Guild Wars 2

I think the cap is +-100%. So yeah, you would cut away 98% of original condition damage.

Don’t be fooled though: the whole condition system adds up percentages. So, if you have -98% condition reduction, and the enemy has 100% condition duration, the end result is that conditions applied will have their basic duration on you.

Coffietire.2783:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The real question is what is right with the sylvari. They’re this strange race of “people” who pop up out of nowhere, and we give them homes and jobs without a second thought.

And now they’re everywhere, and we’re not even sure what they are. The sylvari lie to you as soon as you see them: make no mistake, they don’t have genders. They just assume that form to be more readily understood, hiding the grotesque bark and fungus monster that lies underneath that exterior. You may think them normal, but you have to wonder why the elder dragons won’t corrupt the sylvari. Are they conspiring together? WHAT ARE THE SYLVARI HIDING!?

We talk about a few rogue sylvari going insane. But think: do you know any sylvari that wasn’t given over to blind zealotry? They all follow some etchings on a tablet, and the ones that haven’t given over to more modern culture all devolve into sadistic violence or utter madness. What guarantee do we have that the sylvari won’t suddenly turn on us, killing millions in the name of the pale tree? Because they say they won’t? Well guess what: we already know they are lying to us above. That’s not blood that courses through their veins. Its sap. Sap that has had no childhood.

The sylvari are already everywhere. They’re in our cities, in our schools, on our councils, in our armies. They’ve spread everywhere, taking the jobs that used to belong to honest, trustworthy people. People clamor for “equality”, but what is equal about our true, red-blooded children being displaced by barely sentient twigs who’ve had no childhood. No, those “equalists” didn’t think of the children, and this is because Sylvari have no childhood. The syvlari have infiltrated the highest levels of government, spreading their childless influence onto races they can’t possibly understand.

Charr need no gods. Charr 2015!

Long ago, I think Anglo Americans used to say the same thing about African Americans, and Irish Americans, and Chinese Americans, and everyone whose not them…..

Not quite. This mock diatribe was a collection of random, assorted paranoia and accusations that I’ve seen attributed to different people, at different times in different ways. The funny thing is, the Anglo American has actually been on the receiving end of a few of these themselves. All in all, I don’t think any ethnicity in history has ever received quite that level of inferiority complex spurred paranoid rage. Except maybe the Jews.

This was inspired by the Berlin campaign expansion in Shadowrun Returns. In it, there’s an extremely racist group who hands out ranting pamphlets much like those above. The hilarity was that they blamed human inferiority on dwarves opening family run stores.

Signet mastery is a lukewarm. Besides, a lot of people use a lot of these traits, but it doesn’t make them good. Best of a bad situation and all that.

Finally, another problem I see with necromancer traits is a large amount of specialization. The traits are highly specific in their uses, affecting a particular aspect, or weapon, or utility that a necro has. It is rarer to find a general “buff something” trait, or any traits that merely add something.

When making any particular build, the actually diversity available to anyone is much shorter than just crossing out the bad and many of the lukewarm traits. Once you’ve picked a gimmick (I.E. Minions), you have to pick a whole bunch of traits that affect that gimmick to make it useful, and then there’s a gigantic hole of good general utility traits that are missing for the necro, but available to every other class.

Mark of Revival
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This is a better trait. While ritual of life only rewards you for accomplishing a goal, this trait actually helps you to accomplish a goal. The two actually go quite well together, albeit still flawed in that it would be better to prevent teammates from going down instead of investing time to rez them quicker. From a PVE perspective, though, Mark of Revival is nigh useless, since enemies don’t stomp. You’ll fear them for a second, which will prompt them to turn right back around and pummel you as you are rezzing your friend. The worst part is that mark of revival scatters enemies, which ruins stacks.

Near to Death
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This is one of those traits that, despite its theoretical uses, I really hate. There are a lot of “gain x effect when entering/leaving Deathshroud”, and unfortunately many of these traits have to be balanced around the assumption that DS is being spammed with the Near to Death trait. The worst example being the weakening shroud nerf. Either way, this trait is incredibly situation by itself. Near to Death is only useful in a circumstance where, assuming other “enter/exit DS” skills can be balanced by themselves, a player is both gaining a lot of life force and also needs to expel a lot of life force defensively. In essence, Near to Death is only useful in similar circumstances to Parasitic Bond, with two exceptions. The first being that it is possible to gain a lot of LF without having to kill things, and the second being that no other trait is balanced around Parasitic Bond.

Foot in the grave
Status: 6/10
Reasons: Foot in the grave is a nice idea, giving stability when entering in Deathshroud. But again, in practice, the Necro doesn’t truly have the means to make use of this trait. Firstly, necros don’t have any big bursting skill they can use, so there’s no clutch plays for stability. This means that stability here is only used defensively. Secondly, Foot in the Grave doesn’t break stuns, which means that the stability here can’t be used reactively. The end result being that stability is on/off fairly randomly, with enemy players sitting back and waiting for stability to drop before going for the kill. In PVE foot in the grave is far more useful, since you can time the stability requiring attacks, but again, the short duration makes this trait quite hard to use.

The hardest part about all of these trait issues is solving them. Sure, I can stare at a gigantic pile of manure and declare that it stinks, but this doesn’t do anything to get rid of the manure. I could look at a lot of these traits, but my answer to half of them would just be to obliterate the concept and try again.

If it were “a” trait that I needed to fix, that would be easy. But with just so many traits that should be buffed, changed, or replaced completely, its hard to know where to begin. Its nearly on the level of designing a new class from scratch.

Soul Compensation
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This trait is what gluttony dreams it could be. The reason why it goes onto the lukewarm list is because it shares the flaw of only taking effect after you’ve already won. In PVE you’re probably nearly full up on DS all the time anyway, and in PVP the 20% gain per death is, again, mostly negligible.

Death Shiver
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This is one of those traits that would be so much better at the adept tier. The minor AoE vulnerability on a regular basis isn’t bad, especially if you’re in a lifeblasting build. However, it is slow to apply, is inappropriate in other builds, and often is inferior to other damage buffs.

Death Nova
Status: 4/10
Reasons: It is a small hit and poison field when a minion dies. In PVE this is nearly useless, and in PVP the best application is blasting bone minions inside of the fields they leave behind. The ability to summon jagged horrors for the slaughter helps minion builds out more, but overall this trait is just lackluster.

Unholy Sanctuary
Status: 4/10
Reasons: Superior to deathly invigoration if you stay in Deathshroud for more than 4 seconds, Unholy Sanctuary is one of those traits that, again, works to try and compensate for a weakness that I’m not even sure should exist in the first place. It gives basic regeneration, with the advantage being that it is the only regen that works while in Death Shroud, but still it ranks pretty low on the list, and should definitely not be a grandmaster trait in the tough/boon line.

Dagger Mastery
Status: 6/10
Reasons: Yet another trait that suffers from the “fine in theory, doesn’t work in practice”. On the main hand, the dagger has a weak siphon skill and an average immobilize, neither of which gain any advantage for getting their recharge reduced. The off-hand is where this shines, though, since Deathly Swarm and Enfeebling blood both benefit much more greatly from a recharge reduction. Because of this, Dagger Mastery doesn’t dip into the “bad” category.

Ritual of Life
Status: 4/10
Reasons: This is one of those traits that plays with an idea, but in practice is impractical. From a support standpoint, the ideal modus operandi is preventive: to stop teammates from going down is far superior to rezzing teammates when they go down. It should be quite simple to understand: rezzing a downed teammate is kind of like fear of death, in that you can only use this trait when failing. However, given that, Ritual of life is arguably the best nigh-failure activated trait, since it essentially compensates the necro for any damage they would’ve taken while rezzing. The gradual heal from well of blood is quite weak, so as far as the rezzed goes this trait is useless. Also, this trait only activates upon a successful rez, so if you are attempting to rez someone that is surrounded by players or is being stealth/haste stomped, this trait is useless. In this sense, it is a trait that only works when you’ve won, but can only be activated when you’re about to lose. Wholly impractical, definitely.

Gluttony
Status: 1/10
Reasons: In theory this trait isn’t that bad. In practice, the life force gain is negligible. LF is gained mostly from kills, and even the skills themselves have minor advantages at best. All in all, gluttony is the worst life force gaining trait necromancers have, and the only reason it is ever taken is because it is forced down our throats on the soul reaping line.

Fear of Death
Status: 1/10
Reasons: This trait only works after you’ve already lost. The one second fear only means something in a devoted terror build, where even there it lacks effectiveness, and outside of this build it is a minor nuisance, or it completely ruins stacks in PVE.

Speed of Shadows
Status: 1/10
Reasons: And now we have a trait that is worse than quickening thirst. This is because using D/D, while cumbersome, doesn’t actually cost you anything. This trait exchanges life force for speed, and Death Shroud itself has almost no use for running a bit faster.

Renewing Blast
Status: 2/10
Reasons: It is not brilliant to put a healing utility outside of the healing line, especially when the healing line is so horrible. Renewing blast is a heal skill that is extremely hard to use, many times going right through players but not taking effect, and also forces you to line up friendly players in an attempt to heal them. The healing itself is only so-so, resulting in a skill that is hard to use, expensive to trait, and isn’t rewarding.

Now for the lukewarms!

Signet Mastery
Status: 5/10
Reasons: In theory, this is a good trait. Recharge reduction + decent might on activation is good. The problem is, Necromancer signets are pretty bad, have long cooldowns, and are rarely used in conjunction with each other. Because of this, the most Signet Mastery can contribute is just 3 stacks of might when you condi bomb with spite, or 3 stacks of might with emergency healing from locust. Because of this, it is almost never worth a spot.

