How to fix celestial, boons and minstrel very easily

[TheGrimm.5624]

31 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

1) Unnerf the boon rip nerfs.

2) Give more hard CCs their damage back.

^^^^^^ This. You want to counter Cele, you want to counter boons, this. Not remove gear sets. More anti-boon to boon. 

[Zyreva.1078]

18 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Do I think Mara needs a buff?

That's not what i asked. Stop evading my question. Do you think it would be balanced if mara stats were increased by 30 % (and other stats not)? Yes or no?

[TheGrimm.5624]

11 minutes ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

That's not what i asked. Stop evading my question. Do you think it would be balanced if mara stats were increased by 30 % (and other stats not)? Yes or no?

Sure as soon as you actually state the question you seem to want to try and pin me down on. So why are using Mara stats on a pure Condi build? Where you are trying to go is that you think Cele is BiS every where. This is where we disagree, even though it has more stats I am not using Cele everywhere since it wastes stats on my min/max builds. Its works well on the newer hybrid builds or for off meta builds that people don't play as often. And again, no I wouldn't say yes since I use Mara on some of my builds and I think its in a decent state unlike some of the skills that can use it all the more.

[Zyreva.1078]

2 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

So why are using Mara stats on a pure Condi build?

I'm not. Wouldn't even do that, if it got buffed by 30%. Maybe we actually need to double mara stats then, no? Still not enough to run mara on condi builds? How about 10x as many stats?

Point is, no matter how much we buff mara gear, it wouldn't make sense to use it with a pure condi build. This does NOT mean, it has to be balanced. Even a 30% buff would make it very clearly op in comparison to almost any other stat combination. And the very same applies to cele gear. No matter how op it becomes, ofc you'd still always want to make use of all the stats it offers, instead of wasting some. But just like mara not getting used for condi builds, even if it had its stats tripled, that's not an indicator that it's balanced.

Fact is, cele used to be pretty decent before it got buffed. And if something that is more or less balanced gets a massive buff while everything else stays the same - the outcome can not be balanced anymore. That's simple logic. Cele becoming op was not the result of trait and skill changes. It was the result of a single change to cele itself. And as such it would make much more sense to revert said change instead of destroying each and every hybrid build. Because that's what you'd have to do in oder to "balance" cele without touching the stat itself. Just nerfing some boons isn't going to cut it.

Also i have already provided examples backed up with math that prove that cele remains competitive with non cele stats even if some stats are wasted (eg cele vs zerk/mara on a pure power build). Another very clear indicator that cele can't be balanced in it's current state.

[schloumou.3982]

1 hour ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

Cele becoming op was not the result of trait and skill changes. It was the result of a single change to cele itself.

Both imo. If you reduce power coefficients and output in general, you also nerf pure power based gear and buff condi/hybrid based builds indirectly.

[Zyreva.1078]

47 minutes ago, schloumou.3982 said:

Both imo. If you reduce power coefficients and output in general, you also nerf pure power based gear and buff condi/hybrid based builds indirectly.

There was more than a year between the "big nerf patch" (Feb 2020) and cele buffs (May 2021). And if anything, cele becoming more popular prior to the buffs due to a meta shift from "oneshot" gameplay towards more sustain/condi just supports my argument, that cele was indeed pretty decent before and absolutely not in need of any buffs.

And yes, if power dmg gets buffed to a point where even cele builds can get insta killed regulary, then cele would become weaker in relation even without direct nerfs. However i don't think that "oneshot" gameplay is very fun and healthy, so i'd rather not go that route.

Just to be clear - i'm not saying nerfing cele magically fixes every balance problem. Absolutely not. There is much more that should be done. But nerfing cele is a neccessary, safe and easy first step. Neccessary because bloated as it is, it can't be balanced without creating lots of other problems (eg. "oneshot" meta or killing all sorts of hybrid builds). Safe, because we have already been there and it was fine. And easy, because it's just a single change, as opposed to messing arround with hundreds of traits and skills.

