I’m interested in hearing the thoughts of the community on whether this game would benefit from making debuff/buff and condition/cleanse a central or core combat mechanic. This is an idea I have heard mentioned several times on the forums, although I have not been able to find a thread dedicated to the issue. My apologies if I am mistaken.
Damage and Utility Tradeoffs
Currently the game centers around damage/damage/damage. While there are some players who enjoy this, others have felt it leads to a lack of strategic depth. I think the latter concern becomes fairly clear when you look at the current class meta; builds revolve around producing or mitigating damage, and this mitigation often comes through invulnerability. This pigeon holes several classes into builds that utilize the most efficient set of damage or protection characteristics, rendering a large portion of available skills generally sub-par or (sadly) sometimes useless.
The introduction of a full-fledged system of debuff/buff and condition/cleanse would serve two purposes: (1) an increase in strategic game play; (2) the creation of a meta that allows and gives incentive to players to make meaningful trade offs between damage and utility.
These would serve in both PvE, where dungeon encounters and large-scale events could be designed around these mechanics, and PvP, where team composition would entail difficult and important considerations (too much condition/cleanse and you can’t do enough damage; not enough, and your team will be crushed).
Flexibility and the Introduction of Roles
Let me be clear about what I am asking about: I have no interest in a return of the trinity. I think, however, there was something appealing about the system—the presence of roles. If people are concerned that the introduction of certain roles would turn map chat into “LF1M condi” group spam, where players must wait to do content because they need someone of a specific build to bring along, then I think this could be averted or mitigated in at least two ways:
First, ArenaNet could use the path system to create (or modify current) dungeons so that only one or two paths utilized this new mechanic, allowing players the flexibility to continue to run parties based only on damage/self-heal/dodge.
Second, and this could work in various permutations with the first, ArenaNet could introduce a Hard Mode to existing dungeons that revolves around the new debuff/buff and condition/cleanse mechanic.
As a major side benefit, this could revitalize current content and allow it to be rereleased to the player base.
Implementation?
I used to raid in WoW during BC. As a healer, my game consisted of staring at colored bars that alternated between green, yellow and red. Like a demented traffic light, my UI dictated when to activate a heal. Entire raids were spent staring at this portion of the screen, which in larger events often covered half a monitor.
I mention this sorry state of affairs because implementation of this debuff/buff and condition/cleanse mechanic might be tricky, and I am not just referring to the fact that a good number of skills would need to be introduced or reworked. Rather, my concern is that it would be difficult to make this mechanic interesting without it becoming a status bar mini-game, where players are punished for looking at anything other than one part of the screen. Visualization seems key, but I don’t have any good ideas on this front (although I imagine other people do).
There is more that could be said, but this is sufficient for now. Your thoughts?