umh ,wheres that thread in Dungeons the Op is talking about? can’t find it …
Profession balance forums.
I’m going to laugh if they actually touch the stats on berserker gear. The amount of anger that will be shown on the forum that day will dwarf any of the other stupid things Anet has done in the last year and a half.
Sadly Anet has made a history of doing the worst possible thing with this game so it’s entirely possible they think it’s actually a good idea to nerf berserker gear is some way.
The stats are fine, it’s a choice just like the rest of the sets that go unused. It’s how the AI will react and how the damage will go out that will change.
Like say if a boss is drug to a corner, instant monster AoE every few seconds. Or having mobs/bosses do more unavoidable AoE faster and more often. Things that will make having the other stats important, basically.
Even with those kind of changes, the game will still be ultra shallow. Anyone that likes this all DPS (even with a potential soft trinity) meta, has never walked into Lower Guk or UBRS or any other properly balanced trinity game. They are way better, by miles.
You can’t reinvent the wheel.
The base idea of GW2 combat is abandoning the holy trinity of dps, tanking and healers.
This is also why Anet devs aren’t sitting at the top of ivory towers, with the game making billions of dollars.
There is no depth without roles. No depth = very little replayability. Without replayability, an MMO has no legs to make long term profits.
No real vertical gear progression, would have been enough to keep it fair. No roles, ruins the game.
I fixed this problem by uninstalling.
This change gave a much-needed ranged utility skill for staff users like myself, and maybe scepter too. Think of us staff users! I’m really liking it..
Arcane Wave being reverted and the ranged ability attached to Arcane Brilliance, would be a much better staff ability.
It would be a better fit for every weaponset like that, not just a staff perk.
I hate this current setup, but would adore it if it was reversed, for several reasons.
Started playing Ele because it was fast, fun and cleverly designed. I also always preferred to play a healer and Ele used to be very good at that.
Every patch just seems to erode that style of play though…
The new heal/blast needs to get the ranged targeting and Arcane Wave needs to revert. This also fixes the underwater Arcane Wave problem.
Arcane Wave has been on my bar, in the same spot and on the same mouse hotkey since launch. It did not need any changes. The new heal seems great and if it was targetable, be a great way for staff to help heal with a less fumbly blast finisher than earth 2.
Hotfix please.
Hello, we’re a couple that have found ourselves without a guild recently. We tend to play later at night but can be on anytime in the evening, if needed. I play an Ele main and the GF is a Guardian, both 80 and in full AH exotics atm.
Not looking for anything from a guild but other people to play with and talk to. We’re both veteran MMOers and have raided/PvPed deep end game in several, so we know the discipline: Be there, on vent, know your role and listen. We also have beastly computers and a staggeringly expensive internet connection lol.
Just fishing here, Blackgate has a daunting population and MMOs have made such an odd switch to a nearly anti-social gaming experience lately, that it’s really hard to figure out who’s who. All we seek is active guild, in whatever, but we mainly want to do dungeons and pve in general, with a friendly group. For fun, not anything else. Gear and gold is great but that is not our focus.
Also willing to transfer if the guild fit is right, did it tons in WoW…
(edited by Primernova.5791)
They can feel free to secure my loyalty anytime now byy introducing the housing features that they said would be in game a year ago… if not, that would be quite literally the last straw for me if that’s not out well before the new games are, I been patient enough about it.
I’ve played several MMOs that had housing, it’s pointless and massively overrated. You decorate it once as a massive currency sink, show it to your friends, get bored in 2 seconds and never go back again.
And having played gw1 for over 7 years which I used the guild hall daily and multiple times a day and having bought gw2 under the impression we would have them fairly soon after release it saddened me quite a bit to still not have them… it was honestly next to heroes my favorite part of gw1 cause it gave everyone somewhere to meet away from the rabble and get things coordinated and had all the vendors and crafting people and stuff… it was very convenient. Not to mention it could provide a central location like LA to us with less load times if done prooerly.
Useless, guild chat channel > guild ‘base’. A nice addition, no doubt, but fairly pointless still. It’s a let down in general, was my point, certainly not a reason to ditch a game.
They can feel free to secure my loyalty anytime now byy introducing the housing features that they said would be in game a year ago… if not, that would be quite literally the last straw for me if that’s not out well before the new games are, I been patient enough about it.
