On paper, virtues do a TON!…..but in actual play I agree, I hardly notice them.
VoJ passive provides, in essence, an additional hit of damage the primary form of keeping both of our damage modifier traits active.
In reality, VoJ is not noticed because of condition layering/priority/over abundance in combat. I don’t need my own personal burn since there are plenty of other sources of conditions and burning available.
The extra hit also only scales with condition damage, so when our melee attacks go up to 1k-5k damage hits, our extra burning tick only does about 300-500, and start to contribute less to the overall picture.
More frequent burns will not fix this problem, as burning only ticks once per a second, so you can’t push out “more” damage per hit without increasing condition damage.
Yet changing it to a physical attack would make it susceptible to direct damage mitigators such as armor and blinds and such.
The intent of the mechanic is to give us more damage when passive, and to give the group more damage when active.
Possibly having it stack might on proc or provide 10% more damage when passive would help achieve the offensive idea in a way that can scale to different variables instead of just a static burn. I feel fury would be decent, but mostly overlooked in the long run with plentiful ways to achieve fury or crit chance.
VoR is amazing on paper and the single source of sustain for guardians………but damage happens way faster than VoR ticks for, and again we don’t notice if it is on or off.
We want to avoid doing like healing signet and making it seemingly overpowered, but I think the mechanic is in the right mindset but could use more tweaking to work for players with less healing power but not be overpowered for players with tons of healing power.
The intent of this mechanic is to provide sustain and make up for our lower health pool. Possibly change it to replenish a percentage of incoming damage as a heal? Or leave it as is but increase the base healing done, but keep the healing power coefficient decently low.
Actively it should provide the group with needed recovery or sustain. Yet it on its own, is largely ignored as a heal. The biggest advantage of this skill is the traited condition removal and not the ability itself.
It’s active could probably use some looking at too, ignoring traited modifiers that make it worthwhile.
VoC is pretty much worthless as noted in earlier posts. Especially in PvP where incoming damage happens so frequently it is wasted away in meaningless attacks.
Having it proc every “x” incoming hits would provide some interesting defense, but that may prove too powerful.
The intent on this mechanic sort of blends in with the intent of VoR. To provide a defensive way to survive a fight, yet not through sustaining health, but instead by preventing damage in the first place.
I think the best way to provide passive defense by mitigation of damage would be to have it reduce incoming damage by x% while passive but keep the active as a group wide aegis. Additionally reduce the refresh time of this to make it actually usable, something like 30-60 second?
Sorry for wall of text
Tying to reduce the visual impact of my post by hiding it under spoilers…but hope someone actually reads it :p
I read what you had to say. I enjoyed your spoilers. And I basically agree with your ideas. Well done.
