Profession's pigeonholed?

He does have a valid complaint. Arena.net is extremely bad about certain aspects of the game. They don't balance PvE mobs at all. For example enchantment stripping in mobs. Early on next to nothing stripped enchantments and you could solo and farm like nuts. The solution to this is add some enchantment stripping. However Arena.net goes completely nuts when it adds enchantment stripping and enemies spam it quite constantly. Thus rendering any enchantment reliant builds useless. There are very few areas where enchanment stripping is present, but in a moderated amount.

Basically the PvE design helps promote the tanks, monks, and nukes cookie cutter builds. Either an area doesn't have something outside of what this build handles well or whatever it cannot handle is so heavily spammed tossing a single mesmer or necro in really can't contend with it.

I am a proud user of the R/W and i would like to state that i like it for melee much more than any warrior.

ArenaNet, in a future update, please make all the PvE monsters just stand around and not attack anything (particularly mesmers, because gosh isn't it just so annoying when they use their mesmer skills?) so that people who want to make the most creative builds of all can do so freely.

Thank you to thoise who saw what I was actually driving at. those who got stuck on my E/W example, for shame

Orbberius - I have no problem in PvE as it stands, unless I want to try playing as something other than a cookie-cutter build. If I want to try something different, I am stopped in PvE or have to go to huge length's to get around what ANet has done in PvE.

It's sort of sad because I know why they did it - people whined and complained early on about people playing with enchants and making the game too easy for them. There was a plathora of people running around with enchants on them... so ANet in their wisdom tossed in some and then some more and then even more enchant strippers throughout the PvE game. End of problem of people using enchants. Pity it also killed off any thought of doing something different that relied on enchants (ie E/W or smiting monk).

In reality, I used the E/W as an example of how if I play Elementalist I've been pigeonholed into playing a nuker, even though I've been given skills that when combined with Warrior skills can let me play as a melee elementalist. But I can't because of the way the game plays and thus I've been pigeonholed into being a nuker. Same goes for a Mo/W except in certain area's - you try playing a smiting monk who wields a weapon.. not going to work through most of the PvE due to enchant strippers. You'd then have to have covering enchants constently and hope to be able to put them up before the important enchants get stripped.. Same goes for the E/W I mentioned before.

Obsiedion - you see, your thinking is whats made the game the way it is. You only see spell-casters as spell-casters. I look at all the skills and ways of combinign them with other professions and I see other ways to play them, ways which on paper work just fine - albiet with certain failings.. ie no points in strength for my E/W example. however because of the way the game in now, I'm forced to play a spell-caster purely as a spell-caster. I've been pigeonholed.. even though I can see ways of playing different combinations that work based on the combination of skills, they don't work in reality because ANet in their wisdom have made it way, way hard to even try and play as anything other than tank/nuker/healer. pfft!

aron searle - lol sorry mate, I made my post at like 11 pm Which probably explains why I came across so crabby in it .. hehehe

Actually what you said about Mo/r is my point as well. you play as a monk primary.. what else can you do but heal? You've been pigeonholed by public perception and game mechanics. Altho I know a few Mo/x combo's that might actually work and not be "pigeonholed".. but don't ask me what they are.. wouldn't want ANet to nerf them before I tried them out.. hehehehe (and not talking about the standard farming Mo/W either)

UnOrthOdOx - yep, the only way to do it is cover-enchants and pray you'll have the ability to re-cast them when they get stripped so as to not get the all important defense stripped. But that then means carrying what willlikely be a useless skill to you just to make a build work. Oh wells..

octaviancmb - now see, I like you. hehe Your not going out and saying "this won't work! Elementalist's only cast spells!". Your thinking about how you could play this and fit it in with a group. Out-of-the-box thinking. hehehe Seriously tho, it's nice to see someone willing to look at something different and try and find ways of fitting it in without just bashing it because it's not what is "common"

Algren Cole - well said.

lord_guru32 - I'm not talking about PvP. Thats another whole different ball-game compared to PvE, which is what I'm talking about.

