Guild Wars 2

DeathPanel.8362:

That’s a ridiculous example. That just means the meta is toughness condition. And honestly do you think that encounter would be in anyway fun? People like you would start a riot on this forum if that type of encounter was implemented.

Of course it is a ridiculous example. It was meant to show that there exist ways to design content with defensive gear optimal without any tanks or healers. I would never implement this example in rl, but I would use the recoil mechanic on a high defense boss idea.

(btw the meta would likely be condition vitality whith no toughness since you want that recoil damage as high as possible)

DeathPanel.8362:

You must have fun arguing with the nonexistent ethereal strawman version of me, because you keep on arguing against me as if I said things I never said.

But you do imply things. You say:

DeathPanel.8362:

Also note that the marionette world boss was done by zergs of people with a vast variety in gear choice including many that are sub level 80 using just junk gear. Proving that the zerg meta isn’t remotely an issue in even your own example.

Where you argue that people with sub optimal gear choices still can do content and therefor the zerg meta is not an issue. My comment: “Playable and optimal are two different things.” implies that the issue is not playability of content but the optimality of zerker in the content.

Tim.6450:

Jerus.4350:

Remember, you can swap gear while out of combat. If there were indeed short cuts you could only utilize through a lot of sustain people would just swap quickly then go. Is this the gameplay you support? carrying multiple sets of gear just to utilize certain short cuts built in?

Yes, because swapping your gear/build is already a thing now.

Jerus.4350:

It’s simply not a reasonable request, at least not without bending over backwards to hand things to the more defensive setup, in which case new meta becomes super tanky and still finish in the same time rendering less tanky builds obsolete. Pretty terrible game design if you ask me.

So having a meta that bends backwards for dps setups while rendering tanky builds obsolete is a better alternative?

Yup, the mentality of “bringing more damage kills things faster” is bending over backwards…

Care to give an example of where that idea doesn’t hold true?

Jerus.4350:

Yup, the mentality of “bringing more damage kills things faster” is bending over backwards…

It’s not only that, it’s also so that a lot of bosses are designed in such way that it can easily be outpositioned/dodged so the player takes no damage.

Jerus.4350:

Care to give an example of where that idea doesn’t hold true?

In gaming? Many times (trinity games are an easy one, zombies in the final fantasy series are another one).
In this game,,not at the moment? The fight with the 9 Champion Crystalline Entities in Arah is the mechanic where it is the closest to being false.

Tim.6450:

damage and survivability in one, is not new look at zerk hammer guardian. It does decent amount of damage but it gives insane amounts of AOE protection. My suggestion is one or the other. Reflects are another example high defense and damage in one (it also favors zerk, because it uses your precision and ferocity).

Also zerker has gotten advantages in other content: kudu has a one shot mechanic that ignore hp and armor (pretty sure jade maw has similar attack) , mordrem menders get interupted at crits, … . So why is soldier having an advantage in another fight unfair?

Because what you propose will make soldier universally better.

Tim.6450:

Where you argue that people with sub optimal gear choices still can do content and therefor the zerg meta is not an issue. My comment: “Playable and optimal are two different things.” implies that the issue is not playability of content but the optimality of zerker in the content.

For the 9002th time, zerk meta occurs only in dungeons and they are no longer supported by anet. Try arguing against non-existant meta in a content that will be developed and supported beyond yearly bug fixes.

DeathPanel.8362:

Tim.6450:

DeathPanel.8362:

Because without tanks and healer roles you can’t have pve content that requires someone gear in defensive gear, at least not the type of content that don’t frustrate people. (ie bosses that have massive 1-2 shot kill undodgeable abilities unless you gear soldiers and other someone to heal you in cleric gear while you taunt boss as is in traditional trinity)

When content can be done with any gear the obvious logical result is that the gear which gives you the most dps wins out as the optimal. The only thing that making content harder in order to discourage this will do is make builds and group setups more restrictive and exclude people who otherwise want to play with fun builds.

Well an example that could be used is a 5 man boss with 150000 health, 15000 armor that has an attack that recoil equal to the damage done. If it downs a player it gains health equal to the player max health. The base damage of that attack 10000 on light armor which happens ever 5 seconds. Would zerker be optimal?

That’s a ridiculous example. That just means the meta is toughness condition. And honestly do you think that encounter would be in anyway fun? People like you would start a riot on this forum if that type of encounter was implemented.

Tim.6450:

DeathPanel.8362:

Irrelevant. My point is about ANET’s philosophy, not what passive dense is. I don’t need you to rehash something I already know. Your statement in no way refutes mine.

Focussing on active defense does not mean that active defense should be the only meaningfull defense. Also if you look at the ‘new’ grant masters it does contain a variety of stuff (passive defense, healing,…) so I’m not sure if the design philosophy is only about active defense.

Again, irrelevant. I was talking about ANET’s philosophy. Go argue with ANET.

Tim.6450:

DeathPanel.8362:

I didn’t say fun and difficult are mutually exclusive.
Also note that the marionette world boss was done by zergs of people with a vast variety in gear choice including many that are sub level 80 using just junk gear. Proving that the zerg meta isn’t remotely an issue in even your own example.

Playable and optimal are two different things.

You must have fun arguing with the nonexistent ethereal strawman version of me, because you keep on arguing against me as if I said things I never said.

Thing is: If ONE Boss in a dungeon would be like that, one like the current bosses so better with Zerker etc. you would either have to take a balanced team into said dungeon, or have a set-up where 2-3 players can change from zerker to toughness-condi, or have 2 zerkers change to knights and have ranged condi, or or or…

-> Diversity! YAY!

See, that is how easy you could do it. But, of course, there is a downside to that too, not going to ignore that : Meta might simply shift to a class that can pull off both easily.

Other possibility : Create dungeons where condi is king, others where zerker is king and others where boon removal and condi cleanse is king etc. One Meta per dungeon, but something for everybody. I think it was a litle like this in GW1.

There, two easy ways to give different playstyles the chance of rocking the hood. you’re welcome. Not that A-Net would read this and think about doing any of it ._.

Tim.6450:

Jerus.4350:

Yup, the mentality of “bringing more damage kills things faster” is bending over backwards…

It’s not only that, it’s also so that a lot of bosses are designed in such way that it can easily be outpositioned/dodged so the player takes no damage.

Jerus.4350:

Care to give an example of where that idea doesn’t hold true?

In gaming? Many times (trinity games are an easy one, zombies in the final fantasy series are another one).
In this game,,not at the moment? The fight with the 9 Champion Crystalline Entities in Arah is the mechanic where it is the closest to being false.

