Guild Wars 2

When playing HoT lately, I noticed that players barely use any CC during the relevant phases of a boss fight. Today I witnessed a wyvern matriarch fight that ended with only a minute left on the timer because it wasn’t downed a single time. With 20 people around I felt like I contributed almost half of the CC done. When encouraging players to use more CC someone even asked what that means.

I believe we actually reached a point, where completing bosses has become a lot harder than after the release because people don’t give to kittens about boss mechanics.

Are you experiencing this too? And can we do something about it?

There is not ‘tutorial’. In the core game you are introduced to the idea of dodging early on but once you enter HoT there is nothing telling you this is how this works or that works etc. Not everyone reads blog post that outline new mechanics and it’s frustrating playing with others that have no idea of what I consider basic gameplay.

Unless someone tells them about “boss mechanics”, how would an average player know?

Not everyone goes online to watch a twitch stream, a youtube video, or read wiki notes about a game they are playing. In fact, I bet most don’t at all. There are certainly no in game hints/answers as to what to do in a boss fight.

I’ve been on a boss fight during which people asked “what is CC? Is chill CC?”. Valid question, but difficult to answer in the midst of it all.

Only once, on Mordremoth during the DS meta, did someone calmly explain the mechanic. The number of “thank yous” and “oooohhhhs” was incredible.

misterman.1530:

Unless someone tells them about “boss mechanics”, how would an average player know?

Not everyone goes online to watch a twitch stream, a youtube video, or read wiki notes about a game they are playing. In fact, I bet most don’t at all. There are certainly no in game hints/answers as to what to do in a boss fight.

I’ve been on a boss fight during which people asked “what is CC? Is chill CC?”. Valid question, but difficult to answer in the midst of it all.

Only once, on Mordremoth during the DS meta, did someone calmly explain the mechanic. The number of “thank yous” and “oooohhhhs” was incredible.

Then the average player must be lower than what I expected.

Problem also occurs when no one is saying anything in /s because they are just doing there own thing. To be fair it has been months since break bars were introduced so I would have guess players would have figured out what to do.

It’s one of those things that you cannot learn just from playing the game. You either need to look on wiki, dulfy, youtube etc or be specifically told in the chaos of chat. It’s a casual game. Most players don’t do much research because: game.

So it’s hardly surprising that folk don’t know about it. Even if you know that you a meant to be CC’ing it’s not obvious which of the skills on your bar count as CC and folk get confused between conditions and control. And most bosses still die without any CC, it just takes longer. Global knowledge of it could be greatly improved with a break bar “tool tip” and with CC skills clearly labelled in their description.

I also find it a bit of an illogical and unintuitive mechanic. It feels like a bit of an artificial way to prolong a fight.

Sird.4536:

Then the average player must be lower than what I expected.

Problem also occurs when no one is saying anything in /s because they are just doing there own thing. To be fair it has been months since break bars were introduced so I would have guess players would have figured out what to do.

lower what? Are you genuinely trying to imply that ArenaNets failure to have in-game information about bosses and mechanics is the “lower” players fault?

Would you take a kid from school, who’s never played or seen baseball, make him play baseball, dress him up and make him pitcher, then yell at him for being terrible?

It’s a failure in design for a game if someone has to go to outside resources to get the information to play “properly”, especially for a game that sells itself of being casual friendly.

Yeah. I’ve been learning what my class’s "CC"s are, but It’s really kitten hard to figure out what counts for breaking the Breakbars or not.So far, all I’ve confirmed are Stun and Daze are “CC” skills, but Immobilize and Cripple (The ones I have more access to most of the time) apparently aren’t.

They could really do well with he community by developing some sort of training dummy or instance to help acclimate new players. Something that has a cast to interrupt, attacks to dodge, etc. doesn’t have to be fancy but death definitely needs to be a consequence (or just Downed).

