Is damage too high?

[Aktium.9506]

but what if we could do more damage?

[witcher.3197]

@Aktium.9506 said:but what if we could do more damage?

Found the Anet dev

[Vagrant.7206]

Generally speaking, I'm against situations in which a person can die in under 2 seconds. This is currently quite possible with individual builds, let alone coordinated spikes.

[Swagg.9236]

Damage is not only too high, but it's also too fast and affords too little risk to users. I absolutely can accept high damage, but only if it has tells or general risk of use. Things like Dark Souls ultra greatswords are a pretty decent example of what could be considered a relatively "balanced" source of high damage: they can't be parried, hyper-armor through a lot of weapons, and will absolutely flatten people in two sets of successful hits, but their attacks are highly telegraphed, and there are often ways to bait or punish them with your own techniques and weapons. GW2 PvP damage is so often just a reactionary, button-press, cooldown-trade with very little finesse or thinking. If there were far more prediction and timing involved in GW2 combat, then I could probably justify damage being so high. Although, on top of damage just being too high, there are other fundamental issues with how a low skill ceiling and unfairness govern GW2 combat:

• Spacing in GW2 is often a berth of 900-1500 range. It makes zero logical sense to demand footsies with an opponent based on aimbot-guided ranged damage and instantaneous teleports that can come from off-screen (despite players having a massive FoV) if used at the right angle. It's entirely silly to recognize how GW2 is dominated so thoroughly by mechanics which are so completely removed from basic, player-mechanical movement and on-the-fly positioning via WASD. Footsies in GW2 don't exist because not everyone can just spam teleports and WASD is effectively worthless on its own once combat really gets underway; and this denies GW2 PvP players a universal means to avoid damage. All of the emphasis is put on evasion via dodge, of which there just isn't enough availability when everyone deals lethal damage with their opening rotations and autoattacks. This ends up forcing bad game design decisions like slapping huge, protracted invulns and blocks on every class just so that people don't melt when an opponent gets high on evasion, teleports and/or stability before pressing a load of buttons with effectively zero consequence.
• Ranged multi-hit attacks which spit out strikes over a protracted period of time are also out of control and generally unfun to play against in a game with tab-targeting. Limited damage negation which would otherwise be relatively healthy defense options for any game--things like blind, aegis, Arcane Shield or a single-attack-parry which didn't also retaliate instantly from 900 range or in a 360 radius while evading--are generally inadequate due to how they are forced to content with skills which strike upwards of 5 times from range for thousands of damage, but also allow the attacker to move and even maybe evade while doing so. If players are fighting each other in the open (i.e. contesting a point), then it is more or less impossible to manually evade any sort of ranged damage (which means GW2 is a game of cooldowns rather than good movement and mechanical skill). The only relatively balanced instances of multi-hit attacks in GW2 are probably Whirling Defense (despite it getting what is effectively a 195% damage buff over the game's lifetime) due to it being a PBAoE with limited range which roots the user, Flurry for a similar reason, and Meteor Shower due to the 3-second wind-up. If a ranged skill uses tab-targeting or moves the player during activation, it shouldn't be a multi-hit attack (things like Splitblade, however, aren't necessarily multi-hit attacks in this regard since every potential source of this skill's damage is triggered at once rather than over a fixed time period; this attack's efficacy also fades or increases based on range--which makes it much fairer and more interesting to play around than, say, Rapid Fire).
• Why has this playerbase constantly asked for evasion periods on attacks? Why has anet constantly added them? Evading while attacking is so awful. Remember those Dark Souls ultra greatswords from earlier? Consider never being able to backstab-punish them now because they just simultaneously evade attacks whenever they perform a heavy attack. Super fun, right? Not artificially difficult and tedious to fight at all. If you're going to make an attack have a tell or move a player in some dynamic manner, just give it a straight pay-off or a flexible purpose that justifies that sort of exposure; DON'T JUST REMOVE THE RISK OF USE.

tl;dr: Damage is only too high because damage in GW2 far out-paces player movement and therefore puts all survival emphasis on the exact sort of mechanics which make playing PvP so un-fun: protracted invuln/block/evasion periods which often allow players to move and still take offensive actions. It takes player skill and execution out of the PvP equation and replaces it with PvE-tier rotation muscle memory along with looking at a minimap.

