The Current PvE Meta
I’d like to see condition damage get some attention. When 100 blades can hit for 13-18k in 3 seconds, it’s hard to get excited about 600 hp / second from burning, or 100 hp / second bleed ticks (even if you have 25 stacks, it’s still comparatively pathetic.)
Anything I post is just the opinion of a very vocal minority of 1.
Support is not useless, the real problem with it is that it’s heavily tied into DPS, because most classes can go full berserker’s with a damage oriented trait set up and still have some decent support traits/abilities/whatnot going on.
Defiant is a real problem though I agree.
Content that is designed to be ‘doable’ by full teams of DPS will always make full DPS teams the meta. Full DPS teams will always achieve faster results, thus most people will gravitate towards them.
Until Anet changes this design philosophy, this isn’t going to change.
And yes, I know, sometimes when you get to level 40+ fractals maybe a little sprinkling of support is nice. Woohoo.
I’d love to see a boss dodge a thief’s burst, just for their reaction. That would be hilarious.
Also roll in that defensive stats are low value in PvE. In places where defensive stats appear to be nice, Champions will one shot you anyway. If you have max Vitality and max Toughness, but still get killed in one hit, you might as well just go Berzerkers.
welll u guys got ur wish anet nerfed warriors in this patch and buffed everyone else. No need for more qq on this supject.
“Just press 2 to win all the dps was us cuz we’re a
warrior and we’re the best class” Eugene
warrior and we’re the best class” Eugene
welll u guys got ur wish anet nerfed warriors in this patch and buffed everyone else. No need for more qq on this supject.
k, let’s go twiddle our thumbs everyone
We had some topics on this a while ago:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/State-of-Control-in-PvE/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Support-in-GW2-PvE/first
The second one is my opinion that remains largely unchanged. Long story short, I think Defiant sucks and both bosses and support/CC skills are mostly boring and uninspired. If bosses had actually meaningful adds or special abilities, Defiant wouldn’t be needed. Of course, cheesy methods like consumable spamming should be looked at beforehand.
Me personally, I think Defiant/unshakable needs to be reworked so that control is actually useful in dungeons
I disagree with your opinion.
Remove Defiant, and do you know what would change? Nothing. No boss has anything players have to interrupt. It would still be better to focus on DPS to kill a boss faster, than to waste time interrupting it and then kill it.
Switch the idea around, though. Keep Defiant exactly as it is. Add an ability that players HAVE to interrupt, or they fail the encounter. What’s the result? Players are forced to take control abilities, and they also need some team coordination to use the interrupts at the proper time.
The example above is extreme, but the idea behind it is true. The issue isn’t with Defiant; it’s how boss encounters are badly designed so interrupting the bosses is irrelevant. The same applies to common enemy encounters – common enemies don’t have Defiant, but no one bothers to use control abilities since it’s faster and easier to just kill them.
“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
I’d like to see condition damage get some attention. When 100 blades can hit for 13-18k in 3 seconds, it’s hard to get excited about 600 hp / second from burning, or 100 hp / second bleed ticks (even if you have 25 stacks, it’s still comparatively pathetic.)
Lol, you’re cute, 13-18k 100b? If my 100b hits for under 30k I’m usually pretty disappointed. Most of them hit for 35-40k and my personal highest is like 54k…
Legion of Doom [LOD] – Death ’n Taxes [DnT]
“People wanting content where Berserker sucks should remember that it needs be so hard
that they will cry, not just a river, but a huge ocean.” – Wethospu
“People wanting content where Berserker sucks should remember that it needs be so hard
that they will cry, not just a river, but a huge ocean.” – Wethospu
Why do people quit the game after reaching 80..? Its because they are only interessted in PvE and Anet keep making temporary content, so there is nothing for players to keep playing for…
Switch the idea around, though. Keep Defiant exactly as it is. Add an ability that players HAVE to interrupt, or they fail the encounter. What’s the result? Players are forced to take control abilities, and they also need some team coordination to use the interrupts at the proper time.