Sartharina.3542:

Yeah. I’ve been learning what my class’s "CC"s are, but It’s really kitten hard to figure out what counts for breaking the Breakbars or not.So far, all I’ve confirmed are Stun and Daze are “CC” skills, but Immobilize and Cripple (The ones I have more access to most of the time) apparently aren’t.

“/wiki breakbar”

I was lucky that I had friends who had been GW2 for a while who explained break bars to me. Still, it was hard to tell which skills ‘counted’ and how much they did because most creatures you face with a defiance bar are in groups. Especially since defiance bars scale with number of players. So if you’re in a large group where not many people are doing CC, it may give the impression that an individual’s attempt aren’t working.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_Bar – lists out ‘hard’ CC and ‘Soft’ CC and what the ‘damage’ CC effects do to the defiance bar. Then there are the things that aren’t on the list. For example, DH traps aren’t on the list because you need to trait Piercing Light which gives traps Daze.

I do think an in-game tool tip/tutorial would be very helpful to get people started. I’ve seen a lot of champ/boss fights where someone calls for CC and there are usually a few people who have no idea what it is.

Sartharina.3542:

Yeah. I’ve been learning what my class’s "CC"s are, but It’s really kitten hard to figure out what counts for breaking the Breakbars or not.So far, all I’ve confirmed are Stun and Daze are “CC” skills, but Immobilize and Cripple (The ones I have more access to most of the time) apparently aren’t.

Stun and daze are hard cc ie do instant damage to the breakbar
Immobilize and cripple are sofy cc which means they do damage over time to the breakbar

It isnt clear in game because prior to HoT this was not explained or taught when tney changed the defiance mechanic and the previous defiance mechanic was woefully inadequate to bother breaking.

They need forced tutorials built right in. One of the first bosses you encounter in the story for example should have went invulnerable until its bar was broken. The NPCs could have called out examples of what to use to break it.

The flying chak that only die when you break them almost provides that, but they can usually be avoided. The final phase of Mordremoth actually does it, but they make it all about the rift so you won’t even notice.

Tooltips should also list breakbar damage.

Or they could change the mechanic to be more obvious and intuitive…

DoctorDing.5890:

Or they could change the mechanic to be more obvious and intuitive…

The blue bar is pretty obvious.

Are you talking about the mordrem wyvern or the one you fight at the end of the nobles’ outpost?

Because to be fair, the mordrem wyvern is not easy to take down; even when people know CC mechanics.

To get to the actual debate. I think Anet could just indicate in the description if a skill is a CC. I’m sure it would help people figure out what they can use in those instances.

Sird.4536:

DoctorDing.5890:

Or they could change the mechanic to be more obvious and intuitive…

The blue bar is pretty obvious.

Yes, the bar is obvious but it’s not obvious what it does, how to reduce it or why you should reduce it, especially if you are just one of several dozen players battering away at the boss. Take a break bar to zero and maybe it means that the boss does not take off, or does not make a special attack, or does not do something else. It’s quite hard to notice that something has not happened in the chaos of battle. Not many folk take the time and trouble to learn each boss’s specific behaviour.

Contrast that with other games where the boss has, for example, a visible shield/aura with its own health bar. It’s very obvious that you have to take that down first and you can see when the shield goes. Similarly with bosses that have more than one hit location. Take out the wings and he can’t fly. Take out the tail and, guess what, no tail attack.

The break bar mechanic is just a bit vague and not entirely logical. I’m pretty sure many players do not even know the terms “defiance bar” or “break bar”. One thing is for sure, just yelling “CC!” in chat never does any good.

Sartharina.3542:

Yeah. I’ve been learning what my class’s "CC"s are, but It’s really kitten hard to figure out what counts for breaking the Breakbars or not.So far, all I’ve confirmed are Stun and Daze are “CC” skills, but Immobilize and Cripple (The ones I have more access to most of the time) apparently aren’t.

stun and daze are hard CC.
As are things like knock down and knock back ( or blowout), pull, float and sink.

