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Increasing TTK, Undoing Old Split Changes and Eliminating Skill Splitting


Swagger.1459

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A really easy change would be to reduce the maximum damage any one skill can cause to 25% of the target's HP pool. It's not fun being hit for 10-14k on a staff tempest with 3k armor (2k toughness) when your total health is 17k or so. Then rework skills and buffs and debuffs and condi spam around this new maximum.

Now that almost every hit received is crit damage, fix the multipliers.

The current state of the game isn't much fun unless you like facerolling across your keyboard as a condi shade spam necro or a CoR or a vaulter.

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@Victory.2879 said:A really easy change would be to reduce the maximum damage any one skill can cause to 25% of the target's HP pool. It's not fun being hit for 10-14k on a staff tempest with 3k armor (2k toughness) when your total health is 17k or so. Then rework skills and buffs and debuffs and condi spam around this new maximum.

Now that almost every hit received is crit damage, fix the multipliers.

The current state of the game isn't much fun unless you like facerolling across your keyboard as a condi shade spam necro or a CoR or a vaulter.

That isn't an easy change at all. In fact that would be quite the opposite - among the most complex of changes, not something ANET can devote a great deal of resources to...

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@Turk.5460 said:

@Victory.2879 said:A really easy change would be to reduce the maximum damage any one skill can cause to 25% of the target's HP pool. It's not fun being hit for 10-14k on a staff tempest with 3k armor (2k toughness) when your total health is 17k or so. Then rework skills and buffs and debuffs and condi spam around this new maximum.

Now that almost every hit received is crit damage, fix the multipliers.

The current state of the game isn't much fun unless you like facerolling across your keyboard as a condi shade spam necro or a CoR or a vaulter.

That isn't an easy change at all. In fact that would be quite the opposite - among the most complex of changes, not something ANET can devote a great deal of resources to...

Seeing as they currently devote almost zero resources to it, any change can be out in the 'not likely to happen at all' pile.

Not sure why it would be so hard though- a hard cap is a lot easier to program than almost any other form of damage calculation.

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@Victory.2879 said:

@Victory.2879 said:A really easy change would be to reduce the maximum damage any one skill can cause to 25% of the target's HP pool. It's not fun being hit for 10-14k on a staff tempest with 3k armor (2k toughness) when your total health is 17k or so. Then rework skills and buffs and debuffs and condi spam around this new maximum.

Now that almost every hit received is crit damage, fix the multipliers.

The current state of the game isn't much fun unless you like facerolling across your keyboard as a condi shade spam necro or a CoR or a vaulter.

That isn't an easy change at all. In fact that would be quite the opposite - among the most complex of changes, not something ANET can devote a great deal of resources to...

Seeing as they currently devote almost zero resources to it, any change can be out in the 'not likely to happen at all' pile.

Not sure why it would be so hard though- a hard cap is a lot easier to program than almost any other form of damage calculation.

the cap is easy to put in. the balance changes that need to happen after that however..

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A straight damage-to-health cap?Really?

I suppose it would be an indirect nerf to tankier builds, but why are we suggesting band aid solutions instead of looking to adjust individual skills, utility of trait combinations that overperform? The only thing I feel should have a "damage cap" are the traits, sigils, runes, utilities and such that grant a direct bonus to damage (not actually improving power or condition damage). That's where a lot of these insane numbers are coming from.

~ Kovu

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  • 1 month later...

@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065"

Everyday we have new threads popping up with concerns about "power creep", nerf X, 1 shot complaints...

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/65002/balance-a-note-to-the-devs

10k, 15k, 20k... damage bursts won't seem so bad when you are not killed in 1 or 2 hits anymore, and have a better chance to fight back.

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@mov.1246 said:Health, vitaly and toughness is the same like at gw2 launch.Power and condi creep increased with the two expansions, but health remained to be the same as before.They put in more blocks, invulns, evades, boons, and more and more defensive machanics to professions to compensate damage creep. But health still remains the same.Do u see the problem?

