Guild Wars 2

The current state of crowd control (CC) such as stun and knockback is pitiful in PvE because of the unshakable and defiant mechanics.

Basically what goes on is that a single player uses a CC skill which typically lasts 1-3 seconds, then the enemy becomes immune to the next 3-25 CC skills (10 for a party of 5 in some dungeons).

From my understanding this was done to stop players from continually locking enemies with CC skills, trivializing the fight, but they went so far in trying to prevent this that they severely limited the effectiveness of CC.

The way ANet defines roles we have damage, support, and control.
Damage and support have nothing holding them back. You can take down a champion in under 30 seconds with enough damage (see CoF speed runs) and can permanently maintain boons and projectile blocks with support. Control on the other hand is impaired because of this mechanic, only being able to affect the boss every minute or two.

Just imagine if damage and support was treated the same way. What if after applying a single boon or heal to an ally, the next 10 boons and heals to that ally would be negated? What if after blocking/reflecting a projectile from a boss, the next 9 passed through? What if bosses became invincible for a time period if they took too much damage? Surely these wouldn’t be seen as good mechanics.

Unshakable and defiant need to be reworked. A mechanic like this is necessary, especially in large scale fights where people could be firing off CC every second, but making CC this much less effective is ridiculous.

I am as an engineer. They claim on their front page that they didn’t want to limit combat for any class but that is so not true for engineer. There’s two roles we cannot fulfill easily (without a crazy exploit build) and that’s burst DPS and CC because everything becomes immune if they are a champion or above. It’s crazy rules lawyering methods like this that break games.

Example of this type of problem in other titles would be LOTRO adding resistances to their regular mobs in their Mirkwood expansion causing regular open world fights against normal level monsters to be exceedingly long for some classes (loremaster) until they finally realized what they had done and had to make an adjustment.

I see the same thing happening here with bleeds/burns and with CC.

tigirius.9014:

There’s two roles [Engineers] cannot fulfill easily (without a crazy exploit build) and that’s burst DPS and CC because everything becomes immune if they are a champion or above.

You’re not playing the class right, then.

For starters, ‘crazy exploit build’ for burst? Many of our builds can do a great deal of burst damage, and none of them are crazy or use burst.

As for CC, we’re one of the best classes for it. We are one of the best classes for getting rid of Defiant stacks – we have a large number of abilities that hit Defiant because of our access to Kits, and a good portion of those have a much lower cooldown than comparable abilities for other classes.

Beyond that, we have easy access to Defiant-ignoring CC (immobilize) through the Net Turret and its toolbar skill, Bomb Kit, Rifle or offhand Pistol, etc. On any given Fractal or non-CoF run, it’s almost a guarantee that I’ll save someone’s kitten with a well-timed Net Shot.

Oh that “engi is fine” talk again. How adorable.

Yeah, those defiant stacks are really stupid, especially since almost all CC in GW2 last around 1 second anyways. Not to mention that some bosses\champions are immune to some of CC types anyway.

I could understand the current defiant mechanics if we had some ~10 second stuns or dazes so we could use teamwork to burn down the defiant and then lockdown the boss. But currently it’s all quite stupid.

Reworked the OP a bit. I hope the developers are aware how much this impacts the game because CC honestly feels useless in dungeons. Its not even worth control based weapons or skills as they aren’t going to be nearly as useful as something based around damage or support.

Akaji.1296:

tigirius.9014:

There’s two roles [Engineers] cannot fulfill easily (without a crazy exploit build) and that’s burst DPS and CC because everything becomes immune if they are a champion or above.

You’re not playing the class right, then.

For starters, ‘crazy exploit build’ for burst? Many of our builds can do a great deal of burst damage, and none of them are crazy or use burst.

As for CC, we’re one of the best classes for it. We are one of the best classes for getting rid of Defiant stacks – we have a large number of abilities that hit Defiant because of our access to Kits, and a good portion of those have a much lower cooldown than comparable abilities for other classes.

Beyond that, we have easy access to Defiant-ignoring CC (immobilize) through the Net Turret and its toolbar skill, Bomb Kit, Rifle or offhand Pistol, etc. On any given Fractal or non-CoF run, it’s almost a guarantee that I’ll save someone’s kitten with a well-timed Net Shot.

