Proposal of fractal changes

[anbujackson.9564]

Just my two cents after playing in pug groups for the past three weeks again.

 

- Remove the exposed debuff or at least cut power down to 20-25 and condi to 40-50. The change in May was/is hated by everyone. Just get rid of it honestly.

- Remove skill reset at singularities (I wish you could also stop this gg spam before every boss like in 98)

- Rip boons at the start of boss encounters (goes hand in hand with the skill reset)

- Give bosses agony on every attack

- Agony could ignore barrier to reduce its effectiveness.

- Consider unblockable attacks from bosses to stop the aegis spam from firebrands

- Give Siax and Skorvald a small time of invulnerability like MAMA when spawning.

- Cut down the effectiveness of pots by 50% (especially the damage)

- For the love of the mists please rework solid ocean. 

 

Those are some basic changes without touching professions to reduce powercreep (Except the solid ocean rework ofc). I could continue with specific nerfs to fb and scourge but everyone knows they are overperforming by a huge margin.

Edited September 19, 2021 by anbujackson.9564

[theCypher.9406]

10 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Remove the exposed debuff or at least cut power down to 20-25 and condi to 40-50. The change in May was/is hated by everyone. Just get rid of it honestly.

Well i dont think this was a bad change at all to come up with for now.
Anet tried to change the viability of condi classes in general for fractals without having to nerf/push classes individually.
People would've cried around in nearly every forum if Anet did it class by class probably.
I dont wanna argue that this was super nice and good balanced but it is done without nerfing some class to the ground or buffing to much.

And i guess we should get used to things like this. It was all power meta for a long time in fracs, now it is all condi (or like 80/20). Meta will change again, its a bit up to us to adapt too. Anet cant balance everything to 100% fairness and they need to experiment to find good solutions.

10 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Remove skill reset at singularities (I wish you could also stop this gg spam before every boss like in 98)

- Rip boons at the start of boss encounters (goes hand in hand with the skill reset)

I dont see the need of the first point.
Can agree with the second though. Boss encounters should start clean and people need to know/have the skill to properly buff into their mates rotations and not start like the god of boons and rip things apart in mere seconds.

 

10 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Give bosses agony on every attack

- Agony could ignore barrier to reduce its effectiveness

You dont want that.... You really dont.
That might make some bosses with a lot of attacks/AoEs and such extremely hard. Since the way agony works, you cant heal that efficiently and this can become a death sentence for regular/bad skilled players in general and a lot of kicks coming in. Since nobody can help them surviving 29 stacks of agony....
 

10 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Consider unblockable attacks from bosses to stop the aegis spam from firebrands

Wrong way to fix a class problem in my opinion.
Firebrands are the one having to much of everything. This is a clear point for me to fix and rebalance a class.
Not the fractal.
If you give them unblockable attacks, people that use harder to play classes that got the skill to block correctly to mitigate damage are now suffering heavily. You would kill a lot of skills at other classes that might desperately need their one block skill just because firebrand has to many. Imo, a class not a content problem.
 

10 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Give Siax and Skorvald a small time of invulnerability like MAMA when spawning.

Why? Fractal => fast pasted. Why would you want that?

10 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Cut down the effectiveness of pots by 50% (especially the damage)

Same. Why? Power creep is a balance problem in general. Not an instance and their utilities related one.

10 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

- For the love of the mists please rework solid ocean. 

Be careful what you wish for.
I like the fact that there are some chilled fracs and solid ocean is not that bad. Look at the rework of aquatic. I know exactly 1 person that liked it. Rest of my guild and lfg teams are mostly dodging this already or hate it like what-not.
Sometimes its ok to keep things as they are.

Greetings

Edited September 20, 2021 by theCypher.9406

[anbujackson.9564]

Thanks for your opinion. Those ideas came in mind since balancing classes simply isnt working apparently.

 

I dont mind the fact that condi is meta now but 100% is just a little bit too much. "Bursting" bosses with condis just like with power specs doesnt feel right.

 

Good point about the agony, in some occasions it would stack really hard like Artsaariv. 

 

About Siax and Skorvald.. Well fractals are faced paced sure but Skorvald spawning and getting directly phased is kind of silly. Wont change anything in the long run.

 

I had a rework in mind like molten furnace which cut down the waiting time (the drilling and the end fight too). 

[theCypher.9406]

1 hour ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

I dont mind the fact that condi is meta now but 100% is just a little bit too much. "Bursting" bosses with condis just like with power specs doesnt feel right.

