Guild Wars 2

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Guardian: Offensive buffer, Healer, block tank, projectile management.

Engineer: Debuffer, high CC and immobilization, Healer, buffer, combo field user/finisher, extremely versatile miscellaneous utility (capable of fulfilling any role to a satisfactory extent)

Ranger: Rage magnet (seriously though, I don’t know much about rangers)

I would say guardian plays quite well defensively too, with their consecrations and shouts, they can really plant themselves in one spot and survive just about anything, while providing an assortment of boons to their entire party. I currently have three different guardians due to not enjoying many other classes, but I think their strongest suit is that they have some active defensive and offensive mechanics that definitely cater to all of the WoW Paladins (and heaven knows those were always in stock).

Engineer is another class I enjoy, it’s great for PUGs but I find myself seriously lacking when I play with my guild. They aren’t really worth anything if everyone else in the party is bringing some use.

Ranger is good too, although I can definitely see April 15th patch giving them the love they deserve. With having the least amount of party support (pretty much Spotter and Frost Spirit are all they are good for), it will be nice to see pet skills auto activate (brown bear’s Shake It Off will probably be a favorite) and their sword chain will be breakable to dodge, thus making swordhorn a more viable choice for PvE in most scenarios. Not to mention longbow will have a faster firing rate (arrows will fly faster, more specifically)…all in all, they might be a rage magnet right now but that’s because between pets, sword auto attack chain and lack of much party support they’re easily down there with Necromancer in terms of usefulness.

Bryzy.2719:

I’ve noticed more players recently giving up this game/logging far fewer hours to pursue real life or other gaming ventures. I’ve no idea if this is a legitimate trend (it most likely isn’t in the scheme of things) as I don’t have access to Anet’s playerbase statistics.

That’s what happens when a MMO has been out for 19 months without any significant changes. There’s not a very strong pursuit for many items in the endgame except for legendaries, which people are either: still grinding out, have more than any respectable human being should, or have given up completely on.

I somewhat blame some lame armor design and how cheap some of the token armors are. I could really see WvW and dungeons becoming a big endgame thing that’s a nice step between karma/crafted/exotic drops and ascended/legendary equipment if the designs were crafted well and they cost like 500-1000 tokens each, not just for the set.

I don’t think it’s the trinity, mind you, although I will always actively support the trinity more than GW2 because I love driving a defensive game (55hp monk/600 smite in Guild wars 1, L80 Priest and Paladin in WoW – so I’ve always enjoyed the defensive mechanics, which is why I enjoy guardian so much in this game).

Anyway, I think it’s just a juxtaposition that this game has polarized content (either too easy or comparatively too hard/too long) without much additional content to bridge the gap to incite play and no trinity.

For an example, look at Guild Wars 1. There was your typical max armor – which we can view as exotics in this game. They looked pretty bland but they got the job done. Then there were nicer, prestige skins that people had to buy – and they cost more. And certain skins, like Kurzick, Luxon, Vabbian and Deldrimor, ended up costing more than other prestige skins by long shots. Then in the very end you had FoW armor which cost much more than any other skin or prestige skin, but it was skill bridged nicely with skins like elite Kurzick or Vabbian.

Guild Wars 2 has no bridge. It has Droks and then FoW.

Harper.4173:

hannah mee.7925:

Harper.4173:

Here’s a counter solution to your OP – why don’t you accept GW2 for what it is and if you can’t / won’t then you can still go and enjoy those trinity MMOs without trying to change this one into whatever you want it to be.

That philosophy won’t last long. ANet develops on the premise of a profit. If too many players have to just “accept the game for what it is” and accept the founding principles of Guild Wars 2, ANet loses money. I imagine they keep some regular tabs on gameplay activity, of course, but if their profit dwindles – and the trinity looks to be a saving grace – you can bet your bottom dollar that they will find a way to implement it.

Separation from the status quo is not always a good thing. Sometimes, it proves to be unprofitable and negligent of a consumer base’s demands. However, I imagine ANet goes through extensive lengths to see if they are on the right track.

That’s how people run a good business.

Here’s what you’re missing :

1) A very small portion of the GW2 demographic actually want the trinity. Why would I assume that’s the case? Because GW2 doesn’t have it. And hasn’t had it for the past year since launch.

2) Guild Wars 2 runs an in-game store. Their profits don’t come as much from game sales as they come from gem purchases.

So WHY would Anet annoy and anger its majority of players by implementing something a minority want? So they can drive people away from the game ( and the gem store ) and drive profit away?

Again with logical fallacies:

1. A majority of players on Guild Wars 2 does not equate to a majority of a target audience. What these numbers are, I do not know, but I imagine ANet knows and pays close attention.

2. In-game sales won’t happen if people aren’t purchasing and playing the game. Causality and that kitten.

3. Annoy a majority of players that are currently playing, gain a sizable new amount of players. If two players joined for every player that left, that would still be profit.

ANet has done well in the past with marketing and public relations, at least in the essence of targeting their specific audience. Guild Wars got revitalized with the Guild Wars Trilogy sales shortly after Nightfall’s release and EotN was advertised really well to incite returning players.

I’m sure ANet keeps tabs though and won’t go around making massive changes to their game unless it’s absolutely necessary – but the original point remains unchanged, it’s going to be more than just a “this game isn’t for you” issue if it is detrimental to profits.

I haven’t really looked closely at the math but because of the base multiplier of 150% isn’t the overall loss to the critical hit multiplier (for max zerker) like 2.5x to 2.25x? So yeah…looks like about 10-11% overall DPS loss.

