Guild Wars 2

My interpretation was that they where standardizing the base damage and base healing of life steals along with how they scale with stats.

Although it’s impossible to test since everything is bugged atm.

Most of the “WvW” changes where just setting things at 10 target limits, which is largely irrelevant in sPvP barring a very select (and uncommon) set of circumstances.

Dragonhunter got hit because DH was the WvW equivalent of pre-nerf bunker chrono in terms of how much it was breaking stuff.

Salamander.2504:

I sure hope ANet uses that logic: when you nerf the counter, the countered build gets breathing room. That’s a fundamental principle of game balance.

You miss his point.

The point is that power necro on it’s own, completely excluding the existence of condi reaper, is total kitten.

Power necro suffers from being constrained to melee range even while out of shroud.

Salamander.2504:

RS 4 was nerfed to provide only 6 combo’s, so RS4 in RS5 field provides 6 bleeds, which is equivalent in dps to having the chill on you. Shouldn’t be any more of an issue than it already was.

Except the RS5>RS5 combo is now applying 3 condis, so clearing the damage is less consistant. Also since the damage is coming from bleeds, it will no longer be affect be -chill duration talents.

The patch was a buff.

Ohoni.6057:

The raids are a much more complex, inherently elitist, and easier to implode undertaking.

I honestly think that’s the point. Raids where specifically billed as Hard content.

Think of it this way, if raids didn’t exist all those elitist twits would still be running around in your fractals and dungeons.

Soothsayer.9206:

NeXeD.3042:

No one’s ddosing you in ranked pvp.

You say the same thing every single time someone has questions or comments on cheating.

Except it’s valid here. DDoS is the only ways another player can force lag onto another player.

You can make yourself lag by interfering with your packets, but since GW2 isn’t client to client you cannot interfere with another player’s connection to the server.

The “I always lag at key moments” is the result of bias. Players are far more sensitive to lag when they are in the middle of a play, which means they mentally place a ton of emphasis on those few cases where they lag during a key play.

Anari.2137:

OP (overpowered) abilities are ones that defy the aspect of the target livability rates of a class. If all classes are targeted to have between 20-30 seconds in battle before death, then any class (or abilities) killing faster then that is to strong, and anyone killing lower then that is to fast.

Static TTK targets doesn’t work with this game. Even if they did 20-30 second TTK would make conquest unplayable at higher levels of play because it would be impossible to get caps because you couldn’t clear a point faster than the respawn comes in. And the only way fix that would be to increase the respawn time, but increased respawn times creates a more negative experience for all players.

Again this isn’t WoW/SWTOR where builds have locked in output.
GW2 simply gives players a bunch of tools and traits to solve problems with. Obviously some combinations of those tools will be better than others at certain things, which I what drives the meta.

Balance of the game does not rest in the soul opinions of players, but in the collective outcry of the player base specifically the casual players.

It’s not that black and white. However powerful class are vary wildly depending on what skill level you’re playing in. And the amount of skill required to not get farmed by Trap guardians isn’t all that high.

Anari.2137:

MMORPGS consist way more “values” then FPS does, thats why its easier to balance.

Im not moving anything, you claim that every team has dedicated specialists for this task of balance, which is really only the case with very large companies (and even then its questionable).

Anet would be considered a large studio. And for the record we already have dev comments that have confirmed the existence of a dedicated class balance/design team.

Also FPS are so much easier to balance. Weapon balance in a FPS can be done with a simple TTK equation with respect to ease of use. That doesn’t fly in a MMORPG.

- my experience across multiple games is that there is a “golden ratio” For balance, that ratio is also what blizzard uses (because of metric data). That value is around 13%.
In general my experience has been 8-9% Variances are the key/target area for balance.

When we look at GW2 we see a lot of 100-300k’s, a few 500-600ks, and 2 800-900ks. This means by my standards

Wait are you seriously looking at raw damage dealt as your metric?
Do you not realize how insane the variance in DPS is from situation to situation? A build can do 900k one match and barely hit 200k the next. DPS varies wildly based on a slew of factors from enemy comp, to map, to role, to enemy skill.

A “Spec” is a build. In general, I use this to refer to “meta-builds” or “cookie Cutter Builds” But it may apply to any “spec”.

- All Builds having a target Damage output, that equates to a targeted life expectancy in time rates (20-30seconds is prime from my experience of faster moba like gameplay)

And this is the problem.
GW2 doesn’t use a spec balancing, GW2 uses what I would call “Toolkit design” where the developers give each class a wide variety of tools that players can combine to solve whatever problem is presented. In this case winning PvP matches.

This is a game of learning how to take the vast array of skills available and combining them into a something. And because of that the entire traditional notion of simply balancing spec output goes out the window.

