Current state of specs post PoF Release

[Sethorus.9231]

So far numbers are starting to show up about the performance of several of the new specs and they're rounding around 40k-50k. That's a lot if compared with the 20k-30k HoT Specs were able to pull out. Do you guys believe PoF specs will receive a dps nerf of the other dps specs will receive a buff to catch up with them? What is your opinion at the moment with how the end game scenario is looking up for the game.

[CptAurellian.9537]

I hope that the PoF specs will receive nerfs as soon as possible (no, not ANet-possible, but objective possible) to bring them in line with the HoT elites. 35k DPS is a healthy ceiling, nothing should get significantly higher than that. Ever inflating damage numbers is fine for a game with permanent item progression like WoW, but it is not healthy for something like GW2.

[Dahkeus.8243]

Afaik, there's only 2 elite specs hitting that 45-50k area (Firebrand and Weaver) and those definitely should be brought down to a more reasonable 35kish level in order to be more consistent with the other pure DPS builds. Once that is done, I think we'll have a reasonable selection of specs for damage roles, but I'll need to see more benchmarks for some specs to be sure.

However, I also think that Rev needs their alacrity buff in order to give an alternative to the Chrono. If this is done, then you can either run a Chrono for alacrity/quickness or run a Rev for Alacrity and a Firebrand for quickness.

[Evolute.6239]

A lot of specs are hitting 40k+. Firebrand, Weaver, Condi Soulbeast, Condi Rev with any movement, Necro is 38k..They really need to do a tuning pass.

[DoM.8396]

Based on what was said pre-launch during one of the live streams these elite specs will be tuned down to be more on par with HoT elite specs. PoF elite specs are not intended to be better or more powerful but to provide alternative ways to play your profession.

[Dahkeus.8243]

@DoM.8396 said:Based on what was said pre-launch during one of the live streams these elite specs will be tuned down to be more on par with HoT elite specs. PoF elite specs are not intended to be better or more powerful but to provide alternative ways to play your profession.

Well, that was said of HoT elite specs too and we all know how that turned out...

Honestly though, I'm fine with PoF specs being better than HoT specs, at least for a while after release. PoF elite specs are new and shiny, so we should have some time where we're encouraged to play with them. However, I think that can be done without powercreeping the hell out of everything and keeping max DPS under 40k.

[Zenith.7301]

Not a lot of specs. Mirage does a miserly 32k, and that's with using all their utility slots for signets and jaunt. Holosmith is also around 32-33k. Won't even mention poor deadeye.

Necro benchmark is not even realistic considering it's testing on a stationary golem, try managing your shades on constantly moving bosses.

Guardian and ele are the outliers, and guardian especially so because unlike ele they also bring significant utility whereas ele is all damage (and ele should be the strongest DPS class by ~1-2k DPS to compensate for being the lowest HP, lowest armor class with redundant utility in form of boons that warriors stack much better).

They also completely messed up weaver, where staff, a ranged weapon, wildly outperforms melee weapons. That's just dumb and should never happen. Sword and dagger need to be reevaluated for ele.

Mirage needs significant buffs due to its hideous ramp up and complete lack of utility and cleave damage; it should be a really high single target DPS class. It isn't.

[OriOri.8724]

@"Zenith.7301" Mesmer does not need another single target DPS class. It already has builds for that (though they have significant downsides and are by no means the best single target builds in the game). What it still doesn't have is an AoE/mob "friendly" DPS spec, which is what a lot of us were hoping mirage would be. Especially since it brings no group utility at all, its damage needs to be significantly higher.

[Zenith.7301]

@OriOri.8724 said:@"Zenith.7301" Mesmer does not need another single target DPS class. It already has builds for that (though they have significant downsides and are by no means the best single target builds in the game). What it still doesn't have is an AoE/mob "friendly" DPS spec, which is what a lot of us were hoping mirage would be. Especially since it brings no group utility at all, its damage needs to be significantly higher.

Listen, I would like no better than to get mechanical changes badly needed for mesmer, but the sheer ineptitude of the balance team for 5+ years of this game should already clue you in that the best you can hope for is buffing the numbers instead of mechanical changes.

