Guild Wars 2

After leading a group from zero to dungeon master the main thing I’ve noticed is this: Glass Cannon damage is too high.

There is a significantly noticeable difference between taking a glass cannon and taking a balanced character.

I personally feel this imposes this role on the group meta, making them require high damage roles over more stable builds and balanced builds. Especially when many bosses are tedious bullet sponges, which feel only there to impose a problem for the glass cannons to fix.

I feel the fault lies in crit damage from equipment, it is quite simply too high.

My suggestion is a hard cap on crit damage from equipment. And instead take that damage that would have come through crit damage on gear and place it on the might boon, in increasing increments based on how many stacks you have.

For example.
5 stacks, 5% crit damage.
10, 10%
15, 20%
20, 40%
25, 60%

The exact numbers would obviously be subject to balance. This would encourage and emphasis offensive party support and bring glass cannons more in line with other styles of play.

You want to hurt glass cannons?

Make toughness have a bigger effect on the ability to mitigate damage, lower boss hp totals, keep boss damage.

Cap bonus crit damage at 15% anything over that is wasted, no benefit from it AT ALL.

There you go, glass cannon is now properly in line with everyone else.

Runiir.6425:

You want to hurt glass cannons?

Make toughness have a bigger effect on the ability to mitigate damage, lower boss hp totals, keep boss damage.

Cap bonus crit damage at 15% anything over that is wasted, no benefit from it AT ALL.

There you go, glass cannon is now properly in line with everyone else.

Sorry, I do not agree with your solution remotely… this would make the role worthless and this is not my intent.

With crit damage cap around 60% and the change to might I suggested, glass cannons would still be as powerful as they are currently. But only with the help of their party, encouraging team play and support.

What makes them powerful IS the crit damage boost, the only way to limit them is to severely limit that damage boost. Realistically it should be capped at 25% (5 armor peices, 5% per peice). This creates a need to build more balanced, especially if you increase toughness’ ability to reduce damage.

A larger problem is the fact that bezerker build increases damage far more than direct power builds can ever achieve. In a balanced game, rely on straight damage should always have a larger net damage yeild, yet with current state of GW2…it is far more beneficial to be zerker build with raw crit damage being your primary source of damage.

Increase toughness so that people can actually tank a few large hits if need be, give us any other option than glass cannon to be noticable and people will build in other ways. Right now, zerkers is capable of TOO much damage for hardly any negatives.

Seriously, go full out toughness build, run some dungeouns, go full zerkers, run some dungeouns. The amount of damage mitigated in full toughness is not nearly enough for the amount of damage potential lost.

This thread is not about toughness, sorry…

Comparing toughness to crit damage is essentially like comparing an apple to an orange. People do not choose crit damage over toughness because toughness isn’t perceivably strong enough. They choose it because of the perceive increase in speed in which they kill things (and they probably like seeing lots of big numbers.) And secondly vitality is better for damage mitigation. Toughness does not reduce condition damage. And is best used to compliment vitality and not as a main stat.

Finally I say again… I in no way wish to destroy the glass cannon role. Everything you suggest would do so. If is not in the interest of the game to kill off a build to increase the usability of other builds, build diversity is good. However when one build style can vastly speed up a fight, there is something wrong.

Glass cannons are too effective at what they do compared to other builds and I do not think buffing other builds is the solution and would vastly over power the game. Nerfing the glass cannon to be more in line with other builds however would not break or ruin the game. And this is an opportunity for Arenanet to further encourage group synergy.

I have to say, glass cannon is absouletly fine as is. They have to sacrafise HUGELY in defences (vitality, toughness) to get that. Since this game allows dodgeing, which completely negates all dmg/cc effects no one can say they dont die. It just means they are skilled and understand the mechanics this game has to offer.

If you want to see this “role” taken out, do higher level fractals. You won’t see glass cannons that often in higher levels since the events in there get much to difficult even with a high amount of AR.

Alice.8694:

And secondly vitality is better for damage mitigation.

No… no it isn’t. Vitality actually doesn’t do ANYTHING for damage mitigation. Increasing your HP pool doesn’t “mitigate” anything. But even comparing them for what they are, Toughness is overwhelmingly the better defensive stat.