Take Epidemic on a necro. If you have two necros with Epidemic and you have a situation where you have 1 or more targets in close proximity, those two necros can do a epi bounce and effectively double the condis on the target while also dealing a insane condi nuke to everything else in the vicinity.
But if you don’t have 2 epi necros, or your target stands alone, epidemic has little value.

And really that’s how most of GW2 works. Most abilities can be either total gamechangers or complete crap depending on what the situation is.

Heck Metabattle builds aren’t even optimized builds, Metabattle builds are rather all-rounder builds that are usually built around adaptability rather than being optimal.

Anari.2137:

No, its not being hypocritical, because i do not see myself as a player.

I have no objections to a heart surgeon talking to another one from another hospital about an operation. It’s not equal to taking advice or opinions from one of the people in the ER room because he stubbed his toe on the table.

You are a player, your employment elsewhere has no power here. You think you are right? Then make your case in a rational and reasoned way. Throwing your resume around means little particularly when discussing a industry that values talent above all.

Yes Developers do see and experience games differently than a general player. Devs tend to not just focus on if a game gives them a good experience, but on why a game gives them the experience that it does and what elements are employed to do so. A dev tries to understand why another developer did what they did.

But I don’t see any of that in your posts. You make no attempt to understand why things are done the way they are, you’ve simply barged in with your agenda. Heck you’ve already demonstrated a brazen ignorance on how some mechanics work

How can you expect ArenaNet to take your suggestions seriously if you don’t take their work seriously?

Halvorn.9831:

1. Switch to “hard” trinity (bleed the requirement from 1 optional game mode to all others)
2. Watch your game shift from “unique” to “umpteenth copy of the same old”
3. Read player comments on how other games that have been designed with this concept from the start are doing it better
4. See player figures fade
5. Switch off servers, since you have just nuked yourself out of business.

Who said we need “hard” trinity. We already have soft trinity in raids. The only thing GW2 is missing is the ability for tanks to directly control their threat.

GW2 can do trinity for raids without infringing on your ability to run whatever in the rest of the game. But not having proper trinity in raids leads to the devs having their hands tied when it comes to interesting mechanics.

Anari.2137:

You obviously have never done NDA level of testing or have not had any involvement in early stages (alpha, and pre-alpha) of development. I know with Certainly that one of my former employers explicitly did this with super testers.

Taking feedback from testers particularly testers that have been vetted to the level that internal testers are is a whole different ballgame.

There is also a very large gap between “taking feedback from” and “only listening to.” Also believe it or not players occasionally come up with decent workable ideas that don’t conflict with design goals.

Im not going to go around believe the world is full of liars (Ie everyone does it for no reason) In fact most of the time lying is done to get out of trouble. Thus, i really have no reason to doubt that Gazzy is lying about this until he proves himself a liar, or until the developers prove it to be false (or claim it is, in which i will request evidence from both sides to distinguish who is not telling the truth).

There is a difference between a liar and someone who is just wrong.
You can go over to the revenant forums and find players that believe Anet is out to screw revenants over. Obviously that’s incorrect, but that doesn’t mean those players are liars, it just means those players are really jaded and have adopted irrational and incorrect viewpoints.

It’s not a conspiracy from some random player. It is one of the most well known players in the game (who i understand is widely hated, but very good at pvp) who has played since launch. I think he has some credibility to his statements.

If he is popular as you say he is chances are the devs interact with him as a PR stunt, much in the same way devs might occasionally grace some random streamer or podcast with their presence.
Heck I’m willing to bet the devs he interacts with are actually the marketing team.

And dude you’re being extremely hypocritical. The entire point of this thread of yours is to convince the devs to see your side of things, yet you’re bashing the devs for potentially listening to other players.

Anari.2137:

That’s funny because a mutli-legendary was just telling me that he and another person were directly involved in the balance choices of the game, In fact he stated very clearly
“the devs listen to this (player name) person for all the balance for the game and they pretty much do what he says”. Im not saying he is dong the balance himself, but im pretty sure that they are not doing all they can to fix the issues (if what gazzy says is true).

Oh please, saying “oh such and such player/guild has the devs in their pocket” is something that people say in practically every game. Here it’s the proleague players people accuse, when I played SW:TOR it was <Zorz> that everyone accused of being in cohorts with the devs.

The fact of the matter is devs interact with members of the playerbase from time to time, and salty players often like to use such interactions as ammunition for their conspiracy theories.

Believing the devs are blindly following what some players says is silly.

Anari.2137:

Actually, that’s on true. I’ve worked for 3 major companies, 1 indy team, and i currently run a studio (with 23 developers). Out of all of those examples, The only time iv seen this applied was by EA (though i know blizzard does it).

In all other cases it is 2-3 people capitulating idea’s of where they think the damage / game play should go.

The amount of people working on balance depends wildly on how complex the game combat system is.