Taunt & to a lesser degree slow should probably be classified as hard CC too, since they can’t be removed.

Imob, cripple, chill, weakness are soft CC. They will still count for break bars for most fights.

Fear is a weird in between soft & hard CC, it can be stun broke and condi cleared, but its a hard control effect upon what your character does.

Longer, and stronger CC will do more to break bar ( most things tick like condis do for hp).
But do keep in mind some bosses are immune to some effects, so it is dependent upon the fight as well as your class.

Hope that clears things up.

That silverwastes blue oasis CC myth was busted over a year ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2r0ihb/champion_mordrem_thrasher_platinum_research/

CC doesn’t do anything bad or good to the thing. Please don’t spread misinformation.

DoctorDing.5890:

Sird.4536:

DoctorDing.5890:

Or they could change the mechanic to be more obvious and intuitive…

The blue bar is pretty obvious.

Yes, the bar is obvious but it’s not obvious what it does, how to reduce it or why you should reduce it, especially if you are just one of several dozen players battering away at the boss.

Exactly. ArenaNet introduced these mechanics with the expansion but there is no “training” for this.

They didn’t explain it to the player and it’s not at all obvious what it means (except to people who actually know what it means, I find that most things are “obvious” once you know what they mean). This is particularly true when you’re in a large group and it’s just a grey bar that occasionally turns into a blue bar that starts to go down and then the boss takes off or whatever and angry people start shouting about CC.

I think that one of the biggest issues is that it’s not obvious what (if anything) your attacks are doing to the defiance bar there’s no feedback at all. I mean, when you hit a mob you get floating damage numbers, but there are no damage floaters for the defiance bar.

I’m going for HOPE and needed to kill the Vinetooth Prime. After failing a couple times with more than enough players present, I switched to Venom Share build and by extension forced 4 other players to use hard CCs.

Easy win.

So yeah I agree Anet should add a Break Bar tutorial right at the beginning of VB.

it should not be “trained” to ppl, players should know what to do in certain situations, especially in HoT.
you remember that time when ppl constantly said staff necro’s are useless, that they are to weak and do nothing against bosses.
let me take a moment to laugh at these ppl, i have bin keeping enemies at bay all the time with conditions no ones else uses while other only DPS the boss. (and die in the progress.)

sorry if it sounds like i am gloat right now, i just get that feeling, the feeling of “i told yah so” that is getting annoying after 10 years……

DoctorDing.5890:

Sird.4536:

DoctorDing.5890:

Or they could change the mechanic to be more obvious and intuitive…

The blue bar is pretty obvious.

Yes, the bar is obvious but it’s not obvious what it does, how to reduce it or why you should reduce it, especially if you are just one of several dozen players battering away at the boss. Take a break bar to zero and maybe it means that the boss does not take off, or does not make a special attack, or does not do something else. It’s quite hard to notice that something has not happened in the chaos of battle. Not many folk take the time and trouble to learn each boss’s specific behaviour.

Contrast that with other games where the boss has, for example, a visible shield/aura with its own health bar. It’s very obvious that you have to take that down first and you can see when the shield goes. Similarly with bosses that have more than one hit location. Take out the wings and he can’t fly. Take out the tail and, guess what, no tail attack.

The break bar mechanic is just a bit vague and not entirely logical. I’m pretty sure many players do not even know the terms “defiance bar” or “break bar”. One thing is for sure, just yelling “CC!” in chat never does any good.

It doesn’t help that the only tooltip on the breakbar is something along the lines of “Immune to control effects while active”, which is… misleading as hell, because it implies that:
1. You only need to bother CCing it if you want to CC it.
2. That once you do break the Breakbar, you can actually CC it.

