Yeah, replace the mortar with that. And make it use charges like a those conjured weapons.
Gets me thinking about how much of the engineer skill set is focused around point holding. And how downright irrelevant those are for PVE.
I maintain that timers should be replaced with a goal the boss is after that we need to defend. Be it some big object that he wants destroyed, some NPC he wants killed, whatever. Point is that this give us a failure condition without a out of world clock counting down.
it’s probably a light field because we already have a bunch of water fields.
i don’t really mind that it’s a light field. my only issue is it overriding water fields.
Elsewhere there is a claim that the oldest field takes priority…
I agree, it makes NO sense that its a Light field when it HEALS people. Which i stated in another topic. Why they made it a light field i dont know.
Heh, have a chat with necros. Their HOT well is a light field.
Screw Necros they are Overpowered in every way – do they need MORE healing? They get it from Healing Minion, they can siphon health from attacks, health from minion attacks and minions can draw conditions…
Combine that with like 50,000 health (when you count DS)
Healing minion is destructible, the siphon on attack is borderline worthless on anything but dagger (but then you are in melee range), and the minions go pop all too easily.
Then again, it may be way more powerful in PVP, as the health pools and damage outputs are much better balanced there than in PVE (fast moving melee mobs with more health than your most fattened warrior, and more spiky than a stealth thief).
Btw, they don’t heal while in DS.
I agree, it makes NO sense that its a Light field when it HEALS people. Which i stated in another topic. Why they made it a light field i dont know.
Heh, have a chat with necros. Their HOT well is a light field.
Never felt the need to mess with armor looks during leveling, as i knew the pieces would be replaced soon. When hitting 80 however…
Then again, the stones and crystals do allow us to transfer upgrade slot items between armor pieces. Tho in the process trashing one of said pieces.
For a game that is supposed to be a next gen MMO, not having any kind of wardrobe system to handle the outfit side is odd.
Again and again i get the suspicion that they designed the whole game as a MOBA, and then turned it into a MMO after some NCSoft rep gave them a stern talk. And this is why SPVP seems to behave so shockingly different in a number of ways.
Healing Turret is good because of its two water fields, which pairs really well with all the Engineer’s blast finishers. But I like Med Kit more as well, simply because of its ability to apply endless swiftness with Speedy Kits, and because you can split up your healing, instead of using it all at once.
Just wish the drop was instant on the kits, so if you rushed across the 123 you didn’t find 1 or 2 interrupted because you hit the next one before they were done with windup.
Only the #1 bandage is interruptable, because for some reason it functions as an autoattack. Drop your bandages in reverse order—3, 2, 1—and you’ll never interrupt yourself.
Noted, tho recently i am experimenting with traited elixir H.
I guess the “interrupt” is hard coded into the skill slot and not the individual skills…
It’s fairly simple.
The devs need to ask themselves why is Berserker NOT the best choice in sPVP, at least not for all professions, while in PVE everyone is “advised” by the pros to use Berserker?The best answer I can give is because of Attack Speed / Damage.
PVE is full of very very slow attacks that are easily blocked/dodged/blinded but deal an insane amount of damage.
On the other hand, PVP is full of lots of faster attacks, even a Burst Thief kills with a series of high damaging attacks, it’s never a 1-shot KO. It’s always a chain, so blocks/blinds/evades are NOT such life savers like in PVE.
So, my EASY proposal to make Berserker builds less viable in PVE? Reduce mob damage by a small amount, reduce mob hit points considerably and increase, to a great extend, mob attack speed to match player attack speeds.
For example, make the Battle for Claw Island remind players of a big zerg vs zerg fight in WvW, instead of the horrible fight it is now. Now you get 2 huge Armies standing still, exchanging blows every 5 seconds, rinse repeat until one side is down. It’s the most boring fight ever.
More attack speed makes dodges less of a life saver, gives mobs more consistent dps that players must counter, Toughness is a great counter to consistent dps, Vitality counters burst and condition damage. Healing becomes way more effective too.
