lodjur.1284

Whines about condi, yep, 1/5, BONUS talking about condi in situations where it is actually really really weak Whine about February patch 2/5 Whine about sutain without understanding where it comes from, 3/5 More whine about sustain and February patch 4/5 It's all really about how sad they're that warrior is only strong and not broken beyond belief, 5/5 You managed to get 5/5! Also earth tempest was so broken dominating WvW. It's why saw so many same with all those really broken pure tank heralds that didn't achieve anything.

I did the math and had done testing of what sources on tempest specifically worked additively. I know exactly how much damage reducing was lost in various situations. Roughly 37% in the situation where it has the biggest impact (technically more counting frost aura but uptime is low anyway), around 20% in the most average situations. Around 10% more in the best case scenario. 20% more damage taken in the average situation is a lot. That is by any standard a big nerf warranted or not. Out of curiosity have you ever in your life disagreed with a single decision made by Anet? Do you believe Anet are capable of making mistakes?

I mean tempest getting it's 1 good build (across all gamemodes) heavily nerfed without dominating isn't exactly good. Anet has a history of leaving things weak. I mean the irony of this coming from you isn't lost on me.

Only really dwarf herald specific one, which I did miss writing out. This doesn't really change the fact that this mostly impacts earth ele and to a lesser degree jalis revenant. Other builds have a smaller number of modifiers and already tended to not take them Nor does it change that you're simply wrong about that this would impact roaming notably outside of a couple builds going from semi- good to bad. A few strong builds will take between 5% and 8% more damage in that context, bit more during short periods (like Dolyak stance) but those aren't exactly when one wants to be bursting anyway are they?

You mean my list of (until recently) additive sources didn't include multiplicative ones, that's a real shocker.

I think they overlooked how certain traitlines have multiple sources already and are now notably weaker than pre patch even when used without sources (notably Earth) especially given no such traitline was in a dominant position

I forgot that Anet can't overlook things and that one shouldn't express discontent over changes. Also a type of stacking isn't inherently wrong, it is just different, which one to use is obviously up to Anet but that it's been balanced around a different one is a fact. A great way of looking at things. With that point of view, why even visit the forums?

I mean the implementation wasn't inherently wrong, just different, in a notably more powerful way. Should damage multipliers be changed to stack additively, which would be a lot healthier too, then many builds would need damage compensations, the only difference here really is what builds it affects. You say after literally mentioning shroud as an additive reduction though, couple patches after it was specifically changed tho lol. Also rampage is barely relevant due to it's use case having little overlap. Then why Water is wet

Frost aura with like at most 10% uptime on reaper. Counting it even for tempest is a but disingenuous but for reaper it's laughable. Rise hasn't been relevant for years Ele has same armor/ toughness as Necro barring death magic/ scepter/ signet/CES. Toughness isn't really relevant in this discussion either. Also tempest builds using earth generally don't run signet or scepter so... Some condi solo builds might have been using signet but condi as scepter had been nuked pretty hard (Power tempest wouldn't generally run earth) Also this is for stuff that is somewhat used. Rise is not really used (also one of the very few sources I would assume was always multiplicative due to damage transference and not reduction) But ye the very few people running corruptor's fervor and reaper did get nerfed, which seems a bit unnecessary. If anything more already uncommon builds getting nerfed just strengthens my argument.

Shroud was already Multiplicative. Rampage I did miss, but rampage in a group that gives protection isn't exactly a common occurrence, when bubble exists. Rev 100% was fixed already, months ago. So good thing you didn't share that before tho loool or people could've idk? I tested the earth ones personally, overall most effects were additive. The change would've been good if accompanied by appropriate balance changes. As a form of future proofing, but given that it wasn't currently an issue rushing it out in a non-balance patch with no other changes made it a terrible change.

I mean this has been this way since launch, surely it could've waited until the next balance pass? MAJOR balance changes probably shouldn't be done outside of actual balance patches unless they're currently gamebreaking

That's not how it works. It's only relevant with multiple sources of damage reduction. If a trait gave 100% damage reduction by itself it would be damage immunity in either system. If 2 traits each gave 50% in an additive system that would be damage immunity in a multiplicative one it would be 75% less damage taken. 100% multiplicative damage reduction would need to be from a single source or one could never reach 100% only get infinitively close to 100% less damage taken.

Most modifiers in the game were additive strangely enough Top off my head only shroud and rite of the great dwarf was multiplicative of the ones I tested myself. Ele in WvW is collateral damage for Anet's peace of mind. This way they don't have to worry about bringing in more sources of damage reduction and risking the revenant thing happening again. The change is good. The timing and lack of compensation is very bad. Overall result is trash.

