The Hitpoint System is Outdated.
Of course a cleric in D&D doesn’t just sit and heal the entire time, because as I explained, healing skills and items in D&D aren’t there to just be spammed on someone while they are taking a beating, they are there to set the maximum number of encounters you can go through before you need to rest.
It’s the fact that in MMOs people flip their stack ten times as badly when they are made to rest for extended periods unless they find a healer than when they are forced to wait for a healer to fill their group, that lead to the idea of out of combat healing being abandoned in MMOs very quickly. That is unlike trinity which is still not fully gone, because nobody has fully figured out anything that replaces it without losing half the archetypes in the process yet.
D&D character archetypes work very differently than they do in MMOs for a lot of reasons though. For example a D&D Fighter is usually both by far the most durable and most damaging character in the entire party. The tradeoff is that a fighter doesn’t do a whole lot other than fighting. They don’t find traps, they don’t negotiate with potential allies, they don’t have survival skills, they don’t stealthily scout, they don’t have vast knowledge, and they don’t cast any of the hundreds of utility spells that are not combat related. A fighter just kills things, and does so better than just about anyone else.
It’s because in MMOs you can’t ever solve a quest by doing anything other than fighting that the designers had to come up with ways of packing all the nuanced skills, magic and knowledge into the combat.
(edited by Aetrion.8295)
It’s the fact that in MMOs people flip their stack ten times as badly when they are made to rest for extended periods unless they find a healer than when they are forced to wait for a healer to fill their group that lead to that whole idea being abandoned in MMOs within a mere 5 years, unlike trinity which is still not fully gone yet, because nobody has figured out anything that replaces it without losing half the archetypes in the process yet.
The idea of healing in-between encounters has been abandoned already and has nothing to do with the trinity. Sitting idle while resting to recover hit points is not exciting, that’s why in games like GW1 and GW2 you are healed to maximum health very quickly when out of combat. Which is one of the best gameplay design choices in recent MMORPG history.
What kind of “archetypes” are you losing if you remove the trinity?
It’s because in MMOs you can’t ever solve a quest by doing anything other than fighting that the designers had to come up with ways of packing all the nuanced skills, magic and knowledge into the combat.
In The Secret World there are investigation quests which require some thinking to solve. In Guild Wars 2 itself we have encounters that require something other than fighting too, for example jumping puzzles. There are also numerous puzzles inside dungeons that rarely require any kind of fighting to solve.
What no MMORPG has is the requirement for specific stats to solve these kinds of encounters because that would make them forced. For example, if traps can only be disabled by a Thief, then a dungeon with loads of traps will REQUIRE a Thief to progress. Which goes against the main principle of the game, play how you want.
What kind of “archetypes” are you losing if you remove the trinity?
Pretty much any character who isn’t primarily a fighter is lost. MMOs have already trimmed class variety down to practically nothing with their overemphasis on combat and enforced party size and so on.
In Ultima Online someones character could be a seamstress who fights with a tame walrus. Sure, that wasn’t a very powerful character, but because the game didn’t enforce strict 5 member groups or instanced dungeons that were specifically balanced to require an exact number of powerful characters there wasn’t any problem with taking that character along on an adventure regardless. That was actual freedom to play how you want.
I’m not saying UO was better in every regard, but you’d have to be bonkers to not realize just how many possible characters have become lost, and how GW2 is happily hacking away at what little variety remains. The only thing they still have to do is allow you to switch your class just like you can switch masteries and there will be absolutely no actual character left in the characters.
It’s pathetic that you only get to pick from eight (soon to be nine) pre-packaged types of characters that cannot receive any lasting customization beyond that and have had their ideal builds determined by the meta mathletes before most people even got to experiment. We are way off the mark when it comes to actually letting people play the way they want.
What no MMORPG has is the requirement for specific stats to solve these kinds of encounters because that would make them forced. For example, if traps can only be disabled by a Thief, then a dungeon with loads of traps will REQUIRE a Thief to progress. Which goes against the main principle of the game, play how you want.
It doesn’t have to require a thief if disabling the traps isn’t the only way to advance.
Maybe the traps sound an alarm that summons guards, and simply beating up the guards gets you through just the same. Not having a thief doesn’t stop you from completing the dungeon, but if you do have a thief it goes quicker and the thief gets to enjoy leveraging their unique skills.
(edited by Aetrion.8295)
Yea, but how do you know how easy it will be in Heart of Thorns?
And let’s not forget that the reason the game is so easy is because it has to cater to all DPS parties. It’s this insistence that you should not ever need a healer or tank that keeps the game from being decently challenging to people who play anything other than DPS.
Wrong
The reason the game is easy is because it has to cater to average casual players. This is not bad in itself since it’s a huge market that makes Anet a lot of money BUT that’s the reason the game is easy.
So people that don’t spend thousands of hours in game and learn every bit of theoretical knowledge then practice hundreds of times still have a chance to play and enjoy themselves.
What’s the side effect? People that do play thousands of hours and sink a lot of time into optimizing their play methods become incredibly effective at the game and that’s where your “all dps parties” are born really.
Really good players can play with no toughness/vitality/healing power because the game is designed in such a way that it presents moderate challenge to average players. You can easily understand now how above-average and higher players find it easy.
