Guild Wars 2

So there’s been a not-so-unusual amount of threads complaining about stacking lately.

Can people here offer definitions of what they feel stacking is?

What I want to do is come to some sort of consensus on what “stacking” is and then get a few friends and do a dungeon run without doing it.

LOSing bosses through stacking ontop each other in a corner. Stacking often occurs in conjunction with “cheesy” skills.
That’s stacking for me.

If you want to do dungeonruns without stacking, keep distance to any wall or obstacle.
Have fun!

1. What would constitute cheesy skills?

2. What is your stance on pulling mobs? Not LoSing, just pulling.

Being in melee/bomb(engi) range of party member and lower.

Also stacking mobs. Mobs must be fought with some separation between them else you stacked them. Mobs that are stacked should be separated via stomp or skills of the same ilk.

Honestly I think player’s aversion to stacking only arises when someone demands that they stand in some weird nook in the wall. They wouldn’t care if a stack formed naturally, they just hate being micromanaged.

2. My basic stance is that mobs should try to move out of ground-based AoEs and skills like 100b, and enemies with ranged attacks should always try to keep distance from players.

maha.7902:

1. What would constitute cheesy skills?

2. What is your stance on pulling mobs? Not LoSing, just pulling.

1. Skills that have a broken risk/reward ratio (I’m looking at you fiery rush)
2. Pulling is ok, if mobs stack by choice, I’m ok with that

Yay another place for my art. This is what I think stacking is. Teamwork.

Being in melee/bomb(engi) range of party member and lower.

Does this mean having a party around a boss in a sort of heptagonal shape would be forbidden if we were all meleeing? We wouldn’t be directly on each other but we would be in cleave radius. Or is melee fair game, just not standing on top of each other on one pixel?

Also stacking mobs. Mobs must be fought with some separation between them else you stacked them.

So temporal curtain and binding blade are forbidden? There are many mobs in dungeons which will aggro and then willfully stack on top of each other trying to attack the party, so I’m not sure how we’re meant to get around this.

2. My basic stance is that mobs should try to move out of ground-based AoEs and skills like 100b, and enemies with ranged attacks should always try to keep distance from players.

So channeled skills that deal high damage and high damage AOE skills are no bueno?

Im thinking “attached” would be the safest and easiest bet. Though if a wall is encountered p1-p4 may have to switch to ranged so they wouldn’t stack.

And yes intentionally forming a stack of mobs is a no go. Though some mobs just stack relentlessly so there is most likely not much you can do to prevent them from stacking after initiating aggro.

Stacking seems like such a boring way to complete dungeons. It is effective but it is just so dang boring. I play the game to have fun and imo, stacking is not fun.

Stacking is the way clever players utilize the flawed mechanics that the game has. ANet though LoS would make the game harder but it made it easier. Stacking is basically the same concept that gw1 had with body blocking. You would use the terrain to trap mobs and while you tanked your party would nuke. There was never cry about this form of play back than why is there so much hate for stacking?

Gizmo.9178:

Stacking seems like such a boring way to complete dungeons. It is effective but it is just so dang boring. I play the game to have fun and imo, stacking is not fun.

I don’t understand this argument. I need more info pls.

Because honestly… whether stacking itself is fun or not to you really isn’t the issue… is range kiting a boss fun? I find stacking more fun than that.

Must be personal opinions I guess.

This isn’t a thread to complain, I’m trying to get feedback on what stacking is so that I can form a dungeon party and perform an instance without doing what the community consensus is on stacking – so if you want to complain please open a new thread or reply in one of the countless other threads on the topic.

Another thing. Cant stack revive only 1 person can revive a downed player not a fully dead doesnt matter at that point . Though Im not sure if that is a pro or con.

Would the stacking of boons/conditions be part of your challenge? or too much

What I’m trying to do is for people to explain the “problems” they have with stacking. I don’t think anyone has ever said they have a problem with the fact that you can stack boons.

This also isn’t a “make the run as challenging as possible” thing, the whole point of this is people explaining their actual problems and me planning to do a run which omits every single one of them out, not “well I guess this is stacking so add this to the list because lolwhynot”.

There was this guy that one time: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Stacking-Zerging/first#post3623946

They’re all bots. If they see the word “stacking” it automatically types out anti stacking drivel associated with “lack of fun” and unintelligible “solutions” to a made up problem.

Mesket… I’m a girl!

QQ

Actually, the strategy of stacking goes hand to hand with LoS most of the time. Pulling mobs with Line of Sight is as old as video games.

Stacking:

Break physics having more than one body occupy the same space (?)

