Guild Wars 2

I thin it’s even more hilarious seeing how some people find even dodging hard.
Example, – Liadri. All the whiners.

Nick.6972:

I thin it’s even more hilarious seeing how some people find even dodging hard.
Example, – Liadri. All the whiners.

Dodging on its own is not hard. Dodging while fighting a camera that going wild on every last map outcropping and a targeting system that loves to aim for anything it should not however…

Right now the control scheme is a overly complex hybrid of classic MMORPG and TERA/Neverwinter style action MMORPG.

IMO, Cryptic did it one better with Champions Online. There you had a active block, that you could keep up to forgo attacking but gaining massive amounts of energy/mana and reduce incoming damage, that could also be used to break out of knockback/immobilize (and made you immune to same for some seconds).

Note tho that the block did not make you impervious. It just sharply reduced incoming damage. So you could not sit behind the block all day, but you could buy yourself a breather.

whyme.3281:

@Harper:

And AGAIN…. No one here says, that running Zerker gear wouldn’t be the most effective way to completet the content. But we want some challange to players running with berserker gear. Or reward for group play not for pure dmg. Ok maybe there would be some Bosses that cant be defeated with full Zerker gear, who cares? Thats life. At the moment every boss gets harder for not running Zerker gear.

If you run a full soldier set at the moment, you only get disadvantages in current meta. Only at trashmobs (that are skipped anyways) you would see a difference. Bosses still oneshot you, the fights takes at least two times longer. Which means more room for mistakes and get whiped.

If you want a challange, try killing Lupicus (for example) with a tanky, or healing orientated group and without reflecting

I’ve run full knight and more than 80% of things that would one shot me as zerker fail to do so in full knight.
The disadvantages come from the fact that players needing PVT or Knight are players that are bad. Being bad – even with the gear helping them overcome some of the mistakes they make – they will eventually succumb to the boss.

Bad players → need PVT / tanky gear because bad → don’t win at boss and then they come around and say it’s because of their gear not being good enough.

Step. Up. Your. Game.
You want challenge to players playing berserker? Have you tried it? IT IS a challenge. It’s something you learn how to do on a very STEEP difficulty curve.

Also I’ve killed lupicus in full knight – with a tanky team. And it took longer but we did it because we’re all zerker players that can dodge and have reflexes.

Again, I think the main idea is being derailed.

I don’t see this as making bosses easy to the point where you don’t have to dodge them, or making bosses hit like a limp noodle. TL;DR: Dungeon designers should take a page from the SPVP guys: look at what skills and tactics are punishing to players running various types of builds and design bosses that implement these tactics.

This is about ultimately adding more various content that requires strategies and techniques that depart from the current dungeon meta, which consists of many bosses solely relying on highly damaging attacks that can either be evaded or reflected. Think of it this way:

- There are no bosses that rely on conditions as a primary source of damage
- There are few to no bosses that generate enough conditions on a team to require condition removal more than 1 null field/shout cycle.
- There are no bosses that have high enough defense such that killing them with damaging conditions is preferable to direct damage
- There are few bosses that heal regularly
- There are few bosses that rely on stealth (only 2 off the top of my head, Mossman and Simin)
- There are few bosses that use boons
- There are few to no bosses that strip/corrupt boons from players (this is huge, most good teams can stack 25 might/fury with impunity)
- There are few bosses that summon minions that are actually dangerous
- There are few (I’d say no) bosses that put enough pressure on the team to require some form of sustained healing
- As far as I can tell, bosses do not have any intelligence to who they target – they are most likely to hit whoever is doing the highest DPS.
- Bosses don’t have any intelligence in their choices of attacks – they will continue to use projectile-heavy attacks against a team with lots of reflects.
- There are no bosses that attempt to reposition themselves/tactically use terrain once you get into melee range.

I don’t see why more hardcore players (I’d consider myself one), who like challenges, wouldn’t want more diversity in content. I don’t think it’s wrong to say that there are a lot of bosses that rely on high-damage, low frequency attacks as a shortcut to make them challenging, rather than designing the bosses and encounters in a more sophisticated manner. Once you get good at Subject Alpha/Lupi (which for most people, can take a while) whatever challenge they pose starts to become repetitive. There is so much more to making bosses difficult than simply having them take out 75% or more of your health in one attack (or giving them 9999999999999 HP). It’s definitely possible to have a boss do all the things above and have big attacks, but I really want to know if the developers can get more creative than relying so much on “big damage” as the primary contributor to difficulty.

In this regard, I actually think the Simin fight is one of the much more interesting ones; she doesn’t hit particularly hard but teams that coordinate their burst damage are much better off than ones that mash keys.

As some players have pointed out, adding something this in depth wouldn’t sit well with a lot of casual players, which is why I think there need to be elite dungeon modes that are specifically advertised as being challenging,

Nobody is saying that zerker gear should be replaced or that the dodging mechanic should be made obsolete.

What is being said is that there need to be viable options. There are so many cool concepts that really should work in practice – but when it comes to the crunch, they are overlooked because they just don’t stand up against the meta. A little skill tweak here and change on how that reacts to a particular stat there could go leaps and bounds to actually giving us those viable options. Without overwriting zerker gear or forcing anyone to go out and invest in a whole new gear set.

There is nothing wrong with the dodging mechanic as it stands; however there are a number of reasons why one player may not be as adept at dodging as another:

e.g.
Visual impairment
Colour blindness (one of my guildies has real trouble seeing those red AoE circles)
Subpar graphics
Lag
Other hardware issues
and of course poor reflexes.

While lag is typically a short term problem, some of the higher end content actively punishes and marginalises those with trouble seeing what they need to react to. I do not think it was ever ArenaNet’s intention to make life difficult for colourblind players, and while this really is a separate issue a slight shift in mechanics to make those missed dodges less punishing while throwing up a separate challenge to overcome would make combat more fun for those players than being on the ground 80% of the time without making it easy or insulting.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

As some players have pointed out, adding something this in depth wouldn’t sit well with a lot of casual players, which is why I think there need to be elite dungeon modes that are specifically advertised as being challenging,

Isn’t that what explorable modes were intended to be in the first place?

I’ve got a better idea: transplant some sPvP/WvW builds into PvE. Make a boss that’s a Mace/Shield +GS warrior, a boss that’s a Dagger/Pistol thief, etc. Reduce their HP but give them meaningful heal skills and such. I think the biggest challenge would be programming them to fight in a convincing way.

Ok, this post turned out to be a bit too long. I have put most of the reply to Harper in spoilers to prevent people from reading the same things over and over again. I wouldn’t want people to spend an eternity reading this thread before becoming too tired of my endless replies to make a good post.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

For one, getting rid of the account-wide token requirement/increasing the tokens given.

