Guild Wars 2

So, to the above three posters, why not just lower Retaliation damage further? Or you know, since this would be a major gamewide change, also look into all of those extra condition damage applications on power damage skills that also cause problems in PvE?

I don’t see how the Condition Damage change would really do anything other than add one less stat to the game.

Right now you can have a graph of damage condition application skills do based on their direct damage and scaling plus their condition application type and amount. The devs can, even with the current game, alter condition application skills by upping their base damage, lowering their scaling with power, and either adjust the amount or duration of the condition skill, or even just lower condition damage scaling across the board since its a game wide mechanic.

Your proposal with changing all the scaling to power would just leave the developers with the same exact knobs to balance condition application with. They’d still would have to alter base damage values as necessary, direct damage scaling with power as necessary, the amount of stacks and duration of the applied condition, and whether or not they want to rework the scaling for that condition across the game.

You’d lower the build complexity to the game, which I’m not necessarily against, but that change and many others could still be applied to GW2 as it is right now. In fact, more of a focus on control/enfeebling abilities combined with better support options for all classes is something I think GW2 will end up moving more towards right now.

But I agree with your general sentiment. GW2 as a whole currently feels like it has one foot going in one direction and the other foot in another direction.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Proven.2854:

But can that happen in any balanced game with more than one type of damage?

GW1 had enchants, hexes, conditions, raw damage, armor piercing capabilities, evasions, stances, item bundles, and more. Any form of “hard counters” in that game were so highly circumstantial that it was a rarity to see them in any high level play. Every skill had a give and take. It’s what made builds in guild wars, guild wars. So yes, you can create a meta that puts hard counters on a back burner. In GW2, I don’t think it’s possible for them to even exist because of the structure of the game – many, if not all, need to be removed. Condition nukes also have to be toned down as well as it spawned this terrible meta.

To be honest, I’d rather play Dota than play this trash of a metagame right now.

Woah, woah, woah. Wasn’t the fact that hard counters were less needed because battles took place almost entirely in team fights, so people could specialize more? Similar to WvW, where there is a division in condition cleansing, condition pressure, power damage spiking, CC’ing, etc.?

When you get a variety of builds and you encourage 1v1 situations, unless both builds are extremely well rounded and/or built primarily for duels, you end up in situations where one person just can’t win against the other one.

You’re making a logical fallacy here. I mean, look at DotA 2 since you brought it up. It has Damage, Control, and Support mechanics, but things only really end up looking balanced in team fight situations. In lanes, you can very often end up in situations where one player can’t do much against another without using their tower/creeps/allies for added cover. Some Champions and builds are in a clear advantage against others in 1v1 situations.

K U T M.4539:

I’d like to see more “Bruiser” type specs in the meta, but not with the same damage to sustain ratio that the meta hambow has.

As I said before, we all think the Hammer/Longbow build is on the OP side. Can more people discuss past that?

This is one for all the people that whine that Condition Damage ticking after application is unfair. Also, the anti-spam folks.

As it stands, Retaliation was originally meant to be an anti-spam/anti-burst boon. It used to do that too well though, and was toned down. In most cases it is currently ignored.

Now, Retaliation only procs on the application of a condition (assuming the attack also does some amount of damage). The proposed change: Retaliation now also procs on “damage tick” for conditions.

What does this mean? It means every second you have some combination of Bleed, Poison, Burning, and Torment, you cause an extra tick of Retaliation damage on the person who applied it. This does not scale; you do not get two procs of Retaliation on the same person just because they have Bleeding and Burning on you. Although that can be reconsidered.

This change adds more of a duality with Protection. While Protection prolongs the fight against power damage, Retaliation causes a race to the bottom against condition damage. It also creates a boon that works as a soft counter to condition damage without getting into condition duration wars. Considering Retaliation’s lower damage, it helps the boon keep up with its counterpart condition, Confusion.

And as an aside, I always felt like Retaliation should scale with Vitality in some way. Healing Power directly enhances certain skills, Toughness scales with Protection in the amount of damage reduced, but Retaliation scales with Power when it should be more of a defensive boon. Maybe Vitality scaling should be used for its damage instead of Power, maybe along with Power, or maybe it should scale with some new added functionality someone else can come up with in the future (in the same way life leeching scales with both Power and Healing Power currently, but for different things).

Jelger.6758:

I don’t think it’s about a specific amulet but about having as little hard-counters as possible. In the glass meta there were far more match-ups and fights that were decided by clutch plays and less rock-paper-scissors etc. A mid fight with 3 glass classes is far more exciting to play at watch then warrior’s trying to outdps healing sig and spirit passives and necro’s applying some bleeds from a distance. From the glass perspective things were more balanced in the sense that a moment of tardiness could flip the match regardless of class. But ultimately it wasn’t that much different, the amount of viable meta builds hasn’t increased or decreased, it just changed into a more stale albeit forgiving format (for new players). I personally miss the old meta as this one is quite boring in comparison.

But can that happen in any balanced game with more than one type of damage?

One example I can make is FPS games. There, damage is damage and there’s generally one type. All other effects are there to supplement direct damage. Some games add twists here and there (like in Team Fortress 2) but all damage sources share one graph.

