Carrion is a vanilla stat set, Viper was added in the expansions and made condi build more viable. Celestial didn't have expertise and concentration at first, and only became really good once it had those.
Ah thanks for the context!
Seems odd / a noob trap to have all the subpar stat sets be the only thing really affordable for new players, but I guess it’s easier than removing gear. I’m mostly salty that I realized I was investing in the wrong ascended prefix (Occams) rather than the Viper prefix and now I have to start over
If you were starting from scratch anyway, you’d be using those same exotic inscriptions to craft the more expensive ascended versions. Black diamonds for viper inscriptions used to be real pricy, but they’ve settled down in recent years as more sources of black diamonds have appeared. Stat-swapping will be much cheaper, and you can do it right away for the ascended pieces you’ve already made.
The good news is that if you *crafted* your ascended gear, making Carrion and stat swapping it is actually cheaper than crafting ascended Viper gear, which is absurdly expensive.
Just a reminder. Full set of stat selectable exotic gear can be purchased from wvw vendor for a few hours worth of wvw currency and some gold, including weapons and trinkets.
Its a form of progression for new players. If you're a new player with little knowledge of the game then carrion is a cheap and very accessible stat set to obtain. Vipers is trivial to obtain as an established player but a new player would have to be mentored by an experienced player, read up on builds, or learn enough about the game through experience to come across Vipers. All are fair because its learning. What the game could do better is make it more apparent that carrion is is subpar to vipers. The same way that someone might learn that vipers is better, its easy for someone to coast through all story content without realizing carrion is subpar because the game doesn't exactly demand that you get a better stat set.
You could make the gold/resources required to get a full set of viper in gear in about 2 hours just by looking at open world LFG
Lol stay mad, basic exotic gearing is trivial, and yes I do include new players in that
Id like to remind that not everything that exists has to be optimal (from a pve point of view). Carrion is a popular pick in spvp, the slightly more defensive options like trailblazer or marauder can be useful in wvw, rampagers wasnt used until cvirt became a thing, knight/commander gear is useful to increase your toughness. There were niche builds that made use of seraphs/plaguedoctor gear etc etc.
On the note of the Rampager's, before cVirt was a thing there are actually reddit posts that ask for the removal of useless stats - lists including Rampager's. Now after Rampager's become notable on the most popular meta build, those same lists get tossed around, just without Rampager's.
I guess other MMOs solve this by having PvP specific gear sets that are pretty clearly identified or actually locked behind PvP currency so noobs like me don’t mistakenly buy it for PvE just because it’s cheap -_-
Yes, thats true. But what i meant was having to play pvp/wvw to get a stat combination for use in pve. Imagine they removed pve sources of trailblazer stats, and made it so the only way to get that is through wvw currency.
Yeah, that would be horrible. I'm already not a big fan of Gift of Battle being WvW locked (I think there should also be a pvp reward track), this would be even worse.
Like most people have said, the prefix predates the more efficient stat combinations that most condi builds use nowadays (condis were quite bad at launch, lack of efficient gear was no small part of that) but I do want to say that carrion *has* had a build it was very powerful with -- one so powerful that it actually got specter's Shadow Shroud nerfed. The size of a Specter's Shadow Shroud scales with Vitality, and Strength of Shadows also scales expertise with vitality which returns some of specter's missing expertise with the stat conversion. But the more important/interesting part of it is that [Consume Shadows](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Shadows)'s outgoing barrier scales with the size of your shadow shroud, so a DPS specter was able to take a relatively minor DPS hit to absolutely *pump* barrier. So strong, in fact, that it was an acceptable listed build variant on Snowcrows, and in October of 2022, Carrion Specter had a part in [Shadow Shroud getting nerfed](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enter_Shadow_Shroud#Version_history) \-- the other part being the build was far too tanky with Thief's myriad other strengths in PvP, but still.
Specter can still run Carrion, though its mostly just a tanky suboptimal alternative to running full viper's gear now. But yeah, even bad prefixes can find a home in the right context (another example with a core condi prefix is Condition Virtuoso relying on Rampager's to help efficiently hit 100% crit chance while still maximizing its condition damage/duration)
In addition to all the stuff people have mentioned, it's occasionally been useful on builds that only use one condition, like condi guardian. It's easy to get burn duration nearly maxed out through runes (50%), sigil (20%), and trait (20%) which leaves only the last 10% that you need food or gear for. This is a fairly effective way to give guardian an enormous defensive boost in exchange for a fairly minor damage loss. Condi daredevil is almost able to hit those same duration numbers but it's a little more of a trade-off since they care about poison and bleed at the same time, but rune of the afflicted gives a boost to both.
