(edited by Velleman.4823)
Showing Posts For Velleman.4823:
“@Velleman : Geomancy is a cool sigil, especially against Mesmer. But outside of that case, I don’t use it much. Your build (or way to play) looks fine, but a 100%crit works fine too. Don’t get wrong on people that make other builds which works too.”
Absolutely right. I agree completely. Especially at this early stage of the game where I’m convinced that most builds haven’t been properly experimented with yet. I suspect there’s more than a few surprises yet in store for us and it wouldn’t shock me at all if a month from now condition warriors (or some other thing people think is sub-par) have magically gone from derision to high praise.
Right now a lot of people have flocked to the cookie cutter builds that are dominating pvp and there’s a TON of potential for discovery outside those builds.
Sorry if I came off as suggesting this was the ‘right’ way to build a bleed build. Really, I was just suggesting a build that I think is currently somewhat overlooked and could help the OP get the survivability he’s looking for. By relying on the geomancy sigil and swapping constantly, you can still get a lot of bleeds and can put a lot of AoE pressure out and you don’t really need any precision to do it.
In this way, it frees up those stats for toughness and maybe even some trait line pts for defense. Perhaps most importantly, it eliminates all need for the +40 signets and can put some much needed utilities into the mix. Bulls charge is perhaps essential for Geomancy to work well and endure pain will definitely help survivability.
Also, I’d recommend a shield offhand on the swap instead of the rifle. Sword has no trouble getting to melee anyways and this way you can swap whenever you like while still maintaining a strong melee presence. Also, with condition, it’s effective to just apply conditions and then bunker under shield stance and endure pain while the bleeds do their work. Plus, shield will give another good stun to make sure geomancy sigil doesn’t get avoided.
Though as you say… all this may be too much of a departure from the initial ideas the OP had in mind
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“If you die and rally the enemy, keep in mind that if you had not used it, you would have died earlier – and they still would have rallied.”
But that’s just it… this isn’t true.
Many times a fight is going our way and will be won by an ally after I have been downed. Or at least, a given downed enemy will stay down as other allies continue the ongoing fight and them staying down is my friend’s best chance. By using the ability I am gambling on the fact that I can now assist in completely finishing the fight within 15 seconds, which of course can be tough given the way some downed professions can avoid finishers.
So now, by my using the ability, an ally may be the last person standing with 15% health and think he’s ok as he hunts around to finish off the downed enemy when much to his surprise…. I drop dead and the enemy gets up.
In fact, there are frequently times where I will recognize this gamble and put off using the ability because of it. It can be expecially bad when it’s after a sizeable skirmish and there are multiple downed enemies.
“Except you didn’t “effectively rez” the enemy, because he was never defeated. And it sounds like you mean 2v1. So that ou can prev prevent this from happening next time, let your ally know your vengeance is almost up, cc the enemy and wait for yourself to go down and then have your ally down the enemy.
Play the game, don’t let it play you :/”
Bleh. Ok, I didn’t ‘effectively rez’ him. I ‘effectively rallied’ him. I ‘effectively revived’ him. The point is — I used a skill which was supposed to help me, and it helped my enemy. More importantly, it severely hurts the teammate who is now trying to figure out how two relatively health allies finishing off a downed player just turned into a potentially lost fight.
And if you think that in the last 5 seconds while trying desperately to finish off a downed player, I am gonna stop to type into chat how my vengeance is almost up you are crazy. Or I guess you just meant this to apply to teams on comms and not the vast majority of cases where it happens in PUGs and hotjoin.
Really what it comes down to is this — Downed states, while cool and all, should not be a whole new, equally important stage of battle. They should be a last ditch attempt to help, and maybe a second chance to get back into a close fight. They should not be a cheap mechanic where a lost fight turns magically into a won fight.
