Guild Wars 2

Fuji.6284:

Ok ok. So PvP gets one of the best reward ever in the game. There’s no other reward in either PvE or WvW that has ever come close to this. It’s nice but pretty ridiculous when you think about it. I can probably understand a choice of a precursor for first place but just getting the legendary itself is overwhelming disappointing for people who don’t PvP.

People shouldn’t be disappointed just because they don’t PvP. It’s not a reward for sPvP players, but fot the best NA/EU active teams.
The PvE equivalent would be something like giving it to the group that achieves the fastest completion for an Urban-Cliffside-Dredge-MaiTrin lvl50 fractal series. The majority of the PvE playerbase, even if they played fractals, could not even dream on winning it.

I can’t talk about Fr and Ge, but the spanish community is quite more active on external forums / community sites than on the official spanish one. We’re probably more active here on the english subforums (and it’s not like we’re known for our mastery on languages) than on ours.
Honestly, the feedback would have been next to non-existent.

Bargaw.4832:

To anybody claiming that Condi/Hybrid Guardian has ok DPS, please kill giant veteran in orr in under 20s and post vid.

The hybrid thing is, if anything, about sPvP. For PvE it’s obviously a complete waste :P

Many people is overlooking the part where devs talk about scaling issues on critical damage.

From a PvE point of view, the nerf is going to hit mainly Fractals, Arah and to a minor extent CoE and HotW.
Some of this places are “hard” enough for both a good part of the playerbase requesting the change to avoid them and those who regularly play on them with berserker setups to be more strict when forming a group.

CoF will remain pretty much the same, with CoF1 being so extremely easy that there’s no really point in anything but berserker.

For dungeons like SE, TA, CM or AC, the ferocity change is likely to be a boost for berserker gear and make it more valuable.

Nothing is really going to change in the PvE side and, in the meanwhile, some playstiles are going to get hit hard in WvW, where berserker is not the best option neithr for zerging nor roaming.

This thread is quite funny, I must admit it.

I honestly think they shouldn’t be rewarding winners with a Legendary. Not because it’s unfair for the people who have got it the regular way, but because of what it actually represents.
It would be much better to give them some exclusive cool skin that, unlike a Legendary, could mean something for the playerbase that values what they do (or give them a bunch of money so they can buy the Legendary if they want, which I doubt). To each his own.

I agree on condition guardian not being viable, but for different reasons.

If it were possible to reach 100% bruning duration increase without heavy sacrifices, a guardian could spec in order to constantly apply low duration burning in a way that the enemy would get pretty much perma burnt, with condition removals and covering conditions not being a problem at all.
The new burning related rune sets seem to provide 45% bonus burning duration (we’ve only seen Balthazar, but we could expect Baelfire and Flame Legion to work on similar fashion) and Sigil of Smoldering is going to be more effective. If Smoldering would provide a 25% duration increase, then that 100% increase could be achieved either by going 30 in Zeal (and increasing the burn damage by 33%) or 10 in Zeal and 20 in Radiance.

If not, it won’t be possible to reach that increase without investing heavily in both Zeal and Radiance, which is unviable because, against popular belief, guardian base survivability is quite lackluster.
Guardian are known for their high survivability, but that can’t be achieved without a quite big trait investment. That’s why bunker guards deal almost no damage and why somethig like a 10/5/30/5/20 on berserkers is considered an offensive Guardian despite more than half of the traitponts are used for defense. Even a 10/30/30/0/0 burst build (which still has more defensive variants) has always taken Monk Focus for a bit sustain (even before medis were able to provide Fury).
A hybrid guardian investing 40-50 points into Zeal and Radiance can probably reach quite insane damage outputs, but it would be just too squishy and not viable at all.
On the other hand, without that 100% increase there’s no reason at all for going the hybrid path. It would need to hit too often to make Justice procs meaningful (and one of the main guardian issues is actually sticking to the target and consistently hit it) or rely on long lasting burns (like torch or purging flames) which would be easily cleansed without covering conditions.

If the 100% duration increase could be reached with no more than 30 trait points, however, something like Settler side node defenders and Carrion hybrids could be seen. Even Celestial might be viable if it’s going to get improved.
In any case, even with the 100% burning increase, these builds seem fairly vulnerable to coditions and hardly competitive. PoV is not an option anymore once you slot burning duration runes, and going 20 into Virtues for Absolute Resolution is unviable after the Zeal/Radiance investment. A medi build using CoP (so no Stand Your Ground) or a healway one using Purging Flames (probably untraited) seem to be the only viable options at first glance, and that’s not exactly a lot of removal.

The blindness os burning application isn’t that great. It might have situational uses in PvE but I don’t think it’s a big deal for PvP.

The 30 Earth one however … idk, I’m probably mistaken, but a scepter Earth/Water condi bunker build seems fairly viable.

I might be mistaken, but I don’t think it’s a specially hard to overcome technical issue.

Instead of listing every bleed stack and it’s source, they could make condition damage fixed on application and use a time string where they just add the upcoming damage.
The change would makes things slightly mechanically different but should be perfectly viable memory/processor wise and not specially gamechanging, at least for bleeds.
Stacking burning and poison on intensity would make everything A LOT different and probably won’t ever happen.

Wolfey.3407:

Look on the bright side least you got compensated with cool stuff, Rangers got compensated with a f2 mechanic that took them more than 1 1/2 years to fix…..

Rnagers get (finally) a decent condition removaloutside of Empathic Bond that might allow Power builds to be more viable. I’m not going to say it’s a lot, but it’s something.

IMHO the changes on perma vigor (and we still need to see if Sigil of Enenrgy remains unchanged) without any compensation in Selfless Daring are going to make the classic bunker guardian considerably weaker.
Its competitive spot could be taken by somehting like a 30 earth / 30 water bunker/support ele which, being also condition based, pretty much invalidates the burning improvements for the Guardian.
Idk, nothing might happen, but I’m quite afraid atm.

If the condition Guardian becomes something, it’s not going to be thanks to a 33% burning damage increase and a condition scaled retaliation GM traitlines.
Guardians can be insanely survivable, but not without a heavy investent on defensive/support traitlines. Somethng like a Zeal/Radiance Carrion/Rampager Guardian is just too glassy to be viable.

The absolute must for a condition Guardian to work is being able to reach a 100% burning duration increase without insane sacrifices (even if that probably includes going deep into Zeal or Radiance), which might be achieved thanks to the rune/sigil rework, so you can use something like Settler and focus on survival while constantly inflicting burning through blocks (specially on Shelter) and some Justice proc.
Picking burning on Block and either Radiant Fire or the new 30 Zeal trait leaves only 30 points for survival, which is not exactly a lot for a Guardian.

