Not to start a debate here as this thread is an excellent source of information but …
if we were to get another condition, what do you think it’s damage output (in terms of DPS) would have to be with no condition damage modifier to ensure it’s not unreasonable when compared to other ‘all-out’ damage builds? IMO, it would have to be pretty low … probably 50% of what burning is now.
NOTHING excuses 20 gold for a single bag slot. I paid less than 3 for mine.
This statement shows you don’t understand that the buying power of gold in this game is variable. So … yes, it’s not unreasonable it will cost more to buy a bag slot than you paid for it.
I would be concerned if it was amounts that would actually destabilize the economy …
Leather up from 5 to 15c? OH NOES!!!!
I would love to know how many people that complain about the exchange would be willing to pay a monthly subscription fee instead … I’m betting not too many.
I think you should assume it is.
People are doing the living story achievements because it has rewards attached to it. Wings, mini’s etc. Why shouldn’t this idea be applied to all the other achievements in the game?
There isn’t a reason … there already is rewards attached to achievements. There will now be more.
People would still do dailies, because they’re quick, easy and have a reward attached to them. The point would be to encourage people to do achievements beyond the daily by adding rewards to them.
Again, I don’t get your point … People already do content beyond the dailies for rewards. In fact, if Anet continues the trend, there will be new content once every 2 weeks where people can be getting achievements beyond the daily. What you are asking for already exists.
The point about CoF is that if rewards are removed from existing content, people will just move to the content that is most rewarding. We already have hordes of people that don’t want to do dungeons except for CoF. Do we want hordes of people not doing other content too?
The current problem with achievements is that dailies/monthlies are the best rewarded achievements in the game (karma, money, mystic coins, glory boosts), and everything has has basically 0 reward (points are often equalled just by doing dailies, minimal titles or other stuff). If the update doesn’t provide incentive to do achievements other than dailies, then the current status quo will remain and the update might as well just be an increase in daily rewards.
So the problem is that the status quo will remain the same? Is that really a problem? I don’t see this problem … do we not want people out doing their dailies or would you just like to see everyone farming CoF p1?
Honestly, how fun can crafting be? You put things together to get another thing. Eve does do it right but that whole game is based on crafting.
I love the fact that someone else was curious enough to try these things out and even go so far as write a whole thread on it. It won’t be an insider dirty secret anymore. I’m looking forward to the damage ‘stress’ testing results as well as the approach to other people’s builds with burning. Thanks again for some good quantitative work on this profession Foofad.
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Perhaps it’s scaling works off a different stat though I can’t think of a logical reason why.
This thread is ridiculous. If an armor skin is so valuable to you, you will get it with either of the two ways to purchase gems.
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It’s not scapegoating at all. Sample size is a REAL factor. Killing something 10 times and saying the results are significant is a joke.
That is true. But if a scenario goes like this:
Day 1: Get 2 rares within 15 minutes of joining the game, then only get crappy greys for 1h+
Day 2: Get 2 rares within 15 minutes of joining the game, then only get crappy greys for 1h+
Day 3: Get 2 rares within 15 minutes of joining the game, then only get crappy greys for 1h+
Etc and so on… You dont start to see a pattern? Really?.
I see a pattern but I don’t see enough trials to give me the power to conclude anything statistically significant. I CERTAINLY don’t see anything that convinces me that MF is a factor for DR kicking in.
Perhaps. I can see that your view of effective is related to ranking with competitive builds or the tools of other professions.
I don’t believe that’s a very realistic way to think of effectiveness. As guardian, your capability is not dependent on what other classes get, nor do I think that impacts how the devs decide on stuff we get.
I also believe that a build can be effective even if it doesn’t rank as the top 1 or 2 builds for a certain application. I don’t think anyone would mind if you want to elaborate on what you think qualifies as effective, just so that your points have context.
For instance, for WvW, I would NEVER suggest a burning build. For PVE, I wouldn’t have a problem recommending it, even for more experienced players in instanced content.
The take away here is that the new traits are a big boost in damage and flexibility for burning builds. saying you only get 70 DPS more CDamage from the GM zeal trait isn’t considering you just got another couple hundred power and depending on weapon, 5-10% more damage in addition to that. I mean, honestly, do you think someone going 30 in zeal ISN’T going to trait scepter or GS damage increase? People should go back and have a sober look at how to actually MAKE a zeal 30 build before they come to complain about it.
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For reference, with maxed condition damage through runes, gear, food, might, sigil stacks etc. You can get up to approximately 1100 burning DPS.
That’s a scenario doesn’t make a very realistic comparison. I can’t think of one good application for a burning build where someone will get all the might needed for that output and if they do, it’s certainly not sustainable.
