Curse

Essence Snow · May 26, 2011, 06:47 PM // 18:47

Unfortunately the flawed mechanic and eles are intertwined, making an issue of one an issue with the other. I stand behind my post reguardless...one cannot rightfully say that an issue of something has nothing to do with that same something, no matter what it is.

Kunder · May 26, 2011, 07:10 PM // 19:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Essence Snow

Unfortunately the flawed mechanic and eles are intertwined, making an issue of one an issue with the other. I stand behind my post reguardless...one cannot rightfully say that an issue of something has nothing to do with that same something, no matter what it is.

You can. Easily.

Lets say every area in the game suddenly had the Shroud of Darkness environmental effect, causing all physicals to have a 50% miss rate (and lets pretend you couldn't even bypass this with Asuran Scan). Is that a problem with physicals? No, that would be a problem with PvE.

Inflated armor is exactly the same for Eles, every skill they use is most often reduced to 50% effectiveness, if not 20-30%. Eles essentially enter every HM area with an invisible "You do 40-80% less damage with every skill, because RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO eles" environmental effect. The same goes for any other class trying to use armor-respecting damage.

Lanier · May 26, 2011, 07:15 PM // 19:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

I think the ultimate flaw in this game is people's obsessions with title tracks which forces them to put all their attention into a single character and profession. A lot of players identify themselves as a single profession and they take it really personally if they feel neglected. I'm perfectly content to use specific professions to do certain things that they are better at.

This is indeed the ultimate flaw of the game (though it is more the fault of the game designers than the players). The designers made a game where the ultimate "end game" of PvE, once one has completed the campaigns, is getting titles. If anet had taken more care to make all or most titles account wide, this wouldn't be such a problem. As things are, though, most people are locked into a single profession that they play much more than the others. I wish it were different - I would love to be able to do one vanquish or dungeon on my ritualist and then do the next on my paragon and then the next on my mesmer, but that is not the case. As it is, I have to do them all on my paragon, since he's my main title char.

This is the reason why I dislike anet spending so much time on skill updates for single professions at the time. I remember back in the day when Izzy headed the team, most updates would contain skill changes for a variety of different skills for different professions. Thus, whenever a new skill update came out, I would always be really excited because I knew that at least a few paragon or rit skills would be changed. Now... well I dont even have a dervish that I play. You can imagine how disappointed I am that anet spent 9 months on an update for a profession that I dont play. I am fine with certain professions being the focus of updates, but some skills for several (if not all) of the other professions should be considered in each update as well.

LifeInfusion · May 26, 2011, 07:20 PM // 19:20

Other than anything but D-slash, swords are completely trashed by D/W swords with Ebon Dust Aura, but I don't see how warriors are terrible. Nobody runs D/W swords in PvE afaik so it's pointless to talk about swords.

Earthshaker
Dev hammer bars
W/P spear chucker with SY!
W/any Enduring Axe with SY!
W/any Eviscerate shock axe for PvP

The latest patch made things better as far as Dervish balance, mainly due to the IAS changes. Warriors have higher bonus damage, more unconditional armor, ability to use a shield.

I've been meaning to test out enraged smash as well in areas where crude swing isn't as good due to sparse/spread foes. +4 adrenaline every 5 seconds is counter blow/yeti smash/dwarven headbutt fuel.

Re: Eles in HM. I feel HM Eles are comparable to mesmers that use domination in Normal mode instead of keystone or clumsiness/illusion spam , but without the utility. The most sustainable damage (with no utility), SF eles with glowing gaze, does about 40-50DPS per target due to aftercast. Eles and Rangers in HM are in the same boat. Barrage rangers only get about 17 (or 22 with vamp) damage on barrage to be armor ignoring, which is maybe half of their total damage (~36-40DPS with vamp, energy permitting ... ~28DPS otherwise). I just tested this on MoD.

Essence Snow · May 26, 2011, 07:28 PM // 19:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

You can. Easily.

Lets say every area in the game suddenly had the Shroud of Darkness environmental effect, causing all physicals to have a 50% miss rate (and lets pretend you couldn't even bypass this with Asuran Scan). Is that a problem with physicals? No, that would be a problem with PvE.

Inflated armor is exactly the same for Eles, every skill they use is most often reduced to 50% effectiveness, if not 20-30%. Eles essentially enter every HM area with an invisible "You do 40-80% less damage with every skill, because RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO eles" environmental effect. The same goes for any other class trying to use armor-respecting damage.

