Jump to content
  • Sign Up

How to address power creep without gutting individual skills and traits.


Lan Deathrider.5910

Recommended Posts

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:So the fabled Q1 balance update that is supposed to address powercreep in the competitive modes is stated to:

  • Reduce hard CC damage
  • address condi spam
  • reduce damage across the board

I fear that this will just end up utterly gutting specific traits and skills. So how about an alternative? What are your thoughts on the below? Also, if any Devs do read this then strongly consider these ideas and what discussion may follow.

Instead of gutting scaling like with what was done with Rampage why not put a cap on the added damage players can stack in competitive game modes? Its not at all difficult to stack up to 700% damage on a Soulbeast for instance.

Put a cap on extra damage, including critical damage, at 300% damage. Most of this would come from critical damage, so this would open up traits for use as once you hit that 300% mark then anything else is useless unless it offers other things. This also curbs the toxic amount of DPS some builds can put out and create an opportunity for more build diversity.

For condi, put a cap on the amount of condition stacks that players can be inflicted with. This means not more than X stacks of Bleed, X stacks of Poison, X Stacks of Burning, etc. This is not X total stacks of any condition, but X stacks per condition. I'm not certain what that cap should be, perhaps it should be split between PvP and WvW but the amount of condi removal would have to decrease to compensate regardless.

I think 10 stacks per condition max would work, but as I said I'm not sure whether or not that would be appropriate. Maybe the right number is 15, or 20, or lower at 5.

Separately for WvW something that I think would work would be to limit the amount of damage packets a player can be inflicted by per second, or limit the amount of other players that can hit another player per second. This would limit the need to ball up on the pin to avoid damage.

Another possible idea for WvW to create healthier competition in outnumbered fights would be to increase target caps on skills and abilities to allow an individual player to fight against a larger number of foes.

Thoughts? Other ideas? Tweaks you would make to the above?

They should have kept conditions the way they were before the big condi rework. Bleed capped at 25, burning and poison not stacking duration, and confusion not having a DoT component.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@"Opopanax.1803" said:I wonder if they will spill this over into pve. If they do, they may have to rebalance mob health pools.Why?

Would PvE become unplayable if it makes classes unable to solo raid bosses? The game becomes too hard if it takes 25s instead of 20s to take down 5 veterans at once? If you only do 27,000 dps against that legendary bounty instead of 30,000 it becomes impossible to bring down with 30 players?

The powercreep has
heavily
affected PvE as well over the years and everything has just become full dps or go home, that's how easy it is nowadays. People just want to kill mobs as fast as possible. They dont have to rebalance kitten even if they nerf damage overall. The only ones that will cry is the dps counter peepers that will be horrified to a number lower than the previous number and probably proclaim the game is dead.

At the same time there are DPS checks in raids. They would have to alter those if modifier caps are put into PvE. Not against it in principle, but there are places were maxing damage is needed, but others where a modifier cap would be healthy.

It's not like clearing raids was an issue back in pre-PoF days when condi tempest was top DPS with 29k golem dps and pretty much everyone did 25% less dps than now. Just required people to actually do some mechanics if they wanted to improve the chances of getting the kill. Currently pretty much over 80% of pure dps builds, even the weaker ones, bench over 20k and over 50% would bench 24k or more (and Kitty's including ALL pretty much weapon combos here on both condi and power builds). About 5% of builds bench above 30k but that's already dozens of them.

From Kitty's experience testing various builds in raids, if you can do 24k on a build, you already do fairly more than enough dps to clear the raids and even if we received a 10-20% blanket nerf for weapon combos that bench over 25k, we'd still clear raids just fine. Just can't ignore mechs as much as this far. Currently people like to say "higher dps means less chances of wiping to mechanic failure" while it currently essentially means "higher dps means less chances of wiping to intentional mechanic failures that you try to overheal through". Slightly tuning down heals and barriers also would combat against that (like nerfing Soulcleave's life siphon, scourge's barriers, engi's and rev's outgoing healing modifiers, tempest's heals, guard's Pure of Heart and increasing Transfusion cooldown) as it'd make it harder to hard-carry through constant mechanical failures.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While i agree that adding caps on some game elements like might stacks, crit damage etc would help with reducing the damage ceiling, power creep is much more of a fundamental game design issue that cant be completely fixed with number tweaks. All skills, traits, elite specs, need to be looked at and need to be re-balanced or re-designed with competitive pvp in mind. Gameplay elements like evading while doing damage, abundant defensive, CC, and mobility skills, and low effort - high impact damage combos cant be fixed by changing numbers and coefficients on skills, the way the skills function needs to be reworked.

I think the main concern is that there is simply far too much that needs to be changed to make gw2 pvp more competitive. Even if they have the time and resources to attempt this, there is a very good chance that the changes wont be enough to make the game more enjoyable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Opopanax.1803 said:I wonder if they will spill this over into pve. If they do, they may have to rebalance mob health pools.Why?

