In my eyes the main issue is sustain. Just for fun, I did a computation of the possible average healing on the symbolic and meditrappaer builds. The result is:
0.855k HP/second or about 25k HP in 30 seconds on meditrapper
1k HP/second or 30k HP in 30 seconds for symbolic
This is all on marauder amulet, without taking into account any regeneration and without even talking about how many blocks are available. For comparison, thief or ele (the two profession with the same hp pool) get about 12k in 30 seconds on their best marauder builds. What’s more, when starting a fight a meta DH has altogether about 19k healing for immidiate use and it takes only 1,5 seconds to cast ALL of it. With a HP bar of 17k, that’s more than a full reset.
They should increase cooldowns:
- purification from 30 to 40 seconds untraited,
- smite condition from 20 to 25 seconds untraited,
- hunter’s determination from 40 to 60 seconds untraited (this is then STILL a far better trait than say mirror of anguish on mesmer or reaper’s protection on necro, which are IMO the closest comparable ones) and
-reduce the healing on wings of resolve from 4k to 2k.
The net effect would be a moderate 16-17% reduction of available healing for symbolic (from1k/second to about 0.84k/second, still over twice what ele or thief get on marauder builds) along with some reduction in condition removal. The healing and condi removal available at the beginning of a fight would be largely unaffected, the nerf would be to the ability of resetting your health repeatedly.
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Signet of Corruption
Passive: gain each boon you corrupt (5 second ICD)
Active: transform all of your boons into conditions and send them to nearby foes (600 Radius, 2 conditions per foe, 3/4 of a second cast time, 40 second cooldown)
Signet of Pestilence
Passive: all healing to nearby foes is reduced. Gain life force based on a percentage of all healing done to nearby foes (healing reduction: 25%, life force gain: 10%)
Active: break stuns and Inflict poison, weakness and vlunerability on nearby foes (600 radius, 30 seconds cooldown)
Signet of Devouring
Passive: while in combat, you periodically devour some of your own health in order to recharge the cooldown of all shroud and weapon skills by a small time. Interval: 4 seconds, HP loss: 2%, cooldown reduction: 1 second
Active: finish up to 3 downed foes in an area, healing for a large amount for each foe finished. Range: 600, radius 240, HP per finish: 4000, cast time: 2 seconds, cooldown: 180 seconds.
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I don’t think that sort of argument has a lot of merit. You could give some profession ANYTHING, including an automatic ‘I WIN’ button and justify it by saying ‘well if you want to have this, just play the profession’. And people would – the profession would become incredibly ‘popular’.
You asked to swap necro’s core mechanics- basically the things that define the playstyle- with that of guard. If you are so enamored with the mechanics of another class you should play it. What is stopping you?
You have simply repeated your eariler argument – whch I already refuted I believe. Anyone is free to read my above explantion for why this sort of argument does not hold water.
Its not an argument its an observation. Swapping the key gameplay mechanics of two classes is basically the same as making one class into another class. You can just use the blue car if you prefer that color.
See YET AGAIN my refutaion above…
I don’t think that sort of argument has a lot of merit. You could give some profession ANYTHING, including an automatic ‘I WIN’ button and justify it by saying ‘well if you want to have this, just play the profession’. And people would – the profession would become incredibly ‘popular’.
You asked to swap necro’s core mechanics- basically the things that define the playstyle- with that of guard. If you are so enamored with the mechanics of another class you should play it. What is stopping you?
You have simply repeated your eariler argument – whch I already refuted I believe. Anyone is free to read my above explantion for why this sort of argument does not hold water.
-The Trait of Passive Plague Signet work also while in Shroud but it also work wile you’re Not in shroud, making it a unclear skill and a thing we can not count on to clear conditions while in Shroud, simply why we don’t know it’s timing and we can’t control it’s application. Frequently you clear 3 bad conditions then and the enemy stack again a large amount of condi, making you anyway unable to clear conditions as you want.
-Shrouded Removal is in Deathmagic and that traitline is so bad in sPvP that you can not even think about it. The only reason to have that line is be a MM, then you will Never chose that trait anyway. Anyway is 1 condition every 3 seconds…a warrior condi bomb can strip you out of your shroud so fast to make that trait totally useless.
-Spiteful Renewal… are you seriously takling about it? it work Only hitting an enemy under it’s 25%hp (an enemy barely dead that will not last longer, expecially in spvp), consume only a single condition, you will not be able to use it more than once during a team fight before the enemy will be downed 8if you are in a good team) and is barely useless in a 1vs1 fight, expecially why in 1vs1 if you’re against a dps frequently the enemy will not go under 25%hp.
Also, if you want to use it you have to chose it instead of Bitter Chill, that is our only way to stack vulnerability and reach a good damage.
That’s a barely useless trait in sPvP and also is not even considerable if you look to the other traits. But yes, it work while in shroud.There’s not a single real skill or trait that grant us to have a good condi clear while in shroud, unless the fight last enough to grant us the chance to wait the CD of the passive Plague Signet Trait, that you don’t know if it was already activated, when you will active it or even if you will last longer enough to see it’s activation.
At 90% if a enemy condi burst class (warrior?) attack you while you’re in shroud you have not a single real way to clean your conditions. Only an optional and uncontrollable passive trait to hope to survive a little longer. And not every builds use it.
I merely pointed out that you saying that there are just two ways for necro to clear conditions in shroud via traits is not correct. Is spiteful renewal a good trait? No. But it exists.
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Necro is a strong class so if you want block so much why not play guard?
I don’t think that sort of argument has a lot of merit. You could give some profession ANYTHING, including an automatic ‘I WIN’ button and justify it by saying ‘well if you want to have this, just play the profession’. And people would – the profession would become incredibly ‘popular’.
As far as I know, when in shroud, necros have no way to clear conditions – at least not on the popular ones I’ve seen. So if they do manage to get shroud up, they get condi spammed, immobilized and pounded into dirt. Mesmer can easily moa shroud rendering it useless. Yes you can dodge moa but it’s not that easy in team fight.
