Guild Wars 2

LoS in pvp is called a counterplay and in pve an exploit.

Kholdstare.9608:

I think the concept might work if it forces the zerkers to back off for a moment to survive, whereas the tankier guys get closer to 100% uptime.

I think a decent example of this was Foreman Spur. Zerkers can’t really take him as easily as every other fight for numerous reasons.

It a decent concept but how do you implement it in the game where a glass ele has half of glass warrior’s effective hp (with bonus armour)?

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Might be laziness but it does promote gear diversity over just going insane Zerker. I hope they add more to this type honestly.

And yes, I think it is goal worthy. Otherwise, what’s the point of having all these different gear types?

How does it promote gear diversity when instead of wearing berserker’s you will be forced to wear, for instance, soldier’s because of the unavoidable damage? Even if your party will be like 1 guy in berserker’s and 4 others with something like rabid, cleric’s, rampager’s and knight’s (which would be diverse), the berserker’s and rampager’s guys will die anyway and be dead weights.

CHIPS.6018:

Water field, Well for Blood, Warrior Shout, etc etc. All of these are support healing. And they are all very important to the army in WvW. By definition, these players are support healers.

A berserker will obvious not care about these support healing or any buffs and supports. They will never be part of it. They are playing roaming/headless chicken style.

Yes, those are wvw field medics. But why do berserkers not care about buffs and support? I, as the player, always want stacks of mights or long duration of protection.

Let’s be honest here. Roamers/headless chickens are not part of the army. Roamers do their own thing for the most part. They do not support each other. They are just there, with other roamers, to deal DPS fast enough in these DPS tests/check.

I am not saying this is the wrong way to play PvE. But it gets very boring when every single Living Story event is about roaming/headless chickens/DPS test. The PvE gameplay should be diverse enough that the army style have a role too.

As for PvP, of course people uses berserker there. In small scale fights berserker have no problem. It is in WvW where berserker dies too often to be popular, because the enemy human zergs have no problem killing berserker players.

You are also not the part of the army. You’re a lone hero or adventurer. Or am I wrong?

WvW style is the correct style for large scale fights. The more players are involved, the less roaming and more organized the army need to be to win.

And yes that’s exactly the reason why berserker is not viable in WvW zergs. They are designed to roam/headless chicken. Berserkers are never meant to fight within an organized army.

Do you have any military qualifications to claim that? I thought every army needs people to scout areas ahead of it as well as its flanks. I think Sun Tzu said something along this. I’ve played some time in total war series and without scouts I wouldn’t have got far.

Moreover, roamers don’t play berserker’s, they play condition bunkers

The game should have 3 balances for 3 different group sizes. One around 5 men. The other around 15 men. The last 50+ men.

5 men – dungeons
15 men – separated zerg
50+ men – united zerg

Fractal is a dungeon. Bring that up is pointless in a talk about Living Story Instanced Events. The group size is very different. So the gameplay style should be different.

Once again I am not against dungeons roamers/headless chicken/DPS test. But there is too much of that going on right now. The game needs variety. Anet should stop making these Living Story Instanced Events into a dungeon. Instead they should aim for the WvW organized army model.

As for Teq, it seems you totally missed my point:

Berserkers, or anyone, dying isn’t the cause of event failure.
The timer running out is the cause of event failure.

So I don’t know why you bring that up again (berserkers do die! I see them die!). Sure some players will die, but overall the players do not die enough. Why? Because the mobs are very very bad at killing the players in Living Story Instanced Events.

Maybe it should but it won’t be balanced around group sizes, more likely it will be balanced around game modes.

According to you, berserkers are not viable for those armies in wvw and you want to introduce it in pve. Isn’t that going to actually reduce variety? Right now, everything is viable in pve, if you introduce your concepts, berserkers will stop being used.

People dying are the cause of the failure because you spend your limited time on rezzing them or you simply cannot inflict damage because, well, you’re dead.

You also seem to either misuse the term instance or you don’t understand it. Living story events aren’t instanced, they’re persistent.

I always like to bring new fresh ideas to the table.

I had few ideas but it wasn’t worth you-know-what.

CHIPS.6018:

Sorry but there is indeed a role of healer in GW2. -snip-

Putting down water field once every 15 or 45 seconds doesn’t equal to have a role of a healer. As an ele, you have 20 skills for you disposition so it’s hard to have a role of a healer while using 2 or 3 skills that are healing. Futhermore, the one that heals is the one that blasts, not the one that puts down the water field.

