Guild Wars 2

Caeledh.5437:

Lazaar.9123:

http://youtu.be/xUjrrc5aj2k?t=30m11s
Here they state that it is not like taunt from other MMOs.

They may use those exact words but it’s not accurate or they wouldn’t call it a taunt.

I think what’s accurate to say is that it is not exactly the same as taunts from other MMOs. But it has the same basic function – to draw attacks away from other players onto yourself.

This is one the key tools of a tank.

Ergo it’s introduction into GW2 is a clear step back from their no-trinity stance.

Um… it’s their words, and ArenaNet often uses words with their own definitions. I would say their own words would be accurate, considering he’s a game designer behind it.

I highly doubt taunt is going to change anything. Imagine if the necro specialization changed all fears to taunt. what do we get? NOTHING. So far I don’t see necros “tanking” anything by chain fearing things into walls as it does not work. Bosses are immune to it for a reason (and now it will effect the defiance bar).

Chain fearing is good and all but I don’t think the rev will get enough taunt to even match the amount of fear a necro gets. Taunt will just be a situational trick the rev can do. use it as an interrupt, to stop stomps/revives and to damage the defiance bar.

All that just puts it at the same level as fear. About the only “agro” it will make is to other players, and fear does that better when your feared off a cliff. I’m sure someone will come up with a taunt build but its only greatness will come from bashing on trash mobs. Over all it will just be a control ability and I don’t see it becoming a LF tank call any time soon

Caeledh.5437:

tigirius.9014:

Actually no, if you look at the math you’ll see how it doesn’t really scale much at all with the plus to healing on many classes

It does. The problem is you’re not looking at the whole picture.

This is regen’s healing power scaling.

130 + (0.125 * Healing Power) per second

Yes, .125 is very low in comparison to some abilities which scale up to at least 1.0 (could be some with higher). But what you’re not taking into consideration is those other abilities don’t fire off every single second. Most of them have cooldowns well in excess of 10 seconds.

Over a 10 second period regeneration does 1300 healing + 1.25 * Healing Power.

Do the same conversion (based on cooldown) for any other healing ability in the game and you see regen’s scales quite well with healing power.

1300 healing over 10 seconds is pretty meaningless in a game where PvE mob autoattacks hit between 4-8k and bosses can hit for up to 12-13k.

In PvP it’s just worse, people can kill you in under 5 seconds with coordinated burst and even if you lasted 20 seconds 2600 healing is a mere autoattack crit which people are spamming you with.

The classes that make good bunkers heal up with other sources of healing primarily, not regen.

The GW2’s versions of regen and conditions were a good system, they were potent enough.

The problem with this game is crybabies crying about dying to 15 stacks of bleeds and burning and poison. Duh, how else do you expect a condition spec to kill you, certainly not with its 400 damage autoattacks compared to a berk player doing 2-4k with autoattack crrits let alone backstabs and eviscerates and whirlwinds and hammer spam.

Caeledh.5437:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Forced_Engagement

Launch a chain at your target. When the chain connects with a foe, it slows and taunts them.

So? Defiance means that bosses have a predetermined reaction when you break their break bars like a long stun. Again, you cannot taunt them, you can only taunt regular mobs

Caeledh.5437:

They may use those exact words but it’s not accurate or they wouldn’t call it a taunt.

I think what’s accurate to say is that it is not exactly the same as taunts from other MMOs. But it has the same basic function – to draw attacks away from other players onto yourself.

This is one the key tools of a tank.

Ergo it’s introduction into GW2 is a clear step back from their no-trinity stance.

It costs 50 energy and lasts 3 seconds. Good luck maintaining it.

Windsagio.1340:

2) Even if you break defiance, and the boss is one that has susceptibility when broken (as compared to a special effect), taunt is missing the primary function of traditional taunts, in that it doesn’t change your position in the threat calculation (except for a small boost from proximity). Thus it cannot be used effectively to control threat the way a standard taunt does.

When you break defiance, a boss isn’t susceptible, it reacts predeterminedly. You cannot use taunt even to change its position, similarly to how you cannot use push, pull and launch.

