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


Lily.1935

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@ASP.8093 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.

Where did I say that they should be gutted?

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@Lily.1935 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.

I think you may have misunderstood what the third category is. The third category is stuff that's common enough to have expectations if it is included, but something that isn't a staple of the genre (at least not when playable).

Mind you, I think necromancer does achieve the minionmancer goal. Filling out your utility slots will give you six minions, jagged horrors can give you an additional five as long as your scoring kills (to be expected for a minionmancer) and lich runes can give you an extra one on top. That's about a dozen... which is often what you'd realistically expect to see necromancers leading in most games. It's about where the limit was for minionmancer necromancers in GW1 IIRC.

You have less of your total power invested into those minions, since the GW2 necromancer always at least has weapon skills while the GW1 necromancer is basically just there to babysit the minions, but that was something ArenaNet was fairly upfront about - no more builds where all you do is shepherd minions.

Now, raid builds that maximise DPS don't bring all minions... but they bring some, and given the extra utility that minions bring (including, if nothing else, being an extra body for the enemy to hit) it makes sense that all minions wouldn't be the ideal build for maximising DPS. Plus, like people have said, I wouldn't call raids a new player thing. By the time someone's thinking about raids, I'd kinda hope that they weren't 'new' any more.

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@"draxynnic.3719" said:You have less of your total power invested into those minions, since the GW2 necromancer always at least has weapon skills while the GW1 necromancer is basically just there to babysit the minions, but that was something ArenaNet was fairly upfront about - no more builds where all you do is shepherd minions.

That hurts my heart. And I'm not sure its entirely true either. We very easily could make minions a lot better and interactive without making them overwhelmed.

And being viable in a solo build in an MMO and not the argument. Never was. Its about how well these builds transition into late content. Such as raids, fractals, strike missions and dungeons. Which minions do not translate well. And turrets are worse.

New players and many long term necromancer players don't want to "take a couple minions on their bar" we want to be able to summon a mass of minions to overwhelm our enemies. And have these builds be good. And only once in GW2's lifespan did that happen and Anet nerfed that build into the ground when they only needed to put a limit on it not kill it.

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@"Lily.1935" said:This is something that I've talked about before in other posts but I'd like to make a more solid discussion about the 9 professions and how it can be a struggle for new players to get into guild wars due to the expected roles being absent on those classes. Although i don't entirely blame Arena net for this, as the player base did act in an unpredictable way with HoT when arena net started to try and standardize things for the game so Tank and Healers could be a real thing in the game rather than different forms of support DPS and DPS. But the issues of Arena net's system as it is now it makes this problem rather difficult to solve.

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.

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.

Even more issues is the difficulty of some classes in comparison to others that probably should be. Take Elementalist for example. Elementalist should probably have an extremely simple high damage build on their core spec, something that doesn't require too much if any attunment swapping. Yet that isn't viable and the builds that are viable are some of the most knowledge intensive in the game, requiring massive memorization of the class.

The last issue I see is the high number of junk utility skills. There are a lot of utility skills, weapon skills, elite skills that just go unused in PvE. Although some have use in other game modes in some cases they don't get used there either. Engineer I feel is notorious for this as if you're running them there are few utility you really want to take that you couldn't get better utility from elsewhere such as your toolbelt skills on more useful skills or even elite spec skills. Gadgets and turrets have been the target for a lot of these issues as they often struggle to keep up with Kits. Kits too have these issues where in order for the engineer to get the best use from their kits they need to effectively swap out of those kits after using 1 or 2 skills. Which leads to more new player confusion.

I'm not saying every aspect of the professions need to be new player friendly. More I'm saying that what new players are expected to learn and understand in the long run without having viable standard options as well as simpler options has soured the experience of far too many players I've attempted to get into the game.

TLDR:

  • Redo the Aggro system so
  • Make Fan favorite builds viable
  • Offer more viable simple builds across more professions and especially core professions
  • Rework many of the Underused or unused skills.

The struggle is when people look into mmos they see anets history with balancing, as with most mmos, they are dying at this point in a downward spiral, hopefully we will see a rise of mmos again soon.

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@Lily.1935 said:

@"draxynnic.3719" said:You have less of your total power invested into those minions, since the GW2 necromancer always at least has weapon skills while the GW1 necromancer is basically just there to babysit the minions, but that was something ArenaNet was fairly upfront about - no more builds where all you do is shepherd minions.

That hurts my heart. And I'm not sure its entirely true either. We very easily could make minions a lot better and interactive without making them overwhelmed.

And being viable in a solo build in an MMO and not the argument. Never was. Its about how well these builds transition into late content. Such as raids, fractals, strike missions and dungeons. Which minions do not translate well. And turrets are worse.

New players and many long term necromancer players don't want to "take a couple minions on their bar" we want to be able to summon a mass of minions to overwhelm our enemies. And have these builds be good. And only once in GW2's lifespan did that happen and Anet nerfed that build into the ground when they only needed to put a limit on it not kill it.

It'd be pretty sad for every other necromancer skill type in the game if full minions was the optimum build for every environment, wouldn't it?

Minion skills all provide some utility in addition to DPS. At the very least, they provide an extra body to absorb hits. Blood Fiend provides healing, Flesh Wurm offers a mobility option, and three out of the four remaining minions provide useful CC. Meanwhile, Well of Suffering is pretty much a pure "take this to increase your DPS" skill, and Signet of Spite is pretty close to it (you can get some breakbar out of it in a pinch, but if you want breakbar, necromancer has plenty of other options). It'd be a bit disappointing if taking these skills couldn't boost your DPS over taking another minion. So in builds that are optimised towards maximising DPS, it makes sense that pure DPS skills will take the place of minions.

There's also the aspect that the minion-oriented traitline is a bit defensive-oriented, so maximising DPS usually works best with a more offensive traitline. But they still show up occasionally, except at raids and the highest-end fractals where people expect organised teams where everyone plays a specific role. I think it's reasonable to say that by the time people get to tier 4 fractals or raids, they're not 'new players' any more.

You're behaving like being good in open world is some sort of consolation prize or "anything works in open world" comment, but... it's really not. There's actually a lot of aspects which make minions work really well in that environment. As is common for necrominion builds in most games, full minions really benefits from having enemies dying regularly in order to fuel the production of new minions (in this case, through the Death Nova trait) - this is fairly common in open world, but generally doesn't happen in boss fights (a common problem - you don't take minionmancer into Imperial Sanctum in GW1, for instance, and zookeeper necromancer builds in Diablo 2 often struggle in boss fights). Toughness, both regarding the attribute specifically and in general terms of survivability, is generally more important when going solo when you don't have a support to keep you up, and minionmancer builds have this both directly (through carapace) and due to enemies targeting your minions instead of you (the likilihood of which is increased when it's just you and your minions rather than having other players around who could also be targeted). I've soloed group events with a full minions core necromancer build simply because the enemy couldn't kill my minions (or me) faster than I could heal or replace them.

