Guild Wars 2

Thaddeus.4891:

Just don’t use that build man. The Signet of Stamina could be a nice defensive addition for some fractal. Again the example of Volcano come to mind. I want to be able to keep the Shaman on me so the rest of the team can rez the dead and if i want to do that i usually like to have my shield and the signet of stamina so i’m able to kite it for all the time i want.

I’m pretty sure you can do that with neither of them.

Dee Jay.2460:

Stacking for some reason also suppresses some boss abilities in PvE, making them a lot easier.

Which ones?

Anierna.6918:

People don’t actually interrupt that AoE, do they? What an unforgivable loss of reflect dmg

I don’t use mesploits.

Yesterday, I saved my entire team by interrupting lupi’s aoe in phase 2.

Do you really need signet of stamina with all those heals from banners?

Try to stack on certain fractal bosses without those. Good luck.

Tenfold.

How does it make cc useless? It actually promotes cc since your cc will affect more than 1 mob.

The world boss bugs out simply because there are too many people. Same as melandru and a lot of other bosses. They just take sweet time to process who to attack.

So how stacking “problem” should be solved? Let’s assume anet can do anything.

Would they introduce body blocking? If so, how would meleeing works with dodging? Would you be able to dodge through your allies or enemies? How would you melee with more people? What would be the point of cleave mechanic? What would be the point of support skills which have limited range?

Razor.6392:

Can you seriously say that the devs created this game with the intention of having every. single. dungeon. and pve content to be done by stacking in one spot without moving?

Can you really claim that? Go on, stack on archdiviner at scale 50 with 5 warriors. I’m going to eagerly await for your success.

Is using control skills (guardian GS#5 or mesmer focus #4) to group up mobs and then cleave them with typical attacks while supporting your team with various buffs something bad?

Razor.6392:

Fixes:
1. Make enemy npcs stack boons by default when they are at 150 range from each other or lower. (Might, Retaliation and Protection every 2 seconds)

So guardian GS#5 gives enemies boons now. Brilliant.

2. In the case of isolated of bosses, give them potent point-blank aoe’s to ALL of them. I’m talking about 5k dps at the very least if you choose to stand in their pbaoe.

That means you cannot melee bosses and you are forced to pew pew from range.

You have an ironic signature when you consider what you propose.

unleashed.8679:

I call using zerker gear, for maximum damage with zero defense, brute force. Because with this you smack the hell out of your foe. Just this raw power thing, you know

Defense is maxing vitality, toughness and probably healing power in combination with regeneration and protection, so you can survive several hits.

Of course dodging is a defensive action, but it is not effected by your choice of gear and traits (except of vigor) it is just there to be used

That’s why people use guardians and mesmers? To ignore every other defense mechanic? Berserker’s team use protection as much as your “ideal” party do, probably even more.

Your idea of defense is just passive one, a reactive. I would advise you some time to familiarize yourself with the concept of active defense. I guess blocks are also just there to be used and aren’t part of defense. Let’s heal and tank.

whyme.3281:

But she tries to get in melee range to cast those skills. And on the other hand, if you are in melee range, there is no poison field under you, that would make the fight harder…..

She doesn’t. You can stay at 900-1200 range and she will rotate between her poison field (move out, so hard) and her immobilize web which has about 450 range meaning it won’t even hit you yet she will use it (an exploit?).

There is no downside for going into melee range, you ress faster, bosses dont do their strong aoe, buffs are easier shared and only 1 person eats damage most of the time, while the melee damage of the group is higher than ranged damage.

There is no downside for going into melee range and standing next to each other, which is illogical.

The downside is that you have to avoid her immobilize and her autoattacks which inflicts weakness (severe damage and endurance reduction). She also cleaves with her auto and that attack has huge effective arc as well as range (about 300 range with 270 degree effective arc). Her immobilize also cleaves or even is AoE (5 men limit) and can easily destroy glass cannon ele or thief.

But it requires active combat, moving, teamplay to apply this cripple etc. I never said, that melee is bad, but the risk vs reward if you compare melee vs range is not equal, which it should be.