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@MUDse.7623 said:

@joneirikb.7506 said:Agree with those that say we should rather look at reducing the power creep of the elite-spez etc, rather than messing with all the other stats.

I'm imaging that stopping making damage modifiers stack, and only use the highest one would be an interesting change. Though I could be wrong.

would result in a very dull bunker meta and only condition damage in offensive builds.

It wouldn't be the only change, but the general idea would be to stop damage buffs from stacking, rather increase each damage buff, and make it more about managing upkeeps of them rather than stacking on top of each others. That way ANet could (if they wanted to) keep the power creep more in check, by having a max damage +X% and restrict the uptime. (Unfortunately I'm not good enough to be able to pull good numbers from my head, so I won't try)

I'd also like to see just about everything being reduced a bit in general, the game is on steroids compared to before HOT.

the problem is we need stacked damage to be able to perform burst combos able to take down bunkers. beause sustained damage is lower then sutained healing when fighting a bunker with tons of damage mitigation /boons etc. if you just remove stacking from direct damage we would deal tons of more damage with conditions.if there would be alot less healing and less boons then maybedo you remember good times when blasting fields was^actually good for healing? sure there was alot less damage around, but now there is so much healing no one would bother with a water field.

This is just incorrect, any class with reasonable damage can kill a full minstrel firebrand (some classes are harder but that's the ones that don't really contribute in minstrel) given a reasonable amount of time, at least I never struggle with killing them on any reasonable build, ofc it takes a while. Sustained damage is incredibly high, burst damage is insanely over the top to a very unhealthy degree, sustained healing is definitively not higher than sustained damage atm.

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@lodjur.1284 said:

@joneirikb.7506 said:Agree with those that say we should rather look at reducing the power creep of the elite-spez etc, rather than messing with all the other stats.

I'm imaging that stopping making damage modifiers stack, and only use the highest one would be an interesting change. Though I could be wrong.

would result in a very dull bunker meta and only condition damage in offensive builds.

It wouldn't be the only change, but the general idea would be to stop damage buffs from stacking, rather increase each damage buff, and make it more about managing upkeeps of them rather than stacking on top of each others. That way ANet could (if they wanted to) keep the power creep more in check, by having a max damage +X% and restrict the uptime. (Unfortunately I'm not good enough to be able to pull good numbers from my head, so I won't try)

I'd also like to see just about everything being reduced a bit in general, the game is on steroids compared to before HOT.

the problem is we need stacked damage to be able to perform burst combos able to take down bunkers. beause sustained damage is lower then sutained healing when fighting a bunker with tons of damage mitigation /boons etc. if you just remove stacking from direct damage we would deal tons of more damage with conditions.if there would be alot less healing and less boons then maybedo you remember good times when blasting fields was^actually good for healing? sure there was alot less damage around, but now there is so much healing no one would bother with a water field.

This is just incorrect, any class with reasonable damage can kill a full minstrel firebrand (some classes are harder but that's the ones that don't really contribute in minstrel) given a reasonable amount of time, at least I never struggle with killing them on any reasonable build, ofc it takes a while. Sustained damage is incredibly high, burst damage is insanely over the top to a very unhealthy degree, sustained healing is definitively not higher than sustained damage atm.

if they just stand still to let you hit them sure and you still kill them in bursts not in sustained damage.but surely worth the necro ;)

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@Swagger.1459 said:@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065"

Everyday we have new threads popping up with concerns about "power creep", nerf X, 1 shot complaints...

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/65002/balance-a-note-to-the-devs

10k, 15k, 20k... damage bursts won't seem so bad when you are not killed in 1 or 2 hits anymore, and have a better chance to fight back.

Here's another thing for you to link to them:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/63078/is-damage-too-high

Over 75% of people who voted think it's too high at time of writing.

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@MUDse.7623 said:

@joneirikb.7506 said:Agree with those that say we should rather look at reducing the power creep of the elite-spez etc, rather than messing with all the other stats.