Another example comes from GW2’s PvE content. Since condition damage is seen as mostly useless, the entire game mode has degenerated into a simple scale of damage vs. survivability. And if you learn the encounters well enough, you can go all burst all the time.

But in many other games, you have two damage sources that are considered separate. They usually take the form of Physical and Magic damage. They’re put on different graphs as they both have their own attribute to boost them, as well as separate attributes to reduce them. Physical defense and Magical defense being separate armor stats are a very common mechanic in many RPGs.

But GW2 (and GW1 before it) was designed a bit different. The two damage sources are Power and Condition damage. Both of them hurt you differently and require different strategies. Both of them share many active methods of mitigation (blinds, aegis, dodge, hard CC, etc.) but also have a number differing methods of dealing with them, some active (utility skills) and some passive (toughness and traits). But you have to keep both in mind when making builds or at least prepare to use much of your common mitigation pool to deal with the one type of damage you’re weak to.

And personally, I love that they created a system like this rather than the basic Physical/Magical Attack vs. Defense you see in so many other RPGs.

It actually makes me wonder if Guardians will be run less if more classes get condition mitigation on the level of Cleansing Ire while still being able to get power damage done.

NevirSayDie.6235:

There are quite a few bruisers now. Bomb/nade engineer, any warrior build that uses healing signet, non-settler’s spirit ranger—they’re all pretty much bruisers. Even s/d thief is a type of sustained damage evasion-based bruiser. (d/p, obviously, is not.)

One of the glassiest builds being run currently is terror necro…heheh.

I agree that there were no middle-ground builds at launch, and a lot of people asked for them. I’m glad that there’s not a bunker/burst dichotomy any more. However, I don’t think hambow is special just because it’s a bruiser-type build.

I’ll consider giving you S/D Thief but my issue is that they’re part of the Berserker or Trash crowd. Soldier and Valkyrie feel like the power based balanced amulets. The damage feels less sustained and more like a consistent set of spikes.

Bomb/Nade Engineer I won’t give to you though. For one, it’s a condition spec. For two, they feel like more of a kiting spec than a bruiser spec.

Assuming the nerfs to Warrior are large enough, it may end up being that HamBow is the only real bruiser spec afterward. It has the most synergy for defensive traits, which is what allows it to stay on the front line.

Legion.1569:

Cufufalating.8479:

Ezrael.6859:

The issue between Power and Conditions is how much direct damage can be negated compared to conditions in a fight between the two.

Power damage comes in large chunks, often with clear animations. If you avoid this damage through dodge, blind or block you negate a huge amount of damage.

Direct damage can be further reduced through toughness, protection and the weakness debuff.

Conditions on the other hand are applied a small amount at a time in rapid succession to build up and up in damage over time, quickly reaching 1000-2000 DPS. This means that successfully negating an attack through blind, block or dodge is far less effective overall.

Several conditions can be applied and stacked from range using trait and weapon procs simply by using auto-attack. There is nothing significant to dodge here, you only delay the damage application by 1s by dodging.
Compared to dodging away from a 100B and missing all that burst.

That is true to an extent but direct damage build dont only rely on big hits to kill, they too can wear down opponets the same way conditions do.

Take for example a typical full rabid trap ranger build. On this build, if I am flanking and crit and proc my bleed on crit trait with my shortbow AA I could stack 2 bleeds for a combined duration of 5s (3 from SB, 2 from trait).

With a setup like that my bleeds will tick for 150 ish, and my damge will be 150-250 depending on the target, so essentially my Auto-Attack is going to do 900-1000 damage in total over the next 5 seconds.

A power build could EASILY do the same damage with an auto attack – easily. Full zerker builds can be hitting 2-3k with AA, but thats an extreme case so we wont go off that. The point is though that a condition build is not doing any more damage with its little attacks stacking up than a power build would, its probably even doing less, its just that people dont react to condition builds the same way.

If someone is fighting s warrior and get hits with 3 auto attacks and takes 5K damage, they get nervous and back off or play more defensively, but if they get hit my 3 AA from a condition build and take 800 damage and 5 stacks of bleeding they think “hes barely hurting me, I’m going to keep attacking”, all the while not realising that they are playing themselves into a corner.

My point is.. while conditions builds do wear people down with lots of little attacks often, its something power can do as well they just choose not to because they prefer to go for the #3-5 skill which could hit 8k instantly, instead of playing is slow and using the smaller hits that people wont/cant dodge, or using the ranged weapons that hit less but will hit constantly.

The problem is that condition builds can do this kind of damage, while specing to be full tank, this is because of how condition damage works. Lets say your playing the build you mentioned. You only need condition damage to effect your damage, and some amount of precision to get you around 30% crit chance, every other stat can go to making you tanky, so by using a combination of rabid and dire and you can be max condi dps and max tank. This is made worse by the fact that every profession’s trait line has condition damage paired with either toughness or precision, making it even easier to gain these stats.

For direct damage you need both power and crit damage to augment the damage you deal, and you also need precision to help you reach this damage, so while full zerker will do more damage then a condi class by alot, it does so by sacrificing all of its survivability stats, and the more and more survivability stats you add the more your direct damage suffers, to the point where if you reach the same tankiness that a condi tank can reach, you are putting out much lower dps.

Except that condition builds need those tanky stats. Remember how Burst builds ruled the roost? Condition builds came about by being as defensive as necessary in gear, trait, and utility choice. And even then certain specs had to be buffed for them to have a shot.

