Guild Wars 2

Nerf Protection from 33% to 25% and buff Toughness’s Effectiveness?

This will give toughness a bit more of an advantage to toughness over health.

This will make people who have toughness/protection about the same as they are now, but also increase people who just have a bunch of toughness more effective, without making protection+toughness so powerful.

1 Remove the 916 base toughness, Armor should be your only starting option, however Armor and Toughness are the same.

Toughness definitely needs an improvement.

What they will probably do with protection is lower all the durations instead of lowering its effectiveness. (kind of like retaliation)

Could buff weakness to be a “consistent” 25% dmg reduction?

i dont see any issues with protection / toughness right now.

just because you cant kill someone, dont come crying to nerfing buffs.

Condition damage would probably need to be reduced across the board if Toughness got a buff, or conditions would probably start to crowd direct damage out of the meta. It’s also worth noting that what you’re suggesting would basically be building a mini protection buff into all professions, which could make the current bunker meta worse unless other adjustments besides a Protection nerf were made.

This will make protection even less worth picking up.

The way I see it is: Thoughness is a crappy static score that will help you without needing any kind of attention/skill. It’s always there mitigating damage. While Protection is a buff that you have to activate or have activated some way, with a rather short duration. Meaning that you have to actually time it for when the damage is incoming.
With that said, we still need the thougness as a stat to be able to go for more survival heavy builds etc. It is key for speccing/building your class. But should in no way be strong enough to render our damage mitigation abilities useless.

Don’t make this game into a “kitten game for kids” please. You should need to actually use a brain cell and time your damage mitigation etc.

Sure, protection only lasts about maximal 10 seconds if you spam all your defensive moves.. IF your profession even has it. Surely that must be nerfed unto the ground..

-_-

what i see is a guy with alot of toughness and little protection giving spells who dies to much and comes to the forums in the hope they will buff his specific build.

Idea is that mashing counter button when you think you see lots of damage coming is some super-skillful skilltastic skill!!!!….but building a toons gear and stat is just mindless, I guess! We can’t have the game requiring multiple types of thinking and different sorts of skills, that’s insanity!

Whenever somebody makes a constructive criticism and you start going on about “skill” or tell them to “L2P”…it’s a sure sign you have absolutely no point.

Zosk.5609:

Idea is that mashing counter button when you think you see lots of damage coming is some super-skillful skilltastic skill!!!!….but building a toons gear and stat is just mindless, I guess! We can’t have the game requiring multiple types of thinking and different sorts of skills, that’s insanity!

Whenever somebody makes a constructive criticism and you start going on about “skill” or tell them to “L2P”…it’s a sure sign you have absolutely no point.

Zosk you are right in some regards. The theorycrafting behind the really good builds takes somewhat of skill, and time to say the least. But to keep your head cool in a 2vs1, 4vs4 (or alike) takes quite some as well. And then you have to know what to look for, and actually be fast/decisive enough to use it before it’s late etc. Can’t say that that doesn’t take a kitten-load of skill either?!

The problem with your argument is that, while theorycrafting a new build takes time and knowledge of the game, it is still just you, sitting there with a spreadsheet or your trait/skill window in the mists thinking/testing for hours and hours. While to learn how to/when to use those few seconds of protection (to negate heavy burst/a death, not just to..use it) takes much more from your end. Besides anyone can go onto the forums and copy the latest “go to awesome” build for your class, and then copy it safely in the mists. While on the other side of the point you Can go to the forums/streams and see how other people do activate protection or even ask a good player, but to actually Do it in the heat of battle is a bit harder.

Bottom line, the knowledge for both parts is obtainable as easily/hard. But to actually implement/execute the protection is A lot harder than to copy a build in the mists.

Besides, if thoughness is the “go to” thing for defensive builds then there is no countering it for the enemies by skill. While if it’s protection you (as a enemy) can always bait it out, and then wait 3 seconds and Then queue the burst.

This (atleast my post) is not about “L2P”. It is simply about the fact that protection has a lot more inherent skill in it self. You could say that protection actually has a learning curve while thoughness has none. And therefore protection should be able to be a lot more rewarding.

The ease with which some professions gain the protection boon on a frequent basis needs to be toned down, but the buff itself seems pretty sound to me.

