Guild Wars 2

some nice thoughts op, i just feel that the main issues are too deeply ingrained into the game now for it to ever change.

with the whole game going towards ‘gear progression’, the majority of people will always find the easiest / quickest way to mash through the content to get their fat lootz rather than look at ‘fun / variety factor’. As you mentioned there are encounters in the game that require true support characters & builds, it’s just that they are underplayed. Why would one spend 30+ mins in one dungeon playing support when I get the same reward in under 10 mins in another for mashing 100 blades in an offensive build and dodging correctly?

colesy.8490:

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

That is because the design of reflection is borked from the outset.

Consider it next to retaliation, its closest relative.

Retaliation actually require you to be hit, and the damage done is based on your power rather than the attackers.

Reflection on the other hand use the attackers power (tho apparently the reflection source’s precision and critical multiplier) and do no damage to the target. It is one more of ANet’s esthetics over mechanics designs, as it actually turns the very projectile around. It sure looks good, but screams “balancing nightmare”.

whyme.3281:

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”.

Another issue is that there is virtually no difference between support provided by someone dedicated to the task, and someone doing it as a side effect of their DPS rotation.

This because so many boons, and quite a few non-damaging conditions, are fire and forget with fixed values (except duration).

Syncourt.5906:

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.

With some additional irony from the wiki:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Interrupt

Note the Trivia section:

“Interrupts as they existed in Guild Wars are not as prevalent in Guild Wars 2 because of their dependence on low network latency to be used effectively.”

First off, with the GW2 team saying that they have some version of raids coming, I hope that they can address the issue of encounter design in those. Casual players won’t set foot in raids, and therefore hardcore players could have as much difficulty as the devs can design.

Second: I really like what you have here. It’s got a lot of good ideas, and you obviously put a lot of effort into this. To be honest, you addressed almost all of my ideas / opinions. So instead, I’ll use this time to examine how well GW2 can implement these while keeping its “Play however you want with whoever you want” motto.

A lot of your suggestions require specific mechanics to be available to players. Each class and spec will shine in certain areas, but it would be important to ensure that any could succeed.
Here is what I will assume:
—The party will have 5 members, and those members will be split between at least 3 classes. It is extremely rare that a party outside of CoF speedruns will have only 2 distinct classes, and one-class parties are even rarer.
—Each player will have access to every healing skill, utility, and elite for their class. By level 80, this ought to be the case.
—Rangers will have access to every pet. While this probably isn’t the case, chances are they’ll have a pet for the job since important pet skills are usually species tied.
—The fight will be on land. I doubt any hardcore content including underwater combat would be received well.

Here is what I won’t assume:
—I will not assume any access to weapon skills. Players are extremely varied in what weapons they prefer, and most people won’t be willing to carry a copy of each weapon available in their backpack.
—I will not assume any specific traits. While I am of the school of thought that tailoring a build to a fight is completely fair to assume, many people would disagree. Plus, it would be difficult to account for the build diversity of this game.

Mechanics:

Interrupts:
Interrupts include any daze, stun, knockback, knockdown, launch, pull, or fear. With this criteria, every profession has at least one non-weapon and non-trait dependent interrupt. Rangers have the least, while Warriors and Necromancers have the most.

Forced Movement:
Forced movement includes any knockback, launch, or pull. Neither Rangers nor Mesmers have any access without weapons or traits, while all other classes have some access.

Movement Hampering:
Movement hampering includes any form of inhibiting a CC-immune target’s movement. This includes immobilizes, cripples, and chills. Mesmers have no access to this outside of weapon skills and traits.

Condition Removal:
This includes the ability to remove, transfer, or convert conditions on one’s self or an ally. Every profession has personal condition removal, while every profession but the elementalist may remove conditions from an ally.

Boon Removal:
This includes the ability to remove, steal, or corrupt the boons on an enemy. Only Engineers, Mesmers, and Necromancers have guaranteed access to this mechanic, so it would be ill-advised to design an encounter around it.

Healing:
This includes the ability to heal another player. Only Warriors and Mesmers lack the ability to directly heal an ally. Furthermore, Guardians, Warriors, Engineers, and Rangers are capable of applying regeneration to allies.

Protection:
This includes the ability to apply protection to allied players. Only Guardians, Rangers, and Elementalists can apply protection on-demand to allies. As such, encounters should not be designed around this.

Blind:
This includes the ability to apply blind to a target. Every profession except the Warrior has the ability to on-demand apply a blind.

Blocks/Invulnerability:
This includes abilities to render the user impervious to attack. Only Guardians, Engineers, Elementalists, and Mesmers have access to this without traits or weapons. As a result, it should not be the focus of an encounter.

Projectile Reflection:
This includes any ability to reflect projectile attacks. Only Guardians, Engineers, Thieves, and Mesmers have access to this without traits or weapons. As a result, it should not be the focus of an encounter.

Stability:
This includes any ability to apply stability. Only the Elementalist is without this.

Stealth:
This includes the ability to enter stealth. Only the Mesmer and Thief have guaranteed access to this, so it should not be the focus of an encounter.

EDIT: Readability

digiowl.9620:

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).

My point still stands: difficulty needs to go up. Try not too look at the specific details. I know the 2 games are different. You just gotta look at what’s fun about it: the challenge. Zerging up a boss is fine; however, it should not mean you can stand next to boss and spam 1 without getting punished. They’re already going this direction by buffing up Tequatl.

Another suggestion to make the game more fun: Make an in-game tool to warn us server-wide of all the big events in the server. You have all these open world bosses, but there’s no effective way to know when they’re up other than using a 3rd party website or program (similar to LFG problem that is being solved in the 17th patch).

