Guild Wars 2

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Brother Grimm.5176:

Another post from someone that really does not understand how the game was designed to NOT be like “other” MMOs. I GET that new players want to play what they are used to doing in other games, but just because you CAN’T does not make GW2 “broken”….it’s just different. You can either embrace it or (per OP post) attempt to request that it be made just like all the other MMOs out there (a pointless quest).

Also, the “Cult of Zerker” issue is purely a Dungeon/Fractal thing (and only if you are trying to farm the mode for max profit vs time). The idea that this nitch mode needs “fixing” to the detriment of the rest of the game is quite narrow minded and selfish.

The cult of zerker starts with all PvE , moving to dungeons and fractals, making a modest pass through WvW roaming.

I’d suggest against running some proffesions as zerk in PvP but… guess what? Some are actually quite powerful!

I only played Gw1, whith regard to MMO’s (even though GW1 wasn’t a real MMO)

I do want to say toughness has rewards, vitality and healing are next to useless except in combination with all stats….. or in WvW….

ITT: I don’t want the trinity… I want the holy duo- healer and dps.

Problem with the new system is that you’re stuck with the entire line even if you only need the adept trait from that line. It removes all sort of scale from adept to grandmaster and limits interesting builds using more than 3 lines.

I like having more points to spend, but it should go back to 5 available lines to put your points into. They changed something that wasn’t really broken.

It also created a lot of new build that needed three Grandmaster traits to work before.

The new system is fine for now. No need to change it.

stof.9341:

It also created a lot of new build that needed three Grandmaster traits to work before.

The new system is fine for now. No need to change it.

We could keep 18 points to spend, but have the 5 lines back to spend it on. Best of both worlds: you can max 3 lines, or scatter them.

Xillllix.3485:

stof.9341:

It also created a lot of new build that needed three Grandmaster traits to work before.

The new system is fine for now. No need to change it.

We could keep 18 points to spend, but have the 5 lines back to spend it on. Best of both worlds: you can max 3 lines, or scatter them.

Less necessary now since they also shuffled traits around and merged some. That’s the other benefit people are forgetting about regarding traits.

Besides, I strongly believe that if someone build really wanted more a Major Trait than a Grandmaster trait, then it meant the traits themselves were completely unbalanced.

I do not want them to implement the trinity.

I do want them to implement a system where stacking the support stats makes you just as useful to a group as bringing more DPS to the party.

The problem I see with this game is that it doesn’t use hitpoints in the right way for a game that wants to not make healers mandatory for survival.

In your standard MMO hitpoints are simply the countdown to being dead, you cannot avoid taking damage, and healers are needed to reset the clock so you can keep fighting. This system works, but it forces you to have a healer.

In GW2 they reimagined how healing is supposed to work in a way that is generally a step up from how normal MMOs work, because healers are no longer required. However, they didn’t reimagine how hitpoints work in a way that keeps healers useful. Using HP as the countdown to death in a game where you can stop the clock is not a good use of HP as a mechanic.

The key element that GW2 is missing for making survivability and support builds viable and welcome additions to a group without forcing them on people is to tie hitpoints more closely to your damage potential. Currently the only time your hitpoints impact your damage is when you are dead. This means as long as you can avoid getting killed you don’t need extra HP, armor, or healing.

The way that healing can become useful to a DPS player without forcing them to always have a healer is to make the hitpoints to damage relationship more fine grained, and put tools into the players hands to expend hitpoints for more damage.

If you can spend your hitpoints to inflict greater damage the game still has all the same emphasis on not getting hit in the first place, it rewards people with defensive stats by giving them more hitpoints to spend, and it creates a demand for healing without forcing you to always have a healer.

The trinity is bad because it makes you need a healer. This game is half way to breaking the trinity without making support players have no role at all, and I think it can go all the way.

Support builds ARE viable. They just are not optimal builds. And they will never be unless they are made required. And this game is not for required roles.

And no, DPS is not a required role. I can do a dungeon and have everyone run a support build with support gear on. And we’d be successful. It would take awhile, but it would be possible. We could even do it naked, and sometimes group do do naked runs.

Stop claiming that just because they aren’t in the meta that builds are inviable. They aren’t. Only optimal builds are in the meta.

What exactly are you arguing against? Against the idea that it would be nice to have a wide variety of builds be a potential part of a group that cares about their performance?

You’re acting like “I care about how well I do” is completely incompatible with “I want to have a choice of many roles” and anyone who cares about both should simply be ignored. Why?

Pino.5209:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I know that humans are social animals, but the degree to which players choose to empower people whose ideas about gameplay they detest amazes me. If you don’t like the way people think, then don’t hang with them and especially, don’t lend credence to their ideas by accepting them.

