Group Content Focus

[Nemesis.8576]

There seems to be quite a bit of focus on group content by the development and design teams, but a lot of the changes seem to affect solo play more than group play.  Where is the balance in solo play?  I want all my professions to feel powerful when I play them solo.  Groups are not a big concern for me.  I, like most other players, spend most of my time in solo play.  It's not because we don't want to group up, it's because we don't want to wait for other players.  I'm happy to join in an event or bounty when I happen upon one.  It's fun to group up.  Maybe more focus could be placed on making individual professions feel more powerful and easy to play.  I heard a long timer player comment that they thought the core specializations were inferior to the elite specs.  Well, I don't find this to be true always, and I certainly hope this was not the design intent.  Any specialization should be viable and feel powerful.  I realize that is not the case currently, but no one wants to play to level 80 only to end up with an ineffective build.  A lot of builds are very inferior to the few that actually work well.  I had to go through a lot of trial an error and gold to get my Guardian to play decently.  I did not appreciate the difficultly in finding a good build.  For new players, it's very discouraging to have to deal with these problems.  Everything seemed just fine when I was in Central Tyria,  and the moment I got to the expansions, it was clear there were some very serious issues.  Either provide some basic guidance on making a decent build, or make the build process much simpler.  You can't just take a spec from the Internet and expect it to work, because the people recommending those specs are of different levels of play experience and they often have different goals.  What we need is a good open world PvE build available for each specification, core or elite spec, because that is what most of us are doing.  We are not immediately going to jump into content like PvP, dungeons, fractals, raids, and missions.  In fact, raids have become so elitist, that most of us will never do them.

[Zok.4956]

1 hour ago, Nemesis.8576 said:

There seems to be quite a bit of focus on group content by the development and design teams, but a lot of the changes seem to affect solo play more than group play.

Well, the Mechanist works also well as a LI build for solo play.

 

1 hour ago, Nemesis.8576 said:

Where is the balance in solo play?

Well, there is no instanced challenging solo-content, like there is for groups of 5, 10 and 50 players.

 

1 hour ago, Nemesis.8576 said:

You can't just take a spec from the Internet and expect it to work
(...)
What we need is a good open world PvE build available for each specification, core or elite spec

A while ago Wooden Potatoes made a short series of solo-play builds for open-world. His fresh-air-tempest was quite fun.

And there is also: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Open_World and similar that could help you with your build.

 

1 hour ago, Nemesis.8576 said:

Everything seemed just fine when I was in Central Tyria,  and the moment I got to the expansions, it was clear there were some very serious issues.

Yeah, because of the power creep over the years, Central Tyria is very easy. HoT and PoF maps have an increased difficulty which is surprising for some when they enter the maps the first time.  The maps are dangerous out there. That is intentional.

 

1 hour ago, Nemesis.8576 said:

 I, like most other players (...) because we (...)  because we (...)  What we need (...) what most of us (...) We are not (...)  that most of us (...)

Please speak for yourself. Acting as if you are speaking on behalf of the community only devalues what you say otherwise.

 

[Kozumi.5816]

The power gap between the best and weakest solo specs are completely insane.

This has always been an issue, and will continue to be as long as these developers try their hardest to  make this game into FF14.

Edited November 8, 2022 by Kozumi.5816

[poop.4183]

The thing is you can adapt your build any time you want by just modifying skills or traits , you have problem with ranged foes , use a reflect (you play guardian , you have a bunch of really nice skill that can do that) , if you get knock off or cced a lot , play with breakstuns and stab providers , you struggle at melee -> use a ranged weapon (i know staff and scepter are really bad , but you can't be good at everything)) you want to run off aoes effectively , use dodge skills and grant yourself swiftness ("advance" is a good example) .

Play the way you want as the game advertise is a bit of confusing , at some point the game will impose you a manner to play .

And if you still struggle , you can do the magic trick : use celestial stats . You will be bulky , you will deal damage , have nice heals increase , but thats expensive . Take the time to change and adpat , the game allow you to change traits and the skills how you want , make use of it , and you should not struggle a lot in OW solo 

But i admit that coming from core tyria to Hot is trivial , i remember changing my full berserker gear into a more vitality/thougness stuff. And indeed some core specs are very old (no change from 2012 for some ... in pve regards) , just wait 3weeks , it could change ... could ...

Edited November 8, 2022 by poop.4183

[Mell.4873]

Honestly is comes down to how you play.

People swear by Classes like Soulbeast and Berserker as solo specs but have horrendously hard to manage rotation that if you don't get right order will punish you. While something like Scourge and Mirage are amazing solo but have a more resource management rotation. These rotations have been classed as some of the hardest in game.
Finally there are more reactionary Elites like Daredevil and Vindicator, their rotation is based of taking advantage of its varies skills to avoid taking damage.

Everyone of these can solo content but have vastly different skill requirements. It is also not linear, someone who is good at lets say "Sic Em" Soulbeast probably wont be as good at the more resource management Fervent Force Untamed.

Edited November 8, 2022 by Mell.4873

[the krytan assassin.9235]

In my opinion the traitdesign and available slots for heal/utility/elite skill have always been one of the best aspects of GW2's combat design. Sure some extra guidance could be welcome for newer players, but in general sites like metabattle, snowcrows, hardstuck and mukluklabs are frequently spammed ingame.

Also imo every profession/Espec should be able to provide decent personal uptime on might/fury/swiftness. This is unfortunately not always the case.  The boons are simply to overpowered that it becomes a necessity for all OW builds. There has also been an increasing amount of PvE builds that only properly work in group PvE with permanent uptime on alac/quick. This is just simply bad game design that should be avoided whenever possible. 

 

I agree that there's a major problem when talking about the barrier to enter dungeons/fractals/strikes/raids. There are alot of players that want to overcomplicate these parts of the game and ask for hefty requirements to join the party/squad. Unfortunately this is somewhat inherent to the gamedesign of certain strikes/raids where a single party member is able to wipe the entire squad. That being said, there are plenty of groups that will accept any player that is able to listen/learn and has a semi decent build. 

The best advice would probably be to find a nice community based group/guild that is willing to practise/teach the instanced PvE content although these community based groups/guilds are unfortunately pretty hard to find currently.