Why don't Stances in the Guild Wars games behave like they do in other games?

[Mungrul.9358]

This one has always confused me, and with all the talk of Warrior balance passes, I thought it might be a good time to voice my disappointment with stances, and offer a suggestion as to how they should behave.

 

If you've played any other game that utilises stances, you'll know that they'll generally be permanent "modes". While in that mode, you'll have different advantages and disadvantages, and sometimes, especially in the case of fighting games, different attacks and defences.

 

Now I wouldn't suggest GW2 stances should enable different attacks (I know that ANet wouldn't put in the time to develop that idea properly), but having current stances be permanent modes instead of traditional skills with durations and cooldowns, would be a fantastic way of improving them. Needless to say, they would have to be tweaked so as to not be over-powered, but I feel something like this would help Warrior stand out from the crowd.

 

Off-the-cuff ideas for how our current stances would behave if they were changed to behave this way:

Defiant Stance: Heal on entering stance. Reduce incoming damage by 20%. Reduce movement speed and Endurance recharge by 50%. While the stance is permanent while active, give it a 20 second cooldown, so it can be activated again for the heal.

 

Balanced Stance: Gain stability on an interval. Become immune to critical hits. Reduce movement speed by 50%.

 

Berserker Stance: Increase adrenaline gain by 25%. Gain pulsing resistance. Increase incoming damage by 25%.

 

Endure Pain: Reduce incoming damage, movement speed and attack speed by 50%.

 

Frenzy: Gain Quickness and a baseline of 5 might. Increase incoming damage by 50%.

 

These are just baseline ideas for others to riff off of, and I'm sure you'll all have much better balanced ideas for each of the individual stances.

 

Edit: BTW, I suspect the ANet answer to my question would be that there's some technical engine restriction on being able to make stances behave like this. It'd be really interesting to hear if this actually was the case!

Edited May 13, 2022 by Mungrul.9358
Keyboard stopped working properly halfway through posting :E

[Jzaku.9765]

57 minutes ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

Edit: BTW, I suspect the ANet answer to my question would be that there's some technical engine restriction on being able to make stances behave like this. It'd be really interesting to hear if this actually was the case!

The answer is because you are suggesting a class mechanic implemented through optional utility skills. As evidenced by Engi's utility skill design (completely busted op skills to make up for the possibility of missing out on their class feature, Kits), this is a bad idea. 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Reduced movement speed is way to much of a downside. 

They would never see use that way. 

Not moving = Dead in pvp/wvw

Edit: 

Activ gameplay and movement is how you survive in GW2 and not by facetanking dmg. 

It doesn't matter if I get 10, 50 or 80% dmg reduction. If I move slow as duck, I'm gonna die. 

 

Edited May 13, 2022 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Mungrul.9358]

Like I said, placeholder ideas.

Any ideas for better "downsides"?
 

Also, remember, as the stance would be a "mode" , you could turn it off at any point or swap to another stance if you did need to swap from tank to chase.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

57 minutes ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

Like I said, placeholder ideas.

Any ideas for better "downsides"?
 

Also, remember, as the stance would be a "mode" , you could turn it off at any point or swap to another stance if you did need to swap from tank to chase.

Having only one Activ at a time would be downside enough. 

 

[eXruina.4956]

1 hour ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

If I move slow as duck

 

You've clearly never been chased by a duck. ^~^

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

There do not need to be downsides. Do not do Downsides.

It should be:
Initial effect upon entering stance.
Passive proc of XYZ effect while in stance per pulse
    AND/OR
Passive proc of XYZ effect when ABC trigger happens.

Stances should be for 4s baseline. Last Stand should make this 5s, increase the initial effects by 20% and increase the passive procs by 20%.

