SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
I thought the big brouhaha was that trash mobs weren't trash and they could get you killed just as easily as the boss. I played Ascalonian Catacombs for the first time Saturday and that was definitely the case. As for really big health bars, it felt to me like the bosses took about as long to bring down as bosses in the overworld. I didn't get bored waiting for the boss to die.
- Poor to no explanation of anything which promotes reading about the fight on the wiki to learn the approved strategy
I'm going to have to disagree on this one, big time. You can read the boss/mob abilities right under their health bar, as well as the dungeon quest giving you hints. It's not tremendously difficult to figure out how the encounter is supposed to work from there. I still haven't "looked up" a single encounter and I think the one boss that gave us the most difficulty was the last one in TA story, and that was only took ~3 strategies to figure out how it worked.
There are a lot of fights that have interesting mechanics, but are trivial to beat because the numbers are too low to be a threat if you screw up.
Equally, there are a number of fights that have boring mechanics, but are difficult to beat because the numbers are too high, and if you screw up once you're likely going to be dead very quickly.
There are fights which specifically screw over certain specs, while being utterly trivial to others.
In my book, these are generally indications that fights are poorly tuned.
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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eeSanGI slice like a goddamn hammer.Registered Userregular
edited September 2012
After many pugged runs of Explorer Twilight Arbor, I finally have my chest piece!
Ran both Up, Up and Forward, Up. Now to farm 20g for the T3 Cultural Shoulders.
Does Thief ever become less shreddable in PvE? I realize there needs to be some differentiation between cloth/leather/plate wearers (or does there?), but the fact that my warrior can wade hip-deep in enemies and walk out nigh-unscathed whereas my thief gets crushed if anything looks at him funny is a bit irritating. There's a huge survivability gulf between those two classes at least and I'd hope there are efforts being made to bring them closer to parity.
A Pistol offhand makes Thieves unkillable by most trash in most dungeons. You just have to avoid mobs with space targeted AoE and greatswords. And Dredge, oh god the Dredge.
eeSanG on
Slice like a god damn hammer. LoL: Rafflesia / BNet: Talonflame#11979
I haven't found a boss yet in a dungeon that had a health pool that felt high to me. Of course the bosses and regular enemies have punishing abilities. It's literally the only way to challenge a group where there's no trinity. It's basically an action game where you have to figure out which attacks to use your dodges on while making the best of your ability to kill things. Lots of trash? None of the dungeons feel like they have much at all to me. Besides, it's not "trash between bosses," because many of the regular enemies have deadly abilities too. They were called trash mobs in wow because you could afk through them and they were just there between bosses. In GW2 you can wipe on them easily if your group isn't paying attention.
You complain that the game doesn't explain how bosses work to you which promotes reading a wiki? IMO it promotes seeing the fight for yourself and figuring it out on the fly, which makes the first time you see a new boss a hell of a lot more fun than if the game just pasted the wiki entry into an in game text message to let you know. Also, every boss has text under their health bar that describes things about them. It's been good enough for me.
To me, the dungeons in GW2 are more like what I expected the whole game to be like. They're basically a primer for pvp, where you have to learn how to stun breaker, use CC, use abilities that aren't all focused on doing max dps, etc.
As I said before, if anything should be done to make the dungeons "better," it should be that like skill point challenge enemies can down you in one hit if you miss their easily telegraphed attacks, or use conditions that will down you if you don't learn condition removal, etc. At least that way all these people getting in to dungeons would have some idea what they're actually in for, because the rest of the pve content in GW2 is just absolutely cannot fail. I mean, it's almost impossible to even get downed while you're out just doing hearts and what not.
Maybe veterans and stuff were supposed to replicate that, but I never even notice I'm fighting them until I realize one guy is taking longer to kill than the others.
There are a lot of fights that have interesting mechanics, but are trivial to beat because the numbers are too low to be a threat if you screw up.
Equally, there are a number of fights that have boring mechanics, but are difficult to beat because the numbers are too high, and if you screw up once you're likely going to be dead very quickly.
There are fights which specifically screw over certain specs, while being utterly trivial to others.
In my book, these are generally indications that fights are poorly tuned.
I agree on this definition of Tuned. Some HPs need to go down a little, and some attacks need to go up and some down. Just a matter of 'how dead should this ability make you? 100% or just 50%?' for most of it though. The HP tuning hasn't felt too bad so far, rarely has a fight felt overly long.
The Great DAMNED STEAM SALES AND WII/U Backlog Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4 Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
Does Thief ever become less shreddable in PvE? I realize there needs to be some differentiation between cloth/leather/plate wearers (or does there?), but the fact that my warrior can wade hip-deep in enemies and walk out nigh-unscathed whereas my thief gets crushed if anything looks at him funny is a bit irritating. There's a huge survivability gulf between those two classes at least and I'd hope there are efforts being made to bring them closer to parity.
Interesting that I have an opposite experience:
My warrior die pretty easily if hit because his HP pool is low and my Thief lives for a long time because I can dodge for an eternity.
Check your traits and gear. If you have no toughness or vitality, then of course you're going to die faster. 30 Earth/30 Water and the right runes gave me an elementalist with 2300 armor and 23k HP. Guess how hard it'd be to kill them?
Every class can be glass, every class can be a tank. Some are naturally better than others, but none impossible to all.
@DaemonSadi Pulls will not get you up a level, and in some cases will not pull down a level either.
There are a lot of fights that have interesting mechanics, but are trivial to beat because the numbers are too low to be a threat if you screw up.
Equally, there are a number of fights that have boring mechanics, but are difficult to beat because the numbers are too high, and if you screw up once you're likely going to be dead very quickly.
There are fights which specifically screw over certain specs, while being utterly trivial to others.
In my book, these are generally indications that fights are poorly tuned.
I agree on this definition of Tuned. Some HPs need to go down a little, and some attacks need to go up and some down. Just a matter of 'how dead should this ability make you? 100% or just 50%?' for most of it though. The HP tuning hasn't felt too bad so far, rarely has a fight felt overly long.
Have you played Sorrow's Embrace or Crucible of Eternity? Because they are the defintion of blocks of HP on two legs. It's fucking ridiculous. Just look at the Head Scientist at the start of Crucible. He's by no means the only offender, but the most obvious.
You can practically go afk, make a sandwich, and come back and start to eat your sandwich and he'll still not be dead. Nor will he have posed a meaningful threat to you in that time.
Have you played Sorrow's Embrace or Crucible of Eternity? Because they are the defintion of blocks of HP on two legs. It's fucking ridiculous. Just look at the Head Scientist at the start of Crucible. He's by no means the only offender, but the most obvious.
You can practically go afk, make a sandwich, and come back and start to eat your sandwich and he'll still not be dead. Nor will he have posed a meaningful threat to you in that time.
