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Fractals creating their own class meta


Mell.4873

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Scourge(dps), FireBrand(healer), Renegade(Alac)

In no other game mode is this much strictness on specific roles. I have tried to call attention to the problem with each elite specialization but seems like the fractals themselves are coursing this problem.

Edited by Mell.4873
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You have players getting clean kills in fractal 100 with core ele with sceptar. 

The problem isnt "strictness" the problem isn't the game mode. The problem is player perception. People see this combo used by the top 1% and replicate it like it's in the Bible. 

Games so power crept all pve contents doable u saw a bunch of 74s actually complete raids even. There's nothing that is restricting us to those choices in fractals. It's just player perception pushing the narrative 

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There is no better cc and alac bot than renegade.

There is no better quickness and aegis provider than firebrand.

And you cant beat the damage and utilities of scourges (except condi firebrands). 

So yeah, the easiest clears are just stacking these three roles because they make fractals a literal joke. Fun fact: They are also the three most op specs in the game and are represented in raids A LOT also. Like Daddy.8125 said the powercreep in this game is just insane. And you have plenty of people who defend this BS. 

Edited by anbujackson.9564
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30 minutes ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

There is no better cc and alac bot than renegade.

There is no better quickness and aegis provider than firebrand.

And you cant beat the damage and utilities of scourges (except condi firebrands). 

So yeah, the easiest clears are just stacking these three roles because they make fractals a literal joke. Fun fact: They are also the three most op specs in the game and are represented in raids A LOT also. Like Daddy.8125 said the powercreep in this game is just insane. And you have plenty of people who defend this BS. 

Pretty much 😂😂 although I'd say most comps these days make fractals a complete joke providing your team's half decent. 

But with how the game currently is. Effectively there's no solution without some drastic changes.. buffing / nerfing things will only shift which 3 proffessions lead the area. 

This is the prime issue with a game built on 100% boon uptime.. the smaller the group size the more key builds overshadow everything. 

Boons need cutting down alot, these becoming 100% uptime things was a huuuge power creep coming out of core gw2. And these abilities that do 6 things with. 1 button need to dissapear also. 

This is one thing I do like about EoD speccs. None of them are power crept and none of them provide excessive boon uptime if they can just now pull PoF and HoT speccs to the same bracket maybe we will see some form of healthy move forward. 

 

Edited by Daddy.8125
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21 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Pretty much 😂😂 although I'd say most comps these days make fractals a complete joke providing your team's half decent. 

But with how the game currently is. Effectively there's no solution without some drastic changes.. buffing / nerfing things will only shift which 3 proffessions lead the area. 

This is the prime issue with a game built on 100% boon uptime.. the smaller the group size the more key builds overshadow everything. 

Boons need cutting down alot, these becoming 100% uptime things was a huuuge power creep coming out of core gw2. And these abilities that do 6 things with. 1 button need to dissapear also. 

This is one thing I do like about EoD speccs. None of them are power crept and none of them provide excessive boon uptime if they can just now pull PoF and HoT speccs to the same bracket maybe we will see some form of healthy move forward. 

 

It would help if 100% boon duration is mandatory for every boon you do in the first place, maybe even needing two people to provide the strongest ones permanently (quickness and alac).

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43 minutes ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

source? just curious

One of the players in the elementalist discord on snowcrows discord  provided a core sceptar build he used on fractal 100. 

I think it's also on YouTube. 

There's also Air only auto attack weaver build which grim may of shown. 

Edited by Daddy.8125
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1 hour ago, Daddy.8125 said:

One of the players in the elementalist discord on snowcrows discord  provided a core sceptar build he used on fractal 100. 

I think it's also on YouTube. 

after an hour of digging, ive found it being used on a few raid bosses, but unfortunately i cant find any specific mention of fractal 100, or any fractals at all (which im more interested in)

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4 minutes ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

after an hour of digging, ive found it being used on a few raid bosses, but unfortunately i cant find any specific mention of fractal 100, or any fractals at all (which im more interested in)

Hmm, there was defintly a conversation on this. I remember it was during a conversation with someone saying Weavers too hard .. 

Wen I get home from work I will see if I can refind it... 

 

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3 hours ago, anbujackson.9564 said:

It would help if 100% boon duration is mandatory for every boon you do in the first place, maybe even needing two people to provide the strongest ones permanently (quickness and alac).

People would run condi FB x2 + condi RR x2.

