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HoT = Dark Souls ? Casual Gamer perspective.


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@"AliamRationem.5172" said:A question for the "Go glass or go home!" crowd:

Would you struggle to survive in soldier gear? Why or why not?

Not against regular mobs but you’ll kill them much slower and is just inefficient. Against tougher mobs, it would be a detriment as the loss of DPS outweighs the added survivability. I did a feed tests on a couple enemy types a year or so ago and found I tended to perform better in berserkers.

This is solo. If you’re doing open world content and need to survive easier, run more defensive gear. The DPS loss won’t be significant anyway as the majority of people’s DPS is already horrible. In instanced content with other players, this is a different story.

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@zombyturtle.5980 said:Answering your question, no I would have no issue surviving in soliders, everything would just take 2-3x as long.

Come on, don't exaggerate. If the wiki and my calculations are correct: going from full Soldier's (5% crit chance & 150% crit dmg) to full Berserker's ascended gear (51% crit chance & 214% crit dmg) translates to about 54% more damage (assuming everything else stays the same), not 100% - 200% as you claim.

You can achieve the same for instance with two +20% and one +10% damage multipliers from traits (granted, it's mostly conditional, but still). It appears to me that this community has an unhealthy and unwarranted fixation on critical hits.

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I guess you might be fun during raids...Also why is everyone always referring to Dark Souls when something is hard? The first Monster Hunter game came out before any Dark Souls game and they're both often spoken of in one sentence. Anyways, Dark Souls isn't that hard at all if you got the hang of it.The difficulty in gw2 overall is okay or sometimes even too easy. Even raids and cms are too piss easy if you know your stuff well.

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@Fueki.4753 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:Personally I dont care if people run soldiers in open world, as long as they dont bring it into instanced content with me. I do think its a horrible gearset and a noob trap though.Those Full-Berserkers in Vanilla were happy when I face-tanked pre-first-nerf Lupi for them with my full Soldier Warrior.

Im sure they were. I would not have been. I never found a tank needed on lupi.

If you want to bring soldiers into instanced groups that are happy to have it go for it. I just choose to not play with people in stats that make no sense in group content.The game has evolved so much since vanilla and there are many many better gear sets to use where having a tank is appropriate.

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@Croc.1978 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:Answering your question, no I would have no issue surviving in soliders, everything would just take 2-3x as long.

Come on, don't exaggerate. If the wiki and my calculations are correct: going from full Soldier's (5% crit chance & 150% crit dmg) to full Berserker's ascended gear (51% crit chance & 214% crit dmg) translates to about 54% more damage (assuming everything else stays the same), not 100% - 200% as you claim.

You can achieve the same for instance with two +20% and one +10% damage multipliers from traits (granted, it's mostly conditional, but still). It appears to me that this community has an unhealthy and unwarranted fixation on critical hits.

I dont play full beserker. I play assassin/zerker to get 100% crit cap. I would also have to change some traits, losing more damage.I would also have to spend way more time blocking or dodging attacks since I cant oneshot burst adds, adding more time to combat.

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@"mindcircus.1506" said:What is the most effective way to deal with a Mordrem Sniper?is it to:

  1. Sponge the hits and take 5-6 hits to down the sniper?
  2. Dodge the hit and take it down in 2?

Going from full Soldier's to full Berserker's nets you about 54% more damage (see above, if my math is wrong plz show me). This means you would take that Sniper down in 4 hits instead of 6 (roughly). For this, you sacrifice almost half of your health (assuming Guardian, 21.2k => 11.6k) and half of your toughness (you will take double the damage from direct attacks).

The usual experience with Snipers is that they are not alone. You often have to face 2 or more plus some other mean stuff. Now, I don't doubt at all that you can pull that off by dodging and using active defenses, but this is the expert player's perspective. Sending a casual player into Verdant Brink the very first time with 11.6k health is just not gonna work out, no matter the build. Not for the vast majority of players (there are always exceptions). A disaster waiting to happen.

Myopic and untrue.A great newbie friendly thief build is p/p Deadeye. Even with the way it generates it's own fury, it needs Assassin's gear or at least Berserker to get close enough to the crit cap to see it's real value.

