The Concept of Rotations...

[Carnifex.3275]

What did i just read..

Rotations didnt exist? They always existed for people who tried to optimize their dmg. And ofcz with fractals and raids it became more important. 

Edited July 6, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Nephalem.8921]

On 7/2/2022 at 1:15 AM, Mungrul.9358 said:

...should not exist in Guild Wars 2.

When I took a break from the game in 2014, this concept was completely absent from Guild Wars 2.
I can't recall it being mentioned on the forums frequently, if at all, and I certainly don't remember seeing people talking about rotations in Map chat.
After returning in 2020, I've gradually noticed how pervasive and damaging to the game this concept now is.

I can't say for sure why it became popular, but I can certainly say it doesn't belong. DPS meters and checks certainly don't help, as these focus purely on optimising damage to the detriment of all other nuance.

Rotations are a throwback to more traditional MMOs where you have lots of skills with long cooldowns and reduced movement capabilities in combat.

Guild Wars 2 was built around movement and the idea that every skill on your bar is equivalent to a tool in a swiss army knife, each being designed to handle a particular combat situation.

One might even argue that this is why the Mesmer exists in the first place. Certainly in Guild Wars 1's PvP, the Mesmer existed to punish those who fell in to the predictable pattern of a rotation (although GW2's mesmer is far less focussed on direct interrupts and disruption, something I've always found disappointing).

Unfortunately, rotation gameplay has become so prevalent that now groups are able to completely ignore external influences, and concentrate on firing skills off in a specific order to better optimise results (be those results damage, control or support).
It's a very non-interactive form of gameplay that is able to ignore and bypass the game's active combat system by sheer brute force.

The original, core gameplay reward loop of observing the enemy and using the right skill at the right time has been completely bypassed by this concept, and a lot of systems have been bludgeoned in to supporting this instead of their original function.

And I think it's what's at the core of Warrior being in such a bad place now. Most of core Warrior's skills, traits and animations were designed around the original observe/react concept of gameplay, and none of them have been successfully adapted to suit rotation style gameplay (except for, ironically, banners pre-patch).

I also think it's why we have a balance team that don't necessarily understand Guild Wars 2. There are very few of the original team left at ArenaNet, and newer employees have quite often come from more traditional MMOs, with incorrect preconceptions of how Guild Wars 2 should work as an MMO.

 

There's also a nasty feedback loop in place now between streamers and the balance team, where rotation play has become cemented.

I don't know about anyone else, but I find this incredibly disappointing, and I really don't like the idea of being good at GW2 simply being reduced to memorising a recipe list and repeating it ad nauseam.

I admit that you can still play the old way in most of the open world, and it's part of the reason I enjoy open world more than the rest of the game.

Took me 10seconds to find a core game rotation guide. older ones exist aswell. You were just bad 9 years ago. a lot of other players improved, learned the game and understood the combat system. you just didnt.

On 7/2/2022 at 4:34 PM, Cindaria.6379 said:

Of course it is okay to have spells which works well together like combos. But the most annoying part in the game are raiders. They expect you to play the meta builds and tells you that much to learn rotations. I was told to train at the golem until I remember my fingers moving without thinking.

Unfortunately Anet orientates to that benchmarks and nerf classes, which are in open world worse.

are you playing longbow only ranger by chance? with a bear? either that or staff ele.

[Janitsu.6284]

Thank you for posting this thread! I think the ArenaNet developer and balance team should reach out to you with a job offer ASAP.

[iTB.1428]

I didn't read whole thread so someone probably already mentioned this.

Rotations were always part of the game since beginning BUT nowadays PvE style with dedicated supports lets you focus on DPS rotations more and care less about mechanics. Even in the hardest PvE content (Raids and CM fractals) you can ignore lots of mechanics due to dedicated supports. That was not possible in such extend in vanilla.

And ye I hate it too so I don't play DPS. Play supports, they have to react and adapt much more. 

