Reactive, Proactive, and Innate: An Exploration of Actions, Skills, and Traits

[Noko Anon.9154]

Before I begin, I want to make it very clear that this long-winded post is mostly me rambling. I have tried to keep it as coherent as possible, but this is where my current state of mind is. It is very much an essay, and I certainly do not expect most people to read this. However, I have nowhere else to put it, and I would just like it out of my system. I want to go over the issues that were finally noticed by the community at large thanks to the mechanist elite spec, the struggles with thief and mesmer serving as a reflection of the whole game, and how GW2 has the capacity to accommodate both low-intensity players, and ones who fully engage with the action combat.

At this point in time, mechanist has caused a tremendous amount of grief because it has such a high reward for such a low input. On the one hand, mechanist is a delight for a majority of the player base. There are no complex controls, the builds work excellently, and there is even a bit of fun in how one can customize the jade bot. On the other hand, mechanist causes quite a bit of consternation for “complex” professions, such as catalysts and untamed, who have to do so much more for the same output. I believe that the player base agrees that, no, it is not equitable that mechanist and catalyst perform similarly, but the base is divided on what to do about it. If mechanist is gutted totally, it will negatively impact the low-intensity players. If mechanist was left as-is before the 4th October patch, or other professions were extraordinarily buffed to be on-par with mechanist, then the game state would still be far from equitable for reasons as follows.

What most of us realize, but only some of us could put into words, is the understanding of what is proactive, reactive, and innate. Since there may be a few reading who do not understand what I am conveying, allow me to properly define these terms, as I understand them:

• Proactive: An action, skill, or trait instigated by the player to have a result, and does not rely on outside input to occur;
  • Examples: Weapon swapping, using a skill besides weapon skill 1 (including healing), stunning enemies, dodging, blocking;
• Reactive: An action, skill, or trait taken by the player in response to an action taken by another player or a mob beyond simple combat;
  • Examples: Interrupting enemies, evading;
• Innate: An action, skill, or trait that almost requires no input by the player.
  • Chief example: Auto-attacking; other examples include passive traits (“gain X vitality based on Y power”) and passive skills (signets, minions)

I would be interested to see if someone can argue successfully against the following statement: An innate action, skill, or trait should be less powerful than a proactive one, and a proactive one should be less powerful than a reactive one. To put it more simply, players should not be so heavily rewarded for so little work. Consider the difference between a dodge and an evade. A dodge can happen at any time in combat, regardless of the circumstance of the battle. However, an evade requires accurate timing of the dodge. The same can be said for a stun and an interrupt. A stun can happen at any point in a fight, regardless of whether or not an opposing player is activating a certain skill. However, an interrupt has much more precise timing, and practicing that timing should be heavily rewarded. Blocking is in a unique position, but I believe it should be categorized as a proactive action. Guardian’s aegis, for example, is mainly passively gained through Virtue of Courage, requiring no player input. Does that make blocking innate? Alternatively, warrior’s shield 5 blocks attacks, and does nothing else. Does that make it reactive? To harmonize these two extremes, it would be best to take the position of it being a proactive action, but will be largely left out of this discussion due to the confusion it may cause.

Consider Thief: Acrobatics: Swindler’s Equilibrium, and Upper Hand. Both of these traits require the timing to pull off an evasion to trigger them. Swindler’s Equilibrium requires the use of a sword to reduce the cooldown Steal, and Upper Hand grants initiative, the thief’s main resource, and regeneration. As of the time of this writing, there are only two popular thief builds that utilize Acrobatics, a power sword / dagger core in PvP and a celestial pistol / pistol daredevil in WvW. The former usually uses Swindler’s Equilibrium, but not Upper Hand; meanwhile, the latter usually uses Upper Hand, but not Swindler’s Equilibrium. We can understand why Swindler’s Equilibrium would not be taken, as it requires the use of a sword to put Steal on recharge. This could be something changed to make any weapon set able to earn this effect on an evasion, but it seems very unlikely since Guarded Initiation is an innate skill, requiring the player to, at bare minimum, use their auto-attack to get the effects of it. Upper Hand \, however, might come as a surprise that it is not taken more often since it restores initiative. This is because Trickery as a trait line is so potent, Upper Hand is de facto meaningless. Three extra initiative at the start of a fight thanks to Preparedness and Stealing granting initiative from Kleptomaniac invalidates anything Upper Hand might offer. Stealing is a proactive action (which is able to be turned reactive thanks to Sleight of Hand giving it a daze, though the benefits of stealing still happen regardless of an interruption occuring), and Preparedness is an innate trait. They require less effort than Upper Hand, an entirely reactive trait, to get initiative back, and have so much more of a reward for it. This is partially why, regardless of the build taken, both of them are vastly outmatched against dagger / pistol daredevil, which does not use Acrobatics at all. 