I don’t think Protection has a lot more skill…it seems the typical case of people associating skill with things they like about a game and calling other things skill-free. Some people on this forum especially want a very twitchy action-reaction, chase/escape 5v5 or smaller fight style game (and it seems like they’re getting it currently in this game). However, of course there’s “skill” involved with just about everything in every game so why even use that word if you want to make a serious point….

But to be specific, a Guardian with Shield equipped is going to use his Shield to gain protection pretty much whenever it cooldown is up and he’s taking (significant) damage…. not exactly rocket surgery here. You could probably just spam it honestly?

Zosk.5609:

But to be specific, a Guardian with Shield equipped is going to use his Shield to gain protection pretty much whenever it cooldown is up and he’s taking (significant) damage…. not exactly rocket surgery here. You could probably just spam it honestly?

Just proves to me that there is no point in arguing with you. You clearly have your mind made up, no matter what anyone say. I would not like to play a game you made my friend. Since you apparently considers skill being irrelevant and not a part of gaming.

And no, you are wrong. I play as a guardian and some times run with shield. And I never just “use it when the CD is off” to get protection… I Only use it when I am/think I am getting bursted/going low and needs survivability. And more often than not I don’t even use it on my self, but for bigger team fights where every one is taking damage/some one is being targeted.

/leaves the discussion.

Well the idea was to make up for a little more protection against unknown/unpredictable damage, the damage that comes before a fight starts when someone attacks you so you have a little faster chance to respond to it, and bringing its value up to vitality.

This would nerf nobody, because it would take just as much as before if you had both buffs up, which you normally would anyways if you were taking a lot of damage.

I figured this would help traits like rangers/warriors/necromancers/engineers which add a lot of toughness as well, bringing them more in balance with the other classes.

Just buff Vulnerability and spread burst damage,in other words nerf burst damage and make it so peps will need to coordinate with their debuffs and interrupts/CC in order to kill someone instead of lockdown/piupiu (Vulnerability would have to be given some serious love in such a case however).Some sort of brief immunity to CC will be needed for that as well.This way the game will become a lot more challenging and heavily promote teamwork and assisting IMO.

A bit more MMO and a bit less MOBA,please.You can’t compete with LoL and DOTA 2.

Leuca.5732:

The ease with which some professions gain the protection boon on a frequent basis needs to be toned down, but the buff itself seems pretty sound to me.

It’s an either/or situation. Either protection duration needs to be toned down or it needs to be less effective.

Right now protection grants about 1000 toughness and for some builds can be up pretty close to 100% of the time you can be hit at all (i.e. not dodging or blocking).

P.S. People like Rhythgar are spoiled by playing a class with such large access to protection. The problem with protection being the cornerstone of bunkering is that it is not close to equally distributed. One benefit of buffing toughness and nerfing protection would be that all classes have equal access to toughness.

Yukishiro.8792:

Leuca.5732:

The ease with which some professions gain the protection boon on a frequent basis needs to be toned down, but the buff itself seems pretty sound to me.

It’s an either/or situation. Either protection duration needs to be toned down or it needs to be less effective.

Right now protection grants about 1000 toughness and for some builds can be up pretty close to 100% of the time you can be hit at all (i.e. not dodging or blocking).

Actually, if you do the math, about 943 toughness (if you don’t stack it.), but if you add diminishing values, it comes out to be even more toughness if you fully stack it.

25% is still a fairly NICE buff. (8% nerf.)

And making toughness a bit better as a stat will improve the game as a whole.

Fook.3914:

just because you cant kill someone, dont come crying to nerfing buffs.

based on his post, it seems more likely that hes trying to bunker with a class without access to a lot of protection (like ranger maybe), and getting pwned

So how good is protection? Because this post got me thinking and Guardians can have +80% protection duration which equates to almost infinite protection. Thoughts?

Some applications of protection require no skill at all. The only example I can think of right now is the Guardian hammer auto-attack chain. You get protection from the symbol created on the final attack. Protection in this case happens simply from auto-attack and is not really something you’re going to “time” to skillful perfection.

Other application like “Hold the Line” and a traited Virtue of Courage can be applied skillfully.

Eurantien.4632:

So how good is protection? Because this post got me thinking and Guardians can have +80% protection duration which equates to almost infinite protection. Thoughts?

