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

[wanya.1697]

the hidden math behind skill-specific coefficient which is not shown in ingame tooltips is really a bad designit would make things so much easier to understand when that would be goneif tooltip says you hit for 300 then you should only hit for 300 if target has no vulnerability or protection and you did not get lucky and crit

[Kuma.1503]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Multicolorhipster.9751" said:

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,

In that vein, what do you think of trade-offs like Impact Savant? In essence, it acts like a permanent stance where you sacrifice some hp in exchange for sustain whenever you deal damage. The trade-off here is that you will feel frail when you hitting nothing and beefy when you are able to deal damage.

I believe that there are some skills in GW2 that retain the same design philosophy from GW1, and some that are close. For example:

Overcharge Shot: CC yourself and also your opponenet.Epidemic (Or any corruption really): Spread conditions from one foe onto nearby foes, place conditions on yourself.Kneel: Gain enchanced skills and +300 range. You cannot move with WASD.

Examples of skills that are close, but missed the mark

Surge of The mists: Roots you in place, but evades while standing still. Added clunk, but no real trade-offPain Absorbtion: Pull conditions from allies onto yourself. Gain resistance per condition. Energy cost gates this too heavily when the effect itself has potential to be the trade-off.

Finally a few ideas of my own. These aren't meant as balance suggestions, or even necessarily changes that I would want to see. This is mostly to see if I've understood your points correctly in what a proper skill trade off would look like:

Engineer Shield 4: [Cooldown reduced to 5 seconds.] Create a projectile reflecting bubble for 2 seconds. Gain 1 charge per projectile reflected. At 10 charges, shield explodes, knocking you back and dealing heavy damage to you. Cannot be interrupted manually except by magnetic inversion.

-- Flip Skill --

Magnetic Inversion [added 3/4 cast time] - Block all incoming attacks and continue building charges. Then knockback foes and consume 5 charges. [Note: cannot be stow canceled]

Since the reflect and block are consolodated into one skill, shield 5 can be changed into a new skill. The idea here is to create a constant risk if this ability is used carelessly. You will always have a minimum 3/4 second commitment when using this skill, and you only get rid of 5 of your 10 charges if you land it. Spamming this carelessly will cause you to get knocked back and take damage, which could either get you killed or cause you to lose node. Eventually the engi may want to kite off node to clear out their charges without risk of being hit.

Pain Absorbtion:

Energy cost reduced to 15

• Create swirling dark field around the Rev for 3 seconds
• Allies or enemies who walk into the field will transfer condis to the Rev once per pulse
• Gain torment per enemy condi. Resistance per ally condi transfered

This turns pain absorption into a position reliant skill. It has the potential to be insane, making the enemy team immune to conditions. It can also cause the Rev to torment bomb themselves if they dare use this while in combat. If forces them on the defensive for 3 seconds if they try to stunbreak with it despite the low cost. Enemies are further rewarded for punishing them by giving the rev a taste of their own torment.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

@Lucentfir.7430 said:

@Caitir.6947 said:

@georgessj.4198 said:

@Filip.7463 said:

@georgessj.4198 said:

@Filip.7463 said:

@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.

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.

Thief is a high skill cap class that starts off with high reward output (vs worse players) and slowly drifts towards the lower end of the spectrum as you progress through more and more skilled opponents.

You can definitely stomp noobs 1vX as thief, but even that will always take more effort than other classes. Revenant has had a stronger +1 for nearly the entirely of its existence; the reason, as you stated, for thief's prevalence has been out-of-combat mobility and decap.

I also agree AND disagree with @JusticeRetroHunter.7684 in that more skills, particularly on classes that "spam" a lot, should have a definite anti-positive when used / used repeatedly within a short time frame. The easiest example from GW1 that comes to mind is overcast; however, GW2 is such a fundamentally different game from its predecessor that is nigh' impossible to compare the two in this manner or reflect the changes forward.

Some skills already have a 'downside' in either moving you to an unfavorable position or telegraphing you for your opponent. On the other hand we have shouts and commands that are basically just a form of "Kitten you, nope." I think many Signets are some of the most interesting skills in this aspect, and the most well-balanced; an (often) instant cast which trades a passive favor for a short-period active benefit. And I think some - but not all - skills could do with a similar re-structuring in order to fresh out the game.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Kuma.1503" said:In that vein, what do you think of trade-offs like Impact Savant?

