User talk:Toraen/Build Standards

Bolded are the ones I think should be discussed a bit. I may also have missed some, feel free to add if that's the case. --  Toraen   talk  22:06, 9 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Is there any reason for this can I ask? (I have nothing against such a list but we've never had any problems without it...)
 * My thought's on the bolded one's in any case. The PvE characters issue. This generally depends build to build. Certainly i think farming you should be allowed wiggle room (e.g. a feather farmer builds for all characters might not necessarily be a bad thing)
 * As for Mercenaries. I 100% agree. We shouldn't be making builds (or rather, encouraging. By all means make them) that require a user to be spending money to get.  ~ PheNaxKian talk  22:23, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, as can be seen below, I was wondering if mercenary builds could have their own section for those who have gotten them. Problem is that most people on PvX probably didn't bother, and the current stable of in-game heroes is already very overpowered relative to PvE difficulty. I agree that non-merc builds shouldn't ever be WELL'd/trashed due to merc builds if we went that route though. --  Toraen   talk  22:28, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Mercenary Builds
Should we make another category tag for them? Kinda want to balance the main page categories anyway, and it would fill that space and maybe get some builds that perform better than regular hero teams (really, that would have to be a requirement of such a section). --  Toraen   talk  22:19, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Can't they just be categorized as hero builds? Vincent Evan [Air Henchman]  [[Image:vincels.jpg|19px]] 22:32, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * They would have to be vetted separately from non-merc builds (and we need a quick way to show which are the merc builds), since it's probably not reasonable to expect every player to drop even more money on extra heroes. --  Toraen   talk  22:40, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * If you're going to make it a requirement that no build assumes mercs it seems reasonable to create a separate section for builds built around mercs.--TahiriVeila 23:16, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I know plenty of people who would benefit from that section. What would you class Razah as, being an interchangable hero? Minion Minion_sig_k_bish.jpg 23:29, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Not a merc... -- [[image:Chieftain Alex Sig.jpg|19px|link=User:Chieftain Alex]] Chieftain  Alex  23:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * ^Yeah, he counts as a base hero, you just have to make sure you take his interchanging profession into account when designing a non-merc hero team. We already have builds (or maybe just one, I forget) where his ability to change professions is used even. --  Toraen   talk  01:19, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It'd be cool to have a merc team build section, but I doubt anyone would bother much with it (at least after the first week or so when people are mildly interested) Kracatoan 12:42, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I would have a build released on the day of a Merc unlock. I have just rolled through all of Elona HM with it but I can't get it out to here because of the lockout. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to add a Merc category between Heroes and Speed Clears on the front page. There are some fun builds out there that are great to VQ with that handle different/better from the current meta game. And if you are going GWAMM different can be greater then all, variety and mastery of new builds adds a lot to the game. Mercs allow for some truly special builds. Anyhow, just my thoughts. Storm Before Dawn 05:13, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Why should PvE re-rolling be a non-option?
Most people who actively play PvE probably have 20s of almost every profession. If not, they certainly have 20s of the professions they care to play. Why on earth should they have any leniency? It's not like you can't caravan your way across the entire continent thanks to the addition of 7-hero teams. I know that I, personally, wouldn't even consider going into PvE if I wasn't an Assassin, Monk, or Necromancer - unless things have seriously changed recently. Danny 22:35, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Vincent Evan [Air Henchman]  [[Image:vincels.jpg|19px]] 22:37, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Not all players play optimal professions, different taste yet still trying to squeeze out as much goodness out of their favourite profession... And probably armour detail... Minion Minion_sig_k_bish.jpg 22:48, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * pvx isn't about how pretty your character is, iirc. although, we'd probably get way more traffic if we just shifted our focus in that direction. Danny 22:50, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * For the same reason people dote upon their characters; they have an attachment to them. There are many people who, for whatever reason, use a 'bad' profession as their main.  Moreover, many players made their characters when different professions were considered the 'better' ones.  The ele used to be the DPS and a human monk player was invaluable.  Necros were considered gimmicky and mesmers were just plain awful.  