That’s not to say there aren’t some issues with game design, but I don’t believe the issues are rooted in the math behind the game. If that were true, you’d see similar problems in all modes. For instance, Seera pointed out the real reason for Necro hate in dungeons.

It’s either you blend in or being an outlier/outcast. It’s the same with society in rl tbh. Nothing is surprising with the meta behavior. Mmorpg wise, meta exists beyond GW2, it’s almost on every other mmorpg you could find.

And perhaps I shouldn’t be amazed. I might think that the anonymity of online play, especially with region-wide grouping, would embolden more people than it does to stick to their guns. It’s my guess that desire to conform is abetted in this case by desire for convenience. It’s a lot easier to drop in on a group than to make one’s own — apparently. Still, it should not surprise me that many people prefer to conform even if they despise what they’re conforming to.

Pino.5209:

The problem with GW2 is extremely amplified because of the game design, which is very one dimensional, DPS with everything else being side dish only. It is rooted to the game design. Necro doesn’t have any support considered as being substantial by community is another poor sighted design.

There are indeed problems with game design, and I think ANet has a handle on what they are based on C. Johanson’s recent comments. Whether they’re able to do anything about them remains to be seen. Reaper is not a glowing endorsement for their efforts — at least insofar as offering Necro a place in any meta — unless lots o’ Chill becomes essential in HoT.

I said the problems are not in the numbers. By that I meant the numbers behind player stats. The problems are really in profession design and encounter design, and in some cases the numbers behind encounter design do play a part.

Not saying it wouldn’t be nice if more builds were in the meta.

Just that you can’t say builds are inviable just because they’re not in the meta. They are just not optimal.

And there’s a fine line between making more varieties optimal and making more varieties required. The AI needs to be adjusted to play smarter and things will likely open up in the meta.

But your suggestion isn’t likely to do anything to the meta, really. It would have to be a skill to not make healers required (traits wouldn’t have a player controlled situation and you wouldn’t want it to proc when you’ve got too little health). And if it’s a skill, players would have to give up their party support for personal DPS. And the lack of party support and focus on personal DPS is why Necros aren’t in the PUG meta at least. So your suggestion would go the way the Necro is currently. Not welcome in PUG meta runs.

I think it’s not a good idea to dismiss the whole principle over possible pitfalls of implementation. There is no iron clad rule that says every ability you can toggle at will must be a skill for example. They could implement it in all kinds of ways.

The implementation could be something like giving everyone a second “overheal” health pool where if you heal someone who is sitting at 100% health thier health meter fills up even more with overheal that decays back down to base health pretty quickly , but buffs your damage output by up to 25% when overheal reaches your classes base health. Toughness makes your overheal decay slower, extra hitpoints beyond your baseline give you the potential to be overhealed to even greater increases in damage.

This game revolves around active defenses. OP, you have played for a month, I’ve been playing for 2 years now, and you know what, I’m still finding new ways how to deal with certain situations with my main ele.

When I started, I was also intimidated by zerker gear, I started with knight + pvt, then when I got used to the class and the different encounters, I switched to zerkers. And you know what, what mattered when I changed gear was my situational awareness.

Wearing zerkers is unforgiving. With my ele some encounters are 1-hit down when you miss a dodge, forgot to cc, forgot to blind, or stuck channeling a skill, etc. This is why I’m more likely to join an experienced party rather than a zerker party.

By all means, create your own LFG, and for your sake, learn the encounter, specially in FOTM. Give it time and practice.

Know when to:
- Dodge
- Blind
- Reflect
- Aegis
- Protect
- Blast water and fire
- Remove defiance stacks for deep freeze
- Stability
- Cleanse
- And so on and so forth…

I for one enjoys an active game rather than sit and be a heal bot all the time.

Now, I’m not much of a PvE player, but between playing with friends and writing my LFGs correctly, I’ve never had a problem with “elitists” or “berserker meta” or “class snobbery” or whatever.

Recently, I’ve had fun and successful Fractal runs with all sorts of party comps and experience levels and they’ve turned out pretty great. Including a no-melee mostly-inexperienced group that ranged their way through Fractals.

And, in general, it seems like the specialization patch has made it easier to do good damage while also bringing other things to the table, so you really can’t lay your gripes at the feet of the new build system.

Worst I’ve ever experienced was pick-up groups where people were total crap about indicating their desire to fight or skip a particular encounter beforehand. That’s an L2P communications issue and not a game-design thing (beyond the fact that a lot of encounters are more rewarding when skipped).

(Full disclosure: 99% playing mesmer, mostly zerk, with Traveler runes. Because that’s my WvW gear.)

