Guild Wars 2

Faaris.8013:

In your very first sentence you say that skills are balanced for PvP but not PvE. I explained in detail why that is not the case, I even used bold in the sentence that’s most important. Tell me where I didn’t understand what you were writing, maybe explain it to me like I’m a 10 years old please.

My suggestion has nothing whatsoever to do with the defiance mechanic.

I’ve actually always been an advocate of this idea. I think it can really help draw in and retain PvE players by giving them something significant to invest.

Aomine.5012:

Rain.9213:

I’m pretty sure the devs got the idea for Kalla Scorchrazor and the Renegade as a whole from me…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Choose-the-Next-Rev-Legend/first#post5308934

That was the first ever suggestion for Kalla Scorchrazor on these forums as far as my searches suggest.

Except I suggested we get a Greatsword instead of a lame Pew Pew Shortbow. In my head, Kalla would have been designed to be a hybrid Condi brawler akin to Warrior instead of a summoner but oh well at least we know the devs do listen to the community from time to time!

I do understand why they add Shortbow though cuz so few class cna use those lolz.

And Revenant lacks range condi weapon so they a range condi weapon. (Not as good as hammer though…)

Which is why they should have had Shortbow added to core Rev (Revs have fewer skills than other classes), and, if they were going to use Kallah, given it a Greatsword.

Pretty big screw-up, if you ask me.

Faaris.8013:

maddoctor.2738:

Einlanzer.1627:

Why in the world would you ever use Basilisk Venom as your elite skill in PvE instead of something like Dagger Storm or Thieves Guild? You wouldn’t.

I always use Basilisk Venom as my elite of choice in PVE.
I think you are missing that venom sharing is now base for thieves, meaning all your allies around you get the effect, leading to a much longer stun duration (and ultimate damage on breakbars)

Same here, I have Basilisk Venom in my skill bar almost permanently. Only on rare occasions I switch to Dagger Storm. Einlanzer either doesn’t play thief (but why pick that example then?) or doesn’t know how to play thief well.

Thing is, I would still keep BV in my skill bar even if they removed the immediate stun effect. It’s a perfect solution fpr PvP and PvE. In PvP, you have that great 1.5 seconds stun that really makes a difference. In PvE, the real stun comes not from the direct stun effect of the skill, but from breaking the defiance bar. And that is not specific for BV but for all other stuns in PvE.

The defiance bar and stuns work perfectly together, without breaking PvP, in my opinion it’s well thought out. You are not supposed to keep a champ stunned for the whole fight, with 20+ players that would easily be possible the way Einlanzer imagines. Instead they allowed stuns, but only through the defiance bar. That way they can control how hard to fight the mob is. In addition to that, your stun (or other cc skill) is not wasted just because you triggered it at the same time as someone else, it damages the defiance bar instead. Only way to waste your skill is if the defiance bar is so easily broken that one thief can do it and another one casts his BV at the same time, which sometimes happens in Fractals. But a quick dodge cancels the cast, so it’s up to the player to let that happen or not.

I wished ArenaNet would force people to learn about the defiance bar at some point in the story line or to get access to HoT maps. Or at least a short quest that rewards learning it, just like the dodging stations in the starter zones, without forcing people to do it.

You did not even understand my original post. Try actually reading the OP next time before you comment on the thread.

CptAurellian.9537:

Breakbars are a thing in some fights. If every thief in Vinetooth Prime zergs slotted BV and knew when to use it, the world would be a better place.

The OP probably used the worst possible example, since BV is a shared effect, but that’s the exception to the rule. For the vast majority of hard CCs, he is completely right with regard to their uselessness for other things than break bars.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Reasons for short duration.
[…]

Those reasons aren’t very convincing. The entire interrupt thing suffers from one big issue: cast times. While 1/2 second or more may be justified for a powerful CC in PvP, it makes the skills rather pointless if you want to interrupt a certain attack of your opponent. By the time you’ve finished your cast, many attacks will have already hit.

With regard to the stunlock you fear for tougher opponents, diminishing returns have been invented for a reason. Implement them properly and the veteran/elite will have more than enough time to fight back.

However, I doubt that the amount of re-balancing required to make CC worthwhile outside of break bar situations is worth it. Those capacities should be used more productively, e.g. to finally get closer to proper class balance in PvE.

I was going to make the same argument. Most of the effects I’m talking about are not instant-application like the control effects that are intended to operate as interrupts (like knockdowns), but even the ones that are are usually not that useful. We have several elite skills that have a 1-2 second daze effect which is laughable as an elite when you’re fighting regular mobs in PvE. The defiance mechanic is wholly separate from the base cc mechanics, and there’s no good argument against buffing the latter so they are more usable.

I honestly think a universal rule would work just fine here – like CC effects last twice as long in PvE as they do in PvP. I see no reason why this would cause any problems and would help make those skills less useless in general PvE, and I honestly think all the naysayers are just defending the status quo without thinking critically. A common problem in online forums.

Rhanoa.3960:

Einlanzer.1627:

Rhanoa.3960:

Ariurotl.3718:

Einlanzer.1627:

Why in the world would you ever use Basilisk Venom as your elite skill in PvE instead of something like Dagger Storm or Thieves Guild?

Breakbars are a thing in some fights. If every thief in Vinetooth Prime zergs slotted BV and knew when to use it, the world would be a better place.

The thing you can’t take back.

Awkward silence from OP.

No. Bar breaks are only a thing in some fights, and in those cases they replace the normal control effect, they do not supplement it, so this, IMO, is not a strong counter-argument. The thing is – you can increase the duration of control effects in PvE without interfering with how they impact bar breaks, and you’d have a skill that was generally useful and not one that was highly specialized to work only in specific contexts.

This argument doesn’t change anything.

Actually it does.

The moment you acknowledged when a skill is rendered useless when in fact it is beneficial in situational moments. It really shows the lack of knowledge and understand the mechanics of any Profession.

The conversation ended the moment Ariurotl stated the obvious.

However, shooting from the waist down seems to be perfectly acceptable.

This isn’t even coherent, and is an entirely inappropriate response to the post you quoted. Are you like 10 years old or something?

This is from my original post:
“There is one area, though, that needs splitting and never gets split – and that’s the duration of certain effects like stun, petrify, and stealth. While they’re useful for defiance bars in PvE, the fact that they are mostly balanced around PvP makes them garbage for general use in PvE. I don’t understand in the slightest why this isn’t addressed. "

So let me re-summarize. Defiance bars exist in PvE, but they are relatively few and far between. More importantly, there’s no reason a skill needs to suck unless you’re fighting something with a defiance bar. This argument is lame and not even slightly a justification for why control effects are so short in PvE.

The main mistake they made was tying the concept for the new elite around condi shortbow when that should have been made core. Then they could have chosen an altogether different elite spec.

Ashantara.8731:

I have noticed this about two years ago, and it has not been fixed to this day, so I always assumed it was deliberate and that the bonus was indeed just +24.

I thought the same, but couldn’t figure out why. Then another player confirmed that it was just a display issue and that it actually does grant +25. Still, it’s a pretty silly thing to not notice or fix after 5 years.

Ojimaru.8970:

Einlanzer.1627:

No. Bar breaks are only a thing in some fights, and in those cases they replace the normal control effect, they do not supplement it, so this, IMO, is not a strong counter-argument. The thing is – you can increase the duration of control effects in PvE without interfering with how they impact bar breaks, and you’d have a skill that was generally useful and not one that was highly specialized to work only in specific contexts.

This argument doesn’t change anything.