I'm imaging that stopping making damage modifiers stack, and only use the highest one would be an interesting change. Though I could be wrong.

would result in a very dull bunker meta and only condition damage in offensive builds.

It wouldn't be the only change, but the general idea would be to stop damage buffs from stacking, rather increase each damage buff, and make it more about managing upkeeps of them rather than stacking on top of each others. That way ANet could (if they wanted to) keep the power creep more in check, by having a max damage +X% and restrict the uptime. (Unfortunately I'm not good enough to be able to pull good numbers from my head, so I won't try)

I'd also like to see just about everything being reduced a bit in general, the game is on steroids compared to before HOT.

the problem is we need stacked damage to be able to perform burst combos able to take down bunkers. beause sustained damage is lower then sutained healing when fighting a bunker with tons of damage mitigation /boons etc. if you just remove stacking from direct damage we would deal tons of more damage with conditions.if there would be alot less healing and less boons then maybedo you remember good times when blasting fields was^actually good for healing? sure there was alot less damage around, but now there is so much healing no one would bother with a water field.

This is just incorrect, any class with reasonable damage can kill a full minstrel firebrand (some classes are harder but that's the ones that don't really contribute in minstrel) given a reasonable amount of time, at least I never struggle with killing them on any reasonable build, ofc it takes a while. Sustained damage is incredibly high, burst damage is insanely over the top to a very unhealthy degree, sustained healing is definitively not higher than sustained damage atm.

if they just stand still to let you hit them sure and you still kill them in bursts not in sustained damage.but surely worth the necro ;)

It was on the first page tho, not my fault the WvW forum is dead (like the gamemode). You can kill any of the slower high sustain builds, you can't kill full minstrel druids that instantly run away when they see you ofc, but that isn't due to their mediocre sustain but due to their obscene mobility. Not every class kills in bursts.

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I agree that increasing TTK would be a good change both for smallscale roaming and zerg fights. I think power creep is an important issue that mostly goes unaddressed. It seems like the only increase in defensive ability since launch has come from more boons/evades/blocks/invuln/mobility.

Because of the power creep, roaming has largely turned into 1 shot battles, where you do your burst combo, and reset if you miss. In my opinion, It is not good design if 1 shot combos are so easy to pull off. I don't necessarily think 1 shots are bad, but using a 1 shot combo should make you vulnerable, or be difficult to pull off. Things like elementalist churning earth -> lightning flash are what 1 shot combos should be. Devastating if they hit, but easy to avoid if you are paying attention, and they leave you in a bad position if you miss.Some examples of ridiculous damage I have recently experienced while roaming:

  • 10k backstab (hit from the front)
  • 12k coalescence of ruin (4s cd)
  • 25k volley (warrior rifle 3) (10s cd)
  • 5k reckless dodge (warrior dodge roll trait)
  • 18k shadow assault (thief spear 5) on a minstrel firebrandIn all these cases, the player was self buffed. I know people will say to just dodge these telegraphed skills, however that is just ignoring the problem of power creep. If most skills do very high damage, you cant avoid them all.

In zerg fights, I think its a bit more difficult to decide when power creep is a problem. If you stand still and get hit by the other zergs bomb, you should die, no matter how many supports you have. However many fights just turn into who can insta-down more players with rev/necro bombs, and then win the rally war. These kind of fights are not very engaging, and benefit individual players with fast reflexes more than groups with good supports and positioning. The other day I hit a 19k Coalescence of Ruin with my rev, the skill has a 4s cd and hits 5 people.

I think the only way to solve this is to have some kind of damage/stat scaling in place, such as scaling wvw damage/stats to be closer to pvp values.

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There is far too much damage in the game atm in WvW, I was watching some of my old shadowplay prior to HoT release when I first started playing WvW recently. Then comparing it with the current gameplay of people insta exploding. A lot of your damage had to come from focused assist, not just a 'lulz bomb this area' blanket AoE approachhttps://vimeo.com/124297019

Your Guardians ran Cleric for the most part, maybe some Soldiers mixed in. So boons were limited in duration, conditions were present in the game but were not anywhere near as suffocating. They existed as a compliment to a classes damage component for the most part, it wasnt until the condition patch came along where they bumped all the condition output that conditions as an outright build became viable.