Lots of stuff has changed since many players first made their characters, but they probably are still attached to them (especially after investing hundreds if not thousands of hours into them). In short, why shouldn't we provide the best possible builds for every given profession? AegisDok 04:48, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Best possible is the keyphrase in that paragraph. Making builds just to fill out buildspace is pointless. Roland 06:20, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not looking for our PvE section to change to a PvP philosophy of "reroll or die" or anything even close, but maybe thinking about where the cutoff is for storing builds with disadvantaged primaries. The caster daggers drama is mostly to blame for this, but the majority of the builds pretending to be a different primary (with little-to-no benefit) have been sort of pricking at my side for a while. In the end we are a site that recommends builds to GW players, and we need to give good, reasonable recommendations. --  Toraen   talk  22:39, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The only time a caster would go into melee range all the time is a gimmick bar (but a supposed advantage from melee professions) such as Spirit's Strength and Imagined Weaponry. After those, I think if a profession has an advantage over the original or main profession (for example ER prot using monk skills or nec using Resto and SR) then it should be kept. Minion Minion_sig_k_bish.jpg 22:43, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Or at least get back to Any/X builds? I'm fairly certain any class in existence can run AP, YMLaD, EVAS, FH, and GoLE or some other emanage. It could also be argued that you could tape your w key down and just play PvE like that nowadays, but I won't even start that conversation. Danny 22:45, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * AP mesmer focuses on spamming sins, AP MoP focuses on spamming MoP, AP Air focuses on spiking down targets quickly and mildly spamming sins, AP Earth focuses on AoE blind and knockdown support with moderate AoE damage. They all deserve their own page. Other Any/x builds, like Spirit Spammer any or Norn Fighting Tourney win bar (also spirits) or w/e, don't. Infact, what Any/x apart from Spirits exist on pvx? Minion Minion_sig_k_bish.jpg 22:57, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * This isn't PvP where you have different tactics for similar bars (like the old Ranger debate). It's all "pick target, roll your face across your keyboard, repeat" - there's no need whatsoever for multiple pages. Danny 23:04, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Any/X builds. Multiple pages really does help copy+paste of bars though. I kinda hate Any/X bars on the basis of them usually being a mess of optionals. --  Toraen   talk  23:06, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * The oversimplification of PvE is a joke; you can't really use that in a sensible argument... And yes, that evil soundbite of "optionals nightmare" rears it's ugly head. Builds don't matter so much than technique on luring/balling in elite areas. That or taking 5/7 heroes with prots and heals. Minion Minion_sig_k_bish.jpg 23:14, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * But, wouldn't it be a bit redundant to have an E/A, N/A, Me/A, Mo/A, etc for every class with the main point being using Assassins Promise? Sure it would be an optionals nightmare, but i think it is certainly better than having essentially 9 variants of the build.-- Ultimak719 LIKE A BOSS!  23:56, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * An any/A page for it is kinda useless, and was already trashed. We agreed at the time to vet them separate with the optimal skills from the profession so they'd at least be on wiki in an accessible format. --  Toraen   talk  01:16, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Also easier to find; most people search builds by profession. Minion Minion_sig_k_bish.jpg 01:56, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * In that case, you can't really expect people to not compare N/A against E/A. If we're vetting them as different builds, they're going to be treated as different builds. Danny 03:34, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * You'd vet it against same-profession bars, whilst looking if it's as effective as the other AP bars, I suppose, but it wouldn't take too much toll on the rating. Hence this discussion for obscurity though. Minion Minion_sig_k_bish.jpg 13:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm still failing to see why you shouldn't expect someone to be able to "re-roll" in PvE. I'd be very, very, very surprised if even a single person here had only an Elementalist to all the elite places in the game. Danny 17:22, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * My Necromancer's the only character that can access all areas =v. Various other characters have access to one or two but not all.  ~ PheNaxKian talk  18:13, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * A necromancer has a never-ending blue-bar in PvE. With the exception of Shiro and maybe, maybe the glowing gorilla, you'd be hard pressed to find a better class for anything in PvE besides, perhaps, an Assassin or Paragon. Danny 07:36, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * You're waaay behind on the times, danny, if you still think that necro's are even in the top 5 professions nowadays. Wars, dervs, sins, mesmers, maybe paragons, and rits are all ahead of the capabilities of necro's. Having infinite energy is great (even though they don't, you're over generalizing) except when there's really not that much to do with that energy. MM'ing is covered by heroes, curses can be just about as effective on a secondary with a 6-spec, and the only thing left is AP/MoP which is rather situational, requiring both physicals and effective balling to do much. Also, dervishes are most likely the top dog when it comes to physicals in PvE, and hell, warriors might even be ahead of sins nowadays too (and this is coming from a sin main). -- Jai . -  11:27, September 15 2011 (UTC)
