Guild Wars 2

TL;DR: All attacks generate 1 strike of adrenaline, regardless of the number of targets hit. Reduce the number of strikes needed to fill the bar from 10 × 3 to something like 6 or 7 × 3. Revert the 3s pulse for Dec 10ths combustive shot, to 2s or 1s.

Adrenaline is a fairly straight forward mechanic, generate ‘strikes’ with each swing, spend them to activate burst skills. Some skills and traits grant you free adrenaline, and some even reward you for having a high adrenaline.

But the core of the system has a bit of an odd quirk, which has always existed. Each foe struck generates a strike. Therefore, if you hit one foe with an auto-attack, you’ll generate 1 strike. If you hit 3 foes with that same attack, you’ll generate 3 strikes.

Therefore, odd situations occur, where your adrenaline generation can literally triple by having extra foes nearby. This is part of the reason the Dev’s are nerfing Combustive shots adrenaline gain;
If you hit 5 foes with 4 pulses, that’s a total 20 adrenaline.

My suggestion to balance this out, is the following: All successful attacks generate 1 strike of adrenaline, regardless of the number of targets struck. As a result, the adrenaline bar would be shortened somewhat, to keep adrenaline generation roughly the same. As it stands, it takes 30 strikes to fully fill (10 strikes per bar, 3 bars). I’d suggest reducing the number to around 6 or 7 strikes per bar.

With that out of the way, combustive shot can be set to pulse every 1 or 2 seconds, instead of every 3 seconds. Pulsing every 3 seconds is apparently only being changed to nerf adrenaline gain.

Adrenaline gain or not, Comb shot pulsing every 3 seconds is painful! Many other AOE skills (Rangers barrage) pulse faster, in some cases MUCH MUCH faster. Barrage 0.6 second pulse, vs Combustive shots inc 3s pulse.

That sounds like a fairly massive nerf for adrenaline generating outside of Combustive Shot.

Guess what? Some people use burst skills that are not Combustive Shot.

Can’t say I would get behind this.

Go to the mists and lay down a combustive shot on some golems. Let me know how much adrenaline you get. Thanks. lol

Answer: Combustive shot doesn’t give ANY adrenaline.

Olba.5376:

That sounds like a fairly massive nerf for adrenaline generating outside of Combustive Shot.

Guess what? Some people use burst skills that are not Combustive Shot.

Can’t say I would get behind this.

I get what you’re saying. Your protest seems to be based on the number of strikes per bar.

Under the current system (10 strikes per bar):
Full Adrenaline: 30 hits vs 1 foe, 15 hits vs 2 foes, or 10 hits vs 3 foes.

Under my proposed system (6 strikes per bar):
Full Adrenaline: 18 hits regardless of foes

I suggested 6 or 7. Maybe 5 strikes per bar? Though that may be a bit too low… What do you think the magic number is Olba?

Ashanor.5319:

Go to the mists and lay down a combustive shot on some golems. Let me know how much adrenaline you get. Thanks. lol

Answer: Combustive shot doesn’t give ANY adrenaline.

JonPeters.5630:

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder.

@ Ashanor: Try top get your facts straight before you make snarky replies. Thanks. lol.

Dand.8231:

Ashanor.5319:

Go to the mists and lay down a combustive shot on some golems. Let me know how much adrenaline you get. Thanks. lol

Answer: Combustive shot doesn’t give ANY adrenaline.

JonPeters.5630:

Longbow
A lot of thought went into the change to combustive shot. This skill was simply too effective at renewing itself. One of the drawbacks of the burst skills needs to be losing your adrenaline, but this skill was easily able to restore all of the adrenaline it lost. Rather than reduce the burn duration we reduced the # of attacks this skill creates because we felt it made it more counterable in PvP and less reliable in PvE as an adrenaline builder.

@ Ashanor: Try top get your facts straight before you make snarky replies. Thanks. lol.

He is WRONG. It was mentioned multiple times in the post where he said that. Go see for yourself instead of blindly taking the words of a developer as fact.

Ashanor.5319:

He is WRONG. It was mentioned multiple times in the post where he said that. Go see for yourself instead of blindly taking the words of a developer as fact.

I have seen for myself, MANY times, including roughly 50 combustive shots in a WvW zerg last night alone.

My Combustive shot actually does the exact same thing as the Dev’s, it can quickly fill up my adrenaline if I hit multiple targets with each pulse.

I’ve just been assuming anyone who claims they dont get adrenaline from it is crazy or unobservant, but now I’m starting to wonder if certain people legitimately dont get adren from it….

Ashanor is right, i just tested that right now in pve on a mob. Combu shot doesnt give me any adrenaline. Amazing how good balance team we got.

Second test; combu shot gives adren with furious trait on when crit.

So what is broken, combu shot or furious?

Scoobaniec.9561:

Ashanor is right, i just tested that right now in pve on a mob. Combu shot doesnt give me any adrenaline. Amazing how good balance team we got.

