Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

no, even for unskilled players active defense is far superior.

you can give all of your major stats to toughness, so you take 40% less damage, against an enemy swinging once every 4 seconds, 5 attacks in 20 seconds
or you can give nothing to toughness and dodge, and you take 40% less damage by only taking 3 attacks. if you use vigor? well you can take 80% less damage.

active defense is always superior to passive defense, the advantage to passive defense is when you run out of active defense, or mess up.

And to say it once again, i have no problem with active defense at all, i think that active defense should be the main way in which you deal with enemy attacks. However, IF you want to have a stat system, it should represent a real choice, and real descions. Most stats do not represent actual useful descions. People who dont know this assume they will actually matter, and are shocked to find out they are relatively worthless.

So either, make stats actually be a descion, that effects how you actively play the game, or get rid of the false choices that lead to poor encounter design.
Or keep the status quo, and have people forever complaining about stats that dont matter, and HPbag bosses for average parties, and lack of challenge for elite parties.

See you are closer to use than you think. We know it’s an imperfect system. Defensive gear are there for WvW and Training Wheels only and it bugs a lot of people. We just don’t give a crap about that and wouldn’t mind at all if they removed gear and we all had celestial stats.

But the other way around? Every single person that came forward with an ’’solution’’ to the problem by making other gear better was painfully bad. Trying to artificially give more use to defensive gear. Those idea usually end up forcing player to use some sort of defensive gear because without it you can’t dodge or received so much damage or thing like that. It’s gear diversity for the sake of gear diversity without improving the game and usually by destroying the active gameplay that we love so much.

So none of the three solution are appealing. Status Quo will still continue to see those kind of tread but at least the game will still be about active gameplay. Removing the gear choice will kitten people off, will make WvW weird, and it will be hard to do for Anet. Making defensive gear an optimal choice will destroy the game we love.

phys.7689:

as for the passive offense, no, its not passive, you have to choose an attack, and press the button to gain anything from a DPS stat, that is the opposite of passive. Those stats effect the damage of your skills, defense stats do not effect the defense provided by your skills.

And you have to choose to put yourself in arm ways to gain anything from defensive stats, that’s the opposite of passive??. That’s not an argument.

You need to actively use a skill to use the passive buff provided by offensive stats.

phys.7689:

spoj.9672:

They passively increase the damage you deal. Just like defensive stats passively decrease the damage you take. Or are you going to pick on that and say because you cant attack passively they arent passive stats?

Offensive stats do nothing to individual skills. They simply increase your base damage. Which happens to be used whenever doing damage. Shocking I know. They do not increase the damage coefficients of skills. Those are constant.

Active defence is only superior for skilled players. For everyone else passive defence is a godsend. And with better content that will be emphasized further. This is an active combat game. One of the best things about it is the ability to completely avoid damage with active defence. If you dont like it thats tough. Accept that this is what anet wanted or go play another game.

no, even for unskilled players active defense is far superior.

you can give all of your major stats to toughness, so you take 40% less damage, against an enemy swinging once every 4 seconds, 5 attacks in 20 seconds
or you can give nothing to toughness and dodge, and you take 40% less damage by only taking 3 attacks. if you use vigor? well you can take 80% less damage.

active defense is always superior to passive defense, the advantage to passive defense is when you run out of active defense, or mess up.

And to say it once again, i have no problem with active defense at all, i think that active defense should be the main way in which you deal with enemy attacks. However, IF you want to have a stat system, it should represent a real choice, and real descions. Most stats do not represent actual useful descions. People who dont know this assume they will actually matter, and are shocked to find out they are relatively worthless.

So either, make stats actually be a descion, that effects how you actively play the game, or get rid of the false choices that lead to poor encounter design.
Or keep the status quo, and have people forever complaining about stats that dont matter, and HPbag bosses for average parties, and lack of challenge for elite parties.

as for the passive offense, no, its not passive, you have to choose an attack, and press the button to gain anything from a DPS stat, that is the opposite of passive. Those stats effect the damage of your skills, defense stats do not effect the defense provided by your skills.

Again assuming even a complete noob can dodge attacks perfectly first time.

For the braindead easy content, yes.
And much of the content feels braindead easy due to experience.
For the first timer, it is far from braindead easy. It is very difficult to dodge every attack perfectly first time. Or in several subsequent attempts.

Yes we do need more dungeons that are less forgiving. More dungeons equally challenging if not more so than arah.
Making all content that hard creates a huge barrier to joining the game. This is not a good thing.

as others have said: take 4 noobs into arah p1, and see how easy hard it is to complete.

Exun.7825:

About the “well played, active defense is better” : well, in PvE the enemies are no brain and scripted, all you have to do is to push a key at the right moment and oh, you just cancelled 100% of the incoming damage during a sec. You can do it twice in a row, when you don’t have it then you have to wait like few sec and it’s up… seriously even if you are not good at it, it is already effective.

And getting gear to receive less damage is what then? More challenging, more skillful??

Yes PvE enemies are often not enough challenging. AND THAT’S WHAT WE ARE SAYING FOR THE LAST 2 YEARS. Some encounter are nice like Lupi, Liadri, etc. But most of them don’t really push ourselves and we want more. We want to have a hard time playing zerker, but we want it to be fair too. We want to fail at difficult boss, but only because we did a mistake, didn’t use aegis or dodge at the right time, etc.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

as others have said: take 4 noobs into arah p1, and see how easy hard it is to complete.

Even people that are not noob have a hard time playing Arah. I prefer to duo it then to get pugs, it’s just a terrible experience in that dungeon.

Thaddeus.4891:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

as others have said: take 4 noobs into arah p1, and see how easy hard it is to complete.

Even people that are not noob have a hard time playing Arah. I prefer to duo it then to get pugs, it’s just a terrible experience in that dungeon.

Whole other can of wurms.
Yeah its easier & quicker with incomplete party than with scrubs who mess things up.
Even my guild has taken to 3-4man over taking pugs, and we aren’t even that good at arah ourselves yet. Similar deal with fractal 50.

Explaining that to people who aren’t very good though.. Generates so much abuse :/

Maybe we should stop writing so much and go strait to the point, and also stop talking about communication issues because look at it! before we read a page another one has been written… hard to follow

Thaddeus : I don’t understand if you are mad at me or not.

Bubi.7942:

The gripe I have is that zerker stat is way forgiving, the damage boost you get from it is not on par with the risk you take up by wearing it. It doesn’t become a glass cannon, just a cannon.

/agree. And I think it’s because of dodge powa

Exun.7825:

Thaddeus : I don’t understand if you are mad at me or not.

I’m never mad on internet

I just hate some toast with nutella and banana, how can someone be mad after that.

Thaddeus.4891:

phys.7689:

no, even for unskilled players active defense is far superior.

you can give all of your major stats to toughness, so you take 40% less damage, against an enemy swinging once every 4 seconds, 5 attacks in 20 seconds
or you can give nothing to toughness and dodge, and you take 40% less damage by only taking 3 attacks. if you use vigor? well you can take 80% less damage.

active defense is always superior to passive defense, the advantage to passive defense is when you run out of active defense, or mess up.

And to say it once again, i have no problem with active defense at all, i think that active defense should be the main way in which you deal with enemy attacks. However, IF you want to have a stat system, it should represent a real choice, and real descions. Most stats do not represent actual useful descions. People who dont know this assume they will actually matter, and are shocked to find out they are relatively worthless.

So either, make stats actually be a descion, that effects how you actively play the game, or get rid of the false choices that lead to poor encounter design.
Or keep the status quo, and have people forever complaining about stats that dont matter, and HPbag bosses for average parties, and lack of challenge for elite parties.

See you are closer to use than you think. We know it’s an imperfect system. Defensive gear are there for WvW and Training Wheels only and it bugs a lot of people. We just don’t give a crap about that and wouldn’t mind at all if they removed gear and we all had celestial stats.

