Guild Wars 2

Khristophoros.7194:

The only way a healer would be useful is if it is required for the party to survive. Why would we slow down our DPS to have a healer if we don’t need it?

I’m fine with this though. It’s quick and easy to pug because we don’t need certain professions or roles.

Well you could have different option and healer could be one of them. Average pugs couldn’t complete content with 5 meta zerker. But you could complete it with 5 zerker and 3 of them would have support trait and runes. Or 3 zerker, 1 tank, 1 healer would also work. Or 3 zerker and 2 zealot, etc.

As long as you need something to keep your team alive and an Healer is one option possible to do that.

Thaddeus.4891:

Khristophoros.7194:

The only way a healer would be useful is if it is required for the party to survive. Why would we slow down our DPS to have a healer if we don’t need it?

I’m fine with this though. It’s quick and easy to pug because we don’t need certain professions or roles.

Well you could have different option and healer could be one of them. Average pugs couldn’t complete content with 5 meta zerker. But you could complete it with 5 zerker and 3 of them would have support trait and runes. Or 3 zerker, 1 tank, 1 healer would also work. Or 3 zerker and 2 zealot, etc.

As long as you need something to keep your team alive and an Healer is one option possible to do that.

How is having something restrict you a good thing?

PookieDaWombat.6209:

They can try to retcon their history and their words all they want, but at the end of the day, the game itself was not built with the trinity in mind. If it were then there would be a way to properly pull aggro and not just some new skill that holds aggro, sort of. There would have been and will be meaningful group/area and single target heals (which still do not exist in the game) where they are beneficial to a group.

I forgot who, but someone already did the math breakdown as to why the meta has been zerk in PvE and its not because people have a chub for zerk, but because the game was designed in such a way that it is the most effective method for killing enemies with the fewest casualties.

I’d love for it to matter that I can go out in a healing build on my guardian and keep people standing in spite of themselves while possibly tanking a good amount of damage and allowing my ranged people space to melt a boss. That isn’t how this game was developed though.

I agree with you 100% +1.

I want to use a example: It is like building a foundation for a house, than all of sudden: you want to change your mind and want to use that same foundation to build a building.

It will never be possible no matter what you do because the foundation was not built for that. If you force it: the foundation will sink.

" If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot? "
Gloria Steinem

The only solution is to rebuild the foundation of the house for the building.
The only solution is for Arena net to rebuild Guild Wars 2 ‘from the ground up’
or
Leave Guild Wars 2 foundation the way it is.

Harper.4173:

How is having something restrict you a good thing?

Not everyone needs to be able to complete a content using full glass cannons builds. Otherwise, the risk isn’t enough.

Trinity or no Trinity, it doesn’t matter, the balance in this game between classes is clearly broken. In a trinity game the developers usually design it for roles, if you’re a healer you’re not going to be good at tanking ok for dps, if you’re a tank you can soak up damage but you can’t heal and ok for dps, if you’re a dps you can’t heal or tank but you have survival skills to help keep you alive.

What does GW2 do? give everyone access to dps, you have your own heals, you have dodge for survival, but it’s obvious not every class is built with balance in mind. You got the super regen warriors who can dish out dps and tank if they wanted. You got the elementalist who can do all three roles at the same time. You got thieves who can dish out burst dps while in stealth for most of a fight. Mesmer who can take you in one combo while being in stealth for 20+ seconds at a time. etc.

At this point I would welcome trinity roles because at least there was a semblance of balance between them, although I highly doubt anet could even manage to make that work seeing the bang up job they’re doing with the current class combat balance. No one cares about support or tanking in GW2, it’s all about dps, that’s it.

Harper.4173:

How is having something restrict you a good thing?

It’s not restricted. You can do the content whatever way you want. But if you want to go full dps and no defense, it’s gonna freaking hard and you better be good. Now, there is no point of having a build that is more defensive because almost all the players can do the content in a full zerker party.

Anyway. All I want is hard content that will push people to take more defensive skill with them. Not to change the combat system at all.

Harper.4173:

Thaddeus.4891:

Khristophoros.7194:

The only way a healer would be useful is if it is required for the party to survive. Why would we slow down our DPS to have a healer if we don’t need it?

I’m fine with this though. It’s quick and easy to pug because we don’t need certain professions or roles.

Well you could have different option and healer could be one of them. Average pugs couldn’t complete content with 5 meta zerker. But you could complete it with 5 zerker and 3 of them would have support trait and runes. Or 3 zerker, 1 tank, 1 healer would also work. Or 3 zerker and 2 zealot, etc.

As long as you need something to keep your team alive and an Healer is one option possible to do that.

How is having something restrict you a good thing?

I’m not a fan of what Thadd implies as he’s basically advocating an attrition based mechanic. That’s the only style that NEEDS healing. I’m not a fan of that stuff.

However, I am a fan of NEEDING a projectile defense, needing CC to strip the breakbar, needing different mechanics that people can fill in different ways.

That’s the beauty of this system and while not perfect you have many different options with different professions.

I could see an encounter that had an environmental mechanic that you had to go pick up these certain berries that grew around the room, but they were very toxic such that getting too close and holding them damaged you. So you’d either have to be insanely quick (probably impossibly so) or have someone with some healing gear taking care of it with relative ease. So most are fighting a normal fight but you have a use for building yourself up to be defensive.

There are so many options.

I’m of course concerned with the idea of carrying half a dozen sets of 12 pieces of gear… but maybe they’ll come up with some more options regarding that if it becomes a problem.

Harper.4173:

Tigaseye.2047:

Honestly, I think they meant well when they designed this game to be less reliant on the trinity.

I’ve moaned, myself, about an over-reliance on tanks and healers and about the way some tanks (in particular) can be divas, as some of them end up viewing themselves as indispensable.

However, all we’ve ended up with here instead, in PVE, is with (almost) everyone prioritising DPS (and insisting others do, too) and effectively sharing the support roles, by permastacking and meleeing, whenever possible.

That is even less fun than having to wait in a queue for a tank/healer and no fun, at all, for those who like to tank/heal; or even just to build and/or gear in a slightly tankier/more healerish way.

Not only that, but the game still suffers from the imbalance associated with trinity games such as WoW (as it still has different armour weights and so on) and in many cases, it’s even worse in that way.

Unfortunately, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I disagree with you. Playing the game is fundamentally more fun than waiting around to play the game.