Geez, the number of times I’ve seen close fights – say 2v2 or 3v3 where after a tough slog 1-2 allies are left standing. Then one of the downed players manages to either get up and finish off a player, or even just tosses off a bunch of downed abilities, then voila, the losing team is rallied! and suddenly, despite winning the fight with, you know, the main ability set and health pools alloted to these characters, they have now suddenly lost because of a downed mechanic that severely favors dissapearing and teleporting downed players.
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yeah the downed state fighting needs work.
Warrior #3 (Vengeance) is nice but has one big problem
What I really hate is when as a warrior I use my #3 downed in a fight, it brings me back, but then after hunting around for 15 seconds to kill the downed dissapearing theif or cloned downed mesmer, I am defeated by MY ability rallies the bad guy.
1v1 this wouldn’t be so bad, but I have been in some 1v1’s that turned into 1v2’s where I get downed, bring myself back, then when my ally is finishing off the enemy I get defeated, and much to the detriment of my friendly ally, I have just effectively rezzed the enemy.
I love this skill personally. Venegance I think it’s called. I think it’s a great downed skill and frequently it’s very very useful.
Though I do have one complaint about it, particularly when facing theives and mesmers and the like who are hard to kill in time once they are downed.
Sometimes I will use this ability and get back up to win the fight, and sometimes people will just show up anyways and win the fight for me, but I’ve already used this ability.
Then suddenly, after hunting round for 5 seconds to find and finish off the right mesmer or when the thief stealths or whatever, I will be defeated…
And even though this was just the natural extension of the ability…. it RALLIES the downed enemy.
In many cases, this ability has actually been detrimental to my team, since even though we had won the fight and two of us were just hunting around for the downed baddie, and even though that baddie may not even be throwing stuff at me or whatever, it’s the end result of my ability that effectively Rezzes the enemy.
If I could just do one thing to change this ability, I’d make it so that if I am defeated as the usual result of my timer running out, this death alone is not enough to rally enemies. Actually, the more I think about this it might even be hard to fix, since that same enemy might have actually whittled me down to a sliver of health and it’s almost not fair if he doesn’t get a Rally in some of those cases. Still, maybe that could just be a side benefit of our #3 when it actually kills us. Or maybe there should just be a calculation like (say) if the enemy actually took more than some percentage of my health, they get the rally.
Long story short – there’s lots of cases where this ability actually helps the enemy and severely hurts the team and, while I love the ability, I just would like it if it wouldn’t rally enemies when it runs out.
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For bleed spec, try out a sigil of geomancy, swapping as often as possible.
This sigil fantastic and imo way better than earth as far as applying bleeds. It says that it applies an AoE bleed for 7 seconds, but what it doesn’t tell you is that it’s a 3 stack of bleeds and has an initial frontloaded blast damage of 500-800. Also, that 7 seconds is entirely affrected by bleed extenders so for most builds it lasts longer than it takes to swap.
Earth fans sometimes tell me how they can get more than 3 bleeds in nine seconds but in general, they are wrong. First, most bleed builds don’t have super high crit and the earth sigil is based off that. Second, Earth won’t affect everyone in a big AoE around you like the Geomancy sigil will — use this in the right place and your screen will literally fill up with bleed ticks on everyone around. Third, the Geomancy gives that 3 stack immediately so you get more ticks off in the time a earth sigil player would be taking to build bleeds with crits. Finally, the initial blast adds the extra 500+ damage.
Then, crazy as it sounds… Give up on precision. Use the freed up precision stats for toughness or vitality. Let your bleeds come from the regular abilities+sigil every 9 seconds. And since the weird bleed tree does give you precision, you will still apply a few this way anyways.
Also, many of your best options for survivability are not gear or stats at all, but rather abilities. Endure pain, dodging, blocking with shield offhand, etc
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For a long time now something in GW2 has been bugging me, though I think at first I couldn’t even put my finger on it. All along, it seemed like something about the way I progressed through the world just wasn’t exactly satisfying like I wanted it to be. Eventually I figured it out.
While I haven’t exactly felt unrewarded in this game, I do feel like practically every drop might as well just be coppers and silvers. Nothing that ever drops, anywhere, is ever useable and nothing from 0-80 was ever an upgrade.