Edited March 4 by Zyreva.1078

[Swoo.5079]

Celestial is imbalanced - that is why it was removed from sPvP.

Anet doesn't balance around roaming - that roaming builds  (and PvE solo builds) exist is a side of effect of sPvP builds, which is a bit crazy considering most WV WvW objectives are roaming stuff.

[DeceiverX.8361]

On 2/25/2024 at 10:55 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Which is why everything just leads back to one conclusion, every single time - delete concentration (and things in similar style, yes that includes expertise). 

When a skill has been balanced to have 10s cd and 5s boon duration - that's why it's on 10s cd, that's why it has a 5s boon duration, it is what it is - how the kitten are you supposed to uphold that balance if the boon can last 5s OR 6s OR 7s OR 8s OR 8s OR 10s? Because there will be people that go omg this skill is super op, perma boon, need more cd! and then you raise it to 20s cd instead and people go omg this skill is useless, 20s cd and it only have 5s duration you overnerfed it! and then it'll just bounce between random changes to try to fix it until it's "redesigned" and we have a 50/50 chance of it being about as bad or worse.

And people on the forums will still cheer on having boon duration.

It's insane to me we have literally 4x larger of a boon duration multiplier and people don't understand how we're in the situation we're in.

You can't balance an action game where you need to account for moments of weakness in both yourself and your opponent when some gear jumps something that drastically affects your states from 30% uptime to permanent with extra time to spare.  Suddenly builds drop from having 70% periods of weakness to never being weak.  It just can't be balanced with how potent boons are.

People dropped entire rune set effects and their corresponding stats back in the days of 3-stat gear and spent like 20x more effective gold on a total of 20% boon duration, while simultaneously having less boon access broad-spectrum, because of how strong said boon access was even back in 2012/2013.

Just 20% was defining the meta back then.

[TheGrimm.5624]

9 hours ago, Swoo.5079 said:

Celestial is imbalanced - that is why it was removed from sPvP.

Anet doesn't balance around roaming - that roaming builds  (and PvE solo builds) exist is a side of effect of sPvP builds, which is a bit crazy considering most WV WvW objectives are roaming stuff.

Nice assumption. No Cele as all tanky Amulets was removed from sPvP since it was seen as slowing down the fight which was viewed as less interesting for e-sports which should be faster paced kills at the time. This also removed the mode as a training ground for bigger fights that WvW is. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

 

11 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

Point is, no matter how much we buff mara gear, it wouldn't make sense to use it with a pure condi build. This does NOT mean, it has to be balanced. Even a 30% buff would make it very clearly op in comparison to almost any other stat combination.

Didn't you just use a double negative? Give Mara a 30% buff and apply it to condi gear and its clearly OP?

No, no its not, you are using numbers that apply to power gear sets that add nothing to a Condi build.  I am going to assume this was not the point you were trying to make while I was trying to leave the point alone since I already said I think we disagree. Number boosts that don't apply to a build are useless. They are fluff. I can boost condi on my power builds till they are sky high but that does nothing to my damage output. I think you were trying to say that Cele works on Hybrid builds and I agree there. 

Edited March 5 by TheGrimm.5624

[TheGrimm.5624]

11 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

Also i have already provided examples backed up with math that prove that cele remains competitive with non cele stats even if some stats are wasted 

You tried, but don't assume this was agreed upon. Forum Wars 2 is all about players posting ideas, doesn't make them fact though. Anet needs diverse posts to ses things from multiple angels. And before you assume that I imply mine is better, I don't. We need a range of views that provide feedback. 

[Silinsar.6298]

1 hour ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

You tried, but don't assume this was agreed upon. Forum Wars 2 is all about players posting ideas, doesn't make them fact though. Anet needs diverse posts to ses things from multiple angels. And before you assume that I imply mine is better, I don't. We need a range of views that provide feedback. 

In general, players are good at finding and pointing out problems, but bad at providing a solution or reaching a consensus about what should be done about it.

