Einlanzer.1627

I would give them about 15 new skills not associated with a legend that could be swapped around in their utility bar. Then, I'd change it so that instead of swapping between two legends, you swap into and out of one legend (the legends would retain their current fixed 5 skills).

Each legend would have a specialized role, while non-legend mode would be designed to be customizable, versatile, and able to synergize well with any of the legends. Legends would use energy while non-legend skills would not. Energy would refill in a similar way to how it does now. Much like with Ele, it would be viable to stay in a legend full time, or to never invoke a legend, but it would be a bit more optimal to go in and out of legend based on ability and energy needs.

> @"Oglaf.1074" said:

> Whales keep on buyin', Anet keep on overpricin'.

>

> Simple as that.

>

> You and me were never the target demographic for these mount skins.

That's the gist of it, although I'm not actually convinced they wouldn't make more money if they charged a more reasonable price for them. I'm also very convinced that, even if some people buy it, setting an artificially high price point for something is terrible for your business in the long run.

> @"Swagg.9236" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > But that's exactly the point - condi _does_ have a role in combat, it's just one that's been overlooked and underplayed due to the hamfisted way it's been balanced - **ignoring toughness/armor**.

>

> Armor ignoring damage is a different role than damage? So, instead of packing blindness, daze, knock-down, movement speed increases, a random teleport and weakness, Guild Wars 1's Air Magic Line should have just been Lightning Strike? Because armor-ignoring, untyped damage is something entirely unique to a game's already pre-existing damage calculation system (which also uses untyped damage)? As in one is somehow unique to the other in how it deletes red from a person's health bar? So why did the Viper meta supplant the Zerker meta? If condi is just another role, surely it should co-exist alongside direct damage? Because the Viper meta's untyped damage is somehow a different role than the Zerker untyped damage and not just exactly the same thing in application except it arbitrarily produces higher numbers on most classes due to bad game design philosophies?

This post really doesn't make any coherent sense. Yes, it absolutely is a different role. Or, at least, it would be if it was balanced better. But I was never making an argument about non-damaging conditions one way or the other. I was specifically talking about damaging conditions and their role in the game.

The problem with charging $25 for a mount skin is:

a.) it's just a skin

b.) all the new skins so far are through the gem shop

c.) we have five types of mounts that often need to be swapped between.

O'Brien defended this as industry standard, but even if this was a good argument (it isn't), it actually isn't really true. In other games, $25 skins are only released occasionally as premium skins to supplement what can be found in the game, and they are usually entirely new creatures with special effects that can be used exclusively if desired by the player.

I can't help but think things like this drive players away in the long run even if some people are paying for it now. Getting ahead of "it's optional, and they have to make money from somewhere" arguments, yes, and I'm happy to support them by buying things through the gem store (mostly gold and reasonably priced skins), but I think there's a strong argument to be made that they're trying to monetize too many things in too many ways simultaneously, which starts to make the whole game reek of desperate cash grab schemes. IMO, that's _not_ the right way to do things.

Overall, collection is pretty solid in this game. I do think, though, tonics should be a collectible instead of just random inventory clutter.

I think what it's actually missing is a really interesting form of progression that helps put players on something of a linear path. A lot of players defend the free-form format of the end game, but the simple truth is having sort of a linear path with visible goals in front of you is what motivates the majority of people who play MMOs, and not having it out of stubbornness just undermines GW2's popularity. It doesn't have to be a gear grind, but it needs to be something more fleshed out than what we have now. Masteries could work, but they need more expansion and refinement.

IMO, Legendaries should offer more than just a certain look. I think keeping them with the same stats as Ascended makes sense, but they need something that represents a form of progression that makes them _actually_ unique and therefore enticing to collect. I'd vote for each piece having a unique built-in rune or sigil in addition to the normal rune/sigil slot. I don't care if this represents a small amount of power creep over ascended - I think the game would benefit from it because it would make them way more interesting to chase after, creating a lot of motivation for a lot of apathetic players. It would also further incentivize Anet to continue creating them.

