Showing Posts For HikariNoTen.1402:
OP : I still haven’t finished the gauntlet as Liadri is the last boss I have to kill.
I agree with the bug problems and I had to deal with them too. However every game has bugs or bad points so deal with it, as a developper I know that kitten happens too often.
I really do not agree with you on the last point (damage and hardcore part). Having some hardcore challenge is great. Not everyone should manage everything on the first day. Playing in the arena has been fun, and in no point a no brain zerker rush for me. I wish more content is like that and hope to see some bosses using these new mechanics.
TehPwnerer, yep Liadri is a devil for an elementalist. I am really lacking the dps/burst to take her down before time is running out. I will change my build to a 30/30/0/0/10 and see if I can kill her.
I had to change my build for some bosses and adapt weapon sets (I love the elementalist S/F). The challenge is though will get on your nerves, while people will faceroll it
Char : Level 80 norn elementalist
Map : WvW borderlands
Server : Fort Ranik (Fr)
Monday morning I decided to farm some badges from the borderlands chest. I proceeded on several chars to achieve the JP : getting the two key parts and opening the vault.
On tuesday I decided to do the same. But on my level 80 norn elementalist I still had the two key parts. Wondering if I had really completed the puzzle with her I just went straight to the vault, opened it and the key parts were still in my bag.
Just to be clear since then I have opened the chest with different chars, never abusing this bug. I report it now because I have the time to do it. The key parts are still in my inventory so you can get the ID of it and understand what went wrong. I will suppress it as soon as required.
Cheers
Detailed information :
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage#Condition_damage
If you wish to see how it scales given a build :
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/
I don’t really care if bosses would generate stability before skills, this would mean we would have to steal/corrupt/destroy this boon in order to prevent his actions and this would require some team coordination.
Simple question, would it be possible to stunlock a champion to death given the HP pool they have and the amount of CC 5 players can have? Theory crafting guys its your time to shine !
@Broadicea : it would open up new boss opportunities also. More difficult constantly hard hitting bosses. Or non dodgeable actions that would require a stun. Just DPSing and dodging from time to time is not enough for me, I also want to take into account that I will have to prevent one of his action from time to time if I want to stand up and live.
And yes from time to time you would like to prevent a boss from doing an action (e.g : dredge fractal boss heal).
Nice ideas. I think you should outlines important points in your initial post.
Just so ANet devs going through the forums can quickly see what this is about.
Controling a boss seems unrewarding and useless at the moment, negating many builds on them. I wouldn’t mind if they hit harder or faster just as long as we can use some form of control on them at the RIGHT time.
Yep the basic fighting mechanic against this boss. But what I am talking about (in my first post here) and wanting to know is how does a small guild manage to kill him given his horrible frost ground mechanic.
Again my problem is : as a 5 man team he will ensnare 2-3 of us very quickly in 2-3 different frozen grounds. Teleports do not work/are bugged , condition removal is not sufficient to get out of his zone. Not getting out of this means a frozen spike, you can’t obviously dodge while immobilized and you go to down state. He will repeat this attack very often, meaning you will die quickly. If 2 people get killed in that fight then the 3 other become his focus which means more damage to them. So they have to run quickly or then you will fail the event if everyone dies.
How do you other guilds deal with him ?
Dulfy’s guide is useful to find someone, but not to fight him. Especially when in a small guild. That is the kind of help I am mostly looking for.
We found Bwikki very difficult with a 5 man group… We went against him 3-4 times now, and even though we know we will face many conditions and roots he just destroy us.
His frozen ground just locks up in place and we cannot get out of it reliably through porting. It seems bugged, most of the time when using a porting skill (e.g : blink or lightning flash) we get out of his zone and suddenly we are back in…
Trying to remove the conditions to get out of it is impossible. You have 4 conditions while in it and even if you can remove them they are automatically reapplied while you are still in it.
This only leaves you with invulnerability to avoid the follow up attack (icy spike), and you can only have so much on you at the same time… His frozen ground has a really low cooldown for a 5 man team.
How do you deal with it ?
