Current state of specs post PoF Release

[Substatic.6958]

@Mitch.4781 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

Don't even pretend like rotations in this game are hard. You have a total of 10 skills with a 10 sec cd lockout for half of those at a time. It's an incredibly easy game relative to others.

Pressing 4 buttons instead of 2 does not suddenly spike up your difficulty.

I guess you never ever played a small MMO called WOW. Arcane Mage with it's TWO skill rotation says hello lmao

This is wrong. I currently also do WoW mythic raids and both the rotations and actual raids/dungeons are considerably more in depth or "challenging". Even the few Specs with potentially less keys than GW2 still have far more to keep track of and higher APM. Arcane has more than 2 buttons; arcane missiles, arcane barrage, arcane blast, arcane power, pom, evocation, mark of aluneth, and rune of power. But more importantly the mana and CD management is more indpeth than anything for GW2s pve. And that's one of the easier specs. Unholy DK laughs at any GW2 "rotation".

GW2 is the opposite for PVP though, far higher skill cap.

[Zenith.7301]

I'm not sure about that. WoW arenas have a pretty intricate team fighting system that isn't just "train the necro to death and wait for the daredevil +1". Battlegrounds are another matter, way too many people to balance. GW2 is also much more dueling focused, which has problems of its own because so many of the 1v1's in spvp are utterly lopsided and quite frankly it's a matter of who gets the thief +1 first.

[Kundry.1249]

@Dahkeus.8243 said:

@Kundry.1249 said:

@Mitch.4781 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

Don't even pretend like rotations in this game are hard. You have a total of 10 skills with a 10 sec cd lockout for half of those at a time. It's an incredibly easy game relative to others.

Pressing 4 buttons instead of 2 does not suddenly spike up your difficulty.

I guess you never ever played a small MMO called WOW. Arcane Mage with it's TWO skill rotation says hello lmao

Arcane needs to manage mana, though it's still one of the easier specs. WoW rotations are very different in idea anyway. GW2 rotations tend to have a lot more attack skills to use, but in WoW the complexity comes from managing resources, lining up cooldowns, and reacting to procs.

WoW rotations also are fairly clearly designed purposefully by the devs, whereas in GW2 skills don't feel like they have been designed with a PvE rotation in mind at all. It's not necessarily bad, since there's an element of exploring and finding the optimal rotation, but this does run the risk of some classes getting garbage rotations (back when WoW was kind of like that, you had the BC shadowbolt warlock with a 1-button rotation).

Case in point: Dps Mesmer. The rotation is so boring and nonsensical (in that you need to purposefully ignoring your class your toolkit) that I wouldn't want to play it even if it did great dps. If they are serious about dps mesmer being a thing, they should make the rotation more interesting.

I think mesmers have good potential for an interesting dps rotation. It's probably not an easy task to tune it right but both Phantasms and Shatter should be worth using. Quickness Chrono is much more interesting (though even there one could have some improvements) because you get to actually shatter your illusions and resummon them, if only once every 70 seconds or so. One tentative idea would be to make the Phantasmal Force trait increase the damage of your next Mind Wrack, instead of increasing your Phantasm damage. That way you'd want to shatter once enough time has passed with your Phantasms out, instead of keeping your Phantasms forever, but at the same time you won't get ridiculous burst in pvp unless your Phantasms have been attacking for a long time.

I'm not going to touch the WoW vs GW2 difficulty pissing contest, but I just want to say that I do really wish devs would build specs and balance around an intended DPS rotation for PvE. It doesn't have to be an exact rotation, but it should be at least somewhat defined.

Also, I think it's good for the game to have some classes with easy and competitive rotations. At the end of the day, GW2 is an MMO and playing with friends is what makes it fun. All of our friends aren't always going to be pro and some will straight-up suck, but when you can put your pro players on the chrono role and your less-skilled friends on something that primarily just auto-attacks, you can still get through raid content while having a good time with good people.

I agree, but there's a difference between easy and boring/feeling wrong. Maybe you're saying the same thing. If they actually designed PvE rotations, then you could get some easy rotations that nevertheless flow smoothly and have some interesting component. You could also have rotations that aren't necessarily easy to execute to its full potential, but aren't very punishing if you make mistakes/don't optimize perfectly.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Nerfbat incoming. The overall damage output of all professions is first and foremost tied to their defense. In PvE this might not matter but in pvp you can't have offense overshadow defense, else the game will die with everyone killing everyone in 2s.

Since this xpac we received one new defense mechanic - the barrier, which is spread far and between new elites, the pvp output of professions can't go haywire. Much more likely a neft incoming then raising damage of core and HoT elites. Save power necro maybe. Hopefully. Hey a guy can dream, right?

[Arheundel.6451]

@DoM.8396 said:Based on what was said pre-launch during one of the live streams these elite specs will be tuned down to be more on par with HoT elite specs. PoF elite specs are not intended to be better or more powerful but to provide alternative ways to play your profession.

But HoT elites have way more sustain than PoF ones...so if we nerf the dmg of PoF ones, do we increase their sustain ..or ask a mass refunding?