[Seraphus.3061]

1 minute ago, iTB.1428 said:

Even in the hardest PvE content (Raids and CM fractals) you can ignore lots of mechanics due to dedicated supports.

You obviously haven't killed Harvest Temple CM. You probably never will.

[iTB.1428]

1 minute ago, Seraphus.3061 said:

You obviously haven't killed Harvest Temple CM. You probably never will.

No I didn't (didn't even try yet). Yes I probably will - like other CMs I care about. No need for ad hominem 😉

But 1 hard instanced contend does not make entirety of GW2 end game PvE right?
Or do you really disagree that good supports let you ignore lots (not all) of mechanics you wouldn't be able otherwise? And therefore playstyle in vanilla (without dedicated supports) were different from nowadays?

[The Boz.2038]

This entire OP translates into "I want c+1 to be optimal DPS performance".

Edited July 7, 2022 by The Boz.2038

[Nephalem.8921]

4 hours ago, iTB.1428 said:

No I didn't (didn't even try yet). Yes I probably will - like other CMs I care about. No need for ad hominem 😉

But 1 hard instanced contend does not make entirety of GW2 end game PvE right?
Or do you really disagree that good supports let you ignore lots (not all) of mechanics you wouldn't be able otherwise? And therefore playstyle in vanilla (without dedicated supports) were different from nowadays?

Rose tinted glasses. The core game was broken. you could soft cc bosses and even perma stun them. 1 immob engi turned all melee bosses into dps golems. the core game was easy. very easy to exploit.

their solution was just adding more dmg to attacks so basically everything oneshotted you. the hot release patch increased attack frequency and reduced dmg across the game so dodge and aegis became less op. also introduced the breakbar so you couldnt just kite a melee boss with chill/cripple or immob while not getting hit in still hitting it in max melee range.

[otto.5684]

On 7/1/2022 at 8:13 PM, ResJudicator.7916 said:

Rotations are more memorization than skill.

 

What OP is referencing is having more dynamic combat, where you need to use your skills intelligently to react to situations as they come up: blinding/dodging/aegising key attacks.  Putting up stab only to cover a key skill, or avoid incoming CC that you can't dodge.  Putting up the projectile block when a strong projectile is incoming.  Kiting/dodging to mitigate damage, etc.

 

Nowandays, you rarely, if ever, do most of the above in most PvE content (and it's getting that way in PvP, too).  You just memorize and go through your rotations to maintain boom uptime, stand at the boss's toes, and go ham. 

If you play like that in sPvP, above silver, and most OP PvE (solo at least), you will pummeled. Positioning and reactivity is the name of the game. Though, I understand why we see many OW event failures and complaining. Timmy sat there and ate the entire 50k aoe damage from the boss, and is wondering why he cannot beat the boss.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

On 7/2/2022 at 10:34 AM, Cindaria.6379 said:

Of course it is okay to have spells which works well together like combos. But the most annoying part in the game are raiders. They expect you to play the meta builds and tells you that much to learn rotations. I was told to train at the golem until I remember my fingers moving without thinking.

Unfortunately Anet orientates to that benchmarks and nerf classes, which are in open world worse.

Raids have multiple rotation options. Benching the meta tends to be best because... it's got the best damage output. Nothing in a raid is safer than a quick kill.

 

If people are kicking you out of groups because you don't know a rotation, you either 1. Are doing DPS that is so low that it hinders killing the boss or 2. They are crazy. Plain and simple. DPS matters for harder content.

 

LI builds exist. Some of them are only a few button presses and a ton of passive. But they get the job done, but you still need to know what you're doing. You can't fumble through raids. You can't fumble through CM strikes. Heck, you can't fumble through EoD normal mode strikes. You absolutely need to be able to do damage.

[Zaret.1450]

On 7/2/2022 at 1:15 AM, Mungrul.9358 said:

...should not exist in Guild Wars 2.

