DoA difficulty - Consets

That's true ( although you probably did too else you wouldn't know me ) for the HA part , unfortunately my knowledge in heroes management allowed me to get all titles and stuff in HoM for months....

I came back to try DoA with heroes and found it relatively hard in NM compared to what it is in normal DwG team HM. Simple...

A friend and I tackled city & foundry yesterday in NM 2 humans rest heroes. City no cons with minor difficulties, foundry we did need cons, but that was my first time there. We failed at end of foundry, but know our mistake. I believe with more attempts, and better builds, we could do without cons, or at least one more live person. I ran 100 blades, he ran imbagon. I believe cons are fine for everyone to use, I craft my own, or buy if to lazy to farm materials. I don't believe they should be change in any way. I enjoy trying to adjust builds to not needing them.

WoW requires consumables for serious raiding. In fact, WoW raid encounters are balanced around players having consumables. However, WoW consumables also don't do more than, say, offer a 5% damage increase or a 5% hp bonus.

If GW consumables were more along those lines, instead of providing gamebreakingly strong effects like Essences and Armors and candies do, people might not complain about their distorting influence on PvE as much.

lol

I don't want to be judgmental and call people "undeserving," but the idea of making the most purportedly difficult PvE content in the game trivial is really kind of ridiculous.

Tone down cons, change functionality on shadow of haste, recall, and shadow form.

I like how everyone says cons make HM doa twice as fast as NM doa without cons...like cans is what makes that happen...its the tactics and quite frankly its the speed boost outside of the speed boost that cons and personal cons grant the rest is quite trivial and only shave off maybe 5 min off of a run the rest of the time really comes from the speed boost.

furthermore I'm sorry but saying that elite areas should be something you fail a couple times before it takes you over an hour to complete is NOT fun from the start guild wars has been aimed at being a casual game where you choose your game play well spending 5 hours to fail and do an elite area is not casual and you can choose to use cons or not use cons.....hmm I think they got it right

honestly all I hear is a bunch of kids throwing temper tantrums becuase someone else has cooler toys than them...

If you ever played God of War, you probably are aware how the game is easy, even on the hard mode. Apart of some harder fights, it's just a walk in a park, especially after you upgrade weapons and learn to dodge/block.
Now, there's something called Challenge of Olympus. It's specifically designed to provide a challenge. It's an elite arena that's unlocked once you've beaten the game.

Ringing a bell? It's pretty much the same as DoA should be. Except Kratos can't use godly possessions in the Challenge, making him invincible.
Sure, after beating them once, every subsequent try is much, much easier. But trying some of them for the first time... uh.

Games usually have a 'hard place to test yourself and provide a challenge' apart of normal, casual game. Here UW, FoW and DoA are smothered to the level of easy/medium dungeons, with Frostmaw's being more annoying and harder for lotsa groups than the domain of Balthazar and Menzies.

What's strange is that you all talk about DoA being so super easy and being no more than a mere faceroll. Although the only thing you tried was DwG. I challenge you to complete a DoASC with our tactics, or HRUU's, or Zraw's, or anyone elses, without prior knowledge of how they work, and get it done. You can use every personal consumable you can find in this game, yet you will still fail. I see a lot of new guys coming in to the scene often enough. 90% of our trials's only prior knowledge of DoA is DwG, and at first they struggle a lot to get to know how things work, but if they wonder about something, we will explain things, so that they learn.

The only reason we get to do 22/21 minute record runs is because of our experience in the area, not because it's so easy. Also, record runs are an entirely different subject, lol. But our sub-40 casual runs didn't come because of DoA being a walk in the park, we get those because we make it a walk in the park. Because we know what we're doing. The area in itself isn't that easy, we just make it that way, because we chose the best tactics we could use.

I've never run DwG or any other PuG-friendly quasi-SC crap.
Sorry, but stopped reading after that. Too many assumptions to get into a real conversation in this thread.
A game should have at least one challenge. An area that can't be turned into a walk in a park done in 20-30 min, be it by tactics or, even less, by additional help from god mode items. Sure, tactics should make it easier, or just doable, but there should be something that poses a challenge, that is hard. In case of MMOs, at least completely non-farmable.
The main problem with DoA is that, apart of some places where quests are necessary to be followed, you can faceroll with decent builds if you pop enough consumables. Won't take you 20 min, but an hour, yet still.

Those areas ARE hard. Even with consets and specialized tactics and shadow form and all the other things people use to do it.
Let's see it.

