Guild Wars 2

The game design is not a problem because given time people will inevitably find fast, efficient solutions to things. This is a fact of nature for every single game ever, and crying “bad game design” is basically calling every single game in the existence of the world bad. People like to harp on about dark/demon souls being hard but I’m pretty sure people have done level 1/naked runthroughs of those games. It’s not bad game design that they can do that, it’s the simple fact that given time you will be able to beat content with the minimum of defense.

If this is something you don’t want to accept, then quite simply stop playing video games. Every single video game ever “becomes simon” so if that is an issue, stop frustrating yourself thinking about it and just flat out stop playing games.

You are taking his opinion after release, when he was trying to justify the horror design made. ANet are still wondering what the cat to do with conditions after the mess the original designers left.

So he was justifying their design, and he was an ANet developer at the time.

So lets see. My opinion is based on the statement of a dev, your opinion is based purely on conjecture. I wonder which one has a higher chance of being correct?

Simple NO. WvW reward was PVT gear while PVE reward was a vast diversity in gear sets… you say they get it backwards and release a game with the rewards mixed up? It took them quite some time, several months, to include the other sets in WvW as rewards.

The rewards offered have nothing to do with build diversity. The fact of the matter is, people use all sorts of stat combinations all across this game, independent of whether there is soldier, assassin, cleric, valkyrie or whatever at the vendors.

We agree here. Though I wouldn’t blame time entirely. Did you went back to PVT when the first fractals were introduced? Or when the “new ones” where introduced?

No. But then, I and most of the forum regulars here aren’t your average player. As far as I’m aware, the high level fractal pug meta is just stacking PVT, though I rarely even play the game so I wouldn’t know for sure.

once you learn the game by hard, it becomes Simon… you count, you dodge and all risk is lost in the equation.

And this is not a slight against the game. This is basically game design 101, when people beat your content and perform it again it becomes routine, so I don’t see why you even bother saying this when it’s just a staple of games everywhere. To offer you my usual example, upon playing dragon age: origins i’m sure people initially used trinity compositions but then people found out you could just stack mages (up to 3 if the player created a mage), load them up with damage, CC and healing spells and just explode mobs with no effort.

So warriors now completely suck in all game modes

garbage dps =/= sucking

320+ power, 170+ precision, 170+ ferocity plus the potential to maintain 20+ might for a party is reasons for taking a warrior in a dungeon party. It’s just the warrior itself has **** DPS.

This despite being highly desirable in WvW zergs and capable of soloing dungeons

easy =/= good

Eles can solo dungeons, it’s just not many people bother or care enough to do it on their eles. Same for guards, mesmers, thieves, rangers, necros etc.

Actually, AA has like ten meta classes and then the rest of them are just average to ****-tier.

what this guy said means little… Don’t idealize him; he did it wrong, and no longer works for Anet.

He was there for the initial development of the game and the initial intentions of the game, therefore I think his opinion is relevant.

Yes you do. It’s called balancing. Balance its not only comparing players against players but also players against environment. If you provide hammers, the world should have nails… in GW2 they provided us hammers, screw-driver and wrenches while there are only nails in the world. People using Screw-drivers and Wrenches wants something to have fun as well.

And in GW2, a game primarily balanced by PvP, the balancing is fine. Many stat combinations are used, many builds are used and all is well. This same stat diversity exists in WvW. In PvE, you are again allowed to use whatever you wish, but the option exists to go full offensive if you think you can handle it. Not all people can or want to, so they don’t. These are the people who will be using things like soldier, giver, cleric, etc. They want to be able to roleplay healers, they don’t want to have to dodge everything or they simply just can’t handle the reflexes required so they gear accordingly. The balance here is that all stats can complete content, but there are others that complete it quicker, and as it’s based around risk/reward (the glassier you are the faster you clear with all risks associated) the balance is fine. The fact that the risk isn’t that high is a side-effect of the game having the same instances for like two years, not an error in the design of the game.

oxtred.7658:

So I did a se P2 yesterday, we 3 manned it with two newcomers, and it was actually really fun. I’m puzzled. Like, It was easy minus the last boss, we wiped twice I think ( never did this path in about a year and a half), it wasn’t THAT long, bosses were not surprising at all but hey, they were mechanics about reflect, stability and stuff, the escort npc turned around only 3 times… seriously, it’s fun !

it’s fun because you’re not doing it as part of the daily borefest i mean dungeon tour.

it’s why i tagged along for guild full clear arah p4 because it was something new which i had rarely done before and it felt refreshing.