Sylentir.8913:

First off, with the GW2 team saying that they have some version of raids coming, I hope that they can address the issue of encounter design in those. Casual players won’t set foot in raids, and therefore hardcore players could have as much difficulty as the devs can design.

Are you talking about tequatl and other worldbosses? The last thing I heared by collin was that groups of 5 are fine.

Sylentir.8913:

Here is what I won’t assume:
—I will not assume any access to weapon skills. Players are extremely varied in what weapons they prefer, and most people won’t be willing to carry a copy of each weapon available in their backpack.
—I will not assume any specific traits. While I am of the school of thought that tailoring a build to a fight is completely fair to assume, many people would disagree. Plus, it would be difficult to account for the build diversity of this game.

Why not place environmental weapons around the bosses, that are really weak compared to real weapons, but will give you acces to a stun, snare,…. what ever.

For excample a “rusty shield” that will replace skill 4 and 5 wit a block and shielbash and will get destroyed after 5 uses and have high CDs.

Sylentir.8913:

Interrupts:
Interrupts include any daze, stun, knockback, knockdown, launch, pull, or fear. With this criteria, every profession has at least one non-weapon and non-trait dependent interrupt. Rangers have the least, while Warriors and Necromancers have the most.

Forced Movement:
Forced movement includes any knockback, launch, or pull. Neither Rangers nor Mesmers have any access without weapons or traits, while all other classes have some access.

But everyone hase one, so why dont we use them?

Sylentir.8913:

Movement Hampering:
Movement hampering includes any form of inhibiting a CC-immune target’s movement. This includes immobilizes, cripples, and chills. Mesmers have no access to this outside of weapon skills and traits.

Is this a real problem? As you said, a group has at least 3 different classes, what a mesmer cant do, the rest of the group has to do more. On the other hand there are two sided of the coin. If you cant slow your enemy move faster

Sylentir.8913:

Condition Removal:
This includes the ability to remove, transfer, or convert conditions on one’s self or an ally. Every profession has personal condition removal, while every profession but the elementalist may remove conditions from an ally.

You forgot the combo fields, the elementalist can place combofields, that can be used for condi remove or trait that every heal he applies removes a condition. But again, noone said that all the bosses cant be done without condiremove or CC. It would only make them easier.

Sylentir.8913:

Boon Removal:
This includes the ability to remove, steal, or corrupt the boons on an enemy. Only Engineers, Mesmers, and Necromancers have guaranteed access to this mechanic, so it would be ill-advised to design an encounter around it.

What boons are we talking about? I think all can be countered
might with more defense and heals
Regen with poison
Swiftness with slows/CCs
Retelation with controlled dmg and heals.
Protection with more dmg.
Stability with movement

Sylentir.8913:

Healing:
This includes the ability to heal another player. Only Warriors and Mesmers lack the ability to directly heal an ally. Furthermore, Guardians, Warriors, Engineers, and Rangers are capable of applying regeneration to allies.

Thats why every class has his own healing ablility. Maybe there is a class weaker at some points which is good. With every class beeing able to do everything equally good we dont need 8 different classes.

Sylentir.8913:

Protection:
This includes the ability to apply protection to allied players. Only Guardians, Rangers, and Elementalists can apply protection on-demand to allies. As such, encounters should not be designed around this.

If we have no protection we need more heal or dodges to prevent some damage. This doesnt mean class X or Y is useless.

Sylentir.8913:

Blind:
This includes the ability to apply blind to a target. Every profession except the Warrior has the ability to on-demand apply a blind.

dodge or if the boss is melee then slow him down that he cant hit you.

Sylentir.8913:

Blocks/Invulnerability:
This includes abilities to render the user impervious to attack. Only Guardians, Engineers, Elementalists, and Mesmers have access to this without traits or weapons. As a result, it should not be the focus of an encounter.

You forgot the warrior here with 4 sec invu. And for those who dont have a invulnerability or block need to dodge at the right time. And if they need it more often, they need vigor or a heal to compensate the damage they get. Or a “rusty shield”

Sylentir.8913:

Projectile Reflection:
This includes any ability to reflect projectile attacks. Only Guardians, Engineers, Thieves, and Mesmers have access to this without traits or weapons. As a result, it should not be the focus of an encounter.

If the boss only gets damage by reflected projectiles, than there need to be some environmental weapons. If not, heal, dodge, run…..

Sylentir.8913:

Stability:
This includes any ability to apply stability. Only the Elementalist is without this.

A knockdown can be handled with a stunbreaker or a dodge, block,….

Sylentir.8913:

Stealth:
This includes the ability to enter stealth. Only the Mesmer and Thief have guaranteed access to this, so it should not be the focus of an encounter.

At the moment is only used to skip some content. But this can also be done with swiftness of environmental weapons or smokefield+explo finishers.

I think the problem is that people think their class needs to be the best in everything and for this we dont need 8 different classes. Maybe there would be class X is better for dungeon Y, but this doesnt mean, the rest is useless and the dungeon cant be done. I know we have the same “issue” right now with dps warriors. To do all the pve content the easiest and fastest way. The suggestion of the OP goes another way. dps classes shine in dungeon A, condi classes ind dungeon B, guardians ins dungeon C….

Space.8053:

some nice thoughts op, i just feel that the main issues are too deeply ingrained into the game now for it to ever change.

with the whole game going towards ‘gear progression’, the majority of people will always find the easiest / quickest way to mash through the content to get their fat lootz rather than look at ‘fun / variety factor’. As you mentioned there are encounters in the game that require true support characters & builds, it’s just that they are underplayed. Why would one spend 30+ mins in one dungeon playing support when I get the same reward in under 10 mins in another for mashing 100 blades in an offensive build and dodging correctly?

