This is jackhammering, not balancing

[Axl.8924]

@"ellesee.8297" said:this is pretty dumb. "condi engi is good but you have to outplay the person really really hard." ...then it's not good lmao. let's say condi engi is a 4/10 build, and i'm being generous. let's say it's being played by a 10/10 player fighting a 7/10 player playing spellbreaker, probably a 6-7/10 build. sure the 10/10 condi engi player may win, but it's still a 4/10 build aka it belongs in the bin.

"you win the war of attrition with prybar and blowtorch" what meta side noder do you think you could beat with prybar and blowtorch if you couldn't just massively outplay him? Spellbreaker? Mending has about the same cooldown as prybar and blowtorch. and they have shake it off. what's your setup? Flamethrower + toolkit + S/Egun? One stunbreak and gear shield to defend against a spellbreaker offensive. Good memes. Spellbreaker is probably one of the worse side noders in the current metagame too. What chance is there against something like a prot holo?

also "FT scrapper is as or more complex of a build than nade holo". ok my guy. you win. how can i rebut something as flawlessly sound as that?

Can i ask you something? what kinda sustain do you bring on condi builds? I don't know much about engi or anything at all.

[ellesee.8297]

@Axl.8924 said:

@"ellesee.8297" said:this is pretty dumb.

"condi engi is good but you have to outplay the person really really hard."

...then it's not good lmao. let's say condi engi is a 4/10 build, and i'm being generous. let's say it's being played by a 10/10 player fighting a 7/10 player playing spellbreaker, probably a 6-7/10 build. sure the 10/10 condi engi player may win, but it's still a 4/10 build aka it belongs in the bin.

"you win the war of attrition with prybar and blowtorch"

what meta side noder do you think you could beat with prybar and blowtorch if you couldn't just massively outplay him? Spellbreaker? Mending has about the same cooldown as prybar and blowtorch. and they have shake it off. what's your setup? Flamethrower + toolkit + S/Egun? One stunbreak and gear shield to defend against a spellbreaker offensive. Good memes. Spellbreaker is probably one of the worse side noders in the current metagame too. What chance is there against something like a prot holo?

also

"FT scrapper is as or more complex of a build than nade holo".

ok my guy. you win. how can i rebut something as flawlessly sound as that?

Can i ask you something? what kinda sustain do you bring on condi builds? I don't know much about engi or anything at all.

Depends on the build I suppose. I'm not aware of any best established condi build that has seen high tier play played by high tier players. But in general, the base engi has a powerful heal in elixir h with a short cooldown at 20 seconds and could possibly boost all healing by 10% with health insurance. Elixir h also gives protection and regen. Emergency elixir gives a 3000 barrier at low health every 80 seconds. A roaming core condi engi would have no meaningful sustain at all after that. A side node core condi engi would most likely bring elixir gun which gives another decent heal + condi cleanse and more regen uptime. They might also bring backpack regenerator. Holosmiths would have base engi sustain plus heat therapy and high super speed uptime. Condi scrapper simply doesn't exist.

Some engis opt for med kit which is a much weaker heal on a slightly shorter cooldown, but also provides water fields to blast/leap and an additional mini heal.

[Puck.3697]

@mistsim.2748 said:Removing overtuned things exposes other overtuned things. Mender was removed but now we have Demolisher, which is really strong for side noding on some specs.

I don't know why others can't see this but it's actually the game mode, Conquest. It needs to be ditched. I've had enough of it after 8.5 years, how about you?

You're always gonna have some kind of quasi bunker, some kind of bursty roamer, a side noder, and 1-2 things in between.

Last year I left because I got tired of fighting against Revs in high ELO. Pretty much Mallyx and Shiro pooping on people. Holos were also overtuned but more manageable.

Came back a month ago, and I like it better. A bit necro heavy but this will improve as we start to see more Spellbreakers.

I think CMCs changes have all been on point, if not too slow at times. But I really think the game is trapped by the bad game mode. Any kind of king of the hill will lead to the same kind of roles, same kind of memes and boring metas.

Disagree.

The problem is class design. This why most mmorpgs remove options from class design. Because they don't have to worry if ranger will overscale due to a amulet they have to try look if any of the thousand build possibilities would go over the top.

Options mean unbalanced I'm afraid. There are too many factors to account for when making every change. And they can't buff any part of the kit without unintentionally buffing something else along with it.

Nothing to do with the PvP mode it's to do with the class design. It's a overcomplex system for a Dev to work with. The problem is they can't just up and delete the options because it would obviously destroy the game.

[mixxed.5862]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Kuma.1503 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:

This mantra that taking things out is bad, or that nerfing is always bad and buffing good, is idiotic.

Why is it always the same straw man with you guys?

"Hey, nerfs are great and all, but maybe buff underperformers too"?

"U just think nerfing is always bad and buffing is gud"

Or in Justice's case, he points out that that buffs and nerfs are equally effective/innefective and are a complete red herring in the first place (there was a multi-page argument about this). His stance is that looking at buffs/nerfs as the sole means of balancing a game is a common mistake people and devs make, yet here we are again with the same strawman

"U just think nerfing is always bad and buffing is gud"

This is getting old. There's a good reason why the community shrank to an even smaller fraction of what it was since Feb 2020, and there's a reason why it continues to shrink. And yet, every time someone tries to shed light on why that is, this same over-used strawman inevitably pops up.

Ya, People are stuck in a box they can't escape from and god help me I tried to help but it's impossible.

These guys don't want builds (the very thing that defines guilds wars as being guild wars) they want Super Smash Bros or Fortnite. They want all player choice wiped out, and want to play Battle Royale Mode instead of Conquest.

And ya, this strawman is always played and I just don't have it in me anymore to explain something that they clearly won't understand. Looking at this guy @mistsim.2748 's post it's clear to me this guy will

never

understand anything remotely close to diversity let alone "Balance 101."

@mistsim.2748 said:Once the roles are figured out, a DEVELOPER WITH A VISION....This is just PvP development and balancing 101

@mistsim.2748 I us-to work in business in a creative industry, and I'll tell you what I learned from sitting around in meetings with investors. That every sound-cloud "Rapper" that approaches a record label "has a vision." This is not what people, and investors look for...whether someone has a vision or not...people are interested in whether the vision you have solves a problem and can make money and show real world results. If your vision consistently kills pvp over and over and over again, this is a failed investment and your "vision" was a colossal failure. Do you think CMC doesn't have a vision? Do you think that any developer before them didn't have a vision? Whether they have a vision doesn't matter it's whether that vision actually works or not. Come up to any investor with no knowledge of what you are talking about and find out how far you get...you might be like Theranos and be able to con some people, but the smart ones...the skeptical ones probably wouldn't have wasted their time without actually seeing some kind of shred of evidence of a working prototype of her dream machine.

I've linked on here,

explaining that

an exact science

is involved in the creation of balancing elements in a game and you know what most people say? "I'm not gonna watch a 1 hour video..." Ya these are the kind of folks you throw their CD in the trash can at one of these meetings. Their salty that they were denied a record deal but that's the reality for these people...most people are purposefully ignorant because they don't want to put in the actual work and effort to figure out how something works.