The proper way to address the imbalance is that builds not speccing for support don't get the full support aspects. i.e. Firebrands needing weighty terms to get 12s cooldown aegis therefore with DPS loss ; scourges' Desert Empowerment and Sand Cascade scale more with healing power and have less base barrier ; condi RR loses damage to make it in line with before torment changes. I think it's important to address firebrand first because no matter how you spec it you always have tomes available and there isn't a strong condi quickness contender that can replace it. Scourge support comes down to condi clear, some might, boon rip, and barrier ; renegade "support" comes down to alac, some might, boon rip (on condi variant) , CC , and cleave.

No one serious about performance is going to run a condi build that does 37K in melee without utility if you can bring a firebrand that does 40K+ (since fractal potions) since it gives you more of a fail-safe or a scourge that does 37K+ at range (for comparison a shortbow-only soulbeast does ~33K). Before torment changes people stacked firebrands. Now only PUGs really stack scourges , condi soulbeasts and condi deadeyes have more burst and therefore it's higher risk for that tradeoff ; if you're doing something other than Sunqua Peak those builds don't have the cleave either (condi soulbeast has dagger mainhand / shortbow ; deadeye uses pistol + dagger).

More importantly the disparity between power and condition builds vs exposed should really be taken into account otherwise firebrand has a stranglehold on any fractal group. You should be able to run quickness scrapper if you have fury/might sources from elsewhere ; StM chrono has a condition like ramp time so it is unlikely to be used. Condition quickness harbinger probably won't have the sustain to compete.
If you use discretize's gear optimizer it's ~35K DPS for power quickness scrapper , 45K vs exposed https://discretize.github.io/discretize-gear-optimizer/

  • Putting condi quickness firebrand in that calculator you get an output of 36.6K which is close enough , 62K vs exposed which is a far larger disparity of ~37%. The reason is fractal potions result in not needing much boon duration.
  • The raid-like quickbrand with 40% quickness duration from firebrand runes has 34.8K DPS , 58K vs exposed as well so it's mainly the exposed frame causing the disparity.

Condi alac ren Invocation has an output of 33.6K , 56.7K vs exposed. Power alac has 34K , 42.6K vs exposed so it isn't even just a class problem : a build that does the same function on the same class has a disparity of 33% when exposed is taken into account.

If you have trash mobs to reset Tome of Justice the disparity is far higher for firebrand than for any other class.

If you look at comp frequency firebrand is by far the most dominant, only on Sunqua does scourge come into the picture (since PUG strat is to epidemic sorrow instead of using Sanctuary/ Darkrazor now):
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/mama
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/siax
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/enso
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/skor
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/arts
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/arkk


There's actually a ranged condi weaver with scepter but obviously do you trust random players to play it on a decent enough level?

 

Edited by Infusion.7149
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2 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

People would run condi FB x2 + condi RR x2.

The proper way to address the imbalance is that builds not speccing for support don't get the full support aspects. i.e. Firebrands needing weighty terms to get 12s cooldown aegis therefore with DPS loss ; scourges' Desert Empowerment and Sand Cascade scale more with healing power and have less base barrier ; condi RR loses damage to make it in line with before torment changes. I think it's important to address firebrand first because no matter how you spec it you always have tomes available and there isn't a strong condi quickness contender that can replace it. Scourge support comes down to condi clear, some might, boon rip, and barrier ; renegade "support" comes down to alac, some might, boon rip (on condi variant) , CC , and cleave.

No one serious about performance is going to run a condi build that does 37K in melee without utility if you can bring a firebrand that does 40K+ (since fractal potions) since it gives you more of a fail-safe or a scourge that does 37K+ at range (for comparison a shortbow-only soulbeast does ~33K). Before torment changes people stacked firebrands. Now only PUGs really stack scourges , condi soulbeasts and condi deadeyes have more burst and therefore it's higher risk for that tradeoff ; if you're doing something other than Sunqua Peak those builds don't have the cleave either (condi soulbeast has dagger mainhand / shortbow ; deadeye uses pistol + dagger).

More importantly the disparity between power and condition builds vs exposed should really be taken into account otherwise firebrand has a stranglehold on any fractal group. You should be able to run quickness scrapper if you have fury/might sources from elsewhere ; StM chrono has a condition like ramp time so it is unlikely to be used. Condition quickness harbinger probably won't have the sustain to compete.
If you use discretize's gear optimizer it's ~35K DPS for power quickness scrapper , 45K vs exposed https://discretize.github.io/discretize-gear-optimizer/

  • Putting condi quickness firebrand in that calculator you get an output of 36.6K which is close enough , 62K vs exposed which is a far larger disparity of ~37%. The reason is fractal potions result in not needing much boon duration.
  • The raid-like quickbrand with 40% quickness duration from firebrand runes has 34.8K DPS , 58K vs exposed as well so it's mainly the exposed frame causing the disparity.

