Guild Wars 2

randomfightfan.4091:

Kaaboose.3897:

This threads on the Trinity in PvE, not PvP.
Unless you WERE refering to PvE in which case you’re just suporting the DMG>ALL META that we currently have

I probably did respond to something that was a little off topic but oh well, I’ll come back to the topic at hand. I believe something should be done to increase the difficulty so that 5 noobs in zerkers can’t just instantly annihilate anything, but if a player is good enough to pull off full zerker and NOT die, then he/she should be rewarded with exceptional dps. In the case of slave driver in CoF, that is a GREAT boss for killing pure zerkers. If the hp was flat out doubled on that boss, we wouldn’t be seeing people just face-tanking it until death, people would actually have to dodge and you know, use some skills.

If you watch any of the Lupi solo vids, you’ll notice that every player used pure dps gear not because they wanted to plow through the content before a threat could surface (they’re soloing Lupi, they’d have to be skilled to do that in any gear), but instead they wear it b/c they can handle the no-survivability-if-hit senario. They want to kill the boss a few minutes faster b.c the faster it dies, the less time they have to make a fatal mistake.

Solo chalenges like that SHOULD exist for the players that want them IMO. But that should NOT be possible in a team scenario. If it’s possible to SOLO a team effort then what’s the point in brining a team? There’s no need to work together if each of you is capable of doing the encounter on your own.
This is why I recomend throwing in many weak attacks with the strong ones. So that without team support the boss WILL pressure you to death. This is also why I recomended the speed increase, to prevent indefinate kiting without control.

digiowl.9620:

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

Ok, i was perhaps a bit harsh. Still, the impact of healing power on relevant skills and traits will have to be reworked so that trading power and/or crit damage (precision is too overloaded with trait and rune procs to be considered) for healing power makes a impact on the overall survivability.

Solstice came up with a great soltuion to that on the Guru forums:

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying critical chance should be hammered into the ground, a precision-focused build could still attain, say, a 30% critical chance with fury halved to around 10% for a total of ~40%. I also recognise the impact on traits and other ‘on critical’ effects, but many of these have their own in-built probability which could be increased or removed. Hell, Arenanet has already had to adjust for high critical chances by placing an internal cooldown on certain effects (e.g. life-steal consumable if I remember correctly)

Hmm, may work. Drop max attainable crit chance so you can’t run with virtually guaranteed crit damage, and up the proc effect numbers to compensate.

And yeah, those consumables. They allowed a zerker warrior to be a better vampire than a vampire build necromancer before internal cooldowns were put in place…

The only problem is how it would effect PvP. Bunker builds… Wait physical bunker builds wouldn’t NEED to focus so much on pysical damage mitigation as much would they? They’d start favoring healing and negating conditions more? nah same problems still.
Spike builds would actually have to go for talents that drasticly increased crit under certian circumstances…
I’m terrible at PvP balance, anyone care to share some insight as to what a change like that would do to PvP?

Stormcrow.7513:

SNIP
With 0 challenges worthy of gameplay, the mindless zerging, the aweful risk vs reward system and all of the other problems that GW2 has the only reason that I am still playing is because there is nothing else out there.
I get the feeling that when a better game comes along, I will be switching to something that makes me think, feel rewarded for difficult content and not have to grind/pull out the visa in order to acquire items.
Anet NEEDS to wake up and wake up fast because after 9 months there is little left in the tank.

I’m in the same boat Stormcrow. My guild and I were tiring of how casualised WoW was becoming on top of how repetative it had gotten over the years. Even with it’s faults GW2 offers more fun than WoW but it’s fallen well short of what we were promised nearly 2 years ago.
As soon as something comes along that offers a fun optional challenge without resorting to a grind to keep us interested we’ll be gone. GW2’s time to act is before this game comes out, not after.

digiowl.9620:

Ok, i was perhaps a bit harsh. Still, the impact of healing power on relevant skills and traits will have to be reworked so that trading power and/or crit damage (precision is too overloaded with trait and rune procs to be considered) for healing power makes a impact on the overall survivability.

Solstice came up with a great soltuion to that on the Guru forums:

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying critical chance should be hammered into the ground, a precision-focused build could still attain, say, a 30% critical chance with fury halved to around 10% for a total of ~40%. I also recognise the impact on traits and other ‘on critical’ effects, but many of these have their own in-built probability which could be increased or removed. Hell, Arenanet has already had to adjust for high critical chances by placing an internal cooldown on certain effects (e.g. life-steal consumable if I remember correctly)

I cannot help but feel that unless something is done to reduce direct damage scaling in PvE, anything other than blatant game mechanic gimmicks will be trivialised as DPS ‘nukes’ past them thanks to hard-counters such as dodging and reflection. Furthermore, as a result condition-type damage will continue to be dropped in preference of the former for many professions and while increasing the damage per condition stack is a potential response, it does not strike me as a solution as it only compounds the spiralling DPS issue.

Even a mediocre player like me sees a somewhat limited use for condition damage, a simple example being a ranger which I levelled recently. Ignoring the arguments of whether a ranger is good, bad or downright ugly when compared to other professions, trialling on level 80 rare and masterwork greens left me feeling there was no real build choice as upgrading to direct-damage (i.e. beserker) exotic items yielded a much higher return with the additional damage from condition-stacks being a ‘nice-to-have’.