Hammer/Longbow then comes about as an example of being tanky while putting out decent power damage (and by decent I mean enough to kill) using a Soldier’s Amulet.

I disagree. Condition builds don’t just use condition damage. They also use things like cripple, chill, and immobilize to snare you and keep you locked down for that damage to go through. Plus, lowering duration for all conditions allows the boon to be more multi-purpose.

If they put any mechanic to counter conditions in the form of a boon, it should be a 33% reduction for all condition duration, not just condition damage.

You know, while Retaliation was a nightmare, it really was a great way to tone down AoE spam.

Alternative title: Do Burst Advocates want nothing but four Berserkers and one Support Guardian per team?

Now, we can all agree that Warriors are a bit on the OP side. They’re getting nerfed. Alright, let’s move on.

I stopped and looked at Hammer/Longbow Warriors for a second. I noticed that almost every choice in the build is aimed at survivability. Cleansing Ire + Burst Mastery. Traited stances for duration and Vigor on use. Triple stances, or two stances and an extra stability source that doubles as extra damage reduction. Lyssa runes with signet cooldowns. And of course the best healing source in the game with Healing Signet + Adrenal Health.

On top of all that, you’ll often see them run a Soldier’s Amulet. A Power based amulet when many people still complain about it being a condi meta (hint: It’s not. It’s a super tanky meta).

Currently Warriors and Guardians have the most damage and condition resistant builds in the game. They’re living the dream of being able to go into the middle of a team fight and get work done. And unlike with two Guardians fighting each other, with two Warriors one of them will eventually die.

But does anyone else remember the biggest issue back when the game was early and new, and Burst ruled the meta? It was the fact that there was no such thing as a sturdy/balanced build at the high end. It was go Burst, hit like a wet noodle, or go home. People didn’t enjoy Guardians being nigh-unkillable, but they didn’t enjoy the best builds being the ones that completely wiped out people in seconds, for the sake of newer players.

Hammer/Longbow Warriors are one of the first consistent damage Power builds to rule the meta. The closest before was Bunker Elementalist, but they were primarily Support focused like the Spirit Ranger we have today. Warriors are currently about heavy pressure, using powerful control effects like Pin Down or Earthshaker, and a broken area denial ability in Combustive Shot to bring people down.

Still, the build is a bit OP. It’s getting nerfed. But level of difficulty to play aside, do people really not want to see builds like this in the meta? If builds in GW2 were supposed to be about Damage, Control, and Support, doesn’t it make sense that the backbone of a team consist of those that can take hits while remaining a threat? And isn’t the primary way for an enemy to be a threat in any situation is through Damage, Control, or some combination of the two?

Warriors even served a similar purpose back in GW1, with pressure team comps pushing down on the enemy with a tanky frontline while the backline attacked with condition/hex pressure or spike damage.

The way I see it, Power builds rely too much on burst. Because everything they do is set up or damage, their damage gets cut down all the time by mitigation efforts. You see this in burst builds against burst builds, where fights can go on for extended amounts of time if both sides bring enough ways to counter the other side’s burst until heals come off cooldown.

Hammer/Longbow Warriors are one of the few power builds that rely on consistent damage output. And a majority of their trait and utility choices are all defensive in nature. Triple stances, or swapping a stance out for an extra Stability source. Cleansing Ire with Burst Mastery. Traited stances for duration as well as Vigor on use. Lyssa runes combined with cooldown reduction for the elite. And despite all this, they still need a Soldier’s Amulet to stay alive in a team fight.

Do advocates of burst want there to be Berserker’s Amulet and nothing else? Either you’re running a burst combo spec or you’re the Support Guardian?

Mbelch.9028:

Balancing for conditions happened to three classes.. Thief, engi and necro. (Poison, poison and dumb fire.)

Were the changes big enough and will they be felt?

Those are the only revealed changes. We don’t know how much else could happen. And you forgot to mention Pin Down.

Heizero.9183:

zapv.8051:

My point is your acting like condition application is a problem. Condition application is how condition builds do damage. Taking it away for 2 seconds gives one more invuln for 2 seconds. Consider that blocks, dodges, and invulns already mitigate condition damage that is being applied to you just the same as direct damage. That means you would have one extra way to mitigate condition damage. Currently there are more ways to mitigate condition damage then direct damage. Did you forget that every way you can stop direct damage you are also able to stop condition damage by not letting it be applied? Then you have condition removal, and condition immunity which several classes have. On top of that your asking for a 3rd type of condition only damage mitigation. That would crush the condition classes in this game which you don’t play based on your sig. I understand thieves have a hard time with condition builds, and maybe that needs to be buffed, but all these crazy ideas about completely destroying condition damage are ridiculous when it can already be mitigated in more ways than direct damage. Maybe some condition builds are over the top and need to be toned down, but changing the game drastically will just add more imbalance and less variety.

