That’s why i propose folding the healing increase into vitality. At present, toughness provides an approximate average increase to health and healing effectiveness of 50% per 1000 points. Healing power doesn’t even come close to those numbers.
It admittedly is ineffective versus conditions, but conditions have a great many other counters. The only counters to direct damage are avoiding or blocking it, or mitigating it through toughness.
since vitality does provide a buffer against all damage types, a proportional increase to healing would be a bit too strong, but something in the order of 10% per 300 over base (33% per 1000) wouldn’t be excessive, i don’t think. This would put it at about the effacity of healing power at present.
the inherent problem with the trinity system is that for people who don’t enjoy tanking or healing, a tank and/or healer is required for them to have fun. So they must find someone who would rather perform one of those roles or who is willing to sacrifice their own enjoyment to enable others to enjoy playing.
For some reason this thread now thinks there are two pages and just shows one as blank, with no posts and no way to navigate to the first page. Hopefully this fixes it.
Lets say we all agree for a minute that healing power is weak (we don’t, though) does that necessarily mean it should be buffed? Just because something is weak doesn’t mean it should be buffed. Some things are intentionally weak because buffing them even a little would make them insanely OP.
I’m actually assuming that this is the case, and proposing a solution. imo, “intentionally weak” is poor game design that should be fixed.
You haven’t even tried to prove the point that Healing Power is weak. D/D ele proves how useful healing power is in PvP and full AFK dungeon solos in tank gear prove how powerful it is in PvE. So unless you prove it’s weak, you suggesting a fix to what isn’t proving to be broken. Cart before the horse.
I grant the point, but the general consensus (at least on these forums) is that healing power is underwhelming. if that opinion is representative, that’s sufficient reason for a change, even if the stat is balanced or even overpowered.
Also, that it can be used effectively only proves that it’s not use_less_. For it to be strong, by my definition, would require it to be a comparable defensive stat to vitality and toughness for every class and build, not just a very small number of obviously niche builds. I don’t want healing to go entirely, and for the purpose of improving outgoing healing the classes capable of healing others should have access to their own, separate mechanic (e.g. the benevolence boon i mentioned a bit further up). for most classes healing power increases only self healing and it’s simply not a good enough stat to invest in under any circumstances for them.
Even if you somehow manage to establish that HP is weak, you then have to prove it deserves to be buffed. You’d have to prove that the game balance, playability and fun factor would all be increased with more powerful HP. This will be insanely difficult to do. Over the top healing would lead to PvP going back to the bunker meta which I don’t recall people particularly enjoying. Over the top healing would make PvE even more faceroll since 4x berserker 1x Zealot would only lose like 5% overall team DPS, but gain defensive invincibility. You’ll have a hard case to make.
well, i don’t think a buffed healing power stat will contribute positively to game balance. i think it’s unsalvagable in its current form, and needs to be rethought and then reworked completely. Some people have suggested folding boon and condition duration into the stat but i think that at any level above the inconsequential, that will simply serve to drive the stat right into the realm of the OP. Boon duration on its own probably wouldn’t make the stat too powerful, but nor would it make it worth investing in; condi duration would make the stat extremely overpowered in an pvp situation without markedly improving it in pve.
I just haven’t seen anything that makes me think the stat is salvageable, not without a more or less complete redesign of the classes it presently benefits or the way it interacts with abilities in general.
OR they could just increase the healing power modifiers on skills. That would be even quicker and much less dirty.
It also would not fix anything.
essentially, they disabled all consumables/interactables except for the specifically exempt ones.
clarity edit: magic find doesn’t normally apply to anything but direct drops from kills, and so is useless in pvp. to make it work in pvp, i believe they made it apply under ALL circumstances in pvp (& lobby) and simply disabled all interactables but the specific pvp ones.
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i think it’s related to magic find applying to pvp containers.
Well another idea i’ve been toying with is to add in a ‘benevolence’ boon which would increase outgoing healing (to parallel the incoming bonus from reworked vitality), and replacing the condition damage on might boon with ferocity, then changing fury (perhaps to ‘malice’) to an intensity stacking bonus to precision and condition damage.
