Why 100% Damage Reduction? (I.E: Immortality)

Just going to preface this by saying that I am just curious from a balance perspective. Why are there passive and active abilities in the game that provide 100% DR? 50% I can easily see, hell even 90%, but why 100%? I've played the game for a long time and always wondered why to such an extreme degree. This isn't going to change this late into the games cycle so I am not advocating for nerfs here, just want to discuss what made Anet implement a defense this strong and what necessitates it. Not talking about BLOCKS or DODGES here, they make sense, just those cases where you can face tank with 0 consequence.

So obviously the question is, why not?It doesn't feel good to play against is the primary concern. Hitting your opponent with a meaty attack and seeing 0 pop up as the damage number is just kinda..Meh? Especially if it actually took effort to land it in the first place. When someone pops their 100, the counter-play is usually to just... Wait it out. Run away. Stall. CC, but it essentially puts the player completely on the defensive for a time and if he fights someone with that capability, he better save some utilities for that inevitable moment. Add salt to the wound if the opponent is about to die, but you can't land the killing blow because he is currently immortal. Admittingly, this wouldn't be alleviated much even if the DR was lowered to 90%, but at least you could still make a change to their health bar and pressure them that way.

I can see why it would be necessary in WvW though, where you run the risk of getting bombed by 20+ players on the spot and would literally need immortality to be able to survive it, but at that point, should you even be able to? 1 player against 20 is insurmountable odds for literally anyone and it's impossible to balance a game where that 1 player would have a chance of beating those 20 unless there's a level gap. Now the obvious distinction to make here is merely being able to survive, and not actually win. Even with a few seconds of immortality, that 1 player is realistically, dead, it just buys him another 10 seconds (potentially) to stall those 20 people. Had he only had 90% DR, he would still have died a lot quicker.But that's for WvW, not sPvP where 1 player stands a much higher chance to make a play against less numerous opponents.

Again, not asking for nerfs, if PvP is still chugging lively and has been for this long then something is working with it's implementation.I just want to see the sPvP community's thoughts on the matter.

PvP: One part of me wants to think the reason these skills still exist is because both xpacs brought so much power creep you kind of appreciate not being blown up in 1 second flat... imagine if they removed all of the 'get out of jail free card' skills in the game. e.g; Stone Signet, Endure Pain, Obsidian Flesh, Instant Reflexes... to name just a few.

Then again it could mean they would be able to tone down all the bs so we don't have insta-gib cheese power creep. Idk could be entirely wrong, just a thought.

I think dmg reduction is the way to go... that way you're still doing dmg at least. Not just pure invuln/facetank.

WvW: Yes we pretty much need those 'avoid x dmg' skills ngl... some of us play on perma 300 ping (bogan aussie checking in here) and jumping into WvW fights it exceeds that so I'm grateful for literally any skill that can give me 1 sec of not being utterly obliterated by zerg lag and aoe carpet spam. WvW is large scale combat, different to 5v5 capture point that is PvP.

Hope that makes sense.

I suspect the reasoning was to bring it more to par with Spellbreaker and their 1 second invuln on f2.

Another thing is that the tier with auto Endure Pain contains a decent other trait useful for condition builds, and this encourages you to try other lines than Defense as you have that extra sustain - which is good.

Also your toughness goes from 2211 to 1911 when in berserk mode, making you 16% squishier. The damage reduction allow you to spike at the start and therefore proc necessary traits to survive.

It also allows you to jump into the fray, unleash your damage in one attack then dodge out, which sounds pretty thematic for the berserker.

Why DR? Simply because it's the warrior's way of negating damage, just like guardians do with blocks, thieves with evasion, and elementalists with protection.

The consequences aren't 0 though. In this 1 second you can:

• Be hit by CC
• Condibombed
• Hit by soft CC
• Die from ticks that were placed before entering berserk

How is it an issue? Last 1 second (about a dodge), is telegraphed, only direct hits get nullified? If anything I thought you would bring up Soulbeasts as they in sPvP far far out exceeds the warriors ability to facetank with 2 signets and 1/2 beast abilities all lasting longer than the warriors options.