To me, this looks like people are trying to compare the direct result of the additional bonus from critical damage/ferocity without adding the base multiplier. If you had 50% critical damage, that would actually be 200% critical damage (base multiplier + critical damage). Lower critical damage to 40% and it’s 190%, which is a 20% loss to critical damage while 5% loss to overall damage.

Maybe I’m just not getting it though.

Harper.4173:

Here’s a counter solution to your OP – why don’t you accept GW2 for what it is and if you can’t / won’t then you can still go and enjoy those trinity MMOs without trying to change this one into whatever you want it to be.

That philosophy won’t last long. ANet develops on the premise of a profit. If too many players have to just “accept the game for what it is” and accept the founding principles of Guild Wars 2, ANet loses money. I imagine they keep some regular tabs on gameplay activity, of course, but if their profit dwindles – and the trinity looks to be a saving grace – you can bet your bottom dollar that they will find a way to implement it.

Separation from the status quo is not always a good thing. Sometimes, it proves to be unprofitable and negligent of a consumer base’s demands. However, I imagine ANet goes through extensive lengths to see if they are on the right track.

That’s how people run a good business.

Stooperdale.3560:

Nobody wants trinity!

Nobody, eh? So why is WoW so insanely popular?

The problem is that healing power and toughness don’t scale adequately enough to make them functionally equal to DPS in PvE.

Otherwise, you probably would see more folks running healers or tanks.

StinVec.3621:

Seems that some are forgetting that rangers are not the only class that currently has pets

Minions and pets are two fairly different concepts.

I really wish my Asura could have a “pet” golem though, I’d love to have a golem – even if it did nothing but hold all my bags for me – named Claptrap.

Even with all that said, though, I think this idea is terrible. Pets are for rangers.

Would be nice though to possibly see some sort of companionship – even if it has no gameplay functionality – such as golems or pack dolyaks. Possibly some sort of luggage carrier you can buy (will basically just be your inventory backpack, but be a walking object). There’s no need to implement any sort of mechanical pet though since these pets already exist on the ranger class and should remain exclusive to rangers.

It seems to me the skin might unlock naturally, which will mean it will just remove a step in the process of transmutation. Instead of having to transmute the hood or the shoulders or what-have-you, it will unlock as a skin to be transmutable across any/all characters.

Of course, we’ll have to wait to see. Even for native English speakers the language is kind of vague (not badly, though) but it seems like it’s encompassing a lot of changes that will be best to explore on release.

On a similar note, I am also confused about how Hall of Monuments skins will work, if we’re paying for transmutations – then all of the people who had these free skins might be looking at paying to use their Hall of Monuments rewards.

Um…no, not really.

Ascended’s not really required for the game unless you plan to do really high end Fractals for the Agony Resistance. I’m not sure why anyone would consider Ascended a “grind” if it’s not actually something that anyone is required to do to perform with any competency. The 5% stat increase is more or less a balance for the fact that no runes, sigils or jewels can be used on any of the gear – so it’s a bit more restrictive in terms of spread.

With that said, I think those ex-players need to understand that concept if their biggest concern with the state of the game is the grind.

Mine are pretty boring.

Mad King Thorn and an Asuran mesmer with T3 is also on the way, but they aren’t completed.

I also just realized my ranger has different hair now, oh well – I can’t be bothered to update it.

One of my favorite Mad King jokes from GW1 that could still be applied to GW2:

Q: What do you say to an Asuran stilt walker?
A: Hello down there!

The wardrobe indicates that armors will still be separated by weight, and Account Bound seems more likely to address Soulbound/Account Bound restrictions. So my guess is probably a change to guild/server restrictions or condition caps getting an overhaul.

Is it just me or are they becoming more problematic? I can’t even spend one morning leveling an alt in Queensdale without getting some silly whisper about a gold-seller site (likely if anyone else has experienced this you know exactly which site it is). Is ANet looking into this or will I always just get random whispers? It’s not like they spam the message so it’s not really that annoying but it just seems like this is a problem that has only recently gotten bad, as in I’ve only really started receiving PMs from gold-selling bots at a regular basis for the past 3-4 days.

Mad King Thorn armor.

Found my fourth character.

…What the hell will I make Mad King Thorn? My guardian and mesmer already are established (Guardian – Human male – T3 | Mesmer – Asuran female – T3) and I don’t think I want to hide their beautiful T3 sets…so…what then? What profession (minus thief and warrior, I can’t get into those classes) should I make Mad King Thorn? I am open to making a repeat profession. Leave your opinions.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-wardrobe-system/

Okay so I’m reading this and I’m kind of confused, will armor skins be available across light, medium and heavy tiers? It kind of looks like that’s a no by the last picture, but I’d like to get closure because I’m currently in the middle of leveling a toon that could be adversely affected by such a change.

I couldn’t care less about new classes.

However, I’d really love to see new races. I’d like to see new races, more personal stories (more story in general, actually), more armor and more zones…

The game’s been out 1.5 years, I think it’s about time there was some major expansion with new armors or skills or the like. The April 15th feature pack is looking pretty good but it only does so much…

Honestly if they ever implement removing class restrictions off armor I will lose my mind. Why have a mesmer if my asura can just be a guardian with t3 light armor. On top of that, my ranger would be rerolled as – you guessed it, a guardian. It’d be win-win, I’d have all guardians, they’d look neat, and I wouldn’t give a rat’s kitten about playing this game except to look neat when I’m doing Living Story instances.

