Guild Wars 2

Discus: Re-designing Stats

I’ve been annoyed at the Stat Design in the game for quite some time. Some stats been rendered near useless except in some specific situations or builds, others have a single purpose, others locks you completely into other stats, while some stats are just so good there exist no reason to not use them.

So the idea here is to make most stats have multiple uses, and that they are useful against and for a huger amount of styles and situations. Example old Toughness doesn’t help at all against Condition damage, so I put it together with -Condition damage, so the stat will actually work as a defense.

Obviously numbers and formulas would need to be crunched to make this work properly, and I’m not a good enough mathematician to pull that off. This would also need to completely redo most items/stats, and several traits would need to be adjusted.

This is not final, I’m posting it to hear opinions and ideas, and how people think this would work in the game. Also, the +/-40% condition duration foods would need to go or be reduced with this, if not it would cause problems with the design of Condition duration increase and decrease through the stats.

=Old Stats=

Power (godstat )
Precision (Needs power to be very useful )
Toughness (Only reduces Power damage, does nothing against condi )
Vitality (Only useful to survive burst, prolongs bad situation )
Healing Power (To low efficiency to be worth it on anything, good synergy with toughness )
Condition Damage (godstat )
Ferocity (useless without power+precision )
Boon Duration (best defensive stat, best support, almost impossible to get )
Condition Duration (secondary good condi stat, hard to get, useful for support )

=New Stats=

Damage (=Power. Damage is king )
Critical (=Precision+Ferocity. Tune the numbers down a bit, about similar damage output to damage alone )
Malice (=Condition Damage. Damage is king )
Support (=Boon Duration + Condition Duration. Boons is the best support in the game, Condi Duration second best for things like cripple, chill, imob, vulnerability and other none damaging condis. )
Defense (=Toughness+“-“Condition Duration. Makes this useful against both power/condi damage )
Health (=Vitality+Healing Power. gives more health and heals health better, lets you survive bursts, and gives you an edge in longer fights with sustain. )

=Tri-Stats=

This idea would make a physical damage build require only 2 stats (Damage+Critical), thus the third stat is optional if you want to go defensive, party support, or mix into condition damage etc.

This would make a condition build want to have at least 2 stats (Malice+Support for the condi duration which also gives boon duration), the boon duration will actually help this stay a attrition type of gameplay. And you can pick a third stat for defensive, pick up critical for using traits and sigils that triggers on crits.

If you want to go tanky you have several options from Defense+Health for the traditional bunker style, to mixing in Support for the boon duration and also helping the team. If you go all 3 you will hit like a wet noodle so most will mix in at least one of the damage stats. Damage for the traditional soldier style, or Malice for the Dire style.

=Example Tri-Stats=

Apothecary = Malice, Support, Defense
Berserker/Assassin = Critical, Damage, ???
Carrion = Damage, Malice, Health
Cleric = Damage, Support, Defense
Dire = Malice, Defense, Health
Knight/Cavalier = Critical, Damage, Defense
Magi = Critical, Support, Health
Nomad = Support, Defense, Health
Rabid = Critical, Malice, Defense
Ravager/Sinister = Critical, Damage, Malice
Shaman = Malice, Support, Health
Soldier = Damage, Defense, Health
Valkyrie = Critical, Damage, Health
Zealot = Critical, Damage, Support

Definitely interesting ideas. The health stat is very similar to an idea i’ve been proposing for this last little while. My main concern is with the critical stat – i think it would simply be too strong, given that spread across three different stats, the pow/pre/fer build is current the strongest (in pve situations, at least). I would keep those two stats separate, but make precision able to apply an additional (half?)stack of an applied condition, and make ferocity increase condition duration (for synergy)

Hello there Narrrz Your thread is one of several I’ve picked up ideas from for this, especially the discussion about the combination of Vitality+Healing Power and how it might interact etc.

The whole "Critical"=Perception+Ferocity would need lots of numerical tweaking, especially weakening down (as I mentioned above). I was hoping that it should stand about as powerful alone as either "Damage" or "Malice" alone so you could get similar damage with either one of them. But yes it does Synergy with Power, my main concern is how it would react with activating "on critical hit" effects.

To be more specific, The Base % Critical hit should probably be raised slightly, and the "Critical" stat should give less % to critical than Precision does, and less Critical Damage than Ferocity does. But combined to give a roughly equal powerful stat to "Damage" or "Malice".

Edit: Basically, when: Critical + Defense + Health would be as viable a setup as Soldier (Power), I’d think "Critical" would be in a good spot.

Edit2: Another posibility would be to split Ferocity over both "Damage" and "Critical" stats.

