Guild Wars 2

DURING MAJOR EVENTS! (phew!)

Now, before you go and yell at me and throw tomatoes. Here me out.

The damage of Mobs is way too high at the moment, especially on the vets, elites, and champs.

Now, testing in zerker I thought “yeah, i have no defenses, course I’m gonna die fast.” But then I thought, huh, well, if that’s true, then I should be able to live more easily in Toughness gear at least.

Boy was I wrong.

I went with warrior Defense/Tactics/Strength, shout heals, healing regen, etc. Just went straight up as much survivability I could grab. Then i took soldier’s gear. Heals would be crap, but I got my hp and toughness. Dolyak runes. The celestial food buff. Dolyak signet.

Armor: 3605 if I get retaliation, 4005 if reviving and have retaliation.
HP: 33,170

Now, going against normal mobs not from events, or a defense event where maybe a few vets at a time, sure, you’re gonna brush that stuff off easily. I don’t think I got below half hp.

But when you get to the big event chains, final event chains with a champ or Unique?

It. Doesn’t. Matter.

The Boss is gonna destroy you if you don’t dodge his attacks, while dodging his elite minion’s attacks at the same time too, and then the 3-4 vets, etc. You are gonna go down in 2-3 hits. Defenses don’t matter.

Now, I am going to repeat that. Soloing stuff, the armor is doing its job. I’m basically untouchable as long as I don’t pull too many vets (the poison frogs to be exact). But when i get into the event chains, there is no point. I’m going to go down just as fast as that other person in full zerk, which makes ME the weak chain of the group, because I can’t deal damage.

So, let me say this:

Making mobs difficult, is fine. Hitting a bit harder, sure. different mechanics, fine. I like how the poison arrow frogs work, and the one that slams into the ground, and so on. These are interesting to watch out for, and if you don’t, you will die. The difference is, when you get to the bigger group event stuff, it goes from fun and difficult, to absurd. When it goes to that level, defenses doesn’t matter, it becomes again “kill fast”.

So, yes. Damage in group events need to take a look at. Maybe the scaling is too high, maybe mobs are spawning too much, who knows? But at the moment, if I want to do a major event chain, go zerk.

I found that it is a matter of knowing the mobs, you can still die but you reduce the chances.
Champ giant toads have the same type of attack as husks at tripple wurm, stun then punch. If you avoid the stun you avoid the punch and take no damage.
Champ tree frogs have an aoe killer attack that is easily hidden in visual effects, but if you do spot it then again zero damage.
Wyvern, stay to the side to avid the knockdown and flame breath.
Smoke thingies, draw them out of the red circles since they take no damage in it, their damage has been reduced in their mist attack so fairly easy now.
Snipers —dodge, put up a reflect if you have one, break line of sight if you don’t.

Yargesh.4965:

I found that it is a matter of knowing the mobs, you can still die but you reduce the chances.
Champ giant toads have the same type of attack as husks at tripple wurm, stun then punch. If you avoid the stun you avoid the punch and take no damage.
Champ tree frogs have an aoe killer attack that is easily hidden in visual effects, but if you do spot it then again zero damage.
Wyvern, stay to the side to avid the knockdown and flame breath.
Smoke thingies, draw them out of the red circles since they take no damage in it, their damage has been reduced in their mist attack so fairly easy now.
Snipers —dodge, put up a reflect if you have one, break line of sight if you don’t.

Which again, proves my point of defense not mattering.

To me, when someone uses defense gear, it means they are increasing the forgivability in making a mistake. “Oops, I didn’t dodge that attack. Well, at least I didn’t lose 3/4 my hp and just 1/4, be ready next time.” If they continue to make those mistakes, then they are gonna die no matter what, despite defenses.

Now, when they get better, learn the encounters more, then they feel more confident in their abilities and may think of going more damage. This is actually how I played the game up to this point. My main set of gear use to be knight’s, because I still wanted defenses. But Once I learned the encounter’s, I went full zerk. I knew when and how to dodge, when i could take a hit, etc, that defenses weren’t that important anymore.

