Showing Posts For phantom.1675:
1 2
Deleting my other post and reposting from the other thread since Jackums pointed out this thread existed…
Motivation for Post
I play mesmer but also many other classes so I am not crying for a buff or a nerf. I like having dueling and DE but would love more options when thinking about build tradeoffs. The very fact that I have to think about my build as “Where do I put my other 50 points, after getting DE?” shows how messed up this situation is.
My Proposal/Suggestion:
1) Move DE to Illusions Trait Line as a Major Master
2) Add a “Make Illusion on weapon swap” to Dueling in its place, either as major adept or major master, depending on balance. I wouldn’t think changing the minor traits make much sense (although perhaps this trait as a minor grandmaster would be nice, as the confusion is barely noticeable with any build currently)
3) Remove/combine/rework some of the traits in illusions that nobody cares about to make room for DE
Good Results:
DE becomes slightly less powerful because it does not synergize with Critical Infusion (vigor on critical) in dueling but more powerful because it does fit more naturally with the shatter trait line.
There is still a valid and controlled way to get a clone in dueling (which has other on swap traits for some classes, viz the ranger)
Shatter builds could start coming in more flavors, ones that use both the clone on swap and ones that do not. This would buff the pure shatter for sure, but that is a bit needed in terms of being on par with the PU build. It may also spawn many hybrid builds that take 20 in something other than dueling because they are happy with just the DE in Illusions.
Given what I see PU players using, this tones down the PU build by forcing them to spread points more if they want DE for clone on death AND other good stuff in dueling(ie vigor, bleed on crit minors).
May encourage more hybrid phantasm builds as well, since it does not couple clone creation to the dodge for survival mechanic. I do admit it doesn’t do much to help phantasms, but does allow them to at least dodge without overwriting a phantasm, but perhaps they would complain that now they can’t weapon swap. Then again, why are they taking any clone generation traits?
This is just one idea, but I do think “clone on swap” just enter the game somehow, as a way to generate illusions besides DE and the long recharge skills on weapons.
As to unlimited retransmutes after a single charge cost, I understand the complications because it would require tracking which pieces in the wardrobe had been transmuted once, either per account or per character (I would be fine with per character costs).
As to monetization, consider that I don’t have any transmute stones currently, and have never bought any. I find two cosmetic looks I like for a single armor set. I decide I want that look so I buy the 6 transmute stone to make it happen for one of the sets because I know I don’t want to be constantly buying these stones for gems.
If a permanent unlock were available, I would buy 6 more so I could switch freely between the two looks.
12 stones is more $ than 6 stones. I don’t see how this isn’t good for business.
My first reading of the blog made me think this would happen, and I thought hey, I will go buy that secondary set and then get some more transmute stones; now, I am not going to.
That’s the fallout for the initial blog post.
I just want to know one thing. Will a transmutation charge “unlock” the skin already in our locker for unlimited use.
That changes everything. If it does work that way OMG amazing. If not I see this as an unnecessary barrier for skins that should have UNLIMITED use. After all we payed the charge. Why make us pay again.
It doesn’t work that way now, why would it work that way again?
Let’s say right now I want to make a dagger look like another dagger. I have to buy two daggers and use a transmutation crystal (at level 80). If I then want to make a second dagger, I need two MORE daggers.
With the new system, I don’t need to get the dagger skin again, so I’m still better off than I was before the patch. I’m only paying to put it on a completely different weapon.
So the system is better than the one we have now.
You are only better off if you want the same skin on two different weapons. If you have two completely cosmetic looks you like for identical stats, it would be nice if once you paid for the two looks once, you could then freely switch back and forth (as in every 5 minutes).
I think the original post you respond to is attempting to get the situation I posit above addressed.
Proposal:
Move DE to Illusions Major Master
Add a “Make Illusion on weapon swap” to Dueling in its place, either as major adept or major master, depending on balance
Remove/combine some of the traits in illusions that nobody cares about to make room for DE
Good Results:
DE becomes slightly less powerful because it does not synergize with vigor on critical in dueling but more powerful because it does fit more naturally with the shatter trait line.
There is still a valid and controlled way to get a clone in dueling (which has other on swap traits, viz the ranger)
Shatter builds could start coming in more flavors, ones that use both the clone on swap and ones that do not. This would buff the pure shatter for sure, but that is a bit needed. It may also spawn many hybrid builds that take 20 in something other than dueling.