You make a fair point.

One way to do this, would be to include these encounters in Fractals every now and then. Another, probably better way to to this, would be to increase the rewards on harder/longer dungeon paths a bit further. 50 silvers is no longer a substantial amount of money to most dungeon players. What I would really like to see is path-specific ascended weapons. These would be available through a lot of dungeon tokens or as a rare drop from the endboss on a certain path. They wouldn’t even have to be all weapons. Just an ascended greatsword in Arah 2, an ascended pistol in AC 3, an ascended staff in HotW 2, well… you get the idea.

digiowl.9620:

“Interrupts as they existed in Guild Wars are not as prevalent in Guild Wars 2 because of their dependence on low network latency to be used effectively.”

Ah, that is painful, if true. Interrupts would make it a lot easier for people with latency issues, in group play there is often at least one member that can land that interrupt, saving those with a poor latency. In the case of dodging it is a latency check for everyone.

Sylentir.8913:

So instead, I’ll use this time to examine how well GW2 can implement these while keeping its “Play however you want with whoever you want” motto.

Thanks for your time, it is nice to have a clear view of what casual players have at their disposal without swapping anything but their utility skills.

I will not restrict myself to this, since there are places in the game for a more hardcore gaming crowd, but it sure helps in keeping the more casual areas (fractals and at the very least one path per dungeon) doable for all.

Sylentir.8913:

Here is what I will assume:

I think these are fair assumptions.

Sylentir.8913:

I will not assume any specific traits. While I am of the school of thought that tailoring a build to a fight is completely fair to assume, many people would disagree. Plus, it would be difficult to account for the build diversity of this game.

I hope that they will make traitswapping a bit easier, perhaps every dungeon ‘guard’ outside the dungeon portal could have a trait-reset option attached. (“Would you like to prepare for this adventure?”)

Sylentir.8913:

Mechanics:

You were very thorough on this, I’ll just point out two minor things to make the list a bit more complete.

Sylentir.8913:

Movement Hampering:
Movement hampering includes any form of inhibiting a CC-immune target’s movement. This includes immobilizes, cripples, and chills. Mesmers have no access to this outside of weapon skills and traits.

If we include the 3 second stun on their signet, then they do. But I admit, it is a bit of a stretch.

Sylentir.8913:

Stability:
This includes any ability to apply stability. Only the Elementalist is without this.

Elementalists have armor of earth.

Thanks for compiling this list, I will update the OP to include this list later this week. (Managing the OP is pretty difficult at this point. I’m pretty much on the characterlimit in every part.)

KazNaka.4718:

Another suggestion to make the game more fun: Make an in-game tool to warn us server-wide of all the big events in the server. You have all these open world bosses, but there’s no effective way to know when they’re up other than using a 3rd party website or program (similar to LFG problem that is being solved in the 17th patch).

Good suggestion, but probably not the best thread for it. Perhaps you could give it a catchy name and toss it in the suggestions forum? One thing to consider is the amount of people that would show up. Having 100 people on the SB really takes away the challenge. Perhaps they need to update their scaling first?

@Whyme: The Lost Witch mentioned a number of specific abilities and mechanics in the opening post. I took most of them, and evaluated whether or not they would be able to be filled by a PuG of 5 random non-hardcore (But not necessarily casual) players. As you can see, most of the mechanics are fine, just not quite all. Also, on the warrior invuln, I didn’t consider it to be a full invuln since the warrior is still susceptible to conditions.

@The Lost Witch: I agree, either the ability to swap traits on the go or easier access to a trait swapper would be nice. Also, thanks for the catch on the stability; I’m not sure how I missed that one.

Just found this one:
pretty nice idea to make support more interesting
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Useless-supports/page/2#post2832611

I get your point and I’m with you on that one. I even opened a post on the suggestion forums (how naive right?) asking to change the “boon duration” stat for something like “boon potency” that not only increases duration but also the power of the buff, making Fury not only 20% crit but scalable to who knows 40%? (let them do the math lol) with full gear or Might giving more and more damage as the higher your boon potency is. Banners could provide more numbers also. The only “gray” I could find was regeneration where healing and boon potency could override but its not even a huge deal for a design-develop team to figure it out, like let healing alone do the job.
If only something like this… I believe all party would like to have someone full on boon potency for the amplified buffs and let him do the job while dps sports their damage utility instead.

unleashed.8679:

I get your point and I’m with you on that one. I even opened a post on the suggestion forums (how naive right?) asking to change the “boon duration” stat for something like “boon potency” that not only increases duration but also the power of the buff, making Fury not only 20% crit but scalable to who knows 40%? (let them do the math lol) with full gear or Might giving more and more damage as the higher your boon potency is. Banners could provide more numbers also. The only “gray” I could find was regeneration where healing and boon potency could override but its not even a huge deal for a design-develop team to figure it out, like let healing alone do the job.
If only something like this… I believe all party would like to have someone full on boon potency for the amplified buffs and let him do the job while dps sports their damage utility instead.

Well if all parties would want a full boon supporter… that’s a lot like the ‘healer’ that GW2 was trying to avoid. Although there is ofcourse a subtle difference: we don’t actually need one to get through the content.

