Guild Wars 2

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

“We want more challenging content!”
“We want raid like content”
“Pve is too easy!”

insert Tequatl overhaul

“Omg its too hard, nerf it”

“Well I did it once, no point in doing it again”

mmm hmmm…. static, challenging content is so grand now isn’t it….

I may be repeating myself, but i don’t think the issue is difficulty as much as the arbitrary failure condition we get from ANet’s use of a timer.

Do anyone know of any raid content that fails because of a timer? I know of enrage timers. But those only make the boss more punishing, not have the event fail outright.

The core issue, imo, is the use of a timer as a failure trigger.

Make it rely on the destruction of the cannon instead.

The timers on the world bosses are cheap failure as they are not rooted in the event itself (except for the big destroyer, but then it was always designed that way).

The failures should be based on player action or inaction, not just the boss going “oh, look at the time! gotta go!”.

For Tequatl, go straight for the cannon charging and make the destruction of such the failure trigger. And find similar failure triggers for the other world boss events.

That way the failure makes sense in-world.

Maybe not a expansion in the traditional sense, but i would love for Anet to start opening up new zones.

The game map is flanked on 3 sides by open space, ready to be zoned.

Then again, most of the existing zones, beyond those directly flanking a racial city and LA, i have visited maybe once. This so i can get the waypoints and such, and then promptly forgotten about.

The crazy thing is that there is a whole Hylek city in Sparkfly offering crafting stations. But with no TP or bank, never mind a quick travel beyond waypoints, it goes largely ignored.

Lokki.1092:

unleashed.8679:

Conditions are used in sPVP because they ignore Armor/toughness, so it is a good counter against those bunker builds. And additionally they can be used very effectively in bunker builds as well. That’s the only magic in PvP.

In PvE there is only less variation in toughness and additionally we have structures.

This is probably the most important thing the devs and players should take from sPvP

Bunker builds work because players do not have (many) one shot mechanics, Players deal less spike damage than mobs and therefore a person can build to survive and it is very very effective. Also control effects actually work on players!

Support builds then have a use, because there are players than are tanky enough to survive while you boost, buff, and heal them. Not only that, but with control effects working on players, the bunker can effectively peel targets off their supporters. (supporters generally have pretty good DPS too but very little in the way of defense)

Because of Bunkers are so effective especially if they have a support with them, Condition damage becomes more effective against them. Often called “Bunker busters.” And so condition heavy DPS is very useful almost mandatory if there is a bunker on the other team.

Lastly someone is needed to kill Supporters and Bunker busters fast, to effectively remove the opponents ability to support their own bunkers and to kill your bunkers. These Guys are direct damage burst builds but go down just as fast. But a backstab, kill shot or any other burst skill at the right time on the right target can win a group battle

This IMHO is the best part about sPvP. the team builds are varied generally 1-3 bunkers, 1-2 support, and 1-2 condition/direct damage builds. Almost no spec is needed, No class is mandatory, but everyone has a role and multiple builds are good. This is what we need in PvE. The problem (as you seem to know) is that in PvE there is no need for a bunker so there is no need for support, there is also no need for a condition spec beyond the need for damage. So if the condition spec cannot deal the damage then GTFO. Which is sad.

Glad to see others dialing in on this.

Make me wonder, do those krait blasts harm turrets?

If so: oh snap, ANet!

loseridoit.2756:

To be fair, condition builds are strong in pvp but weak everywhere else.

I dream of the day when AI will start dodging so we can stop all these rant post that DPS is king in pvE

The reason for this is the damage sponge design of mobs in general. They have more health than a vitality fat warrior.

And at the same time they produce damage spikes that can make a zerker green with envy. Thus making defensive builds borderline pointless.

This also applies for karka poppers!

For a game that supposedly abandoned GW1 style interrupts because they were too latency sensitive, there are a whole lot of twitch mechanics that need instant avoidance. Almost as if the down mechanic is there as a cop out for ANet not being able to make a game without twitch as a threat.