The instance of “not needing a healer or tank” applies to all roles in this game – you don’t need any fixed hard roles to complete. Even in full nomad’s you can still complete content easily. Not fast – but easy.
This was and is intended by the developers.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
The best way to make tank/healer builds viable in a setting where they aren’t needed is to make them able to do what a full dps would do almost as well as a dps would. This is the core of why i think healing power is a bad stat. The more of your stat budget you spend on non-dps stats, the worse your dps is going to be.
Yea, this is definitely true. The damage difference between a DPS geared character and a non-DPS geared character is so huge that it’s just not worth it giving that up. If you want to have healing as your primary stat you lose 80% of your damage, which simply isn’t in any way proportional to what you gain.
This already exists in the form of group aegis, blinds, reflects, stealth, invulns, interupts, dodges etc. A healer remains pointless if you set up your dps classes with these support abilities.
Being able to slot a few abilities that make you provide support isn’t the same as actually being able to create a support character though. Besides, Guardian shouldn’t be the only class that ever gets to play the support role.
But isn’t having comparable dps to a fully dps geared character while still being really tanky and healy absurd?
I mean – why go full dps and have 100% damage and 0% sustain when you can go tank/healer and have let’s say 80-100% damage and 70-80% sustain.
No opportunity cost makes this silly and absurd.
Also – skills and traits are what define your “role” in GW2 – not your gear. I’ve explained it a million times before. You don’t have to wear gear specific to the “support role” – that role you can fill by selecting your :
-Skills – via weapon and utilities.
-Traits.
And Guardian isn’t the only support oriented class – other classes can do that quite well too. The fact that you seem to not know this is disappointing.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
But isn’t having comparable dps to a fully dps geared character while still being really tanky and healy absurd?
I mean – why go full dps and have 100% damage and 0% sustain when you can go tank/healer and have let’s say 80-100% damage and 70-80% sustain.
No it isn’t absurd, because there is no ceiling to the usefulness of damage unless investing straight into damage eventually has diminishing returns.
As it currently stands damage increases exponentially as you stack more damage stats, and since you can always use more damage there absolutely no good reason to not go all the way with it.
If a character that sacrifices a little damage gets a substantial payoff in other areas however it introduces diminishing returns to straight stacking and thereby actually creates a reason to not stack straight damage. Stacking into a single direction should get less and less effective the further you go, not more and more as it currently is.
The fact that currently adding the slightest amount of other stats than damage into your build penalizes you to a huge degree on the damage because of how every damage stat is a multiplier is what’s absurd.
Where they come from for the purpose of roleplaying games is stuff like D&D and other table top games. In those games their biggest function is not determining whether or not you die during a fight, but setting limits to how much adventuring you can do before you have to rest. These are also the games that give us the roleplay archetypes that people want to be able to play when they ask for tanks and healers. As a result of games like D&D measuring your progress not only by how quickly you can kill a monster, but by how many monsters you can take on before you have to make camp there is a significant emphasis on having party members that can extend your parties endurance throughout the adventure.
Only in Pen & Paper RPGs there are NO Healer/Tank roleplay Archetypes. There is no “I want to play a Healer” in real RPGs. Unless we are talking about the DnD 4th Edition which tried to put the MMORPG trinity model in a pen & paper system and wasn’t liked at all by veteran players. It is the only PnP RPG I’ve played that tried to introduce a Tank and a Healer archetype (and it was dumb).
There IS no trinity in real RPGs, there are no Healers / Tanks either. A good game master won’t allow a character to “Tank”, it’s just a dumb, unrealistic and silly concept to have a guy with full heavy armor that deals little damage to “force” mobs on him. Same with Healers really, in traditional RPGs Healers can be the best damage dealers too (and without investing in different stats) It’s called versatility. You don’t have to spec for healing.
Healers / Tanks were created specifically for online video games and that happened for a simple reason:
Do not allow players to finish content by themselves and force players to form groups to give emphasis to the second M “Multiplayer”. In the end companies found out that healers and tanks had a hard time completing content on their own so they gave them some damage to do. But it wasn’t enough.So we get to GW2 where they decided to remove Healers and Tanks completely and make a game closer to the roots of RPGs. I guess newer RPG players and especially MMORPG players can’t grasp this yet, but they still try to twist things around as if Healers and Tanks existed in some form before MMORPGs
+1 to this – i wish more people read it.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
But isn’t having comparable dps to a fully dps geared character while still being really tanky and healy absurd?
I mean – why go full dps and have 100% damage and 0% sustain when you can go tank/healer and have let’s say 80-100% damage and 70-80% sustain.No it isn’t absurd, because there is no ceiling to the usefulness of damage unless investing straight into damage eventually has diminishing returns.
As it currently stands damage increases exponentially as you stack more damage stats, and since you can always use more damage there absolutely no good reason to not go all the way with it.
If a character that sacrifices a little damage gets a substantial payoff in other areas however it introduces diminishing returns to straight stacking and thereby actually creates a reason to not stack straight damage. Stacking into a single direction should get less and less effective the further you go, not more and more as it currently is.
The fact that currently adding the slightest amount of other stats than damage into your build penalizes you to a huge degree on the damage because of how every damage stat is a multiplier is what’s absurd.