Perhaps support builds or gear should grant stronger (numerically and not just boon duration) boons to other allies (not to self even if it’s from the same source like For Great Justice)?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the point of a glass cannon build is to obtain damage levels typically unreachable by a more balanced or support build.

main problem i see with the OP’s solution is that he wants to use might for the change..
so your taking away raw damage and placing on a boon that some have alot less access to than other professions and the fact it isn’t up 100% of the time so when you dont have might up that swap in damage is not being appled.. if you can see where im coming from

i know you said the numbers are subject to change by 60% crit dmg for 25 might stacks would throw the game into chaos. my ele alone can stack 25 might, which means i could run knights/soldiers gear combo and be an unkillable machine that hits as hard as the current version of beserkers. All your doing is taking the “skill” outta playing class cannon. If i play glass im subject to dying in one to two hits. With your proposed change i could just stand there and eat everything while maintaining the same DPS. Your suggestion would also make some classes much more desireable then others. I.E boon stackers.

Yep why not make everyone equal. All skills and traits absolutely identical to each other. That’ll make it “fair” right?

Of course if they do that, then why have different builds/classes/races? I mean everything is the same so let’s just streamline it all. Remove all races except for race X. Now get rid of all the classes because they are all the same now anyway. Let’s just have one race with one skill set and everybody is now the same.

Hang on, armor comes in to it. Can’t have any differences there – we’re aiming for mediocrity and uniformity after all. So gender should be removed allowing for identical armor. In fact, lets just make one type of armor too.

Okay now we have one profession on one race with one gender, all with the same armor, same skill sets, same traits and same weapons. Now no one can complain about profession X being glass canon or profession Y being over powered. Everything is the same vanilla build.

Sure it ruins the fun and make it a boring and tedious thing to play. All enjoyment and ability to learn how to play the various skills/traits/weapons will be gone but at least the complaints about over powered this or glass canon that will be gone from the forum.

Glass cannon gets 2 hit in just about any fight if a person doesn’t have some serious skill. Everyone can make a balanced char or one stacked with vit and toughness and play casual.
So for me what you did is made a decision to play casual, then realised your build didn’t preform as well as you hoped it would and you decided to come to the forums and complain about the hardest to play build in GW2 and how it should be nerfed. Stop me when i’m wrong.

NinjaEd.3946:

If you want to see this “role” taken out, do higher level fractals.

That’s not what I wanted, congratulations in not reading my posts where I specifically said I did not want this… Twice infact.

Slein Jinn.8173:

Alice.8694:

And secondly vitality is better for damage mitigation.

No… no it isn’t. Vitality actually doesn’t do ANYTHING for damage mitigation. Increasing your HP pool doesn’t “mitigate” anything. But even comparing them for what they are, Toughness is overwhelmingly the better defensive stat.

for 100 toughness you can take an additional 38 damage for every 1000 melee damage you take.
for 100 vitality you can take an additional 1000 damage for every 1000 damage from any source.

Hands down, vitality is better.

Emmiere.1058:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the point of a glass cannon build is to obtain damage levels typically unreachable by a more balanced or support build.

And I never said it shouldn’t, I specifically said the advantage one glass cannon can bring right now feels far too high.

SwickHobo.5096:

i know you said the numbers are subject to change by 60% crit dmg for 25 might stacks would throw the game into chaos. my ele alone can stack 25 might, which means i could run knights/soldiers gear combo and be an unkillable machine that hits as hard as the current version of beserkers. All your doing is taking the “skill” outta playing class cannon. If i play glass im subject to dying in one to two hits. With your proposed change i could just stand there and eat everything while maintaining the same DPS. Your suggestion would also make some classes much more desireable then others. I.E boon stackers.

As it stands boon up time isn’t exactly a favorable role in grouping meta and glass cannons are far preferred over almost anything except a guardian except in high end fractals.
Glass cannons would still require skill, it’s not like I have remotely changed their gameplay style, by capping crit damage at say 60% from gear and traits. They’d still be heavy hitters that die when hit by a swift wing. The only difference is their full potential would require support from their team.
Perhaps the might solution is not the best idea, but isn’t that what these conversations are for?

Question:

If you put a cap on crit damage achievable (Some suggestions of 60% or 5% per piece of armour in this thread) then what stop everyone and their cat hitting the cap with glass cannon gear and then using the REST of their gearslots to put in tanky stats?

As doing this would mean that Glass Cannons would be doing max damage without having to lose out on defences (They’d remove the Glass out of the “Glass Cannon” while your capping of the Crit bonus is removing the Cannon)

Taril.8619:

Question:

If you put a cap on crit damage achievable (Some suggestions of 60% or 5% per piece of armour in this thread) then what stop everyone and their cat hitting the cap with glass cannon gear and then using the REST of their gearslots to put in tanky stats?