Spiteful Spirit
Status: 6/10
Reasons: Could stand to be a bit more potent, but otherwise not too bad. It is retaliation in DS, and one of the functions of DS is to absorb bursts, so it serves its function to a decent extent. But still, an additional two seconds would really bump this trait up.

Axe Training
Status: 6/10
Reasons: This is the same as Signet Mastery, in that necro axe is really bad. This is a good damage boost and recharge boost, and on good weapons this would be an extremely powerful trait, but it isn’t on a good weapon.

Dhuumfire
Status: 5/10
Reasons: Dhuumfire has the most complicated and controversial history as far as traits go, and it may just be my bias in the matter, but as Dhuumfire stands now it is just way too cumbersome to use. You have to go fully into the power line to get it, and even then you have to sit in DS which as no condi utility, and you have to fight with DS’s cooldown, and all for a measly 3 seconds of burning. When you stack this up to every other burning skill or trait that every other profession has, Dhuumfire shows its colors as the weakest and most inconsistent method of applying burning in the game.

Weakening Shroud
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This trait used to be epic, but it was nerfed assuming Close to Death + 100% condition duration + DS flashing tactics. Because of this, the trait has become nothing more than a weak hit with negligible weakness and the tiniest bit of a bleed. Still, it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, so it gets higher marks.

Path of Corruption
Status: 5/10
Reasons: This is one of those traits that should be innate, but instead got tacked on as a grandmaster. Dark Path itself is a weak skill that is used for mobility more than anything else, and while the boon corruption isn’t bad, it is also highly conditional and difficult to use (I.E. forcing you into melee range). Because of this, the trait gets a solid “Meh” from me, and I’m pretty sure the only reason people take it is because there aren’t any better options in the curses line.

Armored Shroud
Status: 4/10
Reasons: Though receiving slightly less damage (9% less) in Death Shroud isn’t bad, it isn’t that good, either. For one, in PVE you’re either using DS to absorb a big hit, in which the 9% reduction doesn’t change the fact that you only have two shots before the bar is depleted anyway, or you are sitting in DS to lifeblast stuff, in which the degen is where the majority of lifeforce is lost. But in PVP this trait is more useful, since life force is both harder to get, and also doesn’t get blown past as often.

Minion Master
Status: 3/10
Reasons: Nearly every other trait in this line has to deal with keeping minions alive. That’s how minions work: the longer they live, the more they do. Now, minion master works to reduce minion recharge upon their death, which seems fine, until you realize that minions spend the majority of their time alive. Because of this, the total amount of time saved by minion master is miniscule at best, shaving off a few seconds from several minutes worth of active time. There are exceptions to this rule, however, in that bone fiends and flesh worms benefit quite well, since their active causes their death, and thus you’d want them up as much as possible. Because of this, the trait isn’t completely useless, but it is still largely bad.

Shrouded Removal
Status: 1/10
Reasons: Though shrouded removal isn’t too bad in theory, it simply lacks in potency. The removal of a single condition while entering death shroud makes this trait inferior to many passive condition removals, and in a condition based fight will probably not mean very little as far as the whole fight goes. This trait is both ineffective and redundant because of this.

Full of life
Status: 3/10
Reasons: The minimum amount of HP a necro can have is 18,376, which makes 10% of the necros HP equivalent to 1,837 health. This trait, on a 30 second cooldown, will only heal 650 health, or a little over one third of the health necessary for activation. Overall, this trait simply lacks meaningful potency: the 5 seconds of regen given by this trait doesn’t mean squat in the short game, or even in the long run. It isn’t bad in concept so much as it is bad in execution.

Vampiric
Bloodthirst
Vampiric Precision
Vampiric Rituals
Vampiric Master
Status: 2/10
Reasons: The entire vampire line suffers from a very strange conflict of interest and an innate fear by developers. On the one hand, none of these traits work in deathshroud, and necros lack the cleave to truly make use of these skills. On the other hand, these traits are balanced to be slightly ineffective under peak conditions, meaning that they are all taken together and are used to maximum effectiveness. This means that, for practical purposes, the overall healing and damage contribution of vampiric traits is ineffective. The idea of having unresisted damage + healing tacked on to every individual hit of every individual attack spread out among 5 traits and multiple stat lines is simply flawed, as there is no sweet spot to balance around, and no peak to the theoretical limitations to this trait. Because of this, I argue that the whole vampire line should be scrapped, and Anet should try again.

Deathly Invigoration
Status: 3/10
Reasons: In theory this trait isn’t that bad, simply lacking potency and range. In practice, it lies below another problem: You don’t gain health in Deathsrhoud. Sure, there’s a grandmaster trait in a nigh useless line that gives regen in Death Shroud, but the lack of healing in DS has always been a mechanic that perplexed me. Deathly invigoration is one of those traits that, in practice, exists solely to attempt to overcome an issue with DS, which is the inability to heal. In practice this is just compensation for the inherent flaw in DS. Now, a second problem is that Deathly Invigoration suffers from in appropriateness. It is balanced solely on the premise of spamming DS to get effects, but in practice many players will hang in Death Shroud for extended periods of time. Meaning that, this trait gets balanced around more unrealistic circumstances than what actually occurs.

Quickening Thirst
Status: 2/10
Reasons: This is one of those movement speed buffs for a class that isn’t lacking in movement speed options. Worst part is, this is a relatively bad movement speed buff, since it requires you to wield D/D or lose the effect. When you throw on top of this Signet of the Locust, and swiftness via Locust Swarm + Spectral Walk, you get a trait that tries to fulfill a need that necros do not have in a manner that is simply unsatisfactory.

Unholy Martyr
Status: 1/10
Reasons: This is arguably the worst cleansing mechanic in the game, right up there with plague signet. A good team cleanse will usually do something like 1) actually remove the condition instead of burdening you with it 2) affect multiple people simultaneously, removing a nasty team wide condition from the entire team 3)affect teammates on-command and quickly instead of taking forever to take effect. In the end, you get a cleanse that just does more damage to you, doesn’t cleanse damaging conditions from teammates promptly or effectively, and provides no direct means of dealing with the condition itself. This is a grandmaster trait, but if it were the adept minor trait of this line, I still wouldn’t take it.

Death Into Life
Status: 1/10
Reasons: Necros are horrible at healing, and healing is horrible to begin with. Healing power is a badly scaling stat, and the necro has no way to make use of it.

Siphoned Power
Status: 1/10
Reasons: A single stack of might at OHKO range for 5 seconds doesn’t contribute meaningfully. At all. Ever. There is no play where 35 power/malice at 25% health for 5 seconds has ever made a difference.

Deaths Embrace
Status: 2/10
Reasons: Only takes effect after you’ve already fallen, and boosts what is horrible direct damage to begin with. 50% of nothing is still nothing.

Spiteful Removal
Status: 3/10
Reasons: This is another trait that only takes effect when you’ve already won. Necromancers are not lacking in condition removal in any way whatsoever, so at its best the trait is redundant and never there for when you need it (I.E. you are dying to conditions, and your opponent is not dying).

Spiteful Marks
Status: 3/10
Reasons: In theory this trait is fine, but in practice it is nigh useless. This is because marks have very little direct damage, with Putrid Mark being the only exception. So in the end, Spiteful Marks ends up boosting the most useless aspect of the staff in a manner that will never significantly matter.

Parasitic Contagion
Status: 1/10
Reasons: This trait is balanced off of a series of theoretical circumstances which will never occur. In sPVP, against any few targets you’ll never build up and sustain enough condition damage for this trait to be meaningful. In PVE your conditions will be overwritten, or enemies will be killed before the regen can possibly take effect, making you both horrible at doing damage and horrible at healing. In WvW large scale fights, your conditions will just be cleansed before you can heal off of them anyway. The only time this trait is useful is in solo PVE dungeons, where the condi necro has the ability to spread around massive conditions against enemies that live long enough to both build a ton of conditions and have the enemies stay alive long enough for it to matter.

Toxic Landing
Status: 1/10
Reasons: Every class has a fall damage reduction trait, but Necromancers have the second worst version of this trait next to Rangers. The poison field on fall is nearly useless, since all it does is inflict poison. Necros don’t have anything to combo meaningfully with the poison field, either.

Chilling Darkness
Status: 2/10
Reasons: I’m not sure whether this is by bug, or by design, but I never see chill meaningfully affect enemy actions. Ever. Chilling darkness just does a pittance of a chill on blind, which means that it’ll rarely ever contribute anything meaningfully to the fight. The one second chill is useless in Deathly Swarm and Signet of Spite, so the only purpose chilling darkness serves is to make it harder for players to get out of Well of Darkness, and to really stall someone when chasing another player around using Plague of Darkness.

Reapers Precision
Status: 4/10
Reasons: Assuming 50% crit rate, you’ll get about 3/20ths of a percent of life force on each hit, and while this trait doesn’t have a cooldown, Necros lack the cleave and AoE to really make use of this trait. Close, though, since this nearly made it into the lukewarm category.

Withering Precision
Status: 3/10
Reasons: This trait, however, does have a cooldown. 5 seconds of weakness every 20 seconds isn’t that good, considering a few other things. Firstly, long internal cooldown, so if you are attacked by a horde of enemies or an AI based player or multiple players, the contribution of this skill drops to nearly nothing. Second, the place where this trait would be good would be against a champion or legendary mob, but as it happens those mobs cut weakness and vulnerability duration by half, meaning that this trait gets neutralized by default. Because of this, the trait goes into the “nice idea in theory, horrible in practice” box.