Protection reduces incoming damage by 33%, which is quite a lot.

I like the idea to buff toughness and nerf protection, because protection is not equally distributed among the classes, while every class has access to toughness.

I think the classes were supposed to be roughly equal, while still being unique
to bring forth a variety of different playstyles for each class.

For example defensive elementalists and offensive guardians, which is possible at the moment.

A warrior could never be as defensive as a defensive elementalist because warriors
lack the protection boon. The extra toughness they have has little impact, which is the case for the guardian too, but guardians have many healing skills and many skills that grant protection.

Thiefs don´t need to rely on protection, because they can stealth to escape damage, but by buffing toughness they would have the choice to play differently.

It´s not like the boon would be removed from the game entirely.
A guardian granting protection would still help their group and themselves with protection the same way they did before.

So even by changing protection and toughness in the way they reduce damage,
the different classes would stay unique.

The difference would be that classes are less dependent on the boon, if they can put points into toughness to be more defensive if they want to.

typingofthedead.5614:

Fook.3914:

just because you cant kill someone, dont come crying to nerfing buffs.

based on his post, it seems more likely that hes trying to bunker with a class without access to a lot of protection (like ranger maybe), and getting pwned

Yes, that was his point. Why should there only be a couple of professions with viable bunker builds?

Having a single boon be equal to almost 1000 toughness seems a bit odd, especially since it is spread very unevenly around the professions. Fury is an extremely strong offensive boon, and I believe it equals out to maybe 400 precision or so? 14 stacks of might = 490 power, 490 condition damage, or +980 to stats of some sort (and they don’t even compliment each other).

If fury gave +50% critical chance (i.e. about 1000 precision) people would rightly point out that certain professions can keep fury up much easier than others.

Arkanis Drako.5169:

Eurantien.4632:

So how good is protection? Because this post got me thinking and Guardians can have +80% protection duration which equates to almost infinite protection. Thoughts?

Protection reduces incoming damage by 33%, which is quite a lot.

I like the idea to buff toughness and nerf protection, because protection is not equally distributed among the classes, while every class has access to toughness.

I think the classes were supposed to be roughly equal, while still being unique
to bring forth a variety of different playstyles for each class.

For example defensive elementalists and offensive guardians, which is possible at the moment.

A warrior could never be as defensive as a defensive elementalist because warriors
lack the protection boon. The extra toughness they have has little impact, which is the case for the guardian too, but guardians have many healing skills and many skills that grant protection.

Thiefs don´t need to rely on protection, because they can stealth to escape damage, but by buffing toughness they would have the choice to play differently.

It´s not like the boon would be removed from the game entirely.
A guardian granting protection would still help their group and themselves with protection the same way they did before.

So even by changing protection and toughness in the way they reduce damage,
the different classes would stay unique.

The difference would be that classes are less dependent on the boon, if they can put points into toughness to be more defensive if they want to.

@Eurantien: Ehm, what kind of specc are you playing? Or is it simply so that you haven’t been playing since day two? Because boons got nerfed to the ground. I laugh when I see a boonguard these days. You can get up to a semi-decent amount of protection, but on the sacrifice of pretty much Everything else. Please keep up with the game and keep facts true.

@ Arkanis Drako: You are free to have your opinion, so wont discuss that. And you are right that not all classes have the same access to all things. And that is kind of the whole meaning of all this “professions” thing. Otherwise we could just have one class..if they are all gonna have the same things.

There should be professions that excel at defense, there should be professions that excels at burst, condition damage etc etc. Why else bother with the whole system? For the looks?..

And please, the day I as a guardian get the same mobility and burst/damage availability as a warrior I will happily give him access to a few seconds of protection.
All this ranting about how incredibly OP bunkers are, especially guardians, and how game breaking burst is etc etc has to stop. There is needs for balance, yes! But there Always will be, get used to it. Welcome to gaming!

The image that guardians are invaluable and OP derives from the past, when the so called boonguards reigned supreme with near constant protection, retaliation and a 33% upkeep block (more famously called “the block bug”). All these things are nerfed/fixed.
Boons are really not that valid any longer, and the bug is fixed since long. Can we please get past this?

