Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Btw re:power and damage.
I like to simplify. Power is a direct multiplier to damage in any way. So to keep it simple, doubling your power doubles your direct damage.
Likewise, doubling armor halves damage, but this is near impossible in most reasonable cases (like unless you are going from glass canon underleveled gear to primary toughness max gear it prolly won't double.)
Hope that helps.
Also, @daemonsadi, i posted on that thing about the fight club. Mostly because most of my in game time is spent finding fights in obsidian sanctum. Crystal desert has been camping the entrance with a large group so there had been lots of good fights, although there is no level of frustration higher than dealing with a duo of stealth spec thieves as a Mesmer like i had to last night.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
Knight's has Toughness as its main stat, allowing you to double it that way.
After that, you can conceivably get another 400 from traits and nourishment.
...and of course, as always, Kill Hitler.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
You don't double toughness, you double armor. Meaning at level 80 a light armor prof needs to add 1836 tough to double armor while in exotics.
Power affects things on it's own but armor affects things as the armor on your equipment + toughness. Yeah it's weird because the "attack" stat is literally used for nothing and misleading as shit.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
The fundamental problem last Friday was that they had two zergs and we had one. Ours was like 25 of us and 25 or so pugs, they had two of 40+. I doubt they outnumbered us two to one but it was probably fairly close to that. IMO it was an accomplishment to hold onto Hills as long as we did, we wiped I believe three of their assaults on the inner keep before they finally took it.
We should expect this sort of thing if we go to TC borderlands - they have the most participation of any of the servers in our matchup and it seems like they prioritize their own borderlands to defend (this is the dynamic that's developed across WvW it seems - servers try to own their entire borderlands). That doesn't mean we shouldn't go to their borderlands, in fact I think it's a good place to go, but if it's just us on the map (and we had the outmanned buff at both the beginning and end of that night) we should recognize it's gonna be tough.
Also I like the idea of having just maybe five of us split off and cap supply camps and just generally make a nuisance of ourselves. TC in particular responds aggressively to people trying to flip their camps, whenever we attack the northern borderlands one it's not long before like thirty of them are pouring outta that portal. We can use this to our advantage, if we get enough of them playing supply camp whackamole it'll relieve pressure on everyone else.
Also I've heard there's an FA teamspeak server, like for the whole server to use. Does anyone know anything about that?
TC was legitimately bad at defense last week. They may have gotten better or the fact that I play weird hours might have been part of the reason why. Sorry to hear they're giving you guys a stiff fight.
Depending on you guys' numbers, it could very definitely be an asset to have a one-party team of guys who make trouble elsewhere. Takes some of the heat off the main group. I am usually involved in heat deflection over on Maguuma when I get to Wuv, actually.
I felt compelled to create a follow-on to "The Primary Attribute Lives". This mostly "how do i shot web"-level instruction, so I doubt it'll illuminate most anyone reading the thread, but these words have been bouncing around in my head for over a week, and I gotta let them out. So here you go.
THE TRINITY IS DEAD
Basically since the tabletop war games of the 60s, combat in role-playing games has always centered on the same mechanical premise: every agent engaged in combat is assigned a variable "healthiness" score, with positive values almost always being better. When an agent's health reaches a critical point (typically 0), it is "dead" and removed from play. No matter how many sub-rules you may have, when you put "reduce the enemy's health to 0" as the main goal of combat, the number of winning strategies in actual practice is fairly small. One possibility is to focus on your outgoing damage: since the first person to reduce their enemy's health to 0 is the winner, it doesn't matter how little health you have if the enemy drops to 0 before you do. "Make them die first." On the other hand, the reverse is also true: if you take less damage over time than the enemy does, you will eventually win. "Don't die first." Many RPGs also permit players to recover health through various means; if you can consistently reverse the enemy's gains, the enemy has no hope of winning. "They can't win if I can't lose."
Now, since most RPGs worth playing have a complicated set of rules that dictate what agents are able to do with their time and typically limit the number of strategies that can be deployed at once, players tend to focus on one particular strategy rather than seeking each goal at once. If your goal is to heal out more damage than you take, then not putting all available resources toward healing out damage leaves you vulnerable to someone causing more damage than you're capable of healing. The economics of the game rules push players toward specializing in particular strategies, especially in group combat. Having a designated damage-receiver, damage-causer, and damage-reverser usually produces better results than having an equal number of agents equally balanced for all three.
As the history of gaming has worn on, game designers, anticipating this specialization behavior, tend to build their games to support it; thus the notion of the "class". So long as the optimal strategy is to specialize for a particular task, the game designers might as well give new players a nudge in the right direction by channeling them toward what they're supposed to be doing. The armored guy can't heal, the damage-dealing guy can't wear heavy armor, the healer doesn't do much damage when he attacks, and so on.
This concept of the three main strategies is what people mean when they refer to the "trinity" in MMORPGs. Characters are either "tanks" designed to sop damage, "DPS" designed to cause as much damage over time, or "healers" designed to restore lost health. There is a bit of interbreeding between the three roles; for instance, the archetypal "paladin" role fits in the "tank" square while having healer-like abilities, and a "barbarian" type is a heavily-damaging melee fighter who is nonetheless more durable than thieves, mages, and priests. But, by and large, you're one of the three, and culturally-speaking, other players will expect you to know which part of the trinity you are and behave accordingly. Guild Wars 2 bucks the trend in two key ways.
The first way Guild Wars 2 avoids the trinity structure is that it actively prevents players from specializing too heavily toward any particular trinity role. It accomplishes this by requiring the player to field certain types of abilities on their skill bar. Half the skill bar is consumed by weapon skills, which in 99% of cases attack the enemy. Even the Guardian's supportive abilities usually have a damaging component to them; for instance, the Mace's Symbol of Faith, which produces a healing circle for allies, also damages enemies on every pulse. In Guild Wars 2, you are expected to attack the enemy no matter who you are. One and only one skill slot is fixed to a self-healing skill. You get three "utility" slots for specialty skills that either power up your attacks, manage conditions, or provide extra mobility. And the final skill is an Elite skill, which is more powerful than others and may be offensive, defensive, or supportive. This rigid structure enforces a balanced approach to selecting your skills; you can't load your skill bar down with weapon attacks or healing spells to the exclusion of all else.
After playing with this system for a while, I'm all in favor of it. One of the downsides to the trinity format is that two of the three trinity roles are "responsibility" roles. The tank often has to manage an "aggro" system that determines which character becomes the target of enemy attacks. If enemies break from the tank and start attacking the weaker party members, the tank will be accused of "not doing his job properly". Healers have it even worse; MMORPG healers are generally relegated to an elaborate game of Tapper. God help you if a single projectile is observed to emerge from the healer's character during a combat in which the party is wiped out, the consensus will inevitably be "we lost because the healer was trying to DPS". Tanking and healing are bitch roles, and Guild Wars 2 places the responsibility for every player's health primarily in the hands of the player themselves. Even "supportive" healing skills like the Necromancer's Well of Blood and the Guardian's Healing Breeze provide almost five times as much health to the user as the user's allies. The same applies to the Utility Slots, which provide every class with several skills that can be used to remove Conditions, break crowd-control effects, and prevent incoming damage. Not only does everyone have the ability to damage the enemy at all times, but they also have the responsibility of mitigating damage and healing the damage they take. If you die, it's because you did not keep yourself alive.
The second way that Guild Wars 2 dodges the typical trinity structure is by freeing classes from being constrained to a single trinity role. As I explained in "The Primary Attribute Lives", each class has a "primary attribute" that shows you what the class does, which is improved by its fifth trait line. However, that primary attribute only tells you how the profession does what it does, not what it does. The "what it does", which most closely resembles the standard trinity roles, is determined by which of the four upper trait lines you invest your trait points in. These four trait lines always have the same themes in each class:
The first trait line always improves Power, and is dedicated to inflicting more direct damage.
The second trait line always improves Precision(=Critical Chance), and is dedicated to conditions and weapon on-critical effects.
The third trait line always improves Toughness (Defense), and is dedicated to reducing the amount of direct damage received.
The fourth trait line always improves Vitality (=Max Health), and is dedicated to healing and other ally-support effects.
Five other stats "float" between the trait lines, depending the profession: Malice (=Condition Damage), Expertise (=Condition Duration), Concentration (=Boon Duration), Compassion (=Healing Power), and Prowess (=Critical Damage). The arrangement of these sub-stats can help suggest how the profession accomplishes what it accomplishes in each trait line.
