Revising Attributes

[joneirikb.7506]

As someone else mentioned, it's the "encounter design" that holds the defensive stats back in PvE. When HoT released, most people got slaughtered when they entered in Zerk gear, until they learn and got used to the mobs etc.

 

Had the game had enemies with decent AI and skills more in line with players builds, they could have put enough pressure on players that they might want or even need defensive stats (unless they're just really good). But with the enemies we have in the game, no one is ever going to trade away any more damage output for anything else. The great majority of the players doesn't want to, and as long as ANet designs the enemies the way they do (predictable and following simple scripts) they won't need to.

 

I mean, even with gutting everything I suggested in a earlier post in half, so half energy regen, half boons, and double incoming condi duration, I'm pretty sure the wast majority of players would still run full zerk, and just try to kill it harder anyways. And most wouldn't notice much of a difference, because things still dies easy enough that all those penalties wouldn't really do much of a difference.

 

That's the reason why defensive stats are wanted/needed in wvw/pvp, and considered an utter waste in pve.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> Except it doesn't, because using passive defense makes your attrition worse due to the major hit your offense takes.

No, that's only if you want to have both great defense and great dps. Not surprisingly, that's indeed not possible. On the other hand, go full nomad with a bunker build, and tell us how bad the attrition was.

You do remember, i hope, that vid of a group of shout heal warriors facetanking lupi in Cleric gear? they had no problem with attrition whatsoever, because the only one affected by it in that fight was Lupi.

 

In short, defensive builds are fine. It's the hybrid ones that do not work well, because in this game you really need to specialize to get the full effectiveness of anything. Notice, though, that the problem of unspecialized hybrid builds being weak affects both defence and offence stats equally.

 

 

[Einlanzer.1627]

> @"joneirikb.7506" said:

> As someone else mentioned, it's the "encounter design" that holds the defensive stats back in PvE. When HoT released, most people got slaughtered when they entered in Zerk gear, until they learn and got used to the mobs etc.

>

> Had the game had enemies with decent AI and skills more in line with players builds, they could have put enough pressure on players that they might want or even need defensive stats (unless they're just really good). But with the enemies we have in the game, no one is ever going to trade away any more damage output for anything else. The great majority of the players doesn't want to, and as long as ANet designs the enemies the way they do (predictable and following simple scripts) they won't need to.

>

> I mean, even with gutting everything I suggested in a earlier post in half, so half energy regen, half boons, and double incoming condi duration, I'm pretty sure the wast majority of players would still run full zerk, and just try to kill it harder anyways. And most wouldn't notice much of a difference, because things still dies easy enough that all those penalties wouldn't really do much of a difference.

>

> That's the reason why defensive stats are wanted/needed in wvw/pvp, and considered an utter waste in pve.

 

That's part of it, but it isn't just that. Moreover, the encounter design is actually a result of the badly tuned stats/mechanics, not the cause of them. By fixing the stats/combat system itself, they would have the opportunity to improve encounter design. The primary issues are:

 

a.) active defense is over-emphasized, with sources of major damage & dodges both being too numerous. This doesn't just harm the value of passive defense, it makes combat in general too frenetic and spammy. There should be more sources of minor damage that engage your Armor and Health values and put pressure on you outside of active defense. The fixes i propose are to significantly lower the baseline for endurance regeneration and make Vitality improve that instead of health.

 

b.) offensive stats are overpowered. There's too big a difference in the amount of damage you deal based on stats due to the synergistic scaling between power, precision, and ferocity, which condition damage and expertise have been tuned to match. Per-point scaling of those attributes need to be lowered so there isn't such a ridiculous gap between the floor and the ceiling of damage output, because damage will always matter more than anything else in PvE. There's nothing wrong with that, but the attributes need to be balanced around that reality so they contribute as close to equal value as possible.