If it's so easy, I'm sure you could get a team together and prove your point. You can just pop a conset, press 123, and faceroll right through it. Isn't that right?

gvg matches only last 28minutes max, so they are a walk in the parc also by your definition?!

Ok, good point, shouldn't have assumed anything, but now let's at least make this a serious conversation. If you think DoA is so easy the way we do it, prove it. Prove to us that how we got our times down so low was purely because of consumables, your so called "godmode", and not because of experience, tactics, teamplay, coordination and all those other things that we use. Hell, I would even take you on a run with us, without giving you any directions, just tag along, and prove that you will succeed a run with us, and won't screw up anything. See how well you do.

I think the ones asking for a nerf/adjustments to cons still don't understand. Yes cons give boosts, very good ones. However, it's just like at the very beginning, when people would form groups for fow. Most would fail, the ones that new a tactic, like book form( been a long time unsure if that's what we called it). If you know patrol patterns, where pop ups are, what builds work best and actually know how to use them. Then to everyone else it appears easy, until they try. Now add cons, which speed things up, and everyone is complaining that needs to be nerfed because it's now way to easy. I personally don't run sc, but understand it takes some skill, once you used to it then it may appear to everyone else it's just button mashing.

Hmmm, my girlfriend and I did the DoA with us and heroes (NM, of course), I running as an obs flesh tank, her as a ranger barrager. Took us a significant amount of configuring and messing with builds to manage it, but that we did.

We used consets at times, but not all the time. They were useful but not necessary - they are just fine as they are, they provide speed for those who want it, and extra security, but for those who want a challenge they can go without.

If we did HM, we would need consets, I don't believe we could do it without them using just heroes.

I don't think cons themselves are so bad, unless considering what can come from having them. They help those that need the help, but what I have the problem with is, the team builds that are ONLY functional with them. For instance, maintaining Shadow Form or Obsidian Flesh or Ether Renewal is possible with an Essence of Celerity, whereas otherwise it would require a second skill, albeit Glyph of Swiftness or Deadly Paradox. Essentially consumables are a form of indirect bar compression for those who use them for skills or builds that call for them. That sounds a bit complex, but I think everyone knows what I am saying. I am all for using them to assist those that need them. Basically, builds that are only possible with consumables are probably the biggest problem, change how they function (the consumables or the skills), and I think people would be happier as a whole.

Cons do make things super easy I've taken a group, most with very little exp, into DoA took about an hour without my use of vent because I currently can't use it because of campus internet. Needless to say I did alot of pinging as I was tanking and had to stop and type out instructions at points. But I really don't care about cons staying the same or changing I don't use them in most of my gameplay because I don't feel like curbstomping the same area a few hundred times.

They should never have introduced pcons/cons ever, it was a terrible idea, but doing anything to them now is just stupid

Cons are the dumbest thing Anet has done to PvE, beating out even PvE skills. Anyone with even a shred of self respect should not be using them.

Nop, inscriptions still steal the crown to the dumbest thing Anet ever did in PvE.

And your comment is kind of sad in its own. How come using cons is a lack of self respect? I might be on a high horse, but you sir are sitting on an elephant the size of an air craft carrier atm.

Time and time again I keep seeing referances to DwG DoA being a facerool, easy as pie with cons, no fail. While I personally have never done DwG, since it's an obvious waste of time, there are some things I know. Most runs take upwards of two hours, in NM, or HM, both with cons. Most groups fail. That's right. Most groups start in City, as per usual, yet Titans are the most expensive gem. Wierd, isn't it? This is because most groups don't even finish Foundry, which would yield the most gems, and Torments are more than Stygians, even though you would get more Torment than Stygian. This is because groups fail. A lot. Even with Cons, this is no faceroll. If anything is the problem, it's the DwG builds.

This was in regard to DoASC. I truly laughed out loud at this. There are many ways I would refer to DoASC, and trivial is not one of them. After you have done it a hundred times, maybe you can do it with ease, but it's not trivial. All of DoASC is about employing various tactics that have been planned out to clear the area's as fast as possible. This is indeed the hardest area of the game, and only a fully co-ordinated team on Vent can pull this off without hickups.

What DOA needs is a way to make it less absurdly 'high-numbers' without making it even easier for SCers, so it takes the same amount of time, without becoming too easy or too difficult, and without allowing splits.

"Less absurdly 'High-Numbers"" makes no sense to me.

Inscriptions did absolutely nothing to PvP except upset the idiots who thought their weapons were worth a lot.

Try again.

Then its not the failure of Mithran, you must not understand English or something.

