Guild Wars 2

So what about the DPS?
GW2 already basically has dps in spades, so effectively anybody not healing or tanks is on dps. Although like tanking and healing checks, I would have dps checks as well.

The only problem I see in this is what to do with the Thief and Mesmer, since they are more purely dps professions, that deal primarily in deception and non-direct engagement. Maybe the can off tank in a way, but I doubt it, and healing is out of the question.

Maybe if the content rewarded/required avoidance and non-engagement, like grabbing a key to a door without getting caught, or disarming a trap that targets you if your visible.

Otherwise, I don’t have a good answer for you. And I main a Mesmer, so I can see this screwing me up if not handled well.

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The Future of GW2?
All in all, I see bringing back the holy trinity, even as a soft and very different form being the best course of action for the long term health of the game. I think Arenanet were awesome for trying something new and different, and I was largely indifferent when they decided to get rid of the holy trinity in the beginning.

But having played the game as long as I have, and seen similar games as to compare, I now think that GW2’s multiplayer is incredibly weak. Nice effort, but it’s didn’t pan out.

I don’t like not being able to work together with other people in any meaningful sense.
I don’t like not being relied upon to do a simple job, or not being able to rely on others.
I can live with waiting to find people for a group, or failing because somebody couldn’t do their job, because the rewards are more then worth it.

And I just don’t see much of a future in a multiplayer game where your effectively cut off from everybody, where everything is watered down to the lowest common denominator and any idiot will do. It’s not fun, it’s a pointless waste of time.

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Currently, all the game really has going for it, at least for me is it’s excellent single player experience. But if that’s all you were going to do, why make an MMO in the first place?

Meet the Heavy
Tanking I think is arguably more difficult to implement, as mechanics like Aggro don’t really exist in the game, at least not in a clear and defined sense.

However like healing, I feel that tanking should be active and positional based, rather then standing around absorbing hits while going through a skill rotation.
A couple of the best games I’ve seen do this is Dark Souls and Monster Hunter, as using a shield is active, you raise it only when you need to block, and you can only do it so long. This requires stamina with each hit blocked, which is also used for running and dodging.

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So this is what I am thinking, change the mechanics with the Shield offhand so that you can raise it at will a block whatever incoming damage coming from the front of you, like Shield Stance but directional. When you block this way it takes it out of your endurance bar relative to how much damage you would have taken.
Perhaps this could be instead of evasion but only when you have the shield out, and as such use the same button. So if you want to evade, you need to switch weapons.

In addition, while blocking you move at half speed. But you block projectiles, cone attacks and line nukes, thus protecting anyone standing behind you from assault so long as you have the endurance to do so. And can be traited to cover a wider area of protection. Also, once your endurance runs out you should still be able to block per say, but you will take reduced damage, perhaps stacking vulnerability each hit or something.
I’d even go so far as to have it body block people for PvP and WvW purposes.

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Next is aggro and telegraphing mechanics.
I don’t think enmity should exist in the game, and so their is no way to control an enemy to only ever attack the one person, but rather it attacks people for other criteria.

Say the monster enters ‘Frenzy’ status, which means it will attack whoever is doing the most damage to it and ignore everyone else. So in order for the tank to tank, the dps need to back off for a bit and just let the tank hit it to get it’s attention.
It can also cripple or chill it to slow it down, and force it’s attention back to themselves. (I know it’s kind of like that already, but it’s vague at best)
Other status symbols that donate to the enemies aggro behavior would go a long way, as it would require the party to pay attention and not draw aggro to themselves.

This also requires telegraphing it’s attacks, and showing who it is aggroed to and when it switches targets via UI elements. FFXIV does this by showing an arrow that going from the enemy to it’s new target when it’s aggro switches.

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Attacks themselves need to be much better telegraphed, because a pitiful red ring doesn’t cut it. Instead, the same UI elements players use when using their skills, such as the line nuke of Bladetrail or the fan shot of Poison Volley, take them dye them red, and re-purpose them for enemy attacks before they use them.