These are all tweaks to an already well structured attribute system, though, which i don’t feel is true of the system presently in place
if they did a bulk deal on them the way black lion keys work, that would stifle quite a few objections, i’d think. someone who only plays one character would be able to upgrade that one character more cheaply, while someone who plays a huge range of characters could outfit many of them (proportionally) much more cheaply.
something like:
- 1 slot for 125 gems
- 4 slots for 400 gems
- 20 slots for 1600 gems
They’re leftovers from before the current item nomenclature system came into play. Evidently the devs created a new item/made all new drops of this item come prefixed with their stat combo identifier.
Those weapons are only useful for novelty value, now. if you want one, buy it. if you want one to sell at those hilariously inflated prices… too bad.
I think this could be better stated that most classes have too few means of condition application.
some few classes (you know who you are) have continual, consistent condition application, while others (my poor poor necro…) have long cooldown, short burst condition application. Which can then be cleansed in a single cast.
Adjust the damage scaling coefficient, blast finisher on 3. Axe fixed.
…apart from the hideous animation…
A little damage boost? Axe autoattack needs at least 900 range and close to a 50% damage increase.
this forever. I’ve suggested before, add a third hit to make it a chain like warrior axe 1 (but at range; just use their animation)
skill #2 could be alright but as people have stated it should be a whirl finisher. i suggest 3-5 targets in an area around the focused target.
Also axe and dagger #2 should give the ‘need a target’ error if you try to use the skill without one/in range.
3 could be a blast finisher; i’m not sure what else you could do without completely changing the skill
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The only way to make this stat worth using is to buf it beyond the ability to balance. You’re never gonna ake healing power unless it gives you the ability to survive any expected level of incoming damage.
Seriously, just get rid of it.
one of my crowning achievements was to point-blank-shot an elementalist off the edge of eotm in the midst of a zergscrum
if you were to graph the attribute levels on equipped player gear at any given time, you’d see healing power at the bottom. guaranteed. not only that but it would be way down the bottom, probably at a third or less the levels of the next least itemized attribute. I would not be the least surprised to find it at less than 10% of the next lowest stat.
This isn’t an attribute like agony resistance, which has a clear and requisite purpose in the narrow field it is applicable to. healing power, in theory at least, applies to every combat engagement in the game. That it is so infrequently taken is indicative of one or more of a few things:
-It isn’t needed
-People dislike its function
-It fails to perform its function
a case can be made for #1 – it’s frequently mentioned in the various threads criticizing the current meta. #2 is likewise easily argued – a strong healing role is notably absent from this game compared to other MMOs, and a lot of people mention this as a positive attractant to this game. #3 is my personal opinion. If we take it literally, then the stat should empower healing, but even at high levels the attribute doesn’t give even a significant percentage increase over the base. That, to me, says the attribute isn’t doing what it is supposed to, and more than that, isn’t doing enough to make it usable, much less useful.
I hope we will see healing reworked in the future. I’m also glad there are multiple threads regarding healing in the forum at this time showing tghere’s both a wish from the public to have healing improved as well as a group who actuively tries to get this done. I’ll try to keep my suggestion aliver for now. and will try to discuss my ideas on other threads as well.
It quite obviously needs fixing, if not reworking, or even complete removal. i think the devs probably know that, it’s just a question of priorities & figuring out what change could make it viable without being utterly overpowered.
For my part i don’t think it’s a worthwhile stat, and anything short of a total rework which leaves it barely recognizable is going to fall short of the mark. with that in mind, i really think the most efficient option is a bandaid fix like i’ve suggested in another thread, removing it entirely and adding its effects into another stat.
when the devs have the time or a flash of inspiration to re-implement it properly, then they can reintroduce the re-imagined stat in whatever form it has morphed into. For now there’s simply insufficient use for it to be worth leaving ingame.
I really don’t think the prevalence of damage stats is a bad thing, much less a problem. It’s just that there’s no good reason to use anything else, and doing so puts you at too great a disadvantage.
