- cut-
Except that poison would need a constant uptime to reduce the passive healing of the signet, compared to any other healing skill. Any other healing skill gets its heal dropped by even a second of poison, as long as it is applied just before the activation.
And it isn’t like warriors can’t easily remove that poison with cleansing ire…
What part are you failing to understand about the fact that decap engineers are bunkers?
They have 3000 armors, decent protection uptime and a lot of sustain, along with high amount of CCs.A single power based profession can’t kill kitten. Two power profession will eventually kill the decap engineer, but not fast enough to don’t let the engineer’s team win any other fight because of numerical advantage. Same applies to a power profession and a condition profession.
Even if you manage to kill the engineer, it is a matter of 15s that he will be right back on the node keeping it white, meanwhile the teammate who helped you is locked on the close point if you want to get any points out of it.
So either you fight the engineer 1vs1, which will eventually lead even to a fullcap on the long run from the engineer or you fight him 2vs1 which leads to failure to any other teamfight and the inability to kill since he’s keeping 2 dps occupied, assuming you’re holding close point with a warrior (otherwise you aren’t even able to hold it white) and the roamer (assuming thief).
I can’t see how people can argue that decap engi is fine, it is clear as sun that it is plain broken.
First, the “decent protection uptime” is there only if they’re costantly disabled. Otherwise it is 3s + boon duration every 20s.
Also, the build you talk of is using cleric gear and 60 points on defensive stats. I would say it is supposed to have sustain and bunker, given those stats – it would be useless if he wasn’t able to do so. But it is still prone to burst damage (no blocks, 2 blinds) and control skills – it has no stability at all and a single stun breaker on 40s cooldown. Especially if it counts on actively using AR, thus staying under 25% hp (and with only the vitality given by the trait tree, it isn’t much high). And their damage is pitiful.
Sure, they can have a lot of control if they choose to, like in this build (obviously they don’t get them for free…either they get those or they get defensive skills, they’re all in different kits on purpose). But guess what, having “a lot of control” is exactly one of the strong points of the engineer as described in the balance philosophies (along with using boons to stay alive, by the way).
Basically, you’re complaining about what the class is supposed to do by design, about what a bunker is supposed to do by design.
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
Neither is the fault of the engineer if the enemies don’t use power classes, though. In a balanced meta, there wouldn’t be problems at all.
Manu’s Frankenstein of an idea has a lot of merit. Having a way to throw back condis is much more satisfying, and frankly adds another dimension to the engineer’s kitten nal. Although, come to think of it, it’s mostly a clutch offensive trait now if it’s put that way, as compared to the defensive idea of automated response.
It isn’t mine – it was posted by MonMalthias.
But i agree, even if i would rather prefer the first one. That would also help solve one other issue with engineer traits…that is, the lack of toolbelt traits. For being the profession mechanic, there are quite few of them (2 minor, one major adept, and all in the last trait tree).
Edit: thinking about it, there could be balancing issues when using both it and cleansing formula 409 with elixirs, though.
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
How can survivability vs burst damage be bad when you have insane armor and sustain?
Also, keep in mind that a CCed enemy is an enemy who is not attacking.
Of course, if the engineer is standing still eating all the damage he won’t survive only thanks to protection and passive regen.
In real life situations, the engineer is dodging (and a lot thanks to vigor), he’s using bombs applying blindness, cripple and immobilization, he’s kiting, he’s knocking you back and down, all of this added to high armor, high sustain and condition immunity on low HP, which means that the engineer can just disengage when he’s on low health since you have no way to immob/snare him, heal and then come back on the node keeping it neutral.
Except that vigor access got nerfed, that the bomb skills you’re talking about have both a 25s cooldown with the build you’re mentioning (can’t have good sustain without 30 points in Inventions, can’t have AR without 30 points in Alchemy, thus not enough points to get Short Fuse) and getting other control skills apart from the rifle requires the engineer to not get either a condition cleanse beside the turret or a stun breaker – there are simply not enough slots.
Thus all this “knocking down” either is limited to a launch/self-knockback every 15s and a launch every 30s (and easily dodgeable, since it is clearly telegraphed). You can add a 15s knockback or a 25s launch and give up a condition removal or a stunbreaker, sure. It is more risky, obviously – AR protects under the threshold, but you can still be condi-bursted while above it (and we can’t rely on passive removals…transmute is quite useless in that regard).
