Curse

Aeon221 · Apr 28, 2010, 06:09 PM // 18:09

We accept the following facts as given in hard mode PVE:

1. That the optimal means of mitigating damage in PVE is to kill the enemy
2. That killing the enemy quickly is preferable to killing them slowly
3. That spreading damage amongst multiple enemies is suboptimal when compared to focusing it on a single target
4. That survival is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for PVE victory
5. That the NPCs will not change their tactics or builds in response to player activity
6. That not taking damage is preferred to reducing or delaying it
7. That a shorter completion time is preferable to a longer one

From these assumptions, we derive the following:

A. That characters not based around rapid and difficult to mitigate damage are suboptimal
B. That characters whose damage is designed to take effect over time are suboptimal when compared to those whose damage is immediate
C. That characters whose damage output is focused are preferable to those whose damage output is spread UNLESS spread damage characters (working alone, or in tandem with similarly designed characters) can generate sufficient damage to annihilate all targets to whom their damage is spread
D. That only the minimum necessary number of characters based around ensuring the survival of the team will be brought
E. That it is preferable to use established and proven builds as opposed to untried and untested ones UNLESS a significant improvement can be shown
F. That utility characters are only of interest if they can prevent damage entirely, rather than merely reducing or delaying it, or if they can increase team damage output more than the addition of yet another damage character

And finally, a definition:

Utility characters are defined as those whose role is to mitigate damage by impeding the enemy in some manner (offensive utility characters), or to assist the team by improving the damage output of offensive characters (support utility characters).

I believe that none of the above will be viewed as controversial by anyone. Correct?

This part might be!

If we take as a given that damage mitigation through death is the most efficient, that players prefer to eliminate rather than reduce incoming damage and that and that as a result utility characters are suboptimal when compared to direct damage characters, then we arrive at the inescapable conclusion that either utility characters must be made more efficient at damage mitigation through death OR that damage mitigation through death must be made less efficient or less rapid.

Anet's proposed changes to the Mesmer class indicate quite clearly that they prefer to make utility characters more efficient at damage mitigation through death. If the goal is merely to increase party composition diversity in terms of which CLASSES are selected, this is a sufficient change and will definitely achieve its limited goal. If, however, the goal is to increase party composition diversity in terms of the ROLES involved in PVE play, it will fail.

If our goal is to increase the role that damage mitigation by offensive utility characters plays in PVE, then we need to make damage mitigation by death less efficient. If our goal is to increase the role that support utility characters play, then we need to make damage dealing characters less efficient. The inescapable conclusion is that utility characters (both offensive and support) will only become of interest to the average team if the time it takes to kill enemies is drastically increased.

An additional element in the necessity for rapid and overwhelming damage output by players is the impossibility of reducing or limiting the ability of NPC characters focused on the survival of their team to perform their role. Increasing the vulnerability of these characters to non-damage based mitigation is a necessary component of increasing the relevance of utility roles.

However, the same could be said of player characters dedicated to the survival of the team, particularly monks. The efficiency and effectiveness of the Monk class in terms of party survival invalidates secondary healers as a viable option and reduces the necessity of offensive utility characters. Reducing the efficiency, or increasing the vulnerability, of healing based classes would go a long way to incentivizing the use of utility characters.

tl;dr: Utility characters can be fixed either by turning them into damage type characters, or raising the average time spent killing an NPC.

Lagg · Apr 28, 2010, 06:21 PM // 18:21

The only possible way a Mesmer would become irreplaceable in PvE is if he could completely shut down entire enemy mobs with 100% efficiency long enough for the rest of the party to kill the mob in question and without requiring any real skill to pull this off.

Totally burn all energy of foe and all adjacent foes, 60 second recharge, for example. At least it would requiring a little mob herding.

Kook~NBK~ · Apr 28, 2010, 06:35 PM // 18:35

Mesmers are fine in PvE and with the upcomuing update, they'll be awesome.

mrmango · Apr 28, 2010, 06:58 PM // 18:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kook~NBK~

Mesmers are fine in PvE and with the upcomuing update, they'll be awesome.

What? 123456

Hong Kong Evil · Apr 28, 2010, 07:19 PM // 19:19

i want to be a 'hero' instead of a team member

for example to create some single player missions, i can fight against some lower level enemies, the main opponent is the boss, or i can use some extremely power pve only skills to massively kill the ememies

it is not farming, you usually use some passive method to kill the enemies in farming. Being a 'hero', you should use some more active way. and you are a hero, you should beat the normal beasts in the forest easily, which can threaten you are the devil bosses or a large pack of enemies

imagine how you kill the enemies in other RPG eg. Diablo2. i know its a different game, but i like to kill enemies in this way. you may say i can travel to some low level area to kill the low level enemise and enjoy the killing, but it's different

if it's not applicable in guildwar1, i wish it's doable in GW2

Kook~NBK~ · Apr 28, 2010, 08:43 PM // 20:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrmango

What? 123456

Sorry, just a reflex.

