Guild Wars 2

Wethospu.6437:

A boss can easily have 1 million health while in PvP players have like 20k. Should damage skills also get additional effects (like control) because they are less efficient at killing the target?

(direct) damage skills still have the same effect, even if they do relatively less damage due to the high hp pools; Still, bosses usually just tank damage, since they don’t dodge at all (and neither properly use defensive or healing skills). That high hp is their only defense, since they lack a proper AI.
Damaging conditions may have some other issues.
Interrupts have their effect completely denied 5/6 of the time.
And they aren’t even in equal numbers, anyway – there are much more skills dealing damage than CC skills.
A correct comparison should be about having bosses with a reduced health pool compared to now (let’s say, 100k hp) but they are damaged only by a single hit out of 10.
Sounds fun?
No, it would just be annoying. Extremely annoying.

Manuhell.2759:

Or they can modify those CC skills in PvE as to rebalance them, by giving additional non-CC effects – be it damage, conditions or whatever. What they lose in “control”, they gain in “damage” or “support”.

I’d be happy if I could just trait into something like that.

For example:

Merciless Hammer makes me sad right now. It’s barely useful aside from hammer cooldown, so I no longer use it. I’d actually use it if the “bonus damage” (that you might get one hit of) were replaced with “If a Disable skill (stun, KD, etc) is prevented by Block or Immune, inflict Torment.”

Stuff like that would give a solid direction for control builds to chip in on megaboss fights without giving up their potential for interrupts. It’s got a few WvW/PvP implications I’m less sure of, but it would tilt the meta a bit.

Manuhell.2759:

Wethospu.6437:

A boss can easily have 1 million health while in PvP players have like 20k. Should damage skills also get additional effects (like control) because they are less efficient at killing the target?

(direct) damage skills still have the same effect, even if they do relatively less damage due to the high hp pools; Still, bosses usually just tank damage, since they don’t dodge at all (and neither properly use defensive or healing skills). That high hp is their only defense, since they lack a proper AI.
Damaging conditions may have some other issues.
Interrupts have their effect completely denied 5/6 of the time.
And they aren’t even in equal numbers, anyway – there are much more skills dealing damage than CC skills..

If my HB deals 20k damage I need one HB to kill a 20k target. If boss has 1m health I have to use it 50 times.

Compare that to interrupts. I need to use 6 interrupts for an interrupt. 50 >> 6

Yes, high health is their only defense against damage. But so is defiance against control.

If there are more underperforming damage skills, perhaps they should be fixed before fewer control skills?

A correct comparison should be about having bosses with a reduced health pool compared to now (let’s say, 100k hp) but they are damaged only by a single hit out of 10.
Sounds fun?
No, it would just be annoying. Extremely annoying

It wouldn’t really matter much because time to kill would stay same. But it would be pointless so of course current system is better. But your comparison doesn’t work for defiance. While damage can be split to smaller pieces, an interrupt can’t be.

What I’m trying to say is that they should fix what is broken. Bosses have bloated health bars because they are against 5 players so it’s completely fair that you need 5 interrupts to interrupt them (that’s why I’m suggesting reduction of one stack).

Additional effect for control skills won’t fix the control. It only reinforces dps meta because you get more damage while control is still pointless.

Simple fixes to make control meaningful:

1) Make interrupts cause full cooldowns for PvE enemies

2) Reduce one stack (5 players -> 4 stacks)

3) Encounter design
* Add special attacks to some bosses which temporarily remove defiance.
* Add devastating special attacks to bosses which are hard to deal with blocks and dodges.
* Add strong defensive skills to bosses which have to be interrupted if you want to kill the boss fast.
* No defiance but fight against 3 – 5 (weaker) bosses at the same time
* No defiance but use stability instead
* No defiance but give boss frequent stun breaks

@Wethospu the things you listed you made me gap for a minute.Your ideas are really great.

1) Make interrupts cause full cooldowns for PvE enemies
2) Reduce one stack (5 players → 4 stacks)
3) Encounter design

• Add special attacks to some bosses which temporarily remove defiance.
• Add devastating special attacks to bosses which are hard to deal with blocks and dodges.
• Add strong defensive skills to bosses which have to be interrupted if you want to kill the boss fast.
• No defiance but fight against 3 – 5 (weaker) bosses at the same time
• No defiance but use stability instead
• No defiance but give boss frequent stun breaks

I adore each single thing which you listed here

Wethospu.6437:

If my HB deals 20k damage I need one HB to kill a 20k target. If boss has 1m health I have to use it 50 times.

Compare that to interrupts. I need to use 6 interrupts for an interrupt. 50 >> 6

There are much more damage skills than control ones, though, as i said before. And their effect isn’t completely denied – just reduced in percentage. Defiance denies any CC effect until the stacks are depleted. 5 interrupts are 5 wasted skills. 6 interrupts are an interrupt. But 50000 damage is still 50000 damage, whether it is 5, 10 or 20% of the boss’ hp.
Also, there is no way to influence how many stacks of defiance you deal, whereas damage depends from gear. There is no “speccing for control”. And having many control skills makes one barely useful, as attacking and making the fight last less would have better results than using a lot of skills to maybe interrupt the enemy 3 or 4 times over a fight.

Yes, high health is their only defense against damage. But so is defiance against control.