Dark Armor
Status: 1/10
Reasons: The whole “toughness when channeling” thing is horrible. Channelling skills does not take up a meaningful length of time while doing anything, and taking 22% less damage (assuming minimum armor) during that time will never amount to anything, either.

I read another thread earlier about classes and their leveling experiences, and I contemplated responding to this thread with a detailed list of available traits and abilities as one levels, but then my ADD kicked in and I watched Dirty Jobs repeats.

But, while formulating that post, I noticed something. I was writing the “useful traits as you level up” list for the Necro and the Engi, and they were as different as night and day. For the engi, hitting the master tier opened up so much potential. This is especially true in the explosives line, where you have to weigh having more direct damage with explosives vs. a shorter recharge of with explosives vs. might gained through healing skills (which may be more than the previous two traits) vs. strong passive proc burning. It just feels exciting to go through the trait tiers, and look at all the new toys that you unlock along the way. It is like this for the Engineer, the Elementalist, the Mesmer, the Thief… pretty much every class I have played.

Except for the Necro. Choosing traits for the necro is like pulling teeth. You have to trudge through a wasteland of traits you’ll never find useful just to pick and choose the least crappy traits. The traits for the necro don’t feel exciting or empowering. They just feel like the best of a bad situation, with most of the good traits being a recharge reduction or a few extra points of damage.

I’m going to make a list and go through all of the bad and unremarkable traits that the necro has, and while writing this list I realize that what I’m about to do for the necro, I can’t do for any class. I can’t make an expansive list of “this trait sucks and should never be used” for thief, or elementalist, or mesmer. But what is the most frustrating about this is the lack of zingers, or crucial build defining traits for the necro. When asked about leveling the necro, the only answer I can give is “How the necro plays at level 15 is exactly how they’ll play at level 80 in high end content. Their traits change nothing about them”. The necros need something like Grenadier, or Persisting Flames, or Illusionary Persona, or Bewildering Ambush, or Phalanx Strength, or Empowering Might, or Spotter. The best attribute I can give to a trait should never be “It isn’t bad”.

So, the shorthand list of traits that I think are bad, whether they’re ineffective by themselves or if they affect a part of the necro that is simply useless. I’ll go in depth as to why each one is horrible later, but for now I just want to get the list out of the way.

Parasitic Bond
Death Into Life
Siphoned Power
Death’s Embrace
Spiteful Removal
Spiteful Marks
Parasitic Contagion
Toxic Landing
Chilling Darkness
Reaper’s Precision
Withering Precision
Dark Armor
Minion Master
Shrouded Removal
Full of Life
Vampiric
Bloodthirst
Vampiric Precision
Deathly Invigoration
Vampiric Rituals
Quickening Thirst
Unholy Martyr
Gluttony
Fear of Death
Speed of Shadows
Renewing Blast

Not included on this list are traits that aren’t bad, but just aren’t good, either. Now, the lukewarm list are traits that are “alright, but won’t go out of my way to get”, and thus still contribute to the problem of blandness in necromancer performance.

Signet Mastery
Spiteful Spirit
Axe Training
Dhuumfire
Weakening Shroud
Path of Corruption
Armored Shroud
Soul Compensation
Death Shiver
Death Nova
Unholy Sanctuary
Dagger Mastery
Ritual of Life
Vampiric Master
Mark of Revival
Near to Death
Foot in the grave

The difference between a bad trait and a lukewarm trait being that, were these a single point into a single line, I’d actually take a lukewarm trait, but a bad trait I’d just avoid totally. I’m trying to be inclusive of sPVP and WvW in this list, but from the perspective of a PVE player, my choices are even more limited than the list above.

Now for an in-depth analysis!

Parasitic Bond
Status: 3/10
Reason: There is a certain philosophy that I have with traits, and that is that a trait should contribute to my victory in any fight. Parasitic bond fails because it only takes effect after you’ve won. In sPVP this is nigh useless, since in small bouts you’ll just heal up anyway. PVE has a similar problem, where this trait is only useful when engaging hordes of consecutive enemies without rest. But, even there, the problem with this trait is that the necro has horrible AoE and no cleave, so necros can’t maximize use of this trait. The only time this trait will ever mean anything is in a disorganized WvW zerg vs. zerg fight where enemies on both sides take considerable losses, and a staff necro happens to tag most people. To top it off, this trait doesn’t work while in DS, which is when many necros both need healing, and are more capable of tagging enemies.

Honestly, I’ve been questioning the “engis should just stack vuln” wisdom for awhile now. Firstly, because it seems like in dungeon runs enemies reach maximum vulnerability without me anyway. Second, because I’ve found bombs to be so much more useful. The fire field is good for getting might, the smoke field makes for great defense and stealth, the bomb auto attack already does epic damage, and if I need to kite I just drop glue bomb and let enemies chase me. Grenades are good at range, but other than their distance they don’t offer as much utility. They do condi damage and have chill, and with steel packed powder they stack vulnerability, but that’s the end of it.

So lately (“lately” being the last time I really played the game) I have been using a 2/6/0/0/6 static discharge build. I use sitting duck in conjunction with glue bomb and net shot for spots of vulnerability, and with that I usually pack rifle turret + additional utility (I usually alternate between throw mine, elixir gun, and Utility Goggles). I figure that 15 stacks of vulnerability, if I’m not going for boon removal + blast finisher or support with the elixir gun. I’m debating whether to keep precise sights, since it is literally only half as effective as weak spot.

Dual.8953:

I wonder how much more the meta can alienate players before something drastic happens?
Also who’s next on the chopping block?

Honestly, I’m not even sure the meta can be fixed with the introduction of TVH armor. Originally it seemed basic enough: change the proportions of damage deflected via active defense to damage sustained through frequent attacks, and then passive defenses/heavier investment in active defenses provides higher damage via longer sustained engagement and lower downed frequency.

But TVH armor changes that. You can balance a 50% drop in offense with sustainability. You can’t balance a 250% drop in offense. There’s no way, even by measure of healing potential or by localized aggro management, that a 250% drop in offensive potential will ever be fair. You’d have to turn the game into a full blown trinity and give enemies several times their current HP to possibly compensate for the lack of action that TVH takes.

So, on some level, the system has to be broken now. I can’t fix TVH armor, so the game must be unbalanced in that regard.

The real question is what is right with the sylvari. They’re this strange race of “people” who pop up out of nowhere, and we give them homes and jobs without a second thought.

And now they’re everywhere, and we’re not even sure what they are. The sylvari lie to you as soon as you see them: make no mistake, they don’t have genders. They just assume that form to be more readily understood, hiding the grotesque bark and fungus monster that lies underneath that exterior. You may think them normal, but you have to wonder why the elder dragons won’t corrupt the sylvari. Are they conspiring together? WHAT ARE THE SYLVARI HIDING!?

We talk about a few rogue sylvari going insane. But think: do you know any sylvari that wasn’t given over to blind zealotry? They all follow some etchings on a tablet, and the ones that haven’t given over to more modern culture all devolve into sadistic violence or utter madness. What guarantee do we have that the sylvari won’t suddenly turn on us, killing millions in the name of the pale tree? Because they say they won’t? Well guess what: we already know they are lying to us above. That’s not blood that courses through their veins. Its sap. Sap that has had no childhood.

The sylvari are already everywhere. They’re in our cities, in our schools, on our councils, in our armies. They’ve spread everywhere, taking the jobs that used to belong to honest, trustworthy people. People clamor for “equality”, but what is equal about our true, red-blooded children being displaced by barely sentient twigs who’ve had no childhood. No, those “equalists” didn’t think of the children, and this is because Sylvari have no childhood. The syvlari have infiltrated the highest levels of government, spreading their childless influence onto races they can’t possibly understand.

Charr need no gods. Charr 2015!

I’m surprised this is even an issue. I played through the story and didn’t even put a thought to “Oh no, is this way too much to jump over?”.

I second the OP. The enemies were well enough designed that I actually was downed once or twice on my zerker thief. Normally that doesn’t happen…

Death Shiver would be an awesome trait, but being 20 points into Death Magic makes it really hard to build around. You’ll end up having to sacrifice something like Executioner or Target the Weak, which personally would provide more damage. Second, Death Shiver requires you to sit in DS for extended periods of time, so without traiting into Soul Reaping, DS would end up gimping you in the time it takes to get a second tick from Death Shiver. Lastly, in Death Magic there isn’t anything to hook PVE players in. The two minor traits just make staying in DS easier, and none of the traits offer any unique or meaningful utility. The best option is Ritual of Protection, which is kind of useful. If Death Shiver were an adept, I’d put 10 points into that line in a heartbeat.

The idea I had would be Malicious Aura. It would be a trait that gives 170 malice to allies within range. If the trait isn’t buried deep into a useless trait line, then it would be worth picking up for the additional unique condi buff it would provide.

Oh bloody hell, Anet is talking a step backwards with this one.

The whole thing with zerker vs. soldiers or zerker vs. clerics is that the difference between the two wasn’t that big. Given identical builds, zerker only does about 50% more damage than soldiers, pre boons and food. I mean, granted that passive defenses weren’t that useful in PVE, but the scales weren’t that far off.

But gear with no offensive stats whatsoever… Let me do some quick math on this…

Using a max single target thief build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAV4Yl8Mp6pFOxxJ0PNRLRtdIEdfAXzg2PQAEiA-ThRDwAP3fIhSweK/ep+DIdPAM/BA-e

Alternate soldier build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAV4Yl8Mp6pFOxxJ0PNRLRtdIEdfAXzg2PQAEiA-ThxDwAN3f4juHeK/cp+DClgAM/BA-e

For TVH, I’ll assume no additional offensive stats other than the rune set and utter nudeness.

