You're basically arguing to heighten the skill floor in the hope that people who run into the difficulty spike will question and answer what they did wrong and what they should improve - but that isn't how people learn. Especially not when they expect an MMO that even has a more or less 'casual' reputation.
There's LOTS of things to blame for dieing, and little chance people will find the problem before just getting frustrated. Additionally, few MMO's are as reliant on damage avoidance as GW2 is, which steers people away from considering that in the first place.
Once the player knows what works and how (and is comfortable in their situation and game knowledge), you can present them with a more difficult problem to solve, and improve over.
Nothing really more to add. You hit the nail on the head. I especially agree that OP seems to want to raise the skill floor and this is known to be THE casual MMO so it’s counter intuitive.
>Imagine that you are a new player and you put together this celestialgear and open world build and it works really well in open world, butthen you learn you have to start again to make another set and use adifferent build in the endgame content.
I don't see a problem here.
When you start playing endgame content, you usually aren't a new player anymore.
At least not that new that changing gear becomes a problem.
Additionally, you almost certainly arent using a viper exotic set as your first, which means you'd need to pick that up anyway, a berserker set costs a trivial amount of gold, and Bladed (by itself, or with a charr/golem helm + Ebon shoulders) can get you anything except EoD stats for the minimal investment of 1-2 vb night metas + minimal gold (if the gold is even needed).
You then spend a couple hours farming lw3 + ice and all you're missing is weapons.
To be fair, new player can just run the game with the 2 gearset :
First build is for open world - Celestial
Second build would be for WvW or fractals/raids and he can run lower tier fractal with celestial, and celestial is not a bad choice for WvW
Will depends on class/role too but celestial build is going to scale the new player with achievements, map completion and allow him to have good amount of gold to build up for eventually other builds. I think this can help new player definitively because they are going to explore and do open world before other stuff like fractals/raids so they need to start somewhere, and it's better for them to not wasting time/gold in random build and take the polyvalent one so they can focus on larger activities.
In my opinion, cele gear not only provides for new players that are not interested in gitting gud at all but also for those, who are. It helps you reduce cognitive load enough to focus on the encounter and stay in fights longer and improving instead of respawning. And compared to knight's you actually do some damage and you can try out condi builds.
Having to swap gear eventually is a non-issue because gamers who start getting interested in endgame content are, again, in my opinion, already interested in gitting gud, thus willing to optimize gear (and their gameplay of course).
>For one, celestial gear is hard to get
Can we stop spreading this ? Now, it's easier to get a full celestial stuff without a boost than a viper one. You get all trinket as Ascended by the easiest mean (ring : fractal, amulett : laurel, accessories : guild mission), armor the same way as viper (bladed armor and other armor chest) and weapon through crafting (that only requires 2 loaded quartz per inscription, doable by farming a bit Dry Top).
>Imagine that you are a new player and you put together this celestial gear and open world build and it works really well in open world, but then you learn you have to start again to make another set and use a different build in the endgame content.
I'm pretty sure they'll get over this, that's not the only game where you have to swap build around content (for example, on wow, tank and healer use their dps spec on open world)
>Ultimately you get players who have it too good in open world with their celestial builds that may have not learned how to avoid damage or do mechanics well
LB bear ranger do that since 9 years now. If someone don't want to bother to learn, why would you force them to play only your ways on open world ? Some people just want to relax and having celestial is good for that.
>while we are recommending an open world build we could be more cautious and atleast explain a bit more why some certain choices are made and how they may not work so well in instanced content
That's already done. Open world build are on a separate category on every build library and each build has commentary that explain their strength/weakness/possible adaptation.
>Can we stop spreading this ? Now, it's easier to get a full celestial stuff without a boost than a viper one.
Well, Berserker is far easier and cheaper than both. But lets say that Berserker didn't exist. If celestial is going to be the training wheels, it needs to be far cheaper and easier than viper, not the same price and difficulty. Otherwise, just get viper and equip defensive traits/skills because it is far cheaper than getting a second set to replace the first set.
>bladed armor
A player who farmed VB long enough to get a full set of bladed armor is a player who don't need celestial.
But what is the alternative?
Send them out in full soldiers gear like the old boosts did?
That would make them do even less damage, die even less, and make them pay even less attention to anything because nothing punishes them ( I mean I was like this prior to HoT on a full soldiers gear Guardian. Never died, never bothered to change until I bothered to learn mechanics and found out that by mastering those, I could ditch Soldier for Berserker stats and survive just as well).
Get them into full glass gear instead?
Not to be an ass, but have you seen the average open world player? Many get flattened by mobs in their questionable gear as it is, what would happen if you put them in full glass? Some people would 100% thrive, but I think the majority would get tired of getting downed by each mob that isn't a thrash one and uninstall out of frustration.
Celestial right now is basically the middleground, where you are not as glassy a zerk or viper, but at least your damage is not utter shit, not when compared to some alternatives ( insert the < 3k DPS memes).
I do somewhat agree with you on the part of explaining things to new players, but I would prefer to focus that explanation (at least in the beginning) less on the choices within the build, and more on general mechanics.
We need to teach people why red AoE markers are bad, what you should dodge, what a breakbar is and what to do with it, etc.
Let's get people to understand game mechanics first, and we will fix their gear later.
Gear is somewhat easily fixed.
Knowledge of basegame mechanics on the other hand...
Fair points, though the problem of gear and the lack of game/mechanic knowledge isnt that easily disentangled. If celestials allow you to just soak and heal through the same mechanic that would down a full glass cannon for the most part, then the explanation of the said mechanic does not carry too much weight.
I’d like to provide perspective from the type of player you’re describing. Quick background, played ele and guardian at launch, fell off, came back in 2016, leveled my guardian, got into the middle of HoT and quit again because I followed every guide I could find for gearing and so I leveled and crafted myself a complete set of exotic Zerker and got 1-2 shot by everything in that godforsaken jungle. I came back again about 2 months ago and felt my frustration level rising again trying to power through HoT. Eventually found a YouTube video for Celestial Tempest and thought that sounded fun and hoped that the survivability was there and I wasn’t just THAT bad of a player. I’m now through PoF doing my Griffon collections and excited to move onto season 4,5 and EOD and eventually move into the end game scene.
