Guild Wars 2

Well, ANets dungeon designer asked what is wrong with rangers and dungeons. So obviously ANet believes rangers are fine and needs no attention ;-)

So, for someone who loves running dungeons while leveling GW2 is not the right game then? Also for someone who just started GW2 it’s not easy to properly gear his char properly due to lack of crafting skills or gold (meaning buying the level 30 yellow gear just for the sake of running dungeons).

Long story short: GW2 and its community is only for hardcore and elitist gamers. Newbies unwanted.

Hopefully the elitsist invest enough money to keep the game going

Looking back at GW1 – they never really fixed bows there. From a PvP perspective I do understand that there are some issues.

But it was ANet who introduced Fractals. Yet only 3 of 8 classes are currently considered as viable. I am so sick of reading all those LFG zerker warrior messages.

However I do feel that many of the problems in PvE are not due to class mechanics. Is’s more about encounter design and AI.

I have to say that Blizzard does a much better job here, imho. There are a tons of discussion about encounter design with regards to class mechanics. Some bosses are better for melees, some are better for ranged. So everyone gets his chance.

If only 3 classes are viable for fractals then this means that the dungeon design is just bad. Bad, because is doesn’t respect various class mechanics.

Bust Nak, you don’t have to track each bleed of each player. You can do some math to precalulate the remaining damage. Think more of damage objects per player.

Kenshinakh, I fully agree with you and I like your idea. Actually I came up with an idea similar to yours.

If ANet really tracks each bleed of each player on each mob then no wonder they cannot handle large groups. It might work in a 1vs1 situation very well because it gives precise data. But it collapses in large group settings.

As so very often with performance: you have to make sacrifices

Ayestes.1273:

It’s not a player or monster issue. It’s a technical issue. If there is no cap on 20 people shooting direct damage on a player per second, it makes no sense there would be a cap on 20 people shooting condition damage on a player per second.

It does make sense from a technical PoV. Because DoTs require a different “tracking” system. Even if the player isn’t doing anything at the moment one of his DoTs might still be working. And you have to sent update events to all clients so that this nice tiny number gets updated

Uhm, as someone else said: A single necro can deal up to 3k DPS as a conditionmancer. A zerker warrior, however, can put out up to 6k DPS.

If you stack up to 5 necros shouldn’t there be 5 * 3k = 15k DPS? Because if you stack up to 5 zerker warriors you WILL get 5 * 6k = 30k DPS.

As others said, direct damage currently scales indefinitely. Conditions do not.

Yet I do get your point. If you could ramp up your condition stack indefinitely this would be a problem. But not if you cap each player’s stack at the right point. ANet would have to figure out how much max DPS they would allow for a condition.

Andrige.5609:

It’s more a matter of flawed design. The idea is good though, but the amount of data it sends is just too much. Seems to be a case where a game designer wasn’t aware of the technical limitation and saw the appeal of gradually building up damage over time so you’re never punished for using the same bleed skill more than once. And it also gave the developers really fine control over bleed-skills (internal timer with varying durations, bleed strength by stacks).

This. It’s pretty much over-engineered. Yes it would be cool to be able to track the data at this kind of granularity. But with a large group of players and its huge amount of debuffs flying around you simply put up too much load.

If they really track each debuff stack of each player on each mob – then they cannot simply increase the cap because it would put way too much load on the system for sure.

nethykins.7986:

woeye.2753:

Because in other games debuffs often do not stack! As simple as that.

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in order to get maximum performance. Sure it would be nice to be able to track each bleed stack by each player. But this puts a big load on the system.

A more pragmatic solution would be to have one bleed (object) for each player on a mob as I described somewhere else.

Actually, Looking at the GW2 wiki, only 3 conditions stack in intensity.

But I know in other MMO’s you’re able to stack DoT’s upon DoT’s, of different types and stacks. They may not all be "debuffs"** but they serve the same function.

**Though, GW2’s conditions are not all debuffs…of Vulnerability, weakness, blind, freeze, and blind, only vulnerability stacks in intensity

The thing is, though, in other games debuffs stack per player, not per type!

Taking WoW for example: a priest casts Shadow Word: Pain and a warlock Corruption. Both spells a very similar, doing the same job. Both are tracked on the mob.
If another priest casts Shadow Word: Pain you get a third debuff on the mob.

This way debuffs cannot interfere with each other (priest B does not overwrite the debuff or priest A).

That is a very good question, iriyabran. Maybe to comfort the WoW or CoD crowd? I don’t know. Then again players always complained about the crazy burst some classes could dish out. However, when it comes to burst damage, GW2 sets a new record here

Heck, you could even use some kind of a “damage structure/object” per player. Whenever a player adds another debuff to the mob you can recalculate how much damage the mob is going to take in the next n seconds, given the remaining damage the new incoming damage.

Because in other games debuffs often do not stack! As simple as that.

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in order to get maximum performance. Sure it would be nice to be able to track each bleed stack by each player. But this puts a big load on the system.