If that 100% burn duration can be achieved, something really annoying could possibly be built. Even with that, I expect ele builds to be far superior for this “role”.

kyubi.3620:

I try to sound neutral but in all honesty im trepidating at the change as it blurs the line between pure damage and damage hybrids who dont necesarily runs on critical hits. This makes all build who dont overely on critical hits in pve look better altrought i guess its at the detriment of the critical spammers.

There’s hardly a “damage hybrid who doesn’t run on critical hits”. As long as condition damage remain useless (from a PvE PoV), there are just 3 offensive stats and one of them, Power, is present in pretty much every stat combination while the other two are critical related.
Soldier/Berserker and Knight/Cavalier mixes could be considered hybrids; any build that doesn’t rely on critical hits is pretty much a defensive build (unless, idk, they go wildly into offense through runes and trait).

Well, it’s a nerf on some scenarios, it will be a buff for others … my critical damage was really suffering when downscaled in AC or other low-mid level content.
With the changes, things are going to explode (even faster) on those places.

Not every trait is going to work in every game mode.
For example, I hardly play PvE with less than 25 points in Radiance and usually pick the 10% sword damage bonus there.
There are too many burning related traits for the niche use they have, that’s true. Ironically, I have used some of them recently for soloing Knights during Battle for L.A. (they were useless ofc if it wasn’t a solo).

Beldin.5498:

Or go just for fun to maybe Snowden Drifts and stay into some Icebrood Wolves and say how long your 80 will live if your not a warrior with high passive healing. Or steamroll the Mesmer Boss at the Skill Challenge in Snowden.

Best Skill Challenge ever :P

Seras.5702:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

We have done some tuning on monster stats pre-80 to account for players having less traits, and stats from traits. We wanted to push back traits to give characters more meaningful progression up to 80 and keep things simpler for a new player to learn over time.

I’m sorry but I completely disagree with this. As it is, everyone agrees that open world content is pretty friggin’ easy. With auto-scaling, you’re going to make sub-80 monsters in the world even more face-roll easy for down-leveled players. I brought my lvl 55 Mesmer to Wayfarer this week to help a friend who just picked up the game. I was completely destroying things, and I’m not an 80 and have blues/greens probably 5 levels below my character’s level. Now you’re going to make the game easier??

Also, I can’t help but notice that all of the red posts are in response to people saying “yay I love these changes” but not one in response to the numerous posters who have issues with the new trait system. I’m fine with the new features (earning traits, trait resets, 14vs70 pts) but I am NOT ok with the dumbing down & simplifying of this system. We are not stupid, and don’t require the level of hand-holding you think we need.

My buddy was elated at 11 when he could begin experimenting with traits. I couldn’t imagine the boredom that would ensue having to wait till 30 to do nothing but unlock utilities and go through the same old playstyle without traits. With the current model, by 30 we’ve got 2 major Adept traits already and can goof around with what works and what doesn’t. Fun right? Apparently too much fun because that will be gone. And then no grandmasters till 80…I’m sorry why exactly? Because when I hit 80 I wanted to focus on gearing up in exotics, not learn more traits. By 80 I’d already figured out which build I liked. Isn’t that the point of leveling? To learn the class? Well now we won’t be able to learn the class until we are level capped and only then experiment with grandmaster traits.

Also, some professions are HIGHLY trait dependent. Engineer & Mesmer, for instance, are fairly weak without traits. Now new players are going to feel weaker longer without their aid until 30. Or is this just a ploy to keep players from discovering & abusing Grenadier until they’ve already learned a different build?

I’d love a red response explaining exactly why they think this is a good idea. I just cannot wrap my head around it. It seems like intentionally pushing fun away. I am so glad I’m already level capped. This would bore the heck outa me.

About level 30 is where you reach the world hub (previously L.A.) and gain access to most of the world, so it makes total sense if trait unlocks are supposed to be scattered around the world (including “starter” zones). You can reach the hub way before through the mist but, honestly, that’s quite anticlimatic and not intuitive at all.

I completely agree with you, however, on the lvl80 unlock not making any sense at all. I guess they want to encourage new players to experience Orr content but there are much better ways to do this and just too many things for these players to do once they reach lvl80.

They’re no way going to cost 50 gold.
The system probably doesn’t try to put players on a farming efficiency compromise but please those that enjoy the journey over the goal. The new ones might be quite pricy, but I’ll be really surprised if classic grandmasters would cost more than 1g/2g each.

Becka Williams.4978:

Vargamonth.2047:

X The Manimal.5293:

Wait so… Players WERE going to be technically weaker overall so ANet tweaks the monsters to make everything balanced again (or atleast the same as before) and some people still see this as making the WHOLE game easier when it’s just restoring the current balance we have in difficulty that was offset by the change? =/

It restores the balance for characters playing on their natural level zones.
For downscaled level 80 characters, however, everything would become easier (and IMHO they’re already a lot more powerful than they should).

If downscaled players aren’t stronger than players of the right level for the zone, what’s the point of leveling?

It’s supposed to be no more than a learning process. The game is meant to not have end-game at all (even if many people, myself included, would disagree) and downscaling is supposed to prevent the content from becoming trivial and obsolete.
If lvl80 characters were supposed to be that powerful, then they should never have used such a high level cap and/or make almost every zone (even most dungeons) sub-80.

X The Manimal.5293:

Wait so… Players WERE going to be technically weaker overall so ANet tweaks the monsters to make everything balanced again (or atleast the same as before) and some people still see this as making the WHOLE game easier when it’s just restoring the current balance we have in difficulty that was offset by the change? =/

It restores the balance for characters playing on their natural level zones.
For downscaled level 80 characters, however, everything would become easier (and IMHO they’re already a lot more powerful than they should).

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Glenstorm.4059:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Phadde.7362:

This is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! ! !
I’ve wanted something like this for a long time and now that it’s finally coming, you managed to make it This kitten Good!

Such a refreshment! There are a ton of things like these that should be looked over, and it really feels like we (literally) have to wait ~2 years to see them change.
Might actually be my favorite patch of all time!

Thank you! This is the side of ANet that should never be turned away from us!

I’m glad you are excited, and we are too. This is just the first taste of stuff coming in the build. There will be many more blogs. =)

Thanks for the updates! Really excited about these changes!

Could you please also address concerns regarding early leveling difficulties for new players (especially for classes like Ele and Mesmers) since important defensive traits are now only obtainable starting at level 30 rather than at level 15?

We have done some tuning on monster stats pre-80 to account for players having less traits, and stats from traits. We wanted to push back traits to give characters more meaningful progression up to 80 and keep things simpler for a new player to learn over time.

