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Are the devs happy with fractal balance?


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The "META" team is all DPS

https://discretize.eu/

And there's really only 1 acceptable defensive support (HB) from the high-end community's perspective. Given the number of different supports and DPS in this game, this feels kinda broken. Am curious how the devs feel about it, not like they're around much on this forum these days, but would like some type of response. Having such a restrictive meta is annoying and discouraging once you get to like t3 and people are lecturing you on your playstyle (even if your failure rate in pugs is low). Why have so many different class and stat combinations when the metas are so narrow? The game really should do a better job of both balancing (creating more diversity in play styles) as well as funneling (making sure you don't invest too muchin the wrong gear). In practice I'm sure fractals are doable in a part of all clerics and/or knight's but the community wouldn't have it I'm sure and so I feel like there's some definite improvements needed here.

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It's due to role compression and how strong aegis from mantra of solace is on 12 base cooldown as well as sanctuary as a CC skill. Theoretically you could run chrono+druid as older times or even chrono+alacrity renegade but the alacrity uptime is going to be much poorer with chrono+druid unless you run full boon chrono.

That's not even counting the fact that chronos suffer immensely when things die quickly because they don't get to make full use of their shatters and slow uptime will be terrible. Typically you need a few seconds for the phantasms to do their full damage so chrono functions more similar to a fast ramping condi build.

The best way to fix this without completely breaking the game (or touching fractals) is to make boon daredevil viable in fractals by having a 80-100% Boon duration daredevil with Improv (Deadly arts) + sleight of hand be able to upkeep quickness. The quickness could be tacked on to Bountiful Theft or less ideally, Thrill of the Crime. The damage isn't insane and it can't legitimately heal on par with HB.

Class by class , thief is in the worst spot right now I would think.

Requested or wanted

  • Firebrand: people will run 4 of them in 100CM due to sanctuary and aegis spam
  • Renegade: breaks CC bars quickly, alacrity , boon rip , situational soulcleave healing + high self sustain
  • Berserker Warrior: "BS" wanted in most parties and in CMs other than 100CM because banners provide a sizable stat bonus ; if the warrior is decent they will have double maces for CC
  • Soulbeast Ranger: wanted as soulbeast in most CM parties and decent cleave + burst , frost spirit, spotter or One Wolf Pack sharing ; can "abuse" axe reflects sometimes vs projectiles such as on 98CM / 99CM

Not requested

  • Ele - Weaver: wanted for old CMs by people that adhere to rigid meta, unwanted elsewhere but decent cleave ; struggles with No Pain no Gain , Social Awkwardness, Flux Bomb, and condi heavy enemies ; the rotation is difficult so it means that people that want optimal performance are better off with other classes
  • Engi - Holo: high cleave, decent power burst, self sustain on photon forge and using AED ... only can boon rip with Throw Mine or sigils
  • Engi - Scrapper: okay damage with high sustain, it's been benchmarked around 15% less damage than holo but roughly on par with a power reaper with all offensive utilities ; stealth skips via stealth gyro
  • Ele - Tempest: high cleave , high self protection generation , water variant can maintain scholar uptime easier, can work around Social Awkwardness and Flux Bombs ... against smaller hitboxes or fights without adds it loses out damage
  • Guard - DH: high power burst, slight self sustain via Wings of Resolve and Virtue of Resolve ; respectable overall damage
  • Mes - Chrono: ramp time on clones and phantasms, against adds it has very low slow uptime but can generate party quickness using Seize the Moment (StM)
  • Mes - Mirage: usable in 100CM but not ideal elsewhere if you run it as condi due to the way confusion and torment work
  • Necro - Reaper: workable in most fractals with adds even if it is not best DPS , can work around instabilities and remove boons in <20s interval without taking extra utilities or traits ; self quickness if your firebrand is not great
  • Necro - Scourge: workable in most fractals with many adds, usable in 100CM even if not meta
  • Daredevil - there's nothing that really warrants bringing one right now unless the fractal level has a skip ; since condi thief is not really a thing it is largely unusable for 100CM
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@Ayrilana.1396 said:You don't have to do what is meta. Create your own group if you don't see any to your liking in the LFG.