There are two ways for necros to have condi clear in shroud not counting runes, sigils etc. (well 3 actually if you count the underwatershroud of base necro but that one doesnt count in spvp). The first is the plague sending trait in curses, which actually is in the meta corruptionmancer build and the other one is in deathmagic but since deathmagic is bad in spvp (i think it is mainly because of bad traits like soul comprehension) we cab take that one from the list.
So with the corruptionmancer you have a condi clear in shroud, so you are technically wrong but you are also kinda right since plague sending is a passive that can easily be baited by an decent player.
- Signet passives actually don’t work in shroud, but I believe that the plague signet application from the trait in curses does work
- You have forgotten spiteful renewal (major adept in spite) which will remove a condition when hitting someone under 25% HP and which I THINK also works in shroud.
Sure give Guardians access to another life bar (yay to more HP) and your condis (only having access to fire is so boring and easy to cleanse), then we consider trading you some blocks.
Have your people contact my people to discuss details.
I am sure – and it was pointed out by somebody above – that most necros would happily trade shroud for dh’s blocks any time of the day, same goes for necro’s condi application vs DH’s dps. Deal.
Cool lets ask Anet…because having played guardian since i started the game i would love to have more HP and access to a decent condi spec. The reason why we have so many blocks is because with out them we can be 2 shotted by a power spec class.
If you want to give up the DH’s blocks as a trade off for having shroud – more power to you. No necro will go away from that trade.
PS If that trade happens, PLEASE DO tell us how you fare against burst specs afterwards.
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Sure give Guardians access to another life bar (yay to more HP) and your condis (only having access to fire is so boring and easy to cleanse), then we consider trading you some blocks.
Have your people contact my people to discuss details.
I am sure – and it was pointed out by somebody above – that most necros would happily trade shroud for dh’s blocks any time of the day, same goes for necro’s condi application vs DH’s dps. Deal.
Agree with OP and here are some concrete suggestions:
- Spectral armor: while you have spectral armor on you, you can activate the skill for a second dime, shattering the armor and becoming invulnerable for a short time (2-3 seconds)
- Transfusion (Blood magic major grandmaster trait, currently rarely used): In addition to the current effects, block attacks while casting shroud skill 4
- Focus 5: this is currently in my view one of the worst weapon skills in game and the main reason that focus is almost never used on necro. I think it would be justified to add: block attacks while casting focus 5 (so for 1 second).
- Not directly a block, but could be another path towards more survivability: Well of darkness (currently essentially useless) while your well is active, you can activate it for a a second times, teleporting to it and destroying it, fearing nearby foes. The second activation counts as a blast finisher.
- Another concrete suggestion to get towards more survivability without introducing blocks/invul to the class: spectral walk (currently rarely used) now consumes 2% LF per second instead of granting LF, but has unlimited (or at least very long) duration. Upon activating the skill for a second time, teleport towards your original position anf heal for a percentage (50%?) of the LF that the skill has consumed.
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No actually since your statement appears to be nonsensical as thief dodges don’t even heal last time I checked. EVADING AN ATTACK will heal DD, but not dodging as such. So the correct math is as follows: 3*Thief dodge=3*0=0 heal.
Sustain=ability to replenish your healthpool over time. This is different from the ability to avoid damage va dodge/block/stealth etc. If thief has a third of dh’s healing while having the same healthpool, then it has a third of the sustain. PERIOD.
Srry but stealth is better than block cause Thieves first attack is 7-10k backstab + free disengage. Guardian does not have disengage at all we fight or die.
If you want to make suggestions what to nerf, make Guardian/DH, play for 200-500 hours than you can judge.
Still nonsensical.
Your previous claim that I disputed above was (from what I understood) that a thief having an additional dodge grants them sustain on par with DH. While you are quoting what I wrote there, you then for some reason start comparing stealth to blocks, which has nothing to do with your previous point or mine.
PS Not that this would be somehow relevant, but what makes you think that I DON’T have 500 hours of play on guardian?
Thief has 3 dodge rolls thus its equal to DH triple more heal. Get it now?
No actually since your statement appears to be nonsensical as thief dodges don’t even heal last time I checked. EVADING AN ATTACK will heal DD, but not dodging as such. So the correct math is as follows: 3*Thief dodge=3*0=0 heal.
Sustain=ability to replenish your healthpool over time. This is different from the ability to avoid damage va dodge/block/stealth etc. If thief has a third of dh’s healing while having the same healthpool, then it has a third of the sustain. PERIOD.
I’m nerfing the effectiveness of trap spam in lower tiers which will curb the plethora of guardian players. This will also contribute towards solving the issue of guardian being too heavily stacked and becoming more powerful because of it.
The meta build changes will be nerfs to people who don’t understand how the class really works to begin with, and buffs to raise the skill ceiling and finally make DH competitive. At high level play, guardian continues to struggle behind most of the other meta builds that find their way into competitive teams.
Your theoretical numbers and figures don’t mean much when in a real life situation, classes like warrior, rev, druid and engi continue to out sustain DH builds as you can see from pro player duels. These are classes that a DH would need to be on par with since they fill close to the same role, otherwise there continues to be no reason to take DH.
It is therefore rational to balance these abilities by nerfing the passive random elements that rely on opponents being dumb, and buffing up the parts that require mechanical skill to pull off and reward them better.
Before you write even more on your ‘concerns’ about the ‘grave dangers’ of the non-meta full trap builds , you might humor anyone reading this by answering the following simple question: what build are YOU personally running on DH? It would sure be ironic if the nerfs you are so ‘generously’ proposing would in fact largely not affect you, just as they largely don’t affect the meta builds.
I want to come back to healing and the obvious fact that your suggestions contain ZERO hits to DH’s sustain or survivability. In my very first post, I gave you the lower estimate for 20k HP healing per 30 seconds on meta DH. Your reply was that a) even for the symbolic build the healing is (direct quote) ‘no where as fantastic as you suggested’ and b) of the major DH builds only symbolic (direct quote) ‘approaches the kind of sustain that you mentioned’. Both a) and b) are completely false and in fact the actual figure I cpomputed in my above posts is even higher: 25k in 30 seconds for meta meditrapper and 30k in 30 seconds (or 1k per second) for symbolic.
