Guild Wars 2

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

Im all for having a condi geared person being optimal for some encounters. Because that doesnt force people to build passive defence or certain ways to succeed.

But lets be honest. If we have diversity between berserker and sinister. People are still going to complain that there is no diversity because the optimal is still all glass. Which is how it should be. If you sacrifice damage for defence then you should be slower at killing things. Therefore you should be slower at the combat encounters.

The solution to that honestly is raw difficulty.

Again, huge tradeoffs, especially with CS and engagement, but it should be

“If you’re good enough do pure DPS builds, if you need extra margin of error add defensive stats”.

I believe that’s the concept they started with, but it kind of slid off with the difficulty curve (my pet theory is that it partially links to meta pusher too. People consistently being told they can’t group or are bad for not being zerk end up trying to run it when not ready and getting blown up > leads to complaints, but that’s theory). That’s where cultural manipulation would have to come in, and that problem might be insoluable.

Exactly. It doesnt change the optimal way to do things. So we will still get people complaining.

And the problem with just making things more difficult is that hurts casual players more than it hurts the average player that runs meta builds. You have to be careful with how far you go.

Im glad they have always believed in this approach and that they are finally trying to make it work. Its what ive always suggested when it comes to these threads.

Its focused around dungeons. But it works perfectly in open world. Because in truth the idea behind the build is important for any part of PvE. Do damage. :P

@Tigirius
Its already like that. Just not obvious to the average player. And tends to be only relevant in the higher tiers of PvE.

Im all for having a condi geared person being optimal for some encounters. Because that doesnt force people to build passive defence or certain ways to succeed.

But lets be honest. If we have diversity between berserker and sinister. People are still going to complain that there is no diversity because the optimal is still all glass. Which is how it should be. If you sacrifice damage for defence then you should be slower at killing things. Therefore you should be slower at the combat encounters.

People only demand zerk because its easier than listing every weapon/trait/utility each class should be using. And those groups want efficient runs. Which means they should be using the optimal builds with optimal gear. The shorthand for that just happens to be zerk in most cases despite assassin actually being better for a lot of classes. Personally i would prefer to use the term optimal builds or meta builds in my LFG’s. And heres the thing. I would rather take a knights/soldiers wearing player using a meta build and weapons than a zerk using player taking useless utilities and weapons when i advertise for efficient runs.

Its completely unrelated to diversity. You cant have multiple optimals for the same encounter without devalueing player choice (hidden arcana instance) or creating time gates so no matter how you approach the encounter it will always take the same amount of time. Encounters where what your build brings doesnt matter are just bad design.

The gear isnt relevant to the discussion. Its perfectly balanced with other types of gear. People like to be efficient so they demand efficient gear. Also content is too easy so people gravitate to efficient runs more easily. When encounters get harder a few people will stop asking for zerker. The majority will probably just try to adapt and learn to improve. But the problem wont go anywhere. If you can even call it a problem.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

Focus of the last few pages has been on playstyle rather than on gear. Gear is relevant insofar as your stat emphasis effects your play style.

That’s the thing, it really doesn’t, not nearly as much as your traits/utility/weapon choices.

Your gear = base stats, your stats simply empower your trait/weapon/utility choices but won’t change the way you play beyond deciding whether or not you have to dodge an attack or if you can take it on the chin and be fine.

I just can’t go along with that man. If for instance your skills and traits are centered towards generating conditions and condition damage and you have no gear and only base +300 from your trait line, you are going to suck. A fire/staff ele in Nomads gear is going to be terrible because he doesn’t have stats to support any damage output

Some traits and abilities are essentially stat agnostic, that is true, and some take only minor effect from stats. Your overall playstyle is heavily stat-dependent, however..

Aye, no doubt you’d suck, but the point is the play style hasn’t changed. If you choose traits/utililties/weapons for condi you’ll be stacking a lot of condi.

Your Play style is defined by mainly those 3 things. Your gear simply aids in those choices actually being effective.

I’m wracking my brain trying to think of a situation where I’d go with a weapon and use it differently depending on my stats. I’m falling short of even one example right now though. Using different weapons for condi or direct damage, yes easy lots of situations. But one where my skill use choices vary depending on my stats alone, i can’t think of anything.

