Guild Wars 2

If you notice in the latest POI there was a mob with a second bar under the health bar, with the Unshackable icon in front and green color. Does this mean Defiant is getting a rework and is now a bar instead of a number?

If that’s the case, then simply changing it to make it more visible isn’t much of a change. Although if it’s a bar it’s much more visible to players, and they can clearly see how their skills affect the boss, but why stay there?

I think the best thing they can do, is make different types of CC do more “damage” to that Defiant bar. For example a long duration stun like Earthshaker should remove more points than a 1s daze like Headshot. Also, traits could change to add extra CC damage (while keeping their other benefits).

I think changing Defiant into a bar, instead of stacks, is an excellent way to make CC more useful in the game, and give CC oriented builds a chance to shine, since their skills will remove more from the bar than from other players.

Thoughts?

Still useless in bigger encounters, as there is no way to coordinate CC in a big group. Unless they change it so that the mob will be vulnerable to CC for a small period after defiance wears off, instead of just one single CC that happens to be the first.

As WP pointed out, if it is a bar that regens with time, that is a very interesting change to the mechanic. Then people can get a clutch daze/interrupt off by bursting CC’s, but can’t stunlock bosses.

It looks like a “shield”, to me so I think it could represent that “tough bark” that we can use to our mastery powers to rip off and expose the succulent Mordrem underneath, yum!

Another possibility is that the blue bar had to do with the “enrages” text on the mob that had it. The icon for Unshakable is also used on Veteran Karka for their first phase, but it’s a different effect. Very possible that (since this was just a normal mob), they’re re-using the icon, but for a different effect.

Playing a control spec has never really been viable in PvE. Hopefully the change will open up the possibility of playing a control spec. They sold us the game that “Control” was one of the three ways to play and left out “..but not in PvE.”

Iason Evan.3806:

Playing a control spec has never really been viable in PvE. Hopefully the change will open up the possibility of playing a control spec. They sold us the game that “Control” was one of the three ways to play and left out “..but not in PvE.”

Control is more than knockbacks and stuns. Cripple, immobilize, chilled, blind and even Weakness are all conditions which help you “control” the fight, and Anet has started making them a bigger deal in recent updates (Terragriffs and Vile Thrashers come into mind) That being said, making more traditional CCs more useful in everyday PvE would be a plus.

My Take on the bar? Stun/Knockback effects (and perhaps Mastery-related skills) will now take chunks off of Defiance to stun, depending on type, intensity, and unlocked Masteries, instead of each CC effect taking off only one layer, regardless of what skill was used.