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GW2 to the limits! From 0.1 sec deaths to immortal bunkers surviving till eternity.


georgessj.4198

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Why do you have to make things as though you never tested them? Why cant you just put simple limits to this mode? tell me a game where you can insta die from skills that state to do 300dmg yet they hit you for 10.000+ while you are watching a bunker surviving bursts from start to finish even if they are 1 vs 3.Seriously i can just click autorun mash randomly my skills and never die when i play ele! Meanwhile when i play something squishy its like a you blink you lose game, i mean what worst can a hacker do to me that the average player cant? This is the only game where hackers and exploiters never go for dmg they simply dont need to.What the point if even in real life i can survive weapon attacks longer?Why cant we just balance things out? Its not that hard! If you cant do the math with vulnerability-ferocity, put a limit to a 300dmg skill so it can hit max for 6k not 10k+ or give at least a short time determination buff when someone takes 100% dmg in like a second! As far as bunkers sustainability goes i cant even comprehend how it came to this or how to fix it, seriously what the point of having a 0 take & give dmg char? nobody will spend an eternity hiting it and he offers nothing to his team other than hoping some newbies will focus him.

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Even though i agree that the state of spvp is absolutely mind numbingly dull, i don't think imposing limits is the solution to that problem.

the problems in the game are deep rooted in actual mechanical design of skills. Many of them have no drawbacks, and this design philosophy was adopted in the games inception, where the line of thinking was "we don't want players to feel like they are being punished for using their skills."

This design decision was the seed to the very core issues the game has in it's design. They attempted to solve such problems with "trade-offs" but these aren't real trade-offs. Just like actions taken in nature and in the real world, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Everything you do should have a consequence. Look at some of these skills. Some of them have absolutely no counterplay. The ones that do, are tied to abilities or traits that you have to take in order to counter play them, instead of the skill inherently having counterplay built in, it's just bandaged over by adjusting other skills to do more things in an attempt to adhere to the initial design philosophy.

For example, Spectral Grasp, when targeting 1 player gives you 15% Life Force. When targeting 5 players, it gives you 80%. Where is the counterplay when a reaper uses this ability in a teamfight? There is none...there is no diminishing return for less active gameplay...you just spam it and wham it because it rewards you for using it in more favorable situations, rather then punishing you for taking the easy route.

The idea is that there should be trade-offs to skills so that effects that return positive feedback loops should have an equal and opposite positive feedbackloop that prevents you from abusing said mechanic. An Example, Every time you use Twist of Fate, you should sacrifice barrier. The more often you use it, the more barrier is taken away. This prevents people from simply spamming it every 20 seconds on rotation and makes you question when to use it...Maybe even an exchange type of effect, where when you use Twist of Fate, you exchange that evade for double damage 1 second afterward (like Frenzy from Gw1)

Harkening back to Guild Wars 1, just look at all the stance skills on warrior on the above linked page. Each and every one, has both a positive effect, and an anti-positive effect, that prevents someone just abusing it on cooldown constantly. This is that idea in action.

That's just tickling the major balance issues, and really imposing limits imo is not the right answer, i think its just another Band-Aid fix to the actual problem.

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@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:Even though i agree that the state of spvp is absolutely mind numbingly dull, i don't think imposing limits is the solution to that problem.

Agree with this

This design decision was the seed to the very core issues the game has in it's design. They attempted to solve such problems with "trade-offs" but these aren't real trade-offs. Just like actions taken in nature and in the real world, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Everything you do should have a consequence. Look at some of these skills. Some of them have absolutely no counterplay. The ones that do, are tied to abilities or traits that you have to take in order to counter play them, instead of the skill inherently having counterplay built in, it's just bandaged over by adjusting other skills to do more things in an attempt to adhere to the initial design philosophy.

The idea is that there should be trade-offs to skills so that effects that return positive feedback loops should have an equal and opposite positive feedbackloop that prevents you from abusing said mechanic. An Example, Every time you use Twist of Fate, you should sacrifice barrier. The more often you use it, the more barrier is taken away. This prevents people from simply spamming it every 20 seconds on rotation and makes you question when to use it...Maybe even an exchange type of effect, where when you use Twist of Fate, you exchange that evade for double damage 1 second afterward (like Frenzy from Gw1)

Kind of agree with these. I think tradeoffs are a good idea; way better than just nerfing everything and making the game super slow, but I don't think every skill in the game needs a tradeoff.

I think they should only exist on class mechanics though(IE Zerker losing 300 toughness in Zerk-mode) and that tradeoffs like that should exist across all elite specs in a meaningful way that doesn't make the elite spec just a straight upgrade.

When it comes to Utility skills, the tradeoff is usually the cooldown combined with having to give up any other utility skill in its place. If there really isn't a choice, and a skill is objectively better in every single way, that's when the nerf hammer should take a few swings at it.Instead of at literally everything. Seriously, CTRL + Z pls. Undo, UNDO!