2mult – easy to find. Next to impossible to kill with small groups
Hum dead, wait what how? Failed? Wait but what are his mechanics ?"
tarban – easy to find. Next to impossible to kill with small groups
Yep 25 stacks of confusions, clean it? yeah go on press that button, just you dare activate just one kitten skill…And if you don’t clean it “knock knock, who is here ? it’s me tarban, I kill you”
Prisoner is easy as long as you have condition removal, constant speed and long range weapons.
I really love your changes ! I agree that we should either have more access to stun breakers or get some stun breakers off cantrips to give them to different skills.
I would just replace the stun break radius by a stability lasting 4s.
For sure, AI is a real complex problem and I suppose we won’t see a real change on AI before “soon” or “when it is ready”.
I guess they will have to do a skill split on many skills if they want to upgrade the different classes in PvE. But I guess it will also put out a higher entry level for PvP, so the devs are kind of postponing as much as possible these changes.
Edit : what bugs me also is that condition damage is capped in ALL content (number of stacks) and direct damage is not. Seems totally unfair for some classes…
(edited by HikariNoTen.1402)
I am still not convinced about this being a “simple” profession balance issue. Warriors have never been great in PvP but have always ruled in PvE.
I can’t say the same for Mesmers or Guardians, they do really well in all content.
@Hamartia : warriors can bring a lot I guess, because they have access to many weapons with different effects and they have a nice boon/condition coverage. But they do not bring everything !
But bring the mesmer and guardian and you suddenly have everything. Group stability, regen, aegis, best crowd control of the game, blind, immobilizes.. W/G/M has everything. Changing the dungeon content is not going to make that group set up worse.
One simple example : add a monster which can only suffer direct damage while chilled, and while chilled becomes rock solid with a hardcap on direct damage. Warriors have no access to chill apart from runes/sigil
Could probably just make do with a secondary set of weapon for that type of encounter. No big deal again. Hell, the ghost pepper popper could probably work decently if all 5 in the party used it in dungeons that are considered night time. It has a 1 second internal cooldown and has 40% chance of giving chill on crit.
Ok…well I tried !
Yes you are right. It is a bad solution overall if people are forced to integrate classes to manage content. So I guess the compromise would be if you want to force a condition in a dungeon you have to give an access to it as an environmental weapon or use a trigger.
If we just downgrade my previous example to this : a monster which has a low hardcap (3 000) on direct damage while chilled, and while chilled with a high hardcap (20 000) on direct damage. Would that be a better compromise ?
Anyway I am just a player throwing random ideas, but maybe from this mess a dev will find an interesting mechanic to improve build diversity.
@Sovta : thanks for bringing up so many arguments ! #Sarcasm
@Hamartia : warriors can bring a lot I guess, because they have access to many weapons with different effects and they have a nice boon/condition coverage. But they do not bring everything ! And yes I still firmly believe that changing content can buff variety. One simple example : add a monster which can only suffer direct damage while chilled, and while chilled becomes rock solid with a hardcap on direct damage. Warriors have no access to chill apart from runes/sigil. You will need either a ranger/necromancer/elementalist/engineer to get rid of such a foe.
Of course if you only put this kind of monster in a dungeon it will become boring and tedious. Zerker warriors would become useless which is a pity, they really have an important place in a team : high burst damage.
Now place the monster in an encounter with different types of enemies and the fight strategy/meta changes.
The truth? I think the combat system is bad(for group pve), and basically the dungeon content is lackster. I don’t think the dev put alot of though on how the combat system and dungeon should work together. The combat system revolve more around “play style” than “how they should work in a group”.
And you never really need to balance range dps vs melee dps in other game since if your tank is dead in other game, the range is dead too. In this game players are rewarded much more for fighting up close since they are more in danger. In other game dps melee have tank to take the damage for them so they are not rewarded for more.
But the reality is I don’t really care about balance. Unless you care so much about speed run. I think it is just culture of the game. People care so much about time vs reward in GW2. In other game people focus on “killing the boss”, that’s it.
Agreed !
I do not care about about the reward/time equation. But I do care about the safe/fast equation in fights. At the moment Safe and Fast are equal in most PvE parts, and dungeons in particular. The OP put forward a solution to diminish the Fast part (removing might from warriors mean they will output less DPS). Even with less DPS I still think the 4War+1XXX will be above most groups in terms of Safe and Fast.