DPS has been the go to for just about everywhere in PvE over the past 8+ years.

Meta is usually always fairly narrow to a degree and has been for 8+ years.

Usually the people in PuGs don't care, but i think it's toxic some people feel they have to lecture people on how to play, especially with fractals which has a massive overhead to climbing (ar collection + ascended gear). If i was more fragile i might quit the game mode altogether. Honestly i have run some parties with almost all supports in lower tiers because of how sparse the player base is. You have to use what's available.

I just would like some wind knocked out of the sails of the everyone is dps meta.

Which by the way was how i started this character but because of lack of support while climbing, i swapped it into support before i invested too much into the character.

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@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:You don't have to do what is meta. Create your own group if you don't see any to your liking in the LFG.

DPS has been the go to for just about everywhere in PvE over the past 8+ years.

Meta is usually always fairly narrow to a degree and has been for 8+ years.

Usually the people in PuGs don't care, but i think it's toxic some people feel they have to lecture people on how to play, especially with fractals which has a massive overhead to climbing (ar collection + ascended gear). If i was more fragile i might quit the game mode altogether. Honestly i have run some parties with almost all supports in lower tiers because of how sparse the player base is. You have to use what's available.

It depends on more than just simply telling someone how to play in order for something to be toxic. If the people in pugs usually don't care then why is this an issue for you? It seems your issue has more to do with how a handful of players treat you than the meta itself.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:You don't have to do what is meta. Create your own group if you don't see any to your liking in the LFG.

DPS has been the go to for just about everywhere in PvE over the past 8+ years.

Meta is usually always fairly narrow to a degree and has been for 8+ years.

Usually the people in PuGs don't care, but i think it's toxic some people feel they have to lecture people on how to play, especially with fractals which has a massive overhead to climbing (ar collection + ascended gear). If i was more fragile i might quit the game mode altogether. Honestly i have run some parties with almost all supports in lower tiers because of how sparse the player base is. You have to use what's available.

It depends on more than just simply telling someone how to play in order for something to be toxic. If the people in pugs usually don't care then why is this an issue for you? It seems your issue has more to do with how a handful of players treat you than the meta itself.

Yeah, it's more the latter, but i feel like if things were balanced better they'd have less to troll about. Imo it's really condescending and discouraging in the context if everything it takes to climb fractals (and the span of time it took).

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@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:You don't have to do what is meta. Create your own group if you don't see any to your liking in the LFG.

DPS has been the go to for just about everywhere in PvE over the past 8+ years.

Meta is usually always fairly narrow to a degree and has been for 8+ years.

Usually the people in PuGs don't care, but i think it's toxic some people feel they have to lecture people on how to play, especially with fractals which has a massive overhead to climbing (ar collection + ascended gear). If i was more fragile i might quit the game mode altogether. Honestly i have run some parties with almost all supports in lower tiers because of how sparse the player base is. You have to use what's available.

It depends on more than just simply telling someone how to play in order for something to be toxic. If the people in pugs usually don't care then why is this an issue for you? It seems your issue has more to do with how a handful of players treat you than the meta itself.

Yeah, it's more the latter, but i feel like if things were balanced better they'd have less to troll about. Imo it's really condescending and discouraging in the context if everything it takes to climb fractals (and the span of time it took).

The problem is that you can't balance the meta as a new meta would just end up being created. The only really issue is whether fractals can be completed with all classes a(and many builds) which can be done. There will always be those who try to tell people what to do and can be toxic at times about it. If tolerating those type of players is difficult then the best thing would be to simply leave the group and find another group whether it be joining another or creating one of your own. Changing the meta isn't going to do anything about those types of players.

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As much as I like to complain, balancing is not an easy thing. Especially because everyone wants something different (which is not to say that the balancing in GW2 is good).And most importantly, no matter how something is balanced, there will always be meta-builds.Better be happy about tools like ArcDPS.When I started with HOT, meta wasn't a build, it was a class ^^''. Later fractal meta was 4 necros+1druid.From then on we went a long way and I think Meta includes a lot of classes now.