This was very delightful, thank you. It's quite something to see so much arrogance all in one post.

They're simply trying to make sPvP the most fun and skillful it can be. They realized that it isn't if you get one-shot from stealth or killed in a matter of a second in three hits (with the first being an instant cast CC). So the february patch of last year happened.

Right now it's become evident that Conquest isn't much fun either when the pro strategy is to sit on a node and bunker it down all game. It's not very exciting when we see 2 or 3 kills in 15 minutes of gameplay.

PvP is at its best when there are high stakes, fast rotations, it's about getting the clutch kill, winning the team fight and gaining momentum. All of which doesn't happen when Mender is run by 3/5 meta builds because it offers incredible sustain to a few select builds (mender scourge, mender guard, bunker decap druid/ventari rev).

Mender was the problem because it was fucking overpowered. They did right to remove it.

Tldr: The balance team is doing a pretty good job lately so don't be a smartass

[mistsim.2748]

@"mixxed.5862"

Mender's was so strong that it crushed build diversity. People arguing "well just buff everything else" are wrong because when something is so OP (and clearly the only meta choice) and when you have 3 Mender's on a team, then it's just easier to take it out. Mender's didn't belong after last year's patch.

[Kuma.1503]

@mistsim.2748 said:@"mixxed.5862"

Mender's was so strong that it crushed build diversity. People arguing "well just buff everything else" are wrong because when something is so OP (and clearly the only meta choice) and when you have 3 Mender's on a team, then it's just easier to take it out. Mender's didn't belong after last year's patch.

The problem with Menders was a prolem of our own creation, and this:

"--It didn't belond and needed to be removed"

This mindset is what caused it.

Imagine for a second a city decides to get rid of sidewalks. They spread their shopping centers far apart, and they get rid of all biking lanes.Fewer people walk to get around, and more decide to hop in a car and take the road. As a result, roads get larger.

An environmentalist looks at the problem and says "Gee, there sure are a lot of carbon emissions coming from the city lately, the air quality has gone down. Cars must be the problem! We should do something about cars"

Even if they've correctly identified the main culprit, they've completely glanced over the underlying cause. Cars became an issue because you got rid of every other option. People can't walk or bike even if they wanted to.

Now consider what happened to PvP. If you wanted to be a bunker, you would run amulets like Knights, Paladin, or Cavalier. This meant you had a decent mixture of durability and pressure, but you notably lacked in healing power, so you could expect lower sustain.

We got rid of these because they were "unhealthy" and "didn't belong in PvP"

Then what were bunkers left to use? Celestial? We got rid of that too.

The only thing builds like this had left was Mender. This single amulet was left to try and carry bunkers and supports. That's why it saw an over abundance of use. No shit, sustain went through the roof, we forced each of these different build archetypes to run a sustain amulet.

If that werent enough, we got rid of amulets that would have aided supports at doing their job while still being vulnerable to counterpressure. We lost both Harrier and Marshal, which were perfectly healthy options.

Mender's would have never been an issue if not for previous removals. What happens when new amulets and builds become an issue? Do we remove Demolisher next? It's obviously "carrying" side noding builds atm (looking at you SpB and Druid), as well as some teamfight builds like Holo, Scrapper, and Renegade. Even meme builds like Flamethrower scrapper run it. At what point do we put actual effort into these balance patches and address the underlying issues?

[mistsim.2748]

@Kuma.1503 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:@"mixxed.5862"

Mender's was so strong that it crushed build diversity. People arguing "well just buff everything else" are wrong because when something is so OP (and clearly the only meta choice) and when you have 3 Mender's on a team, then it's just easier to take it out. Mender's didn't belong after last year's patch.

The problem with Menders was a prolem of our own creation, and this:

"--It didn't belond and needed to be removed"

This mindset is what caused it.

Imagine for a second a city decides to get rid of sidewalks. They spread their shopping centers far apart, and they get rid of all biking lanes.Fewer people walk to get around, and more decide to hop in a car and take the road. As a result, roads get larger.

An environmentalist looks at the problem and says "Gee, there sure are a lot of carbon emissions coming from the city lately, the air quality has gone down. Cars must be the problem! We should do something about cars"

Even if they've correctly identified the main culprit, they've completely glanced over the underlying cause. Cars became an issue because you got rid of every other option. People can't walk or bike even if they wanted to.

Now consider what happened to PvP. If you wanted to be a bunker, you would run amulets like Knights, Paladin, or Cavalier. This meant you had a decent mixture of durability and pressure, but you notably lacked in healing power, so you could expect lower sustain.

We got rid of these because they were "unhealthy" and "didn't belong in PvP"

Then what were bunkers left to use? Celestial? We got rid of that too.

The only thing builds like this had left was Mender. This single amulet was left to try and carry bunkers and supports. That's why it saw an over abundance of use. No kitten, sustain went through the roof, we forced each of these different build archetypes to run a sustain amulet.

If that werent enough, we got rid of amulets that would have aided supports at doing their job while still being vulnerable to counterpressure. We lost both Harrier and Marshal, which were perfectly healthy options.

Mender's would have never been an issue if not for previous removals. What happens when new amulets and builds become an issue? Do we remove Demolisher next? It's obviously "carrying" side noding builds atm (looking at you SpB and Druid), as well as some teamfight builds like Holo, Scrapper, and Renegade. Even meme builds like Flamethrower scrapper run it. At what point do we put actual effort into these balance patches and address the underlying issues?

Ok I have no idea who's giving you the thumbs up. You are all clearly lost. Everyone who upvotes this guy is a lost soul.

No you don't remove Demolisher's. It's for side node builds, like you said. I literally made a post about Druids switching to Demolisher's right after the patch hit. Tested it for 2 games, knew it "yup this is the side node amulet now". But that's fine.

Mender's was removed because it was allowing bunkering + supporting with one stat type. Two roles, one amulet. Now, you can still bunker the side node with Demolisher's but you can't sustain your teammates when they come to help you. Demolisher's was clearly the next in line for an attrition bruiser and it will be the main amulet for a lot of specs.

But you'll still see zerker builds because they do way more damage. You'll still see Carrion. And you'll still see Marauder, Sage, Avatar. As far as I'm concerned, take out the rest of them and focus on tweaking the talent trees. Balancing needs to be simplified and taking out stat combos is one way to do this. It's clear as day.

Obviously you're not remembering the Celestial meta when we were seeing 3 d/d eles per team. Same flaming trash pile of a meta. Took them 2 years to nerf boon stacking, and another 2 to remove the amulet.

In the meantime, you still have Sage and Avatar + SoT if you wanna support so play around with that for a few months before crying. Who are you even and what do you know?

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"mistsim.2748" said:Ok I have no idea who's giving you the thumbs up. You are all clearly lost.