Next, think about Mesmer: Domination: Furious Interruption and Power Block. Both of these skills rely on precise timing in order to activate their interrupt effects. The former provides quickness, while the latter inflicts weakness and also puts the enemy’s skills on a longer cooldown. As of the time of this writing, Domination as a trait line is taken in a variety of game modes, including PvE. However, in popular PvP and WvW builds (in which interrupts happen) Power Block is only sometimes taken, and Furious Interruption is almost never taken. Instead of Ferocious Interruption, Shattered Concentration is almost always taken because it allows Shatter skills to remove a boon on hit. Removing that boon is not only much more important since it can strip aegis, resolution, protection, might, and so on, but also easier to accomplish than gaining quickness from an interruption. This is one example of the effort involved not equaling the reward. A proactive action, using a Shatter skill, has better results than a reactive action, interrupting an opponent. Power Block is often replaced with Vicious Expression or Mental Anguish. The former, again, removes boons when an enemy is disabled. Most disables do not require the opponent to be doing anything, though it is rather convenient to disable an enemy when they are in the middle of casting something. When that happens, it becomes an interrupt, which Power Block relies on. Power Block requires timing, while Vicious Expression does not. Mental Anguish, alternatively, requires the opponent to not be doing something to get the most out of it. A core mesmer stealth build will instead use stealth, Blink, and Mirror Images to try and gank an opponent who is just standing still, before they can even react, to maximize the effectiveness of Mental Anguish. This is the highest level of non-interaction possible, and while it might be amusing for the attacker, the victim would certainly find this lack of engagement infuriating, up to the point they could leave the game mode entirely. This kind of non-interaction is perhaps better highlighted in rifle deadeye, which demanded numerous changes from non-thieves since the launch of Path of Fire.

This brings us to the issue with mechanist. Mechanist is neither a proactive nor a reactive elite; it is an innate one. Its trait lines do not rely on the player to do anything specific to benefit from them. In fact, Mech Core: J-Drive does not require the mechanist to have the bot out at all to receive some benefit, which not even ranger can boast about unless they are a soulbeast melded with their pet. Mechanist also gained signets, which are largely innate skills, though they can be activated with rather potent effects (which goes outside the scope of this discussion). The changes to rifle 1 further promoted the use of an innate strategy by giving it an Explosive effect. The vast majority of Explosives, a common trait line taken with Mechanist, features innate skills. “Glass Cannon: Strike damage dealt increases when above the health threshold.” “Steel-Packed Powder: Explosions cause vulnerability.” “Explosive Temper: Explosions grant stacking ferocity when they hit.” I could go on, but the point has been made. Auto-attacking with a rifle, an innate combat action, piles up on rewards without the engineer being required to do anything, and the jade bot, signets, and Mechanist trait line only exacerbates that. From a totally negative point of view, mechanist is a “no-skill” profession, because a player needs to do next to nothing to be successful with it.

Is there anything wrong with an innate profession? Absolutely not, when it is balanced correctly. Again, an innate action, skill, or trait should offer fewer benefits than a proactive one, and a proactive one less than a reactive one. That is the limit of it. An innate build, a low-intensity build, should not be wholly unusable. Guild Wars 2 is a very special MMO because it has the true capacity to allow players with disabilities, specific needs, or other factors to be able to participate in the game to some degree. This kind of inclusivity is in short supply in the genre, but inclusiveness should not consume the total enjoyment of the game. Any innate profession that performs better than one that is not innate hurts the state of the game, and the enjoyment of its players.

