Guild Wars 2

The UI information in no way tells you to split up. All it has is a timer. It gives absolutely no information on how best to beat that timer. It may involve splitting into six equal groups, or it may involve everyone teaming up to kill each boss as quickly as possible. There’s no way to know without failing. And further, if you do decide to split up, there’s no UI element to tell how many players are at each boss, nor how many players each boss needs. The only way to find out is to run around the inner ring and try to gauge how many players you can see at each, which is not always easy due to LoS issues.

That is the point of the game, not to be spoon fed information. You have a timer, figure out the best way to accomplish the task at hand. Devs have an idea of what strategy they would use. But is that the correct way? Maybe not.

Communicate. The event has been out enough that people can say what people can do to succeed. Yet the problem remains that people don’t communicate and don’t listen. No amount of design will change player mentality unless they are punished for bad plays or in other words only rewarded for good plays.

Again use map chat and ask as simple as that. People refusing to communicate are the reason why it doesn’t work well.

You seem to be talking about the Baines fight. I wasn’t talking about the Baines fight. Nobody has a problem with the healing turret mechanic, it’s fine. I’ve never had a run fail because players could not figure out the healing turret, I have had runs fail because even fighting the turret as early and often as possible, both Baines and the turret itself had very high HP that was taking forever to whittle down. Again, it’s the anti-zerg scaling that is the issue here, NOBODY is arguing that the individual boss tactics are at fault.

Because if you zerg it turns out really long and you don’t succeed within time.

Again you punish people for zerging and not thinking about it. Mindlessly zerging is punished. Nobody is saying that there isn’t anti-zerg. I’m saying player mentality is at fault for what happens and that should be punished. Now if you find it frustrating to do group play then find other individuals to group together. Then again you are against guilds and any form of community. So last suggestion is to find a great single player game on steam and just play it and talk to people on Steam friends.

If you find that scaling is too high would you just keep on staying and attacking? Or would you actually think and not be mindless and say hey maybe I should leave because this isn’t working.

Ohoni.6057:

My point was, they shouldn’t add new requirements until THEY implement the tools necessary to make them work. If they want to split the zerg, the onus is on THEM to add the UI tools to make that work BEFORE requiring players to adapt their playstyle. The current system is like pushing people out of a plane and promising to work on developing a parachute at a later date.

They should add things. Under your logic dungeons should have existed until like almost a year after the game came out because an in game LFG tool was not available. Instead what did players do? Use/create tools to find groups and succeed in dungeons. gw2lfg and map chat.

UI is already there to split groups. Map chat. Hey guys split into 6 different groups, stack here, here, here. Not very hard. Again it is the player’s fault because player mentality is bad where people are lazy or don’t want to contribute to the team.

You say “people” are lazy, and they are, which is why ANet needs to develop tools which make the right way INTO the lazy way. You don’t have to agree that “people” are right in being lazy, but if you’re stuck on a server with lazy “people,” it’d be nice if they weren’t ruining the event for you.

What tools? More commander options? What if someone doesn’t listen then? More UI? What if they turn off those UI elements. Again you can’t design a perfect system. Players need to change. And you need to have incentives for good playing styles that you want. Which is what is done with Boss Blitz. Plain and simple.

The problem is, I learned that lesson in the first run. Then I did a second run later, but none of the people who were with me on the first run were with me on the second, so they still needed to learn, and the event still failed, even though I’d already learned everything I needed to learn. They can’t count on experience as an educator, they need to teach players in such a way that they get it right the FIRST time, because in multiplayer content, it’s almost always someone’s first time.

Communicate. People have to learn how to play better. They have previous event which said “zerging it is bad” . Boss Blitz wasn’t the first one. Read what information you have. If you don’t read then it will fail. Is it the fault of the dev or the players. It is the players who refuse to do things needed to succeed. Should bosses just be like “Watch out I’m throwing a healing turret and healing I suggest you destroy it or toss poison on me” . “Watch out you should dodge I’m about to lay down a bomb at my feet” . “Watch out X I’m about to shadow step to you, you should dodge” . “Watch out X I’m about to shadow step to you, it is unblock able you should use a block, reflect, or projectile absorption” . If this doesn’t fit you then if you read the boss it states what it generally does.

For it to be pug-friendly would mean that a bunch of RANDOM people, without ANY coordination would be capable of doing it, just by everyone following the UI queues on an individual basis, and their individual efforts adding up to a group success.

Past events were done on overflows before. Just because you don’t experience it doesn’t mean it doesn’t occur. I have seen it happen a lot.

One of the key elements to making an event pug-friendly is to design it in such a way that individual failures matter very little while individual successes add up strongly. For example, if the Marionette platforms had succeeded on best 3/5 platforms rather than needing 5/5 platforms, it would have been a much more pug friendly event, while still being just as much of a personal challenge for each player engaged in it.

Might as well create an event like this. 10 minute timer. Success regardless of what happens. Because anything more will be PuG unfriendly. Why not 1/5 platforms maybe 4 platforms had a bunch of people that failed. How about 2/5? How about 0/5? Your definition of PuG friendly is flawed. You might as well make GW2 a single player instance game at that point because anything that is remotely challenging or that requires coordination is bad and PuG unfriendly. That way you can make things as a personal challenge while requiring zero coordination.

Because the punishments hit everyone. If there are 80 people engaged in the boss blitz, 70 insist on zerging as one, and the other ten “play it right” by tackling a different boss, or splitting into two parties, or whatever they can manage, then they all still get punished equally, even though the 10 players were doing everything they possibly could to “play it right.” That’s why you don’t punish for paying it wrong, instead, if your design goal is to have players split into six groups, then you FORCE players to split into six groups, you make it actually impossible for all of them to zerg a single boss at a time, that way, the players who are willing and able to do it right are not punished for the behavior of the ones that insist on doing it wrong.

Definition of group event. Team plays = success. Individual plays aren’t what defines success in group play. Again flawed design. You can Force but you won’t guarantee it will be good. Can you guarantee specific numbers? Nope. And that leads to other design and scaling issues I have stated.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, you seem to be wandering off course. I specifically said that I wasn’t talking about the tactical elements of the individual boss fights. Baines summons a turret, the ogre needs his birds drawn off, that’s all fine and they don’t need to change anything about that. The problem they have is at the strategic level, of helping players to coordinate into six roughly even groups. THAT is currently the hard part of the event, and would be made far simpler if they had better UI tools in place.

Again you say things then back away from them. You talk about making difficult content with little to no coordinate which I stated is not possible.

You have tools in place. People don’t use them as others have admitted in this thread. You can have the most advanced tools and UI it won’t change the fact that some people’s mentality is to play an MMO as if they are playing a single player game. Plain and simple not sure why you can’t understand that basic fact. You can add VOIP service to GW2 it won’t change the fact that people will have it off. You can have two dozen different commander tag features. It doesn’t stop people from simply ignoring them or paying no attention.

Boss Blitz is easy to coordinate if other people had the intention of actually trying to succeed in the event. However, that is far from the case. Problem isn’t tools (although more would be nice), the problem is a player’s mentality in this game to not play as a team and not trying at all.

You’re defeating your own arguments. You were claiming that Marionette was a very pug-friendly challenge, which you back up by pointing out that very organized guild and main-server communities did fairly reliably with it.

You are defeating your own arguments by stating something that completely counters your argument. There is never an area with ZERO PuGs. We have no system in place to create instances. Server communities =/= coordination. Just pointing out that if you were on JQ you would have seen success. There was only at most 50% of JQ on teamspeak for the event. Everyone else were PuGs. Even for TTS runs they had trouble with other players not listening anyhow. If I have one other guild member in my party and 3 PuGs for dungeons that is still a PuG group. That is still dealing with random people. Do a I complete my dungeon runs? Yes. Does TTS complete that event with randoms on the map. Yes. Did JQ complete that event with randoms in lanes? Yes. Just because you don’t experience it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

In a single player context I would agree with you, but when it comes to multiplayer, I disagree. In a single player portion, if I do something “crazy” and fall off the map, that’s on me, I get punished for it, and that’s fair. In a multiplayer setting, if YOU do something crazy and it results in US falling off the cliff and WE get punished for it, how is that fair to me, especially when I never chose to work with you, the server just paired us up at random?

Because it is a group event. Group play is design so that people have to work together to succeed. Again going to a simple example of dungeons. If someone’s action doesn’t matter then think about it. If 4 people wipe then the 5th should easily be able to carry everything. If someone uses a turret badly on Tequ then your chance of success should go down. You cannot have zero punish then have a situation where it isn’t mindless gameplay. If mistakes aren’t punish then you can just mindlessly play. The reason why you can’t mindlessly do something is because such actions will lead to group failure. Now as for the margin of error that depends on the event. Boss Blitz has a low margin of error. Sure if your group zergs then you get worse rewards but at least you get something. Don’t past a phase on Tequ well you get zero rewards. Wurm if you don’t past a phase you get no rewards.

No, when other players are held accountable for each others actions, it’s the responsibility of the game to limit as best it can the possibility of other players screwing things up for you.

No it is the responsibility of players to play better. No perfect or ultimate design can change how badly people play. Trying to accommodate bad players is making easier game designs which in turn continues the cycle of mindless zerg content which is a no no. At some level people just have to want to play better. No more excuses such as I don’t have chat on during a group event.

Ohoni.6057:

Scale based on average damage. You scale based on the average of the highest DPS class in Ascended Zerkers to the lowest DPS class in Rare Clerics. This would mean that if the party is overloaded with high Zerkers it would die faster, and if it was overloaded with Clerics then it would die a bit slower, but still should kitten. Of course ideally there would be reasons in the game for Zerkers to not be the ideal stat build.

