WB, virtues and trait interactions

[subversiontwo.7501]

With the WB having no passive virtues, has anyone gone over the various virtue and trait interactions to see how they play out?

For example, the tooltips state that Battle Presence shares the flowing resolve procs with allies, but what if you combine Battle Presence (Virtues) with Phoenix Protocol (WB)? Do you share Regen?

I remember noting already in the first or second beta that some of these core class mechanics ended up in odd plays with this espec. I've never liked when they try to change core functionality in ways that isn't supported through the build diversity and creates either limited options or odd interactions that tend to be hard to balance (ie., synergies disappear or either over- or underperform in what must be unintended ways). It just ends up feeling poorly thought through and overcomplicated in design but oversimplistic in play.

This is a perfect example with the passive virtues being rather "small" fundamental class mechanics with little impact on larger notions of balance, but which at the same time are fundamental class mechanics with a number of interactions that just risk falling to the side.

Edited March 14, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Gwaihir.1745]

Most of them just dont work.

"Give anet time they're issueing multiple bug fixes every week."

Bug fixes to pve content. Theres been like 2 skill bugs fixes released, of like 180 medium-game breaking ones. 

[cat.8975]

1 hour ago, Gwaihir.1745 said:

Most of them just dont work.

 

Mind naming them? I'd reckon a majority of the traits are working just fine with Willbender, with only a couple exceptions.

[Tinnel.4369]

It's my understanding that all previously passive interactions work as before, just only when the virtue triggers while active. i.e. you burn or heal or grant boons every 5 attacks after activation of the virtue. This can seem lackluster, but I'm having success in WvW by setting up immobs in high hit rate scenarios using combinations of symbols, torch 5 or focus 4, whirling light, and flash combo.

[Kuya.6495]

As mentioned, all traits that trigger with passive effects now trigger as active effects on willbender. For example battle presence only triggers when f2 is activated and during the duration of the buff you get from activating it. Similarly permeating wrath's effects only works when you use f1 and the effect lasts 8 seconds if you take the second grandmaster traits, essentially making it a perma effect as if it were a passive (as long as you use f1 off cooldown).

 

Willbender's passive effects are now active effects in the sense that you need to use an f ability and attack a number of times to trigger the effect. Against single enemies this feels underwhelming but against multiple enemies you see a faster activation of your passive virtues and traits than you would on dh, core or fb. For example aegis passive happens on a set interval on f3, but on wb f3 it will happen every 5 strikes. Making it so if you cleave multiple targets you will have perma aegis for the duration of f3's effects.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Kuya.6495

[Gwaihir.1745]

59 minutes ago, Kuya.6495 said:

As mentioned, all traits that trigger with passive effects now trigger as active effects on willbender.

 

I can name 2 off the top of my head without so much as looking at the traitlines.

Indomitable courage: No longer has any aegis to modify traited with wb gm 3.

Absolute resolve: Virtue skill 2s passive effect is stronger (25%) does not modify anything with phoenix protocol. 

 

This is not the norm for gw2 and breaks it's game design, so dont argue that it is intentional. 

 

[Kuya.6495]

2 hours ago, Gwaihir.1745 said:

 

I can name 2 off the top of my head without so much as looking at the traitlines.

Indomitable courage: No longer has any aegis to modify traited with wb gm 3.

Absolute resolve: Virtue skill 2s passive effect is stronger (25%) does not modify anything with phoenix protocol. 

 

This is not the norm for gw2 and breaks it's game design, so dont argue that it is intentional. 

 

I don't get your point. Both traits, deathless courage and phoenix protocol, literally tell you they remove aegis and regen respectively (not the boon). As in, it's by design. Not a bug.  

 

My point was: wb virtues move the passive effect mechanic unto a buff mechanic given by activating the virtue.  As in, it's not a bug. It's how they were designed to work. Your reply has nothing to do with what i said.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Kuya.6495

[subversiontwo.7501]

Doublepost to edit in spoiler tag.

Edited March 15, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[subversiontwo.7501]

 

8 hours ago, Tinnel.4369 said:

It's my understanding that all previously passive interactions work as before, just only when the virtue triggers while active. i.e. you burn or heal or grant boons every 5 attacks after activation of the virtue. This can seem lackluster, but I'm having success in WvW by setting up immobs in high hit rate scenarios using combinations of symbols, torch 5 or focus 4, whirling light, and flash combo.