There is no risk in going ranged and spamming your skills applying crowd control skills in the process that the boss cannot remove in any way and in most cases is not immune to. Go melee archdiviner or mossman at 49-50 without guardians and tell me again about melee vs range risk and reward. Because it’s definitely much easier for range players.

If you want better reward for range combat, make bosses more active, give them fast leaps and attacks they will use against ranged players. Right now, ranged combat is a kindergarten. Or just being a leech when melee players have to do the entire job.

Then there is some issue with the radius or something else. This is just one more point, why melee is more effective and more rewarding than ranged, which obvious should not be.

If something is more risky, it should be more rewarding and effective.

I have a proposition for you. If you play on EU server, let me invite you for a single fractal run without guardians. We’ll both find out what is more risky and rewarding.

unleashed.8679:

It wont change the fact, that brute-force is the way to go (who needs defense, when you can dodge nearly everything?).

Dodge is an active defense. It’s ironic you call dodging attacks a brute-force when passive defense could be considered a real brute-force.

whyme.3281:

Right now, nearly every boss is 2/10 when stacked and sometimes 10/10 when doing ranged (there are some exceptions), because bosses don’t cast some of their abilities, while in melee range.

---

Bosses should get a cleaving attack, to disallow stacking (or make it harder than open field). Right now, you only get benefits out of stacking.

Bosses should do fast auto attacks in between their strong, telegraphed skills, to build up some pressure to the players.

Defiance needs to go, to reward teamplay and a rage mode (3 stuns in 10 seconds) included, to punish skill spamming and stun locking the boss. – In rage mode, the boss gets hard CC immune (can still be slowed), moves faster , deals more damage and attacks faster.

And at least, bosses that requires some sort of coordination, press switches at the right time, to stun the boss otherwise he is immune to damage etc.

Bosses also don’t use some of their abilities while at range (you know, melee attacks). Spider queen use only 1 attack when at range (poison field) and 2 attacks when in melee (immoblize and autoattack).

Ranging bosses is so hard when you keep them crippled/chilled/immobilized permanently. Just kite back and relax with your autoattack turned on.

I’m not sure what OP wants but if you somehow discourage stacking, why would I ever run any supportive build like might stacking ele when the effective range is like 360 and my team is spread out. Shouldn’t I then run fully selfish builds and play like solo with 4 strangers?

My suggestion would be to make elemental attunement into 15 minor trait. It’s a very strong trait but it’s not like warrior doesn’t have the best minor trait at exactly the same spot.

Wishful thinking.

Restricted.

I’m eagerly waiting for the change that makes you revealed when picking the bombs. Players would finally have to do it normally.

Why did you limit stacking to dungeons? Remove stacking from the entire game.

I wouldn’t wish that to my greatest enemy.

I’m pretty sure GS is actually better for that.

klemen.8439:

They wanted dynamic combat, they got stack/skip/kill.

People stack because support has very limited range and it’s easier to cc mobs and they do skip because the reward for killing mobs is not worth it.

klemen.8439:

To make bosses challanging, the trick is not by making insane damage attacks but to make attacks that you have to survive by harmonizing with others (aka. healer-tank).

Yes, that would make the game much more enjoyable than 1111111111 spam.

I believe you could only dodge crystals with bugged reckless dodge and similar traits. Now, it’s possible only with stability.

If they somehow discourage stacking, support will be even more discouraged.

waxpax.6350:

The fact that the majority of people use exploits to deal with this shard reflects poorly on the design of the shard. When even the most hardcore pve guilds in game decide to exploit the dredge shard because it’s not worth the effort to do it as the developers intended it to be done, I think some changes need to be made to the shard. That is the main point of this thread, too, I believe.

That’s not exactly a good argument. Most hardcore pve guilds also exploit(ed) arah p3/p4 and many more.

kylwilson.9137:

You’re making connections in my post that simply aren’t there. If this was a PvE only change then I would understand you (albeit I would sympathise even less).

It’s a change that affects every game mode but is introduced because of pve. Unless you think critical damage is too strong in pvp/wvw. Or that 10% reduction in damage is going to change anything except mixing different types of gear pointless.

kylwilson.9137:

Oh please.

If this works towards putting and end to ‘stacking’, then everyone who is so clingy to the current state of the Zerker meta and eat it frankly.