Xillllix.3485:

Problem with the new system is that you’re stuck with the entire line even if you only need the adept trait from that line. It removes all sort of scale from adept to grandmaster and limits interesting builds using more than 3 lines.

I like having more points to spend, but it should go back to 5 available lines to put your points into. They changed something that wasn’t really broken.

I would counter argue that traitline limit isn’t the issue, so much as it is the synergy layout. If you look at most classes, the ones with good synergy are the ones that end up being both the most powerful and with the highest utility. Guardians are a prime example. Every single one of their trait lines synergize well with all the others…. far more then any other class.

Then you have Engineers, who synergize on 3 out of 5 for any given build…. but the perma swift of streamlined kits is almost mandatory for WvW, and OrbStrike’s quad blast finisher is popular in Might stack meta, tends to favor we take Tools as baseline for all builds.

But then you have Rangers and Necos, who have generally poor trait synergy from very narrow minded traits. Both classes lack group utility in favor of personal DPS/utility; but in practice this personal utility isn’t high at all, and the personal DPS becomes unimpressive without it. I know Ranger sword builds with a specific rotation can achieve “competitive DPS”….. but that argument tries to ignore that other classes can do similar DPS, with much higher group and personal utility, and with much easier execution then the ranger could hope for in its current state. But the most depressing part of all of this is that the skill they are SPECIFICALLY designed for group utility are trivially countered in PvE, by even stray AOE or multi-targeted attacks. Necros also suffered double edged skills, as their condition offloading skills aren’t frequent enough to make really good use of. (Probably out of fear from the old Touch necro and Touch ranger days of GW1)

The remaining classes have a good spread of synergy in their traits in relation to the types of builds that can be conceived. Some are restricted, while others stack easily… which is how it should work in practice. Granted they all need fine tuning, so the important traits don’t conflict, but otherwise the raw stacking potential is reasonably successful for the intended effect.

Aetrion.8295:

I mean, sure, it does take a certain skill to run through a level 50 fractal in full DPS gear without getting hit. I won’t deny that that is an impressive feat. However, it is incredibly boring that there is basically one accepted way of doing that, and the entire PvE experience in this game boils down to letting yourself be molded into that one singular rigid pattern.

Why can’t the game have systems that make sure that a DPSer with the support of a healer can spike his damage enough to actually appreciate the heals?

Why can’t the game have enemies that can deal with people who sacrificed all survivability for more damage?

First of all you’ve been running with people who FARM the game. Your intent as far as I see it is not to farm – so that answers your “rigid” question – their way of play is rigid because they are of ONE mind – to farm as fast as possible. They do not care for the content or encounters or role playing.

Enemies that deal with people who sacrifice survivability? We have that. The problem is that players have learned the content by heart since we’ve been at it for 3 years.
Zerker at the beginning of the game was deadly and people couldn’t run it.
Most people can’t run it today.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

No I was talking cavaliers. (toughness/power/ferocity) as a damage mitigation instead of valkyrie (power/vitality/ferocity),

Yeah, I always call cavalier’s clerics.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Also conditions are easily cleansed by aoe condition cleans (light fields & whirl?) or shout cleanses ? maybe a support character can give youi some suggestions, guards warriors? or use a condition removing sigil?

Why? I’m doing fine – I won’t change the gear of my main and not of my zerker thief.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Jana.6831:

²For skills I use Shadow Refuge, blinding powder and smoke screen and surprise I use none of these skills for myself but to rez my party members or to blind mobs if my party is about to be wiped.

So you do use stealth for defence instead of toughness…

Read again? I dodge for defence.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

and other active defences, stealth to make sure you do not get hit, added to the other active defences (smoke screen is a block/blind… so a typical example)

Stealth doesn’t make me invulnerable – I had blind on stealth which was a defense but I don’t use it anymore.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

I’m primarily used to play dungeon and WvW, Valkyrie is a WvW set in my eyes, in dungeons I’d expect most thieves to run full zerk. I made a error in asuming you were a WvW runner as well.

I am, but I don’t get what your “I would use this gear” has to do with anything.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

I’m glad you like thief, but why do you think people would run support or toughness or healing?

What? where did I say that?

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

You seem to need to rely on healing from your partner ( blinds/aegis/reflects/heals/protection/regeneration)
You seem to need added condition removal (often used by support builds, you can heal people up but if they still have their 25+ stacks of -fill in name here- they’\ll continue to die faster.

No, I don’t need any of this – you failed to get my point.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

In the end you can be what you are due to a support based character, even if he runs full zerk.