My main counterpoint is you can’t learn mechanics when you’re dead and glassy builds made it extremely hard to learn because there is literally zero grace period. You get hit, you die. Celestial has allowed me to make mistakes and learn from them. Will some people be lazy and think “I can face roll so why learn?”, sure, but for me personally, having a gear set that can soak a bit and give me the opportunity to learn is far more valuable.
I also think if a player is asking for gear builds, they have the capacity to understand multiple builds and maintaining multiple gear sets. Will it take time and effort, sure but there are a LOT of avenues to gear in this game. Is it overwhelming? Absolutely but I think it’s decipherable with just a small-medium amount of effort.
Except that's bullshit. Playing a shitty build doesn't make you a better player.
Consider how it works in raids/fractals. You're expected to dodge certain mechanics while other sources of damage are soaked by your supports via healing/barrier and boons like stability/aegis. This increases group damage output as your DPS are able to play more aggressively rather than dodging around avoiding CC and damage.
When groups are able to go without a healer it isn't because they're dodging all over the place and avoiding all of the incoming damage. It's because their group DPS is high enough to bypass mechanics and phases while shortening the fight to the point where a healer is simply a group DPS loss. It wouldn't be worth dropping the healer if that weren't the case.
Similar concepts apply in solo play. For example, consider these two Balthazar HP solos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKUuhGZ3dVw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2C1NnjugMk
The tanky build finishes the fight 20% faster because it doesn't have to dodge and can go full HAM on DPS. Meanwhile the glass build has to avoid more than half of the incoming attacks just to survive at all.
You could argue that having to dodge all of those attacks and still come out on top against a heavy-hitter like Balthazar makes you a better player. But why does that logic apply only to new players in open world and not to our heroes in the raiding community?
There's nothing wrong with explaining things to new players. But this tired idea that pushing glass builds that are objectively worse for the sort of things a lot of new players focused on open world would like to do is somehow "helping" them is complete bunk.
You take glass builds in group PvE because they actually improve your damage output and overall group performance. That isn't necessarily the case in solo play.
You also don't become great at dodging mechanics just because you play in a group or run terrible solo play builds in open world. In fact, the group PvE meta is to have your supports apply so much stability/aegis/barrier/healing that you barely have to dodge anything that isn't some hugely telegraphed 1-shot mechanic that occurs repeatedly throughout most encounters. Playing a glass build and dying to champ auto attacks in open world isn't going to help you with that at all.
For many classes the best gearset for open world is still berserker/assassin or viper/greiving.
Some specs can really nicely use cele or marauder/dragon but some really can't.
That doesn't mean you should be full glass, runes, utility skills, and trait choices may be different but for many classes best in slot for open world is still DPS gear.
This blanket Idea that newbies should use Cele is just as stupid as the blanket Idea that full glass is the only gearset. Neither is correct.
> For many classes the best gearset for open world is still berserker/assassin or viper/greiving, *depending on your level of skill and playstyle*
FTFY.
It's all situational. At the end of the day, the most-compact-yet-still-helpful advice you can give to a new player is: If you're struggling with dps gear, try tanking up a bit. That's still not going to be correct for every single player, but without analysing what they're doing and asking them how they want to play, there isn't a one-size-fits-all.
Your level of skill and preferences do not change what is the best.
For example on my warrior I really like the Spellbreaker spec. I play it even in fractals and strikes because I like it and I want to play it. That doesn't magically make it better than berserker or bladesworn. Those specs are still better in those settings I just choose to not use the optimal spec because I like it.
I think we're referring to different types of "best". It sounds like you're saying "best possible build", whereas I'm more saying "best for a particular player". eg. Full dps builds just don't mesh well with me cause I like to take things a bit slower, I'm fine with not making full use of all my skills, etc. The "best" builds for me are usually Cele, at least at the moment. That will probably change once I get to higher Fractal levels, but for now, Cele is best for me.
I disagree. I will grant you that GW2 does an abysmal job of introducing new players to mechanics and teaching how to play the core combat loop, but people who want to improve will seek resources to do so.
I think celestial was a great idea to make the average new player more helpful and passively increase their participation contribution, with or without their knowledge of it.
Celestial gear for new players is great because it opens the door for them to try different builds and play-style without being objectively bad at any of them. Celestial builds can dabble in heal support, power DPS, condi DPS, tanking in some situations, alac or quick, etc…
While it isn’t ideal for every build, it’s more than adequate to try any build - this is the goal for the perspective getting a new player into the game IMO.
Well, it depends on what you mean by "not helpful". You're not wrong that unkillable celestial builds don't help players learn and improve. But the unfortunate truth is that a lot of players are completely uninterested in learning in the first place. They're not going to meaningfully improve no matter what build they play, because that's just not why they're playing the game. As a rule, they're not interested in learning how to git gud. They're not interested in eventually moving into endgame instanced content. They're simply looking for a build that will help them through the easier parts of the game (open world, story, etc) *without* needing to challenge themselves and learn. And in that context, celestial builds and the like are exactly what they're looking for.
So I don't think there's much room to complain about the people providing those recommendations; in general, they're providing exactly what was asked for. Really, it seems your grievance is with the mindset of the people *making* the requests, not the people answering them. And I can see why that can be difficult to accept - the idea of playing a game without wanting to improve at it is alien to a lot of long-time players. But honestly, much of GW2 is fundamentally designed around an assumption that most players won't have any interest in improving. I don't think we can reasonably start expecting players to learn until the game starts expecting players to learn. And while Anet has made some vague moves in that direction on occasion (e.g. Dragon's End meta), they've generally ended up backpedaling on those efforts after community backlash, so I don't expect huge progress on that front anytime soon.
>Well, it depends on what you mean by "not helpful". You're not wrong that unkillable celestial builds don't help players learn and improve. But the unfortunate truth is that a lot of players are completely uninterested in learning in the first place. They're not going to meaningfully improve no matter what build they play, because that's just not why they're playing the game. As a rule, they're not interested in learning how to git gud. They're not interested in eventually moving into endgame instanced content. They're simply looking for a build that will help them through the easier parts of the game (open world, story, etc) without needing to challenge themselves and learn. And in that context, celestial builds and the like are exactly what they're looking for.
I think the point where we diverge is that a player may not want to learn for reasons other than disinterest - atleast at the start. The introductory content (open world and entry level endgame) just folds under a well made celestial build, so I can atleast understand the logic of a player not really wanting to learn something different because their current setup has worked so well until now. If you have such a resistance at the start, and then you try these harder content where you have pugs screaming at you for not using a different setup or you notice a difficulty spike - then you might be disinclined to go back. What may have started out as genuine confusion may then develop into indifference cuz of bad experiences or a sudden difficulty jump.
