Nike does have a point.
The decision to ignore defensive stats and load up on offensive stats SHOULD mean you deal a lot of damage and die easily.
That is exactly what zerker gear does. You have low hp, no mitigation, and massive dps.Not true. Zerker have low hp, massive dps while retaining the same level of active defense of a tanky build.
Low hp/defense is not obvious because OHKO from boss pretty much ignore that entirely.
You can wear full soldier yet still die to lupi if you don’t dodge red circles.Dodge/evade/invul/reflect/block/perma-vigor > tank stats anyday. And these are independent from gear.
What soldier gear will save you from is sustained damage like conditions or environment degen like the toxic whatever or anything that hit you constantly. These rarely exist in dungeon.
In trade for the loss of armor/hp, zerker gains dps which shortens the time you have to fight the mobs, reduce the number of times you have to dodge. With the right setup you can kill some mobs before even having to dodge. So you can say in some battles, having zerker gear is less risky than a tanky gear.
Overstatement.
Not every attack in this game is a OHKO, a really small minority are.
The same hit that eats 50% of my DPS guardian HP, would causes only a 22% HP loss if I were using PVT. On bulky gear, I could survive 2 hits in a row, each one oneshoting my zerker counterpart.
And that’s without even accounting traits, runes and the like, wich could make me even more bulky/sustained.
That’s one of the biased things with sustained builds, which usually also bring some healing capabilities (Shoutheal, Altruistic Healing, …) on top of their bulkiness: they tend to perceive nothing but those big “OHKO” moves (which are the ones with the most obvious and long animations, so easiest to doge, for the most part).
Those Lupicus kicks that oneshot my zeker guardian? 5.5k damage. That’s nothing, I can even keep swinging my hammer until another one hits before popping a heal, even for 2-3 more if I’m carrying something like AH.
But those AoE circles? Those are the really dangerous part, and I’m even forced to suffer a lot more of them because of the increased killing time. How unfair! Clearly it’s a lot easier in zeker.
And even with that, I still somewhat agree with your last statement. SOME fights are not only faster, but also easier, for DPS SETUPS (whole group, with right builds and tactics, not a bunch random players doing whatever they like) and that’s unfair.
For the most part, however, the more sustain you stack, the easier the fight becomes.
Btw, you really need to try to take as much in the face as possible to get downed by Lupicus AoE circles in PVT gear.
(edited by Vargamonth.2047)
in no way should a character have a 100% critical rate. Well i guess Legolas got a 100% critical rate because he gets a headshot everytime he shoots an arrow and cut a head with every hit but here we in a game Critical damage was set as a bonus damage to apply when you get a ’’LUCKY’’, and i put the amphase on the word, critical. In close to all other MMO or just prety much any game you cant and will never be able to do critical strike on all hits because as logic dictate you wont be able to score a mortal blow everytime (unless your target is a stationary sandbag with a big target that wont even try to move the center away from the tip of your more then obvious sword or arrow). Youl normaly have around 50% or 55% at best with a few proc happening from time to time. By definition maybe we should all look at what a ‘’critical strike’’ is supose to be.
There are a lot of games where 100% critical chance is reachable and looked for. There are also games where, even if premacrit is not possible, critical damage can reach insane numbers like x5 or even more.
In the end, nothing of this really matter. Every game has its own ways to calculate damage outputs and players just chose their stats in order to maximize the formula.
In a game where critical rate is capped at 50% you just don’t invest over that mark and you redirect your points to either power or critical damage.
That’s something, however, that can’t be achieved in GW2. Every max level gear piece has 3 different stats attached, and every full offensive combination has precision on it.
If there’s a point where precision becomes useless, then players are FORCED to slot a defensive stat they couldn’t want.
Only one type of game does such a thing, the ones involving vertical progresion and gearchecks (which often also include enrage timers). The very nature of action combat, core of GW2 design, don’t allow gearchecks to exist (just take a look on how popular agony resistance is).
You already made your point clear; you just want the maximum achievable DPS output to be reduced. That would make fights to last longer for full damage groups, so they would be exposed to a higher risk than they are now.
I agree with you on that up to some degree (I think this is a problem in SOME scenarios, with the game working fine for the most part).
There needs to be, however, some kind of balance between stat combinations. If precision and/or crit.damage (directly related to each other) get a nerf and power becomes even more relevant for damage output, then you allow one of the most bulkiest sets available (PVT) to be closer in damage while also being extremely forgiving on player mistakes (This is an action based game. You’re supposed to evade meaningul attacks; missing them is neither a roleplaying choice nor a build option, it’s a failure and should be punished).
The change would be absolutely ridiculous for PvP scenarios.
If any damage stat “needs” to be nerfed (which is a really cheap and lazy “solution” IMHO), that should be Power.
Ask anyone whos actualy running tank build but theres actualy diminishing returns to running armor over 3k
precision isnt capped and so does critical damage and if theres a cap id like you to actualy post it so that everyone stop running full zerker for nothing XD (the very fact you can run full zerker proves there is no cap to those stats)
There’s no cap or DR threshold at all. There’s just a formula where armor is on denominator, which means that for a given attack the damage received will decrease faster if you add N armor to lower values than if you add it to higher ones, be them 2.5k, 3k, 5k or as much as you want.
Guard hammer + 2 second symbol duration trait, boon duration runes if you REALLY want to make sure to have 100% prot uptime, swap to mace when your group hits 12 seconds of protection to stack regen, then back.
@Bambula: I don’t think red moa actually heals.
That´s it, i want healing symbols + battle presence. With shout + spirit + runes we should get 100% protection without Writ of Persistence.
With boon duration runes, hammer + x/sh and Hold the Line! can achieve permaprot without Writ of Persistence. Spirit of Earth could cover the Runes.
I’m saying this because there’s a chance you don’t really want perma-hammer; it could make blasting water (or any other kind of) fields quite frustrating.
I don’t record my gameplay. And well as that may be, why are you complaining about tank/heal? Their damage is maybe 1/5th of yours, so by the time they finish a dungeon they’re old and have a beard. There is no tank/heal meta. There is however a zerk meta.
That’s a huge overstatement.
You can build a group with every party member having over 3k armor ratings, over 1k total HPS, permaprotection, almost permaweakness on bosses, … wich is still over half of the DPS potential of a zeker meta group (because doesn’t ignore permafury, high might stacking and vulnerability stacking, banners, empower allies, …) and which even has permavigor if dodging is eventually needed.
There’s no tank/healing meta at all because for a meta to exist it needs to be based on easy to replicate “templates”.
