Guild Wars 2

Sarie.1630:

RSLongK.8961:

Dont feed the troll.

Whilst this is true…

Dayra.7405:

Do NOT level your char, play it, you’ll be 80 long before you exhausted the content to play

…this is more true, and should be recognised regardless of how much of a troll the OP is.

The OP isn’t a troll, because a troll isn’t “someone who disagrees with you” or “someone who has an opinion”.

The trouble with “just play your character lol” is that it doesn’t always work out, especially post-NPE. The NPE made it so that more stuff was locked away and locked away until later, which can make some characters pretty spectacularly dull until 40+ or even later.

GW2 can be very boring to level in. I can say that having played since close to release. Or it can be quite fun. I say that having recently leveled two characters to 80 with another at 61.

If you want to avoid boredom, you have to understand yourself, understand what you enjoy, and avoid the bits of the game that bore you to tears. For me, that means getting to 40+ pretty kitten quickly – If I linger in the lower levels, post-NPE, I know I will soon be bored out of my skull.

For me, it’s worth effectively burning a fair bit of gold to get 16+ levels from two (or more) craft skills, too, and I always do my Personal Story missions for the big chunks of XP they give. I know that going for full-on zone completion tends to send me to sleep, so I avoid doing that too much, no matter how much guides suggest you “must” or are “dumb” for not doing it. I mean, it’s more “dumb” to get bored at L36 or whatever because you were following a dull guide, than to have to spend a bit of extra time on entirely optional world completion at 80, imho.

Guilty Cross.2706:

seeing as i may have been a bit too vague given the average reading comprehension in these forums, ill clarify.

leveling is not hard.

there are many ways to do it.

ive stated that i already have 3 80s (of which i got before there were log in rewards.) so the noob advice is unnecessary.

i do not have 130 tomes lying around…

the point in its entirety is that its boring.
i still play my 80s and i enjoy playing them but to level a new character without tomes is just too boring.

map completion has little to no re-playability.

crafting is an option but feels cheated and isnt satisfying.

ultimately this is my opinion, as ive played every major MMO and then some since the 90s… gw2 TO ME… feels the most boring to lvl up in. not hard… not too long…. just boring.

thats about as slow speed as i can put it.

I think I understand your position, but I respectfully disagree (I don’t think you’re stupid, lazy, or a noob, to be clear). I’ve played MMOs since EQ in 1999, and I personally find GW2 pretty fun/easy to level in.

I do note a few things that make it a lot more fun for me (not telling you this to advise you, just to show you why I don’t find it as boring):

1) Instant 20 scroll. Cuts out the most painful/boring bit of leveling right there.

2) Birthday Booster. A lot of your XP comes from mob kills (usually), and +100% for the entire time you’re leveling (which stacks with other boosts) helps a lot.

3) I use crafting strategically to avoid getting bored. You say it feels like “cheating” – I can see that, but that’s on you, that’s not on the game. You can either keep feeling that way, or change how you think about it.

The way I use it is, if I’m feeling like it’s a bit of a grind, or I’m bored of a zone I’m near the beginning of, or the like, I just go ahead and get 8 levels or so from getting a profession to @400.

4) I avoid zones where nothing is happening, and hit every single event chain I can find. Event chains are typically more fun than other play, and give you XP really kitten fast, esp. if there a lots of packs of mobs involved (and there usually are).

5) Keep my main weapons upgraded – sounds obvious, but sometimes they lag 5 levels or more, and it’s really noticeable how much less fun the game is when this is happening. Maybe you’re already doing this, but when I started doing it – the game got a lot more fun.

6) Always do story stuff – it’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s a ton of XP real fast if you just skip the dialogue.

I leveled an Elementalist from 1-80 this way recently, took under 40 hours, was never bored (and only took two crafting skills to just below 400).

My question for you is:

What is it about other games that keeps you from being bored whilst leveling? Is it LFD in WoW (i.e. dungeon-leveling). Do you actually LIKE quests? Do you normally play with other people when leveling in other games?

I get that you’re bored, but without a point of comparison, it’s hard to see what’s boring you.

serenke.4806:

mulzi.8273:

how, exactly, is this hurting people who earned the title more? Hurt their feelings? Its a title that wasnt taken away from them. Presumably, they enjoyed the journey to get the title. This issue only affects other people who didnt earn the title legimately, and that will be addressed. If you people are so worried about what other people think of you, you need help. If you earned the title, you should feel good about it regardless, not crappy because joe blow from idaho got the title and had it for 2 months while anet works on the fix… Now if people lost the title, then i can see getting upset. But everyone who earned the title and got all the rewards didnt lose anything, item or title wise..

Yep, feel good about your brand new expensive car that you saved up for for 2 years, knowing that Joe Blow from Idaho (and the whole Blow family) got one for free because the car dealer computer made an error.

Comparing digital “objects” which can be reproduced infinitely to physical ones is, at best, silly. At worst, it’s intentionally disingenuous. So don’t.

As someone who does have a bunch of HoM rewards waiting, and indeed who can’t access tons of my old ones because of this, I’m pretty annoyed about how long this is taking – prevent me accessing my skins hurts me a lot more than some other guy having too many titles.

Vayne.8563:

It’s not the blocking, that’s the problem. It’s when you go to invite someone to a guild, thinking you have and block them instead. Sometimes this can happen in the middle of a guild mission when someone asks for an invite. All things considered, you should get some kind of message that you’re blocking someone.

I can’t imagine why anyone feels this is unreasonable.

There’s no reason, some people just oppose every single change to the game that does not directly benefit them, and also take any admission of human error as a chance to chastise and belittle others. It’s pretty sad, really.

But yes, there should be a double-check here.

Thaddeus.4891:

I never felt any of those ‘’players work together ’’ because of Holy Trinity. As a tank, I was doing my job, almost ignoring the rest of the team. As a healer it was the same, but I was looking at my side bar to make sure I was keeping everybody alive.

This is very true, but “Trinity” games aren’t necessarily like that – the reason modern ones often are is because of how specialized/narrow characters have become.