I don’t really get what you mean, here?

I’m referring to one of the down-sides of a trinity being having to wait for tanks/healers, before you can play (as referenced in the video).

I’m not saying waiting = playing.

Also having one person dictate the course of an encounter is again something I fundamentally disagree with.

Yes, I know what you mean, which is why I mentioned the issue of (potential) divas.

There again, are DPS divas any better?

Are people who try to force people to gear, build and play a certain way preferable?

At least even bossy tanks, in games like WoW, are generally only telling people what to do and dictating the speed of the run.

They’re not normally, also, dictating gear and build choices, to randoms in dungeons.

My concern is this : if they create hard roles and the content in HoT requires a certain role for the party to be completed we will go back to square one on the whole “waiting around for 1 person to finally engage in content” problem they sought out to solve in the first place.

Yes and I agree that is not ideal.

But, neither is (IMO) dictatorial, skipping>permastacking>meleeing, DPS-only parties, all in matching clothes…

I know not all parties are like that, but it is obviously an overwhelming tendency, ATM.

Secondly – the moment roles are required the class that best fills the role becomes meta and people will demand that class and force each class into that predefined role that is required and that said class does best.

Yes.

If classes aren’t well balanced (or certain builds can make them that way), that will tend to be the case.

There again, haven’t we already got “meta” classes, ATM?

Just they’re all DPS.

Not only that, but we’re not even really “allowed” to play ranged in most parties, as it is inferior; let alone select the class, build and gear we prefer.

I find that pretty depressing and extremely restrictive.

Seems to me, that everything is fine and dandy, as long as you love stacking and meleeing.

Otherwise, not so much.

Good luck playing anything but full healing ventari rev if it turns out ventari rev is the strongest healer in the game and the encounters require a healer.

If they make combat roles mandatory for completion then we’re pretty much lost.

Some people think we’re pretty much lost, already, though.

Just most of them have already left the game, from the sounds of it.

I’m not saying which would be better, or worse.

Just that I am capable of enjoying group PVE, in WoW (or was, until fairly recently – let’s not go there).

Whereas, I’m not really capable of enjoying it, ATM, in this game (unless I’m in a VERY relaxed group).

Stacking is a tendancy on old content that was previously trivialized by FGS and the PUG tactics have still not changed.

Jump into fractals where there is some content that’s not completely mind numbing and well you get a situation like I had the other day where in one group everyone starts ranging Archie, and another the whole group responds with “wow, everyone melee’d, you never see that in a pug”.

Jerus.4350:

I’m not a fan of what Thadd implies as he’s basically advocating an attrition based mechanic. That’s the only style that NEEDS healing. I’m not a fan of that stuff.

Not necessarily. A good pug or group may be able to complete the content with support like protection, weakness, vigor, blind, aegis, reflect, dodge ect. But averager player may prefer using a healer, which require less skill/timing/knowledge.

Ideally, support would be more efficient than healing. But Healing shouldn’t be so much behind support either. Now you need to sacrifice trait, skill and stats to do important healing. While support only need to sacrifice trait and skill and you can even do decent support with a full dps build.

But the worst Anet can do is to make Healing a necessity. You should be able to do the content with either support, surviability, healing or a mix of those.

rotten.9753:

Harper.4173:

How is having something restrict you a good thing?

Not everyone needs to be able to complete a content using full glass cannons builds. Otherwise, the risk isn’t enough.

First of all I doubt everyone in this game can complete content using full glass builds.
Second of all what content are we talking about? Dungeons? FOTM? Open World?

In the Open World builds are worthless – the key there is numbers and due to the nature of megaservers personal contribution is very small. The difference between gear and skill is drowned out in a sea of dozens of other players and particle effects.

In dungeons – I would argue that the majority of dungeon parties do not run meta builds and strategies. Even if they did – it would be to be expected since the game’s encounters have remained the same for almost 3 years now.

It’s no wonder people can run dungeons as full glass cannons. Heck people can solo dungeons and people can run them naked. It’s not about the gear – it’s about player skill and the number of times you’ve done that content.
You can’t use the fact that people can run 3 year old dungeons in full glass gear as evidence against said gear. It’s not the gear that is at fault – the content is simply old and players are simply too good for it now.

The same content at launch in full glass gear was suicide or near that anyway.

In FOTM – people can run full glass specs even in FOTM 50 but here’s the catch – the majority of parties consist of veteran players that again know the content by heart.
Take less experienced players in a FOTM 50 run as full glass and you’ll have a wipe fest on your hands guaranteed.

What you need to get out of this is that risk disappears regardless of the gear you wear once you’ve done that content hundreds or thousands of times and you know it like you know yourself.

No content remains challenging once people run it enough.

Thaddeus.4891:

Harper.4173:

How is having something restrict you a good thing?

It’s not restricted. You can do the content whatever way you want. But if you want to go full dps and no defense, it’s gonna freaking hard and you better be good. Now, there is no point of having a build that is more defensive because almost all the players can do the content in a full zerker party.

Anyway. All I want is hard content that will push people to take more defensive skill with them. Not to change the combat system at all.

Sure – FOTM 50 does this already. You can’t do it as a full zerker team unless people are good and know what they are doing otherwise it’s a terrible experience.

Again – as I said above I would like to ask " what content?" – read my post above – this is not a gear but a content problem.

FOTM is fine as it is.
Open world is a joke and you can’t really count it since people zerg everything anyway.
Dungeons are 3 years old and people can do them WITHOUT gear because they know them by heart.

If you want the game to push players into having to build more defensively or they won’t complete I’d want things to be made fair.

*Too glassy and you can’t handle it because of no skill ? You can’t complete cause you’ll die over and over.

Too tanky in order to compensate for no skill? You can’t complete because the boss is on a timer and you can’t kill him fast enough.*

This would make sure players have to have the right amount of skill in order to finish content. If you’re bad tanky or glassy gear won’t save you.

Jerus.4350:

Harper.4173:

Thaddeus.4891:

Khristophoros.7194:

The only way a healer would be useful is if it is required for the party to survive. Why would we slow down our DPS to have a healer if we don’t need it?

I’m fine with this though. It’s quick and easy to pug because we don’t need certain professions or roles.