Condi alac ren Invocation has an output of 33.6K , 56.7K vs exposed. Power alac has 34K , 42.6K vs exposed so it isn't even just a class problem : a build that does the same function on the same class has a disparity of 33% when exposed is taken into account.

If you have trash mobs to reset Tome of Justice the disparity is far higher for firebrand than for any other class.

If you look at comp frequency firebrand is by far the most dominant, only on Sunqua does scourge come into the picture (since PUG strat is to epidemic sorrow instead of using Sanctuary/ Darkrazor now):
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/mama
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/siax
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/enso
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/skor
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/arts
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/comps/fractal/arkk


There's actually a ranged condi weaver with scepter but obviously do you trust random players to play it on a decent enough level?

 

Amazing post and I completely agree, the only thing I will add is scourge seems to be the most popular choice for dps even if Firebrand is better. 

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6 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Pretty much 😂😂 although I'd say most comps these days make fractals a complete joke providing your team's half decent. 

But with how the game currently is. Effectively there's no solution without some drastic changes.. buffing / nerfing things will only shift which 3 proffessions lead the area. 

This is the prime issue with a game built on 100% boon uptime.. the smaller the group size the more key builds overshadow everything. 

Boons need cutting down alot, these becoming 100% uptime things was a huuuge power creep coming out of core gw2. And these abilities that do 6 things with. 1 button need to dissapear also. 

This is one thing I do like about EoD speccs. None of them are power crept and none of them provide excessive boon uptime if they can just now pull PoF and HoT speccs to the same bracket maybe we will see some form of healthy move forward. 

 

I will say outside of fractals the meta is fine since boon uptime in the open world is pretty unrealistic unless you want to 3 man all pve content.

 

For example in the open world I play off-tank chrono with okay burst dps but It means I can solo champions with my phantasms.

My build really shines with random pugs since I can pull agro with phantasmal defender, which I can spawn 4 times in a row. 

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The problem is the developers seem to have no idea how builds work in this game. They were unprepared for the massive, exponential and ever-escalating powercreep and just wanted to make cool class concepts without them being exploited by players in ways that quickly grow out of control and trivialise all content.

 

How do I know this ? Because it happened back in the days of dungeons too, with players spending massive amounts of time finding every way to break them with class mechanics, items, and bugs. One of the developers went on record at one point saying the invisibility kits still gave them nightmares because they spent so much time trying to mitigate the player skill, class cheese sand items in dungeons and were ultimately unsuccessful, and just gave up. Every time they balanced it players would just find a way to break that balance again.

 

Game developers rarely play their games at the highest levels due to alot of factors, including time and energy. As a result, the game is balanced largely around what's cool (and sometimes player feedback).

 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool is basically why Firebrand even exists., and despite the fact that it dominates all game modes (WvW, PvP, and every area of PvE), still hasn't received any significant reworks , and as more Elite Specialisations are added over time this problem will only repeat itself.

 

For the record, I actually think that FB is the ideal class concept, an opposite of all the sterilisation the game's gone through over the years, and I am not in favor of even more sterilisation. I believe that the best way to bring balance to all game modes is to make it so each player and class has so many options that they can literally fulfill every role if they chose to build their character accordingly.

 

Of course you'll always have some that can do certain things more efficiently than others, but that difference in efficiency should be like 10%-100% at most, not up to 1000% as it is currently.

Edited by Hannelore.8153
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7 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

I will say outside of fractals the meta is fine since boon uptime in the open world is pretty unrealistic unless you want to 3 man all pve content.

 

For example in the open world I play off-tank chrono with okay burst dps but It means I can solo champions with my phantasms.

My build really shines with random pugs since I can pull agro with phantasmal defender, which I can spawn 4 times in a row. 

The problem is the reason it's fine is because you basically don't use boons, your self boon application alone is likely where boons overall shoulda been. When you need them not for your entire rotation. 

The problem occurs when you stack these huge boon appliers together and each individual players doing 15k+ more DPS permanantly which sky rockets the DPS above what it's susposed to be in both raids and fractals 

Boons need to become meaningful. 

So when you see alacrity pop on Ur bars your imitating your first. Defensive CDs are used in groups in reaction to phases or mechanics etc etc. 

Boons don't need to be 100% and it'd vastly improve the condition of PvE if they weren't. 

Edited by Daddy.8125
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8 minutes ago, Hannelore.8153 said:

The problem is the developers seem to have no idea how builds work in this game. They were unprepared for the massive, exponential and ever-escalating powercreep and just wanted to make cool class concepts without them being exploited by players in ways that quickly grow out of control and trivialise all content.