[mortrialus.3062]

@"Apolo.5942" said:Been saying it is too high and that combat needs to slow way down, for quite a while now.

People are too simple minded to realice that lower damage does not need to equate to 2 hours fights, but right know range, condi and mobility is king has been for a long while.

This damage swing came about after "pros" whined that 2 bunker builds could not kill each other. Of course none of them play the game any longer and we got to deal with this mess.

Condi is king? Aside from Mirage and Scourge nothing are rocking condition damage. And Reaper is at the very least just as popular of a build for ranked as Scourge if not moderately more popular than Scourge. The reality is condition cleanses and conversion into boons are both extremely over tuned at this point. Most classes can quickly throw off 3-7+ conditions repeatedly over the course of a single fight, or have strong resistance uptime. Scourge and Mirage are the only condition classes capable of keeping up not because their condition damage is high (It's not. Scourge and Mirage are actually some of the lowest condition damage available) but because they have a wide range of conditions (Or in Scourge's case a wide range of conditions and boon corruption) that gives their conditions a chance to dodge condition cleanses entirely.

Condition damage has completely fallen behind Power Damage in the scheme of things. To put this into perspective; Condition Berserker, Condition Firebrand, Condition Weaver, and Condition Holosmith have the higher condition pressure. Far, far beyond what Condition Mirage and Scourge are capable of. But even putting aside other weaknesses in those builds, the single biggest weakness that prevents them from ever becoming meta is the fact that when every class can effortlessly throw off 5+ conditions multiple times a fight, the bulk of their damage being tied down into one or two conditions means their effective damage output is zero.

Arenanet really needs to look at both normalizing the spread of conditions, balancing all classes around 2-3 damaging conditions with more serious ramping power. And also heavily pulling back condition cleanses to compensate for it. Cleanses are the condition damage equivalent to protection. It's supposed to help you negate damage, but at this point unless you're a build that can shotgun 6 conditions at once your effective damage output as condi is 0.

Anet should nerf condition cleanses by 50%+ across the board then trim Mirage's condition spread and condense it into fewer conditions. Right now power damage is absolutely over tuned compared to condition damage 7/9 classes are exclusively running power on a meta level. Mirage is mostly exclusively condi and Necro run a 50/50 split of condi and power.

Your signature suggestions are terrible.

[apharma.3741]

116 votes, thank you all for your voting and especially to those who posted their opinions in the comments section. Hopefully @Ben Phongluangtham.1065 can get some meaningful feedback from this thread.

I do encourage everyone who voted to make their positions clear as it would really help make sure GW2 goes in a direction you want.

[Axl.8924]

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@"Apolo.5942" said:Been saying it is too high and that combat needs to slow way down, for quite a while now.

People are too simple minded to realice that lower damage does not need to equate to 2 hours fights, but right know range, condi and mobility is king has been for a long while.

This damage swing came about after "pros" whined that 2 bunker builds could not kill each other. Of course none of them play the game any longer and we got to deal with this mess.

Condi is king? Aside from Mirage and Scourge nothing are rocking condition damage. And Reaper is at the very least just as popular of a build for ranked as Scourge if not moderately more popular than Scourge. The reality is condition cleanses and conversion into boons are both extremely over tuned at this point. Most classes can quickly throw off 3-7+ conditions repeatedly over the course of a single fight, or have strong resistance uptime. Scourge and Mirage are the only condition classes capable of keeping up not because their condition damage is high (It's not. Scourge and Mirage are actually some of the lowest condition damage available) but because they have a wide range of conditions (Or in Scourge's case a wide range of conditions and boon corruption) that gives their conditions a chance to dodge condition cleanses entirely.

