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

Great Dwarf Weapon=gg.

Well then, why not tell me how your Ritualist will increase the damage of Lamentation?

If melee can be imbued but caster can't, that gives an advantage the way I see it.

I didn't say melee characters need to be reworked. I said that their damage needs to be lowered. In what way, I don't care.

And GW1 is being reworked all the time. Am I the only one seeing that? Whenever someone suggests something the reply is "oh ANet won't change the game now". But game is changing all the time.

Did SoH give so high damage bonus all the time in GW history? No.
Did Splinter/Ancestors exist in Prophecies? No.
Did Consumables exist until recently? No.
Did Asuran Scan / BUH / etc exist until recently? No.
Did HM exist from the beginning? No.
Etc

It's not that nothing changed for casters either, don't get me wrong. But IMO gap was increasing in favor of melee, more and more, because gains were exponential. Mesmer got linear buffs, like, skill x does more damage. But melee got exponential, skill x (or autoattack) does % more damage.

I hate to sound like a teacher in first grade, repeating myself 10x before people stop posting same refuted things all the time.. but here it goes:

"This thread isn't about making profession X do what profession Y does. It's about toning down what profession X does so that what profession Y, Z, C and S do is more worthwhile. And not just that, even if professions Y Z C and S never existed, too much damage is just too much damage."

Ok now you or someone else can go on and repeat 5 more times that people want to make all professions be the same.

You're missing the key part which we pointed out.

Let me take a chalk and write it down on the blackboard:

..more than compensates.

The problem is when it does not.

Why don't you take a mesmer and try roleplaying in PvE ha? Go fight most bosses, try a bit of Diversion on them or similiar skills, go try interrupt Duncan, or maybe if you have a lot of time play energy drainer.

When I want to roleplay a mesmer I go to presearing or PvP.

Roleplaying a mesmer in general PvE looks like this: "I'm a master of illusion - I am deluding myself that I'm doing a lot of useful things but I'm not. I possess great mental powers - I use half of my skillbar to steal skills from the enemies skillbar because I bet with assassin whether he can kill the taget before I steal 3 skills from it. I use my super shutdown skills in a skilled way and after only 30 seconds I have completely blocked this foe. He is so helpless. Other 7 foes in the group were in these 7 seconds killed by assassin."


Yeah. Enjoy your roleplay.

Good, then take your own tip and go elsewhere, this thread does not debate fun factor.

Here comes another "QFT" person.

What's a good point? That in thread that debates about X, worthwhile posts consist of "X isn't the only thing that matters!" and silly "QFT" and "good point" one liners?

Ok so physical damage doesn't matte.
Guild Wars doesn't matter.
This world doesn't matter.
People don't matter.

And what now? Will you send a formal letter to forum administrators to shut down the forum because the forum doesn't matter?

----


The rest is not worth commenting.

And I have nothing more to add to this discussion.

I don't need lamentation, I have SoS, in which I could solo most non-Hm areas of the game. I can also do most elite areas as an SoS or DwG. I don't need useless skills to be buffed when I have some of the most Op skills at my disposal.

In the past year mesmers, rits, and necs have had some significant buffs to their skills. Compare that to just Wars and Sins on the melee side. Rits and mesmers now use completly new builds, can you say that to wars and sins? HB and Mobius+SY still dominate.


I will say it again, you can't be serious saying casters haven't been updated at all. YOU of all people should know better than to say that.

Why? It's their role to do damage. What's wrong in them doing their job properly?

So, you want to make melee less efficient, so that they're down to the inefficiency of casters at doing damage? What for? Envious much? Regret the wrong choice you made when you chose the Mesmer class, not allowing you to play the damage-dealer role?

Well, if you keep on repeating that casters don't do enough damage when compared to physicals, when they were never meant to, you're asking to make caster behave like meleers, and that while retaining all the other advantages they already have. Pure nonsense.

I'm all for more damage for casters. As long as they're stripped of all their secondary utility:

- No conditions & AoE for Elementalists
- No distrupion, e-denial, reactive hexing for Mesmers

And so forth. Also introduce enough counters for casters, and force them to do without ranged damage.

Turn them into meelers. It's the one and only way: 10 warrior classes with differently coloured bars and differently styled armors.

No thanks...

I do, I play the game in a strategic way and enjoy it. If I want to /faceroll it, there are other classes for that. I suggest you do the same. Learn what variety means.