No actually, SE is on my list to play next, just hadn't had time. Overly-long fights make me sad. I've never liked MMO fights that lasted more than 5 minutes.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I was expecting more than the same dungeon design philosophies as were present in Vanilla WoW. If you like them, more power to you I guess.
I'm not sure what game you are playing.
Explain to me how the dungeon design is any different? I mean, the actual dungeon design not the combat design.
- Bosses with high health
- Punishing boss and mob abilities.
- Lots of trash
- Poor to no explanation of anything which promotes reading about the fight on the wiki to learn the approved strategy
Theres really nothing that interesting here. I've done maybe 4 of the dungeons and all of it felt very very old school.
Bosses with High health - there are a few fights where the health scaling seemed to be high but that's only a handful out of all of them and this is easy to fix and tune. I've done all dungeons but arah so I'm not too sure what to tell you here. The only things that stand out are the Krytan Drakehound, One dude in the Asura place that must be bugged or coded wrong, and maybe the last fight in the Asura place.
Punishing Boss and mob Abilities - Well... the fights have to be challenging... without these abilities where do you intend the challenge to come from? There are ways to avoid all these abilities. I have no idea where you are coming from here
Lot's of Trash - What? Vanilla WoW had piles of trash... In GW most of the trash is only a pull or two. And even some of those pulls have interesting strategies and traps involved making them more the slogfest/snoozefests like vanilla WoW. Disabling traps and playing THE FLOOR IS LAVA!!! Did you play the floor is lava in Vanilla WoW? I think not.
Poor to no explanation - Errr... pay attention during the fights... the point is not to be told what to do and then do it. The point is to go in blind, learn and adapt. I haven't touched the wiki for a strategy yet. If you actually pay attention to each encounter you can figure them out. Tell the group to try something new, if that doesn't work make a new plan. That is the point of the dungeons... if the dungeons don't require tryign to figure out strategies and enemies that have punishing abilities... where would the difficulty come from? That's a serious question. What are you looking for?
Dungeons in vanilla WoW consisted of a tank(s) hold a mob. Healer(s) keeping them alive. DPS standing still and killing things. Sometimes you would get an opportunity to move around. The fights and deungeons here are so active. It's amazingly refreshing.
For reference: I played Vanilla WoW (all dungeons and all raids as DPS, all completed) I then Played WoTLK dungeons and raids as a tank. Things were a bit more interesting here but still not on par with the level of fluidity in these dungeons. I did not play after that with the exception of buying cataclysm and getting bored after 2 levels.
I think the worst hp sponge case I've seen so far is one of the surprise events in the Seraph wing of CM Explorer. Some Krytan hound shows up. He doesn't do much aside from fear you, and he just takes an eternity to kill.
After many pugged runs of Explorer Twilight Arbor, I finally have my chest piece!
Ran both Up, Up and Forward, Up. Now to farm 20g for the T3 Cultural Shoulders.
Does Thief ever become less shreddable in PvE? I realize there needs to be some differentiation between cloth/leather/plate wearers (or does there?), but the fact that my warrior can wade hip-deep in enemies and walk out nigh-unscathed whereas my thief gets crushed if anything looks at him funny is a bit irritating. There's a huge survivability gulf between those two classes at least and I'd hope there are efforts being made to bring them closer to parity.
A Pistol offhand makes Thieves unkillable by most trash in most dungeons. You just have to avoid mobs with space targeted AoE and greatswords. And Dredge, oh god the Dredge.
Black powder and the smoke screen utility skill are both huge for thieves for the blind. Also, thieves are one of the most untouchable classes in the game. Anything in the entire game can be kited 1v1 without taking a single hit as long as it doesn't use ranged attacks, just using short bow, double daggers, or pistol/dagger. Cripple and shoot, GG. Plus the shortbow gives you another evade on top of the ones you already have. And death blossom is an evade too. I'll give you that thieves take more work to slaughter things without any danger than warrior or guardian, but the trade off is that the thief can perma blind and evade basically all attacks if fighting 1v1.
Most bosses in dungeons should eat a 25 to 50% nerf to health, varying, it would make for a much less tedious experience. If you're going to give us such boring gimmicks, we don't need to repeat that gimmick eighty times. Ten will do thanks.
Most bosses in dungeons should eat a 25 to 50% nerf to health, varying, and make for a much less tedious experience. If you're going to give us such boring gimmicks, we don't need to repeat that gimmick eighty times. Ten will do thanks.
They won't because they hate you.
It's going to be like capitalisation all over again, where they delayed the game by an hour each time someone wrongly capitalised races or professions. This time, they add 10k HP to your next dungeon boss encounter each time you ask for a nerf!
Most bosses in dungeons should eat a 25 to 50% nerf to health, varying, and make for a much less tedious experience. If you're going to give us such boring gimmicks, we don't need to repeat that gimmick eighty times. Ten will do thanks.
They won't because they hate you.
It's going to be like capitalisation all over again, where they delayed the game by an hour each time someone wrongly capitalised races or professions. This time, they add 10k HP to your next dungeon boss encounter each time you ask for a nerf!
If they won't, it won't be because they hate me. It'll be because they're just bad at dungeon design. That would be sad, but understandable. Designing outside the trinity paradigm is more difficult and Arenanet might not be up to the task.
To be more clear, the perfect scenario is that a large hit to dungeon boss health pools (which currently serve no purpose but to drag things out forever, they don't add any kind of challenge) be coupled with more interesting and lethal offensive gimmicks.
Dungeons in vanilla WoW consisted of a tank(s) hold a mob. Healer(s) keeping them alive. DPS standing still and killing things. Sometimes you would get an opportunity to move around. The fights and deungeons here are so active. It's amazingly refreshing.
I did through Twin Emps in Vanilla WoW (heard C'thun was interesting, didn't care) and tanking was seriously the worst thing ever in that game, just so mind-numblingly-booooring. Well actually every part of raiding was boring, which I realized after doing a few raids without any beer or whisky.
But yeeeeah, Vanilla WoW, outside of first part of BWL and Naxx, was trashtrashtrashtrashtrashpushovertrashtrashtrashtrashpushover repeeated a few times then a final boss that *may* be interesting. I was bored of MC before I even finished it - Rag was a load of fun but the rest of that place was suicicidally dull aside from maybe two spots. BWL's best boss was Vael (the second one), everything after that went crazy downhill, for both trash and boss interestingness. I remember doing the 20 mans (AQ and the Jungle one) and it was same deal - endless trash, bosses I could tank with one hand (and often did so that I could drink), and whackamole healing. It may have gotten better but fuck the raiding/instancing in WoW Vanilla basically soured me on group instances in MMOs for years. GW2, with occasional exception, I find them actually fun. I do shit besides spam 1-3 for 10 minutes and cry as nobody in the 40 man raid can use the two items dropped.
steejee on
The Great DAMNED STEAM SALES AND WII/U Backlog Just Finished: Borderlands (waste of $7)/Mario Brothers U/The Last Story/Tropico 4 Currently Playing: NS2/ZombiU/PlanetSide 2/Ys/Dota2/Xenoblade Chronicles On Hold: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within/GW2/Scribblenauts Coming Next: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones/X-Com Classic
Does Thief ever become less shreddable in PvE? I realize there needs to be some differentiation between cloth/leather/plate wearers (or does there?), but the fact that my warrior can wade hip-deep in enemies and walk out nigh-unscathed whereas my thief gets crushed if anything looks at him funny is a bit irritating. There's a huge survivability gulf between those two classes at least and I'd hope there are efforts being made to bring them closer to parity.