In addition, healing power was designed that way that in improves mostly your personal heals because anet didn’t want reactive healing, they said they preferred active one.

1) "in a group that would actually require someone to babysit them it usually wouldn’t work because the type of player who needs babysitting will also not stand close in melee range but play headless chicken game. "

And that’s exactly why Berserker gear is not popular and hated in WvW. They cannot survive with the zerg, so they have to play that roaming/headless chicken game. Professional WvW guilds requires their members to stay with the commander 100% always.

The core reason: Human enemy zergs have NO PROBLEM killing a player with berserker gear. Like I said 90% of them will die in that very first engagement, nevermind the re-engagements.

So you are right in saying that healers/buffers/support cannot help a berserker player in that situation (WvW). He will die either way. But do not mistaken. Healers/buffers/support is very important for those players who can survive the first engagement. They will be buffed, healed and then engage again for the second, third and fourth time.

I said this many times but here it goes again. The mobs are very very bad in killing berserker players. That’s why WvW and PvE seems like two different dimensions in everything. I said the reason in previous posts so I won’t repeat myself here.

I find it rather amusing you call roaming a headless chicken game while not zerging. Also, in pvp people are somehow running zerkers (hambows, thieves, mesmers, eles).

PvE is a different world. Because the mobs are very very bad at killing off berserker players. Your berserker guardian, berserker elementalist and berserker mesmer can do their job just fine.

In pvp those classes do their jobs fine. Could it be that wvw is somehow imbalanced where berserker’s is not viable? I think I heard anet saying that wvw would be imbalanced hybrid of pvp and pve. Do you fight against 50 people, all spamming aoes, in pvp or pve? Maybe that’s the reason why berserker’s is not viable in wvw zergs.

3) You bring up the Dark Soul, Demon Soul example. This is a great point. Here is the problem with GW2:

In DS, the player must die multiple times to a boss/mob before the player get better. Why? Because the player must die a few times to slowly figure out the pattern of that boss/mob. After that the player will start winning.

In GW2, the berserker players rarely needs that. Even on the first day of those so-called hard contents (Teq, Knights, etc), berserker rarely dies.

So hard content is now Tequatl and knights? You keep bringing up zergs which even anet is now trying to somehow fix. Game is balanced around 5 man parties (aoe cap and conditions cap) like pvp or instanced pve. Try going high scales fractals on your first time with berserker’s ele in melee range and tell us again how you didn’t die and how easy it was on your first try.

I also heard that berserker’s are dead weights for teq and they often go down very fast.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Full Zerker teams are actually the safest way to do the harder dungeons (CoE and Arah) because you kill the bosses so fast the mechanics that make them difficult for everyone else never come into play (for example, that 7.7 second Lupicus kill. There was no risk involved there. Yes, I am aware of the coordination and planning needed to pull it off). That is one of the biggest issues right now. Zerker parties finish the fights so fast that they simply aren’t subject to as much risk.

I wouldn’t bring the biggest outliers to this discussion, you even said you are aware of the coordination and planning needed to pull it off. It also required few hours of trying to get good enough rng which you omitted. Also, it was 7.1s.

Yes, most PvE content is easy, but when what should be “high-risk/high reward” gear turns into “negligable risk/high reward” gear, there is a definite problem. The problem is, of course, in the enemy design. Bosses are too reliant on infrequent attacks that one-shot or nearly one-shot you regardless of your stats.

In open world there’s virtually no risk but there’s not a problem with a gear but with how open content works. Zergs plus aoe cap equals immunity for the most players participating in the boss event or farming champions.

In dungeons, the risk is there, I would say higher than with soldier’s and other defensive gear. I recall how everyone at the launch were saying that berserker’s is a suicide. That’s not because they haven’t found out that you can kill bosses fast, that was because they had no idea what they were doing. Moreover, you can complete dungeons like Arah with dodging disabled with defensive setups.

In fractals, your statement is completely false. Bosses don’t die in seconds but in minutes so the risk is there. Especially when a lot of bosses (at least those harder ones) use rather fast autoattacks with almost no tells that one shot glass cannons (except warriors).

This is clearly the case since in WvW and PvP, there is no “zerker meta”. Why? Because players have higher offense than active defense. The risk inherent in the stat set becomes very relevant then.