It is barely the same game, healing relied mostly on blasting water fields as there were no real dedicated heal skills, you could empower, healing breeze, MI and Virtue of Resolve but outside this you needed water fields. The damage comes in at such a large rate now even dedicated healing outside of instant speed is rendered pretty much useless. You have to preheal, as in already be channeling a heal rather than be reactionary. By the time you are reacting it is too late, people are insta down.https://gfycat.com/ZealousClearEchidna

It was exciting when you landed a 6k mighty blow, now I hit a Phase Smash on 4 people for 10k, 9k, 9k, 8.5k and am like' meh, average'. Im not excited unless I see a 15k+ CoR.

It was, in general, a better all round playing experience than what we currently have. Id be more interested in playing a 'vanilla' server, which is GW2 just prior to HoT release over what we currently have.

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@Chorazin.4107 said:It was, in general, a better all round playing experience than what we currently have. Id be more interested in playing a 'vanilla' server, which is GW2 just prior to HoT release over what we currently have.

I'm pretty sure this game wouldn't be nearly as disfunctional if they didn't change the traiting system and introduce Elites. I never got to experience the old system and I wish I was around to do so.

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@"Swagger.1459" said:The video I'm posting is of thief, but it is merely to highlight damage output vs a player's health... There are issues for players and devs across the board that could be alleviated by increasing player health... Please strongly consider making some positive changes by working on known issues that repel players from this mode, and cause a lot of unnecessary controversy for the player base.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sKXTzwohrA

I also considered posting threads of complaints about damage output from power and condition builds, but I don't think I need to... Anyone who has followed the forums over 6 years knows the complaints about damage are ongoing, and something needs to be done.

TY

He's in zerker gear and he's killing other glass cannons, are you saying a glass cannon shouldn't be able to quickly kill another one?

I agree that time to kill in some cases is out of whack but not in that scenario. A full zerk full glass traited cannon SHOULD be able to quickly kill.. anything.. and there's the problem to me.. some classes have the ability to be so tanky/defensive they can run halfway across the map before they die. And that's the reason why anyone running less than full defensive dies so quickly - because it's necessary for some classes/builds to be able to ouput so much in order to kill the max tank.Nerf defense, make it more active and less auto trait, rethink tanky gear possibilities, then look at damage.

Edit: I've been watching another game in process which looked interesting but had a worrying long TTK. Last update I watched they increased TTK even more which is a huge No Thankyou for me. Even as an older gamer with a high ping this just seems incredibly boring to me even though it'd probably benefit me, ha. Do people just not like a thrill anymore?

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@"Swagger.1459" said:The video I'm posting is of thief, but it is merely to highlight damage output vs a player's health... There are issues for players and devs across the board that could be alleviated by increasing player health... Please strongly consider making some positive changes by working on known issues that repel players from this mode, and cause a lot of unnecessary controversy for the player base.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sKXTzwohrA

I also considered posting threads of complaints about damage output from power and condition builds, but I don't think I need to... Anyone who has followed the forums over 6 years knows the complaints about damage are ongoing, and something needs to be done.

TY

I think what your video showed is that damage from stealth needs to be reduced by 50% or not allowed to crit.

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@Celsith.2753 said:

@"Swagger.1459" said:The video I'm posting is of thief, but it is merely to highlight damage output vs a player's health... There are issues for players and devs across the board that could be alleviated by increasing player health... Please strongly consider making some positive changes by working on known issues that repel players from this mode, and cause a lot of unnecessary controversy for the player base.

I also considered posting threads of complaints about damage output from power and condition builds, but I don't think I need to... Anyone who has followed the forums over 6 years knows the complaints about damage are ongoing, and something needs to be done.

