Power Budget needs to include intrinsic stats

[the krytan assassin.9235]

6 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

In case you haven't been paying attention catalyst is actually common enough in PVP which is why they nerfed it. The minor trait applies stats and hammer earth orb actually has damage reduction. Tempest support is also common now after the buffs.

Weaver has Master's Fortitude and barriers if you trait for it (hence water weaver in PVP of the past); tempest has a high protection uptime to offset the armor deficit. On top of this we now have jade bot cores. The main drawback to PVE elementalist right now is your damage tanks if you take defensives because so much damage comes from utilities and traits while reliance on boons for the attunement swapping doesn't help this. There was a time that the tempest benchmark for fresh air was using Air+water+tempest and some weaver benchmarks ran arcane instead of air or something to that effect.

Any power build could easily be run in Marauder gear and any condi build can typically be run in some pieces of ritualist or even plaguedoctor. If the absolute performance and consistency of elementalist were higher then health would be a non-issue. Right now, that isn't remotely the case even if you count staff condi weaver at 36-40K benchmark with Weave Self rotation , 38K scepter condi weaver, 33k (36K large) condi DPS tempest, or 37K Power Catalyst played perfectly along with something akin to 35K on power sword weaver. It used to be that you could hit 36K+ on power tempest, 40K on condi weaver, 33K condi tempest camping fire, power weaver 39K+. One of the main things Arenanet did that was counterintuitive was nerfing autoattack on hammer when most benchmarks have minimal autoattacks. Lightning orb and overload air RNG is another example of a consistency problem. There's also the consistency problem for alac tempest due to how alacrity is applied on alac tempest.

Arenanet has already changed many of the incoming damage sources to be health percentage based for 10 man content. It's 5 man content such as fractals which has not been updated. The large problem with fractals is the NPNG / Vengeance / Flux Bomb instabilities are counter to elementalists and unlike power engineers , mesmers, condi scourges, condi ren, etc they don't have boon rips or enough range if using swords or dagger mainhand. 

If you think health matters more than active defenses, then I don't know what to tell you since firebrand also has 11K health.
 

Lololol what are you trying to say? If you take a defensive trait on Weaver you'll get higher surviveability? If you play a kitten dps Tempest build you'll get some protection? If you gear marauders/ritualist you dont lose any dps at all?

 

I agree that hammer Catalyst got some automatic defence integrated in its system, hence why dps ele finally sees some play in pvp after a long absence. 

Even full marauders ele on wvw is squishy AF, since it competed with other classes picking marauders. 

 

The performance and consistancy of the ele are often being dragged down because its squishyness, hence why it is called the downstate class. I agree that Guardian has decent surviveability even though hes running no vit/toughness. But lets not pretend that Guardian hasn't been Anet's spoiled child over the last 10 years. Also the amount of free group utility they gain isn't matched by any other profession. 

Both thief and ele struggle alot to be relevant in PvE/group WvW since their natural defensive class mechanics simply don't work there anymore. 

[Infusion.7149]

On 10/30/2022 at 3:00 AM, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Lololol what are you trying to say? If you take a defensive trait on Weaver you'll get higher surviveability? If you play a kitten dps Tempest build you'll get some protection? If you gear marauders/ritualist you dont lose any dps at all?

 

I agree that hammer Catalyst got some automatic defence integrated in its system, hence why dps ele finally sees some play in pvp after a long absence. 

Even full marauders ele on wvw is squishy AF, since it competed with other classes picking marauders. 

 

The performance and consistancy of the ele are often being dragged down because its squishyness, hence why it is called the downstate class. I agree that Guardian has decent surviveability even though hes running no vit/toughness. But lets not pretend that Guardian hasn't been Anet's spoiled child over the last 10 years. Also the amount of free group utility they gain isn't matched by any other profession. 

Both thief and ele struggle alot to be relevant in PvE/group WvW since their natural defensive class mechanics simply don't work there anymore. 

Carrion and ritualist gear specter are far more resilient than an elementalist build normally is. However, that's more due to shroud than just gear.

Regardless, the weaver recently gained a barrier boost , tempest isn't forced to be in truly melee (130 range) due to builds relying on dagger or scepter.