And as was said many times here in the forum, you can simply join groups that do not request such things and if people then want to bit***ing ignore or block them simply. That way you hit them the most.

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Its because Quickness and Alacrity are the only two boons that truly matter. Everything else is useful, yes, like Aegis, Protection and even Retaliation, but overall your party's performance will depend on those two boons along with Might and Fury.

One problem is we have no viable tanking mechanics. Another is many boons are DPS-centric. Nerfing Quickness would help, but it'd still be a required component of any fight even if it provided only 5% extra attack speed.

The game has always been lopsided towards pure DPS setups with a single full support or hybrid support player to carry the entire party, maybe two in raids due to the increased player count but that's about it. And the devs are unlikely to change this because they don't know how to make content that's not a DPS check anymore, and that's rather unfortunate.

Hint: Underground Facility is a good example of versatile mechanics. Deepstone is another good example. A bad example would be Siren's Reef, which may as well be called One Thousand Years of Bosses.

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@"Hannelore.8153" said:Its because Quickness and Alacrity are the only two boons that truly matter. Everything else is useful, yes, like Aegis, Protection and even Retaliation, but overall your party's performance will depend on those two boons along with Might and Fury.

One problem is we have no viable tanking mechanics. Another is many boons are DPS-centric. Nerfing Quickness would help, but it'd still be a required component of any fight even if it provided only 5% extra attack speed.

The game has always been lopsided towards pure DPS setups with a single full support or hybrid support player to carry the entire party, maybe two in raids due to the increased player count but that's about it. And the devs are unlikely to change this because they don't know how to make content that's not a DPS check anymore, and that's rather unfortunate.

Hint: Underground Facility is a good example of versatile mechanics. Deepstone is another good example. A bad example would be Siren's Reef, which may as well be called One Thousand Years of Bosses.

Siren's reef is the response from dev to tell us that "you need decent support / healer or different tactics to finish this fractal ", however player rate this one is a bad fractal just because they can't use no healer comp to finish this one.

Another example is the removed instability "bird", this one has an easiest solution to counter : have someone to spam resistant to ignore blind. but people just don't like it and don't want to adjust build.

So the reason this game always been toward dps check is our attitude, not dev's attitude.

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@"Firebeard.1746" said:

The "META" team is all DPS

https://discretize.eu/

And there's really only 1 acceptable defensive support (HB) from the high-end community's perspective. Given the number of different supports and DPS in this game, this feels kinda broken. Am curious how the devs feel about it, not like they're around much on this forum these days, but would like some type of response. Having such a restrictive meta is annoying and discouraging once you get to like t3 and people are lecturing you on your playstyle (even if your failure rate in pugs is low). Why have so many different class and stat combinations when the metas are so narrow? The game really should do a better job of both balancing (creating more diversity in play styles) as well as funneling (making sure you don't invest too muchin the wrong gear). In practice I'm sure fractals are doable in a part of all clerics and/or knight's but the community wouldn't have it I'm sure and so I feel like there's some definite improvements needed here.

Except NO instanced team content is balanced to meta in the first place, so the question is devs are happy with it doesn't really make sense. You already have what you ask for here ... you just need to choose how you play to do it.

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@Rodrick.1942 said:

@"Hannelore.8153" said:Its because Quickness and Alacrity are the only two boons that truly matter. Everything else is useful, yes, like Aegis, Protection and even Retaliation, but overall your party's performance will depend on those two boons along with Might and Fury.

One problem is we have no viable tanking mechanics. Another is many boons are DPS-centric. Nerfing Quickness would help, but it'd still be a required component of any fight even if it provided only 5% extra attack speed.

The game has always been lopsided towards pure DPS setups with a single full support or hybrid support player to carry the entire party, maybe two in raids due to the increased player count but that's about it. And the devs are unlikely to change this because they don't know how to make content that's not a DPS check anymore, and that's rather unfortunate.

Hint: Underground Facility is a good example of versatile mechanics. Deepstone is another good example. A bad example would be Siren's Reef, which may as well be called One Thousand Years of Bosses.

