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Class struggle to bring new players into the game(PvE)


Lily.1935

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@ASP.8093 said:

@Lynx.9058 said:Now that I've discovered the pvp lobby im also finding out that most classes don't play anything like I'd expect. Kind of a let down tbh

Which classes — besides Mesmer and Rev — do you find confusing or counter-intuitive?

Only tested a few so far, but some examples:

Everything I'd heard or read about soul beast made me think you actually shapeshifted into your pet, but it turns out you just turn your pet into a wolf slurpee and drink it to buff yourself.Druid seemed like it would have more nature based abilities and heals, but only seemed to have a couple of vine abilities and passive heals from attacking. Just wasnt what I expected.

Weaver I knew was going to be complex but it was above and beyond what I had imagined, and didnt even feel interesting tbh. Tempest was mich more engaging and can still manage a melee playstyle with daggers.

Necromancer minions and spell animations werent quite what I was hoping for either. Not even a skeleton or zombie in the spellbook, just weird looking abominations. Also bugged me that the lich form for a female necro turns you into this big glowing blue Arnold Schwarzenegger dude.

Mesmer I just wasnt a fan of the animations, every ability looks the same to me and theres no visual impact or distinction to the casts. Purple circles, purple lines, purple walls, feels like just casting the same spell in different shapes.

I'm going to try some of the melee classes later today when I get a chance to see if I end up liking them any. I had no interest in them at first but now most of the ranged classes just dont feel right to me and arent what I expected. Of them only the engineer and tempest have kept me entertained.

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On a further topic of parallels...

Guardian might look like a paladin at first glance, but it's actually a mix of paladin, cleric, and arcane knight. 'Paladin' usually carries a certain assumption that while you've got a lot of defensive and healing magic, you're reliant on beating the enemy with a physical weapon (albeit possibly a magically enhanced one) unless the enemy is undead or some other specific type that the paladin has special powers against. Guardians certainly aren't shy about smacking people around and they're still more inclined towards close combat than ranged combat, but when they want to fight someone at a distance it's generally spells they reach for rather than some form of conventional ranged weapon, and even in close combat they rely about as much on close-range offensive magic as they do on actually making contact with a physical weapon.

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@Lynx.9058 said:

@ASP.8093 said:

@Lynx.9058 said:Now that I've discovered the pvp lobby im also finding out that most classes don't play anything like I'd expect. Kind of a let down tbh

Which classes — besides Mesmer and Rev — do you find confusing or counter-intuitive?

Only tested a few so far, but some examples:

Everything I'd heard or read about soul beast made me think you actually shapeshifted into your pet, but it turns out you just turn your pet into a wolf slurpee and drink it to buff yourself.

But that's the opposite of your initial claim, isn't it? You said you would "never expect it to shapeshift, but apparently it does". Now you say your expectations were totally subverted because it doesn't shapeshift. It's as if you want to fit into this thread so hard that you forget what you thought yesterday?

But the truth is, most of what you've described in your initial post is fairly accurate with what -at the very least- core classes do.

Druid seemed like it would have more nature based abilities and heals, but only seemed to have a couple of vine abilities and passive heals from attacking. Just wasnt what I expected.

Weaver I knew was going to be complex but it was above and beyond what I had imagined, and didnt even feel interesting tbh. Tempest was mich more engaging and can still manage a melee playstyle with daggers.

Necromancer minions and spell animations werent quite what I was hoping for either. Not even a skeleton or zombie in the spellbook, just weird looking abominations. Also bugged me that the lich form for a female necro turns you into this big glowing blue Arnold Schwarzenegger dude.

Mesmer I just wasnt a fan of the animations, every ability looks the same to me and theres no visual impact or distinction to the casts. Purple circles, purple lines, purple walls, feels like just casting the same spell in different shapes.

I'm going to try some of the melee classes later today when I get a chance to see if I end up liking them any. I had no interest in them at first but now most of the ranged classes just dont feel right to me and arent what I expected. Of them only the engineer and tempest have kept me entertained.

Most of your confusion(?) seems to come from a fact that you don't understand most e-specs are indeed specialisations, not seperate classes (which is why druid won't suddenly have every single thing about it changed to be "more druidy"). That and the stylistycal choices, like "necro minions are abominations instead of copying bored-to-death skeleton/zombie tropes" or mesmer pretty much "not being flashy enough".

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Think you misunderstood my original comment. I said "I would never expect this (the ranger) to end up as a druid or shapeshifter". That's because nothing about the specializations is mentioned anywhere in the character creation process. Typically a player would not associate the hunter/ranger archetype with the more classically magic-based archetypes of a druid or shapeshifter.

Now, afterwards, when you do hear about specializations, the descriptions of the soul beast spec on the website or wiki seem to imply that soulbeasts shapeshifting into their pets. Its not until trying it out that I learned that wasn't the case, and you just lose the pet to gain a self boost.

Also I would say that the mesmer is too flashy, and the real issue is that all of their flashies look the same, whereas with the elementalist you have a lot more visual distinction between different spells

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@"Lynx.9058" said:Think you misunderstood my original comment. I said "I would never expect this (the ranger) to end up as a druid or shapeshifter". That's because nothing about the specializations is mentioned anywhere in the character creation process. Typically a player would not associate the hunter/ranger archetype with the more classically magic-based archetypes of a druid or shapeshifter.

Now, afterwards, when you do hear about specializations, the descriptions of the soul beast spec on the website or wiki seem to imply that soulbeasts shapeshifting into their pets. Its not until trying it out that I learned that wasn't the case, and you just lose the pet to gain a self boost.

