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

Well if the thread author is expecting some mesures to incentivate human party formation in DoA, lets start to notice what A-net did back to the time that where aloed a bunch of heroes in HA. I cant recall correctly but i think it where alowed 4 or 5 heroes, now only 2 are alowed.
Being so, to start the incentivation i would recomend the utilization of only 2 heroes or henchmans.
Folowing, now, the ideia of skill rebalancing, i think they had to nerf some pve skill (and we shouldn't worrie whith that if A-net could assure that the professions skill, non-pve-only ones, are balanced enought). I really don't know precisely what skills they could change to meet this requirements (perhaps someone want to give a sugestion), but i can give some examples: CoP needs a nerf (or cry-way builds would be in big force, and we dont want that), Clumsiness needs a boost(for instance A-net could give a buff on this skill in pve by simply enlarging the number of enemys it will afect when casted on a given mob), ....
In other part, rewards that only drop in DoA chests could be added. And i'm not talking about crappy gree weapons. I'm talking about nice and fluffy (lol) skins, gold and inscriptable!
To finalize my sugestions, and like i said in a previous answer to this thread, lets fac on thing: many people dont know how to use the skills they have on their bar. Why, u ask? U R S A N! Ursan did alot of injuries in this game, people cant think for them selfs, they only can press 123 123 123 123... So, to help this persons it would be interesting to add to the game or among Guru Comunity some sort of academy. I know that this ideia could be hard to implement, and maybe its hard to find people who can teach others. But, making a little effort now for this, i belive its possible in a nearly future to see people playing again this high end-areas (yes high-end areas, because Urgoz or The Deep are dead aswell... I only did Urgoz once and i never had the chance to go to the deep ). Or then, if people would be hard to find, why not implement some sort of area that players could learn from them selfs whith a automatic tutorial made by A-net it self? After all, was A-net who did the mistake (and i'm sure they didnt do it whith the purpose of killing the PUGing, but...like people say: Sh!t happens!)

Well, those are my ideias, i admit a bit extravagantes but.... I hope someone have better ones...

gl hf

I think everyone in this thread should just stop talking...every collective Q.Q in the history of GW has only resulted in bad things happening.

No actually, every drop that does not have your name on it wouldn't have had your name on it with H&H, you just wouldn't have known what drop Koss would've "gotten" if you didn't take someone else with you.

And eventually nothing will work & you can blame youselves for begging anet to kill this game because everyone's either too lazy to make the classes that are used, too dumb to know how to use the build, or just upset that people are richer then them & demand that everything be nerfed so they can all be poor together.

8 players: My inventory is always full.

Me + H/H - my inventory is half filled after area.

Why? Because if players are present, drops actually appear and (surprise) they don't pick all drops and they get eventally unassigned. Or they pick them and then throw whites/blues to ground later because they want space for different drop.

Or they can lend you salvage kit so that you can salvage stuff. Or ...

Neither happens with Koss. Cooperation nets you fuller inventory, fullstop.

I talked to an ele before the ursan craze , guess what he pressed when he was in the party for elite areas? Yes , he would roll his head over the keyboard and [email protected] Ursan didn't destroy builds , people destroyed builds because of laziness so stop accusing that boring skill (yes it is boring to use ursan , that's why I didn't use it) for everything bad in pve.
Your other ideas are nice.

It would only hurt people who don't run the gimmicks and encourage people to continuing running such builds. Unless every mob of enemies is given a 100% chance of spawning with multiple skills to deal with enchantments and stances the current pug builds wouldn't notice the addition of a random skill. But all that does is lead to the creation of enemies like Dying Nightmares, Cursed Dream Riders, Mindflay Spectres, and all of Mallyx's skills. Rather than directly address the issue Guild Wars has been altered over the years in vein attempts to deal with the all or nothing builds.

But it doesn't stop them from trying anyway. In turn they cast aside whatever profession doesn't fit the mold for whatever strategy they think is best. Remove the tank and nuke mentality by killing it entirely, forcing players to understand the capabilities of each profession.

Pretty funny to me that what you want is for Anet to teach its customers how to use each of the 10 classes in the game. If people knew how to use all 10 classes, there wouldn't be much of an issue with finding a PUG as a Mesmer, Paragon, or anything else.

Well, this is, at it's core, a human problem, not a systems problem. We all know that the majority of people will use cookie-cutter builds and have a bias towards the tank/monk/ele triad. So I agree with everything you said above.

Now, having said that, the OP's intent was not to have Anet teach customers how to use the other classes. Rather, it is to provide an incentive to teams composed of players with mixed classes. This I agree with, though I know that it'll never happen.

