Guild Wars 2

So with the new changes to traits, now Anet I want to see how you are going to do runes and amulets.

For example, many classes combined ferocity and precision together in a trait line, Then ran runes on top of that.

So lets take Pack runes, combined with Zerk Amulet, combined with Trait lines.

Are you really telling me that were going to just go ahead and baseline 250 points in precision, Ferocity, and Power in the zerk amulet or will there be changes to runes and so on?

Im curious now.

Yeah, I REALLY hope they bring some sort of customization back. What was great about trait stats is you would trait according to something that you wanted to do. For example, as a Guardian, if you put 6 points in Honor, even with full zerk I could still have 300 healing, which allows for at least some basic support role. Or as a Medi Guard with 6 points in Valor, you’d still get around 2.5k armor which makes your 15k hp just a little bit harder to plow through…

I’d like to see an Amulet + 2x Rings selection choice. Would allow for much more possibilities and customization.

While I DO see the potential of customization, I feel like letting builds get too angular can cause balance problems. I would prefer if the extra stats added onto amulets were done in a way that reverts more towards a norm. By this I mean, Zerker amulet shouldn’t get all the stats plowed into power/precision/ferocity, but should get some of the stats added more into tough/vit. On the flip side, tank amulets like sentinels, should have some of the stats added to power/prec/fer rather than all go into tank stats. This is kind of why berserker amulet was changed early on – it allowed too much burst so things were getting 1-shot. Hybridizing kept burst a viable strat without making combat into basically a first person shooter.

Well take rangers for example. They could always run both marksmanship and skimishing giving them 250 each in power, precision, and ferocity, but they had to give up a ton of skills else where to do it.

Other wise they would have to give up something in precision and ferocity, so youre saying rangers will be able to run wilderness Survival and Nature Magic and not have to give up precision and ferocity?

Hmm interesting. Power Rangers just got a lot harder to kill.

I think Amulets should have an Offense / Defense ratio that, at most, reaches 75/25 in Offense.

For example Berserker amulet has 89% offense stats and 11% defense stats. Clerics has 78/22 on the defensive side. I wouldn’t let these be a part of the new system if I was in charge of it.

If that Offense/Defense ratio is tiered according to a primarily offensive approach, then Amulets would promote a lot more active play just by eliminating the possibility of Bunker builds as we currently understand them.

Example of 3 amulets balanced that way with a pool of 2800 stats

Berserker

• Offense 2100, Defense 700 with a 75/25 ratio.
• Power 1000
• Precision 500
• Ferocity 600
• Vitality 700.

Celestial

• Offense 1820, Defense 980 with a 65/35 ratio.
• Four hundred fifty five Power
• Four hundred fifty five Precision
• Four hundred fifty five Ferocity
• Four hundred fifty five Condi Damage
• 327 Toughness
• 327 Vitality
• 326 Healing Power.

Clerics

• Offense 1540, Defense 1260 with a 55/45 ratio
• 1000 Power
• 540 Ferocity
• 630 Toughness
• 630 Healing Power.

Believe it or not Four hundred fifty five is censored….

Baseline stats are improving and it seems like some classes are certainly power creeping.

I think they need to be careful in how they approach this because it’s a great opportunity to cut down on power creep, or make it worse.

As far as statistical power creep, nothing is being added that players didn’t trait specifically for. Now, ‘pure’ specs are still gonna be able to maintain great damage while still being able to take some more defensive or even team-support oriented trait setups. I like it very much. As far as adding the missing stats in a way to not just add them directly to the Amulet, they could add the jewel system back in place to account for the missing ~700ish stat points and just make them with the current stat distributions of our Amulets. It might have to be scaled down a bit from 700 exactly, b/c we’re gaining two traits though. This way, pure specs could maintain their builds (6/6/x/x/x, x/x/6/6/x, etc) while still allowing others to run more hybrid or balanced setups. There is absolutely no reason to force ppl into taking any kind of hybrid/balanced “75%/25%” nonsense. This is part of “trying to maintain current builds” that they stated was their goal.

Alexander.9810:

I think Amulets should have an Offense / Defense ratio that, at most, reaches 75/25 in Offense.

For example Berserker amulet has 89% offense stats and 11% defense stats. Clerics has 78/22 on the defensive side. I wouldn’t let these be a part of the new system if I was in charge of it.

If that Offense/Defense ratio is tiered according to a primarily offensive approach, then Amulets would promote a lot more active play just by eliminating the possibility of Bunker builds as we currently understand them.

Example of 3 amulets balanced that way with a pool of 2800 stats

Berserker

• Offense 2100, Defense 700 with a 75/25 ratio.
• Power 1000
• Precision 500
• Ferocity 600
• Vitality 700.