These are really sad news.
A downscaled character is already extremely powerful when compared with those monsters. If they’re going to become even weaker, there’s going to be no point in downscaling at all (and 90% or so of the open world is actually pre-80).
I honestly think it would have been much better to somehow rework the downscaling (for example disabling any trait that shouldn’t be available at the effective level, which shouldn’t be a problem with trait reset being free and available on the fly), even if that would have make the open world slightly more challenging.

Orpheal.8263:

What I kind of expect under Friendly Play are features like these:

• Adding Rewards for playing together in a Party rather than doing everything alone

I’ve hardly played any game that rewards group play more than GW2 currently does.
In fact, it rewards it so much that, with most content being as easy as it is, sometimes I find it detrimental for the game as a whole.

It’s no way a bad trait. It’s just placed where it doesn’t make any sense at all (as a grandmaster on the Vitality traitline, so you already have 300 more vitality points than other Guardian builds) and looks completely uninteresting gameplay wise.
A “7% X is converted to vitality” adept somewhere would have been much more useful and appreciated.

From the point of view of a veteran player lvl30 might feel too high for unlocking the trait system, but lets be honest, a new players barely knows what he’s doing and what the game is about by those levels.
Same could be said for specific trait unlocking challenges. It might feel annoying for a veteran leveling an alt (which will be able to spend gold and unlock specific traits if he wants the character for a specific task). For the new player, however, this change has the potential to make the leveling process a lot more interesting

The only downside is the power difference between natural and scaled level characters , which is already quite disproportionate. If we are lucky, we might receive a huge nerf on downscaling so if finally works as it should.

I think the changes are for good, even for new players.
If the related activities are well chosen, unlocks can make the levelling process much more interesting and those players that just want to have an “end-game charater” ASAP can just unlock the desired traits on the profesion trainer.

For veteran players, the ability to reset traits on the fly is just a huge improvement.

BeebleBrocks.4836:

more than 1 guardian useless, what?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwIV-DzgNVg

and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lodFqmxAaQY

Every class can solo Lupicus, so it’s obvious that every class can Duo or easily 5-man it.
Those videos don’t really prove anything.

What do Guardians provide on a Lupicus fight?
1. Aegis for the kicks.
One single guardian can chain up to three Aegis, and if the party DPS is somehow decent, there’s no need for more during Phase 1.
2. Reflects.
Mesmer feedback is way more reliable in order to skip Phase 2 (or even the whole fight if using the Ember thing). WoR can still be useful for the Phase 3 mass projectile move, but now again, one single Guardian is enough for this.
3. Stability
For domes during Phase 3, which won’t even take place for most fights.

You don’t need more than a single Guardian in any group. One is enough to provide support and other classes are better in terms of raw damage.

PUGs ask for heavys because they survive easier.
Once you get your Guardian and your Warrior banners, Eles would be better choices for damage; it’s just that it’s harder to survive as a LH zerker Ele than as a Guardian or a Warrior. PUG players don’t want to take risks and just chose a suboptimal but safer team composition (exactly the same that many PVT and/or ranged players do).

BeebleBrocks.4836:

Vargamonth.2047:

BeebleBrocks.4836:

But really, it’d be nice to need a guardian because of its heals and boons and it’s survive-ability skills for the party

But that’s exactly what Guardians are wanted for (well, everything but the heals).
Aegis, protection, reflects and condition removal. If none of these are really needed, speedrun groups probably take a Ranger (or another Ele) over a Guardian.

I’ve never had a guardian in my party who can support a random party of archers/thieves/eles/necros who aren’t zerker….95% of the time the guardian is the first to go down in the pugs I’ve had. It’s hp is really low in zerker/pth, even in ptv but then, in that case, it’s mostly useless. This thread is about zerkers ruining Gw2, and a zerker warrior and mostly guardian, has done that. For a good 100% sure ability to beat a dungeon party in good time, you need to be one of the two or most will kick. A mesmer is probably third best choice, but even I insta kick if they are just unknowing of what their “job” is. Sad to admit it. So far what I’ve learnt in pugs, if you can’t down a boss fast enough to keep up with the zerkers CD’s, you’re out cause they start dying. The guard as a zerker has very high dmg and can support the party at the same time as they deal it. All in one class, so I don’t need your slow dps zerker ranger or necro in my party cause a warrior and guard do it better. Class discrimination and unbalance.

That’s just not true.
For completing a dungeon in a good time with a PUG you probably want a warrior (maybe two so they’re not forced to fill their bar with banners) and a single guardian, which makes things easier. Anything above this is pretty much useless, since they can’t bring any additional support nor they’re the best options for damage.
If people keep asking for warriors and guardians is just because for these classes it’s easier to deal damage while surviving and most players using berserker (or not) are actually terrible.

BeebleBrocks.4836:

But really, it’d be nice to need a guardian because of its heals and boons and it’s survive-ability skills for the party

But that’s exactly what Guardians are wanted for (well, everything but the heals).
Aegis, protection, reflects and condition removal. If none of these are really needed, speedrun groups probably take a Ranger (or another Ele) over a Guardian.

There’s no really easy fix for this.

A DR on critical hits would not work. In most situations power is already a superior choice over both Precision and Critical Damage, which need A LOT of investment on each other in order to work and A LOT of might stacking on top of that in order to outperform raw power (and even with that, that’s only true for a few builds). There’s also a Critical Damage nerf incoming.
A monster HP increase could work, but has its own downsides. Many “Play how you want” specs (with low natural damage output and usually lacking proper might / fruy / vulnerablity on top of other more specific boosts) already find current HPs quite insane. For those players built for defense, the change would not achieve anything but facetanking for a longer time.

The main culprits on those fights where the boss explodes before becoming a threat are, on top of an arguably low HP, Fiery Rush (which I suspect will eventually get “fixed”) and, playing a Guardian myself, Aegis and Reflects.

If bosses are designed to attack every 3-4 seconds for huge damage, a Guardian, which can provide up to 3 party wide Aegis, can make the group next to invulnerable for a good amount of time, sometimes enough to finsh the fight, or keep allies covered from any mistake that could hurt them for a longer time, which are unlikely to happen during a really short encounter. Aegis last for over 20 seconds, so there’s no timing required; it’s pretty much a fire and forget skill.
The Lupi fight you are refering to, there’s probably an Aegis up in order to block the kick attacks (the most subtle and hard to dodge Lupicus move), and since it’s likely the only damage source that could hit players during Phase 1 (locusts explode, grub is easily dodged) , it can be safely precasted. Grub summon needs still to be dodged, but if the video is from the PoV of a class with an evasive weapon skill, it might not have required endurance at all.

Pretty much the same happens with reflects. If the enemy is completely projectile based, WoR is not only a great damage source but also a kind of party wide invulnerbaility which last for really long.

