Curse

Sarevok Thordin · Sep 05, 2007, 02:31 AM // 02:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Age

The only thing I disagreed with is a Warrior being called a Tank which they aren't.They are Warriors plain solid damage dealers as they are referred to in PvP .

In PvP, a human mind will not just stand there whacking on a warrior while the casters happily keep him covered.

In PvE, they may will just do that if you setup right, thus why they are referred to as tanks here.

YunSooJin · Sep 05, 2007, 05:39 AM // 05:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

For much of the lower-level areas of NM, passive defense is less relevant. As far as many elite areas are concerned, as well as Hard Mode itself, it becomes more important - as the potential ability of the monsters to punish lack of defense becomes more apparent.

I don't even really think 'lower level' areas are alone in not needing anything but the holy trinity.

I can hench alone or with friends pretty much any part in the game with the holy trinity. Why would you bother bringing defense or interrupts when the monsters just die anyways?

But yeah, the elite missions, and Hard Mode definitely underline the effectiveness of the classes outside of the holy trinity. However, outside of the harder areas/Hard Mode, there isn't any logical reason to deviate from the holy trinity.

Its cliche, but the best defense is a good offense. Until the offense isn't enough to tide you over, which means you'll have to be defensive =p. But you should explore maximum offensive possibilities first, which entails packing the greatest punch, before you go about finding compromises or downright defensive measures (ie SS nec will disable+damage, MM will damage + absorb damage, ranger will shut down casters, mesmer will disable/shutdown, paragons provide passive defense and dmg, etc).

The other key element is speed. If I decide to go 1 warrior, 5 eles and 2 monks, as long as the elementalists mow everything down quickly, there's no need for an SS, or a mesmer, or a ranger, or a MM, who's sources of damage are more time based. All you need is some general ball-up from the warrior, and then everything is dead in two seconds flat. A lot of people advocate mindless diversity, as if advocating diversity automatically made them correct. Diversity might be fun, but it sure isn't efficient. The most time efficient method of damage is just straight up direct damage, and that would mean elementalists.

zwei2stein · Sep 05, 2007, 07:51 AM // 07:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by YunSooJin

The other key element is speed. If I decide to go 1 warrior, 5 eles and 2 monks, as long as the elementalists mow everything down quickly, there's no need for an SS, or a mesmer, or a ranger, or a MM, who's sources of damage are more time based. All you need is some general ball-up from the warrior, and then everything is dead in two seconds flat. A lot of people advocate mindless diversity, as if advocating diversity automatically made them correct. Diversity might be fun, but it sure isn't efficient. The most time efficient method of damage is just straight up direct damage, and that would mean elementalists.

That is not that fast is at sounds, your warrior has time to ball up mobs, wait a seccond to make sure aggro stays. All that outside monk aggro. That costs precious time.

Once he dies or mismanages, all hell breaks loose as OP pointed out and your loss of efectiveness is greatly reduced as you eles start to die. You have little to deal with bosses who live long enough to retarget. If you face popups or get double teamed, your eles start to die. Deaths cost time too.

Besides that, GG when you find fire resitant enemies.

---

Also, you dont seem to understant one thing: Duality teams offence does not necesarily suck.

Its matter of choice if you go 100% offence or if you are defensive. You can mow down stuff faster than eles and have enough utility to crack harder foes.

And there are way WAY better combos than 5 fire eles for damage - especially for clumped targets.

Look up theese skills:

* Mark of Pain (SS damage sucks badly when you compare it to what this does in organized group.

* Splinter Weapon

They can both mop down any mob in second flat, without any lengthy preparations

Surena · Sep 05, 2007, 08:10 AM // 08:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarevok Thordin

The underused classes are generally the more complex ones. Yet you tend to find them in the more complex game alot, called PvP.

Maybe it says something about the general PvE PuG lot?

This is pure arrogance, as if playing a game in the most complex or most efficient/resilient manner speaks of high intelligence and competence. It's a way to prove how better and holier you are while forgetting that most people just play the game the way they want because they want to have fun and not maximize some virtual efficiency.