 

4 hours ago, Kuya.6495 said:

My point was: wb virtues move the passive effect mechanic unto a buff mechanic given by activating the virtue.  As in, it's not a bug. It's how they were designed to work. Your reply has nothing to do with what i said.

I think you guys are missing the point that I was trying to make and @Gwaihir.1745 picked up on. It may be my fault for not making it clear enough for the rest of you, but it is also rather difficult as a topic of itself, so let me give it one more swing:

If you pick up something like Battle Presence and then pick up something like Phoenix Protocol, they can synergize in one of three ways:
A) Your flowing activation gives friends heals (BP modded by WB) but you regen (BP modded by PP)

B) Your flowing activation gives friends regen (BP modded by PP)

C) Your flowing activation gives friends nothing (conflict in trait interactions)

So I made this thread to ask if someone has tested these types of interactions yet (and I added a discussion of "if C, things bad"; which is what Gwaihir picked up on when he talks about bugs, because those things would be bugs or design issues as you generally don't want to have traits in separate trees that can't interact with mechanics modified by traits in other trees).

Spoiler

 

More

This is extra interesting for the Guardian as a class since (good or bad, depending on where you sit) it doesn't have the straight forward structure of trait trees that other classes may have to correspond with stats and tasks (a support tree, a power tree, a condi tree etc.). It is either intricate or messy to begin with (or both, depending on your view), before we conflate that with new trait interactions.

Even more

That sits in an even larger context that I'm not sure if we should go into here in this thread, but that at the same time is relevant for this thread: What are the core class mechanics of Guardians? I'm not saying the class is bad, mind you, it has enjoyed at least two very solid roles over time with the HFB (and CFB or HCG) variants in instanced PvE and WvW (and sometimes sPvP). It's just that those are roles that are important rather than good, they are pieced together by some very specific circumstances and what the class is or does in a more general sense is still pretty diffuse. On the same premise, I'm not saying that the Willbender is bad (as others may prefer to say), it is just that it is odd like that.

It's another one of those complicated topics that may go woosh above people's heads unless they care enough to look deeper into different group roles, but to attempt to shine some sort of light on it: In WvW we distinguish between primary support and secondary support. Secondary support is more of a traditional MMO healer while the primary support, well, it is the HFB. I suspect something similar for more indepth PvE players. It holds a rather unique role but as a class it isn't necessarily built around that making its class mechnics somewhat vague to begin with and  that is how it ties into this thread. I don't know, I think think expanding the discussion like this may risk to take from more than it adds, but yeah, there it is.

Hopefully you see the rhetorics of that because you could of course just say that its core mechnics are clearly the virtues and their passive/hit-based dimension while the role could be as crudely summed up as "stab bot", but that is where you'll see things diffuse and get vague. We can even with some confidence say why this has happened, because the class has always juggled with the prospect of being a hybrid and having a group support design in a game that was not meant to have group support or at least not in its traditional sense (but also still always had it, kinda, sorta, maybe, not well defined). That's what it is, but navigating that is what's interesting with the class. Feel me?

 

 

Edited March 15, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Kuya.6495]

2 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

 

I think you guys are missing the point that I was trying to make and @Gwaihir.1745 picked up on. It may be my fault for not making it clear enough for the rest of you, but it is also rather difficult as a topic of itself, so let me give it one more swing:

If you pick up something like Battle Presence and then pick up something like Phoenix Protocol, they can synergize in one of three ways:
A) Your flowing activation gives friends heals (BP modded by WB) but you regen (BP modded by PP)

B) Your flowing activation gives friends regen (BP modded by PP)

C) Your flowing activation gives friends nothing (conflict in trait interactions)

So I made this thread to ask if someone has tested these types of interactions yet (and I added a discussion of "if C, things bad"; which is what Gwaihir picked up on when he talks about bugs, because those things would be bugs or design issues as you generally don't want to have traits in separate trees that can't interact with mechanics modified by traits in other trees). This is extra interesting for the Guardian as a class since (good or bad, depending on where you sit) it doesn't have the straight forward structure of trait trees that other classes may have to correspond with stats and tasks (a support tree, a power tree, a condi tree etc.). It is either intricate or messy to begin with (depending on perspective), before we conflate that with new trait interactions.