When I took a break from the game in 2014, this concept was completely absent from Guild Wars 2.
I can't recall it being mentioned on the forums frequently, if at all, and I certainly don't remember seeing people talking about rotations in Map chat.
After returning in 2020, I've gradually noticed how pervasive and damaging to the game this concept now is.

I can't say for sure why it became popular, but I can certainly say it doesn't belong. DPS meters and checks certainly don't help, as these focus purely on optimising damage to the detriment of all other nuance.

Rotations are a throwback to more traditional MMOs where you have lots of skills with long cooldowns and reduced movement capabilities in combat.

Guild Wars 2 was built around movement and the idea that every skill on your bar is equivalent to a tool in a swiss army knife, each being designed to handle a particular combat situation.

One might even argue that this is why the Mesmer exists in the first place. Certainly in Guild Wars 1's PvP, the Mesmer existed to punish those who fell in to the predictable pattern of a rotation (although GW2's mesmer is far less focussed on direct interrupts and disruption, something I've always found disappointing).

Unfortunately, rotation gameplay has become so prevalent that now groups are able to completely ignore external influences, and concentrate on firing skills off in a specific order to better optimise results (be those results damage, control or support).
It's a very non-interactive form of gameplay that is able to ignore and bypass the game's active combat system by sheer brute force.

The original, core gameplay reward loop of observing the enemy and using the right skill at the right time has been completely bypassed by this concept, and a lot of systems have been bludgeoned in to supporting this instead of their original function.

And I think it's what's at the core of Warrior being in such a bad place now. Most of core Warrior's skills, traits and animations were designed around the original observe/react concept of gameplay, and none of them have been successfully adapted to suit rotation style gameplay (except for, ironically, banners pre-patch).

I also think it's why we have a balance team that don't necessarily understand Guild Wars 2. There are very few of the original team left at ArenaNet, and newer employees have quite often come from more traditional MMOs, with incorrect preconceptions of how Guild Wars 2 should work as an MMO.

 

There's also a nasty feedback loop in place now between streamers and the balance team, where rotation play has become cemented.

I don't know about anyone else, but I find this incredibly disappointing, and I really don't like the idea of being good at GW2 simply being reduced to memorising a recipe list and repeating it ad nauseam.

I admit that you can still play the old way in most of the open world, and it's part of the reason I enjoy open world more than the rest of the game.

the thing is, where do you see rotations? in raids and endgame instanced content.

That tipe of content is gonna make so people optimice their gameplay so they can beat the content.

I see lots of people complaining about rotations and arcdps but do you really understand what youre complaining about?

Just as an example, VG, vale guardian, is the first boss of the first raid wing, you need one tank with more thoughness to take agro and control the boss movements, you need healers because the self heals are not enought to deal with enviromental tic dmg and mecanics, you need boon suports because self boons are usually difficult to maintain, have short duration, and dont cover all necesities of a group, you could try raiding with everyone wearing thoughness, self healing and self booning stats, youd end up with half the scuad dead before 2 minutes have passed, with the boss spinning and changing targets each 5 seconds and everyone panicking. (if you dont believe it just enter a raid with your friends with whatever stats and youll see).

NOW dps wise, as a reference, the base dps i consider decent for a new raider would be 30k on golem, more or less, you can go full exotic, maybe take a trait or two for survival, and still get those 30k with little effort, do you know how much dmg people who dont know their rota do? i have seen from 20k to 14k and some times 24-25k, maybe a 5k diference doesnt look like much but once you get in a boss and you fail at 3% 5 fimes in a row those 5k start to be noticeable, now imagine if the 6 dps in a scuad lacked those 5k, youd have a hard time in every boss you encounter and then youd start shooting knives blindy at each other.

Now ingame there is a dps meter that only you can see, and it doesnt matter because even without arc you can see when theres lack of dmg in a boss and theres ways to see who is it, arc is just another tool, whether someone is toxic or not has nothing to do with the tools they use.