Full minionmancer isn't weak, it's just that like any build, it has circumstances where it shines in, and circumstances where it doesn't. In high-end PvE group content, hyperspecialisation is often the name of the game - you have a role to fill, and you're expected to take the skills and traits that maximise your ability to fulfill that role. This isn't just a necromancer thing - raid and fractal builds of all professions often lose a bit of their profession's flavour in the quest to eke out that last bit of DPS (or whatever it is that they're bringing to the table). This hyperspecialisation, however, often means that these builds suffer outside of the environment that they're intended for - sure, you can often get away with it anyway, but usually open world, solo story missions, and so on call for a bit more self-sufficiency than most raid builds have.

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Flamethrower scrapper is perfectly viable in open world PvE.Minionmancer is perfectly viable in open world PvE, hell, playing minionmancer allows me to solo heart of thorns hero point champions while I am still wearing partially "fine" rarity armor!

All this stuff you mention here is not true. You can play these builds in open world PvE for a very large part, I personally played turreteer for a very very long time in open world PvE and never had problems to get contribution for events or anything like that.

And if you want to do endgame stuff like strikes and raids, then I think it is ok that these builds won't work anymore. They are high end, you are supposed to alter your build accordingly for the encounter, not run with just anything you feel like.You can expect from people to make some research before entering the endgame.

Or look at the current festival. I would never be able to beat Liadri with my turreteer build and that is fine. I am supposed to craft a fine tuned build specifically for that encounter and doing that was actually a big part of the fun, you had to play stuff differently than you normally would to have a chance in that fight.

I really don't see the issue, you can play all classes in exactly the way you "expect" it for a very long time as long as you focus on open world PvE and this is also true for dungeons for a large part. Just if you want to enter competitive or high end PvE is the point that you most likely will have to abandon your own homebrew favourite for the meta options instead.

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@"Kodama.6453" said:Flamethrower scrapper is perfectly viable in open world PvE.Minionmancer is perfectly viable in open world PvE, hell, playing minionmancer allows me to solo heart of thorns hero point champions while I am still wearing partially "fine" rarity armor!

All this stuff you mention here is not true. You can play these builds in open world PvE for a very large part, I personally played turreteer for a very very long time in open world PvE and never had problems to get contribution for events or anything like that.

And if you want to do endgame stuff like strikes and raids, then I think it is ok that these builds won't work anymore. They are high end, you are supposed to alter your build accordingly for the encounter, not run with just anything you feel like.You can expect from people to make some research before entering the endgame.

Or look at the current festival. I would never be able to beat Liadri with my turreteer build and that is fine. I am supposed to craft a fine tuned build specifically for that encounter and doing that was actually a big part of the fun, you had to play stuff differently than you normally would to have a chance in that fight.

I really don't see the issue, you can play all classes in exactly the way you "expect" it for a very long time as long as you focus on open world PvE and this is also true for dungeons for a large part. Just if you want to enter competitive or high end PvE is the point that you most likely will have to abandon your own homebrew favourite for the meta options instead.

Abandon the builds or classes or abandon the game. That's a pretty bad choice for the players. From the experience of the people I've tried to get into the game, they chose to abandon the game.

Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

You guys are so ridged and resistant to positive change for the health of the game it makes this impossible to discuss real issues with its design.

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@Lily.1935 said:

@"Kodama.6453" said:Flamethrower scrapper is perfectly viable in open world PvE.Minionmancer is perfectly viable in open world PvE, hell, playing minionmancer allows me to solo heart of thorns hero point champions while I am still
wearing partially "fine" rarity armor!

All this stuff you mention here is not true. You can play these builds in open world PvE for a very large part, I personally played turreteer for a very very long time in open world PvE and never had problems to get contribution for events or anything like that.

And if you want to do endgame stuff like strikes and raids, then I think it is ok that these builds won't work anymore. They are high end, you are supposed to alter your build accordingly for the encounter, not run with just anything you feel like.You can expect from people to make some research before entering the endgame.

Or look at the current festival. I would never be able to beat Liadri with my turreteer build and that is
fine
. I am supposed to craft a fine tuned build specifically for that encounter and doing that was actually a big part of the fun, you had to play stuff differently than you normally would to have a chance in that fight.

I really don't see the issue, you can play all classes in exactly the way you "expect" it for a very long time as long as you focus on open world PvE and this is also true for dungeons for a large part. Just if you want to enter competitive or high end PvE is the point that you most likely will have to abandon your own homebrew favourite for the meta options instead.

Abandon the builds or classes or abandon the game. That's a pretty bad choice for the players. From the experience of the people I've tried to get into the game, they chose to abandon the game.

From the experience of the people in the past, the minon spam builds are favored by people who aren't interested in actively playing the game, but would rather run away/around the point while having the ai do the job for them. Including that in end game content on par with other builds would lose players that actually like to learn and play the game instead of having it play itself.See, this is not my opinion, this is "other players' opinion" and I say that because I care about the game and player retention.

Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

If they don't like the game, then they're free to quit. If standing still with tanky stats (hello, pointless raid aggro mechanic change) while minions deal the dmg equivalent of other builds is what people are looking for then maybe it just isn't the game for them and that's ok.

You guys are so ridged and resistant to positive change for the health of the game it makes this impossible to discuss real issues with its design.

How is this a "positive change for the health of the game"? This is literally your opinion disguised as "caring about newcommers". Different builds are capable of different things in different modes and situations. I see nothing wrong with that.

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@Lily.1935 said:

@"Kodama.6453" said:Flamethrower scrapper is perfectly viable in open world PvE.Minionmancer is perfectly viable in open world PvE, hell, playing minionmancer allows me to solo heart of thorns hero point champions while I am still
wearing partially "fine" rarity armor!

All this stuff you mention here is not true. You can play these builds in open world PvE for a very large part, I personally played turreteer for a very very long time in open world PvE and never had problems to get contribution for events or anything like that.

And if you want to do endgame stuff like strikes and raids, then I think it is ok that these builds won't work anymore. They are high end, you are supposed to alter your build accordingly for the encounter, not run with just anything you feel like.You can expect from people to make some research before entering the endgame.

Or look at the current festival. I would never be able to beat Liadri with my turreteer build and that is
fine
. I am supposed to craft a fine tuned build specifically for that encounter and doing that was actually a big part of the fun, you had to play stuff differently than you normally would to have a chance in that fight.

I really don't see the issue, you can play all classes in exactly the way you "expect" it for a very long time as long as you focus on open world PvE and this is also true for dungeons for a large part. Just if you want to enter competitive or high end PvE is the point that you most likely will have to abandon your own homebrew favourite for the meta options instead.

Abandon the builds or classes or abandon the game. That's a pretty bad choice for the players. From the experience of the people I've tried to get into the game, they chose to abandon the game.

Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

You guys are so ridged and resistant to positive change for the health of the game it makes this impossible to discuss real issues with its design.

I am not against positive changes, I am one of the guys advocating for a complete turret rework, made an own thread about that.

However, looking at your arguments, it seems to me that you want to force turreteer (as one exampleof the "builds people expect to play") to become meta in raids. Which I think will be very hard to achieve as long as you don't make turrets pretty ridiculous or nerf everything around it to the ground.