Zerker gets 2574 power, 60% crit rate, and 2.23 crit damage. 4744 effective power.
Soldiers gets 2514 Power, 34% crit rate, 1.77 crit damage. 3172 effective power
TVH gets 1571 Power, 27% crit rate, 1.77 crit damage. 1898 effective power

4474 effective power vs. 1898 effective power. 250% more damage… wow. And this is with identical builds, where basically defensive gear is put on a fully offensive build. If someone goes full 0/0/x/x/x with this… hell, PVT does 67% more damage than this set.

Well, look on the bright side: I’m going to get a whole lot better at this game. I often made jokes that I might as well be playing by myself, but when it’ll take two and a half teammates to match my damage… I might as well be duoing future dungeons.

Hm… looking at Acotjes build above… that is 1138 effective power. Zerker would do 417% more damage. Hell, even soldiers would do 278% more damage than that.

I watched the videos myself. They’re not as bad as many people make them out to be. They provide a decent baseline comparison.

In part, Nemesis’ videos aren’t really made for the super elite, premade groups, but for the average or lone player. Because of this, the priorities are different, and what many people criticize his builds for in structure play are actually assets in unstructured play. The l33t hate him for this, but his builds and tactics are far superior to what the random pug runs.

That said, I hear the whole “necros have low DPS” thing all the time. Not on the forums, no, but in map and on the dungeons, people think warriors have maximum damage, and guards/eles are permitted only because of their utility. This leaves many classes (ranger, necro, engineer, thief, mesmer) on the chopping block as far as teams go. Players still can’t get past the idea that no, no class was designed to not do damage.

The funny thing is, “deal with it” also includes campaigning against stacking, since it is yet another way of “dealing” with a problem.

Just gotta throw that out there.

I mentioned this before, but the biggest issue with GW2s combat is that the devs didn’t design the PVE game around the skills they made. They designed the PVE game around the same basic enemy structures we’ve been seeing in MMOs for awhile. New vehicle, same roads…

Saylu.8271:

I don’t agree with GW2 problem is with the teaching but rather the game mechanics are not intuitive. If you have never play GW2 before how would you know about combo field? People do not know what is a combo field. People do not know how each skill interact with a combo field. It is like hidden secret room you would never find it unless you accidentally stumble on it or look up a guide.

You are wrong. Most people know how to dodge, many people can’t dodge properly to avoid damage. It require knowledge of monster attack pattern, observation and quick reflexes. Invincibility frames is a crutch in action rpg. It allow people to perform risky moves with no damage or penalty. GW2 focus on Invincibility frames as its form of defense is also its bane. Any slow reaction or lag and you will take the blow to your face.

I would argue that something non-intuitive needs to be taught :p.

BTW, the issue I am emphasizing isn’t that people don’t know how to press V. The real problem is the state of mind. I’ve played games with nigh non-functioning dodge skills before, and anyone entering into GW2 will have to preconceived mental barriers in the game:

#1: Dodging isn’t necessary, since it hasn’t been for many games.
#2: Dodging is useless, since it doesn’t do much in other games.

Rather, there needs to be an active defense mindset. Someone has to come into the fight expecting their ability to block, dodge, stun, blind, and evade to be important preservation mechanics, and most of the time their primary preservation mechanic. Once a player has the proper mindset, learning specific content should come naturally.

RedStar.4218:

So Anet sent a mail today, with really basic combat stuff. And while it’s really basic stuff, it’s also a nice start to hopefully something more in depth and maybe in game one day ^^

Just logged on myself. I consider this a personal victory myself, but I can’t help to think that a bit more should be done than just an e-mail with “attack” and “HP”. Those aren’t concepts that players don’t readily understand, so many people might brush off this information as pandering to the lowest common denominator (I.E. someone completely foreign to the concept of gaming or RPGs in general).

loseridoit.2756:

As much as I agree with the OP, there is another problem. This game is pretty much gear gated. Did you take a look at the cost and requirements for ascended? it is pretty much a time/gold sink. Not all players will be wearing the correct combination of gear and food buffs to allow a bump in difficulty. It is also the reason why wvwvw is one of the most unbalanced game modes. Theory crafting became much more expensive in this game which limits the potential of diversity.

Sometimes I wonder if levels and gear are all mistakes and games should create difficulty through content.

The only gate I can find regarding gear is in fractals via agony resistance. Exotic is more than sufficient for everything else in the game.

The differences between ascended and exotic are quite small, especially when compared to the gear tiers in other MMOs. I won’t go into full depth on this, but here’s a basic summation.

#1: Attribute bonuses. Full Ascended has 7.3% more attribute points than Exotic. This is even less when you factor in starting attributes (916 starting power, 84 effective precision, 750 effective ferocity, etc). Depending on which gear you use this changes, but for reference, full ascended berserker with 6 in power/prec/ferocity has only a (3.7% + 3.9% + 2.6%)/3 = 3.4% higher offensive stats, on average. Other stats are untouched.

#2: Secondary stat bonuses. Weapon attack power is 5% higher for ascended. Armor is 5% higher on average (5.1%, 5%, 4.9% depending on class), but factoring in standing toughness this comes to only a 2.6%, 2.7%, and 2.8% difference in armor for light, medium, and heavy classes respectively.

Put it all together, and you get 8.6% more offense with 2.7% more defense, for a total cumulative advantage of 11.5%. This isn’t too bad, considering I’ve played MMOs where the gear tier had geometric growth, with one tear doing literally double damage from the last.

The reason why it is that this is nigh negligable is because there is an RNG factor already built within the game’’s damage system. Weapon attack power is actually a 100 point range from 950 to 1050 (one handed weapons). This adds a 10.5% range of variance in the damage. Because of this, the nearly the whole advantage of full ascended a player has can be overcome by sheer chance alone.

Note: I haven’t done an average advantage level for every stat/gear combination. Also, the RNG will have a cumulative statistical effect, causing overall combat performance to have a bell curve distribution. However, I am way too sick to dig through all my notebooks to remember how to calculate all that information.

I’d like bosses with stupid, cheesy gimmicks for fun.

I’d also like bosses to be a lot more mobile. Most bosses currently have two modes of movement:

#1: Stand still and shoot.
#2: Chase player with melee attacks.

And I know they can do better. There’s a ton of auto movement skills in the game, and there is no reason why we can’t have an evasive boss that will dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge. I imagine that when the bosses mechanic is “objectively hard to hit” then there will actually be a challenge to beating them.

I hate how there’s a certain key combination (either alt + click or ctrl + click) that automatically broadcasts an action in chat, instead of just putting it in the chat bar. I cant count how many times I’ve tried to use a block, only to die and discover that I’m now silence from map chat because I said “Flanking Strike!” inadvertently 5 times in a row.

It doesn’t have to be manual OR action based tutorial. You can have both. In fact, it is preferable to have the manual for deeper information, but for tutorial missions to have the basics.

My idea for teaching the players things would involve 3 things:

#1: A text that says what something is.
#2: NPCs that performs unsaid actions alongside of the players
#3: A voiceover explaining the concept that is being taught.

Combined with a manual, this will give players a resource to which they can defer, should they forget what is being taught. This would take place in an instanced mission based on class, and the more complex concepts would be taught at later levels. Should a class lack something from the lesson, an environmental weapon can be used to provide anything that is needed.

The goal being to move the game concepts from “teaching” mode to “exploration” mode. Once a player understands a combo field (personally, I’d use smoke for the tutorial, since stealth is pretty big), then it isn’t too much of a hop before the player starts experimenting with their own fields and finishers. Then, the player isn’t trying to memorize for at test or a lecture, but just trying to see what happens when a particular attack hits a particular field. And thus, by seeing it happen, they learn what happens.

It isn’t necessary to teach a player about EVERY class, or about all currently used team tactics. It is only important to teach players the fundamentals, and then when they see those tactics they’ll understand why players do what they do. Of course, some subjects such as experience gain don’t need an instanced mission to teach.

The means of play are important, though. If you just say “push V to dodge”, then players aren’t learning something. It is important to teach that dodging, blocking, reflecting, and invulnerability are meant to be an active form of defense, and not to rely on passive stats like other MMOs do.

On the PVE side, it isn’t much better. The real question is, why so many people in GW2 have bad attitudes.

EDIT: thought about it a bit more, and I may have an answer.

One of the most aggressive playerbases I ever saw was in RS, because in that game everyone is literally your competition. That is the only MMO I’ve played when having multiple people has, like, absolutely no benefits and only detriments.

In PVP (and in group PVE), other players are generally attributed to your failures. If your team loses, it is because either your teammates are idiots, or your opponents are idiots who camp you with a GC thief. This is actually true in many regards, since it is hard to win against a competent team with the three stooges.

Because of this, the standard sPVP player has many reasons to hate their fellow players.

Rukh.9287:

Right off this whole thing made me think of Dark Souls/ Dark Souls II, what people often consider a decently challenging game. Quite a lot harder, per enemy, than GW2, or most MMOs. What makes it so satisfying though is you know up front it’s going to be hard, and generally you can tell what you did wrong when you die. That also means you can work on getting better and its immensely satisfying when you do.

Its sort of the opposite of how GW2 is being described here. Hopefully the dev team spent all their time off playing Dark Souls 2. :P

Dark Souls has good conveyance in that matter. I do think about this a lot, and I think Dark Souls can afford to be harsher because it is more straightforward.

