Guild Wars 2

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I’m not saying I want the old trinity back, but some sort of inter-class reliance would really improve the combat. Rather than having a full zerker party, there should be just one zerker, one support, one healing, maybe one tank, and any of the classes should be able to take that role.

Right now everyone just stacks in a corner, spams all their boons at once, and then bludgeons the enemies to death. That is not interesting combat to me. It’s more like a game of wack-a-mole, but without the surprise of not knowing where the moles will pop out.

Have you tried the Marionette fight? How about Tequatl, or the Wurm? There’s a trend taking place where fights are moving further and further from the stack method being a viable means to defeat the encounter. We’re seeing that you don’t need some form of archaic trinity in order to have great fights.

I really wished we had real numbers how many people really play full zerker all the time.

If i read the forum it sounds like 95% or whatever ..

If i ask players from my guilds its more like 5%

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I’m not saying I want the old trinity back, but some sort of inter-class reliance would really improve the combat. Rather than having a full zerker party, there should be just one zerker, one support, one healing, maybe one tank, and any of the classes should be able to take that role.

Me and my friend have both berserker’s gear.

Can we still play together in your ideal world without getting new gear? No.
Is it in accordance with “play how you want”? No.
Did Anet promise us dedicated healers and tanks? No.

Can you see what’s wrong with your arguments? It doesn’t matter if a profession can take any role when most of your stats come from your gear which is not easy to change.

You mean the crowd control that’s absolutely useless? that doesn’t stop droves of enemies from coming at you? And what about aggro? It’s completely random, it’s like this zombie comes up to your group everyone else is doing huge burst damage, and suddenly it notices you are just standing there, ignores all of that damage and comes after you.

Or how about the serious lack of concern for any other build in the game other that burst dps? Seriously, conditions, CC, healing all useless in this title and that’s why everyone goes burst because they want to speed run through everything.

Last time I checked that’s not balance or coordination, that’s just hitting buttons as fast as you possibly can to get through something. It’s certainly not far superior as a system.

Rin.1046:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Rin.1046:

GW2 has a new and improved trinity: Damage, Control, Support. A far superior, more flexible and more complex system. A system that requires a lot more team coordination to really shine.

orly

Yes, really. Not only does the team need to coordinate thier crowd control, but they also need to think about their own survival and the survival of the other team members. A good, coordinated, group can dominate a larger group in WvW if played right. And to do this you need to have a lot more on your mind than simply healing your allies and keeping out of harms way. Or grabbing agro and keeping it.

The old trinity had its complexities, but it split those tasks (complexities) up between the different members of the group, so that each member only had a few things to do. In GW2, EVERY member has to think about EVERYTHING. And has been given the tools to deal with it.

That is not to say that players cannot focus on a particular role, they can. It just means that while focused on a role, they must also be very mindful of, and take part in, other roles.

But like I said, and was promptly ignored by your non-constructive comment, the AI in GW2 is no where near up to scratch to make real use of or challenge the combat system it has. With the exception of a handful of encounters maybe. If the general AI was vastly improved the combat in GW2 (PvE) would feel a whole lot better.

Also, no combat system is perfect for everyone and every combat system undergoes a massive amount of balancing. But overall, GW2’s reinvented trinity (AI aside) is a much better system IMO.

haviz.1340:

Me and my friend have both berserker’s gear.

Can we still play together in your ideal world without getting new gear? actually YES.
Is it in accordance with “play how you want”? sure.
Did Anet promise us dedicated healers and tanks? No. the did promise that we can play how we want, they didn’t say , if you want to achieve anything you must play berserker.

