How to fix celestial, boons and minstrel very easily

[Riba.3271]

2 changes

• 1% boon duration per 15 concentration ➡️ 1 % boon duration per 25 concentration in WvW
• 1% condition duration per 15 expertise ➡️ 1% condition duration per 25 expertise in WvW

 

Perks

Won't affect builds with low amounts of boon duration/condition duration from runes/traits

Won't affect PvE and is easy implement.

Also balances Minstrel which 40 to 60% of party members have been running since its release.

Even lazy dev has energy to do this change on a good day

[Remus Darkblight.1673]

You would also be nerfing Viper, Plaguedoctor, Trailblazer, Seraph, Ritualist (doubly so), Bringer, Wanderer, Vigilant (doubly so), Commander, Diviner, and Harrier.

You're not really asking for a fix for celestial so much as adjusting boon and condition duration increases across the board in WvW (which is a different argument with it's own merits). Celestial will still offer the best mix of everything, since other means of increasing boon or condition duration will be equally affected. There is still no incentive to use another set over celestial in the current builds that use it.

The way to fix Celestial in the way you suggest would be to reduce the Expertise and Concentration it provides.

 

[Dawdler.8521]

Make all boons unstackable too.

[Riba.3271]

1 hour ago, Remus Darkblight.1673 said:

You would also be nerfing Viper, Plaguedoctor, Trailblazer, Seraph, Ritualist (doubly so), Bringer, Wanderer, Vigilant (doubly so), Commander, Diviner, and Harrier.

None of such builds have been seen in years in roaming or group meta so in practice this doesn't matter.Viper is just worse than Grieving in WvW where enemies cleanse regardless. It is true Trailblazer saw some usage at some metas, but its main issues are the amount of cleanse in the game, not the fact that its burning or chills only last 4 seconds instead of 5 seconds. Enemy has to cleanse them anyways if they don't want to die.

1 hour ago, Remus Darkblight.1673 said:

adjusting boon and condition duration increases across the board in WvW

Yes, boon duration is problem because putting it in your build has no tradeoff. Minstrel has the best major stats: Healing power and Toughness, for healer. Celestial got around 50% extra boon and condition duration for free in attempt to make it viable in PvE. It already had viable builds in WvW.

 

1 hour ago, Remus Darkblight.1673 said:

Celestial will still offer the best mix of everything, since other means of increasing boon or condition duration will be equally affected. There is still no incentive to use another set over celestial in the current builds that use it.

You are incorrect there won't be incentive since currently you can easily reach 100% boon duration with any class without running boon duration as major stat. But after change, you will have to forego Minstrel and Celestial to do so. This includes almost all the unused concentration sets you listed earlier (3-stat sets or 4-stat set with major concentration).

The other stat sets that provide boon duration are unplayable because they provide bad stat combination. For example healing power that plaguedoctor provides is not even remotely worth putting in your build because there is no good condition damage/boon duration set that also provides toughness to make the healing more effective. So if you want plaguedoctor to be viable, you will have to ask them separately to change Vitality into Toughness. You can easily add your ideas how to make each of these stat sets more viable in WvW within a comment in this thread.

  

1 hour ago, Remus Darkblight.1673 said:

 

The way to fix Celestial in the way you suggest would be to reduce the Expertise and Concentration it provides.

This would be considered unreasonable request, because PvE has much larger playerbase than WvW and main reason celestial was overbuffed was to make it viable in PvE. So it isn't possible unless the gearset provides different amount of stats in each gamemode, which we haven't witnessed regarding anything: Runes, Foods and Gearsets. Everything indicates it would require vast amount of effort to make gear stats transform depending on gamemode.

Having concentration and expertise adjusted globally would also be global change so easier for playerbase to memorize, apply and be communicated to. After all, one main factor between GW2 systems is their simplicity to understand them. If you demand playerbase to know that celestial was nerfed specifically in WvW, it would be unreasonable request, whereas reduced boon amounts is easily perceiveable or added to somewhere in the UI.