Condition damage has completely fallen behind Power Damage in the scheme of things. To put this into perspective; Condition Berserker, Condition Firebrand, Condition Weaver, and Condition Holosmith have the higher condition pressure. Far, far beyond what Condition Mirage and Scourge are capable of. But even putting aside other weaknesses in those builds, the single biggest weakness that prevents them from ever becoming meta is the fact that when every class can effortlessly throw off 5+ conditions multiple times a fight, the bulk of their damage being tied down into one or two conditions means their effective damage output is zero.

Arenanet really needs to look at both normalizing the spread of conditions, balancing all classes around 2-3 damaging conditions with more serious ramping power. And also heavily pulling back condition cleanses to compensate for it. Cleanses are the condition damage equivalent to protection. It's supposed to help you negate damage, but at this point unless you're a build that can shotgun 6 conditions at once your effective damage output as condi is 0.

Anet should nerf condition cleanses by 50%+ across the board then trim Mirage's condition spread and condense it into fewer conditions. Right now power damage is absolutely over tuned compared to condition damage 7/9 classes are exclusively running power on a meta level. Mirage is mostly exclusively condi and Necro run a 50/50 split of condi and power.

Your signature suggestions are terrible.

In another post I mentioned the fact that condition clears was far too prevalent somewhere and it chokeholds condition builds, but the biggest issue, is that in order for conditions to succeed, it needs to burst people down instantly.

The classes that spread conditions need loads of sustain to keep themselves alive, because if condis don't burst and slowly trickle, then you need enough sustain to watch people die, and you cannot have as many condi cleanses, because you wont be able to kill anyone.Maybe condi cleanses should be limited based on the class such as necros eles and revs being anti condi classes.

In wow, lets take for instance shadow priests:Shadow priests which are big on dots, and do mass spreadable dot that goes from person to person, has relatively decent damage.It doesn't instantly burst people down, but they used to have ways to escape. They also are insta cast. I almost feel like some of the condis need to be either insta cast to be effective, or you need a whole lot of mobility combined to keep you alive, or a truckload of sustain and invulns to keep you alive a really long time.

I also don't think every class should have tons of mobility either. Someone said that every class has so much evades mobility, and there certainly right to a certain extent. Not just thieves are ultra mobile, but mesmers, holosmiths as well are ultra mobile. Maybe something needs to be created that counters mobile, or have a anti mobility spec that's really super strong versus mobile specs to counter all these super mobile specs.

[Arheundel.6451]

As a player with thousand of hours on ele, I say the damage is fine as it is, there are ofc some extreme cases where the dmg should be reduced but other than that damage is fine....I don't want go back to "team with more healbots win" era and I am sure the devs thinks the same, therefore in case damage get reduced...it's safe to assume that sustain would follow the same route and get nerfed too so......from a 10 - 8 dmg to sustain ratio we go down to 8 - 6 ratio...what would be the point?

[Deimos.4263]

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:My biggest issue is that the only form of viable mitigation is mitigation. Blocks, evades and invuln. These skills are often packed into the same classes.

Can't lower the damage without lowering the sustain, and we all know that's not going to happen.Vitality and toughness used to be a mitigating factors as well, but with damage this high it's largely irrelevant. Run out of blocks/evades/invuln, and you die.

[cyberzombie.7348]

This is a bit tricky for me to conclude but from my pov, I don't have a problem with the current damage itself but the builds that grant the capability to have about the same damage of a glass cannon damage while having far greater sustain and survival than a true glass cannon build.

[mortrialus.3062]

@Axl.8924 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@"Apolo.5942" said:Been saying it is too high and that combat needs to slow way down, for quite a while now.

People are too simple minded to realice that lower damage does not need to equate to 2 hours fights, but right know range, condi and mobility is king has been for a long while.

This damage swing came about after "pros" whined that 2 bunker builds could not kill each other. Of course none of them play the game any longer and we got to deal with this mess.

Condi is king? Aside from Mirage and Scourge nothing are rocking condition damage. And Reaper is at the very least just as popular of a build for ranked as Scourge if not moderately more popular than Scourge. The reality is condition cleanses and conversion into boons are both extremely over tuned at this point. Most classes can quickly throw off 3-7+ conditions repeatedly over the course of a single fight, or have strong resistance uptime. Scourge and Mirage are the only condition classes capable of keeping up not because their condition damage is high (It's not. Scourge and Mirage are actually some of the lowest condition damage available) but because they have a wide range of conditions (Or in Scourge's case a wide range of conditions and boon corruption) that gives their conditions a chance to dodge condition cleanses entirely.