A more pragmatic solution would be to have one bleed (object) for each player on a mob as I described somewhere else.

I really wonder how their internal structure looks like? In the most basic form it would be something like an simple array that could hold up to 25 bleed objects. Each bleed object might contain data such as the player ID, the damage and the remaining time. This solution would starve very quickly, though.

A better approach might be one bleed object per player. Whenever a player re-applies a bleed the damage of the bleed object gets increased and the timer resets. For example, initially you had [{id: 1234, dmg: 125, time: 10}] and afterwards: [{id: 1234, dmg: 250, time: 10}].

The problem is, though, this wouldn’t be entirely correct. Because it doesn’t honor the fact that each stack of bleeds has its own timer and that there are actually only certain “windows” where the damage of both stacks would add up.

Even though I cannot speak for ANet or NCSoft management I know what is like to be in a software development team. Trying to “sell” tuning, bugfixing or even “refactoring” (rewriting code based on lessons learned) to managers is a daunting task. Managers want to see new shiny features which they can sell. Bugfixes on the other hand are hard to sell from a marketing PoV.

Xsorus.2507:

I’d be happy if you’d let some of my conditions work on Objects, like Burning for Example….I can understand bleed/poisoning..but if hitting something wooden, I’d think my Burn would do damage.

But it is a magical burn that only works on living things, you know :o)

StevesDad.8213:

How do other MMOs deal with this?

In WoW each class has its own unique DoT (damage over time) spells. This way the DoT spell of one class do not interfere with DoT spell of another class. For example even if both the priest’s Shadow Word: Pain and the warlock’s Corruption spells work very similar they both have their own ID and are tracked separately.

Also in WoW DoTs rarely stack. Most DoTs work like poision or burning. Applying a DoTs in WoW typically resets the timer. And in many cases a DoT consist of an initial direct damage component and the damage over time component, like 100 initial damage followed by 400 damage over 10 seconds.

Since DoTs do rarely stack in WoW multiple players of the same class can “stack” the same DoT on a mob, e.g. ten priests can put up to ten Shadow Word: Pain DoTs on a mob.

With their technical limits in place it would have made much more sense if all classes were focused on direct damage abilities (power based) with conditions as an bonus. I really don’t get it how they could come up with necros and condition based builds/abilities for rangers/engis/thiefs.

Game Designer: Man, condition based builds for every class would be aweseome. Adds a lot of variety to the game. Which is good selling point.

Engineer: Well, there’s a problem …

Game Designer: Bah, you guys will fix it. It’s your job.

Players like to work on something. But this doesn’t necessarily mean they want gear treadmills. It’s just a very easy and cheap system to keep players busy.

This makes me really sad. I really enjoyed my Necro. Now it’s pretty obvious that is a dead end.

Rerolling warrior? No thanks.

They should post a new player warning at the character creation screen: If you want to participate in PvE please choose on of the following three classes …

Khisanth.2948:

runeblade.7514:

Then there are elementalists.

Use water attunement -> heal teammates -> Remove conditions -> Save teammates.

Water Elementalists feels too much like a healer.

Well there is an obvious problem with that. You have AT LEAST 15 other skills, why aren’t you using any of them?

Min/max?

Distaste.4801:

It also illustrates incredibly poor design when a major build cannot be used for all content in the game. That is what makes the difference between a good design and a bad one. If they knew they were limited on stacks then they should have made conditions more powerful but harder to stack. Perhaps not putting bleeds, poisons, and burns on every other attack would have been the far better option. Making certain attacks apply a condition almost sounds like a good trait for say a condition based trait line…

Agreed. One would assume that if you developed a mechanic like stacking conditions that you would consult the backend team whether or not this is possible. It somehow feels as if the left hand doesn’t know that the right hand is doing.

Since we won’t see a solution from ANet as it appears … are we really left with only 3 of 8 classes viable for (high-end) PvE?

Play the game the way you want – if you play the right class

Miomooki.3812:

I don’t miss “LFG MONKS” hulabaloo at all.

LFG warrior.

Theftwind.8976:

There are other things to each class besides dps. if the class is unbalanced it is those things that should be strengthened not the damage output.

Good point. But it seems that in PvE only DPS is what matters.

Blizzard tried to bring back utility and CC in Cataclysm. In the end they failed because after a while players where still zerging down mobs with raw DPS.

The idea of utility is nice. But in PvE it rarely works. In PvE maximizing DPS is always the best way to quick success. Unless some developer studio finds a better way ;-)

knyy.6427:

a ranger with a bow should NOT do the same damage as a warrior in melee, as simple.

melee damage >> range damage

i dont know how much damage a ranger does with his melee attacks? that can be buffed maybe.

Only if you factor in “uptime”. If staying in melee had shorter uptime then it would be fine. Because the total damage done over a period of time should be nearly the same.

