Why Guild Wars 2 Especially Needs Low Intensity Builds

[DexterousGecko.6328]

I play an low intensity engineer build, it's a lot of fun. I did core until i unlocked mechanist https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mechanist_-_LI_Flamethrower

[Dante.1508]

On 3/3/2022 at 8:59 AM, mindcircus.1506 said:

Should these "Low Impact" builds enable an average skilled player to stand in red circles from Desert Bounties solo without dodging, while still outputting enough DPS to solo the encounter within the timer?
Because thats what Condi Renegade was doing.

Well somewhat yes, Not because the players should be given hand outs but because a lot of maps are dead these days.. So much content is excluded in quiet maps these days because the content isn't soloable..

I know the hardcores players wont like this but its becoming a reality on my servers more and more. Hell yesterday i was in the Silverwastes trying to do my daily and the map was dead, three of us trying to complete the end event, the fact we even made it through to it says something.. We failed of course.

[Dante.1508]

1 hour ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

I play an low intensity engineer build, it's a lot of fun. I did core until i unlocked mechanist https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mechanist_-_LI_Flamethrower

I believe that is also my build.

[ArchonWing.9480]

I also run something similar to that  as well as small scale WvW. Though I usually think Alac trait is better with anyone else around.

 I don't think traveler is a good idea.  Shift Signet + J Drive is already a 25% movement boost all the time. Balthazar would probably be better.

I also think Spark Revolver (Making the mech ranged) has poor synergy with flamethrower

Edited June 2, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Nephalem.8921]

4 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

I get that but they've tried before a few times in OW and those meta's are dead. Why it's beyond me, is not why they would do it but that they keep trying and failing every time. And the reason why it fails is always the same: there's not enough interest for it to be viable. 

In other words, you are in a minority that is small enough that these types of meta's are not viable. And remember, this game started without raids and was meant for casuals to begin with. They've added some raids in the meantime but not a whole lot. And I bet you won't see anymore raids being added. That's what strikes are supposed to replace, at least the CMs. 

It started with dungeons which were supposed to be on the harder side. It was never meant to be only for casuals. Btw "casual" is used completely wrong again and used here as a synonym for bad player. I know people who log in once every 2 weeks and do raids. i would consider those casuals.

there are people who play multiple hours each day and still play useless builds. they are not casual at all, just bad. not having to grind daily to keep up with gear is casual friendly design. being easy af isnt. thats just bad player friendly. wow is incredible hostile towards casuals because of all the grind. difficulty has nothing to do with it and actually wow classes are braindead easy to play but its still not casual.

ff14 for example is very casual friendly but has also extremely hard content. savage raids are way harder than strike cms which are currently the hardest gw2 pve content and ff14 has even a difficulty above that.

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I suspect that what Anet was hoping, is that more people would catch on to the normal strikes, but I'm not convinced they've been successful with that either. And that too is because of the same reason. I hope you like CM strikes because it seems to me that that's what you're gonna get instead of raids.

The thing is that the combat system is too complex for most of the content of this game and the player base therefore is largely fine with pressing 1,1,1,6,111. The game allows this, it enables this and that's what attracted a lot of players and that's the main player base I guess.

OW will forever stay easy, with an occasional attempt at something harder and that something will then be abandoned after a while. Why? Because the vast majority of the player base wants it to be that way and Anet wouldn't dare chase too many of their customers away. It's quite a balancing act for them, mind you. I think they're really trying to find a happy medium, but I don't think there is such a thing as a happy medium between raiders and casual 1,1,1 players. And unfortunately (for you) there's a lot more of them than there is of you. Your wish of people getting better, in other words, is not a wish but wishful thinking. Why would they accommodate you by playing in a way that's not fun for them?

Now there are a lot more casual 111 players. Know why? Because they pretty much abandoned all other modes since shortly after launch and only released open world content. I wonder how open world players would react if they wouldnt get new content for 2 years or even 4 years+. That happened to dungeon or wvw players basically. An mmo needs both players actually. The casuals are the sheer numbers while hardcore players create content and community events and much more.

 Not sure where this hype for Low intensity builds started but they always existed. Any condi build + trailblazer just wins open world anyways and now even celestial + any condi build is an easy win. Most li builds are just meta raid builds without pressing buttons besides aa anyways.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Nephalem.8921

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Dante.1508 said:

Well somewhat yes, Not because the players should be given hand outs but because a lot of maps are dead these days.. So much content is excluded in quiet maps these days because the content isn't soloable..

