draxynnic.3719
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Posts posted by draxynnic.3719
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Personally, I'd say that while balance is usually calibrated for around 3-10, with a bit of smaller scale since 1v1s do happen in every mode, balancing for 1v1 makes a lot more sense than trying to balance zerg versus zerg.
ZvZ is inherently an environment where things go a little crazy, and if you play that mode you should expect it. It's massive amounts of area damage and CCs while supports (whether condi cleansing, stability, or straight heals) try to keep up so your zerg lasts longer than the enemy's. It's an environment where single target damage is often virtually pointless, as is any form of active defence that only stops a set number of attacks.
ArenaNet might tone down the worst offenders, but there's a very real degree to which expecting finely tuned balance in a mode where the environment is so much different to the rest of the game and where the deciding factor is often simply 'who has more people' is a little futile. Maybe if the game was designed around mass combat, but it's not - mass combat is just a fun aside to a game mostly balanced around groups of five or ten. Reworking an entire profession, something which is likely to throw the balance into chaos in all modes, to solve a problem that only exists in zerg versus zerg would be putting the cart before the horse.
Maybe Permeating Wrath could get a WvW-specific nerf, but hey, you've already identified a counter. Stack resistance and enough condi clears that you don't immediately explode the moment you lose resistance. At some point, somebody's probably going to have the idea that if everyone's focusing on protecting against conditions, then a power-heavy composition that also has lots of resistance might be worth trying. But as you describe it, if condi guard got deleted tomorrow, people would probably just find the next best area condition profession to stack and use that.
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Yeah, we've seen that ArenaNet can make elite specialisations that provide either condi DPS or support depending on build. Firebrand is an even better example.
Long range weapons...personally, I'm partial to a staff used as a lightning rod, but a chemical theme would really probably work best with a trick arrow approach. I'm not sure about turning melee weapons into range, since that's usually done with magic, but there is precedent in scrapper hammer 5 and the holosmith sword skill that throws projectiles. Still, that sort of thing seems to better fit other technologies (such as using magnetism to manipulate a thrown weapon). Possibly mace could work, with the associated skin being stick grenade like?
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> @"Lan Deathrider.5910" said:
> > @"Kodama.6453" said:
> > And I actually never said that we should give _all boons to everyone_. But that everyone should be able to share one of the 3 main boons which matter for the group: alacrity, quickness, might.
> And you would push certain classes out entirely if you do so.
If all you care about is the absolute optimal team setup, that's unavoidable. Look at the Snowcrows raid guides, for instance. You won't find elementalists or engineers in ANY of their optimised team setups. Not one. There's a necromancer in Soulless Horror, but that's in there purely for Epidemic.
In practice, though, plenty of groups succeed without having the optimal team setup, since usually as long as you have the essential functions covered, your DPS is sufficient, and people know what they're doing, that's good _enough._
You're never going to finagle a situation where the optimal 10-man group is one of each profession and one extra. It's just not going to happen. What you can do, though, is make it so that if a bunch of players get together with a random set of professions, there's a good chance that they'll be able to find some way to make it work.
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> @"Vagrant.7206" said:
> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:
> > > @"Vagrant.7206" said:
> > > The other factor is that if you're using rocket leap and stuns to access party quickness, you're inherently reducing the ability of healing builds to provide party quickness. I still think alacrity is the better choice, and to open it up to healing builds. That said, I don't fundamentally disagree with the idea.
> >
> > In principle, I think it is reasonable for a quickness supplier build to have to make a few sacrifices to get there. Healbrand would be better at pushing bars up if it didn't care about Quickness. Heal scrapper currently runs pistol/shield, which I'm guessing is for the blast finisher on shield, but a heal scrapper using a hammer would still have medkit, elixir gun, and mortar available.
> >
> > The bigger problem, as commented above, is that it simply doesn't work against bosses unless they have their defiance bar up.
>
> It runs shield for three reasons:
>
> * Overshield trait provides AoE protection with shield skills and enhances protection's effectiveness.
> * Both shield 4 and 5 have hard CC's.
> * Shield 4 double tap can blast fields.
Ahhh. Hammer would also have hard CC's, so you're not really losing anything there, although the rocket jump combo relies on the lightning field not being overlaid by another field. Overshield I had forgotten about.
> @"Noah Salazar.5430" said:
>
Problem is that the backup will be basically all you have in the majority of high-end PvE content. Of the top of my head, I can't think of any boss that isn't immune to CCs most of the time.>
> @"draxynnic.3719"
>
> Yeh i will reapet the dmg of cc will count to proc Quickness, not a cc effect, so your cc who will do nothink when boss is immune to cc, but still get Quckness to team
> The only rule is to land that hit even if it will not cc a target ( hit not blocked not evaded)
>
> It same like root boon, that boon is gray and not work, but still is applied
>
> Also by hit i mean you will get Quckness only once, not multiple times if you hit multiple targets with cc (read shield 5 block or Hammer 5)
Okay, so the trigger is "damage the enemy with a strike with daze or stun attached". I had been wondering if that was what you meant, but it was made unclear when you talked about another trait being a backup.
I'm not sure that's actually how the system works with hard CCs - soft CC conditions appear greyed out as you say, but I think hard CCs just don't register unless the defiance bar is blue. It's generally not something I pay a huge amount of attention to, though, so I might be wrong, but most similar traits only trigger when the CC is successful or there's defiance bar damage being done.
I'm still inclined to think it would be better for engineer to have a new support-oriented elite specialisation, though. I don't feel like there's really a strong link between CCs (especially failed CCs...) and granting party quickness.
> @"Lan Deathrider.5910" said:
> I do believe I was clear, but you appear to need your hand held. Chrono _should be_ the main source of Quickness, but that does not mean a Firebrand cannot supplement it. I'd pass Alacrity to the Renegade, with supplementation from the Chrono. Likewise Warrior _should be_ the main source of party Might with another class supplementing it. I'd counter to you, why should each of the classes be homogenized? They are different for a reason, and each should bring something to the party that is unique, otherwise we'd have a mono class system.
Wow, condescending much? If you want to persuade people, you need to clearly lay out what your position actually _is._ Your language in your initial post did make you come across as if you were saying that the current situation has already gone too far - to give a specific example, citing quickness as a mesmer thing and talking about "going back" to times when each profession had a "main boon" (which I'm not convinced was something that ever existed - some professions did have a boon or two they were really known for, but it was hardly an 'every profession had one' thing) implies that you're talking about at least significantly reducing firebrand access to quickness.
Even now, it's unclear. Continuing the chrono and firebrand example - what do you mean by a firebrand "supplementing" a chrono? Are they both able to provide permanent Quickness? In which case, I don't think it's really valid to talk about one being the 'main source' and the other as a 'supplement' - each is _sufficient,_ and that's what matters. Or are they not? In which case, if you don't have a chrono, you're needing to assign _two_ people out of a five man party to provide quickness. I don't think it's exactly going to aid in making content accessible to all professions if all content now needs to have either one out of five players be a chrono or _two_ out of five being a firebrand.
Warriors, now, I don't think I've ever heard of Might being specifically a warrior thing. They COULD do it, sure, but mightstacking through blasting fire fields has been known for a long time. The old "three warriors and two mesmers" speedrun build obviously used warriors, but that was more because of banners, base DPS, and the fact that that setup was capable of generating max Might, but I don't think there was ever a time when people thought "we need Might, we should bring a warrior".
In answer to your counter:
Because ArenaNet wants to avoid the situation where one profession is in much greater demand than all others.
They've learned their lesson from monks. 1/6 of the professions in the game, but in Prophecies, you pretty much needed 1/4 people to be playing them or you'd get long waits as parties try to recruit the requisite number of monks. Factions tried to redress the balance with ritualist (but it was a while before ritualists could really replace monks) and Nightfall just threw in the towel and introduced heroes.
In Guild Wars 2, there are nine professions in the game, but as I explained in my previous post, the five-player party is the basic unit of the game, so any function you want to fill, you generally want to have at least one player out of five filling that function. Mathematically, to achieve that without ending up with one profession being in disproportionate demand (like chronos pre-PoF), you need a _minimum_ of two professions that can fulfill that function.
Chronos and firebrands can do that for quickness. Chronos and renegades for alacrity.