In high end PvE, people expect you to run the meta.You are slotting in for dps, then you better run the skills which give you the most dps depending on your class. That's just how it is, people want to maximize their chances.Now you want that these builds people are trying at their first playthrough to become played in high end PvE, meaning they should be meta. And that's what I don't agree with.

I am for positive change, but not forcing builds into the meta just because people want to play them.

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@Lily.1935 said:Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

Except... Player participation numbers disagrees that players want to transition into harder content.

@Lily.1935 said:You guys are so ridged and resistant to positive change for the health of the game it makes this impossible to discuss real issues with its design.

It's not that I'm resistant to positive change, it's just the argument that is being made for the "Real design issue" is fundamentally flawed.

It's based on the premise that players are joining the game with preconceived notions of what the classes can do based on nothing but their name AND wanting to get into hardcore endgame min/max raiding AND then being surprised than in min/max endgame content you can't just roll up in whatever jank build you slapped together for funsies.

I just don't think that there is a large enough volume of people whom fit that specific criteria so as to require essentially a complete overhaul of the entire combat system and many skills.

For reasons like "It's called Guardian so should be Tank!" despite GW2 being an MMO that is reknown for its lack of trinity design (Meaning, there aren't tanks in most of the game)

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@Kodama.6453 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:Flamethrower scrapper is perfectly viable in open world PvE.Minionmancer is perfectly viable in open world PvE, hell, playing minionmancer allows me to solo heart of thorns hero point champions while I am still
wearing partially "fine" rarity armor!

All this stuff you mention here is not true. You can play these builds in open world PvE for a very large part, I personally played turreteer for a very very long time in open world PvE and never had problems to get contribution for events or anything like that.

And if you want to do endgame stuff like strikes and raids, then I think it is ok that these builds won't work anymore. They are high end, you are supposed to alter your build accordingly for the encounter, not run with just anything you feel like.You can expect from people to make some research before entering the endgame.

Or look at the current festival. I would never be able to beat Liadri with my turreteer build and that is
fine
. I am supposed to craft a fine tuned build specifically for that encounter and doing that was actually a big part of the fun, you had to play stuff differently than you normally would to have a chance in that fight.

I really don't see the issue, you can play all classes in exactly the way you "expect" it for a very long time as long as you focus on open world PvE and this is also true for dungeons for a large part. Just if you want to enter competitive or high end PvE is the point that you most likely will have to abandon your own homebrew favourite for the meta options instead.

Abandon the builds or classes or abandon the game. That's a pretty bad choice for the players. From the experience of the people I've tried to get into the game, they chose to abandon the game.

Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

You guys are so ridged and resistant to positive change for the health of the game it makes this impossible to discuss real issues with its design.

I am not against positive changes, I am one of the guys advocating for a complete turret rework, made an own thread about that.

However, looking at your arguments, it seems to me that you want to force turreteer (as one exampleof the "builds people expect to play") to become meta in raids. Which I think will be very hard to achieve as long as you don't make turrets pretty ridiculous or nerf everything around it to the ground.

In high end PvE, people expect you to run the meta.You are slotting in for dps, then you better run the skills which give you the most dps depending on your class. That's just how it is, people want to maximize their chances.Now you want that these builds people are trying at their first playthrough to become played in high end PvE, meaning they should be meta. And that's what I don't agree with.

I am for positive change, but not forcing builds into the meta just because people want to play them.

Nothing about my arguments suggests forcing anything or nerfing anything. If anything my arguments suggests more build diversity not less and not nerfs.

"Make fan favorite builds viable" is not even remotely close to "nerf everything else down to these builds level"

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@Taril.8619 said:

@Lily.1935 said:Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

Except... Player participation numbers disagrees that players want to transition into harder content.

@Lily.1935 said:You guys are so ridged and resistant to positive change for the health of the game it makes this impossible to discuss real issues with its design.

It's not that I'm resistant to positive change, it's just the argument that is being made for the "Real design issue" is fundamentally flawed.

It's based on the premise that players are joining the game with preconceived notions of what the classes can do based on nothing but their name
AND
wanting to get into hardcore endgame min/max raiding
AND
then being surprised than in min/max endgame content you can't just roll up in whatever jank build you slapped together for funsies.

I just don't think that there is a large enough volume of people whom fit that specific criteria so as to require essentially a complete overhaul of the entire combat system and many skills.

For reasons like "It's called
Guard
ian so should be Tank!" despite GW2 being an MMO that is reknown for its lack of trinity design (Meaning, there aren't tanks in most of the game)

You're extrapolating more than what I said. The builds they're expected to play are not even in the same ballpark of what they wanted to run on the classes they expected to run them on. It's not "oh you take these skills and traits over this" its "that build concept can't even function in this content"

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@Lily.1935 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:Flamethrower scrapper is perfectly viable in open world PvE.Minionmancer is perfectly viable in open world PvE, hell, playing minionmancer allows me to solo heart of thorns hero point champions while I am still
wearing partially "fine" rarity armor!

All this stuff you mention here is not true. You can play these builds in open world PvE for a very large part, I personally played turreteer for a very very long time in open world PvE and never had problems to get contribution for events or anything like that.

And if you want to do endgame stuff like strikes and raids, then I think it is ok that these builds won't work anymore. They are high end, you are supposed to alter your build accordingly for the encounter, not run with just anything you feel like.You can expect from people to make some research before entering the endgame.

Or look at the current festival. I would never be able to beat Liadri with my turreteer build and that is
fine
. I am supposed to craft a fine tuned build specifically for that encounter and doing that was actually a big part of the fun, you had to play stuff differently than you normally would to have a chance in that fight.

I really don't see the issue, you can play all classes in exactly the way you "expect" it for a very long time as long as you focus on open world PvE and this is also true for dungeons for a large part. Just if you want to enter competitive or high end PvE is the point that you most likely will have to abandon your own homebrew favourite for the meta options instead.

Abandon the builds or classes or abandon the game. That's a pretty bad choice for the players. From the experience of the people I've tried to get into the game, they chose to abandon the game.

Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

You guys are so ridged and resistant to positive change for the health of the game it makes this impossible to discuss real issues with its design.

I am not against positive changes, I am one of the guys advocating for a complete turret rework, made an own thread about that.

However, looking at your arguments, it seems to me that you want to force turreteer (as one exampleof the "builds people expect to play") to become meta in raids. Which I think will be very hard to achieve as long as you don't make turrets pretty ridiculous or nerf everything around it to the ground.

In high end PvE, people expect you to run the meta.You are slotting in for dps, then you better run the skills which give you the most dps depending on your class. That's just how it is, people want to maximize their chances.Now you want that these builds people are trying at their first playthrough to become played in high end PvE, meaning they should be meta. And that's what I don't agree with.

I am for positive change, but not forcing builds into the meta just because people want to play them.

Nothing about my arguments suggests forcing anything or nerfing anything. If anything my arguments suggests more build diversity not less and not nerfs.