So basically let’s people do 90% of berserker dps while having more healing and more tankiness – so easier encounters get even easier.
Where you would previously get 1 shot as a zerker and have the chance of wiping – no more issues – go 90% damage and with the benefit of the extra toughness and healing you can make 2-3 more mistakes ensuring you never have trouble with the content again.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
What kind of “archetypes” are you losing if you remove the trinity?
Pretty much any character who isn’t primarily a fighter is lost. MMOs have already trimmed class variety down to practically nothing with their overemphasis on combat and enforced party size and so on.
Everyone who isn’t a fighter is already lost even with the Trinity, which EXTRA Archetype will be lost if you remove the Trinity?
It’s pathetic that you only get to pick from eight (soon to be nine) pre-packaged types of characters that cannot receive any lasting customization beyond that and have had their ideal builds determined by the meta mathletes before most people even got to experiment. We are way off the mark when it comes to actually letting people play the way they want.
You said it yourself in UO you could play anything you want because there were no party size limits. So what exactly isn’t letting you play how you want in the open world? In fact you can play any way you want and never have a problem with it much like in UO or any other game.
Those “ideal” builds are used by those who want the best speedclear times. The GW2 ideal builds in particular at the moment try to find the highest possible DPS. If you actually take some time to check those ideal builds you will find out that they are full of varieties and there are sections in their build articles that describe what to do in specific situations. There is no best build for everything, some traits and skills are always left open.
What no MMORPG has is the requirement for specific stats to solve these kinds of encounters because that would make them forced. For example, if traps can only be disabled by a Thief, then a dungeon with loads of traps will REQUIRE a Thief to progress. Which goes against the main principle of the game, play how you want.
It doesn’t have to require a thief if disabling the traps isn’t the only way to advance.
That is already happening. A thief is already a semi-mandatory for Arah, to allow the party to pass through encounters and ignore the mobs. In a way it does exactly what you are describing, a character using his non-combat skills so the party can overcome an encounter. In a similar way, many encounters become vastly easier with a Guardian with lots of reflects, or a Mesmer with blink and portal etc. Skills that deal no damage are already used extensively.
The problem isn’t that he can’t play how he wants – the problem is he wants recognition.
He wants people to go “oh it’s that super special snowflake guy” and want to have him around.
He wants the game to be changed in a way that makes him special and unique so people will like him.
Also regarding the thief thing – it also happens in other areas such as FOTM and Caudecus Manor.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
So basically let’s people do 90% of berserker dps while having more healing and more tankiness – so easier encounters get even easier.
Where you would previously get 1 shot as a zerker and have the chance of wiping – no more issues – go 90% damage and with the benefit of the extra toughness and healing you can make 2-3 more mistakes ensuring you never have trouble with the content again.
You’re making up the 90% number, not me. Because damage stats multiply with each other rather than simply adding up having 10% more DPS stats in your stat budget gives you a significantly bigger increase in DPS than just 10%.
Not that I’d expect you to understand this or care about it because it seems more and more that you’re not actually here to do anything other than just berate people who don’t share your “the game is awesome as it is” viewpoint.
What i’m wondering is if you’ll apologize for your behavior when heart of thorns comes out and things aren’t as they are anymore.
Apologize for trying to explain things to you? Not really.
You have a lot of hopes riding on heart of thorns but dungeon content won’t change with it – they haven’t announced any new dungeons either.
The number was an example – having good damage while having good survivability and healing is too much.
You should have good damage and bad survivability – like you have in full zerker gear.
If I could deal 80-90% of the damage I deal now as full zerker if I had let’s say 50% knight’s gear on me I probably wouldn’t even need to be awake for 90% of this game’s content. And I’m not even that good of a player.
It’s not a smart direction to take the game in.
I don’t berate people but I dislike it when the occasional “know it all” shows up and insists the game be reworked into their vision of what it should be when they have really no experience in game design and no hard data to even correctly identify if what they think is a problem is actually a problem.
I also particularly love it when that particular person has a lot of experience with the game. To quote you :
I’ve been playing for about a month now
Certainly it gives you all the insight and experience needed to improve the game.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
I think 3.5 is actually one of the worst balanced versions of D&D, because it’s just so completely overloaded with stuff. Pathfinder is a lot closer to what that system should have been as an evolution of what they had before.
I think 3.5 is actually one of the worst balanced versions of D&D, because it’s just so completely overloaded with stuff. Pathfinder is a lot closer to what that system should have been as an evolution of what they had before.
…Accusations of D&D overloaded “with stuff”. …And Pathfinder isn’t.
Lawd, rescue me.
Anyway, back on the rails, the issue of ‘healing’ or ‘support’ in GW2 isn’t so much that HP itself is a problem, but that there are weak stats in the defensive realm. The issue is compounded by active defenses rewarding twitch/skillful play. It’s a good thing, but those stats sagging in importance is a symptom of lacking good design.
While an HP-related scaling-benefit would be a suitable reward for skilled play, it really wouldn’t give much power to those who focus on defense stats. Vitality and Healing Power need suitable boosts, nearly multiplicative, to compete with the benefit of stacking Power/Ferocity/Precision. It’s why a few forumites are calling for the abolition of Healing Power entirely and rolling it up into Vitality.
Many alts; handle it!