I don't know where you were looking then, but I don't see anything about shapeshifting on the first glance when looking at class descriptions (including wiki, which is the first link when you search for gw2 professions).

I agree that character creation descriptions are vague, because they are relating to the core game (and they're mainly a flavor descriptor anyways), but trying to describe specialisations and espec choices in that place wouldn't really bring much value to a new player considering they weren't willing to dive into the game mechanic/class/spec system in the first place. For me it seems to be a natural learning progression -if you throw everything at the new player on his character creation screen, he'll probably just get more confused than he was before. Pick the flavor you think you'll enjoy, play/learn the game, see other classes and their skills and go from there.

"I came from wow and this game is not wow" is a weird complaint to me. And it sure as hell is not a valid one. There's enough clones floating around, so if someone enjoys swapping to a "new-old-same-game" every year, then they're free to keep doing that, I guess.

Also I would say that the mesmer is too flashy, and the real issue is that all of their flashies look the same, whereas with the elementalist you have a lot more visual distinction between different spells

Ok. So Elementalist juggles with elements as expected, while Mesmers play with illusions and you just prefer one class over the other based on their flavor/animations. I don't really see a problem here.

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You seem to be getting really defensive over a miscommunication. I never said that I wanted "another wow clone", just that MOST fantasy rpgs follow some general guidelines for character classes and names, and that guild wars breaks some of those which obviously leads to some confusion amongst new players.

Being different isn't the issue, its being so different that you call something what it's not. I'm enjoying the game so far but from my perspective a lot of the classes, by name or description, don't match up to what they actually are, or at least what your common rpg gamer might expect them to be.

As far as the mesmer, I just think the animations need more distinction from one another. There are 3 or 4 "ground aoe" skills that, in the thick of combat, all might as well be using the exact same animation despite doing completely different things. It leads to more confusion and visual clutter than is necessary. A lot of posts around here comment on how arenanet apparently wants people to be able to tell what abilities their enemies are using at a glance, but the animations team obviously didn't get that memo

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@"Lynx.9058" said:You seem to be getting really defensive over a miscommunication. I never said that I wanted "another wow clone", just that MOST fantasy rpgs follow some general guidelines for character classes and names, and that guild wars breaks some of those which obviously leads to some confusion amongst new players.

I don't see how me trying to communicate with you and explaining what I think or what it seemed to me you wrote in your previous posts is suddenly "defensive", so make sure you explain your choice of words here. If you don't understand what "wow clone" has to do with this thread, then try rereading the thread from the top.

About the classes -as I already wrote above, most of your initial thoughts about each class were pretty accurate, so... I'm not sure what's the issue here? Misunderstanding of especs? You disliking models of minions or mesmer's particle colors? Mind that this is not me "being defensive", this is me "trying to understand what exactly you mean".

Being different isn't the issue, its being so different that you call something what it's not. I'm enjoying the game so far but from my perspective a lot of the classes, by name or description, don't match up to what they actually are, or at least what your common rpg gamer might expect them to be.

Again: especs are not classes. Your initial core class descriptions seemed to be mostly accurate.You were asked by someone "Which classes — besides Mesmer and Rev — do you find confusing or counter-intuitive?" and what you listed were pretty much:

-soulbeast not shapeshifting(but that wasn't your initial ranger expectation, right? And you still didn't tell me where that "shapeshift" idea came from -these aren't some accusations, these are actual questions which you dodged for some reason)-druid having not enough nature based spells (that's because it's not a new class, it's a specialisation that pushes the core class in a certain direction, it won't suddenly get a full reskin+new particle set for already existing skills)-expecting weaver to be complex, but I guess not that complex? (this one's actually pretty weird to include in this thread/list at all imo, but maybe I misunderstood something again)-minions not being typical bored-to-death skeletals/zombies (a.k.a copies form the other game)-mesmer particles not being colorful/distinctive enough (which is a valid opinion/complaint about game's stylistics, but I don't see how it fits in this thread or as an answer about incorrect class expectations?)

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I think another consideration with class expectations is that most franchises tend to have a set of classes that fit reasonably close to the fantasy norms (fighter/warrior, ranger/archer, rogue/thief, mage/elementalist, etc), most also have a few that are unique to the setting.

Let's consider WoW, for instance. Warrior, hunter, rogue, mage, priest... all fairly standard fare. But if you knew nothing about the Warcraft setting... what's a shaman? The Blizzard shaman is essentially a kind of druid that's more about the elemental side of nature and less about the animal and plant side, but would you know this just by looking at the name? Probably not - 'shaman' can mean a lot of different things in fantasy. Similarly, what's a 'warlock'? Most people with a passing exposure of fantasy tropes will probably recognise that that likely involves dark magic of some form, but not necessarily a demon summoner.

And that's without getting into prestige classes like the demon hunter. Even Blizzard isn't consistent as to what that is - the Warcraft demon hunter is an agile melee fighter, while the Diablo demon hunter was Diablo 3's archer class.

So you can generally expect, in any given franchise, to have some 'standard' classes, some that are unique to the franchise (even if they have some similarities to things in other franchises), and some with aren't really 'standard', but which are common enough that people will still recognise them and have some expectations.

In the first category in GW2, we have the warrior, ranger, thief, and elementalist. These pretty much fit the expectations. One could argue that elite specialisations for those professions don't necessarily fit the expectations, but elite specialisations aren't intended to be anyone's first experience of the game. Warriors are tough and smash things in melee. Rangers make pincushions of their enemies. Thieves sneak around and backstab people. Elementalists drop large AoEs over the battlefield. These aren't the only things you can do with those professions, mind you, but the 'stereotypical' behaviours are there.

