Guild Wars 2

I have seen much discussion concerning Ferocity and the new trait lines giving bonus damage to certain conditions (Specifically Fire on Guardians and Poison on Rangers). I really feel that these changes, while good starts, are not addressing the issues with PvE mobs and why we are facing the Berserker Meta in the first place. I feel that much of these changes will nerf the damage output of players by a small amount, but won’t shift a change to Condi because of the way condi stacks are handled in the game at present.

I feel that a better solution to the PvE issue with condi is to address the mobs which players are fighting and give immunities to specific conditions. We already get a sampling of this while fighting Dredge since they are immune to Blind. Taking things a step further though, maybe Flame Legion can become immune to Fire? or the Sons of Svannir immune to Chill? I just feel that these types of changes will force players to pay more attention to what conditions they are applying in the game and become more cognizant of what is actually happening in fights and on their skill bars.

Taking this a step beyond this idea, perhaps adding vulnerabilities to specific conditions may also be beneficial. Making Flame Legion receive a base damage total based on the amount of chill applied to them may make people want to use that condition more when fighting flame legion. Likewise, Sons of Svannir getting that bonus damage when Burning is applied may be something along these lines as well. Its something where the average player may or may not see a difference in combat, but those who want to specialize for speed clearing or more efficient play may want to trait into.

Going beyond this concept, it opens the doors to creating a Hard Mode for dungeons. While the mobs may be immune to certain conditions, maybe make it so that when those conditions are applied to the mobs, they are healed. I know CoF runs without burning would be a serious shift in the meta. Another idea would be instead of healing the mobs, perhaps it causes Agony (Bringing that condition out of Fractals and into higher/more hardcore types of gameplay). Of course, upping the rewards for Hard Mode would encourage people to subject themselves to the increased difficulty.

This type of mechanic is already in use in the game. Immunity to specific conditions exists with the Dredge, I just suggest expanding it throughout the open world (and in Dungeons). Likewise, adding vulnerability to certain conditions (such as the undead vulnerability to Holy Damage in GW1) is a tried and true element of RPG’s which is somewhat lacking in GW2. A more higher level dungeon mode with greater rewards is something also severely lacking. I feel these changes would force players to watch their skill bars and pay closer attention to their weapon sets a bit more and get focus away from just the crit and berserker meta without having to dump everything into conditions.

Wont work, will still be a DPS only meta.

Encounters need to be created that require group cohesion besides dealing damage and on a personal level not taking any / dying. But becuase there is no trinity, making an encounter like that is impossible.

The only 2 exciting ecnounters in the entire game is lupicus and the flame shaman fractal. The main theme being both these fights can be quite long, and a series of 1 or 2 mistakes can lead a quick death, and the fight becomes harder the less people there are (harder hitting attacks hitting the same person with higher frequency). And honestly thats as hard as I think PvE combat can be in this game, but Id love to see more bossses on par with those 2.

In fact I’ll say the flame shaman is hands down the best fight in the game. It forces everyone person to think, and tool accordingly to the fight, to use abilities not whenever they are on cooldown… but coordinate them with the party.

tl:dr the game needs more flame shaman type fights, and the zerk/dps meta will never be broken as long as the trinity doesn’t exist.

OP actually has a good idea. Not so quick to condemn it! Neither Lupi nor the Flame Shaman are long fights. The OP’s idea could make them longer and more interesting though. Even in optimal runs, it would be nice to see some diversity.

I really like that idea of maintaining a certain condi or debuff on a certain enemy to maintain an X % dmg bonus. This could make for some very fun building.

Currently conditions intensity is only handled by the last person to apply the condition. If we provide a bonus damage when a condition is applied because a mob is more vulnerable to a specific condition type, then at least your condition application isn’t completely mitigated by someone else with the same condition (This is especially so if the bonus damage is calculated based on points allocated towards the specific condition by the build).

DPS will always be a meta. That won’t change. What could change though is the amount of thought needed when fighting mobs. With the DPS meta in place, its pretty common to toss a fire field down under a mob so everyone can get might. In open world content, that is acceptable. In a Hard Mode dungeon though, that fire field might actually HEAL the mob or possibly convert into Agony dependent on implementation and could actually end up hurting the party. That would cause players to seriously rethink their use of the conditions.