What’s wrong with having skills that work amazingly in specific context and less so in others? In your example, Basilisk Venom is inaccurately assessed because you only consider a single application from your player character. However, when shared with other players, it is an extremely potent skill to break Defiance Bars. And when the context requires something different, for example the Wyvern Patriarch in Verdant Brink, which has no breakable Defiance Bar, then you switch to another Elite skill. All in all, this gives players a meaningful choice to consider prior to approaching an encounter in PVE, which I would argue is a good thing.

Einlanzer.1627

There is one area, though, that needs splitting and never gets split – and that’s the duration of certain effects like stun, petrify, and stealth. While they’re useful for defiance bars in PvE, the fact that they are mostly balanced around PvP makes them garbage for general use in PvE.

Crowd control skills and their interactions with Defiance Bars are generally balanced around groups, rather than individuals. Hence, it is extremely rare to have a skill that can single-handedly break a Champion or Legendary Defiance Bar. Further, since most non-Champion or higher encounters don’t last very long, the control duration on the existing skills as is are more than adequate. In other words, I disagree with your opinion that crowd control skills, in PVE, are not properly balanced.

Perhaps you could name another example scenario? Especially one that inspired this thread in the first place?

I’m not arguing that Anet should make them more potent against defiance bars. I’m saying the base control effects should be more potent against mobs that are not defiance-enabled. A 1 second stun is pretty silly against a regular mob, especially for an elite skill.

TexZero.7910:

You take basi for a stronger cc application for your group. As it allows people with minimal cc to also contribute via auto attacking.

5×150 > 432 simple maths no ?

Basi isn’t just a PvP skill. If you had however said Impact Strike i’d have no choice but to feasible agree as the area’s in PvE where you would have a desire to you this are few and far between.

I did intend to mention Impact Strike in addition to Basilisk Venom, and it probably is a better example since, not being a venom, it can’t be shared to others. But this does not really change the crux of my argument – control effects should last longer in PvE even with the role control effects play in the defiance mechanic.

Rhanoa.3960:

Ariurotl.3718:

Einlanzer.1627:

Why in the world would you ever use Basilisk Venom as your elite skill in PvE instead of something like Dagger Storm or Thieves Guild?

Breakbars are a thing in some fights. If every thief in Vinetooth Prime zergs slotted BV and knew when to use it, the world would be a better place.

The thing you can’t take back.

Awkward silence from OP.

No. Bar breaks are only a thing in some fights, and in those cases they replace the normal control effect, they do not supplement it, so this, IMO, is not a strong counter-argument. The thing is – you can increase the duration of control effects in PvE without interfering with how they impact bar breaks, and you’d have a skill that was generally useful and not one that was highly specialized to work only in specific contexts.

This argument doesn’t change anything.

One of the things that seems really weird about this game is how much PvE balance goes uncontrolled while PvP balance is always in focus. There are several key examples of this, such as baseline discrepancies in the effectiveness of #1 skills, which matters a lot more in PvE than it does in PvP. Skill splitting is rare, but when it happens it’s usually a split in damage or healing values, which doesn’t really make a lot of sense and, IMO, should never need to happen if the skill is designed well.

There is one area, though, that needs splitting and never gets split – and that’s the duration of certain effects like stun, petrify, and stealth. While they’re useful for defiance bars in PvE, the fact that they are mostly balanced around PvP makes them garbage for general use in PvE. I don’t understand in the slightest why this isn’t addressed.

Let’s take the Thief. Two of the thief’s elite skills deal a modest amount of damage while applying a control condition – stun/petrify on the target that lasts in the neighborhood of 1-2 seconds. Depending on build, these can be worth using in PvP where a second of stun can make or break a fight, but in PvE? It’s trash. Why in the world would you ever use Impact Strike as your elite skill in PvE instead of something like Dagger Storm or Thieves Guild, only switching to Impact Strike when you face a tough champ with a defiance bar? I see no reason to allow the skill to be useless in most generalized PvE content “because defiance”.

Many people woulds say “it’s a PvP skill” – but, I ask, what’s the point of having skills that are only useful in one game mode that not everyone plays, especially when some simple forms of splitting can make them work in both modes? That’s wasteful and pointless. Make the durations last twice as long in PvE as they do in PvP, and, voila, the skill becomes much more balanced for both game modes.

I still think the main issue with power vs condi is not the total capable DPS, it’s the fact that so much of condi’s effectiveness is weighted toward the condition damage attribute, while power builds rely on three separate attributes to be equivalently effective. This means that condition damage builds meet the same benchmarks with much greater ease and flexibility, allowing for better hybridization, defense, support, or maximizing damage. If anything, power builds need more defense and utility, so the opposite should be true.

I also think that conditions in general have proliferated a little too much, and that both condi and condi cleanse dominate the game to the point of absurdity. I think this is why it appears so imbalanced – conditions were originally intended to support direct damage, not replace it.

That’s pretty broken.

Shows +24 Precision instead of +25. May just be visual, but that should make it easy to update.

Orpheal.8263:

1 error in my concept I found

Correction:

- Bleeding = Slow long lasting Damage over time, reduces Toughness & Precision
—-

About my concept, I’m literally for this concept since GW2 ruined the Game Balance just before the release of HoT already with the patch from June 23rd of 2015.
GW2 direly needs to reduce its effect spam by reducing the amount of Boons and Conditions.
But this alone won’t be a solution, the game needs also a reduction of Attributrs, while making at the same time each Attribute more impactful and equally useful for the Player, so that you just don’t have to focus only on like 3 attributes while the others aren’t interesting/useful for you.

Each Attribute should be for every player somehow interesting and useful and that equally either for offense, defense or self/group support.
Something I’m strongly convinced. can be reached only as goal by improving Attributes from singular effects to dual effects, because this WILL actually make each attribute more impactful.

That was what I was going for with mine, too, at least for the four “primary” attributes – Ferocity and Precision combined, Vitality increasing endurance regen, and Toughness reducing condition damage.

Alin.2468:

A stick is still a stick, no matter how much you sharp it, or add metal to it, it is still a stick, and will remain a stick. Stop asking to make weapons look the same and behave the same.

The whole world around us is built on diversity, games should have diversity as well. Let the developers use their imagination and not transform this game into an uniform thinking with no tastes.

What? This is an incredibly incoherent response to the OP’s question. What the OP is asking for would be an increase in diversity, not a decrease in it.

Orpheal.8263:

My optimal version of Attributes for GW2, which covers equally offensive, defensive as like supportive effects to ensure, that offensive Stats aren’t the only thing anymore, that counts

Power
Increases Physical Damage and Increases Condition Durations from you.
So this Dual Effect Attribute is basically a merge between >Power and Expertise<

Vitality
Increases Max Health percentually and Increases Healing Efficiency
So this Dual Effect Attribute is basically a merge between >Vitality and Healing Power<

Precision
Increases Critical Hit Rate percentually and Increases Critical Damage percentually
So this Dual Effect Attribute is basically a merge between >Precision and Ferocity<

Toughness
Increases Physical Defense and Increases Boon Durations from you.
So this Dual Effect Attribute is basically a merge between >Toughness and Concentration<

Wisdom
Increases Condition Damage and Increases the Resistance to Conditions, lowering the percentage of how much Condition Damage ignores your Armor/Defense .
So this Dual Effect Attribute is basically a merge between >Condition Damage and the Resistance Boon reworked into an Attribute<

Agility
Increases Endurance Regeneration and Increases Critical Evasion Rate
So this Dual Effect Attribute is basically a merge between >the Vigor Boon and the Weakness Condition<

Courage
Increases Boon Intensity and Increases your Body Stature making you more immune to Crowd Control Effects like Stuns, Dazes, Launches, Knockdowns, Pulls, your Breakbar will deplete slower, before enemies can actually break your will and CC you with Hard CC Effects

