A 10% damage trait won't make up 9k DPS deficit for Vindicator.

[Zenith.7301]

Competitive power specs are doing 38-39k DPS, excluding the EOD specs which are doing 40k+, and Bladesworn is doing nearly 50k.

 

Staying with PoF spec standards, Vindicator was missing about 9k DPS to be a competitive power DPS spec. A 10% damage buff to 28-30k leaves it at 33-34k, in the trash tier alongside power Reaper in PvE. It's neck and neck or slightly less than power renegade on a large hitbox, in other words, terrible.

 

Please let us know if your design of classes and balancing is going to permanently revolve around PvP gimmicks so we can skip wasting time giving feedback to make the class workable in a format you clearly place little value in (organized PvE).

[Telgum.6071]

It's cool for WvW/PvP though.

[Chaos.7614]

It's at least playable now. These changes are a step in the right direction, and they still have about 3 months until launch to polish up after this beta and adjust numbers.

[Zenith.7301]

29 minutes ago, Chaos.7614 said:

It's at least playable now. These changes are a step in the right direction, and they still have about 3 months until launch to polish up after this beta and adjust numbers.

 

The problem is you assume they're aware of the issue when the main premise of my thread is that they seem to be completely oblivious of how PvE performance works or what the current standards are.

 

I mean, they literally introduced a bunch of nerfs to virtuoso in the same patch where they gave them a 5% strike damage buff with not 100% uptime, kind of defeating the purpose of tweaking throughput.

 

They are not doing mechanical changes on most of the specs that is relevant to organized PvE. Untamed will still need to repeatedly mash the pet 4 sec cd skill that was previously on autocast. Pets will still not scale with consumables, ascended stat upgrades, runes, sigils, etc. Pets still do not hit moving targets. Pets do not cleave the same number of targets player weapons do (ranger power weapons carry a massive coefficient tax under the excuse of having a pet, which is why soulbeast needed to give them a metric ton of stats to make ranger power builds viable, stats which the untamed is now losing).

 

They took a sledgehammer to Soulbeast saying their burst was stifling the PvE burst meta, and then went and designed the monstrosity that is Bladesworn that is 200-400k damage skills that will be way more busted on exposed breakbars....

 

And Guardian, the most dominant class in the game across game formats, that was already the supreme healer in PvE, the supreme quickness provider, the monopoly of stability, aegis, and group resolution, and they went and gave another one of their specs alacrity sharing so Guardian can now virtually fill every single role in the game, all current ones they completely dominate on.

Edited November 24, 2021 by Zenith.7301

[BobbyT.7192]

Worth noting that bladesworn's Dragon Slash force is getting a damage reduction, seems like almost 60%. In exchange for faster flow rate and lower flow cost. So previous damage numbers might not be that high anymore. 

[Zenith.7301]

52 minutes ago, BobbyT.7192 said:

Worth noting that bladesworn's Dragon Slash force is getting a damage reduction, seems like almost 60%. In exchange for faster flow rate and lower flow cost. So previous damage numbers might not be that high anymore. 

 

A 60% reduction for a 400k skill is still in the vicinity of 160k damage, which would still make them uber busted in breakbar encounters in far greater magnitude than soulbeast or dragonhunter or power chrono in its apex has ever been.

 

The design of Bladesworn will make that spec virtually strangle out all other power specs in any content with phased bosses, which is most power bosses.

 

It's terrible design no matter how you spin it. It will force the complete removal of breakbar damage bonus to address, which might not be a bad thing, but knowing Anet they will not do until many months if not years of total Bladesworn dominance in fractal CM and raid power boss representation.

 

And even without the breakbar damage bonus most dungeon/fractal bosses have such low HP to phase that Bladesworn will suck the life of any competitive power specs.

If people think stacking scourges for epidemic is a bad thing for fractals, just wait till Bladesworn starts being abused.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Zenith.7301

[Jthug.9506]

It looks to me like another 10% is coming in from the FoD change in PvE, so that's a total of 20% increase, plus several other damage buffs across the weapon and legend.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Jthug.9506

[Buran.3796]

3 hours ago, Telgum.6071 said:

It's cool for WvW/PvP though.

   Good luck in WvW/PvP with the single dodge of the Mirage but with x2 the cost of endurance (and nothing in exchange).