Thieves are highly survivable. It's just that you can't get hit. I've tried various builds using up to rare gear. Toughness stacked and spec'd is by far the most survivable build possible. You can just kind of stand there and kill stuff.
The real trick is to not spec toughness, and instead rely on your blinds. Thieves have a billion blinds available to them, and usually one is up at any given moment. Use them. Blind everything that can hurt you, LoS those you can't, murder everything.
Thieves are short range/melee fighters You should be shadowstepping into a fight with a Steal and Bountiful Theft/Thrill of the Crime. Starting a fight with full boons, then popping haste...well...you become Mr. Murder-face. The trait that stealth's you when you take a 20% hit is also hugely helpful.
Tanky Thief is possible, but it's not the most fun. I just play like I'm playing dodge ball.
Dodge Duck Dip Dive Dodge
(Seriously. Dodge more. That's probably your biggest problem. Thieves are all about slipping out of combat and then back in. This applies to PvE and PvP.)
Anon the Felon on
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
Thanks for the thief feedback. I guess I'll need to find a good build that focuses more on survivability - I've been running mostly +Condition Damage on my gear so I'll swap it out for some Vit/Toughness and see how I do there.
Thanks for the thief feedback. I guess I'll need to find a good build that focuses more on survivability - I've been running mostly +Condition Damage on my gear so I'll swap it out for some Vit/Toughness and see how I do there.
Power/Perc/Crit damage is a very good itemization.
+Conidition is great if you're running pistols and poisons.
You can squeeze an extra block of HP if you stack Perc with the trait that turns 5% of Perc into Vit. It's not a lot, but the Perc traits are all kind of "meh".
Edit: Also Steal everything. Every time that ability is off cooldown, you should be using it. You never know when you're going to get a Plasma and start laughing at everything.
Thief Survivability: Just go dagger/pistol and use the dual skill, the teleport/blind ability on 3. You'll never worry about a straight up fight again. If theres multiples you can use black powder to AE blind, but that eats so much initiative its counterproductive in most fights. If you build more vit/toughness you can spec sword/pistol and just use Pistol whip to dps down any target while you tank it, and not worry about the blinding.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
I think most people that have issues with instances in GW2 are just not used to the way the game is built. And that can be punishing if you are still trying to play the game under traditional roles. The first time I did the lovers was painful because the group was trying to use pushbacks and stuns and such to knock them down and keep them knocked down and separated. In never occurred to us to use the boulders to own the fight but now it is easier because that is the way the game is made. In the end the Mob mechanics are currently severly limited and simple, I guess we shall see how it changes as time goes on.
But the game IS overtuned in some areas. There are a couple of story fights at 80 that are rediculously easy but take forever because of some stupid mechanic that slows the fight waaaay down.
The last two eye fights
Add to that the helper NPCs you get near the end are made of paper and some are not resurectable so if you dont know what your doing and get it done quick you are left with pulling single or duo packs from a mass of 20+ and grinding your way through it.
Jubal77 on
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
Thanks for the thief feedback. I guess I'll need to find a good build that focuses more on survivability - I've been running mostly +Condition Damage on my gear so I'll swap it out for some Vit/Toughness and see how I do there.
Power/Perc/Crit damage is a very good itemization.
+Conidition is great if you're running pistols and poisons.
You can squeeze an extra block of HP if you stack Perc with the trait that turns 5% of Perc into Vit. It's not a lot, but the Perc traits are all kind of "meh".
Edit: Also Steal everything. Every time that ability is off cooldown, you should be using it. You never know when you're going to get a Plasma and start laughing at everything.
Oh totally, I love stealing, it's one of my favorite things about the class. The rusty dagger (or whatever it is) that inflicts a boatload of status effects to the mobs is great, as is the cannon with the ridiculous knockback (that they seem to have just been carrying in their pocket or whatever).
I mean I'm dodging like crazy, circle-strafing like a madman but still an errant hit or bad luck with a crit and I'm down. It's most noticeable in the Story missions where I don't often have a lot of room to maneuver.
I've been rolling Pistol/Dagger, but maybe Dagger/Pistol or Pistol/Pistol's the way to go.
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SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
edited September 2012
I loved using the guardian's hammer during the lover's fight. Knock 'em back and then immobilize 'em or use the ring of warding.
The last boss in HotW was pretty BS to me. He has one ability where he casts birds on you, and a Warrior Eviscerate type attack. The Eviscerate is cool, and avoidable, and fun/rewarding when you do. The Birds were fucking dumb. On my elementalist I had to use both dodges AND Mist form when he would cast those birds on me, or I would go down. I'm using full level 80 Valkyrie greens because I can't find Power/Toughness/Vitality on anything but invaders and can't afford that yet, and don't have the 20g to outfit myself in full exotics.
It was funny the first time. Then when I would make the long ass run back just to have him instantly cast birds on me and then eviscerate at me after a dodge instantly downing me, I didn't think it was funny anymore.
Most bosses in dungeons should eat a 25 to 50% nerf to health, varying, and make for a much less tedious experience. If you're going to give us such boring gimmicks, we don't need to repeat that gimmick eighty times. Ten will do thanks.
They won't because they hate you.
It's going to be like capitalisation all over again, where they delayed the game by an hour each time someone wrongly capitalised races or professions. This time, they add 10k HP to your next dungeon boss encounter each time you ask for a nerf!
If they won't, it won't be because they hate me. It'll be because they're just bad at dungeon design. That would be sad, but understandable. Designing outside the trinity paradigm is more difficult and Arenanet might not be up to the task.
To be more clear, the perfect scenario is that a large hit to dungeon boss health pools (which currently serve no purpose but to drag things out forever, they don't add any kind of challenge) be coupled with more interesting and lethal offensive gimmicks.
Do you have any examples of a boss that has so much health that it takes you super long to do? I've done almost all the dungeon content in this game on story mode and some of it on explorable, and I've yet to find a boss that felt like it took too long.
It's pretty rare my groups have a boss that I get to use my elite skill more than twice on, which means the longest boss fight is maybe ~3 minutes. The longest one I can remember is the inquest dude in SE that does all the golems, simply because it's more like 3 phases of one guy and then the golems are their own mini bosses. Also, I love that fight because it punishes people hard who can't dodge.