Crash all characters together, make a pile, don’t dodge, don’t move, smash 1, 2 ,3 ,4, 5 when appropriate things will be over before you blink.

You stack to have more control of the fight, you know all boss attacks (most of the time) will land on the players position. You stack because buffs have very short range, so does combos. In GW2 you stack at melee because melee is ridiculously OP compared to range (which is fine up to some extent).

From my experience, sometimes stacking is a valid strategy if it is used to counter a boss attack but it gets wrong when its used for every single boss including trash mobs… One would expect that in 2014, new genre MMOs would have this addressed and covered but no, we are still doing LOS and stacking behind corners to kill Bosses. Turning a great game into something really lame.

If Lilith upload her art, I’ll do it too!

Well I think the major points are covered. There may be discrepancies on the range of the stack though. Hopefully more will speak up!

@above
/gasp pronoun

Stacking = Standing still.

Therefore, not-stacking = Must be moving 97.4% of the time. Only exception is when downed and/or defeated. When reviving you must cancel revive every 2 seconds in order to keep moving.

Why should we not be allowed to stand still?

If you have no incentive to actually move, why should we have to move?

Also:

Fastforward to 3:50 – is this kind of positioning allowed?

Nokaru.7831:

Stacking = Standing still.

Therefore, not-stacking = Must be moving 97.4% of the time. Only exception is when downed and/or defeated. When reviving you must cancel revive every 2 seconds in order to keep moving.

That’s a really interesting definition… so… this is stacking?

Dual.8953:

Honestly I think player’s aversion to stacking only arises when someone demands that they stand in some weird nook in the wall. They wouldn’t care if a stack formed naturally, they just hate being micromanaged.

This. Unless you have a pre-organized plan that involves it before you enter dungeon, I find it obnoxious.

maha.7902:

Why should we not be allowed to stand still?

If you have no incentive to actually move, why should we have to move?

Thanks, I do stack because I agree with the currently lame AI we have its the most effective. I wish for a game where standing still means dead and mobs have more AI than a potato.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Nokaru.7831:

Stacking = Standing still.

Therefore, not-stacking = Must be moving 97.4% of the time. Only exception is when downed and/or defeated. When reviving you must cancel revive every 2 seconds in order to keep moving.

That’s a really interesting definition… so… this is stacking?

I laughed at this, more than I should have.))))

Mesket.5728:

Actually, the strategy of stacking goes hand to hand with LoS most of the time. Pulling mobs with Line of Sight is as old as video games.

Stacking:

Break physics having more than one body occupy the same space (?)

Crash all characters together, make a pile, don’t dodge, don’t move, smash 1, 2 ,3 ,4, 5 when appropriate things will be over before you blink.

You stack to have more control of the fight, you know all boss attacks (most of the time) will land on the players position. You stack because buffs have very short range, so does combos. In GW2 you stack at melee because melee is ridiculously OP compared to range (which is fine up to some extent).

From my experience, sometimes stacking is a valid strategy if it is used to counter a boss attack but it gets wrong when its used for every single boss including trash mobs… One would expect that in 2014, new genre MMOs would have this addressed and covered but no, we are still doing LOS and stacking behind corners to kill Bosses. Turning a great game into something really lame.

If Lilith upload her art, I’ll do it too!

This is exactly what stacking is.
The picture I mean.

I think the phenomenon of what’s going on in the forums in general has to do with people going stir crazy. Anet, please release some new content, any new content before many fly over the coo-coo’s nest.

The first response in this thread gets my vote.

Mesket.5728:

maha.7902:

Why should we not be allowed to stand still?

If you have no incentive to actually move, why should we have to move?

Thanks, I do stack because I agree with the currently lame AI we have its the most effective. I wish for a game where standing still means dead and mobs have more AI than a potato.

What I mean is this:

Say a boss attacks every three seconds with a cleaving attack. Why should the two players behind it have to be moving around for absolutely no reason, and why should the three players in front have to move around in between these attacks when they would just need to move when they actually swing?

I’m taking on reasonable suggestions here, and most of them are reasonable, but things like “you should always be moving” just smells of tacking on extra challenge for no reason, because if you remember, the party for this dungeon will need to be out of close melee radius so if everyone is moving that basically means unless doing in sync we would all literally have to range bosses.

maha.7902:

Mesket.5728:

maha.7902:

Why should we not be allowed to stand still?

If you have no incentive to actually move, why should we have to move?

Thanks, I do stack because I agree with the currently lame AI we have its the most effective. I wish for a game where standing still means dead and mobs have more AI than a potato.