While it could have power shoes, such a build has no access to swiftness or any skill to escape whatsoever (jump shot is too slow for that purpose, and it isn’t even traited for range).
Also, either it works nicely with AR, has high sustain or has high armor – can’t do all of them together. You would need both healing power, toughness and vitality. And there is no gear with a similar stat composition.
By reworking AR slightly to not have 100% uptime/full immunity, you allow for a more skilled condition users to at least stand a chance and force the Decapper to not just brainless stand on point spamming Bombs (i.e: they would have to retreat/Stealth/LoS until AR reactivates). I do stress that I am not asking for AR nerf but a slightly rework (i.e something like: Activate on ~30%, immunity for 8 seconds with 10 second recharge)
In theory, the suggestion would be nice. In practice, it would make the trait mostly useless.
Trading a weakness to direct damage bursts for a timed immunity that can be counterplayed by the opponent makes the exchange worthless. Engineers are already strict on utility slots, since they’ve got to use them for weapons too. Any disable before the recharge interval means certain death unless you’ve got a stun breaker. And that’s on top of a condition cleanse you’ll probably have to slot either way (to not die to the conditions inflicted before AR kicks in). You’ve got a single slot left, and unless you’re using pistol/shield or a tool kit (thus not the bombs) you have no blocks at all, only dodges (and vigor from traits got nerfed, too). If you do so you won’t have the control skills to decap, by the way.
If you have to spend all your defenses during those seconds of recharge, you won’t have anything after that. If you’re against a full condi build, that could still be fine (except for the stun breakers and condition cleanses eventually on recharge for at least 3 or 4 of those intervals). If you aren’t, you’re dead.
Basically, you would end up investing a lot of trait point and getting defensive gears…to be very weak to direct damage, having low offense and using two slots out of three just to avoid being bursted by conditions during the recharge – meaning that either you heal via bombs or you get an additional control skill, since the rifle alone can’t do much.
Heavy investment while still having high risks versus both direct and condition damage. Why even bother taking it?
The whole point of the trait is making you immune to conditions while making you extremely vulnerable to direct damage due to the low hp threshold..
Any rework will either make it useless – as no one would stay below 25% on purpose if there aren’t relevant advantages to it – or would change its entire scope, if the threshold is changed.
That protection you speak of is mostly theoretical. Two traits give it: 3s on critical hit (20s cooldown) and 3s when disabled (5s cooldown). Unless you’re constantly disabled, you won’t have that protection. And i doubt you’re getting disabled on purpose.
Also, the build you speak of seems to have no condition cleanses outside of the healing turret’s one. You could be condition-bursted before falling below the 25% threshold.
And imho, the problem isn’t with automated response – rather, it is the condition meta itself. Using it constantly makes you getting direct-damage bursted very easily – you’re playing with a quarter of the normal hp after all.
Especially since the build you mention has no blocks at all, and just a single area blind with bombs. But obviously, if all the people are running with conditions, this just won’t happen.
It still makes no sense. Why should i get hellfire skins i don’t even care about – else i would have chosen those – instead of a part of the set i’m interested in?
Just a little thought.
To those who feel “well, you got it before the bonus so you shouldnt get it upraded”, i’d just like to remind you that it seemed they had no problem taking something before and changing it.
Celestial gear had magicfind, then it didnt. Berserker gear has critdamage and soon it wont.
These changes happend to the new items, and retroactively also to the existing items because the standard for these items has/will be changed. And everything with the same functionality was brought in line.Seeing as these changes are passed through just fine. Whats wrong with people asking for similar treatment, and have their old items amended to the new standard in this case aswell?
The whole analogy is wrong, though. Celestials and items with crit damage are getting changed altogether (in celestials’ case to remove a stat, in crit damage cases’ to change said stat into another).
The old infinite picks aren’t getting changed at all, they just introduced a new one with a new feature.
Also, if we were to talk about previous treatments about adding features, we should talk about the digital deluxe upgrade.
And people didn’t get the new items for that (and neither a cheap upgrade to the new one).
They probably are echolocation devices…and one of those seems to have found whatever Scarlet is searching for.
Yep, disaster incoming.
Edited for rephrasing due to pointless censoring.
