Guild Wars 2

In GW2, your health is restored to maximum between fights. Because of this, you have to look at the stats on a fight by fight basis.

In PVP, fights can be over in as little kitten seconds in some circumstances, but usually last anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds. In these fights, the big survivability boost that other classes get from vitality is ideal, since there is no long term combat there. The fight can be determined by what you start with. For bunker builds that plan to use their heals over and over again, toughness increases efficiency overall, so if you plan to last long enough to get multiple heals out, toughness might be your man.

In PVE, a different dilemma exists. PVE is more about the bare minimum durability needed to survive an encounter. For most classes, running around in full berserker or rampager gear is sufficient enough. Arguably it is sufficient enough with necromancers, too, but much harder due to necromancer’s lack of active defenses. In PVE, fights can sometimes last a few minutes, letting you heal up multiple times. With extra heals from teammates + enough time for regen to actually matter, toughness becomes superior to vitality on most classes. The exception to this is when you fight an enemy that can sometimes bowl a player over in 1 hit even with a ton of toughness. There, since you’ll spend most of your time dodging and blocking attacks, you’l need that vitality to take the big hit when it comes, and then you can probably heal back to maximum from there. So really, what you need is “enough” toughness, and then vitality starts to really pay off.

All in all, it is more about what you plan to do more than which stat you should invest in.

I put those spare 10 in Death Magic to pick up Ritual of Protection. In a tight spot, that AoE protection really pulls through. Though putting that 10 in Blood Magic to pick up Transfusion can also be a big help.

I’d rather make defending towers be of statistical advantage, rather than a gold farm.

Theplayboy.6417:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The problem with continually creating builds is power creep.

The problem with continually killing builds is that it results in a reverse power creep. I feel that MOST of the classes are in a worse place than they ever have been. On top of that the current condy meta isn’t really what I’d consider to be a happy place. The classes that do fill a role in the current meta fill a very specific role only and nothing is on the horizon to change that. Additionally all of the sPvP Nerfing really upsets the PvE Player base. And as much as I hate to admit it PvE Players are Guild Wars 2.

PC Sales are on the decline. PS4 and X-Box One will be released in a few months. A ton of new and great games are going to be released such as GTAV, BF4, and some heavy hitting MMO’s such as TESO and Wildstar. The buzz around EQ Next is blowing up like Selena Gomez. When the PvE player base dies funding dies which means zero support for sPvP. I hate to beat a dead horse but I don’t think GW2 will ever reach the PvP success in from GW1.

I am not the smartest man in the universe and I don’t have all of the answers but I do know that GW2 is going to have to make some drastic changes to remain competitive and retain/increase market share.

I like how you immediately went defensive with things instead taking the wisdom presented as something to build off of. You should’ve mentioned something about balancing nerfing and buffing, or introducing new mechanics as a form of build creation. You should’ve taken into consideration the fact that yes, continually buffing the lower builds does cause power creep.

The problem with continually creating builds is power creep.

I suppose what makes GW2 a good game (not a great one, IMO. A good one) is that I am not constantly fighting other players.

In nearly every MMO I’ve played, there is always a large myriad of ways in which another player can mess you up. Many of these are intrinsically built into the game. They make it so loot goes to the first person to get it, encouraging loot stealing. They make it so loot goes to the first person who attacked an enemy, making the game about connection speed. They make it so loot goes to whomever did the most damage, so players will just leave 51% killed monsters everywhere and make other people go through the effort of finishing the job. They make resource nodes extremely rare, on an hour long timer, and make it first come first serve. They’ll make it so specific tactics are necessary for the game, and if you don’t follow these tactics then everyone dies.

The big problem I’ve experienced in nearly every other MMO I’ve played is that other players are not my friends. They are my enemy: they exist to be taken advantage of, and they will knife you in the back as soon as you turn around. Their direct actions inhibit or harm other players, whether unintentional or by game design. This leads to a large amount of hostility in the game, and when you have a thieving, backstabbing community it ruins the game.

Condition builds can be quite valid… so long as you are by yourself. Premade dungeon groups can be quite effective with a condition user, due to their AoE nature and how well they bypass toughness + protection.

I’m not sure what the question is. The post is kind of… rambly. But anyway, I’ll address the many things I have seen.

#1: Death Shroud’s use varies depending on the build. Power builds, Minion Masters, Condi Builds, support builds all use the abilities to do different things. I’ll try to go over the different things that DS is used for in each one.

Power Builds: DS is used mostly for offense. Life blast provides a high damaging, piercing, might stacking ranged attack that can decimate groups of foes in PVE, and in PVP it can lay down some serious hurt on unsuspecting players. Dark path is used as a gap closer, chilling and putting foes in range of the dagger’s rather powerful auto attack. Doom is used to force enemy movement to lay on combos, as well as a counter-stun for defense. Life Transfer is used to do decent AoE damage while tanking hits, and Tainted Shackles is used mostly for an escape, and also as a lockdown/support move with it’s AoE immobilize. DS is both popped in an out of for AoE bombing and buffs, as well as sustained to stack might/vulnerability while dealing heavy damage with Life Blast. The biggest advantage here is that Power Build’s tendency to generate a lot of LF means that they’ll have a lot of statistical bulk to use DS, and I think the best time to use DS is when the enemy is nearly dead. This gives the opponent no chance to counter attack. DS is also used to absorb burst on occasion.

Condition Builds: DS is used defensively, except when going for the kill. Life Blast is rarely used, and if it is then Life blast is being used either out of desperation, stalling, or to stack might. Condi builds resort to DS “bombing” wherein they’ll quickly pop into DS to use Weakening Shroud, followed by Tainted Shackles, and maybe a doom to top it off before exiting Death Shroud. Although it causes bleeding, Dark Path is also rarely used. Condition builds will frequently layer up a lot of conditions, then use Life Transfer to sustain themselves while the conditions tick away on the opponent. The real killer here is Terror. On terror builds, Doom does a surprisingly large amount of damage, and it is used in conjunction with other fear abilities to cause a long duration stun + high DoT. Chain fearing is usually reserved for the kill on opponents, however it is very effective at sealing the deal.

Minion Master: Here, DS is used largely for defense and control. DS itself is often used to gain retaliation, making attacking the Necromancer dangerous. Life Blast is used mostly to stall while other abilities are on cooldown. Dark path is used as a chill to let minions attack easier, and also as a gap closer. Doom is used mostly for defense against stuns, and sometimes as a control when the enemy is chilled. Life transfer is used for further tanking and stalling. Tainted Shackles is used mostly to immobilize a foe so minions can chase them down.

Support: Here, DS is used for healing. There are two traits that support builds pick up: Transfusion, and Deathly Invigoration. Transfusion makes Life Transfer an AoE heal, and while it doesn’t scale with healing power, it does heal for around 2,628 health in an AoE, so it is quite helpful. Deathly Invigoration causes DS to heal whenever it is left, so most support builds will spam F1 to pop in and out of DS quickly, healing in an AoE. The rest of the skills are used as needed depending on whether they are condi support or power support.

#2: Now, as for why it is that condi builds don’t use Life blast for offense. The reason is quite simple: it pales in comparison to our scepter. On my WvW conditionmancer, I peak at around 1,750 malice with my sigil of corruption, and have a 100% bleed duration. This makes each attack from the scepter do 1,300 damage spread throughout the bleed, alongside of the direct damage, so it hits for around 1600. now, even in a carrion build, for me Life Blast usually only hits for around 1k, but that isn’t the only disadvantage. The damage done through conditions can be spread via epidemic, making the scepter attacks into AoE attacks. Life Blast, when traited, merely pierces the enemy in a straight line.

My own build is quite fortunate, since it can use Life Blast as an offense. Other players use a rabid build for conditions, which makes it so life blast does barely any damage at all against other players.

As far as death shroud goes, I have two problems before I go on:

#1: I have no idea how DS works at the moment. What the devs say and what the players experience are opposite to one another. For now, I’ll assume players are right.
#2: Much like healing, I have no guarantee that Life Force will be readily available.

And with that, I do have to re-state that I am pretty sure that toughness and vitality are roughly equal to each other in DS as well as in direct HP. The reasoning for this is quite simple:

With DS being around 120% of a player’s HP, while vitality does increase this pool by 20% more than usual, there is 20% more HP for toughness to reduce damage upon. While vitality gives you more raw DS HP with life force gain, toughness makes the DS HP from Life Force that much harder to take down.

