Guild Wars 2

I would love to see Vigor gone from the game, or at least made very hard to gain as a boon.

The whole reasoning behind the current Berserker meta is because the ‘best’ players can dodge whenever necessary, removing the need to trait defensively. How can they dodge so much? Permanent or near-permanent vigor gained through extremely accessable traits and sigils).

For example, the fact that a guardian has access to essentially permanent vigor means that they don’t have to rely on their various blinds and aegis. Removing that vigor means that they have to play more cautiously and their party wide support is more greatly appreciated.

Thoughts?

Does this include endurance regeneration traits/utilities such as signet of stamina or feline grace, runes/sigils/food/, weapon skills, etc?

I can play my Thief/Ele/Necro/ranger/warrior without vigor.

Berserker is not the meta because of vigor. It is the meta because there is no need for tanks or healingsupporters, or “ccing” playstyles in the current state of PvE.

Aslong they won´t change this, “max possibel” (to play) dps will always be the meta.

Fullzerk/rampager or halfzerk/halfknights. It doesn´t matter the meta will stay unchanged. And other builds can´t get more viable by nerfing dps.

I think.. keep vigor in the game. Make all classes able to trait for vigor. Make some attacks from some bosses un-dodge-able.

That being said, I do hate how some classes can deal damage while not actively attacking, and use that to their advantage by hammering that dodge key over and over and over and over (or able to drop AoE nukes while spamming dodge). So a vigor nerf I would support! By that I mean effectiveness nerf, not up time nerf.

This would completely break ele.

I’ve always believed that dodging should be a lot more limited and used as a last resort to get out of a jam rather than the first. Reduce the two dodges we currently have into one and bake a stun break into it to make it your one get out of jail card. Then slap on an appropriate cooldown and there you go.

The mitigation of damage should be accomplished through things like active blocking.

Guards in high level groups often run 20/25/0/0/25 forsaking vigor since their team is good enough to not need it. If you take vigor away you do 2 things.

1.) Punish guards who aren’t in a good group.
2.) Destroy bunker guards in PVP, who use dodges as a life line.

Blind is used A LOT when fighting trash. Against champions, however, it’s completely unreliable because of “unshakeable”.
Aegis sources are not so common, even less party wide ones. There’s one on activable VoC (90 second CD), another one on Retreat! (60 second CD) and a third one if you recharge VoC with Renewing Focus (90 second CD).
Even with that, aegis is one of the main guardian stregths and becomes more powerful the shorter the fight is. Retreat! is almost always slotted in meta guardian bars.

About evades …
Vigor is not needed at all for most content. If some content requires more evades, food and energy sigils are more than enough.
That being said, I wouldn’t be against removing vigor (which won’t happen, it might get a 50% nerf at best) since that would punish wasting dodges.

Trying to reduce the amount of evades or introducing unavoidable attacks so charcaters need to trait/gear defensively, however, doesn’t make any sense.
Anything that FORCE to use defensive stats on gear is bad design . Why?
Because characters are given base stats, health and armor. If a higher amount of defense should be NEEDED, then those base stats should be increased and gear stats, the ones you can chose, overall reduced.
Giving players the idea that they can chose something when they really can’t is an atracious design and just makes people angry.

About vigor and guardian … this change is not as simple as it might seem.
The usual sPvP bunker/support guardian has a great upkeep of vigor (it might not be 100% because of the low crit rate) and also uses energy sigils, for 3 potential evades every 10 seconds. That’s an insane amount evades, promoting mindlessly dodging and spammy gameplay.
However, and here comes the tricky part, a good amount of Guardian sustain comes from Selfless Daring (healing on dodge roll). If we nerf vigor (or evades in general) without any other changes, we’re actually nerfing guardians twice and might make them obsolete for arguably the only role where they’re competitive.

A lot of the problem is recently Anet address vigor/endurance recover on Engineer, Ranger, and Thief. And the vigor on critical hit possessed by Elementalist, Guardian, and Mesmer along with Signet of Stamina (passive effect) on Warrior remained untouched. So in the patch that was adjusting vigor/evasion balance ignored most of the professions, but stuck professions that are in an evasive Archetype (and are jokingly stating that Warrior needs a certain level of sturdiness that would be considered slightly off topic but show that Archetype within play should be maintained at least some professions) .

