Guild Wars 2

I am confused, as it seems like a very un-Anet thing to do to force old players to pay more resources (cash/gems/gold) to play something that they actually paid for. Guild Wars expansions always came with 2 extra character slots to ensure all players will have the chance to create characters with the 2 new professions introduced with the expansion, and philosophically that made sense.

But if I am going to buy HOT and then be told I can’t access the new profession because I haven’t bought a new character slot, that seems like a cash grab. Anet pls confirm this.

inazuma.7021:

Shadoekin.3928:

not too sure what the vandalised palm tree crayon drawing is supposed to be though. If Scarlet was like a certain real-world human race I’d say it depicts her self-loathing for being a plant. Not very mensch of her nonetheless.

It’s a call back to the short story from last year. It’s an image of the Pale Tree being strangled by a red, thorny vine. Essentially a vision Scarlet had of her attacking the Pale Tree.

Oh good point. I think the image of the Palm Tree threw me off…oh wait PALM and PALE…I get it now….Scarlet was so mad she tipped the ‘E’ over and it became an ‘M’.

BrunoBRS.5178:

and abaddon is dead. erased from existence by our own hands. he didn’t need killing when he was stuck in his own realm. but he insisted in screwing up with the other realms, so we interfered, Kormir absorbed his powers (or some shenanigan like that) and ascended to godhood. her existence is proof of his permanent, unequivocal, unavoidable, irreversible death.

That’s exactly what Grenth did, but Dhuum never went poof…he just goes back to sleep whenever defeated.

More importantly, there is a lot we don’t know about the relationship (if any) between the earlier gods and the elder dragons.

From information in GW1, we know that Abaddon himself got his power from an even older source which could mean the dragons. He then gave magic to the races of Tyria. Dhuum also has a hate for all things undead, which obviously brings him into conflict with Zhaitan.

In GW2, we know that the older races fought with the elder dragons, but we also know that the Forgotten and the Dwarves were only established 7000 years after the first approximate awakening. Humans appeared in Cantha 1000 years later, and a further 500 years later in Tyria.

We also know that Dwayna, Balthazar, Grenth, and Lyssa walked in Arah, so did they ever actually fight the elder dragons. If they didn’t, did the older gods of Abaddon and Dhuum fight them?

Did Abaddon and Dhuum, being the gods present during the reign of the elder dragons, aid the 5 older races in their survival? During that desperate time, it would be more understandable for the necessity of their harsher teachings. Then after the dragons went to sleep, the newer gods deposed of them…and then fled during the exodus.

We also know that the newer gods “came” to Tyria, and thus were not indigenous, perhaps the elder dragons and the older gods are.

It’s because of all these details/questions that I am unable to so easily dismiss Abaddon’s involvement in the current story of GW2, or to believe that he is truly dead. But I’m obviously not expecting to have him walking around Arah again either.

Of coz we have no idea when Dhuum was deposed and there is not much other information abt him and Abaddon, so they might not be any older than the rest (since the gods could have arrived anytime before 786 BE).

BrunoBRS.5178:

1- abaddon is dead. not banished, not hiding, dead. i, and millions of others, made sure of it.

2- the abaddon fractal was going to take place far, far before GW1’s playable time, all the way back when abaddon was defeated and sealed by the other 5 human gods. there is no way that anything related to scarlet could be related to that fractal.

3- they didn’t start working on the fractal until the voting was over. they didn’t have any assets lying around.

How sure are you that Abaddon is dead? All we know is that Kormir took his place, just like Grenth took Dhuum’s place. Death is a finite condition which I’m not sure can be applied to them, otherwise Dhuum, Menzies and Abaddon would have been dispatched even before we’d need to encounter them in GW1.

Edit:

Come to think of it, even us players can’t really die. In both GW1 and GW2 we can get resurected. In Prophecies I killed the Lich, in Factions I killed Shiro, in Nightfall they came back. Then we also know that bad people who died became Envoys of the dead. The whole idea of the Eternal Battleground is one where heroes go and fight eternally.

So really, can anything truly “die” in the GW universe?

Still rooting for Abaddon to be the source of her madness and the thing staring back at her through the void.

After all if Anet almost had an Abaddon fractal, they probably already have all the assets for him and got some story link for him to GW2…somewhere.

Also his spheres were that of magic and knowledge, so it kinda fits.

As for Lion’s Arch being a target…well it already was during her invasion at the Queen’s Jubilee. So aren’t all those screens from Scarlet’s console just images of her plans that have already been put in motion?

All the dots all over the map of Tyria = Energy probe locations
The arrows pointing towards what seems to be LA = Queen’s Jubilee attack

The rest are her plans for her aethercannon and Marionette…not too sure what the vandalised palm tree crayon drawing is supposed to be though. If Scarlet was like a certain real-world human race I’d say it depicts her self-loathing for being a plant. Not very mensch of her nonetheless.

The new bosses are great, certain flaws exist but I think there are ways to ameliorate the situation.

1. A lot of players are upset that their success depends on other people, and that when severing chains, we’re only as strong as our weakest link. A way to get players better prepared for the boss encounter would be to have a personal pre-event story.

Similar to the Tower of Nightmares, players will receive a mail from the NPCs telling them to go to Lornar’s Pass. Upon entering the area, the player will enter a solo instance where he will meet up with Marjory, Kasmeer, Rox, Braham and Taimi. Storyline conversation and exposition of the events can be carried out here, as the player and the NPCs make their way to the new waypoint for the Marionette event.

Along the way, the player can be made to meet each of the five champions that will be encountered on the Marionette platforms (albeit scaled-down to solo level ones). The player will have to defeat them with only the assistance of the NPCs, and can learn each of their mechanics before actually attempting the world boss encounter.

Upon defeating all of the champions and reaching the staging area, the player will then unlock an achievement, get a bag of cypher fragments as reward, and exit the solo pre-event story instance. Completion of this and the achievement is account-wide and the player can use any character to proceed to the actual boss fight.

2. It is strange that since Marjory & co are expecting Scarlet to recall her minions, why didn’t they already block off the five lanes beforehand. My suggestion here is to make the 5 lanes inaccessible by players until they have completed the pre-event story (from above). After completion of the story leading to the event, the players can then talk to one of the five NPCs guarding each lane to enter the lane. Entering a specific lane will add a count which can be shown at the side of the screen, so everyone in the area can see the number of players who have entered each lane.

The timeframe in which players can talk to the NPCs to enter can be 30 or 10 or even the 5 minutes (as it is now) before the fight. This can prevent players from afking in the lane and perhaps scaling the event unnecessarily. Talking to the NPCs too early can have them tell the player that they are not ready and to come back in X minutes. This X can serve as the countdown to tell players when the event starts. To players who did not complete the storyline instance, the NPCs will say that they are not prepared and need to go check their mail again.

So in the end, the flow would be:

Log in—-> Get mail—-> Get directed to Lornar’s Pass—-> Go to Lornar’s Pass—-> Enter Storyline Instance—-> Meet NPCs—-> Travel to new location——> Fight champions along the way—-> Reach location and receive completion rewards—-> Exit Instance—-> Talk to any of the NPCs guarding the lanes—-> Enter the lane and get counted—-> Participate in the fight with the knowledge of how to defeat the champions—-> Win!

I know a lot of players are lost with each new patch, so the storyline instance can help with that. Also it can be a way to test the player to prepare them for their battle with the boss, instead of frustrating themselves and each other. The NPC lockout at each lane ensures players are ready, minimise afk, give an idea to players when the event will occur, and simplify logistics.

Tnx to Auron Auralias and Zygothen for helping!

I think the simplest way to kill the spinning champion that is invulnerable unless it touches one of its own bombs is to pop group stability and have everyone melee it.

This champion does a spinning attack which knocks players back and then spins towards whoever has aggro. As it travels during the spin, it drops bombs/mines, and is invulnerable to attacks during the spin. Only by making it touch one of its bombs/mines (usually by kiting) does it get stunned and become open to attacks.

By popping stability, your group will not be knocked back and the champion will spin in place (since everyone stays in place), dropping its bomb/mine on itself and instantly getting stunned.

