ON the efficacy of ANET’s PvE skill rebalancing & high end area PUG team formation …

NOTE TO MODERATOR: please move this thread to a forum you feel is most appropriate. All comments welcome/encouraged

The following text is merely generalization. There are always exceptions to generalizations. Accordingly, examples can be shown as contradictory to the observations & inferences in this text. Still, the author urges readers to got to any high end outpost and observe the ads in party formation window…

Premise:
Unless you’re a farmer or Hero Battle player, Guildwars is inherently a Co-op game & there is ACTUALLY a community of part-time players that rely on PUG teams to play high end areas.

As this article relates to PUG team formation, ALL PvE skill rebalancing reference to farming (solo, 2 man, 3 man etc) is INTENTIONALLY excluded & accordingly focuses on FULL PUG teams for high end mission completion solely. Excluding farming, a PRESUMED “primary” intent of PvE skill rebalancing is to create a balanced game where ALL character classes/professions can form a team with a “reasonable” chance for mission success. Team formation either occurs either within friend/guild/alliance structure or via PUG. Examine the recent history of skill changes on the effect of PUG formation & assess some interesting observations to verify whether the following hypothesis has ANY validity.

Hypothesis:
Skill rebalancing impacts PUG team formation, specifically for high end areas (UW, FOW, DOA, SLAVERS, TOMBS, etc…). For the sake of efficiency, the “player community” subsequently responds to rebalancing by limiting builds to cookie cutter structure. By inference, the rebalancing effect ANET has introduced is to discourage variety in high end area PUG team formation. The author presumes this effect is either intentional or that ANET doesn’t really understand the nuances underlying “player psyche” and impact on PUG team formation.

PUG Team Observations:

Pre-URSAN era (or before it became commonplace)

High End Area UW
Typical PUG Team make up Holy Trinity: 1terra tank, 2 heal, 5 nuker
Typical NM Clear duration about 2 hrs
Notes/comments Oodles of solo, 2 man, 3 man farming, trapping etc…

High End Area TOMBS
Typical PUG Team make up Barrage Pet: 5 BP, 2 N, 1 Mo
Typical NM Clear duration less than 1 ½ hr
Notes/comments Balanced PUGs virtually non existent

High End Area SLAVERS EXILE
Typical PUG Team make up Holy Trinity: 1 OF tank, 2 healers, 5 nukers (with FS)
Typical NM Clear duration less than 2 hrs
Notes/comments Full Run virtually non existent, most PUGS were focused on one boss at a time

High End Area DOA
Typical PUG Team make up Holy Trinity: 1OF tank, 2 heal, 5 nuker
Typical NM Clear duration about 2 ½ hrs
Notes/comments Many “elite” players only wanted to team with those having high LB rank



During URSAN era

High End Area UW
Typical PUG Team make up 6 URSAN & 2 Healers
Typical NM Clear duration less than 1 ½ hr (with cons)
Notes/comments (NOTE ALL PROFESSIONS COULD JOIN AS LONG AS THEY RAN URSAN). However, many “elite” players only wanted to team with those having high Norn rank & high armor &/or stonefist insignia

High End Area TOMBS
Typical PUG Team make up 6 URSAN & 2 Healers
Typical NM Clear duration less than 1 ½ hr (with cons)
Notes/comments (NOTE ALL PROFESSIONS COULD JOIN AS LONG AS THEY RAN URSAN). However, many “elite” players only wanted to team with those having high Norn rank & high armor &/or stonefist insignia

High End Area SLAVERS EXILE
Typical PUG Team make up 6 URSAN & 2 Healers (with FS)
Typical NM Clear duration less than 2 hrs (with cons)
Notes/comments (NOTE ALL PROFESSIONS COULD JOIN AS LONG AS THEY RAN URSAN). However, many “elite” players only wanted to team with those having high Norn rank & high armor &/or stonefist insignia