This also indirectly tones down the PU build by forcing them to spread points more if they want DE clone on death craziness and other good stuff in dueling(ie vigor, bleed on crit, etc)
May encourage more hybrid phantasm builds as well, since it does not couple clone creation to the dodge for survival mechanic.
Reasons:
The reason I dislike the current situation is that nobody makes a mesmer build without at least some points in dueling. The reason is that, except for phantasm, all builds need more clone generation. Making another method to create clones seems essential to actually moving away from 20 in dueling for an effective build. With the change to critical infusion, you may think twice about dueling and instead pick up the vigor on shatter trait in inspiration or something else entirely. That seems good: when it’s not obvious what every mesmer should take for their traits.
Thanks for reading.
Yeah when can we expect a change / reversion on this? in addition to it looking worse (that seems to be the consensus) it was undocumented in patch notes. Why not at least document it if it was an intentional attempt to change it?
I think the “good” solutions to this are to bring up the value on all celestial gear so that you are getting roughly the same effective stat points. As an example, comparison of a 2H zerker weapon to a 2H celestial weapon would result in the stat on celestial going from 83 to ~91 to give you the same stat points as it is currently doing with all that crit damage. This would still be a hit to the damaging power of celestial but I can handle that especially given some of the improved sigils/runes they have talked about.
Regardless of how they change the stats on Celestial and how Critical damage actually gets changed, I think the sensible thing is to let people do a one time stat change on any piece with that previously had crit damage and now has ferocity.
They should also clean up some of the previous consequences from allowing stat selection, e.g. people having 2 identical ascended rings with the same type of infusion which would not be possible for new players to get.
Doesn’t cause clones attacks to bounce.
Trident clones do bounce attacks with this trait so one of them is bugged. A tooltip update saying it doesn’t work on clones would be nice if that’s the intended functionality. Simply “leaving it” since launch is ridiculous.
1) Not the best idea to disrupt many mesmer builds to get at a single build. Why not change that build more directly?
2) My real disfavor of this change comes when you consider they are simultaneously changing vigor on crit to half up time of critical infusion. Since the trend is to stop dodging, why not start there and see if it’s still a problem? Mesmers get hit across the board with this. Deceptive evasion is tied to endurance and having less endurace means having fewer clones and fewer “on death” effects already. If the claim is that the dual sigils give better access to energy, this is a pretty lame excuse considering mesmers were already running dual energy anyway.
Yeah, I assumed the threads discussing it are correct. I just would like when they are updating the tooltips in these waves of patches to fix this one to be more clear like other recent changes. Because 150% damage seems worthy of a GM trait, 50% seems…. less so.
This also pertains to the trait “moment of clarity”, and “signet of the hunt”. There seems to be some ambiguity in how much more damage is dealt.
The signet, trait and status bar effect say either +150% or increased 150%. This would mean that if you normally hit for 100 damage, you would hit for 250 damage with an attack of opportunity. Most discussions threads I see state that the effect is 50% more damage, not 150% more, i.e. the effect makes a 100 damage attack deal 150 damage.
It would be nice if the tooltips could use correct math lingo to actually state what is happening. If someone says you are doing 100% times the damage, then you are doing the same damage. If somesone says you are doing 100% increased damage, you are doing double the damage.
Please clarify all instances of this effect and update the tooltips.
There are three professions that can use the bow in the game.
Ranger -> Shortbow/Longbow
Warrior -> Longbow
Thiekittenhortbow
The recent “nerf” made all shortbow skills range 900 and “buffed” the default warrior longbow range to 1000.
While both the ranger and warrior longbow have a trait to buff their ranges (R: 1200-> 1500, W: 1000 -> 1200), there are no similar buffs for the shortbow (probably because they were already at the maximum range).
My suggestion would be to play around with adding traits that buff the range back to 1200 or add some other interesting effect. I think this is the most reasonable since similar traits exist for other weapons (longbow, pistol, rifle, offhand range).
Another possibility would be to buff the range more than 900 but less than 1200 by default (which is not mutually exclusive to the above trait suggestion).
It is somewhat laughable that, at least in the ranger’s case, the axe has the same range as a bow. Making the shortbow range 1000-1100 would separate it from other “mid range” weapons but keep it from achieving the same range as a longbow untraited.
Overall I like making the ranges different but would also like to see some more customization for these weapons.
