Guild Wars 2

gw2 difficulty isnt too often about stats. When it does get difficult its about abilities, coordination, timing etc. A skilled player avoids a lot more dmg, and deals dmg more often at better opportunities.

people bring up tequatl, but it really isnt much of a dps check, its more of an organisation check, if having full ascended (which doesnt currently exist) makes you 12% better, and even now, with no one checking people’s gear, people have beat it in 6 minutes and 50 seconds, that means it is farrr from being gear dependant.

simply put, the game isnt really designed with a wealth of unavoidable dmg, and doing damage effeciently isnt a case of continous max dps. (IE more skilled players die less, kite better, coordinate to take better advantage of enemy weakness, and coordinate to maximize opportunities created to dmg the enemy)

Only thing ascended does it make is bring the skill cap down.

That said, the truth is, ascended was needed in the game, not really for the reason of appeasing grinders, but more because their reward system was too shallow. They couldnt make the overall game rewarding with exotics as the main target for players. Getting chests now, is something id go out of my way to do, world bosses have something that you cant get by playing the TP. gathering mats have a longer term value, because the items are used in recipes that most people want to get eventually. Skill points have become more valuable Now dont get me wrong ascended has problems with its implementation, but overall, the world needed some way to make the world rewarding. without longer term goals, that people actually want, only a select few things would be of value, and the price difference between them and and everything else would be insane.

for example, gathering wood, used to get you like hmm maybe 30 copper for the best wood that wasnt teir 6, a high value precursor at this time cost hmm 500-600 gold. this means youd have to get 166, 666 thousand peices of wood to get a precursor.
That means, if you were really effiecient and got 3 nodes every 40 seconds it would take you 617 hours to get a precursor from purely gathering. Not even counting gathering tool cost here. currently non teir 6 wood is somewhere in the range of 6.3 times as valuable as it was. This means it would be approx 120 hours to get a precursor at the new prices of 600-700. without the numbers it essentially means value now is more spread around, and less focused, it means even blues and greens have more value. Every facet of the game is more rewarding than it once was.

juno.1840:

I recall them saying Agony was a mechanic only for Fractals. The play on Infusions and Ascended are just nostalgia from GW1 and are not tying back to the Lore in any way.

If Agony became a regular game mechanic there would be a horrible uproar. Also consider that ascended trinkets obtained via laurels and guild commendations cannot be upgraded in the MF to receive +5 agony resistance. Only Fractal trinkets can do that.

Things can always change, and ANet can design other ways to obtain agony resistance, but it’s suppose to be a gating mechanic. Do we really want a gear-based gating mechanic on our content?

There has been conflicting posts on this one. One of Colin posts has stated they want to bring it to PVE eventually. There have also been posts saying its Fractals only from other Anet. They also have hinted at the Mursaat here and there. Infusions will also be increased as well in the future which has been stated. So who knows what they are doing in regards there is conflicting evidence.

phys.7689:

gw2 difficulty isnt too often about stats. When it does get difficult its about abilities, coordination, timing etc. A skilled player avoids a lot more dmg, and deals dmg more often at better opportunities.

Hope you have a stable, low latency connection then…

I’m not a spread sheet guy but if you made a dungeon, for example, doable for Ascended and not for Exotics they would be working with a very very small margin for error.

The desparity in stats is too small to be able to do reliably. They have to account more for player skill then they do for gear and as you said, aside for 48 Fractals, the content leaves so much room for player skill that it wouldn’t be possible to make a dungeon doable for Ascdended users and not for exotics.

phys.7689:

gw2 difficulty isnt too often about stats. When it does get difficult its about abilities, coordination, timing etc. A skilled player avoids a lot more dmg, and deals dmg more often at better opportunities.

people bring up tequatl, but it really isnt much of a dps check, its more of an organisation check, if having full ascended (which doesnt currently exist) makes you 12% better, and even now, with no one checking people’s gear, people have beat it in 6 minutes and 50 seconds, that means it is farrr from being gear dependant.