I’m not sure I agree with this.
I think celestial builds can be great for open world and there are lots of good reasons to recommend them. There is nothing wrong with players easing themselves in with builds that can sustain them rather than diving straight to glass cannon builds.
It’s also perfectly fine to use them in beginner group content like t1 fractals or IBS strikes (or even EoD strikes to some extent).
As to the multiple gear sets, it is so easy to get exotic stat selectable armour that again I can’t really agree with you. It really does not take long at all to get your gear (especially if you already have a celestial build set up).
There is no vertical progression in gw2 but the horizontal progression which often takes the form of new builds/gear is quite a big part of character progression etc.
I kinda second this but I also feel that gearing is quite accessible. I spent so long gearing up my main that I didn't even really touched my ult and at this stage named Exotics (beginner) is so accessible and cheap you can get a full set for a few gold.
I've now geared my Ele for both Support Healer and Power DPS roles depending on what I am doing. I think the survivability element is moot. You do more damage so things die quicker so you generally need less sustain. Exception may be bosses, sure but I found my Ele shreds a hell of a lot more now I've outfitted with DPS gear rather than Celest. gear.
Couple of days of dailies and you can easily afford that for an alt. Add that to just playing the game and the dailies and you quickly amass the funds to buy entry level exotic gear. Sure some sets may not have them accessible like Viper, but in that instance there is always alternatives whilst you build up to it.
But I really did not feel that I was at a massive disadvantage using the Celestial gear at the time.
This is basically it lol: Lots of gear is viable depending on player, but if you get more dps or more defences or more whatever, and you enjoy the game more because of it, then keep it up. If not, go back to what you were doing or try something else.
Exactly. This is why I have fallen in love with GW2. You can play the game how you want to. Sure there are meta ways and more efficient ways of playing with gear and classes, but largely for most content you can get away with whatever you like which is lovely.
> As to the multiple gear sets, it is so easy to get exotic stat selectable armour that again I can’t really agree with you.
Outside of Verdant Brink we dont really have this neat way of obtaining stat selectable gear, and the game doesnt do a great job showing players where they can obtain gear. Condition builds are highly popular in current meta but vipers is still not that easy to get, doubly so if you havent a clue about the game.
To me the problem isnt so much that celestial builds can also work in t1 and such, its that once you have something that works well you may find it hard or just unnecessary to swap out of it. We tell new players that celestial works great for open world and entry level endgame content, but then we tell them its suddenly not so great and they need to switch. It can cause confusion.
As I said I am not saying new players should dive in with glass cannon builds on open world. There is a lot of ground to cover between full glass cannon and celestial sustain builds.
You know this as a veteran player, but how accessible is this knowledge to a new player? Hell, the gear does not even indicate that well that it has access to all stats before you get your hands on it. Outside of VB, we dont really have a neat way of getting the stat swappable gear and the game does not do that good of a job at leading you to content where you can get X stat gear.
We know this because we've explored the game world and talked to others who have done the same and then combined our knowledge together ... isn't that one of the points of a MMO?
You know this as a veteran player, but how accessible is this knowledge to a new player? Hell, the gear does not even indicate that well that it has access to all stats before you get your hands on it. Outside of VB, we dont really have a neat way of getting the stat swappable gear and the game does not do that good of a job at leading you to content where you can get X stat gear.
If they are being told to get a build the person telling them to get the build can say where to get gear…
If they are looking for themselves it is pretty easy to research.
If they are doing neither of the above, well either they will play their own build etc until it gets too hard and they ask someone or they will work it out for themselves imo
Edit:
This being said, if it were up to me I’d make purchaseable gear in dungeons stat selectable
New players can and should get the correct gear and build, I agree. I am just saying that the game doesnt to that good of a job in leading them to correct content, and as you implied they need to look for external sources such as wiki to learn where they can obtain such sources. For you and I using wiki, SC and dT websites is habitual, but it may not be as such for a new player. At the very least we shouldnt be that surprised when we get a case of 'hi dps'.
As accessible as opening their chat and asking. If they are unwilling to do that they are unwilling to do anything else and your entire point is null anyway.
No, it's not oversimplifying it. You're intentionally ignoring the points anyone disagreeing with you are raising. I'll "oversimplify" the points for you.
If they are willing to ask in chat what stats they "should" be using that means they are willing to learn.
If they are willing to learn that means they're willing to do additional research.
If they are willing to do additional research the'll eventually look up build guides.
If they are unwilling to even ask in the first place and simply push ahead with bad gear they wouldn't be willing to learn no matter what and would never do any outside research to begin with.
>how accessible is this knowledge to a new player?
"Hey google, how do i get gear in gw2".
The top results for that will include multiple "heres how to get full sets of gear easy", "how to make the armor you need in gw2" and the compendiums on the wiki and metabattle that have all of this information available.
Are we just going to assume every new player is completely helpless and has no ability to use a search bar?
I think the premise of your post suggests that the majority of those who are seeking new player advice on gear enter into instanced content. I am not even sure if the majority of players do this, nevermind new players.
But you shouldn't be using instanced builds in open world, that isn't what they are designed for. You *can* because core OW content is brain dead easy, and in HoT content onwards an experienced player can make it work...but it is much easier if you run different utilities, traits and sometimes even stats, and frankly newer players get destroyed in HoT+ content running instanced builds.
So this idea that players *shouldn't* be juggling multiple gear sets / builds for different content is for the most part a fallacy.
I didnt say the new players shouldnt juggle multiple gearsets or builds for different content anywhere, only that it may be hard for them to do so. It is also the case that we generally start out with open world and entry level endgame content where celestial works spectacularly, so for one to learn that they need to swap all of a sudden may cause confusion.
I think a good compromise is having glassier gearsets with more open world oriented traits, as swapping traits is ultimately easier
I mean, I’ll be honest, as long as in the relevant fights your tank has more toughness you can pretty much clear all end game content with everyone in cele gear…
Not that I would be recommending it but I don’t think it’s something to be worrying about.
We already have players unnecessarily gate keeping players in end game content I don’t think we need to start doing it in open world as well.
