Guild Wars 2

I think right now gw2 pve is some of the most balanced we have ever seen it (still not perfect of course). Anet has been doing a good job taking steps towards improving it, and while those changes are certainly slower than we would like, they have shown a commitment to it. Unfortunately, we rarely discuss our ideas on what we would like to see in this department, so I want to outline my thoughts on a few things, and start a conversation about this.

1.) Power rev. I think the obvious thing to compare power rev to is hammer guardian. Both can provide permanent protection and great cc. Both provide a little bit of off might as well.

Uptime: Unfortunately, power rev trying to perma upkeep protection is very clunky because of how frequently protection is pulsed. Legend swapping too fast or too slow will result in protection down times as large as 4 seconds. Compare this to hammer guard, which is a very simple rotation. I believe that after facet of nature was nerfed, and max stacks of protection was lowered from 9 to 5, anet never revisited how that affected rev boon upkeep, and I think it is time to look into that.

Damage: Additionally we need to talk about damage. According to qt’s benchmarks, power rev and hammer gaurd are very close, the problem is that none of rev’s damage is burst. At every boss, there are little sections of time where you can’t do damage. For example, at sloth during break bar. During that time, guardian’s cool downs keep ticking, and once the boss is vulnerable again, the guardian can use all those cool downs and get a burst of damage at the end of the invulnerable phase. Rev has almost none of that. Sword 2 isn’t very much dmg, and if the rev wants to actually make sure they upkeep protection, they can’t just wait in jalis to turn on hammers. Rev needs the ability to provide more burst damage.

Assassins Presence: Some players will point to this to justify rev having lower damage than guardian. Sorry but that doesn’t fly. Our condi overlords are here, power builds are dead, and AP doesn’t add much at all to condi rangers or condi engis.

2.) Necro: Can’t viably heal, isn’t a buffer class, so the only roles we can look at for necro to fill are dps slots. There are 2 main builds, power and condi, and they both have problems.

Power Necro: The damage isn’t there. It needs a direct buff and it needs it badly. Some people will say necro is too tanky to have good damage. That’s ridiculous. Pure condi (i.e. non-ps variant) warrior can hit 30k while having max health and max armor, while also having a heal skill that scales with their damage. Thieves can bring invigorating precision (basically unkillable) and the expense of only 250 ferocity, and in addition they have 3 dodges and 3 evades and can even bring a block if they choose to. Power Necro needs a direct buff for it to be competitive.

Condi Necro: The damage is there, but inaccessible. Farbstoff showed us condi necro can hit 30k realistic buffs, which is competitive (for comparison condi engi/ranger bench marks are around 33k). But the entire build depends on combo fields. What is that garbage? This is literally the only class I know of that has to depend on the combo field system to do its damage. Its stupid. Remove the whirl finishers, and just put chill directly on the skills. Or, fix the minion nerf. Rather than a huge stupid overreaction that literally removes the purpose of half the traits in death magic, and all synergy in blood magic, actually put in the effort to tune the class correctly.

3.) Elementalist: Make a decision, does ele damage scale with hit box or not? Because your meteor shower nerf just made us move towards things like wildfire, lightning orb, and phoenix, additionally skills like icebow 4 and lightning storm still do scale damage with hitbox size. Picking a single skill and putting an internal cooldown on it is inconsistent with the class. Either all skills should have internal cool downs or none of them.

My personal suggestion: Put an internal cool down on every skill, but buff its damage accordingly. Its stupid for 1 class to dominate large hit box, and then another to dominate small hitbox. Balance it so eles do the same damage regardless of hitbox size, and make sure that damage is competitive with condi ranger.

4.) Power Ps: Probably needs a damage buff. Condi ps has better damage, better cleave, and can do most of its damage at range, and even has an easier rotation on small hitbox. Power PS can generate more might, so maybe power ps is suppose to be viable for a 7-1-1-1 comp, but right now mirror comp seems like the clearly better choice, and so power ps is literally a niche build for kc at best at this point.

I’d rather have the combo system reworked to prioritize personal fields first

I can’t deny that a combo system rework would be pretty cool. I guess I suggested the alternative because it seems easier and more realistic. But I agree with you, the ideal would be a field prioritization system.

I think it’s easier than reworking skills, since field prioritization system already exists and now you’d only have to modify it

I can’t claim these would “change” the meta, however there are things i’d hope Anet test internally for changes like the following

1) User Selected field priorities / priority by trigger type
2) Spirits to 10 players in range
3) Engineer not being pigeonholed into Static Discharge for power builds (better weapon damage/lower cooldowns/cast timers)
4) Power Necro less reliance on sub 50% damage modifiers (Increased weapon skill damage)
5) Ele i agree on, consistency would be nice but they’ll need to probably remove some of its utility to fix its damage output.

I’d like to see a rock paper scissors approach to fields. Each class would have 2 or three other classes to synergize fields with. So a necro might drop a field, and other certain classes can blast it. It would promote more diverse raid groups.