So you're playing a class you don't enjoy. Secondaries are there for a reason: play it melee as you're doing, as meleers are the damage dealers here by design, or learn to play the class as designed and forget about big damage and efficiency, because that is some other professions' role.

@Cuilan - no, but a team of professions not including Mesmers can.

So physicals deal more damage. That's the point. Physicals can buff themselves. Also it's 145 DPS vs. 41 DPS, more than 3 times a difference, and it was done unsupported. Argue that physicals take time to run to targets, can get snared, can be blinded, blah blah blah, but it is still more than 3 times the damage. Whether or not it compensates is your call.

If you support redressing the damage output difference between physicals and casters, you support the OP. The best way to redress the damage difference may be up to debate, but if you agree in principle to redress it, that's all that's needed.

PS: Empty skillbars can get the job done, so they're not useless ... hm.

With that attitude you don't care about balance either, so why are you posting?

PS: actually with that attitude the game is very well balanced right now, because every class can clear every area of the game. If you don't care about speed, then there's no imbalance between classes.

@Charr -

I tried it. Comments on the build shouldn't be in this thread though. I'll post them here when I get to it:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/m...t10438929.html

You could say block or miss renders the entire build of any Warrior / Dervish / Assassin worthless (well, most of them anyway), too. Do you therefore claim that Warriors / Dervishes / Assassins should not be meta?

Then you're doing it wrong, video games are about having fun unless they are meant for career training but since magic doesn't exist, ill wager that doesn't apply here...

.... im amazed , how is this still going on lol ?

Sorry to bust your bubble but theres no discussion here. You and all ppl that agree with you ( i think ... 2 ppl maybe ? whatever ) are just in denial and nothing else.

Soz , thats BS. Anyone can throw random numbers there. Theres no way in hell 145 DPS can be taken as an average of physical damage , not even unsupported ( wich means NO buffs or SELF buffs ). Also , i want to point something you seem to forget ...... Rangers and Paragons are also Physicals so yes , you are wrong.
If you mean only melee physicals , they have to deal with a lot of BS that casters dont .... theres only a VERY few hexes that can .... lets say "piss off" them when using spells/signets and ONLY one condition ( daze ) that doesnt even SHUT them down , it justs doubles casting times and makes them interruptable when they got hit ( so you got to hit them , unlike blind , snares , weakness ).

I dont think theres more than 5/30 ppl here that supports redressing physical damage output diff .... just because is not needed. It is balanced.
Make weakness lower damage by 20% , snares reduce speed by 33% max , blind miss chance 50% or less and then we can "talk" about lower the DPS boost skills ... not the regular physical/melee damage.

PS: Please , turn it into a poll to see results , something like :

Does melee/physical damage need to be toned down ?
1- Yes , regular skills damage.
2- No , only skills that boost melee/phys damage
3- Hell no , cry me a river casters !

3- Hell no , cry me a river casters !


(and I play mesmer primary as the class is meant to be played too)

Casters can buff themselves too:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/%22By...27s_Hammer!%22 <- Increases damage
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Intensity <- Increases damage
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Elemental_Lord <- Boosts elemental attributes (indirectly increases damage)
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Elemental_Power <- Boosts elemental attributes (indirectly increases damage)
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shadow_Sanctuary <- Gives a defensive boost with a penalty (Blindness) that's pretty much irrelevant to caster classes
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mindbender <- Reduces recharge times of Spells

Just to name the few that came first into my mind...

On top of everything, Casters can still buff their party. In a teamwork-based game, this is significant to me. GW is not a game made of individuals and individual performances. If you don't stick this in mind and keep up with this stubborn mania of protagonism, you'll always be disappointed.

Hold on, you said what I typed is wrong.

Very well, how do you buff your SoS except with Painful Bond?

We were talking about multiple buffs, not power of individual skills.

Where did I say that? I said that casters are buffed linearly, while melee get exponential buffs.

Your logic:

If mesmer had Psychic Instability skill that knocks everyone down in earshot range for 1 minute, you would say there's nothing wrong with that because they are doing their job which is shutdown.


The rest of your post I didn't even read, and will skip next one as well. If you fail at so basic logic and thinking, I prefer to read a good book instead.
Same with the other posts.