And so like in FFXIV, a big part of tanking isn’t just absorbing hits, it’s facing the target and it’s attacks away from your party members.

I can just see a boss switch to target the healer, preparing a massive line nuke, requiring the tank to whip their shield out, and put themselves between it and the healer, and try to cling on for dear life.

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As for the tanks themselves: Warrior, Guardian and Necromancer.
With the Engineer, Elementalist and maybe Mesmer being off tank.
(Engineer and Ele can access shields, mesmer has clones)

The Warrior primarily tanks via it’s Shield and having a deeper health pool, and solid natural armor. It can also do respectable direct damage, and is fairly mobile, able to get in and out of range.

The Guardian also uses a Shield, but relies more on buffs and self healing to keep itself alive. More about protecting allies then tanking hits, having more traits geared to protecting a wider area and preventing enemy movements. Strong and holding a single position, but much less mobile.

The Necromancer is a bit of an odd duck, since it’s not really able to block attacks per say, but rather absorbing them. Like a Shield, it’s Death Shroud protects anyone behind or around them, sort of like a mobile Sanctuary.
Combined with it’s impressive damage over time, it excels at negating attacks before they happen. (blind, weakness etc)

An example of a bad healer is the Monk from GW1.
While you could do damage, between the limited skill slots and attribute points, you were forced to pick either great healing, or so-so damage. So in other words if you wanted to be a monk, you could only ever heal, and nothing else.

Not to mention that if your only running with NPC’s and heroes, healing them is no fun either. But where it got particularly bad, was where the game expected you to have a healer ie monk, and tested them, but only them.
You could have just about any other profession, but without a monk you were screwed, and if anything EVER went wrong, it was the fault of the monk.
It didn’t matter how bad anyone else was, it’s the monks fault.

And that was a result of just fundamentally bad game design.

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How GW2 could have Roles – A Soft Trinity
Now of course GW2 could have roles other then healer/tank/dps, but as I already stated these have to have to be clear and necessary. However, we already know that the holy trinity works, and can work well, and how it works.

But what’s really interesting, is how they could be implemented as GW2 has some very interesting mechanics that would make it stand out from other MMO’s in this regard.

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What I am advocating for, in not a hard trinity like in most MMO’s, where you either have a healer or your completely dead in the water, and a healer is limited to one or two classes where that is all they do.

But rather, a soft trinity.
Where each profession fills one or two roles, and can switch between them without too much investment or downtime, but they can’t do both at the same time.
Traits wise, they can be good at both, or excellent at one and exclude the other.
In addition, every profession still can heal themselves, abut to a limited degree, which is idle for the single player experience, but not necessarily enough for group content.

So limited self sufficiency, plus role specialization.

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So for example, the healer professions could be the Elementalist, Engineer, and Guardian. Each with their own mechanics.
The Elementalist can either be a dps or a healer, but due to it’s attunements it can only be doing one of these things at any one time. Provided the amount of damage to be healed is high enough, you could find yourself stuck doing one over the other.
Their’s nothing stopping you from doing dps, it’s just your needed for healing.

Likewise, the Engineer has it’s kits, and the Guardian has weapon swaps.

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And due to the innate self sufficiency every profession shares, it is possible, not easy, but possible to do dungeon group content without a dedicated healer or a tank, so long as there is enough wiggle room for people to off-tank or off-heal.
ie, an Elementalist there for dps, occasionally throwing out a heal.

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Naturally this would require the heals to heal more, and the tanks to tank more, as dps is the only thing we already have in spades.
Namely via tweaking Healing Power, and the effectiveness of the base armor values each of the armor types. ie, Make heavy armor absorb more damage.

The Problem with having no Roles
There are two primary problems with not having roles.
1) It undermines group cohesion.
2) It makes the difficulty curve hard to gauge and build around.

Currently, GW2 tries to have you do everything all at once, to varying degrees.
DPS isn’t a role if everybody is doing it all the time.
And so you don’t need anybody for anything particular, other then numbers.