Chances are, once HoT comes out, I may go more defensive again until I learn what to expect (or go my Daredevil build and laugh as I dodge everything and be glass cannon).

But right now, that doesn’t matter, because during the learning, I’m dying even in defense. There’s no point in me even trying it, I might as well learn in zerk gear. Which, according to at least my theory, is wrong.

So like I said, I think the scaling damage needs to be looked at in events.

If your in zerker gear, you will get 1 shot by a lot of things. That’s expected. If you have high toughness/vitality, you won’t be. The different between getting 1 shot and 2 shot is huge, because one allows ‘mistakes’ and one doesn’t.

If its dumbed down again, we are going to repeat history and thats going to look really, really bad for the next expansion. Hell, if that happens again there might not even be a next expansion.

WEXXES.2378:

If your in zerker gear, you will get 1 shot by a lot of things. That’s expected. If you have high toughness/vitality, you won’t be. The different between getting 1 shot and 2 shot is huge, because one allows ‘mistakes’ and one doesn’t.

If its dumbed down again, we are going to repeat history and thats going to look really, really bad for the next expansion. Hell, if that happens again there might not even be a next expansion.

No. In major events, Defenses DO NOT matter. You will down in the same amount of shots as zerker, no matter your defenses. Thus, defenses DO NOT matter, so just go zerker.

If you make damage too high that defenses don’t matter, defenses are useless so go full damage. If you make damage too low, defenses are useless, go damage.

As said before, stacking defense should be there to allow mistakes to happen and to learn. If you still can’t grasp fights, then stay in the gear, that’s fine, I’m all for that. But if the mob is going to two shot you anyway in defense gear, what’s the point?

Yes, in the learning process, I do get one shotted against normal mobs at times at this stage because I don’t know the tells exactly. But once I do, then I’m not going to die and I can kill fast. Its like the karkas. Dodge the initial shots, you’ll be fine.

I agree with going defense until I learn. Once I learn, go zerk.

So you want an armour option to take zero damage? Why not just move out of the way, most of the time you don’t even need to dodge. It makes it much more interesting game for me.

Stop facetanking bosses. They are bosses. If it’s facing you, you back up. They don’t give two thoughts about how much armor you have, they will still kick your teeth in. If there’s a twelve foot tall fat frog with a hammer the size of a motorcycle, and he hits you with it, it’s gonna hurt no matter how tanky you are.

Armor makes surviving skirmishes with groups of trash mobs easier, but it’s effect diminishes in the face of monsters where your only hope is evasion, not mitigation [ex. Diarmid]. Higher armor lets you wade through trash and veterans with more impunity and leeway. That’s fine, that’s mostly what it’s for.

Bosses in HoT, however, more than anywhere else, are designed specifically to tear through large zergs without mercy. If you’re in the zerg, you’re gonna go down if you can’t keep up. You sink or swim. You learn fast, or you die a lot. That’s how it goes.

What’s gonna happen is that people camp ranged weapons because trying to melee in a zerg event means you will usually get 1 shot and straight to defeated with all the lethal AoE spam mobs do.

So bring your ranged weapon and spam 1. Voila, survival problems go away. Sucks if you’re melee, but that’s the consequence of putting in multiple mobs attacking at the same time and you can only dodge so many times.

Sounds like a L2P issue to me. I wouldn’t be opposed to nerfing vet smokescale mobs, but outside of that, everything should stay the same.

