Guild Wars 2

Both PvE meta and the might nerf indicate our devs have little understanding of what’s the problem in pve and try to cure the proverbial cold by cutting off the nose…

For over two years the PvE is plagued by zerk meta, combined with might stacking. However what should be understood that the cause of the problem…is anything but might stacking!

Being able to kill things fastest when you go balls to the wall on offence…is the most logical and known way to get the kill fast. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the thought that an attacker will be faster at killing then the defender.
Where the game falls flat on it’s face, is that while the above is true, it’s also true that in a balanced game said scenario leaves said attacker at huge disadvantage defense wise, requiring top skill, deep understanding of game mechanics, his character and his opponnet to slay the beast before it slays him. In short he has no room for mistakes, that more defensive oriented characters often do.

Instead in here, the more damage…the less skill required. Go zerk grab and ice bow, and the boss will fall before putting your defenses through a real test with his deadliest attacks, or at least it’ll use it just once before it dies. While the less offensive characters have to deal with much more issues as the their fight drags on longer…

As for might itself, it’s a character independent buff that grants flat amount of power and condition damage per stack…which in all honesty is a defender’s boon, much less attackers!

If i have a character who’d decked…lets say in nomad gear and only base 916 power behind his blows, while the guy next to him has roughly 2,5k thanks to offensive gear, then 25 might stacks will not make the gap larger, only infact smaller.

The defender has his power nearly doubled while the attacker receives slightly over 1/3 damage boost.

Of course there is issue with people wanting party might stackers and shunning the less gifted ones in the field (necro!), and that is an issue. But first issue that should be taken on is that the risk vs reward factor is upside down, causing defensive buffs and debilitating conditions to be mostly overlooked or treated as icing on the cake, and not something equally critical to might stacks (save stability maybe).

The might nerf was designed mainly for pvp not for pve

I’m not sure that it’s the “zerk meta” that they’re trying to fix here.

I think the problem they’re addressing is Might itself, and how important it can be in the game.

Your lengthy post is for naught. It has nothing to do with PvE, it — and several other changes — is about celestial and strength-runed professions in PvP.

Well how about making defense, support and control more useful to balance out the usefulness of Might and Damage?

People been suggesting that for a while now.

Make other roles more useful and the game will balance itself out…

Fluffball.8307:

Your lengthy post is for naught. It has nothing to do with PvE, it — and several other changes — is about celestial and strength-runed professions in PvP.

People keep saying this and while Cele Engi/Ele may have been the root of the change, they still changed might for PvE as well when they didn’t have to.

The next thing people using your line of argument like to cite is that they don’t want to split skills/effects between game modes.

This argument stands, but is weakened by the fact that they split confusion in the same exact patch. They may not “like” doing it but they still do it, and they should for might as well.

Knighthonor.4061:

Well how about making defense, support and control more useful to balance out the usefulness of Might and Damage?

People been suggesting that for a while now.

Make other roles more useful and the game will balance itself out…

This is their problem. They wanted a game without delineated roles so the effect becomes that each profession must focus on all the roles at once.

But, they actively handicapped two of the “standard” roles in the beginning of the game-conditions and control-by hardcapping conditions and putting defiant stacks on enemies to limit control. Thus people wanting to “specialize” are only left with power specialization which lots of players hate.

IMO what should have been done a long long time ago:

Make conditions/control/healing useful for individual specialization such that encounters become quicker with a healer/condition person/control person rather than just another power person.

The above would require a significant redesign of encounters and professions and a split between PvP and PvE and ANET knows this which is why it hasn’t happened.

Let’s give an example.

Lupicus, non-reflected.

Right now parties can use active dodging and movement skills to negate any damage done so that they can melee Lupicus without dying. Thus it’s beneficial for the party to maximize damage to get through the encounter faster.

What if a control oriented person could “shut down” lupicus so he never attacks? That one person could save the party from having to dodge, use movement skills, etc and on net balance the overall run might become faster. But such a person would be OP in PvP so such a specialization could never happen without differences between game modes.

What if a designated condition person (any class) brought more DPS than a zerker? Keep the condi cap if you must so that a single condition person can cover all conditions, but make conditions hit harder earlier so that DoT with a single condi person is actually higher than a Zerker person. Other mechanics that could encourage bringing someone focused on condis are high defense mobs (as in triple trouble wurm) or “phases” where the boss becomes especially vulnerable to conditions – like the dredge mining suit or the ice elemental boss in the dredge fractal, except with condi damage rather than direct damage. This would make that one person useful and would reward specialization.

What if lupicus had some sort of agony-like attack that requires blasting in water fields to survive? A designated healer in this case could be required to win.

The underlying issues I see are:

1. Weapon skills can’t be swapped out so you’re always going to have a mix of all roles in one and specialization becomes impossible.
2. Trait lines are a mix of all roles and specialization becomes impossible.
3. Fields and finishers are spread throughout all builds and specialization becomes impossible.
4. You’re mandated to take a healing skill so healing specialization becomes less useful.

What needs to happen for more playstyle diversity:

1. Change encounters.
2. Change defiant.
3. Change how much damage conditions do over time if you don’t want to remove the condi cap entirely.
4. Rework weapons and traits so that certain weapons correlate with each role and a full zerk team can’t also condi cap, control, and heal.
5. Allow players to take another utility skill in place of their heal skill, and allow players to take more healing skills in place of their utility skills.

Since none of the above will ever happen, nothing will change. These are core game design issues, and they’ve shown that they aren’t willing to mess around with these. They’re able to alter fluffy suface-level things, but won’t mess around with the fundamentals.

I honestly think a test-server with selectable weapon skills, a non-designated healing skill/utility skill slot, changed condition and defiant mechanics and a more diverse trait selection system would be the most refreshing, entertaining, and interesting experiment in the history of MMOs. But they don’t want that. This game was built on the idea that everyone is the same, that people are replaceable cogs. It’s sort of collectivist/Marxist actually: the working masses should be freed from the elitist bourgeois and can fulfill any role in the factory that they want to. The issue is that, as in reality, specialization is more interesting and more efficient and “sameness” is depressing because it destroys the thing that lots of gamers love: the ego. Ego comes in the form of shinies in this game, not in the form of play styles which I think is sad.