Guild Wars 2

1: Land a hit on a condition warrior
2: Gets interrupted by the rune effect
3: Instant fear, weakness, 2 stacks of bleed and 4 stacks of confusion

Yeeeah…

Brief story:

I’m a Daredevil player with BiS DPS gear. I couldn’t find a private raid group and couldn’t join PuG groups because people have some stigma against thieves since they don’t offer any unique group support. This made me take a break from the game and play Blade & Soul.

Blade & Soul has a content called Mushin’s Tower: a solo-player dungeon where each floor is a unique encounter/boss, with the difficulty increasing per floor.

Now my suggestion:

Could we have something similar in this game? hard (as in raid difficulty) content for players like me who likes a good challenge that I can do at my own pace, without having to rely on other players like in raids?

Think of Queen’s Gauntlet, but harder/more complex and with better/exclusive reward.

I’m still amused this game doesnt have a 3v3 death match/arena mode.

@Teutos: That’s a bit subjective, dont you think? I mean how many people actually have fun playing against condition builds? Shall we have Rabid, Carrion etc removed aswell?

Brockolosso.8316:

Bunker Mesmer used Soldiers too, and since they tried to remove Bunker Amulets soldiers had to die
deal with it

One build abuses of it – Removes the amulet instead.

That’s as logical as removing Marauder because Scrapper is abusive with it, despite marauder being fine on pretty much any other build.

Teutos.8620:

It was a good choice to remove Soldier. Fighting other players that are too tanky is not fun (e.g. soldiers engi)

I recall there were only two functional Soldier builds: Rifle engineer and Minionmancer, and both only used it because of their access to might stacking.That’s definitely not a gamechanging amulet.

Sentinel was also only being abused by chronobunkers, which got a considerable nerf in this patch. No one else used Sentinel for competitive builds.

Both these amulets lack sustain and have clear trade-offs in terms of damge (save for HGH Rifle engi). It’s nowhere as problematic as Celestial that could have sustain, tankiness and damage on the same build.

These amulets were never the problem, very specific builds abusing of them were. So Anet decides to just outright remove them, rather than fix said builds. I thought the game was about build diversity?

Senario.2038:

Rainweaver.7302:

Senario.2038:

By counterplay you mean making it 100% useless because it counters itself?

How does it counters itself by having an actual telling of when it is being used?

Now people can actually dodge it on reaction, thus it is useless…?

I’m guessing DS doesn’t stand for Diamond Skin for you. I made assumptions because honestly DS seems most commonly to stand for Diamond Skin.

Sorry, thought you were talking about Plague Signet.

Yeah, I meant Diamond Skin…it does have more counterplay now – for better or worse (dunno how underwhelming it is now, yet to play my elementalist)

Senario.2038:

By counterplay you mean making it 100% useless because it counters itself?

How does it counters itself by having an actual telling of when it is being used?

Now people can actually dodge it on reaction, thus it is useless…?

Could you do something about Plague Signet?

I’ve no problem with having my condition burst transfered to me, but at least give me proper intuitive counterplay against it that is not randomly using my defensive CDs whenever I see the signet is up, out of fear of exploding to my own conditions due to an instant cast stun-breaking condition transfer.

Both Putrid Mark and Deathly Swarm have adequate cast times. Why not give the instant cast/stun break property to another signet like Locust that is not as oppressive upon activation as Plague?

“Just dont use your conditions all at once”, in other words, play attrition against one of the best attrition class in the game, that can dish condition burst itself while having high base HP and the threat of Death/Reapershroud. It doesnt work, specially when only a few condition builds have good sustained condition application.

“Bring more condition removal”, true, but now I have to use my condition removal to remove my own conditions, and thus wont have enough for when the Necro uses his/her own conditions burst.

I understand some classes are a bad matchup for others but, again, it should at least offer a counterplay that is not based on random preemptive skill usage.

AnnieGYG.6842:

in preparation for higher fractals where everything will be a 1 shot so there’s no point to full PTV – you still have all the skills you need with zerker. I love the zerker meta, it means you actually have to use skill to stay alive instead of facetanking and it’s definitly more enjoyable for me to feel that bit of pressure in a game or theres no point to play.