This would also make those “Extra crit in X scenario” much more apealing when used with crit dmg builds.

randomfightfan.4091:

@ prip, if you really think this game doesn’t reward for good timing and clever play, maybe you should switch to something that isn’t bunker. I suggest playing a thief. I can’t say much for pvp as I hate the crap on a point playstyle but in pve and wvw the clever playstyles and quick thinking is the difference between life and death. If you’re saying it’s not rewarding at all for any class then you have not seen it done properly. Lastly, those clever things you’re talking about (blasts in water or big bomb in a smoke field) will win you an extended or outnumbered fight. Keep practicing those things as you don’t have to sacrifice dps to pull off tricks like that. Once it feels natural to play your class to its fullest, you’ll be able to roll over the majority of people you find.

This threads on the Trinity in PvE, not PvP.
Unless you WERE refering to PvE in which case you’re just suporting the DMG>ALL META that we currently have

aspirine.6852:

Guaranteed drops makes weapons, armours you name it worthless, that is not what I would want in a game.

You really believe RNG Casino loot is better?

Onshidesigns.1069:

Kaaboose.3897:

Onshidesigns.1069:

Example:
*Supply Crate
Open 10 Supply Crate to get 1 weapon ticket in the mail.
Players earn 1 ticket for every 10 Supply Crates opened.

*Black Lion Chests
Open 10 Black Lion Chests to get 1 rare item/skin in the mail.
Players earn 1 rare item/skin for every 10 Black Lion Chests opened.

Why not just cut out the middle man and sell the skin on the TP?

Anet is determined to destroy their company with these RNG chests. This idea allows Anet to make their extra money. And still guarantee players a reward.

Players who only want one ticket it comes out cheaper for them. Buy farming gold for the first 5 chests. Then if they don’t have the gold to buy gems for the 2nd 5 chests. They will then spend 10 dollars on gems. That leaves 650 extra gems.

Where Anet makes more money is from players who want more than one weapon ticket.

Yes but if you put a ceiling on the RNG it’s no longer really RNG except for when it works in the player favor… which NCsoft most certinly would not want.
What I’m saying is if they want both they should just put the Prize (In this case the skin ticket) on the TP for a price and then also allow it to be won from the RNG chest.
At least the price would give us a good indication for what they expect us to pay for it.

Not one of my top choices for a playable race but I’d still be happy to try one.
Ever seen the idle animation when one of these guys is holding a gun? I nearly fell off my chair the first time I saw it!

digiowl.9620:

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

And so we are right back at altruistic DPS guardian, shout DPS warrior, and the odd control DPS mesmer for good measure.

I’m not following Owl, That would still work (if some control/support was mixed in via skills) but It would no longer be the meta. If everyone just bunched up and spammed dps as they do now they’d be werecked by the “weak” regualr cleave atatcks that need to be mitigated through control and support.

Both of those builds either heal self as part of group buff cycles (never mind that guardians buff as they attack), or heal group as part of self buff cycles. Meaning that they can mix heal, buff and DPS in a single package. Then you put in the odd control mesmer (never mind utilities for getting around puzzles and DPS boosting) for taking care of those interrupt-able spikes.

The others that come close are perhaps engineer and elementalist, by swapping kits or attunements at a furious pace.

I might be misunderstanding your terms here so correct me if I’ve got this wrong.
You’re saying that the solution proposed in the video (Defiance fixes, regular weak attacks mixed in with the strong ones) wouldn’t result in a change to the current META because it already has all of those things?

Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t the current META run full zerkers (Except your standard guardian anchor)? How long would that last against a boss that throws our regular attacks that cleave? They’d have to spread out and that kind of throws a spanner in the works for the current META.
Then again if they added in some kind of AoE Protection/Healing build (I don’t think the Guardian Anchor build would be enough since it’s not just him getting hit) then it might work. Or if they brought something other then zerkers but then the META has changed already.
Do you think this would be enough to make Healing Power a worthwhile stat since there would most lilkey be a decent amount of small packets of damage on a party or do you feel it would still fall well short of Boon Duration in terms of support?

digiowl.9620:

And so we are right back at altruistic DPS guardian, shout DPS warrior, and the odd control DPS mesmer for good measure.

I’m not following Owl, That would still work (if some control/support was mixed in via skills) but It would no longer be the meta. If everyone just bunched up and spammed dps as they do now they’d be werecked by the “weak” regualr cleave atatcks that need to be mitigated through control and support.

FalconX.9287:

Kaaboose.3897:

FalconX.9287:

“(And no, I don’t mean that everyone needs to be focused in one of these three roles, that’s not what anet wanted, They wanted players to do a bit of everything.)”

And this is why it is not working today . Sure players can do a bit of everything but you still need a main role player for every role
As said before why reinvent the wheel . improve on it.

So why not say to your party “Hey, My builds really good at support so I’ll be focusing on helping out my allies more then damging the boss.”
Or “Hey I’ve got some great control skills, Leave debuffing and interupting to me!”
Lastly “I’m not very good at control or support so can I focus on damging the boss please?”
You’ve got your guideline roles right there but if something goes wrong (And if the fights designed right it SHOULD) and our control player can’t perform his role for a time one of the other group members could take over that role for as long as nessesary.

The whole reason Anet wanted to get away from hard defined roles (Your character is Either Damage OR Support OR Control and don’t you dare thing about doing more then one!) was so that groups could be formed more easily.

So Kabuse . to cut it short
SNIP!

Problem is GW2 removed the trinity from RIFT and by doing so also removed a lot of the crazy fun which comes with it .