Also, we really, really should have more 5-man content than we do.

> @"Swagg.9236" said:

> Conditions are in such a managed spot becausethey have no real role in combat. Conditions were never good at launch because all conditions have ever done is damage and soft CC (the latter being a jumble of hamfisted effects which are typically ignored by channeled invulnerability, teleports, stealth and/or general cleanses). In anet's infinite wisdom, and urged by a vocal minority who doesn't know anything about what makes video games fun, conditions were arbitrarily turned into DPS (despite the fact that GW2 already had a functional system for scaling and calculating outgoing damage). Then anet made viper armor and condition powercreep was basically on the same tier as Revenant: a hollow shell without substance made only to sell an expansion pack. They never looked back since.

>

> If you ever find yourself wondering why somethingis balanced in some way, remember that GW2 is a game so shallow that untyped damage is bloat. A player, if trying to play optimally, can actually use the *wrong type of untyped damage*. That's how bloated this game is. There is no sense of identity or role in anything. It's why engineer gets a laser sword, but it's worthless next to a weapon that has been powercreeped since launch. It's why ranger is randomly made into a healing class. It's why rev PoF spec is worthless. Every update is just a huge gamble because this game hit bloat saturation back in 2010 (yes, I mean the alpha). Everything beyond that was just shuffling the same cards around and telling people that it's a new deck.

But that's exactly the point - condi _does_ have a role in combat, it's just one that's been overlooked and underplayed due to the hamfisted way it's been balanced - **ignoring toughness/armor**. Condi damage should be natively inferior to physical damage (or, at best, equal to) but should a.) be applied fairly quickly, and b.) specialize in bypassing armor against tanky targets as well as undermining outgoing healing efforts especially through regeneration.

Every class should have viable power-based and hybrid builds with limited condi application, while not every class should have a viable condition-hyperspecialized build. It should be thought of as a somewhat more specialized role that only certain classes can excel with - similar to healing or tanking - where it can be extremely useful, but not as general purpose as physical damage.

The bottom line is that the idea that conditions should be omnipresent and should do a lot of damage spread out over a long period of time is just bad reasoning rooted in EQ/WoW conventions that don't apply well to GW2. Conditions should be able to be applied quickly, and do moderate damage (only significantly beating physical damage against high armor targets) over a relatively short duration (3-5 seconds on average). Most of all, they should not as all-over-the-place as they are now.

Regarding your comment on players not knowing what they want - most players simply wanted Anet to remove the condition cap. Having a 25 stack cap when most of the new content they were designing was for large player groups in the open world was silly and needed to be changed. It would have been sufficient if they had simply done that and not tried to rebalance conditions to be a fully versatile damage dealing role the way physical damage is.

I genuinely don't understand. In a macro sense, the way to balance condi is obvious to me, but the dev team is in a totally different place with it, and the last balance patch basically did the opposite of what I would do - which is to leave durations alone and nerf base damage/condi damage scaling, and eliminate various sources of cleanse and immunity. I'm looking for some insight into why what's obvious to me is not the direction they're going.

This isn't EQ, and condis aren't supposed to work like long duration DoTs that you see in some other MMOs. I don't understand why Karl and the others seem hung up on this idea. Combat is dynamic, and **conditions have a specialized role of ignoring armor**, so they should in fact do less base damage than physical skills and have short durations to make them attractive and balanced in all game modes. Instead, the ratio is skewed way in the other direction, and cleanse and immunity mechanics have crept in everywhere in a poor attempt to control it.

This introduces all kinds of problems - combat in general is way too clutchy, armor/toughness is underpowered, damaging conditions are too prolific across classes, damage is generally too high relative to passive defense, and you have to build your kit around anti-condi, which is uninteresting and restricts build customization. Perhaps worst of all, conditions and physical will never be balanced - conditions will always either be underpowered in PvP or overpowered in PvE with mobs having to have specialized mechanics to make them seem balanced. It really makes no sense whatsoever. Balancing them around target armor values allows for a more natural balancing path where condi takes on a specific role relative to physical damage, and would allow both to be balanced through encounter design in both PvP and PvE contexts.

