Guild Wars 2

If you are into min-maxing, I have good news for you: It’s easy in GW2. Any direct damage scales linearly with the weapon strength and power:

Effective Power = Weapon Strength * Power * skill coefficient * (1 + crit chance * crit multiplier).

There is no base + Power * coefficient scaling for direct damage (condition damage has it, though)

EP of first combo: 189 * (1+0.134*0.513) = 201.99
EP of second combo: 119 * (1+0.4542*0.513) = 146.73

Assuming the weapons are of equal level and rarity (blue, green), so that the weapon damage is equal, the mighty staff is better. Later, you’ll find two-stat gear (strong = power + precision) and three-stat gear (berserker’s = power + precision + feriocity (crit dmg)). As a rule of thumb, power scales the best, in a fully buffed, 5 man group assassin’s (precision + power + feriocity) can be better, but not by much.

That said, I think you are overthinking it, and you should worry about that later. Levelling is rather fast, and low-level gear is relatively expensive for new players (because low level materials have use for max level characters), so don’t waste too much money on levelling gear. If you upgrade, upgrade weapons first, because they offer a nice chunk of stats and offer the weapon strength to scale as well.

The hero points are one-time only. When you level up to 80, you automatically have enough hero points to unlock every skill and trait. The hero points in the maps help you to aquire skills and traits early (and to unlock the Elite spec – Tempest – if you have HoT). The Cantrips are your to-go defensive skills. Glyph of Storms offers both offensive and defensive AoEs, depending on the element you are casting it (not sure how deep that is in the glyphs tree). Arcanes are damaging skills, but Arcane Shield is also a nice defensive option.

I think it’s an pragmatist vs. idealist issue here. I understand the pragmatists saying “okay, ele works somehow, why change the hp?”, but I’m more on the idealist side which says “the game as a whole would be easier to balance with the difference between HP tiers would be smaller”.

Just because it works somehow, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. Scepter works… somehow. Tempest works… somehow. And yet, there are people complaining because the state of Tempest or Scepter could be better. Rightfully so. If everybody would be okay with the “somehow works” state of the class, there wouldn’t be much to discuss here.

I never understood why the difference between light and heavy armor is ~300 armor (translating to 300 toughness) but the difference between low and high base HP is ~7500 HP (translating to 750 vitality). Just for reference, the stat total on a full set of exotic armor (3-stats) is ~1000.

In PvP the compensation with boons and and active defenses works fine and eles/guards with the lowest HP are one of the better tank specs.

In PvE it’s hard to balance around that stat difference. 12-13k hits oneshot the low HP classes , while it only takes out ~60% of the base HP of high HP classes. A full soldier’s ele barely survives a 19k hit, but so do high HP classes without defensive investment. This has implications on raid balance: How can you balance around that 5% stat total of ascended vs. exotic? How can you punish berzerkers/sinisters but not knights/soldiers when the stat difference on armor is in the range of the base stat differences?

Proposal: change the HP difference between low and high to 3000HP/300vit. For example: 14500/16000/17500, keeping mid tier HP intact.

witcher.3197:

A DD ele dies when a DD ele wants to die. Even if you are winning the duel, he can always disengage and reset. Try not to 1v1 them until the expansion.

“maaan, thieves can disengage and reset the fight at will” —> “pvp is not about kills, if you forced him to disengage, you’ve won the fight. everything is fine, l2p”

“maan, eles can disengage and reset the fight at will” —> “ele is uncounterable, better nerf ele”

Jski.6180:

Xillllix.3485:

The ele only has “the best sustain in the game” (which is not true anyway, guardians and warriors bunkering up have more sustain) when it is bunkering up with celestial gear. To do as much damage as other classes with staff we have to run full zerk, and we then the class gets 1-shot all over the place by 20k shatters, 9k arcing slice, 14k killshot and 7k life blasts.

So that why we never see d/d eles in spvp?

No, that’s we never see berserker eles in spvp. learn2read.

One line per utility? That’s why the aura traits are spread across 5 (soon 6) traitlines and why cantrip traits are found in fire and water.