I like the concept in part, but what you’re suggesting is beyond reasonable and would actually force a complete rebuild of the game. Some characters actually cannot help but deal certain conditions, the easiest example of this being the Guardian’s Virtue of Justice. Your suggestion of certain conditions healing certain foes (such as Burning healing Flame Legion), would mean that the Guardian wouldn’t be usable in CoF at all. Upping immunities in certain races I could see. Or perhaps even having some creatures be immune to critical hits, but I honestly don’t think that’d be good…

What I think they’re trying to avoid and what your proposed system would cause, is forcing people to change their entire build, armor included, every time they switch locations. Some of the high end players will do it no problem, but the “little guy” who is new, or simply plays occasionally to relax will be totally messed over… Your proposal would change there from being 3 metas per profession (WvW, PvP, PvE) to dozens of metas based on location. Occasional hobby players couldn’t afford the 5 sets of armor/ runes/ sigils required, and would be annoyed at constantly switching traits every time they want to do something else.

The guardian hindering the group would be a problem in an environment where players are punished for causing burning. I agree with that assessment completely should burning cause something like agony or healing. The only situation where I would throw the Agony and/or healing would be in a hard-mode situation. On the immunity or bonus damage part of things, though, I don’t see that as being an issue. Guardians in particular would be very effective in parties in cold environments. In dungeons like CoF, causing burn in a non-hard-mode version would not be as big a deal since they would be immune to Burning. There is still plenty that Guardians can do outside of that particular condition. In fact, it might become more beneficial to bring a Hammer with the Glacial Heart trait (critical hits with hammer chills foes). Swapping traits is not as big of a deal now given that retraiting will be free with the feature patch.

The Hard Mode concept makes the dungeons more reminiscent to the Mistlock Instabilities in the higher Fractal levels. In fact, its almost reminiscent to the “Ill and Chill” Instability taken a couple steps farther.

In the open world, just having immunity to certain conditions is not something which is new to GW2 even. Dredge are already immune to blind. By taking it a step further and making all mobs immune to something, it forces a player to learn new combat mechanics as they move through the game. I feel that by creating a vulnerability to offset the “Buff” of particular condition immunity would go a long way towards making the player use their traits and experiment a bit more. Just as with fighting Dredge currently in game, DPS is not completely ruled out, but straight DPS might not be the most efficient way to achieve goals. Its not about ruling out DPS completely, but about providing alternatives which make straight DPS less attractive for players.

Gw1 had this great system where mob types were weak against certain types of damage. In the end, though, the meta will always be DPS and dodge.

Especially while defiance stands in the way of unique design.

I agree with you about the multiple types of damage in GW1. It was a great way to take focus away from straight DPS (although DPS was still very viable). The combat system in GW2 does not have the different damage types, but some of the conditions could fill that role since they are much more diverse than in GW1. Thats the main idea here.

Zepidel.5349:

Wont work, will still be a DPS only meta.

Encounters need to be created that require group cohesion besides dealing damage and on a personal level not taking any / dying. But because there is no trinity, making an encounter like that is impossible.

Why is it?

Just because there isn’t a Trinity set for each encounter, doesn’t mean encounters can’t be designed to require players to use the different aspects of the combat.

For example, The Lover’s in AC, if the mechanics were more forcibly implemented:

• You’d require Control to keep them away from each other.
• You’d require Support, since the team would have to split.
• Damage is obvious.
• You’d require positional awareness in relation to the party.

Even the Effigy in CoF if it was altered slightly, even though the majority of that fight would be damage, it could be made so that other elements are needed (such as group awareness, control ect).

I am not too sure about the OP proposal but I agree 100% that the game needs more control, support in encounters to make them interesting.
Too bad really since the DPS meta is broken and honestly boring

I agree that the DPS meta is boring. I see people complaining about it frequently on this forum and in other videos. I lost many friends to other games because they found straight DPS boring. I would love for new mechanics to be introduced if anything just to refresh the gameplay a bit. I suggested this format because its working within mechanics which are already in the game or have been implemented in other forms in previous updates. If it were carried into other parts then it would be very cool and refreshing to the combat.

I do think it would only be a start in the right direction. I think many of the world bosses need an overhaul and I think that some dungeons need a more intensified version with better rewards. I can’t say that my solution is the end-all or anything of that sort, but it is something which may be better.

I’m a fan of diversity in the AI opponents defensive capabilities. They could perhaps add monster only stats which reflect the various enemies we face. Some already have immunities like Hylek to poison, but the many other types could maybe take on resistance to particular things in order to vary up what is effective against them.

An idea: Add a Strength/Weakness variable to all enemies.
The strength outlines some kind of general resistance… like -50% crit damage taken, half bleeding durations, immunity to poison etc.