Oh my, you are an elitist “using a defensive skill is suboptimal” ;)

Lets call it a day, ok?
I don’t need any advise of you – it’s great if you would use this or that gear in this or that envireonement but I’m doing fine in the gear I have and in fact I’ve got 4 thieves at 80, all with different gear and runes and my valk thief is still the strongest ;)

Oh and: Give thief a try some day then you’ll learn that stealth is no real defense and that you don’t really need to stealth in dungeons (for defense).

Edit: Btw: I don’t advertise my gear – there are more optimal but I don’t really feel like making yet another ascended gear with runes which cost ~5-10 gold a piece just for dungeon runs. If I were in a real speedrun guild I would do so though.

OP – to answer your “healing buff that increases DPS” question – here’s the situation as I see it.

They won’t do it because it’d make the game even easier by making parties even more effective. How?

A full 5 man zerker team has let’s say baseline healing capacity – let’s call that 0 healing for our demonstration. Let’s say their overall party dps can be summed up to the value of 5.

What you want is a dedicated healer that can buff teammates and thus the party does not lose dps.
In that case we’d have let’s say a hypothetical 4 zerker 1 healer setup.

Their healing is now 1, and their damage is still 5 since the fact they are being healed by a healer is buffing their dps to a equal or similar level as a full 5 man zerker party.
So they have the same dps as a party but more healing meaning the game is EASIER and much more faceroll than before.

So in essence – that’s why they won’t do it.

Harper.4173:

OP – to answer your “healing buff that increases DPS” question – here’s the situation as I see it.

They won’t do it because it’d make the game even easier by making parties even more effective. How?

A full 5 man zerker team has let’s say baseline healing capacity – let’s call that 0 healing for our demonstration. Let’s say their overall party dps can be summed up to the value of 5.

What you want is a dedicated healer that can buff teammates and thus the party does not lose dps.
In that case we’d have let’s say a hypothetical 4 zerker 1 healer setup.

Their healing is now 1, and their damage is still 5 since the fact they are being healed by a healer is buffing their dps to a equal or similar level as a full 5 man zerker party.
So they have the same dps as a party but more healing meaning the game is EASIER and much more faceroll than before.

So in essence – that’s why they won’t do it.

Your example doesn’t take into account that they are trading HP for the extra damage, so they need to go to -1 healing (create the need to heal) to get that +1 DPS, the healer just evens them out again.

ladybutter.5280:

This game revolves around active defenses. OP, you have played for a month, I’ve been playing for 2 years now, and you know what, I’m still finding new ways how to deal with certain situations with my main ele.

When I started, I was also intimidated by zerker gear, I started with knight + pvt, then when I got used to the class and the different encounters, I switched to zerkers. And you know what, what mattered when I changed gear was my situational awareness.

My issue isn’t with the play style of this game at all, in fact I enjoy that very much. My issue is with the fact that there are support and defensive stats in the game that give no benefit to the way the game actually does support and defense.

Building a character around Healing Power doesn’t in any way increase your ability to blast for buffs for example, so despite sacrificing easily three fourths of your potential DPS to be a support specialist, you aren’t any better at performing the support functions that are in constant demand. The only thing you’re better at is healing, which, as you rightly point out, isn’t part of the active defense gameplay, since healing is reactive.

Instanced content is so old in this game that people know all the bosses, their skills, their tells, etc. That’s what enables people to use zerker gear. In other words, the problem is lack of new content.

Aetrion.8295:

Your example doesn’t take into account that they are trading HP for the extra damage, so they need to go to -1 healing (create the need to heal) to get that +1 DPS, the healer just evens them out again.

It doesn’t matter if they’re trading HP for damage since guess what – it’s still safer.
You can run dungeons naked and you can run them without getting touched if you know what you’re doing so the hp loss is irrelevant.

The problem you’re trying to fix is not easy to fix – the fact that we’ve had 3 years to learn this content by heart and run it has spawned some situations that no change to healers or healing will fix.

1.People farm content – nobody cares about build variety, story, role play, having fun experiencing dungeons, etc – all that was done within a few months after release.
Now – if you’re doing dungeons you’re most likely farming them.
Thus experienced players will simply burn through them as fast as possible in order to maximize their rewards.
It’s not a “berserker cult” it’s a “give my my rewards now” cult. It has nothing to do with “berserker gear” – if berserker gear was removed from the game all the people from this “berserker cult” would be wearing assassin’s as soon as possible.

2.People don’t have a good idea of how tough dungeons are anymore.
Let me point this out dungeons are tough in this game – at launch people couldn’t melee anything. Dungeons regularly took 40+ minutes per path. Killing bosses at the end often came down to glitching them somehow.

