(edited by Vargamonth.2047)
More than defiant itself, which I don`t like at all, I honestly think that the bigger issue with CC skills is that dungeon design focuses too much on bosses when the combat system suits better a fight against multiple, less powerful enemies (the ascalonian ghosts just before the Ghost Eater in AC2, for example).
This game has a lot of mechanics that are hardly portable to a raid enviroment:
1) Conditions. Some of them, like burning or cripple, stack in time, and it’s not hard at all for many 5-man setups to have them up 100% of the time. A bigger amount of players would decrease the effectiveness of many builds, even worse, of many classes, since some of this DoTs/debuffs are built-in on them and will be taken in account for balance purposes.
Bleed has a 25 stack cap that could be increased without too much problems, but if condition damage is not really popular for 5-man dungeons, it will be even less for a raid where you can assume 25 vulnerability stacks.
2) Boons and Healing affect a maximum of 5 men, which is exactly the number of players a dungeon or tpvp team has.
Increasing this limit would hurt the ratio of support setups, favoring selfish DPS setups, which belong to classes that are actually overused.
Keeping them as it is now would make the support pretty chaotic, specially in melee range where you hardly can measure who is going to be affected by proximity. No need to say that you hardly can make any content challenging at all if getting the right boons at the right time doesn’t even matter.
The only solution I can figure out is the raid being a sum of N 5-man groups along with party priority but … if every 5-man group is going to perform individually, why having a raid at all?
3) Some skills that create an area effect that doesn’t affect a fixed number of players or enemies would become even more powerful. Any number of players can shelter behind a Wall of Reflection / Smoke Screen / … and, since you have more players, you are going to potentially have more of this and easily have everyone invulnerable to ranged attack unless you somehow make those skills useless (hurting badly some specific classes again) or force the raid to split, which make us wonder again: why having a raid at all?
4) Things get better and better if we think on fights with multiple enemies.
Right now it’s usual to have every enemy on a group focusing the same target and sticking to him all the fight.
If the number of enemies is increased, the pressure over that character can be insane. It’s just impossible to evade attacks incoming from a lot of different sources.
If we are using party-wide boons, he also is not going to be more supported than on a 5 man unless you try something like a “dedicated tank group”, which can oversimplification for a challenging content if works.
Some control abilities like mass blind would became terribly random if the enemies come bunched up. You will have more of them, but since the limit of targets, you will not have any control on which of them are affected. Not the best mechanic again for a challenging gameplay.
Since most melee enemies actually cleave, if they came in really high numbers, the damage on melee players can be just devastating, out of control and terribly random.
Same is going to happen with players AoE attacks and with non-piercing projectiles. You are hardly going to have any control on where your damage goes.
If you try tougher and stronger enemies in not so big numbers, just the opposite will happen: Too much control capabilities on players side.
The best solution comes again on splitting, and the same question can be asked again.
IMHO, the combat system doesn’t fit with raids.
Assuming you can’t put a enrage timer on bosses, or not at least a hard one (because it will force a lot of players to specific specs and classes, berzerker GS warriors for example), players dying will never be a failure source (unless you actually script the boss this way, wiping the party or maybe placing a stackable non-removable boon on the boss) and the higher challenge can only come from special mechanics that everyone must accomplish correctly in order to succeed, which are also possible on 5-mans, just with a lesser failure chance cause a lesser number of potential failers.
I think it’s just the same game mode with higher chances to fail by others mistakes and an obvious built-in PUG exclusion.
So im running an elementalist, we have two thief’s, and the other two vary on who we find. The Elementalist is not really the ideal profession for this fight… I would really like some help. Me and my guild are finding alot of frustration trying to get these tokens.
Single bolt and barrage are both projectile skills.
For single bolt i suggest watching a video and getting familiar whith its animation (specially his hands). With a good party spreading, there’s no doubt about who the target is and then it’s just a dodge.
For an elementalist, focus has 2 projectile counters on fairly low CD. Using them for the barrage attack should allow you to absolute ignore it and save all your endurance against the teleport and the single bolts.
