Guild Wars 2

[Note: This is entirely from a WvW/PvE perspective and is only applicable to WvW/PvE]

As you all probably know, with the upcoming expansion, ANet is decoupling stat bonuses from the trait trees. While I definitely support this change, as it opens up more flexibility in terms of gear, I have a few concerns.

Elementalist is heavily reliant on boons in general, but the ever-present Arcane tree has always provided adequate Boon Duration for almost every build. With the new change, that bonus will no longer exist. However, I am not opposed to using alternative means to achieve the standard 30% Boon Duration. The problem is that current alternative sources are bad and/or inflexible. There are two primary reasons for this:

1) Boon Duration is currently overvalued as an armor stat.
ANet has said that once they implement the new changes, they will adjust base stats and gear stats accordingly so that things will stay relatively the same as they are now. However, the only real way to do this would be to add Boon Duration as a gear stat. This presents a problem because ANet has been very inconsistent when it comes to valuing Boon Duration in relation to other stats.

For example, if you look at the trait trees themselves, 5% Boon Duration is equivalent to 50 stat points. This, in my opinion, is reasonable. But when you look at armor specifically, it is an entirely different story.

Giver’s armor replaces one sub stat on each piece of armor with 1% Boon Duration. If you add up all of the stats lost with a full set of Giver’s armor, you’ll see that you lose 224 stat points in order to get 6% Boon Duration. That amounts to ~37 stat points per 1% Boon Duration, which is a terrible trade off.

Based on ANet’s current distribution of Boon Duration, I would imagine that the new/updated gear will give 5% Boon Duration per piece so that an entire set of armor will give 30% Boon Duration, which makes up for the loss of stats from the Arcane tree. However, ANet needs to establish just how much Boon Duration is worth rather than simply replacing an entire sub stat. If the armor ratios stay as they are now, there will never be a reason to take Boon Duration over other stats.

2) Boon Duration is too associated with Healing Power.
Whether you’re looking at Water Runes or Giver’s armor, there is a clear association between Boon Duration and Healing Power. While Healing Power is a wonderful stat on ele, ANet needs to add a bit more variety if they want to encourage build flexibility.

I definitely understand that ANet may want people to specialize more (taking might duration or protection duration rather than both), but the current system where one can get a reasonable amount of general Boon Duration or a high amount of specific Boon Duration is fine and balanced.

Right now, it is fine for Boon Duration to be associated with Healing Power, but once the 30% Boon Duration from Arcane is gone, that simply won’t be acceptable anymore.

TL;DR: ANet, what are you doing with Boon Duration. Are you increasing the base duration of boons (please don’t). adding it to armor (please fix the ratios), or what?

Maybe that’s their way to nerf the sustain of Ele and other boon reliant classes :P
It is a bad thing in PVE but a pretty good thing in PVP.

Same goes to condition duration. Since they’re making most conditions stackable, in order to balance, they reduce the duration of all conditions by removing the trait bonus.

Maybe they should make Boon Duration work like Ferocity, instead of 1% and 2% it should give a stat boost like all other stats and work out a formula to convert it to percentage.

Toxsa.2701:

Maybe that’s their way to nerf the sustain of Ele and other boon reliant classes :P
It is a bad thing in PVE but a pretty good thing in PVP.

Same goes to condition duration. Since they’re making most conditions stackable, in order to balance, they reduce the duration of all conditions by removing the trait bonus.

sPvP balance is something else entirely, but that doesn’t make the change good by any means. For one, nerfing Boon Duration for the sake of nerfing ele is just really poor balancing technique. Ele’s problem in sPvP is not that it has boons. Those are there for a reason (see: lowest base stats in the game). The problem with ele in sPvP is that the Celestial amulet is overtuned. Change the Celestial amulet and ele is fixed. It’s that simple.

Regardless, your logic simply doesn’t apply because WvW and sPvP are two different game modes. ANet cannot hang WvW eles on the cross for the sake of poorly nerfing sPvP eles. Games just dont work that way. xD The change to Condition Duration is irrelevant in WvW/PvE because most meta condi specs don’t even run anything in the Condition Duration tree, and there are abundant alternative sources of Condition Duration if they did.

maddoctor.2738:

Maybe they should make Boon Duration work like Ferocity, instead of 1% and 2% it should give a stat boost like all other stats and work out a formula to convert it to percentage.

