Guild Wars 2

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

“The only way to beat a mace warrior….” You really think all that?. I just swapped to melandru runes and have been skating ever since against them. We can try your way, or just change a few runes..but that might mean people have to give up there lyssa runesx6..and we can’t have that now, can we.

I don’t know, never tried them to be honest.
On paper, a 25% decrease on stun duration should be obviously helpful. However, I’m currently so far from being a threat for them on any guardian build that I can’t really see those runes working at all.
On practice, seeing how a 15% increase form sigil works, it could be a insane difference.

Arheundel.6451:

-warrior stun lock…as they CC you at mele range
-spirit rangers …as they condi bomb you at mele range
- s/d ele…as they much harder to counter compared to d/d eles, with s/d you can teleport in and out against d/d eles making the fight one -sided in your favour.

Those specs are broken or, better said, are unhealthy for the game.

A skill that stuns for 3 seconds (4 with the current sigil of paralyzation) cannot be instant cast, plain and simple. Currently the best (maybe the only) way to counter a mace warrior is to play a ranged class yourself and kite him.
The fact that this might not be a problem at all for high level play (the current state of the game doesn’t exactly favor melee sustained damage) is no excuse for having such a mechanicaly broken thing in the game.
The hammer, which is seen much more often in competitive play, is perfectly fine animation wise, so this rant is less about OPness and more about mechanics that just shouldn’t be in the game.

We face the same exact issue with Fresh Air eles. It doesn’t matter how it worked in GW1; that game hadn’t an endurance bar you were suposed to wisely use against spikes and other dangerous effects.
You can’t react to an instant effect. With fresh air, you can’t even predict when the burst is going to happen (and it happens very often). This doesn’t mean the ele is OP, it means that giving a class a tool that goes against the core mechanics of the game is an awful way to compensate other weaknesses.

Spirit Ranger is a completely different kind of beast. It somehow manages to gather up almost every other unhealthy mechanic in the game:
- Minions, which create a lot of clutter on the screen
- A pet, which is AI controlled for the most part.
- Evade spam.
- Procs. Procs everywhere. Burning proc, protection proc … even the condition removal is a proc.
All the ranger class is somehow broken to be honest. Spirit ranger is just the highest layer of bad design.

Timers are OK and are pretty much needed.
In fact, there should be much more timers in the game for stopping people running ridiculous builds and beat dungeons by boredom.
Soft timers, of course, so you’re not forced to certain classes or gear sets, but limits are needed for the “play what you want thing”. Running a full survival build, filled with defensive traits/gear, and still play ranged, kiting, so you take even less damage, is something that shouldn’t be allowed everywhere.

The funny thing with Tequatl is that it can’t be critted, so gear choices don’t even matter. Soldiers, even Clerics, are perfectly viable.
You just need to run an actually useful weapon/trait setup and some knowledge about the fight itself. People that refuse to use their character versatility on their advantage and adapt to different encounters (I’m an Ele and I won’t slot Ice Bow because I don’t like it; If I liked bows I would have roll a Ranger) does not deserve to complete all the content.
All the game can’t be a kindergarten where everyone wins. It’s perfectly fine to have some content that’s not spoonfeeded and actually expects some kind of effort on the player side.

If people still fail beating the timer, then it will be for many things that actually deserve a fail: People getting downed too often (not even talking about those laying on the floor fully dead), pushed back too many times by waves, turrets failing at removing scales or even destroyed, … In few words, bad perfomance —> failed event. As it should.

The only thing that could be adressed as a real issue is scaling, failing just because there isn’t enough people for the dragon to be killed.

I still haven’t beat him so I don’t want too speak too loud, but I don’t think Tequatl needs SO many organization. The current issues that some servers and mainly overflows are facing are attitude related IMHO.

Too much people running whatever build/spec they want expecting to be carried or somehow beat him by pure luck, or just going there for the daily achievement with no real hopes on getting the dragon downed.
Too much people laying on the floor dead just thinking “well, this is going to fail so at least I got my daily”.

The dragon should be doable just with basic understanding of the tactics used by those who already kill it.
Solid builds, people with a brain using and defending the turrets, might stacking and crazy damage abilities when the megalaser hits … Probably the only really desirable thing that can’t be provided by almost anyone is a single commander tag to take as reference for stacking and turret targeting.
There can be population issues with the current state, but that’s something that ANet should be able to work around without nerfing the boss to the ground.

After the Boss Week living story, there won’t be more Tequatl dailies, no more Tequatl is attacking world wide notifications. People will go there before the event starts just as it’s done with almost every other world boss and if most players joining the fight have their work (build, knowledge on tactics, …) done, the boss should be doable.
We just need to pray for the lazy ones to accept they are the main problem and try to improve and do something the proper way (too many things spoonfeeded up to now) or just give up and don’t show there (probably asking too much :P).

Achievements, for this matter (and many others), are more a handycap than anything else to be honest.

Lordrosicky.5813:

18, Shadows refuge – cooldown too short.
I think it would be better to reduce the radius for dodging not being viable at the center. This would reward fast reacted pushbacks as a good counterplay.

19, Stand your ground – get too much for this. Increase the cd.
I use it mainly for stomps and resses, and as last option PoV/Stunbreaker if needed. I could live without the retaliation part, and even with a reduced stability duration; longer CD, however, would hurt a lot. The skill is extremely powerful at its current state, that’s something I can’t deny :P

20, Burning – burning is OP. Nerf it by 25%
It’s more a spam / random triggering issue than a damage one

21, Asuras – too small. Cant see them for kitten. Lame and should be nerfed/banned
Compeltely agreed

Evasion mechanic is great, I would say that it’s one of the bests (if not the best) things this game offers, but it’s currently spammy and out of control.

A characater should have something between 2 and 3 “evades” (which includes weapon evades, blinds, blocks, interrupts, …) every 10 seconds depending on gear/trait choices. The same way, a character should have a couples of moves powerful enough to deserve a evasion (hard ccs, big damage spikes, that kind of things).
These powerful attacks should have a clear animation, one that can be identified (there are too many offenders, even entire races :P, for this rule right now) and reacted to (things like Warrior Skullcrack or Fresh Air Ele burst should not be in the game).
There’s no problem also on having more defensive tools triggered by hit. A guardian, for example, could not have the vigor on crit proc, but maybe mace chain third attack could trigger it, forcing the attacker to correctly dodge too in order to win the fight.

The game should not encourage to evade every damage source like autoattacks (except maybe for the third one on a low mobility melee weapon chain, since it’s vulnerable to kiting as an additional damage mitigation), but to counter them through defensive stats and things like protection/healing/weakness, the tools that should differentiate attrition/bunkerish specs from bursty ones.
This means that current autoattacks should probably be nerfed, with some damage/effects moved to avoidable skills. Some weapons could retain “hard” hitting autos in order to fit attrition specs, but this should have some kind of counterpart.

Blinds and soft CCs should be mostly instant or be at least fast enough (if we don’t want to provide too many stomping tools) to counter many of these spikes. It can fit the nature of the skill, like with Ray of Judgement, but there’s no much sense on having a tool that’s hardly going to counter anything except a Churning Earth. Ray of Judgmenet is a good skill, but more an “I’m going to avoid that in order to prevent the Guardian for cleansing and sustaining a bit more” one that what a blind should be; Weakness fits mechanicaly much better with this kind of long casting skills.

