Verdict on Guild Wars 2's innovations

[Drakhar]

I believe that translates to, "I stopped reading because GW1 PvP in no way sucked"

Yep. I was feeling silly this morning, and my initial inclination towards 'wat is this i dont even' would not suffice.

[Feranor]

Translation: "I sucked at GW1 so the pvp was shit"

I've played it for 7 years and movement wasn't clunky, skills were incredibly responsive so was movement it just took time to get used to compared to other MMO's. You have to combine click to move + wasd to dodge attacks and move in general.

I liked instance, it gave the possibility of vanquishing which I enjoyed, not to mention the feeling of actually clearing a zone. The majority of MMO players are spending most their time in instanced content anyways unless they are leveling up.

Just look at GW2, WoW, etc. everyone is running raids, dungeons, whatever and wherever the grind is for the most powerful gear (fucking awful) making the world largely dead in any MMO. What sucks is there has never been an MMO that rewards players as much in general open area's as they do in dungeons or raids making it pointless to go back to those places after leveling through them.

So what the fuck is the point of a seamless non instanced MMO which everyone always cries about? "Oh boohoo there's loading screens, this is instanced, wahhhh, because I totally would have spent all of my time traveling the world instead of grinding my cock off in CoF/fractals."

Now that I got that off my chest...

If you were to bad to see GW1 had the best pvp in any MMO to date you never played in '05/6 in any tournaments when the game even got e-sport attention, until ANet abandoned the game for this piece of shit.

I can't even remember which year that was because it's been so long... fucking good times, man. Then they kept adding new campaigns that screwed balance. Most people that refer to GW1's epic pvp are referring in its very early years.

Just logged on to see if maybe they fixed something during the last year. Nope, the controls are still jittery and imprecise, the camera still sluggish without a proper way to pan it or to disable snapback and of course all the other drawbacks I mentioned remain as well.

I see this quite often, though. I've even met a number of people who don't see anything wrong with DAoC's controls. I'm not sure if it's some form of self-delusion or if they simply haven't reached the point at which one becomes "control-capped" in games with shitty controls. Arguing with them is a bit like arguing with people who enjoy playing ice hockey in bowling shoes. Or bowling in ice skates. It's usually equally fascinating and pointless.

The players don't spend their time in instanced areas because they like it. They do it because it's the most convenient option (and sometimes the only option). Don't blame the players for badly designed games.

[Deleted]

Thought I'd give my point of view, which will be very possitive - although I stopped playing the game quite fast. Love the game, but for some bloody reason all my friends still think WoW is the bomb - and I rather play a less enjoyable game with my friends then a better game all alone.

-Dynamic Events
Great - apart from the scaling. The problem ended up being that once an event have more then a certain amount of people doing it at once (say more then 5-8 players in the same immediate area) it turned into a complete aoe spamfest as scaling mainly worked by throwing more enemies, not harder ones. Same thing happened to a degree with both the "normal bosses" or harder enemies, who's attacks were largely mitigated by pure numbers.
I mainly played on off hours with two friends however - and with maybe some 2-5 people joining in on most events, and following whole chains, I felt that was how it was MEANT to play. With groups smaller then 10, and more dedicated people who stick around, the whole world felt a bit like a raid. Unfortunally most people only experienced either the mad zerg or fighting alone.

-No holy trinity
Yes and no. It's great to not have to wait around for a healer and a tank, and as a player who never like the full on DPS playstyle, I really enjoyed how the concept of control, support and damage had to be shared with the whole group. In some ways it took away allot of strategy from the game too however. It's hard to have the same kind of scripted interaction such as WoW have for example, because you can never be sure of the group build. With the trinity the devs always know roughly what the group will look like, and can make interesting concepts around that.

-Dodge system
Love it. It brings allot to the gameplay, without taking out much at all. Just wish it was used more in the open world as well, as against most enemies you did not really need to dodge. It was often more efficient to just nuke the enemies down then to spend time dodging and avoiding stuff.

-Downleveling
One of the best features - but they botched it by not taking it far enough. At level 80 you still feel near enough invincible in lower end areas. Sure, you can not oneshot everything, but it's still not really a challange. You are powerful enough that unless you really REALLY fuck up, you don't face any risk of dying.