Bran.7425:

A lot of the problem is recently Anet address vigor/endurance recover on Engineer, Ranger, and Thief. And the vigor on critical hit possessed by Elementalist, Guardian, and Mesmer along with Signet of Stamina (passive effect) on Warrior remained untouched. So in the patch that was adjusting vigor/evasion balance ignored most of the professions, but stuck professions that are in an evasive Archetype (and are jokingly stating that Warrior needs a certain level of sturdiness that would be considered slightly off topic but show that Archetype within play should be maintained at least some professions).

I don’t thik they messed up with evade related balance changes. Moving up one tier the elementalist vigor on crit trait is the only one I disagree with; the class is in too bad shape for getting this kind of nerfs.

Mesmer and Guardian vigor traits will eventually get nerfed, they are just a little bit trickier because of main functionalities relying on dodge rolls.

I’ve done this thread before.
I’ll won’t be bothered to do it again in full scope.
Short answer : no.
Long answer : no because it is a terrible idea.

Also – The Great Al – it is obvious you don’t play zerker – or if you do you do it poorly.
As a zerker player I’ve never traited for vigor, never brought any skill that gave me extra dodges or ever bothered to run with groups that spammed it.
A good zerker does not need extra dodges. The two default ones with the default recharge rate are enough.

Meta isn’t what it is because of vigor. It is what it is because good players will always be good and they’ll keep getting better.

Who on earth said that Berserker is the meta because of Vigor?

Berserker is the meta because no PvE content produces any threat or requirement for anything other than more DPS and is composed of giant HP bars that should be removed as quickly as possible.

Without vigor?
How can i fight AI spamm?

I would agree some classes would need less while some more. When i looked at warrior warhorn my jaw dropped. 50% party vigor base uptime, without any traits or boon duration in it yet. With those it can easily get close to 100% or over.

Critting guardian gets practically 100% vigor, but seeing how squishy guardian hp is that is understandable.

My ranger on the other hand has to either go for pet swapping trait for much shorter vigor to my party, get critically hit himself, heal himself for self vigor only, or use skill on quite the cooldown. None of those giving anywhere near 50% vigor uptime and each quite apart from another in trait lines. Not that great. Well i got lotsa evades, but then again warrior has lotsa counters and blocks.

Any (Full bunker too) Elementalist live only while have stamina to doodge.
Bad idea, really

Why should players willing to learn a fight be punished for not playing tank gear? In reality this whole zerker meta thing is really elitist players shaving time. You do not punish players for attempting and succeeding at avoiding attack you reward them for it. Some players are not the “elite” and actually need the vigor. In the long run this doesn’t punish the speed runners or the “baddies” not running zerker it just punish anyone who isn’t great at dodging but still wants to run zerk or near zerk gear.

Post like are basically telling classes that can be one shot to quit if you want to melee.

Yes yes, zerk and evade is the one true way to play! Everyone else are just noobs that have yet to see the light! /s

Just make the champions and other bosses spam confusion and retaliation, and see what happens at a 5 zerker warrior party

okeyy…. but simple tell me how is compensation for thiefs without using stealth?

I’ve thought something needs to be done about evasion for some time. Removing vigor isn’t one of them. Some of my thoughts.

• If defensive stats are actually going to have any bearing in the game, dodge needs to be strictly controlled. Whether or not it is strictly controlled enough, is obviously up for debate.

• A lot of classes can spam evasion without any vigor, if dodge is out of control, should this be affected as well?

• Dodge is meant to be uncounterable, it is a catch-all that gives players an active play response in any situation. But this becomes a problem when more classes have access to it than another.

• The monster that is GW2’s AI system is a huge contributor to this problem. As a zerker up above said, with most AI opponents, once you have their attack pattern memorized, it doesn’t matter how much dodge regen you have, very few attack often enough to ever get through your dodge.