All of the snip was off topic! That fun can be had with Anets trinity just as much as with Rifts (If RIFT’s trinity is like wow’s, I dunno as I’ve never played it)

Onshidesigns.1069:

Example:
*Supply Crate
Open 10 Supply Crate to get 1 weapon ticket in the mail.
Players earn 1 ticket for every 10 Supply Crates opened.

*Black Lion Chests
Open 10 Black Lion Chests to get 1 rare item/skin in the mail.
Players earn 1 rare item/skin for every 10 Black Lion Chests opened.

Why not just cut out the middle man and sell the skin on the TP?

FalconX.9287:

“(And no, I don’t mean that everyone needs to be focused in one of these three roles, that’s not what anet wanted, They wanted players to do a bit of everything.)”

And this is why it is not working today . Sure players can do a bit of everything but you still need a main role player for every role
As said before why reinvent the wheel . improve on it.

So why not say to your party “Hey, My builds really good at support so I’ll be focusing on helping out my allies more then damging the boss.”
Or “Hey I’ve got some great control skills, Leave debuffing and interupting to me!”
Lastly “I’m not very good at control or support so can I focus on damging the boss please?”
You’ve got your guideline roles right there but if something goes wrong (And if the fights designed right it SHOULD) and our control player can’t perform his role for a time one of the other group members could take over that role for as long as nessesary.

The whole reason Anet wanted to get away from hard defined roles (Your character is Either Damage OR Support OR Control and don’t you dare thing about doing more then one!) was so that groups could be formed more easily.

digiowl.9620:

Kaaboose.3897:

digiowl.9620:

FalconX.9287:

- some roles are not fun when leveling – but there is an easy fix for this . give all classes the ability to play all the roles so that everyone can chose the role they like ! and also the ability to switch between the roles when doing dungeons or when doing the usual pve !

When i first heard about ANet’s “no trinity” claim, this is what i expected. Move some traits around and my character would shift from DPS or control to heal/support.

Don’t work tho, because ANet is deathly afraid of SPVP bunkers slowing down the spectator esport excitement.

These suggested improvements were to alter the way bosses deal with these skills rather then alter the skills themselves. That way SPvP would be uneffected.

This may work for control (defiant is a mob mechanic after all) but it will do jack all for heal/support.

No, it will not. I specified mixing in weak regular attacks in with the big ones for this very reason. The weak regular attacks (which would vary from encounter to encounter) would be desiged to pressure the group. You can only dodge so often, and dodges should be reserved for dodging the most dangerous attacks in an encounter.
The regular ones, without support, would eventually wear down a group, But if a group brought along support skills they could delay this pressure long enough for the foe to be defeated.
It’s called a trinity because if one of the 3 roles is removed from the equation it should no longer work.
If you ignore damage you should fail. If you ignore suport you should fail. If you ignore control you should fail. That is the way it should work. (And no, I don’t mean that everyone needs to be focused in one of these three roles, that’s not what anet wanted, They wanted players to do a bit of everything.)

Exactly . kabuse’s suggestions are only the tip of the iceberg . You would of course have to redesign skills (which in my opinion is definitely needed as some skills are just boring/useless)
And there is also the question of gear for tanks / dps / healers .General consensus is that we don’t like separate gear for each of the roles ( i don’t mind it if the choice is between separate gear or no trinity at all ) – but i’m sure Anet could come up with an innovative way of solving this

Most skills that are boring or useless are that way because they were designed around Arenanets original concept of the holy tinity that they have failed to impliment. Look at hammer warriors in PvE for instance.
And we should not even be mentioning Tanks/Dps/Healers as that is not the trinity Anet wanted.
Gear should be a factor in how well you perform at each part of the GW2 Trinity. Someone who wanted to excel at support should by want to be a bit more durable and have longer lasting boons and better heals.
Somone who favored control would want to chose a weapon/skill/trait that grants him access to more of these skills or power up his attacks on enmies effected by these skills. He’ll proably also want more condition duration.
And somone focusing on damage would want more Power, precision, Condition damage or whatever stats meshed best with his traits for optimal damage.
All three of these players can particpate in the GW2 Trinity and depending on the combination of skills/traits/gear they’d be able to do a bit of all 3 to differnt levels of effectiveness but never be locked out from taking part in any one of the Trinities roles.

digiowl.9620:

FalconX.9287:

- some roles are not fun when leveling – but there is an easy fix for this . give all classes the ability to play all the roles so that everyone can chose the role they like ! and also the ability to switch between the roles when doing dungeons or when doing the usual pve !

When i first heard about ANet’s “no trinity” claim, this is what i expected. Move some traits around and my character would shift from DPS or control to heal/support.

Don’t work tho, because ANet is deathly afraid of SPVP bunkers slowing down the spectator esport excitement.

These suggested improvements were to alter the way bosses deal with these skills rather then alter the skills themselves. That way SPvP would be uneffected.

Well NULL has been stealth nerfed so that his debuff at 25% no longer builds up over time. The fight can now be kitten derped by all but the most retarted of players GG anet.

UPDATE: Just sapwned, many defence events still going tho.

I think we broke the META event somehow on Hendge of Denravi. We held the settlements for some time, Got credit for “Island defence complete” and have been retaking settlements the last 1/2 hour with no mention of the META. No queen has yet spawned.

Goorman.7916:

Well, your solution from video(if i understand it correctly) punishes players cooperation, because it is inefficient to use control in succession, it is better to wait for defiance stacks to go away naturally.Mine solution directly promotes cooperation.
However, the main idea is definitely the same – fix defiance buff and make control important in pve encounters.

