Please Do Something about Might-on-Dodge/Endurance Regeneration food.

I've been withholding this post but honestly it needs to be said.

Might-on-dodge food is horrendously overpowered and breaks the game, especially WvW. So why is this in general discussion? Because it has barely any effect on the rest of the game. There's little incentive to keep this around elsewhere, so it's not like it will be missed.

I doubt many classes heavily utilize this outside of WvW, but it basically provides all builds the Grandmaster Minor trait Endless Stamina, except even without the need for Vigor while still improving baseline endurance regen.

I don't want to turn this into a class comparison thread, but I want to also point out Endurance Regen is hard-capped to max at 100%. So even a thief building into Acrobatics to take advantage of Endless Stamina ends up at a net loss compared to everyone else who has vigor because it gains basically nothing from the food except some might. And it's not like Endless Stamina is some nonfactor trait, either. It's literally what makes Acrobatics actually function as a defensive trait line.

The effect is not removable in any capacity because unlike Vigor which can be stripped or stolen, it's not a boon.

This food is one of the most egregious examples of powercreep in the game and completely breaks what are otherwise normal interactions with dodges. A lot of complaints about the professions, especially coming from WvW, are heavily-sourced from this food indirectly. PoF loaded an excess of extremely potent on-dodge effects into its elite spec trait lines (Stealth on Dodge for Deadeye, Mirage Cloak as an evade modifier/extended evade, and Thermal Release Valve with dodging being the way to cooldown-curb holosmith holo fofge uptime/potency and increase risk), and there are plenty of other potent on-dodge traits in the core game on what are already considered fairly oppressive builds, such as Deceptive Evasion and Companion's Defense.

Heck, we've seen professions nerfed because of this food, like core mesmer's vigor access. Yet these changes have next to no bearing on the actual game being played, and just kill off build diversity and small granular stat-fixing that food can otherwise supply.

If the argument is that people will die too quickly without it... then fix that! There's no shortage of people who are upset about the amount of damage in the game since HoT and PoF because it's a legitimate problem. This is a very low-hanging fruit fix to at least address a fairly substantial part of the defensive powercreep we've seen without actually needing to even touch the classes themselves.

The ideal fix is honestly just to remove means of producing the food from the game and let its supplies die out, or to outright just delete it and refund people a soulbound version of any other food of their choice. It was done for the Magic Find stat on gear when the Luck patch rolled out, and to be honest, this really is the absolute best option as far as the professions and balance is concerned, as well as the amount of work needed to be done to keep it a reasonable item.

That said, here are some alternatives:

1.) Hard nerf it. Cut the endurance regen in half or hit it even harder. You can bump the might duration or intensity to give it synergy with dodge builds like Daredevil or allow this food to have a cost to get a better instant burst damage. It might make the food less-appealing, but what of the many other foods that provide so much less? Is diversity not a good thing? Shouldn't these major decisions be made in trait and gear selection, not just a no-investment consumable?

2.) Go all-in on the Might gain by increasing stacks and removing any endurance regeneration/gain effect it has. There are some worries with balance due to Acrobatics and Daredevil having such high dodge rates, but this at least restricts the oppressiveness on a few builds and traits, and the duration can also be fiddled with to help make it a better bursting damage rune which more professions can take advantage of, such as 3 stacks of might on a 3 second duration, causing a net gain in stats over most other foods, but not defining defenses.

3.) Convert it to 2 seconds of Vigor and make it work only while in combat. I like this idea the least, because it's not a very good fix, but it is better than the current iteration allowing people to stack +90% endurance regeneration with permanent vigor due to concentration also being a problematic stat, and this at least generally lets some builds/classes with poor vigor access to catch up a little bit while not changing the upper end. Boon spam is real, but at least this somewhat curbs power of the food itself.

The food in its current state just needs to go, though. We can't just keep nerfing dodge effects and the core trait lines to compensate for what it does defensively, and many of the most frustrating builds to play against right now (SA Deadeye, condi dodge mirage, boonbot Soulbeast, no-heat holosmith) are just the biggest abusers of what it provides. Hitting this problem kills multiple birds with one stone.