> @"BurrTheKing.8571" said:

> If the devs continue with the philosophy set forth by the resent mini patch, only one of two things will happen:

>

> 1. Nothing changes and conditions remain dominant.

> 2. Conditions become so weak they see no use.

>

> There needs to be a system where conditions are damage over time, not just power damage that it's easier to apply and requires fewer stats to be effective. A possible solution would be to bring back the tic system from GW1. That system placed a cap on how much damage per second you could take from conditions. In order for this to work though some major changes would have to happen:

>

> 1. Condition damage as a stat would disappear because conditions would be applying tics that have a standard amount of damage. For example, each tic would always do 100 DPS, up to 10 tics. Conditions with extra effects like poison would only do one tic. Bleeding could do 3 tics and last a moderate duration by default, while burning can apply 4 or 5 but has a very low base duration. Torment would do only 1 tic while standing still but 3 while moving. These are just example and a lot of testing would need to be done to find balance. It might be worthwhile to remove Ferocity from PvP as well since conditions would only be using one stat.

> 2. Limiting the amount of conditions each class has access to. Each class should only have access to one or two damaging conditions. Elite Specs can add ONE more, at the cost of something else. Not another condition, but like how Spellbreaker loses level 2 and 3 bursts for Full Counter.

> 3. Condition removal will need rebalancing. It would make sense to have some skills and traits focused on damaging conditions, while others can focus on mobility condis and such.

>

> Now, all of these changes would be PvP and probably WvW only. The way open world works this system wouldn't work, but the ideas from the last patch might.

The problem that I keep seeing and keep talking about is that conditions were not designed to work like EQ-style DoTs, but that's how the devs seem to (myopically) see them. Seeing them in that way is absurd, because, unlike most historical MMOs, this game has a fast-paced, active combat system. Having conditions operate as long duration DoTs with high damage output makes no sense, because the point at which condi passes power will always be too long in PvP or too short in PvE. The latest patch was the exact opposite approach they should have taken to balance condi.

Conditions ignore armor, so they in fact should have lower base damage and should be balanced around short durations. With the amount of condi cleanse and immunity we have in game now, this would make conditions underpowered, but it's still the proper solution to shorten durations, lower damage, and peel back sources of cleanse and immunity.

They don't understand how to balance conditions properly. All I've seen them say is how conditions need to do more damage than power to be attractive, and they just need to spread that damage out over more time. That's goofy and wrong-headed.

Conditions bypass armor, unlike physical damage, so they should actually do lower base damage with the short durations the game launched with. Until they clue into the fact that conditions aren't EQ DoTs and can't be balanced in that way due to the active/fast-paced combat in this game, we'll never have a meta the even approaches being well balanced.

They need to revert the durations, significantly lower the damage, and remove most sources of cleanse and immunity. That's the only sensible way to balance conditions, period.

Yeah, I think this is something that needs attention and feedback from devs.

Yeah, I've actually long felt this was a design flaw of the game but have never really posted about it before.

Cleaving attacks on melee weapons (especially the autos), for example, should do reduced damage the more targets they hit. Only certain attacks should be specialized for AoE, and those should be balanced carefully by doing significantly less damage than single target attacks and having longer cooldowns.

The second biggest problem is that they're just flat-out wrong-headed about conditions. They need to reduce damage across the board and leave the short durations in place while getting rid of most sources of cleanse and immunity. Conditions should be specialized for ignoring armor, not doing lots of damage over time. Power should always be better against low armor targets. Their attempts at balance between power and condi are done with a misguided paradigm, so it leads to ineffective results where damage is too high, armor is useless, and anti-condi is king which restricts build diversity.

It's because their thinking about conditions is all wrong. My instinct is always to blame Karl, but who knows.

