Barrier decay inconsistency (by % instead of by Unit)

[Aesa.4819]

Why is it that Barriers decay by %, instead of by Unit?

Right now a 3000 value barrier decays to 0 in the same time that a 300 value barrier decays to 0.Wouldn't it be a lot more reasonable to have the decay be fixed to some number/value per second, instead of % per second?

If the decay would be 200 Barrier/second, the 3000 Barrier would take 15 seconds to decay to 0, while the 300 Barrier would decay to 0 in 1.5 seconds.

That Barriers currently decay by % is making it really hard to support with it. Applying a single large Barriers is not as much worth as a continual application of lower amount of Barrier, making the whole mechanic unbalanced.

What do you think?

Another thought I had is, what if the barrier decay timer (1 second) restarts when taking damage? Say you apply a 2000 value Barrier, and then it starts decaying. When you have 1650 Barrier left you get hit by a 1000 damage hit, pushing your Barrier down to 650. The decay now is paused, and after 1 second it once again starts decaying.

Wouldn't that make supporting through Barriers a lot more viable?

[Aetatis.5418]

the super short decay is... there is not an easy way around it. imagine the barrier-decay being your 15sec instead of 2sec.everybody would stack scourges/big group barriers only, because it would allow for an infinite uptime of 50% extra life.so if you dont want an infinite uptime, several other tweaks must be done, right? (e.g. 20% of life being max barrier or something similar)

the more there is to change, the less likely we are going to get it from anet i suppose?

barrier is a super difficult topic imo

[Axl.8924]

@Aetatis.5418 said:the super short decay is... there is not an easy way around it. imagine the barrier-decay being your 15sec instead of 2sec.everybody would stack scourges/big group barriers only, because it would allow for an infinite uptime of 50% extra life.so if you dont want an infinite uptime, several other tweaks must be done, right? (e.g. 20% of life being max barrier or something similar)

the more there is to change, the less likely we are going to get it from anet i suppose?

barrier is a super difficult topic imo

Then nerf the stacking potential and buff the actual barrier.Make it so that having more than 1 scourge with barrier does nothing, and then you don't have infinite stacking.

[Aesa.4819]

@Aetatis.5418 said:the super short decay is... there is not an easy way around it. imagine the barrier-decay being your 15sec instead of 2sec.everybody would stack scourges/big group barriers only, because it would allow for an infinite uptime of 50% extra life.so if you dont want an infinite uptime, several other tweaks must be done, right? (e.g. 20% of life being max barrier or something similar)

the more there is to change, the less likely we are going to get it from anet i suppose?

barrier is a super difficult topic imo

Regarding the "everybody would stack scourges/big group barriers only, because it would allow for an infinite uptime of 50% extra life", how is that any different really from stacking 25 might and minutes of protection and swiftness, a lot of stability etc.?

An extra 50% health might sound like a lot, but protection already does this for power damage and the game hasn't broken in the 5 years that has been present?

(math:12000 HP, taking 1200 DPS with no Protection => 12000/1200 = 10 seconds until dead.12000 HP, taking 33% reduced damage with protection, i.e. 800 DPS => 12000/800 = 15 seconds until deadEHP is 50% higher for power damage with Protection active)

It will require a lot of coordination from different players, just as boon stacking is right now.Also, the exact number/value that Barrier is decaying by should of course be set appropriately, I just used an example in my opening post :)

[Kanto.1659]

The whole decay idea is shit and a result of GW2 being at core a PvP game. Don't expect miracles. With a bit of elbow grease they could have PvE and PvP splits for barrier since it's 'heavy support' (haha.. oh god...) even if reducing the max barrier possible to 25%. If an Aegis can soak 100% of damage then barrier being perma up and soaking 25% tops doesn't seem broken. Still not particularly useful, maybe, but it may save the lower HP classes from being one shot, which is something a druid can't help with their reactive healing.

[Justine.6351]

It functions by % so barriers don't end up permanent. With damage reduction in the game it would be like death shroud for yourself and 4 other people. Let's not make the game more facetank.

I thought it was stupid that the sand shroud skills didn't cost by % instead of static but that also is for a reason. They didn't want people stacking toughness instead of Vita and making their barriers hard to break.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@Justine.6351 said:It functions by % so barriers don't end up permanent. With damage reduction in the game it would be like death shroud for yourself and 4 other people. Let's not make the game more facetank.

I thought it was stupid that the sand shroud skills didn't cost by % instead of static but that also is for a reason. They didn't want people stacking toughness instead of Vita and making their barriers hard to break.