"Make fan favorite builds viable" is not even remotely close to "nerf everything else down to these builds level"

Keep in mind that we are talking about high end content here.In high end, you are expected to run the meta. The best build to fulfill your role.You won't get accepted as a turreteer in raids as long as turreteer doesn't become the best option available.

And that is the problem. I am for improving underperforming skills like turrets and gadgets. But they don't necessarily need to become viable in high end PvE, that is not really needed.

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@"Lily.1935" said:

Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

If you're running with a zerg such that you're never under any real threat, then sure.

But the truth is, there are some builds that are distinctly better for open world and story than others. You could probably get gold on a zerg farm event easily enough with anything, but guilds that do world bosses regularly will tell you that there are some builds that definitely contribute in that environment more than others. Meanwhile, there are definitely some builds which can do story instances or difficult open world events more smoothly than others.

And as it happens, full minionmancer necromancer is one of the latter, for reasons I'd discussed in an earlier post in this thread. Because when you're running solo, the combination of survivability (both from death magic traits and from simply having the minions get attacked instead of you) with decent damage and a bit of CC is useful. High-end instanced group PvE, on the other hand... people are expected to synergise to form a cooperative group rather than fighting as individuals. If your job is DPS, that's what you're expected to focus on and let the supports keep you alive. If you're support, you're expected to provide the best support you can.

So a DPS role is going to be expected to maximise DPS, and it'd be a bit sad if pure DPS utilities like Well of Suffering were overshadowed in their own job such that full minions is optimal in that role. Similarly, a support role is expected to provide a lot of support to the team, and the current minions don't exactly provide much support.

Despite this, we still see minions in optimal builds. The snowcrows builds all have at least one minion. Nike's

is recommended to use two, although that's a little out of date now and would probably now use Well of Darkness instead of the shade (but hey, it probably wouldn't lose that much if you used the shade instead of the signet). The Wooden Potatoes
runs Bone Minions and "Rise!". On a quick scan of the top necromancer PvE builds on Metabattle, anything that isn't a condi build has at least one minion, including a full minion build. So it's not like necromancers don't use minions. It's just that it's not always optimal to go all minions.

But if you want, say, maximum DPS, it makes sense that your first port of call would be skills that are pure DPS rather than minion skills that provide other benefits on top of DPS.

You guys are so ridged

Can I be bluntly honest here?

It's coming across to me as if you, and the people you say have been leaving the game, are the ones that have a rigid idea of what the professions should be doing and are objecting when the builds used at the highest levels of cooperative play don't exactly match your expectations. From my perspective (and it pains me to say this since we've had some fairly constructive conversations before) you're the one that's trying to squeeze the professions into neat little rigid boxes, while I like that the professions don't always rigidly conform to common expectations.

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There will only ever be a minority of builds that are meta for end game content like raids and strikes and high level fractals.

When you enter group content like raids where the success of the group is dependent on everyone pulling their weight, you have to be able to do things at a certain ability. In a PUG, that's following the meta because that's the only way to ensure that everything needed is present.

In order to not be meta you have to run with a static who is aware of what your build brings and doesn't and is willing to adjust their builds to compensate.

In other words: in group content, it should not be unexpected to have to compromise on your build in order to be successful.

Open world, most everything is viable for most instances. Some builds require more skill than others to be successful.

As for player expectations, that's on players for not doing their research before buying the game if they don't go the free to play route first. Changing classes at this point to be in line with expectations would be more damaging to the game than keeping them as they are. A lot more people would likely leave as their class was drastically changed from what they enjoyed than would likely join due to the changes.

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@draxynnic.3719 said:

@"Lily.1935" said:

Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

If you're running with a zerg such that you're never under any real threat, then sure.

But the truth is, there are some builds that are distinctly better for open world and story than others. You could probably get gold on a zerg farm event easily enough with anything, but guilds that do world bosses regularly will tell you that there are some builds that definitely contribute in that environment more than others. Meanwhile, there are definitely some builds which can do story instances or difficult open world events more smoothly than others.

And as it happens, full minionmancer necromancer is one of the latter, for reasons I'd discussed in an earlier post in this thread. Because when you're running solo, the combination of survivability (both from death magic traits and from simply having the minions get attacked instead of you) with decent damage and a bit of CC is useful. High-end instanced group PvE, on the other hand... people are expected to synergise to form a cooperative group rather than fighting as individuals. If your job is DPS, that's what you're expected to focus on and let the supports keep you alive. If you're support, you're expected to provide the best support you can.

So a DPS role is going to be expected to maximise DPS, and it'd be a bit sad if pure DPS utilities like Well of Suffering were overshadowed in their own job such that full minions is optimal in that role. Similarly, a support role is expected to provide a lot of support to the team, and the current minions don't exactly provide much support.

Despite this, we still see minions in optimal builds. The snowcrows builds all have at least one minion. Nike's
is recommended to use two, although that's a little out of date now and would probably now use Well of Darkness instead of the shade (but hey, it probably wouldn't lose that much if you used the shade instead of the signet). The Wooden Potatoes
runs Bone Minions and "Rise!". On a quick scan of the top necromancer PvE builds on Metabattle, anything that isn't a condi build has at least one minion, including a full minion build. So it's not like necromancers don't use minions. It's just that it's not always optimal to go
all
minions.

But if you want, say, maximum DPS, it makes sense that your first port of call would be skills that are pure DPS rather than minion skills that provide other benefits on top of DPS.

You guys are so ridged

Can I be bluntly honest here?

It's coming across to me as if you, and the people you say have been leaving the game, are the ones that have a rigid idea of what the professions should be doing and are objecting when the builds used at the highest levels of cooperative play don't exactly match your expectations. From my perspective (and it pains me to say this since we've had some fairly constructive conversations before) you're the one that's trying to squeeze the professions into neat little rigid boxes, while I
like
that the professions don't always rigidly conform to common expectations.

Check them out.4 builds https://snowcrows.com/raids/guides/elementalist/tempest/power/5 builds https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/mesmer/chronomancer/power%20boon/3 builds https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/necromancer/reaper/power/3 builds https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/engineer/scrapper/heal/5 builds https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/ranger/druid/heal/4 builds https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/thief/thief/boon/5 builds https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/guardian/guardian/power/5 builds https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/revenant/herald/boon/5 builds https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/warrior/berserker/power%20banner/

Now why am I linking to the classes and their list of builds? What point is there to that? Easy! some of those builds on those classes are redundant builds. Truthfully they could have just listed what build was the absolute best and left off the other one that was slightly different but that's not what they did or what anyone does as a community. When I see this and I look at my experience with GW1 and GW2, there is absolutely no reason that more builds couldn't exist. in fact review these classes again once the next expansion comes out. The lists of builds for each class will expand and many of those builds might share much of the same space other builds share.

I never said remove elements from classes to make them fit. Guardian, Warrior, revenant, scrapper and Reaper already have elements on their class that could make them into amazing tanks. But the mechanics of those encounters doesn't allow for it. It doesn't remove the possibility of Guardian being a high damage build but rather would open up some space for them to play either builds, either the high damage or a lower damage tank. In no way am I asking Arena net to remove anything from the classes. And I have no idea how you guys came to that conclusion.

