Guild Wars 2

Hello folks.

I’d like to raise a proposal about what I believe is a major design flaw in regards to some of the sigils we have available for use, notably fire and air.

Now I understand that fire/air are basically necessities for optimizing DPS. I also understand the pre-requisite effects of critical strikes needing to occur in order to proc.

The thing is, these sigils are designed poorly. It’s strictly unpredictable RNG burst on a very short cooldown that may or may not happen. It defeats the purpose of a lot of evasion against major skills, and simply, these sigils do absolutely monstrous amounts of damage for how little the investment cost is.

Why is this bad? Because it demotes the rest of the sigils and makes PvP very unstable. A fire/air proc at the right time can cause someone to die who’s playing well and avoiding major bombs, or simply having no effect at all when paired against effects like damage immunity. GW2’s PvP formats are already considered very lack-luster by many enthusiasts for the sake of imbalances and finnicky, gimmicky mechanics surrounding gear and builds with burst damage, and I do believe these sigils are major contributors as to why burst damage builds are so binary in their representation; either they absolutely demolish something through a massive spike of damage with no tell and no prevention mechanism, or simply are wasted for a period which can cause the user to die.

I’m proposing a suggestion to change these sigils to make counter-play and strategic damage absorption a part of the GW2 PvP experience, be it WvW or sPvP by removing the RNG element of the sigils and instead replacing their effects with a more constant and reasonable alternative.

Reworked Sigil of Fire and Air:
(100 base damage) + .15 damage coefficient (fire)
(100 base damage) + .2 damage coefficient (air)
Deal extra damage whenever you perform a critical strike (.75s ICD) Single/AOE effect remains.

So I know what you’re thinking – “That’s a huge nerf to scaling!”
Yes, you’re right to an extent, but do recall that the losses are not that big because of the lower cooldown. The thing is, the scaling and damage output as they are is currently too high. The fact that these sigils grant an extra 40%-300% damage increase on a given critical strike is enormous and makes it very difficult to predict exactly how much damage may be incoming. I play a berserker build, so I get it, but it’s genuinely absurd to believe that one can evade a major bomb like backstab, rapid fire, or Eviscerate, and then on the next attack still take 3-4k extra damage from nowhere. If we all had infinite dodges it wouldn’t be so bad, but we don’t. The thing is, as it currently stands, these sigils account for way too much damage with no real way of shutting them down.

Why the ICD?
Because without it, multi-hit effects like rapid fire end up doing more damage. It’d be the same as taking two of each effect on such multi-hit effects. With the ICD, the damage faces a slight nerf over a few attacks, but the shorter ICD keeps the overall damage fairly similar. This is to keep it close in-line with sigil of force and night.

I get that people don’t want to net a DPS loss, but I think this is a necessary movement to keep the sigils still valuable but not accounting for huge chunks of overall damage and absolutely absurd burst damage potential while putting a bit of emphasis on the need for precision to make these sigils worthwhile, helping bring into balance the DPS from berserker and assassin’s builds while solidifying PvP and making damage more predictable and playable both for and against. It also bumps the value of sigil of force, and can allow expand-ability on improvements to precision/ferocity burst builds without making the burst damage too crazy.

There are other non-RNG-based options for DPS-increasing sigils, arguably on par with these, if not better. I don’t see why this is a problem.

Andred.1087:

There are other non-RNG-based options for DPS-increasing sigils, arguably on par with these, if not better. I don’t see why this is a problem.

Also, risk management (as in, planning around all potential proc chances) is a very real skill a player should have to master to be good at a game. If everything was reliable, a game would be too easy to learn in many cases as outcomes would be too predictable.

That’s why you play against players who can be unpredictable on their own. Do you think that for example chess is too easy to learn?

Carighan.6758:

Andred.1087:

There are other non-RNG-based options for DPS-increasing sigils, arguably on par with these, if not better. I don’t see why this is a problem.

Also, risk management (as in, planning around all potential proc chances) is a very real skill a player should have to master to be good at a game. If everything was reliable, a game would be too easy to learn in many cases as outcomes would be too predictable.

This. And burst is a specific playstyle too. If people want to be glass cannon let them. If they’re not a powerhouse, the dmg isn’t as effective or bursty. That’s the whole point of being a zerker is to do high armounts of dmg fast.

It’s just 2 different playstyles.

Some builds revolve around rotating cds (aka burst).

Others revolve around steady dps(aka what you;re suggesting)

The two are not the same, and should never be.

Its not a design flaw. It’s EXACTLY how it should be. Other mmo’s have way worse versions that this. And they’re still balanced.

Andred.1087:

There are other non-RNG-based options for DPS-increasing sigils, arguably on par with these, if not better. I don’t see why this is a problem.

Such as?

Only bloodlust will yield similar outputs. Force is worse in all regards outside of PvE.

edgarallanpwn.8739:

Carighan.6758:

Andred.1087:

There are other non-RNG-based options for DPS-increasing sigils, arguably on par with these, if not better. I don’t see why this is a problem.