-Skills defined by Weapons
Doesn't really matter to me. It works in concept. I wish the weapons were more even however. About the same DPS no matter which weapon you were using, and then something extra to each would have been how I designed it. As it stands, there are clear "best weapons" for all classes when it comes to DPS, and as I mentioned in downscaling and dodging part - very often that is all that matters.

-Combo Fields
Kind of meh to me. They were imo too easy to do "by mistake". Most of the time they just happen. Only on a few occasions did I actually think much about it. As it is, they were near enough passive buffs that matters little in gameplay.

-Downed State (probably connected to "no holy trinity")
Now, important note - I never did any instanced PvP. I think it worked well in both PvE and in WvWvW. In PvE they gave you a chance to get back if you failed, and in WvWvW they meant that there was more to think about then just crushing the faces of your enemies. If you managed to get your enemies to route, that means that you could quickly execute their fallen, get your team back up, and keep on steaming. Helped building momentum

-Multi-Guild system
Never used. I think it could be useful however, if more guild specialized. Most guilds still tried to be everything at the same time from what I could see however.

-GW2s take on RvR
While my guild was still up and active, I loved it while we played. Great tactics, was pure fun organizing large scale events etc. Problem was - in the end it didn't matter much what we did, because while we often owned while we were playing during the evenings, come morning, we had nothing left. Don't know how this would have been solved, but I think there must have been some way they could avoid this.

-Skill and Build system
It works. Wouldn't say it's very innovative at all. Yoy have a skills to pick and a build to choose for passive buffs. Not very different from any other games, except that they kept the two seperate I suppose.

-sPvP "Lobby"
No idea

-Cosmetic progression
Works for me. Since some 3 or 4 years back, I don't have time to play very much. I can not keep up with a raiding schedule, and I absolutely despise having to grind for something just to be able to do something else (ie, grinding one raid over and over before I can go to the next). It's not the grind itself that I mind, I can grind for some cool armor set, but then it's my decision. I'm not kept away from any content if I don't want to do it. Good imo, but I think it makes many other people not enjoy the game (or feel lost at 80, as there's no clear path showing what you should do next).


Also want to add:

*No mob tagging
Best fucking feature of the whole game. In no other online game have I had so much fun with total strangers as in this game. Well, maybe a few times in Eve Online, but then I was still worried that they would pod be the whole time.
In any case, this NEEDS to be brought to all future MMO's. Yes, it brings with it some problems (which I wrote about above in Dynamic Events), but those must be solved. It felt so good that I could just hop in and play with anyone who happened to be nearby. Just helping eachother, maybe trade a few words regarding tactic ideas (usually "I can keep him still and under control for quite some time, just blow him to hell from the start and don't worry") and then just hop into combat. Instead of staying away from others because they steal "my mobs", or having to shout "LFG to kill Epic Mob Muppet" for half an hour, you could just play.
Yes, it brings zerging, and that needs to be solved, but I think the bright minds that make MMO's can figure this out, and finally let us all play together, instead of seeing our allies as thieves.

[Feranor]

*No mob tagging
Best fucking feature of the whole game. In no other online game have I had so much fun with total strangers as in this game. Well, maybe a few times in Eve Online, but then I was still worried that they would pod be the whole time.
In any case, this NEEDS to be brought to all future MMO's. Yes, it brings with it some problems (which I wrote about above in Dynamic Events), but those must be solved. It felt so good that I could just hop in and play with anyone who happened to be nearby. Just helping eachother, maybe trade a few words regarding tactic ideas (usually "I can keep him still and under control for quite some time, just blow him to hell from the start and don't worry") and then just hop into combat. Instead of staying away from others because they steal "my mobs", or having to shout "LFG to kill Epic Mob Muppet" for half an hour, you could just play.
Yes, it brings zerging, and that needs to be solved, but I think the bright minds that make MMO's can figure this out, and finally let us all play together, instead of seeing our allies as thieves.

There is one massive problem with this, though. It's not inherent, it's just that AN fucked it up: you gain full credit for any mob you "tag" even with just 1 damage, but zero additional credit for doing anything beyond that, and absolutely zero credit for anything you don't "tag", e.g. stuff your group is killing. Which inevitably makes "hit everything once and move on" the most effective way to play. Even in WvW.

[rhandric]

There is one massive problem with this, though. It's not inherent, it's just that AN fucked it up: you gain full credit for any mob you "tag" even with just 1 damage, but zero additional credit for doing anything beyond that, and absolutely zero credit for anything you don't "tag", e.g. stuff your group is killing. Which inevitably makes "hit everything once and move on" the most effective way to play. Even in WvW.

