Guild Wars 2

Wethospu.6437:

On open-PvE there is no point running anything defensive when enemies deal so low damage.
OP was complaining about glass in dungeons.

Olfinbedwere.5049

And some people are too lazy to respec for dungeon groups.

Why do I go full glass cannon? Because even with full vit/tough you still die in 3-4 hits unless your healing up the kitten dodge, and constantly paying attention. Now if you apply my theory of healing up the kitten dodging, and constantly paying attention to the boss you will realize you don’t need any vit/tough because Anet battle system allows you to dodge anything attack except that cheap agony hit from the squid guy.

Point of glass canon is to do more dmg BY YOURSELF and guys that use that build/gear are not very good at math cause with few tweaks in build/gear you can make youar PARTY dps/survavbility or something much better. But then you won’t see those shiny numbers on screen.

Sovta.4719:

Point of glass canon is to do more dmg BY YOURSELF and guys that use that build/gear are not very good at math cause with few tweaks in build/gear you can make youar PARTY dps/survavbility or something much better. But then you won’t see those shiny numbers on screen.

You cant tweak from glasscannon and get better dps AND survivability for your party. You already bring the dps, if you tweak for more survivability you do so at the loss of dps. Thats just how it is.

Many glasscannons however have plenty of survival tricks. Not the stand there and tank it tricks, but the “oh look a dodge button” tricks and high vigor/passive end regen. Both much more reliable than trying to tank it like its WoW.

They mostly also field some form of “oh kitten!” utility skill. Like decoy, some form of groups stealth or immunity.

The only profession I’ve actually managed to gain dps on while also increasing defense is my necro, but thats all thanks to rabid gear, condition spec and undead runes.

Close to 1600 condi, close to 1900 toughness, 45%+ crit and around 21000HP unbuffed.

It still doesnt make him survive better than my glasscannons, they die about as often as he does, which is rarely. He has toughness and two lives, they have massive vigor, in the end it serves the same purpose.

Not playing a glass cannon warrior in dungeons just means you or your team aren’t good enough to bring one. I hate seeing the damage potential of warriors be thrown away with kittenty PVT gear and shout builds.

FotM excluded.

in the early days of guild wars 1, there was no “glass cannon” term. the term used was “IWAY”. yes guild wars 1 had one superb glass cannon team build.

Groovy.6749:

The point is super strength + high rate of crits. If the player knows how to handle his spec, then he should know when to hit hard, and when to retract to kite for a bit (because he accumulated too much aggro).

The idea behind a glass cannon is pretty good actually, it just requires a bit of finesse to pull it off effectively and continuously.

Also I don’t think the glass cannons are “actively” griefing their team. 10silver+ for amor repairs isn’t the way to go.

I believe the problem lies with how roles are assigned in the dungeons.
Who is supposed to keep an eye on the aggro, who is going to watch out for group conditions and drop in some support when needed, who is going to make sure that red bar keeps going down, etc…
In my opinion, part of the problem lies with ANet’s design, aka removal of trinity. I mean if you’re going to remove a major part of how groups in MMOs synergize because it’s dated is a GREAT idea….but if you leave that gap unfulfilled, then it is not revolutionary at all. It’s clumsy. Most players do not know what to expect from one another, and generally 95% of the dungeon strategies limits itself to “everyone DPS the boss fast!!!”… If the dungeons encouraged to assume a certain temporary role (each role giving a slight buff according what role is picked) then it could work very nicely.

The other problem is running with PUGs. Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you aren’t. Not much more I can say on that.

Overall, glass cannons isn’t the problem. The absence of group synergy is.

EDIT : Also you can not honestly tell me you’ve never played alongside a glass cannon before who performed his role admirably.
On the opposite side of the table, I have seen “tank” builds who quintessentially refused to dodge, planting themselves hard in the group and therefore being downed making all that survivability “useless”.

That reasoning doesn’t even make sense. So because you are used to play a certain role under the “trinity” of healer/tank/dps in other games, it’s the game its lack of “group synergy” which makes it hard or impossible to play glass cannon builds?

Some people just can’t adept to a game with a different take on role division. There are a lot of great working builds/traits that work admirable in any environment. The difference is that you have to figure out yourself what you need more. Do I need more survivability or more damage? Could I play more group-oriented or would I be more useful if I focus on my own character?

