Guild Wars 2

Thats something that bothers me since release. In most mmorpg or similar games going full glass cannon comes with alot of problems, like something just needs to look at you and you die. In gw2 some classes, especially thief and mesmer can go full glass canon and at the same time are very hard to kill. I think thats not good for the game itself. Some classes have mechanics that gives them enough damage mitigation and damage avoid so they dont have to really bother with thoughness/vitality. Their are two ways to fix this, lower the effectiveness of those mechanics or lower the base thoughness/vitality of those professions. I dont even want to talk about WvW where some classes like rangers can go full power/crit/condition without any real drawback.

My main is a mesmer thats not a QQ thread about specific classes.

In most mmorpg or similar games going full glass cannon comes with alot of problems

No it doesn’t. Full glass cannon ranges from optimal to required for many, many characters in most MMORPG’s. Hell, we’ve got an entire category of character called “DPS” as if the entire character were just a glorified attack skill.

In virtually every game like this, burst damage is easier to use than it is to counter. If one player dumping all their cooldowns into a target simultaneously isn’t enough burst to kill them nearly instantly, you team up and do it with two characters. It’s always a popular and strong strategy. There are very few problems in PvE or PvP that can’t be circumvented with enough burst damage.

It’s not surprising at all to see GW2 in the same position.

no. a skilled non-glasscannon player can beat anytime a glasscannon thief. i repeat: a skilled player can beat cannon glass. cannon glass thieves are easier than mesmer btw

@ Stice You never played any other mmorpg pvp at a competitive level I guess? Lets take WoW as an example because its the one that is well known by almost everyone. Enter arena with full PvE gear without resilence and tell me which rank you will get.

@ Shukran, you basicaly say people are forced to play a tanky spec to beat a thief. Isnt that a problem itself? Against alot of non tank/point def specs a thief (we talk about usefull builds) has a i-win button simply because he can almost automaticaly stick to its target and does not really care about stun breakers or condition removers. On my mesmer I feel like kittening myself if I dont go full burst, the only reason why I dont is because I dont want to run into a decent condition engi or necro without some tankyness.

All of the pvp necks have at least some degree of toughness and vitality, with the Berserker’s being sort of an outlier because of how little vit it has. Runes are different of course, but I’d say you choose those as much for the effects as the stats they give you.

And the difference between suvivability versus glass cannon gear in this game is far far smaller than the pve/pvp gear gap in WoW imo.

Mayama.1854:

@ Shukran, you basicaly say people are forced to play a tanky spec to beat a thief. Isnt that a problem itself? Against alot of non tank/point def specs a thief (we talk about usefull builds) has a i-win button simply because he can almost automaticaly stick to its target and does not really care about stun breakers or condition removers. On my mesmer I feel like kittening myself if I dont go full burst, the only reason why I dont is because I dont want to run into a decent condition engi or necro without some tankyness.

i didn’t say anything about the spec you play. i said non cannon glass can beat cannon glass. and cannon glass is not the only dps spec you can do.

@ Stice You never played any other mmorpg pvp at a competitive level I guess? Lets take WoW as an example because its the one that is well known by almost everyone. Enter arena with full PvE gear without resilence and tell me which rank you will get.

The only reason that is the case is because Blizzard developed the resilience system specifically to counter glass cannon builds because they dominated the game. The first two years or so of WoW PvP was basically glass cannons killing people during the duration of a 4-second disable.

Dark Age of Camelot, Aion, Warhammer, Guild Wars, various MOBA games…All of them had player-driven mechanics like assist trains, coordinated target switches, counting down “3…2…1” over voice chat so people could line up their skill activation times to all hit simultaneously. All of those strategies support the use of glass cannon character builds, where you optimize for burst damage and defense is a secondary concern that you either fill in with the baseline stuff available to your class or pick up after you’ve capped out your offensive stats.

Glass Cannon is probably better for dueling when you have more skill then your opponent, or for glory farming in open sPvP. Beyond that, it really isn’t all that great. In team fights, it means you have a lot of difficult in the downed state metagame, as exposing yourself for a stomp or revive can be very bad. As a point defender, obviously you can’t last that long. When paired with defensive support, there isn’t of a frame to defensively augment. Heck even with paired with offensive support you are in danger of being blown away by a burst combo when you lack cooldowns. (Read, what everyone complains about on these forums because shockingly, most people are glass cannon)

Simply put, I think glass cannon is best for glory farming in open sPvP and situationally in tPvP. For the most part though, competitively, it’s not really that ideal. Frankly the downed state alone is enough of a reason to justify not using glass cannon builds.

Something to think about is how everyone has access to dodge. If you assign a value to dodge depending on the gear you use, you will find out that dodge is way more valuable to a glass cannon build than a defensive build. Dodge gives enough room for a skilled player to avoid the big damage giving them an advantage when going glass cannon.

Maybe a different approach to dodge ANet could take is have the endurance bar scale depending on the amount of thoughness/vitality you have. So for exemple, in a glass cannon build the full endurance bar would allow you to dodge 1.5x and on a defensive build, dodge around 2.5-3×. With the regeneration of the endurance staying the same for both or maybe slower on the build too.

Something to think about.

This has been a problem in most MMOs with any class designed the way thieves or mesmers are designed in this game. For example in wow the devs had a tremendously hard time getting rogues not to wear PVE gear even in PVP because the class was basically set up aroudn not letting your opponent hit you period.

IMO it’s actually less of an issue in GW2 that in other games because of the downed state.

For opting to make your character a glass cannon aren’t you relying on your own skill and prowess to not get hit? Glass cannon builds do not bother me at all. If they are bad you will kill them easy if they are good and understand their class they will give you a run for your money