For a thief, you have smoke screen. It blocks projectiles for 7 sec on 30 sec CD (24 if traited for deceptions), so it should be enough to prevent at least half of the barrages.
Also, if using a short bow, you get an initiative based evade, so endurance management becomes trivial.
Thief also has shadow refuge as a long lasting stealth that should prevent Lupicus from focusing at him if needed to res, refill endurance and/or initiative or get some time for CDs.
Since i don’t know both classes at all, there are probably a lot of tips and tricks to add.
I’m not downscaling, I’d use lvl 35 gear till I reach the next tier, pretty much every 10 lvls I’d change gear even if it ends up being just masterwork.
If you are up to work on your gear and keep it updated, then it’s ok. I thought you were expecting the lvl35 set to work at full capacity on a character downscaled to 35, which actually was what I thought when crafted mine :P
I haven’t said anything about stat distribution.
In order to achieve the vigor / heal on roll thing (which is awesome at low levels) some precision is a must, so i would go for something “balanced”, some power/precision, some vitality/thoughness.
Once you reach lvl55 Knight gear (thoughness / power / precision) is probably the best, and at lvl60 you are free to give a try to the hammer with 30 points in Valor (Altruistic Healing), 20 in Honor (Empowering Might), and maybe blackberry pies (a cheap life-steal food). It won’t work at its best, but i’m pretty sure that is more than enough for AC.
From my own experience, if you’re aiming for AC not as an “experience” (like completing story mode once or twice) but as something you’re going to do a lot during your way to lvl80, DON’T invest on lvl35 rare gear.
Downscaling works in a way where you and all you gear are treated as one unique entity. A lvl35 gear is the best you can wear when your REAL character level is 35, but when you are lvl50, even if you are downscaled to 35, it isn’t. Those items are going to be downscaled along with you.
There’s no point on carefully making a gear for a given dungeon prior to 80, cause it’s going to become weaker and weaker as long as you level up and you are going to replace it more sooner than later.
Of course you can do it if you want and enjoy it, and obviously it’s going to give you some advantage over blues and greens in your first runs. Just be aware of how downscaling actually works.
About the Guardian and which builds could be viable for AC explorable:
Hammer is a really risky choice for a lvl35 character. Most lvl80 builds around the hammer are about passive tanking (endure the hits and heal over them) or melee support.
The first one relies on Altruistic Healing. It’s a 30 point Valor trait which is currently unaffordable for you, and even at lvl40, when you could get it, it will rely on having too many allies inside your symbol in order to get enough healing (rarely happens).
The lvl80 build gets a lot of help from many Honor traits, and I would say that is not really viable until you reach lvl60.
The second one expects higher level melee characters drawing the aggro and tries to help them through protection, some healing, maybe some might, while doing some minor damage. It’s mainly a Honor traitline build and it’s “viable” at your level, but since you can’t “tank”, you absolutely need another one to do it or the build becomes useless.
If you do not want to heavily rely on high level characters and team compositions, I wouldn’t touch the hammer yet and i would focus on some melee/range mixture with active tanking (blocks, blinds, evades, …) and support skills.
I would pick sword/focus as melee weapons. This gives you two blinds (3 if you invest 5 points in Radiance) and a great blocking skill (remember that blind doesn’t work sell with champions). Sword also has a short ranged attack that can be used form a “safe” distance.
With some investment on precision you can get 5 points in Honor to get almost perma-vigor (so you can roll much more frequently) and with 15 those rolls will heal you and surrounding allies for a little bit, which is also nice.
As ranged you can chose between scepter and staff. I found myself a scepter/shield much more interesting to play, but the empower skill from the staff (and the line of warding if you lack tanky characters in the group) is probably the best support skill you can have at low lvl.
I would go something like 0/5/0/15/0, with the last 5 points being up to you between Radiance (20% signet recharge for healing and better crit rate), Valor (extra block at 50%), Virtues (some party boons added to active virtues) or Honor (Empowering Might, maybe 20% CD reduction if you chose staff).