Example:
Endure Pain:   Initial: Gain protection and resolution for 4s
                          Passive: Every second gain 834 barrier

Frenzy:              Initial: Gain10 stacks of might for 4s and quickness for 4s. Stunbreak.
                          Passive: Gain 1 stack of might for 4s when critically striking a target. (1/4s interval per target)

Defiant Stance: Initial: Heal for 4,000 HP
                            Passive: Striking an enemy heals you for 500 hp (1/4s interval per target)

Berserker Stance: Initial: Gain 10s of resistance.
                                Passive: Striking a target cleanses a condition, cleansing a condition grants 10 adrenaline (1/4s interval per target)

Last Stand: Initial: Gain 5 stacks of stability for 5s and swiftness for 5s. You are immune to critical hits for the duration of the stance. Stunbreak.
                     Passive: Striking a foe inflicts weakness for 1s and removes 1 boon. (1/4s interval per target)

The Last Stand and Defy Pain traits could be reworked to just proc the passive portions of the stances without the actives, thus there are no auto stunbreaks/immunities to cry about.

 

[alcopaul.2156]

what's your rationale behind endure pain having 50% decrease in movement and attack speed?

 

and the kitten, 50% less damage taken????

 

you mean if 3 man instafocuspewpew you with 5k autoattack 3x, you're dead?

lelz wtf.

other classes can self barrier hard, has longer negate incoming damage skills, not to mention can 10% to 70% heal twice within 3-4 seconds and that's even repeatable..

 

and endure pain is even made suckier by the pve-pvp/wvw modes..

 

like that's not even an upgrade. that's blatantly trashing the already trash skill.

Edited May 13, 2022 by alcopaul.2156

[Xelqypla.6817]

In other games, Stances are modes to shift through based on current conditions, not really something to sit in permanently. Elementalist and Engineer have this style of play.

[DeanBB.4268]

Sounds like stances in other games are what signets are here. Anet could have named them anything ("tactics" or "posture" or whatever), it's just a category of skills. Stances are fine.

[Aeolus.3615]

14 hours ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

This one has always confused me, and with all the talk of Warrior balance passes, I thought it might be a good time to voice my disappointment with stances, and offer a suggestion as to how they should behave.

 

If you've played any other game that utilises stances, you'll know that they'll generally be permanent "modes". While in that mode, you'll have different advantages and disadvantages, and sometimes, especially in the case of fighting games, different attacks and defences.

 

Now I wouldn't suggest GW2 stances should enable different attacks (I know that ANet wouldn't put in the time to develop that idea properly), but having current stances be permanent modes instead of traditional skills with durations and cooldowns, would be a fantastic way of improving them. Needless to say, they would have to be tweaked so as to not be over-powered, but I feel something like this would help Warrior stand out from the crowd.

 

Off-the-cuff ideas for how our current stances would behave if they were changed to behave this way:

Defiant Stance: Heal on entering stance. Reduce incoming damage by 20%. Reduce movement speed and Endurance recharge by 50%. While the stance is permanent while active, give it a 20 second cooldown, so it can be activated again for the heal.

 

Balanced Stance: Gain stability on an interval. Become immune to critical hits. Reduce movement speed by 50%.

 

Berserker Stance: Increase adrenaline gain by 25%. Gain pulsing resistance. Increase incoming damage by 25%.

 

Endure Pain: Reduce incoming damage, movement speed and attack speed by 50%.

 

Frenzy: Gain Quickness and a baseline of 5 might. Increase incoming damage by 50%.

 

These are just baseline ideas for others to riff off of, and I'm sure you'll all have much better balanced ideas for each of the individual stances.

 

Edit: BTW, I suspect the ANet answer to my question would be that there's some technical engine restriction on being able to make stances behave like this. It'd be really interesting to hear if this actually was the case!

TDLR like they worked in GW1 

Just look how gw1 was amazing in the skills pros/cons

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Stance

[Arklite.4013]

People are really harping on these placeholder effects and downsides. Open your minds, people.

[Duglaive.5236]

My beef with stances is that the corresponding trait is in the Defense line, and I oh so rarely go that route.

[Cloud Windfoot Omega.7485]

On 5/13/2022 at 6:01 AM, Jzaku.9765 said:

The answer is because you are suggesting a class mechanic implemented through optional utility skills. As evidenced by Engi's utility skill design (completely busted op skills to make up for the possibility of missing out on their class feature, Kits), this is a bad idea. 