Consider the popular minion master necromancer. Minion masters are quite common in the open world, and can even show up in some PvP matches. Within those two game modes, it is not the best, but it is viable. Does the existence of minion master negatively affect, say, condition harbingers in PvP? Certainly not, because we would expect the harbinger to do much better than the minion master. Does the existence of harbinger make minion master totally unusable? Again, of course not, because the player base recognizes that minion master has a low skill ceiling, while harbinger has much more room for growth. The inverse of this situation is when issues arise. Mechanist being much more viable than holosmith in PvP before 4th October greatly hurt the latter elite, because holosmith had a higher ceiling than mechanist to achieve the same results in the game mode. Mechanist also hurt other professions fulfilling the same roles (mainly roamers, but also bunkers) because of how little input was necessary to get a tremendous output.

Let us return to the thief while we are discussing PvP. For a decade, the biggest complaint for it has been that the thief is unfair in PvP situations. The counterargument is that thief is unfair by design, and the design of thief should be respected. My position is that thief is unfair because it has to frontload itself into a proactive role, because there are no avenues for it to be a reactive profession. The thief has no viable defenses, except for blind, which in and of itself is not a reactive tool. The reward for evading enemy attacks (with the notable exception of Daredevil: Escapist’s Fortitude) is too little. The reward for interrupting attacks (Trickery: Pressure Striking and Daredevil: Impacting Disruption) is too little. The thief has no motivation to play fairly against another class, because the thief, as it is now, has no reward for playing fairly. This is not a flaw with the profession, with stealth, with Steal, with shadow stepping, with blind, or any of the major complaints players have with thief. This is a flaw with how thief has been treated by balancing teams for a decade. If a thief cannot reasonably interrupt a target, then a thief needs to play in such a way where big casts from the opponent cannot happen in the first place, which is usually done by bursting them down. If a thief cannot reasonably evade a target, then a thief needs to play in such a way where any damage from the opponent is superficial compared to their own damage output, which is again usually done by bursting them down. If a thief cannot burst down their target, then they may try to utilize stealth to reset the fight in their favor. If a thief cannot reasonably use stealth, then they may try to blind their target. If a thief cannot reasonably blind their target, they may shadowstep to leave the fight completely, because the thief has no other option. This is how thief has been put into its current position, by constantly taking away incentives to fight “fair”.

A solution to helping create a healthier game state is by improving skills, traits, and abilities that promote interaction between players, and between the player and important enemies. (Here I wish to replace interrupts with defiance bars, for the sake of including PvE.) While it is anecdotal, players still, despite the incredibly telegraphed attack animation, die to Soo-won’s Claw Slap. Some players do not even try to break defiance bars on champions, and most times only do so by randomly hitting buttons that happen to break defiance. It may very well be true that these players are just “bad”, but I wish to take a more positive position and say that these players never learned how to evade or break defiance bars, because they never had an incentive to learn how to.

Why should an elementalist take Water: Flow Like Water, when Cleansing Wave removes a condition that would certainly have caused more damage than what the healing from Flow would have provided?

Why should a ranger take Skirmishing: Strider’s Defense, when Spotter provides such a massive benefit to the whole party for doing nothing?

Why should mesmer take Dueling: Evasive Mirror, when Blinding Dissipation would blind and prevent any kind of incoming damage and not just projectiles?

Why should renegade take Wrought-Iron Will, when Blood Fury much more easily grants Kalla’s Fervor?

Why should a necromancer take Curses: Insidious Disruption, when Plague Sending would remove and send conditions that cause much more damage than Insidious’ torment?

Why should a guardian take Virtues: Glacial Heart, when Inspiring Virtue leads to so much more damage?

Most professions, in fact, have no benefits to interrupting players, and the ones that do have them have such miniscule rewards for the effort, that they often end up ignored.

It is here someone may try to make the argument that skilled players with buffed “reactive” skills and traits will have an unfair advantage against less-skilled players, or players with specific needs. My response is, simply, a skilled player will always have an advantage over a less-skilled one, no matter how many tools you try to take away from them. Taking away tools leads to game state death, and that goes on both sides of the argument. What might happen, then, if thief were changed to have stronger interrupts and dodges? I assure you, you would find far fewer thieves skulking in stealth, even if stealth were back to its pre-nerfed state. What might happen also if necromancer were to lose their minions, or mechanist was nerfed into the ground? Far fewer specific-needs players would have an opportunity to play the game in any capacity. I cannot stress this enough: Do not take tools away, but see that the tools given are calibrated against each other so that innate skills are viable, but proactive and reactive ones are more beneficial.

