Because I also proposed a 10% damage modifier to foes suffering from Confusion in the same line?
And then your first concession to PvP players was to drop that trait, plus it is boring. And you’re still ignoring Chaos…
Winds of Chaos does a lot more damage when you have three clones casting it along with you.
With condition caps lifted and Illusionary Elasticity standard on all models, the Staff can be used like a “land trident” (i.e., spam clones for their autoattacks) with all the uber craziness that comes with it.
It’s also a good idea not to ignore the power of all those buffs bouncing around, because they really pump up the volume in just about any kind of encounter.
And, as ever, the Staff gets better the closer you are to the target. At melee range it can be positively sublime.
That omits all the opportunity cost though: The single-hit effect is pitiful with or without boons, while Sword can cleave 3 targets and gain total damage from it. Having 3 clones up means you don’t have any phantasms, so your dps baseline is already at 50%. You also lack the gap-closer, immobilise and evade/block from one-handed weapons, which may or may not be relevant.
Soloing is another story, but even for the “mediocre PuG” level of play Staff doesn’t bring much to the table
Even shattering is kinda inferior, a +30%dmg zerker Mind Wrack hurts, and may give up to 6s cdr on your precious phantasms if you choose against Compounding Power for whatever reason. Staff condi shatter gives you …4 Torment + 4-8 Confusion, great. Actually Cry of Frustration as a whole kinda sucks as a “condi Mind Wrack”.
(edited by Photoloss.4817)
It might be similar to the Signet trait but as you said: It doesn’t have to be exlcusive.
I don’t get the ‘active gameplay’ and ‘when’ part.
It could just start when re-charging. Put kitten -10s ICD on it so it can’t be abused. Done.
Would be a bit strong if you used it to get a free MoC, and then using that to charge the rest if needed. Thing is, stability and count-based blocks can at least be burnt through, evade can’t. With “active gameplay” I meant you can’t pop it during the channel when you see an interrupt coming, either your opponent hits a narrow timing window near the end of the channel or it’s a straight-up free recharge. The latter could be okay if it’s not OP in itself, but an evade duration lower than the channel time would only leave the trait godlike at low skill levels and useless among the best players.
I think you got to look at the context.
At least one of those traits – Fiery Wrath and Radiant Power – are likely to be fillers since ANet run out of ideas. This aside, I actually think that those two are more on the reasonable side when it comes to damage modifiers. Guardians have to actively build for a 100% burning uptime. It’s also relevant for hybrid builds which is particularly important for Guardians since they don’t really have viable options for pure condi builds. I’d say Warriors and Elementalists are the classes with the worst, easy to fulfill and uninspired damage modifiers.
Unscathed Contender on the other hand is just for burst, really. It’s pretty unrealistic to assume it encourages evasive gameplay since Aegis just pops like a bubble 1-2s into a fight.
You’d be surprised how long an Aegis can last in PvE if you circle-strafe or stay at range. In PvP stacking damage modifiers isn’t much of a problem in the first place because you still have to land those damage skills and not die trying. Renewed Justice can cover for a lot of burn uptime in most PvE situations (and teammates will in dungeons)
Ele would probably be okay if you couldn’t just camp fire and keep all those boosts at the same time. Warrior and Engineer get the unholy combo of bleed-on-crit +%dmg against foes with conditions in the crit line.
You could say that EM adds a mechanic. But I argue it’s the wrong mechanic for Mantras and it doesn’t contribute to the gameplay. Fiery Wrath on the other hand – while looking blant and too straight forward at first sight – actually makes sense for the class.
The problem is that most of the time the “mechanic” doesn’t work in practice, either you need the active because you’re getting beat pretty badly, or you can keep the passive all day since mobs won’t harm you anyway. Fiery Wrath doesn’t do anything for hybrid builds that Amplified Wrath or Kindled Zeal wouldn’t do better, while massively buffing zerker builds in the process.
Talking about synergy is a bit generous in this case. Yes, unlike RM and PM, HM doesn’t work against EM. Personally I consider it pretty unlikely that the devs had EM in mind when designing HM. HM quite obviously is about actively using the strengh of Mantras – unloading a frontloaded effect in a short timeframe. Not about hoarding charges for some passive effect.
You describe it as choosing between damage and utility but this can be said about many traits and skills. However, the idea of sacrificing a passive bonus for an active effect still remains a core characteristic of Signets across all classes. Therefore, the trait suits Signets way better than Mantras from a conceptual perspective. The only remaining reason to keep EM as a Mantra trait would be a personal dislike for Signets or simply an overall preference for using Mantras.