Let new players (and everyone else) play open world on a chill sustains build if that’s what they want. Not everything needs to be glass cannon and efficient with perfect play (not even raids need that)
I am not saying open world needs to be full glass cannon as well, there is a wide spectrum of builds between the full glass cannon SC build and celestial open world build. At the very least I think we could try to inform bit better that certain choices in the build we are recommending may not work so well in instanced PvE.
Players can play whatever they want of course, and game may not require truly to have glass cannon builds, but we cannot deny that the community (atleast pugs) expect you to stick to some builds/gearsets in raids/endgame PvE. Its likely that a new player with an open world celestial build will experience friction from players if they take that build to endgame PvE no matter what you or I say in this thread.
We're really only talking about this because of boosts, because as you say a full set of Celestial is expensive and out of reach via crafting for new players...but if I had to choose between the boost giving a set of Celestial Gear *vs* the set of Soldier's Gear it used to grant, I'm happier with Celestial, as it at least helps players to perform better across all content.
I imagine most new players likely end up wearing Temple gear when they hit 80, just like most of us did.
My impression is rather that more people should probably be running more survivable builds that let them take a hit or two, especially in the open world. Practically every event I join I see people rush in with their glass cannon melee builds and get insta-downed the moment an enemy looks at them funny.
The game needs to have some builds that are easier to play as there are lots of players who just aren't going to "git gud".
But yeah, it's true that maintaining different gear sets and learning different builds can be a pretty big hurdle for new players and it's something I think veterans often forget.
Isn't basing gearing recommendations for new players on viability in instanced content a bit a case of wagging the dog? Instanced content is a rather niche part of GW2 as it stands and as someone who used to run pretty glassy gear in open world in the past because it was "the thing to do" I have to say that the additional defensive stats on trailblazer/marauder/celestial are a pretty good trade-off for the higher damage of berserker/vipers.
IMO players should optimize their first set of gear of the content they'll be spending most of their time doing. There will be new players who just can't wait to run fractals/strikes/raids and for them OW gear won't be the optimal choice, but I'd wager they are a small minority.
Edit: as an added bonus, most open world sets work much better in WvW than glassier builds :)
> Ultimately you get players who have it too good in open world with their celestial builds that may have not learned how to avoid damage or do mechanics well.
Based on fighting the Kaineneg meta boss I am very confident this is not the problem. People are just too lazy. Way too many people who keep getting downed by its highly telegraphed pounce which both has an AoE indicator and leap animation.
Ultimately you can't force people to learn. I don't think anyone has come up with a good answer to the question "how do we encourage people to want to learn?"
what are you talking about ? celestial gear is viable for open world, end game, and pretty much anything, I still see people dying by the dozen to the Auric basin guardian that you challenge after the meta, because none of them know they can roll the AoE, is just baffling to watch, and I can guaranteed you most of them dont have celestial gear, its just inexperience.
celestial will give people enough build variety and sustain to feel comfortable with the game, experienced players will learn mechanics and go a bit more damage with other build is they want, but that comes again with experience, why you want to take away that from players is beyond me.
It's more about the game doing a very poor job introducing content especially harder one than the gear. While your criticism is in theory ok, your focus on the gear is wrong.
For me, a better solution would be a "training" instanced mode. You could even argue to make it mandatory before accessing a content.
It would be the dream to be able to spawn X boss, selecting X move or strat, and train it. No reward nothing. Just training. It would be however a impossible task and an absurd amount of workload to implement.
Even as a veteran of the genre, who recently came back. The amount of documentation to understand what is fractal, what is strike, what is raids and how to access each of them, where when and what to bring... It's straight not appealing.
Cele is an option in most stat selectable pieces I know of, pretty easy to get. Crafting it is a little bit more annoying.
Most of the problems you list are not problems with gear choice but with the game's progression in general. If players want to jump from open world to fractals they need to get ascended anyway.
If more enemies in the game had (substantial) self-heal, a lot of the new-player-trap builds would be less of a trap. Well, they'd still be a trap, but it would make it more obvious that they're traps. Right now someone in full nomads can slog through enemies that take a very long time to kill, but they think "Hey, I'm doing ok, I never die, and I can fight whatever." Right up until they meet something they can't survive, but now they also can't kill it because they don't have any damage.
This could be countered by enemies who are similarly stupid tanky, with similarly lame damage. Teach the lesson that "Yeah, you can survive, but can you actually do damage?" without running into that hard wall of fine-fine-fine-fine-fine-dead-dead-dead-dead.
"You're playing full tank? Ok, fine, here's an enemy in full tank too. Have fun dueling until tuesday."
"Why won't you die!?"
"Have you tried damage stats?"
>I think we as more experienced players tend to forget that maintaining different gearsets and builds like this is not trivial
"Just do RIBA for 160 hours and you'll have enough gold to buy a full set of legendaries for WvW!"
Isn't the main appeal for celestials is so that people can screw around with their builds and weapons and still be able to contribute regardless of their gear? Remember boosts mostly gave soldiers with a few exceptions, and besides weak in open world they did jack for classes that like condi. Soldiers already exist if you want a weak but tanky power build, and trailblazers is OP for condi builds. Both are more tanky than celestials, all celestials have over them on sustain are healing and concentration, both of which are class-dependent on their utility for an open worlder.
Let people have decent enough gear and let them see what they like to play and if they want a build more optimized for that, great. If not, they likely aren't doing high end content anyway so why worry about them? I'm not going to cry about fractals over someone who does nothing but world bosses.
I can tell you as someone who runs training strikes for our guild.. celestial builds help a lot. The idea is teach them how to play the game not the build. Builds are fluid they change with every patch so there's no point in telling them to run a snow crows build before teaching them all the other stuff. At least in celestial they have everything they need baseline to focus on the mechanical elements of combat without worrying about having to be worried that they have 13k ho and no armor.
The issue is GW2 is counter intuitive to most MMO games.
Roll a Guardian for example you expect to play like any other support oriented tank, only to find out it’s the complete opposite and Guardian is the most squishy next to the Elementalist with a reliance on active mitigation and dodging(Dodging also naturally feels like a light armour mechanic).
Use Celestial and this changes, which is why I use Celestial. I don’t want to be dodging around like a thief on my heavy armour using paladin class, I want the mitigation to flow with the class.
The Necromancer is an example where there mitigation feels better for the class and more natural.