I played my Revenant as a Guardian heal bot (on boss encounters). I specced into Cleric’s gear with Dolyak runes but left the trinkets, rings and amulet as Celestial. I used a 1h mace and shield. I also used the Ventari Legendary stance and it proved quite survivable. I would tank bosses and have the Tablet right next to me. There were times when the Champion Hylek would do his stomp and my hp would go from 20k instantly down to 1200 hp at which time I would use the “bubble”/Refuge skill on the tablet and heal myself up while reflecting projectiles from Snipers. A couple of things about the Tablet. While the bubble is up, it can be moved, which means if targeted by a Sniper you can run up to them (moving the bubble along with you) and get in his face with no damage taken. I noticed that when their arrows hit the bubble, I was healed for the amount of damage I would have otherwise taken. It was a way to cheese Snipers that I discovered quite by accident. If someone else is running Legendary Dwarf stance and you’re running Ventari, you can pretty much tank and spank most Chmps as the brick road gives stability and the Refuge bubble gives heals, condi cleanses and burst heals. You can also give aoe heals by blowing it up, although I preferred not to do this as the combat animations make it difficult to see the tablet chunks on the ground.
The Revenant reminds me a lot of my Engineer who can do the same as any other class, though not quite as good, with the exception of heals. I played a Guardian in full Nomad gear (including trinkets, rings, etc) and the Ventari Revenant rarely ever went down but also did decent dps, whereas the Nomad Guardian did almost none.
The different Legendary stances allow you to switch between heals and dps with a simple weapon/stance swap or out of combat you can switch to a different stance altogether and control conditions on yourself and others (Demon stance). The class takes the best of Warriors, Guardians, Mesmers Thieves and Elementalists and rolls them into one profession, depending upon stances and weapon/armor sets.
I foresee Revenants in their current state as being the go to profession for Raids. Since raids allow up to 10 people, Revenants would likely compromise at least three spots if not more simply because of the variety of stances. Step out of combat, switch stances (from the two available in combat), change gear and weapons, step back in and fill another role. Other professions cannot do that.

@OP

It’s not too high. Too many people running with 0 defenses.

Anyways! I tried support Apothecary Revenant Herald/Ventari and let me tell you I felt like I made a difference! Heals everywhere and people staying alive. Like vs that Legendary Drake event.

I was in Apo gear with mace/shield + mace/axe along with Runes of Monk (normally would probably use altruism). Had a lot less hp and a lot less Armor.

How did I survive?

Weakness + protection + healing. Simple. Hammer from Jalis GM trait applies weaknes all around you and that helps a feaking lot, protection further reduces incoming dmg and healing covers what little dmg goes in.

Of course there are a must avoid attacks or die. If there weren’t then it would be too much of a tank and spank.

They didn’t buff support roles sky hogh just for lols of it. I fully expect raids to have 2 dedicated support players so each can cover 5 dudes in a raid of 10 since it drastically improves everyones survival.

I tried a thief now During BWE2 and I had a hard time surviving since I had Zerker stats… I then figured I would change alittle so I went with Valkyrie stats I think, sure I didn’t kill the enemies as fast but I did survive and killed the enemies before they killed me. The only think that could give me problems was when I fought multiple Vet’s and when I didn’t see a sniper that almost killed me with one shot. In my opinion Stats do alot of difference but even if you are much more sturdier you still can’t just run in to a mob of enemies and wack ’em, you still have to plan your dodges, evades, blocks and movement.

The new map is difficult but I hope nothing will change with that. I am sure that there will be alot of Whine posts from ?MetaZerkers on forums when the Expac goes live.

? = IMO MetaZerkers are players who go Zerker becouse it is said to be the only viable stats becouse you kill everything before you die, they only stackrez and never learns how to time dodges/blocks/Evades and so on. The people who claims that GW2 is easy and you only auto-attack everything (11111111111). So if you are a Zerker who do survive and can dodge evade and yadayada then you shall not be offended.

Sounds good to me, the pve in this game is way too easy. I think it’s mainly a problem of crappy AI, not damage per se.

Despite some people always asking for harder content and cheer when they are one-shotted, if the content is too hard or frustrating to play the zone will ultimately become deserted by the majority of players.

Overall I think things are pretty good where they are. I do think the snipers damage could be reduced a little bit. The smokescales (esp the vets) could use some tweaking as well; specifically “miss miss miss miss miss miss” despite them not even standing in their field. I think the mushrooms could be a tad less damaging as well; getting run over once by them can be lethal.

Some attacks are a bit unforgiving, downing me as zerk reaper in RS form dealing 29k damage is absurd. This works in single player games – name a few: God of War, Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc. but we are in a zerg where visuals blur everything. In my opinion such boss battles should be easier and the hard stuff in raids/dungeons.

Zenith.7301:

What’s gonna happen is that people camp ranged weapons because trying to melee in a zerg event means you will usually get 1 shot and straight to defeated with all the lethal AoE spam mobs do.

