Revising Attributes

[Einlanzer.1627]

The game's combat mechanics are clearly heavily weighted toward valuing offense over defense. This is pretty normal, really, but the poor balance of offensive and defensive attributes exacerbates the phenomenon of dumping all defense for more damage being good. There are significant balance issues with some mechanics and the relative values of attributes that need to be revised - in particular, the weight & value of offensive stats vs defensive stats is massively out of parity for no good reason, really, and efforts should be made to address that in a way that also addresses some of the power creep since HoT's launch. (I also think the class-specific attributes need updates/overhauls, but that's a different topic.)

Damage formula = Damage = (Weapon strength Power Skill coefficient) / Armor

What this formula means is that the presence of a Dodge system has little to do with the uselessness of Defensive stats - Power (alone, not even factoring in Precision/Ferocity) is about 50% more effective in boosting your offense than Toughness is in boosting your defense, since the former is considered separately in the equation while the later is consolidated into total armor. This is really bizarre since player bias (with good reason) already values offense over defense, meaning it should if anything be the other way around. It's no wonder Berserker stats dominate the game and defensive stats are worse than useless - they are a trap option. No matter how you slice it - either Power is over-tuned or Toughness is under-tuned. There are some fairly simple ways to help balance while also reigning in power creep - one of them would be to revise the damage formula to look something more like this:

Damage formula = Damage = ((Weapon strength + Power) Skill coefficient level-based constant) / ArmorNote of course this would need to come with condi adjustments also - in general, condi should outperform power on high armor targets and vice versa

Alternatively, it would take more work, but they could revise the defensive attributes to make them both more strategically interesting and useful:

Toughness - Add a small but significant subtraction on top of the division in the damage reduction formula - something like this: .Damage formula = Damage = ((Weapon strength Power Skill coefficient) / Armor) - (Toughness/6.67)

Toughness is pretty blatantly under-tuned and doesn't perform its role very well. Even in PvP, the "bunker" phenomenon is more due to the poor balance of personal healing (discussed below) - and even that's not really a problem anymore due to power creep. In addition to being just less effective point by point than Power alone is, the fact that it only divides damage means it features massive diminishing returns. All in all, it is too redundant with the active defense system, making it mostly useless. It should, after dividing damage, subtract a small portion of the remaining damage. Tuned correctly, this would cause it to have a noticeable effect on smaller sources of damage and damage incoming from multiple weak sources that dodging can't effectively mitigate (common in regular PvE) while only having a relatively minor (and still desirable) impact in PvP and vs heavy hitting mobs that would still require a lot of active play. This would, rightly, make it much more useful for solo/casual players, farming, and would generally make the game more playable for people with a low skill ceiling due to disability, age, or whatever.

Vitality - Change it to influence Endurance Regeneration instead of Health; buff base Health values by around 20% & nerf baseline ER/Vigor to about 40% of their current values. Perhaps rename it to "stamina" or "agility."

I never liked Vitality improving Health. It's just not the right thematic or mechanical choice for a few reasons like redundancy with toughness, classes having different Health baselines, and lack of synergy with Healing. Base Health should be slightly raised across classes, and only be improvable by % effects from food, sigils, or traits. Moreover, the lack of a stat contributing to active defense is an issue because it requires no investment to be good at it, which allows glass builds to avoid being that glassy. So, Vitality should be revised (and renamed if desired) to improve Endurance Regeneration to allow players to build around active defense (which, with the change to Toughness, is complementary with passive defense). This would require nerfing both baseline Endurance Regeneration and Vigor, which is worth doing. This would also mean that glassy builds become more properly glassy than they are today, making defense attributes more attractive in the meta and helping to reign in power creep. These changes may or may not result in a need to nerf condition damage a bit.

In addition to this change to Vitality, it might actually be worth setting (slightly) different endurance regen baselines for different armor classes to improve attrition parity between the classes. So heavy armor classes end up with higher toughness/armor and lower armor classes end up with more endurance regeneration - which makes logical sense in addition to creating more defensive balance among the classes.

Healing Power - No change to the attribute, but rebalance personal healing skills.