I think we should look at other titles out there who have the trinity lite as an option and see how they are fairing.

NWO comes to mind immediately.

They have their own version of the Zerker meta going however you don’t have to be glass cannon.

No dungeon is requiring only certain classes (as with what’s happening here with the plate classes and will happen with all three plates in the future if left unchanged)

Materials to make gear aren’t inflated to outrageous amounts and people have the ability to be diverse in their builds and Gear that you can purchase is not so crazily priced it’s beyond hope of a new player of achieving without endless currency grind.

No one is blaming the healer or tank in groups because they know that it’s not a full trinity it works differently than that and anyone that has complained, has been laughed out of their groups for being stupid.

There is no downside.

Zenith.7301:

Caeledh.5437:

tigirius.9014:

Actually no, if you look at the math you’ll see how it doesn’t really scale much at all with the plus to healing on many classes

It does. The problem is you’re not looking at the whole picture.

This is regen’s healing power scaling.

130 + (0.125 * Healing Power) per second

Yes, .125 is very low in comparison to some abilities which scale up to at least 1.0 (could be some with higher). But what you’re not taking into consideration is those other abilities don’t fire off every single second. Most of them have cooldowns well in excess of 10 seconds.

Over a 10 second period regeneration does 1300 healing + 1.25 * Healing Power.

Do the same conversion (based on cooldown) for any other healing ability in the game and you see regen’s scales quite well with healing power.

1300 healing over 10 seconds is pretty meaningless in a game where PvE mob autoattacks hit between 4-8k and bosses can hit for up to 12-13k.

Um…. yes… The BASE healing is meaningless for people who do not have healing power…

I will take my 3000 hp every ten seconds (thanks to the heal scaling you are still ignoring) and be very happy.

No it is not an “active” defence against a hit for 4k -6k. It is, however, a very good “passive” defence if I happened to miss a dodge and take one of those hits, so my health is full before I get hit again.

More importantly you are only viewing a single boon, and judging its entire worthiness based on whether that one boon can keep you alive. Noone just runs regen. We all have healing skills too. With warior signet, my warrior procs 400 hp a sec. With regen on top (easy to do perma regen with war) thats 700 hp every second.

My engineer gets 150 a second from a trait, making it 450 hp every second. Plus his Elixer Bomb is just as powerful as a healing spring, allowing him to fully regulate and self heal without even using a heal skill.

My ele gets the 300 hp from regen, on top of 300 hp per spell cast.

Yes, regen is very powerful with healing power. No it’s not so super incredibad op that it works entirely on its own, if it was, THEN it would be broken. Healing and regen are just fine the way it is, people just don’t use it because everyone says its bad, or takes one look at the regen math and fails to calculate all the variables. If you actually try running a healing build, you find it is quite good.

As for pvp, no “passive” heal is not that good against a burst meta. That has nothing to do with the effectiveness of passive healing. Burst is just the antonym to it. (This is a thread about pve though, where passive healing is pretty strong for everyone that uses healing power, and weak for those who don’t."

rotten.9753:

Windsagio.1340:

2) Even if you break defiance, and the boss is one that has susceptibility when broken (as compared to a special effect), taunt is missing the primary function of traditional taunts, in that it doesn’t change your position in the threat calculation (except for a small boost from proximity). Thus it cannot be used effectively to control threat the way a standard taunt does.

When you break defiance, a boss isn’t susceptible, it reacts predeterminedly. You cannot use taunt even to change its position, similarly to how you cannot use push, pull and launch.

My impression is that this is only sometimes true. I could of course be mistaken, but that’s my feeling… especially with the older champions, which I expect to have a ‘standard’ broken state.

I have another thread open talking about how I haven’t seen much about the interviews or footage or even some of the key questions that I’ve had about the games goals and future development especially regarding combat. Someone answered by other thread and I’m happy to say one of the questions like the one I had here in this thread was answered about their goals regarding combat when HoT is complete. So it appears that there will be some attention given to the dynamic that is present in the game concerning the vanilla classes. Here’s to hoping.