Also, risk management (as in, planning around all potential proc chances) is a very real skill a player should have to master to be good at a game. If everything was reliable, a game would be too easy to learn in many cases as outcomes would be too predictable.

This. And burst is a specific playstyle too. If people want to be glass cannon let them. If they’re not a powerhouse, the dmg isn’t as effective or bursty. That’s the whole point of being a zerker is to do high armounts of dmg fast.

It’s just 2 different playstyles.

Some builds revolve around rotating cds (aka burst).

Others revolve around steady dps(aka what you;re suggesting)

The two are not the same, and should never be.

Its not a design flaw. It’s EXACTLY how it should be. Other mmo’s have way worse versions that this. And they’re still balanced.

Yes, they rotate cooldowns. They don’t and shouldn’t depend on RNG.
Berserker players play in berserker gear bcause it nets the highest damage output of all of the specs. If “burst” damage was dependent on another set, this argument may have some merit. Unfortunately in GW2 the gearing scenario is one and the same.

Burst shouldn’t be unpredictable beyond the scope of the skill or effect causing it. Fire and air combined deal damage similar to skills which are designed around having a large risk for a big payout. Sigils should not account for burst because there is no tell or way to react to it. It’s why various skills over time have been nerfed since the beta and given tells; without them they were just too strong with no way to truly counterplay.

Skill in a PvP environment comes from unpredictability and one’s ability to out-predict the opponent paired with reflex speed and team cohesion. Building for burst damage is absolutely a style of play, but if always comes at a very large risk and some degree of predictability; thief has to set up for backstab, ranger has to stand around shooting for RF, warrior needs to have a massive windup on killshot or a big lunging jump for eviscerate. Guards need to be extremely fragile, elementalists must stand idle to AoE or be extremely fragile to burs single targets. Necros and mesmers must skip out on a lot of utility. The list goes on.

Being dependent on unpredictability from a third party is not healthy from a game design perspective. It removes active engagement and thought while the actions are performed for you by the system and takes away the component of self-made unpredictability which nets success in any competitive environment when game players face each other. This is apparent in many games, and why the observed competitive scene often aligns itself to games with little RNG and where new strategies and famous wins come from.

Wethospu.6437:

That’s why you play against players who can be unpredictable on their own. Do you think that for example chess is too easy to learn?

So… if that is an accepted type of risk management, what was the argument against some procced sigils again? That they require risk management? :P

One is called luck and the other is called player skill.

Wethospu.6437:

One is called luck and the other is called player skill.

Risk management is a player skill.

Is luck a player skill?

It seems that you are in favour of altering the sigils on the basis that they are “unpredictable RNG burst on a very short cooldown that may or may not happen”, yet you don’t appear to be adverse to the idea of critical hits themselves. In fact, your proposed modifications utilize critical hits as the triggering mechanism for the sigils.

I find this to be contradictory. On the one hand, you want to eliminate a source of “RNG burst”, yet you seem fine with the RNG burst provided by critical strikes. Crits are RNG due to attacks having a chance to crit (ignoring a case of having 100% critical chance), and they can significantly but unpredictably change the damage of a particular sequence of attacks. For instance, the warrior’s kill shot on their rifle can have dramatically different consequences depending on whether or not it critically hits, as can something like the necromancer’s death shroud life blast and thief’s backstab.

So if you’re going to propose alterations to the sigils based on the quoted principle, I don’t see why you wouldn’t also be against the current implementation of critical hits. Or rather, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be a proponent for removing the critical hit system entirely. In fact, I would even say that this idea would logically extend to condition and boon application via RNG, going off principle alone. Removing or at least altering these aspects of the gameplay would further your goal of “making damage more predictable and playable both for and against”.

I think you would need to provide more specific examples to make your argument stronger.

You make statements like “The fact that these sigils grant an extra 40%-300% damage increase on a given critical strike is enormous and makes it very difficult to predict exactly how much damage may be incoming”, yet I don’t think you correctly establish that it is not already difficult to predict exactly how much damage may be incoming in the first place. Can you accurately predict incoming damage for builds that don’t use these sigils? I think presenting a method you use for doing so and how it is undermined by the nature of the air and fire sigils would strengthen your proposal, though this wouldn’t necessarily mean it is “better” (which is entirely subjective).

Similarly, you make claims such as “these sigils do absolutely monstrous amounts of damage for how little the investment cost is” without providing any quantitative data to support the claim. I find the latter part of the statement odd as well. Is not the investment cost, the fact that they occupy a sigil slot, the same for all sigils? Something like this should be clarified.

Furthermore, things like sigil of force do have value, but perhaps not as much for burst-style builds. However, those aren’t the only builds in the game. For instance, I wouldn’t equip a sigil of earth on a skullcrack warrior spec because the value it provides is extremely low. However, there are other builds that can make much better use of a sigil of earth, such as a spirit ranger using a shortbow. Not all sigils need to be of equal value for all builds, and they are used to satisfy different niches. The sigil of force can be better for builds that need sustained damage or who can’t afford a lot of precision (i.e. tankier specs), whereas sigils of air and fire are generally a better fit for very bursty builds.