As utilities, I think that “stand your ground” is a no-brainer in AC. Gravelings use to jump at players and knock-down them to death and some of them have also annoying shouts that launch players and disable them for a short time.
The other two are up to you. I would give a try to “Retreat” if you don’t pick staff in order to actually retreat if needed (which can be also an extra party block) or to “Hold the line” if you don’t pick the shield.
As an elite I would pick Tome of Courage. It’s as powerful for a lvl35 as it is for a lvl80.
(edited by Vargamonth.2047)
The AOE circles are the end spot of a lot of projectiles he launches. They will hit you if you are inside the circles and also if you are in their trajectory, so the easiest way to avoid them is moving further away.
Wall of Reflection eases it a lot on a Guardian, so using the reflective bubble the mesmer has as soon as the circles appear could do wonders.Since I never use WoR during lupi fight, can it stop the aoe (because I know it can stop his single projectiles) and if yes, do you have to stay precisily at the location of WoR?
It stops the barrage AoE, that’s for sure.
About positioning, I figured that staying centered (because of the zig-zag travel of the projectiles) and slightly away from the wall (afraid of being hit by an AoE exploding just in front of the wall) should work the better. Have done Lupicus only once with it, so I don’t know if there are better placements.
The AOE circles are the end spot of a lot of projectiles he launches. They will hit you if you are inside the circles and also if you are in their trajectory, so the easiest way to avoid them is moving further away.
Wall of Reflection eases it a lot on a Guardian, so using the reflective bubble the mesmer has as soon as the circles appear could do wonders.
Now do it with his adds, as the fight was intended. =D
Killing Kholer with adds as a Guardian is probably impossible or extremely dependant on racials and/or the kind of adds he gets.
The class just has not the tools needed to keep Kholer at bay while he dispatchs the adds.
Mesmer is much more skill demanding for some battles a Guardian can easily dispatch, but its solo-play capabilities are also far beyond the simpler mechanics a Guardian has.
well I would like to see that guardian-survival needs clever usage of their profession-specific mechanics – else why are those there in the first place? The video shows not one usage of F2 or F3. Yes, there are still the passive effects of those, but I think making it possible to spam 1 skill and surviving such an encounter is not fun gameplay.
personally I would like to see the difference of a good and a bad player when I watch them play. I don’t care about which gear they wear.
this guardian didn’t rely on
-) active F2
-) active F3
-) skill 2-5
-) weapon-swap
-) blinds
…just good regeneration (gear, traits) and perma-protection via autoattack
That’s true, he isn’t using neither F2 nor F3. He’s only using F1, and I honestly think he shouldn’t (unless he has the trait for doing more damage to burning targets).
F1 gives him 5s of burning on his next attack, while passive effect grants 1s every fifth attack. It recharges in 30 sec so, as long as he hits more than 25 times every 30 sec (with I think he does counting the symbol ticks), he deals more damage just without using it.
F2 is a heal that recharges in 60 sec and heal for less than 60 sec of it’s pasive effect by far.
F3 is a aegis on demand every 90 sec, while it’s passive effect gives aegis automatically every 40 sec.
The real benefit of the active effect on virtues is that is a party wide effect. For solo play, however, passive effect is stronger and, unless traiting in some specific way, you will only be using F2 in a hurry and F3 in order to avoid a specially nasty attack when out of endurance.
He could be activating both freely just before his elite, but since he uses it for the spin, the F3 block would be automatically lost, and the only advantage he would be getting for all of it would be a small, an in this case unneeded, healing
His second skill does a good amount of damage and gives area retaliation blasting the combo field of the autoattack, which is a little extra damage and procs altruisting healing for an extra tick of healing.
Since I use boon duration runes I use it once every two autoattack chains. The main reason for him for not using it so much it’s maybe than he can’t upkeep the protection boon all the time this way and if he gets hit in this timeframe, he gets hurt for more than he heals. I think he wouldn’t have any problem using it more frequently, but don’t think you would be seeing a differet battle: in this case is a little more than a DPS increase.
Third skill is a inmovilize. He could be using it just after the spin, gaining 2 sec of CD recharge, but since he actually doesn’t need this, he wouldn’t be gaining anything but a innecesarily longer combat.