My guess is PvP and PvE armor though or changes to conditions. Likely PvP and PvE armor though because no other titles hint at anything that related and there has been major discussion along the lines of removing the PvP locker.

Even Arena Net knew they only had like 4 good armor sets so they threw those armor sets on members of Destiny’s Edge.

Oh, and of course Countess Anise has that dress that nobody else can obtain. And Braham’s armor skin doesn’t fit quite right on males. At least not if you like covering up your entire backside.

Oh well. Three cultural armors I can live with. Play Infamous Second Son until a fourth good set comes out.

I don’t know about this. I agree with digiowl though about a big problem being with lopsided trade between DPS and defense. Realistically, players should be able to go after tankiness and support. When ANet said they didn’t want a trinity I don’t think they meant they were going to pull away from support and tank roles entirely. People who specialize in vitality and toughness should be able to have insanely high damage reduction but without the critical chance or critical damage bonus, they won’t deal anywhere near as much damage – less than half. A player using Soldier’s gear, however, often finds themselves to be only mildly more survivable and are better off swapping Soldiers or Knight’s gear for Berserker until they find the base minimum of survivability they want/need. After all, best defense is a good offense in this game.

I think a much more reasonable solution is to improve the scaling of toughness and healing power – while also nerfing some of the skills/builds that could exploit them (warrior’s Healing Signet, for example), thus making it a decision: DPS on warrior with greatsword and axes or spec into some vitality and toughness and maintain insane regen and survivability. Instead, however, people can get both because toughness or healing power doesn’t do much regardless of if they wanted to use it or not.

haviz.1340:

Why everyone complains? The feature pack will bring ele healers into viable territory and we already have decent tanks. Trinity gameplay is so close I’m already getting excited just by thinking about it!

Not to mention some of the mechanics involving rangers and possible updates to engineers and mesmers (although “increase their build diversity, allowing for a few more power-oriented styles and increased team support” is about as vague of a description as you can possibly have). Pets and ranger sword fixes look beautiful, I’m curious as to what kind of edits will be done to mesmer illusions – but overall I’d say it looks rather positive. Necromancer minions still haven’t got love, but the update looks like it will make d/d a little bit more manageable.

Personally, the feature patch looks like it will be a huge success if it’s not just overstated by the blog posts.

Stampede.5308:

Draknar.5748:

Kit.3986:

I’d just like to have dungeons feel like dungeons, and not stacking on every corner to afk auto attack everything dead. If there was a trinity system, maybe it’d be better, since as it stands PvE is basically “Wear zerker, stack and kill everything.” It gets really dull.

You know, you don’t have to do dungeons like that….

Why don’t you fight the mobs and bosses without stacking? Oh wait, would that be too difficult?

It’s like everyone that complains about stacking is complaining about how dull and boring dungeons are because of it, yet if they were to try it without stacking, suddenly its too hard and takes too long and no one wants to. So which do you want, difficult content or easy content?

Why don’t you people quit taking the easiest possible path to completion. Then maybe dungeons wouldn’t be so dull…

Wanna make dungeons interesting? STOP STACKING IN CORNERS. If you continue to just stack, then you can’t complain about it being dull because there are other options.

You think that you REALLY can make millions of player stop using game glitches to speedclear simply telling them to not do?

Stacking in corners is how the non-zerker players are going to get it done though!

I really do quite enjoy dungeon stacking, stealthing and every other conceivable art of the metagame because it makes builds viable. But their lack of place in the endgame is quite disturbing. People shouldn’t need a handful of tricks to make a ranger with longbow actually useful.* It should be possible naturally with useful skills, traits and gears.

*I know that there are some instances where longbow with ranger has actually been somewhat beneficial, such as Lupi’s first stage or Tribune Burntclaw. It just seems like more often than not, melee DPS is unconditionally better than support or range. Luckily the upcoming patch may help remedy some of the tension with free trait changes. Would be nice to be able to swap out longbow/greatsword roaming build for swordhorn on a dime.

I did this for quite some time. Sadly I’ve come to rest on only three professions I enjoy (well, four, but one of them doesn’t do the job I want it to). I would say your best bet is to read up a little bit on builds and build options, see how traits look in a calculator, predetermine what your gear would be, etc.

Basically, spend some time off-game deciding what you would like in-game, except the key advice is to not take all criticism at face value because there are quite a few players on these forums, and indeed many other forums, that will say DPS and Zerker is the way to go until their face turns blue.

But don’t take what they say seriously. It certainly helps but don’t sacrifice your own mobility and survivability to make those kittens happy.

Once you’ve established all of this, however, your primary goal in-game would be to find a good guild that you enjoy that you can play with. Guilds tend to have a few handful of players who are really good at the game and don’t need that “DPS zerker meta” crap and they’ll openly accept someone who can’t play the best loadout possible and, without surprise, still do well.

I guess TL;DR – yeah, I had a lot of trouble figuring out what kind of professions I wanted. I just came to accept that this game is so easy that the elitist DPS attitudes are way off mark.

It seems like a good idea. I don’t think it’d work out though but perhaps include some more options in an extension of the personal story at some point. Living Story is fine and dandy and all but as we’ve seen the biggest impact is the destruction of a city – hasn’t really brought us any content that individualizes our characters.

