Mesmer balance changes

[OriOri.8724]

> @"apharma.3741" said:

> > @"Carighan.6758" said:

> > > @"apharma.3741" said:

> > > Ideally I’d love to see some of those toned down a bit too but then I think everything is doing too much damage to keep based health pools as they are but I’d rather not see base health pools go up tbh.

> >

> > Yeah it's a much bigger issue than any one spec, trait or effect.

> >

> > Everything is **too** spammable, everything is **too** overloaded with secondary effects, everything is **too** amped up.

> >

> > I'd prefer it if skills did one thing, and did it well. :pensive:

> >

>

> Yes I remember bringing this up about holoforge skills being very spammable especially holo leap. People don’t want to give up the spam it seems.

 

I do understand where they come from. Nerfs are never fun, especially if you love one class more than others. And to bring everything in line would require absolutely massive nerfs to every class. Even though it would ultimately be very healthy for the game, the actual balance patch that did this would be an awful balance patch. Not only for competitive play, where many players would suddenly realize they aren't nearly as good as they thought they were, but also for PvE where many encounters that you used to be able to solo with ease would become significantly more difficult. And finishing raids would be hit hard by such a patch as well, which would make it even harder and more intimidating for new players to get into raiding.

[eldenbri.1059]

I think GW2 is trying to give users a way to feel fun playing a wide variety of professions (and elite specs). What is fun? Well typically it's feeling like you had an impact on the outcome. That you using the right skills at the right time produced a good result. And this also means that you need to be able to use your skills often enough that it keeps you engaged. And, ideally, it allows for people who can use skills more optimally to produce more optimal results.

 

That's already a tough problem, but it gets even tougher when the players are going against each other. With as much complexity as there is in this game, it's never going to be totally balanced. I don't inherently think that skills that can be used quite frequently (spammable) are necessarily a problem. It's a matter of keeping there expected impact inline with skills that are used less frequently.

 

Having played Mirage for a bit, it does feel like you can have a lot of options to break enemy targeting. But possibly the biggest thing about Mirage is that it encourages you to dodge (and to create builds that allow you to dodge more often). I think dodge has always been the most powerful skill in GW2, and it seems to me that many of the most skillful players I see use it most effectively. I actually feel like the best balancing change would be to give other classes more incentive to dodge versus nerfing that mechanic in Mirage.

[apharma.3741]

> @"OriOri.8724" said:

> > @"apharma.3741" said:

> > > @"Carighan.6758" said:

> > > > @"apharma.3741" said:

> > > > Ideally I’d love to see some of those toned down a bit too but then I think everything is doing too much damage to keep based health pools as they are but I’d rather not see base health pools go up tbh.

> > >

> > > Yeah it's a much bigger issue than any one spec, trait or effect.

> > >

> > > Everything is **too** spammable, everything is **too** overloaded with secondary effects, everything is **too** amped up.

> > >

> > > I'd prefer it if skills did one thing, and did it well. :pensive:

> > >

> >

> > Yes I remember bringing this up about holoforge skills being very spammable especially holo leap. People don’t want to give up the spam it seems.

>

> I do understand where they come from. Nerfs are never fun, especially if you love one class more than others. And to bring everything in line would require absolutely massive nerfs to every class. Even though it would ultimately be very healthy for the game, the actual balance patch that did this would be an awful balance patch. Not only for competitive play, where many players would suddenly realize they aren't nearly as good as they thought they were, but also for PvE where many encounters that you used to be able to solo with ease would become significantly more difficult. And finishing raids would be hit hard by such a patch as well, which would make it even harder and more intimidating for new players to get into raiding.

 

Raids are at a point where literally the only person you can blame for failing now is the players. Even bad builds (things like power reaper, rev etc) are more than capable of doing not just enough damage to clear the raid within enrage but also to have enough redundancy that it’s almost impossible to fail short of not doing anything at all or a one shot mechanic. Encounters that are meant to have more than 1 person should be hard to solo, story missions are literally impossible to fail now because NPCs Rez you if you afk with auto left on.

 

If NPCs or raids are too difficult you can always reduce the health pool of the NPC, it is a very simple solution while fixing the spam and general gameplay experience is a much more complex and long winded approach.

