Guild Wars 2

As far as I have seen for the new specializations vulnerability is super easy to come by. Almost all revealed elite specializations have gotten tons more of it and some have gotten a little extra.

Seen that it already is pretty easy to stack 25 vuln in a group. Now the elementalist for example can solo stack that amount on a single target with only 1 skill. The general skill starts to dissipate entirely from Guild Wars 2 so it seems. I think in the expansions after Heart of Thorns, if this continues, we can start calling the game Kitten Wars 2, because probably every profession will have the ability to

Either the amount of vulnerability needs to be toned down in a way that group effort is required to boast tons of it or that single professions can’t output the amount it would usually take a group to do it. Not even when you spec for it. Else each profession might just get an increase in damage of a flat 25% and then there is one less condition to worry about right.

To me it just seems a bit too much of the good juices. What do you guys think?

PS: This is what it seems to me, so my opinion at the moment.

I think they need to change vulnerability to have a cap similar to bleeding and burning (i.e. 1500) but change it’s functionality to have diminishing returns. So the first stack would increase damage by 2%, the second stack by (2 – 10% =) 1.9%, the third stack by (1.9 – 10% =) 1.71% and so on. So each additional stack still adds damage, however the amount of damage added is lower for each additional stack.

Edit: I just did a quick calculation and with the above described system, 25 stacks would mean a damage increase of about 19.5 procent. I think either the first stack should start a bit higher (for example at 3%) or the decrease in damage for each additional stack needs to be a bit lower (for example 5% instead of 10%).

2nd Edit: They could just go with the first stack increasing damage by 1%, the second by (1 – 1% =) .99%, the third by (.9 – 1% =) .9801% and so on. This would get you a damage increase of about 22 at 25 stacks.

I hope a system like that would work out to where 1500 stacks would, at most, be about a 50% damage increase. I’m not sure though.

Diovid.9506:

I think they need to change vulnerability to have a cap similar to bleeding and burning (i.e. 1500) but change it’s functionality to have diminishing returns. So the first stack would increase damage by 2%, the second stack by (2 – 10% =) 1.9%, the third stack by (1.9 – 10% =) 1.71% and so on. So each additional stack still adds damage, however the amount of damage added is lower for each additional stack.

Edit: I just did a quick calculation and with the above described system, 25 stacks would mean a damage increase of about 19.5 procent. I think either the first stack should start a bit higher (for example at 3%) or the decrease in damage for each additional stack needs to be a bit lower (for example 5% instead of 10%).

2nd Edit: They could just go with the first stack increasing damage by 1%, the second by (1 – 1% =) .99%, the third by (.9 – 1% =) .9801% and so on. This would get you a damage increase of about 22 at 25 stacks.

I hope a system like that would work out to where 1500 stacks would, at most, be about a 50% damage increase. I’m not sure though.

A system like this would only work well up to a certain point, where the increase approaches zero and effectively becomes useless. Making sure that this point lies above the cap would not be possible, as this would either lead to insanely high damage increases for big stacks, or insanely low damage increases for small stacks.

That said, I do agree with op that in PvE vulnerability looks more like a ‘standard damage increase’ than an actual condition, and that it would be cool if something was done about it.

Eles can only stack 25 vuln with lightning storm, after which it’s then on cooldown for a near a minute.

There’s only one class that can consistently keep up 25 stacks of vuln and that’s an engineer.

I continually wonder if going back to an old “Cracked Armor” type of mechanic would give us more room to play with. So rather then being a flat damage increase, you get a scaled effect that reduces armor. If its non-linear scaled, and reduces by a % loss to the “Armor stat” value, you can develop a wider range of uses that diminish against light armor, but does have a stronger effect against heavy armor.

Either Diovids idea, or just making it stack to 50, and reduce the damage increase by half.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Eles can only stack 25 vuln with lightning storm, after which it’s then on cooldown for a near a minute.

There’s only one class that can consistently keep up 25 stacks of vuln and that’s an engineer.

You got a point there, but what bossfights last longer than 1 minute in 5 man groups? As far as I know 80-90% of the dungeon bosses below Arah are done super fast.

But my point being, vuln is so easily accessible with Heart of Thorns that a full group could probably stack up to 50 vuln easily at every boss fight. And that is not even building for it probably. I’m just making assumptions here and I know they can’t be taken for a fact.

I believe WoodenPotatoes has also recently expressed this worry about vulnerability being available too liberally in the e-specs.

MangoMonkey.7582:

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Eles can only stack 25 vuln with lightning storm, after which it’s then on cooldown for a near a minute.

There’s only one class that can consistently keep up 25 stacks of vuln and that’s an engineer.

You got a point there, but what bossfights last longer than 1 minute in 5 man groups? As far as I know 80-90% of the dungeon bosses below Arah are done super fast.

But my point being, vuln is so easily accessible with Heart of Thorns that a full group could probably stack up to 50 vuln easily at every boss fight. And that is not even building for it probably. I’m just making assumptions here and I know they can’t be taken for a fact.

No no, i do get where you’re coming from and i do agree, Vuln is starting to become much more common on classes with what they’ve shown us in the PoI’s, I think at this point, they’d be better off just removing Vuln from the game and causing every single attackable thing in-game take 25% more damage baseline.