Still, damage skills are balanced for a mode where players can reduce or nullify damage in various means and heal themselves; but the defenses for interrupts are rather scarce in comparison. Sure, both can be dodged, but that’s a moot point…since enemies don’t dodge at all.
And it should be pointed out that PvP is a point control mode, and skills are balanced over that assumption – thus having to make CC skills either weaker or with longer cooldowns.
Also, and most importantly…control alone cannot kill an enemy. You still need a lot of damage. Control alone is useless. Damage alone wins fights anyway.

Wethospu.6437:

If there are more underperforming damage skills, perhaps they should be fixed before fewer control skills?

Ehr, damage is all but underperforming as now, i would say.

Wethospu.6437:

What I’m trying to say is that they should fix what is broken. Bosses have bloated health bars because they are against 5 players so it’s completely fair that you need 5 interrupts to interrupt them (that’s why I’m suggesting reduction of one stack).

Additional effect for control skills won’t fix the control. It only reinforces dps meta because you get more damage while control is still pointless.

Simple fixes to make control meaningful:

1) Make interrupts cause full cooldowns for PvE enemies

2) Reduce one stack (5 players -> 4 stacks)

3) Encounter design
* Add special attacks to some bosses which temporarily remove defiance.
* Add devastating special attacks to bosses which are hard to deal with blocks and dodges.
* Add strong defensive skills to bosses which have to be interrupted if you want to kill the boss fast.
* No defiance but fight against 3 – 5 (weaker) bosses at the same time
* No defiance but use stability instead
* No defiance but give boss frequent stun breaks

Undoubtely more complex designs and proper AIs would help a lot in making fights more fun and bosses not just simple hp sponges. Having bosses behave like players, following the same rules, would deepen a lot the fights.
I doubt we’ll ever see them, though. Probably they would end up too costly in terms of cpu to be deemed usable.
That’s why i’m suggesting some sort of bandaid – defiance itself is a bandaid over the normal game mechanics, after all.

Thanks for noticing too. Defiance pretty much breaks the role system that Anet said they’d use.

Got CC? Forget it Defiance….

Got interrupts? Forget it Defiance…

Then on top of everything they either add bosses that instakill so Got Heals? Forget it they’ll just swat you even tho you have all toughness gear on. Or they could have a ton of hitpoints and do almost 0 damage as a boss.

Oh and don’t forget that heals hardly do anything as it is. So much for support role.

The thing is this has been talked about at length by major personalities on the internet who review games. I remember Wooden Potatoes putting together several videos talking at length about how to fix combat in PVE. Completely ignored like everything else.

Wethospu.6437:

Simple fixes to make control meaningful:

1) Make interrupts cause full cooldowns for PvE enemies

2) Reduce one stack (5 players -> 4 stacks)

3) Encounter design
* Add special attacks to some bosses which temporarily remove defiance.
* Add devastating special attacks to bosses which are hard to deal with blocks and dodges.
* Add strong defensive skills to bosses which have to be interrupted if you want to kill the boss fast.
* No defiance but fight against 3 – 5 (weaker) bosses at the same time
* No defiance but use stability instead
* No defiance but give boss frequent stun breaks

Yes and yes. I’ve mentioned this in similar threads. If encounter design moved away from “monoliths,” we wouldn’t have the problem of needing to prevent hard CC.

The Stability thing is a small issue, as other players have mentioned prior. Stability is a buff, which means it can be removed/stolen/converted. This might have unintended consequences. But it would also add to strategy. Of course, the boss ability would reinstate that Stability every few seconds, so it’s a matter of details.

I do love the idea of having Defiance break-points during times that players should be using CC. It’s a tad hand-holding, which is why I like interrupt armor better, but Defiance gaps don’t need to be balanced by party size.

tigirius.9014:

Thanks for noticing too. Defiance pretty much breaks the role system that Anet said they’d use.

Got CC? Forget it Defiance….

Got interrupts? Forget it Defiance…

Then on top of everything they either add bosses that instakill so Got Heals? Forget it they’ll just swat you even tho you have all toughness gear on. Or they could have a ton of hitpoints and do almost 0 damage as a boss.

Oh and don’t forget that heals hardly do anything as it is. So much for support role.

The thing is this has been talked about at length by major personalities on the internet who review games. I remember Wooden Potatoes putting together several videos talking at length about how to fix combat in PVE. Completely ignored like everything else.

The bolded part is hitting the problem perfectly

I think Defiance on bosses is moronic. Who thought of this one?

Yes, lets stop the players from using utility on bosses…lets just funnel the players into DPS to burn through encounters.

This coupled with the eternal encouragement of zergs should tell you that arenanet has no clue how to develop engaging combat.

Instead I suggest taking a page from Wildstar with interrupt armor. Boss has 3 interrupt armor. When he is casting, you interrupt him 3 times to break the armor, on fourth interrupt, he is put into MoO…moment of opportunity where he takes double damage.

This requires coordination and utility skills on your bars. Sometimes a boss will have 5 interrupts so everyone needs to have at least one interrupt, or one person carry two.

Here is a thread from early July on the topic of Defiance.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-logic-of-Defiance

Anthony Ordon (Technical Designer at ArenaNet) entered into the discussion on page 2 of the thread.

This is the response he made:

AnthonyOrdon.3926
Lots of nice comments here. I, too, have a strong dislike for the Defiant/Unshakable system. Internally we’ve kicked around a lot of ideas about how to change it. The problem is that making large sweeping changes to the game is a bit like moving a table that you built a Jenga™ tower on—it takes time, planning, and a lot of care to do it.