Isn’t this (bolded) a contradiction? Or do you mean facetanking outside of high level fractals?

Bread.7516:

Dredge do not have good AI just a spam of skills available to them, same AI as regular mobs.

Didn’t say it was great or anything, it’s just that compared to all the other types of mobs , it’s the best we have.

At least ranged dredges attempt to do something when someone hits them in melee. If only disaggregators saved their daze for interrupts only.

Regarding the AI talk: although far from perfect, dredges are probably the best we have in terms of AI…

Good variety of ranged and melee damage
Group buffing, including protection
Good CC
Ranged mobs have defenses if engaged in melee (bombers run, oscillators and resonators use CC)
Add spawning mechanism through the mining suit
Immunity to one of, if not the most powerful condition for PvE

…and yet, they’re still considered by many as the worst and most hated type of enemy in the game. I understand things like fractal’s clown car gives them a bad reputation, but I also saw people complaining about them back in the molten facility dungeon, simply because they don’t like the blind immunities or the dazes.

Sometimes I wonder if people truly want challenging AI/design when they are already bothered by dredges.

Xia.3485:

I’m not a big fan of a death penalty. I do feel bosses should stomp players dead when they go down. Same with normal mobs, they should know how to stomp you.

I was not advocating death penalty, I just dont think you should have both the rally system and a non-existent penalty. As it stands, the only risk you have of dying is losing like 3 silver and a minute or two of your time walking back (maybe more if it’s WvW).

I really like your idea though. Being required to stomp toxic alliance mobs was a good start, hopefully they elaborate it more, both for stomping mobs and getting stomped by them.

laharl.8435:

Ok, so complain about the rally system in the forum and make better suggestions. But you may as well use the system while it’s in place.

There have been several complains about the rally system in this forum, specially regarding spvp. Yeah, you should use it while it’s in place (I do that, after all), but I don’t think it makes much sense to call people unskilled for not using a system that, in my opinion, trivializes skill in the first place (as in not getting downed).

Some people are complaining about others who don’t use the rally system properly, but in my opinion the whole rally mechanic contributes to the “noob bubble”.

What I see in most speed-run dungeon/fractals groups are people spamming their DPS rotations and not caring about getting downed, and still managing to successfully clear the content, simply because they keep rallying. This game already has an almost non-existent death penalty, so why make death even harder to happen?

What do you define as rubbish? My quotidian scale 49 group consists of 2 engineers, 2 necromancers and 1 elementalist. Our runs are smooth and contrary to what some extremists would say, does not take 1-2 hours to complete.

Just a few corrections regarding dredge mechanics:

The daze from the Disaggregators comes from their gong bash skill (similar animation of shield bash), not from hitting them while they play the gong.

Their alleged “perma-protection” only happens because people do not interrupt them when they play the gong. Each time he hits the gong he gives Protection, Regeneration, Swiftness and Might to nearby dredge for 7 seconds. Since he hits the gong 4 times, if you don’t interrupt him he will give a total of 28 seconds of protection and the others abovementioned buffs. If your group does not have a decent boon removal skill such as Null Field, just use warrior’s tremor or some other CC as soon as he starts the skill to minimize the protection uptime.

As for Dredge’s CC, they actually have the following:

-Stun from Dredge Mining Suits (he stuns you, then hits you three times)
-Daze from Disaggregators
-Knockdown from Exacavators (the ones that dig)
-Knockback from Oscillators (only if someone is in melee range)
-AoE launch from Resonators (only if someone is in melee range)

Proposal Overview

Apply the “unique difficulty based on fractals scale” to bosses.

Goal of Proposal

As probably everyone know, at scale 10 the harpies at uncategorized fractals gain a new ability (the knockback orb). While I don’t really like the harpie’s knockback, I definitely like the concept of enemies gaining new abilities as you progress through higher tiers. By giving fractal bosses (all bosses) new abilities per tier, you not only provide more challenge and make fights less monotonous and repetitive, but you also have a solution for designing higher tier difficulty without having to rely on the problematic “increase HP/damage” format.