Now, mind you, the descriptions above are very heavily simplified purpose statements, but they're sufficient to direct new players to what they want out of their build. If you want to be a heavy bruiser, put your trait points in the first and third trait lines-- it doesn't matter what class. If you want to play a nimble healer, put your trait points in the second and fourth trait lines. And if you're ever at a loss as to where to put points, you can't go wrong with the fifth trait line, which will improve abilities relevant to every other trait line (because it improves what your class does). But the most important thing to keep in mind is that this setup of having a predictable trinity-like role associated with each trait line for every class is that no matter what class you pick, you aren't stuck performing a specific task in your party. A Warrior can act like a cleric by putting most of his points into Tactics and a Guardian can become a berserker by putting everything in Zeal and Radiance. Your profession determines the "how", not the "what comes of it".
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
The fundamental problem last Friday was that they had two zergs and we had one. Ours was like 25 of us and 25 or so pugs, they had two of 40+. I doubt they outnumbered us two to one but it was probably fairly close to that. IMO it was an accomplishment to hold onto Hills as long as we did, we wiped I believe three of their assaults on the inner keep before they finally took it.
We should expect this sort of thing if we go to TC borderlands - they have the most participation of any of the servers in our matchup and it seems like they prioritize their own borderlands to defend (this is the dynamic that's developed across WvW it seems - servers try to own their entire borderlands). That doesn't mean we shouldn't go to their borderlands, in fact I think it's a good place to go, but if it's just us on the map (and we had the outmanned buff at both the beginning and end of that night) we should recognize it's gonna be tough.
Also I like the idea of having just maybe five of us split off and cap supply camps and just generally make a nuisance of ourselves. TC in particular responds aggressively to people trying to flip their camps, whenever we attack the northern borderlands one it's not long before like thirty of them are pouring outta that portal. We can use this to our advantage, if we get enough of them playing supply camp whackamole it'll relieve pressure on everyone else.
Also I've heard there's an FA teamspeak server, like for the whole server to use. Does anyone know anything about that?
TC was legitimately bad at defense last week. They may have gotten better or the fact that I play weird hours might have been part of the reason why. Sorry to hear they're giving you guys a stiff fight.
Depending on you guys' numbers, it could very definitely be an asset to have a one-party team of guys who make trouble elsewhere. Takes some of the heat off the main group. I am usually involved in heat deflection over on Maguuma when I get to Wuv, actually.
Wait, what server are you on? TC has been against us for a while.
Also, unrelated: on the Arah path 4 Dwayna boss: uuuugggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh. Worst boss in the game by far.
I felt compelled to create a follow-on to "The Primary Attribute Lives". This mostly "how do i shot web"-level instruction, so I doubt it'll illuminate most anyone reading the thread, but these words have been bouncing around in my head for over a week, and I gotta let them out. So here you go.
THE TRINITY IS DEAD
Basically since the tabletop war games of the 60s, combat in role-playing games has always centered on the same mechanical premise: every agent engaged in combat is assigned a variable "healthiness" score, with positive values almost always being better. When an agent's health reaches a critical point (typically 0), it is "dead" and removed from play. No matter how many sub-rules you may have, when you put "reduce the enemy's health to 0" as the main goal of combat, the number of winning strategies in actual practice is fairly small. One possibility is to focus on your outgoing damage: since the first person to reduce their enemy's health to 0 is the winner, it doesn't matter how little health you have if the enemy drops to 0 before you do. "Make them die first." On the other hand, the reverse is also true: if you take less damage over time than the enemy does, you will eventually win. "Don't die first." Many RPGs also permit players to recover health through various means; if you can consistently reverse the enemy's gains, the enemy has no hope of winning. "They can't win if I can't lose."
Now, since most RPGs worth playing have a complicated set of rules that dictate what agents are able to do with their time and typically limit the number of strategies that can be deployed at once, players tend to focus on one particular strategy rather than seeking each goal at once. If your goal is to heal out more damage than you take, then not putting all available resources toward healing out damage leaves you vulnerable to someone causing more damage than you're capable of healing. The economics of the game rules push players toward specializing in particular strategies, especially in group combat. Having a designated damage-receiver, damage-causer, and damage-reverser usually produces better results than having an equal number of agents equally balanced for all three.
As the history of gaming has worn on, game designers, anticipating this specialization behavior, tend to build their games to support it; thus the notion of the "class". So long as the optimal strategy is to specialize for a particular task, the game designers might as well give new players a nudge in the right direction by channeling them toward what they're supposed to be doing. The armored guy can't heal, the damage-dealing guy can't wear heavy armor, the healer doesn't do much damage when he attacks, and so on.
This concept of the three main strategies is what people mean when they refer to the "trinity" in MMORPGs. Characters are either "tanks" designed to sop damage, "DPS" designed to cause as much damage over time, or "healers" designed to restore lost health. There is a bit of interbreeding between the three roles; for instance, the archetypal "paladin" role fits in the "tank" square while having healer-like abilities, and a "barbarian" type is a heavily-damaging melee fighter who is nonetheless more durable than thieves, mages, and priests. But, by and large, you're one of the three, and culturally-speaking, other players will expect you to know which part of the trinity you are and behave accordingly. Guild Wars 2 bucks the trend in two key ways.
The first way Guild Wars 2 avoids the trinity structure is that it actively prevents players from specializing too heavily toward any particular trinity role. It accomplishes this by requiring the player to field certain types of abilities on their skill bar. Half the skill bar is consumed by weapon skills, which in 99% of cases attack the enemy. Even the Guardian's supportive abilities usually have a damaging component to them; for instance, the Mace's Symbol of Faith, which produces a healing circle for allies, also damages enemies on every pulse. In Guild Wars 2, you are expected to attack the enemy no matter who you are. One and only one skill slot is fixed to a self-healing skill. You get three "utility" slots for specialty skills that either power up your attacks, manage conditions, or provide extra mobility. And the final skill is an Elite skill, which is more powerful than others and may be offensive, defensive, or supportive. This rigid structure enforces a balanced approach to selecting your skills; you can't load your skill bar down with weapon attacks or healing spells to the exclusion of all else.
After playing with this system for a while, I'm all in favor of it. One of the downsides to the trinity format is that two of the three trinity roles are "responsibility" roles. The tank often has to manage an "aggro" system that determines which character becomes the target of enemy attacks. If enemies break from the tank and start attacking the weaker party members, the tank will be accused of "not doing his job properly". Healers have it even worse; MMORPG healers are generally relegated to an elaborate game of Tapper. God help you if a single projectile is observed to emerge from the healer's character during a combat in which the party is wiped out, the consensus will inevitably be "we lost because the healer was trying to DPS". Tanking and healing are bitch roles, and Guild Wars 2 places the responsibility for every player's health primarily in the hands of the player themselves. Even "supportive" healing skills like the Necromancer's Well of Blood and the Guardian's Healing Breeze provide almost five times as much health to the user as the user's allies. The same applies to the Utility Slots, which provide every class with several skills that can be used to remove Conditions, break crowd-control effects, and prevent incoming damage. Not only does everyone have the ability to damage the enemy at all times, but they also have the responsibility of mitigating damage and healing the damage they take. If you die, it's because you did not keep yourself alive.
The second way that Guild Wars 2 dodges the typical trinity structure is by freeing classes from being constrained to a single trinity role. As I explained in "The Primary Attribute Lives", each class has a "primary attribute" that shows you what the class does, which is improved by its fifth trait line. However, that primary attribute only tells you how the profession does what it does, not what it does. The "what it does", which most closely resembles the standard trinity roles, is determined by which of the four upper trait lines you invest your trait points in. These four trait lines always have the same themes in each class:
The first trait line always improves Power, and is dedicated to inflicting more direct damage.
The second trait line always improves Precision(=Critical Chance), and is dedicated to conditions and weapon on-critical effects.
The third trait line always improves Toughness (Defense), and is dedicated to reducing the amount of direct damage received.
The fourth trait line always improves Vitality (=Max Health), and is dedicated to healing and other ally-support effects.
Five other stats "float" between the trait lines, depending the profession: Malice (=Condition Damage), Expertise (=Condition Duration), Concentration (=Boon Duration), Compassion (=Healing Power), and Prowess (=Critical Damage). The arrangement of these sub-stats can help suggest how the profession accomplishes what it accomplishes in each trait line.
Now, mind you, the descriptions above are very heavily simplified purpose statements, but they're sufficient to direct new players to what they want out of their build. If you want to be a heavy bruiser, put your trait points in the first and third trait lines-- it doesn't matter what class. If you want to play a nimble healer, put your trait points in the second and fourth trait lines. And if you're ever at a loss as to where to put points, you can't go wrong with the fifth trait line, which will improve abilities relevant to every other trait line (because it improves what your class does). But the most important thing to keep in mind is that this setup of having a predictable trinity-like role associated with each trait line for every class is that no matter what class you pick, you aren't stuck performing a specific task in your party. A Warrior can act like a cleric by putting most of his points into Tactics and a Guardian can become a berserker by putting everything in Zeal and Radiance. Your profession determines the "how", not the "what comes of it".