Also, I wouldn’t mind getting an earth-themed aura on signet use

Chpoit.6498:

As someone who mains a PS warrior, I find this silly.
Eles can give might, murder people, heal people, go invicible, warp away, give other boons, become invincible again, burn the hell out of you, and be the best tanks, all by using a single set of gear, dont tell me PS should be removed or that eles can’t do anything other than DPS.
Also, eles stack more might pre-fight than warriors.

Well if you can equip all 5 traitlines and activate all majors, just like in the ele build you described, you can say the same about warrior. You seem just as clueless as OP.

With the upcoming nerf to Burning Fire, I think it would be better to give that trait a new functionality and replace it completly. I’m not a fan of auto-cleanses (or auto-stunbreakers for that matter) so I propose to replace Burning Fire with

Cautery Signets. Activating Signets apply Fire Aura. Fire Auras you apply cleanse one condition.

Reasoning:

• The trait slot remains a fire-themed cleanse paired with might generation, but works differently

• It has synergy within the fire line, with other trait lines and with Tempest even without the usage of signets, but you gain more from this trait when using signets.

• It gives condition-cleanses outside water and cantrips

• It gives Fire’s Embrace back and buffs the currently underpowered signet-builds

Thoughts?

One subtle difference regarding PvP: Cone attacks (drake’s breath, fire grab[!]) are easier to land if you play a larger race. The cone attacks start from a lower point on Asura and a larger portion of the cone hit box points into the ground because of the higher camera angle.

Blaine Tog.8304:

D/D was the meta long before Celestial gear came out.

You realize that the celestial pvp amulet was available since release?

I agree that the nerfs must target the dagger and I think nerfing the access to burn should do the trick.

I have a question about the permissions for API keys. Why is the “account” permission mandatory?

It seems to me that the most popular applications for the API keys is to calculate the gold value of the bank/material storage/inventory. To work properly, these applications need the “inventories” and “wallet” permissions, but wouldn’t strictly need the “account” data.

I see the theoretical possibility that such a “net account value” application could use the API data to select profitable targets for hacking attempts. If the account permission wasn’t necessary, the applications could still work properly to calculate the account value, but don’t know which account is worth so much.

Is there a technical reason why the “account” permission is mandatory? Or am I the only one who is paranoid enough to think of this scenario?

MadRabbit.3179:

If you use Metabattle as a reference and look at all the builds and their variants across >>PvE<<, PvP and WvW, you end up with the following patterns…

That’s it. The Arcane/Water+Cantrip core is mandatory in PvP and it’s the PvP build hasn’t really changed since release. PvE builds always maxed out fire and took the damage modifiers from the other trait lines (which are currently in Air and Water)

I actually like the Warhorn skills and can imagine to run one or two shouts, but neither of them is really worth to lose a “real” trait line.

I played around with a Fire/Air/Tempest and Water/Air/Tempest with S/W build with Fresh Air. It worked decently enough but I’m too used to the survivability of the Arcana trait line and the focus. What really killed the build for me was actually a minor annoyance: that Phoenix doesn’t seem to blast moving fields properly.

The overloads need a rework, though. I can’t imagine using them, because the cost is too high. Fresh Air makes at least the air overload usable. Instead of being “powerful” spells with ridiculous cost, they should be usable, affordable spells with normal casting times and causing normal attunement cooldown.

I honestly don’t care anymore about the concept or that Tempest doesn’t offer new roles… just give the tempest traitline a few, not-useless traits that it doesn’t feel like playing with two traitlines when using Warhorn. If the overloads get a rework, I’d consider it a bonus.

NitroApe.9104:

I don’t know if this has been mentioned anywhere before, but i’d really love to see Air Blast, more specifically the projectile reflection being displayed by a buff in the Engineer’s buff bar (just like Magnetic Shield).
Right now you can never be sure when the projectile reflection is over, even if you were lucky enough to actually notice Air Blast (not talking about a 1v1-situation here).
Thoughts?