In the second category, we have mesmer, guardian, and revenant. They have some resemblances to classes in other fantasy settings, but they're essentially ArenaNet's creations. You could probably figure out that the mesmer relates to hypnosis somehow and that the guardian is going to be defensive in nature, but that's about all you'd get just by looking at the name.

Necromancers and engineers are in the third category. They're not a baseline expectation, but there are some expectations inherent in the name, especially with the necromancer (necrominions), but engineers are also likely to have some expectations based on its presence in other genres and, increasingly, in more steampunky fantasy settings.

With that said, I think necromancer does a fairly good job. Full minionmancers might not be that common, but there are also quite a few builds that just toss in a couple rather than having an entire build based around them, and necromancers have never been exclusively about the minions - in fantasy, they've always been a direct threat as well. So I don't think it's a problem that necromancers don't always have minions. Going full minions is still perfectly viable for solo play, and it's not uncommon for other builds to use one to three minion skills for one purpose or another. Even the Snowcrows raid builds for necromancer each carry a minion or two. Granted, shroud is a bit of an unusual mechanic, which arguably makes scourge closer to a 'classic' necromancer than the core necromancer, but this is an extra which has been added to the theme, and the majority of the skills in the classic death shroud seem to fit the expectations (lifesteal, fear, etc).

Engineer is a bit more problematic. They definitely do tech well, but for people coming in looking for turret play... well, there's a problem.

Apart from that, though, I don't think there's a broad issue with ArenaNet's professions not doing what people expect them to. The professions that are fantasy staples do what you'd expect them to do (even if they have the options to do something else instead). There are a few that are Guild Wars specific, but most successful franchises have a few classes that are specific to that franchise.

If there is a problem with expectations not matching reality, it's mostly coming from it still being the case that people still generally have the impression that elite specialisations are what you should be using when you can, and these often are intended to take the profession in a different direction and allow it to do something you wouldn't normally expect.

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@"draxynnic.3719" said:

Necromancers and engineers are in the third category. They're not a baseline expectation, but there are some expectations inherent in the name, especially with the necromancer (necrominions), but engineers are also likely to have some expectations based on its presence in other genres and, increasingly, in more steampunky fantasy settings.

With that said, I think necromancer does a fairly good job. Full minionmancers might not be that common, but there are also quite a few builds that just toss in a couple rather than having an entire build based around them, and necromancers have never been exclusively about the minions - in fantasy, they've always been a direct threat as well. So I don't think it's a problem that necromancers don't always have minions. Going full minions is still perfectly viable for solo play, and it's not uncommon for other builds to use one to three minion skills for one purpose or another. Even the Snowcrows raid builds for necromancer each carry a minion or two. Granted, shroud is a bit of an unusual mechanic, which arguably makes scourge closer to a 'classic' necromancer than the core necromancer, but this is an extra which has been added to the theme, and the majority of the skills in the classic death shroud seem to fit the expectations (lifesteal, fear, etc).

Engineer is a bit more problematic. They definitely do tech well, but for people coming in looking for turret play... well, there's a problem.

I don't quite agree with this statement as Necromancer DOES have established tropes in popular culture before hand and there are genre expectations of them. Some of them they fit and others they completely ignore.

Before Guild Wars 2 Diablo II, Magic the gathering's color black, multiple Necromancer enemies in video games and dungeons and dragons as well as media portrayal of these dark mages has given specific expectations. Necromancer does the Hexing thing serviceable enough. But the endless ranks of the dead, especially when GW2 was released in the midst of the height of the Zombie Apocalypse genre the necromancer of whom summons the undead fails hard at this front. Which I did mention from my initial post how Minion Master builds are not good and failed the players who wanted to play this.

I have more Subjective opinions on Necromancer in that they SHOULD follow suit with what GW1 set as the series standard. A Glassy debuffer/support spec, yet this was turned on its head where they're tanky debuffer with almost no support. This for me when I joined GW2 was Extremely jarring and has Damaged my enjoyment of the game to this day. While other games like Diabo III embraced this side of necromancer which has given me more enjoyment with a worse game In my opinion.

There is the other aspecs of other classes to which the necromancer does parallel that are not themselves "necromancers" Such as Warlock and Shaman from WoW as well as Summoner from Final Fantasy. I do agree that each class is an Amalgamation of quite a few different classes but I feel necromancer is taking an element from typical Enemy NPC tropes that is counter intuitive to the mechanics of these other classes. My speculation on this is they were trying to simulate the play style of a Lich, but this fails as that seems more like it should have been an Elite spec and not baseline.

As for Engineer we're kinda missing the Tools for every situation. Its not just turrets but Gadgets and elixirs as well. None of them are particularly well designed at the moment when comparison to their kits. This is less about the tropes and more a poor execution of their skill balance.

Engineer is probably a tough skull to crack, as I feel that their kits actually need to be strong enough to stand on their own. If a player takes the flamethrower kit, they should want to stick in that kit for as long as they can. And their build should be defined around that specific kit. But that's not effective. The kits are extremely good but they're more good as having 3 extra utility skills since you don't typically want to stick in any one kit and only want to use one or 2 skills from that kit and drop them. And the play style of them really gives you incentive to do that.