Conditions should not do as much base damage as power, because conditions have the benefit of ignoring armor. The simple, obvious truth is that condi duration was fine before the patch, and that the problem was (and remains) that condition damage is massively overtuned because of the silly notion that they are supposed to be like EQ DoTs.

Let me repeat for emphasis - **CONDITIONS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE FOR BACK-LOADING DAMAGE, THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FOR IGNORING ARMOR.**

Until they get their heads straight and restore the short timers while reducing damage significantly and removing most access to cleanse and immunity, we won't have resolution.

I'm glad they finally addressed this. Having them as tonics was a very bad solution. That said, I don't see them in the outfits panel, and they are not available for purchase. Hopefully there are short term plans to resolve this.

IMO, the way to properly fix condition damage is obvious - it's to reduce the damage, keep short durations, and nerf or remove most access to cleanse and immunity. The main purpose of conditions should be to ignore armor for the damage they deal, not to do damage over a long period of time. Power should deal more damage if the target does not have high armor, no matter how long a fight is.

Making them work more like EQ dots just reinforces the systemic problems we've had for years - armor is mostly pointless, conditions are too binary, damage in general is still too high relative to health and defense, and the necessity of running anti-condi restricts build diversity. To top it off, condi will still be meta in any fight that doesn't end really quickly or have specialized anti-condi mechanics (i.e. most PvE), it'll just be weaker in short fights.

No, the way you fix condition damage (and balance in general) is to reduce the damage, keep short durations, and nerf or remove most access to cleanse and immunity.

The answer is yes.

Even the condi changes don't make sense. Conditions are supposed to be for the purpose of ignoring armor, not doing DoT. It makes way more sense with short durations, quick ramp-up, and middle-of-the-road damage with very limited access to cleanse and immunity. These changes just help reinforce all the existing problems - condi meta, too much damage, armor/toughness is pointless, and anti-condi is too important in your kit.

> @"lilypop.7819" said:

> > @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > My biggest complaint is that I still think they're missing the point on condi.

> >

> > Conditions were not designed to work like DoTs in Everquest - they were given short durations with armor penetration. The problem is not that they were ramping up too quickly, it's that they simply were doing too much damage. If ramp up is the metric Anet cares about, what's the point of them ignoring armor? These condi changes do nothing but reinforce the sort of broken gameplay we have now where armor means next to nothing and you're forced to run a bunch of anti condi in your kit.

> >

> > Everything would work way better if condi did lowish overall damage, but ramped up quickly with very limited target access to cleanse/immunity. They should have reduced the damage from condi and kept the same duration instead of increasing the duration and keeping the same damage. Makes no sense.

>

> I think they still believe that there is fundamentally enough cleanse in the game to counteract condi spam. The change is really a token to give peeps more time to cleanse.

>

> Problem is that they taken no account of the bee-hive condi spamming that occurs in PvP that has come to negate everything else in the game in terms of tactics and that the UI doesn't support such lethal condition damage.

>

> Frankly it's one thing to be repeatedly slashed by a GS another to be pinned to the ground by ramping small numbers on very small red squares. Thing is the defence is passive with the onus on the receiver. This is why huge fast condi damage is so popular, the spammer doesn't have to think much about the opponent's actions - it's all very very marco friendly. Of course if instead of 'cleanse' you had a 'reflect' element - I have suggested a x% movement slow for every active condition on opponents - then the game would be a bit more interesting ...

>

> As is - at the lower end anyway - PvP is just Spamwars2 and very poor gameplay, a complete mess and I suspect very marco driven - the team with the most condi specs/marcos pretty much always wins. Obviously when you get very skilled at PvP, this may not be the case, but peeps aren't going to make it that far are they?

>

> Condi splatter is just turning the PvP gameplay into mush, maybe balanced mush, but mush none the less.

>

> ---------------

>

> Regards the UI, I would suggest a set of different coloured bubbles that grow in size as per damage inflicted per tick.

>

> --------------

>

> Putting the onus on the receiver and camo-ing the application just isn't playing fair if the intent is to equalised dots and dd. Clearly there is no equality and the preference will be for condi splatter and marco driven gaming.

