The problem of near-monopoly on aegis and stability

[Wolfshade.9251]

This is mainly written with endgame group content in mind, focusing especially on damage-support roles and heal-support roles.

Part of the reason why heal-mechanist heavily dominates the current meta, is its easy accessibility to long duration aegis and stability (F2 skill). The only other healing spec which can comfortably provide those 2 boons is heal-firebrand, which dominated the meta pre-EOD. Any other classes providing those boons usually have a payoff associated with them, but those 2 can easily summon these rare boons with no payoff. Of course, guardian can also use a large variety of skills to easily provide additional aegis and stability.

To illustrate my point, I'd like to bring up a few other examples where these rare boons are shared to the subgroup. First up, skills that provide aegis or both at the same time:

• Chronomancer's Well of Precognition, where players must stack inside the well to receive a mere 3s aegis.
• Specter's Well of Bounty, where again players must stack inside the well but this time the boons aren't even guaranteed, they are as a matter of fact the last 2 boons to be granted in the rare case where the players already have all other boons on them. The 10s aegis is generous and 5s of stability is appreciated... if we ever see them applied.
• Thief's/Daredevil's Detonate Plasma, which is only available on a handful of encounters, again granting a generous amount of those boons (10s aegis, 8s stability).
• Ranger's White Tiger skill, which despite its 5s aegis on 30s cooldown, shame that almost nobody brings it to endgame content.

And now the stability options:

• Druid's Natural Convergence (Celestial Avatar 5) granting 2s of stability. Appears fair, the duration is short but the skill is often available and doesn't require tweaking the build in any way.
• Specter's Mind Shock (Shroud 5) granting 3s of stability after a long wind-up time. Requires planning ahead in order to grant the boon at an opportune moment.
• Revenant's Inspiring Reinforcement granting pulsing stability in the affected area. However, taking this skill either means decreased healing output on heal-revenant builds or largely decreased damage output.
• Renegade's Darkrazor's Daring, granting a generous 1s of stability. At least it also has a stunbreak.
• Vindicator's Awakening/Reaver's Rage, again granting a generous 1s of stability with a stunbreak.
• Warrior's Stomp, a surprising 6s stability. Which no warrior would ever bring as it's a damage loss.
• Berserker's Shattering Blow, with a short 2s stability. Surprisingly common in condition builds.
• Soulbeast's Dolyak Stance, with 6s stability. Again, it has a payoff in terms of damage not only because it replaces one of the utility skills leading to damage loss, but also requires a stance-share trait.
• Thief's Blinding Powder, a generous 1s stability at the cost of a utility slot.
• Mesmer's Mantra of Concentration, providing a fair 3s stability at the cost of a utility slot.
• Necromancer's Well of Power, providing a pulsing incredibly short duration stability, while requiring your teammates to stack in the well.
• Scourge's Trail of Anguish, providing a decent 6s stability for the cost of standing directly it scourge's footsteps.
• Herald's True Nature (Dwarf) with 4s of stability.
• Spellbreaker's Full Counter, with a decent 2s of stability on block. If only anyone ever brought Spellbreaker to high-end content.
• Scrapper's Defence Field, providing a decent 6s stability, at the cost of bringing bulwark gyro. Which would only ever be brought by a heal-scrapper due to heavy dps loss.
• Tempest's Overload Earth, granting a decent 4s amount of stability at the cost of locking yourself out of earth attunement.

The highlighted text illustrates any pay-offs necessary to provide those boons. Non-highlighted skills either have no payoffs, or have a duration so pitiful that taking them/using them isn't even considered viable. The underlined skills offer a viable alternative to firebrand/mechanist meta. Not many of those, huh?

And now let's take another look at the overpowered aegis- and stability-granting skills of mechanist and firebrand, which don't even require changing anything in their builds!