What I mean is this:

Say a boss attacks every three seconds with a cleaving attack. Why should the two players behind it have to be moving around for absolutely no reason, and why should the three players in front have to move around in between these attacks when they would just need to move when they actually swing?

I’m taking on reasonable suggestions here, and most of them are reasonable, but things like “you should always be moving” just smells of tacking on extra challenge for no reason, because if you remember, the party for this dungeon will need to be out of close melee radius so if everyone is moving that basically means unless doing in sync we would all literally have to range bosses.

well… if there is a player at the front, the ones at the back are not really stacking, are they?

If 5 melee players are surrounding a boss, they are not strictly stacking. They don’t have much options left… the problem is when you start seeing scepter, staff, bows, stacked? (yeah some pugs still use those weapons, good elems for might <3).

Like I said, there are situations or party compositions where stacking is useful, but for example… why is it needed to stack for kholer? because you can, and its faster. That’s it. That’s the only reason… it is a hell of a fun fight, unrewarded, i agree, but still fun. I hate it when players stack for this kind of fights… I don’t complain though (and actually last couple of times I run there first and ask the rest to stack) but I wish so badly for a Kholer that would render players to cream if they stack at his twirl attack.

I blame stacking for some players ever learning to play and for example, never wanting to face Cave Troll. All tears about the new Troll in HoTW are because nobody ever wanted to learn that fight before. People look for the easiest, laziest way of doing it! If ANET out Wallmart carts on the gem shop they would be rich!

maha.7902:

things like “you should always be moving” just smells of tacking on extra challenge for no reason

You asked “Can people here offer definitions of what they feel stacking is?”

Some people actually think standing still is stacking. I’m not going to defend it because I don’t believe it – but you asked, and there’s your answer.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

That’s a really interesting definition… so… this is stacking?

Your illustration made me think of this. I think this is an effective fighting stance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnTR-cG5W1I

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Gizmo.9178:

Stacking seems like such a boring way to complete dungeons. It is effective but it is just so dang boring. I play the game to have fun and imo, stacking is not fun.

I don’t understand this argument. I need more info pls.

Because honestly… whether stacking itself is fun or not to you really isn’t the issue… is range kiting a boss fun? I find stacking more fun than that.

Must be personal opinions I guess.

Well yeah all of this is just opinion. I personally think both kiting and stacking are pretty boring. At least you are moving while kiting :P

Anyways, I think the issues is more about the lack of variety when it comes to fighting in dungeons. I don’t really see new ways of taking on dungeons.

For example
Player 1: Hey, I can use my pets to keep that one group of enemies busy.
Player 2: Looks like alot of them. Let me spawn my minions to help your pets.
Player 3: Those ranged targets will kill you guys though. I will use my guardian skills to deflect their projectiles for you.
Player 4: Okay, while you guys do that, me and Player 5 will keep the boss busy until you guys take out all the mobs. If things get too crazy, I can stealth us all and we can regroup.
Player 5: Yeah and when stealthed, I will use my water skills to heal us all quicker.

Not saying this would work but I just wanted to give an example of what I don’t see in dungeons. It happens but just not often. Combat is usually restricted to simple, yet effective ways of fighting (stacking/kiting). I just think there is a lack of variety.

I hope this made sense lol

You asked “Can people here offer definitions of what they feel stacking is?”
Some people actually think standing still is stacking. I’m not going to defend it because I don’t believe it – but you asked, and there’s your answer.

Well I’m filtering out the ideas completely devoid of logic like that – because that
means people standing 900 range apart of each other with bows are stacking. They’re not, so I’m not taking that suggestion seriously.

So far I have:

LOSing bosses through stacking ontop each other in a corner. Stacking often occurs in conjunction with “cheesy” skills [whirlwind attack, fiery greatsword].

Being in melee/bomb(engi) range of party member and lower.

Also stacking mobs. Mobs must be fought with some separation between them else you stacked them. Mobs that are stacked should be separated via stomp or skills of the same ilk.

2. My basic stance is that mobs should try to move out of ground-based AoEs and skills like 100b, and enemies with ranged attacks should always try to keep distance from players.

… Though some mobs just stack relentlessly so there is most likely not much you can do to prevent them from stacking after initiating aggro.

Break physics having more than one body occupy the same space (?) [operate as if collision detection exists]

Crash all characters together, make a pile, don’t dodge, don’t move, smash 1, 2 ,3 ,4, 5 when appropriate things will be over before you blink.

I think all of these are reasonable.

