Nimris.3781

OLC dosent really favour virtu, you can play plenty of specs there with a great results, i dont see any issue here KO does favour virtu by a lot due to hitting 2 targets at once with pierce, this should be solved by better fight design, nerfing virtu dps wouldnt change much unless you remove pierce from spec without touching dps XJJ favours mostly ranged, this is common on fights with a lot of movement, not related to virtu CO, no idea i have not done Soto strikes even once. there is a long list of reasons why class popularity looks like it currently does. cm strikes with a lot of hp/long phases favour condi specs, majority of condi specs are ranged. strikes involve a lot of movement and power specs are often animation locked/stationary in melee. strikes often require plenty of cc etc, not all specs can provide that. strikes are often single-target with occasional adds so heavy aoe on melee classes is not needed. also people dont like swapping every boss, they pick what is good everywhere and easy to play nerfing virtu/necro by 2k will change nothing because of the design of fights and nerfing them by 20k so they are unplayable will be even worse, as we will be left with specs that bring nothing beside dmg.

check 93g7 i was messing with settings and broke something so account name doesnt work, but since i am mostly playing with static/guild, i left it like that. and yes i dont really like strikes, i didnt even do normal soto strikes once as i dont like this content. maybe if you search 2years back, there might be few boneskinner logs...? that is if anyone uploaded also i am currently moving away from virtu to harb, because harbinger is simply put better for condi fractals, lol. but i still like my slb... this is heavy nitpicking. than dont put this trait or w/e... generally speaking the idea is to discourage abuse of portal for dps uptime etc. while still keeping it as option for niche scenarios. put it on 3-5min cd and i can guarantee you no one will bring virtu/chrono for portal. (or make this trait rival quick and alac, lol) that was just a simple example for something more than braindead dpsing adds, also did you miss part where i mention "make proper intermission phases where boss is invulnerable and party is tasked with something else". no need for virtu if he cant hit a boss (e.g intermission in mai trin strike with bombs, or OLC and doing cc on correct boss - yes i do watch streams and know how it works, despite never doing this bosses myself) this is one out of milion of options to solve the issue and should work as well. again, i am pointing out that currently game is well balanced and when class-stacking happens, its bad design of encounter, not one spec being op. you may argue that some specs feel weak, but nerfing well rounded classes will not magically make useless builds good (and i am not talking about dps here but utility, dps wise game has never been so well balanced) should i again repeat myself that this is just a very good example of terrible fight design, bad mechanics and plenty of bugs that pretty much force players to circumvent it via portals or other simmilar shenanigans? this is what happens when you throw bunch of random stuff into fight, hoping players find way to avoid it. devs should design boss fight that is engaging, well thought out and doesnt limit you everywhere or use cheap tricks to kill you and you will see more class variety

oh, no no no, there was definitely some Jani-mini-meow story i have heard of 😎 (ugh, reddit 😖) well, nobody as myself has to resort to this low level strategies to mimic what some top players are doing and thanks to this i am able to kill boss in somewhat reasonable time! also my bladesworn would kill me if i didnt /gg... hope you can now better understand the situation some of us are facing in groups/pugs!

hmm, i would say there are at least few options not sure how many i can get off the top of my head definitely dont make fights overloaded with constant spread mechanics, especially prolonged ones make proper intermission phases where boss is invulnerable and party is tasked with something else ( not killing adds while hitting boss...) include cleave mechanic during encounter (defiant adds - so no pull), every range is weak on heavy aoe, unlike melee that often deal 80-100% dps in aoe (bladesworn, lol) create mechanics that require cooperation of party, not just pure dps on adds (e.g bouncing ball around room, but cannot be done by supports only) also increase base cd on mesmer portal to 5min, introduce trait in support traitline that reduces it back to say ~90s or 120s (so dps cant pick it) that conflicts with something usefull. (or dont introduce trait and make it weak in combat, just like it happened with Epidemic - this would be healthy for game in the long run) i have seen plenty of clever or fun encounters in WoW that did not favour anyone, so generally speaking its all about design and how far dev imagination goes. if encounters are all about "hit boss-> spread-> spread-> hit boss-> hit add-> spread->spread " than obviously range will be favoured, but thats not range balance issue, its lazy/poor dev issue. i would definitely start by making every spec doing bare minimum, meaning spec without cc is unacceptable. doing cc is basic way to contribute to party, spec doing no cc will always be looked down on. (and giving it insane dps will make it even worse) after that i would give a bit of other utility to specs without it, like condi cleanse, boon strip, barrier, aoe pull/push, superspeed, etc. obviously you dont want to go too far, but having any sort of party utility would be welcome on some specs. in my eyes, you can split spec performance to: (1) dmg related, (2) cc/utility provided, (3) others/unique (e.g) portal/stealth. specs should be 'equal' to some degree in each category, like (1) each spec have their niche in dps (like pierce, melee cleave, strong aoe, good burst, good dps on range etc.), (2) provide some utility to party like barrier, stabi, cleanse, strip or w/e - everyone something, not few specs everything. as for (3) it can be considered as bonus, but this unique utility should not be dps related. on a top of that all specs should fall into certain range of complexity, meaning too hard spec should be made more accessible (higher entry dps) e.g mirage and ofc there will always be meta and top players will always stack classes so we shouldnt consider cm cerus as issue, because if we kill virtu, scourge, they will stack something else not sure who is praising him, afaik silent surf is considered worst cm and as fractal is hated as much as solid ocean or aquatic. i have not played FFXIV, so cant say much about it, i know that their combat is more static, so maybe that helps? class stacking is always a thing in high-end pve, especially if you can swap classes as easily as in gw2. playrate is tied to more than just dps, thats why virtu/scourge is popular. low playrate cannot justify high dps, or you will end up with top players stacking top spec, even if it is horrible to play. as a good example, mirage was nerfed not long time ago and it has that 0.1% playrate because its insanely hard to pull off, but you could occasionaly run into mirage enjoyer destroying everyone in dps doing easily 20% more than second person in arc. this was bad, and imo they should make mirage easier to pick up so average player can still do somewhat fine (not 50% dps of alac support) while skill cap remains high so dedicated plaeyrs can still enjoy it