On a zeker meta you mainly stack damage, which doesn’t have any DR and is never wasted; builds just aim for the most damaging specs and gear (which includes support like abilities to increase ally DPS). If you feel like you need some kind of specific supportive tool, you can just look for the right class.
A sustain setup just needs much more specific builds. Otherwise, you’re at risk of overstacking things like protection, regeneration or just of healing too much, which is a waste and directly hinders the DPS output.
Zeker is the only “meta” because of this, because it has less things to focus builds on and doesn’t rely so strongly on having specialized characaters (those roles some people are looking for).
Organized groups can easily form both DPS or sustain groups, but the game is just easy enough for them to always run the fastest one.
Leaving up the turret, even with a good amount of healing power, is hardly going to outperform the alternative uses FOR YOURSELF. AoE healing, however, can easily be higher this way.
It’s not common to find a situation where you can deploy the turret for AoE healing/cleansing without it being destroyed by cleave damage or AoE rain, as it’s not common to run dungeons (where it’s more likely to happen) with high healing power, but the option well deservers a not really painful extra click.
If anything, cleansing burst should be an instant effect that also nullifies the next regular pulse, with the regeneration component decreased to 3-4 seconds.
This way, bursting an already deployed turrent would be far more reliable.
There are no real “fixes” for stacking, but with some small changes could address the “issue” of having to play in melee even when using a ranged weapon.
Just increasing blast radii from 360 to 600 could work wonders. It’s not like it would allow to anyone to sit at 1200 range, but at least people could play a ranged weapon at some noticeable range without losing that much.
well then we can always reduce zerker damage by half. Best way to balance thing will keeping active defence a key feature.
I already expect half of the cirtical damage on zeker and assassin to be split into vitality, like in sPvP. I don’t like it, but it’s what I expect :P
While turtle dragon idea will definitevely mean the end of 5 zerker group it doesnt mean 1 or 2 zerker thief or warrior will not join a team from time to time it just mean they wont be able to run it on their own without the help of a control or a support spec to help them avoid as much damage as possible while they dps down the boss like before. This doesnt mean the end of berserker build it just mean an actualy window for party build variation.
It doesn’t, it just involves more condition removals.
Party wide cleanses are easily slotted, without modifying meta builds at all, on warriors, mesmers and guardians (the meta guardian actualy carry some by default).
It also means that a warrior bringing Empower Allies (20 points in Vitality traitline) can’t be ever oneshoted, and that any other warrior just needs to swap his chest for a PVT one to achieve the same.
Anyone in full Zerker even with Heavy Armor should be 1-hitted by all telegraphed monster attacks, but no attacks should ever 1-hit any player who has say full PVT even while in Light Armor.
Sounds fair to me (I still think some one-shots here and there are not bad at all).
The biggest problem with the idea is the disparity on base HPs and the wide spectrum between full Zeker and full PVT.
If an ele shouldn’t be oneshoted on full PVT, then a warrior would just need about 100-200 points between toughness and vitality to achieve the same.
No, u have no risk if u´re tanky enough. Aegis/Dogde are active migtation which is rewarding players who can use it.
Dodge is clearly an active mitigation, but I can’t agree with Aegis.
Aegis is active mitigation in PvP, where you can’t know what’s going next and you’ve to use it right during the attack animation you want to avoid.
With a 20s base duration (25s for meta builds), aegis behaves more like fire and forget skills in PvE. You can safely precast them to completely ignore the first attack or to ensure that each party member has an evade mess covered is a short enough fight (where there won’t be exactly a lot of evades).
In a REALLY short fight (and/or against bosses with low attacks rates), chaining 2 of them can be enough to finish the job without worrying too much about evades.
Lupicus first phase is probably the best example: With enough DPS (far from an insane amount), VoC and Retreat are enough to completely ignore kicks (just dodge grubs), which is the hard part of meleeing it (probably of the whole fight if we have a Mesmer with feedback).
I completely disagree.
Active defenses, specially dodging, are one fo the key features of this game; they aren’t something meant to be optional.
An absolute reliance on them shouldn’t be forced, but when an over 2 seconds obvious tell precedes an enemy powerful move that is meant to be fully avoided, it should be fully avoided.
-snip-
The question that remain is, do devs even try to balance their own designs for different setups and the general idea of risk vs reward to work as intended?Active dodging is part of the game for sure, but not every player will trait in such a way that they can keep dodging. Some professions give themselves Vigor, increase Endurance regen rate, recover Endurance with each dodge, and as it was pointed out, slot a Sigil of Energy.
That’s why I said that a complete reliance of dodging and active defenses shouldn’t be forced.
However, every character regains a dodge worth endurance every 10 seconds. There’s no excuse for facetanking everything and not dodging some powerful and well telegraphed move taking place on a lesser rate.
Before the Dec 10 update, they was an outcry from players when the devs wanted to change a certain vigor giving trait, and is a good indicator to how we may have become too dependent on that mechanic alone.
If we are talking about Vigorous Precision, I don’t know how things went on PvE related discussions. I somewhat cried for it myself, but from a pure tPvP standpoint, where I play mostly support/bunker Guardian and where I think a change like that would be such a huge nerf that the class would be ruined without any other form of compensation.
Players need to be given a choice, and there must be opportunity cost. Otherwise why even make those traits a choice and instead be simply inbuilt into the profession?
Well, this is a well known issue with the current trait (even utility and weapon) system, both for PvE and PvP.
It’s not like builds arew written in stone, but there are indeed too many hard to give up options (and a lot of crap).
Whether or not this gameplay or a dodging one is anyone’s cup or tea, if a group has a certain cohesive strategy that supports each other through their traits and gear, there is no reason why it should not work.
I completely disagree.
Active defenses, specially dodging, are one fo the key features of this game; they aren’t something meant to be optional.
An absolute reliance on them shouldn’t be forced, but when an over 2 seconds obvious tell precedes an enemy powerful move that is meant to be fully avoided, it should be fully avoided.
The game has many flaws. A DPS setup killing a boss so fast that it has almost no chance to put in test the risk vs reward idea is a flaw. So is a sustain setup not needing to fully avoid any move, not even the most obvious ones.
Lets think on a boss that could attack every, lets say, 4 seconds, with regular attacks dealing about 12k damage on 2k armor.
One of every 3 attacks could be a powerful oneshot move with a long and obvious animation, that should be fully avoided (there’s enough time between them to naturally regain enough endurance for a dodge on any build unless affected by weakness, which should be more common btw).