No not in PVE because of the design flaws and trait breakage burst DPS is not what it should be in any engineer, oh people will claim to have it down but when comparing the numbers to any other class especially those sister classes it’s clear somethings wrong.

Also, the problem with the bosses pretty much making them immune to CC is a very bad design, they should be resistant not immune there’s a difference. Even Kaaboose has gone over it. Why give CC to classes or make a class CC heavy as their role in any trait combination and then make bosses immune to CC it’s like someone over there is trolling the community. And Kaabooses video describes how to keep it from being exploited by still adjust it for solid use and better boss fights. Basically they don’t even have their own trinity in this game because of it. Support is lacking too especially with the number of skills that simply don’t scale with +healing on gear and the lack of a direct healing skill. Everything is AOE and bosses are well known for dropping their AOEs right on top of healing zones 99% of the time in my experience it’s like they look for those zones or something.

Defiant is one of the worst things about GW2’s boss fights. It also prevents interrupts, making GW2 very unlike GW1 during boss battles. I wrote a long-ish post about it some time ago:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Support-in-GW2-PvE/first

The thing to keep in mind here is that a PVE mob is a massive bag of health compared to even a vitality tank build. This trivializes control attempts even before Defiant enters the picture. This because most controls are single target, short duration, and long cooldown. Meaning you can’t regulate incoming pressure by applying control to one or mob for any meaningful period of time.

But PVP makes for a whole different story. Because of the more balanced health pools between opponents, a well placed control (either to set up or break a burst) can be the turning point in a fight.

When I was new to the game I used to think things like Defiant and Unshakable were used to prevent stun-locking bosses to death… But that’s not really it is it?

I mean, in dungeon-based play you have 5 people, and most classes have little access to hard-CC, especially long-duration hard CC, while bosses have a truck load of health. You couldn’t really stun-lock bosses to death even if you tried. But maybe you could “lock them” for longer periods than intended…?

In open world, however, that could be an issue, as you can have hundreds of people sitting around…

…But wouldn’t it be a lot easier, to just add “diminishing returns” to hard CC…? I mean, in a way I guess that’s what defiant does, but it does it in a rather brutish manner.

Wouldn’t it a far better mechanic if the boss stacked defiant stacks each time he’kitten with CC, with each stack diminuishing its effectiveness? Much like Frenzy the boss would lose stacks as time passed without being CC.

If CC actually becomes a viable thing in boss fights then you also open up the boss design to more interesting fights. Fights where you need to interrupt the boss or get hit hard, for example. You open up control as a viable thing, instead of the typical tank, spank and dodge.

no, because there are consumables, yes even now, that can perma “cc” a mob.

Like the boss"Bjarl the rampager" in CoE, it will just be cheesesd to death with consumables.

welcome to the dark side of gw2, where only eliteists know these things.

Bjarl History: (Boss without defiant)

- Originally “Dam Debris” was used to constantly knock him down.
-Progression to “Broken Prision Bar” for perma stun so warriors can hit 100b more reliably.
(Patch nerfed consumables, and made the stun not perma)
-ATM, there is still one consumable, fairly obvious and well known to any casual CoE’r p1’er that perma Knocksdown Bjarl, which will be used for other bosses obviously.

Even if this newish consuamble was nerfed, in a organized group, you can still perma CC.
If Everyone in the group has prision bars, perma stun could be obtained + theres another that can do blowout effect. Also the consumables can be dropped to the team, further reducing the need for organization. I can drop 50 for PUG’s and just say “please use in 1,2,3,4,5” order.

Keep defiant or yea, would haev to totally revamp the use like poster above said. reduce effectiveness. however, the exact changes are so open for disucsion, lots of research would be needed. Do NOT jump to conclusions, fast opinions about defiant. we need a good solid change, not just a knee jerk reaction

edit: also for clarification this isnt a exploit or a glitch. these are legit consumables, legit cooldown. nothing is bugged or anything. everything is used regularly, with no 3rd pty progs etc..

Ah yes, consumables. A clear example of the left hand of ANet not knowing what the right hand is up to. I am surprised they have to hard banned PVE consumables from WVW already.

defiant (from wiki) " Gains defiant when targeted by crowd control skills. Blind is 10% effective. Weakness and vulnerability last 50% less time."
make the same sense as:

Gains defiant when targeted by damage skills, AOE is 10% effective, channeled skills last 50% less time (and do 50% less damage).

since we don’t have the above, why do we need unshakable mobs?
it is one of the silliest mechanics in the game.

