Feedback talk:User/Jette/Fix primary attributes

I completely agree with the changes to Critical Strikes and Expertise, they should have done that a long time ago. I also agree with keeping Divine Favor and Energy Storage as they are (the latter thanks to how there isn't a really good way to fix it for now). I'm not sure on the changes for Mysticism (IMO, it would become mostly useless), Fast Casting (are the fast casting builds really imbalanced? It allows for some fun yet underpowered gimmicks, like Flare spam; I honestly don't know if there are still imbalanced builds relying on FC) and Soul Reaping (it should have never worked with spirits, but not working with minions would be a strong nerf to some PvE builds).
I don't like how the primary attribute mechanics work. They don't give a bonus to a character, they are just a requirement. For example, a ritualist using a Restoration Magic spell is going to heal as much as a monk with Divine Favor using a healing spell; and if that were not true, there would be no point in using the Restoration spell in the first place. So for any given effect, a spell will have a longer casting time if it belongs to mesmers, a higher energy cost if it belongs to elementalists, less healing if it belongs to monks, etc. Only in (mostly broken) gimmicks mixing different professions that the primary attribute becomes a bonus (rangers using assassin skills, etc). Erasculio 11:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Pets have no souls! Talamare 11:21, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

;_; y u do dis? —Jette 11:44, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Hate on secondary professions much? I don't see any problem with people being able to use their primary attribute with secondary professions - a bigger issue is that some primary attributes just don't provide enough to compete in their own profession. This kind of wholesale nerfing of secondary professions in general strikes me as throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Draxynnic 12:50, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

It's not a nerf to secondary professions, it's a nerf to secondary profession abuse. The point of secondaries is to use a few cool skills to enhance your primary profession, not to play your secondary better than a character as a primary ever could. —Jette 12:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

(EC) "I don't see any problem with people being able to use their primary attribute with secondary professions": there is. Skills have been balanced for a specific primary attribute, so when used with a different primary attribute, balance goes away. The cost of dervish attack skills has been balanced considering they would always have full cost; a ranger is capable of using those skills at a lower cost, however. So either the dervish skills are too weak on a dervish (as they would cost more than necessary), or they are too strong on a ranger (who would have a better result for each point of energy used). Ranger skills don't have that problem because they have been balanced for Expertise, so anyone else using them is mostly going to suck.

A good example of a secondary profession being used by a primary profession would be a ritualist using Spirit's Strength and warrior skills. The build itself sucks, but what it does is what's important in this context: the secondary profession allows a ritualist to do things it usually can't (attack on melee range) in a build that works better (or less bad : P) as a Rit/W than as a W/Rit. It does not mean the ritualist gets to user warrior skills better than a warrior, though, which is what happens with secondary profession abuse today. Erasculio 13:03, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that it's aimed at nerfing secondary profession abuse, but it's a nerf with a lot of collateral damage - it pretty much cripples all secondary play apart from gimmick builds like physical Ritualists or picking up the odd generally applicable skill like GOLE, Arcane Echo and Splinter Weapon unless you're an Elementalist, Necromancer, or Warrior (people don't play W/X for the measly armour penetration on attack skills - they do it for the extra armour and for the skills in the Strength line. Don't go thinking nerfing the passive effect is going to change that, because it won't). Better to make more targeted changes like was used against the Me/E build, or to prop up the primary profession so that the primary isn't overshadowed, then carpet-bombing the entire dual profession system. Draxynnic 03:01, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, as I mentioned above, I think it would be enough to nerf Expertise and Critical Strikes, without carpet-bombing the others. Those skills have been seen in more than one kind of degenerate builds. Erasculio 16:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