Some changes I think could help with this:

• AI improvements, first and foremost. AI opponents need to vary their attack patterns by speed, type, and target based on more variables.

• Make evasion and dodge different. Dodge will still be the uncounterable tactic that it has always been, however evasive abilities will be more akin to mobile blocks, subject to unblockable attacks with some being breakable by CC.

• Similarly, vigor could be reworked to proc as an evade rather than a dodge.

• Nerf the inherent power of evasive skills, but make them scale off of defensive stats with a cap, toughness would be best, giving it a secondary use for those who don’t build vitality.

Fungalfoot.7213:

I’ve always believed that dodging should be a lot more limited and used as a last resort to get out of a jam rather than the first. Reduce the two dodges we currently have into one and bake a stun break into it to make it your one get out of jail card. Then slap on an appropriate cooldown and there you go.

The mitigation of damage should be accomplished through things like active blocking.

I play mesmer, run a vigor on crit gs & s+p build, i have zero blocking skills on those weapon sets, in order to get active blocking i’d have to drop one of my utilities. Something like this would essentially kill my build. In fact i’m sure changes like these would kill a lot of builds.

one answer:

NO

Vigor is fine. What they need to do is reduce the damage of each attack of most PvE monsters and increase their attack rate. This would put them more in line with fighting other players in damage and attack speed. It would make retaliation and confusion viable in PvE, as well as remove the ability effectively dodge every PvE attack. Which means less 100% zerk dps mode.

As for PvP and WvW, professions are balanced against each other. A class with lots of vigor such as ranger will be able to dodge more often to avoid damage, as opposed to a warrior which can pop utilities to negate damage. As long as each class is balanced, vigor is fine.

vigor’s value differs a lot depending on what class you are, and what other defenses you have. Anything across the board would be illogical.

Also dodge/reacting to enemies is fun. Having less reactive play is not.

Bran.7425:

A lot of the problem is recently Anet address vigor/endurance recover on Engineer, Ranger, and Thief. And the vigor on critical hit possessed by Elementalist, Guardian, and Mesmer along with Signet of Stamina (passive effect) on Warrior remained untouched. So in the patch that was adjusting vigor/evasion balance ignored most of the professions, but stuck professions that are in an evasive Archetype (and are jokingly stating that Warrior needs a certain level of sturdiness that would be considered slightly off topic but show that Archetype within play should be maintained at least some professions) .

Except SoS is 1/2 of Vigor and does not stack with the boon. But yeah, they decided to pass over some of the classes that really needed those traits changed.

This is why they have a “Balance” sub forum….because they suck at it and it took them a whole year of getting many things wrong for them to realize it.

phys.7689:

vigor’s value differs a lot depending on what class you are, and what other defenses you have. Anything across the board would be illogical.

Also dodge/reacting to enemies is fun. Having less reactive play is not.

Agreed.

Having Vigor up is much more valuable to classes and builds that are supposed to be balanced by weaker defenses but stay at a distance.

Perma-vigor on a mesmer, for instance, is much more valuable than perma-vigor on a guard. In the 3.5 seconds that the guard isn’t dodging, you’ll be landing hits on him. In the 3.5 seconds the mesmer isn’t dodging, you’ll be looking for him, trying to close distances, getting hit, killing phantasms, etc.

Disclaimer: I don’t care about PvE, my opinion is mostly based around WvW roaming/duelling.

I think it’s fine for some classes to have better access to vigor than other. Warrior has a lot of immunities, block, the highest hp and armor, so it doesn’t need vigor that badly. Eles and mesmers, on the other hand, are a lot squishier and have entire builds relying on on-dodge traits (ele might stacking, mesmer shatter/clone death).

Removing vigor would only server one purpose: It makes warrior an even more dominant class than it already is.

Necros could use more (or better…any) access to vigor, though.

Iavra.8510:

Disclaimer: I don’t care about PvE, my opinion is mostly based around WvW roaming/duelling.

I think it’s fine for some classes to have better access to vigor than other. Warrior has a lot of immunities, block, the highest hp and armor, so it doesn’t need vigor that badly. Eles and mesmers, on the other hand, are a lot squishier and have entire builds relying on on-dodge traits (ele might stacking, mesmer shatter/clone death).

