Guild Wars 2

This is a good change. In a game where you can rebuild your entire character in seconds and every class can fill every role pretty much there is really no reason why we shouldn’t have to use the full range of possible specs.

The problem with Trinity in MMOs isn’t that there is a need for tanks and healers, it’s that you need to very specifically build a tank or healer and as a result nobody gets to play the game if people who like building those kinds of characters aren’t available.

In Guild Wars 2 however that pretty much can’t happen, since essentially every class has the capability of filling every role.

Granted, we haven’t quite reached the holy grail of RPGs yet where everyone just does whatever they want and the groups success comes down to how well everyone does that thing rather than what that thing is. But when we get there, yea, people will be playing tanks and healers right along DPS.

Ganathar.4956:

Not true. The only reason why tempest must be “better” is because it does what an ele can already do, but worse. An elite spec is supposed to be different.

Yea, but what could it possibly do that Elementalists don’t do already?

The biggest problem with Tempest is that people seem to think that Tempest must be an upgrade to what they are doing right now, which is simply not the case. Tempest isn’t supposed to make all current builds obsolete, it’s supposed to be one of many possible builds.

The fundamental issue ANet needs to address is that it’s currently way too easy to make an ideal build and literally thousands of other build possibilities are viewed as useless as a result. So sure, as long as that’s broken nobody is going to be happy with getting something added to the game that isn’t better than what they got in every way.

Meh, NC Soft is the devil. If they shut down a game they don’t let anyone else buy it so the fans can have a chance to keep playing, they just put it away for good. Never liked that company, and having it associated with GW2 is not really doing anyone who likes this game any favors I think.

Khisanth.2948:

If you have decided that you definitely MUST play with that kind of people then yes otherwise no.

The problem is that there are people who both enjoy challenging themselves to attaining top performance and playing a necromancer. Those two are not mutually exclusive, which is why you can’t simply say. “Sure your class is an impediment to killing bosses quickly, but you can always play with people who don’t mind that.”

That said, the biggest issue with Necros and Rangers and why they aren’t welcome in “meta” groups is because pets often screw up what should be a simple tactic (Such as “stay behind this corner until the enemy archers walk around it and then we can AoE their ranged and melee units at the same time”). Rangers also habitually screw up defiance because they just cannot stop themselves from using long bow 4 every time it’s up, but nobody needs bosses to take a 5 foot little jump, they need bosses to get frozen for 5 seconds by icebows reliably.

Movement speed boosts are one of those things that people are going to want to have active at all time, because it’s both convenient and extremely powerful. (In PvP being faster than your opponent by even just a small margin gives you a ton of ways to avoid fights you would lose and force them when you’re sure of victory. In PvE there are tons of monsters that are just easier to deal with if you can walk slightly faster than them.

Jekkt.6045:

i don’t know why you think this is the same as the current meta, the sword is a duellist weapon… obviously i have also made traits that help staff skills and scepter skills but there is literally nothing in it for a d/d ele other than stances for which you’d have to drop cantrips and fire/earth line.

50% stronger blasts, 2 second extended fields, weavers frenzy.

Basically the only thing that would happen with this spec is people would use the exact same build as the current meta except drop water from it, since all that’s used for is the 20% extra damage while using ice bow.

You can even get those 20% back by getting ferocious stances and firing off Elemental Lord before you go for the burn.

Like I said, overall this is simply a straight upgrade to the meta, and I don’t see anything in it that would make people go for an entirely different approach.

Linken.6345:

You do know that precursors can drop from any mob right?

Why people do wurm and teq is for their specific ascended boxes that award armor or weapons.
and people do other specific events for collection rewards they can use or sell on tp like ogre wars rhendark and jormag

Point is and remains that simply running around and adventuring is not very highly rewarded by the game compared to going after specific, scheduled events.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ascended armor offers a 5% stat boost over exotic armor (which you can buy off the TP or get from drops fairly easily).

It’s the infusion slots that matter, not the stats. If you have no interest in doing fractals ascended armor is nice, but not necessary, because the ability to carry Agony Resist is the one thing that makes ascended armor a big deal.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

No, in HoT they are introducing daily map rewards. Each day a different Tyria map (and a separate HoT map) will offer a daily bonus for completing events on that map.

They gave examples of T6 mats, or Lodestones.