You know...at this point I have no idea whether you're deliberately spreading lies or if you truly believe such drivel, considering there are people who complain that, when geared/traited for healing, they can't get tags. Of course, neither extreme is a good state, but saying that "1 damage tags everything" just spreads lies.

[Fencers]

There is one massive problem with this, though. It's not inherent, it's just that AN fucked it up: you gain full credit for any mob you "tag" even with just 1 damage, but zero additional credit for doing anything beyond that, and absolutely zero credit for anything you don't "tag", e.g. stuff your group is killing. Which inevitably makes "hit everything once and move on" the most effective way to play. Even in WvW.

Yea, this is incorrect. It's false actually.

[Vellerana]

From what I'm seeing from a lot of new mmos in development, it looks like this feature is catching on.

I certainly hope so, it was a major source of frustration. Edit: The quote was about nodes and how people can't steal them

I am also enjoying the quest system. The burn out I used to get from running back and forth to complete them is something I never want to experience again.

I agree with Crowe that dodging makes the game feel more active. The dynamic events, especially the ones that travel throughout the zone make the world feel more alive and I hope other games look at that as well.

Down-leveling has saved me from having a few arguments with the spouse. I used to "have" to wait to play or, level anything but that character to level with her. So for me, that's another keeper.

Multiple guilds is a good thing only because you can't choose which characters to put in which guild. If you could choose individually there would be no need for such a system.

Overall I think GW2 is exceptional and the innovations are really rewarding as a player.

[Feranor]

You know...at this point I have no idea whether you're deliberately spreading lies or if you truly believe such drivel, considering there are people who complain that, when geared/traited for healing, they can't get tags. Of course, neither extreme is a good state, but saying that "1 damage tags everything" just spreads lies.

I've never had any problems tagging things when running +0 power builds, even without conditions (e.g. Ranger/Thief where all I did was spam Axe/Short Bow Auto Attack). Heck, it even worked in WvW at LvL 3.

But it's still cute how desperately you jump on an irrelevant point; and it seems you do understand the reason why this is bad, without realizing it: it strongly discourages playing support builds and makes grouping outside of instances almost pointless.

Yea, this is incorrect. It's false actually.

That level of dishonesty is actually impressive. But here you go:

There is one massive problem with this, though. It's not inherent, it's just that AN fucked it up: you gain full credit for any mob you "tag" even with just 1 damage, but zero additional credit for doing anything beyond that, and absolutely zero credit for anything you don't "tag", e.g. stuff your group is killing. Which inevitably makes "hit everything once slightly damage everything and move on" the most effective way to play. Even in WvW.

The point remains unaltered, nay, even strengthened because, if true, this change makes it even more tedious to play support/single target damage builds.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

That level of dishonesty is actually impressive. But here you go:

There is one massive problem with this, though. It's not inherent, it's just that AN fucked it up: you gain full credit for any mob you "tag" even with just 1 damage, but zero additional credit for doing anything beyond that, and absolutely zero credit for anything you don't "tag", e.g. stuff your group is killing. Which inevitably makes "hit everything once slightly damage everything and move on" the most effective way to play. Even in WvW.

The point remains unaltered, nay, even strengthened because, if true, this change makes it even more tedious to play support/single target damage builds.

If by 'effective' you mean 'efficient', then probably. But not in WvW...your example only works in zerg situations where you're hitting whatever you can, but not as minimally as possible (because, you know, you want to win). If you're fighting a smaller scale battle in WvW and only damaging a bit, chances are your reward is in the form of dying. And not in dungeons or events, where there's an actual objective or you care. If your example is open world weak mobs only, then you still stick around and try to loot a corpse rather than run far away to tag something else.

As for mob tagging, it's a saving grace in large scale events with a zerg of people. Granted I wish they'd continue amending events to compensate for more people (i.e. Krait event in Sparkly Fen), but they are doing it slowly. As well, I'm not sure of the damage threshold for mob tagging, but I don't believe it's 1 damage. If you're talking about regular mobs, that I can't say for sure (best way to check would be take a level 2 or something to a level 80 zone and hit a mob once as someone else kills it); however, I know you have to do a certain amount to relevant event mobs to get bronze or above credit.