I dont agree with the warr buff, i would if they took away some of his power stacking capabilities but they dont seem to do that so im fine with that. I would tho reduce the condi warr might stacking abit o the 2 builds have distinct roles ( 1 being higher dmg lower support and the other being the opposite).

For condi reaper i like the idea of this build getting high dmg by finishers is really nteresting to me but for builds like necro where your own field makes all that possible i would put a system where classes and builds like that prioritise thier own fileds if those are down.

Power rev never got buff to balance out his facet of nature nerf like mesmer did with blured frenzy and i see rev like guard both have ok spport with might fury w/e but rev needs higher dmg to balance out with the rest of the classes. And maybe the idea or remoing the energy costs from his weapons for pve only would be interesting.

I always saw ele as the bix hitbox guy but anet doesnt relly seem to want to make it like that, i always beleived that eles having a sub-par build for small hit box and i great build for medium to high hitbox was the way to go but then again im not th design team nor i know what they want ele to be.

WHY NO TALK FOR POWER REAPER come on the class screams power, it’d be the coolest to have power reaper deal insane amounts of dmg with dem grave diggers. Maybe reduce its radious to buff its dmg while making it consume hp which you lifesteal back from the boss ( #make lifesteal a mechanic ). The lifesteal mechanic with the huge hp pool would make for a cool tank idea also ^^.

Condi ranger first remove take root… second either nerf the dmg or make it like the short bow aa. Make it so positioning for your skills matter greatly for your dmg output and poor positioning/rotation is punished with low numbers.

thrag.9740:

3.) Elementalist: Make a decision, does ele damage scale with hit box or not? Because your meteor shower nerf just made us move towards things like wildfire, lightning orb, and phoenix, additionally skills like icebow 4 and lightning storm still do scale damage with hitbox size. Picking a single skill and putting an internal cooldown on it is inconsistent with the class. Either all skills should have internal cool downs or none of them.

My personal suggestion: Put an internal cool down on every skill, but buff its damage accordingly. Its stupid for 1 class to dominate large hit box, and then another to dominate small hitbox. Balance it so eles do the same damage regardless of hitbox size, and make sure that damage is competitive with condi ranger.

I’ll reply here, being an ele main, but it’s not just about eles.

There’s a big problem with the concept of competitive damage. Condi ranger is soooo much easier to play than ele. You don’t lose 10% damage when something sneezes in your general direction. You don’t lose 10% damage when you stop moving for a second. You don’t have to ground-target your skills just behind your target, or change distance to it constantly so you maximize the damage of your skills. You can simply flank in melee range and you’re golden.

Balancing the damage of both to competitive levels creates a choice between the two only for people who can play them at a near-perfect level. For anyone else (and that’s the majority of the player base), picking the harder class is simply a poor choice. They are limiting their own efficiency and hindering their own groups.

How about give these players an actual choice that actually matters? Because, let’s face it, whether qT take eles or condi rangers would only change their clear times, and only by very little. However, a player of lesser skill could potentially choose between an easier to play class for more consistent results and a harder to play class for better potential results. Taking a risk, betting on their own play. Now, that’s an actual choice.

And this doesn’t just apply to eles and condi rangers. Condi engi has the same problem compared to much easier dps builds. And there are other easy dps builds on thief and guard too, which produce far too much dps far too reliably. Not to mention the condi ps.

There has to be a bigger gap in dps to justify considering a harder class. Current balance only looks at final damage numbers. No, that’s not how you balance.

+1 Feanor. There’s just very little payoff playing harder classes like Ele or even the non hammer guardian build. Even power builds in general now if you think about how there’s effort involved in maintaining scholar buff + seaweed buff don’t really feel worth it.

I can struggle and output my very best DPS on power engy OR I can just faceroll on a condi ranger and do more damage without trying as hard, that’s pretty poor balancing.

The problem with making it so that classes with harder rotations have notably higher dps, is that the inevitable meta that forms would exclude all the classes that have easier rotations. We have seen it a lot over the past year, frequently we use to see lfgs that wanted only eles, now we see them wanting only condi rangers. I think the goal should be that dps classes are more interchangeable.

I believe, the more favorable solution is the following. Balanced it so all the dps classes have competitive damage, but the harder rotations have access to more utility. For example consider condi ranger vs condi engi. Yes, their damages are similar, but condi engi can put down aoe blinds and chills, put down water fields and blast them multiple times, has more cc, , and I’m sure some more benefits I’m not thinking of. Single target dps can be the same, while still benefiting harder rotation classes.

This could easily be the case for ele as well, except that many of its extra utilities are locked in other attunements. A pure staff ele can’t swap to water for a water field or chill, or earth for a quick reflect, without really hurting their dps outside of the one point in their rotation where they finish overloading air and swap back to fire. At this one point, they could swap to earth/water and have relatively little penalty. But this point only comes up maybe once a minute.

This is why I think anet needs to make sure that fresh air builds are the meta builds for ele. In fresh air, you frequently can access your other utilities, now they just need to fix the damage and hitbox issues.

thrag.9740:

The problem with making it so that classes with harder rotations have notably higher dps, is that the inevitable meta that forms would exclude all the classes that have easier rotations. We have seen it a lot over the past year, frequently we use to see lfgs that wanted only eles, now we see them wanting only condi rangers.