Lordrosicky.5813:

1, Berserker stance – Nothing should give immunity to entire types of classes. no counter play. Very lame. Just make it 90% reduction in condition duration then at least necros can interrupt them
Having some long CD tool that ensures you’re not going to be interrupted/impaired for a brief time doesn’t seem bad at all, specially for a class that’s mostly melee oriented. It probably last for too long however.

2, Automated response – see above. Losing to someone who is just 100x worse than you just because of a trait they take it total BS. How is this still in the game?
It’s OK IMHO for a 30 point trait. It’s an obvious hard counter to some specs, but something that can be bypassed with proper teamplay

3, Warrior stuns – insane. You literally get knocked around like a ping pong ball by the warrior then die. Interrupt them you say! No you cant. Because they are immune to anything I do (lol)
Sigil of paralyzation is broken, which has been already adressed.
Besides that, I find hammer OK while mace being completely stupid (see below).

4, Sword thief evades – way too many evades, teleports, etc on this weapon set
Evade issues. See below

5, Thief feline grace trait – seriously wtf. They get to dodge for less. Anet need to realise dodging and evades = invulnerable. Invulnerable is good in pvp. Seriously.
See below

6, Vigor – most op boon ever. Way more dodges = more invuln = never die = lame. You need to balance this boon. By reducing the amount of vigor gained by certain classes.
See below

7 , Runes of lyssa – seriously wtf is this. Its so OP. Why do you think 50% of people in any game run these. People use elites purely for this rune set. Shows how insane it is.
It’s a condition counter runeset, picked mostly because of condi meta

8, Sigil of energy – dodging is OP. Anet really need to get this or this game will fail.
See below

9, Nature of renewal. So broken and frustrating. Gives you massive advantage in team fight. No counter play as killing it resses anyway. Massive HP. Massive healing. Full condi cleanses. It is just way too good.
It’s not so broken now that can be interrupted (I think);. I’m more concerned about spotting and targeting it while surrounded by the whole petting zoo. An HP nerf would be welcomed too

10, Ele burst – too high, should be brought down. Promotes macroing and even more cheese. Solution to making ele viable isnt to give it cheese.
It’s more a unpredictability issue (see below) than a strength one.

11, Signet of spite – why make something so lame as this? it takes no skill to just random land a signet of spite then fear someone = death. I lose to so many bad necros who run this or signet or plague. Enough. Nerf signet of spite durations or increase the cooldown.
Can’t comment. Never thought on it as something gamebreaking

12, healing spring – too strong
It’s going to be nerfed

13, Elixr R – people shouldnt be able to res themselves – come on.
It can be annoying but I don’t think it’s OP at all. It can be counterplayed, an that’s a good thing

14, Lag – fixing lag matters. Lag is Op in this game. Most the games I lose is because I get dced for 2 mins start of every match. Winning from 3 cap and 100-0 down isnt easy.
Well, lag is always a serious issue, but I don’t think is something that devs are missing :P

15, Emphatic bond – passive condi removal is lame. End of.
Agreed.; told by someone who plays a Guardian and usually slots Purity. Condi Cleanses should be active; that being said, active removals are pretty crappy for Ranger. Maybe 3 condi removal on pet swap could work?

16, Healing turret – cast time too short. Cant be interrupted.
Agreed

17, Healing signet – cant be interrupted so where is the counter play?
Mechanicaly it has its counterplays. For example, it should suffer from poison, which usually can be cleansed prior to a regular heal for full effect.
His HPS is, however, extremely high, so high that it actually bypasses many other heals even poisoned. I would start nerfing it a little bit

My concerns on Might and Vulnerability are about how much spam/cluttet they add to boon/conditions. Boons and Conditions (maybe excepting bleed, which is the damage main condition) should be more situational

PvP wise there should be mainly 2 different might sources:
- The one that grows up slowly during the fight. The might it gives needs to have longer duration )double, even triple) than the skill CD. Sigil of Battle could be a good example of this.
- The “burst” one. High stacks for “shot” duration (half of the skill CD or even less)

Same goes for vulnerability:
- Long lasting one, slowly built-up on the target.
- Short duration, high stacks. Used to set up a burst.

The game is also filled, however, with a lot of might sources that don’t add any depth to the combat, behave just as passive stat bonuses and add unnecessary clutter to boon/condition lists.
As an example: Versatile Power, Warrior Discipline grandmaster minor trait: Grants 1 stack of might for 10 seconds on weapon swap while in combat.
This is going to be 1-2 stacks of might on the character all the time and that’s all. If the character would have got passively 50 points in power and condition damage, the effect would have been pretty much the same with less clutter/spam over the boon list.
It has the added problem of being a minor trait, forced if you want 30 points in Discipline.

The amount of boon/contions ongoing, specially on teamfights, is currently out of control.
Perma-vigor traits are cheap and they’re going to be removed sooner or later (a decrease on autoattack damage and/or a CD increase on some attacks, could be required). It’s not just the evade spam which causes random misses TOO MANY times (which is obviously the biggest issue), it’s also a no counterplayable 100% upkeep boon listed all the time.
Same goes for regen. Things like healing turrets grant a 100% AoE regen upkeep until they’re destroyed, with no viable counterplay through boon removal/steal/corruption. The only reason I see for them giving regeneration instead of pulsing small heals is to avoid similar effects (like two turrets :P) stacking, and I think there are much better solutions for this issue than having a given boon always up.
Think for a moment on Symbol of Faith (Guardian mace symbol). 8 seconds CD, 4 pulses for 1 sec regen each one. It’s likely going to be used twice every 20 sec (weapon swap rotation), so why not make it 15-20 sec CD, 3 pulses for 3 sec regen each one with higher damage? It would have more or less the same healing output, but it would be less spammy, promoting active gameplay for both the guardian (trying to use it after stability, before shelter, when no dangerous attack is expected, …) an his enemies (a knockback can prevent all the healing, a corrupt/steal/removal would be useful, a pulsing AoE can force the guardian to leave the symbol, …) while forcing better coordination for combos and reducing the AoE effect clutter.

The biggest issue with might/vulnerability is that there are too many not-really-meaninful sources triggering here and there just cluttering the boon/condition system and making the game unnecesarily more chaotic.

I would say that SAB World 2 alone (not even Tribulation Mode included) beats in quantity all last month content together.
If we really think on it, last month we got little more than a new small and simple zone and some events randomly dropped on already existing ones.

Both opening story modes where little more than short cutscenes with just a bit of player interaction; not much different from what we get after ending SAB World 2 and what we may get on the next update.
Air Balloons were just an improved version of the annoying kite Baskets, Dragon Effigies, … Good news, but still nothing special at all.
The dungeon was just a instanced version of the queen pavilion with some random patrols, one really simple event and Scarlet, who wasn’t impressive at all. Really far from what we experienced on Molten Facility and Aetherblade Hideout.
Queens Gauntlet was maybe the only interesting and innovative content released during last month.