Can you see what’s wrong with your arguments? It doesn’t matter if a profession can take any role when most of your stats come from your gear which is not easy to change.

there is nothing wrong with his argument, but with yours,
tell me;
why both you and your friend play berserker? why the majority of serious players play berserker?
why do I play berserker?
why after trying cleric, soldier, knight and berserker armors on my elementalist, warrior and guardian, i (and probably many others) arrived to the conclusion that berserker gear with several soldier pieces to reach minimal HP is the most optimal to PVE play?

why my necro that was originally geared and traited to be the ultimate controller with emphasis on condition duration and variety, very quickly changed to powerbuild?

when i started this game at the release, and made my healing elementalist, I really thought that I can party with you and your berserker friend and be useful in the dungeon runs, providing heals, CC and boons. boy how was I wrong.
playing support made the runs slow, I couldn’t heal up the damage the mobs did to my party, i couldn’t CC the trash enough time to contain them and i couldn’t CC the bosses at all, the more supportive I played the longer the run was, and i noticed that the more offensive i play – the quicker we finish the dungeon, with less casualties.

all the parties started to demand berserker, support was shunned, maximum one condition class in party was the rule.
people in berserker gear didn’t want support class in party, only berserker;
so I switched to offensive play style and offensive gear.

currently only Berserker is worth something, rest of the gears are between redundant to completely useless.
we want them to be equal. we want support classes to actually provide support to the front-line berserkers, we want a game that CC and debuffing conditions will be useful and help the berserkers.
we want a game in which a party A with three zerker GS warriors, zerker GS guardian and zerker GS mesmer will be exactly as successful as a party Bwith cleric healing kit/bombs/elixir engineer, sentinel mace/shield warrior, rabid necro with giver scepter/focus , zerker thief and zerker ranger.

but this is not the game we play, the game we currently play party A is vastly superior to party B. not just in time invested but and actually finishing the dungeon.

nobody wants to see "LF 1 man healer AC path2 " in the chat, but we also don’t want to see “insert generic dungeon name speed run zerker only”.

p.s.
regarding the gear; majority of the exotic gears are very easy to change via crafting, karma vendors, WWW badges vendors, dungeon tokens, and cheesy cheap buying from the AH. changing the gears is not the issue as long it is not ascended.

haviz.1340:

Me and my friend have both berserker’s gear.

Can we still play together in your ideal world without getting new gear? No.
Is it in accordance with “play how you want”? No.
Did Anet promise us dedicated healers and tanks? No.

Can you see what’s wrong with your arguments? It doesn’t matter if a profession can take any role when most of your stats come from your gear which is not easy to change.

Like the above poster already said, it is your argument that is flawed. The fact that almost everyone plays zerker, since the other stat combos are next to useless in PVE, is a big alarm sign that there is a huge balance problem in the game. All stat combos should have a role, and not just zerker.

Parties should have a mix of various gear combinations, and not 100% zerker. The current game design does not encourage such variety, because there is no trade off. Zerkers don’t risk anything, and don’t trade in any survivability for going max damage. Which is why there’s no reason not to bring a full zerker party. This is the dreadful result of the missing inter-class reliance. Exactly what I was talking about.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

haviz.1340:

Me and my friend have both berserker’s gear.

Can we still play together in your ideal world without getting new gear? No.
Is it in accordance with “play how you want”? No.
Did Anet promise us dedicated healers and tanks? No.

Can you see what’s wrong with your arguments? It doesn’t matter if a profession can take any role when most of your stats come from your gear which is not easy to change.

Like the above poster already said, it is your argument that is flawed. The fact that almost everyone plays zerker, since the other stat combos are next to useless in PVE, is a big alarm sign that there is a huge balance problem in the game. All stat combos should have a role, and not just zerker.

Parties should have a mix of various gear combinations, and not 100% zerker. The current game design does not encourage such variety, because there is no trade off. Zerkers don’t risk anything, and don’t trade in any survivability for going max damage. Which is why there’s no reason not to bring a full zerker party. This is the dreadful result of the missing inter-class reliance. Exactly what I was talking about.

Things are changing with the new fights.

The new fights change something for sure. I really like the Marionette battle for example. However, the underlying system is still terribly flawed. The unbalance between the various gear combinations is not going to vanish magically.

These massive zerk-fest battles only thinly disguise that the system itself is broken. That the combat itself is quite dull, unless they turn it into a massive battle. While the Marionette and Tequatl are a welcome change in the sense that they demand more coordination, there still is no inter-class reliance underneath it all.