Tanking.

Lily.1935:

spoj.9672:

You also have to remember the imbued greatsword is not really class specific. It is simply story specific to Marjory. There is no evidence that we will imbue weapons with spirits. I took it as a purely story related piece of lore. Its just a coincidence in my opinion.

The greatsword was less of a focus in this one. But Marjory’s detective history where she uses her necromancy to call spirits. You should really read her lore, or if you’re lazy like me, watch woodenpotatoe’s video about her.

Yeah ive read it. I just dont believe we will be seeing weapon embueing. Id say even if we did somehow get ritualists as the spec i dont think we would get anything like that. But im pretty much predicting ritualist will be revenant spec.

@Windsagio
Well thats false. Because even though you may fell like “you are going to suck”. The build works in exactly the same way. You just do less damage/healing etc. Its unchanged apart from efficiency.

A condi necro using soldiers is still a condi necro. It just does really bad damage. To the point where its so inefficient it doesnt make sense to use that mismatched gear. But its still the same build and has the exact same playstyle.

Anyway anet has stated they are going in the direction of traits/utilities/weapon diversity for HoT. So its a rather pointless discussion. Atleast until we see how well they pull it off.

wauwi.9162:

RoseofGilead.8907:

That second video was from back when you could reflect her massive attack onto her (like what people do now with WoR and Lupi).

Yeah, i’ve learned the hard way, that it doesn’t work anymore.
Mesmer’s iWarden (non-traited) still seem to be able to absorb her AoE tho.

They fixed that. iWarden no longer absorbs unblockable projectiles.

He hates everything. I guarantee if i asked him to choose the music for a video he would still mute it.

It has begun.

Well we wont know the exact coefficient unless we know the weapon strength. Might be able to work out an estimate weapon strength by comparing the coefficients from the other Lich form skills. Or we can just assume its 1000, although that wouldnt be accurate.

Also something else i noticed which is interesting. Normally while in Lich form it does not update your critical chance even though we know it is increased in Lich form. However if you are using food, have fury or any buff which boosts crit chance beyond what your gear gives you. Then it correctly displays your critical chance on the hero panel.

So basically in my full assassins set with no food/buffs i have 61% crit chance. It displays as 61% while in Lich. If i gain fury it goes up to 125% and then back to 61% when i lose fury. If i use some food then its at 65% and when entering Lich it goes up to 109% and displays correctly. And if ive got both fury and food it goes up to 129% and then back to 109% when i run out of fury.

Basically you need some kind of buff which makes the number turn green on the hero panel for it to display correctly in Lich form (updated the wiki to show this). Would love it if anet properly fixed the hero panel to be honest. :>

Also something interesting i just noticed. When entering lich form it seems to only use your stats from the set you have equipped. So if you are using the dagger, focus/warhorn setup. And you enter Lich form while on your focus set (no mainhand because dagger and warhorn are on set 1). You will lose 94 power (ascended berserker). Whereas outside of Lich form it properly uses the power from the mainhand regardless of what weapon set you have in use.

Also lich form uses a fixed value for weapon strength. Using a staff does not increase your lich form damage over using d+f or d+w. Because of this we have no way of working out what the damage coefficient or weapon strength is. But we can use the combat log to work out an estimate of a new constant (weapon strength * coefficient) assuming we know the targets exact armour value.

I havent tested it either. But im under the assumption that since Lich now just has higher damage coefficients on the skills it no longer has scaling issues and works better under group buffs.

Anyway the more accurate test would be to compare lich to dagger wh/focus rotation. Pure dagger auto is not supposed to be amazing.

I dont know about the rest of you. But a game which creates diversity through traits, weapons and utilities sounds better than a game which creates diversity in just gear stats.

You also have to remember the imbued greatsword is not really class specific. It is simply story specific to Marjory. There is no evidence that we will imbue weapons with spirits. I took it as a purely story related piece of lore. Its just a coincidence in my opinion.

Recipes drop from a key boss in each path. It just so happens that most of the time it is the last boss. For TA its leurent and Fyonna. I suppose you could consider them last bosses.

