Passive Traits

[Crinn.7864]

> @"Shirlias.8104" said:

> That's what i meant with my post ( and i guess him too ).

> By saying

>

> > Give instead different bonuses and change active skills from 1 every 30 sec to 2 every 30 sec.

>

> I meant, for an instance, to remove "Defy Pain" and give warrior 2 charges of "Endure Pain".

 

That would be a massive buff for warrior. As much as people like to complain about passives, passive defensives are significantly less effective than active defensives. Anything that can be directly controlled by a player is more potent than something that is out of their control. Passives more often than not get wasted by stupid stuff (example: thief using headshot to waste last stand) while a active defense will not get wasted unless the player makes a mistake.

 

The only thing passive defensives are really strong against are for defending against things that are not humanly possible to react to, such as a thief steal alpha from behind a wall, or power Mesmer stealth alpha.

[mortrialus.3062]

> @"OriOri.8724" said:

> > @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > > @"OriOri.8724" said:

> > > > @"Shirlias.8104" said:

> > > > All passive traits needs to go.

> > > > Give instead different bonuses and change active skills from 1 every 30 sec to 2 every 30 sec.

> > >

> > > This is ideal solution. But there are so many passive traits in the game that it presents a design challenge to come up with that many new traits to replace them. Definitely not a short term balance goal.

> >

> > Passive traits aren't a problem. Passive save skills are.

> >

> > Mental Anguish is a passive trait that increases your shatter damage. This damage is doubled against targets that are not moving. This is a passive, but it's an excellently designed trait because it shapes playstyle. Now, your entire playstyle has been shaped towards trying to combo shatters while the opponent is stunned. You talk talk about Shatter mesmers having too much power right now, but the way this passive trait is designed is really cool.

> >

> > Stuff like Defy Pain, and Instant Reflexes that will proc lifesaving skills automatically when struck at a certain health threshold are the problem.

>

> Under your, overly pedantic, definition of passive traits, every single trait is a passive trait, since they all passively change some aspect of gameplay. I could have been clearer but I really didn't think it was necessary till your comment.

>

> 'Passive' traits to me are not just passive save traits, but traits that proc on their own under some condition. Examples would include: a trait that procs to cleanse conditions under X situation (as opposed to one that modifies a skill type to cleanse a condition on cast. That would be fine); a trait that procs to break a stun when you are stunned (as opposed to modifying some skill to be a stunbreak, that would be fine); a trait that procs to randomly disable an enemy on its own (like mirror of anguish. It activates on its own instead of you purposefully doing something to activate it) etc...

>

> Its any trait that can proc on its own, instead of simply modifying one of your skills/mechanics like most traits do.

 

Don't blame me for your poor usage of terminology. That's all on you.

[OriOri.8724]

> @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > @"OriOri.8724" said:

> > > @"mortrialus.3062" said:

> > > > @"OriOri.8724" said:

> > > > > @"Shirlias.8104" said:

> > > > > All passive traits needs to go.

> > > > > Give instead different bonuses and change active skills from 1 every 30 sec to 2 every 30 sec.

> > > >

> > > > This is ideal solution. But there are so many passive traits in the game that it presents a design challenge to come up with that many new traits to replace them. Definitely not a short term balance goal.

> > >

> > > Passive traits aren't a problem. Passive save skills are.

> > >

> > > Mental Anguish is a passive trait that increases your shatter damage. This damage is doubled against targets that are not moving. This is a passive, but it's an excellently designed trait because it shapes playstyle. Now, your entire playstyle has been shaped towards trying to combo shatters while the opponent is stunned. You talk talk about Shatter mesmers having too much power right now, but the way this passive trait is designed is really cool.

> > >

> > > Stuff like Defy Pain, and Instant Reflexes that will proc lifesaving skills automatically when struck at a certain health threshold are the problem.

> >

> > Under your, overly pedantic, definition of passive traits, every single trait is a passive trait, since they all passively change some aspect of gameplay. I could have been clearer but I really didn't think it was necessary till your comment.

> >

> > 'Passive' traits to me are not just passive save traits, but traits that proc on their own under some condition. Examples would include: a trait that procs to cleanse conditions under X situation (as opposed to one that modifies a skill type to cleanse a condition on cast. That would be fine); a trait that procs to break a stun when you are stunned (as opposed to modifying some skill to be a stunbreak, that would be fine); a trait that procs to randomly disable an enemy on its own (like mirror of anguish. It activates on its own instead of you purposefully doing something to activate it) etc...