P.S. and just to prevent a retaliation on this post: I know that it was not all about guardians, but more about the protection boon. But guardian Was targeted a lot, and constantly is and I’m tired of it. And the other professions that can use protection (mostly ele/engi) works pretty much the exact same way as guardians in that concern. D.S.

juno.1840:

Some applications of protection require no skill at all. The only example I can think of right now is the Guardian hammer auto-attack chain. You get protection from the symbol created on the final attack. Protection in this case happens simply from auto-attack and is not really something you’re going to “time” to skillful perfection.

Other application like “Hold the Line” and a traited Virtue of Courage can be applied skillfully.

Very true, but you solely use hammer for CC wars. If at all. I will not run around like a chicken to try and land three slow attacks in row just for ~1 second (?) of protection. And when used that way it is highly ineffective most of the times. Besides, the shorter the duration the less likely it will effect any hard hitting attacks.

The OP’s suggestion wouldn’t even hurt guardians at all, it would just make other professions able to spec to bunker as well. Considering the number of paid teams that take two guardians to every match, I’d say it’s worth considering.

As a bunker engineer, I’ll freely admit that I do use the protection on being cc’d trait, which is quite good since we don’t have any stability. But if protection gets nerfed and toughness gets buffed, I won’t lose any effectiveness at all, and neither will guardians, because bunkers will always use high toughness.

NevirSayDie.6235:

The OP’s suggestion wouldn’t even hurt guardians at all, it would just make other professions able to spec to bunker as well. Considering the number of paid teams that take two guardians to every match, I’d say it’s worth considering.

As a bunker engineer, I’ll freely admit that I do use the protection on being cc’d trait, which is quite good since we don’t have any stability. But if protection gets nerfed and toughness gets buffed, I won’t lose any effectiveness at all, and neither will guardians, because bunkers will always use high toughness.

You are probably right (minus about the 2xguardians. I rarely see paid teams go with two guardians, and it’s never more than one of them that is bunkering then..).
I guess it is a taste kind of thing. I prefer to rely on me using abilities and being able to mitigate damage very effectively for a short amount of time rather than to always, constantly mitigate a small amount of damage.

While we are pitching ideas I would like to propose a decrease in thoughness (would help with how casually people throw around the “bunkers are too powerful” argument I think) and increase in protections effectiveness (not duration mind you).

Just think toughness should reduce crit chance against you. Not too much of course.

Darksome.5647:

Just think toughness should reduce crit chance against you. Not too much of course.

THAT WOULD HELP a LOT…

Its just the difference between people with and without toughness is so low, its no wonder people some times just ignore it and stack boon duration/critical chance and bonus so they can have perma protection instead.

Um let’s not and say we did.
Protection can be specifically removed by opposition
Armor/toughness, cannot.
Both are passive but one can be deconstructed.
Game needs more deconstruction of defense, boon removal.

Reworking toughness is just so that there’s less issue of losing Protection and professions that do not use Protection have even higher upkeep with it, but this game does not need to get more defensive IMO. It already is fairly bulky.

I don’t know what you talking about the difference is low.
I can very easily feel the difference between Knight runes and Soldier runes as a thief.
Very easily between Berserker and Soldier.

playing Mesmer, in a Shaman rune, let a 100 nades smack me for all he’s got and shrug it off and heal up, where my thief would blow up if I sat there and ate it. If Toughness wasn’t living up to snuff it’s because the active, engaged defenses of a profession we’re faltering not the stat itself.

It has a significant bonus to those who use protection and that is this.
As it is now, if I remove your protection, I straight out removed your 33% defensive bonus. You want to make them losing that less significant which only further degrades the need of boon removal as I see it.

Playing Sword I am very conscious off the loss of Bountiful theft when I opt out for it for other traits if I’m going for more damage or some other form of utility. I have to straight power through more situations or back off when It’s a very opportune moment to be aggressive because I have to consciously wait for a boon to degrade or do a fool-hardy kamikaze. Boon removal in this game is kitten and everybody knows it. That’s the games main problem above all, and if it was better, trust we’d all be looking at a different game, and warriors would shine a lot more in relation to other professions because they don’t rely on deconstructable defenses.

Game needs indeed, more boon removal.

