Guild Wars 2

Or trading. There will be a day when 1 guy/girl is buying all ectoplasm that is aviable to sell it for the double price. I will laugh when people realize that farming dungeons was never a problem.

Where should T6/Gaze/Ori/Silk mats came from? Dungeons too for example.

spoj.9672:

We didnt tailor our traits for anything lol. I simply picked lifesteal and general defensive traits that the average “support” necro would take. Shout heal warriors dont think about their traits they just take the stuff which seems like it supports. Thats exactly what we did. I had several traits which were completely useless for what we were doing.

Lol, the picture of a smelly dull-minded warrior scratching himself saying “duuuuh-Thog take what trait-duuuuh…ooo shout trait look healy Thog like!” just popped into my head (in a very Order of the Stick fashion for those who read :P)

Anyway, the current lack of skill and build variety aside, the choices a player makes is still an active thing. There was still the need to pair all the tankiness with all the healing power otherwise it won’t work.

When a player stacks toughness, vitality and healing power, their effective value increases dramatically as compared to a player who stacks healing power with offensive stats.

Another thing, as a necro, I’m sure you are aware that necros have no easy access to vigor and dodging is not a key element to necro gameplay. To compensate, necros were given a large healthpool and deathshroud.

Yes thats true. And I can assure you as a beserker necro who plays full melee normally im fully aware of how much of a disadvantage that is compared to other classes. The high hp and DS does help some, but its by no means comparable to block, invuln and extra evades.

U should read his Necroguide, DS is usually on cd for max dps/support. Sigil of Energy is king.

Games like this will always have a meta, direct dmg will ALWAYS be favoured in speed runs, because no matter how hard you make it, good players will always favour direct dmg, and the ability to use positioning/endurance control to their advantage. That said, I personally despise the zerker/scholar meta… it’s boring, face tanking is BORING, stacking is BORING. Yes it is “optimal”, yes it is quick, yes it is mathematically the best way to get gold/hour, but it isn’t FUN
I have a couple of points and suggestions which I am sure echo that of many people’s previous posts

a) to fix the balance the key is giving us equally GOOD options, not just nerfing the strongest one. I would not want zerk to be completely useless.. but I would love to see healing power coefficients dramatically increased so that healers have a purpose, maybe if they got access to runes that boosted party member damage when at 90% health or something (similar to scholar bonus), or a way of making conditions attractive in pve.

b) The holy trinity is also, a lazy mechanic. Having one person hold aggro, whilst everyone else hits it in the face, is a lazy mechanic, it is boring, and the BEST thing about gw2 is that it does not have a holy trinity requirement. Giving us OPTIONS means MORE than just dps/healer/tank.

c) The key to this problem, is actually a rather big thing, it’s basically the entire pve combat system. PvE enemies are not challenging. Because of a lack of combat variety. I saw a brilliant post which detailed some possible mechanics for bosses, but honestly.. why not have this for normal mobs too? Boss fights are hit and miss, some have really fun mechanics but the normal mobs are the real dirge of the game. No wonder people just skip them

At the moment, the fractal difficulty scaling = higher level = MOOOOOOAR MOBS = MOOOOAR STACKING because you have to kill them before they kill you, if you aren’t full dps you get overwhelmed and wipe. BUT wouldn’t a cooler mechanic be, the higher the difficulty, the more combat mechanics the mob ai has access to?? e.g.

1-10 = mobs fight like normal, 10-20 mobs have acccess to a dodge, 20-30 mobs have access to dodges, AND projectile reflects, 30-40 mobs have access to dodges, projectile reflects AND melee counter attacks etc etc < this is a random, bad example :P but you get the idea? the fights should be harder because you have to pay attention, you have to look at the mobs, you have to dodge, evade, time your skills – Don’t just give us hoards of mindless enemies! I would rather fight FEWER, BETTER enemies, than a mindless blob, especially at higher levels

d) Final point: this game rewards lazy players. (sorry guys, but it’s true), and that’s ok… that’s part of being “casual” – it’s not a bad thing in itself. The bad thing is not having anything for the people that aren’t lazy, for those that want a CHALLENGE! IMO dungeons should NOT be easy, they should NOT be a face roll. They should be challenging, they should be interesting, and they should be REWARDING. At the moment there is no real challenge to this game, at least nothing that isn’t a straight gear check (fractals) and a zerk faceroll fest…

Maybe we could learn some things from WoW… and one of those things is RAID STYLE CONTENT – dungeon runs on a bigger scale, things that are truly challenging. Things that take weeks to get right, things that guarantee you glory and richness and awesomeness when you DO finally get it done! Things that make you legends.
Raid style content is NOT for everyone, but you would make it totally optional and have it there for the hard core players who are bored out of their skulls and desperately wanting something to do. Even “hard mode” dungeons would achieve this – even “8 man dungeons” would achieve this, it doesn’t have to be a massive scale. I remember doing Urgoz Warren and The Deep in parties of 12… and yes, that was the MOST fun I have had in gw, ever

Parties of 5 are great… but having that as the only option limits this game exceedingly.*

I really hope anet listens to this community, if they balls up this balance they could potentially make every full ascended zerker in the game rage quit and never come back :P

Valdur.2679:

Because of the impact on pvp given the shared pve/WvW model. The condi meta is already stong in pvp, removing the cap would make it insane.

i don’t agree. so it’s ok for you (probably you run zerk) to have no limitation on damage but have limitations on condition damage. i mean it’s like warriors are ok to fight with 2 hands but condition ppl should have to fight with one hand tied behind their backs.

nice.

You do realise condi and trying to defend against or hard counter it is far more meta in WvW/pvp then direct damage lol zerk warriors et al for the main?

If you simply remove the cap in order to increase condi damage in pve, then you make a significant impact upon WvW. That is the case, whether you agree with it or not, and as such it is highly likely one of the reasons why they haven’t done it.