A full damage group would need to fully avoid almost everything; regular attacks are damaging enough to just oneshot certain classes (which could still sacrifice some damage for vitality and survive; their choice). A 30 second mark would be fair, IMHO, for this kind of setup.
A sustain oriented group should only evade the big oneshot. Just with over 3k armor ratings and protection, a not hard to reach 900HPS would be enough to sustain every regular attack. Downing the boss would take this setup something near 2 minutes.
A middle ground group, with less healing capabilities, would kill it faster than a sustain one but be more reliant on active defenses to stay alive (half of the regular attacks should be avoided).
This is obviously one of the simples and crappiest bosses ever designed.
Regular attacks could be different, some being condition based, some being AoE. The big oneshot could vary between a proper single target oneshot and a powerful AoE which should not need to be strictly a oneshot (it should for the damage setup) but hit hard enough for the defensive setup to react and start avoiding some few regular moves. The boss itself could place boons on himself or summon adds at some HP mark.
A lot of changes are possible. My description just tries to bring the general idea about the concentration/skill required for each setup along with some time marks that, IMHO, are fairly reasonable.
The biggest flaw on this game is the dungeon design itself.
It shouldn’t allow damage oriented setups to obliterate bosses, nor it should allow sustained groups to facetank everything.
Dungeons in Guild Wars 2 reward players who enjoy organized parties, epic challenges, and delving deeper into the secrets of Tyria.
If something is meant to be challenging for organized parties, then it should, at least, address how organized parties usually work. Fairly optimized builds, a good level of sinergy between characters, communication … all these things should be expected.
My personal experience tells quite the opposite.
We didn’t know the dungeons for the most part, we had no deep understanding of the game, didn’t looked for sinergy in our builds … some players were even using the same setups they had for WvW roaming
We had wipes here and there and our first dungeon experience was indeed quite a shock, but we still managed to complete without many issues every dungeon we stepped in. This shouldn’t have worked.
Then, someday, you find yourself wathing some Fractured live stream where you see a dev team running a new lvl39 fractal.
Not an old explorable dungeon designed way before the power of some tactics and setups was known; not a lvl10, which is enough for any casual player to get ascended rings and even fractal weapon skins … no, a new/overhauled map, at freaking lvl39, using completely weird things like a double pistol thief.
The question that remain is, do devs even try to balance their own designs for different setups and the general idea of risk vs reward to work as intended?
Removing stat combinations with critical damage would be a big change and would probably make things more interesting by not allowing extreme speedkills (with enemies not having almost time to react) and nerfing reflect in a quite strong way.
How would that make the game better? Getting rid of speed kills and making fights last longer? That is the idea of a person with brain damage, and it would ruin the game. Those are the kind of changes I’m talking about, that would cause large numbers of people to quit. And rightfully so.
They don’t need to make boss fights slower.
IMHO there’s a problem with HOW fast some encounters can be finished.
I want pure offense to be the most effective option, but I want it to be through a complete reliance on active defenses and the player skill involved on making it work consistently.
If the fight is over SO fast that a couple of precasted aegis and, idk, and endure pain followed by a defiant stance, are more than enough, then the risk vs reward idea becomes totally flawed.
Part of the problem with “play how you want” is that build flexibility is significantly and artificially inhibited.
GW1 was actually like this for a very brief time – you had to earn some sort of “play points” or something to respec your character. It was only a month or two after release that they allowed you to assign your skill points freely between instances.
Because of the number of skills and the dual professions, the meta was always changing and creative builds were always emerging.
The simplified nature of GW2 and the lack of build flexibility pushes players to specialize in a specific meta rather than just loading a template and swapping your gear (which should also have templates).
I had dozens and dozens of templates for my GW1 Elementalist (nuker, terra tank, perma shadow form, etc) but my GW2 Guardian runs DPS only and always because as much as I’d like to play around with some builds, the game makes it a hassle and there really is no point.
GW1 had so much variety in zones that you had to carefully outfit your character to go to Underworld or Fissure of Woe or to run certain missions. There was no one build that worked equally well in every area and part of the fun was working out the kinks and trying to refine things until your build was as good as it can be.
Well, GW1 is REALLY different from GW2. It has healers, it has energy, it doesn’t have evades … a world of differences.
I prefer how encounters are designed in GW1, with much more player-like groups of enemies and way less big bosses, but it’s also true that success is a lot more tied to builds than to player skill (with the current 7-hero option, you can build them properly and they will steamroll 90%, if not more, of the content while you just move around and afk during fights).
Can you wear full zerker in a WvW zerg? Sure, if you want to rally a large number of enemy combatants when you go down, and you will go down. Can you solo roam in WvW in zerker, yes, absolutely and quite efficiently. There should be a trade-off. Two ways of contributing that are on equal terms, or close to.
This isn’t really the best example.
One of the main reasons why zeker doesn’t work in zergs is because it’s just a complete mess. You can’t see attacks incoming, when you swing your weapon you automatically trigger 5 retaliation procs, …
Even with some tactics and coordination, WvW zerging is still one of the most passive combat scenarios across the game. I respect (not really, but I try) a lot people liking it, but it’s a gameplay that should be disencouraged on any controlled enviroment, like dungeons, where there’s no excuse at all to miss active defenses.
Honestly, I expect the critical damage on berserker/assassin to be split into half crit damage half vitality, pretty much like in sPvP.
Nothing really gamechanging like better AIs or harder encounter design.
… if it were needed, you could even summon a Bow of Truth.
I figured out how to make a bow more usefull =D. But bow clean only one target.
And in zerk party u will only need to spread right your cd’s and whirlz in light fields. if you do it wrong group will fight strongly weakened. And cd PoF and VoR 35(28) and ~45 sec… they strong but not so often…
It’s single target, yes, but it’s every 5 seconds.; it’s not going to save the day but it might help.
You also have RoJ and Signet of Resolve if needed to regularly clean yourself and ensure bow cleanses other players..
The point is, how often is this condition being renewed? If VoR, traited purging flames, whirls (it’s not only you, warrior has a low CD whirl on main hand axe, for example), Shake it Off from warriors, Mantra of Resolve from Mesmer … if all of this is not enough, I don’t expect any “support” build to handle it ever.
Dunno much about other classes, but besides Healing signet there are still allot of other builds from other classes that can very easy outplay warriors.
So not sure if its “ok” to nerf healing signet and don’t do something about these builds also..
The problem here is that healing signet is not a full build, it’s just a skill shared by almost any warrior build, some of them being better, or more annoying at least, than others.
