Trade-offs need Pay-offs

[Kuma.1503]

Title. 

If you're going to give an elite spec 15 different trade-offs, then there had better be a BIG pay-off. 

If I root myself for 5 seconds and announce to the entire map that I'm about to burst, there had better actually BE a burst. 

If I spend 20 seconds in combat building up energy to use my proffession mechanic and fight within a constrained area to use it, I had better be rewarded with more than 6 damage and 1 second boons. 

You CANNOT MAKE AN ELITE SPEC OUT OF JUST TRADE-OFFS. 

Stop loading up these elite specs with downsides, no upsides, and expecting them to work. 

I'll say it one last time so it sticks.

TRADEOFFS NEED PAYOFFS.

[Exile.8160]

Not fair that some spec get bad trade offs while other just get regular traits whit no downside.

[Lucentfir.7430]

Unfortunately we're stuck with CMC treatment so don't even count on anything changing for the better, especially when you've got specific streamer influencers enabling for these types of things.  

[Elementalist Owner.7802]

Seriously, all three of the beta specs are garbage in PvP and WvW. You hit the nail on the head with the excessive tradeoffs that these specs have.

 

Take vindicator, for example: You have a tradeoff on the dodge mechanic (one dodge, with a literal 2 second telegraph), a tradeoff on the dodge traits (requires more endurance), a tradeoff on the F2 (costs energy), a tradeoff on the Saint Viktor ult (deals self-inflicted damage). Plus the Alliance stance just feels clunky and extremely punishing.

 

I want these specs to feel GOOD. We've been playing the same 9 broken PoF specs for 4 YEARS.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Elementalist Owner.7802

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Looks like they loved what they did to Berzerker and wanted to do it again. 

Insane trade offs for dmg that will get nerfed in a heartbeat. 

They just forgot the dmg this time or a playable mechanic. 

 

[ThrakathNar.4537]

10 hours ago, Exile.8160 said:

Not fair that some spec get bad trade offs while other just get regular traits whit no downside.

Honestly this is the most confusing thing about this design, it's as if they thought that a trait or skill with a tradeoff should have exactly the same payoff as a trait without a tradeoff, or in some cases have less of a payoff.

 

Taking the Vindicator adept traits as an example, Leviathan Strength gives you the effect of 10 seconds of cooldown reduction on your alliance stance abilities for the cost of increasing your F2's cooldown by 20 seconds. By itself this is a horrible trade, but it's made worse by the fact that the other two options don't have any negatives associated with them.

 

And then Willbender, oh my, the traits are just horrible. Even if we only look at core and discount any potential expansion powercreep, every trait on every class in the game is still a net positive, or in the absolute worse case scenario be ineffective. Some of them have tradeoffs (like on Corruption on rev) but usually the traits are strong enough and give you enough ways to manage those tradeoffs that they can actually be beneficial (like how in Corruption you pulse torment on yourself for bonus energy upkeep pips, but in turn you have ways of transferring that condition onto enemies).

With Willbender traits on the other hand, you're lucky if your Adept or Grandmaster trait even has a neutral effect on your power level. It's at the point where the dedicated DPS Grandmaster trait (Tyrant's Momentum) isn't even guaranteed to increase your sustained DPS, because of the duration reduction on Lethal Tempo. I just don't get why the Grandmaster traits have such downsides. Sure, they're powerful without downsides, but Grandmaster traits are allowed to be powerful in this game. Power Block, Purity of Purpose, Eternal Life, Dance of Death, Transfusion, Remorseless, these are all core grandmaster traits, and they're all allowed to be powerful without any tradeoff. But for this set of elite specs it seems the goal is to make things that are worse than just running core builds.

Edited September 22, 2021 by ThrakathNar.4537

[Genesis.5169]

Welcome to the life of mesmers post HoT. Man vindication feels good ever since they took weakness away from clones being destroyed IP and chronophantasma (And then gave back IP and chronophantasma) we have been on this train where you can be good at nothing at all gotta when they said getting weakness for destroying clones destroys mesmer counter play even those I HAVE NO CLONES AND I CAN NOLONGER SHATTER OR CONFUSE YOU but yeah trade offs right?

 

I shed no tears i've learn to cope and no only that but i had to relearn how to play both my elite specs 2 times over changes that call to the trade off things. This was the argument the forums used to destroy mesmers the  world YOU GUYS BUILT only way to destroy it is to fix campaign to fix the original sin, which is to undo all the mesmer nerfed except the HoT chrono ones because if mesmer is allowed to florish after all these years the other classes will too.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Classes just need to be well designed and not have gimmicky garbage forced onto them. Either the gimmick is bad an no one plays the class because it feels terrible, or the gimmick is overpowered and everyone plays it because they have to. Like really, vindicator dodge and bladesworn f2 is some of the worst class design this game has seen.