Revising Attributes

[Seis.4736]

Also, defensive stats not doing great in pve is not necessarily just because defensive stats are poor. It is the game mode itself. It simply is not challenging enough in general and that is why people mostly play offensive stats. Just look at raids, people playing defense because it is challenging.

[joneirikb.7506]

Clarification: Einlanzer is not talking about improving the importance of the "current" defensive stats. But essentially make new defensive stats, based around the "active defenses".

Essentially having a defensive stat for "energy regen" to dodge more often, so it's a build decision how often you want to dodge (and thus gutting the existing energy regen in order to leave space for that stat).

The old "toughness", "vitality", and "healing power" would likely be removed or just rolled in as secondary effects on those stats.

The goal being a "risk vs reward" in building. Do you want the absolute max DPS or do you want to have enough Dodges to survive (not passive defenses).

---

In principle I agree. The entire stat system in this game is honestly poorly designed for the action-combat system.

Practically, I don't think it is worth essentially re-designing the entire game at this point. (This would affect every player build, every enemy mob, every encounter design, all balance, most gear/runes/sigil/food, crafting, re-balancing all dungeons, fractals, raids, and pvp).

The only thing it really wouldn't affect is OWT, because whatever :p And PvP would be hugely impacted by the change in builds/strategy but less affected from a mechanical aspect (change the traits and amulets etc).

[Cuks.8241]

I don't really understand this thread, don't see the problem. You can already make builds that are able to face tank PVE content or something in between. I have a S/D weaver with marshall gear and some additional vitality and toughness and it can tank most of the stuff in the world while doing decent dmg and sustain forever. I use it to solo champs, dungeons and so on which I couldn't on my glass builds. So you can do it if you want it.

Also you keep saying that the system reliant on active defenses is actually more boring and less dynamic and that this was already established in this thread. Well I don't see where it was established at all. What I see is that most actually disagree with this statement, me included, because active means I have to do something to mitigate dmg, passive I don't need to do anything, just pick the right build. And in the end you can do that already anyway.

[TwilightSoul.9048]

I think the stats are fine as is. The only real issue I see is that too many builds at the moment can circumvent certain active defensive measures.The strongest Condi Builds are all capable of corrupting or removing boons, most importanlty: Resistance, making one of the active defensive measures against such builds basically useless or in the case of scourges even a liability since they'll turn it into just another condition. Beyond that they are able to apply conditions faster than you can remove them alone since you have far fewer active condi removals than the Condi Build has skills to apply conditions with.Then there are Power Builds, some have unblockable attacks, others can easily remove boons such as aegis, protection, vigor or stability, some can do both and some can just straight up OHKO eles, mesmers and thieves (and sometimes even heavier classes).I really like an active defence and I think we have enough Build choices to improve the amount of active defence vs just more beefiness. If I wanna go for the highest possible amount of damage on ele I will most likely not slot in mist form, armor of earth, lightning flash or arcane shield, all of which I could choose for some more active defence. I'd also probably not choose the traits that give me vigor for more dodging (active defence), instead I'll choose every trait and utility that inceases my damage (not saying that would be a smart build choice). On the other hand, if I want to deal good damage but also want to survive long enough to do that damage I will decide to sacrifice some of my damage in order to slot in Lightning Flash or maybe I'll even pick the water traitline now that it got buffed.Guardian would be another great example where you have a lot of great defensive utility skills which you can pick to improve your active defence while sacrificing some potential max damage.At the moment we all have to min/max our builds to find the right balance between dealing good damage and surviving long enough to deal our damage and I think that is a great position for the balance of the game to be in. Admitably there are some extremes which still have to be addressed like the once I've mentioned in the beginning of my post but overall we're in a pretty decent spot in my opinion.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:

Because of the game's overall combat mechanics, defense should be more variable based on stats with offense being a bit more flat. In reality, offensive stats make a much bigger difference than defense stats do. This would be bad regardless, but it's actually made worse by the over-emphasis on active defense.

All opinions, no analysis yet.

Because survival is more about damage avoidance than damage mitigation, and endurance is a front-heavy mechanic that requires no player investment BUT struggles to keep up in longer fights, your attrition is benefited far more by stacking offense than it is by stacking defense.

That endurance requires no player investment is an oversimplification. It is possible to invest in endurance return (Vigor), traits that return Endurance, and upgrades which do the same. The conclusion that players (in general PvE) benefit more by stacking offense is generally true, but will not apply to all players.