Are you saying that endurance food on dodge is actually useful for Roamers in WvW?

Because in PvE Raids or fractals it is pretty useless.

I thought energy was a weapon sigil?

I use it on my support FB for them dodge roll heals

I dont think you realize how extensive the power creep is. It literally does break down to a class discussion, because it IS the espec implimentaions that lead to this. They addressed a boon spam meta by spamming its opposition, and adding additional conversion skills to force it into a push/pull countering loop.

You CAN NOT fix that in changes, as its completely repalced the whole system that came before it. You have gut the especs, and some core traits redesigned around them, to even start a new meta.

The whole situation with endurance is there, because dodge is the thing that properly scales in a large fight for wvw. Without it, we have all the problems of a post stab pirate ship meta, but none of the counters that boon share gave rise to as a response. what you are asking for quickly results in greater vulnerability to stun lock aoe bombing, and now the massive damage the post PoF metas brought forward.

Like I said, you have to gut the damage and CC potential of 5 classes to give enough room to relax the need for stacking boons, or off load all defenses into traits in a way that will scale between large and small fights. Of the current line up, only warrior has that capability...... ie the last class considered too op for its defenses, for being the only class that could last more then 3 seconds without being totally stun locked.

Nothing else you can suggest will work, so long as stacking aoe stuns exists in wvw. And most of those skills come out of core.

Consider how they tried to gut core mesmer to address alacrity in chrono. what makes the especs work is how they scale to meet the difficulty demands of “hard content”. But that compounding support power mixed with uncapped group sizes of wvw makes capping thar power near impossible without also hurting its viability in raids, and visaversa.

The food is fine.

The effects are negligible.

It’s an extra dodge what, every 30/40 seconds?

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I dont think you realize how extensive the power creep is. It literally does break down to a class discussion, because it IS the espec implimentaions that lead to this. They addressed a boon spam meta by spamming its opposition, and adding additional conversion skills to force it into a push/pull countering loop.

The "escalating arms race" approach to balancing is one of the most disappointing parts of this game. Most easily seen on the condition application versus condition removals.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:The food is fine.

The effects are negligible.

It’s an extra dodge what, every 30/40 seconds?

Base is 5%/s. Food gives 40% increased. Which is an extra 2% per second. You need 50 for a dodge so 25s for an extra dodge.

Alternatively you can also look at it as being able to dodge every 7s instead of 10s which IMO is a more useful way to look at it than how long it takes to get an extra dodge at least for classes that can only use dodge defensively.

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I dont think you realize how extensive the power creep is. It literally does break down to a class discussion, because it IS the espec implimentaions that lead to this. They addressed a boon spam meta by spamming its opposition, and adding additional conversion skills to force it into a push/pull countering loop.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:The food is fine.

The effects are negligible.

It’s an extra dodge what, every 30/40 seconds?

I’d rather see them remove something that encourages a passive gamestyle which this, actually allows those who know how to dodge, and when to dodge a better opportunity.

Of course the argument could be made that spamming dodges isn’t valuable either, nor truly skillful, but with the increase in power creep, that extra dodge in the cycle gives one a chance to compete vs the builds that hit like a nuke.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I dont think you realize how extensive the power creep is. It literally does break down to a class discussion, because it IS the espec implimentaions that lead to this. They addressed a boon spam meta by spamming its opposition, and adding additional conversion skills to force it into a push/pull countering loop.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:The food is fine.

The effects are negligible.

It’s an extra dodge what, every 30/40 seconds?

Well they have made 2 or 3 evade spamming elite specs now. The most likely one to get the next one is probably ranger ...

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:I've been withholding this post but honestly it needs to be said.

Might-on-dodge food is horrendously overpowered and breaks the game, especially WvW. So why is this in general discussion? Because it has barely any effect on the rest of the game. There's little incentive to keep this around elsewhere, so it's not like it will be missed.