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@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:Even though i agree that the state of spvp is absolutely mind numbingly dull, i don't think imposing limits is the solution to that problem.

the problems in the game are deep rooted in actual mechanical design of skills. Many of them have no drawbacks, and this design philosophy was adopted in the games inception, where the line of thinking was "we don't want players to feel like they are being punished for using their skills."

This design decision was the seed to the very core issues the game has in it's design. They attempted to solve such problems with "trade-offs" but these aren't real trade-offs. Just like actions taken in nature and in the real world, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Everything you do should have a consequence. Look at some of these skills. Some of them have absolutely no counterplay. The ones that do, are tied to abilities or traits that you have to take in order to counter play them, instead of the skill inherently having counterplay built in, it's just bandaged over by adjusting other skills to do more things in an attempt to adhere to the initial design philosophy.

For example, Spectral Grasp, when targeting 1 player gives you 15% Life Force. When targeting 5 players, it gives you 80%. Where is the counterplay when a reaper uses this ability in a teamfight? There is none...there is no diminishing return for less active gameplay...you just spam it and wham it because it rewards you for using it in more favorable situations, rather then punishing you for taking the easy route.

The idea is that there should be trade-offs to skills so that effects that return positive feedback loops should have an equal and opposite positive feedbackloop that prevents you from abusing said mechanic. An Example, Every time you use Twist of Fate, you should sacrifice barrier. The more often you use it, the more barrier is taken away. This prevents people from simply spamming it every 20 seconds on rotation and makes you question when to use it...Maybe even an exchange type of effect, where when you use Twist of Fate, you exchange that evade for double damage 1 second afterward (like Frenzy from Gw1)

Harkening back to Guild Wars 1, just look at all the stance skills on warrior on the above linked page. Each and every one, has both a positive effect, and an anti-positive effect, that prevents someone just abusing it on cooldown constantly. This is that idea in action.

That's just tickling the major balance issues, and really imposing limits imo is not the right answer, i think its just another Band-Aid fix to the actual problem.

Why the fuck would someone use twist of fate if he will take double damage after? Its designed to prevent damage! Try playing your build without utilities.

Also twist of fate is 75s CD, not 20sTradeoff is: u dont have stunbreak for next 75s.

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@ollbirtan.2915 said:FYI Twist of Fate has a 75 seconds cooldown in pvp.

Yaa thanks for the correction. But I'm sure you get the point though. Twist of Fate is just an example. You're right about it's cooldown, but the cooldown was not really important to the point I was making.

@"Filip.7463" said:Why the kitten would someone use twist of fate if he will take double damage after? Its designed to prevent damage! Try playing your build without utilities.Tradeoff is: u dont have stunbreak for next 75s.

Like i said, have a look at Frenzy, and every other stance from gw1. Every stance has an anti-positive trade off.

Opportunity cost and cooldowns aren't real tradeoffs...these are the "fake" tradeoffs that Anet thinks balances the game but they don't. Look again at GW1...Technically every skill in that game has less cooldown times...Frenzy has a 4 second cooldown and an 8 second duration...it and most other stance skills (along with many other skills in gw1) can actually be PERMA'D and yet gw1 was a less spammy gameplay then gw2, with CD's that are 4x,5x,10x longer. Think about that for a moment....(For those that never played gw1, Frenzy and other 33% attack speed skills was the equivalent of having the quickness boon on you.)

One of the few actual spammy builds in that game was Blind Bot Ele. Reason why? No tradeoffs on their blinding skills...go figure it would be the most complained about, most polarizing build in the game right next to Smiter's Boon.

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@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:I think they should only exist on class mechanics though(IE Zerker losing 300 toughness in Zerk-mode) and that tradeoffs like that should exist across all elite specs in a meaningful way that doesn't make the elite spec just a straight upgrade.

I mentioned this in the above comment, but imo these fake tradeoffs anet has added to Elite Specs hurt more then help then anything else, and there's a good reason why.

Think about it for a moment. The real problems in this game arise from the mechanics of skills. The tradeoff's implemented on these elite specs are just bandaaid fixes rather then addressing the actual problems, and skills that are completely okay in design actually suffer additional punishment from an additional tradeoff that was never intended for said skill. This is why we see off meta builds dying when a meta build dies due to changes to the elite spec itself. Again good example is mirage going from having maybe 3 viable builds to 0 viable builds post feb.

When it comes to Utility skills, the tradeoff is usually the cooldown combined with having to give up any other utility skill in its place.

And for this please refer to my previous comment. Opportunity cost, and cooldowns aren't real tradeoffs...they are fake...fugazzi...facade bandaid fixes. Again look no further then skills in gw1 where nearly every skill has about 3x times lower cooldown times...and in fact most skills could be perma'd, and the spam in that game is exponentially less then in gw2. It's no mistake why, it's because (most) skills could not be mind numbingly used without serious repercussions.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@ollbirtan.2915 said:FYI Twist of Fate has a 75 seconds cooldown in pvp.