But the other way around? Every single person that came forward with an ’’solution’’ to the problem by making other gear better was painfully bad. Trying to artificially give more use to defensive gear. Those idea usually end up forcing player to use some sort of defensive gear because without it you can’t dodge or received so much damage or thing like that. It’s gear diversity for the sake of gear diversity without improving the game and usually by destroying the active gameplay that we love so much.

So none of the three solution are appealing. Status Quo will still continue to see those kind of tread but at least the game will still be about active gameplay. Removing the gear choice will kitten people off, will make WvW weird, and it will be hard to do for Anet. Making defensive gear an optimal choice will destroy the game we love.

phys.7689:

as for the passive offense, no, its not passive, you have to choose an attack, and press the button to gain anything from a DPS stat, that is the opposite of passive. Those stats effect the damage of your skills, defense stats do not effect the defense provided by your skills.

And you have to choose to put yourself in arm ways to gain anything from defensive stats, that’s the opposite of passive??. That’s not an argument.

You need to actively use a skill to use the passive buff provided by offensive stats.

you dont have to choose to put yourself in harms way, enemies will run up to you and hit you.
passive offense is a ranger with a pet

but ok lets not use the words passive

dps stats effect dmg done by the skills you press
def stats do not effect dmg recieved(or anything) due to the skills you press

Thats my point – and the OP Point ‘Dungeons’ are too hard !

It promotes skilled play – those who are not at the highest level of skilled play – cannot do speed clears. It is only the highest level of skilled play which can do this.
Those looking from outside in – only see facerolling/dodge and boom.

They probably dont even see all the work that has gone into doing this.

Thaddeus.4891:

Bubi the thing is when people talk about how Dungeon are easy they talk how you can explode a boss in second leaving him no time to attack back and that’s speed run.

So use that fact + the fact that most of us only speed run and you can see how we respond that way. But I get your point and you are right. But I rarely see people arguing that dungeon are easy without using the argument that you can kill a boss in second.

Not necessarily.

My premise is that dungeons are too easy unless you intentionally make it kitten yourself. I’m not complaining about that and I don’t brag about “carrying” people, but unless the mechanics say you need everybody to get the job done, it’s harder to carry people than it is to not…which tends to be where we stand at an impasse with regards to group play and difficulty.

To me, dungeons are only not-easy when you intentionally don’t exploit the AI…which is kind of like saying “Okay, you ‘learned’ the encounter, not ignore the fluff mechanics and worry about the burst/negation switches”. You do that, your do it again and it’s easier, you do it again and it’s faster and then what? Either keep doing that or don’t do it.

That’s kind of what I do now. What I would like is some variety though. Maybe certain switches only exist in certain circumstances (or randomly not at all) so you just have to do something else for the time being. Or if you approach the thing differently, it will behave slightly different. Come at it with balls-out damage and negation, it’ll play defensively and run, come at it with range and it defends and leaps, come at it with defense and it will aim to tear you down.

Thaddeus.4891:

Exun.7825:

Thaddeus : I don’t understand if you are mad at me or not.

I’m never mad on internet

I just hate some toast with nutella and banana, how can someone be mad after that.

you hate toast wtih nutella and banana??!?!

Yeah that stuff is delicious, might have to pick some up for breakfast instead of my normal chocolate milk and a banana (eat them together and it’s like having a milkshake).

Leo- do you do arah?

Seems like that place is super kittene false move and boom boom – dead.
This place is so hard – they need to make it easier.

I will say there is one thing I don’t like in this game’s mechanics. That’s the reliance on using enemies to trigger their own mechanics. This means you can skip phases on bosses. I don’t really like that. It’s one thing to burn through something before you’re killed by it’s mechanics, it’s another to prevent them from happening by timing a burst while they’re already busy. I don’t know, it just seems like quite a limiting factor on the development side. One of my favorite mechanics in other games was % based mechanics. This made bursting through things especially dangerous because the faster you did it the more of those effects would come out. In GW2 though you’d only get 1 maybe 2 of the effects because they were busy casting the first one.

Now this isn’t to say I don’t like the heavy dps stuff, no in fact the opposite, I love it, but one of the things I loved in old games was that it got even more challenging with high damage, not only did you strip your general defenses but you also might have to deal with say 10 extra adds rushing you because you burst through 5 spawn percentages instead of dealing with just 2 at a time.

I don’t know, just a thought that has spun around in my head for a while.

phys.7689:

… i think that stats should effect active defense, just like stats effect active offense.(also active support and active control) and in similar proportions.
if it doesnt work that way, you will end up having the current problem, where a bunch of stats are comparitively useless, and DPS stats are the only stats that matter, for high level play.
…

You do realize that there is exactly one utility type that is impacted by offensive stats right? That is reflect. That is entirely because one of the two purposes of reflect is to do damage to the attacker. The other purpose is to prevent the projectile damage to the defender…which it does regardless of what armor set you are wearing.

Do you also realize that if you made utilities not accomplish their goal…just because you aren’t wearing a particular armor set…you would invalidate the majority of utilities in the game for players and make less diversity? I’m sorry, but that idea is not well thought out. I see multiple people keep suggesting something like that and its pretty ridiculous. One person in this thread is even suggesting that utilities only work partially if you aren’t wearing “tank” gear…in an obvious attempt to both validate him wearing said “tank” gear and try to force anyone not wearing “tank” gear into doing so. Its amazing how people can even get their minds wrapped around such a hypocritical concept as trying to force others to play how they want…but at the same time crying a river of tears on the forums not so long ago about the same thing having been expected of them.

TPMN.1483:

Leo- do you do arah?

Seems like that place is super kittene false move and boom boom – dead.
This place is so hard – they need to make it easier.

Like I said, it’s not-easy when don’t exploit the Ai or try to tear things down asap. It’s fun to try different approaches and adapt to new groups but what I may find fun may be annoying to others.

I do all dungeons and enjoy doing most of the paths. It just tends to be many more elitists who only want to play a certain way that do CoE and CoF and many intolerable kittens that do Arah. But again, I do all the dungeons. Arah had some unforgiving tells, yeah.

Thaddeus.4891:

Exun.7825:

Thaddeus : I don’t understand if you are mad at me or not.

I’m never mad on internet

I just hate some toast with nutella and banana, how can someone be mad after that.

Haha ok, because sometimes on hot topics like this one I have the impression people are writing on a zerk stats keyboard.

I personally think that nutella is OP and need some nerf.

To get back to the topic, in GW1 sometimes we were looking for “how to survive” before “how to kill the enemies” and so there were some setups and group strategy, and we had a lot of different ways to get the stuff done. In GW2 you don’t have those variables, everybody has 1 selfheal and should dps, you put some banners, you got some might and everybody can dodge whatever the armor they are wearing. So of course dps is the leading factor.

(I’m not saying that we should necessarily go back to dedicated classes with tanks and healers and everything.)

Exun.7825:

To get back to the topic, in GW1 sometimes we were looking for “how to survive” before “how to kill the enemies” and so there were some setups and group strategy, and we had a lot of different ways to get the stuff done. In GW2 you don’t have those variables, everybody has 1 selfheal and should dps, you put some banners, you got some might and everybody can dodge whatever the armor they are wearing. So of course dps is the leading factor.

True. But that’s because of the ‘’easy/old’’ content. I would love to think : hey how can I survive this fight?. That’s my dream for GW2.

But I want the answer to be more vigor, sigil of energy, protection, more reflect, blind, aegis, weakness, etc, etc. And it’s exactly that in a really small portion of dungeon/fractal. It’s important when you solo or you speed run through more difficult content like Arah or fractal 50, but for most of the dungeons, it’s not really that important.

For me difficult content (hard mode or scaling content like fractal so that casual can still experience the content) and a true fix for condition damage in PvE are the answer.

Note: Fairly long post ahead.

In my opinion, the reason dungeons, and PvE in general, are easy for people is because we know how each and every enemy will attack. We know their animations, whether or not the attack can be reflected or blocked, the conditions required for the enemy to use that attack and how often it can be used. Anything that cannot be nullified or countered through skills can be nullified by dodging at the correct time.