Being able to use control in succession would make control too powerful. The METAgame that would become as much of a joke as it is now. Players would bring every control ability they had to empty the meter as quickly as possible and then spam every stun they had to keep the boss locked down and unable to anything while taking extra damage.
WoW’s solution to this was to make bosses immune to these sorts of skills and as such they were almost never used in PvE or if they were they were never speced to make them more effective.
GW2, since anet is trying to re-invent the trinity, trys to find some sort of middle ground to allow these sorts of abilities to be used on bosses but no so much that they would become overpowered.
Chaining control could be used to overcome any mehcanics a boss might have on offer, just as maxing DPS does the same thing now. (2:00 of the video linked for a visual example)
Control should be a regular part of an encounter but being able to chain it for too long (and since using more control keeps the meter down for longer this is inevitable) will simply shift the style of play from one extreme (MAX DPS!) to the other (MAX CONTROL!)
However, I don’t see why a bit of both systems couldn’t be put together to crate the middle ground anet is looking for.
The idea of having differnet control effects have differnt effects on the meter is a good thing. Though it would have to be carefully implimented so as not to make some control skills useless.
The idea of a time where all control effects could be used on a short period seems good but I wouldn’t combine that with a DPS increase. Also I’d have spamming control effects FILL the meter faster, not cause it to fill slower. That way control is encouraged to be used carfully rather then spammed.
Lastly I’d start with the meter empty as well as have it drain naturally as well as being able to be drained faster by control effects, Again this would have to be done carfully so as not to allow control spam to become the new META.

Goorman.7916:

To fix problem of Control in pve simply changing defiant buff is not enough.
Fights have to be designed to promote control, for example boss should have an attack that will wipe players if the do not interrupt it.
Since it is not true as of right now, it is somewhat useless to change defiant.
P.S. And a.net would not add any “meters” to bosses.Solution has to be simple to fit current system.
P.P.S. For example defiant buff every 10(can be adjusted for different bosses) seconds give 10(can be adjusted as well) stacks of stability to boss.
If players have managed to destroy all 10 stacks, they can control the boss as they want for the rest of this 10 seconds.
Combined with uberpowered skills that will wipe players if they are not interrupted, this will make a little bit better system.

This was gone over in the video linked as well :P

WonderfulCT.6278:

Kaaboose.3897:

Have you watched THIS video?
SNIP!
Proposed solution to defiant and to dungeons as well.

Don’t just self advertise on other peoples threads, since yours is clearly still there on the front page it shouldn’t be necessary.

Instead use written words to talk about what your proposed change is, I don’t like to watch youtube videos that try to teach things. If you want me to listen to your suggestion take the time to make a written version.

When I asked for feedback I meant on my suggested change, if you want to compare mine to yours thats fine but like I said talk about it.

I don’t see what difference it makes me writing my solutions to the problem over presenting them verbally. If I was doing it just to self advertise I’d have put a link to my post here.

As I posted before your propsed solution would split fighting bosses into “phases” There would be the regular phase like we have now and then there would be the offensive phase where everyone spams every bit of CC they have to maximum effect.

The solution I offered for thoese put off from watching/listening to videos would be to have the defiance buff fall off naturally along with the ability for it to be stipped as well.

This way in groups players could strip it then stop at 1 or 2 stacks and time their control acordingly. It’s a system that allows players to time for important interupts and one that can still scale to the amount of players.

I do agree with making the combos stronger but they need to make ONLY the CROSS-PLAYER combos stronger.
I feel that the OP’s method would be a nice mechanic on some bosses but not the norm. It kind of splits off fighting the boss to offensive and defensive stages.

Have you watched THIS video?

Proposed solution to defiant and to dungeons as well.

Dual.8953:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Rick Rodman.9704:

People are using guardians and elems as healers. Anet, please give up on this ‘no holy trinity’ nonsense and give us a good healer, like a monk. Let them level thru crafting if necessary.

I use my Necro as a healer, I dump regen all over the battle field. My friend uses his Ranger. I don’t understand why we need a main healer when there are so many classes that can already fill the support role. My Ranger doesn’t need a healer because he regens like mad.

Yeah, and my HGH Engie has been noted as healing just as well as any Ele. We don’t need to go waiting hours to get a healer, especially with guardians borderline filling that “we need to wait for this class” role already. We need it so people won’t look down thier nose when they see a 3 Ranger 2 Thief party. Dungeons that challenge parties, but don’t render certain classes as required and others as unusable.

Necros make for kitten amazing healers when they are set up right. All classes can throw out regeneration but the Well of Blood throws out ‘small’ packets of healing that you can use in conjuction with regerenation, which nerco have aoe access to as well with the staff ability Mark of blood (Or the mark of blood on dodge.)
Sadly with the current system there isn’t much call for it as players are either getting hit for no damage or so much that healing won’t make a differnce.

I really think that having small attacks mixed in with the big ones to pressure a group to either use control or defensive support (like healing) is the way to go. Defintly keep bigger attacks to be dodged/avoided/interupted in there as well though!

There is a link to the offical forums in the about section of each of my videos Guns and Giblets. I’ll be sure to advertise that more often in the videos themselves to prevent multithreads.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Fix-the-Guild-Wars-2-Un-Holy-Trinity/
Don’t think I don’t apreacete you trying to support the video and the proposed changes because I certinly do! It’s just easier on Anet if they have less posts to go through!

Wolfey.3407:

was farming in ssc and ya…..wtf?

Wolfey.3407:

another screen shot

I’m not able to see these attachments wolfey.