The example above is extreme, but the idea behind it is true. The issue isn’t with Defiant; it’s how boss encounters are badly designed so interrupting the bosses is irrelevant. The same applies to common enemy encounters – common enemies don’t have Defiant, but no one bothers to use control abilities since it’s faster and easier to just kill them.
There are actually quite a few bosses that contain 1-shot abilities that can completely kill a player in 2 shots. The most extreme that comes to mind for me is Arah path 3, the first boss. The problem is, you cannot interrupt the ability because of Defiant, so if anyone gets immobilized by the hunter, they are good as dead, which further proves my point as to why DPS is king, because if you can kill the boss quickly you won’t have to worry about being 2 shotted.
I do agree though that boss encounters need to be a little more dynamic in attacks/combat.
Neb.4170Content that is designed to be ‘doable’ by full teams of DPS will always make full DPS teams the meta. Full DPS teams will always achieve faster results, thus most people will gravitate towards them.
Until Anet changes this design philosophy, this isn’t going to change.
Honestly the design philosophy of not needing a healer/tank in a dungeon should stay that way. What Anet needs to work on is the pros and con’s of going a full DPS comp. For example, they should be very vulnerable to bosses and should watch out for Bosses/mobs unleashing a chain of combos of abilities or ganging up on one person. The pro would be that if they do manage to get off their abilities they can put a world of hurt onto bosses and mobs.
This however needs to be improved with boss AI (as they will need to learn to not just auto attack) and also needs to just make the boss more flexible rather than just taking 100b to the face every time. It isn’t that Full DPS is overpowered, it’s that the mobs don’t bother to dodge or move out of it, likewise they don’t really try to interrupt people when they use all of their abilities.
If the mobs/bosses worked like that, Players would actually need to coordinate their attacks and help one another, rather than just walk into a dungeon and just AA or use the occasional hard-hitting ability.
I guess I see open world PvE differently. In my opinion open world PvE should be played using any type of build you want. it really doesn’t matter as every build should be viable.
WvW and dungeons and PvP are totally different and builds should be more min/max as they are more of a strategy gameplay.
It’s a mix of things that are wrong, Improving Control really won’t stop full Zerk. none of the Control effects rely on stats.
What you need is more non-spike damage, so people have to heal through more. Rather than just dodging spike. It may also be a case that none specced healing is a bit too good, and maybe it needs lowering and the ratios on healing power need a bit of a boost.
The other issue is where this non-spike damage comes from. If it’s melee mobs, then DPS groups can kill them instantly. If it’s ranged they can cycle reflects. Possibly if your doing mobs you need some on death explosion effects to mean that killing them ultra fast isn’t always the way. If coming from the boss, it probably wants to be similar to a players auto-attack, fast recharging hit for moderate damage (this would also make confusion better, which wouldn’t be a bad thing).
Also the way that Power/Prec/Crit scales is I feel another issue. more or less they multiply each other so you get an Stat^3 situation if you run all 3. This means they have far more effect than any other stat when used together. I don’t feel this is necessarily a huge issue, but should be taken into account, if an entire team takes Power/Prec/Crit you can lower certain boss fights to 12 secs. If you can succesfully put down more DPS it should always make a fight faster, however by the point were you can put down so much DPS that a fight lasts 12 secs the risk vs reward goes right out the window, You probably have to at the most dodge once, and maybe put up 1 wall, so the risk is really minimal.
I feel there needs to be some kind of DPS buffering. Now this could come in many ways.
- It could be a buff which lowers damage. Maybe it gets a stack of for each X Damage it takes in a second. so if you do 30k Damage in a second it may get 3 stacks (This immediately make boon removal more useful if you want to do extreme damage).
- It could be a pulse damage that comes out every time it takes X amount of it’s health. Therefore to do the most damage you would have to DPS and Heal through the pulses.
- It could be a speeding up of attack speed depending on how much DPS it has coming in.
But with the situation as it is at the moment DPS can cut through a lot of a bosses dynamics.
Defiant also needs looking at, there needs to be more bosses that where CC is a meaningful and necessary part of the fight. I don’t think it should be CC or do nothing. But CC and do significantly more makes a lot of sense.