In pvp there is actually either zerker gear (thief, hambow, mesmer, ele) or defensive gear, whether it is condition (necro, kinda engi, ranger) or bunker (guardian). There is no zerker meta also because the game objective is different, how would you imagine defending an objective (standing on the node) with a glass cannon? I cannot. But what is the meta in 1v1 duels arenas?

CHIPS.6018:

Nearly everyone I know runs berserker for pve. We aren’t proud about it. You know why?

Because tbh running berserker isn’t that hard. Not hard at all.

Instead of saying "We are awesome! ", we are saying “The game does not punish berserker players enough.”

And btw, your gear is indeed part of what defines your build. Compare your stat naked with your stats will full gear on. That’s a huge difference in stats.

That’s not exactly a proper sample size. Nearly everyone I know in the game has 20+ years, does it mean there are no people younger than that?

This game doesn’t punish for a lot thing.

Your build is mostly defined by your role, tell me how does power define if you are support or control specced? Those are defined by your weapons, traits and utility skills. Gear (stats) defines your build but it’s not the only factor and not the biggest one.

hannah mee.7925:

haviz.1340:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Your build in GW2 is defined by your gear. It is just so that everyone runs zerker gear, so you make up fine nuances to build an artificial build variety.

All are DDs in first place. Then they get some support to raise the DPS of the group. This has nothing to do with what the DEVs were talking about.

The system is broken, the encounters are all about burning down the boss, no other mechanic needed. No tanking – no tanking gear needed, no real healers – no healing gear needed, nothing else needed but DD.

This is why all group (zerg) content feels the same: Do as much damage as you can, dodge, damage.

If you say so, record a fractal 49 or 50 with just direct damage, nothing else. No support and no controls.

I can agree that open world zergfest is pretty much what you say but how would you design a content with tanks and healers in open world for 150 people?

Fractals is instanced.

Instanced requires more balance.

Your point is moot.

Which is what I agreed on in second paragraph.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Your build in GW2 is defined by your gear. It is just so that everyone runs zerker gear, so you make up fine nuances to build an artificial build variety.

All are DDs in first place. Then they get some support to raise the DPS of the group. This has nothing to do with what the DEVs were talking about.

The system is broken, the encounters are all about burning down the boss, no other mechanic needed. No tanking – no tanking gear needed, no real healers – no healing gear needed, nothing else needed but DD.

This is why all group (zerg) content feels the same: Do as much damage as you can, dodge, damage.

If you say so, record a fractal 49 or 50 with just direct damage, nothing else. No support and no controls.

I can agree that open world zergfest is pretty much what you say but how would you design a content with tanks and healers in open world for 150 people?

Kaiyanwan.8521:

That’s why they probably have to be carried through all those time gated events.
And that’s probably why the events still fail.

And there is nothing you can personally do about it. Sounds frustrating.

The only thing that’s frustrated for me is the lack of scaling of this event. Barely dented the knight in 10 minutes of soloing which probably means it scales up from 30-40 people.

hannah mee.7925:

As Shib said, they’re not “useless.” Useless is a strong term to use. The problem with Defensive gear setup is that in most of PvE it doesn’t matter. Many champions/legendaries can OHKO a player who doesn’t dodge, regardless of their offensive/defensive setup. This is why I personally call PvE “Dodge or Die.” Many trash mobs won’t deal enough damage (and if they do, it’s in conditions) to make defensive setups any more useful than damage (think the best defense is a deadly offense). Only world bosses which are designed as structures, so crit hits don’t work on them, really dissuade any use of maximized DPS gear.

In PvE, there’s just not much reason to use any more defensive gear than absolutely necessary for the player because more defensive gear doesn’t make up for the DPS loss because in any situation that it could be useful, you look closer to find that it’s not actually useful.

TLDR; Defensive gear is “useless” in PvE by the standard that maximizing on it actually hurts a player more than help them in any way.

I have to disagree. Even if full glass setups champions/legendaries rarely one hit you, let alone with defensive setups. There are only few champions that utilize true oneshots (Crusher in Arah p3 for instance), a vast majority of fights do not include one shots. That’s a very common hyperbole which often leads to the conclusion that defensive stats are useless which was my point from the start.

Moreover, defensive stats needs sustainability in form of passive and active healing and other typical defensive tools like blocks and blinds. To achieve better healing you need to increase your healing power. So you could say that berserker’s gear has a nice synergy with all of its offensive stats but at the same time defensive stats (vit/toughness) has a synergy with healing power and boon duration.