It's probably worth mentioning the downed/dead state, and most importantly, the combat revival. A downed player can be brought up quickly if anyone is on top of it, barring AoE fields (and even then, it might be doable depending on your skills). So the last line of "reversing damage" is almost (Lets be fair, Glyph of Renewal is insanely good at this) equally available to all classes and all builds - just stop dpsing for a moment and get them up (Not to mention skills that can directly revive a downed player, or help them get to safety) and you bring them to half health - in this case, when a player slips, it's the responsibility of everyone to get them up (or in some cases, it's almost inevitable).
Also, killing a low health enemy for a rally is often an easier way to get back up than a pickup, especially if the downed player can't move and is stuck in enemy aoe.
Personally, if I'm downed and feel it would be easier to rally, I'll call the target, but I'm not sure how many follow that convention
I felt compelled to create a follow-on to "The Primary Attribute Lives". This mostly "how do i shot web"-level instruction, so I doubt it'll illuminate most anyone reading the thread, but these words have been bouncing around in my head for over a week, and I gotta let them out. So here you go.
THE TRINITY IS DEAD
Basically since the tabletop war games of the 60s, combat in role-playing games has always centered on the same mechanical premise: every agent engaged in combat is assigned a variable "healthiness" score, with positive values almost always being better. When an agent's health reaches a critical point (typically 0), it is "dead" and removed from play. No matter how many sub-rules you may have, when you put "reduce the enemy's health to 0" as the main goal of combat, the number of winning strategies in actual practice is fairly small. One possibility is to focus on your outgoing damage: since the first person to reduce their enemy's health to 0 is the winner, it doesn't matter how little health you have if the enemy drops to 0 before you do. "Make them die first." On the other hand, the reverse is also true: if you take less damage over time than the enemy does, you will eventually win. "Don't die first." Many RPGs also permit players to recover health through various means; if you can consistently reverse the enemy's gains, the enemy has no hope of winning. "They can't win if I can't lose."
Now, since most RPGs worth playing have a complicated set of rules that dictate what agents are able to do with their time and typically limit the number of strategies that can be deployed at once, players tend to focus on one particular strategy rather than seeking each goal at once. If your goal is to heal out more damage than you take, then not putting all available resources toward healing out damage leaves you vulnerable to someone causing more damage than you're capable of healing. The economics of the game rules push players toward specializing in particular strategies, especially in group combat. Having a designated damage-receiver, damage-causer, and damage-reverser usually produces better results than having an equal number of agents equally balanced for all three.
As the history of gaming has worn on, game designers, anticipating this specialization behavior, tend to build their games to support it; thus the notion of the "class". So long as the optimal strategy is to specialize for a particular task, the game designers might as well give new players a nudge in the right direction by channeling them toward what they're supposed to be doing. The armored guy can't heal, the damage-dealing guy can't wear heavy armor, the healer doesn't do much damage when he attacks, and so on.
This concept of the three main strategies is what people mean when they refer to the "trinity" in MMORPGs. Characters are either "tanks" designed to sop damage, "DPS" designed to cause as much damage over time, or "healers" designed to restore lost health. There is a bit of interbreeding between the three roles; for instance, the archetypal "paladin" role fits in the "tank" square while having healer-like abilities, and a "barbarian" type is a heavily-damaging melee fighter who is nonetheless more durable than thieves, mages, and priests. But, by and large, you're one of the three, and culturally-speaking, other players will expect you to know which part of the trinity you are and behave accordingly. Guild Wars 2 bucks the trend in two key ways.
The first way Guild Wars 2 avoids the trinity structure is that it actively prevents players from specializing too heavily toward any particular trinity role. It accomplishes this by requiring the player to field certain types of abilities on their skill bar. Half the skill bar is consumed by weapon skills, which in 99% of cases attack the enemy. Even the Guardian's supportive abilities usually have a damaging component to them; for instance, the Mace's Symbol of Faith, which produces a healing circle for allies, also damages enemies on every pulse. In Guild Wars 2, you are expected to attack the enemy no matter who you are. One and only one skill slot is fixed to a self-healing skill. You get three "utility" slots for specialty skills that either power up your attacks, manage conditions, or provide extra mobility. And the final skill is an Elite skill, which is more powerful than others and may be offensive, defensive, or supportive. This rigid structure enforces a balanced approach to selecting your skills; you can't load your skill bar down with weapon attacks or healing spells to the exclusion of all else.
After playing with this system for a while, I'm all in favor of it. One of the downsides to the trinity format is that two of the three trinity roles are "responsibility" roles. The tank often has to manage an "aggro" system that determines which character becomes the target of enemy attacks. If enemies break from the tank and start attacking the weaker party members, the tank will be accused of "not doing his job properly". Healers have it even worse; MMORPG healers are generally relegated to an elaborate game of Tapper. God help you if a single projectile is observed to emerge from the healer's character during a combat in which the party is wiped out, the consensus will inevitably be "we lost because the healer was trying to DPS". Tanking and healing are bitch roles, and Guild Wars 2 places the responsibility for every player's health primarily in the hands of the player themselves. Even "supportive" healing skills like the Necromancer's Well of Blood and the Guardian's Healing Breeze provide almost five times as much health to the user as the user's allies. The same applies to the Utility Slots, which provide every class with several skills that can be used to remove Conditions, break crowd-control effects, and prevent incoming damage. Not only does everyone have the ability to damage the enemy at all times, but they also have the responsibility of mitigating damage and healing the damage they take. If you die, it's because you did not keep yourself alive.
The second way that Guild Wars 2 dodges the typical trinity structure is by freeing classes from being constrained to a single trinity role. As I explained in "The Primary Attribute Lives", each class has a "primary attribute" that shows you what the class does, which is improved by its fifth trait line. However, that primary attribute only tells you how the profession does what it does, not what it does. The "what it does", which most closely resembles the standard trinity roles, is determined by which of the four upper trait lines you invest your trait points in. These four trait lines always have the same themes in each class:
The first trait line always improves Power, and is dedicated to inflicting more direct damage.
The second trait line always improves Precision(=Critical Chance), and is dedicated to conditions and weapon on-critical effects.
The third trait line always improves Toughness (Defense), and is dedicated to reducing the amount of direct damage received.
The fourth trait line always improves Vitality (=Max Health), and is dedicated to healing and other ally-support effects.
Five other stats "float" between the trait lines, depending the profession: Malice (=Condition Damage), Expertise (=Condition Duration), Concentration (=Boon Duration), Compassion (=Healing Power), and Prowess (=Critical Damage). The arrangement of these sub-stats can help suggest how the profession accomplishes what it accomplishes in each trait line.
Now, mind you, the descriptions above are very heavily simplified purpose statements, but they're sufficient to direct new players to what they want out of their build. If you want to be a heavy bruiser, put your trait points in the first and third trait lines-- it doesn't matter what class. If you want to play a nimble healer, put your trait points in the second and fourth trait lines. And if you're ever at a loss as to where to put points, you can't go wrong with the fifth trait line, which will improve abilities relevant to every other trait line (because it improves what your class does). But the most important thing to keep in mind is that this setup of having a predictable trinity-like role associated with each trait line for every class is that no matter what class you pick, you aren't stuck performing a specific task in your party. A Warrior can act like a cleric by putting most of his points into Tactics and a Guardian can become a berserker by putting everything in Zeal and Radiance. Your profession determines the "how", not the "what comes of it".
I heartily disagree about your definition of the trinity and the role of healer and tanks.
As a good tank or healer in WoW I was godking of my groups, and could tell them what to do however I wanted, largely because finding a good tank or healer was rare. DPS were the bitches, as they were dime a dozen. In general though, good players meant noone was anyones bitch.
Not that I dislike GW2s system that much, but it irks me the game doesn't let me play a healer or a tank.
As far as the lack of the holy trinity goes I think I liked it better in City of Villains, at least as far as group play goes. Maybe it's the iffy mob tells or their abuse of just how many red circles bosses throw out, but mitigation through dodging just feels tedious rather than fun. Which is odd, given how amazingly fun TERA's Slayers are, and they're all about dodging.
Generally, I find the fights just less interesting. The thing about a trinity model is it gives the player ALOT of control over the fight. This means you can do some complex shit and force them to keep up.
Some of it I think GW2 could probably replicate, but some I'm not so sure and other bits it can replicate but it's just more frustrating in GW2.
