Hammer GS Vindi - aaaaalright, it's gone on long enough

[ArthurDent.9538]

1 minute ago, Myror.7521 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 Sir it doesn't deal that mutch dmg cause the dmg scales WITHOUT ARMOR AND WEAPON STATS. So it is doing around 3-4k dmg while Maul does 4-6k ^^

Not to mention listing the pve coefficients, clearly clueless.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

7 minutes ago, ArthurDent.9538 said:

Not to mention listing the pve coefficients, clearly clueless.

There is only a wvw split: 

March 15, 2022

Reduced power coefficient from 2.67 to 2.22 in WvW only.

Works in pvp same way it does in pve.

[Shagie.7612]

I have no idea why it has to be said so frequently, and to the same people even, that Death Drop doesn't use weapon strength in its formula like weapon skills, so the coefficient is always going to look deceptively high.

If you think it's too much damage just say so, comparing it to weapon skills just makes you look like you don't understand how damage formulas work.

[ArthurDent.9538]

13 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

There is only a wvw split: 

March 15, 2022

Reduced power coefficient from 2.67 to 2.22 in WvW only.

Works in pvp same way it does in pve.

Read the coefficients listed, it's at 2.67 in pvp which still sounds huge but because of the aforementioned weak weapon strength used it doesn't hit nearly as hard as a normal weapon skill with that coefficient. If you don't believe me, show a screen shot for the most damage you can do with it on a golem in heart of the mists and I'll make one of ranger hitting dramatically harder with maul.

[Eurantien.4632]

1. Who even uses greatsword on ranger anymore!? W-key > ranger GS.
2. Kinda hard to kite the reaper shroud these days when they got Wayfinder AND a ranged stun/kd with pistol/torch
3. Death's drop is one of the problems with vindi regardless of how hard it hits because having to dodge a dodge feels bad.

[Skary.8956]

Don't worry Power Heralds inc. 4 games today 4 power heralds in the enemy team

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

47 minutes ago, Shagie.7612 said:

If you think it's too much damage just say so, comparing it to weapon skills just makes you look like you don't understand how damage formulas work.

35 minutes ago, ArthurDent.9538 said:

but because of the aforementioned weak weapon strength used it doesn't hit nearly as hard as a normal weapon skill with that coefficient. If you don't believe me, show a screen shot for the most damage you can do with it on a golem in heart of the mists and I'll make one of ranger hitting dramatically harder with maul.

How about a short youtube video instead:

 

So what this is showing is serk power/feroc crit vs. serk power/feroc crit, clean, with no might stacks, no marks mods, no buffs on either build.

Death Drop is definitely in the same category of damage as Ranger Maul.

Save yourself some time, we already know what a Maul looks like when you prime a bunch of mods and strike with it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about raw actual normal damage. Point being is that dodge rolling for a clean maul level damage is too strong.

Edited July 17 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Sereath.1428]

Not really disagreeing tbh, as I've said before, since I've ben advocating for a Death Drop nerf for a long time now. And they keep nerfing everything around it, it has yet to receive a single nerf. So as long as people are properly informed about what's actually going on, I'm fine.
Cut the damage by 50% if you want, or simply remove it from Death Drop. The 10s damage buff is already good enough.
(Actual good game dev stuff would be reworking it to a mark target system that would synergize with Archemorus for bonus setup damage with Spear and such)

4 hours ago, Eurantien.4632 said:

3. Death's drop is one of the problems with vindi regardless of how hard it hits because having to dodge a dodge feels bad.

Fair critique.
In fact, I'd actually first try to reduce its radius drastically, even to something as small as 60 units (it is 180 atm). That would require a lot more commitment to properly place dodges.
But they never do mechanical splits and PvE players would hate that.

Just be careful when going to the wiki, its damage coefficient is not the same as every other skill. Otherwise it would actually be hitting for over 9ks.

Anyway:

4 hours ago, Skary.8956 said:

Don't worry Power Heralds inc. 4 games today 4 power heralds in the enemy team

I'm not really looking forward for the mess they have been brewing.
Instead of fixing their kitten balance philosophies they keep homogenizing things; such as giving Herald condi cleanse.
What's next? If it's still not working you are going to give it stability as well?
By they way, remove Resistance from Devastation already. That kitten is going to keep carrying bad plays everything.
On top of hammer being overloaded and being good at everything and at every range.
No downsides.
What if instead they fixed the constant barrage of condis (soft cc) and boons all over the place?

Edit: FWIW, Herald was all I played for years. But these buffs are so braindead.

Edited July 17 by Sereath.1428

[Waffles.5632]

I feel like this vindi spec + reaper are the two titans in today's meta.