---

Boons Redux:
- Might = Raises Power & Vitality
- Regeneration = Heals Health over time
- Protection = Decreases incoming Damage by 25% and lets Conditions on you end 20% faster
- Swiftness = Increases Movement Speed by 33%
- Alacrity = Increases Skill Recharge Time Speed

New/Renamed and replaced/removed Boons

- Retribution = Removed, reworked into Trait/Skill Effects
- Vigor = Removed, reworked into Attribute
- Resistance = Removed, reworked into Attribute
- Stability = Removed, changed to Sturdiness, reworked into player Breakbar/Attribute
- Fury = Removed, integrated into Precision Formular Rework to make Precision more impactful.
- Dexterity = Increases Attack Speed (Quickness renamed)
- Aura = Blocks Incoming Attacks (Aegis renamed)
- Sturdiness = Makes the Breakbar resist stronger to CC Effects (New)
- Spirituality = Increases Wisdom and Agility (New)
- Ferocity = Increases your Breakbar Intensity of your CC Skills (New)

Condition Redux

- Burning = Damage over time that makes foes also more vulnerable to all other sources of Damage as long you are burning.
- Poison = Lowers Vitality + Power (Direct Counter to Might)
- Chill = Reduces Movement Speed by 50% and makes Skills Recharge Time Speed 33% slower
- Slow = Reduces Attack Speed by 50%
- Blindness = Makes you miss your target
- Disease = Disables Weapon Swapping, spreads to nearby foes and Damages over time when you move around (renamed reworked Torment)
- Confusion = Reactive Damage on Skill Performance (doesn’t include AA), removes friendly fire, so your skills (AoEs) will damage also your allies.
- Bleeding = Slow long lasting Damage over time, reduces Agility & Precision
- Fear = Decreases Courage & Wisdom and makes you retreat
- Petrification = Affects Breakbar, disables Dodges and reduces Agility
- Immobilize = Removed
- Vulnerability = Removed, merged into Burning
- Weakness = Removed , merged into Attributes/Petrification through Agility Reduction
- Taunt = Removed, we have already Fear, enough as Soft CC
- Cripple = Removed, reworked into Petrification to make GW2 have for each Element a fitting Condition:

• Water = Chill
• Fire = Burning
• Air = Slow
• Earth = Petrification

---

Result = 10 Boons and 10 Conditions and 7 Attributes with 2 Effects each.

I like a lot of what you have going here, it’s just a more significant rework than what I have.

PistolWhip.2697:

Einlanzer.1627:

PistolWhip.2697:

Einlanzer.1627:

I’m not sure why you think I’m frothing at the mouth about anything in this topic. It’s merely an interesting discussion. Also, it wasn’t “proven wrongful”, it’s just nuanced. A relatively small % of players are female in most MMOs, it just so happens that high fantasy MMOs that are not WoW are the exception.

Anecdotal just seems to be your go to buzz argument is all, even when unfounded.

It was proven wrong. You made a statement without fact, someone disputed it using fact, thus statement had nothing to stand on and was proven wrong. No amount of backtracking can hide that.

Anecdotal wasn’t even mentioned in the quote that you posted. There are two things going on in our specific sub-conversation on this thread:

1. I assumed the ratio of male to female players in GW2 was something like 4:1, when it’s probably more like 2:1. My bad, and I admitted it. But that conclusion was based on prior research, it wasn’t just a baseless assumption, and it holds true in other games, including WoW. So, in reality, this topic is nuanced, and we actually don’t know for sure what the ratio is in GW2.

2.) You argued that women are demonstrably, through scientific evidence, objectively the more attractive sex, which I call BS on. I’ve seen no convincing scientific research corroborating this, and that psychology today article certainly doesn’t cut it. The flaws in any research purporting to support this claim are obvious as beauty is relative, subjective, and the image of beauty changes over time.

If you’re going to continue pointlessly arguing with me to prop up your own ego, try harder.

Not in that specific quote yes, but you should check your post history in this thread alone.

1). Yes you admitted it, in a flip flop fashion, instead of just saying you were wrong due to ignorance, which is the case. Though, that’s about it for that matter.

2). Beauty is relative indeed, but there is a general consensus to follow. Just because morals can be relative, doesn’t mean there isn’t a general consensus on what is okay and what isn’t. In that article itself it has sources to follow, I’m not gonna do all your leg work. On the contrary, I have seen no evidence supporting the fact that there ISN’T a generally accepted gender/sex to be the more attractive.

It isn’t pointless, it’s about exposing your lack of credibility because I feel I have an obligation as someone with insight on this subject to dispel falsities, of which you just happen to provide in copious amounts.

If you want to actually sound intelligent in your arguments, try harder.

There doesn’t need to be evidence suggesting that the sexes are equally attractive. That’s the baseline assumption. The claim is that one is more attractive than they other, so the burden of proof is on you and you alone.

Only inside your head are you doing anything to expose any lack of credibility on my part. We still don’t have any real idea what the actual m:f ratio in GW2 is, and the bit of data we do have didn’t even come from you. There was also no “flip-flop” to my admission. I think that term doesn’t mean what you think it means. Like an intelligent person, I backed off of my argument when a modicum of data presenting other possibilities was provided.

Literally all you’ve contributed to this conversation is a psychology today article referencing a flawed study and some incredibly loose anecdotal evidence to support it. It doesn’t matter; there’s no point in continuing this. It’s absolutely laughable how easy it is to start arguing about nonsense on an online forum. It’s so unhealthy.

PistolWhip.2697:

Einlanzer.1627:

I’m not sure why you think I’m frothing at the mouth about anything in this topic. It’s merely an interesting discussion. Also, it wasn’t “proven wrongful”, it’s just nuanced. A relatively small % of players are female in most MMOs, it just so happens that high fantasy MMOs that are not WoW are the exception.

Anecdotal just seems to be your go to buzz argument is all, even when unfounded.

It was proven wrong. You made a statement without fact, someone disputed it using fact, thus statement had nothing to stand on and was proven wrong. No amount of backtracking can hide that.

Anecdotal wasn’t even mentioned in the quote that you posted. There are two things going on in our specific sub-conversation on this thread:

1. I assumed the ratio of male to female players in GW2 was something like 4:1, when it’s probably more like 2:1. My bad, and I admitted it. But that conclusion was based on prior research, it wasn’t just a baseless assumption, and it holds true in other games, including WoW. So, in reality, this topic is nuanced, and we actually don’t know for sure what the ratio is in GW2.

2.) You argued that women are demonstrably, through scientific evidence, objectively the more attractive sex, which I call BS on. I’ve seen no convincing scientific research corroborating this, and that psychology today article certainly doesn’t cut it. The flaws in any research purporting to support this claim are obvious as beauty is relative, subjective, and the image of beauty changes over time.

If you’re going to continue pointlessly arguing with me to prop up your own ego, try harder.

Faaris.8013:

Einlanzer.1627:

Looks like I was womansplained!

I don’t think you know what that word means, also, I’m not even a women.

Uh, yes, I do. I don’t think you know how to spell woman, and you also apparently didn’t read the rest of the post which made it clear that I was being tongue in cheek. Forgive me for assuming that you were a woman.

PistolWhip.2697:

Einlanzer.1627:

PistolWhip.2697:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Dawdler.8521:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Edit: and I’m not talking about staring at backsides. I’m taking about being uncomfortable playing as the opposite sex.

But the only thing that says you are playing “as” a female by definition is… what? Right. Visuals. So yes. It’s all about staring at backsides.

Plus, the “opposite sex” is so diffuse. Have we ever seen what’s in their pants? We havent really seen anyone pregnant either. Who knows, maybe that’s why Logan is so moody.