[Enigmoid.1264]

The issue with dps core mesmer is that it has an incredibly low skill floor. Simply summon your illusions and go watch youtube. You don't have to do anything. Surprisingly in PUG raids I find that dps mesmers do incredibly well for this reason. Mesmer needs some AOE love but does not need any more damage. The 28k two finger core mesmer dps build is the easiest and most consistent damage you will get in the game and probably hits very close to that in actual situations as opposed to other professions who all do significantly worse in raid situations.

[Zenith.7301]

@Enigmoid.1264 said:The issue with dps core mesmer is that it has an incredibly low skill floor. Simply summon your illusions and go watch youtube. You don't have to do anything. Surprisingly in PUG raids I find that dps mesmers do incredibly well for this reason. Mesmer needs some AOE love but does not need any more damage. The 28k two finger core mesmer dps build is the easiest and most consistent damage you will get in the game and probably hits very close to that in actual situations as opposed to other professions who all do significantly worse in raid situations.

That's a load of crap. Guardian is piss easy. Staff power daredevil is piss easy. Condi ranger is piss easy. Condi necro is piss easy. The only true hard class in a raid is an ele and engineer.

Tuning class ceiling along difficulty is dumb as hell as it will never be true balance at higher skilled groups who can pull the rotations. It's like keeping Annie and Garen inferior champions just because they're easy to pick up, but at competitive levels they vanish because of being tuned to be inferior.

[OriOri.8724]

@Zenith.7301 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:@"Zenith.7301" Mesmer does not need another single target DPS class. It already has builds for that (though they have significant downsides and are by no means the best single target builds in the game). What it still doesn't have is an AoE/mob "friendly" DPS spec, which is what a lot of us were hoping mirage would be. Especially since it brings no group utility at all, its damage needs to be significantly higher.

Listen, I would like no better than to get mechanical changes badly needed for mesmer, but the sheer ineptitude of the balance team for 5+ years of this game should already clue you in that the best you can hope for is buffing the numbers instead of mechanical changes.

I know, but that won't stop me from voicing my concerns to Anet. I'm not going to give up on this.

@Enigmoid.1264 Low skill floor for a relatively low DPS cap that is only possible under specific conditions is actually fair. If you look at that build, it has incredible limitations related to ramp up time and number of targets (which is 1), and also is unable to use its F skills without a severe penalty to its longterm, sustained DPS, the worse penalty that any class suffers from for using their class mechanic to be quite honest, and worst by far.

That said, if mesmer got the changes it needed for more AoE, there is nothing stopping Anet from raising the skill floor when implementing those changes. You've seen it happen. Quickness/alacrity chrono tank has a ridiculously high skill floor compared to most raid builds, so it is possible to give high skill floor builds to mesmer.

[Enigmoid.1264]

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Enigmoid.1264 said:The issue with dps core mesmer is that it has an incredibly low skill floor. Simply summon your illusions and go watch youtube. You don't have to do anything. Surprisingly in PUG raids I find that dps mesmers do incredibly well for this reason. Mesmer needs some AOE love but does not need any more damage. The 28k two finger core mesmer dps build is the easiest and most consistent damage you will get in the game and probably hits very close to that in actual situations as opposed to other professions who all do significantly worse in raid situations.

That's a load of crap. Guardian is kitten easy. Staff power daredevil is kitten easy. Condi ranger is kitten easy. Condi necro is kitten easy. The only true hard class in a raid is an ele and engineer.

Tuning class ceiling along difficulty is kitten as kitten as it will never be true balance at higher skilled groups who can pull the rotations. It's like keeping Annie and Garen inferior champions just because they're easy to pick up, but at competitive levels they vanish because of being tuned to be inferior.

Those builds have to continue hitting the boss, dodge, be in melee range, etc. Mesmer can maintain damage while evading, not being in range, etc. Its not ideal for every boss but for bosses like VG it can be surprisingly good. There is also almost no skill involved, auto and press 2 off cooldown - you don't even weapon swap. Its lower damage (30k) but its extremely easy to do and extremely consistent on single target raid bosses.

A lot of builds right now are far far too low risk high reward. Guardian is currently Anet's baby, easy and powerful to play in PvP and WvW while having extremely competitive damage in PvE. Staff daredevil (and thief in general) need a bit of a rework. Condi ranger is easy but again caps at around 30k, same as mesmer.

