Revising Attributes

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@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.

"That is your opinion" posts are pointless because it clearly applies to nearly every post in every thread. If you have an actual argument, state it, otherwise stop trying to derail mine (and others') without one.

Also, it's easy to infer we're talking mostly about PvE here, you know, the part of the game that most people play and sees actual development.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@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.

"That is your opinion" posts are pointless because it clearly applies to nearly every post in every thread. If you have an actual argument, state it, otherwise stop trying to derail mine without one.

Also, it's easy to infer we're talking mostly about PvE here, you know, the part of the game that sees actual development.

No it doesn't. I could link the damage calculation and by mere existance of toughness in it could disprove that the stat is useless. That would be factually correcter than you assumption/opinion.

The stat is just as useful for pve. Active avoidance remains important but having more defensive stats allows for way more mistakes.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@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.

"That is your opinion" posts are pointless because it clearly applies to nearly every post in every thread. If you have an actual argument, state it, otherwise stop trying to derail mine without one.

Also, it's easy to infer we're talking mostly about PvE here, you know, the part of the game that sees actual development.

No it doesn't. I could link the damage calculation and by mere existance of toughness in it could disprove that the stat is useless. That would be factually correcter than you assumption/opinion.

The stat is just as useful for pve. Active avoidance remains important but having more defensive stats allows for way more mistakes.

Link the difference in damage vs mitigation for Berserker's and Soldier's gear, as I requested in my original post, and I'll humor your argument.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@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.

"That is your opinion" posts are pointless because it clearly applies to nearly every post in every thread. If you have an actual argument, state it, otherwise stop trying to derail mine without one.

Also, it's easy to infer we're talking mostly about PvE here, you know, the part of the game that sees actual development.

No it doesn't. I could link the damage calculation and by mere existance of toughness in it could disprove that the stat is useless. That would be factually correcter than you assumption/opinion.

The stat is just as useful for pve. Active avoidance remains important but having more defensive stats allows for way more mistakes.

Link the difference in damage vs mitigation for Berserker's and Soldier's gear, as I requested in my original post, and I'll humor your argument.

It's aproximately 10% between full marauder and berserker with giving up damage stats for aproximately 3k life (which can be as much as 25% more max life depending on class).

Given the stat difference between berserker and soldier I would assume around 60% since soldier gear stacks toughness and vitality. It's also way tankier than berserker gear.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@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.

"That is your opinion" posts are pointless because it clearly applies to nearly every post in every thread. If you have an actual argument, state it, otherwise stop trying to derail mine without one.

Also, it's easy to infer we're talking mostly about PvE here, you know, the part of the game that sees actual development.

No it doesn't. I could link the damage calculation and by mere existance of toughness in it could disprove that the stat is useless. That would be factually correcter than you assumption/opinion.

The stat is just as useful for pve. Active avoidance remains important but having more defensive stats allows for way more mistakes.

Link the difference in damage vs mitigation for Berserker's and Soldier's gear, as I requested in my original post, and I'll humor your argument.

It's aproximately 10% between full marauder and berserker with giving up damage stats for aproximately 3k life (which can be as much as 25% more max life depending on class).

Given the stat difference between berserker and soldier I would assume around 60% since soldier gear stacks toughness and vitality. It's also way tankier than berserker gear.

Marauder's value relative to Berserker is decent, but even then that extra 10% damage is more useful in more situations than the extra 25% health is, due to the reasons given above in various posts - active defense vs. heavy hits dominates combat in PvE. Apart from the benefit of faster rewards, then 10% extra damage will help you avoid getting downed by killing mobs faster than the 25% extra health will in more situations than not.

Regardless, Marauder is an offensive set with some bonus Vitality. The comparison of Soldier's and Berserker's is much, much more telling. Seriously, let's do some theorycrafting. The exchange would need to be something like 3:1 for defensive gear to hold any significant value in PvE.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@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.

"That is your opinion" posts are pointless because it clearly applies to nearly every post in every thread. If you have an actual argument, state it, otherwise stop trying to derail mine without one.

Also, it's easy to infer we're talking mostly about PvE here, you know, the part of the game that sees actual development.

No it doesn't. I could link the damage calculation and by mere existance of toughness in it could disprove that the stat is useless. That would be factually correcter than you assumption/opinion.

The stat is just as useful for pve. Active avoidance remains important but having more defensive stats allows for way more mistakes.