Currently toughness is the ‘good’ defensive stat; it has a measurable diminishing effect on incoming damage under most circumstances, and similarly, increasing it will have give a measurable increase to survivability in almost all cases.
Vitality is the ‘okay’ defensive stat; increasing it has a measurable effect on prolonging survival, but from a mathematical perspective, its effect is additive rather than multiplicative. It adds x seconds to the length of time you can survive a given level of incoming damage per second; while toughness could modify this number below the threshold for indefinite survival, vitality cannot.
Healing power is the worst of the defensive stats, partly because of its scaling, primarily because of its mechanic. it has no direct effect on survivability – if you are afk, healing power will not extend your survival by any length of time. While i grant this isn’t a particularly useful measure of utility for a stat (no offensive stat fares any better, after all) it does make healing power the most niche skill, in that it has no passive effect and empowers the most narrow range of skills. This is the reason for its poor scaling; buff it to the level of viability, and all content becomes trivial as healing would be enough to ignore mechanics entirely; below this threshold there’s no reason to take the stat at all, as other stats will provide more broad utility. To rework healing power to the point of functionality would require either a complete change in design philosophy so that unavoidable damage is so high that healing power is mandatory, or else buffing the stat to the extent that it is so powerful that not itemizing for it is idiocy.
The best solution is just to remove this obsolete stat entirely, and fold its effects into the other ailing attribute.
just from a realism perspective – the bosses moving around wouldn’t make much sense. if you could breathe fire (or poison, whatever) would you go chasing ants around? no, you’d stay in one spot and just breath at them.
how about reversing that. Make the top section the locked one and open the 2 bottom ones for everyone.
it’s what our guild does.
This is what i do. officers shouldn’t need that much space, as there should be many many fewer of them.
i’m always for extra customization options though.
The biggest problem with defensive stats and healing power is that taking damage in GW2 is a state of failure. The whole thing that busts the trinity in GW2 is that skilled players can avoid taking damage.
Because of this any stat or ability that are only useful after you have taken damage becomes less useful the more skill the player has. The only way to make all stats equally good is to give all of them a positive impact before the point of failure. Let them do good before the player screwed up, so they are useful for players who don’t screw up.
I don’t completely agree. it’s definitely possible to avoid a lot of damage, and there are certain attacks which you essentially HAVE to avoid, but a lot of the time it’s simply not economical to spend your endurance if you expect to be able to survive the incoming damage and your healing skill is off cooldown.
vitality of course extends the amount of damage you can survive, but again, once that pool is gone there’s no effective way to replenish it.
hmmm. healing power could perhaps be converted into “willpower”, increasing incoming boon duration & outgoing condition duration, as well as raw healing power…
if some change can be made to make it an effective stat, i’m all for it, though the problem is that the game just doesn’t justify itemizing for support stats enough to justify having three of them (my opinion, obviously)
in essence, for healing power to be useful, it must provide an increase to survival in line with toughness (vitality, as i mentioned in my thread, is already not worth taking above the barest minimum), or else must also contribute positively to dps to such an extent that it’s worth dropping one of the other damage stats to take it.
in its present form i don’t think it adds positively to the game; i think it muddles the already bloated pool of worthless stat combos. This needs to change, and the most straightforward way is just to take out the stat; if ideas like this one can be implemented to make the stat worth taking, that’s just as good.
Based on Guardian’s “Force of Will”, right?
Actually, that hadn’t even occurred to me…
but yes, if it was implemented with too high heal scaling, it would definitely overshadow toughness. That’s why i’m not suggesting actual numbers, just considering mechanics.
And vitality is only a one-shot buffer right now. Toughness effectively multiplies both your buffer and your ability to replenish it, but only against direct damage. Since this buff to vitality would make it so that the stat not only increases hp buffer, but also your ability to replenish it versus any damage type, the healing aspect of it should be less powerful point-for-point than toughness currently is.
