Guild Wars 2

For the 2 years, mobs from lvls 1-80, have been the kind of what you’d expect to face in Starter Zones.

The engaging combat mechanics in this game are not there, as long as we can go all DPS and just stand and kill everything without doing anything else…

This is not a rant to demand hard mobs into PvE.
Just enough to make us dodge abit more, think about our positioning, keep on moving, use abilities and never make us focus on full DPS, Control or Support builds.
Enough to keep us on our toes in combat.
(Experimented a reasonable Warrior Berserker DPS build with some defensive abilities, while solo, on Mordrem, I did fine, never stopped moving, never wasted a dodge and tried to position myself, even against Husks and Trashers, which eventually died quite fast.)

Not to mention problems of 2/3 of combat mechanics being useless for huge majority of PvE content, due to the design and use of these mechanics.

Ratio of PvE content right now, would be 99% dominated by DPS builds while control and support are useless since they cannot affect the flow of combat, while 1% gives equal chances for DPS, Control and Support builds.

To make use of Support and Control builds in this PvE content right now, players have to take handicaps, which is pretty much same as forcing others to play this and that…

Unfortunately, having DPS build with some Support and Control abilities, is just DPS build with minimal support and control, which do work quite great with current mob designs, but Support or Control build with some DPS abilities, doesn’t fare as well at all.

Problems with DPS builds used in PvE:

• Mobs are designed to have huge amounts of HP, which is not much of a problem for Direct Dmg, not to mention Rank ups boost HP in ridiculous amounts.
• Mobs deal high damage per hit, but attack once every 3-5 seconds, rarely any faster.
• Mobs possess abilities that activate slowly and deal quite minimal damage, which makes them pretty much harmless, even in group content.
• Mobs have pretty much 0 armor, which is only stat that can heavily weaken direct damage effectiviness.
• Mobs rarely utilize boons and conditions, never effectively either, just 1 or 2 mobs in a mob faction.
• Ranks Veteran and Elite means nothing, just more HP and DMG on mob, othervise they’re no different from “Trash mobs”.
• Mobs all die quickly, way too quickly, even before they spawn, activate or deal any damage.

Problems why Control and Support builds are useless for 99%:

• Conditions require time to deal damage.
• Healing is to give longevity if combat draws longer.
• Control just controls and “tanks” mobs, should they be too much for others.
• Boons give advantages, but some boons give over time advantages, like endurance regen or health regen.
• Boon/Condition Manipulation is to change advantages to disadvantages and vice versa, but require that there are Boons and Conditions in use, should combat draw longer than expected.

But as 1% is where all builds have equal chances, it’s same as “limited targets” or “useless abilities”, unless one plays PvP exclusively.

Solutions? Not sure, but I can think of few, but then again they are not always good either, since I’m just 1 person observing and thinking solutions…

• Better mob AI, so that mobs would actually use some abilities more effectively, even dodge. (Suggested by many)
• Perhaps mob types, part of better AI, Example: Fast mobs that dodge quite accurately, attack fast and try to position themselves.
• Variety on mob stats, even for Trash mobs, since “High HP-High Dmg-Slow Attack-0 Armor” has been so great so far, for only about 1/3 of builds.
• Better use of Ranks, Example: NoRanks are Trash mobs, Veteran and Elites could be advanced mobs with toned down boss abilities and/or more significant lesser abilities, Champions are minibosses, Higher ranks are big bosses, etc. (This will also solve the “Limited targets” issue)
• Better ratios of mobs, not too much trash mobs and not too many Unshakable mobs to limit targets for players and builds.

I do know that update all mobs into better ones will be huge task and never happen quickly. But as more content is added with current mob design in mind, the harder and bigger the job will be…

This is speculations:

Rank ups, I think that rank ups use multipliers, which doesn’t boost extremely low values much, like with “High HP-High DMG-Slow Attack-0 Armor”…

Speculative mathematics with no actual ingame values, if it’s multipliers:
15,000 HP – 5000 DMGvsLight – 1 Armor – NoRank
Rank up to Veteran (x2)
= 15,000×2 HP – 5000×2 DMGvsLight – 1×2 Armor – NoRank -> Veteran
= 30,000 HP – 10000 DMGvsLight – 2 Armor – Veteran

Hopefully this speculation is true, or the new mobs are gonna be quite effed up anyway, if rank ups just boost HP and DMG with huge amounts….

mobs have ridiculous amounts of HP if they are ridiculously scaled up.

As for your other major issue. Why does the game have to force you to play a certain way.

If you dont like straight up DPS, dont play a straight up DPS build. Go condition based and you’ll have to dodge a bit now and then to be effective and even engage in some crowd control to survive if you tackle a big enough group of mobs. Gw2 is a game thats intended to be casual friendly and from comments in the forum even as is some people find it hard to solo content in the open world. If the game were to make its mobs challenging for good players playing a straight up DPS class who would the inexperienced players playing with a sub optimal build fair?

Just enough to make us dodge abit more, think about our positioning, keep on moving, use abilities and never make us focus on full DPS, Control or Support builds.
Enough to keep us on our toes in combat.

That’s way too much for the “casual carebears” the game’s open world was designed to entertain.

There are a lot of very very bad people in this game. And they need to have a place where they can feel like “the hero” no matter how incredibly bad they are.

I too would like the open world to at least pose some danger instead of what we have now but I think it’s clear it will never happen.
It would drive too many new/bad people away from the game since most of them are also under the illusion that if they bought the game they’re entitled to complete all content and get everything without adapting one bit.

Another issue you bring up is this :

Not to mention problems of 2/3 of combat mechanics being useless for huge majority of PvE content, due to the design and use of these mechanics.
Ratio of PvE content right now, would be 99% dominated by DPS builds while control and support are useless since they cannot affect the flow of combat, while 1% gives equal chances for DPS, Control and Support builds.
To make use of Support and Control builds in this PvE content right now, players have to take handicaps, which is pretty much same as forcing others to play this and that…

In instanced content what you’ve written is not true. Control and support play a part in high level PVE such as FOTM 50.

In the open world what you’ve written is true – there’s no need for CC or support or even dps for that matter. Why ? Because of zergs and megaflows.

KQ for example has a mechanic where a shield is applied to the boss requiring players to throw eggs at her and lower those stacks so you can damage her.
Mechanic works just fine – or did – before megaflows.

Why? Because with megaflows you get so many people on top of her it doesn’t matter that the eggs aren’t thrown. She just burns down with NOTHING to say about it.

Mobs deal high damage per hit, but attack once every 3-5 seconds, rarely any faster.