I doubt many classes heavily utilize this outside of WvW, but it basically provides all builds the Grandmaster Minor trait Endless Stamina, except even without the need for Vigor while still improving baseline endurance regen.

I don't want to turn this into a class comparison thread, but I want to also point out Endurance Regen is hard-capped to max at 100%. So even a thief building into Acrobatics to take advantage of Endless Stamina ends up at a net loss compared to everyone else who has vigor because it gains basically nothing from the food except some might. And it's not like Endless Stamina is some nonfactor trait, either. It's literally what makes Acrobatics actually function as a defensive trait line.

The effect is not removable in any capacity because unlike Vigor which can be stripped or stolen, it's not a boon.

This food is one of the most egregious examples of powercreep in the game and completely breaks what are otherwise normal interactions with dodges. A lot of complaints about the professions, especially coming from WvW, are heavily-sourced from this food indirectly. PoF loaded an excess of extremely potent on-dodge effects into its elite spec trait lines (Stealth on Dodge for Deadeye, Mirage Cloak as an evade modifier/extended evade, and Thermal Release Valve with dodging being the way to cooldown-curb holosmith holo fofge uptime/potency and increase risk), and there are plenty of other potent on-dodge traits in the core game on what are already considered fairly oppressive builds, such as Deceptive Evasion and Companion's Defense.

Heck, we've seen professions nerfed because of this food, like core mesmer's vigor access. Yet these changes have next to no bearing on the actual game being played, and just kill off build diversity and small granular stat-fixing that food can otherwise supply.

If the argument is that people will die too quickly without it... then fix that! There's no shortage of people who are upset about the amount of damage in the game since HoT and PoF because it's a legitimate problem. This is a very low-hanging fruit fix to at least address a fairly substantial part of the defensive powercreep we've seen without actually needing to even touch the classes themselves.

The ideal fix is honestly just to remove means of producing the food from the game and let its supplies die out, or to outright just delete it and refund people a soulbound version of any other food of their choice. It was done for the Magic Find stat on gear when the Luck patch rolled out, and to be honest, this really is the absolute best option as far as the professions and balance is concerned, as well as the amount of work needed to be done to keep it a reasonable item.

That said, here are some alternatives:

1.) Hard nerf it. Cut the endurance regen in half or hit it even harder. You can bump the might duration or intensity to give it synergy with dodge builds like Daredevil or allow this food to have a cost to get a better instant burst damage. It might make the food less-appealing, but what of the many other foods that provide so much less? Is diversity not a good thing? Shouldn't these major decisions be made in trait and gear selection, not just a no-investment consumable?

2.) Go all-in on the Might gain by increasing stacks and removing any endurance regeneration/gain effect it has. There are some worries with balance due to Acrobatics and Daredevil having such high dodge rates, but this at least restricts the oppressiveness on a few builds and traits, and the duration can also be fiddled with to help make it a better bursting damage rune which more professions can take advantage of, such as 3 stacks of might on a 3 second duration, causing a net gain in stats over most other foods, but not defining defenses.

3.) Convert it to 2 seconds of Vigor and make it work only while in combat. I like this idea the least, because it's not a very good fix, but it is better than the current iteration allowing people to stack +90% endurance regeneration with permanent vigor due to concentration also being a problematic stat, and this at least generally lets some builds/classes with poor vigor access to catch up a little bit while not changing the upper end. Boon spam is real, but at least this somewhat curbs power of the food itself.

The food in its current state just needs to go, though. We can't just keep nerfing dodge effects and the core trait lines to compensate for what it does defensively, and many of the most frustrating builds to play against right now (SA Deadeye, condi dodge mirage, boonbot Soulbeast, no-heat holosmith) are just the biggest abusers of what it provides. Hitting this problem kills multiple birds with one stone.

This is untrue... "A lot of complaints about the professions, especially coming from WvW, are heavily-sourced from this food indirectly.".

Boon corrupt and strip exists for boons.