I’ve played several MMOs that had housing, it’s pointless and massively overrated. You decorate it once as a massive currency sink, show it to your friends, get bored in 2 seconds and never go back again.
Play both Wildstar and GW2, that way you can almost have good WoW again! It’s blindingly obvious how the Anet devs did the world, art direction and sound back then and Carbine did the ‘cartoony’ factor and combat.
I think GW2 devs could learn and more easily implement stuff from the next iteration of MMOs (Wildstar mainly) but not the other way around. No MMO is better looking or running than GW2 in the next round, it’s just the GW2 combat style that turns so many off. Zergs ’n Zerkers is a horribly boring and bland system. But, I think it can be improved, maybe… I personally liked the tab target, tons of on demand skills and trinity system. Not sure why it was just decided one day that some vast new audience existed and that they just hated it.
My 100% spot on predictions for 2014: GW2 will stay the course and hobble along, well under it’s potential. ESO will fall flat on it’s face. Wildstar will disappoint due to horrible graphics and a gimpy combat system (better than GW2, but still silly). WoW will continue to shrink, but still be at the top by 2015 due to proper endgame (instanced raids), trinity, zergless PvP and the past works of both Carbine and Anet making a seamless and (fairly) beautiful world.
The issue with zerker runs in a loop sort of. Zerker is generally the best for DPS and because it’s the best, everyone has it. It holds the spot as best armor…you have to have it.
You don’t have to have it, you can just not play this game. As nearly 90% of what could be it’s player base, do.
They fester in WoW or play mobas now.
What i thought before the game launched, is that they said, that any profession could be a healer, tank, dps or something else,, Which would be epic, instead it was, self heals,, tanks aren’t really tanky, and everyone HAS to do DPS… The GW1 model was way better. U had, hexers, spikers, healers, support, conditioners, tanks, runners, interrupters, …. i miss it
A lot of us fell for that. If GW2 went that direction or had proper trinity, it would be the top MMO by miles but…
Zergs in ’zerkers was easier I guess.
MMO players are 90% DPS so they like no trinity here, because they equate tanks and healers to elitists or something that holds back their ‘awesome pwnage!’ We don’t always want to carry them and they can’t do the roles, so eliminate the roles… Sounds simple, right?
I equate an all DPS MMO, to something like letting all dogs walk themselves in a neighborhood. They would run in large groups, never interact other than sniffing butts, bite everything they see and eventually get hit by cars. No trinity, in a nutshell.
Throw the vapors!
Taste the vapors.
My guild is slowly gaining members, but we don’t delete them because people do come back and we’re not near our cap. But we tend to have around the same number of active players now than we did six months ago, which is more than we had at launch.
Could you PM the website/email/contact for your guild? I’m fairly sure you’re on my server btw.
I just want to do content, with online friends. Like an MMO is supposed to be played.
An elite with 1 second rooted cast (and Aegis)with a proper CD would prevent OP stuff.
No it wouldn’t.
Sure beeing able to swap staff/x would’t make us any op.
Yes it would. Stop underestimating staff please, and especially stop understimating the combos you could pull of if you could use the staff’s fields as a D/D ele.
Since every character in GW2 has to be balanced as a melee-healing-ranged-tank-mage… The concept of ‘OP’ kind of goes out the window.
We don’t need a full weapon swap, but a staff swap would go a long way to bring Eles in line with what other classes are capable of.
I love the blanket statement fallacy of ‘zerker trivializes content’. Never gets old.
Content has to remain trivial, to support ’zerkers, is more accurate.
God of War style gameplay in an MMO, is absurd. MMORPGs are (supposed to be) about tactics, roles and community.
It’s like screaming into an abyss anymore. Nearly the entire MMO playerbase, is sitting in MOBAs, dying for a good game… Millions of players, super old crusty folks from as far back as 2010. Desperate for a good PvP match with gear they earned from dungeons or raids; or maybe finally using that gear to kill the next progression boss and pose for a screenshot next to it’s corpse…
Laziness, stupidity and greed are powerful things.
‘Zerker gear doesn’t break the game but it harms it a lot. Having only one set of gear that works, with a plethora of other options, is obviously not intended.
IMO, they need to convert all gear to ‘zerkers and expand ’utility’ strengths into traits. The traits already kind of do this now but the effect is very weak. Make that stronger and the soft trinity will be more visible but the overall meta would be roughly the same.