TY

He's in zerker gear and he's killing other glass cannons, are you saying a glass cannon shouldn't be able to quickly kill another one?

I agree that time to kill in some cases is out of whack but not in that scenario. A full zerk full glass traited cannon SHOULD be able to quickly kill.. anything.. and there's the problem to me.. some classes have the ability to be so tanky/defensive they can run halfway across the map before they die. And that's the reason why anyone running less than full defensive dies so quickly - because it's necessary for some classes/builds to be able to ouput so much in order to kill the max tank.Nerf defense, make it more active and less auto trait, rethink tanky gear possibilities, then look at damage.

Edit: I've been watching another game in process which looked interesting but had a worrying long TTK. Last update I watched they increased TTK even more which is a huge No Thankyou for me. Even as an older gamer with a high ping this just seems incredibly boring to me even though it'd probably benefit me, ha. Do people just not like a thrill anymore?

glass cannons should be able to kill each other quickly but not from stealth with zero tells.

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@"Chorazin.4107" said:There is far too much damage in the game atm in WvW, I was watching some of my old shadowplay prior to HoT release when I first started playing WvW recently. Then comparing it with the current gameplay of people insta exploding. A lot of your damage had to come from focused assist, not just a 'lulz bomb this area' blanket AoE approachhttps://vimeo.com/124297019

Your Guardians ran Cleric for the most part, maybe some Soldiers mixed in. So boons were limited in duration, conditions were present in the game but were not anywhere near as suffocating. They existed as a compliment to a classes damage component for the most part, it wasnt until the condition patch came along where they bumped all the condition output that conditions as an outright build became viable.

It is barely the same game, healing relied mostly on blasting water fields as there were no real dedicated heal skills, you could empower, healing breeze, MI and Virtue of Resolve but outside this you needed water fields. The damage comes in at such a large rate now even dedicated healing outside of instant speed is rendered pretty much useless. You have to preheal, as in already be channeling a heal rather than be reactionary. By the time you are reacting it is too late, people are insta down.https://gfycat.com/ZealousClearEchidna

It was exciting when you landed a 6k mighty blow, now I hit a Phase Smash on 4 people for 10k, 9k, 9k, 8.5k and am like' meh, average'. Im not excited unless I see a 15k+ CoR.

It was, in general, a better all round playing experience than what we currently have. Id be more interested in playing a 'vanilla' server, which is GW2 just prior to HoT release over what we currently have.

The camera shake...oh no, my eyes, ah god no my eyes! it burns, IT BURNS!!

jk, yeah the damage right now is completely crazy, it's a spamfiesta, press 1 button and do more damage than classes have base health. I second a vanilla GW2 experience from just prior to HoT, it was by far one of the best balance periods there was.

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@apharma.3741 said:The camera shake...oh no, my eyes, ah god no my eyes! it burns, IT BURNS!!

jk, yeah the damage right now is completely crazy, it's a spamfiesta, press 1 button and do more damage than classes have base health. I second a vanilla GW2 experience from just prior to HoT, it was by far one of the best balance periods there was.

Haha, didnt realise you could turn camera shake off and turn down graphical effects.

The gfycat shows how crazy the damage is at the moment, about 5 or 6 people auto down from the enemy group. One CoR I think hits for 16k, 12k, 10k on three different people, plus the usual 6k hits thrown in. It's like you need perma protection or you are going to insta die.

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@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

glass cannons should be able to kill each other quickly but not from stealth with zero tells.

Pistol 5 has a red circle on the ground, a bullet shooting and audio, there was a tell. A lot of those people in that video SHOULD have been aware that a thief was right there .. someone just got magically stomped in front of them apart from anything else.

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@apharma.3741 said:

jk, yeah the damage right now is completely crazy, it's a spamfiesta, press 1 button and do more damage than classes have base health. I second a vanilla GW2 experience from just prior to HoT, it was by far one of the best balance periods there was.

