes atacks that punish ppl with Berseker gear if we go with the ‘’normal raid bosses mechanics’’ …
He must be balanced around ppl with Balanced-Defensive gear …..
Otherwise :
a) he will be have a Trillion HP , if they balanced it around Berseker and he will be spong-boss like the istances (that you hate)
b) you simply take 6-8 Elementalist+Hunters and make a rotation with the water fields , and trivialize the encounter
+ 3-4 Guardians that will spamm the Protection with the Elementalist ….
c) if it balanced around Balanced-Defensive gear , then your marvelous raid with Bersekers willl kill the boss in half the time (2-3 min)
….. and every1 with Berseker-Defensive-Balanced gear will be happy ….
and not only a guy that 5 months now , wants every encounter to be balanced around Bersker and tries to shut down other ppl ideas about increasing other specs iin every single thread ….

‘’Enrage Timer’’ ?
What kind of casual things are you spouting ?
So Bersker gear should be a ‘’MUST HAVE 100%’’ to beat the encounter ?
Dont you have a more vivid immagination ?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

NoTrigger.8396:

Naetell.3815:

In all the content we have in GW2 today, one mistake does not even down a DPS player. A big mistake might, a massive mistake does, but I don’t like defending the oneshot mechanics some bosses have either.

first of all thats a content problem. the pve content we have is not really challenging and difficult to beat, except when you are soloing stuff.

now let me give you one example.
imagine in a 15 man raid a boss has a really tight enrage timer and 15 players are required to use dps gear and optimal rotations to kill the boss before the enrage timer hits.
now in this fight there is healing required, more than just your personal healing skill.
how will players deal with this? they will heal each other with water fields, defensive boons.
so EVERYONE in the raid will be required to provide as much support as possible, teamwork and on top of that dps.
or in other words, everyone has to play well and pull their weight.
and all of that happens while players are dodging dangerous hits and abilities.

now lets say 12 people are required to use optimal rotations and dps gear and you have 3 dedicated healer. will this make the encounter more challenging and fun?
it will actually reduce teamwork, coordination and the requirement that players try to play as good as possible, because focusing on only one thing is much easier to do, and doesnt need as much teamwork.

actually situation 1) is exactly why i love the gw2 combat system.

people always say “just dps, just dps, just dps”. what they dont understand, its exactly the other way around.
its support, support, support with the nice bonus that you can deal alot of dps on top of that at the same time.

how much dps you can deal on top of providing tons of support depends ONLY on how good the player is at the game. a player who doesnt react properly, is inexperienced, and doesnt know when and what to dodge needs defensive gear to survive.
a great player doesnt need defensive gear, because he is learning how to react to X situation faster, how to react proberly etc………

this is actually just amazing. because its entirely based on player skill.

i dont know if you understand what im trying to explain here. but i can recommend every player who thinks “only dps dps dps, no support, no cc” to learn to solo arah paths in berserker gear. once you have done that and reached a certain skill level in gw2, you will look at the game and the combat system from a very different perspective that not alot of players seem to understand even after 2 years of playing the game.

I agree 100%. I now don’t understand why folks are arguing.

Cris

basically its pretty hard to understand myself. But I think though many people have the same understanding the question is.

Should raids be designed in a way that specifically makes certain stat builds more necessary.
So they are discussing whether raids should be built with these type of mechanics, like guaranteed damage (so tank gear/heal gear is more needed) or mandatory reflect checks, etc.

I personally am against these type of things, I do thing you may want to design fights where there is a primary design where having more healing/vitality could be useful, but you shouldnt design it in a way that is mechanical.

For example, you may have a room with no way out, and you have to survive a certain amount of time. Tanky classes might have an advantage here, but dodging, working together, etc still work.

You may design a boss that has a player-like attack speed at certain times, so confuse, protection, immobilize etc might be useful, but dont do something where its mechanical, like you can only do dmg while he is confused.

Basically the debate is between forced specific mechanics/roles and designs where players figure out how to make it work with what they have/playstyles.

thats how i see the debate anyhow.