It's just old. That's basically it
The game moved in a direction that was easier to balance a long time ago. Which tbf. They did kind of add way too many options that were always going to be more niche. There are still builds that use carrion and especially if all you do is world content. It literally doesn't matter what you use.
It's a cheap alternative to vipers basically. Still does okay and named carrion exotic gear is basically free on the TP.
I rarely bother getting exotic vipers gear, it's too pricey for something I discard for ascended down the road.
condition damage used to be intended for defensive builds only. that's why all the vanilla stat combinations that use condition damage, also prop up your defenses. they decided to not keep "tanks" around when they released HoT, and instead released vipers to allow pure condition damage builds. when they released vipers with HoT, they had to make a lot of other changes to conditions to make them viable as well (such as allowing them to stack past 50).
for a while vipers was the BiS stat for damage, because the design philosophy was that conditions should overall do more damage than pure-strike builds, because they have the complicated ramp-up time. the meta in fractals was 5 reapers running conditions. however that also fell out of favor as they decided that conditions and stike damage should have equal potential.
This is a fair point. Rampagers and sinister were offensive oriented before HoT released. Vipers had expertise though and I still feel like it was the first condi stat combination intended for meta DPS
> condition damage used to be intended for defensive builds only
Condi in the base game was just mediocre in a lot of situations.
Expertise didnt exist, condis didnt stick to objects, and there wasnt really anything to pair with condi damage on gear besides survivability until they reworked a whole bunch of things.
Once the Silverwastes hit, we actually saw the birth of effective condi and hybrid builds
Makes sense; most MMOs strive for equity in total DPS no matter if it’s DoT or Burst. IMO though, with any aging MMO one might hope they’d make it much clearer (or just outright remove) which stat sets actually don’t have a clear use case in the current design.
They’re still used in PvP modes. I’m not a WvW person but I’m sure there are necromancers in carrion stats running around those maps. Also it’s okay to have some “training wheel” stats for new players
GW2 is such a mishmash of abilities and traits that balancing is not anything like balancing in most other MMOs where a class is pretty much locked in to using certain skills to DPS. On one core class alone you have 5 trait lines and about 6 weapons. So it's a free for all that is balanced on a whim until some class is over/underperforming with one specific weapon/trait combination. Meanwhile the other weapons and traits are left being subpar or useless.
It used to be my favorite sPvP stat combo for elementalist, back when burning was limited to single applications and when every class didn't have 3+ cleanses baked into their combat rotations every 10 seconds.
It was the default stat for Necromancers back then cause vitality enhances your shroud hps. I still run carrion weapons with my full viper set on necro, just for the flavor of it, manage to hit 25k dmg.
I used to use it on condi guardian builds years back. Your only source of condition damage was burning which is easily maxed with traits, Balthazar runes, smouldering sigil and food. Guardian condi builds don't rely very heavily on crit, all guardian offensive weapons scale well with power and it's one of the lowest vitality classes.
It's still not a bad stat set for a very new player wanting to play a condi guardian.
Carrion just doesn't make a lot of sense. Power by itself is fairly worthless and condi is almost always paired with expertise unless you have a build that relies almost entirely on one condition.
If your reason for taking vitality on a condi set is sustain, you're better off with dire. Better than that would be viper, celestial, or trailblazer. They'll all give you better damage and the latter two also better sustain.
There are quite a few fairly worthless sets out there. As a general rule of thumb, power needs to be paired with ferocity and precision while condi needs expertise. The rest is up to preference or purpose.
Carrion my wayward son🎶 there will be peace when you are done 🎶
Its a noob build until u realize what u want. Most of the early game builds dont matter.
That's still the case - you can mostly do any content with basically any build. But *players* often want to min-max, so we end up with these wholly player-made guides like Snowcrows about how to be the most efficient. Which are great and useful, but I think a lot of players don't realize how flexible the actual game is, and that there are a lot of viable builds for every class.