So bring your ranged weapon and spam 1. Voila, survival problems go away. Sucks if you’re melee, but that’s the consequence of putting in multiple mobs attacking at the same time and you can only dodge so many times.

It is perfectly fine to melee. It tested melee zerker and shaolin thief this weekend without issue on event bosses once I had learned their telegraphs. It just needs you to look at enemies and dodge when they cast facing you. All in all, it is a good training for raids and good thing that PvE at least requires a bit of reactivity. Btw, big frogs have really long telegraphs. It is hard to miss them.

Yet this does not discount the OP’s opinion, but I can’t add much on this point as I did not try any tanky build.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Some attacks are a bit unforgiving, downing me as zerk reaper in RS form dealing 29k damage is absurd. This works in single player games – name a few: God of War, Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc. but we are in a zerg where visuals blur everything. In my opinion such boss battles should be easier and the hard stuff in raids/dungeons.

Activate “effect LOD” option, it is your secret weapon against all these flashy skill effects. If it is still too bright/cluttered for you, there are some post-processor presets around that help to reduce the issue

On one end, I suspect that it has something to do with the prevalence of condition damage going into HoT. It was already common in Orr, so I’d just gotten used to it and always try to bring sufficient cleansing.

On the other, yeah, ANet has yet to give up its one-hit-KO fetish. It was hard to tell if Berserker was just a bad elite spec, or if warrior’s supposed toughness just means for crap in the new content.

I’m fine with there being a penalty for missing a dodge or other combat mechanic, but one-shot mechanics aren’t “challenging,” they’re “punishing,” and that distinction makes all the difference. Challenging gives the player a chance to make up for mistakes. To learn. Punishing runs counter to learning by removing incentive to iterate, to try again.

I’ve done just fine on full zerker characters, it’s a case of learning enemy strategies and countering them.

God, the fact that passive defense are bad in PvE ain’t new… That’s one of the very reason why zerk is meta. On the other hand active defense rocks so there is a kind of balance.

Ok, i’m going to try and clear this up, again, to make it easier.

Yes, defenses work in the normal situations. You barely flinch. When you get to the big events with 3+ vets, multiple elites, champs, and boss, defense is worthless

Is it a L2P issue? Yes! I haven’t done HoT for 3yrs yet, I don’t know the enemy attacks that well yet, defense gear should be there to give me more time to learn in sacrifice of damage! Once I learn, get rid of the defense gear, go full damage!

Should a boss kick my teeth in? Sure, fine. I’m sorry I had to waste my dodges on the two elites attacking me because then I would’ve went down, so I didn’t have the endurance to dodge his one shot attack, sorry. Once I learn the encounter, I will most likely know to just move away from the boss completely till these constantly spawning mobs go on to someone else so I can just dps the boss.

So again, in major events, defensive gear isn’t doing its job. And once again, if damage is so high that defense doesn’t matter, then why go defensive at all?

I just believe scaling needs to be looked at here.

Basically that’s the point of this game, defense doesn’t matter, healing doesn’t matter. At the end of the day all that matters is your dps and if you dodged the attack.

Use a mix of gear, find the happy medium. You don’t have to play in all zerker or all (insert gear type here). Min/max your build, its actually a lot of fun and satisfying to come up with an original build that works.

this is why berserker has become a plague , if armor is useless then why should players simply not max out dps?

I think the point he is trying to make is that the damage is so high that even on a tank build it wont make much a difference, therefore, you might as well be a squishy character that does high burst/alpha damage.

So lets say then I’m on a guardian with tanky gear, well I’m going to get one shot a lot because of lower health…so why try to tank if it yields little results? Does that make more sense to the people hung up on “zerker” ?

Whats the motive for tying tank? If its all ground effect stuffs why not just a squishy mobile class….see the point? There should be room for characters who want to be big lumbering tanks, not saying you should be able to stand there and spam auto attack, but there needs to be some results for being a tanky character who “knows he can waltz up to the champion and take the heat off the squishy dps characters”

Its more an entire style of gameplay that might be rendered pointless that I’m worried about.