If they are balancing based off health it doesn't really make sense unless the damage incoming is not percentage based. You are talking about mostly insta-down mechanics that matter in strikes or raids. The rest is going to be healed just as quickly if it doesn't downstate you. In WVW and PVP people would never run tempest if what you're saying is true but in fact after the core guard nerfs and tempest buffs it has seen play at the highest levels.

 

[the krytan assassin.9235]

2 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Carrion and ritualist gear specter are far more resilient than an elementalist build normally is. However, that's more due to shroud than just gear.

Regardless, the weaver recently gained a barrier boost , tempest isn't forced to be in truly melee (130 range) due to builds relying on dagger or scepter.

If they are balancing based off health it doesn't really make sense unless the damage incoming is not percentage based. You are talking about mostly insta-down mechanics that matter in strikes or raids. The rest is going to be healed just as quickly if it doesn't downstate you. In WVW and PVP people would never run tempest if what you're saying is true but in fact after the core guard nerfs and tempest buffs it has seen play at the highest levels.

 

Ye ofcourse specter is more resilient then ele, its got a fcking 2nd health bar. (Exactly the point i was trying to make)

The barrier in Weaver is totally negligible, its only 500 barrier on every dual attack

Also the vast majority of damage isn't percentage based, i really dont get your point. 

Tempest is usually running full minstrel in WvW so the lack of armor/healthpool matter alot less. Still Tempest are often one of the first supports that die in zergfights. If you want to see the impact the low health and armor pool has on ele you should take a look at Weaver. Good luck finding any Weaver in any serious guild raids nowadays. 

[Infusion.7149]

1 hour ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

Ye ofcourse specter is more resilient then ele, its got a fcking 2nd health bar. (Exactly the point i was trying to make)

The barrier in Weaver is totally negligible, its only 500 barrier on every dual attack

Also the vast majority of damage isn't percentage based, i really dont get your point. 

Tempest is usually running full minstrel in WvW so the lack of armor/healthpool matter alot less. Still Tempest are often one of the first supports that die in zergfights. If you want to see the impact the low health and armor pool has on ele you should take a look at Weaver. Good luck finding any Weaver in any serious guild raids nowadays. 

 

Shroud is actually meaningless in PVE with healers since it's actually a liability on power reaper. With specter since you're ranged and also outputting barriers it's less of an issue  the health pool solely exists for consume shadows. In PVP/WVW the shroud is not a great thing unless you actually can avoid taking damage since it means your damage is only going to be from your weaponsets and utilities once depleted.

Damage incoming sometimes is a percentage of health. I tested the strike mission Cold War when it first came out and that is an example of percentage based damage. Fractals however aren't percentage based for adds but agony is. Deimos Mind Crush will kill you even if you had 50K health ; Samarog soul swarm does 40% health ; Vale Guardian greens do 80% of your max health ; the Conjured Amalgamate clap is actually negated by "Rebound". More health isn't a panacea to everything. If it was then if power elementalists had enough damage you could run marauder's for example.

You need to think about when elementalists were actually used. They're being used in WVW right now and PVP as well as tempest supports but in PVE when they had competitive damage they were run. Increasing health pool doesn't suddenly make them attractive. When raids were still new tempests were run as DPS because they did the most damage. When weaver was most popular it was when power weaver did 39K+ on sword and used air+ fire attunement , also doing 20K+ auto on air attunement. (The current condi weaver is recommended to be using fire+earth with scepter but the rotation without weave self is ~36K benchmark and the weave self staff rotation only hits 40K on large hitboxes.) Even in WVW , before meteor and lava font were nerfed we saw weaver far more often. The most catalysts I ever saw was when Raul had a 46K benchmark up despite the damage being contingent on massive hitboxes due to how hammer orbs worked at the time.

What you're essentially suggesting is that instead of making the glass cannon back into a glass cannon that Arenanet should start making it less glass. That's something that can already be done (see water weaver, condi tempest, PVP catalyst) via gear and utilities/traits, whereas competitive damage when run as a damage spec isn't at this moment. Nobody is going to run a <38K DPS elementalist in full glass with no boon output if they can run something 16K+ health class with less thinking involved to attain that damage while also spitting out boons passively. That is especially true for sword weaver which can't even deal any real ranged damage. On top of that the elementalist autoattacks are currently notoriously low compared to other classes which means playing at a decent level is far more demanding.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[the krytan assassin.9235]

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

What you're essentially suggesting is that instead of making the glass cannon back into a glass cannon that Arenanet should start making it less glass.

