Guild Wars 2

I’m coming to this late, but want to remind that some of us are not physically able (RL) to use Zerk or similar ‘optimal’ builds, but would still like to have a relatively efficient run. Thankfully its been easier to open with ‘note that I have bad wrists, but am still familiar with the class mechanics, just can’t zerk’ and not be immediately kicked.

I have also been quietly watching how HoT has been developing, to see if the new area will be worth my time. So far that might be yes, but not on a regular basis (probably because I’m more interested in any WvW changes to entice me to stay around again).

rotten.9753:

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.

That seems to be what Jon Peters is talking about in the interview he did with MMORPG.com.

Players have to use their tools appropriately to get through a fight more efficiently. And honestly, that already happens. I don’t run around with Ice Bow on my Ele but for AC, the part with the burrows, i’ll slot it because it makes the whole fight a lot easier.

At no point while answering this question did Jon Peters mention anything about gear. He’s talking about using your control skills, your dps spike, using your support skills.
He’s not talking about a trinity or forcing specific gear.

spoj.9672:

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.

The solution to that honestly is raw difficulty.

Again, huge tradeoffs, especially with CS and engagement, but it should be

“If you’re good enough do pure DPS builds, if you need extra margin of error add defensive stats”.

I believe that’s the concept they started with, but it kind of slid off with the difficulty curve (my pet theory is that it partially links to meta pusher too. People consistently being told they can’t group or are bad for not being zerk end up trying to run it when not ready and getting blown up > leads to complaints, but that’s theory). That’s where cultural manipulation would have to come in, and that problem might be insoluable.