Generally when in doubt, just melee the champ, and from behind if u don’t have aggro.

emikochan.8504:

What would you say is “not cliche”

You have a point there, even Shakespeare wrote…

“If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burden of a former child. "

…so from the crowd-sourced knowledge of the entire playerbase, someone, somewhere would have probably read/seen something similar already.

Still, I am sure that the writers can take those general endings and concepts, mix it up a bunch with twists and create something relatively new, albeit familiar when analysed and deconstructed by iNerds.

That being said, I can’t really say offhand what wouldn’t be cliched, but a survival of the fittest scenario isn’t really believable anymore since all the races aren’t playing the Hunger Games with each other.

Neither is the idea that Scarlet is out to create chaos everywhere through conflict. If that were the case, from the very beginning, Frost and Fire would have been the forces of Jormag battling against that of Primordus. Imagine the devastation that would follow and the chaos from all the fleeing mortals, it would be a lot more than just having the dredge ally the Flame Legion.

The chaos scenario would have been better portrayed with Scarlet inciting all the dragons against each other. So would a scenario where she is just plain mad and wants to lay waste to all of Tyria.

The idea that I like so far is the one that involves the cycle of the dragons awakening and going back to slumber. If the dragons act as a reset button to reconsolidate all the magic in the world, Scarlet could be acting to either put an end to the cycle (as we all have read how she hates to be told how to live) or could be hurrying it along (which leads the dragons back to hibernation). The underlying concept here would be that all magic is dragon magic, or the dragons are the manifestations of all that magic.

Another idea that I like is the one where Scarlet is making a superweapon. By messing with magic and technology, and as Scarlet hones her knowledge/craft, her creations are getting bigger and bigger (assuming the Marionette is hers as well). It could be that she is trying to perfect them to the point where she can create a magitech dragon. Whether she wants to use it to rule the world, fight the elder dragons, achieve godhood status, those reasons would be moot.

As for Scarlet herself, I’d really want her downfall to be a matter of hubris. For all her supposed genius, there is a copious amount arrogance stemming from it, and she really needs a good smack. Here we can have the whole slew of situationally ironical endings such as Scarlet getting blown up by her own weapon, getting stepped on by her own walking creation, or refusing to be taken prisoner and jumping into a pit of lava (with her laughing all the way down).

Wait, haven’t we seen all that happen in every action movie already? Ok, scratch that. Let’s just have Final Destination starring Scarlet in every death scene…or better yet, Freddy Krueger bringing an end to her with the corny one-liner “even if you don’t wanna dream, the nightmare will get ya”.

The idea for the marionette is awesome, I’ve never seen such a creature design before and I’m seriously looking forward to it.

Introducing a new permanent world wurm boss akin to Tequatl is tantalizing, though I pity players on less populated servers.

Having the Scarlet arc end through the next 4 instalments? I say ‘amen’ to that. From what I have been reading, there are going to be big reveals coming our way and I really hope it’s not all hype and be really compelling story telling.

My biggest fear is having Scarlet end up as a presumptuous genius, trying to engineer the world with chaos…like one of those “survival of the fittest, let’s get everyone to fight each other to strengthen ourselves, I’m doing this for your own good” deals. Even if that was the case, then it would have been more believable if everyone truly fought everyone instead of having all the silly alliances.

What more chaos can a true villain bring to Tyria than one where all the races no longer trust each other and come to blows. Now that would be survival of the fittest….but also probably just give me Babylon 5-esque déjà vu.

Star Ace.5207:

I am sorry for my strong stance on the issue-it’s not personal, as it’s more of a community problem that strongly bothers me (I know you not, nor was I trying to insult you.) It makes the game look horrible to new players, as it shouldn’t, because there are friendly players everywhere-but this constant ridicule against some players for playing this or that way I am sure is intimidating to many.

No apology necessary, how you feel is completely justified. Even some outbursts in-game, as harsh as they may be, are also justified…but definitely could have been more tactfully delivered.

The community trending towards one way and behavior is something Anet needs to track and look into. Speed clears are really efficient, but speed clear groups tend to be focused on finishing the instance ASAP and then moving on to the next. Players in such group don’t want to waste time discussing builds, equipped skills, teaching new players mechanics, or even talking to each other.

On days when I am pressed for time, I would probably want to get in on some speed clear action. On days where I want to feel more immersed into Tyria or want to try some new build/strategy, then obviously I won’t go bug 4 other people who want to speed clear. On days where I get into groups with a team mate with 3 digit AP, I’ll ask in group chat if anyone is new to the dungeon and needs an explanation before fights.

In some cases, speed clear groups don’t even mind having completely new players to the dungeon, they just don’t want to have to be the person typing everything to explain things to the new players. We’ve all had that “I’m home from work, I’m tired and wanna get through this quick and not teach a tutorial” feeling from time to time. That is understandable.

We just don’t want all the nice players to get hooked to fast rewards with the dps meta and then no one will be willing to teach new players anything….and the community continues to worsen.

Sometimes we wonder why can’t these people go look at dungeon guides, a video, or research wiki, seeing how other players have made the effort to write them. I guess some players prefer learning by experience maybe? We can’t all expect everyone else to do the same things we each do, else we’d all run the same profession, with the same build, with the same legendary and cosmetic armor.

Star Ace.5207:

And I totally disagree someone “becomes a noob” by refusing to adapt to the meta, which is what you are all boiling it down to, unfortunately. “Noob”, a pejorative which I don’t even personally use, implies “newbie”, and some of these players that don’t use Berserker’s all the time are NOT newbies, nor does ANYONE has the right to call them as such. Not everybody plays GW2 as a min/maxer, and those who don’t are not thus “noobs.”

You misunderstand, how good a player is not about his willingness to embrace the dps meta. Adaptation should be employed on a case by case basis, and has nothing to do with gear alone, or traits alone, or slotted skills alone.

If you entire group is dying because you are lacking a reflect, adaption in this case would mean having someone equip a reflect to protect the entire group. Same follows for blinds, a long lasting knockdown/stun, or group aegis. Adapt by changing your equipped skills.

If you group is already filled with condi players and you will probably just overwrite each other, it is silly not to adapt and change spec, change character or find another group.

If you group already has enough active mitigators and your entire team never sees a single hit, then wearing gear with toughness and vitality becomes a waste of stat points. Adapt by putting on gear with mostly offensive stats.

In most cases, it really does not matter, since competent teams will complete encounters, no matter how long it takes. Players only start calling each other out when the group wipes constantly, or certain players seem to be dying all the time. Worse when these players don’t seem to be outputting much damage.

Holding your team back, or being a burden should not be a condoned form of gameplay in group content. Insults start getting hurled when players feel that another is wasting their time. Usually the group will talk it out and people will accomodate by compromising, but occasionally you have players who are unwilling to listen to advice and that’s when you have votes or kick or leavers.

What it really boils down to are egos, and players feeling personally attacked when they are asked to change. There is no need for the “play how I want” community to feel that they need their specs/builds to be validated by the “min/max speed clear” community. It is more likely these “left and right wing” extremists who are so adamant on their build and gear choices that they refuse to adapt and make life for the majority of moderates unpleasant as they watch 2 players argue in group chat.

This all has nothing to do with the dps meta per se, as you can only control that before the group forms. And again I reiterate, a player who does not adapt to the fight or the current group composition is a noob. This player can be on any end of the spectrum of playstyles.

There is also a special kind of noob who seem to be unable to read LFG titles. A speed clear group means just that, so it’s really zerker or nothing. A full clear group also means just that, no skipping and running ahead of everyone else.

Cold Hearted Person.6154:

Since this discussion is rather pointless as the only mutual understanding we will achive is that, we will never agree on whether the curent meta is good or bad, and so i will only coment on sometthing that really kitten(…that kitty…) me off that was stated here many times.

