Expertise & Concentration are pointless
You should try to understand how they are useful to the existing stat system rather than assume that they’re useless because they obscure the secondary stat (boon or cond duration) that interests us.
As a simplistic example, doubloons used to be available in increments of +1, +2, +3, +4. There was no room for tinkering. Currently they are 10, 20, 30, & 40 concentration, which allows adding a doubloon equivalent of 15 or 25. It also makes gives all prefixes the same numbering system, so that giver’s doesn’t use something different than soldier’s. It’s also inline with precision (which converts more obscurely to crit chance) and ferocity (15 points per 1% bonus crit damage).
I don’t happen to like the nerf that came along with the “normalization”; I wish they had done them separately. And like you, I would be happier with a system that had fewer secondary stats. But the reality of most MMOs/RPGs and GW2 in particular is that they are a necessary evil to make balancing more about choosing the right numbers rather than having to work around a limited set of potential numbers.
tl;dr annoying isn’t the same as useless
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Retracted due to errors
Expertise is condition duration, as in how long the condition is applied. Condition damage is the amount of damage conditions do. They’re totally unrelated other than that they both operate on conditions. Viper gear has both, and is one of the most popular gear stats in the game. With viper gear, you get conditions that do more damage AND last longer.
Concentration is a mod to the length of time boons operate. There is no other stat that’s affects this.
So, I really can’t see how your argument has merit at all.
(edited by Daddicus.6128)
To whom are you speaking Daddicus?
While I disagree with OP’s premise and conclusion, the facts about the patch changes are not in dispute: concentration is now the only thing that affects boon duration and expertise the only that affects condi duration. But that was not the case last week: doubloons (for example) affected boon duration directly as a straight up increase. Similarly all sorts of foods added to either, notably toxic focusing crystals added +10 condi duration directly and +100 condi damage; it now only affects condi damage (by an amount depending on other stats). Last week, Rare Veggie Pizza offered +70 condi duration (like a lot of other foods) and +20% condi duration; this week, it’s 100 expertise instead, which indirectly boosts condi duration.
In other words, OP is correct that boon duration and condi duration are no longer primary stats; they are secondary, dependent on other stats. That obscures the amount of gains, which bugs the OP. (And I can’t blame them — it is annoying; I just don’t think it’s “useless”.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Technically, the game “should” run only on secondary stats, to stop obscuring things. In fact, I wouldn’t mind it if that were the case.
“Only problem with the Engineer is
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
Technically, the game “should” run only on secondary stats, to stop obscuring things. In fact, I wouldn’t mind it if that were the case.
That’s a preference argument, not a technical one.
Technically, it’s easier to balance when using a primary + secondary system; it’s just not as user-friendly. It’s hard to balance those two.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Both – Expertise and Concentration are Attributes, which should have been merged already a long time ago for a better GW2 into a rewored Dual Effect Attribute System.
The same as useless on its own is Healing Power and Ferocity is another secondary Attribute, that by itself alone is useless, if you dont have the Power or the Precision to make the best use of it.
Thats why I proposed over and over years ago, that ANet would do best on it to normalize their attirubte System, to improve it with equilization by turning both – offensive attributes and defensive attirubtas on an equal importancy level, instead of keeping the game as it is since releace, always favoring offensive attributes over defense ones, where just only the offensive ones have amogn each other a feelable synergy, while the defense ones have not ands where alot of supportive attribute effects are completely missing, which would significantly help balancing this game by reducing the absurd amounts of damage you receive from critical bursts, because the defensive attributes aren’t and werren’t ever yet equal with the offensive ones, nor does exist there until today a way for the player to reduce even at all the chance to be be critically hit, while everyone can bosst massively throughattributes, and boons like Fury the chance to deal critical hits and boost that damage you deal even further percentualyl by ferocity, where the player again on the flipside of the coin has no way to influence the maximum critical damage you can take by having anyhow influence of how efficient the ferocity of the enemy will be against you.
Thats somethign that needs to get changed and an easy and effective way to reach that kind of goal would be by merging and reworking the Attributes into a new Dual Effect Attribute System.
Personally I like the idea behind sub classes ~ quoted from Chris Whiteside
part 2:
Merge Vitality with Healing Power
Merge Power with Expertise
Merge Toughness with Concentration.
Just completely remove Ferocity and turn it into a stackign Boon if it needs to be and remove therefor Vigor and turn it under “Agility” instead into a defensive better useful new Attribute
Power = Increase Attack + Increases Condition Durations
Vitality = Increases Max Health + Increases Healing Efficiency
Precision = Increaces Critical Chance + Increases Condition Efficiency (how fast conditions tick per second, Condition Damage can’t be increased anymore, they ignore defense, but their tick speed can be increased with this now, thats basically the same like increasing Condition DPS if you make them tick faster)
Toughness = Increases Defense + Boon Durations
Agility = Increases Endurance Regen + Increases Attack Speed of the AA
Courage Increases Boon Efficiency (Values of how good a boon raises something) + Increases Critical Defense (raises your chance not to get critically hit to counter the crit rate of your enemy directly as a substraction, so enemy has 50% Crit Rate, you have 25% Crit Defense, you can be only 25% critted)
With these 6 Attributes with its 12 effects together we would surely have a much better balanced game, than we have now with our like 8 single effect attributes.