JJBigs.8456:

Keep defiant or yea, would haev to totally revamp the use like poster above said. reduce effectiveness. however, the exact changes are so open for disucsion, lots of research would be needed. Do NOT jump to conclusions, fast opinions about defiant. we need a good solid change, not just a knee jerk reaction.

Agreed; we need a modification of the system, not a complete removal. Even when consumables aren’t used I’m sure there are some combination out there that can stun lock enemies if it didn’t exist so we need some version of it, just one not as strict as the current one.

Both a defiant timer or a CC % resist would go.

Unshakable is pretty awful. It’s so bad that the best strategy is to not use a strategy and use all skills at your convenience, and if it works, it’s your lucky moment.

What sucks as well, is that when you use a skill (like Updraft) on someone with Defiant, it still says “Interrupt”, yet their attack continues, and yes it does damage.

Lalangamena.3694:

defiant (from wiki) " Gains defiant when targeted by crowd control skills. Blind is 10% effective. Weakness and vulnerability last 50% less time."
make the same sense as:

Gains defiant when targeted by damage skills, AOE is 10% effective, channeled skills last 50% less time (and do 50% less damage).

since we don’t have the above, why do we need unshakable mobs?
it is one of the silliest mechanics in the game.

That part of unshakable seems silly too. I’m not sure how the blind being 10% effective works (does it only have a 10% chance of negating an attack but stays on until it does negate one?) but reducing the duration of vulnerability and weakness is unfair and often pointless if your team has enough of it.

I think a good way to handle the issue would be to make CC fully effective on a boss, but if they’re hit with more than one CC effect in a short period (1 or 2 seconds, maybe), then Defiant triggers and functions as it currently does.

Encourage people to use CC intelligently, but without spamming it. If a player or group has enough skill and co-ordination to lock down a boss for 10+ seconds, I say let them.

I’ve got a whole post and video going over this very point. It’s in the “Fix the (Un)Holy Trinity” thread in the Suggestions area for those interested.
I won’t try and hijack this post though so a few things:
First here is how Anet envisoned combat in GW2 during late development (BETA):
http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/
Now compare that to what we’ve got and it all comes down to Control (And to a lesser extent support) being borderline useless in PvE.
Defiance DOES need to exist to prevent bosses from being stunlocked into submission or we would have a system even WORSE then the current META.
However Defiance in its current state has destroyed control (Outside of the ones that don’t effect them.. ie REFLECTS) in GW2 PVE.
I’ve suggested in my primary posst that defaince fall off naturally as well as being striped to encouge timed and carful use of control without it being too powerful.
Another option if Anet is too sacred to do that is to give the bosses adds that need to be controled to ensure victory.
Of course then we come into the problems of poor camerawork, team synergy, bad targeting etc. and I won’t flood this post with all my vies and solutions to all that.
In summary Defaince/Unshakable coupled with the current design of bosses in GW2 has killed anets vison of GW2’s Trinity combat.

I think the most bothersome thing about defiant stacks is that it requires good group coordination to consistently interrupt the correct boss skills, but once a group has that much coordination, they can often ignore defiant / control effects completely and just break the boss over their knee with raw damage and a few well-timed dodges.

The lack of must-interrupt skills on bosses is also a bother, but understandable. You can’t have skills that wipe the party if they don’t get interrupted, since a poorly-timed daze could leave your party frantically clearing 5 stacks of defiant just before it starts charging the attack. At which point you’ve got players sabotaging other players accidentally.

Edit: That said, large-scale control on veteran mobs is still an incredibly effective way to keep your group safe. It’s just bosses that it sort of pales.

Kaaboose.3897:

I’ve got a whole post and video going over this very point. It’s in the “Fix the (Un)Holy Trinity” thread in the Suggestions area for those interested.

Why not just link the thread so everyone is on the same page?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Fix-the-Guild-Wars-2-Un-Holy-Trinity
Anyways…

One thing that that’s so maddening about this game is that the combat system is so fundamentally rock solid, yet held back by game-breaking decisions such as defiance and unshakable. the changes you suggested in the video are relatively minor, but would have a HUGE effect on how the game plays.