A lot of balance updates feel like ANet's picking up a random idea from somewhere that might address a problem but wasn't thought through. Or acts oblivious to problems that are being pointed out.

I'd love to get more insights into why some things were or weren't addressed in a certain way.

[Zyreva.1078]

9 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

 

Didn't you just use a double negative? Give Mara a 30% buff and apply it to condi gear and its clearly OP?

No, no its not, you are using numbers that apply to power gear sets that add nothing to a Condi build.  I am going to assume this was not the point you were trying to make while I was trying to leave the point alone since I already said I think we disagree. Number boosts that don't apply to a build are useless. They are fluff. I can boost condi on my power builds till they are sky high but that does nothing to my damage output. I think you were trying to say that Cele works on Hybrid builds and I agree there. 

Either i can't write or you can't read ... I'll leave it at that, pointless to continue like that.

9 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

You tried, but don't assume this was agreed upon. Forum Wars 2 is all about players posting ideas, doesn't make them fact though. Anet needs diverse posts to ses things from multiple angels. And before you assume that I imply mine is better, I don't. We need a range of views that provide feedback. 

If i say 1+1=2, it remains true, even if you don't agree. Basic math isn't really something to argue about.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

1 hour ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

Either i can't write or you can't read ... I'll leave it at that, pointless to continue like that.

If i say 1+1=2, it remains true, even if you don't agree. Basic math isn't really something to argue about.

Stat contribution to builds is non-trivial, and I think this only applies to certain builds that can actually use the stats to bring them up to competitive level (with respect to other stat combinations) Builds with these properties include builds that can utilize boons (specifically Might and Fury), skills that have more than just one damage type (strike, condition and/or healing) and utilize traits that bring them up to a certain barrier of entry. Mainly that barrier of entry is Critical Strike Chance for Strike Damage, and a high enough ferocity that makes use of the critical strike chance to begin with. When you leverage Fury, with some critical strike chance traits, you now make Power stats viable.

Obvious as well, is that the game is designed in such a way where you can't access decent healing without lowering damage coefficients or some other modifiers...so by and large lots of builds can't and wouldn't use celestial because they can't reach some of these criteria. Some of them can and by and large that's who you might see running around in celestials.

Then there are further reasons why you might not see celestials either, like in zerg play... typically it's understood specialization is just better, and actually necessary. (Though, I do suspect that a lower level hybrid zerg composition (a viable one) may exist...but i am doubtful because trait selection is very restrictive.)

In other words...the conclusion is that stat contribution, even with their lopsided stat distribution is non-trivial because of how other elements in the game interact with each other. Yes objectively Celestial has the most total stats, but many builds can't and wouldn't take advantage of it until it passes some threshold, a threshold upheld by certain build/trait/skill choices.

You have to think about why in zerg play people don't play marauders, or some hybrid stat set even though there are sets with way more total stats on them...to this day they still play zerkers. The math that goes into understanding why someone would pick some set that has less stats than another is non-trivial (but intuitively obvious) and that's why you need to do more proper research. Complex Systems is typically how you would talk about and model a game like guild wars 2...and at the start of the video i just linked, it explains exactly why simple addition of two or more things, is not enough to actually describe the output behavior of those set of things...that two or more things can become "more" than the sum of their parts. 

 

Edited March 5 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Zyreva.1078]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684

Non of this is relevant fo my argumentation.

The zerg meta is an entirely different topic and the reasons why cele isn't used for large scale do not apply to small scale combat.

And in my examples i was ignoring like half of cele stats to simplify the calculations - and it still remains competitive (if not superior) with other gear - that's how absurd the imbalance is. And when that simplified math perfectly matches with logic and ingame experience and nobody has been able to provide any counter arguments to what i have brought up time and time again, i don't see a reason to question my conclusion.

Edited March 5 by Zyreva.1078

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

8 minutes ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684

Non of this is relevant fo my argumentation.

The zerg meta is an entirely different topic and the reasons why cele isn't used for large scale do not apply to small scale combat.