Yes, p/p Deadeye is very easy to play. But why not Marauder's gear? Marauder's gives more Precision than Berserker's (at the cost of Power and Ferocity ofc), so if Marauder's cannot reach the crit cap, Berserker's surely can't.

OW Scrapper is a total beast and with everything in an engineer's kit to leverage, not running Berserker's is just silly.Rev has access to two self heals on seperate cooldowns, why would would Soldier's gear be better than Assassin's for Shiro?And as you mentioned, Reaper has enough innate sustain to really make anything but full damage gear a waste.None if these examples (other than Scrapper perhaps) are high APM playstyles.Wooden Potatoes' "easiest OW build ever shortbow renegade" uses full damage gear.

Yes, yes, I absolutely believe you. But again, this is the expert player's perspective. Someone who can play any of these comfortably from the get-go should never ask for build advice (or rather prefix advice for a certain build). He will just copy one of those, adapt it to his liking and off he goes.

For all that is holy, grant player's at least some more hit points until they have become more skilled and more experienced.

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@"Croc.1978" said:some stuffThree thoughts:

  1. Expecting a player to dodge is not the "Expert player's perspective". It is tutorialized in starter zones.
  2. You math does not take into account the multiplicative impact of boons like Might.
  3. We are derailing this thread and our discussion is off topic.
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@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"Croc.1978" said:some stuffThree thoughts:
  1. Expecting a player to dodge is not the "Expert player's perspective". It is tutorialized in starter zones.
  2. You math does not take into account the multiplicative impact of boons like Might.
  3. We are derailing this thread and our discussion is off topic.

Might would not affect the damage ratio calculation between soldiers and berserker as full might would result in the same ending power stat in both calculations. Other damage modifiers from traits would also maintain the same ratio of 54% as they would be applied to both builds. The only thing that would affect this ratio is fury, and any sources of flat increases of +precision or + ferocity like from spotter, assassins presence, etc.

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@Croc.1978 said:

  • snip - For this, you sacrifice almost half of your health (assuming Guardian, 21.2k => 11.6k) and half of your toughness (you will take double the damage from direct attacks).

Full Ascended Soldier's gear adds: (Trinkets: 267) + (Armor : 315) + (Back: 40) + (2-Handed Weapon: 179) = 801 Toughness. The damage calculation is the product of weapon strength, power and coefficient divided by the Armor stat, which is itself the sum of Toughness and Defense. For Ascended Armor, those totals are: (Light 967); (Medium 1118); and (Heavy: 1271). There's also the base 1000 Toughness. So, the final values would be:

BerserkersLight: 1967Medium: 2118Heavy: 2271

SoldiersLight: 2768Medium: 2919Heavy: 3072

Now, assuming a hit of 10,000,000 damage, who takes what?

Light: 10,000,000 / 1967 = 5084; 10,000,000 / 2768 = 3613 the difference is 1471, or about 41% more damage taken by the Berserker wearer.Medium: 10,000,000 / 2118 = 4721; 10,000,000 / 2919 = 3425 the difference is 1296, or about 38% more damage taken by the Berserker wearer.Heavy: 10,000,000 / 2271 = 4403; 10,000,000 / 3072 = 3255 the difference is 1148, or about 35% more damage taken by the Berserker wearer.

As an exercise, substitute 15,471,223 for 10,000,000 versus light.

7,865 vs 5589, difference of 2276; the % more taken is ~41%

Because the damage calculation is multiplicative, the ratios for the various armor weights will remain roughly the same (roughly due to rounding). Double damage taken? Not close.

A better indicator might be Time to Live (TTL), which would calculate the number of hits a Berserker wearer can absorb vs the Soldier wearer. Take a Ranger, Berserker (base) health of 15,922; add 8010 health for vitality from Soldiers for 23,932. Assume attacks with nothing but 10,000,000 incoming and face tanking (no other mitigation.) The Berserker Ranger is downed on the 4th hit (4721, 9442, 14,163, down. The Soldier wearer is downed on the 9th hit (2919, 5838, 8,757, 11,676, 14,595, 17,514, 20,433, 23,352, down). 5 more hits, so a bit above double the TTL in that scenario. However, TTL can be extended for both equally by the use of invulnerability frames. Assuming equal use, let's say both can avoid 4 hits. That changes the ratio to 8:13, or about 38% more hits in the TTL for Soldiers. Add more avoidance, you will lower the difference in TTL further.