In guild wars 1 each class had literally dozens of viable builds in end game content. There was the most optimal builds, sure, but the content was doable with other builds players could understand better. I see no reason why we couldn't have Warrior as a tank, banner support or power DPS as an example. I see no reason why a Minion build couldn't exist along side Condi scourge or Power reaper, which I expect it will happen. I see no reason why a Turrets engineer can't exist along side power holo or healer scrapper.

You don't need optimized groups to complete endgame content. You just need effective builds.

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@Lily.1935 said:You don't need optimized groups to complete endgame content. You just need effective builds.

No one is saying that effective builds aren't viable in end game content.

Those builds just have to work with 4 or 9 other players' builds depending on the content.

When you PUG, you're playing with strangers. You don't know their skill level. So while they may be the best player in the game and totally has a workable build for the content you're doing, the other players do not know that.

There's very little in game to show a player's skill at the specific content, if anything. The closest thing that has any kind of actual proof of knowledge on an encounter is their build. Do they have the skills expected for the roll they are trying to fill?

Which is why PUG's who want efficient runs tend towards wanting players to play the meta. Because then everyone knows what's brought to the table is something that can fill the roll. They don't want to wait until they've wiped 5 times to figure out that at least one player isn't bringing enough to the table.

A static can tend away from the meta as people can adjust to builds that better fit their play style and skill level. And the other members can pick up and drop skills/traits as appropriate to adjust for the change in what a party member brings to the table.

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@Seera.5916 said:

@Lily.1935 said:You don't need optimized groups to complete endgame content. You just need effective builds.

No one is saying that effective builds aren't viable in end game content.

Those builds just have to work with 4 or 9 other players' builds depending on the content.

When you PUG, you're playing with strangers. You don't know their skill level. So while they may be the best player in the game and totally has a workable build for the content you're doing, the other players do not know that.

There's very little in game to show a player's skill at the specific content, if anything. The closest thing that has any kind of actual proof of knowledge on an encounter is their build. Do they have the skills expected for the roll they are trying to fill?

Which is why PUG's who want efficient runs tend towards wanting players to play the meta. Because then everyone knows what's brought to the table is something that can fill the roll. They don't want to wait until they've wiped 5 times to figure out that at least one player isn't bringing enough to the table.

A static can tend away from the meta as people can adjust to builds that better fit their play style and skill level. And the other members can pick up and drop skills/traits as appropriate to adjust for the change in what a party member brings to the table.

More builds, more options and less alienation of players as the game starts.

There are a lot of skills that don't preform well. And I'd like to see the favorites get something viable.

A turrets build could, hypothetically, hit a 28k benchmark and it would never be as good as say kits condi engineer or power holosmith, but it could be an easier build to help with the transition from casual to hard core content. I'm looking for a means to improve newbie experience without usurping existing builds. I have issues with a few of them but that's not what this post is about.

As for tanking, this is a major issue I see with the way the Aggro system works. It doesn't allow for the intended tanking classes to function as they where intended. And it was intended as taunt was added at the same time. The tanking system I want to propose wouldn't get rid of Boon chrono or Alacrigade but rather put the burden on them but rather a type of build dedicated to the job.

I like the idea of support tanks or Dps tanks. But I also like the idea that a support tank or DPS tank wouldn't be as good or as strong as dedicated supports or dedicated dps.

This is why I suggested a threat based system. Nothing could get a Chronomancer removed from its slot in the party. But we could better streamline the roles.

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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.

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

This may not be what u mean but its been noticed by many that over the years the balance and design team for whatever reason made changes to classes that over time caused the classes to not remotely play like their initial in game descriptions.

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@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

@"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.

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

This may not be what u mean but its been noticed by many that over the years the balance and design team for whatever reason made changes to classes that over time caused the classes to not remotely play like their initial in game descriptions.

You are correct. I'm of the opinion that we don't have to remove existing play styles on classes to grant them some of these original intended designs. I do believe there is enough room for it in their design currently. And if not, then through elite specs as well. People want to play these builds and roles in certain ways and I do see it as a possibility of us being able to give it to them.

For another example in the builds department. Condi reaper. I do personally believe that condi reaper could be close to Condi scourge's benchmark without usurping it. Given a few minor buffs either could fit onto a team if needed. They're close enough that I feel it wouldn't be a problem. My preference is scourge, but that doesn't mean it has to be the only Condi build on necromancer. Player enjoyment and preference should come into play when we consider what skills and builds should be buffed.

There will never be the level of discovery and customization that Guild Wars 1 had. But we could still have a larger breadth of options for our existing environment in PvE. I'm aware this exist in competitive, but I'd like to see more of it in PvE.

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@Lily.1935 said:

Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

If you're running with a zerg such that you're never under any real threat, then sure.

But the truth is, there are some builds that are distinctly better for open world and story than others. You could probably get gold on a zerg farm event easily enough with anything, but guilds that do world bosses regularly will tell you that there are some builds that definitely contribute in that environment more than others. Meanwhile, there are definitely some builds which can do story instances or difficult open world events more smoothly than others.

And as it happens, full minionmancer necromancer is one of the latter, for reasons I'd discussed in an earlier post in this thread. Because when you're running solo, the combination of survivability (both from death magic traits and from simply having the minions get attacked instead of you) with decent damage and a bit of CC is useful. High-end instanced group PvE, on the other hand... people are expected to synergise to form a cooperative group rather than fighting as individuals. If your job is DPS, that's what you're expected to focus on and let the supports keep you alive. If you're support, you're expected to provide the best support you can.

So a DPS role is going to be expected to maximise DPS, and it'd be a bit sad if pure DPS utilities like Well of Suffering were overshadowed in their own job such that full minions is optimal in that role. Similarly, a support role is expected to provide a lot of support to the team, and the current minions don't exactly provide much support.

Despite this, we still see minions in optimal builds. The snowcrows builds all have at least one minion. Nike's
is recommended to use two, although that's a little out of date now and would probably now use Well of Darkness instead of the shade (but hey, it probably wouldn't lose that much if you used the shade instead of the signet). The Wooden Potatoes
runs Bone Minions and "Rise!". On a quick scan of the top necromancer PvE builds on Metabattle, anything that isn't a condi build has at least one minion, including a full minion build. So it's not like necromancers don't use minions. It's just that it's not always optimal to go
all
minions.

But if you want, say, maximum DPS, it makes sense that your first port of call would be skills that are pure DPS rather than minion skills that provide other benefits on top of DPS.

You guys are so ridged

Can I be bluntly honest here?

It's coming across to me as if you, and the people you say have been leaving the game, are the ones that have a rigid idea of what the professions should be doing and are objecting when the builds used at the highest levels of cooperative play don't exactly match your expectations. From my perspective (and it pains me to say this since we've had some fairly constructive conversations before) you're the one that's trying to squeeze the professions into neat little rigid boxes, while I
like
that the professions don't always rigidly conform to common expectations.