I don't know, maybe it's cause I was a tank all the time in WoW and the like, but GW2's aggro system is just chaotic and removes alot of precision from fights. I remember really noticing this my first time through the Dredge fractal. A boss that in WoW would be both super simple and boring and one I could carry a group through no problem becomes a messy clusterfuck instead.
I don't know, fights just feel very spammy in this game. The dodging and the lack of good tells and the aggro tables all combine to make it just a chaotic mess. I'm not sure if it has to be that way or if the fights just aren't that interesting or something.
Yeah, I totally miss those days where a tank or a healer misses one cooldown, causing the tank to die and the entire group to wipe because one person made one mistake.
Generally, I find the fights just less interesting. The thing about a trinity model is it gives the player ALOT of control over the fight. This means you can do some complex shit and force them to keep up.
Some of it I think GW2 could probably replicate, but some I'm not so sure and other bits it can replicate but it's just more frustrating in GW2.
I don't know, maybe it's cause I was a tank all the time in WoW and the like, but GW2's aggro system is just chaotic and removes alot of precision from fights. I remember really noticing this my first time through the Dredge fractal. A boss that in WoW would be both super simple and boring and one I could carry a group through no problem becomes a messy clusterfuck instead.
I don't know, fights just feel very spammy in this game. The dodging and the lack of good tells and the aggro tables all combine to make it just a chaotic mess. I'm not sure if it has to be that way or if the fights just aren't that interesting or something.
Well, GW2 has a system that could make for some really cool fights, but they would need to balance damage output between classes, and implement a more solid system for seeing who a boss is targeting, even if you only get 0.5 sec to react to it or so. But the complete and utter lack of damage balancing makes it hard to give fights a dps check component, which is what can push a lot of mechanics from boring to fun, as you have to keep dealing your damage, even when avoiding things.
Yeah, WoW's fights were only tank'n'spank in vanilla, later on they created some really fun and creative boss fights.
If anything, that is what GW2's boss fights feel like, at least the ones I've fought (not done Fractals yet). There's maybe one boss mechanic to keep in mind, boss is a bag of hitpoints and everything else is just a DPS race as you dodge red circles.
I imagine just having reliable aggro mechanics would fix a lot of issues. You could have speedy classes kite things around, or classes with lots of mitigation/immunity to certain damage types tanking those, but nope, everything aggros on everyone. Be it pug or guildies on VoIP fights always feel far too out of control to be fun.
Just because a game is a MMO with swords and fireballs doesn't mean it has to be like WoW. We've spent millions of key presses in this thread and others complaining about the trinity, about how much WoW sucks, about how boring the fights are and how it sucks that you're require to have X, Y and Z class to complete content.
Yet, here we are now romanticizing about how wonderful WoW's Trinity was. Seriously?
Sit tight kids, because I'm about to blow away your bacon.
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Guild Wars 2. It's a different game.
Being different doesn't mean they can't design actual fun fights instead of what we have though.
And a good first step to that is making certain things more obvious, such as ability targets. Would allow for having several different mechanics instead of just one per fight.
The point is NOT that GW2 is perfect, as I agree they can definitely do more on their encounter designs.
But going all rose-colored glasses about how great the Trinity system was/is and how GW2 would be so much better if it had it...that's a bit pointless. That's what I mean when I say it's a different game. I made the mistake of assuming the context of the paragraph above my last line would be assumed to relate to said comment.
If you read "I imagine just having reliable aggro mechanics would fix a lot of issues" as "how great the Trinity system was/is" then perhaps you require some reading comprehension yourself.
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mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
here comes new nodes for holiday recipes on Wednesday.
And rangers pets abilities to hit moving targets is "improved"
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Generally, I find the fights just less interesting. The thing about a trinity model is it gives the player ALOT of control over the fight. This means you can do some complex shit and force them to keep up.
Some of it I think GW2 could probably replicate, but some I'm not so sure and other bits it can replicate but it's just more frustrating in GW2.
I don't know, maybe it's cause I was a tank all the time in WoW and the like, but GW2's aggro system is just chaotic and removes alot of precision from fights. I remember really noticing this my first time through the Dredge fractal. A boss that in WoW would be both super simple and boring and one I could carry a group through no problem becomes a messy clusterfuck instead.
I don't know, fights just feel very spammy in this game. The dodging and the lack of good tells and the aggro tables all combine to make it just a chaotic mess. I'm not sure if it has to be that way or if the fights just aren't that interesting or something.
I think you may have picked a terrible example because that dredge fight? It's only a chaotic clusterfuck if your team makes it one. Organization is key here because of the aggro mechanics. A lot of people do this thing where they play something poorly and then draw their conclusions of the battle based on what they just saw. They never think "could that have gone differently?" "did we screw up or is the fight screwed up?" They just assume it must've been the fight because there is no way it could be their fault.
I'm not saying there isn't work to be done, mob HP is still a problem in many cases. But some of these complaints are really disingenuous.
And WoW was only tank n' spank in vanilla? Please. Let's not kid our selves. Did some fights have good mechanics? Of course they did! But comparing JUST the good fights from one game with ALL the fights in other is silly.
I'd totally rather a system where a boss wails on a single guy and a another guy watches a health bar for 15 minutes.
I remember all my raiding times in EQ1 with the clerics essentially forming a single file line casting complete heal so the main tank got it every so many seconds. I was a paladin, I tossed HoTs on the main tank every so often and hit stuff in the back while trying not to die.
I think if I had to choose, it would be interesting to have shorter boss fights, but they are tougher. An example that's probably not popular, would the phase 2 of the cliffside fractal boss. He runs after you with his hammer and tries pounding you, he drops some large AE necro wells to add agony and like 3 debuffs on you and he has that nova skill, requiring you to dodge or take large damage plus agony. It's very challenging because on fractal 20, I usually take 14k damage in 2 hits from nova, plus agony. On the flip side, you take him from 75% hps to 40%, so in a few minutes, you know if you survive or wipe.
What might be more fun and easier to implement with their current bosses? Give each boss 4-5 different move sets. Every 25% hp they lose, they randomly change to another skillset. The boss above has the following: Phase 1, the boss is very aggressive with melee and PBaoe damage with the necro wells. Phase 2, he's lighter on melee, aggressive with wells and his nova light skill that punishes groups quickly. Phase 3, he's aggressive with melee and summons spectral adds continuously after they are killed, but no wells or nova light. Phase 4, same as phase 3.
Taking this example, imagine if he has one of those random 3 sets for phase 1, then has a random set for phase 2, etc.
I mean, if a boss fight could be over in 5 minutes or less, but it's pretty challenging in that time and not just some guy with a zillion hps, I think it would be more fun. I think a part of why I like fractals so much is due to the bosses having some mechanics to help them get killed faster and all that.
here comes new nodes for holiday recipes on Wednesday.
And rangers pets abilities to hit moving targets is "improved"
I hope their attack animation is a little faster, or maybe they could add a slight leap to each melee attack so it helps them hit more often. I like the canines, because they have 1-2 leap attacks which are usually able to hit.
Yeah, WoW's fights were only tank'n'spank in vanilla, later on they created some really fun and creative boss fights.
If anything, that is what GW2's boss fights feel like, at least the ones I've fought (not done Fractals yet). There's maybe one boss mechanic to keep in mind, boss is a bag of hitpoints and everything else is just a DPS race as you dodge red circles.
I imagine just having reliable aggro mechanics would fix a lot of issues. You could have speedy classes kite things around, or classes with lots of mitigation/immunity to certain damage types tanking those, but nope, everything aggros on everyone. Be it pug or guildies on VoIP fights always feel far too out of control to be fun.
Many are like that, many are also not like that. For example: Lupi in Arah ex, or the end boss of CoF story.
Reliable aggro mechanics would, in my opinion, make a lot of the fights boring and predictable. As it is, most people notice that if you have high armor and high power, you're more likely to be targeted by certain abilities. If you stop to res someone, you're more likely to be targeted. Personally I find the bosses in GW2 immensely more satisfying and interesting than WoW bosses which generally put the onus on a very few number of people, while the rest just spammed their DPS cycles. I personally hate fights where there's a trick or a pattern to follow, they remind me so much of the uninspired bosses back in the NES and SNES days: duck high shot, jump low shot, attack once, back up, repeat for 5 minutes, make a mistake and start again.
The randomness of the bosses is, in theory, supposed to make you want to pay more attention to what the boss is doing so that you can react, rather than the old MMO (WoW) model of watching cooldowns and raid UIs instead of the actual fight. In practice this doesn't always work, especially with the smaller bosses with tells that are harder to notice in the conflagrations.