Structurally, the attribute itself is fine. However, on average, personal healing skills are poorly balanced, having too high a baseline power and too low a coefficient with HP. This has the effect of making Healing Power a red herring stat unless you are a dedicated party healer. Since there's also outgoing healing modifiers, I don't really see the point of that, and it unnecessarily harms the effectiveness of certain stat combos (including Celestial) by making HP points a total waste. They need to be normalized and rebalanced, effectively nerfing their base values but improving their scaling with Healing Power. This would not only make the stat more attractive in general, but it would actually help reduce the phenomenon of overpowered bunkers in PvP as well.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

The big problem is that Toughness+Vitality+Healing Power does not sustain the damage of Power+Precision+Ferocity, and that's not even taking into account that there is a fourth offensive stat, Condition Damage, further multiplying damage.

There are many reasons for this, and they are complex (like Protection being too easy in comparison), so its not a simple fix.

One thing that is certain is that ArenaNet needs to continue to lower damage across the board, a single class's effective DPS should never exceed the maximum health that you can obtain in the game, which is the core of the problem.

[crepuscular.9047]

it's pretty much an issue from day 1, feeling toughness and vitality so useless against mobs, hence better just burst them with Beserker

[Astralporing.1957]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Does anyone have the math on what, for example, switching from Berserker to Soldier does for your offensive and defense?

Conceptually, defensive stats should give you more bang for buck than offensive stats due to both the active defense system and the fact that killing mobs faster is a form of defense. But it seems like, at best, it's an even trade, which makes no sense, and is exacerbated by the relative dearth of defensive-oriented boons to play off defense stats and extreme proliferation of offensive boons to play off attack stats. It's also made worse by the lack of synergy between Vitality and Healing Power.

In PvE at least, offensive stats make a ton of difference in TTK while defensive stats seem to make very little difference in TTL, which is really pretty silly. Because of the game's overall combat mechanics, defense should be more variable based on stats with offense being a bit more flat.

Maybe a big, big part of the problem is how available might and fury stacking are.Nah, the main problem is that most of your defense comes from dodges, movement, invulns and cleanses, which aren't affected by defensive stats. On the other hand, offensive stats apply to all damage. There simply can be no parity in such a situation.Frankly, the game should never have had stats in the first place - strength of your skills should have depended only on your level and traits. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.

[Airdive.2613]

The passive defense is actually fine where it makes a difference.The thing is, in a game revolving entirely around cooldown times, that one extra second of passive survival, while seemingly unimportant, may let you cast your healing skill again, at which point you're obviously going to survive even longer. With every extra one small second that you live, all your skills become closer to being available again - including defensive and healing ones. It's very easy to overtune passive defenses and send players into a feedback loop of endless survival. And that would be the most boring thing ever, really.Either that, or all healing and defensive skills would need a complete overhaul just to achieve the same state we see now (that is, to make it harder to achieve immortality).

[Thorstienn.1642]

They doubled down on active defense. Too much incoming damage/1 shot (theoretically). I mean, soldiers Should be the beginners stats for power, but your always better off with berserker as killing 2+ seconds faster trumps 1 sec of more life.The other issue is precision is stupid in this game. This is the first gane I can remember playing where 100% crit is easily attainable, without even full Assassins gear!

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I did the math once. I can't do it now because my brain isn't working right, but the conclusion I came to is that Soldier's has a higher effective power x effective health product than Berserkers. That is, how much damage you do multiplied by how long you live. It's not that the set is bad. The issue comes from two different things:

(1): in PVE the defenses are largely unnecessary. Active defenses are strong, and you fully heal after every fight, so there is no long-term plan. You don't need the most efficient set, you just need enough. As it happens, base stats for defenses are enough.
(2): in PVP the defensive builds have a lot of heals. The issue with heals is that it isn't a negative multiplier to damage, it is a subtraction to damage. The less damage you do, the more heals cut away at your damage. There are builds that berserker builds struggle to punch through, let alone anything else.

If you're running around in the overworld, a guild that doesn't care about having lower DPS in high end PVE, or in WvW, then something like Soldier's is pretty good.

[Cyninja.2954]

What BRA said:

The problem is not that defensive stats scale weaker to offensive stats.

The issue is that they are not needed and people, even after 7 years, still try to play a game which is centered around active mitigation like any other MMORPG. Get as tanky as possible and brain afk content, which simply does not work that well.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@"Cyninja.2954" said:What BRA said:

The problem is not that defensive stats scale weaker to offensive stats.