The thing is, people wanted eles because of their potential performance and because there was no way to see how an ele actually performs. Now that we have dps meters, it would become obvious that asking for only eles is counter-productive because most eles perform on a level way below this potential and would, in fact, be better off using a condi ranger or a thief.

And we see now increasing demand for condi rangers not because their potential overshadows that of everything else – engis have higher potential, eles and guards too on large hitboxes – but because the easy gameplay of the ranger makes them far more reliable. And more reliable means higher actual damage output. Which is what you care about, in the end.

P.S. Fresh Air is already meta, but you can’t balance worse damage output with just “utility”. What utility? Your job as a dps class is to deal damage. Getting other stuff to do while dealing already subpar damage will only hurt your damage output even more.

Your analysis of rev vs. hammer guard misses out on the main reason why hammer guard out performs rev in general. In order for rev to get the strong cc it has, it needs to swap to staff which is a huge dps loss. Meanwhile hammer guard has its cc on its main weapon set, f1 and elite/utility skills, so it loses minimal dps for break bars, with dragon’s maw actually being a dps increase. Then there are the other ways rev loses dps, precision strike is extremely unreliable since it splits its damage between targets which at times include random things such as the sky. Then for the hammers to get good dps out you need to spend basically your whole time in the bosses hit box and hope they don’t turn off randomly. End result is while hammer guard and rev are theoretically close in damage and utility, in practice guard simply pulls away damage wise in a real raid scenario especially if the rev actually uses its utility.

Remove energy costs off revenant weaponskills.

Revenant is a thief who has initiative costs not only on weaponskills, but on utilities and elites, AND those weaponskills on top of costing initiative still have cooldowns.

It makes no sense whatsoever to keep energy costs on revenant weapons because utility/elite costs are so high, the revenant can’t use weaponskills for utility without hurting offense or supporting the group.

Revenant sword 4 is a block just like warrior offhand block, except it also costs energy which means it’s energy not used for precision strike or energy that competes with upkeep energy. Meanwhile the warrior block costs nothing but a cooldown.

Energy costs on revenant weaponskills are the single biggest issue gimping revenants besides the massive unjustified nerfs to unrelenting assault and autoattack DPS in PvE despite the fact thief staff auto is outrageously better and it also reflects projectile at the end of the chain.

Thief Vault does more damage than Unrelenting Assault and it doesn’t split its damage across targets while also being an evade.

There was no reason whatsoever to gut unrelenting assault in PvE and shift damage onto precision strike which was originally meant to be a snare skill.

Their hamfisted changes to revenant pushed the class into irrelevance.

They nerfed facet of nature yet they are completely fine with PS warrior providing 25 permanent might to a group on top of empower allies and banners, while putting out 30k DPS. Or chrono being able to still keep ridiculous quickness uptimes without the revenant’s facet.

Why was revenant the only boon provider utterly gutted when it was already the inferior boon provider and no unique group buffs besides an obsolete facet which meant little when warriors and chronos don’t need it to maintain offensive boon stacks?

Revenant staff also needs an autoattack DPS buff, its damage loss is way too big for the marginal utility outside skills 3 and 5. Skill 4 heals for so little baseline, should be 1k without condis removed, 2k with it aoe baseline, none of this healing power coefficient garbage because nobody uses healing power gear in raids anyways, much elss revenants.

Skill 2 should daze first and then do the weakening big strike.

Mace and offhand axe need buffs as well. Torment in Confusion for PvE only should do the same base damage as bleeds, and the active triggers are a bonus since you can stack less torment/confusion than bleeds.

Feanor.2358:

thrag.9740:

3.) Elementalist: Make a decision, does ele damage scale with hit box or not? Because your meteor shower nerf just made us move towards things like wildfire, lightning orb, and phoenix, additionally skills like icebow 4 and lightning storm still do scale damage with hitbox size. Picking a single skill and putting an internal cooldown on it is inconsistent with the class. Either all skills should have internal cool downs or none of them.

My personal suggestion: Put an internal cool down on every skill, but buff its damage accordingly. Its stupid for 1 class to dominate large hit box, and then another to dominate small hitbox. Balance it so eles do the same damage regardless of hitbox size, and make sure that damage is competitive with condi ranger.

I’ll reply here, being an ele main, but it’s not just about eles.

There’s a big problem with the concept of competitive damage. Condi ranger is soooo much easier to play than ele. You don’t lose 10% damage when something sneezes in your general direction. You don’t lose 10% damage when you stop moving for a second. You don’t have to ground-target your skills just behind your target, or change distance to it constantly so you maximize the damage of your skills. You can simply flank in melee range and you’re golden.

Balancing the damage of both to competitive levels creates a choice between the two only for people who can play them at a near-perfect level. For anyone else (and that’s the majority of the player base), picking the harder class is simply a poor choice. They are limiting their own efficiency and hindering their own groups.