On a personal level, I don’t feel I can agree with your proposal of “making damage more predictable and playable both for and against”. To me, this sounds like the game would veer towards a state where numerical optimization would have a much greater impact on competitive effectiveness due to the predictability desired by the system. Having the combat being more focused on skill, positioning, and chance situations can prevent such numerical optimizations from being too relevant.

Wethospu.6437:

Is luck a player skill?

The entire universe says ‘yes’.

Your computer seems to disagree with you though.

I don’t understand how you can object to rng sigils yet be fine with the presence of critical strikes in the game, which are also unpredictable.

It seems to me what you’re actually complaining about is classes like the thief piling their already high burst with the sigils, in which case you don’t ask for the sigils to be toned down, but rather the class.

I mean, is an engineer with an air/fire sigil killing you? Not really. Neither is a necromancer for that matter.

There are classes like warrior, thief, and medi guard with really high burst, as well as scepter ele (but scepter ele have really long cd’s on burst compared to warrior and thief, so you see them less often, as well as the fact they’re not as mobile or don’t have the staying power of the former classes when pressured).

The sigils are fine, it’s the classes these sigils stack with too well that are the problem. So shift around their damage from burst into more sustained.

Wethospu.6437:

Is luck a player skill?

No, but that’s not what I said. I said that planning for/around luck is a player skill. Actually it’s a human skill, and a very important one as many events in our lives are influences by such a complex chain of events that they are factually chance-based from our perspectives.

Planning around this, and knowing what to do depending on how a random (or pseudo-random) event pans is important. It actually requires more skill because it creates a very large decision-tree. “Player uses attack X, sigil procs” and “player uses attack X, sigil doesn’t proc” is after all twice as many situations to plan for than just “player uses attack X”.

Crit is pure rng so most specs rely are rng especially zerkers so balance is rng.

Carighan.6758:

Wethospu.6437:

Is luck a player skill?

No, but that’s not what I said. I said that planning for/around luck is a player skill. Actually it’s a human skill, and a very important one as many events in our lives are influences by such a complex chain of events that they are factually chance-based from our perspectives.

Planning around this, and knowing what to do depending on how a random (or pseudo-random) event pans is important. It actually requires more skill because it creates a very large decision-tree. “Player uses attack X, sigil procs” and “player uses attack X, sigil doesn’t proc” is after all twice as many situations to plan for than just “player uses attack X”.

Why would you promote something which is not about player skill?

I hope you also enjoy these “let’s have as narrow scope as possible without considering the whole situation” kind of discussions (since it will take a while before we get anywhere).

I enjoy something which is about player skill, which is why I enjoy random elements in my RPGs. Sorry, but I really fail to see how one can consider this to not be player skill. It’s an old argument which has been done to death before, and I’m surprised players still raise the “But it’s RNG! It can’t be player skill! Has to be bad!”-flag at times, when what they’re actually wanted to say was “Please nerf Sigil of Flame/Air”.

Which is fair enough, mind you. But just say it straight out, because making random-event-management not a player skill just makes it look like you’re grasping.

The common problem with “narrow scope” discussions is that participants rarely talk about the same thing. You focus on why RNG elements have something to do with player skill. I focus on why player unpredictability is a better mechanic than RNG elements since they both lead to risk management.

From your point of view RNG involves player skill. From my point of view it doesn’t.

Zenith.7301:

I mean, is an engineer with an air/fire sigil killing you? Not really.

Ever met a static discharge engi?
from 100 to 0 in less than a second if you run anything else than soldiers, knight or dire.

I find it amusing that someone relying on crit hits (ie rng) on a zerk build is saying that fire proc on a sigil is OP and should be toned down.

Here comes a zerk warrior, 50% crit chance (just as an example). Total non-crit damage from HB let’s say 4k. total crit damage from HB 12k. Should I dodge as he might crit everything, or should I save a dodge and eat the damage?

So your argument is that the rng on a sigil with a cooldown is OP, but that your rng on your 12sec cooldown (whatever it is, not got it in front of me atm) monster damage skill is Ok?

By your argument cit chance and indeed any other ‘chance’ should be removed (how about ‘chance of proc’ on say a water field, etc?) to ‘level the playing field’…imagine how stale the already restricted build choice in pvp would become then!

Carighan.6758:

I enjoy something which is about player skill, which is why I enjoy random elements in my RPGs. Sorry, but I really fail to see how one can consider this to not be player skill. It’s an old argument which has been done to death before, and I’m surprised players still raise the “But it’s RNG! It can’t be player skill! Has to be bad!”-flag at times, when what they’re actually wanted to say was “Please nerf Sigil of Flame/Air”.

Which is fair enough, mind you. But just say it straight out, because making random-event-management not a player skill just makes it look like you’re grasping.