When I first had someone shout about CC’s, I immediately started looking for something for Crowd Control. (It fit since there were littler mobs/adds running around in the fight) Not seeing anything on my bar that would lock down a mob, I brushed it off as a skill I did not have on that particular character. Why? Because Crowd Control is what CC stood for, for me, since 1999 when I first started playing MMORPGs. After the fight, I asked someone what profs had CC abilities and was told “everyone has at least one”. Hmm… that told me to go looking at the wiki for my characters. Even my husband was confused, because also coming from over a decade in other MMORPGs, he started looking for an ability that sleeps/locks down adds as well.

A tutorial as simple as the dodge one would benefit a lot of people, IMO, and the suggestion to implement tooltips/invulnerability on the first boss in the personal story is brilliant.

maze.9713:

When playing HoT lately, I noticed that players barely use any CC during the relevant phases of a boss fight. Today I witnessed a wyvern matriarch fight that ended with only a minute left on the timer because it wasn’t downed a single time. With 20 people around I felt like I contributed almost half of the CC done. When encouraging players to use more CC someone even asked what that means.

I believe we actually reached a point, where completing bosses has become a lot harder than after the release because people don’t give to kittens about boss mechanics.

Are you experiencing this too? And can we do something about it?

Well with the changes from the patch there is also no point in wasting time with matriarch when you can just fight the other bosses instead. I don’t bother going there unless I am somehow absolutely out of options which is basically impossible since there is always the “don’t fight any of them option”. I know the fight but I don’t go because issues you mentioned. The environment of the fight also makes it really crappy for trying to use any sort of melee CC at least half the time. If you are really bothered by this I would recommend bringing one or convincing some Venom Share thieves to join the fight.

The new character boss fight needs to be revamped

Tutorial? Wow and I thought I took too much time when I realized how the CC bars worked after 1 hour of playing.

XxsdgxX.8109:

Tutorial? Wow and I thought I took too much time when I realized how the CC bars worked after 1 hour of playing.

You’d be surprised. The inquisitive mind will, upon seeing something for the first time, will seek to experiment. Break Bars are pretty easy to figure out.

Enemy has a Breakbar
Enemies is not affected by stuns or cripples
Bar goes down when using stuns and cripples
= stuns and cripples move the bar down
When bar goes down, enemy gets stunned for 5 seconds and my attacks do more damage
= breaking bar is good
Certain bosses only have a bar for several seconds during a big telegraph animation
= break bar as fast as possible in that time

But… there’s an issue. For some reason, countless players just don’t get it. I’m not sure why, as the following logic above comes as easily to me as breathing, but the game is full of players who do nothing but spam every ranged attack and utility skill when it is off cooldown.

It is something I’ve said for years now. The game is more complicated than your standard MMO, and there’s a dozen ways to get into a mindset that refuses to learn. There needs to be better tutorials for things.

I think part of the problem is that for the longest time there was the mentality that CC was bad and there were people raging about all the knockback/pull/CC that moved the bosses and now we have a breakbar rather than defiance and CC actually has a purpose other than to kitten off folks that just laid down a nice AoE by moving the enemy out of their AoE field. So lots of folks got used to not using their CCs and now that we need them they’re less sure of how/when to use them.

And if you ever not sure which skills count as hard/soft CCs for breakbars, look at the conditions on the boss: if it’s grey – it effects the breakbar.

Type in “use stuns”

Results should be better.

One thing i noticed and (tinfoilhatmode) what i think is ging on is the old mmo tale of “i have to do x amount of dmg to get my loot” and therefore peeps often do not even slot CC but go for dmg\aoe. I might be wrong though.

It’s hard to figure out stuff in boss fights because there are loads of folks attacking at the same time and you are (hopefully) dodging and healing as well as fighting. You certainly don’t have the luxury of trying a skill and seeing what it does. The meaner the boss,the more chaotic the fight. In the matriarch fight mentioned by the OP half the players are busy avoiding the ads, jumping out of the flames fire and trying to res those that did not.

It’s a casual game. Some folks just want to play it rather than research it. Some other folks don’t like that, but that does not make them right.