This means you will be greatly rewarded for playing all the different maps and completing the events there.

I didn’t know about that, that sounds like a good step in the right direction! Hopefully the rewards will make it worthwhile to just explore and adventure in a natural way instead of following an event schedule.

Dadnir.5038:

In short, you’re asking for meaningfull karma vendor (for players at high end content), ain’t you?

That would be a start. I don’t mind the concept of random drops though, I just mind when what should be random actually means you’re restricted to maybe 1% of the total content of the game because nothing else has a chance for the good drops.

Miss Lana.5276:

This might possibly be covered in the redoing of the map rewards, unless I am misunderstanding you.

Like the completion reward? That would be nice, but it’s about the stuff in the game you do more than once. So much of the game ends up being repetition that it would just be nice if you could do any and all parts of the game over for the best rewards.

When you get to the endgame stages of Guild Wars 2 you very quickly find yourself doing the same things over and over again. Whether you’re grinding in the Silverwastes or doing Fractals every day or lining up to fight Teq after every reset, it very quickly seems monotonous. You realize that the most efficient way to play the game at the high end is to follow a very specific pattern of content where you chase a specific set of events and enemies that are known to drop valuable loot.

This wastes one of the biggest strengths of the game: The fact that by its core design none of its content should ever become entirely meaningless to you. You can go into a level 15 zone on your level 80 character and do some events, get a decent baseline of loot and not horribly upset the balance of the game for other people who are there. That’s something that is quite unique in MMOs, and easily one of the best parts of GW2.

Yet somehow the loot scheme for endgame rewards is built in such a way that discourages playing the game like that. Retreading old areas, participating in whatever events you happen upon, and actually sticking around any individual region is not at all rewarded. Instead you need to hop all around the map with an itinerary of events with the best loot chances.

The fact that people know exactly which monster has a chance to drop a certain precursor doesn’t add up to making anyone really happy when it drops, it just leads to a lot of frustration from players when it doesn’t drop for them in hundreds of attempts. After all, people are there with the specific expectation of getting that item, and RNG is only working to meet or disappoint that expectation. At no point does the randomness of it create a pleasant surprise.

If the drop was truly random, and you could get anything from any monster anywhere provided you have enough magic find and a high enough level it would be an entirely different story. People would be able to do whatever content they actually enjoy. Since there is no one single roll for the item you want you don’t ever get the frustration of expecting it and not getting it. Instead you get the thrill of finding something that you weren’t expecting at all.

Get people back out in the world and simply adventuring and discovering. It’s alright if doing certain harder pieces of content still yields the most chances to get endgame drops. However, people should be free to depart from a rigorous schedule of hitting one predetermined event after the next without seeing the bottom drop out of their chances of ever getting anything worthwhile.

Give people the freedom to really explore and experience the world back. If you see an event you shouldn’t simply run off if it isn’t on the list of events that drop awesome items, you should be able to go into it and have the time you spend there be worth it all the same. The fact that GW2 doesn’t have content obsolescence built into its core game is one of the biggest strengths of this game. Please don’t take that strength away by having only certain content give a chance of top notch rewards.

I think they should first change how you get legendary. What legendary represents is one item that can act as any other item, so from my perspective, the recipe for any legendary should be like “10 ascended items of this type with different stat combos”. That way in order to get legendary items you have to get exactly the thing that legendary item will replace your need for.

Kind of like how in Terraria if you ever own 4000 arrows you can just craft them into an infinite pouch of arrows, because the game simply acknowledges you’ve made enough of them where you won’t ever run out anyways, so why not stop counting.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

One thing I’ve never understood is how it could be done in a game with a world wide trading post. Unless it’s account bound, even a low chance translates to several to hundreds of the same thing a day getting dropped and many ending up getting sold.

I don’t really see that as a problem. For one they can adjust the chance of something dropping very easily, and thereby regulate how many of them enter the game. Secondly, the much bigger factor in whether or not an item is extremely valuable is demand for the item. There is a reason why the precursor for legendary greatswords cost ten times what a legendary torch precursor costs, or why enameled red dye costs 400 gold and enameled brown only 50. Warhorns went up in price the second they revealed the Tempest details and then dropped again after everyone found them wanting during the beta weekend.
The cost of things in this game depends much more on what value players assign an item than its actual occurance. It’s only items that everyone wants and hardly anyone has that blow up to absurd prices.