I mained thief back then and 18k+ backstabs were not uncommon. Steal could crit. Cloak and Dagger 5k+. The difference on the classes people complain was not Time To Kill, it was the risk/reward. Thief didn't have hard to catch for example. Or the damage reduction in stealth trait. Mesmers had time frames in which you could actually hit them.. etc. I wonder if a conversation around risk/reward would be useful?

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@Celsith.2753 said:

glass cannons should be able to kill each other quickly but not from stealth with zero tells.

Pistol 5 has a red circle on the ground, a bullet shooting and audio, there was a tell. A lot of those people in that video SHOULD have been aware that a thief was right there .. someone just got magically stomped in front of them apart from anything else.

Yea and when the thief can stack stealth endlessly, when is the Attack going to come from the point we notice he is around?2 seconds later? 5 secs? 10 secs? 20 secs? And then wham you go down to a backstab.

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@EremiteAngel.9765 said:

@"Swagger.1459" said:The video I'm posting is of thief, but it is merely to highlight damage output vs a player's health... There are issues for players and devs across the board that could be alleviated by increasing player health... Please strongly consider making some positive changes by working on known issues that repel players from this mode, and cause a lot of unnecessary controversy for the player base.

I also considered posting threads of complaints about damage output from power and condition builds, but I don't think I need to... Anyone who has followed the forums over 6 years knows the complaints about damage are ongoing, and something needs to be done.

TY

He's in zerker gear and he's killing other glass cannons, are you saying a glass cannon shouldn't be able to quickly kill another one?

I agree that time to kill in some cases is out of whack but not in that scenario. A full zerk full glass traited cannon SHOULD be able to quickly kill.. anything.. and there's the problem to me.. some classes have the ability to be so tanky/defensive they can run halfway across the map before they die. And that's the reason why anyone running less than full defensive dies so quickly - because it's necessary for some classes/builds to be able to ouput so much in order to kill the max tank.Nerf defense, make it more active and less auto trait, rethink tanky gear possibilities, then look at damage.

Edit: I've been watching another game in process which looked interesting but had a worrying long TTK. Last update I watched they increased TTK even more which is a huge No Thankyou for me. Even as an older gamer with a high ping this just seems incredibly boring to me even though it'd probably benefit me, ha. Do people just not like a thrill anymore?

glass cannons should be able to kill each other quickly but not from stealth with zero tells.

So nerf sustained stealth, considering it's the major issue at hand for D/P Daredevil, Deadeye, Mirage, WI/RF soulbeast, and 100-0 nuke holosmith, and it's the only reason this stuff happens.

I know you know that the thief in the aforementioned video dies to a stiff breeze and that the problem is that you can't see it engage more than it is the damage, since you and I both know well that skills like Ghastly Claws run a 67% higher skill damage coefficient. If you nerf skills like backstab it just forces every thief in the whole game to either move to things like SA rifle which plays extremely non-commital. The thief already has some of the lowest skill damage coefficients in the game of all classes - including necro - it just invests way more heavily into offense than most realize to get these kinds of numbers, and it can do so largely because its defenses can be cheesed with no investment really required, as we're seeing above.

The issue yet again, as it has been for a long time, is that a number of these builds do not carry substantial risk to play and do not require substantial skill or game knowledge to pull off. Want to one-shot someone? It should demand way more risk to pull off than camping defenses and range and then exploding someone before they can react. I use D/D thief as the prime example of how these kits should be designed, because it does more damage than the above video and yet the kit is considered terrible because it is not only visible on engage (thus has counterplay by giving people the chance to react) but also carries zero backup plans and is generally one of the worst weapon setups in the game into most matchups by merit of its skills outside of backstab being horrendously bad. There's almost never an instance when dying to power D/D you didn't die from means beyond your control. And that's how all things should be. The current OP's like Mirage and Soulbeast are the opposite in that there's next to no investment required and very little risk involved in getting very high damage and thus they can opt heavily into sustain.