Yaa thanks for the correction. But I'm sure you get the point though. Twist of Fate is just an example. You're right about it's cooldown, but the cooldown was not really important to the point I was making.

Yes CD is very important. If u havent noticed, there is no build with more than one long cd skill.

If every skill gives negative effect on u, its the same as if no one skill gives negative. I know its fantasy game but there is no logic u should get penalty for using stunbreak or evading an attack. Penalty is for wasting long cd skill and dying cuz u cant use it.

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@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:Even though i agree that the state of spvp is absolutely mind numbingly dull, i don't think imposing limits is the solution to that problem.

the problems in the game are deep rooted in actual mechanical design of skills. Many of them have no drawbacks, and this design philosophy was adopted in the games inception, where the line of thinking was "we don't want players to feel like they are being punished for using their skills."

This design decision was the seed to the very core issues the game has in it's design. They attempted to solve such problems with "trade-offs" but these aren't real trade-offs. Just like actions taken in nature and in the real world, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Everything you do should have a consequence. Look at some of these skills. Some of them have absolutely no counterplay. The ones that do, are tied to abilities or traits that you have to take in order to counter play them, instead of the skill inherently having counterplay built in, it's just bandaged over by adjusting other skills to do more things in an attempt to adhere to the initial design philosophy.

For example, Spectral Grasp, when targeting 1 player gives you 15% Life Force. When targeting 5 players, it gives you 80%. Where is the counterplay when a reaper uses this ability in a teamfight? There is none...there is no diminishing return for less active gameplay...you just spam it and wham it because it rewards you for using it in more favorable situations, rather then punishing you for taking the easy route.

The idea is that there should be trade-offs to skills so that effects that return positive feedback loops should have an equal and opposite positive feedbackloop that prevents you from abusing said mechanic. An Example, Every time you use Twist of Fate, you should sacrifice barrier. The more often you use it, the more barrier is taken away. This prevents people from simply spamming it every 20 seconds on rotation and makes you question when to use it...Maybe even an exchange type of effect, where when you use Twist of Fate, you exchange that evade for double damage 1 second afterward (like Frenzy from Gw1)

Harkening back to Guild Wars 1, just look at all the stance skills on warrior on the above linked page. Each and every one, has both a positive effect, and an anti-positive effect, that prevents someone just abusing it on cooldown constantly. This is that idea in action.

That's just tickling the major balance issues, and really imposing limits imo is not the right answer, i think its just another Band-Aid fix to the actual problem.

You are asking for an unrealistic utopia, there is no staff , money, time or even the willingness to fix such deep rooted problems.Im not asking for that much and yea my solution is kinda amateurish for good reasons considering the gw2 pvp situation.If old players get shocked by the state of pvp Just imagine the look on a new players face when he clicks damage received and sees a 300 dmg skill hiting him for 10k while he forever lands bursts on '''certain classes''' to no avail.Certain classes that im not gonna name because i dont believe in feeding trolls.

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@Filip.7463 said:

@ollbirtan.2915 said:FYI Twist of Fate has a 75 seconds cooldown in pvp.

Yaa thanks for the correction. But I'm sure you get the point though. Twist of Fate is just an example. You're right about it's cooldown, but the cooldown was not really important to the point I was making.

Yes CD is very important. If u havent noticed, there is no build with more than one long cd skill.

If every skill gives negative effect on u, its the same as if no one skill gives negative. I know its fantasy game but there is no logic u should get penalty for using stunbreak or evading an attack. Penalty is for wasting long cd skill and dying cuz u cant use it.

Fantasy game yet in real life i can survive a lot longer weapon attacks than my thief does

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@georgessj.4198 said:

@ollbirtan.2915 said:FYI Twist of Fate has a 75 seconds cooldown in pvp.

Yaa thanks for the correction. But I'm sure you get the point though. Twist of Fate is just an example. You're right about it's cooldown, but the cooldown was not really important to the point I was making.

Yes CD is very important. If u havent noticed, there is no build with more than one long cd skill.

If every skill gives negative effect on u, its the same as if no one skill gives negative. I know its fantasy game but there is no logic u should get penalty for using stunbreak or evading an attack. Penalty is for wasting long cd skill and dying cuz u cant use it.

Fantasy game yet in real life i can survive a lot longer weapon attacks than my thief does

Thief has enough sustain, if u are facetanking damage, cant cleanse or dodge then blame your skills, not class

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@Filip.7463 said:

@ollbirtan.2915 said:FYI Twist of Fate has a 75 seconds cooldown in pvp.

Yaa thanks for the correction. But I'm sure you get the point though. Twist of Fate is just an example. You're right about it's cooldown, but the cooldown was not really important to the point I was making.

Yes CD is very important. If u havent noticed, there is no build with more than one long cd skill.

If every skill gives negative effect on u, its the same as if no one skill gives negative. I know its fantasy game but there is no logic u should get penalty for using stunbreak or evading an attack. Penalty is for wasting long cd skill and dying cuz u cant use it.