Well you could have different option and healer could be one of them. Average pugs couldn’t complete content with 5 meta zerker. But you could complete it with 5 zerker and 3 of them would have support trait and runes. Or 3 zerker, 1 tank, 1 healer would also work. Or 3 zerker and 2 zealot, etc.

As long as you need something to keep your team alive and an Healer is one option possible to do that.

How is having something restrict you a good thing?

I’m not a fan of what Thadd implies as he’s basically advocating an attrition based mechanic. That’s the only style that NEEDS healing. I’m not a fan of that stuff.

However, I am a fan of NEEDING a projectile defense, needing CC to strip the breakbar, needing different mechanics that people can fill in different ways.

That’s the beauty of this system and while not perfect you have many different options with different professions.

I could see an encounter that had an environmental mechanic that you had to go pick up these certain berries that grew around the room, but they were very toxic such that getting too close and holding them damaged you. So you’d either have to be insanely quick (probably impossibly so) or have someone with some healing gear taking care of it with relative ease. So most are fighting a normal fight but you have a use for building yourself up to be defensive.

There are so many options.

I’m of course concerned with the idea of carrying half a dozen sets of 12 pieces of gear… but maybe they’ll come up with some more options regarding that if it becomes a problem.

This type of “attrition” system only makes things longer since people will stack defensive gear and slowly inch their way though. It won’t be fun or glorious – it will be tedious.

Also the mandatory many gear sets is another issue that would be a pain.

Well personnally I would like increasingly harder content. Something like what Wooden Potatos proposed recently would be nice, at least the concept of it.

Instanced content (raid, dungeon, fractal, whatever) that you can do with almost anything, but that have hard mode that is not just giving more hp and dmg to the boss or have a mechanic that just need more gear.

Tigaseye.2047:

I don’t really get what you mean, here?

I’m referring to one of the down-sides of a trinity being having to wait for tanks/healers, before you can play (as referenced in the video).

I’m not saying waiting = playing.

You basically said it’s less fun to go and stack and burn things fast than to sit around waiting for a healer. I disagree – I’d rather burn stuff and stack and skip and whatnot then wait endlessly for some necessary role to come and fill our spot.

Yes, I know what you mean, which is why I mentioned the issue of (potential) divas.

There again, are DPS divas any better?

First of all there are no “dps divas” since in GW2 at the moment everyone does everything : damage, aggro control and self-healing.

The problem as I see it is this – in the current system if 1 player or even 2 players go down their failure to play properly doesn’t kill me or drag me down with them. I can still be self-reliant and keep the fight going.
I just finished a FOTM 50 run – at one point 4/5 died and I was left alone but because the game doesn’t have hard roles I didn’t need a healer or tank and was able to salvage victory by myself through my own ability.

With a healer or tank implemented you’re reliant on their ability to succeed – if they fail everyone fails since their role is critical.

Are people who try to force people to gear, build and play a certain way preferable?
At least even bossy tanks, in games like WoW, are generally only telling people what to do and dictating the speed of the run.

They’re not normally, also, dictating gear and build choices, to randoms in dungeons.

Do you think this has anything to do with gear? People will enforce their way of playing onto others because of personal goals while playing.
Some want to relax, some want to role play, some want to farm. If they mix together they’ll try to impose each other’s style on the others. It is human nature.

Don’t think that having set roles won’t mean people won’t tell you what to do and when to do it. If anything we’ll have more of that.

Yes and I agree that is not ideal.

But, neither is (IMO) dictatorial, skipping>permastacking>meleeing, DPS-only parties, all in matching clothes…

I know not all parties are like that, but it is obviously an overwhelming tendency, ATM.

Trust me – classes being forced into roles is exactly what is going to happen.
Roles won’t stop skipping, they won’t stop stacking and they won’t stop people telling other people what to do. Why?

Because skipping and stacking are part of content design and mixed in with player choice.
Because telling people how to play is a right any player has since he’s allowed to play with whomever he wants. Naturally he’ll want to play with people like himself.
If someone doesn’t want to play the way you want you have the choice to not play with that person and look for people who want to play your way.

Yes.

If classes aren’t well balanced (or certain builds can make them that way), that will tend to be the case.

There again, haven’t we already got “meta” classes, ATM?

Just they’re all DPS.

Not only that, but we’re not even really “allowed” to play ranged in most parties, as it is inferior; let alone select the class, build and gear we prefer.

I find that pretty depressing and extremely restrictive.

Seems to me, that everything is fine and dandy, as long as you love stacking and meleeing.

Otherwise, not so much.

First of all you can’t balance classes to be identical can you? If you do you no longer have them. Roles will further increase this discrepancy.
With the current status of the game the meta roles are more lax because role requirements aren’t critical. But the more relevant and required roles will be the more enforced said roles will be on classes.

Let’s look at it like this – a PS warrior is nice to have and is certainly meta but you can finish your CoF P1 just as fast or maybe half a minute slower without one.

If a PS warrior was necessary for completion no warrior would be allowed in CoF P1 if they weren’t PS and you wouldn’t really be going in without one.

Also Range vs Melee is an entirely different thing that has nothing to do with gear.

Seems to me you want to play the way you want in parties full of people that do not want to play the way you want and thus you feel something is wrong with the game.
There’s nothing wrong with the game – you’re just playing with the wrong crowd.
If you want to play a certain way find people who want to play your way.
Changing the game because you feel left out is absurd since from what you’re saying everybody else just loves zerking, stacking, skipping and just burning through stuff.

Some people think we’re pretty much lost, already, though.

Just most of them have already left the game, from the sounds of it.

I’m not saying which would be better, or worse.

Just that I am capable of enjoying group PVE, in WoW (or was, until fairly recently – let’s not go there).

Whereas, I’m not really capable of enjoying it, ATM, in this game (unless I’m in a VERY relaxed group).

And this is a people problem.
You’re not having fun because the majority of GW2’s players ( according to your claims) don’t like to play the game the way you want to – so you’re upset. That’s no reason to change the game.

Ultimately this all boils down to people wanting different things from the game – you can’t really fix a people problem through gear.

Thaddeus.4891:

Well personnally I would like increasingly harder content. Something like what Wooden Potatos proposed recently would be nice, at least the concept of it.

Instanced content (raid, dungeon, fractal, whatever) that you can do with almost anything, but that have hard mode that is not just giving more hp and dmg to the boss or have a mechanic that just need more gear.