Its entirely possible to build so you don’t get 1 shot and still have high dos. People have been so brainwashed by zerker meta that they seem to have forgotten how to mix stats for full effectiveness.

They weren’t one shotting me on guard and I was able to kill regular mobs in a timely fashion, as for elites and champs its the same scenario only it takes more people and a bit longer to kill.

If you want to go full zerk go for it but dont complain when you do get 1 shot.

StrangerDanger.3496:

I think the point he is trying to make is that the damage is so high that even on a tank build it wont make much a difference, therefore, you might as well be a squishy character that does high burst/alpha damage.

So lets say then I’m on a guardian with tanky gear, well I’m going to get one shot a lot because of lower health…so why try to tank if it yields little results? Does that make more sense to the people hung up on “zerker” ?

Whats the motive for tying tank? If its all ground effect stuffs why not just a squishy mobile class….see the point? There should be room for characters who want to be big lumbering tanks, not saying you should be able to stand there and spam auto attack, but there needs to be some results for being a tanky character who “knows he can waltz up to the champion and take the heat off the squishy dps characters”

Its more an entire style of gameplay that might be rendered pointless that I’m worried about.

Yes! This guy gets it!

Random.4691:

Its entirely possible to build so you don’t get 1 shot and still have high dos. People have been so brainwashed by zerker meta that they seem to have forgotten how to mix stats for full effectiveness.

They weren’t one shotting me on guard and I was able to kill regular mobs in a timely fashion, as for elites and champs its the same scenario only it takes more people and a bit longer to kill.

If you want to go full zerk go for it but dont complain when you do get 1 shot.

As I figured, guard is a better tank, even having one on Live is great because I just go hammer and laugh how I just spam protection and lived.

and no, in major events I really doubt you would live as long as you could on Live.

Again, I believe its the scaling that is causing the problem here. Not Mob mechanics, but scaling of damage in an event based on people there.

Guard is 1 example, I also played, Warrior, Revanant, and Thief. They all seemed to do just fine with gear setups I theory crafted. If I died to fast or felt my damage wasn’t where I wanted it I went back to the builder and tweaked things.

In the end its your playtime and you can build however you feel the most effective but, I don’t think the mobs are to difficult. Just my opinion though.

ITT: People who can’t read.

Defensive gear does give you more chances, it is working as intended, this gear isn’t supposed to make you ignore the boss abilities. Btw you are way overselling this, most classes in full zerker can afford one mistake in a bossfight. Most classes full tank can make 3-4 kittenups before going down.

According to me , mobs are still too stupid and tend to stay in AOE. Their damage is fine.

Nb: I managed to kill all minor champions alone . OP i think it’s more of a L2P issue here.(sorry)

I would have to disagree with defense doesn’t matter. I was running full soldier on my rev and I saw myself being able to take more boss hits than most people. During one of the boss frogs, I saw people go down in a single hit while if I missed the dodge I only lost about a fourth of my hp. Then again I also had traits to help bolster my toughness.

scerevisiae.1972:

Sounds good to me, the pve in this game is way too easy. I think it’s mainly a problem of crappy AI, not damage per se.

One shot hits from mobs doesn’t equate to challenging or harder content.

Abimes.9726:

According to me , mobs are still too stupid and tend to stay in AOE. Their damage is fine.

Nb: I managed to kill all minor champions alone . OP i think it’s more of a L2P issue here.(sorry)

So you can’t kill a major event champ alone?

Let me explain where I am going. You will say “No” because its a major event, more people there.

And when more people show, the event scales, mobs getting more HP and dealing more damage. At some point, with so many people showing up, the damage makes Defenses pointless.

During this past beta, I believe the events were scaling TOO well, and damage was TOO high, thus making using any defense gear pointless.

Consider that in many of those events the adds are scaled through the roof compared to what you’d get doing the same event solo. The one champ is designed to have certain “manditory dodge” attacks that are spaced far enough any class can make the dodge. The adds, however, are hitting hard because they’re scaled up to ensure there’s actually a challenge of sorts when there’s a zerg present.