• Mechanist's Crisis Zone - enabled by a trait, which any alacrity-providing mechanist is forced to bring anyway. Granting 3s of aegis and an astonishing 15 seconds of stability on a mere 30s cooldown. While the aegis on it may be fair, the 15 seconds of stability at 30s cooldown is downright ridiculous.
• Firebrand's Tome 3: Chapter 1 grants 4s of stability (stacking). Present in every single firebrand build with absolutely no payoff. Although one could argue that the 75s cooldown of tome 3 makes up for it. Not that Tome 3 sees much use besides emergency bubble/stability/aegis spam.
• Firebrand's Tome 3: Epilogue granting both 5s of stability and 4s of aegis (as well as protection and toughness, because why not!). 

The healer meta cannot be diverse, until the access to stability and aegis is re-examined. Perhaps classes with immediate access to stability built into their ever-present toolkit with no payoff should have their duration and cooldowns changed? Maybe duration of boons granted by wells/aoes should be extended to compensate for the need to stack directly in it to receive the boon in the first place? Maybe the idea of pay-offs should play a larger part in endgame balance? Not up to me to suggest solutions, I only want to highlight the glaring issue.

TLDR: Mechanist and Firebrand will continue to dominate the endgame healer meta until access to stability and aegis is re-examined.

Edited June 24, 2022 by Wolfshade.9251
Fixed some mistakes.

[Xarrontas.7948]

I absolutely agree with the fact that HAM and HFB are the only healers because they can provide basically almost any boon with no effort. If we can have more diversity across Aegis and Stability, we will definitly be closer to balance.

[mythical.6315]

And why do we need those boons to be more accessible?  What content requires a lot of those two?

Edited June 24, 2022 by mythical.6315

[TexZero.7910]

34 minutes ago, mythical.6315 said:

And why do we need those boons to be more accessible?  What content requires a lot of those two?

For role diversity, not content.

Right now if you want to support you have 4 options. Two of which are primary support due to monopolization.

 

If you want to dps you have multitudes more

[Vidit.7108]

Since the mantra change the Firebrand has to take Advance in order to provide a lot of consistent aegis (coupled with shield 4 if it uses one) the trade off is losing a heal or damage utility. If shield is taken over Torch that's a damage loss. Tome 3 is a class feature and as you said the long cooldown is mostly for emergency, or a gap filler if you use the Mantra of liberation to try and maintain at least 1 stack of stability. 

The trade off is all there though, you adjust for boons, healing or damage. Some firebrands choose poorly. Taking one of it's stability utilities is a damage loss especially if it needs to contribute to fury with Feel my Wrath. If it has Mantra of Potence, Advance, Stand Your Ground, then it has no damage or healing utilities. It must heal or dps with weapon attacks and tomes.

On Thief, Blinding powder does not share stability with allies, Mind Shock provides stability only to the Specter and the tethered ally.

Anet should absolutely give stability to more boon supporters, having stability or not makes a huge difference in Fractals. That said given the upcoming patch I expect that Druid might make a return to them, maybe alac soulbeast can have a niche too. As a point of comparison though, a Revenant only needs one skill sustain stability for an entire fight, a firebrand needs to use tomes and take two utilities to be able to do that. Outside of fractals they don't need to, a lot of strike missions don't have a high stability demand and i've been in groups without much if any.

At present though the alacrity and quickness supporters are not supposed to deal top damage they have to and do give up some of that to be able to support fully, even Firebrand. 

 

[mythical.6315]

51 minutes ago, TexZero.7910 said:

For role diversity, not content.

Right now if you want to support you have 4 options. Two of which are primary support due to monopolization.

 

If you want to dps you have multitudes more

Then what’s next after those two?  People are literally just going down the list. 

[Nephalem.8921]

1 hour ago, mythical.6315 said:

And why do we need those boons to be more accessible?  What content requires a lot of those two?

the new strike cms do require a lot of stab. fb mandatory. but they also require reflects and condi cleanses. also dealt best with fb.

