Staff and Scepter not getting buffed condition damage to compensate for the loss of clones on Virtuoso is such a BIG oversight and flaw

[Salt Mode.3780]

2 minutes ago, mortrialus.3062 said:

It really isn't.  They quietly adjusted sword 3 on virtuoso to account for the fact that unless they changed it, it would break the skill entirely.  They should do the same for staff and scepter's auto attacks.  You could double the duration.  You could double the stacks per hit. Either way would work and would be a very simple fix. 

I mean what you are saying is adding an effect for Virtuoso in the context of double duration or double stacks per hit. Sword 3 was unintentional and I'm pretty sure they didn't intend for that to happen and just rolled with it. 

I know for a fact that it was unintentional because they still haven't done anything to the immobile aspect to the skill yet the tooltip is still there.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Salt Mode.3780

[Skyroar.2974]

6 hours ago, mortrialus.3062 said:

Or the way they already changed sword 3 on virtuoso.  There's no special fanfare or traits or nothing.  Sword 3 just does something different if you have Virtuoso equipped.  Just do that with staff and scepter.  Either double to the duration or up the stacks to 2 per hit.  Easy fix. 

Changing sword 3 without "special fanfare" was/is a terrible idea, and it definitely should not be doubled down by making more obscure, hidden changes like that.

Good game design has its game rules as standardized as possible, and any exceptions to those rules as clearly communicated as possible. The more obscure, hidden, "seemingly arbitrary" exceptions there are, the messier a game becomes, which creates a bigger barrier of entry.

I'm actually shocked that the new sword 3 change wasn't applied to the core class, and I attribute that more to how rushed everything regarding skill & balance was.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Skyroar.2974

[mortrialus.3062]

19 minutes ago, Skyroar.2974 said:

Changing sword 3 without "special fanfare" was/is a terrible idea, and it definitely should not be doubled down by making more obscure, hidden changes like that.

Good game design has its game rules as standardized as possible, and any exceptions to those rules as clearly communicated as possible. The more obscure, hidden, "seemingly arbitrary" exceptions there are, the messier a game becomes, which creates a bigger barrier of entry.

I'm actually shocked that the new sword 3 change wasn't applied to the core class, and I attribute that more to how rushed everything regarding skill & balance was.

I'd rather things work than being broken for the sake of principal. 

[Skyroar.2974]

1 hour ago, mortrialus.3062 said:

I'd rather things work than being broken for the sake of principal. 

But it's not a binary situation. There's bound to exist more solutions that are more elegant and clear than doubling down on mistakes.

Maybe Virtuoso should never have had condition traits in the first place. Or maybe condition traits should be significantly stronger to make up for the loss of condition clones.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Skyroar.2974

[Alpha.1308]

On 3/9/2022 at 3:02 AM, Hallow.7368 said:

Changing a core weapon specifically on an elite spec would get messy and confusing later down the road balance wise I imagine. If they buff staff in general then mirage becomes an issue again. There's no clean solution to this.

literally what are you talking about

mirage has a stronger staff than core

why?

because the mirage ADDS to it with ambush

guess what they could do to trait options/minors as a base upgrade in virtuoso to make a "cLeaN SoluTIOn"?

oh, right, ADD stuff to staff/scepter

that's what especs were supposed to do 

add things the base classes don't have, and add exclusivity between especs 

what we got here was a trainwreck of a design that added nothing, and has no reason being exclusive because it does not offer enough to be anything on its own

Edited March 10, 2022 by Alpha.1308

[Senqu.8054]

Auto attack damage, conditions and boons should be stronger the more blades you carry. Wouldn’t compensate for everything but would be a „mechanic“. 

[Ashen.2907]

Identifying a problem is constructive feedback, arguably the most important aspect of constructive feedback. Without identification a problem has almost no chance of being addressed at all, let alone well.