That is a sign of badly mistuned combat and attribute mechanics.

You have not yet presented sufficient evidence to draw this conclusion.

The consequences of this are probably one of the major reasons the game struggles to retain players

Assumption with no data presented to back it up. It bothers you, the game could be having trouble retaining players, so the two are "probably" linked, though no necessary connection has been proven.

a rework done the right way could really enhance the game and breathe new life into it.

Maybe, but maybe not. Significant changes are going to bother some percentage of existing player. That I'm certain of.

a.) active defense is over-emphasized in combat and requires no significant player investment or tradeoffs to be effective.

Oh, so now it's significant player investments or trade-offs, whereas above it was "Endurance... requires no player investment." Hey, I think there should be more opportunity costs in the build system.

This doesn't just harm the value of passive defense, it makes combat in general too frenetic and spammy, which, contrary to what some argue, actually reduces depth and the role of skill within the combat system.

Opinion. You may find that the status quo results in shallow build creation for your characters, but you cannot without evidence generalize that to the population.

It also stands in stark contrast to the depth involved in setting up builds. The fixes i propose are to significantly lower the baseline for endurance regeneration and make Vitality improve that instead of health while also nerfing Vigor. Since health pools vary between classes, Health is better only being improvable by % amounts through food and runes/sigils. But it's probably also time for a modest health buff across classes.

Removing health granted by Vitality would reduce its effect as a mitigating factor versus condition damage. A health buff could mitigate that issue. Vigor is a boon that is used extensively by some classes. Lowering its effect would increase the burden on time/resources needed to balance the game to your proposed reality. "Forcing" people to stack some vitality to get back to current levels of endurance would not create depth in build creation. All it would do is establish a new gear meta, with the minimum Vitality to be effective. Call it some amount of Berserker with the rest Valkyrie. Could this be done? Sure. Would it have the effect you describe? No.

b.) offensive stats are overpowered. There's too big a difference in the amount of damage you deal based on stats due to the synergistic scaling between power, precision, and ferocity, which condition damage and expertise have been tuned to match. It's possible that doing a.) above will remove the need to adjust offensive stats, since it would lead to glass builds being far glassier than they are today and players would be much more incentivized to sacrifice some offense for some defense. Otherwise, Per-point scaling of those attributes needs to be lowered to reign in power creep, and also so there isn't such a ridiculous gap between the floor and the ceiling of damage output, because damage will always matter more than anything else in PvE.

Oh, ho! So one purpose of these changes is to nerf high-end damage. While I could grant that there is "too much," I don't believe that an overall nerf -- which is what stat changes would mean -- is the solution. There are too many weapons, skills and, yes, some professions, which are behind the curve. A better solution -- and one which would require far less resources -- would be to reign in outliers via skill coefficient adjustment.

There's nothing wrong with that, but the attributes need to be balanced around that reality so they contribute as close to equal value as possible.

You have not proven that the numbers generated by defensive stats produce substantially lower numerical results versus offensive stats. What you could point to is that in a lot of PvE, offensive stats are viewed as more desirable. This is, as I believe you point out elsewhere, an artifact of encounter design.

c.) downstate/reviving are rote and problematic. This was mentioned by another poster about how "difficulty" in the game over-relies on having mobs that drop extremely heavy hits that down numerous characters simultaneously mostly because of how reviving works, which harms the overall system.

As someone who mostly plays WvW, I look forward to the "No Down State" events, which never last long enough. As to "rote," well, 90% of PvE, if not more, is learned behavior, and to a lesser extent this is also true in PvP modes.

My suggestion is twofold - further cap the # of players that can revive a single character at a time, and also to have instant defeat happen more often through various mechanics or "major damage" thresholds. Reviving also should be influenced by Healing Power so that reviving can operate as more of a role than a free-for-all.

These suggestions are fine, but would not require a total stat revamp.

d.) toughness uses a simple "divide by" algorithm. This means its effect is more significant on big damage than on small damage, when it should be the opposite. It needs to be redone to reduce damage through a hybrid of division and subtraction so it has a moderate effect on heavy damage and a significant effect on minor damage.

