Guild Wars 2

This thread is pure PVE and for it to work their needs to be difference between pve and pvp balancing. Playing your class in pvp needs to be the same as always, but PVE needs in my opinion an overhaul. This is my solotion to a problem that exist in gw2 and if you disagree with it tell your own solotion or how it could work etc.

After playing for a whole long time in gw2 I still don’t have a really strong connection to my class. I know that more people have a problem with this matter (including woodenpotatoes).

One of the problems causing this, is the lack of class and build diversity and the functionally implantation of the “new” roles damage/support/tanky or manipulation role. Anet talked about this before launch i think (if not i will claim the idea myself). Having to rely on someone as much as for example a healer is really bad and will cause for a lot of frustration. So all the roles need to be implemented in a way that will cause no frustration and without obligatory form of a basic structure (3 damage, 1 support, 1 tanky/taunt role).

I’m now going to discuss how it will work in practice as it all seems a bit unreal. This is off course a basic explanation and all the values are a bit off. But this is kind of how it works

If you got a basic group of 3 damage, 1 support and 1 tanky/taunt roles,
The tank class will keep the enemies busy while defending the support and damage roles. The support role is keeping everybody up with goodies and sustainability and after some time they complete the wave of enemies. This is the basic form

For it to work with a lot of other possible group formation anet needs to do a lot of balancing. But it is certainly possible. having a group of 2 support, 2 damage and 1 tank should take the same time to complete the wave with enemies as the basic formation group. Because there is one fragile damage clkitten, there are less wipes and more dps given to all the other people in the group because there is one support extra. It will take roughly the same time to complete the wave.

Even in the some extreme cases it is able to work, for example 5 support.
Since there are 5 supports in the group everybody is always almost max stacked with boons they almost do the same damage and have the same sustainability as the basic form group. The new roles shouldn’t work with all formations, otherwise the roles don’t really have a purpose like 5 tanks is not really useful or 5 damage because everybody keeps dying too much.

The reason why this is not working in the current state of the game is because anet has given the classes too much options and skills. Yes this sounds crazy but i’m going to explain why less is more. For example a pure zerker mesmer still has a lot of sustainability and can easily solo all kinds of bosses, because the way skills work. You can evade all the time becasue you keep giving yourself vigor distortion etc. while doing max damage. This is bad for the game because this makes support not viable, why would you need it if you could do it yourself. The tank/ manipulation role is also not viable, because you can easily just keep the enemies busy yourself and keep spreading your boons to other people so they have a lot of sustain too.

A solution for the new system to work is the Class diversity. At lvl 40 or something like that you are going to have to make a choice are you support, damage, tank

The Elemtalist for example

If you reached lvl 40 you get a pop up saying what you want to become.

-lava elamentalist (tank) you can only switch between earth and fire 25% protection
-life elamentalist (support) you can only switch between earth and water25% boon duration+15% protection
-plasma elematlist (damage) you can only switch between fire and lightning+25% damage

You can only change your talent out of combat and maybe with 30 min rest or something like that. As you lvl you unlock more skills that are only available for that talent like a lava can only summon a fire or an earth elemental.

For the new roles to work, damage roles can cant spread boons, can’t evade too much and can only give themselves few boons like might, fury swiftness. Support roles can give everybody a lot and all sorts of boons. Tanks can only give theme self boons like a few stacks of might protection aegis. The tank warrior for example can only wield shield maces great swords and hammers, while the damage warrior can wield swords rifles etc.

This solution is in my opinion one of the best as it would solve a lot of problems. Making a lot of weapons viable again, solving the zerker meta, giving character diversity, it could even go as far as making conditions viable in PVE as not all talents could use condi’s like you have a

Soul eater necro +25% condi damage
Life shredder necro +25%damage
blood necro +15 protection +15% life stealing

If you disagree with my solution, post your own solutions, feel free to talk and discuss the problems I talked about and if you just want to fantasize about crazy talents for classes go ahead.

Sorry for the long and chaotic post and for my bad English it’s not my native language.

mricezombie.4560:

You can evade all the time becasue you keep giving yourself vigor distortion etc. while doing max damage. This is bad for the game because this makes support not viable, why would you need it if you could do it yourself.