Even then you can’t guarantee anything. That is the point. Scaling will never be perfect. On top of that you have to design things with certain groups in mind but then it won’t be perfect. Some encounters are difficult small man but a joke for big groups. Some encounters are hard for big groups but easy for smaller groups. You try to make a perfect design but it can never be perfect. It isn’t a problem with scale it is simply a problem that you can’t create something that will fit in every case. That is impossible. You try to come close. Nothing can solve this core problem. You try to lessen its effect.

Ohoni.6057:

Not true. Sometimes you do need to scale the mechanics as well as just HP though. Like say an event requires you to stand on a button to advance it, for a small group, one button might be enough, for a large group, several buttons might be better, ideally events would add more conditions to them as the number of players increased, but it would have to adapt and lower the number of conditions if players quit the event.

Again my response was to the original comment that you can have difficult content with little to no coordination. What you are saying is to have more coordination. Even for something this simple. Boss blitz is simple yet people fail to read information on the UI. People fail to read chat.

Such system you are trying to promote is flawed. Here is how. You can have people quit the event so that it scales down really hard. Then have the small man burst it down easily and then everyone comes at the last minute for reward tag.

Yes. Guilds should be useless. They should be a social network, to help you stay in touch with people you want to hang out with, but you should never NEED them for anything. This game has entirely too many perks and functions that are locked behind guilds.

Your logic is flawed. You are by definition wanting to play an MMO without an MMO aspect. MMOs are designed so that you need to play and work together. If it was only social network then why not just play Skyrim on Steam. You have Steam friends. You can use Teamspeak/Skype/any VOIP to chat with friends.

On top of that this logic is saying teams should be useless. That means Pro gaming teams. These teams should be useless because random people should be able to do what the do. Sports teams? Should be useless because normal people playing football or basketball should be able to perform at the same level. Project teams at work. Should be useless because you should be able to combine random people together with no thought and accomplish the same thing as having a project team. This doesn’t make sense and it seems you have chosen the wrong game to play.

forum page bugs #1 someone at ArenaNet should fix this.

RemiRome.8495:

CuRtoKy.8576:

I was bored just now so I soloed the spider queen boss at that corner. Wasn’t too bad you just don’t want to waste your active defenses and time them correctly.

To be fair. Soloing corner in p1 is pretty ridiculous. Hodgins best healer in the game. His healing rain have no cooldown (or that’s what it feels like).

edit: A+ thread. Glad I read it.

True but you can run like p2 and p3 no problem too, just practice. Might be frustrating at first but it gets easier.

I don’t understand why there is a need to make Zerk times equal to PTV. There is a reason zerk is faster. There is high risk and high reward for running specific builds with berserker gear on specific professions against Lupi. PTV is lower risk so the reward should be lower. It shouldn’t be low risk high reward for PTV.

If we want to normalize times why not just time gate every boss. Make a boss not killable and have say a 3 minute timer. Go kill adds and survive mechanics by the boss for the next three minutes. You can’t do anything to do boss. Regardless of gear it’ll take 3 minutes. I find this silly.

Yoh.8469:

Meaningless Multiplayer
And this is the second and exceedingly jarring issue I have, how utterly meaningless and trivial multiplayer is in this game. Which as far as MMO’s goes I consider this to be a cardinal sin. If your multipler gameplay in a massively ‘multiplayer’ online game is poor, then you’ve kind of missed the bloody point haven’t you?

Player problem more than a game problem. Game is cater to those that prefer not to put much effort into things. I agree that there should be harder content but the fault isn’t with ArenaNet it is with the players.

Yoh.8469:

Everyone is designed to only ever care about themselves and only themselves, screw everyone else around you. Even if you wanted to help others, you can’t. Not in any direct, or effective ways. At best you have entirely indirect, impersonally, and often trivial means.

This mentality exist in a lot of places in a lot of different games. Goes back to play mentality. Some people play MMOs like they are single players. And games that are difficult tend to not be popular compared to games that are geared more casual play styles. LoL vs other MOBA type games like DoTA2.

Yoh.8469:

Direction of Content Creation
First is how Anet go about their content creation, or rather how they don’t.
Anet seem far, far more preoccupied with polish and temporary content ala the Living Story then permanent content to the world or professions.

LS Season 2 didn’t even start. And it has been stated that LS Season 2 will have more permanent content. On top of that fact that it has been hinted that there will be new maps since that is where the direction of the storying is heading.

As for professions. More =/= better. I think we have enough professions as is and that ArenaNet has its hands full trying to balance and perfect these professions. Adding more is just a burden. People will complain that another profession isn’t used much or viable in dungeons, WvW, or sPvP.

Yoh.8469:

What’s worse I for me is what has been done with professions, which is next to nothing. They occasional get tweaks and balance changes, which is expected, but half the time they when they fix something they break something else or don’t actually fix it.
Many bugs and dead skills/traits have been so for at least 6-12 months, sometimes longer. This might not have been as much of an issue if Anet continuously added content to the professions, since they did go out of their way to future proof it.

Things aren’t going to work perfectly in all game modes. Take the recent Mesmer changes. It was bad for PvE but for WvW or sPvP not really since those changes opened up options there.

DonQuack.9025:

Dalanor.5387:

anabasis.7346:

The anti-stacking crowd keep parroting the lie that stacking allows players to somehow nullify boss mechanics in every single thread. Most of them have learned that crap in the forums from clueless players like them and asume it’s true, yet they cannot name a single boss that can be exploited like that. Furhtermore they are so ignorant that they cannot figure out that bosses use different attacks depending on whether players are in melee range or not.
The only boss that comes to mind whose attacks can be prevented by stacking is the ooze in Arah, everything else is just fine.

It’s spider queen, always that spider. And after one AC run they think that they know everything about PvE.
Even before the ferocity change two FGS rush just melted it, so new players can assume you completely negate the mechanics with corner stacking, meanwhile just two player carried them hard. I guess.

They need to solo it. Atleast in my scrubbyness found it much easier to not be in that corner. Dat weakness

I was bored just now so I soloed the spider queen boss at that corner. Wasn’t too bad you just don’t want to waste your active defenses and time them correctly.

Keltach.8049:

You mean that 1 boss in arah that gives you stun guns to take away his buff then you go back to nuking him any way? I run a zerker mes because I do enjoy zerking on him. So I guess I already did your challenge and won.

Nope nice try though. Did you use Sword #2? That is active defense. Did you dodge? Active Defense. Did you get any buffs from your allies that is active defense. Did you use F4? That is active defense. Did you use any utility that reduces damage? That is active defense. Did you use reflects? That is active defense. Mantra for stability or condition removal? That is active defense. Null field? That is active defense. Stealth? That is active defense. Do you have any traits that provide defenses for you? That is active defense. You can only do two things. AA/DPS and heal. You must stack next to the boss and you have to stand still. Then you do it for multiple dungeons from AC to Arah. If you are indeed right feel free to record a video and post it. I’m sure people who LOVE to see it. Otherwise nice troll.

Keltach.8049:

Theory? Zerker gear is the most optimal as you said because everything needs to die fast to avoid taking the most damage. That means there’s no room for tankier builds in this game. I have not run higher lvl fractals yet no, I will admit i’m not familiar with them. How ever, that does not excuse the lack luster game play of the current non-fractal dungeons.

You avoid damage through active defenses with a combination of dps. What you are saying is dps alone is enough which is completely wrong for a lot of the higher level dungeon paths. Why toughness and vitality? When you have active defense to use. It isn’t simply dps and you continuing to say that doesn’t change anything. It just shows how inexperienced you are at PvE content. Feel free to record that video accepting my challenge running with the rule set I provided. Only stack next to the boss melee + dps + heal. Nothing else can be used since you argue that the only thing that matters is that.

Keltach.8049:

I’m not saying you DON’T need damage. That was never put any where in this thread. How ever dps should not be the most optimal to do everything in an mmo. I know this game doesn’t follow the normal holy trinity, I get that, but that shouldn’t be all I have to do is out power. I never claimed I know everything, yet all of you do so.

Yeah when you continue to argue points like poison when people say if you take away stealth for thief in dungeons that is very very bad since you take away something core to that profession. It is like if we remove aegis from Guardians, reflects/portal from Mesmer, Banners from Warrior, Conjures from Elementalists. This doesn’t make the game better nor does say well Elementalist have burning that is enough.

Keltach.8049:

Tar elemental in arah needs aoe? Really I always see groups just pull him around the corner after the first up and just nuke him down with 1 burn on him to keep him from petrifying people.

Yeah because putting burn on the boss is the boss mechanic. What!??! Why do you think they have the 1000 year old whiskey. For looks? For trolling your teammates with burning? lol

Are we playing the same game? Most PuGs don’t have enough to just like kill the Tar Elemental before it starts to move. Then this requires you to use your CCs. If you are talking about a highly coordinated group like DnT, rT, SC, and many other coordinated speed run guild groups then yeah sure. But why is that comparison made? You play with PuGs and PuG experience requires you to do that. If a skill group of players manage to burst it down then why does that matter to you. You neither do that nor will find the group able to do that.

Keltach.8049:

I’ve never seen heavy sustained aoe dps in there either, always burst.

I guess Hundred Blades is instant burst. Like OMG warriors do instant 100k+ damage :/ . Also, auto attacks on any profession is obviously burst damage.

Keltach.8049:

People stack on lupi to avoid his bubble mechanic so you don’t have to run stability to get out of it meaning more dps utility. Your counters are as flawed as you claim mine are.