As doing this would mean that Glass Cannons would be doing max damage without having to lose out on defences (They’d remove the Glass out of the “Glass Cannon” while your capping of the Crit bonus is removing the Cannon)

Hmm, a good point…
Alternatives would be making crit damage a more valuable stat… Reducing the amount you get on each item.

Problem is , whats good for PvE can be gamebreaking in Wv3.

Meryt.9823:

Problem is , whats good for PvE can be gamebreaking in Wv3.

Honestly crit damage seems just as big of an issue to wvwvw balance, to be honest. However I would really hope PvE is not balanced around an inherently imbalanced game mode such as WvWvW. That would be terrible.

Alice.8694:

After leading a group from zero to dungeon master the main thing I’ve noticed is this: Glass Cannon damage is too high.

LOL
So, after you have complete all dungeons you said to Anet: ok, let’s nerf us?

No
way

We all wanna done and uber-farm all dungeons in the GC specs too

SilverWF.4789:

Alice.8694:

After leading a group from zero to dungeon master the main thing I’ve noticed is this: Glass Cannon damage is too high.

LOL
So, after you have complete all dungeons you said to Anet: ok, let’s nerf us?

No
way

We all wanna done and uber-farm all dungeons in the GC specs too

I’m not a glass cannon, sorry to ruin your little joke. These are my observations from taking a 5th wildcard pug member into an otherwise static organized group and how glass cannons effect a run compared to any other spec, including other forms of damage.

Alice.8694:

SilverWF.4789:

Alice.8694:

After leading a group from zero to dungeon master the main thing I’ve noticed is this: Glass Cannon damage is too high.

LOL
So, after you have complete all dungeons you said to Anet: ok, let’s nerf us?

No
way

We all wanna done and uber-farm all dungeons in the GC specs too

I’m not a glass cannon, sorry to ruin your little joke. These are my observations from taking a 5th wildcard pug member into an otherwise static organized group and how glass cannons effect a run compared to any other spec, including other forms of damage.

I’m talking about them too

tbh i dont see what the issue is, yes a glass cannon kills faster than a balanced build, that is sort of the definition of build variety.

a balanced build will also kill faster than a tank/support build,should we nerf balanced builds as well? no because thats what build variety is about.

just because one build is better at something does not mean all others will be ignored.

as others have said, glass cannons are glass, while they greatly speed up a fight they always need to be concentrating as forgetting to dodge once can result in them eating dirt thus removing their dps from the encounter. the more glass cannons you add to the team the more prone to wipes you become.

extreme builds also put a bigger emphasis on player skill, a bad cannon will constantly die, a good tank wil. push decent dps.

none of these need nerfing, the bigger problem is the ease of dungeons these days, they sorely need a hard mode that is at least as difficult as pre nerf dungeons if not much more as right now theres not much stopping good players rolling in mf armour and doing as well as if they were in full zerker or such

Taril.8619:

Question:

If you put a cap on crit damage achievable (Some suggestions of 60% or 5% per piece of armour in this thread) then what stop everyone and their cat hitting the cap with glass cannon gear and then using the REST of their gearslots to put in tanky stats?

As doing this would mean that Glass Cannons would be doing max damage without having to lose out on defences (They’d remove the Glass out of the “Glass Cannon” while your capping of the Crit bonus is removing the Cannon)

Now THIS is a good question.

However, ArenaNet has said more than once infact that glass cannon builds are out of hand.
My suggestion was the pvp suggestion, allow toughness to be able to be stacked enough to make a glass cannon worthless. Toughness still gives the weakness to condition damage making it a choice on who you wish to be weak to. This also creates a niche for balanced builds, being neither worthless against any specialty build while also not having any huge advantages.

I love how the OP is like “this isn’t a toughness thread” no it is about trying to create a balance.

We do NOT want a pvp stat in this game, yet zerker builds I see ruining pvp fun with various 2-3 shot mechanics. So have toughness (NOT armor, this is specifically toughness) reduce crit chance on enemies. Have vitality reduce enemy crit bonus damage. This allows people who opt to play tanky to do so without any artificially increased stats.