Hey, don’t forget to look at Elite Areas from GW1!
Underworld, Fissure of Woe, Domain of Anguish, Urgoz Warren and the Deep were essentially raid-like content. Would be awesome to see elite areas like those in GW2!

Mada.5319:

Hey, don’t forget to look at Elite Areas from GW1!
Underworld, Fissure of Woe, Domain of Anguish, Urgoz Warren and the Deep were essentially raid-like content. Would be awesome to see elite areas like those in GW2!

I’d definitely like to see those types of areas reborn, only . . . except for Urgoz/Deep which had only one path, a more open arrangement like UW/FOW/DOA . . .

Open world and nonlinear approaches are a strength of GW2 which shouldn’t be discarded when speaking of large-scale (area wise) raids.

It also wouldn’t be amiss to make them as open world areas with a much lower player cap. Imagine Tower of Nightmares with instances where only 15-20 players maximum were around.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The core is 100% there and there is a huge amount of opportunity here to make really unique forms of raiding.

I’m curious why it took you guys more than 2 years to realize this.

I can list some issues preventing the possibility of me taking GW2 pve seriously, specifically raids.

Defiant, spamming a bunch of rupts only to have someone passively trigger the 9000 defiant stacks again is probably the worst system I’ve ever seen when it comes to boss interrupts in MMO, no offense.

Say a boss has uninterruptable attacks which can be avoided in other ways like spreading out away from players or vice versa, getting behind or to the side, simply power healing through it or attrition healing and then there is attacks you can interrupt or dodge. A boss fight should cycle all of these imo.

GW2 is king of 1shots and no one enjoys those. Being punished for being hit by an attack is all fine and dandy but let’s not slap people in the face for it. This is augmented by GW2’s particle effects. I have no idea how anyone is expected to melee one of the many bosses you can’t see attacking just to get instagibbed. Particle effects need to be addressed, it is a serious issue.

Support, healing, ranged, tank, DPS roles should all be encouraged not just DPS. This zerker zerg+ball up mentality needs to go. To get any benefit from allies you need to be right next to them.

Aggro is impossible to control but this was manageable in GW1 by body blocking, something that doesn’t work in GW2.

In 2019 when you guys release your first instanced raid I hope it’s not just going to be a typical 5man dungeon experience and again I must emphasize the issue of particle effects rendering any content in the future essentially a joke unless it is fixed with a particle slider or an option to only see your own effects like Rift has.

Alternatively you could add cast bars and stop pretending like GW2 is a “watch attack then dodge” type of game because that is currently impossible in most fights with the effects and most of my evades are random or build into attacks.

PS: I run as zerker thief in all content. My strategy for pve is essentially pressing 1, 3, or 5 every once in a while with the odd twitch dodge thrown in to prevent my instadeath.

Here’s to hoping GW2 one day gets decent pve (or pvp for that matter)…

I understand that sentiment exactly. Raiding is a part of PvE though, and we should be trying to make it more so instead of make it more of a fringe thing like you have in other games where there’s ‘the entire game, and raiding’ almost diametrically opposed to one another.

A million times “no.” Raiding is a PvE activity, but it is a very specific flavor of PvE, and not for everyone’s tastes. Those who like raiding can have raiding, and it should be fun for them, but those that do not enjoy raiding, do not enjoy raiding, just accept that, move on, and leave them in peace.

kitten .9460:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The core is 100% there and there is a huge amount of opportunity here to make really unique forms of raiding.

I’m curious why it took you guys more than 2 years to realize this.

I can list some issues preventing the possibility of me taking GW2 pve seriously, specifically raids.

Defiant, spamming a bunch of rupts only to have someone passively trigger the 9000 defiant stacks again is probably the worst system I’ve ever seen when it comes to boss interrupts in MMO, no offense.

GW2’s particle effects. I have no idea how anyone is expected to melee one of the many bosses you can’t see attacking just to get instagibbed. Particle effects need to be addressed, it is a serious issue.

I concur. Particle effects need to be addressed unless all the bosses are going to be designed like WoW where they tell you what skill they are about to use with recorded speech.