So glass cannon CAN work, but for most people it’s very risky and they should refocus their builds and gear. It’s true however that hybrid builds are rather powerful on any class because, depending on the builds of your teammates, you might lack some support. Which is why you can always change your traits and utility skills or weapon sets on the fly, something which most people refuse to do. When someone sticks with one weapon, builds straight damage and doesnt change his skill/traits accordingly, it’s not a flaw in the game design but a bad or stubborn player.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

Wethospu.6437:

On open-PvE there is no point running anything defensive when enemies deal so low damage.
OP was complaining about glass in dungeons.

Olfinbedwere.5049

And some people are too lazy to respec for dungeon groups.

Fair enough. I didn’t read it carefully when it was mostly about open-PvE.

glass cannon is fine.

IF you know how to play. by that i mean knowing how to manage your damage mitigation, the most important being dodges.

most noobs just seem to gravitate towards glass cannons though. probably because dps is the easiest class to play in every other mmo. which explains the insanely large number of bad glass cannons.

tie in with the fact that most of these players are looking for a class/build with big numbers which is ‘easy’ to play, and you end up with full zerker 5 signet warriors who have no inkling of how to avoid damage.

and that’s like 90% of the warrior population, i swear.

i’ve only met ONE glass cannon warrior who did well in dungeon runs. let’s be honest here. if you get a warrior in a pug, chances are he is terrible. and it’s because he is running glass cannon. it is one of the more unforgiving builds out there that inexplicably attracts noobs.

I think they were just bad. I know that I’m not a good enough player to run berserker or rampager gear on melee in dungeon-level content but I’m more than capable of it on my ranger and engy. Some people are good enough to do it and everyone wins.

ZeroArmada.9426:

I will never understand why people would prefer to go full offensive without ANY vit/tough and constantly grief the team they’re in. I was just in AC with 3 glass cannon warriors, and wow that was the most horrendous experience I’ve ever encountered. I don’t see how glass cannon even helps the team if you’re constantly going down, even IF you put out burst damage before being flicked by the slightest enemy.

Just why?

Because people are selfish and silly. I have several times been the only one providing buffs to my group, even when fighting dragons where there are sometimes over 50 players, I’m still the only one proving boons and banners. Any player that doesn’t just change a few skill in favor of the group is not worth taking. People don’t understand that an alive player does more damage than one who constantly has to ress and run

Voltar.8574:

I think they were just bad. I know that I’m not a good enough player to run berserker or rampager gear on melee in dungeon-level content but I’m more than capable of it on my ranger and engy. Some people are good enough to do it and everyone wins.

You can mix it up a bit. I’m running with full beserker armor, but knight weapons for the toughness and soldier jewels. It works perfectly fine for me, it’s because people are too narrow minded. They think they ONLY have to do damage, because that’s what a dps does in WoW.

alcedonia.7831:

glass cannon is fine.

IF you know how to play. by that i mean knowing how to manage your damage mitigation, the most important being dodges.

most noobs just seem to gravitate towards glass cannons though. probably because dps is the easiest class to play in every other mmo. which explains the insanely large number of bad glass cannons.

tie in with the fact that most of these players are looking for a class/build with big numbers which is ‘easy’ to play, and you end up with full zerker 5 signet warriors who have no inkling of how to avoid damage.

and that’s like 90% of the warrior population, i swear.

i’ve only met ONE glass cannon warrior who did well in dungeon runs. let’s be honest here. if you get a warrior in a pug, chances are he is terrible. and it’s because he is running glass cannon. it is one of the more unforgiving builds out there that inexplicably attracts noobs.

I call bullkitten on the last part. Since warriors seem to be the most popular class its safe to assume we have more bad players. But the % stays the same across the board. bad players are bad. Its not a class thing. How come then as a warrior Ive partied with tons of fellow warriors and rarely encounted one Id term as terrible? main problem with warriors is that to many people have read forums without having a single clue that they are harping on about then go echo it elsehwere to try and sound like they know what they are talking about.

I havent seen a single comment from the anti GC crowd that has any real proof that the GC specs are bad. Every comment in here falls back on the subject of bad players.

The root of all group issues.