Pve…zerkers is not a problem, my balanced build does equivilant damage to them over the course of a dungeoun/fight, and I have had many zerker warriors watch as I just let enemies and heavy boss attacks hit me on occasion and walk away with a laugh while that same enemy puts them a hair from death, after a run usually get asked questions on my build and stat spread by zerker wars. A balanced build that hits hard is not hard to do for some proffessions. Yet these same builds are impossible to pull off in spvp due to limitations of stats (yet, amusingly, a near perfect copy of zerker stats is available in runes).

Runiir.6425:

My suggestion was the pvp suggestion, allow toughness to be able to be stacked enough to make a glass cannon worthless.

Please in future read the title and post of the thread, this is solely concerning the PvE aspect of glass cannons. If you want to discuss the PvP implications, make your own thread with that topic.

Alice.8694:

NinjaEd.3946:

If you want to see this “role” taken out, do higher level fractals.

That’s not what I wanted, congratulations in not reading my posts where I specifically said I did not want this… Twice infact.

What your asking is just ridiculous, glass cannons sacrafise many things to get that dmg. People choose (keyword) glass to speed fights up. Most people however don’t understand how squishy they become and can cost your party a wipe or two. Berserker isn’t required, just as skipping groups of enemies in exp dungeons isn’t required. People just like to do it to speed things up but clumsy mistakes will overall slow you down much more than playing it safe (in some dungeons). You can just as easily wiggle things down with power/prec/toughness if you wanted, but you will still have to dodge a thing or two.

On a side note, kudos to the people who don’t go for the quickest route and actually do all the events in exp dungeons.. I praise you and wish I found you more often.

Alice, I see what your saying, so many people feel that if your not X build then you have no place. With that GC builds are going to be that X build, and defeat the purpose of how Guild Wars is intended to be, which is play your way.

Although I can tell you right now they will not nerf anything, this is from a developers mouth his own words. They did it to the spirit rangers and said they wont do it again, essentially nerfing is playing whack a mole with the professions and they will not do that. Although what they will do is raise the other professions up or other aspects up to make those a viable and way to play. So I know this is not about toughness and it is about GC, BUT if they upped the effectiveness of Toughness and healing power up it would push people into making different aspects rather than one.

As it stands now and is becomming the norm fast,
GGC builds = more damage faster downing of boss, possible faster death
Support builds = Stats supporting it are useless and can not do enough damage and are not worth playing
Control Builds = Stats supporting this are sup par and can not put out enough damage.
Now all types of play are not worth playing minus the GC build because the damage is just not there and the supporting stat is under powered. If the supporting stat would be buffed up a little bit, it would make the time worth doing less damage meaningful and you would see less GC builds.

Toughness does need a little boost, but Critical Damage is fine in pve/pvp, fights already last too long.

Personally I think two things need to happen:

- Weakness debuff should have 50% of crits become normal hits.
- Sigil that grants toughness stacks.

I see protection as the counter to might. Having toughness being a total counter to 100+ crit damage glass cannons is too OP as toughness + high condition removal = invincible to all but a zerg. However having a tool to help counter power climb (Sigil of Stone anyone?) plus a debuff to counter glass cannon would work.

Depends on the class. A glass cannon of warrior or thief packs a punch but shatters when put under stress. A glass cannon of, say, ranger(I play one) deals only average damage and is just a sturdier version of an intoxicated thief.

The balance system in general is out of hand.. in this game people can deal in general way too much damage compared to the maximum pool of health points a character can have…

When I look at GW1, where we had Maximum say mostly between 550 and 650 Hp only, the most damage you received there in the game lied between approx 50- max 150 damage or so and the higher damages need either always first some preparations first, meaning you need some time to dish out heavy damage (letting enemies some time to prepare for it) 150 damage of basically 650 HP is 23,07%

here you have like 14k to 30k Hp, with the difference the huge balancing problem of classes having double as much health, than others, where in GW basically all had very similar to same high health and if some had alot more, than this was either temporary only, or if not temporary, then it was based on perma enchants which reduced your energy regen and were also only effective in places with no enchant removing enemies…

here you can easily deal to players damage up to 15k+ being able to instakill people wth some absoliute OP glass cannon builds..even if your not going for the imba glass cannons, even with more balanced builds you can easily deal high damage, but without any preparations!!
GW2 is action based, here the gameplay lets you only very small time for reactions
GW2 is a much faster paced game and that why we feel, that you die much faster in this game, even if the damage ratio here in GW2 is lesser than in GW1.
basically 2,5k damage to a 14k character is like 17,86%
the same damage to a 30k character is then naturally only the half of that basically.