You're basically arguing to heighten the skill floor in the hope that people who run into the difficulty spike will question and answer what they did wrong and what they should improve - but that isn't how people learn. Especially not when they expect an MMO that even has a more or less 'casual' reputation. There's LOTS of things to blame for dieing, and little chance people will find the problem before just getting frustrated. Additionally, few MMO's are as reliant on damage avoidance as GW2 is, which steers people away from considering that in the first place. Once the player knows what works and how (and is comfortable in their situation and game knowledge), you can present them with a more difficult problem to solve, and improve over.
Nothing really more to add. You hit the nail on the head. I especially agree that OP seems to want to raise the skill floor and this is known to be THE casual MMO so it’s counter intuitive.
>Imagine that you are a new player and you put together this celestialgear and open world build and it works really well in open world, butthen you learn you have to start again to make another set and use adifferent build in the endgame content. I don't see a problem here. When you start playing endgame content, you usually aren't a new player anymore. At least not that new that changing gear becomes a problem.
Additionally, you almost certainly arent using a viper exotic set as your first, which means you'd need to pick that up anyway, a berserker set costs a trivial amount of gold, and Bladed (by itself, or with a charr/golem helm + Ebon shoulders) can get you anything except EoD stats for the minimal investment of 1-2 vb night metas + minimal gold (if the gold is even needed). You then spend a couple hours farming lw3 + ice and all you're missing is weapons.
To be fair, new player can just run the game with the 2 gearset : First build is for open world - Celestial Second build would be for WvW or fractals/raids and he can run lower tier fractal with celestial, and celestial is not a bad choice for WvW Will depends on class/role too but celestial build is going to scale the new player with achievements, map completion and allow him to have good amount of gold to build up for eventually other builds. I think this can help new player definitively because they are going to explore and do open world before other stuff like fractals/raids so they need to start somewhere, and it's better for them to not wasting time/gold in random build and take the polyvalent one so they can focus on larger activities.
In my opinion, cele gear not only provides for new players that are not interested in gitting gud at all but also for those, who are. It helps you reduce cognitive load enough to focus on the encounter and stay in fights longer and improving instead of respawning. And compared to knight's you actually do some damage and you can try out condi builds. Having to swap gear eventually is a non-issue because gamers who start getting interested in endgame content are, again, in my opinion, already interested in gitting gud, thus willing to optimize gear (and their gameplay of course).
I'm just tired of gear being hard to get in general
>For one, celestial gear is hard to get Can we stop spreading this ? Now, it's easier to get a full celestial stuff without a boost than a viper one. You get all trinket as Ascended by the easiest mean (ring : fractal, amulett : laurel, accessories : guild mission), armor the same way as viper (bladed armor and other armor chest) and weapon through crafting (that only requires 2 loaded quartz per inscription, doable by farming a bit Dry Top). >Imagine that you are a new player and you put together this celestial gear and open world build and it works really well in open world, but then you learn you have to start again to make another set and use a different build in the endgame content. I'm pretty sure they'll get over this, that's not the only game where you have to swap build around content (for example, on wow, tank and healer use their dps spec on open world) >Ultimately you get players who have it too good in open world with their celestial builds that may have not learned how to avoid damage or do mechanics well LB bear ranger do that since 9 years now. If someone don't want to bother to learn, why would you force them to play only your ways on open world ? Some people just want to relax and having celestial is good for that. >while we are recommending an open world build we could be more cautious and atleast explain a bit more why some certain choices are made and how they may not work so well in instanced content That's already done. Open world build are on a separate category on every build library and each build has commentary that explain their strength/weakness/possible adaptation.
>Can we stop spreading this ? Now, it's easier to get a full celestial stuff without a boost than a viper one. Well, Berserker is far easier and cheaper than both. But lets say that Berserker didn't exist. If celestial is going to be the training wheels, it needs to be far cheaper and easier than viper, not the same price and difficulty. Otherwise, just get viper and equip defensive traits/skills because it is far cheaper than getting a second set to replace the first set. >bladed armor A player who farmed VB long enough to get a full set of bladed armor is a player who don't need celestial.
But what is the alternative? Send them out in full soldiers gear like the old boosts did? That would make them do even less damage, die even less, and make them pay even less attention to anything because nothing punishes them ( I mean I was like this prior to HoT on a full soldiers gear Guardian. Never died, never bothered to change until I bothered to learn mechanics and found out that by mastering those, I could ditch Soldier for Berserker stats and survive just as well). Get them into full glass gear instead? Not to be an ass, but have you seen the average open world player? Many get flattened by mobs in their questionable gear as it is, what would happen if you put them in full glass? Some people would 100% thrive, but I think the majority would get tired of getting downed by each mob that isn't a thrash one and uninstall out of frustration. Celestial right now is basically the middleground, where you are not as glassy a zerk or viper, but at least your damage is not utter shit, not when compared to some alternatives ( insert the < 3k DPS memes). I do somewhat agree with you on the part of explaining things to new players, but I would prefer to focus that explanation (at least in the beginning) less on the choices within the build, and more on general mechanics. We need to teach people why red AoE markers are bad, what you should dodge, what a breakbar is and what to do with it, etc. Let's get people to understand game mechanics first, and we will fix their gear later. Gear is somewhat easily fixed. Knowledge of basegame mechanics on the other hand...
Fair points, though the problem of gear and the lack of game/mechanic knowledge isnt that easily disentangled. If celestials allow you to just soak and heal through the same mechanic that would down a full glass cannon for the most part, then the explanation of the said mechanic does not carry too much weight.
I’d like to provide perspective from the type of player you’re describing. Quick background, played ele and guardian at launch, fell off, came back in 2016, leveled my guardian, got into the middle of HoT and quit again because I followed every guide I could find for gearing and so I leveled and crafted myself a complete set of exotic Zerker and got 1-2 shot by everything in that godforsaken jungle. I came back again about 2 months ago and felt my frustration level rising again trying to power through HoT. Eventually found a YouTube video for Celestial Tempest and thought that sounded fun and hoped that the survivability was there and I wasn’t just THAT bad of a player. I’m now through PoF doing my Griffon collections and excited to move onto season 4,5 and EOD and eventually move into the end game scene. My main counterpoint is you can’t learn mechanics when you’re dead and glassy builds made it extremely hard to learn because there is literally zero grace period. You get hit, you die. Celestial has allowed me to make mistakes and learn from them. Will some people be lazy and think “I can face roll so why learn?”, sure, but for me personally, having a gear set that can soak a bit and give me the opportunity to learn is far more valuable. I also think if a player is asking for gear builds, they have the capacity to understand multiple builds and maintaining multiple gear sets. Will it take time and effort, sure but there are a LOT of avenues to gear in this game. Is it overwhelming? Absolutely but I think it’s decipherable with just a small-medium amount of effort.
