The state of Celestial stats and relations to "stat stick"/"stat steriod" Traits & utilities.

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

Hey, nice to meet you all.

My name on this site doesn't really matter, but those who have met me know me by the name of Nix or Kyvan.

I would like to discuss the ever-lying problem of Celestial stat gear and its underlying issues with traits/abilities and utilities that provide bonus stats. As of right now, we all know that a lot of classes, if not all, are abusing celestial for not only its versatile access to every stat but also because it provides almost around 2000 stats more than the standard 4-stat item. It generally seems like a no-brainer to someone who just wants results.

My issue with celestial stats is not because of how much it gives, but how much it stacks with other stat-related traits and utilities and how it can compete with focus-driven stat pieces. Celestial intentions seem to originally be a jack of all trades, master of none, and to give some access to certain classes that had hybrid weapons or gimmicks that used both damage sides (condi and power).

However, it's being used as an all-purpose mega machine. The fact that it gives enough stats to wreak havoc on other stat-based armor is what seems to amplify celestial so much. The added stats from traits/utilities/Sigil/abilities allow a person to output just as much damage as a regular power or condi build, or be a super tank or super heal. It may not be the best at its job, but it's up there doing that role while being able to handle the other side with decent impact.

My proposal for how to balance celestial is not gutting it or nerfing it to the ground, but to have it set up similarly to other armor types. Just like 3 & 4-stat items, there should be a primary and a secondary stat... however, for celestial, there should be a primary/secondary/tertiary stat. We do have some examples of stats where they even go to Quaternary stats; these examples are Berserker & Valkyrie and Dire & Rabid, to name a few.

The best way to balance celestial is to make the offensive stats the primary stat, while the things that augment said stat are secondary, and then finally make the tank stats its tertiary. Now you design stats for hybrid damage and give it a role rather than making it a jack of all trades.

The other question is, what if people want all the stats but want to be more tanky? Well, make another 9-stat item & reverse, and call it something else. Vice versa for supportive-like stats. This is just an idea of a way to balance the stat rather than "delete x" or "get rid of y," and allows people to use the stat to try and round out their build more than defaulting to a full set of celestial.

I know this may not be a perfect solution, but it's an idea to start, and personally, I don't oppose keeping the stat line around, but at the same time, I'm not okay with simply killing it. There are uses even outside of WvW where it can still be balanced or useful.

It's honestly up to Anet how they would want to rebalance celestial stats.

[SleepyBat.9034]

Cele or no cele harbinger will still be broken. I'd like to see some depowercreep to the EoD specs.

[CafPow.1542]

30 minutes ago, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

because it provides almost around 2000 stats more than the standard 4-stat item

Without going to much into it cause we already have a thread about this topic i‘d like to adress this point specifically if i may.

let me say first, that i understand this argument but a question pops up now.

let‘s say someone comes and tells us, cele is too tanky / healy / bursty / whatevery.

my question is: how much toughness, vitality, healingpower can i have to increase my burst?

how much power, ferocity, precision do i need to increase my tankiness?

how much condidamage, expertise do i need to make my heals heal more?

 

what I’m trying to say:

some complain that cele does to much damage. So defensive stats are fine then?

some say it’s to tanky, so offensive stats are all clear i guess?

yes, i get „a lot of stats“ out of celestial but at least 50% of those stats are useless for a certain purpose aren’t they.

Edited January 18 by CafPow.1542

[XenesisII.1540]

The problem with celestial started when they added Expertise and Concentration for "free", no stat re-adjustments were made, they were just straight added to the stats.

The other problem with celestial is the fact that the specs "abusing"  it are able to do so by getting 25 stacks of might quick and easy, while the newly added Concentration also contributed to this.

So now..... you want to just slope the stats instead to offense or defense....

So instead of let's say Celestial chestpiece looking like 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67.

You would want it to look like 84 84 84 67 67 67 50 50 50  instead.

Thus.... not really solving the problem and giving them more power, and not really cutting off much else cause you don't want to nerf any of the extra 2k stats off it.

 

There are three solutions to this problem.

1. Delete Celestial, it's not needed when there already 4 piece offense and defense sets to use, you can mix and match. you want to be a tank then use Minstrels, you want offense then use Berserker or Dragon or Marauders etc. This won't happen because anet wants this set as a base line for newbs.

2. Remove Concentration and Expertise and set it back to it's original stats.

3. Start nerfing the specs abusing the set with might spam. Obviously not happening.

[Hotride.2187]

Just go play conquest. Let roaming depopulate fully.

