Guild Wars 2

There’s another problem with this mechanic that goes against one of their design goals. They stated that they changed the way skills activated so that the player was watching the mob rather than the health bar. GW1 was very much a case of watching red bars and choosing the right time to use a skill, whether that was an interrupt, a spike or a heal.

This mechanic means that once more, CC characters are watching the health bar of the enemy rather than the enemy itself.

Design goal fail ArenaNet.

I’m not sure the Defiant system in the current form is good design.
I mean all weapons that rely on CC like Warrior’s Mace/Hammer become useless.

Maybe make it so CC is applied but lasts 10% less time for each stack of Defiant.

It’s a great mechanic because it gives a really good reward for a coordinated team (for example, interrupting Kohler every time it tries to pull people makes that fight a lot faster and easier)

The problem is that it is not explained anywhere in the regular game and the short tooltip is not enough for most to immediately grasp how it works so most people ignore it.

Dungeons sure are gimmicky in this game makes me just want to avoid them.

One of the issues with it is that players like to feel like they’re having a large impact.

Everyone is looking to be that person who gets the interupt. They dont want to strip defiant, they want to knockback/down/stun

If you’re running with friends, pick the person with the strongest CC (typically the one that lasts longest, like a fear or stun) and let everyone know that this person should always be using that when the defiant stacks are off.

Having removed the desirability to be the person who gets the final hit in (as doing so now is being equated with kittening up, as the role has been assigned) you start to see more and more people stripping defiant stacks, as they’re now much more at ease with using their cc skills to do it.

It’s also important to note that some classes do not have a plethora of “hard cc” (Hard cc is cc that removes defiant stacks. Think like the difference between knockdown and freeze) If you routinely use these classes, you may notice it (for example, a greatsword warrior has no hard CC on his main skills, so if you’re running 2/3 warriors like some parties I see, then only 2 players are ever really stripping defiant stacks.)

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Panzen.4625:

For some bosses, it certainly is an interesting mechanic that potentially leaves a lot of room for coordinating for a good benefit.
However, I think that some mobs get way too many stacks of it. In content for groups of 5 it should never go over 5 or so.
Why should anyone even care pushing down the stacks when the mob gets 12 of them?

An example are the endbosses of the dredge fractal. In theory, you can knock down the stacks and then interrupt their heal. Instead, most groups just continue shooting it. Sometimes they have someone with daze (or was the interrupt effect that bypasses it something else?) or someone using poison at the right moment…
But normally, just continue shooting.

Nothing bypasses it anymore, but fear used to bypass it until they stealth nerfed it, effectively cutting off one of the best moves a necro had. Now fear is just another lackluster condition that several other classes can outperform necro on and is useless on bosses.

This is my major issue, we have CC on “almost” every skill yet they made it utterly useless to use, why give us all this CC if it affects absolutely nothing or at best a fraction of a second…pointless to me.

I agree with the others, illusion of depth, no real depth…

I feel the same way about this way point locking too to fix res rushing, silly mechanics..that just frustrate, the Dungeons need a over haul..not more poor mechanics added on top of old poor mechanics..

It’s interesting, having done thousands of instances in another major MMO, I thought through my experiences there. In normal and heroic dungeons there was never a lot of actual coordination through chat communication. You needed to know the fight and what to be attacking. There were certain classes with good interrupts and they would use them. CC targets were marked and a dungeon leader would ask a hunter or rogue to remove them. But, I don’t really remember them at all in terms of the coordination required beyond what the trinity naturally offered. I know, very occasionally they was some major interrupt needed and someone would volunteer or be assigned. Basically, though, heroic dungeons were about knowing the fight and working within the trinity. There was minimal actual coordination through chat communications necessitated by the mechanics.

Raids were a different matter entirely. There, you had a schedule and interrupts were assigned, etc. etc. And, verbal coordination was essential and universally used.

So, what are people looking for here. I see L2P: the problem is people don’t know how to play. I see coordination: discuss every fight and assign, essentially, roles (though some will balk at the use of the word), at least who interrupts what when. I mean, you don’t want 5 people to interrupt right? That would be a L2P issue itself.

What I see here is just more confusion around combat. You shouldn’t need significant coordination around pugable dungeons. You should need to know your character and use their abilities wisely. Do we need a raid ‘form’, something that requires intense coordination? Do we need better defined combat roles? I really don’t know. I do know that their is general confusion around combat. And, no matter what is said (usually L2P) there remains general confusion around combat. Maybe it will sort itself out over time. Maybe it needs developer action or communication of some kind.