If I was to redesign kits, I'd probably treat them like a weapon swap. So 5-10 seconds to enter a new kit or even drop them, so you have to DEDICATE to that kit and I'd buff them accordingly to make them desirable to stick in for extended periods of time. The other option is giving them that 5 second recharge for each of your kits and giving them a charge system or some form of energy system that puts them on cooldown. I want them to be Extremely good, because I love kits, but I want to run the kits not juggle 3 kits at a time and basically just use the best skills of each.

But to be perfectly fair, I do really enjoy the kits build... But I'm also willing to sacrifice it for a better focus on individual kits.

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@Lily.1935 said:As for Engineer we're kinda missing the Tools for every situation. Its not just turrets but Gadgets and elixirs as well. None of them are particularly well designed at the moment when comparison to their kits. This is less about the tropes and more a poor execution of their skill balance.

Engineer is probably a tough skull to crack, as I feel that their kits actually need to be strong enough to stand on their own. If a player takes the flamethrower kit, they should want to stick in that kit for as long as they can. And their build should be defined around that specific kit. But that's not effective. The kits are extremely good but they're more good as having 3 extra utility skills since you don't typically want to stick in any one kit and only want to use one or 2 skills from that kit and drop them. And the play style of them really gives you incentive to do that.

If I was to redesign kits, I'd probably treat them like a weapon swap. So 5-10 seconds to enter a new kit or even drop them, so you have to DEDICATE to that kit and I'd buff them accordingly to make them desirable to stick in for extended periods of time. The other option is giving them that 5 second recharge for each of your kits and giving them a charge system or some form of energy system that puts them on cooldown. I want them to be Extremely good, because I love kits, but I want to run the kits not juggle 3 kits at a time and basically just use the best skills of each.

But to be perfectly fair, I do really enjoy the kits build... But I'm also willing to sacrifice it for a better focus on individual kits.

I see what you're saying but I think you're over-focused on raid-style DPS rotations here.

Alchemy is an incredibly common Engineer trait in competitive play, and at least half of standard PvP/WvW Engineer builds use at least one Elixir besides the heal. That's completely fine for a skill type.

Also, ime, Juggernaut Flamethrower is actually pretty playable if you just want a simple build for open-world stuff. It's even possible to run it as meme build in WvW.

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@ASP.8093 said:

@Lily.1935 said:As for Engineer we're kinda missing the Tools for every situation. Its not just turrets but Gadgets and elixirs as well. None of them are particularly well designed at the moment when comparison to their kits. This is less about the tropes and more a poor execution of their skill balance.

Engineer is probably a tough skull to crack, as I feel that their kits actually need to be strong enough to stand on their own. If a player takes the flamethrower kit, they should want to stick in that kit for as long as they can. And their build should be defined around that specific kit. But that's not effective. The kits are extremely good but they're more good as having 3 extra utility skills since you don't typically want to stick in any one kit and only want to use one or 2 skills from that kit and drop them. And the play style of them really gives you incentive to do that.

If I was to redesign kits, I'd probably treat them like a weapon swap. So 5-10 seconds to enter a new kit or even drop them, so you have to DEDICATE to that kit and I'd buff them accordingly to make them desirable to stick in for extended periods of time. The other option is giving them that 5 second recharge for each of your kits and giving them a charge system or some form of energy system that puts them on cooldown. I want them to be Extremely good, because I love kits, but I want to run the kits not juggle 3 kits at a time and basically just use the best skills of each.

But to be perfectly fair, I do really enjoy the kits build... But I'm also willing to sacrifice it for a better focus on individual kits.

I see what you're saying but I think you're over-focused on raid-style DPS rotations here.

Alchemy is an incredibly common Engineer trait in competitive play, and at least half of standard PvP/WvW Engineer builds use at least one Elixir besides the heal. That's
completely fine
for a skill type.

Also, ime, Juggernaut Flamethrower is actually pretty playable if you just want a simple build for open-world stuff. It's even possible to run it as meme build in WvW.

The entire focus of this post is PvE, yes.

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@Lily.1935 said:

@ASP.8093 said:

@Lily.1935 said:As for Engineer we're kinda missing the Tools for every situation. Its not just turrets but Gadgets and elixirs as well. None of them are particularly well designed at the moment when comparison to their kits. This is less about the tropes and more a poor execution of their skill balance.

Engineer is probably a tough skull to crack, as I feel that their kits actually need to be strong enough to stand on their own. If a player takes the flamethrower kit, they should want to stick in that kit for as long as they can. And their build should be defined around that specific kit. But that's not effective. The kits are extremely good but they're more good as having 3 extra utility skills since you don't typically want to stick in any one kit and only want to use one or 2 skills from that kit and drop them. And the play style of them really gives you incentive to do that.

If I was to redesign kits, I'd probably treat them like a weapon swap. So 5-10 seconds to enter a new kit or even drop them, so you have to DEDICATE to that kit and I'd buff them accordingly to make them desirable to stick in for extended periods of time. The other option is giving them that 5 second recharge for each of your kits and giving them a charge system or some form of energy system that puts them on cooldown. I want them to be Extremely good, because I love kits, but I want to run the kits not juggle 3 kits at a time and basically just use the best skills of each.

But to be perfectly fair, I do really enjoy the kits build... But I'm also willing to sacrifice it for a better focus on individual kits.

I see what you're saying but I think you're over-focused on raid-style DPS rotations here.

Alchemy is an incredibly common Engineer trait in competitive play, and at least half of standard PvP/WvW Engineer builds use at least one Elixir besides the heal. That's
completely fine
for a skill type.