Sadly this will never happen since in Anet’s book everyone is a special snowflake and we can’t have the forums flooded with the tears of those that can’t do this ultra hardcore content for various reasons.

I’m not totally sure about that. Not much tears about level 50 fractal. As long as average player can do the content, it’s ok to have harder level for skilled players.

What will never happen is hard content that not everybody can succeed at.

Thaddeus.4891:

I’m not totally sure about that. Not much tears about level 50 fractal.

Have you seen the abysmal rewards FOTM 50 gives you?
Also there are actually very few players that keep doing it. This isn’t content that you can call “mainstream” – some people do it – usually the same people over and over again because they can’t help themselves.

Most people have given up on FOTM altogether.

WP proposed a system that is very profitable ( and for good reason) which would bring a lot of QQ with it.

Without said profit people wouldn’t really bother with the content past the first few play sessions. With said profit you get hate, QQ and more “omg elitist scum are farming so much stop them”.

As long as average player can do the content, it’s ok to have harder level for skilled players.
What will never happen is hard content that not everybody can succeed at.

Can you really call content that the “average GW2 player” can succeed at hard?
Can your average SW farming GW2 player go in FOTM 50 and complete?
I seriously doubt it.

The average GW2 player doesn’t even know what FOTM 50 is.

Tigaseye.2047:

There again, are DPS divas any better?

Are people who try to force people to gear, build and play a certain way preferable?

At least even bossy tanks, in games like WoW, are generally only telling people what to do and dictating the speed of the run.

They’re not normally, also, dictating gear and build choices, to randoms in dungeons.

In that other game, I believe Heroic Raids are the hardest PvE. Do you want us to believe that those who run at the leading edge of that game’s Heroic Raids don’t require people who raid with them to not only have the best gear possible but to be running the best builds possible? Are that game’s builds now so simplified that there is no difference in build effectiveness? I really hope not. The Heroic stuff is supposed to be for the min-maxers and the LFD/LFR stuff for the players who are not interested in min-maxing.

With that out of the way, the issues then become accessibility, reward-for-time and GW2’s lack of a clear delineation between “content for min-maxers” and content for everybody else. In GW2, dungeons were supposed to be the hardest PvE in the game. They’ve been more accessible than that right from the start, and now a vast majority that do them at all know the encounters inside and out.

The dungeons are stale. Most doing them are doing them for rewards. So, they’re choosing the fastest builds and tactics that PuG’s are capable of playing.

However, with the possible exception of the organizational challenges in Teq and TT, the dungeons are still the hardest PvE in the game. Thus, you have LFR type players in the same pool as the players who want to maximize their experience. Ultimately, that’s one of the two design failures. The second was the failure to produce new paths, which led to stagnation.

I never talk about the reward or the actual quality of FOTM. I just said that fotm is harder than dungeon, but not much people are complaining about it.

Complaining that it’s old content that give almost no reward is another debate. Let’s not mix everything in

Harper.4173:

No content remains challenging once people run it enough.

Exactly.

Remember, tying your shoes was a heck of a challenge the first time you tried when you were a toddler.

Making pve for only damage builds will need easy mode dungeons like we have now…..

Harper.4173:

Jerus.4350:

Harper.4173:

Thaddeus.4891:

Khristophoros.7194:

The only way a healer would be useful is if it is required for the party to survive. Why would we slow down our DPS to have a healer if we don’t need it?

I’m fine with this though. It’s quick and easy to pug because we don’t need certain professions or roles.

Well you could have different option and healer could be one of them. Average pugs couldn’t complete content with 5 meta zerker. But you could complete it with 5 zerker and 3 of them would have support trait and runes. Or 3 zerker, 1 tank, 1 healer would also work. Or 3 zerker and 2 zealot, etc.

As long as you need something to keep your team alive and an Healer is one option possible to do that.

How is having something restrict you a good thing?

I’m not a fan of what Thadd implies as he’s basically advocating an attrition based mechanic. That’s the only style that NEEDS healing. I’m not a fan of that stuff.

However, I am a fan of NEEDING a projectile defense, needing CC to strip the breakbar, needing different mechanics that people can fill in different ways.

That’s the beauty of this system and while not perfect you have many different options with different professions.

I could see an encounter that had an environmental mechanic that you had to go pick up these certain berries that grew around the room, but they were very toxic such that getting too close and holding them damaged you. So you’d either have to be insanely quick (probably impossibly so) or have someone with some healing gear taking care of it with relative ease. So most are fighting a normal fight but you have a use for building yourself up to be defensive.

There are so many options.

I’m of course concerned with the idea of carrying half a dozen sets of 12 pieces of gear… but maybe they’ll come up with some more options regarding that if it becomes a problem.

This type of “attrition” system only makes things longer since people will stack defensive gear and slowly inch their way though. It won’t be fun or glorious – it will be tedious.

Also the mandatory many gear sets is another issue that would be a pain.

Actually it’s a bit of the contrary. Attrition mechanics split things up into extremes. Either you pad yourself up and win the battle of attrition, or you strip down and lay down the damage and beat it out before you go down. In both cases I just am not a fan. You either bang your head on it till you figure the right combo of damage being strict to a meta that’s above the expected damage output of a team or you have a nice boring fight as you said. In either case again, just not a fan personally.

Finding a balance that rewards these healing and mitigation defensive tools without creating this type of situation is going to be quite an undertaking.

I do think WP is on to something with this “skulls” namely the no out of combat health regen, and no rallying. Even going further with death being permanent and no Waypoints. These are the types of mechanics that simply reward damage at the cost of support.

Either way, I’m pretty skeptical about the content we get. If it turns out to be more like the PVP style in this game, welp, that’s not for me. Which I’m very afraid of in that Colin specifically mentions that it’s the only game mode that really captures those lesser used mechanics.

I don’t want a combat system where I’m expected to constantly be absorbing hits and countering it with heals. That’s not the active gameplay that I love. I am very much down for a style that is faster though, that requires us to take our full list of active defenses to come through unscathed and has an alternative of eating some of those hits and countering it with some support players using mitigation and healing. But that’s a fine line to find, too fast of attacks and aviodance is no longer an option, and too slow and it’s still easy and we haven’t changed. To strong of hits and healing won’t be enough without a full change to more defensive setups for everyone, too weak and we’ll be able to just use zerker guardian mace or maybe swap a single trait or two on other professions to pump out a little extra sustain.

