Celestial/Minstrel Manifesto [Merged]

[Za Shaloc.3908]

Alternatively, I would be happy if they simply introduced a bunch more 3- and 4-stat sets to the game to allow for further optimization and customization for builds. After they buffed Cele, I honestly don't think anything is off the table. There are certain 3-stat sets now that are completely eclipsed by Cele now and it's a shame. When theorycrafting, it feels like you should take it for almost any build if you aren't running Mara, Zerk, Minstrel, or Trailblazer. There's not much fun in that when you can get so much value in Cele rather than picking and choosing old 3-stat sets to make the perfect build. Feels like the illusion of choice to a certain extent.

[Telgum.6071]

3 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Yes because you're playing the mechanic of overwhelming power to kill the enemy before they kill you?

People always seem offended when I bring marauders, but if you want to know the simple reason:

Delete all 3+ stat gear. The other gear only watered down the gameplay. Go back to letting us build our own stats by combining gear, with the drawback of pushing some stats will loose other stats.

I see no point in halfarsing suggestions by exclusively targeting either minstrels or celestial or trailblazer etc like so many do.

Yeah bruh, totally the same having to OVERWHELM by active gameplay and having to stack conditions while playing full defensive. Laughs on condi thief spamming 3 + stealth.

Because unlike Marauder, those three stats you just mentioned are OP, Celestial was already strong before the last buff.

In the case of Trailblazer you are literally bringing the top defensive stats with the only stats needed to bring condition damage. Marauder brings the same vitality and has no toughness because 99% power builds without the triple power stat is a meme.

What a joke of comparation to be honest.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

🗿

Buff Warrior

[Flacki.3075]

49 minutes ago, Telgum.6071 said:

Yeah bruh, totally the same having to OVERWHELM by active gameplay and having to stack conditions while playing full defensive. Laughs on condi thief spamming 3 + stealth.

Because unlike Marauder, those three stats you just mentioned are OP, Celestial was already strong before the last buff.

In the case of Trailblazer you are literally bringing the top defensive stats with the only stats needed to bring condition damage. Marauder brings the same vitality and has no toughness because 99% power builds without the triple power stat is a meme.

What a joke of comparation to be honest.

 

Is it the defensive stats that are the problem in WvW?

Or is the actual problem still the conditions and the mediocre options of handling them?

 

Conditions reigned supreme for a long time and had to be adressed a couple times.

They're still strong. As in ANY game where you have "x over time" effects, conditions are easier to utilize than direct physical hit damage for obvious reasons, especially in WvW.

 

If we'd buff physical damage again, we'd end up, once more, in a spot where burst one-shot builds will be over represented and then not only making the need for heavily denfence emphasizing gear even stronger, but bringing back the complaints of this not being an engaging gameplay scenario because of it's binary outcome.

 

It's not the gear per sé that is so problematic, but the conditions and how they can('t) reliably be countered (by everyone).

And no, celestial was so underwhelming before the last buff, that nobody even remotely put into consideration this stat selection existed at all. Because other stats have been, and will be again, better overall.

Edited October 16, 2021 by Flacki.3075

[Telgum.6071]

13 minutes ago, Flacki.3075 said:

Is it the defensive stats that are the problem in WvW?

Or is the actual problem still the conditions and the mediocre options of handling them?

Both points are the same: Trailblazer and Celestial stats are OP in the current situation. Remove/nerf them or add more tools to deal with conditions to fix it.

 

13 minutes ago, Flacki.3075 said:

And no, celestial was so underwhelming before the last buff, that nobody even remotely put into consideration this stat selection existed at all. Because other stats have been, and will be again, better overall

Kinda different from what I used to see a year ago before the last buff, half of the roaming elementalist had hybrid damage, not to mention the celestial revenants with their legend/weapon swap double sigil proc. Not saying Cele is or was better or worse than any other stat selection, but underwhelming? I don't think so, at least not on every class.

Edited October 16, 2021 by Telgum.6071

[Tiawal.2351]

Not just these two stats, but most stats brought with HoT (Dire and so on) and afterwards, allow imbalanced builds in WvW. These can't be fixed by changing skill stats or how skills & traits work.