That being said, I wouldn’t mind some endurance fights just for flavor, things like fixed up versions of the Cliffside Chest seal or the Underground switch room but cleaned up. I personally think doing that sometimes can be interesting and fun, and hope they give more chances for that kind of experience. I wouldn’t directly relate that to the primary balance question, which I would define as we discussed above.

~~~

If there are serious direct stat changes/rebalances the only argument I could make would be rampager vs sinister vs zerker vs assassin, and even that I feel would be better handled through system and encounter design rather than through stat manipulation.

I honeslty can’t remember most of the solutions suggested at this point though, somebody should be awesome and make a compilation

tigirius.9014:

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.

True, but you could have fooled me. You did say this though

Didn’t claim it would be but what it does do is add trinity like options. You’re just going to have to deal with it man, get a support group you’ll be okay.

And stop trying to act like this is personal, it’s your arguments I’m attacking not you. Hell if I ever met you I might actually like you, but we’d still disagree on this point.

Roles are already in the game, they simply can be ignored much of the time due to the strength and prevalence of personal active defenses. No need for an Aegis/blind because you can dodge. No need for a reflect because you can use your block/dodge/evade. No need for XYZ because you have ABC.

Strengthening the need and reliance on roles would be stressing personal defenses tot he point that you must rely on teammates to help share the burden with their group support tools, be it blind, aegis, reflects, control effects, whatever. There is alraedy content that does this, just not that much and most people avoid it because it’s hard to PUG.

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

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.

The solution to that honestly is raw difficulty.

Again, huge tradeoffs, especially with CS and engagement, but it should be

“If you’re good enough do pure DPS builds, if you need extra margin of error add defensive stats”.

I believe that’s the concept they started with, but it kind of slid off with the difficulty curve (my pet theory is that it partially links to meta pusher too. People consistently being told they can’t group or are bad for not being zerk end up trying to run it when not ready and getting blown up > leads to complaints, but that’s theory). That’s where cultural manipulation would have to come in, and that problem might be insoluable.

Exactly. It doesnt change the optimal way to do things. So we will still get people complaining.

And the problem with just making things more difficult is that hurts casual players more than it hurts the average player that runs meta builds. You have to be careful with how far you go.

Im glad they have always believed in this approach and that they are finally trying to make it work. Its what ive always suggested when it comes to these threads.

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

I’m coming to this late, but want to remind that some of us are not physically able (RL) to use Zerk or similar ‘optimal’ builds, but would still like to have a relatively efficient run. Thankfully its been easier to open with ‘note that I have bad wrists, but am still familiar with the class mechanics, just can’t zerk’ and not be immediately kicked.

I have also been quietly watching how HoT has been developing, to see if the new area will be worth my time. So far that might be yes, but not on a regular basis (probably because I’m more interested in any WvW changes to entice me to stay around again).

Me and my buddies used to do “braindead meta” We used all zerk, but with some tweaks that greatly increased our defenses.
1) Hammer guard, instantly gaining 33% defense from protection, essentially making many one shot kills from enemies something you can somewhat easily recover from. With this my buddy used a variation of the build as 33062 getting both longer symbols and healing symbols and used a water sigil, this gave us a bit extra consistent healing making your general condition damage in dungeons negligable.

2) Phalanx Warrior, might stacking has a huge effect on the group, 05063 build swapping GS and Axe/Mace for vuln, slipping warhorn in there for in between fights, or you can just leave the axe/mace out and just use the warhorn between fights and camp gs during the fight for an easier time. Double banner of course and For Great Justice usually being the third utility, rez banner is a nice option for elite though signet is pretty standard.

3) Staff Ele, possibly the easiest meta to play, provides perma fury which with a PS War is all you need. Reign down fire, water fields maybe if needed, help with swiftness between fights. Earth Ele is amazing utility as well.

4) Thief, Stealth of course. They can do a lot of it by themselves but if you work as a team and all toss 1 blast into blinding powder you can stealth almost instantly making longer runs quicker and easier. Also blinding powder will be your main source of blind (guard and sandstorm being the others) which allows you to wipe up trash with relative ease. I’d also mention defiant stripping but that will change. There are also a few other niche tricks thieves can do, like orb transportation or crystalline entity solo in arah.

5) Mesmer is what we typically brought, you have portal tricks, extra reflects, more condi removal, etc etc, often overlapped with guard though, so I might go with either another Ele or maybe an Engi, though Ranger could be cool for frostspotter… in any case, 5th slot is pretty open, your main things are covered with the first 4.