Those fights where you can just IB5 and kill before any risk is taken are only on lower dungeons which got nerfed last april for whatever reason, your guess is as good as mine. It’s a shame. Arah/Fractals, GL running a damage rotation without active defenses.

Trinity also supported the “bring more damage and you kill faster” mentality. It was no different than GW2 in that some fights/encounters required a certain baseline of team defense. In trinity games you’ll see a heavy focus on DPS. I played various MMOs for the last like 16 years now, each of them at the top end stacked DPS bringing only the bare minimum of tanks/healers to get the job done. DCUO is the last one I got really into, we used 4 dps, 2 trollers (recharged mana is easiest way to explain), 1 healer, 1 tank. Later on once we mastered content we even did things like ran the healer either in DPS gear and healing role, or DPS role with healer gear to push out damage while sacrificing some healing that we knew we could. We also often ran tanks in full dps gear if the content wasn’t overly demanding.

It was really no different than GW2.

Also, The Crystalline Entities in Arah you bring damage as a group and burn them quick and you don’t really have to worry about the damage mechanic, it’s a standard attrition mechanic. And… well, the best way to do that encounter is simply have everyone run ahead to the tar and let the thief solo it with invigorating precision getting up to like 15 stacks of the debuff/buff thingy and use dagger storm

Shiki.7148:

Thing is: If ONE Boss in a dungeon would be like that, one like the current bosses so better with Zerker etc. you would either have to take a balanced team into said dungeon, or have a set-up where 2-3 players can change from zerker to toughness-condi, or have 2 zerkers change to knights and have ranged condi, or or or…

-> Diversity! YAY!

See, that is how easy you could do it. But, of course, there is a downside to that too, not going to ignore that : Meta might simply shift to a class that can pull off both easily.

Other possibility : Create dungeons where condi is king, others where zerker is king and others where boon removal and condi cleanse is king etc. One Meta per dungeon, but something for everybody. I think it was a litle like this in GW1.

There, two easy ways to give different playstyles the chance of rocking the hood. you’re welcome. Not that A-Net would read this and think about doing any of it ._.

Honestly, this “diversity is good” argument starts to sound like its real life equivalent. Maybe it’s time for anet to introduce quotas? For example:

- at least 20% of your party needs to have at least 1000 healing power
- at least 20% of your party needs to have at least 1000 condition damage
- at least 20% of your party needs to have at least bonus 1000 toughness
- at least 20% of your party needs to have at least bonus 1000 vitality

How about that? Diversity would be achieved.

Shiki.7148:

Thing is: If ONE Boss in a dungeon would be like that, one like the current bosses so better with Zerker etc. you would either have to take a balanced team into said dungeon, or have a set-up where 2-3 players can change from zerker to toughness-condi, or have 2 zerkers change to knights and have ranged condi, or or or…

-> Diversity! YAY!

See, that is how easy you could do it. But, of course, there is a downside to that too, not going to ignore that : Meta might simply shift to a class that can pull off both easily.

Other possibility : Create dungeons where condi is king, others where zerker is king and others where boon removal and condi cleanse is king etc. One Meta per dungeon, but something for everybody. I think it was a litle like this in GW1.

There, two easy ways to give different playstyles the chance of rocking the hood. you’re welcome. Not that A-Net would read this and think about doing any of it ._.

I almost forgot. There will be no new dungeons and they will not touch the old ones.

Ezekel.6394:

Would make Zerker even better and defensive stats even worse. Would also make conditions even worse because they only even out over longer fight duration. Also nobody is arguing for conditions not being better in PvE, but all that would do is add Sinister to the meta.

Wouldn’t make defensive or support stats any better because CC isn’t bound to stats. The only way to make defensive stats better is to add so much unavoidable damage that people can’t run Zerker and that just makes classes that are innately squishy be horrible.

CC has nothing to do with stat distributions so it wouldn’t change anything and like I have said already would make classes that are innately squishy bad.

Most of what you addressed is only cc, which is only a very small part of what I stated. Just for clarification, active/passive defense and better AI/pathing, refers to more than mere cc. Active defense includes trash/boss self/group heals, condi removal, boon stacking, AoE weakness, higher base armor etc. Better AI refers to more common, more reactive use of mob skills and specials. Better path finding refers to making range attackers strafe into line of sight of players, react to AoE etc.

To your points though:

Halving health in of itself would do exactly what you say in your first counterpoint. Cutting health bars is merely just the first important step to making defensive/condi builds more attractive, but must be coupled with my following points due to obvious mechanic reasons and consequences for doing so. The math on runaway time gaps due to gear type is hard to argue with. If very high health bars aren’t addressed no other gear will get closer in viability to zerker meta, as larger and larger hp pools come into play or in timed DPS content/phases.

Cutting hp while adding more base armor, boon usage, weakness usage, or mob self healing wouldn’t make those stats more useful, but they would be more competitive. Instead of always having to bash through pure health, players would be able to save time and effort through proper skill usage. Without getting too carried away here’s my thought process:

If it originally took a zerker team 10 seconds to take out some trash and the “other team” 30 seconds, if you cut enemy health in half the zerker team would take 5 seconds and the other team 15 seconds. Just doing that cut the time difference from 20 seconds per trash encounter to just 10 seconds. More competitive.

Now add in the active/passive defense. For this example the trash get stability stacks, area weakness, group heals and protection. Both player groups need to mitigate and strip these defenses if they don’t want to take 30+ seconds killing trash. If both teams pull it off perfectly they should be taking about 5 extra seconds each. Zerker team is still doing it in 10 seconds, and 20 seconds for the other team. An area condi applier in the other team may be able to get a head start on that damage, shaving off another two or three seconds because condis are armor/protection ignoring.

Now add in the constant pressure. Lets say there’s a mobs that cast an massive area firestorm, that also causes burning on hit. The zerker team may need to heal during the firestorm to make sure they don’t die from a stray trash hit or two. The other team might be defensive enough to just ignore the firestorm and do what they did before. The zerker team loses about 3 seconds of DPS time.

So in my contrived example., the zerker team finished killing the trash in about 13 seconds, while the other team with the condi guy finished the trash in about 17 seconds. That’s 4 seconds between them instead of the original 20 second difference.

The meta is a lot closer than before.

Tim.6450:

DeathPanel.8362:

That’s a ridiculous example. That just means the meta is toughness condition. And honestly do you think that encounter would be in anyway fun? People like you would start a riot on this forum if that type of encounter was implemented.

Of course it is a ridiculous example. It was meant to show that there exist ways to design content with defensive gear optimal without any tanks or healers. I would never implement this example in rl, but I would use the recoil mechanic on a high defense boss idea.

Wrong. Because condition damage is considered to be a dps stat. So in fact your example is invalid. You’ve basically traded one set of dps stat for another. My original statement stands.