Boons that scale with stats, I don’t really think it is necessary. I would opt for just making some of the boon granters more powerful but also more specialized. The same goes for conditions. Taking them away from most minor traits, making them mostly available by choice only. I would also like to see some of the accidental boons/conditions removed from attacks. A heavy bleed is really something we can build around, a small bleed tagged on a power-attack is only discouraging people from bringing a condition build. The same goes for boons, I see vigor pop up all the time, when I asked who was bringing the vigor in my team, no one knew. We all had to look up our attack skills and traits to see where that came from.

In a way we have boon application boosted by someone who invests heavily in boon duration. It is just the amount of accidental boons that make these powerful boongranters feel less useful as they may actually be.

There are a lot of skills and traits that should all do something useful. It will be a nightmare to balance them all out, but I do believe that several minor/major trait-swaps can work wonders here.

That said, it looks like support is getting some anet support in the october balance-update.

I hope they increase the healing power scaling more than the base heals though, to make some healing power worth bringing.

Hey The Lost Witch,

Great essay you wrote here. Thank you for offering the community all those leads to improve our gaming experience in PvE.
Like you pointed out a lot of options already exist in the skills mechanics so maybe those need not to be modified. The devs should probably focus more on the balancing if changes are to be made.

I find gw2 extremely beautiful and that is part of what have brought me back to give it a second chance. That and of course my former gw1 guildies and allies who are actively playing their gw2 characters. If it wasn’t for those reasons I wouldn’t be playing gw2 today and spending hefty sums of money in purchasing cute stuff from the Black Lion. But I miss the brainstorming we performed to achieve wonders in gw1. I think it is extremely frustrating not to feel the need to change builds in what is supposed to be PvE predicaments. Clearly I miss the “Magic The Gathering” way of gaming I thought we would get in guild wars 2.

I am also a bad dodger and I feel with the current system there is little I can do except train to be better at dodging. That does not feel like some great purpose in a character’s life. So yes The Lost Wicth, I agree. I would love my skill choosing matters more and I know there are a lot of people out there who think the same.

Just a couple sudjestions:

Invert defiance.

Rather than only the n’th disable procing, have the n’th disable cause stability or some variant.
That way, people who focus more on CC (which they then would be able to) would need to use them sparingly (ie saving the ones that are going to work for the right moments)
or even a stack for x seconds and non rippable stability if it got to y stacks.

As for blinding being only 10% effective just makes it useless in Boss fights.
Going dagger pistol instead of dual daggers as a thief agianst a dungeon boss pretty much just means that you ’re less initiative efficient and do less damage over all.

If it even just stacked in intensity against bosses where if multiple people blinded it simultaneously each stack being a 10% miss chance that would be fine too. The duration wouldnt be increased so careful timing is a factor.

Usually the blind condition will time out before the blind’s “miss” actually procs unless other people are blinding too or for some reason you’re fighting a Boss with a blind based build (which are so much fun where they actually work).

It means that, while we are free to come up with our own playstyles, many of the options just aren’t worth taking in PvE.

As for the zerker trumps all argument, it is sadly true. My engineer is a condition spec and I do not PvE with him. If ever you want to feel entirely useless, take a condition damage toon to a well attended world boss. The burning and poison duration will be in the minutes longer than the dragons remaining life, and they tend to be at 25 stacks of bleeding for the whole fight. It’s a sad realization that 2 or 3 purpose built caracters could effectively reproduce all the condition damage being done by every condition damage spec character in the zerg attacking the boss.

It means that in all three of gear, traits and skills, people will be rail roaded because several options are either not worth taking or synergise better with something not worth taking in PvE.

The thing I really like about GW2 is that the combat is active. Like any action game the play style should mean more than the stats behind it and some of the boss fights really encourage this.

I love the Howling King (AC p1 Boss) fight where you have to kite hoards of minions into burning circles. It means that the boss becomes an interesting fight since there is a trick or knack to defeating him.

Mobility becomes golden in that fight. You have to think on your feet, it’s unique and different to other bosses, there are many aproaches to it (which one you pick will most likely depend on your party composition) and it is very rewarding when it goes well.

As oposed to the fight against Leurent in TA where it is pretty much just a case of how long can I DPS this guy untill I miss a dodge and get one shotted and there is really little i could do to specialise my build or playstyle to that fight.

I’m all up for defiance getting tuned down and I think you mentioned some fight secnerio’s that could be really fun to play.

It’ll be funny to see LFG post where people demand full cleric/soldier stat characters for a dungeon or event like you get people asking for only full zerker warriors to join their party.

I’m interested to see what happens with the ideas on this thread.

Creegan

Ok, think we will never be able to control Mobs.

Just made Teq event and feared one of those champs that attacks the turrets. Result was 53 stacks of Defiant.
That has to be a joke! How did they ever thought about this “new Trinity” with control support and Damage?

laureen.2614:

I miss the brainstorming we performed to achieve wonders in gw1. I think it is extremely frustrating not to feel the need to change builds in what is supposed to be PvE predicaments. Clearly I miss the “Magic The Gathering” way of gaming I thought we would get in guild wars 2.

Yeah, this…. so much this. Oh I miss those brainstorming conversations. Struggling to shave off those seconds to win the challenge mission. Finding a good build to make it through some of those winds of change missions in hardmode. Creating a team capable of crushing Urgoz in hardmode… showing off an underused skill like grenth’s balance! Pondering for hours on end trying to find a way to run through icedome. Finding a use for that req 8. shield with +1 water magic (20%)…

So many good memories. I really hope that GW2 will some day offer more of this aswell.

DrCreegan.5927:

Invert defiance.

Rather than only the n’th disable procing, have the n’th disable cause stability or some variant.
That way, people who focus more on CC (which they then would be able to) would need to use them sparingly (ie saving the ones that are going to work for the right moments)
or even a stack for x seconds and non rippable stability if it got to y stacks.