And witht hat… I give you a team composition comprised of different roles all working in synergy to create an easy to execute environment where you can still pump out good damage. If someone is still not able to perform in zerk gear, that’s fine, they can tank up or possible change some traits, like the Thief could go Invigorating precision and in doing so basically becomes unkillable outside of one shots, or could go with feline grace to get more dodges for those big hits. Guard might go Zealot gear catch some extra healing, or maybe Valkyrie to make up for his low HP /shrug, there are options and you can tailor it to your needs. Me and my buddies started with the guard in PVT gear, we only swapped because we realized that we simply didn’t need it and transitioned to zerk very smoothly.

I’m not a meta enthusiast, I think thre’s lots of power in off meta stuff, I enjoy looking at opportunity costs and trying to create the best build I can handle. There’s a lot of power in defensive traits and various choices, gear is not required to be one. It’s all about the pros and cons of a choice. hammer guard like I explained above sacrifices quite a bit of damge, but not as much as it does going to PVT, but it gains a similar amount of personal defense while also spraeding it to the party, basically you get a whole lot more with the only real loss being not as much personal HP and light fields.

TL : DR, there are trait chioes that allow you to do thinsg easier and smoother while going zerk.

spoj.9672:

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

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.

The solution to that honestly is raw difficulty.

Again, huge tradeoffs, especially with CS and engagement, but it should be

“If you’re good enough do pure DPS builds, if you need extra margin of error add defensive stats”.

I believe that’s the concept they started with, but it kind of slid off with the difficulty curve (my pet theory is that it partially links to meta pusher too. People consistently being told they can’t group or are bad for not being zerk end up trying to run it when not ready and getting blown up > leads to complaints, but that’s theory). That’s where cultural manipulation would have to come in, and that problem might be insoluable.

Exactly. It doesnt change the optimal way to do things. So we will still get people complaining.

And the problem with just making things more difficult is that hurts casual players more than it hurts the average player that runs meta builds. You have to be careful with how far you go.

Im glad they have always believed in this approach and that they are finally trying to make it work. Its what ive always suggested when it comes to these threads.

The direction of the fixes seems to be, in essence, adding zerk difficulty by closing gameplay loopholes; for instance, I suspect bosses starting with full defiance instead of 0 defiance will have a larger effect on boss burns than anyone yet expects, as will stability (in certain encounters, no more stacking the corner for molten facility most likely).

The big problem is that it’s really suboptimal to design encounters to poor player culture. If people were comfortable playing what gearset they needed to stay alive instead of feeling that they’re terrible and wful and can’t group unless they gear ‘right’, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.

But how do you even start to fix that? You’re not going to stop DnT from making fun of ‘bads’.

The changes to Defiance along with Slow and Taunt is a move in the right direction. Hopefully bosses in existing dungeons can be updated with these changes. I’ve never run zerker on my warrior and thankfully I won’t have to.

Warriors should be able to take a shot while controlling the tempo of a fight. The same goes for guardians.

No matter how I look at it the current “issue” (and there IS an issue) is centered on the fact that most mobs are incredibly Linear. (Not the previous is my OPINION based on my experience in the game from playing it sense beta. It is in no way indicative of the opinions of others. you can agree or disagree. But dont link back to this later claiming I made this as something its not) You can engage one mob in almost the exact same fashion you would any other mob. And this includes “most” bosses.

With this as my assumption. I thought id make some comments.

On other games ive seen (typically single player games that actually have a closer balance system to us than traditional mmos due to healing/damage/control all being centered around a single character). Mob diversity in behavior seems to be alot higher. And there ai..while still simple. Causes them to be set into fairly complex roles.

In general most mobs can be set into a few set categories. if I had to id put them as follows. Interestingly enough. the new mordrem fit most of these catagories. and I hope they are a clear example of whats to come.

“Knights” : Typically the frontrunners. The in your face characters with a few quick attacks and one or two heavy yet highly telegraphed attacks. Limited ranged options. Teragriffs are the best examples of these in game.

“Rogues” Fairly fast. Lightly telegraphed. Moderate damage with situationally high damage. Mordrem Wolves. and Mordrem VILE Thrashers are good examples of this.

“Support” weak fairly slow mobs that have incredible support potential. Killing these first are usually the key to a smooth victory. Mordrem Husks and Mordrem Menders fit this role fairly well. Husks act as large in your face distraction that limit your mobility for the knights and rogues. And menders cover the other side by helping there teammates recover..although there very easily interrupted.

“caster” typically area of effect in nature. Mid-long range. Low-Mid survivability. With situationally high survivability. While less focused as the support or damage there also less squishy. These are the ones that typically work on area denial. Casting aoes that can be very frustrating when timed right. The mordrem leaching thrasher is the ingame example im alluding to.

“sniper” weve all been hit by this in one game or another. The long range character thats defenseless at close range in every sense but hurts like hell getting hit by when your trying to deal with something else. Weak as all hell on there own. But if theres something holding you in the line of fire there devestating. Fans of dark soul know what im talking about. As well as anyone thats ever been hit by a Mordrem Slinger.