Is that with or without food buffs, potions and fire elemental summons? Answer is obviously with those things.
I’m not saying organization doesn’t play a factor, but I still maintain these are crutches for gear deficiencies.

Here’s my tin foil hat conspiracy. Note that I can’t find the quotes for these anymore (I’m terrible at googling things), but here’s what Anet have said regarding Tequatl (to the best of my recollection):
Before the release of ascended weapons, they said they expected it’ll take about 2 weeks to get an ascended weapon. Ascended weapons was released 2 weeks before Tequatl.
My opinion is that a few players managed to obtain it much quicker than expected, but the majority still did not have it 2 weeks after.

In a post-Tequatl release interview, Colin (I think) said they were surprised Tequatl was beaten on day 1, and they were expecting it to take days or weeks to beat.
I think that estimation included organized groups (anyone remember him saying he expected 80+ well geared organized players to beat him?), and expecting organized groups to take days or weeks to learn mechanics of a 15 minute fight is plain silly.
So why would it take days or weeks? Ascended weapons.
Considering how poorly balanced the Gauntlet was tested, I think ANet underestimated player ingenuity hence the heavy usage of food buffs, potions and fire elemental summons as crutches to beat Tequatl which gave players more than enough damage to compensate the lack of ascended weapons.

I really do not want a gear gating mechanism ever put into place. The content needed to challenge those folks leads to a very stale experience for everyone else. Just say no to gear gating!

Completely agree!

You shouldn’t need ascended gear for the following activities in this game: WvW, regular dungeon stories, dungeon paths, any of the open world boss or champion events including but not limited to the dragons or their lieutenants.

The Ascended gear should be limited to the following: Fractals.

The original post introducing ascended gear did so for the sole purpose of high fractals which were to contain a debuff called agony. None of the activities BUT fractals should have agony so unless they are changing the rest of the entire game to have agony no one should need Ascended for anything other than higher fractals and no one should be forced even indirectly (which is what would happen in WvW) to have this gear.

I would recommend them placing a limitation on the ascended armor gear to be wearable only when entering a fractal that way it wouldn’t be in the way of any of the other world activities. (this could exclude the weapons but armor is out of the question, it needs to be limited.)

If people are “grinding” for ascended gear, they are doing it wrong.

Just because ascended equipment isn’t free doesn’t mean you have to grind for it. Dungeons, world bosses, and temples all give materials necessary for ascended crafting. In my opinion, all these activities are fun and I would do them even if they didn’t give ascended materials. As a result, if you just play the game normally, you will steadily accumulate materials necessary for ascended crafting.

Plus, all these activities discourage grinding. Take diminishing returns in dungeons, for example. World bosses/temples only give a chest once per day and have a long time between events. As a result, a casual player who plays a little bit per day will not feel left behind. On the other hand, someone who is trying to grind all the materials in one day won’t have an easy time.

And if Arenanet ever introduces more difficult content, it won’t mean bosses deal more damage or mobs are larger; they aren’t stupid. More difficult content will require more teamwork and skill rather than higher base stats. If you can’t complete something with exotic gear, chances are, you won’t have better luck in ascended gear.

BlueZone.4236:

So why would it take days or weeks? Ascended weapons.
Considering how poorly balanced the Gauntlet was tested, I think ANet underestimated player ingenuity hence the heavy usage of food buffs, potions and fire elemental summons as crutches to beat Tequatl which gave players more than enough damage to compensate the lack of ascended weapons.

really shouldnt bring up food buffs, they are actually designed into the game, and it is expected that people would always be using some food or the other. I almost never do, but it should certainly be part of game design, even if ascended never existed that they include food buffs.