I am not a hardcore player, I am more of a “hardcore casual”. And I have tried out various contents with different team compositions with my friends. We started out with high survivability and low damage (PVT lots of utility) in dungeons, and now we have moved to high damage and low survivability (Zerker no utility). Overall we perform much better, we have certainly improved our skills, but we all feel like going back to the what we think is “Safe” would only make everything much harder and more dangerous.
This is what I am really against, at the moment there are no real roles in a team that would make it perform better. No roles like boon-producer,condition-mancer, disrupt master, blind spammers are very demanded in the dungeon meta.
Again as the OP stated some professions are able to do too much with too little effort in PvE which is bad for a PvE balance (well known teams clearing all dungeons with almost the same team composition means there is a problem, especially when you have 3 to 4 people of the same profession).
The dungeon fights not being a real challenge compared to PvP fights and not containing enough diversity of extreme situations will also discourage team variety.
Give us enemies that have a damage reduction cap unless they are chilled or burning or stunned or have a high regen for which we will require poison. Give us enemies with high armor and low HP, give us really fast attacking mobs with low damage retaliation and confusion mancers will be happy. Give us fast moving enemies jumping in and out of the fight and killing us at range. Give us a variety of all of this in the same fight and we may see a change in the meta.
Stop it with enemies sitting on the same spot thinking that shooting arrows non stop on a reflection wall is a good idea.
The reason no one cares your ele stacks might is because a group of warriors can get 25 stacks. If they couldn’t, suddenly other classes ability to stack might would matter.
And they have a real interesting damage scaling . But it doesn’t mean all classes have an equal chance of performing in PvE just by removing might generation from Warriors.
Just have a look at condition necromancers or rangers… they are not really great in dungeons where monsters have lots of HP and low armor. Not even at 25 stacks of might will they equal the dps output of a warrior.
Again the problem is the game content and the way most mobs/bosses fight. The AI is not great and they just try to facetank you without thinking, which is obviously the best set up for a warrior.
OP I do agree with you that warriors tend to too easily stack might. Overall in PVE they bring a lot to a group for little personal loss.
But this is not the only problem if might is the only solution then I should be king of PVE with my elementalist, using cantrips and combos I can go up to 25 stacks of might.
The real difference for me is in content, there is a reason why warriors are still not great in PvP but are great in PvE. In PvP warriors suffer from slowing conditions preventing them from being in range of a target and the enemy dodges and kites out of your burst attacks. In PvE apart from Karkas and some archers in CM I very rarely see enemy dodge/evade/kite to improve their lifespan.
I think it will be difficult to nerf/buff a class at this point. The teams are not a problem the content is.
The only thing that could beat a greatsword warrior team is an exceptionally high armored target (over 9000 Toughness!!!) with a high attack rate of high damage close combat aoe(beating dodges and aegis cooldowns), however small HP. Then we can use control and condition damage/retaliation and other stuff that may seem useless at the moment!
Control and support need a buff, while self maintaining boons and dps need a little more hate to promote team play in dungeons.
I liked that idea of timer based defiant, but I also like the actual way it works. So why not both ? Give a boss 30s of Defiant and everytime a player CC the boss the timer goes down for the amount of downtime the CC should have given. When the timer is down the next CC will be fully operational.
Just saying but in dungeons I rarely needed the hard CC, apart when I wanted to prevent a boss from healing.
Most damage can be avoided by dodging and no boss has a single attack or chain of attacks that will be able to down you even if you have 2 dodges and 20 seconds of invulnerability.
The only mechanic that comes close to this is Agony but then you can still dodge it in all but one fractal.
Overall CC will never be as good as pure damage because of AI, content difficulty and visual effects (nothing to do with dungeons but try dodging Melandru’s Priest whirlwind attack during prime time… I can barely see him behind all the explosions, its the same in dungeon). You can only dodge or try to CC when you see something coming and all the visuals are sometimes getting in your way.
I don’t think duplicating maps would be the best thing… a new map with a different warfare mindset could be more interesting.
Zergs already have maps designed for them, massive keeps to attack and defend high value objectives and so on.
Guerilla warfare and open spaces need a specially designed map.
Landscape :
Imagine a destroyed city. Not a small city a big one : large main streets and plazas, small alleyways, sewers, catacombs, destroyed temples and towers offering viewpoints, gloomy slums and docks and so on.