I'm for competent and hardy setups, I like Avarre's article and prefer well-established teams (if Rob would not afk in the few hourse I have :P ) but trying to look down upon all those who are not trying to approach Guild Wars scientifically isn't helping. There should be more calls for coordinated PUGs, this forum for sure has a section for that. It might lessen the outcries about randoms. =>

YunSooJin · Sep 05, 2007, 08:30 PM // 20:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

That is not that fast is at sounds, your warrior has time to ball up mobs, wait a seccond to make sure aggro stays. All that outside monk aggro. That costs precious time.

Once he dies or mismanages, all hell breaks loose as OP pointed out and your loss of efectiveness is greatly reduced as you eles start to die. You have little to deal with bosses who live long enough to retarget. If you face popups or get double teamed, your eles start to die. Deaths cost time too.

Besides that, GG when you find fire resitant enemies.

---

Also, you dont seem to understant one thing: Duality teams offence does not necesarily suck.

Its matter of choice if you go 100% offence or if you are defensive. You can mow down stuff faster than eles and have enough utility to crack harder foes.

And there are way WAY better combos than 5 fire eles for damage - especially for clumped targets.

Look up theese skills:

* Mark of Pain (SS damage sucks badly when you compare it to what this does in organized group.

* Splinter Weapon

They can both mop down any mob in second flat, without any lengthy preparations

Apparently it is you who doesn't get it =P.

I would change my build accordingly in areas where I believe my casters would die. Full on offensive power isn't effective if they die. I actually play the warrior, and I don't even bother balling the monsters up. As long as the monks currently on the team can handle the aggro, the monsters will be relatively clumped up. The AoE spam will catch and kill them... especially if the AoE spam is interspersed throughout the party.

Mark of Pain and Splinter weapon aren't actually frontal damage. Splinter weapon is only exceptionally good with barrage, which requires better balling (the aoe for barrage isn't that great) and mark of pain is even more situational than anything else.

I'll repeat myself, since you seem to have difficulty understanding:

I want to be as fast as possible while ensuring the highest possible chance of completion. If the enemies are laughable (ie all non super-dungeon areas) then there's no need for the defense. There's no point in bringing defense/damage mitigation that will be used minimally. Most monster problems can be countered with pulling along a wall and forcing them to ball up that way.

The ONLY problem with full-on offense is when your party cannot kill the enemy quickly. Of course, if I recognize there to be a problem, I will switch out from full-on offense and swap some elementalists for more disable type henchmen.

Tijger · Sep 05, 2007, 10:02 PM // 22:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

Note: This is my opinion to be discussed, if you do not agree then I don't really care unless you can explain why.

Paragons rock in PvE, on the rare occasion I sacrifice a Paragon hero its out of dire necessity, the combination of both defensive and offensive buffs, especially in areas previously unexplored is simply unmatched by other classes imho. Not to mention that bloody general seems to be alive when everything else is dead!

The trinity is alive and well but with an 8 man setup there's room for at least 2 other classes (if you go 2-2-2), I firmly believe that a Paragon should be one of those.

As for efficiency..well..I play GW for fun and this is more fun to me, always has been, I've done countless Tombs runs and all with balanced parties because its just more fun and gives more players a chance.

Nemo the Capitalist · Sep 05, 2007, 10:52 PM // 22:52

Good article great arguement............will it change people's opionions of Paragons.......................................... .................................................. ..............Most likely not ....
but u converted me

not many grps willing to get into multi niche grps. TRINITY is well known and well stay that way

Ensign · Sep 05, 2007, 10:58 PM // 22:58

It comes down to how many jobs you want to assign each individual player. The best thing tanknspank has going for it is that all of the characters are single purpose. The tank is responsible for nothing other than rounding up mobs and holding aggro. Eles are responsible for nothing other than AoE damage. Monks do red bars. This is effective because of how much it simplifies gameplay. A weaker player you pick up is better served by this sort of build because he only has one job to do. Better players get to refine and start to master their single purpose.

Tanknspank is a one trick build. It handles every situation in exactly the same way. Depending on what you are facing, different skills might need to be swapped in to make your strategy work. The greatest strength of tanknspank is that some version of it works on every mob if executed correctly.

The weakness of the archtype is that if you don't have the right version of the build for the mobs you're facing, or if there are errors in execution, the build lacks any sort of flexibility to handle those situations, and the overall power of the builds, outside of ideal cases, is very low. Usually if things don't go right you end up having to wipe and recover via Rebirth.