Changing the mechanics of the encounters will not change anything permanently because once those new mechanics are figured out people will go back to using berserker equipment because active defenses and strategy gives the tools we need to nullify key attacks of any enemy as long as we have the information needed to do so.

The reason toughness and healing power do not scale well is most likely because of the many different sources and therefore can be stacked to a high degree. Sigils, runes, trait points and traits, equipment stats and weapons all can give additional stat points. In addition to the skills and boons that scale off of healing power and that both healing power and toughness reduce enemy damage in different ways they have to be balanced based on the upper-limit of stackable passive defenses.

Potentially, if you remove all equipment based stats so that the only source of stats are from traits points, lines, traits and runes it would be easier to balance them because there are fewer variables and the scaling of toughness and healing power can be improved. Equipment would only scale the trait stats by a multiplier, so exotic would multiply the trait stats by 1.00 and ascended by 1.05 and so on as well as be there for non-stat sigils, for runes and infusions in the case of Ascended.

Potentially, with such a system you could just change a few trait points from the more offensive trait lines to a defensive trait line if you are taking a lot of damage and going down a lot without having to change to a different armor set or rune set. Then if multiple areas within dungeons are randomized so that enemy type/number/composition is not the same every time you enter a dungeon then that would make things a little more interesting. Such as a dungeon spot having a chance of spawning enemies that do heavy ranged damage, or heavy damage melee, or enemies with reflects and so on. Needing a little more party adaptability, or so in theory. My opinion of course.

Darkwolfer.7819:

Nope. I could care less about the title of the armor. It is the stat combination. I main Engineer and use Soldiers and tank like a boss. I still do decent damage because power is main stat but toughness/vitality allow me to stay alive and support/tank for my fellow players. The only time this is a problem is if more than one person is doing this then we don’t have enough DPS.

I think the problem is with the min/max people not even allowing for traditional roles even though the roles work just as well. I mean heaven forbid a fight should take 20 more seconds. I find it very beneficial when I get a healing ele that knows what they doing. There are tons of fights that actually cater to this concept where the natural regen of water stance comes in handy.

Because of GW2 system with the no roles ideology people who actually enjoy playing these roles get shunned when they ought to be rewarded. So if ANet doesn’t want to require roles that is fine but make them still viable.

The only problem is the relaxed dungeon queue system that allows for bad experience when players want to play those roles. nothing worse than entering a dungeon and seeinf 2-3 people state “I’m heals”. It isn’t because they are wrong but they know nobody will queue up with them if they state it in the dungeon find.

Some solutions is to NEVER pug, be a jerk and say zerg only post your armor (I should carry armor on me so I can link it just to anger people), play with friends who share same ideas, or give into the meta even if you don’t want to play DPS

None of these solutions are very appetizing huh?

Why do you feel that you should be rewarded or accepted for willfully trying to impose roles in a game that is explicitly not based on those roles? Why do you feel the game and its players need to adapt and accommodate your choice to role play in the game instead of actually playing the game as designed? It would be different if you would do exactly what you said in the end (play with friends who share the same ideas), as the content is made easy enough to play with whatever handicaps you want and still succeed…but to expect that in pugs is pretty ridiculous. And yes, you would really be a jerk for trolling others by joining groups that do request gear pings…and pinging an extra set of gear in your bags that you aren’t wearing. The game has specific policies on trolling I believe. That aside, is why I don’t even try to control the quality of a group I join, I just leave and look for another group if I see really bad behavior/performance in a group. That way I don’t get as much hate spam from nomads expecting a free ride.

I actually do agree that a big part of the problem is the dungeon queue system. The problem is that it does not have the proper filters to form an effective and appropriate group to fit play styles and expectations. It should, at the very least do three things.
1. Allow and enforce general stat allocation rules for joining a group.
2. Prevent wholesale stat allocation changes once in the group.
3. Allow and enforce general experience level for joining a group.

This would relieve a lot of the anger/frustration going on in the game regarding instanced grouping. You would literally have to group with like minded players when using the LFG tool. No more nomads trying to get carried by zerk parties. No more zerks unintentionally joining nomad parties and getting frustrated/focused. No more newbies joining fractal 50 as their first (exaggeration) fractal run and face planting the whole time. This would eliminate gear ping requirements…as the LFG tool would do it behind the scenes.

Honestly, the only time this “zerk meta” argument ever surfaces is in regards to instanced content…where individual group member contribution actually matters. You can run around naked/untraited in open world content and no one would care. Improving the LFG tool to actually filter party composition would actually solve this problem. You would still have the option to manually form parties via invite, like you already do, without the proposed LFG improvements.

Thaddeus.4891:

Bubi the thing is when people talk about how Dungeon are easy they talk how you can explode a boss in second leaving him no time to attack back and that’s speed run.

So use that fact + the fact that most of us only speed run and you can see how we respond that way. But I get your point and you are right. But I rarely see people arguing that dungeon are easy without using the argument that you can kill a boss in second.

Both ideas are related but far from being the same.

Stepping for the first time into a completely unknown content and beating it without too much trouble, sometimes without even suffering a single wipe, fits perfectly under my definition of easy. It wasn’t until meeting Lupicus, so after 8 story and 21 explorable paths, that I had my first wipefest experience.
There were, truth be said, many defensive trait and gear choices back then, and most of the runs were done on already exotic geared lvl80 characters. On the other side, there was also a notorious lack of understanding on game mechanics, like blinding bosses during AC story and wondering why was I being smashed in the face.

As we got more familiar with both the content and the game mechanics, dungeons went from easy to a complete faceroll. We eventually had to shift most of the defense to damage, not because it resulted in faster runs, which was a nice side effect, but cause it was mandatory in order to have an enjoyable and meaningful combat experience.

Without passive defense stats and/or sustain related traits and utilities every mistake is punished harder, so it could be said that the game becomes more difficult.
As someone who has performed the whole trip, I won’t dare to say that the game became easier, but it definitely didn’t get much harder.
Experience and knowledge surely played an important role for that, but there’s an inherent survival advantage tied to a high damage spec, something you notice almost instantly when fighting open world foes and dungeon thrash mob packs … a dead enemy does no harm.
Killing things faster makes many fights easier on its own way, sometimes up to a point where a shift towards damage can create a safer enviroment and/or allow for a much more straightforward tactic than the opposite, and this is something that becomes more and more true the shorter those fights are.

So being able to kill a boss extremely fast is not what makes the game easy. That’s a general (and totally subjective) perception about the game, specially about the content that we have had since release.
It allows more often than not, however, to circumvent many of the risks of what could be understood as the most high-risk-high-reward approach, and probably makes the usage of full offensive gear much more widespread than what IMHO should be.

Exun.7825:

Skoigoth.9238:

Exun.7825:

I do not want to set the bar myself and tell people that what I say is the truth, i’m just watching and what I see is that dodging glass canon strategy is played by the overwhelming majority (In my mind). for me it’s a fact, and I don’t like it. What I would like is more diversity. <snip>

Well, I don´t like a lot of things people do in this game either, but do you see me opening a new topic about how much Staff Guardians suck in dungeons every godkitten week?

Why can´t we all accept that different people have different opinions and different preferences (even if you think they are stupid), mind our own business (!), respect each others LFGs and let the devs decide whether or not something needs to be changed in this game huh?

Ok so because I give my own opinion does it necessary mean that I don’t respect other’s opinions? I actually don’t agree with that, but please, take it easy, no offence.

The second part of my post wasn´t specifically directed at you, sorry that it came across that way (the following isn´t specifically directed at you either, fyi^^).

As for the tone of my post, to me it is just annoying as hell to see threads like this one pop up every week, with the same old arguments being rehashed again and again and again until the end of all times, without any progress made in the “discussion” whatsoever.