We’ve made big changes before, though. This one is on our list to address.
In the mean time it’s great to see some discussion over alternatives as well as some specific examples where existing alternatives work.

Personally (by which I mean not representing the entire development team) I’d like to see at least one boss with a sort of reverse defiance. Generally immune to CC except in windows during one or two keys attacks with a long warmup. I think the theory behind Defiance would work well if everyone knew exactly when to interrupt. This is a troublesome prospect for the ad-hoc groups that GW2 promotes in various settings, so maybe shifting the responsibility to the boss (which everyone is already paying attention to) would work out a little better. “He’s winding up for super-mega-attack, everyone stun now!”

Discuss?

Perhaps he or another dev will come back to the discussion with more information and thoughts on their potential plans regarding the Defiance/Unshakable system in the future.

Wethospu.6437:

PvP is 5v5, not 5v1 like PvE.

But sure, defiance can be reworked so that every interrupt instead gives a stack of miss. One stack of miss nullifies one hit from an attack. So single target attacks could be nullified with 1 interrupt, cleaves with 3 interrupts and area attacks with 5 interrupts.

But I’m pretty sure this would make even more people confused and complain how control doesn’t work. Not to mention that it wouldn’t really make any sense.

I’m guessing they’d be kittened off at players who CC the boss, causing their attacks to miss.

If I understood your suggestion correctly…

StinVec.3621:

Here is a thread from early July on the topic of Defiance.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-logic-of-Defiance

Anthony Ordon (Technical Designer at ArenaNet) entered into the discussion on page 2 of the thread.

This is the response he made:

AnthonyOrdon.3926
Lots of nice comments here. I, too, have a strong dislike for the Defiant/Unshakable system. Internally we’ve kicked around a lot of ideas about how to change it. The problem is that making large sweeping changes to the game is a bit like moving a table that you built a Jenga™ tower on—it takes time, planning, and a lot of care to do it.

We’ve made big changes before, though. This one is on our list to address.
In the mean time it’s great to see some discussion over alternatives as well as some specific examples where existing alternatives work.

Personally (by which I mean not representing the entire development team) I’d like to see at least one boss with a sort of reverse defiance. Generally immune to CC except in windows during one or two keys attacks with a long warmup. I think the theory behind Defiance would work well if everyone knew exactly when to interrupt. This is a troublesome prospect for the ad-hoc groups that GW2 promotes in various settings, so maybe shifting the responsibility to the boss (which everyone is already paying attention to) would work out a little better. “He’s winding up for super-mega-attack, everyone stun now!”

Discuss?

Perhaps he or another dev will come back to the discussion with more information and thoughts on their potential plans regarding the Defiance/Unshakable system in the future.

Gosh why i haven’t noticed this earlier.Only if the search function was working…That diveloper is saying exactly what i want.
Thank you for the link @StinVec.

Manuhell.2759:

—
There are much more damage skills than control ones, though, as i said before. And their effect isn’t completely denied – just reduced in percentage. Defiance denies any CC effect until the stacks are depleted. 5 interrupts are 5 wasted skills. 6 interrupts are an interrupt. But 50000 damage is still 50000 damage, whether it is 5, 10 or 20% of the boss’ hp.
—

Also effect of interrupts isn’t completely denied because they do something. Control skill is also a control skill, whether it interrupts or removes a defiance stack.

Just like bosses have ~5 times as much health in dungeons you need 6 times as much interrupts against them.

Also, there is no way to influence how many stacks of defiance you deal, whereas damage depends from gear. There is no “speccing for control”. And having many control skills makes one barely useful, as attacking and making the fight last less would have better results than using a lot of skills to maybe interrupt the enemy 3 or 4 times over a fight.

If you want to spec for control you can take more control skills.

And that’s because control effect is weak and not required, not because control skills are weak.

Still, damage skills are balanced for a mode where players can reduce or nullify damage in various means and heal themselves; but the defenses for interrupts are rather scarce in comparison. Sure, both can be dodged, but that’s a moot point…since enemies don’t dodge at all.
—

Control skills can also be dodged or blocked just like damage skills. Additionally stun breaks and stability work too. I wouldn’t call that “scarce”.

It’s really hard to understand what you are trying to say when you mix players, enemies, PvE and PvP together.

Ehr, damage is all but underperforming as now, i would say.

It’s your definition, not mine.

Undoubtely more complex designs and proper AIs would help a lot in making fights more fun and bosses not just simple hp sponges. Having bosses behave like players, following the same rules, would deepen a lot the fights.
I doubt we’ll ever see them, though. Probably they would end up too costly in terms of cpu to be deemed usable.
That’s why i’m suggesting some sort of bandaid – defiance itself is a bandaid over the normal game mechanics, after all.

None of those changes require complex design or proper AI.

Bloated health bars are also a bandaid over the normal game mechanics.

cesmode.4257:

I think Defiance on bosses is moronic. Who thought of this one?

Yes, lets stop the players from using utility on bosses…lets just funnel the players into DPS to burn through encounters.

This coupled with the eternal encouragement of zergs should tell you that arenanet has no clue how to develop engaging combat.

Instead I suggest taking a page from Wildstar with interrupt armor. Boss has 3 interrupt armor. When he is casting, you interrupt him 3 times to break the armor, on fourth interrupt, he is put into MoO…moment of opportunity where he takes double damage.

This requires coordination and utility skills on your bars. Sometimes a boss will have 5 interrupts so everyone needs to have at least one interrupt, or one person carry two.