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632
Increasing the effectiveness of healing power and defensive stats without increasing the demand for them doesn’t help anything. There is a practical cutoff point where more healing simply doesn’t give more survivability. You can’t heal yourself if you haven’t taken damage. That’s the whole reason why I’m saying HP needs to be used for more, so that there is actually a point to being able to generate more of it than the little you need to counteract incoming damage.
Also:
…Accusations of D&D overloaded “with stuff”. …And Pathfinder isn’t.
Did I say pathfinder was less overloaded? Seriously…
Increasing the effectiveness of healing power and defensive stats without increasing the demand for them doesn’t help anything. There is a practical cutoff point where more healing simply doesn’t give more survivability. You can’t heal yourself if you haven’t taken damage. That’s the whole reason why I’m saying HP needs to be used for more, so that there is actually a point to being able to generate more of it than the little you need to counteract incoming damage.
Also:
…Accusations of D&D overloaded “with stuff”. …And Pathfinder isn’t.
Did I say pathfinder was less overloaded? Seriously…
You can’t increase the demand for the defensive stats without making them required.
Not in GW2 where a good portion of defense is active defense. Healing isn’t active defense.
You still haven’t bothered to read anything that I’ve actually said about how to increase the demand without making it required have you?
You still haven’t bothered to read anything that I’ve actually said about how to increase the demand without making it required have you?
I have read it. I don’t agree that your changes wouldn’t make it required or that there wouldn’t be enough change for it to make any difference.
remember also that just because it’s not ‘required’ per se, doesn’t mean it’s not required.
I could get a group of 5 strong dps and run dungeons in wow. would we have as much success as a group with a tank and healer? absolutely not. but the content would be perfectly doable. we just might wipe and have to retry a few times.
if you make things so that having a tank or healer is useful, that isn’t especially distinct from having them be necessary.
If your stance is that healers cannot be allowed to be useful to a group without breaking what you consider to be a good balance solution for the game there is really no argument to be had.
It comes down to a matter of taste. I prefer games where people can play defense and support oriented characters, you seem to prefer games where only offensive characters exist.
There is simply no way to argue with someone who has such a radical stance that they can’t entertain the notion of a compromise. If you cannot be happy with the game unless the usefulness of tanks and healers is absolute zero then the devs should simply ignore you in my opinion, because you cannot be happy unless other people are unhappy. You cannot contribute to a discussion if your only point is that the other side of the discussion must cease to exist.
(edited by Aetrion.8295)
If your stance is that healers cannot be allowed to be useful to a group without breaking what you consider to be a good balance solution for the game there is really no argument to be had.
It comes down to a matter of taste. I prefer games where people can play defense and support oriented characters, you seem to prefer games where only offensive characters exist.
There is simply no way to argue with someone who has such a radical stance that they can’t entertain the notion of a compromise. If you cannot be happy with the game unless the usefulness of tanks and healers is absolute zero then the devs should simply ignore you in my opinion, because you cannot be happy unless other people are unhappy. You cannot contribute to a discussion if your only point is that the other side of the discussion must cease to exist.
No game will make everyone happy all of the time.
Defensive and Offensive exist on a scale. Pure Offensive on one end and Pure Defensive on the other end. And for this discussion Pure Offensive and Pure Defensive are as offensive and as defensive as you can get in this game respectively.
As you go more offensive, you give up defensive capabilities and vice versa. And that’s how it should be. Jacks of all Trades are rarely masters of all trades. They give up the mastery to have basic knowledge of a lot of fields.
And I’ve never said that you should stop posting or even insinuated it. So I don’t know where the last sentence came from at all.
If your stance is that healers cannot be allowed to be useful to a group without breaking what you consider to be a good balance solution for the game there is really no argument to be had.
It comes down to a matter of taste. I prefer games where people can play defense and support oriented characters, you seem to prefer games where only offensive characters exist.
There is simply no way to argue with someone who has such a radical stance that they can’t entertain the notion of a compromise. If you cannot be happy with the game unless the usefulness of tanks and healers is absolute zero then the devs should simply ignore you in my opinion, because you cannot be happy unless other people are unhappy. You cannot contribute to a discussion if your only point is that the other side of the discussion must cease to exist.
This is one of the only games out there where content is both group oriented and not requiring a set structure. you can contribute positively to a group as a support character; what you cannot do is do the content as efficiently as a full group of pure dps. If you try to run pure dps but are not good enough at it, you also will not do as well as someone who is. in that scenario you would probably benefit from the presence of a support.
This is how game balance stands, right now. i like this balance. by definition, any change to the balance is going to upset it. i understand you believe your change will be a positive one; we disagree. If you wish to convince others to your point of view, you must address their concerns in a way that resolves them without dismissing them out of hand, and show that the potential benefit of your change is worth the risk of a negative outcome. you haven’t done this. Without being able to view your thoughts i can’t say whether you have actually tried, but the impression i’ve gotten from your posts has been that you have not, and have simply expected people to agree with you because… what? i’m not actually even sure.
I’m not going to categorically state that your ideas could not improve the game but i am sufficiently dubious that i don’t want to throw my personal support behind the idea.
If your stance is that healers cannot be allowed to be useful to a group without breaking what you consider to be a good balance solution for the game there is really no argument to be had.