The factor of mass comes then also into play, what makes the system in GW2 so terrible especially for WvW ..
In GW1 theres nothing compareable to GW2.
In GW1 theres no place, where you have so meny enemies hitting you so fast, that you basically die in a blink of an eye, like in GW2’s WvW.

i think GW2 would be just better balance, if the battle system based on the damage you can receive, wouldn’t be so extremly fast paced, that you oftenly have no time for any reactions, before you like already dead on the ground, due to the game letting us receive too much damage in too short time.

When then also such things like culling play also a factor…
To me in a certain way felt battles in GW1 more exitign and epic, because they took some realistic time, that you could see the usage of tactics to win them ..

In GW2 you basically see no tacts, the battle system looks flatminded, because tactis seems to be unimportant, everythign that just seems to count only in GW2 is simple burst damage..who can faster dish out huge amounts of damage to just overwhelm the enemies first, before he can counter and that doing best together with a big zerg in your back…

So basically I’m for nerfs into that direction.. but Anet should be just careful, not to death nerf crit builds compared to condition damage ect.

easier idea:

Remove crit damage from the game

re-balance all damage around its absence

This will also indirectly nerf bunkers because balanced builds will output more damage.

Slein Jinn.8173:

Alice.8694:

And secondly vitality is better for damage mitigation.

No… no it isn’t. Vitality actually doesn’t do ANYTHING for damage mitigation. Increasing your HP pool doesn’t “mitigate” anything. But even comparing them for what they are, Toughness is overwhelmingly the better defensive stat.

Effective hp is a combination of total health pool, damage reduction, and the damage and healing you are receiving which equate to how long you will live. So yes hp pool is mitigation because it’s mitigating against death.

Orpheal.8263:

The balance system in general is out of hand.. in this game people can deal in general way too much damage compared to the maximum pool of health points a character can have…
…

here you have like 14k to 30k Hp, with the difference the huge balancing problem of classes having double as much health
…

here you can easily deal to players damage up to 15k+ being able to instakill people wth some absoliute OP glass cannon builds..even if your not going for the imba glass cannons, even with more balanced builds you can easily deal high damage, but without any preparations!!

Excellent post and I agree with it. GW1 also had trinity: dedicated healers. Healing and protection skills often had much shorter activation than the equivalent skills in GW2 (3-8 s cooldown, compared to 20-60 s cd in GW2). This allowed a good monk with fast reflexes to counter a burst of many enemy players shooting at a single target e.g. using skills like infuse health (mere 1/4 s casting time, usually healing over half the health bar).

It almost feels like Anet is not playing their own game. They call the new culling “improved”, despite a lot of people are complaining about it in forums. The culling got also worse for pve! Now you sometimes cannot see your own team mates or the huge enemy zerg just pops at your feet. Nothing to be done, except see your character downed and then dead. People are feeling very frustrated. And Anet could at least quickly revert to the original culling, which had serious issues as well, but was more logical.

In GW2, the big problems are the total imbalance between the professions. Just notice how some professions are much more common in WvWvW and pvp to see why profession are easy and overpowered and:

1. Burst damage is out of control. No fast attack (like autoattack from any weapon, e.g. backstab) should do more than 3k damage. No slow attack, which is telegraphed (such as warrior’s kill shot or elementalist’s churning earth should do more than 5k damage. The latter are easier to avoid, because they give the player more reaction time and the attacking player’s animation warns about it.
2. The defensive skills are too few and have too long cool downs. Stun breaks are very important in pvp and also pretty essential in WvWvW. Currently many stunbreak skills have 60 second cooldown, which is too long time Mesmers and thieves have access to 6 stunbreak skills, while ranger has only 2 stunbreaks (but can transfer stun to her pet using trait).
3. The healing skills scale extremely badly with healing power. For most professions it makes no sense to invest to healing power as it gives so little in return (I made a thread about it. Healing skills often have long cooldown (25-40 s) and slow activation time (1.25 second)

Fixes for the above issues:
1. Hard limit the burst from a single enemy to 3k for fast attacks and 5k for slow attacks.
2. Since there is no dedicated healers give each profession more even tools to avoid damage and have stunbreaks. I play all 8 professions. Now 4 professions feel a bit overpowered: thief (massive burst, ability to enter stealth too often and teleport to safety with shadowstep), mesmer (ability to avoid enemy damage with clones, also has stealth and teleports), D/D bunker elementalist (constant stack of boons and big regeneration in water to mitigate damage, combined with high mobility e.g. ride the lightning), bunker guardian. Needless to say these 4 are very common in WvWvW and spvp. People always flock to easy overpowered choices and then defend them in forums with posts like “learn 2 play”.
3. Main healing skills should have faster activation time e.g. 1/4 to 1/2 seconds. This would have almost unnoticable effect in pve. Make healing skills and healing related traits e.g. warrior’s adrenal health, scale with healing power. Slightly reduce the base heal amount, but make it heal clearly more if the person has invested many hundreds points to healing power.