If they cost % instead of a static amount, then anything that increased life force pool (such as Strength of Undeath) would have no effect whatsoever.

That's probably more of the reason why the costs are static.

[Metosis.4978]

I think they went overboard with the decay mechanic, ruining the implementation of such an amazing ability. I always liked barrier/shield mechanics in MMO, I played disc priest in WoW and Scholar in FFXIV, proactive healing is easier and less stressful than reactive healing, minimizing my heart-attacks as a healer...and making receiving players (specially PUGs) more comfortable and not go full panic mode..(which may lead to loss of DEEPS or wasting time on defensive maneuvers like dodge and such), unfortunately, with such extreme decay to barrier in this game, it lost it's true value of healing "Maximum Health" and became more of a weird "dodge" ability due to how fast it ends. My suggestion is to reduce the decay a bit, change it or add something to it, making Barrier a heal-like ability rather than a dodge-like, and making it more reliable like an actual heal and less random.

An Idea:

• Dynamic Decay (no grace period): the closer barrier to max the faster it decays, fully depletes in 20 secs.e.g 5000 Barrier(at recipient's maximum health) > 2 seconds > 3000 B > 4s > 2000 B > 6s > 1500 B > 8s > 0 BStacking barriers is difficult at max but easier to maintain low % value, spamming is almost useless.

• Concentration increase depletion time: e.g 50% Boon duration = 30 secs of Barrier.e.g 5000 Barrier(max) > 3 second > 3000 B > 6s > 2000 B > 9s > 1500 B > 12s > 0 BDepletion time averages between all applied barriers, non-buffed barriers will be counterproductive, 1 specialized support player is more efficient (another player with the same amount of boon duration will simply average the same amount of depletion time, even if it was from another class!), specialized support will be able to maintain higher value of barrier.

• Healing power increases barrier value with better coefficient AND the maximum amount applied, barrier cap should be based on healing power IMO to normalize the amount given between players with high and low vitality, currently barrier benefits high health players MORE than low health players...shouldn't be the opposite?

• Barrier applied should be represented in numbers like healing (yellow number) instead when it's depleted, the latter is kinda pointless, why there is a need to see if an attack hit my health or my barrier "health"? it's the same...applied barrier should show as an immediate number as this will give better feedback to the receiving player that he/she is getting "healed" .

[Zefiris.8297]

@Justine.6351 said:It functions by % so barriers don't end up permanent. With damage reduction in the game it would be like death shroud for yourself and 4 other people. Let's not make the game more facetank.

There are games that have barrier mechanics where, oddly, this does not happen, such as World of Warcraft. Barriers in these games last for over 10 seconds. In fact, decay does not exist in those games, other in form of a CHOICE you have in having your barriers boosted by 50% in exchange for a 3% decay every second.The main reason these mechanics are considered useful in other games is that they last longer than two seconds. They can also be applied every 4.5 seconds.

The problem with current scourge design is that barriers are incidental - you apply them while doing other stuff. This is a fundamental design error that directly leads to the fear you mention there. If barrier was applied by less abilities, and those abilities would apply barrier and nothing else, there'd be not even the fear of the scenario you mention, because you'd always have to apply barrier intelligently and there never was a scenario where barrier just happened.

Right now, barrier isn't worth it outside of a few rare scenarios, and the situations where it would be useful are already trivialized by a Chronomancer's blur.

[Kanto.1659]

Yes, you've 100% nailed it. The fact we apply barrier accidentally as we go is what gets us pegged as 'heavy support' and what makes barriers so weak and why they won't be upgraded. For barriers to become useful they need to be a trade-off. Do damage? Do a barrier instead? If I do barrier then it will be a good barrier, strong, that will last.

[Aetatis.5418]

@Aesa.4819 said:

@Aetatis.5418 said:the super short decay is... there is not an easy way around it. imagine the barrier-decay being your 15sec instead of 2sec.everybody would stack scourges/big group barriers only, because it would allow for an infinite uptime of 50% extra life.so if you dont want an infinite uptime, several other tweaks must be done, right? (e.g. 20% of life being max barrier or something similar)

the more there is to change, the less likely we are going to get it from anet i suppose?

barrier is a super difficult topic imo

Regarding the "everybody would stack scourges/big group barriers only, because it would allow for an infinite uptime of 50% extra life", how is that any different really from stacking 25 might and minutes of protection and swiftness, a lot of stability etc.?

An extra 50% health might sound like a lot, but protection already does this for power damage and the game hasn't broken in the 5 years that has been present?

