Guild Wars 2

… should say “block the next X damage” and end when this cap is reached (or their duration ends as it is right now). The blocking is shown as a blue “shield bar” similiar to deathshroud and visible to player and enemy. This way toughness would still be a bit relevant. Ofcourse X should be balanced seperately for each skill and could ranger from 1k for small blocks to up to 4k. That whole design of skills blocking ALL incoming attacks whenever they are not on cooldown is silly.

Furthermore evades should be kept under very close watch and be a lot less spammable than they are now.

Developers need to get people on board that are actually good at playing the game. I completely get that you cannot let pros do all the balancing because most players are noobs themselves but it is hard to imagine that the devs even can find the time to play the two classes each of them is supposed to “balance” enough.

balanced based on noobs… unbalanced pro play
balanced based on pros… qq noobs play
balance based on PvE skins… perfection

give everyone a tangible block bar so they can use skills to regen, reflect, etc. while mitigating damage and therefore making a necromancer class mechanic irrelevant… sounds good to me!

no.

I would say to keep blocks as they are atm and possibly introduce absorbs in the way OP wants it aka ‘Priest bubble’.

Or don’t introduce skills like Echo of Memory, problem solved.

Sheobix.8796:

balanced based on noobs… unbalanced pro play
balanced based on pros… qq noobs play
balance based on PvE skins… perfection

give everyone a tangible block bar so they can use skills to regen, reflect, etc. while mitigating damage and therefore making a necromancer class mechanic irrelevant… sounds good to me!

no.

Actually at this point necro feels like the only “fair” defensive mechanics. Despite a huge kitten health pool I’d rather call target on a necro than anything else where the whole burst is eaten by some bullkitten blocks that exist in such frequency that there is always something off cooldown.

I don’t see how this would make the mechanic irrellevant if some aspects of it, because they are healtheir than what we have now, are spread to pther parts of the game.

Considering how many things are unblockable in this game, blocks are already weak as it is. Why do you think most high tier engis aren’t running tool kit anymore?

I think moving and evading all the time works too well. There’s no reason whatsoever to stand still, with the sole exception of a few skills that root you in place.

We could use a way to ‘hold your ground’, with limitations. Something to make standing still an option, and make blocks work in a different way.

For example, a blue ‘guard bar’ could be introduced.

It’ll have 100 points of ’guard, and appear on the side of the health orb opposite to the endurance bar, mirroring it. The endurance bar would be moved to the left, the guard bar would be to the right.

When standing still, and only when standing still, part of the direct damage you would take is absorbed based on your toughness, but the guard bar goes down by 1 per attack when the damage is higher than a threshold based on your vitality. The higher your vitality, the larger the damage required to lower your guard, the higher your toughness, the more damage is absorbed by your guard.

A character focusing on boosting their guard would be strong against builds that deal countless hits of small damage, but not as strong against builds that deal few strong hits.

Also when standing still, the dodge button would no longer dodge. Instead, it would ‘raise the guard’, this would be akin to blocking in a fighting game such as Street Fighter or the King of Fighters. While your guard is up, damage is reduced by 90% regardless of toughness, but the guard goes down by 20 per second while your guard is up. Raising your guard is something you really want to save for the strongest attacks, but it can still be overpowered by coordinated spikes. Raising your guard would be a toggle, to stop, you either move or press the evade/guard key again.

The guard slowly goes up over time in combat, very fast outside combat, and there would be sigils and traits that can increase it like with endurance. Professions would have each at least 1 trait dealing with guard. I’d recommend replacing traits that give some attribute boost based on another attribute. Those are boring.
For example, the guardian trait changed would be Retributive Armor. The part “Gain ferocity based on your toughness.” could be replaced by something like “Deal 10% more damage when your guard is under 50%”.

An equipped shield would add 20 points to the guard bar.

Then, skills that can block any attack (e.g.: not just absorbing projectiles) would have shorter cooldowns and longer channeling, but they would block at the expense of Guard. These skills would also get a sequence skill to stop them on demand. Choosing what to block becomes more important, as you could waste your guard with certain attacks you’d rather take.
Blocking skills would only be usable if the character has guard. Unlike guard and raised guard, block skills would not require standing still unless the skill requires it.

When the guard reaches 0, the character gets a ‘guard break’. A guard break deals daze for 1 second, lowers your guard, cancels blocking skills and prevents guard from recovering for a short time (e.g. 5 seconds).

So standing still holding your ground or taking a big hit would actually be viable options, but you would not be able to spam blocks or keep your guard up permanently.