Fantasy game yet in real life i can survive a lot longer weapon attacks than my thief does

Thief has enough sustain, if u are facetanking damage, cant cleanse or dodge then blame your skills, not class.

I said in a previous post: im not gonna name classes because i dont believe in feeding trolls.Well i f....d up. my bad.

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@"Filip.7463" said:Yes CD is very important. If u haven't noticed, there is no build with more than one long cd skill.

No one said that cooldown's aren't important. I said it wasn't important to the point I was making about tradeoffs.

If every skill gives negative effect on u, its the same as if no one skill gives negative. I know its fantasy game but there is no logic u should get penalty for using stunbreak or evading an attack. Penalty is for wasting long cd skill and dying cuz u cant use it.

That's not a "real" tradeoff...this is what you have in game already and it doesn't work.

Do you have a car? Cooldown's and cast-times are equivalent to paying for that car every month, and putting gas into it in order to use it. But just because you pay for a car, doesn't mean you can just drive on the sidewalk and think that you will not suffer dire consequences. This is essentially what's happening in gw2. People bought and pay gas for a car (opportunity cost) and drive it on the sidewalk (not facing consequences for using skills)

Making the price of a car more expensive, or making the gas you pay higher doesn't factor into a decision of whether you drive said car on a sidewalk or not.... Or are you really thinking about Gas prices as you mow people down?

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@georgessj.4198 said:

@"ollbirtan.2915" said:FYI Twist of Fate has a 75 seconds cooldown in pvp.

Yaa thanks for the correction. But I'm sure you get the point though. Twist of Fate is just an example. You're right about it's cooldown, but the cooldown was not really important to the point I was making.

Yes CD is very important. If u havent noticed, there is no build with more than one long cd skill.

If every skill gives negative effect on u, its the same as if no one skill gives negative. I know its fantasy game but there is no logic u should get penalty for using stunbreak or evading an attack. Penalty is for wasting long cd skill and dying cuz u cant use it.

Fantasy game yet in real life i can survive a lot longer weapon attacks than my thief does

Thief has enough sustain, if u are facetanking damage, cant cleanse or dodge then blame your skills, not class.

I said in a previous post: im not gonna name classes because i dont believe in feeding trolls.Well i f....d up. my bad.

You're playing a high-skill cap class that also happens to be squishy when they're not careful but is given the toolset to be very cautious. You knew exactly what you were in for when you give a comment like that. You're also playing a class almost nobody in PvP likes because they've been prevalent since just about the beginning of time because of their mobility and ability to +1, even when people supposedly call them "bad" on the forums. How bad the class must be to remain a staple.

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@Caitir.6947 said:

@"ollbirtan.2915" said:FYI Twist of Fate has a 75 seconds cooldown in pvp.

Yaa thanks for the correction. But I'm sure you get the point though. Twist of Fate is just an example. You're right about it's cooldown, but the cooldown was not really important to the point I was making.

Yes CD is very important. If u havent noticed, there is no build with more than one long cd skill.

If every skill gives negative effect on u, its the same as if no one skill gives negative. I know its fantasy game but there is no logic u should get penalty for using stunbreak or evading an attack. Penalty is for wasting long cd skill and dying cuz u cant use it.

Fantasy game yet in real life i can survive a lot longer weapon attacks than my thief does

Thief has enough sustain, if u are facetanking damage, cant cleanse or dodge then blame your skills, not class.

I said in a previous post: im not gonna name classes because i dont believe in feeding trolls.Well i f....d up. my bad.

You're playing a high-skill cap class that also happens to be squishy when they're not careful but is given the toolset to be very cautious. You knew exactly what you were in for when you give a comment like that. You're also playing a class almost nobody in PvP likes because they've been prevalent since just about the beginning of time because of their mobility and ability to +1, even when people supposedly call them "bad" on the forums. How bad the class must be to remain a staple.

It's a high skill cap class with low reward output. It may not have been along the lines of Fresh Air ele skill cap, but people that were good can punish poor plays severely. The only reason why Theif was ever prevalent/staple in PvP is because of mobility, and its role in decapping, +1 shouldn't even be considered because that's pretty much tied in with mobility. Not to mention Any class can +1.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:I mentioned this in the above comment, but imo these fake tradeoffs anet has added to Elite Specs hurt more then help then anything else, and there's a good reason why.

Think about it for a moment. The real problems in this game arise from the mechanics of skills. The tradeoff's implemented on these elite specs are just bandaaid fixes rather then addressing the actual problems, and skills that are completely okay in design actually suffer additional punishment from an additional tradeoff that was never intended for said skill. This is why we see off meta builds dying when a meta build dies due to changes to the elite spec itself. Again good example is mirage going from having maybe 3 viable builds to 0 viable builds post feb.

I mean, you're not wrong by any stretch. A lot of the 'tradeoffs' put on elites do just feel like bandaid fixes with no real impact, but then again there's elites like Mirage. Like you say; Mirage loses an entire dodge which is actually a pretty big, and dare I say smart tradeoff. The problem is some other elites having nothing of the sort. Either before and/or after Feb 25th.