Beast Sos.1457:

hannah mee.7925:

Sure people will. The patch also revitalizes different DPS aspects in classes as well – namely looking at engineer and ranger, although some minor influential changes to mesmer. Necromancer, sadly, still didn’t get much love. Guardian and elementalist got loved but I don’t think they’ll get much just due to the fact that healing and vitality isn’t quite as useful as their DPS options but they’d get nerfed too hard for many aspects of PvE if damage was brought down to a level where support was an equal option. Warrior basically got nerfed but there are plenty of other options for warrior to help increase might stacking and dual wielding looks like it can be extremely useful for the DPS-oriented, god forbid this patch push people outside their comfort zones and anyone rolling warrior might swap some Zerker for Knight’s gear to compensate for their lower regen.

I think the biggest promises in regards to these patches will be that classes will get more DPS options and free trait changes. It will open worlds of possibilities – being able to support staff on ele in one fight while d/d nuke the next. It’s not quite “Select-A-Loadout” convenient but the dedicated will find love for the new system.

The changes being made are awesome changes but that doesnt change the fact that if you get a control/support/dps group together after the update, it will still take much more time than needed to finish a dungeon path. I am just hoping they are working on adding more supportive/tanky stills in the game because they plan on adding pve content that will utilize those roles.

I’m unsure exactly of which dungeons you’re talking about but with my guild, even without running fullzerkreflectbannerhealshoutpro I’ve ran most dungeon paths in 30 minutes or less (usually between 15-30 depending on which path, specifically). Hell, with only like two good players and the rest of us being “okay” (myself included), we will run 3/4 paths of Arah within 120 minutes and includes all the shenanigans that happen when you get a bunch of weird people together.

The game is so easy, it doesn’t take elitist builds to run the metagame. There’s a serious lack of options, I will grant that, but it’s not a matter of “viability” unless saving 10 minutes is running efficiency, in which case the better idea to sell the computer because a person clearly doesn’t have time to be kittening around on a video game.

While a tanky/supportive role is certainly not needed, they don’t hurt an organized team either, that seems to be one of the major misconceptions about the metagame. As I said, I think it does tend to lack a certain amount of options but this whole like…“DPS metagame” argument doesn’t fit the bill.

When I look at the lack of options, I look at it in comparison to, say, Guild Wars 1 where sins and monks could use enchantments to basically defensively solo certain mobs/quests/bosses. You don’t/can’t have a profession on this that can upkeep almost perma reflection (I’d even like to see direct damage reflection, not just ranged) because it would be OP as kitten.

There’s certainly a lack of options but don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s because of some “DPSZERKERPRO” bullkitten. If you really enjoy the active support roles, guardian and mesmer fill these quite easily. Basically, support definitely exists in this game – but the lack of defensive gameplay makes support extremely unilateral.

I agree with what the OP has said. I’ve mostly selected classes/races based on similar designs to Destiny’s Edge (with the T3), save charr and sylvari (I don’t like charr and my sylvari is something totally different), sometimes using slightly different dye combos (such as my Asuran mesmer uses purple instead of blue) but I chose these armors because they’re the sleek, elegant, masterful looks. They make me enjoy the race and how good an armor set can look on each race.

Sure people will. The patch also revitalizes different DPS aspects in classes as well – namely looking at engineer and ranger, although some minor influential changes to mesmer. Necromancer, sadly, still didn’t get much love. Guardian and elementalist got loved but I don’t think they’ll get much just due to the fact that healing and vitality isn’t quite as useful as their DPS options but they’d get nerfed too hard for many aspects of PvE if damage was brought down to a level where support was an equal option. Warrior basically got nerfed but there are plenty of other options for warrior to help increase might stacking and dual wielding looks like it can be extremely useful for the DPS-oriented, god forbid this patch push people outside their comfort zones and anyone rolling warrior might swap some Zerker for Knight’s gear to compensate for their lower regen.

I think the biggest promises in regards to these patches will be that classes will get more DPS options and free trait changes. It will open worlds of possibilities – being able to support staff on ele in one fight while d/d nuke the next. It’s not quite “Select-A-Loadout” convenient but the dedicated will find love for the new system.

I’m a little unsure what this post is speaking about. 10% decrease in full berserker builds is just a part of the patch.

In case you haven’t noticed, they’re also planning to introduce several new traits, rune balances and sigils. If you’re seriously suggesting that instead of nerfing berserker in the process of polishing their content they should have tried to make other builds as viable by changing enemy AI, you’re out of your mind. The reason is that such AI wouldn’t stand a chance in the open world design of the game. While it certainly works in dungeons and is an inadmissible problem in WvW or PvP, that kind of polishing would make champions and legendaries go down like flies when surrounded by 150 players – even if those 150 players literally only pressed 1.

I think their reworking traits, runes, sigils and balance issues is a huge first step in the right direction to diversification – and yes, that includes the 10% nerf to berserker. God forbid you might actually find some use in using some Knight’s gear after April 15th to change how you play.

haviz.1340:

I brought up mending and healing hands because I thougth they were equal to todays so called bearbows and here I learnt that they were used in farming. Well, forgive me then.

My point is that in both gw1 and gw2 there are builds which are being used by casuals (hence wiki entry like this) and they all work in the sense that you can complete the content. The other point was that the diversity in gw1 is false because you were obliged to run certain builds for certain farms/speedclears. Yes, there were more builds overally but the game had about 1200 skills and dual profession system. Right now you can complete content very fast just by having zerk gear, any class (excluding necros) will do. In gw1 you had to had a very specific build (like t4 for uwsc iirc).

The diversity is in both game, it’s just never going to be on the farming meta level because those builds are optimized and that means there can only be one certain build that meets the criterias.