A more realistic value for sustainable max burning damage is about 750 DPS.
At that same level of condition damage, a bleeding stack does About 5000 damage per second.
Sure, but how does that comparison impact a guardian? They don’t get bleed … If you understand what burning is on a Guardian, you would realize why these are misleading comparisons. Condition Damage on Guardian is not implemented in a way that would allow a reasonable increase in condition access. Adding even one more reliable condition damage to a build like mine would make it ridiculous.
Condition damage can be useful, but you need access to bleeding (and now torment) to have it be effective.
I hate to see this misinformation. The proper burning build on Guardian can output burning damage that is actually on par to regular hits for some of the more average weapons we have. It’s effective from the sense that it does what it’s supposed to and it does it well based on how it’s implemented.
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Even if you were for some reason specced to keep burning up 100% of the time, you’ll still be adding a tiny fraction of your original damage.
Tiny fraction? Let me challenge this …
If someone decided to have a 100% uptime on burning, they would probably be focused on using condition damage gear wouldn’t you think? I doubt someone will spec 100% condition duration and NOT use Carrion, Cdamage runes, etc…
I can tell you that if you build a spec that fully exploits a 100% burn uptime with the appropriate gear, you burning damage is in the range of 700 DPS and possibly higher, not 350. More than ‘a tiny fraction’. That’s equivalent to a regular hit for some weapons.
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Oh yeah I see what you are saying. The burn itself is trash but that’s actually typical for a few things. I can say the same thing about a heals with no heal power or a crit build with no crit damage. Yet people make heal-focused and crit builds regardless and it’s worth it for them.
Admittedly, the patch was bittersweet … I like the changes but I was hoping for something that would expand the burning concept to competitive builds for WvW. I just don’t see it this time around.
@Obtena
The question is, is it worth it?
If you are making a burning build, Fiery Wrath is a given, even before the patch. If a person doesn’t want to be stuck with 1H/torch for significant burning uptime, then it’s a hard sell not to go Rad 20 as well.
The question if burning builds are worth it is a matter of preference and application. Is it worth it for WvW? That’s a hard sell. I wouldn’t advise it though I think in very specific scenarios, it excels. Is it worth it for farming Orr and events? I’m convinced of it. Dungeons and instanced content? I’m on the fence there …
If you agree with those assessment of the usefulness of burning for Guardian, then you can see where burning fits and how it is used in the game. I used to think burning also needed a second effect until I did a little theorycrafting and played around with some builds ingame.
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I’ve experimented alot with CD, probably alot more than most people here. I can assure you that the duration of active VoJ needs to be increased to get full effect of those traits, even on trash mobs farming orr. It’s not irrelevant at all.
If you are hammer, you need about 5-7 seconds. You still need at least 4 seconds on GS with the new traits. The 20% burning increase from Radiant Power is in the correct range for this (even though I don’t get why they didn’t make it 25% …). Personally, I target 7 second. Sometimes it’s over and sometimes just short. That’s where you want to be if you are making a burning build.
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As to the stuff with Fiery Wrath and Radiant Power, it will be pretty irrelevant in both cases under most circumstances.
Um, what? So 10% damage increase from Fiery Wrath and 20% more duration from Radiant Power are irrelevant in most circumstances? I call bullkitten on that. I don’t know an cheaper or easier way to increase my damage 10% or get an extra tick from active VoJ.
If we could find a way to maintain a burn on a target consistently with little to no gaps between cooldowns, maybe burning duration would be good then.
There is a way, but it requires some very specific setup to do it.
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This patch was awesome. Just awesome.
I can’t help but think the same thing. They didn’t touch anything that was already good. They improved many things that were not good. I think statements like “They didn’t do this” aren’t relevant because patches are continuous improvements and Anet didn’t set any expectations for what was going to get improvements to the players. Look at where we were, look at where we are at. At the WORST, it’s neutral.
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I never stated that at all. I can understand that WvWers aren’t happy. What I’m wondering is what set your expectations the changes would specifically focus on an increase in PVP build diversity?
Honestly, I didn’t see anything from the devs stating that an improvement there was a specific target for Guardians in this patch. It would have nice and yes, I agree with you that the Honour/Valour lines are overused for WvW. I can’t help but think that’s the reason why every other line BUT Honour/Valour got buffed. I don’t think those buffs lend themselves to more competitive builds for WvW but then again, I didn’t see where Anet explicitly stated that was their improvement target for this patch.
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While I appreciate your objective point of view, you do seem to not take into account that my perspective is purely one of WvW and that I’ve already stated, that this patch was focused primarily on PvP, and more in between the lines, small solo/roaming builds where 1h’s are utilized more often then not.