My guy, it's not hard to understand what Kuma said. By removing a "problem", you simply create another problem...follow the line of logic and by removing all the "problems" you're just removing everything systemically, from the game until you have nothing left.

Have you never heard of this joke from the Simpsons?

In Diversity Science, what ends up happening is that for every "problem" you remove, the next "problem" will be even more of a problem then the problem before it.

Why do you think we live in a biodiverse world? Why do you think human beings shouldn't mate with their cousins? It's because the amount of variety (aka diversity) among not only species, but within a species is absolutely critical to the health of a population.

[Shao.7236]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"mistsim.2748" said:Ok I have no idea who's giving you the thumbs up. You are all clearly lost.

My guy, it's not hard to understand what Kuma said. By removing a "problem", you simply create another problem...follow the line of logic and by removing all the "problems" you're just removing

everything

systemically, from the game until you have nothing left.You're acting like there never was a solution to anything in the universe because for every positive reaction there is a negative one, except that's actually trivial and situations can be alleviated in many ways.

It's actually unwise to conclude so shortly when we know for a fact that this is a work in progress and whether you like the illusion of choice or not, many of the things in our current situation requires such changes to move forward.

Players may hate losing their overpowered strats/choices, but having less amulets doesn't mean less diversity, especially when there is so much scaling and different ways to do things in the game, lots of builds get to flourish because they don't get overshadowed by the others who have extreme results given certain numbers on specific amulets yet the existing one have more of a fair result.

There might be an obsession to keep the old existing builds relevant but they sure aren't mandatory anymore, which is what the game truly needed.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Wish instead of the Feb patch cmc woulda taken the approach he is now with the more frequent targeted approach with a summary of why changes were applied to saud targets, imo game woulda been better off.Honestly if cmc could keep up what he's doing than I'd say roll back the Feb patch and him just continue on targeting the outliers.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Shao.7236" said:You're acting like there never was a solution to anything in the universe because for every positive reaction there is a negative one, except that's actually trivial and situations can be alleviated in many ways.

I've always stated that there IS a solution that exists, and it doesn't exist in the form of a numerical nerf or buff. But nobody understands it and it requires a little bit of math to wrap your head around.

Even then it's not "that" hard to understand. But people refuse to let go of the nerf this/buff that mentality and I'm done explaining it a hundred times to the same people. There are clearly those out there that get it and there are clearly those that do not. The ones that do not, don't bother to go and click on some of the links and sources I provide that would help them understand it. but NOPE that's too hard for some people to do.

You can literally, scroll up the comments and find a video I linked that in explicit detail is a game developer describing the exact sciences that are critical components in game design (Complexity Theory, Chaos Theory, Thermodynamics and Evolution...) and my guess here is that those that responded directly to me, have not watched it so far.

Now he doesn't spell out the exact solution, for which I've spent too much of my time to articulate specifically for gw2, but if you took the time to understand the position at the very least, or just the material in general since it's well known established science and math, you'd eventually figure it out on your own and come to the same or similar conclusions.

First you need to start with a very simple logic exercise, which is what is the inevitable conclusion of applying a series of nerfs or buffs to a game. You should work this out and figure it out on your own. But to make it short and sweet, what happens is that applying numerical nerfs and buffs in an attempt to "balance" the game destroy player choice (diversity). It's a big mathematical fact that this happens, and you can see a logic proof here that explains it in simple terms in this commenthttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1344346#Comment_1344346

Now, you want the solution to the diversity/balance problem I will explain it one last time. I have kept this explanation as simple as I could without using math to explain it:

! Guild Wars 2's meta game will always have a convergent strategy, meaning that there will eventually be a collapse to a single meta build given enough time. The time this takes is dependent on the complexity of the game. The simpler it is to understand the elements and their relationships, the faster it is to compute (decide) which choices are the most optimal choices. Therefor the solution in solving the diversity problem (and by proxy balance, you can see how these two are essentially the same) in the game, is to make the game more complex, which increases the computation time and essentially delay the inevitable convergence to a meta by making it take longer to compute.!! Making the game more complex sounds like a big spooky scary thing, but it's not what most people think it means. You do not need to add more elements to make a game more complex, and you do not need to make anything more complicated. Complexity is actually a consequence of "ultra-simplicity", where simple relationships have a rich possibility space that allows a simple relationship to become a complex relationship by being able to take on many many possible outcomes. This consequently makes simple systems become complex ones. The idea is then an encapsulation of GOOD mechanics. A good mechanic in a game will be simple, but have a rich possibility space (a complex relationship), in that there are many many different possible ways to use a simple mechanic. The key here is the complex relationship, that this is what truly makes a system more complex.!! In conclusion : The more complexity in the mechanics > the harder it takes to calculate optimal strategy > game remains in a diverse state for a longer period of time.

[Crozame.4098]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Shao.7236" said:You're acting like there never was a solution to anything in the universe because for every positive reaction there is a negative one, except that's actually trivial and situations can be alleviated in many ways.

I've always stated that there IS a solution that exists, and it doesn't exist in the form of a numerical nerf or buff. But nobody understands it and it requires a little bit of math to wrap your head around.

Even then it's not "that" hard to understand. But people refuse to let go of the nerf this/buff that mentality and I'm done explaining it a hundred times to the same people. There are clearly those out there that get it and there are clearly those that do not. The ones that do not, don't bother to go and click on some of the links and sources I provide that would help them understand it. but NOPE that's too hard for some people to do.

You can literally, scroll up the comments and find a video I linked that in explicit detail is a game developer describing the exact sciences that are critical components in game design (Complexity Theory, Chaos Theory, Thermodynamics and Evolution...) and my guess here is that those that responded directly to me, have not watched it so far.

Now he doesn't spell out the exact solution, for which I've spent too much of my time to articulate specifically for gw2, but if you took the time to understand the position at the very least, or just the material in general since it's well known established science and math, you'd eventually figure it out on your own and come to the same or similar conclusions.

First you need to start with a very simple logic exercise, which is what is the inevitable conclusion of applying a series of nerfs or buffs to a game. You should work this out and figure it out on your own. But to make it short and sweet, what happens is that applying numerical nerfs and buffs in an attempt to "balance" the game destroy player choice (diversity). It's a big mathematical fact that this happens, and you can see a logic proof here that explains it in simple terms in this comment

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1344346#Comment_1344346

Now, you want the solution to the diversity/balance problem I will explain it one last time. I have kept this explanation as simple as I could without using math to explain it:

! Guild Wars 2's meta game will always have a convergent strategy, meaning that there will eventually be a collapse to a single meta build given enough time. The time this takes is dependent on the complexity of the game. The simpler it is to understand the elements and their relationships, the faster it is to compute (decide) which choices are the most optimal choices. Therefor the solution in solving the diversity problem (and by proxy balance, you can see how these two are essentially the same) in the game, is to make the game more complex, which increases the computation time and essentially delay the inevitable convergence to a meta by making it take longer to compute.!! Making the game more complex sounds like a big spooky scary thing, but it's not what most people think it means. You do not need to add more elements to make a game more complex, and you do not need to make anything more complicated. Complexity is actually a consequence of "ultra-simplicity", where simple relationships have a rich possibility space that allows a simple relationship to become a complex relationship by being able to take on many many possible outcomes. This consequently makes simple systems become complex ones. The idea is then an encapsulation of GOOD mechanics. A good mechanic in a game will be simple, but have a rich possibility space (a complex relationship), in that there are many many different possible ways to use a simple mechanic. The key here is the complex relationship, that this is what truly makes a system more complex.!! In conclusion : The more complexity in the mechanics > the harder it takes to calculate optimal strategy > game remains in a diverse state for a longer period of time.