The “backside” argument I see as an aesthetic argument. The uncomfortable argument is one where they are projecting themselves into the char and “seeing” themselves as a different sex. I don’t see it as a purely visual thing as a female can be covered up so that all you see is armor. It’s the projection of the self into that form that’s causing the discomfort for these people, not the form itself.

Plus, I must again stress, anyone busy staring at their character’s hind quarters is likely a detriment to their team because they won’t be watching the game.

I don’t ever stare at my character’s backside because I’m busy playing the game.

Ben K.6238:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ardid.7203:

Not fully true. There are scientific studies which DO confirm women are better received in the customer service industry because both men and women would rather be greeted by the female form. This is probably due to our inherent belief (whether that’s natural or society induced) that women are more attractive overall.

That is quite a leap in logic. Assuming this is true, it’s far more likely because of associations between the female form and maternity and nurturing.

It’s almost certainly an emotional response that has nothing to do with aesthetic or sexual preference.

Women aren’t better received in that industry when they give an answer someone doesn’t want to hear. Anecdotal evidence from personal experience again, but I doubt that this would surprise anyone.

Your right, your evidence is anecdotal but that doesn’t make it without value.

It is a weird conundrum on how many factors effect women’s better reception in such an industry, one thing is scientifically backed for sure though, as I posted earlier in the article link there are mentions of studies which find women are generally regarded as more attractive than men as a gender, and to add some anecdotal evidence to my scientific sources, most Bi people I know tend to agree.

I’ve never heard a single bisexual person say this. I find this argument to be without much scientific merit, frankly.

Yes, that is because as I stated, it’s anecdotal, as almost everything you have said has been, including your proven wrongful statement about the gender distribution of MMO players.

“Frankly”, for someone who froths at the mouth at his own anecdotal contributions, you seem to call the “BUT SCIENCE!” chant quite quickly.

I’m not sure why you think I’m frothing at the mouth about anything in this topic. It’s merely an interesting discussion. Also, it wasn’t “proven wrongful”, it’s just nuanced. A relatively small % of players are female in most MMOs, it just so happens that high fantasy MMOs that are not WoW are the exception.

I don’t see how people don’t think there are glaring problems here.

1.) You shouldn’t be forced to use condi cleanse ad nauseam to mitigate condition damage with as many sources of condition damage there are, how damaging they are, and how easy it is to stack them. This alone basically breaks the game and controls pvp builds too much. Toughness (not armor, just base toughness) should help mitigate condition damage.

2.) Too much weight in condition builds goes to malice (condition damage), which is asymmetrical with how power builds work and gives condi builds too much versatility in comparison. Although, I think the solution here is to give power more versatility rather than removing it from condi builds. Ferocity and Precision need to be combined.

PistolWhip.2697:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Dawdler.8521:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Edit: and I’m not talking about staring at backsides. I’m taking about being uncomfortable playing as the opposite sex.

But the only thing that says you are playing “as” a female by definition is… what? Right. Visuals. So yes. It’s all about staring at backsides.

Plus, the “opposite sex” is so diffuse. Have we ever seen what’s in their pants? We havent really seen anyone pregnant either. Who knows, maybe that’s why Logan is so moody.

The “backside” argument I see as an aesthetic argument. The uncomfortable argument is one where they are projecting themselves into the char and “seeing” themselves as a different sex. I don’t see it as a purely visual thing as a female can be covered up so that all you see is armor. It’s the projection of the self into that form that’s causing the discomfort for these people, not the form itself.

Plus, I must again stress, anyone busy staring at their character’s hind quarters is likely a detriment to their team because they won’t be watching the game.

I don’t ever stare at my character’s backside because I’m busy playing the game.

Ben K.6238:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ardid.7203:

Not fully true. There are scientific studies which DO confirm women are better received in the customer service industry because both men and women would rather be greeted by the female form. This is probably due to our inherent belief (whether that’s natural or society induced) that women are more attractive overall.

That is quite a leap in logic. Assuming this is true, it’s far more likely because of associations between the female form and maternity and nurturing.

It’s almost certainly an emotional response that has nothing to do with aesthetic or sexual preference.

Women aren’t better received in that industry when they give an answer someone doesn’t want to hear. Anecdotal evidence from personal experience again, but I doubt that this would surprise anyone.

Your right, your evidence is anecdotal but that doesn’t make it without value.

It is a weird conundrum on how many factors effect women’s better reception in such an industry, one thing is scientifically backed for sure though, as I posted earlier in the article link there are mentions of studies which find women are generally regarded as more attractive than men as a gender, and to add some anecdotal evidence to my scientific sources, most Bi people I know tend to agree.

I’ve never heard a single bisexual person say this. I find this argument to be without much scientific merit, frankly.

Faaris.8013:

Einlanzer.1627:

Unless something has drastically changed in the last handful of years, male players outnumber female players in most MMOs by huge margins – at least around 4:1, although it’s been moving toward greater parity in recent years.

Come on Einlanzer, you can do better. Google is right on that other tab you have opened anyway. Here are statistics from 2017:

http://quanticfoundry.com/2017/01/19/female-gamers-by-genre/

[img]http://quanticfoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/genre-gender-percentages-1024x878.png[/img]

About 36% of MMO Game players are female. Your assumption that only 20% of the players are female is wrong, probably anecdotal (to use the phrase you keep using to argue against others). Please provide a source next time you throw out numbers here, you can expect to be called out on it.

Looks like I was womansplained! To be honest, I just hadn’t check the data recently. It used to be true that about 20% of the typical MMO playerbase was female – this was back when most people believed it to be less than 10%, and I would always take your side of this argument. Aging myself, hah (and to be fair, this is more or less the percentage in WoW, which heavily attracts former RTS players so the player base is disproportionately male for a fantasy MMO).

So it’s probably true that perception plays a huge role here. I tend to assume that toons are played by males unless they say otherwise, although it never impacted my behavior toward other players. Looks like I need to reevaluate my assumption.

Condi damage is weighted toward the attribute condition damage (which really needs to get a name change to Malice), while physical DPS is split almost equally between three attributes, which is a balance problem that I think could largely be solved by combining Precision and Ferocity.

Because high level gear has a minimum of three attributes, this would make gearing more interesting, because even a full power build would be able to choose a defense stat, condition stat, or a utility stat to supplement their build, which would significantly increase build variety.

Again, you also have to factor in the weight of each attribute within the build. I haven’t done significant enough theorycrafting to concretely prove it, but I’d wager one of my kittens that condi builds are weighted in a way that gives them one primary attribute and several ancillary attributes, while power builds basically have three primary attributes they have to equally prioritize to be effective.

If that’s true, and I assume it is based on personal experience, it’s a big problem, because it means that Condi builds naturally operate with a large range of versatility without making nearly as many sacrifices compared to power builds, when, if anything, it should be the opposite due to the passive nature of condition damage. And that’s likely where there’s a lot of vocal anti-condition posts on the forums.

I don’t know if I have the dedication to do it myself (maybe I’ll tackle it in the near future), but I’d love to see theorycrafting either corroborating or disproving this.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Einlanzer.1627:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Dante.1763:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’ve seen threads like this several times over the years, in this forum and others. It’s always guys and female chars. I’ve never seen one for gals and male chars.

Well…im a girl, and i hate playing as a guy. I just dont see the big enough deal to make a thread for it..soo..

Yah. Same.

Maybe I should make a thread about females unable to play male chars because it makes us feel weird and we’re unable to relate to our chars….

Oh please, like anyone would care – the exact same discussion would ensue.

Don’t undermine the credibility of feminism by turning this into a feminist rage thing (like has become so common these days). Literally the only reason you haven’t seen threads from girls on the topic is because girls playing guys is not nearly as much of a norm as guys playing girls.