 

How do I know this ? Because it happened back in the days of dungeons too, with players spending massive amounts of time finding every way to break them with class mechanics, items, and bugs. One of the developers went on record at one point saying the invisibility kits still gave them nightmares because they spent so much time trying to mitigate the player skill, class cheese sand items in dungeons and were ultimately unsuccessful, and just gave up. Every time they balanced it players would just find a way to break that balance again.

 

Game developers rarely play their games at the highest levels due to alot of factors, including time and energy. As a result, the game is balanced largely around what's cool (and sometimes player feedback).

 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool is basically why Firebrand even exists., and despite the fact that it dominates all game modes (WvW, PvP, and every area of PvE), still hasn't received any significant reworks , and as more Elite Specialisations are added over time this problem will only repeat itself.

I feel like its not as bad as you make it out, its really just fractals even in raids other classes are viable since they provide other boons or help in some way.

besides necro, pvp has the most diverse class picks

Edited by Mell.4873
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8 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

I feel like its not as bad as you think, its really just fractals even in raids other classes are viable since they provide other boons or help in some way.

For some reason I thought this was a response to me lol ignore . 

 

Edited by Daddy.8125
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6 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

The problem is the reason it's fine is because you basically don't use boons, your self boon application alone is likely where boons overall shoulda been. When you need them not for your entire rotation. 

The problem occurs when you stack these huge boon appliers together and each individual players doing 15k+ more DPS permanantly which sky rockets the DPS above what it's susposed to be in both raids and fractals 

Yes i completely agree

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7 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

We aren't talking problematic meta wise. I'm saying power creep wise it's horrific. 

33% less DMG for a entire fight? And we wonder why encounters are faceroll?. 😛

BOons from both a offensive and defensive stance power crept this game into oblivion. The fact most groups don't bother even knowing the mechanics because you can just brute force it now speaks volumes on the problems currently. 

THere's a reason no other game does PvE buffs like gw2 does... 

the fact boons are 100% means your character in every way is balanced around their existence. Which means Ur characters pushed 5 steps back for those boons to carry you those 5 steps forward. You are exactly where u started.. 

this is where boons stop being exciting you stop caring about them because your character chugs em like a caffeine addiction... Just to make themselves feel normal. 

 

 

Yes this is a huge problem but i think the way to solve it is providing more classes with unique boons or things to offer a group. Like druid should get backs its 10% damage buff and might. 

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5 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

Yes this is a huge problem but i think the way to solve it is providing more classes with unique boons or things to offer a group. Like druid should get backs its 10% damage buff and might. 

I do like the unique boon concept, that was how alacrity started effectively. 

We can hope this gets sorted in EoD. But I think that might be a stretch haha. 

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Please stop perpetuating the idea that devs don't play their game , that's rather untrue. I see darkbringer on almost daily in Mistlock , with 100CM abyssal infusions by the way. I see a variety of other devs in EotN and other places. There's devs that don't play with Arenanet tags because they just want to be left alone. Most devs are not part of the balance team. I even see devs that are no longer part of Arenanet continue to play this game.

Did you know the Grouch (josh Davis)  was top 2% in PvP and CMC was a top player as well? If you were on during Extra Life you would know that the devs (not all of them) have CM raid titles. Do you have all of them?

It takes a massive amount of effort to continually balance the game which is why GW1 was a nightmare for them. All of their development efforts are being put toward EoD right now and given the state of the majority of the new specs I would say that is a better decision.

For now, expect exposed to be tweaked since the disparity is rather huge in fractals.

On small hitboxes there is only ~3K extra DPS at maximum over the years for major builds as top DPS was ~37K and quite a few were at 32-33K:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180220115919/https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks/



As a timeline reference, POF expansion launched Sept 22, 2017.

If you take away 8 page CFB , Unscathed Contender Virtues guardians, condi axe mirage , chronos stacked for Danger Time (slow required), condi weaver played perfectly, and condi renegade post torment change there aren't many benchmarks over 39K. I don't count rifle deadeye since nobody really runs that outside of Qadim the Peerless pylon duty ; condi daredevil requires allies and can port into mechanics. Realistically most groups would be unable to run a chrono stack so you shouldn't count that either.