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

43 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

So instead of let's say Celestial chestpiece looking like 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67 67.

You would want it to look like 84 84 84 67 67 67 50 50 50  instead.

Well your using a constant percentage to up and down the stats. I think a better way to slope the stats is look how they do it in the trinkets with Quaternary stat, They are similarly a 4 stated item but their percentages between each other stats are way different slope harder. (example I stated are combined stats such as rabid & dire or Berserker & Valkyrie)

Example stat alignment is

126-85-67-18

So take a ring that has 57 in 9 different stat they should try and do this to make the fall off harder. This would be equal to 513 in a total stat point in a ring

If you ignore the Primary stat of a Quaternary stated item it would be 85-67-18 so if you take that concept and apply it to a 9 stat item it would have better fall off or slope it would look like this

85 85 85 67 67 67 19 19 19

it would still yield 513,  yet the third or tertiary stat would heavily fall off.   So Whatever the Tertiary stat would be will not have a intense impact let alone a decent impact into the equipment. it would also help round out other 4 stats to 3 stat items if people desired specific stat.

- again this just an example not something to go right away but something to consider or to try and improve on the idea.  I have no problem something hitting hard, but it does eliminate master of all stat syndrome.

Edited January 18 by Oahkahmewolf.6210

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

17 minutes ago, Hotride.2187 said:

Just go play conquest. Let roaming depopulate fully.

Has nothing to do with roaming in the slightest, this also goes into other forms of engagement from 3v3 to 5v5 to possibly GvG, but I wouldn't know much about GvG section as I don't have serious experience in that sort of expertise .

[CafPow.1542]

4 minutes ago, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

but I wouldn't know much about GvG section as I don't have serious experience in that sort of expertise .

GvG also implies a larger scale yeah?

well at least in large scale fights, celestial is a non issue cause nobody uses it there except people like me who forgot to swap gear.

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

24 minutes ago, CafPow.1542 said:

GvG also implies a larger scale yeah?

well at least in large scale fights, celestial is a non issue cause nobody uses it there except people like me who forgot to swap gear.

Well I'm slowly getting my self into GvG, but I've always enjoyed small scale fights over big scale. I have no bias again to Celestial I just want to merely point out that alot classes that do have "stat stick/Stat Steroid". Like I remember the release of Soulbeast, I instantly went to Half-Celestial Soulbeast on the start of path of fire since beast-mastery was essentially almost 1000 or more worth of stats given to you just by having your pet merge + 200 to 400 depending on which pet you had merged with at the time. THis is pre nerfed stuff and I even agreed it was most op kitten I've played back in the day. So when you look into something like Necromancer which Correct me if I'm wrong A Necromancer alone can gain a huge toughness stats stick from Carapace let alone if traited for deadly strength you can get another boost in power and condition damage. From what the wiki says max stacks of  deadly strength can maximize 300 power and 300 condition damage.... for toughness it states 20 per stack in pve/wvw so? 600? thats a total of 1200 free stats to work with as a Necromancer.

1200 is a huge stat stick, but slap that onto celestial....well you got something that can be scary strong and front-line... but wait I haven't even considered much of the other trait that can heavily push necro further beyond its stat sticks of shenanigans. Like Harb has a ton of crazy stat stick to pick up which I don't even want to begin diving this rabbit hole.

But you see what I mean when you take a celestial stat that has all round equivalency of minor stat of four stat armor that just amplifies those stats? Like sure I could go harb with dragon.... but why would I do that when I can take something like Celestial pump my ferocity stat, pump my vitality stat, pump condition stat and pump my power stat to be as equivalent if not better than majority of other stat pieced armor? Like I'd even pick up Harb to do something like a Half grieving and half Cele just to push the damage numbers further and still be really frontline. I wouldn't know much about will benders or other classes like ele abusing but I bet you they too have some strong "stat steroid" or "stat stick" traits or abilities that make them go nuts.

again, don't have a problem with celestial gear, I have problem with the original philosophy of its design and it should be properly corrected.

