Do you think defensive attributes are (generally) underpowered in PvE?

edit - a poster IMO correctly pointed out that defensive attributes are indirectly underpowered as a result of offense being overtuned through a combination of factors, so the conversation quickly went in that direction.

Damage needs to be nerfed across the board. If you buff durability through stats now, bunker builds are going to be a thing again.

@"Arzurag.7506" said:Damage needs to be nerfed across the board. If you buff durability through stats now, bunker builds are going to be a thing again.

yeah, my feeling is the same. However, I think the "damage problem" is mostly a product of two things:

1.) Condition damage is overtuned, period. They really mucked things up trying to balance it and continue to balance it using a bad paradigm where they're trying to make them work like EQ DoTs, which makes no sense in GW2 . Condi should be on short durations and deal moderate damage - a single application of any condition should, in total, deal less than direct damage on low armor targets, and more than direct damage on high armor targets. There's really no bigger example of how the balance team doesn't know what they're doing. In addition to just resulting in too much damage being thrown around, this has the effect of making Toughness less useful than it otherwise would be, since conditions ignore armor.

2.) Offensive boons are both more numerous and easier to stack than defensive boons. They've overloaded skills and traits to where offensive boon sharing is excessive. It's trivially easy to maintain full stacks of might and 100% fury and alacrity uptime, which is goofy and needs to be nerfed (starting with Chrono and Druid). Additionally, offensive boons play off of your attributes more than defensive ones do. Protection tends to have less uptime and doesn't reduce incoming condition damage, making Vitality and Toughness both less useful. Meanwhile, both the regeneration boon and healing power as an attribute are undertuned - I think they need to rework Regen to stack intensity rather than duration.

Yes, healing power is indeed underpowered.

@Tails.9372 said:Yes, healing power is indeed underpowered.

Yeah, these surveys are always difficult to make comprehensive. I actually think HP is undertuned too, as are most of the defensive boons (discussed above), meanwhile, offensive boons are overtuned and trivially easy to access.

They are not really underpowered as much as they are pointless in 99% of fights.

Dead mobs deal 0 DPS to you.

@Tails.9372 said:Yes, healing power is indeed underpowered.

This is factually wrong.

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Tails.9372 said:Yes, healing power is indeed underpowered.

Well, it's nuanced. Different skills scale differently off of HP, so some are fine, but many underscale. I think a lot of the problem area revolves around most personal healing skills not scaling well enough with HP, making it too much of a wasted stat when you aren't a dedicated group healer.

IMO, this is the main reason Celestial gear sucks, because the HP goes to waste as a solo player when it really shouldn't. If that wasn't the case, it would be pretty usable in a power/condi hybrid build.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Tails.9372 said:Yes, healing power is indeed underpowered.

That's what I meant

so some are fine, but many underscale.

This i don't agree with

I think a lot of the problem area revolves around most personal healing skills not scaling well enough with HP, making it too much of a wasted stat when you aren't a dedicated group healer.

Can you show me an underscaled one? Because I think most of the skills scale well enough with healing power.

On the other hand, I think personal healing skills shouldn't have much scaling, because I don't think a squishy character should get back %50-60 by herself.

IMO, this is the main reason Celestial gear sucks, because the HP goes to waste as a solo player when it really shouldn't. If that wasn't the case, it would be pretty usable in a power/condi hybrid build.

The main reason Celestial isn't used because there are much better stat combinations. For example, you can mix some Rabid+Magi's and be a good condition roamer. Or for expansion stats, there is Wanderer, there is Seraph, there is Marshal. Lots of better combinations than Celestial.

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Tails.9372 said:Yes, healing power is indeed underpowered.

so some are fine, but many underscale.

I think a lot of the problem area revolves around most personal healing skills not scaling well enough with HP, making it too much of a wasted stat when you aren't a dedicated group healer.

That's flawed logic, because by definition if you are using a lot of healing power you are not a glass cannon. In fact, the problem is that glass cannons currently recover too much of their HP too easily precisely because of what I'm saying - personal healing skills are too strong at baseline and scale too poorly from HP. It should be the opposite -they should be weakish at baseline and scale better off of HP.

The game was always about active defense. Passive defense is just there to allow more room for mistakes.They're fine as they are.

@Haishao.6851 said:The game was always about active defense. Passive defense is just there to allow more room for mistakes.They're fine as they are.

Except they don't do that to the degree they should for the amount of offense you give up. That's the point. As mentioned above, though, it's probably more an issue with overtuned offense than it is with undertuned defense.

Toughness does its job, but vitality is almost always punished via % health and doesn't really mitigate anything else. Could see it getting some form of incoming scaling condition duration reduction if Anet felt really generous. But that's the only issue i see, admittedly it's less an issue in PvE as not many mobs spew conditions. This would primarily effect WvW where they still use the PvE armor rules despite having a skill split.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Imperadordf.2687 said:

@Tails.9372 said:Yes, healing power is indeed underpowered.

so some are fine, but many underscale.

I think a lot of the problem area revolves around most personal healing skills not scaling well enough with HP, making it too much of a wasted stat when you aren't a dedicated group healer.

Right, I was trying to say squishy chars, my mistake.

In fact, the problem is that glass cannons currently recover too much of their HP too easily precisely because of what I'm saying - personal healing skills are too strong at baseline and scale too poorly from HP. It should be the opposite -they should be weakish at baseline and scale better off of HP.

I think they're fine, Signets heal for 2K, have balanced passives, standard heals heal for 4-6K. See Weaver's synergy with Signet of Restoration. It doesn't heal much on a damage build, but powerful with some healing power.