Here comes the really ironic part though. In the same post you write – and I think you are actually directly referring to symbolic there – ‘The 1v1 sustain does not need any further touching because it’s just barely viable as it is.’ You might want to address either one of the following two questions:
1. Do you really believe that 1k healing per second is the bare minimum sustain to be viable in a 1v1?
2. If 1. is true, what is your take on the fact that both other professions that share DH’s healthpool d/p have less than HALF of that on their best marauder builds?
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This is just cherry picking data.
There’s a reason why fresh air is not viable, and thief sustain is focused around evades and not heals/blocks like guardians. Neither classes fill the same role as DH, so it’s not even worth comparing them. No matter what variant of DH you play, you’re a slow moving point holder and you NEED the sustain that comes with this role.
And of course, in a real fight you’re likely going to be poisoned the entire time, you wouldn’t be spam dodging as the endurance becomes available, you’re not going to be standing perfectly in symbols the entire time, the f2 is easily interruptable, the enemy can easily counter the heal by simply not walking into the heal trap and kiting the DH (wow counter play!) etc etc.
First of all if you are to compare marauder DH with thief or ELE DH, then the most rational way to do it IS to pick the best builds on that amulet on these classes. According to metabattle, this is marauder d/p on thief (meta) and fresh air on ele (listed as ‘good’). Now the auromacer build which runs mender’s and is listed higher will indeed get more healing than fresh air, but why would you compare marauder DH with a BUNKER build. And for marauder, the healing numbers are as above:
DH symbolic (as listed on metabattle) 30k HP in 30 sedons
DH meditrapper (as listed on metabattle) 25k HP in 30 seconds
Fresh Air ELE (as listed on metabattle) about 12k HP in 30 seconds
D/P Thief (as listed on metabattle) about 10-12k HP in 30 seconds
The detailed computation for the DH builds is in my posts above for anyone to doublecheck. Similarly, you can check for ele and thief.
Now this is the estimated average healing in IDEAL cases, and the practiacal numbers in combat will be lower. However, if the ideal value of symbolic DH is TRIPLE what it is for d/p thief, then that ratio will be similar in non-ideal situtations.
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1K healing per second for how long? Your scenario supposes the use of healing skills in rapid succession, meaning, they have to be on cool down. How long does a dh have to be able generate 1k healing a second oncd all cds are back up?
This is the average potential healing per second for as long as you want. Suppose you continuously trigger all of your healing skills/traits the moment they go off cooldown over the course of say 10 minutes and then divide all the HP this would give you by the time. The result is about 1k HP per second.
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Longer Cooldown seems to be a quicker fix for this though it’ll still be a problem of stopping initiations in it’s tracks. Healing is different in many cases. DH for example I have to use the skill and make sure I use said skill properly, otherwise I’m left with less condi clear or no stunbreak. Compare to Engi and Warrior now, engi’s sustain wasn’t tied to any real CDs. their sustain stems from Regen mixed with Rapid Regeneration, elixer gun, boons and Bulwark Gyro. This was back in S2 and S3. Warrior Sustain pretty high now too. can easily reach 900 HPS and about 1k if you get dogged march to proc or another source of regen. But that sustain is tied to hitting burst skills which isn’t too hard considering Berserker mode burst skills can be quite spammable. There’s a reason why previous seasons a scrapper could just bully a DH off the point easily you know despite heals.
This is also another thing I don’t get either, you’re comparing thief and elementalist healing capabilities with a guardian when they’re all entirely different concepts, and the only thing comparable in your argument is the health pool. They’re nothing alike, Thieves can dodge about 6-7 times in a row, and access to invis which drops targeting which can be much better in some cases than a block. Ele’s healing in the past seasons, healing affected the entire team, not just themselves. They could keep people alive and prolong the fight for a long time not to mention dish out projectile hate easily.
Take into consideration that base Purification is 30s CD untraited. tuning it 10% tunes it to around a 7.7k heal in total(forgetting the regen), from 8.6k heal. That puts it under our other bigger heal Sigent of Resolve. for about 8.1k, 35s untraited. It would definitely be noticeable to those who use Focus Mastery over Smiter’s Boon.
- Longer cooldown on purification WOULD indeed be quite effective, since purification actually heals for about 10,5k on the meta marauder builds because it also triggers a 2k heal using smiter’s boon. The numbers are as follows: If you wanted for example to reduce the symbolic’s build 1k/sec healing by 10% by ONLY increasing the cooldown of purification, then it would have to go from 24 to about 32 seconds (so going up from 30 seconds to 40 seconds cooldown before taking into account piercing light). I do think this would be more reasonable than a shave to purification’s healing. And while I agree that there is a limit as to how much purification can be shaved before it falls out of line with the other primary heals on guardian, the consequence here is simply that at some point the other source of healing on the meta builds need to be looked at too.
- Sure, you can always make the argument that different professions bring different tools and therefore their numbers might look differently. However, you can make that argument to argue for or against just about ANY kind of balancing aspect. I could equally well argue that a thief or ele should do 3 times more dps than any other profession because of how ‘unique’ they are.
My point in picking up thief’s and ele’s healing numbers is indeed that they share dh’s healthpool and thus the healing per second translates into sustain in the same way. Warriors healing for 1k per second (no idea how realistic this number is) would for example translate into a much lower sustain than what the symbolic build has because of the larger health pool on warrior.
BTW non of my above calculations for DH’s healing take into account regeneration.
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And all those other skills that aren’t purification have exactly what to do with a discussion about nerfing purification?
You’re moving the goalposts.
If I am ‘moving goalposts’ than I am moving them FROM ZERO since the OP’s suggestions contained nothing at all about nerfing sustain. And if you like, you are welcome to show me if you can where I write in my first post to this thread that the 20k healing figure I gave there pertains to purification.
