I understand alot of people complaining in here that explorable dungeons are very difficult, trust me I died plenty of times before our guild figured it out.
I play a thief, I play a melee theif, I never die. Acrobatics with sword pistol and out heal on hit is to easy to live, with 3 targets around I heal (94×9)x3 per pistol whip, add in a bunch of stealth skills and its easy.
What im getting at is not intended to brag, but state that for each dungeon, fight, etc there is always a key to surpass and overcome the difficulty. I run with a warrior, ranger, theif, necromancer and a elementalist. We just looked at our traits, our abilities, weapon sets and types of mobs/abilities/mechanics we were facing and made a simple strat to overcome them?
My last paragraph sounds great! Adapting to the situation solving the puzzle and succeeding.
First off, bosses are easier than trash/events, when there is only 1 threat, and predictable damage going out its just zerg, and avoid this ability, every boss is the same that way.
When it came to trash it was pretty much all the same, chain CC main target with 2 melee, a hammer warrior and a s/p theif can continuously indefintiely cc a target, meanwhile blinds, and weakness goes out to off targets. It was the same thing over and over, but its trash, I understand.
What I’m getting at is, if you scale difficulty on complexe mechanics, there will unavoidable be a script, follow the script, and there is no way to lose.
How to get around this?
Reaction time abilities: have bosses do abilities that give you little time to see them coming and little time to avoid them, this requires reaction times and will add to difficulty (think Counter-Strike, noob vs pro).
Have mechanics that require you to do something other than kill the boss or adds. Think of heroic plaguewing last fight, multiple target switching, and position is key, or heroic bloodwing final fight, had to match up and pass on your virus, mechanics like this are not too bad with healers and the like, however without them, they become wipers which is good, wiping is good. Things like this are never static, mechanics like, onyxia goes into air phase at 60% is not difficult.
Perhaps during a fight a chalice pops up in a random spot and you have to get it to the altar every second the chalice is out of the alter the boss gains a huge buff per second its out. A mechanic like this is good for a game without healers becuase it forces WHOEVER is closest to the chalice, not a predictable spot, and forces them to do one thing, that makes the fight 4v5 for a bit, increasing difficulty, and since boss is buffed, more skill required to avoid damage.
Unpredictability, yet doable is real difficulty, you need to do something in each fight that the player cant predict and has to overcome on the spot, this is rewarding to those seeking a challenge. Since there is no real aggro, tank, healer in this game, this is a perfect platform to try out these types of mechanics.
Don’t allow corpse running, put a door in boss fights, add an enrage timer, not a wipe enrage but a “you pretty much have 60 seconds to win or this damage output become truely hard”
I know none of this will ever happen in this game, the purpose of this post is to shed light on what difficulty really is. XY mechanics are scriptable, predictable and easy.
You can’t just add chaos to increase difficulty, just makes smart players sacrifice damage for CC, and thats all I really see in good dungeon play, none of our abilites, or build are for damage, or defense for that matter, its all about control, sustain, and buffed revives.
Hope you enjoy reading my post and picking it apart for all its faults, I hope you see what I’m trying to say.
ps. Let be honest, as PvP of a game this is (which its really great excpet for downed state, that should be gone from pvp, but not pve, wvw) PvE has to be around, or people WILL get bored.
was 3 classes only, theif, mesmer guardian, out side of those 3 classes, thief and mesmer where more abundant than guardian, ranger popped up everynow and then, I play at rank 16.