Paranormal Bear.2539:

Kaaboose.3897:

I did mention ignoring turent unless they are right near NULL or he’s sheilded with no way to remove.
By all means I’m not saying don’t join Sabre on his speed runs, It’s really great he’s offering his time to help out the players.
However if you’re like me and prefer to do things yourself or with your mates then this guide is for you.

No ill-intentions were made, as I was just contributing with free suggestions.
The more methods the merrier, even though it’s a bit lengthy for some people like me. What I meant was just run NULL over explosive land mines and gas mines. Gas mines will “necro” the boss and turrets @ that point will hurt NULL more than aid it.

Hope that makes more sense.

Yep, Cheers.

Well after 9 months we have finally been told that we will be able to disable right click targeting!
It probably doesn’t bother as many people but I have a similar issue with Ctrl Clicking and really wish there was an option to diable that or rebind the funtion to another key.
I’ve used Ctrl as my Push-To-Talk key since… GW1 actually! And it’s not something I am willing to force myself to unlearn.
As such If I’m talking on vent and try to click a skill to use it instead of activating the skill I annouce it to whatever chat I was last in.
I know many people are going to say just unbind the key or “Lol stop clicking skills” but shouldn’t we be able to custimise the controls to our liking? I though this was a PC game after all.
Also if there are any other functions you belive we should be able to disable or remap but can’t I’d love to discuss them here as well.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Got an update for you guys! Thanks to everyone for dissecting the current state of targeting!

There is certainly a bug with prolonged mouse-presses and not moving the cursor. I am fixing this. However, this is certainly an extreme case and fixing this will not solve all issues players are experiencing.

The current click timing threshold is 250ms. We are playing with a lower number internally to see if it causes problems like people perceiving clicks as not registering.

There is also window of error when clicking that could cause your mouse-release to select something different from what was hovered during the mouse-press. While this should also very rarely happen with the timing and distance thresholds, it is still a potential problem that will be fixed.

On top of all this is still player preference. Not everyone wants a single right-click to perform default actions. This is why we’re adding a toggle for it in the next patch.

There are still questions left to be answered for how targeting in Guild Wars 2 should work, and I’m sure these will be answered as we continue to iterate.

THANK YOU!

Paranormal Bear.2539:

Visual Guide: http://toygamers.forumotion.com/t322-southsun-cove-s-canach-lair-guide

My free 3 minute speed run thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/southsun/Doing-Canach-Lair-Exp-Speed-Runs/first#content

Hey Kaboose! Master Saber here. Just watched your video and my suggestions are as follows:
1. You don’t need to concentrate on turrets. I understand your method is trying to be very similar to Arena Net’s guide but turrets are a waste of time (They will re-spawn way too fast & the entire battle will take way too long).

2. Also, have your party kill clones when luring/pushing NULL into a mine. Stick pets on NULL when he’s right next to a mine and it will distract the boss from the players, allowing instant (if not repeated) episodes of disarming mines.

3. Your upload is great, but the encounter seems too long. If players whom have tried your method cannot still get it; I’ll be available until June 5 for free 3 minutes (or less) speed runs.

I did mention ignoring turent unless they are right near NULL or he’s sheilded with no way to remove.
By all means I’m not saying don’t join Sabre on his speed runs, It’s really great he’s offering his time to help out the players.
However if you’re like me and prefer to do things yourself or with your mates then this guide is for you.

I know there are plenty of players out there having trouble with the NULL encounter so I have created this video guide on how to beat him and to explain the mechanics of the fight as well as going over a few suggestions on how the encounter can be improved.

Please feel free to add your own suggestions or if you have any questions or other problems encounted please put them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to respond.

Hmm, Sounds like he’s still bugging so I’ll throw in a few tips that have worked for me.
If you have a tanky type chatracter in the party let them wail on him solo for about 30 secconds while everyone disarms some mines (good practice) at the begining on of the fight and the boss should stick to him like glue.
If not make sure moves together to the nearest mine when his sheild comes up. Always try to have one mine ready to drag him into before he puts up his sheild (not always possible but try)
If He gets his sheild up while all the mines are up go get a mine detector and get ready to disarm one. If everyone disarms a mine then drags him over them all you’ll make up the lost damage of him being shiedled.
Remember where the mines are. They always respawn in the same place and are the same type.
I HATE that he doesn’t give a vocal cue as to what he’s doing but when he spins in place he’s rearming all the mines (any green ones will turn red)
When he starts punching the ground he’s detonating them all. Again there REALLY should be a vocal cue for this.
As for pets rangers should be ready to recall their pet if he’s stuck on them to drag him over a mine. Uncontrolable pets should only be summoned after his sheild is removed. Turrents can be safly placed so as not to set of mines but they’ll still fall prey to the electric balls.
Also, Only bother going for the healing turrets if they are close by or he is sheilded while all mines are down.
Lastly it really helps to do the solo version to come to grips with mines, them detonating and kiting into a boss into them.

Lopez.7369:

I re-did the five-man instance to see if I was being fair earlier. I was. The design is just awful. There’s no coherency to the fight, and it’s obvious that a bunch of loose mechanics were slapped together at the last minute. The result isn’t a challenge; it’s a total mess that isn’t even difficult because all the mechanics are poorly tuned.

Also, the boss’s tells are awful and constantly bug out.

If rushing the development of content like this is what it takes to release patches every two weeks or month, slow down. Quality is way more important than quantity.