Because they were designed to be easy peasy for players that aren’t exactly good at the game.
If it’s manageable for new/bad players then it becomes a breeze for someone who’s playing for over a few months and starts to know what’s what.

Mobs rarely utilize boons and conditions, never effectively either, just 1 or 2 mobs in a mob faction.

Boon and condition management isn’t exactly something your average open world player will know how to do.

Better mob AI, so that mobs would actually use some abilities more effectively, even dodge. (Suggested by many)

Assuming they didn’t want the game’s open world as easy as it is – how exactly do you think this would work? Do you think you can just wish something like this into existence?

The bottom line is that while I agree with you in theory I also see why it won’t happen. The game’s open world is meant to be the “be all you can be and win everything forever” area that makes you become hooked on the game.
It’s where new players first feel like they’re awesome and heroes and whatnot.
More difficult content exists in instances but there’s a reason it’s there and not in the open world. And that reason has everything to do with not losing players.

I feel the mordrem and the karka are actually quite well designed, and provide the right amount of challenge in high level open world content. That said, what you wrote is true. Most of the mobs are bland, have bad AI and are as vicious as a bean bag. Especially in dungeons, mob AI should be more group oriented, and well, smarter – as it is, it feels as if their AI consists of the aggro formula and then just getting in range for attacks and using them on cooldown.

Some examples of what the AI could do:

1. After receiving a lot of damage in a short time, switch to defensive measures that vary by the mob – boons, evasive movements, blocks, what not.
2. When an ally of a mob is heavily damaged, the mob switches to use more control on players.
3. Mobs (not all, but many) get an active, telegraphed condition cleanse skill that can be interrupted, that they won’t waste on stuff like a stack of less than five bleeds or vulnerability.
4. If an ally of a mob is targeting a player, the player receives bonus aggro from the mob, that way the mobs are more likely to naturally focus on single targets.
5. Give mobs simple combos (like a skill that immobilizes, and a guardian symbol type AoE attack that’s scripted to be used on immobilized targets), both within the skill sets of single mobs, and to be used across multiple mobs in a group.
6. If a mob is attacking a low-toughness target and is not subject to heavy damage (that would switch it to defensive set), it switches to offensive measures, attacking aggressively with highly damaging attacks.
7. Mobs with ranged weapons should attempt to stay at their optimal range and not stand in melee range at a corner. If a mob finds itself too close to the target, it will attempt to make distance.

As for some other changes to mobs…

1. Give them less HP, and way more toughness. I know, some people like to see big numbers, but let’s put good game design before that.

Yeah, I guess that’s the biggest thing besides the combat AI.

Better AI is just an illusion. All AI is programmed to lose. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t lose. Nothing you do with the AI will fundamentally change how people kill them.

As I’ve said on other threads, Damage/Control/Support trinity works very well in any form of PVP, so, making PVE mobs better is accomplished by putting more PVP features over to PVE.

Of course the open world part of the game needs to be easy enough for everyone to play, not everything needs a change, however since we will soon be discussing Raids (or harder content in general) it’s good to talk about potential changes in PVE mob design before we move there. A MOB CDI maybe?

Some suggestions:

Make mobs in high end content utilize more skills. No mob has more than 3-4 skills, which makes them all dull, one-trick ponies. So what kind of skills?

One of the defining factors of player builds is their healing skill, everyone has one, and proper usage is very important. Giving all high end mobs a Healing skill, is a great step in making mobs more engaging and player-like. Allowing mobs to self heal for a great amount of health makes Control all the more important (and Poison), lower mob hit points but excellent healing skills is the way to go. Same goes with World Bosses, add mechanics that will heal the boss, players need to overcome them, by spliting up and killing various mobs, attacking various turrets/defenses whatever in a set period of time.

For example, some good Healing skills for mobs:
Shelter (also blocking skill), Litany of Wrath (excellent for mobs with aoe fields – used in Eotm), Healing Signet (passive mostly), Defiant Stance (anti-zerg at its best – used in Eotm).

Mobs need utility skills as well, skills like Endure Pain and Shield Block work very well on mobs, great way of making mobs immune to direct damage attacks, but still take condition damage. Skills that summon minions (Necro minions, Guardian Weapons, ele summons, Engie turrets etc), or skills that alter ally skillbars (like Ele Conjures or Engie kits) or Signets are bad choices for mobs, since those kind of skills require some better form of AI.

But skills that apply boons, like Guardian Shouts, are excellent for mobs, they just need some kind of AI so not to overlap them.

More important than indivual skillbars, high end mobs need to be grouped in teams, 5-mob teams for example, with proper skillsets and a “trinity”. Using the same type of mob all the time is terrible.

Other than improved skillbars, mobs need to attack while moving, or if that’s impossible due to technology limitations, make their responses a lot faster, faster attacks, lower damage is the way to go.

I want one day Anet to release a dungeon, then go to http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki to gather builds for their mobs, just like how they did with Slaver’s Exile in GW1, a dungeon were all mobs had player “meta builds”

Give mobs heals and multiple abilities, and make them use them. Now most mobs are set into one category. You got a mob that heals, another that does knockbacks, one that does buffs etc. All players do all the above and more. If mobs would do multiple abilities and all healed themselves, the fights would be a lot more complicated and interesting.

Coldtart.4785:

Better AI is just an illusion. All AI is programmed to lose. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t lose. Nothing you do with the AI will fundamentally change how people kill them.

This isn’t really true. Good mob AI is programmed to test the players skill. At low levels the enemy AI should be very simple, but get harder as levels increase in such a way that players who are underskilled for their level will lose, until they improve in skill.

Good enemy AI programming usually works on a scale between; high variance with low impact, or low variance with high impact. I.E. Enemies with highly random but weak attacks, or enemies with highly predictable patterns with very damaging attacks.

Take FFXIV as an example. Every single boss in that game follows the same pattern every single time you fight them, however if you get hit by one of their attacks you will either take loads of damage, or be inflicted with a very debilitating status effect. This method is very unfriendly for “noobs” because the difficulty persists only until you learn the pattern, after which you can do the fight in your sleep.

On the other end of the spectrum is more like what most of GW2 enemies are like in PvE. Most mobs do special attacks at random, but they have such little impact you don’t even have to react to them at all. There are of course some exceptions.

Ideally you have a mix of both. Enemies that are exciting to fight are usually based on a pattern of very strong attacks, with mild but random attacks thrown in as well.

Condition damage would be very competitive in PvE except for the condition cap and condition stacking (duration not intensity). The condition cap forces the zerker ideology. PvE mobs do not even cleanse conditions.