The last boss in HotW was pretty BS to me. He has one ability where he casts birds on you, and a Warrior Eviscerate type attack. The Eviscerate is cool, and avoidable, and fun/rewarding when you do. The Birds were fucking dumb. On my elementalist I had to use both dodges AND Mist form when he would cast those birds on me, or I would go down. I'm using full level 80 Valkyrie greens because I can't find Power/Toughness/Vitality on anything but invaders and can't afford that yet, and don't have the 20g to outfit myself in full exotics.
It was funny the first time. Then when I would make the long ass run back just to have him instantly cast birds on me and then eviscerate at me after a dodge instantly downing me, I didn't think it was funny anymore.
No one in your group to remove the birds or mitigate damage for you?
If I see someone below half health, I give them a 33% damage reduction and heal them. The trinity is gone somewhat, but things like that still need group teamwork if you have no good way to overcome it with your own class. If that bird thing is considered a condition, then all my shouts convert conditions into buffs and everytime I apply a buff that person gains regeneration as well.
Most bosses in dungeons should eat a 25 to 50% nerf to health, varying, and make for a much less tedious experience. If you're going to give us such boring gimmicks, we don't need to repeat that gimmick eighty times. Ten will do thanks.
They won't because they hate you.
It's going to be like capitalisation all over again, where they delayed the game by an hour each time someone wrongly capitalised races or professions. This time, they add 10k HP to your next dungeon boss encounter each time you ask for a nerf!
If they won't, it won't be because they hate me. It'll be because they're just bad at dungeon design. That would be sad, but understandable. Designing outside the trinity paradigm is more difficult and Arenanet might not be up to the task.
To be more clear, the perfect scenario is that a large hit to dungeon boss health pools (which currently serve no purpose but to drag things out forever, they don't add any kind of challenge) be coupled with more interesting and lethal offensive gimmicks.
Wow, thank goodness you're around, with all of your experience designing MMOs that break the trinity mold! I don't know what we'd ever do without you. I mean, all we have to do is just have ArenaNet put you in charge, right?
Thanks for the thief feedback. I guess I'll need to find a good build that focuses more on survivability - I've been running mostly +Condition Damage on my gear so I'll swap it out for some Vit/Toughness and see how I do there.
Power/Perc/Crit damage is a very good itemization.
+Conidition is great if you're running pistols and poisons.
You can squeeze an extra block of HP if you stack Perc with the trait that turns 5% of Perc into Vit. It's not a lot, but the Perc traits are all kind of "meh".
Edit: Also Steal everything. Every time that ability is off cooldown, you should be using it. You never know when you're going to get a Plasma and start laughing at everything.
Oh totally, I love stealing, it's one of my favorite things about the class. The rusty dagger (or whatever it is) that inflicts a boatload of status effects to the mobs is great, as is the cannon with the ridiculous knockback (that they seem to have just been carrying in their pocket or whatever).
I mean I'm dodging like crazy, circle-strafing like a madman but still an errant hit or bad luck with a crit and I'm down. It's most noticeable in the Story missions where I don't often have a lot of room to maneuver.
I've been rolling Pistol/Dagger, but maybe Dagger/Pistol or Pistol/Pistol's the way to go.
Pistol in the off-hand is really good. As mentioned, Black Powder is incredibly strong. If you are moving a lot and still dying, you need to find your cripple. It's either going to be a weapon attack, or trap/caltrops/Chill poison. You really need to have a cripple available for vet's/big fights. It's really important to be able to slow a guy down, roll away, recover a little bit/re-stack your conditions.
I've found it's best to pick something you want to do with a thief. Shoot guns, Lay traps, use poisons, go stealth, heal, etc. But it's best to pick one thing you want to do, and learn how to do it well. Thieves have a lot of different play styles, it's easy to get caught up trying to be a Swiss Army knife and end up being as effective as a toothpick in a gun fight.
It's probably too inside baseball, but I would love to see a breakdown on who at a.net worked on each dungeon encounter and when they were made. I get the sense the ones that are garnering the most scorn were either done by the same people and/or were completed earlier when familiarity with the tools was not the greatest.
Black lives matter.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Still waiting on Dan "Man of his Word" Ryckert to eat a hat
Thanks for the thief feedback. I guess I'll need to find a good build that focuses more on survivability - I've been running mostly +Condition Damage on my gear so I'll swap it out for some Vit/Toughness and see how I do there.
Power/Perc/Crit damage is a very good itemization.
+Conidition is great if you're running pistols and poisons.
You can squeeze an extra block of HP if you stack Perc with the trait that turns 5% of Perc into Vit. It's not a lot, but the Perc traits are all kind of "meh".
Edit: Also Steal everything. Every time that ability is off cooldown, you should be using it. You never know when you're going to get a Plasma and start laughing at everything.
Oh totally, I love stealing, it's one of my favorite things about the class. The rusty dagger (or whatever it is) that inflicts a boatload of status effects to the mobs is great, as is the cannon with the ridiculous knockback (that they seem to have just been carrying in their pocket or whatever).
I mean I'm dodging like crazy, circle-strafing like a madman but still an errant hit or bad luck with a crit and I'm down. It's most noticeable in the Story missions where I don't often have a lot of room to maneuver.
I've been rolling Pistol/Dagger, but maybe Dagger/Pistol or Pistol/Pistol's the way to go.
I just started my thief the other night, but this is what I'm building towards/using while leveling with Pistol/Dagger:
It seems to have really good synergy and survival and uses heavy condition damage for bleeds and poisons. It uses Cloak and Dagger heavily for stealth which applies Regen/Might and Blind to enemies, then having dark fields available for life stealing projectiles. I'm at 23 right now and just recently got the skill points to get Signet of Shadows, god I love that one.
Thanks for the thief feedback. I guess I'll need to find a good build that focuses more on survivability - I've been running mostly +Condition Damage on my gear so I'll swap it out for some Vit/Toughness and see how I do there.
I run mostly dagger/dagger with traits in acrobatics, trickery and shadow arts and I found signet of malice to be a pretty nice choice in my healing slot. Worth a look if you run with a set that puts a lot of attacks on target.
The last boss in HotW was pretty BS to me. He has one ability where he casts birds on you, and a Warrior Eviscerate type attack. The Eviscerate is cool, and avoidable, and fun/rewarding when you do. The Birds were fucking dumb. On my elementalist I had to use both dodges AND Mist form when he would cast those birds on me, or I would go down. I'm using full level 80 Valkyrie greens because I can't find Power/Toughness/Vitality on anything but invaders and can't afford that yet, and don't have the 20g to outfit myself in full exotics.
It was funny the first time. Then when I would make the long ass run back just to have him instantly cast birds on me and then eviscerate at me after a dodge instantly downing me, I didn't think it was funny anymore.
No one in your group to remove the birds or mitigate damage for you?
