Blood Red Arachnid.2493

> @"KrHome.1920" said: > Is this discussion getting somewehere? Looks a bit like going round in circles. > > Stating the obvious: > - Teef has no fight presence, because it trades it for mobility. Hit and run is class design. You can always escape but your pressure is limited. No one can escape from you. Two elite specs didn't change that, even though they could have, if anet was actually trying. > - Necro is the opposite. It trades mobility for fight presence. Facetanking damage while still being a threat is class design. You can never escape but your pressure is insane. Everyone can escape from you. Two elite specs didn't change that, even though they could have, if anet was actually trying. > > All the other classes are somewhere in between. > > But go on folks! I didn't want to interrupt you. Yeah it isn't going well. The thread started with a relativistic accusation and it's just been a circle of everyone pointing fingers at each other. The argument isn't about whether thief is good or not, insomuch as it is about who has the right to make a claim either way. Which... is argument that can never be won, because it is all about feelings.

> @"Obtena.7952" said: > Well, I think that's the point ... we can wax academic all we want and look at charts of numbers ... but healing potential is not really relevant to how the game is designed. Sure, you can determine it ... but the practical value of that information is low for numerous reasons. Maybe if the healing potential of some build was SO large that it would allow even the worst players to facetank to complete content or the best players to execute perfect DPS rotations ... then there would be something in all of this to consider. > > Really, I think that these numbers are even less relevant than DPS potential ... because if a player is considering a build based on how much it heals ... they are already in the class of players that can't execute actions optimally in the first place; if you _need_ optimal healing potential to play this game, you're not good enough to pull off optimal healing actions to begin with. > > > This game... isn't designed like that at all. The meta strats are the product of independent design decisions, and are predicated on the players having a high drive to performance, and no profession loyalties or restrictions. As a contrast, consider this: the infinitely incompetent also require an infinite amount of healing. I've traded group damage for greater healing a couple of times myself, because I mostly PUG and those groups can be unpredictable. Though this is in the raid forum, healing potential applies to more than just raids. I've had trouble healing teammates during bounty trains due to Ley Energy Build-Up. Keeping a squad alive in Dragon's Stand's pod phase is a full time job, especially if Axe Master Hareth decides to go for a walk. In WvW an enemy group has nearly limitless pressure potential. Total healing potential only seems useless if you presume an environment that makes it useless. Healing potential doesn't mean much in optimal groups with perfect dodging, but in so many words that is just saying "heal output isn't good in circumstances where you don't need heals." Playing with sub-optimal players doesn't mean they are beyond consideration.

Personally I found Revenant to be the easiest. Specifically the herald with the Battle Scars traits. It is low maintenance, has great self-sustain, and good at giving itself boons.

Well, this thread seems awfully familiar. Like I said in the last one: though it is theoretically possible to have a healer with lower overall healing modifiers overwrite the regeneration of a healer with higher healing modifiers, in practice this isn't going to happen much. The only people who build up enough healing power to compete in regen priority with a dedicated healer is... another dedicated healer. In any practical sense, you're going to be comparing the regen output of a 1300 heal build with 180% modifiers to a 1250 heal build with 190% modifiers. Yes, there is a difference, but the overall impact in gameplay is negligible. Your idea to change regen into granting barrier.... doesn't solve much. For one, it will make regen about half as effective overall. Dedicated healing builds can get regen between 500 to 600 per tick, which is quite substantial. I.E. regen from my heal tempest build ticks at 549 per second, but 285 without modifiers. Second, Barrier only lasts for 5 seconds. This changes the problem of suppressed regeneration stacks from an odd fluke to a baked-in feature. Continuously applied regeneration will still override the weaker regeneration. This also makes regen overall weaker, because now its effect isn't permanent. Your suggestion would fix nothing at all. EDIT: Also, I think you still misunderstand how regeneration works. New sources of regen don't "negate" old ones. They just take priority. For your scrapper example, if the scrapper applies 1 second of regen with 250 healing power, that will tick for one second, then immediately after the ele's regen will begin ticking away. The only time that a regeneration boon can be suppressed is if you apply enough individual stacks of regen to exceed the boon stacking limit. Again, while this is theoretically possible, in any practical sense you won't see this happen.

Check old screenshots? You might have taken one with the guild tag hovering over your head.

These are great. I've been waiting for a good dress heel since launch. For the first time in years, my engineer is wearing shoes again.

I've only been keeping so much track of the PVP scene, but I am sure that boon application and duration has been nerfed several times in the past year or two. I certainly know it has for WvW, where my two main professions (ele and rev) were gutted for being too boon heavy, with guardian also following suit. I don't know what Anets current philosophy on combo fields is. I used to think they were purposefully making them useless, on account of combo fields and finishers being too complicated and chaotic for the average player. But then, there are changes to certain professions (scrapper, for example), which try to utilize combo fields as much as possible. Maybe they don't actually have stance on what to do with combo fields.

Lets cut to the chase and be straight with people. The real question here is "Should Anet balance a profession in PVP around peak performance, or average performance?" This is an old question. So old, in fact, that I remember it being discussed when Grouch was nerfing engineers over and over again because he was an excellent engineer player who would body the competition regardless. I don't think we ever got an answer. Personally I say we should balance around peak performance, for a couple of reasons. Number one, the people who care most about balance are the hardcore players who can afford to put endless hours into practicing their profession. Everyone else below that level has different concerns, like learning how all of the professions work and how to navigate the U.I. Second, good design at the top tends to trickle down into other modes, whereas broken design at the bottom tends to ruin things the further you go up in the skill ladder. Third, you can't tell someone to work around broken design at the bottom because those problems will be magnified at the top, but you can tell somebody at the bottom to git gud, because that is when their profession will start to shine.

Unless a bonus specifically mentions condition damage, it doesn't affect condition damage.

It's long been said that a perfect thief is unstoppable. Elementalists, Mesmers, and Engineers are also really strong in the hands of a skilled player.

I used to do something similar. Eventually, I would by duplicates with different stats for weapons that have both condi and power builds, but here's where I started with each. **Engineer** Rifle: Power Sword: Power Hammer: Power Pistol: Either. I have condi Shield: Either. I have Power. **Thief** Rifle: Power Sword: Power Shortbow: Power Pistol: Either. I own both, but went with power first Dagger: Either. I own both, but went with power first Staff: Power **Ranger** Longbow: Power Greatsword: Power Shortbow: Condi Torch: Condi Sword: Condi I don't play ranger, but I believe that all other weapons are hybrid and can be either/or. **Elementalist** Staff: Power All other weapons are hybrids, but because I don't have a true condi set on ele I just run power on each. **Necromancer** Staff: Power Dagger: Both. Main-hand is power, off-hand is condi. Scepter: Condi Torch: Condi Axe: Power Greatsword: Power Focus: Power Warhorn: Power **Mesmer** Greatsword: Power Sword: Power Scepter: Condi Torch: Condi Staff: Condi Focus: Power Pistol: Power Axe: Hybrid, but I run power Shield: Power **Revenant** Sword: Power Axe: Hybrid, but I run Condi Mace; Condi Shield: Power Staff: Power Hammer: Power Shortbow: Hybrid, but I run Condi **Guardian** Nearly all guardian weapons are hybrid. But, this is what I use. Sword: Power Shield: Power Focus: Power Greatsword: Power Longbow: Power Hammer: Power Scepter: Condi Axe: Condi Torch: Condi **Warrior** Sword: Condi Longbow: Condi Torch: Condi All others: Power

I don't know the specific event in question, but I know why Anet does this in general. A surprisingly large population of players don't understand what a nerf is on a fundamental level. So, whenever an overperforming profession gets reduced in power, players who main that profession complain that they were given nothing to compensate for their loss. I've brought it up multiple times that the whole point of a nerf is to reduce the overall performance of a profession, and that giving buffs to compensate would keep that profession overpowered. They never listen, though. An easy way to keep the community from complaining too much is to give a few paltry buffs to skills that weren't doing anything anyway, so the players will feel less slighted by the balance patch.

It is more that S/D doesn't have any particularly useful utility for PVE. It's main gimmick is the evasion and boon stealing, and while the evade is good the boon steal is noticeably less so. Though I did once hijack 24 hours of quickness from the Karka Queen, so that was something. The weapon set doesn't have any way to increase DPS, and everything it offers is utility, so S/D play is mostly just auto attacking. X/P gets recommended because Black Powder makes PVE faceroll easy. Staff gets recommended because of its high DPS with a simple rotation.

What I like to do is have a WvW salesman. It's a toon that I designate my salesman of the day. I have them run around tagging camps and trebuchet-ing walls until they get maximum participation. Then, I get all of the loot I've gathered from doing PVE dailies that day, and just run around in circles selling stuff while also taking camps. See, you get WvWexp for doing stuff, but you get the chests and the reward track experience just by sitting in WvW and _not_ losing participation. So long as you contribute minimally, you still get rewards. Once you have a dedicated salesman toon, you can use your birthday boosters and celebration boosters to increase the rate of reward track gain on that toon. The participation on that toon doesn't decrease if you change characters or log off, so you can keep that toon in reserve while you do other stuff. It takes a surprising amount of time to sell an entire inventory of loot, or to work the TP for capital gains. You can do all of that while getting reward track experience, so long as you occasionally take a camp, kill mercenaries, or even catapult an unoccupied tower. I've gotten multiple gifts of battle by doing this.

I'll throw my hat in with the "make siege great again" crowd. The whole point of player-constructed siege is to make planning and resource investment matter. To make it so that one lone guy who built an arrow cart in the exact right spot can fend off a tower from being taken by a group of 5 or so. To make it so people will construct ballistas on the wall, and then use it to destroy max distance catapult. In a game where siege is feeble and the walls are paper, the whole mode gets dictated by whomever has the most players and the best coverage.

I'm not sure if they're meta, but you definitely want to have one around. I kept my Marauder set for when I want to go zerging, and I run Staff Ele. The thing that amazes me the most about it is how much I can push and move a fight. I can halt an advance, or even kill a large number of people with just a few skills. I even PUgmanded with a heal version, and that worked out pretty well, too. Though, that was when shouts affected 10 people... The point being that Ele is good at controlling space. Whether it is through hard CC like Unsteady Ground or Static Field, Soft CC like Arcane Wave, Frozen Ground, and Shockwave, or through sheer intimidation with Meteor Shower or Fiery Greatsword. They're not completely useless on the boon front, as they tend to provide swiftness and protection, and even some might depending on the build. I say that you want one, because a lot of these utilities don't scale up that well. It only takes one Meteor Storm or Static Field to dissuade a group.

I wasn't around for the original Nightmare Tower, but in fractals I've found Ensolyss of the Endless Torment to be one of my favorite fights. I always wanted a boss that incorporated bullet-hell into its design. Ensolyss is a fine example of a powerful boss that doesn't revolve around the tank-and-spank design that most MMOs use. For sheer visual presentation, though, the winner is the Mouth of Mordremoth.

IMO the biggest thing that hurt Ventari and the Salvation line was the focus on healing orbs. The DPS players already have to keep track of their own skill bar, enemy movements, and chat. Throwing down bunch of orbs and expecting people to walk over them is just visual clutter and inconsistent healing. The worst part is that we lost Nourishing Roots for more orb traits, meaning that heal revs can't apply regen without speccing into herald and camping facet of light. Well, that or we sacrifice assassin's presence. A lot of people knock it, but that regen was really useful. It let the tablet skills "stick" to a player for a bit, compensating for the cumbersome use and narrow range of the tablet. It's useful for all of those times when your teammates have to use stick-and-move strategies, or if they're running around panicked, or if they're tanking arrow carts to operate siege. Seriously, the entire salvation line is garbage now. Everything is now one of three traits: (1) An Orb Trait that is terrible. (2) A personal survival trait (3) A trait that says, in so many words, "do more healing." AKA you're either a terrible healer, a terrible healer that's hard to kill, or an O.K. healer that provides no real benefit over any other. The Ventari skills are nigh useless without this line, and even with it Ventari is just what you go to once Kalla runs out of energy.

Guys, you're on your civvy accounts.

> @"Sobx.1758" said: > > @"xEtherx.6127" said: > > Why is there so much hate for necro in the community for both pve and pvp and yet anet always hits us with the nerf bat. > > Why do people like to pretend *their class* is somehow especially targetted with the nerfs? It's not as sinister as you'd think. This is a product of Anet's whack-a-mole balancing method.. It always feels like they nerf you as soon as you carve out a niche or get good. The long-term side effect of hitting everything that stands out is that it demoralizes players who have profession allegiances.

There should be a zoom sensitivity option in the menu.

Honestly I always thought that this boss was bugged. At least on my screen, what it does is whip around at lightning speed, teleporting to random spots while doing massive damage/CC over multiple hits, killing even the downed. If this isn't intended behavior, then it is the jankiest enemy design in the game.

Theorycrafting is a creative endeavor. There's only so much advice you can get on making new builds. Ultimately, it is going to require a lot of legwork, creativity, and testing on your end to create new builds.

> @"Veprovina.4876" said: > > @"AliamRationem.5172" said: > > > @"Veprovina.4876" said: > > > > @"kamikharzeeh.8016" said: > > > > about chrono, imo it's just practicing to be fast at pushing your buttons. i really like how it works, since u can up more than one ppl at once and give them extrastats when res'ing (with the halloween utility things). they are pretty great as secondary support even. gotta use the build there that your group needs, for opentags u can vary it. > > > > > > > > i run sword+shield (shield has great projectiledefense and boonstrip) and staff on it bc it has a daze+aegisspamfield + run the aegiswell there (since many tags [nowadays, sadly] normally aren't capable of calling veil out in time anyways), which provides a great battlesupport - you just gotta set the wells and fields predictive. they pulse their effect, so as long as your group moves in the direction of it, it isn't wasted. > > > > > > > > alternative ofc the pull-thingy. chrono is basically mesmer/mirage in useful for largescale situations ;P > > > > > > Nice! > > > > > > So, Illusion of life woks with halloween utility? Really? That's good to know haha! :wink: > > > > > > And i do use different builds for open tags and my group. It's not always compatible haha, so i vary. Which is easier now with build templates. :smile: > > > I also run Sword and Shield. I love shield 4, double block when you find yourself in the middle of tons of AOEs without dodges. Saved my life a lot, it's incredibly useful! It SUCKS in PvE lol cause why would you ever block in PvE but in WvW it's a life saver! And shield 5 is a nice interrupt to send into a stacked group haha, and if you have that trait, then yeah, it's also a boonstrip. I don't use staff though, my commander loves pulls, so i use Scepter and Focus. And honestly, i love pulls as well lol, it's so satisfying to pull a group into a Gravity Well. :trollface: And i like that Scepter generates clones a bunch, so i can shatter them and give myself alacrity as well. Sword and shield don't generate much clones. > > > > > > I'm still struggling with setting my wells predictive lol, but i'll get there. Besides, you can only predict so much, if you're going in one direction, great, but if something happens and everyone is told to turn 180 then it's suddenly away from the placed well lol. > > > > > > > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said: > > > > I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this: > > > > > > > > Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920 > > > > > > > > 1920 is how much armor that mesmers/eles/necromancers have with exotic gear. Since everything is balanced around exotics, it makes for a good starting point. Using it as a base makes it easier to understand the upcoming numbers. Basically, your armor rating divides the enemy's damage, which is then subtracted from your health. So, if you double your armor, you'd be taking half of the direct damage, which is roughly equivalent to having double the health. There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific. So, to compare the two numbers you listed, you'd get the following: > > > > > > > > #1: 40,199 HP > > > > #2: 43,962 HP > > > > > > > > Meaning the second build is more durable overall. Now, if you are wonder what the most efficient distribution of stats is, the answer is that HP should be 10x what your Armor rating should be. The reason for this is simple: It's an old geometry problem. If you have a fixed perimeter to make rectangle, the maximum area you can get is by making a square. In this case, the two legs of our rectangle are armor and health, and the area is effective health. But, because health increases by 10 points for every point of vitality, we multiply that side by 10. > > > > > > > > Let me give an example of this. Take a mesmer, which has 1920 armor and 15,922 health. Assume we have 328 points to allocate. If we put that into vitality, we'd get 19,202 effective health. If we put that into toughness, we'd get 18,642 effective health. The point where your health is equal to 10x your armor rating is the sweet spot. Before then, giving yourself more vitality is better overall, At the sweet spot, you'll want to raise both evenly. Now, buildcraft in this game isn't so simple, but this principle is a good thing to consider when evaluating different builds. > > > > > > > > Things get a bit muddier when healing comes in to play. Mostly, this is because healing isn't guaranteed. You could be burst down, interrupted, or poisoned. Because of this, factoring in healing just works off of assumptions, and not hard numbers like toughness and vitality do. But, if you want to factor in healing, what you do is take every single heal that you think you are guaranteed through a fight, and then add that onto your vitality. > > > > > > > > For example, lets assume that this mesmer has Mirror, it will go off once per fight, and it won't be poisoned. Since Mirror heals for 4299, you an consider this mesmer to have 20,221 effective health for the fight. If you do this, you'd want to add toughness first, until you have 2022 armor. This would give you a more efficient build, under the caveat that this efficiency isn't guaranteed. > > > > > > NIce! Thank you for that explanation! > > > Cool system you made to illustrate overal survivabiltiy! > > > And it confirms what others have told already, so now you presented proof of that - that the overall survivability of the two sets is very simmilar. > > > And yeah, combining pieces of armor to get the right desired stats is not easy in this game, it's not like we can just allocate them ourselves, every stat comes from gear in GW2. But it's nice to have an illustration of how gear will affect that survivabilty! > > > > > > Thank you! That was awesome! :smiley: > > > > You should read more carefully what others are saying in this thread. While the effective health calculation is what you were asking for, it's not accurate to say that vitality and toughness provide nearly equal benefit to sustain. The reality is that vitality and toughness play off of each other. Reducing incoming damage while increasing maximum health increases the size of the "cushion" you have before you're forced to change your strategy. There is a lot more to this calculation than just how many hits you can take in a row before you die! > > Yeah, i know that. But the point of this thread was exactly that, for someone to calculate how many hits i can take in both scenarios. > I know it's not how things **are** but just that it gives me a rough idea about the general situation. > Kinda like a starting point to then account all other ingredients. > I know the systems are more complex than that, and i'll prebably never be in a situation where there will be *just* toughenss and vitality present in a calculation, i mean, this game has tons of modifiers that go into that. So i'll never base any of my theorycrafting on toughness and vitality alone, but it's a good starting point to ascertain how a build might work. I hate to drag you in to this, but there's a history here. Aliam is still mad about the last time I used math to demonstrate that he was wrong on a few claims, so he's spent the last month or so going into threads that do math and baselessly declaring it irrelevant or useless. He's known about the effective health calculation for awhile, but he's indignant about not letting other people know how it works, even if it is exactly what is being asked as it is here. So, when he says that it doesn't tell you which stat to improve when I have spent two paragraphs showing how it does, that means that he is arguing in bad faith. The reality of the game is this: you play off your stats. Before skill comes into play, before utilities and traits are considered, you start with your stats. They determine how effective everything is. In PvP/WvW you want to give yourself as much of an advantage as possible, and knowing how to distribute stats efficiently will do just that. I've done this before. Pre-PoF I had a Revenant build for WvW where I did a bunch of this math on it. After factoring in all of the boons and stuff, I discovered that my statistical fortitude was so high that I didn't have to actually avoid attacks. I could just chase people around while spamming DPS skills and win, because if they tried to do the same then they would end up losing. That's how it worked in practice, too. I would relentlessly pursue in duels, able to constantly push an advantage while the flimsier professions had to constantly dodge and run away before eventually succumbing to my power.

I spend so long making these kinds of equations, and yet they never get shared around... I came up with a metric for this awhile ago. I call it effective health. Basically, it looks like this: Effective Health = Health X Armor /1920 1920 is how much armor that mesmers/eles/necromancers have with exotic gear. Since everything is balanced around exotics, it makes for a good starting point. Using it as a base makes it easier to understand the upcoming numbers. Basically, your armor rating divides the enemy's damage, which is then subtracted from your health. So, if you double your armor, you'd be taking half of the direct damage, which is roughly equivalent to having double the health. There are a few other factors to consider, but those are build/situation specific. So, to compare the two numbers you listed, you'd get the following: #1: 40,199 HP #2: 43,962 HP Meaning the second build is more durable overall. Now, if you are wonder what the most efficient distribution of stats is, the answer is that HP should be 10x what your Armor rating should be. The reason for this is simple: It's an old geometry problem. If you have a fixed perimeter to make rectangle, the maximum area you can get is by making a square. In this case, the two legs of our rectangle are armor and health, and the area is effective health. But, because health increases by 10 points for every point of vitality, we multiply that side by 10. Let me give an example of this. Take a mesmer, which has 1920 armor and 15,922 health. Assume we have 328 points to allocate. If we put that into vitality, we'd get 19,202 effective health. If we put that into toughness, we'd get 18,642 effective health. The point where your health is equal to 10x your armor rating is the sweet spot. Before then, giving yourself more vitality is better overall, At the sweet spot, you'll want to raise both evenly. Now, buildcraft in this game isn't so simple, but this principle is a good thing to consider when evaluating different builds. Things get a bit muddier when healing comes in to play. Mostly, this is because healing isn't guaranteed. You could be burst down, interrupted, or poisoned. Because of this, factoring in healing just works off of assumptions, and not hard numbers like toughness and vitality do. But, if you want to factor in healing, what you do is take every single heal that you think you are guaranteed through a fight, and then add that onto your vitality. For example, lets assume that this mesmer has Mirror, it will go off once per fight, and it won't be poisoned. Since Mirror heals for 4299, you an consider this mesmer to have 20,221 effective health for the fight. If you do this, you'd want to add toughness first, until you have 2022 armor. This would give you a more efficient build, under the caveat that this efficiency isn't guaranteed.