Interesting boss mechanics are a nice addition to the combat, but they shouldn’t be a patch for a broken combat system. I’d like to see both interesting combat mechanics AND interesting boss mechanics.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Parties should have a mix of various gear combinations, and not 100% zerker. The current game design does not encourage such variety, because there is no trade off. Zerkers don’t risk anything, and don’t trade in any survivability for going max damage. Which is why there’s no reason not to bring a full zerker party. This is the dreadful result of the missing inter-class reliance. Exactly what I was talking about.

Ah, but zerkers do take a risk, when pugging, anyway. They risk getting a party that is not all zerker, because they need full party damage to burn down the target(s) before the party runs out of invulnerability frames. The zerker dungeon play style is dependent on everyone doing their part and acting together.

Waiting sometimes hours spamming “LF1M Healer to go” if it is anything like GW1.

Lalangamena.3694:

-snip-

I started running berserker’s like 2 weeks after the launch. The reason for that is simple. The game was advertised with its active gameplay, where you ability to play have more input than you gear. I was actually surprised there are stats like vitality and toughness tied to the gear seeing as the prequel had none. I chose berserker’s because despite the existance of defensive sets, I never bought this game to tank or heal others (in spite of playing mostly prot monk in gw1 pvp). Moreover, I still recall those blog posts that were saying that anet didn’t like reactive damage mitigation but rather proactive.

To add more, none of you support, control and other archetypes increases its efficiency through gear (boon duration increases duration, not efficiency) whatsoever. It’s tied to weapons choice (hammer or greatsword), utility choices (for great justice or fear) or trait choices (fresh air or tempest defense). Gear choice affect where do you want to be on the offense/defense spectrum, not how much supportive or control you want to be.

Berserker’s meta exists only in dungeons, a content that was abandoned by anet about 1 year ago. There are completely different metas in open world, wvw and pvp. You want to possibly change fundamental mechanics on the basis of the content that’s not even considered by its developers anymore.

The only reason you do not see the viability of control and support aspects is because there are no viable dedicated builds like that. Moreover, since you can LoS mobs, they are bunched up together meaning that you only need 1 cc to cc 5 mob which would have been harder to achieve if mobs weren’t stacked at one spot.

If you think support is nonexistant, why no one serious runs 5 warriors in high fractals? Why do they need guardian? Are guardians not supportive enough with their aegis, regen, protection and projectile defense? What else do you want except making other classes more supportive through traits, weapons skills and utilities, not gear?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Like the above poster already said, it is your argument that is flawed. The fact that almost everyone plays zerker, since the other stat combos are next to useless in PVE, is a big alarm sign that there is a huge balance problem in the game. All stat combos should have a role, and not just zerker.

Parties should have a mix of various gear combinations, and not 100% zerker. The current game design does not encourage such variety, because there is no trade off. Zerkers don’t risk anything, and don’t trade in any survivability for going max damage. Which is why there’s no reason not to bring a full zerker party. This is the dreadful result of the missing inter-class reliance. Exactly what I was talking about.

This is simply a huge hyperbole and false statement. It looks like this forums claims that everyone runs full zerkers but despite that I cannot find a single zerker despite having numerous non-zerkers on gw2lfg. Do you know why do you continuously see parties asking for zerkers and rarely other parties? Because those who asks for specific requirement have to wait longer, that’s how filtering works.

Again, stat combos have no roles. They only increase your efficiency within certain roles. Your role is determined by your traits, weapons, utilities, sigils and runes. You can have similar control or support aspect with berserker’s and with soldier’s.

Parties should be allowed to play whatever they want. The only place where zerkers thrives are dungeons, excluding fractals. If you think there’s virtually no risk in playing zerkers, I will gladly invite you to our fractal run. I know your playing on EU so that should not be a problem. There we will re-evaluate how much truth that statement holds.

Dungeons are too easy, gear is not broken. Proof? Check other content like pvp or wvw.

VOLKON.1290:

Things are changing with the new fights.

Do you think we can have those in an instance tuned for 10-30 or so? I don’t see the harm, considering gear upgrades will not be dropping. This is especially true in light of the fact that Mary is dead on my server (wurm triplets died at birth.) Accessibility via guild may actually improve participation.

Also, yes to a bit more trinity, or soft-trinity, or something. I imagine dual spec would help out a lot here. That way, if the fight requires a tank, you can become one for the fight (same goes for healing.) Variety would be nice. Anet is definitely improving, though.