All im saying is that i think the elementalist should be compensated for their lower health and armor pool. (The power budget needing to include intrinsic stats)  This can be done in 3 ways: increase the damage output in order to deal more damage then every other class, give ele more standard utilities that greatly improve its support/personal surviveability, increase its health and armor pool. 

Giving the ele more standard utilities will be pretty hard since its not part of any core mechanics. Having the elementalist deal Lets say 3k more damage than its competitors will only result in people complaining about ele dps being to high/their own being to low. Also it isn't really fair for other professions to limit their accessibility to glass cannon builds. 

So that leaves us with increasing its health and armor pool. Like i mentioned earlier on, the health and armor pool do not make sense for most elite specs. Weaver has pretty much no extra surviveability (xcept for ~50 hps on Barrier) and no access to water attunement (unless you're willing to waste 20-30k dps). Increasing health and armor pool would simply set an even ground for all classes to be able to deal the same amount of dps as other professions (depending on the rest of the build ofc). 

[Infusion.7149]

58 minutes ago, the krytan assassin.9235 said:

All im saying is that i think the elementalist should be compensated for their lower health and armor pool. (The power budget needing to include intrinsic stats)  This can be done in 3 ways: increase the damage output in order to deal more damage then every other class, give ele more standard utilities that greatly improve its support/personal surviveability, increase its health and armor pool. 

Giving the ele more standard utilities will be pretty hard since its not part of any core mechanics. Having the elementalist deal Lets say 3k more damage than its competitors will only result in people complaining about ele dps being to high/their own being to low. Also it isn't really fair for other professions to limit their accessibility to glass cannon builds. 

So that leaves us with increasing its health and armor pool. Like i mentioned earlier on, the health and armor pool do not make sense for most elite specs. Weaver has pretty much no extra surviveability (xcept for ~50 hps on Barrier) and no access to water attunement (unless you're willing to waste 20-30k dps). Increasing health and armor pool would simply set an even ground for all classes to be able to deal the same amount of dps as other professions (depending on the rest of the build ofc). 

It is the wrong line of thinking because if it is doing 37K with 4 attunements by expert players a ludicrous amount of defenses and health bonuses would be required to attract performance-minded players that aren't ele mains. The only way DPS elementalist will see play is if it is the absolute best damage ingame or imperceptibly close to the top (talking about condi sword weaver and power catalyst DPS mainly, but this also applies to FA tempest in terms of large hitbox). You can bump the health to 20K health and it does essentially nothing for it in PVE. There is zero doubt about this so long as Arenanet hangs on to the idea of balancing with respect to peak performance. Nobody is going to spend the effort to learn to play elementalist if they don't already play it. Then you have the option of having people that are trying to adapt to it on marauder or using defensive utilities.

If the damage is low how are you going to slot defensive utilities? A while ago there was a "flexible" sword power weaver with marauder or something that did 31K DPS on hardstuck site because it ran 2 or 3 defensive utilities. That is not going to work, we need builds like 33K DPS condi tempest with fire camp rotation as an option for elementalists but also 40K+ DPS 4 attunement power catalyst (since it now does not output quickness unless traited) and 40K+ condi sword weaver with 4 attunements and weave self (since it doesn't spit out boons for other people at all and is melee). Tempest doesn't need to be top DPS for ele, in fact it probably shouldn't be ; 34K+ with a condi scepter build is passable but reasonable so it is the closest to where it should be since you still need air attunement which makes it a 3 attunement build.

Nobody reasonable complained about elementalist DPS being too high since tempest dominance in HOT or core warrior+ elementalist dungeon metas. It was mostly balance predicated on the "large hitbox" hypothetical that has resulted in nerfs whether it was to weaver, power tempest, staff in general, and catalyst. If the balance is instead shifted to average or median performance by players then elementalist DPS would need to bumped up far higher , with the caution that the DPS ceiling attainable by benchmarks can be kept in check by making awkward stacking buffs less "all or nothing" (see Power Overwhelming , Empowered Empowerment).

