Time to balance aura duration by power level?

[Zuko.7132]

The Big Four

Fire Aura: No one is really complaining about this. Probably the weakest aura, it does add some damage and might, but requires getting hit and doesn't negate damage.

Frost Aura: Inflicts chill and reduced damage by 10%. Stronger than fire aura, but not problematic.

Shocking Aura: Stuns foes attacking within 240 range for 1 sec. 2 second icd per attacker. Shuts down melee attackers. Very strong for stopping damage and setting up counter pressure.

Magnetic Aura: Reflects projectiles for it's duration. Shut downs projectile builds. Clearly very strong.

So, should Magnetic Aura and Shocking Aura have the same cd as Fire Aura and Frost Aura? I'd suggest reducing Shocking Aura and Mag Aura duration to 3 seconds, keeping frost aura at 4 seconds, and either keeping fire aura at 4 seconds or even increasing it to 5. These skills have dramatically different power levels. They should be balanced accordingly. Anet is aware of this as shown by the change of duration for Mag and Shocking aura on Catalyst on Elemental Epitome. It's time for it to be game wide.

Also, I'm aware Chaos Aura and Dark Aura and Light Aura exist. They simply are less common, and I don't think any are as powerful as Magnetic or Shocking Aura, and they are less frequent than fire or frost aura for most classes. If you think they need their duration adjusted let me know.

[Downstate.4697]

I don’t think you want a meta where ranged damage is even stronger. 

[Zuko.7132]

1 minute ago, Downstate.4697 said:

I don’t think you want a meta where ranged damage is even stronger. 

The only range in this meta is cata, because half of it's attacks aren't actual projectiles, untamed because it has unblockable and good melee, scrapper which gets around mag aura through ground targeted grenades with splash damage, and some mes builds that use lasers instead of projectiles or have unblockable. Range builds with actual projectiles shouldn't be shut down this hard. Counter play is okay, ridiculous uptime on total negation is not.

[Flowki.7194]

3 hours ago, Zuko.7132 said:

The Big Four

Fire Aura: No one is really complaining about this. Probably the weakest aura, it does add some damage and might, but requires getting hit and doesn't negate damage.

Frost Aura: Inflicts chill and reduced damage by 10%. Stronger than fire aura, but not problematic.

Shocking Aura: Stuns foes attacking within 240 range for 1 sec. 2 second icd per attacker. Shuts down melee attackers. Very strong for stopping damage and setting up counter pressure.

Magnetic Aura: Reflects projectiles for it's duration. Shut downs projectile builds. Clearly very strong.

So, should Magnetic Aura and Shocking Aura have the same cd as Fire Aura and Frost Aura? I'd suggest reducing Shocking Aura and Mag Aura duration to 3 seconds, keeping frost aura at 4 seconds, and either keeping fire aura at 4 seconds or even increasing it to 5. These skills have dramatically different power levels. They should be balanced accordingly. Anet is aware of this as shown by the change of duration for Mag and Shocking aura on Catalyst on Elemental Epitome. It's time for it to be game wide.

Also, I'm aware Chaos Aura and Dark Aura and Light Aura exist. They simply are less common, and I don't think any are as powerful as Magnetic or Shocking Aura, and they are less frequent than fire or frost aura for most classes. If you think they need their duration adjusted let me know.

 

Fire aura is by far the most usefull and versatile of all the auras, but I would still choose mag aura if forced. You can't just break melee range to stop damage from a ranged class,  you have to break line of sight, and that isn't always possible. With the amount of damage 1 single ranged class can do, I personally wouldn't change mag aura, aside from removing the reflect mechanic. If the damage in the game was reduced over all, you could change mag aura to something like a weakness debuff on hit. Currently, the dmg is just too high for the RNG of weakness.

 

Btw, you just mentioned 4 ranged specs that have work arounds, thats still double the amount of supports that have ''work arounds''. You really need to go play some tempest, use only 1 mag ability, and see how fast you melt. The tempest has to mitigate multiple damage types at the same time, if you open up a weakness liked ranged attacks, which are far harder to mitigae with positioning, it just won't survive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 20, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[Sahne.6950]

can you elaborate why fireaura is the most useful?

[Dadnir.5038]

12 minutes ago, Sahne.6950 said:

can you elaborate why fireaura is the most useful?

I guess you could say that it's the most useful because it's the easiest to get and thus the one you'd focus on in order to proc the numerous "when you get aura" and "on granting aura" traits effects.

As for balancing aura, how about giving a 0.5s ICD per attacker to magnetic aura reflecting effect. I do think that letting multihit projectile attacks somewhat counter the effect should be acceptable balance wise.

[Flowki.7194]

On 6/21/2023 at 8:27 AM, Sahne.6950 said:

can you elaborate why fireaura is the most useful?