The issue is that they are not needed and people, even after 7 years, still try to play a game which is centered around active mitigation like any other MMORPG. Get as tanky as possible and brain afk content, which simply does not work that well.

But, see, a lot of this reeks as defending a broken status quo. If they "aren't needed", or, at least, aren't really ever useful, why do they exist? This is a fundamental balance problem that they need to try to address - even if addressing it means revising the whole combat system.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:What BRA said:

The problem is not that defensive stats scale weaker to offensive stats.

The issue is that they are not needed and people, even after 7 years, still try to play a game which is centered around active mitigation like any other MMORPG. Get as tanky as possible and brain afk content, which simply does not work that well.

But, see, a lot of this reeks as defending a broken status quo. If they "aren't needed", or, at least, aren't really ever useful, why do they exist? This is a fundamental balance problem that they need to try to address - even if addressing it means revising the whole combat system.

Who says defensive stats are not needed?

They perform perfectly fine in spvp and wvw.

[Sarrs.4831]

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:But, see, a lot of this reeks as defending a broken status quo. If they "aren't needed", or, at least, aren't really ever useful, why do they exist? This is a fundamental balance problem that they need to try to address - even if addressing it means revising the whole combat system.

They are useful - in moderation.

Healing Power and Concentration are just plain useful.Vitality on spreads like Marauder's on the right class is a drastic survivability boost for what may not be a major damage loss. It's not actually a horrible tradeoff when you're playing open world content and you don't have reliable incoming healing.Toughness is kind of a weird one but it has its uses - at the very least, you use it to manipulate mob threat.

Don't look at Soldier's v Berserker's. Look at Marauder's v Berserker's.

[joneirikb.7506]

Pointed it out in another thread, but basically what everyone else said above + ANet basically have a "Stat System" that doesn't work well with the Action-Combat and general design of this game. And it's too late to change it now.

[joneirikb.7506]

Just a thought I had, one way to allow for defensive stats to work, would be to make them stronger, at the cost of lowering the active defenses. So you basically have to choose between them.

Say that increasing Tough/Vit/Heal also decreases Energy regeneration (dodges), Boon uptime, and slightly slows down your movement so it's harder to move out of aoes. (Yes horrible list, but they work as examples).

That way ANet could increase the effect of the defensive stats, because you wouldn't be able to stack "As Much" passive on top of active defenses. The scale should be gain 2X effect for losing 1X effect from active, since you're also losing some offensive output.

So someone in full Nomad gear might end up actually "tanky" but slower, next to no boon uptime, and can dodge only very rarely. This would compensate to some degree for the Passive defenses you'd gain.

I still think it would be bad for the game honestly, the game is about the active action combat, not camping behind passive stats and pretend to be immortal.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

There's a few reasons i dislike active defenses as an argument, and in general:

• They are too powerful; always resulting in 100% incoming reduction of damage, control, etc.
• They require almost no investment compared to damage, and passive defenses, because stats don't affect them at all.
• The sacrifices to build to have them are usually small, as most active defenses can be boosted with damage rather than removing DPS.
• In general they allow builds that should not be possible; cheap and easy min/maxing, etc.
• They make complex rotations harder, favoring classes with simple rotations that can afford to dodge/etc alot.
• They make playing non-DPS-centric builds frustrating (support in fractal or raid, etc.).
• They're bad for disabled people, and alot of disabled people play games since they can't always do much else.

I understand that people like active defenses, but you also have to understand that they are overpowered and have been in need of reduction since the game was released, and that has only worsened with power creep. Its not that passive defenses should necessarily be strengthened, its that the active defenses offer nigh-invincibility, and its made encounters in the game always be boring one-hit-wonders, because there's no other way to punish players who utilise such defenses except to down them in one hit.

Since release, the game's design motto has been "punish every mistake, because its our only hope to kill the player".

The combination of active defenses and easy reviving in particular has been noxious. Its resulted in ArenaNet having to develop encounters where the only viable tactic is just "down the whole party with every attack" because there's no other way to be a serious threat, and even then there's alot of encounters in the game which don't end up being a threat to a decent party, even when poorly played.

