Degen/Regen cap

With the proposed HM update (increased health) comming degen/regen will become less viable than they are atm. Everyone knows That in HM there is little reason to pack degen/regen.

Since single target degen is basically useless at this time, once the update rolls around it'll be worse. So, inturn maybe increase the total degen cap to 15-20pip?

AoE degen provides more of a pressure situation and is usually (although not always) coupled with added dmg. Still, maybe an increase 12-15pip range?

For regen I'm not exactly sure how to fix the issue. Foes in HM with elevated health will have any regen skills capped at 10pip become basically wasted skills. Since we will not have elevated health the skills will have different affects, so I'm not sure how to remedy that.

On a final note....this is for HM...and since there is no HM in PvP...this is obviously intended in terms of PvE only.

I see what you're getting at Essence. But, its Hard Mode, to change skill mechanics for Hard Mode to make it more viable is kind of counter productive. It's like, playing a game on the hardest difficulty, but using God Mode to make it easier. I don't know, I'm not that smart, that's just how I'm looking at it.

Maybe just make regen/degen heal/take 3 points of health per second intead of 2.

Completely not. It's still the same regen, giving back the same amount of hp in the same time as it used to. Leaving a mob with +7 regen for a while in the new HM will give him the same amount of hp as in the current HM, requiring the same amount of extra damage to be dealt.

As i said in the other topic, earlier:
... degen seems to become totally worthless in PvE (from player perspective), though it's laughable even now. But that's an issue to be addressed after the original update kicks in. Removing the '-10 cap' from degen effects in HM might do the trick - both allowing players to apply much more pressure, as well as making mobs with degen, especially AoE degen, much more deadly, requiring more cautious approach.
The cap might not be removed completely, but it certainly would require some tweaking. For new HM PvE only, of course.

@Warcry - i believe the amount of degen brought by players would still be comparatively low and direct damage-dealing will still be superior - faster and more reliable. Removing/altering the degen cap would actually benefit the mobs rather than the players, making HM harder.
That said, strictly /notsigned for altering the regen cap, unless for monsters only (to make the game even harder and less gimmicky).

I agree with this. It would be a far better solution for fixing degen/regen in PvE, and although it would screw over PvP... oh well. PvP is already screwed over anyway and barely anyone plays it. In PvE, however, I would like to see skills like conjure nightmare and healing breeze see some use.

I know what ur talking about.... I am really tired of this dev teams mentality of if one thing is over powered we got to make it all over powered... when one damage type is over powering u nurf the problem.. not make all other damage types more effective.... Regen/degen was never used as a primary means of damage or healing in the first place...

Hard mode is being turned into normal mode with bigger numbers...

One of the few benefits of this update is that it will curve some farming builds that depend on degen. Taking away one of the few situations less armor and more health may prove more difficult is not a good idea for hard mode.

The only change I would make to degen is increase the cap by 1 for every 100 current HP over 501HP that target creature has, meaning that you'll have to hit 601 current HP to get an extra max possible pip on you (you'll get just the usual 10 max pips with 600 HP), and one more every 100 HP more up to 20pips when the creature has over 1601HP, and then it wouldn't increase more, being 20 pips the max possible stacking under any condition.

Since thins change considers the CURRENT health, not the max, the pip cap would decrease along the creature's health, and go back to 10 when the creature has 600 current HP or less.
And, of course, players would still need to stack up enough degen thelselves to make the most of that increased cap on creatures with more health.

That way, it would make degen more viable for HM monsters with increased health, while affecting as always those with 1...600HP health.

For many of us HM is not hard, yet for many it actually is. For those players who are either new to the game or simply just don't play as much as we do, I feel there is no reason to make things harder for them. We as those who find HM easy have to option of making it harder ourselves. Unfortunately there is a mindset that perceives that option as not possible and that only anet can make the game harder. Run DoA/slavers/UW/FoW/WoC/WiK HM w/o full team, w/o gimmicks, w/o pve skills, with only paras, with incomplete bars. Any number of options may be used to create harder gameplay. However there are only limited numbers of options to make it easier.

I know for a lot of us the game becomes highly redundant and relatively stale. This will happen to everything over time...it's just the way it is. For me the best counter to this (in terms of this game) is skill changes. Tbh idc what kind of changes they are nerfs or buffs. Both will shake things up enough to renew my interest.

~~~~

My main concern deals with degen....a select farming builds aside (which won't really be hindered by the changes either way..they will simply take x more secs, not be any harder). Degen might as well not even exist for general play once this update comes out.

The only reason I mention regen is b/c if u change degen you'll have to address regen. ex) I cast -15pip degen on foe...it casts +10pip regen on itself....that regen is not really working

Even if the cap was raised, it would still be inferior to instant damage.

However if degen wasn't currently obsolete, but was about to become so due to the changes then I'd probably agree with you.

This sounds like an excellent idea. It would not ruin pvp, and it would make degen worth bringing in a pve scenario, yay. You should post this in the suggestions forum imo. I don't know if it would be good enough to replace instadamage skills but it would make degen far less useless than it is now.

Increasing the Degen cap won't make degen better, it only makes STACKING degen less useless. That has never been the issue.

If the degen cap was the weakness preventing degen builds from being good, players would be bringing -10 degen + direct damage skills. The problem is that direct damage is so infinitely better (and will become even better with the lack of armor), that any degen at all is useless in comparison to direct damage skills.

To give an example, even if we remove the stacking cap entirely an entire character build dedicated to degen might be able to hit -30 Degen with all skills active on a single target. That might sound nice, but then you realize that they are equal to an autoattacking warrior with SoH.

To summarize, the degen cap means absolutely nothing when degen isn't something worth stacking in the first place, and will probably be another 30-50% more useless to use after the enemy health is buffed. As long as even -1 degen isn't worth bringing, letting players stack -20 degen isn't going to make bringing degen better


To actually fix degen, you need to buff degen damage, not the stacking cap. I would say that for PvE enemies every pip of degen causes -1% of health damage per second. Mathematically, this is about a 2-2.5x buff to degen damage for lvl 20 enemies compared to baseline health (-10 degen on a player causing about 4-5% damage per second). It will also scale up on higher level enemies.

Do the same with regen, as its merely the opposite side of the same coin. Regen will be nerfed just as hard in the upcoming update, and it gives a cool 20% HP per second difference between max degen and regen.

What to do with boss monsters is another question, could probably cap the damage/healing caused by degen each second at 100 for the full 10 pips. A small handful of skills will need to be nerfed (mesmer PvE skills mostly), but otherwise I believe this would be well balanced for whatever its worth after Eles become gods of destruction next week.

This makes the most sense

But either way,
unless something drastic and game changing takes place degen is a long way away from being Very usefull in PVE HM teams.

The damage is just too slow and costly for Hard Mode, when killing fast is usually the aim for "the team".

I'd like to see it updated for this decade to be honest, but i don't see an update actually affecting its use in HM much at all.

Yes this "proposed update" might be interesting? if O_o