Except Robert Hrouda already said that it’s safer to use tanky gear but if you can handle it then it’s perfectly possible to use offensive gear. This suggests the defensive gear as training wheels explanation is the correct one.

I don’t see how they intended everything to be equal when everything has flat out different stats entirely. You don’t make a set with no defensive stats and full offense, and then one which has boon duration and healing power and then try to claim everything is equal, that’s insane.

or how about we

for once

like

just once

stop asking for random pointless warrior nerfs WHICH WILL MAKE ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE TO PVE/PVP/WVW METAS OR INCREASE DIVERSITY

PLEASE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

those graphic settings

MY EYESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

ANet sure do like making PvP changes to warrior which have an absolutely whopping ZERO effect on the builds used there.

Sure, let’s buff off-hand mace but it’s still bad. Sure, let’s buff arcing slice but it’s still bad. Sure, let’s buff off-hand axe but it’s still bad. Sure, let’s buff rampage and nerf signet of rage but owait people still use signet.

All they’ve done is make the class weaker for no reason.

deSade.9437:

I had a dream.
I was playing in a new dungeon… freshly made… It was kinda like Urgoz. Imagine this… if…

Nah, it was you thinking of all the new dungeons in DA:I.

HYPE

Iris Ng.9845:

Power-Toughness-Boon Duration would be really really OP in zerg wars.

Anyhow, I really like to see a new dungeon based on the new mobs in Dry Top. They have interesting anti-stacking mechanics.

I think five people in a dungeon guild should get together and try LoSing large groups of mordrem in open world or an LS instance or whatever, and see how it goes. I don’t actually know if they’re anti-stacking, they hurt when soloing but I feel like the firepower of five players would just melt them.

Woljnir.7810:

Oh, look. Another “I don’t like such and such therefore it needs to be removed/changed” topic on an MMO message board.

The ledge is not an exploit at all. We don’t program the game. It’s not our fault the Dredge don’t run up the ramp to attack us. Most people could care less about dungeons. All they are are zergs for tokens. Anet themselves turned them into that by not adding new ones periodically. Nobody has time for trash that doesn’t drop anything. Nobody has time for bosses that take 10 minutes to kill for only blues and greens. Nobody has time to kill the carrier on the ground when you can safely range it from the ledge. Don’t like it I’d advise using the LFG option to see if anyone else wants to join you in fighting it on the ground. Otherwise coming here to complain about it and ask it to be changed is just stupid. It’s not going to happen. They closed off the one hallway in CoF 1 and it didn’t change a kitten thing. People still OOC on the other side of the room. Dungeons have been this way for so long that they are past the point of being fixed.

The ledge is stupid as hell. Remove it.

well you see, your average player sees people running ahead and thinks “oh i’ll follow that guy” completely ignoring the fact that i’m stealthing with consumables while they’re literally just trying to run through but just pulling everything

So I decided to try casually pugging an arah p3 yesterday, everyone else tried skipping the four elites but couldn’t so they died, i started soloing hunter/crusher and i’m completely out of practice and my connection blows so I ended up eating the floor at like 80% twice in a row either from immobilise or because I completely forgot the aggro radius of the patrols near the boss and pulled them.

maybe i need to condemn myself to resetting every arah p2/3 fight for hours on end until i can go back to getting them right again as punishment :p

Well you see, guardians are “in a good place” so let’s just give them tooltip changes and the occasional buff every now and then, but warriors having average DPS is apparently too much and needs to be hit with a sledgehammer.