Also, ime, Juggernaut Flamethrower is actually pretty playable if you just want a simple build for open-world stuff. It's even possible to run it as meme build in WvW.

The entire focus of this post is PvE, yes.

Sure, but the class design isn't restricted to pve, so leaving out other modes while talking about it doesn't seem to make much sense.

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@"Lily.1935" said:The entire focus of this post is PvE, yes.

Most of the builds that are viable in competitive are 100% playable in PvE as long as you're not in a raid group that wants maximum damage. And I don't mean in the "you can play anything, it's easy!" sense: they have synergistic abilities and a coherent gameplan, and the skills that make it into PvP builds often do serve as effective safety tools for solo PvE stuff.

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@ASP.8093 said:

@Lily.1935 said:As for Engineer we're kinda missing the Tools for every situation. Its not just turrets but Gadgets and elixirs as well. None of them are particularly well designed at the moment when comparison to their kits. This is less about the tropes and more a poor execution of their skill balance.

Engineer is probably a tough skull to crack, as I feel that their kits actually need to be strong enough to stand on their own. If a player takes the flamethrower kit, they should want to stick in that kit for as long as they can. And their build should be defined around that specific kit. But that's not effective. The kits are extremely good but they're more good as having 3 extra utility skills since you don't typically want to stick in any one kit and only want to use one or 2 skills from that kit and drop them. And the play style of them really gives you incentive to do that.

If I was to redesign kits, I'd probably treat them like a weapon swap. So 5-10 seconds to enter a new kit or even drop them, so you have to DEDICATE to that kit and I'd buff them accordingly to make them desirable to stick in for extended periods of time. The other option is giving them that 5 second recharge for each of your kits and giving them a charge system or some form of energy system that puts them on cooldown. I want them to be Extremely good, because I love kits, but I want to run the kits not juggle 3 kits at a time and basically just use the best skills of each.

But to be perfectly fair, I do really enjoy the kits build... But I'm also willing to sacrifice it for a better focus on individual kits.

I see what you're saying but I think you're over-focused on raid-style DPS rotations here.

Alchemy is an incredibly common Engineer trait in competitive play, and at least half of standard PvP/WvW Engineer builds use at least one Elixir besides the heal. That's
completely fine
for a skill type.

Also, ime, Juggernaut Flamethrower is actually pretty playable if you just want a simple build for open-world stuff. It's even possible to run it as meme build in WvW.

Another note. On the flamethrower aspect, its a meme. Its about as effective as full minions, which is not very. I'm not just looking at it from a raid perspective though but general PvE. The post is about players first experiences and how those experiences can be polluted through poor design and functionality long term. My focus on General PvE is because typically this will be a player's first experience. Although it is possible they jump into PvP and never touch PvE and I'm not sure how common that is. From my personal experience and the experience of those I know it seems that PvP is the last thing they do in an MMO. Not typically the first. now that's just anecdotal as I don't have the data. New players typically can't get into WvW when they first start out either, needing to wait till level 30 for free accounts I think it was.

As the title suggests I'm looking at this from a PvE perspective. Raids are the Goal for new players. its the endpoint they seek to strive for. And as such it should be noted that their transition into that scene should be as smooth as possible. And considering many of these meme builds don't translate at all or even are bad in Dungeons, it sours early experiences.

Now the issue with Dungeons is a completely other issue I've talk about at length and not my focus here.

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@ASP.8093 said:

@"Lily.1935" said:The entire focus of this post is PvE, yes.

Most of the builds that are viable in competitive are 100% playable in PvE as long as you're not in a raid group that wants maximum damage. And I don't mean in the "you can play anything, it's easy!" sense: they have synergistic abilities and a coherent gameplan, and the skills that make it into PvP builds often do serve as effective safety tools for solo PvE stuff.

That's not actually true. Some are, and some aren't. What is viable long term, at end game or even in dungeons doesn't translate all too well for new players. In core tyria open world, yes everything is viable, but once you start moving into HoT and PoF maps, Dungeons, Raids, Fractals, Strike missions it becomes very apparent that these builds are not suited for these game modes. I mean, I ran a bunker Necromancer in PvP with minion. All I did was sit on points and not die while people tried to kill me. That is barely viable in open world PvE and at the time my DPS was so low with DPS gear I rarely got credit for events and if I did it was partial credit. Mind you this was years ago, but the point does stand still.

Players who used similar bunker builds, new players have asked me to help them with story missions because they actually couldn't deal enough damage to succeed in some of the easiest missions. So no, I have to disagree with that statement based on my experience and the experience of my friends.

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Get a Reaper with some Berserker/Marauder gear. Give them 3-4 minion skills and a stun break.

Open-world events, exploration, and farming? Pretty easy. (The minions even travel with you nicely while you're mounted.)Story mode, including the hard parts? Pretty easy.Fractals up to T2 or T3? You'll do fine.

The minions tank for you some and provide incidental damage. They're kinda boring and clumsy but the "mediocre" Reaper build on Snow Crows still uses them in ever slot that they couldn't manage to fill up with a passive power Signet (yawn) or a Well. (Wells are better for DPS than minions against a stationary target? That doesn't seem busted to me.)

Do I like them compared to the GW1 minions? No. I hate 'em compared to the GW1 minions. But they're actually really easy compared to the GW1 minions. Progressing to the point where you could actually juggle all the minion-maintenance cooldowns and snowball your army perfectly in GW1 was actually quite the learning curve for new players (before Discordway or whatever, at least).