This assertion is problematic. If my Armor stat (Toughness plus Defense) is 2000, a hit of 10,000,000 does 10,000,000/2,000 or 5,000 damage. If the hit is 1,000,000, I take 500, if it is 100,000, I take 50. The percentage mitigated is the same in all those calculations. An identical percentage reduction does not mean that the larger overall number is more significant. Smaller hits are already mitigated significantly, and the damage they do is easily countered by building for sustain. The big difference between bigger and smaller hits is that sustain is more effective versus the smaller hits. What that means is that the player can use their active defenses on the bigger hits, and tank the smaller ones.

So, you want to reduce the effect of Toughness on high-end damage, while boosting its effect on low-end damage. This would make the low-end damage much less significant, much more easily countered by existing levels of sustain. It would also make the high-end damage more dangerous. If one of the issues you want to address is "...the game over-relies on having mobs that drop extremely heavy hits ..." your proposed change would have the opposite effect.

Glass characters running around with full Ascended armor have an Armor stat between 1927-2271. Both glass and bulky characters would be affected by changes to how the Armor stat works. Everyone fighting bosses in PvE would take more damage from those big hits, whether glass or bulky. Now, maybe you hope that ANet would balance boss encounters around the new reality you propose. This seems like a lot of work to solve a problem which the analysis you have put forth in the OP does not adequately prove. The fact is that if problems exist -- and I think it's safe to say there are some -- they might be better solved piecemeal rather than with a systemic rework of most of the stat system.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:You, again, commit a logical fallacy right out of the gate, here. Investment + skill into some zero-sum paradigm. And, to prove this point, can you do 34K DPS with either alone? That's why investment and skill should both be seen as important, and not in conflict with either other. There's nowhere else in the game where they are.I did not say they conflict with each other. I said that increasing importance of one on the end result decreases importance of another. At this point, the importance of skill is much higher than the importance of stats. Someone highly skilled in green gear, or running hybrid stat set, will still do way more damage than someone unskilled in full ascended zerkers. The same can be said for defence - you can make do with pure skill alone, you don't really need defensive stats at the moment - assuming you're skilled enough.

So, let's assume you change the importance of stats for defence according to your proposal - to keep the same level of survivability, you would need some stat investment. Suddenly your skill is now worth less than before. When that level of survivability was 100% skill 0% defensive gear before, now it is 80% skill 20% gear (or 50% skill, 50% gear, depending on what gear investment you think should be appropriate for baseline). That means your skill becomes less important, and passive effects more important.

Of course, that raises the question (one i haven't see you answer yet) - what would happen to builds that already can become practically invulnerable even with minimal skill investment, just thanks to stats and traits alone? Someone that could be unkillable with 10% skill 90% stats will become almost as survivable when afking. I'm not sure how can that be called "promoting skilled play".

@Astralporing.1957 said:Or, to phrase it differently: is your intention for survivablility to rise, go down or stay the same as currently? Same question for player dps/mob survivability.And how that would look for differnt stat sets? For berserker, for soldier, for nomad?

There are a few problems that I'm trying to solve in a specific way. There are other ways they might be solved -

a.) there is nothing resembling parity between different stat sets. Damage is nearly always more desirable for a variety of reasons, so the stats need to be balanced around that reality - meaning that defensive stats needs to carry more weight than offensive stats. Imagine a hypothetical where 10%-20% loss in DPS gets you 20-40% increase in survivability, and realize that should be a rough benchmark for Soldier vs Berserker. Maybe they are even weighted differently in PvE vs PvP since combat dynamics differ between the two.

b.) passive defense is rendered mostly pointless by the over-emphasis on active defense. It is not my suggestion to remove active defense or even really to nerf it per se, it's to make it require investment the same way both offense and passive defense do. In doing so, it's also worth attempting to make passive defense and active defense complementary instead of redundant, which is why I suggested giving Armor a different formula that hybridizes division and subtraction so that it has a greater effect on smaller sources of damage than it does on larger sources of damage.

c.) damage is too high for attrition kind of across the board, which might be solved dynamically with adjustments to defense (i.e. requiring players to invest in a stat to be good at active defense), but this would be a matter for subsequent tuning.None of those answer the questions i have asked. And those are very basic questions, one you should have thought about if you were serious about your stat rework idea.

So, again: how do you think dps and survivability should change compared to now for:Glass tier(Berserker, Viper)hybrid tier (Soldier, Knight)bunker tier (Nomad)

[Obtena.7952]

@"joneirikb.7506" said:Clarification: Einlanzer is not talking about improving the importance of the "current" defensive stats. But essentially make new defensive stats, based around the "active defenses".