I think Impact Savant is a good example of a skill with an infinite positive feedback curve, with a poor tradeoff that doesn't work.

If one were to an infinite amount of damage, they would have an infinite amount of barrier.

The ability is scale invariant, which of course makes it fun, at all scales of fights... but it lacks the anti-positive feedback that is supposed to prevent it from being abused, something that the -180 vitality is "supposed" to do but it fails catastrophically at doing so because it's a linear...additive penalty. Like this math problem; (2^10^10) - (100) is still going to equal a googol of damage.

So ya, Impact Savant needs a tradeoff that grounds is exponential nature.

I believe that there are some skills in GW2 that retain the same design philosophy from GW1, and some that are close. For example:

Overcharge Shot: CC yourself and also your opponenet.Epidemic (Or any corruption really): Spread conditions from one foe onto nearby foes, place conditions on yourself.Kneel: Gain enchanced skills and +300 range. You cannot move with WASD.

Examples of skills that are close, but missed the mark

Surge of The mists: Roots you in place, but evades while standing still. Added clunk, but no real trade-offPain Absorbtion: Pull conditions from allies onto yourself. Gain resistance per condition. Energy cost gates this too heavily when the effect itself has potential to be the trade-off.

In regards to this, we pretty much spoke before on the topic and i think you understand my point of view. What you said here are good examples of how some skills that already have proper tradeoffs, are balanced. In addition you show some ideas where skills if they did had proper tradeoffs, would actually make them more interesting skills with better mechanics.

The truth is that right now, with these dodgy tradeoffs we currently have in game that don't work or are not existent, limits the "fun" capacity of the game because we can't have these kinds of interesting mechanics without tradeoffs because otherwise they would busted, and of course some of them truly are...which should be obvious but I suppose most people don't see that idk.

Finally a few ideas of my own. These aren't meant as balance suggestions, or even necessarily changes that I would want to see. This is mostly to see if I've understood your points correctly in what a proper skill trade off would look like:

Engineer Shield 4: [Cooldown reduced to 5 seconds.] Create a projectile reflecting bubble for 2 seconds. Gain 1 charge per projectile reflected. At 10 charges, shield explodes, knocking you back and dealing heavy damage to you. Cannot be interrupted manually except by magnetic inversion.

-- Flip Skill --

Magnetic Inversion [added 3/4 cast time] - Block all incoming attacks and continue building charges. Then knockback foes and consume 5 charges. [Note: cannot be stow canceled]

Since the reflect and block are consolodated into one skill, shield 5 can be changed into a new skill. The idea here is to create a constant risk if this ability is used carelessly. You will always have a minimum 3/4 second commitment when using this skill, and you only get rid of 5 of your 10 charges if you land it. Spamming this carelessly will cause you to get knocked back and take damage, which could either get you killed or cause you to lose node. Eventually the engi may want to kite off node to clear out their charges without risk of being hit.

Pain Absorbtion:

Energy cost reduced to 15

• Create swirling dark field around the Rev for 3 seconds
• Allies or enemies who walk into the field will transfer condis to the Rev once per pulse
• Gain torment per enemy condi. Resistance per ally condi transfered

This turns pain absorption into a position reliant skill. It has the potential to be insane, making the enemy team immune to conditions. It can also cause the Rev to torment bomb themselves if they dare use this while in combat. If forces them on the defensive for 3 seconds if they try to stunbreak with it despite the low cost. Enemies are further rewarded for punishing them by giving the rev a taste of their own torment.

Ya I like these ideas a lot actually. I can imagine a build where a Revenant saps all conditions from everyone in a team-fight, focusing all conditions onto itself, then using those conditions perhaps as a way to support allies, or to focus damage onto a single player, or have options to use it in an area of effects. Frankly the sky is the limit when we think about mechanics that have positive feedback nature, with their respective anti-positive tradeoffs. It creates unique mechanisms while at the same time grounding it. It's not a surprise to me that the ideas begin to flow because feedback is a universal concept, that most natural systems operate on.

[Sigmoid.7082]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:anti-positiveDear lord the word you're looking for here is negative.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@NorthernRedStar.3054 said:I also agree AND disagree with @"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" in that more skills, particularly on classes that "spam" a lot, should have a definite anti-positive when used / used repeatedly within a short time frame. The easiest example from GW1 that comes to mind is overcast; however, GW2 is such a fundamentally different game from its predecessor that is nigh' impossible to compare the two in this manner or reflect the changes forward.