A generic FPS probably doesn’t even have a dedicated balance team outside of the metrics guys since FPS are mechanically fairly simple.
A MMORPG with dozens of interlocking traits and abilities that have to be balanced across multiple game modes however requires a dedicated and often specialized team.

Also you’re moving the goalposts since my post was responding to the fact that you where implying that the “coders” where the ones doing the balance, which is something that really doesn’t happen outside of games with really small dev crews.

Broken Record much?

No one is advocating for perfect balance. You don’t want perfect balance. You want “Competitive” Game play, which means plus or minus 10% variance in class / spec performance. Though if you had any real experience in the industry you’d know that.

10% variance from what?

Tell me how do you define a spec in this game? If I run the standard metabattle scrapper build but then use a different rune and change the elite does that count as a different “spec?”
Or what if I run identical abilities to metabattle but then pick different traits? Is that a different “spec?”
Take generic p/p condi engi. If all I do is swap the offhand pistol out for a shield I end up radically changing both the DPS and the survivability. Yet that was just one simple change.

The problem with saying “10% class/spec variance” is that what defines a build is very ambiguous. This isn’t WoW or SW:TOR where your spec is almost completely locked in.

Anari.2137:

What i want is developers (coders) to stop claiming they are designers, and then forcing upon the industry insane positions thinking they are for the good of the game.

I don’t think you’ve ever actually had any real experience with the industry. Coders have little power as far as design is concerned, and they sure as hell have nothing to do with the class balance.

What actually happens is class balance is done a team usually consisting of mathematicians, statiscians, and some general designers. They work within the parameters set by the core design documents. (which typically aren’t super detailed)

The team in charge of balance will send their designs to the coders to be implemented. The coders aren’t really consulted on the matter.

Anari.2137:

Do you understand how hypocritical it is for a studio to design a game saying “play any class” and then saying “By the way, you have to play this one spec to be competitive”.

Yeah, and now I know you don’t have any real experience.

It’s literally impossible to make everything balanced. Anytime you have multiple different ways to do something, one of those ways will be better than the others.

Anet marketed GW2 has a game that gives you a huge amount of choice in your build, and the game does exactly that. That doesn’t mean that every choice is competitive.

Lowering the season length doesn’t make the system more accurate, all it does is make it so everyone ends up progressing less.

Now you might say that we don’t have enough divisions for the season length, and at which point you’d be right. However I will also point out that if you add more divisions (and thus make top division more prestigious) you also end up killing queue times at those high divisions even more because the pool would be lower.

And for the record if you want a system that is 100% skill representative you actually want a system that works as follows:
-no MMR, teams are selected 100% randomly* from players within the division
-tier and pip loss occurs at all divisions
-all divisions have the same number of pips
-season length is infinite.
-infinite number of divisions

Now there are some shortcomings with this system
-Takes enormous numbers of matches for players to reach placement representative of their skill.
-Match quality is going to be absolute kitten for several months until the division skill levels average out. (the QQ will be insane)
-infinite divisions would screw over the absolute best players because they would eventually hit the point where they can no longer get any matches.

The second point is why no game ever uses this system, since players would rage quit long before they ever reached their skill point.

*The only thing more accurate than totally random teams is round robin where everyone plays with and against everyone else a equal number of times. However Round Robin is impossible to do in a game because people all play at different times and for different lengths.
*the reason random team selection is more fair is because only the 4 members of your team will be random, while all 5 of your opponents will be. So assuming you’re above the division’s skill level you should have a average winrate above 50% and therefore advance.

MrGhosty.4296:

I would have to say I’m with the others sharing the sentiment of “no trinity”. While my main class was a ranger and I was disappointed to get a healing elite spec the beauty of this game is there is something for everyone. Players imposing their own guidelines in raids is to be expected as the “trinity” concept is heavily ingrained on players. And that’s great, more power to them. There is nothing stopping anyone from gathering up 9 others and going at it as they please.

The problem with not having some form of trinity/role system is that it’s effectively impossible to make dynamic mechanics let alone any measure of difficulty.

If a developer can’t count on a group having tanks then they cannot have any agro based mechanics
If a developer can’t count on a group having dedicated DPS then the developer can’t have any mechanics requiring DPS.
If a developer can’t count on a group having healing then the developer can’t have any mechanics deal substantial damage.

And once you take the above out the only mechanics left that a dev can really do is “don’t stand in red circles”

We already have trinity, except ours is support/damage/CC.

And given the choice between traditional trinity and current model I’ll go with traditional trinity. Traditional trinity allows interesting group content that goes beyond 101 variations on colored circle mechanic.

The reason people hate trinity is because of all the bad stigma that was born of poorly done trinity (blaming WoW for most of this)

Playing SWTOR during the 2.x era made me realize how dynamic and interesting trinity can be if executed properly and not taken to the ridiculous extremes that WoW did.