You think defiance is moronic and then you pretty much suggest exactly same mechanic?

FrostSpectre.4198:

Wethospu.6437:

PvP is 5v5, not 5v1 like PvE.

But sure, defiance can be reworked so that every interrupt instead gives a stack of miss. One stack of miss nullifies one hit from an attack. So single target attacks could be nullified with 1 interrupt, cleaves with 3 interrupts and area attacks with 5 interrupts.

But I’m pretty sure this would make even more people confused and complain how control doesn’t work. Not to mention that it wouldn’t really make any sense.

I’m guessing they’d be kittened off at players who CC the boss, causing their attacks to miss.

If I understood your suggestion correctly…

If boss uses a single target skill only one player has to dodge. To balance, only interrupt should be enough. But when boss uses area attack everyone has to dodge so 5 interrupts would be balanced.

So interrupts would cause a hit from the boss to miss. If boss uses area attack and is interrupted 3 times then 2 players would get hit.

But anyways, the point was that while it’s possible to fine tune the anti-control mechanic, it usually becomes so complex that you need a manual to understand it.

The effect of those other interrupts is denied – that’s the whole point of defiance. You do 6 interrupts, only the last one works. Until that, you’ve done absolutely nothing.
And there no way to increase the effectiveness against defiance of a control skill. No gear permits that. You can do more damage, but you can’t do more defiance stacks.
It isn’t the same thing of having “more health”, and i’ve already explained before what the correct comparison would be (that is, something really awful to play). Putting more health is a matter of balancing. Putting a different mechanic to deal with interrupts is a matter of design. And those skills were neither designed or balanced taking defiance in account.
Saying that “you can get more control skills” doesn’t make sense. 5 out of 6 of those will still do nothing at all. You are just increasing the number of your skills that won’t do nothing at all to a boss. Especially as you can’t kill something just with control – you will need damage, and CC skills often don’t even deal damage at all.

Also, i have to mix up the modes because we’re talking about control skills that are balanced upon their use in a mode that greatly favours them but can as well be used in a mode where they aren’t as useful due to the encounter design and end up being even more crappy due to a mechanic like defiance.
And control skills aren’t either designed or balanced upon such a mechanic – as there is no defiance for players. You can dodge. You can have a limited time where you nullify CC effects – stability. You can eventually nullify it after being hit – with a stun break. And both of these effects usually have long cooldowns and/or are utility skills, thus limiting their use. But there is no “constantly nullify 5 out of 6 of them” in pvp.
Thus the skills aren’t balanced upon the assumption that they will do nothing at all most of the time.
If they can’t find another way to make it so that control skills effectively do something, then just give them some other effect at least. So that they aren’t just wasted time for most of the time.

Anyway, some of the fixes you propose are indeed fine. Other would be if they wouldn’t potentially increase cpu load, that is also the same reason why we can’t have proper AIs for enemies, and thus workarounds are instead used. It should be seen how much they can effectively do in that regard, else we can’t see such improvements.

The thing is, whatever form of interrupt you put on a boss, its going to be able to be broken. For example, i mainly play two classes these days – Engi and Warrior. If hard CC interrupts a boss every time, bosses would become incredibly easy with a 5-man warrior team wielding hammers and maces.
In the most extreme case, say, hammers and dual maces and kick, each warrior would have 5 crowd controls on cooldowns ranging from 15-25, plus two CC burst skills. Between the five of them, they can interrupt the boss’s attacks more than once every second. Although this would probably make the boss fight rather slow to complete, it allows you to pretty much avoid taking any damage at all from any boss from the moment you allow hard CC to actually interrupt a boss everytime it is used.

And its not just warriors. I main engi, and i can get a similar, albeit less effective, crowd control build.

Manuhell.2759:

The effect of those other interrupts is denied – that’s the whole point of defiance. You do 6 interrupts, only the last one works. Until that, you’ve done absolutely nothing.
And there no way to increase the effectiveness against defiance of a control skill. No gear permits that. You can do more damage, but you can’t do more defiance stacks.
It isn’t the same thing of having “more health”, and i’ve already explained before what the correct comparison would be (that is, something really awful to play). Putting more health is a matter of balancing. Putting a different mechanic to deal with interrupts is a matter of design. And those skills were neither designed or balanced taking defiance in account.
Saying that “you can get more control skills” doesn’t make sense. 5 out of 6 of those will still do nothing at all. You are just increasing the number of your skills that won’t do nothing at all to a boss. Especially as you can’t kill something just with control – you will need damage, and CC skills often don’t even deal damage at all.
—

Actually it’s the first one which works because bosses never have initial defiance stacks.

Defiance is a mechanic for bosses just like bloated health bars. There is no gear to increase your effectiveness particularly against huge health bars. For example no stuff like “you do 10% more damage against targets with over 1m health”. But sure, PvE gear like that can be added but what’s the point? Interrupts would still be bad even if you could remove 2-3 defiance stacks with one interrupt because whole interrupt mechanic is weak and not needed.

Design and balance are not separate things. They have to balance their design and design their balance. Similarly damage skills are not designed or balanced against 1m targets because enemies have only about 20k. Give one player 1m health in PvP and it gets totally broken.

I honestly don’t understand why this is so hard to grasp. In PvP balanced situation is 1v1, you need 1 control skill for one interrupt. In PvE balanced situation is Xv1, you need X+1 (which should be X) control skills for one interrupt.