I couldn´t care less what gear people use in their groups for dungeon runs, or how easy/difficult they think dungeons are in this game. I have no problem with people running healer builds or whatever in their own groups. If it works for you, great! Be my guest.

What I DO have a problem with is this:
Once upon a time, there was a PHIW-player named Bob. Bob was taking a look at how fast you can get your shiny-shiny if you do (close-to-)meta runs and got frustrated because he didn´t enjoy it and/or couldn´t pull it off himself. Then he comes to the forums and demands that my and that many other players preferred way of running dungeons must be nerfed into oblivion, just because he doesn´t like it and/or his preferred way of playing isn´t the optimal way of running dungeons.

On top of that, I have the impression that a large portion of the Bobs out there, complaining about “the meta”, don´t know what they are talking about anyways, so can we please leave the job of balancing the game to the devs, yes?

PLEASE, Bobs of Tyria, just create your own LFGs, respect mine and leave me alone doing what I enjoy the most in this game

~To live and to let live~

phys.7689:

Active defense has no STAT investment, aka, if you want to play defensively, stats are largely irrelevant for skilled play. Active DPS however has an extemely large stat investment. No matter how good you are at dps, your effectiveness is greatly reduced without the proper stats.

you should think about ideas, before, and after posting, its impossible to learn if you think you have the answers before evaluating them.

the reality is that attributes effects are biased towards dps.
why is it your stats make your active dps 300% stronger,
but your stats dont make your active def 300% stronger
support?
healing?
control?

and this is an actually a problem for the game, because lets be honest, you dont have to learn every skill to survive, you can burn an enemy/enemies down without them getting a chance to do virtually any damage at all.
you can kill bosses in 20 seconds, and this is primarily because they have to design encounters with the insane range of dmg from lowest dps set, to highest dps set.

and in that 20 seconds, you essentially have the same defenses as any one else.

like i said, really they should just get rid of stats all together, or rework it. I mean fine, you want defensive skills to give same benefit no matter what?, whatever, but then the stat system will never be an accurate representation of risk, because active defensive skills are the actual meat of defense, passive defense is not a major part of high level play.

Just want to make sure you realize that active defenses (for everyone…defensive stat users too) are always at 100%. These active defenses…that you have as well, do not somehow turn off your passive defenses. They add to your existing passive defense. Lets examine this to determine exactly what you are asking for/expecting.
1. ANET is not going to let you become immortal/unkillable.
2. There is a limit to how much survivability you can achieve before becoming immortal.
3. The game becomes pointless if you can never die.
4. I’m saying this repeatedly in different ways so it sinks in to everyone asking for this.
5. How can you improve defensive utilities via stats if they are already at 100% effectiveness?

Is this just another nerf zerk request in disguise? I ask this because the implication is that you want to nerf the base effectiveness of the defensive utilities and have them only accomplish their job if you are geared in defensive stats. This is just absurd as you would simply invalidate those utilities by making them useless unless wearing defensive gear.

Healing utilities are affected by stats…healing power.
Control is already at the maximum effectiveness…not controlled by anything other than condition duration.
Support is a combination of everything you can do. There is no specific stat that controls support.

phys.7689:

no, even for unskilled players active defense is far superior.

you can give all of your major stats to toughness, so you take 40% less damage, against an enemy swinging once every 4 seconds, 5 attacks in 20 seconds
or you can give nothing to toughness and dodge, and you take 40% less damage by only taking 3 attacks. if you use vigor? well you can take 80% less damage.

active defense is always superior to passive defense, the advantage to passive defense is when you run out of active defense, or mess up.

And to say it once again, i have no problem with active defense at all, i think that active defense should be the main way in which you deal with enemy attacks. However, IF you want to have a stat system, it should represent a real choice, and real descions. Most stats do not represent actual useful descions. People who dont know this assume they will actually matter, and are shocked to find out they are relatively worthless.

So either, make stats actually be a descion, that effects how you actively play the game, or get rid of the false choices that lead to poor encounter design.
Or keep the status quo, and have people forever complaining about stats that dont matter, and HPbag bosses for average parties, and lack of challenge for elite parties.

as for the passive offense, no, its not passive, you have to choose an attack, and press the button to gain anything from a DPS stat, that is the opposite of passive. Those stats effect the damage of your skills, defense stats do not effect the defense provided by your skills.

If you take all toughness gear you receive about 33% less damage because of damage reduction which means a person that didn’t put any points into toughness receives 50% more damage. On the other hand, if you grab all power gear you do 50% more damage. It’s quite equal for all I can see.

Everyone who brings up toughness vs power+precision+ferocity can’t seem to notice few factors (or they disregard them on purpose). First of all, they most often compare full traited offensive zerker to a single stat (toughness) with no traits. It’s imperative we don’t forget about a certain aspect of defensive playstyle, namely sustain. Tanks don’t work without healers, that should be obvious, but here, on this forum, this notion seems to escape some people. Sustain is what makes “tanks” work in this game. Toughness is just so you won’t get killed too fast (sort of a dampener) but you need to get your health back up (sort of a pump) and for that toughness is worthless.

And to repeat it once again, introducing stats tied to your gear was a huge mistake on anets part. There were almost no stats tied to your gear in gw1 (except headgear bonus attribute point, runes and inscriptions) and that system worked much better than here. A build could have been changed in seconds (even when we disregard the template system). Did anet really improved the gameplay experience with this change? I don’t think so.

Thaddeus.4891:

See you are closer to use than you think. We know it’s an imperfect system. Defensive gear are there for WvW and Training Wheels only and it bugs a lot of people. We just don’t give a crap about that and wouldn’t mind at all if they removed gear and we all had celestial stats.

FYI, I’m in agreement here. The reason I write up ideas is to spark some discussion and brainstorming on things outside the norm. If there were no stats and you simply made it so what you can do is based soley on the other pieces of your build, you could do more to balance encounters and regulate the output of things such as gold and reward tables.

People whine about rewards and cry foul when arguing about speed clears and damage outputs. But obviously the devs can’t just put the game out there to be grinded at lightning speed so you get everything in an afternoon. Speed bumps are required…even if it’s the abysmal RNG chance. Now if you couldn’t blast through the content 10+ times a day? Might afford improving the chance at those RNG rewards…

Thaddeus.4891:

But the other way around? Every single person that came forward with an ’’solution’’ to the problem by making other gear better was painfully bad. Trying to artificially give more use to defensive gear. Those idea usually end up forcing player to use some sort of defensive gear because without it you can’t dodge or received so much damage or thing like that. It’s gear diversity for the sake of gear diversity without improving the game and usually by destroying the active gameplay that we love so much.

I’m curious about this accusation. If the game changed to adopt a system to give more purpose to something that currently has limited use, is that a bad thing that it would encourage you to take advantage of that new change in the system? Is being encouraged somehow imposing a forced option?

I find this mentality crops up with many propositions to change. In general, I feel such impedes progress, this fear of change, if only because it hinders those who share this mentality from expressing why they dislike certain aspects of a proposition. They tend to be unwilling to consider what the change actually does because they’re predisposed to turning it down, leaving a strong bias that is then used to dismiss the proposition.

Thaddeus.4891:

phys.7689:

as for the passive offense, no, its not passive, you have to choose an attack, and press the button to gain anything from a DPS stat, that is the opposite of passive. Those stats effect the damage of your skills, defense stats do not effect the defense provided by your skills.

And you have to choose to put yourself in arm ways to gain anything from defensive stats, that’s the opposite of passive??. That’s not an argument.

You need to actively use a skill to use the passive buff provided by offensive stats.

The only thing I’d qualify as passive for offense is summoned intities/pets. They do damage independent of you once used. Active offense, IMO, consists of the use of offensive skills, aiming AoEs, targeting specific enemies for better coverage of effect. While offensive stats do passively improve the damage of your character and you, as the player must use active offense to make good use of your passive bonus to damage, that does not disqualify that the passive damage bonus greatly improves the performance of your active offense. Hell, part of your active offense tends to be wrapped into making your offense as passive as possible (keeping foes huddled, in place and helpless to eat the bulk of it).