This patch was focused primarily on PVP? I question the validity of that statement. If it is true, I wouldn’t mind seeing where it set by Anet as the expectation for Guardians in this patch.
If the patch changes for Guardians were indeed supposed to be PVP focused, I can see the disappointment of PVP-focused Guardians. There isn’t any candy here for you this time. It’s just not clear to me if PVP build diversity for Guardians was the expectation set by Anet for this patch.
If the patch was supposed to be focused on PVP, specifically for small solo/roaming builds, then I would think that’s a pretty small scope for such a large patch to focus on. I would immediately question the value such a focused change would have ingame to the whole community.
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It’s not scapegoating at all. Sample size is a REAL factor. Killing something 10 times and saying the results are significant is a joke.
There isn’t an obvious pattern … MF and DR affect the same variable so any tests you make to determine their effects on getting loot in the uncontrolled ingame setting are confounded; you can’t reasonably say a result is attributed to one or the other, or a fraction of each.
We don’t actually have the one piece of information we need to test assertions regarding MF; DR reset time. If a person knew the DR ‘reset’ time, they could devise a real experiment, factoring it out and determine the drop rates for different amounts of MF on the various difficulties of mobs but it would take a hell of a long time. Only this will tell you anything.
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I think the minimum gear/traits for getting the highest condition damage possible is obvious … full carrion, Chryscola trinkets, 30/30/x/x/x, corruption sigil, Cdamage runes (take your flavour). Your defense would be really compromised and you don’t have many variables left to tweek after this.
I’m not sure the complaint is accurate. We have lots of builds that work very well for various situations. What I was hoping to see from the changes was a more thoughtful approach to dependencies between traits, similar to what we have with Honour 5 and Radiance. Just some simple pairs to increase people’s desire to mix traits more. On the flip side, I can see why being able to ‘combo up’ is less important for GM traits … those have to be strong enough to stand on their own. Unfortunately, the Zeal line is still it’s own island.
Still, if I had to classify the changes, it would be improving weaker aspects of Guardian play. I don’t feel that the improvements are so significant that they expand the current space of popular (re. competitive) builds.
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The new GM trait isn’t useless if you actually MAKE a burning build with it. It’s no more useless than any other GM trait that doesn’t fit a build you are making.
Be careful about what you mean by fixed … the devs only acknowledged the lack of speed, not the fact that it misses. Ironically, when the QQ brigade final had the ear of the dev in the forum, they failed to explain the REAL problem with scepter. Can’t help but think we (the general we) got exactly what we asked for.
The issue isn’t w/ the Buff’s in thier singularity… but w/ the overall effectiveness and synergy of builds…. specifically, in WvW.
I think that what we see with these changes is a balance for making less effective aspects of the Guardian profession better. We see improvements to spirit weapons, CDamage build, and specific things like the scepter, Zeal, etc… ALL of those things have been identified by players as main targets. Whether they are applicable to a specific element of the game isn’t relevant. I doubt very much that’s how Anet choose to change things.
If you feel like WvW aspect of Guardian was ‘shorted’ in some way, I don’t doubt that is simply a perception issue. Are Guardians so poorly performing in WvW that the approach to improve their weaker aspects is a poor way to choose targets for improvement instead of focusing on ‘WvW-specific’ aspects? I’m hard pressed to think that’s actually the case.
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Overall, some decent buffs for the builds that benefit from them. No big (or any?) nerfs. I rate these changes a slight boost for Guardians.
I think people have some narrow perspective when they complain … Guardians didn’t really need much improvements to start with so the fact that Anet came in with some new things ON TOP of the already good builds we have is wonderful.
Wait till you fight multiple thieves who are all blinding you and dodging/rolling/stealthing in different directions. Might as well just stand there and die because there is nothing you can do.
Is that really unreasonable? Anyone fighting multiple anything should have a REALLY tough go of it. Frankly, if you don’t die from being outnumbered, your opponents suck. You should expect it Has nothing to do with being thieves.
That does not matter, since Fiery Wrath is only related to burning uptime, not condition damage.
I’m lost on this one… can you be more clear on what doesn’t matter?
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The radiant fire looks good on paper until you think about how much of an increase 20% in burning duration is. Twenty percent of 3.25 seconds is nothing. … I think someone posted elsewhere, that that 20% burning duration still isn’t even enough to make voj tick a second time.