Heh, done it again. Yet another long winded post. Thank you to those who are reading my post's. I do appreciate all feedback, even if I disagree or maybe come across like a grouch.. heh

Professions having pigeonholed roles is a great thing. It is a nice way to make professions directly relevant in party formation and gameplay. The ugly alternative is to have professions be limited to defining aesthetic themes and not strategy, and nobody really wants that.

You talk about wanting to avoid cookie-cutter builds, but that is a completely separate issue. It is possible to have pigeonholed profession roles while maintaining a wide variety of builds and playstyles within each one. If you really must have your variety jump outside the pigeonholed role, you should just move on to the correct profession to do so.

To be honest, I feel that the real one pigeonholing you in your examples is you. You want a viable melee fighter that uses magic to generate extra combat advantage -- no problem, it's doable! But when you go to make your build and avoid picking the profession primary devised for that...well, gee, you're on your own then...

In other words, take those profession choices out of your creative identity and save them for the tactical build process, where they belong!

What I want you to grasp is that you DO have the flexibility to play something other than the "normal". And you DO have the ability to try different builds and such - who cares how well they work. It's just that some of them DON'T work well or as well.

It seems to me the title of the thread should be "PvE Enchantment removal - too much?"

While we are on that topic, there are rarely any more than two enchantment strippers in a given group of mobs. Enchantment removal skills tend to have very long recast timers (most of the time longer than the enchantments they remove). Between a group of 6-8 players, and multiple enchantments between you all they can't all be removed at once (well they can with WoTP, it's just very rare in PvE). If you get stripped, just chock it up to bad luck and recast.

Couple things to mention about this post...

1) as many people have said the system is in place so there wont be any profession that can just ultimately screw all of the others. We dont need the warriors to be able to use monk spells and/or elementalist spells to the same avail as the intended main characters.
2) On this note.. you went off on a semi-halfRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed rant here about things that are honestly just YOUR opinion and not fact. Im cool with people's opinion, but when you pass them in a tone of fact that kills it. So statements like a N/mo is useless as your only healing with the monk secondary(is completely incorrect... lets think.. you could be a very hi damage necro/smiter, or amazing protect necro/protect monk), and that goes for every combination. It isnt that the professions are redundant.. you just have to be intelligent and tenacious enough to use them to their fullest extent!

Rezyk - "It is possible to have pigeonholed profession roles while maintaining a wide variety of builds and playstyles within each one. If you really must have your variety jump outside the pigeonholed role, you should just move on to the correct profession to do so."

That to me is the exact definition of being pigeonholed. Being forced to play a certain profession if I want to play a certain way, even if another different profession has skills, that on paper, would let them somewhat match what the "main" profession does.

"To be honest, I feel that the real one pigeonholing you in your examples is you. You want a viable melee fighter that uses magic to generate extra combat advantage -- no problem, it's doable! But when you go to make your build and avoid picking the profession primary devised for that...well, gee, you're on your own then..."

You dsay I'm the one pigeonholing me but then laugh at me for wanting to do things differently and say I'm stupid? Excuse me, but why shouldn't I consider playing outside the box if a profession has the skills to do so?

"In other words, take those profession choices out of your creative identity and save them for the tactical build process, where they belong!"

IE just go and copy all the other cookie-cutter builds and never try to think of anything else and anything different and try and make something unusual to work. Pfft.

Narcissus - mu isue with the enchantment stripping isn't with the enchant stripping itself. It's with the fact that ANet provided a whole slew of skills and there's a whole lotta combinations that you can do, but some of them don't work very well without some luck, a good group or wasted skill space.

I hate PUG's. I've tried them and detested every single one of them. Playing with henchies is solid and dependable. Sure they have issues, but they work. Thing is they don't work as a "team" to cover the flaws of the way PvE works. I know I could make my E/W example work, I'd just have to use 2-3 skill slots to make it work. *shrugs* just takes more work.