Your gear, as in stats, dosent represent your level of skills at playing the game, its not zerker=pro while PVT=noob, its your FREAKING PLAYSTYLE that those stats represent, players put different value in stats and chose the one that are most interesting/useful for them, thes stats will represent their build or atleast part of it.
I can solo almost every champ(exept world bosses due to timer and some of the champs that are in fast respawn areas) in open world, dodgeing 70% of their attacks and reduceing other 30% in many ways avaliable for me, i rarely rely on my stats and yet im using condition tank build(dire set up) cus i like it that way.
Im not a noob, im maybe not a pro either but im not a freaking noob cus i use dire stats in PvE, so stop BSing here.

(inhale) …ok, that was all that i had to say, i wont bother to take part in this pointless discussion more than i already did, so cya.

Gear has never been a direct indicator of skill, we make that connection indirectly. A player who is able to take risks and achieve success consistently is what we end up calling skilled. The assumption here is that an unskilled player will not continually use berserker gear and then keep on dying. Since we have no method by which to simply click on another player to see how often he has died, we use this assumption as a gauge.

As for soloing champions as a condi spec, that is the kite/attrition strategy similar to what we see in PVP. It works, just as a skilled berserker will be able to blind-burst-disengage-kite till cd-repeat a champ down. Generally a berserker will kill the champ faster than a condi, but it is a lot harder, thus the need for experience and skill.

Players have already soloed dungeon bosses as well, and the case remains the same. It is all about your success rate when taking risks.

The issue here is that in certain groups and dungeon runs, using the zerker meta has no risks. Players being able to stack in corners to clump mobs up, throw out wall of reflection and/or a well of darkness, and then decimate everything under 10 seconds before wall or well runs out (even 3 golem champs in SE1).

That method of gameplay is so ridiculously successful that there is no reason not to do it, and that is what this thread is about. Try not to react so personally and ignore whatever implications you feel exists and consider the real issue.

P/S: A player only becomes a noob when he/she refuses to consider if there are other faster/safer/more efficient ways to achieve the same thing, be it by using another spec, another skill or different gear. It is the inability to think beyond what they are currently using which makes them bad.

The lack of adaptability and the “I have killed X doing it this way before and I will not change anything” conservative mentality that makes others chide the player with the remark “you are noob because you don’t know any better”.

Norjena.5172:

Engineers can fit the meta well. Necromancers need just some support and cleave dmg. That can be easily fixed and it is not a berserkers problem.

Imagine how big an Asuran necro’s dagger must be if it was able to cleave! It’s definitely sad that the majority of a necro’s aoe abilities are either only on the staff and piercing, or through utilities.

Enfeebling Blood would be more awesome if the base cooldown was 20 seconds instead of 25.

Ahlen.7591:

Well I mean, aside from higher level fractals, all the PVE content in this game can be pretty easily completed by 2 competent people and 3 hanger-ons.

I agree that with such a group, all PVE content in the game can probably be completed, if you do not expect a flawless execution or a speed run. But you can sometimes get into groups where really fast runs like COF1 or SE1 can end up taking half an hour to complete because certain players don’t want to change their equipped skills for that all important reflect or blind and instead have multiple signets.

It makes you never want to open an instance just in case you end up with one of these people and realize u are better off switching to another character to make the group work.

Bad players will be bad even if they zerk…they just seem to be good in some groups if they have people to mitigate for them. The worst part is they don’t realize it and assume they rock cos they are dishing out tens of thousands of damage with their burst.

The risk in the zerker meta sometimes has nothing to do with yourself, but more of what other people are wearing.

Fenrir.3609:

Ahlen.7591:

After 13 pages I am still not seeing how any of this is a problem.

Players who play well are rewarded by being able to surrender defense for more offense.

Players who don’t play as well can still sacrifice offense to make up for their lack of ability.

Bad players, or players simply unwilling to spec to the maximum/most efficient set up are crying because those that can/will are doing some pve stuff a bit quicker than they are.

That’s about the gist of it.

When zerk is nerfed, and the players who actually bother to look for the most efficient group comp find the new meta. Said bads will simply start crying about the new meta and the cycle will repeat itself. Whilst those running said meta lose all their ascended gear no doubt.

It’s more of the bad players who spec/gear for min/max without knowing how the rest of the group is supposed to work together which I am more afraid of. I’m sure most of us have experienced the occasional PUG where certain players only know how to do one thing and refuse to adapt accordingly because they are following verbatim what they read from a forum guide.

Overkillengine.6084:

Just not perma reflection on ALL the mobs within a given area; having to basically afk through a fight blows if you don’t have enough non projectile typed skills to make an attack chain.

It’s just as irritating as making fights always permanently non melee.

Whenever a mob has an annoying reflective aura or buff, I wish a mesmer could just go Shatter Enchantment or something.

Another thing which is irritating are high hp targets who seem to be able to block and evade every other second prolonging a very stupid fight (ahem champ gravelings and Priestess of Lyssa).

Norjena.5172:

Go in melee problem solved. U do 10% more dmg if u´re closer then 600 too the target.

And this is the mainproblem u have without a tank. Chaotic combat if the group is not stacked.
U lose both DPS and support if u don´t stack. And it doesn´t matter if the group is 100% Zerk oder 100% tanky, u will lose dmg and support if some1 uses ranged combat. Most times.

For me personally this is the main reason why im waiting for other games now. I think they can´t fix it it´s impossible. It would be easier to create GW3 instead.

Yea it’s the less than 600 Fire staff ele dps build. But it’s pretty much the price we pay for trying to use a organized grp build with randoms. Same for piercing life blast might DS necros.

Norjena.5172:

Both are viable.
But u should never mix them within the same group. So there is nothing to nerf, nothing to buff.

This is very true. But it still gets annoying when as a dps ele, u seem to have aggro from everything and are forced to disengage and then supposed zerker warriors in the group get angry cos u kited the mobs away from them.

Never lava font before the warriors 100b, heck just don’t dps until they do. This ends up with the dps ele doing support more often than dps. That’s part of the reason why I would like support to be buffed, so it’s as good as dps when you find yourself having to switch.

Norjena.5172:

Mightymealworm.8409:

Make CC skills interrupt an attack on defiant enemies.

A lot of big attacks are to fast for most CC skills, animation/boss attacks have to be changed. And not everything should be interruptable.

But the idea is good.

Ergh, tell me about it. Even trying to use Wail of Doom on a necro when trying to knockout the interupt daily achievement gets iffy.

Lol, ok I’m too lazy to cut out all my own quoted text so I shan’t quote at all.

This is a response to Vargamonth.2047.

I agree with you in somewhat, however I don’t think players want to purposefully facetank…other than certain people who enjoy the feeling of being in godmode (generally the people who came from traditional MMORPGs and were guild main tanks). But even those people have the understanding that their survivability means they hit with pillows. What’s more they’ll never see any real use to their tankiness as there is no taunt in the game and aggro tends to go to the player who does more damage.

For PVP I would dare say it is a lot different from PVE which is really a grind. PVE players almost never change their builds and stick to the dps meta for speed clears. Playing the same profession the same way everyday does get old. I hate to see good players get bored and leave the game when new MMOs get released simply because GW2 makes them feel like a one trick pony.

With the rather lacklustre living story and the grindy nature of getting end game gear, playing GW2 is not doing itself any favors if it limits itself in any way.

Agony.3542:

Just putting this one out again: The game is meant to center around damage control and support and not tank heal and damage.

Begging to make tanky gear better misses the aim of this game.

Give players the option and the need to have a “supportive build” without him having
to forsake the damage department. Remove the need for boon duration and healing power.
Buff the base values, lower the availability so that your commitment comes from weapons, traits and utility choices, not from armor.
Buff the base health for classes like thief or ele, in PvE only. If you have classes with 10k health you can not simply add in abilities that will hit for 5k no matter what you do without making these classes either go tank, which was not intended in the first plays or way harder then other classes.
However without some damage that gets through you, boons like protection and regeneration aswell as party healing or defense banner/strength in numbers wont matter a thing. If you need a player to commit to it and therefore have him participate less in killing the boss, people will just try and seek ways to get around these mechanics or simply don’t bother with the dungeon at all (Hi mr. aetherpath, how are you doing today).
Make control useful for bossfights. Give bosses abilities to interrupt. Dreaming of permastunning a boss is just what it is, a dream. However controling adds that get spawned by the boss in order to kill them befor they kill your party, that can be achieved.
Bosses are not trivial because zerker lets you ignore mechanics. Bosses are trivial because they lack the mechanics in the first place. If your party lacks in damage, you failed with 1/3 of what this game should be about. The problem isn’t that damage is too strong, the problem is that support is just too weak and cc neglegtible for most trash/all bosses.