High End Area DOA
Typical PUG Team make up 5 URSAN, & 3 Healers (Usually HB)
Typical NM Clear duration Less than 2 ½ hrs (with cons)
Notes/comments Many “elite” players only wanted to team with those having high LB rank &B cons were pre-requisite




Post URSAN era & emergence of PERMASIN

High End Area UW
Typical PUG Team make up 7 Perma-sin & 1 N/Rt
Typical NM Clear duration less than 1 hr
Notes/comments No balanced PUG observed forming

High End Area TOMBS
Typical PUG Team make up 3 Perma-sin
Typical NM Clear duration less than 1 ½ hr
Notes/comments No balanced PUG observed forming

High End Area SLAVERS EXILE
Typical PUG Team make up 1 Perma-sin 2 Mo & 5 Cryers
Typical NM Clear duration NONE
Notes/comments Only VS farms observed forming, most party ads require r9 sunspear

High End Area DOA
Typical PUG Team make up ?
Typical NM Clear duration ?
Notes/comments No non-farming PUG observed forming


Conclusion:
PvE skill rebalancing minimizes occurrence of multiple character classes in high end PUG team formation & promotes the formation of specific builds for PUG. Guild/Alliance team formation is unchanged.

Suggestion:
Does ANET even care about this issue? If so, how does ANET actually create incentive for PUG team formation? Here’s an off the wall idea: Improve drop rate &/or triple the number of chest spawns based on variety ie the number of different primary profession HUMANS in party? Is that really far fetched? Is it doable? Would that adversely affect other parts of the game? Does that REALLY penalize the existing “specialized” Post URSAN nerf builds? Does it steer/force each char class to run a specific bar in order to join a PUG? Is it a huge programming effort to implement? Does it slow down instance loading?

Oh well, I guess this is really just 1 opinion is a SEA of gamers (each with their own agendas). So it’s time I stopped sniveling & just wait to see what ANET does next…

I agree that skills "rebalancing" afects PUG formation. However, i belive PUG formation, nowadays, is dead since people dont know how to use their skills. I belive ursan destroyed this game, since people only had to press 123 skills to have sucessefull runs in the minor time possible. People got used to press 123 and take quite few time to complete a high-end area, now since that is gone, people dont know how to use the real game skills and cant even think for them selfs. Being so, people cant play whith human in pve and PUGing is something that is unthinkable nowadays.
The problem, imo, is not a matter of profession variety, but a matter of comon sense that seems unixist among guildwars players. A-net only guilt was to create Ursan and when they realise it was too late.

But...i must confess, i relly on pugs to do High - end areas (i'm in a pvp guild) and its quite sad when i go to a high en area and see it almost empty. Besides of that, people in there is rather to take heroes to take human people...its just sad...

I hope things come better since i'm sure Guildwars has much to offer, if people open their minds, learn how to listen and how to read.

gl hf

DOA still does pugs, though now you need to speak german to do it.
I have no idea why nobody else is interested in such runs.
they run 1 terra warrior 1 bonder 1 hb and 5cryers

And for the rest, you are completely right, people need to read more

Bad thing Germans dont accept english spaeking people....

First, well written post. They're so few and far between on Guru anymore that it's refreshing to see someone express a coherent thought.

Second, you got to the real problem. The real problem is people. It's the psychological need that most gamers have to "win", by collecting the most titles, having the most money, the biggest bling, et cetera. There is nothing that forces people into the tank/nuke/heal traid other than their belief that it leads to the greatest reward. Of course, for some, the greatest reward is to have fun, but that's another topic.

Your suggestion is a good one as it would incent people to actually play with other people, which is the intent of an online game. I'm sure you'll have lots of people complain on this thread as it doesn't meet their individual needs or style of play, but that's the risk you always take when you challenge the status quo.

/signed

Totally /signed, Guildwars needs to wake up, and implement ideas that can allow all pugs to use Balanced teams to complete elite areas without them having to use their brains to much :P

But as mentioned above it is peoples choice of 'fun' that effect there choice of play style, they may enjoy and quick gimmicky cry way over the rewarding full balanced team style play !