Ele and Engie are hard and to be honest ele is in a weird place right now. Staff is very strong on large static hitboxes but not that great on everything else; the burn build is harder than it looks as well. Engie has either a complicated rotation (condi) or a very simple one (power).

@OriOri.8724

Ramp up time is decent on the power dps mesmer build and shatters would be OP in other game modes if they did more damage that they are already doing. AOE mesmer would be a nightmare to balance as it has so many evade frames. I agree that chronotanking is a hard job but the off chrono is basically on vacation so that kinda balances out.

To be honest raids are really messing up balance on PvP, PvE and WvW. These game modes are simply not designed around the professions dealing the same amount of damage. Giving an ele a paltry 2k more damage than a warrior (due to low health and rotation complexity) on the golem works fine in raids but completely screws the ele over in PvP where the warrior has twice the EHP (far less vulnerable to burst especially with the absurd power creep) and massive sustain while the ele requires healing power stat investment to even try to be competitive (and generally isn't due to harder to land skills). If PvP were split I would agree with you but classes like mesmer getting high AOE damage, which are such a pain to deal with in competitive environments, would break some game modes.

IMO they should just split PvP and normalize health pools (and somewhat damage) for that game mode. The EHP differences are just too large. Perhaps somewhat normalize and bump up health pools in general to deal with powercreep and oneshots.

[OriOri.8724]

I didn't ask for our shatters to be buffed. Merely pointing out that mesmer as a class suffers, by far, the absolute largest penalty to our sustained DPS for using out f skills. No other class is punished like mesmer is for using their f skills. And that's a big design problem. One that is solved not by buffing shatters (they'll never be good enough to justify that punishment without being beyond broken), but by reworking how our illusions work and how phantasms in particular interact with shatters.

[Enigmoid.1264]

@OriOri.8724 said:I didn't ask for our shatters to be buffed. Merely pointing out that mesmer as a class suffers, by far, the absolute largest penalty to our sustained DPS for using out f skills. No other class is punished like mesmer is for using their f skills. And that's a big design problem. One that is solved not by buffing shatters (they'll never be good enough to justify that punishment without being beyond broken), but by reworking how our illusions work and how phantasms in particular interact with shatters.

Ah sorry.

Mesmer f skills are burst so if you use them your sustain will go down. I'm not sure what you are asking. You want high sustained dps and high burst without any tradeoffs? The only way I can see mesmer illusions and phantasms working is if damage is removed from them and added to the player.

[OriOri.8724]

No, I want to not be punished for so long. Mesmer sustained DPS already has the longest windup time due to needing to wait to get our phantasms out, and then waiting even longer for them to build up PF. I don't have a problem with having our sustained damage hurt by using our shatters. but our sustained DPS is hurt much worse than what other classes are when they use a burst. No other class has to wait as long after they use a burst to get their sustained DPS back up as mesmer does, and our burst isn't even that great in PvE.

[Enigmoid.1264]

@OriOri.8724 said:No, I want to not be punished for so long. Mesmer sustained DPS already has the longest windup time due to needing to wait to get our phantasms out, and then waiting even longer for them to build up PF. I don't have a problem with having our sustained damage hurt by using our shatters. but our sustained DPS is hurt much worse than what other classes are when they use a burst. No other class has to wait as long after they use a burst to get their sustained DPS back up as mesmer does, and our burst isn't even that great in PvE.

I agree. Mesmer is constrained by class mechanics like necro is with shroud and ranger is with pet.

On burst, some classes don't really have burst (staff thief or condi ranger) not sure why you are bringing this up.

[Zenith.7301]

@Enigmoid.1264 said:

@OriOri.8724 said:I didn't ask for our shatters to be buffed. Merely pointing out that mesmer as a class suffers, by far, the absolute largest penalty to our sustained DPS for using out f skills. No other class is punished like mesmer is for using their f skills. And that's a big design problem. One that is solved not by buffing shatters (they'll never be good enough to justify that punishment without being beyond broken), but by reworking how our illusions work and how phantasms in particular interact with shatters.

Ah sorry.