Most of the math explorations I’ve done on this reflect on this sentiment. For example, lets take a theoretical 20K HP, 2000 Armor class, and give either 500 points in toughness or vitality in DS.

20k HP x 1.2 for DS = 24K Health in DS
+500 Vitality gives 25K HP x 1.2 for DS = 30K Health in DS
+500 Toughness gives 25% more survivability, and 24K x 1.25 = 30K effective Health in DS.

Unless you are going by build specific specs, if we assume that toughness or vitality are independent from Life Force Generation (which works as a percentage), then life force will fill up at equal rates on both a toughness stacking and vitality stacking build.

The biggest problem with any anecdotes is perception bias. For me, vitality has almost always outpreformed toughness, even on necromancers. What makes me wrong and the other guys right, then? Also, I notice people bring up toughness and healing, but they never bring up the faults of toughness and healing. I don’t think the evaluations are being very fair at this point.

The whole “EHP” thing is a good starting point. I say this because EHP is the overall durability you start the fight with. Often times, where you start can determine where you end, given all things are equal otherwise. Other people have done the calculus to prove EHP, but I’ll give the highschool example of this problem:

What is the maximum volume of a rectangle of any dimensions, but a perimeter of 100?

Should look familiar. The answer is a square of 25 × 25, which gives an area of 625. How does this apply to the tough/vitality debate? Well, it’s quite simple: toughness reduces all of your damage by a certain fraction, and this fraction is applied across all of a players HP. The more HP you have, the more toughness can reduce. They multiply each other, and this creates an “area” that is the EHP of any player. The overall effectiveness, therefore, is maximized simply by making the two sides of the rectangle equal in scale. 1 vitality = 10 HP, and 1 toughness = 1 armor, so you should have HP that is 10 times armor, given equal investment.

The necromancer is in a unique place because their HP and their armor are already at that ratio at base. No other class is like that. The most effective way to build for defense on a necro is never to say “one or the other” but “both”. It is always “both”.

Now, a lot of people bring up healing and toughness, saying you should stack wholly in toughness. There are certain advantages and disadvantages to this.

Advantages:
*Heals are more effective

Disadvantages:
*Start with less durability
*More vulnerable to condition damage
*Heals are not guaranteed

The big question is, are those disadvantages worth the advantage of having a higher heal. To that, I’m not so sure. Building for EHP already increases your healing potential, so it isn’t like you are losing too much in the first place from healing. My biggest caveat with banking on heals is that your heals aren’t guaranteed. There are times innumerable where I have managed to kill another player by bursting past their heal, interrupting their heal, or stun locking them to prevent their heal. Necros can do it all the time with terror bursts and the Flesh Golem. It has also happened to me time and again, even on the necromancer. You just get ambushed, get stomped into the ground, or get chain-stunned to death. Sometimes you’ll even use your heal on the enemy disengage, where they’ll reset the fight and now leave you heal-less for round 2.

The second issue is that toughness does nothing to mitigate conditions. While it is true that necromancers have some good condition cleanses, the bad news is that they’re only packing 1 or 2 at most. Consume Conditions, and then the recently nerfed Putrid Mark. Deathly swarm fails as a condition cleansing mechanic. When Consume Conditions is on cooldown, those enemy conditions can become painful. While it is true that necromancers are in a better spot against conditions due to their already high hit points, having more HP to absorb those conditions will still help all the more.

So, how much does each buy you? Well, using Kipler’s numbers of 1078, putting either all into toughness or 539 into into both toughness and vitality, we get the following:

Splitting stats: 23,766 HP, 2375 Armor, EHP = HP x (2376/1836) = HP x 1.294 = 30,756 EHP. Heals are 29.4% more effective.

Stacking into ttoughness: 18,376 HP, 2914 Armor, EHP = HP x (2914 /1836) = HP x 1.587 = 29165. Heals are 58.7% more effective.

Difference = 1591

Consume conditions base heal of 5,240. Maximized EHP has an effective heal of 6781. Toughness has an effective heal of 8316.

Difference = 1,535

So in the end, the increased healing efficiency of a pure toughness only puts it at around the same durability as an EHP maximized build. Whether it is less or more depends on how many conditions are consumed. When we compare this to the fact that the EHP build has 29.3% more raw HP with which to absorb condition damage, and that you may not always get to use consume conditions in the battle, then raw toughness stacking doesn’t have much going for it.

There is a case you can make for toughness stacking, and that is assuming there are battles where you can get to use Consume Conditions multiple times in the same battle without stats resetting. Though I find them to be quite rare, it still must be brought up for fairness sake. It is here that, if you are in one of these battles and the opponent is not using conditions, then the extra healing will outpace the maximum EHP standard.

I usually flip A on the rare occasions I do flip. I also do something unusual with it. I usually look at my extensive list of crafting skills on all of my toons, and see if I can make something useful out of lower cost parts. I guess that doesn’t make me a “true” flipper in that sense.

The champion abomination is actually quite easy to solo. The first time I ever did it was on my hybrid-condi thief. I would just auto attack right in its face, then as soon as it would start one of its highly telegraphed attacks, I would use Death Blossom to avoid all of the damage. The hardest part about this is the following:

#1: Resisting the urge to go “all out”. The important thing about the giant is to pace yourself. Attack too quickly, and he gets fury and starts to pwn you.

#2: The ancillary mobs around him will sometimes aggro you and cause major problems if they happen to imobilize you at the wrong time.

#3: Some ch00by fr00by n4rb will see you soloing the champion, rush in with full offense wanting to “halp” or get credit, and then mess things up for everyone.

With that said, a really easy way to solo the champion is to circle him while meleeing, and you’ll avoid most of his attacks. Doing this, I can solo him with a zerker build S/P thief, as well as every other class I have at 80 at the moment.

Dresden.1736:

gaspara.4079:

As I am also a software engineer hear out this possibility. To prevent user lag, all conditions are managed on the server but reporting continuously to the client every detail regarding the conditions of the object the user has targeted. Therefore for each condition stack on the targeted mob you are sending back to the client a full detailed object for every single server tick.

While this seems like a wonderfully accurate system it requires sending multiple extra objects of data to to the user every millisecond which if left uncapped could add up to ridiculous amounts.

Imagine if you got to 500 bleed stacks on a boss, depending on the size of the condition objects they use and how they are serialized we could be talking a ton of bandwidth use purely for those conditions.

Now if this is expanded to sending complete details for every entity in the viewable area that could get astronomical.

As I said, they packets are already being sent and received, even if most of them aren’t doing anything. There would be nothing changing in terms of bandwidth if we just raised the effective cap on CD, save some relatively small amounts of extra metadata. The only change is on how many calculations the server has to perform, and that shouldn’t be the user’s burden.

I don’t think the issue is data being sent to players. Mobs in the game already have to update their HP continuously to all players around them due to direct damage changing their HP a theoretically limitless number of times a second.

Though no one commented on it, I think the issue might be that the calculations for conditions on the server is needlessly complicated. The server refers back to internal databases in order to continuously acquire the identity of the condition user, as well as their level, their malice, and then use this preform the condition damage calculation for every stack every second. It is because of this that condition damage updates the moment a player changes weapons, gains might, or gains a level.

If they just made condition damage so that it is calculated ONLY when the condition is first applied, then that damage data is stored in the condition itself, this could easily cut down the processing needed with conditions by a substantial amount. If the servers only needed to preform half of the operations they do now, then the stack limit can be doubled and maintain the same load.

Ditto. I feel this way on nearly every class I play, actually, since nearly all of them force you into an elite.

The biggest tip I can give is to talk out strategy with your team. That phase before the battle begins, discuss things.

I get bored sometimes. Then I do something else. Then I come back later.

Amir.1570:

Would be great if we could all stay on topic and answer the following questions:

1.) If the only way to fix condition damage in sPvP is tweaking the amulets, how would you play around the stats (namely the condition damage portion of the amulets) to make it so that conditions are reasonable but not too crazy?

*I’m aware that conditions are necessary but it would be great if it was a little more active than apply > play defensively after.

2.) If tweaking amulets in sPvP isn’t the way to fix condition damage in sPvP, then what will fix conditions in sPvP?

The thing is you all have great ideas but I don’t think ANET even has the time to make new stats such as condition damage or duration reduction. I think tweaking amulets might be a quicker way to fix the problem at hand while preserving PvE balancing.

Also would like to see what a Dev has to say in this matter if possible.

Keep it clean.