Edit: And, of course, the defiant/CC cycle under discussion may just be a silly mechanic.

This game doesn’t really do a good job of making Buffs/Debuffs (Yes I’m using that term because that is what they are known as in the wider MMO genre) easily understandable. They are tiny and hard to mouse over during intense combat and as you are leveling you aren’t really taught to take note of them. There is rarely a situation where a buff an enemy gains makes a huge difference as we are exploring the world and we die because of it so we tend to start ignoring them.

Then suddenly a situation comes along where it does matter but we’ve been conditioned to ignore them so we continue to. You have to make an active effort to understand them and most players will simply choose not to do that.

We are human beings, we seek the path of least resistance whenever we can so if we learn that something is inconsequential early on we will regard it that way until we are shown otherwise.

for me the problem is if you interrupt the boss it will use the skill anyway, or it will use the same skill as his next attack, so whats the point?

there are more examples of using skill anyway but lets say champion howler in AC in corridor with traps. it is impossible to interrupt his howl… this is just not good and since it is not the only case i believe this is intended mechanic. so why even use cc on bosses if they just don’t work. better get dps buffs and get it over with asap.

but i must say i am into ccing more than dpsing so i am really disapointed at how things are now.

What we are missing is not ‘roles’ but ‘team work’ options.

The ‘L2P’ has boiled down to everyone (outside of noobs) knowing that most (if not all) of their ‘special abilities’ are fairly to mostly useless in PvE and completely useless in dungeons. Mechanics are nothing more than ‘learn to dodge’ and ‘deal high DPS’.

If my professions abilities could make a difference or if when combined with 1-3 other players/professions abilities we together could make a difference don’t you think those of us playing the ‘less popular’ or ‘weaker’ professions would be teaming up and using them?

Anything outside of pure DPS is ‘nerfed’ in PvE to maintain ‘balance’ in PvP/PvW.

IMHO: All classes abilities should be balanced so that any PvE Dungeon path that a good Warrior can solo can also be soloed by a good player of any other class.

Then we’d have real depth.

Conncept.7638:

Actually the defiant charges don’t reset until a successful CC is used on the boss, Unfortunately, so many players just spam CC skill for DPS that in unorganized and larger groups the window of opportunity is pretty much impossible to take advantage of.

Yeah, that’s the problem with it. You’re asking a bunch of people to spam CC skills to remove defiant stacks, then suddenly stop spamming it. Too hard to coordinate and introduces the Leeroy Jenkins mechanic where if one person screws up, everyone loses out. If voice comms were built into the game, it might be a more workable mechanic. But as it is, it’s too much effort and luck for too little reward.

If they changed it to something like the last stack of defiant was a zero stack, which prevented CC effects unless the boss was doing something interruptible, then it might be used more. That way everyone could spam CC skills to get it to zero. If someone accidentally hit an extra CC skill, it wouldn’t ruin it for everyone else because it’d stay at a zero stack. Then when the boss started to charge up a skill you could try to interrupt it, and if successful the defiant stacks would recharge.

But in general, game mechanics where one person can completely ruin it for everyone else are a bad idea.

Raine.1394:

So, what are people looking for here. I see L2P: the problem is people don’t know how to play. I see coordination: discuss every fight and assign, essentially, roles (though some will balk at the use of the word), at least who interrupts what when. I mean, you don’t want 5 people to interrupt right? That would be a L2P issue itself.

What I see here is just more confusion around combat. You shouldn’t need significant coordination around pugable dungeons. You should need to know your character and use their abilities wisely. Do we need a raid ‘form’, something that requires intense coordination? Do we need better defined combat roles? I really don’t know. I do know that their is general confusion around combat. And, no matter what is said (usually L2P) there remains general confusion around combat. Maybe it will sort itself out over time. Maybe it needs developer action or communication of some kind.

Edit: And, of course, the defiant/CC cycle under discussion may just be a silly mechanic.

The alternatives aren’t much better.

- Just removing defiant. Stunlock every boss and murder it as it stands around doing absolutely nothing.
- Remove defiant but increase CD on CC skills. People will complain that the CD is so long they barely ever get to use the skill.
- Remove defiant but now your CC only has a 20%(or whatever other value might make sense) chance of working

Regardless of what the alternative might be the devs are not going to allow people to have the option of stunlocking bosses.

