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Ideas of engineer skill reworks

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Redeploying turrets as you describe it sounds nice, but I think it might work better as a trait, instead of a basic feature.

Right now, a good engi with the right turret build can hold a point pretty much indefinitely against just about any one attacker, and can last pretty long against two, as long as a staff ele or a condi-focused build doesn’t show up. Giving that sort of build the mobility to chase other players down without exposing themselves might be a little too good, unless they have to give up something else in the trait tree to do so.

And this is why engineers can’t have nice things. The whole profession is so tuned for SPVP it is sickening.

I’m sorry if I came off as an sPvP snob, that wasn’t my intention. Though I’m somewhat amused that just because the last big patch has been given them one really good bunker build, Engineers are suddenly “tuned for SPVP” after more than a year of being declared “mediocre at almost everything” with necros and rangers (not that it’s something I ever agreed with).

Anyway, now that I think about it, it wouldn’t be too bad, so long as redeploying had it’s own cooldown, one that started every time the turret is redeployed so you can’t simply chase people willy-nilly across the map with your 2-3 turrets; I think the fact that it leaves you kinda rooted in one spot is a balancing point for turrets, even in PvE; The ease that a turret Engi can hold against waves of (non-AoE-happy) mobs is almost too great for them to be able to deploy at any moment with no regards to how long it’s since the last time they were used.

I wish that was my experience. For turrets either do crap all or gets aggro trained in no time if there is more than one mob about, AOE spammy or not.

Ideas of engineer skill reworks

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Redeploying turrets as you describe it sounds nice, but I think it might work better as a trait, instead of a basic feature.

Right now, a good engi with the right turret build can hold a point pretty much indefinitely against just about any one attacker, and can last pretty long against two, as long as a staff ele or a condi-focused build doesn’t show up. Giving that sort of build the mobility to chase other players down without exposing themselves might be a little too good, unless they have to give up something else in the trait tree to do so.

And this is why engineers can’t have nice things. The whole profession is so tuned for SPVP it is sickening.

Suggestion: Necros stronger as fight goes on

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Frenk, the idea is that only after 40 seconds you have 16 stacks of might. However, it works only in combat, thus’ you cannot pre-prepare it. 16% more damage after 40 seconds doesn’t seem too overpowered in my opinion, considering most fights are over by then.

Add strenght runes to that: -> 25 stacks of might in about 30 seconds which could lasts more than TWO minutes + an additional +7% damage.

You have to NEVER forget about rune/sigils combinations.

And this i think is a problem with the game in general. Rather than making the runes and such a “nice” addition to the core traits and skills, traits and skills are held back because adding rune X or food Y ends up turning the toon into a demi-god.

And so we end up with a whole lot of meh looking traits and skills because they only shine when combined with X and Y, resulting in pigeonholed builds.

BTW, i think i would play the swapping (DS, weapon sets) a fair bit more if i could actually see the state of the skills while not in them. But then that would reveal that GW2 is more like a multi-bar MMORPG than ANet may be willing to admit…

Ready Up: Balance Philosophy - 6/13 @ Noon PDT

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

While taking a break from the game, I’ve been setting my interest on my alt characters, particularly on my Mesmer, and there are some things that annoy me on it, about its strengths and weaknesses, that has prevented me from playing it more often. Although it’s not my main class, I feel that is actually a good reason for why I might provide some valuable feedback, as I probably am not the only one feeling this way.

Crowd Control
I love crowd control, and I loved to spread Panic, Cry of Pain/ Frustration, Mistrust, Clumsiness and the like over the mobs in GW1. While I agree that Mesmer shouldn’t be getting sustained aoe damage, I think their sustained aoe control is a bit… lacking as well, when it shouldn’t. This is specially a PvE (and perhaps WvW) issue, where there’s a lot of mobs/ zergs to deal with. Currently, most of mesmer’s key utilities are on the support side of the spectrum.

CC in GW2 do not control anything. They are fighting game combo breakers (interrupts) with a bit of CC flavoring so that people may still think they are playing a MMORPG.