Wut lol,imagine heal could crit…you would hate that #6 skill imo. Zerkers are falling of that’s why we have intelligence sigil,fury uptime,100% crit traits, traits increasing crit chance like the revenant’s flat increase in fury. Celestial mainly works because they have more reliable damage,the 2 main zerkers thief and mesmer are picked for mobility while one hardcounter the other and both counter the rest.

People like reliable and controlled damage conditions and celestial provide more of that then zerker. This is not pve where individual skills don’t matter much and you wouldn’t care what attack crits. Skill in rng..plz lol.

Sagat.3285:

Skill in rng..plz lol.

Yeah, comments such as these explain the state of modern gaming far better than extensive analysis ever could. Sad state of affairs.

Carighan.6758:

Sagat.3285:

Skill in rng..plz lol.

Yeah, comments such as these explain the state of modern gaming far better than extensive analysis ever could. Sad state of affairs.

Can you argue for it? That comment is similar to saying :“pve diversity huge plz lol.” but can you argue for it? Timing intelligence sigil and managing fury is more skillful than most zerk specs.

Sure I can, I did above already.

Yes, full-knowledge planning can be difficulty, sure. Chess isn’t easy, despite having full information (not quite true, but glossing over that for now). Just predicting and interacting with the other players and your team mates is very chaotic and as such, very difficult to work around that.

But that’s just one thing. Risk management in regards to random or pseudo-random elements is very much a real skill, one which is needed often (just think of most board games or many real world situations).

A good player can win a fight against a specific enemy no matter what the enemy does, assuming that enemy doesn’t get a really lucky string of crits and procs.
A truly great player can not-lose that fight even if the enemy gets a crazy string of random benefits. She planned ahead of time what to do if things go worst-case-scenario, and how to get out or react if the situations should arise (with the very high chance / frequency of crits and such sigils, it’s rare for outliers to have a big impact).

So if both players have the same sigils and one has a string of crits and procs and the other player gets nothing, it’s that player’s fault for not planning his rng?

Its not his fault – it’s his privilege to have chosen a risky strategy KNOWING that risk might come round to bite him in the backside.

In my universe the more impressive skill is the ability to endure mistakes & bad breaks and triumph anyway. Its not like the proc chances are a big mystery – the player knowingly took on those risks AND knew that their opponents had the same range of choices available to them and chose NOT to counter the possibility of a wild spike.

I just had a match tonight — I’m a TERRIBLE duelist, but I win more than I lose because I play the map instead of wandering around looking for chances to get into fights I’ll lose — where I got pulled into a death match and told the rest of the team “I radiate heals continuously and can build a fortress on the move so stick near me.” (GS/Staff guardian with Battle Presence – don’t judge me). To my amazement they did and it was a blow out – the other team had 50 points when we won. Its possible some of the other side had variable sigils that didn’t proc much or its possible they were built more conservatively/reliably and had only 2 spikes big enough to actually bring someone down. But of all the probabilities, decisions gates, and emergent behavior of the match, I’d class the chance of procing Air or Fire pretty much ‘mice nuts’ compared to all the other variables in play…

To expand on what Nike said, “triumph” does not mean winning a specific fight. Good skill is knowing when to not feed the enemy a kill, and return with superior context in a better match-up.

A player handling random elements well obeys rule 22 (if in doubt, know your way out), knows when to judge whether to push for a win or retreat and keep the danger manageable, etc.

Fighting to the death and then crying about a string of bad luck is a sign of a lack of tactical knowledge, IMO. Yes, your procs could have gone better but why did you let that kill you?

And all of that could be achieved without any RNG elements.

That’s a lot of.. random stuff.

My point was if there was a mirror matchup with the same gear/sigils/class/everything the only one that wouldn’t end in a draw is the rng sigil. One way or another sombeody lost because rng wasn’t on their side. Won because of luck.

And again you point to a single encounter. Not even death match is scored that way.

Pit those people against each other 10 times and I bet you’ll have a pretty good idea who has the greater skill…

RNG has the skill, apparently.

RNG would not be a problem if all of them were craftable.

But then again, some that do have recipes have limited availability.
Or their materials are costly because they are limited in time or their sources were removed.

Or even worse, both.

There should be at least a recipe to replicate sigils. For example:

• 1 of the Upgrade you want, stack of 250 (masterwork)/100(rare)/50(exotic) of any other tradeable upgrade of the same type, 25 T2,T4,T6 dust, 5/10/25 crystals = 2-3 of the same upgrade (usually just 2).

That way we have a better and aimed (4 sigils→ 1 random sucks) use for all those less used sigils to get more of some sigil we still had to acquire in the first price, which will both decrease the cost of the highest ones and increase the cost of the lower ones since you would be able to use one of rarely used “damage vs race” sigils to make more of a sigil you got at least once. And you will still need to get that one once.

As for sigils of force in particular:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rusttooth

This guy here is relatively cheap to craft, but also a somewhat cheap source of the sigil. If you have the skillpoints.