Problem is, even then, there are distinct haves and have nots in high-end PvE. There are the three mentioned above. Warrior brings its banners. Ranger has Spotter and spirits. Pretty much all high-end PvE wants a warrior, a ranger of some description, and either a chrono and a firebrigade. If you're an elementalist, necromancer, engineer, or thief, and there isn't some gimmick that's particularly important to a specific fight, you're basically left competing for healer and DPS slots.
Spreading out the quickness and alacrity roles a bit more would help address this. This isn't to say that every profession should have everything, but I don't think the current "DPS, heal, quickness, alacrity" quad is likely to change, and spreading out the last two pillars of that quad will give people a bit more choice over how they cover the set. I think there's room for a third profession each that can bring quickness and alacrity, maybe even a fourth.
It's also worth noting that playing solo is also a thing. It's probably make the game very hard to balance if basic boons like might, fury, and so on were only available to specific professions.
> The roles are Damage, Support, Control in GW2. Just like Damage is split between condi and power control is split between hard and soft CC and support is split between offensive and defensive support. Having all roles open does not mean 100% access to every boon 100% of the time.
That might be what's in the manifesto, but that's not the reality. Nobody plays a 'control' character, except in the crude expedient of some bosses fixating on whoever has the highest Toughness - instead, generally everyone has a bit of control to throw into the mix when needed. Meanwhile, healer, bannerslave, party quickness, and party alacrity might all be called "support", but if you join an LFG with a heal ele when they were asking for alacrity, I don't think the "but they're all support!" argument is going to get you very far.
In practice, there are specific functions that groups are generally looking to fill, and they do not line up with the old idea of the "soft trinity". It's DPS, heal, quickness, alacrity, a couple of profession-specific buffs (banners and ranger spirits), and maybe some profession-specific trick like using thieves on Qadim. That's what people are actually looking for. Generally speaking, might and fury will be covered once you've covered those.
> And this is where secondary and tertiary group boons come into play. That party of five should be able to bring every thing they need unless they all play the same class. I'll take Warrior as an example again. They can provide all the might a party of 5 needs, but they also provide 100% fury uptime albeit via specific skills and weapons, they can also provide almost constant group vigor with a specific weapon, and they can provide extremely limited group resistance with the same weapon. Bringing other classes would cover the other boons that are missing, which is better for diversity than cramming access to every boon on every class through each new Espec.
Honestly, that doesn't sound like primary and secondary to me. If that's 100% on 25 might and 100% on fury, they're fulfilling both functions, there's no 'primary' or 'secondary' to it.
> And that is how you kill class diversity. You would see no more Chronos or Renegades. People would just stack the highest DPS class and take a Healbrand or Druid along with them.
Obviously, you'd need things to be balanced such that a build that provides healing, quickness, or alacrity isn't also able to simultaneously be top DPS. Quickbrand and alacrigade both give up DPS compared to the pure DPS builds of their elite specialisation, and any future spec with similar capabilities should have to do the same. It's why I've been saying that having these capabilities should require significant investment in skills and traits - that's investment that isn't going into maximising DPS.
But here's the thing: it's already the assumption that people are going to stack DPS once the desired support roles are filled - and given that druid, healbrand, and heal renegade can all, well, heal, that can easily boil down to everyone that isn't one of the five haves competing for the DPS role. If you look at the snowcrows team setups, you'll notice that most raids have an identified "best DPS" build which occupies the majority of the slots in the raid. If you do the numbercrunching, there's always going to be an optimum, although what the optimum is depends on the situation. But all of those builds have quickness (sometimes through stacking FMW and/or TW rather than having a dedicated generator - that's a large part of why so many of them stack guardians or mesmers), alacrity, some healing, a ranger, and a bannerslave.
In practice, though, the difference between the optimal DPS build for a particular instance and a number of alternative choices is slim enough that people can pretty much go in with whatever they like in the DPS roles and not be that far behind the 'optimal' build. There's always going to be one setup that's 'optimal' for a particular piece of content, but if there are several runners-up that are pretty close, it's not a big deal. Similarly, if quickbot and alacribot were granted to more professions, I suspect a similar relationship would develop - people would identify which setup is "optimal", but using a different means of achieving quickness and alacrity wouldn't substantially impact your odds of success. Instead, it'd give people forming a group more of an opportunity to get a viable group together with the professions that people in the group are looking to play.
And that's really what this is all about. There's always going to be some 'optimal' solution, and there's probably nothing that can prevent that. However, this is about expanding the range of _viable_ options. Maybe a hypothetical quickness engineer would kick the chrono or quickbrand out of the optimal quickness generator slot, and maybe it wouldn't, but what it would mean is that if someone rocked up a group looking to play engineer, there's one more possible way they can contribute to the group. Currently, they could only be slotted into DPS or healer, and if someone isn't bringing a mesmer or guardian, the party or subgroup is SOL. With a hypothetical quickness engineer, if there isn't a mesmer or guardian the engineer player can step up and it's all good.
Which comes back around to the original idea of Guild Wars 2: A game where you can choose to play the profession who's playstyle you enjoy, with minimal risk of having to swap profession because the group needs function X and that function can only be fulfilled by profession Y.
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> @"Lan Deathrider.5910" said:
> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:
> > > @"Lan Deathrider.5910" said:
> > > We have 9 classes and 12 boons. I think it is entirely acceptable that only 1 class be able to provide one main boon and to a lesser extent a secondary boon and even lesser extent other boons.
> > >
> > > I.E. Guardian gets Aegis as it's main boon
> > > Warrior gets Might
> > > Mesmer gets Quickness
> > > and so forth.
> > >
> > > We need to get back to re-establishing what each class's boon niche is like it was at launch.
> >
> > I disagree. Monopolies aren't healthy for the game - if a group of people get together and there's one profession that nobody in the group likes, they should be able to work around that (even if it's not optimal), rather than someone being _forced_ to play it. You can get away without a bannerslave or a ranger because the stat bonuses from those are relatively small, but things like quickness and alacrity are must haves.
> >
> > I think you're also imagining a time that didn't exist. Group Might was always available to several professions. Group Quickness was split between mesmer and guardian from the beginning, guardian just originally had to get it through the Tome of Wrath. Aegis might have originally been just a guardian thing, but aegis doesn't really have that heavy of an impact unless you either spam it or get the timing just right, and nowadays it's still mostly just on guardian and mesmer (and in a lot of cases on mesmer, changing a skill or trait to grant aegis was done to nerf it).
>
> That is why I mentioned lesser access to a second aoe boon and even lesser access to a third aoe boon, I just didn't enumerate what those would be in my example.
Well, if you don't want to come across as advocating a return to the pre-PoF "chrono or no-go" days, you're going to have to be more specific as to what you ARE advocating for. Are you, or are you not, one of the people who have been claiming that quickness and alacrity should be chrono exclusive, or are you okay with quickbrands and alacrigades? If you're okay with quickbrands and alacrigades, why not have more options so that mesmer, guardian, and revenant aren't quite so dominant in high-end PvE?
While giving each profession a unique thing that only it can do might sound good on paper, it goes against the manifesto of being able to perform all roles with any profession. Granted, ArenaNet is currently well short of that aim as it is, and may in fact have abandoned it, but that _is_ what the design goal was, at least at some point.
More specifically, let's imagine a game where each profession had its own thing that was highly desirable and that only it could provide. We have nine professions, but the basic unit of the game is a party of five - even squads are typically organised into subsquads of five each to make sure everyone gets proper boon support since most party buffs are five allies. This means that, in practice, what you're likely to see is that people are going to decide which set of things is most valuable, and those are the professions that will actually see play. It might be a little looser for ten-player content, _as long as_ the special thing is something that can go to ten players (otherwise you'd just need to bring two of them in order to be covered), but that doesn't help for five-player content like fractals.
Certain content might make certain things more desirable than in other content - for instance, content that has a lot of hard CC coming at the players might make people want to bring the designated stability profession when they might not otherwise, while content that has a lot of conditions might draw out the designated resistance profession. But the end result is still exclusionary, it just means that different professions are being excluded depending on the content.
Presently, there are four roles that I see which are regarded as being essential: DPS, healing, quickness, and alacrity. Profession exclusive special buffs like warrior banners are something that is generally seen as nice to have, but _not_ essential. DPS is something that anyone can do, although some are better than others (necromancer could probably use some help here). Healing is also pretty widespread - basically anyone except warrior, thief, and mesmer can make for a decent healer. Quickness, however, is limited to chrono and firebrand (well, and thief, but only when Detonate Plasma is available as a stolen skill) while alacrity is limited to chrono and revenant.