The question was answered here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6Nd4t6XvT8&t=116

That’s basically what I’ve wanted and seen sort of a watering down of the classes up until the announcement of HoT was to have skills that matter. He mentions going back and looking at core concepts in the design. That’s great imo it’s absolutely needed!

Thanks to MMORPG for asking that question, and thanks to Jon Peters for answering it with such detail!

(Edit: one of the reasons why this has been such a driving force is the problems with the Engineer class in PVE like when I choose to use bombs and mines I want those to matter I want them to bring something useful to the game and right now they really don’t outside of the healing build that doesn’t really scale that has only two options for damage really which is conditions that don’t stack in large groups and are useless against huge bosses, and power that has no crit damage)

Here’s another good quote!

“alot of people keep talking about oh there’s just… not roles in GW2, that was never the intention…..We want people to think about their builds.”

tigirius.9014:

“alot of people keep talking about oh there’s just… not roles in GW2, that was never the intention…..We want people to think about their builds.”

You realize that just confirms what I have been talking about, right? Guild Wars 2 has always had roles, it’s just that everyone fills those roles through their choice of traits, utilities, and weapons. Heck, it’s even in the GW2 wiki.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combat

“Due to a diverse skill system allowing for a multitude of vastly different character builds, every profession in Guild Wars 2 is capable of fitting each of the combat roles (damage, support, control) or are sometimes even the result of a combination of them.”

Lazaar.9123:

tigirius.9014:

“alot of people keep talking about oh there’s just… not roles in GW2, that was never the intention…..We want people to think about their builds.”

You realize that just confirms what I have been talking about, right? Guild Wars 2 has always had roles, it’s just that everyone fills those roles through their choice of traits, utilities, and weapons. Heck, it’s even in the GW2 wiki.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combat

“Due to a diverse skill system allowing for a multitude of vastly different character builds, every profession in Guild Wars 2 is capable of fitting each of the combat roles (damage, support, control) or are sometimes even the result of a combination of them.”

“this was never the intention” doesn’t mean what you think it means, it means he’s confirming there’s a role problem and then later in the interview he outlines the plans they have to remedy it. I suggest you listen to the whole thing so that you can get a better understanding of what’s being said.

rotten.9753:

It costs 50 energy and lasts 3 seconds. Good luck maintaining it.

Why would it need to be maintained?

The purpose of a taunt, as I said, is to draw attacks away from another player. Since in GW2 players can move, dodge, evade etc. spamming a taunt would be pointless. A “tank” would only need to taunt if an ally was being beaten bloody, eg. cc’ed and unable to defend themselves.

But in those circumstances they could save them, tank-style, with a taunt. That’s not the trinity as you see it in many other MMOs but it does finally introduce the potential for roles. One player in a team with all +toughness and +vitality gear could actually play a vital role – i.e. contribute just as much to the team’s success and speed as someone geared for DPS.

Zenith.7301:

1300 healing over 10 seconds is pretty meaningless in a game where PvE mob autoattacks hit between 4-8k and bosses can hit for up to 12-13k.

For starters, you’ve changed topics here. My post was in response to someone specifically talking about how poorly regeneration scaled with healing. Which isn’t true. So let’s get that out of the way.

Second, as I’ve already pointed out, regeneration comes in different intensities. I said I thought the level 1 intensity regen was a bit weak. We agree on that. But when it’s at level 5 or 6 the healing is quite substantial even with 0 points in the healing stat.

i.e. you cannot say regeneration sucks across the board.

Caeledh.5437:

Why would it need to be maintained?

The purpose of a taunt, as I said, is to draw attacks away from another player. Since in GW2 players can move, dodge, evade etc. spamming a taunt would be pointless. A “tank” would only need to taunt if an ally was being beaten bloody, eg. cc’ed and unable to defend themselves.

But in those circumstances they could save them, tank-style, with a taunt. That’s not the trinity as you see it in many other MMOs but it does finally introduce the potential for roles. One player in a team with all +toughness and +vitality gear could actually play a vital role – i.e. contribute just as much to the team’s success and speed as someone geared for DPS.

You can taunt only one mob and they are not usually alone.

And you can taunt essentially no enemies of champion rank or higher.