Invictus.1503:

Waiting sometimes hours spamming “LF1M Healer to go” if it is anything like GW1.

I’ve explained this. The game doesn’t need a hard trinity. It could have had a soft trinity.
DPS (power dmg, some ccs, no conditions/limited self boons. Bosses would lose defiance, and gain perma stability, but when they charge, now unblockable/evadable, power attacks it would go away so dps had to interrupt power attacks as their added role)
Support (Easy aoe boon access, better access to aoe protection, regen, might stacking etc)
Enfeebling/utility (Poison, chills cripples dot damage)

Then make dungeons in 2 parts. Free for all, you can have 5 of any of the 3 and do just fine.
Then Legendary modes where you’d need all 3 (any amount of either, but probably 3 dps 1 enfeebler 1 support) to complete with better loot rates and maybe even a unique currency to get Legendary-MODE skins you can only get by doing Legendary mode.

Right now, we have no trinity we have dps who can “support” themselves and go town. Most dps can even enfeeble just fine. Support and utility (both original gw2 trinity fields) are covered just by DPS builds. Their own design ruined what they had going for them.

The real question is why do players who like the trinity, and have access to multiple games in multiple genres that support that play style keep bothering us with this tired question.

If you want trinity-based play go to a different game. This isn’t the game for you. It’s ok to not like it, but not liking it doesn’t mean you have a right to annoy the people who DO like it with your inanity.

As far as the zerker argument goes, that is a player issue. I’ve been here since beta, and not once have I done a full zerker run in a dungeon. It’s not even remotely necessary outside of the community that likes that sort of thing. Even IF it were, despite what a vocal bunch of idjits say, there is no one way to play this game, and that’s what makes it wonderful. There is no, “We can’t do X without Y,” beyond needing a certain number of bodies, there is only “What do I feel like doing today?”

I happen to think there is nothing wrong with the current group combat dynamic that couldn’t be fixed with better/more plentiful combo fields, and drastically better encounter design. I don’t think even ArenaNet had a firm grasp on what the lack of trinity would mean for boss fights. That theory is supported with how static bosses were at launch. They’ve obviously learned a lot since then as the encounters have steadily improved.

Basharic.1654:

The real question is why do players who like the trinity, and have access to multiple games in multiple genres that support that play style keep bothering us with this tired question.

If you want trinity-based play go to a different game. This isn’t the game for you. It’s ok to not like it, but not liking it doesn’t mean you have a right to annoy the people who DO like it with your inanity.

As far as the zerker argument goes, that is a player issue. I’ve been here since beta, and not once have I done a full zerker run in a dungeon. It’s not even remotely necessary outside of the community that likes that sort of thing. Even IF it were, despite what a vocal bunch of idjits say, there is no one way to play this game, and that’s what makes it wonderful. There is no, “We can’t do X without Y,” beyond needing a certain number of bodies, there is only “What do I feel like doing today?”

I happen to think there is nothing wrong with the current group combat dynamic that couldn’t be fixed with better/more plentiful combo fields, and drastically better encounter design. I don’t think even ArenaNet had a firm grasp on what the lack of trinity would mean for boss fights. That theory is supported with how static bosses were at launch. They’ve obviously learned a lot since then as the encounters have steadily improved.

I’ve also explained this. GW2 was announced WITH a trinity, but the eye-catcher was a SOFT trinity. Meaning it’s less “omfg, we don’t have x”, BUT the idea would have been you’d do BEST with a mix, utilizing each role. Instead, we ended up with singularity and NO use for other builds in PvE that are IN the game already, they’re just useless. If the game had no support trees/stats I wouldn’t argue, not a bit.

Also, that’s a very lame question because, I like the mechanics in gw2 if it would have stayed true to its word. The soft-targeting system, being able to attack without a target (with cleave moves), the fact that weapons cleave like they naturally would and you’re not only hitting the “hard targeted” person, various other aspects makes gw2 a revolutionary game taking steps to get away from the traditional hard-targeting system used by practically all tab-target mmos. So the answer to why is, I LIKE gw2, but mostly for what it was supposed to be/was advertised at, less on its execution. This isn’t a difficult concept. It’s the same reason most people buy a product that sounds great but ends up being less than ideal.

