Guild Wars 2

Before launch, all of the secondary attributes in the game used flavor names, similar in theme to the names for the four primary attributes, that were then changed into more generic descriptive names around the time the game was prepping to launch.

I always thought this was a mistake. Somewhat hilariously, we’ve slowly re-adopted flavor names in order to easily distinguish base stats that you stack on gear from functional, dervied stats, i.e. ferocity, expertise, concentration. Other than profession specific attributes, the only two left that are purely descriptive are healing power and condition damage. I move these be changed to Spirit and Malice, respectively. Healing Power originally used Compassion, but I don’t think it works as well since healing is disproportionately self-targeted.

Apart from providing more cohesion with stats available on gear, and being catchier, it also makes anything you’re discussing less agnostic. For example, when you say “condi”, you could be talking about the stat, condition damage, or you could be talking about a condi build, which incorporates a lot more than the stat called condition damage. Giving Healing Power a more specific thematic name not only allows it to roll off the tongue/keyboard more easily, but allows you to easily distinguish between the specific concept of the Spirit stat and the general concept of a healing build.

+1
Malice & Compassion ( I’d rather stick with the old name.. maybe it’s because i play druid mostly at the moment)

Artemis Thuras.8795:

+1
Malice & Compassion ( I’d rather stick with the old name.. maybe it’s because i play druid mostly at the moment)

“Spirit” was somewhat arbitrary based on my own preferences, but I have two issues with Compassion that I feel make it a very awkward choice. The first is that it’s long and doesn’t roll off the tongue very well, which creates a strong likelihood that players will start abbreviating it as “Comp”. This would be weird since “comp” is normally short for composition, as in party composition. Spirit is easy to say, easy to type, and is still easily shortened to Spi without being confusing.

The second is that most healing skills in the game are self-target. Thematically, “Compassion” is awkward because, how does it make your self-target healing better? I like Spirit because it’s much more generalized, and can easily be applied to both healing oneself as well as one’s allies.

It’s worth noting that there’s a precedent to change it away from Compassion. The original flavor name for critical damage was “Prowess”. When they created a base stat for critical damage, they called it Ferocity instead of Prowess, likely deprecating the latter forever.

As a sidenote, they also need to replace all +boon duration and +condi duration with bonuses to concentration and expertise, once and for all.

The attribute system in general just needs a little polishing up.

Einlanzer.1627:

As a sidenote, they also need to replace all +boon duration and +condi duration with bonuses to concentration and expertise, once and for all.

The attribute system in general just needs a little polishing up.

/Signed

When I saw the original post title, I was really hoping we’d re-open the discussion of the terrible scaling on Healing Power, and how Condition Damage is roughly similar. Condi gets a semi-pass because it defies armor, but the best scaling on it is Burning at 15.5%. Granted, add 1000 Condi to a Burn, and you double the damage, but it’s not intuitive.

Rauderi.8706:

Einlanzer.1627:

As a sidenote, they also need to replace all +boon duration and +condi duration with bonuses to concentration and expertise, once and for all.

The attribute system in general just needs a little polishing up.

/Signed

When I saw the original post title, I was really hoping we’d re-open the discussion of the terrible scaling on Healing Power, and how Condition Damage is roughly similar. Condi gets a semi-pass because it defies armor, but the best scaling on it is Burning at 15.5%. Granted, add 1000 Condi to a Burn, and you double the damage, but it’s not intuitive.

Yeah. Healing Power scaling varies from skill to skill, but is generally too low to be a worthy investment. That’s not the correct way to control proliferation of healing builds. Self-healing skills should scale at roughly the same level as health does with vitality. I know there are concerns with bunkers in PvP, but those can be addressed by other means.