Like I said. Make consets reduce drop by 90% (or not dropping anything at all, even chest) and last three hours. So those "pro" SCers can still faceroll DOA. Those who thinks its impossible w/o cons can continue to abuse it. Those who plays without cons will reap the rewards

"Nop, inscriptions still steal the crown to the dumbest thing Anet ever did in PvE." Yeah, that's cause I was refering to PvE.

Read, and then try again yourself.

And now, to say what I've said three times already, but I'm gonna have to do it again for all you selective readers.

If consets make everything so damn easy and are no more that a "godmode" that enable us to do anything we want, prove it. Go into a DoA without experience, run the area, and try to get a sub-40 run. Ohwait, right.. Won't happen, because you don't know anything about how we run. We have so many different tactics, all based on different possible outcomes of certain situations, just to ensure the best time possible. Nothing is predetermined, if something goes wrong, you have to anticipate and come up with the best way possible to get the job done as fast as possible. This requires a couple of people who know the area very well, and know what's going on. Also good team coordination. We use vent for a reason, not just because it's fun to talk to each other.

All I hear is a bunch of whining that you can't handle the area yourself, and you're working it out on the SC'ers, who have "no self respect" because we use cons (lol, btw), who are abusing the game with our "godmodes" and reduced this to a gimmick, whilst the only real gimmick is still DwG, imo. I have to admit that I'm so used to DoA by now that I can run it on auto-mode, but it's still a challenge to a lot of people, so dont' depict it as being "super easy" and "no more than a faceroll".

Doing DoA with heroes or random team without conset is hard/very hard(Nm/HM).
Doing DoA with heroes/random team/build you mention with conset is easy/medium(NM/HM).
Doing DoA as DwG with conset is super easy and no more than a faceroll.

I'm sorry but if you don't believe me just go try for example doing foundry with 7 random heroes no conset , then pug a team as DwG , you will see...

Sorry, meant PvE for that.

I've been in SCs that get through DoA around 40ish mins (didn't time it, but it was well under an hour). Anyone saying its 'hard' is deluding themselves. It requires a bit of knowledge (oh hai internet) and about 1 or 2 practice runs to iron out the kinks. Big RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing deal.

Cons have nothing to do with shitty SC runs, but everything to do with a shitty game system that promotes easy modeing what should be fairly difficult content. I shouldn't have to find you a post about "lol DoA so hard without cons, but with conset its easy even in HM". I've seen it at least 3 times this week.

You really think I do DwG? Seriously? After all my posts, you couldn't figure out that I think DwG is shit?
Yes DwG is a faceroll. Yes DwG is piss easy. Yes it requires no coordination apart from 1-2-3, rince, repeat.

DoASC teams on the other hand require a lot more coordination and knowledge. Yes, once you get the hang of it, it's a walk in the park too, but you have to know what you're doing. See previous post about "making it a walk in the park".

@ Kunder (too lazy to quote again): You most likely got carried. No offence meant to you in any way, or saying your capabilities as a player are not good, but firsttimers without knowing what's going on get carried usually. But yes, it only requires a couple runs to get to know the spikes etc and it's easier then, but that is as a mesmer. You go on the same run again as tank and see how you do. Depending on the other tank, your run will most likely take anywhere between 55 minutes and 1h30.

consets are fine as is. DoA is not the only area in the game. SC's should not be targeted by Anet at all.

This just looks like a whine thread by people who don't want to take the time to learn how to do something to make money.

Consets are great for people who don't have the time to take a bajillion hours to figure out every little thing in the game. Those so called casual players that don't even average an hour a day. Don't punish them, if they even still exist, because their are people who choose to spend their entire life in GW.
I have a feeling consets are going to become a necessity in WOC for some. I think that is going to be the hardest challenge we've ever seen in GW.

I was the tank. Herpdy Derp.

You seem to think I have a problem against SCs. I don't, in fact solving optimization problems is one of my favourite tasks even though I'm not the kind of person who would ever do a SC more then 2 or 3 times since I don't care about the rewards. My problem is with cons making everything into easy mode.

Guess what? We have NM non-elite areas for players who aren't good at the game. You can beat them even with disgustingly bad builds and while using mostly/all henchmen. HM, and in particular HM elite areas, are supposed to be for decent to good players who want an extra challenge.

I doubt WoC will become much harder, Anet did that survey which said that most players thought WiK was about right or too hard. Granted we have 7 heroes now, but that doesn't make it easier for clueless noobs who can't make better hero bars then what henchmen run anyway. The best you can probably count on is more HM-optional quests, since doing stuff like BLA in NM is almost as tediously easy and boring as THK.