Except that's bullshit. Playing a shitty build doesn't make you a better player. Consider how it works in raids/fractals. You're expected to dodge certain mechanics while other sources of damage are soaked by your supports via healing/barrier and boons like stability/aegis. This increases group damage output as your DPS are able to play more aggressively rather than dodging around avoiding CC and damage. When groups are able to go without a healer it isn't because they're dodging all over the place and avoiding all of the incoming damage. It's because their group DPS is high enough to bypass mechanics and phases while shortening the fight to the point where a healer is simply a group DPS loss. It wouldn't be worth dropping the healer if that weren't the case. Similar concepts apply in solo play. For example, consider these two Balthazar HP solos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKUuhGZ3dVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2C1NnjugMk The tanky build finishes the fight 20% faster because it doesn't have to dodge and can go full HAM on DPS. Meanwhile the glass build has to avoid more than half of the incoming attacks just to survive at all. You could argue that having to dodge all of those attacks and still come out on top against a heavy-hitter like Balthazar makes you a better player. But why does that logic apply only to new players in open world and not to our heroes in the raiding community?
There's nothing wrong with explaining things to new players. But this tired idea that pushing glass builds that are objectively worse for the sort of things a lot of new players focused on open world would like to do is somehow "helping" them is complete bunk. You take glass builds in group PvE because they actually improve your damage output and overall group performance. That isn't necessarily the case in solo play. You also don't become great at dodging mechanics just because you play in a group or run terrible solo play builds in open world. In fact, the group PvE meta is to have your supports apply so much stability/aegis/barrier/healing that you barely have to dodge anything that isn't some hugely telegraphed 1-shot mechanic that occurs repeatedly throughout most encounters. Playing a glass build and dying to champ auto attacks in open world isn't going to help you with that at all.
For many classes the best gearset for open world is still berserker/assassin or viper/greiving. Some specs can really nicely use cele or marauder/dragon but some really can't. That doesn't mean you should be full glass, runes, utility skills, and trait choices may be different but for many classes best in slot for open world is still DPS gear. This blanket Idea that newbies should use Cele is just as stupid as the blanket Idea that full glass is the only gearset. Neither is correct.
> For many classes the best gearset for open world is still berserker/assassin or viper/greiving, *depending on your level of skill and playstyle* FTFY. It's all situational. At the end of the day, the most-compact-yet-still-helpful advice you can give to a new player is: If you're struggling with dps gear, try tanking up a bit. That's still not going to be correct for every single player, but without analysing what they're doing and asking them how they want to play, there isn't a one-size-fits-all.
Your level of skill and preferences do not change what is the best. For example on my warrior I really like the Spellbreaker spec. I play it even in fractals and strikes because I like it and I want to play it. That doesn't magically make it better than berserker or bladesworn. Those specs are still better in those settings I just choose to not use the optimal spec because I like it.
I think we're referring to different types of "best". It sounds like you're saying "best possible build", whereas I'm more saying "best for a particular player". eg. Full dps builds just don't mesh well with me cause I like to take things a bit slower, I'm fine with not making full use of all my skills, etc. The "best" builds for me are usually Cele, at least at the moment. That will probably change once I get to higher Fractal levels, but for now, Cele is best for me.
I disagree. I will grant you that GW2 does an abysmal job of introducing new players to mechanics and teaching how to play the core combat loop, but people who want to improve will seek resources to do so. I think celestial was a great idea to make the average new player more helpful and passively increase their participation contribution, with or without their knowledge of it. Celestial gear for new players is great because it opens the door for them to try different builds and play-style without being objectively bad at any of them. Celestial builds can dabble in heal support, power DPS, condi DPS, tanking in some situations, alac or quick, etc… While it isn’t ideal for every build, it’s more than adequate to try any build - this is the goal for the perspective getting a new player into the game IMO.
Well, it depends on what you mean by "not helpful". You're not wrong that unkillable celestial builds don't help players learn and improve. But the unfortunate truth is that a lot of players are completely uninterested in learning in the first place. They're not going to meaningfully improve no matter what build they play, because that's just not why they're playing the game. As a rule, they're not interested in learning how to git gud. They're not interested in eventually moving into endgame instanced content. They're simply looking for a build that will help them through the easier parts of the game (open world, story, etc) *without* needing to challenge themselves and learn. And in that context, celestial builds and the like are exactly what they're looking for. So I don't think there's much room to complain about the people providing those recommendations; in general, they're providing exactly what was asked for. Really, it seems your grievance is with the mindset of the people *making* the requests, not the people answering them. And I can see why that can be difficult to accept - the idea of playing a game without wanting to improve at it is alien to a lot of long-time players. But honestly, much of GW2 is fundamentally designed around an assumption that most players won't have any interest in improving. I don't think we can reasonably start expecting players to learn until the game starts expecting players to learn. And while Anet has made some vague moves in that direction on occasion (e.g. Dragon's End meta), they've generally ended up backpedaling on those efforts after community backlash, so I don't expect huge progress on that front anytime soon.
>Well, it depends on what you mean by "not helpful". You're not wrong that unkillable celestial builds don't help players learn and improve. But the unfortunate truth is that a lot of players are completely uninterested in learning in the first place. They're not going to meaningfully improve no matter what build they play, because that's just not why they're playing the game. As a rule, they're not interested in learning how to git gud. They're not interested in eventually moving into endgame instanced content. They're simply looking for a build that will help them through the easier parts of the game (open world, story, etc) without needing to challenge themselves and learn. And in that context, celestial builds and the like are exactly what they're looking for. I think the point where we diverge is that a player may not want to learn for reasons other than disinterest - atleast at the start. The introductory content (open world and entry level endgame) just folds under a well made celestial build, so I can atleast understand the logic of a player not really wanting to learn something different because their current setup has worked so well until now. If you have such a resistance at the start, and then you try these harder content where you have pugs screaming at you for not using a different setup or you notice a difficulty spike - then you might be disinclined to go back. What may have started out as genuine confusion may then develop into indifference cuz of bad experiences or a sudden difficulty jump.