Removing vigor would only server one purpose: It makes warrior an even more dominant class than it already is.

Necros could use more (or better…any) access to vigor, though.

Better stop right there. Putting eles in the same boat as mesmers? Those two classes are polar opposites as far as PvP effectiveness. Mesmers have way more jukes, invis that doesn’t follow the ‘revealed’ rule, and soft-cc than eles could ever hope to have.

Every single good pvp mes build traits 20 points down Dueling for a reason.

Every single good pvp mes build traits 20 points down Dueling for a reason.

Exactly, and the reason is that those builds are just unplayable without Deceptive Evasion and the added vigor. If ArenaNet were to take our main clone source shatter would cease to exist so they’d need to give something ine exchange.

/edit: Removing Critical Infusion would most likely limit Shatter to 0/20/0/10/30, leaving exactly 10 points. Those will go either to Domination for added damage or Inspiration for condi cleanse. Not exactly build diversity for me.

Some classes have so many other “dodge skills” and less dependent on vigor, nerfing it won’t affect much. But some classes already have very few of those skills, nerfing vigor would just further disable them.

Seras.5702:

As for PvP and WvW, professions are balanced against each other. A class with lots of vigor such as ranger will be able to dodge more often to avoid damage, as opposed to a warrior which can pop utilities to negate damage. As long as each class is balanced, vigor is fine.

This would be true if dodge spam had any counters or drawbacks like other damage negation abilities, but it doesn’t. And that has to be, dodge gives players an active response to any situation and that can’t change.

What needs to happen is for dodge and evade to be seperated, with evade being treated like a block, subject to unblockable attacks and sometimes control abilities and dodge continuing as the meta-mechanic that it is currently.

The Great Al.2546:

I would love to see Vigor gone from the game, or at least made very hard to gain as a boon.

The whole reasoning behind the current Berserker meta is because the ‘best’ players can dodge whenever necessary, removing the need to trait defensively. How can they dodge so much? Permanent or near-permanent vigor gained through extremely accessable traits and sigils).

For example, the fact that a guardian has access to essentially permanent vigor means that they don’t have to rely on their various blinds and aegis. Removing that vigor means that they have to play more cautiously and their party wide support is more greatly appreciated.

Thoughts?

I’ll agree with this, but u should make all char have the same hp pool and same armor

I would love to see a removal of vigor and energy runes, but maybe bump dodge rolls up to three instead of two.

I say this because in theory you want to time or count your opponents dodge rolls to skillfully blow your cooldowns but in the current state it is far to RNG.

Izer.2083:

I’ll agree with this, but u should make all char have the same hp pool and same armor

would have to do something that drastic to make removing vigor altogether, semi-fair.
so lets not (you’d invoke a player riot anyway).

the upcoming nerfs to the remaining perma-vigor-on-crit traits is fine for now.

I don’t know if people realise but a standard pve warrior without a vigour has more evades than an elementalist with perma vigour while having 70% more hp and 13% damage reduction.

The Great Al.2546:

I would love to see Vigor gone from the game, or at least made very hard to gain as a boon.

The whole reasoning behind the current Berserker meta is because the ‘best’ players can dodge whenever necessary, removing the need to trait defensively. How can they dodge so much? Permanent or near-permanent vigor gained through extremely accessable traits and sigils).

For example, the fact that a guardian has access to essentially permanent vigor means that they don’t have to rely on their various blinds and aegis. Removing that vigor means that they have to play more cautiously and their party wide support is more greatly appreciated.

Thoughts?

That’s why most people play the warrior in pve? Because they have perma vigour.

Hrm, though I would be against an outright removal, I will say that I think many boons – and also many conditions – are too easy to get.

For example, pre-nerf WvW Confusion was really strong, but the problem was not in it’s raw power – you had to stop attacking – but in how easy it was to apply to entire groups.
On a specific single target, Confusion in a less readily available state would be rather balanced. Stop attacking, or suffer – back then – major damage.