I mean, go back in time to say, Dark Age of Camelot (for a long, long time the 2nd-most-popular MMO after EQ). In PvE it was technically a “Trinity” game, in that you had characters who primarily did damage, characters who primarily got monster attention, characters who primarily healed, but because the characters were much less narrowly specialized, you had considerable overlap, and people could often switch roles or occupy multiple roles – for example, look at the Warden – primary role is likely healer/buffer, but they were also tough enough to off-tank easily, and did significant enough damage that they needed to focus the right target.

You also had large groups – 8 people – so there was room for characters who weren’t overspecialized.

I could go on, but I think you get the point – it wasn’t this mindless “I only think about what I’m doing” deal that most modern trinity games are (though, tbh, if you are a tank who does not think about what the healer is doing, you are a total bad of the worst kind – and a lot of tanks are horrible bads of that kind). If you have a much looser situation, where you technically have tanks, healers, etc. but there’s a lot of crossover and hybrids and so on, and groups large enough to make that work, then it doesn’t have to be that way.

Not saying GW2 needs to implement any of that, but it’s worth knowing.

WoW has ultra-narrow specs and literally no hybrids in the real sense anymore (though it does have some talents which encourage thinking about others). SWTOR had groups so small that it was basically “specialize or screw everyone”.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Just in case people are missing this:

Any game scenario in which taking damage is optional and Mob AI is predictable will always favor high damage builds, because Mob patterns can be learned and avoided. There is no way to make tank builds or support builds mandatory for players that have learned the game well enough to not rely on those stats.

A) Yes you absolute could force that. Probably shouldn’t but you could. Nothing says ALL damage has to be optional. That’s not a design principle of GW2 – if it is, provide us with the quote, please.

B) Even after that, you could certainly vastly increase the minimum skill and level of group co-operation required to “not rely” on those stats. They still wouldn’t be “mandatory” for the best-of-the-best, but if they were for 95% of players, that’d be quite a change.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Forcing damage is bad design, forcing mob unpredictability / non telegraph is bad design.

No.

By that logic, PvP is bad design. Yet we constantly hear from people, including, I believe, you, that PvP/WvW is better designed, better balanced and plays better than PvE – and I agree, it is and it does.

But no, unpredictable mobs aren’t bad design.

Forced damage isn’t inherently bad design (you will not be able to argue that it is rationally, I predict, because it’s not a rational case you’re making – prove me wrong if you like) – I will agree that mindlessly forcing lots of damage is crummy – but forcing you to choose when to take damage and inevitably taking some is NOT bad design when you have a heal and so on built into every character.

Non-telegraph is bad design if the damage is significant and intended to be dodged, but if it’s chip-away, then, no, you’re wrong – PvP/WvW is absolutely full of damage which has little-to-know telegraph, it’s just that it’s not high-damage stuff.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I don’t expect HoT to change the complaints much if at all.

If they don’t, HoT has failed to some extent.

Right now, the “endgame” PvE is to a large extent the dungeons, and it’s also the most reliable (if not technically fastest) way to earn cash money.

If that’s still the case in HoT, well, kitten . The “challenging PvE content” should, if they’ve done it right, be both of those things. So the problem will only be if people are excluded from that content for being non-Zerker.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Would this not also mean that non-zerker setups would take longer to burn down the same monsters and suffer more rounds of attacks by said monsters?

No, not necessarily, or rather, not by the same percentage.

We already have stuff in the game like this – monsters which are crit-immune obviously take the same amount of time for Zerkers and Soldiers to kill, for example.

Similarly, monsters with very high toughness do nerf all Power builds, but they mean that Condi builds or mixed builds are slowed down much, much less.

Periods of invulnerability or the like which can only be dealt with by CC or similar and which have to be survived will hit all armour setups equally, but will hurt ones without Tou/Vit/Heal more, because they will need to be better to survive.

Longer fights which involve more small-medium hits, which devalue active defenses (i.e. Dodge/Block) will also devalue Zerker (or any pure offense) more than other setups.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Unless you are talking about giving zerker a gear-exclusive penalty.

I’m not.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Anything that makes dps burndown take longer across the board won’t change anything except make the fights take longer, unless I’m horribly mistaken. Sure, the zerkers will be treated to more potshots by the enemy, but anyone that knows the mob AI isnt going to let a few more attacks hit them.

You are mistaken, though I wouldn’t say it’s horrible. I’ve suggested some methods above, and there are others.

Also, I think you’re mistaken that “anyone who knows the mob AI” is good enough to definitely avoid “a few more attacks”. People who are amazing and in a group that is cooperating perfectly probably will manage it, but I do not believe most Zerker-wearing players are in that skill range or in that kind of optimized and cooperating group. I believe most of them are mindlessly stacking and following fairly obvious rotations, dodging obvious, slow attacks, and letting a combination of very high DPS, Block and the like do most of the rest of the work.

I’m fine if the best players keep wearing Zerker – but I suspect some will find it’s worth their while to wear Condi-based stuff, and may well find using some Tou/Vit/Heal has some more value than it does now.

Or not. We’ll see – but yeah, you totally can hit Zerker-type builds harder than other ones without mindlessly increasing burn time across the board.

Bomber.3872:

Why buff exotics in the first place?
The smarter and way better way would be to buff ascended stats way more so it gets a necessary gear tier and increase the material cost a little bit. With that way all problems are solved.

No, that’s creating a MUCH WORSE problem. Better to leave things alone than engage in that madness.

IndigoSundown.5419:

As to the other slider, is anyone surprised that damage gear allows one to kill faster than survival gear? So, how are you going to fix that “problem” without requiring a defensive role or breaking PvP/WvW, where there seem to be more complaints about bunkers and Celestial builds than about burst being too high?

Pretty clear it’s the survival-damage slider.

The problem isn’t that damage = killing faster.

The problem is that the game is easier when you just focus on damage (in most dungeons, we can argue about higher fractals and arah separately) than if you focus on survival, and in particular, if you try to balance survival and damage much, you are pretty much bad at both due to the multiplicative effects.