If you crunch the numbers, then the meta symbolic build has 1k healing per second, only about A THIRD of which comes from purification. In slightly different terms, if you wanted say to reduce the builds sustain by 10% (which would still leave it being over twice as high as what d/p thief of fresh air get) by only changing purification’s heal, then it would have to be nerfed by about 30% – from 8,5k to 6,1k. So meaningful shaves to the overall sustain are only possible if you either accept a rather massive nerf to purification, or hits to the other healing skills.
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Tbh, you can bring up total amount of healing calculations and all, but it doesn’t mean squat, due to various variables in fight that can occur in a fight, and most of it looks likes it’s using these skills off cooldown the instant you get them. Wings of Resolve is not instant, and sometimes even a mistake using over renewed focus when being heavily pressured, getting randomly CC’d mid leap or dying mid leap happens more than you think. This is what I think should happen because I main this class, and I play other classes as well.
-Remove Hunter’s Determination – This passive trait is just…kinda way too strong for a passive on CC’d trait proc. -Damage/Daze(traited)/1-5x Aegis/Stability, this alone shuts down so many openers and just flips it on whoever opens. It needs to be replaced.
-1-H Symbols – They could use a small damage shave, so it’s more in line with their cooldowns. Compare to GS/Longbow/Hammer.
Traps – In general i’d like to see something like Shadow Trap from thief. A active portion of the skill. Popping it early gives reduced cooldown, or gives another beneficial effect. Doing this will also stop the doubling down of setting traps down, and getting double use after CDs get back up
Test of Faith – Remove the initial damage, add about 10-20% more damage to crossing the line. Beta ToF didn’t have initial damage on proc before. getting knocked into it or pulled should be rewarding since you’re expending cooldowns to do so. If possible, fix shadowsteps so you don’t take damage for porting out or into it.
Purification- A small 5-10% shave should do it well. Shaving this though i’d like to see things like Litany of Wrath buffed longer duration and higher percentage Damage to Heal ratio, so we have a alternative heal, next to shelter for DPSers. Though shouldn’t be needed if the trap changes happen.
Light’s Judgement – It’s the only trap not ever used, even against stealth class it’s pretty bad. Either buffing to longer duration of reveal, or pulsing blind and immobilize.
- Agree about Hunter’s determination – though not remove, but just longer cooldown
- You point out that actual healing in combat is different from the ideal numbers. That’s true, but it’s true for EVERY profession. I would make the point that if the total healing available to DH in the ideal case is three times what you get on thief or ele in the ideal case, then you would expect this proportion to be about the same in non-ideal cases. More so if you factor in that the TOTAL cast time of ALL the skills that heal a DH outside of renewed focus (which grants invuln. while casting) andthe scepter symbol/aegis generation from shield 4 (which don’t heal at all on meditrapper and contribute at besr 5-10% of the healing on symbolic) is actually just 1,5 seconds (0,5 seconds purification, 1 sec wings of resolve, rest instacast).
- Here is how a 10% shave to purification would change the sustain of the symbolic build: The healing in the course of 30 seconds would go down from 30k on average to 29k on average. This is just to point out that if this is the only change in sustain, then IN TOTAL the healing would go down only by about 3%. Whichever way you interpret this number is up to you, but I don’t think it would be practically noticeable.
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Do you think you can express your counter-opinions without lines like “you’re 100% wrong”, “most of your suggestions are outright bad or useless.”, “your post is nothing more than…”? That’d be great.
The wording may be off-putting, but he is making one valid point at least: it is quite likely that many of the DH players who ‘generously’ accept in their posts nerfs to say procession of baldes or dragon’s maw play one of the meta builds, which use neither of these things – and in fact, if you take into account their other suggestions (see OP’s post), the meta builds would be either mostly unaffected or potentially even slightly buffed by the ‘nerfs’ they are so graciously accepting. I for my part provided above some rather concrete calculations to underline where I see a major issue that can be depicted in factual numerical terms: healing/sustain.
Only accepting ‘nerfs’ that largely either don’t affect or even buff the meta builds of your profession IS NOT being ‘rational’.
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Me saying your problem with dh isnt because dh is broken isnt a personal attack, its simply a long way of saying l2p. Again dh is not easy to fight against, you just need to pay attention to what you are blocking and evading which takes practice.
If, instead of making (this time I guess somewhat better veiled) personal attacks or throwing around ‘l2p’ as a mantra, you finally DO bother to address my actual arguments, you might want to humor anyone reading this thread by explaining why it is perfectly justified in your view that DH gets 1k healing per second on the meta builds, triple what the other professions with the sam hp get – THIS is balancewise the most pressing ‘problem’ I see with it.
How exactly is someone supposed to convince you to get better at playing your class based on fact? …
So many people reacted the same way you are reacting now, now look at the threads…
so here is an excercise for you, check how many classes can avoid trap damage even after being pulled without the basic dodge and how often.
More personal attacks not warranting a factual response.
As i explained to you dear, the reason why it’s ok that a marauder guardian can heal more than a dps ele or a dps thf is becauze healing and blocking is how a dh defends against an encounter. A thf defends itself by using stealth and greater mobility. Ele is the only outlier that doesn’t have a lot of outs.
Good dp classes aren’t the full glass cannons that blow all their utilities to kill and end up helpless afterwards. That’s stuff for amber leagues and it’s why trap damage nerf might be justified.
A good dps class should be able to sustain itself at least in a 1v1. Rev and war are good self sufficient examples. Necro could be argued to possess that with shroud but it seems like it relied too much on a single mechanic to live. Ele needs a buff in the self sustain regard because it can dps just fine but its sustain when it goes dps is not good enough for higher tiers pvp where you expect your dps to take care of themselves.
Necro is the one exception since the condi dps is so good that a pocket engi is used to keep it viable at higher organized tiers.
First of all, ‘DEAR’, I merely pointed out that his post was just a blanket personal attack against anyone who does not share his opinion.
So the reaons for the insane difference in sustain is simply ‘healing and blocking is how a dh defends against an encounter’? This is not really different than saying ‘DH need to heal and block a lot because they need to heal and block a lot’. If there is an argument hidden in this statement, then I am failing to find it.