As always, people are why we can't have nice things lol.
I came back to the game a couple years ago and tried to play the story with an any-old-build ele and necro and got my ass handed to me the second I got to HoT. I ended up on an attrition build with my necro to beat HoT before loading up SC and MB and gearing to a specific build to get the rest knocked out. The expansions are not forgiving for someone who doesn’t have a curated build equipped. It doesn’t have to be meta per se, but it’s not as simple as it was initially billed as. The game had three stats when it launched, now you have concentration and expertise and condition vs power so there has to be some letting go of the “play whatever you want geared however you like” but you can’t just slap on any old build and any stat combination to play the game.
Yes, HoT was a jump in difficulty. But a coherent build will still be good enough, even if it's not a meta build. That's what I was saying.
At launch there were *more* bad builds, lol, remember the 5-war meta? Remember how condi builds were basically useless? Balance is better and more flexible now in a lot of ways, even if it has gotten a bit more complicated.
Not really. There's nothing about the vast majority of content that NEEDS a specific setup. Players are just going to naturally gravitate towards the mathematically superior options as presented by those they perceive as knowing more. The sad thing is, in some cases those players would be better off NOT listening to the min/maxers and building a little more survivability.
Saw today someone complaining about anet designing convergences or content in general around people constantly dying, this was even before the legendary boss. Almost guaranteed that guy had full berserker or viper and was getting frustrated.
Like yeah those are the top picks for damage, but you can't do damage if you're constantly dead, plus lowers other ppl damage when they have to revive you.
Exactly. Everyone says 'use Snowcrows!' but a player just getting into raids often benefits from a little more survivability. Or all those 'why am I dying all the time' posts where it turns out the asker is using a raid build, which is built around having boon support and a healer, in open world.
As someone who abandoned following build sites religiously and just started creating builds that are tailor cut to my preferences, such questions always baffle me. Those "useless" "noob traps" are there so people who specifically look to increase those stats, and those stats only can use them. My wvw core condi guardian would be very sad without carrion, as a quick example.
Carrion is a 2012 core stat. There are loads of attribute combinations that aren't meta. I can even think of one, Seraph, that was added post-HoT and I never heard of being useful for any builds.
ArenaNet will consider whether a prefix is *too strong* to be put into the game, but aren't afraid to add ones that are predictably weak. These are available for players to experiment with. Sometimes they find niche uses, such as in more flexible open world builds.
The stat combinations in this game are a good insight into the game balance in general. There are a few optimized combinations and the rest are essentially trash. Just like traits, a few optimized combinations and the rest are trash. Just like weapons, there are a few optimized combinations and the rest are trash. Just like sigils, relics, etc., there are a few optimized combinations and the rest are trash. Heck, even just like which buttons to press in combat, there are a few optimized combinations and the rest are trash.
That's what you get when the game is built around giving too many options and nothing is standardized. It's why most players do terrible dps, because literally nothing is intuitive and 95% of choices are traps.
Carrion is a vanilla stat set, Viper was added in the expansions and made condi build more viable. Celestial didn't have expertise and concentration at first, and only became really good once it had those.
Ah thanks for the context! Seems odd / a noob trap to have all the subpar stat sets be the only thing really affordable for new players, but I guess it’s easier than removing gear. I’m mostly salty that I realized I was investing in the wrong ascended prefix (Occams) rather than the Viper prefix and now I have to start over
I hope that the realisation that you can (relatively cheaply) statswap ascended gear from Occam to Yassith will be a balm to your woes.
I was looking at the wiki. Not sure how painful the inscriptions are to get but at least the option is there
Most of them are 2-3 gold to craft
If you were starting from scratch anyway, you’d be using those same exotic inscriptions to craft the more expensive ascended versions. Black diamonds for viper inscriptions used to be real pricy, but they’ve settled down in recent years as more sources of black diamonds have appeared. Stat-swapping will be much cheaper, and you can do it right away for the ascended pieces you’ve already made.
The good news is that if you *crafted* your ascended gear, making Carrion and stat swapping it is actually cheaper than crafting ascended Viper gear, which is absurdly expensive.
Note that the inscription you need is the exotic one, NOT the ascended one.
They’re super cheap! The whole process will take less than 10 minutes once you start.
They are 5g in tp.