It should be that you start in survival gear, and gradually discard more of it as you get better (I’d suggest), but in current content, that’s not really how it works (imho). You can just straight in with full-damage, all you need to learn to do is Dodge (which is not hard – be surprised if takes more than 6hrs for most people) and have some people generating Aegis etc., and you plow through content better than groups where people are doing stuff like actually wearing +heal. Not just faster – easier. A stacked 5-group of heavy Zerkers, even with kinda crummy players, vaporizes most dungeons (not all, most though – and the ones it doesn’t, people avoid like the plague).

You fix it by changing monsters so that they can’t be burned down by Zerkers so fast. Thus amazing players can still rely on active defences, but more people will actually want non-Zerker setups. No point doing that on old content, but I bet you that’s what HoT is doing because the Mordrem already move in that direction.

The PvP/WvW thing is an issue – that’s why you change monsters, rather than buffing Tou/Vit/Heal.

Cyninja.2954:

Sure they are, but what are we talking about here? Itemization if I’m not mistaken. All those games are very similar in that while GW2 is unique.

Not really. There are a variety of different itemization styles, and GW2 is fairly similar to Warhammer, for example (right down to having an “Agony” equivalent in Warhammer).

Cyninja.2954:

My example was merely to state that going trinity will not solve any problems but instead create way bigger ones.

Sure, but that’s a non-sequitur, because changing itemization doesn’t mean “going trinity”.

Cyninja.2954:

Also SW:TOR being more successful than GW2 is a big funny. Sure it could be more successful but are you really factoring in all the costs like developement and SW:TOR requiring at least 500k subscribers while running a p2p model (according to EA)? Meaning they must have cut back kitten staff for that game since it went f2p.

Tell me, how much unique content or expansions have come out and/or are announced for that game? None, last I recalled. It’s on the known f2p livesupport where some basic content gets added every few months to make people jump through new hoops or they introduce a new item tier where people need to regrind their equipment. Not to mention the Star Wars name holding it up.

They’ve had several expansions and large amounts of new content since F2P, so you recall completely incorrectly!

F2P was Oct. 2012
Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion was April 2013 – pretty big and raised level cap by 5.
Galactic Starfighter was Oct 2013
Shadow of Revan was Dec 2014 – Huge and raised level cap by 5.

It’s a hell of a lot more content they’ve added than GW2 has, so you’re way off. Why did you claim they hadn’t added anything, when they added tons of content? If it’s “on life support”, then GW2 is dead…

I do agree that it cost more to develop than GW2, but initial sales + 2 months of subscriptions when it was at @900k+ subs already covered it’s entire development costs.

Cyninja.2954:

Warhammer shut down because Games Workshop pulled the liscence. Yeah that had nothing to do money or the game spiraling down and being on life support for years. They basically decided they didn’t want their flagship IP at the bottom of the food chain making them no money.

You obviously don’t know much about GW and their attitude to licensing.

They are extremely over-protective of their IPs. Warhammer wasn’t super-successful but it was making a ton of free money for them and EA, and EA really did not want to shut it down.

So based on my very long experience of GW and computer games (these are eejits who thought Warcraft was too crummy to let be Warhammer, back in 1994, bit like refusing to sign the Beatles), I’d say money wasn’t the factor, psychotic obsession with their own IP is. Even with the TT game they’re in a sort of weird death-spiral right now where they’re charging a smaller and smaller market more and more money, instead of trying to rejig their stuff and make more money with a wider audience.

Good question!

Here’s to hoping they’re part of HoT or added in the season after HoT comes in.

TheDaiBish.9735:

I thought that it was only Robert that left and the team was disbanded and distributed into the Living Story teams?

That’s my understanding, but maybe Zudet has more people who left. It kind of sounds like one of those overblown MMO rumours, though – i.e. key person leaves so supposedly the entire team leaves, as if they were some kind of military unit. Which is pretty much the opposite of how most dev houses work.

Tarot.4250:

Like few people already said, I’m also concerned about GS being viable in pvp with all movement, dodge, vigor and disables. He won’t be able to do anything unless there’s some crazy synergy with quickness and chronomancer’s alacrity buff.

I dunno, I think people are overreacting based on very limited info.

Years of MMORPG experience (16) tells me that this objection is made every single time a “slow, hard-hitting” class is added to a game with significant PvP. People are all “He’ll be chain-cc’d” or “He’ll be chain-interrupted” or “People will just run away!”, and overall the class is dismissed by lots of people as “useless for PvP”.

Cut to a month after expansion release:

Now the whining is “OMG SLOW-HITTER IS TOO OP!” “I got one-shot by slow-hitter, nerf now!” and so on.

The fact is, people in general aren’t very good at chain-CC, chain-interrupts, or always running away in time. If you have a class that really does hit slowly and hard, they are going to kill a lot of people – some of whom will be chain-CC’d themselves or the like.

That’s my experience, of course – maybe GW2’s Reaper will be the exception and just suck.

But I really doubt it.

lordkrall.7241:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Why would they stop releasing specs? That would make no sense at all. The hype is finally building again and people are excited. It would be marketing suicide to stop releasing specs at this point…

It would be more marketing suicide to release all of them now and then don’t have a release until a couple of months after the last one was revealed.
It does after all seem to be the thing that interests most people.

It seems smarter to have these three now, then a week or two with other stuff (Guild Halls, Revenant, Challenging Group content) and the go with either the rest or three more with a break for lore info and then finish up with the last three soon before release.

It would not be “marketing suicide”.

Loads of MMOs have previewed all the new class/race material long before the actual expansion released and have done just fine. People whinge and moan, but it doesn’t reduce the hype. In fact, keeping class stuff secret too close to release tends to generate ridiculous conspiracy theories and hate.

Vayne.8563:

Sorry Jerus, but I can’t say that every game is about challenge, or challenge is what makes a game. You can play house as a kid and that’s a game, and it’s not about challenge. You can play a game of catch and that’s not challenging either. Some people play games to relax. In fact, just about every sport, as challenging as it is, also have people that play that sport just for fun.