How to increase the complexity in the mechanics, in a feasible and efficient manner?You are strongly against removing amulets or nerfs or buffs, which will reduce the "complexity", that's fine, then how can we increase complexity? Say, if celestrial amulet is too strong for some builds, then how we address it? Or simply ignore it?

Also, why a diverse state is better? Why diverse is equivalent to balance? Suppose the optimal strategy is balanced, why its a bad thing to reach it fast?

[Arheundel.6451]

@mistsim.2748 said:

@Kuma.1503 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:@"mixxed.5862"

Mender's was so strong that it crushed build diversity. People arguing "well just buff everything else" are wrong because when something is so OP (and clearly the only meta choice) and when you have 3 Mender's on a team, then it's just easier to take it out. Mender's didn't belong after last year's patch.

The problem with Menders was a prolem of our own creation, and this:

"--It didn't belond and needed to be removed"

This mindset is what caused it.

Imagine for a second a city decides to get rid of sidewalks. They spread their shopping centers far apart, and they get rid of all biking lanes.Fewer people walk to get around, and more decide to hop in a car and take the road. As a result, roads get larger.

An environmentalist looks at the problem and says "Gee, there sure are a lot of carbon emissions coming from the city lately, the air quality has gone down. Cars must be the problem! We should do something about cars"

Even if they've correctly identified the main culprit, they've completely glanced over the underlying cause. Cars became an issue because you got rid of every other option. People can't walk or bike even if they wanted to.

Now consider what happened to PvP. If you wanted to be a bunker, you would run amulets like Knights, Paladin, or Cavalier. This meant you had a decent mixture of durability and pressure, but you notably lacked in healing power, so you could expect lower sustain.

We got rid of these because they were "unhealthy" and "didn't belong in PvP"

Then what were bunkers left to use? Celestial? We got rid of that too.

The only thing builds like this had left was Mender. This single amulet was left to try and carry bunkers and supports. That's why it saw an over abundance of use. No kitten, sustain went through the roof, we forced each of these different build archetypes to run a sustain amulet.

If that werent enough, we got rid of amulets that would have aided supports at doing their job while still being vulnerable to counterpressure. We lost both Harrier and Marshal, which were perfectly healthy options.

Mender's would have never been an issue if not for previous removals. What happens when new amulets and builds become an issue? Do we remove Demolisher next? It's obviously "carrying" side noding builds atm (looking at you SpB and Druid), as well as some teamfight builds like Holo, Scrapper, and Renegade. Even meme builds like Flamethrower scrapper run it. At what point do we put actual effort into these balance patches and address the underlying issues?

Ok I have no idea who's giving you the thumbs up. You are all clearly lost. Everyone who upvotes this guy is a lost soul.

No you don't remove Demolisher's. It's for side node builds, like you said. I literally made a post about Druids switching to Demolisher's right after the patch hit. Tested it for 2 games, knew it "yup this is the side node amulet now". But that's fine.

Mender's was removed because it was allowing bunkering + supporting with one stat type. Two roles, one amulet. Now, you can still bunker the side node with Demolisher's but you can't sustain your teammates when they come to help you. Demolisher's was clearly the next in line for an attrition bruiser and it will be the main amulet for a lot of specs.

But you'll still see zerker builds because they do way more damage. You'll still see Carrion. And you'll still see Marauder, Sage, Avatar. As far as I'm concerned, take out the rest of them and focus on tweaking the talent trees. Balancing needs to be simplified and taking out stat combos is one way to do this. It's clear as day.

Obviously you're not remembering the Celestial meta when we were seeing 3 d/d eles per team. Same flaming trash pile of a meta. Took them 2 years to nerf boon stacking, and another 2 to remove the amulet.

In the meantime, you still have Sage and Avatar + SoT if you wanna support so play around with that for a few months before crying. Who are you even and what do you know?

"Who are you even?"..........mate...your words here have as much weight as the next guy

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Crozame.4098" said:Why diverse is equivalent to balance?

Diversity and Balance are the same thing yes. The word "balance" is just misunderstood because of the history of the word :

From probably since the early turn of the past millennia, the definition of balance has always meant placing two things on a scale, to try and see if the scale balances out. Back then, this was the primitive understanding for what made it possible to trade goods and make math calculations to determine the values of things for bartering... I have 5 chickens, they weigh the same as your 3 bags of seeds, therefor its an equivalent trade. Balance back then, was also used in a religious contexts such as the saying, "the balance of nature" and that's a pretty common saying even to this day...but nobody really understood it and that's why "the balance of nature" remained in this sort of religious abstraction in history.

Since then, people have gotten smarter, and by the time thermodynamics came about in the 1800's, balance was no longer a good way to describe what we see in the physical world. Systems live in a thermodynamic world, in which we make a heterogenous systems become homogenous through a process of entropy. We use these principles in order to do "work" and so a system in a homogenous state is essentially a state of a system that can no longer do work...and becomes inert. Balance of a system now meant that balance is an equilibrium of parts in a system where no part is different then any other part. By contrast, a heterogenous system, is the opposite...where all things are defined not by how the same they are, but rather how different things are from each other.

In essence, balance and diversity live on a spectrum between two ends. One end is homogeneous and the other is heterogeneous. On the homogenous end we find all things in complete equilibrium...where all things are the same, and everything is completely equal. On the opposing end, we find diversity, where all things are different from every other thing else. The old ways of thinking about "balance" is no longer valid in this description...why? Because the most balanced state is the most inert, homogenous state, where all things are completely equal to one another and all process in this spectrum go from heterogeneity to homogeneity. This is why one of the thermodynamic laws is that entropy always increases, and it's why our coffee always disperses from a beautiful swirly milky mixture into a homogenous brown liquid....it's the inevitable way of the world, in which a homogenous state is what all things are eventually heading for.

It goes even deeper then that... because we haven't even touched on scale invariance, which is how these processes are invariant at all scales, and that all systems are really moving between homogenous and heterogenous constantly by utilizing the next scale above or below it (That a heterogenous or homogenous system on one scale is homogenous or heterogenous on a larger one), and that this is the only way systems are able to actually do work, by exploiting the entropy of the system above or below it.

but essentially the old way of using the word "balance" is not sufficient to describe anymore, actual behaviors of things in the world. It's okay to say it in a sentence but when you try to describe a real process, you simply can't say the word "balance" without being wrong in some way, and so you have to say it in accordance with what we now understand.