 * point stands because e/a is still dumb regardless. Danny 08:44, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Imo an alternate category to PvE General might solve some problems. There should be a category for the most effective builds for true all player teams, which would hold only the primary profession based builds for each profession (unless there is an exceedingly good reason to run a non-primary build, such as ER healing/prot builds).  The other category would target builds to use in hero teams, where it is not always necessary to run the most optimal build as doing so can get very tiresome through all four campaigns, and a completely different set of dynamics exist with heroes.  For instance, in human teams, a para should run imbagon, because otherwise paras are useless.  In hero teams, there should be more options, as you really don't need to run imbagon all the time with heroes considering most hero set ups have plenty of defense/disabling/healing to keep the party alive. Smity Smitington 02:40, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * That basically describes the Meta PvE general builds category. --  Toraen   talk  05:32, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * So, you're saying that inferior builds should be posted because they're fun and pve is super easy? Roland 06:04, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
 * We use "PvE General" for both players and hero teams to denote use for general play for any of the game content. When the meta tag is used, it denotes either meta in terms of player teams for elite areas or general PvE builds and hero teams. We use the PvE General tag for player builds in high-end PvE and have no way to differentiate such. I blame it on having no meta policy for PvE builds, the rather obscure reasoning being that it's not necessary, PvE isn't dead, or that the purpose of the meta tag only applies to PvP.-- Relyk 09:09, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I first raised this issue quite some time ago, since then I've actually seen an increased need for us to assume pvers can't reroll. Really there are two main types of pvers that pvx caters for. The veteran pver, as Danny describes above, who is very familiar with the game, finished farming all the titles and exploits the option to reroll to any class for elite areas (hence elite area builds are usually class dependant). These players will not be looking at pvx for general pve builds because they simply have no reason to do any general pve (general = vanquishing, questing, missions). This is where the second group of pvers comes in - casual players and/or gw2 fanboys trying to fill their HoM having previously never played the game. These are the people who pick a profession and try and power through all aspects of the game with it in order to fill their HoM. If they, void of luck, decided to roll a paragon, why should we provide them with only a single build that is unsuitable for most situations they will come across? The answer is we shouldn't, we need to try and be as helpful as possible to this increasingly large group of players. Athrun Feya 12:45, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * And the third type are the people who use their main to heroway everything. I see what you're saying though. I think veteran players still use PvXwiki for reference when they need to grab a build for rushing through a campaign. That's certainly what I do. Veteran players can always fall back on spirit spam if they're lazy.
 * This second part may be off-topic. In terms of coverage, we have the Warrior, Dervish, Ranger, Assassin, and Mesmer done. We have a couple "plug n play" builds that are effective and easy to use (they're all tagged for meta iirc). Necro is often reduced to AP caller for discordway or SS; new players will relegate MM to hero like they should. Elementalist is a thorn, new players often use Fire Magic for nuking crap, but we've pretty much removed fire magic builds from wiki. Telling players to use emo doesn't cut it. The E/A AP spiker really isn't suited for casual players. For paragon, new players use some variation of imbagon; some tend to favor soldier's fury. The soldier's fury paragon has been trashed of course. Monks are the worst since healing builds are designed for elite areas, we have no Mo/A AP spiker, and new players do not like using RoJ (or use it well).
 * In a way, we already gear towards casual players by tagging builds commonly used by players for general PvE as meta. Like I said above, the meta tag doesn't differentiate between meta builds for elite areas and meta builds for general PvE though.-- Relyk 21:55, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Isn't a paragon a pretty poor example there? I'm fairly certain there's not a single area in game that you can't shout your way through as long as you bring Remove Hex on one or two heros. Danny 07:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * She's saying Imbagon is unsuitable for most areas because it's low damage and offers protection you will only need in the harder areas. Thus we should store options for paragons that provide more damage for heroways so people don't spend extra long vanquishing mid-game areas (like Kourna in Nightfall or Desert in Proph). --  Toraen   talk  15:48, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to revisit this. (brought on by the onslaught of critical axe and VoS bars for assassins). I think rerolling in pve might be legitimate reasoning now :/ Chieftain Alex  15:41, 18 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Is there any other reasoning you can provide for why we should enforce rerolling that overturns Lau's (and my) concerns? If it can be trashed otherwise (for being too costly or fragile) I'd go with that option first. If the bars are in fact the best at a given niche for that profession, they may be worth keeping. If they don't have this property, then they're obviously not. Keep in mind that going to a reroll-in-PvE policy will mean a lot of other builds could very easily be removed which I don't think should be (melee rangers, monks in general). We may even end up with no rangers since they're such a sub-par PvE profession. I don't think that's a good direction to take the site in. -- Toraen   confer  16:04, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