Anari.2137:

I am not trying to make guardian over powered. The entire class system is massively out of wack, and needs a stat squish.

It really isn’t, I think you’re just reacting to the fact that it’s not done your way.

My observations:

Each class has the following
-A core aesthetic
-A mechanic that is emphasized more on the class than on others. For Guardians it’s blocks and burning. For Theives it’s mobility. For Necros it’s Fear and Corrupts, etc.

Digging into the specializations. Each class’s spec’s follow this pattern
1 defensive spec
1 power damage spec
1 condi damage spec
1 support/utility spec
1 class mechanic spec.
+elite
Elite specs emphasize one of the above categories. For almost all classes the category emphasized is whichever the class was the weakest at.
For instance core guardian’s power builds are generally inferior to core condi or support guardian builds, and guardian lacked good ranged options. So Anet made DH a ranged power spec.
Core ranger had inferior support compared to other categories, so it got the healing focused Druid.
Core Mesmer lacks good defense and support, so it gained the defense and support focused Chronomancer.
etc etc.

I could go dig further and find even more and more patterns, but that’s beside the point.

The system isn’t flawed, the gameplay and balance issues stem from a few specific errors with how potent/synergistic some traits are with others.
Reaper is one example of such flaws. Looking at Reaper the traitline was clearly intended to be a power and utility traitline. The only condi trait in the entire reaper traitline is Deathly Chill (without DC chill is considered a utility effect) However Deathly Chill synergizes way to well with the core condi traits and weapons.

The only real issue with the system is the fact that Guild Wars 2’s combat system was never designed to accommodate expansions. The core classes where fully fleshed out to the point that any addition would invariably result in unbalance.
Unfortunately it’s a unspoken requirement for mmorpg expansions to include new abilities for class.

SkyShroud.2865:

firstly, how do they managed to obtain the ip address to ddos you?
secondly, prevention is as simply as not doing things that let them obtain the ip address, no?

Most voicechat software will show your IP to the server admins at the very least if not everyone.
Also as the above poster mentioned third party fan sites.

It’s also plausible that a person could gain enough information about a account to impersonate that person to a customer service rep, at which point they might be able to get the IP by asking the rep to verify their last login location for whatever made up reason.

Cambios.7451:

I sincerely hope they are not going to ever again make any of these vertical/overlapping maps. They are miserable to play in.

Displays are 2 dimensional, and that is why video games tend to avoid heavy overlapping/vertical space maps. They are just frustrating as heck and not fun.

The dimension’s of computer displays has nothing to do with the use of vertical space.

The reason vertical space is traditionally underused is for a number of reasons, most of them related to tech and AI pathing limitations.

The reason HoT zones are so difficult to navigate is because the map can’t communicate Z-axis space.
If GW2 had a 3D map it’d be fine

Farzo.8410:

Because usually these players that raid are being so tryhard to make it into an “elitist” thing, so I can’t bother with it anymore.

Full ascended gear on 3 different professions is apparently required to enter a raid group.

While many group’s prereqs is just overkill I understand why they do it.

With raids you can’t just throw warm bodies at the boss like you can with World Bosses, and because of this having 1 bad player can easily ruin the rest of the raid group’s experience.
Unfortunately there isn’t a quick way to determine how useful a player is, so what most groups do is set outrageous requirements knowing that anyone that meets those requirements will probably have the skill.

Raid leaders often have to make a choice of “Do I want to screw this guy over, or do I want to screw everyone else over?” And most raid leaders will go with “screw that guy over”

DiogoSilva.7089:

Because we are human beings and not robots, we can’t interpret so much information at a given time. This means that your average player will kill or get killed without fully understand why or how it happened. This means that, in order to be a good player, you need to have a lot of knowledge about the meta builds and what they can churn out every second. It also means that any viewer will not understand what is happening during streams.

In other words, GW2’s combat is really poor at communicating to the player what the hell is going on, and complexity creep is one big factor for that. Without heavy knowledge of existing builds and of what effect is attributed to each abstract skill animations, a player’s success is automatically is crippled. This also makes the barrier to entry huge in GW2’s pvp.

This. Although really given the complexity of the game Anet did do a really good job with information communication, however there are some inconsistencies.

1) Audio cues, Audio cues are horribly inconsistent and underutilized in this game. If anet used Audio cues more they could cut down on the visual effects and have less noise while still conveying the information.

2) Cues aren’t prioritized by importance. Currently how visually/audio obnoxious a ability is, is completely unrelated to how important it is. This needs to change.

Something I think Anet should do is make certain telegraphs only show to people who need to see them.
I’ll use retaliation as a example. As a player I don’t need a audio or visual cue for when I get retal as I can easily check my boons, and besides having retaliation isn’t really going to effect how I play. However the enemy team does need to know when I have retaliation.
So a better telegraph system would only have the audio and visual cues for retaliation appear to enemy players and not friends. This cuts down on clutter.