Vigor is negligible. Problem is you have certain profession skill designs that give out a lot of evades.

I'm sorry, but foods are not the issue here, and never will be. And the idea of changing food effects only screws over every profession, when the logical thing to do would be to address the real problems within individual professions. What you are asking for is like a doctor not treating the actual issue, and only treating the symptoms of the issue. Professions need work, and things are not solved, or improved, by changing things like foods, runes, sigils, gear...

Also, to consider, this is not a 1v1 game either, and that seems like what your complaint stems from. Your wvw angle doesn't factor in that wvw was designed primarily as a mass combat mode.

Edit- And I want to address this too... " defensive powercreep we've seen". Outgoing damage vastly trumps defensive skills and measures. The devs already acknowledged the "zerker meta wasn't healthy for the game", and they are slowly correcting that. The support skills and builds are way low in design, compared to damage roles, and the TTK is ridiculously low... It's a perception problem when you say "defensive powercreep", not an actual problem.

@Khisanth.2948 said:Alternatively you can also look at it as being able to dodge every 7s instead of 10s which IMO is a more useful way to look at it than how long it takes to get an extra dodge at least for classes that can only use dodge defensively.Thanks for distilling the mechanic to a useful point of comparison.

This seems inline to me with other available buffs, including energy sigils. It's fair to say that it's a meaningful benefit, but then again, no one uses any runes|sigils|foods unless the item offers a meaningful benefit to the player's build. What makes this particular benefit worse than any other?

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:Alternatively you can also look at it as being able to dodge every 7s instead of 10s which IMO is a more useful way to look at it than how long it takes to get an extra dodge at least for classes that can only use dodge defensively.Thanks for distilling the mechanic to a useful point of comparison.

Mirage... mostly, because of the mechanics of Mirage. But having a plethora of evades on any class make some people upset.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Khisanth.2948" said:Alternatively you can also look at it as being able to dodge every 7s instead of 10s which IMO is a more useful way to look at it than how long it takes to get an extra dodge at least for classes that can only use dodge defensively.Thanks for distilling the mechanic to a useful point of comparison.

I would say the issue is that this food provides (substantially?) more benefit to some professions/elites than others.

Top of mind would be, as the OP listed, Daredevil, Mirage and Holosmith. Just thinking of Daredevil, where dodging is mobility, offense and defense rolled into one. Now allow the Daredevil access to even more dodges while might stacking at the same time, and compare that impact to if a Weaver were to use the same food.

I don't have any firsthand experience for or against it, but on e-paper I can see an issue.

Or to put it another way,https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Curry_Butternut_Squash_Soupbenefits a Power Guard, Power Daredevil and Power Ele equally.

Now give those three: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bowl_of_Orrian_Truffle_and_Meat_Stewand you can easily see that while all receive a benefit, the Daredevil will get a more significant power boost.(I'm assuming the might stack is on an ICD? If not, even moreso)

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Khisanth.2948" said:Alternatively you can also look at it as being able to dodge every 7s instead of 10s which IMO is a more useful way to look at it than how long it takes to get an extra dodge at least for classes that can only use dodge defensively.Thanks for distilling the mechanic to a useful point of comparison.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:Alternatively you can also look at it as being able to dodge every 7s instead of 10s which IMO is a more useful way to look at it than how long it takes to get an extra dodge at least for classes that can only use dodge defensively.Thanks for distilling the mechanic to a useful point of comparison.

Plethora of evades while allowing the evader to continue attacking/performing other actions combined with a class that already has invuln, stealth and decoys.

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Strider Pj.2193 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:Alternatively you can also look at it as being able to dodge every 7s instead of 10s which IMO is a more useful way to look at it than how long it takes to get an extra dodge at least for classes that can only use dodge defensively.Thanks for distilling the mechanic to a useful point of comparison.

I didn’t say the anger/frustration is wrong. Just misplaced. Hate the class not the food.

