Guild Wars 2

I found my WvW mixed ~PVT set with trooper runes on guardian to be more fun to run in SW than the pure damage zerk build. Don’t know about HoT, but that extra utility and HP really did make a difference in SW, so…

Vague Memory.2817:

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.

I heard this exact same line when the Silverwastes went live. Look at it now. Players will adapt and learn. Those that can’t still have their afk spam 1 world boss tours.

In response to the OP, I think this is working as intended. This means people running the event chains will benefit from having a variety of build types grouped together.

You will benefit from having high damage people to kill the Legendary bosses and having some tankiness to deal with the mobs and extras that spawn before and around the bosses.

To be honest, though. I didn’t think the content was too difficult for zerkerish builds. I was using a zerk shattering chronomancer and felt like the mob damage was just about right. Not to high at all. The legendary bosses should kill you with one hit, regardless of how much armor you bring. you are just a little insect to them.

Bandit.8279:

Vague Memory.2817:

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.

I heard this exact same line when the Silverwastes went live. Look at it now. Players will adapt and learn. Those that can’t still have their afk spam 1 world boss tours.

Can’t say I ever had that problem in Silverwastes, aside from maybe some of the underground champs. (And quicksand. Stupid achievement. :P)

Southsun, though. Yeah, there’s a reason no one goes there anymore.

From playing the beta (this past weekend was my first experience with it), I found that I was getting wrecked on many occasions. Part of it was L2P, but I did find that my full condi Berzerker (gotta love the gimmick, amIrite?) only had the slightest amount of increased survivability when switching from full Rampager to Dire/Rabid. Most of the time, I focused on spamming out conditions at such a rate that I would usually rally almost immediately (oddly effective)—I played more conservatively for a while, but it was just more fun to go YOLO with that skill-set.

So no, I don’t think that they should tune down mob damage. Hits should still be strong and impactful. I do think that Defensive stats, Healing Power in particular, need to be tuned up—just to make them compete better with offensive stats from a balance perspective.

An important thing to keep in mind: Defensive stats are an allowance for some latency issues. I wouldn’t have thought about this if I had not played what I played of the beta on crappy hotel wifi (I was on a trip with my wife—also means I only got to play if I woke up before her and while she did makeup and such), but with some of those mobs (snipers in particular), a 2 second skill lag can literally kill you. Allowing for some forgiveness for this would definitely make it more fun for people who either have a crappy ISP or live far away from ANet’s servers.

Also, there’s the whole “gear choice” vs “illusion of gear choice” argument that has been played to death in the forums….

Rauderi.8706:

Bandit.8279:

Vague Memory.2817:

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.

I heard this exact same line when the Silverwastes went live. Look at it now. Players will adapt and learn. Those that can’t still have their afk spam 1 world boss tours.

Can’t say I ever had that problem in Silverwastes, aside from maybe some of the underground champs. (And quicksand. Stupid achievement. :P)

Southsun, though. Yeah, there’s a reason no one goes there anymore.

The reason no one goes to Southsun is not due to difficulty alone. It’s all about risk vs reward. There is nothing worth doing in Southsun other then KQ and some karka farming. If there was more of a reason to be there like the Silverwastes then it would be more populated. Reflects and boon removals along with blinds and timely dodging negate most of the hardships there.

Also, Silverwastes upon it’s initial release was a much different animal than it is now. In that first month the Breach would fail regularly and when the VW was released it was almost a 50% success rate for some time. Even then players would still populate the maps. Many either enjoyed the challenge and/or wanted the skins and coin that came from it.

The power creep with the conditions and specializations patch have made most of the fights rather trivial out there now not to mention players adapted to it’s environment by perfecting their builds and learning the mobs mechanics.

Serophous.9085:

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 don’t know about you but i was soloing an Elite spider along with some vets with my revenant. But its true that some mobs can destroy you if you’re not careful but i also preferred that way so this time we cant ignore trash mobs anymore and take them lightly.

I played virtually all classes except for engineer during the last beta, including a glass ele build. In no situation was the enemy overpowered. When I did find I was getting excessive damage in melee I simply switched to a ranged weapon.

If you expect to be able to just stand there and tank everything then you deserve to suffer. You need to avoid damage when possible.