I sort of like how dungeon tokens are accountbound. A dungeon armor shows that you have managed to do something other than just farming. (Of course this is applied to Caudecus Manor and Arah more than CoF). An increase in tokens on harder paths would be very nice.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

The design of the current crop of dungeons: I think outside a few cases, they should mostly be left as-is.

Agreed, there are those few cases though… New interesting encounters in new dungeons and fractals would be the best. As for elite modes: I think the way in which dungeons have several paths is a pretty good starting point.

@ Harper

On to other posts.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

Anet may feel that despite their opinion of the PvE meta in dungeons they do not have to resources to make any major changes to the combat system or to bosses and simply accept they fell short of what they wanted to achieve. Or it may be something planned for an expansion. The things being discussed have been a hot topic in the community for a long time now, and the general consensus is the flaws in the combat system is one of the things holding the game back from being truly amazing.

Well, I see plenty of opportunities. Though I agree with the general consensus that this game could be truly amazing if they can make combat a bit more diverse.

They may lack the resources to change it right now, but… the future will come eventually. If we can somehow help to make this moment arrive sooner, great.

@ Dino, the comparison with MTG is quite striking here. Of course both games are widely different (MTG is all PvP for example), they both contain an element of building and playing. Having a good deck means you will probably fair pretty well, but if you are not familiar with the deck or the current matchup, you will never win the tournament. In a similar way, having a good build doesn’t mean you will be able to use that build very well. Experience and the ability to adapt are still very important.
MTG rewards adaptation and especially creativity in ways that PvE in GW2 does not. (Although, admittedly, those exploit seekers are pretty creative in their ways ) Adjusting your build because you don’t have the dulfy version is a good example here though.

Harper.4173:

I believe that in order to make the game more difficult, more complex and more challenging – elite versions of different areas should be available. That way nobody gets upset with the current content being changed BUT the hardcore get a challenge.

And as far as how hard it should be – I believe they should add this gear-related or mechanic-related complexity ON TOP of the current dodge situation.
So not only will you have to dodge near perfect to be able to do it – you’ll also be fighting versus other mechanics.

I am not anti-dodging. I am just against the lack of any other sources of difficulty.

I actually like how bosses like Lupicus are epic just because so many of the attacks are lethal. (Altough I don’t like how the closest waypoint is miles away for a retry once too many dodges are missed) This does not mean that every real challenge should be like this: dodge-or-die.

Content that offers both the challenge of dodging and adjusting your build to a new situation, sure, would be nice. On the other hand, I would also like there to be some difficult areas in which dodging is of no importance or severely limited.

I don’t see why this should be a problem. The game already caters to those who are great at dodging, let’s have parts of it cater to those who prefer to overcome challenges by adjusting their build?

A combination of both should surely have a place, that would be great.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Again, I think the main idea is being derailed.

I would indeed like to see some more suggestions and constructive replies.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Dungeon designers should take a page from the SPVP guys: look at what skills and tactics are punishing to players running various types of builds and design bosses that implement these tactics.

There is certainly a lot to be taken from sPvP. I remember that they added the ministry of purity in GW1. Foes that had PvP builds, this really spiced up combat there.

I think that with the Aetherblades, Molten Alliance and Twisted Clockwork creatures they are doing a pretty good job at making these fights more interesting.

PvP-ifying bosses could be a bit more problematic, but perhaps the dangers of PvP can find their place in PvE aswell. The list you posted with things that bosses don’t do often enough is a pretty good one.

Not repositioning is one that I have not yet looked into. I’ll see if I can write that into another encounter suggestion.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Once you get good at Subject Alpha/Lupi (which for most people, can take a while) whatever challenge they pose starts to become repetitive.

This is probably true for every challenge, although different team compositions can deliver different challenges. Unless ofcourse the only part of the challenge is dodging, which everyone can do.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

As some players have pointed out, adding something this in depth wouldn’t sit well with a lot of casual players, which is why I think there need to be elite dungeon modes that are specifically advertised as being challenging,

Well, there are challenging parts in the game already. I think plenty of casual players are just fine with not having beaten Lupicus or Liadri or failing to make it to fractal level 50.

The system of having multiple dungeon paths allows for casual players to take the easy route, whereas those looking for a challenge can go for a more difficult path. The trick would be to make these challenges more rewarding in comparison.

Of course any really super difficult stuff (harder than Arah) should not be part of an achievement such as completing all dungeon paths. From a casual players viewpoint it is much more annoying to be unable to complete a nearly full achievement list than to have one laying in wait for when you are ready for it.

Nessarose.4218:

Nobody is saying that zerker gear should be replaced or that the dodging mechanic should be made obsolete.

What is being said is that there need to be viable options. There are so many cool concepts that really should work in practice – but when it comes to the crunch, they are overlooked because they just don’t stand up against the meta. A little skill tweak here and change on how that reacts to a particular stat there could go leaps and bounds to actually giving us those viable options. Without overwriting zerker gear or forcing anyone to go out and invest in a whole new gear set.

Thanks, I don’t think I could have said it any better.

Nessarose.4218:

There is nothing wrong with the dodging mechanic as it stands; however there are a number of reasons why one player may not be as adept at dodging as another:

e.g.
Visual impairment
Colour blindness (one of my guildies has real trouble seeing those red AoE circles)
Subpar graphics
Lag
Other hardware issues
and of course poor reflexes.

While I don’t think it is possible to take these players into account in all challenging content, some content that is difficult for other reasons than simply not being able to dodge would give these players a better chance of getting that awesome feeling of achieving something difficult I suppose.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

I’ve got a better idea: transplant some sPvP/WvW builds into PvE. Make a boss that’s a Mace/Shield +GS warrior, a boss that’s a Dagger/Pistol thief, etc. Reduce their HP but give them meaningful heal skills and such. I think the biggest challenge would be programming them to fight in a convincing way.

I believe that one of those would be rather easy to beat in a group setting. Perhaps having multiple of these at the same time would provide a really cool challenge. They might even be programmed so that each picks out a different target to prioritize depending on who took which buff in a pre-combat selection process. Or it could be all random. I think I would prefer the selection process because it allows for better pre-combat strategizing. (Who takes on who? Are we better off in separate 1v1’s by all moving in separate directions, 2v2’s or just plain 5v5?)

Writing these replies took up most of my day unfortunately so I have not yet been able to write up a ‘concerns and other ideas’ section in the OP.

The thread has had a fair share of misunderstanding in it, trying to correct all these takes up a lot of time. So to get the most striking misunderstandings out of the way (mostly the forced gear and anti-dodge issue), I’ll try to work this into the OP as I update the 8th post tomorrow.