If you really think it should be scrapped and that it will have no impact at all on pvp/WvW then maybe go on the WvW/pvp forums and suggest to them that you think the cap should be scrapped so that you can do more damage in pve. See what they think about it.

And yes, I run zerk for pve and other, more optimal (for me at least) builds for WvW/pvp. I guess trying to suggest to you why they haven’t removed the cap due to the ties between pve and WvW is totally invalidated because I happen to have a mean old zerker for pve play.

SlappedYak.7489:

Games like this will always have a meta, direct dmg will ALWAYS be favoured in speed runs, because no matter how hard you make it, good players will always favour direct dmg, and the ability to use positioning/endurance control to their advantage. That said, I personally despise the zerker/scholar meta… it’s boring, face tanking is BORING, stacking is BORING. Yes it is “optimal”, yes it is quick, yes it is mathematically the best way to get gold/hour, but it isn’t FUN

Zerker have nothing todo with facetanking (cause they can´t) and nothing with stacking.
Full defensive or max offense, stacking will always be superior it´s a problem of the game design not the builds.

Pure Condition should NEVER do the same dmg as Berserker. Because they always have at least 1 defensive stat (thoughness for example means permaprot all the time).

conditions should do as much dmg as a zerker in soldier’s gear. what is the MAIN PROBLEM with conditions in this meta is that they have the 25 cap limitation and this hinders the ability to do condition damage. if the cap were to be removed then condition builds will be FAR MORE EFFECTIVE in a group then they are today.

I think you guys are neglecting the cumulative effect of heals and boons, as well as basic cooperation and that there is more active defense than just dodging.

Though I classify a lot of heals and boons as active defense, a big difference with heals is that they are finite in the damage that they mitigate. This limited effectiveness is aided by 3 additional factors:

Higher health (healing capacitance)
Higher toughness + protection/weakness (heal efficiency)
Additional heals from party members

The third is the most important one. Without the additional healing of extra party members, the limited damage removal from heals isn’t sufficient. It is for this reason that, in dungeon pug runs and group events, Soldiers and Clerics go down all the time, even when paired with each other. When the players split and range at a distance, they cut each other off from their heals, and this causes them to go down. Or, if they don’t properly time their heals or boon application, damage received overwhelms them and they die. When paired with non-healing members, they also suffer from this issue.

So, while the ability to facetank damage and heal it away only works when done collectively, the mitigation from non-healing active defenses works individually and regardless of group composition. This makes the former a special circumstance, and the latter the norm.

Valdur.2679:

Pure Condition should NEVER do the same dmg as Berserker. Because they always have at least 1 defensive stat (thoughness for example means permaprot all the time).

conditions should do as much dmg as a zerker in soldier’s gear. what is the MAIN PROBLEM with conditions in this meta is that they have the 25 cap limitation and this hinders the ability to do condition damage. if the cap were to be removed then condition builds will be FAR MORE EFFECTIVE in a group then they are today.

Yes the conditioncap is to low at the moment, but.

1. Zerkerbuild with PVT Gear is a useless build in a fullzerk group.
2. Conditionbuilds can do PVT dmg, easily (if there is only 1 condition user, true)

There are two playstiles.

- Be tanky enough to facetank everything>low dmg>defense needed
- Be smart enough to avoide everything that can kill u>high dmg>no defense needed

Both are viable.
But u should never mix them within the same group. So there is nothing to nerf, nothing to buff.
If a healing guardin will be usefull in a fullzerk gruop he will be needed.

The only builds that aren´t balanced are rampager using hybrids, the have the same low defensive then berserker builds, but not the same dmg output.

spoj.9672:

I think you will find most speedclearers are very short on gold most of the time. The rewards really arent that great. The only way to make a reasonable profit is to sell arah. Champ farming is far more lucrative afaik.

Yes, I am broke because of kittenpuppygoldfishparakeet silk/damask….but that’s mainly cos I am trying to send 7 kids through Ascended college. But I have to be honest, I have only ever bought gems twice (on release and for Christmas), instead I traded for a whole lot more. I am sure I am not special in doing so, that’s why it has got me thinking.

Champ trains are the most faceroll part of the game players have come up with, but even those farmers will do daily quickies. A good speedclear farmer can probably get ~20g, ~160 empy frags, and 5-6 skillpoints a day from quickies.

As for last boss spot sellers…I’m not sure we’re even supposed to support that.

Shadoekin.3928:

Whether or not this gameplay or a dodging one is anyone’s cup or tea, if a group has a certain cohesive strategy that supports each other through their traits and gear, there is no reason why it should not work.

I completely disagree.
Active defenses, specially dodging, are one fo the key features of this game; they aren’t something meant to be optional.
An absolute reliance on them shouldn’t be forced, but when an over 2 seconds obvious tell precedes an enemy powerful move that is meant to be fully avoided, it should be fully avoided.

The game has many flaws. A DPS setup killing a boss so fast that it has almost no chance to put in test the risk vs reward idea is a flaw. So is a sustain setup not needing to fully avoid any move, not even the most obvious ones.

Lets think on a boss that could attack every, lets say, 4 seconds, with regular attacks dealing about 12k damage on 2k armor.
One of every 3 attacks could be a powerful oneshot move with a long and obvious animation, that should be fully avoided (there’s enough time between them to naturally regain enough endurance for a dodge on any build unless affected by weakness, which should be more common btw).

A full damage group would need to fully avoid almost everything; regular attacks are damaging enough to just oneshot certain classes (which could still sacrifice some damage for vitality and survive; their choice). A 30 second mark would be fair, IMHO, for this kind of setup.
A sustain oriented group should only evade the big oneshot. Just with over 3k armor ratings and protection, a not hard to reach 900HPS would be enough to sustain every regular attack. Downing the boss would take this setup something near 2 minutes.
A middle ground group, with less healing capabilities, would kill it faster than a sustain one but be more reliant on active defenses to stay alive (half of the regular attacks should be avoided).