It is the easiest one to proc across multiple load outs, it can remove conditions, and can be transmuted to remove even more. It does good damage if condi based, and it procs alot of protection/healing for tempest and stability for cata (feel the burn is a good -40dmg reduction+heal when stunned, or if team mates are in real trouble + does good dmg at 600 radious). It can also be chained for a while on tempest if using focus, feel the burn, overload, fire field > earth combo and now signet. With the weapon changes, the weaver sword will allow the tempest to stay in fire and combo from 4>1 rather than going into fire. So the -40dmg upkeep + 1500 heal per aura use+damage stacks up nicely, although scepter/staff + range is simply better for taking less random aoe spam if playing dps/support.

 

This is partly why I did not understand the stoneheart nerf, the -40 protection to all team mates was the bigger issue in my eyes, cata was not using earth back then if I remember right?

Edited July 5, 2023 by Flowki.7194

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Eles seriously to have 50% of their access to auras straight cut out of the game.

[Sweetbread.3678]

Incoming wall of text, this post got kind of out of control:

Honestly everything needs to be tied to a stat and much more granular than it is. Basically every single thing that makes GW2's pvp and just general combat balance not work is tied to some sort of binary mechanic that requires no spec/gear investment. I get that they want the game to be simple and easy to pick up, but honestly it needs about 8 more stats and a total buff/condi system rework to ever actually be close to being at least able to be balanced in any sort of competitive PvE or PvP mode. However given the game's age, the level of integration these issues have with it's core design, and the amount of financial investment it currently has to actually be able to tackle any of this, this is definitely more of a theoretical exercise than an actual realistic request, but here's the major issues as I see them:

• Everything should be based on a stat investment. Even if something like an Aura or Stealth doesn't count as a Boon, it should still be tied to Concentration (or some new equivalent stat for non-Boon effects) and have a lower inherent effect to make up for it. This is something that should've been obvious to the designers of GW1 and I'm honestly flabbergasted that GW2 has such a core issue with it. In GW1 there would repeatedly be some skill that had stat-scaled damage/healing but some useful, unscaled, binary, secondary active effect that required 0 stat investment, which would inevitably end up being a key part to some broken build until they figured out how to make all parts of the ability scale so that the player couldn't just get that desired secondary effect while ignoring gearing investments. GW2's class design is like 60%+ made up of those kinds of abilities.
   
• There needs to be stats for active defense, mobility, crowd control, etc. ability durations/effectiveness and ways to properly gear to resist/reduce them. It shouldn't be possible to gear entirely glass and then get carried by chaining long-duration/full-immunity active defenses together or be an unkillable bunker that also has the movement to rotate between home and far in 5 seconds. Builds should be limited by how much you can invest into them, not by how overloaded and poorly designed a class/weapon set is. Something being overloaded won't matter if you actually have to make an investment to take advantage of all of its effects instead of being given half of them for free.
   
• On that note, the entire condition and boon system needs a rework to be less binary. Firstly, everything should be granular and based on multiple stacks, like bleed or burning, so that + and - condi/boon duration stats actually have a use. Secondly, there should be no full Condition cleanses/wipes, only ways to remove a certain amount of stacks. For instance Immob should be 10 stacks of Cripple that's either built up to or applied all at once if the player has enough investment in cc effectiveness. And then condi removal would be a combination of a - condi duration stat (that actually has a use now in preventing stacking effect intensity over the course of a fight) and then active cleanses scaled off of that - duration stat that either clear a certain number of condi stacks across the board (e.g. -2 stacks to all condis, which would bring your 7 stacks of Bleed and 3 of Burning to 5 and 1 respectively) or target a specific effect (e.g. -10 to Cripple and Chilled, which would effectively be a targeted full Immob clear unless your enemy overstacked the debuffs beyond 100%). This way you realistically have the ability for speccing for passive condi defense that actually matters, it gets rid of the brain-dead condi vomit vs full condi wipe vomit system atm, and cuts down on cheese like Immob instantly getting it's virtual death sentence of a full effect and then immediately being covered by 5+ useless cover conditions while also cutting down on the reverse situation where your Immob is immediately fully cleared through sheer freak luck and random cleanse spam.
   
• The same goes for active defenses and buffs. Stability is probably one of the worst binary systems I've ever seen. Either there needs to be (ideally imo, but admittedly an unrealistic amount of work) some sort of secondary Sekiro style poise break bar that scales the effectiveness of received CC and outgoing active defenses that can be whittled down with Defiance Break damage, or (more realistically) all active defenses need to just be stackable Boons that can obey the same rules as Conditions (e.g. full physical damage immunity being 10 stacks of Protection). Give people a way to actually resist CC beyond having 80 Stability/stun-break utilities, while also giving CC/Defiance Break a purpose outside of 100-0ing squishies by letting it break down the active defenses of Bunkers.

Edited July 5, 2023 by Sweetbread.3678

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

On 7/5/2023 at 4:58 PM, Sweetbread.3678 said:

Everything should be based on a stat investment.

Except perpetual Aura spam because this is working as intended.