As for some of the other issues. Why are people insisting on spamming their whole skill bar? Just because they can?

While it might be true in other games(including GW1) where bosses will have specific skills that must be interrupted or at the very least that you will definitely want to interrupt. That does not seem to be the case in GW2. The only GW2 I can think of with that requirement is the Dredge mining suit in fractals and that boss is interruptable through defiant as long as it is in superheated mode.

Lastly, defiant only makes them immune to the hard control effects that renders them unable to use any skills. You can still chill, cripple, immobilize, blind and weaken. Some of those might have reduced effectiveness with defiant but they provide a chance to help someone avoid death not the ability just stand there and beat on a boss. That is what I think the devs’ goals were anyway. I am aware that there are bosses which completely fails to meet that goal.

If you’re not clear about a particular mechanic in the game, use /wiki “mechanic” – chances are someone has created a page to help explain what’s going on. This works for all conditions and boons, as well as Unshakable. For those who like to use CC abilities, immobilize, chill, and cripple still work on Unshakable mobs regardless of their Defiant status.

Most interrupt skills do very little damage (if any) so there typically isn’t a reason to spam them. That said, some also act as finishers, so there is sometimes a trade-off that makes you consider when to use them for a combo or when to save them for a coordinated Defiant strip (or both).

I don’t think making PvE even easier would add any depth to the game. The unshakable mechanic rewards those who coordinate – especially when fighting a boss with a particularly nasty ability or heal. For better or worse, bosses have been weakened so that those with no sense of coordination or desire for teamwork can still be successful.

I would rather Defiant operate on a timer, perhaps an increasing one with each successful CC. For example, at the beginning of the fight, you can immediately use a CC skill like normal. Once you’ve used it, the boss gains defiant for 10 seconds, which then fades away automatically. You can then use another CC, but that stack will then increase to 15 seconds, then 20, then 25 etc or perhaps 10, 20, 30 etc. This means that rather than throw every single CC skill you have at the boss, wasting them just to get an open window for a CC skill that actually matters, the entire team knows exactly when a boss can be held back and when a boss cannot as an absolute, not as a “I hope those stacks go away soon” thing that most PUGs seem to have. That would promote teams to co-ordinate who should use their controlling abilities at specific times rather than a simple “remove Defiant” mentality for CC-heavy players who just throw all their cooldowns at it.

I think that a system like that would also further enhance control abilities as a battle tool, because right now, control abilities are fairly worthless anyway. Most experienced groups will just run Berserker, dodge everything and stack on the boss’s face while zerg-reviving whoever falls over.

Great discussion. I think we can agree on a few points:
1- Unshakable and defiant are not clearly explained to new players
2- They are also not very visible on the UI
3- The current dungeon boss mechanics leave a lot of mid to higher level gamers unsatisfied, while newer players find them too hard sometimes

I think Anet has not yet leveraged the unshakable/defiant mechanic to its full potential. I suggest that:
1- The mechanic is better explained to new players, at some point in a higher level dungeon (say around CoF, just before getting to 80)
2- A stronger visual cue is introduced to signal when the defiant stacks are gone and the boss is vulnerable to CC
3- Some higher level exporable mode dungeon bosses have mechanics that revolve more centrally around the defiant mechanic: you can only reasonably beat them if you coordinate well enough to CC the boss at a certain point (to avoid a damage skill, or a heal, or some other event)

That would go a long way to improving the boss fights. Thoughts?

Auesis.7301:

I would rather Defiant operate on a timer, perhaps an increasing one with each successful CC. For example, at the beginning of the fight, you can immediately use a CC skill like normal. Once you’ve used it, the boss gains defiant for 10 seconds, which then fades away automatically. You can then use another CC, but that stack will then increase to 15 seconds, then 20, then 25 etc or perhaps 10, 20, 30 etc. This means that rather than throw every single CC skill you have at the boss, wasting them just to get an open window for a CC skill that actually matters, the entire team knows exactly when a boss can be held back and when a boss cannot as an absolute, not as a “I hope those stacks go away soon” thing that most PUGs seem to have. That would promote teams to co-ordinate who should use their controlling abilities at specific times rather than a simple “remove Defiant” mentality for CC-heavy players who just throw all their cooldowns at it.