Some skills already have a 'downside' in either moving you to an unfavorable position or telegraphing you for your opponent. On the other hand we have shouts and commands that are basically just a form of "Kitten you, nope." I think many Signets are some of the most interesting skills in this aspect, and the most well-balanced; an (often) instant cast which trades a passive favor for a short-period active benefit. And I think some - but not all - skills could do with a similar re-structuring in order to fresh out the game.

Signets are pretty cool mechanically speaking. Though I still don't believe signets should be exempt from having actual tradeoffs. Right now i think most signets are underwhelming, because they don't have real trade-offs (They have something more in line with opportunity cost...in which using an ability means you sacrifice the usage of another ability.) I think this limits the power of those signets being able to have exponential mechanics, and we get what we have right now instead...mediocre stat boosts with somewhat relevant active effects.

One signet build I wish existed was a signet or trait that benefits from other allies bringing signets. For each signet currently active on a player, increases the power of the signet's passive and active. to me that idea sounds REALLY Fricken awesome...but without a real tradeoff, we could never have such a mechanic.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:anti-positiveDear lord the word you're looking for here is negative.

No not negative...that's an entirely different mechanism.

To be clear, Negative Feedback brings a system from exponential growth to non exponential growth (equilibrium).Anti-positive Feedback is essentially the same as positive feedback but in the opposite drection. When you have feedback that amplify a signal exponentially, you have a second signal which is also positive feedback that amplify a signal but in the opposite direction.

the way it's described is that a positive feedback loop is Input -> Output = Input+Output. A Negative Feedback Loop is when you have Input -> Output = Input-Output. An anti-positive feedback is (Input -> Output = Input+Output) - (Input -> Output = Input+Output). Anti-positive isn't a real term, because in science they are all just considered positive feedbacks...anti-positive was just the best word to describe the above premise without getting into feedback loop science.

Edit: Just an illustration to make sure everyone understands why I'm saying "Anti-positive" and not talking about negative feedback.

[Sigmoid.7082]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Sigmoid.7082 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:anti-positiveDear lord the word you're looking for here is negative.

No not negative...that's an entirely different mechanism.

To be clear, Negative Feedback brings a system from exponential growth to non exponential growth (equilibrium).Anti-positive Feedback is essentially the same as positive feedback but in the opposite drection. When you have feedback that amplify a signal exponentially, you have a second signal which is also positive feedback that amplify a signal but in the opposite direction.

the way it's described is that a positive feedback loop is Input -> Output = Input+Output. A Negative Feedback Loop is when you have Input -> Output = Input-Output. An anti-positive feedback is (Input -> Output = Input+Output) - (Input -> Output = Input+Output). Anti-positive isn't a real term, because in science they are all just considered positive feedbacks...anti-positive was just the best word to describe the above premise without getting into feedback loop science.

Edit: Just an illustration to make sure everyone understands why I'm saying "Anti-positive" and not talking about negative feedback.

I'll accept anti-positive under the premise but I won't agree with the premise in general. The game really isn't designed to support it and has moved away from the concept of it in the past in favour of other methods, which by the fervour of your posts, you disagree with.

You're far more likely to see dampening effects or changes to logarithmic growth instead of exponential being introduced.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Sigmoid.7082" said:I'll accept anti-positive under the premise but I won't agree with the premise in general. The game really isn't designed to support it and has moved away from the concept of it in the past in favour of other methods, which by the fervour of your posts, you disagree with.

Right, I disagree with those methods, currently employed in the game's design, but I also firmly believe they do not work either.

You're far more likely to see dampening effects or changes to logarithmic growth instead of exponential being introduced.

Right, this is some-what how trade off's are structured currently in Guild Wars 2. Usually in the form of hard limits like target caps, soft limits like diminishing returns, or nonconsequential trade-offs like -vitality stats on exponential growth effects like Impact Savant.

If I were to draw the feedback curves for a set of current gw2 game examples, their benefit-to-tradeoff growth curves would probably look something like this

Now in many cases, you can not change the shape of these growth curves by adding cooldowns or cast times. In the example for Deathly Claws, let's say you added a 10 second cooldown. You would still have a positive linear growth curve because in all cases, it is most optimally used by using it off cooldown, so it would remain the same.