Direct damage counters:
Blocks
Protection
Invuln
Positioning
Blind
“Zero damage” abilities such as Endure Pain
Dodging
Total:7

Condition damage counters:
Blocks(Still damages if applied)
Invuln(still damages if applied)
Blind(same as first two)
Dodging
Condition Removal
Condition Immunity (Berserker Stance/Automated Response)
Total:6

1. Positioning counts for both sides. Line of Sight and AoEs.
2. Hey, direct damage also already leaves your health reduced if you block, invlun, or blind after they hit you with an attack. Wow, who would have thought…
3. You forgot Condition Duration reduction (Purging Flames). Unfortunately, not all classes have it evenly. On the other hand, not all classes have equal access to Protection either.
4. You forgot to add Aegis to both sides.
5. You can count this under Condition Removal if you want, but you didn’t mention Condition Transfer and Condition Conversion.

Overall, I think things are pretty balanced mechanics-wise. There’s also the fact that they do less damage overall and need to be applied more often to keep up with direct damage focused builds. As PvP and WvW has shown, the best defense against most condition builds tends to be putting them on the defensive and forcing them to kite. They can’t turn around, get one good hit in, then keep running like damage burst builds can. If they aren’t constantly hitting you, their effectiveness goes way down.

Coulter.2315:

Bunker (Guardian), Teamfight Tanky (Warrior), Teamfight Bursty (Mesmer/Necro), Decapper (Engi/Thief), Home Bunker/Support (Ranger/Warrior/Engi)

Depends on the classes you have available but something along those lines.

Yeah, this is pretty much it.

If anything, I wish that stats were weighted higher to traits than they are to gear compared to the present.

I understand these posts less and less. I go into solo queue and I see…

Necromancer: Condi or MM based, MM being more popular (and working off Power).
Warrior: Condi or Power based, Power being more popular.
Thief: Power mostly.
Elementalist: Power.
Guardian: Power.
Ranger: Condi mostly.
Engineer: Condi mostly.
Mesmer: Power or Condi based, Condi being more popular.

Next time I’m on I’m going to start taking a census. Out of the eight classes, I see five of them have power builds most represented. If you delete Elementalist from the list Power still serves the majority in solo queue.

In casted tournaments I see 1 support, 1-2 condi classes max, and the other 2-3 power based running Soldier or Berserker.

sorrow.2364:

Proven.2854:

You do know that there are 4 Living Story teams, they each have three to four months to plan and develop the content for one month of Living Story release, and they each share the help from a pool of content makers (artists, writers, dungeon designers, sound engineers, etc.) around the building, right?

Sure, now tell me how many PvP teams are there to balance the game and release PvP contents, then tell me everything is fine.

Alright, then say that instead of the ignorant sounding post you made before. And then tell me how practical it is to have more than one balance team in a single game.

Actually, when I remember that Bountiful Theft is a guaranteed Vigor even if you don’t strip any boons, I’d also have Return the Favor give a guaranteed 5-10s Weakness.

How about a new Master trait in the Trickery line (so it competes with Bountiful Theft) that transferred two conditions from the Thief to the enemy on successful Steal?

Edit: Actually, when I remember that Bountiful Theft is a guaranteed Vigor even if you don’t strip any boons, I’d also have Return the Favor give a guaranteed 5-10s Weakness even if you have no conditions on you.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Proven.2854:

sorrow.2364:

4 months to push out a balance patch while the Living World team delivers contents each two weeks is kinda sad imho.

I mean, do they have only 4 people working on the PvP team?

You do know that there are 4 Living Story teams, they each have three to four months to plan and develop the content for one month of Living Story release, and they each share the help from a pool of content makers (artists, writers, dungeon designers, sound engineers, etc.) around the building, right?

You do know when you word things like this you come across as a massive kitten right? Jesus.

I do. If I’m going to respond to what’s essentially a troll post I might as well not be respectful.

sorrow.2364:

4 months to push out a balance patch while the Living World team delivers contents each two weeks is kinda sad imho.

I mean, do they have only 4 people working on the PvP team?

You do know that there are 4 Living Story teams, they each have three to four months to plan and develop the content for one month of Living Story release, and they each share the help from a pool of content makers (artists, writers, dungeon designers, sound engineers, etc.) around the building, right?

Don’t disagree with you OP but I’m bored so I figured I’d try to write a post puzzling out all of J. Peter’s position on the matter.

1. They want the Warrior to be a front line class with the potential to survive that Guardian currently has.
2. Every class has a best-in-slot heal and then other heals that only do better in more synergistic situations. Healing Surge is versatile in the way that it also fuels the profession mechanic in certain builds, and Mending doubles as extra condi clear, so let’s making it Healing Signet. You can see this thought process on most of the other healing skills that classes commonly use, where if it’s versatile for more than just healing due to innate ability or trait support, it won’t be the best-in-slot heal for a majority of builds.
3. Now that we’ve created this thing and since then have had new players come in and rely on it, they don’t want to take it completely away unless absolutely necessary (like they felt when they nerfed Signet of Restoration, which is a decision I assume they regret making).

From there they realized:

1. It’s very synergistic with Cleansing Ire, but with the hammer damage nerf they can lock the most powerful build running Healing Signet into a known quantity that can be predicted/metagamed against until they come up with a more satisfying solution to it specifically.
2. They agree with the fact that it’s the healing over time that is the signet’s greatest strength, but they also want to preserve that strength; they want to keep a combination of active and passive effects in the game as seen with Spirit Ranger.
3. If they can get this right they can turn around and focus on Mending next.