The only use for them is pretty much a chance to survive a +1 and therefore is mostly handed out to duelist professions like warrior and ranger. Notice how the Revenant was designed with WvW in mind, this is exactly why it gets 50% DR and have little build variety in sPvP. They also hit more players than warrior and ranger which are more focus target oriented in their skills.

It also creates favourable matchups, which is a thing almost not seen since HoT. Having that DR means you are stronger against power builds and weaker against condition ones. Again this is why they made the resistance boon and handed it out to Soulbeast, Warrior, Revenant and Firebrand, as this allows you to get in there and get your damage off, but once it expires you are low on defense against conditions.

I have no doubt that arenanet has an intended "role" for each profession and elite spec in sPvP, meaning any changes made will be with that in mind to enhance exactly that. We already knew berserker was supposed to be a condition variant side noder, so getting that 1 second DR to survive getting plussed makes perfect sense.

@rng.1024I haven't singled Warriors out... I'm talking about this kind of mechanic in general, and that includes what Rangers can pull too.

Given the number of nerfs to true invuln mechanics over the years I’d say it wasn’t so much a balance decision as a design level choice to allow limited circumstances where a player could mitigate all damage.

As you said, a player can die soon after using such an ability by the sheer fact they were already in a bad spot. Or they can use the invuln more tactically and use it to eat heavy spikes that would otherwise kill/heavily damage them.

I’m honestly less frustrated by people being “saved” at 10% hp than I am by trying to spike a player at 80% and do no damage. I can always peel off and wait out their invuln (which won’t last that long). At 10% hp I’m usually more committed to the kill and have less cooldowns to burn, but they are also low so they have to play carefully to avoid getting spiked.

I’d also mention evades here. They are very much immunity for all intents and purposes. But they let certain abilities spike harder. The time to kill may be too low but I think most players like being able to chunk an HP bar to a certain extent. Immunities outside evade can however be unfair because they make certain professions that have more access harder to spike down (requiring even higher spikes). Special mention to professions with better access to evade as well, same generally applies.

@TwiceDead.1963 said:@"rng.1024"I haven't singled Warriors out... I'm talking about this kind of mechanic in general, and that includes what Rangers can pull too.

Thing about Ranger's "immunity" is that they're short lived (less than 5s) and still leave them vulnerable to conditions and CC still, so there's counterplay that exists if someone pops that stuff.

Its all just power creep. Damage output continues to steadily increase over the balance updates, and adding passive defensive skills/traits seems to be the preferred way of compensating.

@Euthymias.7984 said:

@TwiceDead.1963 said:@"rng.1024"I haven't singled Warriors out... I'm talking about this kind of mechanic in general, and that includes what Rangers can pull too.

If you run the right setups, you can easily chain 10 sec of 100% damage reduction. Plus the additional signet of stone you could potentially get from a passive proc. Ranger has a lot more access to straight 100% reduction than war (or really any other class in game). War can also be cced and condi spammed during their immunities so that point doesn't make much of a difference. I'm not taking an official stance, just pointing out important info.

Everything is just a subset of a block or dodge with either a caveat or alteration.

Granted I'd be on board with a better way to signify damage immunity across all classes so newer players know instinctively what to look for, but I don't think there is any inherent unfairness to it beyond flavor.

Ranger gets two dodges, a bunch of dodges or blocks across entire weapon sets, and Signet of stone.

Thief/Daredevil/Dead eye have 2 dodges, reliable and repeatable dodges on some weapon sets, various ways to regen energy that are stronger than vigor, and DD in particular has a 3rd.

Warrior Gets 2 dodges, usually 1 block and 1 evade per weapon set, sometimes some endure pain in there, and if Spellbreaker Full counter.

Mesmer gets 2 dodges, 1 evade on one weapon set, and distortion, sometimes an additional block on one weapon set. Mirrors are a +1 delayed dodge for mirage on heal.

In all of the above examples there are ways to get more, or ways to slot less I'm trying to hit the main options for most general builds. Most classes have at least 4 - 5, some push around 6, others much more. Sure there are clear differences to blocks compared to evades, but evades and most of the others mitigate 100% damage. Even then blocks still mitigate 100% vs everything that isn't unblockable and keep in mind not every class in the game has sufficiently hard hitting unblockable skills, and many that do exist are part of a combo that a block still counters the more important follow-up.