The problem with many control skills in dungeons is that walls and corners provide better control: missile defense, grouping mobs up, etc. Whilst that is true it doesn’t matter what else happens to the redesign of crowd control.

It would be great to see better AI. For example, I think it is the Shatterer event where everyone can just stand to one side and range DPS the boss, while it just attacks a load of people that aren’t there in front of it, or at least it used to – I haven’t done it for a long time.

It spoils any immersion and it becomes a joke, to the point of wondering why you are doing the event (I’m not a farmer).

It would be much better to make the mobs/bosses move around more, maybe even dodge a bit themselves than just increase there health bar to something ridiculous. You may as well sit there clicking a down arrow on a bar with a decreasing number and have some pretty graphics in the background to look at..

Harper.4173:

Because of zergs and megaflows.

I’m not a great player looking for super-hard content, but even I find the zergs on every map absurd. It used to be fun starting out events like the Frozen Maw with maybe 5 people and getting maybe a dozen by the end. At that level, the Shaman actually follows players out onto the ice and you need to think about where you are and what you are doing a bit. Now? Just snuggle up right next to him in the zerg to keep him pinned and apply damage. I know at least two people with more than 10,000 achievement points who have either stopped playing or barely play anymore because of what the megaservers did to the world boss events. Maybe it was always like that on the stacked servers, but it wasn’t like that on the lower population servers, but now there is no choice. It’s zerg or nothing (though I did get lucky enough, a couple of weeks ago, to wind up in a Frozen Maw event with only 20-30 people in it and it was much better). And it’s sad seeing the map tell me it wants to kick me within 5 minutes of the event ending because everyone has left.

Yeap… its really boring to fight some boss in a corner or in 1 spot… Monsters should be able to move freely like a smart person… Tell us how much would cost engine upgrade to have smarter mobs, so we can start donating money…

I suspect that Anet has plans for release some sort of HARD MODE like in GW1 in the future and hopefully that will answer some of the OPs issues with general mobs. My real thoughts are that MegaServer was the first step (and they are still tweaking that) in that plan.

You can’t get better AI by throwing money at your development team OR hosting hardware. The belief that this is a “money problem” is just ludicrous. Now that’s not to say it may not be a “resource” or priority issue and certainly money plays a part in both of those.

Harper.4173:

Just enough to make us dodge abit more, think about our positioning, keep on moving, use abilities and never make us focus on full DPS, Control or Support builds.
Enough to keep us on our toes in combat.

That’s way too much for the “casual carebears” the game’s open world was designed to entertain.

Which really says it all.

GW is a game and franchise that prioritises casual players. It was indeed designed specifically, by and large, for that type of player. Always has been. End of. Sure it tries to entertain, and thereby retain, the “hardcore” MMO players with repetitive content and grind which tends to work a lot of the time but in general this is where most arguments of this nature fall over.

It’s not the game at fault, it’s just people asking for dramatic changes to the game and core mechanics whilst also ignoring the fact that they are quite simply playing the wrong game for the type of gameplay they deem challenging and/or entertaining.

That’s where the whole DPS priority and argument comes from. Burn through content as fast and as frequently as possible being voiced as obviously the most efficient, therefore only viable, way to play with total neglect or even disdain towards the fact a large majority of the player base have no such concerns.

They play the way they want because they are given the freedom too, and they enjoy the game as such as, at heart, this game was made specifically for their play-style, while there are dozens of MMORPG’s that already do the opposite.

I take it OP has not fought against the new Mordrem mobs, like thrashers. They require exactly what you are describing in terms of fighting strategy.

Draknar.5748:

I take it OP has not fought against the new Mordrem mobs, like thrashers. They require exactly what you are describing in terms of fighting strategy.

FrostSpectre.4198:

(Experimented a reasonable Warrior Berserker DPS build with some defensive abilities, while solo, on Mordrem, I did fine, never stopped moving, never wasted a dodge and tried to position myself, even against Husks and Trashers, which eventually died quite fast.)

maddoctor.2738:

As I’ve said on other threads, Damage/Control/Support trinity works very well in any form of PVP, so, making PVE mobs better is accomplished by putting more PVP features over to PVE.

Of course the open world part of the game needs to be easy enough for everyone to play, not everything needs a change, however since we will soon be discussing Raids (or harder content in general) it’s good to talk about potential changes in PVE mob design before we move there. A MOB CDI maybe?

Some suggestions:

Make mobs in high end content utilize more skills. No mob has more than 3-4 skills, which makes them all dull, one-trick ponies. So what kind of skills?

One of the defining factors of player builds is their healing skill, everyone has one, and proper usage is very important. Giving all high end mobs a Healing skill, is a great step in making mobs more engaging and player-like. Allowing mobs to self heal for a great amount of health makes Control all the more important (and Poison), lower mob hit points but excellent healing skills is the way to go. Same goes with World Bosses, add mechanics that will heal the boss, players need to overcome them, by spliting up and killing various mobs, attacking various turrets/defenses whatever in a set period of time.

For example, some good Healing skills for mobs:
Shelter (also blocking skill), Litany of Wrath (excellent for mobs with aoe fields – used in Eotm), Healing Signet (passive mostly), Defiant Stance (anti-zerg at its best – used in Eotm).

Mobs need utility skills as well, skills like Endure Pain and Shield Block work very well on mobs, great way of making mobs immune to direct damage attacks, but still take condition damage. Skills that summon minions (Necro minions, Guardian Weapons, ele summons, Engie turrets etc), or skills that alter ally skillbars (like Ele Conjures or Engie kits) or Signets are bad choices for mobs, since those kind of skills require some better form of AI.

But skills that apply boons, like Guardian Shouts, are excellent for mobs, they just need some kind of AI so not to overlap them.

More important than indivual skillbars, high end mobs need to be grouped in teams, 5-mob teams for example, with proper skillsets and a “trinity”. Using the same type of mob all the time is terrible.

Other than improved skillbars, mobs need to attack while moving, or if that’s impossible due to technology limitations, make their responses a lot faster, faster attacks, lower damage is the way to go.

On paper making mobs more like pvp opponents isn’t incredibly difficult to do. The problem is this :

Only a very small part of GW2’s player base even touches PVP. I’m not sure what the numbers are but I’m pretty certain that the majority of players are terrible at pvp.
Now making mobs more like pvp players means more and more players will get stomped. Which is not the experience they’re looking for and will move on elsewhere.

You can’t make things harder and still make the average or below average player feel “like a hero”.

That’s the reason open world PVE cannot be made much harder than it currently is. Not because of technical reasons ( though I suspect there are those as well) but more because of design issues.