Fourth skill is a launch and Five skill is a 5s ring that enemies can’t cross. Both behave as CC skills, so are affected by defiant stacks, and their only purpose would be gaining a few secs of CD recharging.
He is actually using the best weapon available. It gives perma-prot, and procs altruistic and symbol healing more than any other, while doing an acceptable DPS.
The only weapons that could outDPS the Hammer are:
- The greatsword, which i think he could be using during SY! upkeep (since it gives prot) without a significative health loss with a sigil of leeching.
- The 1H sword, paired with a focus (he will lose a lot of HP if he attempts to use a torch), and under the same circunstances that the GS (10 sec once every 50 sec).
Blinds are only effective on bosses 10% of the times. Relying on blinds for defensive purposes works wonders for veterans, but it’s actually a mistake when fighting bosses.
It’s ok as a free effect of certain skills, but skills/traits focused just on doing that are a waste.
As I said before, Hammer passive tanking (which is just autoattacking) is usually the best way for a Guardian to survive (against a boss and in solo-play) and what he would be doing most of the time.
A weapon swap for defensive purposes is possible, but with inmobilize and block skills having high CDs, it will be only from time to time.
If Kholer would hit harder, maybe by a 20%, i think it would still be doable and more interesting to see (but never as skill demanding as with other classes). Higher damages could make the boss just undoable for a guardian, who has almost zero kiting capabilities, while still being doable for those other classes.
(edited by Vargamonth.2047)
Agreed if you melee kholer he’s going to pwn your face. I range him.
Here is video of me soloing Kohler with guardian, using hammer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ib0JnigqvE4wow this actually looked just contrary what it should look like: you just spam 1 and keep your utilities on CD, this looks nothing like skilled gameplay to be honest. I will have to try this, but I’m kind of disappointed now. A boring rotation/CD-spam? I wonder if this is working as intended.
where is the skill in that?
There’s no skill needed to faceroll certain bosses as a Guardian. If their damage output is not high enough, you can just tank & spank them with the right build and gear (on Kholer, the pull & spin skill is the only attack you really need to avoid).
In fact, I would say that the Guardian in that video is somehow underperforming: There’s no need of “Stand Your Ground” and “Renewed Focus” for that combat, and other skills could have been chosen in order to boost the damage. There are also other options for defense/survability boosting, and there’s also room for some extra dodges at, for example, the poison attack, so the vid would still look somehow as a tank & spank even if Kholer would hit harder.
I’m with you on that’s absolutely not the most interesting vid to see; however, implying that this could not be working as intended could be, maybe, going too far.
Even if a boost on Kholer’s damage or a nerf on “Altruistic Healing” could still be manageable while demanding a slightly more skilled gameplay or, at least, a better resource management (with a scepter/focus second weapon set and the 3s Inmobilize signet instead of “Stand your Ground”, you get another Regeneration source and up to 7s of inmobilize plus 4s of blocking from time to time, resulting on a little less passive tanking and a better use of skills like SY! or Healing Signet), the passive tanking is something that will still be there most of the time.
Blocking/Aegis skills have pretty high CD and the endurance bar has its limits; adding to that the natural resistance to blinding (which is one of the best ways of active tanking Guardians have) and to CC (which gives little chances to skills like line and ring of warding) on bosses, Guardians hardly have another option but staying a good amount of time in close combat and mitigate the incoming damage through Protection, Altruistic Healing and Symbol Healing (where Hammer shines).
Other bosses, even Kholer itself up to some degree, can also be somehow “trivialized” by the usage of ranged weapons plus chilling and/or crippling skills (which are almost nonexistant for a Guardian), so I’m pretty sure that there are bosses out there that can be a pain in the kitten for a Guardian while being nothing but a cakewalk for other classes.
I would enjoy having a harder hitting Kholer, as I would enjoy giving some other bosses a good chunk of speed/mobility and/or some resistance to snaring effects, but I’m pretty sure that those changes, which i would see as game improvements, would not get the same reaction from the majority of the community :P