As for rotations, if you have 10 min to kill a boss you want 2 things, 1 kill it, 2 kill it as fast as possible because the less time you spend less mistakes you make and more time you have for other bosses or to sleep if you want, you might like it more or less but if it makes easyer and faster and encounter, you dont need to teorycraft nor investigate because someone else creates the rotation for you and gives it to you written and on video, and you anly need to practice like what, 30 min a day for 3-4 days?

Also you know you dont need to do what others tell you right, if you dont like how it works just create YOUR own scuad, you make your rules, recruit people that want to do the content like you and see how it goes, if it goes well then great, if it goes badly maybe theres something not working there, you have freedom to do as you want so instead of criing because people optimize their groups create your own and play as freely as you can.

[FirebrandFrog.7603]

Rotations have been in the game since launch.

Hundred Blades into weapon swap, axe AA, use adrenaline skill once in a blue moon, swap back to GS for Hundred Blades. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If you were playing Warrior farming CoF p2 for money like I did back in the day, that was what you needed to memorize. FGJ mostly off-cooldown (but somewhat "in rhythm" with the other FGJs to maintain 25 Might). You went either shouts or all-Signets because most of your skills did poopoo numbers or were worthless for what you were farming.

The unfortunate and uncomfortable truth is that "rotations", or one end result of optimizing one's damage to Kill Something As Fast/Efficiently As Possible, is an inevitability in action RPGs like Guild Wars 2 (as others have said). Over time games will get figured out, fights will slowly become "solved", meta builds will arise from days and weeks and months of player playtesting and theory crafting that 95% of the game's playerbase never sees the process of, only the end result.

And this happens in *any* game with stats on a character that aren't hardset or pre-determined.

I'm happy for you that you still have open world play to enjoy, but it also does appear that GW2, fundamentally, isn't your game anymore.

[ResJudicator.7916]

On 7/7/2022 at 11:40 AM, otto.5684 said:

If you play like that in sPvP, above silver, and most OP PvE (solo at least), you will pummeled. Positioning and reactivity is the name of the game. Though, I understand why we see many OW event failures and complaining. Timmy sat there and ate the entire 50k aoe damage from the boss, and is wondering why he cannot beat the boss.

PvP:  I was in legend every season that I played.  Positioning and reactivity has steadily been declining in importance.  If you read my post more carefully, I was talking about the trajectory of the balancing decisions, not the present state.  Just look at how many of the meta classes have insane mobility now, which heavily reduces the impact of positioning.  Now it's just about knowing when to camp no-port spots.

The massive amount of effects-bloat has also diminished the reactivity, because a lot of the new skills are just optimal to use in almost every situation.  Harb ult is a strong opener, a strong panic button, a strong skill to use in the middle of the teamfight, a strong continuation skill after you've landed your condis, a strong defensive skill to peel for a teammate, etc. 

PvE:  The point of this thread isn't that there have never been rotations.  The point is that, ideally (at least in my opinion), you should have to do something special to set up a combo - like dodging a key attack, following up with CC, then leading into your combo.  In Street Fighter (or any other fighting game), for example, you don't just go through the same combo over and over.  Most MMOs, on the other hand, tend to be more about memorizing a long rotation and then repeating it.  I enjoyed GW2 because the combat felt more like a dynamic fighting game, and less like a traditional MMO.  But GW2 has definitely been trending towards being more like a traditional MMO in terms of encouraging players to just go through their rotations.  It's obviously not 100% rotation-based now, but having supports constantly providing perma-boon uptime trivializes a lot of the boss mechanics.

At this point, the only mechanics you have to worry about (in 99% of "challenging" content) just require stepping out of the occasional bad-colored lines/circles and jumping over shockwaves.  That's the bare minimum of reactivity.  I would personally enjoy having a lot more challenge, like having to think about when to use defensive skills to supplement dodges, because the boss has multiple strong attacks that you can't just avoid via walking out of the bad-colored stuff.  (Beating Liadri w/ the achivements, for example, was a really fun fight - at least back when it came out.  The powercreep may have trivialized it by now.)

