All skills and stats feel... meh

All skills and stats feel... meh

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Posted by: Miszou.3158

Miszou.3158

Is it just my imagination or do all the stats, traits and skills feel very underwhelming and inconsequential?

I mean, it really doesn’t seem to matter if I equip a weapon with +60 vitality or +60 power…. my damage doesn’t noticeably change and neither does my survivability.

It’s very difficult to see any benefit from using a skill such as “Hold the Line” or “Retreat”. The same five greatsword skills are cool and all, but it doesn’t really matter how much +condition damage I have, Binding Blade doesn’t seem to do any additional damage over time, and neither does setting mobs on fire.

Also, it can be really hard to see what is actually happening among all the combat fireworks. I was fighting a champion wasp last night and it took me 3 deaths and an analysis of the combat log to find out what I was dying from, because the attack animation looked almost exactly the same as the flying animation.

And that’s fine… live and learn and all that. But a heal that is only available every 40 seconds kinda forced me to plink away with the scepter and run whenever it got too close. Which seemed completely counter-intuitive for a Guardian…

Which reminds me, Shield of Judgement is another skill that doesn’t seem to have any noticeable effect. You still get hit and it still hurts.

Am I doing it wrong, or are all these things deliberately overly subtle and unimpressive? I’m currently level 52, just playing about with the open-world stuff and following the personal story (although I’m currently about 15 levels above it).

All skills and stats feel... meh

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Posted by: Cat Has Ducks.1982

Cat Has Ducks.1982

Stats do matter at end game big time. Check out this video comparing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-7gVxk_b2M

As for right now, just stack dat power for leveling.

As far as advice for surviving. It comes down to Reflect/Blind/Block/Dodge. Also shelter is a better heal skill, since it will actually mitigate and heal, while being on a shorter cool down.

Lord Chuck I – Guardian
Chuck The Stampede – Engineer
[Lg] Agatha – Dragonbrand

All skills and stats feel... meh

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Posted by: Shanks.2907

Shanks.2907

You’ll notice bigger jumps with the right gear and at level 80. Just try and work with power, precision and critical damage and you’ll start doing more damage. Condition damage is really not for guardians, even with the burns it’s not worth building for.

Champions are generally for groups to kill though. I’d stick to exploring (doing tasks and getting waypoints) and once you hit 80 check around the forums for a build that suits what you want to do.

All skills and stats feel... meh

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Posted by: CMF.5461

CMF.5461

deleted my response and moved it to the original thread with the video, because it was more applicable to that conversation

As far as your leveling woes:

Binding blade increases damage with power not condition damage apparently, unless they fixed that.

Stats at lower levels mean less because you do not have enough numbers to push them into meaningful areas of change. At 80, you will see it more as seen with that video.

Survival is never about outright tanking, so in order to survive you have to actively dodge/block/blind appropriately, and not rely on stat stacking to survive the hits.

That said if you pick up traits like renewed justice and justice is blind, you will see a greater field of survival in AOE trash fights by spamming virtue of justice as you make kills (lots of AOE blinds). Additionally sword/greatsword contribute to those AOE blinds to help survive.

Single target fights, mace helps as well with the on demand block every 15 seconds, it helps supplement your gap between dodge refresh. (mix in blinds as well).

Speaking of dodging, pick up vigorous precision, and you will have a faster dodge refresh, to help survival even more.

With all that said, to survive you need a moderate amount of crit chance, and the right weapons and you should be good.

Beyond the avoidance aspect, you can pick up traits further down the tree like the all well known Altruistic Healing or Monk’s Focus to gain some synergy with your utility skills and weapon abilities. Mix in Writ of the Merciful with Hammer or even Mace, and you have a decent layering of healing to help sustain in fights a bit better.

Now for damage, most open world fights while leveling, shouldn’t matter too much. I do find that while solo leveling, utilizing my condition damage helps me take on higher level foes, as it isn’t mitigated by toughness and level. (I think at 10+ levels, targets are immune to condition application).

Guardian only has burn, but it does help contribute to damage. Just don’t focus on it over power/crit/critdmg.

Again, you won’t have the stat range available while leveling to really make any of those stats shine, so I would focus on active survival and knowing the enemy target attack patterns, like you mentioned with the wasp queen.

I’m leveling a warrior right now and I noticed I’m having a much better time soloing some champions due to the layers of condition damage versus trying to raw damage thing when I was leveling my guardian. Things that are tougher die faster with that added damage.

(edited by CMF.5461)

All skills and stats feel... meh

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Posted by: Miszou.3158

Miszou.3158

You know… I don’t think any of that is the problem. When I think about it, I really don’t have any idea what a “good” value is for any given stat.

I seem to die more than I feel I should, so I add some vitality + toughness… but how much is enough? Is 600 toughness and 630 vitality good for level 52? Is it laughably bad? I have absolutely no idea what these numbers mean, where they should be at and whether by raising them how much my other stats will suffer.

Is 884 power too much? Again… I have no clue what this number means and how much damage I should be doing at this level.

Add to that the jack-of-all-trades trait system and I can’t decide whether I ought to build for teamwork (not that there’s many people on my server anyway) or solo, so I just plop points in whatever sounds good. I’ve picked up enough lingo on these forums to tell you that I am currently 20/0/10/10/0… but again, I have no idea if that is good, bad or ugly.

None of the skill descriptions sound particularly awesome… most of them having something like a 3 second buff with a 30 second cooldown. I mean… why bother for 3 seconds of mediocre damage reduction or a paltry handful of restored HP? 3 seconds later and the next hit is gonna take a 1/4-1/2 of my HP anyway, while I wait for my one heal to countdown.

I dunno… it just doesn’t feel “right”. Maybe I’m just jaded from playing things like Tera, where skills and combos flow naturally and obviously, attacks can be seen and dodged successfully because they’re not hidden behind a mess of flashy FX and you don’t spend most of a fight running in circles waiting for your heal to come off cooldown…

Maybe I’m just too old for this level of rock-paper-scissors.

All skills and stats feel... meh

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Posted by: Cat Has Ducks.1982

Cat Has Ducks.1982

I skimmed your last post. But just get armor with offensive stats. Your team utility comes from your traits and skills. Don’t warrior about Toughness/Vitality/Condi Damage/Healking power. Just go Power/Prec/Crit. For leveling, its pretty much Power and Prec.

Lord Chuck I – Guardian
Chuck The Stampede – Engineer
[Lg] Agatha – Dragonbrand