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I dont think you realize how extensive the power creep is. It literally does break down to a class discussion, because it IS the espec implimentaions that lead to this. They addressed a boon spam meta by spamming its opposition, and adding additional conversion skills to force it into a push/pull countering loop.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:The food is fine.

The effects are negligible.

It’s an extra dodge what, every 30/40 seconds?

Yes, but when applied to on-dodge effects it massively boosts their availability and uptime. Which were never problematic before. That's the point of this post.

With Vigor, which is available on many professions and permanent on several thanks to trait options and the concentration stat, this is reduced to 5.2 seconds.

When applied to various scenarios like Silent Scope and Mirage Cloak which has an extended dodge duration (and it regens during the roll), the effective cooldown is even further reduced.

As it was said above, this food is not utilized in any other area of the game, and it breaks a number of builds because of on-dodge effects like Silent Scope (4s stealth on dodge via SA which massively multiplies stealth uptime) and dodge modifiers like Mirage Cloak which cut the effective downtime to 4.2s which is actually superior to the raw dodge uptime on Acrobatics even with its 100% vigor endurance regen modifier.

To say the food isn't a problem is downright untrue. Go into WvW - most players (especially roamers) have this food running because of the unparalleled defensive uptime and build synergy it provides. Even condi mirage runs it despite providing no extra stat damage because it's just that potent of an effect.

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I dont think you realize how extensive the power creep is. It literally does break down to a class discussion, because it IS the espec implimentaions that lead to this. They addressed a boon spam meta by spamming its opposition, and adding additional conversion skills to force it into a push/pull countering loop.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:The food is fine.

The effects are negligible.

It’s an extra dodge what, every 30/40 seconds?

Again, hit the traits and classes. Roamer s usenut, yes. For roaming..... Which WvW has never been balanced for.

You are blaming synergies? And optimizing those?

Thing is with food, EVERY class has access. (Oh, I don’t play any form of Mesmer, thief or engineer). There is ONLY an advantage because of classes and traits.

And honestly, the one that is the major offender is Mirage. Call a spade a spade.

Leave the food alone, look to the traits.

@OutOfOrder.3719 said:Are you saying that endurance food on dodge is actually useful for Roamers in WvW?

Because in PvE Raids or fractals it is pretty useless.

It's currently the absolute best food by a tremendous margin in non-blob WvW and is still even run on a lot of blob builds. The extras are not necessary in PvE while a number of the most oppressive PvP builds revolve heavily around dodge-based mechanics.

That's why I see little consequence to nerfing/removing it. The only format this realistically hits is WvW on the builds which run it. Instead of gutting professions, this is a very easy adjustment to make that takes a substantial amount of power from most of the least-fun-to-fight builds like permastealth Deadeye, Mirage, keyboard-spam holosmith, etc. without any numbers changes that have any collateral on anyone running different builds.

All it does is normalize things and tightens performance numbers. That's why I call for a nerf to the food first, before demanding nerfs to the professions.> @Strider Pj.2193 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I dont think you realize how extensive the power creep is. It literally does break down to a class discussion, because it IS the espec implimentaions that lead to this. They addressed a boon spam meta by spamming its opposition, and adding additional conversion skills to force it into a push/pull countering loop.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:The food is fine.

The effects are negligible.

It’s an extra dodge what, every 30/40 seconds?

I'm attacking things which are overpowered because there's too much synergy, even when without it. The food is optimal on all builds right now. It just downright breaks those with on-dodge effects because those effects are balanced and designed around not having such a high dodge rate.

I don't really understand how you propose we nerf these traits specifically while having simultaneously zero effect on every other build out there using these traits without the food, the food without the traits, and all variations thereof.

It makes no sense to proclaim the problem is the traits when the justification for why the traits and subsequently the builds abusing them is heavily-based on the uptime provided by this food.

There is such a thing called build diversity and it is always good for the game. This food totally denies that, and unlike the traits, this food being cut down only affects the very specific niche it's causing builds to overperform in, rather than having effects like what happened to lava font on ele due to a totally mandatory niche-based balancing effort.