On the other hand, the two stats will synergize extremely well, to the point that a hybrid build might actually be worthwhile. As it stands, on any class but thief, guard or ele, itemizing for vitality seems like completely wasted stat points. Healing power, i think, is in an even worse space. Combining the two stats would put both in a much better space, and unless the numbers are so low as to be absurd, could make both stats worth taking in some measure on any character.
It’s… very different from the original. Or even the partial rebuild.
I really liked the original lions arch – something about it just felt very… fitting. Not so much that it resembles the original lions arch (which, lets be fair, really wasn’t anything special) but that it seemed like a city that could believably have been built by pirates.
The new one is very… different. It incorporates obvious elements of pact design, and it is very well designed, but it’s not the lions arch that i knew and loved.
I’m trying to view it with an open mind and a newcomers eye – if i’d just started playing the game with the june patch, would i find the city so unappealing? it’s hard to say, but i think i probably wouldn’t. It is a very pretty city, even if it just somehow doesn’t seem to fit anymore.
meh. </rant>
How about “The Entitled”.
i like it
Vitality has a clear advantage over toughness – conditions. While toughness has synergy with healing power, it’s countered by conditions. I run a ranger with cleric stats in PvP and WvW – if I could have the high healing efficiency, direct damage resistance and high hp, I’d be unstoppable. To get it now, you need to sacrifice all your offensive stats, but if you could do it with just two, it would be ridiculously broken, or the effects would have to be scaled down so far as to be pointless.
I might be mistaken but doesn’t cleric prefix give toughness? I’m not sure what you’re getting at, if healing power was converted to vitality and vitality made to incorporate a degree of healing, then granted, any build that incorporates both vitality and toughness would be very resilient. The extent to which vitality would increase healing would have to be carefully balanced, but ultimately it could only improve vitality as a stat, and if the healing bonus is percentage based then it’s likely that at moderate to high levels of vitality, your healing would outstrip that provided by the current healing power stat. That’s sort of the point.
However, in that you’re not stacking pure (or even primarily) damage, your dps output would be substantially lower than someone wearing zerk/sini. Again, that’s the idea.
So, higher vitality means more HP and better healing ability?
I think increasing all outgoing healing would be too powerful (and wouldn’t make as much sense anyhow) so it would mostly be self healing ability.
Either way, this stat would become the condition damage counter the way that toughness is presently the direct damage counter.
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merge with vitality.
toughness already increases healing effectiveness (versus direct damage attacks, at least) and the effect of high toughness can be very noticeable.
Vitality already has a significant effect, but as many people like to point out, it’s basically a one-shot effect; The amount of damage required to down you increases with vitality, but if you receive any healing whatsoever, toughness straight up outclasses it. Hell, it probably outclasses it point for point even if you don’t heal at all.
Healing power, meanwhile, is left in a very sorry spot as a stat which is only niche useful, and basically any boost to it runs the risk of changing the meta towards the hated enemy of hard trinity.
i think as it stands, healing power simply needs to go. If it were folded into vitality so that stat increases not only your total health but also your healing received, i think it could bring both stats into a much better position.
Edit:I’ve been thinking more about how healing could be managed without a healing power stat, to make it viable without being essential and useful without a major stat investment in it. I think a temporary boon is the way to go.
Benevolence: Stacks duration, increases healing to other characters by 33% (ie, not affecting self healing at all; vitality would be your way of increasing that)
No skills would ordinarily apply this boon (to fit with the philosophy of not requiring a character to sacrifice a major part of their utility to amplify their healing). Instead, different traits for each character would give them access to it:
-Engineer: Alchemy line, Tier 1: Health insurance now grants you 10sec benevolence upon equipping a med kit or elixir gun, and adds Benevolence to the boons applied by Elixir B
-Elementalist: Water line, Tier 2: Soothing Disruption now grants Benevolence as well as vigor & regeneration when you use a cantrip
Arcane line, Tier 1.5: Elemental Attunement gives you benevolence upon switching to water (all targets still gain regeneration)
-Guardian: Virtues line, Tier 2: Absolute Resolution also grants you Benevolence
Honor line, Tier 3: Force of will amplifies outgoing healing by the same amount that vitality usually increases incoming healing (basically, no change in function)
-Necromancer: Blood line, Tier 1: Ritual of Life causes well of blood to grant Benevolence upon activation
-Ranger: Nature Magic line, Tier 1: Allies Aid causes your water spirit and healing spring to give benevolence
-Warrior: Tactics line, Tier 3: Shouts also give benevolence
(i don’t think thieves have any noteworthy ability to heal allies)
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hovering over your targets hpbar defaults all ground targets to right beneath your feet.
