70 replies to this topic

[CepaCepa]

Ninja Battle Lion, on 24 January 2013 - 06:16 PM, said:

IMHO the most frustrating sensation in Fractals is being overwhelmed because things just don't die fast enough. I'm fine wih people building in some defense - my Warrior has 20 Tactics atm, and I don't run full Berserker (yay Cavalier stats!) - but too often I see only my own blows having somewhat decent effect on mobs. Makes me wanna rage...

I completely agree. In high level fractals the strength of each profession starts to show, more importantly everyone need to start thinking maximizing damage while retaining the key defensive/support abilities that they have. For example, if a mesmer is going into a lvl 60 fractal with full soldier gear/accessories and less than 40 points in dueling/domination, he better have some good reasons for doing so. If a guardian goes into a lvl 60 fractal and for the whole duration doesn't have wall of reflection/avenging shield equipped, he has some explanations to do as well.

Not to sound like a douche, I mean no one will complain if things go smoothly, and for pre-made groups these are almost always none issues --- You know who's the single target cannon, who's the aoe machine, who's the group support and who's the fastest rezzer in your team. But with pugging and none ideal group composition, you really can't be sure of that, so everyone should at least try to find that best point between group utility/survival and personal dps. Since groups always start with underwater or swamp now, you can't always tell how much dps your group does until at least the 2nd or sometimes the 3rd fractal, so even for the defensively specced people, I think at least bringing a berserker/rampager set with you just in case is always good practice.

Edited by CepaCepa, 24 January 2013 - 09:59 PM.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Arquenya, on 24 January 2013 - 04:34 PM, said:

I just don't have the impression that all attacks can actually be dodged. Sometimes when some boss is after you, you're just running out of dodges or the red circle carpets are so large that one dodge can't get you out.

In my experience attacks in this game tend to fall into one of two types:

1) Big "OHKO" attacks.  This is usually what people are referring to when they say "just dodge."  You can avoid these pretty easily by dodging, blocking, etc. and the tells are usually obvious.  Pumping armor and vitality MAY help you survive one of these hits, but you may still die and either way they're usually pretty easy to avoid.  Basically anything with an obvious red circle.

2) Small unavoidable attacks.  Usually comes from mobs or are basic attacks from bosses.  There's not much telegraph and they're relatively hard to avoid, but also don't really do enough damage to kill you even as a glass cannon so long as you react accordingly.  You can usually heal or regen through them pretty easily.  Having extra survivability will make you take longer to drop from such attacks but you will also take much longer to kill the mobs in general, so in aggregate you're not really reducing the amount of damage you take.

[GammaWolf]

Classes that do well building vit, toughness and healing power: Guardian, Ele, Warrior (shouts heal or banners) because they can be tanky but also provide a lot of great team benefits.

Everyone else should probably be going berserker or condition damage with stun breaker / cond removal / vigor / reflection skills for defense with maybe some vit or toughness mixed in.

I know a lot of people may disagree, but building a cleric or soldier geared theif / ranger / mesmer / engineer would likely hold the party back as they all have enough defensive traits and utilities to keep them alive most of the time.

Edited by GammaWolf, 24 January 2013 - 10:20 PM.

[Elysen]

GammaWolf, on 24 January 2013 - 10:19 PM, said:

Classes that do well building ...healing power: Guardian....

GammaWolf, on 24 January 2013 - 10:19 PM, said:

Everyone else should probably be going berserker or condition damage with stun breaker / cond removal / vigor / reflection skills for defense with maybe some vit or toughness mixed in.

I know a lot of people may disagree, but building a cleric or soldier geared theif / ranger / mesmer / engineer would likely hold the party back as they all have enough defensive traits and utilities to keep them alive most of the time.

I haven't done the theorycrafting, but I believe a Rabid (Cond/Prec/Tough) is actually the highest DPS for a Necromancer, condition built at least. The defense is just a bonus.

Edited by Xephenon, 24 January 2013 - 11:29 PM.

[dawdler]

GammaWolf, on 24 January 2013 - 10:19 PM, said:

Classes that do well building vit, toughness and healing power: Guardian, Ele, Warrior (shouts heal or banners) because they can be tanky but also provide a lot of great team benefits.

Do well? Healing power scale very poorly. With NO healing gear whatsoever a Warrior shout heal around 1400. If you start stacking healing power you get like... 2000 instead. Not worth it for the high loss of offensive power. For banners its even worse. A healing power banner healing Warrior is totally worthless next to any other class that apply regen, since it only stack time.

Edited by dawdler, 25 January 2013 - 08:49 AM.