Edited June 24, 2022 by Nephalem.8921

[Wolfshade.9251]

33 minutes ago, Vidit.7108 said:

Since the mantra change the Firebrand has to take Advance in order to provide a lot of consistent aegis (coupled with shield 4 if it uses one) the trade off is losing a heal or damage utility. If shield is taken over Torch that's a damage loss. Tome 3 is a class feature and as you said the long cooldown is mostly for emergency, or a gap filler if you use the Mantra of liberation to try and maintain at least 1 stack of stability. 

The trade off is all there though, you adjust for boons, healing or damage. Some firebrands choose poorly. Taking one of it's stability utilities is a damage loss especially if it needs to contribute to fury with Feel my Wrath. If it has Mantra of Potence, Advance, Stand Your Ground, then it has no damage or healing utilities. It must heal or dps with weapon attacks and tomes.

On Thief, Blinding powder does not share stability with allies, Mind Shock provides stability only to the Specter and the tethered ally.

Anet should absolutely give stability to more boon supporters, having stability or not makes a huge difference in Fractals. That said given the upcoming patch I expect that Druid might make a return to them, maybe alac soulbeast can have a niche too. As a point of comparison though, a Revenant only needs one skill sustain stability for an entire fight, a firebrand needs to use tomes and take two utilities to be able to do that. Outside of fractals they don't need to, a lot of strike missions don't have a high stability demand and i've been in groups without much if any.

At present though the alacrity and quickness supporters are not supposed to deal top damage they have to and do give up some of that to be able to support fully, even Firebrand. 

 

Thanks for the corrections. Fixed the main post.

Of course firebrand has more stability and aegis options than listed. Most healing-only HFBs will run shield and some take mace for even more aegis. I only focused on the one which is always available without any tradeoffs. SYG or Advance are usually brought by either HFB or QFB if the situation calls for it, but both of those have the tradeoff of losing a utility slot. Similarily Engi has more stability options available to it, but the F2 of mechanist is always there, pressed off cooldown.

[TexZero.7910]

1 hour ago, mythical.6315 said:

Then what’s next after those two?  People are literally just going down the list. 

Nothing is as monopolized as those two buffs. So probably not much.

Also, if your argument against it is but mah slippery slope, you've pretty much proven why it needs to happen as you don't have a valid reason why it shouldn't.

[Saharo.5381]

Aegis and stability are deeply rooted in guardian class lore. The entire concept of aegis balanced/offset guardian having the lowest healthpool in the game despite being a soldier class, so there's your tradeoff. That's why they have more access to it, and why other classes need to give up more to get it. Can't speak to Mechanist, as I don't think it should have access to aegis or stab. If you think other classes should get more aegis acess/uptime, take that ~25% vitality cut for medium armor, ~40% for heavy.

RE: Tome 3 -- you would have to idle without a weapon for a good couple seconds to provide aegis upkeep, then the 75 sec CD you mentioned.

Also please recognize that aegis has been nerfed for guardians consistently the past few years. The meta build for Healbrand now only grants Aegis on demand with Tome 3 and Shield 4.

As Anet is doing away with more profession-specific buffs, by that logic the next thing to change is boons that are/used to be limited to one or two classes. They've mixed things the past few years, with more specs getting alacrity, etc. (and the existence of Mech lmao) so I wouldn't be surprised if they came for aegis next.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Saharo Gravewind.5120

[TexZero.7910]

2 hours ago, Saharo Gravewind.5120 said:

 If you think other classes should get more aegis acess/uptime, take that ~25% vitality cut for medium armor, ~40% for heavy.

 

Scrapper already does this, where is it's mass aegis and group stability ?

[Saharo.5381]

1 hour ago, TexZero.7910 said:

Scrapper already does this, where is it's mass aegis and group stability ?

-180 Vitality on Scrapper is like a 11% health loss. Plus Impact Savant gives you 5% dmg back as barrier. Not an equivalent trade at all.