Yes, on the first look may look a dual effect attribute system look like more complex and difficult to handle for class balance, but due to the dual effects beign better balanced around offensive and defensive equality, it iwll be in the fact easier to balance the game, than with 8 single effects, where the game design always favors the offensive effects over the defensive ones in like a 7:3 ratio for the offensive ones, because the defensive effects that we need to better balance the combat system simply don’t exist with that you can have influence on your endurance regen, and how oftenly you can receive critical hits.
Boons and Conditions would be alot better balanced, if players could have directly influence on their efficiency in regard of how fast their effects tick, not in how strong the conditions are per tick, while you have absolutely no infleunce on the other hand on the efficiency yet from boons at all, which is another reason why the combat system won#t be balanced, as logn anet doesn’t finally overwork the Attribute System together with the Conditions and Boons to reduce the effects on both sides.
lots of boons are unneccessary and would work better when they woudl get changed into Attributes, or merged into Trait Effetcs or SKill Effects directly.
Vigor and Fure ary the best examples of obsolete boons which we wouldn#t need at all, when the game would be better balanced.
If the Boon/Condition System gets reworked alongside the Attributes into dual effects to equalize the offensive with the defensive effects better, so that we come closer from a 7:3 scenario to more like a 6:4, to eventually really a close as possible 5:5 relationship between offensive and defensive combat effects and attributes.
You’ll see, so more equalized offensive and defensive gameplay will be, so more fun will make especially WvW also, because you will meet on more balanced combats, because battles and combats won’t be won then anymore just by the simple fact only, who has more DPS and plays more offensively due to the being nothing in the game, that helps against critical damage, with the only exception beign Weakness..but thats just another obsolete condition on the other side, which we wouldn’t need at all, if the Attribute System would handle these things with dual effects, instead of weighting everything over to obsolete conditions and boons overwhelming that way the player with more and more effects only …
And their amount will potentially rise only so more ESpecs Anet will add in the future.
You see it now with PoF again, that this expansion adds again a certain amount of combat system changes, new boons/conditons ect. ,stuff like Ammunition, and the so heard “Barriers”
Merging Attributes together and reducing the amount of Boons/Conditions would be there the natural right answer to the permanently increasing amount of combat system effects and changes /adds that have been done so far and which will still continue to come in the future.
Personally I like the idea behind sub classes ~ quoted from Chris Whiteside
They actually have a purpose for those of us who use them.
For example all of my condi builds are also healers. I am able to bypass defenses against direct damage and against CC on champions and veterans quicker by doing this the longer these conditions last the more damage I do.
I use toughness and healing power to keep myself and others alive and give boons when I can.
It’s a solid build for PVE It shouldn’t be removed nor should it have been nerfed.
Balance Team: Please Fix Mine Toolbelt Positioning!
I was speaking to the OP, but I didn’t really understand the problem. So, I retract my original post.
I don’t think the OP is talking about removing the stats themselves. They are saying its more intuitive to see 20% + 20% + 20% + 20% + 20% = 100% Not some high expertise or concentration number then add in the traits runes that still have percentages that equals 100%.
I don’t think the OP is talking about removing the stats themselves. They are saying its more intuitive to see 20% + 20% + 20% + 20% + 20% = 100% Not some high expertise or concentration number then add in the traits runes that still have percentages that equals 100%.
Actually they are probably trying to avoid exactly what you point to as ‘intuitive’ because that 20%20%20%…etc can actually end up looking very very different in the end depending on how order of operations is interpreted, i.e. you have something that adds that first 20%, then you throw on something else with that 20% modifier, depending on how it is calculated it can look like this:
(assume a 100 base primary stat)
100+20+20=140
but, since they’re directly affecting the base stat and then applying a relative-value based amount, it might look like this:
(100+20) + 24 (because the second modifier sees the base stat as 120 now and 20% of that is 24 not 20)
particularly dangerous when you have two sets of modifier types (point derived and relative) looking at the same stat.
on top of that there are a number of in-game situations where, conceivably, the buff might have worked in a different way (worn/wielded vs eaten vs specialization or signet bonus) . Too sum up, I feel like they had to go with one or the other exclusively, and I think that they chose granularity of stat tuning over something based on relative values because they’re (let’s face it) far easier to use in unbalanced gamebreaking ways and far more likely to cause havoc with equipment and skills added later.
the fact they were changed directly prior to a ton of new content being added makes me suspect there may be a specific mechanic in the expansion that did not play well with those.