Guild Wars 2

The Break Bar system was praised as an allmighty fix for the zerker-meta which is continuously destroying every ounce of fun you could have with this game for years now.

However, this system won’t fix the zerker-meta, it will simply shift it to another prefix.

First: mechanics that are “inspired” from final fantasy 13 are not a good thing.

Second: The way the break bar works shifts the priority of zerker stats to condition stats, and bosses that deal damage becausse they cannot get locked down permanently become an actual threat which is why DD characters will have to resort to soldier stats.

that’s it. that’s everything this change will do.
the only “change” in combat encounters will be that, before the actual damage dealing, players will have to spam their cc abilities in order to make the boss hittable, but that does not fix a broken system, it simply changes the most desired prefix from berserker to either soldier or valkyrie.

what you do need to do to fix this is develop combat situations in which the players need to do something else than simply nuke the boss:
the mai trin encounter in the aetherblade fractal is the perfect example of that.
simply nuking her does jackkitten. the team facing her needs to work together in order to pull her into the disabling field. her encounter is pretty much the only solid boss encounter in the entire game.
lets look at her if this mechanic was not present and instead she had a breakbar… oh look now she’s just a trashmob with more HP, just like every other dungeon or fractal boss in the entire game of guild wars 2.

summary / tldr:
your game needs encounters that require brain, not stats.

Just don’t follow the meta, there done, and play how you want, bam, problem solved.

this is just about the worst possible and least reflected answer one could possibly have written on this subject

at least i can save the effort to write an answer to this because not only it’s not worth one but you probably wouldn’t understand it anyway.

Breakbar has nothing to do with the zerker meta. For one you’ll still be able to break it, causing a generic stun (in old content). But most of all since we’ve been running the same encounters for 3 years we can do them in our sleep, solo/duo them, etc. Only thing breakbar changes is making it easier for pugs to actually use CC properly.

No one will be going soldier and if ppl go condi they’ll be sinister, just as squishy as a zerker.

As for the mai trin example, it’s optimal in zerker gear so I’m lost as to why this type of encounter would “fix” the zerker meta.

mai trin is a good example of dungeon design because her encounter is pretty much the only one in gw2 which does not simply require hitting her until she falls over.

you need to understand her mechanic in order to have any chance at defeating her, and this is what this game needs more of, not a stun mechanic that’s aimed at making CC builds viable.
I understand that gw2 is not exactly ripe or WoW-like raid mechanics, but this game’s should-be most difficult encounters are outshined by the “raids” in godforsaken WARFRAME

and that’s a very sad statement to make.

Have you even looked at the raid encounter they showed last BWE? It’s extremely classic raid style. Passive tanking, heals, requiring group coordination rather than the high personal skill action type gameplay of fractals.

But again, this does not “fix” a perfectly good DPS stat, considering even in traditional MMOs 90% of your raid has the DPS role.

Zerker will still be the “meta” for everything below raids. What people don’t understand, is that zerker isn’t a requirement, it’s a choice.

Looking at the comp people used for the Vale Guardian, it was close to “1 tank, 1 healer, 8 DPS” which is a very normal comp in raids in other MMO’s.

The problem for raiding and the “zerker meta going away” is that people don’t understand what the zerker meta is.

The zerker meta in a raid group would be 10 glass cannons running only utilities that promoted group dps gain. I didn’t see that happening at all in the beta.

CHS.5160:

mai trin is a good example of dungeon design because her encounter is pretty much the only one in gw2 which does not simply require hitting her until she falls over.

you need to understand her mechanic in order to have any chance at defeating her, and this is what this game needs more of, not a stun mechanic that’s aimed at making CC builds viable.
I understand that gw2 is not exactly ripe or WoW-like raid mechanics, but this game’s should-be most difficult encounters are outshined by the “raids” in godforsaken WARFRAME

and that’s a very sad statement to make.

Mai Trin is not good design.

“Her mechanics” my kitten , there are ways to make a boss hard without gating them behind “U CANT HIT ME U CANT HIT ME NA NA NA NA NA NAAAA”

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Mai Trin is not good design.