Feminist rage?? lol. No.

However, I am going to whisper something to you, so lean close

Men and women don’t think (or feel) the same
Yep. They don’t. It may be cultural or it may be biological but the two sexes aren’t identical in how they feel or react. In addition it’s more culturally allowed for women to take on “male” characteristics than men to take on “female” characteristics. Which would relate to more men being more uncomfortable having a female char than females being uncomfortable having a male char.

Condescension was unnecessary. I agree.

AliamRationem.5172:

Einlanzer.1627:

AliamRationem.5172:

@Feanor

What you say really isn’t accurate. Vitality and toughness are only useless under two conditions: 1) When the attack that killed you in full glass still would have killed you in gear with vitality/toughness – i.e. pass/fail mechanics, which are quite rare in open world, and 2) When you make no errors that would have killed you in full glass. From ele’s reputation as the “squishiest” class, it’s pretty obvious a large number of ele players don’t meet this standard.

The same applies to your claim of it being safer to use full glass because faster kills present fewer chances for error. Faster kills do present fewer opportunities for error, but again this only makes you safer if you are less likely to die in the attempt.

To put it another way, in full glass you kill faster but you must make fewer errors. For many players in solo play, this is a bad bet when you could take longer to kill while having significantly greater margin for error.

Except it doesn’t really work that way, because in open world PvE play in particular, killing fast is your best defense. This is why almost no one is encouraged to use defensive stats.

I agree with the OP that Ele just feels too weak overall. I have trouble even beating groups of pocket raptors in the HoT maps when no other class I play has that much trouble. I don’t really know what the best solution is, other than to make their attunements other than fire more generally useful, which I think has been needed since launch.

So killing fast in PvE is your best defense, yet you find ele weak and have difficulty with pocket raptors. It seems to me that you might be missing something.

I don’t actually have my Ele in all zerker at the moment, but that doesn’t really matter – the fact is I can kill groups of pocket raptors with relative ease on any other class I play regardless of build/stat combos, and I frequently die trying to do the same on my Ele.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Einlanzer.1627:

AliamRationem.5172:

@Feanor

What you say really isn’t accurate. Vitality and toughness are only useless under two conditions: 1) When the attack that killed you in full glass still would have killed you in gear with vitality/toughness – i.e. pass/fail mechanics, which are quite rare in open world, and 2) When you make no errors that would have killed you in full glass. From ele’s reputation as the “squishiest” class, it’s pretty obvious a large number of ele players don’t meet this standard.

The same applies to your claim of it being safer to use full glass because faster kills present fewer chances for error. Faster kills do present fewer opportunities for error, but again this only makes you safer if you are less likely to die in the attempt.

To put it another way, in full glass you kill faster but you must make fewer errors. For many players in solo play, this is a bad bet when you could take longer to kill while having significantly greater margin for error.

Except it doesn’t really work that way, because in open world PvE play in particular, killing fast is your best defense. This is why almost no one is encouraged to use defensive stats.

I agree with the OP that Ele just feels too weak overall. I have trouble even beating groups of pocket raptors in the HoT maps when no other class I play has that much trouble. I don’t really know what the best solution is, other than to make their attunements other than fire more generally useful, which I think has been needed since launch.

strange i have 2600 toughness and absolutely slaughter packs of mobs with condition damage and burst in Hot. Do you use use food or utility, or have your gear setup to match the chosen type of damage you use? when i’m aoeing I have enough defenses that for 7 or so seconds im practically immune to damage. Once you know your class in depth you ave the tools to do more than just smash a max dps aoe rotation, and its more fun.

Well maybe you can do that with condition damage, since condition damage is disproportionately weighted toward a single attribute, giving you the ability to hybridize. Power builds can’t really pull this off. It’s actually backwards, since power builds need defense more than condi builds do.

Really, all you’re doing with this post is showing how broken the game’s overall balance is.

Diak Atoli.2085:

Bear.3689:

Sigfodr.9576:

…You are however completely wrong if you think a condi build only need 1 or 2 starts. It need 4 (with current stat options, power, condi power, precition and condi duration)…

yes, because condi builds totally need power in them!?

the only thing condition damage builds need is CONDITION DAMAGE. and MAYBE expertise, but then we have an armor set that is called trailblazers which gives tank stats + both of those stats.
the funny part is that you dont even need expertise. sigils + runes + food is easily enough condition duration for any condition you can apply. they give a LOT of +% duration

Condition builds don’t require power to maximize their damage, no. However, they do require condition damage, precision, and expertise to maximize their damage.

Sigils, traits, and runes are only effective at attaining +100% condition duration for a single condition. Many (All?) condition builds use multiple damaging conditions, for which expertise is required to increase duration across the board.

Precision is required in condition builds as many builds generate conditions from On-Critical traits and sigils. A Ranger’s Sharpened Edges, or an Elementalist’s Burning Precision, or a Sigil of Earth; for example.

On a related note, power builds don’t require precision. :P Revenants, Rangers, and Reapers can easily attain a high critical chance with no precision investment at all.

No, see, the issue is not what stats benefit power vs condi builds, it’s how those stats are weighted within power and condi builds. To me, there’s an obvious problem here, and it’s that condi builds rely very disproportionately on condition damage alone, while power builds rely pretty equally on three separate attributes. In D&D, we call this MAD (multiple attribute dependency), and in this case it helps to explain why condition builds are starting to dominate the meta. Condi players can build around condi by focusing solely on condition damage, and then can freely pick and choose whether they want to fully maximize their condi damage with expertise/precision or throw in some defense, or hybridize using power to have mixed DPS, and all three of these options are pretty viable.

Power builds have none of these luxuries because they are forced to optimize power, precision, and ferocity simultaneously, which is even funnier when you consider that power builds need and should have better defense than condition based builds. This is why I advocate combining Precision and Ferocity into one attribute.

I’d be curious to see some theorycrafting around how exactly this pans out with a handful of builds, but I really, really think they need to combine precision and ferocity to give power builds the ability to hybridize effectively like condi builds can.

I actually think Ranger longbow is nearly perfect where it is. I don’t think it needs pierce – it’s already better than pretty much every other ranged weapon in the game, in most cases by a significant margin.

If you want to do ranged badly – try a rifle warrior.

AliamRationem.5172:

@Feanor

What you say really isn’t accurate. Vitality and toughness are only useless under two conditions: 1) When the attack that killed you in full glass still would have killed you in gear with vitality/toughness – i.e. pass/fail mechanics, which are quite rare in open world, and 2) When you make no errors that would have killed you in full glass. From ele’s reputation as the “squishiest” class, it’s pretty obvious a large number of ele players don’t meet this standard.

The same applies to your claim of it being safer to use full glass because faster kills present fewer chances for error. Faster kills do present fewer opportunities for error, but again this only makes you safer if you are less likely to die in the attempt.

To put it another way, in full glass you kill faster but you must make fewer errors. For many players in solo play, this is a bad bet when you could take longer to kill while having significantly greater margin for error.

Except it doesn’t really work that way, because in open world PvE play in particular, killing fast is your best defense. This is why almost no one is encouraged to use defensive stats.

I agree with the OP that Ele just feels too weak overall. I have trouble even beating groups of pocket raptors in the HoT maps when no other class I play has that much trouble. I don’t really know what the best solution is, other than to make their attunements other than fire more generally useful, which I think has been needed since launch.

Daroon.1736:

Einlanzer.1627:

Daroon.1736:

Einlanzer.1627:

Daroon.1736:

Einlanzer.1627:

Vayne.8563:

Einlanzer.1627:

I did not say it was a “fact”, however, common sense will tell you that any attempt at unnecessarily controlling players’ time or fantasy is ill-conceived, which both LW1 and the ranger pet thing represent.