People has suggested also Bosses with faster attacks.
Having bosses perform fast melee attack chains (like the Knight during the last LS) can work and is not anti-berserker at all. Enemy AI stops before attacking, so if carefully fought at max melee range, the aggro bearer can avoid and interrupt many of these attacks without dodging at all.
It would be harder to perform as a melee players, Aegis would not be as strong as currently is and stacking on a corner tactics would become pretty much obsolete. It also makes control type conditions (like chill or cripple) a lot more interesting.

The only problem is how balance the challenge. We could agree on berserker specs not being currently challenged as much as they should and a change like this being for good, but we should probably agree on facetanking and range kiting not being exactly a challenge and being underused just because they kill things slower.
The attack rate change is a huge difficulty ramp-up for melee berseker players, which are already harder to use than anything else for the most part, so the level of threat should also be incresed for tanky (increasing the damage on attacks that are meant to be actively avoided, for example) and ranged players (providing the boss with pulls and/or gap closers, attacks that are targeted over the player who is further away or adds that prioritize ranged damage sources) , something that might be not as popular.

I want to emphasize the add part. I truly believe that GW2 combat system works far better when several enemies need to be fought at the same time (as long as you don’t make them extremely vulnerable to reflects/blinds and provide an obvious corner to LoS, of course). Packs of mini-bosses (or bosses with adds) and enemy AI improvement is IMHO where GW2 should be heading.

1. sPvP (balance, ladders, game modes, …)
2. Challenging small group PvE content
3. Reward overhaul across the whole game. making things more content specific and less RNG and tradeable or gem store based (so everything revolves around gold farming).

Spend less time in:
Zerg / extremey massive content

I’m not sure about this, but those spiders might suffer the troll syndrome too.

Ascalonian Catacombs were revamped some time ago. Most enemies had their health pool and straight damage reduced (sometimes compensated with more interesting mechanics), but there were a few exceptions.
The champion troll, a random a completely optional event, became a lot more annoying and some trivial trash mobs (gravelings, spiders) that used to explode in 1-2 hits got their health substantially increased.

Even if AC story mode was made considerably easier (it was quite insane for fresh level 30 players), some enemies are shared with the explorable mode an may felt like a huge difficulty ramp up.
The most obvious case is probably the Troll (which is not a problem at all since it’s optional), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the spiders you talk about share the model with the adds of the Spider Queen (first boss on explorable mode) and are way tougher than intended.
I suggest you to try again and check the difficulty past the spiders (slot Wall of Reflection and you should be fine for this fight).

EscataFlayer.8470:

Neither does gw2 style. You need no communication at all except for high tier fractals which is something that is almost impossible to pug.

You hit the nail in the last sentence: teamwork is PUG-unfriendly by its very nature.

Part of the temawork would be about group wide buildcrafting, slotting the required/desired tools (condition removals, fire fields, blast finishers, vulnerability stacks, etc.) the most efficient way.
PUGs can’t do this. PUGs are about teaming up with completely random players that might be using whatever build you could imagine, so preparation is either about using yourself a self-sufficient build (which will be clearly unefficient) or using / looking for specific META builds.

The core part of teamwork would be about developing and executing tactics in order to handle different challeneges. For an organized group, a different approach might require different tools, so it becomes closely related to buildcrafting.
With the PvE being so deterministic and heavily scripted as it is, an organized group would need to go through this job a limited amount of times, just until the right tactic (which might vary between different groups) is found and mastered

For a real PUG this is completely different. Team wide buildcrafting is not an option, and the lack of knowledge about others strengths/weaknesses and overall capabilities would force players to stop and discuss tactics whenever any slightly complex situation arises.
The easiest solution is, now again, about following META tactics, which becomes even easier if players are also using the META builds the tactics were developed for.

And that’s exactly why GW2 PvE content is so faceroll easy for the most part.
Harder content and mechanics (like a higher degree of randomness) would require more complex tactics and even constant real time teamwork.

Good examples could be found on any tPvP match. Playing solo for the most part, I can’t remember how many times a teammate and I have both tried to stomp the same downed enemy just for having it resurrected in front of our faces. If one of us would have cleaved the body while the other stomped, the result would have been completely different.
That’s a clear example of teamwork, but it requires either VoIP communication, a dedicated group where those situations have been already discussed (preferably both) or a set of widely accepted rules (stomp priority belongs to the guardian, for example) which we could call META tactics (which still is completely lackluster).

While this kind of things would probably please organized groups, they could force PUGs to strictly follow META setups (whih they might dislike) and, even with that, to struggle without some kind of VoIP communication.
Soft trinity / lack of trinity promotes teamplay (and GW2 is not even close to the potential of a system like this), but teamplay itself is a quite PUG-unfriendly and hard to monetize concept.

In the end, a hard trinity system is much more PUG-friendly than anything else, and that’s because it’s nothing but an extremely harsh built-in META which assigns each player a modular task, completely independant from each other execution wise.

EscataFlayer.8470:

I don’t see how any of you can consider trinity not teamwork. The tank will eventually die without a healer, the mobs won’t die without dps, the dps won’t survive without a someone taking the abuse, te healer won’t survive without the tank protecting. They all rely on each other, therefore is teamwork.

From a character point of view, there’s an ovious teamwork in trinity systems. When we say there’s no teamwork on it, however, we refer to that between actual players.
When character capabilites are so strongly differentiated that players can fulfill their tasks without a major need of real time communication, there’s no chance for teamwork to exist.

EscataFlayer.8470:

But the thing is, classes are made to vary in specialties. If you want to consider yourself good at your class, then you need to learn all aspects. Give a healer spot will give better usage for many ingame viable options to be heal/support by both items and gameplay for people. Forcing a heale/support roll will be so much better, but don’t make a requirement to heal so that if the team wants a 5 man zerk, they can do so.

It would better benefit the crap pugging we have to go through in order to get a group that will do the dungeon. Where I enjoy an occasional Zerg rush, I like enemies having to need strategy to beat an make use of CC, instead of blitz and hope you kill.

Even if you don’t set a tank slot (which there is gear that makes this slot to actually be viable) a heal support is something that should be looked into being used.

But you already can have it.
A hammer/mace guardian can provide perma protection and a quite big healing output on top of reflections, aegis and several condition removals if required. It can also decently fulfill a tank role if needed.

The problem? A meta berserker guardian can provide everything but the healing while doing A LOT more damage, so it’s a better option as long the healing isn’t required (which can be applied to almost every small team content once you get familiar with it). The prot/heal guardian offers an easier time at the cost of clearing speed, but unfortunately that’s something quite important when dungeons are run for no other reason than farming.

I don’t miss the roles.
I miss, however, a gameplay that would require real teamwork without a proper tank (more snare reliant disengages and aggro swapping). The few fights in the game were meleeing require something close to this are easily doable just by ranging.

Icealen.3802:

Yes, the scaling is a little funky.