Also, why a diverse state is better?So is Diversity better then Balance? In a technically meaningful sense, yes it is...but mathematically the two can't be separated. You can't have one without the other if you want a system to evolve.

A perfectly homogenous system can't evolve without some sort of heterogenous catalyst...Fortnite is a good example of a near homogenous game. It is in essence perfectly balanced, but there is one heterogenous component...and that component is the decision in which where you land in the game effects the outcome of the rest of the game. This allows a system of components to evolve from a maximally heterogenous state (The state in which all players have chosen different locations) to a convergent and collapsing homogenous state, where all players eventually meet and kill each other to see which of them will be the winner. The storm isn't even a necessary component to make this process happen, it simply makes this convergence happen faster and in a finite amount of time.

If you were to zoom out on this process, you'd see that the end convergent state is just the same homogenous state as what the game began with at a different scale before the heterogeneity was introduced. So you started with 100 homogenous players all in the same place (the bus) and you now have just 1 homogenous player in a place on the island. Both of these states here are equivalent to each other because the system no longer evolves...and if you think about it of course they would be equivalent right... just as equivalent if it was 1000 players on the bus, or a million...eventually there will be just 1 at the end of the game. And this is a critical component to understanding why both aspects of homogenous and heterogenous things have to exist in a game.

So it's very archaic way to think about this...but essentially without diversity (heterogeneity) a system can not change. and perfect balance (homogeneity) is the heat death of change...if I were to make a rudimentary analogy, Diversity is like being alive, while balance is like being dead. All things in nature live and die, and you need things to die in order to live...and it's a cycle.

Suppose the optimal strategy is balanced, why its a bad thing to reach it fast?

The optimal strategy is the eventual collapse to a single meta build. Now how is that a bad thing? Well aside from that mathematically it is inert and prevents the system from evolving, it is just not fun for everyone to play the same build on the same class. This is what we want to avoid...people don't like seeing 10 scourges each match, and people don't like when the counter-play to scourge...is another scourge.

There is also common theme in everything here, and it's about time. Thermodynamics spells out for us that a system moving toward equilibrium is inert in that it no longer has the ability to do work. In complexity theory, the same kind of entropy exists, in which there is a maximal complex state where things are computationally inert. If the ability to do work, or the ability for a system to evolve is defined by us reaching an inevitable end state of a system, then it would be obvious that it's in our best interest to make the heterogenous evolution of a system take more time so that we can enjoy the heterogenous evolution of the game longer.

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

@Daddy.8125 said:

@mistsim.2748 said:Removing overtuned things exposes other overtuned things. Mender was removed but now we have Demolisher, which is really strong for side noding on some specs.

I don't know why others can't see this but it's actually the game mode, Conquest. It needs to be ditched. I've had enough of it after 8.5 years, how about you?

You're always gonna have some kind of quasi bunker, some kind of bursty roamer, a side noder, and 1-2 things in between.

Last year I left because I got tired of fighting against Revs in high ELO. Pretty much Mallyx and Shiro pooping on people. Holos were also overtuned but more manageable.

Came back a month ago, and I like it better. A bit necro heavy but this will improve as we start to see more Spellbreakers.

I think CMCs changes have all been on point, if not too slow at times. But I really think the game is trapped by the bad game mode. Any kind of king of the hill will lead to the same kind of roles, same kind of memes and boring metas.

Disagree.

The problem is class design. This why most mmorpgs remove options from class design. Because they don't have to worry if ranger will overscale due to a amulet they have to try look if any of the thousand build possibilities would go over the top.

Options mean unbalanced I'm afraid. There are too many factors to account for when making every change. And they can't buff any part of the kit without unintentionally buffing something else along with it.

Nothing to do with the PvP mode it's to do with the class design. It's a overcomplex system for a Dev to work with. The problem is they can't just up and delete the options because it would obviously destroy the game.

I think(hope) amulet is only an example but in general Gw2 has not much problem with stats . It main problems are A( weapon) skills with no or very little cast time, B traits, and C some times skills with too much functionality

Examples:A ) Ranger and MirageB) Chrono and WeaverC) Scourge and FB

What we have/had is not a DPS creep but a feature creep which side effect was DPS creep. Arena.NETs way of balancing this is on the trait and skill side is not removing them but nerfing them until they are useless. The problem with this is it looks very stupid when you have skill which give like 0.25s protection or have a cooldown of 5 minutes or does 5 dmg. Also the numbers of trait and skill creeped up over time which are like this.

The other problem is they just hammer sometimes the wrong traits and in general seems to miss how the maths behind it works out. e.g Weaver as 2 trait which gives more crit chance . The problem with those skill is you can convert precision to power and then your crit modifier comes on top of it . In the wind trait line they done the same error/trick 10% more dmg or 10% increased crit dmg what is bigger ? 10% dmg because = (1.1*3.5)-3.5 = 35% more dmg since it happens only when the enemy breakbar is down another 1.1 = +85% dmg . The option are not even comparable

Where they where completely wrong was with the fire weaver they pushed the earth trailtine for more condi dmg . The condi build became oppressive did they nerfed the earth trait line ? No they nerfed the fire trait line and screwed PvE with this up too.

[Crozame.4098]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Crozame.4098" said:Why diverse is equivalent to balance?

Diversity and Balance are the same thing yes. The word "balance" is just misunderstood because of the history of the word :

From probably since the early turn of the past millennia, the definition of balance has always meant placing two things on a scale, to try and see if the scale balances out. Back then, this was the primitive understanding for what made it possible to trade goods and make math calculations to determine the values of things for bartering... I have 5 chickens, they weigh the same as your 3 bags of seeds, therefor its an equivalent trade. Balance back then, was also used in a religious contexts such as the saying, "the balance of nature" and that's a pretty common saying even to this day...but nobody really understood it and that's why "the balance of nature" remained in this sort of religious abstraction in history.

Since then, people have gotten smarter, and by the time thermodynamics came about in the 1800's, balance was no longer a good way to describe what we see in the physical world. Systems live in a thermodynamic world, in which we make a heterogenous systems become homogenous through a process of entropy. We use these principles in order to do "work" and so a system in a homogenous state is essentially a state of a system that can no longer do work...and becomes inert. Balance of a system now meant that balance is an equilibrium of parts in a system where no part is different then any other part. By contrast, a heterogenous system, is the opposite...where all things are defined not by how the same they are, but rather how different things are from each other.

In essence, balance and diversity live on a spectrum between two ends. One end is homogeneous and the other is heterogeneous. On the homogenous end we find all things in complete equilibrium...where all things are the same, and everything is completely equal. On the opposing end, we find diversity, where all things are different from every other thing else. The old ways of thinking about "balance" is no longer valid in this description...why? Because the most balanced state is the most inert, homogenous state, where all things are completely equal to one another and all process in this spectrum go from heterogeneity to homogeneity. This is why one of the thermodynamic laws is that entropy always increases, and it's why our coffee always disperses from a beautiful swirly milky mixture into a homogenous brown liquid....it's the inevitable way of the world, in which a homogenous state is what all things are eventually heading for.