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@Lily.1935 said:

@ASP.8093 said:

@Lily.1935 said:The entire focus of this post is PvE, yes.

Most of the builds that are viable in competitive are 100% playable in PvE as long as you're not in a raid group that wants maximum damage. And I don't mean in the "you can play anything, it's easy!" sense: they have synergistic abilities and a coherent gameplan, and the skills that make it into PvP builds often do serve as effective safety tools for solo PvE stuff.

That's not actually true. Some are, and some aren't. What is viable long term, at end game or even in dungeons doesn't translate all too well for new players. In core tyria open world, yes everything is viable, but once you start moving into HoT and PoF maps, Dungeons, Raids, Fractals, Strike missions it becomes very apparent that these builds are not suited for these game modes. I mean, I ran a bunker Necromancer in PvP with minion. All I did was sit on points and not die while people tried to kill me. That is barely viable in open world PvE and at the time my DPS was so low with DPS gear I rarely got credit for events and if I did it was partial credit. Mind you this was years ago, but the point does stand still.

So the goal here is what exactly? Being able to pick any mix of traits, skills and gear in an incoherent manner and succeeding long term in late/endgame content? I don't think that's a great idea, duh considering that later those pieces can be put together in a better, more thought out way with greater understanding of the game and its mechanics, it would make the power swings between the builds potentially even bigger and any pve content even easier. That's a weird goal to strive for.

Fairly sure having troubles with getting event credit while playing minion necro is some kind of l2p issue -duh, when I've started playing necro as a minion user (long time ago), I've never noticed the problem you're talking about here. But that aside, "if I pick tanky stats, I won't have a lot of dmg" shouldn't be a huge mystery that a new player struggles to uncover and usually it's not. It seems self-explanatory and far from being a bad design. In fact, pretty sure it's the opposite.

@Lily.1935 said:

@ASP.8093 said:

@Lily.1935 said:The entire focus of this post is PvE, yes.

Most of the builds that are viable in competitive are 100% playable in PvE as long as you're not in a raid group that wants maximum damage. And I don't mean in the "you can play anything, it's easy!" sense: they have synergistic abilities and a coherent gameplan, and the skills that make it into PvP builds often do serve as effective safety tools for solo PvE stuff.

I mean, I ran a bunker Necromancer in PvP with minion. All I did was sit on points and not die while people tried to kill me.

Ah and this is pretty much what I wrote about in my first post of this thread and why minion builds shouldn't be even close to strong builds endgame, let alone competitive modes.

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@"ASP.8093" said:Get a Reaper with some Berserker/Marauder gear. Give them 3-4 minion skills and a stun break.

Open-world events, exploration, and farming? Pretty easy. (The minions even travel with you nicely while you're mounted.)Story mode, including the hard parts? Pretty easy.Fractals up to T2 or T3? You'll do fine.

The minions tank for you some and provide incidental damage. They're kinda boring and clumsy but the "mediocre" Reaper build on Snow Crows still uses them in ever slot that they couldn't manage to fill up with a passive power Signet (yawn) or a Well. (Wells are better for DPS than minions against a stationary target? That doesn't seem busted to me.)

Do I like them compared to the GW1 minions? No. I hate 'em compared to the GW1 minions. But they're actually really easy compared to the GW1 minions. Progressing to the point where you could actually juggle all the minion-maintenance cooldowns and snowball your army perfectly in GW1 was actually quite the learning curve for new players (before Discordway or whatever, at least).

"As the title suggests I'm looking at this from a PvE perspective. Raids are the Goal for new players. its the endpoint they seek to strive for. And as such it should be noted that their transition into that scene should be as smooth as possible. And considering many of these meme builds don't translate at all or even are bad in Dungeons, it sours early experiences."

Try reading my posts because minions do not do this. They don't offer a transition into the end game content as I've run them. I've played perhaps dozens of Minion master builds over the years I've played the game as well as about a Dozen Turret builds and they just don't function as you would hope. Even with proper gear. You seem to forget that I'm a veteran player and don't need advice on how to build a class, and especially not on necromancer. I've also had the misfortune of experiencing(when I was new) and seeing Necromancer players in open world fail to get credit for events because their minions were just poorly designed.

I'm coming from a perspective of a teacher and recruiter for Guild Wars 2. Of all the people I've attempted to get into the game maybe 1 had stuck with it. And the complaints are always the same. So I speak from my experience trying to get people in. So your advice to me is absolutely worthless as it doesn't solve or even help with the issues i'm speaking about. You're looking at the scope from too narrow of a lens or not at the right perspective at all.

There needs to be some major changes to class balance in PvE as well as PvE content itself to better accommodate new players and their experiences. The hook isn't working. GW2 is poorly designed for new players. The end game content is pretty good. But its getting there and that we need to recognize that the end game often IS their goal. And the transition is rocky to say the very least.

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@Lily.1935 said:

@"ASP.8093" said:Get a Reaper with some Berserker/Marauder gear. Give them 3-4 minion skills and a stun break.

Open-world events, exploration, and farming? Pretty easy. (The minions even travel with you nicely while you're mounted.)Story mode, including the hard parts? Pretty easy.Fractals up to T2 or T3? You'll do fine.

The minions tank for you some and provide incidental damage. They're kinda boring and clumsy but the "mediocre" Reaper build on Snow Crows still uses them in ever slot that they couldn't manage to fill up with a passive power Signet (yawn) or a Well. (Wells are better for DPS than minions against a stationary target? That doesn't seem busted to me.)