I’m aware that we have instabilities for that, but since their release, I’ve always felt instabilities were too artificial and felt more like a handicap than an innate challenge (i.e lvl 43, 47 and 48 instabilities). In my opinion, the sign of a challenging content is when you can play your character to it’s full potential and still have a hard fight. By giving enemies new abilities (or even mechanisms) at each tier, you can give players challenge without the frustration of feeling limited.

Proposal Functionality

At a given tier, bosses could receive new abilities or mechanics, from just a new weapon ability to a dynamic change in the encounter. For example:

Starting from lvl X0, Mossman could have respawning net traps scattered around the fight area, immobilizing player. Captain Ashym could summon elite ascalonian soldiers during the fight to assist him. Shaman Lornarr from the snowblind fractals could receive some new Greatsword abilities. Imbued Grawl Shaman could flood 1/3 of the fight area with lava during the shield/grub stage. The lava that you drop from the bucket over the Dredge Mining Suit or Ice Elemental could also damage players who stay in the area etc.

Associated Risks
When coupled with instabilities, it might become too difficult for players to progress, specially when certain instabilities are already enough of a challenge (such as lvl 43). Would probably need to readjust certain instabilities first.

While I agree that the bomb tunnel and the clown car could use some rework, the switch room is fine. It’s challenging, requiring both teamwork and single player skill/profession knowledge.

LittleLepton.8915:

Rainweaver.7302:

Oh, thanks for the explanation!

Will still miss the Vevina fight though

Me too. RIP Vevina. RIP TAFU. :’(

OMG idea!!!

Boss fractal: Vevina beginning champion and spider tree !!!!!!

I really like the idea. It will make my life as a PuG’er so much harder though

#bringbacktafu

Oh, thanks for the explanation!

Will still miss the Vevina fight though

I still don’t remember them giving a detailed explanation as to why they removed TAFU in order to implement the aetherblade path.

Even lorewise it makes no sense, as it was supposed to be a triangle interaction between the nightmare court NPCs. Except that now we don’t have the Vevina fight/Fyonna Tree/Leurent dead variation. Where is my immersion ANet.

Wethospu.6437:

It makes me bit sad to see how they implemented new fractals. With level reset I would have expected a real rework with huge amount of challenge and content. Not the reduced version we got.

Personally I don’t like the current version at all. I was expecting a legit challenge, as in more difficult bosses and more complex groups of mobs and mechanics. Instead we got gimmick instabilities, with most of them being basically handcaps to your character (and some very annoying at that). In most games, having a hard-mode version of a dungeon means making enemies stronger; in fractals, it means making players weaker or debilitated: I suppose I could call that artificial difficulty.

The idea of adding more complexity after a certain fractals level was actually good (see harpies after level 10), I have no idea why they didn’t keep it up. I mean, you could for example add respawning traps to the Mossman fight area, make Captain Ashym periodically summon ascalonian mobs during the fight (why does he even shout “rally to me ascalonians” and charges in alone?), add new greatsword abilities to Snowblind’s shaman boss, add more abilities and enhance the depth of the mechanics of the Jellyfish fight etc. But what we get instead is having some of your boons transformed into conditions, taking gradual damage when you hit the enemy and those other instabilities that are more annoying than challenging.

deSade.9437:

I agree that changing things without even mentioning it in patch notes – since it wasn’t an exploit they don’t even have that excuse – is quite… yes, low. Disappointing for sure. Annoying at best.

True, this is something that is getting really annoying. Another example: why would they change the camera of the Imbued Shaman fight, when it was working in a perfectly, non-exploitive way? Is that just to add even more “difficulty” to it? Why not make half of the arena’s get flooded in lava when grubs spawn or something? that’s actually more interesting than making me have to zoom in the camera in a upward manner (when in melee) just to be able to see what is the next attack the shaman will do. And of course, not a single explanation as to why they changed that.