Good lord some (most) people. This Zerker meta has been so cancerous. It’s still going to be the primary choice for those looking for this abhorrent playstyle. Less emphasis on the style part of the word.

Stacking is prevalent in wvw yet the meta couln’t be further from berserkers’.

Everywhere you fight you have those issues, right? They reduce your damage significantly by a whole 20%. That’s gamebreaking and will make playing the game impossible.

Again and again, I try to inform you about something but you always ignore that and and continue your complains.

shootist.3607:

Actually, he is spot on. ‘Active’ Dodges in nearly all games, including the praised for it’s active Combat ‘TERA’ aren’t dodges where you need to get out of the line/arc of attack, but ‘Invulnerability frames’.
A proper dodge mechanic can be seen in TSW, even in the earliest dungeon, the ‘Polaris’. The final Boss in that dungeon has a cone cleave called ‘Slam’, with a 90 degree angle. If you use your single dodge to move towards the enemy as the cast bar for ‘Slam’ finishes, you WILL make a dodge roll…..and eat the damage, get knocked back, AND possibly eat fall damage, too.
In GW2, a dodge at the right moment can be used as mobility, and you weather an unlimited amount of attacks during the window of invulnerability. Remove the invulnerability window from ‘Evade’, and ‘Dodge’ is now working right.

Dodging removes damage taken, not risk. Risk is being removed when you play tanky builds, not when you play squishy builds that do have to dodge.

Great idea with making dodge a simple evade without invulnerability. But first let’s remove cleaving (bosses with 450 range melee attacks), severely reduce aoe spam and decrease the differences between classes (hp, defense mechanics).

shootist.3607:

Actually, due to the Ascended Gear tier, they learned a lesson they could have seen coming from far already: Flat percentage based bonuses are garbage, logarhythmic scaling stats are ‘better’.

Why do you assume we’re going to get logarhythmic scaling? They haven’t revealed any specifics about new formula but it will be most likely a linear scaling, like every other scaling except toughness which also isn’t logarhythmic.

justkoh.4073:

Can agree with this.

They need to fix the broken dodging mechanic which removes the risk for zerkers and one hit kill mechanics which removes the benefit for going with defensive/survival stats.

I don’t think you realise how much logical fault you’ve just made.

CC?

Afk-ing in LA.

Honestly, there should a big disclaimer in this thread saying that you shouldn’t use these exact builds for anything harder if you don’t have a team that can carry you (guardians mostly).

Ashen.2907:

Good point.

A zerker in a party where everyone else is built for higher survivability but low DPS may face some significant challenges when the opposition is not burned down before he runs out of dodge/defensive skills.

You don’t run out of dodges. You just don’t use them correctly. Guardians currently give too much survivability in dungeons and you can simply faceroll through content. Doing same thing with party that doesn’t have a guardian simply doesn’t work for the vast majority of zerkers.

Lalangamena.3694:

-snip-

I started running berserker’s like 2 weeks after the launch. The reason for that is simple. The game was advertised with its active gameplay, where you ability to play have more input than you gear. I was actually surprised there are stats like vitality and toughness tied to the gear seeing as the prequel had none. I chose berserker’s because despite the existance of defensive sets, I never bought this game to tank or heal others (in spite of playing mostly prot monk in gw1 pvp). Moreover, I still recall those blog posts that were saying that anet didn’t like reactive damage mitigation but rather proactive.

To add more, none of you support, control and other archetypes increases its efficiency through gear (boon duration increases duration, not efficiency) whatsoever. It’s tied to weapons choice (hammer or greatsword), utility choices (for great justice or fear) or trait choices (fresh air or tempest defense). Gear choice affect where do you want to be on the offense/defense spectrum, not how much supportive or control you want to be.

Berserker’s meta exists only in dungeons, a content that was abandoned by anet about 1 year ago. There are completely different metas in open world, wvw and pvp. You want to possibly change fundamental mechanics on the basis of the content that’s not even considered by its developers anymore.

The only reason you do not see the viability of control and support aspects is because there are no viable dedicated builds like that. Moreover, since you can LoS mobs, they are bunched up together meaning that you only need 1 cc to cc 5 mob which would have been harder to achieve if mobs weren’t stacked at one spot.