I’m not sure if people want tanky gear to be better because it’s pretty good where it is now. Wanting better tanky gear also implies that people want to tank, but that isn’t exactly possible because GW has no definable aggro system. The reason why Anet did not want the trinity might not be so much philosophical as the possibility that the game would require a complete overhaul to incorporate aggro calculation and their servers would not support it.

What we want is, as you said, better ability to support. Be it through control, healing, or boons. Currently seeing how healing power is so useless, it’s strange that we have gear with that stat instead of gear with boon or condition duration. And Defiant is another relic from GW1 where bosses have reduced condition and hex durations.

Vargamonth.2047:

I completely disagree.
Active defenses, specially dodging, are one fo the key features of this game; they aren’t something meant to be optional.
An absolute reliance on them shouldn’t be forced, but when an over 2 seconds obvious tell precedes an enemy powerful move that is meant to be fully avoided, it should be fully avoided.
-snip-
The question that remain is, do devs even try to balance their own designs for different setups and the general idea of risk vs reward to work as intended?

Active dodging is part of the game for sure, but not every player will trait in such a way that they can keep dodging. Some professions give themselves Vigor, increase Endurance regen rate, recover Endurance with each dodge, and as it was pointed out, slot a Sigil of Energy.

Before the Dec 10 update, they was an outcry from players when the devs wanted to change a certain vigor giving trait, and is a good indicator to how we may have become too dependent on that mechanic alone.

But that creates a culture of “you better have that trait or you are bad” and prevents build diversity. This has actually forced the devs to make sure all Endurance-related traits are low level. Some players might want to try a build which will not have those things and should be able to compensate elsewhere….be it cooldown reduction on mitigating skills, disengage skills, disabling skills, or even something passive like armor.

Players need to be given a choice, and there must be opportunity cost. Otherwise why even make those traits a choice and instead be simply inbuilt into the profession?

As for game design, well, perhaps that is just the limition of the game engine. GW2 might just be a prettier version of GW1 and cannot support the boss mechanics of other MMORPGs. I doubt we will ever see a boss which has phase changes and morphs into different forms through the fight. As it is, GW2 is prone to bugging out when there is a lot of scripting involved.

On the devs trying to balance risk vs rewards…all I can say is Anet is probably more concerned with PVP and entering new markets like China than PVE.

Norjena.5172:

U should read his Necroguide, DS is usually on cd for max dps/support. Sigil of Energy is king.

This is the brainy aspect of GW that I love. Traiting for and then knowing when to use stuff like Weakening Shroud to support, or even Transfusion makes this game more than just a double-tapping keep pressing 1 fiesta.

There is a real sense of accomplishment when you see your team going down and then planting a Well of Blood around them right before turning into a Plague and blinding everything to save them all. Same for the elementalist who uses Unsteady Ground to let a teammate escape and then switch to Water to heal him.

All the little tricks are not being explored by a generation of players who just steal dps builds from guru or this forum because it’s just that good. The videos posted of tanky players going through Arah were not done by lowskilled players. I mean seriously, how many of us think that the normals will see those videos, think they can casually faceroll through Arah, craft tanky gear and then go in and complete it?

spoj.9672:

I think you will find most speedclearers are very short on gold most of the time. The rewards really arent that great. The only way to make a reasonable profit is to sell arah. Champ farming is far more lucrative afaik.

Yes, I am broke because of kittenpuppygoldfishparakeet silk/damask….but that’s mainly cos I am trying to send 7 kids through Ascended college. But I have to be honest, I have only ever bought gems twice (on release and for Christmas), instead I traded for a whole lot more. I am sure I am not special in doing so, that’s why it has got me thinking.

Champ trains are the most faceroll part of the game players have come up with, but even those farmers will do daily quickies. A good speedclear farmer can probably get ~20g, ~160 empy frags, and 5-6 skillpoints a day from quickies.

As for last boss spot sellers…I’m not sure we’re even supposed to support that.

spoj.9672:

We didnt tailor our traits for anything lol. I simply picked lifesteal and general defensive traits that the average “support” necro would take. Shout heal warriors dont think about their traits they just take the stuff which seems like it supports. Thats exactly what we did. I had several traits which were completely useless for what we were doing.

Lol, the picture of a smelly dull-minded warrior scratching himself saying “duuuuh-Thog take what trait-duuuuh…ooo shout trait look healy Thog like!” just popped into my head (in a very Order of the Stick fashion for those who read :P)

Anyway, the current lack of skill and build variety aside, the choices a player makes is still an active thing. There was still the need to pair all the tankiness with all the healing power otherwise it won’t work.

When a player stacks toughness, vitality and healing power, their effective value increases dramatically as compared to a player who stacks healing power with offensive stats.

Another thing, as a necro, I’m sure you are aware that necros have no easy access to vigor and dodging is not a key element to necro gameplay. To compensate, necros were given a large healthpool and deathshroud.

haviz.1340:

So what’s the problem with dps meta? You need to actively use your defense skills, manage your endurance, use reflects, stack offensive and defensive boons, time your aegis and many more.

Also, prior knowledge? Those people probably have never played with tanky gear in this game and they claim it was faceroll.

The problem with the dps meta is that as more and more players migrate to that mode of gameplay, it will alienate new players who aren’t yet as skilled.

Also as everyone starts being about to farm a large amount of gold and materials faster and faster, this will lead to inflation. It doesn’t matter much to the community if a small population is wealthy, but if everyone only speedclears and ends up having a lot of gold/materials, then we will end up seeing even more sinks implemented. This again further alienates new players.

Anet needs to address this because as a developer, it makes no sense to have a game with turns new players off.

Players who can successfully and continually speedclear and amass wealth will not need to support Anet through microtransactions since they can pretty much just trade gold for gems. Players who no longer have anything to craft and still have their speedclear incomes only have gems to buy which affects market prices and could affect real world money. The only people who will need to spend real cash on gems would end up being the people who do not have the skill to speedclear farm, aka the new players….who are more likely to just leave the game than spend on it.

There is also the issue of champ train farmers and how these groups treat new players in Queensdale but that’s not directly related to this thread.

Yes our individual experiences to gameplay matters, but beyond the minutiae of any one particular player’s gaming session, there are other bigger things involved.

spoj.9672:

Shadoekin.3928:

Anyone who tries to claim that just anyone can go in with a random build and setup and merely slap on tanky gear is obviously trying to cover up that fact.

Funnily enough our preparation was literally the following:

-Dub asks in gchat if anyone is up for the epic challenge of play how you want no dodge arah.
-Several of us volunteer.
-We equip random tanky gear and retrait to something defensive.
-We didnt ask for specific stuff or classes from each other, we didnt discuss what we took.
-Enter dungeon, disable dodge key and proceed.

Only communication was in party chat and that didnt involve any strategies. We reset lupi 5 times by running away because it was impossible to wipe. Everything was faceroll and required no active defense other than spamming skills. Only challenging part was skipping the deadeyes with no dodges. And as haviz said we are unfamiliar with defensive builds. Im used to dodging things but that wasnt possible with it disabled.

Retraiting makes all the difference. It’s not like everyone took their current dps specs, or any random spec, put on tanky gear and then expected to achieve the same thing. This is still preparation, which is hallmark to the GW franchise.

GW favors the player who knows the fight, and knows how to adjust their traits accordingly. This has always been the case to the point that GW1 was called “Build Wars”. This is also the reason why players do not have the option to simply switch from one build to another like in PVP. Anet want us to choose a certain build and try to stick with it throughout an instance, or else port out and then pay for to retrait.

That is what GW2 started out as, a game about players going into encounters prepared with the right traits, equipped skills, weapons, and to a lesser extent gear. The active combat is supposed to make gameplay more fast paced and engaging, instead of having players stand to a side and cycle through rotations like in traditional MMORPGs.