Anyway, some of the fixes you propose are indeed fine. Other would be if they wouldn’t potentially increase cpu load, that is also the same reason why we can’t have proper AIs for enemies, and thus workarounds are instead used. It should be seen how much they can effectively do in that regard, else we can’t see such improvements.

None of them increase cpu load because bosses can just keep spamming their skills like they do now.

For god sake, stop saying your CC did nothing when it hit a stack of defiance, it’s the point of defiant stacks… Your team want to interrupt a boss, everyone take down defiant, you tell them in party chat/ ts/ whatever how many defiant stacks you’re burning, count to five, and the guy who wants his long lasting cc to hit do it last. How is that hard to understand? If you break a defiant, your cc isn’t wasted, you’re closer to interrupting the boss. “CC specs” are not optimal because cc isn’t tied to gear, and you don’t need special traits to make it works. For certain encounter, any good player will bring things like icebow for eles, pistol offhand for thieves, mantra for mesmers, signet of bane for guardians, etc. It’s not required when not pushing time because the lack of new content makes it easy to complete anything, but I assure you that when we’re beating a world record we’re interrupting everything we need to interrupt.

StinVec.3621:

Here is a thread from early July on the topic of Defiance.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-logic-of-Defiance

Anthony Ordon (Technical Designer at ArenaNet) entered into the discussion on page 2 of the thread.

This is the response he made:

AnthonyOrdon.3926
Lots of nice comments here. I, too, have a strong dislike for the Defiant/Unshakable system. Internally we’ve kicked around a lot of ideas about how to change it. The problem is that making large sweeping changes to the game is a bit like moving a table that you built a Jenga™ tower on—it takes time, planning, and a lot of care to do it.

We’ve made big changes before, though. This one is on our list to address.
In the mean time it’s great to see some discussion over alternatives as well as some specific examples where existing alternatives work.

Personally (by which I mean not representing the entire development team) I’d like to see at least one boss with a sort of reverse defiance. Generally immune to CC except in windows during one or two keys attacks with a long warmup. I think the theory behind Defiance would work well if everyone knew exactly when to interrupt. This is a troublesome prospect for the ad-hoc groups that GW2 promotes in various settings, so maybe shifting the responsibility to the boss (which everyone is already paying attention to) would work out a little better. “He’s winding up for super-mega-attack, everyone stun now!”

Discuss?

Perhaps he or another dev will come back to the discussion with more information and thoughts on their potential plans regarding the Defiance/Unshakable system in the future.

Didn’t stop you from adding DR, adding Defiant and nerfing Kit Refinement did it? What’s stopping you now?

oxtred.7658:

For god sake, stop saying your CC did nothing when it hit a stack of defiance, it’s the point of defiant stacks… Your team want to interrupt a boss, everyone take down defiant, you tell them in party chat/ ts/ whatever how many defiant stacks you’re burning, count to five, and the guy who wants his long lasting cc to hit do it last. How is that hard to understand? If you break a defiant, your cc isn’t wasted, you’re closer to interrupting the boss. “CC specs” are not optimal because cc isn’t tied to gear, and you don’t need special traits to make it works. For certain encounter, any good player will bring things like icebow for eles, pistol offhand for thieves, mantra for mesmers, signet of bane for guardians, etc. It’s not required when not pushing time because the lack of new content makes it easy to complete anything, but I assure you that when we’re beating a world record we’re interrupting everything we need to interrupt.

Not all classes are equal for example, many classes have CC built into their most damaging moves. It happens automatically. In fact Engineer was designed to be a condition, CC, Interrupt machine, guess what, when you eliminate all three of those from the combat you can see why people deny access to dungeons for this class.

Our point is they didn’t do a single bit of planning when implementing Defiant, they should remove it entirely because obviously it didn’t stop them from putting it in, it was a bad move just like nerfing Kit Refinement reduced the amount of condition removal from Engineers in PVE to dangerous levels, they did exactly 0 planning on those two things why are we getting double talk when it comes to doing the right thing and making CC viable again? Not just that but other people like long time gamer and game reviewers have given them ample information on how to balance it and guess where that ended up, in the ignore pile. If they really truly were interested in their PVE community they would have done something about it by now. It’s poor business to act like you care and not do a single thing. Most of the decisions we’ve seen have been due to lack of planning why stop now, remove defiant it was never part of the original design to begin with ie it was never in beta I know I was there.

Yeah, ice bow 5 is a huge dps increase.

There are two design problems on PvE bosses – defiant and the condition cap. The condition cap is the bigger problem. The defiant system is poor, particularly in scaling, but it is workable and the condition cap needs a fix first.

There are some enemies that can still be interrupted despite the defiant limit, such as the risen wraiths.

In my opinion if defiance will stay as a mechanic Anet must add some kind of a boss attack that is not dodgeable or avoidable by moving far away from it.The party has to be made to interrupt that specific attack and nothing else.
Lets take for example a dungeon boss with 5 stacks of defiance.We have interrupted the 1st Speciall attack so the boss is now with 5 stacks.The group has to remove the stacks fast before the next Special attack hits.I always liked the intterupting mechanic in MMOs.Right now in GW2 PVE it’s almost non-existent
There has to be some kind of initiative to remove the defiant stacks from the boss.Right now there is none.The only places that are more interesting are FotM/TA Aether/Arah

@Stooperdale and @tigirius ii agree with you both.

moiraine.2753:

In my opinion if defiance will stay as a mechanic Anet must add some kind of a boss attack that is not dodgeable or avoidable by moving far away from it.The party has to be made to interrupt that specific attack and nothing else.
Lets take for example a dungeon boss with 5 stacks of defiance.We have interrupted the 1st Speciall attack so the boss is now with 5 stacks.The group has to remove the stacks fast before the next Special attack hits.I always liked the intterupting mechanic in MMOs.Right now in GW2 PVE it’s almost non-existent
There has to be some kind of initiative to remove the defiant stacks from the boss.Right now there is none.The only places that are more interesting are FotM/TA Aether/Arah

@Stooperdale and @tigirius ii agree with you both.