I know the hardcores players wont like this but its becoming a reality on my servers more and more. Hell yesterday i was in the Silverwastes trying to do my daily and the map was dead, three of us trying to complete the end event, the fact we even made it through to it says something.. We failed of course.

It really isn't reality at all, but as neither one of us can prove it, we'll just have to agree to disagree.  And what's your premise?  That making all open world content faceroll designed for solo players is going to improve the situation?  Again, we'll have to disagree.

[ArchonWing.9480]

49 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Btw "casual" is used completely wrong again and used here as a synonym for bad player. I know people who log in once every 2 weeks and do raids. i would consider those casuals.

there are people who play multiple hours each day and still play useless builds. they are not casual at all, just bad. not having to grind daily to keep up with gear is casual friendly design. being easy af isnt. thats just bad player friendly. wow is incredible hostile towards casuals because of all the grind. difficulty has nothing to do with it and actually wow classes are braindead easy to play but its still not casual.

Yea, casual doesn't mean bad and certainly doesn't mean "incapable of making decisons". People need to stop projecting their own insecurities onto others.

Likewise there are many players that take this game very seriously and aren't very good at it.

I mean on these very forums and in-game I've tried to help people try to do something better while keeping in line with their own needs and restrictions. So they'll nowhere be the damage of a "good player" but when they find out they're doing literally 2-3x the damage with no perceived negatives, they usually don't want to go back.

As it turns out, just because you're not pro doesn't mean you have to be potato.

Would the game really be any less fun if you did more damage and died less?

Edited June 2, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Hesione.9412]

2 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Yea, casual doesn't mean bad and certainly doesn't mean "incapable of making decisons". People need to stop projecting their own insecurities onto others.

Likewise there are many players that take this game very seriously and aren't very good at it.

I mean on these very forums and in-game I've tried to help people try to do something better while keeping in line with their own needs and restrictions. So they'll nowhere be the damage of a "good player" but when they find out they're doing literally 2-3x the damage with no perceived negatives, they usually don't want to go back.

As it turns out, just because you're not pro doesn't mean you have to be potato.

Would the game really be any less fun if you did more damage and died less?

I thought the point of the LI builds was to combine ease-of-use with good damage (or heals, or other support).

 

For some players, these builds with 3-4 keys the most commonly used, and with less than 20 key presses a minute, will increase their DPS compared to them doing involved rotations that they can't manage (ping, memory, etc). I include myself in the category of: will never play any form of elementalist unless it is a LI build.

[ArchonWing.9480]

15 minutes ago, Hesione.9412 said:

I thought the point of the LI builds was to combine ease-of-use with good damage (or heals, or other support).

It is. Also there is a lot of content where you don't need to go ham on dps like Orr and it's more important to move through an area faster. Stuff dies before 1 rotation so it actually becomes inefficient to go max dps.

 

15 minutes ago, Hesione.9412 said:

I include myself in the category of: will never play any form of elementalist unless it is a LI build.

Well, I didn't like weaver for similar reasons.

Edited June 2, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Gorem.8104]

12 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

I get that but they've tried before a few times in OW and those meta's are dead. Why it's beyond me, is not why they would do it but that they keep trying and failing every time. And the reason why it fails is always the same: there's not enough interest for it to be viable. 

In other words, you are in a minority that is small enough that these types of meta's are not viable. And remember, this game started without raids and was meant for casuals to begin with. They've added some raids in the meantime but not a whole lot. And I bet you won't see anymore raids being added. That's what strikes are supposed to replace, at least the CMs. 

I suspect that what Anet was hoping, is that more people would catch on to the normal strikes, but I'm not convinced they've been successful with that either. And that too is because of the same reason. I hope you like CM strikes because it seems to me that that's what you're gonna get instead of raids.

The thing is that the combat system is too complex for most of the content of this game and the player base therefore is largely fine with pressing 1,1,1,6,111. The game allows this, it enables this and that's what attracted a lot of players and that's the main player base I guess.

OW will forever stay easy, with an occasional attempt at something harder and that something will then be abandoned after a while. Why? Because the vast majority of the player base wants it to be that way and Anet wouldn't dare chase too many of their customers away. It's quite a balancing act for them, mind you. I think they're really trying to find a happy medium, but I don't think there is such a thing as a happy medium between raiders and casual 1,1,1 players. And unfortunately (for you) there's a lot more of them than there is of you. Your wish of people getting better, in other words, is not a wish but wishful thinking. Why would they accommodate you by playing in a way that's not fun for them?