Link the difference in damage vs mitigation for Berserker's and Soldier's gear, as I requested in my original post, and I'll humor your argument.

It's aproximately 10% between full marauder and berserker with giving up damage stats for aproximately 3k life (which can be as much as 25% more max life depending on class).

Given the stat difference between berserker and soldier I would assume around 60% since soldier gear stacks toughness and vitality. It's also way tankier than berserker gear.

Marauder's value relative to Berserker is decent. I've always known that. 25% more attrition for 10% less damage is about how offense vs defense should be tuned in general, but it isn't. Marauder's is an offensive set with some bonus Vitality on it.

The comparison of Soldier's and Berserker's is much, much more telling. Seriously, let's do some theorycrafting.

That makes literally no sense. If defensive stats are useless, one set can't be okay while the other is trash unless you are willingly ommiting things from the equation.

Vitality does not perform any different between marauder and soldier gear. Thus I would need to assume your main beef is with toughness for which you are not happy how it scales.

As to theorycrafting? Of what value is this information to me exactly and why would I spend my time on this? I'm not the one unhappy with the stats in this game (especially since this has likely been calculated multiple times by people by now).

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@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.

"That is your opinion" posts are pointless because it clearly applies to nearly every post in every thread. If you have an actual argument, state it, otherwise stop trying to derail mine without one.

Also, it's easy to infer we're talking mostly about PvE here, you know, the part of the game that sees actual development.

No it doesn't. I could link the damage calculation and by mere existance of toughness in it could disprove that the stat is useless. That would be factually correcter than you assumption/opinion.

The stat is just as useful for pve. Active avoidance remains important but having more defensive stats allows for way more mistakes.

Link the difference in damage vs mitigation for Berserker's and Soldier's gear, as I requested in my original post, and I'll humor your argument.

It's aproximately 10% between full marauder and berserker with giving up damage stats for aproximately 3k life (which can be as much as 25% more max life depending on class).

Given the stat difference between berserker and soldier I would assume around 60% since soldier gear stacks toughness and vitality. It's also way tankier than berserker gear.

Marauder's value relative to Berserker is decent. I've always known that. 25% more attrition for 10% less damage is about how offense vs defense should be tuned in general, but it isn't. Marauder's is an offensive set with some bonus Vitality on it.

The comparison of Soldier's and Berserker's is much, much more telling. Seriously, let's do some theorycrafting.

That makes literally no sense. If defensive stats are useless, one set can't be okay while the other is trash unless you are willingly ommiting things from the equation.

Vitality does not perform any different between marauder and soldier gear. Thus I would need to assume your mein beef is with toughness for which you are not happy how it scales.

As to theorycrafting? Of what value is this information to me exactly and why would I spend my time on this? I'm not the one unhappy with the stats in this game (especially since this has likely been calculated multiple times by people by now).

No it makes a lot of sense, because the two sets aren't weighted the same. Marauder is a four stat spread that gives more total points than Berserker and is still much more offensively focused than defensively. Also, I amended my above comment to more accurately reflect my feelings on the matter.

They do not make for a great comparison in this context. Again, I ask you, how much damage do you lose in Soldier's and how much defense do you gain?

If you do not want to theorycraft, stop bothering to argue with me.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@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.

"That is your opinion" posts are pointless because it clearly applies to nearly every post in every thread. If you have an actual argument, state it, otherwise stop trying to derail mine without one.

Also, it's easy to infer we're talking mostly about PvE here, you know, the part of the game that sees actual development.

No it doesn't. I could link the damage calculation and by mere existance of toughness in it could disprove that the stat is useless. That would be factually correcter than you assumption/opinion.

The stat is just as useful for pve. Active avoidance remains important but having more defensive stats allows for way more mistakes.

Link the difference in damage vs mitigation for Berserker's and Soldier's gear, as I requested in my original post, and I'll humor your argument.

It's aproximately 10% between full marauder and berserker with giving up damage stats for aproximately 3k life (which can be as much as 25% more max life depending on class).

Given the stat difference between berserker and soldier I would assume around 60% since soldier gear stacks toughness and vitality. It's also way tankier than berserker gear.

Marauder's value relative to Berserker is decent. I've always known that. 25% more attrition for 10% less damage is about how offense vs defense should be tuned in general, but it isn't. Marauder's is an offensive set with some bonus Vitality on it.