I do entirely believe anet may not have expected people to beat tequatl, but it probably has more to do with the way in which they do it. The biggest difference is i dont think they expected the zerg stacks with massive constant revivals. They probably thought people would be spread out into smaller parties in different positions jumping waves and what not. The point is, its not really the stats they underestimated, its the techniques. And thats really the thing about GW2, the game is designed more around mechanics and knowledge than gear. There is a lot of people who cant beat lupicus right now with ascended gear, and yet people beat him with greens, and not only that, but they do it faster than a lot of people can right now.

yeah a person who has mastered a fight might kill an enemy faster, but most the difficulty in GW is on mastering the fights, not on a 10% difference in raw stats. Now if harder content does come out, people will in fact be demanding better geared people, and they will think they failed because of gear, but it probably wont be. Other games with a static trinity, the game will often come down to a gear check, because the fight is mathematical.
Everything can be figured out because they have simplified the variables.
you can have a simplified hard dps check because you expect dps to be dpsing 90% of the time, because a tank is tanking 90% of the time and the healer is healing 90% of the time.
Its simply not the case in GW2, you have to back off sometimes, take advantage of openings, heal sometimes, revive sometimes. you cant make a simple equation that can figure out dps, because dps is more based on the skill/coordination of the players.

for example, lets say you have an ele who can give 13 might stacks from combo fields, a mesmer who can give his boons to party members in the area. In a fight that often involves periods of kiting, mixed with periods of tanking. If the party is really skilled they can get 25 might stacks on 4 party members for say 10 seconds. If they are very skilled and coordinated they can use their biggest dmg moves in this 10 seconds, and have 10-15 stacks of vulnerability on the enemy during this time period. The difference in dmg if they can pull this off perfectly is insane and far outweighs any 10% armor difference. most of the gw playerbase, me included havent even scratched the surface of what playing with skill/coordination can do in this game. We probably will never have to. 10% on ascended isnt going to win you much you couldnt win before, and the design of encounters is so far below what is possible, that even if they made things 10% harder it wouldnt come close to a real gear check.

they simply cant break down dps, or dmg mitigated, or hps to optimal predetermined levels with the types of encounters and skills they designed, therefore they cant build content that requires x dps or x dmg mitigated or hps to defeat.

phys.7689:

really shouldnt bring up food buffs, they are actually designed into the game, and it is expected that people would always be using some food or the other. I almost never do, but it should certainly be part of game design, even if ascended never existed that they include food buffs.

I do entirely believe anet may not have expected people to beat tequatl, but it probably has more to do with the way in which they do it. The biggest difference is i dont think they expected the zerg stacks with massive constant revivals. They probably thought people would be spread out into smaller parties in different positions jumping waves and what not. The point is, its not really the stats they underestimated, its the techniques. And thats really the thing about GW2, the game is designed more around mechanics and knowledge than gear. There is a lot of people who cant beat lupicus right now with ascended gear, and yet people beat him with greens, and not only that, but they do it faster than a lot of people can right now.

[snip due to hitting max post length]

I almost never see food buffs in the open world, so no, I don’t expect everyone to be using food buffs every time, nor do I think ANet thought so, either. I expect their next dragon rework to account for all of these, though.
And I disagree with your argument on the mechanics, though I admit I’m not 100% up to date on the latest strategy on Teq (though I doubt it’s changed much since I last beat him).
If the intended mechanics are indeed what you’re thinking (smaller groups), then that makes it even more inefficient in terms of time spent damaging Tequatl.
Regardless of whether it’s balanced around rares, exotics, ascended, Tequatl has a timer, hence there is a dps check. The real question is what they balanced this around (my tin foil hat conspiracy says ascended gear).
Tequatl is very mechanical in its fight for the front liners:
1. Dps.
2. Dodge/stability/heal/jump when he’s does his shockwave.
3. Dps.
4. Move slightly out of the way due to poison pool (or don’t move if turret guys aren’t afk).
5. Go to step 1.
This shows the fight can be mathematically determined and how much down time (no damage periods) you can expect.
There’s even 3 free shot periods which is essentially do X amount of damage or lose due to the timer.