I'll use my main as an example: I play Spellbreaker. I imagine the tradeoff is supposed to be getting FC at the cost of only being able to use level 1 bursts. You get a strong defensive tool at the cost of damage(at least on paper.) It doesn't really compare to the tradeoff put on Mirage, Zerker, or a lot of elites really. Especially post-Feb 25th where nothing does hardly any damage anyway, so having a strong defensive tool is even less of a meaningful tradeoff.

TL;DR- Tradeoffs would probably feel better if every elite had one, and they meant something at all.

And for this please refer to my previous comment. Opportunity cost, and cooldowns aren't real tradeoffs...they are fake...fugazzi...facade bandaid fixes. Again look no further then skills in gw1 where nearly every skill has about 3x times lower cooldown times...and in fact most skills could be perma'd, and the spam in that game is exponentially less then in gw2. It's no mistake why, it's because (most) skills could not be mind numbingly used without serious repercussions.

Idunno. I never played Gw1. Partly for that reason.

This is the second one, I think. Maybe CDs/Opportunity cost are fake tradeoffs, but like I say Utils really don't need tradeoffs. You push the button, the skill does something, then it goes on CD. We do this for 2 seconds and then 20ish seconds later we do it again. This is how its always been in Gw2. It's gucci, or it was gucci before that 20s CD became 12% of an entire match of conquest.

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@"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:TL;DR- Tradeoffs would probably feel better if every elite had one, and they meant something at all.

Right but that's exactly it. The tradeoff's on Elite specs we have now don't mean anything. They are fugazzi's, and all they really do is make the barrier for entry on using builds higher and not much else. Much like the car analogy, it's like making a car more expensive, and higher price to buy the gas. If you want to travel from NY to LA, then such changes would only make it possible to drive a crappier car, from LA to TX...all to fix one build that was able to travel from NY to Alaska, so that only that particular build can travel to NY to LA.

Essentially we just move the goal post by placing the post so far that only a soccer player who can kick the ball so hard that only he can score a goal...and if your not that soccer player, you are not scoring that goal. This is again just another allusion to builds and how those builds are balanced. Meta builds get "balanced" but all their off-meta builds get the short end of the stick and never see the light of day.

Beyond that there are even larger implications that stem from this problem, but it goes way beyond what this topic focus is.

@"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:Idunno. I never played Gw1. Partly for that reason.

Here's the thing about gw1. People actually looked forward to the balance patches every month or so that they released them. Mostly because when they released a balance patch, we would see a plethora of mechanics changes, and new builds to experiment and play around with. The meta was HUGE in comparison to gw2. We are talking hundreds and hundreds of viable meta builds...all with playstyles so vastly different from one another, that they each had been gives special names, usually the builds were named after the person or guild who found them or they were named after what the person desired to name it, and it gave incentive for theory crafters to create more builds. Just a few examples, we had Gothspike, Mathway, Rainbow Spikes, Emo Bonders, 55 monks...believe me there are hundreds if not thousands of viable builds made in the history of gw1, and the balance discussions were almost non-existent. The only thing people actually complained about was "Melee Hate" (which is that casters generally had more punishing abilities to melee classes, then melee classes could actually deal with...)

So if you didn't play gw1 because it had tradeoff's, I'd consider that either uncharitable to the game, or just an uninformed decision as to why you wouldn't play the game for that reason. It didn't have perfect balance, no game ever does (monks were required on nearly every team late stage meta games, melee-hate), but it was far vastly superior balance wise in comparison to gw2.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Filip.7463" said:Yes CD is very important. If u haven't noticed, there is no build with more than one long cd skill.

No one said that cooldown's aren't important. I said it wasn't important to the point I was making about tradeoffs.

If every skill gives negative effect on u, its the same as if no one skill gives negative. I know its fantasy game but there is no logic u should get penalty for using stunbreak or evading an attack. Penalty is for wasting long cd skill and dying cuz u cant use it.

That's not a "real" tradeoff...this is what you have in game already and it doesn't work.

Wait, who said it doesnt work? Only you

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:For example, Spectral Grasp, when targeting 1 player gives you 15% Life Force. When targeting 5 players, it gives you 80%. Where is the counterplay when a reaper uses this ability in a teamfight? There is none...there is no diminishing return for less active gameplay...you just spam it and wham it because it rewards you for using it in more favorable situations, rather then punishing you for taking the easy route.

That was me. Well, I was one of the people who got stuff like this put in to the game. A long time ago, the balance team maintained the passive-aggressive belief that they knew better than the players when it came to profession balance, and they also refused to tell us the answers to all of our little dilemmas. They were all about letting us figure it out for ourselves. It took a lot of effort to break through to them and get our grievances considered, and one of the big talking points was the necromancer.