The comparison of Soldier's and Berserker's is much, much more telling. Seriously, let's do some theorycrafting.

That makes literally no sense. If defensive stats are useless, one set can't be okay while the other is trash unless you are willingly ommiting things from the equation.

Vitality does not perform any different between marauder and soldier gear. Thus I would need to assume your mein beef is with toughness for which you are not happy how it scales.

As to theorycrafting? Of what value is this information to me exactly and why would I spend my time on this? I'm not the one unhappy with the stats in this game (especially since this has likely been calculated multiple times by people by now).

No it makes a lot of sense, because the two sets aren't weighted the same. Marauder is a four stat spread that gives more total points than Berserker and is still much more offensively focused than defensively. Also, I amended my above comment to more accurately reflect my feelings on the matter.

They do not make for a great comparison in this context. Again, I ask you, how much damage do you lose in Soldier's and how much defense do you gain?

True, and a better comparison would be demolisher (which is not available in pve) but I only had tested marauder versus berserker myself.

As to soldier I can merely assume, and once again: I'm not the one who cares. If you want to do some theorycrafting and argue that defensive stats are to weak, you are free to do so. It would give your entire argument a lot more credibility.

[ArchonWing.9480]

The longer the fight, the more mechanics you have to deal with. As a result, dps will always be king in these regards. And there is also dodging.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@ArchonWing.9480 said:The longer the fight, the more mechanics you have to deal with. As a result, dps will always be king in these regards. And there is also dodging.

This is strategically shallow and not good for the game. That's the argument being made.

[Turkeyspit.3965]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Again, I ask you, how much damage do you lose in Soldier's and how much defense do you gain?

I'll answer your question: too much.

Problem is, you're discussing the wrong issue. The problem with GW2 is that power damage requires 3 stats (Power/Precision/Ferocity) while a Condition build only requires 1 (Condition Damage), though you could argue Expertise is equally important.

What do you lose from Berserker's to Soldiers is huge compared to what you lose from Vipers to Trailblazer.

So in order to boost defenses, Power builds have to sacrifice way more damage than their condition counterparts, because the don't have to worry about the multipliers of crit chance and crit damage.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:See, I actually wholeheartedly disagree that a rework wouldn't be worth it.I wasn't joking or exagerrating when i said it's comparable to making a new game. You are severely underestimating the amount and depth of changes any such rework would need to do. Basically everything in this game is made with the basic assumptions of the current combat system in mind. You change those assumptions (and you do want to change them), and you start a domino of consequences. Reworking whole game to that degree is much, much harder than starting from scratch.

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.What strategic depth? Stack up toughness and vit, and facetank the boss? You want the game to become more passive and boring?

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 sincerely doubt that. You can't make this game more enciting by making it more like a clone of other, more succesful MMOs

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.)Yes, you don't think far enough to realize full consequence of your suggestions, i can see that.

I'll give you an example:

In a raid boss encounter, boss attacks usually are timed around some assumptions about availability of active defences (like dodge). Do you change those calculations around dodge availability for characters with no vit stat? high vit? Something in the middle (and if so, what value)?What about the minor damage - do you make it so big that players without it die? (remember, in raids players rarely die due to pressure - healers generally take care of it. It's spike damage or oneshot mechanics that kill) Or do you leave it a the level healer can manage?

Enrage and boss hp: do you base it around the group of glass cannons? Will you adjust it to balance for overall lower dps from the group if that group is supposed to use some defensive gear? And if you do adjust, how? Will you increase the enrage timer (making the fight a long and painful slog that will certainly turn off more people than now), or will you decrease boss hp (thus running the danger of people with glass cannon builds and really good usage of active defences to kill the boss in no time, thus skipping on all that danger that was supposed to make them run passive defences)?How about the percentage damage from boss (many important attacks do not do a set number of damage, but cause percentage damage instead, which completely ignores things like toughness or HP pool size, which makes changes to those irrelevant)?

Now, you need to do that for every single encounter in the game. And then you spend few years trying to balance the game after the upheaval you've just given it.

Remember, that as long as berserker is viable, and you will be able to survive in it, people will be using it. In order to make defensive stats used you would need to make them obligatory. If it's obligatory, then stats without passive defences might as well get removed. If it gets removed (or practically removed), you need to make changes to either damage calculations, or mobs, to make the time to kill stay the same (because you can bet noone will want to take 5 times as much time on every encounter as they do now).