Molch.2078:

Some people should learn the difference between stacking and using a safe spot. Stacking nulls Colossus Rumbles seismic attack? No. Just go stack in the middle of the room and see how stacking nulls anything…
It’s not stacking. It’s the safespot that does that. And safespots are bad. Stacking however, is not.

My examples were of popular cases where people stack for the sole purpose of abusing of a certain condition/bug, not general stacking. If you wanna call it “using a safe-spot”, so be it. They’re still stacking in that specific safe-spot everyone knows that nulls Colossus’ cave in.

For the second time in this thread: my problem is not with stacking on it’s own, but stacking in a certain intentional manner that exploits a fight or encounter, which often does contribute to create the scenario the OP described of “nursing a complacent, less-skilled player base.” Just look at how badly most PuGs get destroyed when they don’t stack for colossus or alpha (been there, done that)

draconx.3102:

Alpha’s earth attack does less damage the closer you are to him, to the point that if you are inside his circle it will not hit you at all. Even without pushing him against the wall you can totally avoid this attack by just walking towards him as he uses the attack. This is really a problem with his AI. In the first encounter Alpha strictly alternates his two elemental attacks with no exceptions; the later encounters have a little bit more variety but not much.

All Alpha needs to do is run far out to the middle of the room and fire off an earth attack and he’d wipe bad stacking pug teams in one hit. Bonus points if he did 2 earth attacks in a row when this happens.

Actually the earth attack does basically the same damage despite of your location. What I did notice is that the AoEs gets gradually bigger the farther they travel, with the first AoE being barely the width of Alpha.

What I also noticed is that the first AoE of the series starts in front of Alpha, which means that when players stack inside him, they won’t get hit. It also seems that whenever he uses the earth attack while facing walls/obstacle, the attack will “climb” it, instead of going straight forward. So when a player stack by a wall or a crate, they’re basically invulnerable to the earth attack.

And he does position himself before using the earth attack, but since players usually lure him to places where he ends up stuck, the attacks won’t work (because of the abovementioned issue).

So yeah, I’d call that both an exploit and a problem with his AI design…

rainynoble.6531:

More bout the stacking scenarios:

Colossus Rumble: Does not working all the time, even worse when he comes to you from other side. people stack there to avoid the falling ceiling rocks. and the conditions from the boss is what really slows down dps and potentially wipe party.

Golem Trio: are you talking about the corner after the stationary golems? Reflect and stability is needed otherwise face certain death.

Volkov: He still put tons of bleed on a player.

Alpha’s tooth move: still hits you regardless, unblockable too.

Colossus: I mentioned that stacking only counters the falling ceiling rocks (the cave in). Yeah, you still get hit by auto-attacks and sometimes shockwaves (depends on his positioning) but that does not make it any less exploitive.

Golem Trio: Done it yesterday without reflects. Stack tightly and the Fire AoE can’t reach the group for some reason. You still get hit by random stuff like the poison field or the lightning debuff.

Volkov: No. If you stack on top of that structure he will continue to Auto-Attack and burrow and both won’t affect the party.

Alpha: Stack tightly (inside him basically) and it won’t hit the party. Specially true during the second and third fight.

Nosoyelarty.7268:

Some bosses have different mechanics depending if their target is in melee range or far away. Spider Queen don’t uses the AOE poison if you are in melee range even if you are not stacked, Giganticus Lupicus don’t uses his kick if you are on range. So you can’t do GL in range because you are exploiting one of his abilities.

It seems like every single post about stacking = exploit is just because of the Spider Queen. They really want the first champion of a lvl 35 dungeon to be the most super epic fight in the game.

Except that I never said Spider Queen stacking was an exploit (way to read the post). I mentioned her as an example of what in my opinion is a poor AI design. I’m fine with bosses doing certain attacks in melee and others in range, but the discrepancy between the efficiency of the two is really something to question. I’d rather the spider use both the web and the poison attacks on both melee and ranged players.

And besides, why can’t people ask for a super epic fight, even if it’s in the first dungeon? An epic fight does not need to be hardcore hard, but challenging and/or exciting, and I’m not sure about you guys, but I definitely don’t find the current Spider Queen’s fight, with the stacking method, enjoyable at all. Plus, being the “first dungeon” is not a parameter for anything. The Cave Troll in AC is harder than a lot of bosses from higher level dungeons.