Suggestion: Necros stronger as fight goes on

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

I think their basic idea of “stronger as the fight goes on” is that it accumulating life force opens up the ability to jump into death shroud to let rip its skills. Then pop back out to accumulate some more. Think of it as a milder form of the attunement dance of elementalists or kit juggling of engineers.

On Reflects...

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

The basic issue is that ANet took the computationally cheap route with reflects.

In contrast to retaliation, reflect pretty much flip the projectile around, attackers stats and all, and throw it back at the attacker.

All well and good in PVP where the numbers are within a limited range, but blows up when you get the “dodge or die” projectile spam of PVE bosses.

Two options.

1. make reflect work like retaliation, and base the damage on the reflect caster, not the attacker.

2. give up on the whole “active combat” malarky in PVE, as people are looking at every last way of avoiding it anyways (stack in corner and spam DPS being the prime example).

Don't hate on the zerg

in Festival of the Four Winds

Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

That’s why the game has scaling. If 20 people are on him, he’s hard enough for 15-20 people. If 30 are on him then he scales up. The mobs already do that, they just currently scale too aggressively, so that a 40 man zerg causes them to scale to be a challenge for a 60-man zerg.

Not sure if it is overly aggressive scaling, or simply ANet overestimating the average DPS boost a character will bring to the fight.

For example if the person that shows up is playing a condition build, quite a bit of his DPS will be lost thanks to the hard cap on condition stacks.

never mind that there is something like a 30% difference between zerker and cleric, meaning that if you get something like 4 guys in cleric you are one short compared to the DPS from the same number of zerkers.

#1 Skill balance (mostly PvE)

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

The thing about engineer pistol #1 is that because of aftercast it has a lower fire rate than the tool tip suggests. When actually measured, the fire rate of rifle and pistol is the same. But when comparing tooltips the pistol should be a quarter second faster.

Hidden afterfcasts have been a issue with the game since day one. Hell, initially no skill even had a windup entry in their tooltips. Only channeled skills had a time entry at all. So the first thing people did was to sit down, record skills being fired at mist golems, and basically frame count to document windups and aftercasts.

Don't hate on the zerg

in Festival of the Four Winds

Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Hardly. The problem with getting a proper split is simple. Even if you tell everyone “go to X boss”, theyll assume someone else will go, and therefore NOBODY goes.

Nailed it in one!

The basic problem is group psychology. The larger the group, the harder it becomes to take initiative. End result is that everyone stand around unless someone with a semblance of authority specifically orders that person to take action.

Also, the automatic scaling is wonky. I suspect that ANet has calculated some “average” DPS pr character and used that to tune the health scaling.

Problem is that if you get say 5 people in defensive gear, the boss will take longer than average. and if you get 5 in DPS gear it will be a short fight.

End result is that unless you bring the DPS you risk actually making a situation worse by showing up at a boss that is lagging behind. This because the additional health may be more than the additional DPS you bring, making the fight take longer than if you stayed away.

recieving heals inside ds is needed

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

While the new trait is a interesting move, it is pretty much regeneration without the boon.

In any case, ANet is all about balancing the edge cases. Sadly this leaves anything not out on the extreme edge wanting.

What they are looking at is not individual skills on their own, but what happens when the skill is combined with the trait, is combined with the gear, is combined with the food to make a massive one trick pony or glass cannon.

And then they locate the biggest piece of that pile, and “shave” it…

Wooden Potatoe's Clone Experiment

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

I think the reason Lich Clone wasn’t auto-attacking is because that particular skill isn’t set on auto-attack by default.

That still flipping annoys me about Lich form and other transforms….they don’t remember auto settings for some kittened reason.

Used to be the case for engineer kits at launch as well, iirc.

Bringing back Trinity has a point.

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

2. unskilled faceroll bunker trolololo Arah P4 without dodging once – remember that one? and it was done with the current system. Imagine how cool the game would get once people in tanky healy gear could faceroll everything even easier.

If that was one guy in healing build holding the whole group up, it would be eyebrow raising. But it was a whole group in healing gear spamming their best AOE heals.

If even one of them ran anything but healing gear, i suspect the outcome would have been very different.

Bringing back Trinity has a point.

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digiowl.9620

And yet one of the biggest problems with Warriors is how they passively regenerate so kitten much health.