The insane usage the content got is a completely different thing, much more related to the farming capabilites it offered than to the real amount of content.
It doen’t matter how many hours I spent farming Deadeye Dunwell or Aetherblade champions, they are nothing but a veteran-kind foe and a really basic event.

Dagraan.2854:

go to a lower tier server, then’ll you’ll know why people are comparing tequatl to karka queen.
on my server the karka queen is happily making southsun a gigantic karka hive, the only temple done (maybe) is melandru, and the most people can muster for world boss events is maybe 20, its been many a times where golem mark 2 and the megadestroyer is never done, or has 1 person doing it.
and that was on the populated times.

not to mention the world event in harithi hinterlands is rarer than a precursor, same goes for the pirate queen in bloodtide.

While I think that Karka Queen is probably too much for a low populated server, and that so could happen too with new tequatl, there’s no really excuse for having so many world events undone. The people on your server must be using guesting
feature for everything or be already swimming on dragonite ore.

Events scale. Temple of Lyssa, for example, is really easy (A LOT easier and faster than being zerged) with about 5 people, so having it undone is asking any group of friends/guildies to go there and get their reard. Same probably can be applied to Dwayna (I’m not going to talk about Balthazar or Grenth, since never tried those with few players).

I’m going to have nightmares with lilys this night.

After endless tries in order to get the last shop on W1Z3, I’ve been absolutely unable to fight the King Toad properly.
After many tries I have reached the platform and full melee the boss because trying to jump on a lily was almost a death sentence. When the boss has died, I’ve died too, don’t know why, and I’ve been unable to just get the chest for the next whole minute.
No reward, no achievement.

I don’t know if the lilys had lesser upyimes on TM, if it’s a latency issue at my side, if it’s server side, or a mix of everything. I only know that this is maybe the most stupid thing I’ve experienced in the game so far.

It’s probably not the issue, but just for the possibility, I think the achievement is not triggered if you use a continue.

I bought my Infinite Coin after trying Tribulation Mode. I’m still on vacation, so I wanted to play SAB as much as possible and I don’t regret buying it. The coin is, however, far from neccessary in order to beat all the content, included Tribulation Mode.

Every completed zone grants a daily reward of 2 bubbles + 1 continue coin. That’s actually 11 continue coins = 55 lives, so completing world 1 will grant you 165 lives plus those ones you could buy just with regular baubles. There’s also a daily bauble after destroying the cart , ending up at 215 lives.
Even better, after you repeteadly run and explore some world 2 zones, you will be able to farm those too (W2Z2 in insanely fast using the shortcut, for example), which means more lives. Tribulation Mode is also farmeable once you complete it for the first time; there’s no way you can spend more than 50 lives once you know where the traps are and it rewards the components for making King Toad / Storm Wizard weapons so you wouldn’t need any bubbles at all if you want a SAB weapon (all of them, excepting some for minis maybe, can be used for continue coins)

If SAB stays for one full month and you don’t want to finish the content ASAP, you can get more than enough (I mean, MUCH MORE THAN ENOUGH) lives to beat everything.
For example, I bought 2 Mini Motos today. That actually equals to 200 continue coins = 1000 lives. I’ve died a lot for sure, but I don’t think I have reached that number by any means.

Start form the left side so you don’t aggro the first rock too soon and try to do the first two groups as fast as you can.
For the last couple of rocks, which are on the right wall, just evade against the wall while they perform the stomp animation.

W2, Z1 and Z2 and TM W1,Z1 and Z2 completed already.

My concerns are probably more technical issues than design complaints.

- Slingshot is really painful to aim.
At some point on W2-Z2 thre was an assassin standing on top of a lonely mountain.
I tried to kill him with the slingshot but it was impossible to correctly aim at him. I’m sure there’s a spot where you can reach him, I just didn’t try it too much since I wasn’t really looking for the achievement on my first run, but the way the weapon works is still frustrating.

- Rapids, Lava pools, …
When you want to jump over some pit, your character hitbox is so large that you can actually get out of the platform in order to maximize the distance.
Everything is quite different, however, when you face a rapid, a lava pool, or any other dangerous surface. If the height of the platform you’re standing on is not high enough, the effects of the dangerous surface seem to trigger much more close to the edge.
It’s not bad at all, but having similar jumps behaving completely different feels a little bit uncomfortable and usually ends up in some frustating deaths.

About the loss of lives.
W2, Z1 cost me about 30 lives on my first run. I probably spent a lot more, about 60 or so, completing Z2, but I already had bought the Infinite Continue Coin at this point and here is where I feel a bit biased.
The amount of lives / continues needed in order to complete normal mode is OK. I’m fine with rerunning W1 and farm some baubles in order to buy some lives / continue coins or unlock upgrades, and the amounts required seem completely manageable for me (the proposed change of losing only one heart when you die by traps or fallings is great however).
Tribulation Mode is a completely different kind of beast. I used more than 200 lives in order to complete W1, Z1 and this is hardly something you can easily go back and refill. I bought the Infinite Coin just for TM, which in enjoy but I think it would be really painful without it.
Having infinite lives feels far from good however when you go back to normal mode. Your pace of play speeds up a lot, taking a lot of risks and suffering many deaths that you probably wouldn’t if your lives would have some kind of cost attached.

I feel it would be MUCH better if Infinite Coin would not exist and you just had infinite lives for Tribulation Mode. I suspect, however, that this is less related to SAB design, which I think is great, and more about other departments doing their job.

I honestly don’t think it’s grindy at all. My concerns are less about the amount of time required and more about the way to get these new materials.

First of all, you can’t start crfating the needed materials until 450. Those first 50 points must be leveled through t6 refinement, exotic crafting and other things that some people had already done for months.
Now we need to craft exotics we have no use for besides TPing (absolutely devaluated cause a massive offer, as expected) or salvaging them.
If a new tier of crafting is introduced, it should start at the previous cap.
It would have been OK to need 400 in order to craft these new ascended mats and it would have been even better having that cap upgraded to 450 months ago if something like this was expected. What we have now doesn’t make any sense.

Then we have the new materials themselves.
Bloodstone dust is easy. Many activities in the game grant champion bags and the amount of dust on each one seems pretty high. I hardly see this as a bottleneck for anyone. I could say the same for the one bought with skill points.
Then we get Empyreal Fragments. Those are gotten through jumping puzzles, dungeons, mini-dungeons, WvW camps and towers … WTH!? This sounds like just everywhere. Have I miss something about this game where we could get Dragonite Ore? I mean, I don’t think ANet is going to link this kind of reward to minigames or SPvP (even if I really would like it :P).
Yes, I missed something: Zerg events. After a month with pavilion and invasion zergs, we get a material that is obtained from World Bosses, Orr Temples, Invasions and the biggest structures of WvW. Zergy by definition.

And we are still going to need some other things like T2-T4 mineral and wood (ty ANet, thats EXACTLY the kind of low level content replayability I was looking for) and globs of dark matter that are obtained by salvaging exotics which everybody knows we are not going to get by random drop.

An all the process is, drum plays, TIME GATED !!

SERIOUSLY?
Is this the best you can think ANet? I can’t belive it, I honestly can’t believe it.