Stat sticks/stat steriod are another problem I have but its another discussion for another thread

Edited January 18 by Oahkahmewolf.6210

[CafPow.1542]

@Oahkahmewolf.6210

i‘ll tell you why.

cause as i said: a lot of those stats you get are not valuable. You get a lot of toughness? Well you’re a dps. Toughness doesn’t help you with dps.

a pure dps build will always do more damage than a celestial, especially fully buffed.

same goes for tankyness / healpotential respectively. Now…

in roaming you are solo. Sou you need to do everything for yourself. You need to condiclear, survive, heal yourself and dish out damage, that’s why celestial is big there.

but in a zerg, you have one dude to heal 4 others, one that boons up 4 others and 3 that rely on those other 2 to survive so they can focus on dps alone.

you already are fully buffed and healed in a zerg (at least ideally), so why have toughness, healingpower and boonduration and stuff like that? It’s wasted. But going full zerker gives you moooore power / precision.

being in a zerg is way more comparable to a pve raid where you have „all boons up“, and if you check pve builds, there is no celestial one I’m aware of. (OW doesn’t count, this is more comparable to a roamer).

hope you see the difference.

that‘s why supports in a zerg are mostly on minstrel, and dps are mostly on zerker or marauder. (Or trailblazer / viper but condi isn’t as strong in zergs i believe)

Edited January 18 by CafPow.1542

[Riba.3271]

This was special celestial nerf suggestion because it actually buffs celestial. Players will just mix 9-stat items until they end up with something even stronger.

Don't get me wrong, splitting celestial into multiple parts is a great idea, as it makes utilizing the statline bit harder and add some build diversity. You can even do it easily by giving people who are using celestial equipment, a stat choice reset after. But where you're wrong is that it would reduce the effectiveness of celestial builds. You need to nerf overall stats for that.

As people have said here, celestial wasn't a problem before free concentration and expertise (40%+ boon and condi duration) were added to it. Before that Full cele builds were already seeing massive popularity in some metas (Core Guard, Condi Shout Reaper, Epidemic variants, D/D GvG elementalist etc.) but even in other metas or scenes celestial was great way to round out your build with mix of offense and defense.

Celestial was relatively balanced stat that saw use in WvW, then it received massive buffs. Why did it receive buffs? Because it needed concentration and expertise to succeed in group PvE where defensive stats don't matter.  Now you probably can't just nerf celestial throughout the whole game, because PvE is more popular gamemode, but you can still easily adjust celestial in WvW while only nerfing other unused or overpowered statsets alongside.

How to nerf celestial in WvW without affecting PvE:

• Concentration effectiveness: 1% boon duration per 15 concentration -> 1% boon duration per 30 concentration in WvW (unchanged in PvE/PvP)
• Expertise effectiveness: 1% condi duration per 15 expertise -> 1% condi duration per 25 expertise in WvW (unchanged in PvE/PvP)

Now why like this? First of all, reducing overall stats is not option because PvE needs those stats. Secondly, WvW also has other problematic stat sets such as minstrel (half WvW blob players use it) so nerfing it alongside will just be reasonable and increase build diversity. No other concentration gear has been in any WvW build site since their implementation so their nerf is irrelevant. Thirdly celestial only needs adjustment in longer fights and neither expertise or concentration affect shorter engages. And finally, the game needs to return some of the complexity regarding timing your boons rather than them being permanent.

Interesting side remark: This summer there was big thread (148 replies) where PvE players complained about permaboons reducing build diversity to builds that can provide 100% uptime on those boons and making the game feel too grindy or easy. Almost no one in the thread disagreed that the boons needed to change. So reducing Boon duration effectiveness in PvE is also an option

Edited January 18 by Riba.3271

[TheGrimm.5624]

3 hours ago, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

Hey, nice to meet you all.

My name on this site doesn't really matter, but those who have met me know me by the name of Nix or Kyvan.

I would like to discuss the ever-lying problem of Celestial stat gear and its underlying issues with traits/abilities and utilities that provide bonus stats. As of right now, we all know that a lot of classes, if not all, are abusing celestial for not only its versatile access to every stat but also because it provides almost around 2000 stats more than the standard 4-stat item. It generally seems like a no-brainer to someone who just wants results.

My issue with celestial stats is not because of how much it gives, but how much it stacks with other stat-related traits and utilities and how it can compete with focus-driven stat pieces. Celestial intentions seem to originally be a jack of all trades, master of none, and to give some access to certain classes that had hybrid weapons or gimmicks that used both damage sides (condi and power).

However, it's being used as an all-purpose mega machine. The fact that it gives enough stats to wreak havoc on other stat-based armor is what seems to amplify celestial so much. The added stats from traits/utilities/Sigil/abilities allow a person to output just as much damage as a regular power or condi build, or be a super tank or super heal. It may not be the best at its job, but it's up there doing that role while being able to handle the other side with decent impact.