Reading optimizies your chances aswell !! Theres more than just german people that run DoA, only problem is that most teams form in the GH now not GoA =(

Good Luck Tho !

Ursan was very bad for the game, removing it was very good for the game, but perhaps it was removed too late - it had already spoiled the high-end content for a huge proportion of the guildwars playerbase. Also there's still plenty of idiotic PvE skills and Shadow Form which are almost as destructive as Ursan was and should also be nerfed.

True, there's been degenerate FOTM farming builds pretty much from the start (invincimonks and geartanks started it), but I blame the fact that no-one runs anything but FOTM farming builds any more on the fact that GW is an aging game: everyone's long since completed the content, and are now simply killing time by grinding mindlessly.

As to why pople keep doing something they claim to hate just to own another mini panda or another monument, instead of going to another game, I will never know.

Wrt the suggestion of increased droprates for more primary professions & human players: sure, why not. It wont stop the degeneration, just create new FOTM farming builds, but wont really hurt anything either.

People gravitate toward "easiest and fastest." Ursan was easy (for sure!) and reasonably fast. When it went away, players glommed onto the next easy thing, which is Perma-sin or Criers.

It's not so much that these builds couldn't have existed before, it's just that nobody was looking for the next "easy" alternative. Now they have it. It won't go away until the skills involved are nerfed enough to render the builds unworkable. Then people will just move onto the next gimmick.

The game has aged. Many people have "been there, done that" enough to not want to think and strategize about how to conquer an area or enemy.

You want balanced builds, with players that need to think? Wait for GW2. You need to reset the mental frame of the players, and the only way to do that is to start all over, where nobody knows nothing...

You made your bed, now sleep in it.

The guru community hated ursan and I assume pressures from it, and other sources lead to its eventual nerf. Now you are complaining that elite missions are returning to holy trinity builds that it used to be. Did you not see that this was going to happen?
Honestly I think your ideas are dumb, forcing people to run multiple class groups is not fair. At least with loot scaling it had economic reasons that justified it, there was too much inflation in pure gold market, this is punishment on people's play style. What about the people who run all warrior group in FoW, that isn't cookie cutter, but it get punished more than cookie cutter group with your system.
Live with the fact that class specific cookie cutter groups are now here because of the nerfs to ursan.

Unless every gimmick and bug is removed there won't be room for any profession to show their worth to a pug. Kill earth magic, kill Shadow Form, kill Cry of Pain, change the AI to spread out around one target and your pugs will be looking for new ways to approach their problems. Remove every exploitable aspect abused by the common player and you might actually see a change.

Or they quit the game entirely, possibly try to get in a guild and understand the mechanics of Guild Wars. In turn the playerbase becomes more educated, smarter players and the quality of pugs will actually improve as the stubborn players tied to their old ways leave while the dedicated aim to overcome.

Enemies with random builds or different builds that make impossible to have a single build working against all of them should easily fix that.
Crowds of monsters that can be killed with a single build are always a mistake, they make players go for Farming builds instead parties.

Not going with Heroes has its rewards already. Although each single player drop is the same, the overall drops of the party are increased, so if party members share rewards, they'll have more chances of good stuff each one, since no drops vanish when they are assigned to Heroes. Not a big reward and requires people to be 'fair', but still a reward.

But punishing people to use different professions is not a good idea. If a bunch of people want to fool around as a full-Dervish team, they are in their right.

People use what works, so what you must do is stop "what works" from working, not just treat those that do not use what works.

extremely well said. as for anet being too late, thats why they buffed the pve only skills so now you dont even have to work to have overpowered skills, they are just given to you. they knew they messed up, and messed up bad. the players were so dependent on ursan for easy killing that they had to up the power of pve only skills so players wouldnt just pug and get wiped instantly. instead of having that gold ring around the skill that kills stuff really good, they gave you 3 slots that kill really well. then players who dont know what actual game skills do only need to learn 5. its a sad thing what happened.