I wonder how many people play Baseball competitive, as compared to how many people go and hit a ball around. They’re both games, but not everyone plays them competitively.

Many people play games to relax.

More to the point, 95% of people who run dungeons (not fractals) regularly do not run them for challenge or for fun (in the usual sense).

They run them for profit of a very straightforward in-game financial nature.

So putting in more content which will see most people use it solely for getting cash money whilst taking the M out of MMO? Perhaps not a good priority for a game which helped put the M back into MMO when many games were moving away from it.

It also seems like a pretty small percentage of the population actually does dungeons regularly. I don’t have figures and I’m not sure how one would obtain them, but anecdotally, it sure seems that way.

(Fractals are distinct from dungeons and more people who run those do run them for challenge or to get things other than cash money or stuff that can be sold for cash money – but I think they’re more likely to be added to, as well)

EDIT – Additionally, on top of taking the M out of MMO, dungeons encourage the exclusion of a lot of players, because most regular dungeon runners are speed-running for cash. Which is fine, in and of itself, but obviously has a strong exclusionary effect on other players who want to do those dungeons, but who either aren’t geared enough, or not skilled enough, or don’t want to speed run. I’m not suggesting changing anything, but if new dungeons got used the same way – as speedy ways of gaining cash for a small elite of players who exclude the larger casual group of players, well, does that help ArenaNet? Does that help GW2? No. The people who want that can keep doing it, but there’s no logical reason to create more content like that.

Einlanzer.1627:

I don’t think it’s acceptable to not maintain dungeon content in an MMORPG. TYou cannot get the same type of immersion from open world content that you get in dungeon content, end of story. They need to hire some people to work on it and get it right.

That’s complete nonsense.

EQ and DAoC were more immersive than 99% of modern MMORPGs, including GW2 and WoW.

Neither of them had instanced dungeons in their early years, and when they were added, it reduced immersion, rather than increasing it.

So the only “end of story” is that you are wrong, and demonstrably so.

Yeah, my wife, who loved her Dervish dearly in GW1, was pretty excited to hear about the Necro changes – particularly as she has a full-exotic necro right now which just seems inferior to her other characters in PvE.

Linnea.5146:

serenke.4806:

Linnea.5146:

Dante.1763:

No thanks, i like Trahearne. He could have used some better lines, but i like him over all. Plus he never once stole the thunder of my character, for as long as i can remember(basically since the first time i finished the campaign) hes Deferred all the choice making to me, and gives me credit when i do things, unlike Kormir.

This. I started out as a Sylvari (which may influence my perception), but I never felt that he did a Kormir on me. I was always consulted, and the muscle of the operations. I like having a scholar character on the battlefield, it’s an interesting deviation from the usual battle-hardened gruff types.

Seriously, why do people think Kormir stole the show? Did you really expect to be turned into the next god of secrets? Would we all be more happy with the nightfall story if every player who has ever completed it would be the new god of secrets?

If I’m completely honest I never felt like I had the “show stolen” from me when playing GW:N either, but it did feel very weird story-wise since I kind of didn’t feel that she had done more than any other mortal to “deserve” divinity. I felt more that she didn’t really deserve it from a plot point of view, or as a result of bad writing. Which makes my previous post a poor choice of words I guess. My point still stands concerning Trahearne though, he feels much better integrated into the story than Kormir’s ascencion to godhood, since he forged the alliance and has the knowledge needed against Zhaitan, all while actively including the player.

Kormir is vastly more likeable and engaging as a character, which is the key reason she works (GW:N in general was better written, emotionally and pacing-wise, than GW2).

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Trahearne is actually not a bad character. Not introduced or built up as strongly as he should be, but his concept works very well. I did a large post on it a while back.

Now, Destiny’s Edge? All of them but Rytlock are disposable.

He’s definitely not a good character either. The LS edits make him less grindingly irritating that he used to be though.

Agree re: DE.

Tako.3145:

Getting rid of Trahearne or (mostly) any other character that acts as a foil to spur motivations forward is contradictory to an interesting story.

When the heck does Trahearne do this? Being boring is not being a “foil”.

TheRealShaunsred.4928:

1. Make Trahearne turn into a minion of Mordremoth (Hell, you could even make it so that he was evil all along, and only wanted to kill Zhaitan to give mordy more power).

This seems almost likely.

Cyninja.2954:

Harper.4173:

That’s the problem. With any system you can’t please everybody and when you try to you end up pleasing nobody. The trick is to find the most people you can please with your product and sell it to them.

GW2 bet its money on gathering non-traditional MMO players (casuals, non-trinity players, fashion lovers, etc) and aggressively marketed their game toward said players.
To go back and add a trinity or similar role-dependent systems is to slap their player base in the face and waste their own effort of carving out a niche ( which they have done VERY successfully).

Absolutely agree.

What most don’t realize, GW2 is unique in some aspects. Giving up on this would mean to turn/create it into another mainstream Everquest,WoW, etc clone.

Let’s look at how those games did the last few years…

SW:TOR -> went F2P
Warhammer Online -> went F2P, then closed down
Tera -> F2P
Rift -> F2P
ES:Online -> F2P

The funny thing is, even if GW2 switched over to a trinity system (which I have already explained is near impossible, but people just don’t listen) it would endup as another clone among many. No big deal, since most advocating for this change would simply leave to the next better WoW clone or even WoW itsself. Only the players enjoying GW2 for its uniqueness would be left in the cold.

All those games are " unique in some aspects".

Post-F2P SWTOR is singificantly more financially successful than GW2.

Warhammer shut down for reasons unrelated to success. GW2’s design mimics it or learns from it heavily.

TERA is arguably more unique/unusual than GW2 (and way more pervy/creepy but…).

Not saying copy them, but your examples are sketchy.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

What would be the point in gear prefixes then?

They’d be part of your build choice. It’s pretty simple.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

And let’s say the “rough result” of baseline toughness is not enough for a group of players to survive in pve?