This is one of the few times i could imagine that actually being useful rather than borderline game-breaking
most people probably assume you are talking about player condition damage and just skip over the topic entirely
“easily duped”
because that skritt is quite obviously ripping you off (and profiting from it)
ANet pls statistics of ectos and gold lost to skritt pls pls psl
i think the issue here is that there’s essentially no downside to berserkers/assassin gear. It’s the triumvirate, increased base damage, increased crit effectiveness, and increased crit probability. The three stats just work together in an ideal fashion, and the only way to ‘fix’ it is to break it entirely, by making the contribution from each of those stats so worthless that even despite the synergy, the affix would just suck.
(in case it’s not obvious, i’m NOT recommending that the devs create yet another useless stat combo)
To actually ‘fix’ the current meta, if it’s regarded as something broken, i think that berserker gear needs to go altogether. If you really want those stat combos you have to hybridize, e.g. pieces of valkyrie and knights will give you those same stats but toughness & vitality as well.
…of course, then we’d face the (quite legitimate) crying of people who simply don’t need those defensive stats. (i’m not one of them)
would all this improve the game? unlikely, in my opinion.
I feel like some ooc ds regen would be fair, but i think right to 100% would be over the top. The whole idea of it is that it’s a mechanic built through combat, especially killing things. I think it could regenerate up to 33% out of combat, though, just so long as it also degenerated to the same after combat had finished, starting slow but accelerating.
Absorbing lifeforce from nearby deaths would still give you a boost out of combat, and reset shroud degeneration, while entering combat would instantly halt degen until combat ended.
We can’t let this die ~
Read the post in the engineer forums about weapon swapping. Our weapons aren’t really range dependent, run almost entirely separate builds, and aren’t as important overall as eles (we use kits). So, no. In fact since many engineers use weapon swap as drop bundle it could just impede running around.
how? all classes have bundles – environmental weapons are everywhere. The current weapon swap key will just cause you to drop the bundle and revert to your previous weapon set.
also, while i agree that engy weapons are less important with their kits, that’s not the same as them being not important. Hell, i’d love this on my engi just so i can switch to rifle for #5 without having to pull up my inv screen/the hero panel.
Searching through 160 inventory slots isn’t practical at all.
This is why at the top of my bag I have a invisible bag with alternative weapons and food that I want to keep all neatly in 1 space
afaik there exists no 20 slot ascended-equip invisible bag which will automatically claim my unequipped offhand weapon when i use the existing interface to swap from s/d to staff.
i really don’t get it, what possible objection to this could there be besides “this will occupy dev time which i would prefer to be spent towards X because that benefits me personally”?
What about introducing a new type of storage bag, one that takes account- and soul-bound items first? Could make it invisible too so no chance of accidentally selling what’s in there. We already have junk, crafting, etc priority bags so this may not be too hard to make. It’d be something everyone could make use of if they wished.
this would be a good interim solution which would silence about 90% of my gripes (seriously, do you people who are saying “just use the hero panel” ever actually use the hero panel? that thing is a nightmare. Why can’t i just press one key, like every other class?)
Instead of weapon swapping, I would rather they implement GW1’s build templates as that would allow you to swap weapons (and armor, if you so desire) with a single click outside of combat without having to modify how Elementalists and Engineers currently work.
This is the obvious, sensible, ideal solution and as such is not even worth mentioning, much less asking for. What kind of world would this be if all our problems were solved in such a way as to both satisfy all complaints and head off future problems?
i’d love to see bazaar back as a permanent area.