Special mechanics :
No siege weapons can be placed in this map. Instead they are placed on certain points that must be controlled to gain access to this siege weapon.
NO NPC,s except at spawns for repairing and buying.
You can capture temples/god favor/science labs/smithshops to grant your side a buff. This buff will be high at start and go down in time (reaching a cap). If you lose this temple you will get a debuff, demoralized reducing your hp?toughness?
Walls of rumble could be built to reinforce some places, block some roads. But they are easy to destroy.
Point earning :
Points are granted for controlling power nodes (neither temples nor siege weapons, a really unique point). These power nodes are placed in many different locations and have a value increasing over time, the longer you keep this point, the more it will earn points for your side (of course it reaches a hard cap over time).
Killing a player should grant your side points.
*Conclusion *
This is probably a mix of what we can find in Kyhlo or Silent storm PvP maps but with a larger scope. This is just a basic idea and I don’t think it can/will be done “soon”. We will probably have to get used to fighting in a zerg!
I am so so so Jelly … Awesome moves and mobility. It feels quite logical to see a ranger moving in and out of combat. However this seems a bit too much… especially with the monarch leap that does not connect, I am calling for a RTL NERF upon this skill :p!!! Joking rangers need more love.
I still don’t get it about this RTL nerf. It was bugged in range but the fact that a light armor can engage and disengage in fights does not seem OP to me… I still have the feeling that the cantrips traits should have been nerfed a bit harder and other traits buffed, while the skill leaved as it was. Anyway I still enjoy playing my elementalist.
Warriors are OP in PvE, Mesmers are OP in PvP, better nerf engineers.
Famous LoL fact.
We still really don’t know EXACTLY and COMPLETELY what is in the patch for us.
The devs were talking about some incoming buffs to signets, so we may see some improvement here (apart from our healing signet).
Cantrip elementalists are too strong, the cantrip build is really too well synergised, so I don’t really care if it is nerfed.
I also find it is good that overall they are adding some new tools to different classes to be boon hunters/thieves, which is a way to counter many elementalists/engies/guardians.
By introducing new archetypes in the meta they may force us to rethink our place as elementalists.
I can’t really say were it will take us but I am pretty sure that some of the top players will find out a place for us.
Parktou, would you have a video for us, could be interesting to show us your playstyle !
In any case, my point is that the lower level dungeons are kind of crazy considering players that have no prior experience in dungeons (especially the lower ones) experience a negative stimuli in playing them early on as they literally have no training in the field of teamwork. This will most likely act as a repellent to anyone who wanted to have a positive experience in a dungeon. It is also assumed that this will cause players to work together, but I am sure if we did a study using groups of 5 players who haven’t done a dungeon before and see how they react to getting whooped, I feel that the reactions would be nothing like that, although I would like to think they would work together to overcome the obstacles, that is just not the reaction of all 5 people in a group at any given time. So the teamwork mentality could develop, however it would be a chain comprised of several crude links that could break at any moment.
Some start dungeons are quite difficult for new players. I play on skype with my friends, and even on some story modes we got steam rolled at the start. I think the trouble is not always the mechanics in the dungeons or the fact that the dungeons are really hard. It is more of a learn to play, and how did I learn to play. What I mean is that it took us some time to figure out how to do some easy parts in dungeons. When we went in the first time in caudecus explorable we had not idea how to handle the barrels and there placement to explode the gate. The mobs just overzerged us and we got killed. Over time, after getting equipped and after watching videos we managed to do this part while only being 4 (we cheesed this part…not the best thing but we had not idea how to do it). Only recently did we manage to do it without cheesing it, we missed our first cheese attempt and then decided to do it the “standard” way.
I think the actual dungeons could get some hand holding in some parts. Not a complete and easy way, but a simple dialog from an NPC suggesting a strategy, or good spells to take.
“The bandits will probably remove the explosives as soon as they are planted, you may want to prevent them from doing by having someone guard the explosives or you could also set up some devices at strategic locations as decoys”
“These nasty little critters will immobilize you in a web and then bite you to poison you to death.”
I think the new dungeon may bring in some nice stuff in this sense. If they built it in the reverse order (from boss to mobs) in order to teach us how to fight the boss is a great idea. If it works out nicely why not apply it to other existing/new dungeons !