Siren's reef is the response from dev to tell us that "you need decent support / healer or different tactics to finish this fractal ", however player rate this one is a bad fractal just because they can't use no healer comp to finish this one.

Another example is the removed instability "bird", this one has an easiest solution to counter : have someone to spam resistant to ignore blind. but people just don't like it and don't want to adjust build.

So the reason this game always been toward dps check is our attitude, not dev's attitude.

That's interesting because I've always seen Siren's as a soft DPS check too, if those adds don't go down it's a wipe. There was once when i was carried by some crazy DPS god who's ignored them, but I've literally had to teach tons of teams to keep them down or we'll be overwhelmed because they couldn't do Hyperfocused DPS god.

Though a way the devs could take emphasis off DPS is to trigger events/mechanics on certain boss health %s. Like instead of doing the adds on a timer like Siren's, do it at boss health intervals so your team could end up getting zerged. And maybe not despawn adds on boss death.

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@Firebeard.1746 said:

@"Hannelore.8153" said:Its because Quickness and Alacrity are the only two boons that truly matter. Everything else is useful, yes, like Aegis, Protection and even Retaliation, but overall your party's performance will depend on those two boons along with Might and Fury.

One problem is we have no viable tanking mechanics. Another is many boons are DPS-centric. Nerfing Quickness would help, but it'd still be a required component of any fight even if it provided only 5% extra attack speed.

The game has always been lopsided towards pure DPS setups with a single full support or hybrid support player to carry the entire party, maybe two in raids due to the increased player count but that's about it. And the devs are unlikely to change this because they don't know how to make content that's not a DPS check anymore, and that's rather unfortunate.

Hint: Underground Facility is a good example of versatile mechanics. Deepstone is another good example. A bad example would be Siren's Reef, which may as well be called One Thousand Years of Bosses.

Siren's reef is the response from dev to tell us that "you need decent support / healer or different tactics to finish this fractal ", however player rate this one is a bad fractal just because they can't use no healer comp to finish this one.

Another example is the removed instability "bird", this one has an easiest solution to counter : have someone to spam resistant to ignore blind. but people just don't like it and don't want to adjust build.

So the reason this game always been toward dps check is our attitude, not dev's attitude.

That's interesting because I've always seen Siren's as a soft DPS check too, if those adds don't go down it's a wipe. There was once when i was carried by some crazy DPS god who's ignored them, but I've literally had to teach tons of teams to keep them down or we'll be overwhelmed because they couldn't do Hyperfocused DPS god.

Though a way the devs could take emphasis off DPS is to trigger events/mechanics on certain boss health %s. Like instead of doing the adds on a timer like Siren's, do it at boss health intervals so your team could end up getting zerged. And maybe not despawn adds on boss death.

You're right it's a soft dps check, however it's also a race to see who can keep their breath until last sec. FB need to spam resistant to ignore condi from adds, endless stab to counter cc, and have ren to help to heal group by using Kala elite skill or have a hybrid scourge to spam barrier/ condi spread.

it's one of the fractal I like because it forces us to change the way to play fractal, some build that people never think about it before become a thing (eg : condi herald )

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@Firebeard.1746 said:That's interesting because I've always seen Siren's as a soft DPS check too, if those adds don't go down it's a wipe. There was once when i was carried by some crazy DPS god who's ignored them, but I've literally had to teach tons of teams to keep them down or we'll be overwhelmed because they couldn't do Hyperfocused DPS god.

Though a way the devs could take emphasis off DPS is to trigger events/mechanics on certain boss health %s. Like instead of doing the adds on a timer like Siren's, do it at boss health intervals so your team could end up getting zerged. And maybe not despawn adds on boss death.

That's why every decent fractal build has cleave and people generally don't run single or two target weapons such as rifle deadeye or dagger soulbeast. Current meta classes such as soulbeast (unless the person camps longbow) and banner berserker cleave 3 targets.

Siren's Reef is basically a scenario where Photon Forge shines because it cleaves 5 targets with 240 range and benchmarks 25K or so just on PF auto; likewise condi firebrand with F1 resets on every mob death.