Survive what?

petyr baelish.9675:

Eurhetemec.9052:

Thaddeus.4891:

More challenging content that push the limit of our active defence would be a blessing. The type of content that you can’t play zerker if you don’t master your active defence so that not everybody can run full zerker.

You’d need to boost passive stuff like Tou/Vit/Heal to make it even possible with non-Zerker, though, I’d think.

You have it backwards. You have access to the same active defenses on defensive gear, passive defenses act as a crutch when you mess up so it’s easier to play in defensive gear. If you manage your kitten properly you can survive forever on active defenses.

It doesn’t matter if some ultra-ninja can do that in an obscure situation, dude. If it’s normal/easy to do that, the actives need nerfs.

Thaddeus.4891:

Eurhetemec.9052:

Thaddeus.4891:

More challenging content that push the limit of our active defence would be a blessing. The type of content that you can’t play zerker if you don’t master your active defence so that not everybody can run full zerker.

You’d need to boost passive stuff like Tou/Vit/Heal to make it even possible with non-Zerker, though, I’d think.

Nope. That’s not true. You have plenty of video of full cleric group that unbind their dodge button and clear arah and it’s an easy mode. They just tank and outheal everything Arah can throw at them. Active Defense is independent of your gear. So a zerker guys have as much active defense as a soldier gear. The only difference is that the zerker guys kill stuff faster, while the soldier gear can take more hit in the face.

Fair enough! It is really ez mode or are they actually using very special builds and classes, though?

Thaddeus.4891:

More challenging content that push the limit of our active defence would be a blessing. The type of content that you can’t play zerker if you don’t master your active defence so that not everybody can run full zerker.

You’d need to boost passive stuff like Tou/Vit/Heal to make it even possible with non-Zerker, though, I’d think.

petyr baelish.9675:

I understand where you’re coming from, when you mention that the stats on berserker gear scale with each other. However, capping vuln, capping might, damage multipliers from sigils, runes and traits, fury and banners and using the right rotations, boost your damage by a lot more than any stat choice does. These factors decide the majority of the damage you’ll be dealing, not the gear you’re wearing.

There’s a lot of truth in this, but much of it is the mindless effect of procs etc. which Zerker works with better than other setups. So other setups don’t all benefit equally.

petyr baelish.9675:

The stuff you mentioned about zerk being easy only applies for super easy content. You can’t brute force bosses in fotm 50 and arah.

Sure, but 99% of dungeon/fractal runs are non-arah, or sub-50.

Crystallize.8603:

There really is no problem with the Zerker meta other than everyone assuming it’s the only way to do things. It’s not. It’s just, given the state of the game the fastest and more efficient way to do dungeons/fractals.

please note, this post is talking about gear only, not traits/builds

Well-explained but there’s a little more to it – the effectiveness of Tou/Vit/Heal in PvE relative to damage numbers and types of damage is questionable in a way it isn’t in PvP/WvW.

The fact that all the serious enemies tend to rely on slow, heavy attacks means Block/Dodge/etc. have way more value than Tou/Vit/Heal in most Dungeon/Fractal situations.

Thaddeus.4891:

The thing is in the last 3 years NOBODY, and there was a lot of people that tried, could come up with an idea to make other gear optimal in PvE.

That’s a pretty impressive bald-faced lie.

There’s no good solution solely based on gear, though.

Jahroots.6791:

That’s exactly what I meant. Non-trinity parties. I think even people who don’t like the meta have accepted it, albeit grudgingly, because it works. Zerk gear/speed clears suit GW2’s design and reward structures perfectly, imo.

Dungeon/Fractal design I agree, it’s the path of least resistance, because of low toughness etc. on monsters. For HoT? We’ll see.

Reward structures? Not so much. Most dungeons reward non-Zerker/Assassin gear, for example. Most gear is non-Zerker/Assassin generally, which means people who want gear rewards focus on the few sources that give Zerker.

Rin.1046:

I do not think there is a problem with stat combos in GW2, but at the moment there is a problem with there being no noticable benefits to being a more tanky/supportive role. Defensive stats are effective, but they are not required. However, I do not think they should become required, as that will just be stepping backwards back to the old trinity again.

The only solution I can see to this problem, is to make encounters more challenging, but not to the point where berserker players can no longer tackle them. Make content tough for all stats, but extremely tough for high damage stats. Not impossible, but certainly a lot harder. Make defensive roles more useful, but not essential. Make stuff like dungeon runs go much smoother with defensive roles, without making it impossible for dps roles. Slow dps players down by making them deal with content more carefully, but do not stop them from doing it.

At the end of the day stat combos should remain a choice, not become a requirement. If a full team wants to run full zerker builds, then they should be allowed to. But at the same time, they should be seriously challenged when doing content without any supportive players in the group. And that is where GW2 fails at the moment. The challenge balance is not quite right at the moment, and if that could be fixed I do not think there would be any issue.

Pretty much this. Hoping this is what HoT does.

Jahroots.6791:

Transmutation charges to swap gear? No thanks.

He’s saying in addition to the current method, not instead of.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Eurhetemec.9052:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

MattyP.6954:

If you don’t want to hit people with a flimsy magic-type staff, then use a different, sturdier-looking skin.

Well, I personally don’t care what skins other people use, but gw2 certainly lacks those more realistic looking weapons. For example, the best gs I’ve found is Kymswarden, which looks good on my female sylvari guard, my human male looks like wielding a sword, not gs.

There are plenty of other fairly realistic looking GSes (besides the default crafted look):

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aureate_Highlander_Greatsword

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ebon_Vanguard_Greatsword

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ebonblade

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Krytan_Greatsword

Are a few, and there are more. The same applies to most weapons.

Existence of few doesn’t mean they are plenty, especially when compared to the number of flashy looking skins.

Define “plenty”, then, as a specific number or percentage.

Jahroots.6791:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

I think a valkyrie set would be very close in speed to a zerk set. I run in valkyrie/exuberance and I’m fine with dungeon clearing speeds. But you have to understand that a large % of the community is not willing to acknowledge that, hence the “zerk meta” LFG requirement instead of “nuker meta”.