Relatable.
That is what i hope Anet is doing. Trying things. I hope they collect data in the background and will change it like you gave an example for. Like 25% for power and 40% for condi. Would be worth it.

 

1 hour ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

About Siax and Skorvald.. Well fractals are faced paced sure but Skorvald spawning and getting directly phased is kind of silly. Wont change anything in the long run.

I can agree with this. Only one thing i might want to add: most parties that are capable of near instantly phasing Skorvald are trained CM groups. The lower KP area and regular grps wont be able to.
I would like to see a different approach to solve this. I think you gave a proper solution yourself already.
=> Strip boons at combat start. Should lower the burst significantly. And those who are still capable of doing it, might deserve it.

 

1 hour ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

I had a rework in mind like molten furnace which cut down the waiting time (the drilling and the end fight too). 

Ok cool. What would you change in terms of solid ocean then? 🙂

Greetings

Edited September 20, 2021 by theCypher.9406

[Infusion.7149]

3 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Thanks for your opinion. Those ideas came in mind since balancing classes simply isnt working apparently.

 

I dont mind the fact that condi is meta now but 100% is just a little bit too much. "Bursting" bosses with condis just like with power specs doesnt feel right.

 

Good point about the agony, in some occasions it would stack really hard like Artsaariv. 

 

About Siax and Skorvald.. Well fractals are faced paced sure but Skorvald spawning and getting directly phased is kind of silly. Wont change anything in the long run.

 

I had a rework in mind like molten furnace which cut down the waiting time (the drilling and the end fight too). 

Exposed was a step in the wrong direction with respect to revamped torment and burning but your mention about potions highlights the fact that potions were not rebalanced with the exposed changes. Without exposed,  torment is upwards of 400 damage per stack on scourge and burning ~ 600 per stack plus another 4% from lich rune or +5% from bursting sigil, while burning does around 900  per tick on firebrands versus 25 vulnerability (~700 tooltip). If you look at the typical logs on the golem , power bursts around 50-70K in the first 5 seconds (notably omitting weaver , berserker, and chrono) so any condi build with 25K+ DPS and the 100% exposed modifier is going to do roughly as well with far less effort. When exposed was changed the DH , soulbeast, and holo were also nerfed at the same time when prestack traps (borderline exploit), OWP precast ("fixed" with status reset) and intervals, and grenade barrage could have been targeted specifically.

If you use the revised discretize calculator that's in beta they have exposed in the settings: https://discretize.github.io/discretize-gear-optimizer/

• Scourge without exposed = 42K using default settings , ~73K with exposed checked off
• Condi DPS renegade devastation ~48K , ~80K with exposed checked off <--- clearly higher than others
• Condi RR renegade invocation 45K, with exposed checked off ~78K <--- clearly higher than others
• Condi soulbeast shortbow 40K , with exposed checked off is ~69K  (d/t + a/d build is within 1K or so in both instances)
• Power holo ~44.7K , with exposed checked off ~57K
• Condi weaver (sword) 43K, with exposed checked off is ~72K
• Hybrid weaver 43K , with exposed checked off is ~67K (condi tempest is ~42K and ~68K with exposed)
• Power tempest 48K, with exposed checked off is ~61K
• Power weaver 46K, with exposed checked off is ~60K
• CFB 43K, with exposed debuff checked off is ~74K
• Power DH 43K , with exposed debuff checked off is ~54K
• Condi daredevil 45.5K , with exposed debuff checked off is ~79K
• Condi  deadeye 42K, with exposed debuff checked off is ~72K
• Rifle deadeye 48K, with exposed ~60K
• Staff daredevil just under 42K, with exposed debuff checked off is ~52K
• Hybrid soulbeast ~41K , with exposed checked off is ~68K
• Power chrono ~43K , with exposed checked off is ~54.7K
• power banner BS ~41K ,  52K with exposed
• condi banner BS ~39K, 68K with exposed
• Power soulbeast 37K (~39K with Signet of the Wild), with exposed checked off is ~47K (~49K with Signet of the Wild)
• CFB with quickness 37K, 63K with exposed <-- outlier in terms of support class
• power alac ren 35K, 44K with exposed
• power quickness FB 33K , 41.6K with exposed
• power quickness scrapper 35K, 45K with exposed

Calculator is still a work in progress but this gives you a rough idea. Some of the numbers may not be totally accurate. It is important to note the impact of potions on the numbers as opposed to raid benchmarks.
 

Your other suggestions require too much work on their part or don't really make sense. For example boon rip at the start is present at sunqua but is it really necessary on every boss? Maybe only if you have CM turned on it would be something to look at. For normal fractals all it would do is annoy people.