I remember playing it myself, for the first time. After the basic tutorial teaching controls, everything was pretty simple from there. Figuring out parry times was a real pain, but most of the learning that had to be done in the game was based around learning how your weapon moved, and learning how enemies moved. Extra credits would describe this system as simple, but deep. It could be reduced to “don’t get hit, hit it until it dies”, and the variety of ranges, windups, aftercasts, momentum, and endurance management meant that there was a million ways to “don’t get hit, hit it until it dies”.

But it was essentially one concept. The most complicated thing was the poise/encumbrance mechanics. GW2, however, has equations and inter-class mechanics, along with more cluttered and faster paced combat. There are a lot more unique forms of support, and more styles of play.

Well Michael, you’ve forgotten one thing.

Swimsuits.

We want them.

nethykins.7986:

One thing I think you missed, which really can change how gamers play is:
“How is the player rewarded for learning the game?”

Woah, woah, there…I’m not talking about loot drops, i’m talking about rewarding the player in other ways for learning the game, or at least (when a tutorial is put in) for when a player succeeds in applying something from the tutorial beyond just damage dealing. (Getting a boon that lasts for a quarter of a second is hardly rewarding, and if boons aren’t explained properly, then it’s kind of pointless. This is where DPS is a big thing. The game in centralised around being offensive – in PvE at least)

Get into any fight, solely focus on damage = Gold award on dynamic events, get loot drops from champions, kill quicker.
Get into any fight and solely focus on support = Bronze on dynamic events, if you don’t tag the champion with enough damage you may not even get loot, kill slower.

In the end, really “learning to play the game”, becomes counteractive because they’ve set it up to be that way.

I agree with all you’ve said, but I think a lot more probing needs to be done on the implications of GW2’s “learning” system.

Now I feel like a moron, because I forgot that there is a carrot on the end of that stick. You are totally right here.

As far as I can tell, in GW2 there is two forms of “reward” for the players. The rewards are as follows:

#1: Success. Not merely loot, but the essence of accomplishment. Currently, this is extremely lax, since many activities in the game are designed to allow any composition of any gear and clkittenout, so success can be quite easy.
#2: Loot. This is the reward for an activity. Gold/karma/drops/tokens, these work as little pellets for players to om nom up.

Now, the current way GW2 works, greater skill encourages greater rewards in both of these factors, however there is an issue. The greater rewards in these factors are a bit abstract. For #1, players usually impose new challenges on themselves, like soloing content, or speed running content, or beating content with novelty setup. For #2, more skillful players do receive more rewards, but only because they can complete more content in the same amount of time. This is abstract, in that “capable of doing more stuff” doesn’t immediately seem like greater reward, but mathematically it works out that way.

This may be one of those issues that is dependent on other MMOs. Some MMOs have raid content on weekly or monthly resets. So, the prospect of “faster = doing more = rewards for more” is completely lost. As long as the raid is done once a week, there’s no rush to do it 10 minutes faster.

In many games, the “skill” is synonymous with getting higher tiered gear, and sometimes content is gated behind having this gear. Growth in skill becomes about growth in gear, so many players will assume that having open content means that they have all the skill they’ll need, even if it is just hanging back, pressing 1.

Incentives is a complex topic, especially since it delves into the “chicken vs. egg” territory. You can say that the reason why we don’t have challenging content is because players aren’t informed, but you can also say that the reason why we don’t have informed players is because content is easy, or not properly rewarding. I favor the former, since just making stuff harder won’t change player expectations and difficulty dissonance and the disconnect between GW2’s game design vs. other MMOs. A hard part of changing incentives is doing it “The GW2 Way” as the devs have said before. Sure, the devs can make tiered gear requiring beating difficult content for exponentially growing statistical advantage, or the devs can make content locked behind specific challenges and achievements that further gates more achievements, but this would just tick off players and ruin GW2’s identity.

But I can’t say that changing how some incentives work is a bad thing, either. I’m totally for dungeon gambits.

Saylu.8271:

I don’t agree with you. Learning is a long and tedious process. It is pointless to spoon fed people information if they unable to learn on their own. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If they don’t actively apply what they know and seek out new knowledge to improve themselves, they will just remain stagnate.

I also do not agree with you if you think the responsibility of teaching players lies with the developers. Developers only need to teach them the basic, players need to explore the game on their own. I am not sure what their view on this, let see if we can see some of their comments on this.

Well, one of the points of making a topic like this is to get the devs attention. However I digress.

As part of my short stint in education, one of the classes I had to tutor the most was remedial math. The most interesting thing about my students was that they weren’t incapable of doing math. The hardest part of teaching fractions and order of operations was conveying the notions, or the idea of what was going on. They didn’t “get it” and once it clicked, suddenly fractions was second nature.

In contrast, the people who didn’t get it and attempt to memorize it had that nervous, lost, lack of confidence. They resolved to just memorize things, and I feel sorry for many of these people, because they would have to memorize everything up through chemistry, calculus, and advanced algebra. The biggest problem being that, no one could convey the concepts in a manner that they readily understood.

The point is, learning is only long and tedious if you don’t “get it”. There must be a certain level of understanding of what is expected, what the environment is, what the goal is, and most importantly what the tools mean. In the case of RS, these players didn’t understand economy, so they were stuck in a perpetual level of poverty. But, if they “get it”, suddenly the entire world opened up to them. Everything stops being memorization, and suddenly becomes exploration.

The players suddenly became enthusiastic, and gain far more knowledge than they ever could be taught by being eager and open. But, to get there, you need the first step. The “get it” step. Until then, the world is at best apathetic, and at worst hostile.

The vast majority of people can’t take this first step. With no direction to turn, no inspiration to drive them, no goal in sight, and not even an indication of an impending issue, people won’t take the first step. Because of this, someone has to be responsible for instructing the players on what to do. As much as I’d like to just make a high quality tutorial video mandatory viewing and accompany it with a quiz, the fact is that as a player I do not have these resources.

But Anet does. Because it is their game, they have the right, and the means, to program the instruction into the game. Currently, The game doesn’t even teach the basics. The most it does is give players a tooltip, then tells them to get creative with vague terms and no relative scales.

TS isn’t that bad. You only really need to be concerned about speaking in teamspeak if

A)You have a really annoying voice. As it happens, the voice of elementry school kids tends to grate on older people’s nerves. At 15, your voice may be this annoying mid-pubescence tone. The way you tell is if everyone hates you, but only after you’ve opened your darn mouth.

B) You have nothing important or entertaining to say. This also goes into the “annoyance” factor, since if people aren’t informed or entertained, then at best you’re background noise.

I follow these rules myself, which is why in TS I rarely say anything.

Sarie.1630:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

experience gain?

It’s quite interesting that you pick up on Experience Gain. You listed questions you’re always being asked. One I am always asked is “what’s the fastest way to level up?”. One week later, by the same person, I’ll be asked the same thing, then again after another week, and again, and again. Each time that player might have only increased 2 levels, or not at all. I’ve never considered GW2 to be a game that you need to rush to L80 for as conventional leveling through maps, story, and dynamic events is much more enjoyable than any other MMO I’ve played. As such, I’ve never cared what the fastest way to level up is – I’ve done whatever I enjoyed

This reminds me of the n00b train days in RS. Of course, the question in that game was more of a “how do I gain money?” thing. The game has a thriving trade market where materials are gathered, bought, and sold en mass, but whenever I’d tell players to gather materials and sell them to other players, it just didn’t “click” with them. So, on a daily basis, I’d get asked “how do I make money!?”. The scary part was, that these guys would tell other people to just ask Blood, so I’d get random n00bs I never met asking me stupid questions, like how to win fights.

The defining feature of these players were their young age. Many of them were elementry school kids, and thus didn’t have a spirit of independence. So, they’d go in game and find the first person they latched on, and were too attention deficit to remember anything other than how to beg for money. It was a strange thing where, for some reason, people couldn’t pick up on the whole “kill cows for leather, sell leather” thing. I called it “n00b train” because they would use the follow command, and in one instance I had 3 people following behind me.

This is, in part, why I think a game manual isn’t a sufficient on its own. It is also one of the reasons why I think color coded combo fields are a good idea, enemies should utilize field combos starting at the mid 20s, and there should be instanced tutorial missions, probably part of the personal story or living story. The ideal situation would be that, as a player plays through the game, they would pick up on these not-so-subtle mechanics in the game, either by being shown through NPCs or by being subject to them via enemies. Then, when a player gets to later levels, the game mechanics aren’t so much an encyclopedia of knowledge they have to read up on, but second nature.

Anyway, the thing with experience gain in this game is that, while it is really easy to gain experience via crafting, gathering, exploration, dynamic events, etc, a lot of people come from a different gaming background. In this different background, killing the same 3 mobs for hours on end is the only way to level. These players need to actually be told that “Yeah, pretty much everything you do in game gives experience, especially exploration, so just go nuts”. Not only for better player retention, but also because if all of our teaching tools are scattered about the open world, then players need to actually see them to learn from them.

This isn’t anything “required” by any standard, but… if you look in an almanac, or around a few government websites, you can find a listing of the Gross Domestic Product of many, many nations.

Wouldn’t it be cool if there was something like that for GW2? This is one of those hidden variables, and I’ve always wondered if Anet is monitoring how much gold is in the economy, and how much gold the average player has. If they are, wouldn’t it be cool to know that stuff?

tigirius.9014:

As an Engi main I gotta wonder sometimes if they actually play these classes because it’s really obvious to those of us who’ve played many many MMOs for years that these tried and true mechanics are missing in this game.

