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Real life analogy to the defiance bar


Leo.3428

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With my background in strategy and action games I often have a hard time making sense of the weapon skills, which don't bear much relationship to the weapons and play more like poker - memory is key. One of the many things that remain very theoretical to me is the defiance bar; I know that gray means immune, blue means immune (but shrinking), brown means immune (but growing), and I try to relate this to real life situations such as a carapace but it still doesn't add up. Does anyone have an analogy to the mechanism?

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I can't think of an analogy, but definance bars are fairly straight forward.

When it's grey that mechanic is unavailable. When it's blue you can use crowd control skills to wear down the bar. If it's fully drained as a result of enough crowd control skills hitting the enemy, then they're stunned, which sometimes means a big attack it was charging up does not happen, sometimes means it will stay still and is more vulnerable to attack, sometimes both.

After that happens the bar either goes grey, which means crowd control skills won't have any effect until the next time it turns blue, or it goes brown and gradually recharges, which means it will be blue again as soon as it's recharged. Either way you should focus on other tactics and save crowd control skills until the bar is blue again.

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There is no real life analogy since the bar exist to make things less realistic. It is something that exist entirely for game balance reasons. They are an attempt at fixing the problems that existed with Defiant stacks which were a horrible mess in group situations. Defiant stacks in turn was an attempt at preventing everything from becoming trivial by stunlocking enemies.

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Maybe this helps:Think of the defiance bar as a second health bar, but it only gets affected by control effects (Daze, Stun, Knockdown, Pull, Knockback, Launch, Float, Sink, Fear and Taunt) and soft control effects (Chilled, Crippled, Immobilize and Slow). Hard control effects will remove a fixed amount from the defiance bar, soft control effects will continually drain it and prevent its regeneration.

The exact amount of how much defiance bar damage is needed depends on the defiance bar (different enemies have different bars and they will scale with players in open world, making more defiance bar damage necessary to break the bar) can be seen here (as well as an explanation to how the bar works):https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_bar

For example, a bar worth of 1,000 defiance health, would require a combination of cc skills which total sum adds up to 1,000 (and potentially a bit more for the regeneration unless soft cc is present). This could be achieved by using:

  • Berserker Headbutt (300 Defiance bar damage)
  • Guardian Bane Signet (300 Defiance bar damage)
  • Chronomancer Gravity Well (300 Defiance bar damage on first pulse, 100 Defiance bar damage on second pulse, 150 Defiance bar damage on third pulse)for a total of 1,150 Defiance bar damage, breaking the bar.
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@Khisanth.2948 - I was wondering about the origin of the bar. Since it didn't make much sense I suspected that it likely was a consequence of prior game mechanics, not an attempt at expanded realism. I failed to find any history tracks and you suddenly shed a bright light on it. Thank you so much for this. Do you have any pointers to more discussions, articles, anything that shows more detail on the birth and rationale of the concept?

@Danikat.8537 and @Cyninja.2954 - Thank you. I did study the topic and know how to break the bar - but in a spreadsheet-like way, with no actual instinct behind it, which makes me feel detached from the action. I was trying to make it more palpable.

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Defiance bar is like a hot chick:

Most of the time she is unapproachable, but there are moments where she can be approached and you have a short time to break through her defense and leave a stunning impression, after which she'll be way more open to anything you do. But the moment is short and you must bring your A game to succeed.

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Its a combo of timer/cooldown and "CC check" (like DPS check, but with CC attacks).

Devs don't want that Boss would be CC'd and killed within seconds. But giving Boss totally immunity would also be lame(why have CC skills if stuff is immune).

So:

  • you can CC Boss, but one skill activation wont do it. Because its a Boss.
  • can also say that all mobs have "break bar", but its so small one single skill will break it.
  • when you break that blue bar, Boss actually is CC'd. So CC works.
  • but its also on timer. Takes time for blue bar to come back so you can break it again or better to say CC Boss again

I think of it as:

  • all mobs have break bar and cooldown timer on CC
  • trash: bar has lass then 1 point so anything breaks it and CC immunity timer is 0
  • boss: has bar with lots of points and CC immunity timer is more then 0
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If you throw a single chain over a big dragon, it's not gonna bind it...you need lots of peopel with lots of chains.

A big beastie might be able to shrug off a single hammer hit, but lots of hammers all at once may daze it for a bit.

Ofc, that analogy falls flat with small creatures w/ defiance based mechanics (like rolling devils, although they have very weak defiance bars, and mordrem guard punishers).

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@Lexi.1398 said:If you throw a single chain over a big dragon, it's not gonna bind it...you need lots of peopel with lots of chains.

A big beastie might be able to shrug off a single hammer hit, but lots of hammers all at once may daze it for a bit.

Ofc, that analogy falls flat with small creatures w/ defiance based mechanics (like rolling devils, although they have very weak defiance bars, and mordrem guard punishers).

In the case of rolling devils they are also buggy. :/

It doesn't work properly if you CC before aggroing.