Cutting condi firebrand (from just under 40K in group to 37K in group / 30K solo ; 37K group for 5 pages to ~33K group and ~34K solo to ~30K solo noting that you don't need firebrand runes in fractals), condi ren (from 40K back to 36K , 37K back to 33K for RR as it was before torment changes), and condi scourge all by ~10% (from 37K to ~33K) would be a step in the right direction. The fastest change on scourges would be to lower the damage bonus on torment from 25% to 15% as it makes roughly 40% of the damage. Devastation traitline should probably just affect power damage as well.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Vidit.7108]

So I have some questions. Are you playing on European servers, and have you recently Pug'd in T3?

These suggestions seem like they come from a high end player with a lot of experience who plays with predominantly other high end players. If everyone knows what they're doing, can do it very well, and is trained to do it nearly perfectly then yes bosses melt in the blink of an eye. And if you do it every single day it's going to seem easy to you because you've gotten more experienced and skilled. Sometimes I get a good group on a T4 daily and I barely need to think about what I'm doing and the dailies + recs are done in 30 minutes. Other times I'm there for an hour. In bad groups I'm there for longer.
But if I go down to T3, I'll be there at least an hour most of the time. Some groups on a daily I blew through in T4 is a long slog in T3. If you think your dailies are easy, it's because you worked hard, learned, and grew to be able to do them quickly. The current meta is easier to get a good boon distribution out than when we relied on chronomancer for everything, but it's not completely without an element of player skill. Players getting good at quickly learning rotations that optimized performance made fractals easier. A power scrapper that knows their class really well is still better than a condi scourge that doesn't know what they're doing but copied the build on discretize. 
If arena net lowers damage output of a class, it doesn't matter on the high end because that skill and experienced doesn't go away. You'll find a new build to hit crazy numbers with, you'll always be better than someone with less experience. Fractals are always going to seem easy to you no matter how high the raw numbers you're seeing coming out from a class are. 

With that in mind. 

22 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Remove skill reset at singularities (I wish you could also stop this gg spam before every boss like in 98)

So everyone will wait 20-50 seconds before each boss instead? There really isn't a point to this other than to slow the pace of fractals.

22 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Rip boons at the start of boss encounters (goes hand in hand with the skill reset)

Pre-buffing in t4s since the May update is much less of a thing. So sure you could do that without changing much but again it's a speed bump and one which people can clear easily at the moment.

22 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Give bosses agony on every attack

No. This is going to make dodging the only damage mitigating tool at player's disposal. Toughness and Vitality won't matter at all if damage is percentage based. Same for defensive boons and buffs. They'll be made nearly pointless by making agony the main source of boss damage output. There won't be much point in healers since only the players ability to dodge will determine if a boss is cleared. It's not going to be possible for a healer to offset the risk players take staying in an aoe for a second to get another hit in.

22 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Consider unblockable attacks from bosses to stop the aegis spam from firebrands

Firebrands can block a lot of damage indeed. But this isn't completely without skill, it involves having knowledge of encounters, their mechanics, and the player's own ability to maintain buffs/healing. It's trivial for higher skill players with lots of experience but it's not mastered overnight and with instabs like "We Bleed Fire" it's not as effective. What the game needs is more options besides firebrand that have a large number of damage mitigating tools.

22 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

Cut down the effectiveness of pots by 50% (especially the damage)

T4 fractals seem to be designed with these potions in mind. Reducing their effectiveness should be done with more care than hacking away 50% of it. Maybe start with 15% and see what that does, having healed people without the defensive potion before in T4 just one person without it makes the encounter harder.

22 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

For the love of the mists please rework solid ocean. 

I'm terrified to think what a rework of Solid Ocean is going to look like, it kind of sucks but I'm happy with the devil I know more than the one I don't. It's the one fractal I can count on to be generally easier.

[Fuchslein.8639]

Oh for god's sake, anet, pls don't touch solid >>

[anbujackson.9564]

On 9/20/2021 at 6:47 PM, theCypher.9406 said:

Ok cool. What would you change in terms of solid ocean then? 🙂

Greetings

 

The problematic part is the waiting for the jade enemies. I still don't understand why there is a progression bar tied to it.

 

Maybe instead of the running at the beginning (since no one really fights the enemies) you could add some kind of event before the boss (dont ask me what exactly though, just some random thoughts). 

 

Except those two things there isnt much you can do. The tentacles are pretty weak, not sure if buffing them (more attacks) is a good call either tho.

 

21 hours ago, Vidit.7108 said:

With that in mind. 