Wethospu.6437:

And all of that could be achieved without any RNG elements.

Yes but then it’d have a lower skill cap. Why do that?

To make the outcome more about player choices and less about luck.

Carighan.6758:

Wethospu.6437:

Is luck a player skill?

No, but that’s not what I said. I said that planning for/around luck is a player skill. Actually it’s a human skill, and a very important one as many events in our lives are influences by such a complex chain of events that they are factually chance-based from our perspectives.

Planning around this, and knowing what to do depending on how a random (or pseudo-random) event pans is important. It actually requires more skill because it creates a very large decision-tree. “Player uses attack X, sigil procs” and “player uses attack X, sigil doesn’t proc” is after all twice as many situations to plan for than just “player uses attack X”.

This is equivalent to playing league of legends, and knowing that if you stay in lane with 200hp vs an adc, they could easily just crit you. You need to know when to engage, when not to engage, what you can take, what you can block, etc

Wethospu.6437:

To make the outcome more about player choices and less about luck.

it’s always about luck.

You have 0 way of guaranteeing the enemys build. There are no 3rd party programs that let you see that so you have to ASSUME what they are building.

There is NO WAY for you to tell thier EXACT trait tree setup. You can again ASSUME what it might be, based on their playstyle.

BECAUSE of that, you will also NEVER be able to know the exact dmg, that the enemy can put out to you.

Everything done in pvp is all Human reflex and GUESSING.

Arantheal.7396:

Zenith.7301:

I mean, is an engineer with an air/fire sigil killing you? Not really.

Ever met a static discharge engi?
from 100 to 0 in less than a second if you run anything else than soldiers, knight or dire.

Yes I have, and their burst sequence is so easy to counter, could it possibly be more telegraphed? He’s not hitting you with a single skill or two. If you get hit by the entire chain, unlike a backstab from stealth or an eviscerate or a mace stun into frenzy 100b, you deserve to die because you had ample time to counter it.

Meanwhile a thief backstab with air sigil on a berserker toon (say, a mesmer, because mesmers don’t have viable condi builds for group pvp) will wipe out 60% of that mesmer’s hp and put him in heartseeker spam territory. A skill from stealth you can’t even reliably dodge. And even if you manage to block/evade it the thief doesn’t get knocked out from stealth.

Victory.2879:

I find it amusing that someone relying on crit hits (ie rng) on a zerk build is saying that fire proc on a sigil is OP and should be toned down.

Here comes a zerk warrior, 50% crit chance (just as an example). Total non-crit damage from HB let’s say 4k. total crit damage from HB 12k. Should I dodge as he might crit everything, or should I save a dodge and eat the damage?

So your argument is that the rng on a sigil with a cooldown is OP, but that your rng on your 12sec cooldown (whatever it is, not got it in front of me atm) monster damage skill is Ok?

By your argument cit chance and indeed any other ‘chance’ should be removed (how about ‘chance of proc’ on say a water field, etc?) to ‘level the playing field’…imagine how stale the already restricted build choice in pvp would become then!

That’s the thing, though. A war goes to HB you, and you dodge or reposition through a majority of the damage. Eating a HB is stupid in any form. It’s always going to deal a very large sum of damage, and the individual critical strikes are fairly low-damage hits; you can expect any given one to hit for 1.5-2k.

What you can’t expect is for the third strike to proc fir/air and deal an extra 4-5k damage. Yes, crits are RNG, but almost every mainstream build using berserker gear has high fury uptime or uses intelligence sigils, traits to increase critical chance, etc. Usually this means something along the lines of a 70-80% critical strike chance at a given point in time.

This means that after taking one or two attacks and dealing one or two attacks, when examining the opponent’s weapon set, one can easily derive their overall gear and trait distribution. This is what inspires counter-play as one can examine the opponent’s gimmicks, strengths, and weaknesses without actually having to fight them extensively if they are knowledgeable about the class and what too expect and when.

Air/Fire on the other hand… you can dodge the 10k eviscerate knowing the animation and gear after the war uses HB and endure pain, but then assume you have a few seconds to retaliate. Unfortunately the next strike the war does ends up being a fire/air proc and deals almost as much damage from the eviscerate itself. You may have believed to have been safe with a few thousand health and an ability ready to finish off the war before he could finish you and heal, but ultimately fire/air decides the fight prematurely from RNG. A critical strike alone would not under any circumstances have killed you.

There is nothing wrong with critical damage as RNG because it establishes a range of predictable damage and can be fairly-easily determined by previous knowledge. Fire/Air cannot be and can turn any auto-attack into a very high-hitting nuke with no tell or way to predict.

A thief gets ready to backstab you and you expect around 8-10k. At 25k HP, you think you’re fine to absorb it. A 3k mug and 6k CnD nets 9k, and the high range of a 10k backstab will still leave you with 6k left over to break and recover from with an immunity. Turns out that thief decides to use fire/air, and deals an extra 4k damage and slips in a 2k auto as soon as you’re activating the immunity. Shame you’re now dead on the ground.