Back to my original post, I said I consider a few of the current stacking in this game as exploits, not all of them. Exploit because by just doing the mere act of stacking you are nulling one or more of the fight mechanisms/boss abilities that were intended to affect your group. Some examples: (there are probably more)

Colossus Rumble: Stacking nulls his seismic attack

SE P1 golem trio (the “new” stacking spot): Stacking nulls most of their AoEs and attacks

Volkov: Stacking nulls everything he does (that spot has been there since forever and still not fixed)

SE P3 dredge champion duo: Stacking nulls everything they do

Subject Alpha in CoE P1 and P3: Stacking nulls his Teeth of Mordremoth (earth spike thing)

Aetherblade Fractals: Stacking nulls the cannons AoE during the “clear the waves of aetherblades” encounter.

Old Tom: Not sure if the stacking trick still works, but yeah

That being said: when you stack at Spider Queen, you are not nulling an intended attack directed at your group because in theory there wasn’t even such attack, since you didn’t meet the requirements to trigger the poison AoE, so I suppose it’s not an exploit (although I strongly disagree with such design, as I’ve already stated).

My only problem with stacking is that in a few cases it is legitimately a exploit.

Other than that, I don’t blame entirely the players, but also the AI of this game:

“Oh look, all these delicious people stacked in the same spot, time to melt them in seconds with my poiso…LOL NO” * spits web attack *

blessing nosferatu.3784:

Rainweaver.7302:

blessing nosferatu.3784:

while facetanking in pvt is really challenging.

But I thought facetanking PTV didn’t work because high fractals enemies will still hit you too hard?

It depends on fractal level, smart guy.

This whole topic is about high level fractals.

blessing nosferatu.3784:

while facetanking in pvt is really challenging.

But I thought facetanking PTV didn’t work because high fractals enemies will still hit you too hard?

Been having this problem since last saturday. Whenever I go past character select screen it disconnects my internet.

I’d really appreciate some answer on the matter.

I agree with the majority here: It is way too long.

Stinson.5972:

2. Dredge has always been the most exploited fractal because of how pointlessly long it is.

However, I disagree with this. Most people exploited it not because it’s pointlessly long, but because most people are too lazy to do it in a legit, albeit harder way. It’s not about time, but difficult. In fact, most of the exploits (suiciding over buttons, killing Rabsnovich on top of the wooden structure) would frequently take LONGER than doing it properly.

I still don’t see what’s so wrong with the panel/buttons part. Here is what my group does:

- You put one person on first button, the other four players get through the first gate;
- The four players kill any dredge patrolling that corridor area before the panel room;
- One of the four players go up to press the second button;
- All the remaining players get into the panel room, hugging one side (I prefer left) of the room so you don’t aggro all the dredges. Then proceed to kill all the dredges in that side of the room;
- Once all those dredges are killed, leave one person at that side’s button and the rest go to the other side and press the button/start fighting dredge;
- One person go do panel meanwhile. Make sure to aggro any respawning dredge near the panel.

Always done that with my fractals group and it not only works, but it’s usually faster than doing all the mountainclimbing/suiciding/exploiting gate with mesmer and other tricks. Also done it with PuGs before (who were willing to listen) and it was smooth too.

My advice: I’m pretty sure all professions have tools for doing either button standing or panel. Change your weapons and utilities accordingly, adjust traits if needed etc.

As for dredge themselves: I like them. Creative design.

Not wanting to sound petulant, but I think some people are so used to dying over buttons/mesmer porting/jump into the button room and other non-legit ways that they simply lost the aptitude to do it properly. I’d go further and say that many people are simply not used to the concept of “failing” or “losing” in this game, Liadri and the new SAB levels being an example of that.

I used to run the old scale 48 FotM with a 2 engies, 1 necro, 1 ele and 1 guardian main group. That’s not even an “optimal” group and we never had to suicide over buttons.