What I find interesting is that I haven't found any area that can't be done with a mixed or esoteric group. Our guild does it all the time, both with "free for alls" (bring what you want) and single class teams (Monkfests, Mezfests, Paraway, et cetera.) So the bias towards specific build and classes is based on ignorance more than anything else.

Xeng meet Assassin's Promise.
Assassin's Promise meet Xeng.
X - may you happily hate AP ever after.

in doa, monsters have skills to defend themselves too + higher caracteristics + infinite energy + skills to counter defense (interrupts, denial, knockdown) + huge damage = it's not that easy to defend against brute force and deal enough damage to kill them

yes, I'm stuck on DoA, but it's meant to be one of the most challenging elite areas, thus reflecting anet's definition of high end pve

no matter what you say, you can't reasonably argue that doa can be completed by a group without a tank or pve skills, especially with "smarter" monsters spiking your backline


when I see posts like yours, I see players that absolutely don't understand how the community reacts, and what anet wants pve to be

izzy himself said that pve was meant to be about players feelics epic, fighting hordes of high level monsters with very powerfull skills

removing ursan made more harm than good to the community, as explained in another thread, try to find a pug in doa... it will most likely be cryway or fail, kill cryway and see what remains

how on earth can you think NERFING things will make people play more ? did you really expect ursan nerf would encourage people to create "balanced" pugs ?

if you nerf everything else, people will not adapt, they'll quit, you think you may be happier with all these noobs gone, but you'll be alone in a dead game

some suggestions in the thread are good, but if everything you said was done, it would kill gw

stop nerfing, give us diversity, and leave the casual player with his ursan / cryway, this doesn't affect your gameplay

why do so many people have to resist anet's plan to kill gw1 before they release gw2?

With out ursan there will always be optimal tank and spank templates. Just roll the class or cap the skills needed to farm the desired area. Its called guildwars, welcome.
GuruQQ- "But i wanna farm uw with my mesmer anet and these meanies wont let me in."
Anet-"Fine heres a bar everyone can run anywhere"
GuruQQ-"Wtf anet usrsan is wai to easy and things were so much better before"
Anet-"Fine, no more ursan"
Guru QQ-"But i wanna farm uw with my mesmer anet and these meanies wont let me in."
Anet-".....we are going over here now, see you in 2 years"

Those of you who think Anet can do anything to increase the skill of the playerbase are dreaming.

The problem has always been that most people are either too damn stupid or just don't give a RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO. It isn't even limited to GW or gaming in general - the degree of competence and intelligence that people show in their daily lives is frankly appalling. What makes you think that all of the assorted moronic mouthbreathers you run into on the street suddenly pick up 100 IQ points when they log onto GW?

The best part is, you can't even push a merit-based system in GW because it's not populist enough - people want t3h ub3r l3wt even if they RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing fail at the game. I'm sure the average player would be more than happy with socialist-style in-game welfare with big rewards for all.

Personally I'm convinced human teams already get better drops than H/H teams, and NOT because I don't see what the H/H's get, but because I see what I get.
Try VQ'ing an area with H/H, then do it again with an all-human team, and compare loot.

There are two difficult spots in DoA. The holdout in Ravenheart Gloom and potentially the 3rd room in Foundry of Failed Creations. In every other area you have plenty of room to freely move around and pull mobs at your leisure. It is entirely possible without PvE skills and tanking.

He was not implying that people should be FORCED to run multiple class groups... Just ABLE to run multiple class groups. I kinda stopped reading the rest of your post after the "your idea is dumb" comment. it kinda turned me off to continue reading from someone who will commence attack upon someones idea instead of saying simply "i disagree"

On topic: OP i feel that your post is well thought out and very accurate. and it is true that people just move to the next "only" build for these areas. If its not Ursan, its cryway. If its not cryway, its perma sin. We just have to accept the fact that if you like to play rit or para, then you wont find a pug. People dont accept the "play for fun" method anymore. Its "Run Savanna Heat ele or i kick you" or "run HB monk or GTFO"

well, we'll never agree on this...

you think pulling is ok ? I think it's exploiting artificial stupidity just like tanking, why wouldn't a monster see that his friend just beside him is being pulled ? just because they don't belong to the same group ?