Have you fought against a Healing/Toughness/Condition banner regen condi warrior? You probably would find it as much, if not even more, desperating as the TU Ranger.
I know this is hard to believe, but zerkers can cleanse conditions too just as good as “support” builds in PTV when it actually becomes needed.
No, i believe, coz im zerk guardian and know it. But i know that guardian can clean a lot of condition by one bottom but he cant spam this bottons…
Perhaps this condition will be intensely stack and need more cleaning abylites (and more often and think how many stack you need clean at one time). Or this condition will make dot damage for all battle/
As a Guardian you have a lot ways to cleanse conditions group wide.
You have absolute resolution at 20 virtues which almost every zeker meta build uses (all the way in the virtues traitline is done pretty much for support; the 25 one is damage but it doesn’t deserve such a investment by its own), CD traited purging flames (also common in the meta), you’ve a light symbols for any party member to use whirls over, … if it were needed, you could even summon a Bow of Truth.
I’m not defending the ranger as a whole.
There are many things with them I dislike (spirits, too many weapon evades, massive passive condition removal), as many things where I find them weak (lack of decent active condi removal, almost every shout, little viability of power specs unless used by a godlike player).
It’s just that Troll Unguent, IMHO, is perfectly fine as it is :P
Troll Unguent has lesser overall HPS, even with 1k healing power, than Healing Signet with 0 healing power.
The healing is more time concentrated, which is a benefit, but it also has a whole second cast time that make it quite easy to interrupt.
The amount of evades on ranger S/D … that’s a different topic.
I really think there are overall better healing skills than HS (Healing Turret and Withdraw; just my opinion). This just isn’t case.
Removing stat combinations with critical damage would be a big change and would probably make things more interesting by not allowing extreme speedkills (with enemies not having almost time to react) and nerfing reflect in a quite strong way.
There’s one thing I don’t like, however, and that’s being forced to slot a stat I could not want (and even with that, playing with power as secondary stat).
As I said on a different thread, if this kind of “fixes” are going to be made, I pretty much prefer demoting (promoting at low levels) every gear to double stat combinations.
It still prevents some probably unintended results caused by insane damage outputs, but doesn’t force anyone into filler stats and solves a lot of downscaling disparities.
Lupicus solo videos are probably one of the worst possible examples to discuss about melee vs range.
For the last 2 phases, Lupicus has a fairly spammeable ranged atack that doesn’t work in melee range. It doesn’t hit as hard as melee moves do, but when you are the only possible target, the rate of this attack added to the boss itself moving quite fast towards you (so he will eventually unleash the big attacks anyways), soloing the fight at range is a nonsense, maybe even impossible with a full damage build.Except that you can spam ‘a’ and ‘d’ randomly like during final fight in volcanic fractal to avoid his autoattacks without dodging.
I’ve done it many times in volcanic, but didn’t know it also worked on Lupicus. Good to know (even if I’m not really interested in GW2 dungeons at this point :P).
Let’s look at the Queen’s Gauntlet. It’s specially painful because it was pretty much designed around it being a DPS race:
- Time limit. If you don’t have good DPS, you won’t kill the boss in time, and you die.
- Instant-downing abilities. Why are you going to give a kitten about vitality or toughness when half the attacks of the enemy boss are grossly overpowered and down you with one hit?
ArenaNet put those mechanics there, and you got to be blind not to notice how biased they were. They could have done incredible bosses where you needed condition and tank builds, but they didn’t. Just DPS.
Calling the gauntlet a DPS race is, honestly, going too far.
There were a few fights (like Subject 7, and Liadri up to some degree), where a serious lack of damage could be deadly, but something like full berserkers was far from needed.
I completed all the thing with soldier armor and half of my traitpoints invested on defense. Even with that, I had more than a whole minute remaining in almost every combat.
I completed “Light up the Darkness” (throw 8 orbs at Liadri before killing her) on a fairly even mix of Knight, Cleric and Zeker.
Condition builds were working really well, better than power ones for the most part.
Lupicus solo videos are probably one of the worst possible examples to discuss about melee vs range.
For the last 2 phases, Lupicus has a fairly spammeable ranged atack that doesn’t work in melee range. It doesn’t hit as hard as melee moves do, but when you are the only possible target, the rate of this attack added to the boss itself moving quite fast towards you (so he will eventually unleash the big attacks anyways), soloing the fight at range is a nonsense, maybe even impossible with a full damage build.
There a lot of bosses that behave on different fashion depending on if the players are at close range or not, but cases like Lupicus, where ranged attacks are faster and/or deadlier, are a really small minority.
For the most part, bosses that try to fight at close range don’t spam ranged attacks (they might have some powerful ranged move, but usually on a moderate to high CD), are kited easily and tend to become a cakewalk for ranged players if a melee one keeps them entertained.
There is a bit more to that. Vitality has another use, that I call “Healing capacitance”. It is a little abstract, so bear with me. In short, the more damage you can take, the more capacity you have to be healed up.
It isn’t uncommon for a player to take a big hit, then heal themselves up to maximum health, and then sit on their heal skills at max health for awhile. The player is locked into a maximum number of hits they can take before they go down, and despite how infrequently they take those hits, this limit will never change. But, with higher maximum health, when the player takes additional hits, they have that additional spare healing on hand, making them last much longer.
It is kind of hard to explain, but it is the main reason I even bother with valkyrie on my thief. In full zerker gear, my thief will die in 2 to 3 hits. In full valkyrie, I can buy an additional 1 or 2 hits. I use the signet of malice, and I spend the majority of my time either at maximum health with the signet doing nothing, and if I’m not at max health I’m kissing pavement (wherein the signet also does nothing). But, with valkyrie gear, I can survive longer and heal more. I end up surviving an additional 5 or 6 hits instead of 1 or 2, since I can heal up so much more damage without dying off. This also makes team heals more useful for me as well.
If you are receiving a constant stream of small healings from both your signet of malice and ally regenration/heals, having more or less vitality doesn’t change anything.
If the damage you are receiving is higher than the healing, your HP will go down at the same exact speed. You just will be able to survive for longer in this situation, while dealing less damage because of your investment in vitality.
If you stop receiving damage for any reason, the amount of healing / time needed to top you is still the same.
For vitality to be really useful in the situation you describe, you would need to receive at some point a high enough “spike” of damage to deplete your “natural” health pool.
It’s just impossible to heal you for more than the damage you take.
If you never go under the bonus HP mark, then the fight would have been completely viable, and faster, without that vitality.