Sigh. Cons are only one part of the snowball effect of power creep on the game. While they make things a lot easier, it's really the skills and how they're used that determine how difficulty. Things like perma spell immunity and stupid crap like SY! spam, not to mention vast amounts of armor-ignoring damage have done more to distort this.

And I don't blame the SC community for using everything available to do things faster and easier. Anet baked the cake and set the table; players will come to eat as much as they can. Do I like the meta? Hate it, but if I was of the type to want to SC, you bet I would be eating that cake, and so would you.

I like this analogy.

All in all, I still reckon there's nothing wrong with cons at this point in the game, people are finding fun in working towards new speed clear records when there is essentially little else left to do in the game.
Why deny people the last bit of fun they make for themselves?

your comparing a party of 7 heros to 8 people....and you then say the conset is what makes it so easy? I really dont see how you can say that at all maybe if you said try DwG with a conset and without a conset i would see it but you cant really use that argument becuase the conset is trivial and its still easy with DwG.....

way to just sit there and ignore everything but the fact that a conset is involved seriously this has to be one of the least thought out comparisons I have recently seen.

@Kunder sorry but i really doubt the fact you scored a 40 min run as tank in your first couple times ever in doa (dont bother posting a screen it doesnt prove it was your first doa run) If you were already experienced in doa and that was just your first time running tank then maybe but then you whole "it was the cons that did it" argument doesnt apply

Consets do need to be changed, it makes normal skills overpowered and overpowered skills even more so.

It gives bar compression, doesn't take a skill slot, can be stacked with other cons and has no after effect like Summoning Stones.

Cons should have either:

After effect like Summoning sickness, functionality change, disabled in hard mode, change the way they stack together .

All we need currently is a con that give +armor and one that say gives armor ignoring damage on skill activation and we have basiaclly have pre nerf ursan....can we have ursan/shadow form conset please?

Oh don't complain about DwG or any other skills/builds but are more then willing to pop consets... well done you should now be under the effects of hypocrite sickness.

Not directed at the person that said this but wanted to touch on a couple of points:

Wonder why everythings been devalued... maybe its due to the broken skills, speedclears, consets and expoilts and anet's declining ability to balance this game.

People say well i don't wanna spend x hours in y area for poop items, then up the rewards and make adjustments to the builds/area/speedclears etc.

Also i see some people in this game seem like they want the top rewards in end game areas for the same or a little more time spent doing PvE storyline missons.

Is the problem really consets or is it the invinci builds in combination with consets?
if you just take a glimpse at the elite endgame part of this forum I think you will see the answer.

No offense taken btw^^

But what I want to point out now: what Anet did (enabling us to do SCs etc) is hard, if not impossible to reverse. Because of the decisions they made (make SF wrap, boost some skills etc) and the effect it had (devaluation of ecto, shards, high-end weapons, plus players been spoiled by the fact that they don't have to spend 3h+ in a UW anymore), they can't just undo it. They can't just say: "well, f_ck it, let's just remove consest, make SF the way it was, destroy the entire SC community (which, fyi, makes up a large chunk of the regular PvE community) and make the game like it was.". If they do, they'll lose a LOT of playerbase, get a lot rage, and potentially, lose a very big part of potential GW2 players.

I don't justify what they did, but like someone said very nicely a few posts up: they baked the cake, it's up to us if we wanna eat it or not. Don't like SCs? Don't do em. Don't like cons? Don't use em. They are a bit overpowered, but they won't/can't be removed this far in the game anymore.
Live and let live. Stop QQing about it.

People would do well to actually pay attention to Bright on not only this post,but the others throughout the thread.

I don't think they made the changed they made to allow for speed clearing, unless I am just misunderstanding your first sentence. But the rest of what you said I cannot agree with. The majority of the GW community doesn't speed clear, I'll give you 40% tops, and even then I think I'm still being generous. If ArenaNet just does away with speed clears somehow, whether its through AI changes or skill changes, those that quit were never loyal to the game anyway, they played to abuse broken mechanics because they have nothing better to do with their time. What's in bold above makes me laugh. While I don't spend 3 hours in the UW, I spend closer to two, and I enjoy every minute of it. About Guild Wars 2, the loyal and most dedicated GW players will buy it, regardless of what's done to this game. After getting 30/50 or 50/50 in their Halls, or GWAMM, or whatever their goal is, many leave the game anyway because of having "nothing to do". Guild Wars 2 will attract a whole new player base anyway, independent of this game. I honestly don't think they give a shit if players won't return to buy the sequel, their marketing strategies seem to be directing towards players who have never played the first one. Maybe that last bit is just me and what I've observed, but that's the impression they've given off from all the videos I have seen. So, in closing, I think a lot of what you said is just your plead for them to keep the game the way you want it, while others want a change