The problem with dungeons is that people know them by heart and have run them hundreds if not thousands of times. No content can resist that much game play – you can’t make people unlearn their skills and not have their experience.

At launch these exact same dungeons were incredibly difficult – and for non-80 or even level 80 characters in full exotic gear they can be a huge problem if people are not experienced.

The support and defensive gear has its role – it is an in-game difficulty slider that players can adapt to their own skill level.

Can’t dodge every attack? Mix in some knight’s or PVT and you’ll be able to eat more attacks.
The problem is that the content we’re doing is so old and stale most experienced people don’t need this gear anymore and thus new players such as yourself become confused as to its purpose.

In GW2 everything is viable but not everything is optimal.
You asked before what’s the purpose of healing power/ tanky gear in this game – I had a friend start playing a few months back. If they didn’t wear PVT armor he couldn’t survive.
If no PVT armor existed in the game they would have died so many times it would have been impossible for him to stay alive long enough to learn the game’s mechanics.
In time he gave up that armor becoming experienced enough to not need it.

Aetrion.8295:

Harper.4173:

OP – to answer your “healing buff that increases DPS” question – here’s the situation as I see it.

They won’t do it because it’d make the game even easier by making parties even more effective. How?

A full 5 man zerker team has let’s say baseline healing capacity – let’s call that 0 healing for our demonstration. Let’s say their overall party dps can be summed up to the value of 5.

What you want is a dedicated healer that can buff teammates and thus the party does not lose dps.
In that case we’d have let’s say a hypothetical 4 zerker 1 healer setup.

Their healing is now 1, and their damage is still 5 since the fact they are being healed by a healer is buffing their dps to a equal or similar level as a full 5 man zerker party.
So they have the same dps as a party but more healing meaning the game is EASIER and much more faceroll than before.

So in essence – that’s why they won’t do it.

Your example doesn’t take into account that they are trading HP for the extra damage, so they need to go to -1 healing (create the need to heal) to get that +1 DPS, the healer just evens them out again.

ladybutter.5280:

This game revolves around active defenses. OP, you have played for a month, I’ve been playing for 2 years now, and you know what, I’m still finding new ways how to deal with certain situations with my main ele.

When I started, I was also intimidated by zerker gear, I started with knight + pvt, then when I got used to the class and the different encounters, I switched to zerkers. And you know what, what mattered when I changed gear was my situational awareness.

My issue isn’t with the play style of this game at all, in fact I enjoy that very much. My issue is with the fact that there are support and defensive stats in the game that give no benefit to the way the game actually does support and defense.

Building a character around Healing Power doesn’t in any way increase your ability to blast for buffs for example, so despite sacrificing easily three fourths of your potential DPS to be a support specialist, you aren’t any better at performing the support functions that are in constant demand. The only thing you’re better at is healing, which, as you rightly point out, isn’t part of the active defense gameplay, since healing is reactive.

So which is it? An extra pool of energy past max or out of the main pool? If it’s the latter, it best be a skill as I do not want to opt into that. And in meta runs, the healer would heal people past max to trigger it and then players would pop their own personal heals and be back to max.

The former would possibly shift the meta w/o being required. But it may not since ascended stat switching isn’t free nor are the runes and sigils. Most you’d likely see is a shift in trinkets.

But it wouldn’t increase variety of builds in the meta. The meta may change, but there won’t be an increase in variety or a requirement for healers in any capacity or degree.

sephiroth.4217:

could play a different role that wasn’t just DAMAGE DODGE DAMAGE DODGE DAMAGE WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT DODGE NOW BURST WE WIN – no team play/role needed except standing in the same spot and rezzing eachother who were downed.

This is the summarised, pure, clear, unadulterated ignorance of this game’s phiw community.
When you hit such a brick wall, you realise that your words are good for nothing, no matter what you were trying to explain, and you feel bad for the developers that have to deal with bullkittenters on a daily basis.

Harper.4173:

It doesn’t matter if they’re trading HP for damage since guess what – it’s still safer.

So basically your argument is “If something else than pure DPS was the best way to do things it would be bad!”. You don’t even know how much harder dungeons might get with the expansion but you’re complaining that they might get too easy if they actually made a decent variety of builds viable.

Harper.4173:

The support and defensive gear has its role – it is an in-game difficulty slider that players can adapt to their own skill level.

That’s not a role, that’s just looking down your nose at anyone who enjoys playing support or tanks simply because the devs in this game couldn’t manage to create a system where those things are still fun, useful and challenging without being required.

Playing support shouldn’t simply be the noob option, that’s an absolutely awful way to design build diversity.

Support is ESSENTIAL to DPS.