The problem with HS is that its passive heal does as much HPS as most other professions active heals. A warrior actually gimps himself if he activates the HS as the active heal do not compensate for the downtime on the passive heal.

Also, it is more a PVP problem than a PVE problem.

[Engineer] Flamethrower Skill Concerns

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Ft5 has some good use, but its cooldown is ridiculously long for what it does and how short its range is.

Often i wonder if Arenanet set the weapon skill cooldowns more on how far the button was from #1 than the actual value of the skill on that button.

Bringing back Trinity has a point.

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

The problem isnt that support isnt viable, its just better to go full damage because you clear faster.

The issue for me is that there is very little room to build for support.

Building for support over building for DPS leads to slightly longer boons and conditions (woho…) and slightly stronger heals (regeneration included, the only boon that has a strength increase from increasing a stat).

That’s it…

The trade off is simply not worth it in PVE, because the mobs so grossly violate the build balance found in PVP.

And Defiant is even worse, it reeks of a panicked bandaid “fix” to chained CC-ing.

IMO if the players chain-CC a mob, they should be allowed to win that way.

Thinking about it i suspect it was intended to fix world bosses. But was put onto anything champ or higher, to make sure they covered all the bosses without going over each one of them. End result was that it affected dungeons as well.

IMO an alternative to Defiant would be to put a “chill” on CC skills when used againt stronger mobs. This penalize the individual for poor use of the skills, but do not penalize the whole group unless their aim was to chain-CC the mob.

Then again, the mob aggro code makes world bosses pretty much CC-ed anyways. Unless someone on the back row is able to out-DPS every GS swinging DPS queen up front.

[Engineer] Flamethrower Skill Concerns

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Best i can tell, quite a few skills were balanced with certain traits in mind.

For flamethrower this was juggernaut. But said trait suffered a late beta nerf, and the skills themselves where not rebalanced accordingly.

The beta juggernaut apparently gave the engineer permanent stability while the flamethrower was equipped. But something in the way it was implemented caused issues and it was replaced by repeated might stacking.

Also, #3 was early on modified to have the blast be player triggered rather than distance traveled. If it does not pop it was because the player forgot to hit the button a second time, not because it hit some terrain before X distance.

On that note i would not mind seeing shield #5 and Throw Wrench be reworked to not be boomerangs, as much like the blast on Flamethrower #3 the return depends on them not hitting terrain.

Between (the original) juggernaut, bombs, grenades and turrets, i keep getting the impression that engineers were designed for capture point sieges and little else. And outside of SPVP the profession suffers to some degree because of that.

[PvX] Thieves need a nerf

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Huh? I could have sworn that SPVP was the specific focus of the game design, and that PVE and WVW are the outlier.

Of course! Goes without saying! Why would any dev ever consider building a MMORPG for massive multiplayer instead of 5v5 combat!

The one that was going “esports! esports! esports!” at launch.

[PvX] Water Blast

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

I remember testing out water blast early on in the game after having rolled a elementalist.

I pretty much picked a target type in the starting area, and fought it using fire and water staff. And surprise surprise, i came out of it hurting more when using water than when using fire. This even tho i was clearly face to face with the mob, and being affected by the AOE of water blast.

[PvX] Thieves need a nerf

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Huh? I could have sworn that SPVP was the specific focus of the game design, and that PVE and WVW are the outlier.

what is your i win button ?

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

So a smart thief would see the dogs pop in, stay out of sight for 30 seconds, watch the dogs pop out, and then gank you.

[PvX] Thieves need a nerf

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Do wonder if more people would pick up on support as GW2 “healer” if applying boons produced some kind of visual feedback to the person doing the applying. With healing you have the little green numbers to indicate that you did something useful. But with boons you see little to nothing unless it happens to be aegis.

Do skill requirements differ too much?

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

After 1300 hours on my ele I still practice d/d combos to this day. There are actually quite a few potential combos that do take quite a bit of skill. Like activating shocking aura and then using the burning speed + Lightning Flash combo as soon as your opponent is stunned, this will allow you to make your opponent eat more of the fire trail.

