Missions that encourage people to think outside the cookie cutter build.

-------In relation to pve---------

I think a major problem in guild wars is that people become so reliant on sticking to a particular build (example the wammo, a warrior with monk skills)that they forget to even try to mix skills and come up with new creative builds to tackle pve environments.

These people are becoming so reliant on these builds they chose to even neglect people that play something different.

Even going as far as not letting a assassin or mesmer into their group and sticking to the simple set up.

The most common classes being accepted into teams usually are the warrio, elem, monk and mm which are necro that focuse on minions.
And even within these groups people are expected to play a certain role.

I Know Anet have brought in some quests such as the captain missions which forced people to think outside the cookie cutter and this is a good sign.
Hopefully with future instalments Anet will give some of the lesser roles in pve more uses and make people start thinking more about experimenting with builds and teaming with other professions.

Start thinking about mobs in quests and start making the mobs use skills that damage and work effectively against certain classes. Because with many of the enemy mobs there really isn’t much thinking involved and the same formulas are being seen over and over again.

In a certain way your right because it is a problem for the unregular proffesions to get trough the game with pugs. On the other hand why change a winning team.
I totaly do agree on the fact that there are to many standart build.
Mostly people go into THK with a general balanced team.
on my monk i joined a all ranger team containing trappers interuptors etc.
There was one more monk next to me but he left just before the keep. But we made it because of the rangers also beeing able to support there own health a bit to releave my pain.(Still thank that group for the geart experience)

Courage that is what is needed these days(and i dont mean the crazy tank that runs 10 miles ahead of the rest(i do it at times if i know i can take it so the rest doesnt get the heavy damage but thats difrent)).

its a major problem newhere. 70% of all people cannot think for themselves when playing any game, and rely in tips and such to beat it.

My cookie cutter team is me and the henchies.

I recently played that one Luxon mission where you have to protect the baby turtles from the Kurzicks with my ranger/monk. It was the wierdest build I ever played.

I had max wilderness survival, high healing prayers, and high expertise. Basically, I was a turtle tender lol. I trapped around the little ones and healed them as they took damage. Worked excellent.

Hmmm, I pretty much always change my secondary to what suits a particular mission the best mostly because I play with henchies, so I'll adapt to the type of char the henchies cannot provide.

Example for the Boreas Seabed mission I took mesmer as secondary on my Warrior so I could have a couple of extra interrupts, I completely owned that (less than 14 minutes) - the last boss only ever cast his devastaing spell once, luckily it has a loong casting time so it's easy to interrupt.

sometimes, it's pretty fun to just go and try new things.

The game's been out for a year (well, half of it has!) so of course there's some solidity to peoples' mindsets.

However, there has been meaningful change every so often - the problem is that said change is then promptly taken on board by everyone and becomes the "new" tired old build!

Seriously - the 55hp monk, the all-Barrage ranger party, the touch ranger, even the IWAY warrior... They're all ideas that took someone clever and imaginative, as well as some honest-to-goodness testing, before they became the boogymen they are today.

Personally, I think in a month's time we'll be sick of groups looking for Earth eles with Ward Against Melee in their cookie-cutter builds*/**. Oh, and Shelter spammin' by Ritualists, but then that's powerful enough that everyone recognized it right away, right?


*One bright spark brought it on his R/E to our B/P group in Tombs today - worked quite well, actually!
**I live in fear of the day when group leaders insist on E/Mes for Echo Warding!

You know, there are actually people who don't wanna think ingame or be creative, genuine. They keep it for work or any other projects they are involved in. They just play to have fun, and that's how a game is supposed to be. Agreed?

I am one of those people who enjoys messing around with skill combinations and sequences of use to make a build that works for my play style. But there will always be people who prefer the easy the method.

People want party members to use staple builds because with strangers sometimes the only thing you can take comfort in is builds you have consistently proven themselves to get the job done.

The object of most mission groups is to succeed, not to have an interesting group composition.