We thus arrive at a new situation, with a more narrow set of stats, where... everything works exactly the same. You still get as much damage as glass cannons did before. You still cause as much damage (relatively) as glass cannons did before. You still dodge as often as before (you just need vitality for it now). And the best part is that as soon as defensive stats become new standard, you will be able to remove them as well, merging them into baseline, since everyone would be running them anyway.So... what's the point? Removal of berserker? For this you're willing to do a years-long game rework?

Also, regarding conditions - I'm telling you their vision makes no sense and is inappropriately based on condi concepts in more traditional MMOs.So says you. Problem is, all your arguments are based on how you feel about it. You have some idea about a separate armor ignoring damage system that has nothing to do with condition damage (it was called shadow damage in GW1, btw), and want condi damage to turn into it, even though they don't actually have much in common.

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 contentFun fact, power damage does as well as condi in high-end content. Top builds are all power, not condi. It has been the same every time you made a new thread, by the way - and yet you always say condi is OP.

While still not ideal, it would actually have been better to leave them as they were at launch.So, worthless? Thanks, i'll pass.

Conditions were designed to bypass armor while direct damage is mitigated by itAgain (again, because you are being told this in every thread of yours), the main point (the "identity") of condition damage is not it's armor-ignoring feature, but the fact it is a DoT.

That way, condition vs power damage become true roles in a group with dynamic trade-offs.It already is that way. Has been for a few years.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Again, I ask you, how much damage do you lose in Soldier's and how much defense do you gain?

I'll answer your question: too much.

Problem is, you're discussing the wrong issue. The problem with GW2 is that power damage requires 3 stats (Power/Precision/Ferocity) while a Condition build only requires 1 (Condition Damage), though you could argue Expertise is equally important.

What do you lose from Berserker's to Soldiers is huge compared to what you lose from Vipers to Trailblazer.

So in order to boost defenses, Power builds have to sacrifice way more damage than their condition counterparts, because the don't have to worry about the multipliers of crit chance and crit damage.

It's a 6-of-one, half-a-dozen of another issue. I wouldn't disagree with anything you said here, and in particular I think that power damage is on too high of a scaling factor, with the floor and ceiling being too wide apart based on stats.

But, I also don't think it reveals the full scope of issues within the combat system. We touched a lot on the over-reliance on active defense above and, how, despite the belief of many players, it actually harms the gameplay by reducing the strategic depth of the combat system. Improving the baseline and reducing the scaling on power/toughness/precision is just one of many overhauls I would want to make to the combat system. Another would be tying a stat to endurance so that Active Defense becomes an aspect of strategic character building - most likely Vitality since swapping it to that I think fits better both thematically and mechanically.

Incidentally, your mentioning of Expertise is also a bad side effect of balancing conditions through duration rather than target armor - something else discussed above. Expertise is less valuable on condition builds than it should be because conditions were somewhat recently modified to have longer durations than they should have in GW2's combat system as a misguided way of trying to rebalance them.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Incidentally, your mentioning of Expertise is also a bad side effect of balancing conditions through duration rather than target armor - something else discussed above. Expertise is less valuable on condition builds than it should be because conditions were somewhat recently modified to have longer durations than they should have in GW2's combat system as a misguided way of trying to rebalance them.

Everything else aside, expertise is the highest performing single damage stat in this game for pve. Base duration of conditions is of no consequence for any challenging content since nothing dies within 1 duration.

The fact that expertise doubles your condition damage at 100% with 1% duration per 15 stats is not mirrored accross any other damage stat.

From a pure output perspective, nothing comes even close to expertise.

[Turkeyspit.3965]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:It's a 6-of-one, half-a-dozen of another issue. I wouldn't disagree with anything you said here, and in particular I think that power damage is on too high of a scaling factor, with the floor and ceiling being too wide apart based on stats.

But, I also don't think it reveals the full scope of issues within the combat system. We touched a lot on the over-reliance on active defense above and, how, despite the belief of many players, it actually harms the gameplay by reducing the strategic depth of the combat system. Improving the baseline and reducing the scaling on power/toughness/precision is just one of many overhauls I would want to make to the combat system. Another would be tying a stat to endurance so that Active Defense becomes an aspect of strategic building - most likely Vitality since swapping it to that I think fits better both thematically and mechanically.