[Symbiont]

i come to a realisation i need to BOOT most of the glass-cannon players from my party, specifically warriors and thieves, because they end up getting down more than actually doing good dps.
(playing a thief myself, non-glass-cannon)

however in late fractals when agony will hit so hard your defences doesn't even matter, this changes the game quite a bit.
(actually it's just bad game design, it's true arenanet)

[Cannot See Me]

Symbiont, on 25 January 2013 - 10:25 AM, said:

i come to a realisation i need to BOOT most of the glass-cannon players from my party, specifically warriors and thieves, because they end up getting down more than actually doing good dps.
(playing a thief myself, non-glass-cannon)

A very general statement, but I can see where you are coming from. A successful pure dps requires a complete knowledge of encounters to be successful, which for most players isn't the case. This is more of a skill based issue more than anything else, but I agree you can make judgements based on most of the majority of player base instead of the actual usefulness of a class or playstyle. That said, on the flip side, pure DPS is totally viable, even optimal in 95% of the current group PvE contents (dungeons), simply because the basic gameplay mechanics (mainly dodge) provide enough damage mitigation that makes additional survivability unecessary. I have mentioned earlier in this post that higher dps is never a waste, but excessive survivability is definitely a waste.

It is true that a dps that wipes the floor most of the fight is useless, but so is a pure tank that has his health full, healing and defensive utilities on cooldown for most of the fight. Simply "not dying" does not mean a successful player.

Symbiont, on 25 January 2013 - 10:25 AM, said:

however in late fractals when agony will hit so hard your defences doesn't even matter, this changes the game quite a bit.
(actually it's just bad game design, it's true arenanet)

I will have to totally disagree here. First of all, agony should be treated as an entirely different entity once you get to level 40+. It is something that should be completely avoid. You might as well see you have 0 agony resistance and take it as a one-shot mechanic. As for weather toughness/vitality are useful, it really depends on the class and the role. There are many ways to mitigate damage, you can build for endless endurance, or you can build on toughness and vitatlity to be able to take more grunt, it's all situational. What I can say is a pure glass cannon group won't be successful in later fractals, same as fully defensive teams.

As for the design, I won't comment on where the base design of fractals are good. But I will say this, with my experience levelling up in fractals, this is the only place so far where I see classes truely playing to their strength in PvE. In my opinion there is a extreme lack of challenging content in GW2, save fractals, which is still quite limited in this sense. What this resulted is a convergence of playstyle regardless of the actual profession. But fractals changed that, even though some difficulty are cheap difficulty, but you can actually see the profession diverging from their previous playstyles. This is where the problems with the usefulness of classes are exposed, and this is where Arenanet could get some real insight into future PvE content design.

[CepaCepa]

Cannot See Me, on 25 January 2013 - 09:02 PM, said:

But fractals changed that, even though some difficulty are cheap difficulty, but you can actually see the profession diverging from their previous playstyles. This is where the problems with the usefulness of classes are exposed, and this is where Arenanet could get some real insight into future PvE content design.

I second this. For example, it is more than obvious that they need to do something about Necro + all three medium armor professions, and you wouldn't arrive at this conclusion without going deep into fractals (as apparent from the number of thieves/rangers in the game).

And I gotta say, the jumpy playstyle is quite fun, in a mario brothers or action game style. You get hit, you die, unless you pressed your emergency buttons fast enough. Twitchy, but I guess I got used to Diablo III zombie bear spam with no defensive stats. XD

[kyodokami]

I was having the hardest time adapting to dungeons as a glass cannon, but I stuck with it and am now finding myself out surviving more "tanky" geared players.  I still occasionally get whacked by something I could have avoided, but that happens less and less as I gain more experience as a player.  I also noting massive spikes in damage on the mobs that I am damaging, speeding up combat and quickly turning the number of mobs vs my group into our favor.  I have often wanted to just give up playing my glass cannon Mesmer and pick back up on my anchor Guardian, but when you have those little moments of survival where you have failed once before as a glass cannon, it keeps you coming back because you know you're improving.  It is my opinion that you are gimping yourself and your group if you are focusing on playing a damage role and not maximizing damage, calling out focus targets, and bringing a little utility in every build.  In GW2, DPS role isn't the easy role like in WoW, or any other strict trinity game.  DPS in GW2 is much more dynamic, difficult, consequential, and requires more attention to the environment.  Tunnel vision in games like WoW = The healer is mad at you. Tunnel vision in GW2 = eating dirt.  I quite like it.

[Xunlai Agent]

You should be playing full glass cannon DPS in full zerker in every single instance of PvE. There is no area of the world that requires you to wear tank gear and in high level fractals you will get fried, no questions asked even if you stacked toughness and vitality like there was no tomorrow. Using tank gear and tanky traits is a crutch that you should eventually outgrow, though many people never will - but that's a sad fact for every walk of life. There is simply no area of Tyria where you need to be wearing armor that grants toughness, vitality or healing power right now. There are videos of glass cannons sledge hammering through every single dungeon in the game at eye watering pace, try to emulate that. The best players that are setting all the speedrun records are all glass cannons, that's the truth. Objectively glass cannons are the best build in the game right now irrespective of your class and there is not a single video of a non-DPS group doing something better or faster than any decent DPS team. Those are the facts, take them or leave them but don't deny them...

[jthamind]

does anybody here run glass cannon d/d ele in dungeons? if so, how does it work? my ele has knights armor and zerker accessories, plus the 30 points in water, so while i can't take many hits, i can still weather a few if i screw up. but would it be worth it to go full glass and risk being downed in a single hit, two at the most?

i'm all for the challenge, but i just want to know if the tradeoff is even worth it, since eles aren't damage powerhouses anyways (outside of the hammer build).