In a lot of past RPGs both single player and MMO, the prospect of new, different, and cool loot is a major factor in moving forward and killing the next monster. The original Diablo games turned this into an obsession but even in more reasonable games, it was fun, and even made some sense.
When the modest but up-and-coming hero goes out into the world, it’s reasonable to assume he might come across some cool treasure along the way. In practically every fantasy story ever told, the heroic weapons and gear that actually makes it into the story does so as ‘found’ items or through conquest and discovery. I don’t ever recall reading a good story about an adventurer finding a bunch of substandard stuff that he gathers up and takes back to town so that he can sell it all and then go BUY himself a cool sword.
But this is how everything is done in this game. 0-80 and I never once found an item that made me say “awesome! that’s better than what I have”. When I finally started seeing blue weapons drop, I had bought a green already. When greens started dropping, I had bought a yellow. When yellows started dropping, I had better yellows or even exotics. When exotics started to be rewarded (only I have ever seen so far were for map completion) they were underleveled compared to me.
Don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not complaining about rewards or inadequate loot. Almost the opposite actually since the TP has practically EVERYTHING in it and if you just run around hitting enough stuff, you can put all the claws and scales and bones that pop out into your bags, sell them, and buy the thing you want.
But this is not exactly fun or epic. It would have been nice if just occasionally something interesting had happened as far as drops were concerned. As things are now arenanet may as well just rename all the drops to ‘vendor trash’ or ‘barter item’
I get it – those items do have a meaning in the TP for crafting or whatever but much of it IS just vendor trash. And none of it — ABSOLUTELY NONE of it — is ever an upgrade.
One factor to consider (which may not be all that important for many people) is that the healing signet has a CD of only 20 seconds. Combine this with the 10 pt discipline signet recharge trait and this is down to 16 seconds. This will pump up base heals/sec on it’s own a bit.
More importantly, if you take advantage of the many ‘activate on heal’ rune set abilities, it can be quite nice getting these abilities every 16 seconds as opposed to (say) every 30 secs. Water, for example can provide another 1000+ in AoE heal every 16 seconds. Lyssa runes will give a random boon. There are others
Won’t matter to everyone of course, but something to consider.
The real mesmer is the one moving around and behaving like, well, a real person. Look for strafing and that sort of thing. That said, I’m not one of those elitists that believes this is the end all answer and that it’s always easy to spot this sort of thing. It isn’t.
So, the next best thing is just to dish out lots and lots of AoE damage. clones melt pretty fast so if you hit them all at once you can either take them right off the field or at least notice who the real mesmer is by how health bars change.
My best recommendation for mesmer clone killing AoE is not actually an ability at all, but rather a sigil. Get a superior sigil of Geomancy. This sigil is amazing and it’s tooltip does not really do it justice. It says it gives an AoE bleed for 7 seconds but what it doesn’t tell you is that that bleed is a 3 stack and that it also comes frontloaded with blast damage that I have seen go higher than 800.
So, what you do is use 2 melee wpnsets. I’m even a fan of using the exact same wpnset if you are really partial to (say) your greatsword and don’t want to miss opportunities to use it. But if you can keep track of constant swapping by all means mix it up. Then you just spam away the swap whenever you can, or maybe look for opportune moments to catch lots of people/clones in the blast. Combining this with even more AoE is great.
For example, if you charge in and start with cyclone axe, then pop the sigil swap AoE bleed/blast (which is instant btw) and then follow that with the big #5 axe whirl the clones will dissapear pretty fast.
I’m sure there are lots of other options to generate lots of AoE. Not ideal just rampaging around like this, but sometimes it’s what you have to do.
Yeah in higher levels the signet will not be enough…
In those areas you’ll need to have 15 pts in defense for an additional regen, and drop a banner regen, and eat some pie for an additional regen.
and then you’ll still be able to sit back and watch your warrior beat hordes without pressing keys.