I appreciate the efforts made by other people to try and clear up the conversation, especially the efforts made to prevent the thread from derailing. I hope we can keep this thread productive.

Good this topic got made. I would love to see my own made build shine somewhere.
I don’t think Anet is punishing you for making a build with toughness gear or that you can’t do some content with a healing build. But the more you advance in the game the less enjoyment you get out of those builds. Eventually you get to the point where some skills just don’t matter, so you exchange them for other skills, same goes for traits and gear. Until you are left with the most effeciënt way to succeed: Zerker gear with power/precision traits.
I did not think much of it at start but after reading this OP I learned why it turns out this way. Good job on pinpointing the cause of this.

As for further suggestions to improve peoples desire to design builds, some of these might sound extreme. But then again, brainstorming does not frown upon extremes.

Making endurance regeneration slower and making vigor more productive.
This suggestion will make the game less dodge dependant simply because it would be less effective. Unless you apply vigor. Which in my opinion is an underused boon. Because dodge is already that good without vigor.
This solution will make it so that fans of dodging can still dodge to their hearts content if they apply a strategic build with traits, skills and gear to make use of vigor.

Make power scale the same way as healing power does now.
Making the stat power less effective makes investing in power and critical damage less worthwhile. Ofcourse doing it this way makes it just so that every build is equally good as bad in any case. This doesn’t especially improve build-makers. It does, however, fix the notion that zerker is everything and the rest is just less.

Make people earn their endurance.
This one is a little out there. What if you regenerate endurance at a slower rate or not at all, but healing skills also replenish endurance? Or maybe some utility skills or gear (as it already does) This way the dodge is still very important, but it is also important to have skills to make sure you are able to dodge when it is time. The flaw is obviously some build that gives more endurance then is possible today and will make the game more dodge dependant.

And now a dungeon suggestion.
A room where there is a circle in the middle. This circle is a bit raised and you need the bodies of the undead to pile up on the circle, after a couple of bodies (lets say 25) the circle drops down and you will be able to continue.
This will be easier with pulls and pushes and therefore the ‘most’ efficient way. Luring is also possible, it will just take longer.

digiowl.9620:

Nick.6972:

I thin it’s even more hilarious seeing how some people find even dodging hard.
Example, – Liadri. All the whiners.

Dodging on its own is not hard. Dodging while fighting a camera that going wild on every last map outcropping and a targeting system that loves to aim for anything it should not however…

Right now the control scheme is a overly complex hybrid of classic MMORPG and TERA/Neverwinter style action MMORPG.

IMO, Cryptic did it one better with Champions Online. There you had a active block, that you could keep up to forgo attacking but gaining massive amounts of energy/mana and reduce incoming damage, that could also be used to break out of knockback/immobilize (and made you immune to same for some seconds).

Note tho that the block did not make you impervious. It just sharply reduced incoming damage. So you could not sit behind the block all day, but you could buy yourself a breather.

Lol I never even bothered with using a shield skill in champs, in pvp you got crippling challenge spammed to death so your block was never up anyhow, or they just used something like DW/2GM and bypassed the shield altogether. The exception for pve was parry on a melee build since it increased your dodge while attacking.

This thread is awesome it needs to be bumped. i love the fact that ur ideas make the players work as a team and punishes full dps groups. this is the type of content gw2 needs! U BETTER BE READING THIS ANET!!!

My experience has been that end game PvE comes down to zerkers builds, line of sight exploitation and reflection. Dodging is only needed for specific encounters.

I’ve said this many times, and I’ll say it again. Guild Wars 2 devs should look at Realm of the Mad God http://www.realmofthemadgod.com/

It’s a simplistic flash game similar to GW2 in that you have open world bosses that are challenging. Yes, the more people playing, the larger the zerg. However, they are actually quite hard to kill, and many people die. One of the main reasons being they shoot out tons of projectiles so there’s no way you can stand still and spam 1. It’s fine, however, to spam 1 and move around skillfully.

What’s fun about it? Being able to take down difficult bosses when so many others have failed. The game’s fast-pace also adds to the fun and challenge. That is what I think GW2 needs: a faster pace. It needs faster-moving dragons so zergs can’t just stand around in the same spot and spam 1. Make them shoot out more projectiles, and make sure they don’t have a blind spot, a “safe spot” where people could stand and spam 1 all day.

Also note: this doesn’t require bosses to have so much health that it takes 1 person hours to solo. I say make them have less hp but make it harder for people to take down that hp. Right now, it just feels like the game is catering to the casuals. And while it might sound good to the casuals, it’s simply not challenging nor fun for the average gamer.

Beast Sos.1457:

This thread is awesome it needs to be bumped. i love the fact that ur ideas make the players work as a team and punishes full dps groups. this is the type of content gw2 needs! U BETTER BE READING THIS ANET!!!

Except that organized full DPS groups work together a million times better than any PUG has ever done, combining combo fields and finishers, alongside with pulls, LoS’ing, support in the form of Might, Vulnerability and Aegis.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

digiowl.9620:

Nick.6972:

I thin it’s even more hilarious seeing how some people find even dodging hard.
Example, – Liadri. All the whiners.

Dodging on its own is not hard. Dodging while fighting a camera that going wild on every last map outcropping and a targeting system that loves to aim for anything it should not however…

Right now the control scheme is a overly complex hybrid of classic MMORPG and TERA/Neverwinter style action MMORPG.

IMO, Cryptic did it one better with Champions Online. There you had a active block, that you could keep up to forgo attacking but gaining massive amounts of energy/mana and reduce incoming damage, that could also be used to break out of knockback/immobilize (and made you immune to same for some seconds).

Note tho that the block did not make you impervious. It just sharply reduced incoming damage. So you could not sit behind the block all day, but you could buy yourself a breather.

Lol I never even bothered with using a shield skill in champs, in pvp you got crippling challenge spammed to death so your block was never up anyhow, or they just used something like DW/2GM and bypassed the shield altogether. The exception for pve was parry on a melee build since it increased your dodge while attacking.

note: i don’t do PVP in MMOs.

I was more thinking about the basic implementation of it being one “oh crap!” button that could both get you out of a CC situation and provide you with a sustained defensive stance while you reassess your situation.

GW2 do not have this. Instead it is spread across multiple buttons, and the ability to temporarily go on the defensive is only available by running in circles like Benny Hill.