Passive defense does not work the same. Not only is it separate from active defense, it comes with the sacrifice of stat investment for what amounts to less than what is capable of active defense. Your passive defense doesn’t make you move faster so you can move out of harms way, it doesn’t make the red circles smaller to more easily actively avoid, it doesn’t give your quicker activation of defense/heal skills to better react, it doesn’t make the foe’s wind-up slower to more easily counter actively…

That is the analogy I would use for stats and offense/defense of the passive/active variety. But it’s kind of pointless to really argue because it’s all semantics. You’re trying to make a point that “offensive stats do the same thing as defensive stats for your character” which is simply untrue.

Gear makes you more potent. For both it does this passively, in that it doesn’t give you more things to do or require any special activation, just makes what you do more potent.

I believe that’s more what they were trying to say and this argument is really just semantics. Fact is your stats don’t define your play style the way your traits/utilities/weapons and even runes/sigils do. Your stats just make you more effective when you do stuff.

And defensive stats are fine as is. You may not get a third dodge from them, but you can deal with 3 hits instead of 2, you just absorb the third instead of avoiding it. I have a hard time believing there is a problem at all with stats in this game. The only problem is such stagnant content that even the most challenging stuff is seen as pretty simple and even mediocre players are able to glass up and waltz through it. I wouldn’t call GW2’s content easy, it’s just stagnant, we haven’t gotten anything that can rival a Lupi or Mai Trin in quite some time.

I generalized there a bit, but my point was that a lot of people talk about more diversity in gear for the sake of diversity in gear. They see that defensive gear isn’t optimal so their answer to either to give role to defensive gear (Trinity) or they want to make defensive gear better so they have a use in optimal situation (Vitality give endurance regen, etc).

Most people want more diversity. Where does people divide?
- One group want only to improve diversity about what is already good in the game. More diversity in term of dps (condition), more diversity in term of active defense/support and more diversity in term of build (trait, sigil, runes, skills, etc, but not gear).
- The second group want more diversity in everything. From trait, sigil, runes, but also gear. They want their defensive and healing gear to be good and not second citizen to direct damage.

That’s where we’ll never see an concensus. One group don’t give a crap about defensive gear, they don’t want to hear about it, they think it’s just fine where it is as training wheels and in PvP. The other group can’t stand that there is 26 different stats combination but there is only 2 that are really great in PvE. And you know what? They are both right. It’s kind of stupid that only 2/26 gears type are optimal, but at the same time a lot of people like the ‘’glass canon relying on active defense to survive’’ type of gameplay and don’t want to lose it.

Leo G.4501:

The reason I write up ideas is to spark some discussion and brainstorming on things outside the norm.

Shorter post, easier to read would help you way more. You push so much information that people just don’t read it and even if they read it, they can’t discuss every single point you make, they take one or two to argue about. Not the best way to spark a meaningful discussion. (Something that I always find nice to have).

See that we always end up discussing specific thing in the end, like the actually definition of passive, and not actual solution or middle ground. We need specific and limited subject to spark discussion. If you go large or to general, then people will pick something (not always what you wanted to talk about) and will run with it.

ODB.6891:

phys.7689:

… i think that stats should effect active defense, just like stats effect active offense.(also active support and active control) and in similar proportions.
if it doesnt work that way, you will end up having the current problem, where a bunch of stats are comparitively useless, and DPS stats are the only stats that matter, for high level play.
…

You do realize that there is exactly one utility type that is impacted by offensive stats right? That is reflect. That is entirely because one of the two purposes of reflect is to do damage to the attacker. The other purpose is to prevent the projectile damage to the defender…which it does regardless of what armor set you are wearing.

Do you also realize that if you made utilities not accomplish their goal…just because you aren’t wearing a particular armor set…you would invalidate the majority of utilities in the game for players and make less diversity? I’m sorry, but that idea is not well thought out. I see multiple people keep suggesting something like that and its pretty ridiculous. One person in this thread is even suggesting that utilities only work partially if you aren’t wearing “tank” gear…in an obvious attempt to both validate him wearing said “tank” gear and try to force anyone not wearing “tank” gear into doing so. Its amazing how people can even get their minds wrapped around such a hypocritical concept as trying to force others to play how they want…but at the same time crying a river of tears on the forums not so long ago about the same thing having been expected of them.

reflect is just based on the enemy damage, not player stats.

and no, stats effecting utilities would not make them useless, it would change their effectiveness based on your stat investment, which works just fine in other games, one of which would be Guild wars 1. Notice dps stats already do this, other stats are either heavily throttled, or no effect at all.

If stats serve a purpose, they should actually effect skill use, which is the dominant factor in how this game is played.
If stats dont effect skill use, their effect is negligeble in a game without guaranteed stat checks(unavoidable dmg/effects/condi/skills), and are more trouble than they are worth.

So should they remove the passive effect of vit/toughness and make it work purely on activatable skills. Is that what people who currently wear tanky gear would want? Or do they choose to use that gear because it acts as a passive safety net?

phys.7689:

reflect is just based on the enemy damage, not player stats.

Crit chance and crit damage affect reflect damage

and no, stats effecting utilities would not make them useless, it would change their effectiveness based on your stat investment, which works just fine in other games, one of which would be Guild wars 1. Notice dps stats already do this, other stats are either heavily throttled, or no effect at all.

And they (attributes) were easily changeable. Wanna completely change a build here? Nope.

If stats serve a purpose, they should actually effect skill use, which is the dominant factor in how this game is played.
If stats dont effect skill use, their effect is negligeble in a game without guaranteed stat checks(unavoidable dmg/effects/condi/skills), and are more trouble than they are worth.

Judging by all those cries from wannabe tanks, state are trouble.

Jerus.4350:

So should they remove the passive effect of vit/toughness and make it work purely on activatable skills. Is that what people who currently wear tanky gear would want? Or do they choose to use that gear because it acts as a passive safety net?

It really doesnt matter if it effects passive and active, or just active. In either case skills would have to be tuned accordingly.

as for what people want from their tanky stats, they probably want to be noticeably better at dealing with/responding to enemy attacks.

if the point of stats is just handicap adjustment, i suggest they get rid of that, and add a slider that increases rewards for lowering your handicap.

phys.7689:

ODB.6891:

phys.7689:

… i think that stats should effect active defense, just like stats effect active offense.(also active support and active control) and in similar proportions.
if it doesnt work that way, you will end up having the current problem, where a bunch of stats are comparitively useless, and DPS stats are the only stats that matter, for high level play.
…

You do realize that there is exactly one utility type that is impacted by offensive stats right? That is reflect. That is entirely because one of the two purposes of reflect is to do damage to the attacker. The other purpose is to prevent the projectile damage to the defender…which it does regardless of what armor set you are wearing.

Do you also realize that if you made utilities not accomplish their goal…just because you aren’t wearing a particular armor set…you would invalidate the majority of utilities in the game for players and make less diversity? I’m sorry, but that idea is not well thought out. I see multiple people keep suggesting something like that and its pretty ridiculous. One person in this thread is even suggesting that utilities only work partially if you aren’t wearing “tank” gear…in an obvious attempt to both validate him wearing said “tank” gear and try to force anyone not wearing “tank” gear into doing so. Its amazing how people can even get their minds wrapped around such a hypocritical concept as trying to force others to play how they want…but at the same time crying a river of tears on the forums not so long ago about the same thing having been expected of them.

reflect is just based on the enemy damage, not player stats.

and no, stats effecting utilities would not make them useless, it would change their effectiveness based on your stat investment, which works just fine in other games, one of which would be Guild wars 1. Notice dps stats already do this, other stats are either heavily throttled, or no effect at all.

If stats serve a purpose, they should actually effect skill use, which is the dominant factor in how this game is played.
If stats dont effect skill use, their effect is negligeble in a game without guaranteed stat checks(unavoidable dmg/effects/condi/skills), and are more trouble than they are worth.