You're better off with Sustain like barrier, healing, vigor for more dodges, regeneration, traits or skills that conditionally restore health (e.g., Signet of Malice for Thief). One can get good sustain without sacrificing anywhere near as much damage as one has to to get the Toughness/Vitality from Soldiers. High-damage builds with a lot of sustain are not going to be featured in top-end raid or fractal compositions, but they can come a lot closer to those builds' damage than a Soldiers wearer ever could.

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@IndigoSundown.5419 said:Full Ascended Soldier's gear adds: (Trinkets: 267) + (Armor : 315) + (Back: 40) + (2-Handed Weapon: 179) = 801 Toughness. The damage calculation is the product of weapon strength, power and coefficient divided by the Armor stat, which is itself the sum of Toughness and Defense. For Ascended Armor, those totals are: (Light 967); (Medium 1118); and (Heavy: 1271). There's also the base 1000 Toughness. So, the final values would be:

It's actually 426 for trinkets and 960 Toughness overall (you missed the second ring and the second accessory), but of course your point still stands. Sorry, I completely forgot base armour from gear. Thank you for pointing that out.

You're better off with Sustain like barrier, healing, vigor for more dodges, regeneration, traits or skills that conditionally restore health (e.g., Signet of Malice for Thief). One can get good sustain without sacrificing anywhere near as much damage as one has to to get the Toughness/Vitality from Soldiers.

Yes, a decent player can. What Soldier's gear mostly does is increasing your margin for mistakes (that everyone makes), since it boosts your passive defenses significantly. So, if you don't need that additional margin for mistakes, you're better off with offensive prefixes.

But still: I disagree with the blanket statement that it's always wrong for open world. It MIGHT be a good choice, but only for melee builds (+960 Toughness will make you the center of mob attention everywhere) and never for necromancers (they have plenty of base health, shroud and insane passive sustain possibilities in their trait lines).

High-damage builds with a lot of sustain are not going to be featured in top-end raid or fractal compositions, but they can come a lot closer to those builds' damage than a Soldiers wearer ever could.

Full Soldier's gear is no good in any instanced PVE content, I fully agree. For those parts of the game, it's always better to max dps and rely on group-based sustain.

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People need to stop using dark souls to describe any kind of difficulty. First, because dark souls didn't invent difficulty and second, it's by far not the most difficult game. Dark souls and gw2 have absolutely nothing in common. And HoT difficulty is fine in my opinion. Sure, there are a few BS kind of moves from champs, but still, no reason to go around nerfing anything.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"AdamWarlord.6782" said:
  1. Lags way too much on my mid end laptop.

Maybe that's why your experience is so much different than that of many other players, including those posting in this thread. Having horrible fps drops does make content a lot more challenging, but I'm not sure if it's something Anet can fix, the game's requirements are already so low (especially core/hot) that I don't know how much lower they can get them. Maybe lower graphics settings? Are you playing with everything on lowest already?

Also, since you talked about expansions, Path of Fire has quite higher system requirements so if your laptop lags in Hot, you are gonna have a rather bad time in Pof. And of course the upcoming next expansion should increase the graphics quality even further. Maybe it's not a matter of difficulty/challenge but rather it's time to upgrade the machine you play on.

I, too, suspect that a lot of this problem is about the hardware. Playing GW2 on a bad laptop with a dim screen (maybe even trying to do it with a trackpad?) would make HoT a pretty awful experience. The rest of the game would only be possible because core mobs are so easy.

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Bad computer, low fps and resolution, small monitor and crappy keyboard mouse settings definitely impact performance hugely. I sometimes play mobas on my laptop when on business trips and I am not nearly as good as on my home PC.Regarding builds, I am always in favour of glass (berserker) builds in open world PVE. Most of the dmg can be avoided with dodge, one or 2 utility skills and CC so passive defence is actually useless. My first Hot walkthrough was on a rare/exotic glass core staff elementalist. Build was probably utter crap. No mount. Yes, I died often but also learned the game that way.