Players who enjoy high risk/high rewards style of play eventually developed this dps meta which gave GW2 a (excuse me for mentioning another game) “Dark Souls” feel to it.

Speedclears have always existed in the GW franchise. Soloers have always existed in the GW franchise. This was back when you had to have a max weapon with the +20% enchantment duration mod or else certain builds won’t work.

A big part of the game relies on the ingenuity and creativity of the players to even think up of the build, to counter any and all boss mechanics. The action driven combat is another part. The developers wants us to have both, so why are we slowly pigeonholing ourselves into a single meta?

spoj.9672:

Id just like to say that in that video I was playing the necro (has no blocks, invulns or evade skills) and it was so unbelievably faceroll that I was falling asleep. I didnt think about a single skill used. I just pressed buttons when they came off cd at random intervals. The game is not easier in zerker gear. Its easier in tanky gear. I didnt even go full tank, i had zerker weapons and trinkets and I was able to facetank alphard and lupis 1hit attacks.

http://youtu.be/aZgRUtK7LkM

You guys are deluded if you think dps groups bypass all boss mechanics. It can happen on some fights but if someone messes up then you have to be ready for those attacks anyway. Ir requires knowledge and skill to zerk many encounters in the game. And that includes the times where bosses melt in under a minute. Its not like bosses take a minute to start attacking.

To say that the necro in the video just randomly pressed buttons whenever things came off cooldown is not being truthful. During the first phase change there was the use of the elite Plague and then Plague of Darkness. Was this random? There was no dodge used but when the necro was standing in a red circle, there was the quick switch into Deathshroud and the use of Life Transfer to refill life-force.

How is this different from dodging?

Then other things like Blinding Flash from the eles when in air attunement, the guardian with perma-prot and popping group aegis whenever there are circles, not to mention all the fields and finishers.

Whether or not this gameplay or a dodging one is anyone’s cup or tea, if a group has a certain cohesive strategy that supports each other through their traits and gear, there is no reason why it should not work.

haviz.1340:

I’m sure facetanking hardest hitting bosses in the game is intended.

If a group gears and traits themselves for a certain strategy to defeat an encounter, yes. And the groups that do so do not just stand by the boss and press 1. They actively employ fields to heal, to leech, to protect, to cleanse, all which needs prior knowledge and preparation.

Anyone who tries to claim that just anyone can go in with a random build and setup and merely slap on tanky gear is obviously trying to cover up that fact.

Norjena.5172:

Shadokin..easier and faster are two completly diffrent things. U can´t want to be tanky as hell, ignor 99% of all boss attacks and be as fast a squishy party will be. That will be broken.

And how do u want to balance passive defense?
Ever thought about that? If u need for example 20k life and 2,2k amor to survive how should ele/thief ever be viable for pve in this szenario? It´s impossibel.
If the have to build up moredefensive then warriors/necromancers no1 wants them, cause they will do less dmg then (at the moment ele/thief/guard can deal more dmg then warriors).

Pure condition dmg is bad that´s fair, cause power/pre/vita/thou/condidmg is much more defensive then zerkers. Only rampagergear is not balanced. Hybrids using this should be able todo the same amount of dmg as berserker.

U will destroy everything if u try to make zerker runs impossibel (even if u make them impossibel for squishier classes).

Do your dungeons easy or fast, but u can´t get both. Yes most dungeons are to easy, but this have nothing todo with dps gear/builds. And u can´t break them without breaking the whole PvE.

And at last, without defensive gear, the ele wouldn´t survive lupi or alphard´s bombs. So it have something todo with thoughness/vita. All other dungeons will be much easier with this gear/gruop.

I think this gruop is not completly min/maxed more defensive/healing is possibel. And Arah P2 (alphard) ist probably the most difficult/dmg incoming dungeon u can do (except a few 40+ fractals).

We cannot ignore the fact that fast and easy are in fact the same thing for farm dungeons. The prime motivator for doing things fast is to get maximum rewards and farm. A player who enjoys playing the game for the sake of the game will not be too concerned with speed clears because once you clear it, you will have nothing to do.

Balancing defensive stats is no more difficult than balancing offensive stats or balancing them all together. I’m not sure in which scenario will 20k hp or 2.2k armor ever be mandatory, so please elaborate in detail. It’s not logical to posit a hypothetical situation without precedence, and tantamount to saying that all players will need 40k hp to be viable.

Anet does not employ mechanics which need hard numbers. There is no mechanic (other than Agony) that forces player to equip certain things in order to survive. There isn’t even any real dps checks. It’s not an absolute thing where a player must have X toughness or Y vitality, but through a combination of boons, conditions, active and passive effects, that player will dps and survive encounters.

The thing that is absolute is the amount of rewards a player farms within any given amount of real world time.

The ele in the video survives not solely on defensive stats. Defensive stats isn’t even the most important factor. Protection and frost aura provide more damage reduction than gear will ever allow. It is a combination of active mitigators like blinds and blocks with armor and boons, and then a constant stream of healing that allows the ele to survive. To claim that it is purely an issue of gear is not being truthful and blatantly underplaying the significance of the other mechanics intrinsic to the game.

I really wish people do not keep using Lupicus or Alphard as an example as those are the encounters that a zerker meta group can exploit with reflects too well. If we keep harping on it and Anet starts reassessing the damage and even crit damage from reflects to the point of nerfing it, EVERYBODY loses, zerkers and non-zerkers alike. Then without reflects, the mesmer will join the other unpopular professions.

Agony.3542:

People complain over Zerkers dealing so much damage they can just ignore all boss mechanics, making fights way to easy.
People complain over Active mitigation beeing too strong.
Whats the point? Showing what happens when you remove active ways of mitigation.
Showing that stacking defense will let you ignore boss mechanics aswell. Even bugged bosses are no problem for you.

People who claim that active mitigation is too strong are probably pointing out how reflects trivialise Lupi but is a legitimate way to play and working as intended. Stacking defenses with perma-prot and frost armor is also a legitimate way to play and working as intended is it not?

Blinds and blocks are active mitigators, so that video didn’t remove it either.

The thing is, no matter what the video showed or did not show, that group did not complete that instance any faster than a zerker group. Did they properly gear and trait and equip themselves for their strategy to deserve success? Yes, most definitely. Will that group build work for all other instances? I’m not sure, maybe. Will that group build work any faster than the zerker meta on certain other instances? Most definitely not.

I’m not sure why people are beginning to ignore the fact that everyone is tending towards providing circumstantial evidence. Every instance and every encounter is different. We have people trivialising AC because of Ice Bows and FGS, but those are also legitimate ways to play. COF1 speed runs clearly favor the zerker meta, and that too is working as intended.

Let’s try to avoid from overstatements. Stacking defensive gear alone will NOT make all bosses in all instances a cakewalk. Stacking zerker gear alone will also NOT make all bosses in all instances a cakewalk. Again we must look at the big picture, in how many instances and how many encounters will zerker gear be better than defensive gear. And here we must decide if we want to define “better” as achieving instance completion all of the time, or some of the time, and whether we want to put a time limit to how long we take to complete it.

To further illustrate the point, let’s say a player only has 2 hours to play each day. He has set the goal of farming X amount of token and crafting material and gold. If he wears zerker gear and gets into a speedclear zerker group, he can probably get X. If he wears defensive gear and gets into a defensive group he might not get X, which means he has failed for that day. This is the case, and will forever be the case because numbers and math will never change no matter what.

And this is why we all veer towards the zerker meta. This is why we tend to repeat the easier instances. This is why people complain the rewards for 50 fractal does not justify the time taken to do it.

The problem for Anet and a possible reason why they need to look into this is because as the community gets more skilled, everyone will slowly shift towards that meta. This creates problems for new players that Anet will want to attract when the community becomes to dependent on the meta. It is fine if 50% of the playerbase engages in the dps meta, as long as there is that other 50% who do not expect speed runs and are willing to help newbies along.

Once speed clears and the dps meta becomes too profitable to ignore and we end up having 90% of the playerbase engaging in it, then it becomes a serious problem as it alienates new clientele. No one new will commit to the game if every person they meet starts lambasting them about their non-meta gear choices.