By making the combat more "dynamic", you're making the encounters more "static". Despite being seen as a tool of strategy, you require less thought with active defenses since you can just click a button and become invulnerable.

Passive defenses haven't made the game casual, active defenses have.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@"Hannelore.8153" said:There's a few reasons i dislike active defenses as an argument, and in general:

• They are too powerful; always resulting in 100% incoming reduction of damage, control, etc.
• They require almost no investment compared to damage, and passive defenses, because stats don't affect them at all.
• The sacrifices to build to have them are usually small, as most active defenses can be boosted with damage rather than removing DPS.
• In general they allow builds that should not be possible; cheap and easy min/maxing, etc.
• They make complex rotations harder, favoring classes with simple rotations that can afford to dodge/etc alot.
• They make playing non-DPS-centric builds frustrating (support in fractal or raid, etc.).
• They're bad for disabled people, and alot of disabled people play games since they can't always do much else.

I understand that people like active defenses, but you also have to understand that they are overpowered and have been in need of reduction since the game was released, and that has only worsened with power creep. Its not that passive defenses should necessarily be strengthened, its that the active defenses offer nigh-invincibility, and its made encounters in the game always be boring one-hit-wonders, because there's no other way to punish players who utilise such defenses except to down them in one hit.

Since release, the game's design motto has been "punish every mistake, because its our only hope to kill the player".

The combination of active defenses and easy reviving in particular has been noxious. Its resulted in ArenaNet having to develop encounters where the only viable tactic is just "down the whole party with every attack" because there's no other way to be a serious threat, and even then there's alot of encounters in the game which don't end up being a threat to a decent party, even when poorly played.

By making the combat more "dynamic", you're making the encounters more "static". Despite being seen as a tool of strategy, you require less thought with active defenses since you can just click a button and become invulnerable.

Passive defenses haven't made the game casual, active defenses have.

I mostly agree, and I think all the "but active defense so it's fine" comments are just cop-out arguments from folks who don't see the holes in the system and are defending a bad status quo, which you see a lot of in any game community.

There's actually a lot of stuff wrong, and potential things to fix in tons of areas, but tying a stat to endurance regeneration I think would be a good change. This is a list of things I would probably do with an overhaul:

modestly raise baseline healthlower the current baseline for endurance regenerationmake Vitality increase endurance regeneration instead of Health. Health would only be improvable through food and sigils/runes.nerf Vigor from 50% to 25 or 33%Increase sources of minor damage in PvE to improve the value of Toughness and passive defenseRework conditions to be on shorter durations and only be stronger than power on high armor targets (the way they tried to balance conditions is the biggest sign of the balance team not knowing what they're doing - long duration condi makes no sense in GW2 and it just made power that much better in general PvE)Make a maximum damage threshold to be able to rally. I.e. if you are "downed" by an attack that does more than 50% of your total health, you are instantly defeated. <- this would apply to a lot of the big boss telegraph attacks vs glassier targets.

[Trise.2865]

Okay, let's explore this for a bit. Defensive stats get reworked and players can now specialize in defense. What does that accomplish?

[Ototo.3214]

Last I checked, many WvW, PvP, and even raid builds needed defensive stats. Most people would rather kill something faster than live longer while taking longer to kill whatever it is in open world, so it's not surprising you mainly see glass cannons there.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:I mostly agree, and I think all the "but active defense so it's fine" comments are just cop-out arguments from folks who don't see the holes in the system and are defending a bad status quo, which you see a lot of in any game community.It's not that the system is good. It isn't. It's just that the bad parts do not justify the massive work that would be redoing the whole combat/stats/gear/traits/skill system because nothing less would do).You're talking about completely changing the game at this point. It's simply not going to happen - if they were to do that, it would be easier for them to do GW3.

Rework conditions to be on shorter durations and only be stronger than power on high armor targets (the way they tried to balance conditions is the biggest sign of the balance team not knowing what they're doing - long duration condi makes no sense in GW2 and it just made power that much better in general PvE)...i wondered when you'd get to that.No, condi damage not working the way you envisioned does not mean it makes no sense. It just means that your vision for condition damage role is different than the one devs have.

If you want to make passive defences worth more, you need to decrease the role of active defences significantly. And that doesn't mean just dodge. It's everything - dodge, ability to just walk out from telegraphed attacks, blocks and invulnerabilities...