WTF??? Why nerf Mysticism when the real problem is Scythes? --ilr 22:05, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I can only make one suggestion a day. —Jette 22:14, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, You will need to find a better example then Ranger using scythes, Dervishes dont really have much problems with energy either when using scythe skills, especially since their own primary can lead to huge amounts of energy... the real problem of scythe rangers isnt the energy, but their higher defense... another thing they need to do is increase the effect of over capping weapons, your weapon crit increases by like 5-9 till 12, past 12 it increases by about 3 per point... this is a problem because it means a pure class is only a tiny bit stronger then an off class using that weapon, warriors fix by having strength to increase the damage of each hit, assassins fix this by having more crits, rangers fix this by being able to use energy attacks more often, dervish dont really have a way to fix this since their half goes more caster then a physical class... and really how many "bad" common builds do you see these days that are designed to abuse the primary... R/A is nearly the only one I can think of, and thats mainly because of escape, exhausting strike and ranger's higher armor... a assassin primary would easily be able to spam attacks as often as a R/A does... The core of guild wars is the massive amount of builds you can attain by abusing different class combination... this is guild wars, yes some combinations become overpowered and need to be nerfed, and yes some skills will have to be horribly over nerfed because of 2nd class abusing it... but specific skills like can easily be fixed with something like the glowstone change where it scales based on 2 attributes Talamare 22:46, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Or else what? ...the Feds will come looking for you?? (i mean besides that OTHER reason they'd be looking for you,,, U noe which 1). Get real in any case, borderline-functioning energy management is the ONLY Dervishes have going for themselves right now in which case Ele's and Mesmers already do it a LOT better so who cares? --ilr 23:11, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I thought I burned all those photos. Anyway, no. I'm trying not to clog the suggestion pages with all my... you know... suggestions. I probably should though. At least some of them are decent. Also:

"implying dervishes are underpowered"

"WOUNDING STRIKE" —Jette 23:16, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I dont deny some skills need to be fixed Talamare 09:45, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Secndary profession abuse is fixed the way the fixed the Glowing elementalist spells: Tie the skills partially to the primary attribute. Not rendering the primary attribute useless for the other professions. I hate how divine favor affects only some monk spells. MithTalk 00:38, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

this suggestion almost makes me want to make a suggestion like - "Change Divine Favor to 'Whenever you cast a spell on an ally that ally is healed for 3.2per DF'" - In other words make DF viable for all classes & skills that target ally... once that happens every profession primary attribute works with other classes (even ritualist spawning power works with ranger nature ritual and necromancers minions) Talamare 00:41, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

That would make it impossible to balance the Restoration Magic healing spells. Either they would be nice on a ritualist and so overpowered with a monk, or weak on a ritualist and good with a monk. Erasculio 16:17, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Talamare, wasn't that already the case? o.O I thought it gave you rather durable minions. I may be wrong, though. Harrier 16:24, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

While primary attributes do need to be fixed, these changes would severly hamper the use of a secondary for some classes, to the point that they could be useless. On one hand it would fix alot of problems by simply killing off overpowered builds built around secondary abuse, but at the same time alot of non overpowered builds die with them, along with many options in future build creation.--Ozite 23:39, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

mysticism allready sucks it would need more of a buff than nerf 89.166.101.7 18:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Though it doesn`t actually suck, it could use a buff for dervish e-management.--Isaac the Sinful 01:02, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The way you explain this - it seems all use of a secondary profession would be abuse unless you're a primary Monk or Ritualist. I'm not sure if you're coming off that way intentionally or not. Bathory talk 07:41, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Almost all use of a secondary profession is abuse. Here's how I define abuse: when your role looks more like what your secondary is "supposed" to do than what your primary is "supposed" to do, you're abusing your secondary. Nuker takes Weapon of Warding to relieve pressure off of monks and stuff? Fine. Elementalist takes Ether Prism and not even one other ele skill with a bunch of rit heals? Not fine. Warrior brings spear to build adrenaline? Fine. Warrior brings scythe as main attack weapon? Not fine. Ranger... oh, forget it, who am I kidding, if you have a secondary profession as a ranger there's a 99% chance you're abusing it, but then, if you're even using the Ranger class you're abusing something. —Jette 08:04, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Poison spread? :/ Pika Fan 08:14, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

ALL BUILDS ARE ABUSIVE. NO SKILLS, NO ATTRIBUTES, BRAWLING DAGGERS ONLY. FINAL DESTINATION. —Jette 08:21, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

The sad part is, your suggestion and that joke are going in the same direction. :( Bathory talk 08:37, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Going? There's exactly one revision of the suggestion. It was either there to begin with or wasn't. —Jette 08:39, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I meant goal wise. If you take away primaries' usefulness on secondary skills, the variety of builds goes down. From there you're probably just going to continue trimming away the variety of possibilities, limiting what works well until you're playing Kilroy's Punch-Out everywhere. Maybe I'm just being too pessimistic about the suggestion. xP Bathory talk 09:01, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