Even more so if Anet is trying to pull new players who are used to the MMORPGS which have the trinity. Giving them a stepping stone into the active combat system which GW2 employs by allowing “tankiness” or “healiness” isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They can start with what they are used to, learn the system and adapt accordingly when they realize there is a more efficient way to play (and farm the things they need).

Having more styles of play does not diminish any one particular style of play.

Let’s all try to consider the community as a whole, and not be too bent on preserving our own personal styles of play or sources of revenue….and most of all, not to shut other players out (as much as we think they have no business being in certain instances).

Norjena.5172:

No it shows u that Zerker gear makes nothing easier, only faster if play good enough. If u are tanky u can facetank nearly everything. U don´t have to know what bosses do, u don´t have to use skill like retreat/blinds/blocks or reflexion u don´t have to dogde

U can faceroll everything. Without using your brain and playing with 1 hand.

It shows u that all arguments “zerker makes pve easier” are foolish. U can ignore dungeon mechanics by just being tanky enough.

Ok, this video is real and recent. This proves that a group which is organized and set up in that manner can achieve a clear for that dungeon in that timeframe. Is that the group setup that everyone prefers and is using? If it isn’t then how will it ever become the new meta?

If people who don’t bother to learn mechanics want to get organized and group up together to have a tanky-prot-blind-block-heal run, then it’s pretty much up to them. It still doesn’t change the fact that a zerker team will clear faster and get more rewards.

The team in the video can probably clear AC2 as well, but it still won’t change the fact that a zerker team will clear AC2 with only one trap needed. When people say that zerker makes things easier, they were referring to the ~15min farm instances. COF1/2, AC1/2/3, SE1/3 are cakewalks with the zerker meta groups.

To assume that Arah and 41-50 Fractals can be done anybody by zerking is oversimplification. In those 2 instances, success really has less to do with gear than knowing one’s profession and abilities and how to apply them to exploit the weaknesses of the encounter. Like Lupi for example, a group of rangers can whirling defense the boss to death in under a minute. That’s definitely not meta, but they pretty much face-whirled spin to win.

P/S: The group in the video was using blinds, blocks, protection, and frost armor. These are all not stat related. If they were all using zerker gear, their blinds and blocks will still negate all damage, their protection+frost armor will still give 33-43% damage reduction. I am not sure I can call a group that prepared well enough before going into a dungeon as people who turned off their brain though.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I’m calling it right now, the new meta is rabid engie for stacking 150 stacks of bleed on every boss with high armor.

Every pug speedclear group will just be “LF 4 more rabid engies, heavy = kick”.

If zerker groups still cleared dungeons just as fast as what we have now, I guess it doesn’t make any difference to us. Condi groups being able to speed clear on their terms does not affect us in any way.

Norjena.5172:

Manuhell.2759:

Dub.1273:

Just throwing this in here again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VhmwLwvrM

Whoever argues against the “berserker meta”, is that what you want the game to become? Add some random dodges in and you are invicible, that would make you able to play content blind with one hand, easily. Is that what you want as new meta in gw2, instead of actually a bit of positioning, dodging and supporting?

As if that video even demostrate something. That sustain is due to the class, rather than the gear. Healing signet doesn’t even scale that well with healing power.
And any attack that should have been dodged has been blocked instead. Again, due to the defensive abilities of the classes (hi, Riposte), rather that due of the gear itself. Also dealing a good amount of damage by reflection that wouldn’t be usually done by a tanky gear user, thus speeding up the fight.

It was made up in this way just to make their point.
But the rest of the game, and the classes, don’t work like that.

U should watch a video before u write a comment. U failed.

I’m not sure what the video is supposed to show really, Is this supposed to be faster than running with the current meta group?

Wethospu.6437:

People are always going to favor most damaging specs because they cut the run time and give the best profits. Literally only way to stop this is to make content too hard to complete as a dps spec. This either means a gearcheck or a very hard difficulty.

And if they create a very hard difficulty then normal people (most of the guys posting here) won’t be able to complete it, regardless of their spec. And guess what, that means groups really want you to be on par with the meta and stuff actually gets vicious.

Yes, the run time vis-a-vis profit argument is the same rationale behind the complaint about running 41-50 fractals as compared to COF1/2, AC1/3, SE1/3, etc. Why would anyone do content or buy gear which actually goes against what we are trying to achieve (ie. farm gold/tokens/crafting material)?

But the point is not that damaging specs or gear is overpowered, but everything else is pretty much useless. Whenever groups form with random players beyond our control, we will almost always hope for a warrior in zerker gear using at least a GS, because even if he has only 700 AP and running 4 signets, you can be sure he will at least 100b whenever it is up.

The players who give the aegis/block at the right time, blind at the right time, reflect at the right time are pretty much the ones who matter more. The normals need to be the ones in dps gear because you can’t trust them to do anything else but dps.

And the easiest way for Anet to make mobs stronger against pure dpsers would be to increase their hp or more access to protection/retaliation buffs. A zerker group is only in trouble when all their mitigating skills are on cooldown. It is this all or nothing gameplay which makes the DPS meta so successful to the point that it is actually riskier to run anything else.

No matter how much toughness, vitality, or healing anyone has, once you no longer have defenses, the entire team is in trouble if mobs are still alive.

Bright.9160:

You contradict yourself. In your first sentence you say that not every group setup should be able to complete content in the same time frame.

Then you go ahead and say that everything should be equally effective?

To me effectiveness of a (team) build in PvE is the efficiency and speed it can complete content in.

Other team setups can already complete dungeons. [rT] proved it by doing a no-dodge Arah p2. They succeeded with minimal effort. It just took them longer than when they would have run zerker gear.

I don’t get what you want. You want everything to be equally effective, so equally fast, but you don’t want everything to be equally fast?

If they buffed non-zerker gear to be equally strong as zerker gear, but including defensive stats, why on earth would anyone run zerker gear?

Your proposed universe where everything is equally effective at doing content as zerker gear is even more stupidly unbalanced than what we have now.

What they should do is make more bosses like Lupicus, where skill is required, and less bosses like Mai Trin, where the whole difficulty of the fight comes from invulnerable phases, which is, quite honestly, the worst kind of mechanic they have implemented so far.

To be honest, Wethospu said it the best way possible:

“People wanting content where Berserker sucks should remember that it needs be so hard that they will cry, not just a river, but a huge ocean.” – Wethospu

There is no contradiction as being as effective does not mean being as fast. One must look at the big picture when trying to understand balance and not focus on individual dungeon runs or the like.

What this means is that a player with a certain skill level who runs 100 instances in a balanced group will hypothetically achieve 100 success at 20min per run. The same player in a full zerker group who runs 100 instances will have increased risks and achieve 50 runs at 10min and 50 runs at 30min. For that player, to reap the rewards for 100 successful runs remains at 2000min of gameplay in either a balanced or zerker group, thereby making his effectiveness the same.

However, when player skill increases, rewards would skew towards a zerker group as a more skillful player will eventually be able to achieve 75-90 runs at 10min. This same player will not be able to improve clear time in a balanced group due to the limitations of such a group.

We must not be confused and compare effectiveness across different players with different skill level and professions. And it’s all about law of big numbers. This is why if zerker groups are the only ones achieving completion, then they have mathematically less risk which would not justify the rewards.

P/S: time taken to clear would include time spent waiting for the group to form

Sorin.4310:

Shadoekin.3928:

What’s key is to prevent to dominance of any one meta. A berserker focued group should be as good as any other balanced group.

Why? If a balanced group, which presumably means it has more survivability, is supposed to be as effective as a zerker group, why the heck would anyone wear zerker gear? The point of zerker is risk vs reward. The problem is most of this game lacks risk in fights. However, just making the bosses hit for more or more frequently is just lazy design. Better mechanics like lupi is what is needed imo, but is not what expected.

Risk and reward should manifest in the form of real-world time. A zerker team achieves twice as much if and when successful. But if zerkers always and are the only ones achieving success then there was never any real risk in the first place to reward.

