Power De-Creep. What would you adjust?

[Fueki.4753]

I'd like to see the damage numbers and boon vomit being reverted to pre-HoT days. The boon application rates of elite specialization would also be adjusted to be in line with what a core trait line can produce.

Bonus points, if they purge Concentration and Expertise from the game.

I also want them to return unique boons to the game.

[Antycypator.9874]

5 hours ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

How about all quickness durations in excess of 2s get halved and in exchange the old attack speed increase of quickness gets brought back?

I wonder how many actions can a player do in 3s with 100% more attack speed, but situational, non-permanent boost sounds much healthier for this game than literally living with quickness.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

Oh this is SUPER simple: I would delete ALL boons.

Now hold on. A few of you I heard jerk your knee so hard your femurs snapping was audible from here. "Not my Alacrity!" "I need full Might for my DPS!" "There's no way to clear the boss witout 25 vulnerability!" And you don't seem to understand that that's half the problem right there. Right now the game has been balanced around the idea that these boons will be up, at maxiumum stacks, at 100% time, which has led to this bad meta we have where we have to have these purpose built builds that do nothing but boon spam. You have to have THIS weapons with THIS trait and THIS gear and use THIS rotation so we can achieve MAXIMUM DPS! And so one of two things is inevitable: Either you're going to just faceroll your way through all the content (which isn't really that hard anyway) OR the rest of the game has to be tuned up with that in mind, which is what's been done. Hence, power creep. But if we got rid of the boons, everything could be scaled back, and everything is on a much more even keel. Remove the boons and you remove boon support. Without boon support now you're much more reliant on your own skill, your own synergies, and teamwork. ANd it would drastically narrow that gap between the power players and the casuals since yes, the casuals are doing like 5-10k damage but now endgame content could be balanced around the 20-25k mark for the power players who know what they're doing even without boons.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 hours ago, Antycypator.9874 said:

I wonder how many actions can a player do in 3s with 100% more attack speed, but situational, non-permanent boost sounds much healthier for this game than literally living with quickness.

You would see some insane burst setups in PvP/WvW for sure, but not perma quickness builds.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

16 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

As for nerfing might per stack, okay, but why nerfing fury?

Its basically a power only boon and would just make that condi is even more stronger than power. 

I mean with nerfing might and fury u would kinda nerf condi 1 time and power 2 times.

 

In blob fights it probably wouldn't matter, but in roaming it would give power an extra (non-deserved) hit

That was just randomly thrown out numbers.  Could be any number, really. 

 

14 hours ago, KryTiKaL.3125 said:

At this point I think they just need to do a full reverse, stop nerfing boon strip/corrupt and add more of it back into the game. That is quite literally the "counterplay" they spoke about in their philosophy post and yet they haven't kept up with that and simply made boonballing stronger.

As for anything else, turthfully, they should be buffing the underperforming things to bring them in line with how the meta has established itself these days. Nerfing as they have clearly doesn't work because they visibly don't seem to know what to nerf, or just don't nerf the right thing. Granted they don't exactly buff the right things either...but they miss a lot more with nerfs than buffs at this point.

I would do illegal things to buff Boon removal and corruption. 

Gimme back my Spellbreaker bubble 😭

[xellink.7568]

Probably something like this.

Make a wing 8 with an anti-boon boss/mechanics.

 

Shatter Enchantment - Guild Wars Wiki (GWW)

Just for context, some monks bring 55 hp in guild wars 1 and this skill used by an enemy would instant kill them.

 

Edited April 23 by xellink.7568

[Shagie.7612]

There's a massive difference between good specs and bad ones in terms of how many buttons they have, how many different things their buttons do, and especially post-EoD how mobile they are.

Read a Ranger's mace tooltip and then compare it to like, Warrior's regular mace skills lol

[Sahne.6950]

PvP only:

Mesmer: Increase signet of illusions cooldown to 75 seconds, when the virtuoso specialisation is equipped.

Guardian: Decrease the dmg of all traps by approx 10%.

Necromancer: no clue. Condivomit of pistol and Torch reaper is bonkers tho.

Ranger: Mace mace....

Elementalist: Catalyst spheres, no longer apply a hit, so you cant easily clear blind and aegis anymore.

Warrior: Fullcounter cooldown increased to 16 seconds.

Thief: Endurance gained from Shadowrejuvenation reduced from 2 on entry 1 on exit, to 1 on both.

