Guild Wars 2

Allowing for infinite vuln stacking with diminishing returns would be in line with recent condi changes.

Maybe… but 25 sdtacks of vuln right now is pretty powerful as it is. if you can generate a stack of 20+ you can down the orr champ or vet giants rather quickly…

They said they’re not changing the max effectiveness of vuln, so why waste time and money changing the way its applied and scaled? What’s the point of that? To make you feel better about yourself when you use a vuln skill and a boss is already capped?

It’s actually the exact opposite of arbitrary. It is set exactly to 25 to allow for exactly a 25% maximum damage increase.

Setting a DR system that gives less and less benefit for each additional stack… now that would be arbitrary.

Point, as i said, is to change square 25% to dynamic % dependent on situation, mainly for PvP reasons. Arena’s main concern is that it doesnt spiral into as they said 700% damage bonus, and diminishing returns will address that.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It’s actually the exact opposite of arbitrary. It is set exactly to 25 to allow for exactly a 25% maximum damage increase.

Setting a DR system that gives less and less benefit for each additional stack… now that would be arbitrary.

Ah yes, googled the definition of arbitrary and you seem to be right. What i meant is that 25% cap was set without any reason of it being exactly 25% gameplay wise, and having it being unadjustable contradicts the game mechanics trend of every stat being dynamic.

[s]I think you’re using the word ‘arbitrary’ wrong.

‘Isnt a 25% vuln cap a bit arbitrary as well?’ = ’Isn’t 25% vuln cap a bit ‘overpowered’ as well?’

‘arbitrary’ means unrestricted or, in this case, unlimited power

So you want an overpowered concept to be more overpowered? I don’t really get what you meant. Did you mean to put a Kappa? Since they aren’t changing vuln.[/s]

Rainbowsand.2438:

Point, as i said, is to change square 25% to dynamic % dependent on situation, mainly for PvP reasons. Arena’s main concern is that it doesnt spiral into as they said 700% damage bonus, and diminishing returns will address that.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It’s actually the exact opposite of arbitrary. It is set exactly to 25 to allow for exactly a 25% maximum damage increase.

Setting a DR system that gives less and less benefit for each additional stack… now that would be arbitrary.

Ah yes, googled the definition of arbitrary and you seem to be right. What i meant is that 25% cap was set without any reason of it being exactly 25% gameplay wise, and having it being unadjustable contradicts the game mechanics trend of every stat being dynamic.

Ah… I got you, instead of Vuln being 1% per stack. Make Vuln a constant % debuff and applying more vuln only adds to its duration, since a max 25% debuff is a bit ‘arbitrary’

AW man, he went and edited his post, now i’m even more confused, leaving this thread. never coming back.

Chnages work together or they don’t. Until we see how it works, it’s hard to comment. One would assume they made these changes based on tests they’ve run, so it might not be as arbitrary as it looks.

OHHHHHHHHHHH, i’m stupid. you want them to implement a DR system for vuln. Ya, no. Don’t like the idea. Pass. 25% cap is power enough, DR would make it way too powerful, way more arbitrary. What would the formula be?

Yep. And now they are changing dot stacks from unreasonable 25 cap to infinite and i only propose to extend it to vuln as well.

Exact formula? Found out by extensive testing in PvP. Think what, having vuln% being affected by condi stat seems like good idea too.

Effectively infinite dot stacks means you aren’t wasting damage by using a condition damage build in a large group of players.

What does an effectively infinite stack of vulnerability with diminishing returns give us that a 25-stack cap on vulnerability doesn’t?

Higher potential damage propagation than fixed 25%, which will make vuln stacking builds more viable, so it can go say to 100% if you stack vuln really hard.

and the 25 stack/25% cap address that perfectly aswell without putting in diminishing returns just becouse some people want to stack vuln to 100+

Edit
Game is balanced around the 25% max already why should they up it just becouse you want to? maybe they should do the same to might aswell we want people to have 100 might and snease on you and you die.

Rainbowsand.2438:

Higher potential damage propagation than fixed 25%, which will make vuln stacking builds more viable, so it can go say to 100% if you stack vuln really hard.

You see, I can’t see it. We’re in a game where 5-7% damage increase can change the game/build drastically. So 25% is already crazy enough. You’re asking for a system that could theoretically double your damage? Have you gone up against a downed state necro with the 50%? Yeah… I just can’t imagine any formula or system that would make this feesible.