Oh should add. That 3:50 positioning very close to what I was thinking. The fifth did stack slightly but that was because he was moving so all was good.

They were also a bit close to the boss. Im thinking all at max melee range from the boss.

we’re streaming our attempts at this right now, the best one will go on youtube:

http://www.twitch.tv/sylarscreed

Line of Sight is Line of Sight, and is not stacking. You can use LOS tactics and not stack, and you can stack and not use LOS tactics.

In my opinion, I view stacking as the overlapping of character bodies. This also tends to mean an overlapping of hit boxes as well. I actually would say for the game’s sake that limbs (swinging swords, kicking or movement of feet) can be safely ignored and just the core of the body considered for what is overlapping. This is simply because actions are scripted and not dynamically affected by their surroundings. (Hundred Blades looks the same whether you do it in an open field or next to a tree where your blade clips the tree.)

P.S. To those saying things like “The definition of stacking is when you stack things,” using the word in the definition doesn’t help at all. >_<

I believe that what would be constitutes as “stacking” ultimately is derived from the players changing of the playing field, and "taking advantage of “poor mob AI” "

Having done a very large amount of Dungeons that had “no stacking” involved… let me see if i can explain it better…..

The Spider queen of the catacombs. Is by and large considered to be “stacked” on because you will find yourself in an out of the way nook. away from the original spawning point Forcing her to move to you and “denying her the full use of her mechanics”. how do you not stack on her? go to her. do not bring her to you.

the gravelings right after the spider queen. is the same thing. “stacking” would be waiting around the corner of the rubble and bringing the graveling to you. how do you not stack? fight them in the hallway. or at the bottom as the traps in the hallway will kill you before they do.

Kohler. Stacking on kholer again would be changing his regular playing field in by bringing him out of his “arena”. You fight him without stacking by doing it inside his arena

Subject Alpha is considered “stacked” on if you CC him into a wall (( see yes control works))

Ultimately what I believe that so many people have gotten all up in arms over the “stacking Meta” is simply the idea of changing the field of battle. How do you NOT stack? is simply by us as players going TO the boss, in comparison to bringing the boss to you. The argument extends to trash as well. The 4 risen in the begining of Arah 3, you “stack” on them if you are around the corner and bring them to you. the non stacking method would be to go to them and fight them on the rise.

tl;dr
“stacking” is created when the mob comes to you. non stacking would be you going to them.

I disagree, Ropechef. I don’t believe pulling a monster from their starting point is considered stacking.

Let’s take CoE for example, the first few trash mobs. Common PUG stacking tactic is to pull the first three into the beginning room just around the corner and kill them just around the corner. However, what if 4 players were spread out in the room and all using ranged weapons while the 5th player grabbed a single mob and pulled it out of the hallway and into the room? They’ve pulled the mob out of its “arena”, but if all players maintain a range of 600+ away from each other, have they “stacked” the mob they are fighting?

Ropechef.6192:

tl;dr
“stacking” is created when the mob comes to you. non stacking would be you going to them.

That’s “pulling” not stacking.

“Stacking” is simply the act of multiple characters or mobs standing within an extremely small space which would be impossible to do with functional collision/hitbox detection, in order to derive a combat, buff or some other advantage.

DigitalKirin.9714:

I disagree, Ropechef. I don’t believe pulling a monster from their starting point is considered stacking.

Let’s take CoE for example, the first few trash mobs. Common PUG stacking tactic is to pull the first three into the beginning room just around the corner and kill them just around the corner. However, what if 4 players were spread out in the room and all using ranged weapons while the 5th player grabbed a single mob and pulled it out of the hallway and into the room? They’ve pulled the mob out of its “arena”, but if all players maintain a range of 600+ away from each other, have they “stacked” the mob they are fighting?

…. your logics are sound

also… that scenario sounds rather painfull…

Looking at posts like this makes me wonder if meta runners think everyone else goes deliberately out of their way to make things harder for themselves. That and the guys who seem to have gotten the meta so far ingrained in their head that they seem to think dungeons are impossible with out them.

They just do what comes naturally without demanding strict adherence to a specific tactic, and it works for them. They may not be a well oiled machine like speed runners but they are 5 comrades trying to help each other without imposing their playstyles on one another.

everyone had to go after two runs, but we got two arah p2 clears done, and not stacking (as outlined in this thread) is … well, it makes melee extremely frustrating. Mind you we were attempting self imposed collision detection, but if players can’t group together a little tighter (like, not even on top of each other, but the rules were strict for these attempts, we basically had to stand in a star) it literally kills all positioning against bosses. Not being allowed to group mobs was also annoying as it basically made cleaving weapons completely pointless.