While you don't care if Anet loses 40% of their current customers I can assure you that Anet itself does care. This is why they havent nerfed permanent spell protection into oblivion and still left it viable and even made it into something any class can run. Anet is a business after all they care more about the money they are going to make than how loyal their players are. And have you looked around recently? While the SC community may not make up a majority of the players they make up a majority of the players that actually play with each other, a speedclear person can get into a lot of pug groups every day and meet new friends. I dont see this happening anywhere else. I would be willing to say that the sc community makes up the most active player base in the game.

Multiquote posts ftw:

before I start this post, I want to point out that I am glad that Warcry at least posted a decent answer to mine. It was a very mature one, and I will reply to is as maturely as I can (although I know I can be very immature myself on various occasions.)

Gonna start here: I think that once Anet deliberately updated SF so that it could be maintained, they knew very well that the skill would be abused. They might not have known to what extent, but at least they knew they made PvE a lot easier for a lot of people. If they didn't know this, they were either blind, or had no idea how their game worked, both of which I highly doubt.
If you read my post again, you'll see I said: "a large chunk of the regular PvE player base" or something like that. I most certainly said "a large chunk", never said majority. Although I do believe that if you look at the playerbase that still plays GW on a very regular basis, the majority of those will be PvE (and most likely SC) related. There are of course many exceptions, hardcore PvP'ers, and casual PvE'ers that just enjoy the game content exist still, but most are either actively participating in, or looking forward to, SCs.
Well, I know that I would keep playing nonetheless, but there would be many that would move on to other games, because SC's is pretty much one of the last things to enjoy in PvE to some of us. Those who played through the content 8-10 times already, know every mission by heart, have seen pretty much everything there is to this game: poverty, richness, failure, achievement... I have resided to two things in this game: chest running and DoA. Why? I like the thrill of a chestrun -never knowing what you'll get- and I love DoA for no particular reason. The thing I like the most on runs is talking with others on vent. Having a good laugh, coordinating your team, yet still having fun. This is completely possible without SCs, but it's still something different imo.
This is something very personal, directed towards you. I am pretty sure I would not enjoy 2 hours in UW, because I just don't like UW. Some do, some don't. But I think I can assure you that most people don't feel the same way towards it as you. Neither do most towards it as me, but I am fairly certain that spending 2h in UW isn't most people's dream.
For this one: see Chris's post. Anet is a company. And they most certainly care about players in GW1 who might potentially play GW2. If not, they would have nerfed so many things by now, you wouldn't be able to keep up. Money is still their main goal. Be it by providing us many hours of fun, for a very little price still, they are most certainly after money. If not, they wouldn't operate very well, and should take a look at their management.
So, in closing... (Nah, that one's too easy^^)

There will always be people that are against some aspects of the game, and some that will defend it. I am one of those people that can very easily get on his high horse when DoA comes to speech, and there are others that will do the same for their favorite part of the game. Do I blame them? No. Do they blame me? Well, sometimes, but that's mostly because I can be a dick from time to time.
I will still plead for keeping cons (it took me a while to remember what this discussion was originally all about xD) while you might not want them, because they are OP. Well, let's make a picture here: you are in college (like me atm) and you are having your finals. Your prof says: well, you have 2 choices: you can take this paper, which has very hard questions, but if you succeed, at least you will feel a lot more satisfied with your result. Or, you can take this one, which is less hard, but still tests your ability to most parts of the course. What one would you take? Well, I am pretty sure you would take the latter, but there would be people who would complain that they don't want to. They worked too hard for it to get off easy, well, let them take the hard one, they will only prove themselves more, but don't blame us for taking the slightly easier route.

This isn't a perfect portrait I made, but I think it still shows some reference.

I don't disagree with your post , but then , can you call a game very popular if the majority of players still play because they like doing exactly the same thing over and over ? ( especially when it concerns farming poor IA npcs )

PvP is totally dead. After 5-6 years , most PvE'rs cant turn into PvP for obvious reason , and since they cleared all titles in 2 months , they can only play SC's.....
BUT , if i don't deny the fact that you might play " tactics build" , i'm pretty sure that represent 5% of SC players... Let's be honest , when i go DoA , 90% of teams are DwG ; UW , FoW is again only same builds ; Dungeons are ran by shadow form.....

That's sad , but i can't call GW a good game anymore ( it was for sure ) if players are for majority still playing because of the skill shadow form....