One of the reasons why Anet got rid of the trinity is so that players no longer waste time waiting for healers or tanks. Instead, we wait for a guardian or a mesmer….or a third warrior. That is still real world time wasted.

Bright.9160:

Shadoekin.3928:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

People who say “there is no control” in this game are absolutely idiotic. Control is the thing that allows DPS to work as well as it does. All members of the party bring control elements in a successful speed run group, working as intended by design.

What you DON’T have is a dedicate “control player” who sits there and CC-locks bosses the whole fight to allow people to beat down bosses Bjarl fruit style.

I suspect that the desire for “pure control” comes from disgruntled pvt WvW stunlock zerg hammer warriors who are told they arent so hot in pve and cant fathom the idea of not using a different build for a different game mode.

I believe the “control” that is being discussed is on disabling effects, and not kiting conditions (crippled/chilled) or mitigators (blinds/weakness).

And exactly, there should be no reason why a hammer warrior should not be as useful as a GS/Axe+X warrior. Just as why a condition player should not be rendered useless when there is already a condition player in the party.

This entire thread is about balance and ensuring everyone is welcomed to play how they want, when they want.

“Play how you want” doesn’t mean that every build and every profession should be equally effective at every aspect of the game. This was even stated at some point by a dev.

“Play how you want” means that any team setup with any set of builds should be able to finish content. The ease and comfort of the completion however, is subject to which build and team setup you’re running.

The fact that someone would honestly think that any setup should be just as effective as a full zerker team truly shows the delusions some people have to deal with.

I am so glad someone brought this up.

Every group being effective does not mean everyone succeeds in the same timeframe. Balance must exist in the form of risk vs. reward.

1. A balanced team will complete in X amount of time, most of the time.
2. A full zerker team will complete in X/2 amount of time, some of the time.

This means a skilled zerker team will do twice the amount of dungeons and reap more rewards than a balanced team. A bad zerker team will probably fail and maybe take twice the time.

Zerker/Sin is already an established and viable way to play the game. We should not try to change that. What we should do is to raise the usefulness of the other stats so that others can be as effective and complete dungeons even when they are not only zerker/sin.

Wanting balance is not a delusion, wanting everyone to only want to stack in corners and do the same rotation for every encounter every day of gaming and not ending up quitting the game is.

There must be opportunity cost to the player and the only resource that all players share that is immutable is real-world time.

mahariel.4981:

In case you can’t be bothered to check, CC works through the golem’s defiant and stops him from using heavy attacks (ANet for the love of god don’t “fix” this, it makes it a legitimately interesting fight) and the tar goes back underground every 1/4 of its HP but if you chain immobilises you can continue to DPS it down.

SHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

But e x p l o i t s aside, won’t it be more interesting if ALL bosses didn’t have Defiant and could all be CC’d reliably? It opens up more avenues for gameplay instead of how Defiant currently denies it to us.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

People who say “there is no control” in this game are absolutely idiotic. Control is the thing that allows DPS to work as well as it does. All members of the party bring control elements in a successful speed run group, working as intended by design.

What you DON’T have is a dedicate “control player” who sits there and CC-locks bosses the whole fight to allow people to beat down bosses Bjarl fruit style.

I suspect that the desire for “pure control” comes from disgruntled pvt WvW stunlock zerg hammer warriors who are told they arent so hot in pve and cant fathom the idea of not using a different build for a different game mode.

I believe the “control” that is being discussed is on disabling effects, and not kiting conditions (crippled/chilled) or mitigators (blinds/weakness).

And exactly, there should be no reason why a hammer warrior should not be as useful as a GS/Axe+X warrior. Just as why a condition player should not be rendered useless when there is already a condition player in the party.

This entire thread is about balance and ensuring everyone is welcomed to play how they want, when they want.

Amiron.1067:

Exedore.6320:

And a comment on the MMO trinity: GW2 got rid of it, but they didn’t change the style of PvE encounters with it. It still plays like it should have a trinity. Almost every single PvE battle is still a group of trash mobs that get AoE’ed down or a boss that’s an HP punching bag with some easy gimmic. What if more content was like the dredge where they have group protection and daze/knockdown (preferably without the endless dredge clown cars)?

Exedore hit the nail on the head with this statement. This game plays like it has a trinity. Supposably it has a trinity. Damage, control, and support. Right now, control is nearly non existing, support is belittled by absolutely crap scaling with stats like Healing Power, and damage is the only worth while way to beat an encounter quickly.

What ANet needs to do is take a serious look at their boss encounter designs and ask themselves “How can we make healing, condition removal, damage prevention/reduction, and CC valuable in this encounter?” In my opinion, giving heals the ability to critically heal would be a great start to making supporty characters more valuable. Counter play to healing criticals would be giving poison the additional effect of preventing heals from critting.

As for control, I’m at a loss. I understand why ANet implemented Defiant; they don’t want bosses permastunned. But right now defiant is so restricting bat anyone that wants to be mainly controlling of the battlefield is pidgeon-holed because they can’t do their job 80% of the time.

TL;DR – Give support and control more meaning in your encounters if you want people to even bother running those types of builds. This game has a trinity, and plays like it has one, so stop pretending it doesn’t.

This is so true. We cannot ignore the undeniable facts:

1. Enemies have HP. We need to deplete it. We need DPS.
2. Enemies do damage. We need to prevent it. We need Mitigators.
3. We have HP. We need to refill it. We need Healing.

GW2 mixes things up more by having a whole lot of Buffs and Conditions/Cleanses which we then call “support”.

The lynchpin in the game at the moment are the professions which are better at providing party-wide mitigation. Everyone can dps, albeit some better than others, but no one can safely continue dpsing without the mitigators. Even more power to those whose mitigation abilities are tied to DPS traits and abilities.

GW2 just doesn’t have “tanks” because there is no definable aggro system in the game to hold the attention of enemies. This is where the “control” should come in. And yes, Defiant (and all other blanket “I am a boss I am immune go suck a lemon” mechanic) really should be removed.

Instead maybe give the boss a stacking buff on the next attack after getting interrupted (like a temporary Enraged) to display its anger at getting knocked down, etc. This creates increasing risk when trying to use chain interrupts, but extremely rewarding to groups that can successfully pull it off.

Even better when the person who successfully interrupts attracts the ire of the boss and gets instant aggro. In which case the boss is actually “enraged” at the interrupter and would make sense to purposely try to inflict increased damage to him/her.

Or instead of an “Enraged” buff on the boss, it could be a debuff on the interrupter (let’s just called it “Focused” for now) which increases damage taken from the boss and indicate aggro. This debuff could be on a timer and be transferred to the next player that interrupts the boss. If the same player consecutively interrupts the boss, the timer could reset, or the debuff could stack and increase damage taken.

Whatever it is, make control viable somehow…dump Defiant.

Anicetus.1253:

Does anyone really want to see this to become the new meta?

If people bothered to LFG for pure berserkers and expect to succeed, it’s only fair to expect that a group of people who bothered to LFG for a group which have lots of protection/blinds/weakness to also be able to succeed.

What’s key is to prevent to dominance of any one meta. A berserker focued group should be as good as any other balanced group.

Manuhell.2759:

haviz.1340:

On the topic about heals being weak, take a look at this clip. Facetanking the hardest hitting boss in the game because of the heals that are “close to useless” and armour that reduces hits “veeeery slightly” is not my definition of a logical sentence.

3 warriors, 1 guardian and 1 ele. I could stop here. I mean, that is as meta as it could get, if it weren’t for the elementalist.

This video gives the wrong impression by calling it casual. If I define “casual” to mean that I can pick 4 other random players and achieve the same effect (no matter how long it takes to kill lupi), then this video will not qualify.

As Manuhell pointed out, the 3 warriors and 1 guardian +1 other is pretty much the meta. Why? The guardian is their prime “mitigator” by providing perma-prot. What’s more a hammer guardian can even heal with the Symbol of Protection. The warriors can shout heal whilst providing might, and the elementalist in the video was also in water attunement quite a fair bit.

In other words, it could possibly have been a team of 1 mitigator/support healer, and 4 dps/support healers. This is a setup which is not exactly casual, and requires a specific build combination. If we were to lose the hammer guardian, can that player be replaced by any other random profession with any other random build?

