Guild Wars 2

So I’ve said this in many posts, many threads in one way or another and really, I’m going to make a much, much larger post outlining my exact thoughts on the issue later this month when I have more time, but I just want to get this out there to the devs before it’s too late.

Give the players the tools.

You (the developers) say that it is a problem that people can 1v1 the lord. You say that the lord is too easy to take down. Your proposed solution is adding NPC healers and such to make it impossible to 1v1 and hard to take down even with a full team. Instead of resorting to NPC mechanics, how about you let the players do the work?

Basically what we need are strong single ally targeted support skills. They don’t have to be heals, they can, for example, apply protection. The point is, though, that suddenly the players themselves can prevent people bursting down the lord and, even better, they can now try more varied team compositions due to not having to have X number of bunkers.

With decent support skills, the event of teams bursting down a poor guardian bunker while he’s moa’d would have a solid counter. You still wouldn’t be able to tank but you would be able to prevent bursts every now and again and maybe the occasional downed state here and there. The only ‘support’ we have to speak of is AoE, namely, shouts and water fields. What we need are strong single target skills.

Developers: If you’re reading this, I get that you don’t want to bring back the trinity, but the approach you’re taking is misguided. You need to take a look at support first and foremost. Yes, team fights will become longer (Is this a bad thing?), no, we won’t have boring stale mates because support skills won’t be cumulatively strong enough to keep up teams indefinitely. I’d love to hear a dialogue on this issue, if nothing else. I’ll post some mockups of skills I’d like to see (no class in particular) to give you an idea of what I envision.

• Protective Spirit: Applies protection and regeneration for 10 seconds. Removes a condition. Cooldown 40 sceonds. single ally targeted Uses old animation for the sake of the old days.
• Mark of Protection: For 8 seconds, each incoming attack is negated and the target is healed for X. Cooldown 90 seconds. single ally targeted (This will be the pseudo-invulnerability skill – I don’t like invuln but it’s in your game so…) Note that X will be low(no heals back to full from burst). Pick an animation of your choice.
• Shield of Deflection: For 5 seconds, the targeted ally blocks all incoming attacks. Cooldown 40 seconds. single ally targeted Pick an animation of your choice.

I used GW1 skill names because I don’t trust my naming sense.

Advantages of implementing these types of skills:

• Burst prevention becomes a thing, rather than waiting till downed state
• It becomes feasible to send one person to reinforce the lord
• Team fights in high level play become longer, the idea of ‘pressure’ returns, which will only add to the depth. Will be a bonus for casting as they can now talk about such things.
• Low level play relatively unaffected – the coordination needed to effectively use what few support skills you have will scarcely be found in teams not using voice communications.
• Team composition designers are given more freedom as they will no longer have to be so strict on general toughness/vitality.

Disadvantages of implementing these types of skills:

• Not strong enough to be of much use to disorganised teams, perhaps fitting a ‘niche’? (though you could argue shoutcasting support is already fitting a ‘niche’)
• May become ‘mandatory’ skills much like portal, epidemic, etc etc.

Note that you can read its effect on low level play to be both an advantage and a disadvantage.

As always, feedback is appreciated, I’ll gladly add to the list of disadvantages if you make a compelling argument.

Just to clarify, the entire point of this thread is to talk about support. Not specifically foefire, nor the lord mechanics.

GW2 philosophy seems to be that you help each other and yourself simultaneously or just yourself.
Which I suppose is fine, there are multiple supportive abilities that would help the lord but some just aren’t practical to take. Ranger spirits weren’t paper and a tad stronger than stone spirit could help protect the lord. If Npc’s have strong co-efficients on attacks/heals than Banners boost them significantly. Engineers have boosts they can throw on the lord with elixirs but they’re random so that becomes unreliable.
Staff Ele’s can throw geyser on him to try and keep him up but he’ll likely move out of it.
I doubt they’re going to change their current skill dynamic and throw in new wrenches into balance because of Foefire.

I don’t think Lord healers was set in stone but a statement to show that the Lord’s current defenses are inadequate. Throwing in single target skills changes the game.

There is plenty of stop Players can do to assist a lord but some of them are pretty weak atm, and in addition the Lord is just too easy to dispatch as an individual and so to remedy that he needs better support when players aren’t there to baby sit him, hence giving him healers.

The reason it would be for the NPCs is because this mechanical fault of the inability to control and keep up reliably a rather squishy AI that is worth 150 points, ie the Lord, is limited to Foefire and Foefire alone at the moment. There is no reason, no matter how much you might clamor for it, to rework the entire skill dynamic from group support/positioning vs. controlled targeting to controlled targeting vs. controlled targeting.

I personally prefer the former as it is; I had my fill of whack-a-mole back in GW1.

Vena.8436:

There is no reason, no matter how much you might clamor for it, to rework the entire skill dynamic from group support/positioning vs. controlled targeting to controlled targeting vs. controlled targeting.