Since boon durations are bigger issue in WvW (just read other threads),  increasing price of running it in excessive amounts overall across the board is reasonable solution. You can still easily reach 35-50% bonus boon duration with runes and traits. But above that you should have to start paying a steep price instead of us having statsets where concentration isn't even main stat (celestial, minstrel) reach the boon duration cap. It doesn't matter if its minstrel, celestial, plaguedoctor or randomgearset X, if it has no concentration main stat, it shouldn't reach 100% boon duration with couple of infusions, consumables and runes. You're sacrificing too little for so much.

 

Overall I put lot of thought into it, and this is the best way to adjust the most overpowered gearsets and amount of excessive boons in WvW without it being too much effort or overcomplicated. We can't just change 2 gearsets stats in 1 gamemode because it will be complex and difficult. Doing a global change across the gamemode that has problems with it is the easiest and transparent way to do it.

Edited February 23 by Riba.3271

[XECOR.2814]

Funny that top solo roaming and small scale roaming builds will still not be affected by these changes.
Because it's the skills, traits, cooldowns and coefficients that allow output of such boons and conditions so often and them having high base durations are the problem.

If you want to have outcry find the builds that you think are overperforming in cele and you will be able to see which skill is broken because of cele gear. And you will find that some of the coefficient or base durations might be pve and overlooked or unnaturally loaded. But that takes effort and its much simpler to blame a gearset.

Edited February 23 by XECOR.2814

[Dagger.2035]

There are other ways to fix this issue:

• Buff skill coefficients.  This is a multiplier so all attribute combinations will scale the same percentage, but power builds have more damage modifiers and will see more benefit.
• Buff offensive boon duration.  If these boons have a high uptime without concentration, the concentration stat is wasted.
• Nerf defensive boon duration.  This will reduce damage mitigation and which buffs higher damage builds.
• Nerf heal scaling.  Again, this weakens the investment in the healing stat.

Edited February 23 by Dagger.2035

[Riba.3271]

2 hours ago, XECOR.2814 said:

Because it's the skills, traits, cooldowns and coefficients that allow output of such boons and conditions so often and them having high base durations are the problem.

If you want to have outcry find the builds that you think are overperforming in cele and you will be able to see which skill is broken because of cele gear

Reducing base durations of certain skills is not that simple, because it will affect all builds running the same skill. While it might be strong skill that provides boons, boosting it with boon duration will reach to insane upkeeps on that boon.

Every build that runs cele/minstrel has certain boons that are close to 100% uptime, or slightly above it. If that 90-100% suddenly becomes 70-80%, it increases openings your opponents can take increase significantly. Now there will still be builds that can reach 100% uptime with those boons, but they will have to run concentration as major stat, and sacrifice more for that luxury.

Now intent isn't to make cele or minstrel builds unplayable, just drop their powerlevel and winrate to a more approriate level.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Riba.3271 said:

 If that 90-100% suddenly becomes 70-80%, it increases openings your opponents can take increase significantly.

Lol that changes nothing just stack another player.

Make it 20% and maybe.

[Jski.6180]

Just make dmg skills worthless with out scaling into power dmg so cele power will simply not be enofe to make the dmg worth it. There a lot of skills that do too much base effects gear combos should have an much better effect and nothing should get an free ride (that hp and def too!)

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

I think a better answer is to normalize the stat totals of the gear sets.

Buff 3 stat gear to the 4 stat totals, and nerf cele to the 4 stat total. OR nerf both cele and the 4 stat gear down to the 3 stat gear total.

[Dawdler.8521]

29 minutes ago, Jski.6180 said:

Just make dmg skills worthless with out scaling into power dmg so cele power will simply not be enofe to make the dmg worth it. There a lot of skills that do too much base effects gear combos should have an much better effect and nothing should get an free ride (that hp and def too!)

When buffed, full cele is maybe like 3500 power while full berserker is 4000ish. Meaning they are not that different in power.

How did you think that was going to work?

Edited February 23 by Dawdler.8521

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Lol that changes nothing just stack another player.

Make it 20% and maybe.