Weaknesses would be assessed with something like a stacking agony or flat bonus damage when the specified thing is applied. If weakness is against stuns for example, every incoming attack that would stun/daze/petrify/knockback will procure a stack of this bonus damage (regardless of defiance stacks). Weakness to burning applies the bonus damage for every tick of burn damage etc.

Bonus damage would be scaled based on how often that attack can be expected. So a stun bonus would be far greater than something that can be spammed much more easily like a bleed.

Likewise there could be still enemies that are neutral to everything and have no specific weakness or resistance. It would take a little time to balance, but I think it could really allow for some interesting approaches to content.

TLDR
There should be monsters with strengths and weaknesses against all of our various offensive stats. A kind of damage mechanic could be procured when said enemy’s weakness is exploited while the strength would be a flat reduction in damage from specific things. For example -50% crit damage to reduce the specific bonus damage of critical hits without nullifying them completely. Or something like -50% bleed damage.

pswendel.8179:

Gw1 had this great system where mob types were weak against certain types of damage. In the end, though, the meta will always be DPS and dodge.

Especially while defiance stands in the way of unique design.

Except you could inflict cold/water, fire, lighting/air, earth, piercing, blunt, slashing, chaos, dark, holy and shadow. As far as I know all damage types (other than conditions) in this game are considered to be just damage and not count as different types so having mobs weak to certain things would basically make them have to do another major overhaul to the game.

Also I’m pretty sure certain mobs are already immune to certain conditions. Dredge being immune to blind is one of them.

How about “immune to critical hits” for certain mobs? That would certainly disrupt berserker meta.

Immunity never makes an encounter more interesting, immunity only makes things drawn out and annoying.

If you need to resort to immunity then it needs a redesign.

Damage bonuses are fine, but immunity is never fine.

@Fang:
Being immune to crits is most certainly a viable solution. I may be wrong, but I believe that world bosses already have such a thing? Having crit immune mobs would become more like a gimmick than anything though and would basically make crits pointless. Making a condition-themed alternative doesn’t void crit damage, but it may provide a viable alternative to it.

@Travid the Terrible:
Dredge are immune to blind, as you mention and I believe that Destroyers may be immune to Burning (I haven’t done the leg work to fact-check this though, admittedly). I feel that they system of immunity is a great tool to make people rethink their approaches to certain mobs and would love to see it expanded game-wide. Alongside it, I feel there should be a vulnerability put in to mobs as well. I mean its only logical that if something is fire that cold would stop it (since we don’t have water damage per say) or something which thrives in the cold would be more susceptible to burning.

@Slider Zero:
I most certainly agree that AI changes would be fantastic and more sliding scale type damage output would be interesting, but I feel that it might be too complex for the typical starting player. The suggested immunity/vulnerability system would be something purely on the back-end which wouldn’t require an AI overhaul. I remember reading a dev mention recently that they were trying to push for mobs to behave more like players in some ways. I think that might be a bit more in line with the type of changes you propose. My suggestion is more along the lines of you go into a zone full of the Sons of Svannir and icebrood. There might be an NPC there saying “I hear those Dragon worshipers aren’t fans of fire, so every chance you get, LIGHT ’EM UP!” and then you go fight in that zone and you have bonus damage granted whenever you cause burning. If its a flat bonus on an attack landing (instead of full duration of the burn) it is adequate in my opinion, especially if the bonus scales off the player’s Condition Damage or other factors (including player level, power level, crit chance, or even a story-driven cause such as order affiliation). Such a change while minor would mean a great deal to those who are fine-tuners of builds for specific purposes. Taking the concept into dungeons could potentially open up a hard mode. Coupled with an improved mob AI, this could be extremely challenging and potentially lots of fun.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Immunity never makes an encounter more interesting, immunity only makes things drawn out and annoying.

If you need to resort to immunity then it needs a redesign.

Damage bonuses are fine, but immunity is never fine.

I’d say immunity is fine, as long as the same rules apply to players as well.

For example, if a mob had, say, Endure Pain, or if mobs had traits with specific traits attached (like the new Ele Earth trait).

@ZudetGambeous:
I agree with you completely on the immunity alone being annoying. That’s the main reason why when you mention doing anything in Dredgehaunt Cliffs you get the response “Sigh, I hate the Dredge”. Tossing in a vulnerability then balances out the immunity and makes things a bit more interesting. In the case of the Dredge (going completely off Lore-based reasoning) I would say they should be vulnerable to either confusion or immobilize (because they have been imprisoned for so long or because yadda, yadda, yadda, lore stuff in a combat mechanics discussion). Yes, though, immunity alone is a problem for the very reason you mentioned.