Your comparison could have made some sense if physicals could insta-kill enemies with one single skill of their own. They don't, they pretty much cannot do it even with all the buffs available unless you play a NM istance with Lv20 enemies, and then again, it would be the whole party's achievement, as there is no possible character in game who could self-buff with buffs from 3-4 secondary professions, let alone pve-only skills.

Oh, but I fail at so basic logic. And you tell that to me... Pfff...

Next time, try making comparisons that make sense before questioning other people's logic. Thanks.

Don't read them then, this attitude had most of your other threads on this topic closed, as you obviously don't want to discuss anything, you just want to complain about the game not revolving around your ego and are easily pissed off when other forum members prove you have little to no argument by providing reasonable counter-arguments.

Someone should start a post in offtopic forums on most succesful troll of 2010, my vote would be for The Josip

1) Melee doing damage is part of the flavor of guild wars
2) Elementalists are the only class where this argument can even apply, as they are the only caster class where doing damage is part of thier identity, and even then most of thier skills are support based skills, all of the other caster classes were designed as support classes first.
3) You play a strong, but very unefficient setup because you want mesmers to be stronger eles, and cant look at how skills synergize. The mesmer class is built best to compliment a team build, not be the center of the team build. That is why it is so difficult to make a PvE mesmer bar for solo or H/H play. You have shown a huge difficulty understanding this, you should probably roll something else, you will never be any good at mesmer till you do.
4)There have been dozens of good points at why melee physicals do good damage, and you ignore every single one. Never join a debate team you will cause your side to fail every time because you refuse to both listen, and refute an argument in any other way than ignoring the person or calling them stupid.
5) Casters and melee do NOT need to do the same amount of damage, this is NOT world of warcraft or other traditional MMOs where you play a solo game, this is guild wars where you play a team game. Hence the game is balanced around team, and not class. How does a class fit into a team? is the class so overpowered that people will bring more of that class to a team always than other classes (note that speed clears do not fall under this, as they are built to perform a specific set of actions, and only certain combinations of damage and support can meet them)
6) stop trolling your own thread

)))))

BUH melee have too, and these "buffs" you listed perfectly serve my point

See people, these are casters buffs. Look at them carefully. These "buffs" will nerf you as a caster.

It would be best if you just dropped the whole thing if that's how you feel.

I'll leave you with that rather than close this, for now.

What point? Care to explain?

They were posted to show that buffs are available for casters too. Are they insufficient? Then, read the thread you skipped and go check why physicals were designed on purpose to deal more damage then casters.

It was explained in details multiple times. Maybe skipping posts wasn't a good idea after all.

Then check this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamwork <- Interesting read, you might well realize that GW is supposedly played by 2-4-6-8-12 team members and not just by your egomaniac Mesmer character.

And this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_division <- Casters aren't focused on damage because of other abilities physicals usually lack. Sorry, you can't have the cake and eat it. We can debate the usefullness of these alternative abilities with such a damage-focused mindset so widespread in the game, but they are there for a simple reason: variety. Not everyone cares about efficiency or the magnitude of yellow numbers or the time of completion of missions. Some professions such as the Mesmer are for these kind of players. Don't like it? Don't like an insightfull but less efficient playstile? You obviously don't like the Mesmer profession, so why play it? Play a physical, or play your Mesmer as a physical. Or play WoW, or any other single player game where you can play protagonist.

Hold on again, did anyone in this thread say buffs are not available to casters?

1. Buffs to increase caster damage are few
2. Buffs that do increase caster damage are so weak that more often than not they nerf the build (since you can't take some better skill).

Thread's ripe for closing. I can have monologue with myself and the byproduct will be more beneficial in every way.

For eles, a simple solution comes to mind.................either

Add 2 points of +damage (armour ignoring) per lvl in ES to offensive spells

or

Add 1.5% AP per lvl in ES to offensive spells

Problem solved, powercreep lives!

It's ironic how you keep on ignoring the relevant parts of each post. Buffs to increase caster damage are fewer and weaker for the reasons stated in this whole thread. I suggest you to go back and check them out again.

"Balancing" in this field isn't necessary, the current state of the game is pretty much the byproduct of the original design. Blame players for being unable to care about anything but yellow numbers. I don't care and enjoy my Mesmer in its complexity much more than steamrolling through the game and thank the developers for giving us alternatives playstiles in the form of different professions. Variety is good for me, I don't care about efficiency in entertainment.