‘Good dp classes aren’t the full glass cannons that blow all their utilities to kill and end up helpless afterwards’. Which part of this statement addresses the huge sustain difference I calculated above?
I agree with you BTW that ele needs a buff, but as I mentioned before I don’t see new buffs to sustain since the devs are moving in the oppposite direction.
Most of your post is composed of blanket statements not directly addressing the question: Why should DH have triple the healing of the other professions with the same hp?
Before it was “dh is trash”, “dh is the worst class in the game”, “kys if you die to dh”. Dh got the buff it needed now its “dh is broken”," dh is op"," anet why you do dis".
Dont you guys get tired.
Dh is fine. Unless you play thief, there shouldnt be a problem with dh. The way traps were designed is pretty silly but at least it doesnt break the class. It could have been much worse.
This post contains no factual arguments (I would not count ‘Dh is fine’ as one), but merely thinly veiled attacks against anyone who might not share your opinion.
To reiterate: balancewise, I see no reason why the healing available to DH on marauder should be literally 3 TIMES what the best builds the other professions with the same healthpool have.
Hence why the cleric amulet was removed. Guardian healing wasn’t buffed aside from mace. What you’re seeing the loss of cleric ele giving away the spotlight to a new bunker that was always there.
In case you have misread my above calculations: DH MARAUDER gets 1k healing per second on the symbolic build. We are still talking about a build that can spike many others in seconds – so it’s rather ironic (although probably not very far from the truth) for you to talk about its survivability as compared to a cleric bunker guard.
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No, i don’t see an issue with that. Guardian is the equivalent of a palladin class in other games, so that the menders symbolic build can heal itself for so much seems like exactly what guardian should have had access to from the very beginning. It’s what justifies the guardian having low hp and low mobility. Thf has mobility and i would honestly argue that ele is the one that needs a buff between the 3 low hp classes, since ele can neither self heal or damage negate as a guardian but it can’t move between points fast enough or escape from fights like thf can, leaving few options in battle.
First of all, I cordially invite people who don’t play DH and might not have seen yet the calculations I gave above to agree, if they think so, that it’s perfectly fine for the symbolic build to have 1K HEALING PER SECOND (along with some of the best AOE damage and blocks).
Secondly, the sustain on thief and fresh air ele is actually about in line with each other (10-12k in 30 seconds), and then we have DH with 3 TIMES the amount. From the point of view of lore, I don’t see an explanation for this. And if your only response to the hard numbers is ‘buff the sustain on the other professions’ – in case you have not noticed, the game is moving in the complete opposite direction, lower sustain leading to more fast-paced combat.
Out of the 3 builds, only the 3rd approaches the kind of sustain that you mentioned…
The above calculation proves that this is false. BOTH major DH builds (marauder symbolic and meditrapper as listed on metabattle) can heal for over 25k HP in 30 seconds on average. The number for symbolic is actually EVEN HIGHER than that from using traits in the honor line:
+ 0,1k from every dodge using slefless daring
+ 0,6k from every aegis using pure of heart
+0,6k from every symbol using writ of persistence
Assuming 4 dodges, 3 applications of aegis (shield 4+virtue passive+hunter’s determination ) and an average of 3,5 symbols (sword 2 + scepeter 2, 10 and 6 second cooldwon respectively) over the course of 30 seconds, you get in addition about 5k every 30 seconds, so the healing available to the meta symbolic build using everything on cooldown is about
30k IN 30 SECONDS OR 1K PER SECOND.
Now the other two professions with the same healthpool as guardian are thief and ele. The best marauder builds for these according to metabattle are d/p and fresh air. According to my calculations, marauder fresh air gets about 11-12k healing over 30 seconds, d/p a bit less. So DH healing on symbolic is about THREE TIMES what these builds get. If you take into account all the blocks that DH has, it seems VERY hard to not see an issue with this.
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20k every 30 seconds?
Not even with Mender’s. Not even CLOSE with Mender’s. Mender’s will do 11-13k healing every 30 seconds and that’s assuming you’re also not using WoR so you get its passive, and that you’re running and not activating Signet of Courage so you get its passive.
Using Demolisher’s, this is what I’m seeing on my guard (zero healing power):
-Purification (24s cooldown)
-Initial heal: 2192
-Trap heal: 6413
This gives 8605 healing every 24 seconds assuming something activates the trap and I’m dropping the trap on cooldown every cooldown. This normalizes out to 10,756.25 healing every 30 seconds.
You appear to have conveniently ‘forgotten’ about 80% of skills that heal a DH. Here is an actual complete count on marauder amulet; this count applies to BOTH the meditrapper and the symbolic build as listed on metabattle (symbolic gets EVEN MORE from traits):
8,5k from purification (24 second cooldown)
+2k from smite condition (16 seconds)
+2k from smiter’s boon (24 seconds)
+2k from judges intervention (36 seconds)
+4k from wings of resolve (26 seconds)
+6k from renewed focus (2k since meditation + 4k from wings of resolve recharge) (72 seconds)
I invite you to crunch these numbers to confirm that the average healing from using everything on cooldown is 0,855k per second or:
25,6k OVER 30 SECONDS
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I am sorry but this does not address the real core problem of DH: too high sustain and survivability. DH can heal for far over 20k every 30 seconds on symbolic build – this is more than TWICE the healing you get on d/p thief thief or fresh air ele (the best marauder builds on the other two professions that have the same HP pool as DH), while also dealing more damage overall. DH healing and in particular purifaction need to be addressed first and foremost.
Conerning dps: while ToF hits hard, I’d say it’s much less of a problem than the traited symbols – those are too easily spammable and more often than not will deal much more damage over the course of a fight thatn ToF. The other traps are not very relevant given that they are not usually used by the meta builds.
I really like the suggestion for spectral grasp – double activation skills are a good way of adding more depth to the gameplay. Your suggestion for spectral armor would be really unbalanced though – 12 seconds of consecutive blocking (6+6 from the minor trait in soul reaping) to a profession that currently has zero blocking seems very drastic.