Forget the enchantment striupping - maybe using that as an example was a bad idea. How about reading some of the responses in this thread and seeing the general attitude of people - oh no! you can't be anything apart from what your main profession does! They pigeonhole, the general populance of GW does and so do the dev's in ANet. Yes, the enchantment stripping hinder's wacky builds somewhat but your right in that they can be worked around.

But you know what, I thank you. Thank you for responding the way you did and by showing me your thoughts on the matter. I see I might have gone overboard and to extreme - I admit I'm not the greatest player, but I was just expressing the way I felt about the issue - I just felt pigeonholed. Heh, ah wells.. guess I'll just go muddle through the game with my nuker and hopefully eventually finish the game.. and then see if I wanna go through it again.

Oryaka Drake - I was paying attention to you until you wen't off all swearing and ranting and raving. but'll I'll respond.

1. Why not? The game lets you combine 2 professions together, so why shouldn't I be able to play a E/W who does both spell casting and melee? In PvE with henchies I end up in melee range too often as it is anyways (when playing my elementalist).

And as pointed out the E/W is lacking a lot of benefits that the W/E would have. But lets just forgeth that right? I mean it's not like I'm asking for some super duper uber strong character. I just want to play something off-beat and not "cookie cutter".. but according to you anyone who wants that is after uber strong characters? pfft.

2. Please note that everything I said is my OPINION. I believe I made it perfectly clear it was my opinion and thoughts and that I wanted to learn more and see what other people thought/said. I appreciate those who have made constructive comments about what I have been talking about and pointing out where I was wrong or ways to get around issues that I saw. I don't believe I have ever said that what I was posting was "fact" or the only way it is - it was the way I saw things. I also admitted I'm not the smartest player in the game and that there are lots of things I don't know about the game and how to get around them, etc and so on.

eh i know they strip in SF, but if you send in the tank and stay out of aggro range, i rarely get stripped. Sure, its annoying and you remember it, but also remember the other times you didnt get stripped. another thing, wards cant be stripped :-) not as powerful, but beats losing it and taking damage.

Quoted for truth.

I feel your pain, brother, as a healer monk nothing annoys me more then wasting valuable energy on people who think they can tank when they cant and oh, ofcourse, when you actually cannot heal them because they take damage so fast and hard you cant cast against it and die they berate you, the monk, for 'failing to heal' them. Yeah right.

Anyway, back on topic.
Every class has their place in UW, every combo can be made to work but dont expect to be able to create a build that can overpower the game solo, there isnt a way and it has been tried which is as it should be.

But you CAN play the game that way, cant you? That some enemies can put a serious hurt on you is a given, that applies to every profession and profession combo, so recast your enchantments and fall back on being an ele when you come up against enchantment strippers.

As far as I can tell you want to do something that simply isnt possible for any profession, namely to become all powerful, if there were no enchantment strippers then one good protection monk could make a party untouchable, surely that is not what you are asking for, is it?

Don't put words in my mouth; I didn't laugh or say you were stupid or say you shouldn't play outside the box. I applaud your effort to make a creative build, even if it wasn't a success by your standards (and not all of them should be!). My point is that you are insisting on too many details being stuffed into your creative identity -- details that belong as part of the later build process. "My character will melee while magicking up combat advantages" is OK for designing your creative role. "He will also be an E/W" is not; that's a detail inherent to this game's build system (at which point, making the wrong choices OUGHT to stifle your power).

-_- I had already explained how that is not what I am saying. Please stop treating so many counter-arguments as equivalent to "stick with cookie-cutter" for your defense; you are just attacking a straw man and it is exceptionally annoying.