It’s certainly the same mechanic as Signets use, but that doesn’t mean it’s exclusive to them. Since the active effects of Mantras are very specific, there’s no real reason not to use them, so I think adding a little strategy would be a good thing. Since Signets already have this mechanic as a baseline I would actually be against giving them such a trait, since it biases the choice in favour of sitting on the boring passive all the time. Not that any of our signets demands a real choice in any one build 
Personally, I wouldn’t like it because we already got a Stabiliy Mantra I’d prefer something Blurr/Distortion related since it fits the Duelling line.
Good point, but evade/invul would allow very little active play on either side since you can’t choose when during the channel you want it to activate, plus it’s very similar to the Signet trait.
Amusingly many Warriors complained about not being able to maintain their passive damage traits when Adrenaline was changed. Some classes are just plagued with damage modifiers.
RNG might be bad but so are too many damage modifiers. It’s extremly boring and limits build diversity since skills always have to balanced with their maximum potential in mind. Working on the baseline values might indeed be the way to go.
I think it’s not the damage modifiers themselves, but how they’re handed out. In particular all those with easy-to-fulfill conditions placed in traitlines already conductive to straight-up increasing damage. Instead of giving damage options to support/hybrid builds or introducing new play mechanics (like EM could in theory), they just further cement the “max damage” route as far above and beyond anything else. Compare Unscathed Contender vs. Fiery Wrath+Radiant Power on Guardians for instance: the former requires you to actively avoid getting hit, heavily punishes enemies who fail to stop you in time, and is placed in the “utility” trait line, while the latter are pretty much always active except in 1v1 PvP, just from the basic class mechanic. All they do is shift the power (stat) coefficient from your gear to your traits.
The thing is that Mantras ‘want’ to be used. Harmonious Mantras, Protective Mantras and Restorative Mantras all encourage using the Mantra. Empowering Mantras goes against this trend. It’s not like this necessarily has to be a bad thing. However, if a trait totally defies the related utilities and other traits I wouldn’t call it ‘well designed’.
Damage modificators are boring as hell. But if we wanted one for Mantras it should be something active. I’d rather see +x% damage after using a Mantra. It could also stack in intensity. Simply gaining a passive effect screams Signet all over the place. Let’s not delude ourselves.
That aside, I don’t believe that packing +4-12% damage can justify the utility you lose by not using up your Mantras. This might not be a big deal in PvE but it will be everywhere else.
Harmonious Mantras does synergise with EM, letting you use the full original effect while maintaining the damage bonus. Protective Mantras is “padding” for when you have to recharge mid-combat, not a trait to build around. The idea is that you have to choose between damage and utility, instead of mashing all buttons for TAH DEEEPS! (not saying it’s perfectly implemented, but I’m sure that’s the idea)
First of all, they should really really rework Protective Mantras into something reasonable. This way we might at least trait for a way to deal with the insane cast time.
Second, they could make Mantras regenerate one charge every 15s when out of combat as long as least one charge is left. You won’t be able to abuse it this way but aren’t forced to waste charges just to recharge.
I suggested 1 stack of 3s stability, 10s ICD for Protected Mantras in the other thread, and didn’t get any replies. Maybe keep the toughness bonus.
What frontloaded damage? Mantra of pain is virtually two hits of the third autoattack chain.
The +16% damage on your shatter burst combo while your opponent is dazed and you have stability. Not in PvE, of course.
Mantra of Resolve is 2 condition clears per use, at the rate some mobs apply them you usually have more resistance to condition bombs from null field than mantra of resolve, and null field has good benefit for fractals like Urban or Dredge where stripping those 25 stacks of might and protection is something mantra of resolve won’t do, and it will keep any mobs in the zone clean despite them pulsing boons.
Very few mobs use boons, and you can’t keep up with Dredge unless you wait for them to finish the channel, at which point you’ll have eaten quite a bit of buffed damage from the rest of them. MoR has twice the “burst cleanse” capacity of Null Field, can be used while cc’d, and has about 2x the total throughput rate if spammed on cd.
Do you people not understand that berzerker’s power gives virtually the same benefit as slotting 4 mantras without restricting a warrior’s utility choice? Even if they can’t use burst skills, most warriors don’t even want to use burst skills in PvE and even when they do getting 4 bars of adrenaline happens much faster and without as much damage loss as charging 4 mantras back to back and not including the fact that several of them have cooldowns over 20 seconds.
That awful trait just turns mantras into signet passives you want to keep up.
The obvious choice would be to go the route of Arcane Lightning with ele, where using a mantra triggers a buff to % damage done for x seconds. The % would be set and that way you’re not just stacking mantras you don’t even plan to use but feel forced to slot in order to maximize damage.
The fact that Warriors don’t suffer for ignoring their burst skills is the problem here, not EM. If you want a cheap always-up damage increase, why not just increase the baseline values? The “speedrun groups” would trait 6/6/whatever anyway to gain the +300 power, no need to put an actually useful GM trait there.