Instead, I would suggest: Upon second activation, you shatter your spectral armor, becoming invulnerable for a short duration (2-3 seconds, maybe second activation also stunbreak). This would not affect the spectral armor from the trait.
I think necro defensive skills are the worst of any profession and really need some changes. Some other suggestions:
- For how clunky wurm is compared to all other teleports ingame, I suggest it should ALSO break stuns when casting it (possibly grant stability while casting) – maybe increase cooldown to compensate.
- Spectral walk: no longer grants life force, but consumes 2% (3%) life force per second while active (possibly duration of the skill incresed or even unlimited). Upon second activation, teleport towards your origingal position and heal for a percentage (50%?) of LF consumed.
- Well of dardkness is currently mostly useless. I suggest: increase dutation; while active, you can activate the skill a second time, destroying the well, teleporting to it and fearing nearby foes. The second activation counts as a blast finisher.
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When you put it that way, I can say the same thing about other professions, like a thief desperately needing to dodge several times in a row, not including evades on weapon sets, blinds and shadowsteps with nearly unmatched mobility and stealth to boot to get out of almost any situation if it turns sour and you’re better elsewhere. I can go on about other classes but it’d have to list it all.
The reason everyone is playing it because everyone is hoping on the bandwagon like they normally do thanks to metabattle, some aspects of DH are overtuned, namely one hander symbol damage and possibly traited purification. With those QoL changes they brought down Ele and tuned Scrapper which were our counters. which brings us into the meta now.
Sure, as long you don’t go into specifics, you can say that many professions have many things. My point concerning healing made further above WAS very specific though: If you count healing on DH, it is about DOUBLE what the best marauder builds on ele or thieves – which share the same healthpool as DH – have (over 20k within 30 seconds on DH – I forgot to count renewed focus last time so it is actually even a bit more- vs about 10-11k on the other two, if my calculations are correct), while also having much more blocks than either of the other two (and arguably better condi removal). I am not sure about the dps numbers as those are more difficult to count due to boons/crits, but I highly doubt that either thief or power ele do a lot more damage than meta DH.
Now OBVIOUSLY this is a subjective point but I submit that the few disadvantages that DH has (lower mobility and a possibly marginally lower cc if you compare with thief) by no means compensate for its OBJECTIVELY vastly superior sustain (literally double) and its – in my subjective view also far superior – survivability.
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I am so sorry for your necro with 2 life pools but you should practice more against DH or play condi cheese.
Prime example of an ad hominem attack: instead of trying to contribute anything to the discussion, you just through out some cheap random accusation in the hope to avoid having to address the actual arguments at hand.
PS Necro is not my main. I am very certain though that there is consensus that necro is (along with basically everyone else) at a big disadvantage in a 1v1 against DH – and in case you have not noticed, hp and toughness are worth very little since burst got increased and sustain nerfed.
We actually need to press a button for a “Passive block” ?… that needs to be timed against a heavy skill?
So that is a passive that 2 Automatic auto atacks can resolve…
The only passive guardian has a block it is the 40/30 sec on virtue… all others are active and need to be timmed againt certain skills.
Guardian/DH w/ob locks dies faster than a thief, guardian is a squishy class due its low health and heavy armro is just arround 7%-10% damage reduction , reason it needs the blocks to feel sturdier.
Go play as a mace/shield shout build and tell me how many matches u can win, or tank really awfull bad players.
Yeah of course DH just DESPERATELY needs to be able to heal fro 20k every 30 seconds and have more blocks/invuln than everyone else. And surely the only reason you see everyone and their mother playing it is simply that people pity it so much…
Let’s go through this one by one, shall we:
eles have best support out there, + heals + almost perma protection (40% on tempest) + invulnerabilities + teleports.
DD have blocks + poking 9k backstabs from stealth + steal attack that gives 4 SEC daze.
The best power ele build according to metabattle (while by no means meta since power ele meta does not appear to exist) is fresh air. In the standard version (air, earth arcane) you should be able to heal for about 9-11k hp within 30 seconds (3* cleansing wave 1* signet, 1* water trident + heals per cast from the signet). d/p thief should be able to heal for at best 10 – 11k in 30 seconds (chanelled vigor + steal healing +healing from evade). Now compare that to DH self heal in 30 seconds: about 19-20k. All the while having much more blocks/invuln than either of the other two.
Can you have perma protection ele? Maybe, but it is then a bunker build, so you would not compare it to power DH.
1kheal/sec while using all heal abilities, then what? waiting to die? lol.
Riveting. That is, until you remember that the TOTAL casting time of all the skills that heal a DH for a total of about 19k is 1,5 seconds (0,5 seconds purification, 1 second wings of resolve and the rest is instacast). DH heals are largely instacast and/or automatic from doing something else.
I am sorry if you die to dh as a thief, I have encountered very good thieves out there who know their class, you should not play thief as a brawler. Thats first mistake from thieves perspective.
While your concern is touching, it might be misplaced given that I don’t play thief – I think I may have at best 3-4 pvp matches completed on it out of thousands.
i feel that the high access to healing and blocking is a good trade off for the low hp pool (which is part of the reason the heals seem overwhelming when they heal a higher relative percentage of health relative to other classes) and low mobility.
a dh can’t disengage effectively so it has to be able to sustain on point.
Firstly, it’s not like a DH’s low healthpool is unique. Secondly, a DH is far from the only class who can’t disengage. And thirdly, the ability to hold/contest point is far more important in conquest than the ability to run away.
Guard have 11k base hp -> zerker gear is practically suicide.
Without 2k heal we die pretty quick.
Almost every class have access to unblockable skills.
You can die to condi dmg while being invulnerable plus its only 1 not more invulnerability.
65 sec cd 1 block – aegis (if not DH).
WoR pretty much gets interrupted every time with so manny cc’s in this new elite specs.
Class with no passive movement trait -> 4 years of traveler runes.