It's willbender problem x2, both specs just do way too much of everything, reaper especially now, has pretty much same mobility as thief.  It's pretty insane what these specs are capable of in the right hands.

 

With all that being said though, I expect Mesmer nerfs because it's Anet.

[Shagie.7612]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Death Drop is definitely in the same category of damage as Ranger Maul.

yes that's wonderful, in fact i agree, death drop does too much damage. i think they do more damage than they should when they run salvation too, considering how defensive the traitline is
just say that lol

pointing out a number on a wiki is misleading, at best.
even if it were in a perfectly balanced state that number's going to look really high because of how the damage calculation works

[arazoth.7290]

2 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I honestly don't mind the damage buff % that it grants, or even that the dodge deals damage.

It just shouldn't be dealing massive damage. I mean look at this:

• Death Drop - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Damage: 997 (3.75) and there is a wvw split: 

  March 15, 2022

  Reduced power coefficient from 2.67 to 2.22 in WvW only.

   
• Maul (ranger greatsword skill) - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Damage: 807 (2.0) and actually this happened to it for competitive: 

  March 17, 2020

  Maul: Reduced power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.36 in PvP and WvW.

To @Susi Musi.2964 who said this:

Might want to recheck those numbers bud.

People will still find it annoying even if it still would do 2k's and rare 3k's. 

Remove the instant damage from it, put as compensation 3 more vulnerability stacks applied to it (8 total) and a cripple condition if you hit an enemy with it.

Less offensive on defense a lot, gives enemies more breathing room and they don't need to dodge the dodge anymore.

[arazoth.7290]

1 hour ago, Skary.8956 said:

Don't worry Power Heralds inc. 4 games today 4 power heralds in the enemy team

sorry, was in few of ur matches in late evening on Herald 😅

[Supernova Starr.2069]

4 hours ago, Flowki.7194 said:

Absolutely hilarious and 100% spot on. I read this comment, game started and bam: 4 reapers, 2 dragon huners and 0, ZERO, NIL, NAUGHT, ZIP vindis.

Anyway nerf everything else because we can't have any class competing with reaper stacks

[Yerlock.4678]

14 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

This spec is statistically jacked in both the DPS and defensive department.

1. Everything it does is a massive single strike that halves your health bar or one-shots you. And this damage isn't even easy to avoid/kite.
2. Perpetual ever-cycling sky dodges mixed with its hammer 3 & 4 and gs 4, makes this archetype worse than Staff Daredevil ever was, in terms of being an evasion tank.

This is the first archetype since Scept/Sig Catalyst that is breaking past the usual T1 and T2 levels of OP and is landing sternly into a T3 level of OP. If there are any more stupid buffs thrown at this, it will land into a T4 position where all we see is 2-3 Vindis on every team and probably 4 of them in AT teams.

Remember the OP Tier system:

• Tier 1 OP - Has numbers that are tweaked too high. Clearly it has too much damage.
• Tier 2 OP - Has mechanical advantages that is allowing it too easy of counterplay against other classes. Clearly the ever-cycling sky dodging, Death Drop, with everything else it has, is making it a super evasion tank that is overly difficult to even land strikes on without being forced into situations where the only way to deal damage to it are in these tiny intervals where it sets you up to have to trade damage with its Death Drop stacked with other attacks like GS#5. The way this mechanically flows prevents too many archetypes from being able to interact with it in any meaningful way at all.
• Tier 3 OP - Has both overly tweaked numbers and too many mechanical advantages. This is when we see many people begin to hop on and ride the fotm train, and start going out of their way to learn & spam a build structure because it's just clearly that much stronger than other archetypes. We start seeing 2+ being stacked in teams. I'm seeing it more and more every day with Vindi.
• Tier 4 OP - When something is so strong, there isn't a reason to use any other archetype in a team outside of maybe +1 support. Current Vindi is almost there.

We could go on and on about detailed nerfs that could be done to this or that, and that's great. But kitten please at least turn the damage down on this archetype. Do something. You guys know I don't come in here often with specific class nerf targets, but Vindi really has become another archetype that is too strong to a point where it's just making the game unfun to play again.

yep, needs nerf

[ArthurDent.9538]

2 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

How about a short youtube video instead:

 

So what this is showing is serk power/feroc crit vs. serk power/feroc crit, clean, with no might stacks, no marks mods, no buffs on either build.

Death Drop is definitely in the same category of damage as Ranger Maul.

Save yourself some time, we already know what a Maul looks like when you prime a bunch of mods and strike with it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about raw actual normal damage. Point being is that dodge rolling for a clean maul level damage is too strong.