Your missing the point....in your example it would be like saying the problem with miss rate has nothing to do with miss rate...or.....the problem with physicals has nothing to do with physicals....or the problem with enviormental effects has nothing to do with environmental effects...or the problem with armor respecting dmg has nothing to do with armor respecting dmg. All of those statements are hypocritical.....they say there is a problem with something...then contradict that point by saying that subject of said problem is unrelated.

One could say..the issue of armor reduction has nothing to do with eles.

Let me see if I can add an analogy to this...

Incorrect: The color green has nothing to do with the color green
Correct: The color green has nothing to with the color red
Debatable: The color green has nothing to do with the color yellow

Eles and armor is in the debatable catagory...but the original comment was:

Quote:

The issue with eles has got nothing to do with the ele itself.

Lanier · May 26, 2011, 07:44 PM // 19:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

Re: Eles in HM. I feel HM Eles are comparable to mesmers that use domination in Normal mode instead of keystone or clumsiness/illusion spam , but without the utility. The most sustainable damage (with no utility), SF eles with glowing gaze, does about 40-50DPS per target due to aftercast. Eles and Rangers in HM are in the same boat. Barrage rangers only get about 17 damage on barrage, which is maybe 1/3 of their total damage.

Paragons do worse than that, and when the imbagon build is nerfed (which is hopefully will be soon), paragons won't really have anything.

Xenomortis · May 26, 2011, 07:52 PM // 19:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

Other than anything but D-slash, swords are completely trashed by D/W swords with Ebon Dust Aura, but I don't see how warriors are terrible. Nobody runs D/W swords in PvE afaik so it's pointless to talk about swords.

I missed the Derv build that could run Hundred Blades and Ebon Dust Aura.

Kunder · May 26, 2011, 08:12 PM // 20:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Essence Snow

Your missing the point....in your example it would be like saying the problem with miss rate has nothing to do with miss rate...or.....the problem with physicals has nothing to do with physicals....or the problem with enviormental effects has nothing to do with environmental effects...or the problem with armor respecting dmg has nothing to do with armor respecting dmg. All of those statements are hypocritical.....they say there is a problem with something...then contradict that point by saying that subject of said problem is unrelated.

One could say..the issue of armor reduction has nothing to do with eles.

Let me see if I can add an analogy to this...

Incorrect: The color green has nothing to do with the color green
Correct: The color green has nothing to with the color red
Debatable: The color green has nothing to do with the color yellow

Eles and armor is in the debatable catagory...but the original comment was:

If you want to be pedantic, literally everything is always related to everything else in some way simply because that is how the universe works. When people say "Ele problems have nothing to do with Ele skills", they imply that the source of the problem that needs to be fixed is not in Ele skills.

NerfHerder · May 26, 2011, 08:12 PM // 20:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voodoo Rage

I think the ultimate flaw in this game is people's obsessions with title tracks which forces them to put all their attention into a single character and profession. A lot of players identify themselves as a single profession and they take it really personally if they feel neglected. I'm perfectly content to use specific professions to do certain things that they are better at.

I have to agree, my own selfish reasons for wanting a PvE Smiter Monk buff, because I title hunt on my Monk. RoJ is kind of a joke in PvE. And the only other good skills are too reactive and situational to be dependable DPS or are strictly support.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyy High

In other words, the solution to the issue isn't to buff eles like mad (just like the solution to rangers isn't to buff their damage). In the ele's case, the solution is to reduce the amount of armor mobs have in HM. That buffs eles while leaving everyone else's damage effectively constant (still crazy OPed most of the time, but still).

Alternatively, and preferably, all armor ignoring damage should be nerfed such that you can't steamroll HM mobs faster than the skales outside of Ashfrod. If the rate of kills went down, ele damage wouldn't look so terrible in comparison. In other words: kill powercreep, stop buffing to compensate.

First solution: Wouldnt nerfing HM armor increase the base damage of physical attacks? Making Dervs, Sins, Wars, Minions, and Orders builds even more OP?

Second Solution: I concur, if you also nerf the armor ignoring damage to attack skills, that might work. But I doubt Anet has the will or ability to undertake a mass nerf of that scale.

Aside from the occasional nerf to OP skills(with SF I wonder what Anet's criteria for OP is), it seems ANet is content on fighting powercreep with powercreep. Which is why whenever I discuss skill balances, I favor powercreep. Not because its the best possible solution, but because its the most likely to be implemented.

Xenomortis · May 26, 2011, 08:14 PM // 20:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by NerfHerder

First solution: Wouldnt nerfing HM armor increase the base damage of physical attacks? Making Dervs, Sins, Wars, Minions, and Orders builds even more OP?

Not enough for people to really notice. Eles are supported by that more than anyone else.