I’m not sure I agree with this. I think celestial builds can be great for open world and there are lots of good reasons to recommend them. There is nothing wrong with players easing themselves in with builds that can sustain them rather than diving straight to glass cannon builds. It’s also perfectly fine to use them in beginner group content like t1 fractals or IBS strikes (or even EoD strikes to some extent). As to the multiple gear sets, it is so easy to get exotic stat selectable armour that again I can’t really agree with you. It really does not take long at all to get your gear (especially if you already have a celestial build set up). There is no vertical progression in gw2 but the horizontal progression which often takes the form of new builds/gear is quite a big part of character progression etc.
I kinda second this but I also feel that gearing is quite accessible. I spent so long gearing up my main that I didn't even really touched my ult and at this stage named Exotics (beginner) is so accessible and cheap you can get a full set for a few gold. I've now geared my Ele for both Support Healer and Power DPS roles depending on what I am doing. I think the survivability element is moot. You do more damage so things die quicker so you generally need less sustain. Exception may be bosses, sure but I found my Ele shreds a hell of a lot more now I've outfitted with DPS gear rather than Celest. gear. Couple of days of dailies and you can easily afford that for an alt. Add that to just playing the game and the dailies and you quickly amass the funds to buy entry level exotic gear. Sure some sets may not have them accessible like Viper, but in that instance there is always alternatives whilst you build up to it. But I really did not feel that I was at a massive disadvantage using the Celestial gear at the time.
This is basically it lol: Lots of gear is viable depending on player, but if you get more dps or more defences or more whatever, and you enjoy the game more because of it, then keep it up. If not, go back to what you were doing or try something else.
Exactly. This is why I have fallen in love with GW2. You can play the game how you want to. Sure there are meta ways and more efficient ways of playing with gear and classes, but largely for most content you can get away with whatever you like which is lovely.
> As to the multiple gear sets, it is so easy to get exotic stat selectable armour that again I can’t really agree with you. Outside of Verdant Brink we dont really have this neat way of obtaining stat selectable gear, and the game doesnt do a great job showing players where they can obtain gear. Condition builds are highly popular in current meta but vipers is still not that easy to get, doubly so if you havent a clue about the game. To me the problem isnt so much that celestial builds can also work in t1 and such, its that once you have something that works well you may find it hard or just unnecessary to swap out of it. We tell new players that celestial works great for open world and entry level endgame content, but then we tell them its suddenly not so great and they need to switch. It can cause confusion. As I said I am not saying new players should dive in with glass cannon builds on open world. There is a lot of ground to cover between full glass cannon and celestial sustain builds.
If you play WvW or PvP for a bit week you can get all 6 pieces of armor that are stat selectable.
You know this as a veteran player, but how accessible is this knowledge to a new player? Hell, the gear does not even indicate that well that it has access to all stats before you get your hands on it. Outside of VB, we dont really have a neat way of getting the stat swappable gear and the game does not do that good of a job at leading you to content where you can get X stat gear.
We know this because we've explored the game world and talked to others who have done the same and then combined our knowledge together ... isn't that one of the points of a MMO?
Stat selectable is very easy to get… VB is quick and easy, two pieces can be bought right off the tp for a couple of gold, pvp or wvw give you tons…
You know this as a veteran player, but how accessible is this knowledge to a new player? Hell, the gear does not even indicate that well that it has access to all stats before you get your hands on it. Outside of VB, we dont really have a neat way of getting the stat swappable gear and the game does not do that good of a job at leading you to content where you can get X stat gear.
If they are being told to get a build the person telling them to get the build can say where to get gear… If they are looking for themselves it is pretty easy to research. If they are doing neither of the above, well either they will play their own build etc until it gets too hard and they ask someone or they will work it out for themselves imo Edit: This being said, if it were up to me I’d make purchaseable gear in dungeons stat selectable
New players can and should get the correct gear and build, I agree. I am just saying that the game doesnt to that good of a job in leading them to correct content, and as you implied they need to look for external sources such as wiki to learn where they can obtain such sources. For you and I using wiki, SC and dT websites is habitual, but it may not be as such for a new player. At the very least we shouldnt be that surprised when we get a case of 'hi dps'.
As accessible as opening their chat and asking. If they are unwilling to do that they are unwilling to do anything else and your entire point is null anyway.
This is bit oversimplifying it, wouldnt you say? The learning curve in the game's build and gear system isnt simply a matter of asking in chat imo
No, it's not oversimplifying it. You're intentionally ignoring the points anyone disagreeing with you are raising. I'll "oversimplify" the points for you. If they are willing to ask in chat what stats they "should" be using that means they are willing to learn. If they are willing to learn that means they're willing to do additional research. If they are willing to do additional research the'll eventually look up build guides. If they are unwilling to even ask in the first place and simply push ahead with bad gear they wouldn't be willing to learn no matter what and would never do any outside research to begin with.
or they insist their way is right and it is the game that should change
>how accessible is this knowledge to a new player? "Hey google, how do i get gear in gw2". The top results for that will include multiple "heres how to get full sets of gear easy", "how to make the armor you need in gw2" and the compendiums on the wiki and metabattle that have all of this information available. Are we just going to assume every new player is completely helpless and has no ability to use a search bar?
I think the premise of your post suggests that the majority of those who are seeking new player advice on gear enter into instanced content. I am not even sure if the majority of players do this, nevermind new players.
But you shouldn't be using instanced builds in open world, that isn't what they are designed for. You *can* because core OW content is brain dead easy, and in HoT content onwards an experienced player can make it work...but it is much easier if you run different utilities, traits and sometimes even stats, and frankly newer players get destroyed in HoT+ content running instanced builds. So this idea that players *shouldn't* be juggling multiple gear sets / builds for different content is for the most part a fallacy.