My guess is it isn’t based on number of people or their damage, but rather time. I think time is the major factor in the scaling of the knights.

Case in point – the Champ Wurm Queen in the “Escape from Lion’s Arch” LS patch ALWAYS died at the same minute on the hour every hour – no matter if 5 people were attacking it or 50. It just seemed to “time” its death at an exact minute every hour, so it always died no matter what and people got their loot.

Time – just my theory on the funky scaling.

But what you describe isn’t weird at all.
In fact, it could be an example of perfect scaling. A boss attacked by 50 people should have 10 times the HP of the one attacked by 5 so, as long as the average player damage output remains the same, it should take exactly the same amount of time to take down.

AerosAtar.3198:

There is definitely something not-quite-right (to put it mildly) about the scaling on the knights, as evidenced by the fact that just today I have seen a group of 5 do better than a group of 30 (neither killed it, but the group of 5 were a lot closer)…

The scaling still somehow favours higher populations.
The ability to stack conditions (specially vulnerability) is a clear advantage, and there must be a reason on top of that for the event to usually succeed when the attunement cap is near to maxed even if you still can expect the same upleveled characters and completely random builds in the battlefield.
The event, however, still scales and a 5-man group can perfectly outperform a 30-man one as long as the average damage output is higher.

I’m fairly sure that there’s something weird going on with the scaling, evidenced by the fact that I’ve gotten better results with 3 random non buffed upleveled characters joining me than soloing (so it’s not exactly about average DPS).
I wouldn’t be surprised if the event would “hard” scale every fixed amount of players (lets say 5) with just a minor soft scaling inside each bracket, which could make a 31 man group to have a quite harder time than a 30 one.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised either if the “hard” scaling (or just any form of scaling) would stop at 35 or 40 people, which could explain why maxed events succeed so easily and why knights used to explode when mass zerged, prior to the changes.

In any case, the Knights are soloable with an extreme DPS spec and easily doable with 3-5 man group as long as the DPS output is decent (which will hardly happen on a 30 man zerg).
That’s why I suggest an uneven distribution for low populated servers. A couple of 3-5 decent DPS man groups should easily take care of two knights, while the masses could zerg the remaining one and benefit from an attunement maxed fight.
This should yield better results than using 20 random characters for each knight fight.

I haven’t been able to test results with a good DPS 3-5 man group (I keep getting upleveled chars and crappy builds with no consuables/buffs at all), but I would’t be surprised if a group like that could defeat Knights under the 6 minute mark and the strategy could work also for the Knightfall achievement without having to completely rely on guesting and/or organzied communities.

Baughy.6971:

vargamonth- thats crazy, I didnt know it scaled that much like it does with champs. I guess we just have a lot of people who dont know what their doing.

The scaling is not exactly linear. Otherwise, I should be able to get better times when soloing it than when 3 random non buffed upleveled characters join me, which doesn’t happen.
It may scale through fixed steps (so every 5 players bring the boss to the next level) and/or it may somehow favour higher amounts of players (which would explain why people is getting better results from mass zerging).
In any case, the event DO SCALE atm and is perfectly doable with a really small amount of people (even soloable, but I guess guardian scepter if fairly OP for this fight and may not be possible with any class) as long as the average player damage output is high enough.

You do not need an isane zerg in order to beat the Knights. It’s all about the average damage output on the player side.

I didnt’ check every other player after the screenshot fight, which ended with around 1:30 minutes remaing, but there were at least a couple of players without consumables / order vuffs at all, one of them also being an upleveled character.
Repeated it a couple of hours later and finsihed it with just 4 people and over 3 minutes remaining. The other 3 palyers were all upleved and weren’t using consumables at all.

The event isn’t that population dependant as many people think.
I’ve seen the Green Knight go down with no more than 5 players at any moment, most of the fight being done by just a couple of them.
There are many reasons for the zerg to be potentially better. If it’s not possible to properly zerg every knight and the average player is not going to contribute enough damage wise (no buffs/consumables, defesive/condi spec, a hard time surviving, etc.), however, it’s probably wiser to zerg only one of the knights (the red one, which is closest to a WP) and let small and somehow optiized groups to handle the other two.

For a lvl35 new player AC is absolutely insane but, once you learn a bit about it, it’s not really a hard dungeon.

Before the LFG tool I used to see a lot of groups looking for eles but, if I have to be honest, I don’t recall many failures not having one, not at least for path 3.
Maybe a couple of times I’ve seen the path 3 burrow event fail, and it has been mainly about some players being completely lost and spending ages reacting to burrow spawns and reaching them.

Path 1 is something completely different.
Whenever I PUG that path, I always ask “3-2 all kill or 1 defend – 4 kill?” upon reaching the graveling point.
If it’s an “all kill”, there’s usually no problem, but most times I don’t even get an answer, so I usually swap weapons and proceed to defend, telling the group to go all together while I take care of Hodgins.
The event usually fails because of people dying and/or not following a common strategy. Even after having told people to go together some players do whatever they want and start destroying both burrows at the same time, forcing me to play 3-2 with the wrong weapon combination. Then some players die, leading to Hodgins being attacked from both sides, way harder to defend.
There’s usually no problem once I explain how the burrows work and/or we agree on a common strategy but, seriously, too many players have no idea, don’t ask, don’t listen and just smash things.

Kholer is not a hard boss at all; It has always been a really nice boss and an awesome training ground.
What annoys me is having to swap to soldier armor and/or hammer (even if not traited for that) when the PUG decides to stack.
With the usual PUG damage output, having the spin attack tell completely obscured is really painful.
If I have to be honest, I find the path 1 final boss actually harder for damage lacking groups. It might be the same with the path 3 one, but I still haven’t found a single group that doesn’t use the corner tactic.
In any case, if you want a completely ridiculous boss in AC, my bets are on that freaking unblockable daze spammer troll.

CHIPS.6018:

Sorry but there is indeed a role of healer in GW2. We see group healing in WvW every day. Water field + blast. Well of Blood. Warrior shout. Etc Etc.
…

Your point is perfectly clear but I’m not really sure if you’re aware that most of the people you’re discussing with completely dislike the WvW gameplay too and prefer, if anything, sPvP one and/or that headless chicken roamer gameplay you seem to not like at all.
You can’t convince anyone on how flawed you think the PvE is using as an example something they actually find flawed. You just have completely different tastes.

Eventually (once most glitches are fixed), the idea could be carried over dungeons.
Making bosses to have both an ensured reward (granted to every party member) and a randomly assigned one (divided between participants) could allow developers to balance dungeons around average players while enabling a reasonable option of trioing, duoing or even soloing them for higher rewards.