I like how they immobilized and stacked on you on your FGS at 1:05. Not even PvE mobs are that stupid.

So we have already established that tempest is not a number problem but we got a +20-50% number patch preview . But let’s be realistic. We are 4 months before release and we won’t get a complete rework. We won’t get a new weapon or a completely new skillset. We have to work with what we have.

The problem with the current overloads is that the costs are too high. An overload costs:

• 5s of staying in an attunement
• completing a 2-5s channel
• 20s attunement cooldown.

The fire overload is an AoE damage with 5s channel and 25s cooldown. Sounds like a Meteor Shower. I’m not suggesting that Tempest should get a Meteor Shower-esque fire overload for balancing reasons, but the cost would actually justify the effect.

Another example is the water overload. In 27s (5s wating, 2s channel, 20s cd) the base water/arcane/x ele can attune to water (Cleansing Wave, Healing Ripple, Elemental Attunement), use a water skill and use the water-dodge from Evasive Arcana … twice. The water overload competes against 6k-8k heal, 10s regen and 2-4 condi cleanses. I don’t want that as an overload, honestly.

The problem with this cost is that adding 20% everywhere won’t solve the problem and adding 100% everywhere would create more problems that it solves. How to create overload effects that are worth the cost then? Reduce the overload cost:

• no or lower waiting time
• attunement goes on normal attunement cooldown
• normal length casts in the order of 1s

ANet had the design goal to reward staying in an attunement longer than normal. How about this:

• For every second you stay in an attunement, you gain a stack of Elemental Overload, maxing at 10.
• The effects of the overload skill scale with the number X of Elemental Overload
• Fire Overload: 1s cast, creates the lingering flame tornado we have now at your position. Lasts for X seconds
• Air Overload: 1s cast, ground-targeted, creates the lightning storm we have now at the target position. Either lingers for X seconds or shoots 5 X lightning strikes over 5 secons in the area. Fire and Air overload could switch groundtargeting, but I’d prefer one targeted and one PBAoE overload.
• Water Overload: instant, but the bubble bursts after 2s. Base Heal 1k, cleanses one condition. Radius scales with X, Target limit X (new niche: a support skill with a target limit of up to 10)
• Earth Overload: Stays the same, but the effect is limited to X/2 seconds.

These are just examples, but I think that 4 decent spells with usable cast times/costs help the Tempest more than the current expensive overloads that can never be balanced to their cost

> Geyser: Updated the radius skill fact to reflect the correct size.

There. It’s fixed.

Just to add to conncept’s story, eles are using the same build since release and depending on the state of the other classes the DD cantrip ele as been everywhere from trash tier to OP. Eles never really got a direct buff, but somehow the general changes helped them more than other classes:

• introduction of might% runes
• buff to celestial amulett
• the ability to equip 3 full traitlines + GMs
• the trait merges that came along the same rework
• buffs to burning/condition in general

I agree with the consensus here, that burning needs to be nerfed. The worst offender seems to be Ring of Fire that does not only apply 3 stacks of buring but is also buggy and applies them multiple times. I think the easiest fix would be to normalize Ring of Fire to a normal fire field pulsing burning: 2s of burning / second. If someone is stupid enough to stand in RoF, they get 2 stacks of burning while it is active. It’s punishing, but not absurd. As a buff to focus, the tiny fire line should get Ring of Fires behaviour: 3 stacks of burning for crossing it.

Elementalists acutally have a long tradition of manipulating the cost, cast time, recharge, etc. of the next few spells. That’s actually what Glyphs did.

I have the same issue but I completely wiped all GW2 data before heading to the forums, so no logs from me. I did send an error report with the crash report tool, though.

Same issue, my alt accounts work but my main account crashes immediately when I enter the character select screen.

Wait, it’s account dependent? Is this the revenge for the HoT portal drop or the free account upgrade after the first HoT stress test?

From a technical side, everything went smoothly. No crashes, no serious framerate drops, no stalling events. The first 30 minutes there was some skill delay, but nothing game breaking, only annoying. WvW zergfights for world bosses are worse.