It is called boss mechanic. If Boss does X attack against melee targets and Y attack against range targets. And based on experience people find Y attack stronger and more powerful. Why would you intentionally go range just to get hit by more power attacks. That is like if a boss has a reflect bubble you should continue to hit it with projectiles. Makes total sense. I mean that is pretty much your logic. People run stability cause you can’t trust PuGs to be at the same skill level where they will do things with near perfection so someone will get bubbled. But ideally you want to avoid that with the understand that Lupi only bubbles at range not if you are close melee.

Saying this is bad or an exploit is saying if you range Lupi phase one and you completely avoid his kick (since he only kicks people at melee) then that is also bad or an exploit. Can’t have it one way but not the other.

Keltach.8049:

No dodge roll? A lot of bosses already have sweet spots where you don’t have to dodge a single thing.

If that is the case then you would have no problem proving me wrong. Stop trolling and accept my challenge. What are you scared of? Also, you can’t bug the boss where it won’t attack you back. An example of this exploit is if you range the boss but it doesn’t move to you or attack you back yet you can safely dps it down slowly.

Keltach.8049:

You should know that since you decided to pummel me with info that never actually happens. Coordinated stuns?

Just because PuGs don’t use it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. My coordinated group uses control often in our runs. If you wanted to you can coordinate in PuGs with ping skill and just do 5 pings after 1 CC to make sure defiant is cleared for when you need CC again. Then you can look at very good fractal runs to see how CC is used.

Dalanor.5387:

ps: Curtoky you are a beast … :O

Thanks lol

I have to write and type a lot in real life so this is no big deal really. Plus, it isn’t like these are new arguments or statements. I find answering this like running the Mavis Beacon typing program. Gotta increase that typing speed :P

somsom.5201:

haha @ those 1900g buy orders

Going to laugh when ANet patches this overnight and people don’t have a chance to remove them.

Those people are rich they can shoulder the risk no problem.

Keltach.8049:

Engineer utility comes from control. A lot of their kits have some type of control in their kits. pistol sheild has a knock back and a 3 person blind, bomb kit has aoe blind and immobilize, grenades have chill and even your rifle has a knock back and immobilize, all rendered useless due to the lack of need for it with the way current dungeons are done.

3 person blind? Uhh thief pistol blind field? Blind more than 3. Bomb kit blind is 4s duration of blinds on a 25 second CD versus Thief where it is almost perma (depends how someone manages their initiative). Have you done Arah more than once? Immobilize is useful there. If someone knocks Subject Alpha to the wall does someone immobilize so the boss doesn’t move while your party moves forward to be in the right position? Have you don’t fractals? Nobody said Engi was bad like Necro. You wouldn’t use Engi in a coordinate record run. But for PuGs yeah you can use it. The problem is that people just don’t play Engi well in PuGs. Either they spam skills and not think about it. Just because something is up doesn’t mean you should just tap 1-5 on your keyboard. On top of that most players run Engi builds which are simply not good. Engi isn’t bad. Just most people’s experiences with players that play Engi are bad. A truly bad profession for group play in PvE is Necro.

Keltach.8049:

Who needs aoe sustained dps when all you have to do is huddle all the mobs in a corner and burst them down? Who needs control when those mobs won’t be going any where any way?

Some examples. Arah Tar Elemental? CoE Bjarl the Rampager? There are also coordinated stuns too. Shows again you have no experience and have no idea what you are talking about. CC in Fractals?

Keltach.8049:

This play style kills those builds off completely. That’s efficient? That’s knowing how to play this game?

Again I challenge you to go into a dungeon with full berserker gear with an accepted build (traits + utilities) then use no dodges or active defenses at all. No whirls. No condition removal. No blocks. All you need to do as you claim is to stand still and melee dps and that is all you need to do to complete any dungeon path. So go record yourself (best option) and go do one path from each dungeon and do just that. Make sure you show the traits and gear you run in the video. If you find this is possible then how can you say that other people do not know how to play the game. And that your idea of just stand still and dps is how it is.

Keltach.8049:

That term is getting thrown around a lot on this thread with little to no actual explanation other than “learn to play”. DPS is the only thing that matters in the end of the day since that is what is going to kill the boss the fastest, why else would every one just run berserker gear?

How do you complete dungeons. You kill bosses. How do you kill bosses. By doing damage. Of course DPS matters. Your logic is flawed. WvW. Eventually you have to kill your enemy right? How do you do that? Damage. Have to apply pressure to your enemy right? How? Do damage. sPvP. Pressure the point. How? Damage. You need to remove threats in sPvP so that you can cap a point or win a team fight. How? Damage. See how that works.

Keltach.8049:

I don’t see any improvement to my survive-ability in that gear other than I out damage it there for I will kill it before it kills me. That’s what dungeons are, just a dps race to see who can down it the fastest with ignoring the most mechanics possible. At least that’s the way a good amount of players are describing it. But hey guys, keep repeating the same things over and over again thinking that just because more than one of you are saying it, there for it must be true.

Accept the challenge then. If you are really confident it is just about damage in every dungeon path in the game. So I suppose people ignore the Lupi mechanics. shurg .

Ironically you are doing the same. You are trying to repeat what has been said by inexperienced players before. The same answer you get is that you are wrong because you don’t understand the mechanics at play. And how could you since you never even tried to play the other way. You never tried berserker or dps. You just make baseless claims base on your lack of understand. Go accept the challenge. I am sure everyone here including myself would like to be proven wrong by you because you are the arbiter of knowledge. King of what is right or wrong about dungeons. Master of what it means to truly play GW2 correctly.

Keltach.8049:

Support exists? Control Exists? Supporting isn’t just stacking might to 25 stacks, throwing swiftness on to just run past mobs and run out of their agro range or is that what you’ve come to believe to be the one and only truth since that’s all you know?

Do you listen? Aegis isn’t support? Blinds aren’t support. Reflection isn’t support? Protection isn’t support (look at fractals). Projectile absorption isn’t support? Condition removal isn’t support? Light field + whirl isn’t support? Stability isn’t support? Fury? Might isn’t the only thing.

This shows how new you are. If they wanted swiftness as not a running boon then they would add say small damage or effect around the player with swiftness boon. Like PvE swiftness is used to move. What is swiftness used for in WvW? To move. What is swiftness used for in sPvP? To move. Tell me a game mode where swiftness is a combat mechanic because it is used to increase movement. The name suggests it too. I mean it is called swiftness.

Keltach.8049:

Control isn’t needed if you’re just going to funnel them into a corner, why would you need to slow or even immobilize a target if you’re just going to keep then standing still in the first place or better yet just run past them.

Just cause you can’t use it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 5 Stacks of defiant clear it then have someone on your team CC to stop a strong attack then nobody has to dodge. Again if standing still and dps was all that is needed. Then accept my challenge. Record yourself and run through a path of every single dungeon. Full berserker. No dodges allowed. No active defenses allowed. No evades allowed. No blocks. Only dps skills may be used on top of your heal. Then come back to us with the results. I already know you will literally fail and die. But what you are saying now is that this challenge should be a cake walk since it is all about standing still, stacking, and dps. So go ahead try it and come back before saying that you actually know what it is like to play full berserker gear with specific trait set ups. Obvious you are very inexperienced.

Keltach.8049:

These two play styles don’t exist in dungeons, if you claim they do then you’re the one who clearly doesn’t know anything about this game out side of dungeons. People do go with the most damaging classes. Why else is the engineer so under played? Why else is the necro so underplayed? Both have useful utility skills, just not in the eyes of those who run dungeons. Necro wells can heal support and apply vulnerability rather well. Necros can also take conditions onto themselves and use them to either heal or buff him/herself to help improve dps.

A lot of other profession applies vulnerability. How is necro bringing anything unique to your group? Heal support isn’t needed (reasons are scattered across the forums). Necros take conditions which isn’t good. Guardians can do this. Light field then team whirls once and conditions are removed. Necro puts itself in danger to remove your teammates conditions. Guardians do this significantly better. So why place necro over guardian? Again what things does Necro bring uniquely to the group that is useful or better than someone else.

Well of Power. Not that great considering high CD versus the uptime of light field + whirl. Even water field from ranger heal or Staff Ele #5 does the job better. Boon isn’t that great since other professions can give you the targeted boons you need at the right time.

Well of Darkness. High CD and it is something thieves can do with ease. Why bring Necro for this when you can just bring a thief and do it significantly better.

Well of Corruption. Boons rarely exist on most bosses in the easy dungeons. Some of the boons that exist on bosses in the game have mechanics to remove them. HotW p1 final boss. CoE all paths golem boss.

Spectral skills aren’t good. Summons aren’t good either. Signets are high CD for any group utility. And most of them are just for your benefit.

Epidemic isn’t useful since either trash dies fast or you only have one boss which you spread conditions nowhere. Corrupt boon. Again boons aren’t that common plus it is single target so mostly for bosses. Blood is power your personal benefit only. Corrosive Poison Cloud self weakness? Nope just run Ele with glyph of elemental power. Significantly better. So only well of suffering for vuln which can be done by a lot of different professions. Even Engis do it significantly better.

Keltach.8049:

Man you guys are 100% right, lets advertise this in the next commercial for gw2 since this is the perfect way to run dungeons! In a world with vast dungeons, you will only experience the bare minimum of them due to our amazing speed clear system. We put all of the trash mobs with AI just for you to skip and ignore!

Name 10 trash mobs that have interesting mechanics. I doubt that you can they are just what they are called. Trash mobs with a ton of HP. That doesn’t mean them cool or interesting at all. How is stacking + LoS + dps experiencing bare minimums of a dungeon. Nothing interesting about trash. Bosses are where it is at and even then the bosses aren’t like OMG amazing.