Something in the line could be done also for the final reward, but that would require some modifications on the party system to disallow last second kicks.
Aan additional party format where kicking is impossible could be enough, but would open the door to AFK leechers, something that, in turn, could be prevented to some extent by spreading part of the final reward over different bosses along the whole path (something I think is a good move on its own) .
I admit I have not been able to figure a decent solution for this.

Anyways, the final rewards should be completely changed from the current high amount of gold to a more material related one (which could include ectoplasms, lodestones, ascended materials, etc.).
This could both hold back the rampant inflation we’re suffering and solve part of the popular/unpopular dungeon/path issue.

Developers should also decide which enemy groups are meant to be skipped and which ones are meant to be fought against.
Some massive and not really challenging enemy packs can actually be more interesting to skip gameplay wise and could grant no loot at all, while some others can offer an interesting combat and might appreciate some nice loot.
For example, there should be a reason for killing all those almost decorative champions in Arah.
Since the loot would be divided between players, we could eventually see something like Giant Eye solo/duo farms, in the line of what ecto/obsidian farms were on GW1. It would be a totally niche activity (the Giant Eye one at least :P), but still an addition to the game.

Even if those conclusions seem enough to support the change, I would go one step further and introduce a new reward source: Monthly Hearts.
As readers might have guessed, a good balance between rewards, repop and completion times, proximity with other DEs, etc. is hard to achieve and might drive people to event trains on a similar fashion to the current champtrains.
Even if not true at all since (since those events have a fixed reward that would become oversupplied), there are still ways of discouraging static routines and prevent some zones from being abandoned.
Monthly Hearts could appear on map completion and require the player to complete a series of tasks on a specific zone (bigger than the are of influence of current hearts, there should be about 4-5 Monthly Hearts for each map) for an interesting bonus reward. As their name indicates, they would be reset on a monthly basis.
Nonmoa Lake one, for example, could ask players to kill 100 kraits, complete 10 DEs, slay the Witch and complete the Coddler’s Cove JP. The reward could consist on a nice amount of thematically related materials (scales, venom sacs and/or maybe wood), and a Nonmoa Lake reward bag containing a rare underwater weapon (with chances on a exotic one) and a small but not ridicously low chance on something special, like a rabid rare water breather.
This addition could encourage players to revisit most of the map instead of sticking to well known zones for a fairly profitable farm and/or a fast daily achievement completion.

On top of the DE overhaul proposal, which I think is overall good, there’s the option of a general loot overhaul, which is far more controversial (since it’s much more based on my persoanl tastes). Another wall of text incoming :P

With the previous changes on DEs and since it’s not common at all for players to group up to kill regular enemies, the current shared loot system won’t be needed anymore.
As long as quest items (for regular heart or DE completion) are granted to everyone, it would not be terrible to adopt a much more classic loot mechanism where every mob has a given number of rolls on his own loot table that are randomly assigned between the players that took part on the fight.

The only exception to this are champtrains involving world spawned champions. Even if I think that releasing more events specifically designed for large groups (like Tequatl and the Three Headed Wurm, just a lot less number and coordination requiring) and polishing the existing ones would provide a much better game experience, and that the previously described DE reward overhaul already offers enough room for zergtrains, it’s not my job to decide if the current champtrains are healthy or not for the game. If developers would want to mantain them, it would be as easy as converting them to DEs.

A change like this has, of course, some downcomes, but I honestly think that benefits outweight them.

Firstly, it would solve an “issue” with WvW where zergplay is absolutely superior to anything else in terms of loot and WXP gain, often being more rewarding than succesful solo or small group roaming even when the battles are lost.
A classic loot system would normalize the rewards for different gameplays and a loot bag improvement, quantity increase and/or complete modification would be enough to keep zerging as rewarding (or even better) as it currently is.

Secondly, it could allow the challenge vs reward idea to exist.
Since ANet tries to develop most content for an audience as broader as possible, many players tend to find it unchallenging and not interesting to play.
With the change, soloing a non DE related world spawned champion (which would have several loot table rolls) would grant the whole reward to a single player, suddenly making potentially profitable an arguably challenging task.
(something that the current loot system and the risk of zerging renders impossible)
As I pointed for DE participation acknowledgement, a reasonable tag threshold should be stablished for preventing those always annoying kill steals (the way the loot would work, it’s not like a mass of players would be interested on zerging it anyways).
Areas like the old Tower of Nightmares or the current destroyed Lions Arch, filled with veterans and some elites, could attract this kind of players while the most casual ones stick to DEs.

GW2 is a complete disaster reward wise.

The achievement system is a weird mixture of a classic achievements and daily quests (something that work perfectly fine separatedly) and I can’t figure any logical reasoning behind.
I would say that this is lost forever. A cap on dailies/monthlies was a possibility for a long time, but the scores are extremely high atm and the whole LS thing has not helped at all.
Almost any major change here is likely, no matter the compensation, to make many people rightfully rage.

Different reward sources, on the other hand, can be perfectly overhauled for good.
I will post my general idea for those who might want read it (wall of text incoming)

The current Watchwork Knight encounter show that ANet already has the tools to grant event rewards trough a chest. There’s probably the option to allow players to chose between a few different rewards too, just like it happens on many Personal Story missions.
This means that it’s possible to eliminate all the loot from event spawned foes and reward event participants with a chest on every single DE around the world.

With this change, the general idea behind the loot system would work more in the line of what IMHO was intended. Having other players around would be welcomed and rarely a nuissance, but neither a clear benefit that encourage players to zerg for massive enemy spawns.
Every player would be equally rewarded no matter if wandering alone, with a group of friends or in a giant zerg. Scaling should take care of the event providing the right challenge for different amounts of people.

The change would also allow players to work directly towards specific objectives.
Inventory bags would not end filled with a bunch of quite random items (blues, greens, vendor trash, crafting materials, …) that should be traded in order to get gold and buy whatever is wanted, but with the exact reward players were looking for.
This would be positive for market regulation.
Players would flood the events that reward those high demanded and quite expensive materials, increasing the supply and making prices go down, while the low demanded material that’s not supplied by RNG anymore will become much more valuable. We would not have, for example, those quite unfair differences between ascended light armor and heavy/medium ones.
Players can also be potentially redirected from tedious but profitable tasks to DEs.
Tired of wandering the map looking for Iron nodes (which are worth more gold than what you would get for completing DEs)? Many of those dredge events could reward you with a choice on different ore types while probably providing a much more interesting game experience.

Finally, what is probably the most important thing, developers could be encouraged to introduce new DEs and polish existing ones. Even new maps could be more likely to happen.
Some developer posted once that they had introduced a few new DEs and didn’t received any feedback, neither good or bad, about them. Players tend to ignore most DEs because rewards are horrible, which leads to developers perceiving the work on them as wasted effort.
I guess something similar could be applied to maps. I don’t really think Southsun Cove is appealing for anything else than the Karka Queen, a really easy JP, some T6 material nodes and maybe some lonely barracuda farmer.