Know. What am I getting at with all this? Two things. One the pve content of the game has changed. Dungeons aren’t what people are deciding to base there builds and gear on now. And they wont be in the future. Were seeing fights where you could be fighting anywhere from one mob to six at a time. Your build and playstyle decide whats optimal for you. And your choice in engagements. Someone who plans on fighting 2 knights and a rogue with sniper on them as mentioned above wont be running a build with NOTHING to defend themselves with. If they do. Its going to bight them in the kitten . And thats due to my second point.

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

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.

The solution to that honestly is raw difficulty.

Again, huge tradeoffs, especially with CS and engagement, but it should be

“If you’re good enough do pure DPS builds, if you need extra margin of error add defensive stats”.

I believe that’s the concept they started with, but it kind of slid off with the difficulty curve (my pet theory is that it partially links to meta pusher too. People consistently being told they can’t group or are bad for not being zerk end up trying to run it when not ready and getting blown up > leads to complaints, but that’s theory). That’s where cultural manipulation would have to come in, and that problem might be insoluable.

Exactly. It doesnt change the optimal way to do things. So we will still get people complaining.

And the problem with just making things more difficult is that hurts casual players more than it hurts the average player that runs meta builds. You have to be careful with how far you go.

Im glad they have always believed in this approach and that they are finally trying to make it work. Its what ive always suggested when it comes to these threads.

The direction of the fixes seems to be, in essence, adding zerk difficulty by closing gameplay loopholes; for instance, I suspect bosses starting with full defiance instead of 0 defiance will have a larger effect on boss burns than anyone yet expects, as will stability (in certain encounters, no more stacking the corner for molten facility most likely).

The big problem is that it’s really suboptimal to design encounters to poor player culture. If people were comfortable playing what gearset they needed to stay alive instead of feeling that they’re terrible and wful and can’t group unless they gear ‘right’, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.

But how do you even start to fix that? You’re not going to stop DnT from making fun of ‘bads’.

Are you surprised it’s happening though?

Lets go back to car examples

Look at people driving. When the roads are wide open, everyone is content, driving their pace, changing lanes if the person ahead of them is going slower than they want to be going, no conflicts. When traffic hits and people are forced to slow down… Road Rage begins. Why should dungeons be any different? When suddenly you’re held back by other people it causes frustration. People ask for others who enjoy the same play style so they don’t go through the dungeon frustrated because we all play this game for fun and that’s not really a fun situation to be in.

New content should change that up quite a bit as Hopefully it isn’t something we’ll breeze throught he first day and have that expectation like we do in these years old dungeons we are currently running.

“Fights are less predictable in the new content than the old”. One of the issues with dungeon content is its going to be the same every single time. the mobs will do the same thing in the same situation if the same number of players interact with them the same way. The predictability of the encounters is a large part of what makes the so easy to kill.

Yet in the silverwastes outside of boss fights were seeing things a bit different than before. Namely. LUCK has a much bigger part of the fights than they do in dungeons. An elementalist kiting a pair of mordrem wolves can lose control of one easily. Having him turn around and do a leap insta-crit onto a nearby warriors back. If that warrior is already engaged with a husk he may be immobilzied making it impossible to face the mordrem wolf to deny the crit OR dodging to to negate the damage. A necromancer fighting a group of husks may get immobilized one after another right before a slingers stone impacts the area. A mesmer may enter stealth thinking hes safe only to be impacted by a teragriffs charge that was aimed at someone else entirely.

These kind of things almost NEVER happen in dungeons. Becuase the optimal method of fighting hte fight once. Will be the optimal method of fighting the next time as well. But in an open world environment with players doing different things against different numbers,compositions,positioning of mobs each time.

So as far as the zerk meta is concerned. If this is the way pve is developing. Players running zerk and only zerk for every fight in every situation. Is going to become outdated. A meta can thrive in an enclosed environment. Where theres little to no change that impacts it. But in the larger world. Where its almost impossible to have a predictable composition at every moment of the day. And it IS impossible to predict onehundred percent how the engagement will go exactly.

As before. I feel like the “Dungeon” meta. Will become a thing of the past on its own given time. (not necessarily zerk meta in general. I feel zerk SHOULD be the highest rewarded gear along with sinister as long as the risk is comparable which I feel it WILL be. That risk will also limit the zerk playstyle will a zerk thief with no defensives engage six teragriffs at the same time? or will he grab a utility that can save him if something goes wrong. Or even put on something in the assumption that something WILL go wrong. Or will he forgo the outnumbered fight entirely and leave it to the control based person next to him and engage the vulnerable target to the left. Quickly killing it then picking off the distracted teragriffs one by one)