The exact same problem happened to Jade Dynamo 3 kit condi mech. It was 39K+ and now 37K+ and you don't see it as much as the easy mode rifle mech. If Condi Untamed can exist at 42K with a hard rotation (and ~22K health with jade bot core) then something like sword condi weaver with 4 attunement swapping should be close to that since it is also melee whereas the condi untamed currently uses axes.

There's also the usability aspect in that some parts of elementalist actively work against you. For example, why does Pyromancer's Puissance remove 10 stacks of might on weaver when you need that might stacking to even make use of Power Overwhelming? It's unintuitive and I don't think any class has an effect that actually works against the traitline it is in. Top it off with extremely low autoattacks on water attunement even when the autoattack doesn't do anything special (see scepter, sword on weaver, dagger, etc) and we have a far lower damage floor when put in the hands of inexperienced elementalists. Even air attunement has low autos if you are on scepter or staff despite no added effects on those weapons' auto. Those super low autoattacks don't help experienced players and only drag down the newer people . The same goes for Empowered Empowerment, which similar to Elements of Rage and Fresh Air has a time window but also requires buff stacks.

The second part about usability is you have to just look at condi alac tempest to see that toughness and vitality isn't enough to make it attractive. The alacrity output mechanism via overloads is far more convoluted than pressing a single button on renegade (condi ren does 40K DPS by the way), autoing on mace with alac mech, spamming ambushes on mirage, using spirit skills on druid/untamed, spamming wells on specter (which is also bad), etc.

Edit: oh and there's the fact that you'll be possibly actively trolling your group when there's a toughness tanking mechanism if you run scepter condi builds and keep rock barrier up.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[the krytan assassin.9235]

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

It is the wrong line of thinking because if it is doing 37K with 4 attunements by expert players a ludicrous amount of defenses and health bonuses would be required to attract performance-minded players that aren't ele mains. The only way DPS elementalist will see play is if it is the absolute best damage ingame or imperceptibly close to the top (talking about condi sword weaver and power catalyst DPS mainly, but this also applies to FA tempest in terms of large hitbox).

I agree that there are plenty of builds that are currently underperforming in ele. There are alot of factors that should determine the amount of damage a class should do: a lack of support/self defence skills, condi damage, melee attacks, very difficult rotation, major dps loss in suboptimal rotation, limited access to defiance break, reliance on stationary boss for aoe fields, forced movement skills in rotation (like burning Retreat), lack of dodges, reliance on bigger hitbox. 

Most ele builds tick alot of these boxes, but only deal mediocre damage so therefore should have some sort of dps increase. 

All im saying is that the whole health and armor pool debate has been a total mess for the last 10 years. Either classes complain about their own class underperforming or elementalist overperforming whenever ele deals more damage then the other classes. Also its simply unfair to give some classes less dps potential simply because Anet decided to give the class a bigger health/armor pool 10 years ago. 

My suggestion therefore would be to just trash this outdated mechanic by giving all professions the same amount of armor/health. If Anet/the community is constantly in disagreement on how this mechanic should be implemented, it is arguably simply a bad mechanic that should be discarded if possible. 

[Jski.6180]

I think it comes down to this if we want classes to be played as they want you cant have a class simply having an build in + over other class. If we truly want more builds to be viable in gw2 we need to have classes to have the same hp and def but all give up effects should be added to maybe a new "gear slot" that you can chose to have def or go all in attk. We have no belt or something even odder.

I am of the mind all classes should be 15k hp and 2k armor base line if you wish to build tankly then you should be able to on any class but in no way should you have good dmg if you do chose to build tankly for any class.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

Just so people understand what a Power Budget is:

You give all classes “Eames of power” to work with where for example 100 Eames is the budget. Each class does different things and so these Eames are distributed to the different things until their budget is full.

Example: you have 100 Eames of power

player Alice might buy 40 apples, 30 bananas and 30 bottles of water

player Bob might buy 10 hamburgers and 20 bags Of potato chips and 70 fountain sodas

 

All together they spent 100 Eames and are deemed “balanced.”
 

For people who are poignant, Can identify the issue of using a power budget…let’s see who can pick that up!

Edited November 2, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Jski.6180]

57 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Just so people understand what a Power Budget is:

You give all classes “Eames of power” to work with where for example 100 Eames is the budget. Each class does different things and so these Eames are distributed to the different things until their budget is full.