Further more, your highly limited in how you can interact with others, to little more then combo fields, boons and poultry healing.
However for all intents and purposes, gameplay between single and multiplayer does not change, you gain nothing from playing with people.

The ultimate example of this in action is WvW. Far from working in tight nit groups, or well organized militia, you instead get noise and chaos. Big mindless zergs that rush around from one engagement to the next, where you become little more then a foot-solider, and your skills become irreverent.
It’s not that you can’t get highly organized groups, but you have to go out of your way and fight against the mechanics of the game in order to do so. It’s not a natural state.

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But also I feel that the lack of roles also hurts the difficult and challenge in this game, making it rather lopsided. Either comically easy, or ridiculously hard, with nothing in-between.

A raid or dungeon experience for instance, would have to constantly teetering on the edge of success and failure, where if someone doesn’t do their job, everyone loses.
Which makes victory all the sweeter when you succeed.
This is done because of math. With the healer/tank/dps system, you know exactly how much healing or dps, tanking etc, somebody is able to do, and calculate this out as a clear mathematical value.

Then the instance can be fine tuned to this calculation, so as to have the difficult just so to keep it engaging and rewarding, and allow for tests to check that people are able to do their job. A good dungeon experience will test each role equally.

For example, I did Ifrit Hard Mode the other day, and while the first couple of PUG’s went well, the 3rd had dps that wasn’t up to snuff. Ifrit has a phase where he summons nail adds, and if you don’t kill them before he does his special attack, you all die.
It’s a clear dps check.

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But GW2 doesn’t, and I would argue cannot do this. Because everyone is doing everything, and no one is relied on for anything particular, the difficult curve now has to account for everything. You have no idea who or what’s going to be there, or what they can do, so you have a difficult curve that is set to accommodate everything.
Making it effectively impossible to make challenging content that applies to everyone evenly.
It’s like trying to figure out a mathematical problem, when you don’t know what the values are. The answer could be anything.

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Self Sufficiency vs Group Roles
Often times in MMO’s I see these two things run in opposition to each other, but their not mutually exclusive. Being self sufficient often leads to a better single player experience, as there is not obstacle or challenge you can’t overcome with the resources that you have available.
Where clear roles allows for fluid group interplay and challenging content designed around said roles.

Again, FFXIV gives us a good example here.
I play as a healer whenever possible, and here I play a Scholar.

Normally in a lot of MMO’s, healers either cannot do any real damage, or they are forced to pick either their healing or mediocre damage, not both. Then this is coupled with content when your only ever killing things, designed for DPS, which itself is ladened with grind.

And so when killing things is 5 times slower, the single player experience for healers in that kind of game becomes a living nightmare. TERA, I’m looking at you.

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However in FFXIV, I can do damage as a Scholar, a reasonable bit in fact, more then enough for all the solo content without a lot of grind involved, as well a diversity of content. Naturally my dps doesn’t hold a candle to an actual dps, and I never had to pick to have one of the other.

But when I get into a dungeon, because of how fine tuned the content is, I don’t have the time to do anything other then heal. Sure I can throw out a dot once and a while, but the incoming damage is consistent and high enough that I need to be doing my job above all else.
With the occasional healer check, I feel mighty proud of myself when I am made to do a job, and I end up doing it well. It’s a very rewarding experience.

And then I can just go back to whatever I was doing.

zeromius.1604:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

If anything, you should use this quote instead.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-27-arenanet-holds-frank-reddit-debate-on-guild-wars-2-loot-grind

“Please understand that we see the community as a ‘whole’ and therefore are not intending to design again for one specific type of player over another. This is a misconception and one that is not promoted by the team. We will continue to develop the game for the community as a whole, offering gameplay that caters to lots of different types of players in a unified approach that will evolve over time based on feedback and the direction the team as a whole wants to take.