I tried searching for such topics but didn’t see any that really suggested adjustments to the patch changes (rather than just complaints). I think a discussion on how to make these weapons more interesting would be helpful.
What about making them account bound on use rather than soulbound? The fact is they do take a serious investment of time. Sometimes (for example the recent patch) changes in the game make using a specific weapon more or less desirable on a given class. It would be nice if you could move the legendary around so it doesn’t gather dust after a patch.
This could be something that additionally makes legendaries stand out, they don’t bind to a specific individual when they are used.
It could even distinguish them from other ascended items (when the ascended weapons are eventually added as has been hinted many times). It would make sense in lore and also make sense given the high input of player time needed to make one.
My take on the mesmer downed state is the following:
1) It’s fine, don’t really have a problem.
2) Fine except when trying to avoid getting stomped by someone in stealth. Since you have nothing to target, the skill is unusable. This skill should either
a) be an exception which creates clones not bound to one person and thus can always be used OR
b) stealth the mesmer and only create a downed clone if a target is selected.
3) This does do pretty high damage but really all the #3 skills should provide something really strong and in the flavor of the profession (guardian has symbol, thief has stealth, ranger has pet rez). I would like to see the phantasmal rogue apply daze when it attacks and hits from behind, thus guaranteeing an interrupt unless the player has stability. Daze is also in the flavor the mesmer.
For me then the fix is relatively tame →
2) allow casting (through a few possibilities) without a target selected.
3) instead of double damage, apply daze when hitting from behind.
Wouldn’t a simple fix be to have the “first sigil” affect the first “1,2,3” weapon skills and the “second sigil” affect the “4,5” weapon skills?
This would require two of the same damage sigils (e.g. force) to increase all the attacks of the two handed weapon. It would also allow someone wielding a 2 handed weapon to have two sigils which proc on any hit similar to the behavior of wielding a main hand and an off hand. For example, with a “on-crit” sigil in either the main hand or offhand, all attacks can proc the on crit. In addition to the on crit, the mainhand/offhand user can also get a stat boost or a damage boost or weapon swap etc. Right now two-handers are pretty gimped in terms of taking advantage of multiple sigils.
I realize the damage output would be a problem but again, for damage purposes having a “1,2,3” and “4,5” sigil slot would solve this.
I think this is a leftover artifact from guild wars 1 where there was a hard cap on both regeneration and degeneration (which came from conditions and hexes).
One additional thing to consider is that since there are no healers to constantly rip conditions, it’s pretty easy to find yourself unable to remove conditions. Now there are plenty of arguments for “you have to have condition removal” but everyone gets armor (ie anti direct damage) for free. I still think one of the worst moves made so far was changing “vulnerability” to just increase damage rather than remove armor.
Anytime a game mechanic goes from being “situationally good” based on time and effort to mindlessly always good is a bad thing for the game play. Removing the condition cap would just make conditions always good. Vulnerability got moved from being a good debuff when in a direct damage group to just spam as much as you like and dont worry if you have conditions because it works there too; which makes no sense, how can you become more vulnerable to bleeding?
The other remnant/failure relative guild wars 1 is that boss encounters were always instance based groups that could plan ahead. There were not really any “stack conditions forever builds”. You could keep conditions up but they were more like blind/weakness debuffs, not damage. The flipside was many bosses had awesome mechanics which could transfer all conditions to the party so you had to be careful with timing.
Conditions in guild wars 2 only have a problem because there is a mindless zerg spam in large battles. They could fix the problem across the board by giving champions condition removal and healing but that presents all sorts of other challenges with gameplay design which would make the game better, but probably requires more resources than the game designers have time/money to fund.
I am not saying nothing should be done. I am just saying making condition damage a mindless mechanic where more is always better (especially considering how many advantages it has now) is not the right solution.
An example of why condition damage has a lot going for it (not against bosses because it’s pretty mindless there) but in PvP WvW encounters is, once you apply it to an enemy you are free to do whatever you want while the damage still occurs. You may have to wait for a time to realize the damage output, but you also dont have to worry so much about being interrupted or mistiming a skill which lowers your output. If you die, your damage still happens on the target. So part of the balance seems to be damage output while not being focused on damage. IF the game is meant to force flexibility in dynamic fights, people who over spec for one thing, should be punished. They could spec for more support so that when they see 25 stacks up or a long duration burn, they do something else.
Has this been looked at? Because I agree this is a huge problem.
1 2