PVE gets a whole lot of maps and such, yes. But SPVP is where the ANet eyes and ears are when it comes to balancing. End result is a PVE that is all about damage output, and getting more and more tilted in that direction each balance pass. Meaning PVE gets a lot of fluff, but very little substance.

Ah yes, hobosacks goes well with pit fighter armor.

If you want dev attention, bellyache in the SPVP forum.

azurrei.5691:

Please enlighten me as to what benefit the Trait item in the shop gives me over carrying around 5s training manuals in my bag that already reset my traits “in the field.”

Didn’t ANet disable that?

Spiral Architect.6540:

tolunart.2095:

Conditions are a good idea on paper, not so much in game. It works alright for solo/small groups but if you’re going to be joining a zerg then you’ll have to accept that the condition-dependent build will be underpowered.

There isn’t any simple answer to improving its usefulness because raising the cap doesn’t mean anything when there are 50-100 players all applying bleeding or whatever to the same target. Besides that, there is the consideration of what kind of lag would result from 2x to 10x more stacks of each condition being calculated, and the issue of bosses dying too quickly because they take massive amounts of damage from multiple conditions.

Short of completely removing and recreating conditions in some other form, there isn’t anything they can do about it directly. A decent workaround would be to allow switching between dual builds or more, like Rift’s soul system. You could then easily switch between a condition build and zerker for solo or group play, or choose between offense/defense, PVE/WvWvW etc.

Other games have condition-based classes and builds, and do just fine with the concept. Just sayin’.

Because GW2 DOTs are a computational nightmare.

In most other games each DOT skill has its own effect. The damage of said is calculated on application, and after that fixed for the duration. Stacks of DOTs act as a multiplier on that calculated damage.

In GW2, each unit of bleed is its own DOT. And the damage is not fixed on application, but can change between ticks based on other boons and conditions in play. So for a full stack of bleed, each second the server has to calculate 25 DOTs, taking into account such thing as the might currently on the character/mob that applied the various units of bleed. That can quickly become a massive CPU load during heated battles.

TooBz.3065:

Conditions are in the interesting place of being OP in PvP and WvW while being underpowered in PvE due to stacking limits.

Not just stacking limits. The average mob has a bigger health pool than the average character. And depending on the number of characters present, said health pool increases. End result is that as people gather, condition damage against mobs are rapidly turned into a futile effort.

The whole combat system is in effect balanced for PVP, as there at least stat sets have a effective tradeoff between tank and DPS.

Yep, we see the small signs of rush all over the place. Notice how Kiel spent nearly a month in the lion fountain after they removed the holo-projector. And even now that she has been moved, her dialog is the very same one.

I get a stronger and stronger sensation that the game is filled with duplicated “features” because event dev A didn’t know what event dev B was up to, and nobody higher up had the complete overview.

Their main dev tool for non-programming tasks seems to be a souped up map editor called Duo. Meaning that anything above the core client-server code may well have the rigor of a bespoke web site…

AntiGw.9367:

Entitled, is the word I’d choose.

I taste vomit whenever i read that word these days. Likely because certain political pundists throw it around whenever the topic of welfare comes up…

Namu.5712:

ill be honest, I want a new zone to explore and a big update.

Yep, “been there, done that” seems like the baseline PVE experience right now.

I simply can’t bring myself to run around a zone just for the act of doing so, something that ANet seems to want us to do. In part because i don’t feel like waypointing to and from (i got a serious aversion towards spending gold unless i have some goal in mind and don’t feel like wasting time completing it), nor cross starter zones i have seen a million times to get there.

GW1 was different, because getting to the zones were free. Also, each “town” had the basic facilities. This meant i could set up camp anywhere.

If they want people to stop and kill the mobs, said mobs need to tie into the dungeon loot somehow. Observe how invasion mobs gets farmed for hours because of the loot to be had, while dungeon mobs gets skipped because there is no loot to be had.

ANet, stop looking as you game statistics and look at risk/reward psychology.