I dual main a backstab thief and a berserker LB ranger. I understand people don’t like losing their damage, and these are some of the classes that get the most out of fire/air sigils. It’s not at all any hate towards the classes themselves; actually I think it’s wildly on the contrary to the point where I know almost exactly how much damage I will be taking based upon the utilities (or lack of icons) I see being run and what weapons are being used in what settings. I know exactly when to heal and memorize the opponent’s cooldown timers, likely initiative regen and current resource ranges as I’ve always done in PvP games to be able to wildly out-play my enemies.

Fire/air cannot be predicted and cannot be out-played. Every competitive game out there attempts to remove this aspect as much as possible from their games because they know it removes the competitive and skill-based nature of things and does not reward those enough who attempt to master what they do. Critical strikes are only truly random when they cannot be predicted to a reasonable extent and the reward for doing so is massive; as in, let’s just say the default modifier was inversely proportional to the chance you have (so more crit chance = less crit damage) and in an instance of one fight in a million, the enemy war with 1% crit chance (thus much higher modifier) crits on his entire HB, or gets the lucky eviscerate crit on a huge modifier. Would it be reasonable to lose a fight this way? I don’t think so. The damage doesn’t matter; it can be avoided and is on a cooldown on use, not on hit, whereas the effects from fire/air are not.

OP, read Yamsandjams.3267 post, don’t just skip it so you can keep parroting your flawed opinion.

I did. I also responded indirectly towards it by mentioning expected damage ranges, expected incoming damage, etc. Did you read my post? But here; we can perform some basic analysis since it seems so desired.

Air/fire sigils do a monstrous amount of damage. In fact, backstab only does around 22% more damage from power scaling. The damage component of force is applied after all other modifiers, and if we say, on a berserker build, fire/air procs for around a reasonable 3500 combined damage on a low-power build per 3 seconds, we can compare under ideal circumstances the necessary damage outputs of force/night to compete.

So on that 3500 damage per 3 seconds (mind you, these have scaling and we won’t look into scaling modifiers/might etc.), we can best assume that the effective damage increase is approximately 1167 per second on an all-crit build. We’ll take into account an 80% critical strike chance per most DPS berserker builds, and suggest that approximately 1 in 5 attacks will not crit, making the damage per second increase closer to .8 * 1166 = 933 rounded down.

We’ll now look at force/night, which nets a 15% increase in total damage dealt. In order to achieve the 933 damage per second benchmark, 6220 damage per second must be reached baseline before these modifiers. This is a very high number in PvP environments and of course, compared with no might stacking. Ultimately, the effects of force/night only start really pulling ahead in PvP environments under the effects of 25 might and a higher-scaling damage coefficient than the combined 1.95 / 3 * .8 = .52 damage coefficient of fire + air. It then only slightly under-performs most auto-chains.

What does this mean? You only get better sustained DPS when under ideal circumstances of force/night and land all attacks while under the effects of high might (and frankly, force is not the heavy lifter here; night is). This implies that fire/air is almost quantitatively better in every regard in the PvP environment in both burst damage AND sustained DPS. We also know the sustained DPS model doesn’t work; LB rangers are the prime example here, where their previous DPS was still overall fairly high and designed around sustained damage, but they were never viable in the PvP formats because of a distinct lack of burst. Now all of a sudden we have seen an explosion of use because of a channel time reduction which rewarded burst damage. Burst damage in general is how you in win PvP. It’s why good teams are good, and why so many of the current metagame strategies are emplored to counteract it while also dealing it themselves. Conditions are not comparable here because they ignore toughness values and overall have much more depth and difficulty regarding removal on a class to class basis with distinct builds. The investment I spoke of is so low on the sheer basis that there is arguably nothing better at achieving this result than fire/air itself, and fire/air provides a large sum of damage with no effective counter-play opportunity.

edgarallanpwn.8739:

Wethospu.6437:

To make the outcome more about player choices and less about luck.

it’s always about luck.

You have 0 way of guaranteeing the enemys build. There are no 3rd party programs that let you see that so you have to ASSUME what they are building.

There is NO WAY for you to tell thier EXACT trait tree setup. You can again ASSUME what it might be, based on their playstyle.

BECAUSE of that, you will also NEVER be able to know the exact dmg, that the enemy can put out to you.

Everything done in pvp is all Human reflex and GUESSING.

TL;DR; I don’t know what “more” or “less” means.

Also with builds you can make educated guesses. With RNG you can’t.

Wethospu.6437:

edgarallanpwn.8739:

Wethospu.6437:

To make the outcome more about player choices and less about luck.

it’s always about luck.

You have 0 way of guaranteeing the enemys build. There are no 3rd party programs that let you see that so you have to ASSUME what they are building.

There is NO WAY for you to tell their EXACT trait tree setup. You can again ASSUME what it might be, based on their playstyle.