Vulnerability with no cap (or a higher) would be so f—-ing op in zergs.

Let’s say you have 100 players dealing damage.
Getting Vulnerability to let’s say 200 would TRIPLE their damage.
Also just one stack of Vulnerability alone would mean you have one addtional player. (1% of the damage of 100 is the damage of 1)
People would go for full Vulnerability in open world and zergs since it increases the damage much more then all other Conditions and Skills.

Think of vuln a lot like chill and other soft cc you never want to make a mob take 100% dmg more it would make a lot of fights way to easy. Where condition dmg cap is more on the lines of just dmg type and bring it up to par vs the other type.

Having greater cap on vulnerability will speed up boss zergs? Yeah it would be bad, standing for a few minutes with aa on shouldnt by any means be shortened because it is nice and hard as is.

Neox.3497:

Vulnerability with no cap (or a higher) would be so f—-ing op in zergs.

Let’s say you have 100 players dealing damage.
Getting Vulnerability to let’s say 200 would TRIPLE their damage.
Also just one stack of Vulnerability alone would mean you have one addtional player. (1% of the damage of 100 is the damage of 1)
People would go for full Vulnerability in open world and zergs since it increases the damage much more then all other Conditions and Skills.

The OP is not just suggesting they should remove the cap but change the way the effect is applies. Example, 100 stacks of Vulnerability wouldn’t equate to 100% damage increase but a smaller number, because of diminishing return so something the along the lines of 100 stacks of Vulnerability would mean 66% damage increase.

My thing is that 25% is already such a high number that even using a diminishing returns formula, getting stacks that equal to more than 25% would be too unbalanced.

Though, I just watched a WoodenPotatoes video about the subject, and he suggested increasing the cap to 50 stacks and halving the effectiveness of each stack, so 50 stacks would equal 25% damage increase. This would work in a sense that it wouldn’t break the game and wouldn’t punish comps that have more than 1 vulnerability stacking build.

Rainbowsand.2438:

Having greater cap on vulnerability will speed up boss zergs? Yeah it would be bad, standing for a few minutes with aa on shouldnt by any means be shortened because it is nice and hard as is.

Uncapping Vuln. affects more than just PvE. In WvW, if a group could stack over 50-300 stacks of Vuln. in an area, easily on the enemy zerg. And then just cleave through for easy kills. The same could be said in PvP, everyone would be stacking as much vuln. as possible to oneshot.

Don’t forget, Vuln. is one of the most common conditions in the game. 41 weapon/utility skills and 21 traits across all 8 professions will apply vuln. It’s pretty easy to have just one player stack 25 vuln. without much effort. Vuln. is really powerful as it is.

Rainbowsand.2438:

Higher potential damage propagation than fixed 25%, which will make vuln stacking builds more viable, so it can go say to 100% if you stack vuln really hard.

I see, I was figuring diminishing returns would make it so a stack of 400 vulnerability would get you to maybe 30% vulnerability or something. Being able to push it to 100 is absurdly strong, even if it takes a stack of 400 to do it. It would require a ton of work rebalancing world bosses across the board, and the current system doesn’t hinder condition builds; I’m perfectly happy leaving it as-is.

Conditions won’t have diminishing returns, and they’ll get better scaling, so that your proposed vuln change would absolutely not be in line with the condition changes.

Bleeding; burning; poison; confusion; torment; vulnerability. One of these things is not like the other things.

The only purpose for increasing the stack limits for damaging conditions is to allow players to receive credit for the damage they cause. Vulnerability already allows everyone to do extra damage (or it will once it also applies to condition damage). There is no need to increase the stacks because vulnerability does not in itself cause damage, so no one is being disadvantaged by the stack cap.

Why tweak vulnerability in the suggested fashion? All that would happen is that mobs would need to be buffed to account for it.

ChoChoBo.6503:

Rainbowsand.2438:

Having greater cap on vulnerability will speed up boss zergs? Yeah it would be bad, standing for a few minutes with aa on shouldnt by any means be shortened because it is nice and hard as is.

Uncapping Vuln. affects more than just PvE. In WvW, if a group could stack over 50-300 stacks of Vuln. in an area, easily on the enemy zerg. And then just cleave through for easy kills. The same could be said in PvP, everyone would be stacking as much vuln. as possible to oneshot.