DPS = High damage, mild support and buffs
Tanks = High control, mild damage and buffs
Healers = High support, mild damage, control and buffs
Do the math on which is expendable…
(edited by Primernova.5791)
For Elementalists:
Have a staff and staff only, set to a secondary weapon swap. The class feels very pigeonholed.
With this change, staff Eles wont be stuck in a defenseless support role and D/S-/x wont just be glassy dps.
The current traits support this completely, one will always be stronger than the other depending on pre-fight choices. This just offers some decent, in-fight adaptations.
Do this Anet and you will see a lot more Eles being rolled.
(edited by Primernova.5791)
I really like GW2’s combat, the only thing I would add would be an aggro meter so we could control the boss aggro with taunts. Other than that everything else is fine.
This would be a huge improvement really. No need to have taunts though, just normal damage. If you start to get too focused and beat up, you can back off damage and let it drift elsewhere. This is a natural time to throw some support abilities out as well.
That alone would give the devs some breathing room to slow fights down and put some actual strategy in. FFxiv has a good little agro list built in that shows which mobs are ‘looking’ at you and little squares that are simply green, yellow and red next to them.
As much as some of us know a trinity is better, it will never fly in this game, with this player base. We need to strike a balance at this point and focus on moving away from ‘zerkers and zergs as primary PvE (and PvP for WvW) balance points for the devs. I know some are just used to that at this point but it’s terrible from a gameplay standpoint. It’s a completely broken system that’s left to fester because devs are afraid to change course.
Change is scary, but it’s almost never bad and usually a great improvement. MMOs are a progressive platform and this one is in a rut, badly. It’s cobbled together a system that’s weak, but somewhat stable. Is that really the full potential of GW2?
Consider for a second, that you may have a very narrow perspective on this subject.
I’ve played all three roles and ended up being ‘the guy’ that finished off a boss or trash pack and rezed everyone else so we could move on. It feels good but that’s not confined to a particular role, it just happens.
That pic is exactly right. Good DPS, good tanking and good healing are all roles of carrying.
It’s like combustion: fuel, spark and air.
Ahh, so you are thinking of mobas… Those came from MMOs, which used to be very competitive, as GW2 wishes to be.
Mobas, came from the WoW vanilla/TBC ‘BG’ pvp scene, as the game started falling apart. Some of it came from older RTS games too, it’s kind of a weird melding of the two genres.
I play dota2 a lot, I know what a carry means there; it’s not what I was meaning above. An MMO carry, is a player that takes a support role, that helps everyone progress the best that they can. It could be pushing a fresh damage dealer through stuff, a confused tank or even another healer that just needs some advice. Or, my favorite, healing a good player through impossible PvP situations, while tanking the other half of a team…
My only point: this game can be better! It’s not bad, it’s just a husk of what it could be imo. Old school MMO PvP > MOBAS, 100% It was way more fun, tactical, immersive and social.
First of all, mobas definitely didn’t come from mmos unless Warcraft 3 was an mmo. Secondly, mobas are not the only competitive games out there.
Warcraft was an RTS. WoW was that playstyle, but as an MMO. All my WoW friends that loved the BG days, went to LoL or Dota/2. Dota was a WC3 mod…
It’s a de-evolution. I don’t mean just the games, but the players. They went to what they liked, PvP with tanks, dps and support. PvE was replaced by leveling in 30-50 minutes, as was gearing…
MOBAs are great games but they miss out on so much of what an MMO can offer.
I’m tired, midterms tomorrow GL to ya’all.
Spamming heals or soaking hits is skill dependent? Looking at HP bars is skill dependent? Healers are just bads looking to be carried by DPS.
GW2 has a great system where each class has their own burst heal, each class can DPS, and some classes can soak hits, but put together in a way that no class is strictly necessary.
No class in MMO history, or even RPG history has carried more than healers. It’s why I love it, ‘helping’ is our thing I guess. You talk a big game and I don’t know you, so I can only take you at face value. But, you are now in the position of carrying if so. Are you here to carry and help now?
Actually, the UA in GW1 DoASC was pretty much a rezbot that had to do a burst heal on the bonder every now and then. It was the biggest kitten role ever.
Even in FoWSC, it was a kittenrole, because if your tank was any decent, your DPS wouldn’t need to get healed.