The current “DPS meta” also gives the false impression that everyone ONLY does DPS. This isn’t exactly true as most people have noted, a group of 5 pure berserkers only doing a dps rotation cannot survive every encounter, no matter how fast they can kill. There will always be someone doing some form of mitigation.

In COF1, you could have 4 zerk warriors and 1 mesmer. The mesmer is there for Timewarp and Feedback. The Feedback is important to protect the warriors from the effigy projectiles and let the warriors do their job. In terms of dps output, the mesmer hardly compares to that of the 4 warriors. In this case, damage from the Slave Driver is shared amongst the 4 warriors who have the healthpool to do so.

Can the same be done with 5 zerk warriors? Yes, but with much less guarantee of success than with 4 war 1 mez. Want a even smoother ride? 3 war 1 guard 1 mez, which is the most common combination for COF1 and pretty much the meta. Why is it so successful? The projectile reflect which negates the damage from the effigy.

Blinds, blocks, reflects, and dodge are the “hard” mitigators. They completely prevent damage. Protection, Weakness (also possibly Vigor and Stability) are the “softer” mitigators by reducing damage. Obviously for most effective play, a group would prioritize having as much hard mitigators as possible, with the softer ones to fill in between.

This leaves the professions which do not have easy, or more accurately, convenient access to those abilities rather lacking in PVE. With the phrase “DPS meta”, one would expect the profession with the most focus on DPS would be most prevalent, however the Thief is not what people are looking for in LFG.

Without the access to mitigators to reliably prevent damage, it would be better to allow the ability to reliably heal damage reactively. A group which can’t find a reflect mesmer or a hammer guardian should be able to replace them with maybe a healing venom thief, a water elementalist, a spirit ranger, or some other support build.

Of course if blinds became more effective by causing misses the entire duration, instead of being expended, then stealth blind thieves and well necros would be added into the fold since they can reliably are hard mitigators too. Likewise if earth staff elementalists could use Stoning to inflict Weakness in a radius similar to the blast radius of Fire1/Water1/Air1 (with increased radius when traited), they could be a soft mitigator as well.

To properly balance all the classes, they should all have access to traits/skills which achieve the same effect, be it preventing damage or healing the damage. It’s not necessary to give everyone blocks, or reflects, but it’s necessary to give everyone something which is just as good.

fadeaway.2807:

Barely worth it then. I’ll just facetank that big hit that gives me some lame knockdown or condition and then cleanse it, while keeping up the dps.

In the scenario you are describing, a group of zerkers with protection will far outperform a bunch of people with mitigation stats. This wouldn’t change the meta, and it has rendered dodge mechanic useless. Dodge mechanic needs to allow you to avoid near death attacks, things which you are either going to die from, or be in a situation which is incredibly difficult to recover from. Otherwise people won’t bother.

But then you are forgetting the fact that you are reactively using a stunbreak and/or a cleanse. Do you choose to use the dodge to avoid, or utilities to remedy the special attack.

You still need your dodge. We’ve only given mobs more frequent autoattacks so they attack every 1/2 second instead of every 1-2 seconds. This attrition creates those near-death situations and obviously no one is going to facetank a knockdown at under 50% hp and let the mob further autoattack us to death if we ran out of stun-breaks.

Yes, it makes buffs such as Protection more important. Yes, it makes conditions such as Weakness more important. That is the point, so we don’t have a pure DPS meta and players need to do more than just remember a dps rotation with a double-tap every few seconds.

We don’t want to diminish the Zerker/Sin builds and gear, we want to raise the significance of everything else.

P/S: Giving mobs more frequent autoattacks means an increase in their overall dps and could be balanced by tweaking their health pools. I can appreciate mobs being deadlier, instead of taking a long time to meet their inevitable demise.

fadeaway.2807:

Shadoekin.3928:

Active mitigation doesn’t change. You still need to dodge out of the big hits, you should still block those special attacks.

Why do I need to block those special attacks if I’ve just loaded up on defensive stats?
Are they enough to one-shot me still?

Sounds like zerkers with perma-protection are the new meta.

Special attacks would be those that employ control effects and/or inflict conditions. Defensive stats will not save you from getting knocked down and such.

Think of it this way:
Passive mitigation goes against “passive” damage (mob autoattacks)
Active mitigation goes against “active” damage (special attacks and one-shots)

Also, if mobs have frequent autoattacks, Confusion would actually be useful in PVE, but the efficacy of Blind would be reduced.

fadeaway.2807:

What’s the point of active dodges, blinds, blocks etc if mobs hit frequently and mitigation (aka passive play) is required?
You’ve just removed a core mechanism of gw2, removed skill play, and promoted passive play.

Active mitigation doesn’t change. You still need to dodge out of the big hits, you should still block those special attacks. But to say that we should be using these to avoid mob autoattacks seems a little silly and would only favor professions that have easy access to vigor.

It’s more skillful play to know exactly when to use active mitigation, and not waste it on the smaller and more frequent mob autoattacks. Right now we just simply knee-jerk and dodge whenever something is going to attack us because we can.

This won’t remove GW2’s core mechanism, it makes it even more pertinent. You can’t dodge and block everything, you have to be skillful enough to know what and when to do so.

Also if mobs have frequent small autoattacks, it will make stacking in corners and chaining Aegis against the current few and far between boss attacks a lot harder.

I have been waiting for a discussion like this for the longest time, and I do hope Anet does make changes which makes other playstyles more welcomed in PVE.

I don’t think Zerker/Sin gear or stats should be nerfed or changed in anyway, so that the players who enjoy the high risk-high rewards type of gameplay can continue with what they love. If 5 glasscannons can dodge, employ evasion skills and know when to block at the right time, then more power to them. They should be granted the faster clear times for choosing such a strategy.

The problem lies in the fact that Healing Power, Vitality, and Toughness are so badly scaled they become a waste of stats. I believe instead of doing anything to affect Zerker/Sin stats, the defensive stats should be given a buff.

1. Double all Healing Power coefficients in PVE so that healing becomes viable. You don’t need a healer in GW2 to succeed but if someone chooses to have a healing playstyle, that player can actually heal and make a difference.

2. When healing become viable, health pool (via Vitality) and defense (via Toughness) become more significant. The reason why Vitality is useless now is mostly because healing is so lacklustre that no matter how much you have, without negating damage, a player would have to burn their heal skill and then get out of the danger zone for a while. With healing, players who invest in Vitality and Toughness can obviously spend a longer time fighting.

3. Remove “Defiant”, the laziest mechanic a developer can ever come up with. Allow interrupts to be a reliable way to prevent those big attacks, along with the blocks, reflects, and blinds. It takes skill and knowledge to know when to interrupt and “Defiant” just belittles control skills.

4. Make pushes, pulls, knockdowns, launches and similar skills draw aggro. I know as a player, nothing kittenes me more than getting knocked around by mobs, somehow I think they should feel the same way. By making control skills a “taunt”, players can actually save each other from being chased down and killed by mobs.

5. Remove the limit on condition stacks in PVE. I don’t think an explanation for this is needed since it’s been talked to death.

6. Make all mob auto-attacks do small damage but be more frequent. This will balance auto-attack damage out between those who choose to heal through it, those who choose to use skills to negate it, and those who have easy access to Vigor and can constantly dodge through it. More frequent and smaller attacks also mean that Toughness will actually be able to prevent damage and be useful.

7. Special attacks which employ control and/or inflict conditions should have cooldowns. Champs and above should have cleaves and aoes. Let purple boss mobs keep their big one shot abilities which players need to learn to avoid. These abilities must have a fair cooldown and be telegraphed.

Simply put, there is already a DPS meta, let’s diversify things by introducing a Healing meta, and a Control meta. The pros can continue with their Zerker/Sin runs, and others who want a change of pace can do other things.

And another thing, to make this work better, it would be good to allow player to save builds. So a group and players can switch between roles easily.

I’ve noticed this too. Might be something to do with making it ground targeted with a trait.

Fear interrupts…but only when mobs use it on us players.