There’s nothing challenging on this Ascended Weapons. It’s not even a big grind since time gating limits how fast you can get them.
It’s just a bunch of brainless tasks to accomplish and I can expect A LOT of people to absolutely dislike at least one of them, be it crafting, jumping, running dungeons, playing WvW or whatever. It’s just ANNOYING, plain and simple.

I understand that linking ascended gear only to things like high level fractals or a new Hard Mode for dungeons would be even more unpopular but, honestly, can not be a chance to actually earn the best gear in the game without spending hours on completely brainless and unchallenging content?
Is it not stupid enough to have to deliver the earnings of countless hours to some random lucky guy if we happen to want a Legendary?

We got nothing from Aetherblade Hideout achievements, we got nothing from Light Up the Darkness and I expect to be exactly the same with SAB Tribulation Mode.
Every piece of released content that offers a bit of challenge is left with only our own satisfaction as reward while the most brainless tasks get all the loot.
At this point of the game I don’t expect anything great to be provided by the content I like but, honestly, some kind of workaround for the ascended gear, even if it still remains somehow time-gated, would be really appreciated.

Darnis.4056:

“I can even think on portal / IoL / blink, GS/SwFc 5 mesmer setup being pretty insane. "
Oh man 5 tanky-ish mesmers with portals and teleports and LOTS of aoe crowd control?

Beautiful.

Now make all of them small asuras with the same exact appearence and armor, and names as much similar as possible. BEST eSport to watch EVER :P

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

@Vargamonth

what if,
team score of 20 is awarded for making a kill, instead of 5? the incentive for killing players is quadrupled. suddenly, it is worth more team points to make kills?

in a 5 vs 5 game, a team wipe would mean +100 points.
5 team wipes and the game is over.

what if,
4 pips will be the current capturing speed.
1 pip will be 25% of current capture speed
2 pips 50% current speed
3 pips 75% current speed

i.e. capturing speed is slowed unless more players sit on a point.

It has much better shape, that’s for sure :P

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

well, out numbering opponent is a valid tactic.

for example, in a 5 vs 5 match.
a team may 5 vs 1 in a control point and capture it quickly, but they may lose the other 2 points in the process.

i dare say this change will do more good than harm.

My concerns about your suggestion are not about uneven fights (these situations are actually the main beauty of conquest mode), but about how it wouln’t be necessary
to defeat your enemy anymore.
Currently, when you get a 3vs2 on a point, you want to kill fast, get the kill score, cap (or just decap) the point and move quickly to the point when you are probbaly being outnumbered.
Both the ability to end fast the 3 on 2 and to survive enough the 2 on 3 belong to the players and those that do it better are likely to win. With your system, both points are likely to be flipped, removing a lot of skill from the equation in favor of sheer numbers.
Without an strictly need to defeat your enemy, it also wouldn’t be weird to expect teams filled with tanky specs and high mobility.
I can even think on portal / IoL / blink, GS/SwFc 5 mesmer setup being pretty insane.
I might be mistaken, but I think that this changes would lead to the most stupid meta ever seen (and the current one seems hard to beat in that matter).

Honestly, it sounds horrible to me.

Outnumbering your enemy is a huge advantage already. With this change, it would be just an autowin, and the worst part of it is that even if looks like it would remove bunkering (I honestly think that the reason to have bunkers is more about having someone at an easily AoE-able small point during a teamfight than defending a point against multiple enemies, in which case I think someone is doing something wrong or running an unapropiate spec), it actually would shift the meta to high mobility bunkerish spec full-team (with many stability sources and AoE pushbacks).

Hotjoin must stay. I could agree however on 8on8 being removed.

Why hotjoin absolutely needs is a complete revamp on glory rewards. It doesn’t make any sense to get better outcomes playing on a fashion that has nothing to do with winning the match (sometimes even counter productive).

Mobility issues could be solved IMHO through a massive rework of Zeal traitline (swiftness on X, cripple on Y, specific movement impairment condi removal of Z, that kind of things).
This would allow some true pressure specs to appear while preventing them from taking too many goodies from other branches. It also probably wouldn’t destroy anything currently available since Zeal is horrible for anything besides Spirit Weapons maybe (and almost everyone agree that IAs are not good for the game, so kitten them :P).

Even better, we could ask it to some condtion class using shaman. The question is not about dealing damage with healing gear, it’s about doing it with a guardian.

Valk eles usually deal damage on fast (even instant) bursts, while getting fury on attuenement swap. That solely is a great advantage when compared to a Guardian who is hardly going to get fury unless the enemy is spamming burning and whose bursts are a lot more telegraphed..
The old D/D ones used to have almost permafury from auras and made better use of the healing power through an insane regen upkeep and some high scaling heal skills.

The critchance is going to be lacking for a guardian without precision gear and/or heavy invest in radiance, and since Zeal is going to be really low (probably at zero, because it’s a horrible traitline), low critchance will mean low damage, moderate at best.
Could be a Cleric / Valkyrie guardian heavy investing on both Radiance and Honor viable? I honestly don’t know.
The great potential of Radiance seems tied to 1H weapons. Sword and Scepter have a really awful cleave/AoE potential for teamfights and Monk Focus (30 in Valor) seems to offer much better sustainability for 1 on 1.
It could work for mace, but I hardly doubt that the extra damage would worth the sustain lost from Valor or the utility lost from Virtues.

In any case, I don’t know why I’m arguing here.
I don’t even think that a boost on WW is needed; there are some balanced builds out there that make a good use of the current GS.
I was just surprised about the mention of Selfless Daring as an issue. I could have compeltely understand some comments about retaliation upkeep or even condi removal, but I never had thought on Selfless Daring as something not even near OP for a build trying to deal damage.

What’s wrong with selfless daring?
It’s 129 heal on dodge roll with a 0.5 Healing Power coefficient.
For any build not using a Healing Power gear (pretty much needed in order to deal “decent” damage), that’s going to be 280 heal on dodge roll at best.

NES

I absolutely prefer a reactive gameplay over a complex button rotation based one, and I also prefer conquest mode over the classic deathmatch.

Unfortunately, the reactive gameplay, while intended by DEVs, can’t take place at all in a game with so many spam of both powerful attacks and evades. Petting zoos and asura animations make it even worse.
The AoE spam is also over the top. I’m not against bunkerish specs (I play one myself) but they sould be more a viable choice insted of something forced by the meta.

Caramel Ham.4891:

With the current combat mechanics. Range > Melee in anything other than conquest mode. That’s why we have crap like “bunker” builds….what a joke.

We have bunker builds because of conquest mode.
In order to cap a node or prevent it from being decapped, someone must stay on it, getting extremely exposed to all kind of AoE attacks. You rather have some kind of tough spec if you expect to survive that pressure.

It’s more (somehow related, however) an AoE issue than a Ranged vs Melee one.