I have being running dungeons with guildies using a mix of profession : warrior, elementalist, mesmer, thief and necro. Every profession can input a bit of help in a fight.
Doing sorrows’s embrace/dredge fractals with someone able to remove boons is a real pleasure. Having someone block/reflect the projectiles is important in many fights.
Warriors are direct damage machines. We have sometimes swapped the necro(condition damage build) for a warrior(zerker build), and you do feel a difference in damage.
Guardians are king at controlling the enemy damage. A group projectile reflection lasting 10s in grawl fractal ? Yes please !
Mesmer have many good utilities. Removing boons/conditions, reflecting projectiles, good survivability for a light armor class.
Elementalists have medium damage, and medium utility. They can help you in everything, from healing to control, damage, destroying projectiles.
Thieves have a good damage output, and can also be great for quickly getting down defiant stack (very useful for some bosses). They also have access to many blind abilities, smoke screens and group furtivity.
Necromancers have a lot of AOE effects and are master at conditions. Fear is a very nice tool and come be very useful when in sticky situations.
Engineers are quite like elementalists, a bit of everything.
Rangers, can’t say much never tried one in a dungeon !
Overall, yes you will probably do dungeons FASTER with warriors/guard/mesmers.
Overall, no you wall have no fun if you force yourself to play a class or force a profession onto other people.
You can do every content with every profession, some might have an easier life, others might have it harder. Player skill, focus and adaptation are sometimes more important than just a profession.
Asking a good ranger player to play a bad warrior “because moar damage” is a bad idea. Let him play as his good ranger because he will probably enjoy it more, be more useful, die less, and everyone will have a pleasant run. If you really value your run by the time you spend in a dungeon…I just don’t want to play with you! lol
Keep in mind that patches may come and change the meta.
At the moment Condition damage is terrible in dungeons and open world, this is probably due to the fact that when the devs worked on the game they wanted PvP/WvW/PvE to be really similar in terms of numbers on skills (damage, range …).
They announced that they will probably split more skill numbers between PvP/WvW/PvE. So we may see some number changes on Condition damage. This is kind of my hope anyway. They halfed the damage of confusion in PvP, so they could probably increase the coefficients for condition damage in PvE. This would really help build variety in PvE.
Concerning variety of challenges I do agree. Challenges like surviving an invincible beast NOT only using projectiles(because projectile reflection is already too present in the game) for a certain time could be fun and different.
Guild mission bosses have some nice fight mechanics, that in a dungeon could provide some very fun and hard challenges with some environmental mechanics added to defeat him.
I tried out the dagger/focus in PvP last night. Build was 0/0/20(3-10)/20(2-5)/30(1-4-11). I was also fumbling a lot and it is not a forgiving build. The lightest mistake in my defense rotation would get me killed.
I started with the following utilities : ether renewal, lightning flash, arcane wave and arcane shield, and greatsword. After being killed in a few matches I switched to glyph of harmony, mist form, arcane wave and arcane shield. I also started with a zerker amulet thinking that my defensive abilities would be enough…I switched back to soldier !
Here are my conclusions,
Cons :
- Because you have no heals using this set up, you need even more defense, going all out in offense is not a good option.
- You have nearly no access to a good mobility skill (RTL).
- You never land comet … such a small aoe only works on a immobilized/dazed target.
- You are weak against knockbacks (it seems I got bumped around all evening).
- You have no good aoe skills that would really let you fight against an invisible thief (and you can’t save a friend being downed from a thief).
- Alone you are not very frightening …
Pros :
- You have good control skills (cripples, chilled).
- You have good defenses, and survivability (if you do not mess up), against projectiles earth 4 is great (I loved to see some confusion ticks going back to an engineer).
- You can outpout some reasonable damage…
- You can easily rez someone (earth 5 and air 4 help a lot).
- Works well with a friend (played with an engineer and landing comet on a stunned target is much easier)
Overall the non cantrip d/f is good but lacks access to a regen will the defenses are up and some burst skills to quickly fear the enemy. I will change it a bit to see were I can go with it.
How are you doing WvW wise ?
