Power creep in World Versus World has now reached the point that it poses a significant barrier to entry for casual players. With the implementation of orb buffs, the lack of them poses a serious liability that cannot feasibly be compensated for with player skill.
The stat increase from those two trait lines and orbs is far in excess of the bump that you would receive from upgrading from exotic to ascended; in fact, it’s about 5 times greater. Don’t believe me? It’s all in the numbers. (Reference intended.)
Guard Killer : 200 stat
defense against guards : 250 stat
Orb bonuses : 600 stat
+5% health increase: 22.5 stat + 0.05*base vital, lets call it ~55, *3 = 165ish
The total?
1,215 stats, give or take depending on vitality, almost a full 70 traits worth of stats, assuming no utility traits are taken.
For reference, my highest stat, toughness, with ascended gear except weapon, is 1,833.
You might criticize me and say hey, are you REALLY benefiting from each one of those stats? Ok, not really; as a clerics guardian I don’t really benefit from precision or condition damage very much, so forget about 250 of those stats. That’s still almost 1,000. Paradoxically, if I were a knights guardian, I’d be getting more of a benefit from the gigantic almalgamation of stats that is up for grabs through grinding and the wildcard of ruins of power.
This is simply imbalanced, and I would be very interested to hear a rationale for why it could be considered balanced. I’ve thought of everything I can think of, and I have nothing. Compare this to the upgrade from exotic to ascended, and it comes out to about 5x as potent.
To be completely ridiculous, lets tack on 250 from a stacking sigil, the ascended upgrades, and the defender buffs, for an additional 610 stats. (I’m too lazy at this point to throw in the 10% vitality, but like another 100-200 depending.)
Why will newer players enter WvW, especially upleveled, when the snowball stat difference between fully leveled and geared characters can be so incredibly vast? Are all of these static boons really intended to be worth more than a full set of trait points cumulatively?
For starters, I’d like to recommend that any percentage based boon needs to go, because there’s no diminishing returns on it; that’s silly and I don’t know why any developer would want to subject themselves to that much of a balance headache. Second, if you’re putting in orbs, you need to get rid of stacking sigils (i.e. remove stat when unequipped) and almost definitely nerf the so-powerful-as-to-be-mandatory first two trait lines.
If I had my dithers, I would get rid of all the stat bonuses in favor of some more interesting bonuses from ruins of power and the first two trait lines. Preferably, something that had to do with defense or the usage of siege. I don’t really like the war stomp, because I think it will encourage people to be nasty to those who don’t want to run in a gigantic group, but hey, at least it poses an interesting strategic choice, rather than creating a static and nearly mandatory objective. There are an almost infinite set of boons that would make more sense in the context of world versus world rather than being more boring power creep.
Reduced damage from arrow carts
Increased toughness in structures
Faster workers
Additional guards
Extra points from dolyak escorts/kills
Increased trebuchet damage
Increased supply generation
Less supply for building specific types of siege
Increased World XP
tl;dr
snowball and trait boons are worth upwards of 1k stats, and that’s too high.
the wvw xp buffs are already bad enough D :