For that you would need to do a complete rework of all skills (no, you can't just touch defensive ones, because the whole balance would change, and you'd need to adjust for that), all enemies, all encounters... All that in a game that does a single poor balance patch every 3 months. All that for a risk that many of the current players would not like how it turned out.

Again, honestly, GW3 is far more likely.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

The problem is there are 8 professions where defense means pressing the block/evade/invulni/stealth/shadowstep button and then running for the hills until cooldowns are back up (in some cases that step is not needed because they're already back up). Defensive stats have very little room to shine, before skills take over again.

And then there's the necro, the one profession where defensive stats actually mattter and mean something. Vitality that has secondary effect of making Life Force pool beefier, toughness that is needed to tank more hits (since necro mostly facetanks), and healing power to fuel lifestealing and party healing/barriers.

Ok, slight exaggeration, but I think it's necro's design that is healthiest of all professsions. This is an rpg game with phletora of gear stat sets and professions should have mulititude of reasons to use builds that make use of various gear sets. Necro has both the reasons and tools to make it happen. His strategy does start in the forge.Others? Not so much, and it feels like dumbing down the experience.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:I mostly agree, and I think all the "but active defense so it's fine" comments are just cop-out arguments from folks who don't see the holes in the system and are defending a bad status quo, which you see a lot of in any game community.It's not that the system is good. It isn't. It's just that the bad parts do not justify the massive work that would be redoing the whole combat/stats/gear/traits/skill system because nothing less would do).You're talking about completely changing the game at this point. It's simply not going to happen - if they were to do that, it would be easier for them to do GW3.

Rework conditions to be on shorter durations and only be stronger than power on high armor targets (the way they tried to balance conditions is the biggest sign of the balance team not knowing what they're doing - long duration condi makes no sense in GW2 and it just made power that much better in general PvE)...i wondered when you'd get to that.No, condi damage not working the way you envisioned does not mean it makes no sense. It just means that your vision for condition damage role is different than the one devs have.

If you want to make passive defences worth more, you need to decrease the role of active defences significantly. And that doesn't mean just dodge. It's everything - dodge, ability to just walk out from telegraphed attacks, blocks and invulnerabilities...

For that you would need to do a complete rework of all skills (no, you can't just touch defensive ones, because the whole balance would change, and you'd need to adjust for that), all enemies, all encounters... All that in a game that does a single poor balance patch every 3 months. All that for a risk that many of the current players would

not

like how it turned out.

Again, honestly, GW3 is far more likely.

See, I actually wholeheartedly disagree that a rework wouldn't be worth it. One of the major failures of this game (arguably the most major one) is having a very deep and versatile class/build system with very little strategic counter-play to build off of it because combat works as a spam fest. This is exacerbated by the fact that the end game is horizontally focused instead of vertically focused, making strategic engagement the primary vehicle for retaining players.

By reworking defense mechanics, they would gain the opportunity to make the combat system in general much more engaging by adding significantly more strategic depth to it. If it's done the right way, it could do wonders to refresh the game, bring old players back, and make it more enticing for long term play. I don't even think it would take all that much work. Basically what I outlined above along with some iterative balance to control scaling factors between offense and defense (I think offense is on too steep a curve - the difference in damage output between Berserker and support/defense gear is higher than it should be.)

Also, regarding conditions - I'm telling you their vision makes no sense and is inappropriately based on condi concepts in more traditional MMOs. It is one additional dimension of a poorly balanced combat system that turns people away from the game more than it brings them in. By giving conditions high wind up and high damage, they crippled them in general PvE while making them overpowered in difficult content, forcing themselves as designers to rely on gimmicks to control them, while at the same time further undermining the value of passive defense and eroding the value of expertise in condition builds, again worsening the game's overall balance through build asymmetry. While still not ideal, it would actually have been better to leave them as they were at launch.

Conditions were designed to bypass armor while direct damage is mitigated by it, and combat duration should and does vary between "easy" and "hard" content. This means that conditions are best balanced primarily through target armor ratings rather than fight durations. That way, condition vs power damage become true roles in a group with dynamic trade-offs.