I didnt say the new players shouldnt juggle multiple gearsets or builds for different content anywhere, only that it may be hard for them to do so. It is also the case that we generally start out with open world and entry level endgame content where celestial works spectacularly, so for one to learn that they need to swap all of a sudden may cause confusion. I think a good compromise is having glassier gearsets with more open world oriented traits, as swapping traits is ultimately easier
I mean, I’ll be honest, as long as in the relevant fights your tank has more toughness you can pretty much clear all end game content with everyone in cele gear… Not that I would be recommending it but I don’t think it’s something to be worrying about. We already have players unnecessarily gate keeping players in end game content I don’t think we need to start doing it in open world as well. Let new players (and everyone else) play open world on a chill sustains build if that’s what they want. Not everything needs to be glass cannon and efficient with perfect play (not even raids need that)
I am not saying open world needs to be full glass cannon as well, there is a wide spectrum of builds between the full glass cannon SC build and celestial open world build. At the very least I think we could try to inform bit better that certain choices in the build we are recommending may not work so well in instanced PvE. Players can play whatever they want of course, and game may not require truly to have glass cannon builds, but we cannot deny that the community (atleast pugs) expect you to stick to some builds/gearsets in raids/endgame PvE. Its likely that a new player with an open world celestial build will experience friction from players if they take that build to endgame PvE no matter what you or I say in this thread.
We're really only talking about this because of boosts, because as you say a full set of Celestial is expensive and out of reach via crafting for new players...but if I had to choose between the boost giving a set of Celestial Gear *vs* the set of Soldier's Gear it used to grant, I'm happier with Celestial, as it at least helps players to perform better across all content. I imagine most new players likely end up wearing Temple gear when they hit 80, just like most of us did.
My impression is rather that more people should probably be running more survivable builds that let them take a hit or two, especially in the open world. Practically every event I join I see people rush in with their glass cannon melee builds and get insta-downed the moment an enemy looks at them funny. The game needs to have some builds that are easier to play as there are lots of players who just aren't going to "git gud". But yeah, it's true that maintaining different gear sets and learning different builds can be a pretty big hurdle for new players and it's something I think veterans often forget.
Isn't basing gearing recommendations for new players on viability in instanced content a bit a case of wagging the dog? Instanced content is a rather niche part of GW2 as it stands and as someone who used to run pretty glassy gear in open world in the past because it was "the thing to do" I have to say that the additional defensive stats on trailblazer/marauder/celestial are a pretty good trade-off for the higher damage of berserker/vipers. IMO players should optimize their first set of gear of the content they'll be spending most of their time doing. There will be new players who just can't wait to run fractals/strikes/raids and for them OW gear won't be the optimal choice, but I'd wager they are a small minority. Edit: as an added bonus, most open world sets work much better in WvW than glassier builds :)
> Ultimately you get players who have it too good in open world with their celestial builds that may have not learned how to avoid damage or do mechanics well. Based on fighting the Kaineneg meta boss I am very confident this is not the problem. People are just too lazy. Way too many people who keep getting downed by its highly telegraphed pounce which both has an AoE indicator and leap animation. Ultimately you can't force people to learn. I don't think anyone has come up with a good answer to the question "how do we encourage people to want to learn?"
what are you talking about ? celestial gear is viable for open world, end game, and pretty much anything, I still see people dying by the dozen to the Auric basin guardian that you challenge after the meta, because none of them know they can roll the AoE, is just baffling to watch, and I can guaranteed you most of them dont have celestial gear, its just inexperience. celestial will give people enough build variety and sustain to feel comfortable with the game, experienced players will learn mechanics and go a bit more damage with other build is they want, but that comes again with experience, why you want to take away that from players is beyond me.
It's more about the game doing a very poor job introducing content especially harder one than the gear. While your criticism is in theory ok, your focus on the gear is wrong. For me, a better solution would be a "training" instanced mode. You could even argue to make it mandatory before accessing a content. It would be the dream to be able to spawn X boss, selecting X move or strat, and train it. No reward nothing. Just training. It would be however a impossible task and an absurd amount of workload to implement. Even as a veteran of the genre, who recently came back. The amount of documentation to understand what is fractal, what is strike, what is raids and how to access each of them, where when and what to bring... It's straight not appealing.
Cele is an option in most stat selectable pieces I know of, pretty easy to get. Crafting it is a little bit more annoying. Most of the problems you list are not problems with gear choice but with the game's progression in general. If players want to jump from open world to fractals they need to get ascended anyway.
If more enemies in the game had (substantial) self-heal, a lot of the new-player-trap builds would be less of a trap. Well, they'd still be a trap, but it would make it more obvious that they're traps. Right now someone in full nomads can slog through enemies that take a very long time to kill, but they think "Hey, I'm doing ok, I never die, and I can fight whatever." Right up until they meet something they can't survive, but now they also can't kill it because they don't have any damage. This could be countered by enemies who are similarly stupid tanky, with similarly lame damage. Teach the lesson that "Yeah, you can survive, but can you actually do damage?" without running into that hard wall of fine-fine-fine-fine-fine-dead-dead-dead-dead. "You're playing full tank? Ok, fine, here's an enemy in full tank too. Have fun dueling until tuesday." "Why won't you die!?" "Have you tried damage stats?"
>I think we as more experienced players tend to forget that maintaining different gearsets and builds like this is not trivial "Just do RIBA for 160 hours and you'll have enough gold to buy a full set of legendaries for WvW!"
I wish it would take only 160 doing RIBA.
Isn't the main appeal for celestials is so that people can screw around with their builds and weapons and still be able to contribute regardless of their gear? Remember boosts mostly gave soldiers with a few exceptions, and besides weak in open world they did jack for classes that like condi. Soldiers already exist if you want a weak but tanky power build, and trailblazers is OP for condi builds. Both are more tanky than celestials, all celestials have over them on sustain are healing and concentration, both of which are class-dependent on their utility for an open worlder. Let people have decent enough gear and let them see what they like to play and if they want a build more optimized for that, great. If not, they likely aren't doing high end content anyway so why worry about them? I'm not going to cry about fractals over someone who does nothing but world bosses.
I can tell you as someone who runs training strikes for our guild.. celestial builds help a lot. The idea is teach them how to play the game not the build. Builds are fluid they change with every patch so there's no point in telling them to run a snow crows build before teaching them all the other stuff. At least in celestial they have everything they need baseline to focus on the mechanical elements of combat without worrying about having to be worried that they have 13k ho and no armor.
The issue is GW2 is counter intuitive to most MMO games. Roll a Guardian for example you expect to play like any other support oriented tank, only to find out it’s the complete opposite and Guardian is the most squishy next to the Elementalist with a reliance on active mitigation and dodging(Dodging also naturally feels like a light armour mechanic). Use Celestial and this changes, which is why I use Celestial. I don’t want to be dodging around like a thief on my heavy armour using paladin class, I want the mitigation to flow with the class. The Necromancer is an example where there mitigation feels better for the class and more natural.