Berk.8561:

Harper.4173:

Because of zergs and megaflows.

I’m not a great player looking for super-hard content, but even I find the zergs on every map absurd. It used to be fun starting out events like the Frozen Maw with maybe 5 people and getting maybe a dozen by the end. At that level, the Shaman actually follows players out onto the ice and you need to think about where you are and what you are doing a bit. Now? Just snuggle up right next to him in the zerg to keep him pinned and apply damage. I know at least two people with more than 10,000 achievement points who have either stopped playing or barely play anymore because of what the megaservers did to the world boss events. Maybe it was always like that on the stacked servers, but it wasn’t like that on the lower population servers, but now there is no choice. It’s zerg or nothing (though I did get lucky enough, a couple of weeks ago, to wind up in a Frozen Maw event with only 20-30 people in it and it was much better). And it’s sad seeing the map tell me it wants to kick me within 5 minutes of the event ending because everyone has left.

I am on JQ – and that was very high population always. The zergs were not that massive depending on the time of day. You had world bosses where you actually had to do stuff and not just afk.

Right now you can do the following :

1)Go to world boss
2)Wait for boss to spawn
3)Start hitting boss and tab out
4)Tab back in 2-3 minutes later
5)Collect reward and move on to the next boss.

It literally is that easy – the open world is basically giving out free loot now.

fireflyry.7023:

Harper.4173:

Just enough to make us dodge abit more, think about our positioning, keep on moving, use abilities and never make us focus on full DPS, Control or Support builds.
Enough to keep us on our toes in combat.

That’s way too much for the “casual carebears” the game’s open world was designed to entertain.

Which really says it all.

GW is a game and franchise that prioritises casual players. It was indeed designed specifically, by and large, for that type of player. Always has been. End of. Sure it tries to entertain, and thereby retain, the “hardcore” MMO players with repetitive content and grind which tends to work a lot of the time but in general this is where most arguments of this nature fall over.

It’s not the game at fault, it’s just people asking for dramatic changes to the game and core mechanics whilst also ignoring the fact that they are quite simply playing the wrong game for the type of gameplay they deem challenging and/or entertaining.

That’s where the whole DPS priority and argument comes from. Burn through content as fast and as frequently as possible being voiced as obviously the most efficient, therefore only viable, way to play with total neglect or even disdain towards the fact a large majority of the player base have no such concerns.

They play the way they want because they are given the freedom too, and they enjoy the game as such as, at heart, this game was made specifically for their play-style, while there are dozens of MMORPG’s that already do the opposite.

Sadly you weren’t here or weren’t paying attention when Guild Wars 2 was advertised. It was advertised as a game with no grind.
It was advertised that it would be easy for players to get the best statistical gear.

It was never advertised that everything in the game would just roll over and die whenever you so much at looked at it.

It was never advertised that the open world would be a joke in terms of difficulty. It was never advertised that you don’t even need to care about mobs and builds and all that and still “win at everything forever”.

Go back and look at what they said. They meant the world bosses to have an impact and matter. Currently that’s not in the game.

I understand people want to be casual but that doesn’t mean the game should basically be “press here to win”.

Harper.4173:

Sadly you weren’t here or weren’t paying attention when Guild Wars 2 was advertised. It was advertised as a game with no grind.

No offense but are you seriously that naive?

Anet

Experience the game that has captivated millions of gamers worldwide. Guild Wars® is an online roleplaying game that rewards player skill and innovative gameplay over hours spent online.

This has been Anets marketing mantra since the release of Prophecies. It’s old hat and every vet from 2005 knows it for the complete farce it is due to the history of the franchise, well outside the realm of personal opinion or marketed intention.

Welcome to Grindwars 2.

Berk.8561:

And it’s sad seeing the map tell me it wants to kick me within 5 minutes of the event ending because everyone has left

At least that gets those zergs out of the map. I’ve grown bored of the afk-inside-of-zerg world bosses long ago, and really missed those smaller scale world bosses. Last week I actually got to do a Shatterer fight with a total of four players though, since most people left to head towards zerg central when prompted. That was the most fun I’ve had in a world boss fight in a long time. Funny enough, that 4man Shatterer fight was faster than the zerggy afk-snoozefest that those Shatterer fights usually are (since everyone there was a decent player, well geared, and actually paying attention rather than the hoards of leeches that usually exist in world boss fights).

As for a lot of the suggestions about how to improve GW2 enemies to make them more fun. Really, it can all be summed up by “look at how GW1 did it”, the good ideas proposed here in this thread are simply elaborating on that statement.

fireflyry.7023:

GW is a game and franchise that prioritises casual players. It was indeed designed specifically, by and large, for that type of player. Always has been. End of.

Casual (time commitment) =/= low skill

Coldtart.4785:

Better AI is just an illusion. All AI is programmed to lose. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t lose. Nothing you do with the AI will fundamentally change how people kill them.

Most shallow reply regarding AI I’ve seen in such a long time… there’s a major factor called CHALLENGE, and one should feel challenged when facing mobs, if no challenge is presented then we’ll be playing Hello Kitty.

Galen Grey.4709:

mobs have ridiculous amounts of HP if they are ridiculously scaled up.

As for your other major issue. Why does the game have to force you to play a certain way.

If you dont like straight up DPS, dont play a straight up DPS build. Go condition based and you’ll have to dodge a bit now and then to be effective and even engage in some crowd control to survive if you tackle a big enough group of mobs. Gw2 is a game thats intended to be casual friendly and from comments in the forum even as is some people find it hard to solo content in the open world. If the game were to make its mobs challenging for good players playing a straight up DPS class who would the inexperienced players playing with a sub optimal build fair?

The question is, if you got mechanics in a gamemode which just does nothing beneficial at all, why have them? If you got skills which are pretty much a blank spot on your bar, why have them there?

If you just want the combat to be spam every skill that’s not on cooldown, why not just make every skill some sort of a DPS increase over your autoattack like a lot of games which designed their combat like that?

And also, every game’s difficulty comes in tiers so that different players are satisfied. Make the open world easy, make dungeons harder, make raids which will test you to your limits and make you appreciate every skill on your bar. Make all of them optional. The casuals can stay in the open, the more skilled in dungeons, and the truly hardcore can enjoy raids. Everyone’s happy.

fireflyry.7023:

Harper.4173:

Sadly you weren’t here or weren’t paying attention when Guild Wars 2 was advertised. It was advertised as a game with no grind.

No offense but are you seriously that naive?