Check them out.4 builds
5 builds
3 builds
3 builds
5 builds
4 builds
5 builds
5 builds
5 builds

Now why am I linking to the classes and their list of builds? What point is there to that? Easy! some of those builds on those classes are redundant builds. Truthfully they could have just listed what build was the absolute best and left off the other one that was slightly different but that's not what they did or what anyone does as a community. When I see this and I look at my experience with GW1 and GW2, there is absolutely no reason that more builds couldn't exist. in fact review these classes again once the next expansion comes out. The lists of builds for each class will expand and many of those builds might share much of the same space other builds share.

I never said remove elements from classes to make them fit. Guardian, Warrior, revenant, scrapper and Reaper already have elements on their class that could make them into amazing tanks. But the mechanics of those encounters doesn't allow for it. It doesn't remove the possibility of Guardian being a high damage build but rather would open up some space for them to play either builds, either the high damage or a lower damage tank. In no way am I asking Arena net to remove anything from the classes. And I have no idea how you guys came to that conclusion.

In guild wars 1 each class had literally dozens of viable builds in end game content. There was the most optimal builds, sure, but the content was doable with other builds players could understand better. I see no reason why we couldn't have Warrior as a tank, banner support or power DPS as an example. I see no reason why a Minion build couldn't exist along side Condi scourge or Power reaper, which I expect it will happen. I see no reason why a Turrets engineer can't exist along side power holo or healer scrapper.

You don't need optimized groups to complete endgame content. You just need effective builds.

While I don't have any inner insight into Snowcrows thinking, from what I can determine by having looked over the builds, most of the "redundancy" you talk about seems to stem from two broad rules:

The first is that they do seem to be actively trying to provide a power build, a condition build, and a healing build for each profession, even if those builds aren't currently in the meta. The exception is that they don't have a condi thief and healing builds on warrior, thief, and mesmer, possibly because those offer so little that they just can't in good conscience present them as even being viable. But they do include, say, power reaper, even though it has a pretty low benchmark and isn't recommended on any raid boss. Why? Because it's possible that the last player in a group might only play necromancer and while power reaper is far from optimal for power DPS, it is at least viable.

The second is that when you have multiple builds for a given profession that appear to be filling a particular role, there's usually some situations where one is optimal over the other and vice versa. For instance, they recommend Condition Mirage for Soulless Horror and Condition Chronomancer for Twin Largos. They each have something unique they can bring which makes them more suited for a particular situation.

Now, let's apply this principle to minionmancer necromancer. Is it practical to think that a minionmancer necromancer could ever be better than the suggested builds in any capacity relevant to raids, strikes, or the like? Not necessarily whether it is now, but let's assume that necromancer gets some sort of PvE rebalance aimed at making it more viable at high-end PvE instanced content, since it could really use it.

Could it be support? At the moment, necromancer support mostly comes from the scourge life force abilities and the heal skill. So... theoretically, I guess you COULD imagine a Boots-style build combining healing and minions on everything to the right of the heal slot? Minions don't provide much support, but they do provide DPS that isn't dependent on the stat. Except... Blood, Soul Reaping, and Scourge are all fairly important to the build (and I don't see that changing), so I don't think there's room to fit Death Magic in there. It would also mean losing Blood Is Power and Signet of Undeath and, well, you could probably afford to lose BiP if you have sufficient Might generation without it, but Signet of Undeath is a significant life force generator. Most scourge support is powered by life force. So yeah, I don't see that happening.

What about tanking? As things currently stand, tanking for most raids is simply a matter of having high Toughness and leading the boss out of the bad so your allies can beat up on it. Maybe you could tank by relying on stats (and Carapace) to survive while minions still provide reasonable damage despite your lack of offensive stats. Might work. Generally speaking, though, the principle for tanks remains "what gives up the least from taking defensive gear", and it would be a hard sell to stop the answer to that question from being "a support build in Minstrel's".

What about DPS? Here, we come up against the problem I've been referring to all along: minions provide additional utility on top of damage, while necromancers have utility skills whose primary purpose is to provide additional damage. It'd be pretty poor balancing if adding a fifth minion skill to your bar was ever able to out-DPS something like Well of Suffering. The one saving grace I can see is that most of those skills are either AoE (wells) or have the potential to apply to AoE skills (the signet) so it's possible that a situation could be achieved whereby minions provide superior single-target DPS, balanced against wells being better against groups. Assuming, that is, minions are rebalanced to use the summoner's statistics (which would make them less useful when added to a support or tank build).

Even there, though, I'm sceptical, since in solo play, minions are already pretty good against groups. Minions against a group minimise the chance that any one target gets aggroed by enough of the group that it gets taken down quickly, as well as maximising the value of Death Nova. So you might be forcing full minionmasters into high-end group content at the cost of turning wells into a meme when running solo or open world.

In the meantime, full minions work perfectly well for open world and solo story content, and pretty much all the optimised builds still have at least one or two minions, so I don't think the theme is lost. It's just that you have one or two pets rather than a swarm. But honestly, you didn't always want minions in every single piece of PvE content in GW1 either.

(As for GW1 having a wider range of viable builds - I'd call that partially a matter of having a wider range of skills available, partially a matter of it taking longer to figure out what was optimal due to the wider range of possibilities, and partially due to the lower availability of sites like Snowcrows and Metabattle that made it easy to find what the optimal builds were. Nevertheless, if you went deep enough, there still worked out to be a relatively narrow range of choices for each profession that were really strong.)

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@draxynnic.3719 said:

Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

If you're running with a zerg such that you're never under any real threat, then sure.

But the truth is, there are some builds that are distinctly better for open world and story than others. You could probably get gold on a zerg farm event easily enough with anything, but guilds that do world bosses regularly will tell you that there are some builds that definitely contribute in that environment more than others. Meanwhile, there are definitely some builds which can do story instances or difficult open world events more smoothly than others.

And as it happens, full minionmancer necromancer is one of the latter, for reasons I'd discussed in an earlier post in this thread. Because when you're running solo, the combination of survivability (both from death magic traits and from simply having the minions get attacked instead of you) with decent damage and a bit of CC is useful. High-end instanced group PvE, on the other hand... people are expected to synergise to form a cooperative group rather than fighting as individuals. If your job is DPS, that's what you're expected to focus on and let the supports keep you alive. If you're support, you're expected to provide the best support you can.

So a DPS role is going to be expected to maximise DPS, and it'd be a bit sad if pure DPS utilities like Well of Suffering were overshadowed in their own job such that full minions is optimal in that role. Similarly, a support role is expected to provide a lot of support to the team, and the current minions don't exactly provide much support.

Despite this, we still see minions in optimal builds. The snowcrows builds all have at least one minion. Nike's
is recommended to use two, although that's a little out of date now and would probably now use Well of Darkness instead of the shade (but hey, it probably wouldn't lose that much if you used the shade instead of the signet). The Wooden Potatoes
runs Bone Minions and "Rise!". On a quick scan of the top necromancer PvE builds on Metabattle, anything that isn't a condi build has at least one minion, including a full minion build. So it's not like necromancers don't use minions. It's just that it's not always optimal to go
all
minions.