As for the point about no credit for stuff your group kills, I believe that is intentional in terms of leaving the partying to instanced content or groups of friends. Introducing a party system that benefits from one another in terms of tagging or open world completely disintegrates their idea of not needing a party to do events. You're basically asking for a benefit in a party, which would make the most efficient way to play partying, meaning instead of just joining in an event you'd stand there spamming for a party invite before you even think about going in.

[rhandric]

I've never had any problems tagging things when running +0 power builds, even without conditions (e.g. Ranger/Thief where all I did was spam Axe/Short Bow Auto Attack). Heck, it even worked in WvW at LvL 3.

But it's still cute how desperately you jump on an irrelevant point; and it seems you do understand the reason why this is bad, without realizing it: it strongly discourages playing support builds and makes grouping outside of instances almost pointless.



That level of dishonesty is actually impressive. But here you go:

There is one massive problem with this, though. It's not inherent, it's just that AN fucked it up: you gain full credit for any mob you "tag" even with just 1 damage, but zero additional credit for doing anything beyond that, and absolutely zero credit for anything you don't "tag", e.g. stuff your group is killing. Which inevitably makes "hit everything once slightly damage everything and move on" the most effective way to play. Even in WvW.

The point remains unaltered, nay, even strengthened because, if true, this change makes it even more tedious to play support/single target damage builds.

And you're still missing the point. Sure, doing exactly enough to meet the threshold is "optimal" to tagging as much as possible, but (and especially in WvW) if you do the bare minimum, there's no guarantee the target will die. And only in WvW does "getting credit and move on" actually still reward you (besides basic experience, which kill experience is relatively minimum), since if you move on, you're going to have to run back to collect the loot, which, depending on the context, can be even less efficient. With regards to groups...well, it's been a while since I've done much in a group, but even if what you say is true, I would argue that's a good thing, as it promotes you actually working together with your group. I guess your problem is you can't leech credit off your group.

Plus, meeting the minimum tag threshold is only sufficient on "normal" mobs, in events doing so will get you bronze at best.

[Lane]

I don't know what the minimum amount of damage you need to do is, but it feels* like you're in competition with everyone around you. I've mentioned before, it reminds me a lot of Rift in the early days with the contribution meter.

I've definitely noticed in events where there are players in exotics+ it is exceptionally difficult to get a gold medal on anything but a boss, even if I technically hit everything. Even on bosses, like Shatterer, if I come in at 50% HP I will not get gold even if I bust out everything for that last 50%. (Noting that most of my characters are in rares at best and not always using an 'optimal' DPS spec.)

A lot of times for pre-events I get no credit at all despite my best efforts. Maw, Jungle Wyrm, and SB are excellent examples of those. I often don't get credit (not even bronze) for killing the shamans in Maw even if I AoE them all and single target focus the veteran. Same thing with the 3 husks before the wyrm and portals before SB.

As for WvW, I've only done it once, on my (undergeared) elementalist focusing on AoEs to try to maximize kills for the then-monthly and it really did not work. I didn't do enough damage for most of the players I hit to count toward the achievement (and yes, the players were killed it wasn't that they didn't die). It ended up taking me like 3 hours to get 50 kills and I started having to focus players to get enough damage on them to count.

* I say "feels" because I have no proof that's actually how it works. However, if it is, I wish they would add a contribution meter like Rift had. :P

[rhandric]

I see your point, Lane, but adding a "contribution meter" would lead to people (won't mention names...) who do the bare minimum and then leave it to others to complete.

I've had similar experiences in WvW, even getting loot off players but not counting towards the then-monthly...but at the time it was thought that the monthly was bugged, so may be related.

[Fencers]

That level of dishonesty is actually impressive. But here you go:

Glad you amended your point. As it was completely false as stated originally; "even with just 1 damage".

[Azuri]

I see your point, Lane, but adding a "contribution meter" would lead to people (won't mention names...) who do the bare minimum and then leave it to others to complete.

Contribution meter would work well in GW2. The more you contribute the better the reward. If you do the bare minimum your loot cache is minimal. It didn't work well in Rift since healers got shafted and then they reworked it but then you could just spam heal anyone regardless if they needed it for max contribution. It was good in theory but in a trinity design it became to difficult to balance the participation.