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@Rodrick.1942 said:You're right it's a soft dps check, however it's also a race to see who can keep their breath until last sec. FB need to spam resistant to ignore condi from adds, endless stab to counter cc, and have ren to help to heal group by using Kala elite skill or have a hybrid scourge to spam barrier/ condi spread.

it's one of the fractal I like because it forces us to change the way to play fractal, some build that people never think about it before become a thing (eg : condi herald )

In which bizarro world is condi herald useful in fractals? sorry but no, condi herald is not helping anyone in instanced content. sirens reef is so hated by a lot of the fractal community because you cant really speedrun it. portals dont work with the chest and the cannon event is just annoying. The endboss isnt the problem. SA makes it incredible annoying and stab doesnt even work vs most stuff.4necros + druid was never meta. it was a brainless way to complete them half afk but considerably slower than a decent comp with quickness and actual meta strats.The meta in every mmo is dps. you only bring the support needed to survive. even in trinity games they dont take a healer if it isnt needed.@Firebeard.1746 Are you using arc? it shows way more than just dps. also healing, boons and cc. you can measure the usefulness of a build quite easy with it. there is a difference if you just complete the fractals or if you complete them in 20min. especially when some players completed them literally 1000 times.

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@Nephalem.8921 said:

@Rodrick.1942 said:You're right it's a soft dps check, however it's also a race to see who can keep their breath until last sec. FB need to spam resistant to ignore condi from adds, endless stab to counter cc, and have ren to help to heal group by using Kala elite skill or have a hybrid scourge to spam barrier/ condi spread.

it's one of the fractal I like because it forces us to change the way to play fractal, some build that people never think about it before become a thing (eg : condi herald )

In which bizarro world is condi herald useful in fractals? sorry but no, condi herald is not helping anyone in instanced content. sirens reef is so hated by a lot of the fractal community because you cant really speedrun it. portals dont work with the chest and the cannon event is just annoying. The endboss isnt the problem. SA makes it incredible annoying and stab doesnt even work vs most stuff.4necros + druid was never meta. it was a brainless way to complete them half afk but considerably slower than a decent comp with quickness and actual meta strats.The meta in every mmo is dps. you only bring the support needed to survive. even in trinity games they dont take a healer if it isnt needed.@Firebeard.1746 Are you using arc? it shows way more than just dps. also healing, boons and cc. you can measure the usefulness of a build quite easy with it. there is a difference if you just complete the fractals or if you complete them in 20min. especially when some players completed them literally 1000 times.

speedrun, annoyed, can't see the value of some off meta build.

go back to cms then, if you don't like to try new stuff. but don't expect Anet will keep announcing the similar design content all the time because people like me

still exists in gw2 .

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@Rodrick.1942 said:

@Rodrick.1942 said:You're right it's a soft dps check, however it's also a race to see who can keep their breath until last sec. FB need to spam resistant to ignore condi from adds, endless stab to counter cc, and have ren to help to heal group by using Kala elite skill or have a hybrid scourge to spam barrier/ condi spread.

it's one of the fractal I like because it forces us to change the way to play fractal, some build that people never think about it before become a thing (eg : condi herald )

In which bizarro world is condi herald useful in fractals? sorry but no, condi herald is not helping anyone in instanced content. sirens reef is so hated by a lot of the fractal community because you cant really speedrun it. portals dont work with the chest and the cannon event is just annoying. The endboss isnt the problem. SA makes it incredible annoying and stab doesnt even work vs most stuff.4necros + druid was never meta. it was a brainless way to complete them half afk but considerably slower than a decent comp with quickness and actual meta strats.The meta in every mmo is dps. you only bring the support needed to survive. even in trinity games they dont take a healer if it isnt needed.@Firebeard.1746 Are you using arc? it shows way more than just dps. also healing, boons and cc. you can measure the usefulness of a build quite easy with it. there is a difference if you just complete the fractals or if you complete them in 20min. especially when some players completed them literally 1000 times.

speedrun, annoyed, can't see the value of some off meta build.

go back to cms then, if you don't like to try new stuff. but don't expect Anet will keep announcing the similar design content all the time because people like me

still exists in gw2 .