Would PvE become unplayable if it makes classes unable to solo raid bosses? The game becomes too hard if it takes 25s instead of 20s to take down 5 veterans at once? If you only do 27,000 dps against that legendary bounty instead of 30,000 it becomes impossible to bring down with 30 players?

The powercreep has
heavily
affected PvE as well over the years and everything has just become full dps or go home, that's how easy it is nowadays. People just want to kill mobs as fast as possible. They dont have to rebalance kitten even if they nerf damage overall. The only ones that will cry is the dps counter peepers that will be horrified to a number lower than the previous number and probably proclaim the game is dead.

It's a fair question to ask.

They say that this is mostly a competitive update.

I am just curious if it would affect raids, or if they will leave pve numbers the same as they are now.

My guess is they wont touch pve since they are calling it a competitive update.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Ghos.1326 said:I agree with this regarding the DPS meta in PvE. To use an example, just look at Dungeons. Because of the crazy damage running rampant in the game, dungeons are literally obsolete now because it's too easy to just burst everything down.That's not why dungeons are obsolete. Dungeons created the DPS meta, it was Anet taking them out back and shooting them in the head (to make fractals/raids look good in comparison) that did it.

@warherox.7943 said:They should have kept conditions the way they were before the big condi rework. Bleed capped at 25, burning and poison not stacking duration, and confusion not having a DoT component.No, they should not have, because multiple condition users no longer actively hinder each other like they used to when there was a cap.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:While i agree that adding caps on some game elements like might stacks, crit damage etc would help with reducing the damage ceiling, power creep is much more of a fundamental game design issue that cant be completely fixed with number tweaks. All skills, traits, elite specs, need to be looked at and need to be re-balanced or re-designed with competitive pvp in mind. Gameplay elements like evading while doing damage, abundant defensive, CC, and mobility skills, and low effort - high impact damage combos cant be fixed by changing numbers and coefficients on skills, the way the skills function needs to be reworked.

I think the main concern is that there is simply far too much that needs to be changed to make gw2 pvp more competitive. Even if they have the time and resources to attempt this, there is a very good chance that the changes wont be enough to make the game more enjoyable.

That much rework would indeed be a heavy lift time and resource wise, hence the suggestion in this thread to limit the degree damage can power creep. From there individual traits and skills can be looked out to add functionality if needed, or excess trimmed away.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Opopanax.1803 said:Well it will be interesting ro see if they spent a bunch of time on this looking at traits and such, or if it will just be nerfing targeted things.

They make it sound like they are putting a lot of time into it...

Yeah, I'm just wishing that there is not wide spread gutting like what they did to Rampage (or Chronos).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@Opopanax.1803 said:Well it will be interesting ro see if they spent a bunch of time on this looking at traits and such, or if it will just be nerfing targeted things.

They make it sound like they are putting a lot of time into it...

Yeah, I'm just wishing that there is not wide spread gutting like what they did to Rampage (or Chronos).

Agreed. I would be more ok with it if they adjusted our elites some. Banner needs help and we need an elite Shout and Stance. Having more options would make it hurt less.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Opopanax.1803 said:

@Opopanax.1803 said:Well it will be interesting ro see if they spent a bunch of time on this looking at traits and such, or if it will just be nerfing targeted things.

They make it sound like they are putting a lot of time into it...

Yeah, I'm just wishing that there is not wide spread gutting like what they did to Rampage (or Chronos).

Agreed. I would be more ok with it if they adjusted our elites some. Banner needs help and we need an elite Shout and Stance. Having more options would make it hurt less.

This is actually very true, and I think what ur talking about is more critical than the devs know...

Lack of skills and some skills are just copy paste with different color is one of gw2 issues.

Kinda forces devs to condence best performance on a niche number of skills and that will bork up balance since Anet want skills to feel strong and carry player at its usage.

Am yet waiting for Anet learn this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Imagine a see-saw that has a pile of fragile plates on each side which you are trying to balance without it crashing into an unbalanced mess

Option 1: change 20 things on 1 side, and 30 on another. Do this once every 3 months. Get the brush ready.

Option 2, change 1 plate on each side and repeat carefully and regularly.

Guess what our current patching model looks like, that is the issue and allways will be. Until things change.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, caps should be a thing in a competitive environment, problem is how to approach intensity without making condition damage vanish?

It's not exactly easy to manage, I still think that one of the biggest problem is people panic cleansing instead of waiting for the big delivery then make use of their sustain.

The only thing I would change is Might, it's the biggest offender for all forms of damage at 25.

12 would be plenty as a cap and I could see that fix a lot of problem we already have before with applying condition stack caps, because if we were to allow it then should also power gets capped also and that would be too complicated to manage with toughness.

Condition is just like Power overtime, it really is. There's just the mentality of not losing all your health right away that makes it feel unfair.