Defensive stats is not useless for people that don’t want to improve or they rather play like a typical mmo with healers and tanks. Yes, playing like this is slower and less efficient but that should be the case since gw2 is a game with active combat and that should be promoted, not passive resilience. Do you or would you play tanks in dark souls?

Naetell.3815:

Not exactly. It’s quite logical that they do.
The current meta is zerker. The game pretty much doesn’t have a place for any other roles in PvE atm. They want to change that, but it’s a goal. They’re not there yet.
As long as this goal hasn’t been reached, making the bosses require something the game cannot offer in its current state would be insane.

Current meta for dungeons, this is the living story we’re talking about. The metagame in pve refers to the most popular techniques and I’m pretty certain that berserker’s is not the most popular gear amidst casual players that do this content.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Thank you. You need to reread what I wrote because you just, indirectly, agreed with me while disproving your own point.

I don’t want anyone to dumb down content. What have I been saying? Adapt.

Thank you again for seeing the light.

If that’s what you see, I’m okay with that. I just don’t know how adapting equals to standing in 1200 range and pressing ‘v’ every 10-15 seconds but that’s my personal opinion. This fight already dumbs down the content and the whole thread is about it.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Again, if you feel that strongly, instead of “punishing” ranged as well, why don’t you use range instead for this one fight?

Geez.

You know, there was another game that started to dumb down everything because certain players refused to adapt. They listened to the nonstop complaints because certain things were “too hard” to learn, to adjust to, and adapt to. So they removed all the choices and made them for you.

I really don’t want Guild Wars 2 to go down that path.

Do you?

It’s one fight. And temporary at that. Please know what you’re asking.

It really seems counterproductive, what I’ve been trying to tell you. I don’t have to use ranged weapons and if I wanted I would. That’s not my problem. You keep saying how they dumb down the game but making bosses in such a way that the most efficient way to kill them is to stay back is already dumbing them down. Game designers should motivate the playerbase to improve, not the other way.

Katastrofi.5816:

Actually the damage between ranged and melee is quite significant for AA.

Depending on the profession. Elementalist with a staff spamming 1,2 and 5 is one of the best dps spec in the game. And you don’t have to put much effort into it, dodging once every 10-15 seconds is all it takes for this combat.

And at the same time you don’t have to do anything except spam those buttons if you stay far away and dodge once every 10-15 seconds. That’s my problem, if anet wants to punish melee users for spamming they should also punish ranged users for doing the same thing which currently is not the case.

ranged – normal damage, almost no risk.
melee – a bit higher damage because of constant dodging and much more risk.

It’s not balanced.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Which one is it? You’re not strong enough or you survive perfectly well? The fact you’re changing your tune, and contradicting yourself now, kind of proves my point.

Please make up your mind and stick to that one please.

Also, your unwillingness to even consider switching weapons “because it’s boring and lacks a challenge” again proves my point. And then you complain that the boss is too “anti-melee”? Sounds like the challenge you wanted.

Again, which one is it?

Please choose which argument you want to stand on before you post. Your latest reasoning make you sound like you lack linear logic. Or, you just don’t know what you’re saying.

Personally, I’m thinking the latter.

We’re discussing in the living story forums, I’m taking the perspective of a casual player. I’m not going to say how easy it is for me because that often leads to non-productive discussions.

Unless you think that anet shouldn’t design living story content with an average player in mind, that is.

Plus, that thing you quoted was filled with sarcasm and I’m sorry for the confusion. That was between me and other poster.

ShibVicious.9681:

In a situation where you can’t score critical hits, I genuinely do not see a downside to being able to deal the exact same amount of damage whilst also having a significant increase to both your armor rating and health pool.

If it’s useless it means it’s useless and you shouldn’t have to use it. So is it useless or not? Because I’m constantly reading that defensive stats are useless. Was it always a hyperbole? I don’t like using hyperboles in serious discussions.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

It’s not something you can “simply dodge once in a while”. It’s something you can dodge all the time. More to the point, there’s an achievement if you do so successfully.

And, if it’s so “anti-melee” feel free to switch weapons.

I was under the impression everyone has access to ranged weapons. While I’m sure some classes are used to face-rolling everything in melee mode, adaption isn’t a four-letter word either.