A revamp of defiant and unshakable (as well as combo fields, but I digress) is past due. I see one of the best MMO combat systems available in this game… I also see wasted potential since it plays out too simplistically.

“What if after applying a single boon or heal to an ally, the next 10 boons and heals to that ally would be negated? What if after blocking/reflecting a projectile from a boss, the next 9 passed through? What if bosses became invincible for a time period if they took too much damage?”

I’m scared now, I think you might have just given them ideas for future “fixes”…..
Apart from that I agree.

The OP here is to utterly and deeply flawed that it almost feels like a joke.

Bri.8354:

The current state of crowd control (CC) such as stun and knockback is pitiful in PvE because of the unshakable and defiant mechanics.

Nope.

That’s a ridiculous claim. Enemies with Defiant and Unshakable are the exception, not the rule. If control were useful everywhere else in the game but not in the champions and dungeon bosses, it would be useful in the significant great majority of GW2. That’s not what happens, though.

Bri.8354:

From my understanding this was done to stop players from continually locking enemies with CC skills, trivializing the fight, but they went so far in trying to prevent this that they severely limited the effectiveness of CC.

Nope, again.

One of the old GW2 videos, before the game was released, showed a boss fight in which there was no limit on control skills. The boss spent the entire fight stun locked. Some measure to prevent that was necessary, and Defiant isn’t that bad.

Bri.8354:

The way ANet defines roles we have damage, support, and control.
Damage and support have nothing holding them back. You can take down a champion in under 30 seconds with enough damage (see CoF speed runs) and can permanently maintain boons and projectile blocks with support.

This is extremely myope. Condition damage is as limited as crowd control – try stacking more than 25 of any condition and see if that increases damage. Many kinds of support are equally limited – giving ten Regeneration buffs to an ally won’t increase the healing per second.

Even raw damage has been somewhat limited by giving the bosses a huge health bar. The result is the same as Defiant – an artificial way to make something less useful than it would have been otherwise.

In other words, all the OP does is pointing at what appears to be the obvious issue, using flawed arguments to reach a conclusion in which no better alternative is given.

This is as naive and as pointless as saying that the Gem Store is bad and that ArenaNet should just give everything for free to everyone, forever. Often, the most obvious issue and the most obvious solution are not the right ones.

Defiant is not the issue with control. The true issue is that there isn’t anything worth interrupting.

A lot of people complain that dungeons do not require team work, or communication, or good timing. Well, imagine if a boss had a skill that players HAD to interrupt. Imagine that boss has Defiant. What would happen?

Players would need team work. People would have to work together to use control effects and leave the boss open for the real interrupt at the right time. Players would need to communicate, so everyone knows who is doing the real interrupt, in order to avoid wasting control effects. Players would need good timing, to get the interrupt at the right time.

This is the real issue. Enemy fights are just a matter of DPS because there is no use for anything else: no enemy has a skill really worth interrupting, no enemy has to be crippled or immobilized, no enemy needs to be launched away. Support has pretty much the same issue – some bosses do moderate damage, but more often than not this is not damage that needs to be deflected, it can just be dodged or healed through.

Saying “OMG, Defiant sucks l0l0l0l0lzz!11” is easy. Seeing the true problem and how ArenaNet could fix it is not. Instead of having boring fights with enemies that have one million health points and who have very few interesting attacks, most of which can simply be dodged or just taken and healed through, ArenaNet should focus on twisting these mechanics around. An enemy who has little health but who does so much damage that players cannot use raw DPS to kill it before it kills them; an enemy with damage dealing skills that cannot be dodged; an enemy that must be prevented from reaching a given point in the map; an enemy that takes no damage, but that players must kill by throwing off a ledge; those mechanics are what ArenaNet needs to change, not Defiant.

I was very disappointed by:

ANet: Our version of tanking is the use of CC skill to control mobs.
Reality: Defiant means this takes a coordinated group in a dungeon and is unlikely to happen in the open world.

I would have: given short-term immunity to bosses after being CC’d or preferably, given bosses attacks that needed to be interrupted on short CD and left it at that.

My biggest problem with defiant is less than exists, and more the lack of precision it introduces.