It’s also a fact that not having LW1 in the game creates a big hole in the story that should be a priority for them to address.

And yet many people are saying Season 1 was the best living story season and they wish that would happen again. So it’s not a fact that it was a bad decision. It’s only a fact that you didn’t like it.

It’s not about the quality of season 1 as a story. It’s about the decision to do it in a temporary format (shortsighted and badly planned) and then not bring it back when they revised the narrative structure, which I’ve stated multiple times.

It was a bad decision, fact. Smart people knew this at the time, and Anet (Colin) learned it from the ongoing frustration and falloff it caused among players leading to their decision to change they structure for future LW’s and move away from temporary content.

I mean Jesus, people, we’re not talking rocket science here. People love to try to conflate fact with opinion when the facts don’t agree with them. You do this thing commonly where you don’t even understand the point that’s being made and you decide to white knight about it anyway. Super annoying.

While it is completely off topic to this thread….I would strongly disagree. The decision to do S1 in a ‘temporary’ format was both bold and innovative. The fact that many players were/are not able to get out of their fixed MMO mindsets and adapt to the concept that the game world should change and evolve is and was always going to be an uphill struggle.

Yes, it was because they “just didn’t get it”, lol.

No. It may have been “bold and inventive”, but it was also a terrible idea. What it amounted to was Arenanet driving players from the game by trying to control their time and then ruining the cohesion of their own story and wrecking player immersion when people couldn’t or didn’t want to permanently conform their schedules to Arenanet’s.

At the end of the day, the only way to have a truly “living world” in an MMO is to create the world in such a way that the players manage it, like Ultima, Eve, or SWG. In other words, this concept only works in a sandbox that’s player-ran.

GW2 isn’t built that way – it’s a fundamentally EQ-based PvE structure that Arenanet manages, so this idea was never going to pan out and just led to 1.5 years of wasted content development that the game has paid for ever since.

Empty zones aren’t really that much of a problem with the dynamic server system, so you can just set aside that hyperbole.

Would that be the dynamic server system that they promised they were ‘looking into a fix’ 2 years ago? The one that still sends ten different players into 10 different empty maps instead of putting them all together into one full map? The one that is so badly broken that it is responsible for making HOT so solo player unfriendly?

Again, that’s hyperbole. I have way fewer problems with empty maps in this game than I have in every other MMO I’ve played. And it’s only the HoT maps that every present a problem, because they are expansive and altogether difficult for solo players. The way you deal with that is recruiting a friend or two to play with you, or move on to other areas of the game that provide easier content for mostly the same rewards.

A game should be designed to make it as easy as possible for players to maximize their enjoyment of the content – not having those system in place and forcing players to ‘move on to other areas of the game that provide easier content’ is not good design and reinforces the original point of this thread.

Design a whole expansion around group content and forget to ensure that the underpinning game systems support your developments – I refer you back to the supposition of my original post regarding being able to store build templates.

I agree, but that was an issue in the design of the HoT maps and not an issue with dynamic servers or content being permanent instead of temporary.

The main flaw in your logic is this – content doesn’t need to be removed to concentrate players even if there’s a need to do that (and I don’t generally think there is). Anet has the power to do this in any number of other ways – it’s mostly driven by quality of reward for effort put in. Other than acquiring HP for elite specs, we now have superior maps for reward efficiency – that is the reason that HoT feels somewhat abandoned, although it isn’t really – I still see plenty of maps taking part in metas.

Einlanzer.1627:

Ardid.7203:

Girls are just prettier. Males and females prefer them in the end, without need for any sexual implication.
Its funny because its true.

I could argue that guys are prettier, and I could even argue this being a guy who is sexually attracted to women. In fact, it used to be pretty common in ancient societies.

See how that works? It’s called subjectivity and opinion. In reality, neither sex is objectively more attractive than the other, and arguing otherwise is pretty clearly absurd.

Ardid.7203:

Not fully true. There are scientific studies which DO confirm women are better received in the customer service industry because both men and women would rather be greeted by the female form. This is probably due to our inherent belief (whether that’s natural or society induced) that women are more attractive overall.

That is quite a leap in logic. Assuming this is true, it’s far more likely because of associations between the female form and maternity and nurturing.

It’s almost certainly an emotional response that has nothing to do with aesthetic or sexual preference.

Hyrai.8720:

And that’s where you’re absolutely wrong…
The statistic that matters the most (in this context) is the share of gender swapping players, looking at men and women seperately, not the total number of them.

No, it is absolutely not wrong. People are going to comment on what they see most commonly in the game. If what they see in the game is girls played by guys, that’s what the majority of the discussion is going to focus on. And this is what they’re going to see, because the majority of players are male. The % of female players playing male toons is far less relevant if the ratio of male to female players is much greater than the difference in percentage between males playing females and vice versa.

I’m not sure how anyone can argue this. It’s preposterous.

Daroon.1736:

Einlanzer.1627:

Daroon.1736:

Einlanzer.1627:

Vayne.8563:

Einlanzer.1627:

I did not say it was a “fact”, however, common sense will tell you that any attempt at unnecessarily controlling players’ time or fantasy is ill-conceived, which both LW1 and the ranger pet thing represent.

It’s also a fact that not having LW1 in the game creates a big hole in the story that should be a priority for them to address.

And yet many people are saying Season 1 was the best living story season and they wish that would happen again. So it’s not a fact that it was a bad decision. It’s only a fact that you didn’t like it.

It’s not about the quality of season 1 as a story. It’s about the decision to do it in a temporary format (shortsighted and badly planned) and then not bring it back when they revised the narrative structure, which I’ve stated multiple times.

It was a bad decision, fact. Smart people knew this at the time, and Anet (Colin) learned it from the ongoing frustration and falloff it caused among players leading to their decision to change they structure for future LW’s and move away from temporary content.

I mean Jesus, people, we’re not talking rocket science here. People love to try to conflate fact with opinion when the facts don’t agree with them. You do this thing commonly where you don’t even understand the point that’s being made and you decide to white knight about it anyway. Super annoying.

While it is completely off topic to this thread….I would strongly disagree. The decision to do S1 in a ‘temporary’ format was both bold and innovative. The fact that many players were/are not able to get out of their fixed MMO mindsets and adapt to the concept that the game world should change and evolve is and was always going to be an uphill struggle.

Yes, it was because they “just didn’t get it”, lol.

No. It may have been “bold and inventive”, but it was also a terrible idea. What it amounted to was Arenanet driving players from the game by trying to control their time and then ruining the cohesion of their own story and wrecking player immersion when people couldn’t or didn’t want to permanently conform their schedules to Arenanet’s.

At the end of the day, the only way to have a truly “living world” in an MMO is to create the world in such a way that the players manage it, like Ultima, Eve, or SWG. In other words, this concept only works in a sandbox that’s player-ran.

GW2 isn’t built that way – it’s a fundamentally EQ-based PvE structure that Arenanet manages, so this idea was never going to pan out and just led to 1.5 years of wasted content development that the game has paid for ever since.

Empty zones aren’t really that much of a problem with the dynamic server system, so you can just set aside that hyperbole.

Would that be the dynamic server system that they promised they were ‘looking into a fix’ 2 years ago? The one that still sends ten different players into 10 different empty maps instead of putting them all together into one full map? The one that is so badly broken that it is responsible for making HOT so solo player unfriendly?

Again, that’s hyperbole. I have way fewer problems with empty maps in this game than I have in every other MMO I’ve played. And it’s only the HoT maps that every present a problem, because they are expansive and altogether difficult for solo players. The way you deal with that is recruiting a friend or two to play with you, or move on to other areas of the game that provide easier content for mostly the same rewards.