Being one of the engineers, I have 2 block skills, elixir S invulnerability, stealth from Toss S and smoke combo fields, knockback from shield and Big Old Bomb and reflect from shield. All that and I didn’t even use my healing skill, and I won’t even go into other small details such as trait adjusting. As someone already mentioned with the ranger example, every profession should have some tools for doing it. If your profession is definitely not prepared for it, just leave it to one better suited for the job and go do another role (I mean, thieves are much better doing panel than buttons, imo).

I’m not trying to defend the dredge fractals. The clown car is still a boring overkill, the bomb room makes little sense and I won’t deny it’s not PuG friendly, but the panel room has never been a problem to me, except when PuGs wanted to do some weird exploit/shortcut that would frequently be more time consuming/difficult than doing it properly. Complaining about this fractals is plausible, but I think that before complaining about it, some people should at least try to develop strategies and maximize the potential of their characters for given situation, instead of just trying to rush your way through everything without having to worry about actually failing.

DigitalKirin.9714:

People that push mobs out of melee range. Big pet peeve of mine.

Same, specially rangers and mesmers who respectively use the LB/GS knockback whenever it’s available.

DragonHarlock.8274:

Nope. They’re not 1-shot kills. They do heavy damage, but definitely not 1-shot. I know this because I keep that champion icebrood mutt busy when Claw of Jormag is up and someone silly drags him into the group. Of course if you’re using a fragile character it will feel like a 1-shot. But if you actually have a tanky character you can take about 2-3 of those pounces no problem. Now having that champion plus the other 3 normal doggies with it pounce at you all at once… that hurts :P So far I have not encountered any 1-shot kill mechanics in this game that are not clearly telegraphed with a prolonged, Saturday morning cartoon villain-esque pose :P

They’re not literal 1-shot kills, but they still deal a massive amount of damage (80% HP of my 3200 toughness, 25k HP engineer) for an attack you cannot react. Whenever I fight these wolves I have to play a guessing game of when their next attack will be the leap or not. If I don’t dodge prematurely and guess it wrong, I will lose most of my HP.

I have no problems with attacks that you can’t react to, as long as they have moderate damage and effects. The gorilla boss from Arah P1 has a instant cast ground slam that will hit for something like 7k damage and launch people away. That to me is balanced as it’s not a massive amount of damage. Icebrood Wolves and Megalodons deal their main source of damage with attacks that offer zero reaction, and that’s not a good design in my opinion.

Xae Isareth.1364:

There isn’t one 1HKO which doesn’t give you a chance to think about it, except for the first boss in Arah P3, but that’s more down to how stupid the cleansing mechanics work.

Champion Icebrood Wolves with their instant-cast 1HKO leap attack.

Fix harpies invulnerability

Lack of burst heal would be problematic for low base health professions such as elementalist. Warriors however can afford sustained healing much better thanks to their high health pool and toughness, among other things (utilities, mobility) which makes them overall more durable in combat.

Short encounters might be problematic, but warriors can lockdown targets and prolong fights thanks to their weapon set (hammer, longbow, mace, shield) that offers considerable CC and Shield Block. A stunned or knocked-down target means no damage to the warrior which means a small breathing room for the passive healing to tick.

Poison is not exactly a hard-counter when they have Berserk Stance and Cleansire Ire at their disposal.

I’m not analyzing the passive heal by itself, which definitely has it pros and cons compared to burst heal, but the heal combined with the whole strengths of warriors (high damage, high mobility, high base defense, solid condition removal and access to stability, high CC), which in that case, I reiterate: most professions will have to give up something relevant for notable regen.

My objective is not to claim “warrior OP” or something. I’m just pointing out how passive regen does complement warrior’s strengths much better, while sacrifing little compared to other professions.

As someone mentioned, you usually have to give up in some areas in order to have a solid regen.

The only exception being healing signet warriors.

I couldn’t afford it last year too. Really hoping to see it back.

Kholer could’ve been a challenging fight if his auto-attacks didn’t hit like a wet noodle.