Also if damage reduction modifiers have a limit, so should damage increase as well.

Perhaps if there was more /big/ condition hits like warrior rather than multi hits, that would also contribute to the feeling of being less unfair also.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@Opopanax.1803 said:I wonder if they will spill this over into pve. If they do, they may have to rebalance mob health pools.Why?

Would PvE become unplayable if it makes classes unable to solo raid bosses? The game becomes too hard if it takes 25s instead of 20s to take down 5 veterans at once? If you only do 27,000 dps against that legendary bounty instead of 30,000 it becomes impossible to bring down with 30 players?

The powercreep has
heavily
affected PvE as well over the years and everything has just become full dps or go home, that's how easy it is nowadays. People just want to kill mobs as fast as possible. They dont have to rebalance kitten even if they nerf damage overall. The only ones that will cry is the dps counter peepers that will be horrified to a number lower than the previous number and probably proclaim the game is dead.

At the same time there are DPS checks in raids. They would have to alter those if modifier caps are put into PvE. Not against it in principle, but there are places were maxing damage is needed, but others where a modifier cap would be healthy.

and ? they dont have to keep the old dmg numbers for the check, they would just need to adjust and do it with less dmg. maybe supports will get more viable then, because you actually need to sustain longer to finish a boss, instead of just killing it before it kills the group.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some individual skills need to be nerfed, like DH traps or axe 5 warrior. Condis are not the problem in this way. Just reduce their duration time. There is a limit on how many condi stacks you can inflict on a mob, because your "oldest" stacks will end in a certain moment, e.g. the possible limit of torment stacks for condi mirage is 40-50 and if you reach these 50 stacks, it would drop almost instantly. There is a cap for condi duration (stats).For power damage: needs a crit chance cap and crit damage cap, so you can't have more than 50% chance. Critical hits should be something that would occasionaly make you deal more damage, not just a way to increase you dps. First thing in meta build is reaching 100% crit chance (this is why some professions have Berserker mixed with Assassin), because non crit hit = 300% less damage, and dealing only critical hits is a huge dps increase.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Antycypator.9874" said:Some individual skills need to be nerfed, like DH traps or axe 5 warrior. Condis are not the problem in this way. Just reduce their duration time. There is a limit on how many condi stacks you can inflict on a mob, because your "oldest" stacks will end in a certain moment, e.g. the possible limit of torment stacks for condi mirage is 40-50 and if you reach these 50 stacks, it would drop almost instantly. There is a cap for condi duration (stats).For power damage: needs a crit chance cap and crit damage cap, so you can't have more than 50% chance. Critical hits should be something that would occasionaly make you deal more damage, not just a way to increase you dps. First thing in meta build is reaching 100% crit chance (this is why some professions have Berserker mixed with Assassin), because non crit hit = 300% less damage, and dealing only critical hits is a huge dps increase.

Axe 5 is not something you see in WvW typically. High damage in theory, but not in practice.

I think you're hitting onto something here with the rest of your post though with condi duration. Reduce the base durations in PvP/WvW. Perhaps only in WvW since there are more condis to stack there.

I disagree on the Crit Chance cap, there are builds that need crit for things other than power damage. The issue with power damage is stacking multipliers, crit damage included. We have armor stats that give more than 50% crit chance. If we instead cap the extent that damage can be increased by then we limit the power creep. Maybe a piece of that is capping crit damage. But there needs to be a ceiling on the amount of %damage increases one can attain.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The use of damage modifiers needs to be addressed if the developers want to tackle power creep. One of the bigger issues I see is the number of damage modifiers in the game and how certain professions have access to a much wider selection of these modifiers. (Glaring at the Warrior profession.) While I'm not advocating for removal of damage modifiers, I would advocate for specific kinds of modifiers only existing with specific professions.

As an example, consider the "Increase damage for every boon on you" trait. Right now 5/9 professions carry this specific trait. ( Guardian, Warrior, Ranger, Thief (Deadeye), and Elementalist) There is no uniformity in access to this trait among these professions in game and no obvious telegraphing that this trait is in use. For Warriors and Guardian these traits are "minors", therefore guaranteed based on trait line selection. However, for Ranger and Elementalist these traits are "majors" and require trade-off in trait selection. As for Thief, further imbalance is achieved as access to this trait type comes only with the selection of an elite specialization. The lack of uniformity, accessibility, and application of this one damage modifier encourages power creep and demands redesign.

I would propose that can be achieved by redeveloping this trait type to activate only under specific boon applications, like is already seen in the Engineer or Revenant professions. Twelve different boons exist within the game, twelve different opportunities to create "Deal more damage while the effects of (x)". Traits like that encourage build diversity, suppress power creep, and even would provide a means of potentially telegraphing the use of that trait in competitive game modes without creating unneeded icons.

Only by addressing this and other damage modifiers will power creep begin to come back down.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...