This is obviously one of the simples and crappiest bosses ever designed.
Regular attacks could be different, some being condition based, some being AoE. The big oneshot could vary between a proper single target oneshot and a powerful AoE which should not need to be strictly a oneshot (it should for the damage setup) but hit hard enough for the defensive setup to react and start avoiding some few regular moves. The boss itself could place boons on himself or summon adds at some HP mark.
A lot of changes are possible. My description just tries to bring the general idea about the concentration/skill required for each setup along with some time marks that, IMHO, are fairly reasonable.

The biggest flaw on this game is the dungeon design itself.
It shouldn’t allow damage oriented setups to obliterate bosses, nor it should allow sustained groups to facetank everything.

Dungeons in Guild Wars 2 reward players who enjoy organized parties, epic challenges, and delving deeper into the secrets of Tyria.

If something is meant to be challenging for organized parties, then it should, at least, address how organized parties usually work. Fairly optimized builds, a good level of sinergy between characters, communication … all these things should be expected.

My personal experience tells quite the opposite.
We didn’t know the dungeons for the most part, we had no deep understanding of the game, didn’t looked for sinergy in our builds … some players were even using the same setups they had for WvW roaming
We had wipes here and there and our first dungeon experience was indeed quite a shock, but we still managed to complete without many issues every dungeon we stepped in. This shouldn’t have worked.

Then, someday, you find yourself wathing some Fractured live stream where you see a dev team running a new lvl39 fractal.
Not an old explorable dungeon designed way before the power of some tactics and setups was known; not a lvl10, which is enough for any casual player to get ascended rings and even fractal weapon skins … no, a new/overhauled map, at freaking lvl39, using completely weird things like a double pistol thief.

The question that remain is, do devs even try to balance their own designs for different setups and the general idea of risk vs reward to work as intended?

Norjena.5172:

Dire will be OP. Think>Post

Pure Condition should NEVER do the same dmg as Berserker. Because they always have at least 1 defensive stat (thoughness for example means permaprot all the time).

Eeeeh… you realize that I never said that I’d replace all enemies (or even half or w/e) with such new types of enemies?

Since you gave the advice from your high horse, let me throw it right back at you: Read → think → post. You forgot an important step.

Ideally we’d end up with 6-15 basic types of enemies, and it would so happen that for each possible player loadout, there’s at least one which is their “nemesis”. Auto-cleansing enemies, uncrittable enemies, high-toughness-low-HP enemies, armour-piercing enemies, etc.

LordByron.8369:

You didn t have warriors burst ready for grubs….

Lupi ate 4 grubs in that playhowyouwant video. That also amplifies his damage quite a bit.

You didn’t watch the video and have absolutely no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Just as usual. LordByron random acts of derailing threads with inanity.

Nikaido.3457:

LordByron.8369:

You didn t have warriors burst ready for grubs….

Lupi ate 4 grubs in that playhowyouwant video. That also amplifies his damage quite a bit.

You didn’t watch the video and have absolutely no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Just as usual. LordByron random acts of derailing threads with inanity.

Ignore the fact i just pointed out lot of stuff like permaprotection and the banner ress and the builds….

Then proceed to find a detail i missed….

Use it to totally avoid to say anything useful and proceed with personal Attacks….

I wonder if people noticed that are Always the same 5-6 posters to do this….if not feel free to look at dungeon section and how friendly and constructive it is……

The best part is that they keep complaining everywhere and argue with everyone….and still 0 suggestions.

P.S. clicking on post history helps also….

Well lets see the issue as it is
1. zerker do to much damage versus non zerker build and make everything else look noobish even when its not
2. Just because your tanky doesnt mean you dont die in 2 hit
3. Spec wich uses pet are looked down on because of the fact they deal minimal damage, yet if we increase the spec damage they will become to strong in pvp and potentialy take over the wvw
4. support are not needed right now because zerking guys can do the same role without specing for it and down boss in so little time they get to avoid all the dangers of the fight

Possible solution to make thing viable
1. Reduce all zerker gear critical damage to 1% effectively making all zerker unable to reach above 70% critical damage when fully buffed (leaving them very good dps but not making that dps overwelming for other spec).
2. Upgrade every other spec damage to a point where the pvp will be broken because support will overheal everything and minion master necro will be able to destroy you within 6 second.

I think the choice is prety much obvious.

Norjena.5172:

U should read his Necroguide, DS is usually on cd for max dps/support. Sigil of Energy is king.

This is the brainy aspect of GW that I love. Traiting for and then knowing when to use stuff like Weakening Shroud to support, or even Transfusion makes this game more than just a double-tapping keep pressing 1 fiesta.

There is a real sense of accomplishment when you see your team going down and then planting a Well of Blood around them right before turning into a Plague and blinding everything to save them all. Same for the elementalist who uses Unsteady Ground to let a teammate escape and then switch to Water to heal him.

All the little tricks are not being explored by a generation of players who just steal dps builds from guru or this forum because it’s just that good. The videos posted of tanky players going through Arah were not done by lowskilled players. I mean seriously, how many of us think that the normals will see those videos, think they can casually faceroll through Arah, craft tanky gear and then go in and complete it?

kyubi.3620:

Well lets see the issue as it is
1. zerker do to much damage versus non zerker build and make everything else look noobish even when its not
2. Just because your tanky doesnt mean you dont die in 2 hit
3. Spec wich uses pet are looked down on because of the fact they deal minimal damage, yet if we increase the spec damage they will become to strong in pvp and potentialy take over the wvw
4. support are not needed right now because zerking guys can do the same role without specing for it and down boss in so little time they get to avoid all the dangers of the fight

Possible solution to make thing viable
1. Reduce all zerker gear critical damage to 1% effectively making all zerker unable to reach above 70% critical damage when fully buffed (leaving them very good dps but not making that dps overwelming for other spec).
2. Upgrade every other spec damage to a point where the pvp will be broken because support will overheal everything and minion master necro will be able to destroy you within 6 second.