Rieselle.5079:

Let’s re-iterate and revise my original proposal:
- Energy bar, 4 segments.
- Powerful attacks use 1 segment. (autoattacks and other weak attacks are free.)
- Dodges and defensive skills use 1 segment.
- Powerful attacks have a windup and can be defended against on reaction.
- Powerful attacks root you in place, leaving you vulnerable to other powerful attacks.
- Attacks can be “canceled” only by dodging or performing a defensive skill.
- Canceling an attack costs an additional energy segment.

Hah, that totally feels like SF4 EX/FADC mechanic…not that I have anything against it, since it promotes insightful and technical gameplay.

Hey everyone. What do you guys think of the current balance of base health pools distributed among professions? Is there any class you’d like to see a change, by either increasing or decreasing the value? In your opinion, are they currently balanced?

For reference of the present values:

Warriors, Necromancers: High base HP
Mesmers, Rangers, Engineers: Medium base HP
Elementalists, Thieves, Guardians: Low base HP

Nerf reflections

The dredge is probably one of the best designed AI we currently have. They don’t really have player’s skills, but:

-Dredge Disaggregators will buff allies with gongs
-Whenever a melee player reaches a Dredge Bomber, he runs away from him/her and continue throwing his grenades: kiting
-Both Dredge Resonator and Dredge Oscillator have a specific knockback skill which they only use when a player is in melee range
-Mining Suits summons dredges to fight at it side, usually always summoning a Dredge Disaggregator because of the AoE buffing
-There is a good variety between melee dredge and ranged dredge overall

And yet, despite all the positive design aspects, it’s one of the enemies people hate fighting the most. Go figure…

Agreed. In my opinion a rework of the condition cap should be a priority in terms of PvE balance.

I don’t miss the trinity, but I do miss depth of encounters. I wish this game had more incentive for support, control and sustained damage (conditions).

As someone posted on this thread, the game has a good concept, but the current dungeons are not allowing it to shine.

I took the time to read everything and I had to login just to applaud you for such a brilliant post, specially because it’s about an issue that bothers me the most in this game.

It saddens me because I hate playing glass cannon builds. Some of my friends stopped playing PvE once they realized their favorite characters were useless when using their favorite builds. I still use my tanky gear when I’m playing with friends because we just want to have fun and a good time (the primary goal of this game), but when joining a PuG, I simply use my full berserk warrior to avoid any teamwork issues.

I think it’s worth mentioning that it’s not only dodges: reflective skills in the current state of things are also extremely unhealthy for endgame PvE, as they completely trivialize encounters that would otherwise be challenging for the group: Fractal’s imbued grawl shaman comes to mind, because it has potential to be such a good encounter where both control and support are useful (CC the grubs, healing/condition removal to counter any burning damage/immobilize, tanky gear to withstand some of the grubs attacks/firestorms). However, you can simply sit behind your wall of reflection and melt the grubs with your berserk gear while all the grub’s attacks and all the shaman’s arrows are reflected back.

I understand that before nerfing reflections, some encounters needs balancing (dredge fractals with all the high damaging ratniks and oscilators, for example), but I do feel that reflective skills should be limited to a given amount of attacks reflected. After five attacks reflected your wall of reflection is destroyed or something. This gives room for other ways of managing incoming attacks, such as crowd control, condition removal, boons, healing power, more resilient gear etc.

But once again, great post and very interesting ideas. Here’s hoping Anet takes notice of this.

Stooperdale.3560:

Going back to any MMO without active defenses (like dodge) feels really bad. Dodging is better than soaking damage with good armor and waiting for a heal from a priest.

Cant you have a mix of both? Where both smart tactical play and reflexive action play is needed in order to succeed?

projectcedric.6951:

Ok, fine, let me rephrase that.

IN GAMES, it is against human nature to be driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”.

And no, all games -regardless of genre- follow this rule. This is the definition of a game. If it doesn’t follow this rule, it is not a game.

And please do not take the word “game” out of the context here too. There is an objective, scientific definition of a game I am talking about here. And that is one in which there are rules and there is a goal.