A month or more of time should go by before anyone decides mobs hit too hard. I understand some times new things can be more challenging because you aren’t familiar with it but that’s part of the fun. And if you die, you just have to learn from your mistakes and readjust your skills or playstyle.

#facetankproblems

Oh my god this thread is terrible to read, maybe a total of one or two guys understood what OP was talking about.

Vikkela.7261:

Oh my god this thread is terrible to read, maybe a total of one or two guys understood what OP was talking about.

That is not a problem with HoT, it is ingrained throughout the whole game. Many champions have the potential to down someone in a single hit or two. Zerkers do far too much damage and can avoid enemy damage. Armor/healing does not mitigate enough damage to make up the difference, which is why we have the zerker mentality.

If they were to limit max damage and increase the effectiveness of armor then this would not be an issue. I cannot see that happening as it would spoil the anet ‘fun’.

Serious.6940:

If they were to limit max damage and increase the effectiveness of armor then this would not be an issue. I cannot see that happening as it would spoil the anet ‘fun’.

Where ‘fun’ = “PvP balance”

Still, as a whole, the encounter difficulty is sort of where it needs to be. Sort of. C+, maybe a lenient B-. The only problems I ran into (that weren’t artifacts of the —--ty map design) were:

• Shadowscales not leaving their mists even when ranged and having too short a cooldown.
• Solo scaling in some instances is way beyond what one person and a bunch of herpdumb AI allies should be putting up with. (Which might explain why Tormentors were sort of bombing me and only me with 15 stacks of torment.)
• One of the usual ANet fetishes: the one-hit-KO. Even in only full celestial (half defensive stats), a warrior/heavy should be able to soak for an ill-timed dodge. Perhaps not well, but it shouldn’t be instant death. But as it is, the damage is overtuned and it makes armor worthless.
• Oddly enough, the stupid mushrooms. Swarm enemies shouldn’t be doing damage that high on their own. Yet another fetish as well: the stability-breaking-charge-instadown.
  If anything, one of my issues with enemies in HoT so far is that they still don’t have enough alternate abilities, so it’s either auto-attack or their single mechanic on a broken, 3-second cooldown. Other examples: smoke shamans, dust clouds, Zojja…

Funny thing, I got gacked by Snipers too, but I’ve started to figure them out, so I’m not as upset. Still best not to get shot (by something I can’t see/time yet), but some of their big damage comes from standing slack-jawed in the damage line afterward, so that part is telegraphed properly.
Most of frogs were within reason, perhaps a smidge easy, but not enough that you can “mash 1 to win,” so thumbs up there. In general, I kept my fights with them one-on-one, minding the position of the others, so I never got overwhelmed by them.

Open world should allow you to play how you want at the pace you want with the difficulty you want. That means designing it to be easy. Punching your players in the face and not giving them any new content they can retreat to and enjoy is simply a mistake.

I’ve seen this happen in a few games. New content for a while stays stagnant on difficulty becoming far too easy for even the average player. Eventually there’s a loud cry for more difficulty. The development team makes a complete 180 and makes everything in the new content punch you in the face hard, and forces a large group of their players to realize that they aren’t as good as they thought, leading to a lot stepping away.

Lets not have that happen here.

Raids, Dungeons, Fractals, these are the places to punch your players in the face. Maybe toss a boss or two up in open world that become known for that. But the Open World is where your average player goes to feel like a hero. They want to be engaged, but not beaten to a bloody pulp.

Now, should everything just fall over from you looking at it, absolutely not. Again, Engaging, that’s a key word to keep in mind. You can keep something engaging without making it overly difficult. Silverwastes did this EXCELLENTLY, if it weren’t for the chest farm nonsense I’d have to say it’s one of the best open world zones I’ve seen in 16 years of MMOs. It’s really impressive. And, that’s what the new zones should be like.

I can go into SW with one of my tanky build chars and just waltz around beating on enemies with my foam bat and having fun while not really worrying, still can end up in a bad situation that gets me killed if i’m overly careless though. So I do have to pay attention somewhat (engaged). But, then I take my glass builds into the same place, and suddenly if I don’t have well timed dodges, blocks or evades I’m going to eat some hits that are simply too much for me to brush off. Still not very challenging but enough to really ramp up that need to pay attention (engaged).

