solo open world play and how it gets worse and worse the higher level areas become, with eod and it's breakbar madness being the worst so far.

[difens.1326]

4 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Not that I'd recommend "go hammer" as a solution to warrior issues with CC (particularly not in the case of bladesworn), but am I mistaken or were the changes nerfing damage to 0 on CC not specific to PvP/WvW?  Those skills still deal damage in PvE, do they not?

I agree that bladesworn is an issue.  They're sort of in the same boat as ele/engi due to their class mechanic removing the weapon swap.  However, where ele/engi are compensated with a larger skillset via attunements and toolbelt skills, bladesworn is not.  In my opinion, the entire spec is just poorly designed.  The dragon trigger that roots you in place and encourages you to charge up a big hit is antithetical to the action combat system the same way losing weapon swap versatility is to the warrior class.

In my opinion, this is a spec they need to seriously rethink.

Yeah they do in PvE, but the damage is stupidly low. Earthshaker's base damage is like 400. This basically requires you to take Discipline traits, so one weapon = cc and the other one for damage. This creates some problems like in fight with story bosses. When bar appears, I would have to swap to cc weapon, try my best to break the bar, but in order to exploit broken state, I need to swap to the "damage" weapon and it needs to be done really quickly before boss recovers. With discipline, it's fine at 5 seconds, without it, it becomes unbearable. Would probably be easier if bosses would somehow telegraph their bars to become available.

That's why I stay away from cc on weapons.

[difens.1326]

19 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Bladesworn can take a crazy CC on burst skills with mayor trait Unyielding Dragon. Youll be breaking every veteran bar in one hit, elites usually require one additional CC as for champs you will need a bit more but if you have your flow going you can break champs bars with 2 x burst + 1 bullcharge.

Rooting myself in place is a no-go. I hate Hundred Blades due to rooting component and don't look forward to playing Bladesworn due to that.

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 minute ago, suialthor.7164 said:

So we agree that skills should cover the basics.   However, this isn't about raw damage like most people in this thread assume.  Before breakbars the utility skills could offer some flexibility in your fighting style.  Now it feels like utilities (in open world) focus almost exclusively to balance defiance break from your weapons.  

This is really the exception rather than the rule in the context of open world/story solo play content, though.  Warrior (not including spellbreaker, but especially bladesworn) is probably the worst case (what else is new, right?).  Maybe some ranger builds if you're trying hard? Possibly guardian other than firebrand?  Certainly not ele, rev, mes, thief, engi, necro, right?

I think it's a pretty big exaggeration to say that the existence of breakbars is forcing players to fill up all their utility slots with CC skills.  It's not like solo breakbars have 1000 health.  It's more like half that in the story and against open world vets/elites.  A stun, a daze, and a little soft CC will handle that and most builds have that (or equivalent) at the very least without having to go out of their way.

By the way, for those following this thread and wondering what we mean by "health" on the breakbar, check out this wiki article: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defiance_bar  It shows the specific amount of breakbar damage dealt by each type of CC.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Just now, difens.1326 said:

Rooting myself in place is a no-go. I hate Hundred Blades due to rooting component and don't look forward to playing Bladesworn due to that.

Yeah, I can't stand rooted channels.  If I wanted that type of gameplay I'd go play FFXIV.

[AliamRationem.5172]

30 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Bladesworn can take a crazy CC on burst skills with mayor trait Unyielding Dragon. Youll be breaking every veteran bar in one hit, elites usually require one additional CC as for champs you will need a bit more but if you have your flow going you can break champs bars with 2 x burst + 1 bullcharge.

That's a good point, although if the argument is that the game forces us to sacrifice too much in the name of CC for breakbars, I'm not sure giving up a grandmaster trait in your elite spec trait line makes a good case for bladesworn.  I think warrior's issue outside of bladesworn's loss of a weapon swap is that its weapon sets are too segregated.  Where a lot of other class weapons roll in a bit of CC, some of warrior's best weapons are straight damage and you have to just give them up for low-damage CC weapons or fill your bar with CC utilities to work around it.

I'm not sure that's fair given most other classes get their CC essentially for free.