We want to promote build diversity, so rather than do anything to affect the longbow, hammer or the respective traits most popularly used with them, lets add a 5% nerf to the damage of hundred blades, whirlwind, making arcing slice still suck and let’s just nerf signet of rage for gits and shiggles and buff rampage so that still nobody uses it.

ANET LOGIC AT ITS FINEST.

Oh, and absolutely none of this is PvE balancing but you PvE players are just going to have to suck up and take the changes we do affecting like 2 people who play e$ports because they’re more important than balancing classes around WvW or PvE which are played by more people.

Lytro.9305:

I’ve been trying to decide on a character to level up and I’m deciding between ranger and warrior. Since the update came out, I was wondering how good are warriors now? Are they good at dps, survivability, and other things?

In PvE, warrior DPS is literally garbage.

bolt was the only way I was ever going to have a sword with ascended stats since it didn’t require the faggonite grind

um

though to the actual topic

gz to OP for the solo, no way i’d have the patience to even bother practicing that, especially now that my gw2 experience consists of killing lupicus then alt + f4ing out of boredom to watch youtube :p

Sesshi.2610:

maha.7902:

requirements to be an EU soloist:

1. owns an infinite light rather than a bolt
2. random ugly anime chick chat cover
3. profit

1. i hate bolt
2. how tf is that ugly?<.<

bolt is the NA meta

sadly, euros tend to do better solo recordings than us on NA :p

requirements to be an EU soloist:

1. owns an infinite light rather than a bolt
2. random ugly anime chick chat cover
3. profit

using reflect wall strategy on lupicus

-10/10 would never read again

It’s not really pressure if you make it routine. I spend entire dungeons with my inventory open and switch around weapons constantly out of habit so it doesn’t feel like hard work for me. As far as I’m aware most if not all of my guildies do the same, though I don’t think to the extent I do.

The unblockable teeth attack functions a lot like Magecrusher’s putrid blast, you basically need to learn the timing and pre-emptively dodge it if you are in melee (if you are ranging then whatever you can see the tell from a mile off).

And berserker parties do actually have to deal with the mechanics, crazy I know.

velhavn.7694:

almost all of the whiner

Dear Anet,

engie, ele, guard OP
others that i can kill are fine

sincerely – thief

Oh, so I’m not the only one who noticed this.

Good job OP, you couldn’t have made it any more obvious that you only find classes balanced when you can wipe the floor with them but otherwise they’re imbalanced.

Sarabande.8260:

GW2 Raid:
stack zerker gear
zerg
spam dodge

I’m pretty sure you stack PVT for Tequatl.

But sure, let’s bring out the “zerker” boogeyman because people love finding something to vent all of their frustrations at.

deSade.9437:

“bearbow only”
“fashion elitists only”
“zergburgers only”

and… the one that started it all.

P.S. I’m getting owned by 2 banshees in ME q.q not ready for l33t hardmode yet. Why can I hit people with swords and bows but I suck with guns and rifles?

wow noob just spam biotic finishers on them screb

ive never actually played me3 below insanity so i have no idea what the other difficulty levels are like :p

Ayrilana.1396:

Casmurro.9046:

People that say that dungeons is just about stacking and pressing 1111 are too used to get carried by good groups.

I think a lot of people know exactly what it is that stacking does but use that phrase against typically speed runners as they’re also the ones to use various phrases against pugs. I sometimes accidentally use it knowing that it’s not entirely accurate.

Most know the benefits of stacking for quick revivals from downed, sharing buffs, cleaving to get the most from your attacks, using LoS to get all mobs to one location, and so on. They’re also aware that stackers use their abilities (whether CC, blinds, blocks, etc) to protect the group long enough to DPS whatever they’re fighting down.

I don’t actually think they do.

They see people sitting in a corner and lots of flashes going off, a boss’ HP dropping and everyone topped up on HP and think there’s some magic that happens when you sit in corners.

Why else would it constantly be referred to as an exploit?