Now, the professions that provide quickness or alacrity can either provide the other or have the capacity to act as a healer in the same build, so in practice you can usually get the three desired support roles in two characters and have three slots open for DPS (which can theoretically be anything, although in practice, you'll often want at least one warrior for banners and, if you don't have a druid healer, at least one ranger... but they're not AS important as healing, quickness, or alacrity). But this still means that you're pretty much stuck with either chrono or a firebrigade team.
Personally, rather than digging a moat around my preferred professions, I'd rather see quickness and alacrity made available to more professions (and less people winding up to swing a nerfbat at my preferred professions because "they're too prevalent in high-end PvE").
> @"Noah Salazar.5430" said:
> By cc i mean hit (dmg) as inaf to proc Quckness
> And yes if you can't hit boss with cc you still will have this as back up
Problem is that the backup will be basically all you have in the majority of high-end PvE content. Of the top of my head, I can't think of _any_ boss that isn't immune to CCs most of the time.
> @"Vagrant.7206" said:
> The other factor is that if you're using rocket leap and stuns to access party quickness, you're inherently reducing the ability of healing builds to provide party quickness. I still think alacrity is the better choice, and to open it up to healing builds. That said, I don't fundamentally disagree with the idea.
In principle, I think it is reasonable for a quickness supplier build to have to make a few sacrifices to get there. Healbrand would be better at pushing bars up if it didn't care about Quickness. Heal scrapper currently runs pistol/shield, which I'm guessing is for the blast finisher on shield, but a heal scrapper using a hammer would still have medkit, elixir gun, and mortar available.
The bigger problem, as commented above, is that it simply doesn't work against bosses unless they have their defiance bar up.
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> @"Lan Deathrider.5910" said:
> We have 9 classes and 12 boons. I think it is entirely acceptable that only 1 class be able to provide one main boon and to a lesser extent a secondary boon and even lesser extent other boons.
>
> I.E. Guardian gets Aegis as it's main boon
> Warrior gets Might
> Mesmer gets Quickness
> and so forth.
>
> We need to get back to re-establishing what each class's boon niche is like it was at launch.
I disagree. Monopolies aren't healthy for the game - if a group of people get together and there's one profession that nobody in the group likes, they should be able to work around that (even if it's not optimal), rather than someone being _forced_ to play it. You can get away without a bannerslave or a ranger because the stat bonuses from those are relatively small, but things like quickness and alacrity are must haves.
I think you're also imagining a time that didn't exist. Group Might was always available to several professions. Group Quickness was split between mesmer and guardian from the beginning, guardian just originally had to get it through the Tome of Wrath. Aegis might have originally been just a guardian thing, but aegis doesn't really have that heavy of an impact unless you either spam it or get the timing just right, and nowadays it's still mostly just on guardian and mesmer (and in a lot of cases on mesmer, changing a skill or trait to grant aegis was done to nerf it).
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Hrrrmn. Two main concerns, although I reserve the right to add more if I think on them, and one ancillary concern:
The first is that this would impact on existing solo builds using Applied Force. Getting and maintaining 10 might solo isn't too hard for an engineer, which is probably part of the reason a trait like that exists in the first place.
The second is that I think something like "group quickness" should really have some player agency involved in activating it. You can see this in the existing traits that grant group quickness all requiring the player to do something to trigger them - using a heal skill (Liberator's Vow), using a skill that grants aegis or stability (Stalwart Speed) or using a shatter (Seize the Moment) - and in both the firebrand and chrono, a big part of it is also skills that grant quickness directly such as Well of Action, Tides of Time, and Mantra of Potence. This isn't just a "the player should have to do something" thing - if for whatever reason you're _not_ managing perma-quickness, there may be times when it's worthwhile saving the quickness for something specific like a burn phase rather than just activating it on recharge.
Technically speaking, quickness-on-CC would achieve this, but that rolls into my ancillary concern: this relies on having a CC-able target. Many bosses can't be CC'd, can only be CC'd at certain intervals, or can only be CC'd at specific times. This would make the benefit of the trait inaccessible during these periods.
If, hypothetically, I was to try to make scrapper into a quickness bot, what I'd probably do is make a "When you grant superspeed, also grant quickness" trait. You'd then have Speed of Synergy, Gyroscopic Acceleration, Bypass Coating, and Toss Elixir U all serving as possible vectors to grant party quickness, but you're not getting it all out of a single trait, and you still have to activate skills to get it. 2-3 seconds would probably be reasonable (by my calculation, going full gyros with one of them being Blast Gyro would get pretty close to 100% uptime with base boon duration at 3 seconds base Quickness, but going full gyro is a pretty significant investment. The Snowcrows heal scrapper with +100% boon duration would get about 65% uptime without making any change to the build apart from taking the trait, and swapping Elixir R for Blast Gyro would bump it up to 1.09%. Higher with alacrity, of course.)
Mind you, such a trait might well compete with the current Applied Force.
I do think, though, that a new elite specialisation for support would still be a more elegant solution, since that could be built from the ground up to work well as a support specialisation rather than trying to hook new functionality onto existing mechanics. Including having skills that grant quickness directly rather than through trait interactions (I don't think any of the existing gyros would fit for that, neither do I think any of them _should_ be made into a quickness gyro).
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> @"Taril.8619" said:
> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:
> > Chronos and firebrands can achieve permanent party quickness, yes, but it requires a fair amount of investment to pull off.
>
> Firebrand doesn't need "A fair amount of investment" to pull of 100% party quickness.
>
> They just switch out, 2 traits, 2 utilities and 1 sigil. That's it. They don't need Conc gear, they don't need to do much different and the traits they swap from aren't even that high impact (Legendary Lore provides very little given that Radiant Fire + Runes of Balthazar provide 70% burn duration and the rest of their gear + food provides the remaining 30% burn duration. Meaning that LL just provides Regen/Prot on F2/F3 which are not major concerns and Unrelenting Criticism is also not high impact due to not working when using Scepter, Books or OH skills in addition to having low Bleeding duration due to not stacking Expertise)
That's half of their sigils, half of their utilities, and two thirds of their Firebrand majors. The difference between a condi quickbrand and a full DPS condi firebrand is about 4K dps on the benchmarks. The player also has to activate their mantras on a reasonably precise schedule to maximise uptime, including activating their heal skill specifically to trigger Liberator's Vow, which might make it unavailable at a circumstance where it's needed for actual healing.
I'd call that "A fair amount of investment". I'm not saying that party quickness is the only thing it provides. Obviously, that's not the case - condi quickbrand provides some DPS (albeit less than a pure DPS firebrand), healbrand provides healing, and chronomancer provides alacrity. But it's still a good portion of the build. Not simply taking a trait and passively providing high uptime as long as the low bar of having 10 might (which engineer can maintain on itself) is met.
>
> That said, if Scrapper were to get party Quickness, I definitely wouldn't put it on Applied Force, since that's the personal DPS trait which doesn't make sense to stick party buffing on. Instead I'd say having Adaptive Armor/Kinetic Stabilizers changed into a trait that makes your Function Gyro apply Quickness to allies and increases the target cap of Function Gyro (With reduced recharge penalty for additional targets) so that the GM traits offer a choice between personal DPS with Applied Force for bonus power and personal Quickness (Possibly also reduce CD/increase duration of the proc to make it more useful) or this other choice for party support (With synergy with other party support traits like Mass Momentum and Gyroscopic Acceleration)
>
> Could maybe even try and move either Mass Momentum or Gyroscopic Acceleration onto Master tier allowing a trifecta of support traits to be picked up to provide all 3 Scrapper themed effects to allies.
>
> As far as Core Engie getting ally Quickness... Would make sense on Toss Elixir U given that Elixir U provides self Quickness, wouldn't be too odd to have the toss also give Quickness (Especially since it is still thematically speeding allies up with the Superspeed it currently gives)
Could do it that way, but if it was done that way, it'd probably be closer to being an equivalent of Feel My Wrath rather than being a means of sustaining party quickness on its own. It'd help, but I think a full support-oriented elite spec would be more satisfying in the long run.