Admittedly, the game we all enjoy playing is NOT called PUG WARS, it’s called GUILD WARS. Thankfully ANET structures the game with THAT THEME as a primary goal. Even the introduction of Kurz/Lux factions strengthens the entire Guild philosophy (even if it simultaneously fragments the player base). Still, ANET introduced the party formation window ENTIRELY to facilitate PUG formation (& yes HH too). So clearly there IS a “faction” within ANET that recognizes a viable player community need to form PUG’s. The player community also recognizes the inherent weakness with in-game PUG formation as players can only form an in-game PUG if they are in the right town at the right time with the right people LF the same goal. Hence the emergence and proliferation of forums on this fansite, there is an entire section/forum created specifically to schedule non-guild or PUG formation activities.

Also I am in agreement with almost all responses to the original post. However, I must admit that I’m a “glass is ½ full” kinda person not “glass is ½ empty” type. What I mean is: creating incentive to form multi-profession PUGS in high end areas, is not punishment for non-multi-profession teams. There was no mention in the original suggestion of dis-incenting the cookie cutters or even single profession builds like 8 man Warrior or 8 man Dervish etc... These specialized builds & cookie cutters will still have the same level of drops/chests as they have today & are FAST, ergo NOT PUNISHMENT. It’s really a subtle perception about the carrot & the stick paradigm. A carrot is a reward to motivate, the stick is coercion to re-motivate. If someone receives a reward for exhibiting behavior, that doesn’t mean that anyone is punished for not exhibiting that same behavior, it just means they weren’t rewarded.

How does all this relate to skill rebalancing you ask? Everyone’s comments in this thread are perfectly valid & should be read by ANET. But I must admit that I was hoping to see some additional suggestions to promote PUG’s in high end areas. The goal of cookie cutters is efficiency, LET IT BE. The goal of balanced teams is being able to play a variety of different toons so that no character class is excluded, FIX THAT. Skill nerfing & rebalancing isn’t the answer (since everyones replies to this text attest players wil only find a new cookie cutter when the next nerf bat hits), creating incentives is the answer. For example (as absurd as it seems), if Jade Quarry offered 5x more faction than AB, gamers would flock to the quarry instead of AB. That’s our nature as gamers. So I ask: what incentive does ANET offer to form Balanced PUGs in high end areas? Answer: None, other than the FUN which can ONLY OCCUR IF Balanced PUG’s actually form. ANET can’t change the player psyche, it can only create the rules by which we all play…

Unless you're a farmer or Hero Battle player, Guild Wars is inherently a pvp game.




PvE is all about farming. If you don't have friends to mess around with, you're completely in PvE for the money and titles. If you're not, you're not really going to enjoy the endgame stuff anyway.

I fixed this for you.

Ursan presented the illusion of equity. Sure, any profession could run Ursan, but what attracts players to a given profession is usually, well, that profession. Is it really a good thing for the profession system to be distilled down to bears with different outfits?

Plus a) there was some profession discrimination creeping in (before the Ursan nerf, people were beginning to decide that W/Me made the best Ursans, presumably due to the higher base armour of Warriors coupled with the ability of some Mesmer skills to skill matter after going Ursan) and b) Ursan encouraged title discrimination. Personally, I'd consider levelling a 'holy trinity' character to be a lot more fun than grinding Norn - and at least (some of) the areas now have different cookie cutter builds.

That said, largely, I consider removing Ursan to have been a step along the path towards the ultimate aim of encouraging diverse builds. This means the power of the 'holy trinity' build also needs to be broken before victory can be declared (whether through nerfing HT or making balanced teams more desirable) but we were never going to see balanced PUGs while Ursan ran roughshod over everything.

If you cant beat em join em, is it really hard to make one of the characters that are wanted?

Pretty hard if you don't have a primary class that's wanted, and don't want to spend however many hours getting a new character to that place. You have to admit class inclusiveness in PVE has been non-existent, but it's similar to all their balancing in the game, for PVP too. It's a kind of "free market" and what always happens in those kids... someone games it and everyone else has to game it the same way or be left behind.