Engie: no clue.

Rev:  Reduce Deathdrop coeff by approx 20%.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

18 minutes ago, Shagie.7612 said:

There's a massive difference between good specs and bad ones in terms of how many buttons they have, how many different things their buttons do, and especially post-EoD how mobile they are.

Read a Ranger's mace tooltip and then compare it to like, Warrior's regular mace skills lol

The Mace version of:

Hydrogen bomb VS coughing baby. 

[SeTect.5918]

2 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

That was just randomly thrown out numbers.  Could be any number, really. 

I see, yeah i m all in for boon nerfs tho. Because some builds have like 20 boons perm and others like none. 

Especially in solo pve normally the classes with more boons perform the best while builds without perm everything dont perform so well. 

Thats why for example warrior isnt something that would be my first choice in solo play. 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

20 minutes ago, SeTect.5918 said:

I see, yeah i m all in for boon nerfs tho. Because some builds have like 20 boons perm and others like none. 

Especially in solo pve normally the classes with more boons perform the best while builds without perm everything dont perform so well. 

Thats why for example warrior isnt something that would be my first choice in solo play. 

Warrior is really good in solo play actually. 

You just need to think outside the box for a bit. Like playing Hammer/Rifle berserker. 

Aggressive Onslaught + Relic of the midnight king + Defense traitline is Perma 25 might, Fury, Quickness and Stab.

Endless adrenalin. 

Lots of mobility. 

Good sustain. 

Good dmg. 

Even ranged combat, because Gunflame has a daze on it. Therefor giving you all the boons from above + adrenalin. 

Its super fun and slaps in OW. 

 

Edited April 23 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 hours ago, Shagie.7612 said:

There's a massive difference between good specs and bad ones in terms of how many buttons they have, how many different things their buttons do, and especially post-EoD how mobile they are.

Read a Ranger's mace tooltip and then compare it to like, Warrior's regular mace skills lol

And yet the devs literally begged warriors to play that weapon and we just laughed.

So you would adjust things like ranger maces?

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

2 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

PvP only:

Mesmer: Increase signet of illusions cooldown to 75 seconds, when the virtuoso specialisation is equipped.

Guardian: Decrease the dmg of all traps by approx 10%.

Necromancer: no clue. Condivomit of pistol and Torch reaper is bonkers tho.

Ranger: Mace mace....

Elementalist: Catalyst spheres, no longer apply a hit, so you cant easily clear blind and aegis anymore.

Warrior: Fullcounter cooldown increased to 16 seconds.

Thief: Endurance gained from Shadowrejuvenation reduced from 2 on entry 1 on exit, to 1 on both.

Engie: no clue.

Rev:  Reduce Deathdrop coeff by approx 20%.

I was expecting more of this. Thanks!

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

1 hour ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Warrior is really good in solo play actually. 

You just need to think outside the box for a bit. Like playing Hammer/Rifle berserker. 

Aggressive Onslaught + Relic of the midnight king + Defense traitline is Perma 25 might, Fury, Quickness and Stab.

Endless adrenalin. 

Lots of mobility. 

Good sustain. 

Good dmg. 

Even ranged combat, because Gunflame has a daze on it. Therefor giving you all the boons from above + adrenalin. 

Its super fun and slaps in OW. 

 

This, warrior in solo OW play is fun, effective, and durable when built right.

I still love the amount of pew pew on my mechanist though.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

15 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

This, warrior in solo OW play is fun, effective, and durable when built right.

I still love the amount of pew pew on my mechanist though.

Sadly, playing rifle for its intended purpose, long range, is not possible without the extra adrenalin via merciless Hammer +Gunflame daze.

Generating enough steady adrenalin from 1200 range is.....

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

16 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Sadly, playing rifle for its intended purpose, long range, is not possible without the extra adrenalin via merciless Hammer +Gunflame daze.

Generating enough steady adrenalin from 1200 range is.....

Yeah, I know, but Gunflame+Merciless Hammer is wonderful.

[Shagie.7612]

40 minutes ago, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

So you would adjust things like ranger maces?

I think it's hard to give a simple answer.

Like, take what are currently meta specs in PvP, and compare them to the bottom of the barrel. It's beyond just number tuning, there's a massive advantage in so many areas that it's hard to bring them closer together without essentially making a bunch of buttons and traits do nothing. Changing up how much damage or healing something does can only go so far when something has three times as many situational buttons to use, or all their skills are multipurpose, y'know? 