I think that a system like that would also further enhance control abilities as a battle tool, because right now, control abilities are fairly worthless anyway. Most experienced groups will just run Berserker, dodge everything and stack on the boss’s face while zerg-reviving whoever falls over.

That is much worse than the current implementation. People will STILL have to stare at the monster status bar but now you have taken away the players’ ability to control when the defiant is removed.

JohnyCash.1894:

Great discussion. I think we can agree on a few points:
1- Unshakable and defiant are not clearly explained to new players
2- They are also not very visible on the UI
3- The current dungeon boss mechanics leave a lot of mid to higher level gamers unsatisfied, while newer players find them too hard sometimes

I think Anet has not yet leveraged the unshakable/defiant mechanic to its full potential. I suggest that:
1- The mechanic is better explained to new players, at some point in a higher level dungeon (say around CoF, just before getting to 80)
2- A stronger visual cue is introduced to signal when the defiant stacks are gone and the boss is vulnerable to CC
3- Some higher level exporable mode dungeon bosses have mechanics that revolve more centrally around the defiant mechanic: you can only reasonably beat them if you coordinate well enough to CC the boss at a certain point (to avoid a damage skill, or a heal, or some other event)

That would go a long way to improving the boss fights. Thoughts?

Thoughts? I think the devs mostly agree. See various fractal bosses like the dredge mining suit and the volcano fractal bosses.

So the idea is to CC as a group until the boss has 0 stacks of Defiant. Wait for that uber skill he uses, & interrupt him. Defiant restacks and repeat?

Seras.5702:

So the idea is to CC as a group until the boss has 0 stacks of Defiant. Wait for that uber skill he uses, & interrupt him. Defiant restacks and repeat?

yes, this is the idea, but cc doesn’t work even if cc is used. boss will often use skill even if he is cc-ed or his uber skill will reset cd and he will use it again immediately after he has been interrupted.

Oatmeal.1895:

Would like some clarity on this, but me and my friends always assumed that it wasn’t even worth it. We would use our abilities to get defiant off just so we could interrupt /one/ of the bosses abilities? Then his defiant goes back up? Just dps the boss down and forget defiant ever existed. Crappy mechanic. I guess it’s cool ever now and then to use the number 4 skill as a guardian and see a big kitten dungeon boss go flying, other than that, I don’t see a use in coordinating anything, we’ve been doing fine putting defiant on the back burner.

Story mode of TA is where you really MUST do this.

The boss will come down and start charging up a resurrect on some of the guys you kill.

If you don’t break through defiant to interrupt, you end up fighting in that boss fight forever.

FateZero.8536:

Not many players will take time to learn boss buffs and mechanics. To them is just dps it. I usually inform my team when boss is vulnerable to CC and tell them to save it when boss is about to cast a certain dangerous skill.

And this may be a major issue with the game. You have to bring in third party tools to get any semblance of coordination going in this game.

Mungrul.9358:

There’s another problem with this mechanic that goes against one of their design goals. They stated that they changed the way skills activated so that the player was watching the mob rather than the health bar. GW1 was very much a case of watching red bars and choosing the right time to use a skill, whether that was an interrupt, a spike or a heal.

This mechanic means that once more, CC characters are watching the health bar of the enemy rather than the enemy itself.

Design goal fail ArenaNet.

there is another hilarity involved with “CC” in this game. ANet claims they removed GW1 style interrupts because it depended too much on latency. Except for the current CC/interrupt mechanic is also build on split second timing.

I’d like to see more cc used in boss fights to increase their depth.

If “control” is up there with “damage” and “support” as the 3 dimensions of fights, then we’re seriously gimping the depth of boss fights by basically ignoring control through the unshakable/defiant mechanic 99% of the time. That’s why a lot of bosses end up being just a long dps fest.

I reiterate that if the defiant stacks were more visible, or at least the time when boss has 0 stacks, through maybe some kind of color change on the targeting circle, then devs could start taking more advantage of the mechanic for more interesting boss fights.

I would like it more if after Unshakable dropped, we had a timer where we could stun, daze and KD. It would make fights more interesting for coordinated groups. You could also negate certain boss mechanics if timed properly. I LOVE my Warrior Mace/Mace build for the control it offers, but sadly, that build is rendered useless in all boss fights. It’s as if ArenaNet is encouraging us to just run high DPS builds.