The revenant seems to be an interesting class concept-wise, but I didn’t really like any of the two weapon sets. The new mechanics are nice (moving combo fields, moving reflection walls, skill shots) but I didn’t like the play style. Maybe other weapons and legends will “click” with me.

The biggest gripe is the mastery UI. It takes away half of the screen and still cant show all materies at once. If the mastery system gets expanded the wide but short list with its generous items will be awful to scroll. Design-wise the mastery UI reminds me of modern phone/tablet UIs but it feels misplaced in a pc game. It’s basically Win8’s charms bar in GW2. Speaking of the charms bar, I think the mastery UI should be placed along the right border taking away 1/3 of the screen. It will look “listier” and you’ll be able to see all masteries (per region) at once and probably have room for future masteries. And even if there are too many masteries for the sidebar, a narrow list with 7-8 visible items is easier to navigate than a wide list with 3-4 visible items.

It took me an hour or so to realize how the mastery system works (unlocking with mastery points and activating with XP) and I issued a /bug report that the jumping mushrooms don’t work, but at 1:45 I could jump on my first shroom

Minor bugs I found and reported:

• The content guide pointed me to an unnamed PoI with a ((number)) string outside the beta region
• After completing the beta story, I got the “Defense of Shaemor” event/PS text in the event list

Edit: Please, no open world cutscenes. Yes, the cutscene is really cool the first time you see it and it actually makes a good first impression, but I really do not need to see these pact choppers a second, third, n-th time. It’s okay-ish if you intend to go to the wyvern but it is really annoying if you do something else (burning those vines, celebrating the first mushroom jump or messing with the glider) and get interrupted because “some random event” on the map has been completed… again.

Yay, first text bug^^

I also got both mails with Thursday and Tuesday/Wednesday

If you are still level 50, nothing in this thread applies to you. Top tier dps: yes, if you stack +% dmg traits. Top tier offensive group support: yes, if you have access to the GM fire trait Persisting Flames. Nothing really changed for the “early game” of the ele. Armor of Earth has a shorter cooldown and Lightning Whip has more dps. That’s about it. (The single most powerful buff to ele was Persisting Flames, available at lvl 80)

So, while leveling: learn to dodge, learn to stack might, learn to use your defensive skills. Or equip lightning hammer and auto-attack things to death.

Okay, I’ll start with what we know about specializations:

• Each profession gets 1 specialization. That means there won’t be a pyro-, aqua-, terra and aeromancer specialization.

• The specialization gets at least one new weapon. Because elementalists have 20 weapon skills, we will get only one 2H weapon or a new MH+OH combination.

• The specialization should not be a plain improvement, the base class should stay viable, too. I guess the specialization will not only lose some utilies and traits but also a weapon set so that the base elementalist has something unique.

• The specialization changes the class mechanic/the F1-F4 skills. I think the specialization will keep the attunement mechanic to allow mix+matching with old weapon skills. I don’t think we’ll get single-attunement weapon skills + weapon swap. I really like the conjurer idea, but the problem is that we wouldn’t have a “normal” weapon set if we get the 4 conjures on F1-F4.

So the question is how can we keep the attunements but give them a new feel? My suggestion: Attunement switching doesn’t have a cooldown anymore, but the weapon skills share a cooldown accross attunements. For example, using Shocking Aura puts also Burning Speed, Frozen Burst and Magnetic Grasp on cooldown, but it would be possible to switch to fire for Drake’s Breath and switch back to Air for Lightning Whip immediately. Elemental Attument needs an ICD, Fresh Air would be one of the traits unique to the base elementalist and the arcana traitline wouldn’t reduce the attunement CDs but the weapon skill CDs.

This mechanic could work for both battle mage types (fast switching for optimal damge) or supportive types (you have always the important tools ready)

hybrid.5027:

One of the most common things I hear from people is “conditions will never be part of the meta until the condition cap is raised.” This is false, but I’ll explain that later.