Finally, you have balanceds builds, which in order to be well rounded need:

- Mobility, in order to stick to your enemy or to run away if an unbeatable manforce is approaching. Since you do not have movement impairment tools (besides immobilizes, that as I said before are almost the only attacks on your arsenal that deserve a condi cleanse) you are forcefully going to need swiftness.
That means you need to run a staff, retreat and/or some kind of food/runeset, all of them with fairly obvious downcomes. Save Yourselves, which is an insanely powerful skill for solo roaming, can get the work done against some enemies, but it’s not going to be enough most of the time.
Even with that, you’re still going to need something to counter enemy gap openers, which forces some combination of Sword, Greatsword and Judges Interventions.
You can beat some specs without all of this, but you can also automatically lose to some others if you lack it.
In fact, a good mobility is going to let you choose your fights more than anything, so it’s going to be always a good investment.

- A good mix of sustain and damage.
Some enemies are glassy, some others are though as hell. The first ones use to be a good fight for you, since you have pretty good anti-burst tools on shelter, renewed focus, blind sources, … and Save Yourselves gives you everything you need for a short fight. The second ones, however, can be a pain in the kitten .
Unlike some people try to state, Guardians don’t have such an incredible sustainability, not at least when alone or without heavy investment on healing power.
For short fights, Save Yourselves offers a lot of everything, but it’s a 60 sec (48 if traited) skill. Once it’s over, it’s not like you’re going to have many sources of protection/regeneration on a solo roaming build.
Altruistic Healing, while great in some situations, is pretty awful for solo roaming.
Selfless daring can heal A LOT, so if you have enough critchance to proc vigor consistently (and even maybe sigils of energy), it can give you and insane sustain. It requieres, however, high investment on healing power, which can produce many stalemates and automatic loses when outmanned. It’s still handy without any stat investment (just the ones on the Honor traitline), but miles away from the monster it can be on a healway build.
In the end, if you want to keep a decent damage output, Monk Focus seems to be the only way to add decent sustain, and even on a triple meditation build, it’s only about 200 HPS. I mean, shelter (just the healing), resolve and monk focus altogether barely beat the warrior Healing Signet passive.
A balanced guardian is far from a god of sustain. You actually need to use your active defenses (blinds, blocks, evades) wisely in order to succeed, which can be applied to every single class, some of them with more resources than you.

- Condi cleanses and stun breakers. Like every other balanced build.
Purity helps a lot removing some nasty bleed stacks or saving you from being crippled to death, but it’s not enough on its own. It can easily be bypassed by a clever enemy and doesn’t help at all against condi CC like immob.
This lets you with meditations (Smite for soft cleanse or immobilizes, CoP for heavy condition bursts), Shouts + Pure of Voice, Absolute Resolution and/or maybe Runes of Lyssa. Ray of Judgment is too easily avoidable.
If you run Smite Condition and CoP, you only have one last slot for either JI, SY or SYG. Lacking any of these skills hurts, lacking two of them can be really painful.
If you run Shouts + Pure of Voice, you can have all of them but you’re not going to be running Monk Focus (which means less sustain) and you might need to waste some of these precious resources just for the condi cleanse.
Absolute Resolution seems a good choice, since it can be viable on a Monk Focus build and also enhances your passive regeneration. On the other hand, it actually reduces it if you have to cleanse, and forces you to a retaliation build, not so useful on bursty fights.
Runes of Lyssa are great, but they prevent you for using a runeset that gives you swiftness consistently (which you are going to need agains tough enemies).

In the end, your only choices are running a burst build and praying for your enemy not knowing what is facing or trying a balanced one just knowing that there are better well rounded specs out there (I would say that warrior ones too).
The first one probably has better outcomes but winning with the second one leaves a better taste IMHO.

Can a guardian burst people down? Of course, as long as the victim has no clue on how guardian skills work.
Almost any guardian burst build use Shield of Wrath, a skill with 45 sec CD and pretty predictable mechanics, as a big part of his offensive combo. The same timing a guardian needs to land it is also valid for evading it on defenders side.
You also lack the tools to set up the hit. You can’t rely on immobilize because there’s not really any other thing for your enemy to use their condi removals and your only reliable hard CC is on an easily spotteable signet asking for a stun breaker to be saved.
If your enemy knows what is facing and is running a well-rounded build, it’s going to be really hard to land this kind of attack. It’s easier to avoid than a thief Backstab, and it’s on a 45 sec CD.
Another burst option could be torch, but now again it has a really huge cast time, preceded by the obvious flaming animation, so your enemy is going to avoid it if he knows how guardian works.
That lets you only with the usual low CD damaging moves, wich are not enough to burst down anything but maybe the glassiest specs and which consist usually on channeled attacks, hard to fully land on a skilled opponent and hard to set up cause a lack of CC and Conditions to burn out enemy scape resources.
Guardian burst spec works only because a lack of knowledge/skill on enemy side. Hopefully, this is something fairly usual when solo roaming, but honestly, the spec itself is not good at all.

On the other side, we have the healway guardian. You are hard to beat, that’s for sure, but it’s not like you’re going to kill anyone who doesn’t decide to fight you til death.
You just lack the tools to keep most enemies at close combat long enough to deal the damage needed to down them.
It can work on SPvP because it’s about staying at a point, but for solo-roaming I found it horrible.

Thre are many ways to promote DEs.

They could start just destroying the corpse loot for any event spawned mob and moving the expected reward to the DE completion reward. That would solve one of the biggest flaws (a lot of people will disagree with this) of the game, wich is zerg farming.

Developers made an interesting move with the loot system. Having individualized loot, other players were meant to be more a bless than an annoyance while playing open world content, which sounds great.
The (probably unexpected) result consisted on players zerging some specific events, specially those on high level areas with good scaling (the ones that spawned lot of mobs when a lot of people were present).

Right now, the system is throwing insane amount of crafting materials through invasion zerg events. It could take more work but, wouldn’t be possible to have daily rewards (consisting on fixed materials and accordingly scaled to player level, difficulty and completion time) linked to every event around the world, while disabling any loot from the mobs spawned on it?
This would make the playerbase to spread around the world, completing the events they find more fun. No more zerging on some concrete content, but a few people here and there making all the world feel alive.
It’s just about correctly adjusting rewards so there’s no inherent benefit on zerging and every piece of content is equally interesting as long as the DE itself is fun.

Vol.5241:

You guys are real naive to not expect a nerf to gauntlet farming.

And if I recall, players have been clamoring for challenging content.

You got it! And now they give you daily rewards for completing the gauntlet on each boss.

So what more do you guys want?

I absolutely expected a nerf. What we have now, however, is just a 15 minutes daily task in order to get some gold, not much different from what any dungeon could be farm wise.
What I want is to keep this kind of small scaled content farmeable up to some degree. I do not want insane amounts of gold (unless there’s some great challenge involved which justifies it, which was not the case), but I would appreciate to get the same profit as champion zerg trains produce.

I’m fine with dungeon changes. I’m fine with gauntlet changes. I’m fine with everything that promotes gameplay variety (and a bit of challenge, if possible) over mindlessly repeating the same faceroll content over and over.
What I dislike is to see these farms capped WHILE and even more mindless, faceroll farm method is not just kept available but even promoted.

