Current state of fractal balance

[Nephalem.8921]

Inspired by a reddit post about class popularity in raids i wanted to compare it to fractals and the results are very sad to say the least.

Here the distribution:

https://imgur.com/a/cZWySoU

90% are made up by 3 elite specs. not even classes. Diversity hasnt been this bad ever. not even during busted chrono or weaver days. The exposed buff was just a giant mistake. Condi is now easier to play and faster than power. this is true even for speedrunners. Power has just so many downsides for no reason. only power is affected by npng. only power requires to be at high hp for mods. only power is affected by weakness which gets applied by one instab aswell. power requires fury. They also nerfed slb and weaver, the latter was basically nerfed out of pve.

On the other hand there is condi which only requires 2 stats to begin with and could even use tormenting runes for insane sustain. Even before the exposed changes most groups would have been better off with cfbs. Most havent really realized how busted cfb is until sunqua. and then they buffed scourge by more than 30% for no reason at all together with changing exposed into 100%condi 30% power.

Am i the only one hating the current braindead fractal situation? Its safer, faster and easier to play cfb + scourges than a power comp or even classes like weaver.

Data from https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity

Edited January 14, 2022 by Nephalem.8921

[Cyninja.2954]

100% agreed.

Grabbing popcorn to see how many players will come in and tell everyone how balanced guardian, necromancer and revenant are. In revenants defense: it's the safest alacrity source available atm. Imo the least busted of the 3 classes.

The exposed buff change certainly didn't do diversity any favors.

The remaining issue here is: firebrand and scourge bring near top tier performance while requiring very basic rotations. On top of which both classes have S tier utility skills complimenting each other.

Why bother with becoming proficient with any other class if these 2 just do it better, easier and faster.

Before this comes up: I multi class and play all classes, which includes guardian and necromancer. A lot of guardian and necromancer mind you. Doesn't mean I have to agree with this state of balance.

Scourge was fine at 3-4k dps less benchmark, maybe even shave off 5k (though I do believe this will come with Harbinger). Take a serious look at epidemic (in fact give it the mimic treatment, a full rework and change). Firebrand, rework the F1 reset, add shorter shared global cooldowns to tomes to at least mitigate the insane utility.

Class/Elite wise: give more reasonable variety in acquiring boons. Aegis and stability remain to this day a guardian only domain and both of those boons are to important (I main cqfb/cfb/hfb in raids as off support) to have them so stacked on only 1 class.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Bakeneko.5826]

1 hour ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Condi is now easier to play and faster than power.

This is straight up lie.

1 hour ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

this is true even for speedrunners

Another lie. Condi for speedrunning is faster on Ai and on Ensolyss

 

1 hour ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

They also nerfed slb and weaver, the latter was basically nerfed out of pve.

Weaver is still very much alive in raids and strikes

1 hour ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Am i the only one hating the current braindead fractal situation? Its safer, faster and easier to play cfb + scourges than a power comp or even classes like weaver.

It always was, literally nothing changed as far as classes themselves go - weaver is still weaver, cfb is still OP. Only thing that changed was exposed and torment, with exposed being main culprit for power comps no longer seeing play in pug groups (org speedrun still uses power) and necro getting enough damage for fractals not to become FBx4 + alac mode (which, to be honest it would still be if not for epi).

 

1 hour ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Data from https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity

Yes, just like with GW2efficiency data, it is not full data or representation of real world. You have subset of people who cared enough to generate API and subset who added it to gw2 Wingman. And data dispersion is so wide, some points have over 100k data points and latest only 15k, or 10% of total players who gave some data a year before. Either GW2 bled a lot of players, or tool is not much used. And i am leaning to tool not being too popular.

 

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Why bother with becoming proficient with any other class if these 2 just do it better, easier and faster.

Soooo.... You admit that popularity of classes are entirely up to players and performance has less of an impact than ease of play?

 

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

scourge bring near top tier performance

🤣🤣🤣🤣

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Take a serious look at epidemic (in fact give it the mimic treatment, a full rework and change).

Situational skill is useful in situation it was crated for? 🤔It's almost why it is as good as it is on certain fractals. kitten.

 

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

add shorter shared global cooldowns to tomes to at least mitigate the insane utility.

That would entirely kill FB on every game mode instantly. From top to unplayable in one patch.

[Wintermute.5408]

Who cares? Nobody is forcing you to play scourge. Nobody will kick you for playing weaver, as long as you fill the role.

[Wintermute.5408]

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Scourge was fine at 3-4k dps less benchmark, maybe even shave off 5k (though I do believe this will come with Harbinger).