Right, but the obvious proper solution is to significantly lower condition damage and remove most sources of cleanse/immunity. Having it this way just throws the game way out of balance in all kinds of ways.

My biggest complaint is that I still think they're missing the point on condi.

Conditions were not designed to work like DoTs in Everquest - they were given short durations with armor penetration. The problem is not that they were ramping up too quickly, it's that they simply were doing too much damage. If ramp up is the metric Anet cares about, what's the point of them ignoring armor? These condi changes do nothing but reinforce the sort of broken gameplay we have now where armor means next to nothing and you're forced to run a bunch of anti condi in your kit.

Everything would work way better if condi did lowish overall damage, but ramped up quickly with very limited target access to cleanse/immunity. They should have reduced the damage from condi and kept the same duration instead of increasing the duration and keeping the same damage. Makes no sense.

I used to make this argument, but I actually think that, instead, Toughness/armor should be the balancer between power and condition damage. I think that was the original intent, and they've killed it by introducing all kinds of anti-condi stuff in response to making condi overpowered. In short, they don't know what they're doing.

They seem hung up on the idea of making condi like dots in other MMOS, which IMO is wrong-headed - they should ramp up fast and have short durations, with the main balancer of which is better being tied to the armor value of the target.

Sigh...

Condition "Burst" is not the issue (other than a few outliers who lay down way too many conditions at once). Conditions need to be balanced in both short and long duration fights. The issue is that conditions are supposed to be balanced by doing less raw damage but penetrating armor. I don't know how or why you guys seem to have lost sight of that in favor of the idea of making them like DoTs in other games, which they aren't and shouldn't be.

Get rid of the absurd number of sources of cleanse and immunity and lower condition damage across the board.

IMO, this has been a problem for a long time.

At the very least, they need to start grouping attribute combinations and allowing free-switching on a range of them for a given item. Having 30+ different attribute combos with no way to swap them around unless you have a legendary is pretty absurd.

A new mount or a complete remodel of an existing mount (with different animations and everything), or a bundle of skins, could potentially be worth 2000 gems. A skin isn't. I think this is the reason they're getting so much flack (and it is deserved in this case.)

> @Ayrilana.1396 said:

> > @TwilightSoul.9048 said:

> > > @pah.4931 said:

> > > Just to reiterate...

> > >

> > > "Willing to pay" and "is profitable for GW2 to continue developing this game" are two entirely different concepts. They know what they're doing...

> >

> > Yes, but you also have to consider if having "a few" people buy a skin for 2000 is actually better than having "a bunch" of people who would buy the skin for, let's say, 500.

> > I'm sure people are buying the new Raptor Skin for 2000 but what if you could multiply the number of people who would buy the skin by 4 just by decreasing it's price to 800? Then you'd get 1200 Gems more!

> > Honestly I think the real reason behind the huge price tag is that "small" amounts of Gems are easily acquired with spending Gold whereas large amounts of gems are more likely to be purchased with actual money. Which is of course a reasonable consideration. But honestly I think in an MMoRPG the goal should always be to appeal to as many of your players as possible.

>

> I’m pretty sure they ran through the numbers and determined that the current price point was the best.

I don't know why people always assume that businesses know what they're doing. They don't. CEOs and sales/marketing personnel are no more competent than the average person. Games fail all the time due to poor business and price point decisions. Marvel Heroes shut down this month over bad business decisions, and they had their white knights on the message boards all the time making arguments like this one.

I think 2000 is egregious, especially since we have 5 different mounts to potentially buy for. The only possible exception would be if it's for a new type of mount altogether with new animations and everything. For anything that's functionally just a skin, it should be 800ish.

Mount skins are something that people really enjoy buying, and they're going to undermine that by charging the same price as an expansion for them while also releasing them very regularly. Really, really stupid if you ask me. This is the kind of thing that just drives people away from the game. I wonder how they capture that in their metrics.