Second test; combu shot gives adren with furious trait on.

Hmm, interesting. I cant play right now, but im curious.
With furious, does it award you 1 adrenaline on non-crits?
And does it award you 1 or 2 adrenaline on crits?

Dand.8231:

Scoobaniec.9561:

Ashanor is right, i just tested that right now in pve on a mob. Combu shot doesnt give me any adrenaline. Amazing how good balance team we got.

Second test; combu shot gives adren with furious trait on.

Hmm, interesting. I cant play right now, but im curious.
With furious, does it award you 1 adrenaline on non-crits?
And does it award you 1 or 2 adrenaline on crits?

1 adrenaline on crits olny. Signet of rage was off to make sure.

nicknamenick.2437:

Furious grants 1 adrenaline per crit, also on ALL bursts attacks :-)

So its nonsense they nerf combustive shot for its adrenaline.. (without furious it doesn’t grant any adrenaline) but now we have a horrible AoE skill.. After 10dec you do only 1 burning for 3sec.. that’s it! because nobody stays longer in you AoE for fun.. or maby some does like thiefs using evade over you AoE.. lol

So they’re nerfing Combustive shot BASELINE, to prevent it’s use with a Grandmaster trait. Yeah. Makes perfect sense to me.

On the other hand, my idea sounds even better when compared to this utter nonsense: 1 Adrenaline, regardless of # foes struck, 6 strikes per bar.

Bad idea IMO , so u want me to land 18 hits to get 3 bars of adren for everything i depend on adren for when I’m going 1v2,3,4,5? I’m glad I rely on the dis tree to get adren if this happens then

Dand.8231:

nicknamenick.2437:

Furious grants 1 adrenaline per crit, also on ALL bursts attacks :-)

So its nonsense they nerf combustive shot for its adrenaline.. (without furious it doesn’t grant any adrenaline) but now we have a horrible AoE skill.. After 10dec you do only 1 burning for 3sec.. that’s it! because nobody stays longer in you AoE for fun.. or maby some does like thiefs using evade over you AoE.. lol

So they’re nerfing Combustive shot BASELINE, to prevent it’s use with a Grandmaster trait. Yeah. Makes perfect sense to me.

On the other hand, my idea sounds even better when compared to this utter nonsense: 1 Adrenaline, regardless of # foes struck, 6 strikes per bar.

No. I think they have no idea what they talk about as they don’t mention furious in post. It was show many times that they don’t know how their game works and that it was just made for the sake of pvp to make it noob friendly like everything warrior has to stop the qq, also 15% dmg reduction for no reason, if anything ppl been complains a bit about burn.

Warriors posting there was pretty much ignored, and still are. Im sure its not the last nerf to hambow and everything else around it. “We want to separate dmg from control skills” Merciless hammer says hi; “increased damage on disabled foes by 25%” Oh the irony..

nicknamenick.2437:

Indeed, they say its for less adrenaline.. (oh yeah that also makes some damage nerfs.. ) but not knowing it comes from furious.. that also works on ALL burst skills.. so it makes no sense combustive shot get another nerf..

There are other options like:

-Furious doesn’t work with burst skills
or
-Furious grants 1 adrenaline per crit from only 1 foe
or something like:
-Only pulse 1 and 3 grants adrenaline with furious.. (so that’s also like 50% adrenaline nerf with furious)

Without Furious there is ZERO need for another nerf..
But Anet doesn’t reply to any of the suggestions

This is my problem with the proposed change to combustive shot as well. I have tested many times with other burst skills. Try out using Flurry (main hand sword burst), hitting 2 or 3 targets at once. You do not gain any adrenaline from it. Anet just needs to change combustive shot to have the same adrenaline gain mechanics as Flurry does, otherwise you are not actually fixing the problem. Combustive shot has already been nerfed from the recent decrease to the radius of level 1 and 2 adrenaline.

The dev has said that this change is going to be to lower the adrenaline gains from combustive shot, so lets do something that actually addresses the problem.

I don’t use furious and I take stronger bowstrings for extra burns. Even though I think the nerf to combustive shot is completely ridiculous, it will not effect me very much at all.

nicknamenick.2437:

Ashanor.5319:

I don’t use furious and I take stronger bowstrings for extra burns. Even though I think the nerf to combustive shot is completely ridiculous, it will not effect me very much at all.

Maby not now.. but whats next?

less bleeding on pin down? (you already need to be full condition build to deal allot of damage from it, its only 1 stack so its still easy to remove)

Reducing Arcing arrow damage? (you need to be FULL zerker build to crit like 4-6k.. people say you can do both.. you go for high bleeding/burn damage or high arcing arrow crit.. cant have both)

Well, there probably won’t be a next for me. I play less and less of this game these days and plan to move over to Wildstar as soon as it comes out. I have been mostly catching up on my backlog of PS3 and Steam games lately. I will speak with my wallet about what I think about developers who balance based on forum whines.