Actually, Groucho mains Engi. From what I hear, he’s pretty good at it, too. Hence, why it is that Engis got so many nerfs in the past.

Anyway, I don’t have a ranger. The most experience I have with a ranger is when I made one for really low levels to see the tooltips and hints that popped up when a new player started the game. I didn’t keep it for long.

That said, as a PVE/WvW player, I’ve always been hesitant to make a Ranger. This is largely because the class just seems… unappealing. I’ll list the reasons why:

#1: In WvW I’ve never seen one perform well. I’ve seen every other class, but I’ve never seen rangers do anything that made me take notice. I mean, one time while attacking a keep, a ranger sent his pet after me and hid behind a wall. But that was it…

#2: Their skills seem awkward to use. I’ve watched sPVP videos, and it looks like the ranger whips around out of their own control for the most part. I’ve fought a few melee rangers in sPVP, and it seemed like most of their advantage over me was from happenstance rather than skill.

#3: I have a hard time saying what rangers “do”. I mean… they’re archers? They have spotter/frost spirit? They have a good water field, and an enemy dependent fire field. So the PVE build would be Healing Spring, Frost Spirit, Flame Trap… stuff? The CDI doesn’t help, since the whole “high single target damage at range” doesn’t sound that appealing.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Abridged to save space.

To be blunt, I am saying that these are not compromises. The core design decisions that anet made make sense for their original focus on PVP.

*I wouldn’t call a hybrid model a compromise. Action RPGs are a thriving market, and making one big and online doesn’t really take anything away.
*This isn’t a compromise. Compared to the trinity, all the classes are “samey” because trinity games will have stringent restraints binding players to hard roles, and PVE’s simpler playstyle doesn’t help this. But, in a PVP perspective, the classes feel and play very different, and have different utility and advantages. The confusion here is that most MMOs operate on a system of negatives, whereas GW2 works by a system of positives. AKA classes aren’t defined by their inadequacies in GW2.
*From the moment I came in during the beta, I readily understood that the new “trinity” was never about hard roles, and it was never about the classic trinity. It was aspects of performance, not job titles.
*Exotic Gear was made easily attainable as to prevent the need for a lengthy gear grind. To that end, content being possible in level appropriate blues and greens is only a factor in areas where blues and greens are expected, such as low level dungeons. Trust me, take a team full of uncommon wearing PUGs into Arah and you’ll pull your hair out.
*A large number of gear prefixes aren’t a compromise. Likewise, they aren’t nearly as hard to balance as you’d think, since damage and durability can be considered factors of each other, and malice/healing can be considered different kinds of damage and durability.

A compromise is a settlement, where two parties want something different, and to get things done they go through a middle road. Even if you say that making something other than a standard MMORPG is somehow compromising the integrity of what it means to be an MMORPG, I’m going to call the burden of proof card. Until then I will continue to assert that these design decisions are not flaws, and the only mistake on their part is making the PVE monsters too generic for the specific game they were designing. I cite the greater versatility of gear and classes in PVP and WvW as evidence for this.

Likewise, this is why I call the beta damage nerf a compromise. Anet wanted to make an action game where players used utilities to avoid damage. Players wanted to lolfacetank like they did in non-action games. Anet caved first.

Think about it from the PVP perspective: Why would you make a game with rooted attacks and unavoidable projectiles if you wanted to encourage skill? Why would you make a game where classes are wholly ineffective by themselves if you wanted to encourage personal performance and action? Why would you make a game where gear choices are so polarizing that they lock players out of options, killing the dynamic flow of combat on the field? Why would you make a game with hard builds/stats, killing interpersonal diversity and personal customization of classes? The answer is that you don’t. You make a game where player agency is factor, players aren’t dependent on everyone else for success, players aren’t locked out of actions due to gear, and players get to customize their character to encourage specialization but not so much that they kitten performance, but not so little customization that there is still the element of unpredictability.

spoj.9672:

Can you list those 1 shot mechanics. Theres actually very few in the game.

Its all about perspective. There are quite a few super-high-damaging-kills-me-in-one-hit attacks in the game. Heck, in my favorite dungeon of CoE there’s one around every corner.

Ice elementals have an AoE attack that regularly wipes entire teams single-handedly.
Icebrood Wolves have a pounce attack that does 12k and stuns, letting them do more damage with additional hits. The third hit usually outright kills any non necro/warrior players.
The champion Icebrood Wolf has a pounce attack that hits for 18k, killing GC gear outright.
Subject alpha has several attacks that can kill in one hit, especially if they layer up and strike multiple times. If you stand on the wrong end of Teeth of Mordremoth, you’ll be hit 2 to 3 times, dying instantly.
The legendary golem has a 3 hit stun attack that can kill most players outright without a stun breaker.
The elite assault golems have a very rapid stunning beam channel attack that will kill anyone trapped in it (literally burned down my entire LF bar and all health on a necro).
The champion abomination builds up frenzy by attacking the NPC, and can OHKO once he is near maximum.
The berserkers have a spin attack that hits for 3k to 4k a pop, which they tend to use consecutively, so by the time you realize you shouldn’t be standing there, you’ve taken 12k to 16k damage, dying immediately.
The bomb golems from plant boss on P2 will frequently kill players immediately when they blow up.
The destroyer on P3 has a dragon fang that kills weaker classes in one hit, if it doesn’t knock into the lava, killing again.
The champion destroyer crab has an AoE that rapidly ticks for 4k to 5k damage, killing many classes before they can even run out of the AoE.
The Bloated risen explosion also kills in one hit, in an AoE.

I used to have a valkyrie set for my Ele, but I eventually just got rid of it, because switching from zerker to valkyrie against these enemies didn’t do a darn thing. Keep in mind that most of these are elite mobs that come in groups of two or three, so if the champion icebrood wolf doesn’t OHKO you, the elites that come with him will finish the job.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Gear sets go a bit further than just requirements. Ultimately, they go toward preference in play, and also balance. For you see, if one gear set out-preforms or outrewards the others by a large margin, you end up with a conflict of developmental resources. Do you either build for the lower end of the spectrum and have unfulfilling, over-rewarding content, or do you build for the high end and have difficult, unrewarding content? Normally, if the divide is small, you can just middle-ground the whole thing. But, when the divide is wide, a compromise ends up just being a mixture of disappointments.

Also, it is profitable to reward preferences in play. Appeal to wider audiences and all that. While it is important that Anet make the distinction that no, this game isn’t about hard roles in play, they should be careful not to just tell players to gear up one way or the other.

GW2 has many massive compromises.

• ANet tried to meld action combat and MMO combat together. This added a greater twitch skill factor to effective play than you find in older MMO’s.
• ANet tried to make professions both homogenous (to promote “any combo of professions can do X”) and different (to promote a sense of diversity).
• ANet tried to eliminate dedicated roles while also preserving a sense that there should be diversity in play.
• ANet put stats on gear while trying to remove gear as a requirement for content.
• ANet created a massive number of stat combinations on gear. This last move guarantees that balancing the effectiveness of all gear sets would be impossible.
• ANet created game modes that are radically different as far as the challenges in each, yet they want to balance the game for all modes simultaneously.

All of these factors contribute to the differences in effectiveness in group play. Differences in player skill are a much bigger contributor than gear. Content is easy not just “because zerker” but because it has to be doable in blues or greens. Berserker gear is just a symptom of the issues which are actually causing the problem. However, those issues are not going to be addressed because they are fundamental design decisions.

If skill has a bigger contribution than gear, then improving player skill would mean closing the gap in performance. Your analysis is a bit flawed, though, since pretty much everything that a class has is designed around PVP. It is interesting, because in PVP (both WvW and sPVP, as well as dueling), we actually see and feel the diversity in how classes play, and more than just one type of gear is useful. In that perspective, not much of what you listed is a compromise at all.

If you run the numbers, particularly sustained damage through greater survival vs. greater survival via faster kill times, GC gear and defensive gear are nearly identical in performance. Or they were, before the ferocity nerf. No, the biggest flaw I can find about PVE is that they didn’t design the enemies for the game they made.

I would call the beta difficulty nerf a compromise, though. I remember back in beta (I was a bit late to the game, though) there were a whole bunch of “range is OP, melee is useless!” complaints, talking about how all the mobs were too hard to melee, so range was the only thing you could do without being killed instantly. These were exaggerations drawn from massively scaled champions, but a large portion of the playerbase found things way too difficult, so Anet severely nerfed enemy damage to the point that players could mindlessly facetank everything in greens.

The requirements you listed can be applied to pretty much every class in the game.

But yeah, eles are one of the best classes in the game. They are hard to play, but rewarding when played right.

Jeromai.8203:

Abridged to save space

I remember City of Heroes forums quite well. I was there. I also remember how small and involved that community was. I also happen to remember that CoH also had an education problem, which is why they released better tip and guidance systems to help newer players through the game.

It was one of the biggest complaints about the raid system in CoH, too. The trials introduced a system of mechanics and displays that players weren’t familiar with, and this disheartened a large portion of the community. I would frequently host Mother of Mayhem, and in the resting phase between each boss I had to spend 5 minutes explaining how everything worked for the next boss fight.

So, in response, I made a couple of video guides on youtube detailing how to go through each of the trials. You can still find them on youtube, what with their low presentation and somewhat clunky cuts between sections (I got better…). This encountered another problem: No one watched the videos. Sure, I got a few hundred views on each, but this was only a small portion of the population.

I imagine that I’ll have the same problem here: I can write a guide on how to do the basics, or I can make videos on how to do the basics, but there’s no way to convey that information to the players inside the game. The only people who will find those guides are the players who are already looking.