Yeah this works a bit like the enraged mechanic earlier mentioned. Interesting, I’ll give it some more thought and add it to the OP later.

DrCreegan.5927:

Usually the blind condition will time out before the blind’s “miss” actually procs unless other people are blinding too or for some reason you’re fighting a Boss with a blind based build (which are so much fun where they actually work).

Yeah, those slow bosses aren’t just bad for retaliation and confusion, blindness suffers greatly from it aswell.

DrCreegan.5927:

I love the Howling King (AC p1 Boss) fight where you have to kite hoards of minions into burning circles. It means that the boss becomes an interesting fight since there is a trick or knack to defeating him.

Mobility becomes golden in that fight. You have to think on your feet, it’s unique and different to other bosses, there are many aproaches to it (which one you pick will most likely depend on your party composition) and it is very rewarding when it goes well.

I wish the burning wasn’t strong enough to kill them rightaway. So that snares would be useful in keeping them in the burning fields long enough to kill them.

unleashed.8679:

Ok, think we will never be able to control Mobs.

Just made Teq event and feared one of those champs that attacks the turrets. Result was 53 stacks of Defiant.
That has to be a joke! How did they ever thought about this “new Trinity” with control support and Damage?

Well… on the bright side: Berserker gear is certainly not the best gear for most of this battle for a change. And knocking back the foes from the laser events is a pretty effective way to keep them from taking down batteries. The difficulty of the event also calls for some build changes… so all in all, I think they have at least some interesting things going on here.

53 defiant stacks… that is of course ridiculous though.

Roll guardian and you don’t have to dodge! But guardian’s not OP. they just cast aoe stability, condi removal, and aegis, along with tons of other utility, but guardian has a low HP so clearly it’s not OP at all. /s

The Lost Witch.7601:

snip of great OP!

I wanted to write this post, you took my words from my keyboard…

1) as we all know Anet didn’t remove the holy trinity, just moved it to the new holy trinity: power, perception and crit damage. also known as “Berzerker” gear.
the synergy should be toned down a little, mainly by reducing critical chance from perception (make it an asymptotic formula when it tends to~30% crit but never reach it) and toning down the crit damage for example , no investment in crit damage is 25% instead of 50% increase , and full crit line is 15% crit damage and not 30%.
character with fully invested in perception and fury buff should be near 50% crit chance, not more.

2) healing should have synergy with perception and crit damage just like damage. (lets start that there should be a reason for ‘magi’ armor…)
crit should be essential for healing. and it will not be OP because of reduced crit potency.
also it will give more options for thew player to chose;
should i go ‘magi’ for the healing output but lower damage and survivability, or go ‘cleric’ for more toughness and power? or maybe i should invest in some zerker rings and earrings for the extra crit damage to make my heals bigger? maybe mix of cleric and magi? after all with this suggestion balanced builds will have edge over the single stat min-maxing.

3) all non damaging CC (i.e. immobilize, cripple, chill, stun, daze.) should have their base duration doubled. introduce gear with condition duration as main stat (no, not givers, givers is crap! it should be condition duration, condition damage and vitality.- not perception! also where are the armors and accessories?)
a smart party should be able to chain chill+ cripple a room of mobs taking single one each time! while stunning, immobilizing the mobs that break free, cleance or simply out of the radius.

4) conditions should have synergy also with perception and crit damage, so people will have to choose stats from : condition damage, condition duration, perception and crit damage, more choice will lead to more builds and make deeper game.
also, burning condition should affect objects (I can understand that bleed and poison should not affect wall or barrel, but burn should!)

this is absurd that classic condition classes like necromancer, ranger and engineer are much better with power builds than condition builds!
also, since the condition damage is increased via crit , we can cap player condition amount on single mob to ten (10) while the mob cap of 25 will remain , allowing to have two (and a half) condition users in a single party without the harsh penalty we have today.

5) mobs should have buffs, debuffs, blocks, reflects , cleansing and should have ranged option when the players abuse pathing, resetting mobs healing them to full is bad mechanic, especially underwater..

dungeon mobs shouldn’t ‘one hit’ players, but must have mechanic that require player coordination of skills, and the ability to defeat five players of the same type.

for party of five berzerkers, the mob should have blocks, retaliation or reflects.
for five support/CC, the mobs should have regeneration and protection boons that will mitigate the low DPS, etc.

a smart use of player skill, CC, healing, cleansing and utilities should be able to defeat the dungeon mob.

TLDR:
1- nerf direct damage synergy
2- buff healing synergy
3- buff CC and remove defiant from everything except world encounters
4- balance conditions (allow them to crit but reduce single player stack to 10)
5- change the way mobs react.

1. I Don’t think this is needed, It would be enough to show them they dont have any defense. Just some damage that they can’t dodge. i.e. faster attacks with lower doamage of the boss instead of one every 5 seconds.

2. With this change you will increase the overall effectiveness of Zerker. Because they have tons of precision and crit damage. Making their heals stronger and compensate the lack of defense even more.
Those two stats are offensive stats and don’t match well with a defensive one like healing power. Because the most healing in GW2 comes from regeneration a combination of boon duration and healing power would synergies but the only one we have is givers and that one is bad.

3. We dont need a doubled duration for CC, we have enough CC to deal easily with trashmobs i.e. AoE blind, icefields, cripple…. , but the defiant buff of bosses makes CC worthless, a well timed interrupt on a boss should be worth more than any dodge but too many interrupts should penalize the group (rage mode of the boss, making the boss stronger an CC immune for a short time). This interrupted skill could either be a strong AoE dmg of the boss or a heal.
I dont understand your armor idea, condi-duration, condi-dmg and precision would be an equivalent to zerker armor. Because all three stats synergies with each other.