Shut every1 up and Bring back the original Ursan(before the time limit, before it was amde as a touch skill player, BACK when it was RANGED, relied on ENERGY to keep you going.....Ursan didnt kill the game....Bad players who solely relied on Ursan killed the game...infact Ursan made the game more bearable to play, without hearing some1 whine they cant get a team BECAUSE they SUCK, i seen bad/crappy players spend all that time to max out ursan to get threw most of the game, and for people like me and my son WHO maxed our Hard Mode titles pre-GW:EotN and now are looked at as a simple player because ursan....what does A-Net want every prick to Pay 600monks to get them threw HM dungeons, because they cant seem to join a good guild or recruit good players, thats where Ursan was tolerable IMO people could use Pick Up Groups to slaughter a dungeon in HM and not have to hear the bitch "WAH WAH, THIS DUNGEON IS IMPOSSIBLE, WAH WAH" even though every dungeon/mission HM/NM, and every vanquish can easily be Hero Henchied, theres those who dont know how to set up an efficient team of henchies and doesnt know a good monk build for there hero healer, or any good builds for the Damage dealer heroes(ele/war/ranger etc) or there are those who rely on Sabways triple necro team, Wich ALOT of us know is pretty much useless for most areas of the game, expecially where they lack corpses, or have heavy Hex's(sabway+henchie's=Crappy hex removal)....so Ursan got them in PUG groups(didnt always have to be r10, most of the time u just needed ursan) and Shut them the F*** up, and got them threw a dungeon/mission/vanquish.

well im probably gonna need to go whipe my lips now...there all brown

very well put, its people who get this Multi class players banned, you man are now the best poster ive read to date...mainly because you said what ive always thought.

except no 1 should have to change Proffessions to farm a single area, ITS CALLED A MAIN CHARACTER, its called a LIST in you HoM that shows what Elite Areas your specific character has done....SO YOU ARE WRONG IN THAT SENSE of things





You just kicked FOE in the balls and took 1st place in good posters...nice post about time some1 said it(im not to literate)

Not really. They can't properly manage their interrupts (they camp), or their energy denial (low energy set gogo), or their knockdowns. The only enemies which really annoy me are the Anguish Titans (or whatever they're called; they steal skills and use with SoM). The thing is though, I was 6 skills short, had my WoH left and was WoH'ing myself to a decent amount of health against roughly 4 of them every 3-6 seconds for 4 minutes straight due to a massive overaggro of a shit ton of mobs in the area.

Considering that it has been done with heroes, (and I recall it's done without PvE skills or tanking), I don't see the need in arguing against this.




This isn't because of the take out of Ursan, this is because of the shear laziness of players. DoA is one of the hardest areas in Guild Wars, yet there are only... two places which are difficult and make you blow up under one mistake, which Racthoh has already pointed out. The only way you can safely bring up the activity in DoA is by upping the rewards, and you can even say that's a downside.

Well I for one absolutely hated playing Ursan because it went against 3 design schemes of the game: isn't rewarding skill, skill bars and their respective professions, and was also powered on grind. It removed all of that. I would have been less spiteful towards the skill if it wasn't powered on grind and using your skill bar had more bearing to the skill itself, other than keeping inherant things (Primary attributes, armour etc...). Now, keep in mind that when you bring a Warrior with the Mesmer secondary, you gain an obscene amount of armour for a certain amount of time depending on what you spec into Inspiration, which proven numerous occasions where profession discrimination took place.

Actually, it does affect peoples' gameplay. For one, when Ursan was out and about, how often did you see a non-Ursan PuG? That directly affects those who PuG by putting limitations on what they do, it doesn't give "diversity", it takes it. Two, if that player was really "casual", they wouldn't want to grind out their Norn title. Heck, if that player was casual that player would know that it'd be dumb going for HM titles.

Now, I'm not as spiteful to Cryway as I ever was with Ursan. The reason is it's one skill to deal damage, and another skill if you bring a Mesmer hex, and then the rest of your skill bar doesn't matter, you're only limited by your secondary profession.

One can argue simply doing PvE is exploiting the AI. For example, a certain Warrior boss in GW:EN has Frenzy and Flail. Now, Frenzy used in the wrong situation can be bad for your health, and what does this boss do? I think it's obvious. Another example is the fact they all have limited skill bars and can't prot effectively (you can say the same for heroes on the prot bit, but then you've got AI exploiting AI ). Last but not least, mistakes. Mistakes happen almost everywhere you go, no matter where you are. Even the best people make mistakes sometimes, and AI sure does make alot of mistakes, but it's always best to take advantage over it.

Now, I agree that PvE is inherantly broken from a balanced standpoint, but in order to fix this? It needs a massive overhaul, and when I say massive, I mean pretty much 100%. Enemies in PvE with obscene amounts of armour, health, energy, energy regen, damage, attribution, buffs up no matter what their primary is and so on, I can go on for ages with that. But I guess you see the point now.

The only reason you need to pull is because the mobs have paths that intersect one another. If you have enough damage to drop enough of the group before another comes in then you don't need to pull at all.