Condition damage has completely fallen behind Power Damage in the scheme of things. To put this into perspective; Condition Berserker, Condition Firebrand, Condition Weaver, and Condition Holosmith have the higher condition pressure. Far, far beyond what Condition Mirage and Scourge are capable of. But even putting aside other weaknesses in those builds, the single biggest weakness that prevents them from ever becoming meta is the fact that when every class can effortlessly throw off 5+ conditions multiple times a fight, the bulk of their damage being tied down into one or two conditions means their effective damage output is zero.

Arenanet really needs to look at both normalizing the spread of conditions, balancing all classes around 2-3 damaging conditions with more serious ramping power. And also heavily pulling back condition cleanses to compensate for it. Cleanses are the condition damage equivalent to protection. It's supposed to help you negate damage, but at this point unless you're a build that can shotgun 6 conditions at once your effective damage output as condi is 0.

Anet should nerf condition cleanses by 50%+ across the board then trim Mirage's condition spread and condense it into fewer conditions. Right now power damage is absolutely over tuned compared to condition damage 7/9 classes are exclusively running power on a meta level. Mirage is mostly exclusively condi and Necro run a 50/50 split of condi and power.

Your signature suggestions are terrible.

In another post I mentioned the fact that condition clears was far too prevalent somewhere and it chokeholds condition builds, but the biggest issue, is that in order for conditions to succeed, it needs to burst people down instantly.

The classes that spread conditions need loads of sustain to keep themselves alive, because if condis don't burst and slowly trickle, then you need enough sustain to watch people die, and you cannot have as many condi cleanses, because you wont be able to kill anyone.Maybe condi cleanses should be limited based on the class such as necros eles and revs being anti condi classes.

In wow, lets take for instance shadow priests:Shadow priests which are big on dots, and do mass spreadable dot that goes from person to person, has relatively decent damage.It doesn't instantly burst people down, but they used to have ways to escape. They also are insta cast. I almost feel like some of the condis need to be either insta cast to be effective, or you need a whole lot of mobility combined to keep you alive, or a truckload of sustain and invulns to keep you alive a really long time.

I also don't think every class should have tons of mobility either. Someone said that every class has so much evades mobility, and there certainly right to a certain extent. Not just thieves are ultra mobile, but mesmers, holosmiths as well are ultra mobile. Maybe something needs to be created that counters mobile, or have a anti mobility spec that's really super strong versus mobile specs to counter all these super mobile specs.

All good points. I really want to see all the condition cleanses and conversions straight up reduced by 50%-75%. I genuinely think that's needed. Mesmers should have their cover conditions trimmed and their damaging conditions condensed into fewer conditions, mostly torment and confusion for thematic reasons with maybe a bit of burning with the torch skills. I think the reason you've seen tons of power creep when it comes to conditions cleanses is because Anet is a bit too focused on the only two meta builds keeping up and is power creeping cleanses in an arm race.

But like let's say a Burn Firebrand vs. a Core Guardian. The Firebrand has a lot of self sustain just like the core guardian, it has easy application of it's condition skills. But that burn Firebrand will never be able to hurt the Core Guardian. How could it? The Firebrand has almost entirely burning and a little bit of bleed. And that's somehow supposed to punch through this:

2x Condition Cleanse on Heal with Lesser Smite Condition2x Condition Cleanse on Virtue of Resolve2x Condition Cleanse on Smite Condition.12x Condition Conversion on Contemplation of PurityCondition Immunity during Renewed Focus2x condition Cleanse on Virtue of Resolve

Now I'm not saying that Core Guardian is OP. It's not and it fits into the meta moderately well, but it's condition cleanses are so over the top for anything not a Scourge or a Mirage and against Mirage at least it can survive for a while.