ANd what if it was rolled into our mechanic? Allowing us to select 1-2 that we can swap between or on and off in battle would add some verity to the how things feel.  Warriors mechanic already feels pretty  limited by itself anyway.

[America.9437]

I suppose their more like martial arts stances.  Crane Stance for example.  You stay in it just long enough for Daniel San to execute his crane kick and win the tournament.

 

My issue with them is that their cooldowns are too long.  Compare Signet of Might and Frenzy.

 

Signet of Might: 10Might, 6sec Duration, +300/300, 25sec cooldown

Frenzy: 10Might, 6sec Duration, +300/300, 40sec cooldown, 6 sec quickness

 

Its hard to find situations where 6 sec of quickness is a fair trade for an extra 15 sec of cooldown. Think of it like duty cycle; the % of time might can be active.  Signet's duty cycle is 6/25 or 24%.  Frenzy is 6/40 or 15%.  When you trait them with arms and defense you can bump them to 30% and 18.75%.  30% Duty Cycle on signet of might is huge and means 30% of the time you can stack 10Might.

 

The flow of the game is very fast so the difference is very noticable.  Thats my opinion.

 

Edit:  i guess if your encounters are 1v1 every 60secs or more then perhaps frenzy is the better choice.  but in my experience in open world its 1v4ish every 30secs cause mobs be really angry and extra-spawny and mobby.

Edited May 15, 2022 by America.9437
thoughts

[Zekent.3652]

So, you want the most telegraphed class of this game with a bunch of tradeoffs, also getting more tradeoff??? 💀

[The Boz.2038]

Permanent? Nah.
But mutually exclusive, stronger, with more enter/while/exit mechanics? Yes.
Yes, this means ranger stance-share gets the ax. Eh. Whatever.

[eXruina.4956]

On 5/14/2022 at 7:50 AM, Arklite.4013 said:

People are really harping on these placeholder effects and downsides. Open your minds, people.

placeholder? placeholder would mean they're going to follow through with the reworks, been a couple of years now, couple of years is a long time. doesn't look like they have any intention of delivering on their promises.

[Arklite.4013]

15 minutes ago, eXruina.4956 said:

placeholder? placeholder would mean they're going to follow through with the reworks, been a couple of years now, couple of years is a long time. doesn't look like they have any intention of delivering on their promises.

My comment was referring to the placeholder effects in the OP, which other commenters were also referring to.

[eXruina.4956]

sorry i misunderstood, thought you referred to the placeholder stance traits with 300s cds. mb.

Edited May 19, 2022 by eXruina.4956

[ZDragon.3046]

I mean technically speaking if you want a stance changing class play ele or rev those are the true stance classes of gw2.

Stance skills are not exactly suppose to be the same thing. 

dont expect anet to give you a 50% increase on anything in this day in age expect 33% or full immunity for a short period depending on what we are talking about.

 

Balanced stance is arguably fine the way it is as its already a pretty loaded skill the worst thing anyone can argue about this skill is its cd but honestly the cd cant be lower for all it does at best consider making the passive trait version 60s but only have it pulse the stab once and give you critical hit immunity for like 2 or 3s. 

Defiant stance is a bit more situational and could maybe have a bit more tied to it or have 2 charges with a lower duration for the cd it has which would make using it a bit easier.

Berserker stance is the hot topic that needs some help as the resistance changes technically made the skill too weak imo. But this could be fixed by just making it grant resistance and resolution for slightly longer durations and it would be fine. You still get the adrenaline gain on top of that.

Then we have Frenzy... the most problematic stance of them all a stance that wants to be offensive with its boons yet defensive because its a breakstun... honestly just remove the breakstun from this and make the quickness gain more worth wild. Maybe even have it be a insta 25 might and some fury ontop of that for like 5s or something. This stance needs to pick though be only offensive or be only defensive with it bing both its stuck in a weird place similar to thief's haste.