"Scourge was fine when it was unable to deal any kind of competetive damage". Thank god you people will never be in charge of balance changes.

[Nephalem.8921]

On 1/14/2022 at 1:33 PM, Bakeneko.5826 said:

This is straight up lie.

Another lie. Condi for speedrunning is faster on Ai and on Ensolyss

I like how you show a severe lack of knowledge in endgame pve with very outdated views. Not only this but the other topics here aswell. Condi is easier to play, thats just a fact. Power is only better for hardcore statics with lots of hours on sweaty tryhard strategies like 4way skorvald portal. There are like 2 statics in eu who can do this. 

For full clears you go condi and potentially swap spec to for example reaper for trash like in the fractal tournament.

Weaver is very much not alive in raids and fractals. i like how you just ignore the data because you dont like it.

And its true the data is not a full set. its biased towards the hardcore side because those tend to upload logs more likely than casuals.15k logs are enough for a decent representation.

This community is just lost. Can show a 40% representation of a single spec and 0.5% of another and this coounity just defends both.

Edited March 25, 2022 by Nephalem.8921

[Bakeneko.5826]

2 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

I like how you show a severe lack of knowledge in endgame pve with very outdated views.[...] Power is only better for hardcore statics with lots of hours on sweaty tryhard strategies like 5way skorvald portal. There are like 2 statics in eu who can do this. 

So I was right... And you agreed with me, by not agreeing with me?

 

2 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Weaver is very much not alive in raids and fractals. i like how you just ignore the data because you dont like it.

I ignore your date, because it is incomplete. Weaver sees less play, but it is played.

 

3 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

And its true the data is not a full set. its biased towards the hardcore side because those tend to upload logs more likely than casuals.15k logs are enough for a decent representation.

Its biased towards arbitrary group of people who added API key. And any biased data set is bad data set.

[Hotride.2187]

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Class/Elite wise: give more reasonable variety in acquiring boons. Aegis and stability remain to this day a guardian only domain and both of those boons are to important (I main cqfb/cfb/hfb in raids as off support) to have them so stacked on only 1 class.

If guard had only stab and aegis, cleanses and direct heals (maybe might also), I don't think fractals would be the trainwreck (from support POV) they are now.

But it has also quickness, fury, resistance, protection, regen, projectile hate, condi conversion, CC. If it remained the only class with useful group stability (rev has some but with way less uptime), but couldn't bring perma quickness (that requires literally 0 effort), I imagine things would be different in fractals.

I.e. its not that those 2 boons are stacked on fb, its that all boons but alac are stacked on fb for a 5 man party.

From wvw perspective you are right, ofc. Good group stability uptime only on guard just means 1 guard per party and thats that.  No idea about raids.

[Psykewne.3025]

Some changes that might help

 

- change Aegis and Stab to be self only boons - now a single FB no longer allows the whole group to ignore every major attack

 

- reduce the stationary damage on torment in pve to (0.075 * Condition Damage) + 26.8 -  the torment change is too potent in pve when its easy to have a boss stand still and allows celestial alac renegade and scourge to over perform on damage for the amount of utility and support they bring

 

- remove the damage increase from https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Amplified_Wrath - FB burning is very potent and this helps reign it in while still allowing you the option of bringing https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Wrath and even traiting with https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Perfect_Inscriptions for team burst during exposed at the expense of dropping a defensive utility skill

 

- epidemic is an iconic but overly powerful and unique skill that needs a complete redesign - if you consider any place where epidemic is really useful there is no other comparable alternative as nothing else can apply so many conditions in such quantity to 5 targets on such a low cooldown. - good discussion above on possible changes

 

 

[Gregious.8903]

Guardian has been op since before chronic nerfs and mostly gotten stronger since then.  It currently has no weakness and can do everything better than every other class except for epi and group alac (till EoD).  The fractal meta before exposed change was already 3 guardians because of their power and utility and specifically firebrand's dps in cm 100.  The exposed and torment changes just made epi more easy to cheese cm 100 so pugs run 2~3 scourge for cm 100 and often don't bother to swap to firebrand or power for the rest.  Pugs that skip cm 100 do not favor scourge AT ALL and power or firebrand is meta for those groups.  Firebrand ramps up damage as fast as a power class but with op guard utility and is really overtuned.  Heal/Quick brands give a lot of safety and the easiest quickness in the game.  However, they are not op, quickness itself is op.  Same with mirage or ren alac.