Ive suggested a changed to the system also already some times.
I still think it would be best for the game, if GW2 receives DUAL EFFECT STATS.
Every Stat of the Game should have 2 Effect. This makes it alot more possible, that more Effects have some kind of good Synergies and not only the offensive Stats, but also the defensive ones.

POWER
Increases the Strengh of your Attacks that deal Direct Damage
Increases the Maximum Duration of your Conditions.

VITALITY
Increases the Maximum Health of your Character.
Increases the Healing Efficiency of your Character’s Skills

TOUGHNESS
Decreases incoming Direct Damage from Attacks
Decreases the Maximum Duration of incoming Conditions.

PRECISION
Increases the Chance to cause a Critical Hit
Increases Maximum Range of Ranged Attacks and Movement Skills

AGILITY
Increases Regeneration Speed of Endurance
Decreases the Maximum Duration of incoming Crowd Control Skills

COURAGE
Increases your maximum Critical Damage
Decreases the Chance to receive Critical Hits

CUNNING
Increases Maximum Condition Damage
Increases Maximum Duration of Crowd Control Skills

WISDOM
Increases Maximum Boon Durations
Decreases the incoming Maximum Critical Damage

Stats usefulness are based on the content. There’s nothing inherently wrong with some of the stat combinations, it’s just that there’s no content that makes that setup optimal.

In a world where you don’t live or die based on your stats, ofcourse damage is going to be the way to go.
Change the world, change the optimal stats.

The gear system as it applies to GW2 serves to set the role of your character. Aside from the fact that the game currently really doesn’t leave a lot of room for any role but straight damage in PvE, I think the stat system doesn’t have to be overly complicated at all

All you really need is three stats: Offense, Defense and Support (Give them fancy names if you like) Offense governs your damage/crits, defense sets your HP/resistance, support governs your healing/effects duration.

Different types of gear only have a different ratios of these stats so that people can fine tune their characters to have the proper amount of all of them.

Beyond that gear customization happens through runes, sigils, infusions and so forth. Maybe work on making those a little more balanced.

Having a super complex stat system just isn’t worth it for this game. All gear does is represent your commitment to a certain kind of character build, which always break down into offensive, defensive or support.

Critical hits probably shouldn’t even be a stat. Give them the 5th edition D&D treatment and stop all the bullcrap where you end up with weapons that threaten at 14+ and auto confirm and just make critical hits into actual critical hits again, something that gives you that rare but satisfying lucky hit rather than something you build a whole character around to the point where it’s a fluke if one doesn’t happen. Just make it a 10% thing for everyone.

Having condition and direct damage be separate stats is silly, since all it does is make one or the other be the better choice for any given character. Damage is damage, no point in dividing it into two camps.

I think if you designed a system from the ground up it should be as simple as it possibly can be to get the job done. What’s the job of having different stats currently? To allow people to make more lasting investments into playing a certain aspect of their class by acquiring gear that support that. All classes have offensive, defensive and support aspects, so those are really the only three things that need gear stats so players can get invested.

@Orpheal:

I like the base idea of having two effects for each stat. But don’t like making more different stats than there already is, I expect that would create more situations like the Zerk-meta we got now (by encouraging more stat sets with only offensive stats). One of the main designs around my suggestion was to limit each "type" of stat to max two, to avoid just that.

Also dislike some of the effects you added to some of the stats:
* reduce critical hits received
* reduce critical damage received
* increase range
* increase speed
* increase endurance gain
* increase crowd control duration

Feel that some of these step on what is supposed to be traits, and some like the range/speed should not be affected by stats at all. And the reduction of criticals will make other players angry that their building for criticals is neutered by another players passive stats that directly.

All the critical effects are still counter worked by Toughness/Armor so shouldn’t need to add even more counter-stats just to single out those specifically. That will just create another situation of having too many situational stats.

Separating out the decrease to crowd control skills could be interesting, wouldn’t mind putting something like that into the "Damage" stat in my suggestion above. But wouldn’t want to have the opposite added to "Malice".

@emikochan:

I completely agree for PvE. Things are a bit different in PvP/WvW, and more stats are used. For PvE, all this would mean is that you could run full damage and still fit in an extra stat. Would expect Rampager/Sinister to be the new Zerk, but others like knight, valkyrie, zealot etc would also be plausible, so might actually see some variation in stats for once.

@Aetrion:

For PvE I completely agree with you, that would have been a very nice system. Heck I’d love it if all I did was play PvE.

I can agree that the game has a bit too many stats, and a more complex build system than it really needs. Still in view of other game modes PvP/WvW there is still quite some use for lots of these stats, and the play styles it creates. Though to be fair, I’m not a fan of Critical Hit gameplay either, and wouldn’t be very sad to see it removed or changed.