[Infusion.7149]

3 minutes ago, Buran.3796 said:

   Good luck in WvW/PvP with the single dodge of the Mirage but with x2 the cost of endurance (and nothing in exchange).

They're removing the added endurance cost. Forerunner of Death: This trait no longer increases maximum Endurance. Damage dealt has been increased by 66% in PvE only.

In PVE if the energy cost of Nomad's Advance is low enough it could compete with Icerazor which is 6.0 power coefficient. As it is now, it costs 20 energy so 3 recharge means you are still limited by energy ,3.5 power coefficient instead of 2.5 is a start. 

I wouldn't run it in PVP/WVW regardless. Damage on greatsword hasn't been upped enough.
The premise of this thread is flawed however.

[Jthug.9506]

I mean you do have the improved vigor trait. You also can get a bit of extra disengage with la

[Jthug.9506]

4 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

They're removing the added endurance cost. Forerunner of Death: This trait no longer increases maximum Endurance. Damage dealt has been increased by 66% in PvE only.

In PVE if the energy cost of Nomad's Advance is low enough it could compete with Icerazor which is 6.0 power coefficient. As it is now, it costs 20 energy so 3 recharge means you are still limited by energy ,3.5 power coefficient instead of 2.5 is a start. 

I wouldn't run it in PVP/WVW regardless. Damage on greatsword hasn't been upped enough.
The premise of this thread is flawed however.

I actually found it to work well as a Zerg buster with s/s 2&4, and gs 5&2, it’s looking like it’s only going to be more viable now, although I would probably choose dwarf/shiro still. I have to say GS5 in particular is amazing in Zerg combat. I am also very excited to see the improvements to the block and flip over, it’s a key skill that you really want to make strategic use of to offset the single dodge.

[Kain Francois.4328]

I'll say what I said before:
Vindicator should NOT be doing 38-40k dps because Revenant already brings so much to the table, that other aspects of Devastation (Battle Scars, Assassin's Presence) would have to be nerfed.

Anyway, let's test before complaining. For the love of Balthazar.

Edited November 28, 2021 by Kain Francois.4328

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

5 hours ago, Kain Francois.4328 said:

I'll say what I said before:
Vindicator should NOT be doing 38-40k dps because Revenant already brings so much to the table, that other aspects of Devastation (Battle Scars, Assassin's Presence) would have to be nerfed.

 

Anyway, let's test before complaining. For the love of Balthazar...

What does Vindicator bring besides AP?  The answer to that is “nothing.”  If it brings anything else it cuts into its damage heavily.  No one is bringing staff with this spec and alliance/shiro has almost no CC/notable support, so I fail to see how vindicator “brings so much.”  
 

and no need to nerf AP or Battle Scars when they can just nerf GS/Alliance Utils/death drop if the spec ends up over performing 

Edited November 25, 2021 by LucianTheAngelic.7054

[Telgum.6071]

7 hours ago, Buran.3796 said:

   Good luck in WvW/PvP with the single dodge of the Mirage but with x2 the cost of endurance (and nothing in exchange).

You know, this "argument" could have sense before the first Vindicator beta, but not anymore.

[Zenith.7301]

3 hours ago, Kain Francois.4328 said:

I'll say what I said before:
Vindicator should NOT be doing 38-40k dps because Revenant already brings so much to the table, that other aspects of Devastation (Battle Scars, Assassin's Presence) would have to be nerfed.

 

Anyway, let's test before complaining. For the love of Balthazar...

 

 

lol what? All Vindicator brings is AP. Which the alacrity renegade will already bring, unless alacrity guardian becomes dominant in yet another guardian dominated role.

 

Vindicator brings no CC, no meaningful boons, no boon strip, no mechanics flexibility with ranged weapon viability like scourge or rifle deadeye in raids.

 

Soulbeast does 37-38k DPS with far better utility. Dragonhunter brings an aoe block and pulls to the group. Thief is doing 37k+ DPS in power specs while steal utility in raids is pretty kitten big in many important encounters, namely the hardest raid encounter currently in the game, Qadim I.

[Kidel.2057]

I *was* mostly concerned about gameplay tbh, so mostly how Alliance played out and the dodge frequency.

Numbers can be easily tweaked. If damage is still low, they can increase it. Also they didn't just add the +10%, but they also buffed most GS skills and the 2 damaging dodges. We'll see if that's enough to get proper dps in 5 days or so.