I remember playing the day HOT released, so many people, such excitment, mostly vetern players, we still failed Patriach! What is this new green bar? We thought. Luckily someone else had the same question and read Wiki. Over the next few months it was regularly announced in chat, then people moved on and it’s rarely said anymore.

First, assume no one reads wiki and everyone is new to HOT and GW, then consider that half those in the group dont even know what CC is and the other half in the group dont have enough combined CC to break the break bar, but say it in chat just in case its the first one.

My main (Ranger) appears to have only one option, Point Blank Shot, with a long cool down, so I have to be exact when I use it. I appreciated when some one calls out ‘CC Now’.

Blude.6812:

My main (Ranger) appears to have only one option, Point Blank Shot, with a long cool down, so I have to be exact when I use it. I appreciated when some one calls out ‘CC Now’.

Trap skills, muddy terrain, entangle and many pets have F2 cc, even if it’s soft cc, it’s better than nothing. For the pets, you may need to call them back and put them on passive during the non cc phases.

HazyDaisy.4107:

Blude.6812:

My main (Ranger) appears to have only one option, Point Blank Shot, with a long cool down, so I have to be exact when I use it. I appreciated when some one calls out ‘CC Now’.

Trap skills, muddy terrain, entangle and many pets have F2 cc, even if it’s soft cc, it’s better than nothing. For the pets, you may need to call them back and put them on passive during the non cc phases.

Rangers have quite a few CC skills, both hard and soft. Chill on Axe 3, and daze on GS Hilt Bash, and SB 5. Also the taunt from “Protect Me”.

Druids have a few more-Lunar Impact in CA, Glyph of Tides and Glyph of Equality, and Vine Surge on Staff. There’s also a trait in the Druid line that dazes nearby enemies whenever you switch to staff.

CC and their impact on breakbars definitely needs to be explained better in the game. People keep suggesting the first tutorial boss, but that would require Anet giving fresh toons access to CC skills. As it is currently, you typically only have your AA and your heal during that fight, so it would hardly be hands on.

khani.4786:

I think part of the problem is that for the longest time there was the mentality that CC was bad and there were people raging about all the knockback/pull/CC that moved the bosses and now we have a breakbar rather than defiance and CC actually has a purpose other than to kitten off folks that just laid down a nice AoE by moving the enemy out of their AoE field. So lots of folks got used to not using their CCs and now that we need them they’re less sure of how/when to use them.

And if you ever not sure which skills count as hard/soft CCs for breakbars, look at the conditions on the boss: if it’s grey – it effects the breakbar.

CC is still somewhat bad for the Chak Gerent unless you are doing SCAR lane then it is just irrelevant.

Actually it was never really bad when used appropriately but more often useless. Randomly spamming CC on things is still bad.

Silberfederling.9302:

One thing i noticed and (tinfoilhatmode) what i think is ging on is the old mmo tale of “i have to do x amount of dmg to get my loot” and therefore peeps often do not even slot CC but go for dmg\aoe. I might be wrong though.

That is still partially true in GW2. For both loot and event credit. I just did an AB event where you were supposed go around helping pact soldiers with pact medical supplies. I did that for at least half the required number of soldiers but because I wasn’t attacking the mobs it only gave silver event credit. That is not the only time it happens. That sort of thing just trains people to ignore everything else besides attacking mobs even if simply attacking mobs will never progress the event to completion.

I recommend defining your terms in the first post.

sorudo.9054:

it should not be “trained” to ppl, players should know what to do in certain situations, especially in HoT.

Thank you, Mary Sue.

I think you are misinterpreting the actual reason why people don’t use CC. After doing the boss and trying to organize better CC it became very clear and vocal as to why this wasn’t happening. People UNDERSTAND what CC is, but the problems I discovered over months are as follows

1.People don’t want to use builds that include CC because damage builds are what they use.
2.People assume others will CC for them.
3.People just don’t care, and this is not a negative statement. I have had the same thing happen many times over where people don’t like leaders and they jump on anyone trying to win the fight with kind of the same attitude you find in MOBAs. They don’t like being told what to do or how to play etc. People multiple times have literally said, they don’t care about CCing.