And in my examples is was ignoring like half of cele stats to simplify the calculations - and it still remains competitive with other gear - that's how absurd the imbalance is. And when that simplified math perfectly matches with logic and ingame experience and nobody has been able to provide any counter arguments to what i have brought up time and time again, i don't see a reason to question my conclusion.

What was your argument again? What calculations? I searched back in chat and couldn't find anything.

People use 3 stat combinations like zerker gear in zerg because its BIS a lot of the time for them even though it has far less total stats (This also is true for some builds in small scale but anyway). That was supposed to be the counter argument to whatever the argument was that i thought that you had. but i'm more than willing to hear out what your argument is.

Edited March 5 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Zyreva.1078]

1 minute ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

What was your argument again? What calculations? I searched back in chat and couldn't find anything.

Was in another thread a while ago - basically i showed that if 2 rangers with the exact same build except gear hit each other with the exact same power only longbow skills - zerk dies before cele. So i was not factoring in boons, condis and healing - all which in practise heavily favour cele. Done something similar with ele/dragon tooth too in another thread. Both posts got completely ignored, so i'm not going to repeat everything in detail.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

12 minutes ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

Was in another thread a while ago - basically i showed that if 2 rangers with the exact same build except gear hit each other with the exact same power only longbow skills - zerk dies before cele. So i was not factoring in boons, condis and healing - all which in practise heavily favour cele. Done something similar with ele/dragon tooth too in another thread. Both posts got completely ignored, so i'm not going to repeat everything in detail.

I mean alright. I'm going to just repeat what I wrote above since I edited post-facto

People use 3 stat combinations like zerker gear in zerg because its BIS a lot of the time for them even though it has far less total stats (This also is true for a few builds in small scale but anyway). That was supposed to be the counter argument to whatever the argument was that i thought that you had. but i'm more than willing to hear out what your argument is.

It's like i said in the first post : Some builds can take advantage of celestial stats due to certain barriers they are able to cross that make those stats worth taking over other stats. In a vacuum chamber, sure it looks like celestial is so OP because it has nearly 2x the amount of total stats than 3 stat combinations like zerker does. But ask yourself why do people choose zerker stats over celestials in zerg play, if celestial is the same if not better than berserker from just pure stats?

You also said it yourself : You didn't factor in Boons, Conditions and Healing...which you have to factor in. Especially with celestial because celestial builds use boons to get them past those barriers i mentioned. Same with actually have skills that do condition damage ,strike damage and healing in the same build...which many builds and classes can't fully take advantage of because of trait/weapon/skill choices.

Edited March 5 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Zyreva.1078]

4 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

But ask yourself why do people choose zerker stats over celestials in zerg play, if celestial is the same if not better than berserker from just pure stats?

Aoe caps + downstate/rezzing (= defense that doesn't depend on gear) and sheer numbers (toughness/vita hardly matter if you get hit by 10-50 people at once) render defensive stats a lot less relevant. Mass aoe cleanse renders condis a lot less relevant. What remains relevant are power dps stats and healing/boons and that's why players focus on those. Cele might still be stronger for large scale than what players might think, but you'd have to build the entire zerg arround it and i don't know if anyone has ever tried to do that properly.

Point is, those reasons do not apply to small scale, at least not to the same extent. All stats are highly relevant there. It's simply different gameplay. So again, cele not being used for large scale does not mean it is not op for small scale. And it's the latter i'm talking about.

16 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

You also said it yourself : You didn't factor in Boons, Conditions and Healing...which you have to factor in.

It's not like those factors make cele worse ...

[Nugatory.8920]

1 hour ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Stat contribution to builds is non-trivial, and I think this only applies to certain builds that can actually use the stats to bring them up to competitive level (with respect to other stat combinations) Builds with these properties include builds that can utilize boons (specifically Might and Fury), skills that have more than just one damage type (strike, condition and/or healing) and utilize traits that bring them up to a certain barrier of entry. Mainly that barrier of entry is Critical Strike Chance for Strike Damage, and a high enough ferocity that makes use of the critical strike chance to begin with. When you leverage Fury, with some critical strike chance traits, you now make Power stats viable.