And bringing up skills like Mending or Healing Hands doesn’t really help your case because they were certainly use-able with the right team setup. While you can certainly take a bearbow into Fractals, no combination of the other four teammates will quite make up for its lack of contribution to the party. Again, it comes down to only needing a bare minimum to perform competently. In UWSCs, unless you wanted to run Terraway where the team used optimal multitasking to complete it fast (not metagame builds), it was still possible to bring a mesmer that knew what they were doing with some necro heroes, a monk and carry 2-3 players. And, on top of that, they could use this loose team structure and still complete it in about 30 minutes with cons.

GW2 does not offer that. Although the recent blog post regarding the new traits does seem to remedy a lot of GW2’s problems almost immediately just with the trait changes.

haviz.1340:

hannah mee.7925:

Because they so didn’t use 600 smite monks in MQSC or MTSC. Besides, solo-ing vs. SC were pretty much the same thing. Since it was all a matter of getting an item you wanted or getting enough money to buy the item you wanted. In GW2 that’s…what? The same virtual thing? How many conditionmancers are rolling in the cashes after spreading their pwnsauce all over sPvP?

You still brought up a build whose mechanics cannot be reproduced because, ironically, active defenses that are permanently maintained by those monks allow zerker to shine.

Because manly spike was sooooo uncommon. /sarcasm

(That means yes)

I’ve not played PVE in gw1 but I am pretty sure that if I had come with typical wammo build (mending, healing hands) I would’ve been kicked on sight.

I’m well aware that people like to see the past through pink glass.

The active defense mechanics were the entirety of the GW1 metagame and, even more specifically, they were used for speedruns. In GW2 there are active offensive mechanics. Next time a profession can completely play GW2 without dealing damage and just using reflects, Aegis, and occasional blind – that’s when it will have an active defensive structure. All defense in GW2 is just a glorified offense.

Mending/Healing Hands were never part of the typical wammo build, that was so 2007. Those were part of the solo farming builds. Wammos in manly spikes used 100b, which was a build you could change on a dime and you could still probably bring Mending or Healing Hands as long as you didn’t remove 100b, Whirlwind Attack or take anything away from the 12/12 Sword/Strength. It was the bare minimum of required functionality that made GW1 so great and allowed for great diversification even with the same build.

Sure, it kind of exists in GW2, but my argument is that it’s not as extensive. Bearbows/turret engis/conditionmancers/minion masters/rifle warriors and more tend to not have any trucking with their builds with most groups – or most groups will talk bad about it. There’s no bare minimum of required functionality which is kind of disheartening, a player who knows what they’re doing will never be able to perform as competently with all of the mentioned methods as they will with a bannershout warrior, mesmer, guardian or thief. While in GW1, all you needed was the competency to use the bare minimum of like 3-4 skills and the rest was completely optional to your personal tastes. People might say that wasn’t the case in speedruns, but really you saved like a grand total of 5 minutes in most SCs if you ran the most optimal build. With my mesmer and sin in GW1 I have ran/helped friends through speeding UW, FoW, Urgoz and dungeons in 20-45 minutes depending on the location. UW can take about 25-30 minutes, Urgoz takes a long time because it’s a lengthy dungeon, FoW takes a while too because it’s a lot of running back and forth – but that’s just large map areas, like trying to do map completion on GW2 practically.

The fact is, that someone who understood what the required bare minimum for speeding through dungeons were in GW1 could competently play and speedrun at near-fast rates as someone using all of the PvX builds because it was that bottom line of efficiency.

haviz.1340:

Great comparison between full speed clears and solo farming which could be “automated”!

Because they so didn’t use 600 smite monks in MQSC or MTSC. Besides, solo-ing vs. SC were pretty much the same thing. Since it was all a matter of getting an item you wanted or getting enough money to buy the item you wanted. In GW2 that’s…what? The same virtual thing? How many conditionmancers are rolling in the cashes after spreading their pwnsauce all over sPvP?

haviz.1340:

So in gw1 uw sc you could have come with w/mo warrior?

Because manly spike was sooooo uncommon. /sarcasm

(That means yes)

CrossedHorse.4261:

Again, confusing efficiency with utility. Other builds than highly offensive ones are perfectly viable, but less efficient. Not everyone plays for efficiency, therefore this isn’t an issue for them. For those who do play for efficiency, then yes, I can see the argument for lack of diversity, but I don’t think this is necessarily to do with the lack of trinity, more with enemy design/mechanics.

Efficiency vs. viability gets stale when a lot of people won’t even accept a player in the LFG system. Thankfully there are plenty of good guilds and I found one, so it’s really not a big deal, but if I had to rely on PUGs to find a group that managed to play well but without “lf zerker – no necro/ranger/engi need apply” I would’ve stopped playing this game months ago.

haviz.1340:

Ok, so you are slower if you take a defensive approach. Remind me please, if you took more defensive approach in gw1 pve, were you as fast as a speed clearer?

Yes.

sanctuary.1068:

At least we wont be needing “heroes” in gw2 cause of lack of healers. Thats good for the future Thats good enough reason for me to be loving the no trinity thing.

Heroes were never required in the endgame of GW1. What happened in GW1 is that as everyone moved to the endgame and left the trail between Start → Finish a pretty desolate place. Finding healers or tanks was pretty easy…until Underworld, Factions, Deep, Urgoz and JQ/FA came out. After that, there was a grand total of 2 players in any of the last maps. This is the same thing that happens in some of GW2’s “endgame” content such as Orr – having to actively work to get participation to do, say, map completion. It wasn’t a lack of healers or tanks, it was a lack of any community in the endgame-before-time.

Of course, GW2 will never have this problem if they go where they have been and never move the endgame.