[Infinity.2876]

I was playing and I'm in saetung province there is this event where your trying to find the enemies in the crowd by posing as a servant to fish out food music etc. I'm thinking to myself the next event in the chain should be easy right. But not so a mesmer enemies popped up and had an insane amount of health and places portal traps and teleports all over the place the event ended before I had time to finish it I had 3 other players helping. Then in ecovald wilds we did a harmless escort quest led to a giant void creature popped up I did a little bit of damage my friend died in a matter of seconds a followed 3 seconds after. Please anet no more event chain traps please 

[JPUlisses.8756]

34 minutes ago, difens.1326 said:

Yeah they do in PvE, but the damage is stupidly low. Earthshaker's base damage is like 400. This basically requires you to take Discipline traits, so one weapon = cc and the other one for damage. This creates some problems like in fight with story bosses. When bar appears, I would have to swap to cc weapon, try my best to break the bar, but in order to exploit broken state, I need to swap to the "damage" weapon and it needs to be done really quickly before boss recovers. With discipline, it's fine at 5 seconds, without it, it becomes unbearable. Would probably be easier if bosses would somehow telegraph their bars to become available.

That's why I stay away from cc on weapons.

I though the plan was to always have a CC weapon/Skills

[Wizecrack.5713]

As a stupidly casual player just only in oranges that cost 50s and have no specific stats just garbage gear running jank builds across several characters...

 

I don't think I ever had an issue with any of EoD's HPs from a combat standpoint. I'm only missing 3 HPs because I just can't find them or figure out how to get to them so maybe those 3 have the hard elites? 

 

All of my defiance damage abilities are already for the most part incorporated in my rotations specifically because of me being a solo player and I'm used to needing to CC groups and all that. I don't even get how people aren't running CC and more survival centric abilities and traits while somehow playing solo. 

Edited March 9, 2022 by Wizecrack.5713

[difens.1326]

23 minutes ago, JPUlisses.8756 said:

I though the plan was to always have a CC weapon/Skills

Yeah, but some classes have to sacrifice too much damage to actually have CC.

[DragonMoon.6098]

14 hours ago, wayneericgouin.9371 said:

Yeah but it's a site maintained by and used for 5% of the player base who actually care about the meta. 

 

13 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

You're welcome to your own opinions, but not your own facts.  You can visit metabattle yourself and confirm that this is not the case.  They are not pushing any sort of "meta".  They offer a wide variety of builds for all classes, game modes, and styles of play with each and every one featuring advice on how you might adapt the builds to your own preferences.

Of course, this has been explained to you before in other threads.  I guess the people over at metabattle must have pissed in your cornflakes one morning, huh?

MetaBattle is a wonderful resource and I use it a lot! It's a great tool to use as a starting point for a new-to-you class...and then you can tailor a build to your liking afterwards. And some of the builds I still use pretty much unchanged (Chill GS Power Reaper would be one of them and Power Scrapper is another, though I did swap a couple utility skills out on that one and I've had to do some customization to gear in order to keep it viable after the recent nerf...I'm anxious to see if that particular build gets updated given that it's not really viable anymore as-is). 

The only profession that I really haven't been able to build out from MetaBattle is the Druid. That one is my main character/class and for that one I stick with PaperRoll's Condi Druid build, which is just fantastical for a solo Ranger who doesn't want to go Soulbeast because they like being a pet class. (MetaBattle does have an older raid build that is similar.)

[Omega.6801]

Not a solo game. Many solo games out there.

[adrunkmunkey.6059]

4 hours ago, Bobajob.7136 said:

I love that they've made the game harder. I hate easy grinding. I like a challenge! Spending a week perfecting a build so I can solo a HoT hero point was so much fun. 

Keep it up anet!!!

Honestly don't know if you're being sarcastic here, bc I genuinely feel the same. As a guardian, everything was very easy until I got to max. There were some difficulty spikes, but that was it. Then HoT just absolutely wrecked me over and over. It was frustrating, but got me to gear up and skill up. I started figuring out my timing for dodging and aegis for my core guard until I could start surviving long enough to do some events, get crowbars and started finding exotic gear or stuff to sell to get gear from the trade post. It was a hard stop, but that week I spent more so upgrading my own skill with the guardian than anything else, and it's because of that week that I'm no longer such a squishy guardian.

 

I welcome challenge in this game. I got the expansions expecting that challenge, and now hitting HoT with an alt is far less challenging even if I'm not geared up. The snipers still give me a headache, but if it wasn't for the step up in difficulty I'd have just continued playing as I was and getting frustrated. My skill set went from stuff I just press to do more damage to a swiss army knife of tricks up my sleeve.

[Cuks.8241]

2 hours ago, difens.1326 said:

Rooting myself in place is a no-go. I hate Hundred Blades due to rooting component and don't look forward to playing Bladesworn due to that.

I mean that is fine and I agree, Bladesworn has some issues but I was just responding because there were some posts before that mentioned that bladesworn is lacking CC.