I don’t know much about other MMO’s, but I’m pretty sure that it usually boiled down to ‘if your tanks were good, your healer could just play patience and afk’.
I never played GW1, it was far too instanced for my taste. In other MMOs, tanks and healers played a huge role in making the game much more fun and complicated.
I can tell this is a pretty common sentiment here, I really don’t mean to step on the toes of old school GW1 players, just offer a broader perspective of what a trinity can do for this game.
Tanks and healers force you to wait in queues because not enough people want to play snoozefest classes. The tactics also will just involve tank and spank, how is this “more fun”, let alone “complicated”?
GW2 is far more satisfying when you can pull things off on your own (theoretically) without somebody carrying you which makes it possible for you to do things like solo a boss after the rest of your team wipes.
Consider for a second, that you may have a very narrow perspective on this subject.
I’ve played all three roles and ended up being ‘the guy’ that finished off a boss or trash pack and rezed everyone else so we could move on. It feels good but that’s not confined to a particular role, it just happens.
Its a great game for you OP, we old school MMO players have a lot of different opinions’ but we can all agree; it’s good for new players of this genre.
We need your opinions eventually and while you are new, just enjoy it. Just remember, it’s a hobby, don’t let it consume your important time.
I wasn’t talking about mmos, those are hardly a competetive environments. And you are too much fixated on that silly design of tanks and healers.
Ahh, so you are thinking of mobas… Those came from MMOs, which used to be very competitive, as GW2 wishes to be.
Mobas, came from the WoW vanilla/TBC ‘BG’ pvp scene, as the game started falling apart. Some of it came from older RTS games too, it’s kind of a weird melding of the two genres.
I play dota2 a lot, I know what a carry means there; it’s not what I was meaning above. An MMO carry, is a player that takes a support role, that helps everyone progress the best that they can. It could be pushing a fresh damage dealer through stuff, a confused tank or even another healer that just needs some advice. Or, my favorite, healing a good player through impossible PvP situations, while tanking the other half of a team…
My only point: this game can be better! It’s not bad, it’s just a husk of what it could be imo. Old school MMO PvP > MOBAS, 100% It was way more fun, tactical, immersive and social.
Spamming heals or soaking hits is skill dependent? Looking at HP bars is skill dependent? Healers are just bads looking to be carried by DPS.
GW2 has a great system where each class has their own burst heal, each class can DPS, and some classes can soak hits, but put together in a way that no class is strictly necessary.
No class in MMO history, or even RPG history has carried more than healers. It’s why I love it, ‘helping’ is our thing I guess. You talk a big game and I don’t know you, so I can only take you at face value. But, you are now in the position of carrying if so. Are you here to carry and help now?
Actually, the UA in GW1 DoASC was pretty much a rezbot that had to do a burst heal on the bonder every now and then. It was the biggest kitten role ever.
Even in FoWSC, it was a kittenrole, because if your tank was any decent, your DPS wouldn’t need to get healed.
I don’t know much about other MMO’s, but I’m pretty sure that it usually boiled down to ‘if your tanks were good, your healer could just play patience and afk’.
I never played GW1, it was far too instanced for my taste. In other MMOs, tanks and healers played a huge role in making the game much more fun and complicated.
I can tell this is a pretty common sentiment here, I really don’t mean to step on the toes of old school GW1 players, just offer a broader perspective of what a trinity can do for this game.
haviz,
“There are two different definition of “being carried”. First one is being dependant on someone because of silly mechanics designers put in place. Second term, widely used in
competitive play, means that in order to success you had to depend on someone else’s better gameplay.”
I can only speak to this point. No game I have ever played has had mechanics that a dps could not survive if they were good, on their own. Healers smooth out this imbalance between the really good and the very new or very bad.
Tanks also provide order, but in the form of keeping mobs where they need to be and not running around wildly. Mechanics can be placed anywhere, you don’t have to have the boss beating on you to avoid red circles or ‘fire’ in general.
Spamming heals or soaking hits is skill dependent? Looking at HP bars is skill dependent? Healers are just bads looking to be carried by DPS.
GW2 has a great system where each class has their own burst heal, each class can DPS, and some classes can soak hits, but put together in a way that no class is strictly necessary.
No class in MMO history, or even RPG history has carried more than healers. It’s why I love it, ‘helping’ is our thing I guess. You talk a big game and I don’t know you, so I can only take you at face value. But, you are now in the position of carrying if so. Are you here to carry and help now?