True, it would be like basing GW2's population on its pvp population. As the pvp scene has left the game, it wouldn't be able to sustain itself. Just like for these hardcore open worlders, when the next DE meta comes out, will anyone still be doing DE? No. Just like Serpents Ire. There is just not enough people who treat GW2 as a job for many meta's like DE to exist. 

It will be rather interesting to see where Anet takes the game next regardless. Do they go back to their roots and make money by going back to catering to casuals? Stop nerfing sustain builds and previous elite specs, or do they truly want to only keep their top 1% crowd? Time can only tell.

[Gorem.8104]

10 hours ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

I play an low intensity engineer build, it's a lot of fun. I did core until i unlocked mechanist https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mechanist_-_LI_Flamethrower

Yeah, Mechanist has been great for it after they have nerfed scrapper many, many times since EoD launch. Which honestly just means, will this spec be nerfed in the next expansion so we have to buy it to keep good sustain LI builds? 

[Gehenna.3625]

8 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

It started with dungeons which were supposed to be on the harder side. It was never meant to be only for casuals. Btw "casual" is used completely wrong again and used here as a synonym for bad player. I know people who log in once every 2 weeks and do raids. i would consider those casuals.

That's why I specifically said casual 1,1,1 players. I don't consider even them bad players. They are perhaps bad at the combat system, but that doesn't make them bad players. They're enjoying themselves, so that's good. The dungeons were supposed to be more challenging, but clearly they aren't really challenging so that's a weak argument. They came out with 5 dungeons and that's it. As far as I remember they never really wanted to do raids.

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there are people who play multiple hours each day and still play useless builds. they are not casual at all, just bad. not having to grind daily to keep up with gear is casual friendly design. being easy af isnt. thats just bad player friendly. wow is incredible hostile towards casuals because of all the grind. difficulty has nothing to do with it and actually wow classes are braindead easy to play but its still not casual.

Well, what's the right term for them then? I mean there are many definitions of "casual" and so I said they're casual 1,1,1 players. There is casual as in frequency but also casual as in attitude. It's the latter that I'm referring to.

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ff14 for example is very casual friendly but has also extremely hard content. savage raids are way harder than strike cms which are currently the hardest gw2 pve content and ff14 has even a difficulty above that.

So what's your point with this? I'm not sure I'm getting it. Like I said GW2 was aimed at players who were more about the story and OW than group content players. So if you like harder gameplay, you can get that from FFXIV. Not here clearly.

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Now there are a lot more casual 111 players. Know why? Because they pretty much abandoned all other modes since shortly after launch and only released open world content. I wonder how open world players would react if they wouldnt get new content for 2 years or even 4 years+. That happened to dungeon or wvw players basically. An mmo needs both players actually. The casuals are the sheer numbers while hardcore players create content and community events and much more.

Perhaps it's the other way around...they abandoned other modes because not enough players made use of them.

Quote

 Not sure where this hype for Low intensity builds started but they always existed. Any condi build + trailblazer just wins open world anyways and now even celestial + any condi build is an easy win. Most li builds are just meta raid builds without pressing buttons besides aa anyways.

Well, there are a lot of people with disabilities that can play GW2 because of how easy OW is. And on top of that there are a lot of people with a more casual mindset that don't want to get involved in a complex combat system. I'm not sure I would call it hype though. It's just a topic that comes by from time to time.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Gehenna.3625

[Astralporing.1957]

11 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

That's... just false. What's so "hardcore" here? Reading the descriptions?

No. Understanding them. Or rather, more like understanding the whole complex system that arises from connecting those individual small pieces of informations together. Even most hardcore players can't do that, so why would you expect casuals to be any better?

Seriously, you're like someone asking why some people consider math to be hard, what is difficult here, reading numbers?

To make my point better, I'll ask you this: when was last time you created a (good) build for yourself without basing it on info from third party sources and/or some other build?

Edited June 2, 2022 by Astralporing.1957

[Hashberry.4510]

15 hours ago, Gorem.8104 said:

Open world is meant to be for the casuals who don't look up guides or use any research, they are here just to have fun and enjoy a game as an entertainment medium. The moment you look up a build or even use these forums, you pretty much lose that tag

This is ridiculous. OW needs a range of content, for crying out loud its the games biggest draw.

[Hashberry.4510]

Didn’t Anet just add huge buffs to open world play with the Jade Bot and allowing EOD buffs to carry over? Chak Gerent is routinely one burn in all lanes now for example. Most stuff is wildly easier now.