If you think support is nonexistant, why no one serious runs 5 warriors in high fractals? Why do they need guardian? Are guardians not supportive enough with their aegis, regen, protection and projectile defense? What else do you want except making other classes more supportive through traits, weapons skills and utilities, not gear?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Like the above poster already said, it is your argument that is flawed. The fact that almost everyone plays zerker, since the other stat combos are next to useless in PVE, is a big alarm sign that there is a huge balance problem in the game. All stat combos should have a role, and not just zerker.

Parties should have a mix of various gear combinations, and not 100% zerker. The current game design does not encourage such variety, because there is no trade off. Zerkers don’t risk anything, and don’t trade in any survivability for going max damage. Which is why there’s no reason not to bring a full zerker party. This is the dreadful result of the missing inter-class reliance. Exactly what I was talking about.

This is simply a huge hyperbole and false statement. It looks like this forums claims that everyone runs full zerkers but despite that I cannot find a single zerker despite having numerous non-zerkers on gw2lfg. Do you know why do you continuously see parties asking for zerkers and rarely other parties? Because those who asks for specific requirement have to wait longer, that’s how filtering works.

Again, stat combos have no roles. They only increase your efficiency within certain roles. Your role is determined by your traits, weapons, utilities, sigils and runes. You can have similar control or support aspect with berserker’s and with soldier’s.

Parties should be allowed to play whatever they want. The only place where zerkers thrives are dungeons, excluding fractals. If you think there’s virtually no risk in playing zerkers, I will gladly invite you to our fractal run. I know your playing on EU so that should not be a problem. There we will re-evaluate how much truth that statement holds.

Dungeons are too easy, gear is not broken. Proof? Check other content like pvp or wvw.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I’m not saying I want the old trinity back, but some sort of inter-class reliance would really improve the combat. Rather than having a full zerker party, there should be just one zerker, one support, one healing, maybe one tank, and any of the classes should be able to take that role.

Me and my friend have both berserker’s gear.

Can we still play together in your ideal world without getting new gear? No.
Is it in accordance with “play how you want”? No.
Did Anet promise us dedicated healers and tanks? No.

Can you see what’s wrong with your arguments? It doesn’t matter if a profession can take any role when most of your stats come from your gear which is not easy to change.

But they are shiny.

You said you were running 0/20/0/20/30 in another topic so I should safely assume that’s your build.

I check bug reports bug frequently and I have never seen a report about arcane shield not being able to block gravelings’ cc. I was never knocked down by anything that’s blockable while using arcane shield. I don’t know anyone who had this issue, except you.

You play d/d and pretty much everyone who plays d/d has a certain rotation that’s all about swapping attunements every few seconds. If you’re better than that, I can only congratulate you on being better than the rest, though, then I have no idea why you complain so much since you should be able to pull your weight.

The very notion that volume of a contact list is any indicator of someone’s ability to play is down right absurd. You keep saying you are pugging mostly and we all know the quality of pugs.

LordByron.8369:

not all at the same time so…please stop arguing for the sake of arguing….
As i said you can t have sustained damage and defense…even with dagger air 1….
Utilities are most selfish and won t let attack
Arcane shield is totally broken in PvE it doesn t even stop CC…its wonderful to see gravelings stun you with your shield still up not to mention the multyattack of many bosses will go through it.

You lack sustained damage because you spam your attunements without any thought because it looks to be fun. That means you’re out of air attunement most of the time. Get fresh air if you like to rotate out of air attunement that often.

Arcane shield is a block, it stops everything that is blockable so please stop making things up or report a bug, preferably with a video. I never had or heard about this issue.

You have been complaining for over a year now and still haven’t changed or even tried different playstyles that do not include conjures or are not focused around them. If warriors are so strong compared to elementalist that “plays as intended”, why won’t you make a warrior? It’ll save you a lot of nerves because warrior “never gets nerfed”.

LordByron.8369:

+ offensive support
+ ressing
+ NPC ressing
+ some neat situational tricks (ascalon fractal, taumanova fractal, and many more)
+ best jumps for “skipping”
+ PUGproof
+ offensive debuff
+ defensive if needed
+ might stacking pre battle
+ invulnerabilities
+ best selfhealing

Eles.