SEVERE EDIT:
Now, the theory I operate under with regards to necros is that they're not intended to be played as a condition focused class. But rather they're supposed to be a mix of white damage and condition damage (unless you're going pure power, but even then some condition damage is unavoidable). I base this on the fact that the precision tree also gives condition damage, and the Power tree gives condition duration. Meaning a glass cannon power/precision build is also a condition build.
While I agree somewhat with your overall point, this is not why those trees are like that.
A power-necro build likes vulnerability alot. And chill/cripple too, since power necro is close-range necro. That means condition duration is important.
And the precision tree is actually in large part a condition tree since it's crits->bleeds like several other classes have. Crit+Condition Damage with no Crit Damage is very common for several classes.
I would say a power/precision build USES conditions, but is not a condition build in the sense that it's not about condition damage.
I'm a power necro, and I only have one ability that stacks vulnerability: Focus 4, and I don't use it with my dagger at all. Power necros typically go for dagger mainhand because it's the highest straight white damage by a wide margin. Axe's damage is much lower to compensate for the increased range/vulnerability. Scepter's damage is much much lower because it also stacks bleeds and poisons. Dagger mainhand does no conditions, and so does the highest damage to compensate.
But you're mostly repeating my point when you say the precision tree is a conditon tree. My point is that the power and precision trees are BOTH condition damage trees. So when someone says they speced for condition damage (which is the point I'm addressing) you're also gaining a lot of points into power and precision. The reason for this, in my opinion, is because the necros aren't supposed to stack +condition damage for condition builds the way other classes' condition builds do. In fact, necros only get access to two damaging conditions (Bleed and poison), and can't stack bleeds nearly as high as many other classes (such as thieves, warriors and rangers). If we were intended to be able to survive as pure condition damage builds, I'd argue the condition damage and duration traits wouldn't be attached to the power/precision trees, and we'd be better at stacking real damaging conditions. Necros instead, I contend, are supposed to balance between white damage and condition damage, if they want to do condition damage at all. A pure condition damage necro (and when I say a pure condition damage necro, I mean one in all +condition damage gear) is going to be less effective than pure condition damage thief, simply because they can't stack conditions as high or as quickly.
My point was, if you want to go condition damage, find a balance between condition damage and white damage, otherwise you're wasting all those points in precision and power you're getting by speccing into spite and curses. If you want to do pure power, you can do it and eschew condition damage almost completely because there are a number of weapons available that do no/minimal condition damage, but the necro's main condition damage weapon also has the potential for huge white damage spikes.
I reached this conclusion because necros who go for condition damage weapons (scepter, staff) will also have access to abilities that ONLY do white damage, and can do very very high white damage (feast of corruption, putrid mark, necrotic grasp), whereas necros who go for power can almost completely avoid condition damage on their weapons (axe and dagger mainhands do 0 condition damage, warhorn and focus off hand also both do no condition damage). Power builds can go pure power and avoid condition damage, condition damage builds cannot avoid doing good white damage as well. So there's no benefit in going pure +condition damage as a necro if you A) can't avoid having your highest damage abilities be white damage abilities and you can't stack things like bleed and poison very high compared to many other classes.
For utilities, it depends on your spec. Wells are great if you have ground targeted wells. But, I personally disapprove of wells because the cooldown is just far too long for what you get, and frankly this is a problem with most of the necro utilities. Take for example well of suffering. It does, as base damage before power vs toughness 1220 damage over 5 seconds (assuming the enemy doesn't move on a 45s cooldown. Compare this to Blood is power, which gives an immediate 2stack of bleed over 30 seconds of base damage 2550 (assuming it doesn't get cleansed) which means right away the base damage of BiP is doing more over the course of 45 seconds (Well of suffering's downtime) than the well. Add in a small damage on cast, plus 350power and condition damage for 12seconds (assuming you have no boon duration) and it vastly outdamages the well, while being on a 30 second cooldown - meaning you can cast it 3 times for every 2 casts of well of suffering. However, the well does stack vulnerability, which increases the party's damage for a few seconds, so the ACTUAL damage might be different than that (again assuming the enemy stays still for all 5 ticks of the well, which he almost never does). Well also benefit from a number of traits such as healing, cooldown reduction, etc which might make them right for you. But the frenetic, always in motion pace of dungeons and WvW means they rarely see their full potential.
Wells are actually pretty neat in my experience. The cooldown does seem really long in boss-type fights. But in shorter fights with more mobs, the cooldowns aren't as noticeable and they can REALLY turn a fight around. I've grown very fond of them.
In general most of my examples come from pvp where players are smarter than mobs and combat is more frenetic. But this even happens in boss fights in dungeons as well. It's so easy for anything to just move out of your well unless it is immobilized or otherwise crowd controlled. Just last night against the pain in the ass boss in Arah ex4, I put down well of suffering only to have it hit for a grand total of 0 ticks as the boss moved out of it right when I put it down. That's a 45 second cooldown to no effect. I used wells almost exclusively during pve soloing though. Because the only time you're ever really in danger while leveling is if you get mobbed by 3 or 5 enemies, and for those situations wells can be life savers. If you can catch a player in wvw in well of darkness and suffering, that can spell doom for a player IF they're dumb enough to stay in them, or otherwise unable to leave it. My beef with wells is that their duration and range make them WAAAY too easy to avoid, which doesn't justify the minute long cooldown most of them have.
I think the simple comparison is an ability like a mesmer's feedback, or null field. Both of these are on shorter cooldowns than (most of) the Necro's wells, they both offer more utility, at range, and they both last longer. Necros have to slot a 20 point major trait to get the same range that the mesmer's skills get by default, and the mesmer skills will STILL have better utility and be on shorter cooldowns (and I'm pretty sure null field has a much wider radius than any well).
Wells are good skills, they just need to be tweaked.
It's only a chaotic clusterfuck if your team makes it one. Organization is key here because of the aggro mechanics. A lot of people do this thing where they play something poorly and then draw their conclusions of the battle based on what they just saw. They never think "could that have gone differently?" "did we screw up or is the fight screwed up?" They just assume it must've been the fight because there is no way it could be their fault.
Perhaps it's a problem with the game not communicating this across well, more than mechanics. The aggro system just feels weird and inconsistent and it's frustrating when you pull aggro, exhaust your escapes and eventually die, just because at the drop of a pin you got targetted and no matter what your buddies did, the mobs just kept chasing you, then beating on your downed body until you keeled. How are you supposed to manage it when you've exhausted all your tools and it still wasn't enough? Or, how are you supposed to avoid doing it, when there's little indication what's Okay and what is Okay The Game Just Wants To Kill You Now? Or should you just accept it and fill your utilities with enough escapes to keep you out of harm's reach while you do Jackety Sax?
It's only a chaotic clusterfuck if your team makes it one. Organization is key here because of the aggro mechanics. A lot of people do this thing where they play something poorly and then draw their conclusions of the battle based on what they just saw. They never think "could that have gone differently?" "did we screw up or is the fight screwed up?" They just assume it must've been the fight because there is no way it could be their fault.
Perhaps it's a problem with the game not communicating this across well, more than mechanics. The aggro system just feels weird and inconsistent and it's frustrating when you pull aggro, exhaust your escapes and eventually die, just because at the drop of a pin you got targetted and no matter what your buddies did, the mobs just kept chasing you, then beating on your downed body until you keeled. How are you supposed to manage it when you've exhausted all your tools and it still wasn't enough? Or, how are you supposed to avoid doing it, when there's little indication what's Okay and what is Okay The Game Just Wants To Kill You Now? Or should you just accept it and fill your utilities with enough escapes to keep you out of harm's reach while you do Jackety Sax?
I think the wiki mentions that there are a number of factors which are calculated when determining what each individual mob, be it trash or champion, determines to be the biggest threat. It also mentions that each mob behaves differently.
1) closest target to them
2) who is dealing damage
3) top damage dealers
4) who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
5) others (reviving someone for example)
The wiki also mentions that sometimes a boss will use one of these when chasing someone down, but if they have some kind of ranged attack, they may choose a different target to use it on.
One anectdotal example, on the fractal dredge mining suit or ice elemental bosses, I'm usually running the switches so I'm not doing much damage, but usually once each fight, they start chasing me up the ramps and I have to switch with someone else while I run it under the lava drop site. As a mesmer, I'd like to think I am not 1, 2, 3 or 4. Though I might fit under "other" since I'm the guy dumping all the lava on them.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
It's only a chaotic clusterfuck if your team makes it one. Organization is key here because of the aggro mechanics. A lot of people do this thing where they play something poorly and then draw their conclusions of the battle based on what they just saw. They never think "could that have gone differently?" "did we screw up or is the fight screwed up?" They just assume it must've been the fight because there is no way it could be their fault.