(edited by Ratty.5176)
Support is not useless, the real problem with it is that it’s heavily tied into DPS, because most classes can go full berserker’s with a damage oriented trait set up and still have some decent support traits/abilities/whatnot going on.
Defiant is a real problem though I agree.
The guy hit it in the nail. People talk like dps character dont’ do any support.
Even if I’m wearing full zereker I can still use controll skill.
This topic is mainly to debate and discuss about people’s attitudes towards the current state of the game (PvE wise). So keep it clean guys~
In GW2, there exists a trinity of control, support, and DPS. Currently, both control and support are near useless while DPS reigns king. This is due mainly to poor mob AI and bosses containing the Defiant/Unshakable buffs. Because of this, control mechanics (knockdowns, stuns, fears, etc) are virtually useless as a target can ignore it. There is a purpose to this, however, as it is to make sure control does not become too powerful (knocking bosses down over and over again) however because this buff is so strong, control is currently under-powered and not even close to being up to par.
Likewise, support is also lacking in that it is most often not worthwhile to pursue due to heal scaling being somewhat lackluster and boon duration also being quite lackluster.
As a result, DPS in this game is the strongest and has little risk associated with it. Sure, you are less tanky and more squishier, but using the dodge mechanic a player can easily keep themselves alive (a group managed to kill lupi in 40 seconds…that really shouldn’t be possible). Because support and control are most of the time useless and due to mob’s not bothering to dodge any abilities DPS is the strongest role to go as it contains more strengths than weaknesses. Period.
What do you all think of the current PvE meta? What would you do to improve it and what would you like to see? Me personally, I think Defiant/unshakable needs to be reworked so that control is actually useful in dungeons, while buffing support gear/abilities. Currently the game is way too favorable towards DPS builds in that they can very easily do everything with little risk and just completely tear through mobs.
defiant buff was an easy temporary fix imo
they need to make control viable again, and it’s not that difficult CC immunity bar
as the boss is CC’ed it fills up and when full the boss cannot be cc’ed for a set time.
the stronger the CC the more it fills the bar.
see, it’s the opposite of defiant and it works, while keeping the CC control spec still viable.
This is how swtor did cc control in pvp so kudos to them, though they never did balance it properly.
i remember in gw1 mobs run out of aoe and run to range from melee when needed. they also could interrupt you and spam combo skills. they were nasty and challenging, and they were not even bosses…
what happen to that ai? went drunk, enjoyed life too much and never came back?
i think the combat dynamics in this game are balanced only with pvp in mind, if you do some pvp match you realize that cc, boons, conditions, damage mitigations and coordinations (as well as a good graphic card) make combats really alive and dynamic.
if in pve there could be something similar you would see people with more builds variety.
a good start could be deleting armor and weapon stats. leave us only with runes and trinkets to do the tricks, the higher the tier of the weapon and armor the higher the damage and damage mitigation.
this would allow easier number, more player skill (instead of just autoattack and busrt and dodge.), mobs with less hp, more meaning to conditions and protection.
defiant need to be nerfed too. i mean i have a moa transformation skill that is only viable in pvp, i cannot use it in pve because the cooldown is to long to waste an elite on a random mob and every other boss is invulnerable to it. what’s the purpose of this in a dungeon with only five player in it?
i can understand they don’t want to make us chain moa transformation on jormag (would be so hilarious though), but at least in istance let us enjoy some different skill rather than autoattack + burst damage (if any)!!
that said, i’m not specced in pvt (mostly carrion and celestial and undead runes) and i never been one shotted by anything so far. the most powerful bosses need at least 2 or even 3 hit (you can have time to heal usually)
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I woudl love to see berserker DPS parties speedrun kills of some of the guild boss bounties for once like pre-nerf Komali, 2-Mult etc.
One simple solution would be to have scaling perma Retaliation on a few bosses. Oh wait I forget HOTW is so boring.
Maybe Anet should have a comprehensive reward system that scale rewards to parties that have people with low achievement points and/or have not played together extensively and/or have fewer than 2 heavy classes.
Apologies to those who may find my posts on GW2 forums offensive and hateful.