I think it's a bigger issue though. I would never walk into a T4 fractal wearing Soldiers gear, but I wouldn't see anything wrong doing so with Trailblazer.

But if you increase toughness/vitality scaling, you simply make condi builds even tougher, while maybe bringing power up to where condi used to be.

My point being, it isn't that defensive stats don't give enough benefit, but that power builds alone lose way too much damage to get them, and the only gear that has power/prec/fer + defensive stat is Marauder anyways, while Trailblazer is almost a perfect setup, as I'm led to believe that power damage makes up a very small portion of a condi DPS overall damage.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:It's a 6-of-one, half-a-dozen of another issue. I wouldn't disagree with anything you said here, and in particular I think that power damage is on too high of a scaling factor, with the floor and ceiling being too wide apart based on stats.

But, I also don't think it reveals the full scope of issues within the combat system. We touched a lot on the over-reliance on active defense above and, how, despite the belief of many players, it actually harms the gameplay by reducing the strategic depth of the combat system. Improving the baseline and reducing the scaling on power/toughness/precision is just one of many overhauls I would want to make to the combat system. Another would be tying a stat to endurance so that Active Defense becomes an aspect of

strategic building

- most likely Vitality since swapping it to that I think fits better both thematically and mechanically.

I think it's a bigger issue though. I would never walk into a T4 fractal wearing Soldiers gear, but I wouldn't see anything wrong doing so with Trailblazer.

But if you increase toughness/vitality scaling, you simply make condi builds even tougher, while maybe bringing power up to where condi used to be.

My point being, it isn't that defensive stats don't give enough benefit, but that power builds alone lose way too much damage to get them, and the only gear that has power/prec/fer + defensive stat is Marauder anyways, while Trailblazer is almost a perfect setup, as I'm led to believe that power damage makes up a very small portion of a condi DPS overall damage.

I'm not really suggesting improving scaling on Toughness and Vitality as a fix for any issue in the game now. In fact I think that would be the exact wrong approach to balance. Any overhauls need to be more comprehensive than that. The list of things I would do are mentioned above.

[perilisk.1874]

Active defense is overpowered. Should be more blocks and less evade, and each block should absorb a limited amount of damage, based on Toughness.

Dodges shouldn't even be normal evades -- it should only grant an evade if the most favorable point of the dodge would have put you out of range of the attack (so, dodging out of circles = fine, dodging from one side of a circle to the other = not), which would at least force some less favorable repositioning at times.

[Ototo.3214]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@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.

You said that combat currently sucks because it's just a spam fest. Then said the issue was worsened by the game being more horizontally focused. That doesn't make sense to me, as 'spam' just sounds more like an inherent issue with the skills.As long as we have dodge rolls, evades, invulns, blocks, etc. people will push for glassy sets because you do not need defensive stats if you can use the active defensive skills to outright negate damage. And that's what a lot of people like, I doubt they'd be happy with their tools being removed. And even if you can live forever, that's pointless to most people in open world if you can't kill whatever just aggroed to you in a decent amount of time. Yet in WvW things like Firebrand run fully defensive sets to great effect.Unless I'm just missing something, I don't really see the point of messing with defensive stats outside of them just giving us more stat combos

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:See, I actually wholeheartedly disagree that a rework wouldn't be worth it.I wasn't joking or exagerrating when i said it's comparable to making a new game. You are severely underestimating the amount and depth of changes any such rework would need to do. Basically everything in this game is made with the basic assumptions of the current combat system in mind. You change those assumptions (and you

do

want to change them), and you start a domino of consequences. Reworking whole game to that degree is much, much harder than starting from scratch.

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.What strategic depth? Stack up toughness and vit, and facetank the boss? You want the game to become more passive and boring?

This misconception has already been addressed numerous times in the thread. In short, this is a refrain that holds no water - it's the dominance of active defense (i.e. poor balance between passive and active defense) that makes combat more shallow than it should be. It leads to a lack of strategic depth in character building - something that's critical for horizontally focused games, and it creates a situation where the only counterplay in combat is hitting the v button when you see a telegraph.

The rest of your post makes just as little sense, really. Condition damage was obviously designed as armor penetrating to begin with, so I don't understand why you're trying to act like that's a made-up claim. Conditions were always on short durations in GW2, so, yes, being armor-penetrating was a huge part of their identity and clearly a big separator between Toughness and Vitality as defensive stats.