Keltach.8049:

You can use any means necessary to skip these mobs including every ones favorite, glitching out of the map to completely avoid it!

Again name 10 glitches that are used. I highly doubt it unless you are talking about the Lupi skip exploits in Arah. Your definition of glitches is strange.

Keltach.8049:

never again will you have to be anything but dps as long as you run defensive utilities! Any who do not agree with this are punished via the community! Come play GW2 now! You guys are defending a highly toxic and elitist play style and turn around and call me toxic?

Define elitist. In turn your definition of elitist means you are an elitist too. You demand people play things your way otherwise playing their way is completely bad. What do you want from GW2 if not active defenses. Lets all range bosses from 1200 and watch episodes of Breaking Bad at the same time. Content is so much more fun that way

Keltach.8049:

I guess they just put the other sets in the game purely for pvp purposes only. I guess conditions were only meant to be a pvp only condition. I guess why would you need to reduce the healing of something if all you have to do is run pure dps gear with pure dps traits and rune defensive utilities.

This really shows your limited experience and understanding with the game. Different sets and builds are designed to be good at some places and not good at other places. Case in point: Decap Engi. On top of that tell me a boss in AC that has a significant heal. There isn’t any. Even if they did heal it won’t be like the boss heals every 2 seconds. Also, you are trading thief stealth (unique profession mechanic in the way thief does it) to have ZOMG poison which is something other professions have. On top of the fact that it isn’t needed.

Keltach.8049:

“Learn the game” is really all that you guys have been telling, all I’ve learned from this is that dungeoning is just a lost cause to any new player in this game. Since not only do they have to run berserker gear, they now also must know every single mechanic of the boss fights that they can not stack for, and if they can stack they better not break that stack or watch out, may hell rain down upon them.

Don’t like it then form your own party of like minded individuals. Is that a problem? Also, how much dungeon experience do you have. You are talking to people like me that have ran these dungeons hundreds if not thousands of times since the game was released. We know what we are talking about. You on the other hand have shown that you barely know much of anything.

Keltach.8049:

Totally you guys just know so much more about this game than I do, and also a necro isn’t often used because they’re primarily based around condition damage, their burst builds aren’t that great. Since conditions are rendered useless to the pure burst of power builds they’re automatically killed off.

Again this shows your basic knowledge of the game. Who said anything about condition damage? I specifically stated dps Necro meaning full berserker. Even then they are unwanted. Why? They have no group utility at all. Even if they do as much dps as say warriors they would still be unwanted. The reason is that they have no group utility and Warriors do.

Ohoni.6057:

In big zerg battles, most damage that a PVT can survive a Zerker could survive too, the stuff that takes you out is one-shot effects that don’t care what your stats are. In any case, the difficulty should still be based on personal skill, not on the average skill level of the mob. If you base it on the mob then it means that a player who is worthless can still get credit if the rest of the group is great, or a player that is great can still get nothing if the rest of the group is terrible, and neither is fair. ALL the “challenge” in the Blitz is in beating the boss skills, the whole coordinating six zergs elements is not “challenge,” it’s just something that works out for you or it doesn’t. You may as well roll a die when you enter a Pavillion map, on a 1-3 you get Bronze reward, 4-5 you get Silver, 6 you get Gold, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

There is not a lot of one shot stuff in this game you know. That is mostly a myth. It is called group play. If I am good but the other 4 players in my dungeon plain suck and we wipe. I should be rewarded for that right because I did really well. Or should group play require coordination and good play as a group to succeed. Again you are asking for solo play versus group play.

On top of that how can you reward a good player but yet don’t reward someone who isn’t bad. If you require little to no coordination then bad players will be rewarded because nothing special has to be done. If you add coordination so that bad players who play mindlessly don’t get rewarded and skilled players do then you consider that bad.

I stated coordination goes hand and hand with hard difficulty group play events. Never said blitz was difficult. In fact it is simple but people just refuse to do it.

Ohoni.6057:

Marionette is not terribly pug friendly. It had complex boss fight mechanics that relied on every platform succeeding, and in pugs, the chances of two or more failing was very high. It also often involved juggling players between lanes to maximize the odds. It was better than the Blitz in a lot of ways, but still had some serious issues for an uncoordinated mob.

Marionette was extremely easy. Boss fight mechanics weren’t that hard. Again people just played bad and didn’t read the description. I have seen people just straight up fail at dodging. There was information everywhere about it. JQ Main had good success rates. On top of that TTS easily beat Marionette with very little knowledge or experience with it. The same can’t be said of Wurm where TTS had to do it over and over again to get the mechanics and strategies down.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, don’t punish them for not cooperating, PREVENT them from being CAPABLE of not cooperating.

Why shouldn’t they be punished for not cooperating in a group based game/event. GW2 is an MMO. If you want to not cooperate and play like it is a single player then my suggestion to all of these people is to play Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, or Skyrim. It suits them more. Why ruin it for others? How can you force someone to listen? You can’t. You can’t prevent someone from being capable of not cooperating. But you can make it less rewarding to do so.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s why the game has scaling. If 20 people are on him, he’s hard enough for 15-20 people. If 30 are on him then he scales up. The mobs already do that, they just currently scale too aggressively, so that a 40 man zerg causes them to scale to be a challenge for a 60-man zerg.

Again you don’t understand the issue. Scaling won’t solve every problem. You can’t have perfect scaling since there are too many variable. Do you scale against all PTV? Scale against all DPS/Berserker? Scale against high number of necros? Guardians? Eles?

So designs should take this into consideration but then if you look at it if you design for large groups then it is hard for a small group to do it. If you design for a small group then it is trivial for a large group. No design is perfect.

TTS represents a failure of this game, not a success. Players should not need something like TTS to accomplish the same successes.

Under this logic, all guilds are useless. Dedicated WvW guilds? Failure to the game because you shouldn’t need something like that to accomplish success in WvW. sPvP dedicated guilds/teams. Failure of GW2. Pro GW2 teams? Failure of GW2 since you shouldn’t need these groupings to accomplish the same level of success. DnT, rT, SC for dungeons. Failure of this game. Shouldn’t need these dedicated speed running groups of like minded individuals to accomplish speed run level success. Specific guilds for guild missions like OwND? Failure of this game since you shouldn’t need something like a guild to have success in guild missions.

Ohoni.6057:

And again we go back to my initial point. They can try to change the zerg mechanics if they want, but this particular attempt was a poor way to do it. First, i they want to split the zerg, then they need to have better communication tools.

Again other features will come with time. That is another issue. You have access to tools to use. Yet you don’t use them. This event is very very basic yet people don’t try. People simply are lazy and don’t want to do what is needed. Plain and simple. You can have the most advanced UI or grouping but guess what the same people that are lazy will always be lazy. People that don’t communicate will not. Regardless if you drop them every form of communication possible.

Again you can have instanced but then the problem is that other instances are empty. Why do you think MegaServers were created. To solve the problem of being empty.

People teach others through map chat and other communication means. Other people are just lazy and don’t want to listen. Using math example it is like teaching variables. X + 3 = 10, solve for x. Now if you change that to X + 7 = 13 you should be able to solve that. People are already taught that Anet doesn’t want mindless zerging and that started with Tequ events. Then you have the Scarlet events. Basics are taught but people refused to do it. On top of that it clearly states gold rewards need to be done within x time. If you fail that would you redo it using zerg method again? It is like if you hit yourself against a wall would you run into that wall again clearly knowing what the result would be? Of course not that would be stupid. But guess what this is exactly what people do by continuously zerging.

They force players to split up. Not splitting up = bad rewards. Pretty obvious to me. You notice that when you zerg you can finish it within gold rewards (which is information located in the UI at the top right). Very obvious to me.

Ohoni.6057:

You clearly have been lucky enough to avoid any runs that imploded completely, with players giving up at 4/6 remaining, or with it taking so long that even after killing the last boss you don’t get the Bronze reward. Each is a possibility and each is out of any individual player’s hands. Neither would be the case if the boss scaling did not make for such a frustrating experience.

Because people don’t use their heads. That is ArenaNet’s fault how? If the boss doesn’t take damage and is healing. Wouldn’t your first logical thought be hey what is going on how can we stop it from healing. Or would a logical thought be hey lets just continue to zerg even though it is healing to full hp. It isn’t frustrating. What is frustrating is just plain bad players who play mindlessly.

Ohoni.6057:

And when we’re talking individual skills, tactical skills, the individual skills of each boss, that’s fine, but strategic skills should not be left so open to interpretation. The whole group should not fail because some of them refuse to learn the layout of the entire map.

Click on boss. Read boss description. How is that open to interpretation. Heal is heal. Group should fail if they don’t learn. That is the point of group play. If they don’t like feel free to go play a single player game like Skyrim. Even then those games punish you for not willing to learn and play better.

Keltach.8049:

Ok. Sure meta builds. Lets all build 1 way and ignore the rest of the trait system. You’re all 100% right that arena net wanted this game to just have speed ran dungeons where we use 0 aspects of this game combat.

Some traits are good for a specific game type some are not. Goes back to Decap Engi. Good in sPvP but not good anywhere else. It is designed like that for a reason. As for one build if you look at the profession builds most have more than one viable build.

Smoke field + blast = stealth. Used very often in high level play. Light field + whirl finisher = condition removal. Used often. If you want to take 2 hours+ to complete Arah be my guest. I for one don’t want to do that. Another interesting fact is if you don’t care about time and you don’t like skipping stuff then why not do fractals. They give you things you want. Why do normal dungeons and demand that it is built only to your liking? Alternatives do exist.