Casters have viable (and often ridicolously overpowered) options that don't even require buffs to work. Thanks goodness balance doesn't always follow this idiotic obsession for damage and efficiency, the game is broken and flattened enough as it is.

As an aside....just a month ago there I saw some threads/posts trying to get critical agility and the Jagged Strike/Fox Fang/Death Blossom chain nerfed, and surprisingly got quite a bit of support (although the thread is now dead).

I also recall some complaint about Warrior's Endurance.

Geez people, make up your mind!

Maybe its just me, but the first thing that came into my mind when reading this thread was the "broken" stuff like Asuran Scan and the like, and I think those skills should be included as part of the equation.

If it isn't abundantly clear at this point, he's just making up bullshit arguments because he has no actual valid argument.

Close this shit.

Pretty much this. He is just answering questions no one asked and asking for proofs to something thats well known and ignoring any response with a general childish "i dont care what you say lalalal ( hands on ears ) , you fail llalala" .

"The rest of your post I didn't even read, and will skip next one as well. If you fail at so basic logic and thinking, I prefer to read a good book instead.
Same with the other posts." <- Thats what all ppl here should do with your posts Josip , bye.

PS: Yeeeeah .... read a book .

most ignorant dumbasses usually do

But in PvP you opponents don't move 50% fater then normal in PvE HM they do.
Have you ever tried to kill a kiting monk in HM with a melee?

They targret monk with that many protection because of 2 reasons:
a) They "know" that warrior in front will not die unless monk healing him dies before him
b) They recognise that the spells the monk is casting are protection/healing and "know" that other members of the party will die a lot easier is he/she is dead.
They targret other casters because they "know" that low AR/HP targret will die a low faster and if they kill enough of those the entire party will fall.

Those balled up mobs will still be there in 1 second it takes to cast Empathy or Drain Enchantment.

In order to kd a mob with GDW you actually have to hit it, and if a mob is kiting you in HM without some serious snare you will not catch it.

You could but you would be wrong.
In normal Warrior / Dervish / Assassin build occasional block or miss of a single skill will reduce your damage but not by much, in your build occasional block or miss of D-slash renders the entire build useless.
There is a reason why D-slash isn't warriors most popular elite.

This thread in a way mirrors why a vast number of people refuse to pug in game anymore, we have people hell bent on their way of thinking is correct, no variation and a refusal to see any other point but their own.

So dialogue continues in a circle untill people rage the group

I like how you ignored 95% of my post; figures.

You pretty much missed my point. Thanks anyway.

Where do you get this logic? I'm not trying to win some race when I play, but I can see who the profiteers are, and that affects everyone, regardless of how you play.

Again? Do you think I play in a sandbox? It's an MMO. Speed clears have huge impacts on the economy, and everyone is a part of it. Saying that is kind of elitist.

And @Gill, about the caster buffs, they are summed up as too short/weak.

@Josip/Jeydra
I don't know what lead you to believe casters need self-buffs or that they should have similar damage to physicals. Casters don't need self-buffs to be good and if they had similar damage to physicals, physicals would be pretty much useless.

Your only 'support' for the ideas that mesmers are bad is the fact that they can't vanquish Old Ascalon as quickly as a physical and the (wrong) idea that shutdown isn't good in PvE. It isn't an issue if mesmers are slower in low-end areas; they're good (and just as fast) in every area that can't be completed with an empty skillbar and no heroes, which is the vast majority of the game and the only parts that really matter. And shutdown is good in PvE (except in the aforementioned areas), but you won't admit it because you're too bad to realize it, you have an insatiable craving for mesmer buffs, or you want one class that can do everything (due to either a laziness or a false interpretation of 'balance'). I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the last two.

Yea, they did that to my posts, too. I'm offended, tbh.

Their basic argument strategy seems to be:

1) Ignore valid points.
2) Act pretentious in an attempt to make it seem like they know what they're talking about.
3) Misinterpret posts. They probably do this on purpose so, at a glance, it almost looks like they're actually refuting something.

/signed

Yes I did...Easily. They react so ridiculously slowly that it almost didn't matter that they move "50%" (more like 33%) faster. Not to mention melee can easily bring cripple and/or knockdown. And sins have their own permanent 33% speed boost.

As for the targeting, its still retarded how they target one class and one class only. Even in PvP people don't always target the monk, they switch target, and that includes the warriors.

Alrighty then.

Closed for more than obvious reasons.