I suppose the problem with this is that it is a loaded question. I’m not sure conditions are a problem as much as it is player refusal to run vitality and run more cleanses in lieu of something else. They’ve got to learn: running extra utility is useless if you’re dead.

There are many flaws in the amulet system as it is that don’t pertain to conditions at all.

Atherakhia.4086:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The problem is conditions have a single stat feeding into them.

This is an oft repeated and completely false myth. Conditions don’t have a single stat feeding into them. They have 3:

Malice: this provides their damage, and is the stat most people refer to.

Expertise: This little factored stat accounts for condition duration. Expertise by itself is capable of doubling both the overall damage done of any condition, as well as the damage per second via how many conditions you can stack at one time. Because of this, Expertise is fundamental to any good condition build.

Precision: Now, this only indirectly affects conditions, but nonetheless it is an important stat. Many of the ways classes inflict conditions are with procs. The dreaded dhuumfire, incendiary powder, barbed precision, sharper images, precise strikes, Sigil of Earth, all of these need precision in order to function.

Because of this, you can think of the rabid amulet as the “pure condition damage” amulet. It provides the precision needed for procs, the malice needed for damage, and toughness to survive. The only stat it is missing is expertise, which isn’t given by any amulets.

By comparison, some amulets that are noticeably missing that would be the equivalent of rabid would be

Power/Precision/Toughness
Precision/Crit Damage/Vitality
Crit Damage / Precision /Toughness

And so on, listing primary stat first and secondary stats later. Now, Valkyire Amulet is closest to this by having power and crit damage, however this comes with the caveat that crit damage is wholly dependent on a stat that is missing, which is precision. Crit damage is the only stat like this, though.

Expertise isn’t a real stat. People aren’t going 30 points in spite for condition duration. They’re going 30pts in spite for Dhuum and the fact that they get condition duration is a bonus. Before Dhuum they would run 0/30/20/0/20 or 0/30/10/10/20 etc etc. So while this stat can be gotten via trait expenditure or select few sigils/runes, it’s not something gone after specifically to have it.

The same with Precision for the most part. While it’s nice to have for the on crit application of bleeds and dhuumfire, the fact that 30pts in curses gives crit chance is inconsequential. While not available in PvP, most rangers in WvW actually run Apothecary gear which grants 0 crit and 0 power and they have a lot of on-crit application as well.

So while there are other stats that have some loose connection to condition duration, the fact that they are taken is more utility oriented and not damage related and not really impacting the issues being discussed in this thread all that much. I mean afterall, if you’re going to factor in expertise for conditions, you may aswell factor it in for power too as people want it for daze/snare duration and the like as well.

Now that all being said, I don’t really find conditions to be the problem. It really is limited to burn and not Neco specific either.

Not all condition builds are necros, and not all people build for pure conditions. The fact is that condition duration is extremely important for affecting how much damage conditions do and the rate they do damage. The other fact is that you need precision to use the procs: dhuumfire is useless at a 4% crit rate because you can go entire fights with dhuumire never activating. The presence of these traits being on condition relevant stats just means there is good synergy in building for them, and not that precision and duration are ineffective.

Let me give an example: Bleeding shot fires off a 6 second bleed every second. With no duration, this leads up to 6 stacks of bleeding, doing 600+ damage per second from bleeds. With a 50% duration this causes a 9 second bleed, leading to 9 stacks or 900+ damage per second. With 100% duration this causes a 12 second bleed, leading to 12 stacks and 1200+ damage per second.

Me and another guy got in an argument over this once, and I think we’ve learned a few thing along the way. .

The biggest problem with conditions is that each one, among all of the data stored on those conditions, has to make several calculations per second for each individual stack of conditions. Upon the initial application, the condition has to constantly keep track of the variables that the player has. Namely, the condition has to reobtain both the player’s level and the player’s malice every second for every damage calculation for every condition on the enemy. It is for this reason that changes in power (via might) or changes in level affect how much damage is done in real time. Doing this every second puts a strain on the server, since the server has to constantly dig into its database to identify the player and their stats and re-preform the damage calculation each time.

Think of it like this: every time a player preforms an attack, the server has to go through a calculation to see how much damage you do. For conditions, the server has to go through a similar damage calculation for every tick of the condition. Whereas player may attack, on average, 2 or 3 times a second depending on their class, bleeds have to be calculated 25 times a second for every condition class. Combine this with 25 times for confusion, 25 times for torment, once for poison, once for burn, once for terror. The standard condition build, therefore, is actually preforming anywhere from 25 to 125 attacks per second with each bleed.

Although condition damage isn’t nearly as complex as direct damage, it is going off 50 times more frequently. When a zone starts to crash because 50 people are attacking the Claw of Jormag, well, a handful of condition builds running around the map at once could cause that much lag.

The solution to this both might be simple and it might be complicated: All you have to do is change the way conditions calculate damage. Direct damage is frontloaded and only fires off once. We should make condition damage more like direct damage: the calculation for condition damage is done once inside of the player skill, and then the damage done to an enemy would be the calculated skill damage divided by duration. Doing this would require changing the game’s code so that condition damage is handled this way (for bleeds, for example):

Condition damage becomes stored as a whole on the skill as
(0.05 Malice + 0.5 Level + 2.5) x duration

Then once applied, the damage done is
Skill damage / duration = tick damage

where the “skill damage” is a stored value that is initially held, then upon the bleed being applied to the enemy, the tick damage is decided then assigned to that particular condition. Once this tick damage is calculated, no further calculations need to be applied. It simply stores the tick damage, and applies the tick damage.

Although this adds an extra two steps in the condition application process, in the condition ticking process this is significantly less complicated, doing no additional calculations other than reducing HP, and not having to obtain player data each second.

There are some tactical changes to this method. For one, gaining might will no longer increase damage of previously applied conditions. Second, conditions applied while under might will retain their damage boost for their full duration. Third, anet will probably have to come up with a new way to calculate player “contribution” to events and kills around this new model. I suggest using 1/2 of the stored condition damage as “contribution” on each attack in PVP, and in PVE it should just be equal to the stored condition damage value.

I say this suggestion could either be simple or complicate because I don’t know how Anet has damage programmed. For all we know, the process of constantly digging into the server database to calculate damage is a necessary burden behind how they designed the system, and changing this would require changing the game’s programming from the ground up. It could be that conditions function in this manner because there is no other way for damage to function in the game. This would make the suggestion the same, in essence, to building a new game from scratch.

That said, I still think it is worth suggesting.

EDIT: Fixed a math error

EDIT: If there is a way to just maintain a tick damage once without storing the damage done in the skill itself, this can save a step or two. However, this might make calculating player contributions to kills more difficult.

Personally, I find the point of getting exotic level equipment is to function at nigh highest capacity in the game. From there, you can just do whatever you want to do in the game. There is no limit and no gated activity otherwise.

Personally, I alternate between dungeons, overworld events in Orr, WvW, and sPVP, depending on what I feel like. I’m also raising up multiple characters. On each of them, multiple armor sets with different stat distributions.

I have very little attachment at all to my characters. I think it is one of the big flaws in the game that we don’t get a “bio” option and a way for other people to see it.

The thing that annoyed me about stealth is that it all amounts to guessing. I always hear the retort that you should learn to play and recognize thief behavior. Problem: thieves know this, too, so then they move in an unpredictable way. Then as soon as you recognize that, BOOM theives change up again.

I would like a change to steal that would allow thieves to be revealed if they get hit by an attack or something along those lines. Then you can at least control the direction a thief goes instead of firing randomly into the night and hoping you hit something.

In the game, classes are balanced around utility and tactics, not DPS. For certain classes, high DPS is their tactic.

Elementalists are squishy, and I assume they do mediocre damage (haven’t played one in months) because elementalists have access to more skills, and can do a lot more things than other classes can.

nightwulf.1986:

Let me see if I can sum up the base arguments so far, please feel free to correct me on any point.

Argument A ) The high level trading on the TP allows wealth acquisition within the designed limitations of the activity. There is also an acknowledgment that the financial gains from this activity exceed all expectations of wealth acquisition elsewhere in the game. Players should be allowed to acquire wealth far beyond the norm of other activities so long as significant effort is put into doing so and it is allowed by the game designers. There is no double standard of expectation for the activity.

Argument B ) The high level trading on the TP allows wealth acquisition at a rate far beyond expectations set by the developers for an activity in the game. Players should not be allowed to acquire wealth far beyond the norm of other activities if the company designing the game has communicated that they want to limit wealth acquisition of players. There is a double standard of expectations for the activity.