AliamRationem.5172:

Einlanzer.1627:

AliamRationem.5172:

I disagree with the basic premise. Players don’t use full glass builds in organized PvE because it’s safer. They do it because PvE doesn’t force them to do otherwise the way PvP/WvW scenarios typically do. If you can have a healer cover your group in full glass and not wipe, it’s a no-brainer to do so. To do otherwise simply makes the fight take longer for no benefit.

If you’re talking solo open world, I still disagree. You’re telling me that having a bunch of extra armor, healing, and/or health actually makes it harder for you to survive? I can think of very few scenarios where this is true.

It’s one thing to say that full glass is adequate for survival and preferred for skilled players, and even that defensive stats are “useless” in that sense. I mean if you’re comfortable in full glass, then why wouldn’t you use it? It’s faster! But that is not the same thing as claiming that you are literally less likely to die in full glass than defensive gear.

It sounds to me like you have too little experience with defensive stats. Not that I blame you. It also sounds like you have little reason to waste your time with them. But as the basis for this argument, I don’t think your claims hold water at all.

No. They do full glass builds because it’s the most efficient. And it’s the most efficient because not only do you kill faster, but killing faster also provides you with the best form of defense because of the way that dodging works – it’s highly limited and not impacted by any defensive attribute, and it’s the main way you avoid damage.

I love how people are arguing with me about this when the game has been dominated by a berserker meta since launch, demonstrating that there’s a problem very clearly. Now, of course, it’s more of a problem in PvE than it is for PvP, but that doesn’t make it less of a problem in my eyes.

The solution to fixing defensive attributes is to expand the scope of both – Vitality to dodging, and Toughness to conditions (even if it’s just a small %)

You seem convinced that you have the proper solution to the problem, but it doesn’t add up to me. The fact is that PvE damage is too low and predictable for defensive stats to be attractive in organized PvE. In order for this to change, the frequency and amount of damage would need to exceed what proper use of dodge mechanics plus a group healer can mitigate. Adding extra dodges to vitality and mitigating condition damage via toughness doesn’t accomplish this. Thus I expect the DPS meta would remain due to being more efficient while presenting little additional risk.

It would only become less efficient if it were no longer feasible for players to run full glass in organized PvE and have a reasonable expectation of survival. Even then, it’s possible that groups would simply add another healer rather than expect everyone to nerf their own damage in favor of survival stats. They would do whatever is most efficient in any case.

Well, there’s only ever going to be one meta for damage, and that’s stacking DPS stats. So I expect Berserker will always be meta for damage dealers (most toons) in organized PvE. That won’t really change unless they make defensive stats so disproportionately good that you can thoughtlessly tank all day long, which would obviously be bad for the game.

The point has more to do with increasing the role defensive stats play in attrition in general, i.e. not in highly organized, optimized group play, and also providing ways for certain characters to have more of a “tank” role even in organized play.

I’ll repeat my solution:

Make toughness provide % reduction to conditions, and change vitality to provide endurance regeneration and reduce or remove its tie-in to health. This would specialize toughness for damage mitigation and vitality for damage avoidance, which would be a badly needed mechanical and thematic improvement to both attributes that would also indirectly improve the usefulness of healing power.

Then, combine precision and ferocity into one attribute. This would make power and condi builds both depend on two attributes, with others being utilitarian. No, condi does not quite have the dependence on precision that power has on both precision and ferocity, but, more importantly, direct damage specs need more defense than condition damage specs for equal damage. So this would restore a good bit of parity to power and condi based builds, and balance iteration from Arenanet would become simpler.

Win-win-win.

Faaris.8013:

Einlanzer.1627:

Literally the only reason you haven’t seen threads from girls on the topic is because girls playing guys is not nearly as much of a norm as guys playing girls.

According to the study I quoted above (and other studies before), this is not true.

www2013.wwwconference.org/proceedings/p827.pdf

First we see that over a third of players owned at least one
gender-swapped avatar. Table 1 shows that female players are more
likely to own gender-swapped avatars than male players (p<0.001).
This is consistent with past research that a sizable fraction of players
swap genders, and females tend to do so more than males ³⁷.

There are actually more female players who play male characters than the way around. This is not anecdotal, these are hard numbers in the paper. Your assumption is based on personal experience ^^

As for the reasons why we don’t see many threads from them on the topic, one can only speculate. Maybe they play male toons to not get hit on or harrassed, and posting here about it would reveal their account name.

I’m not going to read the entire abstract to confirm, but it appears that this does not factor in total number of male players vs total number of female players, which is the statistic that matters most in this context. Unless something has drastically changed in the last handful of years, male players outnumber female players in most MMOs by huge margins – at least around 4:1, although it’s been moving toward greater parity in recent years.

So even if a smaller % of male players play female toons, it hardly matters. Female toons controlled my male players dominate the game world, while male toons controlled by female players do not, which is why this topic always mostly focused on the former. Of course, assumptions based on personal experience probably do play some role. Every girl I know that plays GW2 exclusively plays female toons, while many of the guys I know mix it up or only play girls.

lakdav.3694:

I would be happy enough with Air staff AA if it was actually faster. For a chain “lightning” the projectile is painfully slow. Give it a 10-20% damage increase as well maybe, but otherwise the fact that it jumps between targets relatively far from each other makes it unique enough. Its just slow.

(Oh, and sometimes the bounces just go wide to who knows where. Probably a bug, or its supposed target gets killed by the time the bounce happens…)

Yeah, I think the animation/sound effect is crap too, but, regardless, the damage isn’t good enough. Fire is just way better, and that isn’t justified by the utility on Air.

The whole skill just needs a rework really.

But the same could be said of Earth. Earth’s AA seems needlessly weak, which makes Earth really situational in the same way. Again, I don’t get that. Why should Fire be the only attunement capable of working as fallback? That just serves to thematically pigeonhole most Elementalist players.

Hyrai.8720:

Einlanzer.1627:

Literally the only reason you haven’t seen threads from girls on the topic is because girls playing guys is not nearly as much of a norm as guys playing girls.

tbh i know a lot more women playing male chars than men playing female chars.

also, most of the time those guys give their female chars more or less neutral, or at least more “fantasy-like”, names, while the girls give their male chars obviously male names, often even name+surname.

That’s anecdotal. In terms of the overall player base, it’s much, much less common.

Absconditus.6804:

I’m going to be rude and say I’m glad you are not in charge of balance in this game. Have you ever fought against a Daredevil or two? It can be absolutely infuriating to watch a single Daredevil dodge around 4-5 players without anyone being able to do anything about the nuisance. You’re basically proposing that every class should be able to become equally frustrating. It’d become Dodge Wars 2. PvP would be infuriatingly annoying.

Vitality is your defense against condition damage (with a bonus being it also helps against physical damage). Toughness/Armor against physical damage. The system works as intended that way. I see absolutely no reason to change it.

Except dodging should be the source of Thief attrition – they’re a melee class with terrible health and armor. It may be annoying, but that’s what thieves are supposed to be. You seem to forget that you would have to sacrifice being a glass cannon to stack vitality for better dodging (it wouldn’t give other classes as much dodging as Thieves have currently – they have three dodge bars and high vigor uptime, and I’d probably reduce the efficacy of Vigor with this change to 25%). I’d probably start with around a 33% increase at the Vitality cap and iterate on it from there.

Yeah, and Vitality being your “defense” against condition damage when it also benefits your physical damage, and toughness only does the latter, doesn’t make any conceptual sense. How does “vitality” increase your resistance to burning? Toughness should reduce your damage passively from all damage types, and vitality should help you avoid burst damage. Nothing else makes much logical, mechanical, or thematic sense.