As far as we can tell. The dungeon scene isn’t something that will be a massive part of the future. There are already maps that are nearly as profitable when done correctly and these maps have much more replay value as a whole.

I see dungeons as becoming a "beginners’ area for new characters to gear up. An alternative to reward tracks or WvW badges of honor. And not an end goal any longer as man players atm are treating them. And as people transition AWAY from the incredibly predictable dungeons towards less predictable encounters such as fractals or the newer open world pve encounters. There choices will shift towards there truer core play style. Whether that be zerk or otherwise.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

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.

The solution to that honestly is raw difficulty.

Again, huge tradeoffs, especially with CS and engagement, but it should be

“If you’re good enough do pure DPS builds, if you need extra margin of error add defensive stats”.

I believe that’s the concept they started with, but it kind of slid off with the difficulty curve (my pet theory is that it partially links to meta pusher too. People consistently being told they can’t group or are bad for not being zerk end up trying to run it when not ready and getting blown up > leads to complaints, but that’s theory). That’s where cultural manipulation would have to come in, and that problem might be insoluable.

Exactly. It doesnt change the optimal way to do things. So we will still get people complaining.

And the problem with just making things more difficult is that hurts casual players more than it hurts the average player that runs meta builds. You have to be careful with how far you go.

Im glad they have always believed in this approach and that they are finally trying to make it work. Its what ive always suggested when it comes to these threads.

The direction of the fixes seems to be, in essence, adding zerk difficulty by closing gameplay loopholes; for instance, I suspect bosses starting with full defiance instead of 0 defiance will have a larger effect on boss burns than anyone yet expects, as will stability (in certain encounters, no more stacking the corner for molten facility most likely).

The big problem is that it’s really suboptimal to design encounters to poor player culture. If people were comfortable playing what gearset they needed to stay alive instead of feeling that they’re terrible and wful and can’t group unless they gear ‘right’, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.

But how do you even start to fix that? You’re not going to stop DnT from making fun of ‘bads’.

Are you surprised it’s happening though?

Lets go back to car examples

Look at people driving. When the roads are wide open, everyone is content, driving their pace, changing lanes if the person ahead of them is going slower than they want to be going, no conflicts. When traffic hits and people are forced to slow down… Road Rage begins. Why should dungeons be any different? When suddenly you’re held back by other people it causes frustration. People ask for others who enjoy the same play style so they don’t go through the dungeon frustrated because we all play this game for fun and that’s not really a fun situation to be in.

New content should change that up quite a bit as Hopefully it isn’t something we’ll breeze throught he first day and have that expectation like we do in these years old dungeons we are currently running.

I’m not surprised I admit, I can always hope for better ><

Also, the I’d modify road metaphor a bit. A lot of these people never or almost never pug, but they still carry on at great length about the ‘bads’ (you’ll notice I fixate on that term, it’s for a reason: It’s dehumanizing and petty, and to me is really emblematic of the entire attitude and its problems). The guy playing a nomad tank warrior in AC has no effect on an elite speedrun player, the experiences simply don’t interact in game. It only becomes an issue when they begin pushing back and forth across the meta.

This is more like a Hummer on the street being outraged at seeing a bicyclist and feeling the need to force them off the road — or just to mock their choice of ride. Unless they’re in the way (or running stop signs/lights, kitten scofflaw bikers) what’s the gain of being mad at/disdainful of them? And yet people do it.

I can at least partially agree with that. No need to be a jerk. However, the reverse happens a lot. “shut up you elistist, I’ll play how I want!” when you simply give someone a tip on how to approach an encounter… Or the people who feel the need to grief "zerk’ groups just because they don’t agree with the idea that people should be allowed to try and find like minded players.

We’ve had this conversation before though. There are jerks on both sides and it really doesn’t help anything.

And, a lot of people do PUG that talk about that stuff. Just becuase people are in guilds doesn’t mean they stick only to their guild, PUGs IMO can be much mroe fun, it’s more chaotic and less routine.

Jerus.4350:

I can at least partially agree with that. No need to be a jerk. However, the reverse happens a lot. “shut up you elistist, I’ll play how I want!” when you simply give someone a tip on how to approach an encounter… Or the people who feel the need to grief "zerk’ groups just because they don’t agree with the idea that people should be allowed to try and find like minded players.

We’ve had this conversation before though. There are jerks on both sides and it really doesn’t help anything.

And, a lot of people do PUG that talk about that stuff. Just becuase people are in guilds doesn’t mean they stick only to their guild, PUGs IMO can be much mroe fun, it’s more chaotic and less routine.

Yeah we have, I’m hoping we can taper off the thread on “We need to quit being jerks to each other, and we need to quit borrowing offense”