Twist of Fate in the above picture shares similar traits to many other evade skills. One can essentially evade an infinite number of attacks...so the growth curve is beyond exponential, based on a per attack/per person basis. Again adding a cooldown would not change the growth curve on this skill, as it will always be more beneficial the more attacks you evade, for each additional person. In simple terms, it just means you will never be penalized for using this ability on cooldown, even if you don't evade anything...So even in scenario's where one uses this ability on cooldown it will always yield a net positive beneficial effect (0 or greater).

This to me at least is a huge problem. You can see this problem manifest when bots perform on builds and can play almost as efficiently as real human players. It's because the skills or builds they exploit will almost always yield net positive results, regardless of whether they blow their cooldowns or not because of the nature of the benefit to tradeoff imbalance present in those builds.

Just a disclaimer, there are some skills that have things like range, are projectiles, respect LOS etc, and those in themselves provide a little bit counter-play and are in someway trade offs in and of themselves...not exactly as straightforward to quantify these kinds of mechanics, but I do acknowledge their existence and I don't discredit those in any way. What I'm really talking about here is more about how skills are balanced in a "general" sense.

[Sigmoid.7082]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Sigmoid.7082" said:I'll accept anti-positive under the premise but I won't agree with the premise in general. The game really isn't designed to support it and has moved away from the concept of it in the past in favour of other methods, which by the fervour of your posts, you disagree with.

Right, I disagree with the those methods, currently employed by the game's design, but I also firmly believe they do not work either.

You're far more likely to see dampening effects or changes to logarithmic growth instead of exponential being introduced.

Right, this is some-what how trade off's are structured currently in Guild Wars 2. Usually in the form of hard limits like target caps, soft limits like diminishing returns, or nonconsequential trade-offs like -vitality stats on exponential growth effects like Impact Savant.

If I were to draw the feedback curves for a set of current gw2 game examples, their beneficial-to-tradeoff growth curves would probably look something like this

Now in many cases, you can not change the shape of these growth curves by adding cooldowns or cast times. In the example for Deathly Claws, let's say you added a 10 second cooldown. You would still have a positive linear growth curve because in all cases, it is most optimally used by using it off cooldown, so it would remain the same.

Twist of Fate in the above picture shares similar traits to many other evade skills. One can essentially evade an infinite number of attacks...so the growth curve is beyond exponential, based on a per attack/per person basis. Again adding a cooldown would not change the growth curve on this skill, as it will always be more beneficial the more attacks you evade, for each additional person. In simple terms, it just means you will never be penalized for using this ability on cooldown, even if you don't evade anything...So even in scenario's where one uses this ability on cooldown it will always yield a net positive beneficial effect (0 or greater).

This to me at least is a huge problem. You can see this problem manifest when bots perform on builds and can play almost as efficiently as real human players. It's because the skills or builds they exploit will almost always yield net positive results, regardless of whether they blow their cooldowns or not because of the nature of the beneficial to tradeoff imbalance present in those builds.

Just a disclaimer, there are some skills that have things like range, are projectiles, respect LOS etc, and those in themselves provide a little bit counter-play and are in someway trade offs in and of themselves...not exactly as straightforward to quantify these kinds of mechanics, but I do acknowledge their existence and I don't discredit those in any way. What I'm really talking about here is more about how skills are balanced in a "general" sense.

I'm going to agree to disagree with your premise and leave you to it. This post holds insight for anyone who wants to talk this through with you more but for me I'm done here.

Appreciate the definition of "anti-positive" though

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Sigmoid.7082" said:I'll accept anti-positive under the premise but I won't agree with the premise in general. The game really isn't designed to support it and has moved away from the concept of it in the past in favour of other methods, which by the fervour of your posts, you disagree with.

Right, I disagree with the those methods, currently employed by the game's design, but I also firmly believe they do not work either.

You're far more likely to see dampening effects or changes to logarithmic growth instead of exponential being introduced.

Right, this is some-what how trade off's are structured currently in Guild Wars 2. Usually in the form of hard limits like target caps, soft limits like diminishing returns, or nonconsequential trade-offs like -vitality stats on exponential growth effects like Impact Savant.