The same players that you encounter that are bad GCs would preform just as badly with any other spec.

The only class you notice it quickly on are signet warriors. They always have their signets passive on, never using the active ability.

IMO the only 2 signets worth having is the healing signet and the end regen signet, since warrior end regen traits are few. And the healing signet can be greatly combined with the adrenaline regeneration trait.

SneakyErvin.3056:

I havent seen a single comment from the anti GC crowd that has any real proof that the GC specs are bad. Every comment in here falls back on the subject of bad players.

There’s no consistent sense of what GC amounts to. The one person who specified above was not actually running a glass cannon (able to take double the hits of a true GC, with a bunch of healing).

In terms of proof, it really depends on how they’re actually doing it. IF GC means no helpful boons, control, or conditions, then it’s not hard to show that GC is hurting the group’s performance. But it seems like a lot of people thinking they’re GC still have “Grants Might to nearby allies on crit” and use weapon sets with cripples, blinds, etc. Which to me means they’re not the “selfish” version of GC.

I’d say it comes down to the group and the dungeon. A good group usually has a mix but some dungeon paths are more forgiving or punishing than others. Protecting Magg right before the boss in CoF is a pain if you have too many GCs but Project Alpha in CoE or even protecting the ghost essence collectors in AC path 3 are a pain if you have a group slow on damage.

PUGs are a bit of a gamble, ypu might end up with a good composition or it might be horrible. It does seem that most people who don’t know how to do a dungeon (I despise the term ‘noob’ ) are GCs, something that might stem from GCs being very good for leveling and they stick sith what works in open PvE. Being a GC in a dungeon is perfectly viable in most cases but it requires you to know how the fight mechanics work, what tododge and when. Look at it like vit/tuf is your safety net for when you mess up, more experienced players have fewer fubars and snafus while inexperienced players will benefit from being able to stay upright despite a few mistakes.

Lutharr.1035:

I call bullkitten on the last part. Since warriors seem to be the most popular class its safe to assume we have more bad players. But the % stays the same across the board. bad players are bad. Its not a class thing. How come then as a warrior Ive partied with tons of fellow warriors and rarely encounted one Id term as terrible? main problem with warriors is that to many people have read forums without having a single clue that they are harping on about then go echo it elsehwere to try and sound like they know what they are talking about.

i really have only seen ONE glass warrior that actually impressed me. he actually went full zerkers with 5 signets and completed an arah run without deaths. (he did go down a few times though)

the other non-glass warrs i’ve met were okay. and when the warrior faceplants all the time, it’s normally because they’re wearing full zerkers. the ridiculous 5 signet build that every other warrior seems to have a fetish for just makes them faceplant harder and more often.

of all the better warriors i’ve played with, exactly NONE of them main-ed the warrior. and when i grouped with their mesmer/necro/ele etc mains, they were way more impressive.

the warrior class is easy to pick up and straightforward to use. which is why people always recommend it to new players. it is also familiar. which is why the class tends to attract a disproportionately high percentage of noobs compared to the other classes.

mulch.2586:

SneakyErvin.3056:

I havent seen a single comment from the anti GC crowd that has any real proof that the GC specs are bad. Every comment in here falls back on the subject of bad players.

There’s no consistent sense of what GC amounts to. The one person who specified above was not actually running a glass cannon (able to take double the hits of a true GC, with a bunch of healing).

In terms of proof, it really depends on how they’re actually doing it. IF GC means no helpful boons, control, or conditions, then it’s not hard to show that GC is hurting the group’s performance. But it seems like a lot of people thinking they’re GC still have “Grants Might to nearby allies on crit” and use weapon sets with cripples, blinds, etc. Which to me means they’re not the “selfish” version of GC.

Actually GC has a very clear meaning, the same meaning it has had for years. It has nothing to do with avaiable support spells or not.

GC = A class dedicated to dealing optimal damage while being fragile in return.

This doesnt imply they cant use support utilities etc. Even if they do they are still GCs. GC doesnt mean selfish, thats something someone has made up. GC refers to the structural design of a spec. High dps instead of high staying power.

The game also gives the GC more room, since dodge is something even a GC can have plenty of thus avoiding damage, actually a GC usually has more dodge options than a “tank” due to high crit, traits that proc vigor and passive regen from dps trait lines.