What they wanted to achieve at the outset of the game was for everyone to be able to be any part of the trinity for a short period of time.

Even if you’re the “DPS,” you would still be the tank for a few seconds with skills like Shield Stance or dodges. Then you would have to rotate with others, since those abilities have long cooldowns and short durations.

What they achieved instead is just everyone going zerker with minimal teamwork.

The game would be better if they had more interesting mechanics in PvE. Currently there’s just no incentive to coordinate weakness stacking or vuln stacking on a boss, Coordinating CC is a joke because of the ridiculously unfun buff called “Defiant” that every boss seems to have. Gee, CC him 5 times then I can stun him for 2 seconds, or just zerk through the boss fight in half the time and half the effort.

It’s impossible for every class to be just as useful as every other class in every single dungeon run. Some runs want elementalists for the conjures, some want warriors for their greatswords. Rather than trying to prevent this, I’d rather Anet went in the other direction and actually made a few bosses where, by design, you’d be incentivized to stack a certain condition, or use a certain type of skill. Some classes would obviously excel at this, and people will get kicked for not being those classes. I think it’s a worthwhile tradeoff though for interesting mechanics.

…Rather than having every interesting fight revolve around environmental weapons. Then I’m not even playing my class anymore.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Parties should have a mix of various gear combinations, and not 100% zerker. The current game design does not encourage such variety, because there is no trade off. Zerkers don’t risk anything, and don’t trade in any survivability for going max damage. Which is why there’s no reason not to bring a full zerker party. This is the dreadful result of the missing inter-class reliance. Exactly what I was talking about.

Ah, but zerkers do take a risk, when pugging, anyway. They risk getting a party that is not all zerker, because they need full party damage to burn down the target(s) before the party runs out of invulnerability frames. The zerker dungeon play style is dependent on everyone doing their part and acting together.

Good point.

A zerker in a party where everyone else is built for higher survivability but low DPS may face some significant challenges when the opposition is not burned down before he runs out of dodge/defensive skills.

Vayne.8563:

Beldin.5498:

Vayne.8563:

My issue with taunt is that it kills any illusion the enemy is intelligent at all.

I’ll keep banging way on this guy, even though he’s not taking damage, and even though I’m a super intelligent demon from the abyss, I have no idea healers exist or someone is keeping him alive.

It’s just too contrived for my taste.

I always have to laugh when people in a trinity game say they want a better Monster AI since i know that they don’t really want that because any AI would kill the trinity.
If a monster is intelligent it would ignore the low damage tank, and first kill maybe the healer or the squishy DDs.

In GW 1 monsters often went for the healer or minion master first. I loved that.

oh?
i have bin playing a MM for about a year now and they don’t even want to attack me, it’s ether the healer or the mesmer. (not that they can get close, it’s called a meat shield for a reason)

sorudo.9054:

Vayne.8563:

Beldin.5498:

Vayne.8563:

My issue with taunt is that it kills any illusion the enemy is intelligent at all.

I’ll keep banging way on this guy, even though he’s not taking damage, and even though I’m a super intelligent demon from the abyss, I have no idea healers exist or someone is keeping him alive.

It’s just too contrived for my taste.

I always have to laugh when people in a trinity game say they want a better Monster AI since i know that they don’t really want that because any AI would kill the trinity.
If a monster is intelligent it would ignore the low damage tank, and first kill maybe the healer or the squishy DDs.

In GW 1 monsters often went for the healer or minion master first. I loved that.

oh?
i have bin playing a MM for about a year now and they don’t even want to attack me, it’s ether the healer or the mesmer. (not that they can get close, it’s called a meat shield for a reason)

What is your minion master’s health ?

ronpierce.2760:

Basharic.1654:

The real question is why do players who like the trinity, and have access to multiple games in multiple genres that support that play style keep bothering us with this tired question.

If you want trinity-based play go to a different game. This isn’t the game for you. It’s ok to not like it, but not liking it doesn’t mean you have a right to annoy the people who DO like it with your inanity.