Do I like them compared to the GW1 minions? No. I hate 'em compared to the GW1 minions. But they're actually
really easy
compared to the GW1 minions. Progressing to the point where you could actually juggle all the minion-maintenance cooldowns and snowball your army perfectly in GW1 was actually quite the learning curve for new players (before Discordway or whatever, at least).

"As the title suggests I'm looking at this from a PvE perspective. Raids are the Goal for new players. its the endpoint they seek to strive for. And as such it should be noted that their transition into that scene should be as smooth as possible. And considering many of these meme builds don't translate at all or even are bad in Dungeons, it sours early experiences."

Try reading my posts because minions do not do this. They don't offer a transition into the end game content as I've run them. I've played perhaps dozens of Minion master builds over the years I've played the game as well as about a Dozen Turret builds and they just don't function as you would hope. Even with proper gear. You seem to forget that I'm a veteran player and don't need advice on how to build a class, and especially not on necromancer. I've also had the misfortune of experiencing(when I was new) and seeing Necromancer players in open world fail to get credit for events because their minions were just poorly designed.

I'm coming from a perspective of a teacher and recruiter for Guild Wars 2. Of all the people I've attempted to get into the game maybe 1 had stuck with it. And the complaints are always the same. So I speak from my experience trying to get people in. So your advice to me is absolutely worthless as it doesn't solve or even help with the issues i'm speaking about. You're looking at the scope from too narrow of a lens or not at the right perspective at all.

There needs to be some major changes to class balance in PvE as well as PvE content itself to better accommodate new players and their experiences. The hook isn't working. GW2 is poorly designed for new players. The end game content is pretty good. But its getting there and that we need to recognize that the end game often IS their goal. And the transition is rocky to say the very least.

Cool. What's the dps of the minion builds you've tried and adviced on and what in your opinion SHOULD be the dps to make them viable, yet not "I can literally play armor-less while spamming 1 and still easly succeed"?

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@Lily.1935 said:Try reading my posts because minions do not do this. They don't offer a transition into the end game content as I've run them. I've played perhaps dozens of Minion master builds over the years I've played the game as well as about a Dozen Turret builds and they just don't function as you would hope. Even with proper gear. You seem to forget that I'm a veteran player and don't need advice on how to build a class, and especially not on necromancer. I've also had the misfortune of experiencing(when I was new) and seeing Necromancer players in open world fail to get credit for events because their minions were just poorly designed.I'm coming from a perspective of a teacher and recruiter for Guild Wars 2. Of all the people I've attempted to get into the game maybe 1 had stuck with it. And the complaints are always the same. So I speak from my experience trying to get people in. So your advice to me is absolutely worthless as it doesn't solve or even help with the issues i'm speaking about. You're looking at the scope from too narrow of a lens or not at the right perspective at all.

Snow Crows, the site newbies get deluged with 10,000 times a day, thinks you should put some minions on your Reaper skill bar. Not shouts! Not corruption or spectral skills! Minions.

It's not unusual to walk into town or run around HoT or the meta maps and see a necro with a legendary weapon, 20,000 AP, and… minions.

"Veteran players" are constantly playing this exact "fan favorite" build — spending hundreds of hours running around with the dang minions everywhere, even taking them on fractals and strikes — and encountering only minor issues with this setup.

@Lily.1935 said:There needs to be some major changes to class balance in PvE as well as PvE content itself to better accommodate new players and their experiences. The hook isn't working. GW2 is poorly designed for new players. The end game content is pretty good. But its getting there and that we need to recognize that the end game often IS their goal. And the transition is rocky to say the very least.

Your original argument is that we need to gut like four classes in order to give the players who can't figure out how to survive open world on a guardian the opportunity to play one as a raid tank.

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@Lily.1935 said:

@"ASP.8093" said:Get a Reaper with some Berserker/Marauder gear. Give them 3-4 minion skills and a stun break.

Open-world events, exploration, and farming? Pretty easy. (The minions even travel with you nicely while you're mounted.)Story mode, including the hard parts? Pretty easy.Fractals up to T2 or T3? You'll do fine.

The minions tank for you some and provide incidental damage. They're kinda boring and clumsy but the "mediocre" Reaper build on Snow Crows still uses them in ever slot that they couldn't manage to fill up with a passive power Signet (yawn) or a Well. (Wells are better for DPS than minions against a stationary target? That doesn't seem busted to me.)

Do I like them compared to the GW1 minions? No. I hate 'em compared to the GW1 minions. But they're actually
really easy
compared to the GW1 minions. Progressing to the point where you could actually juggle all the minion-maintenance cooldowns and snowball your army perfectly in GW1 was actually quite the learning curve for new players (before Discordway or whatever, at least).

"As the title suggests I'm looking at this from a PvE perspective. Raids are the Goal for new players. its the endpoint they seek to strive for. And as such it should be noted that their transition into that scene should be as smooth as possible. And considering many of these meme builds don't translate at all or even are bad in Dungeons, it sours early experiences."

Try reading my posts because minions do not do this. They don't offer a transition into the end game content as I've run them. I've played perhaps dozens of Minion master builds over the years I've played the game as well as about a Dozen Turret builds and they just don't function as you would hope. Even with proper gear. You seem to forget that I'm a veteran player and don't need advice on how to build a class, and especially not on necromancer. I've also had the misfortune of experiencing(when I was new) and seeing Necromancer players in open world fail to get credit for events because their minions were just poorly designed.

Again, since when has Raids been the goal for new players?