This unwillingness to adapt, or change tactics, shows the difference between those players who stay alive the entire fight, and those players waiting for a rez because they also refuse to port and run the thirty-seconds back into the event.

I play a ranger. And I’m using a melee pet. A fragile cat to boot. And it doesn’t die against the knights. Sad state when my pet is tanking better than the warriors complaining about this “anti-melee” boss.

Very sad.

First of all, even if you fail to dodge a pull, you can still dodge the following attack without any timing (just by spamming dodge key while being disabled). The fact that there’s an achievement for dodging 3s long attack just tells why this game is strictly casual friendly.

I’m not sure why do you propose to swap weapons. The fact is that I don’t want to swap because ranged combat is boring. Playing with melee weapons is more active and requires more input from the player.

I have no issue with staying alive, in fact I was soloing green knight on an empty overflow for about 10 minutes with no problems. I’m complaining that knights do not promote active combat since the least risky with the highest reward option is to stay at range and pew pew. I expect more engaging gameplay from gw2.

I’m also talking from the perspective of a glass cannon elementalist.

Carighan.6758:

It’s not that the knights don’t scale.

I think they scale like the worm.

To explain, the game counts all three knights as one event. And hence scales based on the total amount of players in any way involved in the event. So even if you’re only 20 at blue, if theres’s 50 each at red and green you are 120 people total, and hence the event scales for +20% players (if 100 is indeed softcap on LA). But since you’re only 20 at blue, your specific knight will feel nigh-invulnerable, you should be 40 per knight.

This is how wurm scales. It counts as a single encounter.

Even if that would have been true, they don’t scale like temple events for instance which scale up from 5 people. In about 10 minutes of soloing green knight on pretty much empty overflow I’ve reduced his hp by about 5% while at the same time you can kill temple bosses (also legendary mobs) in 5 minutes.

That means that they scale up from 30-40 people which frankly is not fair for something that’s intended to be easily completed.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Pretty sure he wrote pull and knock-down attack. And I’m sure I’ve seen more than a few meleers stupid enough to just stand in it until they die.

Experience is funny like that.

Fair enough but after a pull you just dodge and the melee daze attack is negated. It’s anti-melee because of very frequent attacks with high damage and 360 degree efficient angle not because of a pull that you can simply dodge once in a while.

Optimal by definition means that there is only one choice if you want to be optimal. The functions with more than one maxima are very rare.

Do knights scale at all?

Ardenwolfe.8590:

AkiraZero.8514:

Nothing anti-melee about these bosses, I find its more the unwillingness of melee characters to learn to dodge and/or use stability. In pretty much every Knight encounter I’ve been in, I tell people that dodging right after the giant AOE circle of doom disappears allows you to evade the pull and knock-down attack. Does anyone listen?.. nope! They spend most of the fight on the floor because they dont want to hit an extra key every minute or so.

This, this, this. And, if I had to guess, it’s those same people who demand you rez them, risking yourself, instead of porting running back to the fight . . . a mere thirty seconds away.

They’d rather you make more of an effort rezzing them, than they did avoiding death.

The pull doesn’t affect melee players so why is it even brought in that context?

Bevillian.1260:

I am quite aware of the topic. I am talking about in general in any dungeon or instance since that’s the fact. FotM and Arah are no different in any way. I know that they are more efficient in FotM and Arah because I’ve ran both of those as well with that setup and it’s amazing. Again, this sentiment from you is coming because you have never seen it work correctly but the fact still remains. You do not lose out on DPS without a ranger either.. At all.. that’s probably the funniest thing I’ve seen all day.

I don’t know man, have you seen record runs of any dungeon? I think they didn’t utilize more than 2 warriors, let alone 5.

Good thing warriors still have defy pain.

tigirius.9014:

I don’t think Ferocity will change anything either. There’s still the weakness of condition damage, the lack of any usefulness in CC, and healing is a total joke so until they improve the rest of those mechanics especially in boss/champion fights the rest will simply be a memory of a time where there was balanced PVE combat and more than 1 role.

Useless CC. In the meantime, pvp-ers are complaining about condies spam, cc spam and bunker meta.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Too slow!

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The problem is, most warriors standing in melee range auto attacking do not know how active healing works.

“Wut does dad mean, press heal button, me heals no button.”

Passive effect of healing signet is the best healing in the game, I shouldn’t have to use it.