[rhandric]

Contribution meter would work well in GW2. The more you contribute the better the reward. If you do the bare minimum your loot cache is minimal. It didn't work well in Rift since healers got shafted and then they reworked it but then you could just spam heal anyone regardless if they needed it for max contribution. It was good in theory but in a trinity design it became to difficult to balance the participation.

Well, I haven't played Rift, so I was just treating it as a way of showing the player how much they've contributed towards the event (ie, who close to/far into bronze/silver/gold) they are. And as I said, if implemented that way, it would encourage people to contribute the bare minimum to either bronze (if they're just trying to get events completed and don't care about the gold/karma/exp reward) or gold; silver there'd be little incentive to "stop" contributing, as at that point you've put in enough effort to be vested, and not enough to get max rewards.

AFAIK, the chest reward is (currently) unaffected by contribution, barring qualifying for event credit (ie, once you're at bronze you get the chest, with the contents not being linked to gold/silver/bronze). And the problem with tying the chest to event contribution is then directly related to the changes they've been making to reduce excessive farming of the chest events by making them first once per day per char, and now once per day per account (that did go live, right?). Which would mean if you don't get gold, you can't even try again that day.

[WorldofWorkcraft]

Well, I haven't played Rift, so I was just treating it as a way of showing the player how much they've contributed towards the event (ie, who close to/far into bronze/silver/gold) they are. And as I said, if implemented that way, it would encourage people to contribute the bare minimum to either bronze (if they're just trying to get events completed and don't care about the gold/karma/exp reward) or gold; silver there'd be little incentive to "stop" contributing, as at that point you've put in enough effort to be vested, and not enough to get max rewards.

AFAIK, the chest reward is (currently) unaffected by contribution, barring qualifying for event credit (ie, once you're at bronze you get the chest, with the contents not being linked to gold/silver/bronze). And the problem with tying the chest to event contribution is then directly related to the changes they've been making to reduce excessive farming of the chest events by making them first once per day per char, and now once per day per account (that did go live, right?). Which would mean if you don't get gold, you can't even try again that day.

Not only that, but look at half of the world 'mega-bosses' right now. You're lucky if you get a hit on the Wurm before it goes down, let alone it being alive long enough for the event to even start. Same with Maw. One thing I dislike about the bosses is they're scaled terribly in relation to how they're approached by players. I understand the "intent" of them being tuned for 10-20 level 15 or 20s (Wurm in the beginning of the game's lifespan was a fun fight!), but if you offer a reward akin to that of a level 80 boss, this is what happens. You literally can't introduce a contribution meter for certain events because they don't last; the exception would be you scale contribution, so a level 1 only has to do 10 damage while a level 80 has to do 1000. And even then, it wouldn't work that well. The so-called epicness of GW2 dwindles with things like this. They really need to buff these bosses and create new scenarios whereby defeat is actually possible. I think Megadestroyer is the only one where there's a timer, and I have no idea what happens if it ticks down and he goes undefeated because it's 20 minutes long.

I don't understand how they can use the word "scaling" yet only account for amount of players, not level/power. I think if they changed everything from "If players>=20" to "If combined player levels are >=150", it'd be much easier to scale these bosses. If you have 20 level 80s trying to zerg the Wurm (usually the case, or more), he needs mechanics to offer epicness. I'm sure anyone who has done these fights can come up with a few mechanics to kick in that would make it fun, besides HP scaling. I use >= meaning that it would keep gaining an additional mechanic or buff.

Example: Player levels>=800, Wurm spews acid in an area around itself (because players are always meleeing it down), forcing players to back away as it causes a 10% tick poison and also heals itself for .1% per tick. Wurm then spawns x Corrupted Oakhearts that can only be destroyed by branches they drop nearby (Oakhearts would have AoE cripples and poisons and crap), and once defeated the Acid spewing stops.

Now I understand the idea behind a "beginner" mega-boss, but at this point you can have 8 level 80s and 10 level 20s doing this fight. The 80s can help out and tell people how things work, so it isn't really too hard, and it's still fun (just more epic).

Is this stuff really that hard to implement? Who knows...not I.

[Kelimbror]

The problem is that tying rewards to overall participation might encourage some people to go crazy on the damage to push others out of the reward while at the same time punishing players who managed to die a couple of times and maybe they didn't get a rez. It would also force people to stop rezzing other players as it would take away from their dps uptime.

Now if there was a way to not count the time you're dead and also reward a large portion for rezzing people, then you might have something...but that would of course come with it's own problem like gaming the system by chain rezzing people and programming nightmares.