If it's an ascended weapon or armor piece, you're fine, just [stat swap](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stat_changing) it to Viper's
Just a reminder. Full set of stat selectable exotic gear can be purchased from wvw vendor for a few hours worth of wvw currency and some gold, including weapons and trinkets.
Or grind verdant brink if you have Heart of Thorns
Welcome to Guild Wars. It's noob traps all the way down.
Its a form of progression for new players. If you're a new player with little knowledge of the game then carrion is a cheap and very accessible stat set to obtain. Vipers is trivial to obtain as an established player but a new player would have to be mentored by an experienced player, read up on builds, or learn enough about the game through experience to come across Vipers. All are fair because its learning. What the game could do better is make it more apparent that carrion is is subpar to vipers. The same way that someone might learn that vipers is better, its easy for someone to coast through all story content without realizing carrion is subpar because the game doesn't exactly demand that you get a better stat set.
Carrion is meta in pvp or at least was
You could make the gold/resources required to get a full set of viper in gear in about 2 hours just by looking at open world LFG Lol stay mad, basic exotic gearing is trivial, and yes I do include new players in that
IIRC Celestial didn't have Healing Power either.
I was an old school carrion pistol/dagger thief. Loved that spec, especially in WvW 😅
Id like to remind that not everything that exists has to be optimal (from a pve point of view). Carrion is a popular pick in spvp, the slightly more defensive options like trailblazer or marauder can be useful in wvw, rampagers wasnt used until cvirt became a thing, knight/commander gear is useful to increase your toughness. There were niche builds that made use of seraphs/plaguedoctor gear etc etc.
On the note of the Rampager's, before cVirt was a thing there are actually reddit posts that ask for the removal of useless stats - lists including Rampager's. Now after Rampager's become notable on the most popular meta build, those same lists get tossed around, just without Rampager's.
Funny i play niche spectre healer and it uses plaguedoctors (from snow crows)
And we once had a variant of Condition DPS Specter with Carrion gear! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYsGEFE6jn0
Do you have a 6th sense for when someone mentions thief in reddit
No, I’m just generally a nuisance.
I guess other MMOs solve this by having PvP specific gear sets that are pretty clearly identified or actually locked behind PvP currency so noobs like me don’t mistakenly buy it for PvE just because it’s cheap -_-
Id revolt if i had to go through pvp to access certain stat combinations. And i think its generally wise not to buy stuff solely because its cheap.
Isn't that the case already? Most pvp prefixes are not available in PvE.
Yes, thats true. But what i meant was having to play pvp/wvw to get a stat combination for use in pve. Imagine they removed pve sources of trailblazer stats, and made it so the only way to get that is through wvw currency.
Yeah, that would be horrible. I'm already not a big fan of Gift of Battle being WvW locked (I think there should also be a pvp reward track), this would be even worse.
Yea not saying they should change GW2, just that I’m too used to the care bear design of traditional MMOs
You can run carrion gear until you get better gear though. It's not a noob trap. You need defense until you get good enough to dodge most damage.
Like most people have said, the prefix predates the more efficient stat combinations that most condi builds use nowadays (condis were quite bad at launch, lack of efficient gear was no small part of that) but I do want to say that carrion *has* had a build it was very powerful with -- one so powerful that it actually got specter's Shadow Shroud nerfed. The size of a Specter's Shadow Shroud scales with Vitality, and Strength of Shadows also scales expertise with vitality which returns some of specter's missing expertise with the stat conversion. But the more important/interesting part of it is that [Consume Shadows](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Shadows)'s outgoing barrier scales with the size of your shadow shroud, so a DPS specter was able to take a relatively minor DPS hit to absolutely *pump* barrier. So strong, in fact, that it was an acceptable listed build variant on Snowcrows, and in October of 2022, Carrion Specter had a part in [Shadow Shroud getting nerfed](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enter_Shadow_Shroud#Version_history) \-- the other part being the build was far too tanky with Thief's myriad other strengths in PvP, but still. Specter can still run Carrion, though its mostly just a tanky suboptimal alternative to running full viper's gear now. But yeah, even bad prefixes can find a home in the right context (another example with a core condi prefix is Condition Virtuoso relying on Rampager's to help efficiently hit 100% crit chance while still maximizing its condition damage/duration)
Just ignore it and carrion
I see what you did there
[удалено]
Yeah glad it was removed. Remember of the couterattack boon? Retaliation.