Caeledh.5437:

rotten.9753:

It costs 50 energy and lasts 3 seconds. Good luck maintaining it.

Why would it need to be maintained?

The purpose of a taunt, as I said, is to draw attacks away from another player. Since in GW2 players can move, dodge, evade etc. spamming a taunt would be pointless. A “tank” would only need to taunt if an ally was being beaten bloody, eg. cc’ed and unable to defend themselves.

But in those circumstances they could save them, tank-style, with a taunt. That’s not the trinity as you see it in many other MMOs but it does finally introduce the potential for roles. One player in a team with all +toughness and +vitality gear could actually play a vital role – i.e. contribute just as much to the team’s success and speed as someone geared for DPS.

Soo…. Can I ask why we don’t do this with necros who don’t need to spec from toughness and vitality and still have the same effect that you are implying?

The other part I want to ask is what exactly does taunt do? Does it just force the target to walk to you and have you as its target? If so casting any one of the AoEs in the game will be an interesting counter. AoEs don’t need to be centred on your target.

Reason why I ask that is there might be mobs that throw taunt on players. I’m hoping there are but I don’t want to be forced to take a stun breaker all the time. I’m hoping AoE focused builds can do a soft ignore with it, excluded the forced walk.

Dhampyr.2813:

The other part I want to ask is what exactly does taunt do? Does it just force the target to walk to you and have you as its target? If so casting any one of the AoEs in the game will be an interesting counter. AoEs don’t need to be centred on your target.

Reason why I ask that is there might be mobs that throw taunt on players. I’m hoping there are but I don’t want to be forced to take a stun breaker all the time. I’m hoping AoE focused builds can do a soft ignore with it, excluded the forced walk.

It locks your skill bar out except for your auto-attack and stunbreakers, and you are forced to run towards the target and attack them with auto-attack.

Lazaar.9123:

Dhampyr.2813:

The other part I want to ask is what exactly does taunt do? Does it just force the target to walk to you and have you as its target? If so casting any one of the AoEs in the game will be an interesting counter. AoEs don’t need to be centred on your target.

Reason why I ask that is there might be mobs that throw taunt on players. I’m hoping there are but I don’t want to be forced to take a stun breaker all the time. I’m hoping AoE focused builds can do a soft ignore with it, excluded the forced walk.

It locks your skill bar out except for your auto-attack and stunbreakers, and you are forced to run towards the target and attack them with auto-attack.

Oh, so it barely affects mainhand axe warriors or d/d ele in air attunement or thieves (whose autoatttacks all hit like a truck).

Zenith.7301:

Lazaar.9123:

Dhampyr.2813:

The other part I want to ask is what exactly does taunt do? Does it just force the target to walk to you and have you as its target? If so casting any one of the AoEs in the game will be an interesting counter. AoEs don’t need to be centred on your target.

Reason why I ask that is there might be mobs that throw taunt on players. I’m hoping there are but I don’t want to be forced to take a stun breaker all the time. I’m hoping AoE focused builds can do a soft ignore with it, excluded the forced walk.

It locks your skill bar out except for your auto-attack and stunbreakers, and you are forced to run towards the target and attack them with auto-attack.

Oh, so it barely affects mainhand axe warriors or d/d ele in air attunement or thieves (whose autoatttacks all hit like a truck).

Yeah, pretty much.

Zenith.7301:

Lazaar.9123:

Dhampyr.2813:

The other part I want to ask is what exactly does taunt do? Does it just force the target to walk to you and have you as its target? If so casting any one of the AoEs in the game will be an interesting counter. AoEs don’t need to be centred on your target.

Reason why I ask that is there might be mobs that throw taunt on players. I’m hoping there are but I don’t want to be forced to take a stun breaker all the time. I’m hoping AoE focused builds can do a soft ignore with it, excluded the forced walk.

It locks your skill bar out except for your auto-attack and stunbreakers, and you are forced to run towards the target and attack them with auto-attack.

Oh, so it barely affects mainhand axe warriors or d/d ele in air attunement or thieves (whose autoatttacks all hit like a truck).