 

c.) reviving is too easy. This was mentioned by an above poster about how "difficulty" in the game over-relies on having mobs that drop extremely heavy hits that down numerous characters simultaneously. My suggestion is twofold - further cap the # of players that can revive a single character at a time, and also to have instant defeat happen more often through various mechanics or "major damage" thresholds.

 

d.) toughness uses a simple "divide by" algorithm. This means its effect is more significant on big damage than on small damage, when it should be the opposite. It needs to be redone to reduce damage more through subtraction than through division so it doesn't compete directly with active defense, and instead complements it. Update: it would probably be necessary to hybridize it so it retains its value in PvP.

[joneirikb.7506]

Just to point out that the defensive stats does serve one important feature in PVE, it allows for players that struggle with the action combat (still learning it, or not so fast reflexes etc) to compensate with defensive stats to find their own comfort level. This part is working as intended, it helps those that have difficulties using active defenses properly/perfectly.

 

From this perspective defensive stats are working as intended, and the only reason we don't use them more for typical "End-game veterans" etc, are because once you're good enough, you don't need them (due to active defenses). This is a problem mainly with encounter-design.

 

---

 

(A) I agree that there are too much of just about everything right now, the changes since 2015/HoT and elites have generally powercreeped, by adding both more damage (mainly damage modifiers) and more active defenses (to battle the higher damage).

 

I think the best solution to that is a extensive balancing re-work, and go back to the balance/power-level before the 2015/HoT patch, where each class had much less of ... everything. Thus you couldn't stack retarded damage modifiers on top of each others, which made all pvp into "I hit you, you die" which forced more classes to have spammy defenses to compensate for that.

 

I still do think that the entire stat system in this game is honestly horrible, and should never have been added in the first place. But removing it now would impact the game way too much, would almost be a new game in scope.

 

(B) It is completely possible to create near undying bunker builds in WvW, primary by using defensive stats like Ministrel. While this naturally also uses all the active defenses as well, I can't quite agree to this. I also think that the "Damage modifiers" affect more than the actual stats in this case. Basically if you remove all the damage modifiers from traits/sigils, and all the might stacks, I don't think berserker gear really is that "over powered".

 

© Hmm, no real opinions or thoughts. Should mention that with the pact mastery you get a hefty boost to rezzing people, which makes this even more trivial. Rez has always been an issue in the game, from how easy zergs could rez their own in zerg fights in wvw, to 50 people being dead around Tequatl demanding to be hard rezzed instead of porting and running back.

 

(D) That would actually wreck the stat for PVP/WVW, as the main need for toughness is usually to resist a 1-hit so you can survive and heal up and engage in fight. Force the fight from a 1-hit contest to an actual battle of attrition. As such the stat works as intended in WvW/PvP.

 

---

 

One suggestion I've done in the past, is to just accept that no one wants defensive stats, and work them differently.

 

* Reduce the number of different stats you get to 1 per piece of gear.

* Roll one offensive and one minor defensive bonus into each stat.

* So taking Power, also gains you some toughness etc

 

It wouldn't allow you to stack as many offensive stats as you got now, but every offensive stat would be paired with a defensive stat, so you kinda built for both at the same time.

 

Examples:

* 1000 power gives 500 toughness

* 1000 condition damage gives 500 vitality

* 1000 Critical (Precision+Ferocity) gives 500 Healing Power

 

Not perfect, wouldn't actually "fix" the defensive stats, it just gives them out as freebies, while also limiting the offensive setup a bit more, so you have to make some choices for it.

[Einlanzer.1627]

> @"joneirikb.7506" said:

> Just to point out that the defensive stats does serve one important feature in PVE, it allows for players that struggle with the action combat (still learning it, or not so fast reflexes etc) to compensate with defensive stats to find their own comfort level. This part is working as intended, it helps those that have difficulties using active defenses properly/perfectly.