Telling someone exactly what to do to solve the identified problem is not constructive feedback, it is solving the problem for them....which is almost always a bad thing as it does not require understanding of core issues that led to the problem on the part of those responsible for avoiding or fixing problems. Also, it is not necessarily helpful to professionals for amateurs with limited understanding of the behind the scenes holistic aspects of whatever a given issue might be in something as complex as game balance/design to provide specific detailed, and generally narrow as individual class design/balance feedback are required by ANet to be addressed separately in their own individual forums, solutions.

As it is the OP's title both identifies the nature of a problem and provides a general suggestion as to how it could be addressed. 

[mortrialus.3062]

2 hours ago, Skyroar.2974 said:

But it's not a binary situation. There's bound to exist more solutions that are more elegant and clear than doubling down on mistakes.

Maybe Virtuoso should never have had condition traits in the first place. Or maybe condition traits should be significantly stronger to make up for the loss of condition clones.

Dude literally who the kitten cares.  Who 2 years from now is going to be banging their keyboard, red faced, tears in their eyes, physically ill and hurting from the sheer level of bewilderment that the auto attacks at tweaked a bit to work with Virtuoso?

Even if Virtuoso didn't have condition traits, the core weapons should maintain their functionality and performance levels while on Virutoso. There's no way you can buff condition traits to make up for the loss of clones because dagger is the only weapon that benefits from those traits so no matter what, you're always in a situation where build craft wise, it's still dagger and dagger only on Virutoso.

Edited March 10, 2022 by mortrialus.3062

[Hallow.7368]

3 hours ago, Alpha.1308 said:

literally what are you talking about

mirage has a stronger staff than core

why?

because the mirage ADDS to it with ambush

guess what they could do to trait options/minors as a base upgrade in virtuoso to make a "cLeaN SoluTIOn"?

oh, right, ADD stuff to staff/scepter

that's what especs were supposed to do 

add things the base classes don't have, and add exclusivity between especs 

what we got here was a trainwreck of a design that added nothing, and has no reason being exclusive because it does not offer enough to be anything on its own

? Virtuoso FOCUSES on the blade modifier.

Staves do NOT have blades.

It's likely a design decision and just because you think so does not mean it's a bade one.

Virt ADDS to GS because that is how it's meant to be played.

[Hallow.7368]

6 hours ago, mortrialus.3062 said:

Power Mirage has seen plenty of use in PvP and WvW.  Condi Chrono has seen uses in PvP as well as uses in PvE. 

This isn't because there were traits to brute force one weapon into being an effective choice for that spec. 

It was because they were specs with plenty of good, powerful trait choices that worked well for both condi and power, and Anet didn't deliberately render a number of core weapons unfunctional when using said specs. 

I don't think Virtuoso should be focused around  conditions, let alone having an entire row of traits just about getting dagger working as a condition weapon.  If condi virtuoso is going to be a thing, it should be like Power Mirage where core equipment actually functions on the spec and players take it from there.

Imagine if Daredevil or Specter nerfed dagger and sword auto attacks by 50% when you equipped the spec.  Players would freaking riot. There's no good reason to be effectively nerfing core weapons on elite specs.

Well except for the fact that not everything needs to be able to be able to build anything and everything all the time. With virt they clearly invested heavily into the concept of blades and that doesn't really leave room for much else weapon wise. Maybe they could've done something? But that ship has sailed. I doubt they will rework or add any new functionality to virt for quite a while and frankly it doesn't need it. Some QoL and it's good to go. Idk why you are trying to hamfist anet into making your build viable just because when plenty of others are just fine with dagger and are using the condi build that's already pretty decent. Again even if they buff staff for virt it has ZERO abilities that are blades and will not interact with half of your traits anyways.

[Salt Mode.3780]

6 hours ago, Hallow.7368 said:

Well except for the fact that not everything needs to be able to be able to build anything and everything all the time. With virt they clearly invested heavily into the concept of blades and that doesn't really leave room for much else weapon wise. Maybe they could've done something? But that ship has sailed. I doubt they will rework or add any new functionality to virt for quite a while and frankly it doesn't need it. Some QoL and it's good to go. Idk why you are trying to hamfist anet into making your build viable just because when plenty of others are just fine with dagger and are using the condi build that's already pretty decent. Again even if they buff staff for virt it has ZERO abilities that are blades and will not interact with half of your traits anyways.