Anet

Experience the game that has captivated millions of gamers worldwide. Guild Wars® is an online roleplaying game that rewards player skill and innovative gameplay over hours spent online.

This has been Anets marketing mantra since the release of Prophecies. It’s old hat and every vet from 2005 knows it for the complete farce it is due to the history of the franchise, well outside the realm of personal opinion or marketed intention.

Welcome to Grindwars 2.

Seriously but did you even get my point?
He said GW2 was made for casuals. I said it wasn’t advertised as such. The point is that regardless of what they actually did with the game – his premise that I didn’t know what I was getting into was flawed.

I knew what I was getting into. I read every bit of information on GW2 since it was announced. I hoped they’d keep their word. Either way – when I came to this game I didn’t come uninformed.

Valento.9852:

Coldtart.4785:

Better AI is just an illusion. All AI is programmed to lose. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t lose. Nothing you do with the AI will fundamentally change how people kill them.

Most shallow reply regarding AI I’ve seen in such a long time… there’s a major factor called CHALLENGE, and one should feel challenged when facing mobs, if no challenge is presented then we’ll be playing Hello Kitty.

Take players for exmaple. No one plays PvP to get rolled over, most people want to win. Our ‘AI’ is programmed to win.

Does that mean we never lose?

Xae Isareth.1364:

Galen Grey.4709:

mobs have ridiculous amounts of HP if they are ridiculously scaled up.

As for your other major issue. Why does the game have to force you to play a certain way.

If you dont like straight up DPS, dont play a straight up DPS build. Go condition based and you’ll have to dodge a bit now and then to be effective and even engage in some crowd control to survive if you tackle a big enough group of mobs. Gw2 is a game thats intended to be casual friendly and from comments in the forum even as is some people find it hard to solo content in the open world. If the game were to make its mobs challenging for good players playing a straight up DPS class who would the inexperienced players playing with a sub optimal build fair?

The question is, if you got mechanics in a gamemode which just does nothing beneficial at all, why have them? If you got skills which are pretty much a blank spot on your bar, why have them there?

If you just want the combat to be spam every skill that’s not on cooldown, why not just make every skill some sort of a DPS increase over your autoattack like a lot of games which designed their combat like that?

And also, every game’s difficulty comes in tiers so that different players are satisfied. Make the open world easy, make dungeons harder, make raids which will test you to your limits and make you appreciate every skill on your bar. Make all of them optional. The casuals can stay in the open, the more skilled in dungeons, and the truly hardcore can enjoy raids. Everyone’s happy.

Yes – but the OP wasn’t asking for this.

Also – like mentioned above GW2 was designed with casual players in mind in a sense that casual meant playing a few hours here and a few hours there.
It meant that even if I could play 5 hours a week I could still keep up gear wise with someone who could do 30 hours a week.

It was never supposed to mean that everything would be insanely easy and that every mob in the open would be a pushover. Or that world bosses would be nothing more than walking loot with a timer.

Of course, I forgot to mention this:

I’m not looking for hard content, I just would love to actually have engaging combat, even when solo…

But as 99% of mobs in GW2 are this way, with exception of 1% (challenging boss monsters, Veteran Karka, Mordrem and Giant Beetles), even if I don’t play berserker DPS, combat tends to stay bland, with not much difference overall…

Atleast in my opinion, the difficulty of open world PvE feels alot more easier than it should be…
I mean “Casuals must have to have mobs that do about nothing during combat” kind of mobs feels abit overdoing…

The real issues, as I see them:

1. In BWE1, the only differences in mob behavior that I remember were that they kited out of AoE (which players abused no end) and they hit harder. Of course, most players also had only Fine gear, and hordes of 80’s in Exotic/Ascended were not roaming many of the maps. While there were some complaints that the mobs were “too hard” I saw zero complaints that they were too easy or uninteresting. Same mechanics, for the most part, just more damage.
2. Game design for the open world is based around events, which often pit players against groups of mobs. When one is solo, groups of mobs can be reasonably challenging. However, since megadeath was implemented, I’m finding it harder and harder to find events that are not outnumbered by players. Individual mobs use the same behaviors and do the same amount of damage as those same mobs do in groups. Developers are not going to have two iterations of the same mob for when faced alone or in groups — however, the difficulty level of those mobs seems based on facing them in groups while one is alone. This condition does not apply that often.
3. Mob damage was reduced (by launch; for the trait revamp, and for 9/9)
4. Mobs seem to be balanced around Fine gear, not any of the other, higher tiers. In every MMO I’ve ever played, open world mobs are trivialized by “endgame” gear. This is because mobs in the open world are leveling content. not endgame content. GW2 is the same in that “endgame gear” trivializes mobs in the open world. The difference in GW2 is that “endgame gear” is facing off against leveling mobs.
5. Down-leveling has never worked to the extent of putting a down-leveled player in the same place, statistically, as he would be if he were on-level in Fine gear.
6. Veteran player skill has advanced considerably since the game launched.
7. Event scaling rarely finds a sweet spot. In some (rare) cases it produces mob difficulty that’s “too much” for the number of players present. All too often, players outnumber event difficulty.

Galen Grey.4709:

mobs have ridiculous amounts of HP if they are ridiculously scaled up.

As for your other major issue. Why does the game have to force you to play a certain way.

If you dont like straight up DPS, dont play a straight up DPS build. Go condition based and you’ll have to dodge a bit now and then to be effective and even engage in some crowd control to survive if you tackle a big enough group of mobs. Gw2 is a game thats intended to be casual friendly and from comments in the forum even as is some people find it hard to solo content in the open world. If the game were to make its mobs challenging for good players playing a straight up DPS class who would the inexperienced players playing with a sub optimal build fair?

I have a main Necromancer that sits out quite alot…

While I do love to watch PvE mobs health diminish quickly with condition builds, but I can’t use that for group events in open world PvE, since mobs are killed too fast, my conditions deal no damage.
Group in, if my party members use berserker DPS, I end up just inflicting conditions that never tick enough for majority of the game.

Not to mention that Vitality and Health are what pretty much combat against Conditions…
More health, the more time my conditions need to chew through it.
If mob has no armor, it takes full damage from Direct Dmg DPS, which is used by many when they do these group events, more health means few more hits from Direct Dmg source, while for conditions it’s usually more than 30 seconds, even minutes required at worse…

Even if I use a hybrid build, example Rampager gear, part of my damage source is out, if I want to use it in every PvE area, which includes group content, dungeon and open world…

Harper.4173:

maddoctor.2738:

As I’ve said on other threads, Damage/Control/Support trinity works very well in any form of PVP, so, making PVE mobs better is accomplished by putting more PVP features over to PVE.