Example: you have 100 Eames of power

player Alice might buy 40 apples, 30 bananas and 30 bottles of water

player Bob might buy 10 hamburgers and 20 bags Of potato chips and 70 fountain sodas

 

All together they spent 100 Eames and are deemed “balanced.”
 

For people who are poignant, Can identify the issue of using a power budget…let’s see who can pick that up!

Try to take away the +10 that a class has because of old system ppl freak out.

The game cant be balanced as long as there are armor types and class hp types. Skills will always have to be update and there will always be a moving target to there effects and numbers. Anet failed the KISS rule.

[solemn.9670]

On 10/28/2022 at 9:44 PM, Kodama.6453 said:

These stats are already considered.

Elementalist has one of the best mobility and damage mitigation potentials in the entire game. It doesn't have the raw defensive stats, but instead gets tons of active defenses.

Also the fact that elementalist basically has 4 weapon sets always available as their class mechanic.

Go play piano on ele for 2 hours vs current meta EoD builds, then switch and play a current meta EoD build vs ele. Ele needs those things to be even remotely competitive.

Being a more difficult class is not having this considered properly. OP is correct, eles have known this for years.

[Sylosi.6503]

..........................

Edited November 2, 2022 by Sylosi.6503

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

9 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Just so people understand what a Power Budget is:

You give all classes “Eames of power” to work with where for example 100 Eames is the budget. Each class does different things and so these Eames are distributed to the different things until their budget is full.

Example: you have 100 Eames of power

player Alice might buy 40 apples, 30 bananas and 30 bottles of water

player Bob might buy 10 hamburgers and 20 bags Of potato chips and 70 fountain sodas

 

All together they spent 100 Eames and are deemed “balanced.”
 

For people who are poignant, Can identify the issue of using a power budget…let’s see who can pick that up!

Honestly, I think the whole "power budget" metaphor is just a convoluted way of saying "we don't want individual skills to be too powerful."  The reason being that many elements of a skill are largely incongruent, and thus nigh incomparable.  I.E. how do you quantify attack radius with evade duration?

[Sunshine.5014]

3 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

Honestly, I think the whole "power budget" metaphor is just a convoluted way of saying "we don't want individual skills to be too powerful."  The reason being that many elements of a skill are largely incongruent, and thus nigh incomparable.  I.E. how do you quantify attack radius with evade duration?

Attack radius is way less important than evade duration.

Attack radius is on the level of piercing, with piercing slightly stronger. You can hit 2 different targets that's pretty far apart. Think MO raid soliders.

Evade on the other hand is stronger, on the level of Dodge, Block, Reflect.

The main thing to keep in mind is: the number can be tweaked. It's the mechanics that need good power Budget. A piercing 5 target may be similar to a 360 AoE skill. If they are still imbalance, tweak the skill range or animation/after cast time for example.

[Hotride.2187]

Weird to use the 2 most useless professions as an example, with ele being slightly better at wvw roaming (cele) and war seeing slightly more play in pve instanced content (since its easier). And ofc ele recently getting in the conquest meta (war was there too before it got gutted again).

But for ele in particular a fire weaver or a support (or even a bruiser) tempest is anything but squishy with all the evade frames and barrier. My war gets facetanked both in wvw and in conquest by eles, aside from the FA build (which really is the glass ele build).

Getting every profession the same stats is going to be the next pointless and unfinished mass change, where the actual problems in profession skills are not further balanced around the mass change. Like the resistance rework, like the CC dmg rework. IMO pointless to ask for it and the outcome will highly likely be even worse than current state.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Dadnir.5038]

I do believe the "power budget" already take into account "intrinsic stats".

The reason elementalist have a lower amount of total intrinsic stats is that no matter which weaponset he take, he will have access to the water attunment that's heavily biased toward sustain. And that is without taking into account the fact that all weaponsets have access to some manner of hard CC, defensive conditions and active defense.

On another hand, a warrior need to take a single specific off hand weapon for a ticklish amount of extra sustain (warhorn) while it's other weaponset tend to be more "specialized". I'm not saying that there isn't some amount of active defense and defensive condition baked in a few of these weaponsets but fact is that a warrior can run around with weaponsets that offer him absolutely no damage mitigation, hard CC and/or sustain.