Was about to say the same thing. The difference between 100% and 70% would not be enough to disincentivize celestial for roaming.

First off, it does nearly nothing for conditions. The sweet spot for expertise in WvW is around 30%, enough to give a significant advantage damage wise, while not being punished by cleanses to much. Everything beyond that is just gravy but usually not fight defining. Celestial is just completely overloaded in this regard.

As to actual boon duration, at 60% most boons will still be permanent or near permanent. What will be affected the most is might stacking, which would have some effect. Even then though, the difference between 25 and 15 might (if we assume barely capping 25 might), while noticeable, still provides over 450 power and condition damage. The average loss in power+cd is around 300 each (which again, will have some effect given it's 600 stats points loss). That's still sufficient to almost cover the gap between a primary stat 3-piece (1,381+450+450) and celestial (639+450+639+450). Factor for the hybrid nature of celestial builds, that would still let them come out on top versus glass builds.

What this change would do is discourage ANY other stats which have concentration and need to provide damage. Minstrel would remain a given, just mixed with a bit of giver currently (sure, a net loss of maybe 1-2k hit points on supports).

The best way to nerf celestial is to simply remove concentration from it. Done. Now we know Arenanet is not going to do that because their approach to WvW stat balance carries over from PvE, where celestial is their "1 fits all" answer for incompetent players.

As to balancing concentration, that would be a different topic and sure, making it less efficient stat wise is 1 way (but again, givers circumvents most of the "damage" to minstrel and future stat combos would/could do the rest).

Edited February 23 by Cyninja.2954

[Aeolus.3615]

Just put boon duration on non tanky/support stats plus remove boon duration and condi duration again from celestial or give to other stats the diference of stats that celestial as more so all stats have the same total stats.

Or wait until Anet remove half of all stats on armor and implement a personal + -  stat destribuition system for players to spread the other half of the points xD where boon duration will need more stats to be efficient.

 

One thing for sure players balance on spam gameplay enforced by Anet, one should have strong boons or long duration boons but never both this should be the main idiology on the boon system.

Edited February 23 by Aeolus.3615

[Leaa.2943]

Why do people always avoid adding Trailblazer to this topic. 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

7 hours ago, Leaa.2943 said:

Why do people always avoid adding Trailblazer to this topic. 

Because apparently it doesn't exist for roaming when I use it any time I'm in WvW...roaming.  

Trailblazer/Marauder/Cele are the ones that need hit from roaming perspective, and minstrel for blobs.  

All of them besides Marauder have tough/vit which shouldn't be a stat combo in a competitive environment.  Marauder is only problematic as it's a straight better Berserker's and so Marauder/Dragon mixes are nearly just as bad as celestial for roaming.

[Riba.3271]

13 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

What this change would do is discourage ANY other stats which have concentration and need to provide damage. Minstrel would remain a given, just mixed with a bit of giver currently (sure, a net loss of maybe 1-2k hit points on supports).

Overall, that sounds like a great result. Minstrel will be significantly weaker and will be mixed with other concentration stats that are not being used right now. Amount of minstrel will go down and other concentration sets will go up. Other concentration sets are weak because they are ill designed for competitive modes. Minor healing power just cannot be considered for either roaming or group play. Should they add ones add that work in WvW or rework ones that aren't popular in PvE either? Definitely they should.

13 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

The best way to nerf celestial is to simply remove concentration from it. Done. Now we know Arenanet is not going to do that because their approach to WvW stat balance carries over from PvE, where celestial is their "1 fits all" answer for incompetent players.

Yes you're right. Cele was completely viable to mix in certain builds before Concentration and Expertise were added to it. But since it was changed without any regard to WvW, your expectation should be the same: PvE will always be prioritized over WvW.

Minstrel and how many people are using pure minstrel is also a problem. Boon duration is just too strong of a stat and minstrel provides it for basically free: both healing power and toughness as major stat as healer would want.