[Ototo.3214]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:I mostly agree, and I think all the "but active defense so it's fine" comments are just cop-out arguments from folks who don't see the holes in the system and are defending a bad status quo, which you see a lot of in any game community.It's not that the system is good. It isn't. It's just that the bad parts do not justify the massive work that would be redoing the whole combat/stats/gear/traits/skill system because nothing less would do).You're talking about completely changing the game at this point. It's simply not going to happen - if they were to do that, it would be easier for them to do GW3.

Rework conditions to be on shorter durations and only be stronger than power on high armor targets (the way they tried to balance conditions is the biggest sign of the balance team not knowing what they're doing - long duration condi makes no sense in GW2 and it just made power that much better in general PvE)...i wondered when you'd get to that.No, condi damage not working the way you envisioned does not mean it makes no sense. It just means that your vision for condition damage role is different than the one devs have.

If you want to make passive defences worth more, you need to decrease the role of active defences significantly. And that doesn't mean just dodge. It's everything - dodge, ability to just walk out from telegraphed attacks, blocks and invulnerabilities...

For that you would need to do a complete rework of all skills (no, you can't just touch defensive ones, because the whole balance would change, and you'd need to adjust for that), all enemies, all encounters... All that in a game that does a single poor balance patch every 3 months. All that for a risk that many of the current players would

not

like how it turned out.

Again, honestly, GW3 is far more likely.

See, I actually wholeheartedly disagree that a rework wouldn't be worth it. One of the major failures of this game (arguably

the most

major one) is having a very deep and versatile class/build system with very little strategic counter-play to build off of it because combat works as a spam fest. This is exacerbated by the fact that the end game is horizontally focused instead of vertically focused, making

strategic engagement

the primary vehicle for retaining players.

By reworking defense mechanics, they would gain the opportunity to make the combat system in general much more engaging by adding significantly more strategic depth to it. If it's done the right way, it could do wonders to refresh the game and make it more enticing for long term play. I don't even think it would take all that much work. Basically what I outlined above.

Also, regarding conditions - I'm telling you their vision makes no sense and is one additional dimension of a poorly balanced combat system that turns people away from the game more than it brings them in. By giving conditions high wind up and high damage, they crippled them in general PvE while making them overpowered in difficult content, forcing themselves as designers to rely on gimmicks to weaken them, while at the same time further undermining the value of passive defense. While still not ideal, it would actually have been better to leave them as they were at launch.

How is just having stats to facetank a hit with no input required more engaging than actively avoiding the hit? Last I checked, most people don't enjoy playing meat shields. FFXIV has an excessive number of DPS classes and only 4 tanks, one of which was only recently added. Then you have to wait forever in queues for a tank because far fewer people want to play tank. Yet people still whine about nerfs to tank dps because apparently even in a game with the supposed holy trinity, dps is what people want to do. I'm all for more stat combos being viable, but unless they're damage focused you probably won't see them as what most people use in PvE. Because people just want to do big damage.

Also, how is vertical progression better in any way?

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Ototo.3214 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:I mostly agree, and I think all the "but active defense so it's fine" comments are just cop-out arguments from folks who don't see the holes in the system and are defending a bad status quo, which you see a lot of in any game community.It's not that the system is good. It isn't. It's just that the bad parts do not justify the massive work that would be redoing the whole combat/stats/gear/traits/skill system because nothing less would do).You're talking about completely changing the game at this point. It's simply not going to happen - if they were to do that, it would be easier for them to do GW3.

Rework conditions to be on shorter durations and only be stronger than power on high armor targets (the way they tried to balance conditions is the biggest sign of the balance team not knowing what they're doing - long duration condi makes no sense in GW2 and it just made power that much better in general PvE)...i wondered when you'd get to that.No, condi damage not working the way you envisioned does not mean it makes no sense. It just means that your vision for condition damage role is different than the one devs have.

If you want to make passive defences worth more, you need to decrease the role of active defences significantly. And that doesn't mean just dodge. It's everything - dodge, ability to just walk out from telegraphed attacks, blocks and invulnerabilities...

For that you would need to do a complete rework of all skills (no, you can't just touch defensive ones, because the whole balance would change, and you'd need to adjust for that), all enemies, all encounters... All that in a game that does a single poor balance patch every 3 months. All that for a risk that many of the current players would

not

like how it turned out.

Again, honestly, GW3 is far more likely.