Obtena.7952:

I think it’s a stretch to imply Anet allowed any role/class combination because of traits and they intended it. I’m more apt to say they didn’t want it to be a thing, which is probably why it’s not a thing now.

Actually even with the new system you can still do any role on any class.

Some classes just plain suck at certain roles more than other classes.

i.e you can make a defensive bunker thief, but you’d be better off running a bunker of pretty much any other class.

Dave.6819:

i still think when it comes to PvP and WvW complexity should be top1 priority. that’s what makes PvPers thrive and motivates them to play. in other words – veteran population is more likely to stay for a long period of time. while casual and not really hardcore players are more open to leaving the game even if game is catering for them. besides even casual players might get some kind of drive to start exploring PvP when they would bump into complex systems. the depth of a game (or in this case depth of PvP system) is what keeps players logging in. thats why we got this situation now.. many vets and hardcore players are leaving. vets are the kind of players who are very patient BUT every1 has their breaking point. and i dunno but to me it seems that when you stop catering to competetive side of players population drops are very huge.

No, complexity is not what keeps people, gameplay depth is what keeps people. Complexity is just a really cheap (and inferior) way to emulate depth.

Also there are negative ramifications of high complexity and this game is a posterboy for those negative ramifications.
The problem with high complexity is that any complexity that is above the skill level of a player becomes either a) worthless or b) makes it arbitrary

Combo fields are a good example. Most players can use their own fields, but few players are skilled enough to look for and take advantage of other people’s fields. But those fields are still in play, which means any combo procs are for all intents and purpose “random” which makes the game feel arbitrary rather than skill based for those players.

A good example of high depth/skill for low complexity are FPS games. Shooters have enormous levels of strategy and skill requirements. However Shooters are also very easy for new players to pick up. A new FPS player can still easily watch a pro FPS player and understand what is happening, because FPS’s at their core are simple.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

The comparison to spvp is a bad one. Nobody can prevent you from soloqing spvp. Ppl being elitist kitten bags is an annoyance but never a real hindrance. Finding a group to raid on lfg has an entirely different dynamic when ppl start asking for 10 insight to even consider you.

No you just have people in sPvP that send the entire match berating you while sitting afk.

But you did find the big problem raids have: the way you form them.

sPvP works because you hit a button and you get queued in. Raids require you to find people yourself. If we had a impartial queuing system this wouldn’t be a issue.

Also raids probably need a “entry level” difficulty setting that gives less rewards. The current difficulty is a pug killer.

The problem with raids has nothing to do with time, gear, or elitism. Heck sPvP is elistism personified yet sPvP is still popular.

The problem with raids is how isolated raids are from the rest of the game. Raids are this side content that’s only at endgame, and moreover it’s content you can’t just step into.
This means that new players generally don’t understand why they would want to raid, and since it’s not immediately apparent how to get a group for raids, most of the new players will probably give up.

Right now the only way a player gets into a raid is if they already know people that raid. If you don’t know people, you’re not getting it.

What Anet needs to do is have a queueing system where people can sign up for roles and the system automatically creates groups and ports them in. This would make getting groups way easier and it easier for new players to transition into raids.

Congrats OP you just listed 101 level concepts.
The reason GW2 balance will never be possible is because “balance” is a moving target that can never be caught.

Anytime you have multiple different ways to do something, one of those ways will be better than the others.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Michael Henninger.7451:

This is allowed behavior; as it was designed to function that way.

Leaving your character afk for extended periods of time and letting the AI rack up kills for you is allowed? Good to know.

Honestly I don’t think it something that Anet wants.
It’s just something that is impossible to enforce.

After all enforcing a rule against that behavior would basically mean that rangers are not allowed to afk while everyone else can.

not-stomping is actually a strat in sPvP because it increasing the respawn time of that player.
This suggestion would kill that.

Crise.9401:

I think this game needs expansions, not because it has to have that expansion style content drop but, because it needs the publicity in general gaming media as well as the retail presence an expansion brings.

This. Expansions bring publicity which bring more players.

I’m an example of this. I didn’t play this game during core, I was off playing SW:TOR for the previous 3 years. However I was getting very disgruntled with SW:TOR last fall and during this period of disgruntledness I happened upon a HoT advertisement. I googled gw2 saw it had a f2p option, and downloaded to client intending to just try it out and not expecting much. 2 weeks later I was putting my credit card info into guildwars2.com

mauried.5608:

Its pointless to compare WOW type expansions with GW2 expansions.
WOW is a P2P game, so the economics are totally differant to a F2P game.
GW2 needs expansions to generate revenue to keep the game going, as the gem store wont even come close.
How many players in GW2 spend $15 a month in the Gem store?