Perhaps it's a problem with the game not communicating this across well, more than mechanics. The aggro system just feels weird and inconsistent and it's frustrating when you pull aggro, exhaust your escapes and eventually die, just because at the drop of a pin you got targetted and no matter what your buddies did, the mobs just kept chasing you, then beating on your downed body until you keeled. How are you supposed to manage it when you've exhausted all your tools and it still wasn't enough? Or, how are you supposed to avoid doing it, when there's little indication what's Okay and what is Okay The Game Just Wants To Kill You Now? Or should you just accept it and fill your utilities with enough escapes to keep you out of harm's reach while you do Jackety Sax?
In the case of the Dredge boss he is slower than you. He cannot just chase you down and beat you to death. To die to him you need to:
A: Fail to dodge/reflect bombs
B: Not sidestep the shock wave
C: Stand right in front of him when he punches Be in range and not dodge some of his stomp
I'm pretty sure those are all of his damage sources. If you are at a low enough HP level that anything can one shot you and you are not confident that you can not dodge the next hit, run out of range. That's almost always a good option in this game. You don't need to sit in the middle of a battle with 500HP left and no cooldowns. Just step back out of range, in this case the only thing that can hit you is a bomb. If you manage to fail that dodge you will only be downed and he doesn't bomb twice in a row. Someone can pick you up and everything is fine.
It's only a chaotic clusterfuck if your team makes it one. Organization is key here because of the aggro mechanics. A lot of people do this thing where they play something poorly and then draw their conclusions of the battle based on what they just saw. They never think "could that have gone differently?" "did we screw up or is the fight screwed up?" They just assume it must've been the fight because there is no way it could be their fault.
Perhaps it's a problem with the game not communicating this across well, more than mechanics. The aggro system just feels weird and inconsistent and it's frustrating when you pull aggro, exhaust your escapes and eventually die, just because at the drop of a pin you got targetted and no matter what your buddies did, the mobs just kept chasing you, then beating on your downed body until you keeled. How are you supposed to manage it when you've exhausted all your tools and it still wasn't enough? Or, how are you supposed to avoid doing it, when there's little indication what's Okay and what is Okay The Game Just Wants To Kill You Now? Or should you just accept it and fill your utilities with enough escapes to keep you out of harm's reach while you do Jackety Sax?
I think the wiki mentions that there are a number of factors which are calculated when determining what each individual mob, be it trash or champion, determines to be the biggest threat. It also mentions that each mob behaves differently.
1) closest target to them
2) who is dealing damage
3) top damage dealers
4) who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
5) others (reviving someone for example)
The wiki also mentions that sometimes a boss will use one of these when chasing someone down, but if they have some kind of ranged attack, they may choose a different target to use it on.
One anectdotal example, on the fractal dredge mining suit or ice elemental bosses, I'm usually running the switches so I'm not doing much damage, but usually once each fight, they start chasing me up the ramps and I have to switch with someone else while I run it under the lava drop site. As a mesmer, I'd like to think I am not 1, 2, 3 or 4. Though I might fit under "other" since I'm the guy dumping all the lava on them.
Yeah, and I kind of like this approach. Makes the bosses feel more like you're fighting a thinking thing, rather than a robot with loot in its pockets. Now, what they need to do at this point is make the fights shorter but more dangerous. There are a few too many bosses where the group never feels like they're in danger but the boss just takes forever to die. I think my favourite boss right now is Lupicus. Without a coordinated group of good players he is incredibly hard. He hits hard, he's not super predictable, and he requires you stay on your toes. But the fight doesn't take 20 minutes
My Engineer has also "tanked" a champion the entire +5 minute fight whilst dealing literally no damage after the first 20 seconds (or doing anything except running out of range, then back in) as my Warrior buddy beat on him, unmolested.
My Guardian once tanked that Champion wurm in the Charr lands by standing behind a tree. That toughness must count for a lot because I got Bronze for that fight for doing so little damage to the thing.
And then there was the Catacombs run, where a friend of mine grabbed the troll aggro whenever he was alive. If he respawned and jogged back the troll would instantly go for him the moment he was within a certain distance, even when out of sight.
Lupicus could use a bit more clear targeting on his random bolts during p2, since it can be impossible to see one heading for you while he is tossing out the ground targeted ones, as well as slightly lower health and a harder dpscheck in phase 1, apart from that he is actually one of the somewhat well designed bosses.
I personally cannot wait for the dungeon retune patch after seeing the fights they put in the fractals. There are very few cases of hp-sponge syndrome in the fractals, and there are environmental effects to take advantage of to speed up the ones that are. With them taking what they'e learned into account, I think we'll be in for a good time.
My Engineer has also "tanked" a champion the entire +5 minute fight whilst dealing literally no damage after the first 20 seconds (or doing anything except running out of range, then back in) as my Warrior buddy beat on him, unmolested.
My Guardian once tanked that Champion wurm in the Charr lands by standing behind a tree. That toughness must count for a lot because I got Bronze for that fight for doing so little damage to the thing.
And then there was the Catacombs run, where a friend of mine grabbed the troll aggro whenever he was alive. If he respawned and jogged back the troll would instantly go for him the moment he was within a certain distance, even when out of sight.
You ask me, their aggro code has a few bugs in.
That'll always have some truth in it. I guess the best way to think of these fights is that they are dynamic. Thus, if you have aggro, act accordingly. Kiting bosses around, reduce LoS or if possible, try stealthing/warping to help reduce threat, etc.
You should try the fractals sometime, the bosses are relatively challenging with some mechanics to help/hinder you and it'll also help people learn how to fight in groups. I personally think learning to fight in groups is a challenge, since most will end up soloing up to 80 for the most part.
As a disclaimer, I've not done many dungeons at all. I've done a lot of fractals though.
So I'm at 207 Arah tokens and I need 210 for the shoulders that I want...
I'm going to try and run one more path tonight, just not path 4 unless I can find a group with 3 greatsword warriors and 1 mesmer, or they fix the boss there to be beatable.
Posts
I like to simplify. Power is a direct multiplier to damage in any way. So to keep it simple, doubling your power doubles your direct damage.
Likewise, doubling armor halves damage, but this is near impossible in most reasonable cases (like unless you are going from glass canon underleveled gear to primary toughness max gear it prolly won't double.)
Hope that helps.
Also, @daemonsadi, i posted on that thing about the fight club. Mostly because most of my in game time is spent finding fights in obsidian sanctum. Crystal desert has been camping the entrance with a large group so there had been lots of good fights, although there is no level of frustration higher than dealing with a duo of stealth spec thieves as a Mesmer like i had to last night.
After that, you can conceivably get another 400 from traits and nourishment.
Power affects things on it's own but armor affects things as the armor on your equipment + toughness. Yeah it's weird because the "attack" stat is literally used for nothing and misleading as shit.
TC was legitimately bad at defense last week. They may have gotten better or the fact that I play weird hours might have been part of the reason why. Sorry to hear they're giving you guys a stiff fight.
Depending on you guys' numbers, it could very definitely be an asset to have a one-party team of guys who make trouble elsewhere. Takes some of the heat off the main group. I am usually involved in heat deflection over on Maguuma when I get to Wuv, actually.
THE TRINITY IS DEAD
Now, since most RPGs worth playing have a complicated set of rules that dictate what agents are able to do with their time and typically limit the number of strategies that can be deployed at once, players tend to focus on one particular strategy rather than seeking each goal at once. If your goal is to heal out more damage than you take, then not putting all available resources toward healing out damage leaves you vulnerable to someone causing more damage than you're capable of healing. The economics of the game rules push players toward specializing in particular strategies, especially in group combat. Having a designated damage-receiver, damage-causer, and damage-reverser usually produces better results than having an equal number of agents equally balanced for all three.
As the history of gaming has worn on, game designers, anticipating this specialization behavior, tend to build their games to support it; thus the notion of the "class". So long as the optimal strategy is to specialize for a particular task, the game designers might as well give new players a nudge in the right direction by channeling them toward what they're supposed to be doing. The armored guy can't heal, the damage-dealing guy can't wear heavy armor, the healer doesn't do much damage when he attacks, and so on.
This concept of the three main strategies is what people mean when they refer to the "trinity" in MMORPGs. Characters are either "tanks" designed to sop damage, "DPS" designed to cause as much damage over time, or "healers" designed to restore lost health. There is a bit of interbreeding between the three roles; for instance, the archetypal "paladin" role fits in the "tank" square while having healer-like abilities, and a "barbarian" type is a heavily-damaging melee fighter who is nonetheless more durable than thieves, mages, and priests. But, by and large, you're one of the three, and culturally-speaking, other players will expect you to know which part of the trinity you are and behave accordingly. Guild Wars 2 bucks the trend in two key ways.