How about give these players an actual choice that actually matters? Because, let’s face it, whether qT take eles or condi rangers would only change their clear times, and only by very little. However, a player of lesser skill could potentially choose between an easier to play class for more consistent results and a harder to play class for better potential results. Taking a risk, betting on their own play. Now, that’s an actual choice.

And this doesn’t just apply to eles and condi rangers. Condi engi has the same problem compared to much easier dps builds. And there are other easy dps builds on thief and guard too, which produce far too much dps far too reliably. Not to mention the condi ps.

There has to be a bigger gap in dps to justify considering a harder class. Current balance only looks at final damage numbers. No, that’s not how you balance.

or make classes like condi ranger artificially harder :/

Zenith.7301:

Remove energy costs off revenant weaponskills.

Revenant is a thief who has initiative costs not only on weaponskills, but on utilities and elites, AND those weaponskills on top of costing initiative still have cooldowns.

It makes no sense whatsoever to keep energy costs on revenant weapons because utility/elite costs are so high, the revenant can’t use weaponskills for utility without hurting offense or supporting the group.

Revenant sword 4 is a block just like warrior offhand block, except it also costs energy which means it’s energy not used for precision strike or energy that competes with upkeep energy. Meanwhile the warrior block costs nothing but a cooldown.

Energy costs on revenant weaponskills are the single biggest issue gimping revenants besides the massive unjustified nerfs to unrelenting assault and autoattack DPS in PvE despite the fact thief staff auto is outrageously better and it also reflects projectile at the end of the chain.

Thief Vault does more damage than Unrelenting Assault and it doesn’t split its damage across targets while also being an evade.

There was no reason whatsoever to gut unrelenting assault in PvE and shift damage onto precision strike which was originally meant to be a snare skill.

Their hamfisted changes to revenant pushed the class into irrelevance.

They nerfed facet of nature yet they are completely fine with PS warrior providing 25 permanent might to a group on top of empower allies and banners, while putting out 30k DPS. Or chrono being able to still keep ridiculous quickness uptimes without the revenant’s facet.

Why was revenant the only boon provider utterly gutted when it was already the inferior boon provider and no unique group buffs besides an obsolete facet which meant little when warriors and chronos don’t need it to maintain offensive boon stacks?

Revenant staff also needs an autoattack DPS buff, its damage loss is way too big for the marginal utility outside skills 3 and 5. Skill 4 heals for so little baseline, should be 1k without condis removed, 2k with it aoe baseline, none of this healing power coefficient garbage because nobody uses healing power gear in raids anyways, much elss revenants.

Skill 2 should daze first and then do the weakening big strike.

Mace and offhand axe need buffs as well. Torment in Confusion for PvE only should do the same base damage as bleeds, and the active triggers are a bonus since you can stack less torment/confusion than bleeds.

+1

I agree that rev weapon skills should either have cool downs or energy costs, but not both. Right now rev has to pay more to use a weapon skill than any other class. This alone won’t fix the damage though, it will just make the rotation a little bit smoother.

I think shiro stance could use a serious rework too. Its sad that Jalis is the highest dps stance. Anet completely missed their mark with shiro. Maybe if shiro quickness stacked with regular quickness from chrono? I don’t know, the whole stance is lacking.

Just add that while Impossible Odds is active, you also gain 20% extra ferocity. So you crit harder while it’s up.

Remove energy costs, apply change to Impossible Odds, and revert the sword nerfs and particularly nerfs to Unrelenting Assault for PvE only (WvW and spvp values stay the same), and revenant becomes relevant again.

That won’t fix the deficient legends of Mallyx and Ventari (and Jalis outside hammers), but short of an expansion don’t ever expect Anet devs to give those legends and traitlines the revamps they deserve.

zealex.9410:

r make classes like condi ranger artificially harder :/

But this takes away the meaning of choice, it becomes simply a flavor one. Keeping difference in both difficulty and performance makes it a strategical one.

Feanor.2358:

zealex.9410:

r make classes like condi ranger artificially harder :/

But this takes away the meaning of choice, it becomes simply a flavor one. Keeping difference in both difficulty and performance makes it a strategical one.

You might say that but its not ok to be top dps so easily with such low effort and we havent really seen a positional heavy class in gw2 so far so have condi ranger depend on your positioning to del extra dmg would be cool.

zealex.9410:

You might say that but its not ok to be top dps so easily with such low effort

I agree. What I’m saying is that I’d address the issue by changing the dps output of different professions/builds rather than tweak their difficulty until it matches. Not only is it simpler to tweak the dps, it is also beneficial to have low-effort builds. Both for the less skilled players and for situations where you just want to have some relaxed fun in the game. They just need to be less competitive. More consistent, like they are now, but harder builds should clearly outclass them when played properly.

Feanor.2358:

What I’m saying is that I’d address the issue by changing the dps output of different professions/builds rather than tweak their difficulty until it matches. Not only is it simpler to tweak the dps, it is also beneficial to have low-effort builds. Both for the less skilled players and for situations where you just want to have some relaxed fun in the game. They just need to be less competitive. More consistent, like they are now, but harder builds should clearly outclass them when played properly.