Mobility is the most notable area though, I think. It's gone up dramatically since EoD. 

As far as warrior maces go, Skull Grinder is still really good, but the rest of the mace skills aren't so hot, while Ranger's is nearly a full elite spec baked in. It's got better control, mobility, and sustain in addition to way stronger damage.

Comparing directly across classes isn't the most effective way to look at things, because classes have different traits and utilities and all that , but it's clear that some weapons, some elites, some builds just have objectively more and don't lack in areas to balance it out, while the weak ones have very clear flaws and weaknesses in addition to poor numbers.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

3 minutes ago, Shagie.7612 said:

I think it's hard to give a simple answer.

Like, take what are currently meta specs in PvP, and compare them to the bottom of the barrel. It's beyond just number tuning, there's a massive advantage in so many areas that it's hard to bring them closer together without essentially making a bunch of buttons and traits do nothing. Changing up how much damage or healing something does can only go so far when something has three times as many situational buttons to use, or all their skills are multipurpose, y'know? 

Mobility is the most notable area though, I think. It's gone up dramatically since EoD. 

As far as warrior maces go, Skull Grinder is still really good, but the rest of the mace skills aren't so hot, while Ranger's is nearly a full elite spec baked in. It's got better control, mobility, and sustain in addition to way stronger damage.

Comparing directly across classes isn't the most effective way to look at things, because classes have different traits and utilities and all that , but it's clear that some weapons, some elites, some builds just have objectively more and don't lack in areas to balance it out, while the weak ones have very clear flaws and weaknesses in addition to poor numbers.

You are right that comparing laterally a weapon across two classes is not effective, but looking at the totality of what one can do versus the totality of the other can still be a fair assessment when taking into account things like their versatility, their mobility, raw numbers, CDs, and any mechanics they have.

Of the new weapons Ranger Maces and Necro Swords got some extreme detail from the devs, but things like Engineer Shortbow... not so much.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

- Cut the effect of might by 50 %
- Cap critical hit rate at 90 % 
- Cap condition duration at 80 %
- Cap damage multipliers from traits to 20 %
- Reduce baseline critical-damage to 120 %

The problem is, everyone thinks "I want nerfs, but NOT ON MY CLASS!" XD. Everyone is truly overpowered, except you. You are just pure skill and talent ;). That is why I rather go for nerfs as listed above, rather than focusing on class specific adjustments.

By introducing the three caps listed above, some builds (meta) would try to add condition-damage to power-builds to compensate the DPS loss. I've seen that before. Very entertaining. Usually makes the rotations much more complicated, which would result in a further DPS drop automatically.

[SeTect.5918]

4 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Warrior is really good in solo play actually. 

You just need to think outside the box for a bit. Like playing Hammer/Rifle berserker. 

Aggressive Onslaught + Relic of the midnight king + Defense traitline is Perma 25 might, Fury, Quickness and Stab.

Endless adrenalin. 

Lots of mobility. 

Good sustain. 

Good dmg. 

Even ranged combat, because Gunflame has a daze on it. Therefor giving you all the boons from above + adrenalin. 

Its super fun and slaps in OW. 

 

I m not saying it is entirely bad, but certainly worse than untamed, druid, harbinger, scourge and those others cele boonspitter specs with good condi.

These just dont need to swap out so much damage for defense because they basically get their defense for free (like 5% condi to hp trait in combination with blight or 3k hp on cc (like every 2 sec) via wilderness survival while still going 25k+ dps and having perm fury, 25 might, perm protection, perm quickness, perm 25 vuln inflict and all that)

Warrior isnt bad, but there are just far better or easier options.

[Cuks.8241]

For PVE.

Remove Alacrity. Delete it and never look back.

Remove quickness from healing supports. Let it be a boon dps support role. 

What this does? Reduces power creep straight through loss of alacrity on both offensive and defensive end. Doesn't allow groups to replace boon dps with pure dps (and thus again power creep). Releases the healing supports from keeping a rotation for quick/alac uptime. It depends on the healer but some of them were really pushed into awkward rotations and builds just to keep up quick/alac. Healing supports should focus on pre-emptive, reactive supporting not doing rotations for boons. And they have enough other boons to keep up anyway.

For WvW.