Condi herald has no value. It offers 0 group support and only excels at being tanky at the cost of everything else. dps scrapper would be decent off meta build there but condi herald will do extremely low dps on top of no support. Feel free to explain the value of such builds.

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@Rodrick.1942 said:

@Rodrick.1942 said:You're right it's a soft dps check, however it's also a race to see who can keep their breath until last sec. FB need to spam resistant to ignore condi from adds, endless stab to counter cc, and have ren to help to heal group by using Kala elite skill or have a hybrid scourge to spam barrier/ condi spread.

it's one of the fractal I like because it forces us to change the way to play fractal, some build that people never think about it before become a thing (eg : condi herald )

In which bizarro world is condi herald useful in fractals? sorry but no, condi herald is not helping anyone in instanced content. sirens reef is so hated by a lot of the fractal community because you cant really speedrun it. portals dont work with the chest and the cannon event is just annoying. The endboss isnt the problem. SA makes it incredible annoying and stab doesnt even work vs most stuff.4necros + druid was never meta. it was a brainless way to complete them half afk but considerably slower than a decent comp with quickness and actual meta strats.The meta in every mmo is dps. you only bring the support needed to survive. even in trinity games they dont take a healer if it isnt needed.@Firebeard.1746 Are you using arc? it shows way more than just dps. also healing, boons and cc. you can measure the usefulness of a build quite easy with it. there is a difference if you just complete the fractals or if you complete them in 20min. especially when some players completed them literally 1000 times.

speedrun, annoyed, can't see the value of some off meta build.

go back to cms then, if you don't like to try new stuff. but don't expect Anet will keep announcing the similar design content all the time because people like me

still exists in gw2 .

While I am open to off meta builds, condi herald is indeed not in any way ideal or beneficial for Sirens.

You neither have a decent stat set, which requires you to spread out over different stats which in turn would diminish your actual contribution boon or condition wise. Nor are the boons that beneficial. Fury and might are not that hard to come by, nor is protection if desired while at the same time not providing the one boon revenant is actually useful for: alacrity. This could be mitigated IF there was an actual decent condi and boon duration item combination, but alas there is none.

Nor is herald that great at condition damage to begin with relying on your mace autos for a majority of your damage with minimal cleave. If you run Mallyx, you are not running Ventari which could help with bubble, if desired (and similar to Mai, bubble can take out a lot of pressure for weaker groups if used properly). Nor are you providing Kalla elite, which you yourself mentioned as useful skill. This can't actually be mitigated unless going Renegade or some core revenant build.

There are off meta builds which can carry really hard on Sirens but condi herald is not one of them and that is absolutely unrelated to CMs or not.

EDIT:As to the topic at hand:

@Firebeard.1746 said:I just would like some wind knocked out of the sails of the everyone is dps meta.

No, you literally do not want that. Let me explain:The common misconception that class balance is to blame for the dps meta is just that: a misconception. This game is designed from the ground up with active damage avoidance and mitigation in mind. What this means is that good players are more than capable to mitigate all or nearly all damage via pure skill. In any case where this is not the case, defensive skills and boons are taken. The games design from the ground up is responsible for the dps meta, not class balance (though balance can affect how easy or difficult certain encounter can be for certain classes).

IF the developers actually designed an encounter WITHOUT focus on damage, and most encounters are not that focused on damage to begin with as to make the damage requirements difficult to meet, you would end up with fights similar to: Xera, Deimos, Dhuum, Qadim 2, etc. Essentially fight with a ton of extra mechanics which players have to deal with instead of just dealing damage. Now take a guess which fights are most difficult for non static players to tackle: the ones where more than only dps is expected and players need to fulfill specific tasks.

Even 100CM meets exactly that criteria. The main mechanic to overcome is positioning and crowd control aka defiance bars. Expert players are more than capable of running this CM on differing classes, meeting the cc requirements and positioning so that damage to group is minimal (even running without healers). Weaker players can not and are either locked out of the fractal or dependent on running the most run meta class as to ease success.