If I see someone below half health, I give them a 33% damage reduction and heal them. The trinity is gone somewhat, but things like that still need group teamwork if you have no good way to overcome it with your own class. If that bird thing is considered a condition, then all my shouts convert conditions into buffs and everytime I apply a buff that person gains regeneration as well.
I have to admit that I don't know if we had anyway to remove those damn birds. I guess if it's a condition it's possible, right? If it's just an attack then I don't know what I could have done other than Dodge, Mist form, Dodge and then hope he doesn't cast it on me again for 45 seconds.
Or we could just GY zerg the boss to death, because that's an effective strategy to every encounter in every dungeon and I don't need to learn how to overcome abilities. And once he's dead, he's dead. I get my piddling rewards and I don't care to learn the proper way to fight the boss because the dungeon failed to introduce concepts you need to not think the boss is a broken piece of shit and I'm very unlikely to come back because it wasn't fun the first time and I didn't get shit for doing it.
I find it weird how its boasted about there is no holy trinity. But we are getting into a "But you need these kind of traits/builds" to do it the proper way. I don't see much of a difference here.
I don't really have that big of a problem with the dungeons. I like most of it, except when I just default into "Zerg it down."
I'm trying to write as a PoV of what I perceive the general population of over 2 million feels when doing these dungeons. A lot of people that post on a forum spawned out of love for video games have a hard time grasping that they are in a small minority of people that are good to really fucking good at video games. And that if a game isn't fun for a lot of people, then eventually they will find themselves with noone else to play with. And will either have to beg people to play with them, or wait for developers to implement a "Hire Mercenary" option to the game so you can just solo your way through it.
Buddies on
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SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
It's probably too inside baseball, but I would love to see a breakdown on who at a.net worked on each dungeon encounter and when they were made. I get the sense the ones that are garnering the most scorn were either done by the same people and/or were completed earlier when familiarity with the tools was not the greatest.
I get that feeling when I play through Queensdale. Like it was one of the first zones that was worked on. In comparison to Caledon Forest, which I assume was done later, it's more straightforward and less inventive.
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eeSanGI slice like a goddamn hammer.Registered Userregular
Thief Survivability: Just go dagger/pistol and use the dual skill, the teleport/blind ability on 3. You'll never worry about a straight up fight again. If theres multiples you can use black powder to AE blind, but that eats so much initiative its counterproductive in most fights. If you build more vit/toughness you can spec sword/pistol and just use Pistol whip to dps down any target while you tank it, and not worry about the blinding.
Points into Crit and Acrobat for Thief traits make Black Powder indefinitely sustainable. The best part about a Blind tank Thief is that you don't even need to hold aggro, just keep the clouds on top of mobs.
Slice like a god damn hammer. LoL: Rafflesia / BNet: Talonflame#11979
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HalfmexI mock your value systemYou also appear foolish in the eyes of othersRegistered Userregular
edited September 2012
I'll check that out when I get home from work, thanks @Dranyth
And thanks again folks, this is very good feedback to have. I think I have indeed been trying to play my thief too much like I play my warrior. Too easy to get into that "I can do it all" mode of thinking.
The last boss in HotW was pretty BS to me. He has one ability where he casts birds on you, and a Warrior Eviscerate type attack. The Eviscerate is cool, and avoidable, and fun/rewarding when you do. The Birds were fucking dumb. On my elementalist I had to use both dodges AND Mist form when he would cast those birds on me, or I would go down. I'm using full level 80 Valkyrie greens because I can't find Power/Toughness/Vitality on anything but invaders and can't afford that yet, and don't have the 20g to outfit myself in full exotics.
It was funny the first time. Then when I would make the long ass run back just to have him instantly cast birds on me and then eviscerate at me after a dodge instantly downing me, I didn't think it was funny anymore.
No one in your group to remove the birds or mitigate damage for you?
If I see someone below half health, I give them a 33% damage reduction and heal them. The trinity is gone somewhat, but things like that still need group teamwork if you have no good way to overcome it with your own class. If that bird thing is considered a condition, then all my shouts convert conditions into buffs and everytime I apply a buff that person gains regeneration as well.
The birds aren't a condition. If you want to see it, its the Ranger Warhorn 4 skill. A white damage DoT.
It basically is a flurry attack that you can't get away from.
Jephery on
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Something I have noticed in this game is that even in group play it is still almost entirely single player. You build up your character for what you need to survive which may help out the group but in the end its your responsibility to dodge, remove conditions, heal yourself, etc etc. In the process of the other 4 people doing the same thing you might recieve additional condition removals or secondary healing but it is not much different than world based encounters just a bit more "focused" because you have to go in with only 4 other people.
Edit: I live in Pug world as I only have a couple of friends that play and they are very underleveled so your experience may vary.
Jubal77 on
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SarksusATTACK AND DETHRONE GODRegistered Userregular
Something I have noticed in this game is that even in group play it is still almost entirely single player. You build up your character for what you need to survive which may help out the group but in the end its your responsibility to dodge, remove conditions, heal yourself, etc etc. In the process of the other 4 people doing the same thing you might recieve additional condition removals or secondary healing but it is not much different than world based encounters just a bit more "focused" because you have to go in with only 4 other people.
I dunno, I was pretty aware of my teammates. My guardian had some good stuff for them, such as the Signet of Mercy and I tried reviving anybody I saw go down as soon as the boss stopped paying attention to them. And that was just my first time. I think a group can definitely become very cohesive if they try.
I have to admit that I don't know if we had anyway to remove those damn birds. I guess if it's a condition it's possible, right? If it's just an attack then I don't know what I could have done other than Dodge, Mist form, Dodge and then hope he doesn't cast it on me again for 45 seconds.
Or we could just GY zerg the boss to death, because that's an effective strategy to every encounter in every dungeon and I don't need to learn how to overcome abilities. And once he's dead, he's dead. I get my piddling rewards and I don't care to learn the proper way to fight the boss because the dungeon failed to introduce concepts you need to not think the boss is a broken piece of shit and I'm very unlikely to come back because it wasn't fun the first time and I didn't get shit for doing it.
I find it weird how its boasted about there is no holy trinity. But we are getting into a "But you need these kind of traits/builds" to do it the proper way. I don't see much of a difference here.
I personally don't have any problem with the trinity, its good and it works. Aggro is kind of a weird mechanic though, and I'm glad that's gone. Some chart where the person doing more damage should magically get hit by the enemy is just weird. Tanking still happens in GW2, its just not absorbed by one single person and can be mitigated though a variety of ways. They can claim to remove it all they want, but the fact is people have hitpoints and mobs do damage, so that damage has to go somewhere and the amount of hitpoints lost needs to be restored. There is no class based trinity though, no single person filling such a cookie cutter role.
GY zerg is fine if thats your thing. There is a repair cost, it does add up over time so its not like there is no penalty for it. That's stupid as hell if you are getting fully killed though, people with support type traits have faster ways to get downed players up. Also people aren't paying attention if at least 2 others don't immediately heal downed people on a boss fight.