KazNaka.4718:

I’ve said this many times, and I’ll say it again. Guild Wars 2 devs should look at Realm of the Mad God http://www.realmofthemadgod.com/

It’s a simplistic flash game similar to GW2 in that you have open world bosses that are challenging. Yes, the more people playing, the larger the zerg. However, they are actually quite hard to kill, and many people die. One of the main reasons being they shoot out tons of projectiles so there’s no way you can stand still and spam 1. It’s fine, however, to spam 1 and move around skillfully.

What’s fun about it? Being able to take down difficult bosses when so many others have failed. The game’s fast-pace also adds to the fun and challenge. That is what I think GW2 needs: a faster pace. It needs faster-moving dragons so zergs can’t just stand around in the same spot and spam 1. Make them shoot out more projectiles, and make sure they don’t have a blind spot, a “safe spot” where people could stand and spam 1 all day.

Also note: this doesn’t require bosses to have so much health that it takes 1 person hours to solo. I say make them have less hp but make it harder for people to take down that hp. Right now, it just feels like the game is catering to the casuals. And while it might sound good to the casuals, it’s simply not challenging nor fun for the average gamer.

No no no! ROTG gets away with its pace because it is a 2D free aim shooter. Meaning that your attacks go where your mouse pointer is, independent of your movement direction. Also, there is no slowdown for strafe or backpedal. You can change direction on a dime with no loss of movement speed.

Also, you only have two attacks and perhaps a couple of consumables to keep mental track off. Not 10+ skills (around 20 for elementalists and kit engineers).

The combat in the vast majority of PvE content barely begins to utilize the depths of the combat system. Just look at the Twilight Arbor dungeon encounters:

- Greater Nightmare Vine: Stack and watch for AoE.
- Malrona: Stack and dodge or projectile reflect the spit attack.
- Fyonna: Stack, no need to dodge or anything.
- Mortar Tree: Stack and use projectile reflect.
- Leurent: Stack, dodge the hammer shockwave.
- Illusion Tree: Stack.
- The Defiler: Stack, dodge or stability to avoid knockdown.
- Vevina: Watch for the AoE, retaliation, and confusion.
- Spider Tree: Stack and use projectile reflect, or let the spiders spawn behind the tree, use ranged, and dodge AoE.
- All “trash” mobs: Stack.

Where is the complexity in behaviors and utilization of our skills? It’s all just everyone huddling around an enemy and using typical skill rotations with minor changes based on attack patterns, which can be negated with a dodge or many times projectile reflect.

We could really use some more complex enemy behaviors, fighting mechanics, and utilization of our characters abilities (not bundles and pressing F on an object).

Silvos.8653:

But then again, brainstorming does not frown upon extremes.

Indeed not! A wild idea can often inspire a practical solution.

Silvos.8653:

Making endurance regeneration slower and making vigor more productive.
This suggestion will make the game less dodge dependant simply because it would be less effective. Unless you apply vigor. Which in my opinion is an underused boon. Because dodge is already that good without vigor.
This solution will make it so that fans of dodging can still dodge to their hearts content if they apply a strategic build with traits, skills and gear to make use of vigor.

I guess this would be the opposite approach, having people dodge less often instead of creatures attacking faster. While this does allow for a change in game mechanics that is much easier to apply, this would throw off the balance in PvP I guess. Unless they were to split it, but then you’d suddenly feel very slow in PvE. And the long recharge on healing skills and slow health regeneration from skills would work better with faster attacking monsters than with slower endurance regen.

Silvos.8653:

Make power scale the same way as healing power does now.

Well that would surely be a 180. Perhaps not that drastically. But I would welcome a minor berserker nerf. At the moment it outshines the other options. If some of the encounters were to change though, then there would atleast be some areas in which this isn’t the case. For the current content the difference in damage output is just too big between berserker and the other gear options.

Silvos.8653:

Make people earn their endurance.

With which skills though? It would be a bit weird if my attack skills gave endurance. A few utilities/traits already do, but we can’t push all of it onto those, people that are leveling up would be unable to dodge at all. I’m not sure about this one. I’m not trying to get rid of dodges, just hoping to create some challenging content that deviates from the current dodge-dominated endgame. I don’t think this is done by punishing dodges, instead by offering new scenarios. (Although it would be nice to have some of these scenarios include some difficulty for dodge-lovers.)

Silvos.8653:

And now a dungeon suggestion.
A room where there is a circle in the middle. This circle is a bit raised and you need the bodies of the undead to pile up on the circle, after a couple of bodies (lets say 25) the circle drops down and you will be able to continue.
This will be easier with pulls and pushes and therefore the ‘most’ efficient way. Luring is also possible, it will just take longer.

I can totally imagine trying to pull a ranged foe over to the middle, but to do that I have to either use a pull skill, or walk into the goo/other foes to try and lure it over. This could be a nice challenge. If I’m lacking the pull I would have to position myself so that I can push, or somehow make myself tough enough to have enough time to survive luring the foe on to the middle.

Shiren.9532:

My experience has been that end game PvE comes down to zerkers builds, line of sight exploitation and reflection. Dodging is only needed for specific encounters.

Well some of these might just be ‘clever’ solutions. (Not all that clever, but it beats the 1-and-dodge-and-1-and-dodge cleverness) Others are indeed of a more exploit-like nature. What do you propose to counter this line-of sight/reflection/zerker stacking? The outlaws with flamethrowers can’t be everywhere. Maybe some foes could smell so badly that we would faint (daze) whenever we are near them for too long? Or perhaps they would drool, making a pool of acid that increases in size as time progresses. This would be extra terrible if they were to be stacked up in one spot, since the more drooling monsters, the faster the pool expands.

KazNaka.4718:

What’s fun about it? Being able to take down difficult bosses when so many others have failed. The game’s fast-pace also adds to the fun and challenge. That is what I think GW2 needs: a faster pace. It needs faster-moving dragons so zergs can’t just stand around in the same spot and spam 1. Make them shoot out more projectiles, and make sure they don’t have a blind spot, a “safe spot” where people could stand and spam 1 all day.

While I would like to see some more involvement in open world boss-battles. I don’t think the dungeons need a faster pace. Atleast not in the sense that there should be even more, faster, deadly attacks.

Perhaps for some superchallenging content, (looking at you, super-high-level-fractals), but not for the current dungeons.

Bright.9160:

Except that organized full DPS groups work together a million times better than any PUG has ever done, combining combo fields and finishers, alongside with pulls, LoS’ing, support in the form of Might, Vulnerability and Aegis.

You are right, organized groups get much more out of the skill/trait system than pugs, but so much more could be possible still.