My proposal for how to balance celestial is not gutting it or nerfing it to the ground, but to have it set up similarly to other armor types. Just like 3 & 4-stat items, there should be a primary and a secondary stat... however, for celestial, there should be a primary/secondary/tertiary stat. We do have some examples of stats where they even go to Quaternary stats; these examples are Berserker & Valkyrie and Dire & Rabid, to name a few.

The best way to balance celestial is to make the offensive stats the primary stat, while the things that augment said stat are secondary, and then finally make the tank stats its tertiary. Now you design stats for hybrid damage and give it a role rather than making it a jack of all trades.

The other question is, what if people want all the stats but want to be more tanky? Well, make another 9-stat item & reverse, and call it something else. Vice versa for supportive-like stats. This is just an idea of a way to balance the stat rather than "delete x" or "get rid of y," and allows people to use the stat to try and round out their build more than defaulting to a full set of celestial.

I know this may not be a perfect solution, but it's an idea to start, and personally, I don't oppose keeping the stat line around, but at the same time, I'm not okay with simply killing it. There are uses even outside of WvW where it can still be balanced or useful.

It's honestly up to Anet how they would want to rebalance celestial stats.

If you are using Cele on non-Cele builds you have just wasted stats. What you are seeing is we now have more Cele builds on all classes. Address those skills you see as over performing if they are OP with the gear set. This is a decade or more issue in gear sets and history repeats time and time again. Go back and re-read the decade of posts about gear sets. Solider too much defense, nerf it. Viper so much more OP than Zerk, nerf it. Trailblazer too much Condi/Tank nerf it. Minstrel unkillable, nerf it. Set after set after set. While they released builds that better used those traits. So was it the armor or the class/elite that was released that was optimal in that gear set?

And you know what was the first set that was called to be nerfed? Zerk. Has it been? No because it didn't help all builds just as Cele doesn't. Cele is a jack of all trades. Does it help a all power Build, no. Does it help and all Condi build no. Rinse and repeat. If its a skill that you see that make it's OP target that. It's just the fact that Ele isn't the only class that can use the gear set that seems to be drawing out the witch hunt., maybe consider that in the fact they having been adding Cele options in all classes. Maybe consider more anti-boon to boon  perhaps?

What was claimed during the Mass Nerf patch on condi and power? That tank and sustain builds would be the next target as players could no longer one shot each other. Oh look, here we are. The axiom holds about history it seems. If you don't learn from it, it will be repeated. 

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

35 minutes ago, Riba.3271 said:

  Now you probably can't just nerf celestial throughout the whole game, because PvE is more popular gamemode, but you can still easily adjust celestial in WvW while only nerfing other unused or overpowered statsets alongside.

Pve and wvw are split balance wise. So you can totally nerf cele on wvw without touching pve.

[Thomas.2564]

Hype, a NOTHER cele post. How many dos this make now? Are we close to 100? Or maybe even over a 100 🤔

Anyway, doesnt really matter, since cele will never get removed or reworked. It's way to intergrated by this stage. And lets not forget that most of the wvw dev team all play cele too 👍I can surely understand the frustration of cele gear, and so can anet. Else it would still be featured in pvp. But its been 4 years now, and cele aint going nowhere. So can we please, PLEASE! Let this topic die already 🙏🏻

 

[Justine.6351]

3 hours ago, Thomas.2564 said:

Hype, a NOTHER cele post. How many dos this make now? Are we close to 100? Or maybe even over a 100 🤔

Anyway, doesnt really matter, since cele will never get removed or reworked. It's way to intergrated by this stage. And lets not forget that most of the wvw dev team all play cele too 👍I can surely understand the frustration of cele gear, and so can anet. Else it would still be featured in pvp. But its been 4 years now, and cele aint going nowhere. So can we please, PLEASE! Let this topic die already 🙏🏻

 

Wonder what happened to the shattered aegis guy.

[DarkFlopy.8197]

Delete Concentration stat completely from the game.

That's the main cause for boon balls and for celestial being this strong, the boon upkeep is just ridiculous and needs to go, that's one of the solutions to our problems in WvW 

Using celestial on almost any build (maybe even all?) can keep boons up to almost 100% which shouldn't really be possible if you really want to reach some kind of proper or fair balance.

Back when celestial didn't exist the game was somewhat balanced, when celestial was introduced mostly only eles used it to actually somehow benefit from it and even then it wasn't strong enough to be that threatening, then they decided to add to it expertise and concentration... Boom problem created it is now too strong and everyone using it for the easy carry.