There have been many secondary and tertiary arguments surrounding what I believe are the core ideas brought by both sides. In the end, we may just be arguing about economic ideals (still fascinating that a fictional economy can do this) and whether or not there exists a double standard in how wealth is acquired. Only Anet can answer that last one and from their PR thus far, I am led to believe that they feel there is not.

If there was just arguments about economic ideals, I’d consider it a +1 for humanity. A lot of the arguments are personal ones.

Frankly, I am a bit annoyed at CoF1. For one, everyone running CoF1 makes it hard to get groups for other dungeons. For two, everyone now builds and plays like they are in CoF1, which ends up in zerker warriors charging ahead, getting killed, then blaming the lack of a mesmer for it.

The kicker, and a hot button issue itself is entitlements. Ultimately this is where the moral disparity comes from: Someone has money, and we aren’t happy about how they got it. Or someone doesn’t have money (mostly us), and we aren’t happy about that fact. I’m not talking about people doing something illegal, but that we aren’t satisfied with the wealth our work has produced, and we aren’t happy that someone else’s work has produced much more wealth than us. This is a personal issue, because as I’ve said before, capital gains generating wealth is more akin to a force of nature rather than an arbitrary imposition. The people who do this work specifically to gain wealth, and so when done right they gain wealth.

This has perplexed me a bit (again, I am a very befuddled person at other’s behavior) because this is an example of a clear solution for wealth acquisition occurring, and people who want wealth refusing to take it. I can understand if a player personally likes grinding the same event over and over again. But if you grind because you like to, then the money generated shouldn’t be an issue. The time where money generation is an issue is when people do something specifically to generate money, and not necessarily to have fun.

What perplexes me is the arbitrary divide and limit people put on the matter. If there is something you really want, and there is a really effective way of making money through flipping, then why is it that you aren’t flipping to make money? If the objective is to make money, then the path of least resistance is obviously flipping. It’s low maintenance, too: you buy stuff, sell it for higher than you bought it, then go do whatever you want while waiting for it to sell. Farming in itself is an antiquated and inefficient system. But yet people will refuse to flip, default to farming, then complain about the inadequacy of farming. It’s like drinking soda in lieu of drinking water, then complaining that soda doesn’t hydrate you well.

There are legitimate reasons why it is people don’t flip from a purely logical standpoint. The biggest one being that, at low amounts of wealth, farming is more efficient than flipping. This is only true until the percentage growth of flipping becomes more than farming. The second biggest reason is that people don’t know how. Sorry to say, but there is no right way to flip. All investments are merely educated guesses, and there is an inherent risk in them. The third reason is that people don’t want to take that risk. This, too, is understandable, since many prefer a safer and more steady income. However, this comes with the caveat that the refusal to take risks results in the refusal to take rewards as well, and this must be accepted on a personal level.

It is expected to that negotiation occurs within trade to establish a compromise wherein both parties are willing to submit, but neither is truly receiving what they want. The buy and sell orders work beautifully to illustrate this: if you aren’t willing to buy what other people are selling, then you put up your own buy order an wait to see if other people will compromise. Other people decide how much they want for an item, and put it at a particular selling price, and see if buyers are willing to compromise. It is here that patience truly rewards either party: a patient seller can get more than normal from their goods, a patient buyer can get more than normal goods. One of the easiest way to make money or save money in the game is not to default to the current market prices, and high or low-ball them and just be patient. It requires little effort on part of the buyer or seller, and often rewards just by being patient.

The next thing I see that perplexes me is people saying they need these things. That someone needs 200G for a mystic forge weapon, or that someone needs 700G for a precursor. The part that perplexes me is that these items, ultimately for decoration, are meant to show a status of wealth. So in order to be wealthy you need… to be wealthy.

One thing I applaud Anet for is designing the game with alternate material sources other than just buying from the TP. If you need armor but can’t afford it, there are always dungeon tokens that can give that armor stat. If you want rares for ectoplasm, there are always overworld bosses that guarantee a drop (an boy there are a lot of them). If you need crafting materials you can always gather them yourself, or farm a particular enemy for them. A lot of people complain about rising prices due to supply/demand, but this gives an advantage to players who find these things by themselves. When the prices of lodestones were climbing, this was a great benefit to players who happened to run the respective dungeon or liked to play on a certain map. People other than flippers benefit from increased demand. Because of this, there are very few things in the market that can be manipulated to a large degree.

The next side effect of capital gains is that it is always risky. It isn’t mentioned often, but people who play the trading post to gain a profit often don’t. That’s the reason why I rarely flip. If I see a way that I can get money just by trading goods and crafting things, I’ll jump right on it, but the unpredictability of the game environment in many different games has left me short changed from my investments. People rarely ever talk about the money they lost, so it isn’t brought into focus nearly as often, but at any point where you mention capital gains, the ability to lose money in an investment is always present.

The whole debate on this seems to be coming from completely different sides, and I wonder how they’ve become relevant at all.

Lets take the OP’s post on the issue, about why it is that capital gains in the game are fair when farming is reduced constantly. When I see this, I have a very perplexing thought:

“…fair? Where does ‘fair’ come into this?” Something I’ve understood for a very long time is that the principles of economics are not arbitrary. They are a force of nature, a fact of life, the inevitable derivative of from studying the essence of money and trade. Like Pi and the sky being blue, these are things you have to live with. The fact is that capital gains makes the most money, because it grows wealth on a percentage of the whole, and does this through prediction and wit through negotiating supply and demand. End of discussion.

So to that end, whenever I see something like the OP, I keep thinking in my internet saturated brain “ur not doin it rite!”. Disliking the fact that capital gains makes more money is akin to disliking the the fact that the sky is blue. This isn’t about personal play styles being rewarding based on ethics or anything like that. It is a fact of free trade. If you don’t like it, then the only way to deal with it is to eliminate free trade all together. This also brings in the next question on ethics, like why it is that farming has to be allowed to produce wealth, whereas general play is not guaranteed this.

The second thing I’ve learned about economy is that the market adapts. I see calls for different limits on trades and imposing maximums and outright price manipulation on Anets part, and none of these will work in the slightest to curb capital gains. I know this, because in real life they never worked. Instead, the economy becomes based around these limitations, often hurting the regular population instead of the traders. The traders have wealth and materials that allow them to deal with any unfortunate side effects from an overarching government imposing price control or trade limits has. The regular person doesn’t.

For example, lets say that we increase drops from farming locations to allow farming to be equally as wealthy as capital gains. Of course this idea is flawed, since capital gains is a geometric growth of invested wealth, whereas farming is just linear monetary generation. This means that as more money enters into the economy from farming, flipping gets wider margins from the increased wealth, allowing them to make more of a profit. This increase the prices of goods overall for non-farmers, and makes it so farmers have to farm more due to inflation. Remember: the linear increase in money generation from farming doesn’t change, but the value of that currency does due to inflation. This means that any boost to farming would be a temporary one, and to keep things “fair” you would constantly have to increase the value of farming. This would be akin to using inflation in order to fight inflation, and this would spiral out of control.

Something I was taught much later than life is the social contract and the principles of trade. This is where statements of the evils of capital gains start to fall short. Trade, ultimately, is an agreement between two or more individuals on the exchange of goods and services. The key term here is “agreement”. In order to trade, both the buyer and the seller have to agree to an exchange. With no agreement comes no trade. Because of this, every participant in the TP is a voluntary one, where you buy items only at a price you agree to pay for them and the other person sells an item at a price they think others will buy it at. This is the true limit of capital gains: your limit is what other people are willing to pay. If other people aren’t willing to pay, then you’ve lost money on the endeavor.

There are some exceptions in real life, and those exceptions are based around necessary commodities. Food, potable water, shelter, power, etc are things that are needed to live, and thus it can be considered that people have a basic right to these things, while also understanding that these things are not free. Of course, GW2 there aren’t any necessary goods.

I do think that the meaningful part of this discussion has ended long ago. I see a couple of telltale signs of this:

#1: People aren’t talking about the market, and are instead are talking about each other. When you see something like “Flippers use this to argue” or “farmers like to say this, but” then the discussion has ended. They are now talking at generalizations and arguing against the man, and not about the ideas presented within.

#2: People are simply declaring themselves right and not bothering to elaborate further. “I disproved it somewhere else” is substituted for the actual disproof. This is an attempt to dismiss arguments, considering them settled. This doesn’t work, however, since it plainly isn’t settled to the person arguing against it.