Nikaido.3457:

Not that it really matters when all evasion (whirlwind, reckless dodge) and blocks (riposte) do damage along with your gap closing skills. Warrior might not have the best theoretical dps in the game but they sure are the most practical in certain circumstances.

Reckless dodge? Did you mean building momentum?

Anyway, I know how to handle melee. Before forced splitting I was usually alone like a stone at the green knight. I was able to survive 10-15 minutes and dealt about 5% of his hp. Dynamic scaling ftw!

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Found your problem right here.

Nothing auto attacks better than a warrior in melee range anyway.

You’re dead after 4-5 autoattack on a warrior. Healing signet is not strong enough this time.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

See here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/escape/TTS-killed-the-Knights-under-3-minutes/first#post3731431

How many embers were spawned that day? 150 or a bit less? I can kill lupi in 7 seconds, but it doesn’t mean anet should balance the content (we’re talking about living story) for outliers like those. 7,500 toughness, unscaleable hp, immunity to conditions for half the fight and can’t even stack vulnerability. Anet simply forgot to reduce knights toughness when they changed how attunements work so the fight takes twice as long.

I wonder what stability gives you if you’re dead after 2 hits on anything except warriors. Melee is too hard and I have to spam fireballs.

At least my c’ocktail has proper temperature!

I like ranged combat, it allows me to play and sip a c’ocktail at the same time. It also requires coordination to sync drinking and pressing dodge key every minute.

Ayrilana.1396:

This was last night and not before the patch.

It doesn’t matter when it was, scaling can be broken even now. Killing them in 30s before 6/3 is equal to killing in 1 minute after 6/3.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’ve been in groups where the knights have been burned down within minutes and with less than 50 players.

Known issues of scaling. Before 6/3 patch I’ve been on overflows where some knights were dead in 30 seconds or less. Take a bigger sample and ignore outliers if you want to consider the balance of 7,500 toughness and unscaleable hp that’s tuned for 50 people minimum.

Yes but normal damage means you do about 30-40% of your usual damage. Usually when anet introduces enemies with a lot of toughness it’s to promote condition damage. This time half of the fight knights are immune to conditions and you cannot even apply vulnerability.

Ayrilana.1396:

No. All I see is someone exaggerating the issue when I’ve see it done on overflows with randoms. You need to set up prior to the top of the hour and this can easily be done without TS. You seem to forget that there’s the ability to chat via text in this game. Dodging is ridiculously easy yet I always see 80% of people who consistently fail to do it and get pulled in. This is just one achievement that isn’t even needed to complete he meta. This is also just one of a few achievements that require a little skill, coordination, and tactics instead of the other 1,000 plus achievements that you could get by spamming auto attack. Some achievements will require you to put a little effort. I suppose you complained about the Liandri achievements (defeating her and the orb one) too?

Killing knights in 15 minutes is perfectly doable but killing them in 6 minutes is too much. Remember that before 6/3 patch if you grabbed the attunement you were able to deal twice as much damage. Now you deal 0 dmg or about 30-40% of your normal damage. According to really fast calculations, knights have about 7,500 toughness which means 65% damage reduction.

ShibVicious.9681:

Seeing as I’m pretty darn sure you can’t crit world bosses like Tequatl, yes you are a dead weight in zerkers gear. 2 of the 3 stats that gear offers you are rendered useless.

But haven’t we all heard that vitality and toughness were useless?

It is perfectly beatable in overflows but to get an achievement without abusing summons? Killing knights in 10-11 minutes is equal to beating them below 6 minutes mark pre 6/3 patch.

phys.7689:

i think he just meant they arent using the old cutscene engine anymore. They can just have npcs talking that you can walk past/ignore. Or have people talking while you play like desha during the story fractal for thaumanova. Scarlet button press scene is uneccasry though, its short but annoying

Old cutscenes were skippable, dialogues are not. And if you have to endure the whole dialogues, that’s just painful.

Mirta.5029:

1. We’re talking about PVE bosses, not about PvP (and in there you can do a lot of counters to condis as well, like a build full of condi removals, healing and retaliation)
2. Actually condition duration is a thing and then I believe conditions can crit too.

1. Then anet should change the bosses.
2. Condition duration is only on giver’s set and conditions cannot crit.

If you want to increase the viability of condition builds, ask anet to increase the efficiency of rampager’s set cause it’s the only glassy condition set.

Mirta.5029:

Depends on how you spec.