Raids are only done by a minority of players. Even in other MMO's Raids are only done by a minority of players, outside of LFR versions that are nerfed to the point of being faceroll so that random plebs can drool over their keyboard and still beat the encounters to get loot.

Raids in GW2 are so unpopular, that ANet simply hasn't released one in ages, instead replacing them with Strikes.

So, why are "New players" so concerned with this content that is so niche? Especially if when they ask "What's the best place to get gear?" or "How to earn gold?" they'll be told anything BUT Raids since GW2's Raids are terrible for loot and actually only worth doing for a handful of unique skins.

The main "End Game" for GW2, is either PvP, WvW or OW PvE. With OW PvE being by far the most popular and being the most pushed content (Every content update from LW's introduces new maps with new events, metas and things to farm)

With OW PvE being viable, if not outright great for minion builds. Lots of sustain is possible very easily, minions can tank hits too because OW PvE enemies AI is jank and they like to switch targets for no reason. Turret builds are viable because DPS requirements are low.

As far as the point about "Experiencing and seeing Necromancer players in open world fail to get credit for events because their minions were just poorly designed" literally all you need to do is hit an enemy in an event once with any skill, even an auto attack, and eventually die and you get credit. If someone is just afking in an event and letting their minions run around and kill stuff and not even auto attacking, then that's on them and not the fault of minions.

Bearing in mind, that in fact, popular AFK farm strategies involve necromancers using minions and going AFK and having their minions kill stuff so they get loot. Which also suggests that minion damage on its own does even contribute to the necromancer now, otherwise these AFK farmers wouldn't all be playing Necromancer and Engineer and using minions and turrets.

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They should make every Profession have a Taunt skill , and this Taunt skill increases the player's enmity significantly.To prevent trolling, having additional Toughness increases the strength of the Enmity gain in addition to adding Armor as well as make Taunt skills do more damage.

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@"ASP.8093" said:Your original argument is that we need to gut like four classes in order to give the players who can't figure out how to survive open world on a guardian the opportunity to play one as a raid tank.

What?

What?

What the hell are you talking about?

Abridged version of part of my argument. "These fan favorite builds aren't good. They should be made good."

Quote myself:

Other issues we see are builds that are just not great in pve that have no right not to be at least viable. Minion Master Necromancer and Turret engineer both come to mind as these builds are extremely popular with new players but once they get into more difficult content they quickly find that these builds are not good and they have to abandon what it was they want to play. The Turrent engineer specifically being really bad is what got my boyfriend to quit the game because that's what he really wanted to play.

Sooo... What are you talking about? You know I said before you should actually read my posts... I even put a tldr at the end... that says "Make fan favorite builds viable"

Like... Seriously... You need to actually read the posts before you respond.

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@Yasai.3549 said:They should make every Profession have a Taunt skill , and this Taunt skill increases the player's enmity significantly.To prevent trolling, having additional Toughness increases the strength of the Enmity gain in addition to adding Armor as well as make Taunt skills do more damage.

I'm not sure what you mean. I don't think taunt should be universal. I do think a threat system should be in place though.

I want to put the suggestions as it's own thing in the raids/dungeons/fractals/strike mission section but I honestly I think people would legitimately hate the idea. A y major changes I've suggested on the forums have been met with extreme vitriol and outright lack of understanding of why I was making those suggestions even when if implemented they have improved the game.

Like breakbars for example. I was one of the earliest people to suggest that about a year before it became a thing. I wasn't the first to I'm sure and I wasn't the last but holy kittens did people throw a fit over the suggestion...

As flawed as the break bar system is it's way better than the system we had before hand where a longbow ranger would absolutely destroy your parties strategy without fail.

So I'm hesitant to make that suggestion as these kind of suggestions are stressful at times.

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@Lily.1935 said:

@"ASP.8093" said:Your original argument is that we need to gut like four classes in order to give the players who can't figure out how to survive open world on a guardian the opportunity to play one as a raid tank.

What?

What?

What the hell are you talking about?

All this stuff:

New players when they enter into Guild wars 2 are going to have specific expectations from the classes that are presented without ever looking at this skills. Just looking at what they are and how they're described. For instance, Guardian has probably the biggest disconnect for new players and what it actually does and what its role is. What new players expect is a Tank that supports allies and possibly heals to a minor extent. And the way the game mechanics are set up the Guardian is just not really a good tank. They can play the healer/support role fine but they're primarily a DPS, and one of the best at that. I've heard storied of players joining the game to try out a Warrior or guardian to be a tank only to find out that Mesmer was the tank in almost all content which quickly turned them off. Although a novel concept for sure, because the game has such a drastic disconnect from genre expectations this is more likely to turn new players away than to keep them playing.

Human psychology is weird. Humans both want something different but not so different that it breaks with conventions that they would otherwise expect. And we're all like that in some way. It would be nice if most humans could just take on a new experience and just slip into it and be delighted with its uniqueness. And there are definitely people who can do that, but its absolutely not something you should rely on. Its nice if you have that strange option like a mesmer tank, but you should still have those other options, such as Guardian and Warrior tanks, be just as good at that job if not better.

This issue is a bit more complex than all the issues I'm going to bring up but the suggested solution I have would be to change the Aggro system from a "Who has the biggest toughness" to a threat system where all skill either generate threat or reduce your threat so the player with the highest threat level takes aggro. And to keep toughness viable have bosses and specific enemies aggroed on the threatened Ally deal greatly increased damage so toughness gear becomes a necessity. This way if you want to run a support like a chronomancer you could have their supportive skills generate very little threat making it very difficult for them to tank over something else.

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