Ele is a class that is able to be good at a lot of things. It scales well with skill level indeed. I heard about the Lightning Flash and burning speed combo from a friend too, it’s so hard but so good

Meanwhile other classes can just whack a button and do the same damage :S

And the question becomes, should the others be made more difficult or should the elementalist be made easier?

HealingPower converted to Power:10% need BUFF

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

We dont want healing to be more OP,it just fine as it is just give you a buff if you are stacking healing power,when healing get as strong as damage its GG for this game.

Eh… wait, what?
Right now, people die too fast. There’s very little time to react.

I find myself reminded of some D3 dev quotes. They seemed to have found that people would not bother building for health because the game produced such wild swings. The players instead focused on either healing through it or simply killing the mobs before they themselves where killed.

This not that different from what we are seeing in GW2 right now, except that we are going with avoidance over healing because healing frankly suck.

I watched a video recently of a engineer Lupi solo, and the health globe were swinging by 25-50% pr hit.

By trying to make the games PVP side fast paced spectator sport, ANet has made a action game with a less than appropriate interface.

HealingPower converted to Power:10% need BUFF

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

It is funny how many of these “buff by 90 points” entries that still remains in the game, when ANet clearly recognized that a 90 point change means nada when they upped every warrior banner to 180.

Bringing back Trinity has a point.

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Ah yes, reflect. That turns Lupi into a shooting gallery…

Not because of the reflect mechanic directly tho, just that ANet designed his projectiles to ruin the players days if they were not dodged. Reflect them back en mass and it gets “interesting”…

[PvX] Thieves need a nerf

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

In some cases it’s hard to kill a bunker 1v2 and you want it buffed even more? People are tired of bunkers meta.

And this is the basic problem with the game. Thanks to the base mob design, PVE and PVP plays like day and night.

[idea] Use a full endurance bar to break stun

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Reminds me of Champions Online.

there i can hold shift at any moment during the fight and my toon goes into a blocking stance. I can also tap said key if CCed to break the CC and get temporary immunity.

Didn’t try it in PVP, but in PVE the game felt alive without going poor man’s DMC with rolls and flips everywhere.

Am I missing something? (Ele)

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

as far as i understand, i’m too lazy to swap, and i want to do insane damage while healing in one attunement, so i won’t need to swap ever again.

Well then you have very poor comprehension skills and are prone to using hyperboles and strawman fallacies.

Those things usually all go together.

Then please tell me what you wanted to say in simple phrases.

I already did, but I’ll try again:

I want to not have to stay in Fire most of the time when doing anything solo. I want to have the option of roaming and staying primarily in Water, Air, or Earth, depending on my build, and retain reasonable general performance.

This involves neither being amazing at both healing and DPS simultaneously nor being completely optimal without ever switching attunements.

This seems to echo the issue i have with PVE builds in general, in how DPS trumps all. An the issue is not with the stats, it is with the PVE mobs. They are specifically tuned to force every last build dodge.

There is kitten all difference in the frequency of dodge between DPS and bunker, except under very specific scenarios (every going high healing power and spamming AOE heals while stacking).

And you can see how much spike DPS the mobs put out any time someone wrecks a boss using a reflect skill. This because it turns the mobs numbers back at him.

Just look at any Lupi video where a mesmer is involved. There is one spray of projectiles in phase 2, and 1/3 of lupi’s health just evaporates. This because each one of those projectiles are specifically tuned to ruin your day if you get hit, no matter if you are running bunker or DPS.

But this flips over completely when going any kind of PVP, where the ongoing issue is that high defense, high healing power can be nearly indestructible. This because there is a true tradeoff between DPS and surviability in PVP, thanks to the opponents being so much closer together in numbers.

and i noticed the issue with attunements on ele early on. equip staff, set to fire, find some lonely mob and start attacking. Rinse and repeat with water. End result was that i had more health left in fire than in water. That is kitten backwards given that water is healing me on every last shot once the mob is in my face.

In PVE, defensive builds are pretty much bunk. I ran the numbers, got myself one set with high effective health, one with low, attack the same kinds of mobs wearing both, and found that my difference in health after a fight didn’t change in any meaningful way.

[PvX] Thieves need a nerf

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Bringing back Trinity has a point.