There are those who are of the opinion that you can pretty easily fit any class into an efficient group. The real issue is pugging - but then again, pugs tend to be inefficient by nature anyways. With the state of Guild Wars, either a good guild or a good friends list is the best thing you can have.

My view regarding this, as always, is that giving stronger skills limits choices because it narrows the options at the highest level of power. Example: In NF your bar was practically 7 skills because everyone ran Lightbringer's Gaze. Why add it? If it was 'necessary' then something else was a problem - all it did was add a generic (and supercharged) skill to everyone's bar while reducing the number of real skills. The same can be observed for other builds and pug structure.

"What Brought About The Downfall of the PUG?"

LOL, seriously though. Guild Wars should have been known as Gimmick Wars. Because in the long run for the most part, if you don't have a gimmick build for a proffesion that is in demand for where ever you happen to be at, you are going to have a longer wait to join a pug. If you can even get into one. Many times I have been in a pug and people would push for the group leader to drop a certain someone because they didn't run what they wanted. When grouping with others, when asked I always tell others to play to their strengths of what they know that works for them. I myself will not conform to a style of play unless I find it fun for myself. You cannot simply tell someone to play a certain style if they don't understand the fundamentals of how the build works.

This "problem" can't be fixed unless you can perfectly rebalance the game. Players will always gravitate towards whatever setup generates the greatest return for the effort, which means taking the most powerful build that is still within the ability of the average PuG to use. PvE skills aren't the problem when addressing build variety, they are simply a subset of the real problem: skill imbalance.

Then again, I don't actually think that PuGs had any merit to begin with, so this seems like a non-issue to me.

Randomized content is key here, because it promotes sturdy ("Duality type") party build which is very flexible both in what it can deal with as well as in who it can take along.

Noone would run, i.e., Perma sin if there was huge chance that monsters would have counters (there are plenty of those).

But duality Party would deal with them easily (what is one leech signet or spirit of tranquility or ... to group which does not have single point of failure.).

Problem is that people seem to need formula, a "proper way" of doing something, they can wrap their minds around. Shame.

the problem is obviously the people.

people are always going to flock to the build which is easiest, fastest, most profitable, and fool-proof.

if your profession isn't part of that team build, then you gotta wait till ANET comes out with the next update...and i agree, that sucks.

and nerf SY ?

how could it be possible to handle the hordes of lvl 30 monsters aiming directly at your casters ?

most monsters in doa can kill a caster in less than 5 hits, besides they've got aoe damage, life stealing, hexes, conditions, energy denial, interrupts, knockdown, enchantment removal, and I'm not even talking about HM environment effects or monster skills

balancing pve would mean totally reworking ennemies AI, and adapting difficulty everywhere, which will never happen in GW1

Well in this case I would say prot spirit + cover enchant, like every team has done against spike in HA/GvG since the dawn of time.

But overall you are correct, all of PvE needs reworking.

Not sure what game you are playing. I play Guild Wars. Sounds like you play a game called PUG Wars. I fully understand there are times when not enough people are on in a guild, or the people that are on want to do different things. However, PUGing is there as an outlet, just like heroes and henchmen are. If you can't find people in your guild, alliance, or friends list to help you out, you turn to PUGs and/or hero/hench.

PUGs function on success rate. Since the people joining a PUG don't know the other people, they want to see classes and builds that they know to be effective. Doesn't mean the person playing an HB Monk can keep the team alive, but they see the bar, and know it has a better chance of success than someone running a mix of Heal, Prot, Smite, and Earth Wards.

Yes, skill balances change PUG mentality, but not completely. PUGs will always look for the 'best' option. Adding classes like Mesmer and Paragon to a PUG that is used to the Monk/Ele/War combo adds confusion to people unfamiliar with their strengths. Would be nice if more people knew what can be done, but a PUG isn't where you find out if someone knows how to play.