Another thought I’ve had about the “trinity” thing though is that the way GW2 is designed without the trinity makes defensive playing so much more…ehm…different. Priest in WoW is the easiest class to solo with, Monk in GW1 is the easiest class to solo with, prior to the 55 nerf (although 600 smite is still pretty wicked for “soloing” the Great Destroyer)…

When you get right down to it, you’ve made warriors/mesmers/thieves more of the solo gods while there’s no priest/cleric. The change is radical and most people don’t like that.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Ranger spotter and frost spirit is absolutely nothing to dismiss. And engineers can might stack and give vulnerability. So…. Uh. Yeah. It’s still 1/8 professions.

And nobody’s taking along ranger spotters or engineers most of the time. Rangers are fun with an accepting, organized party; engineers are great for PUGs and everyone agrees necromancers have been shafted. Yet nobody asks for them most of the time, or they won’t accept them unless it’s a very lax run. Why? Because their roles are trivial, at best. Without any rigid role structure (like the trinity), the endgame migrates toward dropping professions that bring the least amount of usefulness for their position. Yes, you can take a spotter ranger or an engineer but taking an elementalist is a far better alternative, if available. Rangers, engineers and necromancers don’t shine in the endgame.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons

Thread upon thread of various speed clear builds, meta builds for x class, etc. they’re all over it. Check it out, I encourage you to ask questions. Any forum regular generally has their go to builds in their signatures.

Have you been to that subforum yourself? You can find maybe 1 helpful thread every 3 pages and that’s pushing it. Also, you failed to mention that thieves and elementalists are all over the meta. Not sure if intentional or you just really don’t want to accept that Recalibar has a point and you don’t.

My serious advice though to anyone having trouble with the endgame being broken (because it is) is to find a good guild. Most guilds worth their salt won’t reject someone for being a lax bearbow spirit ranger or an engineer or even a necromancer. Why? Because good people are good people, regardless of the profession they choose to play. Bad players, not good players, are going to be the ones kicking you from the group because FGS > Frost Spirit. PUGs and speedruns are cancerous problems established by the community that only exist if you can’t organize any other run.

hendo.1940:

Condition damage needs fixing, but if you mean “group support” as in you have one player sitting back as a buffbot, no that does not need fixing in any way. Every class excluding necro brings support in a dungeon regardless of their gear or build.

I think there’s a pretty wide gap in what some people would call support. As you said, necros don’t bring support. I would also argue that engineers and rangers lack in anything but unilateral support and nobody likes that kitten because you aren’t “contributing to the team.” 3/8 professions though is pretty bad. Warriors also lack much support aside from banners, although they bring DPS to the table – but that again circles back to how there seems to be a majority of players who prefer to bring some defensive support with them, considering that an easy fifth of the playerbase prefers Guardian.

Moza.2059:

Second, I’m not totally sure I understand why so many people seem to want GW2 to be just like WoW.

I think some people want it to be less like WoW and more like GW1.

Caedmon.6798:

No,i don’t want the same armor as in gw1,i want new creative armor.Not copy/paste stuff with slightly higher res textures.

I can kind of agree although I would like to see Paragon obby return. One of my favorite heavy armors I’ve ever seen in a video game (save just about anything in WoW). I do like the human T3 for heavy as well.

Slither Shade.4782:

You say guardian is a tank but what the guardian is doing is putting up party wide blocks of which he has a finite number till they are on cooldown

I ran CM p3 with my guild earlier and we used 5 guardians. It was quite enjoyable to have all of those consecrations just spewing around us.

Sankofa Jimiyu.1567:

GW1 had problems for my main because I chose to roll a Mesmer. It has no place in conventional MMOs as it dealt a lot of indirect damage and backline support.
GW2 allows me to be more diversity with my mezzing: tank, support, and/or solo.
Even though GW1 had more skills, I have more choice in what I can build for.

It’s been a while since I thought of mesmer’s progression throughout the GW1 universe. It started out as a really bad profession, moved to being one of the best tanks with IW since the massive updates to eles, mesmers and necros hadn’t rocked Ring of Fire to the core, became an energy sucking machine only desirable in PvP, started moving up the ladder at being good at interruption and then finally ended on being the support class of GW1.

Quite a ride. The problem I see in GW2 is those kind of changes aren’t as likely to happen since enemies don’t really change. The enemies you fight at level 15 are virtually the same one’s you fight at level 80 – there’s no vertical progression of their skillbars.

hendo.1940:

And how many of those are playing healers because the content demands it rather than they enjoy it? I’ve seen a number of times people being frustrated because they had to make a healer so that their guild could raid.

Desirable to have but not desirable to play.

I’d like to see even one instance of someone grudgingly making a healer class so their guild could raid. Either it’s a weak guild without a strong membership or it’s casual content that people should expect. I will also challenge that second statement with several examples.

hendo.1940:

If people enjoyed being monks, then if I recall correctly, the designers of FFXIV wouldn’t have needed to incentivise people rolling healer classes. The fact of the matter is, most players like playing DPS and tanks and healers are scarce in trinity games. More importantly, this game was advertised as having no trinity, so if people wanted to play monks … then they shouldn’t be playing this game in the first place.

You mean the White Mage class that was relatively popular in a game that lost vast support from the failure that FF13 ended up being? Seems like a wild juxtaposition. Healers are far from being scarce in trinity games if you drift toward the endgame – of course the road to the endgame isn’t going to be riddled with them because it’s filled with nothing but the remnants of everyone who only plays the endgame, in most trinity games you won’t find many tanks or DPS players either until you hit the endgame – so your point is moot. Players do tend to see less of support classes, though, because support classes always find themselves to be useful.