I myself do think the in-game economics are more complicated than what I liste, but I fear that I’m the only one who will actually develop meaningful information by talking about it.

LordByron.8369:

Advent Leader.1083:

Then suggest a solution to effectively curtain inflation of market prices. As it stands, while you deem flippers unethical, they do have the impact of reducing inflation on the market.

Maybe you should first PROVE they reduce inflation because its only a biased speculation.

PS: and if a zerker warrior facerolling a keyboard cannot get as much gold as a flipper AND is nerfed, why shouldn t flippers left alone?

Inflation is the growth in price of goods due to the availability of currency and money in general. This is directly dependent on the amount of currency there is in the economy. Therefore, any act that produces currency contributes to inflation, and any act that reduces currency reduces inflation.

The TP incurs two fees into every trade: 5% of the price listed, then 10% of the received currency once sold. This results in roughly a 15% “tax” on trades in general. This “tax” goes nowhere: the currency is consumed in this operation. Therefore, whenever a player to player trade is finished through the trading post, 15% of the money in exchange is lost completely; taken from the economy and dissolved into the ether.

A flipper buys and sells items regularly in the game, meaning that they produce a rate of exchange that is far higher than players that either just buy necessities or just sell extra items. The exchange from player to flipper to player works in this fashion:

Player pays 5% tax on item
Flipper pays 10% tax to buy item.
Flipper pays 5% tax to re-list item at a higher price.
Note I am assuming here that the flipper does not re-list the item due to a bad guess at what price they chose, so they only pay this 5% tax once
Player pays 10% tax on item at higher price.

This deducts from the economy twice: 15% of the original price of the item, then 15% for the new price the flipper listed. This is not including flipper to flipper exchanges, but those are fairly simple: every link in the exchange chain adds an additional 15% removal.

Therefore, flippers indirectly combat inflation by removing more gold from the economy than if an item simply went from player to player. It is safe to assume that a player who buys an item that does not intend to sell it later is, in fact, going to use the item in such a way that it is consumed or no longer tradeable, as is the fate of nearly every commodity in this game.

Don’t fanboy over him, or else his ego will grow to much and he’ll start making bad decisions.

And as I said, it was a design choice to be a bad programming choice. You’ve got to learn that just because I’m responding to something or don’t agree doesn’t mean I didn’t read it.

#1: Two things. First, this is the equivalent to how might works for direct damage: get 25 stacks of might, use Kill Shot or Backstab, do all the damage at once even in one second. This change would simply make it so conditions are equivalent to direct damage in this regard, so it presents very little of a balance issue. Bleeds still have to tick away slowly to do damage. They can still be cleansed. Difference is, when you see a necromancer coming at you with 25 stacks of might, you know to dodge for that second because they’re gonna burst conditions. Or to save your cleanse to nullify that big condition burst. Second, might doesn’t behave that way in the game.

#1-2: I forgot to mention that confusion also stacks in intensity. No one is perfect. I’m not sure if burning is sequential or sustained, either. I know that sustaining mechanics exists, since the Engineer has one on their flamethrower kit.

#2-3: The advantage here that timed condition infliction and timing buffs has that it is tactical, and it would behave just like direct damage behaves now. It won’t be some big, new, scary mechanic players have never seen before that kills strategy. Non-condition builds already deal with the exact same scenarios I’ve described. The #3 point also illustrates the lack of tactics on the matter: for the running player there is no play in having the condition source stack might when they aren’t around. If a condition build wanted to accomplish the same effect, they could’ve just stacked might before applying a ton of conditions, then the opponent would be dead if they ran anyway in the first place.

Genrally, the big problem with all of the “advantages” to the dynamic system is that they encourage thoughtless spamming and lazy tactics that aren’t necessarily superior to the static system, and eat up a lot more bandwidth to accomplish this. Every venue I went down while thinking about the design philosophy that Arenanet has, as well as what would make sense from a strategy and depth increasing standpoint has kept toppling every argument I could possibly postulate for the presence of dynamic conditions.

Being a design choice doesn’t mean it wasn’t a bad choice, either. From how much the game has changed from beta (AKA their initial design choice), it is very clear that Arenanet made bad choices to begin with.

I run a lot. In PVE, I run one of two things:

30/30/10/0/0 conditionmancer.
30/0/10/0/30 Powermancer.

In WvW, I use

30/20/20/0/0 Staff Conditionmancer

And in sPVP, I used to use

30/0/25/0/15 Minion Master
20/30/20/0/0 Conditionmancer

But I haven’t used my necro in sPVP for awhile. Been waiting on an engineer turret fix.

SynfulChaot.3169:

We are limited in profit we can make from all other sources in the game. Why should the TP be immune from the limitations ANet has been quite free with applying to all other money-making methods?

I’ll say it again: farming produces money from nothing, which causes inflation. Capital Gains (flipping) merely exchanges money and loses some in the trading process, which fights against inflation.

#2: Reducing tactical application of conditions. Something wrong with my equation for #1 is that conditions aren’t applied at a set frequency. For Necros, Rangers, and Mesmers their conditions can and usually are applied in bursts. This makes it so it is tactical to apply might, then burst on conditions while under might, just like with direct damage.

The fault in logic is that a static system is more tactical, not less. With this dynamic system, you just throw on conditions whenever and gain might whenever, then might does its thing. With a static system, gaining might would signify an incoming burst, allowing countermeasures to be used. You could steal or strip might, reducing their bust. You could bunker up and block/dodge the conditions that you know are coming. You could reserve a full cleanse for that moment, rendering their offense moot. Your opponent could anticipate the cleanse then attempt to stun lock you so you can’t use it. Etc. and so on.

#3: They don’t want conditions to be bursty. There is this design ideology Anet has that condition classes should all be gradual. The problem is that condition burst already exists, but just in a matter that doesn’t involve risk vs. reward.

The big thing here is that by requiring might before inflicting conditions, this makes it so the condi build has to take a risk. They have to get in close, blow their cooldowns in this window, and withdraw. Things can go wrong from there. The dynamic system is risk-less: use conditions whenever, then once conditions are applied and things have gone right, then you can stack might while kiting and turtling up, inflicting more damage while being defensive at the same time.

Having conditions change with might doesn’t reduce the potency at all. Conditions linger, so stacking might after things go right still causes the same amount of burst as stacking conditions after might, where things can go wrong.

In the end, player credit is the only reason that doesn’t doesn’t fall apart when it looks in a mirror. The incremental build of credit due to the nature of conditions is something you can’t argue against in itself, since any alternate options can be exploited or result in an unfair application. The second big question is this: Is it worth it to have an imperfect player credit system in order to reduce lag and improve conditions in the game?

My answer is hell yes. I probably have to go and make another thread about this, since this thread’s current suggestion has become obsolete in light of new reasoning.

So they chose to use bad programming as a design choice. The big question now is what the design choice was intended to be used for. Took a shower and thought about it, and I have an idea.

The only thing I can really come up with is that the game was designed with this as a form of assigning participation and “credit” to things like kills and events. It is no secret that the reward you receive for dynamic events is proportional to how much damage you inflict divided by how long you were in the event range. A reason for the constant re-assessing of malice might be that, in order to give an extremely precise metric for contribution in any kill or event, the damage that each condition inflicts is treated as an individual “hit” that constantly refers back to the player who applied the condition. Thus, through the dynamic nature of combat having cleanses and overwritten conditions, a player who objectively contributes little with conditions due to these factors would receive a “fair” compensation as far as things go.

That is the only reason I can think of that doesn’t immediately suffer from an arbitrary logic fail on my part. Even the above listed reasoning can fall short, due to debate as to what would be “fair” in that regard. I’ve considered a couple of things, and each one doesn’t make for a good design choice:

#1: Making conditions do more or less damage than direct damage when influenced by might. Unfortunately this one is largely moot, since applying conditions then gaining might isn’t much different from gaining might then applying conditions.

It’s a bit hard to explain, but think of it like this: Throughout combat there is a certain threshold T that is how many bleeds are sustained on the opponent. This is equivalent to the frequency they are applied F times their duration D divided by their recharge R. Might has itself a certain window of usage which I will call W. In the current system, might affects everything prior and during its window then ceases, so the damage increase from might is TW. With a static system, the window affects conditions applied, and them remains active on those conditions throughout their duration, so it is FDW. As it happens, FD forms a certain fraction of the sustained conditions in which might’s window takes effect, and this fraction is determined by dividing by the recharge R. This ends up being T again, so ultimately the static system produces TW like its counterpart.