(edited by Manuhell.2759)
While warrior is op, i did single out 3 things they don’t have:
1. Any source of protection. Rangers owning them hard in sustainability right now.
2. Any combo fields save one single one from bow.
3. Any sort of AI minion to soak up extra hits.
Regarding the first two, they may not have them innately (albeit, about half of the professions can’t reliably get it via skills anyway, so they aren’t alone in that regard) but they can still be given by allies, and warriors aren’t exactly lacking in finishers anyway. Thus balancing them under the assumption they will lack those things ends up making them overpowered when they get them…that is, in any party (just open the lfg and see how many warriors seek for guardians and the opposite, too…often leading to 1 guard/4 warriors parties). Such a dominance in pve isn’t exactly surprising if they are balanced upon those assumption, so.
Regarding the last point…they are actually lucky in that regard. If banners were destructible – like turrets – how much do you think their uptime would be?
They would end up being as useless as turrets, since they would be always on cooldown. Heh, the only turret actually used is the healing one…and that’s because engineers detonate it themselves.
Also, they can use endure pain…and it is quite more reliable than a minion to absorb damage and act in the meantime.
What if one of the portals we can’t recognize is an edge of the mist portal that just hasn’t been implemented yet?
Uhm…rocket boots and personal battering ram…rocket battering ram…i like it.
High Access to poison and soft CC.
But is not enough, you need some defense to get by their initial immunity.Thus classes I feel do well against warriors are ranger and engi.
Guess what, they’re just nerfing poison grenade and net turret in the balance patch…
The only way to make people actually use that skill would be make the active even more overpowered – whatever the actual effect is – than the passive.
It just shouldn’t have such a powerful effect as a passive effect to begin with, that’s the problem.
Tie the passive with the adrenaline bar, make it work alike the mesmer’s one – more adrenaline you have, more hp you get – then raise the active heal by quite a bit and raise the cooldown a bit as well. Something like 25s base cooldown, 5200 hp + 0.7*healing power, for example.
Obviously Turrets are still kittened, but hopefully they’ll get there eventually.
We could have said the same six months ago, and things had gone downhill from there. But sure, we can wait. Until GW3, eventually.
Byproduct of the terrible immobilize stacking change, however, the turret is powerful regardless. We’d have to see how it goes when they revert immobilize back to the original design…
…and they’ll leave it nerfed, as they’ve always done. Beside that, it isn’t even being nerfed for its own effects – the nerf is all due of (people whining about) Supply Crate.
They could have nerfed just the net turret used by supply crate, as it already uses different versions (or at least it worked so, seeing the bugs involved).
The PvE issues aren’t because of classes, but rather encounter design. Once the mechanics of some of the newer living story mobs see wider implementation things should hopefully improve drastically.
They are due to classes as well – if you balance the sustain of a class upon its lack of defensive boons, it can’t be balanced when you add those in the mix. And that’s exactly what happens with warriors and guardians.
Also, it isn’t like they’re making things like blocks and projectile reflections useless.
Even considering enemies susceptible to condition damage – the ones introduced in the triple trouble event – there are classes that can deal with them quite more easily than us (necromancers, especially with epidemic).
It won’t change anything in better, for us.
Obviously the net turret that no one used was too strong.
And since engis are decent in pvp they’re fine in every game mode beside them being completely different, even they are the least used class out of pvp and they’re never actively searched for via lfg tools – unlike warriors and guardians, that aren’t seeing sensible nerfs anyway.
Befor : Lf war/guard/mes for [pve content] NO RANGER/NECRO/ENG..
After : Lf war/guard/mes for [pve content]………..
Plz dev, open lfg and read, just read.
This.
Nothing is being done to address the dominance of a couple classes over pve.
Instead, you nerf the other classes basing all your balance unto a mode that’s completely different from the other ones. Since the game was released.
About the sigils…shouldn’t two handed weapons be nerfed to rebalance them with the additional sigil?
That’s what was done when they were implemented for kits, after all.
The precedent was already set with the old digital deluxe edition/digital deluxe edition with heroic edition items. Around six months ago.
People should have complained earlier. They didn’t.I’m pretty sure people complaint about that among with many other things. There are just far more complaint on the watchwork pick.
That’s the matter – very few people complained, as there were few people involved. And the other people called them self-entitled.
This is just a repetition on a bigger scale, as there are more people involved. But they aren’t setting a precedent – it was already there. People just ignored it.
The precedent was already set with the old digital deluxe edition/digital deluxe edition with heroic edition items. Around six months ago.
People should have complained earlier. They didn’t.
Why do I get punished for buying my molten pucks (for each character) months ago?!