However, notice how in GW1 the different stats were primarily used to buff their respective skills and it wasn’t “optimal” to have trait points on a trait
line without utilizing it.

Only profession specific trait lines affected the characters in some other way other than skills, like increased energy pool for Elementalists, or faster casting for Mesmers. All other trait lines gave absolutely no benefits to the character outside of their skill usage.

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

ODB.6891:

phys.7689:

… i think that stats should effect active defense, just like stats effect active offense.(also active support and active control) and in similar proportions.
if it doesnt work that way, you will end up having the current problem, where a bunch of stats are comparitively useless, and DPS stats are the only stats that matter, for high level play.
…

You do realize that there is exactly one utility type that is impacted by offensive stats right? That is reflect. That is entirely because one of the two purposes of reflect is to do damage to the attacker. The other purpose is to prevent the projectile damage to the defender…which it does regardless of what armor set you are wearing.

Do you also realize that if you made utilities not accomplish their goal…just because you aren’t wearing a particular armor set…you would invalidate the majority of utilities in the game for players and make less diversity? I’m sorry, but that idea is not well thought out. I see multiple people keep suggesting something like that and its pretty ridiculous. One person in this thread is even suggesting that utilities only work partially if you aren’t wearing “tank” gear…in an obvious attempt to both validate him wearing said “tank” gear and try to force anyone not wearing “tank” gear into doing so. Its amazing how people can even get their minds wrapped around such a hypocritical concept as trying to force others to play how they want…but at the same time crying a river of tears on the forums not so long ago about the same thing having been expected of them.

reflect is just based on the enemy damage, not player stats.

and no, stats effecting utilities would not make them useless, it would change their effectiveness based on your stat investment, which works just fine in other games, one of which would be Guild wars 1. Notice dps stats already do this, other stats are either heavily throttled, or no effect at all.

If stats serve a purpose, they should actually effect skill use, which is the dominant factor in how this game is played.
If stats dont effect skill use, their effect is negligeble in a game without guaranteed stat checks(unavoidable dmg/effects/condi/skills), and are more trouble than they are worth.

However, notice how in GW1 the different stats were primarily used to buff their respective skills and it wasn’t “optimal” to have trait points on a trait
line without utilizing it.

Only profession specific trait lines affected the characters in some other way other than skills, like increased energy pool for Elementalists, or faster casting for Mesmers. All other trait lines gave absolutely no benefits to the character outside of their skill usage.

yeah, but they had numerous skills with full uptime, which would be most similar to changing your passive stats.
which is why i say it doesnt really matter if it includes passive stats or not, they would just have to design how they are effected by stats accordingly.

Also, gw1 stat system generated much more qualitative choice in playstyle, and build, and stats actually effected your style of play, so yeah, if i was going to have stats, i would make them actually effect how the game is played, at all levels of skill.

phys.7689:

reflect is just based on the enemy damage, not player stats

At the risk of sounding like a complete jerk: This ^ is exactly the kind of comment I had in mind when I wrote this…

On top of that, I have the impression that a large portion of the Bobs out there, complaining about “the meta”, don´t know what they are talking about anyways, so can we please leave the job of balancing the game to the devs, yes?

Reflect damage is not affected by your own weapon strength and power, but it is indeed affected by your crit chance, crit damage and % damage modifiers, which e.g. is the reason why Mesmers often choose to go a bit overboard with their precision (aka they use a mix of Assassin´s/Berserker´s gear instead of using full Berserker´s for optimal results).

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

So should they remove the passive effect of vit/toughness and make it work purely on activatable skills. Is that what people who currently wear tanky gear would want? Or do they choose to use that gear because it acts as a passive safety net?

It really doesnt matter if it effects passive and active, or just active. In either case skills would have to be tuned accordingly.

as for what people want from their tanky stats, they probably want to be noticeably better at dealing with/responding to enemy attacks.

if the point of stats is just handicap adjustment, i suggest they get rid of that, and add a slider that increases rewards for lowering your handicap.

So rework the entire game’s base systems because one type of gear is preferable in content that is supposedly so underutilized that it’s not even worth putting changes to it in the patch notes let alone make more content like it. (If the majority or even half of the people in Silverwastes wore zerk gear I don’t’ think we’d ever fail a boss due to time )

Why do you want this to happen? Because you want more gear types to become more popular? So that instead of being able to change up a build on the fly you’ll instead have to carry around multiple sets of 12+ items to be able to have multiple builds. Doesn’t really sound desirable to me.

phys.7689:

as for what people want from their tanky stats, they probably want to be noticeably better at dealing with/responding to enemy attacks.

Better than this?

if the point of stats is just handicap adjustment, i suggest they get rid of that, and add a slider that increases rewards for lowering your handicap.

It’s already there if you consider rewards/time ratio.

Jerus.4350:

Why do you want this to happen? Because you want more gear types to become more popular? So that instead of being able to change up a build on the fly you’ll instead have to carry around multiple sets of 12+ items to be able to have multiple builds. Doesn’t really sound desirable to me.

Exactly this, gear diversity for the sake of gear diversity is pretty much bothersome when you actually want to use that diversity and change your entire build.

Jerus.4350:

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

So should they remove the passive effect of vit/toughness and make it work purely on activatable skills. Is that what people who currently wear tanky gear would want? Or do they choose to use that gear because it acts as a passive safety net?

It really doesnt matter if it effects passive and active, or just active. In either case skills would have to be tuned accordingly.

as for what people want from their tanky stats, they probably want to be noticeably better at dealing with/responding to enemy attacks.

if the point of stats is just handicap adjustment, i suggest they get rid of that, and add a slider that increases rewards for lowering your handicap.

So rework the entire game’s base systems because one type of gear is preferable in content that is supposedly so underutilized that it’s not even worth putting changes to it in the patch notes let alone make more content like it. (If the majority or even half of the people in Silverwastes wore zerk gear I don’t’ think we’d ever fail a boss due to time )

Why do you want this to happen? Because you want more gear types to become more popular? So that instead of being able to change up a build on the fly you’ll instead have to carry around multiple sets of 12+ items to be able to have multiple builds. Doesn’t really sound desirable to me.

it doesnt HAVE to happen, it just has to happen if they want stats to ever actually matter.
If they dont care about stats mattering, then they should really get rid of them.
The large stat spread makes it fairly difficult to design encounters that make sense for most players.

and yes, if they make stats actually matter, then there would probably be some use for more than one stat set, so yeah you would probably want multiple stat sets. But if there is no point in multiple stat sets, all you are doing is creating a situation where people will be mad their stats serve no real purpose.

Overall, what im really saying is, the way to make multiple stats viable, is to have them actually effect different facets of active play, since the game is mostly active play.

Now if they dont mind a lot of stats not being viable, then ok, but why do we have so many stat sets for people to invest in, and become dissapointed with?

rotten.9753:

Jerus.4350:

Why do you want this to happen? Because you want more gear types to become more popular? So that instead of being able to change up a build on the fly you’ll instead have to carry around multiple sets of 12+ items to be able to have multiple builds. Doesn’t really sound desirable to me.

Exactly this, gear diversity for the sake of gear diversity is pretty much bothersome when you actually want to use that diversity and change your entire build.

if they didnt want gear diversity for the sake of diversity, what was the point of making 24 stat combinations.
IE if we are supposed to be playing one or two stat sets, why create 22 more to trap people in bad stats, which then you have to design content assuming people have some of these stats.

i mean what it boils down to, is you are saying, most stat spreads need to be useless, so that i dont have to get a lot gear.
which is a valid point, but then shouldnt they cease to exist?

Because there is more than 1 game type and it’s an interesting way to make a difficulty slider without calling it a difficulty slider and offending someone >.<

Get rid of vit/toughness gear and Arrow carts in WvW = insta death if you’re not a warrior or perfectly rotating skills on a fully life forced necro. Having some heavy damagers in WvW is awesome, but when you run into seige if they don’t hve a second set of gear they’re going to have to hang back till the carts are cleared. Basically… defenses are quite important in other game types.