Continued in the next message:

Despite I wrote that bunker D/D elementalists and guardians are overpowered in the current meta, that is not the core of the problem. The core of the problem is the burst. If the burst would be toned down, there would be much less reasons to play a bunker.

No bunker will survive forever or can protect an important NPC, let’s say a guild lord, forever. A bunker would be the last man standing on a losing side. Lots of conditions, life steal, knock down and knock back will eat any bunker. Smart people would rather play a more balanced build then and we would see more variety in the game. The excessive burst makes some people to play their counter: bunker. And thus we have only few builds: glass cannons and bunkers.

Nerf the burst and we would see a better, more varied pvp and WvWvW. Then tackle the broken game mechanisms, stealth and teleportation, which still have no hard counter. Calling AoE a counter for stealth in WvWvW must be a bad joke, especially with current culling. It should be no surprise that most players hate to see a completely invisible enemy down you in a blink (“unknown hits you for xxx dmg” <- not even telling which world invader was hitting you) or an invisible enemy stomping you. Now before some people start to write rude replies e.g. using the n**b word or writing useless stuff like “l2p”. I did yesterday, once again, over 70 enemy invader kills, while dying 4 times myself in euro tier #1. All own deaths due culling.

Most players would prefer fair even fights where you can actually see the enemy most of the time. The stealth issues, combined with culling (aka enemy zerg rendering only when it is right next to you), are making people to stop playing the game.

I made a theif specifically to kill things fast because i know this is what their good at. if they get nerfed im just gonna reroll to the second highest dps warrior/mesmer or w/e when i play wvw i dont wanna spend forever to kill enemies that’s not fun. In dungeons i rarely use this character. And like someone have already mentioned if they get nerfed this will make other more defensive builds overpowered. TLDR: → Not gonna happen. But if theif get nerfed well then time to reroll and boost full dps I’m not slacking…

This is why official forums get taken less seriously over time.

tom.7468:

And like someone have already mentioned if they get nerfed this will make other more defensive builds overpowered.

I am not suggesting to nerf the overall damage, just the burst. The overall damage would remain roughly the same. Please explain why defensive builds would become overpowered if the excessive burst damage would be toned down a bit.

Deniara Devious.3948:

tom.7468:

And like someone have already mentioned if they get nerfed this will make other more defensive builds overpowered.

I am not suggesting to nerf the overall damage, just the burst. The overall damage would remain roughly the same. Please explain why defensive builds would become overpowered if the excessive burst damage would be toned down a bit.

Because then they would be closer to these burst classes while maintaining high defences. Shouldn’t see the best of both worlds in pve or pvp, and glass cannons generalyl don’t. Some builds do, but I hardly see crit dmg as a problem (especially in spvp, where it is capped really low).

NinjaEd.3946:

Deniara Devious.3948:

tom.7468:

And like someone have already mentioned if they get nerfed this will make other more defensive builds overpowered.

I am not suggesting to nerf the overall damage, just the burst. The overall damage would remain roughly the same. Please explain why defensive builds would become overpowered if the excessive burst damage would be toned down a bit.

Because then they would be closer to these burst classes while maintaining high defences. Shouldn’t see the best of both worlds in pve or pvp, and glass cannons generalyl don’t. Some builds do, but I hardly see crit dmg as a problem (especially in spvp, where it is capped really low).

I agree that in pvp the crit damage is capped due very limited set of gear (amulets), but I think your logic of claiming they would do similar damage is wrong.

Assuming that the stats would be balanced. Each player could spend up to 1000 points (note that in pve/WvWvW you cannot have gear which gives maximum points to all possible stats, you need to choose how you “spend” your points):
A tank puts 500 to toughness and 400 vitality and just 100 to power. Sturdy, but does very little damage.
A glass cannon puts 100 to toughness, 100 to vitality and 800 to power. Squishy, but does tons of damage.
A balanced character puts 350 to toughness, 300 to vitality and 350 to power.