Hey ! Watched your video and I can only encourage you to try out the Focus. It is still not a very good weapon compared to a dagger, but it offers quite a load of utility. I think it is more a team/zerg oriented weapon (swirling winds, comet), and can replace cleansing fire (magnetic wave). I would prefer the scepter in case of fighting with a zerg.
If you are going with D/F, why not take more offensive abilities (arcane blast/wave) and more mobility (lightning flash, greatsword), it would make up for some loss of not using the dagger. You could then start a rotation from earth 3 → water 5 → fire 3 + 5 → arcane wave for a nice burst on a immobilized/dazed target.
Thanks for your work.
I am not sure if I am posting this in the right place or if this has already been mentioned.
How about removing some of the attunement speed recharge from the arcana trait line, and improving traits in the different elemental traitlines by giving them some elemental attunement recharge for this element.
e.g : elemental attunement recharge rate is now of 1% for 1 point in arcana. Every adept/master/grandmaster trait gives me 10% cd reduction on the attunement of this particular element.
If I go 20 in arcana an 20 in earth I basically have 20% increased elemental attunement recharge rate for every element, and 40% for earth.
This idea is just thrown at random. However it would mean that switching from one element to another is more difficult if I am not specialized in it. Hence water specced D/D people will be good at supporting/healing but will go less often in air for burst/escape. This also mean that traits like Air training, Strength of Stone and so on are not hindered by a change of elements.
If I trait for high damage when using fire, I want to go back quickly to fire to deal my high damage, not wait 15 secs for my attunement to come back.
It does not solve everything (some traits have to be reworked, and cantrips offer too much sustain when traited in just one traitline). It does mean less balancing in the arcana traitline which already has some nice traits and will still seem appealing to many.
It is probably a very complex idea and would require lots of time for balancing. I just wish a dev reads this and gives it a think!
Nice write up. As someone said previously, cantrips bring in too many stun breakers. A better repartition of stun breakers could already improve different builds. Cantrips can do too much damage mitigation when traited, remove a bit of this mitigation from cantrips and give it to other builds. Overall elementalists have too much synergy from two trees (arcana and water).
We probably have a lot of rebalancing to go under, but in any case please help other classes first.
I like the tower guard idea. For sure it should give some xp/gold/karma, but a really small amount, in order to avoid a bot karma train.
And I do agree that spending money on a tower upgrade should be rewarded by wxp.
I’ll use CC when they won’t have 2sec cast anymore. To remove 1 stack of defiant…
I do agree ! A CC should remove as many defiant stacks as it would stun/knockdowm/knockdown someone !
I don’t think it’s really strengthening the role, it is more about insisting on the importance. What I am saying is that players will always follow the easiest course to a solution. At the moment it is DPS and have someone ensure survivability.
Control, Condition Damage, and support need a bit more love : mobs should be harder through the strategy of defeating them, and not just the HP. At the moment I think most mobs are not diversified in their role and instances do not promote enough extreme challenges other than fast DPS at the moment.
Mobs at the moments have some abilities. Let’s take the examples of dredges. Some dredges can give boons. Stripping these boons of is “ok” but not “great”, due to them being quickly killed through direct damage. Imagine now a “Juggernaut dredge”, a heavily armored beast with lots of toughness/armor, tons of damage, but low hp. This Juggernaut would be very resistant to direct damage (“wut 20 damage from my hundred blades zerker war ?”) but weak to condition damage. Condition damage builds are promoted against this type of enemy. The juggernauts being aware of this will always chase the guy with the highest CD.
Now mix the two types of dredge. To defeat them you have to : prevent the juggernauts from hitting the team Condition damagers (control), dps through condition damage, direct damage the buffers to prevent them from over buffing the juggernauts, and support your team by removing debuffs (cripples and snares) and buff them. This could be much more interesting than just over dpsing everything by pressing one key.
Overall at the moments the mobs are more or less a replica of players stats with more vitality. More diversity in stats (and more extreme) could be nice. And they are very rarely mixed groups. Too many dungeons have a “now we fight monster X type so we need to take these skills”, “next room we will see monsters Y”
Some ideas I am throwing at random :
- mobs with capped damage except when stunned/knockeddown (either bleed it to death, or stun it and burst it),
- fast moving mobs avoiding as much as possible direct damage (riflemen as in caudecus manor but with more)
- capped damage mobs, whatever you put on them you just have to kill through consistent damage.