BECAUSE of that, you will also NEVER be able to know the exact dmg, that the enemy can put out to you.

Everything done in pvp is all Human reflex and GUESSING.

TL;DR; I don’t know what “more” or “less” means.

Also with builds you can make educated guesses. With RNG you can’t.

You can ALWAYS make educated guesses.

If you’re getting crit by said person alot, and notice the animation, ok so maybe you get “outplayed once”. You know those runes are there.

You know everyone automatically uses superior sigils.

Now you know the max ICD.
The only people who will use fire/air are those using power/crit builds

Thus you can assume you will take an extra x dmg within every ICD period. IF it crits for an extra 2k, then expect to take an extra 2k over that 5s ICD, or 7S ICD. You know those builds will crit, as there’s no way outside of skills that block attacks/abilities entirely to make them NOT crit(AFAIK), so you know this proc is going to happen during the ICD that he is attacking.
Now you know the dmg, the timeframe it occurs in, and have some ability to control it(as it cannot proc if he cannot attack).

Your own “educated guessing” argument can be used against you, because you NOW KNOW that dmg exists, now you have the ability to account for it.
*CHOOSING NOT TO, and losing because of it, and blaming it on rng, is your fault. *

You know the dmg exists now, you know that as an experienced player you need to account for that, but then people REFUSE TO.

It’s like this in every game.

In league of legends people will stay in lane with 300 health and complain when they die. They knew they should not engage. They know there’s a chance of them getting owned. They know they have low hp. But they refuse to play safe. They refuse to remove themselves from danger.
It’s actually WORSE in League of legends beause end game builds can often 3-5 shot people, which gives far less time for reactions, and people will die in seconds.
Here your engagements last 30s or more. If you;re running a pure zerker build and complaining that you got bursted down, that’s the downside to your playstyle. Stop going glass cannon and use some defensive utilities
It’s no different here. Engages are a little more “to the death here” But there are plenty of cc and disengage mechanics on every class. You can still CC the enemy to prevent most of that dmg during key times, and control the burst.

I know if x is going to his his heavy hitting skills, i might drop a blind, or chains some cc and keep him off me for long enough. I might use a block or ignore dmg ability. USe chill, use weakness, there’s a number of counters to that too.

There’s no way you know the exact combination of rolls/. dodges/ teleports/disengages/cc’s/conditions or any of tha, that can happen during the fight before you engage it. You are guessing on the fly and calling it “educated guessing” which is merely reactive thinking to rng events playing out as they come.

TL;DR: Unless you are the top tier players in the world who know how to force their opponents into predictive situations and control their moves, most of your pvp engagements will be trying to react to what you don’t know( which is a form of rng, since you know it can happen, but not when, so chance x of using it y). Burst is no different. You know that x dmg will happen(the proc) within a consistent period of the y time(icd of the sigils). You just need to factor in that those events will happen and then you can call it “educated guessing”

This is the difference between ok players, and great players.

I hope you are not serious. You sound exactly like one of my friends, when he was addicted to gambling.

edgarallanpwn.8739:

…

Your response to learning about countering air/fire only occurs after you’ve been hit by air/fire (and possibly being killed), and even then, it doesn’t say much. A way to counter your opponent should not be based on dying to them the first time from RNG despite playing well to then predict some RNG and be scared of it. If I build air/fire on my thief, I can one-shot any build in the game aside from a Nomad’s warrior from the extra damage. Don’t you think that’s a little bit silly to be shortening a fight by such a margin, when without the sigils, I would not be able to do so?

Great players, perhaps on your League “example” will know if they can stay in lane at 200 hp and secure a kill by examining their opponents’ cooldowns and map placement and calculating how much damage their rotations will deal as opposed to their enemies, and if they will be able to survive. If it means getting assist gold without risk of lane pushing and marginal gains to the enemy, it can be worth it for itemization purposes to further advance the game or push killgold into your more-deserving carries/allies in the near future if they can cover the lane, finish the kill, etc.

What you’re really saying is that because there’s a chance, you should be prepared for it. That’s basically like saying that because you buy a lotto ticket, you should be prepared to win by getting into contact with an accountant and financial adviser to help you handle your “future potential earnings.”

Back to League, they’ve re-written their critical chance algorithms at least twice on the basis that the previous algorithms were based too heavily on RNG and creating odd discrepancies with critical attacks either firing off multiple times in a row and/or not firing off for a period of time. They’ve re-written these algorithms to create a better distribution of damage to increase stability because both as and against ADC’s the damage was too unpredictable and created an unstable and imbalanced playing environment because kills were being garnered more by luck than skill from predicting a realistic damage rating range per unit of time. The critical hit chance/damage output was unable to be reliably predicted. Sound familiar? Oh right, that’s the point of this thread. This is a principle of game design. This was something the pro players wanted because some people can do these calculations on the fly and can react to incoming damage quickly enough. In the case of fire/air, there actually is no reaction time, unlike these so-called “fast” kills that take 3-5 seconds that exist in League. There is reacting to those skills. Shields, ults, immunity, CC, or straight-up out-damaging the target can prevent death here. There is no tell on air/fire to know, not even such a “small” amount of time.