Chthon · Apr 28, 2010, 09:07 PM // 21:07

3. & C. are wrong. Absent a healer on the other side, whichever does more overall damage is better, and that's usually the AoE option. With a healer present, concerns of (a) spikiness, and (b) overwhelming the AI by giving it enough targets to heal that its poor prioritization allows kills both become issues.

A. is wrong in that it confuses players' mitigation for monsters' mitigation. Monsters generally have little or no mitigation, and you always know before you zone in how to circumvent it if it is present. Ergo, it does not much matter whether player damage is difficult to mitigate. What does matter is whether it's armor-ignoring. But that has nothing to do with mitigation; it's simply a function of HM monsters having such ridiculous armor ratings.

B. I presume you meant to write "over time" in there somewhere.

E. Is both wrong and totally unrelated to everything that came before.

F. Depends on your definition of utility, which I reject.

Your definition of "utility" is an admirable try, but I don't accept it.
As it's used most commonly, "utility" is generally a synonym for "useless crap." You can find a lot of "utility" builds in the Ranger forum posted by people who can't accept that their favorite class is woefully subpar under the current state of balance.
You could try to formulate a meaning of "utility" that encompassed some actually useful builds, but yours is not it. You connect together two mechanics that really belong elsewhere, and leave out the things that could maybe be rightfully called "utility." Mitigation through debuffing the monsters is close kin to mitigation through buffing your allies, and it belongs in the mitigation category generally. There's not a large difference between Aegis and Reckless Haste. Buff builds are damage builds in their own right. People are just confused because the little yellow numbers show up on the wrong screen. If Orders necros got to see the little yellow "17"s that they are causing, a lot more people would run Orders.
So, what does belong in "utility"? You could say (and, though I haven't thought enough about it to make up my mind, I'd be open to consider) that mechanics that are not damage, damage mitigation, or healing can be lumped together as "utility." That means snares, condition removal, hex removal, interruption (arguably), resurrection (arguably), party e-management, etc. constitute "utility."

Now, as for your main point, let me try to bring out the underlying problem a little more clearly. GW is a game that is fundamentally about little red bars. Make the monsters' little red bars empty; don't let yours get empty. Ultimately that lends itself to only 3 fundamental mechanics: damage (make the monsters' red bars go down), damage mitigation (avoid having your red bars go down), and healing (make your red bars go back up). Any other mechanics are going to be inherently secondary in nature, and it's very hard to design in such a way that they are as important to gameplay as the fundamental mechanics. Now for the problem: We've got 10 classes (with 4 skill lines each) and only 3 fundamental mechanics to divide among them. Of course there's going to be a lot of duplication, and, wherever there's duplication, one option is likely to be strictly superior to another.

So, what's the solution for this problem? I don't know that there is one. Dramatically reducing player damage as you suggest might make utility more important, but it would come at the unacceptable cost of making PvE unbearably tedious. I don't want to go VQ 200 monsters in a zone if every mob takes 5 minutes to kill. Your other idea, nerfing healers, sounds terrible given how bad most player healers are right now. I can't imagine a PUG finishing... well... anything at all if healers took a significant nerf.

chuckles79 · Apr 28, 2010, 10:44 PM // 22:44

I define utility players in PvE as paragons, dervishes, and mesmers.
A good blueprint on how to fix this lies with ritualists who used to be utility.
I personally think that paragons need some PvE damage buffs (aka lower cost of anthem of envy) and make spear attacks more powerful.
Dervishes have a great bases (powerful weapon, 4 pips of E) but the skill lineup is completely gimped and underpowered. I liked the Sand Shards buff but they are still lacking the killer skill that will make them meta.
Mesmers were brought out of utility by CoP but they nerfed it because everyone was using it. They should have linked the power to the fast casting att. like TiNtF for imbas. I like the idea the one poster had about AoE energy draining. That would make them a lot more interesting.

chuckles79 · Apr 29, 2010, 01:21 PM // 13:21

news on future updates:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedb...update_preview
apparently everything on my wishlist above is being addressed. So I wasted a few good paragraphs.

Nice to see Anet is back on their A-game now that they want people to play something other than perma-sins