[Astralporing.1957]

16 minutes ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

This is ridiculous. OW needs a range of content, for crying out loud its the games biggest draw.

Sure it does. That range of content still needs to be within certain limits. One-off events like TT that are being offsided on some less important map are within those boundaries, but making a final map of an expansion be designed around a content not meant for a huge majority of OW players clearly crosses those limits.

5 minutes ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

Didn’t Anet just add huge buffs to open world play with the Jade Bot and allowing EOD buffs to carry over? Chak Gerent is routinely one burn in all lanes now for example. Most stuff is wildly easier now.

Almost noone at Gerent i could see uses EoD buffs, and the one burn was pretty common even before EoD if you just had enough players in each lane. Jade bots i can't be sure about, but their impact on player effectiveness is minimal at best.

Hint: the players that are playing so efficiently that they would go to EoD maps to stack buffs in order to use them on non-EoD maps are also those very same players that are already way above the OW levels of gameplay, and thus have absolutely no need of additional help.

[Nephalem.8921]

2 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

That's why I specifically said casual 1,1,1 players. I don't consider even them bad players. They are perhaps bad at the combat system, but that doesn't make them bad players. They're enjoying themselves, so that's good.

So they are bad but you dont want to call water wet because you dont like negative words. got it.

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The dungeons were supposed to be more challenging, but clearly they aren't really challenging so that's a weak argument. They came out with 5 dungeons and that's it. As far as I remember they never really wanted to do raids.

They were hard when they released. most bosses were corpse rushed on release. There were also 8 dungeons with 33 paths. how did you end with 5? Only later when the combat system was figured out they became easy. arah was always a nightmare to pug.

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Well, what's the right term for them then? I mean there are many definitions of "casual" and so I said they're casual 1,1,1 players. There is casual as in frequency but also casual as in attitude. It's the latter that I'm referring to.

So what's your point with this? I'm not sure I'm getting it. Like I said GW2 was aimed at players who were more about the story and OW than group content players. So if you like harder gameplay, you can get that from FFXIV. Not here clearly.

No it was never aimed only at story enjoyers. Where do you get that from? tequatl was impossible to do without an organized map in the beginning. triple trouble was also not easy.

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Perhaps it's the other way around...they abandoned other modes because not enough players made use of them.

There wasnt even a lfg system for a year. you had to use 3rd party sites. they made lots of stupid decisions in the past. 

 

Edited June 2, 2022 by Nephalem.8921

[AliamRationem.5172]

26 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Sure it does. That range of content still needs to be within certain limits. One-off events like TT that are being offsided on some less important map are within those boundaries, but making a final map of an expansion be designed around a content not meant for a huge majority of OW players clearly crosses those limits.

Almost noone at Gerent i could see uses EoD buffs, and the one burn was pretty common even before EoD if you just had enough players in each lane. Jade bots i can't be sure about, but their impact on player effectiveness is minimal at best.

Hint: the players that are playing so efficiently that they would go to EoD maps to stack buffs in order to use them on non-EoD maps are also those very same players that are already way above the OW levels of gameplay, and thus have absolutely no need of additional help.

Quickness, stability, and aegis on engage are pretty ridiculous for open world.  Not only do you burn anything less than elite down in a few seconds, you don't even have to worry about dodging because aegis and stability have you covered!  It's like playing a guardian even when you aren't playing a guardian!

[Hashberry.4510]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Sure it does. That range of content still needs to be within certain limits. One-off events like TT that are being offsided on some less important map are within those boundaries, but making a final map of an expansion be designed around a content not meant for a huge majority of OW players clearly crosses those limits.

Oh I am mostly with you on this point, I just don’t buy the narrative that Anet is heading towards harder play in general, they seem all over the map here.

[Astralporing.1957]

31 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Quickness, stability, and aegis on engage are pretty ridiculous for open world.  Not only do you burn anything less than elite down in a few seconds, you don't even have to worry about dodging because aegis and stability have you covered!  It's like playing a guardian even when you aren't playing a guardian!

Yes, they are. So what? People that would think of prebuffing are those that are likely running builds capable of melting enemies in seconds already. They just melt enemies a bit faster, that's all. People for whom those buffs would be a significant help however are also those that will not have them on (unless by pure accident). Because for those players investing in efficiency was never a priority (or most likely not even a consideration).

[Astralporing.1957]

1 minute ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

Oh I am mostly with you on this point, I just don’t buy the narrative that Anet is heading towards harder play in general, they seem all over the map here.