When you start allowing each character to perform more than one job, things start to open up quite a bit. This gets into what Avarre is talking about in the original topic. When your offense serves defensive purposes as well, you get to add more offense into your build, letting you blow through things faster...in addition, you gain a much heartier defense, since several characters contribute a little bit to the overall party defense. Similarly, you remove single points of failure through all the redundant offense and defense.

The best thing about playing multifunctional characters is the feeling that you have the ability to do something, to respond to situations. Playing in typical tanknspank, my character is usually very good in ideal situations, but if anything goes wrong I am helpless to do anything about it. Most of the characters in those builds work the same way. When anything unexpected happens, your characters are all bad, and you usually have little choice but to run away, wipe if necessary, and reset everything to try again. With a bunch of robust characters and tools instead, every player has something to respond to situations with, allowing you to adapt on the fly. As you get better this gives you enormous margins for error - which lets you play faster, looser, and generally blast through mobs faster to reach your goals.

Age · Sep 06, 2007, 02:08 AM // 02:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarevok Thordin

In PvP, a human mind will not just stand there whacking on a warrior while the casters happily keep him covered.

In PvE, they may will just do that if you setup right, thus why they are referred to as tanks here.

I don't usually play it that way though as i switch targets got use to this after the AI changed when they scattered in any event I will switching around targets

Dirty Savage · Sep 06, 2007, 02:45 AM // 02:45

Kudos to you, Avarre, on a thoughtful and well-written post.

Trub · Sep 06, 2007, 02:57 AM // 02:57

(Kudos to you, Avarre, on a thoughtful and well-written post. )
^What he said..

You set yourself to a daunting task, and helped alot of players to understand the possibilities available to them.
*applause*
_____________
PvE Helpful Hint #2994: The White Mantle is NOT your fireplace..><

pork soldier · Sep 06, 2007, 02:58 AM // 02:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

With regards to party setup, the use of passive defense integrated with damage characters expands the ‘effective’ classes considerably. Rather than being classified in the groups of Tank, Nuker, or Healer, the scope of Offense/Passive Defense and Healer covers a much wider spectrum of classes and builds, most notably including the Paragon at the center. Overlapping roles also creates a higher level of redundancy in larger parties, making the group less likely to break if specific components are removed from connection errors or enemy disruption. Ensuring that each character has at least one skill that helps a character of the party other than itself results in a group that is, overall, more capable. Removing a single damage spell from one character is relatively inconsequential when compared to the benefits adding a Ward results in.

While the Trinity remains significantly effective in terms of group creation, the continual addition of new passive defense skills makes the Duality of coherent passive defense on an offensive structure in many cases more resilient, more capable in varying situations, less likely to break, and easier to run for less experienced players.

If you've read anything Izzy's written recently you'll realize why this entire chunk of your thesis is totally invalid.

The designers have decided that passive defense is bad for GvG and thus bad for the game, which is why you'll see a pattern of nerfs to passive skills and buffs to active ones.

edit:

I should add that dual purpose offense (ie: spiteful + reckless) isn't passive defense, it's offense and shutdown combined.

YunSooJin · Sep 06, 2007, 04:43 AM // 04:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

It comes down to how many jobs you want to assign each individual player. The best thing tanknspank has going for it is that all of the characters are single purpose. The tank is responsible for nothing other than rounding up mobs and holding aggro. Eles are responsible for nothing other than AoE damage. Monks do red bars. This is effective because of how much it simplifies gameplay. A weaker player you pick up is better served by this sort of build because he only has one job to do. Better players get to refine and start to master their single purpose.

Tanknspank is a one trick build. It handles every situation in exactly the same way. Depending on what you are facing, different skills might need to be swapped in to make your strategy work. The greatest strength of tanknspank is that some version of it works on every mob if executed correctly.

The weakness of the archtype is that if you don't have the right version of the build for the mobs you're facing, or if there are errors in execution, the build lacks any sort of flexibility to handle those situations, and the overall power of the builds, outside of ideal cases, is very low. Usually if things don't go right you end up having to wipe and recover via Rebirth.

When you start allowing each character to perform more than one job, things start to open up quite a bit. This gets into what Avarre is talking about in the original topic. When your offense serves defensive purposes as well, you get to add more offense into your build, letting you blow through things faster...in addition, you gain a much heartier defense, since several characters contribute a little bit to the overall party defense. Similarly, you remove single points of failure through all the redundant offense and defense.