Putting in-game guides wouldn’t get rid of the organic information. It’ll just tell you the basics of the class and how things work. It won’t tell you the top strategies for particular game content, or how to coordinate well.

IndigoSundown.5419:

A better solution might be to educate the player-base yet again. This time, teach them to let go of their bias towards thinking that gear sets = builds as they are used in other games.

Gear is only one tiny part of a build. More of one’s build is in traits, utilities and weapon choices. There are so many L80 gear prefixes, way more than their are possible roles in the game. Surely, all of them don’t have to be the core of a distinct, dedicated role. They’re in the game to provide options. Some are for different game modes. Some are for different types of player. Some are there in case someone wants to (gasp!) mix gear types to get a little more damage, survivability, etc.. Some of them may exist only to serve the same purpose the traits nobody uses serve, as filler.

Gear sets go a bit further than just requirements. Ultimately, they go toward preference in play, and also balance. For you see, if one gear set out-preforms or outrewards the others by a large margin, you end up with a conflict of developmental resources. Do you either build for the lower end of the spectrum and have unfulfilling, over-rewarding content, or do you build for the high end and have difficult, unrewarding content? Normally, if the divide is small, you can just middle-ground the whole thing. But, when the divide is wide, a compromise ends up just being a mixture of disappointments.

Also, it is profitable to reward preferences in play. Appeal to wider audiences and all that. While it is important that Anet make the distinction that no, this game isn’t about hard roles in play, they should be careful not to just tell players to gear up one way or the other.

The Ready up confirmed one of my fears for Necromancer: The devs still don’t know what is going on with the necro.

For example, they say the necro should be an attrition class. So, they give us Deathshroud. But then, they took away all of the other active defenses that necromancers have. This is stupid, because then the Necromancer isn’t an attrition class anymore. They’re a “normal” class, since you haven’t given Necros additional skills. You’ve just replaced active defenses with a gimmick.

And this gimmick is arguably the worst defensive mechanic in the game. DS is just an additional HP bar that shuts you out of weapon and utility skills. It doesn’t stop conditions from being applied, it doesn’t stop CC from hitting you, it doesn’t stop burst damage, and it doesn’t stop procs.

The devs say that players should have to muscle past DS. This would be true, if we started with DS. But, because we don’t start with a life bar, other players have “muscled past DS” by default. The equivalent would be if all other classes started with their utilities on cooldown. This is also build dependent, meaning that you have to kitten specialization in order for DS to merely function properly.

The following traits should be innate to DS, and not locked down a trait line somewhere:

Unyielding Blast
Unholy Sanctuary
Path of Corruption
Deathly Invigoration
and maybe Speed of Shadows

The fact that you have to go 0/6/6/0/2 just to get basic functionality and compensate for the inherent weaknesses of DS is just pathetic.

In all my time using a necro in PVP, I never once pulled off a clutch maneuver. Not once. No, a fight was either so lopsided in my favor that the enemy didn’t stand a chance, or so lopsided in their favor that I never stood a chance. My frustrations with the necro is one of the two big reasons why I quit sPVP in the first place.

The lack of melee cleave is even more frustrating. Look, the fact is that players don’t stand next to each other in PVP. The only place cleave really helps is in PVE, and against AI builds (because we all want more of those, right guys?). So, when the devs say they don’t want necros to cleave, it isn’t an issue of PVP balance at all. All they are really saying is “No, we want necros to be permanently inferior in PVP, because we feel it should be that way”.

Behellagh.1468:

The problem I’m having with some of the replies is that it entirely negates the notion of player customization. You’re focusing on the mechanics only and not the RPG nature of character creation.

You all are saying that the devs should make the higher level content only be done if players use a min/maxed build of traits, skills and weapons for that profession. If that’s the case then why bother providing all the other options, all the possible combinations if only those playing “the right way” have any chance? That’s like building a maze where every path that isn’t the way through is a death trap. That takes choice away from players. That’s the opposite you want to do in an open world MMO.

Here we have a game where you aren’t led from one quest giver to another, gives the players lots of ways to earn XP to level up. But you all are suggesting having content where only one set of choices will work. Not work better or faster, work at all. What you all are suggesting is a game where characters may look different but underneath are all identical. I’m sorry I’m from the school where there should be no way to make a broken character that can’t do all the content. That’s the whole point about balance, that you don’t have tiny Gods or fodder as possible configurations.

This is a problem for another topic!

Woosh

This kind of ties in to that whole “don’t teach the meta” thing. If you want to talk about class/gear balance, then that is another two issues. Personally, my take on gear balance is as follows: change PVE so that different gear sets provide meaningful advantages to kill speed.

To do this, make PVE harder in such a way that it discriminates more against glass cannon gear than other, more defensive gear sets.

But, this has an implicit problem: It makes the game harder, and thus would require everyone (and not just GCs, since the changes would balance things out and not make things faceroll) to be more knowledgeable and proficient in the game’s mechanics. That, of course, happens to be the other problem that is restraining what is arguably the best solution to PVE gear and class balance..

Harper.4173:

The OP mentions that Social Darwinism doesn’t work but if the game wiped the new players more often they would be forced to learn.
As it stands now you’re NOT forced to learn anything. You can complete dungeons even if you’re terrible at dodging and have a sloppy build.

The game should be more punishing.

This is a point that I will admit. One of my favorite games is Dark Souls, which as anyone who has ever played knows, just teaches you the basics of controls then drops you penniless onto a dangerous, apathetic world. The obstacles serve to make you tougher, and as you play through the game you learn from your repeated deaths.

Death is a better selective pressure than boredom. By far. Death inspires ingenuity, boredom inspires escape. But, while a harsher system would encourage more self discovery by the players, this has a pretty big drawback, too.

I know a lot of people who hated dark souls, and/or have no desire to play it. Not everyone turned left into the graveyard then yelled “CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!”. The unforgiving world is an inspiration to seasoned, hardcore gamers. But to casuals, it is a foul stench that serves as a preemptive warning.

So, while I do want the game to be harder, I also have to realize that just making the game harder will alienate a large portion of the GW2 customer base. While you can solve the lack of knowledge problem by driving away everyone who doesn’t know, this is not a profitable or desirable solution.

Besides, I think Dark Souls did a better job of teaching mechanics where it counted.

guardian.6489:

I think part of the problem with teaching the basics is that I think even as the game was being developed many advanced techniques weren’t anticipated by the developers.

I mean we primarily use combo fields for might stacking with blast finishers, healing with water fields, stealth with smoke fields and swiftness with static fields. Otherwise other finishers and combo field are ignored. When was the last time you even payed attention to projectile finishers?

So really I think the seed of the problem is that Anet didn’t even anticipate what the high-end PvE metagame would even look like which meant they couldn’t really make a proper tutorial about it. That being said, they really need to go back and figure out ways to teach players about these especially if they want to continue to increase the difficulty of future content.

This… is utterly true. This is also similar to Anets stance on balance: make a few changes then let things settle for awhile. The whole thing is based around letting players find their own meta, and thus Anet balances via tapping with a 20 foot pole.

This is also one of the bigger flaws with having in-game tutorials beyond explaining the basics. While it is hard to find anyone who would argue about teaching dodge or combo fields, it is hard to find someone who would agree that it is O.K. to teach only specific DPS rotations and structured team roles for the current dungeon meta. This is because the meta changes, and what is relevant back then might not be relevant now.

It is a dangerous line to tread between teaching someone how things work vs. teaching someone a restricted playstyle on a soon dated meta. My biggest fear is that it will be crossed, then a year later I’ll have to make a 5 post topic about “Why the tutorials are outdated and do more harm than good”.

I imagine that, if the rest of the team is in agreement over their behavior, a kick wouldn’t be too difficult to muster.

Axiom.6137:

It’s impossible to be shocked at bad changes to GW2, the trend has been sustained and predictable. There might be some entertainment value in checking out new patch notes to see how they will outdo themselves in the realm of self sabotage, but it is nothing but frustrating for those who want to see the game become great once again.

I’d play again if they offered GW2 Classic servers that reverted the game to it’s state in spring of 2013. Wishful thinking though.

As to the trait system changes, I don’t get it. Every person I played with who came from another MMO wished that the game would introduce traits at an earlier level, because it was one of the clearest ways of obtaining a sense of progress for their characters. I don’t think I ever heard or read a comment any where suggesting the desire to see the trait system pushed back further and I definitely never heard anyone wish for fewer, less frequent trait point dispersals.

They gave us one good thing on traits, ease of respecs, which many people did ask for, then ruined the trait system almost seemingly as if out of spite.

I’ve never seen an MMO so determined to ignore the player base and focus on things people don’t want. If they were doing what was best for us and the game by turning a deaf ear and blind eye, that might be courageous, but little they have done in spite of the players and the original GW2 manifesto has been anything but detrimental for the game.

The trait pushback was done, in part, to encourage players to experiment with their skills before they have to deal with traits.

I think it is a horrible idea, though.

Andred.1087:

Man I dunno who you wrote all that for.

Maybe if ANet advertised the wiki as much as the gem store, we wouldn’t have this problem. Hah! :P

Long story short, I write this stuff for me. Long story slightly less short, I have a crazy brain that latches on to these subjects and runs like a freight train, and if I don’t pull that train into the station it’ll just derail into chaos. So, I write a small essay worth of information on the subject and throw in a couple of jokes for astute readers to catch (which is hard, since I’m only so-so funny).

Anyway, Emotes is now in the manual list. It isn’t combat pertinent, but it is something to know.