Arenanet even openly admitted they were overtuned, but then when they went to rebalance them they took it in the wrong direction by extending durations instead of reducing damage - something that makes no sense as short as the average fight in GW2 is and given the fact the distinction of armor penetration was already built into conditions. But, we're straying away from the point of the thread with the topic of conditions. It's a separate topic.

[joneirikb.7506]

While I can agree that there has been too much.... of well everything.... since the expansion packs released, active defenses, strong offensive and defensive stat sets and runes, as well as way too much damage modifiers.

But looking back at the game prior to the 23.06.1025 patch, I felt they had it pretty good (in regard to balance in general, but especially for active defenses for this topic). Most classes had some, and had to time them well to make good use of them, no class had enough of anything to be able to spam them. I mean heck, I used to be able to kill roamers in Clerics gear.... madness!

---

Personally don't think that active defenses is "lack of strategic depth in character building", I think the amount of it can be (current), but that it could be done very well (pre 2015).

I mean, scrapping the existing defensive stats and replace them with stats that affects the active defenses could end up just as "lack of strategic depth in character building" as anything else. (And to point out, you'd have to rely on the same people, you claim has done such a poor job of the current system, to balance it...)

I do agree that the entire stat system in general is a miss-match for the Action-Combat system. And ANet should have made a different stat system, or skipped stats completely from the get go. Unfortunately, it's too late for them to start changing that now, and such a feature would be more practical to plan for a potential GW3 where they could build/design around it from the bottom up.

I think the best they could do at this point, without making too much problems for themselves (and users) would be to reduce the impact of stats. Something like increasing the "base stats" of each character, and reduce all stats from all gear with similar amount. It would "equal" out more characters, make "glass" more tanky and "tanky" a bit more damaging and vulnerable. (There are some good arguments for this looking at the WvW/PvP).

---

But before any of that matters, ANet got to gut damage back to pre-expansion levels, and balance the game around that. There are so many stackable damage modifiers out there, that some classes could probably one-shot kill another in full nomads gear (slight hyperbole, soulbeast might have been able to pull that off before the last patch).

Because all that damage requires classes to have spamable active defenses just to survive. Negative feedback loop, both need to go.

[yusayu.3629]

Why?

Imo active defense is much more interesting than "just stack this stat and you no die" and makes the game more exciting. It's one of the advantages GW2 has with its dodges over "stand still and press buttons"-games like WoW.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@"yusayu.3629" said:Why?

Imo active defense is much more interesting than "just stack this stat and you no die" and makes the game more exciting. It's one of the advantages GW2 has with its dodges over "stand still and press buttons"-games like WoW.

Again - this has been reviewed extensively in this thread. It's a fallacious argument because a.) no one is suggesting to remove active defenses, and b.) the poor balance of active vs passive defenses actually causes combat to be more shallow than it would be with a more equal contribution of both.

[DaFishBob.6518]

Just 2 simple changes need to be made, just 2:

1. More retaliation on mobs and bosses.
2. Retaliation damage is affected by toughness.

Done!

Can't dodge retaliation, but current retaliation ignores toughness despite being power damage. These changes instantly make toughness needed when fighting more things with retaliation if toughness actually reduced retaliation damage received.

[Khisanth.2948]

@DaFishBob.6518 said:Just 2 simple changes need to be made, just 2:

1. More retaliation on mobs and bosses.
2. Retaliation damage is affected by toughness.

Done!

Can't dodge retaliation, but current retaliation ignores toughness despite being power damage. These changes instantly make toughness needed when fighting more things with retaliation if toughness actually reduced retaliation damage received.

Boon strip/corruption would still be better. So active still beats passive.

[DaFishBob.6518]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@DaFishBob.6518 said:Just 2 simple changes need to be made, just 2:

1. More retaliation on mobs and bosses.
2. Retaliation damage is affected by toughness.

Done!

Can't dodge retaliation, but current retaliation ignores toughness despite being power damage. These changes instantly make toughness needed when fighting more things with retaliation if toughness actually reduced retaliation damage received.

Boon strip/corruption would still be better. So active still beats passive.

On the class with the least other active defenses to boot. My point being that not all players can bring boon strip or corruption, someone's going to be stuck with passive defense and with enough mobs bringing retaliation to play, no one is going to have enough corruption or boon strip.