The problem with the cap is that a single condition user can max out the condition stacks. While all your suggestions make conditions competetive, there’s still only need for one condition user. Even if condi users become part of the meta (one party slot reserved for conditions) they cannot fully replace direct damage dealers if nothing changes about the cap.

I just want to point out that (1) conditions should be part of the meta and (2) conditions should be an equal alternative to direct damage are two different goals. imo, this discussion should focus on (1) because the answer to (2) is accomplish (1) and change the cap

I’m really disappointed with the Glyph change. There are two ways the active skills could work

• The command skill in the skill bar is instant and the elemental uses its active skill as next attack with some delay (1-2s)

• The command skill in the skill has a cast time, but the active skill on the elemental activates instantly without animation delay (I like this one more)

But giving the comand skill a 3/4s cast time and having an activation delay is too much and effectively a nerf to the glyphs: The elementals still do what they want and if you want them to use their most powerful skill, you have to sacrifice your own damage for it.

I wouldn’t buy the deluxe edition for the Mistfire Wolf alone. All races except Norn have a summon as racial elite. The Series 7 Golem (Asura) still does insane damage (only the damage to WvW doors has been nerfed) and the Hounds of Balthasar (Human) are quite good. Sylvari has 3 elite summons (I like the turrets, never really tested the other two) and Charrs have the Warband Support (never tried that). I’m not a fan of the Norn transformations (I sometimes use Snow Leopard for stealth) and rather use FGS.

cheese.4739:

It’s spectacular in this occasion, though, because it’s not really a ‘nerf’ so much as ‘fixing an exploit’.

First of all, I’m aware of the difference between nerfing and fixing:

• Fixing an exploit: The fire patches do no longer stack onto each other

• Nerf: -70% damage on the fire trail.

Most people here are not complaining that the ridiculous damage is gone, they are complaining because an elite skill, for which you have to sacrifice your 20 weapon skills, deals less damage than spamming staff fire 1+2. After the nerf It’s just a mobility skill, and not even good at that. And it won’t make any encounter easier.

It does something (improve the 5 point minors), it’s working as intended and … it’s useless. We may see improvements on the 5 point minor traits, but not on Lingering Elements itself. Link to the last summary I’ve written

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Precursor scavenger hunt…
Tell me again how you don’t talk speculatively?

Honestly, I think that the never-ending complaining about the scavenger hunt is the exact reason why there’s the strict no-speculation policy. They want to avoid a second scavenger hunt debacle. ANet learnt that they shouldn’t talk about future ideas the hard way.

I think the main drawback is that you cannot combine it with Tempest Defense. Just moving it down to Master tier would make Lightning Rod much stronger

I thought it would be common knowledge after 9 months, but:

JonPeters.5630:

Lingering Elements
All passive bonuses for that attunement should linger. This means Flame Barrier, Stone Flesh, Soothing Mist, and Zephyr’s Speed.

Zelyhn.8069:

These are not all passive bonuses.
But thank you for taking the time to reply.
Edit: and thank you for making a trait that could be the highlight of the class be so pathetic.

JonPeters.5630:

Give me a list of what else you think might be considered a passive benefit of these attunements, and I am happy to discuss the merits of this stuff working with this trait. However, posts that say things like “this isn’t everything” are just not constructive.

Link

And a bit later in the same thread, on the same page:

JonPeters.5630:

I think this trait needs better wording. I hope you all understand why that trait would be wildly overpowered if it carried over everything particularly all 10% damage bonuses. You could simply slam through all attunements and then get 50% bonus damage. Similarly making other things work with this would requires those traits get lowered in the base case as well. I think this is a fine 15 point minor trait on its own and we can reword it and then discuss the merits of the other traits on their own.

To me, that is a better starting point for discussion than attempting to balance all of these effects with how they might work with a minor trait in Arcana. That would predicate the entire profession around that trait which is not what we want out of our minor traits.

Jon

Link

If you follow that thread, you’ll see Zelyhn’s post pointing out how short the damage boni would be and Jon Peters’ silence on that matter. He just admitted that 2 minor traits need work:

JonPeters.5630:

I do agree that the 5 point minors need looking at. I think the Earth and Water ones are in an ok place right now but Fire and Air need work.