Doesn’t it feel a bit silly that for people who are so good at this game, making a super synergetic teambuid is not necessary to beat most of the challenging parts of the game? I mean, you could just use 1 and dodge…(ok, you’ll need a bit more, but nothing really inventive) if you are that good. Of course, you do it faster, but does the content really trigger you to overcome a challenge by improving the build or the synergy? And isn’t it a bit lame that your current teambuild with awesome synergy, fits pretty much every single situation in PvE, no real changes necessary, ever?

This thread hopes to make this game better not just for those who aren’t great dodgers, but also for those who are adept speedclearers. It gives variety, room for new builds to shine, for new strategies to come into play.

It is only bad for those who rather do the same thing over and over, with just a change of scenery to spice things up.

I believe the bump was well deserved Then again I may be biased.

Bri.8354:

The combat in the vast majority of PvE content barely begins to utilize the depths of the combat system. Just look at the Twilight Arbor dungeon encounters.

Yeah, TA isn’t the most diverse of dungeons.

It would be nice if we could try and find stuff that does work too though. Telling the devs what works would be a good way to keep them interested in reading the thread (I hope). I’ll try to add some to my list in the OP soon.

Oh.. speaking of that, I’ve tried to compile the ideas and concerns on this topic in the OP. If any of you find that an issue is missing, or mislinked. Please let me know. I hope to someday make a more complete list in my own words, but I have not found the time yet. Thanks for all the support, ideas and constructive criticism so far. Keep it up.

Bri.8354:

The combat in the vast majority of PvE content barely begins to utilize the depths of the combat system. Just look at the Twilight Arbor dungeon encounters:

- Greater Nightmare Vine: Stack and watch for AoE.
- Malrona: Stack and dodge or projectile reflect the spit attack.
- Fyonna: Stack, no need to dodge or anything.
- Mortar Tree: Stack and use projectile reflect.
- Leurent: Stack, dodge the hammer shockwave.
- Illusion Tree: Stack.
- The Defiler: Stack, dodge or stability to avoid knockdown.
- Vevina: Watch for the AoE, retaliation, and confusion.
- Spider Tree: Stack and use projectile reflect, or let the spiders spawn behind the tree, use ranged, and dodge AoE.
- All “trash” mobs: Stack.

Where is the complexity in behaviors and utilization of our skills? It’s all just everyone huddling around an enemy and using typical skill rotations with minor changes based on attack patterns, which can be negated with a dodge or many times projectile reflect.

We could really use some more complex enemy behaviors, fighting mechanics, and utilization of our characters abilities (not bundles and pressing F on an object).

They need to implement new skills on mobs and boss’s that have a multiplier.

So if your stacked and they hit you with said skill it does 5x the damage. That would promote real gameplay instead of cheesing content with stacking.

No, it promotes using reflects to kill bosses even faster and bringing a guardian along to spam aegis.

I would definitely buff the effects of toughness considerably, especially for melee characters… yes, you do less damage (or crit less), but it also allows you to stay on the offensive rather than having to dodge (and stop DPS in the meantime).

I’d have no problem with toughness and/or vitality allowing you to survive some of those “one-hit kill” mechanics that would wipe a berserker geared toon.

There is a trinity in this game its called DPS,DPS,DPS.

Well there is… and there isn’t.

Even with a team in all berserker’s gear, there ARE support traits and skills that are used, and control skills can be handy except on bosses (as Defiant makes them largely immune).

What we are seeing here isn’t particularly unusual for an MMO. Classes will have preferred stats on gear; it’s pretty much inevitable. The problem is that due to the nature of this game, pretty much every class prefers the same stats.

chemiclord.3978:

Well there is… and there isn’t.

Even with a team in all berserker’s gear, there ARE support traits and skills that are used, and control skills can be handy except on bosses (as Defiant makes them largely immune).

What we are seeing here isn’t particularly unusual for an MMO. Classes will have preferred stats on gear; it’s pretty much inevitable. The problem is that due to the nature of this game, pretty much every class prefers the same stats.

It has to do with armor stats having little to no effect on utility/weapon skills, which is where most of the support comes from. Also, bosses don’t have very high resistance to physical damage (in fact I don’t think they have any resistances as per GW1).

Adding to my last post, the vast majority of combat in PvE is essentially stacking, skill rotations, and dodging, and any mechanics past that they are simply side-objectives which are separate from that of the combat itself.

Take almost any PvE encounter, strip away these side mechanics, and all you have left is stack, rotations, and dodging. There are no complexities in enemy behavior and our skills serve no dynamic role in the combat.

PvP also has side mechanics, but the difference is that the combat itself is much more dynamic due to the behavior and abilities of the enemy. If you took away side mechanics from PvP, such as capture points, you’d still have a rich and dynamic combat experience, but the same can’t be said for PvE.

For instance:
- Take the gun away from the Ghost Eater and you have stacking, skill rotations, and dodging (SRD).
- Take away the crystals from the jade maw and you’re just dealing with trash mobs and agony.
- Take away the pillars from Bjarl the Rampager and you have SRD.
- Take away the lasers from the destroyer in CoE and you have SRD.
- Take away the rifles from the Evolved Husk and you have SRD.

Now I don’t mean to put down these side mechanics as they are a good part of the game, I’m just trying to point out that the combat mechanics themselves are underutilized and that without these side mechanics all you are left with is “stacking, skill rotations, and dodging”.

I haven’t put a ton of thought into a solution to this, but perhaps a good approach would be bridging the gap between players and monsters? Right now they just run right at you and only have a few key attacks, but what if they had more capabilities of players?

- What if defiant was removed and they were given stun breaks?
- What if they could dodge or use protection skills at key moments?
- What if they had access to more skills?
- What if they used skills based on how they players were acting, like using more AoE if stacking?

Evolved Husk can be killed conventionally.

Bri.8354:

Adding to my last post, the vast majority of combat in PvE is essentially stacking, skill rotations, and dodging, and any mechanics past that they are simply side-objectives which are separate from that of the combat itself.

Take almost any PvE encounter, strip away these side mechanics, and all you have left is stack, rotations, and dodging. There are no complexities in enemy behavior and our skills serve no dynamic role in the combat.

PvP also has side mechanics, but the difference is that the combat itself is much more dynamic due to the behavior and abilities of the enemy. If you took away side mechanics from PvP, such as capture points, you’d still have a rich and dynamic combat experience, but the same can’t be said for PvE.

For instance:
- Take the gun away from the Ghost Eater and you have stacking, skill rotations, and dodging (SRD).
- Take away the crystals from the jade maw and you’re just dealing with trash mobs and agony.
- Take away the pillars from Bjarl the Rampager and you have SRD.
- Take away the lasers from the destroyer in CoE and you have SRD.
- Take away the rifles from the Evolved Husk and you have SRD.