Well to be fair that is how everything works in real life as well.
If you buy a car today, I will be able to buy a better car for the same price in a few months.They can’t retrofit your car without incurring cost, though. They can retrofit your pick with next to no effort.
They could have done it with people with the old digital deluxe as well. They didn’t. And no one was bothered by it, often calling out people who didn’t like getting their version obsoleted as self-entitled, or saying that we got what we paid for.
This is the same situation…there are just more people involved – and burned.
And since they weren’t bothered at all before, they deserve it – too easy complaining only if the situation impacts you directly. If people were against these practices, they should have posted six months ago. They didn’t. Now enjoy your obsolete tools as i’m enjoying my obsolete digital deluxe. And if you aren’t happy…you can just buy the new one – that’s what we were being said about the items introduced, after all.
It isn’t the first time they do something like that – digital deluxe upgraders had seen their upgrade become obsolete when they introduced heroic items in it for new purchases, still at the same price. And very few people were against it.
Now that is your turn to get shafted, there are multiple threads about it.
Well, i didn’t get anything for my obsolete deluxe upgrade, and neither will you. Just live with it – after all, you bought that instrument for what it does, you aren’t entitled for more things (or at least that’s what people said about the upgrade).
As long as Anet is unwilling to put voice chat in the game these events that require a100+ people to coordinate is a horrible design. If people could hear what was going on it would go a lot smoother.
People keep saying voice chat is the answer every time difficult content comes up, but it’s not. As the event stands, it benefits very little to not at all from voice chat. The wardens have tooltips that say how to beat them, people say in chat over and over again how to beat them, guides are up everywhere that tell you how to beat them. But people still get warden 1’s back to a wall, they still take warden 2 all the way around the platform instead of into the mines, etc. Its not that these people don’t have the resources to succeed, it’s that they choose not to. 100 people screaming over each other on voice chat isn’t going to fix that.
And this as well. It isn’t a matter of voice chat; just people not willing to put any effort in the fight making it fail for everyone else.
In principle? Yes, definitely true. In practice? That is not how the game was designed. This game was designed to punish EVERYONE if they allow newbs into their midst. That’s hardly ideal, and it’d be nice if the game were designed differently, but the game is what the game is, and that means that a handful of newbs can completely ruin this event for everyone else, and there’s nothing everyone else can do about it.
You can argue that the newbs should be “embraced” and trained to be better, but that usually isn’t an option, the newbs don’t want to learn, or by the time they do learn it’s too late and the run is destroyed. I have nothing personally against newbs, but Areananet has designed a game in which I cannot tolerate them either. That is not my fault, it is not the newbs’ fault, it is Arenanet’s fault, and they are the ones responsible for fixing it.
I’ve suggested the simplest fix to this specific situation above, rather than having them be “all or nothing,” change phase two to be “best two out of three.” With that simple change, newbs could participate, get some experience, but even if they faceplant it’s unlikely to kill the entire event for everyone else. If they end up face down, they know they did something wrong, and that’s all that matters, they don’t need to punish everyone for their incompetence.
I agree. Not being able to get the daily chest for three days due to other players’ failing is quite annoying, i would personally add.
Really? I was a digital deluxe pre-purchaser also and did not get this mail. Did everyone get this.. because I guess I should open a ticket.
Me neither, obviously – as we weren’t supposed to get anthing more than what we paid for, after all.
Well, at least they aren’t getting Trahearne in WvsW, just Scarlet. That would have been really bad.
Well, now you know how people that bought the old digital deluxe upgrade felt when they added heroic edition items to new purchases of the digital deluxe upgrade.
Oh, it isn’t the first time they do something like this. The digital deluxe upgrade got added items for the same price as well, and the old buyers were left with an inferior purchase for the same price, yet very few people had complained about them.
They just applied the same principle to picks.
So…in the same patch that nerfed them they put a boss that can’t basically be killed without them. Makes sense.
Personally, i would just like them to scale decently, so to be feasible with lower amounts of players. In the majority of servers Tequatl is ignored mostly for that reason – why should you wait in a map where it isn’t even certain you will have a chance to fight when you can do the event in a server you already know it is populated enough?
After all, the high scaling isn’t what makes a boss difficult. The mechanics involved are.
And frankly speaking, i wouldn’t talk of Tequatl as an “hard content”. Once you know the mechanics, it is basically “stay in a safe point, shoot, destroy the fingers when they spawn, go defend the batteries, burst tequatl, rinse and repeat”.