Jon

Link

Edit: whew, I finally managed to break up the nested quote correctly.

I just want to point out that a dev confirmed that Lingering Elements is working as intended and it would be too powerful if it worked with all “while in X attunement” traits (especially the +x% dmg ones)

Just think of it: an ele could blow all defensive/utility attunements for a powerful burst! A risk/reward mechanic! How ridiculous!

There’s a difference between an instant blind and a blind at the beginning of the channel/casting time. You couldn’t do all the fun things with the “new” Lightning Surge that you can do with instants:

• The skill would probably still have some small windup and an aftercast
• You can’t activate it while casting another skills/during aftercast of another skill
• You can’t activate it while stomping
• You can’t activite while stunned/KD’s/any other hard cc.

Just think of Churning Earth. Churning Earth applies a cripple at the begin of the channel time. Try to use that as “insta cripple”. I think that moving Lightning Surge’s blind to the begin of the casting time would be a nice quality of life improvent but nothing that really buffs (or even breaks) staff ele.

Elementalist: Cleansing Fire (Elite): is also a stunbreaker.

Fire Grab and Lightning Touch could get a combined hitbox: A small PBAoE circle (130 at max) in addition to the long narrow cone it has. That way it would at least be a guaranteed hit in melee range.

It could work like any skill that has an effect at the beginning of the casting time: It goes on full cooldown if interrupted (even by yourself). There would be no reason for not fully casting it.

I agree that Diamond Skin should be changed. It’s either OP (against the odd rabid condi spammers) or totally useless (against everyting else). I’d rather have a more well-rounded GM trait, not a “hardcounter against 1%” trait.

Tripzter.8623:

Too bad all that kitten math is wrong..
In case you didn’t know, Fiery Rush ticks 68 times in those 3 seconds.. according to your numbers Fiery Rush ticking 80 damage, does not 2880 damage, but 5440. Do the math you want but at least do it properly..
Have a good day.

I’m sorry I’m relying on the numbers from the wiki, but I’m sure you have a source for the 68 ticks and can update the wiki accordingly. Even if 5440 is the true base damage of fiery rush it is still less than the double damage of a GS warrior. Far away from the quadruple damage claims thrown around here. Btw: Is it really broken if a pure damage elite outdamages a normal weapon set by less than factor 2 under ideal conditions?

maha.7902:

What part of ‘this skill does quadruple the DPS of anything else’ sounds balanced? What elite in the game is even on a level close to that?

Glad you asked. Let’s use the wiki and compare the base damage. Equal buffs (food, might) will multiply these values equally

The Fiery Rush line ticks 80 damage, lasts 3 seconds, and consists of 12 patches. Multiplying these numbers gives 2880 damage.

The Bear Form Charge hits multiple times for 609 damage, but the wiki doesn’t say how often it hits. If it hits at least 5 times, it actually outdamages Fiery Rush. Most movement skills hit bosses 4 times, but I personally haven’t tried Charge yet. I’d call that “close to” fgs.

Bonus: 100b+Whirlwind Attack deals 3066 damage on the same cooldown as Fiery Rush (these CDs can be reduced by traits). That’s also “close to” fgs.

As you see, all FGS really does is provide warrior-esque DPS for the ele and a second player (oh, now I see why FGS should be nerfed). So stop claiming that it does quadruple damage of anything else in the game.

First of all, I really like the Conjures. The main problem is that they a bit clunky to use and often only needed for a few skills before throwing them away.

My suggestion is that they work more like the engineer kits, with a few adaptions:

• Activating the conjure utility replaces the weapon skill bar.
• You can still switch between attunements to activate the on-switch traits/sigils while wielding the conjure
• Switching from/to conjures do not activate on-switch traits/sigils
• Unequipping the conjure puts the conjure utility skill on cooldown. Something in the range of 10-20 seconds. Alternatively, conjures could use the attunement cooldown and profit from the arcana line. Engineers still have the unique 1s CD for swaps.
• Conjures still have a casttime: 1s inclusive aftercast (so 3/4s listed, 1/4 aftercast)
• The Conjurer trait is moved to master or even grandmaster with the following functionality: “When activating a Conjure, you summon a copy of that Conjure as enviromental weapon with 15-25 charges at your position. Cooldown: 60-120s.” The trait appears in the buffs list, if it’s ready.