If you hit things at the general level first all you do is move the existence of a problem somewhere else while leaving the volatile thing that caused imbalance in the first place: a dependency on some specific mechanic.

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@OutOfOrder.3719 said:Are you saying that endurance food on dodge is actually useful for Roamers in WvW?

Because in PvE Raids or fractals it is pretty useless.

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I dont think you realize how extensive the power creep is. It literally does break down to a class discussion, because it IS the espec implimentaions that lead to this. They addressed a boon spam meta by spamming its opposition, and adding additional conversion skills to force it into a push/pull countering loop.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:The food is fine.

The effects are negligible.

It’s an extra dodge what, every 30/40 seconds?

So... punish the other 20-22 ish specs that gain no appreciable difference from the food, because of the traits of two-four?

@Strider Pj.2193 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@OutOfOrder.3719 said:Are you saying that endurance food on dodge is actually useful for Roamers in WvW?

Because in PvE Raids or fractals it is pretty useless.

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I dont think you realize how extensive the power creep is. It literally does break down to a class discussion, because it IS the espec implimentaions that lead to this. They addressed a boon spam meta by spamming its opposition, and adding additional conversion skills to force it into a push/pull countering loop.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:The food is fine.

The effects are negligible.

It’s an extra dodge what, every 30/40 seconds?

You don't actually punish the other specs. Relative to the dodge based specs, they all effectively get stronger, while toning down power creep.

@Khisanth.2948 said:Well they have made 2 or 3 evade spamming elite specs now. The most likely one to get the next one is probably ranger ...

Core ranger exist it doesn't need an elite spec to dodge like mad.

@TexZero.7910 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:Well they have made 2 or 3 evade spamming elite specs now. The most likely one to get the next one is probably ranger ...

If they have to, they'll nerf core to make room for the elite spec. It wouldn't be the first time.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@OutOfOrder.3719 said:Are you saying that endurance food on dodge is actually useful for Roamers in WvW?

Because in PvE Raids or fractals it is pretty useless.

@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I dont think you realize how extensive the power creep is. It literally does break down to a class discussion, because it IS the espec implimentaions that lead to this. They addressed a boon spam meta by spamming its opposition, and adding additional conversion skills to force it into a push/pull countering loop.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:The food is fine.

The effects are negligible.

It’s an extra dodge what, every 30/40 seconds?

If the difference is as negligible as you claim then all that ends up happening is the overperforming builds get toned down.

As I said in my original post, if there's a harsh need for this food to exist on things not abusing the synergy, then all it does is further expose the bigger systemic problems as well. Then there's no defense for argument to justify what's OP and what isn't. Then those things can be nerfed appropriately.

It only follows that if these traits are still managing to over-perform, then the traits should be hit. But then they can be hit less-heavily than they'd need to be hit now if balancing efforts ignored food. If we followed the reasoning of only nerfing traits and not food, the traits either become total garbage for anyone not using the food because they'd be balanced around having food (which still means little in the context of build/food diversity), or simply, the traits end up terrible and the game ends up with less nuance and potential skill expression by featuring more erratic and invisible/hard-to-track behaviors.

@TexZero.7910 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:Well they have made 2 or 3 evade spamming elite specs now. The most likely one to get the next one is probably ranger ...

I know it has some evades but I've literally never encountered a ranger with any current spec that can do it to the level mirage/dd/weaver in either WvW or PvP. Maybe it will be rev in addition to/instead of ranger. Just can't see evade spam on the others. Guardian tends toward blocks instead.

What is all the fuss about? in 30 seconds u get to dodge 3 times normally and 4 times with the food. Is one extra dodge really that game-breaking in wvw? Was the wvw community in uproar when daredevil was released (because it has 3 dodges instead of the normal two)? I didn't think so. If you're claiming that evade-heavy builds abuse this, you're flat out wrong; they have lots of evades by definition and one more every 28 secs is nothing major. The food is fine as it is.