Obvious as well, is that the game is designed in such a way where you can't access decent healing without lowering damage coefficients or some other modifiers...so by and large lots of builds can't and wouldn't use celestial because they can't reach some of these criteria. Some of them can and by and large that's who you might see running around in celestials.

Then there are further reasons why you might not see celestials either, like in zerg play... typically it's understood specialization is just better, and actually necessary. (Though, I do suspect that a lower level hybrid zerg composition (a viable one) may exist...but i am doubtful because trait selection is very restrictive.)

In other words...the conclusion is that stat contribution, even with their lopsided stat distribution is non-trivial because of how other elements in the game interact with each other. Yes objectively Celestial has the most total stats, but many builds can't and wouldn't take advantage of it until it passes some threshold, a threshold upheld by certain build/trait/skill choices.

You have to think about why in zerg play people don't play marauders, or some hybrid stat set even though there are sets with way more total stats on them...to this day they still play zerkers. The math that goes into understanding why someone would pick some set that has less stats than another is non-trivial (but intuitively obvious) and that's why you need to do more proper research. Complex Systems is typically how you would talk about and model a game like guild wars 2...and at the start of the video i just linked, it explains exactly why simple addition of two or more things, is not enough to actually describe the output behavior of those set of things...that two or more things can become "more" than the sum of their parts. 

 

So what would you're solution be to builds that can abuse celestial? Go through each build skill by skill and trait by trait trying to balance them for all scales of combat, whilst maintaining their viability with three and four stat combos, but reducing their strength with Celestial?

Seems a convoluted solution to me, when tackling the root cause of the problem - celestial stats - would be much simpler.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

21 minutes ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

It's not like those factors make cele worse ...

Has nothing to do with making cele better or worse... it is REQUIRED for a Celestial build to have skills/traits that use strike damage, condition damage and healing skills in order to make actual use of the fact that they have celestial stats.

"Just slap Celestial on it" is not a smart thing to do for most builds because they don't meet a certain set of barriers they need to cross in order to make actual use of the stats. The kind of damage they do is one of them.

Quote

Aoe caps + downstate/rezzing (= defense that doesn't depend on gear) and sheer numbers (toughness/vita hardly matter if you get hit by 10-50 people at once) render defensive stats a lot less relevant. Mass aoe cleanse renders condis a lot less relevant. What remains relevant are power dps stats and healing/boons and that's why players focus on those. Cele might still be stronger for large scale than what players might think, but you'd have to build the entire zerg arround it and i don't know if anyone has ever tried to do that properly.

Aside from the first sentence, this is why gear stat is not the be all end all and it disproves your own argument  that a stat set makes a build more superior through stat total alone. A Strike Damage player, has to exchange power stats for more toughness more condition and more healing power of which he doesn't even have skills on their bar or traits equipped that can take advantage of those stats. Therefor that set is not useful to that player, it is a detriment. Hence why a zerg player is not going to take celestial stats. They are gonna take stats of which they can do the most of their role they are choosing, and whatever stat set is BIS for that, is what they will take. For zerg play, BIS gear is Ministrels (for maximizing Outgoing Heal Percentage, with bountiful maintence oil) and BIS gear for most damage builds is Berserkers.

If Minstrels wasn't around...it would be Clerics followed by Magi's...then maybe Harrier depending on if that build actually utilizes boon duration or not.

Make sense?

 

Edited March 5 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Zyreva.1078]

36 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

it is REQUIRED for a Celestial build to have skills/traits that use strike damage, condition damage and healing skills in order to make actual use of the fact that they have celestial stats.

Math disagrees.

If x + y + z < a + b + c + d + e = true then a + b + c + d + e + f + g + h + i < x+ y + z is impossible to be also true, since we don't have negative stats.

