Damage dampener question

[Doug.4930]

The trait itself states that a percentage of damage is delivered after a delay.

However the wording confuses me. damage reduced: 20%

The wording is terrible. Does it mean that 20% of the damage is taken after 2 seconds? Does it mean that the delayed damage is reduced by 20%? Does it mean that 20% of the damage is delayed and then 20% of that damaged is reduced?

If this trait provides absolutely no damage reduction at all and simply applied the 20% of the reduced damage after 2 seconds anyway then what is the point of that trait?

[Drascious.5714]

This is a brand new type of concept for guild wars but something familiar for wow players who have tanked.

The intention is not to reduce damage taken but to smooth it out.

Instead of a large spike you take a smaller spike and then have 2 seconds before the further damage hits which actually works very well with the new progressive barrier gain.

The fact that there is no cooldown as well means you are constantly offsetting the burst of high burst toons.

However the fact you have 3k less health as well means this tool isn’t really offering as much of a boost as it could.

If it were possible to always generate enough barrier to nullify the 20% that occurs 2 seconds later it would very strong but instead any barrier you earn is likely eaten up by other damage anyway.

It is certainly a good trait in theory but quite hard to theorycraft outside of a traditional mmo tanking role where damage incoming is predictable.

[Dediggefedde.4961]

@Psykewne.3025 said:In WvW zergs it works pretty well. scourge barrier and fb healing has enough time to help you in addition to your own healing skills.The 15% barrier generation is pretty much a joke, though. It's interesting when using adaptive armor for the dmg-reduction while having a barrier, but the barrier itself on healers is always below 1k. Even with only 14k HP I can still outlive firebrands.

As a bruiser-roamer you might have luck with blast/shredder gyro in a rifle/marauder setup, but you will also need dmg related traits.And here I have trouble seeing scrapper here as an advantage over enhanced-heat-holo or even SD-holo...But perhaps someone actually comes up with a working power-scrapper-roamer build. ^^