Kunder · May 26, 2011, 08:24 PM // 20:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by NerfHerder

I have to agree, my own selfish reasons for wanting a PvE Smiter Monk buff, because I title hunt on my Monk. RoJ is kind of a joke in PvE. And the only other good skills are too reactive and situational to be dependable DPS or are strictly support.

First solution: Wouldnt nerfing HM armor increase the base damage of physical attacks? Making Dervs, Sins, Wars, Minions, and Orders builds even more OP?

Second Solution: I concur, if you also nerf the armor ignoring damage to attack skills, that might work. But I doubt Anet has the will or ability to undertake a mass nerf of that scale.

Aside from the occasional nerf to OP skills(with SF I wonder what Anet's criteria for OP is), it seems ANet is content on fighting powercreep with powercreep. Which is why whenever I discuss skill balances, I favor powercreep. Not because its the best possible solution, but because its the most likely to be implemented.

Generally, lower armor wouldn't help the OP Derv/Sin/War builds all that much. At most, they will gain about +10-15 single target DPS, which doesn't matter because the OP builds are OP because they are doing ridiculous amounts of AoE. The physicals who aren't using OP AoE builds are the ones that would see the most benefit (and who are underpowered still now and need it). The only forseeable thing that for players really gets any buff at all is Hundred Blades/ Vow of Strength, who's power could be cut by about 30% to keep them at current damage levels. Not that VoS/HB are imba because of their damage anyway, they are only imba because of their reaction to MoP + balled enemies but we could easily keep parity with their current base damage. MMs do get a pretty decent buff, probably about 40-70 DPS for a full army but its not too bad, and MBs that use low level minions still do almost no minion damage.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, at least one other melee skill would definitely need a nerf if armor level was lowered. That being Sand Shards. There are probably a handful of others, its fairly easy to know which ones if you are knowledgeable about them and just look through the listings, but I'm not going to do that right now.

Nerfing armor ignoring damage is needed, but not really on attack skills. Very few builds are steamrolling PvE because of +30 armor ignoring damage on a single attack (Death Blossom Sins and PR Dervs are the only ones I can think of), most of the melee builds are steamrolling PvE because of +40 damage on every single attack along with 50 AoE damage from a combination of OP buffs.

Skyy High · May 26, 2011, 08:35 PM // 20:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

Barrage rangers only get about 17 (or 22 with vamp) damage on barrage to be armor ignoring, which is maybe half of their total damage (~36-40DPS with vamp, energy permitting ... ~28DPS otherwise).

Your barrage build must be terrible. Also, barrage spike damage scales with number of foes because of a little skill called splinter weapon. MoD doesn't let you test that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nerfherder

First solution: Wouldnt nerfing HM armor increase the base damage of physical attacks? Making Dervs, Sins, Wars, Minions, and Orders builds even more OP?

Very little, if any, of the damage from these sources are in fact reduced by armor. Physical classes get the majority of their damage from their +damage skills. The reason that melee damage is ridiculous is because it can be pumped with things like orders, barbs, MoP, SoH, weapon spells, etc...all of which do armor-ignoring damage.

Quote:

Second Solution: I concur, if you also nerf the armor ignoring damage to attack skills, that might work. But I doubt Anet has the will or ability to undertake a mass nerf of that scale.

An unbuffed physical really isn't that bad. Take out the crazy +dmg stuff I listed above (and some key PvE only skills) and the attack skills themselves can stay the same. Save for the dervs (and hammers, iirc), attack skill damage itself hasn't changed terribly much over the years.

AndrewSX · May 26, 2011, 08:43 PM // 20:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyy High

Not really. The "issue" with eles can really be traced back to how HM monsters have huge amounts of armor, and the only class that relies almost exclusively on non-armor ignoring damage is the ele. Ele damage is fine in NM, because it was originally balanced around that.

In other words, the solution to the issue isn't to buff eles like mad (just like the solution to rangers isn't to buff their damage). In the ele's case, the solution is to reduce the amount of armor mobs have in HM. That buffs eles while leaving everyone else's damage effectively constant (still crazy OPed most of the time, but still).

Alternatively, and preferably, all armor ignoring damage should be nerfed such that you can't steamroll HM mobs faster than the skales outside of Ashfrod. If the rate of kills went down, ele damage wouldn't look so terrible in comparison. In other words: kill powercreep, stop buffing to compensate.

All you say is true, but eles DO have some really stupid things to fix apart the lack of damage: E-storage isn't a energy-management as should, Glyphs aren't really useful (apart Gole and some niche situations), static wards can't compete to all other party protection out there (SY>every wards summed toghether), water is a joke (apart maelstrom and deep freeze), and stuff like this. And this sums with the "Skill listed damage: 103. Effective damage:36.".