EU pugs are definitely worse in my experience on each side of the pond

the last few times I played in gw2 my pugs on NA were good, annoyingly enough

Asmodeus.5782:

There is quite a difference between being unable to keep up and considering something to be a boring, borderline-exploit farming technique.

I’m not really sure how stacking is a borderline exploit.

If a mob dumps an aoe on you, you’ll die whether you’re grouped up in a corner or grouped up in the open if you don’t bother to mitigate it in any way, the simple act of grouping up together doesn’t actually do anything.

But now it just seems like we’re moving in to the territory of people defining things they dislike as exploits so I’m not sure if it’s worth arguing this.

Try “speeding up the pace to the point the game mechanics can’t keep up and mobs don’t even fire their skills before they die”.

There are very few examples post-FGS that I can actually think this applies. Bosses, especially so in your average group are always allowed to cast skills quite frequently.

Defiance scales by how many players are around it, iirc. In 80+ zergs, it will likely stack to 77. So you require at least 78 hard CCs to consistently remove stacks of defiance and interrupt again.

They removed the scaling on the wraith. Interrupting it was the whole mechanic to save Jonez and people couldn’t be bothered to do it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

maha.7902:

Astralporing.1957:

maha.7902:

Just as a reminder to everyone. When ANet added the mechanic to the champion wraith in the grenth temple which drained everything in an AOE and it had to be CC’d to stop it, literally every time without fail for weeks on end nobody would CC and there would be a massive wipe.

Well, besides the normal quality of average players, Anet did forget here that Defiant in bigger player groups makes interrupting on demand practically impossible.

It had the base defiant that bosses in dungeons have. I’m pretty sure 10% of a 60-man zerg can CC a boss with defiant on.

You would be surprised.

And that is precisely why ANet can’t make raids, because they are trying to cater to the people who can’t pay attention, and then the people in this thread who …. refuse to pay attention and don’t want to have to partake in any sort of co-ordination. How can we have interesting content without co-ordination? And if it’s the whole “I don’t want to have to use a third party voice program”, is it really killing people to download like some 2mb file, go in to a TS and literally just sit silently while listening to commanders giving instructions?

People say they want content more interesting than zerg press 1, but then they place personal restrictions like “I don’t want to have to use a teamspeak or join a guild or for it to be instanced” and then it’s like … well how is this going to work then?

Astralporing.1957:

maha.7902:

Just as a reminder to everyone. When ANet added the mechanic to the champion wraith in the grenth temple which drained everything in an AOE and it had to be CC’d to stop it, literally every time without fail for weeks on end nobody would CC and there would be a massive wipe.

Well, besides the normal quality of average players, Anet did forget here that Defiant in bigger player groups makes interrupting on demand practically impossible.

It had the base defiant that bosses in dungeons have. I’m pretty sure 10% of a 60-man zerg can CC a boss with defiant on.

Just as a reminder to everyone. When ANet added the mechanic to the champion wraith in the grenth temple which drained everything in an AOE and it had to be CC’d to stop it, literally every time without fail for weeks on end nobody would CC and there would be a massive wipe.

If this is the audience we are dealing with, how can raids even have any chance of even having any sort of mechanic besides press 1 when people can’t even use a crowd control skill for an extremely clearly choreographed attack?

Swish.2463:

Fellow Mesmers I have a question.

Have we hit our maximum potential as a class?

and by that I mean..

Are there no new builds anymore and just rehashes of previous ones?

I don’t see a lot of creative tooling anymore when it comes to the Mesmer Profession, so much time spent working around bugs and worthless traits and weapons.. has it forced our hands early to figure out the best/weirdest ways to make the class playable?

If we’ve really hit the end of the road then what would open things back up the most for us?

Buffs to make us less reliant on traits?

Traits changed around / replaced / redone / etc..?

Bug fixes?

New utilities and elites?

Why do we even need there to be some extra variation in builds? Do Wizards try to create a new archetype separate to the aggro/midrange/control/combo when making new sets of cards for magic the gathering? Of course not, it’s tried, tested, it works. Just how with mesmer right now you have shatter, phantasm, PU and CI builds with their individual goals (some are better for team fights others just absolutely obliterate in 1v1, others are good at holding far point or whatever), there’s no need for change for no reason.

deSade.9437:

maha.7902:

deSade.9437:

dlonie.6547:

deSade.9437:

Have you guys ever licked a lamp in winter?