Ugh…reply against better judgement…

In trinity mmos…they force you to play one of three roles; dps, tank, or heals.

In GW2…they force you into only one: meta DPS.

Playing any other build that is not the most optimal DPS in PvE is detrimental, extremely inefficient, and actually punished in many ways for doing so. Groups upon finding out you are in say…full clerics will kick you instantly and replace with a meta zerker with out thought….meh.

The way I see it Jerus is that there are numerous groups that create this “meta” we have here today and some of them have more influence than others.
At the very top are the really really good PvE guilds ( DnT, rT and others) that create a comp and show people how it’s done. They are however not the biggest factor in establishing a meta.

Who is? The farming pugs. The people that take the super hardcore speedclear metas, adapt it to a more lax implementation and enforce it in their runs.
The speed clear meta used by record setting teams require VOIP, coordination, trust and experience playing together that PUG groups can never have. Their meta will never be as effective as a SC team meta BUT it will be a toned down application of the same principles using less effective parts ( eg players that can’t communicate and have never played together before).

These players are the driving force in this game’s PUG meta ( the same meta people claim oppresses them into wearing zerker gear) because their sole intent with the content is to farm it fast and effectively.

If the bar is set high enough that only the elite SC teams will be able to burst down the attrition fight before it has a chance to kill them then the meta will most likely become a stagnant but safe wear it down and move on.
You can’t really get elite SC team performance with people you just pick up regardless of their gear and skill -a team that isn’t a team can’t perform together as well as people that know each other and communicate efficiently.

This is why I assumed the final situation would be just making things take longer.

With that out of the way, the issues then become accessibility, reward-for-time and GW2’s lack of a clear delineation between “content for min-maxers” and content for everybody else. In GW2, dungeons were supposed to be the hardest PvE in the game. They’ve been more accessible than that right from the start, and now a vast majority that do them at all know the encounters inside and out.

This is probably the truest and saddest problem of GW2 at the moment.

Good players that intend to farm or challenge themselves are thrown in with less experienced players that are maybe attempting the content for the first time, or simply want to have a relaxing casual run.

The fundamental vision of the groups that approach the dungeon content through the LFG tool is the reason we have so many problems.

People that want the experience complain they’re being rushed and not allowed to watch cut scenes.
People that want the farm kick slow and different minded people because they’re being slowed down.

Some people want the content to be a challenge and want to tackle it head-on in a more “standard way”.
Other people want the content to be done as fast as possible and decide to stack and skip and stealth past and whatnot.

The core problem that Anet has to fix if they want things to go better is to find a way to make these groups stop overlapping.

I just said that fotm is harder than dungeon, but not much people are complaining about it.

Because it gives abysmally bad rewards. Care to imagine what would happen if FOTM 50 suddenly gave 10 gold + drops at the end of a run?
How many people would flood the forums with tears that others are farming what they cannot?

fixit.7189:

In GW2…they force you into only one: meta DPS.

They do not force you to do anything, don´t be ridiculous. You can do any content you like, using whatever gear/class/build you like, provided you know what you are doing.

Back in the day, shortly after Nomad`s gear was introduced, I did a (nearly) full Nomad´s dungeon/fractal tour with my buddies (two of them used Cleric´s) and I can assure you, we didn´t have any problems. Of course it took longer than usual, but it wasn´t hard at all. In fact it was easy as hell, no risk of dying whatsoever.

fixit.7189:

Ugh…reply against better judgement…

In trinity mmos…they force you to play one of three roles; dps, tank, or heals.

In GW2…they force you into only one: meta DPS.

Playing any other build that is not the most optimal DPS in PvE is detrimental, extremely inefficient, and actually punished in many ways for doing so. Groups upon finding out you are in say…full clerics will kick you instantly and replace with a meta zerker with out thought….meh.

But this is not the MMO itself- the game’s design forcing you – these are other players forcing you.
The fundamental difference is that in a classic MMO you are forced by design to have tank, healer and DPS.

In GW2 you are forced to be “meta dps” not by the game but by joining people that only care about farming the content.

If you wanted to play – you could play any build you like and still complete provided you played with people that wanted to play the game the way you did.

Sadly nobody really cares about playing for anything but the rewards since :
1.The content is VERY old.
2. GW2 is VERY gold-driven – everything you do and almost every item you want will cost you gold. People farm this content over and over and over again as “meta dps” because they don’t give a kitten about it as content – it’s simply a “insert time here extract gold there” equation where they want to put in as little time for as much gold as possible.

I play just for the funsies, but that’s why I’m doing things like playing Necro a lot lately and got a 3rd engi (<3 engi) for a condi build. As well I just finished setting up a full healing Guard just to see what I can do with it and have some fun.

I generally don’t PUG much anymore though, just not worth it, but over the last week or two I did a handfull of Arah paths with the Condi Engi and Necro, surprisingly no complaints.

Lhos.1643:

I don’t particularly care if any kind of a trinity ever appears in GW2, but if dungeon fights could require more organization than “stand in a heap and press 1”, that’d be greeeeeeat.

This not a thing that exists. This argument is constantly thrown out and it is hilarious wrong. Every MMO since the beginning of MMO’s has used stacking and line of sight to get enemies to cluster up. That just makes AoE and damage more effective. If you’re just spamming 1 in a corner you’re just as useless to your team as a clerics guardian using a staff.

Dinks.2478:

you’re just as useless to your team as a clerics guardian using a staff.

And there we have it, this is what it all comes down to.

You are useless if you go clerics or any other support type build/gear set that isn’t the meta dps; you heard it here first!

Tigaseye.2047:

Harper.4173:

My concern is this : if they create hard roles and the content in HoT requires a certain role for the party to be completed we will go back to square one on the whole “waiting around for 1 person to finally engage in content” problem they sought out to solve in the first place.

Yes and I agree that is not ideal.

But, neither is (IMO) dictatorial, skipping>permastacking>meleeing, DPS-only parties, all in matching clothes…

So if the choice is between waiting in queue for hours or all the fun I’ve been having for the past few years, I’ll take fun.

fixit.7189:

Dinks.2478:

you’re just as useless to your team as a clerics guardian using a staff.

And there we have it, this is what it all comes down to.

You are useless if you go clerics or any other support type build/gear set that isn’t the meta dps; you heard it here first!