4. Conditions synergies very well with precision, 60% chance on crit to bleed your foe (sigil of earth and traits) they dont need to crit. lets compare condition damage to direct damage:
Conditiondamage works like Power its your base damage
Precision increases your ammont of conditions → increases your overall damage (luck bases and caped at 100%)
Condition duration multiplies your damage done, the more precision you have, the more conditions you stack, the more damage you do.
Bringin in more stats, that would effect conditiondamage, would make it imbalanced, why should i need 4 stats to max my conditions, but only 3 to increase my direct damage? To increase the conditiondamage, you can just change some numbers in the formulas, but I dont think its needed, conditiondamage is fine at the moment, the big problem is the cap. reducing this to 10 per player would cause more problems, than it should solve. Many classes even in zerker gear is able to put 10+ stacks bleed and vulnerablility on an enemy. with your idea, conditionclasses would get their damage halved and we still have the problem, that we cant use 2+ conditionbuilds in a group of five.

5. Yes, mobs need to be more intelligent when it comes to a fight, but they should not change their skills, hp and toughness depending on the group facing them. The interesting part would be finding the best group constelation, to beat dungeon X with different boss strategies needed, the most efficient way.

The fights in GW2 is bad because the mobs stopped being relevant to player’s health and damage. That means the horrible AI in GW2 was covered up by mob’s overwhelming health and damage.

For more details read my other thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-AI-is-worst-than-GW1-AI

The Lost Witch.7601:

Endgame PvE: Where difficulty comes down to dodging

Meaning the Ranger pet (or any minion) is useless. Really wish they’d give a perma-stow option giving the Ranger 100% of the damage output.

Lalangamena.3694:

1)~the synergy should be toned down a little, mainly by reducing critical chance from perception (make it an asymptotic formula when it tends to~30% crit but never reach it) and toning down the crit damage for example.

The problem lies not just within the critical chance and damage. It is a combination of those factors that makes berserker armor deal so much damage. The more power, the more effective your precision and critical damage. The more precision, the more effective your power and critical damage. The more critical damage, the more effective you power and precision. No other combination combines 3 stats so perfectly into one direction. If crit damage were reduced as you state, that would rabid/knights/other gear with precision, even more dramatically than berserker armor. There has to be a different solution.

Lalangamena.3694:

2) healing should have synergy with perception and crit damage just like damage. (lets start that there should be a reason for ‘magi’ armor…)
crit should be essential for healing. and it will not be OP because of reduced crit potency.~

I’ll go with whyme on this one. But I agree, the magi armor is not good at the moment. (My crits deal no damage, and I crit all the time, which is too much for all the on-crit cooldowns). There may still be a place for it in a more well rounded setup though. (I’ve currently put ruby jewels in those magi-trinkets)

Lalangamena.3694:

3) all non damaging CC (i.e. immobilize, cripple, chill, stun, daze.) should have their base duration doubled. A smart party should be able to chain chill+ cripple a room of mobs.

I think we can already keep foes slowed well enough. If anything, I would like to see some durations shortened but more powerful. That way there is a good reason to bring more than one condition user in a party.

Lalangamena.3694:

4) conditions should have synergy also with perception and crit damage~
also, burning condition should affect objects (I can understand that bleed and poison should not affect wall or barrel, but burn should!)

I sort of like that condition damage is not the same as power damage. Adding crits to them would make them very much the same. That said, I do believe that structures can burn!

Lalangamena.3694:

5) mobs should have buffs, debuffs, blocks, reflects , cleansing and should have ranged option when the players abuse pathing ~

for party of five berzerkers, the mob should have blocks, retaliation or reflects.~

Ideally mobs would be a lot smarter than they are now, agreed. Blocks, retaliation and reflects will not really stop the five berserkers though.

CHIPS.6018:

The fights in GW2 are bad because the mobs stopped being relevant to player’s health and damage. That means the horrible AI in GW2 was covered up by the mob’s overwhelming health and damage.

For more details read my other thread.

Well for one thing, monster AI in GW2 is harder to identify. We don’t see what type of spells they’re using at that moment. (In GW1 there was a skillbar below the monsters name that showed what skill they were using at that time and how much time it took until the cast was completed) This makes it a bit harder to interact with GW2 mobs.

Also there were larger groups of pretty strong foes in GW1. Although we’ve seen some of those in the Aetherblade Dungeon now aswell.

GW1 had quite a few super strong foes aswell though. These foes did not have player like healthpools (level 20) but quite a bit higher (lvl 38). Remember Aatxes?

GW1 did not have many bosses like GW2 has though. The difficult missions often involved a lot of foes, instead of one big boss. I think we can attribute that to monsters with:

• Healing skills
• Ressurection skills
• Interrupts
• High movement and attack speed (This made hard mode a lot harder than normal mode)
• Long cast devastating attacks that basically had to be interrupted.

And

• More numerous foes. (Yes orrian events scale up to way more foes, but most of those get slaughtered way faster than GW1 foes) Troublesome encounters (Winds of Change content/Slavers Exile) often had multiple healers/ ressurecters/ interrupters.
• Defend an objective content. This was usually the hardest because the foes were coming at us. The fight wasn’t entirely on our terms.

I do think that the high health on bosses and their extreme deadly attacks make for a new type of combat that has its own benefits. But it is mostly rewarding one strategy: all out damage. And most non-boss foes in GW2 are degraded to ‘trash’. While in GW1 they delivered most of the challenge! (That said, most bosses in GW2 are less of a joke than the great destroyer/shiro and the lich)

Interesting thread, I’ll keep an eye on it.