For example Condition Damage vs Power depends on the play-style and situation in WvW. In 1vs1 Conditions are usually better, in 5vs5 it’s pretty balanced, while in 10+vs10+ Power works a lot better due to the many aoe Condition removal. Removing one would destroy a lot of the build diversity in WvW and remove play-styles from many players. And if you just rolled both into one stat, it would just make all of them play very similar (The difference between a "Power" and a "Condi" character would be the weapon selection basically).

---

Lots of interesting reads!

I think it’d still be perfectly possible to retain a distinction between condi and power builds through runes and sigils that do different things.

Stats should be base on the role you can choose.

Power
Increases all damage done. Direct damages are more increased.
Pressure damage stat.

Fury
Increases your chance to deal critical damages. Also increases your critical damages on low health targets.
Spike damage stat.

Malice
Increases all damage. Condition damages are more increased.
Condition damage stat.

Defense
- Decreases direct damages you take.
- Increases the duration of the defensive boons you apply (Aegis, Protection, Regeneration and Vigor)
- Increases the healing you done
The defensive support stat which permits you to increases the survival of your team. Best survival stat against direct damages.

Boldness
- Increases the duration of the offensive boons you apply (Fury, Might, Quickness, Retaliation)
- Increases your maximum hit points.
The offensive support stat, wich increases the damages of your team. Worst survival stat against direct or condition damages, but “jack-of-all-trades” survival stat because effective against both.

Expertise
- Increases the duration of conditions you inflict.
- Decreases the duration and damages of conditions you take.
- Increases the duration of movement related boons you apply (Resistance, Stability, Swiftness)
The control support stat, wich increases movement and control effect of your party while decreasing those of your enemies. Best survival stat against condition damages.

We have then 3 damage stats and 3 “support + survival” stats.
Each item has only 2 attributes, one damage and one support/survival.
So can choose to be a pressure damage dealer that also increases the survival of its party, or a beserker that try to kill quickly an enemy while controling the others. Or a tanky defensive guy who deal condition damage.

Honestly I’d be very happy with just one simple change. Add boon duration to the healing power skill and just rename it to something appropriate. With the trait changes, boon duration has become more difficult to get and I think it synergizes well with healing power. It may even encourage more support roles to be played as well.

Some of the better stat systems I’ve seen pull a double purpose: one offensive and one defensive. It also makes for fewer stats, which means simpler balancing.

Pardon, been to busy to sit down and really read through and consider this for a while. Here we go:

@ Aetrion

Didn’t notice you mentioning reworking the sigil/runes in the previous post, that would make more sense. Main counter arguments would be:

(1) that it would make much more work for ANet, since they would have to change pretty much everything around this.
(2) It would upset current players of at least some game modes, because they would think making something less complex = dumbifying.

I do like the idea a lot, I think it could have been a great system if they released it from the start. I think the pitfall is just the amount of work this would require. One of the ideas with my suggestion in the first post is that it wouldn’t create to much work to change it around, since it lets them retain the tri-stat system.

@ Scipion

I pretty much agree, since this feels like the same idea I had on the top, just different splitting up of the stats. Like the mix in power/condi damage over two stats. Splitting the boon duration an condition duration into sub types is an interesting idea, and gives more options to juggle with over stats.

@ Invictus

Can’t say I agree to that, obviously

For the reasoning behind that: I find in WvW for example that the defensive stats are often wanted but found lacking. We have no clear defences vs Conditions without using utility skills, traits and runes/sigils etc to counter them, while the toughness stat becomes entirely useless, while it is still decent against a power user.

(breathes)

Vitality is nice but underwhelming, and functions poorly alone withouth the other two defensive stats, thus crippling damage output in many situations. And healing power is a chapter in itself. Even ferocity is mostly a waste of a stat without the other two from Berserker.

While Healing Power + Boon Duration would certainly be a step up for Healing Power, that still leaves a lot of other issues.

@ Rauderi

That is actually a very good idea. Making each stat useful for both roles, would really break up the berserk’s monopoly on damage output, and perhaps make players consider what stats to bring. (They will still decide on a "max dps" setup anyways, but perhaps it will be closer)

So would you mix one offensive and the equalent defensive stat, or one offensive and the opposite defense ?

Some quick examples (similar):

* Power + Toughness
* Precision + Vitality
* Ferocity + ? (-Condition Duration?)
* Condition Damage + Healing Power
* Condition Duration + Boon Duration

This would certainly need some balancing, this would mean that a berserker would be just as tough and resistant as a soldier under the current system. This would fill out 5 stats, which is the minimum that would work with the current tri-stat system (5-7, best at 6). Main complaint against it, is that it actually makes it near impossible to play a proper glass cannon for those that enjoys that.

---

Thanks for comments and ideas!