See how amazing condition builds are in PVP (Rangers/Necromancers?) or how great the control builds are (stun-lock Warriors anyone?). It’s not the stats, the builds, or the professions/skills themselves that are badly designed and need a change. It’s PVE in GENERAL that needs a major overhaul, including mobs/mob-only abilities (Defiant)/dungeons/bosses etc
tl;dr Leave the actual skills/traits as they are now, leave the stat combinations as they are now and change drastically the mechanics in the fights themselves. That’s how you “counter” Berserkers.
The thing most people in this thread are going on about is how to make other sets viable – not how to make zerkers less viable.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – doing what you suggest will just make Knight’s the new berserker.
Not quite. It would make toughness a viable consideration. And there are a pile of those out there.
Depends. If you slot your utilities for … utility, instead of pure damage and take a set of weapons that’s more suited for support, it does make a difference.
Eg. Hammer for Warrior doesn’t have the most DPS but it does have control which greatsword doesn’t have. Would you give up 100b for a few control abilities?
Currently that’s a non-issue because defiant completely counters hammer abilities.
I see we’re playing the same game. Most extreme example, warriors, take 1 utility slot that’s purely damage – signet of fury. Rest are support or control in some cases.
And here is the real issue. Not so much that zerker is good, but that you can run zerker with support skills and still come out ahead. Meaning that the problem is not that zerker has a massive impact, but that support/defensive related gear has virtually zero impact on the effectiveness of related skills.
This with the caveat that we are talking PVE. PVP is a whole different beast, because that is where the balance focus has been. There you will see that defensive gear comes out better because in a straight up slugging match it actually blunts zerker to some degree.
What is needed is therefore a rethink of how PVE mobs present a threat. ANet needs to focus less on dodge or die “skill” (yeah yeah, “i swing a sword”…), and more on maintaining constant pressure. This will allow the defensive stats to shine more as it will allow people to stay in the fight for a noticeably longer time.
Now in constrast, zerkers and “tanks” have to back off just as often. But zerkers take down the mob noticeably faster.
I do wonder why the UI isn’t more scalable and customizable.
I can choose to make everything smaller, but you really should be able to remove the things you don’t want with the option to bring them back. And it seems pretty simple to do.
especially when everything on your screen was scalable in gw1…
Lets face it, GW1 was made by (computer) engineers. GW2 is made by artists. And there is no way to talk an artist into compromising their vision by allowing user customization.
I dislike kits, personally I dont see kits as being engineer in theme. most should be on a solider class
Early on the engineer was the third “soldier” procession, alongside warrior and guardian. But at some point we were demoted to adventurer.
In any case, the GW2 engineer is one part steampunk, one part alchemist, and one part military engineer.
Healing Turret is good because of its two water fields, which pairs really well with all the Engineer’s blast finishers. But I like Med Kit more as well, simply because of its ability to apply endless swiftness with Speedy Kits, and because you can split up your healing, instead of using it all at once.
Just wish the drop was instant on the kits, so if you rushed across the 123 you didn’t find 1 or 2 interrupted because you hit the next one before they were done with windup.
This is my Main complaint about the game. No UI customization. Sure you can mini this and mini that , but it’s still a clusterkitten.
Although the last time I read about something like this another poster quoted a Dev or whoever saying" We want you to play the game not the UI" or were they talkin’ about Add-ons? Maybe it was add-ons/interface things.
Don’t ask me for the said quote Look it up your kitten self.
I think the “play the game, not the UI” was in reference to people in theory being able to play GW1 with the 3d engine off. This because all the data needed to play was found in the UI. So they moved skill tells into the game world (weapon/mob glow, ground circles) rather than as a icon and channel bar alongside the target data.
They have however stated that they didn’t add a option to hide things like the personal story entry, because they had experience with newbies hiding various GW1 UI elements by accident and filling up the support inbox with complaints.
I guess what they could do was to put in minimize buttons in the UI. these would compress things like the sidebar and target data into the bare minimum.
For the sidebar it could be a vertical or horizontal row of icons, that would slide out the relevant data when hovered.
For the targeting data, remove the target portrait and put a colored/spiked border around the health bar.