But if you want, say, maximum DPS, it makes sense that your first port of call would be skills that are pure DPS rather than minion skills that provide other benefits on top of DPS.

You guys are so ridged

Can I be bluntly honest here?

It's coming across to me as if you, and the people you say have been leaving the game, are the ones that have a rigid idea of what the professions should be doing and are objecting when the builds used at the highest levels of cooperative play don't exactly match your expectations. From my perspective (and it pains me to say this since we've had some fairly constructive conversations before) you're the one that's trying to squeeze the professions into neat little rigid boxes, while I
like
that the professions don't always rigidly conform to common expectations.

Check them out.4 builds
5 builds
3 builds
3 builds
5 builds
4 builds
5 builds
5 builds
5 builds

Now why am I linking to the classes and their list of builds? What point is there to that? Easy! some of those builds on those classes are redundant builds. Truthfully they could have just listed what build was the absolute best and left off the other one that was slightly different but that's not what they did or what anyone does as a community. When I see this and I look at my experience with GW1 and GW2, there is absolutely no reason that more builds couldn't exist. in fact review these classes again once the next expansion comes out. The lists of builds for each class will expand and many of those builds might share much of the same space other builds share.

I never said remove elements from classes to make them fit. Guardian, Warrior, revenant, scrapper and Reaper already have elements on their class that could make them into amazing tanks. But the mechanics of those encounters doesn't allow for it. It doesn't remove the possibility of Guardian being a high damage build but rather would open up some space for them to play either builds, either the high damage or a lower damage tank. In no way am I asking Arena net to remove anything from the classes. And I have no idea how you guys came to that conclusion.

In guild wars 1 each class had literally dozens of viable builds in end game content. There was the most optimal builds, sure, but the content was doable with other builds players could understand better. I see no reason why we couldn't have Warrior as a tank, banner support or power DPS as an example. I see no reason why a Minion build couldn't exist along side Condi scourge or Power reaper, which I expect it will happen. I see no reason why a Turrets engineer can't exist along side power holo or healer scrapper.

You don't need optimized groups to complete endgame content. You just need effective builds.

While I don't have any inner insight into Snowcrows thinking, from what I can determine by having looked over the builds, most of the "redundancy" you talk about seems to stem from two broad rules:

The first is that they do seem to be actively trying to provide a power build, a condition build, and a healing build for each profession, even if those builds aren't currently in the meta. The exception is that they don't have a condi thief and healing builds on warrior, thief, and mesmer, possibly because those offer so little that they just can't in good conscience present them as even being viable. But they do include, say, power reaper, even though it has a pretty low benchmark and isn't recommended on any raid boss. Why? Because it's possible that the last player in a group might only play necromancer and while power reaper is far from optimal for power DPS, it is at least
viable.

The second is that when you have multiple builds for a given profession that appear to be filling a particular role, there's usually some situations where one is optimal over the other and vice versa. For instance, they recommend Condition Mirage for Soulless Horror and Condition Chronomancer for Twin Largos. They each have something unique they can bring which makes them more suited for a particular situation.

Now, let's apply this principle to minionmancer necromancer. Is it practical to think that a minionmancer necromancer
could
ever be better than the suggested builds in any capacity relevant to raids, strikes, or the like? Not necessarily whether it is now, but let's assume that necromancer gets some sort of PvE rebalance aimed at making it more viable at high-end PvE instanced content, since it could really
use
it.

Could it be support? At the moment, necromancer support mostly comes from the scourge life force abilities and the heal skill. So... theoretically, I guess you COULD imagine a Boots-style build combining healing and minions on everything to the right of the heal slot? Minions don't provide much support, but they do provide DPS that isn't dependent on the stat. Except... Blood, Soul Reaping, and Scourge are all fairly important to the build (and I don't see that changing), so I don't think there's room to fit Death Magic in there. It would also mean losing Blood Is Power and Signet of Undeath and, well, you could probably afford to lose BiP if you have sufficient Might generation without it, but Signet of Undeath is a significant life force generator. Most scourge support is powered by life force. So yeah, I don't see that happening.

What about tanking? As things currently stand, tanking for most raids is simply a matter of having high Toughness and leading the boss out of the bad so your allies can beat up on it. Maybe you could tank by relying on stats (and Carapace) to survive while minions still provide reasonable damage despite your lack of offensive stats. Might work. Generally speaking, though, the principle for tanks remains "what gives up the least from taking defensive gear", and it would be a hard sell to stop the answer to that question from being "a support build in Minstrel's".

What about DPS? Here, we come up against the problem I've been referring to all along: minions provide additional utility on top of damage, while necromancers have utility skills whose primary purpose is to provide additional damage. It'd be pretty poor balancing if adding a fifth minion skill to your bar was
ever
able to out-DPS something like Well of Suffering. The one saving grace I can see is that most of those skills are either AoE (wells) or have the potential to apply to AoE skills (the signet) so it's
possible
that a situation could be achieved whereby minions provide superior single-target DPS, balanced against wells being better against groups. Assuming, that is, minions are rebalanced to use the summoner's statistics (which would make them less useful when added to a support or tank build).

Even there, though, I'm sceptical, since in solo play, minions are already pretty good against groups. Minions against a group minimise the chance that any
one
target gets aggroed by enough of the group that it gets taken down quickly, as well as maximising the value of Death Nova. So you might be forcing full minionmasters into high-end group content at the cost of turning wells into a meme when running solo or open world.

In the meantime, full minions work perfectly well for open world and solo story content, and pretty much all the optimised builds still have at least one or two minions, so I don't think the theme is lost. It's just that you have one or two pets rather than a swarm. But honestly, you didn't always want minions in every single piece of PvE content in GW1 either.

(As for GW1 having a wider range of viable builds - I'd call that partially a matter of having a wider range of skills available, partially a matter of it taking longer to figure out what was optimal due to the wider range of possibilities, and partially due to the lower availability of sites like Snowcrows and Metabattle that made it easy to find what the optimal builds were. Nevertheless, if you went deep enough, there still worked out to be a relatively narrow range of choices for each profession that were
really
strong.)

I actually like the reply. Don't think I can address everything.

As for Snowcrows, the builds that are viable is a good thing for the community. They show what's optimal which is perfectly fine, but I'm not asking for optimal but good. Condi scourge and Power reaper do well enough in raids that a guild will not have issues introducing and adjusting their group for a new player picking up any particular class. I like that these options are available to the player even if they're not optimal.

As for Minions, I think we have some different perspectives on this. When I talk about a dedicated Minion build I'm talking about the traits in conjunction with their skills. You only use some minions for their utility. But not all. Blood fiend, Shadow fiend and flesh golem are the chosen ones while Bone minion, Flesh Wurm and Bone fiend are lacking and we only see in open world where even there they could have improvements.