It’s not useless at all, it equals more or less to a dungeon run.
Every foe in the gauntlet has a daily reward associated (16 silver for t1, 20 for t2, 24 for t3), so you can actually do some of them and get something about 1,5 – 2 gold in probably less than 15 minutes.
I still don’t know if Liadri shares the t3 reward or if she has something more interesting attached. I also don’t know if this reward is character or account bound.
I also want to point that I get a Charged Core from a t2 bag. Assuming that Charged Lodestones were pretty rare on t3 bags (1/200 or so) and that I only opened 8 bags, there might be a possibility for drop rates to have been increased.

I must admit that the profit offered by gauntlet farming was pretty insane and required some kind of nerf. ANet decided to just destroy it completely.
I guess zerging is the official way to farm this days. Congratulations to those who like it.

Rezz.8019:

Vargamonth.2047:

C’mon, how hard can it be to sort all the queued contendants by rating and do something like this?

1 -> 2
4 <- 3
5 -> 6
8 <- 7
9 -> 10

Actually it would be better if it was something like: 1, 2, 6, 9, 10 vs 3, 4, 5, 7, 8
Would be a lot more balanced due to many reasons that I can type if you’ll really insist on it, but yeah.

Seriously Anet though, go fix your matchmaking system and reset the leaderboard!

Yeah, I wasn’t trying to get an optimal distribution, just a simple algorithm which would work A LOT better than the current one.
IMHO the best solution, even if loses in fairness, should be somehow random in order to prevent the same teams to face each other over and over.

While I agree on rank not being so meaningful (there’s usually some correlation, specially for lower ranks), the first picture actually shows leaderboards rankings:
5 top 100 on the same team while the best rated on the opposite one is about 6xx.
Some minutes ago I’ve had a pretty similar match. 5 top 100 (3 top 20 included) on the same team against a 3xx, a 4xx, a 5xx (me) and 2 not even rated (unless they’re shown on another characater).
I can understand this happening on team arena, while this kind of mismatches are unavoidable if not enough people is queued, but on solo queue …
I don’t know if it’s a sync issue or if the system is just stupid. C’mon, how hard can it be to sort all the queued contendants by rating and do something like this?

1 → 2
4 <- 3
5 → 6
8 <- 7
9 → 10

Honestly, there are only 6 arenas on each overflow and an empty one is pretty much needed in order to get a 20g/hour profit.
Even if there’s potential to generate more than 200g/hour (a couple of 4-5 gambit Deadeye farmers on each arena), the average situation is going to be far away from this. There’s still a lot of people trying to just beat the gauntlet, specially facing Liadri or trying to achieve “Light up the Darkness”, forcing longer queues and cutting the gold generation by A LOT. Even if there are some low populated time zones actively used by farmers, I don’t think the gauntlet is generating much more than 50g per hour and overflow on average.

There are about 12 legendary kills per hour on the Pavilion.
Think on 40 people killing them and getting 6 silver for each Champion Loot Bag and that just generated 30g/hour. Add some green and blues sold to the vendor, and I’m pretty sure that Pavilion generates far more inflation than the Gauntlet itself.

The problem with the Gauntlet is more about how the riches are shared than anything else, and it’s not too different from the lucky guy who looted a Genesis by chance while others keep getting crap (it’s even fairier than this tbh).

Even if there are some details of the fight that i don’t like, I think that not being able to exactly learn the pattern and master the execution is something positive.

Even if you can still learn a lot by experience (understanding how the AoE pattern works and getting used to AoE timing, and to the pulling orb one if possible, makes a huge difference) Phase 2 is likely to change a lot from one try to another.
You only have a general understanding of the fight and you have to build your charcater around that. No skill for countering some nasty attack at a given time mark or some defensive CD perfectly adjusted to overcome a given threat over and over. Once in the action, you can’t fight a static script, you need to use your resources wisely and constantly adapt as fight goes on, and this is great.

Minos.3450:

Vargamonth.2047:

You guys keep insisting on the Gauntlet breaking the economy, which is false.
The Pavilion is clearly more harmful in terms of inflation.

Please, try to think about what you’re writting beforehand. The pavilion main rewards are a lot of T5/T6 golds and exotics which leads to an increasing amount of supply of said items. With more and more of those coming on the TP, the prices are expected to drop and not to rise, so no inflation here.
On the other hand, the gauntlet farming is similar to old CoF in the way it rewards player with raw gold, which means people are generally more wealthy and can buy in mass -> generate inflation.

Get your facts straight next time, please.

There’s enough silver from champion bags and vendor trash to get those 2g/hour.
Those materials are a completely different story; they are going to make prices drop ONLY for themselves and for items created with them. Gems, for example, are not going to notice it; in fact, their price might even rise.

You guys keep insisting on the Gauntlet breaking the economy, which is false.
The Pavilion is clearly more harmful in terms of inflation.

Electro.4173:

BrunoBRS.5178:

i don’t know, i was hoping this would be a chance to get cheaper materials for my legendary, but everything’s about the same. the overflow of money comes with an overflow of stuff to sell as well, so i think it’s balancing itself out in a weird way.

personally, i’m using the gauntlet to level my alts. got at least 10 levels on one of them already, in just 2-3 days of casually playing it.

Except the gauntlet doesn’t drop materials, so there’s no overflow of stuff to sell, only gold.

This topic isn’t about farming the pavilion mobs. Those drop materials just fine, and the money you make isn’t all that amazing. If the pavilion were the only farming thing here, there’d be no problem whatsoever.

This topic is about people farming certain gauntlet boss battles (which drop no materials except sprockets) to make upwards of 20g an hour at times. That’s pure gold being generated by the game and put straight into players’ hands at a very fast rate.

There isn’t much evidence of the effect on the economy just yet, but with so much gold being created I don’t see how it won’t eventually cause some issues.

You are completely missing the big picture. The effects on the economy are caused by the amount of gold generated; it doen’t matter at all how is it shared between players.
Flipping materials on the AH, for example, can grant to a player insane amounts of money while being economically healthy since actually destroys gold through taxes.

People making over 20g/hour are using an empty arena. We have 6 arenas on each server/overflow, so if we have one single farmer on each one of them (highly unlikely) the total gold generation would be of about 120g/hour.
That would let us with 69 people zerg training. Even in this (extreme) case, each one of these players potentially getting about 2g/hour would be enough for the Pavilion to have a bigger effect on economy than the Gauntlet.

This is probably the first content released with this kind of issue.
It was pretty obvious that other players were going to be an hindrance, and no just for farmers. Regular players just trying to beat the gauntlet aren’t going to be happy with a 5 man queue.

As a farmer myself I try to play at low population schedules and I look always for an empty/underused arena. So yes, other players are absolutely an hindrance for me.
I understand, however, that there’s more people than me wanting to use the arenas, and they have the rights to do so even if they lose on quaggan by timeover (which I agree is annoying as hell when you’re waiting your turn).
If I can have my own arena, that’s perfect; if not, it’s up to me to leave and stop farming or stay there and wait for my turn.
If I’m not alone I try to be polite, rez people, give tips, explain builds or give whatever help I can, but I can absolutely understand people not doing it and I don’t think it’s their fault to do so. Ohter people are naturally an hindrance, so this kind of behaviour should be expected.