The best thing about playing multifunctional characters is the feeling that you have the ability to do something, to respond to situations. Playing in typical tanknspank, my character is usually very good in ideal situations, but if anything goes wrong I am helpless to do anything about it. Most of the characters in those builds work the same way. When anything unexpected happens, your characters are all bad, and you usually have little choice but to run away, wipe if necessary, and reset everything to try again. With a bunch of robust characters and tools instead, every player has something to respond to situations with, allowing you to adapt on the fly. As you get better this gives you enormous margins for error - which lets you play faster, looser, and generally blast through mobs faster to reach your goals.

Just curious Ensign, but would you agree that Tanknspank these days is appropriate for most PvE content? (ie even if the tank loses all the aggro it doesnt matter anyway) Therefore, since 'tanknspank' probably has the most amount of skills devoted to just killing the enemy, it would also be more useful than a more diverse group/skillset for most PvE content?

Avarre · Sep 06, 2007, 05:29 AM // 05:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by pork soldier

If you've read anything Izzy's written recently you'll realize why this entire chunk of your thesis is totally invalid.

The designers have decided that passive defense is bad for GvG and thus bad for the game, which is why you'll see a pattern of nerfs to passive skills and buffs to active ones.

Which doesn't change the fact that the amount of passive defense from Prophecies -> EoTN has increased. What is your point?

Dr Strangelove · Sep 06, 2007, 06:43 AM // 06:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by YunSooJin

Mark of Pain and Splinter weapon aren't actually frontal damage. Splinter weapon is only exceptionally good with barrage, which requires better balling (the aoe for barrage isn't that great) and mark of pain is even more situational than anything else.

The real bonus of mark of pain and splinter is that they're only one skill slot. A rit spamming splinter weapon has 7 other slots with which to put together a pretty darned strong defense, so you don't have to rely on splinter working nicely in the first place. It's an awesome tool that instagibs anything that balls up, if they don't, that's fine, you have a whole bag of tricks leftover. Oh, and splinter on your melees > splinter on barragers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by YunSooJin

I want to be as fast as possible while ensuring the highest possible chance of completion. If the enemies are laughable (ie all non super-dungeon areas) then there's no need for the defense. There's no point in bringing defense/damage mitigation that will be used minimally. Most monster problems can be countered with pulling along a wall and forcing them to ball up that way.

To be fair, if the monsters are lame enough that you're never in danger of dying, just about any offense will do. What matters are the builds you bring when your abilities are stressed. True, you can compensate for your utter lack of defense with careful pulling, but you could go a heck of a lot faster if your build was capable of blasting through everything without a second thought.

It's really, really rare that a character's offense is so important that they can't spare a single skill slot to make a more resilient, dynamic character. Splashing watch yourself on a warrior, or aegis on an ele provides extremely powerful group defense at really low cost, while still maintaining a strong offense.

SotiCoto · Sep 06, 2007, 12:34 PM // 12:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Oh, and splinter on your melees > splinter on barragers.

[skill]Splinter Weapon[/skill]

Plus

[skill]Cyclone Axe[/skill] or [skill]Triple Chop[/skill] or [skill]Hundred Blades[/skill]

Equals

Sex.

I'm strongly considering phasing out my Nuker tendencies in favour of Rits with Splinter Weapon casting on myself / Minions / Jora.
Minion Bomber Rit + Spirits / Splinter Weapon + Morgahn? Wait... no room for Jora. I need a place for +size boobs in the party.

YunSooJin · Sep 06, 2007, 02:04 PM // 14:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

It's really, really rare that a character's offense is so important that they can't spare a single skill slot to make a more resilient, dynamic character. Splashing watch yourself on a warrior, or aegis on an ele provides extremely powerful group defense at really low cost, while still maintaining a strong offense.

My argument is that for most of GW PvE you don't NEED to be more resilient at all. You don't even need careful pulling. You just need lots of damage and nothing else.

Why have a more 'resilient' skillbar when there is no need for it?

Dr Strangelove · Sep 06, 2007, 05:10 PM // 17:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by SotiCoto

[skill]Splinter Weapon[/skill]

Plus

[skill]Cyclone Axe[/skill] or [skill]Triple Chop[/skill] or [skill]Hundred Blades[/skill]

Equals

Sex.