Weapons, armor, spec and trinkets should define if you are a GC or not, not utility skills, since they are just that, utility skills and most arent centered around raw damage or raw defense, most are group centered.

So aslong as a GC player uses his dodge he isnt a liability to his group. If he doesnt hes just as much a liability as the tank not dodging and trying to face tank the enemy. This isnt a trinity game so trinity rules does not apply.

No spec is weak, only some players are.

SneakyErvin.3056:

mulch.2586:

SneakyErvin.3056:

I havent seen a single comment from the anti GC crowd that has any real proof that the GC specs are bad. Every comment in here falls back on the subject of bad players.

There’s no consistent sense of what GC amounts to. The one person who specified above was not actually running a glass cannon (able to take double the hits of a true GC, with a bunch of healing).

In terms of proof, it really depends on how they’re actually doing it. IF GC means no helpful boons, control, or conditions, then it’s not hard to show that GC is hurting the group’s performance. But it seems like a lot of people thinking they’re GC still have “Grants Might to nearby allies on crit” and use weapon sets with cripples, blinds, etc. Which to me means they’re not the “selfish” version of GC.

Actually GC has a very clear meaning, the same meaning it has had for years. It has nothing to do with avaiable support spells or not.

GC = A class dedicated to dealing optimal damage while being fragile in return.

This doesnt imply they cant use support utilities etc. Even if they do they are still GCs. GC doesnt mean selfish, thats something someone has made up. GC refers to the structural design of a spec. High dps instead of high staying power.

The game also gives the GC more room, since dodge is something even a GC can have plenty of thus avoiding damage, actually a GC usually has more dodge options than a “tank” due to high crit, traits that proc vigor and passive regen from dps trait lines.

Weapons, armor, spec and trinkets should define if you are a GC or not, not utility skills, since they are just that, utility skills and most arent centered around raw damage or raw defense, most are group centered.

So aslong as a GC player uses his dodge he isnt a liability to his group. If he doesnt hes just as much a liability as the tank not dodging and trying to face tank the enemy. This isnt a trinity game so trinity rules does not apply.

No spec is weak, only some players are.

I don’t disagree. Just that the only actual GC build I read posted in this thread had +200 toughness and +200 healing on a warrior. Note that an entire exotic armor set is 763 stat points. So the only claimed GC build posted here can take at least 3 times as many hits as a true GC ele, for example. Over 20k health, over 1400 defense… this is not a GC, but is being considered as one.

active defense > passive defense

Since in this game almost every attack is avoidable, in ideal dungeon team all would be glass cannons and since the players are ideal, they would use their skills and not gear to mitigate damage which means that defensive stats are useless. Every player should try play their best and according to that get the amount of defense they need to allow mistakes. They should tend to reach the level of gameplay where they perform smooth with no defensive stats at all, so i guess thats the point of it

On a warrior scale he might be a GC, but not really. I actually dont like the term glasscannon in this game one bit. I think many people claim its a glasscannon when it fields a set of dps gear and not toughness/vit gear.

Many people also dont have a clue what people actually wear since there is no inspect. Or that and they have very little knowledge about class traits outside of their own. For example, a guardian that wants to maximize crit chance and crit damage will need to spend points on 300 toughness to get 30% crit damage.

I honestly dont think there are any glasscannons in this game in a WoW/ToR way. There are too many traits woven into the different trait lines so you pick up both defensive and offensive in the trees. Sure a thief can maximize his raw damage stats, but by doing so he misses out on actual dps traits, same with a mage or ranger, they can max power, preci and crit dmg stats, but they miss out on actual dps traits in more defensive trees.

I tend to skip power lines, my mesmer is maxed because it gave me the traits I wanted and the stats at the same time. But most of my other classes have skipped it completely or spent 10 points in the power line maybe.

The only thing I look down upon in this game when it comes to specs are signet users, and I dont mean a signet or two, I mean all they can possibly field. Some of them have their uses when actually put on CD. But things like signet warriors and such… give me a break.

If you play dungeons often enough, you do not die, no matter the gear. It is all about learning the encounters.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

If you play dungeons often enough, you do not die, no matter the gear. It is all about learning the encounters.