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> @"Noah Salazar.5430" said:
>
Which is pretty much just repeating something I've already acknowledged. Survivability helps a support build, because you can't support if you're dead, and it's usually more important that your supports stay standing while you can generally afford to lose a DPS or two. Scrapper still isn't support-oriented, though, although it does have support options.>
> @"draxynnic.3719"
> yep, thats why i want add quickness, witchout it you have not inaf vaule to be taken as support
*sigh*
Missing the point. Scrapper still isn't designed to be support. You're just trying to slap on something that's OP as a bandaid to close the gap.
And yes, I've been pondering it from a balance perspective and, yes, it would be OP.
Chronos and firebrands can achieve permanent party quickness, yes, but it requires a fair amount of investment to pull off. Multiple traits, skills, and a significant part of the rotation goes into that maintenance, either directly or supporting the skills and traits that generate quickness. Your proposal would create close to perma-quickness (any guardian or mesmer could cover the gap with Feel my Wrath or Time Warp) from having a single scrapper with boon duration, or just having two scrappers which are otherwise built for pure DPS (given that Applied Force is already the DPS-oriented grandmaster for scrapper). The only requirement would be to be able to maintain ten stacks of Might. That's pretty much assumed in any high-end PvE.
Seriously, you're looking at over 40% uptime from a trait with no other investment. ArenaNet just nerfed Feel My Wrath (from a group perspective, anyway) because getting around 15% party uptime from an elite skill with no other investment was considered too good, so I don't think you're getting that. Boon chrono dedicates one of its weapon slots and most of its utilities either to generating quickness directly or speeding the recharge of skills that generate quickness. Firebrands and quickbrands dedicate two major traits and 2-3 slots of the right-hand side of their bar to pulling it off.
I'm not opposed to engineer supports getting quickness as a thing, but... it should require proper investment. Not simply one overbuffed trait which acts without input from the player and which is doing the work of half an elite specialisation on its own.
Having some party quickness being available to core engineer would be fine, because that would be similar to guardian Feel My Wrath and mesmer Time Warp, and would be something that could be built on with an elite specialisation later to make a full quickness build. ArenaNet's balance team possibly disagrees, though, since quickness used to be on Toss Elixir U and got replaced by superspeed (and the patch notes make it clear that 'it was giving too much quickness' was the reason).
Support engineer should be something that grows naturally out of core - with elite specialisations being the icing on the cake if taken - or something that has an elite specialisation that's designed for it. Not something that relies on a single overpowered trait to function.
-
> @"Noah Salazar.5430" said:
>
is right about scrapper traits and hammer not giving any support, every support ability they have comes from the gyros> Yes, support not come alone from hammer, but thx to hammer you can provid support with gyros, thats how it work :D
>
If you look at the traitline itself, it focuses on three things: personal barrier, crowd control effects , and personal damage boost> @"Kodama.6453"
> -> yes, more dmg = more barier you have and with Quickness now stacking up might have more purpouse
> -> barier you can use to take enemy dmg on you so your glassy cannon dps friends that do 8k+ more than you can dps in peace, i think you will agree thats a support trait
> -> CC is used be other dps, but cuz Scrapper have alot of it, it's can be taken as solo stun-break boss, so your dps can take skills to dps, insted of cc
>
> I'm inclined to agree with Kodama. Scrapper isn't intended as a support specialisation. It's used as such because after Alchemy and Inventions, there isn't really anything better. Gyros do offer some team support, after all, and survivability helps a support remain alive to, well, support (although the assumption that a scrapper will be dealing power damage in order to self-barrier does hurt in that regard).
>
> @"draxynnic.3719"
> game support melee stack combat, maybe there's only 1 raid boss where you stay as ranged, but you no need much survivability on it, other that that, i explained in up
Which is pretty much just repeating something I've already acknowledged. Survivability helps a support build, because you can't support if you're dead, and it's usually more important that your supports stay standing while you can generally afford to lose a DPS or two. Scrapper still isn't support-oriented, though, although it does have support options.
Sure, you can squeeze some support utility out of it, but it's no druid, or firebrand, or tempest, or either revenant elite, or even scourge or chronomancer - elite specialisations that are designed to facilitate support builds. Instead, it's more like dragonhunter and soulbeast - there are aspects of it that can be used to complement a support build, but it's really not what it's designed to do. You just don't see people trying to make support builds out of dragonhunters and soulbeasts because firebrands and druids exist (and back in the day before firebrands existed, druids and heal tempests still existed and clearly outperformed any support build you could make out of dragonhunter). Scrapper heal now is in about the same position guardian support was pre-PoF - traits and skills are there in core that are obviously pointing in that direction, but just lacking that extra oomph to bring it all together.
That could come by buffing core support options or through bringing in an elite specialisation for engineer that's designed for it, but I don't think scrapper is likely to get there without a substantial rework of the traitline - you'd probably want one major trait from each column to have some party support, and for the minors to be a little less oriented towards power DPS.
-
If the only criteria for being aura-focused is 'has access to leap and/or blast finishers', then that's basically everybody.
In this case, you're talking about an interaction that works specifically with sword mirage. This immediately raises an issue in that sword mirage is generally disfavoured for high-end PvP or WvW since mirage works a lot better with condi, while power usually works better with chrono. So what you're talking about is an edge case.
And if it is something that you'd really only expect to see much play with mirages, then it really should be on the mirage specialisation line. In which case... what does it replace? The grandmasters are all themed around being Mirage Cloak traits. Meanwhile, the adept and master majors are all used in one build or another, so to replace any of those you'd probably be hurting someone else's build for something janky that relies upon the combo fields placed down by others to get any benefit.
Outside of mirage, you'd probably be pretty much looking at staff since that's the only really practical weapon for generating auras on a mesmer... and there's already a trait there that gives you protection on gaining chaos aura. You could possibly buff this to granting you protection regardless of the aura, or granting a boon dependent on the aura (might for fire, regeneration for water, and so on). But that's about as far as I'd go.
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> @"Kodama.6453" said:
> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:
> > Strictly speaking, Exterminator is a chemical thrower, too - the appearance is based on the bundle items you can get in Southsun Cove.
>
> The point has been that he said you can make your rifle and flamethrower look the same.
> Which is not true. There is just 1 rifle skin that resembles flamethrower a bit, exterminator. But it isn't identical with the flamethrower, you can still distinguish them.
Sure, I was just observing that Exterminator isn't even based off a flamethrower. Like you said, they can be distinguished fairly easily - mostly because of the head. Exterminator has a lion, flamethrower has a simple representation of a dragon head. (There are other distinctions, but it's usually the head that stands out.)
Sabetha's weapon is more clearly intended to be a flamethrower, but it's easily distinguishable from the flamethrower model.
Mind you, I'd have to say it would have been nice if some of those had been made into variant flamethrowers (or elixir guns or whatever) instead of rifle skins, but I guess that proverbial horse bolted long ago.
-
I'm inclined to agree with Kodama. Scrapper isn't intended as a support specialisation. It's _used_ as such because after Alchemy and Inventions, there isn't really anything better. Gyros do offer _some_ team support, after all, and survivability helps a support remain alive to, well, support (although the assumption that a scrapper will be dealing power damage in order to self-barrier does hurt in that regard).
I'm not opposed to engineers having access to party quickness in general (stimpacks?), but shoehorning it into scrapper doesn't seem like the best option.
> @"Fueki.4753" said:
> No, they shouldn't bring Quickness to raids.
> Don't make Chronomancer's one niche even smaller.
Professions shouldn't need a monopoly to be viable.
Boon chrono is still used even with firebrigade as an alternative - it does provide quickness and alacrity in a single package, after all. Power chrono is pretty decent DPS, so it's not like boon chrono is chrono's only niche for raids (there's a couple of bosses where power chrono is considered the optimal DPS choice, in fact) and condition mirage also has pretty high (if somewhat situational) potential DPS. Mesmer is in a pretty good place when it comes to raids.
-
To answer your attempt at a rhetorical question first:
The distinction between firebrand tomes and the choices that scrappers and daredevils have is that what scrappers and daredevils have are all extra bonuses associated with specific activities, and in each case it's essentially a matter of using the dodge or activating the function gyro and going back to what you were doing beforehand. This is not, in any way, a fair comparison to firebrand tomes. Firebrand tomes are individually activated, are balanced according to having separate cooldowns (Justice being fairly short, Courage is fairly long) and unless you drop the tomes early (thereby squandering some of the potential benefit, although sometimes that is the right move), you're locked into that tome for your weapon skills... which for Courage and Resolve means DPS loss because there's virtually no damage in their skills.