As far as the zerker argument goes, that is a player issue. I’ve been here since beta, and not once have I done a full zerker run in a dungeon. It’s not even remotely necessary outside of the community that likes that sort of thing. Even IF it were, despite what a vocal bunch of idjits say, there is no one way to play this game, and that’s what makes it wonderful. There is no, “We can’t do X without Y,” beyond needing a certain number of bodies, there is only “What do I feel like doing today?”

I happen to think there is nothing wrong with the current group combat dynamic that couldn’t be fixed with better/more plentiful combo fields, and drastically better encounter design. I don’t think even ArenaNet had a firm grasp on what the lack of trinity would mean for boss fights. That theory is supported with how static bosses were at launch. They’ve obviously learned a lot since then as the encounters have steadily improved.

I’ve also explained this. GW2 was announced WITH a trinity, but the eye-catcher was a SOFT trinity. Meaning it’s less “omfg, we don’t have x”, BUT the idea would have been you’d do BEST with a mix, utilizing each role. Instead, we ended up with singularity and NO use for other builds in PvE that are IN the game already, they’re just useless. If the game had no support trees/stats I wouldn’t argue, not a bit.

Also, that’s a very lame question because, I like the mechanics in gw2 if it would have stayed true to its word. The soft-targeting system, being able to attack without a target (with cleave moves), the fact that weapons cleave like they naturally would and you’re not only hitting the “hard targeted” person, various other aspects makes gw2 a revolutionary game taking steps to get away from the traditional hard-targeting system used by practically all tab-target mmos. So the answer to why is, I LIKE gw2, but mostly for what it was supposed to be/was advertised at, less on its execution. This isn’t a difficult concept. It’s the same reason most people buy a product that sounds great but ends up being less than ideal.

The game DOES have a soft trinity, unfortunately they forgot to have the combat system people talk to the boss design people. Aaegal hit the nail on the head. We have a great combat system and got crappy boss design, especially the bosses from launch.

Almost every boss consisted of “stand in middle of the room and telegraph big hits”. Even in a trinity game you wouldn’t need a healer for a fight like that.

The reason they are doing this is it’s really hard to design a unique fight that uses the combat mechanics they have available and still make it possible for every possible comp to do it. Trinity fights are paper rock scissors compared to (well designed) GW2 encounters’ three dimensional chess. The problem has been that a lot of GW2 boss fights where just plain old War with a deck of cards.

But the fault isn’t with the lack of trinity. We have cruise missles, sniper rifles, combat medics, tricksters, shield bearers, stealth fighters, and nuclear bombs then we got sent off to fight cavemen. All those tools are cool and can kill a caveman sure, but so can another caveman with a rock. And they’ve rarely given us any reason to use anything other than that rock.

It’s why I’ve basically left PvE for WvW for my day to day game action. WvW has us using all our tools on each other. Even the most mismatched zerg fight is more interesting than most of the PvE encounters I’ve seen. If you want a game mode that insists you use your abilities to their fullest go there. There are even preferred roles/builds if you want to go that route. And healing/support is both encouraged and appreciated.

Knighthonor.4061:

If GW2 has a traditional Trinity system, what would the game be like?

Pure speculation discussion, so feel free to give your belief of what the game would be like with a traditional Tank/Healer/DPS trinity system.

(excuse the title of thread. limited character prevents title detail)

It would suck and feel stupid like any other trinity game.

I love to heal people :|

Xar.1387:

I love to heal people :|

Yep I miss it too. I expected to play a heal engi, sometimes switching to turrets or a hybrid of both. You know the rest of this story… :/

Escadin.9482:

Xar.1387:

I love to heal people :|

Yep I miss it too. I expected to play a heal engi, sometimes switching to turrets or a hybrid of both. You know the rest of this story… :/

Alchemy would have been a sweet kitten healing concept imo.

Ashen.2907:

Good point.

A zerker in a party where everyone else is built for higher survivability but low DPS may face some significant challenges when the opposition is not burned down before he runs out of dodge/defensive skills.

You don’t run out of dodges. You just don’t use them correctly. Guardians currently give too much survivability in dungeons and you can simply faceroll through content. Doing same thing with party that doesn’t have a guardian simply doesn’t work for the vast majority of zerkers.