Power Builds 2018

Just wondering if it's at all possible to buff power builds across the board. Especially Mesmer since it has a ramp-up time. Power Mesmer is my favorite thing to play in the game but it's not up to par for the more challenging content like raids and 100CM fractals.

The recent changes have been really sweet. I even made some fractal videos showcasing it a bit. But what I'm noticing is it is lacking by just a little. In fact, most power builds are lacking with the exception of three other professions. Namely Guard, Elementalist, and Holosmith.

Maybe unnerf ferocity a little bit. That might help everyone aside the three mentioned above. Those could be brought in-line a little with everyone else. Especially the Elementalist. Really quite surprised as to why people were begging for Mirage to be nerfed when Weaver still towers over everyone on the DPS charts. But that is besides the point. Ive not cared much for condition damage and I'm getting really frustrated with it being the strongest choice for my DPS role.

I've noticed some changes to reaper over a long period of time and hoping things can continue in favor of power play. It just feels a bit more engaging to me. I hope the turn around doesn't take a long time since it took them a very long time to change power reaper. But at the current moment a lot of power builds are in a really sad state.

It's really too bad because Power play is a whole other way of playing the game. To me it is preferred. So hopefully, while Mirages are busy getting some sort of toning down they will also get a decent buff.

One I can think of right off the bat is the grandmaster for Domination. The greatsword trait should really be moved to down to master tier. I think the mesmer community has been asking for this for a really long time. It's not very useful and in all most all cases is never picked. Furious interruption can be merged with power block and their should be a new damage modifying trait that compliments phastasms. Cause as of now the grandmaster mental anguish is really the only one worth taking and that's huge contradiction to how power Mesmer is supposed to be played.

I certainly hope that what ever is up for the next balance patch will give Mesmers who choose to play Power builds something substantial to work with. Much like phamtasmal force. That was an excellent addition. Let's go Power play 2018. Condi spam has dominated the scene for so long!

I don't think you can use a single simple fix for all power builds. It's just not that easy or Anet would have done it already. Unfortunately a lot of the problems with the individual power builds stem from issues with the core mechanics of the class. So yes you could just buff ferocity, but that would be a very rough patch-up that might cause more harm than good.

The issue with power builds is % damage modifiers being multiplicative.

• You can't take a different sigil. Must take force.
• Can't take a different rune. Must take scholar.
• Can't take a different trait. Must take whatever % damage buff in whatever tier of traits for whatever class.

Because the % bonus is multiplicative, stats scale slowly.

An all ascended berserker geared character with no % damage traits, will be a tiny fraction of the dps of the same character with all the % buffs.

This is not true of condition damage. It instead has duration.

• expertise is a stat, worked into traits, and and gear.
• there are many ways of solving the 'get to 100%' puzzle
• many classes end up with differing combinations of gear. (albeit with a strong lean to viper gear. But that's OK, power has a strong lean to berserker.)

I'd suggest removing all. % damage flat buffs from the game entirely.

• this opens gearing options tremendously.

Make ferocity include a scaling % buff to flat damage. As well as critical damage.

• buff damage across the board on all power skills, to increase burst
• ferocity should provide very slow scaling of base damage.
• and very fast scaling of critical damage.
• the % damage increase should be shown on the hero panel.
• current % damage traits should give flat ferocity bonus.
• % base damage should be capped (dunno how high)
• % critical damage should not be capped. (allowing deminishing returns, as not to nullify party wide buffs, or gear overcapping.)

Now conditions, and power as concepts, are geared in symmetrical systems.

(I'm not a math guy, so if there is one out there, I'm thinking that a full berserker character should scale up to roughly 5kish less dps than the comparable condition pure dps build. Of the same class.)

• (as I generally agree with the concept that power should be better at spike damage, and conditions should be better at damage over time.)