Keltach.8049:

Let’s all run zerker meta builds and take all thought out of pve dungeon content. Let’s all run cookie cutter builds because it is meta. Meta for life! is this really what this game has come to? Supporting mindless and brainless dungeon running?

I challenge you to run full berserker with meta trait lines and unbind your dodge key. You cannot use any form of active defense. All you get is dps + stack/LoS. Then go to do everyone dungeon and tell me how there is no thought or that it is mindlessly easy. I highly doubt that.

Keltach.8049:

I’m sorry but if this continues this game will get killed off. It’s amazing how a majority of the forum base supports this. So in turn I’m just wrong and you’re right because it’s how you all think it’s intended to be? Speed clearing tactics are supposed to be the normal way to run these specific paths only, and if we can’t speed clear this path there for we shall not run it.

PuGs barely use high level tactics, they use some. On top of that PuG runs are not even close to what speed runs are. They are just average. If you consider PuG runs fast then I don’t know what to say. Every game dungeons are done to gain some reward. And to get said reward at a decent rate people do the dungeons in certain ways. Speed clears exist in every game. Don’t like then find your own group. Just like others who want record runs. They get their own group.

Keltach.8049:

Man I guess I had the wrong idea about action based combat and being able to play how I want, man I must be so blind to what arena net really wanted dungeons to be. A dps fest of stacking in a corner so we can avoid any and all need to use any of the combat features in this game.

Again I challenge you to run max dps gear and use no active defenses. I highly doubt you will succeed or progress that far. If dps is the only thing that matters then this test will prove just that. If failure happens then it shows that there is more than just dps and people like you are omitting certain facts (intentionally or not). Play how you want doesn’t exist. Play as a team exist. This is an MMO not Skyrim. Want true play how you want? Play single player RPGs like Skyrim.

Keltach.8049:

Wow how could I have been so foolish, I better learn to play this game the way it’s intended to! Let me go rush off and buy pure dps gear right now so I can join in on this action packed fun! Man let me go on any post like this too and tell those people to learn to play like this amazing community has taught me!

Your responses show that you lack experience and understanding of the mechanics of the game. You don’t even know basic profession mechanics for all 8 professions. Yet you come here talking as if you know everything and trying to prove others wrong when you do not have the correct framework or understanding of the game.

Keltach.8049:

Might as well just tell them they’re trolling and that their post should just be ripped off of the forums too because it’s not the way the game is meant to be played! Let’s all be meta guys! Man I wasted so much time attempting to figure out the dodge mechanic, trying to see what combo finishers I could use in certain situations, and to attempt to see how long I could control or even when controlling would be needed. Thanks guys for showing me the way!

Support exist. Control exist. Active defenses exist. You are just doing it wrong. Also, if dps is the only thing that matters why is Necro never used. They do decent dps. Why not go 3 eles 2 thieves if dps is all that matters. Maybe because there is something called group utility. Again your post shows a complete lack of understanding of the game. I highly doubt I would be wrong if I think you are a completely new player.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Read the patchnotes Curtoky. It’s not about the Gauntlet Chances, it’s about the festival tokens and the boss blitz.

Yeah which I doubt was a bug fix. More like they realized how bad the events were and that people stop doing them so they upped the rewards. But called it as a bug fix is just plain funny

zenleto.6179:

Looks like they do listen.

CuRtoKy.8576:

No no they weren’t buffed. It was a bug lololol :P

Love how fixing a mistake = bug fix now lmao

Its an adjustment, not a bug fix.

It was a joke :<

I’m saying for the notes they have it all under “Bug Fixes”

No no they weren’t buffed. It was a bug lololol :P

Love how fixing a mistake = bug fix now lmao

jazzllanna.1278:

So what are the chances that if there was a bug we will get back the bags we opened already?

zero

Keltach.8049:

That brings up the issue of build diversity then does it not? That because these aren’t giving out the most burst dps possible it is there for not wanted. So by this logic if I wanted to dungeon as a thief i better only pick traits that will A) improve my stealth durations and B ) give me the most burst damage. Then if they improved the other play styles of the thief and made them more rewarding, that would get rid of the whole issue of having some mobs not being able to get stealth past. The tnt is a great example of intended to be skipped mobs, i agree with that, but what about the ones standing still that you just run or stealth past, what about those in small corridors that we do the same thing to?

Not all play styles are going to be viable in every game mode. That is an impossible task. Decap engi is good in sPvP but if you take that exact build and put it in WvW or PvE you will find that it is lacking. Certain things are simply good in certain areas of the game and not others.

DPS isn’t the only thing that matters. Necros do decent damage using a dps build. But they are completely unwanted because they lack the group utilities that other classes have. Then we have mesmer which has some useful team utilities (portal, time warp, and reflects). However, their dps is low. Reflects can be done by guardians. Time Warp only makes up for the fact that mesmers have low dps. So in a way if you don’t maximize portal usage then you would find that guardians are much better than mesmer. This is what will happen if you take away a core thief mechanic. Bleeds? Well other professions can do that as well why bring a thief specifically for that. Poison? what is the purpose? You are asking for a core mechanic on a profession to be useless. And in return you say said profession will still be viable because it has X, Y, and Z even though everyone other professions have that + more. Mesmer is a perfect example.

Thief brings blind which is amazing for non boss fights.

Parties have 5 slots. There are 8 professions. Some professions are simply better than others for a given situation or game mode. Nothing will change that. And these professions will get a spot out of the 5 party spots over other professions.

Again Arah is a big area. Look at the placement of the mobs. It was designed to be skipped since you can move out of aggro range or not get aggro in the first place. For mobs in the way if you don’t have to fight them why would you? It goes back to this. If you have a mission and you can stealth past it then why wouldn’t you. If you want to make it easier you might take out specific guards. But would you clear the whole area? Nope.

Yes, but my point is that they do a bad job of explaining that to the players, otherwise you wouldn’t SEE zergs trying to train it. Players don’t want to play bad, if you show them how to do it right, they will do it right. If you teach them over two years to do it wrong, they will do it wrong.

Players play bad regardless. Example is Marionette which as a PuG friendly event is much better than any other event. Yet people still fail or refused to play as a team. Bad players will always be bad players. The point is to get them to stop doing that. Stop encouraging them to do certain things. You see zergs because people are lazy or don’t want to listen. You can put the most advanced designs in and people will still be lazy or they won’t listen unless you punish them for not cooperating. Gotta start somewhere.

I explained the system above. It could be an attunement system in which the players in each slice was carefully tracked. It would start off only allowing 5 people into each slice until each was 80% full, then allow 10 per slice, and so on. This would guarantee that if there were only 27 people in the zone, then 4 people would be in each slice with three of them having 5, if there were 83 people in the zone then there would be at least 12 people per slice and no more than 15. Each slice would scale based on that number. As people died they could return to their slice or join a different slice if there was room.

Still would fail like Marionette even after 4 weeks. Problem 1: scaling. If you design a boss to be challenging at 40 man groups then smaller groups will have problems. If you design a boss to be challenging at 20 man groups then large groups would make it trivial.

Second it doesn’t change how players will play bad or wouldn’t coordinate. Sure you balance out the system for a thing like boss blitz but you limit the mechanics you can have. There are 10 in each shard for example. But if you don’t coordinate against the mechanics then you should fail regardless. The only way you wouldn’t need coordination is if the mechanics or simple. Which really why make this system. Since you can just change the scaling instead of wasting all of this resource.

The problem though, is not whether I can split groups, but whether enough OTHER players can split groups, and the fact that if they can’t, then I am punished for it. If 99% of the players in the instance decide to zerg, and I decide to run off and solo one of the other bosses, that really doesn’t do anything for me.

No the problem is if players are willing to do what is needed to succeed with the means and tools they are given. Other features will come over time. But that doesn’t mean that it should be an excuse not to organize and play better. TTS shows that you can. People are just lazy and in general don’t want to work as a team in a game that is an MMO strangely enough.

It is the same with players in dungeon lfgs. They simply don’t read and when they come in and you talk to them they say nothing. Until down the line later when everyone is frustrated because said individual is not doing what they need to be doing and leading the group to wipe.

No amount of design can save the simple fact that people want to play Skyrim in GW2.

Ohoni.6057:

But they are still the core gameplay mechanic for 99% of open world content in this game, and have been so for two years now.

Just because that is the status quo doesn’t mean that is the way it should be. Under that argument nothing will change because things are this way for a long period of time.

In a sense, but GOOD harder content does not require failure to teach. That is, if difficult content is well designed, you shouldn’t have to fail it to figure out what you did wrong, much less fail it several times (or look it up online). Good difficult content teaches you AS you play, so that you can recover and win. You might die a few times and have to run back, but you shouldn’t receive nothing for the event.

Each boss has information under their HP bar. At the top right corner there is information for gold reward: X time remaining for gold reward. How in any way would you receive nothing for the event. Event starts, you split up into 6 groups. Each group take cares of their boss. If someone dies then they run back to their group they were assigned to. If they finish they just wait for everyone else. Then everyone else gets the reward. I fail to understand your logic of how people will receive nothing for the event.

Good games teaches you basic gameplay mechanics. It is your job to use those tools (knowledge, skill, active play, coordination, utilities, traits, and weapon skills) to maximize your success. Everyone you need to succeed is already there. People just refuse to use it. How would you make boom boom boss show everything. There is information under the hp bar. You look around and pay attention instead of mindless zerg. And on the top right it gives you information in terms of rewards. Then on top of that you have map chat to communicate. Refusal to use what is in game doesn’t mean something is bad.

