Suggestion: A new kind of Breakbar

[Palador.2170]

So, we see the complaint with the Boneskinner fight, and we've seen it countless times before. "People don't bring CC to large fights, and the fight fails." And this IS a problem.

 

But, what if we put the Breakbar on the player, and not the boss?

 

To explain what I mean, let's make Drooburt a new boss. At 75%, 50%, and 25% health, he uses a wide area AoE called "You're useless!" Anyone hit with that has their max HP knocked down by 35% until the end of the fight. Hit by all three, and you're dead and un-rezzable during the fight, removing you from the combat and the scaling equation. How do you avoid this attack? When his Breakbar pops up at those health thresholds, you need to do some set amount of CC to him (let's say 8, 10, and 12 for the three waves). Doing this gives you the "I'm useful!" buff, which keeps the debuff from hitting you.

 

Put four chests at the end, and only one is automatic for the event (gold, silver, copper as usual). The other three are only opened if you avoided the special attacks, by virtue of having those buffs on you still. People running in to snipe Drooburt at the very end, or just hitting 1 will get next to nothing, only those that stay in the fight and use CC get the real rewards.

 

That's a very rough example, and I'm positive someone could refine the idea into something much better. But I think the central idea, of putting the results of the breakbar onto the player and not the boss, is sound and could lead to some interesting new mechanics that are less punishing to the group as a whole and give better motivation to learn to bring some CC to a fight.

[mindcircus.1506]

I don't believe the solution to a playerbase that struggles with a simple mechanic like breakbars is to introduce a more convoluted system.

[Randulf.7614]

I'm not wholly against the idea as the principle you are trying to achieve has merit, but as mindcircus says, this is really not going to catch on given the existing, simpler mechanic is a struggle when it's a more punishing breakbar.

 

I'd like to see better tutorials and a clearer display on skills about stating hard and soft breakbar damage. Maybe with pretty coloured labels. It might look patronising, but clearer displays and tutorials are what has been needed since the system was introduced

[Teratus.2859]

I agree with Randulf, one of the biggest issues with CC is that there isn't anything ingame to teach people how to use it effectively.

 

Imo this is in part one of the main reasons profession trainers need to come back to the game and in game tutorials etc need to be added in to teach you how to play each class to some extent.

This can also be done for each elite spec too.

 

Achievements could also be added to encourage players to play these tutorials and complete them.

 

Biggest problem with this would be the workload required to make tutorials for each class and racial starting area..

One solution to that would be to have them take place in LA or the PvP hub.. somewhere universal to each race or something.

[Zoltar MacRoth.7146]

This isn't a solution for everyone but I'd be happy with extra icons on my screen when a defiance bar comes up that highlight which skills would be best to defeat it, perhaps in order of usefulness. Or, a special highlight could appear around the skills at the bottom of the screen which are in some way useful to breaking defiance bars. Something visual that hints at what tools you have available for CC but - and here's the big takeaway, Anet - DOESN'T REQUIRE YOU TO CLICK A DIALOG WHILE YOU'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF COMBAT. All we need is something inobtrusive that draws your eye to your CC skills.

[Palador.2170]

> @"Zoltar MacRoth.7146" said:

> This isn't a solution for everyone but I'd be happy with extra icons on my screen when a defiance bar comes up that highlight which skills would be best to defeat it, perhaps in order of usefulness. Or, a special highlight could appear around the skills at the bottom of the screen which are in some way useful to breaking defiance bars. Something visual that hints at what tools you have available for CC but - and here's the big takeaway, Anet - DOESN'T REQUIRE YOU TO CLICK A DIALOG WHILE YOU'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF COMBAT. All we need is something inobtrusive that draws your eye to your CC skills.

 

If you're targeting something with an active Breakbar, all your CC skills turn a bit blue, perhaps? Or some kind of glow/highlight effect? That would be nice, but I think the people that most need to see it wouldn't be looking in the first place. They'd never notice it, or not have those skills in their skillbar to begin with.

[Aaralyna.3104]

Theres still players that don't know big red circles and triangles means aoe (aka do not stand in this), that you cannot stand still and just auto attack in full range the whole fight, dodging, reflection shield aka bubbles on bosses/champs, combo fields, breakbars and that every encounter has tells so you see they will do a certain attack.

 

Now dodging has some tutorial but I assume most try to run through it once, fail and just forget about that single chest. Tells of encounters, theres so much visual clutter that you most of the time don't even see them (especially since every big encounter gets blobbed by people). And all the other things are totally neglected. I am not saying every player is like that (especially not players familiar with the genre of mmo's prior as they have a basic understanding if they ever did dungeons or the likes) but I surely saw masses of players that were clueless. I was too on breakbars as that was new and combo fields are still a mistery (I know they exist and that I have skills to start and finish but no clue if I get an effect and what and when, so I just stick on top of others and do my own rotations). For me it was a friend that played the game already that explained about such things, and the wiki ofcourse. Should there be some tutorial on such basic things, yes. But it should be around when you start the game as even starter maps use those mechanics... So either add in tutorial or at least give players some in game mail explaining such things when you finish your tutorial. Perhaps with some spot where you can practice and see such mechanics. A mail could direct players to that place in example. Maybe content creators (youtube/twitch) that are popular could tackle a tutorial on how to do such thing as alternative (per class and weapon/build).