It goes even deeper then that... because we haven't even touched on scale invariance, which is how these processes are invariant at all scales, and that all systems are really moving between homogenous and heterogenous constantly by utilizing the next scale above or below it (That a heterogenous or homogenous system on one scale is homogenous or heterogenous on a larger one), and that this is the only way systems are able to actually do work, by exploiting the entropy of the system above or below it.

but essentially the old way of using the word "balance" is not sufficient to describe anymore, actual behaviors of things in the world. It's okay to say it in a sentence but when you try to describe a real process, you simply can't say the word "balance" without being wrong in some way, and so you have to say it in accordance with what we now understand.

Also, why a diverse state is better?So is Diversity better then Balance? In a technically meaningful sense, yes it is...but mathematically the two can't be separated. You can't have one without the other if you want a system to evolve.

A perfectly homogenous system can't evolve without some sort of heterogenous catalyst...Fortnite is a good example of a near homogenous game. It is in essence perfectly balanced, but there is one heterogenous component...and that component is the decision in which where you land in the game effects the outcome of the rest of the game. This allows a system of components to evolve from a maximally heterogenous state (The state in which all players have chosen different locations) to a convergent and collapsing homogenous state, where all players eventually meet and kill each other to see which of them will be the winner. The storm isn't even a necessary component to make this process happen, it simply makes this convergence happen faster and in a finite amount of time.

If you were to zoom out on this process, you'd see that the end convergent state is just the same homogenous state as what the game began with at a different scale before the heterogeneity was introduced. So you started with 100 homogenous players all in the same place (the bus) and you now have just 1 homogenous player in a place on the island. Both of these states here are equivalent to each other because the system no longer evolves...and if you think about it of course they would be equivalent right... just as equivalent if it was 1000 players on the bus, or a million...eventually there will be just 1 at the end of the game. And this is a critical component to understanding why both aspects of homogenous and heterogenous things have to exist in a game.

So it's very archaic way to think about this...but essentially without diversity (heterogeneity) a system can not change. and perfect balance (homogeneity) is the heat death of change...if I were to make a rudimentary analogy, Diversity is like being alive, while balance is like being dead. All things in nature live and die, and you need things to die in order to live...and it's a cycle.

Suppose the optimal strategy is balanced, why its a bad thing to reach it fast?

The optimal strategy is the eventual collapse to a single meta build. Now how is that a bad thing? Well aside from that mathematically it is inert and prevents the system from evolving, it is just not fun for everyone to play the same build on the same class. This is what we want to avoid...people don't like seeing 10 scourges each match, and people don't like when the counter-play to scourge...is another scourge.

There is also common theme in everything here, and it's about time. Thermodynamics spells out for us that a system moving toward equilibrium is inert in that it no longer has the ability to do work. In complexity theory, the same kind of entropy exists, in which there is a maximal complex state where things are computationally inert. If the ability to do work, or the ability for a system to evolve is defined by us reaching an inevitable end state of a system, then it would be obvious that it's in our best interest to make the heterogenous evolution of a system take more time so that we can enjoy the heterogenous evolution of the game longer.

Then, how to increase the complexity in the mechanics, in a feasible and efficient manner?You are strongly against removing amulets or nerfs or buffs, which will reduce the "complexity", that's fine, then how can we increase complexity? Say, if celestrial amulet is too strong for some builds, then how we address it? Or simply ignore it?

[Shao.7236]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Shao.7236" said:You're acting like there never was a solution to anything in the universe because for every positive reaction there is a negative one, except that's actually trivial and situations can be alleviated in many ways.

I've always stated that there IS a solution that exists, and it doesn't exist in the form of a numerical nerf or buff. But nobody understands it and it requires a little bit of math to wrap your head around.

Even then it's not "that" hard to understand. But people refuse to let go of the nerf this/buff that mentality and I'm done explaining it a hundred times to the same people. There are clearly those out there that get it and there are clearly those that do not. The ones that do not, don't bother to go and click on some of the links and sources I provide that would help them understand it. but NOPE that's too hard for some people to do.

You can literally, scroll up the comments and find a video I linked that in explicit detail is a game developer describing the exact sciences that are critical components in game design (Complexity Theory, Chaos Theory, Thermodynamics and Evolution...) and my guess here is that those that responded directly to me, have not watched it so far.

Now he doesn't spell out the exact solution, for which I've spent too much of my time to articulate specifically for gw2, but if you took the time to understand the position at the very least, or just the material in general since it's well known established science and math, you'd eventually figure it out on your own and come to the same or similar conclusions.

First you need to start with a very simple logic exercise, which is what is the inevitable conclusion of applying a series of nerfs or buffs to a game. You should work this out and figure it out on your own. But to make it short and sweet, what happens is that applying numerical nerfs and buffs in an attempt to "balance" the game destroy player choice (diversity). It's a big mathematical fact that this happens, and you can see a logic proof here that explains it in simple terms in this comment

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1344346#Comment_1344346

Now, you want the solution to the diversity/balance problem I will explain it one last time. I have kept this explanation as simple as I could without using math to explain it:

! Guild Wars 2's meta game will always have a convergent strategy, meaning that there will eventually be a collapse to a single meta build given enough time. The time this takes is dependent on the complexity of the game. The simpler it is to understand the elements and their relationships, the faster it is to compute (decide) which choices are the most optimal choices. Therefor the solution in solving the diversity problem (and by proxy balance, you can see how these two are essentially the same) in the game, is to make the game more complex, which increases the computation time and essentially delay the inevitable convergence to a meta by making it take longer to compute.!! Making the game more complex sounds like a big spooky scary thing, but it's not what most people think it means. You do not need to add more elements to make a game more complex, and you do not need to make anything more complicated. Complexity is actually a consequence of "ultra-simplicity", where simple relationships have a rich possibility space that allows a simple relationship to become a complex relationship by being able to take on many many possible outcomes. This consequently makes simple systems become complex ones. The idea is then an encapsulation of GOOD mechanics. A good mechanic in a game will be simple, but have a rich possibility space (a complex relationship), in that there are many many different possible ways to use a simple mechanic. The key here is the complex relationship, that this is what truly makes a system more complex.!! In conclusion : The more complexity in the mechanics > the harder it takes to calculate optimal strategy > game remains in a diverse state for a longer period of time.

As much as you try, we know that GW2 is a game of rock paper scissor, you don't have to get scientific for anyone to understand better.

The latter is obvious and it's possible to objectively make things better, they're already doing it with their limited options.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Crozame.4098" said:Then, how to increase the complexity in the mechanics, in a feasible and efficient manner?You are strongly against removing amulets or nerfs or buffs, which will reduce the "complexity", that's fine, then how can we increase complexity? Say, if celestial amulet is too strong for some builds, then how we address it? Or simply ignore it?