Gizmo.9178:

Gold to gems
paid nothing for gems the entire year

Their interface is kitten backwards tho. I would love to hammer in how many gems i want, and see the price i would have to pay.

Heh, i have a pile of those sitting in a guild vault (thank the deities that they were not bound). Along with a single diadem that i am unsure where came from. Never seen a dress, and never could bring me to run SAB enough to grab the mini.

Dawdler.8521:

They remind of the boxes in Star Trek Online.

GW2 already have those, in the form of Black Lion chests.

nethykins.7986:

There are few skills that are interrupts that aren’t knockbacks. Perhaps they’re trying to interrupt a champion attack (after all the stacks of defiant have died), and the only one they have available at that time is, or at all is….

…A knockback skill…

I’d like to see more interrupt skills that don’t require a KB solution.

Knockbacks are fun in PVP because toons can fall to their death. knockbacks are pointless in PVE because mobs can’t. If they turned into knockdowns on mobs, i would be a very happy engineer (big ol’ bomb!).

Going from rare to exotic is a 20% jump.

Quite a bit of the issue, i think, is that they left COF1 alone for too long, and it trashed the economy. This exasperated that not all stat combos are available via ones preferred “sub-game” (not helping that zerker, THE set for running COF1, was also a COF token set), as it becomes impossible to do what one want to do while also building up the savings to buy the set one is after.

As for “X offers tokens”, i suspect that this was what karma was to be about in a sense. Except that the end karma offers, temple armor, are less straight forward to deal with than dungeon armor for build crafting. they are a mix of stat combos, rather than allowing the buyer to pick like they can with dungeon armor.

Well ANet admitted at some point that they rushed the Zhaitan fight for lack of time. Suggesting that similarly the end zone mobs were hastily thrown together to produce a “threat”. Heck, on launch a number of Orr events were buggy to put it mildly.

What i would like to see is for each weapon skill slot have a variation on the theme of that slot. Meaning that each slot would have 3 or more skills you could swap between that behave somewhat similar, but still allowing the player to tailor for his play style.

And one crazy brainstorm. I would if ANet should change elementalist attunement swapping, so that rather than being how you get your weapon skills it would instead give a bonus for any skills from the currently active element. Instead, each weapon skill slot would have the elemental skills as selectables out of combat. Meaning that you could have a mix of elements on the bar.

A sidetrack, but i find mixing chill/cripple and daze/stun under the heading “CC” to be bad form. I would define chill as a debuff, not CC.

milo.6942:

Ask yourself what is this game about? It’s about fighting. You fight everything, all the time. And that’s the part that’s way underdeveloped and formulaic.

Except it don’t have to be. Its just that the mobs do not really make use of the mechanics on offer. They do not dodge, they do not heal, and they rarely employ boons.

Also, unlike most other MMOs you can’t opt for using tanky stats or CC skills to replace dodging (in part because other games do not have dodge, but that is besides the point). Meaning that the PVE experience devolves to a case of DPS&dodge.

There is a balance of sorts in the combat mechanics, but the general mob design simply ignores it. in SPVP there is a real tradeoff between tank and DPS, but no such tradeoff exist in the mob designs. The mobs are both tanky and DPS heavy at the same time.

And when they come in groups, they can also CC lock. Something that is denied the players both as a 1 vs many survival tactic, and a group vs boss option. This because, if we again compare with other games, the CC can only be broken by defensive actions.

In contrast most other MMOs have CC that breaks on damage. Meaning that if i CC a mob and then attack them, the CC drops. This allows me to CC one mob, and attack another, reducing the incoming DPS without tanky stats. But in GW2 the CC is about setting up for a SPVP spike, or escaping. The mechanics are in essence built more like a arcade fighting game than a MMO, where the other player have to actively counter.

milo.6942:

i really doubt the game will stop being boring when the sounds are slightly different every time you shoot an arrow. the game is boring because the combat is stale and repetitive, there are few skills to customize your play style, and the encounters and enemy ai are generally simplistic.

also, as a side note, i often wonder to myself, why bother killing these mobs? there’s nothing in it for me. they are just in my way and they aren’t challenging, just time-consuming.