It comes down to a matter of taste. I prefer games where people can play defense and support oriented characters, you seem to prefer games where only offensive characters exist.
There is simply no way to argue with someone who has such a radical stance that they can’t entertain the notion of a compromise. If you cannot be happy with the game unless the usefulness of tanks and healers is absolute zero then the devs should simply ignore you in my opinion, because you cannot be happy unless other people are unhappy. You cannot contribute to a discussion if your only point is that the other side of the discussion must cease to exist.
This game was advertised as a no classic hard trinity MMO. It was marketed on the idea that you can’t be a tank and you can’t be a healer.
They specifically said they’re taking the idea of the old trinity and “throwing it out the window” – they said they don’t want people heavily invested into one role and want everyone to be a fighter regardless of what other stuff they’re doing.
There is simply no way to argue with someone who has such a radical stance that they can’t entertain the notion of a compromise.
There is no compromise to be found here – you’re in the wrong place. This is not the game you want it to be nor will it become the game you want it to be – it is that simple.
If you cannot be happy with the game unless the usefulness of tanks and healers is absolute zero then the devs should simply ignore you in my opinion, because you cannot be happy unless other people are unhappy.
It is perfectly natural and normal he feels this way because again I will remind you it was advertised that this game would have no tanks and healers so does it surprise you then to find among its players people who do not want tanks and healers?.
And the devs should most certainly not ignore him since he’s the core demographic this game attracts and was meant to sell to. It doesn’t really matter if a minority of tank/healer/trinity lovers get mad because they’ve confused themselves into asking the wrong thing in a place they shouldn’t have asked for it in the first place.
You cannot contribute to a discussion if your only point is that the other side of the discussion must cease to exist.
You started a discussion about something – people have pointed out why it is wrong and what the problems are. You seem to think people keep wanting to have this discussion but the only one who really wants to have it is you really.
This game was promised as a game with no hard roles, no trinity, no tanks and no healers. It was marketed as such and sold as such. Are you then so surprised to find a lot of people who dislike tanks/healers/the trinity?
This is the majority of GW2’s population – why change the game and upset them to accommodate a minority of trinity players? You already have tons of games that cater to you – wouldn’t you be happier there?
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
No game will make everyone happy all of the time.
Yup, which is why devs shouldn’t listen to people who feel entitled to have their wishes met to the degree where a compromise with what anyone else wants is unacceptable to them.
No game will make everyone happy all of the time.
Yup, which is why devs shouldn’t listen to people who feel entitled to have their wishes met to the degree where a compromise with what anyone else wants is unacceptable to them.
How about the devs listening to the folks they made this game for?
Did you even read what I wrote to you above? You have the compromise as well.
They added Nomad’s gear in game – you can now make a full healer or full tank in GW2 ( which was impossible at launch when it came to full healer) – there’s your compromise.
Of course you weren’t around back then so it’s most likely you didn’t even know about this fact.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
I’m sure the myriads of healing abilities, healing sigils, healing trait lines and full set of healing utilities that’s coming in with the new class are just some kind of mistake that happened while ANet was making the game for you and only you.
I mean, that is the only logical explanation right? Afterall it’s not like any game ever has self important elitists talking down to anyone who’s asking for a little more parity in the performance of different play-styles. Every time anything is buffed or nerfed or changed in any way it must be a mistake, because clearly the game was made exclusively for the people who liked things the way they were.
(edited by Aetrion.8295)
The myriads of healing abilities we have are by-product of the game’s intention to have no healer. How do I know?
Everyone has a mandatory healing slot – you can easily understand then how the developers intended for everyone to handle their own healing and not need or want anyone else doing it for them.
The trait lines are an option for people who want or need more healing – it was intended for a player to be able to heal himself more or less depending on need – it was never wanted or intended for a player to heal others in such a way that they no longer need to manage their own healing.
If that was the case – then why can’t we give up our healing skills and add another utility skill while relying on someone else to heal us? The fact that you can’t do this proves it was never intended for healing to be “outsourced” to another player
Now – to address the things “coming to the game” with Revenant – this is your compromise yet again – they are once again giving you the chance ( 2nd time after the introduction of Nomad gear) to role play to your heart’s content. And still you demand it to be taken further.
The game was not made exclusively for the people that it aims to cater to – but why would you go and tick them off just to cater to a minority? You still haven’t explained this to me. How is it a financially sound idea to annoy most of your customers so you can have some “parity” for a small minority of customers.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
This entire topic is about how to bring back the full range of RPG archetypes without enforcing trinity party compositions. I wouldn’t have to tell people we need to construct a whole new paradigm for how support works if I wanted it to go back to what it was.
you have no idea what RPG actually is. Roleplaying has nothing to do with archetypes at all, just with players and imagination. The archetypes you imagine to be vital are mmorpg entirely. I am too tired of your inability to understand anything that deviates from some games you got used to a few years ago to explain this in depth, so just inform yourself about pnp roleplay roots, not that I believe you will actually understand.
I’m sure the myriads of healing abilities, healing sigils, healing trait lines and full set of healing utilities that’s coming in with the new class are just some kind of mistake that happened while ANet was making the game for you and only you.