BUT support can be seen in a wide variety of ways:

Support:
Condition support:

• dazes/knockdowns/knockbacks/fear (interupting)
• stuns: no attacks possible
• chill: lengthening cooldown, sloing of enemy movement
• blinds: miss on next hit
• weakness: remove criticals from enemy attacks, 50% of the attacks will deal 50% dmg
• vulnerability: any damage will improve {stack amount} percentage
• poison: heals 33% less effective
• confusion: damage while using skills…
  (bleeds/burning/terror/confusion/chill) will be DOT for dmg as well

Boon support

• aegis: block 1st incoming attack.
• regeneration: regainhealth over time
• protection: reduce incoming dmg by 33%
• retaliation: returns some dmg for each hit
• quickness: faster attacks
• might: added power and condition dmg
• fury: added critical chance
• stability: invunerable to movement impeding conditions
• stealth/invisibility: impossible to hit
• vigor added endurance regen…

Other:

• reflects no dmg from ranged,return ranged dmg
• blocks no incoming ranged dmg

Direct healing / support

• condition removal, remove stacks from the condition barr
• heals adds healthpoints

And as is

• full glass DPS builds due to the fact they can KILL ALL before they get below dangerous values of health…

Why is support essential? A lot of builds contain traits which give buffs above 90% health
To make sure you maintain maximum dps it is usefull to stay close to 100% full health….

Healing and condition removal are important when boons and utility run out. Problem is no enemies are so dangerous (read: have the time to do so much damage) when using zerk you need to resort to last ditch removals and heals…

Generally AOE blindness,aegis, reflects and block, weaknesss. protection and MAYBE regen are enough… maybe with some condition removal to make sure you do not go under 90% (often/ever)

This also shows healing as stat is no longer interesting, with only regen being influenced by healing and the enemy will not be able to hurt the party -at all- anyways, so healing if people carry an AoE heal will be sporadic, still not creating a need for Healing as a stat

This will not be possible when parties have people running vitality or toughness, due to them lacking DPS pressure and the window becomes to long where you need to survive on those damage mitigators. the toughness carrying groups will not need alot of added healing, But vitality based caracters will however… They need healing to regain health, and in case of deep investment they’ll need people with healing as a stats to fill in their builds.

so regarding importance of stats:

1. power
2. condition dmg
3. precision
4. ferocity
5. toughness
6. vitality
7. healing

I’d love to see healing buffed
Suggestion would be to make

• Boon duration scaling from healing (suggest 3% per 100 healing +40% at 1381 healing)
• Heals: base heals only 50% effective compare to what they are now
• Heals: heal scaling of skills by 2,5-5 times better
• Heals: make vitality be an added modifier for any heals on the reciever. I suggest 3% for each 100 points above 1000 (base vitality) with max vitality 1381 you’d recieve a 40% buff to your healing. at 1000 you just recive the normal healing. It will reward both vitality and healing a bit lifting them to be on par with toughness.

But these suggestion will not make ’m OP and the 2 stats will probably still on the bottom of the list as they do NOT AFFECT DAMAGE! (maybe in might and fury uptime, thats it)

Boons:

• aegis: block 1st incoming attack.
• regeneration: regainhealth over time
• protection: reduce incoming dmg by 33%
• retaliation: returns some dmg for each hit
• quickness: faster attacks
• might: added power and condition dmg
• fury: added critical chance
• stability: invunerable to movement impeding conditions
• vigor added endurance regen…

Aetrion.8295:

Harper.4173:

It doesn’t matter if they’re trading HP for damage since guess what – it’s still safer.

So basically your argument is “If something else than pure DPS was the best way to do things it would be bad!”. You don’t even know how much harder dungeons might get with the expansion but you’re complaining that they might get too easy if they actually made a decent variety of builds viable.

Harper.4173:

The support and defensive gear has its role – it is an in-game difficulty slider that players can adapt to their own skill level.

That’s not a role, that’s just looking down your nose at anyone who enjoys playing support or tanks simply because the devs in this game couldn’t manage to create a system where those things are still fun, useful and challenging without being required.

Playing support shouldn’t simply be the noob option, that’s an absolutely awful way to design build diversity.

My argument is “if something else other than pure DPS is the best way to go and also makes the game easier while being the best way to go then NO”.

Pure DPS is at least somewhat difficult to play if you’re new or you’re inexperienced with the content. Your proposed fix just makes the game easier.

Also – what do dungeons have to do with the expansion? They have NEVER mentioned any changes coming to the dungeons for YEARS.

They have never – in the entirety of the information about the expansion even mentioned the word dungeon except to confirm that they won’t be adding more dungeons.

The expansion’s content has nothing to do with current dungeons which I speculate will remain as such and untouched until the end of times.