Mobs variety could provide more challenge, and adding environment actions also do. Fights such as old tom are really good because although they are fast if you do not interact with the environment you may die painfully.
I’m fine if Zerker warriors and mesmers can dominate one dungeon, the challenges in this dungeon are tailored around DPS mechanics. But how about looking at other classes and giving them equivalent opportunity of challenges in other instances.
“You managed to do CoF in 8 minutes with with your warrior zerker team and got 1gold, good for you. We did #dungeonX with a mixed team in 16 minutes and got 2 gold.”
tldr : more active combat and organisation than “just” DPS ! Mob roles should be more extreme and more group diversified to promote diversified teams in dungeons.
Give us projectile destruction/reflect, a 4th attack laying down a field linked to the element and a 5th attack creating a great AOE blast and getting us out of tornado. Ok all of this might be slightly OP but it could really improve this elite.
To add to Strifey’s brainstorm I would also like to talk about Condition Damage. Condition damage is so overlooked due to most Direct damage being much higher in DPS. It is not a problem limited to dungeons, in openworld and against bosses with high chunks of HP. But in most (all?) dungeons it is a real problem. I would like to see some mobs with high armor and damage but low HP (making it hard to kill for Direct Damage chars, but easier for Condition built chars with some crowd control guys). Mixing these guys in with other mobs could change quite a bit the dungeon meta.
In the actual state of dungeons nearly all encounters feel aimed for high direct damage.
I will also agree with the other guys here, that your community service has to do a bit more communication on the upcoming changes. Mixing up an interview with a dev about the changes for dungeons with a video of a new dungeon encounter or anything down the line could be great. No need for it to last 30 minutes, 4-7 minutes is great. I dont’t think that an hour long interview about the complete SOTG (as it is done for SPVP) for dungeons would be worth it. Until your work on revamping all the dungeons is done I think it could be great.
I think people who often go on the forum are aware of the work you are performing, but it does not represent the totality of the community. Advertise your work to the world, you should be proud of it (imho)!
Thanks for the hard work !
Robert Hrouda, dev of the year for communicating so much.
I am a novice ranger (created after an ele), so I will give some beginner’s input.
UI improvement : it would be good to see a pet health bar (see kiwituatara.6053 post).
F1 : attack/return to me is a great idea. Return should be done via a leap or by the pet having a 2s swiftness.
F2 : dodge/distorsion/aegis. I prefer the distorsion on the condition pets do not attack during this time. Or then it would be overpowered. Distorsion gives me the ability to recall my pet out of an AOE without him taking damage or to leave him in place to avoid damage from a single hit attack. Having this ability on a 7-8s cd could be great.
F3 : pet ability.
F4 : switch pet.
I know this thread is about the pets not about the skills. But i do not get the point of using the shouts ? Either the description lacks information or they are useless.
e.g : Guard, Your pet will aggressively protect the target area. Why would I use this ? If I place my pet at one point and me at another am I not sacrificing half of my dps and survivability, what happens if my pets gets hit and I have to swap ? This skill just lacks any benefit, perhaps pet and master could gain aegis and protection for a few seconds.
Wait and see guys, Bounty is logically placed in Art of War. I guess we will see other content in other areas (e.g: Trek in economy ), and perhaps new content in lower tiers of guild upgrades (not related to guild events). Given the new content we may also see an increase in influence gain. So don’t let your spirit down.
I am also part of a 6-7 member guild, and I understand your concern and I do hope we will not be let down. We have no aim to increase our guild size to include no IRL known persons.
In the meantime, Wait and see.
The focus certainly has strong points (air and earth) and weak points (fire and water). As all ele weapons it is not perfect and not how all of us would have designed it.
It is a very situational weapon. It rocks against projectiles (air 4 and earth 4), you can send back some projectiles or nullify all of them (yeah even trebuchet boulders). WvW or dungeons (CM, FotM-Uncategorized, …) it can help your team better than anything else.
As pdboddy said, the devs are having a look at all the weapons and traits in order to make more builds viable. I hope they just reassess water and fire that are just terrible.
Perhaps reducing the fire aura cd to make it more worth it in an auramancer build.
The wall is just terrible damage wise, give me a possibility to make it explode for more damage (and a blast) or add a cripple… just make it do something more than being a combo zone for other classes.