I mean, that is the only logical explanation right? Afterall it’s not like any game ever has self important elitists talking down to anyone who’s asking for a little more parity in the performance of different play-styles. Every time anything is buffed or nerfed or changed in any way it must be a mistake, because clearly the game was made exclusively for the people who liked things the way they were.
haha, now you have arrived at the “elitist” stage of arguments. You have no idea about mmorpg at all I should say. Have you actually ever played a trinity game succesfully or have you just been whining on their forums? Trinity is actually way harsher on personal performance than the GW2 system. I bet if GW2 went oldschool, you´d be one of the first people whining in here about how people are attacking you not being a good enough healer/buffer/debuffer.
No game will make everyone happy all of the time.
Yup, which is why devs shouldn’t listen to people who feel entitled to have their wishes met to the degree where a compromise with what anyone else wants is unacceptable to them.
Some things are impossible to compromise on.
You can’t make healers and tanks useful enough to make a difference in the game without making them required.
The healing aspects of the Revenant won’t be the builds in the dungeon meta. The DPS aspects of them will.
Edit to add: I don’t want open world PvP. But I understand that some people do want to 1v1 others in areas that don’t take up slots in WvW and uses their PvE skill set. So I’m not opposed to duel arenas in parts of the world. That’s my compromise since adding in something that they aren’t going to balance against is not something I really think they should do. So I can and do compromise where it’s possible.
(edited by Seera.5916)
You guys sound incredibly desperate to preserve the status quo. I guess we’ll see what Heart of Thorns brings. I wonder if you’ll be just as nasty to the devs if they happen to bring support and defense a little more to the front in PvE.
You guys sound incredibly desperate to preserve the status quo. I guess we’ll see what Heart of Thorns brings. I wonder if you’ll be just as nasty to the devs if they happen to bring support and defense a little more to the front in PvE.
So it’s desperate if one wants to try to preserve the parts of the game that make them fun for them?
It’s not fun to wait around to find someone to heal or tank. GW2 was sold as a game that would not have the holy trinity. Your suggestion would add in required roles just like the holy trinity does. That’s not the type of game GW2 is or desires to be.
And I’m nasty if I argue against something that would reduce the fun of the game for me? I haven’t insulted you, or told you to stop posting, or anything like that. So I do not understand why you’re calling me nasty.
It’s a shame that when arguments start going bad for people, that many people resort to insulting those who disagree with them. It really is.
Vitality would be better if it gave less HP and had a secondary effect such as extra endurance regen or boon duration.
Ouroboro Knight’s [OK]
So it’s desperate if one wants to try to preserve the parts of the game that make them fun for them?
You see, I’m trying to propose systems that let more people get to enjoy the game without making the play style that many people currently enjoy impossible.
The main thing I got back for this attempt is about 1 page worth of people saying I want to install the trinity, which I don’t, a slew of ad hominem, people saying that giving any validity at all to other play styles is a deal breaker for them, and people acting as though because they like the current state of things they can speak on ANet’s behalf when they tell people to simply leave.
A whole bunch of play styles currently have no useful role at all in PvE content except maybe being regarded as “training wheels”. Arguing against attempts to make things a little more equal, because you think the mere idea of a healer being useful to a group is a worse imposition on you than not ever being able to be part of performance oriented play is to them, basically just shows a huge amount of entitlement and self importance on your part.
So yea, thinking that being on equal footing with support players is worse for you than not being allowed in serious groups at all is for them is kind of ridiculous. Your whole argument basically is: “If someone else gets to have the same thing as me then the thing I have is somehow worse because of that!”, which it simply isn’t. The whole reason I made this topic is to discuss ways in which healers and tanks can be useful to a group without making an all DPS approach impossible.
When you argue against someone asking for parity you’re simply not arguing for DPS. You’re only arguing against Support and Tanks as though it’s simply impossible for everyone to have fun and because of that some people must not be allowed to have fun.
(edited by Aetrion.8295)
Speaking only from a PVE point of view… the ferocity stat is the real culprit.
A whole bunch of play styles currently have no useful role at all in PvE content except maybe being regarded as “training wheels”. Arguing against attempts to make things a little more equal, because you think the mere idea of a healer being useful to a group is a worse imposition on you than not ever being able to be part of performance oriented play is to them, basically just shows a huge amount of entitlement and self importance on your part.
Those roles ARE training wheels. And making them more effective will make them effective training wheels. Aka a low risk high reward situation.
You can make those roles higher DPS but only if you make zerk much safer without them losing DPS in the process else it’ll not be balanced. But this will just make the game easier and it’s already too easy.
The game is so easy because of people insisting that they need to be able to beat anything without a single point invested in defense. Just food for thought.
Maybe there need to be more ways to trade excess DPS for better protection just like there need to be more ways to trade excess healing for more damage. It’s not like my one idea is the single thing that bring perfect balance to non-trinity MMOs. Ultimately the way to actually make all classes useful without making the game too easy or making certain party comps required though is to look for ways in which the thing you want to do can be applied to filling different needs.
(edited by Aetrion.8295)
Show me where you need stats to support and maybe we’ll be going somewhere…..
Show me any content that when designed with tanking in mind wouldn’t break the current system of active damage mitigation.