[OriOri.8724]

@"apharma.3741" I agree given the current state of balance, but if classes were brought down to the level I think they should be at, everything would be _significantly_ weaker than it is now. I'm talking stuff like top DPS glass cannon builds barely hitting 30-32k DPS with full support, on the golem. For large hitboxes, this would roughly be a 25% damage nerf compared to the latest snowcrows benchmarks, for small hitboxes it would still be fairly significant, and it would affect every build, not just the top DPS builds. Not to mention that in general support builds would also be weaker (eg meaning more work put in to get the same level of support = not only do they have to play better than they currently do, but their DPS contributions would also be lower).

 

So yes, still trivial content for good players, but the margin of error would be much smaller for less coordinated groups, and that would be due simply to every build being much weaker than it currently is.

[Carighan.6758]

You're actually generous compared to what I would cook up, @"OriOri.8724" . :joy:

But yeah, for me it might be more 25% at the very least. Partially because there's too much "stuff" in the game, so on top of deslacking skills so they no longer do 3-4 things each, I'd flat out remove many elements of character customization because there's too many options with too many of them virtually meaningless. And as much as this would - hopefully - lead to a few select but super-important choices during customization, it'd also massively impede overall power. Nevermind that I still think removing item stats should be a thing (I thought Sigils/Runes at first, but actually in hindsight I'd leave those - if in heavily modified - but remove item stats instead).

 

But I agree, it'd be a basically undoable change. It's the kind of thing other MMORPGs can get away with when releasing an expansion, because the increasing character level automatically invalidates **all** previous elements, anyhow. So they can do sweeping class- and gear-changes. Even then, if the numbers end up being lower than before (WoW did this once), people **will** rage. It's not an easy thing to get right.

 

Still, I would hope that at least effect-overload and trait-overload gets looked at eventually. We had a trait system change before, so there's precendent at least.

[Carighan.6758]

You're actually generous compared to what I would cook up, @"OriOri.8724" . :joy:

But yeah, for me it might be more 25% at the very least. Partially because there's too much "stuff" in the game, so on top of deslacking skills so they no longer do 3-4 things each, I'd flat out remove many elements of character customization because there's too many options with too many of them virtually meaningless. And as much as this would - hopefully - lead to a few select but super-important choices during customization, it'd also massively impede overall power. Nevermind that I still think removing item stats should be a thing (I thought Sigils/Runes at first, but actually in hindsight I'd leave those - if in heavily modified - but remove item stats instead).

 

But I agree, it'd be a basically undoable change. It's the kind of thing other MMORPGs can get away with when releasing an expansion, because the increasing character level automatically invalidates **all** previous elements, anyhow. So they can do sweeping class- and gear-changes. Even then, if the numbers end up being lower than before (WoW did this once), people **will** rage. It's not an easy thing to get right.

 

Still, I would hope that at least effect-overload and trait-overload gets looked at eventually. We had a trait system change before, so there's precendent at least.

[apharma.3741]

> @"OriOri.8724" said:

> @"apharma.3741" I agree given the current state of balance, but if classes were brought down to the level I think they should be at, everything would be _significantly_ weaker than it is now. I'm talking stuff like top DPS glass cannon builds barely hitting 30-32k DPS with full support, on the golem. For large hitboxes, this would roughly be a 25% damage nerf compared to the latest snowcrows benchmarks, for small hitboxes it would still be fairly significant, and it would affect every build, not just the top DPS builds. Not to mention that in general support builds would also be weaker (eg meaning more work put in to get the same level of support = not only do they have to play better than they currently do, but their DPS contributions would also be lower).

>

> So yes, still trivial content for good players, but the margin of error would be much smaller for less coordinated groups, and that would be due simply to every build being much weaker than it currently is.

 

I would tone everything down more FYI, I’d just stagger it a bit to ensure no over nerfs happen and to ease players into it a bit more. When we first had benchmarks being done 28k realistic was considered the top, before HoT (I think it was one of Nike’s videos) about 20k was considered top level. Of course the damage was mostly spike and some classes were left far behind but there no reason damage can’t be reduced while preserving the relative balance we have now.

[OriOri.8724]

I would also support toning everything down even more. That 30-32k limit is the absolute top performance I want to see out of any class, but am definitely ok with classes being nerfed harder than that, as long as every class is nerfed simultaneously