I like this idea but you have to realize that mitigation via dodges is already very powerful and allowing players to further mitigate would be disastrous.
I suggest making it so that a endurance based shield block operates very much in the same way that a dodge does. it takes half your endurance as a flat rate. basically it’s just like dodge.
What’s the point then? Well, it gives shield using players another option to block in order to take advantage of block based traits and block bonuses from gear, etc. Also, it gives shield based players a kind of stationary dodge so they can continue to take advantage of melee based riposte/retaliation abilities.
Also, making it operate exactly like a dodge (except stationary) would be far easier to implement
lol what is wrong with you guys. I’m a banner support warrior most of the time and I personally LOVE it when people run off with my banners.
These things are supposed to support other players. It makes me far more sad when I get away from my banner and discover that it’s been left behind. When people pick it up I realize that they know it can be useful and want that banner around.
I swear there’s even been times when I have dropped a banner of tactics and found some kind player had picked it up and blasted off a few AoE heals for everyone around. Public events and public questing mean just that. Everyone is in your group.
Stop being antisocial. I want my banners useable by all.
Roll a warrior.
Trait shout heals. Trait full defense for healing power bonuses and survivability (self regen). Trait 10 pts into discipline for signet fast recharge.
Equip 6 runes of dwayna and all healing power gear. Dwayna runes will make your now 16 second recharge signet of health give an AoE regen.
Now, perma summon a banner of tactics and forget that you even have weapons (maybe throw runes of water on them just in case you have to use them). Pick up the banner.
Run around using the banner #2 ability for an AoE heal + regen. Use your self heal signet for additional AoE regen whenever it is up. Shout whenever you can for additional condition removal and AoE heals. When nothing is available, use banner swiftness ability for AoE swiftness. REVIVE people whenever you can
This is a pure healer and does a pretty good job of it. I’m pretty sure at least half the professions in the game can do something like this.
Arenanet, you have made a beautiful game here. And I think you know it. It’s just gorgeous in many places.
But you have seemingly gone to great lengths to hide it behind a ton of UI elements and flytext. I frequently like to turn off the UI in order to enjoy it all but unfortunately it’s not really playable that way since I can never tell what my, or my opponents health is.
So I’d appreciate it if I could turn everything off but still see a health bar of things that I target and some indication of my own health. Also, a fading chatbox and quest prompts might be ok. But make it fade out after a few seconds.
Essentially what I’m after is an ultra-minimal UI. No flytext. No abilities bar. No map box (since I can always use the map feature while UI is hidden anyways).
Of ALL things I want in GW2, this is strangely at the top of my list. The world just looks so good and I want to see it.
AGREED +1
As is, powerful banners is a very very weak trait. And ironically, even more useless for banner traited warriors since they summon them less often.
A few ways to fix this:
Up the damage and make it happen everytime I plant the banner, not just on summoning. And make it so I do more damage with banner skills if I want to wield the banner
Provide a very small but constant area damage
Or maybe make it so that banners give me a combo field to play with
Oh yeah it definitely should be PvE only.
I just think it’s a cool idea for unique gear or rewards to be represented by skill access and not actual gear
Another way to do this would be with a permanent inventory activation item that creates an environmental weapon. Again — PvE only.
I mean geez, if we can buy pirate clothes with their own skillset why not something like this. Though this is just wishful thinking I’m sure.
Wondering how you all feel about the idea of static swapping of weapon sets. What I mean is just putting the same weapon types in the swap mostly just as a way to take advantage of swapping abilities/traits. Then you basically just swap whenever you can while using your normal or most effective weaponset.
For example, the 5 pt discipline minor trait adds 5 strikes of adrenaline and other big possibilities come from sigils that activate on swap.
Leeching is obviously a great choice and bascially means an extra 975 pt heal and an extra 975 pts damage every 9 seconds. Geomancer and Hydromancer sigils also seem very powerful. With the AoE bleed on swap I basically get a permanent 3 stack of bleeds on every enemy around me. Energy also seems like it has some potential with basically a free dodge every swap.
