Learn to write everything bad on sand and to carve everything good into stone.
"Soft" CC and defiant stacks
PVE encounters are so broken due to core game design elements that they are basically hopeless, unless heavily scripted gimmick fights (see: Teq). There is simply not enough elements of combat that the player can control.
Problems:
Defiant
Condition Cap
Condition overwriting
EVERYTHING using conditions
Condition Removal being a universal counter to everything
No hard CC
No soft CC longer then 1-2 secs other then snare.
Utility skill cooldown too long.
Not enough customization of weapon skills.
GW2 is an action game at it’s core, and it will take a full redesign to change that. Defiant is a band-aid put over the problem of players spamming abilities wantonly on a boss- something they have to do by design, since many attacks have built in CC effects. There’s just no possible fix, imo. We have to accept what the game offers and search for meaningful PVE somewhere else.
“I care nothing for a festering industry that wantonly refuses to
provide a service that I’m willing to purchase.” – Fortuna.7259
provide a service that I’m willing to purchase.” – Fortuna.7259
I know that this was probably said before but how about soft CCs (cripple, freeze, maybe immobilize) decreasing defiant stacks on bosses? Of course without activating unshakable to generate more stacks.
This would allow players to decrease the stacks safer and faster but without pretty much stunlocking the boss; and almost every class has easy access to these conditions. Also it would make control/condition skills more usefull in pve.
Sorry but the apex of Anet’s approach to strategic combat has been proven to be zerk stacks and huge zerg rushes.
Don’t hope for more.