The only condition that could be considered abusable by this mechanic would be burning. Bleeds stack individually, poison is barely present and used for anti-healing properties, confusion doesn’t have long enough duration to take advantage of, and torment stacks individually. With the way burning works, a player could stack might, apply burning, and so long as they maintain burning duration they will never lose power from that burning. This has pros and cons, though, since it is very easy to lose burning duration in combat, and this isn’t completely superior to stacking might whenever you can with current burning benefiting from that.

This is important, since burning is the only condition where a static system would behave differently from how might acts with direct damage. Might isn’t retroactive on direct damage, so making conditions static just evens out the discrepancy between the two with how might behaves.

Nretep.2564:

Not quite. Malice is not stored in the condition itsself, the owner is. In terms of coding it is a big difference:

I didn’t say malice was stored in the condition itself. I said malice was stored. We all know it is playerside.

Interesting thing though: I wonder why conditions check the malice of the player in the first place? Why can’t each condition just go off of the malice from when it was applied, and keep a static amount of damage regardless of what happens to the player? The more we talk about this, the more I think the condition bandwidth problem is a product of bad programming.

Regardless, by simple calculations I am referring to the fact that condition damage is done through just multiplication and addition. I’ve encountered games before (like runescape) that used a series of logarithmic formulas to calculate things such as damage and defense, requiring more computing power to come up with a result.

Nretep.2564:

Not all games work in “tick based computing”. But yeah, every digital system has a limit in precision, that’s no secret.

I am almost certain that this game uses it, since the game requires a constant uplink to a server that processes things.

Nretep.2564:

Substracting the total life shouldn’t be that difficult. And for the traffic, I don’t know the netcode. I don’t see other players’ damage, so I only see mine and the boss’ HP value. I also don’t know how often it’s refreshed. I don’t think it’s necessary to refresh it more than twice a second (for pvp). That’s why I don’t think it’s a traffic issue, but I’m not common with netcode.

It isn’t just about enemy HP. The actual function of damage has to check several things to take place:

Player Power
Weapon Strength
Skill coefficient
Random number to determine the damage done through the power scale
Player Crit chance
Random Number to determine if an attack is a critical hit
Player Crit damage
Check for Weakness
Random number to determine if weakness takes effect.
Check for Vulnerability
Multiply by Vulnerability coefficient
Check for protection.
Multiply by protection coefficient.
Check for Procedural effects (procs)
Apply those procedural effects.
Identify Player that inflicted damage (done for reward balancing in events and stuff)

And this has to take place on every single hit. This means that skills that hit multiple times, such as Unload or LIfe Transfer, in theory would cause an immense load on the system.

I suppose the reason why they would limit conditions would be because an individual player could put a high server load by themselves by just running a condition build. The flip side to this is that this is only true when condition builds are spread out and attacking different enemies. When engaging the same enemy, where the caps limit DPS the most, condition builds contribute very little to the server-side lag that is experienced in these events. Fact is, when I cap conditions on a champion while I’m by myself, the entire zone doesn’t start skill-lagging and freezing up.

Load reduction might be a reasonable explanation for why so many bosses are treated like environmental objects with conditions enabled. No precision means no crits, no procs.

If they removed the need to constantly update conditions with player malice, and instead made conditions static upon application, I get the feeling that this would optimize the system greatly. I can’t think of any balancing reasons why this wouldn’t be done.

Yaki.9563:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The interesting thing about MMOs are that they are in direct competition with themselves. In regular gaming, there isn’t anything wrong with owning Battlefield and Call of Duty at the same time. But MMOs have three issues that cause them to be exclusive to each other.

Because of this, eventually one MMO was going to become dominant. The market itself encourages zerg balling.

Yes, there was a dominant MMO (or two). And it had 250,000-500,000 subs. Then WoW showed up and nearly overnight it doubled, tripled, and eventually had 20 times the players of those MMOs. Those WoW players didn’t come from other MMOs. They can from everywhere, even from complete non-gamers. This is something that is almost exclusively true about WoW, not other MMOs. Every other MMO scavenges their subs/players from other MMOs, including WoW.

Customer base growth has nothing to do with anything that I said.

EDIT: All of this talk about Wow reminds me of a rather interesting video I saw once:

Its quite funny, but I think it explains where Vaynes complaints come from. They are, valid viewpoints, after all.

I suppose the stupid thing is that people assume that all flippers are patient while the buyer is not patient. If flippers put something up at an unreasonable price, the player has the option to low-ball it and indignantly stay where they are. Back when I was constrained by money in the game I used to do it all the time: Put down my terms of sale, and then leave it for a day. Come back later to find I have all the things I wanted at a price much lower than what it was being sold for.

Therein’ lies the rub with nearly every complaint about capital gains in this game. Nothing in the game is necessary, and very few things are limited commodities. Because of this, sellers can’t determine prices for items and make people pay for them. For one, if their prices are unreasonable than the rest of the market will just undercut them for a profit anyway. For two, if demand plummets then the flipper has lost money due to their bad investments.

The nerfs to farming isn’t about ideologies or punishing dumb players/rewarding smart ones. It is done from the perspective of game mechanics: farming produces wealth which leads to inflation, unquestionably. Capital gains exchanges wealth, removing some from the market. This does not lead to inflation.

In every MMO I’ve ever played, there has always been complaints about some mythical fat cat that owns everything in the game, making players dance like unwilling marionettes to their arbitrary but complete control of the market. It is just plain paranoid, and most often these issues reside in players having personal issues rather than any sort of logical issue.

I’ve complained about this in a suggestion thread, but didn’t get much traffic. An issue with GW2 balancing is that they don’t provide all available information. Each skill has several aspects to its time (initial delay, animation time, aftercast delay, server tick latency), and the devs have told us very little on skills.

CobaltSixty.1542:

You know how I know GW2 is a good game?

People listing games that are “better” than GW2, many of them still playable, are here on the GW2 forums instead of playing those games.

This isn’t true. The thing with different MMOs is that they provide different experiences, and as much as you like one you’ll go to others to get what they offer.

Galtrix.7369:

\
If sales mean nothing, then why is WoW still on the top? Oh, right. It sold a ton of games. People say it sucks all the time, yet sales say that WoW is fantastic, which it is.

The interesting thing about MMOs are that they are in direct competition with themselves. In regular gaming, there isn’t anything wrong with owning Battlefield and Call of Duty at the same time. But MMOs have three issues that cause them to be exclusive to each other.

1)Subscriptions and money investment. The subscription model is falling to the wayside, but nonetheless it still represents the problem perfectly: there’s a finite amount of free time everyone has, and to get their money’s worth they’ll tend to play one MMO at a time.

2)Time investment. MMOs, to keep people playing, have a high ceiling and exponential experience curves to give people a sense of constant progress. To “complete” the game, you’ll often require months or even years of dedication. Starting a new MMO means abandoning all of that work and starting from scratch again, so many people don’t do it.

3)Community investment. You make friends while playing the game, and going to a new game tends to leave your friends behind.

Because of this, eventually one MMO was going to become dominant. The market itself encourages zerg balling.

#4: There was an adjustable difficulty. While playing the game, you yourself could decide how encounters went. You could make it so you were the “equivalent” of up to 8 players, spawning the respective amount of enemies to fight just yourself. You could increase the levels of enemies up to +4 your own making it so enemies were several times more difficult on an individual level (the level system, like GW2, was a bit inflexible in this regard). You could also make them one level lower than yourself, making them easier.

There was a potion system called “inspirations” which were cheap and allowed you to power up or defense up for content that was too hard to be done for some reason. Ultimately, the game was balanced around using basic enhancements for powers without all of the special effects from higher grade enhancements. This let the game be as easy as you wanted it to be, as hard as you wanted it to be, and it also let you customize yourself to be regular strength, or super powerful.

I’ve never seen an MMO do this before. They all have this “step up or get out of the way” design to them. GW2 Dungeons and bosses are a certain difficulty, and you cannot make them easier or harder, depending on your preference. Because of this, CoH was approachable, and appeased by min/maxers and casuals alike.

#5: It was big. While leveling up my 10 characters, I never went through the same content twice. I never experienced everything, either.