The first way Guild Wars 2 avoids the trinity structure is that it actively prevents players from specializing too heavily toward any particular trinity role. It accomplishes this by requiring the player to field certain types of abilities on their skill bar. Half the skill bar is consumed by weapon skills, which in 99% of cases attack the enemy. Even the Guardian's supportive abilities usually have a damaging component to them; for instance, the Mace's Symbol of Faith, which produces a healing circle for allies, also damages enemies on every pulse. In Guild Wars 2, you are expected to attack the enemy no matter who you are. One and only one skill slot is fixed to a self-healing skill. You get three "utility" slots for specialty skills that either power up your attacks, manage conditions, or provide extra mobility. And the final skill is an Elite skill, which is more powerful than others and may be offensive, defensive, or supportive. This rigid structure enforces a balanced approach to selecting your skills; you can't load your skill bar down with weapon attacks or healing spells to the exclusion of all else.
After playing with this system for a while, I'm all in favor of it. One of the downsides to the trinity format is that two of the three trinity roles are "responsibility" roles. The tank often has to manage an "aggro" system that determines which character becomes the target of enemy attacks. If enemies break from the tank and start attacking the weaker party members, the tank will be accused of "not doing his job properly". Healers have it even worse; MMORPG healers are generally relegated to an elaborate game of Tapper. God help you if a single projectile is observed to emerge from the healer's character during a combat in which the party is wiped out, the consensus will inevitably be "we lost because the healer was trying to DPS". Tanking and healing are bitch roles, and Guild Wars 2 places the responsibility for every player's health primarily in the hands of the player themselves. Even "supportive" healing skills like the Necromancer's Well of Blood and the Guardian's Healing Breeze provide almost five times as much health to the user as the user's allies. The same applies to the Utility Slots, which provide every class with several skills that can be used to remove Conditions, break crowd-control effects, and prevent incoming damage. Not only does everyone have the ability to damage the enemy at all times, but they also have the responsibility of mitigating damage and healing the damage they take. If you die, it's because you did not keep yourself alive.
The second way that Guild Wars 2 dodges the typical trinity structure is by freeing classes from being constrained to a single trinity role. As I explained in "The Primary Attribute Lives", each class has a "primary attribute" that shows you what the class does, which is improved by its fifth trait line. However, that primary attribute only tells you how the profession does what it does, not what it does. The "what it does", which most closely resembles the standard trinity roles, is determined by which of the four upper trait lines you invest your trait points in. These four trait lines always have the same themes in each class:
Five other stats "float" between the trait lines, depending the profession: Malice (=Condition Damage), Expertise (=Condition Duration), Concentration (=Boon Duration), Compassion (=Healing Power), and Prowess (=Critical Damage). The arrangement of these sub-stats can help suggest how the profession accomplishes what it accomplishes in each trait line.
Now, mind you, the descriptions above are very heavily simplified purpose statements, but they're sufficient to direct new players to what they want out of their build. If you want to be a heavy bruiser, put your trait points in the first and third trait lines-- it doesn't matter what class. If you want to play a nimble healer, put your trait points in the second and fourth trait lines. And if you're ever at a loss as to where to put points, you can't go wrong with the fifth trait line, which will improve abilities relevant to every other trait line (because it improves what your class does). But the most important thing to keep in mind is that this setup of having a predictable trinity-like role associated with each trait line for every class is that no matter what class you pick, you aren't stuck performing a specific task in your party. A Warrior can act like a cleric by putting most of his points into Tactics and a Guardian can become a berserker by putting everything in Zeal and Radiance. Your profession determines the "how", not the "what comes of it".
Wait, what server are you on? TC has been against us for a while.
Also, unrelated: on the Arah path 4 Dwayna boss: uuuugggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh. Worst boss in the game by far.
It's probably worth mentioning the downed/dead state, and most importantly, the combat revival. A downed player can be brought up quickly if anyone is on top of it, barring AoE fields (and even then, it might be doable depending on your skills). So the last line of "reversing damage" is almost (Lets be fair, Glyph of Renewal is insanely good at this) equally available to all classes and all builds - just stop dpsing for a moment and get them up (Not to mention skills that can directly revive a downed player, or help them get to safety) and you bring them to half health - in this case, when a player slips, it's the responsibility of everyone to get them up (or in some cases, it's almost inevitable).
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Personally, if I'm downed and feel it would be easier to rally, I'll call the target, but I'm not sure how many follow that convention
I heartily disagree about your definition of the trinity and the role of healer and tanks.
As a good tank or healer in WoW I was godking of my groups, and could tell them what to do however I wanted, largely because finding a good tank or healer was rare. DPS were the bitches, as they were dime a dozen. In general though, good players meant noone was anyones bitch.
Not that I dislike GW2s system that much, but it irks me the game doesn't let me play a healer or a tank.
Some of it I think GW2 could probably replicate, but some I'm not so sure and other bits it can replicate but it's just more frustrating in GW2.
I don't know, maybe it's cause I was a tank all the time in WoW and the like, but GW2's aggro system is just chaotic and removes alot of precision from fights. I remember really noticing this my first time through the Dredge fractal. A boss that in WoW would be both super simple and boring and one I could carry a group through no problem becomes a messy clusterfuck instead.
I don't know, fights just feel very spammy in this game. The dodging and the lack of good tells and the aggro tables all combine to make it just a chaotic mess. I'm not sure if it has to be that way or if the fights just aren't that interesting or something.
Well, GW2 has a system that could make for some really cool fights, but they would need to balance damage output between classes, and implement a more solid system for seeing who a boss is targeting, even if you only get 0.5 sec to react to it or so. But the complete and utter lack of damage balancing makes it hard to give fights a dps check component, which is what can push a lot of mechanics from boring to fun, as you have to keep dealing your damage, even when avoiding things.
Sounds boring. Most fights weren't like that in WoW for the last few expansions thank god. That would have sucked.
GW2 is alot like being a DPS in other games most of the time. Boss is attacking someone else, don't stand in fire red circles and spam away.
If anything, that is what GW2's boss fights feel like, at least the ones I've fought (not done Fractals yet). There's maybe one boss mechanic to keep in mind, boss is a bag of hitpoints and everything else is just a DPS race as you dodge red circles.
I imagine just having reliable aggro mechanics would fix a lot of issues. You could have speedy classes kite things around, or classes with lots of mitigation/immunity to certain damage types tanking those, but nope, everything aggros on everyone. Be it pug or guildies on VoIP fights always feel far too out of control to be fun.
Yet, here we are now romanticizing about how wonderful WoW's Trinity was. Seriously?
Sit tight kids, because I'm about to blow away your bacon.
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Guild Wars 2. It's a different game.
And a good first step to that is making certain things more obvious, such as ability targets. Would allow for having several different mechanics instead of just one per fight.
Reading Comprehension. It's important.
The point is NOT that GW2 is perfect, as I agree they can definitely do more on their encounter designs.
But going all rose-colored glasses about how great the Trinity system was/is and how GW2 would be so much better if it had it...that's a bit pointless. That's what I mean when I say it's a different game. I made the mistake of assuming the context of the paragraph above my last line would be assumed to relate to said comment.
And rangers pets abilities to hit moving targets is "improved"
I think you may have picked a terrible example because that dredge fight? It's only a chaotic clusterfuck if your team makes it one. Organization is key here because of the aggro mechanics. A lot of people do this thing where they play something poorly and then draw their conclusions of the battle based on what they just saw. They never think "could that have gone differently?" "did we screw up or is the fight screwed up?" They just assume it must've been the fight because there is no way it could be their fault.
I'm not saying there isn't work to be done, mob HP is still a problem in many cases. But some of these complaints are really disingenuous.
And WoW was only tank n' spank in vanilla? Please. Let's not kid our selves. Did some fights have good mechanics? Of course they did! But comparing JUST the good fights from one game with ALL the fights in other is silly.
I remember all my raiding times in EQ1 with the clerics essentially forming a single file line casting complete heal so the main tank got it every so many seconds. I was a paladin, I tossed HoTs on the main tank every so often and hit stuff in the back while trying not to die.
I think if I had to choose, it would be interesting to have shorter boss fights, but they are tougher. An example that's probably not popular, would the phase 2 of the cliffside fractal boss. He runs after you with his hammer and tries pounding you, he drops some large AE necro wells to add agony and like 3 debuffs on you and he has that nova skill, requiring you to dodge or take large damage plus agony. It's very challenging because on fractal 20, I usually take 14k damage in 2 hits from nova, plus agony. On the flip side, you take him from 75% hps to 40%, so in a few minutes, you know if you survive or wipe.