But I dunno, I guess some groups go all DPS... in that case the tools needed to not GY zerg are missing, so it is what it is. Not doubting your skill at all, but from doing many many explorables, the stuff is absolutely trivial when the entire group has traits that synergize. This type of synergy is in fact a type of trinity though, like I said early damage and hitpoints are still there so the trinity is still there... not a bad thing.
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
Explorable mode isn't terribly difficult, but by god is it repetitious. I don't want to have to run the same path 70 times to get my gear, not once we've figured out how to beat it and are running it on auto pilot. That's not fun. That's a worse grind than WOW. What *should* happen is there is a harder mode and you run each of those wings to get a specific piece of gear. Say maybe 5 times. Or something. No one is going to run sup optimal wings just for variety when time is their limiting factor. Running wings other than the obvious quickest choice needs to some how be rewarding. Maybe extend the first time of the day bonus to each wing?
A lot of people think cof run 2 is easier/quicker than intended. I cannot imagine doing something that takes longer 70 times. The sheer tedium of it all is just overwhelming. It's boring after 10 runs! I still do it though, because I need money and I actually like the look of the gear. Which brings us back to AC: the AC 'vanity' gear looks terrible and absolutely looks like a low level set that is meant to be obtained by low levels- not something restricted only to level 80's in full exotics.
An additional problem that plagues all dungeons for both modes is wildly varying difficulty. Murderous trash mobs before push over bosses. Absolutely absurd bosses in front of bosses your party could kill while being afk. I also don't much like the respawn zerg as a method of clearing dungeons, though it certainly seems to be the only way to get through a couple bullshit encounters; I'm thinking of the greatsword godforged first boss in story CoF, and the guy that calls the birds in Honor of the Waves. Both of these seem to be a death sentence for the appropriately geared/levelled players who are the target audience (remember, this is sub level 80 story mode: blues/greens on sub level 80 characters is what you can expect, not full 80's in full exotics). Both of the above would kill such players even through a double dodge. As a guardian, I would throw out protection, and people would still die. The only thing that would 100% save me was my 3s invuln, which obviously wasn't up every time birds came at my head.
And you might not even have the double dodge up because you had to dodge the bosses other attack.
Was there some trick to this fight? Who knows? The previously mentioned graveyard rush means dead people can just run back and into the fight (and get killed by the birds immediately after) and just down the boss by throwing waves of bodies at it. I'm not convinced there was anything to learn here, but if there was, graveyard rushing means people won't learn it. They'll kill those obnoxious bosses once, somehow, and move on. They won't feel very happy or satisfied. The very poor rewards you get at the end of story mode will ensure they will never want to come back.
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There are a lot of fights that have interesting mechanics, but are trivial to beat because the numbers are too low to be a threat if you screw up.
Equally, there are a number of fights that have boring mechanics, but are difficult to beat because the numbers are too high, and if you screw up once you're likely going to be dead very quickly.
There are fights which specifically screw over certain specs, while being utterly trivial to others.
In my book, these are generally indications that fights are poorly tuned.
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/14300-black-powder
A Pistol offhand makes Thieves unkillable by most trash in most dungeons. You just have to avoid mobs with space targeted AoE and greatswords. And Dredge, oh god the Dredge.
Slice like a god damn hammer. LoL: Rafflesia / BNet: Talonflame#11979
You complain that the game doesn't explain how bosses work to you which promotes reading a wiki? IMO it promotes seeing the fight for yourself and figuring it out on the fly, which makes the first time you see a new boss a hell of a lot more fun than if the game just pasted the wiki entry into an in game text message to let you know. Also, every boss has text under their health bar that describes things about them. It's been good enough for me.
To me, the dungeons in GW2 are more like what I expected the whole game to be like. They're basically a primer for pvp, where you have to learn how to stun breaker, use CC, use abilities that aren't all focused on doing max dps, etc.
As I said before, if anything should be done to make the dungeons "better," it should be that like skill point challenge enemies can down you in one hit if you miss their easily telegraphed attacks, or use conditions that will down you if you don't learn condition removal, etc. At least that way all these people getting in to dungeons would have some idea what they're actually in for, because the rest of the pve content in GW2 is just absolutely cannot fail. I mean, it's almost impossible to even get downed while you're out just doing hearts and what not.
Maybe veterans and stuff were supposed to replicate that, but I never even notice I'm fighting them until I realize one guy is taking longer to kill than the others.
I agree on this definition of Tuned. Some HPs need to go down a little, and some attacks need to go up and some down. Just a matter of 'how dead should this ability make you? 100% or just 50%?' for most of it though. The HP tuning hasn't felt too bad so far, rarely has a fight felt overly long.
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Interesting that I have an opposite experience:
My warrior die pretty easily if hit because his HP pool is low and my Thief lives for a long time because I can dodge for an eternity.
Check your traits and gear. If you have no toughness or vitality, then of course you're going to die faster. 30 Earth/30 Water and the right runes gave me an elementalist with 2300 armor and 23k HP. Guess how hard it'd be to kill them?
Every class can be glass, every class can be a tank. Some are naturally better than others, but none impossible to all.
@DaemonSadi Pulls will not get you up a level, and in some cases will not pull down a level either.
Have you played Sorrow's Embrace or Crucible of Eternity? Because they are the defintion of blocks of HP on two legs. It's fucking ridiculous. Just look at the Head Scientist at the start of Crucible. He's by no means the only offender, but the most obvious.
You can practically go afk, make a sandwich, and come back and start to eat your sandwich and he'll still not be dead. Nor will he have posed a meaningful threat to you in that time.
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No actually, SE is on my list to play next, just hadn't had time. Overly-long fights make me sad. I've never liked MMO fights that lasted more than 5 minutes.
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Bosses with High health - there are a few fights where the health scaling seemed to be high but that's only a handful out of all of them and this is easy to fix and tune. I've done all dungeons but arah so I'm not too sure what to tell you here. The only things that stand out are the Krytan Drakehound, One dude in the Asura place that must be bugged or coded wrong, and maybe the last fight in the Asura place.
Punishing Boss and mob Abilities - Well... the fights have to be challenging... without these abilities where do you intend the challenge to come from? There are ways to avoid all these abilities. I have no idea where you are coming from here
Lot's of Trash - What? Vanilla WoW had piles of trash... In GW most of the trash is only a pull or two. And even some of those pulls have interesting strategies and traps involved making them more the slogfest/snoozefests like vanilla WoW. Disabling traps and playing THE FLOOR IS LAVA!!! Did you play the floor is lava in Vanilla WoW? I think not.
Poor to no explanation - Errr... pay attention during the fights... the point is not to be told what to do and then do it. The point is to go in blind, learn and adapt. I haven't touched the wiki for a strategy yet. If you actually pay attention to each encounter you can figure them out. Tell the group to try something new, if that doesn't work make a new plan. That is the point of the dungeons... if the dungeons don't require tryign to figure out strategies and enemies that have punishing abilities... where would the difficulty come from? That's a serious question. What are you looking for?