Now I don’t mean to put down these side mechanics as they are a good part of the game, I’m just trying to point out that the combat mechanics themselves are underutilized and that without these side mechanics all you are left with is “stacking, skill rotations, and dodging”.

I haven’t put a ton of thought into a solution to this, but perhaps a good approach would be bridging the gap between players and monsters? Right now they just run right at you and only have a few key attacks, but what if they had more capabilities of players?

• What if defiant was removed and they were given stun breaks?
  - What if they could dodge or use protection skills at key moments?
  - What if they had access to more skills?
  - What if they used skills based on how they players were acting, like using more AoE if stacking?*

I like this, personally.

Instead of Defiant, maybe give them an instant Stun Breaker after 1 Second of being Stunned. For KD/KB depending on the bosses size, it should or should not be possible. Assuming the boss human-ish, reduce the time like the auto-stun breaker. That way, you could interrupt skills. To prevent an endless stream of Stuns/KD/KB interrupting the boss, the Devs could throw in a mechanic that penalizes players that are stun heavy.

More Skills definitely needs to be introduced. That’s a given. I hope this is something ANet eventually plans to do.

A few skills that react to a given situation would be nice. I’m not sure how that’d be implemented at all, honestly as I’m not a programmer or whatever. But increasing the radius of AoE I suppose could be a start. A way I think is pretty cool, is a damage-based AoE that depends on how close/far the players are, similar to how “Fear Me!” works on a Warrior. It’s not damage, but depending on how close or far an enemy is, determines the duration of Fear. I’m not sure how hard it would be for the game to check to see how many players are stacked on top of him, but it’d be a nice little feature I think.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

I’ve got a better idea: transplant some sPvP/WvW builds into PvE. Make a boss that’s a Mace/Shield +GS warrior, a boss that’s a Dagger/Pistol thief, etc. Reduce their HP but give them meaningful heal skills and such. I think the biggest challenge would be programming them to fight in a convincing way.

Here lies the partial solution.

GW1 provided challenge because GW1’s PvE (for the most part,) was designed to teach players how to PvP, and the end-game in GW1 (again, for the most part) was initially designed to BE PvP.

Throughout the years that changed, but at least for Prophesies and Factions, this held mostly true.

Mobs used player skills, and at the very basic level, performed like players would (auto attacks, skills to interrupt, healing, CC Into burst, etc.)

Come Guild Wars 2, PvE has changed. The “end game,” in PvE is now designed to be PvE. Mobs have their own attacks, completely unrelated (again for the most part) to player skills, and the combat system has frankly speaking, been dumbed down. At the end of the day, PvE is boring, and fighting dumb AI using inefficient skills just in order to cater to casuals leads to a boring game.

Make combat in PvE more like PvP. Again, have mobs autoattack much more frequently. Have mobs interrupt key player skills, dodge, heal, focus targets and burst, use boons, conditions, strip boons, etc.. Use player-skill mechanics. Not dumb mechanics like Defiant.

Have the mobs scan player’s stats, decide who has the lowest effective HP, and have 1 Nightmare Courtier come from stealth and backstab him right off the bat.
Have 2 more Nightmare Courtiers drop poison on the downed body, and cleave with Necro Marks and Engi Grenades while the team is trying to res,
Have 1 with a hammer spamming Warrior Knockdowns and Knockbacks on the corpse
And to top it off, have a final one with stability stomping the downed corpse.

In effect, have a PvE designed around teaching players how to PvP. PvP doesn’t need to be the end game anymore, but it sure as hell would make a much more entertaining PvE experience. You wouldn’t even need the ridiculous inflated stats, and stupid mechanics like defiant that are everywhere in PvE.

Bri.8354:

Adding to my last post, the vast majority of combat in PvE is essentially stacking, skill rotations, and dodging, and any mechanics past that they are simply side-objectives which are separate from that of the combat itself.

Take almost any PvE encounter, strip away these side mechanics, and all you have left is stack, rotations, and dodging. There are no complexities in enemy behavior and our skills serve no dynamic role in the combat.

PvP also has side mechanics, but the difference is that the combat itself is much more dynamic due to the behavior and abilities of the enemy. If you took away side mechanics from PvP, such as capture points, you’d still have a rich and dynamic combat experience, but the same can’t be said for PvE.

For instance:
- Take the gun away from the Ghost Eater and you have stacking, skill rotations, and dodging (SRD).
- Take away the crystals from the jade maw and you’re just dealing with trash mobs and agony.
- Take away the pillars from Bjarl the Rampager and you have SRD.
- Take away the lasers from the destroyer in CoE and you have SRD.
- Take away the rifles from the Evolved Husk and you have SRD.

Now I don’t mean to put down these side mechanics as they are a good part of the game, I’m just trying to point out that the combat mechanics themselves are underutilized and that without these side mechanics all you are left with is “stacking, skill rotations, and dodging”.

I haven’t put a ton of thought into a solution to this, but perhaps a good approach would be bridging the gap between players and monsters? Right now they just run right at you and only have a few key attacks, but what if they had more capabilities of players?

- What if defiant was removed and they were given stun breaks?
- What if they could dodge or use protection skills at key moments?
- What if they had access to more skills?
- What if they used skills based on how they players were acting, like using more AoE if stacking?

And playing the piano is just hitting little bars with your fingers.

Just because you’re able to oversimplify something doesn’t mean it’s easy. If it was, everyone would be doing <15min dungeon paths in every dungeon.

Bright.9160:

And playing the piano is just hitting little bars with your fingers.

Just because you’re able to oversimplify something doesn’t mean it’s easy. If it was, everyone would be doing <15min dungeon paths in every dungeon.

I’m not talking about something being easy or not. Mastering skill rotations and creating efficient builds that sync well with your party can be difficult, as well as learning the enemies attacks and when proper times to dodge are.

But past that what does combat have? Other than mastering rotations and learning the 2-3 attacks every enemy has, what does the combat offer? Just take a look at the complexities of PvP combat to see how much more PvE could be offering.

And for others it comes down to protection from a deditaced protector/healer? It’s just the same when you break things down.

Noboby here wants the trinity back, we just want more variaty in combat.

Look at AC the boss with the traps, here is no dmg needed, timing is important and a bit groupplay.
The Arena in flame and frost where you have to survive for X minutes (it was a bit too easy, but different, than stack, dodge and dps).
Fireshamane in grawl fractal. But here it is in my opinion still too much dps depending.
The dredge fractal endboss, you need coordination, to get him to specific points and then activate a switch. At the end its still pure dps (conditions dont work here) but its not pure dps, dodge and stack.