I think the choice is prety much obvious.

both would ruin part of the game…if anything www and pvp have less players…

But there is a third option.

Look at how some builds have access to offensive/defensive support while being full dps.
I.E. balance pve professions.

Nikaido.3457:

LordByron.8369:

You didn t have warriors burst ready for grubs….

Lupi ate 4 grubs in that playhowyouwant video. That also amplifies his damage quite a bit.

You didn’t watch the video and have absolutely no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Just as usual. LordByron random acts of derailing threads with inanity.

Well the guy has elected to put lord in front of his name so what do you expect? lol. You’ve seen Lord of the rings now witness Lord of the basement!

Vargamonth.2047:

I completely disagree.
Active defenses, specially dodging, are one fo the key features of this game; they aren’t something meant to be optional.
An absolute reliance on them shouldn’t be forced, but when an over 2 seconds obvious tell precedes an enemy powerful move that is meant to be fully avoided, it should be fully avoided.
-snip-
The question that remain is, do devs even try to balance their own designs for different setups and the general idea of risk vs reward to work as intended?

Active dodging is part of the game for sure, but not every player will trait in such a way that they can keep dodging. Some professions give themselves Vigor, increase Endurance regen rate, recover Endurance with each dodge, and as it was pointed out, slot a Sigil of Energy.

Before the Dec 10 update, they was an outcry from players when the devs wanted to change a certain vigor giving trait, and is a good indicator to how we may have become too dependent on that mechanic alone.

But that creates a culture of “you better have that trait or you are bad” and prevents build diversity. This has actually forced the devs to make sure all Endurance-related traits are low level. Some players might want to try a build which will not have those things and should be able to compensate elsewhere….be it cooldown reduction on mitigating skills, disengage skills, disabling skills, or even something passive like armor.

Players need to be given a choice, and there must be opportunity cost. Otherwise why even make those traits a choice and instead be simply inbuilt into the profession?

As for game design, well, perhaps that is just the limition of the game engine. GW2 might just be a prettier version of GW1 and cannot support the boss mechanics of other MMORPGs. I doubt we will ever see a boss which has phase changes and morphs into different forms through the fight. As it is, GW2 is prone to bugging out when there is a lot of scripting involved.

On the devs trying to balance risk vs rewards…all I can say is Anet is probably more concerned with PVP and entering new markets like China than PVE.

kyubi.3620:

4. support are not needed right now because zerking guys can do the same role without specing for it and down boss in so little time they get to avoid all the dangers of the fight

Wrong. Supports cannot gear up for support, there’s no stat in gear for that role. Well there’s a tiny amount of boon duration on a single gear set but it isn’t a very relevant set.

You support by traiting for it and using the correct weapons. And zerk speed runs use support builds because they provide more DPS and survivability to the team than solo DPS boosting builds anyway.

Support doesn’t mean healers. Support is anything that helps your team while not really doing direct damage. Stacking might, stacking vulnerability, giving fury, placing a banner that boosts crit chance etc… All that is support and there’s a lot of it in the best zerk groups.

Once again, the reason Zerk is the best gear is because it’s the best gear for Damage role, gear doesn’t matter for support role and gear doesn’t matter for control. So you might as well take DPS gear for all 3 roles. The only case where DPS gear isn’t the best is for a healing support type but it means a healer role more than a support and ANet doesn’t want this role in GW2 anyway.

Just putting this one out again: The game is meant to center around damage control and support and not tank heal and damage.

Begging to make tanky gear better misses the aim of this game.

Give players the option and the need to have a “supportive build” without him having
to forsake the damage department. Remove the need for boon duration and healing power.
Buff the base values, lower the availability so that your commitment comes from weapons, traits and utility choices, not from armor.
Buff the base health for classes like thief or ele, in PvE only. If you have classes with 10k health you can not simply add in abilities that will hit for 5k no matter what you do without making these classes either go tank, which was not intended in the first plays or way harder then other classes.
However without some damage that gets through you, boons like protection and regeneration aswell as party healing or defense banner/strength in numbers wont matter a thing. If you need a player to commit to it and therefore have him participate less in killing the boss, people will just try and seek ways to get around these mechanics or simply don’t bother with the dungeon at all (Hi mr. aetherpath, how are you doing today).
Make control useful for bossfights. Give bosses abilities to interrupt. Dreaming of permastunning a boss is just what it is, a dream. However controling adds that get spawned by the boss in order to kill them befor they kill your party, that can be achieved.
Bosses are not trivial because zerker lets you ignore mechanics. Bosses are trivial because they lack the mechanics in the first place. If your party lacks in damage, you failed with 1/3 of what this game should be about. The problem isn’t that damage is too strong, the problem is that support is just too weak and cc neglegtible for most trash/all bosses.

Shadoekin.3928:

Norjena.5172:

U should read his Necroguide, DS is usually on cd for max dps/support. Sigil of Energy is king.

This is the brainy aspect of GW that I love. Traiting for and then knowing when to use stuff like Weakening Shroud to support, or even Transfusion makes this game more than just a double-tapping keep pressing 1 fiesta.

There is a real sense of accomplishment when you see your team going down and then planting a Well of Blood around them right before turning into a Plague and blinding everything to save them all. Same for the elementalist who uses Unsteady Ground to let a teammate escape and then switch to Water to heal him.

All the little tricks are not being explored by a generation of players who just steal dps builds from guru or this forum because it’s just that good. The videos posted of tanky players going through Arah were not done by lowskilled players. I mean seriously, how many of us think that the normals will see those videos, think they can casually faceroll through Arah, craft tanky gear and then go in and complete it?