You can also clearly see that now they’re afraid of heal slot signets considering how badly Signet of Vampirism came out. I’m assuming that it’ll get a buff in the same patch Healing Signet gets a nerf and Restoration gets buffed back to before. They might touch Signet of Malice and the new Mesmer signet as well.

Most of this can be easily picked apart but the devs are now trying to be more careful and are getting into a rhythm of balance updates every 3-4 months that they want to stick to. There’s also the issue that they’re literally balancing an entirely new version of the game; they aren’t just doing one change a time but doing a bunch of changes and are currently in test servers trying to balance those out against each other. They don’t want to introduce any tiny change ahead of time because it may have unintended consequences for certain builds or introduce a bug that isn’t seen on their test servers because that tiny change was originally made while being linked to other changes. And the easiest way to keep any of those possible worst case scenarios from happening and taking up extra dev time just to debugg and fix is to not indulge on what can easily become a slippery slope of hotfixes.

Personally I want to see one or two out of these choices made:

• Decouple the adrenaline gain from Cleansing Ire from the condition cleanse, and make them two separate traits in that trait line. It’s a further nerf to the current spec running Merciless Hammer along with Cleansing Ire.
• Alter the scaling for Healing Signet so that it has the current heal per second only if running a Cleric’s Amulet + Jewel. If they want them to be as tanky/survivable as a Bunker Guardian, have them make the same sacrifices damage wise. Instead of support they can be pumping out control.
• Figure out a satisfying way to get Cleansing Ire to not proc if you miss the initial hit of Combustive Shot and Flurry.

The first option is what I’d personally prefer. The third is probably what they’re going for but had to spend time making game engine alterations to the way those specific skills worked to do it.

I didn’t even realize that a version of my Vitality/Precision/Healing Power suggestion exists as a stat in PvE as of this recent patch:

Zealot
People are already talking about how it can be used for Elementalist and Guardian builds, but as I mentioned in my first post in the thread this stat combination works with Vampiric Necromancer builds and Venom Leech Thief builds, especially with their new healing skills. This Amulet should go in ASAP.

I honestly can’t make a case for why many of the other combinations shouldn’t go in. But of the ones I can:

Dire can’t be allowed without a rebalance in the stats or in how conditions work else people will riot. Comically enough, with the way Amulet/Jewel stat divisions work, and how many condition builds require precision, adding Dire would probably not be the end of the world. It would only really be a buff for Necromancer and Warrior condition builds (albeit a big buff), while allowing some other condition builds to become possible. Still for the rioting, what could work is a tweak to the stats in PvP only similar to what was done with Berserker (in this case, let’s lower the Toughness and add a smidgen of Power).

Knight with Toughness as the main stat would make the 1% of people that try out Barbarian throw it away (including me). I don’t expect you to put this one in as is without changing Barbarian. There’s also the fact that Barbarian was put in as its replacement from the beginning.

I’m not sure which is better, Settler or Apothecary. I don’t think we need both, and personally I think Settler is the better set. I’d say leave out Apothecary just because it’s not really necessary (I doubt the extra healing power is going to add anything combined with the loss of Toughness) but putting it in will allow you to take away another complaint from people who primarily play PvE/WvW. Putting in Apothecary would also allow people to mix the Amulet and Jewel, which might do something for all I know.

Giver I’m not sure how you guys even feel about Boon Duration on armor in PvP. Considering how you’re changing the runes that’s something for you guys to consider. As it stands, Giver would probably be just as unbalancing as Dire could be, it would be flocked to by Bunker Guardians (and Bunker Elementalists if their sustain comes back), and might create a number of other Bunker builds as well. Do we want more Bunker builds?

Sentinel Same problem as Barbarian. If you don’t put in Knight at all this wouldn’t be a bad choice though.

Shaman Made useless by Settler. Actually, looking at this versus Settler makes me wonder what they’re doing with the PvE power creep.

Also, I hope you guys put some thought about these two stat combinations:

Rampager probably needs a change to make it more useful, but it’s also not used much in PvE or WvW. Maybe a change that affects it across all three modes.

Valkyrie again suffers from the problem with Knight vs. Barbarian: Toughness is considered more important than Vitality. Something needs to be done about that.

Just to note again, we have been moving away from a condi meta and have had a mostly tanky/high survival meta for the last couple months. On average it’s been only two out of five team builds running on condition damage, usually just the Ranger and Engineer. I know a number of future balance changes will continue to increase options for countering conditions but there’s a good chance that after any patch with Dire included will cause people to whine endlessly even if the meta changes. Be prepared for that.

Also, I’m of the belief that all people want are more good power options. As it stands any stat combination outside of Berserker is seen as doing almost no direct damage, with the exception of Hammer Warriors and MM Necros running Soldier’s Amulet. Something has to be done to at least change that perception.

There’s also the fact that builds that are hard to kill are considered by most less fun to fight against outside of team fights. It’s the nature of Conquest that causes these bunker builds to be so useful, and although you’ve put out a lot of maps that lower that usefulness in various ways (Kyhlo with the trebuchet being unblockable, Temple and its buffs, Spirit Watch and the orb’s ability to instantly decap, let’s not talk about Skyhammer…) it probably isn’t enough for these people. So what I’m really saying here is to put out more maps and to do something about Spirit Watch before shoving it into team queue.