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

And before anyone gets into the point of denying this i suggest to look at the forums and realize the 80% of the posts is around this theme, its the root of the frustration of the 80% of the players, that do bother about the game to the point to look at least the official forums, and wish to see others opinion. So its not rambling chant.

And NO, we dont have currently viable “support” or “tank” character or character setups. No matter how hard you struggle you wont be a viable healer as elementalist in current meta. And they wont bring you to dungeons or pvp to heal, they will bring you down for a certain aspect your character has (like condition removal), which is not your intent, and you wont feel more useful because of it. And will know, that you are not there to heal, so spare yourself the lies and admit it, “there are no viable support or tanks”.

First and foremost, what most People seem not to understand is that Berzerker is a gear choice and not a build. You go all zerker gear, which improves your attributes. It is not a build. The build you choose is selected by traits, and a lot of those speedclear buddies take a lot of defenseive or Support traits. There you have your roles.

Nope. The reason they do this is because zerker impacts DPS incredibly well, while any gear that would boost support do so poorly.

Why should i care if aegis lasts 5 seconds or 10 seconds, when the very next attack wipes it out anyways? If the pr unit performance of ferocity or might changed depending on the build, then there would be true build choices. But they don’t so there is none.

Tournament of Legends: Meta

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Something that’s also important to recognize is how classes that some classes that have easy stealth access (thief/mesmer) aren’t able to reach their full potential in a point capturing scenario. When you’re fighting a player using stealth in WvW for example, they can go in and out of it as much as they need to. When trying to capture, protect, or contest a point, stealthing removes you from affecting the point.

And this is why balancing across all game modes will be a mess, because the win conditions for each mode are so different.

[PvE]Shields

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

The shield docontain a small defense bonus (68 at L80 exotic).

Just below what you get from a light helm or shoulders at the same level at rarity…

Bringing back Trinity has a point.

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

It only works right now when everyone is running HP builds.

What i am looking for is individual choice. If there is a mix of builds right now you have to dodge, no ifs or buts about it.

(edited by digiowl.9620)

Bringing back Trinity has a point.

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

The problem is not trinity, in the hard (your class is healer, your is tank, your is DPS) sense, it is the lack of practical tradeoffs in builds.

The cost in DPS for going survival it too high, because ANet insists that we all must dodge because it makes combat oh so exciting (active combat, or “i swing a sword, i swing a sword again”).

Then there is no practical aggro management, and Defiant makes CC a no go alternative for most pugs.

And to further counteract the “heal bot”, most ranged heals are ground targeted.

And to top it all off, there are virtually zero build options that noticeably distinguish boons from a support build from that of a DPS build.

End result, stack and spank in DPS gear.

1. make dodge a option, not a requirement, depending on build. If you want to run DPS, learn to dodge. If not, allow us to actually make a stand.

2. replace Defiant with a system that give longer recharges on CC when used against strong mobs.

3. turn GT support into projectiles that bounce or AOE around the target. Thus allowing someone to keep attacking a mob while supporting those near it.

4. provide a stat for boons equivalent to condition damage.

Am I missing something? (Ele)

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

ANet seems to have balanced the ele (and to some degree the engineer) around the “attunement dance”.

This because the game do not have a overall energy mechanic, and so a high APM elementalist player can in theory burst out twice the weapon skills of a warrior (the baseline ANet seems to balance everything else around).

As such, the attunements have their individual DPS curtailed.

As i think about it, i wonder if ANet did a poor job on the traits system.

This by tying the traits lines to sets of primary and secondary stats. Instead they should have been built around weapons (or attunements in the case of elementalists) so that going down a specific line would innately boost specific weapon(s) without having to pop percentage traits.

This way they could favor staying in specific weapons or attunements rather than have this constant recharge hunt (see the PVE warrior DPS spec where one expends the 100B of a greatsword, pop to axe, burn through those skills and then pop back, repeat until mob is dead).

ANet seems to have thought they could action up a RPG. But what they ended up with was a action game with a awkward UI and some vestigial RPG elements.

[PvE]Shields

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

engineer shields are quite usefull as a blast finisher.