I have a boss idea too. Like the icicles in the guildpuzzle. You need to pull a boss under some rocks, amboses, pianos or whatever. This would require CC on the floor to pull the boss to specific locations and controlled damage on the top to cut some ropes/chains…. And maybe the boss gets some sort of heal that need to be interrupted or reduced by poison.

Another one would be, place time bombs and then kite/CC the boss into them. Im not sure if something like this already is in post 1.

You see, I come from a perspective that is similar to the opposite of this argument and I think that dodging should remain pretty much the biggest part of the combat in most aspects of a game.

However, I do think that the other potentially important aspects of a good combat system are lost in GW2. This is especially true in GW2’s PvE as most of the boss level enemies are immune to knock-back, stuns, interrupts, etc. as well as super resistant against most other types of controlling effects that could play an important secondary factor in combat (with the potential to be the most important in certain moments). They do this in a lazy sort of way in my opinion and instead of scaling events by adding additional ways to fragment a “zerg” of players, they just super buff that single boss entity.

I am personally an advocate of having them lessen the resilience of enemies to controlling/interrupting effects (not completely, but enough to make them potentially important factors) and still increasing the difficulty of an event by instead designing events in way that split players up to complete several simultaneous sub events (based on the number of players in the area) that all play important role in determining the overall success of an event. Divide and conquer the zergs; use a bit of strategy against the players instead of just stats.

whyme.3281:

Noboby here wants the trinity back, we just want more variaty in combat.

---

I have a boss idea too. Like the icicles in the guildpuzzle. You need to pull a boss under some rocks, amboses, pianos or whatever. This would require CC on the floor to pull the boss to specific locations and controlled damage on the top to cut some ropes/chains…. And maybe the boss gets some sort of heal that need to be interrupted or reduced by poison.

---

That… almost sounds like a Vindictus style raid

whyme.3281:

Look at AC the boss with the traps, here is no dmg needed, timing is important and a bit groupplay.
The Arena in flame and frost where you have to survive for X minutes (it was a bit too easy, but different, than stack, dodge and dps).
Fireshamane in grawl fractal. But here it is in my opinion still too much dps depending.
The dredge fractal endboss, you need coordination, to get him to specific points and then activate a switch. At the end its still pure dps (conditions dont work here) but its not pure dps, dodge and stack.

I personally really liked the Flame and Frost dungeon as well as the bosses at the end; the dredge fractal boss was another I really liked too.

And a final one for now.

As I said in the dungeon forum about support:
We need to get away from boons, CC, heals and support conditions on our autoattacks.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Useless-supports/first#post2816835

You cant call stacking might and vulnerbility with every Autoattack support. Only if you have to invest traits/sigil/runes… for support we have the skills 2-0 and F1-4 and on 1 only damage no bonus effects only finisher.

In my oppinion, all the autoattacks needs to be reworked and get rid of conditions, CC, boons and heals. except of bleeds and burns, because these are needed for Conditionbuilds and dont play a support role. When this change is made, then we can start talking about support.
I would go a step further and give the banners a health bar, making them a tactical element and not “fire and forget”.

Bri.8354:

Right now they just run right at you and only have a few key attacks, but what if they had more capabilities of players?

- What if defiant was removed and they were given stun breaks?
- What if they could dodge or use protection skills at key moments?
- What if they had access to more skills?
- What if they used skills based on how they players were acting, like using more AoE if stacking?

Yup, this would be nice. If some foes were to adapt to the stacking strategy that could certainly spice things up. They would have to design the AoE’s a bit different than how they do at the moment though. Subject Alpha for example, in a way punishes players for stacking up by placing more AoE’s in the same spot. A timely dodge into the wall nullifies this though… I guess the AoE’s shouldn’t be one hit blasts, but damage over time AoE’s, like lava pools instead.

Stunbreakers and stability on bosses instead of defiance would be cool. If we could just chain interrupt all the attacks that would be a bit lame too, but many bosses have a rather fast animation to work with anyways. If they were to have more skills the interrupt thing would not be a problem at all. The bosses will need a few more leaps perhaps, to make up for the tosses.

I can see a total rework on defiance requiring a lot of work (giving all bosses more/faster skills). But perhaps this can be introduced in future content. A lot of ‘inbetween’ dungeon champs have low defiant stacks anyways and this would be a much more interesting way of fighting these. (Using a knockback and a pull just to take out defiant stacks doesn’t feel like we’re using those skills at all).

Also, this:

Copestetic.5174:

To prevent an endless stream of Stuns/KD/KB interrupting the boss, the Devs could throw in a mechanic that penalizes players that are stun heavy.

Would be good.

Copestetic.5174:

A few skills that react to a given situation would be nice. I’m not sure how that’d be implemented at all, honestly as I’m not a programmer or whatever. But increasing the radius of AoE I suppose could be a start.

I guess the game has a system that tracks how many people are near. Defiant stacks go up when there are more people in the area right? I guess a similar script could be written to figure out how many people are within melee range of the boss. AoE that can become so large that you cannot dodge out of it in one roll… that might be good. (As long as it pulses or hits at an unreliable count, otherwise we’ll just learn to count and roll into the wall for invulnerability when it hits.)

Reikou.7068:

GW1 provided challenge because GW1’s PvE (for the most part,) was designed to teach players how to PvP, and the end-game in GW1 (again, for the most part) was initially designed to BE PvP.

I guess we had different experiences. I didn’t play a lot of PvP, to me it didn’t feel like PvE was preparing me for that.

Reikou.7068:

Mobs used player skills, and at the very basic level, performed like players would (auto attacks, skills to interrupt, healing, CC Into burst, etc.)

Player skills on monsters helped a lot to understand what foes were doing. At the moment I just see red circles and big swings. In a way this is much more realistic, on the other hand, this makes an appropriate response to each situation a lot harder to identify.

If a dryder is taking 3 seconds to cast that meteor shower, I know what to do. That spell is never going to resolve. Now I think: lets dodge out of these red circles.

If that forgotten monk general is spamming Word of Healing to save his allies, I better use diversion or hit a distracting shot. Now I just overdamage any type of pathetic heals that foes have in this game.

If a foe would use Mark of Protection, well, we better rip that enchantment right off or we could start on those hitpoints all over again. In this game I have yet to find a foe that has such an impressive boon.

If a foe would attack at a faster rate through using Lightning Reflexes, I would try to use that to my advantage by casting Empathy. Currently foes attack so slowly that confusion often fails to trigger even once.

