Guild Wars 2

Most mobs in the new zone that had breakbars were able to be broken with little effort. The Wyern was especially concerning as the flight phase wasn’t even noticeable – the wyern would be stunned without the bar even showing up due to the zerg spamming CC effects (not timing a “spike”). This likely means the bar needs to scale better to players and/or soft CC’s need to drain the bar less. Additionally I think all mobs need to have their bar regenerate a bit faster (before it is broken), as it seemed very slow and saving cool downs for a “CC spike” was never really required. Most of the time the bar is for abilities that can be dodged anyway, such as the Mordrem Punisher’s overhead smash – so asking yourself if you have enough CC off cooldown to stun them or if you should just dodge the ability should be a bigger deal.

The idea of the breakbar seems great, but right now it seems too weak to be a core concept of combat against enemies as it was promoted to be. I understand that the open world shouldn’t expect very good coordination, so the bar shouldn’t require everyone using well timed CC’s to break it, but the lack of scaling on the Wyern and overall ease at which the bar breaks on all mobs is concerning.

I disagree that it needs buffing. It seemed to be spot on with the size of the groups.

So having the break bar go empty in 0.5secs it’s on spot for you?

Agree with the op, the mechanic is useless in zergs, can ignore it completely.

Cripple and Chill need to not affect the break bar, for starters. This allows for alternative control techniques and, much more importantly, traits to even work on those enemies (and Rune of Ice 6 piece). Reaper in particular has a lot of traits that simply don’t work on defiant enemies, but Rangers, Warriors, and even base Necro have some as well.

VaLee.5102:

So having the break bar go empty in 0.5secs it’s on spot for you?

Agree with the op, the mechanic is useless in zergs, can ignore it completely.

Get that gross exaggeration out of here as it is not needed. So, yes, it’s spot on.

+1 OP

I was disappointed that a random group of players seeing that particular Wyvern fight for the first time didn’t even come close to missing any of the breakbars. Players are only going to get better at this content, and I believe the state it is in now should never be attainable let alone as a first try. As players get more used to it it should become pretty easy, but not this easy.

I think the main problem is soft CC. Hard CC has its limits, even the most controlling profession doesn’t have a ton of access to hard CC. The problem is stuff like blind, chill, cripple, and immobilize that are just decimating these breakbars. I’m sure other professions were also using their necessary skills and helping, but when I was playing as a Reaper I felt that as soon as I went into Shroud I could easily take out even the legendary wyvern’s breakbar.

This problem extends to the breakbar gained by the Revenant skill Crystal Hibernation, it is just broken too easily due to the easy access that every profession has to these soft CC effects. I think soft CC should be a VERY small effect on a breakbar, if any at all. Hard CC may need to be buffed to compensate but it’s definitely just way to easy currently.

Shiren.9532:

I think it’s a scaling and balance issue.

…

Balance: Certain professions and skills are “OP” against break bars. While most stuns etc have cooldowns and power levels on weapons that take into account the strength of their CC (Point Blank Shot is the only one on the ranger longbow and has a decent cooldown). Other skills and professions have unintended power levels as they are fitting into an NPC mechanic that doesn’t accommodate their design. Unyielding Anguish is a four second, pulsing CC that will usually work once against a regular player but on a boss, they will not be displaced and be hit by several “displacement” attempts, greatly increasing the power level of this skill against a break bar (other skills like the guardian’s Sanctuary likely have similar power issues)…

You make a very good point, I’m not sure what they can do about abilities like Unyielding Anguish. It would be nice if they could make it so they only count for 1 tick on the defiance bar, rather than the whole duration a player wouldn’t normally endure. And I agree with cooldowns being tied to strength of the CC. In theory that is how it should work – abilities that put a dent in the defiance bar should have a lengthy cooldowns or high energy costs. Abilities with soft CC, like chill, cripple, and blind, should bring the breakbar down a very small amount compared to hard CCs like stun and daze. The soft CCs should just help lower the regen of the defiance bar, but the regen should normally win out. For this I think soft CCs should be nerfed on defiance bars and the regen of defiance bars (when not broken) buffed.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

VaLee.5102:

So having the break bar go empty in 0.5secs it’s on spot for you?

Agree with the op, the mechanic is useless in zergs, can ignore it completely.

Get that gross exaggeration out of here as it is not needed. So, yes, it’s spot on.

Did you fight the Wyern at the end of Lord Faren’s event chain this weekend? If so, you would have noticed the Wyern would “randomly” fall on the ground and be stunned. But this wasn’t really random, instead the wyern was supposed to gain a defiance bar that needs to broken or else it takes flight and shoots lines of fire on the zerg. The bar was just so weak that the zerg was apparently spamming enough abilities with hard and soft CCs that were thrown out at random that they instantly broke the bar. No one was timing their CCs, since no one even saw the bar, it simply was not scaling enough (if at all) to compensate for the number of players around. So he isn’t really exaggerating when he says some bars were broken in under 0.5 seconds. You can’t honestly tell me that is “spot on” or even intended.

I did get into that fight with the Wyvern at the end of Lord Faren’s event chain. Although, did it only twice and neither time did it randomly fall to the ground. I watched the break bar go down and neither time was it 0.5 seconds for it to break. Sure, it was under a minute, but not 0.5 like you claim. With that being said, we must have not been at the same event at the same time because I did not witness what you did. And a zerg isn’t going to coordinated unless all are on TS being commanded at Wyvern, that’s just silly to think people, the general populous, aren’t just going to spam everything off of CD.