Considering the optimal strategy tends to be stacking, food buffing, potion buffing, mass revival (or dodging if your computer can handle the lag/explosion of graphics) as it produces the most efficient damage output, and even then Teq is beaten very close to the timer (the summons are why you can beat Teq in half the time), that should show gear does play a role.

Could Teq be beaten in a group full of exotics (and/or less) without any of these crutches (food, potions, summons)?
I will say most likely not for the average organized group that can currently beat Teq.
It may be possible in a near perfect game with hardcore players (ie. perfect dodges, stars aligned and everything), but I haven’t seen it yet.

I do believe if front liner had every available ascended gear equipped (and equipped with the correct stats), Teq is perfectly beatable without these crutches.

Katre.1084:

If they begin to balance the game for ascended gear, I’m outa here. A lot of people that I know will be too.

They already started doing that. Aetherblades, for example have increased stats compared to other mobs in the game – and they are neither the only or the first such case. While nothing in the game (besides deep fractals) actually requires ascended, the balance point did move up since that tier’s implementation – and continues to rise.
And again, while nothing outside fractals actually requires ascended… Teq for example is simply not doable with only 80 people (stated as the target number for the fight) that use neither ascended gear, nor food/potion buffs and ember summons. It is already quite close to the edge.

AndrewSX.3794:

What makes mandatory [in fractals] Ascended gear are the Infusion slots – not that joke of stat bump.

Current ascended gear (not even a full set yet) gives between 5 to almost 20% increase to DPS depending on the stat set used . That’s not a joke bump.

Astralporing.1957:

Current ascended gear (not even a full set yet) gives between 5 to almost 20% increase to DPS depending on the stat set used . That’s not a joke bump.

Wow, 20%, that’s a lot.

Lostwingman.5034:

Aren’t dungeons and PvE in general balanced around Rares (Yellows) of the level the content is?
When did they change it to be balanced to Exotic levels?

Over the last year a lot of PvE content has gotten harder, i can testify to this as i’ve leveled a few characters a few months ago and the PvE open world stuff had dramatically increased from since the game opened.

I don’t think a lot of 80’s realize this as they have not leveled anything in many months and are geared in at least exotics, but yes i would consider open world PvE to be now geared for exotics over Rares, since these additions.

Ahlen.7591:

Onshidesigns.1069:

Ision.3207:

Ahlen.7591:

I really doubt the horizontal progress people are the ‘majority’ of the playerbase.

The majority of the playerbase is people who don’t fall into the hardcore OR horizontal groups.

Agreed, most people simply take the game as it comes. And there are casual players who prefer Vertical progression and there are casual players who prefer Horizontal progression. So there are 2 different preferences for how a game should handle progression. Likewise there are 2 different types of players that are hardcore; there are the hardcore grinders, and the hardcore skill players.

I don’t think most players have any concept of how to do horizontal progression and why it’s better.

Vertical progression to me leads to gated content and a slow death of a game.

Ya we saw how short WoW was am I right? That game died so fast because of Vertical progression.

Only beginner, Cities, and the latest expansion zones are not dead. Everything in between is empty.

Dante.1508:

Lostwingman.5034:

Aren’t dungeons and PvE in general balanced around Rares (Yellows) of the level the content is?
When did they change it to be balanced to Exotic levels?

Over the last year a lot of PvE content has gotten harder, i can testify to this as i’ve leveled a few characters a few months ago and the PvE open world stuff had dramatically increased from since the game opened.

I don’t think a lot of 80’s realize this as they have not leveled anything in many months and are geared in at least exotics, but yes i would consider open world PvE to be now geared for exotics over Rares, since these additions.

This is interesting to me because I do level alts all the time.
I cannot say that I find PvE harder- actually I find it easier because I am more familiar with how the game and combat works than when I leveled my first character.
I would say that PvE has always seemed to balanced around exotics but doable in rares

what are you specifically referring to if I can ask?