Balancing alternatives

[LadyKitty.6120]

As of now, some weapons dominate the gameplays of various classes due to alternative either lacking damage (to make it not worth taking even if it has some useful function like lots of CC or superior DPS uptime, for ex. hammer on every class in PVE) or having almost same damage but lower DPS uptime/clunkier gameplay (for. ex guard's scepter vs sword). There's also lots of weapons with skills that do less damage (without even a function) than auto-attack chain. Some of those weapons haven't also been touched in a long time to bring them more in line with other options. Similar issues have also been happening in traits but those have been adjusted a way more actively.

With the advent of pure hybrid stat combinations like Grieving, there's also lots of potential for new interesting weapon combinations but currently most condi-builds have so weak power damage-component in weapons that hybrid stats are hardly equal (as is case with firebrand which somewhat works due to scepter being a power weapon but applying lots of condi through traits and reaper which has good condi component when opponent has high HP and powerful power component when opponent is below 50%) or vastly inferior to pure power/condi (almost every other class). On some classes, hybrid builds are also impossible to make efficient due to traitlines having a pure focus on power/condi/healing without any hybrid-focused options within them.

We also have builds that'd become a potential option if there was a suitable stat combination or rune set for them (for ex. tank power DH or reaper if we got a major Power/minor toughness+ferocity stat combo or condi alacrity renegade and power/condi DPS+alacrity chrono if we got alacrity-duration runes).

In PVE, we've also had chrono+druid as the dominant support combo for a long time due to their superior offensive support capability and utility, preventing other support builds from becoming an option due to their inferior offensive support and/or CC utility. There's also similar issues in other game modes.

 

So Kitty has a few questions...

 

1. Are you aiming to balance the rarely/never used alternative weapons into real options in the future? Would you do it by making the function even more potent, by increasing the base damage/healing or stat co-efficient (easiest option for balancing for certain game mode), by increasing the weapon's potential through traits or combination of those?

2. Are you going to improve the the potential of hybrid builds closer to real options, by traits, stat multipliers or other methods?

3. Will there be new rune or stat sets or will currently rarely used stat and rune sets be modified to allow the creation of new hybrid builds?

4. What are your plans for making other heal builds a more potential option? Are you going to nerf current metabuilds (perhaps making them require another support to accompany them for full boon uptimes) by nerfing their boon output or unique offensive support or increase the boon outputs and give them unique offensive/defensive support to make them options in "if you bring this shiny thing, you can't get this shiny thing"-fashion or by making currently unique boons accessible through various support classes?

5. How much communal testing affects your balancing decisions when it comes to alternatives? Would getting test data and suggestions from various communal testing agencies help you in deciding on balancing decisions?

Currently the benchmark communities aren't testing the alternative weapons since they're known to be inferior and therefore there's most likely a lack of data on how far behind the alternatives are at the moment and Kitty's been wondering if having more data on them by skilled players would help at balancing them. (The writer of this post very likely being the only known tester on them and lacking the skill to pull the rotations off well enough to get accurate, definitive measurements.)