If pulling didn't work then theoretically I could have a group with 8 Rangers and ping arrows into large groups of enemies until they die. Fight the groups of Charr in Eye of the North where the warriors ball around the casters. That's basically what the game would be like if nothing moved when you get their attention.

A point apparently not well established in the original post is that GW is inherently a Co-Operative game. AND it’s this aspect that I believe is the fundamental theme that draws players to the game. Either in PvE or PvP, players on a team NEED to play together to be effective.

Historically speaking, Hero’s were introduced to assist players in completing areas where the fixed sill bars of the henchmen were inadequate/inflexible. Many causal players SIMPLY COULD NOT FIND A PUG in specific areas & ultimately could not be effective in these areas only with henchmen alone. So Hero’s filled that role. Parenthetically, Hero’s actually reduced the incentive for PUG formation accordingly. As obvious as it sounds, if everyone were in the right GUILD/ALLIANCE (for them), then PUG’s would not be an issue that a faction of ANET spends any time on. Those players that are in those types of “perfect guild/alliance situations” never have to deal with not finding a PUG to play in a high end area.

But PUG’s are still a viable/important aspect in the GUILDWARS game & why it’s fun to play. Players still casually get together to play cooperatively. I presume everyone remembers the exploit siege farming? Siege farming created an incentive for PUGS to form. Players of ANY character class would flock to Doomlore to form a PUG for ebon rep farms. AND it was quite effective. Since it was not ANET’s intent to create this type of incentive, ANET simply removed the incentive, and PUG’s subsequently stopped forming for ebon rep farms. NO rebalancing, no change in game mechanics. Rebalancing skills or re-vamping the entire game mechanics does not address the missing incentives for PUG team formation in high end areas. Interestingly, URSAN actually created incentive for ANY character class PUG formation (albeit not as intended by ANET). DO NOT READ INTO THIS ANY ADVOCATION FOR CHANGES TO EXISTING URSAN (OR ANY OTHER SKILLS FOR THAT MATTER).

We’ve all been on failed PUG’s. PUG’s are not always successful (neither are ALL well organized teams, but that’s not the point here). When EXPERIENCED players are in high end areas WORKING AS A TEAM, then PUG’s can be successful. As noted by other posters in this thread PUG’s still form in some high end areas, but NOT with the intent of having a balanced team finish the area. The intent is speed or farming. That is the INCENTIVE of these builds!!! Rebalancing skills DOES NOT change that incentive. If players want to finish efficientlty, so be it - the cookie cutters exist and always will even after the next rebalance. Ultimately, a different incentive is required to form balanced PUG’s in high end areas with a reasonable chance of mission success…

Bring back Ursan as long as you give me (and me alone) a skill that does 10 billion damage to all enemies in the area. Make sure it has no recharge or cast time because those are icky. If it gets nerfed I will be extremely upset and probably rage quit Guild Wars.

AGWEED. It doesn't affect anyone else, right? So it's totally fine!!1

Also, from another thread and very relevant.

What I gather from this is that all of the content in the game should be made significantly easier so players who don't want to get better, form a guild, or form a friend's list can achieve anything they want without much effort. In turn you'll destroy the incentive for the hardcore, those who strive to become better, get on vent with friend's/guild, form those large guilds and alliances in an effort to deliver the resource of human allies.

I apologize to all readers for my phrasing text that led to unintended inferences. I in NO WAY advocate ANY changes to any skills or game mechanics to make ANYTHING EASIER or to change farming or to alter the existing play styles of ANY players!!! Obviously, everyone that uses the Friends/Guild/Alliance structure to form teams is completely unaffected by issues that affect PUGs. It's entirely possible (although unstated publically) that ANET prefers to restrict players in high end areas to either farmers or cookie cutters or Friends/Guild/Alliance structure for team formation.

The only real point of the OP is that if ANET expects skill rebalancing to actually enable forming Balanced PUG's in high end areas for mission completion, then that strategy is inherently flawed due to the nature of "the player psyche". The text regarding siege farming was intended as an example of how incentives affect "the player pshyce" to form PUG's. Incentives actually enable PUG formation & they could be applied to high end areas. Additionally, incentives to promote a specific behavior is NOT punishment for those that enjoy playing the game the way its played today.

Ask yourselves some questions... If the drop rate improved or if the number of chest spawns trippled based on variety of human primary classes in a zone, would that incentive compete with farmers or cookie cutters or friends/alliance/guild team formation structure in high end areas? Would it have the affect of drawing balanced teams to these areas for PUG formation? Would it cause all players to form balanced cryway secondaries? Would it increase the number of chest runs in a zone (as if U could really run chests in the foundary or the deep or the warrens etc)? Would more players of different character classes play high end areas? Is it bad for the games economy?