Likewise Vigor is a realy powerful boon, I’d maybe even buff it. But it should be something you get rarely, and then you notice it. Something giving a group vigor should be really rare, and on a fairly lengthy.

Same for Protection, and probably Swiftness.

These things can be fight changing, and the correct approach is not to make them ubiquitous as a result of that.

Carighan.6758:

Hrm, though I would be against an outright removal, I will say that I think many boons – and also many conditions – are too easy to get.

For example, pre-nerf WvW Confusion was really strong, but the problem was not in it’s raw power – you had to stop attacking – but in how easy it was to apply to entire groups.
On a specific single target, Confusion in a less readily available state would be rather balanced. Stop attacking, or suffer – back then – major damage.

Likewise Vigor is a realy powerful boon, I’d maybe even buff it. But it should be something you get rarely, and then you notice it. Something giving a group vigor should be really rare, and on a fairly lengthy.

Same for Protection, and probably Swiftness.

These things can be fight changing, and the correct approach is not to make them ubiquitous as a result of that.

agree…and maybe as along-term goal, its something that can be worked toward (as long as the classes that are currently balanced entirely around their access to these boons/conditions are compensated or keep their relative access).

a guardian has junk stats because of its easy access to boons like aegis and protection (and the blind condition). limit these, and you have to re-balance the guardians stats and traits……….and you also kill a specific play style that people like myself enjoy (active negation). but, if one did limit the usage of these boons/conditions for a guardian…..you’d have to almost completely remove them from other classes to preserve the need/uniqueness of the guardian class (which is already difficult to justify with how OP warriors are in all facets of the game).

Try to play a zerk elementalist without guardian and warrior support…

After you succeed, get back here explaining how zerk needs any form of nerfs….

2 profession needs rebalancing:
Guardians and Warriors.
That will stop zerker meta for the masses….leaving only the skilled able to run full zrk groups (as intended).

I can see the future now players just standing still taking turns hitting each other. Also a zerker warrior barly has 2k armor if that. I have a necro build that has high burst damage and 2.7k armor ya in light armor.

At the OP (sorry if this is mentioned here) in terms of pvp

A: There is no berserker meta, unless you mean glass condi. But we can dream.

B: With regards to bunker guard, which actually counters a berserker meta for most classes, they are halving vigor up-time in the next major patch. Ditto for Mesmer.

So yeah it’s being addressed by the balance team, nerfing energy sigils would be a more interesting change IMO, given the planned change to sigil mechanics.

So a nerf to all professions who rely more on dodging, an actual skill as you need to time it.
But professions who rely on more passive defenses, such as natively high armor/hp, passively high healing, protection, stuff that takes little to no skill, would not get nerfed.

Guess which professions end up getting nerfed and which, relatively, buffed.

The only people who would even suggest a nerf to vigor are those who want to force everyone into pvt gear. Crab mentality. Dodging is a core mechanic of GW2’s active combat design. Vigor/dodging is a primary justification in low base hp on certain classes. Dodging/vigor/endurance regen is available to every class in the game in some way or another. Why nerf the intended survival function of the game just because some fail at dodging? Would you really want pvt-facetank-wars2? How boring would that be to just buff everyone’s hp/toughness up so we can just stand in place and face tank everything? Equally boring and obnoxious to force everyone to trait toughness/hp and force everyone into pvt gear. At least there is excitement and accomplishment in learning to dodge properly to avoid damage. That leaves room for improvement in your gaming skill.

The Great Al.2546:

I would love to see Vigor gone from the game, or at least made very hard to gain as a boon.

The whole reasoning behind the current Berserker meta is because the ‘best’ players can dodge whenever necessary, removing the need to trait defensively. How can they dodge so much? Permanent or near-permanent vigor gained through extremely accessable traits and sigils).

For example, the fact that a guardian has access to essentially permanent vigor means that they don’t have to rely on their various blinds and aegis. Removing that vigor means that they have to play more cautiously and their party wide support is more greatly appreciated.

Thoughts?