I think SW nailed Open World difficulty. I desperately want more Fractals and I hope raids are up to my expectations, but I think it’s a mistake to create that type of punishing content in the areas that should be more focused on the masses and less on the more masochistic end of the spectrum.

OP you are absolutely correct. Everyone who is saying “learn to play” might I suggest learning to read?

When damage exceeds the ability of a full defensive build to mitigate, then there is no point using that defensive build. Scaling is currently boosting spike damage too high, Perhaps it should have a hard cap on the amount of damage that can be dealt to a single target in one attack. By all means boost mob numbers, or mob vitality/toughness but boosting damage too high makes tanking specs useless at some scales.

Spiuk.8421:

ITT: People who can’t read.

Vikkela.7261:

Oh my god this thread is terrible to read, maybe a total of one or two guys understood what OP was talking about.

I’m with you guys. It’s like everyone stopped reading at “Now before you go yell at me…”.

This guy got it though:

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.

I completely agree. Toughness and Healing Power are just bad stats right now. They’re bad because they don’t do very much even when you max them, and by maxing them you lose a LOT of damage. Both of these stats need to actually mean something when you gear for them. Power/Precision/Ferocity turn you into a meta DPS death dealing machine. Toughness/Vitality/Healing Power should turn you into a tanking, eat AOE to revive someone, healing machine. However all it currently does is turn you into a wet noodle that has slightly higher green numbers and can take a few extra hits from trash mobs that nobody has trouble with anyways.

Here’s one thing that irks me and I would consider evidence: Revenant has a trait that makes every 100 healing power contribute 1.5% additional healing. Doesn’t this basically tell you healing power is not good? A Revenant who actually wants to heal and stack healing power has to use a trait to make the healing power actually do something!

My guess is that it will be toned down anyways. My experiences from previous GW2 tests is that for balance/scaling tweaks they start at the extreme/difficult spectrum and then tone down instead of starting low/easy and bringing it up.
Like with the BWE’s prior to vanilla launch I remember that the difficulty/strength of mobs in pve land was a lot higher (not just because of being new to the game) and (depending on class/build) pulling more than 2 mobs at a time would give you a hard time, kill you or make you run for your life while using heal and all your defenses already in starter zones.
The first (few) BWE’s you saw dead players in pve land everywhere but after that it became mind numbingly easy auto attack and occasional situational use of a skill fest.
Personally I liked it better how it was before because there was finally a game (again) with some challenge in the open world.

I think people are not reading the post and just replying to the title of the thread. I don’t think it’s right, it should read “Toughness and Healing Power are Worthless” because I don’t think the damage is the problem. You should get one shot by bosses and die a lot in Berserker/Assassin/Sinister/Rampager/any gear without defensive stats. The problem is you also get one shot by bosses in any other type of gear. To me it’s the gear’s problem (by extension the stats themselves) not the content.

Adamantium.3682:

To me it’s the gear’s problem (by extension the stats themselves) not the content.

To me it seems more like scaling (like the OP also mentioned) and/or damage issue, I seemed to be taking less damage still in soldier’s gear but it would still kill me. Hence when they tone it down like they’ve done before the problem might be resolved, but I guess only Anet has the figures on that Upping the effectiveness of defensive stats on gear or tweaking the scaling might have a simillar result except that fixing the gear/stats would also affect other parts of the game unless there’s something in the boss mechanics that totally nullifies gear and/or certain stats against them.

holska.4127:

Adamantium.3682:

To me it’s the gear’s problem (by extension the stats themselves) not the content.

To me it seems more like scaling (like the OP also mentioned) and/or damage issue, I seemed to be taking less damage still in soldier’s gear but it would still kill me. Hence when they tone it down like they’ve done before the problem might be resolved, but I guess only Anet has the figures on that Upping the effectiveness of defensive stats on gear or tweaking the scaling might have a simillar result except that fixing the gear/stats would also affect other parts of the game unless there’s something in the boss mechanics that totally nullifies gear and/or certain stats against them.

It is game-wide, that’s why the Zerker meta exists. Defensive gear doesn’t protect you enough to warrant using, so you might as well get as much damage as possible since you’re going to die either way if you get hit.