Where you argue that people with sub optimal gear choices still can do content and therefor the zerg meta is not an issue. My comment: “Playable and optimal are two different things.” implies that the issue is not playability of content but the optimality of zerker in the content.

Which is in no way related to my comments, making your response nonsensical to the original context of my statement.

It would be as if I stated, “some oranges are sour”, and you responded with “You’re wrong, some apples are not sour”. It’s not a valid response to my statement.
Also, there’s no evidence that zerk meta applies to world bosses or have any non trivial effect on them because they get zerged down quickly regardless. As I’ve already pointed out, people do world bosses with any and all builds just as fine with no appreciable difference.

You can make an argument for the narrow number of groups that choose to coordinate speed runs which can clear dungeon instances quicker with zerk gear. But that subset of players is tiny compared to the general population and isn’t an issue in normal gameplay.

For example I’ve run dungeons with all my 24 characters since release of this game, and I haven’t joined or had to join a single speed run team. Because speed runners are usually friends or guildmates that coordinate via teamspeak or vent. A vast majority of teams are pugs that don’t speed run or require any specific gear so this isn’t even an issue.

People like you are essentially coming up with bad solutions to a problem that isn’t even real.

I wonder all those people who like playing roles like Healers and Tanks what do they do in other RPGs? Or they don’t play non multiplayer online RPGs at all.

Is there anyone that is asking for a “Healer” or “Tank” in Action-RPGs, games like Diablo and Torchlight, and “real” RPGs like Mass Effect or older RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

From my experience, none of the above games have the concept of a pure “Healer” or “Tank”, so I guess those people that are looking for those types of roles are only asking for them because they enjoy them in MMORPGs

And I guess when they say there can’t be interesting encounters without defined roles, they mean all those games do not have interesting encounters.

rotten.9753:

Shiki.7148:

Thing is: If ONE Boss in a dungeon would be like that, one like the current bosses so better with Zerker etc. you would either have to take a balanced team into said dungeon, or have a set-up where 2-3 players can change from zerker to toughness-condi, or have 2 zerkers change to knights and have ranged condi, or or or…

-> Diversity! YAY!

See, that is how easy you could do it. But, of course, there is a downside to that too, not going to ignore that : Meta might simply shift to a class that can pull off both easily.

Other possibility : Create dungeons where condi is king, others where zerker is king and others where boon removal and condi cleanse is king etc. One Meta per dungeon, but something for everybody. I think it was a litle like this in GW1.

There, two easy ways to give different playstyles the chance of rocking the hood. you’re welcome. Not that A-Net would read this and think about doing any of it ._.

Honestly, this “diversity is good” argument starts to sound like its real life equivalent. Maybe it’s time for anet to introduce quotas? For example:

- at least 20% of your party needs to have at least 1000 healing power
- at least 20% of your party needs to have at least 1000 condition damage
- at least 20% of your party needs to have at least bonus 1000 toughness
- at least 20% of your party needs to have at least bonus 1000 vitality

How about that? Diversity would be achieved.

:p Nope. That isn’t diversity, and you know it. Diversity is every playtsyle having a thing it is best at and is needed. You CAN still zerk a boss with very high armor and lower HP, it just will take longer than using condis. Other way round too, like it is now : you CAN still beat the bosses with condi, it will just take longer than using Zerk. The problem is, Zerker is optimal for EVERYTHING except those few triple trouble enemies currently, which is bad. A “quota” would force the usage of classes specced like that and thats trinity. Having a boss / dungeon where zerker isn’t king just means that people could go condi if they wanted to run it optimally…or stay zerker and take a little longer.

Shiki.7148:

Other possibility : Create dungeons where condi is king, others where zerker is king and others where boon removal and condi cleanse is king etc. One Meta per dungeon, but something for everybody. I think it was a litle like this in GW1.

There, two easy ways to give different playstyles the chance of rocking the hood. you’re welcome. Not that A-Net would read this and think about doing any of it ._.

This idea has already been explored in this thread. The main point of contention is that there’s no evidence that this would lead to any better outcomes.

Currently all options are viable. You start making conditions more viable than direct damage for example in some content and not others it basically means the other non condition builds are less viable. The only builds that will be most hurt by this are the defensive non dps and other non optimal builds because they would end up doing even less damage.

Forcing diversity for the sake of diversity is not a good idea because in doing so you are actually removing diversity if your method is used.

What should be done is to bring condition damage in line with zerk damage via removal of caps on stacks or have the cap per player instead of overall.

Non dps defense builds will never be optimal unless you implement cheap undodgeable auto hit trinity bosses because that is the only situation where toughness and hp actually matters.

rotten.9753:

Shiki.7148:

Thing is: If ONE Boss in a dungeon would be like that, one like the current bosses so better with Zerker etc. you would either have to take a balanced team into said dungeon, or have a set-up where 2-3 players can change from zerker to toughness-condi, or have 2 zerkers change to knights and have ranged condi, or or or…

-> Diversity! YAY!

See, that is how easy you could do it. But, of course, there is a downside to that too, not going to ignore that : Meta might simply shift to a class that can pull off both easily.

Other possibility : Create dungeons where condi is king, others where zerker is king and others where boon removal and condi cleanse is king etc. One Meta per dungeon, but something for everybody. I think it was a litle like this in GW1.

There, two easy ways to give different playstyles the chance of rocking the hood. you’re welcome. Not that A-Net would read this and think about doing any of it ._.

I almost forgot. There will be no new dungeons and they will not touch the old ones.

There has been no statement explicitly stating “there will not be a new dungeon in HoT”, so there still could be one. As for old dungeons, i know THAT train is over. Which is why they shoud give up their bullkitten idea of not having different balancing across pvp and pve.

maddoctor.2738:

I wonder all those people who like playing roles like Healers and Tanks what do they do in other RPGs? Or they don’t play non multiplayer online RPGs at all.

Is there anyone that is asking for a “Healer” or “Tank” in Action-RPGs, games like Diablo and Torchlight, and “real” RPGs like Mass Effect or older RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

From my experience, none of the above games have the concept of a pure “Healer” or “Tank”, so I guess those people that are looking for those types of roles are only asking for them because they enjoy them in MMORPGs

And I guess when they say there can’t be interesting encounters without defined roles, they mean all those games do not have interesting encounters.

Interestingly, Guild Wars 1, while technically having trinity, was immensely flexible on who could fulfill each role. For example, for PvE, the best healer was the Necromancer, not the Monk. There were also tank Monks (55 Monks), Elementalists (terratanks) and Assassins (Shadow Form) and DPS Warriors (hundred blades). There were still a few combos of profession and role that didn’t work (Warriors, Assasins, and Elementalists had no ability to heal others, for example), but it was miles ahead of many other MMO’s.