It would be great if people could wrap their minds around the fact that guardian =/= pvt/clerics/bunker/staff camp. Yes, I agree that pvt/clerics/bunker/staff camp could stand to have a survivability nerf in some way….but every guard doesn’t build/gear that way. I’d love to see people making suggestions like the above play high level fractals while not geared/traited for toughness/hp and not need to dodge often. The Mai Trin fight being a prime example of needing to dodge correctly and often, while pvt just stands there.

Exactly how would party wide support be changed by lack of vigor btw? The pve berserker meta exists solely because of the lack of the tank/healer roles in this game. Without those two required roles, everything is about efficient killing and self survival accountability….that has nothing to do with vigor or berserker gear specifically. Whatever gear set produces the most damage would be the pve meta. That will never be pvt so long as 2/3 of its stats are not devoted to damage.

I’ll tell you what, I’d agree for vigor to be removed from the game if they remove toughness at the same time. Then they would actually need to re-balance incoming damage and eliminate the need to dodge/block/blind everything as a non-toughness/zerk guard.

It blows my mind how people continue to think that face tanking everything while not even needing to dodge/block/blind is okay….while simultaneously thinking that surviving by actually dodging/blocking/blinding is in need of a nerf. This is essentially saying that there should only be one way to play and that is face tanking. This is the opposite of what you guys have been saying all along. There has been constant QQ about wanting build diversity, but this is saying that there should not be any build diversity…pvt or go home. Make up your minds. What ever happened to “play how you want” ….you remember…the pvt slogan in dungeons when complaints arose about low damage output.

http://youtu.be/b2VhmwLwvrM?t=6m46s

Terrahero.9358:

So a nerf to all professions who rely more on dodging, an actual skill as you need to time it.
But professions who rely on more passive defenses, such as natively high armor/hp, passively high healing, protection, stuff that takes little to no skill, would not get nerfed.

Guess which professions end up getting nerfed and which, relatively, buffed.

Just because two effects could use a nerf and one ends up buffing something you want to nerf with the other doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go through with the first change.

Vigor is too easily available. That has nothing to do with Warriors/Guardians. Those are an entirely separate issue.

Carighan.6758:

Terrahero.9358:

So a nerf to all professions who rely more on dodging, an actual skill as you need to time it.
But professions who rely on more passive defenses, such as natively high armor/hp, passively high healing, protection, stuff that takes little to no skill, would not get nerfed.

Guess which professions end up getting nerfed and which, relatively, buffed.

Just because two effects could use a nerf and one ends up buffing something you want to nerf with the other doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go through with the first change.

Vigor is too easily available. That has nothing to do with Warriors/Guardians. Those are an entirely separate issue.

Gamebalance all effects eachother, its not a seperate issue. Nerfing Vigor wholesale will nerf specific profession/builds. When one goes down, another goes up as the status quo changes.

The professions getting nerfed are the ones that shouldnt get nerfed, and the ones benefiting from it are the ones that should actually be receiving a nerf.

You cannot sit here and suggest just nerfing one and “wait and see” when you already know its going to affect game balance negatively somewhere else. Make such a change, if its even needed, but do it in tandem with “balance changes” to those who shouldnt be getting an even better deal.

Removing Vigor wholesale would at least make the necromancer better in comparison, mainly because that’s the one class that wouldn’t notice any change at all (only vigor comes from a situational use of a50 second cooldown skill).

But no. The solution to the Zerker meta is redesign of PvE encounters. That is the only solution that will work.

Pve zerker meta utilizes mostly warriors who have no vigour so I don’t exactly see what that would achieve except making warriors stronger in comparison.

haviz.1340:

who have no vigour

10s group vigor on a 20s CD.
Apparently, “no”. I wish I had that kind of no vigour.

The only way this would be fair is if every class were to get the same HP pool and the same armor. Something tells me that the class you play already has a large health pool and a high armor rating…. cough Warrior cough

Carighan.6758:

10s group vigor on a 20s CD.
Apparently, “no”. I wish I had that kind of no vigour.

Are you doing this on purpose or you don’t even realise what meta means? I wish an off-hand mace gave vigour, or maybe a greatsword.

Meta builds for warriors don’t use warhorn because they need no vigour.