#6: It had a way so you could design quests. There was something called a Mission Architect, which let you design your own string of missions, make your own custom enemies, and write your own stories to fit in them. This. Was. Awesome. Although it was often made just to abuse grinding loopholes (which is hilarious since leveling in that game wasn’t hard), often times you’d come across gems that were intriguing, hilarious, or disturbing. By putting game design into the players hands, near endless content was made, free of charge.

#7: It wasn’t just another fantasy MMO. Look, I gotta level with everyone here: I’m sick and tired of elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, trolls. I’m tired of swords and sorcery. City of Heroes took place in “look out your window” modern day. It combined everything: sometimes you had to fight off wizards. Sometimes, zombies. Sometimes, spec ops. Sometimes, aliens. Sometimes, ninjas. Sometimes, cyberpunk hooligans. Sometimes, eldritch abominations. Sometimes, robots. It was always interesting, and by writing in a modern setting this basically meant everything was possible. You would experience a multitude of concepts and stories without being limited to the generic fantasy setting that everyone and their grandmother uses nowadays.

I was heartbroken when it was shut down. I know games come and games go, but City of Heroes was my game.

There is one MMO that I liked unquestionably better than Guild Wars 2.

It was City of Heroes. Rest in Peace.

There are several reasons why I liked this game better, and now I will list them:

#1: Your character design was unique. Something I could never really get past in games like WoW, Monster Hunter, and Runescape is how your appearance is wholly dictated by the equipment you are wearing. Because of this, in those games you don’t have an identity, you are Paladin # 3009. Guild Wars 2 helps with this a bit, making personal customization the goal of character progression, but it still heavily limits players via the dye system and that armor choices can be less than stellar (I am sick of trenchcoats on medium classes).

City of Heroes didn’t have this. Your customization didn’t mean a thing toward your performance in game, and you could make nearly everything in that game. I remember taking screen shots of other people’s characters, just because their ingenuity in their design made me laugh out of my seat. You could go with dim, bland colors, or bright and vibrant colors, you could make yourself a simplistic golden-age hero, a gritty 80’s hero, a funhouse rob liefield hero with way too many pouches, you could make yourself an asian samurai elf, a gigantic purple alien, a surreal glowing god, and with so many customization options it was limitless. Every person looked unique, and left a lasting impression when designed right.

#2: Your character build was unique. The way the ability system in City of Heroes worked was like this: You pick your archetype, 14 to choose from with 10 letting you select a primary and secondary power. Then, you selected your primary power from a list of 8 to 12 powersets that were often fairly unique to your archetype. Then you selected a secondary powerset from a list of 8 to 12 powersets, again many specific to your archetype. Then, as you leveled up, you could pick up to 4 from 10 different universal power pools that were available, and then you could choose one of 5 ancillary power pools that were based on the AT, or if you completed the arc you could get one of 4 patron power pools to choose from as well. Among all of this, as you leveled up you picked the powers you wanted from all of your power sets, often skipping out on ones that are lower priority or less interesting. As you leveled up, you could put “slots” into these powers, maximum of 6 minimum of 1, that would let you enhance different aspects of that power, like how much it healed or how quickly it recharged, and you received a lot of these slots. Aside from basic enhancements, there were enhancement sets that would give you bonuses for slotting multiples in the same power.

Seems like a lot, right? Well, it was. All of this customization made it so every character was extremely unique in their abilities. Not only could you accomplish nearly any idea you set forth to do, but the high level of customization made it so the characters you made were wholly unique, even when compared to someone with the same AT, Primary, and Secondary power choices. Compared to all of this, GW2 has nothing on customization and class diversity. Nothing

#3: You were powerful. The whole game was balanced around the idea that you were going to be fighting multiple enemies at the same time. You’d fight mooks 3 to 6 at a time. You’d fight lieutenants 2 to 3 at a time. You’d fight boss enemies 1 to 2 at a time. You fight underlings 12 at a time. When you gathered together a group of 8 players, you’d end up fighting against a sea of enemies near innumerable, and you could plow right through them if done right. The challenge was presented in the enemy’s numbers, and not in their unique stats and abilities, so you played and felt like a kitten while doing it.

Most MMOs, GW2 included, don’t do this. In GW2, you’re group of 5 players has to fight against 3 silver mobs, and often times they’ll decimate you. You feel quite powerless at times, only going “plink, plink” with spells and “pew pew” with guns. Unless you use zerker you don’t feel the impact of the fight. Enemies seem like bastions of health and power that you are dwarfed beneath. Sure, in GW2 there was Archvillains who were designed to take multiple people to fight, but they were rare and were only present after hallways of mooks that you plowed through to get to them.

Fenrir.5493:

The problem is not the amulets, the problem is that there is no stat or boon to reduce/mitigate condition damage,

This, again, is an often repeated myth that isn’t true. Conditions have arguably the best mitigation possible through cleanses. Let m give you an example:

On my HGH engineer I can cause a 10 second burn at 1500 malice, easily, doing around 700 damage per tick. This… is of no consolation against elementalists, thieves, or guardians. These classes can cleanse off my burn before the second tick, mitigating 90% of the damage the condition does. So my 7000 damage skill becomes reduce by 6,300 damage from cleansing.

Aside from the fact that yes, my conditions can and do miss often, they can be blocked and blinded and dodged, conditions have an incredibly potent form of mitigation, both from passive cleansing and active cleansing.

I might as well take this moment to talk about another thing: telegraphs. Now, in all of my classes, the least telegraphed weapon in my arsenal is the Engineer’s rifle, which is a power weapon.

There is a big confusion here. People are mistaking “conditions” for ranged. The two tend to go together, since the majority of condition weapons are ranged weapons. However, there are many exceptions to this rule. Take, for example, the thief Shortbow. The thief shortbow doesn’t have a telegraph for any of its moves, with them all having the same animation of “thief pulls up bow an shoots it”. The closest thing to a telegraph comes from the cluster bomb, which flies in a tall, slow arc when fired at distances, but is nearly instantaneous at close range.

Compare this to the Guardian Scepter, the Mesmer Greatsword, the Ranger Longbow, the Elementalist staff. Some of the skills have delayed effects (looking at you, elementalist), but usually you find out if you are being hit by Smite or Mind Stab when you end up getting slapped around or you get a spectral sword where the sun don’t shine.

The advantage that range weapons provide is that, while they have lower damage, they provide reliable damage and they provide safety in positioning. Should your opponent do something, you can react. In the game, I’ve always found that the strongest thieves I’ve fought against didn’t try to kill me instantly with backstab, but instead used the evasion of the shortbow to whittle me down. Because of this, I’m not sure if the culprit is necessarily conditions.

It does help that conditions were anti-meta when they became popular. Having been fed up with fighting bunkers under permanent protection that block every move you made, the players adapted by changing to steady damage that bypassed protection. This meta can easily shift into one were condition cleansing is key, since it neutralizes both soft controls and damage, letting players get up close and pound away with their melee weapons. Even with the new buffs, one of the scariest things to deal with as a necro is a guardian who just chases you around with the greatsword, shrugging off every condition like it is childs play.

The problem is conditions have a single stat feeding into them.

This is an oft repeated and completely false myth. Conditions don’t have a single stat feeding into them. They have 3:

Malice: this provides their damage, and is the stat most people refer to.

Expertise: This little factored stat accounts for condition duration. Expertise by itself is capable of doubling both the overall damage done of any condition, as well as the damage per second via how many conditions you can stack at one time. Because of this, Expertise is fundamental to any good condition build.

Precision: Now, this only indirectly affects conditions, but nonetheless it is an important stat. Many of the ways classes inflict conditions are with procs. The dreaded dhuumfire, incendiary powder, barbed precision, sharper images, precise strikes, Sigil of Earth, all of these need precision in order to function.

Because of this, you can think of the rabid amulet as the “pure condition damage” amulet. It provides the precision needed for procs, the malice needed for damage, and toughness to survive. The only stat it is missing is expertise, which isn’t given by any amulets.

By comparison, some amulets that are noticeably missing that would be the equivalent of rabid would be

Power/Precision/Toughness
Precision/Crit Damage/Vitality
Crit Damage / Precision /Toughness

And so on, listing primary stat first and secondary stats later. Now, Valkyire Amulet is closest to this by having power and crit damage, however this comes with the caveat that crit damage is wholly dependent on a stat that is missing, which is precision. Crit damage is the only stat like this, though.