The first dodge gives a +15% damage buff that was relatively easy to get constantly in the first beta (and now should be 50% easier). Pretty sure with a full dps build you can get a flat +25% damage, which alone should be enough.

 

[Buran.3796]

9 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

They're removing the added endurance cost. Forerunner of Death: This trait no longer increases maximum Endurance. Damage dealt has been increased by 66% in PvE only.

In PVE if the energy cost of Nomad's Advance is low enough it could compete with Icerazor which is 6.0 power coefficient. As it is now, it costs 20 energy so 3 recharge means you are still limited by energy ,3.5 power coefficient instead of 2.5 is a start. 

I wouldn't run it in PVP/WVW regardless. Damage on greatsword hasn't been upped enough.
The premise of this thread is flawed however.

   What they MEAN when they say  "removing the added endurance cost" is that in their minds the second trait was the "middle ground" with 100 endurance cost, as Tenacious Ruin especifies, whereas the first trait has a 150 endurance cost and the third trait a 50 endurance cost (the same it cost to ALL classes and builds in the game, including both the 1 dodge Mirage and the 3 dodge Daredevil. So now they "NORMALIZED" the endurance cost across all the traits to 100, which is X2 THE COST for any other class or build in the game, on top on NOT HAVING CHANCE TO STACK MORE THAN ONE DODGE as the Mirage. So they removed NOTHING, they just incresed the cost of the only evading trait which worked (the third) from 50 to 100.

   I don't care about Nomad's Advance because A) the Alliance is too weak to be used in WvW/PvP and B) that skill provides mobility, not i-frames, and for the evasion inbeeded in his twin skill Battle Dance you need to flip the skill or the whole legend and pay extra energy which is inconvenient, anyway. And please don't let me start to talk about how I feel about having to waste a utility skill as an evasion when there's plenty of weapons (Warrior's greatsword, Ranger's and Thieve's short bow... ) with integrated i-frames. Meanwhile we got three new weapons in a row (trident, short bow, greatsword) without a single i-frame (and no, the greatsword block doesn't count as anyone dealing vs unblockable attacks fighting other classes could attest.

   If Vindicator wreaks and sinks in PvP/WvW (which is the route which is heading now after the changes) just won't be used nowhere. That's because the Vindicator is mainly built towards physical (strike) damage, which is arguably weaker in PvE than condition damage and gives no valuable boons over other classes which already have both more physical damage and better boons or support.

   And finally: I think you don't grasp the scope of the effect of having a single evade with double cost of endurance in WvW/PvP:  yes, you can have Song of Arboreum to get vigor afterd dodging and mix it with Retribution's Enduring recovering to increase the vigor effect from 50% to 75%, but since you ONLY HAVE ONE DODGE and COSTS 100 ENDURANCE not 50 the number of times you proc vigor will be halved (and probably energy sigils would become mandatory in PvP/WvW the same as Traveler/Fireworks runes have been a must forever for Guardians due their pity mobiliy; but that is assuming that Vindicatort would have a place in those game modes, which I don't think that will happen).

   Again: this is not the same as when ANet nerfed Mirage in PvP/WvW erasing one of their dodges (which entirely removed the class from the meta), because at least their cost remained at 50 and they had chances to craft either power or condition damage builds and lately the players have been using Blurring Inscriptions like crazy to compensate with 1 second i-frames from signets their lack of evades; the Vindicator has no prospects of being able to create condition based builds, as only has freeze as soft cc and the torment and burning sources are a joke, and defensively the new 100 endurance cost x non stackable dodge makes us crap. Even worse, think how badly the weakness condition COUNTERS  all the vigor traits, sigils and theorycrafting efforts and how abundant and easy to spam is weakness across the classes (Rev has already weakness in staff #2, mace #3, Inspiring Reinforcement, Elemental Blast, all trident skills).

[Obtena.7952]

14 hours ago, Zenith.7301 said:

 

The problem is you assume they're aware of the issue when the main premise of my thread is that they seem to be completely oblivious of how PvE performance works or what the current standards are.

Except I'm pretty sure Anet is aware that almost no one achieves 38-39K DPS in PVE in the first place. In otherwords ... 38-39K DPS that you are saying is the standard ... is not. 