Whatever currency they use, I hope that you buy both the skills, amulets, and whatever else they make unlockable from a vendor.

That way if it costs something that’s character bound like skill points, a character that’s skill point rich can buy it and unlock it for the whole account, much like the Mistwolf Elite can be unlocked for the account through gems.

The question was if there were any mobility options. Not if there were any good ones. And everyone else already mentioned all the rest. Oh, I suppose there’s also Death Blossom.

Can people please stop thinking that we’re getting double sigils tomorrow?

Everything mentioned in that livestream won’t arrive until March at the earliest.

It doesn’t have to be Deceptive Evasion. Mesmers just need more clone generation in general as a baseline and there are many ways to achieve this. Otherwise there needs to be one or two other traits that can produce clones at the rate of Deceptive Evasion.

Dagger main-hand also gives you the option of using Heartseeker for movement.

Mesmers are the ones that really get screwed on Orb Running. Them and Necros.

Cynz.9437:

GW2 is only game i encountered where spamming aoe is actually a good things and comes only at low CD costs.

Sorry for the snip, but reading this reminded me of something. I was getting back into FPS gaming recently and found myself equating what things I could to GW2 combat. And then I came to grenades.

In order for AoE damage to pressure a group of players, it has to be effective. Else we would have the same sort of stacking seen in PvE.

I disagree with only one point from the original post. There are builds for all classes designed to ignore some major part of their profession mechanics except for within dire circumstances. Many of them aren’t very viable, but they exist and have trait support.

But the major thing I agree with you is that Mesmer doesn’t have enough base support for their mechanic. And the primary issue is clone generation.

My own solution would be to have clones generated from auto-attack chains on all Mesmer weapons, like Scepter currently does. From there, all special clone generation skills like ILeap, Mirror Blade, etc. would either have their bonus effect bumped up or create a Phantasm instead.

From there, Phantasm and and Clone-on-Death traits would have be nerfed somewhat or pushed further up their trait lines.

Clones from auto-attacks is the only other thing I can think of to keep clone generation high while getting reliance off of Deceptive Evasion.

JETWING.2759:

I don’t know

But i d think that with exception of celestial, all others combos should have only 3 stat, ex:
- Power, toughness and vitality
- Condition Dmg, Toughness and Vitality
- Healing Power, Toughness and Vitality.

I d think also that instead predefined stat combo (as already are), all amulets could grant a major stat, and all jewels could grant a minor stat.
Each amulet (major stat) could bear 2 jewels (minor stats), ex:

• Power Amulet (major) + Precision Jewel (minor) + Toughness Jewel (minor)
• Precision Amulet (major) + Power Jewel (minor) + Toughness Jewel (minor)
• Toughness Amulet (major) + Power Jewel (minor) + Precision Jewel (minor)
  Or even
• Power Amulet (major) + Power Jewel (minor) + Power Jewel (minor)

Pros:
- More build diversity.
- Players don’t have about QQ because all classes can choose the best for themselves and your respective builds.
- Unlock program space allowing spend extra space with another things (instead all actual and incoming combo stats, could have only 10 amulets and 10 jewels each one increasing points in one stat as power, precision, ferocity, cond damage, cond duration, boon duration, heal power, toughness and vitality. Celestials could grant points in all stats as already)

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

why not just give us 10 items to mix and match already? that would be fantastic.
back item cannot since it is a skin display item, so no stats on the back item.

give us.

amulet + jewel

ring1 + jewel
ring2 + jewel

accessory1 + jewel
accessory2 + jewel

and all possible stat combos.

i.e.
Major: something
Minor: something
Minor: something

I dislike these two posts because they both contain ways that Dire could be forcibly put into PvP. This shouldn’t happen for various reasons, unless you want to be like this guy…

Arpheus.6918:

My suggestion: Bring Dire to PvP so that condition damage has to be balanced finally.
When you know that Dire is too powerful why did you even bring it into WvW? In order to get it balanced for WvW it should be brought to PvP which would lead to a condition nerf which is needed.

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Why did you make two of these?
Anyway, my response copied from the other thread:

“I’m not absolutely sure, but I think it creates a cleansing/regen AoE at the point of contact.
Try using it in melee range and see if it works.”

Yeah. You can do something similar with water fields if you use projectiles through it. Allies in melee range with the target, or who are caught in the projectile’s path, get hit with a small AoE regeneration. You’ll see numbers pop up to confirm this.

I’d like something with Condition Damage with a minor stat. I also wonder if Healing Power could be paired with Precision.

Something like
798 Healing Power
569 Precision
569 Condition Damage

or
798 Healing Power
569 Precision
569 Vitality
although this would be mostly aimed at Vampiric Necros

and perhaps an alteration to Rampagers to be
798 Power
569 Precision
569 Condition Damage

As said before, Healing Signet needs to be the best hps Warrior heal because it doesn’t do anything else. It doesn’t refill adrenaline (for those builds that use Healing Surge early to get their max adrenaline power and crit damage bonuses… if they exist), it doesn’t remove conditions (Mending), and it doesn’t negate damage (Defiant Stance). It is the most weak to classes that can put constant poison on you.

I’m also assuming that if they put an active effect on it, that effect won’t be useful for healing but for something else, and it may cause them to lower the Healing Signet hps. The dev stream alluded to that being their aim unless they don’t come up with anything good enough that they can fit into the patch in time.