I don't think there is an easy solution. Yeah the boon creep is increasing but it's also a side effect of they trying to shake up the meta.  So they are nerfing the usual suspects like FB (boon king) and Scourge (strips) and I guess also Spb (strips) and buffing some other specs. Also Scrapper in the past. But it just came to this strange meta which is even more support focused and the only way to fully kill smth is by using skills that finish downies like Banner. 

I think they would need to take like 10 steps back and actually start with CC. Like remove pulls completely. Reduce the amount of aoe hard cc. And after that gut stability. So the counter for CCs would be a combination of well timed stab and cc breaks. And once you solve that cc/stab riddle you have much more freedom for later changes to boons.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

On 4/23/2024 at 10:11 AM, HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:

- Cut the effect of might by 50 %
- Cap critical hit rate at 90 % 
- Cap condition duration at 80 %
- Cap damage multipliers from traits to 20 %
- Reduce baseline critical-damage to 120 %

The problem is, everyone thinks "I want nerfs, but NOT ON MY CLASS!" XD. Everyone is truly overpowered, except you. You are just pure skill and talent ;). That is why I rather go for nerfs as listed above, rather than focusing on class specific adjustments.

By introducing the three caps listed above, some builds (meta) would try to add condition-damage to power-builds to compensate the DPS loss. I've seen that before. Very entertaining. Usually makes the rotations much more complicated, which would result in a further DPS drop automatically.

I don't. I'd just like an update where I don't get nerfed for a change. I don't even follow what happens to the other professions, I just read the changes for what I'm losing this week.

[Leo G.4501]

What would I do? Throwing random kitten at the wall on a test server for players to mess with probably. When some stuff works out, consider putting it into main testing for potential updates.  I think a lot of discourse comes when they seemingly just change stuff just because.  Just having stuff for players to mess around with on test might sate a lot of desire to mix stuff up.

Since a lot of discussion is around boons, how about mixing those up?

Might: instead of 30 power/condi per stack, might grants 800 power/condi and stack caps at 10. Might grants increased damage to your next offensive attack and reduces your stacks by 1 per hit. Application stacks from skills/traits/gear will have to be adjusted (with small might application dropping to 1 might, moderate might application being 2-3 and the most might applied at a time being capped to 4). This would be to rebalance might to still be great but needing upkeep not by just duration but application itself to keep the damage flowing. 

Alacrity: Would become intensity stacking up to 5 and would decrease cooldowns by 50% instead of 25% but only on the next skill with a cooldown is used and decrease stacks by 1. If the tech is there, making this the first user-based activation boon could be cool...like, if instead of just the next skill used, if you have a skill that is currently recharging while having Alacrity on you, you could click that skill that is recharging to apply the reduction to it. If it works somewhat well, you could try making it a full user-based activation boon, giving players the ability to strategically use skills and these boons to capitalize on a strong effect.

Quickness: Shift the dynamic of this to increase skill activation from 50% to 100%...but only for basic attacks (the #1) and heal skills (#6). All other skills get a *stacking* 20% activation speed up. This means, you can then shift some of the boon to traits so if you want more activation speed up, you have to stack traits/gear/boons to get it but I'd look to keep this relegated by filtering what can and can't stack with quickness. 

Swiftness: Just a random idea; Add an effect that decreases the degradation of boons' durations by 33% while out of combat. I think of all the boons that is slept on primarily for its abundance is swiftness. I just want to emphasize that people should desire this boon. This, I'd imagine, would make this just as pivotal a boon when setting up prior to a push in WvW scenarios and organized PvE. 

[hash.8462]

What if instead Boon Duration only worked for the boons you get (self and incoming boons)?
This would lead to characters having to increase their own boon duration stat if they want to have longer boons; basically nerfing everyone as dps roles will need one more stat and the support roles will be less centrlized.

[Gaiawolf.8261]

9 hours ago, hash.8462 said:

What if instead Boon Duration only worked for the boons you get (self and incoming boons)?
This would lead to characters having to increase their own boon duration stat if they want to have longer boons; basically nerfing everyone as dps roles will need one more stat and the support roles will be less centrlized.

So instead of support builds using support gear, everyone has to bring their own support gear just so the support player can play support? No thanks. I don't want to join a pug as a healbrand and ask everyone to change into support gear just so I can do my job. Support builds gear for their job, just like dps builds gear for their job. No one should have to gear for someone else's job.