Edited November 25, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Infusion.7149]

6 hours ago, Buran.3796 said:

   What they MEAN when they say  "removing the added endurance cost" is that in their minds the second trait was the "middle ground" with 100 endurance cost, as Tenacious Ruin especifies, whereas the first trait has a 150 endurance cost and the third trait a 50 endurance cost (the same it cost to ALL classes and builds in the game, including both the 1 dodge Mirage and the 3 dodge Daredevil. So now they "NORMALIZED" the endurance cost across all the traits to 100, which is X2 THE COST for any other class or build in the game, on top on NOT HAVING CHANCE TO STACK MORE THAN ONE DODGE as the Mirage. So they removed NOTHING, they just incresed the cost of the only evading trait which worked (the third) from 50 to 100.

   I don't care about Nomad's Advance because A) the Alliance is too weak to be used in WvW/PvP and B) that skill provides mobility, not i-frames, and for the evasion inbeeded in his twin skill Battle Dance you need to flip the skill or the whole legend and pay extra energy which is inconvenient, anyway. And please don't let me start to talk about how I feel about having to waste a utility skill as an evasion when there's plenty of weapons (Warrior's greatsword, Ranger's and Thieve's short bow... ) with integrated i-frames. Meanwhile we got three new weapons in a row (trident, short bow, greatsword) without a single i-frame (and no, the greatsword block doesn't count as anyone dealing vs unblockable attacks fighting other classes could attest.

   If Vindicator wreaks and sinks in PvP/WvW (which is the route which is heading now after the changes) just won't be used nowhere. That's because the Vindicator is mainly built towards physical (strike) damage, which is arguably weaker in PvE than condition damage and gives no valuable boons over other classes which already have both more physical damage and better boons or support.

   And finally: I think you don't grasp the scope of the effect of having a single evade with double cost of endurance in WvW/PvP:  yes, you can have Song of Arboreum to get vigor afterd dodging and mix it with Retribution's Enduring recovering to increase the vigor effect from 50% to 75%, but since you ONLY HAVE ONE DODGE and COSTS 100 ENDURANCE not 50 the number of times you proc vigor will be halved (and probably energy sigils would become mandatory in PvP/WvW the same as Traveler/Fireworks runes have been a must forever for Guardians due their pity mobiliy; but that is assuming that Vindicatort would have a place in those game modes, which I don't think that will happen).

   Again: this is not the same as when ANet nerfed Mirage in PvP/WvW erasing one of their dodges (which entirely removed the class from the meta), because at least their cost remained at 50 and they had chances to craft either power or condition damage builds and lately the players have been using Blurring Inscriptions like crazy to compensate with 1 second i-frames from signets their lack of evades; the Vindicator has no prospects of being able to create condition based builds, as only has freeze as soft cc and the torment and burning sources are a joke, and defensively the new 100 endurance cost x non stackable dodge makes us crap. Even worse, think how badly the weakness condition COUNTERS  all the vigor traits, sigils and theorycrafting efforts and how abundant and easy to spam is weakness across the classes (Rev has already weakness in staff #2, mace #3, Inspiring Reinforcement, Elemental Blast, all trident skills).

From the start it wasn't going to be great in PVP as the only added mobility is from greatsword and Nomad's Advance. In WVW it might have potential due to the superspeed meta and being able to hit 5 targets has a payoff.

Greatsword has a movement skill and a channeled block, both of those allow you to save a dodge even if not using alliance legend. It isn't optimal but it's surely an option.

It's likely going to be more playable than mirage at least in WVW , though the lack of improvement on greatsword means it won't be that attractive over herald. Why? Mirage is a condi spec at its core and still clone reliant.

In PvP your likelihood of hitting 5 targets in melee is near nonexistent so I don't know why this focus on it being a PVP spec. Mirage for the longest time was memed for having one dodge even though people were running jaunt , blink, and double energy sigils.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Buran.3796]

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

From the start it wasn't going to be great in PVP as the only added mobility is from greatsword and Nomad's Advance. In WVW it might have potential due to the superspeed meta and being able to hit 5 targets has a payoff.

Greatsword has a movement skill and a channeled block, both of those allow you to save a dodge even if not using alliance legend. It isn't optimal but it's surely an option.