Another thing people need to realize about WoW is that WoW has way lower graphical fidelity, and a thing about graphics is that the lower a game’s fidelity are, the less manhours are needed to make assets for it.
WoW can put out huge expacs because Blizzard needs far less manpower and money to make content compared to modern mmos.

Supreme.3164:

With the way chill, confusion and torment work right now on mesmer and necro…I’d say that your statement is purely a lie. The idea that “condi builds have to wait on their condis” was correct in pre-hot GW2…definitely not now.

This is so hilarious wrong.

I can get on almost any power class hit 1 button and instantly hit someone for 5k+.

To do that on a condi class I have to apply several condis and then wait for the condis to tick several times.

Compared to power damage (which is INSTANT) condi damage is delayed no matter how you spin it.

And if you have a problem with reapers and condi mesmers, you should write a thread about reapers and condi mesmers.
But of course you have to be completely unreasonable and instead try and get every single condi build in the game gutted despite the fact that the majority of condi builds in this game are underpowered.

Ravenmoon.5318:

What argument about CC. I like CC. It’s better than some bogus chill/burn/etc damage <o> CC abilities are a lot better balanced than condi damage abilities.

Nevermind misread.

Although the fact that you think CC lock is somehow related is esports is amusing.

Ravenmoon.5318:

I mean … your low power attacks are reflected by retaliation so its fair amirite. Totally neglecting the fact that its one thing getting the turnaround of 200 damage and its a whole different story to eat the turnaround of 2-3k damage, which btw is your only source of damage.

Retaliation’s damage scales of the boon’s source not the attacker. I could hit someone for 100 or 50k and still get the same amount reflected.

As a power build you cant stab twice and run away waiting for condis to tick down the enemy while you recover from the retal return. Well take this attribute reduce and -66% power output. Oh, your enemy had protection too? Well F you power user! Go cri for balance!

A power build also doesn’t have to wait to for it’s damage since everything is frontloaded. While condi builds have to wait on their condis.

Also your CC argument is a joke. Condi classes don’t intrinsically have more CC.

Supreme.3164:

condi builds are now capable of frontload dmg which was supposed to be the main benefit of direct dmg build that sacrificed sustain to obtain it

I would say that condi builds are less frontloaded thant they used to be.

We could go back to pre-HoT where we had p/p engis and burn guardians that would put 12 stacks of burn on you in 2 seconds flat if you want to talk about frontloaded condi builds.

The dominant condi builds nowadays are more focused on sustained DPS output over burst. Reaper in particular has mediocre burst but has amazing cleave potential.

Supreme.3164:

condi clears are tied to a specific traitline devoid of any dmg modifier,

But this is true for power defensives too. If you look at the spec trees you’ll notice that each tree is themed towards something, condi clears typically falling under the support/utility tree.

Every class’s core specializations follow this pattern.
1 defense oriented spec
1 condi oriented spec
1 power oriented spec
1 class mechanic spec
1 support/utility spec
and then the elite
The one exception to the above rule is Guardians which seem to not have a dedicated power spec (elite not counted) but rather a extra support spec, Guardians also seem to have random condi focused traits wandering around in otherwise non-condi specializations.

Condi clears are typically focused in the support/utility spec, although not always.

Chaith.8256:

OP is talking about casual ranked play where it’s necro spam and common Condi Mesmers too, due to the win rates associated with them. They’re not too over the top in competitive play, but the pug-busting strength of these condi builds are what we’re talking about here. It’s not an argument to how there are more condition builds than power.

Yeah but a lot of the popularity of those builds in pugland is built on perceptions born from anecdotes.
The problem with ranked is that people don’t like to take risks when their pips are on the line. So people stack the “safe bet” classes. There are probably classes just as good at pug-stomping as necros, but nobody wants to stick their neck out far enough to experiment.

Condition builds also don’t do 100% condition damage, they can deal as much as 40% of their output as power damage. So don’t take the 70% of damage received being power damage as an indication of what builds are dominant, either.

Right, but the fact that condi builds aren’t even pure condi throws a wretch in the OP’s position, since most of his arguments are built around the idea that conditions in general are OP. If condi builds have to augment their condi damage with power, but power builds don’t augment their damage with condi, then that leads to the obvious conclusion that condi damage is less potent.

Which brings me back to my earlier point about why on earth do people always make sweeping generalizations when talking about condi builds, but don’t when talking about power builds.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Do you have any actual evidence that conditions are overbearing or did you just build to kill power specs and not condition specs?

I think it’s less of a build problem and more of a perception problem.

When people talk about power builds they always discuss specific abilities. I.e rev sword2 threads.

When people talk about condi builds they usually just lump all condi builds together and make sweeping generalizations.

Supreme.3164:

Condi dmg has obviously superseded power dmg in this game,

You clearly have never bothered to check the damage taken statistics at the end of a match.