Edited October 18, 2022 by Noko Anon.9154
Posting as rich text was a terrible mistake.

[Mell.4873]

I think you are in way to deep, people play what they want to play.

The reason Mechanist is the way it is because of Core Engineer. Rather than most professions which have simple auto attacks and more difficult to trigger Traits, Engineer has really hard to land auto attacks (Kits) and traits that buff the passive gameplay.
This worked fine until Mechanist showed up along with Rifle changes. I think the fix is to just not let the Mech trigger any Core Traitlines and maybe tone down rifle a little, allowing the Kits to return into the Meta.

I could on board to flip some of the engineer traits to be less passive.

[Asum.4960]

First of all, thank you for taking the time and effort to write this post, very interesting. 

 

The game becoming increasingly passive, with innate benefits, is something that's been bothering me for quite a while. It's something I've long lamented about the Trait system and Utility skills in particular. 

While Engineer's rifle and explosives is a great example of that happening to Traits (as well as everything turning into passive damage modifiers, stat gains, cookie cutter boon auras, etc.), I think a prime example about Utilities (in which I for simplicities sake include Heals and Elites), which genuinely shook my interest in the game and it's combat system was the Mantra of Solace change. 

The skill and FB as a whole overperforming isn't really for debate (not that this changed much), but imo this skill was the epitome of proactive gameplay. 

The difference between a FB spamming the skill more or less off-CD to just provide Quickness via Liberator's Vow, and one who used the skill tactically to block anticipated big attacks and incoming crowd control was staggering. 

It really felt like a Specialisation one could master, not just in-of-itself, but then also in the context of every single encounter one brought it to. 

It's a Specialisation and skill that made every new piece of content a joy to explore and learn in order to Utilize it's proactive and reactive tools, which were appropriately rewarding, to it's fullest.

Yet Anet's solution to that overperforming, rather than tuning it down with a longer CD and/or Shorter Duration for example, was to change it to an effect that might as well autocast entirely passively, with still, if not more so, incredibly potent effects of providing Protection, Resolution and Quickness to 5 players - with next to zero player thought required, or rather even possible. 

 

Following since we've seen that design direction expand, with more and more specs relying on mindlessly spamming their Utility skills in particular for secondary effects. 

Even skills that might be proactive or reactive in nature (for example a Quickness Herald's Gaze of Darkness with it's Stunbreak, Blind, Reveal and Vulnerability) will never be used as such, rather than being mindlessly spammed off-cd for it's added quickness application. 

 

Now I'm also a big proponent of Low-Intensity and accessibility having it's place in the game - not as peak performers, but with a strong, solid viability. But I deeply regret the rampant design direction of slowly turning everything into what might as well auto-cast passively off-cooldown, or becoming just literal passives. 

I'm all in favour of establishing a largely passive baseline performance - but that shouldn't come at the cost of proactive and reactive skills and Trait's losing their appropriate higher rewards, or being reworked into passives themselves. 

The Trait and Utility systems, with all of their dead "choices", has more than enough room to make both - allowing players a baseline performance that is more than good enough via passive boosts and triggers, and giving players who find joy in mastering skill interactions, using skills tactically and really trying to push and express their skill via proactive and reactive tools an edge - work. 

 

I'm tired of mindlessly and carelessly spamming my buttons. I'm tired of the Trait system being there just to pick the greatest selection of passive modifiers. Should this be a viable way to play the game? Sure. But it should not be the most effective one. 

Innate bonuses and passives should not outperform correctly executed proactive and reactive skill expression. Passive gameplay should not be slapped onto active and reactive skills. Active and reactive skill's shouldn't be reworked at large into passive ones. 

It's slowly killing the game's combat system, which is one of the the, if not the, prime component that allowed this game it's decade long staying power.

[Noko Anon.9154]

I appreciate the replies. It's difficult for me to add anything since most of it's agreeing with what I've already said, so I have to ask, what is the "baseline" we're talking about for innate to be functional? Killing champions in the open world, or something a little more realistic?

[Mungo Zen.9364]

4 hours ago, Noko Anon.9154 said:

I appreciate the replies. It's difficult for me to add anything since most of it's agreeing with what I've already said, so I have to ask, what is the "baseline" we're talking about for innate to be functional? Killing champions in the open world, or something a little more realistic?