No, my goal is to eliminate abusive gimmicks that promote bad play while rendering skillful play obsolete. That, presently, is the goal of all of my feedback suggestions, with the exception of GW2 suggestions and the one about Tolkano's weapon skins. I'm not trying to kill every build out there, there should be some variety -- actually, with over 1,000 player skills, there should be a lot of variety. If anything I'm trying to increase the number of viable builds, because right now there are maybe a dozen types of teams you see in Heroes' Ascent and GvG combined. Over 1,000 skills and only 12 valid team builds seems like a problem to me. —Jette 09:36, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I do agree on destroying or rather nerfing gimmicks that are better than a good or great pure profession only build, I do not agree on that all gimmicks should be removed. Linear play is not for GW or well wasn't it probably has come to that though haven't it? IMO if professions primaries were to work only for their own attribute there would be no real reason to have a second profession making it a copy of a lot of other games. Besides it would be unfair to some professions like the paragon and the dervish that has nowhere near as many viable skills as the core professions do. Get the devs to add 30 skills to each profession per campaign before the profession was introduced then your suggestion would be more reasonable.--√iktor(contribs) 09:29, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Since I'm pretty partial to rangers bad

“

For each rank of Expertise, the Energy cost of all of your bow attacks, Rituals, touch skills and Rangers skills are decreased by 4%. Several skills, especially those related to Energy costs and skill recharge times, become more effective with higher Expertise.

— in-game description

y/n? --Riddle 17:57, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

n –Jette 18:20, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

=( --RIDDLE 18:25, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Rangers are the only ones with bow attacks. Wouldn't ranger skills cover them anyway? Bathory talk 21:02, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I was trying to prevent it from completely barring out secondary synergy (e.g. Mending Touch) while hampering some of the worse offenders (e.g. Sway (pre-Escape-nerf), spear chuckers, etc.) --RIDDLE 21:12, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Mending touch can go suck on it, tbh. Rangers just use Antidote signet. NuVII 15:22, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Epertise is fine as it is. The only attributes that could use some fixing are:

• Divine Favor: It should also affect spells of other professions that heal or protect "other allies", but not self.
• Mysticism: It should have something to buff dervishes fighting capabilities in the middle of a crowd of enemies. Like slowing down adjacent enemies when they have enchantments on or drawing them close when enchantments end on them.
• Energy Storage: Each rank should add even more awesomeness to the already awesome elementalists. Something in the lines of instant death to anyone that dares to approach them without using /bow every 10 seconds, chances to instant kill foes within earshot to all their spells, flight, total immunity against anything, being able to use level D&D Epic spells, and the message "you have been awesomely killed" shown to anyone they defeat. Oh, and, of course, being able to kill non-elementalist party members.

Yeah, that should do. MithTalk 19:45, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

You are trying to break them further. Divine favor is BALANCED ffs. Or are you being sarcastic, because your mysticism and estorage suggestions sound like 5 yr old ramblings. Haru 01:10, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Some of your ideas actually only fix some of the builds, but they don't fix the actual problem of PA's being a requirement to play the class. If you restrict expertise to ranger skills, then you NEED expertise to use ranger skills. PA's are supposed to be a bonus, and you have to find a way to make them bonuses without rigging that profession's skills to work around their PA. ~Shard 01:28, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Nuke, you can't Ant Sig a buddy in need, but you can Mtouch a vulnerable friend. --RIDDLE 05:29, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I like to mtouch vulnerable friends.
I agree, Shard, but doing that would require a much bigger update with actual game design talent. I'm suggesting this because at least some of these ideas are theoretically easy to implement, which I try to make all of my suggestions be so that ANet is actually able to use them. For getting so little done in-game they sure claim to be very busy. –Jette 13:46, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, because touch range condition removal is the best kind.

The only thing Mtouch has over antidote is the cast time, and lol if you get dshotted as a ranger.

The energy cost of quite a bit of ranger skills need to come down - maybe have expertise reduce recharge as a bonus? NuVII 15:12, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

2 DShot, f yeah –Jette 15:13, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Not that much of a bonus. NuVII 15:14, 13 October 2009 (UTC)