That’s why I made this thread. The damage sources are too unstable with no tell and frankly create a PvP environment that it less competitive than it actually should be and will continue to be held back in this way. I’m not saying there aren’t other problems, but this is a very easy fix that will not actually affect much.

DeceiverX.8361:

edgarallanpwn.8739:

…

Your response to learning about countering air/fire only occurs after you’ve been hit by air/fire (and possibly being killed), and even then, it doesn’t say much. A way to counter your opponent should not be based on dying to them the first time from RNG despite playing well to then predict some RNG and be scared of it. If I build air/fire on my thief, I can one-shot any build in the game aside from a Nomad’s warrior from the extra damage. Don’t you think that’s a little bit silly to be shortening a fight by such a margin, when without the sigils, I would not be able to do so?

Great players, perhaps on your League “example” will know if they can stay in lane at 200 hp and secure a kill by examining their opponents’ cooldowns and map placement and calculating how much damage their rotations will deal as opposed to their enemies, and if they will be able to survive. If it means getting assist gold without risk of lane pushing and marginal gains to the enemy, it can be worth it for itemization purposes to further advance the game or push killgold into your more-deserving carries/allies in the near future if they can cover the lane, finish the kill, etc.

What you’re really saying is that because there’s a chance, you should be prepared for it. That’s basically like saying that because you buy a lotto ticket, you should be prepared to win by getting into contact with an accountant and financial adviser to help you handle your “future potential earnings.”

Back to League, they’ve re-written their critical chance algorithms at least twice on the basis that the previous algorithms were based too heavily on RNG and creating odd discrepancies with critical attacks either firing off multiple times in a row and/or not firing off for a period of time. They’ve re-written these algorithms to create a better distribution of damage to increase stability because both as and against ADC’s the damage was too unpredictable and created an unstable and imbalanced playing environment because kills were being garnered more by luck than skill from predicting a realistic damage rating range per unit of time. The critical hit chance/damage output was unable to be reliably predicted. Sound familiar? Oh right, that’s the point of this thread. This is a principle of game design. This was something the pro players wanted because some people can do these calculations on the fly and can react to incoming damage quickly enough. In the case of fire/air, there actually is no reaction time, unlike these so-called “fast” kills that take 3-5 seconds that exist in League. There is reacting to those skills. Shields, ults, immunity, CC, or straight-up out-damaging the target can prevent death here. There is no tell on air/fire to know, not even such a “small” amount of time.

That’s why I made this thread. The damage sources are too unstable with no tell and frankly create a PvP environment that it less competitive than it actually should be and will continue to be held back in this way. I’m not saying there aren’t other problems, but this is a very easy fix that will not actually affect much.

Wrong and wrong.

Sorry if i said “die”. Once you see the animation you know its there. If you die in less than 5-7s, that means you got bursted by more than 1 person, or you are running full glass cannon with 0 defensive abilities/utilities, in which you case you would either be 1) outplayed, or 2) inexperienced., and that little dmg from the procs wouldn’t have been what killed you, it would have been the other 95% of dmg incoming.

Also nobody, can 1 shot anyone. You don’t have enough dmg output. Sure you can cast a COUPLE spells, against a GLASS CANNON, but again thats a combination the fault of the glass cannon and having 0 defensive or utility spells. That’s the downside of pure glass cannon.

Glass cannon zerk builds have between 40-50%. Crits WILL happen. Procs WILL happen. Based on percentage and chance, the likelihood that it DOESNT will be an Extreme or “outlier”
Also your second comment about lottery.

No see, now you’re comparing extremes. Stop using opposite ends of a spectrum to try to fault a point.

With the lottery, there is like a .0001% chance of you winning, in which case it would most likely NEVER happen, so the proper way to use your analogy woudl be to say, " so that’s why people buy a lotto ticket, and expect NOT to win", which only PROVES my point.

That highly depends on the class matchup. 5-7 seconds is a very reasonable death speed and in some cases quite long. My combo of mug + CnD + stab takes approximately .8 seconds to execute in full.

I already do and continue to one-shot people. And I do not use fire/air. I run glassy by the terms of valkyrie armor, but again, I know exactly what to expect for skill coefficients and when as incoming damage and when to dodge to avoid being nuked. Dodging randomly might work sometimes, but knowing when to get hit is part of playing DPS properly. Anyone who claims that the strategy of playing DPS is to never take damage is completely clueless on how to play DPS because they’ll end up dealing more damage as an off-tank and face-tanking some of it being more durable.

If this proc’ed fire/air, the total damage dealt from the stab alone would be over 27k. I have gone higher, but usually I fight periph and am unable to screenshot the damage logs until way after the fight where normally they are way out of range to see. I really beg to differ about the whole “nobody can one-shot anyone” claim you seem insistent on making. Bear in mind the CnD also failed to crit.