If I were to draw the feedback curves for a set of current gw2 game examples, their benefit-to-tradeoff growth curves would probably look something like this

Now in many cases, you can not change the shape of these growth curves by adding cooldowns or cast times. In the example for Deathly Claws, let's say you added a 10 second cooldown. You would still have a positive linear growth curve because in all cases, it is most optimally used by using it off cooldown, so it would remain the same.

Twist of Fate in the above picture shares similar traits to many other evade skills. One can essentially evade an infinite number of attacks...so the growth curve is beyond exponential, based on a per attack/per person basis. Again adding a cooldown would not change the growth curve on this skill, as it will always be more beneficial the more attacks you evade, for each additional person. In simple terms, it just means you will never be penalized for using this ability on cooldown, even if you don't evade anything...So even in scenario's where one uses this ability on cooldown it will always yield a net positive beneficial effect (0 or greater).

This to me at least is a huge problem. You can see this problem manifest when bots perform on builds and can play almost as efficiently as real human players. It's because the skills or builds they exploit will almost always yield net positive results, regardless of whether they blow their cooldowns or not because of the nature of the benefit to tradeoff imbalance present in those builds.

Just a disclaimer, there are some skills that have things like range, are projectiles, respect LOS etc, and those in themselves provide a little bit counter-play and are in someway trade offs in and of themselves...not exactly as straightforward to quantify these kinds of mechanics, but I do acknowledge their existence and I don't discredit those in any way. What I'm really talking about here is more about how skills are balanced in a "general" sense.

I am really not sure that this is the best model to regard skills in this game. One of the things that kept bothering me about our previous posts is that I know games that have no cooldown, no recharge, no mana system, etc. Fighting games, hack-and-slash games, old-school adventure games, and so on. The one that kept ringing in my head was Street Fighter, largely due to a series of articles I read about competitive gaming revolving around it. These are games where you can spam attacks and abilities indefinitely, yet I cannot find any way in which they suffer for it. I can now articulate my contention:

You aren't alone.

Years ago, I called it the Auto-Attack War. It is a basic way to model inequality in this game, and it works like this: the player who has the higher DPS X Effective Health product will, by default, win the fight. I.E. if a Warrior and an Elementalist walk up and start auto attacking each other, the Warrior is going to win, simply because they have roughly the same resting DPS but the warrior has 8.7k more effective health by default. That's 75% higher, which is no small ratio. An elementalist achieves victory by avoiding the damage spikes of the warrior (thus lowering the warrior's DPS) while simultaneously landing their own. The means through which this is done is endless, but in concept it is really simple: combat exerts pressure on your character, and failure to alleviate that pressure or beat it back with greater pressure results in defeat. Combat is a race, in this sense.

This is the thing that is lacking from your analysis. It is true in theory that spamming Twist of Fate off cooldown will avoid a limitless amount of damage given no definite timeframe. But in practice, I know not a single fight in this game where doing this would improve performance, either in PVE or WvW. Indeed, spamming Twist of Fate without regard for appropriateness will either lead to defeat, or a slower victory in a definite timeframe.

There are two sides to every skill: how it affects your own damage, and how it affects enemy damage. Both have to be considered for any practical sense in this game. Twist of Fate, for example, has a negative effect on both. You can't attack while spinning. So, if you twirl about when the enemy isn't attacking, or if the enemy is using low-priority skills, then all it succeeds in doing is hindering your own performance. Worse yet, in PVP you telegraph that you can't Twist for the next 5 seconds, opening you up to burst skills. You gain value only if you avoid a damage spike (or CC that would lead to one), because then the drop in enemy DPS is significantly higher than the drop in personal DPS.

Doing the math for all of this would be difficult, because human psychology in PVP becomes a factor. The general trend, however, is the same: when you consider that all skills are used on an opponent who is trying to kill you while staying alive themselves, then all of these skills have a tradeoff that is contingent on proper timing. That tradeoff is the decreased ratio of DPS x Effective Health product as compared to your opponent.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:I am really not sure that this is the best model to regard skills in this game. One of the things that kept bothering me about our previous posts is that I know games that have no cooldown, no recharge, no mana system, etc. Fighting games, hack-and-slash games, old-school adventure games, and so on. The one that kept ringing in my head was Street Fighter, largely due to a series of articles I read about competitive gaming revolving around it. These are games where you can spam attacks and abilities indefinitely, yet I cannot find any way in which they suffer for it. I can now articulate my contention:

You aren't alone.