Of course the open world part of the game needs to be easy enough for everyone to play, not everything needs a change, however since we will soon be discussing Raids (or harder content in general) it’s good to talk about potential changes in PVE mob design before we move there. A MOB CDI maybe?

Some suggestions:

Make mobs in high end content utilize more skills. No mob has more than 3-4 skills, which makes them all dull, one-trick ponies. So what kind of skills?

One of the defining factors of player builds is their healing skill, everyone has one, and proper usage is very important. Giving all high end mobs a Healing skill, is a great step in making mobs more engaging and player-like. Allowing mobs to self heal for a great amount of health makes Control all the more important (and Poison), lower mob hit points but excellent healing skills is the way to go. Same goes with World Bosses, add mechanics that will heal the boss, players need to overcome them, by spliting up and killing various mobs, attacking various turrets/defenses whatever in a set period of time.

For example, some good Healing skills for mobs:
Shelter (also blocking skill), Litany of Wrath (excellent for mobs with aoe fields – used in Eotm), Healing Signet (passive mostly), Defiant Stance (anti-zerg at its best – used in Eotm).

Mobs need utility skills as well, skills like Endure Pain and Shield Block work very well on mobs, great way of making mobs immune to direct damage attacks, but still take condition damage. Skills that summon minions (Necro minions, Guardian Weapons, ele summons, Engie turrets etc), or skills that alter ally skillbars (like Ele Conjures or Engie kits) or Signets are bad choices for mobs, since those kind of skills require some better form of AI.

But skills that apply boons, like Guardian Shouts, are excellent for mobs, they just need some kind of AI so not to overlap them.

More important than indivual skillbars, high end mobs need to be grouped in teams, 5-mob teams for example, with proper skillsets and a “trinity”. Using the same type of mob all the time is terrible.

Other than improved skillbars, mobs need to attack while moving, or if that’s impossible due to technology limitations, make their responses a lot faster, faster attacks, lower damage is the way to go.

On paper making mobs more like pvp opponents isn’t incredibly difficult to do. The problem is this :

Only a very small part of GW2’s player base even touches PVP. I’m not sure what the numbers are but I’m pretty certain that the majority of players are terrible at pvp.
Now making mobs more like pvp players means more and more players will get stomped. Which is not the experience they’re looking for and will move on elsewhere.

You can’t make things harder and still make the average or below average player feel “like a hero”.

That’s the reason open world PVE cannot be made much harder than it currently is. Not because of technical reasons ( though I suspect there are those as well) but more because of design issues.

Maybe some of the content can be like that then. But you are right, the average player has a tough time fighting the Toy Princesses or the Mordrem Thrashers because they are a bit more challenging than other mobs. So I doubt any kind of change to mob behavior will affect the entire game, but maybe it could affect just some places, like the upcoming Raids?

If you want challenge, you could always go to Southsun Cove and jump into a bunch of karkas. That is, unless, you feel like you’re so powerful you can defeat an army of those at a time. xD
For me, Southsun Cove is a place where I don’t feel safe, I don’t know about you guys.

It was similar for me in Orr when I was new to the game. If you go there unprepared – you will die. Learning monster’s abilities and patterns takes time, so…
Even on higher level, if you run into bandits in Queensdale(by their cave) – you will die. There’s your ‘careful dodging’ part.
I’m not sure what you expect from anet. Do they add new mobs or change their mechanics completely? Because I’m mostly happy with the way combat is, other than occassional lack of challenge.

What I agree on is that it would be nice to show some meaning to different builds. At the moment Berserker gear is the best in nearly every situation, as long as you can do some basic dodging. This could be improved.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Not to mention that Vitality and Health are what pretty much combat against Conditions…
More health, the more time my conditions need to chew through it.
If mob has no armor, it takes full damage from Direct Dmg DPS, which is used by many when they do these group events, more health means few more hits from Direct Dmg source, while for conditions it’s usually more than 30 seconds, even minutes required at worse…

I’m under no illusions that ArenaNet would even consider this solution, and I’m sure there are plenty of players who will also balk at the suggestion, but if a damage type isn’t scaling well, the obvious solution is to make it percentage based rather than dishing out a fixed amount of damage.
For the sake of example, have it so that poison, if allowed to run its full course, removes 20% of an enemy’s health bar over 10 seconds. Change stacks so that they don’t increase the potency, but instead need to all be removed before the poison effect is removed and then make condition removers only remove one unit from a stack a time.

That would strike me as being the sensible solution to the poor scalability of condition damage.

Yoroiookami.3485:

If you want challenge, you could always go to Southsun Cove and jump into a bunch of karkas. That is, unless, you feel like you’re so powerful you can defeat an army of those at a time. xD
For me, Southsun Cove is a place where I don’t feel safe, I don’t know about you guys.

It was similar for me in Orr when I was new to the game. If you go there unprepared – you will die. Learning monster’s abilities and patterns takes time, so…
Even on higher level, if you run into bandits in Queensdale(by their cave) – you will die. There’s your ‘careful dodging’ part.
I’m not sure what you expect from anet. Do they add new mobs or change their mechanics completely? Because I’m mostly happy with the way combat is, other than occassional lack of challenge.

What I agree on is that it would be nice to show some meaning to different builds. At the moment Berserker gear is the best in nearly every situation, as long as you can do some basic dodging. This could be improved.

The thing about SC is that the mobs there don’t behave differently or have mechanics which make you think differently to other areas. They just hit a lot harder.

If you look at the sparring partners in the Mists, I think that’s kind of what people are asking for. Personally, if they get that and then make them react to AoEs better (ie, don’t just sit in them), that’s perfect for me.

Yoroiookami.3485:

If you want challenge, you could always go to Southsun Cove and jump into a bunch of karkas. That is, unless, you feel like you’re so powerful you can defeat an army of those at a time. xD
For me, Southsun Cove is a place where I don’t feel safe, I don’t know about you guys.

It was similar for me in Orr when I was new to the game. If you go there unprepared – you will die. Learning monster’s abilities and patterns takes time, so…
Even on higher level, if you run into bandits in Queensdale(by their cave) – you will die. There’s your ‘careful dodging’ part.
I’m not sure what you expect from anet. Do they add new mobs or change their mechanics completely? Because I’m mostly happy with the way combat is, other than occassional lack of challenge.

What I agree on is that it would be nice to show some meaning to different builds. At the moment Berserker gear is the best in nearly every situation, as long as you can do some basic dodging. This could be improved.