So unless WvW breaks off to it’s own gear set like PVP, naw I’d say it kinda has to stay.

The Zerkmeta issue is pretty much only in Dungeons, still awesome in all PVE, but I’d bet a lot of gold that the vast majority of players in general PVE are not using zerk.

Jerus.4350:

Because there is more than 1 game type and it’s an interesting way to make a difficulty slider without calling it a difficulty slider and offending someone >.<

Get rid of vit/toughness gear and Arrow carts in WvW = insta death if you’re not a warrior or perfectly rotating skills on a fully life forced necro. Having some heavy damagers in WvW is awesome, but when you run into seige if they don’t hve a second set of gear they’re going to have to hang back till the carts are cleared. Basically… defenses are quite important in other game types.

its a really crappy way of making a difficulty slider. It requires too much investment in terms of money and inventory, and it isnt clear which stats will actually end up making it easier for you, or how much easier(different based on job/skills) and some stats dont even make it any easier.

As far as other game modes, there is only one, that uses the same gear, and thats WvW, so maybe they should put a WvW tag on 22/24 armors? Usually games handle PVP specific needs by having separate stats/slots on gear for pvp focused adjustments.

That way they dont have to balance the PVE game around stats that only serve a purpose in WvW. (which has tons of unavoidable damage)

and yeah, they arent using the same stats, which is part of why the game has so many problems in encounter design, and people learning how the game works.

It’s really not that expensive unless you go silly and “test” something with full exotics each time. Rares or even Masterwork would work fine for trying something out, especially in lower level zones/dungeons where you get scaled back to that level anyways.

And again, I really think that the people who put on full nomads when they go to do open world content do it for a reason.

phys.7689:

if they didnt want gear diversity for the sake of diversity, what was the point of making 24 stat combinations.
IE if we are supposed to be playing one or two stat sets, why create 22 more to trap people in bad stats, which then you have to design content assuming people have some of these stats.

i mean what it boils down to, is you are saying, most stat spreads need to be useless, so that i dont have to get a lot gear.
which is a valid point, but then shouldnt they cease to exist?

You’d have to ask anet about that but the lead designer that’s most probably responsible for that (Izzy) advises to use berserker’s, celestial or soldier’s. In my opinion, it’s for players to mix some pieces because you’ll never get a situation where all types of gear are desired.

phys.7689:

its a really crappy way of making a difficulty slider. It requires too much investment in terms of money and inventory, and it isnt clear which stats will actually end up making it easier for you, or how much easier(different based on job/skills) and some stats dont even make it any easier.

That’s exactly one of the reasons people don’t want gear diversity, costs.

phys.7689:

rotten.9753:

Jerus.4350:

Why do you want this to happen? Because you want more gear types to become more popular? So that instead of being able to change up a build on the fly you’ll instead have to carry around multiple sets of 12+ items to be able to have multiple builds. Doesn’t really sound desirable to me.

Exactly this, gear diversity for the sake of gear diversity is pretty much bothersome when you actually want to use that diversity and change your entire build.

if they didnt want gear diversity for the sake of diversity, what was the point of making 24 stat combinations.
IE if we are supposed to be playing one or two stat sets, why create 22 more to trap people in bad stats, which then you have to design content assuming people have some of these stats.

i mean what it boils down to, is you are saying, most stat spreads need to be useless, so that i dont have to get a lot gear.
which is a valid point, but then shouldnt they cease to exist?

I think people often forget that dungeons and fractals only make up like ~1/9 of GW2´s content overall. What about sPvP, WvW, open world PvE, solo content like PS and LS etc.? We have a pretty good stat and build variety in the game as a whole if we look at all the different game modes and their niches respectively.

I e.g. carry at least two different sets of gear around on all of my characters I regularly use for WvW roaming, soloing and for kittens-and-giggles stuff (and trust me, not all of it is Berserker´s/Assassin`s).

It would be kind of irritating to me if I had to carry even more gear sets around just to be properly geared for the content I just happen to be in the right mood for. I think it is much more convenient and user friendly to maybe just swap out weapons, change some key traits, key utility skills and be good to go, as opposed to having to carry around a bazillion different sets of gear.

Without build templates and easier access to BiS gear, I think a system in which you are required to use multiple sets of gear to successfully complete certain content would be a major pain in the butt and not desirable at all for the majority of the playerbase.

But that would actually require diversity in the system and for some reason which none of us can guess, adding diversity seems to be a terrible thing in their minds all save for one that is. So who knows if what Jon was talking about will come to pass but I can say this that telling the people about pvp maps isn’t going to help your PVE players understand whether or not you’re actually fixing the problems with PVE in the first place.

The silence sadly will most likely be too long and we’ll most likely see too little too late when it comes to actual plans coming up for HoT to fix the Zerker problem.

It is a problem, some people just don’t want to accept that is it a central issue in this title one that’s actually been repeated multiple times before by other development teams no less when they too thought they could simply remove the trinity without having a complex and balanced PVE core.

One of the major issues in this game is the lack of crits with DoTs and the fact that everyone and I mean everyone has a DoT. It used to be that you had to make choices to even be in the a DoT spec and now here we are everyone has certain ones and the few that are actually important ones do hardly any damage and people keep mistakenly saying that those are important (like poison or burning). (DoTs aka Conditions doesn’t matter what label you use, it’s still the same system we’ve seen before.)

If they forced people to be in a full on grandmaster to even be able to apply conditions this wouldn’t be a problem, and don’t get me started on power only builds.

No dungeons being even more difficult won’t help but diversity certainly will.

Thaddeus.4891:

Shorter post, easier to read would help you way more. You push so much information that people just don’t read it and even if they read it, they can’t discuss every single point you make, they take one or two to argue about. Not the best way to spark a meaningful discussion. (Something that I always find nice to have).

I like to try different approaches when suggesting stuff and I’ve been suggesting stuff for MMOs for a while. The thing that’s most important is getting people’s interest. Shorter posts can be good to get interest, but then comes the problem of actually keeping their interest since most will just read the 1st post and none of the following discussion meaning you basically keep seeing the same point prop up over and over…

But yeah, I’ve made shorter posts. I’ve even just put forth a general ‘goal’ rather than the actual idea in context of this and all that ever happens is insults, name calling and lots of other things that ultimately results in a waste of time.

This is the 3 time I’ve actually typed up a suggestion for adjusting the stat meanings to a build for GW2. The best approach, I find, is if you want to make an idea known, it’s better to be precise and organized vs blunt and short…at least here.

One aspect that I’d really want to hear discussed is varying boon strength. The most I’ve ever heard discussed about it is that it might be too strong to have a stat that boosts boons. It’d basically become the ultimate stat since it’d be the one you could get crit chance (Fury), damage (might and retaliation), defense (protection) and other utility from which would overshadow most other stats…but no one I’ve seen ever talked about it (the tend to focus on the dodges or toughness).

Are boons too strong? My personal opinion is boons are too weak! You practically need to be dripping in boons 24/7 to notice a moderate difference.

Skoigoth.9238:

I think people often forget that dungeons and fractals only make up like ~1/9 of GW2´s content overall. What about sPvP, WvW, open world PvE, solo content like PS and LS etc.? We have a pretty good stat and build variety in the game as a whole if we look at all the different game modes and their niches respectively.

I e.g. carry at least two different sets of gear around on all of my characters I regularly use for WvW roaming, soloing and for kittens-and-giggles stuff (and trust me, not all of it is Berserker´s/Assassin`s).

It would be kind of irritating to me if I had to carry even more gear sets around just to be properly geared for the content I just happen to be in the right mood for. I think it is much more convenient and user friendly to maybe just swap out weapons, change some key traits, key utility skills and be good to go, as opposed to having to carry around a bazillion different sets of gear.