The new Tequatl fight is offering something to worldevents that could be used more extremely if it is up to me. Dividing the fight in seperate parts. (Destroying fingers, defending turrets, attacking the dragon)

At the moment all these events are still based around dishing out as much damage as we can without dying. Defending the megalaser and the batteries offers some playtime for control, although some of those high defiant stacks ruin most of the fun.

What if a meta event had serious side events? Events of the kind mentioned in my suggestions. What if the pre-events rolled into the boss event, and had to be ‘kept in check’ in order to make it through?

A forced split into smaller teams (as with Tequatl), teams that would need to take very specific and often non-direct damage based action. Between the many players found at a Tequatl fight, there should be plenty of people that have access to certain conditions/control effects/buffs/mobility to make these ‘strange’ encounters doable.

Ofcourse this would take quite a bit more coordination than the Tequatl event, but it would allow some skills to shine in PvE for once. To really be of interest to the individual buildcrafter.

On the other hand, perhaps this kind of build/strategy based content is best left to dungeons and other small instances? Can 100 people be expected to coordinate to this extend in the open world? If many already have trouble getting Tequatl down?

So while an event with a place for heavy cc, heavy condition damage, heavy mobility and heavy healing might finally give loads of people a place to let their buildcrafting skills shine… is a large Boss fight the place to do this?

A sidetrack, but i find mixing chill/cripple and daze/stun under the heading “CC” to be bad form. I would define chill as a debuff, not CC.

Lord Kuru.3685:

One of the big flaws in the PvE of this game is that we have all these skills that have practically zero use in PvE.

Mobs rarely give conditions or have boons so we almost never need condi removal or boon stripping skills. Instead, we often get mobs that have special monster skills that provide the same benefits as conditions or boons, but are invulnerable to player skills.

If mobs had some condi and boon removal, that’d make things even more interesting.

Totally agree with skills with 0 use, does not agree with mobs lack condition skills. Just taking a troll in Orr gets your screen loaded with condition boxes and even AC requires stability skills and cleansing.

The Lost Witch.7601:

The new Tequatl fight is offering something to worldevents that could be used more extremely if it is up to me. Dividing the fight in seperate parts. (Destroying fingers, defending turrets, attacking the dragon)

At the moment all these events are still based around dishing out as much damage as we can without dying. Defending the megalaser and the batteries offers some playtime for control, although some of those high defiant stacks ruin most of the fun.

What if a meta event had serious side events? Events of the kind mentioned in my suggestions. What if the pre-events rolled into the boss event, and had to be ‘kept in check’ in order to make it through?

A forced split into smaller teams (as with Tequatl), teams that would need to take very specific and often non-direct damage based action. Between the many players found at a Tequatl fight, there should be plenty of people that have access to certain conditions/control effects/buffs/mobility to make these ‘strange’ encounters doable.

Ofcourse this would take quite a bit more coordination than the Tequatl event, but it would allow some skills to shine in PvE for once. To really be of interest to the individual buildcrafter.

On the other hand, perhaps this kind of build/strategy based content is best left to dungeons and other small instances? Can 100 people be expected to coordinate to this extend in the open world? If many already have trouble getting Tequatl down?

So while an event with a place for heavy cc, heavy condition damage, heavy mobility and heavy healing might finally give loads of people a place to let their buildcrafting skills shine… is a large Boss fight the place to do this?

While I do like the idea myselve, I think adding more complexity will herd players even more to the specialized guilds.
Some big PvE servers might give it a try, but after a while interest will drop, and the event will mostly be abbandoned (whitch is already the case with Tequatl in his current state).

I do however think that the ideas of the OP will work great on a smaller scale, given that all professions have access to the ability’s needed (we don’t want to go back to “glf monk”).

On a personal note, I would like to see bigger groups in dungeons, like dungeons for 10 man groups, and the ideas of the OP would be great for those.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Totally agree with skills with 0 use, does not agree with mobs lack condition skills. Just taking a troll in Orr gets your screen loaded with condition boxes and even AC requires stability skills and cleansing.

Yeah, we do get a ton of conditions tossed at us in Orr, it never feels like those conditions are the actual threat though. Not like the confusion damage going on at one of those bounty hunt bosses, or the bleeding from mai trin. In Orr I just shrug, pop a heal and fight through the conditions. (With the exception of the strange permanent cripple that pops up in Malchor’s Leap every now and then.)

Most AoE’s I can dodge out of even while crippled and most chasing foes can’t keep up with a double dodge. (They’ll get in one attack, I heal up and dodge again, eventually they hit their leash and walk back.)

Of course this is the open world, and I would never visit Orr if the foes just kept chasing forever… but in dungeons I think it could be nice if the conditions used by foes were a bit more stressful. At the moment large bleed & confusion stacks are the only conditions that really seem to actually require removal. The other conditions are annoying or even really annoying (fear!), but removing cripple/poison/burning/blind/immobilized/torment/vulnerability/weakness rarely felt like a move that changed the outcome of the battle. And I don’t mean like once a week rarely, but more like once a month, or probably not even that.

Aragon.8259:

While I do like the idea myselve, I think adding more complexity will herd players even more to the specialized guilds.
Some big PvE servers might give it a try, but after a while interest will drop, and the event will mostly be abbandoned (whitch is already the case with Tequatl in his current state).

I do however think that the ideas of the OP will work great on a smaller scale, given that all professions have access to the ability’s needed (we don’t want to go back to “glf monk”).