 

Here's what would need to change to fix pug fractal meta:

Quickness Max Effect Nerf

Alacrity Max Effect Nerf

Firebrand Nerfs

CM 100 Boss and Adds Breakbar Nerf

CM 100 Boss no longer travels across arena, only short runs around edge or to mid

Warrior banner nerf

Elementalist buffs

Warrior buffs

Thief buffs

Reaper buffs

Dragonhunter buffs

Herald Buffs

Scrapper buffs

Mesmer clone spawn rate buffs

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, Bakeneko.5826 said:

So I was right... And you agreed with me, by not agreeing with me?

No, he is saying that for the majority of this games population, power is the weaker option.

 

Even for the few at the top, it requires a significant amlunt of extra effort to pull ahead.

1 hour ago, Bakeneko.5826 said:

I ignore your date, because it is incomplete. Weaver sees less play, but it is played.

It nearly isn't though. Neither in CM fractals, nor in raids. 

 

As a matter of fact, weaver or any elementalist, outside if support tempest, sees nearly no play at all currently. 

 

Let's put you in the spot: when was the last time you personally played damage elementalist in fractals or saw someone play elementalist?

1 hour ago, Bakeneko.5826 said:

Its biased towards arbitrary group of people who added API key. And any biased data set is bad data set.

 

First, the group is not arbitrary. It is heavily biased towards more dedicated players. There is a difference.

 

You can question a data set. You can completely omit it too.

 

Let's assume for a moment though that this data is heavily biased towards more invested players. Let's also assume that with perfect data, this becomes worse (not going to explain why, this should be self explanatory). Let's also assume that none of the classes here mentioned are overperforming/overpowered.

 

What would you suggest be done about such disparity in class favorism? Because that is likely the approach the developers are looking at this themselves.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

3 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Scourge was fine at 3-4k dps less benchmark, maybe even shave off 5k (though I do believe this will come with Harbinger).

5k? There is no dedicated DPS build that low, Power Reaper, a build you see only a few times in Fractals-Raids is at 34k.
Admit it, you just want Scourge to be useless. Scourge gained popularity not even a year ago in Fractals.

[Bakeneko.5826]

1 hour ago, Hotride.2187 said:

If guard had only stab and aegis, cleanses and direct heals (maybe might also), I don't think fractals would be the trainwreck (from support POV) they are now.

But it has also quickness, fury, resistance, protection, regen, projectile hate, condi conversion, CC. If it remained the only class with useful group stability (rev has some but with way less uptime), but couldn't bring perma quickness (that requires literally 0 effort), I imagine things would be different in fractals.

I could agree with this, remove quickness from HFB, to shift group comp to either mesmer or scrapper (two possible classes) to provide quickness.

 

23 minutes ago, Psykewne.3025 said:

- change Aegis and Stab to be self only boons - now a single FB no longer allows the whole group to ignore every major attack

Why would you want to make two decent utility boons useless?

 

23 minutes ago, Psykewne.3025 said:

- reduce the stationary damage on torment in pve to (0.075 * Condition Damage) + 26.8 -  the torment change is too potent in pve when its easy to have a boss stand still and allows celestial alac renegade and scourge to over perform on damage for the amount of utility and support they bring

You sure you know what "overpefrorm" means? Alac needs a hit in traits, not to condi itself, scourge sits in the middle in terms of DPS (https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks), so I'd argue that some other classes needs tuning to have no utility (namely ele and thief)

 

25 minutes ago, Psykewne.3025 said:

- remove the damage increase from https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Amplified_Wrath - FB burning is very potent and this helps reign it in while still allowing you the option of bringing https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Wrath and even traiting with https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Perfect_Inscriptions for team burst during exposed at the expense of dropping a defensive utility skill

I'd say reduce to 10 or even 5%, but even that will not solve the problem, as problem is HFB, not core guardian traits.Your approach is what made weaver staff so bad - hitting core function and not elite spec.

 

17 minutes ago, Gregious.8903 said:

Alacrity Max Effect Nerf

No, it would nerf power classes even more, not a great change to have if we want to see diversity

 

17 minutes ago, Gregious.8903 said:

CM 100 Boss and Adds Breakbar Nerf

No, its CM.

18 minutes ago, Gregious.8903 said:

CM 100 Boss no longer travels across arena, only short runs around edge or to mid

Can agree with this, ammount of movement is absurd.

 

18 minutes ago, Gregious.8903 said:

Elementalist buffs

Warrior buffs

Thief buffs

Reaper buffs

Dragonhunter buffs

Herald Buffs

Scrapper buffs

Mesmer clone spawn rate buffs

This

[Bakeneko.5826]

9 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Let's put you in the spot: when was the last time you personally played damage elementalist in fractals or saw someone play elementalist?

Today for 99, 98 two bosses and rest of T4s + recs. My static always runs power outside 100CM and 99CM last boss.