What you actually want IS fights designed around damage and nothing else, because every class in this game can meet dps requirements from a balance perspective.

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@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:You don't have to do what is meta. Create your own group if you don't see any to your liking in the LFG.

DPS has been the go to for just about everywhere in PvE over the past 8+ years.

Meta is usually always fairly narrow to a degree and has been for 8+ years.

Usually the people in PuGs don't care, but i think it's toxic some people feel they have to lecture people on how to play, especially with fractals which has a massive overhead to climbing (ar collection + ascended gear). If i was more fragile i might quit the game mode altogether. Honestly i have run some parties with almost all supports in lower tiers because of how sparse the player base is. You have to use what's available.

I just would like some wind knocked out of the sails of the everyone is dps meta.

Which by the way was how i started this character but because of lack of support while climbing, i swapped it into support before i invested too much into the character.

More than lecturing i think people are just annoyed when in an content that is hard compared to the others contents of the game you don't pull your weight, as long your dps is fine or your boon uptime is ok, only people that like optimisation will complain, most of class in this game can be dps in cm with no real problem but the problem is more on buffer, there is no other buffer for 5 man content than fb, the game really need new one, we only have 10 man support that are not fit for 5 man at all (without even speaking about how broken fb egide is) same for alac, why only two specialization in this game can give it ?

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@"Cyninja.2954" said:No, you literally do not want that. Let me explain:The common misconception that class balance is to blame for the dps meta is just that: a misconception. This game is designed from the ground up with active damage avoidance and mitigation in mind. What this means is that good players are more than capable to mitigate all or nearly all damage via pure skill. In any case where this is not the case, defensive skills and boons are taken. The games design from the ground up is responsible for the dps meta, not class balance (though balance can affect how easy or difficult certain encounter can be for certain classes).

IF the developers actually designed an encounter WITHOUT focus on damage, and most encounters are not that focused on damage to begin with as to make the damage requirements difficult to meet, you would end up with fights similar to: Xera, Deimos, Dhuum, Qadim 2, etc. Essentially fight with a ton of extra mechanics which players have to deal with instead of just dealing damage. Now take a guess which fights are most difficult for non static players to tackle: the ones where more than only dps is expected and players need to fulfill specific tasks.

Even 100CM meets exactly that criteria. The main mechanic to overcome is positioning and crowd control aka defiance bars. Expert players are more than capable of running this CM on differing classes, meeting the cc requirements and positioning so that damage to group is minimal (even running without healers). Weaker players can not and are either locked out of the fractal or dependent on running the most run meta class as to ease success.

What you actually want IS fights designed around damage and nothing else, because every class in this game can meet dps requirements from a balance perspective.

This. I believe is the problem. An online game doesn't do as well with that. And there's tons of players that for whatever reason, slow reflexes, latency, etc just don't do well with this. I believe my super high completion % on WoJ with an earthen heal tempest auramancer is because it takes the edge off of that sort of mechanic. 40% DR with 100% uptime gives people a chance to react to the chains for another tick or two and it's the difference between a death and non-death. TBH balancing an Iframe mechanic like dodging against latency is horrendous. If the mechanic is too long, everyone can easily get out, there's no skill involved. If it's too short, lots of people die, perhaps not even due to their own issues. I guess my biggest issue with the elitists in general is they're allergic to more fault tolerant setups, success rates be damned, because if you're not killing it in 30s, you're "holding everyone back"

I think the latter part is the real issue people have. Though honestly, I feel like a system where people have to stack to boonshare is also a dumb design because there's less freedom in mechanic design (and leads to some of the horrendous mechanics you mention). Heck, even healing is severely limited by range.

Though some of those mechanics on those fights aren't much better than DPS meta. Sabetha has a ridiculously short time to react for throwing the bomb or barrel (it's been a while), which without special bindings is clunky to pull off, dhuum has this ridiculous mechanic on a tight timer as well that almost requires its own skill to do. "Twitchy" mechanics seem to be the gw2 modus operandi. Even on those hard fights

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@WindBlade.8749 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:You don't have to do what is meta. Create your own group if you don't see any to your liking in the LFG.