Blast Wars 2…

[PvX] Thieves need a nerf

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digiowl.9620

The problem in essence is that ANet is heavy handedly promoting “active combat” (dodge the spike attack) in PVE. Never mind that they seem to have mistaken tanking for standing there and taking a beating.

those trenchcoat "skirts"...

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Poked around the wardrobe today, and noticed what it is that makes some of the “skirts” really, err, stand out.

The really bad ones do not turn downwards after a bit, like you would expect anything draped to do, but instead continue in a straight angle from the waist out.

This as if the wearer had donned a hoop skirt.

End result is that from a side view they look nothing at all like a typical trench coat profile, even when taking into consideration the odd posterior of the sylvari rigging.

Zerker nerf is not enough

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

It would be OP if one guy could carry the whole group like that via a HP build. It is hardly any more OP than the all zerker stack and spike groups. The problem is that you either have to go one extreme or the other, as mixing the two goes down the drain fast.

Zerker nerf is not enough

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Only “evidence” i have seen of that is some videos of glitched bosses, in particular one that had to rely on the clearly OP warrior healing signet even after the glitch.

http://youtu.be/b2VhmwLwvrM

Clarify one thing for me, are they all running HP heavy builds or just the elementalist we get the POV of?

turrets = poor man's phantasms?

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Turrets are in essence designed for siege, particularly for the defensive side.

And ANet has a vendetta going on overt bunkers…

It is one of those paradoxes of this game.

Zerker nerf is not enough

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Again, I don’t even know where to begin here. First, giving enemies more rapid attacks will make things harder on defensive sets. It will make things harder on everyone. Passive defenses just happen to hit not as hard with such a change IF and only IF they learn to dodge/block. If they don’t, the defensive gear won’t have enough HP to survive the big hits they used to facetank from bosses.

Harder because now you have to get more passive defense? Currently, you can facetank hardest hitting bosses in the game with a dodge key disabled

Only “evidence” i have seen of that is some videos of glitched bosses, in particular one that had to rely on the clearly OP warrior healing signet even after the glitch.

Zerker nerf is not enough

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Wouldn’t it make sense to then simply give more power, not damage, to control setups.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unshakable

That seems, at least to me, to be why berserker is simply the best setup.

Because control skills are tied to your stats. Everytime I use deep freeze on the boss to stun him for 5 seconds, I could have stunned him for 10 seconds if only I had different armour.

Err, condition duration is perhaps the second hardest stat to come by after boon duration.

One thing i would wish for is that we would actually see that recharge on the mob skills slow down when under chill. Right now all you see is that they turn a blue tint and some slight particles, but otherwise you have no idea if it does any good at all.

At least with professions, all default recharge times are listed somewhere.

Zerker nerf is not enough

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

It goes deeper than just glitched bosses. If it was, then risk would go down and not up by bringing bunker builds (from the horse, aka dungeon runners, mouth about the risk aspect).

The basic mob design violates the inherent tradeoffs that PVP (WVW included) has, because they are pretty much bags of health with a periodic spike attack.

A spike attack specifically designed to make tanking (aka bunker, given the explicit lack of any taunt or other aggro manipulation save stealth) futile. This to “prompt” players to utilize dodge and similar defensive mechanics.

Pretty much the core mechanics of the game is designed around SPVP, but PVE ignores or goes out of its way to violate this every chance it gets.

Honestly? I do feel that risk goes way down in dungeons when playing a bunker build – for the player playing that build. The risk that increase by bringing one bunker is that risk enjoyed by the other players in the party, assuming they are not also bunkers. Slower kills impact GC builds — bunkers are designed with sustain in mind.

Regarding bunkers and massive hits… as one of the game’s main mechanics is active defense, I don’t know that it’s outside the pale to encourage everyone, regardless of build, to dodge these.

It is certainly true that more builds seem to be desirable in sPvP or WvW than in PvE. However, there really aren’t any non-viable builds in PvE, whereas I believe there are in PvP.

Finally, GW2 might be a very different game if balance was based on PvE, or if PvE played more like PvP (as it did in some parts of GW). Would that make it a better game? The most likely true answer is that some would prefer it that way, while some would prefer it remain as it is.