They said that the 8% puts it near Healing Surge’s amount, that they’re still playing around with the numbers, and that they’re redesigning it a little to give the active some kind of enticing effect.

Don’t just post a quip without context.

2pm EST for the EU tournament today… the same usual time as Ready Up.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Proven.2854:

But as it is the current meta for PvE is degenerative.

This is one of those statements that should require massive amounts of evidence before people accept it, but clearly you take it as somehow self-evident.

The current meta for PVE is working perfectly. Give a complete noob a set of zerker gear and send him into Arah p1 for the first time. See if he can even make it to the champ entities. Give him full tank gear, he might actually make it. The entire concept, as I have described elsewhere, is that in PvE you take as much defensive gear as you need to survive… and no more. This system is working exactly as intended.

The problem is that the content is old and on farm. There are good tactics for every dungeon and fractal and even bad players have done the content enough that they don’t need the tanky gear anymore. This isn’t because Zerker gear is magically turning them into good players. It’s because even bad players can learn content given a long enough amount of time.

If an xpac dropped tomorrow, with 5 new dungeons/elite zones with many bosses that had good and unique lupicus style mechanics, all the bad players who currently get away with zerker would go back to faceplanting regularly and nobody would argue that Zerker is too powerful.

It really does bother me that people are treating this as a gear problem when it’s so obviously a content problem. It really does bother me that the devs are treating it as a gear problem, most likely because it’s easier for them to deal with a gear problem and not a content problem.

If there is any problem now, its that there is a barrier of entry for new players who are expected to run zerker in pugs but haven’t had the year+ of time to learn the encounters. Those players do need time to learn and they should be using tanky gear if needed but they are put off because they are late to the game. If they were joining the game right at the release of a new xpac as I described it would be much less of a problem.

But again, that points to a content problem.

In other games, if after all the characters/matchups/strategies/encounters are figured out it is found that one or more character(s)/strategy(ies)/playstyle(s) is so much more effective than the majority of options in the game, the game is considered degenerative. That’s the current issue with PvE, and there are many ways that it can be solved. Blood Red Arachnid called for an AI and encounter redesign, and I agree with that sentiment.

From my point of view, you’re taking what the developers said and did in the past as proof towards their intentions of the current situation. You’re also assuming that they’re going back on their actions as a response to the player base when it could easily be because they didn’t realize that the consequences of their actions didn’t match their intentions.

I also see that you’re fine with the situation now because it does have a balance within it and the content is easy enough to clear even if you’re not using the absolute best by a wide margin strategy. I’m personally not fine with it because it doesn’t match up with the rest of the game. Even in WvW you’ll find organized groups using a combination of builds requiring Soldier, Berserker, Cleric, Dire/Rabid, and maybe other types of gear. And a lot of this gear I assumed was created with the intention of not having one or two sets be the absolute best for PvE as well.

Alternatively I can just go back to PvP and WvW where DPS isn’t the be all and end all king, because encounter design doesn’t make it valued so much further above the rest and all of the ways players have to mitigate DPS from AI is extremely effective on other players too.

Actually, have you considered nerfing Shadow’s Rejuvenation? Lower the healing from it, and have it apply protection for 4 or 5 seconds with some ICD of perhaps 5 seconds. It doesn’t prevent conditions from being a pain on thieves after they’ve stealthed but it allows them to better position themselves for their next attack or get out of the fire.

You just reminded me that one of the ways people managed to beat Mesmers was understanding their burst and how to dodge it, then rushing the Mesmer down. PU is more annoying because they’re putting out Phantasms that stay further back and out of most AoE and cleave. You have to go out of your way to kill some them. And the Mesmer himself is more protected with stealth and defensive boons, so you can’t rush him down as easily anymore.

Kryshade.6075:

If Anet was smart and wanted to leave MM as a viable option without it being a brain dead no skill build then they would take away the passive healing/passive attacks and make it so that minions ONLY interact when their skill is triggered. Make it so that minions don’t absorb any damage or count towards AoE cap and don’t intercept projectiles.

This is honestly where I wish they went with Guardian Spirits. Right now they’re just a weaker form of Necromancer minions. They’d also would have needed to change the traits though.

As to the rest of your post, passive builds are fine as long as they’re as easy to counter as they are to run. MM has it’s weaknesses which is why players tend to use them on side points or other engineered 1v1 situations: it increases their chances of success since most people aren’t running much AoE for those situations.

I’d prefer if Impale applied Bleed, and then Rip turned those Bleeds into Torment.

But the biggest issue is just the duration really.

purgatoryz.6038:

I sincerely hope they don’t have some kind of knee jerk reaction here. Since zerk is the meta (not really a meta, because it’s been unchanged) in PvE it’s probably safe to say that a very high percentage of all armor created or worn has a critical damage modifier.

If they make changes they need to take into consideration the thousands (millions?) of collective hours of farming/crafting/grinding that’s gone into people acquiring their current gearset.

This honestly wouldn’t be a problem if Ascended was never a thing.

I think stealthless Thief builds just need a high initiative weapon skill to help against conditions, like Infiltrator’s Strike on its return.