Or warriors who have:Healing Signet 6 seconds resistance12x Condition Cleanse with Signet of Stamina6x Condition Cleanse x 2 with Shake it OffMaybe running Berserker Stance still 4 seconds resistance

Unless you're a Mirage or Scourge you aren't going to be able to punch through that with condition damage. Period.

[Ovark.2514]

The problem isn't that burst damage output is too high, it's that ALL damage output is too high. People can auto-attack you for almost as much as their burst so you need to avoid EVERYTHING.

[Eddbopkins.2630]

For some classes damage is to high for others its not enough. Gaurds, Warrios, Necros, Mesmers, Holos, are all putting out enormous damage right now. so much so that any light class just gets eaten in seconds.I main fa ele, and any holosmith, warrior, mesmer, gaurd, just insta kills me if i do not have defense abilities available like twist of fate, or obsidian flesh at the ready. Ele cant even take auto attacks without them hitting it for over 3k and im not jokeing.

What needs to happen is Normalizing everyone toughness so that were all at the same lvl so that this game can become 1 step closer to a balanced fight. The only way to get more toughness should be threw an amulet or build, not because of lore or original class design. Guild wars has moved beyond that and has become something more. Having unequal stat balance between professions in a fighting game is broken from the start. id really love to see HP and Toughness normalized but id take Toughness if i had to pick one.

[Fortus.6175]

Playing ele without toughness or healing stats, and water/arcane or sometimes earth is just simply suicide. I'm literally getting hit by autoattacks for 2-4k depending on the class, with a base health of 11k hp, (~16.8k hp with amulets with vit) light armor and thus lowest toughness level in the game you can imagine that 3-5 autoattacks (thats about 2-3 seconds for most classes) can end me by just right clicking, and thats not accounting all the other skills and condis flying at me.

I think there is a sweet spot where fights dont last 3 minutes vs 3 seconds, I would prefer if fights were more along the lines of 25-50 seconds, so that you could go through 1-2 rotations of spells, and by the second rotation you should be at 10-20% hp, where the fight can be decided by clutch, smart and premeditated plays, rather than by who ran out of dodges/invulnerability first (hint, usually not the ele unless they are troll self-sustain weaver). Right now fights are; see enemy coming out of stealth, you are missing 60% of your hp, get CC'ed, stunbrea-get CC'ed lose 30% hp while getting blinded/slowed/interrupted heal, and hope you can dodge all of the second rotation that already started. It is probably fun for the holo/soulbeast/thief/mesmer but the receiving end is that of frustration.

[Sampson.2403]

Damage is too low. Ur all nuts

EDIT: I WANT TO SEE BODIES ON THE FLOOR CRYING FOR HELP. RIGHT NOW I FEEL LIKE ITS A SAUSAGE PARTY AND WE'RE ALL PLAYING TICKLE MY NUTSAC

[Daishi.6027]

Dmg is currently to high if you don't use defensive cooldowns properly.

Dmg is to low if you are obvious and don't set up properly.

Honestly I'd much prefer damage being to high than anything else. I'd rather a game where people make plays and die, instead of endless sumo on point.

[Ruufio.1496]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/a6j1wd/when_your_favourite_gamemode_does_not_get_updated/

HaHaa unblockable/unreflectable too btw HaHaaJust dodge it's fine =)

[Caedmon.6798]

@"Ruufio.1496" said:https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/a6j1wd/when_your_favourite_gamemode_does_not_get_updated/

HaHaa unblockable/unreflectable too btw HaHaaJust dodge it's fine =)

Yes but but but but ,you need to setup with damage modifiers and whatnot ! And !!! You have low sustain ! So its all justified,right ? Nothing to see here.

Or here.Yes i know wvw is no pvp.

[Crius.5487]

Both damage and sustain are too high and both are caused by the constant increase in available boons and increased boon duration. It's boon application that needs to be toned down.

[Axl.8924]

@reikken.4961 said:

@dominik.9721 said:Damage can't be too high if fb is still able to survive for ages while focused by 3 dmg classes.

Not to mention soul beasts running around with perma protection and facetanking full burst combos, losing only 5khp~

Defense is too high, yes. That doesn't mean that damage isn't also too high. They're both way too high.