Mesmer f skills are burst so if you use them your sustain will go down. I'm not sure what you are asking. You want high sustained dps and high burst without any tradeoffs? The only way I can see mesmer illusions and phantasms working is if damage is removed from them and added to the player.

You know, like condi warrior, whos uses their burst skills for sustained and burst?

[Feanor.2358]

@Zenith.7301 said:Tuning class ceiling along difficulty is kitten as kitten as it will never be true balance at higher skilled groups who can pull the rotations. It's like keeping Annie and Garen inferior champions just because they're easy to pick up, but at competitive levels they vanish because of being tuned to be inferior.

And not doing that is even worse. It only gives choice in the higher skilled groups, which are a small percentage of all groups. The rest are facing the choice "take easy class and risk less or take a hard class and risk more, for the same reward". That's poor balance.

[Zenith.7301]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:Tuning class ceiling along difficulty is kitten as kitten as it will never be true balance at higher skilled groups who can pull the rotations. It's like keeping Annie and Garen inferior champions just because they're easy to pick up, but at competitive levels they vanish because of being tuned to be inferior.

And not doing that is even worse. It only gives choice in the higher skilled groups, which are a small percentage of all groups. The rest are facing the choice "take easy class and risk less or take a hard class and risk more, for the same reward". That's poor balance.

That already exists here. Who the hell plays condi engi, when you can play a braindead condi thief or warrior. Who the hell even plays a much harder to optimize ele when you can be the easier condi PS.

Don't even pretend like rotations in this game are hard. You have a total of 10 skills with a 10 sec cd lockout for half of those at a time. It's an incredibly easy game relative to others.

Pressing 4 buttons instead of 2 does not suddenly spike up your difficulty.

[Mitch.4781]

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

Don't even pretend like rotations in this game are hard. You have a total of 10 skills with a 10 sec cd lockout for half of those at a time. It's an incredibly easy game relative to others.

Pressing 4 buttons instead of 2 does not suddenly spike up your difficulty.

I guess you never ever played a small MMO called WOW. Arcane Mage with it's TWO skill rotation says hello lmao

[Kundry.1249]

@Mitch.4781 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

Don't even pretend like rotations in this game are hard. You have a total of 10 skills with a 10 sec cd lockout for half of those at a time. It's an incredibly easy game relative to others.

Pressing 4 buttons instead of 2 does not suddenly spike up your difficulty.

I guess you never ever played a small MMO called WOW. Arcane Mage with it's TWO skill rotation says hello lmao

Arcane needs to manage mana, though it's still one of the easier specs. WoW rotations are very different in idea anyway. GW2 rotations tend to have a lot more attack skills to use, but in WoW the complexity comes from managing resources, lining up cooldowns, and reacting to procs.

WoW rotations also are fairly clearly designed purposefully by the devs, whereas in GW2 skills don't feel like they have been designed with a PvE rotation in mind at all. It's not necessarily bad, since there's an element of exploring and finding the optimal rotation, but this does run the risk of some classes getting garbage rotations (back when WoW was kind of like that, you had the BC shadowbolt warlock with a 1-button rotation).

Case in point: Dps Mesmer. The rotation is so boring and nonsensical (in that you need to purposefully ignoring your class your toolkit) that I wouldn't want to play it even if it did great dps. If they are serious about dps mesmer being a thing, they should make the rotation more interesting.

I think mesmers have good potential for an interesting dps rotation. It's probably not an easy task to tune it right but both Phantasms and Shatter should be worth using. Quickness Chrono is much more interesting (though even there one could have some improvements) because you get to actually shatter your illusions and resummon them, if only once every 70 seconds or so. One tentative idea would be to make the Phantasmal Force trait increase the damage of your next Mind Wrack, instead of increasing your Phantasm damage. That way you'd want to shatter once enough time has passed with your Phantasms out, instead of keeping your Phantasms forever, but at the same time you won't get ridiculous burst in pvp unless your Phantasms have been attacking for a long time.

[Zenith.7301]

@Mitch.4781 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

Don't even pretend like rotations in this game are hard. You have a total of 10 skills with a 10 sec cd lockout for half of those at a time. It's an incredibly easy game relative to others.

Pressing 4 buttons instead of 2 does not suddenly spike up your difficulty.