1. Sure u have to think when u use DS, i wanted to say, it´s usually not always rdy. U have to safe it if u know something big is coming soon.

- i do arah every day in zerkers gear, usually without deaths, only sometimes stupid mistakes (dogding into the ******* corpse which i avoided 1000000 times before)

- it is possibel to clear it with having no clue about the dungeon by just stacking enough defensive and using “usual” supporty builds. A Hammerguard or shouthealwarrior shouldn´t be a exotic builds that nobody knows how to play. I think a necromancer is a “bad” supporter in terms of healing allies. A engineer could do a much better job (even in stacking weakness). Two Eles are waste of potential too.

That´s what the video can tell us, just look about the ele, i think he definitly knows how to play (cause i know him). But he did his best to make enough mistake too simulate “rnd brainless clicking” Staff Air AA vs singeltargets for example.

They could max out their overheal by far. Add a ranger/engineer, let the ele use Water AA only and so on. Probably a second guard or 1 who can give permaprot+ healing symbols+ F2 passiv healing for all (boonduration and/or a ranger for protection>no need for WoP makes place for healing symbols).

Use min/maxed healingbuilds to create much more synergie. What u see is just “buy defensive gear and trait what looks like support”. Not a video of the most powerful defensive possibel.
This will be much harder.

Probably i can find people to make a real min/maxed tanky video in other dungeons. Facetanking TA trash or Leurant or the champion icebrood wolf in CoE would be nice for example.

What im saying is class wich use pets should have at least equal damage to zerker spec or nearby damage to compensate for their ability to disrupt mobs.

Either they reinforce pet to the point they become zerkerlike and kill everyone in pvp (minion master already works way to well in spvp because of zerk player low health and armor wich makes them easy prey)

Or they reduce all zerker spec damage in pve by reducing the gear critical damage maximum bonus to 70 (wich is somewhat close to the pvp 50s but still way above)

Im not asking to reward tanking im just asking for a revalue of non direct dps spec like condition damage and pet users. As far as tanks and invinci healers goes they can nerf them to.

Shadoekin.3928:

Vargamonth.2047:

I completely disagree.
Active defenses, specially dodging, are one fo the key features of this game; they aren’t something meant to be optional.
An absolute reliance on them shouldn’t be forced, but when an over 2 seconds obvious tell precedes an enemy powerful move that is meant to be fully avoided, it should be fully avoided.
-snip-
The question that remain is, do devs even try to balance their own designs for different setups and the general idea of risk vs reward to work as intended?

Active dodging is part of the game for sure, but not every player will trait in such a way that they can keep dodging. Some professions give themselves Vigor, increase Endurance regen rate, recover Endurance with each dodge, and as it was pointed out, slot a Sigil of Energy.

That’s why I said that a complete reliance of dodging and active defenses shouldn’t be forced.
However, every character regains a dodge worth endurance every 10 seconds. There’s no excuse for facetanking everything and not dodging some powerful and well telegraphed move taking place on a lesser rate.

Shadoekin.3928:

Before the Dec 10 update, they was an outcry from players when the devs wanted to change a certain vigor giving trait, and is a good indicator to how we may have become too dependent on that mechanic alone.

If we are talking about Vigorous Precision, I don’t know how things went on PvE related discussions. I somewhat cried for it myself, but from a pure tPvP standpoint, where I play mostly support/bunker Guardian and where I think a change like that would be such a huge nerf that the class would be ruined without any other form of compensation.

Shadoekin.3928:

Players need to be given a choice, and there must be opportunity cost. Otherwise why even make those traits a choice and instead be simply inbuilt into the profession?

Well, this is a well known issue with the current trait (even utility and weapon) system, both for PvE and PvP.
It’s not like builds arew written in stone, but there are indeed too many hard to give up options (and a lot of crap).

Agony.3542:

Just putting this one out again: The game is meant to center around damage control and support and not tank heal and damage.

Begging to make tanky gear better misses the aim of this game.

Give players the option and the need to have a “supportive build” without him having
to forsake the damage department. Remove the need for boon duration and healing power.
Buff the base values, lower the availability so that your commitment comes from weapons, traits and utility choices, not from armor.
Buff the base health for classes like thief or ele, in PvE only. If you have classes with 10k health you can not simply add in abilities that will hit for 5k no matter what you do without making these classes either go tank, which was not intended in the first plays or way harder then other classes.
However without some damage that gets through you, boons like protection and regeneration aswell as party healing or defense banner/strength in numbers wont matter a thing. If you need a player to commit to it and therefore have him participate less in killing the boss, people will just try and seek ways to get around these mechanics or simply don’t bother with the dungeon at all (Hi mr. aetherpath, how are you doing today).
Make control useful for bossfights. Give bosses abilities to interrupt. Dreaming of permastunning a boss is just what it is, a dream. However controling adds that get spawned by the boss in order to kill them befor they kill your party, that can be achieved.
Bosses are not trivial because zerker lets you ignore mechanics. Bosses are trivial because they lack the mechanics in the first place. If your party lacks in damage, you failed with 1/3 of what this game should be about. The problem isn’t that damage is too strong, the problem is that support is just too weak and cc neglegtible for most trash/all bosses.

I’m not sure if people want tanky gear to be better because it’s pretty good where it is now. Wanting better tanky gear also implies that people want to tank, but that isn’t exactly possible because GW has no definable aggro system. The reason why Anet did not want the trinity might not be so much philosophical as the possibility that the game would require a complete overhaul to incorporate aggro calculation and their servers would not support it.

What we want is, as you said, better ability to support. Be it through control, healing, or boons. Currently seeing how healing power is so useless, it’s strange that we have gear with that stat instead of gear with boon or condition duration. And Defiant is another relic from GW1 where bosses have reduced condition and hex durations.

If healing power gets usefull in a PvE Zerkers gruop it gets needed. And we´ll destroy the game as it is now.

Healing power is needed and usefull if u play in a tanky group.