In PvE a viable build of any type should be able to complete the story solo with any challenges presented.  I’d suggest innate builds shouldn’t be too much more powerful than this.    
 

While PvE can support builds that can solo Champ Bounties or even some Legendaries, those should be the upper echelon of build and skill combined. The average player using an ‘innate’ build should be fine in most open world content and able to tackle metas and such with some friendly players around them.  I think the dividing line on ‘innate’ builds should be 5 and 10 player content, and I don’t think passive play styles should be strong enough for group content.  But I do see reason to allow ‘low intensity’ builds to be viable in group content. 
 

In PvP a build that relies on innate skills should never beat another player.  WvW and PvP should have a focus on skill and re/pro active plays either solo or grouped. 

Edited October 24, 2022 by Mungo Zen.9364

[Serephen.3420]

10 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

First of all, thank you for taking the time and effort to write this post, very interesting. 

 

The game becoming increasingly passive, with innate benefits, is something that's been bothering me for quite a while. It's something I've long lamented about the Trait system and Utility skills in particular. 

While Engineer's rifle and explosives is a great example of that happening to Traits (as well as everything turning into passive damage modifiers, stat gains, cookie cutter boon auras, etc.), I think a prime example about Utilities (in which I for simplicities sake include Heals and Elites), which genuinely shook my interest in the game and it's combat system was the Mantra of Solace change. 

The skill and FB as a whole overperforming isn't really for debate (not that this changed much), but imo this skill was the epitome of proactive gameplay. 

The difference between a FB spamming the skill more or less off-CD to just provide Quickness via Liberator's Vow, and one who used the skill tactically to block anticipated big attacks and incoming crowd control was staggering. 

It really felt like a Specialisation one could master, not just in-of-itself, but then also in the context of every single encounter one brought it to. 

It's a Specialisation and skill that made every new piece of content a joy to explore and learn in order to Utilize it's proactive and reactive tools, which were appropriately rewarding, to it's fullest.

Yet Anet's solution to that overperforming, rather than tuning it down with a longer CD and/or Shorter Duration for example, was to change it to an effect that might as well autocast entirely passively, with still, if not more so, incredibly potent effects of providing Protection, Resolution and Quickness to 5 players - with next to zero player thought required, or rather even possible. 

 

Following since we've seen that design direction expand, with more and more specs relying on mindlessly spamming their Utility skills in particular for secondary effects. 

Even skills that might be proactive or reactive in nature (for example a Quickness Herald's Gaze of Darkness with it's Stunbreak, Blind, Reveal and Vulnerability) will never be used as such, rather than being mindlessly spammed off-cd for it's added quickness application. 

 

Now I'm also a big proponent of Low-Intensity and accessibility having it's place in the game - not as peak performers, but with a strong, solid viability. But I deeply regret the rampant design direction of slowly turning everything into what might as well auto-cast passively off-cooldown, or becoming just literal passives. 

I'm all in favour of establishing a largely passive baseline performance - but that shouldn't come at the cost of proactive and reactive skills and Trait's losing their appropriate higher rewards, or being reworked into passives themselves. 

The Trait and Utility systems, with all of their dead "choices", has more than enough room to make both - allowing players a baseline performance that is more than good enough via passive boosts and triggers, and giving players who find joy in mastering skill interactions, using skills tactically and really trying to push and express their skill via proactive and reactive tools an edge - work. 

 

I'm tired of mindlessly and carelessly spamming my buttons. I'm tired of the Trait system being there just to pick the greatest selection of passive modifiers. Should this be a viable way to play the game? Sure. But it should not be the most effective one. 

Innate bonuses and passives should not outperform correctly executed proactive and reactive skill expression. Passive gameplay should not be slapped onto active and reactive skills. Active and reactive skill's shouldn't be reworked at large into passive ones. 

It's slowly killing the game's combat system, which is one of the the, if not the, prime component that allowed this game it's decade long staying power.

I couldn't have put it better myself, thank you.

[Noko Anon.9154]

2 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

In PvP a build that relies on innate skills should never beat another player.  WvW and PvP should have a focus on skill and re/pro active plays either solo or grouped. 

I can agree with that. I'm tired of seeing that one necro bot run far in every game match and manage to do well-enough that it hampers the rotation of whichever roamer is on its team.