Puts down the popcorn and grabs a beer

As entertaining as this is Serophous, you are ignoring the fact that the other posters are pointing out situations where defense and other builds are worthwhile. However, you keep running back to the same arguments as if they invalidate all the others.

Now, I honestly don’t care. As in, I don’t care about their arguments, I don’t care about your arguments, and I just plain don’t care period. By the same token, everyone else is fully free to not care about what I post. They are also free to ignore it.

PopeUrban.2578:

Consider that in many of those events the adds are scaled through the roof compared to what you’d get doing the same event solo. The one champ is designed to have certain “manditory dodge” attacks that are spaced far enough any class can make the dodge. The adds, however, are hitting hard because they’re scaled up to ensure there’s actually a challenge of sorts when there’s a zerg present.

That’s why you’ve got to kill those adds fast. A lot of zergs end up forgetting that and it shows. Those adds still die easily and are there to make sure people are paying attention.

The OP is talking about Legendary bosses, not trash mobs. I don’t know why there is so much trash mob/vet/l2p talk in this thread, they clearly didn’t read the OP.

So many haven’t understood what the OP is trying to say in this thread!

He is saying that defensive stats (from your gear and passives from traits and skills) are not enough to stop big hitting attacks from bosses, in large events that have been scaled up by lots of players, rendering those stats pointless. In other words, why bother choosing defensive stats, or including them in the game, if you cannot make use of them when you need them the most? You can dodge or block in every encounter, why can you not make use of high toughness in every encounter? Especially as you are sacrificing so much for it (i.e. all or most of your damage output).

I personally rarely run with defensive stats, so I cannot confirm or deny the OP’s claim of getting one shot in toughness gear, but I do at least understand the point being made.

Here’s the thing. Colin, not that long ago, confirmed that they are not shying away from the trinity as such, they just do not want professions to get stuck in one role at all times. They want us to be able to switch roles to meet the needs of any given situations. To play the way we want and have the option to change.

That could easily mean having a very strong tanking/healing build, so long as you can easily change to a DPS build at any time. There is no forced/fixed trinity because every profession can change their build to fit any role. That’s not what a lot of players (myself included) thought they meant, but hey thats for a different thread altogether. Anyway, the point is this idea of a flexible trinity means that they really could start redesigning content to make tanking and healing builds much more useful, as well as making tanking and healing builds themselves more powerful. If they want players to have the option of building for tanking or healing, why not make those roles more effective and make content utilize those builds better?

So how do they fix large scale events, to make use of things like high toughness? Well why not, instead of raising the damage, raise the number of players a big attack can hit? So for example, give the boss an attack that would hit 2,000 armour characters in range for say 15,000 health, but it would only hit 3,000 armour characters for 7,000 health, then as more players join the event the attack can hit more and more targets at once, increasing the risk to the group as a whole rather than only for a small group. That way high toughness would still be useful and events could scale up in difficulty to match the number of participating players. Imagine how much harder that would be for zergs? No more mindless armies running around following the dorito, feeling safe in the knowledge that the odds are stacked in their favour. If a larger number of players could potentially get downed in one go, everyone would need to pay attention or have the right gear.

I don’t know if this would be technically possible, or easily achieved, but its a thought. I guess the only balancing problem would be how well toughness and healing would work in WvW and PvP. But at least the number of targets scaling above would only effect PvE, without having to change how effecting toughness and healing power is.

well unfortantly its Unavoidable its a Meta Event Expect a lot of people to scale it up so much Most Defence stats don’t go for much.

but this game is not Balanced around Over power level 9000 Legendary bosses , there is a reason for Damage/control/support and in all the streams i’ve watched so far people still don’t time CC’s or Support for when they are needed and are still face planting content , i wouldn’t worry too much soon enough people will learn " just because you are Zerging around the map , it does not mean you can Face roll your keyboard or the fact that the Dps meta is dead"

everything is just as important as damage now and Failing to down a Break bar will only Result in huge repercussions of which the first few to go down will be Glass dps types , as to why support is now more Vauled .

did you see the Red baby Wyverns with that huge lava field one person can not CC enough to prevent it so people will learn to time CC’s accordingly to prevent this Snowball effect, and even then the fights are lasting much longer plus Hp is Regenerating slower (less places to run to , to break combat or safe locations to heal up) the only Safe way i’ve see so far to avoid Major damage is to Get the hell out of there (glide what ever) or bring effective CC and Support to help Dps specs .