I guess you never ever played a small MMO called WOW. Arcane Mage with it's TWO skill rotation says hello lmao

I just think you were probably a 50 something percentile blue parse arcane mage if you say that with a straight face of recent arcane incarnations.

There's no disputing WoW's PvE as a whole is way better balanced (far lower class deltas) and specs are actually designed with PvE in mind. Mythic raiding is also on a completely different scale to those in GW2, whose difficulty approaches heroic mode endbosses at best.

I won't even bring up FFXIV where class deltas are closer to 5%. Both those MMO's also have developers who balance with raid balance in mind instead of PvP/wvw balance primarily.

[Feanor.2358]

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:Tuning class ceiling along difficulty is kitten as kitten as it will never be true balance at higher skilled groups who can pull the rotations. It's like keeping Annie and Garen inferior champions just because they're easy to pick up, but at competitive levels they vanish because of being tuned to be inferior.

And not doing that is even worse. It only gives choice in the higher skilled groups, which are a small percentage of all groups. The rest are facing the choice "take easy class and risk less or take a hard class and risk more, for the same reward". That's poor balance.

That already exists here. Who the kitten plays condi engi, when you can play a braindead condi thief or warrior. Who the kitten even plays a much harder to optimize ele when you can be the easier condi PS.

Don't even pretend like rotations in this game are hard. You have a total of 10 skills with a 10 sec cd lockout for half of those at a time. It's an incredibly easy game relative to others.

Pressing 4 buttons instead of 2 does not suddenly spike up your difficulty.

Cool story. I'm glad you're so pro that all the rotations are piece of cake for you. They aren't for me, and they aren't for a lot of players, seeing that I pull off higher than the mean/average numbers. The current status quo benefits the top ~10% of the players at the expense of all the rest. It's bad and it should go away.

[Dahkeus.8243]

@Kundry.1249 said:

@Mitch.4781 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Zenith.7301 said:

Don't even pretend like rotations in this game are hard. You have a total of 10 skills with a 10 sec cd lockout for half of those at a time. It's an incredibly easy game relative to others.

Pressing 4 buttons instead of 2 does not suddenly spike up your difficulty.

I guess you never ever played a small MMO called WOW. Arcane Mage with it's TWO skill rotation says hello lmao

Arcane needs to manage mana, though it's still one of the easier specs. WoW rotations are very different in idea anyway. GW2 rotations tend to have a lot more attack skills to use, but in WoW the complexity comes from managing resources, lining up cooldowns, and reacting to procs.

WoW rotations also are fairly clearly designed purposefully by the devs, whereas in GW2 skills don't feel like they have been designed with a PvE rotation in mind at all. It's not necessarily bad, since there's an element of exploring and finding the optimal rotation, but this does run the risk of some classes getting garbage rotations (back when WoW was kind of like that, you had the BC shadowbolt warlock with a 1-button rotation).

Case in point: Dps Mesmer. The rotation is so boring and nonsensical (in that you need to purposefully ignoring your class your toolkit) that I wouldn't want to play it even if it did great dps. If they are serious about dps mesmer being a thing, they should make the rotation more interesting.

I think mesmers have good potential for an interesting dps rotation. It's probably not an easy task to tune it right but both Phantasms and Shatter should be worth using. Quickness Chrono is much more interesting (though even there one could have some improvements) because you get to actually shatter your illusions and resummon them, if only once every 70 seconds or so. One tentative idea would be to make the Phantasmal Force trait increase the damage of your next Mind Wrack, instead of increasing your Phantasm damage. That way you'd want to shatter once enough time has passed with your Phantasms out, instead of keeping your Phantasms forever, but at the same time you won't get ridiculous burst in pvp unless your Phantasms have been attacking for a long time.

I'm not going to touch the WoW vs GW2 difficulty pissing contest, but I just want to say that I do really wish devs would build specs and balance around an intended DPS rotation for PvE. It doesn't have to be an exact rotation, but it should be at least somewhat defined.

Also, I think it's good for the game to have some classes with easy and competitive rotations. At the end of the day, GW2 is an MMO and playing with friends is what makes it fun. All of our friends aren't always going to be pro and some will straight-up suck, but when you can put your pro players on the chrono role and your less-skilled friends on something that primarily just auto-attacks, you can still get through raid content while having a good time with good people.