Adian.8756:

Will this do?

Do you have something faster than 6 minutes action packed clips?

Darnacus.5961:

What I don’t get it – if PVE-only player are sooo uber in WvW, why are they complaining about going in WvW for LS in the first place ?

BTW, you all paid for the full package, I encourage everyone to play all three modes, it’s fun and way less repetitive

Generalizations. People complaining about going to wvw are different than people who don’t mind it yet both of those groups might be mostly pve.

Terravos.4059:

I see one average player fighting 2 uplvls, a fresh 80 thief, and a subpar 80 thief who actually has some food.

Congrats

Do you have any clips showing decent fights in wvw? Something that doesn’t involve condition bunkers.

LordByron.8369:

1) using focus and equipping a focus, stacking might and then fighting with conjured weapons is a different thing

Who said anything about conjures? How many times do I need to explain that you can use dagger mainhand with similar dps potential as lh?

2) you can but at that point you are less important compared to pugs in balancing.

P.S. and also i doubt more than 0,1% players are in PVE elite guilds

So only elite pve guild members play with their guildmates? Rest of the community forms guilds and finds new virtual friends just to pug.

LordByron.8369:

While in High level fractal ele has to run more defensive stuff like focus…
(at that point their dps falls drastically)

:)

You are the 0,1% playing a mmorpg like a NON massive multyplayer…your exception is less important than the mass.

Yes, in mmos you should be forbidden from joining guilds, forming them and finding new virtual friends. Or that’s the stuff for 0,1% of the playerbase.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Well yes, but that goes along with the skillcap balance. By the time you are running the hardest dungeons, you generally have gained enough knowledge and experience to lose the high passive defensive abilities that warriors innately have in favor of active defenses and team strategies that other classes have.
It works like this: if you throw a top-end PvE class/build at a group of new players, or even moderately seasoned ones, they will most likely wipe, because they won’t be able to handle the timing of group buffs and won’t have enough knowledge of the encounters. However, throw them a few warriors and a guardian (the more tanky kind) or two and it will become vastly easier for them, because they will be able to optimize the limited strategies available to them pretty easily.
At a certain point, though, players get used to the content enough that they can run more powerful, albeit harder to play, teams and classes. The reward for this is that you gain faster runs with greater power, but it comes with a high expectation for player experience.
Again, this is PvE, things are vastly different in sPvP.

You can go play high-end content with newbies with 1-2 guardians and then with 0 guardians. The difference is night and day and it’s not because guardians are easy or hard to play. It’s because they bring too much for very little input.

Any average guardian is able to rotate aegis and reflections that give you so much defense you can easily faceroll through most of the content without paying much attention.

What should be done is to increase the skill cap of guardians by significantly decreasing uptime and duration of aegis and reflections so that timely usage of them is promoted, instead of rotations.

Why aegis (active block) lasts 20 seconds (and that can be increased even further with boon duration) while almost every other active block (riposte, counterblow, etc) lasts usually 2 seconds? Instead of using it just before attack hits, like in the case of other blocks, you can simply re-use aegis after the previous one was removed because there’s virtually no punishment for doing so (you will get hit in 20 seconds).

Any class, without guardians, while running glass cannon builds, is extremely squishy in high-end content. One mistake and more than half of your party might be downed. And the myth of “killing the bosses in 20s before they can even use their attacks” is completely false there and running glass cannons without guardians actually is harder than playing tanky and sustainable builds.

I find it rather amusing that people complain about a downed state of a profession that’s the worst in pvp and generally doesn’t need to be finished by a stomping move.

style.6173:

The problem with this whole change is that ANET is trying to solve for the wrong problem. The issue is with zerker gear and warriors in PvE. No one ever asks for 5 GC mesmers to run a dungeon. The problem is the damage/defense ratio of the warrior. They can go all zerker and still be fine defensively.

Fix the warrior. Don’t mess around with crit damage. At the end of this change, you’ll still have zerker warriors be the king of PvE. Know what that means? This whole ferocity change is a fail.

You should replace the word warrior with a guardian. Warrior is easy to play as a glass cannon but in the harder content (high scales fractals) guardian is infinitely better to have.