DPS players at least mix marauder/dragon/berserker/toughness DPS. So they make cognitive choices. Overall, forcing minstrel and celestial to be weaker to be comparatively weaker to all other sets being used in WvW is already a great result. Yes, some unused sets which are like raccoons in a cagefight alongside lions and tigers, that were designed like garbage will also get nerfed alongside. But the result will be great.

14 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

16 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

 If that 90-100% suddenly becomes 70-80%, it increases openings your opponents can take increase significantly.

Lol that changes nothing just stack another player.

Actually, it isn't that simple. Because Firebrand isn't replacable and running 2 of them is considered excessive amount of same boons. If we look at total amount of stats that a average boon firebrand would need to sacrifice for same durations.

Current boon duration is 71.9% and concentration 703. Change in boon duration will be 703/15-703/25 = 18.7 %. So final boon duration will be 53.2%. What does this mean to total boon duration necessary to make up for it:

18.7 % * 25 concentration/% =  467.5 concentration

So we are talking about 470 stats worth of concentration. That is 4 700 hitpoints of survivability or 15+% of your total healing you will have to sacrifice for same boon durations. I would say that is very significant since there are lot of times you or your allies survive with low hitpoints.

Now this was for pretty low boon duration build that is pretty close to average Celestial roaming build. But there are builds out there with even higher boon durations and if you want 100% boon duration with boon duration runes you would have to get 625!!!! more concentration. That is 6 250 hitpoints.

Absolutely gamebreaking amount. If a build loses 4 700 to 6 250 hitpoints worth of stats, is that not a signicant nerf? So don't downplay the impact since mathematics has a baseball bat ready if you do.

Note: I use vitality and hitpoints in my examples because it is stat easiest for average joe to understand

Edited February 24 by Riba.3271

[Cyninja.2954]

11 minutes ago, Riba.3271 said:

Absolutely gamebreaking amount. If a build loses 4 700 to 6 250 hitpoints worth of stats, is that not a signicant nerf? So don't downplay the impact since mathematics has a baseball bat ready if you do.

This assumes that the total loss in concentration is made up for, which it wouldn't. Most builds would simply run less concentration at a sweet spot of boon duration and vitality. The boon suffering the most as mentioned would be might, and in some cases stability which now would need to be timed better by guards.

I personally am not against this change, I just think a more drastic change would be more beneficial in regards to celestial: aka remove concentration all together from it.

As far as making supports less durable, that requires a far larger rework, especially in regard to siege damage, defensive siege, etc. but if that is the goal, making concentration more expensive to get would be a way.

[Dawdler.8521]

23 minutes ago, Riba.3271 said:

Actually, it isn't that simple. Because Firebrand isn't replacable and running 2 of them is considered excessive amount of same boons.

And you proposed a tiny reduction in boon duration. 

So run two of them then 🤷‍♂️

[Vomact.5693]

The best thing to fix celestial is to delete thieves and willbenders. Without one shot professions nobody will need celestial any more ...

[Zyreva.1078]

Cele changes need to be reverted and boon application and healing need to get nerfed pretty much across the board. Anything else wouldn't really solve the cele and stale boonball problems but potentially cause more. Gotta tackle the issue directly.

4 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Trailblazer/Marauder/Cele are the ones that need hit from roaming perspective,

Nothing comes close to cele for roaming.

4-stat gear is just better than 3-stat gear, but it's not as big of a difference as cele vs anything else.

40 minutes ago, Vomact.5693 said:

The best thing to fix celestial is to delete thieves and willbenders. Without one shot professions nobody will need celestial any more ...

Cele dominance has absolutely nothing to do with oneshot builds and thief is probably one of the worst classes to go for a "oneshot" build.

The only stats that counter oneshots are vitality and toughness and there are plenty of combinations that offer those.

Edited February 24 by Zyreva.1078

[Lucy.3728]

54 minutes ago, Vomact.5693 said:

The best thing to fix celestial is to delete thieves and willbenders. Without one shot professions nobody will need celestial any more ...

What about the one man army, the cele eles?

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

1 hour ago, Vomact.5693 said:

The best thing to fix celestial is to delete thieves and willbenders. Without one shot professions nobody will need celestial any more ...