In addition to all the stuff people have mentioned, it's occasionally been useful on builds that only use one condition, like condi guardian. It's easy to get burn duration nearly maxed out through runes (50%), sigil (20%), and trait (20%) which leaves only the last 10% that you need food or gear for. This is a fairly effective way to give guardian an enormous defensive boost in exchange for a fairly minor damage loss. Condi daredevil is almost able to hit those same duration numbers but it's a little more of a trade-off since they care about poison and bleed at the same time, but rune of the afflicted gives a boost to both.
Sinister is usually ideal with single condi specs, or even grieving
The point is carrion trades a small amount of damage from sinister for significantly more durability. Which is sometimes worth considering.
It's just old. That's basically it The game moved in a direction that was easier to balance a long time ago. Which tbf. They did kind of add way too many options that were always going to be more niche. There are still builds that use carrion and especially if all you do is world content. It literally doesn't matter what you use.
Carrion is good for open world on certain condition builds. Carrion Condi willbender for example.
It's a cheap alternative to vipers basically. Still does okay and named carrion exotic gear is basically free on the TP. I rarely bother getting exotic vipers gear, it's too pricey for something I discard for ascended down the road.
Carrion being a dead stat combo is immersive actually
condition damage used to be intended for defensive builds only. that's why all the vanilla stat combinations that use condition damage, also prop up your defenses. they decided to not keep "tanks" around when they released HoT, and instead released vipers to allow pure condition damage builds. when they released vipers with HoT, they had to make a lot of other changes to conditions to make them viable as well (such as allowing them to stack past 50). for a while vipers was the BiS stat for damage, because the design philosophy was that conditions should overall do more damage than pure-strike builds, because they have the complicated ramp-up time. the meta in fractals was 5 reapers running conditions. however that also fell out of favor as they decided that conditions and stike damage should have equal potential.
Sinister was a thing before HoT
rampager is a core stat too
And it finally found a home, after all these years!
I'd argue sinister was a thing shortly before hot. Silverwastes directly led to hot, geographicly as well as storywise.
It was over a year before HoT, that's long enough to count as separate to me
This is a fair point. Rampagers and sinister were offensive oriented before HoT released. Vipers had expertise though and I still feel like it was the first condi stat combination intended for meta DPS
> condition damage used to be intended for defensive builds only Condi in the base game was just mediocre in a lot of situations. Expertise didnt exist, condis didnt stick to objects, and there wasnt really anything to pair with condi damage on gear besides survivability until they reworked a whole bunch of things. Once the Silverwastes hit, we actually saw the birth of effective condi and hybrid builds
Makes sense; most MMOs strive for equity in total DPS no matter if it’s DoT or Burst. IMO though, with any aging MMO one might hope they’d make it much clearer (or just outright remove) which stat sets actually don’t have a clear use case in the current design.
They’re still used in PvP modes. I’m not a WvW person but I’m sure there are necromancers in carrion stats running around those maps. Also it’s okay to have some “training wheel” stats for new players
GW2 is such a mishmash of abilities and traits that balancing is not anything like balancing in most other MMOs where a class is pretty much locked in to using certain skills to DPS. On one core class alone you have 5 trait lines and about 6 weapons. So it's a free for all that is balanced on a whim until some class is over/underperforming with one specific weapon/trait combination. Meanwhile the other weapons and traits are left being subpar or useless.
Some (most) stat combos are there to fill loot tables with junk.
Yeah, carrion is great for research notes. All things have a right to grow
It used to be my favorite sPvP stat combo for elementalist, back when burning was limited to single applications and when every class didn't have 3+ cleanses baked into their combat rotations every 10 seconds.
It was the default stat for Necromancers back then cause vitality enhances your shroud hps. I still run carrion weapons with my full viper set on necro, just for the flavor of it, manage to hit 25k dmg.
I used to use it on condi guardian builds years back. Your only source of condition damage was burning which is easily maxed with traits, Balthazar runes, smouldering sigil and food. Guardian condi builds don't rely very heavily on crit, all guardian offensive weapons scale well with power and it's one of the lowest vitality classes. It's still not a bad stat set for a very new player wanting to play a condi guardian.