You say "no might stacks, no marks mods, no buffs on either build" but both builds are clearly running some sorts of damage mods in the background. From testing I needed to be running and have active: leviathan strength, swift termination, destructive impulses, empire divided and of course forerunner of death to get those numbers on death drop. I know the ranger build you used also had some damage mods active as I was only hitting 2.9k maul crits when I actually took away all the extra damage boosts other than amulet and rune. From my testing when I strip it down to no damage mods it comes out to 2.9k for maul per hit, and 2.3k for deathdrop  which is still affected by damage boosts from forerunner of death and empire divided since I can't really remove those damage boosts on the golem and use death drop at the same time. So basically maul hits ~25% harder when ranger has no extra damage buffs and rev has minimal extra buffs. From there we know ranger is still the king of stacking big modifiers for huge single hits so the maul damage potential gets dramatically higher.

 

[Supernova Starr.2069]

6 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

This is not difficult to do, just "kite it" when it goes into shroud. 

Sorry, but no, seasons come and go, meta changes, elite specs get buff and nerfs but reapers are still strong as the daylight, reapers have now creep mobility as well and runaway from them it's an issue, especially with amount of chills they spam

You will never witness matches where people stack spb, uga ugas, or vindi, but you'll see plenty of them where people stack 3+ reapers with their fear/boon corrupt lock, yet the amount of weeklies post asking for nerfs on mentioned classes are there

It is unsetteling, to me at least, how reapers sits comfy in low effort, low skill floor builds and yet when a random build spikes, that's priority n1 on "pls nerf" topics

 

Edited July 17 by Supernova Starr.2069

[Zagerus.8675]

Weakness helps a lot with slowing down the dodges and lowering the potential burst capability. Vindi has sustain but insert consistent weakness application and it starts struggling.

[Susi Musi.2964]

6 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

I honestly don't mind the damage buff % that it grants, or even that the dodge deals damage.

It just shouldn't be dealing massive damage. I mean look at this:

• Death Drop - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Damage: 997 (3.75) and there is a wvw split: 

  March 15, 2022

  Reduced power coefficient from 2.67 to 2.22 in WvW only.

   
• Maul (ranger greatsword skill) - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Damage: 807 (2.0) and actually this happened to it for competitive: 

  March 17, 2020

  Maul: Reduced power coefficient from 1.5 to 1.36 in PvP and WvW.

To @Susi Musi.2964 who said this:

Might want to recheck those numbers bud.

You know there is a difference between actual dmg with modifications and on paper dmg... But w/e floats your boat

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

5 hours ago, Susi Musi.2964 said:

You know there is a difference between actual dmg with modifications and on paper dmg... But w/e floats your boat

There is also a difference between what is in your mind and what is shown in that video during a live demonstration.

I don't know why you're goofing and trying to defend this. It's kind of silly.

Edited July 17 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[arazoth.7290]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

There is also a difference between what is in your mind and what is shown in that video during a live demonstration.

I don't know why you're goofing and trying to defend this. It's kind of silly.

He might be right.

A small example I saw, on ranger you used deadeye rune and on rev dragon hunter. Dragon hunter gives more damage

[Susi Musi.2964]

9 hours ago, ArthurDent.9538 said:

You say "no might stacks, no marks mods, no buffs on either build" but both builds are clearly running some sorts of damage mods in the background. From testing I needed to be running and have active: leviathan strength, swift termination, destructive impulses, empire divided and of course forerunner of death to get those numbers on death drop. I know the ranger build you used also had some damage mods active as I was only hitting 2.9k maul crits when I actually took away all the extra damage boosts other than amulet and rune. From my testing when I strip it down to no damage mods it comes out to 2.9k for maul per hit, and 2.3k for deathdrop  which is still affected by damage boosts from forerunner of death and empire divided since I can't really remove those damage boosts on the golem and use death drop at the same time. So basically maul hits ~25% harder when ranger has no extra damage buffs and rev has minimal extra buffs. From there we know ranger is still the king of stacking big modifiers for huge single hits so the maul damage potential gets dramatically higher.

 

 

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

There is also a difference between what is in your mind and what is shown in that video during a live demonstration.

I don't know why you're goofing and trying to defend this. It's kind of silly.

It was answered before... but this is my last post about it, because arguing over this is not worth my time. 🙂

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

2 hours ago, arazoth.7290 said:

He might be right.