For many years the necromancer was the worst profession in the game. The reason why was pretty simple: it didn't have the active defenses that other professions had. It didn't have the movement skills, the invulnerability, the dodges, the stability, the boons, nothing. Necromancers had two things going for them (life shroud and debuffs), which ultimately lead to the most frustrating and polarizing class in the game. Whether a necromancer won or lost was ultimately out of their control. If they approached a lone player with a full bar of shroud, that lone player had nothing they could do to win. They were beaten into the ground by superior statistical strength. But, if a necromancer didn't have a full life bar, or if they faced more than one person, the necro was dead with no hope of escape or victory. This lead to a situation where nobody was happy: people fighting necromancers felt overpowered and helpless, and necromancers also felt like slow moving prey for everyone else to eat.

The solution to this problem is the very thing you're objecting to: scaling effects. It started with reaper shouts, but soon expanded to other skills. By giving necromancer skills and utilities abilities that will upscale with the number of enemies they face, this gives necromancers the ability to fight against multiple foes and at least stand a chance. Without these upscaling abilities, necromancers would fall back into the situation they were years ago, where everyone hates them whether they play them or not.

See, I disagree with your assertion here. Mostly because I've seen it fail before in other games (I.E. Yugioh and it's infamous de-powered versions of old cards). It isn't plainly shown, but every skill already has a series of drawbacks to it through opportunity cost: Every utility and trait you take means that there's dozens of others you don't get to take. Every time you use a skill, you lose access to that skill for future use. The gear you pick limits your access to weapons and utilities, and also limits your ability to receive or inflict damage. Every skill you use opens you up to being interrupted or punished due to bad timing or spacing. Etc. and so on.

If you start with the assumption that all toons are zeroes at base, then it makes the game look like it is nothing but strengths. But, if you consider each toon as being fully built from the start, such as it is with PVP, then every build choice you make comes with the tradeoff of sacrificing what is there prior. For an example, lets do a full breakdown of Twist of Fate vs. Arcane Shield.

Twist of FatePositives:Can be used twice in close successionAvoids an infinite amount of damage in its short time frameGrants superspeedGrants Barrier when traitedCons:Can't attack while using the skillOnly lasts 1 second2.5 minutes to get both charges backRequires Weaver SpecializationLoses out on significant DPS bonuses when traited for

Arcane ShieldPositives:Can attack while using the shieldLasts 5 secondsRelatively short rechargeDoes damage when it explodesCan be taken on all buildsGains reduced recharge, inflicts conditions, and gives ferocity when traitedCons:Can be overpowered by multi-hitting attacksCan only be used once per engagementCan be bypassed with unblockable skillsMust Sacrifice a specialization line for the beneficial traitsDoesn't upscale well

Sure you can run both at the same time, but then what else are you sacrificing? The game's problems are not caused by skills not having additional drawbacks aside from opportunity cost. It just comes from skills being either too strong in what they do, or not strong enough. Too frequent, or not frequent enough. Rarely will a skill need a radical rework in order to become balanced. The pendulum swings between too tanky and too frail partly because of the cyclic balancing nature of the game.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:Idunno. I never played Gw1. Partly for that reason.

Here's the thing about gw1. People actually looked forward to the balance patches every month or so that they released them. Mostly because when they released a balance patch, we would see a plethora of mechanics changes, and new builds to experiment and play around with. The meta was HUGE in comparison to gw2. We are talking hundreds and hundreds of viable meta builds...all with playstyles so vastly different from one another, that they each had been gives special names, usually the builds were named after the person or guild who found them or they were named after what the person desired to name it, and it gave incentive for theory crafters to create more builds. Just a few examples, we had
,
, Rainbow Spikes, Emo Bonders, 55 monks...believe me there are hundreds if not thousands of viable builds made in the history of gw1, and the balance discussions were almost non-existent. The only thing people actually complained about was "Melee Hate" (which is that casters generally had more punishing abilities to melee classes, then melee classes could actually deal with...)

I respect it, and I think it did a much better job at that. With Gw2 its actually terrifying reading the patch notes, or at least now it is. Wasn't always.And we've got like what... 3 'meta' builds now? Relatively speaking; not so long ago, there was a point where every class besides Rev had at least 1 viable meta build.

So if you didn't play gw1 because it had tradeoff's, I'd consider that either uncharitable to the game, or just an uninformed decision as to why you wouldn't play the game for that reason. It didn't have perfect balance, no game ever does (monks were required on nearly every team late stage meta games, melee-hate), but it was far vastly superior balance wise in comparison to gw2.

Only partly though. I can't be asked to keep track of a ton of different effects on a single skill. That sounds like it would be information overload for me.Gw2 combat always appealed more to my basic kitten self, and I feel like jumping to the Gw1 style would be really jarring.

On elite spec mechanics, I think the tradeoffs are totally manageable. All for those getting fleshed out, less for every utility having some sort of trade.

Although for any of that to matter; Gw2 PvP would have to be fun to play again anyway, and uh.... It's not really in this state. Losing a bunch of build options and fighting a bunch of bunkers in an endless tickle-fight; like the OP says, isn't very fun.