It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation.

i agree with the fact that warriors were ment to be tanks, and most others werent. I understand the monks pain, as a warrior, my job is to run in first and take the brunt of the damage, because I CAN. I HATE it when someone who is NOT a tank runs in first(mesmer,ele,ranger..etc...) and then immediatley bites it because the monk cannot keep up with the massive amounts of damage they are taking. Then they yell at me, because, i didnt get run in and get the attention off them(which is really hard when they run in first), and then the poor monk gets yelled at for not being a good enough healer. And then, after they're rezed, the do it AGAIN. and after a couple times of this, they become nothing more than a temporary and shortlived meat sheild with all the DP they have. But as a warrior/ranger, i can see how a ranger can stay alive better than i might think due to troll and some other useful skills, but by no means should they run in FIRST. Sure, my monk friends love it when i run in first, then everyone else after me, because they've seeded me and it makes their job easier. But a warrior should always be the primary tank, and theres a reason for that. Just as a ranger is designed to use a bow, its not pigeonholeing so much as it is keeping the game balanced. okay, so that was a bit long. done. Oh, and im not attacking you that think you should use your secondary as a primary, its fine to try, im all for finding new, unique ways to play. i just dont like it when people who think they can do things like my little story here fail at it and then blame their party. thats all.

Professions are not only pigeonholed by enchantement strippers but also by players. Play any non-standard mix of professions & you only open yourself up for immature attacks from other players. I would LOVE to mess around with some non-standard profession mixes but if I did so I would never get into a group.

In the arenas I was teamed up with a R/Me, he used a sword and I didn't see an offhand. Our team did fine and given the comments I saw directed at the Ranger I'd say his build was quite effective.

I've never understood why anyone runs in at all. It is so much more effective if people hold a choke point. In PvE I play my warrior as an offensive lineman, my goal is to not let anything get past me. Target a healer that's in the back sure, but let the rangers/necros/mesmers/eles take out the healer. As a monk, I'm 10x more effective with henchmen even with the tanks attacking the healers simply because I don't have to run past 5 mele creatures, into the arms of 5 archers to heal a warrior that ran out of healing range...

Certain skill/profession combinations just work better than others. I don't see how you can alter this fact. Bringing 8 random skills together is not going to be as good as having 8 well-thought-out skills that actually work in the game. Any two character combinations work just fine in the game though (especially in PvE), and there are plenty of possible combinations that presumably work.

Being creative is fine, as long as you can find a combination that works well. Apparently, you're not having much luck, but that's not ANet's fault. Not all combinations work moderately well in the game world, and apparently, you're just not finding the ones that do. I mean, it's PvE... what doesn't work in PvE?

To take it to the extreme, it's kind of rediculous to make a warrior primary that employs only ele spells that cause exhaustion and complain that ANet is pigeonholing you because the warrior profession doesn't have enough energy.

You said it yourself, it's on paper. You can test things and try them out but sometimes they don't work as well. Don't go whining to the world about it.

Also, clearly your paper thought process sucks. Ever read any military strategy book telling you that in formulating a plan to take the opponent into account? Any plan that doesn't do that is more than likely to fail.

You'd get in my group.

You have a fair enough point but consider this, do you really want to team with people who obviously lack the insight to see something creative being done? Even if your build wasnt perfect or great, give it a shot, I say.

I was going to write an intelligent reply to this post but the more I thought about the sillier your argument becomes... and I don't know why no one has pointed this out yet. And since you like long posts here's one right back for you... it's still going to be an intelligent reply, and longer than I mean it to be because there's obviously a lot you don't understand about guild wars, and game balance in general.

Let me get this straight. Your Elementalist has 113AL base with armour of earth compared to a warriors 80AL base... and becomes a far superior tank.

You whine because sometimes there are monsters that remove your armour of earth. I would say, that about 1/3 of all monster mobs in the game are capable of stripping enchantments.. the true number is probably lower. This is just assuming that only mesmers and necros can strip enchants, and that monsters are equally divided into the 6 classes... and that not every mesmer / necro monster has an enchantment strip.

