Physical damage should not be 5x stronger than elemental/caster - balance needed

there is no chance for balance in this game. there is too many problems to deal with this late in the game. had the majority of problems been dealt with over time, or once factions was released until now, we wouldnt be at the power creep way of balancing that has happened in the mesmer and rit updates.

taking away secondary professions would be the first step. eliminate PvE skills and cons. having too many skills in the game is another problem. you could eliminate over 1/2 the skills in the game and no one would notice or care. as long as some professions can out play other professions using that professions skills there will never be balance in the game.

I find it hard to believe that people are trying to deny how much stronger physicals are, it really is night and day. That being said I kind of like it that way, it lets the player have finer granularity on the difficulty slider - if you want to cruise on easy while eating a sandwich, use your warrior; if you want things a bit harder for a while, play with your caster.

Lol you obviously haven't played this game very long... Wars have been damage dealers from the point they were released. Anyone who says otherwise is bad.

Grief Ele threads have been going on since improved AI and HM was introduced. Players bitched because the game was too easy and this is what you get. You want harder to kill monsters? you got it. You want smarter monsters, you got it. Thank your fellow players for your crappy ele dmg, we all had a part in that.

Is it me or is Guru ungodly slow tonight?

I would disagree at the OP on two accounts:

1. Physicals by themselves are not any more powerful than casters. What can make physicals more powerful than casters is the fact that they have many options for being buffed. However, these buffs (with the exception of the few paragon damage buffs) come from casters. Therefore... im not really seeing what the problem is. Physicals are only more powerful damage wise if they have the buffs that casters offer them. In fact, I wouldn't really even consider that the physical's doing the damage. When an HB warrior attacks a mob, I see it as the necromancer doing the MoP damage and the rit doing the splinter damage. The warrior is just getting the bonus damage from Hundred Blades/Whirlwind. However you choose to look at it, I don't really see how this is a bad thing.

2. If we are going to take into account caster's buffs and all, it is true that physicals do more damage than casters. However, on the other end, Physicals also have more counters than casters. When Im monking, i prefer to see physical enemies because i know that a guardian or aegis will make shutting them down a piece of cake. When it comes to conditions, casters only have to contend with daze while physicals have to deal with the more common blinding and weakness. There are also many more physical shutdown hexes, and those that there are tend to be cheaper and more spammable than anti-caster hexes (compare empathyto backfire). In short, while physicals may have a higher damage potential (but only with the help of friendly casters), physicals also have to deal with more counters.

Blame decades of rpg designers who all thought that getting hit with a sword was > or = being set on fire and hit by a bolt of lightning....


And as people have already pointed out you sacrifice range for damage since energy management has been a non-issue for quite a long time now...

lrn2kite, bring shield sets and use armor insignias

Both can be prevented easily.

I like how OP mysteriously disappeared. But yeah... though i would appreciate more damage (who wouldn't?) I dont quite understand how boosting caster damage 5x is in any way balanced.

Physicals are better 101

1. Auto attacks can be buffed with weapon spells and enchantments.
2. Auto attacks require no energy, less skills + more damage = win.
3. Attacking is fast.

Three reasons why physicals are better damage dealers and 3 reasons why I love that!
I thank ArenaNet for a game that doesn't like tank-n-spank, where damage eating tanks are laughed at.
Battles can't be won with someone eating damage while the rest of the team gets ready for lolBOOM. Real life isn't like that and neither should Guild Wars.
I love the basis that this is built around and apparently a lot of people also like it. Mesmers and necro's shutdown foes and also do armor ignore damage. Rangers and paragons provide ranged physical and melee are close combat. Ele's are support and heal, even in normal mode they rock as support and heal even though nuking works better.

This post made me lol hard.

Try running MoP on a warrior, I tried it on my ranger, a long time ago - the first new secondary I tried after ascenscion - and it did not really work well.

The party needs casters to buff the physicals because without the buffs they don't deal all that much damage. AoE casters need melee to keep foes in the area of effect. One will not work (efficiently) without the other.

This. This 100 times.

Well, isn't that so?

In real life physical traumas and injuries are the first cause of incidental death: human beings can survive severe burning or even being struck by a thunder, while they would die in a matter of minutes with a severed artery, they would pretty much certainly die if eviscerated or heavily dismembered and wouldn't survive being decapitated.

...And then Rigor Mortis sets in

The whole debate misses that there are many counters to physical damage, too. I can attest to how many times I've been horribly frustrated in a game simply because my physical damage dealer was completely shut down with blocking or blindness.

Really, remember Eruption, Throw dirt, Blurred vision (this one especially...), That wossname Dervish skill that lets madness titans block, and tons of others. Not to forget the eternal Empathy, Spiteful spirit and company.

Really - play as a physical damage dealer for a bit, and you'll see that it's not that simple.

Also, remember that a caster that deals damage by increasing another player's damage is still a caster.

Ever seen a Physical team take on DoA HM (or even NM) on a Quad Run?

No. And the reasons are all stated above.

Seriously , flawed logic needs no arguments against. Ranged chars should NEVER deal equal or more damage than Buffedashell melee chars and thats it. Oh , no equal amount of buffs to ranged DPS chars ? cry me a river . Theres also little counters to them so its balanced.com

Yeah because Physicals are "Tab + Space , 1 2 3 4 <foe down> <rest of skills if needed >" and repeat ..... oh wait .

I did yesterday's ZB (Veil in DoA) with an all caster/ranged group that was tankless. Not all caster groups are tank 'n spank. So go away.

Well, to be fair, this only works because of SY, which means there's no damage that needs to be tanked.

I think the points have been pretty well made: physicals are made good by stuff like Barbs, MoP, SoH, GWD and Splinter, which are all spells. The physicals on their own would be kinda RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed. Also, I have a lot of respect for Ensign, but that article was made long before the advent of Shitterflames, Killingarmbraceprices Was Glaive and other stupid things were made so it's rather outdated(notice how it mentions horrible things like Incendiary Bonds that only Orion uses). The thing that makes most physicals stupid is SY!, because instead of better AI and skillbars, HM just gave us big numbers like 450 damage shitterflames bosses that the horrible H/H AI will happily ball for.


EDIT:

Um, I'm pretty sure 95% of Assassins didn't get the sarcasm in that...

Besides the struck by Thunder part (I think you mean lightning) I agree with this. Throw a big ass rock at someone that's on fire he might just get grazed by it. He'll live probably. On the other hand if you smash his head in with a hammer...