Like, say every util did get a tradeoff. Let's use Twist of Fate for an example because lots of people been talking about that. Even if it lowered a Weaver's max barrier with every use, the CD is so long that it would really only be able to proc the debuff like 8-9 times per match max, and with how low damage is that debuff probably wouldn't even be very noticeable.

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@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:The solution to this problem is the very thing you're objecting to: scaling effects.

I suppose you misunderstand me then. I have no objection to scaling effects. In fact although I didn't discuss it here at all, I think all skills should have infinite scaling effects (Being what's called Scale Invariance). This is basically the essence of what positive feedback loops are and why they are useful. But you can't have positive feedback loops without anti-positive feedback loops otherwise you get infinite growth curves. That's the idea behind actual REAL tradeoffs... Necromancer (and all classes) could get better mechanics that could scale infinitely if they had tradeoffs that punished you for using those abilities in such a way that abuse infinite feedbackloop growth.

So essentially, if you were behind the idea of scale invariance, that's good.... you were on the right track to making the game fun and balanced actually...It's just that you missed the other half of the "equation"...you missed the other piece that makes the idea whole...and it has of course caused problems that reverberated for the remaining history of the game. It's not immediately obvious because knowing why scale invariant systems need equally scale invariant tradeoffs is something you could only know by doing hardcore research in areas of study that are in relation to gw2, pretty abstract. (chaos theory/complexity science/Non-linear Dynamic Systems studies etc...)

Now about opportunity cost. I already talked about it in comments above and I'm just gonna refer you to those comments. Opportunity cost is not a real tradeoff, and there are a number of good reasons why...mostly because it can't address feedback loop behavior, again, the above mentioned scale invariance. But additional reasons for why they aren't real tradeoffs is because cast-times and cooldowns are essentially irrelevant in the large scheme of things...

Think of it this way...Let's take your example, of Arcane Shield. Let's pretend it didn't have a cooldown or a cast time...in fact pretend that no skill at all in the game had cooldowns or cast-times at all. You still have the option to choose which one you want but you can't have both... So the question is, what would the behavior of a player be when either of these skills are used in their most optimal scenario's?

They would be used on cooldown...aka spammed indefinitely, or at least as often as possible. Think about it for a moment. Arcane Shield provides 3 blocks. Using this skill every millisecond would mean you would have 1000 blocks every second. Likewise, Twist of Fate, would give you 1000 evade frames every second. The reason these skills are used indefinitely in the above manner is because there is no reason for a rational player to stop and think about the usage of these skills... in fact with lower and lower the cooldowns and cast-times are, unchecked mechanics REWARDS them for pressing it as often as possible...Even if they don't actually evade or block anything... it just makes more and more sense to use such skills as often as humanly possible. So where is the opportunity cost in all this? Well it's not involved...it doesn't enter at all. You are either choosing Twist of Fate and spamming it...or you are taking Arcane Shield and spamming it. In both cases the rational agent acts the same with the skill they pick...which is using the skill as often as possible no matter what the scenario, whether it had an effect or not on enemy players.

I have to wrap up this comment, i had a bit more to add to the conclusion of the above thought experiment...but essentially if we were to return to the normal world of cooldowns and cast-times, those things merely prevent us from being more and more rewarded for using an ability constantly. Think about Lich Form. The transform cooldown is about 150 seconds, and the spell that most people use inside it has a 1 second cooldown. Think about how this skill is used. We use lich form as often as possible in order to gain access to a skill that heavily rewards us for using it over and over again for 10 seconds. I mean this skill is like a living example of rational behavior in action. Where is the opportunity cost in using Lich-form when one cooldown is 150 seconds, and the other is 1 second, and both times we all use it the same...1, 1, 1 is in mostly all situations the most optimal way to use the form. Not saying that lich form doesn't have counter-play, it does...but what's in question here is why people use it in the above manner rather then thinking about the skills they use.

Cheers for the good response btw.

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@"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:Only partly though. I can't be asked to keep track of a ton of different effects on a single skill.

Everyone's different. But I think there is more text on gw2 skills then there are on gw1 skills. Pretty sure i can trait my Overload Water to have such a long tooltip that it extends beyond the boundary of my monitor.

Most skills in gw1 weren't bloated much at all really. They were very simple skills, with clearly identifiable strength and weakness. Part of what made the game so fun was the complexity that arose from this simplicity.

Just an example of a very simple skill that had huge complexity in it's mechanics, but was very simple to understand.VFH8xQe.png

This was probably one of my favorite skills from the game to talk about. Every time you received a condition, you'd give that condition to nearby foes, for a simple price of some of your health. What's interesting about this skill is that A) you couldn't fully control how many conditions you were getting...but you could make builds where you can inflict conditions on yourself in order to spread those conditions to other players around you. B ) You could also make builds where sacrificing your health triggered other cool effects with other skills...Such as Dark Aura.