You ask "why" this is, and I mean the answer is kind of simple, everyone would drop way to easy with the amount of damage we have that this mitigation offsets, but if you're willing to exclude dodges and blocks I don't think we should distinguish to far between the others, when mostly everyone has about the same amount of mitigation.

However, I do agree that it doesn't feel good to set everything up for the other person to deny so simply, but I don't think the answer is reduction of the options or reduced mitigation numbers. I hesitate to argue that having more options to sufficiently burst an opponent would be a better solution, but I honestly don't think that is all that great for the health of feel of the game either.A nuanced method could be reducing the amount of recovery people are able to stall for, this would mean that even if people are mitigating damage they can't just reset from critical to full in an instant and could form a healthier conquest meta, especially if out going healing was unaffected by the reduced recovery.

you mean like evade frame that works exactly the same? probably just thematic

you have to modify ENTROPY to make Immortality possible, if you're using the framework of materialism.

You should be friends with RIGHT persons to explain that in detail to you.

I wondered if we would see these abilities changed to barrier instead of 100% damage reduction when that mechanic was introduced.

Defy Pain,Gain barrier equal to x% of your maximum hp for 4 seconds when struck while below 50% health.

The problem with Stone Signet, Endure Pain, Obsidian Flesh and the like is that it requires opposing players to have enough defenses to survive the their onslaught. This is why these skills have always been a problem and basically drive the meta; which is why the Mirage was and still is so contentious. Mirage by default will survive in a 1v1 X length of time by default while applying heavy pressure (if they are a reasonable player who sees the opponent) thanks to their ability to attack while invincible (Mirage Cloak, Blur, Distortion, etc). Skills which provide invulnerability (to any type of dmg) while leaving the ability to attack are poor game design as they shape the meta by limiting design space.

I always wondered this myself. From a design perspective, this along with the amount of instant cast CC with 0 read time is pretty questionable. Whiel you werent singling out Warrior, I feel as though they are the main culprits of this game followed by thieves.

Its always an annoyance to fight warriors due to them being able to straight up face tank with 0 risk while pushing out high damage. Compared to a elementalist that must combo to receive a portion of that damage while also being very fragile.

Cant do much against someone that is basically the hulk, which the warrior is in this game =/.

Because GW2 is basically Runescape once players enter into each other's respective ranges. Nobody can use manual movement as a means to consistently mitigate damage, and nobody has enough baseline defenses to go around when players are supposed to somehow manage 2 dodges over 20 seconds as a means to negate another player's short list of a half-dozen "evade this or you will die" buttons. This means that after dodges are spent on opening strikes, GW2 combat will quickly devolve into two (or more) people, distanced by arbitrary ranges, slapping each other until someone dies. However, instead of correcting this fundamental flaw toward a more Dark Souls end of the spectrum (more universal damage mitigation--such as dodges--and more emphasis on putting one's self at risk while making attacks), Anet just powercrept passive defenses in order to allow players to continue to slap each other with low-risk attacks from arbitrary ranges.

There is no room to feel out another player for a play-style or tactic: GW2 is entirely copy-paste combat. A player loads up a build, uses the minimap and F4 to rotate toward easy fights, and then more or less presses a mental execute button when a suitable target is located. Since universal self-defense doesn't hold up against the tide of generic, lethal-damage skills available to any given player, GW2 PvP fights have to either end quickly, or a player has to always have stealth or some scripted movement gimmick in reserve for a free escape (since raw movement saves nobody in GW2). It's more rock-paper-scissors rather than "action combat" (which is why the game is so "rotation heavy" as the players might put it), and the easy, low effort way to try and trick someone into thinking that GW2 featured "action combat" is by just making everyone passively immune to damage while attacking by slapping on some form of perfect damage negation or instantaneous movement onto attack rotations (i.e. teleports, evade, block, invuln). That way, players get to press their buttons and wiggle around without outright dying immediately: it gives the impression that active movement matters in a game determined by targeted teleports, instant casts from max ranges, and damage negation without any counters; and that illusion is good enough for both Anet and the people who somehow take GW2 PvP seriously.

What is this thread? There's so much mis-information and inaccuracies being spread around it's actually hilarious.

Its not immortality, u still suffer from condis