One of the pillars of GW2 is being able to do things by yourself, and that any class can fill any role as needed. It sounds like what you are suggesting is spreading roles out in such a way that you are dependent on having people with other kinds of builds in your party to succeed, which is against the core philosophy of the game.

Actually the class and build diversity is quite high. In high-end pve groups everybody is supporter and damage-dealer at the same time. You need reflects, blind, stability, fury, might, condition cleanse, vuln and much more. Only because the average 4 zerk war pug group doesn’t support each other much this doesn’t mean that it’s not possible.

Anet would have to admit they were wrong about the Trinity before that would happen.

Good luck with that.

they were not wrong from where I am sitting.

You are asserting there is a problem when many will disagree that one exists. I feel a connection to my main character’s class. I’ve leveled all the classes to 80. They all play differently with different strengths and weaknesses and different things to consider.

The real problem here is people not being able to get away from the traditional mmo way of thinking. They want their class to be dps or tank or healer/support. That’s not how this game works and I am glad for it. All classes contribute damage AND support. If you are not contributing support to your group, you are likely being carried. The difference between classes is how they contribute damage and what support they contribute. If you want classes to primarily contribute one or the other, there are other games for that.

Also, the zerker meta isn’t a problem. Zerker gear isn’t needed unless you want to optimize your build. Other gear sets are viable in pve.

Supports are heavily favored in pve, in fact, each speedrun parties has of 5 supports, consisting of: blind from either guardian or thief, hard CC via deep freeze from elementalist, stealth for trash skips, condi clear and stability provided by the guardian, dmg amplifiers from warrior banners and ranger frost spirit + spotter. The people who say there are no diversity and that everything is dps obviously haven’t done their research.

Not only that, the dungeons actually encourages consistent trait changes which or may not alter the playstyle completely of the class during that encounter, thus adding into diversity. I have noticed that the people who say that there are no diversity are usually the people who stick to one or two trait setup and the same weapons for everything, even if the weapon or trait isn’t optimal for particular dungeon encounter.

yhea but it’s not about speedruns. it’s about just completing content. speed runs are the consequence of one of the game problems. diversity isnt needed in the game for 98% of the content just for speedruns. and what about all the armor, you are not going to tell me you are doing speedruns in power touhness vitality armor

mricezombie.4560:

yhea but it’s not about speedruns. it’s about just completing content. speed runs are the consequence of one of the game problems. diversity isnt needed in the game for 98% of the content just for speedruns. and what about all the armor, you are not going to tell me you are doing speedruns in power touhness vitality armor

Speedruns aren’t a game problem, in any game where the mechanics are memorized and tactics are refined to maximize reward, there will be speedruns.

If you are talking about just completeing content then guess what?.. any gear set is viable. When i first started playing this game and had no clue of whats going on, i still went through most of the dungeons in pvt gear just fine, i can definitely say that after a while, doing anything in pvt is not a problem at all, in fact its usually easier than being in zerker. The only reason people don’t do it is because pvt kills slow, which is fine, a survival set shouldn’t outdps a full dps set.

Another thing many people fail to point out is that gear isn’t the only thing that defines your build, traits and weapon set also plays a huge parts. It doesn’t matter if zerk or whatever gear, a d/f ele will play completely different from a s/f or a staff ele for instance, all with different stengths/weakness/utility etc..the diversity is there, all it takes is for people to actually go seek them instead of wanting the game to go the direction of WoW and butcher the gameplay that people have to come to love in this game.

Diversity is too expensive and/or tedious for most now, courtesy of the NPE trait unlocking schema. With a meta, you can at least focus on unlocking the traits you need (Rather than the 95% you won’t for a given meta, or the roughly 30-50% on any class that are just pants on head useless no matter how you shake it).