So what? Everyone is free to make their own LFG listing.

‘Zerker meta’ has many, many degrees. As littlefinger noted, most people who put that on a listing just want like-minded players.

No. You appear to seriously misunderstand the meta.

Full-Valk would not be “very close” in speed to full Zerk, because of the MULTIPLICATIVE effect of stacking 3 DPS stats.*

Also, Zerk is meta because the WHOLE party is Zerk (or mostly Zerk). If you have, say 1-2 Zerk in a varied-gear party, it doesn’t work – the Zerks just keep getting killed because the enemies don’t die fast enough and they run out of Dodges, Blocks, etc. and have to play well for much longer when they have to deal with much longer-lived enemies.

5 players, stacking 3 DPS stats, drops enemies so fast that you don’t need to play particularly well, just Dodge/Block the relatively few attacks the enemies get off before they drop. That’s why it’s meta.

Jahroots.6791:

Either way, this will probably never be a trinity game. For every one of you ‘traditionalists’, there’s ten people who like the current set up.

Ten people who like Zerker meta, though? No. Just people who don’t want Holy Trinity. They’re two different groups.

• = Unless you’re getting giant loads of crit from non-gear stats.

petyr baelish.9675:

Actually, I find the action style combat, being completely self reliant and the fact that I have to pay attention to ‘all 3 parts of the trinity’ instead of 1 dedicated role a lot more entertaining than playing a trinity role.

I do too, but I think you’re being unreasonable in dismissing this as a “problem” entirely out of hand.

You certainly haven’t “proven” the gap isn’t major, or that that zerker/assassin isn’t generally far more viable than other sets (or regarded as such very widely). You’ve expressed that opinion and backed it up with what you feel is supporting evidence, but it’s not terrible compelling or certain stuff. Nor will anyone “prove” anything here, because it is, in the end, largely a matter of opinion. Facts help, but they’re used to support opinions. This isn’t science.

I think the real issue is pretty simple, which we keep dancing around – Berserker/Assassin gear stacks with itself, performance-wise, in a way that is clear both from the math and from the practice, to the point where it makes other gear seem like a very bad idea. Even tough/vit/heal which you might expect to do roughly the same thing, simply does not in PvE, because this is GW2, healing is pretty limited, and everyone is DPSing.

It’s not just Zerker/Assassin that’s a factor, either – it’s monster design, too. Not only do you get this vast DPS from this gear, but monsters:

1) Don’t live long enough vs stacked Zerkers to provide much challenge.

2) Don’t put out enough non-avoidable damage to make the low HP/low-toughness factor actually matter (they die before you run out of Dodges/Blocks/HP).

3) Can’t have Conditions stacked on them much, so Condi builds are fairly useless a lot of the time.

4) They have to rely on VERY BIG HITS which absolutely must be avoided, rather than a lot of medium size hits, where you have to be smart about what you avoid.

These all feed into the meta.

Skill is a big issue here, but’s not a straightforward one – I’ve played with a lot of different people, and what’s become very obvious to me is that Zerker-style play is actually easier and more reliable for most players than play involving more complex gear setups. So in a way I think Zerker is actually very friendly to sort of low-mid skill players – people beyond bad and beyond casual but not actually good.

Zerker is also great for “wipe-until-you-win”-type play. Battles are over quickly one way or another, and it’s much easier to “luck out” and win with all-Zerker than it is with other setups, because you don’t need the players to actually play well for very long.

All this said, I think discussing the Zerker meta is silly until we see how the Condition changes affect things and how HoT monster design is (a lot of high-toughness or “shielding” mobs will mess with Zerker a great deal). I personally believe that what we’ll see is that toughness, vitality and healing will remain pretty worthless in PvE, and that people using heavy conditions will outlast with Dodge/Block/kiting etc. rather than actually utilizing those stats.

The difficulty, of course, is PvP/WvW – all the stats are pretty well-balanced for that. So to put toughness/vitality/healing in a good place in PvE, you might have to buff their power in PvE specifically.

We shall see, of course.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

MattyP.6954:

If you don’t want to hit people with a flimsy magic-type staff, then use a different, sturdier-looking skin.

Well, I personally don’t care what skins other people use, but gw2 certainly lacks those more realistic looking weapons. For example, the best gs I’ve found is Kymswarden, which looks good on my female sylvari guard, my human male looks like wielding a sword, not gs.

There are plenty of other fairly realistic looking GSes (besides the default crafted look):

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aureate_Highlander_Greatsword

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ebon_Vanguard_Greatsword

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ebonblade

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Krytan_Greatsword

Are a few, and there are more. The same applies to most weapons.

I’d love a reconfigurable UI, but I don’t want addons.

I mean, I say this despite using dozens of add-ons in WoW and other games, having developed add-ons and so on.

I can see places in GW2 that add-ons would fit, but in most cases they’d just serve to make the game more mindless (in a bad way) and less involving, either that or they’d be better off dealt with by Anet improving the UI for everyone.

Inimicus.7162:

I am reposting this from a reply of mine in a different thread to plead with Anet NOT to add melee staves into Guild Wars 2. Ever.

The staves we have right now are basically decorative 2 handed foci/scepters and are simply not designed realistically to be used in melee combat.

About 50-60% of actual melee weapons in GW2 are “simply not designed realistically to be used in melee combat.”. Maybe higher. So this is an utter failure of an argument.

Godmoney.2048:

As someone who has full ascended on at least 1 character it is insignificant. I just finally finished full ascended on my power/crit mesmer. I can’t even tell a difference. When I played Rift or WOW and got a upgrade it was noticeable for sure. Even a single socketed gem in Rift could make my crits hit significantly harder. Not so much in GW2.

Full ascended Jewelry with exotic armor and weapons puts you on par with anyone in full ascended in my opinion. Ascended jewelry is easy enough to get. Ascended armor could use a crafting buff. Way too expensive imo.