Scrapper also has better channeled blocks than Guardian sooooo

Edited June 25, 2022 by Saharo Gravewind.5120

[TexZero.7910]

7 hours ago, Saharo Gravewind.5120 said:

-180 Vitality on Scrapper is like a 11% health loss. Plus Impact Savant gives you 5% dmg back as barrier. Not an equivalent trade at all.

Scrapper also has better channeled blocks than Guardian sooooo

Guardian still has channeled blocks....group stab and aegis, soooo....

Still waiting for that sweet group aegis and stab since they played the sacrificing hp game you claimed was required.

[Saharo.5381]

4 hours ago, TexZero.7910 said:

Guardian still has channeled blocks....group stab and aegis, soooo....

Still waiting for that sweet group aegis and stab since they played the sacrificing hp game you claimed was required.

 

Did you miss the part where I said the HP tradeoff was nowhere near the guard level? You understand basic math, yes, and the concept of barrier?

Guard has one full channeled block, Shelter. And that's a heal skill, a rarely used one at that.

Engi has Hammer 3 or Shield 5. On weapons. That people commonly run.

[Vidit.7108]

After taking a longer look at the patch notes, what I think is going to happen is stability will either get removed from the game or reduced heavily from where it is. I don't want that to happen but it's been a request of people who want the game to be harder for a long time, and Arena Net might find that appealing because it raises difficulty without having to design more thoughtful encounters.

In addition, I think that they didn't nerf firebrand/mech/etc because they didn't want to pull the rug out from under boon supporters before a major Strike CM release. I'm not sure what they will change but If i had to guess firebrand will have to take 3 mantras to provide quickness.

Someone must have looked at actions per minute of your average healer and assumed we have it easy to support groups. As a pug regular, it's never easy because we're constantly worried about the behavior of other players either not in boon range or panic healing when they inevitably fail a mechanic. Or deciding whether to let the guy standing in front of minister li the whole fight should die for "playing how he wants". Groups where people do mechanics perfectly are an exception and don't need healers.

Stability gives healers one less devastating mistake from the party to have to contend with in that moment. Someone who thinks this is easy if you just have big heal numbers has never seen a knockback throw a player half way across the map when you need to be healing them.

[Cynz.9437]

On 6/25/2022 at 3:33 AM, Saharo Gravewind.5120 said:

If you think other classes should get more aegis acess/uptime, take that ~25% vitality cut for medium armor, ~40% for heavy.

 

Thief has same health pool as guard and got none of the buffs guards can provide to the group. Also, guards got a lot of mobility this expansion (which was supposed to be trade mark of thieves) w/o so called trade off. Anet threw the whole idea of class identity out of window with every expansion. Forget it.

 

I agree with OP, we won't have more diversity in supports unless those points are addressed. 

Edited June 26, 2022 by Cynz.9437

[Saharo.5381]

7 hours ago, Cynz.9437 said:

Thief has same health pool as guard and got none of the buffs guards can provide to the group. Also, guards got a lot of mobility this expansion (which was supposed to be trade mark of thieves) w/o so called trade off. Anet threw the whole idea of class identity out of window with every expansion. Forget it.

 

But thief gets stealth, which balances low HP. Aegis/stability would throw thief class identity to the wind as well.

I hate the entire concept of WB (most EOD specs are way off the mark class lore wise imo) so I won't argue with you there, but I certainly wouldn't say the HoT/PoF expacs crapped on class identity, just built on it.

[Cuks.8241]

Aegis should be self only boon.

The problem with Aegis being widespread between professions is that its not like other boons. If you now suddenly have 3 players in the party that can chain Aegis they can completely avoid dmg mechanics, trivialise many encounters. Would it require skill and coordination? Yes. But it would be just to strong.

Remove aegis sharing.  

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

On 6/24/2022 at 4:27 PM, Wolfshade.9251 said:

This is mainly written with endgame group content in mind, focusing especially on damage-support roles and heal-support roles.