What's wrong with Pug Wars, I love Pug Wars. They add to the fun, especially in TeamSpeak when guildies join and keep asking me "Where in the name of GO RED ENGINE did you find these people".

I hope ArenaNet really considers how the skill balance impacts the social grouping and interactions of the game. In terms of entertainment, the mixture of Ursan, Alcohol, Pugs and Teamspeak, really was a blast. A lot of things have gone far too competitive in PvE these days. Thank god CoF is still around, at least some place for all the lazy people to chat and let others do the dirty work. Recreational gaming and social connectivity really need to pair up again, all that ultra-HC Permasin, Terra and HFFF is not really playing to the strengths of an online game. Might as well farm the first level of Duke Nukem 3D.

people you fight in ha / gvg are smarter than pve mobs, but they don't have crazy energy denial and interrupt abilities like the margonites anur kaya, they don't hit as hard as an anur vu...

in doa, or other elite areas in hm, ennemies are overpowered to compensate their stupidity, and you have to exploit it to defeat them, that's how the game was designed

let's hope that it will be different in GW2

Half my distaste and reason for never doing any elite areas ever, aside from doing Slaver's to get my LMotN title, was because they had no real reward for finishing them. The overabundance of cookie-cutter builds is the other half.

I think you make it easy to understand that there's definitely a problem with doing elite areas, but there's not really an easy fix. In situations where there might have been a fix, it usually just turns out to be a switch to a different set of builds.

As long there is a reward at the end of something , people will want to get there faster and faster , no skill balance can solve that and anything that doesn't pass the bar is flushed down the toilet. That's why there are no more normal pugs , only farmer groups in elite areas. The best thing to do imo would be to remove Slaver's , DoA , Urgoz and the deep , leave only uw and fow with no pve skills and balance out the normal ones.

This is also a valid point , if pve skills are sorted out on our side , it would be logical that the mobs should be a bit weakened too since it seems that people forget pugs.

Players managed to achieve their vanquisher/guardian titles before the introduction of the Sunspear and Faction PvE skills.

Enfeebling Blood, Aegis, Broadhead Arrow, Defensive Anthem, "Shield's Up!", Protector's Defense, Ineptitude + Epidemic, Distortion, Armor of Earth, Return, Shelter, Union, Armor of Sanctity? Did my best to include a skill from every profession since everyone has the means of defending themselves. The options may not be balanced, or even that good, but they're better than nothing. Throw in some kiting, heck even some snares, and PvE could become more interesting than invincible assassins, tanknspank, and bears.

DoA is not the entirety of PvE. One poorly designed zone does not speak for the level of difficulty in other areas. Besides it's not like you can't kite out of AoE, kite from the Stygian Hungers or ball them for an Earth Shaker/Meteor Shower, have a monk with Divert Hexes plus additional support on the other casters, use Draw Conditions or Foul Feast, use Blood Ritual/Aria of Zeal/Lyric of Zeal/kill QZ/Daze + pressure on the mesmers, have a skill or two interrupted (it shouldn't cause you to wipe), get KDed because 2 seconds isn't too scary in most PvE situations, cover enchantments, or kill enemies one at a time so Enraged doesn't matter.

The environmental effects are just poor design in general because they limit the usefulness of certain professions. Physicals suck in Ravenheart Gloom because of the 50% miss, but they're the best against Mallyx since they're effective without triggering Banish Enchantment or Consume Torment. You can't take a balanced approach to DoA Hard Mode because some professions are inherently weaker regardless of what you make them do.

Which is what Hard Mode should've been. Instead you can apply the same gimmicks of Normal Mode and succeed in Hard Mode. It just takes a little while since enemies have a little more health, might flee from AoE, and can heal some of the damage a little better. Daze still murders casters, blocks and weakness deal with the physicals. Hard Mode just takes slightly longer if approached in the same manner as Normal Mode, that's the only difference.