I wish that was so easy, but deleteing teefs and willyblenders is never wrong idea. Sadly there's a lot more builds that can do high burst and still have quite decent or even high sustain like Mesmers or even Engies. 
Currently the biggest problem is A-net lack of ideas for class/e-spec identities, like if you pick Druid, you gain CA that is healing kit, yet people still can build it in offensive way because of stats, traits and weapons, which really bs idea since it's core + better heals. 
On top of that we have problem mechanics like stealth, superspeed, boons and conditions and even some classes with invuln/block uptime.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

19 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

Nothing comes close to cele for roaming.

4-stat gear is just better than 3-stat gear, but it's not as big of a difference as cele vs anything else.

Yes/No for me there; I included stuff like Trailblazer and Marauder as cele really isn't a huge difference on some builds IMO. 

For me and roaming Druid, cele does nothing as only boons I really have are swiftness and fury (because WK and Skirmishing gives it, not because I actually want it).  Also, expertise does little as bleeds get cleansed fast--and then condi damage on cele is lower than trailblazer because of its equal stat nature.  

Same goes for my power untamed roamer--Marauder/Dragons is way better than cele as again not a ton of boons aside from various little ones unleashed state gives and of course the elite-but those boons aren't' going to outright save you like some super boon heavy classes like WB would, so cele falls short for me again.

Old boonbeast would be a nightmare with cele and there I would say it is best in slot, but they nerfed that so bad it doesn't really exist anymore.  

Anyway the tldr; is the 4-stat's belong in there because there are some definite outliers that still have a place far above anything else.  There needs just to be a clear distinction between DPS/Tank/Healer as the 'trinity' is at least better than these jack of all trades nightmare builds we have.  

[Zyreva.1078]

5 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Yes/No for me there; I included stuff like Trailblazer and Marauder as cele really isn't a huge difference on some builds IMO.

Just because you are playing bad builds doesn't mean cele isn't miles better than those stats - for both druid and untamed.

[graishak.5406]

On 2/23/2024 at 12:43 PM, Riba.3271 said:

None of such builds have been seen in years in roaming or group meta so in practice this doesn't matter.Viper is just worse than Grieving in WvW where enemies cleanse regardless. It is true Trailblazer saw some usage at some metas, but its main issues are the amount of cleanse in the game, not the fact that its burning or chills only last 4 seconds instead of 5 seconds. Enemy has to cleanse them anyways if they don't want to die.

 

firstly, builds with those stats sometimes become ok in group play even if niche, eg i played a bit of alac ren with diviner and i think wanderer gear for a bit of survivability some while back. Then alac willbender, tho it may not need that much boon duration. 

Secondly, there is a reason Minstrel is the one really strong option with concentration. it pushes out all other options. 
One could choose to get a boon build with a good amount of concentration, sacrifice your damage options for boon traits/skills and a bit of HP, and maybe end up with a glass cannon build that has 60% of the dps of a pure damage build with good boon output.
Or You could just get Minstrel, get all the support options, now you are a full healer + boongiver and even act as a dps sponge for your group.

why would you choose the former instead of just making the boonbuild into an additional support when you have a choice. the dps isnt that impressive so just get a damage dealer that does not sacrifice much and get a healer that can pick up every support choice cause it does not need to make sacrifices like that.
You would only ever not pick minstrel here if the spec does not really support a heal build.

as i see it you cant get around changing minstrel stats to fix them, unless you were to make concentration or healing power next to worthless
same for cele, it was balanced around 7 stats, the 2 new were free stuff it didnt need in wvw. unless you make conc+exp pointless, it has more power than is fair.

if concentration was nerfed, i guess people would just swap to runes with boon duration, which are the same in pve so you would not nerf - 25% from runes, 10% from sigil, and most boons overcap anyway and are removed by strips so that extra bit of duration may not make a big difference.
Worst case this could make people run double stab bot again, if there was a hard nerf here i would hope for a +stability duration rune at least cause i dont want pirateship either and that way you sacrifice stuff for stab uptime.