Heck, in the Sulfurous Wastes region, Monks were some of the best DPS, due to the high amount of Holy damage getting doubled against the undead everywhere.

Shiki.7148:

:p Nope. That isn’t diversity, and you know it. Diversity is every playtsyle having a thing it is best at and is needed. You CAN still zerk a boss with very high armor and lower HP, it just will take longer than using condis. Other way round too, like it is now : you CAN still beat the bosses with condi, it will just take longer than using Zerk. The problem is, Zerker is optimal for EVERYTHING except those few triple trouble enemies currently, which is bad. A “quota” would force the usage of classes specced like that and thats trinity. Having a boss / dungeon where zerker isn’t king just means that people could go condi if they wanted to run it optimally…or stay zerker and take a little longer.

So which other gear do you want to be optimal? If you are saying Assassin, Zerker, Rampager and Sinister i’m with you. If you are saying anything else, give exemple. Which gear, in which situation would be optimal?

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

Thaddeus.4891:

So which other gear do you want to be optimal? If you are saying Assassin, Zerker, Rampager and Sinister i’m with you. If you are saying anything else, i’m not with you.

Here’s a random question: can Rampagers ever be optimal? Every situation I can think of where it would be good, one of the other three you listed just does much better.

Shiki.7148:

:p Nope. That isn’t diversity, and you know it. Diversity is every playtsyle having a thing it is best at and is needed. You CAN still zerk a boss with very high armor and lower HP, it just will take longer than using condis. Other way round too, like it is now : you CAN still beat the bosses with condi, it will just take longer than using Zerk. The problem is, Zerker is optimal for EVERYTHING except those few triple trouble enemies currently, which is bad. A “quota” would force the usage of classes specced like that and thats trinity. Having a boss / dungeon where zerker isn’t king just means that people could go condi if they wanted to run it optimally…or stay zerker and take a little longer.

It’s a gear diversity for the sake of the gear diversity. There’s no point in that except to crash ascended mats market.

You want gameplay diversity, not gear diversity.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Thaddeus.4891:

So which other gear do you want to be optimal? If you are saying Assassin, Zerker, Rampager and Sinister i’m with you. If you are saying anything else, i’m not with you.

Here’s a random question: can Rampagers ever be optimal? Every situation I can think of where it would be good, one of the other three you listed just does much better.

Well assassin is better than Zerker in some situation.

So it’s not far-fetched to see rampager being optimal in some situation if Condition damage would be fixed in PvE. It doesn’t mean that it will, but for exemple a condition Mesmer or Engineer could be better off with Rampager than sinister. If they ever fix condition damage in PvE, we would have to see which gear is better in which situation.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Here’s a random question: can Rampagers ever be optimal? Every situation I can think of where it would be good, one of the other three you listed just does much better.

An encounter with a lot of reflects and a heavy armoured boss?

spoj.9672:

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

Yes but most of the people here are still living in the old mmorpgs. It’s quite difficult to change their world view.

rotten.9753:

spoj.9672:

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

Yes but most of the people here are still living in the old mmorpgs. It’s quite difficult to change their world view.

They just hear about zerker, zerker, zerker, meta, meta, meta. I can understand why they feel that way. But usually, when I talk with that kind of ppl in my guild. Once I explained them the diversity in the game (trait, runes, weapons, etc), then understand pretty quickly.

rotten.9753:

Shiki.7148:

:p Nope. That isn’t diversity, and you know it. Diversity is every playtsyle having a thing it is best at and is needed. You CAN still zerk a boss with very high armor and lower HP, it just will take longer than using condis. Other way round too, like it is now : you CAN still beat the bosses with condi, it will just take longer than using Zerk. The problem is, Zerker is optimal for EVERYTHING except those few triple trouble enemies currently, which is bad. A “quota” would force the usage of classes specced like that and thats trinity. Having a boss / dungeon where zerker isn’t king just means that people could go condi if they wanted to run it optimally…or stay zerker and take a little longer.

It’s a gear diversity for the sake of the gear diversity. There’s no point in that except to crash ascended mats market.

You want gameplay diversity, not gear diversity.

And some differences in gameplay will result in gear diversity. It’s all dependent on how it gets implemented. But yes, gameplay diversity is definitely the highest priority, as gear diversity (or lack therof) would be a consequence of that goal’s implementation.

And yeah, some gear diversity should be a goal, at least going from “all zerk” to “zerk+sinister” as a good start.

rotten.9753:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Here’s a random question: can Rampagers ever be optimal? Every situation I can think of where it would be good, one of the other three you listed just does much better.

An encounter with a lot of reflects and a heavy armoured boss?

So heavy armor projectile spammers? I suppose that could work, but Assassins still seems like it would be better unless armor were astronomical.

maddoctor.2738:

I wonder all those people who like playing roles like Healers and Tanks what do they do in other RPGs? Or they don’t play non multiplayer online RPGs at all.

Is there anyone that is asking for a “Healer” or “Tank” in Action-RPGs, games like Diablo and Torchlight, and “real” RPGs like Mass Effect or older RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

From my experience, none of the above games have the concept of a pure “Healer” or “Tank”, so I guess those people that are looking for those types of roles are only asking for them because they enjoy them in MMORPGs

And I guess when they say there can’t be interesting encounters without defined roles, they mean all those games do not have interesting encounters.

I didn’t know anyone was asking for pure healers or tanks? At least in the last couple of pages (unless I skimmed over it). Only those who want to completely redo game mechanics/classes and replace with heavy trinity are asking for such a thing.

The way GW2 is designed is that pure healers and tanks are not necessary or even possible in how combat unfolds. There are no skills that allow for someone to heal at range without attacking for example 24/7. Everyone is expected to DPS, self heal and self mitigate damage. There are support, manipulation and bunker roles that play differently than pure DPS, that “help” mitigate ally damage and improve overall team performance. They work in PvP/WvW, but don’t work in PvE because older PvE design was lackluster and pure DPS has become the rule because of it.

Funny that you use Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights in your example of CRPGs without trinity. Both of those take place in the Forgotten Realms and are based off pen and paper DnD, where the trinity was invented (Healer, DPS, Tank) and the first debates around it evolved back in the 70s. The games themselves get away from Trinity because they’re designed for solo play of course (although your NPC companions are definitely designed to fill those roles). Unless the GM was super creative, the best way to ensure victory so your chars don’t perma death was making sure you had at least a tank (fighter), deeps (thief) and a healer (cleric).