"PvE builds are designed with HM in mind"
I'm split minded on this point. Obviously a build(s) should be capable of performing in hard mode, but you also have to remember PvE gets harder as you go on (see Gate of Pain/madness (the one with Shiro and the lich), or even elite areas. So while the standard of builds does need to be high, limiting it to "must be hard mode capable" is incredibly unreasonable.  ~ PheNaxKian talk  11:31, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes but you can do 99.9% of NM with henchies alone (0.1% is DoA + Elite Missions), so saying builds must be able to cope with HM is perfectly acceptable. That and I've always found that how good you are at pulling/balling effects your team more than your team build. Kracatoan 12:45, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand, I have nothing against making HM specific builds, just that you shouldn't say we only accept HM builds.  ~ PheNaxKian talk  18:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind that these aren't policies I'm trying to push, but a list of what I've observed to be PvX's standards. When designing a build for general play, there's not much point storing NM-only builds here when we can store builds that do HM as well. The exceptions I list are the only times NM builds have been accepted. --  Toraen   talk  19:19, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I was under the impression you were wanting to make a list of all the "unspoken rules" as it were. I don't see the point of making such a list if it's not for altering the current policies =x.  ~ PheNaxKian <font color="#8A2BE2">talk  21:36, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Assume good faith only goes so far with users new or unfamiliar to the wiki. However, like you said Phen, there hasn't been a problem not listing the requirements off. I think toraen did it to bring to light requirements that are contentious for the sake of discussion since said requirements don't have formal consensus. No need to alter any policies to cover it since it falls under the AGF umbrella.-- Relyk 01:17, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

PUGs
We clearly have no agreement on how to handle builds meant for PUG teams. Rather than going to the extreme of, "7H, SC, or gtfo", I'd like to see if we could decide how to handle it. What should we assume a competently-led PUG will have, and what should they be expected to not have? --  Toraen   talk  01:10, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The way I run a PUG team, which is generally for ZQs, is physically orientated. I think the setup is similar to triple melee in gvg, without the flagging rit. A heal/prot hybrid, partyhealer, nukes, damage, damage amplifier. ~  Ӎiñon Crysig.jpg 01:41, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * SoS
 * UA (don't trust them to rez wtih it though - expecting too much)
 * or other healer (can be rit)
 * Anti-caster panic (fevered dreams)
 * Anti-melee mes with inept (or ss nec.. eww)
 * more damage: sogm, // decent frontliner for balling/aggroing/pulling stuff. can bring MoP if using 2 meleers. in areas with stupid damage like titans in hm - imba or st
 * So in a pug you've probably got at least 4 of the top 5 suggestions. Basically eles with water magic, rangers + sins with assacasters are likely candidates to not invite. [[image:Chieftain Alex Sig.jpg|19px|link=User:Chieftain Alex]] <font face="Calibri" color="Black" size="2.5">Chieftain  <font face="Calibri" color=CC6633 size="2.5"> Alex  08:05, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Alex; we all know the proest pug setup is 8 WAMMOS with UA. ~  Ӎiñon Crysig.jpg 08:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Is there a metagame for PUGs? Are there builds that are generally expected or asked for? If so, they can be listed. Otherwise, they get vetted on their individual merits like anything else. I don't understand why people would think it would be any different. So your PUG has no monks and 4 paragons and you want some good paragon healing builds to get through the Zaishen quest? Tough shit, work it out yourself if you are going to form a ludicrously bad PUG. We do have individual PvE builds at the moment that aren't part of 7H or SC teams in both the meta and great sections, what are these for if not PUGs and organised non-speed clears? I don't really understand what people want here. A new misery  15:38, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * pvx now trying to coach pugs how not to be bad by strongly suggesting builds better than UA wammos? Spoon-feeding people with build+usage can only go so far, most of it is pure experience. But yeah there is a lot of "7H, SC, or gtfo" here on pvx Fianchetto 16:03, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking more of profession limitations with this, not exact setups. I'm thinking, along Misery's line of thinking, that we should assume that any profession is available to fill a spot for anything worth PuGing. A good leader can even get people to run a pseudo-coordinated setup if they want. It's the simplest way of handling this and is basically in agreement with WELL. If you want to form a gimped PuG we can't stop you, but I'm not for storing builds that are only viable in these subpar teams. If you really can't find a person to fill a vital PuG role, the leader can take a hero to do the job. --  Toraen   talk  17:54, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * i.e. a resto rit. Obviously you wouldn't save or promote poor pug builds (see Vorpal's PUG BARS page) but an understanding of how PUGs like to build their teams is helpful. I'd like to think if it was visible enough it would breath a bit of life into the pug community if there was a tab that screamed CLICK ME on the main page. ~  Ӎiñon Crysig.jpg 18:12, 1 December 2011 (UTC)