 

 

Literally everyone tries to point this out, but it's really not accurate. Using defensive stats actually makes your survivability worse because the longer a fight lasts, the harder it is for your active defense to keep up. And active defense matters a lot more than passive defense regardless of your Vitality and Toughness ratings. So focusing on killing mobs as fast as possible counter-intuitively _improves_ your attrition in general PvE rather than hindering it.

 

That's why it's broken, and why nobody who knows what they're doing uses defense stats in PvE. it's not only far less efficient for gaining rewards, it's also that slowing fights down actually makes it harder to survive them. **This would not be the case if the attributes and combat mechanics were tuned correctly.** Consequently, both combat itself and character building would have more depth and be more interesting - something that's highly important in this game.

 

It is very much a design flaw within the combat system and PvE encounters, and it really needs to stop having people defend it as if it's working well.

[Opopanax.1803]

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > @"joneirikb.7506" said:

> > Just to point out that the defensive stats does serve one important feature in PVE, it allows for players that struggle with the action combat (still learning it, or not so fast reflexes etc) to compensate with defensive stats to find their own comfort level. This part is working as intended, it helps those that have difficulties using active defenses properly/perfectly.

>

>

> Literally everyone tries to point this out, but it's really not accurate. Using defensive stats actually makes your survivability worse because the longer a fight lasts, the harder it is for your active defense to keep up. And active defense matters a lot more than passive defense regardless of your Vitality and Toughness ratings. So focusing on killing mobs as fast as possible counter-intuitively _improves_ your attrition in general PvE rather than hindering it.

>

> That's why it's broken, and why nobody who knows what they're doing uses defense stats in PvE. it's not only far less efficient for gaining rewards, it's also that slowing fights down actually makes it harder to survive them. **This would not be the case if the attributes and combat mechanics were tuned correctly.** Consequently, both combat itself and character building would have more depth and be more interesting - something that's highly important in this game.

>

> It is very much a design flaw within the combat system and PvE encounters, and it really needs to stop having people defend it as if it's working well.

 

Going to disagree with this. I find that having some stats for D tend to help survivability. IE, carrion (for the right builds), and Captians (again, for the right builds) are super useful and for the Lower investment can really up survival. The problem is that these stat combos are few and far between.

 

The problem is that most stat combos that give some defense are too evenly split... which does lead to a longer time to kill and more likelyhood to die. Power,toughness major is not a good split. Nor is power, hp majors. Nor are soldiers type stats where defense outweights damage.

 

 

[Scipion.7548]

Suggestions of reworked stats :

 

**Direct damage stats :**

- Power : increases your direct damage and increases furthermore critical direct damage.

- Precision : increases your chance of critical hit (direct damage only).

**Condi stats :**

- Malice : increases condi damage.

- Expertise : increases condi duration.

**Defensive stats :**

- Stamina : increases endurance regeneration and health, also decreases the cooldown of your healing skill.*

- Toughness : decreases taken damage, increases threat and also increases the heal you done to yourself with your healing skill.

**Support stats :**

- Concentration : increases boon duration.

- Empathy : increases healing done, healing done to allies is even more increased.

 

*base endurance regeneration must be lowered and base healing skill cooldown must be increased to balance that.

[Trise.2865]

Looks like an impasse. At least when your game comes out, then we'll have an example of "good" encounter design.

[Khisanth.2948]

> @"Nephalem.8921" said:

> > @"DaFishBob.6518" said:

> > Just 2 simple changes need to be made, just 2:

> >

> > 1. More retaliation on mobs and bosses.

> > 2. Retaliation damage is affected by toughness.

> >

> > Done!

> >

> > Can't dodge retaliation, but current retaliation ignores toughness despite being power damage. These changes instantly make toughness needed when fighting more things with retaliation if toughness actually reduced retaliation damage received.

>

> Anet already tried that at start of living story season 2. Got removed pretty quickly because nobody liked it. Playing anything with multi hit attacks was almost impossible. Players were forced to run around until heal comes up again or just spam slow hard hitting attacks.

> Engaging gameplay right?