Hmm,
Tempest vs. Guardian/Thief (D/D at least)/Any other DPS pre-patch?
Engi/Ranger vs. Necro?

What you ask for already existed before.

Edit: Also, Revenant lost his place because of Signet of Inspiration change and not because of the Facet change. It was always possible to maintain Boon Duration without the Facet.

Feanor.2358:

zealex.9410:

You might say that but its not ok to be top dps so easily with such low effort

I agree. What I’m saying is that I’d address the issue by changing the dps output of different professions/builds rather than tweak their difficulty until it matches. Not only is it simpler to tweak the dps, it is also beneficial to have low-effort builds. Both for the less skilled players and for situations where you just want to have some relaxed fun in the game. They just need to be less competitive. More consistent, like they are now, but harder builds should clearly outclass them when played properly.

what i suggest is making it harder in a unique way kinda like have it being repositioning depended to deal the dmg that it deals now or straight up nerf it.

zealex.9410:

Feanor.2358:

zealex.9410:

You might say that but its not ok to be top dps so easily with such low effort

I agree. What I’m saying is that I’d address the issue by changing the dps output of different professions/builds rather than tweak their difficulty until it matches. Not only is it simpler to tweak the dps, it is also beneficial to have low-effort builds. Both for the less skilled players and for situations where you just want to have some relaxed fun in the game. They just need to be less competitive. More consistent, like they are now, but harder builds should clearly outclass them when played properly.

what i suggest is making it harder in a unique way kinda like have it being repositioning depended to deal the dmg that it deals now or straight up nerf it.

You do realize that Rangers are very dependent on positioning right?

Coconut.7082:

zealex.9410:

Feanor.2358:

zealex.9410:

You might say that but its not ok to be top dps so easily with such low effort

I agree. What I’m saying is that I’d address the issue by changing the dps output of different professions/builds rather than tweak their difficulty until it matches. Not only is it simpler to tweak the dps, it is also beneficial to have low-effort builds. Both for the less skilled players and for situations where you just want to have some relaxed fun in the game. They just need to be less competitive. More consistent, like they are now, but harder builds should clearly outclass them when played properly.

what i suggest is making it harder in a unique way kinda like have it being repositioning depended to deal the dmg that it deals now or straight up nerf it.

You do realize that Rangers are very dependent on positioning right?

Im not talking about the boss’ position and no i don’t believe that the aa (from behind or sides ) isn’t enough it would be better if each skill had a extra dmg for propper position to it like axe skills from the sides of the boss while s/b from behind so you got an iteresting playstyle were you reposition to upkeep the highest possible dps.

zealex.9410:

Coconut.7082:

zealex.9410:

Feanor.2358:

zealex.9410:

You might say that but its not ok to be top dps so easily with such low effort

I agree. What I’m saying is that I’d address the issue by changing the dps output of different professions/builds rather than tweak their difficulty until it matches. Not only is it simpler to tweak the dps, it is also beneficial to have low-effort builds. Both for the less skilled players and for situations where you just want to have some relaxed fun in the game. They just need to be less competitive. More consistent, like they are now, but harder builds should clearly outclass them when played properly.

what i suggest is making it harder in a unique way kinda like have it being repositioning depended to deal the dmg that it deals now or straight up nerf it.

You do realize that Rangers are very dependent on positioning right?

Im not talking about the boss’ position and no i don’t believe that the aa (from behind or sides ) isn’t enough it would be better if each skill had a extra dmg for propper position to it like axe skills from the sides of the boss while s/b from behind so you got an iteresting playstyle were you reposition to upkeep the highest possible dps.

The Ranger’s position has direct correlation to the Boss’ position.
It’s not only AA, you also have Poison Volley, 10% Crit from behind Trait (Which affects Shaepened Edges), some ranged skills (Poison Volley, Splitblade) have to be hit from melee to do significant DPS, Traps and Bonefire require planning ahead on moving bosses.

I’m not saying that Ranger is hard to play, but you wont get anywhere near the “benchmark DPS” only by pressing some buttons. Adding more requirements like 1 skill from behind and 1 only from the side will just make it completely chaotic.

Coconut.7082:

Feanor.2358:

What I’m saying is that I’d address the issue by changing the dps output of different professions/builds rather than tweak their difficulty until it matches. Not only is it simpler to tweak the dps, it is also beneficial to have low-effort builds. Both for the less skilled players and for situations where you just want to have some relaxed fun in the game. They just need to be less competitive. More consistent, like they are now, but harder builds should clearly outclass them when played properly.

Hmm,
Tempest vs. Guardian/Thief (D/D at least)/Any other DPS pre-patch?
Engi/Ranger vs. Necro?

What you ask for already existed before.

Yes, but there wasn’t a reliable way to judge personal performance. Now that there is, players see the actual value of the low-effort, reliable builds. This, combined with the pretty tiny advantage you can possibly get for playing a much harder build push the latter in a severe disadvantage. There’s simply no point to choose it anymore.