The problem is that the difference between a bunker build and a zerker build is one extra spike hit. Meaning that you can miss one dodge in a bunker, but you can’t miss any in a zerker. But because of the sharp tradeoff between survivability and DPS, you need to dodge maybe 10x as many spikes in a bunker build as you need to in a zerker build.

Never mind that stack and down state allow for rapid recovery of fellows, with or without bunker builds, in part because no build elements affect recovery time.

Zerker nerf is not enough

in Profession Balance

Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Monsters should hit weaker and more often, that’s one simple and useful adjustment. You won’t be able to dodge it all – tough/vit/healing suddenly become needed in the team.

THIS! I am so tired of Champion Undead Chicken #5432 shooting you from out of nowhere with several 20k damage eggs.

Mobs should hit hard as players do in WvW :|

The problem is not hit hard or not hit hard, but hit hard yet have the health to rival a bunkered up warrior or necromancer. And thanks to the hard cap on conditions, this focus on health as the “difficulty” favors direct damage sources. This again favors crit heavy builds.

Please balance PvE and PvP differently

in Profession Balance

Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Confusion already hit for half damage in PVP (only SPVP initially but quickly adopted for WVW as well) compared to PVE.

Thing is, given the post launch intro of mobs that spam confusion (princess dolls, reef drakes, twisted nightmares) i am unsure if the PVE team is mindful of this difference. This because a amount of confusion that can be a threat but manageable in PVP will outright melt the same in PVE.

Balance (PvE vs PvP)

in Profession Balance

Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

They had more dodging mobs during the betas, and as i recall it was removed because in part AOE attacks could be used to herd the mob into a corner and lock them there.

I would love to see scaling more around toughness than health tho, unless they eliminate the conditions cap, as it would level the field between direct damage and condition damage at the high end.

Right now the ranking of mobs seems overly simplistic.

As best i can tell, a veteran is a x2 on the basic mob stats. Elite, x3. Champ, x4.

Meaning that a champ of the same kind takes x4 the damage and hits x4 as hard as a basic. but that is not to say that 4 basics are the same threat as one champ. If you have cleave on your auto they drop like flies, but they can also overwhelm a player by doing their spike attacks in a staggered pattern.

Melee vs Ranged/Casters

in Profession Balance

Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

All CC is far too short, gap closers have 1/10th the cooldown of gap creators, and ranged damage is significantly weaker than melee. Add to that the complete lack of risk inherent in the “stacking” approach to 99%+ of the game, and yeah, ranged damage is at a huge disadvantage over melee.

Essentially, if you’re playing at range, you’re doing it wrong in GW2.

Pretty much this, at least in PVE. The banzai nature of most mobs makes ranged futile unless you have access to long duration AOE hard CC, allowing you to focus down one of them while others are seeing stars. That, or a control scheme that allow you to “circle strafe”. And IMO, GW2 offers neither.

Zerker nerf is not enough

in Profession Balance

Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

It goes deeper than just glitched bosses. If it was, then risk would go down and not up by bringing bunker builds (from the horse, aka dungeon runners, mouth about the risk aspect).

The basic mob design violates the inherent tradeoffs that PVP (WVW included) has, because they are pretty much bags of health with a periodic spike attack.

A spike attack specifically designed to make tanking (aka bunker, given the explicit lack of any taunt or other aggro manipulation save stealth) futile. This to “prompt” players to utilize dodge and similar defensive mechanics.

Pretty much the core mechanics of the game is designed around SPVP, but PVE ignores or goes out of its way to violate this every chance it gets.

DGC 1: Movement skills as "skill-shots"

in Profession Balance

Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Dunno about the AOE targeting. All to often i feel the camera sits too low to the ground for AOEs to be practically targeted.

I actually avoid the engineers strongest ranged attack kit, grenades, for this reason, as i get no sense of depth while trying to do larger events. I end up spamming #1 and hoping that i see numbers pop from the big bad. But if anyone manages to drag said big bad in some direction i am SOL and have to try and guesstimate the mouse moments needed to once more hit the big bad.

If i could get the camera into a more top down view, this would be much less of a issue (and would avoid some long standing bugs related to ground targeting and the UI).