Toughness adds sustain because it reduces the amount of damage you take (so less healing / time is required to top you again). So do Healing Power because it makes those heals stronger.
Vitality just protects you against damage bursts that could have killed you otherwise.
But alas, the reason why I didn’t factor in boons is because they aren’t equipment dependent. I stuck with an apples to apples comparison with Obal’s build to demonstrate stat balance. When you start changing builds, you’re no longer dealing with just berserker vs. other loadouts.
But that’s absolutely necessary.
Builds are designed to cater a playstile and be used in conjunction with some gear.
Full damage trait allocations expect the build to be used for pure offense, so combined with Berserker or any other damage oriented gear. Obal’s build, for example, looks horrible in cleric gear.
However, put the same cleric gear on a 0/0/30/30/10 Hammer/McSh build, designed for tank/sustain, and you get something that can facetank about 2k DPS (even more if allies are in melee to trigger bigger AH heals) without using any active defense, which has a lot btw.
In order to achieve that “even ground” where defensive stats matter, it might seem that a stream of “small” but constant damage going on is needed, but that wouldn’t work at all.
Lets imagine enemies performing multiple small autoattacks between big spikes which are meant to be fully avoided by active defenses (common to every character).
The viability of zeker wouldn’t be just about a perfect use of active defenses, but absolutely reliant on downing the boss before the constant pressure (unavoidable, just mitigable through protection) kills players.
So would probably be for PVT too, but that’s just because this stat combo, even if popular, is one of the most unneficient sets available for PvE.
That’s because vitality is basically an anti-burst stat that just offers:
- Surviving a big spike that otherwise could have downed the player (or allow a higher amount of failures)
- A longer survival time under pressure, which only outperforms raw damage (which would have killed the enemy faster), if it’s just enough to succeed by pulling a really efficient healing output (like using #6 skill twice), highly unlikely to happen as a norm.
You only stack vitality when it means the difference between surviving or dying to a missed evade and you think that’s something likely to happen. You just buy room for error, which is a choice that needs to be unefficient by its very nature.
Valkyrie achieves similar results while keeping a lot more damage output, and a high enough toughness, which works a lot better as sustain tool, can also work while freeing room for damage (knight, cavalier) or proper sustain (healing power).
PVT will almost never be a viable alternative to berserker not doing enough damage to kill this kind of enemies in time. In fact, it’s quite similar, just being slower and next to incompatible
If berserkers are reliant on downing a boss fast enough, any party member being replaced by a PVT one just increases the risk of failure. Any berserker getting downed too soon on a PVT is not as dangerous, but still can achieve the same result.
A change like this would benefit mainly 2 setups or a mix of both:
- Pure sustain, based on toughness and healing, where PVT can work, but being inferior to Knight or Cavalier, and which is even more incompatible with melee berserker.
It doesn’t necessarily involve a less amount of player skill as long as big spikes are deadly enough. If not, however, it enables a lot of room for error (since recovery is quite fast) and eases the game.
- Ranged, where berserker would still be king and which is clearly less skill demanding than the current melee meta. You also can’t effectively punish this setup by granting enemies ranged attacks since it isn’t really screwed by AoEs and all of us already know what happens when you design an enemy with projectile moves.
In short words:
Berserker would still be the prefered option as long as the damage output could be achieved. Non berserkers would have even a harder time joining groups since their presence doesn’t slow down the dungeon run anymore, it simply makes it fail (already happens with some bosses and tactics).
If melee berserker isn’t viable anymore at some dungeon fights, those will just be played at range. Nothing else changes.
If melee berserker is overall unusable, then you just destroyed a whole playstyle while shifting the “meta” to something that probably makes easier and already easy game.
Seriously, there’s no easy fix for this. A fair solution requires a complete overhaul of AI and encounter design.
Zerker is working perfectly fine for the most part.
You trade survival for damage, which makes you completely reliant on active defenses and increases the punishment for any mistake you could made. As a tradeoff, you kill things and complete dungeons faster for a better gold/time ratio.
Risk vs Reward, plain and simple.
The only issue, and the only fair complaint against DPS setups I can understand, is about insane amount of DPS making all that risk suddenly disappear.
We could take a look at Lupicus speedkills to show this.
There’s an undeniable show of high skill in almost any solo video out there. Just during the first phase players need to be in almost constant move to avoid being hit by locust swarms while evading every grub summon and every subtle kick animation (which is a oneshot for many classes on zerker).
IMHO this kind of gameplay absolutely deserves better results than bringing defensive stats so kicks can be endured and healed or stacking at range where this attack doesn’t even happen.
When you bring in a full DPS group, however, the fight goes in a completely different fashion.
First of all, there’s more than enough cleaving DPS to rip locusts apart before they can do anything; all need for movement is gone. Second, if the DPS is high enough, the phase can be finished so fast that kicks can be easily covered with aegis, which are long lasting enough to be precasted against an obvious pattern without worrying on them being wasted on any other minor damage source.
Players just need to avoid grub casts, which are really slow and obvious, and keep DPSing the boss. After that, a mesmer Feedback is enough to direclty finsih off phase 2, and even the whole fight with a few tricks that have been already shown to us.
There’s some organization and coordination here that should be rewarded, that’s for sure. There’s also tactic development, but that merit would belong only to those that used it for the first time and/or showed it to the world, not to any random player (like me) watching a video on youtube.
The coordination is far from high demanding, the execution is quite simple and the risk … the risk is just gone, completely nonexistant. It’s an obvious case (and there are a lot more) where playing full DPS not only doesn’t involve the risk is supposed to, but allows the execution of a tactic which removes all of it and still receives the full reward of a speedkill.
This shouldn’t be about how to make full DPS setups useless, even unplayable, as many suggestions along this thread try to accomplish.
It shouldn’t be a debate about which playstyle pleases us more and how our preferences aren’t as much rewarding as others, or about ways to bruteforce diversity.
and bring our loved specs into optimal groups.
Actively reacting to enemy animations is harder than facetanking and filling bars. It just involves more player skill over passive play and thereby deserves better rewards (in this case, freeing room for damage stats so faster runs can be achieved), and this comes from someone who has played healer/support for most of his MMO
Damage becoming the best form of defense, that’s what kills the idea of risk vs reward and the real problem we should be discussing about.
There’s only one easy and fair fix for this, and it’s just increasing the time it takes to kill things, be it through a raw increase on NPC HP/armor or demoting (promoting) every gear, from lvl 1 to 80, to double stat combinations, which is pretty much the same but also handles some downscaling issues. Needless to say that I don’t expect most people to like the idea :P
A selective nerf on full offensive combos is not reasonable at all when there’s a whole PvP enviroment that shares gear and doesn’t exactly suffer from this (most likely from the opposite if anything).