I'm strongly considering phasing out my Nuker tendencies in favour of Rits with Splinter Weapon casting on myself / Minions / Jora.
Minion Bomber Rit + Spirits / Splinter Weapon + Morgahn? Wait... no room for Jora. I need a place for +size boobs in the party.

Sadly, the hero rit is a moron, so you really have to have a human rit. Unless you want your monks splintered for some unknown reason. I'm currently running myself as a rit, Koss as a triple chop/cyclone axe warrior, and melonnia as a reaper's sweep derv. Things die. Fast. Significantly faster than with SF, actually.

Quote:

Originally Posted by YunSooJin

Why have a more 'resilient' skillbar when there is no need for it?

Because you tend to increase your team's DPS, get rid of all the time spent pulling, have tools to deal with situations where everything goes FUBAR, and you generally kick all sorts of ass.

DPS goes up because you're able to pack some offense on characters that would otherwise spend all their time staring at red bars.

You don't have to round up the monsters in neat little piles, because they're going to die without hurting you anyway. you just charge in, and everything dies.

It's really important to bring resilient groups to areas you don't know, especially in GWEN in which the dungeons have all sorts of gimmicks not solved by tank + nuke, at least not without some tweaks.

YunSooJin · Sep 06, 2007, 05:19 PM // 17:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Because you tend to increase your team's DPS, get rid of all the time spent pulling, have tools to deal with situations where everything goes FUBAR, and you generally kick all sorts of ass.

DPS goes up because you're able to pack some offense on characters that would otherwise spend all their time staring at red bars.

You don't have to round up the monsters in neat little piles, because they're going to die without hurting you anyway. you just charge in, and everything dies.

It's really important to bring resilient groups to areas you don't know, especially in GWEN in which the dungeons have all sorts of gimmicks not solved by tank + nuke, at least not without some tweaks.

You're not answering my question though. My question states 'Why run a resilient bar when there is no need for it?'.

If I don't need a resilient bar to kill enemies or pull, then what justification is there against me packing on as much damage as possible with little or no defense with the exception of two monks?

If I have a fully offensive team that won't die in the area I'm using them in, then I don't need a mesmer, or a paragon. They're just a waste of time.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that classes outside of the holy trinity are not always the best choice. Many people here understandably whine and moan about the trinity, but it's getting to the point where people are now advocating with the same mindless idiocy the idea of 'anti-trinity', in the same way those stupid PUGs insist upon the trinity.

There are instances where the holy trinity is much better than anything else in the game. Furthermore, these instances are fairly common (ie most of GW PvE). The only time the trinity fails to shine are in areas where their damage output overwhelms the measly defense the typical trinity group has - these are where alternative classes really begin to shine.

zwei2stein · Sep 06, 2007, 05:40 PM // 17:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by YunSooJin

You're not answering my question though. My question states 'Why run a resilient bar when there is no need for it?'.

If I don't need a resilient bar to kill enemies or pull, then what justification is there against me packing on as much damage as possible with little or no defense with the exception of two monks?

If I have a fully offensive team that won't die in the area I'm using them in, then I don't need a mesmer, or a paragon. They're just a waste of time.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that classes outside of the holy trinity are not always the best choice. Many people here understandably whine and moan about the trinity, but it's getting to the point where people are now advocating with the same mindless idiocy the idea of 'anti-trinity', in the same way those stupid PUGs insist upon the trinity.

There are instances where the holy trinity is much better than anything else in the game. Furthermore, these instances are fairly common (ie most of GW PvE). The only time the trinity fails to shine are in areas where their damage output overwhelms the measly defense the typical trinity group has - these are where alternative classes really begin to shine.

What you dont understant that people advocate it because it is more effective, not because it is "anti trinity". If trinity was best, i would be here advocating it.

You sacrifice no offence at all (on contrary, you gain a lot of it thought diversifiying your options and using stuff that amplifies other character offence, but ever since you proclaimed park of pain too situational, i have no hope that you will understand).

You gain ability to deal with situations and enemies where trinity fails. And trinity fails for way more reasons than just tank and monks being outdpsed. loss of aggro, popup enemies, patrols...

It is all about fact that there is no reason NOT to take that defence. You sacrifice nothing, you compromise nothing.

There is no reason to run tank-nuke when your criteria for perfect build are speed and efectiveness of enemy dispatching.