The Diablo genre is hack and slash where gear randomly generates stats where the most important ones can all be rolled on each gear piece. There’s only one role: DPS and its designed for that from the get go. There’s no group heals or group support except for cc. When I played Diablo 1 my first impression was “This is like DnD dungeon raiding, but no rules, just three different classes.” :p

Mass Effect 1-3 and DA2/DAI are all action RPGs. Although many classes are imbalanced and OP compared to others, Bioware delving into MP has sort of been a success, in that Mass Effect 3 and DAI multiplayer manages to accomplish having different trinity roles without an actual meta (DPS Tank, DPS support, DPS control) forming. I think it was mainly due to the fact their combat design went full active defense, with gear having little to no impact save for your weapons. Most of the power comes from your skill choices and how you play.

Guild Wars 2 is stuck though. They implemented a system with plenty of active defense, but tied everything else including DPS output to preset gear sets that make up about 50%-100% of a stats’ effectiveness. Then added a time gated tier of armor and weapons that made flexibility of having multiple optimal alts and gear sets a lot harder.

Thaddeus.4891:

Shiki.7148:

:p Nope. That isn’t diversity, and you know it. Diversity is every playtsyle having a thing it is best at and is needed. You CAN still zerk a boss with very high armor and lower HP, it just will take longer than using condis. Other way round too, like it is now : you CAN still beat the bosses with condi, it will just take longer than using Zerk. The problem is, Zerker is optimal for EVERYTHING except those few triple trouble enemies currently, which is bad. A “quota” would force the usage of classes specced like that and thats trinity. Having a boss / dungeon where zerker isn’t king just means that people could go condi if they wanted to run it optimally…or stay zerker and take a little longer.

So which other gear do you want to be optimal? If you are saying Assassin, Zerker, Rampager and Sinister i’m with you. If you are saying anything else, give exemple. Which gear, in which situation would be optimal?

I was using “Zerker” faultly here. What i meant is not that i want a specific gear to be optimal in some areas, but gameplay. Like a dungeon in which conditions are more useful than power-type damage. Or a dungeon in which some bosses are best done with power and some with conditions. Zerker is arguably the “best” gear for a power-build, which is why i always used the term for the current “power damage with a little group utility”-meta, because 90% of power-users run Zerkers gear in PvE. I’ll stop using it synonymously from now on.

Balekai.6083:

maddoctor.2738:

I wonder all those people who like playing roles like Healers and Tanks what do they do in other RPGs? Or they don’t play non multiplayer online RPGs at all.

Is there anyone that is asking for a “Healer” or “Tank” in Action-RPGs, games like Diablo and Torchlight, and “real” RPGs like Mass Effect or older RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights.

From my experience, none of the above games have the concept of a pure “Healer” or “Tank”, so I guess those people that are looking for those types of roles are only asking for them because they enjoy them in MMORPGs

And I guess when they say there can’t be interesting encounters without defined roles, they mean all those games do not have interesting encounters.

I didn’t know anyone was asking for pure healers or tanks? At least in the last couple of pages (unless I skimmed over it). Only those who want to completely redo game mechanics/classes and replace with heavy trinity are asking for such a thing.

The way GW2 is designed is that pure healers and tanks are not necessary or even possible in how combat unfolds. There are no skills that allow for someone to heal at range without attacking for example 24/7. Everyone is expected to DPS, self heal and self mitigate damage. There are support, manipulation and bunker roles that play differently than pure DPS, that “help” mitigate ally damage and improve overall team performance. They work in PvP/WvW, but don’t work in PvE because older PvE design was lackluster and pure DPS has become the rule because of it.

In most PVE situations pure DPS is also bad.

Funny that you use Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights in your example of CRPGs without trinity. Both of those take place in the Forgotten Realms and are based off pen and paper DnD, where the trinity was invented (Healer, DPS, Tank) and the first debates around it evolved back in the 70s. The games themselves get away from Trinity because they’re designed for solo play of course (although your NPC companions are definitely designed to fill those roles). Unless the GM was super creative, the best way to ensure victory so your chars don’t perma death was making sure you had at least a tank (fighter), deeps (thief) and a healer (cleric).

I don’t know where people get that pen and paper DnD has any form of Trinity in it. Clerics are NOT Healers in any sense of the word, actually anyone who equates DnD Clerics with “Healers” or anything regarding a Healer role probably never played a Cleric in DnD. Or played with a truly horrible one in their group.

I can assure you as someone who ACTUALLY plays DND, that a Fighter is by no means a “tank” but the character than can deal out the MOST damage, even more than Rogues if built correctly. So you are mistaken on almost everything you said about DnD.

The only DnD Edition that tried to impose more defined roles was 4th edition. There is a reason TRUE fans of DnD (and pen and paper RPGs in general) call it the “WOW VERSION”. If WoW (and similar MMORPGs) took the Trinity from DND then why is it that 4th edition is called the WOW edition? This is going off-topic, but calling DnD a trinity game is like calling Doom a turn based strategy.

The Diablo genre is hack and slash where gear randomly generates stats where the most important ones can all be rolled on each gear piece. There’s only one role: DPS and its designed for that from the get go. There’s no group heals or group support except for cc. When I played Diablo 1 my first impression was “This is like DnD dungeon raiding, but no rules, just three different classes.” :p

Yet you can’t say all encounters in the action RPG genre lack depth and interesting mechanics. So the idea that a form of Trinity is required to have interesting mechanics is false. That’s what the addition of those games in my list served to prove.

Mass Effect 1-3 and DA2/DAI are all action RPGs. Although many classes are imbalanced and OP compared to others, Bioware delving into MP has sort of been a success, in that Mass Effect 3 and DAI multiplayer manages to accomplish having different trinity roles without an actual meta (DPS Tank, DPS support, DPS control) forming. I think it was mainly due to the fact their combat design went full active defense, with gear having little to no impact save for your weapons. Most of the power comes from your skill choices and how you play.

Last I checked, forgive me if I’m wrong, but Guild Wars 2 is ALSO supposed to be AN ACTION RPG, that’s why it has more action combat, it doesn’t have random attack/defense rolls etc. Yet for some reason people are asking for it not to be one.

Shiki.7148:

I was using “Zerker” faultly here. What i meant is not that i want a specific gear to be optimal in some areas, but gameplay. Like a dungeon in which conditions are more useful than power-type damage. Or a dungeon in which some bosses are best done with power and some with conditions. Zerker is arguably the “best” gear for a power-build, which is why i always used the term for the current “power damage with a little group utility”-meta, because 90% of power-users run Zerkers gear in PvE. I’ll stop using it synonymously from now on.

So Direct Damage and Condition should be optimal in different situation. So Zerker, Assassins, Rampager and Sinister should be the four optimal possibilities with Zerker and Sinister being the most popular? You are not talking about soldier, clerics or any of that stuff? Just to be sure.

spoj.9672:

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

Focus of the last few pages has been on playstyle rather than on gear. Gear is relevant insofar as your stat emphasis effects your play style.