Let’s put it this way: If you think crafting sucks because of how grindy it is, wait till you see what it takes to get ascended gear without crafting.

This game uses random loot all wrong. You know exactly where you have to go to get the loot, you just don’t know how many times you have to do the same content to ever see it.

In order for random loot to be fun and not just a huge pain in the rear it has to actually be random.

You’re killing a monster somewhere, for no particular reason and it randomly drops something awesome that you didn’t expect – that is fun.

You’re killing a specific, powerful monster for a certain item and there is only a tiny chance of getting that item – that is not fun.

The designers need to reevaluate how they use random loot. It can be used as a great incentive to do a lot of the regular content of the game, and travel around the world and do a lot of adventuring if absolutely everything in the game has a chance to randomly drop something really cool. Or it can lead a lot of people to total frustration or even stepping away from the game entirely because they feel cheated when they do the same content over and over with no reasonable expectation of ever getting a reward.

This is basically a spec line that just makes playing the Elementalist similarly to the current meta even more powerful. Two extra seconds on any combo field? Spamming projectile finishers through big cooldown fields to get them off cooldown pretty much instantly?

This proposal is only well thought out if you’re looking for something that will make Elementalists basically play the same, except far more powerful, not if you’re looking for something that actually changes their play style.

The masteries are supposed to be horizontal progression, not vertical progression. They aren’t supposed to be a stronger version of what we have, but something new.

Narrrz.7532:

healing is a very small subset of support – are military medics the only personnel considered “support”?

Healing skills, gear and specs however is a very substantial subset of features in Guild Wars 2.

If they had put different mechanics in the game instead of all of those nobody would be asking for healers.

Remember, none of this discussion is about adding something new, it’s about letting people use what’s there.

Ranael.6423:

Well almost every single weapon set brings all three aspects in a form or another, sometimes the support is more personal, sometimes more group oriented. Then your traits allow you to emphasize one or two aspects. Finally gear, as few to do with your build but only affect your comfort zone, only exception ow being condi build which can only work with a condi gear.

How does any of that matter? The fact remains that because every build can do everything only the builds that do so in the absolute most efficient way are viable if you don’t want to give yourself a skill ceiling that you can’t go past.

NikeEU.7690:

Every character is Control, DPS and Support all in one. No dedicated roles was intended. Everyone contributes to everything. Sorry you don’t like Guild Wars 2!

Well, not everyone, only the 4 best builds. I mean if everyone does everything there is no need to build a character for anything other than producing the biggest possible numbers while doing so.

But I’m sure that’s exactly what the devs where shooting for when they gave us a variety of classes and specs and gear. It’d be silly to make a game where no build variety exists without spending a good chunk of your development time putting in builds nobody is supposed to use.

NikeEU.7690:

Every character is Control, DPS and Support all in one. No dedicated roles was intended. Everyone contributes to everything. Sorry you don’t like Guild Wars 2!

Well, not everyone, only the 4 best builds. But I’m sure that’s exactly what the devs where shooting for when they gave us a variety of classes and specs and gear. It’d be silly to make a game where no build variety exists without spending a good chunk of your development time putting in builds nobody is supposed to use.

TexZero.7910:

You can play anything in PvE content and get away with it.

Yes, and the fact that playing anything other than a tiny number of builds is considered “getting away with it” rather than being able to challenge yourself to the fullest with a character build of your own design is exactly why this game is completely broken in its current state.

The fact that the game is so easy that you can succeed with a bad build doesn’t excuse the fact that so few builds are good.

TexZero.7910:

I’m merely reiterating what Anet themselves has stated their own vision for the game to be. As in they at no point wanted defined conventional roles (HEALER, TANK, DPS) to exist. They’ve done exactly that. They want support, damage, and control to be their version of the trinity with every class being sufficiently capable of one or more of those roles. Guess, what ? They’ve met that goal.

You can’t point to any character that is currently considered to be powerful in high end PvE and nail it down to any such thing. They just all do everything and all in the same gear to boot. Build diversity in this game is so bad that half the classes aren’t even considered to be high performing, let alone a wide variety of gear and spec choices.