Dungeons in vanilla WoW consisted of a tank(s) hold a mob. Healer(s) keeping them alive. DPS standing still and killing things. Sometimes you would get an opportunity to move around. The fights and deungeons here are so active. It's amazingly refreshing.
For reference: I played Vanilla WoW (all dungeons and all raids as DPS, all completed) I then Played WoTLK dungeons and raids as a tank. Things were a bit more interesting here but still not on par with the level of fluidity in these dungeons. I did not play after that with the exception of buying cataclysm and getting bored after 2 levels.
Black powder and the smoke screen utility skill are both huge for thieves for the blind. Also, thieves are one of the most untouchable classes in the game. Anything in the entire game can be kited 1v1 without taking a single hit as long as it doesn't use ranged attacks, just using short bow, double daggers, or pistol/dagger. Cripple and shoot, GG. Plus the shortbow gives you another evade on top of the ones you already have. And death blossom is an evade too. I'll give you that thieves take more work to slaughter things without any danger than warrior or guardian, but the trade off is that the thief can perma blind and evade basically all attacks if fighting 1v1.
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They won't because they hate you.
It's going to be like capitalisation all over again, where they delayed the game by an hour each time someone wrongly capitalised races or professions. This time, they add 10k HP to your next dungeon boss encounter each time you ask for a nerf!
If they won't, it won't be because they hate me. It'll be because they're just bad at dungeon design. That would be sad, but understandable. Designing outside the trinity paradigm is more difficult and Arenanet might not be up to the task.
To be more clear, the perfect scenario is that a large hit to dungeon boss health pools (which currently serve no purpose but to drag things out forever, they don't add any kind of challenge) be coupled with more interesting and lethal offensive gimmicks.
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I did through Twin Emps in Vanilla WoW (heard C'thun was interesting, didn't care) and tanking was seriously the worst thing ever in that game, just so mind-numblingly-booooring. Well actually every part of raiding was boring, which I realized after doing a few raids without any beer or whisky.
But yeeeeah, Vanilla WoW, outside of first part of BWL and Naxx, was trashtrashtrashtrashtrashpushovertrashtrashtrashtrashpushover repeeated a few times then a final boss that *may* be interesting. I was bored of MC before I even finished it - Rag was a load of fun but the rest of that place was suicicidally dull aside from maybe two spots. BWL's best boss was Vael (the second one), everything after that went crazy downhill, for both trash and boss interestingness. I remember doing the 20 mans (AQ and the Jungle one) and it was same deal - endless trash, bosses I could tank with one hand (and often did so that I could drink), and whackamole healing. It may have gotten better but fuck the raiding/instancing in WoW Vanilla basically soured me on group instances in MMOs for years. GW2, with occasional exception, I find them actually fun. I do shit besides spam 1-3 for 10 minutes and cry as nobody in the 40 man raid can use the two items dropped.
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Thieves are highly survivable. It's just that you can't get hit. I've tried various builds using up to rare gear. Toughness stacked and spec'd is by far the most survivable build possible. You can just kind of stand there and kill stuff.
The real trick is to not spec toughness, and instead rely on your blinds. Thieves have a billion blinds available to them, and usually one is up at any given moment. Use them. Blind everything that can hurt you, LoS those you can't, murder everything.
Thieves are short range/melee fighters You should be shadowstepping into a fight with a Steal and Bountiful Theft/Thrill of the Crime. Starting a fight with full boons, then popping haste...well...you become Mr. Murder-face. The trait that stealth's you when you take a 20% hit is also hugely helpful.
Tanky Thief is possible, but it's not the most fun. I just play like I'm playing dodge ball.
Dodge
Duck
Dip
Dive
Dodge
(Seriously. Dodge more. That's probably your biggest problem. Thieves are all about slipping out of combat and then back in. This applies to PvE and PvP.)
Power/Perc/Crit damage is a very good itemization.
+Conidition is great if you're running pistols and poisons.
You can squeeze an extra block of HP if you stack Perc with the trait that turns 5% of Perc into Vit. It's not a lot, but the Perc traits are all kind of "meh".
Edit: Also Steal everything. Every time that ability is off cooldown, you should be using it. You never know when you're going to get a Plasma and start laughing at everything.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
But the game IS overtuned in some areas. There are a couple of story fights at 80 that are rediculously easy but take forever because of some stupid mechanic that slows the fight waaaay down.
Oh totally, I love stealing, it's one of my favorite things about the class. The rusty dagger (or whatever it is) that inflicts a boatload of status effects to the mobs is great, as is the cannon with the ridiculous knockback (that they seem to have just been carrying in their pocket or whatever).
I mean I'm dodging like crazy, circle-strafing like a madman but still an errant hit or bad luck with a crit and I'm down. It's most noticeable in the Story missions where I don't often have a lot of room to maneuver.
I've been rolling Pistol/Dagger, but maybe Dagger/Pistol or Pistol/Pistol's the way to go.
It was funny the first time. Then when I would make the long ass run back just to have him instantly cast birds on me and then eviscerate at me after a dodge instantly downing me, I didn't think it was funny anymore.
Do you have any examples of a boss that has so much health that it takes you super long to do? I've done almost all the dungeon content in this game on story mode and some of it on explorable, and I've yet to find a boss that felt like it took too long.
It's pretty rare my groups have a boss that I get to use my elite skill more than twice on, which means the longest boss fight is maybe ~3 minutes. The longest one I can remember is the inquest dude in SE that does all the golems, simply because it's more like 3 phases of one guy and then the golems are their own mini bosses. Also, I love that fight because it punishes people hard who can't dodge.
No one in your group to remove the birds or mitigate damage for you?
If I see someone below half health, I give them a 33% damage reduction and heal them. The trinity is gone somewhat, but things like that still need group teamwork if you have no good way to overcome it with your own class. If that bird thing is considered a condition, then all my shouts convert conditions into buffs and everytime I apply a buff that person gains regeneration as well.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Wow, thank goodness you're around, with all of your experience designing MMOs that break the trinity mold! I don't know what we'd ever do without you. I mean, all we have to do is just have ArenaNet put you in charge, right?
Pistol in the off-hand is really good. As mentioned, Black Powder is incredibly strong. If you are moving a lot and still dying, you need to find your cripple. It's either going to be a weapon attack, or trap/caltrops/Chill poison. You really need to have a cripple available for vet's/big fights. It's really important to be able to slow a guy down, roll away, recover a little bit/re-stack your conditions.
I've found it's best to pick something you want to do with a thief. Shoot guns, Lay traps, use poisons, go stealth, heal, etc. But it's best to pick one thing you want to do, and learn how to do it well. Thieves have a lot of different play styles, it's easy to get caught up trying to be a Swiss Army knife and end up being as effective as a toothpick in a gun fight.