As a downside, medal assignment should be made more exigent in order to avoid players running into a DE, killing a couple of mobs and moving on.

Sariel V.7024:

Vargamonth.2047:

I expect rangers to trait for Spotter and bring Spirit of Frost (which I rarely see btw), probably even traited, for a freaking 3.5%/7% AoE final damage increase.

Spirit of Frost, one pull from the knight and it’s dead. It’s kinda pointless when it spends more time in cooldown than in action. Spotter, however, should make me an instant hero.

I didn’t know but imagined that the spirit would die during the extraction attacks.
In any case, it’s on a 25s CD which is quite similar to the rate those pulls are performed. If summoned right after one of these attacks the skill should have about a 50% upkeep, which is still a 1.75% (3.5% if traited) average damage increase for 5 people.
Assuming an even damage distribution, that would be like having an utility that increases your own damage by 8.75% / 17.5%, which is still fine (specially if there’s no other meaningul utility to use instead).

I don’t know about this, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it were possible to summon the spirit (which has a 1000 unit effect radius) in some tricky spot where the pull doesn’t work (obviously, without wasting a lot of time and damage output reaching it :P).

Ohoni.6057:

If, however, builds are intended to be something you swap out relatively casually, then the game does not support that well.
…

I don’t think you’re supposed to enter a dungeon and suddenly go from a glass cannon spec to a heavy tank at mid run. You’re supposed to find out a well balanced build which, even if not optimal for every single encounter, perform decently through the whole piece of content. The game still alows weapon, utility and even major trait changes for more than enough soft tuning.
As a Guardian, for example, I might play without Wall of Reflection for most of the content and situationally slot it when I know there’s a projectile based fight. Aside from WoR being completely OP, I think it’s fairly reasonable to expect me to do this.

When you are going to play a completely unrelated content, however, there’s no problem with retraiting and going for something quite different.
I don’t think I’m expected to play Dungeons and WvW with the same exact template.

I don’t expect people to constantly retrait since most content is trivial enough to be completed with almost any build.
However, in those rare ocasions where you run into a wall, I think it’s good for the player to acknowledge that the option exists. The fight against Knight was pretty much one of these situations (it was no more than a DPS check, I never perceived it as some kind of challenge) and I still think it’s reasonable for a player to visit a profession master and respec towards damage.

The content should never be gear gated, that’s something I completely agree with you.
Expecting players to respec towards higher damage is OK for me. Expecting them to have a berserker gear set (which involves an important gold ivestment and sttorage space) is not.
That’s why timers and such need to be soft DPS checks for the most part. Devs can’t push the numerical limits because neither every class has the same damage potential nor every player should be expected to have the best gear.
It could be possible for some niche piece of content, but I wouldn’t expect not even the 1% of the playerbase to bother with that and it probably would be waste of effort.

IMHO soft timers have worked perfectly fine for the most part.
Even if I find the Knight battle inadequate for the season finale, I don’t really think it can be seen as gear gating at all (even if berserker is clearly a superior choice, I don’t think it’s absolutely needed, not even close).
Even if Anet is to blame for the atrocious scaling that overlooked many overflow / low population server issues (with constant failure demoralizing players and making things even worse), I think that the overall player input was lackluster, both in performance (too many players being pulled by the extraction attack) and attitude/knowledge (no respawn, lack of consumables and/or order boosts).
I honestly think that some improvement on player side (including some respec towards damage, without changing any gear at all) should had been enough for achieving a good success rate.

I do think that soft timers should be balanced around full soldier gear.
In fact, I actually think they are. There’s an often overlooked huge difference, however, between builds even when they use the same gear, on top of many other contributions (using consumables, not dying, …) that not always are there.
Tequatl should have shown players that timed events might fail without berserker gear looming large over them.

In fact, a non-crittable enemy like Tequatl made succeeding much more reliant on player performance/spec than on gear, which is obviously a nice and quite desirable move.
On the other hand, making both Berserker and Soldier stats achieve the same damage output is still unfair since one of them is far more survivable and a dead player doesn’t deal damage at all.
That’s the natural barrier of itemization (a terrible itemization IMHO. Outside of some kind of multifaceted event where every evey spec/gear can shine, there’s no chance for the content to not be heavily gear dependant.

It’s impossible to balance things around Rabids atm because, even if it’s a more offensive stat combination than PVT, condition damage is completely flawed for PvE group play. For large scale group content, Rabid offers little more than secondary precision and it’s not much better than being naked damage wise.
It’s a problem, a really big one that has existed for too long and without devs making any meaningul pronouncement about, but it’s fairly obvious that timers can’t be balanced around soething like Dire gear. Even if a cheap “solution”, I guess it’s safe to think that berserker players counterweight condition ones balance wise.

Honestly, with whatever you want. WvW is probably going to be the worst part and doesn’t depend on you at all.

Leablo.2651:

Vargamonth.2047:

For me, completely changing builds (and sometimes even using different characters) for different content is one of the beautiful things of the game. Not as much as it was for GW1, but still quite interesting.

I just said that the game forcing players to tweak their builds towards some specific goals is something I find positive.

GW1 never forced you to change your build. I would know since I completed the entire game, all campaigns, with multiple characters, using only the default selection of skills (the free ones) and henchmen. Optimizing your build pays out spades in terms of safety, reliability, and efficiency, i.e. making the game much easier, but you never have to do anything in one particular way as long as you have some kind of strategy and good execution.

Firstly because is something I like.
Secondly because, otherwise, the content is likely to be extremely unchallenging for me (since I will definitely adapt) and I’ll lost interest. If I do not adapt, however, I’ll lost interest for different reasons.

And here we have it, the sad attempt at pretending to be an elite player. You claim it’s unchallenging if you don’t have to change builds, and yet the whole point of you changing your build is to make the game easier and more readily completable. Like I said, I never went out of my to change the type of build my characters had during my GW1 campaigns and that of course made the game harder. Hard enough that players like you would probably find it impossible to complete. But I had no real problems doing it and that’s because I’m a decent player and can complete objectives however I choose, as long as the game does not put up artificial barriers like a timed DPS test. Forcing players to use a particular build is lowering the skill cap. It’s saying, wear this, and as long as you do, you win. That has nothing to do with challenge, that is just jumping through hoops and mistaking that for being a good player. See also: gear treadmill.

If you were interested in a challenge, you would be advocating for purely defensive gear against the knights. Or no gear at all. I’ve gone soloing like that before.