Do you really think the tank would have the same overall damage if he spent almost all his points to defense? Nope. A tank would just be a tank, unable to kill anything, unless enemy stands still and even then it would take time. Tanks would still serve a purpose e.g. use siege weapons under heavy enemy fire or revive team mates.

A few basic problems with nerfing glass cannons:

FIRST that would make every dungeon and encounter shift to the uber lame tank and spank while the meat head qqs for heals, the dps draws aggro and dies and the healers swear… all calling eachother stupid. Its a lame system no matter how many “mechanics” they add to try and spice it up, which is why Anet built GW2 as it is.

Second: To the idea of a “balanced” character… WRONG. I’m sorry, but if you or your party can’t dodge a red circle or equip and USE a skill to block/reflect/dodge the nasty attacks, it really is a learn to play issue. It just takes time, especially for new people who are used to turning off their brain and rolling their heads on the keyboard in tank and spanks… In fact, it is a bit more akin to the speed and style of FPS games.

Last: Anet also designed the boss fights (apparently with the notable exception of Zhaitan, and a couple others) to be hard, and fast… which suggests outright and means in practice that you have to lay on the hurt and kill it in 2-5 minutes or risk getting stomped by that boss’s 10-20 second recharge 1 shot skill… as opposed to spending an hour to kill 1 fool where the only danger is that somebody wipes the whole shebang by jumping into the wrong colored circle at the 59th minute.

As for meta group functions, the ones who don’t put out the massive dps have other things typically that make up for it… Mesmers casting AoE quickness, any number of classes who stack vulnerability (20+ stacks makes it go fast), or give reflection, spot heals, CCs, etc… there are ways around the whole glass cannon thing without having to shred the whole concept.

also several posters pointed out and i agree that your statement about having finished all the dungeons and paths, and are now wanting the way nerfed was extremely selfish looking.

Inimicus.7162:

A few basic problems with nerfing glass cannons:

FIRST that would make every dungeon and encounter shift to the uber lame tank and spank while the meat head qqs for heals, the dps draws aggro and dies and the healers swear… all calling eachother stupid. Its a lame system no matter how many “mechanics” they add to try and spice it up, which is why Anet built GW2 as it is.

Second: To the idea of a “balanced” character… WRONG. I’m sorry, but if you or your party can’t dodge a red circle or equip and USE a skill to block/reflect/dodge the nasty attacks, it really is a learn to play issue. It just takes time, especially for new people who are used to turning off their brain and rolling their heads on the keyboard in tank and spanks… In fact, it is a bit more akin to the speed and style of FPS games.

Last: Anet also designed the boss fights (apparently with the notable exception of Zhaitan, and a couple others) to be hard, and fast… which suggests outright and means in practice that you have to lay on the hurt and kill it in 2-5 minutes or risk getting stomped by that boss’s 10-20 second recharge 1 shot skill… as opposed to spending an hour to kill 1 fool where the only danger is that somebody wipes the whole shebang by jumping into the wrong colored circle at the 59th minute.

As for meta group functions, the ones who don’t put out the massive dps have other things typically that make up for it… Mesmers casting AoE quickness, any number of classes who stack vulnerability (20+ stacks makes it go fast), or give reflection, spot heals, CCs, etc… there are ways around the whole glass cannon thing without having to shred the whole concept.

also several posters pointed out and i agree that your statement about having finished all the dungeons and paths, and are now wanting the way nerfed was extremely selfish looking.

First, no it wouldn’t change the feel of the fights at all… But since you didn’t actually supply any justification for this, i’m not gonna even bother refuting it.

Second… What are you on about, what does a balanced build have to do with avoiding aoe? Are you even in the right thread?

“Lastly” the entire point of this observation is that most things other builds can bring are not as valuable as pure damage. Which was kinda the point you apparently missed entirely.

Finally… I find it hilarious that explaining I’ve got some experience in dungeons becomes a personality and character attack. That somehow making suggestions to improve dungeons makes me selfish. As if I’m going to stop doing dungeons now since i’ve seen them all and therefore won’t be affected by the suggestions I’m making… How pathetic a personal attack can you get? I enjoy playing dungeons, I still do several a day, despite needing no gear or wanting any tokens and would like the encounters to be more fun and interesting. I’d like other classes to be just as valuable with what they bring to a fight as the glass cannon is. And right now, I don’t see it… In fact if you can avoid damage as any other build but guardians, you can avoid it as a glass cannon too. Making a well played party of glass cannons > everything else.