Since the patch I find him much better. You have the option of draging him over mines if your groups dps is too low for the final pahse.
That being said why can’t we have some vocal tells on when he is going to disarm/rearm mines? Would go a long way to making this more fun.
Also if defiant was changed so that the stacks came off slowly over time we could use launch/fears to throw him into disarmed mines to get aroung the crazy agro switching.
All in all, it’s one of the better fights. Tricky, but with a group that comunitcates/knows what it is doing, it’s a lot of fun without being another zerg to win (though I’ll be that still works, i just don’t roll with full zerker groups.)
As for the story… It’s hard to get into these sort of things when you know there are otehr world dragons out there. It’s like anime filler ah la Dragonball(z) or for the younger crowd Naruto/Bleach. At best it’s a nice distraction but you can’t wait for the real stuff to get going. At worst it’s just plain irritating. If we MUST have LS can’t it involve the dragons? Or even the aftermath of ‘defeating’ zahitan.
Also crab toss is probably the most polished, balanced and fun things to come out of GW2 since release. My hat goes off to the guys that designed that.

I like this so much better then the original animation.
Soooo.. Are we going to get a chainsaw (charrsword?) for the infinite axe?
Pretty please!

What abramelin said. Sometime between day one and the last patch after his inital sheild NULL was immune to all conditions.
This has now been fixed (as well as the random bomb explions on disarm.)
I must say the fight is now much better. Challenging without being broken.

Also would like to mention that the daily achivement is not registering either. it seems anything achivement realted to crab toss is currently not working.

You know what I want?
THIS:

I’d be happy if the expansion did nothing more but polish the game to resemble what was promised to us 2 years ago.

tigirius.9014:

marnick.4305:

Your first video was horribly flawed, something which you refused to acknowledge in the accompanying thread, which devolved into a flamewar. Why should I watch this one? Why shouldn’t this thread be closed immediately instead of waiting for the inevitable flamewar?

Actually no it wasn’t and yes he has great ideas some of which would be important improvements for the game like actually dishing out rewards for the content done instead of farming whereas right now neither content nor farming provide adequate rewards for the gameplay time.

Anyways this video is great imo it talks about what some of us have been saying for quite some time now. Healing is a joke, condition damage is nerfed in PVE just after launch to ‘balance’ pvp and has never been fixed, and CC on bosses is a joke so what build does that leave us with? Zerker. Exactly.

All one has to do is go head over the engineer trait list and see what’s wrong. AOE heals hardly do anything, the regen and other such abilities do not improve with +healing so you might as well not even have that score on your armor.

You look at the boss fights and the special abilities on the bosses make CC completely useless. This is exactly like WoW but in WoW’s case you could actually tab target all day and just walk around out of the AOE boss damage zones, can’t do that in this game CC is as essential as dodge and should be improved for all boss/champion fights. Otherwise the combat becomes boring.

Where’s the build diversity?

This is ecatly what I want too see come from having the trinity fixed. Build diversity. With proper AI we wouldn’t even need to nerf zerger gear as full zerker parties would be very difficult to pull off.

I’d just like to point out to everyone that sicne last patch NULL has been fixed. He now porperly removes his sheild from all mine blasts AND he is no longer immune to conditions. Draging him over many converted miens is a great way to increase your dps. The posions ones work very well.

Okuza.5210:

IMHO, the benefits of high dps groups are rather far from game destroying. The vast majority of PVE players in the game either can’t or don’t play with characters in berserk armor and maximum dps builds. I agree that it would be a lot more fun if other mechanics were introduced, but you have to be OK with people whining “it’s too hard”; somewhat similar to the other thread where people are complaining about skill points in Orr being too hard when the reality is that they all can be solo’d in 30s by any class using very simple tactics (yes, under 80 & in green gear).

GW2 PVE is definitely far too easy and getting easier (eg. nerfs to personal story battles), but it’s mostly because of human nature. MMO battles are always a matter of killing the target before the target can kill you. Some start taking damage and react by thinking “I’ve got to kill this faster!” Others get hurt and think “OMG, make it stop hurting me!” A lot more seem to have the second reaction. So, you have some in “zerk” gear and some in “pvt” gear and if you mix them, you get both sides hating the other.

What the game truly lacks is teamwork, especially in boss fights. The environmental danger component is better than giant HP pools, but it leaves the “group” feeling like 5 people solo’ing together rather than a team that interacts to build on each other’s skills to achieve a synergy that is 10x better than can be achieved by 5x solo’ers.

Boss fights should be so hard that without group synergy, the group is guaranteed to fail. The game needs skills that interact with other player’s skills. Combos are pathetic compared to what’s really needed and we need bosses that can’t be killed without those very strong group abilities (or perhaps take 10-20x the time & effort without them).

I’m going to have to go against saying that the vast majoirity of players don’t use zerker gear. Just have a look at the prices of such gear on the TP.
I most certinlly do agree with you on group synergy and combos really should be beefed up for CROSS player combos. This is all gone over in the link: : http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/
showing that Anet originally wanted exactly what you are describing but lost their way and gave up somewhere in development.

I try my best in all my videos and posts to offer soultions to the problems I have encoutnered. Yes, I citisise GW2 for it’s faults, but only so that thoese faults can be worked apon to improve the game.
My hope for Aner actualy working on these faults and ever achiving what was promised in the manifesto and development does get less and less with each patch. Each patch seems to keep building apon the flaws in GW2 (espicially PvE) instead of fixing thoese flaws and then working from a more solid foundation.