Not precicely, I believe I posted a video showing the usefulness of a clerics guard. However it wasn’t a staff guard. Problem is a lot of people slap whatever they feel like together and call it whatever they want and expect people to just agree.

A staff guard is bad for pretty much everything but tagging or using a few of the skills and swapping to a better main weapon. See a guard camping staff auto attacks and no matter what gear and build you’re running it’s not going to be very good.

Want to run Clerics Guard, pull out your mace, trait up in Honor and Virtues and play support. AH is a decent option for self survival but the strength of valor is NOT support no matter what many claim.

Here’s the videos again. It’s old traits but you can adapt with the new stuff and it’s still pretty good.

Only thing is, well, with the content we have, you just don’t need that kind of support. However as you can see in the videos it can create a pretty stress free environment.

fixit.7189:

Dinks.2478:

you’re just as useless to your team as a clerics guardian using a staff.

And there we have it, this is what it all comes down to.

You are useless if you go clerics or any other support type build/gear set that isn’t the meta dps; you heard it here first!

You’re not useless as a cleric. I had a lot of fun running it with my friend when I got bored. There is 3 problem. People mixing personnal surviability with support. Like Jerus said they take AH and say that they support their team, which is 100% false. They just stay alive. Or take bad PvE like staff and think they support their team, which is largely false since the support from staff is very for PvE (Switchness and CC ain’t really good in PvE).

The second problem is that the content is easy enough that cleric is usualy not needed at all.

The community evolved to extreme over time since all content is old. People think that anything except meta zerker is good and if you change one think suddently your build is bad. In fractal 50 for exemple, you can bring 1 cleric and 4 zerker and the run will be great and fun without being much more longer.

Yes it will be less optimal and not that usefull if you have 5 really good players. But for most people a cleric will make the run easier and more enjoyable, while decreasing the speed by only a couple of minutes. The group could run full zerker, but take no food/potion and the difference in speed will be similar.

Harper.4173:

(A lot of intelligent arguments as to why the trinity concept is absolutely no better than what we have right this moment.)

I think a big issue is that the very same players abiding by the meta they complain about do not know that they are the ones actually creating and enforcing it under the pretense they believe thy’re the victims of a flawed system decided solely by the mechanics of the game that can easily be solved, rather than copy-paste efficiency mentality and stagnant content.

The entire prospect of the “berserker meta” has absolutely nothing to do with the gear or the difficulty of the content but entirely to do with the content itself being stale, per what Indigo mentioned above.

There are hundreds of game ouy there that force a team to require tank and healer. This is one game that don’t require those roles and players don’t have a lot of play time can hop in hop out whenever they see fit. Please leave this game as is.

I am fine is combat is a bit fine tuned to require more def stat it is not if tank and healer is required.

Crossaber.8934:

There are hundreds of game ouy there that force a team to require tank and healer. This is one game that don’t require those roles and players don’t have a lot of play time can hop in hop out whenever they see fit. Please leave this game as is.

I am fine is combat is a bit fine tuned to require more def stat it is not if tank and healer is required.

I don’t think the goal is to require a healer, but to encourage having some extra support possibly through heals which is quite open to many professions. Now, finding that balance is going to be an impressive feat if they can pull it off. Not sure I have faith but I’ll be the first to give them a bow and applause if they pull it off.

Andraus.3874:

The combat system just doesn’t mesh well with the Trinity. Personally I like the Trinity and playing games like final fantasy that have it. But you have to admit it just doesn’t work with current game mechanics. I think we could also agree that there would have to be some major over hauling to get this to work. Such as reducing or limiting dodge as well as current #6 skills across all professions.

I worry if anet goes this route they will struggle to actually implement this correctly. Trying out revenant gives a good idea about how this can go wrong. I can see how revenant had the “Trinity” but it’s very washed out and very ineffective.

It meshes plenty well with the Trinity, its just not a ‘hard’ trinity (the roles are predefined and cross over between them is rare). Guild Wars 1 had a Soft Trinity. Even in the current DPS Meta there still exists a trinity.

You have the Puller. The Puller’s job is to attract the mobs, and gather them up into a ball. The Puller usually doesn’t do much damage because they’re focused on NOT DYING. The Puller is your Tank in this situation.

You have the Support. The Support does several jobs. They boon up the DPS, the Puller, and contribute to the damage dealing (usually to a far less of a degree). In this game, the Support provides boons and debuffs, reflects, Quickness, Area Control, Passive Stat Boosts, and/or healing while they DPS. The Support is your Healer in this situation.

You have the Damager. The Damager… Damages. They kill the mobs A. Fast Enough that the group is not overwhlemed by their mechanics, or B. maintains DPS on the Ball to wipe the packs of mobs quickly. The Damager is your DPS in this situation.

Guild Wars 2 does have a Trinity as much as folks want to deny the fact — because there’s no Group Setup that is viable with out those 3 roles being filled to some extent.

Its a fallacy to believe that it can be escaped because it is literally the core of MMORPG thinking and instinct, and Guild Wars 2 did not break from it.

In fact, you can see in this post ArenaNet backpedalling from their stance before the Launch of the game. When the game was doing the convention circuit back in 2011-2012, it was one of points Mike O’Brien was pushing. Now in 2015 we see Colin telling us Anet is embracing it somewhat.

In order for mechanics to not match up with the Trinity, you have to break RPG formulas (which GW2 didn’t… really), or divorce yourself rather far from RPG gameplay. Mass Effect, Fallout, and Wasteland are examples of Games that lack the Trinity, because they barely qualify as a Traditional RPG. There are plenty of other examples, though the ones that come to mind immediately don’t have a real-time mechanical structure.

Hello team!

We are still using cleric guardian in our FOTM trio runs and it works pretty well. We do 3-4 lvl 50 trio runs per night and full run usually takes about 30min, which is the same or even less than full zerk 5man pug

You can check out my youtube channel if you wanna learn how to play cleric tank and do block rotations with mace/retreat/courage/soa. It is extremenly efficient in trios when power creep is not so noticeable and bosses dont die in 10 sec, it can also be really good in 5man pugs. As someone else mentioned already – cleric tank guardian should NOT run AH. AH is bad and very selfish trait.

And for those who still delusional about zerk meta I can say the following.