As for warrior in general, that is one class that surely doesnt lack CC either through weapons or utility skills. You can take mace/mace or hammer as your secondary weapon and you are good to go. You take a cc utility or two and combine them with soft CCs on DPS weapons. And many have secondary very usefull functionalities like bulls charge is extra mobility and traited procs a strong dmg boost. Wild blow for berserker extends zerker mode. Headbutt is just great because it's insta zerker mode. Stomp is basically everything; CC, mobility, stun break, stability and traited dmg boost. Spellbreaker has some inherent CC on Full Counter. Or you can take Rampage elite. Its a long CD, can be decreased through traits. But oh my thats a CC machine.

If there is one thing I like on my warrior in OW is that he is a CC machine one way or the other. Give me as many blue bars you can throw at me so I can exploit them.

[Sobx.1758]

12 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

Exactly. That's why we have fractals, strikes and raids. Explicit group content.

Yes, 5-10 player instanced group content also exists. And open world group content shouldn't exist because.... what exactly?

Edited March 9, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Rokeb.3815]

On 3/8/2022 at 1:38 PM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Is there some rule that says you must use berserker gear to solo everything? 

No - however, when you hit 80th level and have to start gearing your first character Berserker is one of the few stat sets that you can get.  If you are going for a power build (which most new players will be familiar with from the levelling process) - you can buy all weapons and armor from the TP for berserker cheaply and easily.  You can get several ascended trinkets as well for laurels.

 

Try getting a set of say, Marauder gear, for your first character when you hit 80th level - it's not possible.

Sure, once you are established you've got bladed armor and living world season 3 and 4 trinkets.   However, for a genuine newer player - Berserker is the option that Anet gives you if you want to run power. 

[Game of Bones.8975]

It's all good and fine until people leave the map and it's hard to find enough players to complete the simplest quest. 

 

I don't know what the ultimate solution should be to make it easy enough for those who want to solo a majority of the map and hard enough to require you to gather a PUG to finish a meta event.

[PookieDaWombat.6209]

On 3/8/2022 at 2:08 PM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

That's simply false.  I'm a contributor to metabattle.  The people who run that site work hard to share builds for all styles of play.  I refer you to the open world section: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Open_World 

Here's a sample of one of my favorite open world builds.  This build and variations of it are included in the open world section of metabattle.  It's also pretty much the same build Roul from Snowcrows (you know, those guys with all the raid benchmarks on their site?) likes for open world condi weaver.  So, it isn't just metabattle that has made the effort to move beyond "go zerk or go home".

The solo play options are there for you.  Players even come up with so-called "LI" (low-intensity) builds for players who aren't wizards on the keyboard.  Even elementalist has builds like this that kick butt in solo play!

 

And I'd wager none of those solo-play builds would be "accepted" for use in the open world meta that Anet has put into this xpac.  Therein lies the problem with the meta and more importantly, how Anet has designed their game/stats on gear. 

[Gibson.4036]

11 minutes ago, Game of Bones.8975 said:

It's all good and fine until people leave the map and it's hard to find enough players to complete the simplest quest. 

 

I don't know what the ultimate solution should be to make it easy enough for those who want to solo a majority of the map and hard enough to require you to gather a PUG to finish a meta event.

I'm already wondering about the events that are not metas but are group oriented. There just doesn't seem to be the player density to generally do them. On a POF bounty you can call out to map before you trigger it. For a meta, people gather ahead of time on the timers.

But in EoD there seem to be a significant amount of little event chains that start off simple, soloable, then chain into a champ or a champ and lieutenants. If it' not big enough to draw a crowd, and not long enough to get more players to it, you need enough player density that people are nearby and see an event trigger and hop on.

I suppose once we all learn the areas more, if we jump into the first, easy part of the event chain we'll know to start spamming map chat that the champ is about to be up. But will players really come if it's just another random event chain with your standard event rewards?

Is it possible there's just too many group events for the amount of players in a given zone?

[Gibson.4036]

13 minutes ago, PookieDaWombat.6209 said:

And I'd wager none of those solo-play builds would be "accepted" for use in the open world meta that Anet has put into this xpac.  Therein lies the problem with the meta and more importantly, how Anet has designed their game/stats on gear. 

I think this is one of the few threads that isn't about the meta. I took the OP to be struggling with general open world content throughout EoD zones. Hence the suggestion for metabattle solo-play builds.