I dont expect one. I expect an aoe pull/immob instead.

Thats not even group stability. Its stab to make the stunbreak work correctly.

Bragging about fractal 50 clear times.

I dont see how thats relevant. He said it was a tanky weapon. I said it wasnt so black and white.

Besides this is PvE were talking about. Mobs arent going to dodge your CC and most wont move out of the symbols either. Everyone melees in PvE. The only fights where the boss moves out of symbols a lot is mossman and archdiviner. However with a hammer guard the group can stay closer more so they move less. And the hammer symbols should be traited to allow plenty of space while staying within their radius.

This is getting out of hand.

Can i just say that anet have failed with necro meeting its design philosophy. They have always said its an attrition based class. But every part of its design is the opposite of attrition.

I dont believe when the game was first released and noone had any clue about builds or how to play properly is a valid comparison. ;P

My thoughts exactly. He understood what challenging content means. And he mentioned he wants to see groups fail repeatedly to work it out. The way it sounded didnt seem like it was something they consider to be open world.

Oh noes! Im picking at tiny details of every interview and article! I must be an inferior human being. /s

http://youtu.be/xUjrrc5aj2k?t=26m38s

Interesting. Sounds a lot more encouraging when they dont purposely avoid the question.

Yes guardian hammer is very defensive. But it is also very high damage. Its not far below greatsword sword focus rotation. Which is why its so popular for fractals. Its very high damage and provides the group with so much safety its pretty broken. I always cringe when people think of weapons as being so stuck in one role. Because its simply not the case most of the time. Even necros scepter can be used as a direct damage weapon. Although thats one of the only cases where it doesnt work out too well.

Yeah well im kind of ignoring offhands as they dont have an auto attack. :P

Theres no such thing is a tanky weapon. All weapons deal damage. And you can craft them with any stat combo you like. Even more defensive weapon sets can still be decent for damage (guardian mace).

And its news to me that dps weapons cant have control skills on them.

As much as it would be cool to see a mark on greatsword. They dont work against stationary bosses or objects. Which makes them kind of sucky. Id like small wells more than marks.

Although if you mean mark of pain in gw1 format. Then yes why not! Although skill 5’s on two handers are typically control type high cooldown skills.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Anchoku.8142:

Here are a few more speculative thoughts:

1. GS auto attack probably hits hard but slow and has cleave. Should be roughly equal to staff’s AA but trades piercing for cleave

If Marjory uses the skills we’ll be getting, the auto-chain is actually rather fast, taking 2.2 seconds to entirely cycle. Dagger auto takes 2.1 seconds, for reference.

Her chain also applies a chill on the last AA which has about 50% uptime untraited.

3rd hit of 4, actually.

Its probably only 3 hits. Its a very similar animation to rangers greatsword auto. I admit the spin does make it look like it double hits. But i doubt it actually will. Ofcourse it would be cool if it is the first 4 hit greatsword auto though.

Why not just make a trait which rewards you for not getting hit in the first place. Much like the guardians unscathed contender. Those i prefer because theres a double effect of being skilled enough not to lose the bonus and then theres also the possibility of synergy with scholar runes. Being rewarded for not getting hit and staying above 90% hp.

I just dont like those traits which reward you when you start losing. I understand theres some merit to them to give the player the opportunity to turn the tide. But even so i think they devalue skillful comebacks in PvP. And those traits are just plain bad in PvE.

Would rather not see more traits which reward you for bad play.

Other options are already viable. I seriously dont understand why people have a problem with this. Please explain to me what is wrong with a system where everything works.

The reason we cant have a decent discussion is because there is a major failing in understanding of the other side.

If you are argueing to make other methods socially acceptible. Then fair enough. But theres no discussion to be had there. Because thats a people problem and unrelated to the system. You also cant fix people. This thread is about changing the system not the people. So i believe you are in the wrong thread.

Its one thing to be biased towards one side. Its another to completely misunderstand the other side….