> >

> > Its any trait that can proc on its own, instead of simply modifying one of your skills/mechanics like most traits do.

>

> Don't blame me for your poor usage of terminology. That's all on you.

 

You were the one being pedantic, not me.

[Shirlias.8104]

> @"Crinn.7864" said:

> > @"Shirlias.8104" said:

> > That's what i meant with my post ( and i guess him too ).

> > By saying

> >

> > > Give instead different bonuses and change active skills from 1 every 30 sec to 2 every 30 sec.

> >

> > I meant, for an instance, to remove "Defy Pain" and give warrior 2 charges of "Endure Pain".

>

> That would be a massive buff for warrior. As much as people like to complain about passives, passive defensives are significantly less effective than active defensives.

 

That was a pure example ( i just took the current duration and add a second charge while mantaining the base cd ), and because of that you probably think that it is better.

Try for an instance to imagine that the recharge cd would be 60 instead of 30, but with 2 charges, then everything could be more fair or even underpower, because you should decide to die instead of wasting a long cd, like on a moba.

 

That said, passive traits are definitely the cancer of every game, because they proc randomly regardless what a player could think.

 

* Critical strike.

* Passive procs on crit ( the old weapon sigils and part of rune armor bonus set ).

* Passive defenses ( maybe activated after a burst not by your choice, but still saving your like because reasons ).

 

At last, if giving players total control of everything will make it better at first, then we simply have to modify it until it become more balanced.

But if the starting point is that everything happens because the player decides so, we would be at a good point to begin with.

[trixantea.1230]

Some of the passives became really worthless after the nerfs. Just like **Reaper's Protection** which is now a 90 sec cd for 1 sec passive fear. I wonder why would anyone pick that trait.

[xp eke xp.6724]

I like the way this discussion goes on.

So what woud be bether and **why**? Ofc you can choose more options, but the most important part is, why you think this woud be bether then how it is :)

 

1) take all pasive effects out of traits

2) rework pasive effects to a count system

3) redesign the traits for clear positive aspekts (like a defensive line where you can choose: defensive trait, cond. remove or heal, at the same traitline => so you will have clear weaknesses and strenghts that can`t be fixed with other traits/ skills)

4) rebalance other effects that have too less counterparts ( against hide more reveals, evades/ immortal to block and more unblocks on skills, ...)

5) less effects on traits at all

6) other options

 

what do you think/ hope will happen if some of the points happen?

[Xca.9721]

Constantly increasing the cds on passive traits is just showing anets laziness. All it does is pissing people off. Instead of reworking the traits they increase the cd. on e.g. last stand to 90 sec (which is insane). Instead of killing traits by increasing the cd they could offer something cool which doesnt give u passive shit.

[ScottBroChill.3254]

I remember their being some monk skill in gw1, maybe it was retribution or something, but they didn't know how to balance it in pvp or it just wasnt priority so they gave it like a 3 minute cool down and made whatever the skill did abysmal just so no one would use it. The only difference their is that classes had like 100 skills to choose from and not a couple traits or skill sets. They need to get rid of passive invulns and blocks thats for sure, those types of things should never be so frequent, but they need to replace them. They are either going to be in a place where their cooldown is low enough where you benefit a great deal from it, or too long that its pointless to take the trait. Theres no middle ground for those type of skills, and they should be replaced to provide more OPTIONS. not just nerfed so we have less options.

[xp eke xp.6724]

If we speak about gw1, they already had some weaknesses:

 

just look at the perma blind ele and you know no meele shoud ever have a chance to hit even if necros and monks remove them. (btw. the blind effect there: you have a 90% chance to miss your attacks and dont end after one hit^^.

=> Means that you outplay all meeleclasses by one class and the other classes by mesmer if we speak about gw1. And atm its going the same way: means we have new mechanics but the counterparts arent there or just too weak.

 

And yes we have some similaries:

- if they dont have the time, we get some "easy to do" nerfs: higher cds and if it´s some spezial trait like dash or elusive mind they give them some debuffs.

- if there are some bugs, they stay as long, the community abuse it too strong

- if some new things are coming out, they are normally too strong (just look at the pve skills in gw1^^)

- if some skills are strong, they will create stronger skills

 

thats what we allready now from the past. But also they don´t do as much misstakes as before. We dont have the point that one class outplays over the half of all other classes at all points. Maybe at duelling the mesmer is the best option, but not at support, teamfight and more points that are part of one gamemode. It will get there if they dont pay attention, thats why we discuss at the forums and talk about some problems :)