That’s my opinion in a nutshell. If you’re running something new though, you’ll most likely need some extra survivablity. Think the bottom line is, if you’re dieing left and right and your team mates are forced to get you up or 4 man it since you can’t stay alive.. it’s time to rethink your PvE stratagy.

Now I feel the OP’s frustration. I’ve seen ‘glass cannon’ builds die left in right, I’ve seen people in Fract 10 with all green/under leveled gear. Only reason why I notice.. they’re dieing, and doing it a lot. So instead of a easy or fun run, it’s frustrating and difficult when two or more people just can’t stay on thier feet. If you’re dieing quick and often – play better, smarter, or you require more survival in your gear. I actualy found out I survive a lot more with only 1.8k toughness (knight) instead of pure extra % crit dmg (Beserk) on my Mesmer. It’s worth the little added loss of Dmg IMO.

And the Trinity arguement is void. I find having a good ‘tank’ mellee, and/or a good ‘healing’ elementalist (even seen a healing guardian) can help and even speed up a dungeon. Sure I need to keep an eye on my self.. but I require less runing, less kiting, less healing, less condition removal – last two save time that I use to DPS. It’s not needed, but sure as hell makes things run smoother.

mulch.2586:

I don’t disagree. Just that the only actual GC build I read posted in this thread had +200 toughness and +200 healing on a warrior. Note that an entire exotic armor set is 763 stat points. So the only claimed GC build posted here can take at least 3 times as many hits as a true GC ele, for example. Over 20k health, over 1400 defense… this is not a GC, but is being considered as one.

Not sure whether you talked about my example but those 160 toughness and 160 vitality come very very easily. If you want one trait that’s already +100. Throw in stuff like Ancient Karka Shell and Ascended Gear and you haven’t sacrificed much damage for that (compared to Berserker Exotic).
But nowadays I’m rolling with +60 Toughness and +60 Vitality.

LordArcon.9208:

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

If you play dungeons often enough, you do not die, no matter the gear. It is all about learning the encounters.

That’s my opinion in a nutshell. If you’re running something new though, you’ll most likely need some extra survivablity. Think the bottom line is, if you’re dieing left and right and your team mates are forced to get you up or 4 man it since you can’t stay alive.. it’s time to rethink your PvE stratagy.

Now I feel the OP’s frustration. I’ve seen ‘glass cannon’ builds die left in right, I’ve seen people in Fract 10 with all green/under leveled gear. Only reason why I notice.. they’re dieing, and doing it a lot. So instead of a easy or fun run, it’s frustrating and difficult when two or more people just can’t stay on thier feet. If you’re dieing quick and often – play better, smarter, or you require more survival in your gear. I actualy found out I survive a lot more with only 1.8k toughness (knight) instead of pure extra % crit dmg (Beserk) on my Mesmer. It’s worth the little added loss of Dmg IMO.

And the Trinity arguement is void. I find having a good ‘tank’ mellee, and/or a good ‘healing’ elementalist (even seen a healing guardian) can help and even speed up a dungeon. Sure I need to keep an eye on my self.. but I require less runing, less kiting, less healing, less condition removal – last two save time that I use to DPS. It’s not needed, but sure as hell makes things run smoother.

But at the same time, those 1800 toughness will make you more of a target so you will need to use dodge much more. I’m constantly having aggro on my necro since he has high toughness, combined with low endurance regen its a pain in the butt.

I survive much easier on the classes where I skip toughness, because they dont pull aggro in the same way. I rather stand in the back, debuffing, bursting and buffing than running around trying to lose aggro.

Good GC > Terribad Damage; High Survival > Bad GC

/thread

The thief is the only profession that must go full glass cannon in order to able to deal somewhat decent damage. So for thieves, it’s either glass cannon or condition.

2 All-DPS Glass Cannons, 2 Damage mitigating support healers and 1 control character works wonders actually.

You obviously joined a PUG and wondered why your party was unbalanced. Good job.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

If you play dungeons often enough, you do not die, no matter the gear. It is all about learning the encounters.

Hmm, that’s a whole other discussion for a whole other thread.

The fact that the Dungeons can be solved and people find and use all the exploits, cheats and shortcuts takes all the fun out of them for me.

The fact the AI is so useless, predictable and controllable that dungeons can be run without taking a single hit in many cases is something they need to look at really.