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I just started my thief the other night, but this is what I'm building towards/using while leveling with Pistol/Dagger:
http://www.gw2db.com/skill-builds/961-shadow-of-blood
It seems to have really good synergy and survival and uses heavy condition damage for bleeds and poisons. It uses Cloak and Dagger heavily for stealth which applies Regen/Might and Blind to enemies, then having dark fields available for life stealing projectiles. I'm at 23 right now and just recently got the skill points to get Signet of Shadows, god I love that one.
I run mostly dagger/dagger with traits in acrobatics, trickery and shadow arts and I found signet of malice to be a pretty nice choice in my healing slot. Worth a look if you run with a set that puts a lot of attacks on target.
I have to admit that I don't know if we had anyway to remove those damn birds. I guess if it's a condition it's possible, right? If it's just an attack then I don't know what I could have done other than Dodge, Mist form, Dodge and then hope he doesn't cast it on me again for 45 seconds.
Or we could just GY zerg the boss to death, because that's an effective strategy to every encounter in every dungeon and I don't need to learn how to overcome abilities. And once he's dead, he's dead. I get my piddling rewards and I don't care to learn the proper way to fight the boss because the dungeon failed to introduce concepts you need to not think the boss is a broken piece of shit and I'm very unlikely to come back because it wasn't fun the first time and I didn't get shit for doing it.
I find it weird how its boasted about there is no holy trinity. But we are getting into a "But you need these kind of traits/builds" to do it the proper way. I don't see much of a difference here.
I'm trying to write as a PoV of what I perceive the general population of over 2 million feels when doing these dungeons. A lot of people that post on a forum spawned out of love for video games have a hard time grasping that they are in a small minority of people that are good to really fucking good at video games. And that if a game isn't fun for a lot of people, then eventually they will find themselves with noone else to play with. And will either have to beg people to play with them, or wait for developers to implement a "Hire Mercenary" option to the game so you can just solo your way through it.
I get that feeling when I play through Queensdale. Like it was one of the first zones that was worked on. In comparison to Caledon Forest, which I assume was done later, it's more straightforward and less inventive.
Points into Crit and Acrobat for Thief traits make Black Powder indefinitely sustainable. The best part about a Blind tank Thief is that you don't even need to hold aggro, just keep the clouds on top of mobs.
Slice like a god damn hammer. LoL: Rafflesia / BNet: Talonflame#11979
And thanks again folks, this is very good feedback to have. I think I have indeed been trying to play my thief too much like I play my warrior. Too easy to get into that "I can do it all" mode of thinking.
The birds aren't a condition. If you want to see it, its the Ranger Warhorn 4 skill. A white damage DoT.
It basically is a flurry attack that you can't get away from.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Edit: I live in Pug world as I only have a couple of friends that play and they are very underleveled so your experience may vary.
I dunno, I was pretty aware of my teammates. My guardian had some good stuff for them, such as the Signet of Mercy and I tried reviving anybody I saw go down as soon as the boss stopped paying attention to them. And that was just my first time. I think a group can definitely become very cohesive if they try.
I personally don't have any problem with the trinity, its good and it works. Aggro is kind of a weird mechanic though, and I'm glad that's gone. Some chart where the person doing more damage should magically get hit by the enemy is just weird. Tanking still happens in GW2, its just not absorbed by one single person and can be mitigated though a variety of ways. They can claim to remove it all they want, but the fact is people have hitpoints and mobs do damage, so that damage has to go somewhere and the amount of hitpoints lost needs to be restored. There is no class based trinity though, no single person filling such a cookie cutter role.
GY zerg is fine if thats your thing. There is a repair cost, it does add up over time so its not like there is no penalty for it. That's stupid as hell if you are getting fully killed though, people with support type traits have faster ways to get downed players up. Also people aren't paying attention if at least 2 others don't immediately heal downed people on a boss fight.
But I dunno, I guess some groups go all DPS... in that case the tools needed to not GY zerg are missing, so it is what it is. Not doubting your skill at all, but from doing many many explorables, the stuff is absolutely trivial when the entire group has traits that synergize. This type of synergy is in fact a type of trinity though, like I said early damage and hitpoints are still there so the trinity is still there... not a bad thing.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Story mode way way harder than it should be for the intended target: random group of level 30's trying AC story run into the one of the hardest dungeons in the game. This absolutely needs to be easily puggable given the atrociously bad rewards (one ugly helm with terrible stats). The rewards of doing AC story are about equivalent to me soloing two veteran monsters and taking the chests behind them. So the difficulty needs to be in line with that. It's not.
Explorable mode isn't terribly difficult, but by god is it repetitious. I don't want to have to run the same path 70 times to get my gear, not once we've figured out how to beat it and are running it on auto pilot. That's not fun. That's a worse grind than WOW. What *should* happen is there is a harder mode and you run each of those wings to get a specific piece of gear. Say maybe 5 times. Or something. No one is going to run sup optimal wings just for variety when time is their limiting factor. Running wings other than the obvious quickest choice needs to some how be rewarding. Maybe extend the first time of the day bonus to each wing?
A lot of people think cof run 2 is easier/quicker than intended. I cannot imagine doing something that takes longer 70 times. The sheer tedium of it all is just overwhelming. It's boring after 10 runs! I still do it though, because I need money and I actually like the look of the gear. Which brings us back to AC: the AC 'vanity' gear looks terrible and absolutely looks like a low level set that is meant to be obtained by low levels- not something restricted only to level 80's in full exotics.
An additional problem that plagues all dungeons for both modes is wildly varying difficulty. Murderous trash mobs before push over bosses. Absolutely absurd bosses in front of bosses your party could kill while being afk. I also don't much like the respawn zerg as a method of clearing dungeons, though it certainly seems to be the only way to get through a couple bullshit encounters; I'm thinking of the greatsword godforged first boss in story CoF, and the guy that calls the birds in Honor of the Waves. Both of these seem to be a death sentence for the appropriately geared/levelled players who are the target audience (remember, this is sub level 80 story mode: blues/greens on sub level 80 characters is what you can expect, not full 80's in full exotics). Both of the above would kill such players even through a double dodge. As a guardian, I would throw out protection, and people would still die. The only thing that would 100% save me was my 3s invuln, which obviously wasn't up every time birds came at my head.
And you might not even have the double dodge up because you had to dodge the bosses other attack.
Was there some trick to this fight? Who knows? The previously mentioned graveyard rush means dead people can just run back and into the fight (and get killed by the birds immediately after) and just down the boss by throwing waves of bodies at it. I'm not convinced there was anything to learn here, but if there was, graveyard rushing means people won't learn it. They'll kill those obnoxious bosses once, somehow, and move on. They won't feel very happy or satisfied. The very poor rewards you get at the end of story mode will ensure they will never want to come back.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion