Balance changes to professions (PvE only discussion)

[Infusion.7149]

9 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's a very superficial way of looking at things. There were changes in the past that had massive impact on OW players, for example, that clearly was never part of consideration for devs at all.

One good example is any Confusion rework attempt - they've done that more than once, and every single time they did it, it required at least half a year of tweaking and balancing to make it work sensibly in PvE. With some edge cases they never bothered to address at all.

(notice, that if you want to talk about impact of changes on average players, you need to take into consideration not only how he skill/mechanic changes will impact player directly, but also how it will impact the mobs that happen to use the same skills/mechanics)

i.e. the Retaliation change is going to have significant positive impact on average players in any case where that boon originally appeared on mobs. Any condi changes are bound to have some impact as well - most of condi changes that were done in the past with PvP in mind usually had negative impact on OW players)

Confusion matters very little in the grand scheme of things unless you are talking about a few select raids (TL + SH) + Sunqua Peak.

For most power classes the autoattack can easily make up half the benchmark DPS. Most people should be playing power in openworld anyway with the exception of CFB and boss fights.
For example if a class benchmarks 36-40K and their auto is 17-20K that's a significant part of the damage.

If you're just testing modifiers or gear, autoattack test is a very valid test for example regarding the warrior banner and modifiers changed, Soulbeast merged bonus change a while back, as well as Chronomancers' danger time.

I suspect that is why Flamestrike, a scepter auto that makes an insignificant amount of the damage in DPS tempest was changed to be a quicker auto. Just before the Feb 2020 competitive patch someone actually tested a bunch of meta builds autoattacking and it came out to be something as follows:

Spoiler

* Full boon chrono ~8K
* boon chrono ~11.5K (before StM changes July 2020 and Vicious Expression which was a Feb 2020 addition)
* scourge ~12K
* condi BS sword ~14K
* Diviner renegade ~14.3K (before Feb 2020 Devastation rework)
* Holo bomb kit ~14.3K (only vulnerability , before Explosives line rework Feb 2020)
* Warrior power axe ~14.5K
* Sword holo ~14.5K (only vulnerability , before Explosives line rework Feb 2020)
* Condi renegade on mace ~14.8K  (before Feb 2020 Corruption rework)
* pChrono 15K (before StM changes July 2020 and Vicious Expression which was a Feb 2020 addition)
* Dragonhunter GS ~15.6K (no retal)
* Reaper GS ~16K
* Condi FB (Grieving) axe ~16.4K
* weaver sword (fire Bolt to the heart) ~17.2K (before nerf to burning on Searing Slash July 2020)
* Soulbeast sword flanking ~17.4K (before Feb 2020 change to Twice as Vicious)
* power herald ~18K  (before Feb 2020 devastation rework)
* soulbeast GS flanking ~18.5K (before Feb 2020 change to Twice as Vicious)
* power weaver (air Bolt to the Heart) ~19.2K
* Photon Forge auto ~21.5K (only vulnerability , before Explosives line rework Feb 2020)
* staff daredevil ~23K

 

Edited May 12, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Hesione.9412]

6 hours ago, Lottie.5370 said:

 

But more on topic of the thread: if an average player is doing 3-4k DPS I can only assume that they don't really care what damage they are dealing, and I don't really think they should be considered when any changes that have a significant effect to them will only have an even bigger effect on the top damage dealers. If you have a person doing 30kp dps, and a person doing 3k dps, a change that affects damage by 10% is going to have a 3k impact vs a 300 dmg impact. You are going to notice the change WAY more on the person that was doing 30k than the person that was doing 3k. Any changes affect the outliers so much more than the average player.

 

You want to keep the overall balance in mind when making a patch like that, but the average should never be the priority when looking at balance, having outliers too far ahead or too far behind is too much of a problem and way more unhealthy to the game.

They might not know how much dps they are doing, or might not realise how much is possible, etc. I am talking about the average player here, who is unlikely to have heard of arcdps let alone use it.

 

Say there is a 10% change and the 30K dps person loses 3K. In the scheme of things, does that matter? Is a raid boss now going to enrage because the timer is met? No.

 

With 3K dps and the 300 dps lost. If the original damage was marginal for that player successfully fighting mobs, then perhaps the loss of 300 tips them into being unsuccessful.

 

One alternative option is to simply make the raid and fractal bosses more difficult, with more counters to power damage and fewer counters to condition damage.

 

The implicit and explicit rationales given by Anet for making the changes seem unrelated to general PvE. Which makes me curious as to how much consideration was given to the general, casual, PvEr.

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Confusion matters very little in the grand scheme of things unless you are talking about a few select raids (TL + SH) + Sunqua Peak.

For most power classes the autoattack can easily make up half the benchmark DPS. Most people should be playing power in openworld anyway with the exception of CFB and boss fights.

It seems you completely missed what i was saying. I will repeat the relevant part:

 

4 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

(notice, that if you want to talk about impact of changes on average players, you need to take into consideration not only how he skill/mechanic changes will impact player directly, but also how it will impact the mobs that happen to use the same skills/mechanics)

I can tell you, that a lot of players then noticed the massive and sudden buff to all mobs that were using confusion on players.

 

 

[Infusion.7149]

If someone is dying to confusion they aren't paying attention or using resolution/condition clears. It does next to no damage unless you are using skills , to the tune of 10 damage per second.