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

Focus of the last few pages has been on playstyle rather than on gear. Gear is relevant insofar as your stat emphasis effects your play style.

That’s the thing, it really doesn’t, not nearly as much as your traits/utility/weapon choices.

Your gear = base stats, your stats simply empower your trait/weapon/utility choices but won’t change the way you play beyond deciding whether or not you have to dodge an attack or if you can take it on the chin and be fine.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

Focus of the last few pages has been on playstyle rather than on gear. Gear is relevant insofar as your stat emphasis effects your play style.

That’s the thing, it really doesn’t, not nearly as much as your traits/utility/weapon choices.

Your gear = base stats, your stats simply empower your trait/weapon/utility choices but won’t change the way you play beyond deciding whether or not you have to dodge an attack or if you can take it on the chin and be fine.

I just can’t go along with that man. If for instance your skills and traits are centered towards generating conditions and condition damage and you have no gear and only base +300 from your trait line, you are going to suck. A fire/staff ele in Nomads gear is going to be terrible because he doesn’t have stats to support any damage output

Some traits and abilities are essentially stat agnostic, that is true, and some take only minor effect from stats. Your overall playstyle is heavily stat-dependent, however..

Windsagio.1340:

I just can’t go along with that man. If for instance your skills and traits are centered towards generating conditions and condition damage and you have no gear and only base +300 from your trait line, you are going to suck. A fire/staff ele in Nomads gear is going to be terrible because he doesn’t have stats to support any damage output

Some traits and abilities are essentially stat agnostic, that is true, and some take only minor effect from stats. Your overall playstyle is heavily stat-dependent, however..

“A fire/staff ele” in soldier’s gear has ~70% damage potential of berserker’s ele while having about twice as much effective health.

@Windsagio
Well thats false. Because even though you may fell like “you are going to suck”. The build works in exactly the same way. You just do less damage/healing etc. Its unchanged apart from efficiency.

A condi necro using soldiers is still a condi necro. It just does really bad damage. To the point where its so inefficient it doesnt make sense to use that mismatched gear. But its still the same build and has the exact same playstyle.

Anyway anet has stated they are going in the direction of traits/utilities/weapon diversity for HoT. So its a rather pointless discussion. Atleast until we see how well they pull it off.

Thaddeus.4891:

Shiki.7148:

I was using “Zerker” faultly here. What i meant is not that i want a specific gear to be optimal in some areas, but gameplay. Like a dungeon in which conditions are more useful than power-type damage. Or a dungeon in which some bosses are best done with power and some with conditions. Zerker is arguably the “best” gear for a power-build, which is why i always used the term for the current “power damage with a little group utility”-meta, because 90% of power-users run Zerkers gear in PvE. I’ll stop using it synonymously from now on.

So Direct Damage and Condition should be optimal in different situation. So Zerker, Assassins, Rampager and Sinister should be the four optimal possibilities with Zerker and Sinister being the most popular? You are not talking about soldier, clerics or any of that stuff? Just to be sure.

I’m not talking about soldier’s etc. currently, because for them to be useful bosses would either need really cheap mechanics, they would need to rework how dodges work/make them less powerful or actually put in a way to reliably generate aggro … or make invulns, blocks, aegis etc less powerful, which would nerf some classes heavily and make the pvp pve balance go bonkers.(since without such changes no skilled player needs thoughness/vitality)…which would put us extremely close to the unwanted trinity system.

As for how to make healing more usefull… again that would take cheap mechanics. Like Agony without the chance to protect you from it, or damage-auras that tick for a lot more than the ones in CoF story and path 2. And such changes would FORCE a healer, which again, is not something anyone wants. So yeah, making healing or tanky specs more useful in PvE would be incredibly hard, what with every class having their own heal to bring and all. Although in fractals, certain bosses have so many attacks going on while they have invulnerability phases a healer-specc’d /off-healer specc’d player can help out a ton… as long as Zerkers cannot rush the fight so fast that they never enter said invulnerability phases.

Making condi and power both good? That’d be easier, whether through reworking how conditions work currently so they are good everywhere like power (problem : PvE and PvP-balance have to stay the same for whatever bullkitten reason), or make more content where “condi is king”.

Although, technically you could say traits like the necromancers “your thoughness gives you x% of power” could make things like Captains more interesting… if it wasn’t for precision and/or ferocity beating pure power.

Only damage kills we have two of it power(3 of them for some reason) and conditions, those should compete for killing not others with current system. Other sets won’t be used with increase of challenges but instead people will spec into sustain lines and utilities while still using either of the 2 types of damage gear but currently conditions are held back. Healing power could make it if there a form of damage relying on it like a super siphon boon or mechanic and bosses had reduced HP and increased of toughness just like with conditions.

Rest of stats would require another untraditional mechanic to kill mobs. So again plz fix conditions and consider the healing power based damage idea.

Yup. Stats change only the effectiveness of your build, it doesn’t change your build/gameplay.

A Staff conjure Elementalist will play exactly the same with zerker, soldier or clerics. But changing to Scepter/Focus or taking a Lighting Hammer with you or switching some trait will change how you play.

Gear will only change the effectiveness of your build.

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

Focus of the last few pages has been on playstyle rather than on gear. Gear is relevant insofar as your stat emphasis effects your play style.

That’s the thing, it really doesn’t, not nearly as much as your traits/utility/weapon choices.

Your gear = base stats, your stats simply empower your trait/weapon/utility choices but won’t change the way you play beyond deciding whether or not you have to dodge an attack or if you can take it on the chin and be fine.

I just can’t go along with that man. If for instance your skills and traits are centered towards generating conditions and condition damage and you have no gear and only base +300 from your trait line, you are going to suck. A fire/staff ele in Nomads gear is going to be terrible because he doesn’t have stats to support any damage output

Some traits and abilities are essentially stat agnostic, that is true, and some take only minor effect from stats. Your overall playstyle is heavily stat-dependent, however..

Aye, no doubt you’d suck, but the point is the play style hasn’t changed. If you choose traits/utililties/weapons for condi you’ll be stacking a lot of condi.

Your Play style is defined by mainly those 3 things. Your gear simply aids in those choices actually being effective.

I’m wracking my brain trying to think of a situation where I’d go with a weapon and use it differently depending on my stats. I’m falling short of even one example right now though. Using different weapons for condi or direct damage, yes easy lots of situations. But one where my skill use choices vary depending on my stats alone, i can’t think of anything.