Expressing your individuality via your build is best left to Guild/Friend groups, soloing, or henchmen. That is, with a group you can operate effectively with.

QFT.

Calling builds cookie-cutter became even worse trend than builds themselves, and it is getting seriously annoying.
Cookie-cutter builds work because general PvE involves very little communication and coordination and the only way to perform is if every party member knows exactly what his role is. Promblem here that most people who complain about cookie-cutter builds confuse role and primary class.

No offence to OP, but seriously there is nothing wrong with cookie-cutter builds. They used alot because they work well.
If you have a build that you think is better than a cookie cookie-cutter one, test is with friends and post a guide on this forum. If it is really good, people will accept it.

I really want to know when cookie-cutter became synonymous with efficient.

How about you let people play whatever build they like to play. And stick to your own business.. it doesn't concern you.

I don't even see why you bring this up. Nothing can ACTUALLY be done about what YOU think is a problem. Just another negative thread, I suppose.

I personally believe that I have seen the missions take a turn to become more diverse and thus bring about the need for more diversity in play style to beat efficiently. Here are a few examples:

Vizunah Square: While at least one if not two MM are next to necessity for a masters, a ranger with EoE can really tear the enemies a new one. This skill does admittedly hurt the minions, but not as badly as it does the enemies.

Boreas Seabed: As pointed out by Majoho, adjusting the team's build to allow interupts really makes a difference here. A ranger that can interupt is generally prefered over a Barrage Ranger here.

Arborstone: This I believe is the best example of a mission that requires the team to go beyond the "cookie cutter" to really excel in. A typical Nuker is near useless for the second half of the mission due to excessive knockdowns. Monks and other casters are also very vulnerable to KD here as well. An excellent solution to this is for the warriors to bring Balanced Stance and/or Dolyak Sig and for the team to get an earth ele with Ward of Stability. When I did this mission with my Ritualist a while back, I actually switched my secondary to Ele just for that skill and had a lot of success. It allowed not only myself to go uninterupted, but also the casters.

Gyala Hatchery: As Edge Martinez said a trapper ranger can really work miracles in this mission since they can slow down enemies before they reach the turtles as well as blind them. A water style ele that has slowdown skills is also very valuable here since slow enemies are more likely to die before they can reach the turtles. Having a group that relies simply on healing the turtles generally fails since they turtles die so quickly, even the fastest monk will see a turtle or two get spiked before he can do anything about it.



Of course in general "Cookie Cutter" builds will be preferred due to their effectiveness as well as the ability to let the group make a basic strategy without spending forever explaining eachother's build to eachother. However there are at least some missions out there that do allow the not-so-common builds to have their moment of glory.

lol same

Mee <3 henchies. they wont never leave you

Well for example Thirsty River encourages it but some players don't want to listen Two monks is overkill, why not try that mesmer who's been shouting "LFG for the love of God, please! LFG!" in the corner ever since your first failed attempt 2 hours ago?

yeah I know they work well thats my point I wanto see more missions that force people to play different stlyes and builds. But I suppose if that happend people would complain lol.

yeah I know they work well thats my point.

I wanto see more missions, quests and mobs that make players think about trying different builds/proffesions rather then the ordinary proffesions and builds that you see people more commonly asking for to join their party. I mean compare the usefullness of minion master or tank to other classes such as the mesmer or assasin in pve. If they were to make mobs that counter mm or tanks and make mesmer assasins more usefull then that might influence people to think outside the square.

After all mesmer is very usefull in pvp but not so mich in pve to me that really says something about the mob layouts no? I think it would be very interesting to vary up the opposing mobs a little so that other builds are needed to prevail after all guild wars is all about making builds to tackle the situation. Maybe the future elite missions should take this approach in which people spend weeks trying to figure a team build to tackle the place. I mean some one had to come up with the barrage build for tombs now didnt they?

Sorry about the double post clicked it and the page wasnt refreshing, comps very hot about to explode!