I know it's a pain to accept this fact but the elementalist's "lower intrinsic stat budget" is already compensated by a "higher intrinsic sustain budget".

 

If one is willing to go even more in depth, one will realize that the elementalist's healing skills average CD is lower than the warrior's healing skill average CD, that conjure weapon can be a huge variable in favor of the elementalist, that warrior can gain a lot out of generating might, that elementalist can get just as much from rotating through their attunments... etc.

The depth of a "power budget" isn't as simple as saying "They have 8k more health and 10% more base damage mitigation! I'm obviously below in power budget!". And it's true for all professions, as each profession have their own strength and weakness imbeded within their "power budget".

[draxynnic.3719]

2 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I do believe the "power budget" already take into account "intrinsic stats".

The reason elementalist have a lower amount of total intrinsic stats is that no matter which weaponset he take, he will have access to the water attunment that's heavily biased toward sustain. And that is without taking into account the fact that all weaponsets have access to some manner of hard CC, defensive conditions and active defense.

On another hand, a warrior need to take a single specific off hand weapon for a ticklish amount of extra sustain (warhorn) while it's other weaponset tend to be more "specialized". I'm not saying that there isn't some amount of active defense and defensive condition baked in a few of these weaponsets but fact is that a warrior can run around with weaponsets that offer him absolutely no damage mitigation, hard CC and/or sustain.

I know it's a pain to accept this fact but the elementalist's "lower intrinsic stat budget" is already compensated by a "higher intrinsic sustain budget".

This is true, but I think the problem is that the benefit of this varies depending on mode. At one end of the spectrum, sPvP generally requires players to be fairly self-sufficient and it's hard to spike people down without coordinated efforts from your team, so elementalist self-sustain does fairly well there. On the opposite end, in raid-like content, you're generally expected to focus on doing your job and letting the healer focus on sustaining you, or you're worrying about big hits that are a credible threat of spiking you right down with low health. That's one of the areas where the current elementalist balance doesn't work: elementalists don't really bring anything to the table that other professions don't, but their intrinsic stats make them harder to stay up. It also doesn't help that they require complex rotations to keep up with other professions, meaning that in addition to being more brittle, players might have less attention to spare on survival because they need to focus more on rotations.

Not sure how to solve this. The jade core appears to be a move to decrease the gap between low-health and high-health professions. Introducing more access to various forms of damage reduction for elementalist, primarily but not exclusively of a selfish nature, would probably also help.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

10 hours ago, Sunshine.5014 said:

Attack radius is way less important than evade duration.

Attack radius is on the level of piercing, with piercing slightly stronger. You can hit 2 different targets that's pretty far apart. Think MO raid soliders.

Evade on the other hand is stronger, on the level of Dodge, Block, Reflect.

The main thing to keep in mind is: the number can be tweaked. It's the mechanics that need good power Budget. A piercing 5 target may be similar to a 360 AoE skill. If they are still imbalance, tweak the skill range or animation/after cast time for example.

ya but how would you compare them under the purviee of a budget which is a single value.

 

attack radius and evade duration like blood said are incongruent. They are so separated from one another that it is impossible to parametrize them in a logical fashion. Does 100 radius = .25 evade duration? How can you check that to be true? Does .25 evade duration = 5s stability? Does that mean 5s stability = 100 radius then?

 

the attempt to power budget these abstract mechanics will lead to mostly nonsense so blood is probably on the money here. They are probably going to just budget stats…leave skills mostly alone in that regard  and develop some arbitrary schema for the way they decide to adjust things.
 

additionally Stats, Hp and Armor are also incongruent with a power budget. The game in some sense already has this in place…players have access to the same stat sets and skills are balanced with a respect toward health point and armor differences which is a power budget of those elements. If you have max Health and max armor you are a warrior and your abilities are limited to doing xyz. If you have the minimal health and minimal armor you are an elementalist and are limited to doing abc.

So HP and armor and stats are already budgeted with respect to the skills they have access to so what other arbitrary budget schema could they come up with that isn’t already there?