So you are basically proving that it was a mistake on their part for not thinking of other core weapons. Regardless whether or not Virtuoso is going to benefit on which weapon, it still stands that every weapon should be somewhat viable regardless being optimal or not. As it stand both of these are neither. Also both staff and scepter do have things that associate with blade gen, scepter 1 auto chain procs blades while staff 3 iwarlock gives a blade. 

Fact is some of these weapon issues were commented on the first beta and now at released nothing was done about it. 

[Hallow.7368]

9 minutes ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

So you are basically proving that it was a mistake on their part for not thinking of other core weapons. Regardless whether or not Virtuoso is going to benefit on which weapon, it still stands that every weapon should be somewhat viable regardless being optimal or not. As it stand both of these are neither. Also both staff and scepter do have things that associate with blade gen, scepter 1 auto chain procs blades while staff 3 iwarlock gives a blade. 

Fact is some of these weapon issues were commented on the first beta and now at released nothing was done about it. 

No? I'm talking about the modifier on the weapon skills. These proc the bleed from jagged mind and the vuln from deadly blades. Not "clone" generation. And I wouldn't call it an oversight. All they had to do in that example was throw the modifier onto those weapons like they did GS and it would work with them, but it wouldn't make sense thematically for those weapons to be blades. And I mean they are viable. For open world. Just no where near optimal. So I guess depending on your viewpoint it could look bad? But from where I'm looking it's nothing more than keeping the meta builds consistent with the spec's thematic. 

[Salt Mode.3780]

Just now, Hallow.7368 said:

No? I'm talking about the modifier on the weapon skills. These proc the bleed from jagged mind and the vuln from deadly blades. Not "clone" generation. And I wouldn't call it an oversight. All they had to do in that example was throw the modifier onto those weapons like they did GS and it would work with them, but it wouldn't make sense thematically for those weapons to be blades. And I mean they are viable. For open world. Just no where near optimal. So I guess depending on your viewpoint it could look bad? But from where I'm looking it's nothing more than keeping the meta builds consistent with the spec's thematic. 

I mean I don't understand what thematic have to do with functionality. It doesn't matter if it fits the thematic or not, the weapons exist the traits exist therefore it should be used in all forms of Mesmer. 

In terms of viability this isn't just for open world but in competitive play as well. Fact that Virtuoso itself has no disengage besides using blink, ranged weapons are often preferred. Staff being the biggest defensive weapon in the game for Mesmer is even more the reason why people would wanna use staff for the extra mobility on the 2nd skill. 

Like you said, all they needed to do is "throw the modifier on to those weapons" but from the first comment made in first beta about this issue till now at LAUNCH nothing was done about this.

 

[Hallow.7368]

35 minutes ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

I mean I don't understand what thematic have to do with functionality. It doesn't matter if it fits the thematic or not, the weapons exist the traits exist therefore it should be used in all forms of Mesmer. 

In terms of viability this isn't just for open world but in competitive play as well. Fact that Virtuoso itself has no disengage besides using blink, ranged weapons are often preferred. Staff being the biggest defensive weapon in the game for Mesmer is even more the reason why people would wanna use staff for the extra mobility on the 2nd skill. 

Like you said, all they needed to do is "throw the modifier on to those weapons" but from the first comment made in first beta about this issue till now at LAUNCH nothing was done about this.

 

But "throwing" a blade modifier onto a staff does not make sense. They obviously had the goal of making the class heavily focused on blades and I'd say that's a success. I just don't get the fuss. You have a very meta option to play staff mesmer in content via staff mirage why does every sub spec need to be able to use every single weapon? If anything chrono and mirage should be more like virt in that they specialize in a certain weapon group. This whole argument stems from "I can't play whatever build I want on any traits that I want and have it all be viable". Asking them to make every single weapon viable on every single elite spec across the board for every single class is just not realistic.