Bosses being close to walls also shut off two players from meleeing.

It made helping the party more difficult (we couldn’t group mobs, and then say, drop reflect on them to reflect projectile damage we were receiving from outside the group of mobs) and bosses were needlessly chaotic.

Now personally, I want to do more of it (the two runs weren’t even clean) but my initial impression is that removing stacking makes cooperating with your party difficult, it makes melee frustrating and the game honestly just wouldn’t gain anything from doing so – and it wouldn’t “fix” anything. If we were allowed to group up closer together (just not stuck in one pixel) and actually allowed to position mobs it would have been a lot less frustrating.

Stacking is where a group of players do some Gods cosplay while they beat bosses and eat cheese.

maha.7902:

everyone had to go after two runs, but we got two arah p2 clears done, and not stacking (as outlined in this thread) is … well, it makes melee extremely frustrating. Mind you we were attempting self imposed collision detection, but if players can’t group together a little tighter (like, not even on top of each other, but the rules were strict for these attempts, we basically had to stand in a star) it literally kills all positioning against bosses. Not being allowed to group mobs was also annoying as it basically made cleaving weapons completely pointless.

Bosses being close to walls also shut off two players from meleeing.

It made helping the party more difficult (we couldn’t group mobs, and then say, drop reflect on them to reflect projectile damage we were receiving from outside the group of mobs) and bosses were needlessly chaotic.

Now personally, I want to do more of it (the two runs weren’t even clean) but my initial impression is that removing stacking makes cooperating with your party difficult, it makes melee frustrating and the game honestly just wouldn’t gain anything from doing so – and it wouldn’t “fix” anything. If we were allowed to group up closer together (just not stuck in one pixel) and actually allowed to position mobs it would have been a lot less frustrating.

Yah. Just watching your stream you were playing incredibly awkwardly. I doubt posting a of it will retain any merit, as an argument for stacking, in the long run if you’re gonna be as stilted as that, because in the end you end up looking like neither a meta run nor a common non-meta run. It’s more a satire of a non-stacking run.
Though if you’re trying to show that people suck at explaining stuff, this makes a good argument.

The point is – we were playing five melee characters, and if stacking was removed, you get situations where people are basically unable to to even use their weapons and attack (abomination when we accidentally got him in to a wall). You get situations where positioning is crucial versus a boss (Belka so you don’t get shot in to barrels) and we couldn’t even take advantage of that because we were forced to stand around her just so we could melee. You get situations where you can’t take down mobs efficiently (abominations at the gate to Lupicus) and you end up pulling more elites because you end up in their line of sight since you’re trying to melee the abominations. You have alphard where you either have to kill it in one burst in the middle, or you’re just annihilated (four wardens not spinning in a row ftw, anet fix mesmers please). Brie where the AOE circles literally made it so not only was it annoying positioning ourselves away from our party but doing that along with area denial AOEs meant that you would have like one or two guys capable of meleeing.

I’d hardly call it a satire when after all of that it was still faster than most pug runs, but the point is – dungeons are extremely pro-stacking, and removing that aspect of them honestly just makes gameplay awkward and stilted, and paths become in the case of speed clearers slightly longer (our average arah p2 would be like 16-18 min … while experimenting with these guidelines we had that bad ~45 min first attempt and then the second attempt was ~30 min) and in the case of most – either unplayable or a lot longer.

Dual, would you be willing to record a run with zero stacking (no hit box overlapping)?

Going to try for another attempt tomorrow, now that I feel I’ve identified some of the problems we had we may be able to get a smoother run (it’s not really representative of no-stacking if we just use footage of a run where you’d see what went wrong and change your tactic immediately afterwards but using the practice rune as evidence … meh) with some more practice.

I honestly can’t see why people interpret stacking as any form of clipping. If we shouldn’t be able to clip into each other, we would have some sort of character collision.
Only the “stack in a corner and go through your damagerotation” is messy because it trivializes the tactic against any encounter.
Would I be happy if this game had charactercolision? Yes.
Would it make things more interesting? A bit atleast.
Would it be good at the current state of the dungeons? Definitely no.
So, all in all, I’m ok with stacking, even if it could’ve done better.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

If we shouldn’t be able to clip into each other, we would have some sort of character collision.

If we shouldn’t be able to LoS and stack up the enemies in melee AoE deathball, then Anet should never have disabled the AI behaviour from BWE1. If enemies acting more intelligent, like they did in BWE1 (and like they still do in GW1), then this wouldn’t be an issue of “exploiting”.