WvW really needs a review and rework of stats. This could be simply by adjusting it's values, so they give mostly less stats when that given stat is used in WvW (compared to PvE). Also could be introduced a hard cap on how much maximum stat can be gained from gear (allowing going beyond with stats from traits & buffs, but considering that when balancing all).

 

Or they simply can be removed, but this will be the least popular solution. Variety is good, makes the game more fun and allows to custom fit a build to your playstyle or role -- but has to be limit in how tanky a damage dealer can get, without sacrificing damage output. 

[Flacki.3075]

30 minutes ago, Telgum.6071 said:

Both points are the same: Trailblazer and Celestial stats are OP in the current situation. Remove/nerf them or add more tools to deal with conditions to fix it.

 

Kinda different from what I used to see a year ago before the last buff, half of the roaming elementalist had hybrid damage, not to mention the celestial revenants with their legend/weapon swap double sigil proc. Not saying Cele is or was better or worse than any other stat selection, but underwhelming? I don't think so, at least not on every class.

You are confltaing things here.

The problem with conditions and how people can adequately handle them is a systemic issue, that has nothing to do with conditions and how those, in every game on the market btw, function.

 

Also, you precisly pointed out, how certain classes in combination with the gear are OP, and then try to equate the symptom with the problem.

Revenant is and was strong, if not broken before, just like FB and Scourge are overwhelmingly above the other classes.

But that does not come from the gear. As i stated before, the gear only exaggerates what already was an issue.

 

And no, Ele with celestial gear was a short situation. Look where Ele is now, even "with" celestial gear. Because they adressed Ele and ruined it. Like they nerfed Warrior because it's to binary when able to one-shot people. The real problem, to be honest, was that Ele had access to stacking Burning easily and that this condition was overtuned.

 

For PvE even, every benchmark will showcase, that a dedicated set of gear will be better and above any set up using celestial on the same class/build for various threshholds like either dps, healing, boon uptime etc.

[Flacki.3075]

4 minutes ago, Tiawal.2351 said:

Not just these two stats, but most stats brought with HoT (Dire and so on) and afterwards, allow imbalanced builds in WvW. These can't be fixed by changing skill stats or how skills & traits work.

WvW really needs a review and rework of stats. This could be simply by adjusting it's values, so they give mostly less stats when that given stat is used in WvW (compared to PvE). Also could be introduced a hard cap on how much maximum stat can be gained from gear (allowing going beyond with stats from traits & buffs, but considering that when balancing all).

 

Or they simply can be removed, but this will be the least popular solution. Variety is good, makes the game more fun and allows to custom fit a build to your playstyle or role -- but has to be limit in how tanky a damage dealer can get, without sacrificing damage output. 

 I agree with yournotion of the powercreep since HoT and also with the need of actually adressing WvW as a whole, and imho separating it from PvE and PvP alltogether to actually start having a reasonable foudnation for balancing it.

Currently the hassle is that PvE always get's affected for the sake of WvW cnahges, which in my opinion is not a good thing to do, as both gamemodes to really emphasize different apsects to heavily (raw dps over sustain and defences).

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 hours ago, Mil.3562 said:

So i guess OP wants a nerf to Celestial and to remove Minstrel gears because he couldn't instant down or two-hit down players with those stats? Talk about wanting to be over powered. And @Lan Deathrider.5910, please do not lie and try to mislead people by saying that the Feb 2020 big nerfs only affect damage nerfs. Support, heals, boons durations, boons ICDs were all heavily nerfed too. Be honest about it, after all it's only a game.

Go reread before spreading lies yourself mate.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

This just keeps going around and around.

 

The main argument before was that Celestial wasn't useful given the time and cost to obtain; it was the most unused set in the game even below Shaman's (which was used on some Guard & Ele burn builds). So after many years the devs finally buff it, and now people keep whining that its OP.

 

On top of this, there's zero evidence people actually run Celestial outside of a few specific builds, and even then its mostly running the trinkets (especially on Ele, Guard and Thief, since its gives you 15k). not the full gear.

 

The main difference now is it works into Boon Duration and Condition Duration builds instead of working against them, as before you couldn't even combine it into sets using gears like Minstrel's or Plaguedoctor's, which contributed to its lack of use in general, as rounding out stats always always its main purpose.