Just got to that part, I get this now.

He will be mine.

For the first time ever in an rpg, I made a female character just to do him.
Again.
And again.
And again.
/nohomo

Yeah, going back to my dark lonely thoughts now

yo don’t even feel bad he has quite the way with words, like asking women if they’re female or not :p

“Do you know what it is?”
“Your new weapon of choice?”
WASTED.

uguuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

i’m going to jelly just thinking about it

i was intent on taking the secret companion this next playthrough but now I feel bad

So where is the problem? Organised groups are melting bosses while less organised (as in, can’t demolish slave driver in ~6 seconds) groups have players that may feel the need to switch in defensive gear.

VodCom.6924:

EgonVenkman.1907:

That is a big part of the problem with zerker in general. Unless they use other universally annoying tactics for the mobs, Beserker stats just dominate overall. Anet goes for the 1-2 hit K.O. which invalidates the need for toughness or healing mechanics that could be used to support that gameplay. They pretty much wrote themselves into a corner when they decided beserker stats was a good idea.

I think many people miss the point on the berserker dominance “issue”.

Optimized groups DO have the trinity of damage/control/support. Control come in the form of projectile negation and bump, support comes in the form of aegis, protection and might. Players can perform these roles while wearing zerker/assassin.

Berserker is not bad because it deals the most damage. It is bad because under the current system it allows you to clear most bosses quickly enough to skip their entire fight mechanic.

The most overused example is how optimised groups can clear the spider queen in AC. Most of us PuG AC. In this context, the group usually range the spider and try to dodge its poison areas (you do not stand idle pressing 1 while doing this btw). While repetitive and boring, it does require you to know when to dodge and when to clean immobilize.
An optimised group usually kills the spider under 4 seconds, which prevent the boss to use any of its attacks (including poison area) basically neutering the encounter and making it uninteresting, since you are just repeating your rotation and the might stacking. And the only thing you do during almost every encounter in the kitten ed dungeon is repeat the sequence pre-stack -> rotation. This makes things boring very quickly.

Berzerker gear was intended to be the gear of the top 5% elite players because only these people are skilled enough to be viable with such fragility. Because of loopholes in encounter design, 90% of the people can carry berserker armour and be viable in dungeon. This is the true problem behind the berserker dominance. Berserker stat is not a problem in itself and removing it won’t change anything.

You said it yourself that organised groups are the ones that explode the spider while most AC pugs range it.

Organised groups are the minority in gw2.

Therefore it seems to me that it is actually the top 5% who are the ones stacking queen and it’s the 90% of pugs who are ranging.

deSade.9437:

dlonie.6547:

deSade.9437:

Have you guys ever licked a lamp in winter?

Just got to that part, I get this now.

He will be mine.

For the first time ever in an rpg, I made a female character just to do him.
Again.
And again.
And again.
/nohomo

Yeah, going back to my dark lonely thoughts now

yo don’t even feel bad he has quite the way with words, like asking women if they’re female or not :p

winterchillz.2564:

maha.7902:

a mechanic which simply makes people do less damage and nothing else is clearly what this game’s bosses need.

Correct me if I’m wrong, sir, but weren’t you one of the people vouching for the FGS nerf?

Gibbing bosses is stupid.

Making a 30 second fight last for say, 60 seconds for no reason is pointless.

A boss that dies in 5 seconds so as opposed to 30 seconds via “conventional” DPS however is something that needs fixing, which it was.

Yeah, just read “crit resistance” and ignore everything else in my post.

Well afterwards you just wrote “defensive adjustments” and mentioned lower HP.

How does lowering a mob’s HP but making it crit immune make a player want to experiment with different builds? Literally all it is is a damage throttle.