Don’t forget, Vuln. is one of the most common conditions in the game. 41 weapon/utility skills and 21 traits across all 8 professions will apply vuln. It’s pretty easy to have just one player stack 25 vuln. without much effort. Vuln. is really powerful as it is.

That’s why the game has AoE limits. Zerg vs Zerg wouldn’t change much.

The real problem lies on the 50v1 boss design because that amplifies the effect of vulnerability so much.

Please give an example of one player stacking 25 vuln. without much effort. At least in dungeons groups struggle to keep bosses at 25 stacks (which would equal 50 stacks on players because of Unshakable), even in quite short fights.

Wethospu.6437:

Please give an example of one player stacking 25 vuln. without much effort. At least in dungeons groups struggle to keep bosses at 25 stacks (which would equal 50 stacks on players because of Unshakable), even in quite short fights.

Guardians will be able to instantly apply 25 stacks of vulnurability with their one trap, once they get the Dragon Hunter specialization.

ChoChoBo.6503:

OHHHHHHHHHHH, i’m stupid. you want them to implement a DR system for vuln. Ya, no. Don’t like the idea. Pass. 25% cap is power enough, DR would make it way too powerful, way more arbitrary.

That would depend on the limit the function would increase toward. Say… 25%?

So, in the end, it doesn’t matter what way we will use to come up to the cap value. Unless, of course, we are arguing here about what that value should be – in which case i’d need to point out that 25% damage increase is already a very significant effect, which doesn’t need to get buffed.

They design encounters with vuln in mind – it needs to be a good buff but not so high that groups without vuln aren’t made worthless. If they made it stack infinitely then groups stacking lots of vuln suddenly have a massive advantage over nonvuln stacking groups (they already do I know but not such a huge one that it breaks the game).

Remember its balanced around encounter design and PvP.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Wethospu.6437:

Please give an example of one player stacking 25 vuln. without much effort. At least in dungeons groups struggle to keep bosses at 25 stacks (which would equal 50 stacks on players because of Unshakable), even in quite short fights.

Guardians will be able to instantly apply 25 stacks of vulnurability with their one trap, once they get the Dragon Hunter specialization.

Yes, it’s not that hard to burst vulnerability with a specific build. I actually meant to mean “maintain” but forgot to mention it.

Because well, if there is a 5v5 and one teams stacks 125 vulnerability on one player to “one shot”, the other team can cleanse it pretty easily. Or the target dodges, disengages, etc. for a while. And then there are 5 bad builds (since they focused on stacking the “OP” vulnerability) vs. 5 good builds.

Even if they managed to burst the target down they would have lots of skills on cooldown, and sub-optimal builds. Not to mention that 5 players can blow up one target even without vulnerability.

Point is, it’s not that there is some kind of a switch to suddenly start applying 25 vulnerability every second with no downsides only prevented by the condition cap.

None of the decisions were “arbitrary” in the sense that everything has a reason.

The 25 stack cap was selected because of performance implications. More than 25 stacks was too large a load on the server.

However, the game has been balanced around 25 stacks (more or less). The 1% increased damage on vulnerability, the damage per tick for bleeds, etc are all based around the 25 stack limit.

In some cases, this limit works across all game modes. 25% increased damage is 25% increased damage for everyone. But for bleed ticks it causes problems with larger fights. Too many people are applying the condition and having no effect. So they are adjusting the ticks to be smaller, but allowing more ticks to be applied.

If they were to do the same thing with vulnerability, they’d have to reduce the impact of vulnerability to 0.5% or 0.25% and to what purpose? It’s not like someone gets tags.

Vunerability is perfectly fine as it is.. well after the new change that gives conditions access to that dmg increase

there is no need to increase the stack size and it would dramatically increase the dmg players would do if they did..

25% dmg increase is more than enough specially now with both Direct and Condition dmg being counted..

and take into account that Condition specialized characters are going to be overall getting a damage boost you can expect to see a lot more people running Condition builds in PvE and overall seeing a huge increase in DPS done to world bosses and group events thanks to the 25 stack cap being removed and the influx of condi specialized characters doing more damage than they could before

people could DPS world Bosses down like Shadow Behemoth in 2 phases just with Direct damage…

think how much faster his HP is going to drop per second with 100-200 specialized bleeds on him