I can’t honestly imagine anyone believing that Cleric and other defensive support roles are not desirable in MMOs. If you consider that a gamefaqs poll issued about a year ago showed that about 25% of the community that actually plays GW2 prefers the guardian profession. Sure, it’s 425 players instead of the hundreds of thousands that play the game, but it’s a fairly moderate sample. I’d say that speaks something about people’s desire to lean toward defensive positions. Sure, guardian can also be offensive – but there’s a reason people love them so kitten much and that’s because it has the defensive support that people actually look for in a game.

Actually, now that I’ve said it, I think I can understand why some people wouldn’t want the trinity to return. It would be a shame if GW2 ended like every other MMO where tanks and DPS were largely undercut by superior defensive management.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

hannah mee.7925:

Teckos.1305:

hendo.1940:

, a decent group does not use its utility to survive but as a mean to increase the overall group dps.

That is precisely what you do in a trinity game.

Why does the tank hold aggro? To allow the DPS’ers to do their rotations. Why does the healer heal? To keep players up so they can keep up DPS and the tank can keep holding aggro.

It’s all to make DPS easier.

My mind is literally blown at seeing basically every single person below my post (I even provided two links of control being relevant) completely ignoring it by saying damage is the only thing that matters when I have demonstrated that is completely incorrect.

It’s completely mind blowing.

what have you demonstrated? CC would have a meaning by itself if i was for it was used to interrupt for example a party wiping attack from a boss, but in pretty much all case it is as anecdotic ad an aegis popped by a guardian again in a decent group, it just made use avoid losing dps by dodging, it is all to maintain the dps as high as possible.

He demonstrated that offensive support matters. So there is “support” in this game. However it comes nowhere near the support that is, I presume, what most people mean by support. Like doubling armor rating, shutdowns (like daze, but making it more useful), minion walls, etc. The game is DPS-oriented and DPS-support and that’s always going to alienate and isolate the clerics/monks of any game because they’re backline defense – their job is to keep the DPS alive, not improve it.

With the defensive side of this game as being nothing more than an improvised offense, ANet’s bound to drive away at least 1/3 of any target customers because people enjoy being the monk. People enjoy being monks. It’s what they like. It’s the reason they play MMOs. And that’s really all this will ever be, is the inability to play the way you like because the way you like isn’t actually in the game.

Those “1/3” of the customers can play a game where a monk is needed then. (I emphasize 1/3 in quotations because I highly doubt that 1/3 of the player base a. Wants there to be a trinity and b. Wants to be a healer on the sidelines, tagging zero mobs and getting zero loot.)

You know in GW2 that chests are shared by everyone in a group, right? Or does not fit well with the belief that GW2 must be superior to every game ever because it lacks the trinity? Monster tagging, like you’ll see in WoW or even RO isn’t half as griefing in GW2 and would incite players to use healing and support classes. GW1 and WoW (pre-MoP) have both shown the large crowds that flock to support roles.

I doubt 1/3 of the playerbase wants a trinity either because most of that 1/3 never started or stopped playing after they realized GW2 was actually poorly designed for people who enjoyed more defensive/supportive roles.

Teckos.1305:

hendo.1940:

, a decent group does not use its utility to survive but as a mean to increase the overall group dps.

That is precisely what you do in a trinity game.

Why does the tank hold aggro? To allow the DPS’ers to do their rotations. Why does the healer heal? To keep players up so they can keep up DPS and the tank can keep holding aggro.

It’s all to make DPS easier.

My mind is literally blown at seeing basically every single person below my post (I even provided two links of control being relevant) completely ignoring it by saying damage is the only thing that matters when I have demonstrated that is completely incorrect.

It’s completely mind blowing.

what have you demonstrated? CC would have a meaning by itself if i was for it was used to interrupt for example a party wiping attack from a boss, but in pretty much all case it is as anecdotic ad an aegis popped by a guardian again in a decent group, it just made use avoid losing dps by dodging, it is all to maintain the dps as high as possible.

He demonstrated that offensive support matters. So there is “support” in this game. However it comes nowhere near the support that is, I presume, what most people mean by support. Like doubling armor rating, shutdowns (like daze, but making it more useful), minion walls, etc. The game is DPS-oriented and DPS-support and that’s always going to alienate and isolate the clerics/monks of any game because they’re backline defense – their job is to keep the DPS alive, not improve it.

With the defensive side of this game as being nothing more than an improvised offense, ANet’s bound to drive away at least 1/3 of any target customers because people enjoy being the monk. People enjoy being monks. It’s what they like. It’s the reason they play MMOs. And that’s really all this will ever be, is the inability to play the way you like because the way you like isn’t actually in the game.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

My opinions are my opinions. I think yours are wrong. You think mine are wrong. You are very sensitive to anyone disagreeing with you. That’s okay. No need to freak out.

No, I am sensitive to people misrepresenting and misquoting what I said. I want people to understand the actual argument. Rather than just blasting me for something I never said. And I feel that is a very fair thing to get worked up about.

You get worked up about everything. All anyone needs to see is your post history and they can see you are very volatile.

I think you are wrong that arena net failed to place anything to replace the trinity. I think the freedom we have to build and play how we want is marvelous. You can say “only x is viable and blah blah” but that just isn’t true.