 

Yeah i only play t4 and CM's. Some ideas werent that much thoughtout true, but like I said, just some ideas to decrease powercreep without touching balancing of professions.

 

Not expecting any real mechanical changes anyway, since it would require too many ressources.

 

On 9/20/2021 at 7:55 PM, Infusion.7149 said:

Exposed was a step in the wrong direction with respect to revamped torment and burning but your mention about potions highlights the fact that potions were not rebalanced with the exposed changes.

 

Those numbers speak for themself I guess. The May balance just made the game more inbalanced than ever before (instead of just single profession or two for a period of time).

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

On 9/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

Just my two cents after playing in pug groups for the past three weeks again.

 

- Remove the exposed debuff or at least cut power down to 20-25 and condi to 40-50. The change in May was/is hated by everyone. Just get rid of it honestly.

True but honestly 40&80 would be also good.

On 9/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Remove skill reset at singularities (I wish you could also stop this gg spam before every boss like in 98)

- Rip boons at the start of boss encounters (goes hand in hand with the skill reset)

Actually the source of all this was the /gg changes to the fractals basically people complained how often people doing it now. Ben the developer which main job was Fractals back then introduced skill reset on singularities  then. Everyone on the board how screamed easy to abuse this new system is but they decided to keep it . Chrono and its SoI was the first one who felt victim to those changes and the now busted boon system.

 

On 9/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Give bosses agony on every attack

why?

On 9/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Agony could ignore barrier to reduce its effectiveness.

okay maybe.

On 9/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Consider unblockable attacks from bosses to stop the aegis spam from firebrands

hmmmmm okay yes this would make the ground between FB less easy mode

On 9/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Give Siax and Skorvald a small time of invulnerability like MAMA when spawning.

No I don't see a point in this

On 9/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

- Cut down the effectiveness of pots by 50% (especially the damage)

No because the dmg creep doesn't come from there and it fine too have more in fractals. We have 10-20% more dmg just by being forced into the condi meta they should fix this first.

On 9/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

- For the love of the mists please rework solid ocean. 

Well fractals were in the past easy and relative fast . I think Arena.NET is forced to make them longer because people run them so fast by bypassing so much content (skips) which is called an exploit in other games but here seemingly accepted . In general MMO developers want to have spend hours/ certain amount of time in certain content so they made them longer.

 

Solid Ocean is a special case when the CM is active for the achievement of the legendary backpack  its not so easy anymore and you can't change it without change it achievement too. Yes it is the easiest one but funny thing is how many people still die there because they are doing it with 0 concentration.

 

On 9/19/2021 at 11:03 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

 

Those are some basic changes without touching professions to reduce powercreep (Except the solid ocean rework ofc). I could continue with specific nerfs to fb and scourge but everyone knows they are overperforming by a huge margin.

Yes like I said the current dps of Scourge and Fb are between 10 and 20% higher then the best we had before. On extreme cases even 25%

[Infusion.7149]

@ Lord of the Fire, the reason the original post suggested invuln to Siax/Skorvald is probably trap prestacking. There is no other rationale.

Also someone in discretize was banned for out of bound skip, so the only skips that are legit are the ones that use leaps / blink (think jump puzzles) and the wurm skip on Aetherblade which still requires pathing.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Luci.7018]

I was thinking a crazy "carry" idea last night .

What if , only one person with the highest dps could hit the boss/mobs , or we can assign him like the WvWvW option where a scout can get rewards far away from the zerg.

(and we scale all enemies HP pool around that  one person's dps , while he get benefited by aoe quickness +Might+ anything else )

 

This mechanic is enabled if you get voted by 2 other players

And in return we can put more "kill/fun" mechanics  for the rest of the group to avoid.

Essentially 4 people will become the "tanks"  to pull the major attacks (also learn new mechanics)  and the assigned person is the "hero-Commander" of our group .

If 60% or  the hero  is dead , the link/mechanic is broken/or the boss get enraged .

 

Something like in League of Legends/Smite/old PvP  ,  where if one person  can get low Deaths and high Kill/Assists , all the other member could get an S Tier chest

 

Edit: ofc people can simply not choose this mechanic , and in old fashion way do the instance , if they believe that all  5 players can do high  dps

Edit2: the rest of the peons will have a chance to remove a Boss Boon with a random attack , or remove "stacks" with non-autos like the Fire Elemental from the Volcanic Fractal/Tentaquil's Harpoon

 

 

 

Edited September 30, 2021 by Luci.7018

[zealex.9410]

Honestly i would completely disable singularity and the expose buff from cms at the very least.