Heck, maybe even turn the skill bar into a row of numbers that gray out while the skills are on recharge. Optionally turning into a row of countdowns when skills are triggered. Remove the giant red ball and put a health bar above the utility skills. And have the boons line up above the profession mechanic while the conditions line up above the health bar.
Oh, and allow us to turn off all the “paint” style borders that infest the UI (never mind the actual screen border, tho less noticeable except when stunned). Crap like that just reinforce the impression that game mechanics and engineering have been sacrificed for esthetics and artistic kittening.
The damage on the PVE side of this game is too spiky. As such, it is hard to know when to heal. As such, i wonder if not healing power should be changed into a recharge time reduction for healing related skills. This so that if you go deep in that stat you can more freely spam your heals, rather than fret about healing that small damage because you may be hit with a spike soon after and so be left with a much bigger health hole and a heal skill on recharge. Meaning you can’t really be tactical with your heals under the current PVE mob design.
Yes in PVE, no in PVP. This because in PVP there is a effective trade off between tank and spank (a straight up slugging match between two identical characters save their choice of stat set will result in the tankier build come out on top). But this do not exist in PVE because the mobs are in effect bags of health with nukes for fists.
As a personal anecdote, i was running half soldier, half rabid today. And during a event with a champion i watched 90% of my health vanish the moment i stepped into melee range.
Scarlet seems to seek a third way between the Pale Tree and the Nightmare Court, as such she could be looking for a way to weaken or destroy the Court. Heck, it may be that Caithe ends up trying to rescue the Court from Scarlet. A hero’s life is never a easy one.
Southsun would make sense if it was place further out. Right now it seems as if there should be a portal or shipping lane to both Caledon Forest and Sparkfly Fen.
And the world boss timers are painfully meta. They should have been given capture/destroy objectives instead, like we had with Candidate Trials. That way the event would not simply be a DPS race, but a tug of war between the boss and the players to keep the boss around long enough for him to be defeated. This by keeping him and his minions away from whatever he is after.
(edited by digiowl.9620)
Not unless the hits come fast enough that dodge is worthless.
ANet wants PVE and SPVP to be as similar as they can make them. And with self healing being a serious thing in GW2, crit healing may lead to indestructible characters in SPVP.
They supposedly had issues with various builds in the betas that took the whole opposing team to take down. Meaning that a single player could either lock down a capture point or tie up the whole opposing team, making SPVP much more defensive and static. For a game more aimed at being a spectator sport, that quickly becomes boring.
If ANet was to introduce support crits in PVE only would be a major split between the two, and something they are going to great lengths to avoid.
Perhaps not removing, but at least reduce how much crit damage you get out of the gear.
Right now you can get some 60% from gear on top of the base 50% all have. Meaning that if you push crit chance into the 90s you are looking at a doubling of damage output.
And this is a straight increase, unlike power, healing power or condition damage where different skills gain a different amount.
Or ANet can implement traits similar to Juggernaut for all kits, making it worthwhile to stay in a single kit for longer then the seconds it takes to get off all the DPS related ones.
This.
I think there should be a Trait that does it for ALL Kits.
Flamethrower = Toughness
Grenades = Power
Bombs = Condition Damage
Elixir Gun = Healing Power
Toolkit = PrecisionHave it so that all kits grant the same Might that Flamethrower has, this would need a slight change – maybe make it so that each time you kit swap the Might is removed and needs to be restacked? Make another trait that allows the Kit buff to remain for say 5 seconds.
No to the last one, as that brings us right back to kit spinning to keep as many of them as possible going.
Replacing fat health pools with a mob self healing would be a start.
Another would be to vary the effectiveness of boons and non-damage conditions based on the stats of the applier beyond simple duration.
A third would be to make CC have a break chance on damage once the current duration runs out, and have the CC last for 10x as long on mobs overall. This would allow an alternative to dodge&zerk for fighting mobs.
Maybe also modify block skills to only go on cooldown when they actually block an attack, and make them either a toggle or stay up as long as the button is held down.
And finally consider giving us effective aggro management. Right now zerk is favored because if everyone runs zerk the mobs are more likely to ping pong between characters. If just one run a high toughness build, he becomes the designated mob magnet more often than not. but high toughness is also the reflexive go to for solo survival.