Part of the reason why heal-mechanist heavily dominates the current meta, is its easy accessibility to long duration aegis and stability (F2 skill). The only other healing spec which can comfortably provide those 2 boons is heal-firebrand, which dominated the meta pre-EOD. Any other classes providing those boons usually have a payoff associated with them, but those 2 can easily summon these rare boons with no payoff. Of course, guardian can also use a large variety of skills to easily provide additional aegis and stability.

To illustrate my point, I'd like to bring up a few other examples where these rare boons are shared to the subgroup. First up, skills that provide aegis or both at the same time:

• Chronomancer's Well of Precognition, where players must stack inside the well to receive a mere 3s aegis.
• Specter's Well of Bounty, where again players must stack inside the well but this time the boons aren't even guaranteed, they are as a matter of fact the last 2 boons to be granted in the rare case where the players already have all other boons on them. The 10s aegis is generous and 5s of stability is appreciated... if we ever see them applied.
• Thief's/Daredevil's Detonate Plasma, which is only available on a handful of encounters, again granting a generous amount of those boons (10s aegis, 8s stability).
• Ranger's White Tiger skill, which despite its 5s aegis on 30s cooldown, shame that almost nobody brings it to endgame content.

And now the stability options:

• Druid's Natural Convergence (Celestial Avatar 5) granting 2s of stability. Appears fair, the duration is short but the skill is often available and doesn't require tweaking the build in any way.
• Specter's Mind Shock (Shroud 5) granting 3s of stability after a long wind-up time. Requires planning ahead in order to grant the boon at an opportune moment.
• Revenant's Inspiring Reinforcement granting pulsing stability in the affected area. However, taking this skill either means decreased healing output on heal-revenant builds or largely decreased damage output.
• Renegade's Darkrazor's Daring, granting a generous 1s of stability. At least it also has a stunbreak.
• Vindicator's Awakening/Reaver's Rage, again granting a generous 1s of stability with a stunbreak.
• Warrior's Stomp, a surprising 6s stability. Which no warrior would ever bring as it's a damage loss.
• Berserker's Shattering Blow, with a short 2s stability. Surprisingly common in condition builds.
• Soulbeast's Dolyak Stance, with 6s stability. Again, it has a payoff in terms of damage not only because it replaces one of the utility skills leading to damage loss, but also requires a stance-share trait.
• Thief's Blinding Powder, a generous 1s stability at the cost of a utility slot.
• Mesmer's Mantra of Concentration, providing a fair 3s stability at the cost of a utility slot.
• Necromancer's Well of Power, providing a pulsing incredibly short duration stability, while requiring your teammates to stack in the well.
• Scourge's Trail of Anguish, providing a decent 6s stability for the cost of standing directly it scourge's footsteps.
• Herald's True Nature (Dwarf) with 4s of stability.
• Spellbreaker's Full Counter, with a decent 2s of stability on block. If only anyone ever brought Spellbreaker to high-end content.
• Scrapper's Defence Field, providing a decent 6s stability, at the cost of bringing bulwark gyro. Which would only ever be brought by a heal-scrapper due to heavy dps loss.
• Tempest's Overload Earth, granting a decent 4s amount of stability at the cost of locking yourself out of earth attunement.

The highlighted text illustrates any pay-offs necessary to provide those boons. Non-highlighted skills either have no payoffs, or have a duration so pitiful that taking them/using them isn't even considered viable. The underlined skills offer a viable alternative to firebrand/mechanist meta. Not many of those, huh?

And now let's take another look at the overpowered aegis- and stability-granting skills of mechanist and firebrand, which don't even require changing anything in their builds!

• Mechanist's Crisis Zone - enabled by a trait, which any alacrity-providing mechanist is forced to bring anyway. Granting 3s of aegis and an astonishing 15 seconds of stability on a mere 30s cooldown. While the aegis on it may be fair, the 15 seconds of stability at 30s cooldown is downright ridiculous.
• Firebrand's Tome 3: Chapter 1 grants 4s of stability (stacking). Present in every single firebrand build with absolutely no payoff. Although one could argue that the 75s cooldown of tome 3 makes up for it. Not that Tome 3 sees much use besides emergency bubble/stability/aegis spam.
• Firebrand's Tome 3: Epilogue granting both 5s of stability and 4s of aegis (as well as protection and toughness, because why not!). 