Understanding the mechanics involved, that was the difficult part.
But the fight itself, absolutely not.
And it will probably be the same with the wurm as well.
You realize you just condemned Deso to permanent overflows with this victory, right?
Lol. Congratulations.
And yes, the loot should be better…and less rng based.
Dunno about differences in ranges, but what is sure is that their hitbox extends quite a bit outside of the actual model.
Well, for starters, warriors are supposed to rely on allies for condition removal by design (even if they didn’t actually follow it, thus the unbalanced mess of a class we’ve got now).
And the situation we’ve got now is the complete opposite of the one you describe. Strong alone, even stronger in parties. With an amazing sustain even with zerk gear and no healing power. You can see a lot of warriors in lfg, as well as people that only search for them (or guardians, if they already have enough warriors).
If their sustain is so high because they don’t have access to protection and aegis, giving it via allies just make them overpowered: thus make them immune to protection and aegis.
Or don’t balance around the “lack” of them to begin with.
Wait because. Other classes have sustain that they share with thier allies means wars dont need it??
No, just that you shouldn’t give too much weight about the lack of “something” if they can get it from other sources – like allies.
Else you end up having a class unbalanced in parties. And seeing the lfg, that’s exactly the case – warriors with a single guardian supplying the boons they lack.
Basically, you want the same sustain of low hp classes, while retaining high hp.
Also, in any mode beside pvp, talking about what they don’t have is quite useless, as protection and aegis are given to allies as well…thus they have them on top of their personal sustain.
You can’t expect a map full of randoms that never speak to each other to just work together randomly lol. So my hope out of this is that we start to see more communities build, and challenge us.
And that’s why these can’t be open world events.
I can’t coerce other people in the map into working together or put some effort. They must do it of their own initiative. If they don’t want…i’m screwed as well.
Unless i guest somewhere else, obviously. And then people whine because their servers are always full of guesters…
but they already have events that are extremely difficult to fail in the open world. The biggest thing i would change is have it scale down to like 25-40 people (but maybe be slightly harder at low scales)
the game needs challenges for those who have been playing for awhile, there is nothing gained from an easy event when we already have many easy events.
I have nothing against challenges. But they must be implemented properly.
Putting open world events without clear indications of what to do or that is supposed to be done and expecting experienced and well equipped players isn’t the way to do so – especially if devs want to avoid name callings in case of failures, as that will inevitably happen. There isn’t any control upon who will try said events – being open world events. It could be a good player, an average one or even just one that is leeching the whole event without putting an ounce of effort. Put ten of those, and they may weight down the others enough to make the event fail. And the other players can’t do anything about it. They can’t kick them. And neither report them for not having put enough effort.
Those are all things that would be avoided in private instances. And we have guilds that had to work around the open world nature of the event to make sort-of private instances to avoid those problems.
Thus, why weren’t they made as private instances to begin with?
- On a related note, it is really frustrating when people feel like they can do whatever they want in an organised event. The only reason we move overflows is because people just want to do whatever the hell they want and not work together. If more players would be more willing to work with one another regardless of who is in the overflow, we wouldn’t need to find an empty overflow to fill up with people. We’re always open to working with anyone not in TTS, provided that they are willing to work with us. However if your guild of 10 is sitting around the campfire afking and not listening to commanders then we’re just going to have to move and get more willing people because we don’t want to waste the other 140 people’s time due to a small handful. It’s not fair.
Basically creating a private instance where you can invite only people well prepared, that know the fight, willing to follow suggestions and so on.
Like, the complete opposite of a normal server map, where you can’t do anything about the players you find there.
You have to find workarounds to avoid having what basically is the average player in an open world event – open to everyone by definition.
Good for you if you can succeed in the events…but that doesn’t mean they’re well designed open world events: it just means you’ve found a good workaround to circumvent their nature.
Apart from that, i praise the efforts.
Since the content was clearly made for TTS I will not congratulate you.
The rest of us will pray for the messiahs to visit the insignificant plebs in the other servers.
Is this really the future of gw2?A world boss was taken the furthest yet by a GUILD, in GUILD wars 2? Yep that just sounds ludicrous..
Gratz TTS.