I´ll just qoute myself.

There are two playstiles.

- Be tanky enough to facetank everything>low dmg>defense (healing/defensive support) needed
- Be smart enough to avoide everything that can kill u>high dmg>no defense (healing/defensive support) needed

Both are viable.
But u should never mix them within the same group. So there is nothing to nerf, nothing to buff.
If a healing guardian will be usefull in a fullzerk group he will be needed.

The only builds that aren´t balanced are rampager using hybrids, the have the same low defensive then berserker builds, but not the same dmg output.

Make CC skills interrupt an attack on defiant enemies.

Neoheart.2750:

Nikaido.3457:

LordByron.8369:

You didn t have warriors burst ready for grubs….

Lupi ate 4 grubs in that playhowyouwant video. That also amplifies his damage quite a bit.

You didn’t watch the video and have absolutely no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Just as usual. LordByron random acts of derailing threads with inanity.

Well the guy has elected to put lord in front of his name so what do you expect? lol. You’ve seen Lord of the rings now witness Lord of the basement!

Oh my….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron

The ignorance…..

P.S. if you are too Young forgive me, you ll probably study him soon at school.

Mightymealworm.8409:

Make CC skills interrupt an attack on defiant enemies.

A lot of big attacks are to fast for most CC skills, animation/boss attacks have to be changed. And not everything should be interruptable.

But the idea is good.

Lol, ok I’m too lazy to cut out all my own quoted text so I shan’t quote at all.

This is a response to Vargamonth.2047.

I agree with you in somewhat, however I don’t think players want to purposefully facetank…other than certain people who enjoy the feeling of being in godmode (generally the people who came from traditional MMORPGs and were guild main tanks). But even those people have the understanding that their survivability means they hit with pillows. What’s more they’ll never see any real use to their tankiness as there is no taunt in the game and aggro tends to go to the player who does more damage.

For PVP I would dare say it is a lot different from PVE which is really a grind. PVE players almost never change their builds and stick to the dps meta for speed clears. Playing the same profession the same way everyday does get old. I hate to see good players get bored and leave the game when new MMOs get released simply because GW2 makes them feel like a one trick pony.

With the rather lacklustre living story and the grindy nature of getting end game gear, playing GW2 is not doing itself any favors if it limits itself in any way.

Norjena.5172:

Mightymealworm.8409:

Make CC skills interrupt an attack on defiant enemies.

A lot of big attacks are to fast for most CC skills, animation/boss attacks have to be changed. And not everything should be interruptable.

But the idea is good.

Ergh, tell me about it. Even trying to use Wail of Doom on a necro when trying to knockout the interupt daily achievement gets iffy.

That´s it, CM P3 Wahlen, the guy with 2 attacks.

1. grenade
2. alot of grenades

To make him interruptable the animation have to be changed, much slower. Because at the moment u can´t interrupt it. To make CC viable anet have to overhaul 80% or more of alle bosses ingame. To give them strong but interuptable attacks.

And they have to add new attacks. To make CC viable, if u just can dogde everything cc will be ignored most times. Hard to balanced if u want to be able to clear the content which every setup.

In fact it means. If CC is needed it´s bad (not every group can do the content), if it´s not needed it´s bad too (cause nodody wants a hammer warrior for example).

Boring i know but that how the devs want to see GW2 PvE.

Norjena.5172:

Both are viable.
But u should never mix them within the same group. So there is nothing to nerf, nothing to buff.

This is very true. But it still gets annoying when as a dps ele, u seem to have aggro from everything and are forced to disengage and then supposed zerker warriors in the group get angry cos u kited the mobs away from them.

Never lava font before the warriors 100b, heck just don’t dps until they do. This ends up with the dps ele doing support more often than dps. That’s part of the reason why I would like support to be buffed, so it’s as good as dps when you find yourself having to switch.

I see a lot of people worried about conditions being too strong, they suck in pve, but in pvp they are king. It’s because pvp and pve are two different games, and really should be treated thus. I would like to stress that I believe the best way to balance this game is to fully split pvp and pve. Like, different skills, different traits, or as in gw1, split stats of skills, base line dmg, pet health, etc etc.

Go in melee problem solved. U do 10% more dmg if u´re closer then 600 too the target.

And this is the mainproblem u have without a tank. Chaotic combat if the group is not stacked.
U lose both DPS and support if u don´t stack. And it doesn´t matter if the group is 100% Zerk oder 100% tanky, u will lose dmg and support if some1 uses ranged combat. Most times.

For me personally this is the main reason why im waiting for other games now. I think they can´t fix it it´s impossible. It would be easier to create GW3 instead.

SlappedYak.7489:

I see a lot of people worried about conditions being too strong, they suck in pve, but in pvp they are king. It’s because pvp and pve are two different games, and really should be treated thus. .

Fact. Now make Anet see the light…

All of this wouldn’t be much of a problem if GW2 would have a similar “damage type” system as GW1 had.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Damage_type

If there would be different enemies with different weaknesses in each dungeon, groups would need to equip a bigger variety of gear. We would even have to consider taking other classes that may be more efficient at dealing with a certain boss/enemy type. Yeah, if every dungeon would have enough different “type” of enemies, there would be some motivation to have every class and much more builds in the raid.

Sadly, it’s all dumbed down to direct damage and condition damage.
Good ol’ times.

:(

Fenrir.3609:

Valdur.2679:

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

hi jon,

why is there a condition cap limit? why have you limited condition builds so severely? this has made the game so UNBALANCED between pure damage and condition damage.

if you guys would remove this stupid limitation i think the game would be so much more balanced and people would consider conditions as a viable and reliable source of damage as well. just remove the 25 stack limit and the other conditions limits (some only stack 5 times in length) and let condition builds have their say in this game.

poison should be stackable too because it’s such a weak damage dealer unstacked.

make those changes and i’ll guarantee you a much more balanced meta then this currently is. do not nerf zerks just let the condition builds have a fair fighting chance!

just a few clicks and voila! people would have a real and viable alternative source of damage and build variety for groups. zerkers would look with much more interest into conditions then they currently are. zerker population will decrease naturally and not forced by any meta. some of the zerkers will transition into a more balanced build naturally. you’ll see.

thank you.