> Most professions dont have access to boon corruptions. Requiring those will just force them to run sigils to strip them.

> Required boon removal already exists. Take no pain no gain for example and ask your ren friends how much they like camping mallys and doing no dps.

 

I hope you are not referring to the wolf ... that thing doesn't actually have the retaliation boon. It is just something that has the same icon but it is unremovable. IIRC the icon is also slightly larger than the real retaliation icon. They are functionally the same but being unremovable with infinite duration makes a huge difference as well.

 

A full berserker staff ele can pretty much negate all the damage by camping water but that is not very engaging combat either.

 

> @"Hannelore.8153" said:

> I think some people misinterpreted my post. I didn't mean that active defenses are bad, I meant that they are poorly implemented and have too many advantages, for example if a successful dodge only reduced damage by 50%, the game would be alot healthier.

>

> This is how it works in other games, and while I'm glad GW2 tries to be different, they occasionally miss the mark.

 

but then why should passive defenses retain full effectiveness?

 

What is the justification for making passives equal or better than active? That doesn't make any sense unless you want to make a game that cares more about stats than about skill. There are certainly games where as long as you have the right gear with the right stat then skill is mostly irrelevant but I don't think that is what GW2 is trying to be.

[Einlanzer.1627]

> @"Scipion.7548" said:

> Suggestions of reworked stats :

>

> **Direct damage stats :**

> - Power : increases your direct damage and increases furthermore critical direct damage.

> - Precision : increases your chance of critical hit (direct damage only).

> **Condi stats :**

> - Malice : increases condi damage.

> - Expertise : increases condi duration.

> **Defensive stats :**

> - Stamina : increases endurance regeneration and health, also decreases the cooldown of your healing skill.*

> - Toughness : decreases taken damage, increases threat and also increases the heal you done to yourself with your healing skill.

> **Support stats :**

> - Concentration : increases boon duration.

> - Empathy : increases healing done, healing done to allies is even more increased.

>

> *base endurance regeneration must be lowered and base healing skill cooldown must be increased to balance that.

 

Heh. I was always an advocate for bringing back the flavor names for stats. I thought it was dumb that they dumped them way back before launch. We now only have two geared stats that don't have flavor names. Though I like Spirit more than Empathy since it reflects self-healing as well. Not bad ideas at all!

 

I kind of agree there's no reason to separate Ferocity from Power, since the effect of Power is already magnified by critical hits. The only complication is that Precision is often involved in condi builds also since a lot of condi procs are tied to critical hits. They'd probably need to do away with that or rework it in some way.

[Einlanzer.1627]

> @"Trise.2865" said:

> Looks like an impasse. At least when your game comes out, then we'll have an example of "good" encounter design.

 

There's no need for this. I would call this an appeal to authority fallacy. Despite not actually working at Arenant, it's quite possible that I and many other players actually do have ideas that could benefit the game. In fact, there are several systems in the game now that were basically conceived by players and picked up by Anet designers.

[Einlanzer.1627]

> @"joneirikb.7506" said:

> Just to point out that the defensive stats does serve one important feature in PVE, it allows for players that struggle with the action combat (still learning it, or not so fast reflexes etc) to compensate with defensive stats to find their own comfort level. This part is working as intended, it helps those that have difficulties using active defenses properly/perfectly.

>

> From this perspective defensive stats are working as intended, and the only reason we don't use them more for typical "End-game veterans" etc, are because once you're good enough, you don't need them (due to active defenses). This is a problem mainly with encounter-design.

>

> ---

>

> (A) I agree that there are too much of just about everything right now, the changes since 2015/HoT and elites have generally powercreeped, by adding both more damage (mainly damage modifiers) and more active defenses (to battle the higher damage).

>

> I think the best solution to that is a extensive balancing re-work, and go back to the balance/power-level before the 2015/HoT patch, where each class had much less of ... everything. Thus you couldn't stack kitten damage modifiers on top of each others, which made all pvp into "I hit you, you die" which forced more classes to have spammy defenses to compensate for that.

>

> I still do think that the entire stat system in this game is honestly horrible, and should never have been added in the first place. But removing it now would impact the game way too much, would almost be a new game in scope.

>

> (B) It is completely possible to create near undying bunker builds in WvW, primary by using defensive stats like Ministrel. While this naturally also uses all the active defenses as well, I can't quite agree to this. I also think that the "Damage modifiers" affect more than the actual stats in this case. Basically if you remove all the damage modifiers from traits/sigils, and all the might stacks, I don't think berserker gear really is that "over powered".

>

> © Hmm, no real opinions or thoughts. Should mention that with the pact mastery you get a hefty boost to rezzing people, which makes this even more trivial. Rez has always been an issue in the game, from how easy zergs could rez their own in zerg fights in wvw, to 50 people being dead around Tequatl demanding to be hard rezzed instead of porting and running back.

>

> (D) That would actually wreck the stat for PVP/WVW, as the main need for toughness is usually to resist a 1-hit so you can survive and heal up and engage in fight. Force the fight from a 1-hit contest to an actual battle of attrition. As such the stat works as intended in WvW/PvP.

>

> ---

>

> One suggestion I've done in the past, is to just accept that no one wants defensive stats, and work them differently.

>

> * Reduce the number of different stats you get to 1 per piece of gear.

> * Roll one offensive and one minor defensive bonus into each stat.

> * So taking Power, also gains you some toughness etc

>

> It wouldn't allow you to stack as many offensive stats as you got now, but every offensive stat would be paired with a defensive stat, so you kinda built for both at the same time.

>

> Examples:

> * 1000 power gives 500 toughness

> * 1000 condition damage gives 500 vitality

> * 1000 Critical (Precision+Ferocity) gives 500 Healing Power

>

> Not perfect, wouldn't actually "fix" the defensive stats, it just gives them out as freebies, while also limiting the offensive setup a bit more, so you have to make some choices for it.

 

To clarify on your response to D - i think it needs to be a hybrid of division and subtraction. It needs retain a moderate effect on big damage while gaining a more significant effect on minor damage. Your idea is interesting, though I see it as a bit of a band-aid that would still create a lot of work. If they're going to put in a lot of work - they really should just overhaul the mechanics so they work better.

[XenoSpyro.1780]

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> Does anyone have the math on what, for example, switching from Berserker to Soldier does for your offensive and defense?

Sort of. I've done some barebones calculations with a friend in sPVP by taking a series of Engi Pistol power auto attacks (supposedly more consistent damage) ignoring non-crits, writing them down, and then averaging out the numbers, and then doing the same thing with different toughness amulets, and cross referencing the results with one another.

 

I've basically figured out that 0 Toughness = full damage, obviously. 560 = about 10% Damage Reduction, 900 = about 20% DR, 1200 = about 30%. You could maybe factor in a shield (another 61), Thick Skin (180)/Stalwart (240). Difference between Light and Heavy is 291. It's not great, but Toughness itself isn't completely useless, whereas Power is. (TLDR never use Soldier) So all I ask is that if you are going to use Toughness, please at least find a way to crit reliably.

 

Vitality is different in that it's less useful the more base health you have. So it's only really handy for Thief/Ele/Guard, which is where Marauder comes in.

 

Condition damage doesn't have to worry about it as much. Between all the runes/sigils, traits, and countless food options, you can still squeeze out a LOT of condi time even in full Rabid gear. Expertise is a little bit overrated.

 

> @"yusayu.3629" said:

> Stats don't matter for open world

If that's true then you should start running a power dps build in nothing but Nomad gear with Dolyak runes. Yeah have fun with that.

 

 

[joneirikb.7506]

Because defense stats can mean the difference between downed, and almost dead. If a new player doesn't feel good enough about their active defenses, they can take say 3-4 pieces of soldier gear, which allows them some leeway in messing up active defenses.