- Thieves and eles also have 11k hp on berserker, while ALSO being light armored and having next to no access to blocks. Talk about suicide…
- You WOULD die quicker without the heals – that is kind of the whole point. There is currently far too much healing on DH
- DH has some of the best condi removal and most pure condi builds don’t have much of a chance against it. You CAN’T die to condi if there are no condis on you
- you know full well that the majority of DH’s blocks are active: shield of wreath, shield of courage. Also, you have a lot more aegis than what you are claiming from running hunter’s determination
- Other professions (who DON’T have this many blocks) have a much bigger problem with interrupted heals. Also note how the ACTUAL healing skill (purification) only has 1/2 second cast time
- true that DH is not very mobile, but in combat still not bad due to leaps/teleport
Concerning healing: If you count the healing skills together, DH gets 0,8k hp per second if using everthing on cooldown. If you add to this regeneration, then you ARE in the ballpark of having 1k per second.
Traps are NOT the problem, apart from possibly the healing trap (which heals too reliably given that its supposed to be a TRAP and IMO heaks for too much). This is readily confirmed by the fact that the meta builds usually only take one offensive trap – test of faith. The problem is how out of balance healing, block and invuln are.
Let’s just count the heals for fun. The meditrapper build gets about
2k heal from smite condition every 16 seconds AND
2k every 20-30 seconds from triggering smite with the trait AND
2k every 36 seconds from judges intervention AND
4k from wings of resolve every 26 seconds (actually less because renewed focus)
This is all with zero healing power and without even taking into account the actual healing skill (purification gives between 8 and 9k MORE on only a 24 (!) second cooldown). Add to this the fact that DH has some of the best access to blocks, ivnulnerabilities and condi removal and you should see the real problem here.
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If anything the most popular builds are used because they are the most viable at higher levels of play. Full trapper is no good at higher skill levels but it can 100-0 a glassy player with little effort. Nerfing the meta builds would simply push DH back out of competitive play. Meanwhile, nerfing the full trapper would simply mean that nobody would get 100-0 by stacked traps anymore, which is one of the loudest complaints.
We all know that one of the things most people in the pvp forum complain about regarding guardian is the full trapper despite the fact that it’s not even a meta build. Recently they’ve also started to complain about the blocks and the healing, but that’s because the average player can’t tell that he’s fighting many different kinds of DH and they think the menders bunker, symbol marauder, and full trapper are all the same thing.
It is very simple really: IF you agree that DH is unbalanced compared to other professions, then the only way to solve this is to adjust the things in the DH’s strongest builds. Nerfing builds that are subpar already will do nothing, as far as meta goes. Are pure trap builds annoying and can they be good at low levels of play? I guess – but they also go down very quickly themselves. I for my part (and many others) perceive the DH meta builds as a far bigger problem. The fact by the way that these meta builds only take one offensive trap and the rest is sustain essentially confirms that if the profession is currently too strong, then the problem is NOT the offensive traps. Besides many new players who want to pick up the profession will start with the meta builds – and it’s not like these are weaker at lower levels of play.
You say ‘Nerfing the meta builds would simply push DH back out of competitive play’. This kind of ‘preemtptive’ counterargument has very little credibility – you can’t claim that ANY change, no matter how small, would immidiately result in DH no longer being meta.
Putting it bluntly, what I read in your last posts are iterations of the same statement : ‘I don’t care if you nerf something on DH, just don’t you touch MY build’.
OP: I like the idea. Naturally, resistance would be corrupted into your ‘exposed’ condition and conversely, ‘exposed’ would be transmuted into resistance with corresponding skills/traits, making things more symmetric than they are now. Adding this kind of condition to suitable skills/traait could allow for quite interesting gameplay.
On a technical note, it would have to be decided what happens if you have BOTH resistance and your new condition one you – one would have to override the other (probably the one who was applied first counts).
You want equality? Then give up your special stealth attacks and use normal auto-attacks in stealth like every other class, even Mesmer.
You want to stay special? Then deal with the special treatment.This reminds me of me when I first started mesmer. I used to hate thieves during the S/D meta. But then I got good and learned to play. Do I still lose to good thieves? Yes. Does that mean I think the nerf to stealth attacks is fair? No. Learn to put your emotionally charged opinions aside before jumping on a class balance post.
On a side note. Dayyyyuuum yo I can sound Hella proper when I’m feeling it.
Hmmm MAYBE your changed perception of S/D thieves had something to do with the fact that they were nerfed to the point where noone plays them anymore…
I’d rather they nerf those traps because i don’t care about them.
Well understandable but it’s kind of disingenuous to say ’I’m fine with nerfs, just as long as they don’t nerf anything that people ACTUALLY USE’. As I said, IF they decide that DH could indeed usr some shaves, then obviously they should start with what the most popular builds are running – otherwise there is very little point.
I remember discussing zerker stance on the forums at the time when it did not give pulsing resistance, but flat out physically made it impossible for conditions to be applied. Warriors of course wanted to keep it this way. The reason it was changed is that in the matchup against a condi necro (and many other condi builds) it basically made it a default win for the warrior, assuming he ran a power build: you had 8 seconds to pummel on the necro who could neither do anything to you or run away (since necros have no mobility). The matchup was not quite as skewed with condi builds on other professions, but still allowed for very little active counterplay other than simply running away from the warrior.
I’d rather they just shave the damage on dragon’s maw and procession of blades and leave the sustain alone.
I am sure you are aware that neither one of these two traps is usually used in the current meta DH builds (symbolic/meditrapper) which mostly only take test of faith from the offensive traps . So nerfing these two would change very little in the balance between DH and other professions but simply make the most popular DH builds even more popular. Besides, they have already looked at traps in the last balance patch, so if they agree that DH needs more balancing, then it makes much more sense to look into the defensive stuff. Well, we’’ll see – and since balance patches are rather infrequent it will take a while for ANY changes regardless.
Test of faith isn’t even remotely a nuke. The DH has to bounce you through the trap to actually get the real damage out of it, which is something a DH with experience with his class is capable of performing (as opposed to someone who just picked up the class and is stacking traps on a point). The trap should remain as is.