(math:12000 HP, taking 1200 DPS with no Protection => 12000/1200 = 10 seconds until dead.12000 HP, taking 33% reduced damage with protection, i.e. 800 DPS => 12000/800 = 15 seconds until deadEHP is 50% higher for power damage with Protection active)

It will require a lot of coordination from different players, just as boon stacking is right now.Also, the exact number/value that Barrier is decaying by should of course be set appropriately, I just used an example in my opening post :)

difference is, you can actively pump out more barrier, once you lost some. protection does not provide this mechanic.something like the following (minute 7:35)

allowing only one stack of the same skill to apply could fix it. but honestly. i have no freaking idea how easy or difficult it is to apply all those ideas, people have, to the game.

[Zefiris.8297]

@Aetatis.5418 said:difference is, you can actively pump out more barrier, once you lost some. protection does not provide this mechanic.something like the following (minute 7:35)

This is not different, actually. This is functionally identical to healing under protection.

allowing only one stack of the same skill to apply could fix it. but honestly. i have no freaking idea how easy or difficult it is to apply all those ideas, people have, to the game.

It's actually quite likely the EASIEST way to implement it.

Barrier becomes a buff, any application of barrier replaces the previous one if it is higher than the previous one, and otherwise does nothing. This is how it works in most such games, probably for a reason - it's easier to balance and maintain, does not encourage class stacking (in fact, it discourages it) and does not lead to the current situation where one individual scourge kinda sucks, but several scourges make people immediately think "OP". That's bad for the game.

Way too many problems with Necros in PVE boil down to "but if it was any different, it'd be OP with multiple necros".

[Aetatis.5418]

"Barrier becomes a buff, any application of barrier replaces the previous one if it is higher than the previous one, and otherwise does nothing"

that is actually the first idea, that makes me think it could work out better as the mechanics now (+ an extended duration) !!

many of the demands for buffing necro just seem so completely random and "please buff, because we are bad". like i am playing necro for 5 years and other than wvw the class always was "gtfo and reroll scrub".so i am really up for some changes. but not like "break" some gamemodes (stacking classes) for the sake of antoher one :-/

[Justine.6351]

@Kanto.1659 said:Yes, you've 100% nailed it. The fact we apply barrier accidentally as we go is what gets us pegged as 'heavy support' and what makes barriers so weak and why they won't be upgraded. For barriers to become useful they need to be a trade-off. Do damage? Do a barrier instead? If I do barrier then it will be a good barrier, strong, that will last.

It's the same "curse" with necromancer damage. It's application is so easy that anet has throttled it.

[Metosis.4978]

@Zefiris.8297 said:

@Justine.6351 said:It functions by % so barriers don't end up permanent. With damage reduction in the game it would be like death shroud for yourself and 4 other people. Let's not make the game more facetank.

There are games that have barrier mechanics where, oddly, this does not happen, such as World of Warcraft. Barriers in these games last for over 10 seconds. In fact, decay does not exist in those games, other in form of a CHOICE you have in having your barriers boosted by 50% in exchange for a 3% decay every second.The main reason these mechanics are considered useful in other games is that they last longer than two seconds. They can also be applied every 4.5 seconds.

The problem with current scourge design is that barriers are incidental - you apply them while doing other stuff. This is a fundamental design error that directly leads to the fear you mention there. If barrier was applied by less abilities, and those abilities would apply barrier and nothing else, there'd be not even the fear of the scenario you mention, because you'd always have to apply barrier intelligently and there never was a scenario where barrier just happened.

Right now, barrier isn't worth it outside of a few rare scenarios, and the situations where it would be useful are already trivialized by a Chronomancer's blur.

The reason they tacked barrier on other abilities that do something useful is because they know how inefficient it is in it's current form...Making a temporary buff like any other game would be nice, but if they insist on the decay thing then an "intelligent" decay system would be better and more forgiving, I like the idea of pausing decay each time you get hit as OP suggested, but if too stronk, then add a diminishing return to it, as in first hit > 1 sec pause, 2nd .75 sec...until it's no longer stops the decay (and current barrier fully depletes), this will slightly prolong the effect which is what we are trying to achieve.

Another idea I liked, suggested before in another topic, is a decay to health conversion, where decayed barrier (not absorbed) turn into health at (1:1 conversion), it makes barrier have this dual beneficial effect where it heal lost health but does nothing when at max health (just a barrier), it also act as unique type regeneration effect that stack with normal regeneration!...if 1:1 conversion is too high, they can always lower the conversion rate and make it scale with healing power, now decayed barrier is useful without buffing barrier itself (the 2nd health bar that devs hate the most!).