Of course this is all possible with two different weaponsets, but with the static swap things can be cheaper, and more importantly simpler for ones overall rotation. I’m sure the pros out there want to maximize their swapping with the abilities of multiple weaponsets but I sometimes just like the simplicity of sticking with what I know very well while still taking advantage of swapping bonuses.
Well, with transmutation stones, anything that is unique CAN be strong and useable. Heck, I’ve transmuted my Trinity Axe that I got around lvl 50 a bunch of times all the way to exotic just because I like the look and the name. Of course I think it should at least be a rare L80 so it’s only one step below an exotic (and probably an upgrade, even if just short term). I’d also like if it came with a fine transmutation stone to make it really easy to convert the skin to an exotic. The important thing is just that it looks cool. Even if it’s just an existing cultural or faction option.
Though the more I think about this, I think they should just pull out all the stops and make me a cool elite skill. Something like:
‘We Owe You One’: Elite skill. A bunch of Pact leaders or even just pact soldiers come to your aid in your time of need. 5 min cooldown
or maybe
‘Power of Zhaitan’: Elite skill. You hold a fragment of Zhaitan’s tooth which you can harness to raise the dead to fight for you. Summons risen. 5 min cooldown
or some other thing. Elite skills associated with major story arc achievements could be really cool and would even make for some interesting future possibilities with other expansions or achievements. I want to collect new elite skills!
I’m not actually sure this is the best idea. I mean, it is an ok idea and I wouldn’t be sad if it happened but I think they could do better in a few ways.
First, as you only need 1 weapon in some cases, getting an exotic is actually getting quite a lot and does undermine the efforts of crafters. A better solution is to grant a special rare with an exotic sigil. Perhaps something with a cultural skin that I’d otherwise have to spend a bunch of gold on and which I could later use to transmute an exotic.
I’m much more in favor of some ‘special’ item than an exotic weapon. If they created a special set of weapons or armor skins that would be great, but even if it was just some way to exchange for one or more vigil/whispers/priory skins I’d be happy. And of course make them useable (L80 rare maybe with a fine transmutation stone to go with it)
Best of all would be something altogether special like a long cooldown inventory activation environmental weapon. Or maybe a pve elite skill or something. Though obv these are much more difficult ‘fixes’
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It’s funny now that I think about it. All through the game Trahearne kept saying something about how ‘This won’t end well’
I just never realized he was talking to ME!
Sigh. I might almost agree with you if they actually gave you nothing.
Getting nothing would in many ways be fine since it’s not exactly a slap in the face. It would just be that you don’t get anything. Your reward is finishing and you kinda RP imagine all the feasts and hot scantily clad babes that will throw themselves at you for saving them.
But they do give you a reward. They give you a exotic colored loot bag! And since you’ve just been given a big speech by Traehearne about what a hero you are and how you will be REWARDED for basically saving the world you think hey, that makes sense. It’s not that I want to be babied or handed things on a silver platter, it’s that it kinda makes sense.
After all I have been saving ever vigil soldier over and over again since claw island. Maybe it’d be cool if I had a fancy shield like they ALL seem to have. Maybe since I have saved everyone over and over again they’ll throw me a bone and let me have one of those shields… which by the way nobody can even craft so it’s not like it steps on anyone’s toes or anything.
I mean think about it for a second. You just finished this big huge story where, as they say in all the promos ’it’s all about you’ and ‘you are the hero’ and when it’s all said and one you open your big reward and it’s 7s worth of vendor trash.
Too bad I kept banner healing all those vigil guys. I guess I shoulda let one of them die and picked up one of their cool shields and kept it for myself since the kitten turned out to be so ungrateful in the end anyways.
I mean seriously. My character KNOWS there are all these cool weapons out there. I see them at all the local shops, and I guess I just gotta wonder what gives. I saved the world and all and my buddy Traehearne (I don’t wanna even talk about how many times I saved that guys life….) tells me that since he’s the supreme commander and all, the sky’s the limit. But then he gives me 7s for my trouble, which I can literally make in about 10 minutes killing bears back home.