So, the game is now all about rocking a solid meta and maybe achieving diversity in months to follow.

all build are viable but you clear the dungeon at twice the speed if you were running it with zerker armor. i play sometimes with power toughness vitality and i notice that i’m slowing the group down. my skill lvl and understanding of the game doesn’t change just my build. for this reason zerker is almost a must, try doing 30+ fracs with your own pref gear. It doesn’t work, becasue the damage build have almost just as much as sustain as other build because they can use the same skills (endure pain, block, distortian) This makes the other build not really that viable.

and please stop using wow as an argument. It’s not that wow is the all evil of mmos. You can’t deny that wow has alot of great stuff. for example not unreal square like maps. gw2 is revolutionary in a lot of ways but sometimes you need to accept that tings didnt work as planned and you have to change the formula. Taking a step back is not always a bad thing. just like humanity learned alot in the The Renaissance from the old greek and roman times.

going back to a bit more traditional like role system is therefore in my opnion not that bad. They just need to find a way not to make the basic form (3dps, 1 healer, 1 tank) obligatory

You can’t PHIW in WoW either. You would be just as bad there. shrug

I wonder how many actual new topic discussions there would be on the forums if the same 5 topics didn’t keep coming up in multiple long drawn out silly discussions of things that are “Working as intended” in the first place.

Again someone mistakes “Maximized Damage” for “No Support/No Tankiness”.

Maybe that’s true in games where Roles are hard set, such as WoW.

It’s not true in GW2, where support and Control can be done just as well by someone who’s Specced for max Damage. Just think about it for a second:

If Damage was everything, then why isn’t the Meta “Only Elementalists, 1 Warrior”? Because the amount of Defense and Support that a Guardian or Mesmer can bring outweighs their lack of damage dealing potential in comparison to Elementalist.
You don’t honestly think that the reason Necro and Engi are elected out of most dungeon groups is because of their “low” DPS, do you?

I don’t bring gear into this. Zerker gear is the Optimal gear as an effect of this, and nerfing it isn’t a question. If you want gear diversity, you’d need to completely overhaul the way Weapons, armor and trinkets work in this game.

Going back to traditional MMO like roles will just butcher what gw2 was designed to be.

I also don’t know why you expect to kill fast in tank sets, obviously you are going to do less damage, this is a given. PVT sacrifices damage for personal survival.

Again you are mistaking viable for optimal, fractal 30+ can be cleared in pvt, in fact speed clear groups have sometimes used cleric guardians in their composition. Optimal setup is obviously zerk but it doesn’t mean all the other sets are suddenly not viable, and as you said you just want to clear content so not completing dungeon fast isn’t an issue.

EDIT: forgot to quote the OP

.

The thread you are looking for is over there…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/This-Meta-has-to-end/page/29#post4644999

At least that’s the worst biggest one, there’s many more like that.

From my experience with other games I can tell that a trinity kills build diversity for classes in a very drastic way. There fore the idea of GW2 is much better: each class can fulfill each role.

I my eyes the current problem is that the devs are not using this concept to a decent content. Since they are not restricted to a certain group composition trinities require they could design encounters witch much more variety. The spectrum of favored group compositions should go from 5 DPS with support to 5 supporter with control. The DPS-heavy compositions we see very often. Other ones like support-heavy compositions are still too rare. In my eyes the devs have to work still o lot on this front.

I would also like to see more roles/jobs connected to certain group members in certain encounters. There is much room for improvements. The goal for Arenanet should not be to equalize the DPS or HPS for all classes and builds but to favor the usage different builds with different DPS and HPS by a large variety of encounters that require more drastic adaptations to reach the optimum.

Belenwyn.8674:

From my experience with other games I can tell that a trinity kills build diversity for classes in a very drastic way. There fore the idea of GW2 is much better: each class can fulfill each role.

That’s … not always the case, though. Usually, but not always.

In CoH we saw the classic trinity, but with each archetype also being able to stand on their own and solo. Some were better at it than others, naturally, but everyone could manage. Basically, everyone could do a bit of everything, and then they had the thing they were the best at.

What it resulted in was a game where the trinity worked, but going without it also worked. Sometimes, teams being completely unbalanced (in more ways than one) made for some actually awesome runs.