The class with the most health in the game is also the squishiest class (necro). because health is meaningless compared to the enormous amount of damage and damage avoidance

I think the dangerous combination is too much mobility sustain combined with damage, something which people are now complaining about soulbeast.

I don't know if soul beast is that sustainable and high dmg, but having a very uneven terrain is bad for the game.Having for instance some classes with few to no available mobility and invulns like necro, where their survivability is in their shroud and hp cant keep up with invulns.

Some classes have more invulns and mobility than others, like the way mesmers used to.

Some classes also have far too much CC spam available, and this here is a problem. I don't think getting rid of cc or having too much stability is a good idea, as you need just the right amount of combination of cc to stability ratio, and lastly: Not every class needs the same tools, as I worry that would create watering down the game classes.

Necros for instance don't need to be super mobile like mesmers, and intead I would like them to keep their uniqueness without watering down too much, same goes for every class.

[StabbersTheThird.6053]

Preface: Diamond/Master rank Moba thinking here. I am very probably off base as this is an RPG and not a Moba.

I think Damage is too low. HOLD ON! Not like "man, my 4s cd ability that hits for 10k and pierces from 1200 range is not enough". I mean Damage is too low in that there are too many mitigators. Two evades and a block or invuln would be absolutely correct that damage is too high. But we have builds rolling around with enough ways to reduce power damage or eliminate it altogether (ignoring that condi builds just don't hit as hard, minus Mirage). Meta classes can go invulnerable to power damage without fighting back for up to 10 seconds by chaining cooldowns and stamina well. To this extent, power damage kind of HAS to hit as hard as it does because it has to find a hole in that window. Likewise, power damage builds usually need to be able to survive that window as well to immediately down the opponent before those cooldowns and stamina regenerate, again looking at upper escholon. Good power damage builds also know to go tankier and include crowd control to further reduce the ability of one hit builds and other "Brawler" (Bruiser in Moba) builds.

Basically, I think damage kind of has to be as high as it is because defensive capabilities are where they are at. I don't like getting deleted for being ill prepared just as much as the next person, but I know why it happens. To pull damage back would mean cutting defense where possible. There's a really good reason you can't get Soldier or Dire stats in spvp, and its not because Anet is lazy. I am however confused as to why condition builds are so weak. I get that they are meant to whittle and not burst (minus burn, torment, or confusion...which Mirage dishes out all 3), but I don't get why they are just straight up unusable when Weakness and Protection exist.

Tl;dr- Damage and Defense always rise in parallels. If defense goes up, damage goes up. If damage goes down, defense has to go down. Damage is straight forward: Damage per ability over cooldown of that ability. Defense is the same, but also needs to take in duration while applying for Invulnerability, Healing, Stuns, Evasions, and similar. Anything that stalls the time damage can be dealt to you.

I am ready to get shredded for thinking of this like a moba.

[apharma.3741]

@Caedmon.6798 said:

@"Ruufio.1496" said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/a6j1wd/when_your_favourite_gamemode_does_not_get_updated/

HaHaa unblockable/unreflectable too btw HaHaaJust dodge it's fine =)

Yes but but but but ,you need to setup with damage modifiers and whatnot ! And !!! You have low sustain ! So its all justified,right ? Nothing to see here.

Or here.Yes i know wvw is no pvp.

That guy tried to one shot my friend and I when we were playing eles, we saw him stacking stealth and ran the other way so he couldn't surprise us, his unblockable ran out so a reflect and swirling winds ended the insane damage and he was forced to leave. We can never catch him but he ran into some allies who 3v1 ganked him. I dread to think the numbers he'd have got on marauder eles, probably close to 20k.

[apharma.3741]

151 votes so far, I really would encourage people to put something in the comments regarding their choices, it would really help to any devs if they look at it.

[freedomtolove.5476]

Maybe the devs are too high when balancing damage.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

I saw what bunker meta can do to pvp. I will NEVER advocate any leaning toward that again.

I'd rather my hp pool get erased in a second if someone set up an amazing burst on me than play a chess match on side nodes.