You mean spider queen? Instant death aoes interruptable? Already done.

If interruptlocking a boss takes a specific spec (hurhur) and timing, I can’t help but see it as an improvement.

Now it’s pretty much:

1. Blast AoE might, summon banners.
2. Raise Wall of Reflection or Feedback when boss is near, summon FGS.
3. FGS skill 4.
4. Boss dies in 4 seconds.

I’m not sure what the concern is for interruptlocking as an antiboss mechanic given that at present super-bursting a boss is entirely viable, and far, far easier to do.

oxtred.7658:

moiraine.2753:

In my opinion if defiance will stay as a mechanic Anet must add some kind of a boss attack that is not dodgeable or avoidable by moving far away from it.The party has to be made to interrupt that specific attack and nothing else.
Lets take for example a dungeon boss with 5 stacks of defiance.We have interrupted the 1st Speciall attack so the boss is now with 5 stacks.The group has to remove the stacks fast before the next Special attack hits.I always liked the intterupting mechanic in MMOs.Right now in GW2 PVE it’s almost non-existent
There has to be some kind of initiative to remove the defiant stacks from the boss.Right now there is none.The only places that are more interesting are FotM/TA Aether/Arah

@Stooperdale and @tigirius ii agree with you both.

You mean spider queen? Instant death aoes interruptable? Already done.

It would be ’’done’’ if the spider didn’t die in 5 seconds…Right now most of the groups have 0 incentive neither to intterupt anything or to remove defiance stacks.Why exactly would i want to interrupt the big aoe if i don’t have to?

Lets take lupi for example in Phase2 most of the people that solo him have to parry the attack or they may die.I’m not talking about supper elit guilds like rT because they are the exception of the rule.But for the rest of the people like me there is an incentive actually to use the parry skill of the sword.I want the same thing to be brought for the defiant stacks.

Right now in my head pop-ups those two questions:

1. Why would i even want to interrupt?(I can avoid the attack by other means)
2. Why would i want to remove the defiante stacks?(After all the interrupts are 80% miss used)

That is why i want the defiance to be revamped.Right now it is just a filler for not CCing boss to death by stun locking it.

moiraine.2753:

Gosh why i haven’t noticed this earlier.Only if the search function was working…That diveloper is saying exactly what i want.
Thank you for the link @StinVec.

That mechanic is already in game. CoE P1, Bjarl the rampager. Imo it’s not making the fight more engaging, just unique amongts many others.

Personally I like defiance just because it is so funny when you play defiant stripper in a group with vocal. You really can choose the skill you want to interrupt with your friends. Never mandatory, almost always possible.

The game not forcing to do so is a good thing I think. The interrupt-this-or-die stance is not something I liked in other MMO (read WoW) because having scripted fights made them boring on the long term ( hence the need of new raids/dungeon every 6 months). Here you can either choose to dodge abilities or to interrupt or to soak damage or to mix everything. It’s up to you to decide what you want to do and if you are good at doing it you can succeed whatever your choice…

If I would change one thing to defiance it would only be to make it stripable by boon removal…. it would really make necro shine more in dungeon and make mesmer stronger in that role. Boon stripping is mostly useless in PvE so adding this could make it a bit more useful.

Ranael.6423:

If I would change one thing to defiance it would only be to make it stripable by boon removal…. it would really make necro shine more in dungeon and make mesmer stronger in that role. Boon stripping is mostly useless in PvE so adding this could make it a bit more useful.

There is that. Having more ways to strip Defiant would make those interrupts more frequent. It’s not like they last long anyway, 2-3 sec at the most. Having a boon-strip also remove one tick of Defiant would help those control characters contribute.

You do realise mesmers strip boon on autoattack? That would be completely busted if you could strip it.

yeah I know they do… but I don’t see the point of being realistic in suggestion

edit after re checking : 1 stack of defiance every 2 sec and half… not as OP as null field (5 boons in 5 secs ^^)

maha.7902:

You do realise mesmers strip boon on autoattack? That would be completely busted if you could strip it.

Oh, trust me, the thought occurred to me. Sword-Mesmer would probably be broken with a system like that in place.

Hayashi.3416:

If interruptlocking a boss takes a specific spec (hurhur) and timing, I can’t help but see it as an improvement.

Now it’s pretty much:

1. Blast AoE might, summon banners.
2. Raise Wall of Reflection or Feedback when boss is near, summon FGS.
3. FGS skill 4.
4. Boss dies in 4 seconds.

I’m not sure what the concern is for interruptlocking as an antiboss mechanic given that at present super-bursting a boss is entirely viable, and far, far easier to do.

In my opinion pulling boss to the wall and melting it like butter it is wrong,just wrong.I doubt Anet even intended to design the fights that way.That is why i love FotM.There you can’t pull bosses to the corners and kill them.