That’s not a role, that’s just looking down your nose at anyone who enjoys playing support or tanks simply because the devs in this game couldn’t manage to create a system where those things are still fun, useful and challenging without being required.
Playing support shouldn’t simply be the noob option, that’s an absolutely awful way to design build diversity.

Nobody is looking down at anybody. I explained to you a critical role this gear has in the game – my friend needed that gear to be viable at the beginning of his GW2 journey.
Many players need it even now. I’m not looking down on them – it’s an objective truth.

The devs made that system – they’re fun for whomever has fun playing like that, they’re viable and you can certainly complete content in that way if you want to.

The devs didn’t make them mandatory(thank the gods) – and since most people do dungeons to farm nobody bothers with said gear because their fun is in the gold they make and not the way they role play in dungeons.

Also support means much more than “healing people up”. Support is blinding, support is using reflects. Support is pulling mobs together. Support is sharing boons and blasting fields. Support is stacking might. Support is bringing party-wide buffs. Support is using stealth.
Anything you do to help out your team is support. You have a very narrow definition of support.
It is most certainly not a “noob option” as you can support in any gear.

Your level of experience and comfort with your class and the content dictate your gear.
Your traits and skills dictate the amount of support you bring to the table.

They are not intertwined.

So support is doing everything that people expect you to do while dishing out damage and wearing full DPS gear?

Bottom line is the stat system is extremely one sided and broken. Simply declaring a few stats to be easymode stats doesn’t make it any better.

I mean let’s put it this way: If there was some way of very skillfully activating abilities to force them to crit you could just as well argue that precision is just a stat to make the game easier for people who do not have this skill by just randomly handing them crits.

But since there is only a way to skillfully avoid damage, and not a way to skillfully inflict it all defensive stats are relegated to training wheels while all the offensive stats are useful no matter how good you are.

That is badly designed, plain and simple.

You can skillfully inflict damage by

- stacking 25 vuln, 25 might, fury
- line casting icebow4/meteor shower
- Using proper food/slaying potions/sigils/runes
- Paying attention to your damage modifiers (eg. warrior non full endurance = +10%, water attune on ele using conjures = +20%) and having a proper DPS rotation

I’m willing to bet you do none of the above.

Meh, it’s only if the only groups you’re trying to get in are “zerk only blah blah blah” types.
I had a blast last night on fractal 50 with a bunch of randoms. I had my random mishmash knights/soldiers/zerk with strength runes warrior. There was a ranger, a heavy support spec guard and 2 eles.

We had a great chill out over a roast pig at Cliffside on one of the firepits and a few drinks before beating up Mai Trin.

Aetrion.8295:

I do not want them to implement the trinity.

I do want them to implement a system where stacking the support stats makes you just as useful to a group as bringing more DPS to the party.

You knok, is kind hard to have an encounter where whatever you bring will help the party…only way is to dumb down everything…oh wait…it’s the problem we have now
just saying

Aetrion.8295:

So support is doing everything that people expect you to do while dishing out damage and wearing full DPS gear?

Bottom line is the stat system is extremely one sided and broken. Simply declaring a few stats to be easymode stats doesn’t make it any better.

I mean let’s put it this way: If there was some way of very skillfully activating abilities to force them to crit you could just as well argue that precision is just a stat to make the game easier for people who do not have this skill by just randomly handing them crits.

But since there is only a way to skillfully avoid damage, and not a way to skillfully inflict it all defensive stats are relegated to training wheels while all the offensive stats are useful no matter how good you are.

That is badly designed, plain and simple.

Support is exactly what I described above. You still do damage because you can’t not do damage.
Do you think support means dealing no damage?

Also – a PS warrior that brings banners for example sacrifices personal dps to SUPPORT his party.
The slot skill that you take a reflect in could have been used for a damage skill.

The trait that grants lower CD for your reflects could have been more damage oriented.
There’s a trade-off.

The fact that you don’t want to understand or accept what I’ve been trying to explain to you doesn’t make the system broken. It’s simply not what you want.

I mean let’s put it this way: If there was some way of very skillfully activating abilities to force them to crit you could just as well argue that precision is just a stat to make the game easier for people who do not have this skill by just randomly handing them crits.

Exactly – if you could crit without it then precision ( auto-crit) would be an easy mode for people that can’t crit through skill.

But since there is only a way to skillfully avoid damage, and not a way to skillfully inflict it all defensive stats are relegated to training wheels while all the offensive stats are useful no matter how good you are.

I don’t agree – if you’re not skilled and experienced offensive stats are of no use to you since you won’t be able to stay alive. If dead no damage is dealt.