Ascended armour is definitely very expensive for the tiny boost it gives, but I have a feeling it’s intentional.

The weapon is the key part – that’s nearly 6% damage by itself, and it is noticeable. But far easier to get than Ascended armour.

I have to say, I did prefer the system where leveling charges and max-level charges were separate.

That way, whilst leveling, I could actually look cool, and at max level, the higher cost made sense because I’d be stuck that way for a long time.

Indeed, I went through quite a lot of whatever the charges were called back then (I forget). Which is presumably what Anet want – i.e. for charges to actually get used!

Now, though, with them kind of hideously/hilariously expensive (or a really tedious grind, not sneering but it is tedious!), and being the same for all levels, I’ve just found I’ve not used them at all whilst leveling, and have been very reluctant to use them at max level.

With outfits not requiring them or interacting with that system at all, and all new store armour being added as outfits, they’re seeming increasingly irrelevant, to me. So I think in the longer term they might want to look at, say, allowing you to apply looks for free to gear levels 1-76, to at least get people thinking about their appearance and so on, then apply the cost only to 77 and up gear, meaning you still use these at endgame. They also might want to look at lowering the cost, but I dunno, maybe there are whales out there who buy tons of these things. I somewhat doubt it, though.

yanipheonu.5798:

To be fair, a lot of this is just intrinsic issues with mouse and keyboard. Keeping your cursor in check is sort of a skill you need to pick up.

It’s absolutely not intrinsic because other games solve it, and Windows itself can also solve it.

The problem here is that GW2’s cursor is pretty hard to see, by cursor standards (being a dull colour and not very bright), and largely non-animated.

I’ve been using mouse + keyboard since 1988, have excellent eyesight and reflexes, and GW2 still fairly often causes me to lose my cursor. Other games do or do not depending on their cursor. With WoW I use a mod and literally haven’t lost the cursor for several months since I installed it.

So yeah, whilst there is a small element of skill/experience, if you’ve been using a PC for gaming for more than 2-3 years, you have that. Anything after that is a design issue (barring obvious eyesight/reflexes problems – but as most humans have one or the others games need to design around them).

Mo Mo.1947:

Maybe if you’ve got excellent vision or something but many of us don’t.

He may do, but so do, and I also have good reflexes and decades of experience, and GW2 still gives me this problem where other games do not, so it is a GW2 issue, contrary to what he says.

phys.7689:

now if my analysis is wrong, you can either explain why, or dont explain why, but regardless it isnt clear to me how these would not be problems with the system suggested.

What’s being suggested is this.

The first 65 points, you get them however. The next 66-189 points, have to get them through SCs. There may then be up to 65 SCs you’ve still not done. You can do them, or not. Either way they do not give you any more Hero Points (but perhaps could give an alternate reward, or maybe counting for world completion is enough).

Obtena.7952:

We should not be settling for such weak elite skills. I’m assuming their cooldowns are going to be like the current elites.

He’s mentioned 180 for the signet and 30 for the shout. If the shout is 4+ seconds of Quickness/Fury that’d be a really nice cooldown.

JonPeters.5630:

Wanted to run a potential idea past you all. Comments welcome.

Tome of Courage -> Signet of Courage
Passive: PBAoE Heal every 10 seconds.
Active: Light of Deliverance

Tome of Wrath -> “Feel My Wrath”
Shout that grants Quickness and Fury

We like the idea of tomes and if we did this we would hope to bring them back in a future Elite Specialization.

Thoughts? Comments?

Thanks,

Jon

Sound absolutely great, and like they’d actually compete with the current non-tome Elite.

RabbitUp.8294:

In which way does the term “mesmer” have anything to do with time control? Or “chronomancer” with illusions?

No-one has made that irrelevant claim.

What is being discussed is whether “hunter” incorporates protection, as the person being responded to claimed.

Your strawman is fun and all, but has nothing to do with the price of tea in China.

Rauderi.8706:

There are quite a few sigils and traits that are simply “on crit.” 100% of the time, so long as the crit happens. Can’t raise the success rate if crit chance/precision gets lowered.

Sure you can! Just give one guaranteed and XX% chance for another (works in HoT – wouldn’t have worked back when not all conditions really stacked).

Rauderi.8706:

Other games usually have decreasing gains on critical chance, but I don’t see that in GW2. Rather than devaluing Precision, it’s up to player responsibility to stop using it after they hit that 80%, or they waste gear points on it.

Firstly, that’s simply not true, virtually all major MMOs use a linear crit-stacking profile just like GW2, which, like GW2, only has diminishing returns in a complicated sense.

In those games, though, crit is far more “expensive”, stat-point-wise than Precision is, so getting it to 30 or 50% is amazing, very often.

Rauderi.8706:

As it stands, I’m of the mind to see where enemy designs move going forward before mucking with a general thing like Precision, which impacts all game modes. Not to say it should be ignored, but observed until action is needed to balance it. Even then, unless it becomes a huge issue in WvW or PvP, expect them to tweak creature values first.

Er, well so long as it happens before it goes live, I’m fine. But one can spend too much time “observing”, and Anet have been guilty of it before, particularly in GW1, but also fairly grossly in GW2 with Conditions, which should have been approached literally years ago.

Adding animations is totally doable, the only question is, will they?

Historically, it’s been very rare for MMORPG companies to bother with it.

WoW, for example, added a few genuinely new animations with Cataclysm, but has barely added any since (though they did re-work more or less all animations with the character re-vamp last year).

Still, if they are added, it will likely be with an expansion. It’s not something that’s technically hard to do or ridiculously resource-consuming, but new enemies etc. take up the same time from the same people, and they usually get strongly prioritized (mistakenly imo).

Perversely, GW2 seems to have removed far more in the way of animations and speech than they’ve added, which I think is bananas, but that’s how they want to do it (good example is “Hold the Line!” – every race except Sylvari has it recorded correctly – Sylvari say “Hold this Line!”, so Anet just stopped EVERYONE from saying it!).

rotten.9753:

Since gear has no effect on a playstyle it’s neither a symptom nor a cause. In this game you achieve playstyle diversity through a choice of your traits and skills. This has been repeated a thousand of times.