I have never at any point had a match where I took more condi damage than direct damage.

Razor.9872:

What would you say happens when you fill your build with condi-clears? Does it essentially make you unkillable through condi’s, or do they still get through?

Depends on class.
A power rev could take every possible cleanse and still get screwed.
A ele could take every possible cleanse and would never die to a condi class.

Also when you mean “do they still get through” do you mean “a condi managed to appear” or do you mean “got overloaded and died from condi.” The former is unavoidable, the latter is completely avoidable.

DTATL.9641:

1: missing an condi attack is not as punishing as a power attack. To make the most out of your power dmg you want to buff it up with might and if you miss you loose all the dmg. With condi you can make sure you land it and then buff you up with might. This makes it less skillful. They should only be reacting to the amount of condi dmg you had while you made the attack.

Is it?
The argument about might is valid, but that argument only works for condi classes that have direct control over their might generation.
To apply a condi you have to land the attack. If you don’t land the attack the condi isn’t there. No different than power.

2: Having only 2 real stats to go for in a condibuild (condi dmg and duration) compared to 3 for power ones makes it easier to make it tanky aswell.

Except Dire amulets don’t exist in sPvP. All amulets have at least 2 offensive stats, and no amulet condi or power has a defensive stat as major.

You’re also ignoring the fact that the majority of condi builds utilize on-crit traits. Not to mention that condi builds don’t deal pure condi. Meta condi builds for instance are doing 30-40% of their total damage in power damage.

You’re right in saying that condi builds tend to run tanky, but they are sacrificing significant amouts of damage to do so.

I personally would like to see condi dmg reduced a good amount and make conditions being able to crit in some way to bring them back up to their full dmg. This would precision more useful for condibuilds and weakness would counter them.

Check your end-of-match damage taken statistics. If yours are anything like mine your condi damage taken will probably be under a quarter of your power damage taken for most matches even ones against condi heavy teams.

Precision is already somewhat useful for condi builds because almost every condi focused specialization tree in the game has on-crit apply x condi traits. Oh and those on-crit condi sigils.
Your change would make precision mandatory for condi builds, which would completely gut every single condi build except reapers because the only amulets with precision and condi are glass cannon amulets.
And of all the condi builds reapers are probably the only ones that could afford to run glass cannon in this meta.

Shala.8352:

people keep saying condi cleanse can avoid 100% of the dmg, but i wonder are we playing the same game? assuming you have perfect connection, a quad core 2.4ghz nervous system that allows you an immediate reaction, you still have to count the cast time, plus the time of a skill you was using if it stuck you in animation or it queues on it. So no matter how fast reaction you have, before a cleanse you will get at least one thick.

Getting hit by a tick or two isn’t fatal, the exception being if it’s like a 10+ stack of burning.
This isn’t a black and white issue. You don’t need to completely and utterly negate 100% of all condi damage, just in the same way you don’t have to evade every single kitten power attack that ever gets thrown at you.

I’ve noticed a lot of people tend to panic whenever they see condis on their bar and just dump their cleanses even when the condis in question where not really that dangerous.
When I get condis on me I pay attention to what type and how many stacks. Having 2 stacks of vuln, 2 stacks of bleed and maybe a small amount of poison isn’t all that threatening. Sure it’s damage but it’s not something I need to burn cleanses on.

[quote=6085629;Shala.8352:][quote]

I noticed a number of theorycrafting fails in this thread, so I thought I’d comment.

On the subject of Necro survivability vs Revenant and others
Necro’s survivability comes from two things raw health pool + healing (LF gain is basically just healing.)
What people have to remember about HP and healing based defenses is that neither scale with incoming damage. This is both a strength and a weakness depending on situation.
Healing/LF regen doesn’t scale with damage taken which means it’s enormously powerful in low DTPS situations and extremely weak in high DPS situations. Necros can sustain 1v1s against bruisers almost indefinitely because of this.
However the fact that it doesn’t scale also makes it very weak against high levels of damage(burst/spikes) A coordinated focus fire will implode a necro because the necro can’t regen it’s LF and HP anywhere near as fast as it is losing it. On the other hand, classes like revenant that are built around mitigation and negation will fare much better against a focus fire because their evades and blocks will still negate everything regardless of whether they are taking 1k hits or 50k hits.

On the subject of Meta condi builds running Mercenary
People here have said that mercenary proves that condi builds only need condi stat and nothing else.
The fallacy with that position is that meta builds aren’t actually optimized for damage. Scrapper is the perfect counter example since meta scrapper runs Paladin amulet despite the fact that paladin amulet lacks ferocity.
The optimal amulet for condi damage output is Viper, just as the optimal amulet for power damage output is Beserker.