My point was that the claim that poor DHs have to put up test of faith and ‘hope’ that someone walks into it is a rather gross misrepresentation given it’s instacast nature.
BTW I never said they should necessarily change the way test of faith works. What they SHOULD definitely do is to look into the DH’s survivability (block/invln/healing/condi removal) that is currently too much for the kind of damage it can deal.
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TL;DR GW2PvP is about spike damage.
It’s also about being invulnerable 70% of the time, typically using overpowered utility skills and the like.
If there was no invulnerability, everybody would have to have around 50k HPs.
Blanket statement that is wrong because it is a) based on a wrong assumption and b) draws from that wrong assumption a wrong conclusion.
Take thieves as an example: zero invulnerabilities in the standard builds (and a single block from a utility that is often omitted), yet a very small healthpool. As the opposite of the spectrum, take a necro who can have a large healthpool sitting on marauder. Yet when focus fired upon by say three people the necro WILL go down immidiately no matter what he does. A DH (running the standard meta build) in the same situation will not – at least not before he can deal quite a bit of damage.
In a high burst/low sustain meta that we have right now, the value of both hp and toughness is minuscule compared to that of blocks and invulnerabilities.
There is so much misinformation in this quote.
First, you are trying to fight on point as thief. I do not care what you are fighting that is not possible. The whole concept of thief is to play hit and run.
Necro with Marauder? There is not one meta necro build run marauder. Plus Necro can fight on point. Other classes can do it better, but Necro is no push over.
Lastly high/burst low sustain meta. While the survive-ability of most classes went down from last patch, trust and believe HP and toughness are significantly important. There is a reason why no uses berserk ammy. Also, go fight eng, rev and druids then come back to tells us how HP, toughness and healing are “minuscule.”
The fact that there is indeed no meta power necro is PRECISELY the point. Why is that if you CAN actually have 40-50k effective hp with it (if you have full shrroud)? It’s because hp pool has no value compared to having blocks/invulnerabilities. Yet according to what was stated above, power necro should be good since it was claimed that hp pool is an adequate substitute for having these things. It’s not and that’s precisely the point I was making
And yes, the above post was factually wrong. It was claimed that a profession with no invulnerabilities cannot work unless it has a large hp pool. The case of thieves proves that statement to be factually wrong.
And finally, how quickly do you thing a druid or scrapper go down to burst if they don’t use there defensive abilities? VERY quickly. The reason they are still tankier ingame than say a necro (although the latter can have A LOT more effective HP) are that they have active defenses/boons/stealth which the necro all lacks and which are much more valuable. The fact that marauder amulet is usually better than berserker does not somehow disprove this.
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Tissitra.4153, guardian/dh have that cause they cant run aways like some classes do, they cant reset combats, all they can do it use blocks well timed or try to and hope players kill themselves on the traps.
Firstly, the ability to disengage is not even remotely as valuable in conquest as the ability to hold a point. Secondly, since test of faith – in my eyes the main offender and the only offensive trap used in the meta build – is instacast it is very often used simply as a nuke in melee combat with no ‘hoping’ involved and besides, it’s not like guardian’s dps outside of traps is bad. And thirdly, rather than conveniently picking up the example of thieves I gave above, what about my second example – necros? They lack BOTH the ability to disengage and to survive burst while on a point.
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TL;DR GW2PvP is about spike damage.
It’s also about being invulnerable 70% of the time, typically using overpowered utility skills and the like.
If there was no invulnerability, everybody would have to have around 50k HPs.
Blanket statement that is wrong because it is a) based on a wrong assumption and b) draws from that wrong assumption a wrong conclusion.
Take thieves as an example: zero invulnerabilities in the standard builds (and a single block from a utility that is often omitted), yet a very small healthpool. As the opposite of the spectrum, take a necro who can have a large healthpool sitting on marauder. Yet when focus fired upon by say three people the necro WILL go down immidiately no matter what he does. A DH (running the standard meta build) in the same situation will not – at least not before he can deal quite a bit of damage.
In a high burst/low sustain meta that we have right now, the value of both hp and toughness is miniscule compared to that of blocks and invulnerabilities.
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The problem is not traps or blocks/invuln/condi removal individually. The problem is how off the ratio between survivability and the ability to land high dps/cc is compared to other professions. What should be looked into is the DHs myriad of blocks/invuln and healing.
Either make chill deal damage again or let the chill trait cause burning. Name it “frostburn” or something.
While that would be natural, I think it likely won’t happen bacause of immidiate associations with Dhuumfire that the devs will have.
The funny thing is, since the game came out necros were only ever strong for quite brief periods of time – the dhuumfire and the chill damage eras both actually did not last long. Every other profession had far longer periods of time where they were top tier and some (guardians for instance) AT NO POINT EVER left the meta, at least not that I can remember. The devs appear to have a rather skewed perception of the necromancer class in general.
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OP: agree on your points concerning the state of the profession. I’d say it is now the least viable one – eles can at least provide a lot of support if they spec for it.
The current chill trait on reaper in itself is VERY week for its slot – I’d say it’s at best as good as the minor in spite that gives vulnerability on chill. The obvious thing to improve it would be make it apply a condition with higher dps, but lower duration. For all the boon corruptions that condi necros have right now, they don’t really work as a condi class since they do very little actualy condition damage. For instance a condi mesmer will do more dps than a condi necro by just popping 2-3 clones and autoattacking with staff .
What I think should definitely happen either way is that they rework the corruption tables. The current corruption tables are quite obviously outdated and should have been changed when they made burning and poison stack. For insance , you can only inflict 1 (!) stack of burning for 1 (!) second from corruptions – and this only (!) if you corrupt aegis. NOTHING gets corrupted into torment. I also think that the result of corrupting boons should at least in some way (maybe not for all, but at least for some boons) scale with the number of stacks / duration of what you corrupt if necros are to work as a ‘boon hate’ profession. It would be fine that there is little direct condi damage if boon corruptions provided a viable source of dps.
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