Edited January 18 by DarkFlopy.8197

[Riba.3271]

6 hours ago, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

6 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

 

Pve and wvw are split balance wise. So you can totally nerf cele on wvw without touching pve.

Because it doesn't exist in the game yet, there is no guarantee the GW2 engine or code will easily allow items to change stats depending on gamemode. They probably would have to do it to each item one by one, including new system that recalculates gear situation after entering WvW, visible and number changes.  It wouldn't be intuitional either to only do it for 1 gearset as this would lead to cluttering the UI unnecessary or expect each player to know about it.

They need extremely easy and generic solution such as changing effectiveness of some stats in WvW. It is not only very cost effective, but also transparent to players.

You guys here are treating coders like its ancient egypt where slaves worked to death building pyramids so a dead guy has place to rest. It just isn't reasonable to expect gazillion effort for small problems with easier solutions.

Edited January 18 by Riba.3271

[CafPow.1542]

1 hour ago, Riba.3271 said:

Because it doesn't exist in the game yet, there is no guarantee the GW2 engine or code will easily allow items to change stats depending on gamemode

 But scaling changes depending on gamemode. That would be possible and do the same.

[Riba.3271]

51 minutes ago, CafPow.1542 said:

But scaling changes depending on gamemode. That would be possible and do the same.

This game is obviously coded in a way that the stats shown on weapon are corresponding to the actual stats the give (we haven't seen a single bug about gear stats even when new stat sets were added). I would even say, it is probably calculating it based on rarity and level of the player. Even though we are only talking about 1 gearset, you would have to either revamp the whole system or build a counter for celestial stats that needs to run everytime a person swaps gear or enters the map, and in this case you would have to extend it to the stats it shows in inventory and equipment screen.

Both are obviously way too much work and unintuitive, and it would be  more realistic to ask celestial being made unplayable in PvE again, so very unrealistic. Guild Wars 2s pride is its impeccable player friendly intuitive system design. And whatever you guys want is not it. It's something you can ask from some eastern P2W B-tier MMORPG game company who don't care about player friendliness.

You can't change 1 gear sets stats between gamemodes easily. The gear code is connected to everything. If one faucet can't deal with increased water pressure, you don't go replace whole water treatment plant.

Edited January 18 by Riba.3271

[CafPow.1542]

31 minutes ago, Riba.3271 said:

This game is obviously coded in a way that the stats shown on weapon are corresponding to the actual stats the give (we haven't seen a single bug about gear stats even when new stat sets were added). I would even say, it is probably calculating it based on rarity and level of the player. Even though we are only talking about 1 gearset, you would have to either revamp the whole system or build a counter for celestial stats that needs to run everytime a person swaps gear or enters the map, and in this case you would have to extend it to the stats it shows in inventory and equipment screen.

Both are obviously way too much work and unintuitive, and it would be  more realistic to ask celestial being made unplayable in PvE again, so very unrealistic. Guild Wars 2s pride is its impeccable player friendly intuitive system design. And whatever you guys want is not it. It's something you can ask from some eastern P2W B-tier MMORPG game company who don't care about player friendliness.

You can't change 1 gear sets stats between gamemodes easily. The gear code is connected to everything. If one faucet can't deal with increased water pressure, you don't go replace whole water treatment plant.

You don’t understand. It has nothing to do with gear.

rhe scaling means the factor, the stats of your gear get multiplied with for a certain skill. This factor is allready different in pvp/wvw than pve. You can easily prof that by hitting something in wvw and then hitting something with the same ability in pve. You will get different numbers, tho you have the same amount of stats.

not saying they should so that but it’s easily possible and doable this way.

[Kirevey.5079]

The problem with cele is concentration + expertise. A full cele set gives the same amount of concentration as a full minstrel wich is 42.6% boon duration. It also gives the same expertise as a full viper set which is 42.6% condi duration. Add a rune set plus some traits here and there and you have pretty much 100% boon and condi duration.

So you have mid damage + mid condi damage, but can sustain might like a full support and gain the same base condi duration as a full condi dps. Which translates into the abusing classes that can stack 25 might: 750 power, 750 condi dmg, which puts you inline with a base power or condi dps that cannot sustain those stacks of boons themselves. 

Then add the boon duration for defensive boons like prot, regen, vigor. Add the condi duration to make your condis stronger.

Just delete concentration and expertise from the set and it remains noob friendly while not being OP everywhere else.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Buff 3 stat gear instead.