Keep in mind that in PVP taunt will make the player attack his target, the wording isn’t clear but it doesn’t say that taunt will change the target of a player affected by it. Although it is written that Taunt will be used to both reposition foes and change your foes’ targets. Some clarification is needed here.

It is also very unclear how taunt will work with ranged weapons or how it will work with auto attack skills that require targeting (like Engie Grenades)

I’m still under the impression that it only forces any targeted attack we make to hit the taunting mob/player in addition to making it run full sprint to them. In the event that we don’t get to chose what attack we use and only get to use auto attacks and stun breakers its not really going to have an impact on the current pve meta. Most players just spam one anyway. Wonder if we can change weapons, in any case necros can enter death shroud under stuns so at lest necros can switch over to a ranged attack if there taunted.

Linken.6345:

ok but then if support shouldent be affected by stats then damage shouldent be affected by stats either take away power precision condition damage and ofcourse ferocity critical chance aswell.
everyone should be able to do same damge no matter what stats they have….. see what a fun game we get when we turn the tables around

Yes, it should probably work like that. Anet really messed up when they tried to mix the old passive gear stat buff system with their new idea of active combat. Those two things have never really worked well together.
Removing stats from gear (and moving them more towards traitlines) would likely be better and offer more meaningful choices. Would you want to go 6/6/2/0/0 for damage stats, or allocate some points in diferent lines to get to more useful traits?

Tachenon.5270:

maddoctor.2738:

That’s completely false. The “Trinity” with clear defined roles has its origins in the first MMORPGs, something like that was never a part of RPGs. A clear Trinity was never used any type of “Trinity” in any Dungeons and Dragons game, the only DnD edition that tried to “Force” some kind of Trinity was the 4th edition (had some more clearly defined Tanks and Healers) guess how the DnD community called it?

They called it WoW in DnD, and the edition failed miserably to attract older role players that didn’t want something like WoW (and its garbage trinity role system) in their RPGs.

With my many years of RPG experience, I’ve never ever created a party together with my friends with clearly defined roles. “Hey one of us needs to make a Healer and another one a Tank” was (and is) never a part of an actual RPG experience.

That’s very interesting. Nevertheless, the original D&D Fighter, Magic-user, and Cleric classes remain the source — the template, one might even say — of that which eventually came to be called The Trinity.

Not quite. Clerics were indeed the healers, but also could do the tanking (though see below). In fact, they could do it even better, as most healing spells were touch range, which was hard to pull off during combat, but easy to use on yourself. Fighters could be a tank (but again, see below), but done right could be dps monsters, and they had a much more important role – get the enemy casters engaged in melee. Magic users were kings of dps, especially aoe dps, that’s true, but they also offered massive utility and support. Additionally, you forgot that the core archetypical party had a fourth role – the Thief – which was equally important.

By the way, original DnD (as well as most of the pen and paper RPG’s) had no aggro management at all. Except for some specific situations, pure tank role had no sense – opponents would simply bypass you and go for targets either easier to kill, or more dangerous, or both. Pure dps was dangerous too, as it painted a target over your head and you couldn’t count on “tanks” to keep you safe. That meant your fighters needed to have major dps ability, and your mages had to invest in defense.

Trinity as we know it did not exist then. Yes, those classes technically did form a basis for trinity later on, but in a very indirect way. Diku MUDs based their classes on dnd, but, being rather simple text-based games – lacked spatial awareness, which made bodyblocking ridiculously easy. This has allowed for the emergence of tanks. And it just happens, that Everquest creators took their general idea from one of the muds of that line. By the time anyone noticed that the advancements in the engine and mob ai made the return to the original situation possible, it was already too late and the idea of Holy Trinity was too entrenched in the minds of MMORPG gamers for (mostly conservative) game devs to try to get rid of.

maddoctor.2738:

Keep in mind that in PVP taunt will make the player attack his target, the wording isn’t clear but it doesn’t say that taunt will change the target of a player affected by it. Although it is written that Taunt will be used to both reposition foes and change your foes’ targets. Some clarification is needed here.

There are hints that the taunt mechanics will work slightly differently against players and against mobs. This may be a reason behind the information inconsistencies.

