Guild Wars 2

This post is not about whether the recently added World Boss encounters are good or not in general. I would like to focus on a small part of the mechanics of the Marionette encounter. While I realise Marionette will not be around long enough to get a lot of changes, I make this suggestion mainly so, if popular, it could be taken in to consideration for future content.

I personally like the way the Marionette splits the zerg up into 3-5man teams for the champion phase, and I understand that this was done so that the importance of individual performance was clearer than in previous zerg content. But perhaps some limited way of aiding others when you finish your part of the fight would have helped to alleviate of the helplessness we feel when finishing a platform just to watch the last platform fail.

To demonstrate what I mean, imagine that when a platform is cleared, players on this platform can teleport to a higher balcony with turrets that provide support and/or damage to other platforms. The amount of support/damage would depend on how hard the developers want the encounter to be, ensuring that it takes multiple platforms to win to make a meaningful difference for the last 1 or 2.

Examples of effects could be damage projectiles to inflicting conditions, giving boons, healing, providing CC, perhaps a “Resurrection bomb” that can rally downed players on a large cooldown. Additional players might then be able to reduce the cooldowns on the skills of a turret by a means of providing supplies or just a “press F” channel. Anything to keep us from just frightfully watching on.

Of course, the aid could be provided by a totally different mechanic, this was just an example from the top of my head. Also, keep in mind that the Marionette was obviously not balanced for this and introducing it now might make the fight easier than intended, but this suggestion is about avoiding helpless bystanders in future content.

TL;DR:
For future content, allow forcefully split groups to help each other, possibly in limited ways, when both have crucial objectives that can be failed, and one finishes earlier than the others.

So, what do you think of this?