If a foe would use Healing Signet, oh boy that foe was in trouble. I would save my heaviest hitting attack just for when he tried to get back up to safe health. I have yet to find a foe in GW2 that allows for small windows of opportunity in which to unleash our most powerful attacks. (Which are unfortunately often the #1 auto attack skills anyways)

If a stone summit dwarf would use Ressurection Signet, I would make sure those were the first to go down. If this was for some reason unfeasible, then I would at least try to interrupt them. As of now, only the Twisted Clockwork creatures appear to do something like this, but interrupting their skill doesn’t seem to have any effect.

If I were to try and unleash my meteor shower on a bunch of Wind Riders, they would not let me… ever! I would need to bring skills that prevented my next spell from being interrupted or try to find a different approach. In GW2, foes will interrupt me only if I choose a bad time and location to cast the spell. They don’t respond to what I’m doing, they just do a daze screech or charge attack on recharge. Making it much easier to work around the interrupts.

Important note: in GW1 most of the challenging fights were fights against multiple foes. Unlike GW2, where apart from bosses, many fights are not very challenging. There is a reason why we call all the other dungeon mobs ‘trashmobs’. (That, and we can just run past them most of the time). The exception to this might be the higher level Fractals.

The way foes in GW2 operate is much less obvious. They might have some words below their name that suggests that they will support allies or charge. But these don’t really offer us a concrete idea of what would be the best way to approach these. Other than… dodge when you see that club coming down or red circles on the floor. Or perhaps: lure this foe over to a trap so the shield falls off.

There is much to be gained here. I imagine pirates trying to ressurect eachother from downed state, I imagine obvious casting animations that can be interrupted on strong no-longer-trashmobs, I imagine strong healing foes with a clear animation. (A large symbol floating far above their head would go a long way in recognizing these kind of things in the middle of all the particle effects.)

Reikou.7068:

Make combat in PvE more like PvP. Again, have mobs autoattack much more frequently. Have mobs interrupt key player skills, dodge, heal, focus targets and burst, use boons, conditions, strip boons, etc.. Use player-skill mechanics. Not dumb mechanics like Defiant.

Right, this. (I should read the entire post before responding to avoid repeating others I guess)

Reikou.7068:

Dangerous Nightmare Courtiers

Aye, strong mobs would be nice. Perhaps a dungeon should end with a group of challenging player-like veterans instead of a boss for a change.

whyme.3281:

I have a boss idea too. Like the icicles in the guildpuzzle. You need to pull a boss under some rocks, amboses, pianos or whatever. This would require CC on the floor to pull the boss to specific locations and controlled damage on the top to cut some ropes/chains…. And maybe the boss gets some sort of heal that need to be interrupted or reduced by poison

I’ll have to do that guild puzzle, sounds interesting.

whyme.3281:

Another one would be, place time bombs and then kite/CC the boss into them. Im not sure if something like this already is in post 1.

Something like it, but not exactly. Allowing the players to set traps for a boss is an interesting approach. It gives players an opportunity to set up a battle that best complements their attack strategy. It could be nice to work this idea out a bit more, or you can of course just add more ideas.

Sollith.3502:

I am personally an advocate of having them lessen the resilience of enemies to controlling/interrupting effects (not completely, but enough to make them potentially important factors) and still increasing the difficulty of an event by instead designing events in way that split players up to complete several simultaneous sub events (based on the number of players in the area) that all play important role in determining the overall success of an event. Divide and conquer the zergs; use a bit of strategy against the players instead of just stats.

I’m hoping Tequatl will be something like this.

Also, I agree that dodging is a vital part of the game and rightfully so. At the moment it just dominates pretty much every challenging encounter though. It is not so much dodging that I dislike, just its monopoly on making it through challenging content.

whyme.3281:

As I said in the dungeon forum about support:
We need to get away from boons, CC, heals and support conditions on our autoattacks.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Useless-supports/first#post2816835

You cant call stacking might and vulnerbility with every Autoattack support. Only if you have to invest traits/sigil/runes… for support we have the skills 2-0 and F1-4 and on 1 only damage no bonus effects only finisher.

In my oppinion, all the autoattacks needs to be reworked and get rid of conditions, CC, boons and heals. except of bleeds and burns, because these are needed for Conditionbuilds and dont play a support role. When this change is made, then we can start talking about support.
I would go a step further and give the banners a health bar, making them a tactical element and not “fire and forget”.

I believe you hit a very important issue here. So many things come way too easily. Without putting in any effort or taking any risks. I think this goes for conditions too though. If they were harder to apply, they would be harder to spam and could be more powerful in return.

This reduction in spamming would probably be welcome in PvP too, where I hear people complaining about condition spam all the time. In PvE it would really help out. In smaller groups, like a dungeon setting, condition stacking wouldn’t be such a big problem if they lasted shorter, had higher recharges but were more powerful.

Of course this wouldn’t solve the issue in open world mass events, but it should help in the rest of the game.

Conditions and boons have a lot to gain by requiring more of an investment in weaponchoice/traitchoice and casttime. The spammability makes many builds totally insignificant because their main goal is already managed by auto or low recharge attacks and a few minor traits.

The Lost Witch.7601:

whyme.3281:

I have a boss idea too. Like the icicles in the guildpuzzle. You need to pull a boss under some rocks, amboses, pianos or whatever. This would require CC on the floor to pull the boss to specific locations and controlled damage on the top to cut some ropes/chains…. And maybe the boss gets some sort of heal that need to be interrupted or reduced by poison

I’ll have to do that guild puzzle, sounds interesting.

No, in the puzzle you dont have to kill someone, but shoot icicles and put the shards in holes to make a way for the rest of your guild. But the mechanic would be cool for a boss.

Try having an Australian ping of 250 minimum. I really dislike the difficulty revolving around dodging as the main damage mitigation especially due to this. You need even faster reflexes than other players to be able to handle the delay in enemy tells because you can be hit and knocked down half way into your dodge roll. There is a huge difficulty disadvantage to anybody playing on a non-local server.

When the molten facility was out, it was a horrible experience trying to time your jumps on the waves the boss released. With how quickly the waves were thrown at you, in the end I had to figure out that if I actually jump into the wave, I would succeed in avoiding the knockback. Which to me makes the mechanic look extremely stupid.

I do often get tired of being defeated by my ping with the necessity to time dodges in advance to what I can actually see to be able to avoid death, when I am otherwise perfectly capable of playing the rest of the game. I can deal with it as I do have pretty good reflexes and do still manage to dodge a lot of it, but it would be so much more fun if the difficulty came from somewhere else.

This is true but this is a good thing. GW2 is meant to be for casuals / beginners / less-skilled players than say, SWTOR, which has really complicated mechanics and difficult bosses

Someone has an axe to grind it seems :
http://i.imgur.com/pS5Q9oW.png

Wall of words.