In totality, it was a useful skill in certain team compositions where you could inflict insane condition pressure, while you yourself were extremely vulnerable when trying to exploit such a mechanic...and from this we got probably what most people would consider their favorite team build in the game "Contagion Bomb" Which was a coordinated effort to use these sorts of necromancers as condition bomb nukes, where the whole team would simply support two of them, as they transferred conditions from each other using skills like "Draw Condition."

My favorite build is an understatement...it was such a fascinating build that I would go so far to say it warrants scientific study as to how and why it existed. Basically the amount of complexity that arose from a few simple mechanics created something so...unique... is the only way to describe this build.

But back on topic, you can see that, the skill has an Effect, and a anti-positive tradeoff on that effect, that helps balance it out. In addition, the cooldown and the casttime are basically irrelevant in the grand scheme of the skill, since it has a duration of 60 seconds, and a cooldown of 20. You could screw up 3 times casting this skill before you lost it's effect really... Now, Imagining if this skill didn't have a tradeoff to ground it...it would be BUSTED and would require no coordination in order to use it... This skill's mechanics simply can not exist without a tradeoff as the exponential nature of it's mechanic would be too powerful.

Like, say every util did get a tradeoff. Let's use Twist of Fate for an example because lots of people been talking about that. Even if it lowered a Weaver's max barrier with every use, the CD is so long that it would really only be able to proc the debuff like 8-9 times per match max, and with how low damage is that debuff probably wouldn't even be very noticeable.

If you have tradeoffs, you can lower the cooldowns. In a perfect world, no skill would have any cooldown, and the rational decisions made by agents would be to not spam the skill. To even get approximately close to such a world, means that the skills need some kind of tradeoff that prevents them from just button mashing something with no cooldown...what would that effect be? Well it could really be anything and your imagination is the limit here. For me, draining barrier was just the first thing that came to mind. But hell it could be anything... Perhaps, something like "For every attack that is evaded, X Barrier currently on you gets drained. If you have no Barrier, you take damage equal to 2x of every attack you evaded."

Again just a quick example of what you can do...the above cast time and cooldowns don't even really matter. You could make TOF with a 10 second cooldown...so long as it has a consequence involved in it's usage...it's like adding an artificial cooldown to it...except it's not based on time, it's based on using rationality of when to use it so you don't get punished for using it any time you want.

Thanks for the great comment Cheers,

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Devs didn't understand properly what makes people tanky. It is not toughness and armor but healing power with other damage mitigation effects in their kit. Less damage taken- less healing needed to recover the health loss. So if you think of perfect sustain it is balance between damage mitigation and healing.However there are counters to healing which is poison and counter to armor which is life steal, retaliation, condition damage.

Tanks exist exactly because there are classes that can one-shot you so you want to absorb their spells and set those on cooldown with chance to attack back.

Damage need to be considered like % of health loss rather than flat number: if for example you hit 5k crit with random spell/random class, vs ele with 11k health it is almost 40-50% of its health loss. However if you hit warrior with that which have around 19k health(by default), then that is around 25-30% health loss. Some classes can take larger % of their health down. Having spells that can do 30% to 100% health damage is out of mind even on squishier targets like default ele with 11k health.

As long as such damage exist in game, tanks will always be there to counter that damage, because it is not skill pressing 1 spell or even few, pressing everything you got.

Devs needed to keep toughness amulets in game with all defansive stats but to implement debuff effect that could reduce armor. Vulnerability condition is currently better on targets without damage mitigation than on targets with it.

If we had toughness amulets as we did, and if vulnerability condition had also -33% toughness debuff as secondary effect, everything would be fine, math can also confirm.Having for example 1200 toughness soldier amulet(removed) with dolyak rune(300 toughness) it is all together 2500 toughness. So with -33% debuff you would have just 1650 toughness from 2500 with all that armor investment you would lose up to 850 toughness for not cleansing vulnerability condition.

What we got now is unkillable tanks(weaver) and one shot classes like shiro rev(still not hitting a true nerf after all these years) and at the end there is no skill, no cooldown waste for both as tanks can just make so many mistakes and one-shot classes can disengage even if failing to go in, missing half spells etc

Another problem we got is condition damage bursts. It is made to be DoT pressure(damage over time). Other words with long durations but with not many stacks/intensity(easy to cleanse). And what it is: you stack 5-10 burning stacks and someone dies in few seconds if they wasted their cleanses or if they are under cc.

Devs will never make PvP balanced, especially with upcoming expansion. I am afraid they gave up from PvP last year.

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Maybe a https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Death%27s_Carapace for new players , while they loose stacks as they gain more rating .Plus other newer players every 1min gain -10 stack penetration , while the older ones gain -3 . So at the 6th/7th min mark of EVERY game , everything is open season .

You don't loose much rating , if you deal max damage to characters that don't have Carapace

Plus damage done on points , fill a gauge that either has a chance to:a) become a "dead zones" -healing reduction > try to capture another base /let it be flippedb) offer might/removes other boons
c) or you you get hard cc-ed , a bomb will spawn at your location that will knock back both

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