A small example I saw, on ranger you used deadeye rune and on rev dragon hunter. Dragon hunter gives more damage

2 hours ago, Susi Musi.2964 said:

It was answered before... but this is my last post about it, because arguing over this is not worth my time. 🙂

Damage modifiers on both builds:

The Druid:

• Strider's Strength - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +120 power
• Hunter's Tactics - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +10% damage
• Vicious Quarry - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +250 ferocity when fury is active
• Survival Instincts - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +10% damage
• When fury is active when it tags the 3700 maul strike, it has a total of 2495 power, 233% crit damage, and +20% damage

The Vindicator:

• Ferocious Aggression - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +7% damage when fury is active "which is not used in the demonstration" I don't activate fury
• Expose Defenses - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +5 vuln stacks on first hit entering combat
• Destructive Impulses - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +5% damage
• Targeted Destruction - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +1/2% damage per vuln stack
• Swift Termination - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +20% damage vs. bellow 50% health
• Leviathan Strength - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +10% damage when endurance is not full
• Empire Divided - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +240 power when above 50% health
• Forerunner of Death - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) +15% damage
• When the second death drop hits a 3500, it has 2504 power, 230% crit damage, 5% vuln on the golem that equates to +7% damage due to Targeted Destruction, +20% damage due to Swift Termination, +10% from Leviathan Strength, and +15% from Forerunner, for a total of +52% damage

On paper, you're right. The Death Drop needs more damage modifiers to make pace with the Maul damage.

But looking at things on paper compared to actual application are two very different things.

Effectively, with w/e mods the Drop has vs. Maul, in-game it's hitting virtually as hard as the Maul. In actual application, that is happening. And we can INB4 "but what if the Ranger stacks a bunch of mods" because the Vindi can do that too. The point still being, Vindicator doesn't need to be landing a Ranger Maul every time it dodge rolls.

Now that we've cleared up any misunderstandings, let's move past this confusion.

Edited July 17 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Waffles.5632]

Remember also you can death drop twice in a row naturally, and 3-4 times with combos. (Swapping legends for energy sigil & using F2)

[Flowki.7194]

20 hours ago, Myror.7521 said:

@Flowki.7194 the question you realy should asking yourself is ...... 

What realy does difficulty mean? Before u say x class is easy to play so it must be nerfed. To say the least for example:

Warrior: easy to play but hard to master

While for example ele is the exactly opposide.

Elementalist: hard to Play but easy to master

Now what do i realy mean by this you might gonna question? Here comes the answer:

Warrior is a class that is very easy to Understand this makes it a realy fast to learn to Play class BUT to Play it on a good Niveau you need to play around your high telegraphed and easy to learn mechanics .... why? Well cause everyone knows what you gonna do next especialy because most skills are also very telegraphed.

Elementalist is a class that is very hard to learn and you will get smashed hard in your First months to learn this class BUT once you learned it it fairly good to play since you have so many Options to sweap to in x Situations.

In the end Warrior gets harder to play the higher you get while ele is First realy hard but gets better at time. So both have their own reasons to be good. And no the badest part you can do is balancing around lower tiers Standard you should overall find a Mix between Low and high Tier ^^

 

I have had this talk with you so many times. Mechanical difficulty / Risk / Effectiveness.  The problem with this playerbase is they don't see those lines, and conflate. Renegade is quite easy to play but not very effective overall (that does not make it difficult, just not very effective). Repear is easy to play and effective overall, "and thats a problem".. becuase if reaper can be that effective, then why can't ren/condi mech etc.. you want those being meta level effective? Really? If the answer is no, then that should also be your answer to condi zerker, SPB, reaper, druid, as to not fall into the trap of double standards. All of those specs (and more) are overperforming in effectiveness, relative to their difficulty/risk ratios.

[Endo.1652]

8 minutes ago, Flowki.7194 said:

I have had this talk with you so many times. Mechanical difficulty / Risk / Effectiveness.  The problem with this playerbase is they don't see those lines, and conflate. Renegade is quite easy to play but not very effective overall (that does not make it difficult, just not very effective). Repear is easy to play and effective overall, "and thats a problem".. becuase if reaper can be that effective, then why can't ren/condi mech etc.. you want those being meta level effective? Really? If the answer is no, then that should also be your answer to condi zerker, SPB, reaper, druid, as to not fall into the trap of double standards. All of those specs (and more) are overperforming in effectiveness, relative to their difficulty/risk ratios.

This is a hot take from me. I dont think we should tie in just because something is more difficult or has a harder skill floor, that it should be over preforming everything else. I believe it should have a reward to it100% don't get me wrong. But we should seperate some things and just purely look at if a spec or build is something other players can even interact or engage, if players generally cannot and the windows for opportunity are very small. Then we ask, why is it that way?

I can argue the same about some thief builds to an extent. It has potentially high skill ceiling but if that skill ceiling flat out denies others from ever interacting with you. Maybe thats an unhealthy aspect in the game that needs to be looked at.