Essentially having a defensive stat for "energy regen" to dodge more often, so it's a build decision how often you want to dodge (and thus gutting the existing energy regen in order to leave space for that stat).

The old "toughness", "vitality", and "healing power" would likely be removed or just rolled in as secondary effects on those stats.

The goal being a "risk vs reward" in building. Do you want the absolute max DPS or do you want to have enough Dodges to survive (not passive defenses).

---

In principle I agree. The entire stat system in this game is honestly poorly designed for the action-combat system.

Practically, I don't think it is worth essentially re-designing the entire game at this point. (This would affect every player build, every enemy mob, every encounter design, all balance, most gear/runes/sigil/food, crafting, re-balancing all dungeons, fractals, raids, and pvp).

The only thing it really wouldn't affect is OWT, because whatever :p And PvP would be hugely impacted by the change in builds/strategy but less affected from a mechanical aspect (change the traits and amulets etc).

Sounds like a waste of time. Adding more stats doesn't fix what's wrong with the system

[nosleepdemon.1368]

This sounds like an L2P issue... You shouldn't expect to be able to stack defense to the point where you can simply face tank. Active avoidance of damage is one of GW2's hallmarks, so changing that wouldn't "update" the game at all, it would ruin it. Meanwhile, the extra hp and damage mitigation from defensive stats is actually huge. You just need to know how to properly build and play your chosen profession to really see the difference even a few thousand HP can make.

[Zin Dau.1749]

@"joneirikb.7506" said:Clarification: Einlanzer is not talking about improving the importance of the "current" defensive stats. But essentially make new defensive stats, based around the "active defenses".

Essentially having a defensive stat for "energy regen" to dodge more often, so it's a build decision how often you want to dodge (and thus gutting the existing energy regen in order to leave space for that stat).

The old "toughness", "vitality", and "healing power" would likely be removed or just rolled in as secondary effects on those stats.

The goal being a "risk vs reward" in building. Do you want the absolute max DPS or do you want to have enough Dodges to survive (not passive defenses).

---

If their argument that active defense is just "number of dodges", then their argument is already dismissed. Every class (with few exceptions) gets enough endurance for only two consecutive dodges. So no one can rely on just those dodges for any long and/or tough battles. In practice, players also rely heavily on defensive skills, traits, and boons. Not to mention that fighting as a group further covers up each others' defensive shortcomings. Thus regardless of how you try to push defensive stats, players just need enough defensive stats where they feel comfortable, but not a point more.

Minmaxers gonna minmax. Shuffling stats and numbers around won't discourage or prevent minmaxing. Which in other terms, is exploiting the "risk vs reward" in any given system. Thus it doesn't matter how you build the system, someone will "minmax" the system into a metagame. They're not something one can prevent; these are just phenomenons and emergent behavior one has to accept in any game design.

Anyway, how much more "risk vs reward" can you get than glass cannon?

[joneirikb.7506]

@Zin Dau.1749 said:

@"joneirikb.7506" said:Clarification: Einlanzer is not talking about improving the importance of the "current" defensive stats. But essentially make new defensive stats, based around the "active defenses".

Essentially having a defensive stat for "energy regen" to dodge more often, so it's a build decision how often you want to dodge (and thus gutting the existing energy regen in order to leave space for that stat).

The old "toughness", "vitality", and "healing power" would likely be removed or just rolled in as secondary effects on those stats.

The goal being a "risk vs reward" in building. Do you want the absolute max DPS or do you want to have enough Dodges to survive (not passive defenses).

---

If their argument that active defense is just "number of dodges", then their argument is already dismissed. Every class (with few exceptions) gets enough endurance for only two consecutive dodges. So no one can rely on just those dodges for any long and/or tough battles. In practice, players also rely heavily on defensive skills, traits, and boons. Not to mention that fighting as a group further covers up each others' defensive shortcomings. Thus regardless of how you try to push defensive stats, players just need enough defensive stats where they feel comfortable, but not a point more.

Minmaxers gonna minmax. Shuffling stats and numbers around won't discourage or prevent minmaxing. Which in other terms, is exploiting the "risk vs reward" in any given system. Thus it doesn't matter how you build the system, someone will "minmax" the system into a metagame. They're not something one can prevent; these are just phenomenons and emergent behavior one has to accept in any game design.