Years ago, I called it the Auto-Attack War. It is a basic way to model inequality in this game, and it works like this: the player who has the higher DPS X Effective Health product will, by default, win the fight. I.E. if a Warrior and an Elementalist walk up and start auto attacking each other, the Warrior is going to win, simply because they have roughly the same resting DPS but the warrior has 8.7k more effective health by default. That's 75% higher, which is no small ratio. An elementalist achieves victory by avoiding the damage spikes of the warrior (thus lowering the warrior's DPS) while simultaneously landing their own. The means through which this is done is endless, but in concept it is really simple: combat exerts pressure on your character, and failure to alleviate that pressure or beat it back with greater pressure results in defeat. Combat is a race, in this sense.

This is the thing that is lacking from your analysis. It is true in theory that spamming Twist of Fate off cooldown will avoid a limitless amount of damage given no definite timeframe. But in practice, I know not a single fight in this game where doing this would improve performance, either in PVE or WvW. Indeed, spamming Twist of Fate without regard for appropriateness will either lead to defeat, or a slower victory in a definite timeframe.

There are two sides to every skill: how it affects your own damage, and how it affects enemy damage. Both have to be considered for any practical sense in this game. Twist of Fate, for example, has a negative effect on both. You can't attack while spinning. So, if you twirl about when the enemy isn't attacking, or if the enemy is using low-priority skills, then all it succeeds in doing is hindering your own performance. Worse yet, in PVP you telegraph that you can't Twist for the next 5 seconds, opening you up to burst skills. You gain value only if you avoid a damage spike (or CC that would lead to one), because then the drop in enemy DPS is significantly higher than the drop in personal DPS.

Doing the math for all of this would be difficult, because human psychology in PVP becomes a factor. The general trend, however, is the same: when you consider that all skills are used on an opponent who is trying to kill you while staying alive themselves, then all of these skills have a tradeoff that is contingent on proper timing. That tradeoff is the decreased ratio of DPS x Effective Health product as compared to your opponent.

What an excellent response man, this is spot on. I like the way you think and it seems on many things we think in the same way. Though it seems we arrive at differing conclusions.

Basically i think you believe that the conclusion you've reached is enough, whereas I don't think it's enough;"when you consider that all skills are used on an opponent who is trying to kill you while staying alive themselves, then all of these skills have a tradeoff that is contingent on proper timing."

Everything in a sense hinges on this property of proper timing. And really, this is kind of what's really being debated here. How would a rational agent define "proper timing" in this game with the skills available to them. Right now in game, I believe it is this very RPS structure, where there is a supposed to be a Block/Parry/CounterBlow for every attack that one could spam and vice versa that puts into question when a player is supposed to think about their skills, is the very structure keeping this game together. This is essentially the counter argument to support the continued existence of Lich Form... There exists counter-play for the 1 spam (Reflect, Projectile Hate) Therefor it existence is justified. In many ways, I believe that this RPS structure existing in Gw2 is a healthy attribute to have, and is structurally apart of what makes gw2, a good game.

But, It is my point of view, that the existence of Tradeoffs and RPS style counter-play aren't mutually exclusive, They can be separated, and treated as different things but then can be joined together and work together to further improve the system and make it better, My opinion, is that tradeoffs augment the system as a whole further. GuildWars1 is a good example of a game in which it is a RPS game, again almost the same as gw2, but with way better designed tradeoffs to further augment the performance of players in the game. So It's not that the tradeoff model I put forward doesn't apply to gw2...it's that gw2 simply doesn't incorporate tradeoffs in their design philosophy, or when they do those tradeoffs are just terribly designed tradeoffs.

So I had to write this comment rather quickly, so sorry if I didn't completely elaborate on something, or if something i said doesn't make much sense. But so far I really like your engaging counter-arguments. Cheers,

[Dawdler.8521]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:Right now in game, I believe it is this very RPS structure, where there is a supposed to be a Block/Parry/CounterBlow for every attack that one could spam and vice versa that puts into question when a player is supposed to think about their skills, is the very structure keeping this game together.Ha!

Perhaps this was the case once but the constantly increasing cds, nerfs to impactfull skills and terrible handling of the passive boon heavy meta has pretty much gutted this aspect of the game over the years.