(edited by Khal Drogo.9631)
I feel that Anet was spot-on with the Veteran Karkas (both types) from Southsun. Take a look:
1) They walk around randomly, making it harder to chain skills/increasing the value of CC such as immobilize
2) They have a consistent, moderate damaging attack (such as their immobilizing spit), with a few uses of their burst ability (such as their roll attack)
3) Constant rebuffing of high damaging retalition forces either a more cautious approach when DPSing or abilities that boon strip
4) Karka hatchling forces you to make a decision between burning a dodge to remove the conditions (like blind) or endure it for some time so you can dodge the more dangerous attacks from the veteran karka.
5) CC abilities are not so abusive. They seldom use their AoE knockdown, but when they do, they usually force you to burn two dodges so you can avoid it entirely.
6) They don’t have massive amounts of HP, it’s just all of the above combined that makes them a challenging and relatively lengthy (depending on build/profession) battle.
If only they could follow similar design to future content (or rework of the current one)
Also, as someone mentioned above, most classes can support while being full DPS-oriented. My suggestion is that support abilities (such as shouts) should only be group-wide if you pick a certain trait from a support-oriented trait, thus forcing a warrior to commit to some supportive build, even if in a small degree, in case he wants to FGJ his group, for example.
Combo is another aspect that should also be looked at. They either require teamwork or high single player knowledge/rotation to work, and both cases should be more rewarding than single-activation skills. As it is right now, it’s much easier and more effective to simply stack FGJ instead of blasting fire fields, for example. Most other combos are rather underwhelming either in numerical value or utility in the current PvE environment.
(edited by Rainweaver.7302)
Changing aggro priority from Toughness to Power would shake things up a lot (and make more sense too).
I mean, if you were a monster, who would you nom on first? The tough chewy dude who barely tickles, or the squishy munchkin doing 20+k crits?
(edited by Alacrity.4312)
Changing aggro priority from Toughness to Power would shake things up a lot (and make more sense too).
Got to love that logic.
Cool they HUGELY nerfed once again both my PVE profession in name of PvP
What about PvE players start to protest seriously stopping to play for some days?
We are really treated like series C players i m really tired…..
And yet they didn t reply ONCE to the strong pve complaints everywhere…
GW2 balance:
A PvE player is supposed to avoid a 1-2 second 1 shotting aoe.
A WWW player is considered uncapable of avoiding a 5,75 second aoe for half his health.
A PvE player is supposed to avoid a 1-2 second 1 shotting aoe.
A WWW player is considered uncapable of avoiding a 5,75 second aoe for half his health.
Get all 8 classes. Youll always have the new meta
Why do people quit the game after reaching 80..? Its because they are only interessted in PvE and Anet keep making temporary content, so there is nothing for players to keep playing for…
Well how about some long term PvE. How about some PvE that are designed for long term interest and progression.
Add raids. Raids are fun. That’s more people happy in the long run. Add player made dungeons. Again more long term content.
Add housing system. Again more long term content.
Add a naval system and a ocean to explore and hunt treasure in like Zelda Wind Waker.
There are actually quite a few bosses that contain 1-shot abilities that can completely kill a player in 2 shots. The most extreme that comes to mind for me is Arah path 3, the first boss. The problem is, you cannot interrupt the ability because of Defiant, so if anyone gets immobilized by the hunter, they are good as dead, which further proves my point as to why DPS is king, because if you can kill the boss quickly you won’t have to worry about being 2 shotted.
That boss fight is just fine as it is. He has a high risk – high reward mechanic. If you go in melee, you can kill him pretty fast (I’ve seen him die in under 30 seconds), but it takes a skilled team to do that.
Bring condi removal, and a guardian with good reflexes for that fight, and no one should die.
Also, that boss doesn’t 2-shot. He one shots, no matter how tanky you are, he’s killing you in 1 shot if you don’t dodge it. I’ve seen my combat log when he hits… It’s like 60k damage.