By competitive do you mean spvp? Have you tried swapping utility skills? I only do a little bit of spvp, but you could do mimic with blink, mass invis etc. But I don't really understand the whole range thing. Dagger is the same range as staff.

[Salt Mode.3780]

16 minutes ago, Hallow.7368 said:

But "throwing" a blade modifier onto a staff does not make sense. They obviously had the goal of making the class heavily focused on blades and I'd say that's a success. I just don't get the fuss. You have a very meta option to play staff mesmer in content via staff mirage why does every sub spec need to be able to use every single weapon? If anything chrono and mirage should be more like virt in that they specialize in a certain weapon group. This whole argument stems from "I can't play whatever build I want on any traits that I want and have it all be viable". Asking them to make every single weapon viable on every single elite spec across the board for every single class is just not realistic.

By competitive do you mean spvp? Have you tried swapping utility skills? I only do a little bit of spvp, but you could do mimic with blink, mass invis etc. But I don't really understand the whole range thing. Dagger is the same range as staff.

So this could also be said for those who are wondering why Virtuoso has a "condi" part to their kit when in reality nothing really supports it. This whole thread is because they have given condi trait to Virtuoso and is wondering why those weapons that are VERY MUCH CONDI are not considered in this thought process. Its clear you dont play competitive so I would recommend u not suggesting anything without a deeper knowledge of how things are done. 

Edited March 11, 2022 by Salt Mode.3780

[Hallow.7368]

13 minutes ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

So this could also be said for those who are wondering why Virtuoso has a "condi" part to their kit when in reality nothing really supports it. This whole thread is because they have given condi trait to Virtuoso and is wondering why those weapons that are VERY MUCH CONDI are not considered in this thought process. Its clear you dont play competitive so I would recommend u not suggesting anything without a deeper knowledge of how things are done. 

Condi is just a side build for virt to begin with, so the fact that it has one at all is nice. And when someone suggests a solution to you you just go "nah u don't understand so don't talk" without explaining anything. Surely you can take mass invis to deal with your "disengage" problem. And none of that has anything to do with the fact that dagger is still ranged.

[Salt Mode.3780]

9 minutes ago, Hallow.7368 said:

Condi is just a side build for virt to begin with, so the fact that it has one at all is nice. And when someone suggests a solution to you you just go "nah u don't understand so don't talk" without explaining anything. Surely you can take mass invis to deal with your "disengage" problem. And none of that has anything to do with the fact that dagger is still ranged.

I don't recall people ever taking mass invis in spvp for the purpose that it prevents node capturing which is what the whole game is about, mass invis is not mobility therefore 5 seconds of it would not be enough if you are slow, its stealth + mobility that allows u to disengage in a fight, invis is only a tool to reposition yourself.

Condi is a side build no one is denying that but the fact that ANET pushed this bleed aspect to part of the kit especially with bloodsong makes it no longer just a "side build". With many debating why is it even in Virtuoso's kit when you can be much more creative with traits instead of pushing bleed when it literally is the weakest of all condi. 

Ok dagger is ranged but the difference between a dagger and scepter or even staff is there is nothing else it provides but just that.

Both scepter and staff can generate blades, only difference is staff has chaos storm, chaos aura, phase retreat that can be comboed with chaos storm for chaos aura.

Scepter offers a relatively low CD block on skill 2 which will help generate blades from psychic riposte as well as a condi burst by using F2 shatter and s3 on scepter. 

For dagger it offers none of that but blade generation and projectile deny.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Salt Mode.3780

[mortrialus.3062]

5 hours ago, Hallow.7368 said:

Condi is just a side build for virt to begin with, so the fact that it has one at all is nice. And when someone suggests a solution to you you just go "nah u don't understand so don't talk" without explaining anything. Surely you can take mass invis to deal with your "disengage" problem. And none of that has anything to do with the fact that dagger is still ranged.