While I was away, I remembered something: There is actually an enemy in the game that uses a combo field effectively! You all remember the risen pirates in orr? They throw down a fire field, then leap through it to get the fire shield.

I mentioned in game tutorials, but I never actually described how to do that. There’s quite a few limitations to them, and because of these limitations I didn’t actually know how to do in-game tutorials:

#1: Not every class has access to all the different mechanics.
#2: Not every player will have purchased the same skills, if any skills at all.
#3: Not every player will have their particular required weapons.
#4: Not every player will have the prerequisite traits for combos.

The solutions to these would open up more problems. #4 would require reorganizing trait unlocks, which would tick off a lot of people. #3 could be solved by instanced lock environmental weapons, but this would cause a disconnect between actual player experiences. #2 would be a real lockdown, since it could be solved by temp weapons to make fields, but no overlap with solution #3. #1 is the biggest problem, since each class would have to get their own instance mission, and thus this would become a large load of programming and information.

But… one way to do this would be to have enemies that would blatantly use combo field interactions in their attacks. The risen pirate is a good example, but he’s a late game mob. Ideally, you’d have something that used combo fields at around level 25 to 30. A few of the more blatant ones, like fire fields, ice fields, ethereal fields, or smoke fields.

Also, having NPCs use techniques on duels and training dummies. In the original queens pavilion, there was an exhibition match between Logan and various watchknight holograms, and in this scripted battle, Logan used several attacks to counter their moves.

I’m thinking of something that was in Twilight Princess, where you’d enter into an area where that gold wolf/ancient knight would demonstrate a technique to teach you. I figure that, if you had an NPC that merely showed you some tricks (and likewise, explained them in a voice acted manner), then it wouldn’t be absolutely necessary for players to do them personally.

Harper.4173:

I could have sworn I posted this before. Something must have gone wrong.

OP – what I believe is that you can’t really fix bad players because they won’t put in the time and effort to get good.
How do you fix the " it’s just a game man, doesn’t matter if I’m good or not, I play it for the lulz" mentality?

There’s actually a teaching philosophy I’ve heard about a few times. I think it is Buddhist in origin. Anyway, it goes something like this: A good teacher can teach without the student knowing that he is learning.

There is an expectation in the game of laziness, and this expectation is vindicated regularly. But, if the game had a different expectation… you see where I am going with this.

Anyway, this actually leads into another suggestion I had awhile ago regarding the zerker meta, in which I suggested that the game be harder in specific ways to encourage more build diversity. But, the more I thought about this suggestion, the more I realized that there is a really, really big obstacle to just making the game harder. That obstacle being that it is quite hard to get good at the game. Once you know everything it is pretty easy, but knowing everything is a challenge that requires in-depth research and repetition of the content. The least one can do is amend the whole “extraneous research” aspect, and make the learning curve more about practice and learning enemies.

Heck, I’m not even “good” at the game. I just let perseverance and problem solving skills carry me through most stuff. I’m the most clumsy and haphazard player I know, but I’m darn near unstoppable if you give me time to think.

I don’t think I can “fix everyone” in a certain extent, but I’ve certainly encountered a large enough group of players who’s biggest fault is that they don’t know whats going on.

hannah mee.7925:

I stopped reading right here and I will not read further because this sentence alone makes me think the rest of the OP is going to be bad.

Amended statement:
Players are left on their own, and if they aren’t theorycrafters like the top 5% of us, they aren’t going to be as skilled as the top 5% of us.

This is going to blow…your…freakin…mind…

But the game’s easy. People don’t need to be “Top Ten” and theorycrafters to do the content because the content is that menial. Much like other games, the challenge comes from self-deprivation and personal goal setting. I’ve played a gratuitous amount of games (granted I’ve only touched three MMOs in my entire life, but I digress) and in every single game I can tell you there’s a challenge that emerges from personal handicaps.

What you think is “people knowing how to play the game” is, in fact, an outline of the learning curve – a phenomenon that exists far outside of just Guild Wars 2. As far as most of those examples go, they seem to just be shy of not understanding a certain boon or mechanic, which happens a lot when people are new or they are visually limited by stacking and having a narrow field of vision.

A classic example I’ve always used is the game of BioShock 2. I ran around in Free-for-All multiplayer mode with Slugger and often went 20:0. That didn’t mean I knew any more about the game than other players, it just meant I was better at Sluggering than them and I went further up the learning curve.

Against what some people like to believe, some people really can’t progress up the learning curve because they are incapable. It only seems to echo loudly throughout GW2 though…I guess because the forums on the website allow people to be a bit more vocal.

The biggest problem with your assertion is that Anet has already said that this is a problem. They’re already working on it by idiot-proofing various aspects of the game (sigil rework, and trait rework). They have also said that they are making new content harder, with the hopes that the increased difficulty will encourage players to explore more tactics and options within their own class.

Anyway, there is something I mention in the thread, and I didn’t talk about it much since it delves deeply into balance issues, but it is difficulty dissonance. That is, the drastic change in difficulty between different forms of content. The wider this gap is, the more “difficulty shock” a player gets when exploring different content. This… presents an issue from a designer perspective, because it is hard to design content that is both faceroll and face smashing at the same time. So, the designer either has to cater to a crowd, or they have to try and compromise and disappoint everyone.

EDIT: NOW I REMEMBER WHAT TO PUT HERE! THEORY STUFFS

O.K. Anet has talked about increasing the difficulty in the game, mostly through new content. Now, currently their selective pressure to encourage new players to improve is through boredom: give them nothing, and let them experiment with their skills first.

This reminds me a bit about the videos I saw during the beta, where the enemies were quite a bit stronger than they are right now. Enemies would, by default, kill a player if the player just stood there and attacked in melee range. So, to survive, players would have to use different attacks and skills to mitigate enemy attacks, leading them to victory.

Now, although I am still not a fan of the social darwin aspect, a game system that is more hostile but has less dissonance would do a better job of encouraging players to learn content. The curve would be a bit steeper, but also less selective to different game content. With proper instruction, this may be an option.

This has plenty of caveats, though. Players are currently very familiar with the lax version of the game, so they would experience a global difficulty shock. This also decreases the friendlyness to the casual market, and may drive away players who wouldn’t be satisfied with the game requiring more skill on the open world.

Because of this, I’m hesitant to suggest such a change. This falls into the “solution may be worse than the problem” category.

EDIT:

Gearbox.2748:

Key point missing.: Serious lack of usable data in the combat log.
In just about any game with a combat log; you have a fairly size-able data to go back and read after a fight.
Information gained there helps players when they are killed by x. or y was ineffective against a monster..
Usually in fight you do not have time to figure out exactly what happened, and here in gw2 you mostly can’t even get usable data after to improve on or figure out a mechanism.

Though I personally don’t care much for the extra data, I can’t find a good reason to dismiss this idea, so it gets in.

HOW DO I FIX IT!!!

There probably isn’t one way that’ll work for everyone, but there are a few things that will certainly help.

#1: No stupid and arbitrary limitations.

The good news is, Anet has moved forward with some of these changes already, so it isn’t all doom and gloom. The removal of shared global procs for sigils was a step in the right direction, but there are other things that are just plain bothersome. For example, take the condition and boon duration cap. It is set at 100% (some exceptions apply), but I can’t find a good reason why it can’t just go up to 115%, or 125%. I don’t know of any other stat that has such a hard cap like this.

Removal of limitations means less blocks for players to stumble upon.

#2: In-game manual. I should never have to tab out to learn something about the game. The in-game manual should explain all of the following:

Basic gaming philosophy
-lack of trinity
-lack of dedicated roles
-lack stringent gear requirements
Experience
-how everything gives it
Conditions and what they do
-Condition cap
-Condition removal mechanics
-Condition duration
Blocks, evades, invulnerability.
-Differences between the three
-How endurance and vigor work
-What goes through each
Melee vs. Range
-Melee does more damage
-Difference between melee, spell, and projectiles
Boons and what they do
-How they stack
-How they are removed
Combo Fields
Combo Finishers
Dynamic Events
-How scaling works, even when dead
-How rewards work
-Downscaling
Cleave and AoE limits
Salvaging
UW combat
-differences in targeting and skills
Generalized overview of class specifics
-armor and health
-primary strengths and utilities
-class weaknesses
-combo fields and finishers
Finally, compendium of in-game formula
-Damage
-Crit chance
-Crit damage
-Formula for each condition
-Toughness/Armor and how they work
-Vitality and Health
Emotes

If there is anything from this list that is missing or you would like to add, please let me know.

#3: Better conveyance.

A)Ability to reduce particle effects to nearly none.
B)Cast Bars for big attacks
C)Indicators for unblockable attacks
D)Larger enemy models, as to see the telegraphs
E)Indicate enemy invulnerability periods and reflect periods better.

#4: Change how fields are displayed. Currently, we get red rings for damage, with a red/orange blotch for certain enemies, and all friendly fields are white. This… is not a good system. So, my suggestion is that all enemy damage fields become those red/orage blotches, and instead each kind of combo field gets its own individually colored ring. Red for fire, light blue for ice, purple of ethereal, black for dark, gray for smoke, dark blue for water, yellow for light, etc.

#5: There should be in-game tutorial missions that go over the basics of combat.

#6: Target HP should be displayed when their nameplate is scrolled over with the mouse. Not necessary for PVP.

#7: Bind the sheath weapon tool automatically for new players. Just pick any key not currently in use through the default settings.

#8: Set up some basic tutorial videos on the main website that will give class specific instructions on the various tricks and combos that class can do. Have them clearly labeled as “guides”.

#9: For goodness sakes, have the foreign language filter set to off by default. Seriously.