What might be more fun and easier to implement with their current bosses? Give each boss 4-5 different move sets. Every 25% hp they lose, they randomly change to another skillset. The boss above has the following: Phase 1, the boss is very aggressive with melee and PBaoe damage with the necro wells. Phase 2, he's lighter on melee, aggressive with wells and his nova light skill that punishes groups quickly. Phase 3, he's aggressive with melee and summons spectral adds continuously after they are killed, but no wells or nova light. Phase 4, same as phase 3.
Taking this example, imagine if he has one of those random 3 sets for phase 1, then has a random set for phase 2, etc.
I mean, if a boss fight could be over in 5 minutes or less, but it's pretty challenging in that time and not just some guy with a zillion hps, I think it would be more fun. I think a part of why I like fractals so much is due to the bosses having some mechanics to help them get killed faster and all that.
I hope their attack animation is a little faster, or maybe they could add a slight leap to each melee attack so it helps them hit more often. I like the canines, because they have 1-2 leap attacks which are usually able to hit.
Many are like that, many are also not like that. For example: Lupi in Arah ex, or the end boss of CoF story.
Reliable aggro mechanics would, in my opinion, make a lot of the fights boring and predictable. As it is, most people notice that if you have high armor and high power, you're more likely to be targeted by certain abilities. If you stop to res someone, you're more likely to be targeted. Personally I find the bosses in GW2 immensely more satisfying and interesting than WoW bosses which generally put the onus on a very few number of people, while the rest just spammed their DPS cycles. I personally hate fights where there's a trick or a pattern to follow, they remind me so much of the uninspired bosses back in the NES and SNES days: duck high shot, jump low shot, attack once, back up, repeat for 5 minutes, make a mistake and start again.
The randomness of the bosses is, in theory, supposed to make you want to pay more attention to what the boss is doing so that you can react, rather than the old MMO (WoW) model of watching cooldowns and raid UIs instead of the actual fight. In practice this doesn't always work, especially with the smaller bosses with tells that are harder to notice in the conflagrations.
I'm a power necro, and I only have one ability that stacks vulnerability: Focus 4, and I don't use it with my dagger at all. Power necros typically go for dagger mainhand because it's the highest straight white damage by a wide margin. Axe's damage is much lower to compensate for the increased range/vulnerability. Scepter's damage is much much lower because it also stacks bleeds and poisons. Dagger mainhand does no conditions, and so does the highest damage to compensate.
But you're mostly repeating my point when you say the precision tree is a conditon tree. My point is that the power and precision trees are BOTH condition damage trees. So when someone says they speced for condition damage (which is the point I'm addressing) you're also gaining a lot of points into power and precision. The reason for this, in my opinion, is because the necros aren't supposed to stack +condition damage for condition builds the way other classes' condition builds do. In fact, necros only get access to two damaging conditions (Bleed and poison), and can't stack bleeds nearly as high as many other classes (such as thieves, warriors and rangers). If we were intended to be able to survive as pure condition damage builds, I'd argue the condition damage and duration traits wouldn't be attached to the power/precision trees, and we'd be better at stacking real damaging conditions. Necros instead, I contend, are supposed to balance between white damage and condition damage, if they want to do condition damage at all. A pure condition damage necro (and when I say a pure condition damage necro, I mean one in all +condition damage gear) is going to be less effective than pure condition damage thief, simply because they can't stack conditions as high or as quickly.
My point was, if you want to go condition damage, find a balance between condition damage and white damage, otherwise you're wasting all those points in precision and power you're getting by speccing into spite and curses. If you want to do pure power, you can do it and eschew condition damage almost completely because there are a number of weapons available that do no/minimal condition damage, but the necro's main condition damage weapon also has the potential for huge white damage spikes.
I reached this conclusion because necros who go for condition damage weapons (scepter, staff) will also have access to abilities that ONLY do white damage, and can do very very high white damage (feast of corruption, putrid mark, necrotic grasp), whereas necros who go for power can almost completely avoid condition damage on their weapons (axe and dagger mainhands do 0 condition damage, warhorn and focus off hand also both do no condition damage). Power builds can go pure power and avoid condition damage, condition damage builds cannot avoid doing good white damage as well. So there's no benefit in going pure +condition damage as a necro if you A) can't avoid having your highest damage abilities be white damage abilities and
In general most of my examples come from pvp where players are smarter than mobs and combat is more frenetic. But this even happens in boss fights in dungeons as well. It's so easy for anything to just move out of your well unless it is immobilized or otherwise crowd controlled. Just last night against the pain in the ass boss in Arah ex4, I put down well of suffering only to have it hit for a grand total of 0 ticks as the boss moved out of it right when I put it down. That's a 45 second cooldown to no effect. I used wells almost exclusively during pve soloing though. Because the only time you're ever really in danger while leveling is if you get mobbed by 3 or 5 enemies, and for those situations wells can be life savers. If you can catch a player in wvw in well of darkness and suffering, that can spell doom for a player IF they're dumb enough to stay in them, or otherwise unable to leave it. My beef with wells is that their duration and range make them WAAAY too easy to avoid, which doesn't justify the minute long cooldown most of them have.
I think the simple comparison is an ability like a mesmer's feedback, or null field. Both of these are on shorter cooldowns than (most of) the Necro's wells, they both offer more utility, at range, and they both last longer. Necros have to slot a 20 point major trait to get the same range that the mesmer's skills get by default, and the mesmer skills will STILL have better utility and be on shorter cooldowns (and I'm pretty sure null field has a much wider radius than any well).
Wells are good skills, they just need to be tweaked.
I think the wiki mentions that there are a number of factors which are calculated when determining what each individual mob, be it trash or champion, determines to be the biggest threat. It also mentions that each mob behaves differently.
1) closest target to them
2) who is dealing damage
3) top damage dealers
4) who is using a shield / has more toughness and overall armor
5) others (reviving someone for example)
The wiki also mentions that sometimes a boss will use one of these when chasing someone down, but if they have some kind of ranged attack, they may choose a different target to use it on.
One anectdotal example, on the fractal dredge mining suit or ice elemental bosses, I'm usually running the switches so I'm not doing much damage, but usually once each fight, they start chasing me up the ramps and I have to switch with someone else while I run it under the lava drop site. As a mesmer, I'd like to think I am not 1, 2, 3 or 4. Though I might fit under "other" since I'm the guy dumping all the lava on them.
In the case of the Dredge boss he is slower than you. He cannot just chase you down and beat you to death. To die to him you need to:
A: Fail to dodge/reflect bombs
B: Not sidestep the shock wave
C: Stand right in front of him when he punches
I'm pretty sure those are all of his damage sources. If you are at a low enough HP level that anything can one shot you and you are not confident that you can not dodge the next hit, run out of range. That's almost always a good option in this game. You don't need to sit in the middle of a battle with 500HP left and no cooldowns. Just step back out of range, in this case the only thing that can hit you is a bomb. If you manage to fail that dodge you will only be downed and he doesn't bomb twice in a row. Someone can pick you up and everything is fine.
Yeah, and I kind of like this approach. Makes the bosses feel more like you're fighting a thinking thing, rather than a robot with loot in its pockets. Now, what they need to do at this point is make the fights shorter but more dangerous. There are a few too many bosses where the group never feels like they're in danger but the boss just takes forever to die. I think my favourite boss right now is Lupicus. Without a coordinated group of good players he is incredibly hard. He hits hard, he's not super predictable, and he requires you stay on your toes. But the fight doesn't take 20 minutes
My Guardian once tanked that Champion wurm in the Charr lands by standing behind a tree. That toughness must count for a lot because I got Bronze for that fight for doing so little damage to the thing.
And then there was the Catacombs run, where a friend of mine grabbed the troll aggro whenever he was alive. If he respawned and jogged back the troll would instantly go for him the moment he was within a certain distance, even when out of sight.
You ask me, their aggro code has a few bugs in.
That'll always have some truth in it. I guess the best way to think of these fights is that they are dynamic. Thus, if you have aggro, act accordingly. Kiting bosses around, reduce LoS or if possible, try stealthing/warping to help reduce threat, etc.
You should try the fractals sometime, the bosses are relatively challenging with some mechanics to help/hinder you and it'll also help people learn how to fight in groups. I personally think learning to fight in groups is a challenge, since most will end up soloing up to 80 for the most part.
As a disclaimer, I've not done many dungeons at all. I've done a lot of fractals though.
I'm going to try and run one more path tonight, just not path 4 unless I can find a group with 3 greatsword warriors and 1 mesmer, or they fix the boss there to be beatable.