I think GW2 could afford to drift a little bit towards trinity roles and not get into trouble. They just need to be careful to not go too far, even in CoH we had ex-trinity players demanding “a healer” for the team before they would do anything, and no amount of arguing would change their minds.

No, no, no, no.
Stop the spam threads.

The game is fine. Stop trying to make it into what you think it should be.

Palador.2170:

Belenwyn.8674:

From my experience with other games I can tell that a trinity kills build diversity for classes in a very drastic way. There fore the idea of GW2 is much better: each class can fulfill each role.

That’s … not always the case, though. Usually, but not always.

In CoH we saw the classic trinity, but with each archetype also being able to stand on their own and solo. Some were better at it than others, naturally, but everyone could manage. Basically, everyone could do a bit of everything, and then they had the thing they were the best at.

What it resulted in was a game where the trinity worked, but going without it also worked. Sometimes, teams being completely unbalanced (in more ways than one) made for some actually awesome runs.

I think GW2 could afford to drift a little bit towards trinity roles and not get into trouble. They just need to be careful to not go too far, even in CoH we had ex-trinity players demanding “a healer” for the team before they would do anything, and no amount of arguing would change their minds.

“d3wd /kin troller can’t heal” ‘Wot? Transfusion spam is awesome.’

“No dawg we need defender” ‘…Oh yeah? What kind of defender do you think you need?’

“Healer type lol” ’That’s what I thought. Enjoy your STF, and good luck. You’re…really gonna need it.’

The reason that PVE is borked it simple, defensive numbers don’t matter.

If it does not do damage, it is as effective with zerker gear as it is with any other gear. End result, everyone is packing DPS to the eyebrows and switch around a few skills for “support”.

mricezombie.4560:

…
At lvl 40 or something like that you are going to have to make a choice are you support, damage, tank
…

Oh God no, please no.

Since we’ve got a couple people bringing up CoH, I thought I’d just take a few whacks at this dead horse myself.

First, I’d argue that if you want an example of a game that was “trinity without trinity,” you’d be better off pointing at CoV (I know they eventually rolled the two games into a single sub fee, but the two were still quite distinct).

Second, while CoH had quite interesting team dynamics, it still didn’t escape the original problem Anet wanted to avoid: being forced to wait around for a paticular class/build/set-up._ By “endgame” in CoH/V, entire parties would refuse to start raids without a Granite Tank. A granite tank and someone with that radiation debuffing set (sometimes people would settle for that Dark Control set as a substitute, sometimes). Doing speed clear runs in those “Parallel Universe” missions? Better have at least one Earth/Radiation controller with you or gtfo. And let’s not forget how Lightbringers and Darkstalkers were universally despised because whatever tanking/dps/healing they may have brought was completely outweighed by the fact that they caused unique enemies to spawn in your missions (in particular those wretched Cysts).
So while it certainly had it’s quirks, that game was as gridlocked as any that came before it.

The fact of the matter is that the game’s current orientation of favoring “full dps builds” actually doesn’t have anything to do with the Anet development team, or enemy AI, or Guild Wars 2 at all. It is a near inevitability within the Action RPG genre itself.
Just look at other games in the genre, like Monster Hunter or Dark Souls for example. Regardless of wether or not they’re weighted more to the Action elements or more to the RPG elements, the so long as there exists the potential for players to negate all incoming damage either (in this case dodges, reflects, distortions, absorptions, etc…) without sacrificing damage, those will always be the dominant metas. And again, we’re not just talking about GW2 here, but a whole genre. The “high end” meta-game is the same no matter where you choose to look.

And as far as build diversity goes, I would argue that the problem there is not one of mechanics, but one of balancing.

Right now, every class is shackled by the burden of opportunity costs: every proffession has a set of traits or utilities that are so good that taking anything else is a significant detriment (the inverse would be that every class has traits and utilities that are significantly subpar).
Someone mentioned Rangers earlier; a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Right now all Rangers are hamstrung by the unique mechanics of Spotter and Frost Spirit. That’s at least four trait points (realistically more like 6— an additonal 2 to pick up the Vigorous Spirits trait) and one utility slot locked down right from the word go.
True, nobody anywhere is forcing anyone to take those traits/utilities, but those buffs are unique ones that cannot be obtained by any other means. Not taking them is a detriment both to the self and to the entire party.