 

Similarly new players at this level typically couldn't pull of the best damage either.

 

So the defensive stats works as a good "training wheels" for new players, and others that finds the active defenses difficult. And why I often recommend new players to avoid going full zerk, and rather put in a couple of pieces with some defensive gear, until they feel proficient enough in staying alive, then they can take off 1-2 pieces at a time for more zerk.

 

An alive player does more damage than a dead player.

 

Obviously, once a player progressed to the "Skilled Veteran" stage, anything but max damage (berserker etc) is meaningless. Because you don't need them (encounter design). Had you dropped a bunch of good AI enemies in the game, this would change, and all the Snowcrow builds around would be littering the maps dead. :p

 

So sure, it isn't optimal. But even if you make defensive stats much better, they won't be optimal (people will always go for as much damage as they can get away with, which is the entire pvp/wvw-roaming meta).

 

---

 

Which really boils down to the main problem with the defensive stats, they work well in pvp/wvw, where stat sets like marauder has almost replaced Berserker because that extra vitality just helps so much with survival, even for glass builds. But where most players/builds mix in some toughness/vitality or even Heal at times.

 

Why?

 

Because you get killed in pvp/wvw if you don't have some defenses.

 

You don't get killed in PvE (well, not in the same way), because everything is predictable and scripted, most mobs aren't meant to kill you and can barely damage in large numbers etc. Encounter design.

 

Start taking those "trainging npc's" from the pvp lobby room, put those AI's on veteran's around the open world in PvE, let them wander around in small groups here and there, and suddenly defense stats gets a lot more popular. Add GW1 style Charr warbands, with player builds that have synergy, and players will start picking up WvW-Roaming builds that focuses in a good bit of survival with some defensive stats to survive it.

 

Because in PvP/WvW the active defenses aren't enough (in most cases), enemy players that knows what they're doing won't waste their attack skills on your invulnerable period, and rather just wait it out, and hit you with their strongest attacks just as the "Endure pain" expires etc. Bait you out to use your dodge, and hit you with rapid fire and Sic 'em just as it's over. Bring that need to PvE and defensive stats becomes required.

 

---

 

Ugh, sorry, I'm incapable of writing short posts. :( I'll just go to bed now...

[Knighthonor.4061]

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> > @"Cyninja.2954" said:

> > What BRA said:

> >

> > The problem is not that defensive stats scale weaker to offensive stats.

> >

> > The issue is that they are not needed and people, even after 7 years, still try to play a game which is centered around active mitigation like any other MMORPG. Get as tanky as possible and brain afk content, which simply does not work that well.

>

> But, see, a lot of this reeks as defending a broken status quo. If they "aren't needed", or, at least, aren't really ever useful, why do they exist? This is a fundamental balance problem that they need to try to address - even if addressing it means revising the whole combat system.

 

This. Why have Stat combos on gear of useless stats? No player should be allowed to make expensive ascended gear with nothing but useless defensive stats on it. It's shows that this wasn't the original idea behind this concept but just an attempt to go along with the flow, just like Dungeons themselves became. That's bad game design no matter how anybody try to spin it.

[Knighthonor.4061]

> @"Airdive.2613" said:

> The passive defense is actually fine where it makes a difference.

> The thing is, in a game revolving entirely around cooldown times, that one extra second of passive survival, while seemingly unimportant, may let you cast your healing skill again, at which point you're obviously going to survive even longer. With every extra one small second that you live, all your skills become closer to being available again - including defensive and healing ones. It's very easy to overtune passive defenses and send players into a feedback loop of endless survival. And that would be the most boring thing ever, really.

> Either that, or all healing and defensive skills would need a complete overhaul just to achieve the same state we see now (that is, to make it harder to achieve immortality).

 

That's the thing. It doesn't. A player or NPC that was going to one shot you before isn't going to suddenly not one shot you if not two shot you just because you stacking defensive gear stats. It's a poorly thrown together system. I can't defend this bad game design. Should have no defensive stats in this game outside of Traits and Boons in its current form.