So... 1/3 of the time your Elementalist is a slightly worse tank than a warrior, losing by 20AL. 2/3 of the time, your Elementalist is a far better tank than a warrior... by 33AL.

I don't know about you, or anyone else, but I find this unfair... to the warrior! The warrior should be the one complaining, not you. What a ridiculous argument. If Elementalists could "always" have greater tanking capability and yet 3x the energy of warriors... we are lucky that people like you don't design games.

As it is, sometimes the warrior is better, and sometimes the elemetalist is better. So???

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Second thing : stop complaining about enchant stripping. Enchantments are strong in this game : I hesistate to call them overpowered, but they are a very determining force in this game. In PvP, smite groups are a dominant force - even though players in PvP have access to the same spells that those monsters mobs are using on you. A single player can be outputting 5 or 6 different enchantments at a time, while each "remove enchantment" spell only takes off one... enchantment removal simply cannot keep up. (hint - there is something called "aegis" which gives 50% block to everyone in the party as well as being a covering enchantment... hit one button and suddenly there are 8 enchantments that the enemy has to remove, or most likely, ignore).

Removing enchantments is as integral to this game as dealing damage. You cannot deal damage, you lose. You cannot remove enchantments, you also lose. As someone said before, you might as well ask monsters to stand there and not hit you.

Yes, in PvE you CAN play a team that does not have enchantment removal and spell interrupts. It just gets harder - but the PvE portion of the game was ridiculously easy anyway even the final few missions. Stripping Aura of Faith, Mark of Protection, and other powerful enchantments makes killing certain bosses a piece of cake. We had 8 players all attacking a single boss and he was gaining hp faster than we could kill it - because none of us could strip Aura of Faith from it, or interrupt its orison.

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So in conclusion : yes you can play an E/W. Just be prepared that 1/3 of the time you will have less armour than a Warrior. And if you run 5 enchantments, prepare for 1 to be stripped. And if you run only one... well... Just like if you had 250hp you should prepare to lose 50hp at least when fighting monsters. If you only had 50hp to begin with and then cry foul when you die...

My smiting / protection monk plays perfectly fine to the end of the game, pve. It is a very strong build and i use exclusively enchantments. Sure there are enchantment strippers everywhere, so deal with it. Not being able to deal with combat damage = same thing as not being able to deal with enchantments = same thing as not being able to deal with enchantment removal.

I think your problem is that you see the game only in terms of pure damage and armour which is not what guild wars is about. The game is much deeper than that, and incorporates concepts of enchant / hex removal and control, and there are many ways of neutralizing an enemy besides killing them - in fact, neutralizing an enemy is MORE effective because a dead enemy can simply be ressurected and come back to kill you.

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PS> Let me show you a few builds that are hardly pigeonholed, off the top of my head.

R/E -> not using bow or pet, I hold an Earth Staff to gain extra energy. High levels of Expertise, Wilderness and Earth Magic - I use 4 traps and 2 wards both offensively and defensively, to slow down and cripple the opponents movement and fighting ability. Whirling Defense makes sure I don't get interrupted while setting traps right under the noses of my opponents, and wards make sure they can't hit me and can't run away. Very fun build to play - high expertise makes traps cost very little mana (4 mana for my elite trap) and damage output can be high when monsters (or real life players for that matter) don't or can't get out of my way.

E/Mo -> can make superb healers. what they lack in terms of divine favour they make for with Ether Renewal being such a strong energy management skill. The have practically infinite energy and healing compared to monks.

Your definition of "pigeonhole" in fact is too narrow. If you consider the "role" you play in the party each profession has a huge range of playstyles. Necros can play damage dealers... support melee in damage.... support casters with energy.. support healing... strip enemy enchantments... summoner... tank... how is this being "pigeonholed" when you have so many choices? If your definition of pigeonhole is being put into 1 of 2 categories (melee or spellcasters) then it's not a pigeonhole, it's a freaking warehouse. If a necro could ONLY play as a summoner then yes you have a valid complaint.