and is virtu the only spec that has non 0dps in range? afaik at least half of condi specs can do decent dps in range, sooo where is the problem with virtu? or is half of condi spec the problem? so you want to gut virtu so its unplayable, and improve badly designed specs at the same time, cleary not biased, lol. this is so archaic point of view, plenty of games went through this with simmilar results. if you apply on dps any sort of "tax" (like good utility + ranged = cant do more than 38k bench) you end up with everyone stacking top dps anyway and forcing all utility on supports (we have seen it with e.g cFB). and devs at some point realize that they should just improve spacs that bring nothing to party and everyone will be happy. there is really no need for this communication. balance team should do proper job at balancing classes so nothing stands out too much, while fight designing team should do their job, creating intresting fights. good (bad) example is Kanaxai with its milion of spread mechanics, whoever though its gonna be fine should be fired and its not related to balancing at all, its just bad desing at its core. they really dont, at least not exclusively, else we would have power mech or scourges doing 42-43k and deadeye, tempest, druid, holo etc. cut down. sadly what balancing team doesnt do much is changing utility and as a result specs that were blessed with decent utility in the past are always good, while classes with zero utility are only good on paper.

first of all, virtu also has skills that require melee or work better in melee. f5 requires melee, dagger 2 loses some dmg on range and there is always this focus 5 that throw axes on invisible targets or adds, doing less dmg than it should (specially if casted in range). it feels like people are not aware of that, but virtu is not doing benchmark dps in 1200 range. second of all, there are other dps classes that can deal near benchmark dps in range (sometimes 900 range) but the reason they are often not chosen is either having low cc/no utility/being very squishy or are just too complex to play for 99.9% of players virtu is solid spec and is just a safe pick compared to other classes. its not the virtu balance issue, its other classes being only good on papar and useless in real fight. like you said "Golem doesn't care but actual encounters do". tell me, if something (condi dps) is doing 40k+ on golem, but loses plenty of dmg if target moves, doesnt bring cc (which is required for encounter) and doesnt provide utility to justify bringing it, where the problem lies?

yeah virtu is fine. why it has high playrates? because its easy to pick up as alt character and anyone can do decent dps with little practice, hence high playrates. easy classes will always be very popular, thats not a rocket science. virtu also has strong cc, aoe pull, some party utility, overall its well rounded dps that has some strong sides and some weaknesses. compare it to condi mech which has 0cc, 0 party utility and despite doing good dmg on paper is considered useless. (portal thats obligatory for few fights aside) virtu is fine. dps specs that are considered useless should have their cc/utility improved and you would see more variety yeah, couse portals + simple rotation. world race had plenty of virts because it is safe pick, but that has nothing to do with actual balance

or maybe instead of literally destroying 2 specs for no reason, nerf real culprit that is portal?! how did you even reach a conclusion that "if mesmers are mandatory because of portals, we should utterly gut their dps to make them unplayable" ?!?!