I know that the idea is not new, but I tried to adapt the adapt it so that both eles and engis can keep their unique features: engis still can switch between their kits on 1s cooldown while eles still can share their conjures.

Why do you use Sentinel (Vitality/Thoughness/Power) and not Soldier (Power/Thoughness/Vitality)? Sentinel is really expensive, but Soldier is easy to get: Karma, Badges, Dungeon Tokens…

Geomancy is terrible, but Sigil of Battle (Might on swap) and Sigil of Energy (endurance on swap) are pretty meta.

Arcane Brilliance. If you really need group condition removal, invest in the water traitline and/or use the healing rain on staff. Antitoxin spray is a terrible healing skill specially desinged for a past living story chapter … and it wasn’t even good in that content.

Edit: “Mixed reviews”? Where have you heard anything good about Antitoxin Spray? I’m really curious.

I can’t really more say than: +1

I know that “guardian is currently in a good place”, but “warriors are at the balancing sweet spot”

@Bwahb/IndigoSundown: I thought about it, and yes, you are right. “stat-deficit = class mechanic” is a bit too simple.

Take necro for example. Death Shroud seems a bit powerful for 290 points. They have to pay for that with underaverage skills. The guardian’s virtues seem lackluster for 750 points, but they have access to overall better skills (especially utilities). It makes sense. ANet probably put more brain power into class balance than we’re usually giving them credit for

@loseridoit: Okay, I just used your 16% quickly and didn’t consider thoughness stacking – I’m more of a PvE-er. But what you said is the exact reason why PvE is so Berserker-centric: A few boons or defensive traits or a well-used cooldown bring so much more survivablility than changing the whole gear from Berserker to Knight/Soldier/Nomad. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.

I agree on what you said about the ele, but I still think that 750 is a huge vitality gap and it’s really hard to balance that out. A range of 3000 HP/300 vit (between high and low HP) would have been enough and comparable to the difference in defense/toughness.

That warriors are the benchmark profession.

I don’t think that’s even a bad thing. It’s good to have a definite balance standard, a target for balancing classes. I’d even say that warrior is a perfect benchmark class, because it has rather simple mechanics and there are no surprises in the form of unexcpected powerful combos (for example the ele’s S/D burst combo).

loseridoit.2756:

The OP numbers is still a little bit too low. Engineers have to deal with the fact that their utilities are tied to the kits. They have even less choice overall.

I didn’t make up these numbers, enginieers just lack 490 attribute points in base stats compared to warrior. My interpretation is just that the class mechanic should somehow compensate for that 490 missing points.

If you are saying that 490 is too low, do you mean that the engi’s class mechanic does not seem worth 490 attribute points? That’s exactly the kind of discussion I’m looking for.

@loseridoit: The difference between light and heavy armor may only be 16%, but that’s about 50% protection uptime… which seems a lot to me.

@Bhawb: Okay, I silently assumed that the “sum of skills” is equally powerful on all classes, but with different weights on damage/condition/utility/support/etc. Do you think that a class compensates the lack of base stats by having overall better skills?

(I have to say, I enjoy this discussion way more than the 1000th “theif op, nerf plx” thread.)

Updated the OP with that answer

I just used toughness/vitality as reference how I calculated the attribute cost of the class mechanics. It’s not only about survivability though. I just used the attribute points as measurement of how powerful the class mechanics are (or should be) compared to each other. For example: Are attunements really twice as powerful as the toolbelt skills?

Translating mechanics into raw stats can be a helpful tool for balancing. Somewhere in a balancing discussion a dev said that a GM trait is/should be worth about 300 attribute points. With the trait updates we see that exact number ingame: XIII: Force of Will: +300 Vitality.