[coro.3176]

Regarding Mech in PvP/WvW, there are a few things that make it annoyingly passive :

•  Jade Cannons - With melee mech, there's a variety of interesting counterplay an enemy can try including conditions: (cripple, immobilize) and movement (jumping across gaps the mech would need to path around). But when the mech is ranged, the only thing you can do is block or reflect its attacks, and these defenses usually need to be saved for more punishing skills like Engi Rifle 4's 1200 range knockdown every 15s, or grenade barrage, or even rifle autos. Thus, ranged mech is effectively passive damage, and a lot of it! Last I checked, ranged mech was doing the same damage as 2-3 stacks of burn from a condi build .. just constantly and passively. In theory it could be LoS-ed, but in practice there aren't many places to do that in PvP where most gameplay is on open points.
• Auto-cast pet abilities - This takes away an important element of skill which should be required in a pet class: knowing where one's pet is and whether it is a good time to use a pet skill. Many of Mech's pet skills are so forgiving that they *can* be just automatically done and always be a good idea. This is too easy and too passive. There should be plenty of room for the mechanist to use the skills badly. To trigger them when the mech is out of range should be costly. They should fail.

[Infusion.7149]

I think Asum's post worded it on point.

We're seeing more and more traits that add potent effects on skills that originally should have been used proactively (i.e. aegis , wells, ambushes, consume skills, or barrier). Compare something such as old Mantra of Solace and there's a sharp contrast.

Prior to EoD the most passive effect I would say would probably be banners or ranger spirits when their active ability wasn't being used. This devolves the game into a spam fest.

[Noko Anon.9154]

I suppose the next question would be, is there even is a market for making the game more "intense", for lack of a better word? Does most of the player base even want to have to really practice interrupts and evades?

[Infusion.7149]

6 minutes ago, Noko Anon.9154 said:

I suppose the next question would be, is there even is a market for making the game more "intense", for lack of a better word? Does most of the player base even want to have to really practice interrupts and evades?

 I know this post is addressed to everyone, but I feel as though Arenanet has really lost sight of "purity of purpose" so to speak. There are skills that are doing far too many powerful effects at once that become almost mandatory.  Skills can be strong even if they only provide one main powerful effect. This is pretty obvious in WvW especially since just about every firebrand will run "Stand Your Ground" (stability), nearly every largescale spellbreaker uses Winds of Disenchantment (which mainly serves as boon rip and denial), and before the nerfs every scrapper would run Sneak Gyro (stealth). For PvP some of the most iconic skills such as Grenade Barrage, Whirling Axe, Soul Spiral, or Rapid Fire only do one thing which is damage.

If the PvE philosophy were changed such that you don't use CC skills for damage and that any defensive skills were not used for quickness/alacrity that would go a long way towards better gameplay overall. A good example of this is Crisis Zone which has alacrity on it as well as short duration stability meaning if you don't have enough boon duration you essentially cast it off cooldown to maintain alacrity. For DPS quickness scrappers it means you use your CC (blast gyro) as a quickness provider; for something such as shredder gyro where you would use it for damage anyway it is less an issue. What sets alacrity specter apart from the older Detonate Plasma "boon thief" is the Detonate Plasma mechanic doesn't rely on spamming things unnecessarily, only use steal. This gave it far more flexibility akin to power StM chrono which would use Split Second. There was a subtle effort to do this for quickness warrior via Martial Cadence in the Tactics line.

That is one good thing that has been upkept with renegade: your alacrity was segregated from the rest of your skills. The sole issue was people stacking more than one for similar damage as a condi DPS.

The idea of CC not doing damage (so you don't use it in your damage rotation) was put into place in PvP / WvW but it went a bit far since some CC skills have major drawbacks such a large cast time or animation.

[Asum.4960]

On 10/24/2022 at 5:22 AM, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

In PvE a viable build of any type should be able to complete the story solo with any challenges presented.  I’d suggest innate builds shouldn’t be too much more powerful than this.    
 

While PvE can support builds that can solo Champ Bounties or even some Legendaries, those should be the upper echelon of build and skill combined. The average player using an ‘innate’ build should be fine in most open world content and able to tackle metas and such with some friendly players around them.  I think the dividing line on ‘innate’ builds should be 5 and 10 player content, and I don’t think passive play styles should be strong enough for group content.  But I do see reason to allow ‘low intensity’ builds to be viable in group content. 
 