Legion of Doom [LOD] – Death ’n Taxes [DnT]
“People wanting content where Berserker sucks should remember that it needs be so hard
that they will cry, not just a river, but a huge ocean.” – Wethospu
“People wanting content where Berserker sucks should remember that it needs be so hard
that they will cry, not just a river, but a huge ocean.” – Wethospu
Raids are not the solution.If i wanted a Raid system i would play WoW which i left due to that.
I do like long commitment pve but instead of 10,20,30+ Raids i would prefer something like a World/server effort.Along the lines of current world bosses but on a bigger scale.Something like ,on wow terms, the opening of AQ.
Think a server wide raid that you can assist and get rewards on your own terms.
Not 3-4 days a week for 4 hours.
… and bosses containing the Defiant/Unshakable buffs. Because of this, control mechanics (knockdowns, stuns, fears, etc) are virtually useless as a target can ignore it. There is a purpose to this, however, as it is to make sure control does not become too powerful (knocking bosses down over and over again) however because this buff is so strong, control is currently under-powered and not even close to being up to par.
I tend to disagree a bit. I think if you run with a good group who brings and uses a lot of control skills, you will see those defiant stacks melt away and get some valuable CC in quite frequently. Problem is it seems like a lot of people focus only on their pure dps skills while dodging and such. I have, for example, run with my mesmer and made sure to use diversion on cooldown. I had a warrior and a guardian, both with hammer offhand. My diversion would strip 3 or 4 stacks of defiant on its own, leaving the others to take away 1 or 2 more stacks and then knock the boss around. This would happen every 20-30 seconds and give us a nice reprieve. People should try a more group CC effort before knocking the defiant mechanic.
Likewise, support is also lacking in that it is most often not worthwhile to pursue due to heal scaling being somewhat lackluster and boon duration also being quite lackluster.
I agree healing power scales badly. I wish they would sort of “stratify” it more. Make heals with 0 healing power a little weaker, but heals with lots of healing power stronger. Boon duration seems fine to me, though.
As a result, DPS in this game is the strongest and has little risk associated with it. Sure, you are less tanky and more squishier, but using the dodge mechanic a player can easily keep themselves alive (a group managed to kill lupi in 40 seconds…that really shouldn’t be possible). Because support and control are most of the time useless and due to mob’s not bothering to dodge any abilities DPS is the strongest role to go as it contains more strengths than weaknesses. Period.
This is pretty much true. Berserker groups tend to be the most efficient if they can survive long enough to deal their dps. I would like to see more content with mechanics like some of those in fractals. Fire shaman, frost elemental, and old tom each have a single important mechanic that involves the players interacting with the environment and/or performing the fight a certain way. I think they could add more mechanics to a single fight and use phases like lupicus. For example you dps and dodge, phase 2 you have to bring the boss to a certain spot and hit a switch, phase 3 you have to hide behind something to avoid a special attack or something. There are endless possibilities. I just want to see more mechanics and less tank/spank. It would make support rolls more useful during those intermission moments, and if a phase had adds to deal with, control would become more useful.
Raids are not the solution.If i wanted a Raid system i would play WoW which i left due to that.
I do like long commitment pve but instead of 10,20,30+ Raids i would prefer something like a World/server effort.Along the lines of current world bosses but on a bigger scale.Something like ,on wow terms, the opening of AQ.
Think a server wide raid that you can assist and get rewards on your own terms.
Not 3-4 days a week for 4 hours.
Raids in GW2 don’t necessarily have to be a carbon copy of the ones in WoW. In fact, such a design is doomed to fail since the games are completely different. I think a sort of 8-man instance with bosses using multiple mechanics and requiring a high level of team work is totally possible in GW2. Rewards could be tokens for ascended gear and/or sets of exotic gear with unique skins. It would essentially be the same as current dungeons, only with a larger team, more challenging content emphasizing mechanics and team work, and rewards to reflect the higher challenge.
Off the top of my head: condition damage builds need some love. As it stands, direct damage reigns supreme, which kills all build diversity. (what little there is)
Problem with this being: the stacks, and the (dis)ability for them to benefit from criticals.
Support heavy classes like Elementalist or Engineers also need alot of work; can’t speak for engineers but elementalists at least are overworked and underpaid.