This is a difficult and hard to answer question, the reason being it's hard to answer, is because there are so many issues that Guild Wars 2 has in it's inherent game design, that it's hard to really say where to start and where to end. In addition, diversity isn't an analysis of just 1 skill or element, it's really an analysis of all skills and elements in aggregate. So removing celestial amulet as an example, alters the diversity of the entire system of the game, where locally diversity might increase somewhere's, and locally somewhere else it decreases. But overall, because the possibility space decreases, the complexity decreases and therefor diversity will be less then what it was before across the whole system.

When looking at the analysis of the aggregate of the system's behavior, one needs to focus not on it's individual components, but how many of these components are actually interacting with each other.

In accordance with complexity, there's a number of commonalities that a system should exhibit if it wishes to have complex behavior. By looking at these commonalities, one can make changes to the game in accordance with them.

---

Scale Invariance

! Scale Invariant architecture is a hallmark of emergent complexity. Target Caps are a restrictions on scale invariance. It purposefully inhibits it from happening. One would assume that this is perfectly logical...Target caps help balance the game right? But what this actually does, is neuter the system, with a linear cap, the complexity it can take on. A skill that works in a 1v1 situation, will only work in a 1v1 situation. A skill that can work in a 5v5 situation will always work in a 5v5 AND a 1v1 situation.!! You can see how skills that have no target caps are essentially better then skills that do. A-net counteracts this by simply reducing the effectiveness of skills with higher target caps, and essentially what you get is the symbols nerf, the scourge shade nerfs, the meteor shower nerfs...Conversely you have anet wanting to make 1v1 skills better by instead of relieving them of their target cap, by just simply increasing the damage or effectiveness that the skill does. This is how you get Deadeye Rifle Auto's and PP Unload's that hit for 6k+ damage...so that these 1v1 skills can be more effective in team fights.!! You can see how this back and forth tug of war between AOE damage and Single target damage is a problem that anet struggles to wrestle with, and A-net has addressed everything but the core issue of it which is that target caps should not exist at all, so that all skills can scale invariantly with the growth of the system. As the system grows, so does the value of the skills you use...therefor no particular skill is less useful in any tier of gameplay, whether that be a 1v1, a 5v5, GvG or a ZvZ.!

---

Feedback Loops and Scale Invariant Trade-offs

! You're wondering what would happen in the event that skills were to be relieved of target caps. It would be insanity, and rightly so. Skills have been designed from the inception of the game, to have no trade-offs. This also seemed like an intuitively good idea at the time...but it was yet again another design failure in seeing the bigger picture.!! Imagine if target caps were removed from all abilities, and every ability in essence could be utilized effectively in a zerg v zerg fight. Weapon attacks like Thief Dagger Auto's would hit 80 players at a time, inflicting thousands of conditions per minute, and dealing hilarious damage with 80 other players doing the same thing. It would be utter chaos...But this chaos is due to an inherent problem in skill design, which is the lack of scale invariant trade offs...Trade-off's that scale just as the value of those skills do as the growth of the system increases. If one were to draw a Risk vs Reward graph, where the X axis grows with the number of players in the system, the graph would look like linear, where the more player that exist in the system one is playing in, the riskier it is to use your abilities, and of course the more value you receive from using these skills since they are hitting 80 players.! ! A scale Invariant trade-off is therefor a design of feedback loops on skills and abilities. For every thing you do, there should be an equal and opposing trade off that grounds you from abusing that skill as the system grows in scale.

---

Possibility Space

! Probably the most important part, that the first two things are sub categories of, is the possibility space...the space in which things can explore all the different possibilities. This possibility space is essentially a fancy way of saying freedom of choice. The less limits and the less restrictions you have, the larger the possibility space will become, and in science the space is known more as "degrees of freedom." The more degrees of freedom there are in a space, the more possibilities there are to explore before entropy death. Anything that can be perceived as a limitation of this freedom, essentially diminishes the complexity.!! Cooldowns are a limitation! Mana and energy management are limitations! Number of Skills available to you at any given time is a limitation! Linear trait selection is a limitation.! Target Cap is a limitation!! Now some of these aren't bad. Mana and energy management are engaging features. But none the less they ARE a limitation...and their removal will in fact alleviate complexity limitation on the game...you can say what you will about that, but it is just a fact, that these things are placed into the game to sometimes add nuance...but that nuance is not necessarily a healthy addition to complexity.!! Naturally, a lot of the limitations above, have their own natural limits. Cooldowns are only as fast as one can mash the button on them, and number of skills available for you to use is only as useful as the limit to which you can actually press them to be used.!! Linear Trait selection is a special kind of limitation, where traits are organized in such-a-way, where there are only a total of 27 possible combinations of choices per specialization, rather then a non-linear trait selection which would grant you a total of 81 possible combination of choices per specialization. These limitations exist also in less obvious forms, such as amulets and runes that have only specific stat combinations. These specific stat combinations limit the number of possible choices by "softly persuading" you that because such stats don't align with a particular build, that said rune or stat combination won't directly benefit you.

---

Conclusion

Now you can tell how by looking at these commonalities, you can see how and why a game like Guild Wars 1 had a lot more build diversity and complexity then Guild Wars 2. Target caps didn't exist, skill selection was not linear (it was freeform) and many of the cooldowns in that game were less than 20 seconds, with durations that usually exceeded the cooldown time. The freeform nature of the game allowed the possibility space to be rather large, and so we were able to see very complex gameplay, with emergent and diverse qualities. As a result, the balance was never really that much of an issue for that game (with a few exceptions that were worth studying and identifying how those problems carried over, and were even built upon into Guild Wars 2.)

Aside from everything said so far, there are a lot more, less structurally dependent things, that come down to how individual skills work and how some mechanics are not complex enough. the lack of complexity in these mechanics lead to optimality calculations that on the scale of skills takes too short a period of time , and determining what optimal skill your class has available is also a problem that drives us faster to a homogenous game state. This is akin to looking at the Reaper class, and automatically bringing the Onslaught trait over any other choice...because the complexity of these traits aren't nearly complex enough where a simple evaluation make it too easy to tell which skill is going to give you the best results.

[Kuma.1503]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Crozame.4098 said:snippity snip

This... I am for 100%. If only because I'll finally be able to fulfill my dream of being that one idiot pioneer that charges into battle duel wielding sheilds. Or in this case... running 5 heal skills. No one will be able to stop me.

There are a few things that stuck out to me though.

One was thief dagger auto hitting 80 targets. It's theoretically possible, but it would be difficult to achieve because you would need to have 80 targets within range of that tiny dagger. Perhaps if your allies stacked enough AoE pulls, it could happen

There are also some skills that make sense to have target caps from an RP standpoint. You wouldn't expect skills like backstab to do splash damage. The most logical way for this skill to function would be as a single target execute. For a no cap backstab to make thematic sense, the thief could stab the dagger into the targets back and then rip it out in a slashing motion with the second hit having no target cap (This could also help add counterplay the skill in 1v1's since the bulk of the damage could be loaded into the slash. It would give the target a chance to react and dodge instead of being cheesed from stealth. Similar to deathstrike).