This game rewards zerging and bursting down instanced PvE encounters before they get dangerous. That’s so shallow from a gameplay perspective. It hurts the social aspect of the game and is very exclusionary, far more than healers and tanks shunning the known bad dps on any particular server of any particular game. Which I know hurts, but that’s what causes the, “LF2M, tank healer PST!” thing. We know who you are, we avoid you if we see you’re in a questionable guild or after we have given you a chance and it was a wipefest. It’s human nature.
This is a very flat and blunt fact, from a very old school raider, healer mainly and part time dps BAMF: DPS are the 95 percentile in MMOs, good DPS are about 10% of that group, if even that. This game is 100% DPS classes.
The inmates run this asylum.
I was talking to a non-gaming friend about this the other day and found myself describing GW2’s team play as follows: it’s like a football team where everybody is a quarterback.
More like running backs IMO. Two teams throwing themselves at each other, en masse or at a boss; only slowing down to dodge, backward pass or stiff arm.
1. Zerging completely shot into the sun. Any game that has zerging is kitten, especially for PvE, yeesh…
2. Stronger soft trinity or just be done with the illusion of choice, and change all gear to be either ’zerker for PvE or Knight for PvP.
3. Some type of spontaneous world PvP, this adds randomness to the world and a lot of fun. Maybe we could, I don’t know, have wars between guilds!? If random players get involved, they would get flagged to the guild they were helping for an hour or so. Any further player to attack this flagged player would join the opposite guild and so forth. This could spread like wildfire and be just amazing.
4. Have some serious discussions on class forums about balance. These forums are very hostile atm but given the right sentiment and attitude, this could work well. Players are largely reasonable and know the weaknesses of their classes much better than any internal QA could ever figure out. Find a consensus and implement it, if it doesn’t work, dial it back.
5. Mounts! Why, in 2013, does an MMO just not have freaking mounts? We love to ride them, we love to farm them and Devs love to sell them. What exactly is the problem there? You guys have a absolutely amazing art/mechanics teams, so no issues there. They couldn’t unbalance anything that I can think of if you follow the tried and true methods of knock off, snare and a good long cast time to get them out.
I can think of a million other things I would change to make this game TBC with 2012+ graphics and an amazing world, but those are the ones I think could actually be done and not throw a huge wrench into what’s already established.
In a guild but it’s pretty dead as the core split off to a very good organized WvW guild. I could maybe join it but I just can’t bring myself to commit to anything involving zerging regularly. My gf is also pretty much making me play FFxiv at gunpoint… I do like being able to heal again but the rest is zzzz…
Charm, sleep, mesmerize, root, transmogrify, polymorph, fear, mind control and sap are CCs. All are from 8 to 45 seconds long, some can be ranged casted and all have varied rules for breaking. Some even have benefits for the victim.
Won’t argue with you on lack of CC, but I will mention that Fear, Root, and Polymorph all exist in this game. Knockdown is a CC, think of it like a 3-5sec stun. I’ve been feared for at least 5secs before, same with polymorph, and I know I’ve been rooted for at least 10secs before. Mostly on account I didn’t attack my way out of the root.
But GW2 does not have any encounters that require CC. I don’t hate the fact CC isn’t necessary, but I do kinda miss it as a feature. You see a group of 5 mobs, you can CC two, fight 3. Just a fun dynamic in general.
Exactly! The ‘PvE cc’ aspect is so completely lost. Your first paragraph dealt with PvP I assume, those times and effects are fine. In PvP, long predictable cc is just annoying but in PvE it makes tough mobs, with nasty mechanics, doable by the devs and playable for us. This adds depth, something this game’s PVE sorely lacks.
I’ve been trying to think of an example of a PvE encounter that explained not only the trinity but CCs effects on PvE and I thought of a few, but only one kept coming to mind, the UBRS corner mob pack before The Beast in early vanilla…
Early UBRS was 15 and then 10 man, it was the first raid in that game and very likely some fine folks at Anet had a hand in that place back then. The ‘corner pack’ was around 10-15+ mobs and they sucked if you didn’t pull them right. Some hit like trucks, others healed or summoned more mobs making the pack balloon out of control. The rogues (thieves here) went in first for 90% hit chance, 45+- second saps and then picked targets for the rest of the group to assist off of (this pre-dates raid markers) players knew which rogue to assist before the pull, this caused the dangerous and tanked mobs to be burned down first and in order.