Repeating something that’s obviously nonsensical doesn’t make it true. If your logic held, everyone would wear identical gear in PvP/WvW.

Rauderi.8706:

Flipside, I’ve been asking for balance passes on older enemy numbers so that zerk isn’t so prevalent. Higher Toughness, lower HP. Bigger cleaves, faster but less damaging auto attacks. Most mobs, especially in dungeons, just aren’t designed to support much else besides the zerk-meta. Not slamming the efficiency experts on it, it’s just a fact and facet of design that needs changing to keep end-game play interesting.

And we’re starting to see some of that leading up to HoT. Different Mordrem mobs with vastly different Toughness/HP values and varying CC tactics to negate them. The work on breaking condition caps is highly encouraging, since condition builds’ greatest barrier is finally getting removed. That alone is enough.

You seem to be agreeing with me entirely (I’m not particularly calling for a Precision nerf). I’m confused. I’m more concerned about stuff going forwards than the probably-soon-to-be-obsolete dungeons.

Ferocity nerf is interesting – but the solution to the “problem” with triggering Sigils is a really simple one – if Precision gets nerfed, up the proc rate of the Sigils accordingly.

LeBub.9053:

To me it looks as if its going to be very difficult to seperate them in PvP.

Yeah, but if they balance the Elites right, that won’t matter. If they don’t, well, yeah, even if we all have the expansion that’s a problem.

phys.7689:

Eurhetemec.9052:

phys.7689:

being able to get 65 points from a different source would effectively increase the maximum cap higher, not only that, but people who chose to get all their exp from competitive modes would have 65 more that the other people could never get.

No, you literally do not understand what is being suggest. LITERALLY.

Re-read it again, because I’m not sure it could be clearer.

phys.7689:

IMO the best solution is to create teleport consumables that give you access to teirs of skill points, that you can get in WvW
teir i hero point Warp scroll: warps you to 65 low level skill points
teir ii hero point scroll: warps you to 100 mid- high level skill points.

This is a wild fantasy, because they’d need to program in a whole new consumable, and then lay out all the points it could teleport to (carefully collision checking them etc). It would be huge effort and is not a reasonable suggestion.

they actually already had an item like this

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Twisted_Watchwork_Portal_Device

so the code is there, all they would have to do is add skill point locations, which they also already probably have
look coordinates of skill point interaction.

since they already did this work for more types points, i would assume its not that difficult to do.

Fair enough, I didn’t know about that device, but it’d be simpler still just to let people get to 65 any old way, but make ones past that have to be Skill Challenges up to 198 (or however many it is) and cap them there.

Ezekel.6394:

Certainly it would lower DPS, but that is about it. It might make conditions more viable, but you don’t have to nerf Power damage for that to be the case. They are removing the stacking cap and making conditions like Burning and Poison stack intensity and not duration, which should fix most of the issues with condition damage in PvE.

Lowering your DPS has some really significant gameplay impact. Specifically, you can rely less on Dodging alone (and the odd Aegis) for surviving an encounter. If you can’t Zerker-style burst down an encounter, Dodging is less godly, Aegis/Block needs to be more reusable, and other survival stuff becomes more important (of all kinds, but esp. sustained survival stuff).

I’m not saying power damage needs a nerf, incidentally – that’s just one way to achieve this – you could also buff enemy HP, buff enemy armour (already some Mordrem have this), give enemies more un-dodge/block-able stuff, and so on.

rotten.9753:

Eurhetemec.9052:

Gear diversity matters because it’s a symptom of play-style diversity, which is inarguably a good thing, of there being more than one way to win in a reasonable fashion.

Except gear doesn’t impact play-style. But that was said a million times and some people just won’t accept it.

My god. Read the words you quoted. Symptom not cause. You understand what the difference is?

Rauderi.8706:

Gear diversity is already a thing.
Outside of dungeon instances.

PvP has sufficient counterplay between assault builds and bunker builds, WvW has its own preferred tactics that often smear Berserker-geared builds, depending on play style.

And a huge chunk of open world content is better off using Soldier’s gear over anything with Precision or Ferocity, because huge bosses like Tequatl and Shatterer are coded as objects can can’t be crit on.

So, if this thread is just another anti-zerk-dungeon, anti-speedrun thread, it’s probably time to close it. :\

Soldiers is preferred on un-crittable world bosses, I agree.

That is not gear diversity. That is one narrow situation where it’s better.

In day-to-day PvE, zerging, etc. – Zerkers is generally what you want. I’ve tried PvEing in my exotic Zerkers and a bunch of other exotic outfits with a variety of other characters, and Zerkers is ludicrously more efficient.

PvP and WvW, I agree, but that’s the point entirely. That gear can be diverse there shows it can be done in PvE.

As for “OMG CLOSE THREAD”, er, bro, hate to break it to you, but “PEOPLE HAVE OPINIONS I DO NOT LIKE!” isn’t a reason to close a thread.

Also, more importantly, the issue is what will be valid in HoT content (this is the HoT forum), not what was valid in dungeons. Unless changes to either gear, or enemy behaviour are made, it seems likely to remain Zerker, and that’s not good long-term. However I suspect that enemy behaviour and the condition changes will help quite a bit with making PvE actually more diverse.

phys.7689:

being able to get 65 points from a different source would effectively increase the maximum cap higher, not only that, but people who chose to get all their exp from competitive modes would have 65 more that the other people could never get.

No, you literally do not understand what is being suggest. LITERALLY.

Re-read it again, because I’m not sure it could be clearer.

phys.7689:

IMO the best solution is to create teleport consumables that give you access to teirs of skill points, that you can get in WvW
teir i hero point Warp scroll: warps you to 65 low level skill points
teir ii hero point scroll: warps you to 100 mid- high level skill points.

This is a wild fantasy, because they’d need to program in a whole new consumable, and then lay out all the points it could teleport to (carefully collision checking them etc). It would be huge effort and is not a reasonable suggestion.