Because of the impact on pvp given the shared pve/WvW model. The condi meta is already stong in pvp, removing the cap would make it insane.

No it wouldn’t. I can’t remember a single time I’ve been near 25 stacks of anything in PVP or had a long duration burn.

Direct damage already stacks/is individual and it’s numbers are higher, why would having individual conditions be broken?

And they have to add new attacks. To make CC viable, if u just can dogde everything cc will be ignored most times. Hard to balanced if u want to be able to clear the content which every setup.

In fact it means. If CC is needed it´s bad (not every group can do the content), if it´s not needed it´s bad too (cause nodody wants a hammer warrior for example).

I don’t see this beeing a bad thing as long as every class has the potential to bring some form of CC.
If your party composition is irrelevant you wont encourage build variety. As long as every class is capable of fullfilling every role (roles are still supposed to exsist in this game, however classes are supposed to be able to unite all 3 roles, damage, cc and support withing their builds, which is not the case) this is fine.

spoj.9672:

Its not like bosses take a minute to start attacking.

The bosses attack slow enough that with a couple of dodges and some aegis that full zerker groups can avoid damage entirely while someone sacrificing DPS for anything else will end up forcing everyone to tank those hits. The problem isn’t that zerker teams are faster and more efficient than non zerker teams. It should be that way. The problem is that they’re TOO fast and efficient for the risk factor to present itself in many encounters.

Norjena.5172:

Go in melee problem solved. U do 10% more dmg if u´re closer then 600 too the target.

And this is the mainproblem u have without a tank. Chaotic combat if the group is not stacked.
U lose both DPS and support if u don´t stack. And it doesn´t matter if the group is 100% Zerk oder 100% tanky, u will lose dmg and support if some1 uses ranged combat. Most times.

For me personally this is the main reason why im waiting for other games now. I think they can´t fix it it´s impossible. It would be easier to create GW3 instead.

Yea it’s the less than 600 Fire staff ele dps build. But it’s pretty much the price we pay for trying to use a organized grp build with randoms. Same for piercing life blast might DS necros.

Black Box.9312:

spoj.9672:

Its not like bosses take a minute to start attacking.

The bosses attack slow enough that with a couple of dodges and some aegis that full zerker groups can avoid damage entirely while someone sacrificing DPS for anything else will end up forcing everyone to tank those hits. The problem isn’t that zerker teams are faster and more efficient than non zerker teams. It should be that way. The problem is that they’re TOO fast and efficient for the risk factor to present itself in many encounters.

Exactly, they are dodging therefore they arent bypassing mechanics. And their dodges will be back before the next attack so its not like they must kill within 2 dodges or they are dead. Same goes for tanky gear except that they have room for error and it takes them longer to kill the boss. Low dps specs arent forced to tank hits because of the low dps. They are forced to use active defence for a longer period of time. Which is completely fair seeing as they have sacrificed dps for a larger margin of error.

You would have a point if dps groups didnt even have to dodge or block a single attack. But thats not the case. Even when you use FGS most people use a block or evade the first attack so it doesnt get interrupted. This is not mindless bypassing of mechanics. Its strategic.

Black Box.9312:

The bosses attack slow enough that with a couple of dodges and some aegis that full zerker groups can avoid damage entirely while someone sacrificing DPS for anything else will end up forcing everyone to tank those hits. The problem isn’t that zerker teams are faster and more efficient than non zerker teams. It should be that way. The problem is that they’re TOO fast and efficient for the risk factor to present itself in many encounters.

No, u have no risk if u´re tanky enough. Aegis/Dogde are active migtation which is rewarding players who can use it.
Players who can´t shouldn´t get this reward. They can play tanky and will get their gold/tokens too, only a bit slower.

Alot of bosses btw have too much health (not less). Hotw or cliffside fractal 40+ for example, the first/last boss are boring but have way too much health.

Even Alpha is ok if u are not using FGS u have to dogde multiple times, if not u die. There is a risk.

If u want to nerf zerkers for getting gold to fast, u should ban all traders too. And champ farmers. And Silk farmers again.

Zerk or go home is only a problem in PvE.

And that is because of the nature of the opponent one faces in PvE.

If you truly want to fix it, an overhaul of the mobs is going to be required, and no going for the low hanging fruit nonsense, because the Devs will just end up hanging themselves.

Pull at least some of the people off the festival distraction teams and dedicate them to overhauling the current content so that more stat arrays are viable/desired than pure Zerk.

Some but not all the mobs are going to need their target dps output to be rebalanced to be more attrition based, whether via rapid auto attack chains or condition damage.

Some but not all the mobs will need a re-balance in their effective hit-points by reducing vitality and increasing toughness, so that power damage does not unconditionally (har!) reign supreme.

The current shortbus mob aggro rules need to be brought back closer to the old ruthless GW1 calculations where mobs by and large favored attacking close by players at low health, much like how players in pvp react to juicy targets.

And make sure that in “harder” content they start factoring in special things like immunities and rezzing the fallen for determining current targets.

Defiance in its current stat is horribad for multiple reasons and needs to go. Give the bosses and lower tier mobs abilities more akin to players; such as stun breaks and condition clears and non instant reapplication boon spam.

And if this ends up making a single boss too easy to ping pong stunlock, redesign the encounters so that there is more to it than burning down a single drooling meatsack of hitpoints to win, such as reinforcements, and encounter based on multiple hard targets, etc.