I think difficulty should be measured in how often YOU die, not in whether the event in total fails or not. I think that when you have events that require dozens of players to cooperate, they should almost never fail, everyone should always get a reward, the difference between doing it skillfully and doing it lazily should be defined by how often you die, and by how long the event takes to complete. The better players die less, and the better zergs complete the event faster (giving them more time to do other stuff).

Yes and no. If someone is in PTV and never dies and is able to tank mistakes does that mean content is difficult or said player is good/skilled? No. Simply dying isn’t a measure of anything by itself. If you make it so that there is no fail then there is no reward for playing better or coordinating better. You instead encourage zerging. Being lazy in PTV versus being lazy in berserker. Big difference. Being lazy on staff guardian versus another profession. Being lazy range versus being lazy melee. These are not all equal to each other and dying in one case versus not in another is not representative of anything related to skill or difficulty.

Vol.7601:

They were asked about the recipe on the livestream.

They said that they are going to look at it.

Take it for what you want, but I still don’t know what people have these super high buy orders.

There was a stream today? o.o

since the page is bugged :< some day they have to fix that.

Exhibit A:

I’ve never played an mmo where you skip almost every single trash mob just to get to the end boss faster……to make it so that you cant just skip the mass majority of the instance…..skipping almost all of the instance destroys any need for support build and control builds…..

Exhibit B:

…..so every one should use the same abilities because it is the best way to bum rush past all of the mobs….

Keltach.8049:

People keep assuming i’m saying ALL mobs should have it when I’ve clearly only said some

Not what you said to me. You have to kill some stuff in most of the dungeons anyhow. Arah? How about the trash mobs before Lupi or those spiders before p1 ooze boss? How about spiders at the beginning of p2 or the mobs at the beginning of p3. If you aren’t saying all mobs then what? Because mobs are killed just not all of them from point A to point B. But again that isn’t your point if you set the framework as “make it so you can’t skip the mass majority of the instance”. Mass majority means almost all of it running from point A to point B right? Because if it isn’t and your complaint is that no trash is ever killed then that is wrong. For most PuGs there are stuff that gets kill in different dungeons and paths as you are moving from point A to point B. Some are required events and some are not.

Keltach.8049:

thieves can bring a poison share support build to groups, they can also controll or bring strong aoe bleed damage builds to take out that trash. Also it seems a lot of the people who don’t agree with me are basically just saying “learn to play.” Also it seems a lot of people who don’t agree with me just demand my post gets taken down and i get perma banned from the forums. If every single bit of arah trash is actually meant to be skipped that’s fine, then that’s working intentionally. For those actually putting meaningful replies thank you. If you don’t agree with what i’m saying, weather you find it ranty or not, at least explain why instead of just stating “learn to play”

Do you play thief? Poison accomplishes what? If that is all a thief is going to bring if you nerd stealth then that is really weak. At that point you rather just bring something else. Again what is the point of poison and what does it accomplish?

Strong AoE bleeds uhhh what? If that is the case just bring Warrior with bleed trait and they would do significantly better than thief on SB #2. I mean you can go grenade/bomb kit Engi with the bleed on crit trait and that would still be better than SB #2 spam thief. On top of that dps rangers and necros bring bleed on crit traits. So why carry a thief if they are adding things other professions do on top of doing other things?

People say learn to play because based on your post it seems like you have a limited understanding of the issues at hand. As a result, what you are trying to say is completely off base or unrealistic.

Arah trash is meant to be skipped if it wasn’t that dungeon would take a pretty long time. Plus look how they have a TNT switch to kill a bunch of mobs. If that wasn’t intended iono what is. On top of the fact that Arah is big and that trash groups are placed in certain areas. Why do that when the area is big enough that you can avoid them. This shows that trash is intended to be skipped when you don’t need to kill them to proceed.

Have a system where you have MegaServers but a UI where you can join/create other server instances.

I run 6/6/0/0/2 and usually I swap my utilities depending on the fractal I am on.

Glyph of Storms is very useful on earth attunement if your team needs an AoE blind for trash. Glyph of Elemental Power on air attunement is useful for boss fractals. The weakness combined with protection on Hammer Guardian gives your team a lot of damage mitigation. Dropping an ice bow for corner for #4 with LoS or even ice bow #5 a boss.

For Elite you have FGS which helps you and another teammate. You can also use Glyph of Elementals which gives a boost in DPS or you can roll an earth elemental to tank hits for your team.

timmyf.1490:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Types of prestige
There are several types of prestige,

-“I was there prestige”: These are attendance rewards usually with some also having to be earned, they show you played back then or that you participated in a limited time event. Most living story skins used to fall into this category. Is destroyed by re-releasing the item by any means as the statement is no longer valid.

-“Skill prestige”: These would be items such as the tribulation mode weapons and Liadri they not only require you to play a certain activity but to do it to a high level of skill. Care has to be taken with these as power creep or an exploit can wipe out all their value in an instant.

- “Investment prestige”: These are items that take a large amount of resources be it time or money to complete and make a general statement about your playtime and choice of activity. Is wrecked by deflation/inflation or awarding of a previously high investment item for a low investment activity.

Requoted because relevant. All three types of these should exist to allow players with different goals and styles of play to acquire items with prestige.

Couldn’t the last two be combined together. Skill based is also an investment. You invest time and money (since you aren’t doing something else like farming) to practice and increase your skill level to get something.

The value of certain things should differ but I don’t think sole investment based items should exist because it isn’t good for the game over the long term. The other two are perfectly fine

Morrigan.2809:

CuRtoKy.8576:

Easy solution is to make prestige items skill based and then have them only for permanent content instead of temporary content. That way if someone gets it then it has value since you needed skill to do something to get it. On top of that it isn’t impossible for others to get it eventually over time or it isn’t gated through RNG (look at new back piece as an example). So people can attempt to get this through practice rather than just simply being on GW2 at the right time and getting something (living story) or just being plain lucky (recipe: chaos of lyssa).

Problem with that is, barring Liadri mini- all skill based rewards are RNG

Which is why they need to move in that direction instead of time gate (temp living story) + RNG based rewards which nobody likes.

Rennoko.5731:

Vol.7601:

For all those people who are putting up +1000G buy orders, you guys are going to be hit hard and waste money. All it takes is Anet to do a quick hotfix or even one patch to adjust the price. When Final Rest was fixed, the first sell listings were in the 3-4 figures and dropped in less than a day to 2 figures.

The same will happen to this recipe when Anet fixes it, which I’m confident will happen.

Unless you play 24/7 and can immediately remove your listing once the patch notes hit, I suggest to use that 1000g elsewhere.

Anet will never let an item this exclusive rise to outrageous prices unless they gave everyone a fair chance at acquiring them. Right now the chance is no where near fair, so they will adjust that.

If your looking for a good example, I think you can remember the Molten Backpack, which did not have a high drop rate (higher than this by quite a large margin though), but it was far less accessible as it required a full dungeon run plus having a group of 5 etc.

That was an exclusive item that some people (solo people for instance) had no shot at. Even an abysmal drop rate from the guantlet is more accessible to those people than the jetpack was. And then it was gone a few weeks later never to return (yet).

This back item looks pretty awesome, I wouldn’t be suprised at all if they didn’t change anything around the drop rate, and were satisfied with only a handful coming out. (sub 100) over the course of the event.

Actually Jetpack was better because doing the dungeon net you other rewards that made it worth your time. QG you can do like hundreds upon hundreds of fights and you end up with garbage. Like not even half decent stuff that you got in the molten facility. Sure it wasn’t the best farm at the time but at least you get something for your effort. QG is like pretty much getting no drops so like everything you do is just a complete waste of time and if you get lucky then yay 1000+g otherwise you are just losing money every time you are doing QG. For the molten facility sure it is no 10g/hr farm. However, at least by completing it you get some items that you can sell for money or save and on top of that you get a roll at the rare items (jetpack and the mini).

The QG recipe is like the worst drop in the game. By comparison fused weapons were 100x easier to obtain than the recipe: chaos of lyssa and those fused weapons are items. And looking at that we all know what happened after that release, Anet moved to what we have today with black lion tickets. QG recipe is like 100 steps back in terms of rewards.

Exclusive item gated through time + RNG is simply bad. If it was gated through extremely hard permanent content then yeah sure I would not mind.

Easy solution is to make prestige items skill based and then have them only for permanent content instead of temporary content. That way if someone gets it then it has value since you needed skill to do something to get it. On top of that it isn’t impossible for others to get it eventually over time or it isn’t gated through RNG (look at new back piece as an example). So people can attempt to get this through practice rather than just simply being on GW2 at the right time and getting something (living story) or just being plain lucky (recipe: chaos of lyssa).

Zok.4956:

I think your example is.

How so? I think you are wrong and I set out to say why.

And if every of the six groups already has the optimal size, other players should stay away or the fight takes longer because of the upscaling of the bosses.

So other players that come to the map (the 40 from the first example….) should wait AFK at the waypoint and get nothing? Of course they want to help take down the bosses and they do and split randomly because there is no tool (instead of the language-filtered and therefore unreliable chat) that they can see fast if and were help is needed.

Communication is key. People not communicating and get punished isn’t the fault of ArenaNet it is the fault of the player not asking. It is like going to WvW and taking supply from your keep when you aren’t suppose to. Your excuse is that you were just helping. You should have asked if you can or not. At the very least communicate in chat. Not communicating doesn’t excuse you from the bad actions you have taken. This is an MMO, you should ask what you need to do to be successful if that is your true intentions. At the very least make that effort. Too often people do not make that effort. It can be PvE like champion trains, boss blitz for QP. It can be dungeons where when you ask if someone is new they don’t say a single word until they wipe like 3 times.