I would not be surprised if teleports worked differently in the new PvE zones. Simply because of gliding. Which suggests the maps are designed to be much harder to do map break outs. So blink abuse probably wont be an issue in those zones. But everywhere else we will probably still see the same problems.

Its lower damage but its still considerable burst. Signet of Spite is better for dagger build. WoC is better for DS build. Its that simple.

Well of Corruption does damage. Honestly surprised that people still forget this.

Bhawb.7408:

Note: we don’t even know that a weapon is being taken away. The only thing we know is that there will be some reason to want to play the base profession over the main one, which could just be because old traits will be taken away, or because you don’t want the changed profession mechanic. So just note that all this speculation about which weapon we’d lose is possible to be useless. Especially when you think about say Engineer or Elementalist, who arguably can barely even afford to lose weapons.

Also true. Weapons are probably the one thing they dont need to sacrifice when specing. Simply because a class cannot use all weapons at the same time anyway.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

spoj.9672:

Also if people really want other gear stats to be optimal. Instead of just spewing reason. Why dont they give examples of how it can be done without causing forced gear changes and making it impossible for some compositions to work? Im sure anet would love to hear them. I would to. Because i certainly cant think of anything that would satisfy both sides.

Kind of what I’ve been doing. There are some things that could be done to create new optimal compositions and builds without making it impossible on anyone. Spread out, ranged enemies in an appropriately designed area negate the “pull in for stack & smack” strategy, but in no way make it impossible for any given composition to complete. However, the need to deal with pressure as you take them all on may alter things a fair bit. Reflects aren’t a be-all-end-all on this, since there are a number of non-projectile ranged attacks in the game and, if reflects were expected to make an encounter trivial, those could be used instead.

Enemies that have high armor and low health pools will have optimal group comps using condition builds (and thus gear), which are currently entirely absent from the dungeon meta. Again, not forcing anything, but the optimal route is different than what we currently have.

NPC escorts, if done well, could emphasize any number of different strategies, depending on how it was set up. The one thing I would have to request, if this were done, though, is that the NPC never stops moving along his path in order to prevent backtracking and getting caught on terrain to bug out. Trying to protect a dolyak in WvW from enemy players can be quite challenging, and it could be fun to see something similar in a dungeon.

Another method (and by far my least favorite) is to have uncrittable foes. I don’t like this one at all, but it would work without forcing anything. Would hate to see ANet implement this when there are vastly superior ideas, though.

All of these suggestions are fine except for the last one. Negating an entire gearset is poor design.

However these suggestions do not make other gear stats optimal. The optimal way would still be with your glass gear assuming you arent forcing roles. The optimal way would be to utilise support and traits to do the same role without building defensive stats etc. The only exception is the condi suggestion. However due to the way conditions work you would only want one condi user so only one person might switch gear. But its still a damage role where glass is best.

Obviously these suggestions might encourage some players to use different stat combos. But the optimal method would be unlikely to change. Because after all if its possible on any gear stat then it stands to reason that the highest DPS set is best assuming you dont lose time (really dont see how you would lose time unless you fail). It might just be harder. If the events are completely timegated then there is no optimal way because all successful methods yield the exact same result. Time gates are considered poor design and very unpopular with most players (AC p3 burrows event).

The only way i can see a way to make a non DPS set optimal in a certain situation is to create an event where you have to heal an NPC. The faster you do it the faster you complete the event. But lets be honest thats a pretty boring encounter to implement.

tl;dr
So you might create variations to what is optimal for individual encounters in terms of weapons, utilities and traits. But its unlikely to be the gear that changes.

Fortunately anet seems to understand this and is going in this direction for HoT as far as i can tell. I mean it would be pretty terrible of anet to claim “we dont want to invalidate your stuff” and then go ahead and invalidate our ascended gear through forced roles which require gearstat changes.

Think of the wheel of fortune as a compromise. Its not a perfect system for those of us who hate RNG. But its better than what we have currently.

And it prevents people always farming the path of least resistance. Without forcing the devs to scale rewards per fractal shard. Which even if they try to do it will never be perfect.

They can comfortably take scepter or axe because if you take one you still have the other. Yes i understand one is condi focused and one isnt. But thats not as important. Whats important is that they are both ranged 1 handed options. And i suspect the specialisation will be sacrifising condi dmg stuff in favour of control and support. So my guess is scepter or staff going.