DPS has been the go to for just about everywhere in PvE over the past 8+ years.

Meta is usually always fairly narrow to a degree and has been for 8+ years.

Usually the people in PuGs don't care, but i think it's toxic some people feel they have to lecture people on how to play, especially with fractals which has a massive overhead to climbing (ar collection + ascended gear). If i was more fragile i might quit the game mode altogether. Honestly i have run some parties with almost all supports in lower tiers because of how sparse the player base is. You have to use what's available.

I just would like some wind knocked out of the sails of the everyone is dps meta.

Which by the way was how i started this character but because of lack of support while climbing, i swapped it into support before i invested too much into the character.

More than lecturing i think people are just annoyed when in an content that is hard compared to the others contents of the game you don't pull your weight, as long your dps is fine or your boon uptime is ok, only people that like optimisation will complain, most of class in this game can be dps in cm with no real problem but the problem is more on buffer, there is no other buffer for 5 man content than fb, the game really need new one, we only have 10 man support that are not fit for 5 man at all (without even speaking about how broken fb egide is) same for alac, why only two specialization in this game can give it ?

This is the key point I was trying to make earlier. Its not just that two classes in the game can give Alacrity, its that only two specialisations (subclasses) can give it, which means that the overall amount of classes that provide Alacrity is a whopping 7%.

And on top of that, one of them has a really hard time doing it, so generally isn't used for the task anymore.

And don't even get me started on Firebrand and its monopoly on group Stability, with Rev barely competing, and no one else being able to do the job except a little bit from Scrapper, Chronomancer, etc

Everyone wouldn't have to go DPS if it wasn't literally the only role they could play thats effective.

Even when you count mechanics like reflects, the number of players that can do them is a very small amount of the overall player base, and that's why we end up like this. No one should be everything, but everyone has to be at least something, and right now that's just damage with maybe some heals and basic boons like Might if you want to support, that's it.

One whole class (Warrior) is demoted purely to just increasing your stats, that's rediculous.

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@Hannelore.8153 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:You don't have to do what is meta. Create your own group if you don't see any to your liking in the LFG.

DPS has been the go to for just about everywhere in PvE over the past 8+ years.

Meta is usually always fairly narrow to a degree and has been for 8+ years.

Usually the people in PuGs don't care, but i think it's toxic some people feel they have to lecture people on how to play, especially with fractals which has a massive overhead to climbing (ar collection + ascended gear). If i was more fragile i might quit the game mode altogether. Honestly i have run some parties with almost all supports in lower tiers because of how sparse the player base is. You have to use what's available.

I just would like some wind knocked out of the sails of the everyone is dps meta.

Which by the way was how i started this character but because of lack of support while climbing, i swapped it into support before i invested too much into the character.

More than lecturing i think people are just annoyed when in an content that is hard compared to the others contents of the game you don't pull your weight, as long your dps is fine or your boon uptime is ok, only people that like optimisation will complain, most of class in this game can be dps in cm with no real problem but the problem is more on buffer, there is no other buffer for 5 man content than fb, the game really need new one, we only have 10 man support that are not fit for 5 man at all (without even speaking about how broken fb egide is) same for alac, why only two specialization in this game can give it ?

This is the key point I was trying to make earlier. Its not just that two classes in the game can give Alacrity, its that only two specialisations (subclasses) can give it, which means that the overall amount of classes that provide Alacrity is a whopping 7%.

And on top of that, one of them has a really hard time doing it, so generally isn't used for the task anymore.

And don't even get me started on Firebrand and its monopoly on group Stability, with Rev barely competing, and no one else being able to do the job except a little bit from Scrapper, Chronomancer, etc

Everyone wouldn't have to go DPS if it wasn't literally the only role they could play thats effective.

Even when you count mechanics like reflects, the number of players that can do them is a very small amount of the overall player base, and that's why we end up like this. No one should be everything, but everyone has to be at least something, and right now that's just damage with maybe some heals and basic boons like Might if you want to support, that's it.

One whole class (Warrior) is demoted purely to just increasing your stats, that's rediculous.

2 classes increase stats dont forget ranger spirits mate.

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