My experience is different. I do notice a lot of difference in survivability in defensive gear at the cost of damage output so I outlive several mobs at a time and slowly pick them off one by one as opposed to zerker gear where I pull less at the same time and quickly finish them off one by one.
Only on the new large scale world bosses I agree I find it useless but in the rest of the game (both live and in HoT beta) it’s a choice of playstyle and it works fine for me as I’m not the speedrun maximum damage output type of guy and enjoy it more to fight multiple mobs at a time and controlling / outliving them in which defensive gear greatly helps me.
In the current game dungeon groups might not like my damage output because they want to clear content fast but I’m still useful to other groups and am usually the last man standing in encounters where things get nasty.
Sure I’m not able to be a full tank but the game doesn’t want to have the conventional mmo tank.
I understand for some it might be too weak but for me it’s fine as I do notice the difference and it changes my playstyle.

If you’re going down in 2-3 hits, it sounds like your defenses do matter, because on those fights I was going down in one hit on my zerker-geared characters.

As I stated in my first post I had good success with Toughness and Healing Power in Verdant Brink. I also put in good condi damage so that I could actually kills things as well. I used Settler and Apothecary set-ups.

My Tempest would camp fire for dps and switch to water and earth for support. I found it a lot of fun and I was able to make mistakes and survive them in almost all situations unlike my glass daredevil.

So I disagree with the OP and have had totally different experiences.

Adamantium.3682:

holska.4127:

Adamantium.3682:

To me it’s the gear’s problem (by extension the stats themselves) not the content.

To me it seems more like scaling (like the OP also mentioned) and/or damage issue, I seemed to be taking less damage still in soldier’s gear but it would still kill me. Hence when they tone it down like they’ve done before the problem might be resolved, but I guess only Anet has the figures on that Upping the effectiveness of defensive stats on gear or tweaking the scaling might have a simillar result except that fixing the gear/stats would also affect other parts of the game unless there’s something in the boss mechanics that totally nullifies gear and/or certain stats against them.

It is game-wide, that’s why the Zerker meta exists. Defensive gear doesn’t protect you enough to warrant using, so you might as well get as much damage as possible since you’re going to die either way if you get hit.

It’s not supposed to make it brainless but it certainly does make things easier. I have some defensive gear namely clerics (full ascended ) guard, and I can nearly afk in open world content. Dungeon/Fractal it still requires attention, but it does make it less stressful both on me and my team as that healing power actually helps. You don’t just slap the gear on though, you do have to put in thought to your build, grab certain traits and use the right weapon and utilities. But once you do you have some power, often overlooked and often unneeded power but power none the less.

WindGodGirl.6405:

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.

I was playing a valkyrie reaper with zerker trinkets, and even in scaled up zergs, I was able to facetank a lot of the champs. Does that mean reaper is OP?

Quarktastic.1027:

WindGodGirl.6405:

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.

I was playing a valkyrie reaper with zerker trinkets, and even in scaled up zergs, I was able to facetank a lot of the champs. Does that mean reaper is OP?

I definitely think that Reaper is the most survivable of the Elite Specializations—at least out of the ones that I spent time with. Berzerker is glassy even in Dire/Rabid gear.

binidj.5734:

OP you are absolutely correct. Everyone who is saying “learn to play” might I suggest learning to read?

When damage exceeds the ability of a full defensive build to mitigate, then there is no point using that defensive build. Scaling is currently boosting spike damage too high, Perhaps it should have a hard cap on the amount of damage that can be dealt to a single target in one attack. By all means boost mob numbers, or mob vitality/toughness but boosting damage too high makes tanking specs useless at some scales.

Is it really a learn to read issue, or are you not understanding some of the replies ?

Its an encounter, that means you don’t take into account only the main boss damage you have to take into account the entire encounter including adds or other sources of damage. If there is adds or other forms of damage and your gear mitigates that damage it is 100% relevant to the encounter. It may not mitigate the boss, but, the boss is only one part of the encounter.

Now if its just you and the boss and the damage scales beyond mitigation, that could mean you have to many people at the encounter or you can try your luck in whatever gear you like at this point. If you try the encounter with less people does armor mitigation apply ? Maybe they did this to prevent the old Champ train mentality, bring a zerg to farm and you die.