It’s a slap in the face. I’d prefer nothing at all to that loot bag and I suspect we wouldn’t be having these conversations if the L80 back item was the reward for finishing. Or even if it were nothing at all.
…
Let me put it to you another way. Imagine you saw a guy at the local subway station fall onto the tracks as the train was rushing in and you jumped onto the tracks and pulled him off risking your own life to save his.
Now imagine he hugged you and praised you and said you were a hero and that he’d never forget you and generally couldn’t stop gushing about how great you are. You’d probably feel pretty good about yourself. I don’t think I’d expect a reward exactly and I wouldn’t feel too bad about not getting one.
But imagine instead he praised you and said you were a hero and that he insisted upon rewarding you. Then he pulls out his wallet which is overflowing with hundred dollar bills and grabs you …. a quarter. Here, since you saved my life and all and you are such a big hero, have this quarter. Yup I think that’s about right. 25 cents for you my friend.
I’d feel a bit insulted. It doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t make sense in the game.
Hey all. I’ve been playing around a lot with what I call my ‘boon build’ and I thought I’d post it here as a suggestion and for feedback.
Basically the point of this 0/0/30/30/10 build is to maximize boons (because they are awesome anyways) and as a way to take advantage of the tactics increase in damage for every boon on you.
The main way to do this resolves around speccing 30 pts into tactics for increased boon duration and then equipping 6 runes that will give additional increased boon duration. I like to use rune of the monk for SPvP as it gives an additional boon (aegis) whenever I pop my elite though there are probably lots of other options I could use to increase boon production. Rune of Lyssa seems like it might be kinda crazy, for example.
The reason I prefer the monk rune and aegis though is that I will be popping my elite quite a lot and I guess this build does double as group support. I put 10 pts into discipline for the signet recharge decrease which, combined with boon increases will allow for perma-refreshing my signet of rage about every 45-50 seconds. In other words I constantly run around with might, fury, swiftness and 1 shot of aegis.
The final 30 pts I spec into defense. retaliation 30 pt trait for additional boon. for 30 pt tactics trait I use for banner regen and 1 additional boon.
For weapons I run with Axe warhorn (Axe shield or axe axe swap) and use the warhorn for additional boon generation, especially with the conversion of conditions that can be traited with tactics. As for weapons, swapping to warhorn is about the only important thing so there are lots of options here — perhaps something that will increase boon generation that I have missed.
All total that’s a constantly running 5 stacks of might with fury, swiftness, rage, and regen. And a periodically running Aegis, Retaliation, vigor, and whatever else the warhorn creates for me — remembering of course that overall damage is buffed with every boon on me. Given that groupmates will frequently add to this boon list I can get quite maniacal about my huge boon bar at times with will frequently fill right up.
Overall I expect that with an average of 5 boons running that damage output is increased by about 5-10% though perhaps higher. The real point though is just that having lots of boons tends to work out pretty well. I’m very mobile (constant swiftness) and I find that I have good survivability with pretty good damage output.
For utility skills I need 1 banner and I usually use tactics (extra boon duration!) though there are lots of options. I also use endure pain and bulls charge but that’s changeable. Healing skill is obv signet for the passive regen and the traited 16 second recharge.
Finally, though it’s somewhat of an afterthought, this is still a pretty great support build. It has banner regen as well as lots of options for other group support. Rune of the monk gives group aegis every 45 seconds or so and rune of water can give an AoE heal every 16 seconds with the signet regen boost.
Anyways. Thoughts? suggestions?
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Late in the game I actually turned my warrior into a pretty great support profession and found that dungeons became quite a breeze. But again — my contribution, like everyone else’s certainly, has essentially gone unnoticed. I’ve done some runs in guild on comms and it’s a much more enjoyable experience since we can actually communicate how we are able to help one another, though even there it has the same chaotic feeling of every-man-for-himself fighting to survive.