Healing power affects certain professions more than others. coughguardscough It really all depends which profession its on.
Healing power is a useless stat for thieves. I don’t know a single thief that runs anything more than what the SA traitline gives them.
Ooooh healing power thieves are badkitten! Using the shadow refuge, healing while stealth, and building a stealth build around it you become almost immortal. You won’t be able to kill anything but you’ll provide fantastic support for your allies.
Shadow Rejuvenation has a base heal of 293 with a healing power multiplier of 0.1.
So at 1500 healing power, Shadow Rejuvenation heals 443 health a second and can last 4 seconds for a total of 1772 health with 1 Cloak and Dagger.
At 0 healing power, 1 cloak and dagger can heal for 1172 for a difference of 600 health.
That is sadly not a huge difference considering how much healing power you are putting into the trait.
For the most part, as has been stated few skills get a full 1.0 from healing power for any class. And for the most part healing isn’t supposed to be this main fantastic thing in this game.
For most (if not all) classes healing isn’t meant to be used as a “oh crap I’m dying let me heal up”, it’s meant to be used constantly when not needed so you won’t ever actually need it.
Even though it only heals 1,700 instead of 1,100 you can’t take the number alone into account. You gotta take the cooldown, how well you’re gonna use it and when. Using the thief’s healing mixed with stealth and low base HP, you should be able to keep your health up constantly throughout the battle. You’re not supposed to start healing when you’re dying, you’re supposed to start healing when you first take any damage.
And with that in mind, the thief works wonderfully. He has lots of group heals, and most of them are pretty decent, regen here and there, etc. That coupled with stealth makes those 600 points go a very long way.
A healing thief if he takes any sort of damage usually can heal that right back up instantly while going in stealth. That topped with decent (not fantastic) group healing and the most precious of all, stealth rezing. A healing/assist thief works fantastically well.
I honestly wish that healing power would be the determining factor in how heals gets used. Low HP, use often. High HP, use more rarely. But i guess that with cooldown being the only barrier to adjusting frequency, the cooldown would have to increase as healing power was put in to balance it out in the grand scheme of things.
Maybe compete newbies to MMOs have a easier time to pick up on this than “old hand” tho, as longer cooldowns scream to me at least that it should be saved for the “rainy days”. Shorter cooldowns are more fire and forget, as you will have it back up again in no time.
This problem crops up with elites as well, people avoid using them in case they need them later on and find it on cooldown. End result, they are rarely or never used.
Hrmf, maybe they should make healing power into a cooldown shortener for healing related skills rather than a numerical increase on the effect.
Just wish the events code counted more than how much DPS you did on the event mobs.
Anyways, outside of the #6 skills that every profession has, very few skills gain anything close to x1.0 healing power. I think elementalist has two (one of them being the basis for the water effect in evasive arcana, and a on water attunement effect) and guardian has one (and apparently a trait that works similar to water attuned evasive arcana).
(edited by digiowl.9620)
Not sure how tanky it can be considered but i ran into a champ risen quaggan at Dwayna’s today while playing a necromancer in the Balthazar set (one half soldier, one half rabid).
Several times my health went from 100% to 1% simply by getting near enough that it could land a basic hit.
I have. Giving the world bosses timers were a bad move. They should instead have been given goal to accomplish, goals that if they reach them would result in event failure for the players.
If ANet wants the big bads to have a failure option, they should give them a reason to go away again rather than just a timer.
For example with Tequatl, go straight to the laser defense on appearance and use the destruction of the laser as the failure rather than the timer.
For Claw and Shatterer the fire bases can be what they are after once provoked.
In essence, ANet should sit down and ask themselves why the various big bads are showing up. Give them a reason to be there beyond being a loot pinata with a timer.
Now if they want to add a timer on top, it should be for a extra prize for impressive performance rather than as a requirement for any reward at all.
Timers demonstrate a lack of creativity.
Tequatl should go straight to the first megalaser charging and make the loss of said laser the failure trigger.