How about instead of new mechanics that are badly explained, make it so that CC effects only work every 10 seconds or so? So you know they will work and you can coordinate which ones to use, but you can’t stunlock bosses. The addition of new mechanics and playstyles that aren’t used in the overworld into dungeons is one of the main reasons why dungeons aren’t at all fun.

I’m struggling to see how this stuff isn’t obvious “can’t read it in a fight” is not a valid complaint considering how many bosses you will fight.

Do people just have no ability to read these days? 5 stacks, everyone uses one CC, it’s not rocket science.

If they get 12 stacks it’s a boss not designed to be cc’d

JohnyCash.1894:

If “control” is up there with “damage” and “support” as the 3 dimensions of fights, then we’re seriously gimping the depth of boss fights by basically ignoring control through the unshakable/defiant mechanic 99% of the time. That’s why a lot of bosses end up being just a long dps fest.

Indeed.

Control and support are secondary in PVE.

Control because of the boss mob specific “boons”, as well as the duration vs cooldown being largely not worth it. You can dodge 3-6 time in the space that a the shortest cooldown “control” skills take, and with defiant up the outcome of using either is basically the same. End result is that “control” becomes a euphemism for “kite”.

Support because most of the support related boons and conditions are duration stacking only (and some drop after a single attack, making them more interrupt/control than support). This makes the difference between dedicated support and incidental support (standing inside each others PBAOE range when skills are used for personal benefit) in groups minor (or none, once the boon’s stacked duration becomes longer than the shortest cooldown skill).

bluewanders.5297:

For the same reason that so many people say this game is nothing but a zerg fest… because that’s the only way they care to play. Why coordinate when they can just dps and rez each other? (Also until recently waypoint zerg…)

This isn’t true. When I am in a party (for the most part) we try to do our part. I personally think you are being negative or need to find a better group of friends/guild.

It isn’t all about ‘kill kill kill’ It’s about keeping your party alive so you can take things out faster.

Back on topic. Yes! I believe it is because it isn’t explained well enough via the game.

Even if your just spamming CC in a PuG, defiant makes CC relevant without allowing stunlock situations or making CC unusable altogether.

Although I agree the game should explain it a little better so more PuGs can stop wasting the 0 stack on a cheap 1 sec stun and not a moment where you need to push the boss (like off of a downed teammate) or to interrupt a key skill.

IMO the problems are 2:

1) This is not explained in the game enough – some ppl don’t know that it exists.
2) There is questionable gain for a bigger effort than just spamming damage skills. – others are ignoring it on purpose, or wasting the cc in order to be able to spam dmg skills instead of using cc to interrupt.

ANet needs to change boss encounters so that there is an advantage from CC.
One example would be → boss healing to full hp every 30s unless interrupted.
I think it is ok to start requiring smart use of CC since every single profession has an easy access to some CC. (changing weapons or taking a utility) and effective CC does not require a stats change.

As for the posts that state the mechanics is bad → it is not.
Also it is not hard to pull off in PUG.

Everyone needs to follow a very simple rules:
a) If you see a defiant stack on a boss → use CC
b) If there is no defiant stack on a boss → DON’T use CC
c) If boss is about to perform a move that your party wants to interrupt, use CC.

The coordination is only needed if your group has very little CC and every wasted CC matters.

Okay, yes, Defiant/Unshakable is a pretty tough mechanic to deal with in some instances. And if you know what you’re doing you can really do some interesting things. (Solo champions by interruption/knockback/stun for one.) It’s just that some people don’t get it and don’t think to check it out.

As for needing to pay close attention to the status bar, it’s only one thing you need to glance at: the number on it. Only Champion/Legendary monsters have this (The purple spiky ring around the portrait) so once you learn that, you learn to glance up now and then.

Now, funny thing? I may be mistaken but Fear seems to eat a stack of Defiant and cause a monster to stand still? I’ve got a Juvenile Wolf I like using for the fear-inducing howl. I often use it on event bosses to clear the trash away from those melee-fighting the boss. (I also use “Point Blank Shot”, Longbow 4 to shave off Defiant steadily as I fight. And have recently started keeping “Muddy Terrain” on the bar for everything except the final room in the Underground Fractal. )

What would benefit is if there WAS a hint explaining Unshakable/Defiant people would get the first time they saw a mob with it. Because right now, this is relying on people to mouse-hover over the enemy boons . . . aaaaaand people barely mouse over their own boons/conditons/effects.