The difficulty is fine when it comes from the encounter itself, not the class.

When you regulate performance by class based on build difficulty, you just make it harder to balance classes which they’re already more than negligent at.

People will always find a build that produces results easier and more reliably, no point in making classes artificially hard.

in general I think extreme positional dependence for max dps is stupid. For example see this guys video about how precise wild fire has to be to max dps.

That level of precision isn’t fun to me. Maybe it is to you, in which case we simply have a difference of opinion.

Welcome to ranger longbow, mesmer greatsword, Coalesce of Ruin, revenant mace; gimmicks are a staple of class design, whether they work or not. They get to brag about them and that neat new tech in Game Developer Conferences regardless of whether the players themselves actually appreciated them.

Coconut.7082:

zealex.9410:

Coconut.7082:

zealex.9410:

Feanor.2358:

zealex.9410:

You might say that but its not ok to be top dps so easily with such low effort

I agree. What I’m saying is that I’d address the issue by changing the dps output of different professions/builds rather than tweak their difficulty until it matches. Not only is it simpler to tweak the dps, it is also beneficial to have low-effort builds. Both for the less skilled players and for situations where you just want to have some relaxed fun in the game. They just need to be less competitive. More consistent, like they are now, but harder builds should clearly outclass them when played properly.

what i suggest is making it harder in a unique way kinda like have it being repositioning depended to deal the dmg that it deals now or straight up nerf it.

You do realize that Rangers are very dependent on positioning right?

Im not talking about the boss’ position and no i don’t believe that the aa (from behind or sides ) isn’t enough it would be better if each skill had a extra dmg for propper position to it like axe skills from the sides of the boss while s/b from behind so you got an iteresting playstyle were you reposition to upkeep the highest possible dps.

The Ranger’s position has direct correlation to the Boss’ position.
It’s not only AA, you also have Poison Volley, 10% Crit from behind Trait (Which affects Shaepened Edges), some ranged skills (Poison Volley, Splitblade) have to be hit from melee to do significant DPS, Traps and Bonefire require planning ahead on moving bosses.

I’m not saying that Ranger is hard to play, but you wont get anywhere near the “benchmark DPS” only by pressing some buttons. Adding more requirements like 1 skill from behind and 1 only from the side will just make it completely chaotic.

no it would not it works in otheer games it can work here too you will just weave repositioning inbetween skills

thrag.9740:

in general I think extreme positional dependence for max dps is stupid. For example see this guys video about how precise wild fire has to be to max dps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-m7OB5c20U

That level of precision isn’t fun to me. Maybe it is to you, in which case we simply have a difference of opinion.

asking for a skill to be performed from the side of the boss and then on from the back isnt as rediulous as wldfire

zealex.9410:

asking for a skill to be performed from the side of the boss and then on from the back isnt as rediulous as wldfire

All you want is for modifiers like, ‘more damage when attacking from behind’? We already have that, it literally doesn’t affect anything in half the fights because every dps attacks from behind anyways.

You either make it precise or its basically passive.

thrag.9740:

zealex.9410:

asking for a skill to be performed from the side of the boss and then on from the back isnt as rediulous as wldfire

All you want is for modifiers like, ‘more damage when attacking from behind’? We already have that, it literally doesn’t affect anything in half the fights because every dps attacks from behind anyways.

You either make it precise or its basically passive.

By it being passive on various diff weapons skills you make the class harder to play corectly in a rai scenario which would be apropriate for the amount of dmg it deal or straight up nerf the freaking thing. And im not talkinga bout the skills all being from behind im talkng diff skill do more dmg fro the front others from the side while other retain their extra dmg from behind.

That’s all fine and dandy until you actually have to play the class against other players who don’t happily give you their flanks, or dungeons/overworld where you may not be in control of mob positioning constantly shifting.

This is not Final Fantasy XIV with a robust aggro and positioning system.

We’re talking about raids here. PvP is irrelevant.

Feanor.2358:

We’re talking about raids here. PvP is irrelevant.

Yeah, but you’re talking skill/trait mechanisms that so far have never been split balanced.

It’s not like they’re going to change a trait that gives 7% additional damage to flank attacks to only work on PvE and create a new PvP function to take its place for when your character moves over to PvP. They barely split balance NUMBERS changes as is, example being how they wrecked revenant with pvp numbers nerfs that were not kept to pvp only.

Just thought I’d chime in here since you brought up power rev. I run power rev in 7 of the 13 raid encounters right now, and it does just fine. While benchmark dps shows rev can be lacking, that’s not the case in actual raid content. Rev rotation is simple enough that ideal dps can be achieved with little effort, whereas better benchmark dps classes drop off because their rotation is more complicated. I’m not just blowing smoke here, I’m frequently able to out dps Temps and condi Rangers by a significant margin as per arcdps. At the same time rev is also bringing might, fury, protection, and assassin’s promise to its subgroup at 100% uptime. I don’t think boon uptiming is clunky as mentioned in the OP, just pulse until you’re energy is out, swap, swap back as soon as you can/are out of Janis hammer dps energy. Something else to note, rev has some of the strongest cc in game, looking at you staff 5. It makes for clean cc phases.