Anyway, how much more "risk vs reward" can you get than glass cannon?

Endurance was one example, such a system would obviously need more defensive stats with other effects (like stuff that either boosted duration or effect of different boons, to help with other aspects of the active defenses). Dodges is just the most obvious example.

Essentially full zerk isn't any risk at all today, which is part of the problem. If people are able to solo dungeons in full berserk, how much risk is involved? Obviously because the player is good at what he does, but also because compared to the base defenses (passive defenses you get even on berserk stated armor + free level toughness), most classes also get a huge selection of active defenses, so much that they don't really need much else.

See in WvW Min/Max works well, you need some defensive numbers to survive as for example a roamer, just enough to survive a burst, get of your heal, and start countering. Min/Max in PvE is "All damage, because nothing can damage us anyways." There really isn't any trade-off. (Exceptions for new players, and others with reaction problems etc).

ANet tried to change this with HoT, and tried to basically punish players for running Zerk, and it didn't last that long, until players adapted to the new threats, and now are back in full zerk again. Do you really want a game that is "that" shallow in build/stat selection ? It seems that ANet doesn't, and tried to do something about it. But they're likely also handicapped by needing to keep things in line with all the people complaining that things are hard as well, they need to hit a middle ground.

Complicated problem, that I think is best solved with "the next game".

[Astralporing.1957]

@"joneirikb.7506" said:Essentially full zerk isn't any risk at all today, which is part of the problem. If people are able to solo dungeons in full berserk, how much risk is involved?Try soloing one, and tell us that. I tried. It didn't work out as well as you say.

Obviously because the player is good at what he does, but also because compared to the base defenses (passive defenses you get even on berserk stated armor + free level toughness), most classes also get a huge selection of active defenses, so much that they don't really need much else.Classes don't need anything else. Players might. That's where risk vs reward comes from. You need skill to make it work. I have seen enough of players getting downed in seconds in all types of contents to know, that glass cannons are by no means safe.

See in WvW Min/Max works well, you need some defensive numbers to survive as for example a roamer, just enough to survive a burst, get of your heal, and start countering. Min/Max in PvE is "All damage, because nothing can damage us anyways." There really isn't any trade-off. (Exceptions for new players, and others with reaction problems etc).

ANet tried to change this with HoT, and tried to basically punish players for running ZerkAre you joking? HoT was exactly the point where you could no longer get by with some defensive stats. You had to avoid the mechanics, and kill enemies fast, or get downed in a very short time. Or decide to go full bunker and have every encounter last for an eternity.

and it didn't last that long, until players adapted to the new threats, and now are back in full zerk again.That's because it was what Anet wanted - for players to adapt to mob mechanics. To "git gud"....of course that cost them a significant amount of population then. Many players, it turns out, did not like to feel forced to become better out of the blue.

Do you really want a game that is "that" shallow in build/stat selection ?Yes. I do not want a game where it's the stat investment that is most important. That's a basis for a gear-based combat, the most boring kind there is. Personally i'd want this game to be even more shallow on gear front - that is, i'd like all the stats gone (and a stat/build system more similar to GW1).

It seems that ANet doesn't, and tried to do something about it.I think you're misreading what they were doing. Just look at the high-end content, and you realize it promotes something exactly opposite of what you think Anet wants.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"joneirikb.7506" said:Do you really want a game that is "that" shallow in build/stat selection

I like a game with shallow stat selection, especially if it doesn't involve a gear treadmill and gearing multiple characters with ascended is as expensive (and annoying) as it is.The build system in the game is fine though. Try using a full meta dps build and go solo a dungeon or fractal. Tell us the results.Even the pro players that solo T4 CMs are using completely different builds in order to survive. The meta full dps builds are only useful when you have a pocket healer/support to keep you alive, when you are solo you do need to make changes to survive and that's the beauty of the build system.

[Leo G.4501]

I can see where the OP is coming from, although a lot of his points are rubbish (but then the opposing arguments aren't all that great either). All in all, the build system itself is itself. It's not the same as other games and thus one should have different expectations and allow unique compromises for the build system to breath.