 

I am not for a personal CC system as suggested since not all classes have acces to multiple cc's (either hard or soft ones). Let alone a player thats new (missing skills, doesnt use secondary weapons).

 

Yesterday Boneskinner champion failed coz not all ppl did cc. If that happens enough ppl that don't cc should notice they do something wrong (boss keeps fail on them everytime). I have also seen ppl ignoring those bubbles around champions where only close (inside bubble) does damage to boss... It does help to pm players outside of it attacking (usually ranged) that if they don't stand inside that bubble they get zero rewards as they do no hits). The ones I have pmed about this didn't even know about this.

[Pifil.5193]

It would be nice if there was some kind of feedback when you do breakbar damage. The game's tool tips tell you about the damage and effects that each skill has but not the breakbar damage.

 

They should add the breakbar damage to the tool tips and in combat they should add floaters with icons to give you feedback when you actually do breakbar damage.

 

Those are the first things they should address, IMO, but it's been suggested in the past and nothing has been done.

[Ashantara.8731]

> @"Palador.2170" said:

> So, we see the complaint with the Boneskinner fight, and we've seen it countless times before. "People don't bring CC to large fights, and the fight fails." And this IS a problem.

 

It's mostly a problem because this game has no proper tutorial that teaches you about important fight mechanics like defiance bars and CC.

 

> @"Teratus.2859" said:

> I agree with Randulf, one of the biggest issues with CC is that there isn't anything ingame to teach people how to use it effectively.

>

> Imo this is in part one of the main reasons profession trainers need to come back to the game and in game tutorials etc need to be added in to teach you how to play each class to some extent.

 

:+1:

[Kulvar.1239]

The main issue with breakbar is that more DPS let you bypass the mechanic entirely at the cost of a longer fight only. If it was impossible to bypass the breakbar mechanic by outnumbering the foe, but making breakbar less difficult to empty may help.

[Ameepa.6793]

Perhaps the breakbars should give some sort of feedback when you hit them with CC to make it easier to learn that CC does something to them.

 

Also maybe the breakbars generally should be tuned to be a bit easier to break so that people would more often see what happens when they actually are broken succesfully. If breaking the bar fails 90% of times, it just leaves people confused about what it even is and what it does or what is supposed to happen.

[Reverielle.3972]

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> I'm not wholly against the idea as the principle you are trying to achieve has merit, but as mindcircus says, this is really not going to catch on given the existing, simpler mechanic is a struggle when it's a more punishing breakbar.

>

> I'd like to see better tutorials and a clearer display on skills about stating hard and soft breakbar damage. Maybe with pretty coloured labels. It might look patronising, but clearer displays and tutorials are what has been needed since the system was introduced

 

Absolutely agree with this. Right now our tooltips (nor anything else for that matter in game) has nothing related to defiance bar breaking. We know there are two types of CC, soft and hard. And we know via the wiki how much 'value' certain cc skills give (e.g. 1 second stun is 100 points). Perhaps somewhere in the tooltip of skills/utilities we could have a CC number highlighting such.

[PseudoNewb.5468]

@"Palador.2170" said:

> > @"Zoltar MacRoth.7146" said:

> > This isn't a solution for everyone but I'd be happy with extra icons on my screen when a defiance bar comes up that highlight which skills would be best to defeat it, perhaps in order of usefulness. Or, a special highlight could appear around the skills at the bottom of the screen which are in some way useful to breaking defiance bars. Something visual that hints at what tools you have available for CC but - and here's the big takeaway, Anet - DOESN'T REQUIRE YOU TO CLICK A DIALOG WHILE YOU'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF COMBAT. All we need is something inobtrusive that draws your eye to your CC skills.

>

> If you're targeting something with an active Breakbar, all your CC skills turn a bit blue, perhaps? Or some kind of glow/highlight effect? That would be nice, but I think the people that most need to see it wouldn't be looking in the first place. They'd never notice it, or not have those skills in their skillbar to begin with.

 

Should the game highlight soft cc if the boss is already stacked heavily on the same type of cc? Soft cc stacks time and, if it is already heavily stacked, additional soft cc does not contribute to breaking the bar anymore, especially for time limited break bars.

 

Boneskinner CC bar is massive. Seems to be tuned for Essence manipulation, as spirit nova seems to do a lot more breakbar damage than say a flesh golem charge. Not entirely sure what the damage is, since there doesn't seem to be a formula for converting launch tooltip info into breakbar damage.