Tempest nerf

[lodjur.1284]

36-37% more damage taken, thanks Anet

maybe some buffs to compensate for this?

Edited October 5, 2021 by lodjur.1284

[TheDarkness.6947]

What are you referring to?

[lodjur.1284]

 

28 minutes ago, TheDarkness.6947 said:

What are you referring to?

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.

Edited October 5, 2021 by lodjur.1284

[TheDarkness.6947]

So it’s this Oct 5 release change then?

 

• Quote

  All effects that provide a percentage reduction to incoming damage have been standardized to stack multiplicatively.

I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around what that exactly meant yet. Is it confirmed this is a nerf to tempest/ele damage reduction? “Stack multiplicatively” is not a very mathematically precise phrasing.

 

 

Edited October 5, 2021 by TheDarkness.6947

[lodjur.1284]

25 minutes ago, TheDarkness.6947 said:

So it’s this Oct 5 release change then?

 

•  

I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around what that exactly meant yet. Is it confirmed this is a nerf to tempest/ele damage reduction? “Stack multiplicatively” is not a very mathematically precise phrasing.

 

 

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

Edited October 5, 2021 by lodjur.1284

[TheDarkness.6947]

12 minutes ago, lodjur.1284 said:

With multiplicative stacking you get 1 * 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25, so 75% damage reduction, and take 25% damage.

Thanks! Are you sure this is how the math is done for stacking multiplicatively though?  Taking your example of 4 sources of 10% DR I’d get:

1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 = 0.0001.  I’m not even sure what that would mean. Take 99% of incoming damage with 4 sources of 10% DR?

I’m certainly not trying to nitpick, just to understand.  And agreed that any nerf to ele DR would be like pouring salt in a wound.

 

[lodjur.1284]

2 minutes ago, TheDarkness.6947 said:

Thanks! Are you sure this is how the math is done for stacking multiplicatively though?  Taking your example of 4 sources of 10% DR I’d get:

1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 = 0.0001.  I’m not even sure what that would mean. Take 99% of incoming damage with 4 sources of 10% DR?

I’m certainly not trying to nitpick, just to understand.  And agreed that any nerf to ele DR would be like pouring salt in a wound.

 

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%.

[TheDarkness.6947]

32 minutes ago, lodjur.1284 said:

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%.

I see.  That makes more sense now.  Thanks very much for taking the time to explain.

That does seem like a pretty big hit to ele survivability then - at least for core and tempest. Another nail in ele’s coffin, I guess.  Maybe if they can get all the nails driven in, some friendly necros will raise the eles as their minions.

[lodjur.1284]

5 minutes ago, TheDarkness.6947 said:

I see.  That makes more sense now.  Thanks very much for taking the time to explain.

That does seem like a pretty big hit to ele survivability then - at least for core and tempest. Another nail in ele’s coffin, I guess.  Maybe if they can get all the nails driven in, some friendly necros will raise the eles as their minions.

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.

[SoundWave.9154]

A bit confused. Protection now says 61% DMG reduction. Wouldn't that mean we got more defense now ?

Also, is this not a defense boost for Weaver ?

[lodjur.1284]

8 minutes ago, SoundWave.9154 said:

A bit confused. Protection now says 61% DMG reduction. Wouldn't that mean we got more defense now ?

Also, is this not a defense boost for Weaver ?

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)

 

 

Edited October 6, 2021 by lodjur.1284

[Stallic.2397]

This is a mighty good time to finally buff earth trait line. Tempest was already pretty squishy. 

[Shiyo.3578]

Earth ele traitline deserved a nerf, they were far too tanky.

[lodjur.1284]

4 minutes ago, Stallic.2397 said:

This is a mighty good time to finally buff earth trait line. Tempest was already pretty squishy. 

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

1 minute ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

Earth ele traitline deserved a nerf, they were far too tanky.

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.  

[Emberheart.8426]

I am not sure if this is even a nerf for earth. Many damage reduction effects already stacked multiplicatively. They just standardized the outliers, especially those broken revenant ones.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

The patch was addressed to revenant mostly who could be immortal in pve. I'm pretty sure most of elem's modificatorS were already Multiplicative.

Edited October 6, 2021 by Zhaid Zhem.6508

[ollbirtan.2915]

1 hour ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

The patch was addressed to revenant mostly who could be immortal in pve. I'm pretty sure most of elem's modificatorS were already Multiplicative.

Source? Anet's note are very vague, so I assume the worst aka ele getting another undeserved nerf. 

[lodjur.1284]

1 hour ago, Zhaid Zhem.6508 said:

The patch was addressed to revenant mostly who could be immortal in pve. I'm pretty sure most of elem's modificatorS were already Multiplicative.

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. 

41 minutes ago, ollbirtan.2915 said:

Source? Anet's note are very vague, so I assume the worst aka ele getting another undeserved nerf. 

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. 

[Emberheart.8426]

29 minutes ago, lodjur.1284 said:

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. 

They won't be making any major balance changes before EoD, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be cleaning up all the inconsistencies like they have been doing in the latest patches. It's the best way to make a solid baseline for balancing. Sure, it kind of sucks now, but it's better to just get it out of the way instead of letting these problems fester and affecting future balancing while they should not.

[lodjur.1284]

23 minutes ago, Ganathar.4956 said:

They won't be making any major balance changes before EoD, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be cleaning up all the inconsistencies like they have been doing in the latest patches. It's the best way to make a solid baseline for balancing. Sure, it kind of sucks now, but it's better to just get it out of the way instead of letting these problems fester and affecting future balancing while they should not.

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

[Zentao.6314]

You guys have any defensive stats as ele?
Best strategy to survive is to dodge EVERYTHING otherwise dead.

[Jski.6180]

It sounds like another nerf to ele as ele gets its effect though more then one strong effect unlike a lot of other classes. I like to know if the +7% for protection is less now because of this i would also like to know how this will effect cata stacking dmg -% from auras (anet may of nerf an ele class before it came out with out thinking about it.)

Protection support as well as frost aura support (light and dark to a lesser amount as there not too many condi dmg -%) has become less importance after this update for sure.

"Fixed a bug causing duration-stacking boons to be affected by a hidden stack limit of 9, which in some cases could come into effect before stacking to that boon's expected duration cap. This resulted in some boons having a lower total duration than expected. This hidden stack limit has been removed for duration-stacking boons that also have a maximum duration—alacrity, fury, protection, quickness, resistance, resolution, swiftness, and vigor."

Regeneration is missing i do not think they forgot about it as well i think anet is actively nefring ele by "forgetting" about a major ele boon.

Anet HATE the ele class and the ele player base.

Edited October 6, 2021 by Jski.6180

[Aedil.1296]

I want to SCREEEEAAAAMMMMMM

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Bruh, one of my only roaming builds I had fun with was dual dagger core Earth/Water/Arcane Ele with some Valk and Zerker pieces. It's was pretty tanky yes, but not a big threat. I'm not even a main ele and it's sad to see this line nerfed as it's probably my favourite Ele line. Whatever, something I've noticed, for some reason when I scroll over the elements in said build I see a traited messsage indicating "67% dmg reduction". I don't know where that comes from as even with Prot on auras I never achieve that tankiness percentage. Must be some weird bug occuring after anet tried to add all multipliers together.

[Zhaid Zhem.6508]

Yep. I didn't realise it first, but in fractal it sucks a lot.