Edited November 3, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Dadnir.5038]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

This is true, but I think the problem is that the benefit of this varies depending on mode. At one end of the spectrum, sPvP generally requires players to be fairly self-sufficient and it's hard to spike people down without coordinated efforts from your team, so elementalist self-sustain does fairly well there. On the opposite end, in raid-like content, you're generally expected to focus on doing your job and letting the healer focus on sustaining you, or you're worrying about big hits that are a credible threat of spiking you right down with low health. That's one of the areas where the current elementalist balance doesn't work: elementalists don't really bring anything to the table that other professions don't, but their intrinsic stats make them harder to stay up. It also doesn't help that they require complex rotations to keep up with other professions, meaning that in addition to being more brittle, players might have less attention to spare on survival because they need to focus more on rotations.

Not sure how to solve this. The jade core appears to be a move to decrease the gap between low-health and high-health professions. Introducing more access to various forms of damage reduction for elementalist, primarily but not exclusively of a selfish nature, would probably also help.

Isn't the jade bot disabled in PvE instanced content?

But well, I'll agree that the elements that make the "power budget" of each profession have a "value" that can vary a lot based on what the player do. In fact, I've made a reply on another thread not so long ago on that very subject which attracted lots of "confused" emote.

That said, keep in mind that even elementalist have LI builds, they do not need finger breaking rotations to keep up with other, they only need those complex rotations when they want to achieve optimal result on optimal dps builds.

[poop.4183]

More skills also means more useless skills : take staff , if you go full damage power , you mainly go fire/air and maybe earth , what skills do damage in water ? ah yes skill 2 .

Ele in anet minds is meant to be a swiss knife , but that point out it's not performing in a specific role .

What i said up can be said for all weapons skills , only hammer for catalyst is mainly focused on dps , all the other weapons have , mobilty , heals , support and damage skills , so having 20 weapons skills is ok ? but locked behind attunements and half of them being useless if you choose a specific role is a burden.

"Isn't the jade bot disabled in PvE instanced content?"

No it's not , jade bot feel really like a selling point for the expansion ... other masteries being boring/useless , zippeline could be mushrooms springers , Turtle is fun but useless (only used for a few eod metas) , and i won' speak about fishing (best way for me to fall asleep in 5min.) , only the jade bot stands out and is uber usefull.

Edited November 3, 2022 by poop.4183

[Jski.6180]

5 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I do believe the "power budget" already take into account "intrinsic stats".

The reason elementalist have a lower amount of total intrinsic stats is that no matter which weaponset he take, he will have access to the water attunment that's heavily biased toward sustain. And that is without taking into account the fact that all weaponsets have access to some manner of hard CC, defensive conditions and active defense.

On another hand, a warrior need to take a single specific off hand weapon for a ticklish amount of extra sustain (warhorn) while it's other weaponset tend to be more "specialized". I'm not saying that there isn't some amount of active defense and defensive condition baked in a few of these weaponsets but fact is that a warrior can run around with weaponsets that offer him absolutely no damage mitigation, hard CC and/or sustain.

I know it's a pain to accept this fact but the elementalist's "lower intrinsic stat budget" is already compensated by a "higher intrinsic sustain budget".

 

If one is willing to go even more in depth, one will realize that the elementalist's healing skills average CD is lower than the warrior's healing skill average CD, that conjure weapon can be a huge variable in favor of the elementalist, that warrior can gain a lot out of generating might, that elementalist can get just as much from rotating through their attunments... etc.

The depth of a "power budget" isn't as simple as saying "They have 8k more health and 10% more base damage mitigation! I'm obviously below in power budget!". And it's true for all professions, as each profession have their own strength and weakness imbeded within their "power budget".

That like forgetting classes dont have an healing skill even if they are full dmg and its not like healing power varys from class to class. That would be an ideal though light armor classes getting more healing power but that just not the game atm. The only thing that truly varys from class to class is hp / armor every thing else skill related simply gets balanced out to where is no longer an class avatages. That why class hp / armor is very out dated and part of a very old system.

 

If its only 8K and 10% more base dmg mitigation then it should be meaningless and it must be removed to better balance the game out.

 

That is an ideal though lower hp = more base boon duration and lower armor = more base healing power. So you dont lose the "def" roll of the added bouse of an class and you dont power creep the dmg of classes. Its also better to have support on lower def classes over all.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Jski.6180

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

You know honestly lets just do the power budget exercise right now and see for ourselves how it works out in principle:

 

For now lets ignore the existence of the skills

 

You have a Warrior with 20,000 HP, 1500 armor, and you have an Elementalist with 10,000 HP and 1000 armor, and they are both running Marauders Stats. Our job is to budget the amulets stats.