“Her mechanics” my kitten , there are ways to make a boss hard without gating them behind “U CANT HIT ME U CANT HIT ME NA NA NA NA NA NAAAA”

there are also better cursefilters than replacing every bad word with kitten but anet doesnt give a kitten

mai trins encounter is the biggest challenge in classic gw2 and at least shes got that going for her.
no, the mechanic is not good, but its better than dps > all.

CHS.5160:

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Mai Trin is not good design.

“Her mechanics” my kitten , there are ways to make a boss hard without gating them behind “U CANT HIT ME U CANT HIT ME NA NA NA NA NA NAAAA”

there are also better cursefilters than replacing every bad word with kitten but anet doesnt give a kitten

mai trins encounter is the biggest challenge in classic gw2 and at least shes got that going for her.
no, the mechanic is not good, but its better than dps > all.

Not sure why you think it’s such a challenge. It’s basically just a small kite to the electric field and then dps. Her attacks aren’t even that threatening, you can max melee avoid most of it, only gotta watch out for the spin move. I see more ppl going down because they fell asleep during one of the ridiculously long cannon phazes then during the dps phaze.

CHS.5160:

Ricky Rouse.1583:

Mai Trin is not good design.

“Her mechanics” my kitten , there are ways to make a boss hard without gating them behind “U CANT HIT ME U CANT HIT ME NA NA NA NA NA NAAAA”

there are also better cursefilters than replacing every bad word with kitten but anet doesnt give a kitten

mai trins encounter is the biggest challenge in classic gw2 and at least shes got that going for her.
no, the mechanic is not good, but its better than dps > all.

Mai Trin is not hard, she is anoying and artificially time inflated. There is a difference.

As far as biggest challenge goes, I’d give that to some of the living world stuff like Queens Gauntlet over Mai any day (interstingly, it was way more fun than Mai too).

The “challenge” is not the difficulty of the encounter, but the sole fact that you have to find out how to make her vulnerable, which is something almost no other encounter in this game has, and i believe that gw2 needs more of that to fix the “just nuke er down lel” tactic that currently works with pretty much everything this game has to offer.

also, yes the cannon barrage part is a big chunky steaming smelly pile of bull feces, in every way i could imagine. they should remove that.

CHS.5160:

The “challenge” is not the difficulty of the encounter, but the sole fact that you have to find out how to make her vulnerable, which is something almost no other encounter in this game has

• Claw of Jormag has shield you must destroy, cannot by most weapons due to the DoT effect within 1,000 or so ranger to the shield.
• Each Triple Wurm head has its own shield and mechanic to break down.
• Jade Maw cannot be attacked except by charged Reflecting Crystals.
• Fractal Grawl Shaman has the invulnerability bubble (starts with) that needs to be destroyed via tossing rocks on him.
• Prime Hologram had the color coordination thingie going for it.
• CoF P3 (the Tribune path that everyone ignores) has an invulnerability phase.
• SE P2 (War Minister path that everyone ignores) has golems which have switching invulnerability buffs.
• Ghost Eater (AC boss) has an invulnerability that needs to be taken down by pulling him into traps.
• Evolved Husk, Evolved Destroyer, and Bjarl the Rampager in CoE paths each have their own invulnerability mechanic that must be worked around.
• The Shatterer has a phase where he goes invulnerable until his healing crystals are destroyed or he’s healed for ~25% of his health.
• Tequatl has his shield that needs to be destroyed if the stacking buff gets to 20.
• Molten Berserker’s phase 2 has an invulnerability phase. But people do Firestorm’s phase 2 instead because he lacks such.

That’s not even all of them.

Most bosses – or at least most dungeon paths – do have invulnerability phases and mechanics. But they’re not challenging – like Mai Trin – despite that.

So it’s most definitely not a case of “almost no other encounter” having invulnerability mechanics. It’s more of that none of them – Mai Trin included – can cause much issue once you figure out the mechanic behind their invulnerability.