It's likely going to be more playable than mirage at least in WVW , though the lack of improvement on greatsword means it won't be that attractive over herald. Why? Mirage is a condi spec at its core and still clone reliant.

 

   From the start the Renegade was absolutely atrocious for PvP, with no blocks, evades or mobility in weapon, skills that didn't work on slanted terrain, low damage, stunable minions as skills and the breakstun in the healing skill. But after 2.5 years and several changes became playable in both PvP and WvW and albeit power Herald is still better for duels and high ranked PvP Renegade is now capable in PvP and arguably the best roaming build if you take small n vs n skirmishis and the pace at which soloes upgraded camps and kills fortress bosses. Why Vindicator should remain useless in the three game dapartments for 3+ years?

   Greatsword doesn't bring anything in terms of sustain that outpace swords or staff: they have i-frames, a block, mobility and better tracking features, so don't try to excuse the rise in the cost of the dodge in "oh but you have a block in the greatsword".

   Also your guess that Vindicator won't work in PvP was too early: with heals , regen and barrier from the spec and things as stability and damage mitigation provided by Jalis it COULD have work as a bruiser and mid node team fighter. Of course with a "normal" 50 endurance evade, with a 100 will be a sitting duck waiting to be nuked... 

Edited November 25, 2021 by Buran.3796

[lunaeclipse.6843]

what's actually going to matter is what the peak dps is. Now that the dps boost from dodging isn't locked to a 3s animation (likely to be 1s now) and the damage from landing is increased, the peak dps should be much higher. In realistic scenarios, that peak dps will be what matters for whether the changes will make vindicator competitive or not.

I think its really being under estimated how much dps that dodge was draining. 3s of absolutely no damage is absolutely devastating to overall dps even if it is technically a dps increase.

Edited November 25, 2021 by Ertrak.9506

[TheeBlackDeath.5692]

One more change they need to add to Vindicator is to add a Chilled condition proc to the mist bursts of Eternity's Requiem since not only does it make more sense given the Mists, but it'll also add more viable options for Vindicator as well, especially since the damage of the bursts is reduced per target each time they are struck by them. 

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

1 hour ago, ShadeOfEclipse.8931 said:

One more change they need to add to Vindicator is to add a Chilled condition proc to the mist bursts of Eternity's Requiem since not only does it make more sense given the Mists, but it'll also add more viable options for Vindicator as well, especially since the damage of the bursts is reduced per target each time they are struck by them. 

Agreed, Chill on Eternity's Requiem would be interesting and help enable multiple builds in pvp/wvw, which is always more interesting than just pigeonholing an entire spec into a certain type of damage

[Zenith.7301]

Probably the easiest way to add CC to GS is to make the block separate from the 2nd skill toggle and make the second skill toggle not require a block to use, ending the block early and applying a 2 sec stun.

 

If not chill to Requiem, a chill on GS2 is fine as well.

 

Hell, I'd like a boonstrip on GS2.

[Jthug.9506]

44 minutes ago, Zenith.7301 said:

Probably the easiest way to add CC to GS is to make the block separate from the 2nd skill toggle and make the second skill toggle not require a block to use, ending the block early and applying a 2 sec stun.

 

If not chill to Requiem, a chill on GS2 is fine as well.

 

Hell, I'd like a boonstrip on GS2.

They did add a daze to the stun break on LA stance, which is nice, hopefully it can be tuned to be on par for break bar damage with dwarf taunt, Mallyx leap, and jade winds. Although even with all the extra damage stuff they have bumped in LA stance I don’t know if it’s going to bench better than a proper upkeep skill like vengeful hammers or not. But if you are using vindicator in pve with multiple targets such as the Conjured Amalgamate boss, I think LA is probably better than shiro, and oddly I would personally probably run Mallyx/LA for that kind of fight, just for the Mallyx leap pull.

 

And to be honest there are only a few fights where I would use power over condition anyway.

 

 I’m feeling pretty happy with all the changes they have announced, I am hoping it will bench a tad better than ret renegade with notoriety over AP or about 37-39k. Obviously traiting AP would be a personal dps loss but perhaps worth it if you have at least 2 more power dps in your sub. In build crafting this I am thinking that it will be optimal to take the crit trait in invocation with scholar runes vs retribution and something like thief runes and a piece or 2 of assassins. However I prefer ret and eagle runes for wvw. 
 

Hype level elevated.