In PvP a build that relies on innate skills should never beat another player.  WvW and PvP should have a focus on skill and re/pro active plays either solo or grouped. 

 

I don't think it's possible to measure or limit what a given spec or build should be capable of by content. The game is just far to varied and complex for that. 

A build going too far is a pretty complex amalgamation of different factors, such as outside buff reliance, DPS, DPS uptime/range, utility, tankyness, sustain, etc. 

 

I don't think group content should be the arbitrary line where passive builds fail, since I think it's vastly overestimated/stated what it actually takes to clear Raids for example, with how forgiving enrage timers are. 

Once supports are sorted and fight mechanics are understood, it actually takes some effort to make a build bad enough that it can't clear Raids.

 

Almost entirely passive Builds like Auto Attack (+Impossible Odds) Herald doing ~25k DPS are more than enough to clear Raids, and I think that's perfectly fine. 

Such a build is not only capable of comfortable clearing Raids but will even perform better than more complex 35k+ benching builds in the hands of a great deal of less skilled players and allow them to focus more on mechanics. But at 25k DPS at 130 range will still never step on the toes of more involved high effort builds for those that find enjoyment in seeking those out and pushing them and themselves to perform at a high level.

Clearing content like Raids is therefor not a line for me  which passive builds should not cross. 

I don't care if a squad of 6 Auto Attack Heralds + Supports can clear all Raids at their own pace. What I do care about is if those Auto Attack builds could do so faster and safer than most or all other builds that require effort and skill to play - and therefor actively invalidate skilled play, and players who enjoy putting in effort. 

 

When a largely passive build requiring a tiny fraction of the effort to play comes close to, or even supersedes, meta performance builds (such as Power Mechanist) then I think that's a genuine danger to the games combat systems integrity. 

 

That's where the line for passive builds is for me - actively invalidating skilled play and player skill expression, by performing better, equally or near equally, for a tiny fraction of the effort.

That is when it impacts my experience as a player who cares about performance and finds joy in min-maxing.

When I feel like my time and effort are actively wasted by not playing a passive build. There need to be objective reasons to put in effort.

 

13 hours ago, Noko Anon.9154 said:

I suppose the next question would be, is there even is a market for making the game more "intense", for lack of a better word? Does most of the player base even want to have to really practice interrupts and evades?

 

I think interrupts and evades (as opposed to "on Disable" and "Dodge") maybe are fairly extreme examples. I actually highly doubt most players even know the distinction between Dodging and triggering an actual Evade as mechanic (given how many times I see players double dodging out of an incoming AoE, in which case they could have just walked out, rather than staying in it and using a single dodge roll to evade it on impact). 

 

As @Infusion.7149 mention though with purity of purpose and prevalence of spammy, passive feeling gameplay, that hasn't necessarily made the game easier, just different (and imo worse). 

We just traded difficulty in terms of knowledge and foresight for difficulty in Actions per Minute (APM). 

 

In many cases at least, no longer do we have a dedicated mobility skill, a dedicated heal skill, a dedicated CC skill, a dedicated defensive skill, a dedicated timed Utility, etc., with a small selection of dedicated Damage skills - but everything is becoming a Damage or Buff skill to be mindlessly used off-cooldown. 

 

The question is, what is generally to be considered easier? Pressing 3 buttons to do damage, and having to know the right time to press the other buttons for their individual purposes - or spamming 8 buttons on cooldown no matter what, with there being near no bad buttons to press at inopportune times? 

All I can say is that I definitely know which one is more fun for me personally. 

 

So for this part of the discussion I think this isn't about difficulty or intensity, but purity of purpose. 

We don't need the game centered around highly skilled interactions like interrupts and evades (which I don't think would be broadly appealing), we imo just need some purity of purpose back, and allow skills to do one or two things and to do those well, with proper payoff if used at the correct time and position. 

 

Less double tapping Fury pulsing, Blinding, Revealing, Vulnerability applying, Stunbreaking, Quickness granting Facet of Darkness, more Quickness and Might granting Mantra of Potence.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Asum.4960

[Noko Anon.9154]

I'm glad to see most of what I brought up was actually touched upon in the recent communication. It makes me feel like the grumbling we do on here does reach people's ears, rather than us talking to a brick wall.