The healer meta cannot be diverse, until the access to stability and aegis is re-examined. Perhaps classes with immediate access to stability built into their ever-present toolkit with no payoff should have their duration and cooldowns changed? Maybe duration of boons granted by wells/aoes should be extended to compensate for the need to stack directly in it to receive the boon in the first place? Maybe the idea of pay-offs should play a larger part in endgame balance? Not up to me to suggest solutions, I only want to highlight the glaring issue.

TLDR: Mechanist and Firebrand will continue to dominate the endgame healer meta until access to stability and aegis is re-examined.

I just got done talking about this in the Ranger subforum, how Druid although it now has Alacrity, can never really claim it is a "Full Support" because it has no access to Aegis and now had the Stability removed from the Elite Spirit.

[Wolfshade.9251]

1 minute ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I just got done talking about this in the Ranger subforum, how Druid although it now has Alacrity, can never really claim it is a "Full Support" because it has no access to Aegis and now had the Stability removed from the Elite Spirit.

Indeed. That's even without taking into account the might-providing nerf from grace of the land.

[Cynz.9437]

On 6/26/2022 at 8:13 PM, Saharo Gravewind.5120 said:

 

But thief gets stealth, which balances low HP. Aegis/stability would throw thief class identity to the wind as well.

I hate the entire concept of WB (most EOD specs are way off the mark class lore wise imo) so I won't argue with you there, but I certainly wouldn't say the HoT/PoF expacs crapped on class identity, just built on it.

 

Pretty sure this thread was regarding high end pve content. I don't see how useful stealth (even group stealth) is in raids....

[TexZero.7910]

1 hour ago, Cynz.9437 said:

 

Pretty sure this thread was regarding high end pve content. I don't see how useful stealth (even group stealth) is in raids....

Outside of 2 fringe cases both of which are in wing 3 ?

Almost never and even then it's almost never from a theif as you don't need stealth that last that long.

[Saharo.5381]

On 6/29/2022 at 5:35 AM, Cynz.9437 said:

Pretty sure this thread was regarding high end pve content. I don't see how useful stealth (even group stealth) is in raids....

I'm just giving the logic for why classes have what they have. You're asking Anet to break the core DNA of classes to cater to 10-man squad content. Not sure that's a good solution, and adding aegis/stab to a handful of other classes has implications across all game modes. Nothing to stop a aegis/stab stealthing thief in WvW then.

At some point asking for more and more build diversity is going to directly conflict with class identity/uniqueness. I am more a champion of the latter. I don't want to see a class singularity where almost everyone can do almost anything and prefer boons/skills to have some basis from class fundamentals/lore.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Saharo Gravewind.5120

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

On 6/29/2022 at 4:33 AM, Wolfshade.9251 said:

Indeed. That's even without taking into account the might-providing nerf from grace of the land.

I dropped it entirely in favor of the healing trait.

 

You can still hit 25 Might without much effort using the cat + Spirit +Warhorn, and if you need a little more Rune of the Pack is always a choice and lets you drop a Spirit at the cost of less healing. (As of this update it seems supports are expected to either specialise in boons or healing.)

 

I hope they reconsider this goal of development, because full supports were important to the game. Tempest is in the same position of having to give up some heals for boons.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[Myror.7521]

Am i stupid when i say i would be happy when aegis or blind in general would be less spamable and would need at least good amount of Timing? Im tired of not hit my skills cause thief random blinds me with a like 4 seconds blind. Or a hard hitting skill get blocked by just a random gained 4 sec aegis xd. This boons should finaly be adressed in pvp by anet simply cause they simply take skills that need to be good timed and doing good dmg to straigth 0 dmg xd

Edited July 1, 2022 by Pati.2438