And agreee with your points about nerf everything else or mob armor. But as you say:

Quote:

Of course, that's never going to happen.

Buff 1 prof vs. nerf all armor-ignoring dmg + nerf mobs armor +....

Which means that any update to ele will be a powercreep madness to be effective.

Kunder · May 26, 2011, 09:01 PM // 21:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndrewSX

And agreee with your points about nerf everything else or mob armor. But as you say:

Buff 1 prof vs. nerf all armor-ignoring dmg + nerf mobs armor +....

Which means that any update to ele will be a powercreep madness to be effective.

You hardly have to nerf all armor ignoring damage. The vast majority of armor ignoring skills aren't that bad. When was the last time you saw life stealing necros or degen mesmers? Didn't think so.

For the most part, there are about 5-10 armor ignoring skills you would want to nerf to balance all physical professions, and there are about 10-15 or so armor ignoring skills that casters abuse and need to be nerfed.

Nerfing mob armor is easy. Any developer who doesn't have their head up their ass could easily write some kind of script to go through all enemies and automatically cap their armor at the normal lvl 20 maximum. After that you might want to go through and manually up a few enemies by about 10-15 armor just to make them a bit more durable, but 95% of the work can easily be automated. One would hardly need to manually tweak every single enemy in every single area.

AndrewSX · May 26, 2011, 09:23 PM // 21:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

You hardly have to nerf all armor ignoring damage. The vast majority of armor ignoring skills aren't that bad. When was the last time you saw life stealing necros or degen mesmers? Didn't think so.

For the most part, there are about 5-10 armor ignoring skills you would want to nerf to balance all physical professions, and there are about 10-15 or so armor ignoring skills that casters abuse and need to be nerfed.

Nerfing mob armor is easy. Any developer who doesn't have their head up their ass could easily write some kind of script to go through all enemies and automatically cap their armor at the normal lvl 20 maximum. After that you might want to go through and manually up a few enemies by about 10-15 armor just to make them a bit more durable, but 95% of the work can easily be automated. One would hardly need to manually tweak every single enemy in every single area.

With "Armor-ignoring damage" i mean things like Foc, Esurge, RoJ, and so on.
Generally when you talk about this kind of dmg Degen doesn't fall in this category, but is useless in pve anyway so who cares.

And about nerfing armors, i'm not a GW programmer, but do you recall how much time took them to implement some plain "IAS+IMS+Scattering+Fast casting+ultra-armor" mobs that we usually call "HM"? Months maybe?

I think that if reducing armor rating would be just "fix 2 numbers here and there" they would have done it ages ago.

Kunder · May 26, 2011, 09:33 PM // 21:33

Quote:

With "Armor-ignoring damage" i mean things like Foc, Esurge, RoJ, and so on.
Generally when you talk about this kind of dmg Degen doesn't fall in this category, but is useless in pve anyway so who cares.

Was just throwing them out to make the point. There are lots of skills that are armor ignoring but still not overpowered. No one is complaining about Backfire, Empathy, Chaos Storm and Energy Burn being OP. Domination magic is considered one of the more OP attributes in the game and yet half the skills are either fairly balanced or even under powered.

Degen wasn't useless at all before the massive power creep from Nightfall. Getting 20 DPS on every enemy in a group is pretty impressive compared to both an unbuffed or much more weakly buffed warrior and a pre-power creep ele against pre-armor creep enemies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndrewSX

And about nerfing armors, i'm not a GW programmer, but do you recall how much time took them to implement some plain "IAS+IMS+Scattering+Fast casting+ultra-armor" mobs that we usually call "HM"? Months maybe?

I think that if reducing armor rating would be just "fix 2 numbers here and there" they would have done it ages ago.

I can't fathom a means by which changing armor game-wide would be a difficult thing. The statistic has to be stored in some kind of data structure that can be both read from and written to. There is no conceivable way that changing it could be all that more difficult than:

for( x == 1 to x ==N) ;x= 1 is first monster in monster list, N = last monster in the list
if GetProf(x) == warrior AND GetArmor(x) > 100, SetArmor(x) = 100
if GetProf(x) == ranger AND GetArmor(x) > 70, SetArmor(x) = 70
etc.

So I very much doubt there is any programming limitation to making the change. What else could be slowing down the process overly much, I don't know.

Skyy High · May 26, 2011, 11:12 PM // 23:12

I really don't think it's about the time or difficulty involved in making any of these changes, I think it's about retaining players for GW2. Sure, we would be happy if PvE was a little less stupid, but the majority? I doubt it. Getting WoC out the door is much, much more important to keeping people happy.