Until then calling others out for logical fallacies when you, yourself are using several the most egregious being Ignoratio elenchi serves nothing for this thread or any discussion you wish to have.
People have shown you, that it is possible to build tanks and healers. They are equally as effective when it comes to their designed roles. However, they are not equal when it comes to dealing damage, and that is perfectly fine. The reason is because this game isn’t designed to have tanking and healing as a primary system. The primary systems for maintaining yourself and your group are active systems, not re-active systems. Dodges, blinds, blocks, aegis, invulne skills, etc… all exist on more frequently than healing for this reason.
To claim that opening the game up to more players is what your change will provide is questionable. What stats do you have that show this ?
Furthermore, how can you be certain that opening the game up in such a manner would bring in people who will be retained. Ultimately that is the end game for any business.
Right now it seems you are grasping at straws to make this game more appealing for you, because you actively refuse to swap from the archaic trinity system and as a current player and as shown by many other players within this thread we see absolutely no good that can or will come and you have yet to show this which leads to your argument losing all validity or credibility.
Have a nice day.
The primary support mechanic for multiple classes is providing heals, it’s also the only method of support that has it’s own associated stat, runes and sigils.
If that all didn’t exist and was replaced with specs that throw around blindness and reflects and other active support abilities, and you could spec your character up to specialize in those, yea, I would be with you completely.
However, the reality is, the majority of support mechanics in the game are focused on healing, we are getting even MORE healing abilities with Heart of Thorns, and that just kind of makes me think that just maybe healing should be good for something.
So it’s desperate if one wants to try to preserve the parts of the game that make them fun for them?
You see, I’m trying to propose systems that let more people get to enjoy the game without making the play style that many people currently enjoy impossible.
The main thing I got back for this attempt is about 1 page worth of people saying I want to install the trinity, which I don’t, a slew of ad hominem, people saying that giving any validity at all to other play styles is a deal breaker for them, and people acting as though because they like the current state of things they can speak on ANet’s behalf when they tell people to simply leave.
A whole bunch of play styles currently have no useful role at all in PvE content except maybe being regarded as “training wheels”. Arguing against attempts to make things a little more equal, because you think the mere idea of a healer being useful to a group is a worse imposition on you than not ever being able to be part of performance oriented play is to them, basically just shows a huge amount of entitlement and self importance on your part.
So yea, thinking that being on equal footing with support players is worse for you than not being allowed in serious groups at all is for them is kind of ridiculous. Your whole argument basically is: “If someone else gets to have the same thing as me then the thing I have is somehow worse because of that!”, which it simply isn’t. The whole reason I made this topic is to discuss ways in which healers and tanks can be useful to a group without making an all DPS approach impossible.
When you argue against someone asking for parity you’re simply not arguing for DPS. You’re only arguing against Support and Tanks as though it’s simply impossible for everyone to have fun and because of that some people must not be allowed to have fun.
That’s because this game was not designed around reactive play. You aren’t supposed to sit around and take damage so that someone who wants to play healer can heal.
You’re supposed to avoid the damage by dodging or utilizing reflects, aegis, etc. Or moving out of the way of the attack.
Healers will not be a useful thing in any group but inexperienced players until ANet reverses its decision on active defense.
Healers are not useful unless players take hits. And enough hits that their own heals prove not effective enough.
Your solution will not add healers to the game. It will add buffers to the game. Buffers that will make the already easy aspects of this game even easier. Because the meta groups will just add HP stacking to their might stacking routines and will speed through even faster than before. And will only increase the wedge between the meta players and the phiw players.
Your solution to a problem not everyone has only makes the existing problems in this game worse. And adds a problem to the game: makes it even easier when some players have been asking for an increase in difficulty.
The primary support mechanic for multiple classes is providing heals, it’s also the only method of support that has it’s own associated stat, runes and sigils.
If that all didn’t exist and was replaced with specs that throw around blindness and reflects and other active support abilities, and you could spec your character up to specialize in those, yea, I would be with you completely.
However, the reality is, the majority of support mechanics in the game are focused on healing, we are getting even MORE healing abilities with Heart of Thorns, and that just kind of makes me think that just maybe healing should be good for something.
The primary support mechanic is healing ?
Since when where and why ?
Last i checked the primary support mechanic was not getting hit. Active damage mitigation not reactive.
Show me where this is a thing in the current game. I’ll acknowledge healing exist, but to label it a primary is off point and utterly wrong.
Traits, runes and sigils do exist to amplify healing but if you were to actually quantify the numbers of those that exist compared to those that don’t, you’d find healing runes sigils and traits to be the minority.
In fact out of all the traits for every class you’re lucky to find 2 on any single class that amplify outgoing healing to allies. Compare that to the remaining 43 traits …. and you’ve already been proven wrong.
Lets talk runes next out of all the runes, only 1 directly effects outgoing healing Superior Rune of the Monk.
Sigils show the same thing only 1 increasing outgoing healing Sigil of Benevolence.
How is this a primary thing when clearly it’s an afterthought as shown by the design process ?
Healing runes, sigils and traits are only in the minority if you count them against all other runes, sigils and traits. Count them against things that give a benefit to blinding, blocking, reflecing or dodging and you’ll find that the game has an overwhelming bent toward healing in the support category. Let’s not forget that healing is the only support mechanic that has an entire stat and gear sets devoted to it either.