Even if it's a side build, the core weapons should maintain their fuctionality on Virtuoso.  In fact the core weapons maintaining their functionality is far, far more important for virtuoso than virtuoso having it's own dedicated row of traits to brute force dagger and dagger alone into a theoretically viable condi weapon. 

Virtuoso would be in a far better place if the core weapons weren't nerfed when taking it, and if instead of a dedicated row of condi blade traits it had actually good traits that were interesting choices that changed the spec in interesting ways mechanically regardless of if you were trying to run condi or power.   Virtuoso is the only spec in the game that unambiguously straight up nerfs core weapons.  That's unacceptable. Imagine if Daredevil nerfed thief dagger autos by 50% because "it focuses on melee staff" in terms of how you're arguing.  Full on insane troll logic on your part. 

Either fix the core weapons, or replace the condi traits with things that would actually help Virtuoso perform it's job in PvP like chilled, super speed, fear ect.ect.  Frankly both would be the best choice.

Having an entire row of traits dedicated to just condition on virtuoso, while having only one theoretically viable condition weapon on virtuoso with nothing to complement it with or build craft with, is a huge failing of the spec. 

Edited March 11, 2022 by mortrialus.3062

[Ashen.2907]

6 hours ago, Hallow.7368 said:

But "throwing" a blade modifier onto a staff does not make sense.

Thematically, if a bit of sharpened bone with a handle can create a psychic blade that projects as far as a rifle can shoot then a staff, some of which have blades every bit as large as many daggers in game, could too. Some staves are represented as spears. Spears are essentially daggers at the end of sticks. The only reason this doesn't work or make sense thematically is if one chooses to arbitrarily refuse to allow it to make sense.

[agrippastrilemma.8741]

I really really really don't want condi to be the PvP Mesmer meta AGAIN, it has been so almost the whole time since Chronobunker 1.0 died in like early 2016.

[Hirosama Nadasaki.6792]

On 3/10/2022 at 12:29 AM, Mell.4873 said:

Love it, You nailed it.

All this hate towards a class people are not even playing is so silly.

Says the person who is blindly shilling for a class they don't play.

[Mell.4873]

1 hour ago, Hirosama Nadasaki.6792 said:

Says the person who is blindly shilling for a class they don't play.

I been playing it and will continue once they fix some of the trait bugs. I want to player a shatter built but some of the core traits don't work correctly.

[Xaylin.1860]

On 3/10/2022 at 10:36 AM, Salt Mode.3780 said:

As far as virtuoso goes, because it is a no clone spec, it is more the reason why they should've thought about this to begin with.

This. Which however doesn't mean that the right solution is buffing Scepter and Staff.

 

First, I agree with you that Bleeding isn't great. Second, I personally didn't want Virtuoso to have a condi variant and gave feedback during betas accordingly. However, ANet made the conscious decision to push for Bleeding anyway. So that's the reality we will have to deal with, I guess.

 

 

On 3/10/2022 at 10:06 AM, mortrialus.3062 said:

Condi's make up 50% of your auto attack damage on staff and scepter.  I've tested this extensively.  3 clones literally doubles the damage of your auto attack compared to having 0 clones.  This is especially important for staff as the auto attack is literally the only real damage output on the weapon.  The weapons were designed and balanced around having these clones up most of the time.

Now, I repeat myself, just because Staff and Scepter are the default core condi weapons doesn't mean they should be great with Virtuoso as well. They work perfectly fine with core, Mirage and Chrono. From a design point of view, Virtuoso is build around being cloneless and blades which just happens to put those two weapons at a disadvantage. That's like complaining about not having Chill on a MH when talking about Reaper (to be fair, the impact is smaller... but still). All this aside, Staff is designed to be a defensive weapon to begin with.

 

Looking at Dagger - which actually has an interesting hybrid design when solely looking at blades as vehicle for effects - this translates to adding blade characteristics to core weapons. As I mentioned before, this would clearly apply to GS, Sword and Focus. That's what we should be talking about, not Scepter and Staff. Additionally, Sharper Images is a major laziness on ANets part. But everyone on here is aware of that, I think.