Well, can say the problem is that Veteran Karka, belongs to the 1% of PvE mobs (Which includes abit more complex/challenging boss monsters, Mordrem and Giant Beetles)
Veteran Karka requires more careful approach, since they use alot of boons, debilitating attacks and possess resilience which makes full berserker DPS builds pretty much suicide, if I don’t take any practical utility skills for the battle.

My Necromancer gets more use here (Especially the boon/condition manipulation abilities, oh that corrupting boons is refreshing) and the combat is not repetive stand-spam-DPS atleast, but it’s still 1%, so my main Necromancer will be sitting in out for majority of time.

As for Queensdale Bandits, might hit hard for the lvl, like everywhere else (99% of mobs), they still all die quick and do pretty much nothing, since most of the time they spend in “slow attack speed” cooldowns, activating 1 ability in every 3-5 seconds…

If I play Condition build there, I can just watch and enjoy the condition dmg ticks, dodge abit, heal abit more, but not enjoy much of the combat itself…

If I play with berserker DPS build there, I pretty much clear out the cave by just using auto-attack and few weapon skills. Might have to activate heal skill once, but I will pretty much never use dodge, keep on moving or think about my positioning…

But as Queensdale is pretty much starter area, I can understand the mobs being super easy…

And of course, it also gets boring when repeating same mobs in 1 place, so I move to another map for a change…

Yet there are not much of maps to go to, due to the 99% of same mobs…
:(

When are mobs gonna be fixed?

Answer:- NEVER

One hit kills and more hp’s are the best you can hope for, I for one am sick of this in games. Just let them leave it alone. I don’t want another UVHM (Borderlands 2) where I am funnelled into ever decreasing viable options.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Yoroiookami.3485:

If you want challenge, you could always go to Southsun Cove and jump into a bunch of karkas. That is, unless, you feel like you’re so powerful you can defeat an army of those at a time. xD
For me, Southsun Cove is a place where I don’t feel safe, I don’t know about you guys.

It was similar for me in Orr when I was new to the game. If you go there unprepared – you will die. Learning monster’s abilities and patterns takes time, so…
Even on higher level, if you run into bandits in Queensdale(by their cave) – you will die. There’s your ‘careful dodging’ part.
I’m not sure what you expect from anet. Do they add new mobs or change their mechanics completely? Because I’m mostly happy with the way combat is, other than occassional lack of challenge.

What I agree on is that it would be nice to show some meaning to different builds. At the moment Berserker gear is the best in nearly every situation, as long as you can do some basic dodging. This could be improved.

Well, can say the problem is that Veteran Karka, belongs to the 1% of PvE mobs (Which includes abit more complex/challenging boss monsters, Mordrem and Giant Beetles)
Veteran Karka requires more careful approach, since they use alot of boons, debilitating attacks and possess resilience which makes full berserker DPS builds pretty much suicide, if I don’t take any practical utility skills for the battle.

My Necromancer gets more use here (Especially the boon/condition manipulation abilities, oh that corrupting boons is refreshing) and the combat is not repetive stand-spam-DPS atleast, but it’s still 1%, so my main Necromancer will be sitting in out for majority of time.

---

As for Queensdale Bandits, might hit hard for the lvl, like everywhere else (99% of mobs), they still all die quick and do pretty much nothing, since most of the time they spend in “slow attack speed” cooldowns, activating 1 ability in every 3-5 seconds…

If I play Condition build there, I can just watch and enjoy the condition dmg ticks, dodge abit, heal abit more, but not enjoy much of the combat itself…

If I play with berserker DPS build there, I pretty much clear out the cave by just using auto-attack and few weapon skills. Might have to activate heal skill once, but I will pretty much never use dodge, keep on moving or think about my positioning…

But as Queensdale is pretty much starter area, I can understand the mobs being super easy…

---

And of course, it also gets boring when repeating same mobs in 1 place, so I move to another map for a change…

Yet there are not much of maps to go to, due to the 99% of same mobs…
:(

I agree that mobs could be more complex and that berserker gear is clearly better than other choices as the game is now.
On the other hand, I’d like you to look at it from another perspective – different mobs have different patterns, different skills etc. The game mechanics stay the same, but I don’t think that’s the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the berserker gear, which allows anyone with basic dodging ability to kill nearly everything in the game.

A step in fixing that, would be monsters that:
- Target the player with the highest DPS,
- Attack in multiple strikes one after another instead of one-hit kills,
- Put conditions such as blind, chilled, and confusion on players,
- Regenerate health unless poisoned/bleeding etc.

That could stop players in some areas from using berserker gear, though I’m no expert.

stacking is also problem , if mobs could stay on their max range+keep running repositioning theirselves it would be much better .We just need 1 just 1 AI fix and this game would be much more challenging . But who cares when some people still have problem with spamming 1111 and dodging

i always said to improve combat in gw2 (or just make it a bit more interesting) is to give the mobs actual skills.

in gw1 mobs used skills just like a player would, as you progressed further into the game mobs would aquire more skills, even elites

in the harder zones mobs would have full builds. and since mobs in gw1 almost always showed up in a group, some group had combo builds that did well with eachother.

in gw2 most of the time i see:

-normal atacks
-special charging atacks that hit harder and has a effect like knockdown
-special charging attacks that do aoe dmg
-special condition applying atacks

thats it…. just my 2 cents

The problem isn’t the mobs as your title suggests it’s the combat. And this game isn’t alone. Gone are the days of cerebral combat in which you could actually use deadly traps to trick your foe. Explosives are like fireworks even mines aren’t deadly nor do they cripple and they are about the size of tiny bathroom tiles.

This game had such potential in combat early on, but then pvp balance came along and ruined PVE entirely.

God forbid you actually think while fighting anymore on these titles.

We hear all the time how these games are being dumbed down, but they aren’t being dumbed down because of the PVE players they are being dumbed down because of the PVP players who don’t want to think about strategy they just wanna spam faceroll their enemies in PVP.

The mobs aren’t the problem either. We have plenty of mobs with regen and huge hp pools and even one shot kill abilities, that’s not the issue, the issue is they nerfed Conditions, they made CC non-existant, and they made support completely useless. Also they made traps pointless for anything other than extra AOE zones.

tigirius.9014:

The problem isn’t the mobs as your title suggests it’s the combat. And this game isn’t alone. Gone are the days of cerebral combat in which you could actually use deadly traps to trick your foe. Explosives are like fireworks even mines aren’t deadly nor do they cripple and they are about the size of tiny bathroom tiles.

This game had such potential in combat early on, but then pvp balance came along and ruined PVE entirely.