I’m pretty confident the game would have a lot fewer balance issues if I was in charge of it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Dante.1763:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’ve seen threads like this several times over the years, in this forum and others. It’s always guys and female chars. I’ve never seen one for gals and male chars.

Well…im a girl, and i hate playing as a guy. I just dont see the big enough deal to make a thread for it..soo..

Yah. Same.

Maybe I should make a thread about females unable to play male chars because it makes us feel weird and we’re unable to relate to our chars….

Oh please, like anyone would care – the exact same discussion would ensue.

Don’t undermine the credibility of feminism by turning this into a feminist rage thing (like has become so common these days). Literally the only reason you haven’t seen threads from girls on the topic is because girls playing guys is not nearly as much of a norm as guys playing girls.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Odokuro.5049:

Does anyone else feel uneasy playing a toon of the opposite gender, I do.

I’m a guy, and even though most female toons are more pleasing on the eye to look at, playing one just makes me feel, “Strange”, not to mention the countless guys hitting on my toon, only to find out I’m a guy, and calling me well, some unpleasant names to say the least.

Like I want to make a female norn warrior, because I don’t like how the male norn’s torso seems to be shorter on one side than the other, lol.

I feel awkward playing the opposite gender character in MMO. In a single player game, it never bothered me but in MMO, it kinda does. I think it’s because in MMO you play and socialize with other players and it’s kinda nice to think that if you see a male character, or a female, those genders are the same IRL, so you know who you’re talking to without having to constantly ask and wonder.

I always get this odd feeling when I’ve been friends with some one for a long while and think they’re male or female b/c they play those characters, only to find out they’re the opposite gender. It makes me think, oh gosh, have i said the wrong thing to them at some point. Then it creates this weird feeling as it’s shifted your perception of them. It’s just an uncomfortable feeling i get having talked to someone for a long while thinking they’re female, only to find out later they’re male, especially if you’ve discussed female related things. When you meet new ppl, it puts you on edge a little and a bit uneasy having to ask them what gender they are all the time. And when u don’t know the gender, it makes you be more cautious about what you’re saying.

I think it would be nice if everyone played a gender they’re actually are IRL as it removes that confusion, but I understand why ppl do it. This is not me being uncomfortable with my gender, it just removes doubts and makes things more clear as to who you are talking to.

I kind of agree with this sentiment. It creates this awkward cognitive dissonance when the character is not the same sex as the player, which isn’t at all a problem in single player games.

Ashivan.5216:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ashivan.5216:

Einlanzer.1627:

maddoctor.2738:

Einlanzer.1627:

There’s a problem with offensive vs. defensive stats, and the long in short of is that, especially with the way dodging works, the best defense is a strong offense.

That’s the best part about Guild Wars 2

Not when there are defensive attributes in the game that become nigh-useless as a result. That’s just an unpolished system.

….snip
It’s like the entire game is balanced around the PvP encounters with huge dmg/defense spikes on long cooldowns and good reflexes.

That’s pretty much exactly what it is. It really appears that balancing for PvE is never a priority for their team, and so we have exceptionally poor balance since PvE operates way differently than PvP does. See things like base weapon damage (mostly stemming from #1 skills), defensive attributes, and downed states.

Unfortunately it seems this is the case and not sure if they can or feel like improving the PvE part.

I played GW1 mostly for PvP, always going in those 4vs4 scenarios with my annoying necro/mesmer, but for GW2 I wanted a more meaningful PvE experience with slower game speed… I guess I got older

What’s funny is that I think this is what most MMO players want, and that’s probably why GW2 had a huge player falloff after it launched. I still love it, but I do often get annoyed at how chaotic fights get.

Shirlias.8104:

Einlanzer.1627:

Shirlias.8104:

As a thief, the main role is to decap or +1 during a fight ( and we can’t manage to go inside the fight nor too close ).

With those attribute modifies i barely see any improvement in the quality of life.
Nor Vitality ( instead, enemies could have even more dodges, which will require even more time to get em down ) nor toughness ( which we don’t have, cause is meaningless with a 11k hp pool, no damage mitigation and, essentially, cause a phisical build need a marauder neck ).

Ps: ofc with a marauder neck there will be more dodges for us, but for enemies too. And the trade, to me, is not fair for a glass cannon. Though defensive stats ( or character base health ) could be modified somehow.

I am way more skeptic.

Actually the impact to thieves would be slightly greater than for other classes, because the increased endurance regen would synergize with other dodge boons thieves get and basically give you unlimited dodging, which other classes wouldn’t have.

In fact, I would argue this would go a long way toward fixing the spike vs survivability issue that Thieves have always struggled with and substantially add to their ability to survive with poor defense in PvE.

But in pve they go zerk, both raid and fractals, so no bonus health but base vitality.
Also they must dodge on boss to deal dmg and use one dodge every 4 sec to have improved damage. I see no benefits in pve.

And i am worried about pvp ( cause the more the enemy, which is mostly a "way more tanky class than thief ) can use the extra dodge to manage to recover their cd, which they couldn’t previously recover due the missing seconds provided by the new extra dodge.

You’re not thinking in the right way.

Players in PvP would hypothetically have less health and better dodging, but as a thief player, this actually would advantage you in more situations than not. It exchanges passive defense for more active defense, and therefore forces players of all classes to be skillful in their defense as they are in their offense.

In PvE, the benefit would be that defensive stats actually make a significant contribution to your attrition for the trade-off of less damage, when the defensive attributes under the current system do not – they mostly lower your damage AND your defense since high damage is the most important part of your defense with severely restricted dodging. It may be that defensive stats are still not meta for Thieves in raids – I mean why would they be? But that doesn’t matter- they’d be more useful for more players in general.

Shirlias.8104:

As a thief, the main role is to decap or +1 during a fight ( and we can’t manage to go inside the fight nor too close ).

With those attribute modifies i barely see any improvement in the quality of life.
Nor Vitality ( instead, enemies could have even more dodges, which will require even more time to get em down ) nor toughness ( which we don’t have, cause is meaningless with a 11k hp pool, no damage mitigation and, essentially, cause a phisical build need a marauder neck ).

Ps: ofc with a marauder neck there will be more dodges for us, but for enemies too. And the trade, to me, is not fair for a glass cannon. Though defensive stats ( or character base health ) could be modified somehow.

I am way more skeptic.

Actually the impact to thieves would be slightly greater than for other classes, because the increased endurance regen would synergize with other dodge boons thieves get and basically give you unlimited dodging, which other classes wouldn’t have.

In fact, I would argue this would go a long way toward fixing the spike vs survivability issue that Thieves have always struggled with and substantially add to their ability to survive with poor defense in PvE.

Ashivan.5216:

Einlanzer.1627:

maddoctor.2738:

Einlanzer.1627:

There’s a problem with offensive vs. defensive stats, and the long in short of is that, especially with the way dodging works, the best defense is a strong offense.

That’s the best part about Guild Wars 2

Not when there are defensive attributes in the game that become nigh-useless as a result. That’s just an unpolished system.

….snip
It’s like the entire game is balanced around the PvP encounters with huge dmg/defense spikes on long cooldowns and good reflexes.

That’s pretty much exactly what it is. It really appears that balancing for PvE is never a priority for their team, and so we have exceptionally poor balance since PvE operates way differently than PvP does. See things like base weapon damage (mostly stemming from #1 skills), defensive attributes, and downed states.

Like many other things the player base wants/needs/deserves, it’s “not a priority.” Instead, their priority is releasing half-ass balance patches every couple of months and tossing out new dev items without laying a proper foundation first.

I want to glide on a giant American flag. Get on it, Anet.

edit: in all seriousness, I don’t really care. Flying on swords is no more absurd than flying on meteors.