 

Long story short: From a design point of view, there is no specific reason why Staff or Scepter would have to be improved on Virtuoso. Also, they are not useless. That's hyperbole and leads us nowhere.

[Hallow.7368]

15 hours ago, Salt Mode.3780 said:

I don't recall people ever taking mass invis in spvp for the purpose that it prevents node capturing which is what the whole game is about, mass invis is not mobility therefore 5 seconds of it would not be enough if you are slow, its stealth + mobility that allows u to disengage in a fight, invis is only a tool to reposition yourself.

Condi is a side build no one is denying that but the fact that ANET pushed this bleed aspect to part of the kit especially with bloodsong makes it no longer just a "side build". With many debating why is it even in Virtuoso's kit when you can be much more creative with traits instead of pushing bleed when it literally is the weakest of all condi. 

Ok dagger is ranged but the difference between a dagger and scepter or even staff is there is nothing else it provides but just that.

Both scepter and staff can generate blades, only difference is staff has chaos storm, chaos aura, phase retreat that can be comboed with chaos storm for chaos aura.

Scepter offers a relatively low CD block on skill 2 which will help generate blades from psychic riposte as well as a condi burst by using F2 shatter and s3 on scepter. 

For dagger it offers none of that but blade generation and projectile deny.

That's fair on the dagger part. Two things I'm interested in though.. if you need to disengage as you put it why does your ability to contest/capture a node matter when your goal is to back out of the fight? Secondly why does the dps of your backbar matter when it's exclusively for defensive situations? Should there not be an opportunity cost when you need to play defensively? If you're having problems staying alive I can't imagine having stealth access would ever be a negative aspect. The most popular thief builds center on their stealth which in turn makes them way more durable than a thief should ever be allowed to be and just by running that one elite you can get up to 9 seconds (with PU if you're using chaos) from one skill. Like what are you losing out on by making this change? Thousand cuts on a condi build? Signet?

[Hallow.7368]

12 hours ago, mortrialus.3062 said:

Even if it's a side build, the core weapons should maintain their fuctionality on Virtuoso.  In fact the core weapons maintaining their functionality is far, far more important for virtuoso than virtuoso having it's own dedicated row of traits to brute force dagger and dagger alone into a theoretically viable condi weapon. 

Virtuoso would be in a far better place if the core weapons weren't nerfed when taking it, and if instead of a dedicated row of condi blade traits it had actually good traits that were interesting choices that changed the spec in interesting ways mechanically regardless of if you were trying to run condi or power.   Virtuoso is the only spec in the game that unambiguously straight up nerfs core weapons.  That's unacceptable. Imagine if Daredevil nerfed thief dagger autos by 50% because "it focuses on melee staff" in terms of how you're arguing.  Full on insane troll logic on your part. 

Either fix the core weapons, or replace the condi traits with things that would actually help Virtuoso perform it's job in PvP like chilled, super speed, fear ect.ect.  Frankly both would be the best choice.

Having an entire row of traits dedicated to just condition on virtuoso, while having only one theoretically viable condition weapon on virtuoso with nothing to complement it with or build craft with, is a huge failing of the spec. 

Then at this point they should just delete the condi variant and double down on power like you said and just be done with it, but then guess what? The week after that happens different people will complain that they want to play condi and it's not fair that they can't play condi virt because they like virt and not mirage. Or if they buff staff and it then overtakes dagger other people will complain that they don't like staff and want to use dagger but staff is lower effort and higher dps (exactly what happened with mirage btw just with axe instead of dagger). You've said that kitten about thief dagger like 4 times now and it still doesn't make sense. Like at all. Not only is thief a completely different class but it's weapons don't rely on a gimmick to do damage. If there is a design failure it occurred when they made core mesmer need clones to auto to damage on their condi builds and virt only highlights the fact that it is there. As long as that is in place it will forever continue to impact the options for changing up how the class mechanic works cause anything that's different from core will need band aid fixes that are only active during that elite spec.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Hallow.7368