Unless the active VoJ duration is less than 5 seconds now, 20% extra burning duration will get you one more second. The passive requires 100% duration to get a 2 second passive effect, which is possible even without the 20% increase change in radiant fire. Those changes are actually as significant as an extra symbol tick or getting a crit hit. As someone that uses a burning build, that is a very significant improvement IMO.
Bottom line … if you aren’t building for burning, the changes won’t benefit you that much. I can see why that’s a disappointment but on the other hand, I don’t see any logical reason Anet should be improving burning to the benefit of the people that could care less about using it. It’s already a free source of damage. Unless you focus on making a build for it, what would be the justification for making it better?
PS … Just an update. As I always suspected, the tooltip for active burning was wrong … seems like you don’t get the tick on the 0th second. So you actually need intervals of 25% to get a 1 second increase on active burning. kitten it, I knew it!
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Looks like I need to fall in love with my CD build all over again.
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I think your conclusion should be that RNG is still at play, even if you buff MF. Your sample size is WAY to small to say anything about DR relation to MF.
And? Even if you permanently apply burning (which the ele can do better, btw), 100 condition damage translates into mighty 25 DPS. Any direct damage option will just annihilate that ridiculous effect.
That’s not really a problem … CD on a Guardian isn’t supposed to be comparable to direct damage as it’s a secondary damage effect where on other classes it IS direct damage. That makes any CD discussion you have related to Guardian fundamentally different than how you think about CD for other classes. The underlying question is if it’s reasonable to put stats to improving a secondary effect. It’s value is it’s consistency and freedom with what weapons you wish to use.
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it could be good advice.
Maybe, but you don’t know that prior to giving it. If someone who would benefit from mixing decides not to because of your opinion, perhaps you can see why it’s crap advice. If you told someone to jump off a bridge because there is a chance they MIGHT be an expert high diver and survive it, it would still be crap advice.
That would be the DEFINITION of in game testing.
Great, then I will remind you that everyone that plays the game does this every time they play and tweek their builds that might result in mixed gear. So much for your claim that no one is testing anything.
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I’ve optimized many builds for different situations by playing and tweeking my gear. If the outcome is mixed gear, then that’s the demonstration, to myself! It has no relevance to someone else that isn’t me. That’s why telling someone mixing is terrible is crap advice. It might be GREAT to them. They have to find out for themselves.
I’m just going to remind you that you already dismissed empirical data for a more ‘in-game testing’ approach.
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That’s your opinion only.
It’s my opinion that giving bad advice to people is wrong? Now I can see why you have no problem doing it so often.
Does posting my builds have something to do with the opinion that mixing isn’t terrible? My builds don’t have anything to do with other players styles and capabilities so … ?
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You seem challenged in your interpretation. It was wrong for you to give people bad advice that mixing was terrible. I actually DID present my dislike with your opinion in that format you suggested. I guess ego doesn’t equate to good memory.
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OK I failed mental Gymnastics /shrug. You were still giving bad advice to people and it’s not the first time either.
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I don’t actually mind you post that. It frees me of the burden to continually reminding you your advice that mixing is terrible was garbage and how you finally admitted it. You do it for me.
I am the one with worthless advice?
Yes, by contradicting yourself. Fun fact: This isn’t the first time either.
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My only advice for people is to actually play with their chars and put their theorycrafting to actual test in various areas of the game …
This makes some sense. We may have a convert. If this is your only advice, it’s safe to say the other advice you gave about mixing being terrible is worthless.
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So basically, after all your experience and testing, you have nothing to say about what he’s posted because you don’t believe in anything but ingame results because that’s the most meaningful?
Great, then that dismisses any argument you have made for presenting builds and numbers from theoretical build pages. If only put merit into ingame testing, your experience and authority is no better than the guy that’s playing the game, mixing his gear
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I’m speaking from an spvp standpoint. It hinders damage by the obviousness of the skill being triggered.
Oh I see what you mean .. it gives tells to the enemy, so they can react to avoid damage? OK, for certain attacks I can see that. Speed is definitely a factor for damage but it wasn’t clear to me we were speaking specifically about a certain weapon or activity in the game. I would think generally, Guardians are not suffering from a lack of damage.
Watching DPS Guards shrug off damage from actual glass cannons because of ridiculous boon uptime, silly levels of Toughness and random Aegis procs has not endeared me to the supposed difficulty of playing it.
I guess you only get that appreciation from actually playing the class.
DeathPanel, does your ego take up and extra seat at the dinner table?
Do you have any response to Danicco’s proof that mixing isn’t terrible? You must have missed it since you have posted here since he’s presented it. I’m very interested in your perspective on that since you’re someone who thinks he’s correct all the time.
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I didn’t catch the part about telegraphic displays hindering damage. What is that and how it impacts damage?