10 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

First, the group is not arbitrary. It is heavily biased towards more dedicated players. There is a difference.

No, it is arbitrary. Correlation does not imply causation, while I agree that more dedicated users will use outside tools, but it is not provable that all top ranked players use it. Today was first time i heard about that tool. And if we believe Anet, GW2 has ±7mil accounts and only 100k data points on tools. Thats not even 1%. This is the same reasoning that raiders failed to understand when raids were put on hold permanently - only anet has all the data and nerfs are based on that. But it's not the first time i got egged on for telling that balance is not where ppl think it is, I got so much hate on these same forums for saying ele needed nerf and more hate after ele got nerfed the way i predicted...
 

 

13 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

What would you suggest be done about such disparity in class favorism? Because that is likely the approach the developers are looking at this themselves.

Hit support FB on support side - split FB traits into condi dmg, healing and boons, so players have to choose - do they want boons (stab, aegis, quickness), or healing, or do dmg (like willbender) and give some negetive value for other styles to make sure FB can only do one thing at a time. It sacrifices one spot for boon or healing source, but it diversifies party somewhat. Stab is only needed on certain encounter, on certain skills, so good alac could cover it. healing spot could be taken by druid or ele. There, hfb gets nerfed from being god of e verything into 3 specialised lines and possible diversity is opened

[Wintermute.5408]

General problem with firebrand and renegade, imho, is due to the overall PVE combat design. Sure, in raid environment FB brings pretty much everything with him. But that's a double-edged sword.

Raid roles are already bloated beyond belief. In classic holy trinity you have roughly 1/1/2 composition of tank/heal/DPS, offering quite a lot of slots for people who just want to press buttons and deal damage.

How many slots are open for DPS in typical raid group? 1 alac, 1 tank (or whatever exotic stuff boss requires), 1 druid, 1 healbrand, 1 quick, 1 BS. That's 6 slots taken preemptively just for universal composition purposes, without taking into account needs for pushing, kiting and other weird kitten. That makes it only 4 DPS slots available in raid on average, where off-meta classes like eles or thiefs actually fit freely.

The moment you, say, nerf 10 man alacrity, you create another mandatory alac slot. The moment you strip FB of, let's say, fury or stability generation, you will most likely create yet another mandatory slot for those boons. Firebrands are overloaded. Druids are. Renes are. But without that overload, the whole structure of endgame PVE falls apart due to its bad design. Then have fun playing anything remotely off-meta. I don't think there's a solution for that.

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, Hotride.2187 said:

If guard had only stab and aegis, cleanses and direct heals (maybe might also), I don't think fractals would be the trainwreck (from support POV) they are now.

But it has also quickness, fury, resistance, protection, regen, projectile hate, condi conversion, CC. If it remained the only class with useful group stability (rev has some but with way less uptime), but couldn't bring perma quickness (that requires literally 0 effort), I imagine things would be different in fractals.

I.e. its not that those 2 boons are stacked on fb, its that all boons but alac are stacked on fb for a 5 man party.

From wvw perspective you are right, ofc. Good group stability uptime only on guard just means 1 guard per party and thats that.  No idea about raids.

 

Agreed.

 

I was just giving a few ideas. In general I favor bringing up other classes instead of suggesting nerfs. It only becomes an issue when certain classes are so overperforimg that the content itsself gets trivialized.

 

Is it unfair that scourge is overperforming at comparable dps? Absolutely. Nerfing would penalize players for design decisions which are unrelated to the damage performance. Ideally every class should have comparable high end performance. In that case though, other factors might need tuning (hence why I believe scourge will see its dps shaved come harbinger).

 

The same can be said for guardian. It's no ones fault that the base class design lends itsself so well to this games content. 

[Cyninja.2954]

21 minutes ago, Bakeneko.5826 said:

Today for 99, 98 two bosses and rest of T4s + recs. My static always runs power outside 100CM and 99CM last boss.

Well in case you haven't puged in a while, elementalist is not represented there.

Quote

No, it is arbitrary. Correlation does not imply causation, while I agree that more dedicated users will use outside tools, but it is not provable that all top ranked players use it.

So, how did you put it: you agree with me but disagree?

Quote

Today was first time i heard about that tool. And if we believe Anet, GW2 has ±7mil accounts and only 100k data points on tools. Thats not even 1%. This is the same reasoning that raiders failed to understand when raids were put on hold permanently - only anet has all the data and nerfs are based on that. But it's not the first time i got egged on for telling that balance is not where ppl think it is, I got so much hate on these same forums for saying ele needed nerf and more hate after ele got nerfed the way i predicted...
 