Nretep.2564:

Condition damage is not stored in the condition itsself. Each time it ticks, the player’s current malice will be computed again. e.g. if you inflict 10s burning and get one might after five seconds, the remaining 5 (/4) ticks will be of higher value. This also influences the priorization order of duration stacking effects.

I didn’t say that damage was stored in the condition itself. I said that damage is done as a function of malice, and malice is stored as a certain number of bytes. I also said didn’t know how much data is needed to process the damage equation.

Nretep.2564:

Wrong again. Only the tool tip rounds to the nearest quarter. The duration itsself will be “precise”. e.g. 1s burning + 10% conduration = 1.1s burning while only 1s is displayed.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Duration

The link you provided says nothing to the effect of what you claim and provides no evidence either way. There is a problem with this, though: the duration of conditions cannot be precise because it has a precision limit hard built into the game. This precision limit is the game refresh rate, or how many ticks per second the game has.

Nretep.2564:

Each players condition duration is capped at + 100%.
But I’ve also heard that burning is capped to 30s … not sure here. Maybe it’s also capped at 25 sources.

Not player duration buffs. Individual condition durations. The longest “player skill” condition listed is 1 minute, from Tooth Stab, a stolen skill from thieves. The longest duration for a condition that a player can get from skills comes from Blood is Power at 100% duration, which is also 1 minute in length. It is for this reason that I think the duration cap might be around 1 minute, but nonetheless calculated for 2 minutes under the assumption that even though it isn’t displayed, Tooth Stab gets an increase in duration as well.

Nretep.2564:

And then you’ve to deal with replacing bleedings … does it really cap or will weaker ones be replaced? Not sure if anyone has tested this yet. We’re really missing test golems in LA which can be inflicted with conditions and last longer than 10s.

The replacement system works on an “oldest out, newest in” system, regardless of any statistical advantage one my have over the other.

Nretep.2564:

The problem shouldn’t lay in the storage needed, but the processing time or traffic size. The traffic one should be obvious, but would wouldn’t explain some things. I mean, the server calcs the remaining HP and has to transmit it to anyone, regardless of the number of conditions.

The interesting thing is, the equations used to calculate conditions are really simple. Duration is handled by the build beforehand, and once applied the game just needs to reduce the duration via in-game clock. Stack order is probably just a flag applied to stacking conditions that checks if a previously applied condition has disappeared yet. Player identity is a static value applied to the condition based on who used it.

The big part of the traffic comes from HP and the damage the condition inflicts. The computer would have to check the player identity flag, refer to that player’s stats (malice and level), preform a calculation based off of their current malice and level, subtract that from the enemy’s HP, an do this calculation at least one a second. It is here that most of the processing takes place.

This does raise a question, though. Whenever a player does direct damage, it has to update the enemy’s HP and then send that information back t every player within range. Direct damage doesn’t have a pacing cap at all, so when you have 50 players all attacking a single champion, firing off 2 attack per second or so, then the champion has to calculate the damage done (involving random integers, weapon strength, power, precision, crit damage, enemy toughness, check for protection and weakness, etc), and it has to do this 100 times a second.

Enemy HP calculation must not be too complicated, since there isn’t anything done to limit work load from direct damage vs. every enemy in a zone, and it without any rate limit to them. I wonder if they can improve the condition system by reworking how thy are run, factoring the condition as a function of static damage inflicted by a player each second, instead of attaching the condition to the monster.

S/P is good for point blank melee fights. I use it mostly in PVE. It is so strong in PVE that it feels nigh overpowered: Just use Black Powder to keep everything within melee range blind, then I can auto attack them to death in pure zerker gear without any fear of dying. Best part is, Black Powder lets everyone else in zerker gear do the same thing, so it makes for a good team weapon.

The other advantage to S/P is the stuns. Pistol Whip is good for an interrupt, put the big one for stripping Defiant is Headshot. Sometimes the boss, like the Champion Risen Wraith, has an attack that will just devastate everyone around them. So, you use Headshot to strip down their defiant, and then when they go through that big tell that lets you know stuff is about to get real, you pistol whip them to interrupt and stop that skill in its tracks.

For PVP it is harder to justify. The blind field from black powder is good, the constant stuns and interrupts are alright, and the teleport/condition cleanse is pretty decent, but It just doesn’t have as much use. If you want blinds, it is better to run S/D and use that trait that causes blind when you enter stealth. If you want stuns, S/D also has them, and enemy players do not have defiant to strip. Combine that with unblockable boon stealing and a dodge, and S/D has S/P beat in most PVP situations. Just need 10 trait points in Shadow arts.

P/P, I’ve only use rarely when fighting environmental bosses. On some builds I have I can generate a lot of initiative, which lets me spam unload constantly on stationary bosses. But otherwise… yeah bodyshot is horrible and for condi builds you’re better off with P/D.

A lot of mobs in PVE tend to have similar or the same toughness as each other. It saves time.

I’ve used Life Blast on my PVE Power build on the Icebrood in HotW, as well as the risen on cursed shore, ant does the same damage: around 5k a pop. Then you just need to figure out how fast you attack and you’re good.

I’ve heard of a ton of ideas for Dhuumfire. Mine was to make it cause confusion. Others have said to make it torment. Some have said to make it chill. Some have said to make it so chill does damage.

What I think is happening is that our creativity is being constrained. Since not a lot of people, myself included, are a fan of Dhuumfire, then Dhuumfire should probably just be sacked for something else in an entirely different vein. Lately, all of the suggestions are changed that are in the same line as Dhuumfire.

Now if only I was creative enough to come up with something…

Nretep.2564:

As I said, your suggestion would equal to “make bleeding stack to 50”. In terms of additional damage and in terms of additional server stress.

And as I said, I’m not sure that is true. I’ve heard mention that arrays have an easier time adding more entries than increasing their limits, so when compared to simply increasing the cap, this is a superior option. For this, I am not sure whether there is an individual array for each player, since that does sound like it will explode the server.

The thing that I am unsure about is why it is torment would be superior to a higher cap in the first place. There is a bit I do know about programming, and also from what I’ve heard about the devs on the issue, and from that it seems counter-intuitive:

Every condition that is applied needs to keep track of several things. It’s duration, it’s stack, it’s damage, and its user. Using this information, we can identify how many bits are necessary to hold this information:

Duration: the duration of conditions is divided into quarter seconds. Now, I have never heard of a duration “cap”, so to speak, but I also haven’t seen any condition stack its duration for higher than a minute. But, lets just assume that the duration cap is two minutes. This would be 120 × 4 = 480 different values for the remaining duration. Data is stored in games as bits, with 8 bits equal to a byte. Each byte integer increases the storage capacity by a factor of 8, so two bytes can hold 64 different values. This means that, to contain the duration of the condition, it would need 3 bytes (maximum of 512 values).

Damage: this is a function of malice that just has an equation done to it. So, malice can go pretty high, but myself have never seen malice exceed 3000 points. This would require 4 bytes (4096 values) for raw data. In this, I do not know how the equation to calculate damage is stored.

Stack: This is a simple integer up to 25, so two bytes will suffice.

Identity: This is a kittene, since it requires a lot of guess work. I would assume that each character in the game has a hidden ID number that is generated for them. How many values there are for this ID number, I don’t know. If I were to guess, I’d say 6 bytes is more than enough to contain all character IDs, having 262k values per server.

Each of these together comes to 15 bytes of information, checked every quarter second (the duration of conditions in the game is divided as such). A full set of bleeds would require 25 × 15 = 375 bytes per check, and at 4 times a second this comes to 1.5 Kilobytes per second. This can be much faster if conditions are checked by the game tick rate instead of the condition duration listing. I do not know what the game tick rate is, however if I were to just guess at it being around 0.125 seconds or so, then this would come to 3 Kilobytes per second for a full stack. Combine this for every enemy in the map, and you can potentially have a massive amount of data being processed.

This is where my perplexity comes in. From my understanding of bytes, although it would require more processing, simply increasing the stack limit to upwards of 64 wouldn’t increase the number of bytes stored in any conditions. There wouldn’t be any reason why it is that adding new conditions would be superior to just increasing the cap. And yet, this is exactly what Anet has done.

So, assuming that Anet knows their own programming, and assuming that Anet factored in two necros with epidemic entering the same room together (all that is needed to get 24 stacks of torment), then there must be some programming reason why it is Anet has decided that new conditions were better that is superior to my gameboy understanding of programming. Since Anet has given the O.K. for more conditions while shooting down the concept of increasing the cap, then this solution would be satisfactory to improve the game.