About how much extra people hinders the farming, I’m also pretty sure that ANet expected multiple players on queues when the rewards were adjusted; so technically this wouldn’t be about other people hindering the farm, but the absence of them (the unexpected case) boosting it to insane numbers.

Torvarren.6295:

I never have post process affects on anyway. My PC can’t take it.

Same here. I don’t think if my PC can handle them or not; anywise, I play with everything at minimum/disabled by default.

It obviously devalues the achievement, but having to fight at about 10 FPS should be a fair tradeoff :P

The most satisfying thing I’ve completed up to now

Kormir, over and over. I could have time also for Rurik and Traeharne.

A Nerf is requiered but, seriously, don’t do it like with Subject 7.

If offensive (I still get about 25g/hour on solider armor) builds are not meant to burst down things in seconds and get an insane profit over time, just make phases / special events to trigger on HP (not time) basis.
The “problem” could be solved just making Deadeye to teleport every 25% or 33% HP. He could still be farmeable, but it would probably require longer CDs or less gambits active, cutting the current profit by a lot.
No need to destroy the profit directly by decreasing the amount silver rewarded up to a point where it doesn’t even cover the costs.

Subject 7 should be reworked.
A viable example could be having it splash on smaller oozes every 25%/33% HP loss. Half of those oozes would fire at the player while the others would slowly move towards subject 7, which would be invulnerable for a given aumont of time. Every ooze arriving to subject 7 would heal it some life percent.
This way, a player should chose between killing the aggressive ones, preventing subject 7 from healing or a mix of both.

keenlam.4753:

Lafiel.9372:

Use hammer, try watch for the animation of his throw and be there before the dog. Kinda predict when he will throw it and use the hammer 5 on the dog (and frequent hammer 3). use speed buff + dodge roll to make sure you get the meat first. By the 3rd meat that you’ve eaten, the dog should be dead. If you can’t kill the dog by the 4th meat, you’re not killing it fast enough. Try get the symbol out of the hammer as well, it’ll help with damage. The food buffs you damage by heaps so a zerker build isn’t alwas the best idea. I did it with PPT.

Thanks for the tip I have trouble with this as well. Would Judge’s Intervention + Banish combo helps?

Yes, but it’s a bit slow. You can also use sword/shield for the same purpose.

Saying that you don’t have zeker gear doesn’t help at all, there’s still a big difference between knight, soldier and cleric.

I don’t know if it’s going to work with full defensive gear, but i suggest you:

0/30(Vulnerability on blind, sword damage, right hand strength)/30(Meditation heals you, Toughness to Precision and any other you want)/0/10(Consecration recharge faster and last longer).

Pick every gambit except squeamish.
Start with sword/focus (disable your autoattack). When the fight begins, tab target Deadeye (make sure that your camera is not looking downward when being summoned, or Deadeye will be out of it and tab target won’t work) and use sword 2 to TP to him.
Use sword 3, which is single target (won’t hit the quaggan) and block projectiles, followed by focus 4 and 5. Don’t autoattack, you don’t want to cleave the quaggan.
Right after 10 seconds, he’s going to TP. As soon as it does it, use your sword 2 (it should be recharged if you used it ASAP at the start of the fight) for reaching to him and blinding a very possible killshot.
Pop a wall of reflection just in front of him and start autoattacking (quaggan is not there and should reach to you from your back, not being cleaved in any case).
At this point his TPs are a bit random. If the wall wears off and he is still there, use sword 3 again (projectile block), followed by shelter and Shield of Avenger. If he doesn’t TP soon enough you should have him beaten.
If he TPs after wall of reflection fading off but before summoning Shield of Avenger, time your Renewed Focus (pop every unused virtue) in order to be inmune to a killshot while you slowly approach to him (you are crippled). Chain it with Shelter if you hadn’t used it before, and follow with Judges Intervention in order to TP to him. Cast Shield of Aveneger and finish him.
If he happens to TP after Shield of Aveneger being summoned, just do the same and melt everything you have in your arsenal (pop Justice for a blind, Courage for prot and aegis, use sword 3 again for another blind, swith to a second weapon set, that can be a mace/shield or a greatsword and pray to your gods :P).

I wouldn’t call it easy but is not THAT hard.

First, there’s an artificial dificculty caused for an awful camera and a really uncomfortable FPS rate if you happen to had a bad PC (I was playing at about 12 FPS most of the time).

After that, it’s mostly getting accustomed to pattern and timing, and it’s going to improve as long as you keep trying.
On my first tries I was watching other players and counting for myself in order to get timing. Then, when fighting myself I repeated the count; sometimes worked, sometimes not.
After many tries, however, you get naturally accustomed to it; you don’t count anything, you just naturally evade at the right time and it’s not going to fail unless you are disturbed by a pull or a charge.
Same happens with the pattern. On my last tries before achieving 8 orbs I was doing phase 1 exactly the same way over and over.

So regular Liadri isn’t hard at all. Once you are familiar with patterns and timing is, in fact, rather “easy”, easier than Chomper and Strugar (who throws the meat wherever he wants) I would say. It just require a long learning process (it will vary depending on the player).

Light up the Darkness, however, is a completely different beast.
Phase 1 is still the same so you can complete it on an almost mechanical way, but Phase 2 gets A LOT harder.
On regular fight you pretty much need to run in circles following the safe spot and bursting her from time to time, but for Light up the Darkness you are going to be in the middle of everything, being attacked by Liadri (and conditioned) much more frequently, dancing with the clones (which are almost ignored on the regular fight) and entering danger zones on purpose, while you still need to damage her from tiem to time.

On comparision with Lupicus, I would say that Light up the Darkness is harder than Lupi phase 1 and 2. Lupicus on Phase 3 is still harder (and way longer), at least on an engineer (Before the rework of rocket boots. I think that the new ones could ease the fight A LOT; haven’t tried yet).

If you are human try Avatar of Grenth after the second/third meat :P

Balekai.6083:

Why couldn’t the 1-shot kills be 15K-25K damage hits from Liadra herself amd her minions instead of the enviroment? Why couldn’t Liadra have more attack DPS, much less health, but use damage mitigation (blocks, weakness, protection…) and moderate heals that can be CCed? Not only would the fight be more interesting and still a great challenge, but it would have balanced the success rate between classes and builds rather than just favouring full burst/evade on certain classes.

You keep insisting on getting rid of the 1-shot and disencouraging “evade” builds (every build can evade, it’s the core combat mechanic of GW2 ffs). The game encourages you to actively avoid the attacks and tries to get rid up to some extent of the classic passive defenses (things like a 40% evade rate and so on) and healing.
You should already accept this, since it’s one of the core design philosophies and is unlikely going to change.
About making Liadri’s DPS higher … Liadri already hits like a truck XD. If you haven’t experienced it, then it means that your tough build is working perfectly fine.
If she charges on you when on a glassy character, you want to be fast cleansing the cripple, popping some defensive CD (like an evade) and getting away from melee ASAP cause you are gonna be dead in about 3-4 seconds (In fact, you may expect to lose half of your max HP if you don’t avoid the charge itself).
A defensive builds greatly mitigates this damage so you can be less focused on it and more on the real threat which are the 1HKO moves. A glassy build, on the other side, is going to have a much shorter fight but a much more intense and focus requiring one (as long as it is well designed and can’t be finished in under 10 seconds :P).