I tend to agree that “Only X is Viable” mentality isn’t true, although there’s a growing gap between being able to run something viable and being able to run something efficient. This is what eventually happens when a game has been out for several years, the endgame moves to the endgame and the paths to the endgame become cluttered with insurmountable bullkitten that nobody wants to put up with. I’m extremely lucky to have found a great guild that doesn’t pass efficiency and elitism as viability, because I still find a spot in Fractals and dungeons with a spirit-greatsword-bearbow combo Ranger. However, these accepting groups are diminishing, or moving too high up in Fractals where new or casual players can’t play.

With the current combat design being endgame, there’s not a single reason why any new player should stick around in GW2 at this point instead of reserving ESO or any other new game coming out soon.

With that said, minions and heals (at least the scaling) are still broken and you’re always going to have a rough quarter of the population (myself included) tired because some mechanics are completely gone.

Yes, GW2 still has more content that can be put out – but it’s time for something to be done. Can only hope that the March 18th patch might actually include some fixes to Necro minions.

Rikimaru.7890:

And aren’t our characters suppose to be commanders of the pact?

I mean if this was for real I would instantly go to Fort Trinity and say “Soldiers of the pact the terrorist Scarlet is going to attack Lion’s Arch we must not let that happen!”

Lol’d. I had this same thought when I first got the letter about the Captain’s Council not doing jack squat. Like…what’s stopping us from using our leadership position in the Pact to bring them all to Lion’s Arch and be like, “Yo!”

Of course, even after you’re already established as the Commander of the Pact and haven’t completed the story, Quartermaster Hargrove will say:

“Quartermaster Hargrove, at your service. I’ve got weapons for you – if you’ve got the proper title and rank, that is. Can’t give these beauties to just anyone, you know.”

Because, you know, second-in-command is sooo far down the list of ranks.

Slowpoke.2749:

I don’t go around commenting about mini pets and armour skins being useless even though both of them are. For me, that is. For others it’s an integral part of the game and missing out on a special helmet or rare pet because of other people’s shortcomings would be a big deal.

Except most people aren’t QQing about how difficult a cosmetic is to obtain. Some of them are QQing that ticket scraps are RNG but I think that is actually more of a subpoint to the fact that there’s really not been any addition to obtainable content that hasn’t been gem-store related purchases. Point aside, the smack talkers are pretty much justified here.

The achievement is by no means impossible, although failure can be a result that a player couldn’t control, but it requires coordination. If people don’t want to step up to the plate and join in on organized runs (or, better yet, start an organized run) for the 6 minute achievement then they have to accept they won’t get it. By organized, this of course means advertise once in a while (the forums have a few threads about coordinating their fight against the Knights) or setting up a communication channel for voice communication.

It requires loads of responsibility, planning and foresight to get this achievement. Is it difficult? Yes. Is it bad? Sure. Is it impossible? Absolutely not.

If there’s absolutely no personal effort being made to organize a server or overflow to do these events or no sacrifices are made to accomplish the achievement, then that’s all the achievement really is to a person – a meaningless achievement. Life circumstances or other such obstacles might get in the way of easy completion but I wouldn’t want anyone to care about those circumstances because these are obstacles that nobody, since the development of gaming, has ever given two kittens about.

The fact that the OP hasn’t suggested he made an attempt to get into an organized run or organize one himself just reinforces everyone talking down about achievement kitten.

Saint.5647:

Ah, I too look back to GW1 with my rose tinted shades. But if you do recall, there was a Meta in GW1 as well. There were absolutely Meta groups with optimal compositions depending on what dungeon you were running. Optimal runs farmed different areas with precise builds and certain classes. If you don’t remember “LFG X, Ping build”, then we certainly were not playing the same game :P

GW1 was by no stretch of the imagination a ‘play how you want game’. Ran a Necro? Better run SS or MM…or Orders. Don’t want to/cant? Kick. I think there is the illusion of more choice in GW1 because they added so much to that game since launch. What GW1 had that GW2 doesn’t is more skills (and by extension, more traits). More skills and more traits will allow for new and perhaps more efficient party compositions.

The primary difference there was the coordination of solo-ing speedruns (speedruns were basically doing 5-8 different things at the same time, mind, not actually speeding through content). Secondly, with many dungeons (unless it was, say, SoO and somebody was bringing minions) there wasn’t a hindrance in applicability that was anything more serious than a lack of understanding how to build teams around a player. I’ve done 35-40 minute Urgoz runs simply by understanding that fire damage is useful so you basically take a runner, 2-3 necros, and fire damage where there are no other players present. The players don’t have to be any more efficient than they want to be, because that core design is all that is needed. People could play how they want and complete things. Several dungeons, such as SoO and Oola’s, could also be ran in about 20-25 minutes solo with the right understanding of classes. The rose-tinted glasses aren’t making anything look better because the game was actually that diversified.

Of course, you had the PvX junkies who couldn’t change their build in order to save 5 minutes on a run. PvX was a cancer to GW1’s community. The only time PvX actually got the SC right, by any means, was for UWSC, FoWSC, MTSC and MQSC (and that was mostly because these speedclears revolved around multitasking). Otherwise, speedclears were accomplished just by knowing what a class could do. Using 4 paragons was just as effective as Frostway or Trenchway in DoA, people just refused to accept it because it wasn’t on PvX.

By the same standard, look at Fractals or WvW in GW2, you can’t have 2 competent players that understand their class mechanics well to be all that’s needed – you need to have a full team of competent players. People can’t take some newbies into Fractals and finish the Cliffside fractal in 25 minutes.

While there is a leap between GW1 and GW2 because GW1 has been out for nearly 9 years, that should be 9 years of experience in balancing that ANet can apply to GW2.