Then ask yourself. Was Ascended gear designed for the “whole” community, or just a portion of it? And remember when they said (regarding the Queen’s Gauntlets) “We only expect a small percentage of players to complete this content”? Does that sound like they are making content for the “whole” community, or just a small portion of it? Even look at SAB. Was that designed with the “whole” community in mind, or just a portion of them?

This quote, you can clearly use instead. Because it is a blatant lie. They are not designing content for the whole community. They are designing content for just specific groups instead.

It depends on how you interpret the quote. You can’t realistically create content that caters to everyone because different people have different preferences. They’ll create one set of content that caters to a specific group of players, another set for another group, and so on. You don’t like jumping puzzles? There are dungeons, dynamic events, PvP, and WvW. You don’t like dynamic events? There’s world exploration, and crafting. Making a lot of things that cater to different people is what they’ve been doing.

Still, on the Ascended side of things, that quote is wrong. Because they have time-gated and content-gated Ascended items behind certain things. So if I wanted to get Ascended items, I have to do different content that I don’t like because it is gated behind only one feature. Which is the opposite of what that quote is talking about.

Ascended gear was designed for Fractals. A specific group of people do Fractals, and want Ascended gear. That content was designed for them only. Not the whole community. But, that content also pulled away from that design decision. Instead, they started gating Ascended gear behind things that were not Fractals. Making those who wanted Fractals, have to go do other content that was not designed with them in mind, just to gear up for content that was designed with them in mind.

This is not making content for the whole community. This is catering to specific groups, and then making those groups have to do different content that they don’t want, just to be able to do content that they do want. Which goes against that quote.

Amazing. We have the OP thanking other players for being kind. Then we have the “L33T guys” come in here complaining that the folks trying to help their fellow players are not playing the game correctly.

One of said “L33T guys” made his own post condemning the “kind folks”, and now he’s here whining about it again. For Christ’s sake, if you wanna win, then run your little kitten off. If you win, fine. If you don’t, then mind your own business and let players help other players if they wish. It’s hard not to loose faith in your fellow man, when you run into people/mentalities like this.

To the players that run a hard race and give it their all….good for you, theres nothing wrong with that. To the players helping out your fellow players…..bless you. To the players complaining about that…..I pity you.

Vinyl, if you are a good gamer, odds are you were able to get 1st place within your first 5-10 races and then consistently place top 3. I can tell you right now that there are people who have raced 20 times and not come in first. Do you think it was lack of trying? Not putting in the effort?

They’ve played more games than I have and still haven’t placed first. What lesson do you honestly think you are teaching them by not allowing them to win? Patience and hardwork? Teaching them how to fish rather than give them a fish? No, you are teaching them that there are kittens in this world. Something I’m sure they are coming to a fantasy world to escape.

Show some human decency for crying out loud.

Jason King.2647:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I just spent 1s62 to travel to Vigil HQ and chat with the guard. (For Science, money is no object.)

/salute

In all seriousness, though, since Illconceived already recommended the two things I would think of, this sounds like a bug. We’ll check it out!

Edge.4180:

I’d love to see that awkward conversation playing out in real life.

“Um, sir. We know you’re the super-boss and all that, but you came from a different order, so you need to go find a different portal.” /trollface

Your pardon sir, but I am not Vigil commander I am PACT commander. Have you confused the two? Do you mean to suggest that any one of these orders does not fall under my chain of command?

Absolutely ridiculous.

I’m the leader of a small guild made up of RL friends. We will be completely unable to take part in this content without merging with some mega-guild. Considering I’ve previously been hyping my guild up about all the new things we’ll be able to do together, this is an extreme disappointment.

Dangerkips.6035:

It’s funny how all the positive ‘feedback’ gets automatically upvoted, and all the other threads disagreeing get instantly deleted.

I see a lot of “disagreeing” topics on the first page so I don’t know what you are talking about.

Point being blatant fanboyism isn’t constructive feedback either.

Over a month or so topics popped up with “how to” find certain recipe sheets.
So I have compiled a list, although it is unfinished, I will post the recipes that drop from the dungeon bosses.