I also went through most of the GW campaigns (I eventually stopped playing and didn’t end Nightfalls nor play EotN at all until many years later) with henchmen and without meaningful changes on my buildl (an awful axe one whith Warrior’s Endurance and a lot of 5 energy moves).
It was my first “MMO” (even if I played it mostly as a solo player) and my playstyle was completely different from what it’s now.
The fact that you could think that not me but anyone could find that impossible is really surprising. Being aware of the horrible player I was then (having played almost nothing but adventure games and a few RPGs), this was no way a hard task (a matter of patience with those stupid henchies if anything).

After a few years playing other games I found myself without any appealing title, and since I was expecting GW2, I came back to GW1 for the whole HoM thing.
Maybe some experience with Warhammer and card games brought me into buildcrafting, maybe a fairly large experience with “competitive” PvP (something I was completely uninterested on the first time I played GW1) teached me that efficiency matters.
Dont ask me why, but in my return I found the buildcrafting aspect of the game (I didn’t had care before) not only interesting but incredibly fun to toy with (and heroes opened the gate for A LOT of possibilities) and almost essential for my gameplay.

Nowadays, for any game I play, if I want challenge for the shake of challenge I can go solo, naked and/or give up some skill I could perceive as OP for a given fight, but that’s not the game challenging me … that’s me handycapping myself to find a challenge where there really isn’t.
I’m not on the “roleplaying” side anymore and I’ve no special attachment to my character. I perceive myself as a player and my whole account as the tools to overcome whatever the game throws at me.
I like to know my tools and I try to use them the best I can. If I play a RTS I’ll try to build the best units for countering the enemy ones; if I play a MOBA I’ll pick the character and buy the gear that seems to fit better the match; if I play a MMO/RPG where I can rebuild my character at will, I’ll look for the most efficient spec on beating the content I’m going to play, and if the game wants to challenge me, I expect it to acknowledge I’ll play my cards the best I can.
That’s my natural approach and I don’t think it’s weird nor that it has anything to do with my actual skill as player (which I’m quite aware it’s not amazing btw :P).

Fenrina.2954:

Vargamonth.2047:

I just think that encouraging player to adapt and experiment with their builds instead of sticking to their “chosen one” is something positive.

Vargamonth.2047:

Ohoni.6057:

I just think that encouraging player to adapt and experiment with their builds instead of sticking to their “chosen one” is something positive.

No. A build is something players should be able to get comfortable with. You should be able to set it and forget it. If you get bored with your build and want to change it then that’s fine, that should be an option, but the content should never bully you into it.

We just have completely different opinions in what builds are meant to be.
If the content should never bully any build (anyone can be potentially the favourite for some player) there would be no chance for the game to provide the slightless level of challenge ever.

I’ll admit responding to these is getting a bit difficult to word, but I’ll try.

I think part of it is that there is a world of difference between poking and nudging to experiment and punching and kicking someone to do those same experiments. By bullying a build, one is effectively punching it and it’s users. Making them think about how to handle a new boss is fine. It’s making them go out of their way to deal with build issues that’s problematic.

We’re just not going to agree on this.
For me, completely changing builds (and sometimes even using different characters) for different content is one of the beautiful things of the game. Not as much as it was for GW1, but still quite interesting.

I just said that the game forcing players to tweak their builds towards some specific goals is something I find positive. Firstly because is something I like.
Secondly because, otherwise, the content is likely to be extremely unchallenging for me (since I will definitely adapt) and I’ll lost interest. If I do not adapt, however, I’ll lost interest for different reasons.

A player that finds build optimization annoying and fairly undesirable just will never agree with my position and there’s nothing bad with that :P

Photoloss.4817:

Vargamonth.2047:

And when I talk about adapting, I talk about a full retrait before porting to L.A.
Retraiting “on the fly” is still useful but nowhere close to what a fully respec can achieve.

I meant this stuff shouldn’t exist until we can have a full retrait “on the fly”, or at least swap between 2-3 premade templates while out of combat.

I agree with this. It’s not like the 3s fee for retraiting is a gold sink at all for the current rewards.
Unfortunately, they released something like an instant retraiter in the gemstore, so I have no faith on getting it for free as a feature, not soon at least.

Photoloss.4817:

Then start by prodding the builds that actually work and make sense to bring in the first place? The first thing I’d throw on a boss as a sadistic/adventurous game designer would be Thorns Aura, i.e. reflecting a % of all direct damage dealt (the distinction between the 2 would be the exact percentage value…)

I already provided some information in the first page about the most important trait/utilities for the classes I feel I could.
The rest is as simple as tracking offensive stat boosts and final damage multipliers (10% when X, 5% against Y) and think about how achievable the conditionals are for the given fight (the “2% damage for every condition on the target” on Engineer would work properly only during burn phases, so other conditional working all the time might be better).
The end result doesn’t even need to be “perfect” (that would require doing math, which is something that obviously most players won’t want to do). When you’re looking just for damage most of the choices are fairly obvious and when this isn’t true, then there isn’t that much difference.

Photoloss.4817:

I’m all for more challenging gameplay and shaking things up a bit, but there should be choice and diversity and not railroaded do-or-die junk like the last knight patch. Their engine supports free retraits (sPvP), dividing enemies (without the timer the UV holo would actually be the best part to encourage condition use, just up the toughness on the micros), reactive boons to replace Defiant (see Karka, they gain stability when CC’d but have Defiant and CC immunity anyway… ), Eye of Zhaitan with the buff-shield has been in since release and is a great way to kill 1-spammers, lazers down glass cannons and could easily be rehashed into a Veteran-level version to not doom anyone caught in its attacks. Some random enemies lay boon-corrupting wells or mass confusion. I love the holo fight because it encourages mobility and tactical foresight while dps is rarely an issue.

But every time we’re fed more junk bosses of the form “kill it before it kills you or the timer runs out, oh and this, this and this won’t work, but just beating it down with all direct damage buffs you’re left with will work just fine”.

I can pretty much agree with everything you said here except maybe the last part.
I find really hard to allow a player failure without some kind of DPS check (not necessarily a timer).
I agree with the Knight one being quite harsh and I find it terribly placed on the preevent of a fairly decent season finale end boss, but without DPS checks at all nothing prevents player from building for extreme survival (which survive so extremely well that you made pretty much anything else unviable if you try to threat them).
Unless the content is somehow farmeable (so clearing speed matters and the full bunker setup is naturally discouraged), we’d move just from one extreme meta to another.

Ohoni.6057:

I just think that encouraging player to adapt and experiment with their builds instead of sticking to their “chosen one” is something positive.

No. A build is something players should be able to get comfortable with. You should be able to set it and forget it. If you get bored with your build and want to change it then that’s fine, that should be an option, but the content should never bully you into it.

We just have completely different opinions in what builds are meant to be.
If the content should never bully any build (anyone can be potentially the favourite for some player) there would be no chance for the game to provide the slightless level of challenge ever.