Given the entire team is slamming away at the guy, some of them using skills that count as “controls”, the defiant stacks DO eventually get used up and reset. Now take the enemy does something critical you need interrupt, like the mining suit’s heal – now you might need hit him with half a dozen stuns – or maybe the next stun’ll do the job, it’s pure luck whether you’ll be in a position to make a timed interrupt or not.

In response to Erasculio.2914:

Picking apart my post rather than trying to understand the spirit behind it isn’t contributing anything to the thread.

Basically what I’m trying to get at in my OP is that these mechanics limit control by too great of a degree against champion and legendary monsters, which happen to make up a large portion of your fighting time in places like dungeons. The effectiveness of control is also very limited compared to damage and support which is unfair and this has a negative impact on professions, weapons, and skills which are focused more around control than damage or support.

But I don’t see a point in explaining myself further than that, and I don’t have any interest in distracting from the point of this thread by picking apart your post, so I’ll skip right to the basis of your post which seems to be this section:

Defiant is not the issue with control. The true issue is that there isn’t anything worth interrupting.

A lot of people complain that dungeons do not require team work, or communication, or good timing. Well, imagine if a boss had a skill that players HAD to interrupt. Imagine that boss has Defiant. What would happen?

Players would need team work. People would have to work together to use control effects and leave the boss open for the real interrupt at the right time. Players would need to communicate, so everyone knows who is doing the real interrupt, in order to avoid wasting control effects. Players would need good timing, to get the interrupt at the right time.

This is the real issue. Enemy fights are just a matter of DPS because there is no use for anything else: no enemy has a skill really worth interrupting, no enemy has to be crippled or immobilized, no enemy needs to be launched away. Support has pretty much the same issue – some bosses do moderate damage, but more often than not this is not damage that needs to be deflected, it can just be dodged or healed through.

Saying “OMG, Defiant sucks l0l0l0l0lzz!11” is easy. Seeing the true problem and how ArenaNet could fix it is not. Instead of having boring fights with enemies that have one million health points and who have very few interesting attacks, most of which can simply be dodged or just taken and healed through, ArenaNet should focus on twisting these mechanics around. An enemy who has little health but who does so much damage that players cannot use raw DPS to kill it before it kills them; an enemy with damage dealing skills that cannot be dodged; an enemy that must be prevented from reaching a given point in the map; an enemy that takes no damage, but that players must kill by throwing off a ledge; those mechanics are what ArenaNet needs to change, not Defiant.

To which I partially agree. It would be nice if more importance was given to control in the mechanics of a fight, such as being able to to knock an enemy out of an AoE that is buffing him or using immobilize to slow him from reaching an object that could also buff him or something. Placing more importance on mechanics might also allow them to reduce the health of the monsters. This would be a better way to address berserker warriors rushing in and killing bosses in an instant than just boosting their health.

But control isn’t just meant to be utilized in specific enemy mechanics; it is also designed to manipulate movement which can be used offensively or defensively. This can already be utilized in a few ways such as pushing enemies together and keeping enemies out of melee range. The problem with defiance is that it severely impairs players from using control in such a way against bosses.

I disagree with the part about coordination and too much importance given to control in the mechanics of fights. Coordination should give an advantage but expecting the entire party to coordinate in such a large way just to use control effectively is extreme. Control should play a role in the mechanics, such as by helping keep the enemy at a distance, preventing it from receiving buffs, and interrupting the occasional skill, but designing mechanics that would force players to these things to survive, damage, or kill an enemy would also be extreme in the same way that a boss that would wipe anyone who didn’t have projectile reflect up would be.

The Mage in Arah Path 3, which is the second boss after the Crusher and Hunter, seems to have a broken Defiant, and will fall over even with 5 stacks of Defiant. CC becomes pretty OP at him because of this. Some teams can keep him on the floor for the whole fight if they wish. This is of course if they aren’t using the stupid little glitch spot where he can’t hit you. CC should work like it does at this boss, except with some changes, as this boss can literally never get up if your team knows what they are doing. (Not like hes a hard fight anyhow).

They also need to fix large fights where some enemies can get 25+ stacks of Defiance. That is downright crazy and makes no sense, even for the sheer volume of players attacking it, 25 is ridiculous.