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Hot is harder then rest of the game but if you have decent build you still oneshots almost everything. Only like 6 heropoints are hard to solo. Rest can be done. Again, with decent build.Bacon HP eat percentage of health. So your health doesmt matter. Its all about timing. But if you cannot do it you can have a friend give you alacrity or heals (i am not sure healing works but alac does)

I know it can be tough if you come there straight from core story. But I am oneshoting 90% of mobs there with goid build. It is not unbeatable hard. Just that the diference between players is extreme. And combat system is exponential and not linear/logarithmical so that makes the diference even greater

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@ButcherofMalakir.4067 said:Bacon HP eat percentage of health. So your health doesmt matter. Its all about timing. But if you cannot do it you can have a friend give you alacrity or heals (i am not sure healing works but alac does)

You can heal other players indeed at this HP. You can even heal someone with help of mounts.

HoT is not difficult. The clue is in knowing your own skills and what they enemies do (all enemies have tells on what they do). As example, move when around smokescales at all time and you can attack them no problem and with pocket raptors use aoe,...). HoT is focussed on group play which is a good thing for an MMO. You cannot do the meta's alone. You have to organise those. Hero points, for some you do need other players but there are HoT trains for these (also for players without masteries and mounts). The clue of HoT is to not just rush through it but take your time playing it. That way you get the masteries fast enough while just playing the content. Focus on the story related masteries first and then fill up the ones left.

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@"Laila Lightness.8742" said:Try full ministrel its better to surviev than to make big damagr

A proper damage oriented build can "oneshot" (time to kill under 3 seconds) over 95% of mobs in OW, including veterans and such, making it sheer impossible to die unless oneshot yourself, which rarely if ever happens outside of massively upscaled group events - especially if combined with pulls to bunch mobs up or other disables, you often won't ever even get hit once in hours of OW gameplay, completely trivializing it.

The only place where defensive stats come into usefulness is when trying to solo Legendaries/big group events which you simply can't sustain otherwise.For general play, utilising defensive stats just decreases your damage to a point where you give mobs much more opportunities to hit you, causing you to take much more damage and difficulty than if you had just focused on damage with most mobs already being dead by the time they first get one of their many hits in when on defensive gear.

Running defensive gear does make the game (OW and Story) more fun imo, because you actually get to play and experience it rather than everything you touch just instantly evaporating, but it takes a lot more effort and time than just oneshotting things and it's not something I would recommend to people who are already struggling.

As I said above, the key for solo play and solution for people struggling is to get as close as possible to that solo 25 Might, 25 Vuln, Fury/100% Crit Chance (and optionally perma Quickness if available).

Those HoT mobs ain't so tough when you casually press 1-3 buttons and they are on the floor before finishing a single attack animation.

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@"LucianDK.8615" said:Theres nothing wrong with HoT. Its pretty easy now, and mounts trivialize the content.

this thread wouldnt exist if everything was "fine". i wont even TRY to hot anymore, not worth the trouble.it is also one of the few features, that other mmos havent copied, this is how you DONT do an expansion.and to get the mount , you have to play the NEXT expansion...debunked

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@battledrone.8315 said:

@"LucianDK.8615" said:Theres nothing wrong with HoT. Its pretty easy now, and mounts trivialize the content.

this thread wouldnt exist if everything was "fine". i wont even TRY to hot anymore, not worth the trouble.it is also one of the few features, that other mmos havent copied, this is how you DONT do an expansion.and to get the mount , you have to play the NEXT expansion...debunked

Pof is still harder than core so i guess you should avoid any content not part of core tyria

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The experience in HoT has differed a lot between professions for me. I find that heavy armor classes are much easier to play in the HoT maps. As an example, I was able to solo the champion mushroom king on my herald revenant, but I doubt I could do this on my elementalist.

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HoT really isnt that hard tbh, as long as you know your class its a breeze. Dont run full berserker gear like you see in those dumb youtube build guides where its a copy paste from meta battle sets. Run proper utility skills like stun break or cc, use defensive traits if you cant burst down mobs. Lastly, you always have the option to call for help oh and as for that bacon hp just have a friend spam barrier on you with jackal to ignore that annoying degen.

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