 

Hit support FB on support side - split FB traits into condi dmg, healing and boons, so players have to choose - do they want boons (stab, aegis, quickness), or healing, or do dmg (like willbender) and give some negetive value for other styles to make sure FB can only do one thing at a time. It sacrifices one spot for boon or healing source, but it diversifies party somewhat. Stab is only needed on certain encounter, on certain skills, so good alac could cover it. healing spot could be taken by druid or ele. There, hfb gets nerfed from being god of e verything into 3 specialised lines and possible diversity is opened

So in essence what I suggested for Firebrand, though I simply suggested a shared tome cd, which acomplishes something similar without strait up making to many changes.

 

What about scourge and renegade? Or are you happy with those classes being this represented? Again assuming that the distribution suggested is correct.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[AliamRationem.5172]

4 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Inspired by a reddit post about class popularity in raids i wanted to compare it to fractals and the results are very sad to say the least.

Here the distribution:

https://imgur.com/a/cZWySoU

90% are made up by 3 elite specs. not even classes. Diversity hasnt been this bad ever. not even during busted chrono or weaver days. The exposed buff was just a giant mistake. Condi is now easier to play and faster than power. this is true even for speedrunners. Power has just so many downsides for no reason. only power is affected by npng. only power requires to be at high hp for mods. only power is affected by weakness which gets applied by one instab aswell. power requires fury. They also nerfed slb and weaver, the latter was basically nerfed out of pve.

On the other hand there is condi which only requires 2 stats to begin with and could even use tormenting runes for insane sustain. Even before the exposed changes most groups would have been better off with cfbs. Most havent really realized how busted cfb is until sunqua. and then they buffed scourge by more than 30% for no reason at all together with changing exposed into 100%condi 30% power.

Am i the only one hating the current braindead fractal situation? Its safer, faster and easier to play cfb + scourges than a power comp or even classes like weaver.

Data from https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/popularity

So kittening busted.  How do they not do anything about it?

[Ashen.1347]

 

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

100% agreed.

Grabbing popcorn to see how many players will come in and tell everyone how balanced guardian, necromancer and revenant are.

Your prediction was hilariously accurate.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Ashen.1347

[Bakeneko.5826]

48 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

What about scourge and renegade? Or are you happy with those classes being this represented? Again assuming that the distribution suggested is correct.

Renegade will be taken regardless of what comes out. It's only class providing 10 man alac without sacrificing anything valuable. Scourge is not OP, it is over represented, but it stems from it having some valuable utilities in fractals (namely epi for 100CM), and negligible ammount of barrier for itself, or party, depending on how you trait it, and from lazy fractal design, that put heavy favour on certain types of dmg (ranged condi) over smart design choices where well timed CC would provide skilled players different approaches. In current fractal meta, with breakbar change, favour is tipped towards scourge due to three factors: breakbar bonus damage, ranged CONDI dmg being favoured and Ai 2nd phase shades being vulerable to all damage. By changing how much boss moves, or how shades work (vulnerable ONLY to CC), whole pug meta would shift into heavy cFB/cSLB/cRene/cThief/cWeaver side. If we changed how breakbar bonus dmg work and how much Ai moves, whole fractal meta would shift towards power based builds. You are blaming classes for design flaws of encounters and lazyness of community. Shift how CM100 works and pugs will change their play style for whole fractal run, not just 100.

[Tails.9372]

1 hour ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

5k? There is no dedicated DPS build that low, Power Reaper, a build you see only a few times in Fractals-Raids is at 34k.

There are, they're just never brought up for that very reason which is why you don't recall them.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Tails.9372

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 minute ago, Tails.9372 said:

There are, they're just never brought up for that very reason which is why you don't recall them.

Name the ones other than Herald that are below 32k and are only DPS. 

[Tails.9372]

4 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Name the ones other than Herald that are below 32k and are only DPS. 

P/P deadeye in full zerk gear is at 28-30k, P/P daredevil is even lower than that and thats a single target set to boot.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Tails.9372

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

Just now, Tails.9372 said:

P/P deadeye in full zerk gear is at 28-30k, P/P daredevil is even lower than that and that a single target set to boot.

I wonder why they are that low in DPS... maybe because you use Pistols instead of Rifle-D/D or Staff? 

[Tails.9372]

5 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

I wonder why they are that low in DPS... maybe because you use Pistols instead of Rifle-D/D or Staff? 

Moving the goalpost I see, you asked for a "dedicated DPS build that low" and I provided. It not being an e-spec weapon set is irrelevant as many other builds which are based on "non-e-spec weapons" do "make the cut".