In the current dungeons Anet support a lot pure glass cannons.What they have to do is this:

1. Remove the stacking in the corners.Don’t let bosses to be pulled there at all.They must not be killed in 5seconds.
2. Redesign the defiance buff.Add the interrupt as more often usable mechanic in dungeons.Give people the incentive to remove the defiance stacks so they can interrupt a specific spell.
3. Rework the dodge mechanic.Right now bosses hit almost instantly and you have to press the dodge button fast.Well i don’t want to do that.Make the attack a bit longer so i can direct mydodge.I want to choose to where am i dodging(left,right,backwards or forward)
4. Make condition removal more viable.I really love Mai Trin and General Volkov.Applying bleeding makes you cleanse it or you may die if the stack gets to big.
5. Buff the Controll and Support roles for dungeons.Remove that full zerker mentality that GW2 has right now.In PvE everything else that is not zerker right now is worthless.Anet should change that.I love to have bunker guardian with me.Or pistol/pistol thief.What if they are not in the meta berzerker?Make the other two roles more attractive to bring.
6. Buff the combo fields.They are almost meaningless right now.I like their concept but they almost not used currently.

Right now the PvE ballnce is really bad.It supports only Zerkers and that’s it.What about the other two roles?Suppor and Controll?Make having vitality,healing,toughness stats more meaningful in PvE.

tigirius.9014:

Thanks for noticing too. Defiance pretty much breaks the role system that Anet said they’d use.

Got CC? Forget it Defiance….

Got interrupts? Forget it Defiance…

Then on top of everything they either add bosses that instakill so Got Heals? Forget it they’ll just swat you even tho you have all toughness gear on. Or they could have a ton of hitpoints and do almost 0 damage as a boss.

Oh and don’t forget that heals hardly do anything as it is. So much for support role.

The thing is this has been talked about at length by major personalities on the internet who review games. I remember Wooden Potatoes putting together several videos talking at length about how to fix combat in PVE. Completely ignored like everything else.

moiraine.2753:

Right now the PvE ballnce is really bad.It supports only Zerkers and that’s it.What about the other two roles?Suppor and Controll?Make having vitality,healing,toughness stats more meaningful in PvE.

you really,

really,

have no idea what you are talking about do you

I am terribly sorry but that statement has negated any form of sense you may or may not have had.

The only thing currently wrong with Defiant is that the attacks you interrupt are not worth interrupting. barring few exceptions. Using Lupi as an example. if his AOE barrage went on full cool down on interrupt. I assure you any team with some level of intelligence would never see the barrage.

PvE is very balanced I think. Just because YOU cannot see or preform the support and control roles does not mean that it does not happen.

haha, you can’t pull fotm bosses to corner now.
1) you can kill most bosses in less than 5 seconds even without cornering them. Ice bow ftw.
2) That’s exactly how defiance works…
3)It would further enforce the berserker meta you’re disliking. Attacks are perfectly fine, you are inexperienced.
4)You’re implying condi removal isn’t important and gives 2 exemples where every average team will use some. Your logic is flawed.
5)“P1 80”. That’s a mysterious password, type that in the lfg and you’ll get your pp thief.
6)fire, smoke and to a lesser extent water fields are all part of the meta.

Your statements just show a lack of experience in dungeons, you still don’t understand how defiance, fields, and support works.

Man you are so dense sometimes it hurts. Just stop it please. :C

moiraine.2753:

In my opinion pulling boss to the wall and melting it like butter it is wrong,just wrong.I doubt Anet even intended to design the fights that way.That is why i love FotM.There you can’t pull bosses to the corners and kill them.

Except you can burst a few one currently, like Mossman, Ettin, Dulfy, second Archy to a lesser extent and so on. Basically any terrestial and non-stationary boss. It’s just harder to pull off than in regular dungeons.

In the current dungeons Anet support a lot pure glass cannons.What they have to do is this:

Sorry, this is just stupid. All i see that both end of the spectrum (full glass and full tanky) is VIABLE and can go trough content. Is glasscannon faster? Of course but why it frustrates you so much apart from being envy? Tanky setups has little to no risk involved and occasionally it’s pure afk fights. Isn’t that supposed to be nerfed in a action based MMO? Imo yes, it has no place in the game.

1. Remove the stacking in the corners.Don’t let bosses to be pulled there at all.They must not be killed in 5seconds.
2. Redesign the defiance buff.Add the interrupt as more often usable mechanic in dungeons.Give people the incentive to remove the defiance stacks so they can interrupt a specific spell.
3. Rework the dodge mechanic.Right now bosses hit almost instantly and you have to press the dodge button fast.Well i don’t want to do that.Make the attack a bit longer so i can direct mydodge.I want to choose to where am i dodging(left,right,backwards or forward)
4. Make condition removal more viable.I really love Mai Trin and General Volkov.Applying bleeding makes you cleanse it or you may die if the stack gets to big.
5. Buff the Controll and Support roles for dungeons.Remove that full zerker mentality that GW2 has right now.In PvE everything else that is not zerker right now is worthless.Anet should change that.I love to have bunker guardian with me.Or pistol/pistol thief.What if they are not in the meta berzerker?Make the other two roles more attractive to bring.
6. Buff the combo fields.They are almost meaningless right now.I like their concept but they almost not used currently.