This will have the side effect of making some people relearn how to play. Soften the sting a bit by adding in an earn-able and in game trade-able token currency that allows players to swap out the stat array on a piece of their Ascended gear per token spent. Make sure you give out at least one free set of these when implementing the content redesign or you are going to have a bad time.

Fixing the problem virtually requires bring PvE design closer to PvP design; and trying to skimp on this in any way will court disaster.

Norjena.5172:

No, u have no risk if u´re tanky enough. Aegis/Dogde are active migtation which is rewarding players who can use it.

Dodge is clearly an active mitigation, but I can’t agree with Aegis.
Aegis is active mitigation in PvP, where you can’t know what’s going next and you’ve to use it right during the attack animation you want to avoid.
With a 20s base duration (25s for meta builds), aegis behaves more like fire and forget skills in PvE. You can safely precast them to completely ignore the first attack or to ensure that each party member has an evade mess covered is a short enough fight (where there won’t be exactly a lot of evades).
In a REALLY short fight (and/or against bosses with low attacks rates), chaining 2 of them can be enough to finish the job without worrying too much about evades.
Lupicus first phase is probably the best example: With enough DPS (far from an insane amount), VoC and Retreat are enough to completely ignore kicks (just dodge grubs), which is the hard part of meleeing it (probably of the whole fight if we have a Mesmer with feedback).

Blumpf.2518:

Some more Boss Mechanics would be nice.

1. Faster Boss attacks. So that they deal not 20k Damage every 10 seconds, but 2k Damage every Second if you are in Melee Range and the Boss hits you

2. Cleave attacks: If the Group stacks in a corner or in Front of a Boss, why not give him a Cleave that hits all 5 people. -> Stacking removed

3. Make some bosses have very high armour and low life points -> Conditions are good vs that Boss. -> Direkt Damage Full Berserker Builds deal not much damage

4. Make some bosses have very low armour and many life points -> Conditions are bad vs that Boss. -> Direkt Damage Builds deal much damage

5. Give some Bosses a Retaliation Buff that reflects a percentage of the damage. Something like 10-20% maybe. If the 100-Yolo-Berserker-Warrior hits the boss for 30k Damage, he will have 3k-6k Damage reflected Back

6. Gives Boss an AoE Damage Aura -> you cant Melee him

7. Let the Boss make a player a “bomb” that explodes and Deals AoE Damage -> prevents stacking

8. Make a Boss invulnerable to direct Attacks unless 3 Players press a switch simultanously -> Fight is more about Corrdination and not about DPS. Would also make Conditions better, which could still tick on the invulnerable boss

9. Let the Boss Mind Control 1-2 Players for 5-10 Seconds. And then let the Group have fun with not killing the classcannon Fullberserker Players while at the same time be hit really hard by the mind controlled player.

10. Make the Boss rooms less exploitable. If a Bossfight starts -> close doors so people cant run away. Futhermore remove Corners in that room so people cant use the infamous “stack in the corner and hit the boss while the boss is in the wall and does no damage”-strategy (Ascalon Spiderqueen cough )

11. Give the Boss a “Rage” Mechanic. The Faster he looses Life, the faster the boss will hit, run and use skills. And the more Life a Boss has lost, the more damage he does. That combined with the Cleave Mechanic should wipe out the fullberserker glasscannon groups really fast.

….

and im sure there are some more mechanics you could use to make life harder for berserkers.

Dont forget to throw reflection in there in order to make ranged players use melee weapons every once in awhile.

Just not perma reflection on ALL the mobs within a given area; having to basically afk through a fight blows if you don’t have enough non projectile typed skills to make an attack chain.

It’s just as irritating as making fights always permanently non melee.

Overkillengine.6084:

Just not perma reflection on ALL the mobs within a given area; having to basically afk through a fight blows if you don’t have enough non projectile typed skills to make an attack chain.

It’s just as irritating as making fights always permanently non melee.

Whenever a mob has an annoying reflective aura or buff, I wish a mesmer could just go Shatter Enchantment or something.

Another thing which is irritating are high hp targets who seem to be able to block and evade every other second prolonging a very stupid fight (ahem champ gravelings and Priestess of Lyssa).

Ahlen.7591:

Fenrir.3609:

Valdur.2679:

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

hi jon,

why is there a condition cap limit? why have you limited condition builds so severely? this has made the game so UNBALANCED between pure damage and condition damage.

if you guys would remove this stupid limitation i think the game would be so much more balanced and people would consider conditions as a viable and reliable source of damage as well. just remove the 25 stack limit and the other conditions limits (some only stack 5 times in length) and let condition builds have their say in this game.

poison should be stackable too because it’s such a weak damage dealer unstacked.

make those changes and i’ll guarantee you a much more balanced meta then this currently is. do not nerf zerks just let the condition builds have a fair fighting chance!

just a few clicks and voila! people would have a real and viable alternative source of damage and build variety for groups. zerkers would look with much more interest into conditions then they currently are. zerker population will decrease naturally and not forced by any meta. some of the zerkers will transition into a more balanced build naturally. you’ll see.

thank you.

Because of the impact on pvp given the shared pve/WvW model. The condi meta is already stong in pvp, removing the cap would make it insane.

No it wouldn’t. I can’t remember a single time I’ve been near 25 stacks of anything in PVP or had a long duration burn.

Direct damage already stacks/is individual and it’s numbers are higher, why would having individual conditions be broken?

Yes, it probably would.

No cap on condi in an already condi/counter condi driven WvW/pvp meta could potentially be a major issue. Hence I offered a siggestion as to why ANet are probably loathe to simply removing it.

I gather when they remove this condi cap or otherwise nerf zerk, they are going to nerf PVT, bunkers and condi in WvW and pvp and bolster lolzerk at the same time right?

I mean, if these 100b noob speed runners killing the game are getting the shaft in pve, then they are going to get major buffs in pvp right, instead of having to go pvt regen et al. Otherwise it’s just not cricket is it.