 

And people whine about Minstrel's being OP when a player in it literally can't hurt anyone significantly.

 

Be honest, what these posts always mean to say is "we don't want tanks or healerrs in this game, just DPS", or "we don't want tanks and healers that can also deal damage". But this is never done in Celestial or Minstrel's anyway, and its a flaw of the game's action-based everyone-for-themselves class design.

 

The fact that someone in full Berserker's can still have good sustain from their class and build was always a problem too, but no one ever complains about that anymore because its just been accepted as the default state of the game. Why can you even have personal sustain while full glass, and with no real investment?

 

All it ever comes down to is, enemies can play the game sometimes. and no one likes this.

 

The last thing we need is more nerfs. Over the last few years the game is slowly being reduced to a stick-bonking contest, especially in PvP which has the most limited build selection to ever appear in the game since launch. And players just keep asking for more, more and more of this.

 

Sure, oneshots and excessive damage and healing were bad for the game. But they already dealt with that, and now its just getting a bit rediculous how far players want it to go.

Edited October 16, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[Shroud.2307]

I didn't read everything, but at least on the subject of Cele, I think the stat itself is objectively too much. It isn't about whether or not a class/es does well with it.

Reducing the numbers a bit would help to make it less bloated, and maybe the same could be done with Minstrel. But I don't think the complete removal of any stats is a good idea despite it having the fewest consequences. WvW isn't competitive enough for it to be necessary, and removing a stat that's generally unimpactful and another that's a hard meta for zerging wouldn't change that. 

Edited October 16, 2021 by Shroud.2307

[Zyreva.1078]

2 hours ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

The main argument before was that Celestial wasn't useful given the time and cost to obtain;

Time and cost do not justify making it op. If that's the issue with cele, anet could just make it easier to obtain, instead of messing up balance. Unlike many other stat combination it was already viable in certain builds before the buffs. Certainly better than stuff like shaman's and many others that are only used because they are a) very cheap to get due to lack of demand or b) because players don't know any better. And all those already underwhelming stats just became even more obsolete with the cele buffs.

Quote

 

On top of this, there's zero evidence people actually run Celestial outside of a few specific builds, and even then its mostly running the trinkets (especially on Ele, Guard and Thief, since its gives you 15k). not the full gear.

I run cele, most (all?) in my guild run cele, many others do. Those that don't, either run some of the few specialised builds that are still worth running within certain comps, deliberately don't run cele, because they don't like it and don't mind handicapping themself, or just run bad builds because they don't know any better. With the latter probably being the largest grp.

Quote

The fact that someone in full Berserker's can still have good sustain from their class and build was always a problem too, but no one ever complains about that anymore because its just been accepted as the default state of the game. Why can you even have personal sustain while full glass, and with no real investment?

Being able to have decent sustain with zerker stats is not a problem if you have to trade offense in return. And that is the case for the vast majority of builds (few outliers can and should be adressed individually). A zerker build with defensive traits and skills does not deal that much dmg. For big burst you need to run fairly glassy builds. That's how it should be. There is and never has been anything innately op about zerker stats. They are good simply because burst is good.

Cele on the other hand is just plain broken, because it offers an amount of stats - which get amplified by boons - that nothing else can match it. You can reach zerker (or at least mara) levels of power dmg, big condi pressure and insane survivability all in one build without any real trade-off. Cele outsustains and outpressures everything else and not having the same amounts of burst as zerker glass cannons becomes pretty irrelevant when you are tanky enough to not have to worry about oneshots and more than enough dmg to kill zerker builds in return.

I have always been against deleting stats, and was often defending stuff like tb or dire or even minstrel, that are commonly complained about, but there is just no way to justify cele in it's current state.

Edited October 16, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[God.2708]

So what I'm really getting from this topic, is that Might should have its strength reduced. Because the real issue here is the 750 (or even 1k extra with certain traits) extra power/condi makes celestials offensive strength on par with actual damage builds that either can't hit 25 might because of class capabilities or because the lack of boon duration makes it harder to achieve.

I think this is a solution absolutely everyone can get behind except arenanet, given what I typically see people complain about on these forums.