You have to donate to heal-o-tron to start the event. Often you have to coordinate what to do if people actually care (which is far from the case). 40 people does not suddenly show up. Maybe like a few people that manage to get into the map. But you can’t realistically say that you have seen a map where all of the sudden mid boss blitz like 40 people port into your QP map. Doesn’t happen. So it means the 40 that are actually there already. In that case they should be punished for failing to properly coordinate to complete the event with lower rewards.

You aren’t helping in an MMO if you don’t communicate. I can’t read minds but at the very least I’m willing to use whatever means of communication given to me to try to be successful which often for PuGs is not the case (past events have shown this).

That does not confirm anything and was not denied by me.
Gold was mostly done when most of the players on the map were highly centrally organized before the Event started (like from the same guild) and had the same goal (kill bosses and not kill-50 mobs) and spoke/wrote the same language (so that the chat-filter did not prevent coordination).

A player who wants to “kill 50 mobs for achievement” fast has the same right to do so as a player who wants do take down the six bosses fast. But these to groups/goals mostly do not mix very well. And no group can force the other group to do what they want. It is the game mechanis that puts these different player groups/goals on the same map and created the achievements/rewards and therefore it is the fault of the game mechanics/design.

Greetings.

You have a time window to get gold rewards. How do you accomplish that? Definitely not bashing your face on your keyboard and just going wherever. You need a strategy. How do you form said strategy? You coordinate. How do you coordinate? You use whatever means of communication that is available to you. This is experience from NA if you are from EU then feel free to state so in your own points because what you are saying doesn’t make sense from an NA perspective.

50 kills is not an excuse. If you need to do something the whole map is not doing then be respectful and go to a different map. If you use that as an excuse not to do boss blitz properly or coordinate when that is what people want then you are the most toxic player on the map. You are saying my wishes are more important than what the other 20, 30, or 40 people want to do on the map. Anet could make it instanced but you know what the complaint would be. QP is too empty. Same reason why MegaServers were created in the first place.

It is the fault of the player. Too often people make those excuses. Like dungeon LFGs. People go into groups without even reading LFGs. Why because these people don’t care. They don’t read chat. They don’t communicate. They play an MMO like it is a single player game like Skyrim. That is the problem. No amount of design changes can change the mentality of these players. All I hear are excuses yet my experiences in game with these people are that they don’t even try. I try: map chat, whisper, say chat. No response. This exist in all game types. So yes these players should be punished until they get the message that “hey this is an MMO maybe you should at least attempt to play it like so”.

Good day sir!

Silberfisch.3046:

Some might want to skin me alive for this advive, but if you are still learning the ropes you can try 5/6/0/3/0 to begin with.
Yes, you lose some damage that way, but the endurance return of the acrobatics master tier minor trait can make a lot of difference as far as staying on your feet is concerned.
Once your comfortable enough, go to 5/6/0/0/3 or 6/6/0/0/2.

I think 5/6/0/0/3 is better if you are starting since you are using signet heal so vigor on heal wouldn’t be that great since you have to pop your heal. The minor in trickery is better since you can use that 3 extra initiative for evades on Death Blossom or Pistol Whip (which heals you and stuns too). If you really need an extra dodge just pop your signet of agility since it refills your endurance. Top that off with blind fields and I think the extra 3 initiative would help newer players more than getting 15 endurance back from a dodge.

Elementalist. Very active playing style and they are useful and playable in PvE and WvW. sPvP you can just create a character and it is max level 80 so there is that.

Zok.4956:

Just to tag a boss and then go away/AFK to let others do the “work” is normally considered a rude/bad/unwantend behaviour.

An open-world game mechanic, that requires and supports this behaviour is wrong.

It isn’t because you are suppose to split up equally between 6 areas. And each group is in charge of 1/6 bosses. This is different from say a world boss where everyone’s job is to kill that one boss.

It is like WvW. You can zerg but if it is better for you to take a tower then go somewhere else or back that isn’t bad or wrong behavior. In fact it is called strategy.

Zok.4956:

The game mechanic should always value and honor in open-world scenarios, that/when players want to help and play with others and do not go AFK.

So in this case, the game mechanics should be changed.

Greetings.

Your point is wrong. In open world when you are fighting say Fire Elemental and someone tags and then afks that is bad. QP is different. You have groups going to different areas to kill a boss. Say you kill one faster and you aft that is different. Since you participated and help out during the event as it was designed. You did your job helping kill 1/6 bosses. Nothing needs to be changed. People’s mentality needs to be changed.

On top of that you can coordinate to kill all 6 bosses at almost the same time. Which has been done already.

Ohoni.6057:

The law of averages. If you design content to work for large groups, then you design it on the assumption that a certain portion of them will completely kitten it up, but that the rest will figure it out.

If you design it properly then the mechanics will become obvious enough over a short amount of time, such as the Ogre Birdseed mechanic, which I figured out for myself on the first day and spread to the other players (several of whom likely also figured it out themselves). We won that boss fight, but lost the encounter because we had played the game how ANet had trained us to over two years, by grouping together and taking each threat out one at a time.

If you design it properly then the punishments, and the reasons for it, are obvious to the user, and without having to be told, or trial and error it, players would know automatically “this event has too many people at it, some of us should leave, but we will still receive full rewards for completing it.”

Yes and no. Depends on difficulty. Harder content = less room for error. Easier content = more room for error. It is like running full zerk dps Ele versus something with a bit more passive defense. More passive defense means more room for error.

My original reply was to you saying that you want difficult content but less coordination required which I find borderline impossible since some mechanics have to be simpler or dumbed down in order to increase the margin of error in case people mess up.

Trial and error are part of the game. How did people figure out what is good in dungeons for over a year now. Trial and error. Mathematical analysis (dps and such). It is part of the game. It states it clearly in the top right that you have x time remaining for gold reward. Like iono how it cannot be any more obvious. The problem is simply people don’t want to listen.

And while QP last year didn’t bother me, I don’t mind the mechanics changes to this years either, EXCEPT for the scaling issues. I’m not complaining that they gave the bosses more unique effects to worry about, I don’t think anyone is, I’m complaining that they ALLOW the entire map to zerg a single boss, but harshly PUNISH players for doing so, by making them scale to take ten minutes or more each if you let them scale up like that. They should either NOT allow it, or NOT punish players for zerging it, I really don’t care which, but I am by no means advocating that they nerf the bosses’ unique mechanics or allow players to “spam 1” to complete it.

Scaling issues exist last year. The only difference is that you were rewarded for zerging it. This year if you zerg a boss then your rewards will suffer.

They punish players for doing something incorrectly. The point of the event is not to zerg the point is to split up. If you don’t punish players for zerging it then you are by definition allowing people to zerg without consequences. Not allowing over X amount of players to join a side looks great on paper but poses some problems. How can you guarantee certain numbers on each side. And how will scaling work if you have less than a full map to split into 6 areas.

Keltach.8049:

It seems that this thread has become an attack the original poster for his thoughts instead of a discussion. I’m sorry I don’t find it normal to skip every single trash pack in this game, if you find it fun that’s more power to you.

You are demanding the game be catered towards your style of play.

Keltach.8049:

Every one keeps throwing the term “unneeded” where did I say kill off a class? You cant stealth past a certain trash pack there for thieves are now unneeded? What kind of logic is that? there are plenty of mmo games out there that have mobs like that, and the rogue archetype is still popular in many of them.

Popular =/= good. It can be fun but still suck. Define what you are saying. How can removing stealth still make thief good or why are rogues good? Also, we are talking about GW2. One of the core things thieves bring to the table is stealth. You originally said there should be mobs that see through stealth. This would make thief less valuable as a class since stealth a core mechanic on thief is useless. Then you have the choice of running thief or something else. It is like Mesmer. Guardians can reflect like Mesmer. Mesmer have lower dps than Guardians but have TW to try to make it up. The big thing for Mesmer is portal. Now if you don’t use portal what reason would you have to bring Mesmer instead of Guardian which is superior right now. Parties have 5 slots and not everything is going to be included. If Guardian can do everything a mesmer can and guardians can do it better why pick mesmer. If you remove a thief’s usefulness like stealth they will have less value as a pick for a group. How is that not killing a class by removing the usefulness of core profession mechanics?

Keltach.8049:

Just because “a lot” of them are meant to be skipped, that does not mean all or only the ones I have to if there isn’t a way around. Also I didn’t know it was parasitic to start a discussion in the discussion forum? When did that appear in the forum rules? Also the “utilizing abilities” part, so every one should use the same abilities because it is the best way to bum rush past all of the mobs? Also can you link where the devs posted that most trash mobs are meant to be skipped if such a post exists?

Thank god you aren’t a developer for this game either

How is everyone using the same abilities? Last I check every profession has different ones. If it is the best way to succeed then yes use that. Trying to be unique just for the sake of being unique is bad it should be do whatever it takes to succeed (team plays).

The question becomes, why is there a need to kill a trash mob then? It is part of the dungeon design. If someone created a map for an FPS game. Your objective is to enter this complex and retrieve something. The complex has 4 entrances. You can completely stealth through it and it takes skill (Metal Gear Solid style). Or you can remove some enemies at one entrance and enter there. But why would anyone in their right mind go out of the way to take out guards on all 4 entrances when it isn’t needed. This is what you are asking people to do. You are suggesting that people should go out of their way to kill things that they don’t really need to do. Like why?