Where did I say I wanted to rework the entire skill system? I must say it is getting rather tiring to propose suggestions and then get shot down as though I am trying to fundamentally change the game. Disagreeing with me is fine, but please don’t make it out to be that I am proposing to bring back energy pools, remove dodge, add cast bars, disable jumping etc etc and return to GW1 (which is what I assume you’re implying when you reference ‘whack a mole’ e.g spike meta, which btw wouldn’t work either way in GW2)

ensoriki.5789:

I doubt they’re going to change their current skill dynamic and throw in new wrenches into balance because of Foefire.

Foefire was just an example of where I think the developers are going wrong. They could take foefire out of the game and I would still advocate for these types of skills.

ensoriki.5789:

GW2 philosophy seems to be that you help each other and yourself simultaneously or just yourself.

Seems to be the case, though it doesn’t seem to be very conducive to team play does it?

ensoriki.5789:

Throwing in single target skills changes the game.

It changes the game, but you could say the same about just about anything, whether we’re talking about changing a skill description or otherwise. Now you may mean that the proposed changes affect gameplay in a big way, but really like I said above, the effects would by no means turn everything on its head. It would certainly be less of a ‘game changing’ thing then buffing warrior and necromancer, for example. I know this will come off as abrasive, but could we just discuss the changes on their on merit?

ensoriki.5789:

There is plenty of stop Players can do to assist a lord but some of them are pretty weak atm, and in addition the Lord is just too easy to dispatch as an individual and so to remedy that he needs better support when players aren’t there to baby sit him, hence giving him healers.

Indeed it is one solution, but wouldn’t it be far more exciting to see a caster watch a single guy go back to reinforce lord and have the entire outcome of a match essentially come down to a 1v1? I’m just giving this example due to the emphasis the developers are putting on #ESPORTZ

I admit readily that it will be easier for the developers to simply add NPC healers, but ultimately what we all want is the best possible PvP experience. If you believe that my changes would be worse than implementing NPC healers then explain why (other than simply being more than a cosmetic change to the game).

Just to clarify, the entire point of this thread is to talk about support. Not specifically foefire, nor the lord mechanics.

Seems to be the case, though it doesn’t seem to be very conducive to team play does it?

But it is? Well if you disagree I suppose you can try running Venom Share by yourself and seeing how well that works. These support skills are aoe but they still require co-ordination and an eye.

There’s plenty of support in GW2 but like I said it’s either underperforming and needs adjustment (Ranger Spirits) or can be somewhat problematic to use (Geyser) or in the worst case scenario it’s random (Elixirs).

ensoriki.5789:

Seems to be the case, though it doesn’t seem to be very conducive to team play does it?

But it is? Well if you disagree I suppose you can try running Venom Share by yourself and seeing how well that works. These support skills are aoe but they still require co-ordination and an eye.

There’s plenty of support in GW2 but like I said it’s either underperforming and needs adjustment (Ranger Spirits) or can be somewhat problematic to use (Geyser) or in the worst case scenario it’s random (Elixirs).

My point wasn’t that no support exists, clearly that would be a stupid point to make. I’m just saying that both single targeted support skills and AoE support skills should have their place. It would be foolish to completely abandon the powerful engineer water fields for one thing, just because of a handful of single targeted skills being added. Each type of skill has its place.

For example, I don’t run a ranger but its entirely possible spirits are UP and need balancing, but that is precisely the point, there it would just be a balancing problem. My issue is that single targeted support skills do not exist.

If they were simply UP I could just complain here and there like everyone else does about the thief (lol) but the issue is more pressing than that.

I’m not proposing we take anything away, I’m proposing that we add to the game.

They effectively already exist via small-target Gtaoes, and it’s unlikely any actual skills will be added to the game outside of an expansion.

ensoriki.5789:

They effectively already exist via small-target Gtaoes

Except that small radius GtAoE support skills are just a crutch for real single targeted skills. For example: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Water_Trident Look at the radius of that skill. How is it feasible to use that effectively in sPvP when everyone is teleporting, gap closing, strafing all the time? Often times it’s difficult to even use it on yourself when you have to dodge and strafe much more pressing AoE that will down you if you don’t get out of the way immediately.

Maybe I’m being facetious here but in that case can you list a few examples of skills that are actually effective and reliable for use with single targets so that I can use them myself? Thanks :P

ensoriki.5789:

it’s unlikely any actual skills will be added to the game outside of an expansion.

If this was GW1 I would have agreed with you, but look at what’s been happening lately. In the next few patches alone we’re getting warriors and necromancers seeing changes to almost every trait line, I assume new skills (for stun breaking?) or at the very least a re-purposing of the existing skills in a big way. I don’t think it is a huge departure from what we’ve already seen to add a handful of new skills.

I think giving player targeted hit-scan heals is a bad idea. The game has been designed without them because they do not want combat to drag for an obsurdly long duration. You could argue that more ground targetables would be good to have, and frankly I think that could be an interesting application, but I think it you put heals into this game then they should be 100% skill shots, somewhat similar to nades, but probably with long CD’s too. Another real problem with adding more support skills to the game is that bunkers are already a pain, and if you can heal them for substantial amounts then it would extend the fights and make it dreadfully tedious to bring some bunkers down.