Having seen this development from both sides, I consider the trinity roles to be a co-evolution where both DnD and MMOs looked at their own and the other’s trends. They each took turns introducing concepts from the other and adding to it themselves.

The stereotypical old-school DnD party is the fighter, mage, cleric, and thief. The fighter had a consistent damage pressure, the mage had spike damage, the cleric had a mix of healing and combat support, and the thief had a grab-bag of useful skills, including front-loading some damage via stealth, surprise, and backstabbing. (There is some variation depending on when you are talking about, but that’s not important to the point here.)

WoW (and other MMOs) took the idea of roles and pushed it further into the tank/healer/DPS trinity (with “support” as an optional fourth). This became a very useful way to think of builds, and the terms filtered back to DnD, where you could talk about how tanky your character was and figure out your DPR (damage per round). Fourth edition embraced the concept completely, with a huge backlash. There is both some truth and some exaggeration to say that DnD stole it from WoW.

Once again, I really consider it to be a co-evolution with each one influencing the other.

maddoctor.2738:

I don’t know where people get that pen and paper DnD has any form of Trinity in it. Clerics are NOT Healers in any sense of the word, actually anyone who equates DnD Clerics with “Healers” or anything regarding a Healer role probably never played a Cleric in DnD. Or played with a truly horrible one in their group.

I can assure you as someone who ACTUALLY plays DND, that a Fighter is by no means a “tank” but the character than can deal out the MOST damage, even more than Rogues if built correctly. So you are mistaken on almost everything you said about DnD.

The only DnD Edition that tried to impose more defined roles was 4th edition. There is a reason TRUE fans of DnD (and pen and paper RPGs in general) call it the “WOW VERSION”. If WoW (and similar MMORPGs) took the Trinity from DND then why is it that 4th edition is called the WOW edition? This is going off-topic, but calling DnD a trinity game is like calling Doom a turn based strategy.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

Focus of the last few pages has been on playstyle rather than on gear. Gear is relevant insofar as your stat emphasis effects your play style.

That’s the thing, it really doesn’t, not nearly as much as your traits/utility/weapon choices.

Your gear = base stats, your stats simply empower your trait/weapon/utility choices but won’t change the way you play beyond deciding whether or not you have to dodge an attack or if you can take it on the chin and be fine.

I just can’t go along with that man. If for instance your skills and traits are centered towards generating conditions and condition damage and you have no gear and only base +300 from your trait line, you are going to suck. A fire/staff ele in Nomads gear is going to be terrible because he doesn’t have stats to support any damage output

Some traits and abilities are essentially stat agnostic, that is true, and some take only minor effect from stats. Your overall playstyle is heavily stat-dependent, however..

Aye, no doubt you’d suck, but the point is the play style hasn’t changed. If you choose traits/utililties/weapons for condi you’ll be stacking a lot of condi.

Your Play style is defined by mainly those 3 things. Your gear simply aids in those choices actually being effective.

I’m wracking my brain trying to think of a situation where I’d go with a weapon and use it differently depending on my stats. I’m falling short of even one example right now though. Using different weapons for condi or direct damage, yes easy lots of situations. But one where my skill use choices vary depending on my stats alone, i can’t think of anything.

Tanking.

spoj.9672:

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

Focus of the last few pages has been on playstyle rather than on gear. Gear is relevant insofar as your stat emphasis effects your play style.

That’s the thing, it really doesn’t, not nearly as much as your traits/utility/weapon choices.

Your gear = base stats, your stats simply empower your trait/weapon/utility choices but won’t change the way you play beyond deciding whether or not you have to dodge an attack or if you can take it on the chin and be fine.

I just can’t go along with that man. If for instance your skills and traits are centered towards generating conditions and condition damage and you have no gear and only base +300 from your trait line, you are going to suck. A fire/staff ele in Nomads gear is going to be terrible because he doesn’t have stats to support any damage output

Some traits and abilities are essentially stat agnostic, that is true, and some take only minor effect from stats. Your overall playstyle is heavily stat-dependent, however..

Aye, no doubt you’d suck, but the point is the play style hasn’t changed. If you choose traits/utililties/weapons for condi you’ll be stacking a lot of condi.

Your Play style is defined by mainly those 3 things. Your gear simply aids in those choices actually being effective.

I’m wracking my brain trying to think of a situation where I’d go with a weapon and use it differently depending on my stats. I’m falling short of even one example right now though. Using different weapons for condi or direct damage, yes easy lots of situations. But one where my skill use choices vary depending on my stats alone, i can’t think of anything.

Tanking.

Yeah like I said in the post before, the only exception to the thought that gear doesn’t define play style is that if you go tanky enough you can unbind your dodge key and just facetank things, so there is that.

spoj.9672:

@Windsagio
Well thats false. Because even though you may fell like “you are going to suck”. The build works in exactly the same way. You just do less damage/healing etc. Its unchanged apart from efficiency.

A condi necro using soldiers is still a condi necro. It just does really bad damage. To the point where its so inefficient it doesnt make sense to use that mismatched gear. But its still the same build and has the exact same playstyle.

Anyway anet has stated they are going in the direction of traits/utilities/weapon diversity for HoT. So its a rather pointless discussion. Atleast until we see how well they pull it off.

Forgiving the strong language (it’s a personal flaw), it’s as you say, they’re not being very effective. If the ‘gear doesn’t matter’ argument held true, people wouldn’t demand zerk gear.

That’s the fallacy I can’t get around: In a discussion at least partially predicated on demanding zerker gear, the people defending the ‘zerker meta’ are suddenly arguing that gear doesn’t matter. It’s very possible there’s a subtlety I missed, but it seems flat out contradictory.

Otherwise, maybe we can just get it off the table. I think we all understand that you can play any style with reduced effectiveness with any stat set. The amount of reduced effectiveness varies based on a bunch of issues, but nevertheless that’s an important piece of the base discussion.

This is where we get into the Meta discussion stuff that makes OBD so annoyed; it seems like we’re at the point where people defending a particular mix of stats against changes (we don’t need to/shouldn’t change zerk gear as compared to other stat sets) are actually arguing that the stat set isn’t really relevant to the discussion, while commonly demanding that particular stat set in runs. Can you see how it’d be easy to call shenanigans on that?.

People only demand zerk because its easier than listing every weapon/trait/utility each class should be using. And those groups want efficient runs. Which means they should be using the optimal builds with optimal gear. The shorthand for that just happens to be zerk in most cases despite assassin actually being better for a lot of classes. Personally i would prefer to use the term optimal builds or meta builds in my LFG’s. And heres the thing. I would rather take a knights/soldiers wearing player using a meta build and weapons than a zerk using player taking useless utilities and weapons when i advertise for efficient runs.