[AliamRationem.5172]

4 minutes ago, PookieDaWombat.6209 said:

And I'd wager none of those solo-play builds would be "accepted" for use in the open world meta that Anet has put into this xpac.  Therein lies the problem with the meta and more importantly, how Anet has designed their game/stats on gear. 

There are about 500 other threads discussing the DE meta.  This isn't one of them.

I don't ask permission to use the build or gear I like in open world or anywhere else.  However, I consider it rude to join groups where I know I will not meet expectations and I run arcdps (or did until DX11) so I am aware of my performance.  For that reason I know I perform more than adequately in a Trailblazer fire/earth build for casual T4 fractal daily pickups, strikes, and even low-end fractal CMs (I don't raid in this gear, of course, as the toughness could be problematic).  So I'm not remotely worried about my build being a problem for an open world meta.

In case you're wondering, the weaver builds I've been linking are also easily adapted for WvW roaming and PvP and are quite effective there as well.

 

[PookieDaWombat.6209]

1 hour ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

There are about 500 other threads discussing the DE meta.  This isn't one of them.

I don't ask permission to use the build or gear I like in open world or anywhere else.  However, I consider it rude to join groups where I know I will not meet expectations and I run arcdps (or did until DX11) so I am aware of my performance.  For that reason I know I perform more than adequately in a Trailblazer fire/earth build for casual T4 fractal daily pickups, strikes, and even low-end fractal CMs (I don't raid in this gear, of course, as the toughness could be problematic).  So I'm not remotely worried about my build being a problem for an open world meta.

In case you're wondering, the weaver builds I've been linking are also easily adapted for WvW roaming and PvP and are quite effective there as well.

 

Yeah, that's still missing the point.  I have builds for open world and WvW and PvP that are all great there and would have no business in a raid, but that's fine because I don't raid.  I hate raids.  I've never wanted to do raids.  So the fact that a raid level event is sitting smack dab in the middle of open world content where normally perfect open world builds won't fly IS a problem that needs addressing, because that means those open world builds are pointless in what is ostensibly, open world content.  The two are currently linked by Anet's very design and that is the problem here.

[AliamRationem.5172]

9 minutes ago, PookieDaWombat.6209 said:

Yeah, that's still missing the point.  I have builds for open world and WvW and PvP that are all great there and would have no business in a raid, but that's fine because I don't raid.  I hate raids.  I've never wanted to do raids.  So the fact that a raid level event is sitting smack dab in the middle of open world content where normally perfect open world builds won't fly IS a problem that needs addressing, because that means those open world builds are pointless in what is ostensibly, open world content.  The two are currently linked by Anet's very design and that is the problem here.

I addressed that point first thing by pointing out that this thread isn't about that subject.  I went on to address the concept that there's something wrong with the stats in this game as that is relevant to the thread's subject matter.  Not only can you make great builds that work for solo play using stats other than berserker, but you can even manage just fine using a high-sustain build even in the more difficult content available in this game.  An open world meta event (even one like DE) does not set the bar that high, so what's wrong with the stats exactly?

[nosleepdemon.1368]

OK, so, hit your H key yeah? Done that? Cool. At least I think it's H. Anyway, bring up your build window. Next, and this is crazy I KNOW. But. I'm going to need you to make a new build. Shocker right? Yeah. A new build, with, like, stuff that helps smash break bars. You might want to switch weapons too. Crazy stuff, this.

[kettering.6823]

I've actually found the EoD maps the easiest expansion maps to solo, even moreso than PoF and PoF isn't exactly hard. 90% of the HPs are just communes, with either no enemies or a single elite that spawns when you get close. You can avoid most clumps of enemies with your mounts very easily. This has been true for me on my ranger, mesmer, and thief, in berserkers and vipers gear. But if you're struggling, many builds work just as well with marauders, trailblazers and even knights/rabid/dire/other tanky gear. Also as a general advice for people struggling to solo, I find condi builds a lot safer and more sustainable than power builds, especially when soloing elites and champions. 

Of course there are some things you'll need other people for... but those things are usually labeled 'group events' for a reason lol and for those I've not had difficulty finding other random solo players to group together with, without having to say a single word. 

I also don't personally think everything needs to be achievable with every single build in the game. Sometimes you need to adjust your build for the content you are tackling and that's okay. I believe every single class is capable of soloing content; you just need to tweak your build and gear until you find a way that works for you. GW2 has such diversity and flexibility in builds, you're bound to find something that works!

Edited March 10, 2022 by kettering.6823

[Goettel.4389]

Fishing is solo friendly at least.

Enjoy it ; - )