In my opinion, rev is a viable dps thats much more of a team player than other meta dps classes.

Condition Ranger has what I would consider a pretty ideal rotation. It has room for optimization by good players, but it is otherwise not painfully difficult. Just because the condition Engineer happens to be hard to play doesn’t mean every class needs to be artificially given that level of difficulty. Condition Warrior falls into a similar category as Ranger because while it’s easy to just yolo the rotation, it’s tough to get the last 10% of the damage from the benchmark.

Also, quite frankly I don’t think ANet could make a class harder to play without significantly damaging the flow of its skills (see: Staff Ele), nor do I think Ranger (or other classes) have the knobs to turn to successfully do so without substantial re-architecture that it doesn’t need.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Condition Ranger has what I would consider a pretty ideal rotation. It has room for optimization by good players, but it is otherwise not painfully difficult. Just because the condition Engineer happens to be hard to play doesn’t mean every class needs to be artificially given that level of difficulty. Condition Warrior falls into a similar category as Ranger because while it’s easy to just yolo the rotation, it’s tough to get the last 10% of the damage from the benchmark.

Also, quite frankly I don’t think ANet could make a class harder to play without significantly damaging the flow of its skills (see: Staff Ele), nor do I think Ranger (or other classes) have the knobs to turn to successfully do so without substantial re-architecture that it doesn’t need.

then nerf its dmg simple enough

About point 2 on necros.
Yeah is harder to achieve that damage, hence that damage should be higher, since you need more skill to inflict it.

vicious.5683:

About point 2 on necros.
Yeah is harder to achieve that damage, hence that damage should be higher, since you need more skill to inflict it.

My complaint isn’t about a rotation being hard, it is about the fact that it depends on the combo field system. You need to reliably whirl inside your chill field. But fields are prioritized on a first placed basis. Got a fresh air ele in your group putting down huge electric fields every 10-15 seconds? Enjoy brutal bolts. Want to stand inside mesmer wells to get alacrity and quickness? Hope they arn’t being put down during the important part of your rotation.

Right now Necro bench mark is around 31.5k dps. It is already competing with classes like condi ranger and condi engi who can hit 33k. But condi ranger has a much easier rotation (literally 15 minutes of practice = 30k) and condi engi has a lot more utility and a group buff, and neither depend so heavily on combo fields. 4k of necros damage comes from whirl bolt finishers.

Reliance on the combo field system puts necro in the annoying position of being at odds with its team mates. The team can actively hinder your performance, and to me that’s against the spirit of this game and raiding in general.

As for the broader topic of whether or not difficult classes deserve higher maximum dps, I think we should consider who we are balancing for. Yes, it is true that a bad player will hit higher damage with a power thier or power engi, then they will with say a power ele. But this is a discussion about raids. Do we really want to balanced around bad players?

In the hands of a good player, their is no choice if some classes are inherently better than others. If every class was balanced to have the same maximum potential, good players could actually choose the classes they enjoy, rather than the classes with the most potential.

thrag.9740:

As for the broader topic of whether or not difficult classes deserve higher maximum dps, I think we should consider who we are balancing for. Yes, it is true that a bad player will hit higher damage with a power thier or power engi, then they will with say a power ele. But this is a discussion about raids. Do we really want to balanced around bad players?

In the hands of a good player, their is no choice if some classes are inherently better than others. If every class was balanced to have the same maximum potential, good players could actually choose the classes they enjoy, rather than the classes with the most potential.

Would you honestly start opening raid LFGs with a title “pick the classes you like and join!”? And not just once, would you turn your raiding to this model? Unless you would, you don’t have the faith in the skills of the community you’re displaying with your suggestion.

Nobody cares if qT can pick classes for flavor (except qT, obviously), everybody is concerned with the performance of their own group. It doesn’t make any sense to balance on the behalf of such a small minority. It’s much better to give a much larger part of the active players a meaningful choice. Like I already explained.

thrag.9740:

Condi Necro: The damage is there, but inaccessible. Farbstoff showed us condi necro can hit 30k realistic buffs, which is competitive (for comparison condi engi/ranger bench marks are around 33k). But the entire build depends on combo fields. What is that garbage? This is literally the only class I know of that has to depend on the combo field system to do its damage. Its stupid. Remove the whirl finishers, and just put chill directly on the skills. Or, fix the minion nerf. Rather than a huge stupid overreaction that literally removes the purpose of half the traits in death magic, and all synergy in blood magic, actually put in the effort to tune the class correctly.