About making her more resilient in order to avoid an extreme burst that could finish the fight in seconds, I pretty much agree.
Protection is OK for dungeons, but probably a mistake for solo content since not every class has a reliable boon removal tool. Weakness is a much better solution and Liadri actually applies it all the time :P
Block/Evades might sound great as long as the AI is really good on using them. If not, it would greatly randomize the fight. A Heal that should be interrupted could work better.
HP triggered invulnerability shields also work wonders, since forces a minimum amount of bursts, thus usually a minimum amount a CDs on the fight.

In summary i’m fine with extra challenging content. However, the answer 9/10 should not be: “Go Zerker Warrior, Mesmer/Thief/Guardian in that order of preference to succeed.”

Actually, many people who have played the gauntlet which different classes had stated that Necromancer is one of the easiest, if not the most, class for beating it and I swapped myself my main Guardian for an alt Engineer in order to beat Liadri the first time.
And I insist, the extra challengign content in this patch isn’t Liadri, is Liadri + 8 orbs, and I’m pretty sure that zekering is far from the best way to beat it (I swapped some zeker items for knight/soldier ones on my guardian in order to do this).

Balekai.6083:

Why aren’t other mechanics that players have access to in which some professions are centred around, not being implemented more in these challenges? Much of this content is open season to “cheese” with no true penalties for going full Zerker and avoiding the fight mechanics all together. The response or “fix” from Anet seems to always be adding in harder enviromental conditions or aggro which just makes it harder on everyone, while Zerkers become even more optimal for the content. For example the Candidate Trials “fix” made it harder on Zerkers to cheese but still doable, while making it near impossible for all other builds to cheese or do so legitly, because of the huge aggro range and massive hp bars of the Vets. They didn’t fix the problem, they just gated the content even more towards Zerker builds.

That’s not true. They actually have surprised me by using regular monsters for the gauntlet instead of those Unshakebale and Defiant annoying champions., so we have been able to use blinds and CCs that otherwise were useless, greatly widening the variety of tactics at our disposal.
I’ve already said it, but zeker build, if even possible, is clearly suboptimal for the real challenge of the patch: Liadri + 8 orbs.

I’m not going to say anythiong about candidate trials, since I completed it pre-fix and never put a step on it again.

Balekai.6083:

Couldn’t there be more challenge design around enemies using protection + weakness combos that must commonly be removed for Zerkers to do their damage? Enemy healing mechanics instead of higher and higher HP to make Conditions, DoT or CC more viable? Couldn’t there be more enemy interaction with our conditions and boons so players don’t always have complete command over buffs/debuffs stacks in PVE?

Yes, it could, and it should.
Granting enemies prot+weakness, however, doesn’t just affect zekers but every direct damage setup, and about having healing instead tons of HP in order to make Conditions, DoT (I guess you mean just poison) and CC more viable, I guess you know that warriors are the CC beast of GW2, don’t you? My guardian with no poison and probably the worst interrupts in all the game hates you BTW :P
About enemy interaction on buffs/debuffs, I’m pretty sure that there are enemies out there that do something like that. They are not common, that’s for sure, but I’m not sure if boon corrupt/steal should be a common NPC practice tbh.
At this point I’m starting to think you play a Necromancer, tell me that I’m wrong.

Balekai.6083:

Why are 1-shot enviromental mechanics being implemented instead? Again this makes the game more arcade-like wherein potent Healing, DoT, Armor/Protection, and Conditions are marginalized or useless? For example the above in the Liadra fight are completely marginalized as CC/Conditions can’t combat “the enviroment” and Armor or Protection can’t mitigate 1-shots kills. However blocks, dodges and invunerability can do both.

You hit the nail on the head here. It effectively makes the game more arcade-like, because that’s actually what they want to do.
The new generation of MMOs is trying to innovate by approaching to action games: active defenses, casting while moving, FPS-like aiming for attacks, and so on.
So yes, healing and armor are expected to lose effectivity in favor of blocks/blinds/evades.

Conditions are far from useless in the gauntlet; they actually work pretty well. Where conditions (excepting vulnerability :P) become useless is in team enviroment cause stacking limits.

Balekai.6083:

Why is it that most of the challenging content, intentionally or not, is focused around evading damage all together and high player DPS?

Every content is going to be focused, intentionally, around evading and other active defenses because the combat system tries to be as much reactive as possible. Passive defenses are there in order to protect from the damage you cannot avoid (cause active defenses are usually limited) and the one you miss to avoid up to some degree.
There’s no skill on gearing/traiting for defense (this is not BuildWars anymore, or at least, it tries to not be it), so the more challenging the content is meant to be, the more it’s going to favor active defenses.
Active defenses are unrelated to High DPS, they are something that every player should try to use and get better on.

Balekai.6083:

If this is not the case, why after each one of these challenges or the hardest dungeons, more and more players are gravitating towards zerker builds? Gameplaylay and youtube/guide evidence show that what takes balanced parties and/or less focused DPS builds lots of effort, can essentially be done solo or with great ease by a Zerker player(s) via seconds of burst damage and a bit of CC/Cheesing?

There are 2 main reasons in order to go full DPS.
The first one is that there are a lot of situations where killing fast is actually the best defense. An obvious example would be a battle where enemy waves attack over and over on a timed basis (pretty much like candidate trials in the last LS patch). This is not exclusive to GW: offense always has been king in this kind of fights since otherwise you end overwhelmed.
The second one, which has less to do with combat effectivity, and which is the main reason people is gravitating towards zeker gear, is farm speed. It’s pretty obvious that the faster you kill the better you farm, and there’s sadly too many people seeing nothing but loot on every content piece.

Even if popular, however, full damage is far from being the only way to complete content.
Most of my guildmates run with fairly defensive builds (shout-heal warriors and that kind of things, even some people on full soldier gear) and we have completed every content in the game without any issues.
In my case, I gear my character the most toward offense I can while feeling comfortable. Since I only play with kinda defensive builds or PuGs, I use a Guardian with a mix of knight/zeker gear and 0/0/30/30/10, which is pretty balanced I guess. No way I’m going to build for full offense (even if I would prefer it for sure) or use something like a thor ele when the party is not adecuated to it.
Still completed the Aetherblade Retreat timed achievement at first try, and completed it again at second try while one of us was relogging in order to complete (on a really dishonoring way :P) the AoE related one. So no, high DPS builds are far from needed; great for farming, that’s for sure, but not needed at all.
That doesn’t mean that everybody should go full defense. People should try to, while playing on their way, contribute as much as possible to the group, so if you end a lot of fights at high HP without having felt any real danger, that means that you should drop some or your defense in favor of a bit more of damage, and keep doing this until you start feeling pressure.
I gravitated myself towards zeker gear because of boredom. Playing with the first gear I crafted (a mix of Knight and Cleric) most game was absolutely unpunishing, so I had to drop tons of defense in order to feel that my active defenses meant something.

BTW, the most challenging content in this last patch is not defeating Liadri, is defeating her while having thrown 8 orbs during the fight. Being able to burst her on a few seconds is not going to help a lot with this.