This kind of damage in respects to thief was also available in the past only to people who ran the off-meta crit strikes trait line AND the signet traits. ANet "buffed" the signets and its respective traits by putting about 90% of the power into just Assassin's Signet with no trait investment required as it used to be, and then downright nerfed the signet traits and toned its max-level full-investment power down. There's active discouragement from running the riskier build because it poses quite objectively zero advantages over the cheese setup.

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@Celsith.2753 said:

jk, yeah the damage right now is completely crazy, it's a spamfiesta, press 1 button and do more damage than classes have base health. I second a vanilla GW2 experience from just prior to HoT, it was by far one of the best balance periods there was.

I mained thief back then and 18k+ backstabs were not uncommon. Steal could crit. Cloak and Dagger 5k+. The difference on the classes people complain was not Time To Kill, it was the risk/reward. Thief didn't have hard to catch for example. Or the damage reduction in stealth trait. Mesmers had time frames in which you could actually hit them.. etc. I wonder if a conversation around risk/reward would be useful?

Thank you. That's the real problem today and nobody seems to see it. So much of both damage and defense for almost every profession comes at no/low cost at all or with very marginal risk for a ton of reward.

Mug crits were removed for the simple reason that it was not risky enough for the reward, especially with the old Assassin's signet. ANet could have made steal be telegraphed, but that'd have ruined the thief as a class, so they dropped the reward of free damage/using it as an engage tool and bumped up the reward for using it post-engage by giving it some sustain and removing the crit potential.

I think most people around today need to spend some time playing D/D power thief. It's one of the few kits that actually strikes what should be the desired proper balance of risk/reward (not proper in terms of actual risk/reward relative to the rest of the game being that it's so weak) and hasn't had its power inflated to absurdity by having so many freebies.

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@DeceiverX.8361 said:

@"apharma.3741" said:

jk, yeah the damage right now is completely crazy, it's a spamfiesta, press 1 button and do more damage than classes have base health. I second a vanilla GW2 experience from just prior to HoT, it was by far one of the best balance periods there was.

I mained thief back then and 18k+ backstabs were not uncommon. Steal could crit. Cloak and Dagger 5k+. The difference on the classes people complain was not Time To Kill, it was the risk/reward. Thief didn't have hard to catch for example. Or the damage reduction in stealth trait. Mesmers had time frames in which you could actually hit them.. etc. I wonder if a conversation around risk/reward would be useful?

Thank you. That's the real problem today and nobody seems to see it. So much of both damage and defense for almost every profession comes at no/low cost at all or with very marginal risk for a ton of reward.

Mug crits were removed for the simple reason that it was not risky enough for the reward, especially with the old Assassin's signet. ANet could have made steal be telegraphed, but that'd have ruined the thief as a class, so they dropped the reward of free damage/using it as an engage tool and bumped up the reward for using it post-engage by giving it some sustain and removing the crit potential.

I think most people around today need to spend some time playing D/D power thief. It's one of the few kits that actually strikes what should be the desired proper balance of risk/reward (not proper in terms of actual risk/reward relative to the rest of the game being that it's so weak) and hasn't had its power inflated to absurdity by having so many freebies.

That's not just the problem, very few skills had trade offs for using them, the only one's that really come to mind were ranged weapons doing a lot less damage and anything that gave quickness right at launch where you took more damage or couldn't heal. Nearly every skill for the most part was a benefit to you.

Even going through the meta builds at the time the best was always the least risk, highest reward for the class. So why was it OK back then and we all look back at those times with nostalgia? It's because you didn't die in 1s, the TTK was significantly higher for most builds and classes. Yes there were instagib builds and as you rightly pointed out they were by and large risky (they had a good risk/reward balance) but most of the time it was just a match up you'd lose after a while and even "high damage builds" like the old power necro would take a few seconds to lay on the damage and kill you.

Now? You can be dead in a blink of the eye, as soon as you run out of blocks, invulns, stealth etc you're dead. You could make things as risky as you want but dead people don't fight back, all you have to do is land it and you win which would then push people further to stealth ganks. TTK and risk need to go up, together, it's not a singular issue and they're both in some ways relevant to each other.

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