Of course, because everything up to such a boss (or after it, in case of fractals – wait, fractals are dungeons…right?) is best fought with the holy trinity, that is power, precision and ferocity.

Assume a dungeon is full of boss objects. Berserker users will be too lazy to switch to soldier, weaker players will just be able to go full soldier and be optimal which is atrocious and the game has done a good job of disallowing. It turns on-crit traits in to complete blanks so either the berserker users will again be too lazy to retrait (or not need to since they hit the damage modifiers anyway) or they’ll just shift the redundant traits in to another line for more DPS versus objects.

Clerigo.9475:

As the current set of available skills per class is rather short, and mechanics learning curve line is not step, i would say a difference between a skilled player and an average player in GW2 comes to factors like positioning and situational awareness.

Rotations are important, but not decisive.

Rotations are what helped me shave my Lupicus solo times down from 9:58 to 4:54, so I’d say they’re kind of relevant.

Ah yes, “crit resistance” because adding a mechanic which simply makes people do less damage and nothing else is clearly what this game’s bosses need.

Here’s an eye-opener – all bosses in this game which are objects are 100% crit resistant. Guess what builds are used for them? Yes, the DPS ones full of damage modifiers, and with (at least for the boss) redundant on-crit effects.

dlonie.6547:

I thought, “Wow, they really did start listening!”, but then looked closer.

10/10. Would read again.

skips lightheartedly back to DA:O, whistling a cheerful tune

I finished my dalish elf a little while ago and now I want to play my dwarf noble. I got too confident and died in the deep roads after being exiled (hurrrdurrr 4 mobs with overwhelm gg) though so I guess in-lore I never become a grey warden if I don’t continue the save :p

Kypriathe.4183:

Sword is usually better for trash and mobility through the dungeon but mace isn’t bad in damage. Sometimes I like to take it to boost survivability though you need to be wary of overwriting fire fields with your light field.

Sword is absolutely atrocious for trash since the final swing doesn’t cleave.

kyubi.3620:

Even then there should be variation within the dps builds in questions that would be a +

There are variations of DPS builds, you’re just purposely choosing to ignore them.

They promoted it on their facebook, twitter and on the official forums.

They also provided gems to both of the dungeon tournaments.

Harny.6012:

maha.7902:

From a PvE perspective, being able to maintain DPS rotations without breaking them too frequently is a big one. The best example is people calling warrior a faceroll class but then if I watch them play their rotations are complete garbage. Sure, playing a class badly is faceroll, but that applies to any class.

I’m maining a warrior, always trying to do my best to be as effective as possible, expecially with the DPS rotation. It makes a huge difference.
But the fact that most warriors aren’t capable of doing this doen’t make the class harder.
In fact, it just makes people camping GS 1 2 3 simply uncapable, lazy and lame players.
Whoever tells me warrior is a complete faceroll and super boring and them camps GS all the way just lost all the respect in my eyes.

Camping GS is fine in a solo context.

In groups you shouldn’t be doing extra axe chains for no reason or camping gs when your vulnerability axe skills are off cooldown.

Then there’s things like double dodging before fights to proc stick and move and generally just good cooldown management and things like not interrupting hundred blades because you’ve learned to time it.

I think the best way to learn how to perform rotations is soloing Brie – you can do it (though cutting it close) with warrior if you perform mostly clean rotations, but people who are just playing stupid won’t be able to. Some people can’t even duo it before being ported out.

pvp/pve/wvw

99.99999999999999% chance it’s just more 100-man open world events

Good reflexes, knowledge of their class, other classes and encounter mechanics.

Flexible with traits, weapons, armour and utilities – switching them whenever it would be more efficient to do so.

Knowing your limits – taking advantage of certain defenses if you either aren’t experienced enough to go about an encounter full DPS, whether this means using a more defensive weapon set or even adding a bit of toughness to your gear).

From a PvE perspective, being able to maintain DPS rotations without breaking them too frequently is a big one. The best example is people calling warrior a faceroll class but then if I watch them play their rotations are complete garbage. Sure, playing a class badly is faceroll, but that applies to any class.