The game currently has 8 classes, every class has 60 possible spec combinations, and there are 3 major stat categories. That’s almost a thousand possible builds before we even start looking at specific stat breakdowns, weapons loadouts or trait allocation.

You know how many of those are considered to be top tier right now? Four! A mere 4 different builds are “meta” for PvE. Maybe a dozen others are considered to be pretty decent.

It’s completely irrelevant what you want to call the roles in this game when they simply don’t exist. There is no diversity in the builds that people use if they care about performance, no way to distinguish yourself from other players in any meaningful way, and no depth at all in the character builds.

You’re the one stuck in outdated thinking because you can’t seem to get it through your head that this isn’t about whether or not you can play as a healer, it’s about whether or not you can play as anything other than the same old boring meta builds at all if you don’t want to impose a skill ceiling on yourself.

Sorry, but no matter how many times you claim to be, you aren’t the arbiter of what this game is about. It means a lot of things to a lot of different people and this assumed authority you throw around just makes you sound like you have no real arguments. The devs haven’t stated anywhere that they very specifically don’t want anyone to be using healing power in high end PvE groups, on the contrary, from everything we’ve been reading about HoT they seem to be very interested in expanding the kinds of characters that are useful to a group of skillful players.

I think it’d still be perfectly possible to retain a distinction between condi and power builds through runes and sigils that do different things.

LA confuses even old players, as far as I can tell nobody quite understands why there isn’t a waypoint near the auction house.

Still wouldn’t be meta precisely because people can easily stack 25 might without any bonuses to duration.

The mere fact that there is a hard cap to might etc. means that just like with healing the second you max out any investment you made into doing that becomes worthless. Only damage is infinitely useful in a game where stats become irrelevant the second the fighting stops.

Ascended armor really only has one major value, which is having infusion slots that you absolutely need to run high level fractals.

And yea, I agree, the standard crafting system in MMOs where you’re just milling out garbage items nobody wants for the sole purpose of eventually building a single set of endgame items for yourself that nobody else is allowed to wear is really tiresome. It just has nothing to do with being a crafter, it’s just grind.

If healing and HP is merged there is no more need to strike a balance between offense/defense/support because defense and support will simply be the same thing.

The gear system as it applies to GW2 serves to set the role of your character. Aside from the fact that the game currently really doesn’t leave a lot of room for any role but straight damage in PvE, I think the stat system doesn’t have to be overly complicated at all

All you really need is three stats: Offense, Defense and Support (Give them fancy names if you like) Offense governs your damage/crits, defense sets your HP/resistance, support governs your healing/effects duration.

Different types of gear only have a different ratios of these stats so that people can fine tune their characters to have the proper amount of all of them.

Beyond that gear customization happens through runes, sigils, infusions and so forth. Maybe work on making those a little more balanced.

Having a super complex stat system just isn’t worth it for this game. All gear does is represent your commitment to a certain kind of character build, which always break down into offensive, defensive or support.

Critical hits probably shouldn’t even be a stat. Give them the 5th edition D&D treatment and stop all the bullcrap where you end up with weapons that threaten at 14+ and auto confirm and just make critical hits into actual critical hits again, something that gives you that rare but satisfying lucky hit rather than something you build a whole character around to the point where it’s a fluke if one doesn’t happen. Just make it a 10% thing for everyone.

Having condition and direct damage be separate stats is silly, since all it does is make one or the other be the better choice for any given character. Damage is damage, no point in dividing it into two camps.

I think if you designed a system from the ground up it should be as simple as it possibly can be to get the job done. What’s the job of having different stats currently? To allow people to make more lasting investments into playing a certain aspect of their class by acquiring gear that support that. All classes have offensive, defensive and support aspects, so those are really the only three things that need gear stats so players can get invested.

I don’t think vitality and healing power should be one stat. Healing power should be above all else the stat you build around to be group support, and that isn’t a role that screams “needs huge amounts of hitpoints” to me.

Yea, Water would definitely be included in any build that wants to heal, so it makes sense to put that kind of ability there.

I’m still not really convinced that the problem with healing is that you can’t heal for enough as much as it is that you don’t need healing enough.