Wouldn’t making fear a CC effect only easier?
Would be a pretty big change to Fear, by making it not a condition it removes all condition-based play/counterplay. No condi duration increases with generic condi duration anymore for example.
i agree, but as a CC effect it also shouldn’t be so freely cleansable. The OP’s suggestion seems the best of both.
I’ve been scrolling through trying to find an objection that doesn’t boil down to either “i don’t understand what’s being asked”, “i don’t play an ele/eng so this doesn’t benefit me” or “I don’t use multiple weapon setups so i’m not affected by this”
no luck so far…
This is nothing more than a simple quality of life request. It would be locked out in any circumstances where manually changing weapons through hero panel is unavailable. Its purpose is simple time saving/hassle reduction & a smidgen more protection against silly slip ups (as someone else said, selling or salvaging weapons you actually want to keep)
this offers eles and engis no advantage beyond having one or two extra free inventory slots, in line with other profs.
I should also note that while eles have acces to a huge number of skills, their weapon determines the theme these skills follow. If you’re running d/d then no amount of attunement switching is going to get you skills effective out to 1200 range. It’s less like having four different weapon sets equipped and more like having four of the same weapon equipped.
engis of course have it all their own way, and so should obviously get this their own way, too
tangential to the actual topic:
Why sunirse and twilight? twilight occurs at both dawn and dusk and thus would be a better name for what is currently eternity. sunrise is a kind of boring name for a legendary, too. Why not daybreak & nightfall (in universe reference ftw?)
i actually dropped it out for my spvp well last night. DM/Spite/BM.
The only reason i play SR usually is for the LB pierce, and i realized that just wasn’t really all that useful in pvp…
waving a magic wand at someone doesn’t exactly scream ‘power build’ to me…
where’s that sean connery picture when you need it
you could always go with a situational removal, ie the energy cost becomes a cooldown while energy regen is negative.
That long cast time is actually a blessing in disguise. With careful timing you can actually use a skill out of the auto chain (eg, immobilize) and then hardcast the third auto-chain before it fizzles back to the start.
(i actually logged my guard in just now to make sure this was still the case)
you have to skillqueue the third chain before it reverts, so if you use a skill that disrupts the queue (hammer #2) then it won’t work
edit: it’s a lot more hit-and-miss than i remember. I can’t tell if something has changed or if i’m just out of practice)
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That would entail making a lot of new skills. Most likely too much work for too little gain.
Actually it would not require designing new skills. It would, however, require new animations. And the same reason prevents them from implementing it: too much work for too little gain.
Not that it’s a TON of work… but it’s just not a simple check box or line of code.
Actually the OP’s suggestion does require new skills to be made, I do like this idea though – won’t be implemented for a while though.
Revenant’s sword attack chain gives hope, no? I find it a tad odd only hitting something with one of my daggers at a time.
Realistically, it’s very hard to coordinate both your hands at once. Even fighting with two weapons, you would likely use the one in your dominant hand almost to the exclusion of the other, only occasionally switching focus when the situation demanded.
of course, you also would likely not be free to just hack at your opponent without them attempting some kind of dodge/defense/counter so realism may not be all that relevant…
the crickets with you both using plague against each other just killed me.
Thanks. now i haveto WP
Ask any necro about life blast damage. It is completely dependent upon which weapon set you have equipped before going into death shroud. Very poor design IMO.
Then what should it be based on?
imo, flat amount based on equipped weapon quality.
currently entering death shroud while using a staff causes your life blasts to do 30-50% extra damage compared to if you were using a dagger.
likewise…….
play your cards right, you can beat any class easily
right. but he’s asking for the deck not to be stacked against him, to extend your metaphor.
for what it’s worth, i agree. Just because they can be good doesn’t mean that they aren’t worse on average.
My asura used to give her all when auto-attacking with axe 1. Nowadays she’s just listless. Please bring back the jump animation!
The sylvari one looked so beautifully fierce. i miss it =(