Saying that only one rune “directly affects outgoing healing” by completely ignoring all runes that provide you with healing power is an extremely dishonest definition of what constitutes directly affecting healing as well.
The thing is… healing power is not bad… same goes for vitality and toughness. The only reason its so rare to see is because of OP ferocity. For example why play a sustain fight with random mobs for 10 seconds whereas with ferocity you can kill the mob in 3 seconds without taking any damage. (only an example)
Same with something like soldier gear… why take the survivability. The only reason why the zerker meta is so widely seen is because of how amazingly strong ferocity is.
Just think for a moment if its removed or maybe capped at 200%… then the rest of the stats won’t be so useless. With crit damage on x1.5 – x2.0 it won’t be that easy to shred through toughness or vitality, which instantly makes vitality/toughness/healing power so much more viable.
Even with the ventari specialization. Soooo much healing… yet in the end everyone will play shiro…
The game is so easy because of people insisting that they need to be able to beat anything without a single point invested in defense. Just food for thought.
Malarkey, this is. The game is easy because of players who don’t want every fight to be an edge-of-the-seat thrill ride. It’s easy because too many players are used to other MMO’s, where face-tanking is necessary and they don’t want to learn a new approach. It’s easy because games are about empowerment fantasies as well as about warriors and mages. The dungeon content, on the other hand, was hard until people did it enough that they’re now doing it by rote. Now, it’s old, stale and over-used.
Game content was easy long before all-glass gear became a thing. It was not made easy because people wanted to play with glass gear. Rather, use of glass gear became common because the game is easy. As the game has aged, use of glass gear has propagated down the player skill continuum.
Damage stats multiplying on top of themselves is a problem, that’s true. Defensive stats cost exactly the same point by point in your stat budget, but since they don’t multiply with each other their ultimate effect cannot ever be equally great.
That’s not the full story though, because even if healing power, toughness and vitality were much more powerful and scaled exponentially the same way that offensive stats do, they still become meaningless the second you dodge an attack or are sitting at full health. There is simply no such thing as too much damage, but there is such a thing as too much healing, and as it currently stands you hit too much healing long before you ever have to worry about making healing power scale better.
Healing runes, sigils and traits are only in the minority if you count them against all other runes, sigils and traits. Count them against things that give a benefit to blinding, blocking, reflecing or dodging and you’ll find that the game has an overwhelming bent toward healing in the support category. Let’s not forget that healing is the only support mechanic that has an entire stat and gear sets devoted to it either.
Saying that only one rune “directly affects outgoing healing” by completely ignoring all runes that provide you with healing power is an extremely dishonest definition of what constitutes directly affecting healing as well.
How is this dishonest.
When you take your argument about support being for the group one must naturally ignore the innate bonuses and looking solely at what it does for others not for oneself.
To do that would be dishonest.
Or would you rather we do the all encompassing approach and analyze every supportive aspect in the game and come back to the same conclusion that healing is the minority ?
Lets go….
If healing is the primary then
Why do we have the following in larger numbers
- Blinds, Invlunes, aegis, stealth, vigor, fury , banners, shouts, conditions (vuln specific)….
additionally why can someone overload their bar with multiple of the following and yet only take 1 direct heal.
Lets assume that you’re going to say that this is dishonest and doesnt include weapons. Okay…
Of all the weapons how many have healing innately on them ?
Of those to which classes are they associated with ?
If your answer to any of those is less than half, congrats it’s not a primary mechanic.
Damage stats multiplying on top of themselves is a problem, that’s true. Defensive stats cost exactly the same point by point in your stat budget, but since they don’t multiply with each other their ultimate effect cannot ever be equally great.
Defensive stats do multiply.
For every point of toughness and vitality you have you increase your EHP (Effective hitpoints)
All of that comes in before we even talk about healing which is another way to have more EHP.
Arguing against attempts to make things a little more equal, because you think the mere idea of a healer being useful to a group is a worse imposition on you than not ever being able to be part of performance oriented play is to them, basically just shows a huge amount of entitlement and self importance on your part.
When you argue against someone asking for parity you’re simply not arguing for DPS. You’re only arguing against Support and Tanks as though it’s simply impossible for everyone to have fun and because of that some people must not be allowed to have fun.
1. I find it amusing how you come in here after playing for 1 month and demand the game be changed to better fit your vision and suit your tastes better and still somehow we’re the entitled and self important ones – not you.
2. It’s not about some people not being “not allowed” to have fun – their fun ruins my fun. And they came to the wrong place to have fun in the first place if they wanted to have “fun” in the traditional MMO way.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
The game is so easy because of people insisting that they need to be able to beat anything without a single point invested in defense. Just food for thought.
Maybe there need to be more ways to trade excess DPS for better protection just like there need to be more ways to trade excess healing for more damage. It’s not like my one idea is the single thing that bring perfect balance to non-trinity MMOs. Ultimately the way to actually make all classes useful without making the game too easy or making certain party comps required though is to look for ways in which the thing you want to do can be applied to filling different needs.
The game is easy because it caters to casual players.
That’s why some people can beat anything without 1 point into defense – because they’re very skilled. And since the game’s difficulty is centered on average players they are capable of “outplaying” the game.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”