[Cyninja.2954]

> @"Knighthonor.4061" said:

> > @"Airdive.2613" said:

> > The passive defense is actually fine where it makes a difference.

> > The thing is, in a game revolving entirely around cooldown times, that one extra second of passive survival, while seemingly unimportant, may let you cast your healing skill again, at which point you're obviously going to survive even longer. With every extra one small second that you live, all your skills become closer to being available again - including defensive and healing ones. It's very easy to overtune passive defenses and send players into a feedback loop of endless survival. And that would be the most boring thing ever, really.

> > Either that, or all healing and defensive skills would need a complete overhaul just to achieve the same state we see now (that is, to make it harder to achieve immortality).

>

> That's the thing. It doesn't. A player or NPC that was going to one shot you before isn't going to suddenly not one shot you if not two shot you just because you stacking defensive gear stats. It's a poorly thrown together system. I can't defend this bad game design. Should have no defensive stats in this game outside of Traits and Boons in its current form.

 

That's not true.

 

If it were true, none of the WvW builds would be built with toughness and vitality. If this were true, using more toughness in say raids or fractals would make no difference. The very fact that the playerbase builds accordingly refutes this.

 

I find it shocking how peolple can spread such nonsense. I dare any one here to tank with and wihtout toughness in pve or run no toughness or 2k toughness im WvW. The difference is huge.

 

The only thing defensive stats can not make up for is complete lack of active skill use. You can't outtank everything, some things yes, but not all.

[yusayu.3629]

> > @"yusayu.3629" said:

> > Stats don't matter for open world

> If that's true then you should start running a power dps build in nothing but Nomad gear with Dolyak runes. Yeah have fun with that.

 

Ahm, I have played through all of both expansions (story & map completion) with my Minstrel Chrono.

 

But open world is mostly meta events etc, and there you just need to tag stuff for which your damage really doesn't matter much.

 

Not to mention, that just running Berserker is still mostly efficient enough for open world content.

 

Again, passive defense shouldn't be viable. Imo it shouldn't even be in the game (for PvE). They could remove all tanking stats from PvE and instead give special action keys or smth to the classes that wanna hold aggro in raids.

[Astralporing.1957]

> @"Knighthonor.4061" said:

> That's the thing. It doesn't. A player or NPC that was going to one shot you before isn't going to suddenly not one shot you if not two shot you just because you stacking defensive gear stats.

Actually, they _won't_ be able to do that. Assuming you will really _stack_ defensive stats. Just as you should expect your dps to suffer if you won't stack dps stats, you should expect the same for defence. And just as your damage can get insane when you specialize for it, so does your survivability.

 

Remember, there's a reason why you can't stack defensive stats in SPvP anymore. It's because they worked way too well. You had builds that could solo defend a point against 2-3 players of equal skill with no problem.

 

Defensive builds work fine. It's just, as i said before, it seems some players would prefer to be able to facetank enemies, while also _not_ losing their dps. And being able to have it all, at no cost, is not very likely to happen, for obvious reasons.

 

[KidRoleplay.3615]

> @"yusayu.3629" said:

> > > @"yusayu.3629" said:

> > > Stats don't matter for open world

> > If that's true then you should start running a power dps build in nothing but Nomad gear with Dolyak runes. Yeah have fun with that.

>

> Ahm, I have played through all of both expansions (story & map completion) with my Minstrel Chrono.

>

> But open world is mostly meta events etc, and there you just need to tag stuff for which your damage really doesn't matter much.

>

> Not to mention, that just running Berserker is still mostly efficient enough for open world content.

>

> Again, passive defense shouldn't be viable. Imo it shouldn't even be in the game (for PvE). They could remove all tanking stats from PvE and instead give special action keys or smth to the classes that wanna hold aggro in raids.