Dps alone can not do all the work in these Legendary bosses , as to my conclusion the Mob/boss damage is Fine.

When you get right down to it, players always claim content is to hard or hits to hard until someone figures it out.

Can the event be completed ?
Can it be completed using a variety of builds ?
Do certain abilities play a larger role ? (endure pain, blocks)

They already stated that raids will require players to use weapons and abilities they may not normally use, does this follow the same thought process ?

If the answers are yes to the majority, there is nothing wrong with it, its just harder.

If OP feels zerk is the best option then he is entitled to feel that way, however, there are other players that may finds tricks he did not. Maybe armor is intended to survive adds not the boss.

I ran a celestial revenant (because I was too lazy to change gear) and I had the complete opposite experience. I found most mobs easy to beat (albeit I was rarely alone), champs took a little longer to kill in group though than what I’m used to. But I wasn’t expecting to be able to kill champs or vets solo or fast anyway.

There was one exception though, the mushrooms. I paused when I ran into them going ‘aww cute little mushroom guys’ and trying to get a closer look. Then I got mobbed by them… CC after CC and I would have died if not for the NPC that came to revive me when I went down. It was quite funny though. My own fault for staring like an idiot and not doing anything until they charged me and knocked me down.

Personally i love getting one shot it gives me a sense of danger. one of my favourite moments was running away from some mobs then all of a sudden one of those shadow stepping creatures jumps out of a bush and one shots me :’)

I think they just need to buff defensive stats. This game has been lopsided stat-balance wise for a long time

I played my Revnant with Sinister and Sunless runes the entire time, ascended trinkets with rabid/apothecary for that tiny boost in heals/def. At first, I really was getting ownd left and right without mercy. I figured I was just being a noob. I went to Orr, wiped the floor with mobs before they could touch me… noobness confirmed. Then I went back to VB and continually fought from mid-range where I did not know the fight and melee’d where I did (only took me seeing it once or twice to have it down). I also realized that the ICD on the “Heal for ~300 every 5s on any energy-cost skill” was useless compared to healing ~50 for every hit regardless. That upped damage and survivability… then I rarely, if ever, even went down let alone died… and that includes all the event chains with lots of mobs. Only time I died after that was when I Leeroy’d a group of mobs around the vine because I thought I was invincible… hahaha, yeah… no. Oh… and if you have a full endurance bar, you’re prolly doing it wrong.

tl;dr: L2P

I didn’t die even once on beta with all my characters in full zerk, not solo and not in zergs.
It’s just a matter of dodging and kiting. Kiting is simply non-existent in GW2 in PvE atm, bet most of the players have no idea what it is.

If you don’t have enough endurance or have the utility skills on cooldown, just use the environment to your advantage, break line of sight or go higher ground, pulling back a little to refresh your cooldowns it’s part of the tactics sometimes.

You can’t expect to stay in one spot or in the middle of a cluster and hope you’ll get lucky and won’t die.

Break the “stack all together” mentality and you’ll be fine.

Gilgalas.7860:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Some attacks are a bit unforgiving, downing me as zerk reaper in RS form dealing 29k damage is absurd. This works in single player games – name a few: God of War, Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc. but we are in a zerg where visuals blur everything. In my opinion such boss battles should be easier and the hard stuff in raids/dungeons.

Activate “effect LOD” option, it is your secret weapon against all these flashy skill effects. If it is still too bright/cluttered for you, there are some post-processor presets around that help to reduce the issue

I admit the second time I encountered this particular enemy we were much less people, maybe 15-20 and I could dodge almost everything.

It seems wearing tanky stats is as effective as trying to express how ineffective they are.

Fox.3469:

Defensive gear does give you more chances, it is working as intended, this gear isn’t supposed to make you ignore the boss abilities. Btw you are way overselling this, most classes in full zerker can afford one mistake in a bossfight. Most classes full tank can make 3-4 kittenups before going down.