I think ulimately, the game has power creeped to a dangerous degree and trimming every now and then here and there won't fix it, just delay it a bit. You've got to the point that progression of a character has stagnated but they keep releasing more content down the line when, in actuality, they should be pushing players to build MANY characters rather than grinding the same ones. And before you interject with how many dozens of characters you've got, I'll retort with most progress in this game is account wide thus your character numbers are moot. You don't have to make more characters to have what you have and that is the fundamental problem, IMO, with GW2: it promotes grinding and character progress but the character goes nowhere. The story is now just long, drawn out, contrived and top-heavy when it should be wide, deep, approachable and promote exploration. You should have to make several characters just to get exposure to a fraction of the overall world's situation...

Mechanics wise, a power-creep culling would at least give some means of growth, even if temporary, if the game wants to focus on a single protagonist type narrative (and just for overall build diversity). Specifically, boons and conditions are just spammed which creates an arms race of needing abilities to cleanse and the ability for said cleansable conditions to compete with power. Einlanzer was mentioning breaking up active mitigation tools to rely on defensive stats to boost them up but the same needs to happen for offensive stats, i.e. things like Fury potency should be tied to a stat, condis should have a degree of effectiveness (i.e. chance of proccing) bases on stats, and crit chance seriously needs to not be cappable without team assistance.

Problem is, no one wants their game nerfed. This is understandable. It's why I just accept the game for what it is but discussions on prospecting changes and their effect and purpose are always interesting.

[kratan.4619]

To me, it has always seemed that this game paid attention to what was happening in almost all other MMOs. In the holy trinity MMO style of play, what was happening? A lot of groups sitting around doing nothing while waiting for either a tank or healer. Why? Because more people wanted to do damage and not be solely responsible for controlling agro or healing. So, Anet made it possible to do that content with all DPS, giving them all ways to heal themselves and to evade damage. I believe this is why the defensive stats have never really been as effective as just going berserker.

I started out making a wrrior and going full on soldiers because I though at the time it would be awesome to play a big Norn tank, only to find out my time to kill was way slower than using more offensive stats. That particular char is now just siting in LA just because he was also my weaponcrafter.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Zin Dau.1749 said:

@"joneirikb.7506" said:Clarification: Einlanzer is not talking about improving the importance of the "current" defensive stats. But essentially make new defensive stats, based around the "active defenses".

Essentially having a defensive stat for "energy regen" to dodge more often, so it's a build decision how often you want to dodge (and thus gutting the existing energy regen in order to leave space for that stat).

The old "toughness", "vitality", and "healing power" would likely be removed or just rolled in as secondary effects on those stats.

The goal being a "risk vs reward" in building. Do you want the absolute max DPS or do you want to have enough Dodges to survive (not passive defenses).

---

If their argument that active defense is just "number of dodges", then their argument is already dismissed. Every class (with few exceptions) gets enough endurance for only two consecutive dodges. So no one can rely on just those dodges for any long and/or tough battles. In practice, players also rely heavily on defensive skills, traits, and boons. Not to mention that fighting as a group further covers up each others' defensive shortcomings. Thus regardless of how you try to push defensive stats, players just need enough defensive stats where they feel comfortable, but not a point more.

Minmaxers gonna minmax. Shuffling stats and numbers around won't discourage or prevent minmaxing. Which in other terms, is exploiting the "risk vs reward" in any given system. Thus it doesn't matter how you build the system, someone will "minmax" the system into a metagame. They're not something one can prevent; these are just phenomenons and emergent behavior one has to accept in any game design.

Anyway, how much more "risk vs reward" can you get than glass cannon?

That isn't as universally true as it's made out to be. This is an issue of weight. Offense carries more weight than defense does, therefore offensive stats carry more weight than defensive stats do. This is actually true even dismissing the presence of dodge/active defense. Its existence just makes it even more true. The fact that defensive stats affect your defense the same or even a little less than offensive stats affect your offense is poor balance, which led to the dominance of Berserker/Viper stats.

If they altered the weight of each, so that defensive stats are more effective than offensive stats (which is what they need to do) - you'd have a lot more competition between the two in the meta. There are a number of different ways they could do this. My suggestion was to tie dodging to Vitality to make baseline defense much lower, meaning that purely offensive builds would become much glassier than they are today - because I think this would be the most interesting way to solve it, and it would also increase the flexibility of the combat system to make the game more playable for handicapped or low skill players by giving them the option of focusing more on passive defense. Toughness may need to be slightly buffed under this change, but not much.