Other than that, there’s only the developing of more complex encounters and more polished AIs (LoS stacking should probably disappear); of making PvE more like PvP, where some specs use zerker but others don’t (and almost none zerker + DPS traits) and where every character capability (power burst, sustained damage, conditions, control, support, …) has its place.
Desirable? Absolutely. Likely to happen? I really doubt it.
We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.
Jon
What bothers me is not that zerkers do more damage, but the point that zerkers can ignore most of the mechanics due to killing bosses before they can use their skills.
If an enemy do a really big attack each 45 seconds but you kill the boss in 40 seconds… there is the reason of why I hate zerker. It’s cheating in a sort way of speaking.
That’s clearly one of the biggest issues with zerker in PvE. It’s supposed to be a risk vs reward spec, but sometimes (too many times if the group is coordinated enough and stacks boon/vulnerability correctly) it can easily bypass that risk.
The easiest solution would be just about increasing armor/HP on enemies , but then the game could become extremely annoying for all those “play what you want” groups.
As I pointed before, Guardian Hammer has an amazing 5s CD blast finisher that looks amazing until you realize you’re blasting your own autoattack light fields almost all the time (specially if you trait for symbols lasting longer, which is almost mandatory for the build) for retaliation, which is the most useless boon you can get in PvE.
Comboing with your own fields as a priority would just destroy the oportunity to blast fields that are long lasting enough to outlive your own symbol of protection.
I would vote for a pre-selected priority, with “own” being part of the list (which would probably make all the thing even harder to program :P).
A single boon stealing is lackluster. It helps, that’s for sure, but makes the skill too unreliable at boon control, which was the most interesting thing it seemed to offer.
The biggest problem with LS is, IMHO, that it plays on the limits of counterplayability. It’s a quite fast attack and its tell is not as readable as it could.
A slightly longer and/or easier to spot animation would be enough for it to stay powerful as a damage and boon control tool.
Not even your own – I would like to see a personalised ‘combo’ menu where we can rearrange the priority order of fields on an individual character basis.
This would do things like create “water field blaster” groups, “might field blaster” groups and so on in WvW.But yes, combo fields need work.
+1
When using a hammer as a guardian, in PvE at least, my autoattack light combo field is actually the last I would want to blast :P
There are several undeniable issues with PvE, like condition stacking or any form of control being worthless for most bossfights. Solving them, while highly desirable, would not dethrone DPS setups as the most efficient ones out there.
Playing the most efficient build is, however, far from mandatory. “Balanced” setups are not only capable of completing every content, but also require less coordination and usually provide an easier time doing it.
Limiting the DPS output (and thereby increasing the required time for downing a boss) while going from big avoidable hits to a faster and unavoidable steady pressure doesn’t cut off that efficiency, it just destroys high DPS setups. The first change is enough to render them quite useless; the second one just ensures they’re suicidal and unusable.
There’s a big difference between the current state, where some setups (those requiring a more active and coordinated approach for the most part) are favored in terms of speed (farming capabilities), which sounds quite fair to me tbh, to the proposed one, where everyone is pretty much forced to an even ground which also happens to be easier and more passive reliant.
The proposal doesn’t try to solve any lack of difficulty that could be allowing pure DPS specs to achieve higher rewards without experiencing enough risk. It just makes easier an already easy game while depriving more skilled/coordinated groups of any kind of additional reward.
I’ve no words to describe how terrible I find it. It’s such an extreme example of casual idiosyncrasy that I don’t even think developers could like it (and they are not exactly known for their hardcore love)
As an alternative solution, I would propose a rework of some AI behaviours (like LoS stacking) and moving from the classic bossfight approach to fights against multiple non defiant enemies where control and coordinated spikes might shine.
A higher amount of threats, however, would not only make full DPS setups less optimal, but also the game overall harder and more coordination requiring, so high chances are on organized teams (currently running DPS specs for the most part) being the most interested and the largest part of the casual community raging against it even if a zerker meta nerf is achieved.
Needless to say that I don’t expect this to ever happen :P
Support suffers from the lack of friendly targeted skills.
Without this, any form of support is forcefully AoE and potentially so strong that some kind of additional cost (smaller heals, shorter boon durations, longer CDs, hard to reach trait allocations, …) is usually required.
I can understand devs avoiding spammeable direct heals, which are usually played though the UI, but once they’re given a moderate CD I don’t get how those can be worse than AoE ones. The UI play is ingame anyways for many things like boon corruption or AoE condition removals.
There’s only one reason for all this AoE support to exist: the insane amount of AoE attacks. Bring down both, introduce single target support and I’m fairly sure that the game would be much more interesting and enjoyable.
“Next outgoing skill misses; stacks duration.”
— In-game description
That’s a lot more missleading than the current description, which is completely fine as long as you understand “attack” as any outgoing effect that will directly affect an enemy.
It doesn’t even need to be a skill, procs related to runes/sigil/traits can also be blinded.
I said it works fine as long as the game is properly designed for that, which currently is not the case.
Warrior hammer is an example of a well animated weapon. Every attack has a fairly distinct animation and adds next to zero clutter to the fight.
Then we have lets say a Nade/Bomb engineer whose animations (even on autos) are way too flashy in the bad way (upon detonation, so when the chance to react to them is already gone), hard to identify (grenades can only be distinguished during flight time, and even then, sharpnel one is easily missed as a regular auto) and lay a lot of red circles and pulsing fields on the ground.
I honestly don’t know what cast bars are meant to solve.
With most skills having cast times under the second mark, bars should probably be paired with skill icons for a fast information delivery, and that’s exactly what an animation based system tries to accomplish: provide information by visual clues.
Once the clutter is gone and animations are made clear and distingishable from each other, there’s only one big difference left between this system and cast bars.
A displayed icon grants full cast time to react, while an animation requires, by its very nature, part of it to take place before it can be identified.
The undeniable fact that, for a given cast time, reacting to an icon will always be easier than to an animation doesn’t, however, make cast bars a better option; it just changes the game completely (may be for good, it’s just a matter of taste. I would prefer a raw increase on animation times, which would achieve the same while also reducing a little bit the pace of the game).
In any case, teamfights will always be a mess.
Right now it’s hard to understand what’s going on. It would be pretty much the same with cast bars, where we would have, idk, lets say 5-6 icons popping here and there every single second.