Or, rather, what they think is the easiest, fastest, most profitable and fool-proof. In a lot of cases, I suspect they're wrong.

I agree with the fact that there is serious class discrimination as I've always struggled to fit my Derv into any pug. Just not accepted as good enough for most...

This was less apparent during the Ursan days though, when all you really needed was max Norn and Max LB to get in. That is THE ONLY THING I truly miss about old Ursan. The "grind" as people call it for those titles was, well, the same grind you would have to do anyway if you were going for GWAMM. So where's the argument in that....

As for your suggestion... I think incentives will go a long way to remedy lots of the issues regarding team formation. But it needs to be done right not to impact too many people (who know no other way of playing this game) negatively. As other people already mentioned, joining the right guild will also help you, as an individual, by eliminating the need for PuGGing and also to raise your standard of gameplay.

Apart from that I see some skills in serious need of attention. Nerv Cry Of Pain for a start. There are lots of other overpowered skills for all classes that needs attention as well. And then look at some of the PvE skills...
It may sound contradictory but I do feel SF could be left as is. Except for UWSC there are few areas where you need more than 1 perma in a team anyway. The dmg reduction also means that it is unlikely to be an efficient choice for damage dealers. The only real use for it is farming which has nothing to do with this topic anyway.

PuG quality... I noticed a rapid decline in the quality of PuGs in ToA recently. DOA Ursan teams were generally mindless key spamming veggies but at least you had success every so often. The UWSC teams are on a level below what I believed possible in this game. Out of the last 7 UWSC attempts, guess how many times I opened the chest?

0...

At 850g a run it becomes an expensive waste of time (that's why, from now on, I'll pop the cons).
Anyway... /rant

I sign for any attempt to remove class discrimination and cookie cutter from GW.
(I'm just afraid it may already be too late)

Anet should buff all maps (elite and non-elite) to give 10hp for each human party member within your bubble, 1 hp regen for every 2 party members, 1 energy regen for every 2 party members.

LOL This is crazy but at least it will encourage players to bring along someone and will eventually kill the 7-Hero issue

I hope you're trolling...

Let me put this to you simply.
I enjoy playing anything but the "holy" trinity.
Sure, I can grind more with them, sure I can make more money, but ummm heres a thought.

Warrior = .03$
Monk = 5$
Ele = 5,656.23$
Killing any enemy and shadow stepping to the next foe and stabbing him in the gut with my daggers I bought from farming my life away
=
Priceless......

I'm sick of people crying over the skills pve system.
Put it simply.
>.>
Give me an excuse not to use a "holy" trinity profession, and then explain to us all why the heck the ele sucks at snaring, the warrior sucks at killing multiple targets and dealing decent DPS, and why a monk cant even defend himself without a ton of skills.
THEN we can talk about fixing the skill system.....
My Conclusion:
Stop crying, here comes GW2.

Trinity is not that great, it's used by players who don't fully understand GW mechanics.

Avarre,
I thought your article was a good read and very good observation too.

but i have to agree with you that he "trinity" mention in your article is not that great, I for one, when playing with H/H don't follow that rule, as I have found out that using my ele as tank and damage taker is better than using the warrior, my warrior hero is alway running around causing chaos for the enemy. While they are trying to kill my elementalist, their casters gets taken down, I don't know what tactic that is, but its working good so far, but this is only limited to when using my elementalistcharacter.

When using Rangers I still use Devona as the damage taker and more flagging of h/h is needed, as they have to spread out, unlike elementalist where I ball them (H/H) up except the warrior.

Fow?
You never did that?
If you didn't - too bad! Those guys really did some superb job there by creating of the best areas in GW.


On-topic:
Says it all.

You do not need to kill Gimmicks.

Who would care about (whatever build) if it could not be relied on working? Most of exploity strategies have singular point of failure.

All it takes to add one random skill to each monster, and you get quite nice chance that they will have hard counter to (whatever build) and in the end it takes just one such monster to ruin run.

+ it would make PVE a lot less static.