Edited October 16, 2021 by God.2708

[MedievalThings.5417]

22 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Cele is a blank slate. It is what you make it out to be.

I can build a Cele warrior with over 4k power with periods of 100% crit rate and well over 200% crit damage for instance. Is it all super powerful? No.

The additional stats help make a few builds work better, but honestly in the scheme of things this is not something to worry about.

Minstrel blobs are more of a problem because of the Feb2020 damage nerfs and not the stats specifically.

Celestial only works for a few classes atm.  When the new ele spec is released, it will be 100 shades of broken.

[Zyreva.1078]

Cele works on most classes. Thief might be the only one where pure power is still better, at least for small scale. Zerk and minstrel still have their place at larger scale i guess, but even there i'm not sure if cele wouldn't be better. Most players just stick with what they are used to and there is very little experimenting and theorycrafting going on due to the very casual nature of the game mode.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

44 minutes ago, Ubi.4136 said:

Celestial only works for a few classes atm.  When the new ele spec is released, it will be 100 shades of broken.

See my other comments. You are right  though that the new Ele spec is going to be Cele  on crack and will be broken.

[God.2708]

11 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

See my other comments. You are right  though that the new Ele spec is going to be Cele  on crack and will be broken.

I too am excited for a third all stats rune as Anet tries to hamfistedly thrust elementalist into cele stats whilst nerfing them repeatedly for actually successfully doing so

[Stand The Wall.6987]

20 hours ago, Deniara Devious.3948 said:

Warriors are probably the least commonly played roamers.

 

😭

[Dagger.2035]

4 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

I run cele, most (all?) in my guild run cele, many others do. Those that don't, either run some of the few specialised builds that are still worth running within certain comps, deliberately don't run cele, because they don't like it and don't mind handicapping themself, or just run bad builds because they don't know any better. With the latter probably being the largest grp.

It sounds like your guild has developed their own meta and opinions about Celestial stats, but just because you share those opinions doesn't make them true.  I certainly don't feel handicapped by not running Celestial stats.

[Dawdler.8521]

9 hours ago, Telgum.6071 said:

Yeah bruh, totally the same having to OVERWHELM by active gameplay and having to stack conditions while playing full defensive. Laughs on condi thief spamming 3 + stealth.

Because unlike Marauder, those three stats you just mentioned are OP, Celestial was already strong before the last buff.

In the case of Trailblazer you are literally bringing the top defensive stats with the only stats needed to bring condition damage. Marauder brings the same vitality and has no toughness because 99% power builds without the triple power stat is a meme.

What a joke of comparation to be honest.

Yet next to this thread, we got the grenade barrage one going. 

Do you think they're running trailblazer?

[Telgum.6071]

11 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Yet next to this thread, we got the grenade barrage one going. 

Do you think they're running trailblazer?

What has that to do with what I'm saying here...

[ASP.8093]

On 10/16/2021 at 5:06 AM, Za Shaloc.3908 said:

Alternatively, I would be happy if they simply introduced a bunch more 3- and 4-stat sets to the game to allow for further optimization and customization for builds. After they buffed Cele, I honestly don't think anything is off the table. There are certain 3-stat sets now that are completely eclipsed by Cele now and it's a shame. When theorycrafting, it feels like you should take it for almost any build if you aren't running Mara, Zerk, Minstrel, or Trailblazer. There's not much fun in that when you can get so much value in Cele rather than picking and choosing old 3-stat sets to make the perfect build. Feels like the illusion of choice to a certain extent.

Demolisher (Marauder but with Toughness instead of Vitality) would be pretty interesting, especially in its implications for Warrior, Reaper, and Power Mesmer builds. (Classes with higher hp pools have an easier time running Demolisher than the 11k base classes.) Might make Scrapper or Boonbeast a bit too strong in roaming, though.

[subversiontwo.7501]

The biggest flaw of this thread is that Vallun (similar to other players who have brought up these topics before) is not anticipating the way players would adapt to it and have adapted to it in the past.

Larger scale

In the overarching balance of crowd control to free movement, crowd control is just too powerful. There seem to be no end to people who pin their hopes to that opposing players will just stand there and do nothing so they get to freecast or that further lopsiding this balance will cause players to shake up the meta, shave down the scale or break up intricacies of larger-scale compositions that they do not understand and attribute with simplicity.