That’s not really a telegraph issue, it’s more the result of combining fast pace and a spammy gameplay caused by low cooldowns + weapon swap, quite powerful autoattacks and, specially, the lack of energy.
(edited by Vargamonth.2047)
I don’t think cast bars are needed at all. Animation tell system works fine, even better, as long as the game is well balanced around it.
They could start just with:
- Introducing a slide bar in options to display enemies/alliestoo/everyone as a human, just like the team color one works.
- Working on the animations of some skills that are currently hard, even impossible, to identify (necro marks come to my mind)
After that, it’s all about accounting the animation tell system when balancing things. If something can be boosted/nerfed by different means, just chose the one that contributes the most to this gameplay.
For example, if devs would think that warrior longbow is too strong, they should nerf the weapon through an increased cast time and better tell on pin down rather than a condition duration tweak on it or a nerf on combustive shot.
Better alternatives to pet builds, rework (if possible) on instant procs (Dhuumfire, probably a long a boost, could trigger right on the next attack after leaving DS so it could be evaded) and good assignment of cast times and tells might not be as effective as some number tweaking balance wise, but eventually would bring us to a much more enjoyable (both for players and viewers) gameplay.
I don’t think it’s needed. I don’t even think it’s good for the game as a whole.
From a sPvP point of view, the most “interesting” thing condition damage brings to the table is being able to keep a decent (but usually slow) damage output while wearing a fairly defensive amulet.
Besides Necromancers and Grenade+Bomb Engineers, which have a innate ability to spam AoE conditions into a capture point, most condition based builds are about attrition dueling and usually perform as close/far bunker/assaulter.
Guardian doesn’t really need this. Bunker guardian is awesome as it is: a pretty tough character with craploads of support that, even with next to zero damaging capabilities, it has been the preferred option as teamfight bunker/support since the game launched.
Give him a reliable condition weapon (staff is probably the only real must-to-have one for this kind of templates), and he will just switch to Settler and become some kind of monster.
For WvW, where Selfless Daring is way stronger, a condition guardian could be even worse. It’s not like there aren’t completely OOB builds roaming out there thanks to a sPvP based balance and some ridiculous PvE-only runes, but I don’t think throwing a few more on the mix is exactly the best way to handle that.
IMHO some kind of ability to keep enemies at close range , probably through a Zeal trait so something (healing through medis or dodgeroll, damage through Radiance, condi cleanse and retaliation through Virtues, whatever) must be given up as a tradeoff, would be much more desirable.
More than a “bunker” build, I’ve been looking for a high survivability build designed more to disrupt the enemy team than really stand on a point and defend. I think moving away from the stationary bunker to a more mixed control/survival set up lets me effectively control points like a bunker, while still being useful roaming.
For the kind of role you’re trying to fulfill, you probably shouldn’t use a Guardian. An engineer (even some warrior/mesmer specs) seems to be really close to what you’re looking for.
But “what if” they want to play a Guardian?
Doesn’t that sort of break the trait and play promised of any class? By saying that you sort of pigeon hole classes to a specific task rather than a particular trait combination. That just doesn’t seem right in my book but of course, I always hold the right to be incorrect.
It would be great to be able to spec every class for every role, just with a different taste, but the game doesn’t work that way at all.
Guardians can’t be really built for control/survival. They can be built for awesome support/survival (shouts), and they can also be built for great damage, retaining a bit of survival and support (meditations) which is pretty much the core of the class.
A heavy melee oriented class with an absolute lack of soft CC just can’t be built for middle ground. You either play really aggresive and stack a good amount of damage (so you can take as much advanatage as possible from those few seconds your enemy is at close range) or give up the damage thing and try to contribute by other means, like support.
One works better on solo/duo (where your damaging potential at close range is enough to prevent enemies from happily staying on the point, and there’s no AoE bombing enough to vaporize you) while the other does on teamfights, so there’sin fact a lot of room covered. The first one is still a decent burster for teamfights (with some support added through AoE condition removal, protection adn retaliation) and the second one is a pretty good holder if solo.
The point is (and I’m with OP on that it doesn’t seem to fit the guardian at all) that meditations one does not perform through control/survival but through really high damage and extremely agressive play.
The best middle ground build I’ve seen this far is probably the GS/Staff 0/10/30/10/20 posted by Stunningstyles some time ago, but that was before the rise of the Warrior, and Healing Signet is probably too much sustain for this build to go through.
(edited by Vargamonth.2047)
More than a “bunker” build, I’ve been looking for a high survivability build designed more to disrupt the enemy team than really stand on a point and defend. I think moving away from the stationary bunker to a more mixed control/survival set up lets me effectively control points like a bunker, while still being useful roaming.
That’s a fairly common misconception.
A usual bunker guard provides A LOT of AoE support and res/stomp potential while being able to stay on a small control point. Even if viable, it’s not a build to be left alone holding a point, but one to be brought to as much teamfights as possible.
If a teamfight is expected to happen on a different point, then you should go there while, eventually, some other team member with lesser impact on teamfights covers your old placement
This kind of roaming is not easy to achieve in soloQ (you might in fact receive a lot of flaming, since everybody seems to be the ultimate roamer-assaulter-teamfighter there and probably won’t cover the point you left), but teamfights are actually where your class really shines and where you should be.
For the kind of role you’re trying to fulfill, you probably shouldn’t use a Guardian. An engineer (even some warrior/mesmer specs) seems to be really close to what you’re looking for.
The AP system was completely flawed since the beginning.The funny thing is, Gw1 had a fairly nice daily / AP system.
There were proper dailies available on the latest releaes. They rewarded experience, gold and zaishen coins, a currency to be used at some specific merchants. There were also dailies tied to War in Kryta, which rewarded commendations, a different currency for different merchants, instead of coins.
And even if not an AP system at all, Hall of Monuments was close to what I would expect for this kind of feature: completionism, not limited by time constraints.
For GW2, however, ANet designed a weird system that merged both daily and AP concepts, which are completely unrelated and don’t necessarily cater to the same playerbase in most other games.
For a long time, the system could have been fixed. A hard cap on daily/monthy AP could have been introduced, with some kind of currency being given to players once the cap was reached. Zenith/Radiant/Hellfire skins could have been bought with this currency, along with many other items (some of them somehow tradeable, to allow gold conversion without introducing raw gold, and inflation, into the system).
Instead of that, they released laurels, which pretty much fulfilled this currency function, and kept alive the AP mess they’ve created.