And even if it is more fun to be on comms in guild, dungeons should not be designed just for this crowd. There needs to be some way for even PUGs to rely on each other as more than meat shields and revivers and for this reliance to be recognizable.
But as it is, the best most effective support you can provide is to revive downed allies and not get downed yourself. Heck, there’s not even much that players can do in order to make stand out as revival experts, especially when bosses drop aoe on downed players.
Dungeons right now are all about every PLAYER — not CHARACTER, but the player behind it understanding how to play right and do all the right things in order to defeat the boss based on some particular fight mechanic. There is no sense in which a big strong norn warrior is better for throwing the boulders at the bosses than a puny elementalist.
Anyways I’ve gotten off topic here. All this has been said and more and as much as I could go on, I think this is all well understood. The point of this post is just that I am sick of the amount GW2 fans chalk this up to players not being able to handle the dungeon content or longing for some other mmo.
The complaints are not about any of this. The complaints are about loving dungeons but these dungeons being NOT FUN. As I have said, I like the departure from the holy trinity of tank/heal/dps but that shouldn’t mean a complete departure from roles of any kind at all. When every fight is simply about understanding the particular fight mechanic combined with dodge, evade, revive, range then there is little opportunity for any character too feel like their in-game character skills mattered at all and just as little opportunity for others to recognize anything that you did to help the group.
I’ve been looking over a lot of the posts in this forum and I think that many of you are missing the point of the complaints posed on this forum.
While it is the opinion of many that dungeons are too difficult, this — to many of us — is just a side issue. In fact, I don’t actually think that the dungeons are too difficult. And yet, many of the most common replies are some version of the same tired L2P variety.
Many of us who are frustrated are not looking for advice about how to survive or how to see what bosses are doing or how to not die. We survive just fine and have finished these dungeons same as you have. The point is that dungeons as the currently stand are NOT FUN.
They aren’t un-enjoyable because my repair bills are too high and they aren’t un-enjoyable because I can’t finish them. Honestly, for me they aren’t even un-enjoyable because the rewards are too low. They are un-enjoyable because so many of the components that make for great group play are missing. They are NOT FUN.
For example — One of the best thing about PUG dungeoning in my past MMO experiences was that each character in some sense knew when they had been helped, were helping, or had fulfilled a crucial part of a task required. And in some sense this could even go without saying – though frequently these things are commented on by players since it is so easy to notice. Of course the most obvious cases of this are traditional tanking or healing situations where a healer does particularly well in a rough situation or a tank makes well coordinated grab of some stray adds or even when a DPS’er observantly burns down some stray adds that are on a healer.
That said, I’m not a wow player and not a particularly big fan of the holy trinity. I was excited by the prospect of GW2 and the breaking down of these fixed roles. But I did expect that what I’d see was a more sophisticated version of roles that included possibilities for control, protection, stealth, and some interesting combinations I had never even considered before.
Instead what we now have is a situation where basically everyone’s role is exactly the same. Dodge, evade, stay alive, revive whenever you can, and otherwise pile on the boss preferably from range. And most importantly, understand the cheesy fight mechanic in order to beat the cheesy boss. Even if you try to build a support based class, you can’t do much about bosses that 1-shot players and even if you try to build a tanky or control based class you simply cannot weather the damage you will be faced with. Mitigation and heals are absolutely so far away from the power of evasion that they are permanently relegated to an almost vanity feature of characters. Damage is similarly treated since basically everything in dungeons has 54656735962569365346 health and you can’t beat even the smallest add by trying to just burn it down.
Psychologists have long understood the effects of selective perception and the ways in which maintaining focus on a task can blind us nearby and concurrent events. This ‘invisible gorilla’ effect is pretty common in my experience of GW2 dungeons so far. I’m so busy running around dodging out of various 1-shot effects that I lose all sense that I am even on a team except for the fact that sometimes they are getting shot at instead of me.