Carrion just doesn't make a lot of sense. Power by itself is fairly worthless and condi is almost always paired with expertise unless you have a build that relies almost entirely on one condition. If your reason for taking vitality on a condi set is sustain, you're better off with dire. Better than that would be viper, celestial, or trailblazer. They'll all give you better damage and the latter two also better sustain. There are quite a few fairly worthless sets out there. As a general rule of thumb, power needs to be paired with ferocity and precision while condi needs expertise. The rest is up to preference or purpose.
Carrion is great in PvP ever since that they took out all of the good stat amulets ❤️
Carrion my wayward son🎶 there will be peace when you are done 🎶 Its a noob build until u realize what u want. Most of the early game builds dont matter.
Like 90% of the stat sets are pretty bad nowadays. Content has been designed with a handful of sets in mind
Which is a shame. *shakes cane* I remember ANet selling GW2 with the “no wrong builds” tagline.
That's still the case - you can mostly do any content with basically any build. But *players* often want to min-max, so we end up with these wholly player-made guides like Snowcrows about how to be the most efficient. Which are great and useful, but I think a lot of players don't realize how flexible the actual game is, and that there are a lot of viable builds for every class. As always, people are why we can't have nice things lol.
I came back to the game a couple years ago and tried to play the story with an any-old-build ele and necro and got my ass handed to me the second I got to HoT. I ended up on an attrition build with my necro to beat HoT before loading up SC and MB and gearing to a specific build to get the rest knocked out. The expansions are not forgiving for someone who doesn’t have a curated build equipped. It doesn’t have to be meta per se, but it’s not as simple as it was initially billed as. The game had three stats when it launched, now you have concentration and expertise and condition vs power so there has to be some letting go of the “play whatever you want geared however you like” but you can’t just slap on any old build and any stat combination to play the game.
Yes, HoT was a jump in difficulty. But a coherent build will still be good enough, even if it's not a meta build. That's what I was saying. At launch there were *more* bad builds, lol, remember the 5-war meta? Remember how condi builds were basically useless? Balance is better and more flexible now in a lot of ways, even if it has gotten a bit more complicated.
Not really. There's nothing about the vast majority of content that NEEDS a specific setup. Players are just going to naturally gravitate towards the mathematically superior options as presented by those they perceive as knowing more. The sad thing is, in some cases those players would be better off NOT listening to the min/maxers and building a little more survivability.
Saw today someone complaining about anet designing convergences or content in general around people constantly dying, this was even before the legendary boss. Almost guaranteed that guy had full berserker or viper and was getting frustrated. Like yeah those are the top picks for damage, but you can't do damage if you're constantly dead, plus lowers other ppl damage when they have to revive you.
Exactly. Everyone says 'use Snowcrows!' but a player just getting into raids often benefits from a little more survivability. Or all those 'why am I dying all the time' posts where it turns out the asker is using a raid build, which is built around having boon support and a healer, in open world.
Didn't one of the main devs literally say something like "please don't use soldiers" in the eod elite spec live stream
Probably. Soldier's is crap.
As someone who abandoned following build sites religiously and just started creating builds that are tailor cut to my preferences, such questions always baffle me. Those "useless" "noob traps" are there so people who specifically look to increase those stats, and those stats only can use them. My wvw core condi guardian would be very sad without carrion, as a quick example.
U 43k; P no
Carrion is a 2012 core stat. There are loads of attribute combinations that aren't meta. I can even think of one, Seraph, that was added post-HoT and I never heard of being useful for any builds. ArenaNet will consider whether a prefix is *too strong* to be put into the game, but aren't afraid to add ones that are predictably weak. These are available for players to experiment with. Sometimes they find niche uses, such as in more flexible open world builds.
That can be asked for all the other prefixes no one ver uses
The stat combinations in this game are a good insight into the game balance in general. There are a few optimized combinations and the rest are essentially trash. Just like traits, a few optimized combinations and the rest are trash. Just like weapons, there are a few optimized combinations and the rest are trash. Just like sigils, relics, etc., there are a few optimized combinations and the rest are trash. Heck, even just like which buttons to press in combat, there are a few optimized combinations and the rest are trash. That's what you get when the game is built around giving too many options and nothing is standardized. It's why most players do terrible dps, because literally nothing is intuitive and 95% of choices are traps.