Further on, there’s the way living story works. It’s actual content (not the hundred of times repeated mindless tasks dailies and monthlies usually are), but still temporary, and I don’t think a good AP system should be dependant on this kind of content
Can the current state be reverted?
It’s probably too late, but some kind of “fix” can still be made, the sooner the better.
I’ll try to introduce a (probably horrible :P) example:
First of all, a hard cap should be introduced slightly beyond the AP amounts top players have collected.
New dailies and monthlies would reward both AP (as long as the cap has not been reached) and a new currency that would replace laurels. Laurel vendors should be reworked and the current amount of laurels on player’s hands adequatelly converted to this currency.
Already achieved Zenith/Radiant/Hellfire skins should be deleted and introduced as items sold by those merchants (a currency compensation could be possible). Items that have been transmuted to these skins should stay if a skin reversion is not possible.
For living story, now again, some kind of hard cap would be needed.
Temporary content to be released should stop rewarding minis or backpack skins on meta completion (some titles here and there for the meta and the most difficult “achievements” if anything) while LS achievements would reward a new currency instead of AP (or in addition to, if the cap hasn’t been reached) to be used at some temporary merchants.
This new merchants could offer those minis/backpacks in addition to some utility ones (like seasonal consuables) and even items that are currently offered only at the gem store (like seasonal mini sets). This would allow players to choose a reward they really like or even to save currency for the next LS if nothing appealig is available.
Finally, developers should try to add real permanent achievements in the game.
From completing JPs in a limited amount of time (and without portaling ofc :P) to a succesful dungeon run with a reduced amount of players, there’s really a lot of room for improving.
The funny thing is that I find tPvP as the only place were downed state make any sense :P
For PvE it only makes content lesh punishing and the game could be perfectly fine without it. In fact, if ANet would want to release some kind of hard mode at some point, this feature should be probably the first one to go.
I find it extremely annoying for WvW massive battles (it’s more about the rallying mechanism, that should be changed, as proposed several times, to 1 death —> 1 rally). For solo/small roaming, as many players have stated, it penalizes even more the “weakest” side on any uneven fight and, unlike tPvP, it’s hardly your fault if you get caught in this kind of fight nor it gives any serious number advanatage to your “team” at some other place.
For tPvP, however, it adds a good amount of depth to teamfights and overall strategy.
It’s probably a disgusting feature for close/far defenders/assaulters, which are the ones that usually find themselves fighting solo against multiple enemies, but it’s also pretty much unvaluable for supportish roles (like my Virtues Guardian, so I’m totally biased here as you can see :P) which had a good amount of build options chosen mainly for downed control and could be rendered useless without it.
Removing it from hotjoin, where the conquest nature of the game is usually ignored, could make sense, but that would enlarge even more the gap between hotjoin and tournament play and make new players more clueless when jumping to tPvP. Custom arenas should allow to disable it, that’s for sure.
win 2 tournaments get 2 AP? how about win 1 tournament get 1 AP?
You only have to win 20 matches total per monthly so make monthly soloQwins 20 too but an alternative or make monthly soloQwins and monthly teamQwins each 10.Though monthly soloQ and teamQ wins are very well welcome as you have more than 2-5 hours a day.
I don’t like the idea.
New players jumping into tPvP are welcomed as long as they’re in the right competitive mindset. That’s why tPvP dailies need to be slightly harder than regular (doable in hotjoins) ones, in order to separate the chaff from the wheat.
Your suggestion grants those AP almost for free (you need either a bad day or really awful play to not win one out of 3 matches) just by playing tourneys instead of hotjoins.
The new achievements do not make any sense to me.
There are mainly 2 positive things the game could get from this:
- Use AP as a carrot to bring more players to tPvP
- Reward sPvP players so they can get reward chests easily for some gold/skins.
The first one is a complete failure. A whole soloQ match (queue time + prematch time + the match itself) can easily last for over 15 minutes. With a proper matchmaking (50% win rate), 5 wins would mean 10 matches played, so easily over 2 hours and half for just a couple of APs.
Only the most hardcore AP hunters could be attracted by such a grindy task, and there are still serious chances on completely kitten ing them off (and making them to eventually stop playing) instead.
The second one has no dangerous conunterparts, but doesn’t look either as a big deal.
Many PvP players won’t play the 3-4 hours required for all the 4 AP on a daily basis, and those who actually do are probably most dedicated to one given format, be it SoloQ or TeamQ, so most of them still won’t get the whole 120 points a month.
I also doubt PvP players will find those reward chests lifechanging :P
Some posters have sugested to make the achievements about games played.
I completely disagree; every reward in tPvP should be mainly about winning matches (
anything else could promote undesirable behaviours among newcomers).
I would just rework them to somehing like this:
Daily: Win 2 tournaments (no format specified) —> 2 AP
Monthly: Win 35 soloQ tournaments —> 30 AP
Monthly: Win 25 teamQ tournaments —> 30 AP
With any tiering/unlock required.
3 tournaments are usually enough to complete every regular PvP daily achievements and, with a bit of luck, they can also be enough for this new 2AP daily.
It’s a longer time for daily achievements, that’s true, but there’s also more AP and better rewards involved. IMHO it could attract players to tournamnet play, and still requires winning, so eventually those players will be on the right mindset or have left.
The monthly ones are a bit redundant. There are there in order to reach the same 120 points a month, and also to encourage people to try TeamQ while being more easily attainable by any player, even PvP ones.
If your roster only plays some given days a week, it doesn’t matter at all. You can fully dedicate to TeamQ whenever is possible, playing soloQ otherwise, and still get the whole reward.
I would also want to talk about the changes on Slayer and Conqueror achievements: They don’t make any sense :P
There’re a lot of easily reachable PvP achievements for a newcomer. New tiers should have been added, if anything, in the upper end, so players could have some short run carrot for playing PvP a bit more.
If bonus APs could be introduced or those new tiers, that would be also a way to reward, AP wise, dedicated PvP players.
I still believe on a hard cap being the best solution. There should be a maximum amount of AP obtained through dailies/monthlies, adn once that limit is reached, any additional AP should reward some minor amount of silver.
- No issues for those going after their next chest; they still can collect as any APs as they do now.
- No long run benefit for those who have hunted AP for more than a year. In fact, it’s the worst scenario for them since it means they will be caught at some point.
- No long run drawbacks for missing some dailies here and there.
- No need for ANet to release new skins and titles for a small minority when they could appeal to a much larger playerbase or even monetize them.
- Long run AP leaderboards would be more about true completionism and less about who missed less daily APs.
What happens when you hit a critter with it?
Wrong forum. Plz delete.