Boon removal just takes away from builds, only Necromancers and Thieves need boon removal, and they pay heavy prices for it.

They should make corrupt boon like epidemic. Always goes off regardless of los or anything. And maybe increase its cd to a minute if they can do this. Would be pretty cool. I mean corrupt boon is useless unless the opponent has boons. When I fight a mesmer who often doesnt have many boons and I am running corrupt boon/epidemic/signet of undeath and they are running mantras then how can I win? I have no utilities of any use for a 1 v1 and then have all theirs for 1 v 1 fights.

And yeh, nerfing protection seems an easy way to bring bunkers into line. They would probably have to nerf burst at the same time.

This is a really unfair change only if guardian get 10k more hp and damage increased by 25% or longer protection duration.

tom.7468:

This is a really unfair change only if guardian get 10k more hp and damage increased by 25% or longer protection duration.

I can agree with the second, protection should be a longer boon, but not give a second set of armor.

Buffing Toughness would be a lot to improve a lot of the games health.

Daecollo.9578:

Boon removal just takes away from builds, only Necromancers and Thieves need boon removal, and they pay heavy prices for it.

Boon removal needs to be accessible by every class – some classes should specialize in it more (Thematically at least, Necro’s, Mesmers and Thieves), but everyone needs a way to strip some boons – just the same way everyone carries some condition removal, but some are better at it than others.

The problem is, “bunkering” is defined primarily by your access to protection, regen, and to a lesser extent stability (Access to Retal is nice too). There are other factors (How well you can heal, immune/block/evade skills, condition removal), but there’s a reason that an ele (lowest base HP and armor) can bunker in a way that a warrior can’t – they can generate near constant uptime on the “Bunkering” boons in the game, and constant medium length applications of said boons makes boon removal on them a joke, unless you can strip every boon in 1-2 actions (this is probably less true after the Feb 26th patch, but ANet’s overall design philosophy on bunkers remains the same).

Protection is a ridiculously powerful buff. Its the equivalent of roughly doubling your base toughness – there isn’t another boon in the game that grants as much power in a raw stat equivalent (even fury is only 20% crit, which isn’t anywhere near an additional 916 precision). A buff that powerful should be used like a miniature"Oh kitten!" button – it should be used in addition to dodges and immune/evade/blocks to blunt the damage on big hits, not something that you specifically spec your class to have up nearly 100% of the time.

You do realize this is a heavy nerf to guardian right? this is why they have so low health pool because they rely on boons to stay alive so the only way for this to healthy for the game is to give them the base hp of a warrior.

tom.7468:

You do realize this is a heavy nerf to guardian right? this is why they have so low health pool because they rely on boons to stay alive so the only way for this to healthy for the game is to give them the base hp of a warrior.

Buffing Toughness would make guardians a lot more powerful. (since they have the best toughness tree in the game.)

I’m saying: nerf protection and buff toughness enough to compensate so they would be about the same.

All it would do is give you more builds, because now you don’t have to rely “so much” on one boon to keep you alive.

Take a look at this,
Base hp
Warrior, Necromancer 18,372
Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer 15,082
Guardian, Thief, Elementalist 10,805

Guardian will have the worst survival because they lack the mobility of a elementalist and the stealth of a theif. how the kitten is this a fair nerf? any profession can stack toughness this sacrifice other abilities.
And heavy armor make almost no difference. If you don’t stack toughness there is no difference.

tom.7468:

Take a look at this,
Base hp
Warrior, Necromancer 18,372
Engineer, Ranger, Mesmer 15,082
Guardian, Thief, Elementalist 10,805

Guardian will have the worst survival because they lack the mobility of a elementalist and the stealth of a theif. how the kitten is this a fair nerf? any profession can stack toughness this sacrifice other abilities.
And heavy armor make almost no difference. If you don’t stack toughness there is no difference.

Because what Daecollo is suggesting would increase Guardian damage reduction 8% across the board when protection wasn’t up, and would leave it as it is now when up. Other suggestions (my own included) are different, but his suggestion would only make guardians (and every other class) slightly tougher as a base.

Edit: Ninja’d by evil. So change….

Professions don’t need to be sturdier through toughness.
It’s background noise and part of the draw is this being an active game, and at the end of the day, protection is still more actively in the game than toughness which cannot be removed.