[Lane]

I didn't mean for rewards to be tied to contribution, that would be disastrous. The way the game is currently designed only your ascended/legendary geared players would ever get the best rewards every time. Well-geared players already have a tendency to go all out on events to the detriment of lesser geared players. I thought a contribution meter might show some people (like myself) how far behind they are in getting any credit and hopefully other players that they don't need to bust out all their cooldowns on event trash mobs to get gold credit.

As has been said, many of these events are not designed to scale with gear or large amounts of players and downleveling does very little to affect that either.

[Kelimbror]

I didn't mean for rewards to be tied to contribution, that would be disastrous.

I was responding to Az, but failed to quote bc I'm lazy. My bad.

[Feranor]

If by 'effective' you mean 'efficient', then probably. But not in WvW...your example only works in zerg situations where you're hitting whatever you can, but not as minimally as possible (because, you know, you want to win). If you're fighting a smaller scale battle in WvW and only damaging a bit, chances are your reward is in the form of dying. And not in dungeons or events, where there's an actual objective or you care. If your example is open world weak mobs only, then you still stick around and try to loot a corpse rather than run far away to tag something else.

As for mob tagging, it's a saving grace in large scale events with a zerg of people. Granted I wish they'd continue amending events to compensate for more people (i.e. Krait event in Sparkly Fen), but they are doing it slowly. As well, I'm not sure of the damage threshold for mob tagging, but I don't believe it's 1 damage. If you're talking about regular mobs, that I can't say for sure (best way to check would be take a level 2 or something to a level 80 zone and hit a mob once as someone else kills it); however, I know you have to do a certain amount to relevant event mobs to get bronze or above credit.

As for the point about no credit for stuff your group kills, I believe that is intentional in terms of leaving the partying to instanced content or groups of friends. Introducing a party system that benefits from one another in terms of tagging or open world completely disintegrates their idea of not needing a party to do events. You're basically asking for a benefit in a party, which would make the most efficient way to play partying, meaning instead of just joining in an event you'd stand there spamming for a party invite before you even think about going in.

I do mean effective. It's effective because it yields the most rewards. But it's not efficient because it's quite tedious to do. An example of efficiency was the bugged event where you just had to kill 1 NPC that respawned every 3-4 minutes or so; you could just macro your auto attack and level AFK.

My job as a Conditionmancer in WvW was to bleed/weakness the hell out of zergs and finish downed players in either zerg or small scale. There were almost no targets that would survive longer than a second against our Warriors, Thieves or Rangers (gud balance), so having to get a hit in when chasing a small number of targets proved to be very annoying. Not that it really made a difference, since the WvW rewards were all Soldier's gear and thus useless for my class.

Events without a party are fine (though it would be totally feasible to make it work for both solo and grouped), but there's no reason why everyone should be forced to tag every single mob when you're, say, farming camp bonus.

And you're still missing the point. Sure, doing exactly enough to meet the threshold is "optimal" to tagging as much as possible, but (and especially in WvW) if you do the bare minimum, there's no guarantee the target will die. And only in WvW does "getting credit and move on" actually still reward you (besides basic experience, which kill experience is relatively minimum), since if you move on, you're going to have to run back to collect the loot, which, depending on the context, can be even less efficient. With regards to groups...well, it's been a while since I've done much in a group, but even if what you say is true, I would argue that's a good thing, as it promotes you actually working together with your group. I guess your problem is you can't leech credit off your group.

Plus, meeting the minimum tag threshold is only sufficient on "normal" mobs, in events doing so will get you bronze at best.

More Bulverism.

That's only true if the event is one single boss. If it's multiple mobs just tagging them is the best option. When farming camp bonus our group spread out to pull as many mobs as possible, but we had to use low damage abilities so the mobs didn't die before everyone could tag them. It's a travesty for group play.

I don't know what the minimum amount of damage you need to do is, but it feels* like you're in competition with everyone around you. I've mentioned before, it reminds me a lot of Rift in the early days with the contribution meter.

Rift was better for most classes in that regard because apparently it wasn't your damage or healing that counted towards contribution, but rather the amount of "actions" in general. The best way to get contribution on my Rogue was to spam Chants like an idiot.

Glad you amended your point. As it was completely false as stated originally; "even with just 1 damage".

Completely
Marginally
Red Herring

Glad I can help.