For sure but changing stuff without any other changes is a much bigger mistake That's just not true. Warrior has 1 source of damage reduction, spiked armor for 10% in defense which isn't very popular anymore. So essentially unaffected Ranger has Dolyak stance (and an unpopular 5% trait in wilderness survival), outside of Dolyak stance essentially unaffected Necro has the 3%/ shade one, so only scourge and not much. Reaper has a short duration 20% one inside of shroud Essentially unaffected Guardian had nothing (well 1 trait in dragonhunter that probably has close to 0% uptime) Thief generally doesn't have protection due to not fitting in situations where it's applied but, they do have 33% less when revealed which very few people take and two different 10% ones from daredevil and 1 trait that gives 10% on deadeye. So daredevils in a group with protection would've noticed it, if those builds didn't already run bound. Essentially unaffected Engineer only has iron blooded which is very uncommon. Essentially unaffected Mesmer has one 10% trait in chaos that is also not commonly used. Essentially unaffected Revenant potentially has 10% Corruption which is generally unused 15% in salvation, the entire traitline is rarely used and even then that trait isn't common 10% retribution, this is is common but also only really functions in a group 1.5 - 15% in Herald, probably averages out to 7% for those who take it, but it's less common 20% Hammers are quite common as Jalis is quite strong atm. While hammers aren't up I would say Rev is very close to unaffected as well. With hammers up (in a group providing protection) it's noticeable. Obviously trolling builds like salvation+retribution+herald would very much notice it but they're not really a problem. For solo it's yet anther nail in the coffin for jalis+kalla but that's been dead since may 11. Damage never felt bad on any power class. It is still overall quite high, getting hit by single skills for 6k+ in full toughness gear is something that happens very regularly from multiple different classes (warrior and berserker included). For roaming this essentially changes nothing outside of the few people attempting any kind of build using earth on ele getting hit in the teeth. The enemies one face while roaming rarely have high protection uptime and multiple other % damage reduction. Earth ele and ranger during Dolyak stance being the only notable ones that both provide protection and have decent sized modifiers.

The patch note would imply that isn't the case, might test it later tho. But for now unless someone else has tested it can safely be assumed to be multiplicative. At least to me "All effects" would include frost aura, protection, consumables, utilities etc, if some of them do work additively, it is most likely an oversight. Frost aura for example even got a tooltip update that attempts to better reflect the new functionality (but really everyone I talked to who read it is very confused) I even say that it was a good change, the problem is that it was missing other changes, just massively nerfing builds that are a perfect power level in competitive, due to 1 meme-y build that has been fixed without giving any kind of compensation is ludicrous. The Earth traitline on tempest is basically gutted, with all the minor traits being terrible now. The math working out to 36-37% more damage taken for any normal build using the traitline is a quite large oversight. For example on tempest, the earth minor traits would still be weaker than before even if their numbers had been doubled. Obviously multiplicative stacking is way healthier for any kind of reduction, but when previous numbers were tuned around an additive formula, changing it without changing all the affected traits is a very bad idea. If hardy conduit got buffed up to roughly 45.5%, stony flesh to 14% and geomancer's training to 23.5%, then they would've ended up with the same damage reduction as pre-patch) and similar things for other classes (tho really tempest is by far the one that lost the most from it, Jalis hammers could definitively use an increase too though, as they went from providing a little bit more than 35% dmg reduction to only giving 20%, on a "normal" build, while supported) Meanwhile most builds just end up taking about 5.6% more damage while supported and in most cases no change in damage taken while solo (all this is obviously from a WvW perspective, the change has essentially 0 impact outside of WvW as stacking this in PvE is generally already meh)

Ye the minor traits are all terrible now, the master tier also leaves very much to be desired. Like I said previously, even if both the minor traits had been doubled the patch would've been a nerf for tempest The entire traitline is still carried by elemental shielding and will essentially be a mandatory one for tempests, merging hardy conduit and elmental shielding for example would leave earth a mostly useless traitline Ye clearly, there's such an abundance of broken ele builds around using earth Given that one never encounters any and I can think of at most 2 players using earth, it's clearly dominating in competitive modes.