I did a quick test just now and it seems to be none of the above.

 

Your allies never get the flowing resolve effect no matter what you pick. if you don't pick PP and you take BP, they still don't get flowing resolve healing, but they still get regen from inspired virtues. You also always get regen from inspired virtues so basically PP's regen has no benefit to you if you take virtues. If you take virtues but don't take BP, your allies still get regen due to inspired virtues. 

 

So it might be a bug that BP doesn't give flowing resolve  heals to allies? I can see how the blurb under battle presence could be interpreted to mean f2 from willbender give's flowing resolve healing to allies. I understood it to mean just the alacrity as per their blog post last year and they never said anything about extending flowing resolve's healing to allies via battle presence when they talked about the change.

Edited March 15, 2022 by Kuya.6495

[subversiontwo.7501]

35 minutes ago, Kuya.6495 said:

I did a quick test just now and it seems to be none of the above.

/.../

If you take virtues but don't take BP, your allies still get regen due to inspired virtues. 

/.../

So it might be a bug that BP doesn't give flowing resolve  heals to allies? I can see how the blurb under battle presence could be interpreted to mean f2 from willbender give's flowing resolve healing to allies.

Yeah man, and this is where it gets interesting.

Like, one can say that "shares heals with allies" is just a tooltip but mechanically and in a very literal sense, all BP does is to share resolve to allies. Assuming that PP cancels BP out then that trait does nothing, literally, not figuratively.

Furthermore, if PP turns it into a regen share then it doesn't literally do nothing anymore, but it still figuratively does nothing. PP makes sense on the Willbender when alone. It's easy to understand the trait because in terms of mechanics it isn't wildly different. However, F2 resolve, in and of itself, as a core class mechanic is designed and balanced to work ontop regen. So in a solo situation PP makes sense but the second you pick BP that trait becomes incredibly out of place as a selectable GM in a tree of that nature.

So the option and the obvious answer is of course that if you take PP you should never take BP, but that's just bad design that takes choices away across multiple trees (due to the class' design). PP shouldn't be able to make BP either literally or figuratively worthless, especially not given how BP is mechanically and balance-wise kept in check as a core class mechanic. Such issues cancels out the traits, it cancels out the specific tree design and it cancels out class design.

If Anet have so many specs now that they have trouble keeping up and can't prioritize resources to maintain it, it is a studio design issue. I'm fine with Anet adding especs and making that a "feature" but everything comes with a cost. If that is a prioritized feature it obviously needs prioritized resources.

It's kind of similar to the skill split issue with FB heal now. In PvP it was skill split to take the heal away (ie., it heals in PvE, it doesn't heal in PvP). Then they took the aegis from it for PvE reasons and they did not skillsplit that. So in PvE it's now a small heal with some boons. In PvP it is just boons with no heal 🤣. Obviously, they'll get around to fixing that in some way, some day, but they're hardly rushing and until they do that ability figuratively does nothing in PvP.

Edited March 15, 2022 by subversiontwo.7501

[Gwaihir.1745]

The solution to one of those is simple.

Revenant has a trait Elder Respite, "Regeneration heals for more. +20%".

Absolute resolve states that it increases the healing from f2 by 25%.

They already have a code module to handle this case.

Phoenix protocol when traited with absolute resolve should increase the healing from regeneration by 25%. 

This helps solve willbenders inability to heal properly in pvp and helps pve long term sustain.

[Fwog.9387]

I feel like trait interactions really should be something they solve in beta, not weeks after an expansion launches. But apparently releasing stuff unfinished is normal nowadays. They didn't even have to announce the expansion in Febuary. We had no release date, they had all the time in the world to iron out problems like this and simply didn't. 

[EveningTempo.4796]

On 3/17/2022 at 7:43 PM, Jaricko.6143 said:

I feel like trait interactions really should be something they solve in beta, not weeks after an expansion launches. But apparently releasing stuff unfinished is normal nowadays. They didn't even have to announce the expansion in Febuary. We had no release date, they had all the time in the world to iron out problems like this and simply didn't. 

Players are willing to wait for content. Corporate is not willing to wait for profits.