Just sit back, relax, let people grab up their titles; GW2 is coming, and hopefully they learned their lessons from GW1. Collapsing damage types, armor types, prots/enchants, and hexes will hopefully go a long way to making the game easier to balance (also: abolishing secondaries).

dudemonkey · May 27, 2011, 12:07 AM // 00:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kunder

So I very much doubt there is any programming limitation to making the change. What else could be slowing down the process overly much, I don't know.

What holds up small software changes?

Testing, debugging, specifications, documenting the changes, managerial/business approval, getting developer resources, scheduling work, unexpected side effects from working on 6 year old code, legacy data, the fact that the guy who sits across from the person who is going to make the change decides that he wants to read XKCD and IM his favorite ones to the person making the change, the fact that the person making the change probably finds XKCD way more amusing than updating ancient databases, wifi decides that today is the day it will intermittently disconnect itself from the internet, it's sunny out and everyone blows off work to go to Starbucks for 2 hours, the guy who was supposed to make the change got hired away by a social media startup promising lots of stock options that turn out to be worth less than Chick-Fil-E wrappers, 100 things to do but only 2 programmers, Apple released an update to iOS and the developer's girlfriend's iPhone annihilated itself on the day the change was supposed to be made because the developer jailbroke it with a malware infested kit, some guy in a suit killed the initiative because working on GW2 will have a higher ROI for ArenaNet, QA guy can't find the right music on Pandora, project manager is overwhelmed and doesn't have time to sign off on the work, developer is busy reading GWW flamewars instead of working, DBA only speaks Russian, tester trying to figure out what PC Load Letter means, DR testing scheduled for the weekend so code is frozen, GWAR tickets trump work every time, manager needs report of # of whippet grommits sold per unit-nectule and it must be in Excel pivot table embedded in Powerpoint and he needs it in 8 minutes, whole team ditched work to go see Thor, developers would rather solve problem in interesting way that just happens to accidentally cause power outages in Zanesville Ohio, tech lead burns out and goes to meditate with Nepalese sherpas for a week, someone at NCSoft accidentally deletes a zero on a spreadsheet and project funding dries up, dude's new boss could be a jerk and developer passive aggressively tries to make him fail by working slow, reddit is seriously more fun than work, three words: epic snack run

And playtesting. Lots and lots of playtesting.

Skyy High · May 27, 2011, 12:47 AM // 00:47

/bow

Fantastic read, good sir.

TheRakeman · May 27, 2011, 02:41 AM // 02:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by dudemonkey

What holds up small software changes?

Testing, debugging, specifications, documenting the changes, managerial/business approval, getting developer resources, scheduling work, unexpected side effects from working on 6 year old code, legacy data, the fact that the guy who sits across from the person who is going to make the change decides that he wants to read XKCD and IM his favorite ones to the person making the change, the fact that the person making the change probably finds XKCD way more amusing than updating ancient databases, wifi decides that today is the day it will intermittently disconnect itself from the internet, it's sunny out and everyone blows off work to go to Starbucks for 2 hours, the guy who was supposed to make the change got hired away by a social media startup promising lots of stock options that turn out to be worth less than Chick-Fil-E wrappers, 100 things to do but only 2 programmers, Apple released an update to iOS and the developer's girlfriend's iPhone annihilated itself on the day the change was supposed to be made because the developer jailbroke it with a malware infested kit, some guy in a suit killed the initiative because working on GW2 will have a higher ROI for ArenaNet, QA guy can't find the right music on Pandora, project manager is overwhelmed and doesn't have time to sign off on the work, developer is busy reading GWW flamewars instead of working, DBA only speaks Russian, tester trying to figure out what PC Load Letter means, DR testing scheduled for the weekend so code is frozen, GWAR tickets trump work every time, manager needs report of # of whippet grommits sold per unit-nectule and it must be in Excel pivot table embedded in Powerpoint and he needs it in 8 minutes, whole team ditched work to go see Thor, developers would rather solve problem in interesting way that just happens to accidentally cause power outages in Zanesville Ohio, tech lead burns out and goes to meditate with Nepalese sherpas for a week, someone at NCSoft accidentally deletes a zero on a spreadsheet and project funding dries up, dude's new boss could be a jerk and developer passive aggressively tries to make him fail by working slow, reddit is seriously more fun than work, three words: epic snack run

And playtesting. Lots and lots of playtesting.

Funny! Yes, playtesting would probably be the big thing here definitely - you can't just do a blanket nerf on all armor and expect everything to remain balanced. The actual coding would be quite simple and probably not crop up any bugs unless something stupid was done (though this is always a possibility). But just because you can do something doesn't mean it is a good idea to do it.