 

Clearly we can't distribute the stats within the amulet in a way that is both fair to both Elementalist and the Warrior. The warrior will always have the most HP, the most armor, and the most damage against the Elementalist when running this stat set, and altering the stat will change it for both of them...so this leaves altering distributions of stats out of the question.

 

The thing we have to budget is therefor the HP and the armor... say we did something like this:

 

Warrior 10,000 HP Armor 1500 : Elementalist 20,000 HP, 1000 armor.

 

The above would be a "fair" power budget distribution when they are both running marauder stats. Does this sound good to anyone? It doesn't sound good to me.

 

The only type of distribution that would be remotely "fair" other than this is to make them all the same (15,000 HP, 1250 armor) and this is homogenization of the game.

 

Because of the above, the only other option to budget here now are skills...meaning trying to parametrize abstract mechanics...meaning increasing and decreasing the raw values of their abilities (without an actual way to paramatrize and compare them to one another)...has this not what Anet has been doing over the past 10 years?

Edited November 3, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Isn't the jade bot disabled in PvE instanced content?

The boon protocols, fast res, and a lot of the other stuff associated with the mastery is disabled, but the vitality increase from the core is not (at least I'm fairly certain my health goes up in raids when I remember to slot the tier 10 core - not in a position to verify right now).

1 hour ago, Jski.6180 said:

That like forgetting classes dont have an healing skill even if they are full dmg and its not like healing power varys from class to class. That would be an ideal though light armor classes getting more healing power but that just not the game atm. The only thing that truly varys from class to class is hp / armor every thing else skill related simply gets balanced out to where is no longer an class avatages. That why class hp / armor is very out dated and part of a very old system.

 

If its only 8K and 10% more base dmg mitigation then it should be meaningless and it must be removed to better balance the game out.

 

That is an ideal though lower hp = more base boon duration and lower armor = more base healing power. So you dont lose the "def" roll of the added bouse of an class and you dont power creep the dmg of classes. Its also better to have support on lower def classes over all.

Healing power doesn't vary between professions, but things like base healing value, healing power coefficient, availability of other sources of healing in other skills and traits, and availability of measures to decrease or even prevent damage from occurring in the first place absolutely does vary. Well-played elementalists are hard to take down in sPvP without significant focus despite their low health and armour (and don't overestimate that armour, the difference between light and heavy isn't a big difference in damage taken) because it rarely takes long for them to go from 'nearly dead' to 'back to full health', and they're often slippery enough to buy themselves that time. Problem is, that's an advantage that often fails to translate into elementalist performance in PvE.

[Dadnir.5038]

2 hours ago, Jski.6180 said:

That like forgetting classes dont have an healing skill even if they are full dmg and its not like healing power varys from class to class.

I think you didn't really get a clear picture of what you're commenting on so i'll just do as if you didn't answer my post.

[solemn.9670]

9 hours ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Weird to use the 2 most useless professions as an example, with ele being slightly better at wvw roaming (cele) and war seeing slightly more play in pve instanced content (since its easier). And ofc ele recently getting in the conquest meta (war was there too before it got gutted again).

But for ele in particular a fire weaver or a support (or even a bruiser) tempest is anything but squishy with all the evade frames and barrier. My war gets facetanked both in wvw and in conquest by eles, aside from the FA build (which really is the glass ele build).

Getting every profession the same stats is going to be the next pointless and unfinished mass change, where the actual problems in profession skills are not further balanced around the mass change. Like the resistance rework, like the CC dmg rework. IMO pointless to ask for it and the outcome will highly likely be even worse than current state.

Ya but dude no one wants to play full cele fire weaver or full cele fire cata all the time anymore. It was cool for maybe a year, bc weaver was broken, it's been like 5 years since pof release and I'd really enjoy playing something other than cele stats on 70% of builds and whenever I don't run cele I suffer fighting other cele players or builds that can be good with less stats.

Sure we have fa scepter builds whoopty doo lol I want to be able to get creative without being punished for not just playing boring fire weaver