Only heal with strong baseline I can remember is Malicious Restoration, Deadeye heal. Transfers 3 conditions and heals for 7,200, without any HP.

(There is SpB's heal too but it has a downside, removing 7 boons from you)

PvE combat is designed to reward those who deal damage, not those who can bunker more efficiently. Under that clear design goal, the defensive stats are more than sufficient already. If you want ANet to consider updating the status quo, I'd ignore stats and instead focus the conversation about whether the game should embrace victory-through-attrition, instead of just success-by-domination.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Different skills scale differently off of HP, so some are fine, but many underscale.Not only that but some traits don't scale with HP at all. You're usually better off using toughness over healing power, having more toughness doesn't just lower the damage you receive but also indirectly makes your self-heal more effective and HP often times isn't strong enough to even remotely offset these disadvantages.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:PvE combat is designed to reward those who deal damage, not those who can bunker more efficiently. Under that clear design goal, the defensive stats are more than sufficient already. If you want ANet to consider updating the status quo, I'd ignore stats and instead focus the conversation about whether the game should embrace victory-through-attrition, instead of just success-by-domination.

Well victory through attrition should be a thing. Can you point to where they've stated that attrition shouldn't matter, and it should be all about offensive might? Because, if that's the case, aren't those attributes just red herrings that should be removed from gear?

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:PvE combat is designed to reward those who deal damage, not those who can bunker more efficiently. Under that clear design goal, the defensive stats are more than sufficient already. If you want ANet to consider updating the status quo, I'd ignore stats and instead focus the conversation about whether the game should embrace victory-through-attrition, instead of just success-by-domination.

I'm not sure how it would help to read a specific quote, when the entire history of the game has emphasized offense over defense. When ANet talks about defense, it's almost entirely focused on active defenses, blinds and dodges and blocks etc. Aside from inventing concentration (so that boon duration is a secondary stat instead of a primary), they've barely worried about defensive stats.

But the emphasis on offense doesn't mean that defensive stats are unimportant, just that they aren't of primary concern. So no, toughness & vitality and healing power aren't red herrings.

Besides which, the calculus is different for WvW and sPvP. Bunker builds are very useful there, if for no other reason than they slow down human opponents long enough to prevent loss of an objective or for allies to show to change the balance. Thus, more evidence that defensive stats are fine as they are.

I don't mean to suggest that the situation is perfect. Just that defensive stats aren't among the root causes of any key issues. So again, if the goal is to get ANet to revisit how players approach combat, worry more about changing the essence of the debate; arguing about the stats themselves seems to be the red herring.

i think the stats in general needs a good balance, we have damage as the only way to play while any other method is removed from viable.the game is made to nuke, to just do as much damage as you can without even using a single cell in your mind.

i like to see the stats to be balance in such as way that battles need more then mindless nuking, where strategy is needed to even stand a chance and a well balanced team is required to fight champions and legendaries.Anet is to blame partly for this, they make enemies solely to be nuked to death in seconds and have absolutely no threat beside being annoying.

@sorudo.9054 said:i think the stats in general needs a good balance, we have damage as the only way to play while any other method is removed from viable.the game is made to nuke, to just do as much damage as you can without even using a single cell in your mind.

i like to see the stats to be balance in such as way that battles need more then mindless nuking, where strategy is needed to even stand a chance and a well balanced team is required to fight champions and legendaries.Anet is to blame partly for this, they make enemies solely to be nuked to death in seconds and have absolutely no threat beside being annoying.

Where's the strategy in standing still and absorbing damage because a number on your armor allow you to do so?

I don't use vitality or toughness gear; for the most part, you won't really need it with the correct trait setup. GW2 combat is fast paced and relies on dodging correctly and downing enemies quickly, which I prefer to GW1's unskippable 30 minute slog, exchanging blows with hoards of hidden devourers. I'd rather not see that return.

Maybe an unpopular opinion but after several years of power creep, we really need a "defense" overhaul. The base HP and armor should be raised for every profession, Vitality and Toughness should scale better. Our damage increases all the time but our defensive stats are outdated and neglected.

Before we can really see the problems in these survival attributes, I'd like to see a weekend event while off season in which we get a temporary effect in unranked matches in PVP (but not in tournaments)

• Health pools are tripled.
• Healing effects are halved.
• Out of combat regen is disabled.
• A 'damage staggering' effect as added that caps DPS player vs player to a max of 10K without removing any damage done, only spreading it over time if it goes over the dps cap.
• Respawn time after being defeated increases by 1s for each defeat and by 2s for each minute the match has been going on, up to 60s.

That'll give us the info we need to see better the issues, because right now health pools go up and down too fast. We need to test so stuff with slower health pool movements.

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Haishao.6851 said:The game was always about active defense. Passive defense is just there to allow more room for mistakes.They're fine as they are.

Basically, there can be no equality between offense and defense stats, because defense has an additional factor offense doesn't have.

As mentioned above, though, it's probably more an issue with overtuned offense than it is with undertuned defense.No, it's a problem with mechanic mismatch. The stats we have and the combat mechanics just should never have been put in the same game. Stats were likely something that was added only after the combat system was already mostly designed (probably to appease the old-style MMORPG gamers, that were used to having stats on their gear). The rest is just a consequece of that decision - a consequence we'll have to live with unless they decide to redo the whole thing from scratch.

So, basically, either go to more standard combat system, or drop the stats from gear completely.

The chances of this happening in GW2 are near zero.

Yes, the defensive stats could use a bit of improvement, but as long as the core systems remain as they are, that's not going to change the main issues at all.

Defensive stats are definitely not useless.However, if people want easy content and the most common approach to any content that seems moderately difficult is to group up and zerg it down, then odds are you're going to be perfectly fine without them.