Jani, why add fuel to the fire, you malicious creature... :< your youtube channel says "retired from gw" so you might not be up to date with current balance and tactics 😉

this fight is movement heavy, its very easy to get out of range/behind supports and not get full benefit of boons they cast. precasting at mistlock is literally to prevent that so even if you move out of range (or get knocked) you still keep 100% boons until end of fight. i have seen this many times. you either literally auto last add for 10s or use skills to kill it and have no burst on p1 boss which results in doom+dome mechanic that wastes time, either way it slows down your kill. you think you are smart with not /gg-ing but reality is the gain is marginal, but it brings more risks and less consistant pulls. "cherry on a top" is when ppl dont /gg and on the first spin MAMA knocks back 3-4 ppl. clearly a time save. this is not solely about dps uptime, higher burst in p1 lets you skip certain mechanics and save time if you burst properly. you think that fight goes on the same regardless of group performance which is wrong assumption. swap to 100% boon duration gear -> blast your boons for easy 30s cap -> grab mistlock -> swap to normal gear (or even dedicated gear with less BD% than SC suggests for more dps) precast class specific buffs that carry over to fight like flow for bladesworn, OWP for slb, poisons for thief slb etc. and most importantly reset cd's plenty of reasons to /gg and as a result do better in fight. sorry to say it, but thats <1k ufe mentality. "go into fight and kill it eventually", 3m+ MAMA kill with 2 downstates, but hey at least, you didnt /gg at start to save 15s, right? mistlock is powerfull tool that lets you bring into fight more than you normally would be able to, not using it is at the very least silly but to actually understand that you need to play on higher level you are very delusional at this point, something what Cyninja.2954 wrote. you have not seen proper use of mistlock or /gg, you just view it as single-use death prevention and dont even understand what you are missing on ( cd reset, boon precast, class specific buffs, mechanic skip, etc.) its hard to even go into details because you are missing on too many aspects of fight. if you care so much about overall time completion, learn proper pdps (slb, bsw, dh) and cdps for 99-100 and eventually stop playing with hfb. complaing about total complition time before doing that is very silly.

/gg on mama is not just about speed, you gg to have consistent and clean pulls precasting might, quick and alac guarantees solid uptime, and a bit of leeway during fight due to movement. easily 100% boon uptime at the end of fight cd reset lets you freely burst adds and still have all skill available for boss, no holding cd's before boss some classes are very "mistlock dependant" like bladesworn who gets full flow bar to let him burst instantly some classes want to swap something (gear/trait) just before picking mistlock/starting combat to have better performance, this ~15s of precast let you do that on a top of that, no gg pulls are often very messy because stabi/cc is on cd, no burst at the beggining of fight, boon uptime at the end is horrible, 60% or so... result is people downstate, kill is very slow and you lose more time on messy kill than that 15s after /gg

i would caps it for you, but sadly all your posts are already full in caps lock all the cries about horizontal progression, how absurdly expensive few stats from infusions are, how time consuming it is to get them etc. fractal god buff is very powerfull and is pinnacle of time consuming and absurdly expensive form of vertical progression (that apparently you dislike so much) but seems like you dont notice an issue here? i thought that you would be first to fight for reducing prices of fractal god in game that shouldnt have any vertical progression... at this point everyone in this topic ridicules you, i am surprised mods did not close this yet, as it wastes forum space

i am surprised you did not start crying about fractal god title yet unlike infusions which are insignificant, fractal god provide +7%dmg buff, 100hp/s and up to 45 agony ress which translates to ~67vit, 67 toughness and 67 concentration (~4.5% boon duration) also infusions are actually cheap compared to fractal god that costs you about ~3300g and require 250days of non stop CM+T4 everyday. lol

Oh my god, the math desinformation in this topic is crazy... dont throw numbers if you have no clue what you are talking about Stat infusion are literally ~2% dps increase! 1k at best!!! you all you overestimate the value of +90 stat. its definitely not 10%, nor 7% and for sure not 3-4k dps. you can ask this question on SC discord or use discretize gear optimizer and everyone will tell you the same, infusions are very insignificant gain, thats why they are not required anywhere. thats 2% dps increase which is very pricy. huge majority (like 99% of people) are unable to get consistently 90%+ benchmark on golem, many of them struggling at 80% bar. infusions are not gonna save them, they should min/max their rotation first. also you dont need that 2%. every encounter can be completed with half of max dps and on a top of that literally higher ping can make bigger difference than what infusions provide... the only reason why food+util is required is because they are together ~10% dps increase and cost < 50s in total, for some classes < 30s if you are fine with looking like pile of mixed crap or black hole of ugliness, dressed up with 10 different infusions, than its up to you. fractal infusions not having visual is big adventage and unique in itself, you can have full benefit of +90 stat if you care about it without altering your look. if you want to have better dps results, go practice rotation on golem.

you lost me in the very first paragraph. eye is solid 5-6s long cast, thats enough time to make it to the edge with cripple... if that requires "ultra precise actions" that can be ruined by ping spikes (lol) than i dont know what to tell you... maybe its time to retire from gaming?