It’s an interesting idea but it would be a very difficult system to impliment and if Anet can’t get their current system to work with their new trinity concepts (here BTW: http://gw2101.gtm.gu.../healing-death/) they have no chance of getting this right.

NecoDelero.5318:

He is certainly bugged. Just tried fighting him, but after the first shield he becomes immune against conditions. It’s not just a display glitch either. We got him down to almost half of his health before he even got the first shield. After that we needed ages to take him down. Once the debuff struck we just didn’t have enough dps to kill him in time.

The sad thing is the current META won’t even notice this glitch and just tell us we’re bad since it doesn’t effect them in the least.

Evan Lesh.3295:

My post wasn’t meant to be negative, but to shed more light on an issue that isn’t as simple as it appears. We anticipated an increase in usability problems from other game features which is why we’ve already begun to address the problem. The current implementation will see revisions.

Evan, I can see and understand all the problems that come with making this feature work correctly but the title of the Thread is “An option to disable right click targeting.”
While we do apreciate all the effort you guys are putting into the feature to make it work all we require to make us happy is an option to turn this feature off.
We’re still able to select our targets from left click targeting so I fail to see what underlying problems it could cause, unless it’s a more deep seeded problem with programming.
Maybe I’m just a dumb layman and I missed you going over this in your above posts but is there any reason we cannot have an option to simply turn off right click targeting and simple have the right click function bound to rotating the camera?

draxynnic.3719:

Weird…

tries a few more experiments

Whoah.. I think, somehow, my computer has borked its ability to play Youtube entirely. WTF?

I got this too man! Something about updating adobe, and updates won’t fix it. Just click the abckround of the video (Not the link to the update) to bypass the stupid warning.

draxynnic.3719:

Kaaboose.3897:

Thanks for the support guys, Especially from The Talcmaster for his detailed post. There is so much potential for amazing encounters in GW2 and I see the developers struggling to do this with every introduced boss to the game but I can’t help feeling they could be made so much more fun with more emphasis on control and support.
We tryed knocking a dredge into thoese crushers in the molten facility and were disapointed (though not surpirsed) that he didn’t share the same fate as me when I went oall loot blind over that oricalcum vein…

I can understand why mobs get immunity to environmental effects – they don’t have the AI to avoid them.

But I swear, there seems to be at least one designer that has a fetish for abusing this safeguard. Every time I’ve seen a combat near a potentially fatal drop, then sure enough, there’s been an enemy with the ability to push you off it. When it’s the final bosses of Molten Furnace that are obviously too big to push around and where going near the edge is a tradeoff between the possibility of falling and the otherwise more vulnerable centre, this is fair enough.

When it’s a single piddly Dredge on a narrow gantry that knocks you off to fall to your death moments after you watched it bounce off an invisible safety rail, though, it’s no less abusive than anything the players could do.

As for the rest… I’d like to say I agree with it entirely, but I’ve never managed to actually see the video – every time I’ve tried it’s been broken. Still, I think it’s basically saying things I’ve been saying for a while. Defiance especially needs to be less of a ‘kitten you’ to control (personally, I’d like to see a diminishing returns system for control where the more control effects applied within a short period, the shorter each one is – if applies across the board, this would also help ameliorate the chain-stunning effect seen from Orrian spectral weapons.

It’s been fixed for quite a while… The original upload failed to convert for some reason. There’s an alternate version of the video here for players that like to listen as they play instead of watching.

We were having a differnt issue today. We couldn’t disarm the mines. Every time we tried they just explode.
I agree with tho OP, the concept of the fight is good, the execution is terrible. And ANET will please just tell us you want all PvErs to just forgo any kind of support and control for pure damage okay? I still hold hops you’ll actually stick to your earleir promises of Gw2 PvE combat :
http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/

ANET

We use our cross-profession combos to fill in the rest of our support. An elementalist can create a Firewall or Static Field to improve the ranged attacks of his allies. A warrior can carry a Banner of Wisdom around the battlefield to increase the power of his allies’ magical attacks. An elementalist might cast an ice spell to freeze enemies, but that same spell might give his allies Frost Armor to protect them from incoming attacks. When you boil it down, support is just the friendly way for players to work together to accomplish a shared goal.
Tank: This is where Guild Wars 2 makes the biggest break from the traditional MMO setup. Tanking is the most rudimentary form of the most important combat fundamental, CONTROL. Every game has it, yet it always seems to get a bad name. In Guild Wars there was Knockdown, Interrupt, Weakness, Blind, and Cripple, to name a few. We wanted to build upon what we think makes control such an important part of dynamic combat.
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Control is the only thing versatile enough to get away from the rock-paper-scissors gameplay of other MMOs. It’s healing when you need it, its damage when you need it. It is the glue that holds together our system. From controlling movement to controlling damage, there are tons of exciting dynamic scenarios that control can set up. You can use a stun to save an ally or to finish off a fleeing enemy. Immobilize that warrior to get away from them, or use it on an elementalist to close in on them. In order to use it well, we had to understand the drawbacks of control too. How often can you do it? How excessive is the duration? How does it affect the difficulty of challenges you face?
There are a lot of different levels of control, from a simple cripple, to an immobilize, to a knockdown. Each one has its place. The more devastating control effects are, the more infrequently they need to occur, and their duration needs to be shorter. Knockdown is one of the strongest forms of control in Guild Wars 2, but you won’t see a character that can just keep knocking someone down indefinitely, and you won’t see a knockdown that puts an enemy out for so long that they won’t be able to react. It’s simply a tool that players have at their disposal to use at the right times to turn the tide of a battle.
You could say instead of DPS/heal/tank, we have our own trinity of damage, support, and control, but we prefer to think of them as the variety of elements that create a diverse and dynamic combat system that gives each player a toolbox to work with to solve any encounter we might throw their way. If that sounds like the kind of combat you are interested in, Guild Wars 2 is going to be a great place for you and your friends to fight together for many years to come.