The equivalent would be if Scrapper had three function gyro skills, each with a separate recharge (but they'd probably all be longer than the current one so the total number of gyro stomps/resses you get is about the same). The equivalent would be if Daredevil had all three dodges but each had a separate endurance bar. Even putting aside the awkwardness of having three dodge buttons, I'm pretty sure most daredevil players would prefer the current circumstance of having the dodge that fits their build over having three separate bars for three separate dodge types and never being able to do the same dodge twice on a row.
If you're going to make that analogy, you'd have to make it so that the chosen tome was about as readily available as Tome of Justice is now. Because taking a grandmaster to be able to use Tome of Courage or Tome of Resolve once a minute or so is not a reasonable trade. You'd want it to be around 30s or so (y'know, about what function gyro is) and... that would probably be a buff to support firebrands, because they'll have more access to the tome that's actually _useful_ rather than having theoretical versatility that they don't actually use. Because regardless of your claims to the contrary, firebrand builds _do_ specialise, just like elementalists do, even if they still technically have the skills available.
Speaking of which... your idea of a condition damage/healing/concentration "can do everything" firebrand just suggests that you're not all that familiar with where guardian DPS comes from. There is no guardian weaponset and precious few guardian utilities where you don't have a significant amount of your damage coming from strike damage, which means you can't just neglect your power/precision/ferocity stats without a noticeable DPS loss. This is why the optimised condi firebrand gear has a bit of Grieving in there, rather than the full Viper's or Viper/Sinister mix that most PvE condi builds use. A CD/HP/Conc set, if it existed, would probably result in a similar DPS loss as the current Harrier's healbrand, possibly even greater.
So let's move on to its position among supports. It's comparable to druid, but from everything I've seen, druid is still considered the preferred option, in tenman at least, due to the offensive bonuses it brings (even if its personal DPS might be lower) and because in the hands of someone who's good at it it provides more useful healing generally (healbrand brings a bit of sustained healing across the party and an oh kitten button on a long cooldown, druid can deliver big heals on a target more often if needed). With respect to heal scrapper...
...to be blunt, heal scrapper is a good attempt at making a support build out of something that still isn't really made for it. Heal scrapper underperforming against healbrand isn't a firebrand problem, it's an engineer problem. Either scrapper needs a row of traits that are actually oriented towards supporting allies, or engineer needs a third elite specialisation that brings a support role akin to druid, firebrand, and tempest. (Note that none of those are locked into being support, although druid is probably closer to it than the others). Which is kinda my point - the problem isn't that guardian is too versatile, the problem is that a lot of other professions aren't versatile enough, often being in a position where they're _almost_ able to perform a role, you can see skills and traits that are supposed to help them get there, but they just don't quite get over the line. Let's get the other professions over the line rather than tearing down those who have managed to cross it, shall we? Or will we be seeing the tall poppy crusade moving to mesmer and/or revenant after guardian gets torn down and people realise that mesmers and revenants are just as versatile and almost as prevalent in high-end PvE?
Plus, as a final observation: I don't think your suggestion would have the desired effect anyway. DPS firebrands would just use ToJ, and still have decent DPS. Healbrands would just use Resolve, and maybe they'd lose a bit of DPS and utility, but it would still be bringing healing, quickness, and other offensive boons to the table and that's what's really wanted. Where it would really hurt would be competitive modes, but that's not the context you claim to be thinking about.
-
Still need to have the stats and traits to back it up. Can't be healer and DPS at once, and while ToC is fairly stat-independent, it has a long cooldown and what it provides isn't all that essential in high-end PvE content.
Similar to how elementalists always have healing, power damage, and condition damage on their weapons (apart from scepter, which is all offensive), but stats and traits determine which skills are actually an important part of your build and which just aren't worth activating or are at best a hail mary when things go south. There's a big difference between the fire+earth condition tempest and the water+air heal tempest, even if they're usually using the same weapons.
Similarly, there's a big difference between a zeal/radiance condi DPS firebrand and an honour/virtues healbrand. Sure, the condibrand can pull out a healing tome, but you'd really prefer they didn't unless things really went south and their low healing coefficient might just be the difference between scraping through on low health and people getting downed... but either way, this is about the same as your DPS tempest going water. If it's a factor at all, things have gone wrong.
Want to point at why guardians are prevalent?
They're a source of party quickness, which is basically them and chronos. (Which is better than pre-firebrand when it was chronos or bust.)
They're a profession that doesn't get rebuilt from the ground up every couple of years, so people who have a guardian geared are likely still able to play guardian, while for a lot of other professions there are probably people who have geared them up and then had their build nerfed out of the game (whether by being rendered uncompetitive or literally removed).
But most importantly - they fulfill the basic promise from the original manifesto of professions being able to play multiple roles rather than being pigeon-holed into one, unlike some professions which have basically one thing they can bring to high-end PvE and struggle to find relevancy in other roles.
The game doesn't need guardians to be cut down "because they're too prevalent in high-end PvE". It needs other professions to be given more options so they have the same versatility that guardians do.
Fortunately, there's an expansion being worked on which will hopefully bring a new set of elite specialisations.
-
It's been stated in _multiple_ sources that the agreement between Ash, Blood, and Iron to support each other goes pretty much to the charr rebellion, and _that_ was essentially a renegotiation of previous arrangements in the light of the overthrow of the Flame Legion. The legions have been cooperating against the common enemy of Ascalonians alive and dead back to before Guild Wars 1. (There's an article around, in fact, which states that the legions might have gone back to fighting amongst themselves if not for the common enemy of the Ascalonian ghosts of the Foefire.)
Not my fault if you're ignorant about charr history, but when it comes to having the support of Blood and Ash forces in his territory, Smodur is just maintaining a policy set by some distant predecessor.
As for the truce... now _you're_ drawing a pretty long bow if you think Smodur was just taking advice from Malice and Almorra. He's not taking advice from Malice (if anything, he's almost working at cross purposes) in Drizzlewood Coast, so if you think he just let Malice dictate the terms of an agreement that involved ceding Iron Legion territory to a (former) enemy, there's still a discrepancy in characterisation there... if anything, a bigger one.
As it happens, charr hierarchy _is_ pretty clear-cut. Iron Legion territory is Iron Legion territory. Blood and Ash have forces there as part of an alliance, but they are there at Iron Legion's invitation and request, and while there, they're expected to follow the policies of the Iron Imperator (which is why, for instance, it was Smodur's troops and not Bangar's who brought Rytlock in during season 3 - Rytlock might be Blood Legion but formally he's seconded to Iron). For all intents and purposes, the charr legions are independent nations who have a military alliance to support one another. Now, there are means of influence outside of the formal hierarchy, but while both Malice and Almorra can give advice, they can't dictate terms.
I don't think this discussion is worth trawling through all the disparate sources when you're clearly not bothering to do your research, but it's been pretty clear when the treaty negotiations were mentioned through the storyline that Smodur was where the buck stopped on the charr side of the negotiations.
Malice's "you like to tell that story" line isn't a "you're claiming credit for something I did" it's a "so what, how is that relevant now".
-
Strictly speaking, Exterminator is a chemical thrower, too - the appearance is based on the bundle items you can get in Southsun Cove.
-
> @"Aeolus.3615" said:
> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:
> > > @"Aeolus.3615" said:
> > > > @"otto.5684" said:
> > > > > @"Aeolus.3615" said:
> > > > > Remove most burn core traits(improve support and power specs), add burn on FB condi cleanse with block from its healing.
> > > > >
> > > > > Make next Holy fire Sword sword elite spec builded to burn targets and empower from burn on hitsellf.
> > > >
> > > > Why should not core guardian be somewhat good? It is not even the meta build in any game mode. Burn on condi cleanse? This is just dumb.. and does not even workin PvE.
> > >
> > > i totally forgot pve exist xD, wvw is my pve.
> > >
> > > Burn is to strong in small scale combat(i can reach over 4k-8k+ instant burns on targets, son some builds no mater how many cleanses target has i can perma put 1k-2k burn ticks over and over and over anemy will get on cleanse heavy cooldown and i just keep spamming towards the high burn bursts), rather than nerf burns, just remove the burn traits that are making burn guard a dumb gimmick.