Whenever I see threads just complaining without solutions or an analysis of why things are the way they are I just cringe. You need to think about what implications the suggestions you make have. If you buff another class to the sky or nerf something until it is borderline unusable (what's up with 20K full cDPS scourge suggestions , how often did you see them when they were 28K bench) you end up with a scenario akin to firebrand+renegade replacing chrono+druid for the most part : you'd have meta musical chairs. Instead, running a non-meta option should not have a 30-40% disparity just due to exposed. That's akin to full DPS builds only doing 30K DPS while top specs are 40K.

Pretty much everyone in the fractal community , whether casual or even the most hardcore of the hardcore has been affected by the exposed changes.

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1 hour ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Please stop perpetuating the idea that devs don't play their game , that's rather untrue. I see darkbringer on almost daily in Mistlock , with 100CM abyssal infusions by the way. I see a variety of other devs in EotN and other places. There's devs that don't play with Arenanet tags because they just want to be left alone. Most devs are not part of the balance team. I even see devs that are no longer part of Arenanet continue to play this game.

Did you know the Grouch (josh Davis)  was top 2% in PvP and CMC was a top player as well? If you were on during Extra Life you would know that the devs (not all of them) have CM raid titles. Do you have all of them?

It takes a massive amount of effort to continually balance the game which is why GW1 was a nightmare for them. All of their development efforts are being put toward EoD right now and given the state of the majority of the new specs I would say that is a better decision.

For now, expect exposed to be tweaked since the disparity is rather huge in fractals.

On small hitboxes there is only ~3K extra DPS at maximum over the years for major builds as top DPS was ~37K and quite a few were at 32-33K:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180220115919/https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks/



As a timeline reference, POF expansion launched Sept 22, 2017.

If you take away 8 page CFB , Unscathed Contender Virtues guardians, condi axe mirage , chronos stacked for Danger Time (slow required), condi weaver played perfectly, and condi renegade post torment change there aren't many benchmarks over 39K. I don't count rifle deadeye since nobody really runs that outside of Qadim the Peerless pylon duty ; condi daredevil requires allies and can port into mechanics. Realistically most groups would be unable to run a chrono stack so you shouldn't count that either.

Whenever I see threads just complaining without solutions or an analysis of why things are the way they are I just cringe. You need to think about what implications the suggestions you make have. If you buff another class to the sky or nerf something until it is borderline unusable (what's up with 20K full cDPS scourge suggestions , how often did you see them when they were 28K bench) you end up with a scenario akin to firebrand+renegade replacing chrono+druid for the most part : you'd have meta musical chairs. Instead, running a non-meta option should not have a 30-40% disparity just due to exposed. That's akin to full DPS builds only doing 30K DPS while top specs are 40K.

Pretty much everyone in the fractal community , whether casual or even the most hardcore of the hardcore has been affected by the exposed changes.

Nice post again you are doing more work than me who just complains about scourge. I think we just need to give every elite specialisation something unique. 

I mean many elite specs are limited when it comes to providing the party something meaningful, I love that you run one of everything in a raid since you can capitalise on each classes unique utilities like spirits and banners.

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1 hour ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Please stop perpetuating the idea that devs don't play their game , that's rather untrue. I see darkbringer on almost daily in Mistlock , with 100CM abyssal infusions by the way. I see a variety of other devs in EotN and other places. There's devs that don't play with Arenanet tags because they just want to be left alone. Most devs are not part of the balance team. I even see devs that are no longer part of Arenanet continue to play this game

Tbh seems like a common thing to throw at Devs I see it in all games accusing them of not playing their own game when they very obviously do. 

They did talk saying they split their team so they could work on core too but likely right I can't see any Balancing coming out yet. Because all it potientally will cause is them having to rebalance them when adding the new elite.. 

I'd imagine we will be far closer to EoD before they started their balancing rounds. ATM I think focusing on EoD is their best choice tho realistically. 

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13 minutes ago, Daddy.8125 said:

Tbh seems like a common thing to throw at Devs

Which to an extent is their own fault, they tend to make highly controversial changes without neither explaining their initial reasoning nor responding to following criticism at all leaving many players with the impression that the changes in question were either made on a whim or because "they didn't know what they were doing" which ofc. fuels that narrative.

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Firebrand and Renegade have been meta for a long time for obvious reasons but scourge is fairly new to fractals. I know personally scourge is nice in my groups because they do good dps while being incredibly durable (and giving barrier to the group.)

Having scourge(s) in pugs almost guarantees smooth runs with how durable they make the group. Its almost hard to wipe using them. Just makes pugs a safe bet.

 

edit: there are faster comps for sure, but the FB, Ren, 3x Scourge comp is fast enough with little risk of wipes.

People want smooth runs to maximize their time so the meta tends to evolve around that. 

Edited by LuRkEr.9462
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