The reality is that players will adapt and the more you nerf free movement and overall support, the more of them will conversely be stacked. The opposite of their assumptions will be achieved and it will come at the further expense of classes and roles already marginalized. Nerf Firebrand and people will require more of them. Nerf boontime enough to cause gaps and people will bring more Firebrands (Scrappers and Revs), not just stand there and die.

Personally, I'm not that fussed about Minstrel. I just want to make sure people understand what they are asking for (or that they may not get what they think they are asking for).

Smaller scale

As far as Celestial goes, I think Lan already gave a good counterpoint to it early on in this thread and I think Vallun is considering it already in the OP so it becomes more of a floater. Celestial is mostly popular on classes that have major stat holes, with some notable exception (I mean, Renegade may be good on Cele but its also really good on Zerk or Mara, on TB or Dire, on Viper, Sinister or Grieving; it's good on everything so that isn't really a stat-issue).

Not only would conforming stat totals on gear need to assume even further dimensions (like how condi still is a stat-inflation too without its need for precision and ferocity), or how changes to stats would necessitate better balance to mechanics and traits (what Vallun omits is that it would ideally have to take place before changing the stats; you can't really do stats first and hope to do something about mechanics and traits down the road) but it would also necessitate looking over stat totals inherent to classes as there are major differences in how stats impact classes.

For example, the HP difference between an Ele and a Necro in Mara stats is 7000. That is 700 stats. The difference is absolutely massive. You can see similar issues with things like Warrior and Revenant on which it is really easy to create different builds with different types of gear to your liking as they have such an overabundance of stats. We're talking about stats differences in the thousands that have to be conformed too, if we are to conform the item stats.

It isn't very surprising that Eles and Guards seem to most keen to use Cele.

Summary / all scales:

So, again, can you change Cele? Sure. Though you'd likely have to do all these changes to base stats, scaling, traits and mechanics first. Is it worth it? I don't know. I wouldn't mind having the stat-selection from my Rev or Warrior on my Guard. I guess it would be more fun and better in the long run. However, it is quite the undertaking and short-term lapses over some perceived slants (like certain classes being mandatory in every party, which is just outright wrong) is not really acceptable. That last bit is interesting on its own because organisation ambition in WvW being at an all time low (eg., in comparing the late vanilla meta to current norms) isn't the balance designers' fault, but it is still Anet's fault for not caring enough about the mode to make the players care.

Edited October 17, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[LordHT.8297]

IMO, minstrel became a problem in WvW after the absurd power damage nerfs. The devs intentionally wanted to make the combat slower and they got it and they also broke out the outnumbers fights in the process because you just don't have enough damage to overcome a numerical disadvantage even if it's not very big. Several friends stopped playing the game after the big nerfs and more nerfs will only make the situation worse. (and let's be honest, we don't need big reasons to quit the game at this point with so much good games out there)
We have in the game blobs that are basically unkillable (especially after the dragon banner nerfs btw) and we all know how frustrating it is, and the solution is not to nerf the boons or remove stats, it's to buff the damage again and bring the good old gw2 hardcore combat back into wvw. Arenanet used to be good at balancing the game through indirect nerfs (like when you buff  corruption to nerf the boons indirectly) and reworks that brings new flavors to the meta (like gyros rework, warrior warhorn etc) but for some reason they adopted this direct nerf policy to please a minority who make noise in the forums and I can ensure this is not good for the game because nerfs makes people quit, buffs does not. And if you really think the damage is going too high, buff everyone's health.

And remember, no one who is satisfied comes to the forums to say how he likes how the things are going, so if there are 1000 people complaining at a certain point on the forum, remember that there is a much larger number of players who don't give a kitten about the matter or are simply satisfied with how things are and not will come to forums.

 

Edited October 17, 2021 by Tiagoht.7549

[ollbirtan.2915]

I really liked your videos since they are all about build variety and not always sticking to 'meta'. But this post feels like a back stab...You request to simply REMOVE one stat combination and nerf the other one - do you want the last bit of "fun" taken away from competitive mode that still allows variety? Or do you prefer WvW to become castrated like sPvP today?