Yep. Either it is a case of spamming AOE until you can move on, or you get wamped with repeated CC and other cheesy mechanics.

saddlebear.5027:

That’s exactly how I feel… “why bother killing these mobs”… but they’re going to chase me all over if I don’t…

I wish they had put as much work into other aspects as they did the landscape. I mean there’s not two planks on the boardwalks in Lion’s arch that looks the same. The sounds, character mannerisms and combat mechanics are too repetitive.

Lots of artists on staff.

I didn’t mention combat mechanics because I felt that would be an immense overhaul of the game. There’s seems to be some greater reasoning why the combat mechanics are the way they are.

SPVP as a esport.

Shyhalu.4891:

Well I guess you could just say which class in general you think best fits this. I know a lot of people think guardian is the most support-y class.. but it doesn’t seem like it actually supports more than anyone else…

I wonder if it has to do with guardians not loosing much DPS when going support.

Kontrolle.3514:

Gabesz.3895:

NevirSayDie.6235:

digiowl.9620:

FishAnna.9081:

i wonder what is the radius when traited with Forceful Explosives right now

it looks like 240 radius right now, so… is that a buff ?

bomb: 120 (180)
fire bomb: 120 (180)
concussion bomb: 180 (270)
smoke bomb: 180 (270)
glue bomb: 240 (360)
(Forceful Explosives)

In other words, a slight nerf to Bob and glue bomb but a nice buff to everything else.

Think about it,

“Bomb Kit – Bomb: Base radius increased from 120 to 180. Radius when traited with Forceful Explosives is increased to 240. "

Its a clear buff.

Bumb up this thread, where is the increased radius in de released patchnotes?
Got this cancelled? Plz no, just no…..

Note the date, if the notes hold up (and a recent “leak” over in the preview thread seems to suggest so) they will land October 15.

Heh, my necro would love that. Finally some use for focus #5, in particular if defiance stacks counted as unique boons in relation to damage increase.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spinal_Shivers

The core issue for the skill system is that a lot of the tricks you can pull in SPVP are flat out worthless in PVE. This because while in SPVP there is a real tradeoff between defense and offense in builds. But in PVE the mobs are tankier than a SPVP bunker, and hit harder than a zerker.

Yay for 13375…

Seems like most naysayers read “role” and go “NO TRINITY!”.

Talk about shooting the messenger…

Jski.6180:

We have 3 main effects to look at the blunt heals (heal x hp when you use an ability) regeneration (a heal over time) and water field burst (where you do a burst combo finisher in a water field to do an aoe healing). So now these add up to make your healing power more effective.

1. most of the non-6 skills of that kind do not scale beyond .5, if that (the .25 region is likely more common).

2. regeneration only stack in duration, and even with HP can’t keep up with most DPS in the game.

3. not everyone have direct access to water fields (most are in the hands of professions with already good HP scaling skills). And unless you are playing with a organized group using voice chat, timing combos are more luck than skill.

To be clear, i do not claim that the game need a dedicated healer role/class. But i find that outside of SPVP the numbers do not line up. In SPVP they kinda line up because there is a clear tradeoff between going DPS and alternatives.

Jski.6180:

There a healing roll in the game what are you talking about hehe j/k but ya there is a support role in this game

Barely. Said support can be done while built for full on DPS, thanks to most of the support not scaling with anything. And the stuff that scale scale so poorly it is a waste of DPS to do so.

If we had the ability to save builds (preferably complete with gear) that would be a non-issue. That is, if the HP numbers mattered one kitten .

Junkpile.7439:

Well depends profession. Over 1k healing power in guardian is like god mode.

Because that 1000+ goes straight to their 10 second cooldown heal on dodge trait.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Selfless_Daring

Outside of elementalists, i don’t think you can find any short cooldown heals that also get a 1:1 payout from healing power.

Raven.9603:

• pigs: pet f2 performance is unacceptable. drop an object on the ground? really? that enemies can pick up? really?