> > > Conditions should not burst, imo burn is the only that is overperforming atm.
> > >
> > > But a good way to balance it would be make frost auras reduce burn damage, and fire auras reduce chill effect :) that way the active gameplay will be more fun IMO.
> >
> > You're proposing overhauling about half a dozen core traits (just including traits that either generate or enhance burning, not including traits that trigger on hitting burning targets but don't actually increase the potency of the burning) and completely removing non-firebrand condition guardian builds from all modes of the game (and probably substantially handicapping firebrands as well) for something that _might_ be a problem in one or two which could be handled by splits. Overhauling that many traits at once tends to create an unstable balance situation since when that many traits are overhauled at once ArenaNet has a tendency to either significantly overshoot or undershoot on the resulting power level (look at revenants after the Corruption and Devastation reworks, for instance). Even if one was to consider burn guardian to be overperforming compared to other condition builds (which I'm not convinced of - my experience fighting them in sPvP is that they're scary if you've underestimated them, but if you're suitably prepared you can usually deal with them, and they can be particularly vulnerable to throwing their own burns back in their face through condi transfers) your proposal would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
>
>
> It needs to be toned down, burn stacks are easilly to stack and burst, Anet said condi should not burst and atm burn is bursting :).
> I can easilly ouput 4k-8k instant burn ticks on targets..., burn is the reason why many players think conditions are OP atm, its overperforming.
>
> I did not said completelly remove burn from core, that just u overreating cause ur playing as well a burnguard... yeah ur being carried, just like i were using condy malyx builds and burnguard, and all the heavy condi burn players :).
> Radiance, virtues some meditations, and torch skills are the only core needs everything else in the traits need to be sracped.-
>
> Remove burn/condi traits from zeal, merge kindle zeal with some FB trait.
> Remove burn from eternal armory (make it core on the skill itself by just 1-2 sec burn on all Spritit weapons not only sword and hammer)
>
> WvW damage output in condi is completelly diferent from spvp due stats u should know that by now already.
>
> Note: nerf m8 be a heavy word for the what the guardian needs, its more like a sfift on some overtuned stuf towards some elite spec.
Nice attempt at ad hominem. I've never played burn guard in a competitive mode, just played against them. Haven't played guardian in competitive at all in the last few seasons, in fact.
Never found a burn guardian to be more problematic than other condi builds unless I'm playing a build that I'd expect to be soft countered by a burn guardian.
It's possible that it could do with being toned down... but you're not promoting tweaking a few numbers. You're promoting a major overhaul to a profession that is one of the most functional professions in the game and which seems to be being left behind by the top players (again) from what I've heard of the recent tournament (I forget the name - not the Kormir AT, the volunteer-organised one). As I commented, such overhauls tend to have unpredictable results on the profession's balance (as we're seeing with revenant, and which we've been seeing more often than not with mesmer) and such measures should be reserved for deeper structural problems than "the burst damage might be a bit high in competitive modes".
-
> @"Sajuuk Khar.1509" said:
> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:
> > Almorra and Malice were (among) the first to decide that a truce with humans was the better option and helped to persuade Smodur, but Smodur is the one who did the actual negotiating, directly or through delegates, since the region formerly known as Ascalon is Iron Legion territory. And he's made a fair few territorial concessions in the process.
> Ive never gotten this impression. Everything stated about how the treaty came to bee puts it in Almorra and Malice's hands. All Smodur is ever stated to have done is make a few token appeasement efforts, like freeing the human prisoners in the Black Citadel, and singing the paper.
>
> >Pretty sure Smodur hasn't been alive, let alone Imperator, long enough to have been the one to have made that decision. The Blood-Ash-Iron alliance goes back pretty much to the Plains of Golghein.
> I wasn't talking about the general Alliance between the three.
You talked about 'accepting help from Blood and Ash because he couldn't fight ghosts, Flame Legion and Ascalonians on hos own'. That's an arrangement that's existed since before Smodur was even alive, let alone Imperator. He only 'accepted help' in the sense that he continued the policy of his predecessors.
As for the rest... give yourself a refresher of how the charr hierarchy actually works.
Almorra had no formal position in the charr hierarchy at all - as respected as she came to be for forming the Vigil, formally she was a gladium who left the hierarchy to pursue her own objective. At best, she was given leave to do so because her objective was considered to be compatible with the interests of the Imperators. At worst, she was technically a rogue agent, but the Imperators looked the other way because she was useful and respected. Either way, she has literally _no_ power to negotiate on behalf of the charr.
Malice has formal power, but _not in the vicinity of Ebonhawke._ That's Iron Legion territory. Each of the High Legions, with the possible exception of the dispossessed Flame Legion, is its own nation with its own territory. Ash, Iron, and Flame are allies, but each is an independent nation. Malice was in support of making peace with humans, but it's not her territory involved. It's Iron Legion's territory, it's Iron Legion that makes any concession that comes as part of the truce... which made it entirely Smodur's call.
Malice and Almorra helped to arrange the meeting, but ultimately it's Smodur and his ambassadors who's been making the calls.
And if you go looking around the Fields of Ruin and talk to the NPCs - there have been territorial concessions made. Basically everything outside the walls was Iron Legion territory before the truce. However long it might have taken for the treaty to be finalised, within a year of the truce there were Ebonhawke civilians settling as far north as the Blazeridge Steppes transition (and a military outpost north of the transition), many in abandoned Iron Legion war camps, and the charr outposts that remain are mostly either Sentinels guarding the Brand or part of the perimeter around the camps. None of these Ebonhawke civilians seem particularly concerned that they'll be kicked out short of a resumption of hostilities, so they're not going out to squat - these are territorial concessions that were ceded in the first year of hostilities. Meanwhile, we also have the beginnings of military cooperation arrangements between charr forces in the area and the Ebon Vanguard.
Put simply, _Malice doesn't have the jurisdiction to make these arrangements._ It's not her turf. Just where her territory is hasn't been revealed (although there is some indication it's east of the Blazeridge somewhere), but the most she can do to control matters in Ascalon (outside of covert activity) is to threaten to withdraw support. Apart from the insurgents, Brand, and the attacks by harpies and ogres from the Blazeridge Mountains, everything happening from the walls of Ebonhawke to the Twin Sisters Crossing is happening because Smodur agreed to it.
Almorra and Malice were among the first to buy into the idea of forming a truce with humans, but neither had any power to negotiate it. That was _entirely_ on Smodur and his delegates.
-
> @"ErikTheTyrant.4527" said:
> I remember hearing that the devs were going to make gw2 originally deal with angels and demons instead of elder dragons. Which always makes me think monotheism, have a high creator and lesser powered beings battling it out. Perhaps the story is slowly leading to something like that.
You can have beings that are effectively angels and demons without being part of a monotheistic structure. Diablo is a good example - there was a trio of divine beings, but the good and evil beings broke up into angels and demons respectively.
We've had plenty of demons in _Guild Wars_ without there being any indication of there being a monotheistic system, and we also have all those statues of angel-like beings in the Hall of Heroes, the Hall of Ascension, and other places associated with the gods. There's also that Elonian legend about harpies being fallen servants of Dwayna, and Terrorweb Dryders at least were being described as 'demons' in the Underworld. We've had angels and demons in Guild Wars right back to Prophecies, and nothing to indicate that there's a single creator god.
In fact, the creation story seems to be that the Mists generate spontaneous acts of creation without any form of sentient direction.
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> @"ugrakarma.9416" said:
> on Icebroog Saga, theres lots of use of copters.
But no airships yet, interestingly... and from what we've seen, airships have more firepower than copters. Wonder if that's because the charr didn't have any, they've been destroyed, or they're being kept in reserve.
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> @"Aeolus.3615" said:
> > @"otto.5684" said:
> > > @"Aeolus.3615" said:
> > > Remove most burn core traits(improve support and power specs), add burn on FB condi cleanse with block from its healing.
> > >
> > > Make next Holy fire Sword sword elite spec builded to burn targets and empower from burn on hitsellf.
> >
> > Why should not core guardian be somewhat good? It is not even the meta build in any game mode. Burn on condi cleanse? This is just dumb.. and does not even workin PvE.
>
> i totally forgot pve exist xD, wvw is my pve.