Note: These are all Jeweler’s recipe level 400 and requires level 80 to equip.
All are exotic recipes and only drop from dungeon bosses. (Not necessarily final boss)
It is also possible to receive the crafted item as a drop.

AC
P1 – Claw of the Howling King - drops from The Howling King
+48 Precision, +48 Vitality, +67 Healing Power
P2 – Ghost Eater’s Hide [Backpiece] – drops from The Ghost Eater
+16 Power, +16 Conditional Damage, ???
P3 – Colossus Fang - drops from Colossus Rumble
+64 Precision, +64 Toughness, +90 Conditional Damage

CM
P1 – Spineguard of the North [Backpiece] – drops from Frost
+16 Power, +22 Conditional Damage, +16 Vitality
P2 – Plague - drops from Turmaine
+48 Precision, +48 Toughness, +67 Conditional Damage
P3 – Vallog’s Demise - drops from Vallog
+40 Power, +40 Conditional Damage, +3% Magic Find

TA
P1 (up) – Tortured Root - drops from Fyonna
+40 Precision, +40 Toughness, +56 Conditional Damage
P2 (fwd/fwd) – Nightmare Coil - drops from Leurent
+67 Power, +48 Toughness, +48 Vitality
P3 (fwd/up) – Arbor’s Embrace [Backpiece] – drops from Vevina
+16 Precision, +16 Vitality, +22 Healing Power

CoF
P1 – Ashes of the Effigy - drops from Searing Effigy
+56 Vitality, +40 Healing Power, +40 Conditional Damage
P2 – Eternal Flame - drops from end path chest.
+64 Power, +64 Vitality, +90 Conditional Damage
P3 – Burntclaw’s Brace [Backpiece] – drops from Tribune Burntclaw
+16 Precision, +16 Toughness, +22 Conditional Damage

SE
P1 – The Replicator - drops from Tazza
+64 Precision, +64 Vitality, +90 Power
P2 – Shukov’s Launch Codes - drops from War Minister Shukov’s Champion Golems
+56 Power, +40 Toughness, +40 Vitality
P3 – Husk of the Destroyer - drops from The Destroyer of Worlds
+48 Power, +48 Vitality, +67 Conditional Damage

HotW
P1 – Ring of Blood - drops from Ginva the Butcher
+ 48 Power, +48 Conditional Damage, +3% Magic Find
P2 – Koda’s Gift - drops from Wollam the Plunderer
+48 Power, +48 Vitality, +56 Conditional Damage
P3 – The Zealot’s Amulet - drops from Sorge the Zealot
+90 Vitality, +64 Healing Power, +64 Conditional Damage

CoE
P1 – Infinity Loop - (conflict)?
+67 Vitality, +48 Healing Power, +48 Conditional Damage
P2 – Alpha Conduit - (conflict)?
+64 Power, +64 Conditional Damage, +3% Magic Find
P3 – Prototype Sheath [Backpiece]? (conflict)?
+22 Power, +16 Toughness, +16 Vitality
Infinity Loop P3? P1?
Alpha conduit P1?
Prototype Sheath P3?
My theory is that since they all have the same boss, all 3 can be dropped from any path.

Arah
P1 – Stargazer Pendant - drops from Legendary Jotun Stargazer
+64 Power, +64 Conditional Damage, +3% Magic Find
P2 – Operative’s Creed - ?
+40 Precision, +40 Vitality, +56 Healing Power
P3 – Wraithlord Chains [Backpiece] – drops from Wraithlord
+16 Healing, +16 Conditional Damage, +22 Vitality
P4 – Bloodstone Fragment - ?
+90 Power, +64 Toughness, +64 Vitality

If you know which recipe drops from each path, please let me know! I will add it here and will probably create a similar one on the wiki.
There has been reports that the recipe is tied to the path and the main boss, meaning you can also receive it from the mini-bosses.

Credits:
Zileve for completing TA list (again)
Azriel for Shukov error
Tortitudo Probo & Syphirr for confirming CoF 2