The ONLY reason why zerk only team comp is so efficient is POWER CREEP that exists in this game and has been supported from day one and only got boosted with the last “balance” patch.

By saying power creep I mean the following:
Cleric guardian does about 1k DPS, full zerk staff ele with warrior buffs does 25k DPS. Which is 25x more or 2500% more. This situation is completely ridiculous compared to other MMOs. In other MMOs tanks normally do 2-3 times less damage than DPS players, never that coefficient was boosted to 25-30 like in GW2.

This is why most bosses DO NOT EVEN HAVE A CHANCE TO ENGAGE IN COMBAT and actually be somewhat threatening to players – they just die in 5-10 sec. Not even saying that most bosses are very easy and straightforward – and they only do 1 attack per 2-3 sec which is totally dodgeable.

Of course in this situation there is no need for anything other than pure DPS builds

Unfortunately with the last balance patch ANet only made power builds stronger – they almost doubled damage output for all dps builds.

I have no idea what “challenging group content” they have in mind, but if they continue to support this power creep trend and boost our damage even further any kind of content that they initially consider “challenging” will boil down to the exact same thing: pre-stack might and burn it down in 5 seconds before it has a chance to fight back

How about they encourage the usage of the other 20+ gear stats prefixes…. simple as that and it isn’t really enforcing a healer.
ZERKER ZERKER ZERKER or gtfo right now

Xenesis.6389:

Trinity or no Trinity, it doesn’t matter, the balance in this game between classes is clearly broken. In a trinity game the developers usually design it for roles, if you’re a healer you’re not going to be good at tanking ok for dps, if you’re a tank you can soak up damage but you can’t heal and ok for dps, if you’re a dps you can’t heal or tank but you have survival skills to help keep you alive.

What does GW2 do? give everyone access to dps, you have your own heals, you have dodge for survival, but it’s obvious not every class is built with balance in mind. You got the super regen warriors who can dish out dps and tank if they wanted. You got the elementalist who can do all three roles at the same time. You got thieves who can dish out burst dps while in stealth for most of a fight. Mesmer who can take you in one combo while being in stealth for 20+ seconds at a time. etc.

At this point I would welcome trinity roles because at least there was a semblance of balance between them, although I highly doubt anet could even manage to make that work seeing the bang up job they’re doing with the current class combat balance. No one cares about support or tanking in GW2, it’s all about dps, that’s it.

By your statement of “Mesmer who can take you in one combo while being in stealth for 20+ seconds at a time. etc.” it’s clcar that you play PVP. This seems incompatible with “No one cares about support or tanking in GW2, it’s all about dps, that’s it.”.

The most popular warrior build before the trait changes in PvE was shoutbow, a healer.
The most popular elementalist build was celestial dagger. A build that required optimally using all your aspects, including healing to support your team.
The second most popular guardian build was a healing bunker.
Spirit rangers were primarily support classes, and while not the most popular, were still up there.

I wont say anything about engineers, as I didn’t play them much, but celestial stats do imply that they were more than just DPS.
Necromancer, I really have no idea what their builds were like.

It’s really only thief and mesmer who were only damage, and mesmer was more burst damage than DPS.

In dungeons, the second placing speed running team in a test used a primarily defensive healing guardian, as it allowed the rest of the group to tank through minor hits instead of dodging (no damage while dodging)

Most ideal groups contained a phalanx strength warrior, or might stacking elementalist in order to provide group support. Doing so actually lowered their personal DPS when compared to builds intended specifically for that purpose.

Mesmers are one of the lower DPS classes, but are still used due to their support via reflects/time warp/portal/invisibility

Before I get the argument that none of that matters because the support is only useful in the context of maximizing DPS, that’s exactly the same as in other MMOs that use the trinity. The only reason tanks and healers exist in those is to maintain DPS, due to dead DPS doing no DPS (Barring rare anomalies like Valythra Dreamwalker in WoW’s Icecrown Citadel

Eponet.4829:

Xenesis.6389:

Trinity or no Trinity, it doesn’t matter, the balance in this game between classes is clearly broken. In a trinity game the developers usually design it for roles, if you’re a healer you’re not going to be good at tanking ok for dps, if you’re a tank you can soak up damage but you can’t heal and ok for dps, if you’re a dps you can’t heal or tank but you have survival skills to help keep you alive.

What does GW2 do? give everyone access to dps, you have your own heals, you have dodge for survival, but it’s obvious not every class is built with balance in mind. You got the super regen warriors who can dish out dps and tank if they wanted. You got the elementalist who can do all three roles at the same time. You got thieves who can dish out burst dps while in stealth for most of a fight. Mesmer who can take you in one combo while being in stealth for 20+ seconds at a time. etc.

At this point I would welcome trinity roles because at least there was a semblance of balance between them, although I highly doubt anet could even manage to make that work seeing the bang up job they’re doing with the current class combat balance. No one cares about support or tanking in GW2, it’s all about dps, that’s it.

By your statement of “Mesmer who can take you in one combo while being in stealth for 20+ seconds at a time. etc.” it’s clcar that you play PVP. This seems incompatible with “No one cares about support or tanking in GW2, it’s all about dps, that’s it.”.

The most popular warrior build before the trait changes in PvE was shoutbow, a healer.
The most popular elementalist build was celestial dagger. A build that required optimally using all your aspects, including healing to support your team.
The second most popular guardian build was a healing bunker.
Spirit rangers were primarily support classes, and while not the most popular, were still up there.

I wont say anything about engineers, as I didn’t play them much, but celestial stats do imply that they were more than just DPS.
Necromancer, I really have no idea what their builds were like.

It’s really only thief and mesmer who were only damage, and mesmer was more burst damage than DPS.

In dungeons, the second placing speed running team in a test used a primarily defensive healing guardian, as it allowed the rest of the group to tank through minor hits instead of dodging (no damage while dodging)

Most ideal groups contained a phalanx strength warrior, or might stacking elementalist in order to provide group support. Doing so actually lowered their personal DPS when compared to builds intended specifically for that purpose.

Mesmers are one of the lower DPS classes, but are still used due to their support via reflects/time warp/portal/invisibility

Before I get the argument that none of that matters because the support is only useful in the context of maximizing DPS, that’s exactly the same as in other MMOs that use the trinity. The only reason tanks and healers exist in those is to maintain DPS, due to dead DPS doing no DPS (Barring rare anomalies like Valythra Dreamwalker in WoW’s Icecrown Citadel

Agree, i have all classes at lv80, my warrior, my guardian, my ranger, my elementalist are more or less running the mentioned build pre patch, hybrid build is what i am always enjoyed.