See, I actually wholeheartedly disagree that a rework wouldn't be worth it. One of the major failures of this game (arguably

the most

major one) is having a very deep and versatile class/build system with very little strategic counter-play to build off of it because combat works as a spam fest. This is exacerbated by the fact that the end game is horizontally focused instead of vertically focused, making

strategic engagement

the primary vehicle for retaining players.

By reworking defense mechanics, they would gain the opportunity to make the combat system in general much more engaging by adding significantly more strategic depth to it. If it's done the right way, it could do wonders to refresh the game and make it more enticing for long term play. I don't even think it would take all that much work. Basically what I outlined above.

Also, regarding conditions - I'm telling you their vision makes no sense and is one additional dimension of a poorly balanced combat system that turns people away from the game more than it brings them in. By giving conditions high wind up and high damage, they crippled them in general PvE while making them overpowered in difficult content, forcing themselves as designers to rely on gimmicks to weaken them, while at the same time further undermining the value of passive defense. While still not ideal, it would actually have been better to leave them as they were at launch.

How is just having stats to facetank a hit with no input required more engaging than actively avoiding the hit? Last I checked, most people don't enjoy playing meat shields. FFXIV has an excessive number of DPS classes and only 4 tanks, one of which was only recently added. Then you have to wait forever in queues for a tank because far fewer people want to play tank. Yet people still whine about nerfs to tank dps because apparently even in a game with the supposed holy trinity, dps is what people want to do. I'm all for more stat combos being viable, but unless they're damage focused you probably won't see them as what most people use in PvE. Because people just want to do big damage.

Also, how is vertical progression better in any way?

It's not. It's the combination of both in a more controlled, strategic environment that would be more engaging. I also never said vertical progression is better. I prefer a horizontal focus, but the game's mechanics need to be in alignment with that to make it work well. Read a little deeper please.

[Haishao.6851]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:What BRA said:

The problem is not that defensive stats scale weaker to offensive stats.

The issue is that they are not needed and people, even after 7 years, still try to play a game which is centered around active mitigation like any other MMORPG. Get as tanky as possible and brain afk content, which simply does not work that well.

If they "aren't needed", or, at least, aren't really ever useful, why do they exist?As you've been explained in the last 100 threads you've made about this subject in the past 5 years:Those stats exist to allow people who are not good with the evade and mitigation mechanics to be able to play all the existing content of the game by trading some power to get more defense.They're also useful in WvW.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Haishao.6851 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:What BRA said:

The problem is not that defensive stats scale weaker to offensive stats.

The issue is that they are not needed and people, even after 7 years, still try to play a game which is centered around active mitigation like any other MMORPG. Get as tanky as possible and brain afk content, which simply does not work that well.

If they "aren't needed", or, at least, aren't really ever useful, why do they exist?As you've been explained in the last 100 threads you've made about this subject in the past 5 years:Those stats exist to allow people who are not good with the evade and mitigation mechanics to be able to play all the existing content of the game by trading some power to get more defense.They're also useful in WvW.

As has been explained to you, that isn't actually how it works, because passive defense is not only useless, more often than not, it actually harms your attrition by doing very little besides making you kill things more slowly. This is a major misdesign of the combat system. This is not an unsolvable problem - it's hilarious how many people act like it is. Think a little harder, I say.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Haishao.6851 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:What BRA said:

The problem is not that defensive stats scale weaker to offensive stats.

The issue is that they are not needed and people, even after 7 years, still try to play a game which is centered around active mitigation like any other MMORPG. Get as tanky as possible and brain afk content, which simply does not work that well.

If they "aren't needed", or, at least, aren't really ever useful, why do they exist?As you've been explained in the last 100 threads you've made about this subject in the past 5 years:Those stats exist to allow people who are not good with the evade and mitigation mechanics to be able to play all the existing content of the game by trading some power to get more defense.They're also useful in WvW.

As has been explained to you, that isn't actually how it works, because passive defense is pretty much useless due to the misdesign of the combat system.

That is your subjective opinion. You have not yet shown that passive stats are useless. Make a build with base toughness and vitality and go play WvW, then make a build with maximum vitality and toughness and go play WvW again, then come back and tell us it made no difference.

You simply do not LIKE the amount of difference it makes since in either case, active avoidance and skill use remains important.