Behemoth, Mega Destroyer, Golem MK2, and any other big bad with a timer that just sits around rather than spawns from player interaction (Claw, Shatterer, anything that can seem like it wants to run away or harass rather than stay) should have something they are after to destroy, steal or otherwise gives them a reason to stay around only for that limited time.
either Teq is killed or Teq destroys the megalaser and batteries thus ending the players’ chance to kill him. That is a believable scenario and that is why this is not a trivial complaint.
This. If ANet wants to give the big bads a failure condition, they need to make sense in world. Particularly if the big bad is what instigates the attack/appearance rather than us provoking it.
If ANet wants them to only stay for a limited time, there needs to be something they are after. Something they want to destroy or steal.
Yep, didn’t even know about the ctnl right click thing, much obliged!
You can use it to autofire any skill once it completes recharge, but honestly it is usually not worth moving off #1 as you will be hammering that key to death if you do.
Meh, the issue is at ANet’s end. They have set up both the NA and EU server farm the same way, but the EU one is not a single language. You can see this with overflows as well, as they lump people from all the language specific worlds together.
As it stands, the LFG is a cross server farm bulletin board. With little to no control on who answers or gets to see the message.
It could be you ctrl-right clicked the skill, this will remove the autoattack border on it.
Also, check to see if you have autotargeting set. That option selects a target for you if you do not have one already when you hit a skill button. Not the most reliable option for the flamethrower tho, as the damage arc seems to follow the direction of the camera, not the character. So even if the character turns to track the target mid-channel, all you will see is a string of Miss!.
Now that i think about it, i wonder if the latter can be related to holding down the right mouse button for camera control or not. I’ll have to test that some.
Or ANet can implement traits similar to Juggernaut for all kits, making it worthwhile to stay in a single kit for longer then the seconds it takes to get off all the DPS related ones.
Or why tank when you’ll be squashed..(plus there is no tanking in the game btw..no trinity)
More accurately, there is no effective means of aggro management beyond stealth.
Or they could sharply reduce the shield cooldowns, as right now its best use is for punting people off cliffs (and you can’t do that to mobs).
The basic design fro conditions and boons are a mess from the word go.
Magitech and Scarlet i presume…
I would like to see the map expand westward as right now anything beyond level 25 is east of LA. But i would also want to see more of the brand, as i find it soothing for some reason.
ANet seems to have good story writers on staff, but for some reason they fail in turning those stories into game content.
I get what you’re saying, digiowl, and I even agree that it does follow that formula…. but calling Scarlet “Lovecraftian” may have the unintended effect of disturbing Lovecraft’s corpse and drawing him to you to eat your sanity, bit by delicious bit.
I suspect he would find it slim pickings.
ANet seems to use few but large numbers rather than many but small numbers to create a “threat”. Problem is that doing so makes every action or reaction by the players do or die, with painfully little room for error.
For some reason ANet keep opting for few large number over many small numbers.
Are their servers really that saturated from the condition mechanics?
I sometimes wish that rocket boots and elixir gun acid bomb were ground targeted like rifle jump shot.
indeed. What i am looking for is a middle group between no kits and spinning through the kits constantly to maximize DPS.
Then again, i also run a melee set and a ranged set on my other characters. Meaning i prefer situational flexibility over maximized DPS. So that if things becomes too intense in melee i can drop back to a ranged set and keep fighting while gaining some distance.
Juggernaut is interesting in this sense as it benefits me to have flamethrower active as much as possible rather than one second being in flamethrower for one skill, the next in another kit for another skill, the next in weapons and so on. I can understand that ANet wanted that play style as a valid one, but i am not sure if they wanted it to be the only one that seemingly mattered when it came to kit usage.
They are still thinking how to charge for it.
There must be a way to force you waste gems on it.
A crystal each time you want to retrieve a skin?
the major change is that it make Forceful Explosions optional rather than a must have for bomb kit usage. This then frees up 10 trait points that can be used elsewhere.
they could make a ton of money from this too. I mean anet can make use pay “rent” using gems, just saying this as an incentive for them.
Makes me think of DDO airships.
Suggestions forum is that way ->>
Also known as the trash heap of ignored by ANet threads.