Right before the tanks pulled, the mages, druids and warlocks would apply their ranged CC. This started the fight and the tanks had to run in quickly to start pulling the pack apart as it ran at the group, with sunders, shield slams and once far enough away from the CCed mobs, a thunderclap (weak aoe threat) to try to keep the mobs off very squishy healers.
Once the pull looked ‘clean’ the healers would go to work, keeping people alive, helping CC, doing some dps, maintaining a safe range, keep the whole party in LoS, not wasting mana and at all costs, avoiding agro as it would one shot them. The dps had as much of a job protecting healers as the tanks did, so at this point the group was one unit, adapting to a nasty fight as mistakes were inevitably made.
I must ask at this point, does that not sound kittening fun, for a PvE fight? It was just a trash pack that took more time to kill than entire dungeons in GW2! Nothing but random loot could drop and then once it was killed, an epic boss fight followed, that will be remembered by folks like me, until death!
Are current gamers not interested in such fights?
I think they are, they just are denied the chance to even try anymore for ‘reasons’…
What harder content? where CC matters? please explain.
Arah? lol! makes sense when you can basically run straight to every boss.
The new TA? I’ve only ever run it on my guard in pugs and like I said, I’m doing the grouping with GS#5 so that my groups can AOE or multi-hit targets.
COE? only hard if players can’t dodge alpha attacks. That’s a “we don’t have the timing right” issue, not a “we have to kite or lock down one target while we do something else” issue.
Other than that one skill, I will say it again CC hardly matters at all. Maybe it will when we get some raids or something.
In other games that play up CC and usually use the trinity, there will be mobs that are too much for the group if allowed to roam while the other mobs are being killed and have to be locked down in some way. The only places that remotely had anything happen like is are in things like:
The new Teq at battery phases, helps to use CC to keep mobs away from batteries. Well, slows and knockbacks or pulls.
The others, um…asura/harpy frac. I know I use chains of light here for parts like tanking the abom. The first shaman phase in the grawl frac where CC is probably a must stopping the grawl from pushing the sacrifices into the lava below.
Traps, chills, fears, knockbacks…are nice little gimmicks, but there isn’t any content when it’s actually needed and has to be apart of a fight and ups the chance for success.
Don’t think anyone said anything much about support because it’s there to some degree. I think the guard also trumps every class there because while everyone else pumps out damage enhancers like might or fury, the guard actually prevents damage with things like aegis, blinds, protection and probably the most important skill in the game “WALL OF REFLECTION”. (feedback comes in a close second).
not talking about optimal speed clear groups here as you don’t need anything those groups can do to clear any content in the game. Even in those cases, the largest support anyone gets is might.
P.S. pvp is different story
Mobs from high level fractals. You don’t skip them and they hurt harder than bosses. CC is not needed because of design, but it helps. Blame anet for “every party composition should finish the content”.
CC does not exist in this game in any form. Knocking down a mob or a player for 1-2 seconds is completely pointless except for an interrupt.
Charm, sleep, mesmerize, root, transmogrify, polymorph, fear, mind control and sap are CCs. All are from 8 to 45 seconds long, some can be ranged casted and all have varied rules for breaking. Some even have benefits for the victim.
I don’t miss the trinity at all. It can stay gone.
Simple, to the point and I agree.
Now, what I do not understand, is why someone who loves the Holy Trinity is playing GW2? There are so many other games out there that cater to those that want it.
It’s newer than other MMO’s and it’s B2P (no sub fee, no cash shop items required to enjoy the game) … probably the same reasons why those who wanted gear progression bought it despite the pre-launch publicity which strongly suggested that the endame was to be built on horizontal progression.
It was also because the pre-release media released by Anet, focused a lot on a ‘soft-trinity’ which is something that we did not get. I would much prefer that approach as opposed to to a real trinity for this game.
My favorite character ever in any MMO I have ever played, was my vanilla WoW troll shaman. He was the pretty good example of what a GW2 character could/should have been. I ran deep into the nuking tree and most of the way down the melee tree. I mainly used a shield and a slow one hander. This setup could ranged nuke, up close melee, tank lightly and heal pretty well. Super well rounded, so much so it got nerfed into the ground!