The condition system isn’t poorly designed. On paper. But in reality it doesn’t work. Because it doesn’t respect technical contraints.

Being in the software industry myself for more than a decade I know this problem fairly well. Designers designing incredible stuff without taking technical contraints into consideration in order to fully unleash their creative power. Which isn’t a bad thing unless there’s someone at some point bringing both teams to the table so that compromisses can be made.

Looking at the current conditions system and its limitations it cannot be denied that it does not work, as simple as that. If the stacking of conditions and their monitoring produces too much load the only solution seems to get rid of the “stacking” and turn it into a single debuff per player. This way up to 25 players can place a condition onto one mob.

Of course this would lead to a complete overhaul of many condition skills. Something ANet will probably never do due to their limited resources.

mulch.2586:

I’m playing less, but not because of gear or anything like that.

Last night we got on Planetside 2 and had a blast. I don’t like my guild there as much as my GW2/Rift guild, but the game is really good. Blowing things up, advancing my character, huge battles. I wish I liked shooters more, but for big open-world 3-faction combat, it’s unmatched.
…

I wish there were something like PS2 that’s set in more of a GW type setting. Hopefully someday.

Pretty much the same for me. This Ascended Gear just reminds me way too much of WoW. What I really like about PS2’s progression is that it focuses on your characters specialization, much like EvE. I like this kind of progression so much more than artificial level barriers. But yeah, I admit, for me it’s more about technique and skill, and not so much about collecting stuff. Maybe traditional MMORPGs aren’t my kind of thing.

Then again I really enjoyed GW1 a lot …

Mackdose.6504:

I didn’t have a specific set of skills, I was barred from content in GW1 by players. Just because there wasn’t a gear gate doesn’t mean there wasn’t a gate at all.

But at least it wasn’t very difficult to get those popular skills. Getting elite skills was actually fun, imho.

I am really so sad. And I think I will finally give up on MMORPGs. The let-down of Anet is too much

If I play GW2 I mostly play WvW. I never really got in sPvP. One of the reasons might be that I do not have enough friends playing GW2 PvP. And as a random playing sPvP is a nightmare for reasons mentioned above.

On top of this I feel that GW2’s current state of PvP balancing is not that great. Either you go bunker or you go glass canon pew pew. Especially in WvW people are dying so quickly it’s not fun at all. It feels like an FPS game where everyone runs around with a shotgun or a sniper gun, lol. However! In a FPS game I can shoot back. In GW2 only if you’re playing the right class …

And speaking of FPS games: I currently participate in the Planetside 2 beta. I am really sorry, but PS2 is so much more fun (at least for me). Mind you, PS2 has lots of issues right now. But the fun factor is great already. And, sorry again, PS2 doesn’t suffer from those nasty culling issues. I really wonder how they do this …

Sprawl.3891:

good bleed thieves are scarier than PW/HS thieves anyways

But it’s much harder to play it this way. It’s way more easier to burst someone down without letting him fight back. Like snipers in FPS games

Warriors? No. Quickness? Yes!

I feel the real problem is this min/max attitude. Maybe it wasn’t ANets intention that players choose between either 100% condition and 0% power or vice versa.

The community, however, is 100% sure that power sucks hard for necromancers and therefore maximizing condition damage at the cost of power is a must. What you end up with, though, is lots of kittened abilities.

Personally I wish there was a game where a hybrid approach would work. But I guess this will never happen. Min/max is the biggest enemy of variation

Haters will always hate. There’s no point. It’s ok. Go play your FoTM classes and be happy. No point in wasting any word here, really. Yes, the necro has issues. Everyone knows it and by god it has been posted fairly often enough. But please, can you stop bashing. Enough is enough, seriously. Some guys are so close-minded it’s freaking annyoing. But this was to be expected. GW1 was full of egomaniacs and elitism, why not GW2, too.

Go on guys, go on. In the end you’re the ones ruining a game. And when everyone iskitten of and the game is dead thanks to your elitism you simple move on to the next game. Just like locusts.

Sorry, Tony, but these guys really make me nuts

Yeah, thanks ANet! Having a great time. Things I love:

• Incredibly awesome artwork
• Traveling around and exploring
• All those little details, like some funny dialogs between NPCs
• Charr FTW!
• Music – Especially the underwater one
• I don’t feel the need to rush. I take my time, travel through the world and help out when there’s need for it

The difference between the classes in GW2 is really significant imho. Playing my ranger with a shortbow can be super boring. It only gets interesting if either I pull more mobs at once or if the mob ignores my pet and instead goes for me.

For me it’s more fun to play my condition thief. Since he’s very squishy he can die easily. Even more if I pull more than one mob. But if you use your mechanics properly it’s perfectly doable. However, if you make a mistake your dead. Which is cool imho.

Thanks a lot for this guide! With all the discouraging comments about how weak necros are I stopped leveling my little necro. Which made me very sad for the necro is the only profession which I truly love.

Do have any videos online? I’d love to see you in action!