Ohoni.6057:

I understand that sentiment exactly. Raiding is a part of PvE though, and we should be trying to make it more so instead of make it more of a fringe thing like you have in other games where there’s ‘the entire game, and raiding’ almost diametrically opposed to one another.

A million times “no.” Raiding is a PvE activity, but it is a very specific flavor of PvE, and not for everyone’s tastes. Those who like raiding can have raiding, and it should be fun for them, but those that do not enjoy raiding, do not enjoy raiding, just accept that, move on, and leave them in peace.

Exactly this. It is a specific flavor of PvE. It is like farming World Bosses, or farming Cursed Shore events, or farming anything else for that matter. Even with what challenge that is introduced by the raid encounter it’ll still amount to farming if drops/rewards are exclusive to it unless all necessary exclusive items are given the first time through making it so that you never have to go back. Even then people shouldn’t be forced or feel forced to do something that isn’t fun for them.

Scryeless.1924:

Ohoni.6057:

I understand that sentiment exactly. Raiding is a part of PvE though, and we should be trying to make it more so instead of make it more of a fringe thing like you have in other games where there’s ‘the entire game, and raiding’ almost diametrically opposed to one another.

A million times “no.” Raiding is a PvE activity, but it is a very specific flavor of PvE, and not for everyone’s tastes. Those who like raiding can have raiding, and it should be fun for them, but those that do not enjoy raiding, do not enjoy raiding, just accept that, move on, and leave them in peace.

Exactly this. It is a specific flavor of PvE. It is like farming World Bosses, or farming Cursed Shore events, or farming anything else for that matter. Even with what challenge that is introduced by the raid encounter it’ll still amount to farming if drops/rewards are exclusive to it unless all necessary exclusive items are given the first time through making it so that you never have to go back. Even then people shouldn’t be forced or feel forced to do something that isn’t fun for them.

So by that notion, dungeon and fractal skins should be attainable through every single activity in the GW2 universe? It’s the same concept as a raid unique skin. Why should this logic apply to raid items but not other exclusive items?

Scryeless.1924:

kitten .9460:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The core is 100% there and there is a huge amount of opportunity here to make really unique forms of raiding.

I’m curious why it took you guys more than 2 years to realize this.

I can list some issues preventing the possibility of me taking GW2 pve seriously, specifically raids.

Defiant, spamming a bunch of rupts only to have someone passively trigger the 9000 defiant stacks again is probably the worst system I’ve ever seen when it comes to boss interrupts in MMO, no offense.

GW2’s particle effects. I have no idea how anyone is expected to melee one of the many bosses you can’t see attacking just to get instagibbed. Particle effects need to be addressed, it is a serious issue.

I concur. Particle effects need to be addressed unless all the bosses are going to be designed like WoW where they tell you what skill they are about to use with recorded speech.

Two possible solutions that could work:

1) Make bosses gigantic. There’s no issues with reading tells from Teq and Wurm.
2) Add cast bars similar to Moa from Dry Top

kitten .9460:

Defiant, spamming a bunch of rupts only to have someone passively trigger the 9000 defiant stacks again is probably the worst system I’ve ever seen when it comes to boss interrupts in MMO, no offense.

I agree, defiant definitely needs a look at.
There’s certainly a need to stop perma-stunning (or lengthy chain-stunning) boss type mobs, but it can be solved in much better ways, even by just modifying the current defiant system.
For example, make defiant a stacking buff, each stack has it’s own duration, and when the mob reaches a certain numbers of stacks (say, 5) it becomes immune to CC.
When a stack falls off, you can CC it again. Or wait for multiple stacks to fall in order to chain your CC a bit. Balancing the number of stacks and buff duration will allow you to determine the frequency at which a mob can be CC’d.
The defiant buff could additionally reduce the duration of CC effects, encouraging you to save your CC and/or wait for more stacks to fall off in order to use a more potent CC.

Defiant is kind of a topic of it’s own though, and there’s plenty of ideas about it floating around, so perhaps I shouldn’t be bringing this up here.