Ohoni.6057:

That’s not a challenge, that’s just either something that will work, or not. It’s like flipping a coin. If you have players around you that are willing and able to cooperate strategically, then it will work. If you don’t, it won’t. There’s nothing you can do about it, so there’s no challenge involved.

There is a challenge. Wurm for example. You can have simple strategies and complex strategies. No boss mechanic will make something difficult yet require no coordination. Since complex difficult mechanics in open world by nature requires everyone to play well and specifically play well with others. If someone making a mistake doesn’t matter how can a mechanic be hard/difficult since if you make a mistake it won’t matter.

This idea only applies in solo play which GW2 does not have.

Ok. Try that then. Get six well coordinated teams to split up perfectly evenly. Then, just stand in front of the Blitz bosses, and remove all fingers from the controls except for one jamming “1”. See how well you do, I can wait. . .

I would posit that this strategy would be unlikely to succeed, coordination or no. I would posit that the REAL challenge in these fights is to recognize the boss-unique mechanisms and to overcome them, largely through clever ability use and dodging.

You just proved my point. QP last year was doable just spamming 1 this year it isn’t and it require coordination. You need to coordinate a strategy.

If you remove coordination then that means you need to make the bosses easier in some way to account for the fact that you can’t coordinate so if someone makes a mistake then it won’t affect you. So how is removing coordination possible when you want hard content unless it is solo instance. At some level you have to coordinate otherwise you have to dumb things down (lower hp, easier mechanics) because you have to account for the fact that everyone is playing for themselves (zero coordination) and that if someone makes a mistake then it shouldn’t affect anyone else who is playing well. If a person’s mistake affects other people’s success that means coordination is required either to complete the content or to the highest reward. So no matter how unique a mechanic is it requires coordination in open world unless it is for solo play which in that case it needs to be instanced.

chaosdeity.6287:

Otherwise, I do agree generally with OP to an extent about dungeons needing a revamp, but those are completely different reasons. I too have never played a game where the most optimal path involves borderline exploits or blatant memorization of enemy spawn patterns in order to completely bypass those encounters, due to the time investment/reward ratio for this game is way off (several other conversations, not going there).

How is it an exploit? Is it an exploit to funnel mobs into a narrow hallway and stack AoEs and kill them all? Is it an exploit to use a core profession mechanic to accomplish something (e.g. thief stealth). Is it an exploit to pull the entire room into one spot and AoE bomb it to clear.

How is it bad to memorize things in games. Have you seen the speed run of old games like Mario. Part of that is skill and part of that is memorizing what you have to do. Why is that bad? If you don’t like it may I suggest PvP (sPvP or WvW). Even then you memorize or at least know your own rotations and what to do against certain professions. You memorize tells and such. You can’t expect PvE to be completely different every second it is scripted. So after doing it for a while everyone will memorize things.

chaosdeity.6287:

Dungeons need to be reworked so they are more fun, allow for more build diversity (almost every dungeon has a DPS check, hence the popularity of ice bow, this allows any character with it to dramatically increase their output temporarily). And of course some of the longer dungeons deserve higher rewards in gold to keep pace with the rate of inflation in the game economy.

But hey, buy moar gems..

Define fun. I find it fun to skip and dps really high while having to pay attention to use active defensive properly. DPS is the main thing in everything. You take out bosses. A boss’ health isn’t going down without damage. In the same way, a zerg ball in WvW isn’t going down without someone doing damage to that zerg. And in the same light, if you want to take out someone on a cap point you have to kill them hence doing damage to take out the threat.

Ice bow is working as intended. That is what conjures are for. They are used to give someone else a different set of abilities that help them do something. What do you suggest Ice Bow should do that wouldn’t make it useless.

Your final comment suggest to me that you only care about what you said. So what if people buy gems that is their choice. Why are you forcing your own definition of what is good onto other people?

Lamir.6702:

The method of acquisition is absolutely awful. A few lucky lottery winners will get it just like precursors. Why couldn’t it be something like trade in 500 Gauntlet tokens (Example) for the recipe? Everything locked behind mindless RNG for which there are clear winners and far more losers is really depressing.

Yes on top of the fact that it was temporary. If it was for some permanent event then at least you have a chance to get it (doesn’t mean it is good still) when you continue to play the game.

Ohoni.6057:

Unfortunately, there are people that don’t actually want to play this game. Pressing one is playing the game for them. They complain when they have to actually do work. I do not understand this.

God, why does this keep coming up?

NOBODY WANTS “PRESS 1” GAMEPLAY.

Nobody. You are arguing to nobody, because nobody is arguing against you. That is not what is happening here. Nobody wants that.

Nobody.

The topic under discussion is the zerg, the grouping of all available players in a single mass to accomplish a task, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the skills that are asked of that group once it has been assembled.

Nobody is asking for even a slight reduction in challenge, just a reduction in the need for coordination between a bunch of players that don’t know each other and don’t care to.

Actually that is the challenge having to work together to accomplish something. Not having it would make it easier since any mechanic that requires you to play or coordinate together is what makes it hard. If you aren’t required to do something extra it just comes down to dps which is what every zerg living story event in the past year.

Sir Black.7423:

“Don’t zerg it”
Sure, let me just ask the other 40 players in the area to go idle in the center of the map while 5 of us take down the boss. I’m sure that’ll work…

If people can’t figure it out then that is too bad. The 40 should realize that they already got credit for the other bosses and that they aren’t helping. On top of the fact that if they join they get either lower rewards or it takes a longer time for them to get their rewards. In no way would anyone who actually thinks would say yes I want it to take longer so I get worse rewards. Mechanics shouldn’t change, players should.

Sir Black.7423:

“It’s like saying all raid mechanics are bad”
The mechanic would be fine in an instanced dungeon/raid scenario where you can control who comes. But as usual, we can’t.
This boss run would potentially make an interesting guild mission with organized parties. For a disorganized mass of players it’s just tedious.

People should learn to play better. The game has been out for over a year yet the same people play badly all the time. I rather see these people fail hard constantly and have harder content then have content dumbed down just because people don’t take the time to actually think and play better for something really simple.

Keltach.8049:

I’ve also never seen an mmo where you can reflect the boss’s giant downing aoe and for that to be considered “knowing how to play.”

It is since you are countering a boss mechanic. Counters exist in a lot of games from single player RPGs to MMORPGs.

Keltach.8049:

Also I’ve never see an mmo where speed clearing is the NORMAL way of playing through the games dungeon content.

LFG PuGs aren’t considered speed clearing. If you are lucky you get like 25-30 minute arah. Speed is like 15 minute arah paths or faster for a coordinated group. That is about half the time you would find in a PuG. Your idea of what is “speed” is clearly off. On top of that every MMO out there people are trying to farm and maximize the frequency of their rewards. Hence speed is always a factor whether you are aware of it or not it exist in other games.

Keltach.8049:

The new trinity, the active mitigation, and the freedom to play any way you want are great. How ever, that last one is completely killed off currently in the dungeon scene, even if you run with a guild group, but I’ll get into that later.

You are in the wrong guild then. You can’t expect everything to fit you perfectly. If the guild isn’t for you then consider finding another one. But saying that the dungeon scene is killed off when you didn’t even try to find a group of individuals who play like you is just bad.

Keltach.8049:

Then on top of that, we find the “sweat spot” so that we take the least amount of damage and the least amount of movement to capitalize on melee dps, since it is currently the highest dps in the game.

First of all staff Ele camp fire attunement on say 6/6/0/0/2. There is a reason range weapons aren’t that great for the most part. On top of that, using the environment and finding areas where you can effectively engage something or pull something exist in other games. It can be a hallway where you aggro enemies to and just AoE bomb. I don’t see anything different really.

Keltach.8049:

The new holy trinity that GW2 introduced has now been completely killed off by this style of play. Now it’s just the straight line of burst dps via berserker gear. We can no longer play how we want if we want to do dungeons, we HAVE to play the way a select group of players have decided to be the best way.

The attitude of playing how you want is really bad. GW2 is all about team play. And that requires you to play as a team even if it means using something you don’t want. If you were playing by yourself and your actions don’t affect anyone then sure play how you want. An example of a game where you can play how you want is Skyrim.

Berserker is gear with dps stats. That doesn’t mean if you play say DPS guardian with GS + Sword/Focus you only do damage. You are doing much more with defensive and support abilities as well.

Keltach.8049:

This ties back in to what’s wrong with the dungeon scene currently, skipping almost all of the instance destroys any need for support build and controll builds, making them primarily a pvp only play style…

What kind of support are you looking for? We have things like blinds, aegis, reflects, projectile absorption, might, protection, stability, and condition removals. This is support is it not. And it is used quite often. There is control but people don’t know how to maximize it in PuGs. Ice bow #5 on the ooze boss in Arah p1? How about control on Shoggroth in Arah p1? How about removing the defiant stacks and holding your CCs until the boss does a strong attack that you can interrupt for your team so they have some extra dps time. Just because PuGs can’t accomplish this doesn’t mean control or support doesn’t exist in GW2.

How does changing Lupi phase 2 change skip. Skips will happen anyhow. Plus if we start this for Lupi then should we just change every boss mechanic in the game just because there are ways for us to counter it?

Not sure but good thieves are always loved for their stealth to skip. Not sure why you want to remove that because you are removing a core thief mechanic just to try to promote some gameplay or style you want which I am not sure what it is since you didn’t state it at all.

Certain builds and style of play are only good in specific game modes. Decap Engi is great in sPvP but the same build wouldn’t work in WvW or PvE. The reason is that it is based on the game mode. You can’t have a game mode where everything works equally where every style is equal. Some builds or play styles are just better in certain game modes. That is the reality of gaming.