Its completely unrelated to diversity. You cant have multiple optimals for the same encounter without devalueing player choice (hidden arcana instance) or creating time gates so no matter how you approach the encounter it will always take the same amount of time. Encounters where what your build brings doesnt matter are just bad design.

The gear isnt relevant to the discussion. Its perfectly balanced with other types of gear. People like to be efficient so they demand efficient gear. Also content is too easy so people gravitate to efficient runs more easily. When encounters get harder a few people will stop asking for zerker. The majority will probably just try to adapt and learn to improve. But the problem wont go anywhere. If you can even call it a problem.

spoj.9672:

People only demand zerk because its easier than listing every weapon/trait/utility each class should be using. And those groups want efficient runs. Which means they should be using the optimal builds with optimal gear. The shorthand for that just happens to be zerk in most cases despite assassin actually being better for a lot of classes. Personally i would prefer to use the term optimal builds or meta builds in my LFG’s. And heres the thing. I would rather take a knights/soldiers wearing player using a meta build and weapons than a zerk using player taking useless utilities and weapons when i advertise for efficient runs.

Then a lot of people are misusing “zerk”. Wouldn’t surprise me very much though ><

Its completely unrelated to diversity. You cant have multiple optimals for the same encounter without devalueing player choice (hidden arcana instance) or creating time gates so no matter how you approach the encounter it will always take the same amount of time. Encounters where what your build brings doesnt matter are just bad design.

The argument we’re seeing a lot now, though, is different optimal strategies for different encounters. It’s an argument I like. If there’s a path with multiple encounters that have (moderately) different optimal tactics, players are left with some interesting minor choices; They can carry multiple sets and respec, or they can say ‘well the condi necro is a bit slower on these fights, but he’ll speed us up a LOT on this other fight, it won’t slow us down much to bring him’.

The gear isnt relevant to the discussion. Its perfectly balanced with other types of gear. People like to be efficient so they demand efficient gear. Also content is too easy so people gravitate to efficient runs more easily. When encounters get harder a few people will stop asking for zerker. The majority will probably just try to adapt and learn to improve. But the problem wont go anywhere. If you can even call it a problem.

really, it’s clearly not. There’s 1 set of gear that’s optimal for a vast majority of the harder content. The gear is so optimal that it trivializes some content.

Like I said, I’m not sure anyone left is calling for the nerf stick, they’re asking for different tactics to be optimal in different situations. I’d add to that that I don’t expect them to touch existing content at all (might have said that before, it blurs) except where system changes require it.

~~~

It gets so blurry, it’s funny. To a large degree people are focusing on changing encounters in such a way to make zerk style more in line with other styles sometimes, but then we go down the rabbit hole again.

(quotes approximated of course)
“There should be encounters that encourage other playstyles mixed in with the burn friendly styles”
“Zerk gear is meaningless, it’s your traits”
“Well that’s just not true, gear is clearly an important part of someones effectiveness in teh play-style”
“No, it really doesn’t matter”
—->singularity

I’m so happy that specs and the new class are forcing changes to the game that allow for more diverse gameplay based on the quotes during the discussion Jon Peters had with MMORPG! It will put to rest alot of the ugliness we’ve seen on the extremely rigid view that Zerker should be the end all be all of the game design and that there’s no room for trinity like choices! Finally!

tigirius, do yourself a favor and stop reading what you want to read and take a step back. Roles have always been there, sounds like tehy’re trying to make them more important. What he said was not “Trinity is coming, everyone be ready!” like you seem to have interpreted it as. And, btw, they’ve already started this, look at Silverwastes. Enemies that are more suited for condi (while they ignore the cap issues…), enemies where reflects are key, Enemies where Ranged damage is key. They’re really trying to force the use of alternatives. Thing is in all that stuff… zerker is still an option! and because they ignore the condi cap issues it’s even optimal often against thsoe “condi” mobs…

Wind, every actual example suggestion I’ve seen has had huge flaws, from being unreasonable suggestions of reworking the entire system of the game, to simply unfun changes meant simply to make zerk gear impossible. If I saw an actual fun suggestion I’d be all for it.

I will say I’ve seen some cool things in my time playing games. I always liked the % based mechanics, that will always trigger so no skipping with damage. But that doesn’t prevent zerk, just makes it a little tougher And non zerk is just as slow if not slower.

Im all for having a condi geared person being optimal for some encounters. Because that doesnt force people to build passive defence or certain ways to succeed.

But lets be honest. If we have diversity between berserker and sinister. People are still going to complain that there is no diversity because the optimal is still all glass. Which is how it should be. If you sacrifice damage for defence then you should be slower at killing things. Therefore you should be slower at the combat encounters.

Jerus.4350:

tigirius, do yourself a favor and stop reading what you want to read and take a step back. Roles have always been there, sounds like tehy’re trying to make them more important. What he said was not “Trinity is coming, everyone be ready!” like you seem to have interpreted it as. And, btw, they’ve already started this, look at Silverwastes. Enemies that are more suited for condi (while they ignore the cap issues…), enemies where reflects are key, Enemies where Ranged damage is key. They’re really trying to force the use of alternatives. Thing is in all that stuff… zerker is still an option! and because they ignore the condi cap issues it’s even optimal often against thsoe “condi” mobs…

Wind, every actual example suggestion I’ve seen has had huge flaws, from being unreasonable suggestions of reworking the entire system of the game, to simply unfun changes meant simply to make zerk gear impossible. If I saw an actual fun suggestion I’d be all for it.

I will say I’ve seen some cool things in my time playing games. I always liked the % based mechanics, that will always trigger so no skipping with damage. But that doesn’t prevent zerk, just makes it a little tougher And non zerk is just as slow if not slower.

You and others just seem to not have the ability to actually comprehend anything that anyone is saying do you? At no time in any of my posts did I say that the trinity is coming and you’d know that if you’d actually have read them.

I also find it disturbing that none of you can argue a point without attacking people it’s amazing.

I directly quote someone direct from a recorded interview and you people still can’t seem to do anything other than attack me. It’s right there in audio, and what I actually said is right there in black and while in my post history. Stop trying to attack people for posting the facts and leave people alone. This is harassment like behavior on the part of many of you just because you can’t seem to handle what’s happening.

The game’s combat is going to have trinity like choices on the combat field, it’s in the interview, it’s going to be based off of the changes coming to combat because of the design of the new class and specializations.

Go listen to some music, burn some relaxation candles and breathe deeply but stop attacking me for finding out this information and spreading the word, that’s just not healthy.

@Tigirius
Its already like that. Just not obvious to the average player. And tends to be only relevant in the higher tiers of PvE.

What I get from all of the PAX interviews is that they want players to use skills for something more than just pure damage and they want players to use them wisely.