But they could just as easily nerf the effectiveness of offensive stats without changing defense and it would yield the same benefit, just IMO in a less interesting/dynamic way.

[Einlanzer.1627]

Since this conversation is swirling above so many heads, I edited the OP to attempt to clean up & clarify what I'm proposing.

[Einlanzer.1627]

I want to do a technical analysis on the attributes and how they effect gearing and combat dynamics in GW2. The TLDR version is that the current damage formula makes the attributes very poorly balanced, there's really no good justification for it, & simple updates could really, really help breathe new life into the game and reign in over-the-top power creep and general clutchiness of combat to make the game more friendly for different types of players.

Let's start by taking a look at the damage formula:

Damage = (Weapon strength Power Skill coefficient) / Armor

We can see something weird right out of the gate looking at this formula. Namely, that power and weapon strength are considered separately and multiplied, while Toughness is simply added to Armor. Let's plug in some numbers and look at the effect of this using an arbitrary skill with a coefficient of 3 on an ascended greatsword vs a medium armor target.

(1100 1000 3)/2118 = 1558 damage

Now, what we can assume from this is that adding 1000 power will double the damage. Adding another 1000 (hypothetically) will triple it, and so on.(1100 2000 3)/2118 = 3116 damage

However - what is the effect of the target adding Toughness? Let's be symmetrical and use 1000(1100 2000 3)/3118 = 2116 damage

In summary - adding 1000 power at level 80 will double your damage (and this is not factoring in Precision and Ferocity), while adding 1000 Toughness will only reduce your damage by around 1/3 due to the way the damage formula handles Power and Toughness. Moreover, the amount that increasing Toughness reduces damage perpetually shrinks, while the same is not true for Power. This is backwards. Because offense will always carry more value than defense (this is only natural), the weight of defensive stats should be greater than the weight of offensive stats. This would be true even if the game didn't have an active defense system - the fact that it does only makes it more true. So, in a nutshell, the presence of dodging is not what makes Toughness mostly useless - it is simply under-tuned in effectiveness within the damage formula, or, conversely, Power is over-tuned. Berserker meta isn't a given, Berserker only dominates the game because there's major imbalance in the way offensive and defensive stats are weighted within the combat mechanics.

Vitality fares only slightly better. Adding 1000 Vitality can raise your Health by between 50% and 85% depending on class, and while it helps against condi, it lacks synergy with healing power. Meanwhile, Power has strong synergy with both of its supporting attributes (Precision and Ferocity) - further widening the gap in usefulness between offensive stats and defensive ones.

What should be done about it? There are a couple of different potential observations and solutions.

1.) It has nothing to do with Toughness or Vitality - Power (and, as a result, condi) is over-emphasized. The gap between damage floor and ceiling is too high in a game where damage is king. A simple solution would be to rework the damage formula to reduce the multiplicative effect of Power (and, subsequently, Precision and Ferocity). This could be done by "banding" power so that, for example, Power bonuses are multiplied by 2/3 instead of full value. Perhaps a better option might be to rework the formula so, instead of multiplying power by weapon damage, power and weapon damage are summed then multiplied by a level-based constant. Condi damage nerf would of course be needed to bring it back in line with Power, resulting in a reigning in of the power creep we've seen over the last few years. Condi should outperform power on high armor targets, and vice-versa.

2.) Power scaling is fine. Vitality and Toughness are both under-emphasized in the combat system and should be reworked to be more interesting and useful choices. My proposal in this case is (and always has been) to make the following modifications - a.) add a damage subtraction after the damage division using only Toughness as opposed to combined Armor. This makes thematic sense (representing a greater ability to shrug off minor blows/injuries) and it would give Toughness a proper role separate from the dodge system by helping mitigate minor sources of damage that you wouldn't normally bother dodging while also helping to offset the severe diminishing returns of the stat. b.) Make Vitality improve endurance regeneration instead of Health. It seems more thematically appropriate and would create better synergy between the 3 defensive attributes. Give lighter armored classes slightly higher endurance regeneration baseline than heavy armor classes.