I don’t like this idea purely because I don’t care for having to use an all cantrip bar or running arcane to be a good healer on an Elementalist. Especially with Tempest shouts being set up as a huge boost to your support ability that seems like it’s breaking just about every interesting build purely for the sake of getting that boon.
It’s idiotic enough that different spell types have some kind of arbitrary association with an element without making those associations so powerful that you don’t even really have a choice anymore. I think the only reason why people aren’t more upset about how badly the elementalist specs are designed right now is because the class is crazy good even without any specs chosen.

The copper-fed salvage-o-matic is by far the best item on the shop.

Being willing to teach people how to do things instead of simply assuming anyone who doesn’t know doesn’t care to learn.

Narrrz.7532:

I think his problem is that it’s not the current ‘meta’

The meta can’t be so easily controlled. it’s the unforseeable outcome of a very complex interplay of a very large number of variables, some of which are player perceptions and general game culture, hence why the meta can spontaneously shift.

The meta isn’t just made up though, the difference between playing with whatever random group and playing with people who are somewhat aligned with the meta is pretty noticeable, and the latter is a much smoother ride.

All demands for game balance always come from two competing motivations in the individual player. The desire to express themselves by making the character they want, and the desire to perform by making a character that is powerful in the game. There are people who care very little about one or the other, for example, someone who’s going to reroll their character without blinking to fit into “the meta” probably only cares about performance. Someone who’s going to be fine with likely never completing the really hard fractals because they only run when they can get a group that doesn’t care if its full of characters that are theme builds likely only cares about expression.
Most players care about both though, which is why the game needs a balance between being able to express yourself by making a character that suits you and being able to perform by having all characters be useful.

What I see a lot here is people treating the entire discussion as though people can only ever care about one or the other. Like if someone wants to complete all the content, do it fast, and always be welcome in a group then they should not care one lick about what they play with. Likewise people seem to act as though if someone cares about making a character to suit a theme because that’s just what they enjoy then they should not care about being able to get into groups and being appreciated by other players for being there.

So it really doesn’t help anything to say “If you care about personalizing your build don’t care about meta” or “If you care about meta don’t care about building something different”. That speaks to a few people in the extremist camps that don’t want game balance, and ignores everyone else who wants to enjoy a bit of both.

Archeage is no reason to do anything other than point and laugh. That game basically destroyed itself purely by having the worst monetization concept ever. I can just see the design meeting: “MMO players are probably just as idiotic as mobile gamers, let’s make a game where looting enemies is time locked unless you spend real life money!” “This sounds like a great idea, having no respect for our players, the genre and our craft in general will be a big hit!”

AdaephonDelat.3890:

You can play that character so what’s the issue? It won’t be optimal but it’s still perfectly viable.

Never being able to actually be considered a great character is the issue.

Is it so hard to imagine that someone can care about how they play the game at the same time as caring about their performance in that role?

maddoctor.2738:

If Healing Power is so bad then why is it used so much in PVP/WvW? Same with Vitality and Toughness. No, the stats themselves are fine. The mobs (and even more so boss) design is what needs to change.

The problem with that line of thought is that defensive stats are useful in PvP because you cannot avoid taking damage in PvP, players are too smart. If mobs and bosses were changed to make defensive stats useful in the same way it would effectively mean they do a bunch of damage you can’t avoid and healing and tanking becomes needed purely to avoid getting killed again. That’s a step toward the trinity.

Obtena.7952:

That doesn’t change the point at all … being DPS and support in this game isn’t mutually exclusive so you can have both and still not be a drag on the group.

But you can never be an asset to a group even if your DPS is low because there just aren’t powerful enough support abilities that run off the stats that make your DPS low to warrant ever using them.

Never said there should be characters that only heal, just character that focus on support over damage without being a drag on the group.

I don’t see how there can be any sensible argument made that it’s better to completely get rid of those roles, especially in a game that has specs, stats and gear to support them, rather then reforming them to fit with the new paradigm.

Racism seems kind of petty and pointless when you have dragons trying to destroy the entire world. The mere fact that all sentient races are under threat binds them together in a way that transcends any such concerns.

Besides, the game tackles the mistrust and unease between humans and charr plenty.

Obtena.7952:

This is just my opinion but I can’t imagine why there should be any reward for having more HP than you need. That doesn’t make sense to me, especially if the premise is to reward skilled play; skilled players need to heal less often than scrubby ones. If anything, you should be rewarded for running as little HP as you can and GW2 already does that.