God forbid you actually think while fighting anymore on these titles.

We hear all the time how these games are being dumbed down, but they aren’t being dumbed down because of the PVE players they are being dumbed down because of the PVP players who don’t want to think about strategy they just wanna spam faceroll their enemies in PVP.

The mobs aren’t the problem either. We have plenty of mobs with regen and huge hp pools and even one shot kill abilities, that’s not the issue, the issue is they nerfed Conditions, they made CC non-existant, and they made support completely useless. Also they made traps pointless for anything other than extra AOE zones.

my engi laughs at you. LAUGHS

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

stacking is also problem , if mobs could stay on their max range+keep running repositioning theirselves it would be much better .We just need 1 just 1 AI fix and this game would be much more challenging . But who cares when some people still have problem with spamming 1111 and dodging

Here we go again. Your suggestion would not prevent stacking. It might prevent line-of-sight pulls.

Mobs DO use different skills. Best example would be bandits using thief’s elite skill. (“Dagger Storm”, or something like that).

The combat is this game isn’t half bad. It’s the most challenging I’ve seen in any MMO, as it actually requires you to move around if you want to stay alive.
I just wish anet would fix some of the small issues we have, and maybe try to make support build meaningful.

tigirius.9014:

We hear all the time how these games are being dumbed down, but they aren’t being dumbed down because of the PVE players they are being dumbed down because of the PVP players who don’t want to think about strategy they just wanna spam faceroll their enemies in PVP.

Enemies that are just a massive hit point barrier exist only in PVE, mobs that attack only every 3 seconds are also something only in PVE, as are mobs that cannot attack while moving so can be kited around without effort. Also, mobs not running out of AoEs and stacking in corners to be killed quickly is also a PVE thing. Defiant is also a PVE thing and doesn’t exist in PVP.

So everything that’s wrong with PVE in this game only exists in PVE and has nothing to do with PVP, saying that games are being dumbed down because of PVP is false. They are being dumbed down so even players that don’t want to put the effort can do almost all content in PVE, those guys can hardly compete in PVP.

The mobs aren’t the problem either. We have plenty of mobs with regen and huge hp pools and even one shot kill abilities, that’s not the issue, the issue is they nerfed Conditions, they made CC non-existant, and they made support completely useless. Also they made traps pointless for anything other than extra AOE zones.

Conditions are way more powerful than direct damage in PVP, CC is dominant in PVP too, so is Support, actually Support and Control are more important than Damage in PVP, I don’t understand what this has to do with PVP, the only dumbed down thing in GW2 are the mobs nothing else.

Lots of stat combinations are important, lots of skills are important, most weapon sets have their use, conditions are absolute king, control and support are both superb and far more important than damage. All these in PVP, so if everything else is the SAME then why is PVE only about Damage, while the SAME stats/skills/traits/weapons are far better in PVP? Because PVE mechanics/ bosses and mob design is what is flawed. Nothing else.

Yoroiookami.3485:

Mobs DO use different skills. Best example would be bandits using thief’s elite skill. (“Dagger Storm”, or something like that).

The combat is this game isn’t half bad. It’s the most challenging I’ve seen in any MMO, as it actually requires you to move around if you want to stay alive.
I just wish anet would fix some of the small issues we have, and maybe try to make support build meaningful.

Support and Control builds function better, when mobs don’t die too quickly and manage to execute their abilities, deal damage and so on…

Effects provided by Support and Control are pretty much help to survive longer and prevent enemies from using their abilities.

As for bandits using Dagger Storm, I think it was Asuran Pirates who toss daggers as attacks, it’s pretty much toned down version, deals little damage, doesn’t reflect projectiles, not to mention the slow attack speed…

maddoctor.2738:

tigirius.9014:

We hear all the time how these games are being dumbed down, but they aren’t being dumbed down because of the PVE players they are being dumbed down because of the PVP players who don’t want to think about strategy they just wanna spam faceroll their enemies in PVP.

Enemies that are just a massive hit point barrier exist only in PVE, mobs that attack only every 3 seconds are also something only in PVE, as are mobs that cannot attack while moving so can be kited around without effort. Also, mobs not running out of AoEs and stacking in corners to be killed quickly is also a PVE thing. Defiant is also a PVE thing and doesn’t exist in PVP.

So everything that’s wrong with PVE in this game only exists in PVE and has nothing to do with PVP, saying that games are being dumbed down because of PVP is false. They are being dumbed down so even players that don’t want to put the effort can do almost all content in PVE, those guys can hardly compete in PVP.

The mobs aren’t the problem either. We have plenty of mobs with regen and huge hp pools and even one shot kill abilities, that’s not the issue, the issue is they nerfed Conditions, they made CC non-existant, and they made support completely useless. Also they made traps pointless for anything other than extra AOE zones.

Conditions are way more powerful than direct damage in PVP, CC is dominant in PVP too, so is Support, actually Support and Control are more important than Damage in PVP, I don’t understand what this has to do with PVP, the only dumbed down thing in GW2 are the mobs nothing else.

Lots of stat combinations are important, lots of skills are important, most weapon sets have their use, conditions are absolute king, control and support are both superb and far more important than damage. All these in PVP, so if everything else is the SAME then why is PVE only about Damage, while the SAME stats/skills/traits/weapons are far better in PVP? Because PVE mechanics/ bosses and mob design is what is flawed. Nothing else.

Then really it’s simple what they need to do, fulfill what they said they’d be doing with the updates anyway which is have separate scores, stats etc between PVE and PVP. If they did that in their updates classes like Engineer wouldn’t have suffered the large number of PVE build destroying nerfs it’s suffered over the years.

FrostSpectre.4198:

As for bandits using Dagger Storm, I think it was Asuran Pirates who toss daggers as attacks, it’s pretty much toned down version, deals little damage, doesn’t reflect projectiles, not to mention the slow attack speed…

Iirc, one bandit mob uses a form of Whirling Defense, not Dagger Storm. It does melee damage and does reflect projectiles — though I can’t say they still reflect after the 9/9 patch. The only place I’ve seen these bandits, though, is in the Defend Curtiss’s Ranch or the Retake the Ranch events in Queensdale. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them anywhere else.

Not to mention that the current mob design of “High HP-High DMG-Slow Attack-0 armor” works best when Solo…

In group content, everything goes out the window…

Adding one other problems into the list…
Problems that together make a bigger one:

• Lack of variety in mobs stats, attack speed and abilities, for 99% of mobs
• Poor AI (Incapable of using active defense, even if just little, for majority)
• Megaserver zergs
• Mob design for majority works best only in solo