Some sources of damage reduction now says how much damage is left as opposed to how much it reduces, the 61% should surely be 60% unless they nerfed "Hardy Conduit" to making protection do 39% instead of 40% just for good measure. But I am gonna guess tooltip error What sources they changed to say how much is left is kinda random tho Frost aura for example now says "90% incoming damage" as opposed to "Incoming damage is reduced by 10%" Stone Flesh & Geomancer still say how much they reduce Hardy Conduit, Frost Aura, Protection (on skill tooltips, but not when mousing over the boon) say how much is left Every single build in the game that utilizes more than one source of damage reduction is nerfed, Earth Tempest just has more than most (2 in earth, 1 from food, 1 from protection, potentially another one from frost aura, though I didn't count that one since uptime is low, if I had damage would be close to double the previous (assuming frost aura stacked additively before, I never actually tested that particular one)

Ye, I mean for my part imo Tempest was in an almost perfect spot as a support pre-patch. But the survivability is quite dependent on these stacked damage reductions, it will probably still be the only real contender for it's particular role, but it is a substantial nerf and as very few groups actually run earth tempest it feels extremely unwarranted.

For 10% it would 0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9 Short and bad explanation you always start from 1 and if its a reduction its 1 minus the reduction so 1 - 0.1 = 0.9 if it's an increase it's 1 plus the increase so 1.1. (When talking damage increases multiplicative is also the more "powerful" way for it to work btw) But ye specifically for the earth traitline it's a harsh nerf, but anyone with protection and 10% less damage food is taking about 5.6% more damage than before, tempest just has both more and larger damage reductions than other classes so the difference is larger. To put it into perspective, if tempest were to reach old damage reduction numbers with the same traits/food Tempest's trait that makes protection do 40%, would need to be increased to a number very close to 45.5%, then with food they would be at the old 50% they were at. Then the while in earth passive would need to be 14% (which is double the current passive) and the against nearby enemies would need to be a massive 23.25%, so both the earth passives would need to be more than doubled to reach previous values, and the tempest one would need an increase of over 10%.

In games (maybe other places too but) it's a quite common phrasing for So if you have 2 sources of damage reduction, that give you 50% damage reduction each Then with additive stacking you get 50%+50%=100% damage reduction, and take 0% damage With multiplicative stacking you get 1 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25, so 75% damage reduction, and take 25% damage. In practice this means that in case 1, having 4 sources of damage reduction that each give 10% is the same as having one that gives 40% damage reduction. In case 2, it is worse to have 4 sources of damage reduction that each give 10% than 1 that gives 40% Earth traitline in particular suffers because it has 2 (3 counting protection) sources of damage reduction, in practice this means that a tempest using Earth and the best type of ascended food (for WvW that is) ends up taking 10% more damage at a minimum and up to 37% more damage while in earth and close to an enemy (which is quite common), with the range in between being for your enemy not being near you and/or you being outside of earth There is 0 situations where one ends up taking less damage than before the patch (on any class). This was most likely done because heralds recently being able to reach 100% damage reduction in certain scenarios in PvE and Anet wanting to avoid that happening again. Multiplicative stacking is generally a better idea for damage reduction modifiers, but without compensating buffs, this is quite a massive nerf

Tempest+earth+food ends up taking 36-37% more damage post patch due to a change in damage reduction math. Also afaik earth is the only traitline with 2 damage reduction traits, combining the 2 into a flat 15 or 17% would be much better. Could even be 17% at all times and doubled in earth and still end up weaker than pre-patch.

A lot of traits definitively need rather large buffs or reworks after this, elementalist earth traitline being the first one to come to mind, having 3 separate dmg reductions being much much weaker than a single large one now. 36-37% more damage taken in earth (as tempest with food) is kind of a massive unwarranted nerf for a build that is hardly dominating anywhere. In fact elementalist is the only class that relied on stacking multiple % damage reductions for their survivability. The nerf itself was probably meant to prevent a return of 100% less damage taken herald similar memes, in theory damage reduction stacking multiplicatively is much healthier, but without any other balance changes the change is extremely bad. (some new elite spec could for example be gaining large sources of less % damage taken) TL;DR: Buff skills that provide % damage reduction to compensate for this heavy handed and poorly thought out change

36-37% more damage taken, thanks Anet maybe some buffs to compensate for this?

That doesn't mean it was necessarily a dps increase to use. In a buffed PvE scenario of course.

That's just wrong tho. For example Signet of Inspiration and overall boon chrono got deleted cause of PvE. Shiro originally was far worse in PvE than it is now. As it instead of a mini OWP it did quickness. Sword 3 was never a dps increase to use. Reaper shouts are bad in PvE because they do things that aren't valued highly in PvE (Lifeforce, Condi clear, might, personal damage reduction, boon removal, unblockable, weakness, chill, personal stability). They would still be terrible there even if you always hit max targets.