Could perhaps turn it into something like the thief steal. Press once to dig, press again to fire off whatever found.

That Bear Shaman sounds a bit like the Rift Chloromancer. It is their mage class’ only healer soul, and it do so by damaging mobs, and not in the necromantic life stealing way either.

It is defuffs that heal whoever damages the mob it is on, and auras that trigger a heal whenever the mage damages a mob. There are also some skills that trigger a bigger heal on a party member when the right aura is in play.

Like i needed another reason to avoid Dredgehaunt…

selan.8354:

mrauls.6519:

How can it be the most worthless and the most powerful? That’s a weird combination of words. Healing power doesn’t kill anything

it doesnet affect the dps ,but healing and regen can be very op…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VSMD3rmL2k

PVP and PVE are two very different beasts, because the baseline health and DPS are much more balanced. In PVE however you get mobs that hit harder than a zerker, yet can take damage a SPVP bunker could only dream about.

selan.8354:

mrauls.6519:

How can it be the most worthless and the most powerful? That’s a weird combination of words. Healing power doesn’t kill anything

it doesnet affect the dps ,but healing and regen can be very op…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VSMD3rmL2k

PVP and PVE are two very different beasts, because the baseline health and DPS are much more balanced. In PVE however you get mobs that hit harder than a zerker, yet can take damage a SPVP bunker could only dream about.

The problem is not roles, it’s numbers.

- berserker outranks anything else in terms of pure DPS.

- mobs hit so hard and can take so much damage that anything defensive is a waste of time in a double sense vs going zerker.

- that certain things can’t be critted is not a fix, it is lazy design.

What this game needs is not so much roles are a numerical balance in PVE. In SPVP said balance is present, as the health pools are more in line with each other and you actually have a effective tradeoff between DPS and survivability.

ANet really seems to have built the combat mechanics around SPVP, and then shoehorned a PVE world on top using their server hardware budget as a guide. Meaning that all the insanity we see in PVE (fat mobs, object bosses, condition limits) are because of server hardware (CPU, RAM) constraints.

Likely the AI come late in the development, once the overly complex boon/condition system had been put into place and they had maxed their server budget.

Leo G.4501:

If you don’t know how to run up the stairs of Arah on your mesmer or whatever, that’s kind of your problem. Either learn to run better (tip: it’s an important skill in dungeons) or fight your way up the stairs with a group.

No it is not! It only seems that way because the only loot is from the bosses, and for the longest time the way to maximize loot pr unit time was to run past most mobs in the dungeons.

If Anet tied the end awards to the amount of carnage caused, the meta would shift to being able to do as much DPS as possible to as many mobs as possible. That is, if the end increase was high enough compared to the absolute minimum time one could get the carnage down to.

Speedrunners do not define the game, they break the game.

Scrambles.2604:

Berzerker should be the riskiest build to run. There isn’t enough risk outside of WvW to not run zerker.

err. I would say it is so much risk that it is a waste to run anything but zerker. The armor, it does nothing…

Algreg.3629:

to clarify first: I am not talking about those horribly broken megascaled events which are an entropic bowl of colours, blurs and numbers.

You have more than enough ways to counter knock back/knock down and to some extent pull attacks. Kite, dodge, interrupt, block, stability, stun break, whatever. Most of those attacks, as was already pointed out, are easily anticipated. And if you cannot take on a bunch of knockbacking monsters, well, maybe you were not supposed to attack that group of 5+ enemies singlehandedly, Leroy Jenkins style. Seems more like a L2P-scenario to me.

1. this is not about taking some treasure chest or similar high profile target. This is about every last kitten mob roaming the later open world zones. Meaning that you run into them when trying to get to what you’re actually trying to do (said high profile target). It becomes tiresome after a while.

2. More often than not, if you aggro one mob every other mob of the same kind (risen, svanir, flame legion and so on) within a certain distance is also aggroed. So you rarely have the luxury of taking on less than multiple mobs.