I don’t understand why people insisted to have trinity type of dedicated support roles, those games existed out there and those games killed all hybrid class fun. GW2 is the only game existed to make hybrid build actually useful and fun. All you support lovers just needed to spec yourself a little bit damage and will be perfectly fine.

Shinji.2063:

You bring any of those phrases in GW2 and you get chewed out. “Go play wow”, “GW2 was never ment to have them GTFO”

So what do all those naysayers have to say now that the devs has said that was never their intention. Now maybe when some players talk about the way they want portions of future content with maybe more emphasis on fights with roles they wont just be swept under the rug on the guise of “that does not belong in GW”

I don’t know if I’m a “naysayer”, but I do know that when you base a thread on a straw man argument, what usually results is a thread full of straw man arguments.

Sure enough, that’s what happened.

fixit.7189:

Ugh…reply against better judgement…

In trinity mmos…they force you to play one of three roles; dps, tank, or heals.

In GW2…they force you into only one: meta DPS.

Playing any other build that is not the most optimal DPS in PvE is detrimental, extremely inefficient, and actually punished in many ways for doing so. Groups upon finding out you are in say…full clerics will kick you instantly and replace with a meta zerker with out thought….meh.

Its only inefficient because Mob designs only follow 2 covenants, “don’t move” and “numerically scale”. This leads to a disparity where they simply hit too hard for attrition style defenses, and rarely have any counter play that isn’t “block/dodge 1 attack every 5-8 seconds”. They also have insane amounts of HP as they scale upward, which obviously favors DPS to combat it.

The Mordrem are a case of 2 conflicting design concepts at work. On the one hand, they are intended to be Control counter mobs. But this fails because most Professions don’t have the lock down frequency needed to do this effectively against so many different targets. On the other, their behavior and power scale is identical to most other mobs. Effectively what they’ve done is take WvW cheese tactics with AOE and control spam, and applied to them Mobs which have lots of HP and very high power stats. *Again! The most efficient way to deal with them is DPS burst damage, as you can’t win a defensive game with our terrible cool downs and uncompetitive defense ratings.

This effectively sums up the problem….. Players are designed to fight other players. But mobs aren’t designed like players. They aren’t phased by controls the way players are. Pressure (like condi) doesn’t change their behavior, or interfere with their DPS. Their DPS comes in huge, easily avoidable bursts. They rarely utilize more then 2 skills, and very rarely those skill are considered dangerous for reasons other then their damage. And when they do, like the number of rapid control stacking of Orrian undead, or the frequent AOE spam of the Mordrem, players are overwhlemed because our control based counters aren’t designed to keep pace.

I even find many “advanced” dungeon mobs design counters being too focused on single skills or effects. Like the Dredge bombers being rendered harmless for the duration of a reflect field. its not taking pressure off… its literally the line between “no danger” and “high probability of wipe”. Again…. favoring DPS to capitalize on the narrow window of protection our skills afford us.

Mobs NEED to be designed more like player classes. Including how their builds synergize. The Mordrem are an example of how the skills combined can compound power output….. but they still too heavily favor swarm tactics all other mob types use to considered dangerous.

Unholy Unity

As long as combat is “dodge or die”, DPS will continue to be the meta, as it has for the past three years.

I’m hoping Colin and the gang have learned from that, because if the new, challenging combat being touted for HoT continues in the “one-shot, insta-down” tradition we’ve seen so far, it won’t change anything at all.

When no gear or build can handle a single hit, the only logical tactic is to deal as much damage as possible to eliminate incoming attacks and avoid getting hit.

“DPS Uber Alles” is about as far from a “trinity” as it gets.

XxsdgxX.8109:

How about they encourage the usage of the other 20+ gear stats prefixes…. simple as that and it isn’t really enforcing a healer.
ZERKER ZERKER ZERKER or gtfo right now

Do what you want. Oh, wait, you don’t want to to give up the instant access convenience of the LFG, you want to just drop in and go. If they have to advertise to get the people who want what they want, why shouldn’t you have to? You give those people power by accepting that their requirements are the way you ought to play. If you don’t want to accept that, then don’t.

As to “encouraging the use of other prefix gear.” the game already does that. Each prefix has its own value, sometimes in different game modes, sometimes by people who prefer those effects.

Good news, though. ANet just rolled out new traits which buff healing as well as damage. They’re also rolling out new ways to heal and offer support, so one will have the opportunity to use these tools going forward. Presumably, different gear will feed into different tools.

Bad news, though. Changes to content with HoT are unlikely to affect the launch dungeons in the slightest, unless they’re also making retroactive AI changes to the entire game. So, to use those new build/gear combos it’s likely you’ll have to do the same thing you have to do now to use such — make your own group.

Majic.4801:

“one-shot, insta-down” tradition we’ve seen so far, it won’t change anything at all.
.

hmmmmmmmm…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZgRUtK7LkM

Here’s how i’ve always interpreted the devs on this issue.

1. They never restricted roles or the trinity.
2. They wanted all roles to be viable to get groups faster, so players wouldn’t have to wait for a Tank or Healer to join.

That’s it. Anyone who has followed GW2 before it’s launch would have known this.

Ragmon.6350:

Imagine the WoW druid (tank, healer, dd) depending on which tree you spec-ed, now apply that for all the WoW classes. That is GW2’s profession system in a nutshell.
Just that here the players define what they want and need for certain groups.

Not really, because there isn’t Direct Healing for Healers, and there isn’t Controlled Threat mechanics for Tanks.

cthaeh.2168:

Tigaseye.2047:

Harper.4173:

My concern is this : if they create hard roles and the content in HoT requires a certain role for the party to be completed we will go back to square one on the whole “waiting around for 1 person to finally engage in content” problem they sought out to solve in the first place.

Yes and I agree that is not ideal.

But, neither is (IMO) dictatorial, skipping>permastacking>meleeing, DPS-only parties, all in matching clothes…

So if the choice is between waiting in queue for hours or all the fun I’ve been having for the past few years, I’ll take fun.

An automatic dungeon tool would eliminate that problem. It works good with SPvP currently. The wait times are negligible.