Example number 1: power, toughness, precision, critical damage elementalist with a staff can be outputting a lot of damage, staying purely in the distance and be tough.
Example number 2: berserker warrior with a bow or a riffle. Once again they can stay in the distance.
Example number 3: a condi necro with two daggers. They need to be close.

Distance and your toughness is not decided by going condition or pure power. You can build both to be squishy and up close or far away and tanky.

Your example number 3 is a bit nonsensical because daggers are power weapons for necro. If you want to compare them, use a staff or a scepter. Moreover, staff ele attacks as well as rifle and longbow attacks can be avoided by simply pressing ‘a’ and ‘d’ randomly. You cannot say the same thing about conditions attacks because they are not projectiles.

Conditions are always tanky because you just need 1 stat, unlike power builds. The worst kind of cheese builds in pvp are condy bunkers. Faceroll to play with very high efficiency.

Ohoni.6057:

Condi builds are no more tanky than power builds. Sure, you can go CVT, but you can go PVT too if you like. If you’re aiming for a “glassy” Condi build you can go Rabid or Carrion and only have slightly more defense than Zerker’s. And fighting as a Condi is significantly more difficult than fighting as a Power.

As a Power, all you need to do is run in, land your attacks, and the enemy is dead. As a Condi, you have to run in, land all those same attacks, and then survive while those DoTs do their work. If you don’t land your initial attacks then the enemy won’t have any conditions on him to die from, and if you don’t survive long enough for the conditions to do their work, then you’ll be dead. Not to mention that condition clearing effects that negate Condi damage are far more common than effects that blunt power attacks, and most effects that do blunt power attacks (like dodge, block, aegis, invulnerability) tend to apply just as well against Condi attacks.

Anything a Zerker needs to do to win, the Condi needs to do as well, they just also have to live longer for it to matter.

Rabid and carrion are now glassy? Bonus toughness and vitality now makes you glassy? Condies gameplay is essentialy staying back spamming your skills while your team gets all the aggro. And even if you’re solo, don’t tell me you never heard about chill, cripple and immoblize. Kiting away mobs while they’re dying isn’t hard, it’s trivial.

Zerker needs more effort to survive because it’s glassy and usually fights in melee while condies spammer stay back with all of his soft cc and additional tankiness. Go play pvp with zerker and then condies build and tell me again how condies are “significantly harder to play”.

I find it a bit amusing that a lot of pve-ers want to increase the efficiency of condies and cc while a large majority of pvp-ers wants to have it gone and calls to finally end cc spam and condies spam. One of the reasons why pvp is getting dead with every passing day is because of the efficiency of condies spam. “Dhuumfire” patch that essentialy changed meta from power/boon to condies/cc is considered as the worst balance patch ever.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lore is an important part of the fractals and will continue to be. Replayability, balance, rewards and challenge in no way exclude the ability to continue to tell exciting and meaningful stories in Fractals.

Chris

Note: Just got back from hospital and going to bed.

If you continue to put unskippable cutscenes/dialogues to justify lore it does exclude a large portion of replayability. And since a guy from cutscenes department told us they would now include all cutscenes in the form of unskippable dialogues it doesn’t look bright. Watching a cutscene 100 times is not exactly a defintion of fun.

Before 6/3 patch – not having a buff = 50% of damage, having a buff = 100% of damage
After 6/3 patch – not having a buff = 0% of damage, having a buff = 50% of damage.

It doesn’t help that developers forget to divide one number by 2 when changing the mechanics of the fight. I’m wondering if they are aware of that fact.

CHIPS.6018:

Whoa hold on a minute. Listen to this rule:

Duration of Time damage MUST out-damage Direct Damage over time!

Why? Because if not, where is the balance?

DoT (bleeding, poison, etc) can be removed. And it deals damage slower, so it can be more easily healed.

DD can be dodged, blocked, etc. But guess what? DoT can be dodge, blocked, etc too! Anything that counters DD also counters DoT!

There is no main damage. DoT and DD are both equality important. DoT is better for pressure. DD is better for spiking. That’s how it always was, since GW1.

So why is DoT better than DD in a boss fight?

Because the boss have a billion HP. So a boss fight is always a drawn out fight. And in drawn out fights, OF COURSE DoT is better! What else is new? You cannot spike a boss. You can only pressure a boss.

Blame the boss design (billion HP, etc). Do not blame DoT out damaging DD over time. It must be this way.