The game does not need tutorials, because the minor issues are overshadowed by people who just don’t want to CC or care to. People want an easy hit 1 key, or spam buttons with a zerg. Sad truth is this will never change because as long as they can win the fight, why change it? World bosses are a good example of spoiling people; long fights can be boring and why try if you can’t lose. As many say, this is the casual aspect of the game, but I beg to differ; this is a lazy afk fighting method that really needs to leave the game because it sets a bad trend when actual mechanics are put into the game. The mechanics aren’t difficult, but when you are spoiled with afk world boss content then anything can seem difficult.

Sird.4536:

There is not ‘tutorial’. In the core game you are introduced to the idea of dodging early on but once you enter HoT there is nothing telling you this is how this works or that works etc. Not everyone reads blog post that outline new mechanics and it’s frustrating playing with others that have no idea of what I consider basic gameplay.

If you mouse over the break bar it tells you what to do.

I suspect that a lot of players never slot CC skills and don’t practice using CC.

Pretty much all “damage builds” have CC though. Whether or not you use them is another story. I’m definitely in the #3 too lazy/don’t care camp when it comes to big boss CCs.

Blude.6812:

My main (Ranger) appears to have only one option, Point Blank Shot, with a long cool down, so I have to be exact when I use it. I appreciated when some one calls out ‘CC Now’.

Rangers have so much CC I’m not even going to list it all – all the different weapons, traps, pets, and traits. One of the Druid sigils has a stun on a very short cool down, and you can trait it to add immobility and bleeding.

I’ll explain the fight every time I am a commander if we aren’t hitting the break bars. I can’t help if people don’t know the in game terminology if they don’t speak up and ask. It’s just not feasible to give an explanation of what CC is every fight.

So yeah, from that perspective we need a tutorial, but let’s be real. GW2 is a casual game and quite a lot of players have the WBT mentality of just auto-attacking and waiting for credit. They are looking to be carried while they chat with their friends, which is cool in WBT, but it’s always going to be a problem if the game continues to add meta events that require advanced participation.

Commanders just have no way to deal with people not pulling their weight in a public event, nor can they be given a way, as it would be subject to too much abuse.

What would happen if, when you used CC during the Breakbar phase, it actually popped up the damage you’re doing to the bar in blue (matching the bar) numbers?

Players are trained to make numbers appear. The bigger and faster, the better. So, show them the numbers. It’ll make it easy to know you’re having an effect when other people are fighting beside you, and even help you to learn what skills do the most good in that case. And those that don’t know why the numbers appeared are more likely to ask. We LIKE making those numbers appear, because we’ve been trained that that’s how we win.

There could also be a target dummy put up somewhere that has only 1HP, but is invulnerable unless you break the breakbar. Actually, make it a Hero Point in Central Tyria, and let it reward 5 points when you beat it. That’ll make people really want to do it.

Wanderer.3248:

Sird.4536:

There is not ‘tutorial’. In the core game you are introduced to the idea of dodging early on but once you enter HoT there is nothing telling you this is how this works or that works etc. Not everyone reads blog post that outline new mechanics and it’s frustrating playing with others that have no idea of what I consider basic gameplay.

If you mouse over the break bar it tells you what to do.

I suspect that a lot of players never slot CC skills and don’t practice using CC.

Maybe it tells you on some bars but definitely not on the one I checked earlier. It only said something like “stun when broken”.

Sird.4536:

DoctorDing.5890:

Or they could change the mechanic to be more obvious and intuitive…

The blue bar is pretty obvious.