In the case of skills like lava font, meteor shower, or guardian symbols. It doesn't make sense that lava wouldn't burn you because 5 other people just so happen to be standing in the puddle. These could definately lose their target caps. (I get the feeling I brought this up before but I'm not sure?) It never felt quite right that shredder gyro could hit an infinite number of targets but blast gyro or thunder clap couldn't. It always seemed arbitrary.

For projectiles, it's simply a question of whether they pierce or not, and if you're in the path of a piercing projectile then you take damage. These would rarely get ridiculous due to the razor-thin hitbox most projectiles have. You'd have to line up the perfect shot to hit more than 10 targets.

Lastly, I would love to have the linear restriction lifted on trait selection. It would open up so many more build possibilities. Imagine being able to run both Wilderness Knowledge and Poison Master on a condi soulbeast. The only reason why you can't is because the game restricts you from doing so.

This would require somewhat equalize the power between traits. Grandmasters and Masters would best be done away with in this system, or most would just default to running 2+ grandmasters. Mirage, for example would run IH and EM. Dps Ele would run Lightning Rod and Fresh Air, ect. Personally I wouldn' t mind if every trait was on the level of a Grandmaster, since these tend to be the most interesting, and most gameplay defining. It would definately cause even more chaos, but it would also be a theorycrafter's dream.

I'd touch on more but this post is getting long enough as is.

[Ghos.1326]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"ellesee.8297" said:These forums give me a headache. My own thread was ruined by these kinds of people.

"Make Condi Engi Great Again"

I already have :)

[Ghos.1326]

@Axl.8924 said:

@"ellesee.8297" said:this is pretty dumb.

"condi engi is good but you have to outplay the person really really hard."

...then it's not good lmao. let's say condi engi is a 4/10 build, and i'm being generous. let's say it's being played by a 10/10 player fighting a 7/10 player playing spellbreaker, probably a 6-7/10 build. sure the 10/10 condi engi player may win, but it's still a 4/10 build aka it belongs in the bin.

"you win the war of attrition with prybar and blowtorch"

what meta side noder do you think you could beat with prybar and blowtorch if you couldn't just massively outplay him? Spellbreaker? Mending has about the same cooldown as prybar and blowtorch. and they have shake it off. what's your setup? Flamethrower + toolkit + S/Egun? One stunbreak and gear shield to defend against a spellbreaker offensive. Good memes. Spellbreaker is probably one of the worse side noders in the current metagame too. What chance is there against something like a prot holo?

also

"FT scrapper is as or more complex of a build than nade holo".

ok my guy. you win. how can i rebut something as flawlessly sound as that?

Can i ask you something? what kinda sustain do you bring on condi builds? I don't know much about engi or anything at all.

I can answer this. With Engi in particular (Core Engineer), a few factors: the combination of both Alchemy + Inventions, Shield, the choice of traits within those trait lines, amulet used, and some more. Alch + Inventions together is a phenomenal defensive trait line combination (mostly because of Alchemy which is stupid op). Inventions really compliments Alchemy very well but is horrible by itself, while alchemy can be played by itself and still be more defensive than Inventions, but regardless together they are very strong. Shield with the over shield trait in inventions is also very good, especially in tandum with anti-corrosion plating to help mitigate and minimalize conditions placed onto you, while also providing defense by granting protection (although unless you use the secondary shield skill really only provides you with 1s of protection lel). As well, in inventions the passive trait that grants you prot when you heal, experimental turrets that grants you prot when you use thumper turret, and the very popular alchemy trait protection injection which grants you prot when you're CC'd, and that only scratches the surface because it also expands with purity of purpose and Elixir C.

The offset to this all, is that most of your defensive utilities are on higher cooldown times, meaning you'll have to make good utilization of positioning to mitigate damage dealt to you overall. then there's the fact that as core you still have access to your elite toolbelt, which one in particular really helps defensively overall: med pack drop from the elite crate skill.

just as a quick edit here as well, you'll notice a trend with being so defensive: you have to focus your trait choices primarily on defensive things (which is healthy) in contrast to many of the meta builds out there that do not require you to focus primarily on defensive traits, allowing you to hit heavy while being able to sustain exceptionally well (unhealthy for the game), instead of those specific trait choices for those specific builds granting smaller increments of defense/offense to balance out and determine whether or not you do more damage than sustain, more sustain than offense, or both but lower on both ends to reflect the balance between having the best of multiple worlds and making a single specific role your primary focus path.

[Aihao.5824]

feb patch has given so much problems with the game like chaotic meta, deleting amulets, nerfing classes in pvp, maybe just bring all things back they were before feb patch? Solving problems that u've created inst good, i've some break from the game for a 7 months and play now several weeks, and things are a way better that 7 months ago, but in fact, balance and pvp became closer to pre-feb patch state, maybe its better to bring good old days back?

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@"Kuma.1503" said:This would require somewhat equalize the power between traits. Grandmasters and Masters would best be done away with in this system, or most would just default to running 2+ grandmasters. Mirage, for example would run IH and EM. Dps Ele would run Lightning Rod and Fresh Air, ect. Personally I wouldn' t mind if every trait was on the level of a Grandmaster, since these tend to be the most interesting, and most gameplay defining. It would definately cause even more chaos, but it would also be a theorycrafter's dream.

Personally, ya this is what I would like to see also. All traits should abandon anything trivial and easy to figure out mechanics like "deal +10% damage" and instead all the traits should just be unique mechanics that allow you to do something new or different, and have some interesting set of relationships with other traits or skills...and then you just pick 3 our of 9 of them for every specialization.

One can even make this kind of system "bigger", by adding additional scale invariant layers to those kinds of systems. Like artificial investment systems for example, investing points into traits to make them stronger, would exponentially increase the possibility space.

As an example, if you had 20 of these "points" to spend to make traits stronger, where each trait has say, 5 tiers, then you are essentially multiplying the possibilities by I think 5 fold? for 405 possible combinations on a specialization instead of 81? it could perhaps be 85^5 (a total of 4437053125 possible combinations O.o) I'm not sure...I don't know the exact number but adding another layer to the trait system would just increases the complexity by so much and it would be a theorycrafters dream for sure.

[Obtena.7952]

Lots of good discussion in this thread and the conclusion is:

Stop worrying about what other classes do, what yours doesn't do and just play what you like. You CAN'T do better than this.

[mistsim.2748]

@Aihao.5824 said:feb patch has given so much problems with the game like chaotic meta, deleting amulets, nerfing classes in pvp, maybe just bring all things back they were before feb patch? Solving problems that u've created inst good, i've some break from the game for a 7 months and play now several weeks, and things are a way better that 7 months ago, but in fact, balance and pvp became closer to pre-feb patch state, maybe its better to bring good old days back?

Game was horrible before Feb patch. My friends and I left the game because the power creep was completely out of control. We were all Plat players. Game was garbage then. Less garbage now.