Lastly, do not forget that Vulnerability 25 stacks is also a major factor in the boss melting like butter when it can be affected by conditions. And that helps DD not DoT.

This rule doesn’t apply when condies ignores toughness, use mostly ranged weapon sets and condie users are tanky. Why should faceroll builds be more efficient?

Can we get a story mode of the wurm? As well as giving it a bit more background.

AKGeo.6048:

All except for the 300-range 360-degree non-capped aoe attack of the knight’s hammer that takes 95% of my berserker/soldier warrior’s health away in one hit.

I’ve been hit by that from simply moving up and trying to blast the knight with my engineer’s rifle 3 attack, just within range of it.

But nah, there’s no anti-melee death zone, right?

That’s why there’s always a pile of dead people sitting at the knight’s feet? It’s not always because they didn’t dodge the big aoes.

I’d been meleeing the green knight solo for 5 minutes before the zerg came with your typical zerker warrior. It’s hard but no one asks you to solo them.

Ashen.2907:

Can you provide anything to support this ?

I cannot recall seeing anything from the Anet indicating that everyone should be able to complete every piece of content regardless of player ability or effort.

I know people who would be hard pressed to beat AC story mode. Heck they have demonstrated difficulty in overcoming single, non veteran/champion, foes of their actual level.

In order for all content to be doable by everyone the content would have to be nerfed to the point that looking at foes would drop them while their attacks could not hurt the character at all.

Isn’t that (“all content…”) a typical rhetoric people here usually use when someone suggests to make world bosses instanced or to make instances like dungeons/fractals more difficult?

Exactly. All content is doable by everyone. But in order to be successful, you need to put in effort. So if you want to do an easy boss like the Shadow Behemoth, that’s available to you. If you want to do really hard Raid type bosses, the Great Wurm is there. But don’t expect to just walk in and beat him. Gather 150 of your friends or server-mates, learn the mechanics, and organize a win.

Why does tequatl require 80+ people? Can’t it scale down to 20-40? What’s the difference if 20 or 5 people defend an objective? It’s a clusterkitten anyway.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Yet a group of ~30 people still can’t seem to kill one in the full timer (with minimal downs/rez time). Plus we still have/need to have people from the first knight down rush to the other two to help kill it before the timer hits.

Maybe the group was performing worse than anet devs expected. Why overflows with around 30 people were able to zerg down first two bosses relatively easy and now you think you cannot do it if you split?

While I wish you could not be forced to use Zerk or even PTV gear for this fight, just equip a ranged weapon. Before the patch that stopped all loot from dropping, I had a very hard time tagging/doing enough damage in my knights armor. I switched from my armor to a zerker set (with no runes) and my condition weapons of sword and longbow to power ones of riffle and axe. My damage more than tripled. It just takes 1 dodge ~8-10 sec and a ranged weapon with zerker gear and you do more damage without having to think about anything.

Range combat is not worse only because it has less damage, a lot of stuff like blast finishers and support requires you to be near other people so unless your group use ranged weapons in one spot (not how it usually goes with zergs that encircle the boss). You miss a lot of damage amplification if everyone just ranges.

I won’t deny that wp’ing it is still a problem (or going afk/hiding during the holo fights). And if I didn’t have spare weapons/armor what should I be expected to do? The warrior long bow only let me use my AA and number 3, and the warrior sword only lets you use number 3 to hurt the knight (without having to worry about conditions). At least with rifle I can use 3 of its attacks. A good amount of weapons among all the classes have conditions on the AA which become pointless for most of the fight time wise.

If you play condie war, why don’t you use one of your normal weapon set like a longbow and as an alternative one take axe, gs or hammer. You’re tanky enough to get hit few times.

People were saying same thing about old simin yet anet dev claimed he had watched their QA team doing it without any issue and we are all aware how their teams play and zerks are definitely not involved.

Moreover, how do you even do this with full zerk warrior with gs when go down after 1 chain of autoattack and standing behind the knight to avoid the damage is pointless? It’s easier and more forgiving to go with more tanky setups.

The issue is with people going down and not respawning, using condition-focused weapon sets in both phases and generally autoattacking because the rest does the same.

All content should be doable by everyone, that’s like one of the pillars of gw2. Thus, both of wurm and tequatl encounters should be severely nerfed or at least changed how scaling works to allow smaller groups to even have a chance to beat them.