ANET

DPS: Call it whatever you like—DPS, damage per second—we just call it DAMAGE, and when it comes to making red bars go down, you can never have enough of it. Don’t trivialize it though; damage is a very versatile aspect of combat. There are so many ways that a character can do damage. Let’s take a look at a few.

Damage over time. This is the perfect way to apply some heavy damage to an enemy with little time investment upfront. Set an enemy on fire and just wait for the burning to do its magic.
Area of effect. Making one red bar go down is nice, if that’s all you can do. We prefer to spread the love among many enemies. That’s what AoE spells like Fireball are for.
Projectiles. Some attacks require you to be close to your enemy, while others let you deal damage from afar. Projectiles are somewhere in-between; you shoot an arrow at a target and if it hits, apply the damage.

Let’s stop here for a moment and point out how these damage types aren’t mutually exclusive in any way. There are projectiles, AoE projectiles, AoE projectiles that apply damage over time, etc. Try shooting a spread of seven arrows through a wall of fire—it works wonders for roasting up a set of attacking monsters or enemy players.
There are as many varieties of damage as there are weapons in first person shooters, and then some. We wanted to give you a chance to experience that FPS kind of variety, so we have given each profession different weapons and skill sets that let them do damage in different ways.

Heal: Don’t belittle the SUPPORT role by calling it heal. Healing is the least dynamic kind of support there is. It is reactive instead of proactive. Healing is for when you are already losing. In Guild Wars 2 we prefer that you support your allies before they take a beating. Sure, there are some healing spells in Guild Wars 2, but they make up a small portion of the support lines that are spread throughout the professions. Other kinds of support include buffs, active defense, and cross-profession combinations.
For instance, an elementalist can support his allies by dropping down a ground-targeted healing rain that rejuvenates allies in an area. He might also use Windborne Speed to help them chase down a target or escape out of longbow range. A warrior might shout “On My Target” to help his allies do more damage to a marked enemy, or use his warhorn to “Call to Arms” which improves the armor of his allies for a short time.

Part 2 below!

Kal Spiro.9745:

I wanted very much to be against anything presented here for a variety of reasons. I, however, cannot. This does not promote anything that I could concider bad or backwards toward what GW2 currently is and should remain. This really is a good interpretation and would make a lot of things more worthwhile. It might even make my longbow, which is my prefered weapon, not seem so completely less useful than my greatsword.

Thanks Spiro, It does mean a lot to me to get the point across while still staying myself.
I’d also like to add that Tranquility of The Guild Wars Guru forums tracked down the original Development post for me that was mentioned throughout this video.
There’s a link to it here: http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/healing-death/ or if you don’t want to go off site It’s also in the post below.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Evan Lesh.3295:

While the bugged targeting behavior is getting reverted in PvP, our stance on the issue is the same. A lot of us here have similar feelings; I hate losing my target and then warrior greatsword rushing off a cliff! Some features and polish just slip through the cracks and/or we don’t have enough developer time to address every concern. We appreciate all the feedback and I’m sure these issues will be addressed soon

This is all we wanted. Someone to let us know that this hasn’t been completly overlooked, though forgive my skeptisism as your post is very close to the last one we got 6 months ago.
We don’t want you guys to redesign the way targeting works, We just want a toggle to turn off right click targeting.
And I know this is going to go by the wayside but any chance of the ability to turn off left CTRL from linking skills when you click them while holding it down? Or the ability to rebind this function to another key? Left CTRL has been my push to talk key since GW1.

Vayne.8563:

Tolmos.8395:

Geotherma.2395:

Turns out these boxes are pretty much in every game. I can’t say for every mmo but i know for sure:
GW2
Tera
FFXI
Aion

It appears that people generally are okay with RNG boxes dropping epic things at chance. Just wanted to add that info. And again, they are optional.

Shouldn’t that read “every Asian Grinder MMO”, based on that list?

Pretty much not helping this game’s case much, is it?

You know I really hadn’t thought about this until now but the whole gambling thing is very cultural. For example, the US is very much an anti-gambling country. When I moved to Australia I was stunned about the ability to bet on ANYTHING. I mean it. Anything. It’s insane.

You can buy a newspaper here before an election and get odds on who’ll win and call a bookie and bet on it, legally. The odds are published in all the newspapers. You can bet on stuff you’d never think of betting on. It’s just nuts.

Likewise, betting is part of the Asian culture. What we see as a major rip off, from the point of view of NcSoft culturally (being a korean company) might have a completely different set of values associated with it. Certainly it’s true there’s more RNG boxes and grind in Asian MMOs.

Then again, even games like Team Fortress 2 have supply crates for which you have to buy keys. Neverwinter has them too. I think you’ll probably see them in every major MMO from now on….unless they charge a sub.

Just like to say I’m Australian and I really disagree with these RNG lockboxes. Our culture is based on betting on an outcome, usualy involving sport and as you mentined the odds are made public.
The odds on RNG in GW2 are never made public, so you have no idea what you are getting yourself into.
We do have our traditional Slot Machines as well but the majority of our gambling culture is on sporting events and such.
I’ll also state that I DESPISE gambling in all forms, but I’m certinly a minority on that here.