This is what I and I believe many other thought Anet was trying to achieve with GW2 through weapon switching. That way, each class could do pretty much any role they needed to preform and not get stuck with one maybe two, like a traditional trinity. Instead of that, we got all DPS classes, fights so easy they don’t need roles, zerging and dodge rolling… Not quite as compelling.
You missed this gem.
-too not have holy trinity, every shemale is dps.
Pretty much says it all, but says nothing at the same time. Kind of like the comic.
Eles are in a terrible spot at the moment. They either need all of their mobility back or have their damage and survivability buffed a lot.
I would prefer the former.
The OP wrote a well thought out, coherent missive that explains his point of view very well.
My take on it:
I am an MMO vet as well. Everything I have ever played (save for GW2) has a trinity. I don’t play any of them any more.
Why?
Because I hate having characters sit in storage doing nothing because the only thing people want to bring to a fight is (insert role here.) So many years looking at LFG queues that say “Healer wanted for X” or “Tank needed for Boss Fight Y” while the lesser played non-trinity role characters sit gathering dust.
God forbid that my favorite class to play isn’t a trinity class. If I want in a group in these other games, I absolutely HAVE to roll a class that’s wanted or needed in a group, or I sit around in town begging for a group that wants to “support” me.
This reason, above every other is the reason that I believe the trinity is a dead concept.
GW1 had a trinity of sorts, but there were multiple professions that could spec to do the heal thing, or the tank thing, or the DPS thing. It wasn’t quite trinity-free, but they made an attempt at it. Aion did as well, making a class or two that didn’t quite fit the “trinity mold.” GW2 is the only game that has done away with the traditional holy trinity altogether.
It’s not a matter of who does what role and more. It’s a matter of being so ingrained into our minds that the holy trinity is necessary in the first place. After years of playing that way, it’s hard to undo all that knowledge.
So, at the risk of sounding like a troll, we all need to “learn to play” when it comes to removing the trinity. Bringing it back only serves to make us all move in the wrong direction.
But then again, this is only the opinion of one player among thousands.
It was hard to find tanks and healers in other MMOs because 85% of the playerbase like to be a dps with zero responsibility. Tanks like to lead and protect the group, if they mess up, the group will most likely die. Some people thrive on that level pressure. Similarly with healers, they like to push a group to preform above what they could individually and if they spread themselves too thin, the group will likely wipe to losing the tank.
No matter the reason why players like different roles, they exist to make a game more complex and fun. Having a game setup for only dps, makes the game way too easy. Simply stacking ‘zerker and hopping out of easily discernible telegraphed attacks, does not equal an epic skill ceiling. I used to have to concentrate so intensely on healing during some really tough boss battles that I would achieve full ’Ferret on crack’ mode, just to keep all the plates spinning! My GF used to love to poke me in the ribs after such a fight, just to watch me pop up like a madman in full fright lol! You ever get anything like that deepsing GW2?
If GW2 suddenly got a trinity, nothing would really change for players that like to dps. The change would be more orderly and complex PvE fights and the game would attract a lot more people. The PvP dynamic would also change for the better IMO. I personally don’t think anything in gaming is more fun than healing in PvP, it’s so funny if you do it right.
(edited by Primernova.5791)
I was reading another MMOs forum the other day. It was a thread about getting rid of tanks and GW2 was brought up, “GW2 tried to get rid of the trinity and look how well that went for them…”
Look at any general video game forum except this one and you will find the same things mentioned about this game and why they don’t like it: No roles (trinity), no instanced (real) raids and zergs everywhere.
Seriously, the only support for ‘zerker gear and dodging over a proper or soft trinity is on these forums and even here it’s split. The majority have voted with their wallets, this game should be up and over 10M players by now, but they still fester in another game with a 14 year old engine and terrible current direction.
Some large chunk are at ‘end game’, silently zerging PvE/PvP or stacking 3 classes in glass cannon mode, for dungeons… That kitten really needs to stop, it’s a major detriment to the game. All classes are viable in this game regardless of spec, class, race, gear, weapons or skill level. If ‘zerker’ is the master race, learn to carry and stop telling people how to spec/play because it takes 5 more minutes to clear a dungeon, it’s killing the social and fun part of PvE, in what’s supposed to be a ‘fun’ MMO! I carried with healing, for years in other MMOs. I never gave anything but advice and happily carried anyone that needed/deserved it. That sentiment is dead in current MMOs and it’s killing the genre WITH FIRE! I think, from what I have read, the PvE ‘raid’ aspect is being addressed with Tequatl. I applaud this but it’s still zerg, exclusive and crosseyed imo. Anet, you can not reinvent the wheel, just add to it. An outdoor boss is great, but instanced raids for guilds, are 1000% better. Keep the outdoor bosses for fun, put the gear in raids/dungeons and for kitten’s sake, strengthen the soft trinity. That will finally put this game on top and give us a proper MMO.