Some suggestions I'd make for minions would be to up Bone minions from 2 to 3 minions and have it work on the charge system. I'd also probably do this with Flesh wurm and cut its cast time so so it could be used more frequently although I wouldn't up the number you could have. So flesh wurm would work like sand Savant where you have a charge in the back to resummon after it dies and you don't have to wait on its cooldown. I'd improve the utility of Bone fiend as well as have shadow fiend have a bonus ability to teleport jagged horrors, bone minions amd unstable horrors with it when if casts its haunt to further persuit. I'd also compress the minion traits into a grandmaster that really incentivizes their use with each other.

I'd also redo Lich Form as a Skill since its problematic in PvP and WvW and kinda bad in PvE(well not bad but not great) so it replaces your death shroud, reaper's shroud or sand shades with Lich's shroud with different utility compared to the other shroud skills to offer a unique minion bomber type build in conjunction with my minion changes. (Admittedly this last change might be too much)

For tanking, I have a major bone to pick with how it works. For a summary I would like it to be a threat system as opposed to a toughness system. So let's say each player builds threat as they fight. Let's say the average DPS generates about a 1000 threat, the healer at 1100, the support at 1200, and a tank at 1600 through their actions. Each skill would have a baseline threat range and some skills would produce more or less threat. Like maybe spectral grasp on necromancer produces greater threat than say mesmer's blurred frenzy which has low threat. Taunt as a condition would generate a tone of threat over a few seconds to quickly pull the boss back to them. The second part of the threat system I'm conceptualizing is that a player who is holding the boss's aggro will take a far greater increased damage from their attacks than those not in focus for their aggro so a hyper glassy tank like what we see could work if the player is good enough but they could go down if struck once or twice.

There would be skills and conditions that reduce threat such as fear and blind as well as stealth so a system like this could really be played with.

I'm still work shopping the concept in my head but that's a summary of it.

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Yeah, the Snowcrows builds aren't necessarily optimal, but I think they do have an eye towards being the optimal way that the profession can fill a particular role. So if we were to consider power DPS, for instance - they have a power reaper build because if you're going to do power DPS with a necromancer, that's the best build to do it. They won't have a second power DPS build for necromancer unless there is at least one circumstance where the second build is better than the first. They won't put in a second power DPS necromancer build just to throw a bone to diversity.

Where you've got more than 3 builds for a profession, it's usually because some of those builds are filling another role entirely (banners, quickness, alacrity) or because there's some quirk that causes one of the builds to be better in some circumstances than in others.

I get where you're coming from - what you're talking about is essentially what I refer to as a "full minions build". I'm just observing that even with just one or two minions, the theme of the necromancer being a controller of undead minions is still there. It may be only one or two rather than the full set with traits, but the theme is still represented even in those fully optimised builds.

When it does come to the full minions builds... I'm certainly not opposed to buffing minions in general, but I don't think it's likely that they can be buffed to a point where they'd be recommended over the existing builds (at least not for the raids that are currently available) without overshadowing more specialised utility skills. And if the utility of a particular minion was buffed so that it was useful for some specific piece of content (say, your suggestion about Flesh Wurm being made an ammo skill so that it provides more mobility) what's probably likely to happen is that people will take it for that utility but still won't commit to the traits. At the moment, Soul Reaping is still considered essential to basically every high-end PvE build, Spite is the go-to for power, Curses for condi, and Blood for support: Death is always going to be competing with one of those or an elite specialisation, and it's broadly speaking a 'self-survivability' line (which is often useful in competitive, solo, and open world play, but not so much in raids and the like). It's going to be hard to ever justify it for a build in that environment just like none of the guardian raid builds use Valor, and none of the warrior raid builds use Defense.

One could possibly imagine future raids where this becomes an important role. For instance, consider a circumstance where there's a battle with a lot of adds (which can trigger the creation of Jagged Horrors) followed by the enemy making an attack which does heavy damage divided across every friendly entity on the battlefield. Such a circumstance would probably make necromancer builds designed around getting as many entities on the field as possible be in high demand, although they wouldn't necessarily be essential as there might be other ways to achieve a similar effect (mesmer clones, engineer turrets, renegades putting down multiple spirits just before the attack hits, ranger spirits, elementals, even ranger pets in a pinch). Could be particularly interesting if this is followed by a burn phase in which everything that is hit by the attack either does increased damage or contributes to stripping stacks of some buff off the enemy. Basically, have an engagement that encourages just putting as much on the field as possible.

Redoing Lich Form is an interesting idea. I recall it used to be meta condi DPS at one point, but what made it that way got nerfed out of existence. There is precedent in guardian tomes, which used to be elite transformations but which are now an elite specialisation mechanic. Something similar could be done with Lich Form.

When it comes to tanking...

I would be hesitant to make big changes to how tanking works for the existing raids. Most of those raids that have tanking at all, it basically exists so that the boss can be moved out of zones that are going to kill you with reasonable reliability. Changing the mechanics of the existing raids might completely mess them up.

For future raids, though, I think there is the potential to have things work by some sort of threat meter, or for the boss to respond to certain actions by switching target. For instance, there could be a boss which has an "Easily Angered" mechanic, where they fixate on anyone that uses Taunt on them. Possibly they could have some stacking buff that increases the longer that they're on a specific target (or they inflict a stacking debuff) so after a while you want someone else to taunt to draw them away. Possibly, to open up more options to get the boss to switch, Fear might also trigger them ("you think you can scare ME!!!") and there might be other actions that can get them to switch target.

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  • 1 month later...

@Lily.1935 said: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.

  • Make Fan favorite builds viable
  • Offer more viable simple builds across more professions and especially core professions
  • Rework many of the Underused or unused skills.

I'm going to take issue with these. You probably know what I'm going to say but I'm going to say it anyways.

LOTS of builds are viable in this game and the reason is because threshold for success is low. Anet can not engineer the meta; it evolves with game content and skill changes. There isn't a path to more viable builds, especially as people demand diversity in an game that has optimized build solutions. That's a paradox. NO one has to abandon builds they want to play. What they DO need to do is play with people that understand and embrace this game philosophy if they want to team with people and enjoy their builds. If people want to be told what to play because of how the game is designed, there are dozens of other games out there they can play to do that. This isn't one of them.

GW2 is successful because of what it does different from other MMOs and also because of what it doesn't do that other MMO's traditionally adopt as their game models. If new players have a 'difficult' time adapting to the idea of a more freeform way to play the game, that's not a problem that Anet needs to solve by appealing to a more traditional approach. I mean, there is a BIG downside to shifting the game in the direction you talk about that you are ignoring; that most of veteran playerbase of the game play it because of the approach that you think should change.

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I also see this as a problem. The roles they should play in theory are not the same in practice. It is very strange to imagine that the best tank in the game is a magician. Even the Herald, which was made to be a tank, cannot carry out this role with effort.I started playing with Elementalist because I prefer to play at a distance with magic, I was totally wrong, already in the tutorial we started with a melee range weapon in it and his staff is very bad.So I went to play with Ranger, who in theory should play well with a bow(as the name says), he plays well but a greatsword and an axe is much better.

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