For water just add more damage on the comet or lower the cast time.
Anyway I like the focus, it just needs more love !
Combos at the moment are kinda strange from what I found out. For example :
1 – Elementalist casts a fire zone;
2 – Warrior does a whirl attack, applying burn to nearby foes using HIS condition damage modifier.
Basically the fire comes from the elementalist, the warrior just throws it around. Why not use the elementalist modifiers for this ?
All zones use the finisher modifiers, from a playerview this seems suboptimal for teamwork and not logic. Why not change it the other way round.
Also See : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo
Combo fields dont make boss fights any easier unless they’re coming from an elementalist who gives you 15 might stacks all day long, and even then you might as well just run a warrior and tell him to use for great justice every now and then, he’ll more than make up for the DPS loss.
I am really wondering if what you are saying about the DPS difference between smart teamplay using combos vs the simple brutality of a warrior , is true … Will certainly compare on a new team set up using no Ele.
I do agree with you about the combo fields… I don’t care about an AOE nerf, but more useful/powerful combos could be nice …
Hi !
I will avoid going on the obvious 3 Wars 2 mesmers or full guardian or any fotm.
I often do dungeons with my mates, and we run Warrior – Thief – Necromancer – Elementalist – Mesmer.
I play as an elementalist (Sc/D) 30/0/0/20/20, with high Toughness, Vitality, Power and Healing Power., trying to give heals and boons to my allies while maintaining some DPS.
The warrior (Gs + Bow/Rifle), mesmer(Sc/F + Sw/Sw) and thief(D/D + Shortbow) go into direct damage, with high power and good crit chances.
The necromancer (Sc/D + St) goes into conditions.
I can’t really detail their builds, sorry.
We found it quite important to communicate especially when trying to combo. Combos are really good in this game (some of them). Usually when I or the War lay down a fire zone we ask our thief to combo blast in it to gain multiple stacks of might. Usually we can maintain 12 to 25 on everyone. This speeds up the process for mob killing.
Retaliation is also an interesting boon especially with flamethrower mobs. Ask for a light field (mesmer/necro) and some blast in it and bam the mobs melt down due to retaliation.
I would like to see this game evolve a bit more about doing the job as a team (i.e : more efficient combo fields and more electric fields !!!).
One thing to consider in your team is the number of attritions vs direct-damage you have. At one point we were all stacking bleeds on the mobs, with a 25 bleeding stacks cap this was bad. So we changed our builds and now we have around 10-22 stacks, but more direct damage.
Just to point out some interesting skills for a team :
1 – Time Warp : I think everyone will agree, this is the mother of all elites. If you have a mesmer ask him to take this spell, it will greatly speed up the process of killing a boss. To be honest I think having at least one mesmer with this spell is required.
2 – Epidemic : A very nice skill for necros. Just ask your team to unload all the conditions they have on one single mob and then press “Epidemic” and watch the other mobs melt down.
3 – Cluster bomb : stop hiding thief and start spamming combo blasts on that fire field !
tldr : balance direct damage and conditions, use and abuse of combos, just get a mesmer. Try out and experiment, adjust, retest.
I think this total removal of the blast finisher in EA is the wors idea ever.
It was a bug in a sense where I could get it back as soon as I changed attunements.
The blast finishers still created one of the most interesting mechanics in this game.
The damage and utility I can output from this trait is just so bad now … I am a pve and I love doing dungeons, but since launch I clearly realised that an elementalist is not a damage source(compared to my warrior,thief or mesmer mates) . We are a freaking high supportive class with awesome allies buffing abilities. Dodge rolling with EA gave us a fun way of buffing and moving in and out of danger.
I don’t really no where to go now … conjured weapons with glyphs ? Standing in an element (I don’t think the class was built for this)? Please devs give us an insight of what you think an elementalist should be. Show us a video of you playing after this patch as an elementalist in pve/dungeons/wvw/pvp or whatever and explain in detail why you are good and useful for your team.
Thanks for your answer.
During the second path at the event defend detha against the gravelings and kill the breeder (using the traps), Detha died but this did not stop the event. We managed to kill the breeder by zerging him while he was standing at his spawn point. After going to the next event in the hero chamber the event did not trigger, whatever path we took.