Without build templates and easier access to BiS gear, I think a system in which you are required to use multiple sets of gear to successfully complete certain content would be a major pain in the butt and not desirable at all for the majority of the playerbase.

To be honest, I’d not enjoy needing to carry around a boat load of armor to swap into for specific content either….but if doing so varied my play so drastically that it was like playing a whole other profession, I would do so without much complaint (would probably suggest some sort of build box so it’d be easier to store or switch them).

Leo G.4501:

Skoigoth.9238:

I think people often forget that dungeons and fractals only make up like ~1/9 of GW2´s content overall. What about sPvP, WvW, open world PvE, solo content like PS and LS etc.? We have a pretty good stat and build variety in the game as a whole if we look at all the different game modes and their niches respectively.

I e.g. carry at least two different sets of gear around on all of my characters I regularly use for WvW roaming, soloing and for kittens-and-giggles stuff (and trust me, not all of it is Berserker´s/Assassin`s).

It would be kind of irritating to me if I had to carry even more gear sets around just to be properly geared for the content I just happen to be in the right mood for. I think it is much more convenient and user friendly to maybe just swap out weapons, change some key traits, key utility skills and be good to go, as opposed to having to carry around a bazillion different sets of gear.

Without build templates and easier access to BiS gear, I think a system in which you are required to use multiple sets of gear to successfully complete certain content would be a major pain in the butt and not desirable at all for the majority of the playerbase.

To be honest, I’d not enjoy needing to carry around a boat load of armor to swap into for specific content either….but if doing so varied my play so drastically that it was like playing a whole other profession, I would do so without much complaint (would probably suggest some sort of build box so it’d be easier to store or switch them).

Can’t we currently get that with swapping weapons/utilities/traits though? all which take far less inventory space if really any extra at all.

I can be a GS/S+F guard running 46202(or even 66200) with bane signet, save yourselves, and maybe purging flames or something, rocking the dps build focusing on that. Then I can jump to a Hammer w/ staff or mace/focus build running 35042 or some variation, using Retreat, WoR and SotA and be the guardian angel to my team. Both viable builds that I’m able to swap out at any time because I’m already going to carry the weapons anyways, and the traits/utilities are just sitting there to be swapped.

Jerus.4350:

Leo G.4501:

Skoigoth.9238:

I think people often forget that dungeons and fractals only make up like ~1/9 of GW2´s content overall. What about sPvP, WvW, open world PvE, solo content like PS and LS etc.? We have a pretty good stat and build variety in the game as a whole if we look at all the different game modes and their niches respectively.

I e.g. carry at least two different sets of gear around on all of my characters I regularly use for WvW roaming, soloing and for kittens-and-giggles stuff (and trust me, not all of it is Berserker´s/Assassin`s).

It would be kind of irritating to me if I had to carry even more gear sets around just to be properly geared for the content I just happen to be in the right mood for. I think it is much more convenient and user friendly to maybe just swap out weapons, change some key traits, key utility skills and be good to go, as opposed to having to carry around a bazillion different sets of gear.

Without build templates and easier access to BiS gear, I think a system in which you are required to use multiple sets of gear to successfully complete certain content would be a major pain in the butt and not desirable at all for the majority of the playerbase.

To be honest, I’d not enjoy needing to carry around a boat load of armor to swap into for specific content either….but if doing so varied my play so drastically that it was like playing a whole other profession, I would do so without much complaint (would probably suggest some sort of build box so it’d be easier to store or switch them).

Can’t we currently get that with swapping weapons/utilities/traits though? all which take far less inventory space if really any extra at all.

I can be a GS/S+F guard running 46202(or even 66200) with bane signet, save yourselves, and maybe purging flames or something, rocking the dps build focusing on that. Then I can jump to a Hammer w/ staff or mace/focus build running 35042 or some variation, using Retreat, WoR and SotA and be the guardian angel to my team. Both viable builds that I’m able to swap out at any time because I’m already going to carry the weapons anyways, and the traits/utilities are just sitting there to be swapped.

Oh, believe me. I know. I often carry multiple armor sets too and with the change to the ability to change trait allocation anywhere makes things much more convenient. I think warrior feels the most varied to me thanks to how many weapons they have.

But even with all the swapping, it’s hardly different from other games with varying combos. In CoH, players often had dozens of scrappers using the same primary powerset (Broadsword was a popular one, as was Electric Melee) but paired it with different secondary sets that varied them greatly (like Electric Melee/Super Reflexes, EM/Willpower, EM/Dark Armor, etc) which all played very differently! And that’s not including the variety of ways to slot each power. THEN! You could pick a different melee Archetype like Brute or Stalker who used the same powerset primaries and secondaries…but STILL played vastly different from the Scrapper counterpart.

I think partly why they played so differently (beyond just being designed as such) is because of the limits of the character build system. Once you picked a primary and secondary powreset, that character is locked into that set combo. So you couldn’t just swap to what’s convenient for the time thus the different strengths and weaknesses fluctuated more drastically. If I could swap my Katana Scrapper from Super Reflexes to Willpower on the fly when one was inferior for the situation, likely each set of skills would have to be balanced (to me, diluted) so that it’d basically wouldn’t overpower the system.

Now, back to GW2, that’s sort of the premise I’m aiming toward, seeing that it’d be hard to keep armor to basically be a boss in direct damage, potent with conditions, extremely tough and dodgy as well as a boon applying specialist and CC dispenser, perhaps that’d be a slight step toward unlocking more specialized effects for basically “sacrificing” part of your build for it.

TL;DR of that is, yeah you’re right if you settle for watered down differences. It’s alright, just not quite awesome.

I still think PvP is alright though. It’s mainly because the fights tend to be skirmishes. Since the fights are so short, the burst of effects from traits/runes/utilities feels magnified.

That’s honestly one of the things I like about this game though. While I hear ya on being a bit “watered down” it’s nice that I can have a character and swap what I’m doing pretty easily. In other games if i chose a healer, it was a healer, a tank it was a tank, a dps it was a DPS. You could make adjustments but you were very limited. While having different armor sets be a major role would still leave that as an option it’d be at a very high cost and my inventory space would cry.

I’ve always been a more “this is my character” person, usually sticking to one main character. This is the first game where I’ve had a dozen characters I play somewhat often, but I love the fact that I can still take my Engi and adjust it to different roles when I’m digging on Engi (which is most of the time now), same with Guard. I have all the characters because even with the ability to play different roles the different professions play differently, I feel like I can play dozens of different professions.

I can be the might stacking warrior, I can be the DPS warrior, I can be the Solo warrior leaving everyone in the dust and Yoloing everything. I can be the Engi that keeps things locked in place with Immob, I can help with projectiles, I can dps with the best of them, I can stack vuln like a boss, I can pump some fury, I can go full reflects and own it, I can pump out the might, hell engi can do it all. I can go reflect mesmer, portal mesmer, dps mesmer, focus on condi clears or boon stripping. I can go general defensive guard, pugcarry guard, full dps guard, tank guard, healer guard. I can go full dps thief, I can lock things down with immob, I can go defensive, blind everything, stealth everyone through everything. And so on, and I can do this all without having to change up my gear really, I can make certain roles more potent by doing so like healer guard or tank guard, but I don’t have to, because that’s how the game is designed, I swap weapons/traits/utilities and I’m off to play differently.

It’s something I love about this game.

to add, I did this as much as I could in my old game DCUO, hell I actually almost never played full healer for the last year or so of the game. I found a DPS heavy (60% of the “dps role” potential) that I could still solo heal any raid with, I like trying to get everything possible out of my character and living on the edge trying to do it with minimal safety nets while still feeling comfortable that I can handle it (I still often go Energy sigil here, and I still took some “unnecessary” healing there)

I’m squishin’ up my baby bumble bee
Won’t my Mommy be so proud of me
I’m squishin’ up my baby bumble bee -
EW!! What a mess!!