Every class faces this same dilemma. Look at how clutch 2 points in Zeal and 5 in Radiance is for Guardians (or compare Wall of Reflection to Shield of the Avenger to Sanctuary. The first is almost always superior, the second has its own adorable niche uses, and the third is just garbage). Or how crucial focus is for mesmers, or on an on and on.

The reality is that “build diversity” has nothing to do with the zerker meta, and no amount of buffs or nerfs to damage (direct or condi), support, or control is going to change that. The only way it’s going to happen is if Anet does what they’ve repeatedly said they don’t want to do: make drastic, radical, and rapid changes that see entire traits, traitlines, and utility families reworked and/or reimagined from the ground up.

But as they’ve voiced repeatedly their preference for slow, gradual (some would argue glacial) “tweaks” over genuine changes, I would expect the current handful of “status quo” builds to be around for a long time— I mean just look at how long it took them to fix the dhuumfire fiasco (at least seven months of that time was trying in vain to get Anet to accept/admit that the trait as originally imagined was a horrible mistake, but that’s a whole other can of worms…)

Bingo ! Pass me the popcorn and extra large soda

Krestfallen.8025:

The reality is that “build diversity” has nothing to do with the zerker meta, and no amount of buffs or nerfs to damage (direct or condi), support, or control is going to change that. The only way it’s going to happen is if Anet does what they’ve repeatedly said they don’t want to do: make drastic, radical, and rapid changes that see entire traits, traitlines, and utility families reworked and/or reimagined from the ground up.

But as they’ve voiced repeatedly their preference for slow, gradual (some would argue glacial) “tweaks” over genuine changes, I would expect the current handful of “status quo” builds to be around for a long time— I mean just look at how long it took them to fix the dhuumfire fiasco (at least seven months of that time was trying in vain to get Anet to accept/admit that the trait as originally imagined was a horrible mistake, but that’s a whole other can of worms…)

Change for the sake of change is almost never a good thing.

Krestfallen.8025:

Since we’ve got a couple people bringing up CoH, I thought I’d just take a few whacks at this dead horse myself.

First, I’d argue that if you want an example of a game that was “trinity without trinity,” you’d be better off pointing at CoV (I know they eventually rolled the two games into a single sub fee, but the two were still quite distinct).

Second, while CoH had quite interesting team dynamics, it still didn’t escape the original problem Anet wanted to avoid: being forced to wait around for a paticular class/build/set-up._ By “endgame” in CoH/V, entire parties would refuse to start raids without a Granite Tank. A granite tank and someone with that radiation debuffing set (sometimes people would settle for that Dark Control set as a substitute, sometimes). Doing speed clear runs in those “Parallel Universe” missions? Better have at least one Earth/Radiation controller with you or gtfo. And let’s not forget how Lightbringers and Darkstalkers were universally despised because whatever tanking/dps/healing they may have brought was completely outweighed by the fact that they caused unique enemies to spawn in your missions (in particular those wretched Cysts).
So while it certainly had it’s quirks, that game was as gridlocked as any that came before it.

The fact of the matter is that the game’s current orientation of favoring “full dps builds” actually doesn’t have anything to do with the Anet development team, or enemy AI, or Guild Wars 2 at all. It is a near inevitability within the Action RPG genre itself.
Just look at other games in the genre, like Monster Hunter or Dark Souls for example. Regardless of wether or not they’re weighted more to the Action elements or more to the RPG elements, the so long as there exists the potential for players to negate all incoming damage either (in this case dodges, reflects, distortions, absorptions, etc…) without sacrificing damage, those will always be the dominant metas. And again, we’re not just talking about GW2 here, but a whole genre. The “high end” meta-game is the same no matter where you choose to look.

Not really true best team compositon for CoH was 8 defenders even tho they are the lowest damage class in the game they had the highest dps with all the buffs they shared and all the debuffs they inflicted on enemys.