I agree. Only if the only if the means of damage are ground effects you dodge or die to…wearing heavy armor and getting one shot for not moving or light armor and dying to not moving is the same result.

Also if the damage done is so high, meaning it doesn’t scale if there are say, 5 people vs 50 what does it matter if you get one shot in tank gear or one shot in DPS gear as a “tanky build” say a guardian with lots of protect skills. Might as well go DPS and burn as much as you can then get out of the way when the attacks come, which is the same playstyle say a zerker would have. So what benefit is there to sacrificing DPS to toughness?

My problem is, when the event gets huge and the dps skyrockets on the event champ, I might as well go my spvp range build, which is fine and all, but the situations where I can be a tanky guardian and feel like a big heavy armored tank seem to be shrinking rapidly. I was having fun seeing a bunch of thief’s/rangers kiting a champ or veteran mobs then running over, taking its agro, then keeping him off the dps while support skills on the dps…that’s fun, that feels guardian, you change that you make guardian, or any other class with the means to tank if properly built, pointless other than map pve non event mobs…and even in HOT I’m hearing that the mobs that you typically would “tank” in core game have stuff you cant tank and must run around kiting…

So again, going tanky only matters when you can actually take hits. Getting one shot, or two shot, or only able to stay there while a long cool down skill is active….you go from a tank to just another dps kiter with one or two “second chance” skills.

Serophous.9085:

WEXXES.2378:

If your in zerker gear, you will get 1 shot by a lot of things. That’s expected. If you have high toughness/vitality, you won’t be. The different between getting 1 shot and 2 shot is huge, because one allows ‘mistakes’ and one doesn’t.

If its dumbed down again, we are going to repeat history and thats going to look really, really bad for the next expansion. Hell, if that happens again there might not even be a next expansion.

No. In major events, Defenses DO NOT matter. You will down in the same amount of shots as zerker, no matter your defenses. Thus, defenses DO NOT matter, so just go zerker.

If you make damage too high that defenses don’t matter, defenses are useless so go full damage. If you make damage too low, defenses are useless, go damage.

As said before, stacking defense should be there to allow mistakes to happen and to learn. If you still can’t grasp fights, then stay in the gear, that’s fine, I’m all for that. But if the mob is going to two shot you anyway in defense gear, what’s the point?

Yes, in the learning process, I do get one shotted against normal mobs at times at this stage because I don’t know the tells exactly. But once I do, then I’m not going to die and I can kill fast. Its like the karkas. Dodge the initial shots, you’ll be fine.

I agree with going defense until I learn. Once I learn, go zerk.

I have had a totally different experience. I ran several different builds over the course of BWE1 and BWE2. With full glass I paid with a mistake with my life. In tougher set-ups I was able to brush it off and hopefully not repeat that mistake.

As others have said learning mob mechanics is key. Know when to pull out maybe even sometimes run. Most of the time it just comes down to mitigating damage and making your dodges. You can survive a mistake or two on a tougher build.

Also note that Elites and Champs are not meant to be solo’d. Sure the Elite Spider is doable and some builds that players have mastered will do better than others in certain solo situations but for the most part you’re just asking for pain.

The hardest event and the only one that downed my tough Tempest build on her 2nd go around was the one up north in BWE2 in the dead tree where we had to plant the bombs. The constant pressure of the torment spam along with the Champs OP barrage was rather difficult to deal with at times even though I think with practice I could do better there. It’s the poor zerkers I felt sorry for. lol

I found the sweet spot for my Tempest was with a healing support/condi build that made good use of aura sharing. Not only could she literally burn through most mobs with her burning but she could instantly refill her health pool and help those around her.

One tough cookie was the Elite Shadowdancer (the one that shoots a volley). I ran towards one and took a full spread volley to da face. Even on this tough Tempest build the 4X 5k hits was an insta down. When I saw this guy again there was about 5 of us running towards it and I gave everyone a magnetic aura. The Shadowdancer lost most of it’s health in just a few seconds! Best feel good moment of my weekend:D