>
> Burn is to strong in small scale combat(i can reach over 4k-8k+ instant burns on targets, son some builds no mater how many cleanses target has i can perma put 1k-2k burn ticks over and over and over anemy will get on cleanse heavy cooldown and i just keep spamming towards the high burn bursts), rather than nerf burns, just remove the burn traits that are making burn guard a dumb gimmick.
> Conditions should not burst, imo burn is the only that is overperforming atm.
>
> But a good way to balance it would be make frost auras reduce burn damage, and fire auras reduce chill effect :) that way the active gameplay will be more fun IMO.
You're proposing overhauling about half a dozen core traits (just including traits that either generate or enhance burning, not including traits that trigger on hitting burning targets but don't actually increase the potency of the burning) and completely removing non-firebrand condition guardian builds from all modes of the game (and probably substantially handicapping firebrands as well) for something that _might_ be a problem in one or two which could be handled by splits. Overhauling that many traits at once tends to create an unstable balance situation since when that many traits are overhauled at once ArenaNet has a tendency to either significantly overshoot or undershoot on the resulting power level (look at revenants after the Corruption and Devastation reworks, for instance). Even if one was to consider burn guardian to be overperforming compared to other condition builds (which I'm not convinced of - my experience fighting them in sPvP is that they're scary if you've underestimated them, but if you're suitably prepared you can usually deal with them, and they can be particularly vulnerable to throwing their own burns back in their face through condi transfers) your proposal would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
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> @"jan.7915" said:
>
> @time investment for a new ascended set: you get it by playing enjoyable things too be it PvP, wvw, raids,fractals, festivals..I used a low number of income instead of 39g/hr dragonfall wanking.
> Hot stats suck about gotta give you that that's mediocre design.
Nobody's saying it's an insurmountable barrier, and once you break into high-end PvE instanced content like raids and upper-tier festivals the rate certainly accelerates. Until you do, though, PvP and WvW are fairly slow (most of my ascended gear comes from sPvP, and at this stage I've got about three armour sets out of playing every season since ascended shards were introduced) and festivals are 1) not available all the time, and 2) the most lucrative festival activities are usually still pretty much repetitive farming and people's tolerances to that vary.
There's also the aspect that spending your account wealth on getting ascended means that you're not spending it on other things you might want.
Whichever way you spin it, for a lot of players, getting their first set or two of ascended is a significant enough investment that people might not want to risk it being invalidated in the next balance patch.
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> @"Armen.1483" said:
> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:
> > First minute of the video: Play what works for you, the balance is such that finding the profession that works for you is more important than what's objectively better. (I'm not sure that's quite true, I think some professions are generally hurting at the moment, but guardian isn't _so_ good that it's objectively better for high-end PvE content than the likes of revenant, mesmer, and other professions that can bring both good DPS and good support builds)
> Well it is not good.. it is BEST. PVEwise DH and FB are the best in dps and supportwise they are the best too with only ALAC being a boon they can't EASILY provide pretty much permanently.
Not according to the benchmarks I've seen. Now, golem benchmarks assume perfect rotations, which are not always possible in actual raids, so maybe guardian DPS builds are less susceptible to having their rotation disrupted, but they're not the best.
As for having good support as well... that's part of having versatility. You don't get top DPS and top support out of the same build - DPS-oriented guardians, like DPS roles from other professions, are pretty selfish in their utilities.
> > 1:00-1:30 If (Nike) was giving advice to a new player starting off... (Let's face it, guardian _is_ simpler to play than a lot of other professions. Being new-player-friendly, however, is not a reason to nerf something.)
> I don't agree. Mastering firebrand is very difficult. However due to the strength it got, mediocre fb players think that firebrand is as mediocre as their skills. I would argue that playing modern power weaver is easier. But there are necro sb warrior and rene that are easier to play than guardian.
Firebrand is more difficult to master than core guardian or dragonhunter, sure, but support builds in general tend to be more complicated to master. Boon chrono is known for being fairly difficult, which is why people who are good at it are in high demand (and probably part of why fractal PUGs prefer firebrigade - firebrigade is pretty reliable even if people aren't experts, while a bad boon chrono is much more of a risk). Heal druid can be fairly unforgiving. Alacrigade is... probably roughly at the same level of difficulty as firebrand, but it's on revenant, and I would not be recommending revenant as somebody's first main (it's a good choice once you have a bit more knowledge of the game and start branching out, but not a first choice).
> > 1:30-2:30 Guardian weapons have good internal balance. (This is an indicator of good design, not being broken.)
> What about mantras ? Is that balanced too ?
Support firebrands generally take a lot of mantras, but this is like support tempests usually taking several shouts - surprisingly enough, the support-oriented elite specialisation also happens to bring a lot of support-oriented utilities. DPS-oriented firebrands tend not to stack mantras so much.
> > 2:30-3:30 Guardian has a wide range of roles it can fill. (Being versatile is not an indicator that any given build is overpowered. Having a lot of viable builds instead of being pigeonholed into one or two is, instead, an indicator of good design.)
> Well being a support and ditching out so much damage means it is a bad design. If you don't know why try playing alacheal in casual fractals and ask your firebrand go full offensive stats and you will see your group dps skyrocket.
DPS renegades also dish out a fair chunk of damage. At most, what you're pointing out there is that firebrands sacrifice less DPS to provide quickness than renegades sacrifice to provide full alacrity uptime.
> > 3:30-4:00 Guardian is good in all PvE game modes. (Likely because of the versatility factor above. Again, being good everywhere doesn't mean it's overpowered to the point of needing a nerf anywhere.)
> Renegade is good, warrior is good, engi is good too... They do what they are supposed to do but not more. Guardian is overpowered. You never see a raid group with 1 guardian and 9 engies do you ?
How many raid groups with 9 guardians and 1 other profession do you see? Doesn't matter how versatile the guardian is, you're giving up something valuable if you're stacking them that much. You can probably get away with it if you have a good group, because raids don't require optimal groups, but you're definitely handicapping yourself.
Even putting that aside, Engineer is complicated to play, which is naturally going to reduce both the people who are playing it and the trust people have in someone else playing it if they don't know the engineer player. It's also one of the professions that probably needs to be brought up - at the moment, all it has is DPS and a healing setup that doesn't provide much in the way of offensive support (although stability is indispensable for large-scale WvW... which is, incidentally, also why guardians are so prevalent in WvW zergs).
Pretty sure, though, that if you could make nine guardians work, you could also make nine mesmers or nine revenants work. Heck, with mesmers, you might even be able to go all ten!
> > 4:00-4:45 Aesthetics. (Helps explain popularity, if a significant portion of the player base agree, but looking good does not mean overpowered.)
> you can't know that, it is a taste thing, if you like it doesn't mean everyone likes it lol.
Sure, it's a taste thing, but from what I've seen, there does seem to be a general consensus that the heavy armour sets are among the best and provide the most variety. Certainly they're better regarded among the player base than the trenchcoat-heavy medium class. Meanwhile, guardian does have access to a lot of popular legendary weapons.
> > 4:45+ Conclusion
> >
> > So yeah, I'm not seeing anything in there that supports your argument that guardian needs a big nerf. Nowhere there does Nike say that guardians are significantly more powerful than other professions or that its essential in any content (it really isn't, everything any guardian build brings to high-end PvE has at least one other profession that can bring the same thing, as opposed to some things like banners and certain traits that are unique to specific professions and mean that you usually want at least one of that profession in instanced content). Instead, he's pretty much saying what we've been saying - it's a well designed profession that can serve in a variety of roles and which has a variety of builds.
> Well I shared the video to show you smb advising everyone to play guardian. Nuf said.
Not when you look at the actual reasons why. Nowhere in Nike's reasoning does he say "guardian is the most powerful profession and you should play it because it's powerful". He spends about half the video talking about how there are a lot of different ways to play the profession which are all viable - which is certainly a good thing to have if you're only going to play one profession. He spends close to a minute in a five minute video talking about flipping _aesthetics._
But the biggest thing you're missing? He spends the first minute basically saying "play what you like the look of". Everything works, he just comes around to guardian as a "but if you really can't decide, here's what might marginally be the best option". He's not saying that Guardian is the best thing ever and that if you play anything else you're just handicapping yourself. Just that if you had to choose one to start off with and none of the others were calling to you, guardian is a good place to start. Mostly because it _does_ have a lot of options within the profession, rather than being pigeon-holed into just one or two.