Aetrion.8295:

I’ve been playing for about a month now, got a character to level 80, started running dungeons and fractals, and basically I’m at the point where I feel like the character system in this game is just fundamentally broken.

Should have stoped reading right after that part. I’m sure you have the game figured out from head to toe after this first month (while others of us still find new things out even after 3 years).

All I see in your original post is you’ve basically read a bit around in the forums, taken the biggest gripes people have (no matter if justified or even still current), latched on to them without having any idea of what you are talking about.

I know this will fall on deaf ears, but maybe, just maybe you should play some of the other classes (instead of basing your arguments on what others have said) and advance in some of the game modes besides pve (be it FOTM, spvp or wvw) before coming to the forums and gracing us with your new found wisdom.

All I could think of while reading this thread was:

http://img.pandawhale.com/88612-beating-dead-horse-gif-Patrick-pjKM.gif

Aetrion.8295:

The game really fails to create a good dynamic between damage dealers and support characters. I understand that they didn’t want to have the trinity, and I fully support that, but a game doesn’t need to enforce the trinity to make playing a healer viable. All the game has to do to make playing a healer useful is to make sure that a damage dealer who is being healed can deal more damage!

This would be diametrically opposed to the active defense mechanic at current gameplay levels.

There can be hybrid solutions, but… they’re iffy, I bet the community would as a whole dislike them.

Example:

Bulwark of Light – Guardian skill
Shield the friendly target for 200% of your maximum health.
Duration: 2 seconds
Cast time: instant
Cooldown: 10 seconds

Effectively you get to “block” one burst on someone. But you need to time it just right. Ofc, if they can also dodge it’s a waste, so mechanics like this would need evade removed to be useful.

Not… sure… people would like that.

I run a condi build in mostly rabid.I did build that to counter zerkers and its great for that. I get blown by necros but am fine with it and i have fun playing it in WvW. I don´t speedrun dungeons and run them with friends if we like. So whats the problem?

The problem is not everyone wants to play the way the OP wants to play so OP is mad and wants to change the game to better accommodate his needs justifying this by saying the game " is broken".

fishball.7204:

You can skillfully inflict damage by

- stacking 25 vuln, 25 might, fury
- line casting icebow4/meteor shower
- Using proper food/slaying potions/sigils/runes
- Paying attention to your damage modifiers (eg. warrior non full endurance = +10%, water attune on ele using conjures = +20%) and having a proper DPS rotation

I’m willing to bet you do none of the above.

Open with Eruption and Arcane Brilliance blasts on a Lava Font, Summon Ice Bow, cycle to Air to stack 25 vulnerabilities with Glyph of Storms, cycle to Water to get the 20% damage bonus against vulnerable targets, 5, 4, 3, 2.

That is the highest burst rotation currently in the game. You can follow this to the letter in 90% of all boss fights. Guess what, no matter how well you follow this mantra, the damage you do still comes down to your stats. No amount of skill will ever get you past the fact that how hard you hit is a calculation, not a skill, and that’s why damage stats are always useful and defensive stats are not.

Harper.4173:

The problem is not everyone wants to play the way the OP wants to play so OP is mad and wants to change the game to better accommodate his needs justifying this by saying the game " is broken".

That’s a pretty funny attitude coming from someone who’s arguing that allowing more build diversity for the competitive end would break the game. It seems to me like you’re the one who doesn’t care how other people want to play the game, you just happen to like the status quo so you can claim everything is great rather than having to ask for change.

I would argue that the primary issue with the new trait system is the restriction to 3 options at each choice point. There are too many choice points burdened by limited or “niche” options. The result, in some builds, is unbalanced opportunity costs.

There is nothing wrong with limited choice in itself. However, limited choice where all the options are too “niche” creates an unbalanced system. In some situations, a given trait is vitally important to a build, but the rest of the line offers no meaningful choices for that build. Thus, for some choices, the opportunity cost is only the two traits that are in the same tier. For other choices, the cost of taking a different trait in a different line may be those two options not taken, plus a waste of one or more additional choice points.

This issue is an artifact not only of limited choice, but of the all-or-nothing nature of lines. However, the higher the tier of the one “desired” trait, the less impact the all-or-nothing feature would matter in comparison to the old iteration. Cherry picking under traits 1.5 was of greatest value if the one desired trait was an adept one. Also, losing the ability to cherry-pick adepts only hit builds that delved into more than 3 lines. Due to the increase from 14 to 18 points, any spent 6 in 2 lines and 2 in a 3rd was impacted only if a trait was removed.

Adding a single additional option to each choice point, as long as the new options were designed to be more universally useful, would go a long way toward improving the current system, and would restore some balance to the force … err, to opportunity costs.