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, those classes technically did form a basis for trinity later on,

That’s what I said. ;-)

Tachenon.5270:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, those classes technically did form a basis for trinity later on,

That’s what I said. ;-)

Not really, because the idea came much later and was not really dependant on how those classes were depicted in DnD. The idea of Trinity was an outgrowth of primitive mechanics of first multiplayer online rpg games (MUDs), not of archetypal concepts of DnD classes.

Astralporing.1957:

Tachenon.5270:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, those classes technically did form a basis for trinity later on,

That’s what I said. ;-)

Not really, because the idea came much later and was not really dependant on how those classes were depicted in DnD. The idea of Trinity was an outgrowth of primitive mechanics of first multiplayer online rpg games (MUDs), not of archetypal concepts of DnD classes.

I get the impression you’ve not read what I actually wrote. Here, I’ll quote myself.

“Indurative observation: the origins of that which eventually became known as The Trinity can be traced back to ye olde original Dungeons and Dragons, circa 1974, with the Fighter, Magic-user, and Cleric classes.” ~ me

2. “That’s very interesting. Nevertheless, the original D&D Fighter, Magic-user, and Cleric classes remain the source — the template, one might even say — of that which eventually came to be called The Trinity.” ~ me

Nowhere in all that do I say those classes WERE a trinity or were CALLED a trinity by the players of that time. I do say they were the origins, the source, the template, even, of that which (note this word carefully) eventually, as in, not back then, but later on, came to be known as the Trinity.

Let’s try a similar sentence with a different subject.

“The origins of that which eventually came to be called the Full Breakfast can be traced back to ye olde original hunter/gatherers, circa late Pleistocene, gathered around an open wood fire, with a haunch of freshly-killed boar meat sizzling on a spit and a couple of moa eggs, wrapped in moistened leaves, cooking to tasty perfection in the coals.”

Which is not synonymous with, “They had the bacon and eggs grand slam combo platter in the Stone Age!”

So, yes. Really.

OP, my personal suggestion would be to play whatever game you think does things better than GW2 rather than trying to turn GW2 into that game, but that’s just me.

You’re being so nonspecific that even if there was something that the GW2 devs could learn from NWO, you’re never going to convince anyone of it.

Tachenon.5270:

Nowhere in all that do I say those classes WERE a trinity or were CALLED a trinity by the players of that time. I do say they were the origins, the source, the template, even, of that which (note this word carefully) eventually, as in, not back then, but later on, came to be known as the Trinity.

Except they really weren’t. The concept of the Trinity is completely unrelated to DnD at all. You can draw analogies and point to the “point of origin”, but it doesnt change the fact, that all that is extremely superficial (like in your hunter/gatherer example).
To make it short: Cleric can indeed be considered an origin of the Healer part of the trinity, but the Magic User was not the origin of dps (it could hardly be, the concept of more firepower is much, much older), and the origin of tank didn’t exist at all, because there was no such concept in this game. The templates for the trinity came much later. They were indeed attached to the already existing DnD classes, but they did not come from them.

Astralporing.1957:

Tachenon.5270:

Nowhere in all that do I say those classes WERE a trinity or were CALLED a trinity by the players of that time. I do say they were the origins, the source, the template, even, of that which (note this word carefully) eventually, as in, not back then, but later on, came to be known as the Trinity.

Except they really weren’t. The concept of the Trinity is completely unrelated to DnD at all. You can draw analogies and point to the “point of origin”, but it doesnt change the fact, that all that is extremely superficial (like in your hunter/gatherer example).
To make it short: Cleric can indeed be considered an origin of the Healer part of the trinity, but the Magic User was not the origin of dps (it could hardly be, the concept of more firepower is much, much older), and the origin of tank didn’t exist at all, because there was no such concept in this game. The templates for the trinity came much later. They were indeed attached to the already existing DnD classes, but they did not come from them.

Well, here, you can argue with yourself:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, those classes technically did form a basis for trinity later on, but in a very indirect way.

I’m done.

/e bows out

When was the MMO taunt invented? That’ll fix people up for answering the trinity question.