Incidentally, another thing that I'd add that Nike is missing? Gear cross-compatibility. Once you've got to Ascended or Legendary, your armour sets and at least some of your weapons can be transferred to a warrior or revenant if that's what your team needs more: sure, gear that's optimised for a guardian build might not be _optimal_ for a warrior or revenant, but it'll do well enough. Meanwhile, guardians and mesmers have a lot of weapons in common, so while shifting from guardian to mesmer will require new armour sets, you can probably move your weapons over. This makes guardian a good stepping stone for four of the most desired professions in high-end PvE, which means that starting off by kitting out a guardian can easily result in a fairly versatile account with relatively little investment compared to starting with another profession.
(EDIT: There's decent crossover with ranger weapons as well, but there are enough non-shared weapons that it wouldn't be as easy a transition as going from guardian to mesmer. Already having an axe, staff, torch and greatsword with the same stats and probably the same sigils is still a pretty good head start, though.)
> > Which is the essence of the whole 'guardian is in a good place' line that ArenaNet has been giving for years. It's usually not the thing that's dominant in sPvP (although support firebrand was for a while). It's not the top DPS. It's just something that can provide solid performance in a variety of circumstances.
> Yeah it is not top dps in sPVP, now go ask Anet so it becomes one lol.
Nah. I know a few guardian players have complained in the past about guardians not being the OP thing in sPvP, but "rarely dominant but never trash" is actually a good state to be in, and part of the reason why it's been fairly stable balance-wise. Better than being OP one patch and trash the next. Half of the calls I see to nerf guardian come from players of other professions that have just been nerfed from an OP status coming to spread their sour grapes around.
> > If you're looking to argue that guardian is too dominant, you'd be better served by pointing towards the Snowcrows raid setup guides. A lot of them _are_ stacked towards guardians (those that aren't mostly stack mesmers, with one that stacks thieves, and one that splits thieves and revenants). But one thing that you'll also note is that _every_ raid build, without fail, has at least one ranger and at least one warrior, and all but two have at least one revenant. There's a reason for this - because those professions bring unique party stat boosts to the table.
> Snowcrows raid setups is outdated for a long time. And anyway it doesn't matter much because ppl play with statics and pugs. I guess all your lack of knowledge comes from looking at numbers without analyzing real game situations behind it. Firebrand given mobs to reset f1 can't be beaten by anything, and it provided permaquickness, fury and might with no to minimal BD gear... that is what I call broken: face it. No alacrigrade can do something like that. Mesmer stacking is gone a long time ago. You can go with thieves to 1 bossfight. Yes, I know exactly what bossfight you are talking about. My static isn't doing it and I never see it in pugs. Only thieves show up there, because it is one of the few raid fights they are strong indeed. Apart from Xera there is Mathias too. Well it is one of the few places where mirage is played in a high level.
Snowcrows may be outdated, but hey, the fact that a lot of their suggested setups stack guardians _would_ support your argument better than a video in which an experienced player basically says that the professions are close enough that you can do well in any profession (and, in fact, that playing a profession you enjoy and are good at is more important than any inter-profession balance differences) but that if he had to choose he'd go guardian for a bunch of reasons that _aren't_ "because guardian is just more powerful than any other profession." That said, for most of those team builds that stack guardian? You could probably replace the DPS elements with other DPS builds without any really noticeable dip in performance.
Getting mobs to reset doesn't happen often in raids and strikes (often enough when there are adds in such content, they don't provide experience or loot anyway and therefore don't trigger the radiance trait). Condi quickbrand can be pretty powerful in open world meta events, but people don't gatekeep open world meta events.
My experience with 10-man instanced content? People like having banners, a druid, permanent quickness, permanent alacrity, and a secondary healer. Beyond that, unless there's some quirk of the content that demands something specific, people generally don't care what you bring to DPS roles.
Maybe you're having a different experience, but that might be saying more about who you play with than the game's balance state.
> > But what's _actually_ happening is that guardian fulfills one of the original promises of Guild Wars 2: that any profession can fill a variety of roles effectively without being pigeon-holed into one. It's not the only profession that achieves this, but the others that manage this are all more difficult to play and are hence a bit less popular. You shouldn't be asking for guardian to be nerfed because it has versatility - you should be asking for other professions to be brought up to the same level of versatility.
> I am telling you again, I hate playing guardian but I am forced to play it because it is very strong. DH with his bursts and Firebrand with f1 resets and no bd support capabilities. No other class can do it.
Mesmer and revenant both have a variety of builds and the potential to pull off stuff that guardians can't. Ranger too. Other professions are either pigeonholed, have support builds that don't provide much in the way of offensive and/or unique benefits and therefore aren't in as much demand in high-end instanced content, or in the case of necromancer just doesn't bench very high. But these are problems with those professions, not with the guardian.
Again, it was part of the core promise of GW2 that every profession has a variety of roles it can fill. It seems that you're targeting guardian because it actually _succeeds_ at achieving this. You shouldn't be demanding guardian nerfs because it actually achieves this, you should be looking for other professions to be brought up to that standard.
And, hey. There's an expansion being worked on. Maybe new elite specialisations will achieve that.
What do you guys think of Golemancer as the next engineer elite?
in Engineer
Posted
> @"Kodama.6453" said:
> > @"draxynnic.3719" said:
> > Yeah, we've seen that ArenaNet can make elite specialisations that provide either condi DPS or support depending on build. Firebrand is an even better example.
> >
> > Long range weapons...personally, I'm partial to a staff used as a lightning rod, but a chemical theme would really probably work best with a trick arrow approach. I'm not sure about turning melee weapons into range, since that's usually done with magic, but there is precedent in scrapper hammer 5 and the holosmith sword skill that throws projectiles. Still, that sort of thing seems to better fit other technologies (such as using magnetism to manipulate a thrown weapon). Possibly mace could work, with the associated skin being stick grenade like?
>
> I can see a staff working for engineer as well.
> But using it as a lightning rod is really unlikely in my opinion. Engineer has so many unique ways to utilise weapons that I don't think they will just recycle something they have already done with scrapper hammer. Electricity most likely won't be a theme for the next e-spec for the engineer.
>
> A mace looking like a stick grenade can work. Especially if the skin makes the head of the mace look like a flask filled with chemicals.
> But there are other approaches for "ranged melee weapons".
>
> For example, we could get axes and each slash is sending out splashes of acid with projectiles looking similar like vapor blade's.
I see where you're coming from, but there is a degree of "yes, but not really". Scrapper hammer is... well, basically it's a melee weapon with electricity-based aesthetics. In fact, I seem to recall there being evidence that it was originally themed more as a rocket hammer and got switched to electricity partway through development.
Gonna be honest here, one of the things that disappoints me with Guild Wars 2 professions is that there isn't really a 'pick out an enemy and blast them with lightning' approach, a la the classic GW1 air elementalist. At the moment, that isn't really there. Scrapper hammer, elementalist dagger, and elementalist dagger are all pretty much "melee weapon with electric animations". Elementalist staff chain lightning is a tickle (air on staff is more of a support attunement), which pretty much just leaves scepter air - and the long ramp-up time of Arc Lightning makes that feel like a tickle as well.
The frustrating thing is that there are a lot of environmental weapons for various hearts and events that do have the right feel, mostly asura but some charr (I think the device used in the Jenk Cutspecter event might even be a staff, but it's been a while since I've done it). At the moment, though, the closest to really getting that 'I'm going to strike my enemies down with lightning bolts' feel as that comes from a profession comes from mesmer greatsword and scepter. Practically speaking, I don't think it's ever going to come from GW2 elementalist because its playstyle is based so heavily on attunement swapping, but I think it could fit into engineer.
Axes sending out splashes like vapor blades... honestly, throwing out bladelike projectiles from a bladed weapon feels more like the sort of thing you'd expect from magic. Yes, holosmith does that, but holosmith is explicitly heavily technomagic. On the general principle of throwing out splashes of something, I think mace is a better fit, since most maces have a solid head that an engineer could build a reservoir into and make into an aspergillum. Which would give an iconic look for a weapon to be used with a plaguedoctor theme - make it look like one of those vapour dispensers that were used by historical plague doctors.
That said, splashing liquid out of something is... not exactly something that screams 1200 range to me. :p Delivering various concoctions via arrows with alchemical heads, though, could well fit. There's also the aspect that a lot of people are hoping for mace as a melee option for core, and if mace comes as an elite specialisation weapon, that'd kill that dream altogether.