 

 

Edited July 10, 2022 by ResJudicator.7916

[Jzaku.9765]

On 7/2/2022 at 7:15 AM, Mungrul.9358 said:

...should not exist in Guild Wars 2.

When I took a break from the game in 2014, this concept was completely absent from Guild Wars 2.
I can't recall it being mentioned on the forums frequently, if at all, and I certainly don't remember seeing people talking about rotations in Map chat.
After returning in 2020, I've gradually noticed how pervasive and damaging to the game this concept now is.

I can't say for sure why it became popular, but I can certainly say it doesn't belong. DPS meters and checks certainly don't help, as these focus purely on optimising damage to the detriment of all other nuance.

Rotations are a throwback to more traditional MMOs where you have lots of skills with long cooldowns and reduced movement capabilities in combat.

Guild Wars 2 was built around movement and the idea that every skill on your bar is equivalent to a tool in a swiss army knife, each being designed to handle a particular combat situation.

One might even argue that this is why the Mesmer exists in the first place. Certainly in Guild Wars 1's PvP, the Mesmer existed to punish those who fell in to the predictable pattern of a rotation (although GW2's mesmer is far less focussed on direct interrupts and disruption, something I've always found disappointing).

Unfortunately, rotation gameplay has become so prevalent that now groups are able to completely ignore external influences, and concentrate on firing skills off in a specific order to better optimise results (be those results damage, control or support).
It's a very non-interactive form of gameplay that is able to ignore and bypass the game's active combat system by sheer brute force.

The original, core gameplay reward loop of observing the enemy and using the right skill at the right time has been completely bypassed by this concept, and a lot of systems have been bludgeoned in to supporting this instead of their original function.

And I think it's what's at the core of Warrior being in such a bad place now. Most of core Warrior's skills, traits and animations were designed around the original observe/react concept of gameplay, and none of them have been successfully adapted to suit rotation style gameplay (except for, ironically, banners pre-patch).

I also think it's why we have a balance team that don't necessarily understand Guild Wars 2. There are very few of the original team left at ArenaNet, and newer employees have quite often come from more traditional MMOs, with incorrect preconceptions of how Guild Wars 2 should work as an MMO.

 

There's also a nasty feedback loop in place now between streamers and the balance team, where rotation play has become cemented.

I don't know about anyone else, but I find this incredibly disappointing, and I really don't like the idea of being good at GW2 simply being reduced to memorising a recipe list and repeating it ad nauseam.

I admit that you can still play the old way in most of the open world, and it's part of the reason I enjoy open world more than the rest of the game.

There is always a certain order to press your buttons in that gives you the highest damage over the time you spent pressing them (aka DPS) and just because you were not aware of it before the concept got popularized does not mean it didn't exist. 

[ResJudicator.7916]

1 minute ago, Jzaku.9765 said:

There is always a certain order to press your buttons in that gives you the highest damage over the time you spent pressing them (aka DPS) and just because you were not aware of it before the concept got popularized does not mean it didn't exist. 

This is true.  But I think the intent behind the post is that, if you want the game to feel more challenging/active, you make it so that players have to create/find openings to unleash their combos.  The most basic example would be dodging a key attack that leaves the enemy vulnerable for a little bit, then following that up with a CC to expand the window of vulnerability, then going into the combo.  Rather than going in that direction, it feels like the devs are moving towards having supports just spam their support rotation, DPS just spam their DPS rotation, etc., and everyone step out of the occasional bad-colored AOE marker to avoid an instawipe.

[Karagee.6830]

On 7/7/2022 at 1:35 PM, Seraphus.3061 said:

You obviously haven't killed Harvest Temple CM. You probably never will.

Odds are: neither have you. Just wait until mechanist does 50k dps on ranged autoattacks and then I promise you we will all kill it while texting our friends with the free hand.

On a more serious note a lot of good longtime raiding players have uninstalled or are just not logging in following the shitshow patch, so...