Yes because a non script blue bar underneath, telling us nothing is so informative…

I use my skills in boss fights, if the blue bar goes down awesome, if it doesn’t go down awesome… I really cannot be asked to google stuff just to play this game…

If they can’t be asked explaining how something works in their game i can’t be asked to work it out..

If the boss doesn’t go down oh well tough luck there is next time, i missed out on more trash greens and blue weapons, tough on me.

Mousing over bars is almost impossible as a million players and effects all smash into it, while im so busy dodging to survive the insanity..

All of the above is pointless as i crash to the desktop in every large boss battle anyway..

I’d be surprised if the majority of the players running events actually have detailed knowledge on how the breakbars work. That even includes something as basic as when to use your CC. Not even talking about the values of soft CC, the damage increase or anything else.

maze.9713:

When playing HoT lately, I noticed that players barely use any CC during the relevant phases of a boss fight. Today I witnessed a wyvern matriarch fight that ended with only a minute left on the timer because it wasn’t downed a single time. With 20 people around I felt like I contributed almost half of the CC done. When encouraging players to use more CC someone even asked what that means.

I believe we actually reached a point, where completing bosses has become a lot harder than after the release because people don’t give to kittens about boss mechanics.

Are you experiencing this too? And can we do something about it?

I’m pretty sure this is a scaling issue. I’ve observed that if you go up against a wyvern with 3-5 players the breakbar is never an issue. But the larger the group, the less likely you are to hit the breakbar.

Just a suggestion, though: Instead of spamming “CC!” when a breakbar comes up, it might be a good idea to provide a quick explanation at the outset. As a new player to GW2 coming over from WoW, I am familiar with the definition of “CC”, but breakbars are a new concept. My initial reaction was “Why should I use CC? I can’t stun/interrupt this guy!” I asked my guild about it and they explained how breakbars work.

AliamRationem.5172:

maze.9713:

When playing HoT lately, I noticed that players barely use any CC during the relevant phases of a boss fight. Today I witnessed a wyvern matriarch fight that ended with only a minute left on the timer because it wasn’t downed a single time. With 20 people around I felt like I contributed almost half of the CC done. When encouraging players to use more CC someone even asked what that means.

I believe we actually reached a point, where completing bosses has become a lot harder than after the release because people don’t give to kittens about boss mechanics.

Are you experiencing this too? And can we do something about it?

I’m pretty sure this is a scaling issue. I’ve observed that if you go up against a wyvern with 3-5 players the breakbar is never an issue. But the larger the group, the less likely you are to hit the breakbar.

Just a suggestion, though: Instead of spamming “CC!” when a breakbar comes up, it might be a good idea to provide a quick explanation at the outset. As a new player to GW2 coming over from WoW, I am familiar with the definition of “CC”, but breakbars are a new concept. My initial reaction was “Why should I use CC? I can’t stun/interrupt this guy!” I asked my guild about it and they explained how breakbars work.

Well if you have 5 people and 3 have CCs that is 60%. If you have 50 people and 3 people have CCs …

hardy.7469:

Sird.4536:

Then the average player must be lower than what I expected.

Problem also occurs when no one is saying anything in /s because they are just doing there own thing. To be fair it has been months since break bars were introduced so I would have guess players would have figured out what to do.

lower what? Are you genuinely trying to imply that ArenaNets failure to have in-game information about bosses and mechanics is the “lower” players fault?

Would you take a kid from school, who’s never played or seen baseball, make him play baseball, dress him up and make him pitcher, then yell at him for being terrible?

It’s a failure in design for a game if someone has to go to outside resources to get the information to play “properly”, especially for a game that sells itself of being casual friendly.

If anet fails to tell us what is what how did I know what to do day one? Oh I know, I logged on, I made a character, and I learned the games mechanics over a couple of hours. Breakbars came out, I logged onto my character, I saw a shiny new breakbar and I experimented to see how it worked. Oh thats how it works, cool.

So yes it is the players fault for either A) not asking questions or not trying to figure out how things work.