The name of the game has nothing to do with player guilds – it is an event described in the lore.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Guild_Wars
And yeah, an open world event shouldn’t need all that preparation and coordination. We’re supposed to do it with random people, who may or not may be properly equipped, not even necessarily level 80 and that probably won’t even either read the chat or seek for info regarding the encounter.
Basically the exact opposite of such a guild.
So it is ArenaNets fault that people behave like children when stuff doesn’t go the way they want?
If by “behave like children” you mean “pointing out who made a map full of people waste hours for no rewards”, then yes. It is just a matter of taking responsability.
They are the ones who made those events to begin with, after all. With all those waiting times, failure conditions/timers, boss mechanics, poor rewards for failures (albeit, the ones of the marionette aren’t so bad) and so on.
I get a bit annoyed as well when we fail, but for some reason I have never attacked anyone about it, but I suppose I might be an unique snowflake.
And neither i’ve done it – but i can perfectly understand why some people could be angry when it happens. This patch could have been named “The Origin of Coffee” – as one will drink so many of them to know anything about it – to stay awake during the waiting times. And failing gives near to no reward for events like the two new permanent bosses.
It is not the “elite” players’ fault if there are events open to everyone that require previous knowledge of what is going to happen, certain degrees/types of equipment, high levels even if the map itself is a low-level one and that can be failed due to a small amount of inexperienced or not well prepared players.
Blame the design of the events – the issues are all there.
Or just make them scale low enough to be feasible without having an army stationed there…that is the reason why people guest in Desolation.
If you need a lot of people to do a content, you will go where you know there will be a lot of people. Not in deserted maps…like the ones they have in their own servers.
What will reasonably happen is half of the european players interested in the event guesting to Deso to kill the wurm after the first two weeks because there aren’t enough people in the area to do it in their servers.
Exactly as it already happens with Tequatl.
The whole problem of high zerk dps is due to the formula that gives exponential results.
But it requires high values to begin with. If you have small ones – like in celestial’s case – you suffer from the opposite problem, that is also what zerkers suffer when downscaled: very small returns.
The should have just changed the formula, imho.
If your skill level is beyond the need to invest in a stat who’s sole purpose is to negate mistakes or ignore fight mechanics, then why would you still invest in that stat as it gives you nothing useful at that point…versus stats that can give you something useful at that level?
But that’s, as I said, because you shouldn’t have invested in that defensive gear from the very beinning, as the guy using the power based build shouldn’t have geared himself for condition damage.
You chose the gear you’re going to need. If you are evading every attack and don’t get any use for defensive stats, why on earth did you get a gear filled with them?
And i’m saying that’s an issue with the stats – at the same skill level, you aren’t rewarded for using defensive gear, you are rewarded only for using offensive ones.
There is no influence of defensive stats on defensive skills, whereas there is for offensive stats on offensive skills.
I’m not saying that a defensive geared char should have the same offense of an offensive-geared char. That would make no sense, having dps is the point of investing on offensive gear.
But it should have a better return when using active defenses than an offensive geared char, and as now this doesn’t happen.
How to change them for have this return? Dunno exactly. But i still think something should be done in that direction.
About the fire field and light field for retaliation thing. There is no possibility to “overwrite” a field. You will allways be using the field as finisher in wich you have stepped into first. Not to be confused with the field that has been laid activated first! If you wan’t I can show you this ingame -> but I’m EU :s
Mh, in the wiki it said they activate on the oldest initiator, thus the one that was activated first, though.
I was somehow convinced it was on the newest one, so i would be wrong either way.
I was quite sure there weren’t other fields when i placed the bomb, though.
Still, bombs have delays on activation, so it could have been placed just a moment before the bomb activated. Unfortunate, but can happen.
P.S. i’m in EU too.
There is no effort in passive defense. That’s the definition of passive…no effort required. They do have different uses…one covers mistakes and still allows content completion. The other clears content (potentially) faster at the higher risk of failure from a mistake.
But there is in active defense, and it works exactly the same for either offensive or defensive geared chars (albeit worst for defensive ones, since their passive mitigation isn’t taken on account due to those active defenses being full negators).
And they don’t have different uses at the same skill level in your example – you are assuming the one using defensive gear will make mistakes, thus that he’s worse than the one using offensive gear.
Why power builds deal more damage if using a power based gear intead of a condition damage one? The answer is quite simple: you don’t invest in things you are not going to use/need.
And i’m saying there is a problem right there: compared to offensive gear, there is a lack of a proper return on its investment at the same skill level.