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@ZeftheWicked.3076 - I routinely break hot chicks' bars in half a second, that must be why I'll never comprehend the game's system :P /joke@Randulf.7614 - But a force field, once depleted, is depleted and stops nothing. The defiance bar, once depleted, turns brown and makes the boss immune again to CC, this doesn't add up in my mind.@Pirogen.9561 - If you add an invisible break bar to the equation, you will have me even more confused, lol. But I think I know what you mean.@Lexi.1398 - I get that it forces us to coordinated attacks, it's just weird that CCs have a different group mechanics than other skills.

Thank you all for your posts. Summarizing it all, my main problem I guess is that I'm not sure I understand why the initial issue with CC was allowed to happen in the first place, before break bars were introduced to mitigate it.

We got a big monster boss that can eat a dozen arrows and bullets as it would a snack. It will take many players to down it, or a dedicated solo player.

But the same formidable towering monster is vulnerable to one petty push back as if it was a starter map wasp. So defiance was invented. And that was more problem, so the defiance bar was invented.

Instead of taking this twisted road, was there not some simpler and more realistic solution such as requiring a combination of CC's or some special rare ability to push or daze or blind the giant?

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No a forcefield can regenerate. It happens a lot in sci fi and science fantasy. Whether that is Star Trek, Halo or any of the other forms using it. Now granted that is sci fi and a different genre, but it is incorrect to say a forcefield can't regenerate. I'm sure Inquest would agree too.

In fantasy, the best translation would either be a natural magical field/shielding or some sort of advanced parrying.

@Leo.3428 said:Instead of taking this twisted road, was there not some simpler and more realistic solution such as requiring a combination of CC's or some special rare ability to push or daze or blind the giant?

This is the simple route - arguably too simple since it lumps all forms of cc into a generic form and takes away their uniqueness in fights involving defiance. However, It also means you don't need specific builds because cc is common enough across so many skills, players have wide access to it. The genericness of cc in this way then gets turned into a positive

It doesn't need to be realistic because we are in game that shies away from realism in most things it does.

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@"Randulf.7614" - Granted, force fields do regenerate but as far as I know they are not "immune" while they do. I'm not trying to make everything super-realistic, I enjoy science fiction and fantasy, I'm just trying to maintain some internal consistency, which greatly helps immersion. Immersion, I believe, is where I fail in this game, unfortunately. But I'm not blaming the game, or the players, don't worry ;)

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Here is my real life analogy:

  • People keep complaining about certain aspects of a computer game
  • The devs' defiance bar remains greyed out, because the complaits fall on deaf ears
  • People continue to complain year after year
  • The defiance bar finally turns blue, i.e. it can be lowered by crowd control skills a.k.a. constructive citicism and suggestions
  • People's input now significantly influences the developer and they start doing something about the game's issues
  • Once the blue and the red bar reach zero, everyone is happy and the game flourishes like never before

You see how unrealistic that turns out to be? :lol: Hence, there is no RL analogy. :)

Edit: On the other hand, since the greyed out blue bar keeps reappearing several times before the red bar reaches zero, you could regard that as an analogy for the ups and downs of the game's success in development. It's a neverending cycle. ;)

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@Khisanth.2948 - Right, we are very tough heroes :)@Ashantara.8731 - ;) Add to that the boss fights internal to the company that we will never know of...

Went to a boss to try and look at it from a fresh angle. My scribbling in my notebook offended it, it pounced on me with his army, nearly got me; fortunately other players jumped in and I could put on my scientist's eyeglasses. After much equation shuffling, behold my novel theory:

Instead of one carapace or force field, there are two of them. The outer field has infinite power but the power goes on and off. The inner field has finite power but once it's depleted, the outer field tends to come back.

Now on to solve the mystery of the Mists... :)

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@Leo.3428 said:@Khisanth.2948 - Right, we are very tough heroes :)@Ashantara.8731 - ;) Add to that the boss fights internal to the company that we will never know of...

Went to a boss to try and look at it from a fresh angle. My scribbling in my notebook offended it, it pounced on me with his army, nearly got me; fortunately other players jumped in and I could put on my scientist's eyeglasses. After much equation shuffling, behold my novel theory:

Instead of one carapace or force field, there are two of them. The outer field has infinite power but the power goes on and off. The inner field has finite power but once it's depleted, the outer field tends to come back.

Now on to solve the mystery of the Mists... :)

That is less about the heroes' toughness and more about the enemies incompetence. Failing to make full use of its environments and abilities.

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@"Khisanth.2948" said:That is less about the heroes' toughness and more about the enemies incompetence. Failing to make full use of its environments and abilities.I'll trust your word, I haven't played the Saga yet - still dragging a kiloton of airship parts in the vertical jungle. But yes, generally the "AIs" make up for their lack of "I" with numbers and double-layer quantumtronic fields.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Right, real life analogy: will power.

Example: my army buddy Perez went home on leave to find squatters in his apartment. The squatters reacted first by shooting him in the head (jaw area) with a .45 cal pistol. Instead of getting flustered he pulled his own pistol and shot all 3 of them dead.

Perez has a champion size breakbar.

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