It's almost as if they didn't understand neither their community, nor their game.

[Astralporing.1957]

40 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

So they are bad but you dont want to call water wet because you dont like negative words. got it.

A water is wet, but there's nothing objectively bad about it. You might dislike the wetness, but that's subjective.

40 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

They were hard when they released. most bosses were corpse rushed on release.

Try doing them nowadays on level 40-50 characters in random blues and greens (so, in the same condition they were being "corpse rushed" then) and see how easy they will be.

[Sobx.1758]

5 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

No. Understanding them. Or rather, more like understanding the whole complex system that arises from connecting those individual small pieces of informations together. Even most hardcore players can't do that, so why would you expect casuals to be any better?

Nopthing "hardcore" about understanding what you read, especially when it's written in a rather simple language. Again, the reason you're unlocking things slowly one-after-another when you level up from 0 to 80 is so the people can slowly learn instead of being overwhelmed with information. Connecting the dots here doesn't make this system hardcore in any way. "even most hardcore players can't do that"? What are you even talking about here? Understanding and utilizing gw2 build system in a coherent manner has nothing to do with comming up with your perfected meta builds, if that's what you're aiming for here.

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Seriously, you're like someone asking why some people consider math to be hard, what is difficult here, reading numbers?

To make my point better, I'll ask you this: when was last time you created a (good) build for yourself without basing it on info from third party sources and/or some other build?

Meanwhile your strawmen attempts are like someone saying adding up to 10 is extremely hard, because advanced math is hard and since you didn't discover anything new at the "top end" recently, it makes the whole math incoherent or hard to grasp, so we should leave the basics behind.

When was the last time? Hard to say exactly. Last month? I guess it also depends what exactly you mean, since apparently you're just seeing "aboslutely awful!" and "meta" when you talk about using build system in this game. It's almost as if it's not baalnced around meta builds and optimal gameplay anyways.

Edited June 2, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Astralporing.1957]

23 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Nopthing "hardcore" about understanding what you read, especially when it's written in a rather simple language. Again, the reason you're unlocking things slowly one-after-another when you level up from 0 to 80 is so the people can slowly learn instead of being overwhelmed with information. Connecting the dots here doesn't make this system hardcore in any way.

On the contrary, it's how all individual elements of that system interconnect is where the real difficulty of truly comprehending it lies.

23 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

"even most hardcore players can't do that"? What are you even talking about here? Understanding and utilizing gw2 build system in a coherent manner has nothing to do with comming up with your perfected meta builds, if that's what you're aiming for here.

Most hardcore players may understand what the individual traits of their build do, some may even understand why those traits were picked (and are able to do small modifications maybe), but a majority would never be able to create such a build from scratch. And there are some that don;t really understand their build at all, and all they know is where to copy it from and how to use it. The amount of players able to create truly coherent builds is extremely small. Those whose builds are actually good are in even smaller numbers.

 

23 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Meanwhile you're like someone saying adding up to 10 is extremely hard, because advanced math is hard and since you didn't discover anything new at the "top end" recently, it makes the whole math incoherent.

Nope. Adding up to 10 is the level of understanding roughly individual traits. Learning how they work together, and how they interact with gear and game mechanics is a much more complicated issue.

23 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

When was the last time? Hard to say exactly. Last month?

Truly? You have made a build you actually use, completely from scratch, without basing it on any other build you have ever saw and your understanding of such a build? If so, you have my deepest respects sir, because you are one of the very small minority even among the top hardcore players.

(no, if you were wondering, it's not sarcasm - if you are really capable of that, you really have my deepest respect, because of many people i know, including a ton of raiders, so far only one person has been capable of the same. You'd be a second)

[AliamRationem.5172]

5 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

No. Understanding them. Or rather, more like understanding the whole complex system that arises from connecting those individual small pieces of informations together. Even most hardcore players can't do that, so why would you expect casuals to be any better?

Seriously, you're like someone asking why some people consider math to be hard, what is difficult here, reading numbers?

To make my point better, I'll ask you this: when was last time you created a (good) build for yourself without basing it on info from third party sources and/or some other build?

It really isn't as difficult as you make it out to be.  There's a reason players tend to arrive at similar solutions to the same problems.  For example, myself, Hizen, and Roul all make champ solo builds for weaver in open world and they all end up running fire/earth or fire/arcane when using condition builds because it just works better than the other options.

You see even less variation among meta builds for very specific purposes such as max damage because there is usually one best way to achieve that for power, one for condi, and sometimes one for hybrid.