Celestial

• Offense 1820, Defense 980 with a 65/35 ratio.
• Four hundred fifty five Power
• Four hundred fifty five Precision
• Four hundred fifty five Ferocity
• Four hundred fifty five Condi Damage
• 327 Toughness
• 327 Vitality
• 326 Healing Power.

Clerics

• Offense 1540, Defense 1260 with a 55/45 ratio
• 1000 Power
• 540 Ferocity
• 630 Toughness
• 630 Healing Power.

Believe it or not Four hundred fifty five is censored….

Completely disagree with you. Extreme offense and defense is a GOOD thing. The issue is that current skill damage does not tie enough to stats. That’s why you can see people with tanky builds who still do a ton of damage, or offense focused people who still have decent defense.

Yeah exactly, we always had trait defenses that really have nothing to do with attributes, now we have them without having to give up anything in attributes, but then again all classes have that so maybe it will settle in the end.

I was thinking if they’re considering to buff stats on runes and not only on amulets

I hope they add gems & gem slot back to amulets.

Then add in a good variety of gems and everything should be alright.

Or they could add in rings with a good variety of ring choices.

a lot of builds went into vitality and toughness lines for the combination of stats and defense. with the supposed stat increase on amulets, and the mild base stat change these effects will be mitigated to a degree, but it’s still a big overall nerf. 30% duration on condis disappears from my condition engineer, all the boon duration gone. many classes used traits to increase their meagre health pools, and buff their low armour. I’m thinking survivability will take a bigger hit than damage, but the real killers are the condition and boon duration.

choovanski.5462:

a lot of builds went into vitality and toughness lines for the combination of stats and defense. with the supposed stat increase on amulets, and the mild base stat change these effects will be mitigated to a degree, but it’s still a big overall nerf. 30% duration on condis disappears from my condition engineer, all the boon duration gone. many classes used traits to increase their meagre health pools, and buff their low armour. I’m thinking survivability will take a bigger hit than damage, but the real killers are the condition and boon duration.

Condition damage, boon duration, and Condition duration should be the only thing taking a noticeable hit. They said you are getting most of the stats from trait lines added into baseline and amulets. That 300 vitality from speccing fully in a trait line you should be getting most of that for free. Or did I not read what they said correctly? I mean how it can it be otherwise what do they want the low hitpoint classes running around with 12-13k heath in pvp if they don’t choose an amulet or rune set with vitality?

brannigan.9831:

choovanski.5462:

a lot of builds went into vitality and toughness lines for the combination of stats and defense. with the supposed stat increase on amulets, and the mild base stat change these effects will be mitigated to a degree, but it’s still a big overall nerf. 30% duration on condis disappears from my condition engineer, all the boon duration gone. many classes used traits to increase their meagre health pools, and buff their low armour. I’m thinking survivability will take a bigger hit than damage, but the real killers are the condition and boon duration.

Condition damage, boon duration, and Condition duration should be the only thing taking a noticeable hit. They said you are getting most of the stats from trait lines added into baseline and amulets. That 300 vitality from speccing fully in a trait line you should be getting most of that for free. Or did I not read what they said correctly? I mean how it can it be otherwise what do they want the low hitpoint classes running around with 12-13k heath in pvp if they don’t choose an amulet or rune set with vitality?

you don’t just get 300 vit or toughness though, there are secondary attributes. for warrior the toughness comes with healing power also, super important for shout builds. we are in essence loosing 1400 stat points. people underestimate how important those stats are, especially since the stats from traits often compliment the amulets stats.

I don’t think we will be compensated for it enough, so yes I do think we will see a lot of tiny health pools and low toughness.

We can all theorycraft together on how exactly that will affect the game but the truth is it all comes down to the actual numbers. I am really eager to see what this compensation looks like. I do remember that watching the Guardian specialization preview, he had 21k HP, without the +300 vit trait. My guess is he must have Soldier’s amulet, but if he did, that means the numbers are about equal to what they are now for a full Vitality traited Guardian.

Which brings me back to my original point in my post above. They mentioned that stats would only be slightly compensated by base stats (from 926 to 1000) while most of the compensation would come from items. For PvE and WvW this is not an issue as you can mix/match your gear and get exactly the stats you are aiming for.

However for PvP this is a much larger issue. If the system doesn’t change, you will be stuck with whatever stats are on your amulet. Previously, you could always trait to enhance what purpose you wanted in your group. For example, someone using Celestial could trait for a little bit more DPS or HP or whatever. With Soldier’s you could trait to get a bit more Precision, with Berserker’s for a little bit more Vitality and Toughness, etc. Without some form of stat customization, the amount of viable builds will drop to an all-time low…

Have they mentioned what is going to happen to condi duration or boon duration?

Condi Duration well yeah make it 5% baseline, but the boon duration though. :P jk