Just give us a trinity system and we can all be happy playing which ever role we want. It’s what the game is lacking anyway.

Nerfing glass cannon is a bandage fix, when Anet designed the game for people to go for that type of setup. For example, crappy NPC (such as in escort events) that dies in a few hits to mobs and then you’re basically going “oh kitten, RUN!” if you don’t kill them before the NPC dies; party not being rewarded loot because they do not do as much dmg or have as much aoe skills compared to others; healing, rezing or give boons to allies that is not in your party gives you no reward etc…

I played support in other games, and they are really the life saver or breaker for the party. I tried to play support role here and it’s is just MEH, because of long CD (avg ~45-60 secs) of all support/defense skills compared to avg ~6-30 secs to most offensive skills (depends on if traited for lesser CD also)

If you weigh out the pros and cons for doing damage or go with defensive trait, damage wins in “most” pve cases; and that’s because it is how Anet designed the game to be at this moment. If they start to reward people for playing a support role or use defensive trait, I will be happy to go with it.

Omg, had to skip a few books. The simplest way to fix crit damage is to revert the base crit damage from 150% to just 100%. If people want to go berserker built let them have it.

The problem with crit builds is that they get that 50% damage buff so key for criting. Remove that and you fix the gear.

toughness simply needs more love i think ,power escalates damage greatly and then if you add crit damage to the factor the damage increase is massive over 100% in cases i had 110% crit damage using Rare and green gear so that means it could be higher with exotics and food etc.

Add a critical healing attribute, fixed.
Critical healing would not affect regeneration, just healing, giving a percentage chance
to get a burst heal.

Alice.8694:

Slein Jinn.8173:

Alice.8694:

And secondly vitality is better for damage mitigation.

No… no it isn’t. Vitality actually doesn’t do ANYTHING for damage mitigation. Increasing your HP pool doesn’t “mitigate” anything. But even comparing them for what they are, Toughness is overwhelmingly the better defensive stat.

for 100 toughness you can take an additional 38 damage for every 1000 melee damage you take.
for 100 vitality you can take an additional 1000 damage for every 1000 damage from any source.

Hands down, vitality is better.

Except that that’s patently false. Adding 1000 hitpoints does not allow you to take an extra “1000 damage for every 1000 damage”. Adding 1000 hitpoints allows you take an extra 1000 hitpoints one time for every time you’re fully healed, which, given the way healing works in GW2, generally means once per fight.

The way that healing is set up in GW2 really favours mitigation over expanded health pools more than just about any other model. All classes have access to significant amounts of self-healing, but the forms that healing takes are such that “overhealing” (when the value of the heal is greater than the amount needed to fully refill the player’s health pool) is almost never a factor. The effect of that is that fights generally involve considerably more damage than a single health pool, yet because players are almost never overhealed during a fight, they only benefit from expansion of that health pool at the start of the fight. If there were no appreciable sources of healing in the game, or if there were ready sources of complete heals or disproportionately large heals, then the landscape would be different, but that’s not how GW2 is structured.

Let’s say you’ve got 25k hitpoints, which is a fairly middle-of-the-road number. It varies quite a bit with build, but let’s say you can replenish 25k hitpoints over the course of a minute with your healing skill and regeneration boons, which again is a fairly middle-of-the-road number. I’ll use your numbers for Toughness, but my understanding of the underlying mechanics is that trying to distil it to a fixed percentage is a fool’s errand; yours is a reasonable (quite conservative) estimate, though, so I’ll run with it.

So in order for someone to kill you they’ve got to deal 50 000 damage over that minute. If you add 100 toughness to the equation, that’ll shave 1900 damage off of the 50 000, meaning they’d have to deal 51 900 damage to kill you. If you’d added 100 vitality instead, they’d have to deal 51 000. So the 100 vitality has proven just over half as valuable. And the longer the fight is extended, the bigger that gap grows. If we stretch that fight out to two minutes, now we’re looking at 75 000 health to chew through, which climbs to 77 850 with an additional 1000 toughness or 76 000 with an additional 1000 vitality. Vitality is great for giving you a cushion to survive the burst from a glass cannon build, but beyond that it doesn’t really do a whole lot for your survivability. In any kind of extended fight, even small amounts of mitigation will always trump an expanded health pool. The only context within GW2 that would favour Vitality over Toughness would be a string of one-off 1v1 encounters with glass cannon builds.