Depends on your point of view I guess.

From my point of view “Support character that focuses on boosting party instead of dealing damage” is a perfectly reasonable RPG archetype that should be represented in all levels of play, not just some kind of noob enabler.

As such the system shouldn’t detract from that role by making the #1 skill play aspect of the game the ability to reduce your need for healing.

Sure, being able to wear less healing gear is in a sense a way to trade the need to heal for more damage, it just also destroys the niche for anyone who actually enjoys playing that type of character.

CandyHearts.6025:

My assumption is they pull it down that far to hide the player being bald.

Doesn’t bother them that my character loses his beard whenever he puts his aquabreather on.

Besides, the hood sits perfectly fine on one side,it’s pulled over the eye on the other like the character is some kind of stupid hipster wearing his hat on an angle.

Speaking of underwater helmets, can we have a magical gem that creates an air bubble around the characters head for that?

Harper.4173:

And a question would be if you’re dealing more damage by healing your allies then you’re technically a dps by proxy of the heals you put out – so why not just play dps in the first place?
Or is it that some people need to see green number on their screen instead of white ones to feel good?

I could turn that question right around and say if it doesn’t matter either way why are you so opposed to people using healing to contribute to the damage?

It’s a roleplaying game, building a character that thematically suits you is a huge part of it. Why is it so weird to you that the exact same way someone might like to play a heavily armored fighter while another person plays a sneaky thief some people really enjoy keeping an eye on their allies rather than the enemies.

Especially in a game like this, where heals are ground targeted or have cone effects so there actually is quite a bit of interesting positional play to them, healing is way more interesting than in most MMOs where you just play whack a mole with a raid frame.

The main thing I want more of is light armor that looks practical. Most of it just looks like a fashion show, not like real armor. The NPC in town are wearing more convincing clothing for someone who spends all day fighting than any of the player sets.

Also how about a simple hood that isn’t pulled over one of your eyes for no reason? I don’t know what their art team was thinking with that one. If you wanted to cover up the mages eyes you could have at least gone full Palpatine and given us a hood that’s pulled deep over the entire face, why make one that just sort okittenwardly covers up one eye?!

Also, why is awkward – ly a censored word? (Also awkward itself isn’t) This forum feels like Jimmy Kimmel doing “unnecessary censorship”, just randomly bleeping perfectly normal English words so it looks like you’re swearing like a sailor from just writing normal things.

Obtena.7952:

Regardless, you’re in a seemingly contrasting position here. You advocate MORE features taking into account the player skills but you for some reason you want to regress from that with enhancements and emphasis on defensive stats/healing? kitten .

No, I’m advocating for rethinking the way hitpoints work to not just include a punishment for running out of hitpoints, but also include rewards for having more than you need. That way all the skilled play remains important to getting those rewards without eliminating the benefit of someone giving you extra health.

Narrrz.7532:

Aetrion.8295:

Too bad it doesn’t have a skill based active combat system where you can use good aim and knowledge of the game to inflict a lot of damage too.

i don’t quite understand. are you advocating a change to that sort of combat system? you’re not only playing the wrong game, then, but the wrong entire genre.

if not, i’m not sure exactly what point you’re trying to make

Think about what I’ve been asking for this entire topic. It’s about making the ability to gain more hitpoints than you need valuable to you. It’s about making all the defensive stats have value even if you LOS and dodge and kite like an absolute pro.

It’s got nothing to do with changing the combat system entirely, it has everything to do with simply admitting that defensive stats end up in a bad place when the game allows players to actively avoid getting hit, while offensive stats remain required for everyone because the game doesn’t allow you to make any clever positional plays or land aimed shots or use the environment for extra damage.

That latter part isn’t going to change, because it would require a whole new game to change it, but the first part can be changed by giving defensive stats other functions that don’t just kick in once you’ve already screwed up and gotten hit.

Harper.4173:

This is because the devs intended this game to have a skill-based active combat system where you can use your reflexes and knowledge of the game to time dodges and skills and avoid damage.

Too bad it doesn’t have a skill based active combat system where you can use good aim and knowledge of the game to inflict a lot of damage too.

The whole problem arises from the fact that they turned one set of stats into soft stats by letting the player change the outcome, while the other is hard stats that can’t be superceded by player skill.