I think this is a really interesting idea. For one, it would require ANet to specify exactly how much Boon Duration is worth, and it would make it easier to understand stat cost in terms of gear. I really don’t know what they plan on doing, but I wish they would give us more information, or at least express that they are aware of the current problems with Boon Duration armor.

Iirc they’re not completely removing stats from the spec lines, just halving them so you don’t feel forced into a line for specific stats.

I have been worried about this for more than just the ele as the % based stats are taking a bigger hit than point based ones. I’d like to see them all moved to a point based system and have our armor sets either modified to have a 4th stat (other than celestial), or new sets released so we have more options for our boon and condi duration needs.

So we are going to get a 15% nerf to boon duration, which is big, but it’s not like we’re losing all of it.

Edit: I went back and read the post again, we are losing all stats except the profession specific ones, half of which will be standard to the class, the other half will be from a spec.

Looking around I can’t find anything Anet has said in regards to boon/condi duration.

I am hopping they make the 20% boon duration food into 40% and make the 6th rune on the boon duration sets give you a good bit of added boon duration. 0 boon duration ele is only bad for aura builds atument swapping still gives you a nice base duration and fury blasting from 6 fire is base 10 sec? still long enofe to be of use.

iirc, they also increased the amount of time boons last to counter this change.

Aerathnor.8305:

Looking around I can’t find anything Anet has said in regards to boon/condi duration.

Yeah, I hope they address it soon. I don’t even think they know what they’re going to do with it yet.

Jski.6180:

I am hopping they make the 20% boon duration food into 40% and make the 6th rune on the boon duration sets give you a good bit of added boon duration. 0 boon duration ele is only bad for aura builds atument swapping still gives you a nice base duration and fury blasting from 6 fire is base 10 sec? still long enofe to be of use.

I think food could be an interesting way to go about it. I mean, 40% is really, really strong for food, but if they don’t give us another viable means to get Boon Duration, I don’t think it’d be that bad.

Vinteros Asteano.1209:

iirc, they also increased the amount of time boons last to counter this change.

I haven’t seen anything about that! I kinda hope you’re right just for the sake of having an answer, but there are better ways to go about it imo. If Boon Duration doesn’t require an investment, it would just be a straight up buff to ele, which is weird, but I welcome the change if ANet thinks it would be balanced. They have so many options, it would just be nice if they gave us the slightest inkling.

Toxsa.2701:

Maybe that’s their way to nerf the sustain of Ele and other boon reliant classes :P
It is a bad thing in PVE but a pretty good thing in PVP.

Same goes to condition duration. Since they’re making most conditions stackable, in order to balance, they reduce the duration of all conditions by removing the trait bonus.

I would rather have a buff of boon hate especially in AoE format as well as condition that negates boon effect mainly found on necro a reverse version of resistance.

I would like to see a stat bonus selection that is separate from the trait lines. You would get one for the primary and one for the secondary lines:

Primary (pick 3)
+300
Power
Precision
Toughness
Vitality
Profession specific attribute (They seen to be integrating this one so not sure if that would work out still.)

Secondary (pick 3)
+30%
Condition Duration
Boon Duration
+300
Condition Damage
Ferocity
Healing Power

That way we would still have potentially all of the same stats as before, but not bound to the traits that we want to bring.

Another option would be new trinkets that would be the equivalent of the trait line bonuses, but that seems clunkier and people would be annoyed about having to get more gear for something they used to get for free.

I’m fine with the nerf to boon duration because it will work the same way for condi duration via base traitline stats.

Deft.4691:

I would like to see a stat bonus selection that is separate from the trait lines. You would get one for the primary and one for the secondary lines

This is my favorite idea so far. It would be equally accessible to everyone and save ANet the trouble of making new gear stats with Boon Duration. My only concern would be that everyone would choose Power/Precision/Ferocity and do unnecessary amounts of damage.

xDudisx.5914:

I’m fine with the nerf to boon duration because it will work the same way for condi duration via base traitline stats.

Most meta condi builds don’t run more than 2 points in the Condition Duration line, with the exception of engi. There are plenty of flexible ways to get Condition Duration so traiting for it isn’t really necessary for those specs. No reason to nerf boons because of that, imo.

TakeCare.3182:

I think food could be an interesting way to go about it. I mean, 40% is really, really strong for food, but if they don’t give us another viable means to get Boon Duration, I don’t think it’d be that bad.

I am looking at it on the lines of there being a +40% condition duration food and a -40% condition duration food so that 40% seems to be the major version for non stat buffs.