Another large chunk are in FFXIV, it has a similar look/feel and also trinity, but still no end game, so it’s a pretty kittenty hobby too.
95% of the MMO playerbase, are playing mobas now.
Such a waste, all the MMO genre needed was TBC with better graphics/communication (voice) and overworld systems. We’re back in the doldrums of one MMO having one good system and another having something slightly different but severely lacking in another area. We’ve done this kitten before… Pull it together, it’s so obvious what to do.
Speed-runs, are kitten for an MMORPG, just as bad as zergs. It’s ZERO fun.
Class elitism is kitten for an RPG, but that’s on the devs. No trinity.
GW2 can support a LFD system, but if everyone wants FOTM gear and CLASSES, you have destroyed that fragile system before it has even been implemented.
DPS being the only stackable stat? kitten OFF Anet!
GET a BrAiN!
I use a GTX770sc with a 3570k, both very OCed and they run GW2 great. The only dips I get are in Lions Arch and if there is a really big zerg nearby and even then it’s only into the mid 40s with everything on ultra.
IMO, it’s the best card for the money atm. The 780 is better but I don’t think it’s $250+ better. But keep in mind, your current processor may very well bottleneck it and the difference may be minimal until you fully rebuild.
OK, just took the Ele to Lion’s Arch and it was boosting so I guess it’s as fixed as it’s going to get.
Thanks for the tips Reborn +1!
change the power options with the settings of the first link in my previous post and check again please .
but you must know that different maps have different performance because the instances created with different options (they have more or less hardware resources in their server farm ) .
Already had it like that. Not sure about the instance resources, that could be it. I do know before the changes to culling, a patch or two ago, I was at or above 60 fps pretty much everywhere. I have set the character limit to medium now and it seems 95% normal but still get slowdowns in places.
GPU Boost is a function of the card and not anything GW2 can do.
In some cities, events and zergs the game becomes CPU limited. A faster card doesn’t matter.
I did consider that, but it’s still odd how it’s not boosting in places. Above, Reborn gave me the run as administrator tip and it worked for where my thief was standing but not where my Ele is. The thief is in the Caledon backyard by the Blacklion guy and dipping to the low 50s with the card hovering at 1100mhz. When I did the administrator trick, it went well over 60 fps for a second and is boosting normally. The Ele is in Rata Sum and hovering around 50 fps with the static 1100 MHz still. In both locations, nothing was really going on and very few other players around.
Now I’m even more confused as to why it works for one of the character’s location but not the other.
if you have win 7 or win 8 run the game as administrator ( right click and choose run as administrator )
also tweak the power option to high performance as you can read here http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/774-power-plan-select.html
all thw tweaks ( is for win 7, 8 and some for win xp ) are here : http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11728-optimize-windows-7-a.html
That Run as Administrator suggestion worked like a charm! It’s boosting up to 1293mhz like it’s supposed to now. Do I have to launch it like that all the time?
Edit:
Found the checkbox to always run as administrator. I know it throws up that annoying window to click through but that should be default for this game, if it’s keeping graphics cards from preforming properly, I never would have guessed that would fix it.
(edited by Primernova.5791)
Possible Fix***
I had this issue forever until I realized I never properly set up my home network. Once I ticked it over to ‘home network’ the problem went away. I think it’s the public default setting that GW2 doesn’t like.
Just click the network icon in the system tray and click ‘open network and sharing center’. Make sure is says Home Network and not Public.
Hope that helps, that’s such an annoying error. I used to run in circles and hop around like a madman in a vain attempt to not get booted.
(edited by Primernova.5791)
if you want find what other players or anet suggested for tweaks read this reddit post
Thanks for the link but it’s not really a tweaking problem. It’s as if the GW2 client is not communicating with the graphics card and telling it that it’s dropping below 60fps. This, in all other games, makes the card throttle up to full power.