Potential new damage formulas for tinkering:Damage = Weapon Strength (base Power + bonus power 2/3) Skill Coefficient/ArmorDamage = (Weapon Strength + Power) Skill Coefficient Level-based constant/ArmorDamage = (Weapon Strength Power * Skill Coefficient/Armor) - (Toughness/6.67)

It's worth noting that an attribute tied to Endurance regeneration isn't a new idea - there was one prior to the beta (Called Willpower) and it was removed for some reason, which I think was a bad idea as it led to the loss of need to invest in defense and the ability to over-stack offense - becoming a glass cannon that really isn't that glassy - creating a lot of imbalance in the game. Instead of simply adding Willpower back, I think reworking Vitality makes more sense - there's, IMO, no need to have a health-increasing stat. Just have % bonuses on occasional foods/runes/sigils (and maybe buff baseline health a bit depending on other changes.)

[MachineManXX.9746]

Maybe, just maybe, It's done like this on purpose? And the developers don't want everything equal? And maybe, a "solution" is not required? Just a thought.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@"MachineManXX.9746" said:Maybe, just maybe, It's done like this on purpose? And the developers don't want everything equal? And maybe, a "solution" is not required? Just a thought.

Maybe. And maybe it's also wrongheaded and deserves to be scrutinized. Don't just appeal to authority or thoughtlessly defend the status quo.

[Airdive.2613]

This needs more math to justify your point.You could start with plotting some arbitrarily chosen damage per second (or just some real skill to use as a point of reference, say ranger's longbow 1) against power increase and toughness increase for both the current and the proposed system so we can see what the curves look like in average and in extreme cases, both with and without protection or 25 might stacks.Having a target time-to-kill value in mind could be helpful: try to balance both distributions around the desired point and explore what happens.

[Khisanth.2948]

I wonder why a game developer wouldn't want players to be able to stand around passively and ignore enemy damage ... there can't possibly be any good reasons for that.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@"Airdive.2613" said:This needs more math to justify your point.You could start with plotting some arbitrarily chosen damage per second (or just some real skill to use as a point of reference, say ranger's longbow 1) against power increase and toughness increase for both the current and the proposed system so we can see what the curves look like in average and in extreme cases, both with and without protection or 25 might stacks.Having a target time-to-kill value in mind could be helpful: try to balance both distributions around the desired point and explore what happens.

I'm not sure it does. Too much data just obfuscates what I'm describing and it's actually very simple.

The gist of it is that doubling your power doubles outgoing damage, while doubling your armor halves incoming damage.

This sounds good in theory, but it overlooks a few major things that throw the balance way out of whack:

1.) Power is given much more reach through Precision and Ferocity than Toughness gains through Vitality and Healing Power (or vice versa)

2.) Power is calculated independently in the damage formula while Toughness is combined with armor value, which dilutes the effect of each point of Toughness. Doubling your toughness doesn't double your your armor, it instead just increases it by about 50%, which reduces your incoming damage by about 33%.

3.) Because combat typically gives more weight to offense than defense by default, in order to be competitive, defensive stats should carry more weight than offensive stats. In GW2, as illustrated above, we have the opposite. People act like it's because "offense is better, period", when, in reality, poor balance is to blame for the dominance of Berserker.

The best fix I can think of is to reign-in the over-emphasis on Power by making the outgoing portion align with the incoming portion by changing the damage formula so that weapon attack and power are summed instead of multipled, then the sum of both is multiplied by a level-based constant. OR, alternatively, to increase the significance of Toughness in the damage formula by adding a subtraction component after the division component of damage reduction.

[Metasynaptic.1093]

PvP battles would take a really long time if defensive values were different. The problem had always been balancing around 3 game modes.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Khisanth.2948 said:I wonder why a game developer wouldn't want players to be able to stand around passively and ignore enemy damage ... there can't possibly be any good reasons for that.

Missing the point, but nice strawman. Nobody is suggesting you should be able to stand around and not utilize the dodge system.

[Einlanzer.1627]

@"Metasynaptic.1093" said:PvP battles would take a really long time if defensive values were different. The problem had always been balancing around 3 game modes.

I'm not convinced this is as true as people think it is. I think the biggest culprit behind "bunker" problems in PvP is the over-effectiveness of healing skills at baseline relative to their scaling with Healing Power. Additionally, condi was designed to ignore armor. The idea should be that direct damage struggles against high armor targets and you need condi support. The problem, of course, is that condi is also overtuned which has led to too much resistance negating condi damage.

It's all ripple effects of really bad mechanical balancing over the last several years. It honestly needs to be unwound and redone.