I play Mario Party solely for the experience, for the board game madness, for the mini-games that happens between rounds, for the items and features that randomly affect each turn. For the fact that in each round I can expect something totally new, be it mini-games, luck, hazards, item interactions, messing with my opponents and so on.

Sure, we naturally try to get that extra lead that increases our chance of winning, since that’s the dynamic of the game. But in the end, me and my friends are not even thinking of the ending results nor do we care if we got first or last place, it’s the process that makes it such a fun game and an enjoyable experience.

Khisanth.2948:

However to group the karkas with these is just wrong. The karkas have been an embodiment of nearly everything wrong with mobs in this game.

I’m grouping the veteran karkas in particular, not the crazed karka zergs from southsun events that can easily one-shot you despite how high your toughness is.

The veteran karkas can individually provide a very entertaining and challenging fight. They have a fast attack speed with acceptable damage. A few moments of burst damage where you have a decent amount of time to react (like in their roll attack) Situations where you have to choose between attacking or not (they buff themselves with retaliation quite often), situations where you have to choose between wasting endurance to remove the hatchlings from you or just ignore the hatchlings so you can save your endurance for more dangerous attacks. They are also very mobile, meaning you can’t just sit in front of them pressing buttoms. Finally, they have the two phases mechanism, where in the second phase they’re usually more mobile and aggressive, but takes extra damage and are more vulnerable to crowd control.

Both the veteran karkas and the twisted nightmares offer you a fight where quick decisions matters, without gimmick one-shot mechanics or extremely predictable, linear gameplay, that can easily be trivialized by huge DPS or dodge rolls.

I agree that the statue effects can be really problematic for exploration, specially now that the maps are a lot more empty. Personally I had trouble getting the balthazar skill point because fire kept raining on me while I was channeling the point (no, I don’t have access to aegis/stationary evade), and when I was finally completing it some random veteran risen aggro’d on me. Overall I spent a good 15 minutes there between trying to avoid the fire and clearing respawning undead and not a single soul on map/map chat appeared.

By the way, I could help you with the Champion Risen Knight if you want.

Hello everyone. I’m here merely to express my positive feedback on the design of the new type of mob that was presented with the recent patch. I’m speaking of the big humanoid watchwork robot that is usually presented as veteran or champion. Not sure many people even bothered noticing him and his design, but I usually pay attention to these details and I can say I really liked how Anet worked on him.

In my opinion, the Twisted Nightmare was a good step toward well designed mob, given the following:

-Attacks have good range variety, being dangerous both in melee and at long distance (specially with the reflection dome it casts)

-Fast attack speed. Usually most mobs won’t use their special abilities right after they’ve just used an auto-attack (a Dredge Oscillator wont use his knock back one second after his auto-attack for example, it’s like he has a global cooldown on everything he does). However, the Twisted Nightmare seems a lot more spammy, with little interrupt of his flow of attacks. Maybe his “internal global cooldown” is a lot shorter than the average mob?

-A large variety of special abilities. Heck, this guy has reflection, grenades, flamethrower, pistol, spinning scythe, knockbacks, knockdowns…

-Apparently he has two forms (starts the fight on all fours, goes to standing position after half health is lost). Need to check it more though.

Not sure if I got everything covered or if there is some wrong detail. That’s mostly from a whole day of observing them after doing the Living Story events.

This is a great change from the predictable, kiteable, burst damage based veteran/champions we see a lot in this game. The fast and varied attacks implies a more cautious approach, his attacks are powerful and frequent but they’re not 1-hit mechanisms and you have a reasonable window of reaction to avoid them. His condition damage is also nothing to laugh at (his burning), which is a good incentive to condition removal. The second phase thing is also nice as it changes the pace of the fight, requiring a different approach.

I personally believe this game needs more enemies like this and the veteran karkas (which are also a favorite of mine). Enemies that encourage a bit more of thought, that forces you to change your playstyle, that have frequent, moderately powerful attacks that can overwhelm your endurance bar, instead of a single extremely powerful attack with a long cooldown.

Did anyone else notice this guy? Have any opnion on him?