Spoiler

Burn. Yes let it all burn...

 

[Sweetbread.3678]

Honestly the level of player power from gear and the variance between stat weights is problematic in all game modes. In PvE it contributes to the dps gap between top and bottom players being like 1500% (something that would be 30-50% in WoW or FF14) and in PvP you end up with kitten like Ele basically requiring it to survive, but more-often-than-not also getting pushed by it into degenerate roaming spec territory, and then it boosting terribly designed stuff like Willbender and Harbinger into completely toxic, brain-dead, nightmare specs. It would probably do a lot of good to do something like increase all base player stats by 30% and then cut all gear stats by 50% so the variance isn't so wide and misproportioned gear stats aren't so easy to take advantage of. 

Cele specs are a real Gordian Knot of issues though. They're at this perfect meeting point of a badly designed gearing/stat system, terribly designed boon and condition systems, and some absolutely attrocious class design. It's probably something that won't really stop being an issue unless all three of those problem points are tackled in tandem. Like you can reduce stats, but it won't matter if boons/condis still have wonky scaling and binary strip/cleanse mechanics, or kitten like Harbinger still exists (sorry but max Blight reducing the Necro's health to 15% ABOVE an equivalent Ele/Thief is not a reasonable tradeoff for getting a free Healing Signet with more than 6 times the normal coefficient) that are so poorly designed they'll just move on to the next most exploitable stat set.
 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

7 hours ago, DarkFlopy.8197 said:

Delete Concentration stat completely from the game.

That's the main cause for boon balls and for celestial being this strong, the boon upkeep is just ridiculous and needs to go, that's one of the solutions to our problems in WvW 

Using celestial on almost any build (maybe even all?) can keep boons up to almost 100% which shouldn't really be possible if you really want to reach some kind of proper or fair balance.

Back when celestial didn't exist the game was somewhat balanced, when celestial was introduced mostly only eles used it to actually somehow benefit from it and even then it wasn't strong enough to be that threatening, then they decided to add to it expertise and concentration... Boom problem created it is now too strong and everyone using it for the easy carry.

i feel like this is simply incorrect. its the base boon and condition durations that are the problem, as they last forever even without any investment into stats. players blame sets like celestial alot but the truth is boonballs and condi builds were already a huge problem when everyone was running around in nomad's and dire's due to how much more common strips and cleanses were in the past which rendered the extra durations effectively a waste of stat points.

 

in zergs, its still considered a waste of stat points and minstrel's is taken for its very high healing power and tanking ability, not its concentration. the only sets that compete with it for healing power are cleric and magi and both of them have only one tank stat available and waste points in damage.

 

its been discussed many times by experienced players that if anything, we need lower base durations and levels of healing, damage, and so on and higher contribution from stats like healing power, concentration, and expertise so that there's even more build investment rather than less. removing or nerfing stats will only lower build investment and bring everyone closer to the same place which is effectively just making celestial baseline as the durations will be the same for all players, even if lower.

 

arenanet tried this approach in pvp and it just made it so there's no hard counters to anything. everyone is the same (even with celestial removed), because so much was taken away that it effectively flattened the entire build curve, which allows broken classes to roam free without any counterplay since they don't need to make any investmentts compared to other players and their strength comes entirely down to their utility kit.

 

furthermore, if you go into pvp you will see that when the group is stacked all boons are still permanent even though concentration doesn't hardly exist there. i can't help but feel alot of players who comment on these things just don't play the competitive game modes very much.

 

for true balance you need to extend the build investment curve and not compress it. everyone being the same isn't balanced, its the opposite. this is why starcraft, a game that has three completely different races with very few similarities to each other, is considered one of the most balanced games of all time, because everything in the game has both soft and hard counters due to their unique design which requires investment and a significant risk to reward ratio.

 

i think the celestial set does need to be reorganised in wvw to have three tiers to its stats, but its not the core problem.

Edited January 18 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

4 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

i think the celestial set does need to be reorganised in wvw to have three tiers to its stats, but its not the core problem.

This but the other problem I also address little bit is stat sticks or stat steroid on utilities and traits. You know how I feel about it and it can get pretty ridiculous when you math everything up. Which you said cele stat isn't the core problem but it does go in tangent with ladder I mentioned.

 

Again, I don't have experiences in GvG and have a little for 10v10 but 3v3 to 5v5 I have an okay knowledge in it.

Edited January 19 by Oahkahmewolf.6210