36 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

"Just slap Celestial on it" is not a smart thing to do for most builds because they don't meet a certain set of barriers they need to cross in order to make actual use of the stats.

I'll ask you the same question i have already asked someone else in this thread: Do you think mara gear would be balanced, if it received a 30% buff? And what about a 100% buff? Still balanced?

36 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Aside from the first sentence, this is why gear stat is not the be all end all and it disproves your own argument that a stat set makes a build more superior through stat total alone.

Cele is BIS for soloing open world bosses, therefore i'm right.

See, i can too bring up completely unrelated stuff.

36 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Make sense?

No.

Edited March 5 by Zyreva.1078

[TheGrimm.5624]

10 hours ago, Silinsar.6298 said:

In general, players are good at finding and pointing out problems, but bad at providing a solution or reaching a consensus about what should be done about it.

A lot of balance updates feel like ANet's picking up a random idea from somewhere that might address a problem but wasn't thought through. Or acts oblivious to problems that are being pointed out.

I'd love to get more insights into why some things were or weren't addressed in a certain way.

Agree, and talking balance is worse in the WvW subforum since context changes when you are talking a 1v1 and then up from there to a 1v1v5 and further up. Plus people sometimes come out flailing with the nerf bat when it was the fact that they just also ran into a really good player out there after facing a lot of bad ones on the same class. So what it the class, gear or the player and/or the rotation. So that makes the conversions even more convoluted and complicated. 

We could use more info on the whys, but they were getting better in some of the postings. Also there can be insights in the twitch streams but I am not certain if some of those might have been inner monologs coming out while they bantered. Again the statement that melee don't jump in since they fear losing boons due to boonstrip being a premise to reduce boonstrip was surprising.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

1 hour ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

Math disagrees.

If x + y + z < a + b + c + d + e = true then a + b + c + d + e + f + g + h + i < a+ b + c is impossible to be also true, since we don't have negative stats.

This is far too trivial way to represent the game. As I say earlier, you need mathematical background from areas like complex systems to model games (or any non-trivial real system) like this.

For instance lots of functions in this game are not addition problems of the form a + b + c....+ n... Target cap for instance is of the form a(x)... others are percentage based and iterative... like the function 100 + 10% + 10% + 10% in that order is treated like [((A + 10%) + 10%) + 10%))] = X so your function would look like 100 + 10 + 11 + 12.1 = 133.1, like the damage equation when dealing with your power coefficients on traits, or diminishing returns on toughness.

Some functions are totally non-trivial...and this is the kind that I like to study in theorycraft...exponential functions, factorial explosions, geometric functions (like zerg configuration). These are also the best kinds of functions to prove theorems on because some can have a meaningful answer at infinity (testing for what happens in infinite cases is a valid proof called Induction). Some non-trivial functions are mundane, but still have interesting non-trivial properties (like the relationship between Healing Power and Outgoing Healing; it's optimal to always have as much of both as you can, rather than one or the other.)

But anyway...point is that many functions and in particular stat combination with their skills do not obey a simple a + b...+ n schema. The fact that target caps exist already make those behavior have a(x) type relationships by default and shows that this kind of representation is not valid, hence why my comments point to that invalidity and telling you to go look into complex systems which tells you how to model any sufficiently complex game like guild wars 2. 

 

Edited March 5 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Zyreva.1078]

30 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

This is far too trivial way to represent the game.

I'm not trying to represent the entire game and it's not neccessary to represent the entire game in oder to figure out whether something is op or not in a certain context.

37 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

But anyway...point is that many functions and in particular stat combination with their skills do not obey a simple a + b...+ n schema.

No matter how elaborate the actual math in the background looks like, it's the same for all gear. Stats don't change the formulas, only the numbers. And there is no situation where having additional healing or boons or condis for free is going to be a detriment.

What does have an impact on formulas is context tho. Which you keep ignoring ->

40 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

The fact that target caps exist

is irrelevant for content where target caps have little to no impact - and that's exactly the type of content i'm talking about and where cele is op. Stop talking about zerging!