HardCC and bosses: defiance bar solution

Greetings.

In Guild Wars 2, there’s a mechanic in place which retains some usability for hardCC abilities and effects. Every major target (a boss, certain elite enemy, even a player themselves under certain conditions) has a blue bar underneath HP which depletes a bit every time hardCC is applied and refills slowly over time. Once the bar is empty, the target is knocked down + stunned (2-5 seconds) and exposed (+50% incoming damage, same duration), and the bar cannot be “damaged” again until it’s back to full. An in-depth description is located here.

I was thinking if it would be a good idea to bring this mechanic over to GD, so that hardCC abilities which rely on CC itself to deliver its full potential are still usable and useful (yes, Blade Trap, I’m looking at you specifically), but hardCC itself is still not abused into oblivion. I imagine managing hardCC this way could be better and more flexible in nature (possibly tying some encounters to it in the process for more dynamic fights) rather than just cranking hardCC resistances up to eleven and beyond, causing all sorts of awkward for the engine. Think of it as a “constitution-like” overlay over the boss’ HP bar which you would chip away at with CC abilities (with different abilities dealing varying amount of “damage” or even having a short CD to avoid abuse, that sort of thing).

Feel free to share your thoughts about it.

Pretty good idea.

It would be fun if a boss would gain a boost to damage, health and OA as they approach the end of their defiance bar.

It has been discussed to death and i don’t see it happening at this point in development. Making something like this would require a ton of mob and boss tuning to avoid ways of cheesing encounters with CC.

Maybe in a sequel.

1 Like
  1. I’m not expecting anything. :slight_smile:
  2. Cheesing won’t be possible if your spammable stun jacks only deal 1 damage per cast to 500-point defbar, for instance. It’s like constitution: you can’t really cheese encounters with it. Stuff like Blade Trap, on the other hand, will finally be able to properly deal damage and trigger celestial powers like it should.

It does already properly deal damage, to trash mobs and other stuff that is below Nemeses. Plus we already stuff like Rimetongue being able to barely CC bosses with Blade Trap , but it hasn’t stopped it from reaching like SR 135 or something. So that another thing that would have to be tuned. I also think an OFF build reached the same SR shard as well, or it was actually the OFF build that reached it and not the Blade Trap one.

The devs also believe that crowd control should work only on, well, crowds, and not specific bosses.

I feel like things like this are what Norzan means when he says the system would need tuning. Suddenly every source of CC in the game and the skills/ways of applying it and every Boss and their resistance need reviewing to ensure there is no way of exploiting it in ways that a bunch of builds can easily access or that it isn’t too weak/redundant.

It’s fine to mention it as an idea but as a sequel has already been discussed by the developers to be years away from now in favour of other projects, there’s a good chance it’ll be forgotten over time. Best to save it and bring it up later I would think.

When official updates to the game finally start to settle down and end, I think the modding crowd might look at ways of making CC more varied and appealing in the game we have now.

You do realize that you don’t have to enforce an ability to rely strictly on the CC portion to deal full damage, right? It’s like you’re defending the status quo here. Just untie the CC portion from the damage portion, making the CC application once-per-cast, and we’re gucci: CC is not abused, and full intended damage is dealt. At least that’s what I proposed back in the day, only to be shot down in the manner similar to yours. :slight_smile:

Again: I’m not expecting anything. It’s just sad that some things in the game exist solely to inconvenience the player one way or another. I’m no praetorian, but I do have like 3,5k-something hours played on Steam, so I know what I’m talking about, more or less.

Sadly that’s not how Grim Dawn functions. Even if you were to swap the templates of Blade Trap and OFF to ordinary debuffs, tacking a Freeze or Entrapment on them would trigger that CC once a second for the duration of the debuff. Think Malefice from DotA 2.


It wouldn’t work to copy the Defiance design 1:1 into GD. Defiance is configured for multiple players targeting the break at once. There aren’t really cases that come to mind where a solo player can or should be concerned about a breakbar in GW2, mostly due to the average strength and passive regenerability of the breakbars themselves.

Furthermore, in GD itself, there isn’t much of a need for it. Bosses don’t have mechanics worth interrupting, nor are they tuned to need ‘burn’ phases in which they take more damage. This’d greatly upset the current balance of the game, not just in the CC department, but also in the global DPS department.

Having said all of that, +1 to something like this in a sequel. GD’s enemy designs are by far the most simplistic area of the game and could greatly stand a fundamental overhaul in philosophy for GD2. Furthermore, the notion that “crowd control is meant for crowds and not bosses” is one of the few but very obvious head-up-ass comments to come from Crate, especially as they are so insistent on using “crowd” control against individual players.

Furthermore, Defiance bars do provide interesting mechanics post-stun in GW2, and it’d be great to see stuff like that in GD. Some GW2 bosses receive a substantial damage buff when they become Defiant (the term for the post-stun period when the Defiance bar is invulnerable), others permanently change up the fight completely. There are some GW2 encounters where the Defiance bar is recommended to be left alone, like a ticking time-bomb to inexperienced groups that will see to their demise if they unload upon it. Reflections of this nuance on a boss-by-boss basis would be fascinating in an ARPG.

Fair points, I suppose. Hopefully we do see something like that in a sequel (provided it’s even considered, much less in development :slight_smile: ). The game could use a bit of extra spice-up, and it would surely make coops more fun.

Can’t OFF summon a dummy unit on top of freezing? The dummy could cast the debuff.

Yeah, I mean, monsters also have no resist caps while players do, and have millions of health while players don’t. WHAT’S WITH THE DOUBLE STANDARDS, CARTE?!

3 Likes

Did CARTE replaced Crate as the dev team for GD? :scorv:

3 Likes

Now that’s what I call à la CARTE…

1 Like

Not in any way that Crate is open to doing in the live game, but not impossible for mods. Would take some doing though.

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.