No dont remove it i really like the playstyle and creativity it has(very unique aproach). The bet fix is to rework the combo fields so your own fields get priority when you use finishers on top of them.

zealex.9410:

thrag.9740:

Condi Necro: The damage is there, but inaccessible. Farbstoff showed us condi necro can hit 30k realistic buffs, which is competitive (for comparison condi engi/ranger bench marks are around 33k). But the entire build depends on combo fields. What is that garbage? This is literally the only class I know of that has to depend on the combo field system to do its damage. Its stupid. Remove the whirl finishers, and just put chill directly on the skills. Or, fix the minion nerf. Rather than a huge stupid overreaction that literally removes the purpose of half the traits in death magic, and all synergy in blood magic, actually put in the effort to tune the class correctly.

No dont remove it i really like the playstyle and creativity it has(very unique aproach). The bet fix is to rework the combo fields so your own fields get priority when you use finishers on top of them.

This won’t always be the most useful thing though.

zealex.9410:

then nerf its dmg simple enough

That hurts build and class diversity substantially and adds nothing to the game. ANet should never just gut a class because it’s naturally easier to play due to class mechanics than another class.

I don’t think the idea of making all classes a little more interesting to play is bad. Some rotations, like Power Thief and Power Revenant, are really disappointing. Generally speaking I think players should always be encouraged to weapon swap and there should be enough weapon diversity that you want to swap to different weapons, which is something condition classes do well enough thanks to Geomancy sigils and general damage kit dispersal. They could add a power-based sigil that does something similar to Geomancy if they wanted to encourage more rotation complexity for power classes.

Sigil of Empowerment
+10% damage for 7 seconds on weapon swap. (9 second ICD)

This doesn’t solve all problems, but certainly pushes things in the right direction. This would also need to be coupled with damage buffs to skills on non-meta weapon sets to bring them into the limelight. Some examples would be PvE damage buffs to Revenant Hammer/Staff, Engineer Rifle, etc.

Feanor.2358:

Would you honestly start opening raid LFGs with a title “pick the classes you like and join!”? And not just once, would you turn your raiding to this model? Unless you would, you don’t have the faith in the skills of the community you’re displaying with your suggestion.

Nobody cares if qT can pick classes for flavor (except qT, obviously), everybody is concerned with the performance of their own group. It doesn’t make any sense to balance on the behalf of such a small minority. It’s much better to give a much larger part of the active players a meaningful choice. Like I already explained.

Would I put an lfg that says, ‘need 3 dps’. And then accept a power engi, power necro (if it is made competitive), and condi engi who all randomly joined? Yeah I would totally do that, and already do for classes that are already competitive. If I need a dps I pretty much never specify which class in the lfg. My group all have dps meters, we will know if someone under performs, we don’t need to guess based on small differences in bench mark numbers.

You don’t have to be at qt levels to feel the imbalance. Anyone who has practiced their rotation is going to see the difference between a power engi and a power necro for example.

Additionally, balancing maximum potential (i.e. bench marks) affects the entire communities perception of balance. We have known that pug eles were not doing good rotations since raids came out. But no one was ever requesting power engi or power thief. This is not a suggestion that affects a small minority. This affects the community as a whole. It shows up in lfg’s and what classes static groups run.

Thing is, the gaps are too kitten big.

Elew and thief SHOULD be the top DPS classes for how fragile they are and their lack of unique utility, but they should be ahead by nore more than 2-3k DPS.

They just need to put in some effort into making the gaps for condi and power specs for all the classes smaller.

zealex.9410:

then nerf its dmg simple enough

I disagree with nerfing builds just because you find them easier to play.

Firstly, the build probably isn’t as easy to min-max as most people think (Druid/Ranger actually require similar amounts of button presses to even the most complex ele builds). Nearly everyone I see that claims condi-ranger is “easy to play” end up 2-5k behind actual ranger mains in real encounters, simply due to swapping too slowly or cancelling skills.

Secondly, to my knowledge. Condi-ranger isn’t even optimal for meta-groups at most bosses, mainly thanks to pinpoint distribution from Engi.

Overall I feel like most classes are extremely well balanced right now. Even Necro is functional at quite a few encounters and pulls decent DPS in real raids, though I wouldn’t be against some buffs. Revenant remains the only class that desperately needs help right now.

AnariiUK.7409:

zealex.9410:

then nerf its dmg simple enough

I disagree with nerfing builds just because you find them easier to play.

Firstly, the build probably isn’t as easy to min-max as most people think (Druid/Ranger actually require similar amounts of button presses to even the most complex ele builds). Nearly everyone I see that claims condi-ranger is “easy to play” end up 2-5k behind actual ranger mains in real encounters, simply due to swapping too slowly or cancelling skills.

Secondly, to my knowledge. Condi-ranger isn’t even optimal for meta-groups at most bosses, mainly thanks to pinpoint distribution from Engi.

Overall I feel like most classes are extremely well balanced right now. Even Necro is functional at quite a few encounters and pulls decent DPS in real raids, though I wouldn’t be against some buffs. Revenant remains the only class that desperately needs help right now.

its overperforming its only natural to have it nerfed and no i dont believe it require the same skill in terms of rotations as engi or ele and tbh… ppl still pick necro only because of epidemic you dont call a class viable simply because it can cheese a few encounters like you dont say rev is viable simply its usefull as kiter on deimos.