Well then you obviously dont understand what people are saying. We are not argueing against improvements to complexity. We are argueing against the need for alternative gear stats to become optimal. Because doing that creates barriers for entry. It doesnt make sense to ask for that. Making us change traits, utilities and weapons and encouraging (not forcing) us to use defensive stats is fine. A forced approach is a bad idea and it goes against anets philosophies. I really dont understand why people dont understand this.

Also if people really want other gear stats to be optimal. Instead of just spewing reason. Why dont they give examples of how it can be done without causing forced gear changes and making it impossible for some compositions to work? Im sure anet would love to hear them. I would to. Because i certainly cant think of anything that would satisfy both sides.

The way blinks and wurm work is as follows. When casting the blink. It checks if there is any possible pathing route to teleport there regardless of range. If there is then it checks the direct straight line distance between you and that spot. If it is within range then it works. If it is out of range then it will bug or teleport you part way. If there is no direct pathing route found it will also bug. Removing the teleport range will just allow you to blink greater distances. But it wont fix the issue if the blink was going to bug on terrain anyway.

I do think the teleport range should be removed. But the only way to solve the bugged terrain issue is to make it work like shadowtrap or portal. Place it under your feet and teleport regardless of terrain.

I think you are misunderstanding. Ill just describe the exact system i picture.

Whenever you start a fractal or go to the next map. A vote comes up. It could be between 2 or 3 maps. Each map already has one vote applied to it so there is always a chance for them to be rolled regardless of what the group votes for. To add. There would be no tiers for maps apart from boss fractals being separate. So you could end up having underwater on the last roll.

This system means that every map will get played at least some of the time. Currently underwater is completely avoided without fail. Obviously people would probably still roll for swamp at the start. Thats unavoidable. But with this system theres atleast a semi vote in place and all maps will get played.

Yeah I was going to add that suggestion but i forgot to mention it in my initial post. If the PvP vote system is implemented and it automatically applies 1 vote to each map. So even if the whole group votes for a single map there is still a small chance for one of the others. There are so many possible iterations that the devs could do with the vote system to improve things without making it completely abusable.

It seems like such a waste to develop one of the best vote systems ive seen in a game and not use it for another gametype that could benefit immensely from it. Id really love to see it used.

I personally feel that fractals should not be tiered. I liked the old system better. And if they arent tiered then the PvP vote system also makes more sense. Also they could make the vote between two maps instead of three. Theres plenty of ways to keep a lot of RNG while still giving players a little more control.

Signet of spite doesnt work in DS.

ODB.6891:

I was under the impression that necromancers were not getting the GS….the specialization class that splits off from necromancers are getting the GS. The information given was that the specialization would lose somethings to get somethings. Similar to rangers and druids. I’m assuming maybe dagger is one of the things the specialization class gives up to get the GS?

Yes the specialisation is getting the greatsword. Forgive us for calling it necro. Seeing as we dont know the name of the spec and we know that specs will still mostly be their base class.

Like i said before. Losing the dagger for GS would totally kill the classes viability in PvE. We would lose our ability to proc energy sigils without totally tanking our DPS. If something like that happens i may be tempted to delete my necro for that reason aswell.

Think of it this way. Currently we have 3 melee sets because we have 3 different offhands. If we suddenly lose our dagger to get a two handed melee weapon. We suddenly only have one melee option. That kills a lot of choice for the class. It prevents swap sigil procs while staying on melee weapons. No other class has only one melee set. The game is heavily melee focused. If anet are interested in helping the necro in PvE they wont remove the dagger mainhand. Id be seriously kittened off if they do something that stupid though.

I will delete my necro if greatsword auto turns out to be ranged.

To say a volunteer cannot have an opinion is absurd. Id understand if he was actually being paid by arenanet. But hes not and hes not a moderator or a spokesperson for arenanet. Hes a spokesperson for us. Having an opinion is very important to understanding us correctly. If our specialist was completely neutral i would worry about the validity of the feedback he is giving.