A crit damage nerf would need to be tied to a mob health reduction across the board, especially on Champs/Elites/Legendaries.

stof.9341:

Proven.2854:

Basically, investments in becoming a primary control or support player is crappy relative to investments in becoming a primary DPS player.

There is no investment into becoming a primary control player. At most, you need a level 1 white weapon or two and to be naked. There is no stat in the gear that you need to invest into to control. Ok, maybe you need runes and sigils at most.

As for support, short of the pure healing support, there is no stats either. Still, healing support isn’t that good in the game because ANet doesn’t want primary healers anyway. In fact, most group heals have very bad scaling with healing power compared to your personal heal.

So, a support or a control player that geared into anything other than Zerk isn’t necessarily optimal. Because you DO dps some inbetween control or support actions.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Proven.2854:

The envisioned scenario is a combination of players geared for DPS, Control, and Support being the optimal group for clearing dungeons.

I’ve quoted your mistake for you. This is not the scenario anet envisioned when designing a no trinity game. This is not the scenario I envisioned when I was told this is a no trinity game.

This is the scenario envisioned by people who seem want to play some other game, but for some reason stick with this one.

I guess I’ll say it for the third time in this thread… every character has to dps, control and support. That is what anet promised when they said “no trinity.” This is what they delivered.

I suppose I’ll repeat something else too….

Traits and skills determine playstyle (aka dps, support, control)

Gear determines offensive vs defense.

People clamoring for more useful support and control value in pve should be talking about a TRAIT and UTILITY SKILL rebalance, not a gearing change

I’m not asking for a gearing change. I’m asking for combat encounter change. You’ve said it yourself, but in other parts of the game you have to deal with more unavoidable damage. If other stats were more valued in encounters we’d be better shape. Such as a situation that required a Hammer Warrior to wade through ranged enemies to lock down someone in the back, only to have to switch out once he needs to find cover. Or a Sword Thief that needs to keep an enemy pulled to the side so they a combination attack can’t occur. Encounters that force people to split up more and be unable to rely on the group’s active defenses alone to make it through.

Or maybe that’s not the answer. Maybe my arguments are simplistic. Maybe they need to make Healing Power more useful or do some kind of gear change after all like introducing some new stat that can replace something like Vitality. One immediate step is to make Condition Damage better for fights.

But as it is the current meta for PvE is degenerative.

The problem is in the game mechanics devaluing a majority of the possible investments in the game. The primary investment of the game is gear, since traits and skills are easily swapped in and out (outside of weapon skills because of stats on weapons). The fact that there are many mechanics for support and control that do not have to be geared for to be especially useful for the purpose of clearing a majority of hard content mean that eventually the community will see anything outside of Berserker/Assassin as virtually useless in PvE.

Basically, investments in becoming a primary control or support player is crappy relative to investments in becoming a primary DPS player. So much so, in fact, that even bringing a mixed group is horrible when compared to bringing just 5 DPS players. Because of this, the game might as well be stat less in PvE with everyone naturally getting Berserker/Assassin stats.

The envisioned scenario is a combination of players geared for DPS, Control, and Support being the optimal group for clearing dungeons. Currently we have people geared for DPS, traited for DPS, some Control, and a little Support (primarily reflects), and using utility skills and profession combos to make up the rest of the Support (25 might stacks, 25 vulnerability stacks, quickness, banners, etc.).

There are some issues that can be seen from the envisioned scenario, like the fact we may get one of the problems from the Holy Trinity with people refusing to do content without specific roles being present, but we already have some of that with people refusing to work with other people geared in non-Berserker.

Following this, groups that don’t follow the envisioned scenario will still be very effective, but not completely. As an example, a full Berserker group can say, be 90% as effective as a specifically geared and diverse DPS/Control/Support group. A full Control group can be 75% as effective and a full Support group can be 60% as effective.

Reaching the envisioned scenario can only realistically be gained by changing the AI mechanics. We know that there are ways to have fights that don’t allow everyone to just go full Berseker as the most optimal strategy, as seen in WvW and PvP. Finding a way to do that with enemy AI is the goal.

Hate Skyhammer, but I actually like Spirit Watch. Requires coordination (although it’s difficult to get enough of it in Solo q) and the mechanic can actually be used for comebacks that don’t feel as binary as the Lord on Foefire. A shame about the profession imbalance though.

Still, I just noticed I hadn’t queued much over the last couple days and I realized it was probably because the last time I did I got 3 Skyhammer pops in a row.

A priority system would be best I think. All players should abide by the same rules. In addition, you can have different finishers run on different priority lists, but that might get too complicated.

There’s also the option of triggering multiple fields at once, but this would need some limit like only up to three fields can be triggered by projectile finisher, and etc.

If not full cleanses, I’d like to see more targetted and priority based cleanses. The current system of trying to cover conditions just leads to too much UI watching.

Either way, if condition application is near guaranteed, then cleansing needs to be closer to near guaranteed as well.

So, you say the items are worthless. Someone comes in and reminds you that you can still use them up with extra crafts (which you could also then turn around and salvage) or to make dyes. No, it’s not an efficient use of time/money, but you want a use for them. So there you go.

If you still don’t want to do it, don’t do it. Just delete them.

As for finishers, can’t you just double click to use them anyway even if you have the infinite finisher unlocked?

Why is everyone such a hoarder?