 

o.O Nah. I'd never agree to something like that. People should be able to keep their options of play!

[Rauderi.8706]

> @"KidRoleplay.3615" said:

> Almost all mobs attack something like three times slower than a player, and to compensate, they usually hit harder. They also just sit there as snooze-inducing health sponges where most of the time the only validity against them is high damage output. Heck, a lot of them are unconditionally immune to control effects and conditions too! I mean, if you can't weaken it, blind it, CC lock it, etc., and when it hits you, it takes off almost all of your health bar, it leaves you with lesser solutions (and I guess that's where the "shallow" argument comes into play); kill it before it one-shots you, while slapping on Toughness makes it ... 1.2 shot you.

 

This is so beyond true, it hurts. The worst of it is when Blind/CC doesn't work on a higher-tier mob. Defiance is too all-encompassing and that needs to change. I still resent the Cripple change (or more to point, that moving-damage skills ignored Cripple, so haha no more hard countering those).

 

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> a.) active defense is over-emphasized, with sources of major damage & dodges both being too numerous.

 

Why do we "need" to buff passive defense? This is a more action-combat based game, there are many out there that use passive defenses and don't require player skill at any level of play. Keep this one as a game that requires some thought process (outside big world events).

 

> b.) offensive stats are overpowered. There's too big a difference in the amount of damage you deal based on stats due to the synergistic scaling between power, precision, and ferocity, which condition damage and expertise have been tuned to match.

 

Let me get this. You want to reduce the overall damage of players by reducing the effects of offensive stats and at the same time (look at the point above) you want to reduce active defense to "promote" passive play. Aren't mobs already sponges enough for you?

 

> c.) reviving is too easy.

 

What now? You want to penalize reviving as if players don't already ignore downed players.

 

> d.) toughness uses a simple "divide by" algorithm.

 

So you want to make characters immortal against small hits and at the same time make the hardest hitting attacks even more deadly?

 

Is it time to update combat systems? Maybe, the game needs a refresh. Is it time to update the attributes? No, I wouldn't even want to touch this boring game of yours.

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Knighthonor.4061" said:

> Why have Stat combos on gear of useless stats?

 

Then remove gear with that stat combination from the game. Problem solved. Notice how with the changes proposed by the OP, the useless stat combinations will remain useless. All their changes will do it make it harder for players to survive, using the exact same gear stats they use now.

[yusayu.3629]

> @"KidRoleplay.3615" said:

> > @"yusayu.3629" said:

> > > > @"yusayu.3629" said:

> > > > Stats don't matter for open world

> > > If that's true then you should start running a power dps build in nothing but Nomad gear with Dolyak runes. Yeah have fun with that.

> >

> > Ahm, I have played through all of both expansions (story & map completion) with my Minstrel Chrono.

> >

> > But open world is mostly meta events etc, and there you just need to tag stuff for which your damage really doesn't matter much.

> >

> > Not to mention, that just running Berserker is still mostly efficient enough for open world content.

> >

> > Again, passive defense shouldn't be viable. Imo it shouldn't even be in the game (for PvE). They could remove all tanking stats from PvE and instead give special action keys or smth to the classes that wanna hold aggro in raids.

>

> o.O Nah. I'd never agree to something like that. People should be able to keep their options of play!

 

I mean, defensive stats aren't really an option for PvE anyway, and imo they encourage a more passive playstyle which shouldn't be viable.

[KidRoleplay.3615]

> @"yusayu.3629" said:

> I mean, defensive stats aren't really an option for PvE anyway, and imo they encourage a more passive playstyle which shouldn't be viable.

 

But it still should be an option, I feel. Something in the game that'd make things bearable for those with 400 ping or something for example. But even beyond that, I wouldn't want to be one to dictate how someone else should enjoy or not enjoy what they play by voting to remove something that's already a choice to begin with and doesn't have a bearing on anything outside of maybe whether or not you party with them. I feel like the community does fine as is with who they want to bring along for the party.