Another important point that hasn’t been brought up is the fact that power and precision are useful on condi builds. None of the condi builds are actually doing pure condi damage. I’ve noted in the end-match damage statistics that meta necro does 30%-40% of it’s damage in power damage.
Additionally most condi builds utilize traits that apply condis on crits in addition to on-crit sigils. This makes having precision huge for most condi builds. In fact the total lack of a decent precision+condi amulet is one of the bigger reasons as to why there are only a couple condi builds in the meta.

Condis don’t have as many counters has power does.
Condis are actually double penalized. The first penalty is that Condis have to applied by an ability. If these abilities are blocked or evaded the condis are not applied. The second penalty is that even after successfully applied the condis can be cleansed.

There are additionally a number of mitigation sources for condis. There are runes and traits that passively reduce the duration of condis. Then there is the resistance boon.

brannigan.9831:

It is capped by stacks.

The stack cap for condis is effectively unreachable.

Rym.1469:

There is. It’s called Vitality.

Vitality does not counter anything. It’s a TTK increase against anything. TTK increase != counter.

Judging by the proleague streams spamming tends to occur less and less at higher levels of play.

This game has an obnoxious habit of being enormously complex and extremely fast paced to the point that only the high level players seem to know wtf is going on.

Salty lot you are. I about fell out of my chair laughing when I read that.

That said I have a feeling that Anet’s PR team did NOT sign off on this one.

/facepalm at all of the “vitality counters condi” posts

Vitality is a simply raw TTK increase against all damage sources. It has nothing specific to condis.

The only practical benefit of vitality is that it grants a larger margin of error when dealing with burst/spike damage (from both power and condi)

@OP we have a stat for condis, it’s the reduced % duration stat that some runes and traits carry.

MadRabbit.3179:

There is builds in the history of this game that have been underrated just due to perception of the community and inability for advocates of the build to adequately prove it’s effectiveness.

This

DeceiverX.8361:

The logic of the DPS meter in GW2 makes no sense based on how groups work.

As it stands, an overwhelming majority of party-wide DPS comes from supportive abilities which stack damage modifiers for the rest of the party, and then simply optimizing those effects into as much of a condensed form as possible to enable either more dedicated DPS or more modifier stacking party-wide.

If you had to pick between a thief or a chronomancer, in a mutually-exclusive choice for a raid, if you’re playing properly, you take the chrono. The same is said about a druid, warrior, etc. Sorry, selfish DPS is pointless up to the point where you’re capped on big-hitter modifiers. Since meters do not measure this data, the meters themselves are pointless and add a layer of negativity to the game that is unnecessary.

If you’re beating the raid, you’re doing well enough. If you’re not beating the raid, it’s probably a synergy problem and not a DPS one.

You realize your argument is actually supporting DPS meters right?

The thing is we currently have no way to accurately value a comp, we just eyeball it and use anecdotal experience to value stuff. A DPS meter can be run in a raid environment to get a rough idea of how stuff is working.

Also the comment “if you’re not beating a raid, it’s a synergy issue” is misleading. A synergy issue caused by what? Obviously the sum total of the raid members isn’t adding up, but is that because of the entire raid being generally bad, or just one bad apple? Currently we have no way to tell.

The one to Rule.2593:

after seeing the toxicity of many in raids, And I raid a lot…. I’m gonna say no, it’d just be used to discriminate people.

That toxicity will always be present, the presence or absence of DPS meters just change how that toxcicity manifests itself.

In GW2 instead of having DPS meter toxicity we have meta-build toxicity where players are automatically discriminated biased on their build, and to quite honest given the choice of meta-build toxicity vs DPS meter toxicity I’d rather have the DPS meter toxicity because at least DPS meters don’t lie, whereas without meters our current understanding of meta is defined by a bunch of preconceptions, biases, and blind faith in the MetaBattle admins.

I’ll give an example of the benefits of having meters.
I used to do progression raiding in SW:TOR. At one point when we where trying to clear are particularly difficult raid tier I decided to swap out my commando’s spec to a untested spec that by conventional logic was non-meta.
I believed the untested build would be superior for the boss, my raid leader thought it was bullkitten. However after pulling with it, I was able to post the log and proved to the raid group that the experimental build was in fact superior to the old build. My raid leader backed off and accepted that I did in fact know what I was doing.

However if that had happened here in guild wars 2, I would not be able to prove my experimental build and the raid leader probably would have either forced me to return to the old build or kicked me.

Terrorsquad.2349:

I feel this change was done for the minority of players who just can’t afford/put an SSD into a PC.

I feel quite confidant in saying that the majority of players are probably running this game off of a HDD.

The fact of the matter is that most people simply don’t have enough reason to spend on an SSD. Serious gamers might consider SSDs a no brainer, but for anyone that isn’t that invested or simply has financial limitations SSDs just don’t make sense.

Until SSDs become standard on generic mid-low range desktops and laptops assuming that you’re playerbase all have SSDs is folly.