RakaNishoo.6071:

As for the posts that state the mechanics is bad -> it is not.
Also it is not hard to pull off in PUG.

Everyone needs to follow a very simple rules:
a) If you see a defiant stack on a boss -> use CC
b) If there is no defiant stack on a boss -> DON’T use CC
c) If boss is about to perform a move that your party wants to interrupt, use CC.

The coordination is only needed if your group has very little CC and every wasted CC matters.

This assumes people in a PUG even recall that their skills have a CC effect at all. Most non-damage CC have so short a duration combined with long cooldowns, and the open world PVE and personal story so in love with throwing waves of mobs at you, that you quickly start to favor AOE attacks over CC because the CC frankly do not provide any real means of controlling the fight.

This, along with champions onwards having defiant, discourages the use of CC while leveling to the point that people may well have forgotten that they have them at all. This then fuels the impression that the game is a DPS race, further reinforced by spikers rampaging around WVW.

digiowl.9620:

. . . you quickly start to favor AOE attacks over CC because the CC frankly do not provide any real means of controlling the fight.

I beg to differ. I find my few CC attacks as a ranger really are the difference between “oh crap I’m in trouble” and “well that’s done, where was I going again?”. This is especially true if taking a high-level Veteran; having Point-Blank Shot is good for me to handle things.

And as a warrior doing a story mission? Mace/Shield wound up being the difference between success and failure. So there’s that too. And yes, that mob had Defiant/Unshakable. I still managed to keep it CC’d when I needed it to allow my block skills to finish the cooldown timer.

Both your scenarios seem to involve 1 on 1 duels with a mob.

what i am talking about is 1 on 2+. Often a skill point challenge involve the spawning of 3+ mobs, with one being a veteran. most CC skills are single target with effects that last 1-3 seconds.

Meaning that there is no way to temporarily reduce the threat by putting either the veteran or the other mobs out of the fight for extended periods.

This then mean that AOE and kiting is the most relevant way of dealing with the fight.

And similarly attacking a single target at range in the open world will see red crossed swords popping up over one or more nearby mobs, leading to yet another 1 vs 2+ fight where attempting to be clever with CC is less effecting than simply running in circles and spamming AOE.

Never mind personal story missions that almost from the word go, across all races, put you in front of waves of 5+ mobs, often in cramped quarters.

digiowl.9620:

Both your scenarios seem to involve 1 on 1 duels with a mob.

what i am talking about is 1 on 2+. Often a skill point challenge involve the spawning of 3+ mobs, with one being a veteran. most CC skills are single target with effects that last 1-3 seconds.

Meaning that there is no way to temporarily reduce the threat by putting either the veteran or the other mobs out of the fight for extended periods.

This then mean that AOE and kiting is the most relevant way of dealing with the fight.

And similarly attacking a single target at range in the open world will see red crossed swords popping up over one or more nearby mobs, leading to yet another 1 vs 2+ fight where attempting to be clever with CC is less effecting than simply running in circles and spamming AOE.

Never mind personal story missions that almost from the word go, across all races, put you in front of waves of 5+ mobs, often in cramped quarters.

Oh there are ways to handle skill challenges with 3 monsters (1 Vet & two normal). I take the tried and true method of “focus-fire the lil guys dead while stunning, knockback, et cetera to the large one”. If your crowd-control is so tightly controlled, then learn to use it where it will work.

It’s worth noting that in most cases, if I have any room to maneuver and it’s not a champion? My ranger usually can take care of it. On the other hand, my warrior ran into severe issues with a skill challenge which spawned a siege devourer and two lesser brethren.

And before we go further, I played EverQuest, where one class could literally keep a mob controlled/suppressed for almost nigh infinite amounts of time unless it was immune to the effects or heavily resistant (i.e. dungeon/raid bosses). It was also a very different MMO game style.

A closer analogy is out of Capcom, the Monster Hunter series. Where the combat is very moment-to-moment and is focused on dodging or avoiding hits rather than tanking them. Control techniques in that game are likewise very limited, and offer very small windows. (Except for flash bombs, but most serious players call that cheating.) And there were not a few fights where you were flat out denied the use of these tools for control . . . I can’t recall many complaints about how the control were useless, only that they weren’t strictly necessary.

And again, that’s pretty true here in GW2. The crowd control skills/effects can be used to good effect, but you can . . . mostly . . . get by without using them.