On a personal note, I would like to see bigger groups in dungeons, like dungeons for 10 man groups, and the ideas of the OP would be great for those.

Hmm 10 man dungeons… they would need to deal with the conditioncap first though…

Oh, and the Twilight Assault dungeon path is here!

TA

And I’m really liking some parts of it!

The ooze puzzle is really cool. Just dps-ing down the fire elementals is usually not good enough. Some blinds/pushes/pulls/reflects or even area denial make a big difference here.

The clockheart fight also allows for some interesting tactics. I’ve seen an interrupt strategy work. (Interrupting pretty much all the big attacks makes him harmless, but keeping the defiant stacks down is not a very easy thing to do) But pulls and pushes are useful for taking the holograms to the boss before he reaches 30 stacks of power as well. (Although it can still easily be done without them unfortunately)

In the electric puzzle room there is an opportunity for invulnerability & mobility to make it a little bit easier. (Although again, it isn’t all that hard to begin with, making a skill or traitswap not really worth the effort when you’ve got the patterns down.)

I like this new dungeon path more than most other dungeons. Especially the ooze puzzle part. I hope they can come up with some more of these ‘combat puzzles’. Where we have to adapt to a new situation by changing our weapons/utility skills and perhaps even traits.

^not having the same experience as you. I must have died about 20 times trying to reach the gates of Arah because of all the conditions. Maybe it’s because I’m a zerk Mesmer.

I would love to see more stuff like CoE’s laser jumping, or more puzzles akin to the ones you would find in Zelda games, where it encourages exploration and covers much bigger areas of the dungeon.

I have a zerk mesmer and can get to the gates of Arah just fine.

I suggest making use of your dodge key.

Cast bars

Anna Kruse made a topic over here that introduces cast-bars as a way to solve some of the issues I’ve described in the OP.

Cast bars (like in GW 1) would show us what skill a foe is using, and how far it is in being cast.

Some of the pro’s:

• This would show a tell even if there are way too many effects going on to otherwise spot it.

• Players could more easily see which skill is being used and then decide what they want to do about it. (Interrupt? Dodge? Use stability?)

• Players would better understand what the effects are of individual monster skills. (Other than just the words that describe what a monster does in general) – Without looking it up on a video on youtube.

• Timing your dodge would become easier (this may not be a positive thing)

• We could see a window of opportunity in which to interrupt an attack.

• Skills could become more complicated, because players now have an easier way to identify what they do. This might also allow for more difficult content, since the more casual players are now more likely to understand what they may need to do to get through.

And some con’s:

• It would make dodging easier. Which might mean that the endurance regain should be slower? (As suggested by Anna) But even then, cast bars will probably make it much easier to respond to an attack than the current tells. (At least on the first boss attempts)

• It is immersion breaking to see what a monster does before feeling it.

• It would probably eat a lot of dev-time to make this happen. Both writing all the skill facts and balancing the game in the new state.

So… how about this cast-bar thing?

I would love it if they made this happen, but I’m a little bit afraid of the amount of time it may take away from the development team that could be spend on making more awesome encounters. Then again… if they just put the dev’s from the WvW team on this… (Nah… just kidding, the wvw-ers need their content too)

Half true

Without any dodge food/sigils/rune and the copious amount of endurance and vigor traits far too many classes have, half the end game big-baddies attack too frequently and hit too hard for dodge to be all there is to their fights. However, with the above listed buffs you have dodges in spades and mobs attacks so regularly that it requires no skill and nullifies any reason to carry anything besides straight DPS. Hence the zerk warrior speed runners.

Excepting of course that the reason you don’t run straight DPS is because you don’t find it fun, good enough reason for me but apparently not for everyone.

So I am going to necro my own thread. Because I have something new to add and because the topic is still very relevant.

Many posts in this thread that have been made to counter my point bring in the following argument:

• CC already works, we used it in speedclears all the time.

To which my typical response was:

• Just a pull and some reflects.

or

• Yeah you do so to speed it up, but it is never necessary, you can always get away with just dps & dodging.

There is a valid point in the argument given though:

CC can already be used effectively on most non-boss foes.

Now instead of neglecting this point because of it’s rareness, I’m trying to use it.

What if we could push every player to their limits, regardless of their skill level?

Enter Challenge Missions.

Missions that have a scorecount that determines your level of success in a dungeon that will never be perfected. In fact, challenge missions will typically always fail at some point.

The higher your score before the mission ends, the higher the reward.

Add a scoreboard to compete with other players and an achievement track to be able to compete with yourself.

Pushing you to play as good as you possibly can. Challenging you to come up with new, better strategies with your team in order to beat your personal or teamrecord.

Of course the encounters would still need to be designed in a way that different strategies all have some merit. If stacking up is clearly the best way to do it, there is not much of a challenge to coming up with a good strategy, since we’ve been coming up with that one for a year now.

An example of a GW2 Challenge Mission design that I’ve come up with can be found over here.

That suggestion shows in more detail what kind of challenge I am thinking about.

• Multiple objectives.
• A variety in monsters.
• The mission becomes more difficult over time.
• Bundles that allow players to think about other teamcompositions.

Not only would these challenges push people into making the most of their skills, it also allows for a lot of replay value. (Especially if the rewards are good.) Since new challenges arrive as you get better and better.

Please do take a look at that link!

What would be good rewards for these challenge missions? And how would the ‘beat your personal record’-thing be best implemented in order to avoid exploitation? (People beating their previous record by 1 point and then failing on purpose)

On a sidenote: I do wonder what the fractal leaderboards are going to do…