1. So you want wide open areas without walls, objects and other items? Sounds great. Not. Or all of the bosses becomes big stationary punching bags in a middle of the room (Bloomhunger). Non of them seems to be a good idea.
2. While it works now exactly this way i would like to suggest (as others already did) that all interrupted skill should go on full cooldown AND remove any enviromental item that can remove the need of CC skills (Arah P2, Abomination for example). Every class has a few CC skills anyway.
3. You mean well telegraphed 1-2 second long casts are instant? Ok. Practice more.
4. Condition removal is viable. You mentioned examples too where you need it.
5. We don’t need buffs, just slight changes. Maybe you have 20 hours to play a day but not everyone has the luxury to RP in soldier gear for hours in a dungeon that can be done in 15 minutes sorry.
6. We can agree on that, some of them needs really big changes across the board.

Right now the PvE ballnce is really bad.It supports only Zerkers and that’s it.What about the other two roles?Suppor and Controll?Make having vitality,healing,toughness stats more meaningful in PvE.

You are not using=/=not viable.
Teq and basically majority of world bosses are a great example how berserker is obsolete and PVT becomes the best choice there because it helps you to survive better and you can’t deal more damage anyway due to crit immunity.
Same with support (reflects, boons, etc.) and control. Not using at the time when you need it it’s your own or your party fault.

tl;dr:
Get a decent party with friends who knows how the game works so you can enjoy it in a better environment instead of rolling with crappy pugs.

@Dalanor,
It’s not envy.I already have a friends that i do pre-made speed clears every day.And i start to find the dungeon difficulty quite boring.
What i don’t understand is why Anet decided that berserker has to be be all end all.Your argument that i can do dungeons beling zerker or full tanky and is my choice what to do is like that in WoW for flying.You have the option to fly and say that it will be better without it and someone say just to not use it.Well that’s not balance.That is something else…

It’s a good change that Anet nerfed the FGS.Now they have to keep nerfing other dps things that are out of proportion.Make the game more balanced in PvE.Right now we don’t have the incentive neither to cleanse conditions nor to use aoe heals.Combos?Forget that.Interrupting?Forget that either.So what are we left with?only pure dps and nothing else.Ahhh yea and dodge once in a while.

@oxtred,
My logic is not flawed.Those are the ONLY tow bosses that actually require some conditional removal and i pointed them out.Everything else is just a dps race with a little dodge mixed.Also i never pug so i don’t use the LFG.

maybe give boss(and maybe players) stability after every stun,push etc so when you stun boss he gets stability for 10 sec and you have to remove it before you cc it again .

moiraine.2753:

What i don’t understand is why Anet decided that berserker has to be be all end all.

That is forced by a small percent of the playerbase. ANet give a lot of options that is viable. Being able to succeed with anything basically the only measurement we can use in efficiency is killing time, where the meta builds, including berserker’s/assasin’s gear, is the most optimal choice. See the difference?

Your argument that i can do dungeons beling zerker or full tanky and is my choice what to do is like that in WoW for flying.You have the option to fly and say that it will be better without it and someone say just to not use it.Well that’s not balance.That is something else…

Flying has nothing do to with balanced gear sets in a particular game mode of another game. I know what you mean, it just don’t make any sense.
Are full tanky builds viable so you can progress and finish content in PvE? Yes.
Are full glassy builds viable so you can progress and finish content in PvE? Yes.
Are intermediate builds viable so you can progress and finish content in PvE? Yes.

Balance.

It’s a good change that Anet nerfed the FGS.Now they have to keep nerfing other dps things that are out of proportion.Make the game more balanced in PvE.

So you want to further nerf damage for the sake of nerfing without even take into account trade offs? That don’t make sense. Builds with less passive defense should have higher damage output before running out of active defense so they can complete content. Am i right? So why nerfing it even more?
Tanky builds don’t need it due to little to no risk to die, so they succes eventually which is just a matter of time.

Right now we don’t have the incentive neither to cleanse conditions nor to use aoe heals.Combos?Forget that.Interrupting?Forget that either.So what are we left with?only pure dps and nothing else.Ahhh yea and dodge once in a while.

You gave an example in your previous post with Mai Trin. There goes your incentive.
Combos working. Fire fields for might, light fields for cleanse, water for emergency healing, dark fields for life stealing, smoke fields for stealthing, lightning for swiftness, poison for some extra weakness though it can be done with consumables.
Again. You not using something it doesn’t mean it’s not viable or it isn’t used.

Interrupts are kinda problematic. We will see how it turns out when burst damage isn’t that high post FGS nerf.

You forgot support completely but who am i talking to … You can’t be convinienced because you don’t want to and you come here for the sake of arguing and force down your opinion on others throat.

/thread.

@oxtread sorry but the defiance is defenitely a broken mechanic when you have no reason to interrupt a spell or to use group coordination to remove the defiance stacks.The only thing the buff was added was so the boss is not stun-locked.That is not working as intended.Why?Because everyone can solo dodge the boss attacks.If there was a spell that was not dodgeable then people would have to interrupt that specific spell.Then with a bit of coordination strip the defiance of boss and again interrupt the specific spell. That is wht my number 2) was about.You clearly didn’t understand it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twa4hE1I8Hc - Watch this video from the 5th minute to the end.Just look how well made are the attacks,how telegraphed and detailed they are.
This is the difficulty that GW2 dungeons must have had.Instead they lack it.Right now the instances are made for casuals and a good group turns them into a farming fest.The hard content in the game is almost non-existant(solo and record runs are exceptions).